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(Late) happy new era

i loved that darling little dancer fusion from the ball episode!!!

I don’t know who they are but I must protect them

“Garnet? Does that call herself a ‘Garnet’?”

imagine (hopefully) after her redemption, BD talking to Garnet and actually referring to her as Garnet?

“Garnet, watch out!”

“Hello, Garnet”

“What about Garnet?”

Image Source: SU Wiki

Something I want to start this analysis off with is the context with which Spinel enters the SU movie. Spinel’s resentment and movement towards earth began only the day the Diamonds broadcast Steven to all of their colonies. That was the scene at the very beginning of the movie. So the time it took Steven to shake off the Diamonds, return home, chat with Connie, and sing Happily Ever After with the gems, was the same time it took Spinel to formulate a plan, grab hold of the Injector, and travel to Earth, and begin her Other Friends monologue. 

In the larger scheme of Spinel’s life, this is a blink of an eye, in fact, it is no time at all. That tells us that Spinel’s actions were somewhat a knee-jerk reaction to finding out she was abandoned for good. And that’s where I want to begin with this analysis. With that, let’s get to it.

1. Spinel had yet to process her emotions

Image Source: SU Wiki 

When we first see Spinel, her appearance is accompanied by an almost exaggerated plot to destroy all of Earth because of one Gem’s betrayal. Granted, she was always in the presence of Diamonds, who always talked on the scale of colonies and entire planets, but she herself was never in a position to act on that scale, which would have conditioned her thinking to a large extent. 

Her arrival, her dramatic entrance, and the very dramatic rendition of Other Friends all speak of acting based on gut feel. The entire song, as musically complex as it is, has lyrics that are quite simple in contrast. In a way, it’s as if it’s saying the feelings she had were complex (confusion, hatred, sadness, regret, resentment, anger, a little relief from something ending– more on that later), but she didn’t exactly know where to direct them. 

The abruptness of her arrival and how quickly she acted tells us (about how she got the injector and found out exactly where Steven lived let’s chalk it up to she knew where the Diamonds kept everything for the moment), that she hadn’t processed her emotions yet. So she instead fixated on one that could power her through all these things she’s never done before: Anger. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard! I’ve had your little message to the universe… ON LOOP!

Source: SU Wiki

Without a clear direction, Spinel was fixating, holding onto anything that could help her vent out this anger. And without Rose to direct that anger towards, without anyone to blame, she pinned her anger on Steven and the Crystal Gems. 

Image source: SU WIki

What we also see is something very different from any other Homeworld antagonist Steven has encountered before. Spinel doesn’t conflate or equate Steven with Rose Quartz. She knows very well that Steven is a completely different life form, and his own individual. When she tries to poof him with her scythe, she isn’t that surprised when his physical form stays together.

You don’t poof, do you? Hmm, figured as much. Just wait! *her pupils jiggle like googly eyes Your human half won’t stand a chance against my Injector. Not after what I just did to your gem!

Source:SU Wiki

It implies she knows something about organic life. We also get a hint that she’s aware of how Gems start out with their abilities. “You weren’t always a powerful hero, were you?” She teased him as her physical form poofed. Spinel spent a lot of time with Pink Diamond, who at this point we know is relatively younger. She couldn’t control her powers when her emotions flared, as we saw in SU Future, but this also means Gems must, to some extent practice and train to perfect their abilities. There’s always room for learning, as the Lapises demonstrated in Why So Blue? Even Peridot had to learn and master her metalokinesis because she didn’t know she had it. 

Moments later, when he poofs her in turn, she doesn’t seem scared that the Earth will end with her still on it. Spinel, at this point, isn’t acting based on some grand scheme for vengeance. She’s angry, hopeless, and very lost. She doesn’t see a future for herself, but it would be satisfying for her to take down everything PD left her for in the process. 

Image source: SU Wiki

Spinel doesn’t have a plan for after Earth is destroyed. And that leads to the second idea.

2. Spinel’s resentment predated the events of the movie 

Image Source: SU WIki

Spinel’s life even before Rose abandoned her in the garden seemed less than ideal. As I covered in my previous post, she was given the purpose of being a “perfect friend.” In this case, that meant being agreeable and palatable so that she would be accepted in the company of anyone. That meant putting aside her own feelings and identity in lieu of her “friends’.” 

When we consider what Rose was like in her Pink Diamond days, it seems a difficult juggling act. Pink Diamond was moody, had issues controlling her anger, was demanding, and she herself directed her resentment towards the other Diamonds’ condescension at others. 

Volleyball is the perfect example of this. In her titular episode, she talked about how PD had a temper and was prone to violent outbursts. Now imagine having to be the emotional cushion for that as a “best friend.” This is different from being Volleyball. Volleyball was perceived by PD as a Pearl, no more than another piece of furniture. With Spinel, we expect she would voice her thoughts out loud and expect a response. How would one respond to someone vastly outranking them, with a temper, and immense power that could shatter or at least poof you at a moment’s notice? 

It was a tenuous position. I’m not saying Spinel’s feelings of affection towards PD were fake, or that she was harbouring a secret hatred. What I am saying is that it must have been very stressful, and similar to the experience of someone living in a home where they feel they must always walk on eggshells, because PD’s mood could change at the drop of a hat, and she definitely did not want to be on the receiving end of that.

Image source: SU Wiki 

Another thing to note is that Pearl knew her. At the beginning of the movie, Pearl sees Spinel and immediately recognises her, and she recognises Pearl in turn. That means in the lead-up to being left behind, Spinel must have been around when PD’s views and values were changing. Again, Spinel is supposed to be the “perfect friend,” and it implies she’s finely attuned to the feelings and needs of whoever she’s assigned to be best friends with. There is no doubt she saw Rose starting to shift goals and trajectories in life. 

What I’m trying to say is, Spinel was not ignorant or insistent on the old dynamic she and PD had. We see in the montage of Drift Away that PD was getting more impatient and less willing to play along with Spinel. On the other hand, Spinel stayed loyal in spite of that. I say this because with someone with a personality as volatile as the PD she knew, she felt safer sticking to a tried and true formula: The jokes, the games, the fun. 

Second, her whole self worth, purpose, and standing on Homeworld, up to this point was predicated on her being PD’s best friend, and the best best friend anyone could ever hope for. This mindset, would push her to keep trying to be that ideal best friend and remain persistent even if she herself might have been having doubts about it. And this may be why at the beginning of the movie, her reverted personality came off as annoying to some. Persistence got her where she was before, her rationale was thinking, why not now too?

What’s missing though, is context. She was largely shielded away from what we now know were dozens of life-changing experiences that Rose had with Pearl. Since Pearl recognised her and called her PD’s “playmate,” it implies that Pearl had already had a very different relationship with Rose, from just Diamond and Pearl, at the time of Rose’s leaving her. But even if Rose had left Spinel only at the start of her awakening, after realising she wanted more for Earth and herself, we see that Spinel was purposely shut out of this new chapter of Rose’s life, which was very much in character for Rose at the time– but I digress, and will discuss Rose’s end of this relationship in a future post.

Image Source: SU Wiki

When it hits Spinel after 6,000 years that Rose did leave her for good, I feel it was not so much a meteor out of nowhere so much as it was a reorienting of context. All her suspicions about the way PD saw her, all her doubts about their relationship, all of her unanswered “why's” just came crashing down. 

And at the core of it, Spinel felt betrayed. Because she continued to try until the very end, and be the friend Rose could always turn to. She followed Rose to the letter. In her mind, she did everything right. And this was what she got for it. The word she used in Drift Away was “cruel,”and that’s exactly what it was that she went through. 

That leads to the final point of this post.

3. Spinel was still hurting from the trauma 

Image Source: SU Wiki

As I mentioned, Spinel was never playing the trope of the oblivious and dumb sidekick. To have survived in the environment where she lived, she must have had incredibly high interpersonal skills, and a high emotional quotient. Practicing those skills cost her her interpersonal knowledge and peace of mind, though. 

And what we see from her, right before the final act of the movie, is a pattern of behaviour manifested in someone who had to give away in an emotionally abusive environment for a very long time. She wants to believe Steven is good; she wants to trust him. Because at the heart of it, she was never mean or cruel or villainous. It’s exhausting for her to keep up that anger. She wanted actual love and friendship, the kind she tried so hard to convince herself that she had with PD. The kind that Rose established on Earth that she envied.

But that trust was always going to be fragile. There are different ways abuse trauma manifests, and sometimes they manifest together in complex mixtures. In the early days of “freedom,” it can be almost too easy to see the good in other people, and start overly-adjusting for them because you’re worried you’ll lose them too, even if they’re doing you harm. That’s also why some people fall into patterns of abuse. 

Image source: SU Wiki

How Spinel responded when she saw the scythe affected me deeply, because that’s exactly how I initially reacted to any red flag I saw in anybody. It shows that the trauma made her afraid of being hurt in the same away again. She immediately wanted to cut it all off, never form these new relationships, because she didn’t know if she could really trust them. Added to this is a layer where she’s afraid Steven and the Crystal Gems perceive her as villainous for her initial actions. 

(It’s not an exact parallel, but I just wanted to add that some abuse survivors are demonised by their old friends for leaving relationships these friends didn’t know the full story of, and they look like they’re “breaking someone’s heart” by leaving.)

All this comes to a boil and she lashes out, and returns to her self-destructive tendencies. Spinel wasn’t okay yet. She didn’t get over her trauma the moment she agreed to take Steven’s hand after Drift Away. She was testing the waters. Even at the end, when she leaves for Homeworld with the Diamonds, there’s strong evidence to believe she’s still smarting. 

Image source: SU Wiki

She wears her scars the way many survivors of abuse and neglect do. Like Volleyball, some emotional scars persist so long that they distort a Gem’s gemstone, and no amount of physical healing compensates for that. When the movie first came out, I took the new placement of her gem to mean that her experience with Pink Diamond left an indelible mark on her. And it was only confirmed after SU Future’s Volleyball. However, she has the rest of her life ahead of her.

Her expression at the end of the movie shows she’s hesitant, but hopeful. In SU Future, we see how her character develops and heals, tentatively too, but she’s making progress, undoing millennia of learned helplessness and self-neglect. 

That’s something I want to tackle in the third and final post for this series. 

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If you liked this analysis, you might also enjoy the other posts in the series: 

• Character Analysis: Spinel (Part 1: Purpose)
  
• Character Analysis: Spinel (Part 2: Relationships) 
  
• Character Analysis: Spinel (Part 3: Development) to be linked

“I’m supposed to be better. I’m supposed to make everything better!” This is my first time really drawing white diamond. Her eyes were very hard to do. But she was still fun to draw.