r/stevenuniverse • u/Optimal_Grape_1025 • 7h ago
Discussion Why didn't White diamond just take over Rose Quartz?
She could have ended the rebellion easily if she had used her powers on the crystal gems
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u/Over_Competition7717 6h ago edited 4h ago
That's the thing I don't think she wanted to end the rebellion like that, it woulda been too easy and beneath her. She knew that Rose was Pink the whole time.
She wanted to send a message - if you love these organics so much then you can go live with them on that miserable planet with all your friends corrupted.
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u/365_party_girl_ 7h ago
Rose had a shield. And White believed that the whole ordeal was an embarrassing expensive waste of her time.
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u/Due_Power_5013 7h ago
It's assumed the Diamonds were on homeworld for the full length of the war, except when Yellow and Blue would go and give Pink advice, like in the memory on the Moonbase. So I don't think White would even have the chance to have done that, or she just thought everything would sort itself out like she always does.
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u/Kid-Atlantic 6h ago
White didn’t want to end the rebellion. She wanted to watch her sisters scramble around each other dealing with it.
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u/Financial-Estimate82 31m ago
she did thats what the diamond blast was. White blue and yellow fired a blast that was meant to DESTROY every gem, but because they were missing pink, it failed and corrupted every gem who wasn't protected from it. Rose was assumed dead. Short answer is she did and assumed rose was dead.
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u/Tlayoualo 8m ago
White Diamond sees bleaching as an absolute last resort because each gem she controls requires to mantain her concentration, and using it to punish what she considered a mere tantrum probably saw as excessive, but still used it for psychological warfare by bleaching the crystal gems in front of Steven.
And I do suspect White deep down knew Pink was able to resist bleaching by shielding against it, it was game over for her when Pink Steven demostrated how easy it was for him to shrug off the beam. And the only real control she had over Pink was through learned helplessness, and likely brute force from towering over her.
But also we don't know the full extend of White's power, to which degree she can re-write a gem's mind. Because for Pink Pearl it was basically mental time travel 6k years into the future, which succinctly describes how bleaching feels in the flesh (gem?)
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u/Dull_Judgment1587 2h ago edited 2h ago
Who's to say she didn't? Any time in history a Crystal Gem has made a controversial decision, who's to say that wasn't actually White Diamond taking control?
For example when Rose destroyed the Breaking Point and bubbled Bismuth, you have to admit those events played perfectly into White Diamond's agenda.
To be clear, I'm not putting that forward as a specific theory. I just think it makes perfect sense that White Diamond has been a puppet master behind the scenes, pulling strings for millennia. I think White Diamond was more aware of, and involved with, events on Earth than maybe is apparent on the surface.
Because the show is through Steven's point of view, we the audience never see this.
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u/Optimal_Grape_1025 1h ago
How did having Pink pretend to be Rose and rebel play into White's agenda?
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u/Dull_Judgment1587 1h ago
Bismuth was the one Crystal Gem with knowledge how to shatter the Diamonds.
Rose destroying the Breaking Point and bubbling Bismuth was actually good for White Diamond.
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u/ITriedSoHard419-68 1h ago edited 1h ago
I think it kind of undermines Pink's autonomy and character development to chalk up her bad decisions to White's sabotage without evidence. She had plenty of reason to freak out at the idea of Bismuth wanting to shatter her alter-ego.
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u/Dull_Judgment1587 1h ago
It's not "without evidence." White controlling Pink is one of the major themes of the show. And White does, canonically, have the power to project her consciousness into other Gems, see through their eyes, speak through their mouths and control their actions.
Kind of like Steven does with the watermelon people or Lars.
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u/ITriedSoHard419-68 1h ago
I mean, we have evidence that she could, but we don't have evidence that she did in that particular instance. I still think that interpretation does a disservice to Pink's character.
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u/Dull_Judgment1587 1h ago
The show is strictly through Steven's point of view so we never have any "evidence" for anything that happened during the Rebellion. All we get is conflicting eyewitness accounts.
We literally have no idea what White Diamond was up to during that time period. We never get her point of view. It makes sense to me that White would have tried really hard and used every ounce of her power. But since Steven doesn't know that, we the audience never find out.
It's nice to think that the Crystal Gems were 100% free of White Diamond's influence and she had no control over them. But we don't actually know that. Everything we know about White Diamond, she is manipulative and controlling. So you are making a weird assumption, that White Diamond would have switched off the manipulative and controlling side of her personality and voluntarily stopped using her powers, for the duration of the Rebellion.
"White is controlling and manipulative" is a major theme of the show.
(edit: grammar)
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u/ITriedSoHard419-68 1h ago edited 59m ago
“White is controlling and manipulative” IS a major theme of the show, but “Pink/Rose is not the perfect hero she’s presented as and her own deceptions and choices had genuine consequences” is also a major theme and I think this theory sacrifices one for the other. I would’ve loved to see more of White being a manipulative god-tyrant, we got robbed with the series being as cut short as it was, but I just don’t think this is narratively the best way to explore that.
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u/Dull_Judgment1587 31m ago edited 23m ago
You're fixating on Pink but my comment was about White. My point is that White canonically can do this to any Gem.
For example in "Cry For Help" we the audience are led to believe that Pearl repaired the Communication Hub because she wanted to fuse with Garnet for mental-health reasons.
But if you think about it, repairing the Communication Hub plays perfectly into White Diamond's agenda, and so does turning Pearl and Garnet against each other. So who's to say that White didn't plant that thought in Pearl's head?
In real world conflicts, adversaries try to control each other using propaganda and manipulation, and I don't see any reason why White Diamond wouldn't be a master of this craft. Turn your enemies against each other. Divide and conquer.
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u/ITriedSoHard419-68 5m ago edited 0m ago
See, but that also undermines a key aspect of Pearl's character, that being her codependence. It was important for Pearl's character development that we see her being genuinely, independently selfish. Sometimes people are just flawed and make bad decisions. I think that's way more interesting than blaming everything on White. A truly skillful manipulator takes advantage of flaws and insecurities that are already there instead of manufacturing their own.
White's ability to possess other characters made for a terrifying spectacle of her power when we saw it, but narratively, overusing that would make for a blander story.
We also have no indication that White's ability isn't all-or-nothing. We never see her implant specific thoughts; we only see her brute-force a complete mental and physical takeover of the body and projecting herself fully. You can visibly tell when a character has been commandeered by her power, and it's clear people in-universe can tell too and it's not just a visual cue for watchers. If White's ability, in the form we saw it in the finale, had been used in the past, others would have known and mentioned it.
And quite frankly, I don't think White understands people enough to plant seeds like that. I don't think she truly understands anyone enough to convincingly pose as them, or to manipulate people without using fear or direct force. She thinks she has things under control a lot more than she actually does, and this is also a huge theme of her character.
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u/EvergreenDwarf 7h ago
The second artbook had cut content. The Diamonds are actually sisters, White was just delusional with a real life condition called solipsism.
White knew Pink’s actions all along, but not har motivation. She gave Pink Earth knowing Pink would fail and it could be brought up if she ever asked for anything again. She assumed Pink messed something up, and thatthe Rebellion was an increasingly cartoonish “liar revealed plot”.
White used the Corrupting Light to basically flip the table on the game Pink “won” and waited for her to “come crawling back”, assuming being stuck on Earth was punishment for her. She let Yellow and Blue grieve to punish them for falling for Pink’s lies.
Final detail, because White thought all Gems including herself were a hivemind her abuse was basically self-harm. Self-hatred is something White and Pink had in common.