please raise your children to wash their hands after they use the restroom I’ve watched too many men walk straight out of the bathroom from the stall without a second thought and it’s keeping me up at night
I mean if you taking a piss who cares if you don’t wash your hands, unless you just like go full power and spray yourself like a out of control fire hose
stay the fuck away from me
people who wash their hands after peeing are weak and must be culled
The only excuse for not washing your hands after you piss is mastering the art of pissing without touching your genitals.
You wash your hands every time you touch your dick? How grimy is your dick?
I’m literally never shaking a man’s hand ever again in my life y’all need jesus
remember how i told y’all?
(they don’t wash their hands after shitting either)
What I’m learning is that men are the reason for “employees must wash their hands” signs and why I never put 2 and 2 together is beyond me
Just out of curiosity, do yall wash your hands every time you touch your arm or the back of your hand or any other part if your body?
“According to epidemiologist Richard T. Ellison III, it doesn’t matter what you do in the bathroom when it comes to keeping your hands clean. ‘The rationale is that when toileting, it’s possible to have fecal material and fecal bacteria get onto your hands … So it’s wisest to always wash with soap and water even after urinating. Neither plain water nor alcohol hand sanitizers are effective at removing fecal material or killing bacteria in fecal material.’
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, handwashing can prevent various illnesses and infections. Ellison added that it can also keep us from coming in contact with E. Coli and hepatitis.This is especially important for men to bear in mind because of perianal sweat. This type of sweat forms around the perianal area, which is the patch of skin outside the rectum. It can then spread to one’s underwear and to other parts of the body like the penis. Biology professor Pat Fidopiastis explained, ‘The point is that simply touching the penis in an effort to direct your urine flow can be more than enough to transfer harmful microbes to your hands, and then on to the pretzels sitting in bowl on the bar.’“
Willem Arondeus was a Dutch resistance fighter who gave his life trying to protect his Jewish countrymen from the Nazis.
Born in Amsterdam in 1895, Willem was one of six children. From a young age, he was a talented artist and his parents encouraged his creativity, until he came out as homosexual at age 17.
In a time when nearly all gay people were in the closet, Willem’s parents could not accept his choice to live openly. Their rejection led Willem to run away from home.
On his own, Willem took odd jobs and eventually became a successful visual artist and writer. He was commissioned to paint a mural for Rotterdam’s town hall, in a style that combined modern abstract painting with a traditional Dutch motif. Willem was a well-respected author who published a popular biography of Dutch painter and political activist Matthijs Maris.
In 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. Willem immediately joined the resistance movement, and urged his fellow artists to fight against the Nazi occupation. WIllem published illegal anti-Nazi pamphlets calling for mass resistance against the Germans.
Willem was especially committed to saving Amsterdam’s Jewish community. Bringing in others to the cause, Willem arranged for Dutch Jews to be hidden in people’s homes. He used his artistic skills to create false identity papers.
In 1943, Willem hatched a brazen plan. Dressed as a German Army captain, and with 15 men behind him, Willem boldly marched into the Public Record Office, where lists identifying people as Jews were kept. Willem drugged the guards and planted a firebomb. The resulting blaze destroyed tens of thousands of documents, and delayed or prevented many Jews from being identified by the Nazis.
Unfortunately, Willem was captured by the Germans and sentenced to death. Willem’s last words before being executed in July, 1943 were, “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”
In 1986 Yad Vashem recognized Arondeus as Righteous Among the Nations.
Because of his sexual orientation, Willem’s story was omitted from Dutch history books. Only in the last 20 years has his courage become widely known.
i dont think we need anymore indie webcomics about the artist and their straight relationship and how cute and goofy they think their interactions are
You know what.
You know what?
FUCK this.
Let these people document and enjoy their relationships. If you don’t want that content, don’t fucking read it. You have the power to control what you consume on the internet.
omg relax lol
we get it you think youre the protagonist of a dystopian YA series
“You know what.”
It was scarcely more than a mutter at the back of the SJW Re-Education 101 classroom. At first, in the middle of his lecture, Mr. Fleetwoodbrak wasn’t even sure he’d heard the brave young woman correctly. The only straight white woman in the class. Her pale, nerdy, brunette, “i just want to cuddle with one man forever” vibe blazing like a sick beacon of deviance in amongst the sea of polyamorous communist LGBT people of color. He glared at her over his flamboyant glasses, eyes burning gaily.
But she was brave. Very brave. The bravest brunette white girl in her class. She punched things. Hard. Once she’d even punched a guy in the face when she walked in on him making out with another girl. She would punch God Almighty off his throne if she could. And one day, she would punch this tyrannical regime to pieces. She looked him straight in the eye, punching him with her gaze.
“You know what?”
She said it louder this time, causing every butch, femme, top, bottom, vers, bear, otter, twink, and twunk to spin their heads in raging disbelief that she dare voice her straight opinion.
She stood straight up on her desk, fondly remembering when she used to watch Dead Poets Society before it had been deemed “problematic” and erased from history.
“FUCK this!”
Almost screaming now, screaming at a sea of people who would never understood what it was like to feel DIFFERENT. Who would NEVER understand what it was like to have society force you to live in shame and fear.
“Let these people document and enjoy their relationships!!!
If you don’t want that content, don’t fucking read it!!!! You have the power to control what you consume on the internet!!!!”
An audible hiss went around the room, as if she were reprimanding a den of gay vipers. Fleetwoodbrak spontaneously burst into flame, screaming in agony as his flesh melted off his gay bones.
Finally….because of one girl’s bravery, the straights had the right to enjoy and document their relationships in public. Out of the ashes, a new society, more tolerant of heterosexuality, would be built. All because of one girl.
“If you’re poor, the only way you’re likely to injure someone is the old traditional way: artisanal violence, we could call it – by hands, by knife, by club, or maybe modern hands-on violence, by gun or by car. But if you’re tremendously wealthy, you can practice industrial-scale violence without any manual labor on your own part. You can, say, build a sweatshop factory that will collapse in Bangladesh and kill more people than any hands-on mass murderer ever did, or you can calculate risk and benefit about putting poisons or unsafe machines into the world, as manufacturers do every day. If you’re the leader of a country, you can declare war and kill by the hundreds of thousands or millions. And the nuclear superpowers – the US and Russia – still hold the option of destroying quite a lot of life on Earth.
So do the carbon barons. But when we talk about violence, we almost always talk about violence from below, not above.
[…] People revolt when their lives are unbearable. Sometimes material reality creates that unbearableness: droughts, plagues, storms, floods. But food and medical care, health and well-being, access to housing and education – these things are also governed by economic means and government policy.[…] That’s a tired phrase, the destruction of the Earth, but translate it into the face of a starving child and a barren field – and then multiply that a few million times. Or just picture the tiny bivalves: scallops, oysters, Arctic sea snails that can’t form shells in acidifying oceans right now. Or another superstorm tearing apart another city. Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality.”
this tweet goes from surreal to hilarious when you realize that she was the CEO of Reddit
Casual reminder that while she was CEO at Reddit she created a salary negotiation policy that evened the playing field for women employed by Reddit.
Not-at-all-casual-reminder that she left Reddit in 2015 after being forced to resign because Reddit lost its collective shit at her when the site banned 5 subreddits for harassment; not-at-fucking-all casual reminder that Ellen Pao was the CEO of Reddit when it banned revenge porn after The Fappening.
One of the subreddits that was banned that led to her resignation was r/fatpeople hate. The others were transphobic and racist.
In her time at Reddit Pao did more than the site had ever before done to fight harassment from its user base and for that someone started a subreddit calling for her firing and trying to make nazi and ISIS imagery come up in searches associated with her name.
If *anyone* in the tech industry knows what the blackpill subculture is like and how vile and toxic groups spawned in subreddits can be it’s Ellen Pao.
This isn’t someone who’s oblivious to the fact that her former company is a source of the problem, this is someone who is speaking from personal experience with online harassment campaigns orchestrated by people who want the freedom to post celebrity nudes who were *enraged* that she made it harder for them to do so.
(also basically the rest of her twitter is about #metoo, the need for labor regulation and worker protections, and salary transparency so maybe go check her out)
Hey everyone! My current work environment is incredibly homophobic. I’ve been harassed repeatedly and after trying to do something about it my hours were cut. I’m also trying to save up money to leave my abusive home. If anyone can help me cover groceries, medications, rent (yes I have to pay that even though I live with my parents,) and gas while I look for a new job it would mean the world. I’ve already had to set back my date for leaving my home situation a few times due to financial strain from paying for college and unexpected car repairs. I really don’t want this to effect me leaving. Anything helps ❤️✌️
Thank you so much for the help so far! I was able to get my meds and I have a start on this coming month’s groceries/gas. I still need about $85 so I can eat and get to school/work/therapy this coming month. I was already looking into other job options due to the harassment before everything really got bad so I’m hoping to have something lined up by the end of May.
Urgent 5/10/18:
So my dad has relapsed into addiction. He’s behaving very erratically and violent. He’s thrown things at me and my little brother and shoved us repeatedly just this evening. In the past he has beaten me and I’m scared it will escalate to that. He has access to weapons including guns. Previously in this condition he has threatened both me and my sibling with these. My girlfriend’s family has agreed to let my younger brother and I stay with them until my mom gets back this coming Thursday since she’s the only one who has any real influence on him. My girlfriend’s family doesn’t have much money and neither do I. If anyone can help us get there and contribute money for groceries/travel it would help immensely. We are not safe in this house and I plan to take my little brother after he gets out of school tomorrow.
Tldr: My home is dangerous and abusive and we need out ASAP
so uhhhhhh i know this is a plant blog but realtalk lads im a little freaked out by that wild ass new organ discovered in our bodies according to a paper published literally yesterday am i right my lads, my bois, lmao hhaha
(as of 3/28/2018, paper was published in the reputable international research journal “Nature” on 3/27/2018, publication here, study was started in 2013) ok so like uhhh this is my rough translation of the paper they published using my current level of biological knowledge, if anyone else has a more in depth understanding with human anatomy things and would like to add on with anything i might have missed feel free to add but this is my takeaway:
-scientists were looking at some stuff in the inside of a bile duct they were studying in a live patient (this will be important later) using a laser that lets them see the cells in real time. they injected some stuff into the duct and saw the spaces inbetween the cells fill up with fluid in strange, tube-like structures that didn’t correspond with what they expected to be there, so they sectioned and froze them to study them closer; they realized that upon closer inspection, the fluid-filled places were VERY small collagen tubes forming a complex matrix of bundles surrounded by a weird cell covering that seemed to connect them to one another. they called this the Interstitium.
-they sectioned some more places where squeezy things might happen, like the inner linings of the bladder, lungs, lymph nodes, and the soft tissue enclosing our muscles, filled them with the same indicator, and hyper froze them like they did to the first sample and found the same weird matrix of fluid-filled tubing:
they concluded from what they found from this that:
1. our previous thought of the space inbetween the cells in these parts of the body, which we thought were just kinda like, there or whatever doing nothing (a series of spaces that were already called the Interstitium that were largely ignored), are actually full of complex tubing running through a ton of very important parts of your body
2. when the structures they’re chilling around (like your bladder and bowel) contract, the fluid moves around all weird
3. the reason this wasn’t discovered before is because when the tubes are squished too hard- like when scientists are cutting into them- they have a tendency to collapse really easily,especially when being treated with chemicals for microscope use, giving the impression of the kind of tissues that we’ve traditionally seen in specimens and thought of being in these sensitive areas (closely compact and dense cell mats). it turns out that in living people, these tubes run between the cells carrying fluid; the scientists were able to see this initially in live patients using the above mentioned laser technology, and then took live biopsies by quickly freezing the cells in place before removal to prevent their collapse.
4. yes, these can move cancer cells around, which is HUGE seeing as they seem to enclose a LOT of important and delicate muscles in our bodies in one giant, complex system. when they looked at it in cancer patients, the tumors they found seemed to kind of be….leaking….into them…..because the tumors were putting pressure on the fluid tubes….which easily collapse…..and move things that fall into the fluid around….
5. the scientists also explored things like hernias and colon damage in relation to these, but unfortunately this is where my translation powers run out as non-plant-related terminology starts being used lmao im so sorry im like this
tl;dr: the membranes that surround some really important parts of squishy things like our stomach, bowels, colon, lungs, muscles, etc are full of very delicate and complex tubing that runs in a weirdly complex system to other important squishy things throughout our bodies and looks like a weird organ that we didn’t know was there before (or like, we knew about it, we just didn’t know it was so…connected and uh…organy). also it seems to have an impact on the spread of cancer throughout these regions
Graduate of Biomedical Science here; this paper is pretty much understandable to me.
You’ve picked out the main stuff, but here’s some things I think is very interesting:
The discovery of these spaces dramatically expands the lymphatic system. Basically, this is how the lymph nodes are connected to the rest of the body. Before it was kinda like ‘yeah here are the lymph nodes, and the lymph fluid kinda goes to the somehow? idk’. But now we have a whole system. It’s like discovering the entire circulatory system when before you only had the heart to work with.
This is super important for cancers and detecting when a cancer has spread (metastasised, in the lingo). They talk about the spread of cancers into the deeper tissues (such as stomach cancers invading their submucosal tissue and skin cancers pentrating deeper into the dermis layers), but what is most important is that they detected the cancers spreading into the interstitial spaces before there was anything to detect within the lymph nodes. This is super important, as usually lymph node biopsies are done to detect if a cancer is spreading; this is before that very stage. This is literally catching cancers in the act of spreading before they’ve hit another organ this is fucking incredible.
It’s providing an explanation for oedema (or edema, for my US followers), which is the build-up of fluid in certain areas of the body (usually the lower limbs, but it can be anywhere). For so long it’s been like ‘I guess there’s something wrong with your blood vessels??’ but like the lymphatic system, we’ve now got another explanation. ‘Ah, okay, there’s something going down in your interstitial fluid!’ A more effective diagnosis and treatment could be made, Bam! Enrich more people’s lives.
They may play a role in how scar formation works. Some scar tissue can get a bit crazy and grow too much, meaning it needs to be cut away as it hinders movement or it just fucking painful. Perhaps the interstitial tubing/fluid plays a role in this, considering collagen is used in scar tissue, and these spaces are full of it.
There’s clearly communication between these spaces and the digestive system, as they found tattoo pigment from the intestines in these spaces. Tattooing in the intestine is done to mark lesions for removal or observation later on, so the fact this pigment is actively moving out of the digestive system and else means it could play a role in disease we don’t know much about, like inflammatory bowel conditions.
Basically, THIS IS FUCKING HUGE AND COULD POTENTIALLY CHANGE THE GAME IN A BIG WAY.
Thank you OP for sharing this, I haven’t nerded out and been so fascinated by a study in a long time.
ALSO GOOD ON YOU NATURE FOR MAKING THE FULL ARTICLE FREE. HONOUR ON YOU AND YOUR COWS.
Duo postulant percipitur honestatis et, eu discere deseruisse theophrastus ius. Graece doctus in vim, id nam utamur explicari. Eam id oporteat volutpat suavitate, has ei error senserit. Solet aliquid te ius, est quem ipsum ea. Ei his quod posse iriure, torquatos persecuti at qui, ei legere iuvaret reprehendunt sea. Nam scripta fabulas eu, mea ut labores persequeris. Vis ex solum contentiones, usu ex quodsi denique sententiae, at vix enim ullum error. Vel ubique explicari ne, quem ponderum ad eos. Et eius tibique eos, ea pro dicant partem abhorreant. Dolorum imperdiet ea vim, euismod laboramus cum in. Ius vero salutatus cu. Mel ad sonet accusam. Mei wisi integre persequeris te, nobis discere duo ut. Has aliquid necessitatibus ea, sit te putent commune scripserit, his ferri movet perfecto ad. Vidisse incorrupte ad pro, ad cum nostro mnesarchum voluptatum. Mei dicam feugait maluisset ex. Sit mollis eligendi ad. Id vim tota antiopam platonem, te sit audire viderer vocibus. Dicunt forensibus cotidieque te nam. Ad mel veniam corpora, ius et decore eligendi, quo falli numquam ex. Qualisque vulputate scriptorem et est, ea illum suscipit eam. Usu alienum praesent electram ea, quo utamur dolores id, dicant adipisci neglegentur eu nam. No mutat libris mea, movet persius detraxit vim cu, mel cu ceteros fabellas necessitatibus. Has ei habeo nobis decore. Nam labitur consulatu te, no malorum indoctum honestatis ius. Eu vix paulo tantas, mea ut minim atomorum consequuntur, docendi singulis cu sea. Pro ad nonumy aliquando, at possit possim vel.
This Post will Contain Major Spoilers from A Single Pale Rose; If you have not watched the latest episodes of Steven Universe, please do so before reading!
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If I could describe my feelings about the latest episode of Steven Universe in one word, it would be SHOOK because it was a massive turning point in the series that I think a lot of us were both not expecting it and hoping for it all at the same time. Now, I don’t consider myself to be a complex or serious theorist on the series in anyway, as many of my posts are really just for the sake of provoking a conversation and looking at episodes with a different or alternative context. Theories for me are for the sake of the fun of it and aren’t meant to be taken too seriously in anyway, but there are some things that I wanted to point out from the recent special that I wanted to share.
So lets start with the big one.
Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond.
Shoutout to all the theorists who subscribed to this theory so early on in the series. I’ve always been in the camp of White Diamond Conspiracy, but I am so humbly glad to be wrong about it. There are some things about this fact that I wanted to talk about because I’ve noticed a lot of fans have been saying a lot about Pink Diamond and her character, and I wanted to clear some things up.
First, I want to talk about Pink Diamond as a Diamond.
We only have context for Pink Diamond as a Diamond in two instances: Before the colonization of Earth, and after. We know, based on the flashback in Jungle Moon, that Pink Diamond was treated very differently than the other Diamonds. She was not given any colonies, any armies, or even any real responsibilities as a Diamond. She as ultimately only a Diamond in gem and status, but not in power and respect. Pink Diamond was childish and immature, acting on her impulses and her feelings rather than anything else, and with some fairly justifiable reason. She wanted to be respected, and she wanted to be treated like the other Gem Matriarchs, so she demanded to have a colony of her own, thinking that by having that, she could be respected as the Diamond she was.
She wanted her own Army. She wanted her own Planet. And so, she was given the Earth.
Fast-Forward to Pink Diamond in A Single Pale Rose, and we see a very different portrayal of her. She no longer wants to fit into her mold as a Diamond. She no longer wishes to have the Earth as her colony. She realized the Earth was a special and unique places that taught her about life outside of the role she was created to play, and that became more important to her than her status as a Diamond and her desire to be treated as such. She no longer wanted to run her colony, knowing that it would destroy the planet that she grew so fond of, and kill the people she fell in love with. This portrayal of Pink Diamond is much like the Rose Quartz we hear Garnet talk about in Your Mother and Mine to the Off-Color gems, and is consistent with the Rose Quartz we’ve grown to know over the course of the series. A gem who grew to understand and know the planet she was colonizing in a way that the other Gems never had – a understanding that led her to give up her role and life as the Gem she was forever and to actively fight against the Diamond Authority to free the Earth from its tyranny.
But why would Pink Diamond chose to do this as a Rose Quartz gem, and not as a Diamond? Wouldn’t it be more impactful to have a Diamond rebel against the Diamond Authority and not just an ordinary soldier?
Rose Quartz gems are a vein of Gem that Pink Diamond, from context given to us by Blue Diamond in Human Zoo and Blue Zircon in The Trial, made herself. We don’t know a lot about Rose Quartz gems outside of the fact that they are soldiers, much like any other gems like Jaspers and Amethysts. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that Pink Diamond would disguise herself as a Rose Quartz to travel freely outside of her palanquin to explore the Earth. Its very much so a story of The Princess in Disguise: a high-ranking, royal disguising themselves as a commoner to explore the world outside of their castle.
Perhaps Pink Diamond was able to connect with her fellow gems in a way that a Diamond could not as Rose Quartz. Garnet mentions in Your Mother and Mine that Rose Quartz found allies in gems like herself – defective, off-color gems that did not fit their molds to begin with. It is rather obvious that Pink Diamond was aware that she was flawed; That she was unique as a Diamond not for her flawlessness, but in her flawed nature. Perhaps Pink Diamond saw that she was not alone when she came to know the other gems whom she felt related to her in similar ways, gems that did not fit their roles or their statuses, much like she didn’t. In my opinion, I do not blame Pink Diamond for disguising herself as a common gem rather than remain herself; I’m sure she was able to see a different side of her colony as Rose Quartz, a side that would never reveal itself to her as a Diamond. Perhaps she no longer wanted Gems to feel obligated to follow a Diamond – she makes it clear that she wants to fight for the freedom of the planet Earth and the freedom of other Gems. She gave up her mantle as Pink Diamond in order to forge a new identity for herself and allow others to do the same. I think thats one of the reasons she created the Crystal Gems.
I know a lot of people are angry about the fact that Rose Quartz was a facade for Pink Diamond, or that Pink Diamond was pretending to be some kind of rebel leader when in reality she herself was a Diamond – but I personally do not think that this reveal changes anything about the Crystal Gems and their story. I think, if anything, it simply switches the pieces around. I’m a strong believer that Garnet’s telling of the Story of Rose Quartz is accurate, but what I think is different is the pieces involved and some fine details.
We know Pink Diamond demanded to have a Colony, so Homeworld gave her the Earth. She began her colonization, just as she was instructed and just as she was meant to, playing her Role as a Diamond, but as the colonization of the Earth continued, she came to learn and understand more and more about the planet and slowly began to fall in love with it. In Garnet’s words:
Curiosity turned to Appreciation. Appreciation turned to Fondness. Fondness, turned to Love.
Rose Quartz was a figure that stood for freedom; She represented liberation and the freedom to forge your own destiny and life outside of the role a Gem was made to play. Her transition from Pink Diamond to Rose Quartz is a perfect example of that philosophy manifested in the greatest way: Pink Diamond gave up her life as a Diamond to live as Rose Quartz and to be free of the role she was made for. That, is a core belief of the Crystal Gems – the Earth of their home and they are allowed to live and be who they wish to be on Earth. There are no obligations. There are no rules. There are no requirements. Gems can be who they want to be on Earth and experience life how they choose to experience it. Pink Diamond wanted to free the Earth from Diamond control and free the Gems on it to allow them to live how they chose.
Pink Diamond wanted to protect the place that taught her that she did not have to play the role she was made for. She wanted to pass the message of liberation along to others to allow them to feel the same way she did. Her heart and her gem were in the right place. She had nothing but the best intentions, but even still…
…She was still Pink Diamond, and she was still very, very flawed.
Pink Diamond, as we’ve seen her, is very aware that she is not like the other Diamonds in the Diamond Authority. She knows that the other Diamonds treat her differently – she wasn’t given any colonies to rule over like the others had, she had to demand for one. She wasn’t allowed to interfere or be involved in the process of colonization and she was simply expected to play the role of a Diamond in appearance, not in power. She knew she was flawed. She knew that she did not matter, or at least she felt that way. Thats why you hear her say as Rose Quartz:
“Blue and Yellow Don’t care. They never have. This is Pink Diamond’s Colony. We can end it all… Right here, right now.”
However, we all clearly know this is false. The Diamonds cared greatly for Pink Diamond, so much so that they fought back against the Crystal Gems and their uprising to the fullest extent of their power. The fact that she says this about Blue and Yellow Diamond is really, in my opinion, heartbreaking, especially when you think about how much Blue and Yellow Diamond are aching over what they believe to be Pink Diamond’s demise, millennia afterward. Even in the sequence where you see Pearl as Rose Quartz supposedly shattering Pink Diamond, you can clearly hear sounds of anguish and mourning and despair in the background. Pink Diamond made a spectacle of her own demise in front of her entire court, and I had been wondering why Pearl was crying so much when she did what she did. Perhaps its because after the fact, she saw how wrong the both of them were to do what they did. Pearl must have heard or seen the distress of the other Gems for what she had done and thought that what they were doing was a mistake.
But this is what Pink Diamond wanted. She wanted to free the Earth. She wanted to free other Gems. She wanted to be free of being a Diamond – She must have felt that there really weren’t any other options for them, or at least believed that this was all that could be done, at last at this point. It wasn’t like Pink Diamond didn’t try other ways to leave the Earth. We see her and the other Diamonds in Can’t Go Back, with Blue Diamond saying:
“But this is what you wanted. You begged us for a Colony of your own, and now all you want to do is get rid of it. First, there were too many organics, then their cities were too difficult to dismantle, and… and now these Crystal Gems? We’re tired of your excuses, Pink.”
It gives me this impression that Pink Diamond was already in love with the Earth at this point and had been for some time, and that she created the guise of Rose Quartz and the Crystals Gems as a way to hinder the colonization of the planet. Blue Zircon says during The Trial that at the time of Pink Diamond’s demise, Rose Quartz was a known threat for a few hundred years, meaning that Pink Diamond and Pearl had been sabotaging their own colony for at least a few centuries before resulting in their final plan together. Pink Diamond was trying to get rid of her colony for a long time, so she could leave the Earth be without having to take any drastic measures. She had given the other Diamonds several excuses to try and see if she could abandon the planet – Too many Organics to conquer, Cities that were too difficult to destroy, and then finally, a coup of rebel gem known as the Crystal Gems. She had been trying for a long time to leave the Earth, but because of her own previous actions, the Diamonds would not let her.
“You must understand. You… are a Diamond. Everyone on this planet is looking to you. You don’t even have to do anything! Just smile and wave. Show everyone you are unfazed by this little… uprising. Your gems will fall into line and these… Crystal Gems will be, no more. As long as you are there to rule, this colony will be completed.”
Its in this moment that I think Pink Diamond formulated the plan to fake her demise. Blue Diamond instilled this idea in her that a Colony needs a Diamond to rule over it, and Pink Diamond believed that if she was no longer around, the remaining Diamonds would finally abandon the planet for good. I think too, this is why this episode was called Can’t Go Back – not only for Lapis who felt she couldn’t go back to Earth, but also for Pink Diamond, who could now no longer go back to being Pink Diamond after she swore herself to being Rose Quartz.
She can’t go back to being a Diamond, and she no longer wants to.
I know a lot of people are saying that Pink Diamond was stupid for being so selfish, and that Rose Quartz is awful because of how she kept her past a secret, or how she treated Pearl, but I for one, honestly just feel bad for her. Its tragic, to me. Pink Diamond was so carelessly optimistic about her plans that she thought everything would be okay. She didn’t want to hurt anyone else except herself in the process, but because of her actions, she ended up hurting everyone, and I believe that to the day Steven was born, she never stopped feeling guilty about what she had done and the actions she had taken.
Were her actions selfish and stupid? Yes, I do think so. Was she justified in what she did? Not really. Was her heart in the right place? Did she have good intentions? Absolutely.
After Homeworld left the planet and sent their final attack, I’m sure that was when Rose Quartz realized the gravity of her mistakes. I think that was when she realized that what she had done was wrong, and I think that she had been doing all she could afterward to try and make up for it. Its why she did everything she could to try and heal the corrupted gems, to try and make up for what she had done to them inadvertently by fighting for their freedom. They were her allies and she wanted to do what she could for them, but perhaps in the end, she really believed that the world would be better off without her.
And maybe thats why she was so happy to be able to have Steven; Maybe thats why she was so happy to be able experience something so unique and amazing a being a mother… Because even as Rose Quartz, she was still the same, horrible, Diamond underneath…, and maybe one day, someone better would come along to be able to fulfill the hopes she had that she realized she was never able to in the first place.
Procrastination Station 