Why Rose Quartz being Pink Diamond doesn’t invalidate Steven’s arc

megadan94:

Steven being conflicted about his mum killing Pink Diamond was never just about the act itself. Shattering a gem, that’s certainly bad in it’s own right, and I’m sure that Steven was upset about it. But overall, the fact that one (presumably evil) gem was shattered wasn’t what really affected him, it was all the stuff that happened to everyone else as a result of it. Jasper‘s suffering, Blue’s mourning, the corruption of the Crystal Gems, all of this stuff happened because of what his mum did.

Notice all of the times that Pink’s shattering has been brought up since this arc began. When Jasper was shouting about all the fighting she’s been through, Eyeball bemoaning how terrible the war was, the hallucination scene with Bismuth, Jasper and Eyeball, Blue mourning at her palanquin, “What’s the use of feeling blue”, ‘The Trial’. None of those scene’s were about Pink herself, they were all about how the other characters were affected by her death, and whether or not her death was staged doesn’t change that. Even in ‘Storm in the Room’, when Steven confronts his mum, he doesn’t give her a “killing is never the way” speech, he lectures her on all the people who’ve suffered because of her actions. Steven does not care that his mum murdered a dictator, he cares that she did something that caused all these bad things to happen.

So the fact that Pink Diamond was never actually shattered, and that Rose herself actually was her, doesn’t make anything better. Instead it makes everything worse, because now she not only took away someone who was needed by many, but actually was that someone, and abandoned those that needed her. And that’s what the montage of Steven leaving Pearl’s gem really emphasised, Rose abandoning Homeworld by faking her death, then abandoning the Crystal Gems by having Steven, she became an important figure in the lives of so many, only to abandon them, leaving her problems for them to deal with.

Steven cares a great deal about family, and about helping them with their problems, he even cares about helping his enemies with their problems. So much of his character arc throughout the first three seasons was about him wanting to be useful to the people and gems he loves, and for him to see that his mum had such little regard for those who would’ve done anything for her is really devastating to him.