faelapis:

 see, i don’t think rose wanted that.

i think she made peace with the fact that she would never see them again, and that they didn’t treat her very well. i don’t think she’s obligated to make amends with them, even if steven later wanted to. and i think that’s fine.

i think it’s a good parallel to greg’s family situation – he had no plans to make amends with them, either. the main reason he does so with andy is because steven feels cut off from his own humanity. not for his own sake.

so i don’t think they wanted to – they were both happy with their found family. 

rose wanted to confess her past to greg, to address her own guilt and finally be honest with someone. as he put it himself – she wanted to confess everything to him, and the word “confession” carries a strong connotation of guilt. 

but that wasn’t because she felt bad for leaving the other diamonds behind. her guilt was focused on her own culpability – lying to the crystal gems, forging a new identity, and the horrible things she once tried to do to the earth. her moral compass was currently aligned with the other CGs – hurting earth, humans, and fellow crystal gems is bad, because you’re all on the same team.

“do you miss your home planet?” “no, never”. 

there are two common ways to read this line: as honesty, or as denial. 

and there are certainly things that point to her genuinely caring for the other diamonds – such as how strongly she reacted to bismuth’s plan, how they clearly used to be a family of sorts, how she drew them all smiling together, how quickly she answers in this scene, or how steven deduced that part of pink felt she deserved it when they locked her up.

but here’s the thing – caring for them in some form doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to make amends. she still hates homeworld, and the life she left behind, and she’s not willing to compromise on that. 

hence becoming rose in the first place.

so i read the line above not as a lie or the truth, but as a spoken promise and resolution to the self – to never go back to that life again. 

there are reasons to feel bad for rose. but running away from a broken home and finding a new family and identity… is what she chose. it helped her grow, and find hope and appreciation in all the beautiful and unique life around her. 

moreover, rose never aspired for everyone to understand each other. not the way steven does. pink probably knew that the other diamonds had a reason for acting this way, and internalized that she had to set an example (hence making rose so “perfect”), but she rejects her role in their family. and she couldn’t uncouple that from who the diamonds were.

this didn’t make the other diamonds irredeemable, of course, and it certainly didn’t fix everything… but she didn’t want to see them again. and considering how they treated her, i don’t think i can really say she was wrong to feel that. even if they did love her.

and yknow, i think that’s a good consequence for the other diamonds to deal with – she left, because she wanted to. she’s gone, because she wanted to be. 

i don’t think rose ultimately hated them as these one-dimensional villains in her life. they weren’t, and she didn’t. otherwise, i think she’d have an easier time stomaching bismuth’s plan (she could have still faked her own shattering, and then let bismuth go ham with the others if she truly hated them). 

i don’t think she truly hated anyone, in the end. hence her spoken thesis in “lion 3″ on what she learned being that every life has its own unique experience, and that she can’t wait for steven to join them… but ultimately, making amends with the other diamonds wasn’t for her. even if it would be for him.