Sandbox / Steven Universe Crystal Gems Initial Members

Beware of spoilers up to season 5!

Steven Universe Main Character Index
Crystal Gems (Steven Quartz Universe | Garnet | Amethyst | Pearl | Rose Quartz | Connie Maheswaran | Peridot | Lapis Lazuli) | Gem Fusions | Homeworld Gems | Diamond Authority (Yellow Diamond | Blue Diamond | Pink Diamond | White Diamond) | Yellow Diamond's Court (Jasper) | Blue Diamond's Court | Spinel | Off Colors | Gem Monsters | Little Homeworld | Humans (Greg Universe) | Other

Character-Specific Pages

• Steven Quartz Universe

Members

Garnet

Garnet

Voiced by: Estelle

"I will fight for the place where I'm free
to live together and exist as me!"

^{Click here for her second outfit}

^{Click here for her first outfit}

^{Click here for her outfit during Greg's story}

^{Click here for her actual first form}

Pearl: If we were supposed to fight a "giant foot", Garnet would let us know.
Amethyst: Yeah, Garnet's the boss.
Pearl: Well, we're all a team. Garnet just has heightened perception that guides us towards our mission objective.
Amethyst: Yeah, she's the boss.

Garnet is the de facto leader of the Crystal Gems, having taken over after the departure of Rose Quartz. She's a powerful, strong and disciplined warrior, and is the Gems' unarmed combat expert. A Gem of few words, Garnet is the most aloof member of the team; however, when she does speak, everyone listens. She is usually very introspective, but living with Steven, she is beginning to come out of her shell a little.

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• The Ace: She's the fastest, strongest, biggest, toughest, and most unflappable of the Crystal Gems, and she (almost) always knows exactly what to do.
• Afro Asskicker: She's the unofficial leader of the Crystal Gems, has the Power Fist, and her hair is a cube-shaped, curly afro.
• Aliens of London: Garnet is the only one of the Crystal Gems we've seen so far with a British accent, albeit flavored by some African because of Estelle's roots. What's even odder about this is neither of Garnet's two halves, Ruby and Sapphire, have a similar accent. The accent carries over into Sardonyx.
• Always Someone Better: In addition to their admiration of Rose, Amethyst and Pearl do have one trait they share in that they both look up to Garnet for being so much stronger than they are, which is why the absolutely relish any chance they have to fuse with her. This actually creates the secondary conflict in "Cry for Help", when it is revealed that Pearl kept repairing the communications hub, distracting the Crystal Gems while Peridot was still loose, because she loved the feeling of being strong that fusing into Sardonyx gave her.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: She's the embodiment of Ruby and Sapphire's love for each other.
• Art Evolution: In early Season 1 episodes, her eyes (when uncovered) were simply white spheres with black dots for pupils. Starting from "Future Vision", her eyes took on a more detailed appearance with properly colored irises, the top one being purple, the left being red, and the right being blue.
• Backported Development: Flashbacks to before the beginning of the series give her a characterization more similar to her current self than to The Stoic seen in earlier episodes, though it's possible that the character development in the series' present day is partially just Garnet returning to the way she was before Rose's death.
• Badass Boast: "Stronger Than You" is this in song form. Garnet puts who she is, the love she represents, and how Jasper is never going to truly win against her, in the form of a song. Her doing this while both giving and receiving punches just makes it better.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Due in part to her being The Comically Serious. During "Tiger Millionaire", she fakes being hit by a punch by tipping over like a felled tree, and her improvised heel speech is about as wooden. When Steven hands her a phone and asks her to pretend to be his mom to Connie's mom, she comes up with:
  Hello. This...is Mum Universe. Yes, the children are playing swords. Sorry, playing with swords. They're bleeding. Oh, no. They are dead. Don't call again.
• Bad Liar: Sometimes. As leader of the team, she's not beyond occasional white lies or manipulation to get the job done, though she ultimately she prefers her brand of blunt honesty. But she's not great at lying on the spot, and when suddenly forced to be dishonest it shows that she inherited Sapphire's habit of freezing when caught unprepared and Ruby's habit of saying whatever comes to mind to make up for it. See also Bad "Bad Acting".
• Battle Couple: An interesting variation: She IS a couple and kicks a lot of butt.
• Berserk Button:
  • Most cases of abuses of fusion. Once the initial shock and horror passes, Garnet is furious in "Keeping It Together" at what the Homeworld Gems have done, both with using fallen Crystal Gems as test subjects for the experiments, fusing their Gem shards together, and at the experiments themselves, which she feels is a perversion of the Fusion Dance technique. She was incensed at Pearl for distracting her with the communications hub problem just to give an excuse for them to form Sardonyx, betraying the trust fusion is based on and wasting time they could have spent hunting down Peridot (who was involved with the fusion experiments). It would take her four episodes to finally calm down.
  • Insubordination in a highly dangerous situation. The other Gems fear making Garnet angry, and Steven finds out why in "Mirror Gem" when he defies her orders and refuses to hand over the eponymous mirror, whacking her in the face and knocking off her glasses to show a three-eyed Death Glare. A similar problem arises in "Cry for Help", with Pearl using the very serious problem of Peridot sending out a distress call to Yellow Diamond as an excuse to repeatedly fuse with Garnet and feel better about herself as a result. Combine that with the above and you get one very angry Garnet...
  • Saying fusion is inferior to a Homeworld Gem will reward you with a very uncomfortable time-out. She goes from wanting to reason with Peridot to wanting to beat the hell out of her the instant Peridot calls her a "filthy war machine".
  • Do not speak ill of Rose Quartz or denigrate the Earth and its life forms. Peridot learned this the hard way in "It Could've Been Great".
    Garnet: You, listen to me, now. You are talking about things that you do not understand.
  • Being deceived by people she trusts makes her emotionally distraught enough to split back into Ruby and Sapphire, first during the aforementioned incident with Pearl and again when she finds out Rose had secretly been Pink Diamond the whole time.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Garnet is the nicest of her friends (sans Steven). That being said... do not make her angry.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: As stoic and reserved as she is, Garnet is the strongest and fastest of the Crystal Gems and heaven help you if you make her angry.
• Black Boss Lady: The de-facto leader of the Crystal Gems and has a humanoid avatar with African-styled features, a nod to her voice actress being of African and Afro-Caribbean descent.
• Blessed with Suck: She can predict and sort through all the likely events in the near future, which is incredibly useful. In "Future Vision", she implies it has a pretty horrible downside: she is constantly seeing, in vivid detail, the terrible consequences of every wrong choice she could possibly make.
  Garnet: Steven, I see so many things that can hurt you.
• British Stuffiness: Garnet is noticeably less uptight than most examples, but her stiff upper lip and smooth British accent certainly fit this trope.
• Broken Ace: Discussed. Garnet explicitly states in "Friend Ship" that she's not as perfect as everyone thinks she is and she has her own weaknesses, but tries to stay strong because she knows she has an impact on her friends.
• Broken Pedestal: In "Now We're Only Falling Apart", she (or at least Sapphire) does not take the news about Rose's real identity as Pink Diamond very well, since Sapphire still believes every one of the Diamonds to be the evil tyrants that should've been shattered to liberate all of Gemkind, until she realizes that Pink Diamond formed the Crystal Gems because Ruby and Sapphire's (accidental) fusion inspired her to do so.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Despite her being a hardened Gem warrior, Garnet has a caring and close relationship with her friends.
• Brutal Honesty: Garnet is more deadpan than blunt, but she expressed her dislike for Greg's music quite brutally: by jumping out of the (still moving) van and deciding to spend the rest of the trip on top of the car's roof. This is turned on its head in "The Message", when, after the titular message is translated by Greg, Garnet very firmly thanks Greg for his assistance. The "brutal" part comes from her just as firmly silencing the other Crystal Gems so she could make that thanks, who were panicking over what the message actually told them. The jury is out if this was Garnet's attempts to stay calm herself, though.
• Casting Gag: Garnet's voice actress, Estelle, was born on January 18, and the garnet is the traditional birthstone of people who are born in January, which may make Garnet a Meaningful Name.
• Celebrity Paradox: Her favorite music is by her voice actress, Estelle.
• Celibate Heroine: She has no interest in pursing a romance with anyone because she IS a relationship (the embodiment of one, to be more specific).
• The Chains of Commanding: She's an effective and loving leader, but does not know how to manage the emotional well-being of her teammates. This becomes a problem in "Cry for Help" when a insecure Pearl develops an addiction to the power she feels when she and Garnet fuse. Garnet eventually tells Pearl that contrary to what the other Gems think she does have flaws, but she doesn't let them define her since she's the leader and sometimes she looks up to Pearl for strength. She actually joins Steven and Greg on their road trip so she can have her (quite literal) emotional breakdown out of their sight.
• Character Tics: Tends to adjust her visor often, usually as an outward indication of using her Future Vision. It's also a sign that she's stressed.
• Cold Ham: She's The Stoic, but can pull some very dramatic lines and body language without changing her usual tone of voice.
• Combat Clairvoyance: Garnet uses her future vision to assist the Crystal Gems in their future fights.
• The Comically Serious: Silly things sometimes happen to/around her, and she never stops being serious.
  Garnet: [hair covered in feathers; deadpan] Hello, Steven.
• Cool Big Sis:
  • This is the nature of Garnet's relationship with Steven. While Amethyst is Steven's partner in mischief and Pearl is more of a mother figure, Garnet is like a big, smart sister to Steven, always giving him good advice (usually with more bluntness and less personal opinion than Amethyst and Pearl) and serving as a role model. Garnet also lets Steven make his own mistakes and learn his own lessons when possible, like when she took Steven with him when the team had to split up in "Serious Steven". Finally, she's usually the one most in tune with Steven's emotional needs, like when she gave him the advice to just talk to Connie and making sure Amethyst and Pearl didn't interfere.
  • It is also common to interpret her relationship with Steven as motherly, just in a different way than with Pearl. Many moments have the two interact in a mother-son way such as Garnet going along with Steven's playing hide and seek with her, calling him "cutie pie", always being the Gem targeted by his "puppy eyes" which she can't say no to, saying he's grounded when she's mad at him, their hugs are very tender (usually when Garnet saves him), Steven may be casually seen sitting on her lap when interacting with the Gems, etc. There's also the adorable part in "When It Rains" where Garnet, not in any life-threatening situation but simply because she wants to, shapes her hands into a heart and tells Steven she loves him before going on a mission.
• Cool Shades: Garnet has a nice pair of reflective shades that take up half her face. Turns out they conceal a third eye. She can also transform them into goggles for swimming.
• Cutting the Knot: When Pearl and Amethyst's plans inevitably fail, Garnet will resort to hitting things. It usually works.
• Dance Battler: Not her most common style, but her battle with Jasper has her dancing and swaying to music.
• Deadpan Snarker: She'll occasionally make jokes, maintaining her usual tone of voice.
  Pearl: Are we really going to let him keep that?
  Garnet: We kept Amethyst.
• Death Glare: Steven learned in "Mirror Gem" just how angry she can be when she got backhanded.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: With the reveal in "The Answer" that cross-Gem type fusions are considered forbidden abominations on her homeworld, it's hard not to read Garnet's fusion as a metaphor for gay, inter-caste or interracial marriage. Driven home in her part of the full opening song; when the Gems are singing their motivations for protecting Earth, hers is "I will fight for the place where I'm free / To live together and exist as me."
• Duality Motif: Garnet has three eyes, one red, one blue and one violet, because she's a fusion of Ruby, who has two eyes, and Sapphire, who is a Cyclops. The violet eye is them finding balance.
• Dub Name Change: Averted. Garnet is among the few gems who the Latin American dub doesn't change her name to the faithfully correct translation, granate. She shares this with Peridot.
• Eternal Love: Ruby and Sapphire fell in love with each other over 5,700 years ago. Garnet is their relationship given form, and is one of, if not the, most stable fusions of different Gems (as opposed to the multi-Ruby or Topaz fusions).
• Extra Eyes: Garnet has three eyes, the right one is red, the left one is blue and the middle one is violet.
• Fangirl: Garnet's favorite music is the works of Estelle according to Rebecca Sugar, appropriate considering Estelle is her voice actress.
• Fashionable Asymmetry:
  • Both her outfits show some asymmetry in their designs and colors, most likely due to her nature as a fusion. The second has a distinct red and blue tint on opposing sides.
  • The first couple of times Ruby and Sapphire fused, Garnet invoked this to an even greater extent; Her outfit was a literal fusion of pieces of clothing from her components. On top of that, her hair was an uneven mix of pink and blue.
• Feel No Pain: Garnet appears to be highly resistant to physical pain as part of her stoicism. In "So Many Birthdays", she doesn't react very much when Amethyst hits her repeatedly with a baseball bat while trying to bust open a piñata.
  Amethyst: (hitting Garnet with the bat) Am I—getting—close?
  Garnet: (gets hit in the head) Higher...
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Fighter of the group who depends on physical strength and durability the most.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Sorta does all three on her own. Garnet has lightning powers, Ruby has fire powers, and Sapphire has ice. It's noteworthy that a combination of hot air and cold air form storm clouds.
• Flanderization: Once Garnet is revealed as a fusion, Garnet has a lot less focus as an individual and is instead often considered Ruby and Sapphire and is often brought into focus when the topic of fusion comes up in some shape or form. And since major emotional moments cause Garnet to destabilize, so she is mainly characterized by her The Stoic nature.
• Foil: To Malachite. Malachite is a fusion born of hate and desperation, while Garnet is a fusion born of love and compassion. Additionally, as "The Answer" shows, both she and Malachite were created by a snap decision. However, whereas Malachite was born out of Jasper's scorn and desire for vengeance, Garnet was born from Ruby's need to protect Sapphire.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Not on her own, but two of her fusions with Pearl and Steven give her the ability to reference the show itself or the audience, possibly an increased version of her future vision that goes beyond in-universe.
• Funny Afro: Her afro is notable in that it's cube-shaped rather than spherical, and she's had it since she first fused at the dawn of human civilization. In "Historical Friction", Jamie plays her by putting his head in a cardboard box with an afro drawn on with marker.
• Genius Bruiser: Garnet is the strongest of her friends and the most savvy. This is lampshaded by Steven in "Keeping It Together".
  Steven: Oh. Oh! You're brains and brawn! The whole package!
• Gentle Giant: Sort of. She's not afraid to fight and can really hit hard, but she gives off this vibe around Steven what with the way she'll gently ruffle his hair or go along with whatever wacky thing he wants to do.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: As revealed in her otherwise non-canon appearance in the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Crossover Nexus", Garnet's visor helps her Future Vision. (They're also prescription.)
• Good Parents: While all of the Gems care about Steven, Garnet is the one who has the most faith in him, believing he can and will control his Gem powers in good time. In return, Garnet is often the first Gem he turns to when he needs advice and comfort.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: After Ruby and Sapphire re-fuse, Garnet now has a purplish color theme.
• Grin of Audacity: Sports one for most of her fight against Jasper. Considering her usual demeanor, it's a pretty big deal when she breaks out that big, beautiful smile.
• Hands-Off Parenting: Compared to the other Crystal Gems. Pearl tends to worry and obsess over Steven while Amethyst is usually even less responsible than Steven and prone to getting him into trouble or following his misguided lead. Garnet is sensible enough to put her foot down and aware enough to guide him out of danger or trouble, but usually trusts Steven to make his own mistakes and draw his own conclusions. Perhaps best seen in Steven's interactions with Connie, where she gives them space to hang out and encourages them to enjoy fusion, while Amethyst teases and Pearl meddles and frets.
• Happily Married: Garnet is the permanent fusion of Ruby and Sapphire, making her essentially a living incarnation of this trope. In "Reunited", Ruby and Sapphire actually get married, making her literally a living incarnation of this trope.
• Hartman Hips: Just look at them! Steven calls attention to this in "Rose's Room", saying she would fit into Greg's baggy golf pants. Which she does. It has also been noted that one of her legs is larger than Pearl's whole body.
• Heroic BSoD: Seeing the forced fusion of the missing Crystal Gems mangled together by the Homeworld is enough to utterly paralyze her, which leaves her vulnerable to breaking apart.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She of all people turns out to really like video games.
  • Garnet gives really good love advice, which is to be expected when she's a relationship.
  • She and Greg are apparently really good friends and play tennis together regularly.
• Improbable Hairstyle: No matter what happens, whether it's in a fight or swimming through lava, Garnet's square afro stays in place.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: Wears a visor to cover her Third Eye, possibly because humans could find it weird.
• Innocently Insensitive: Whenever the need arises for a fusion she'll have to choose between Pearl and Amethyst, unaware that the other party is left feeling hurt and inadequate due to being left out.
• Large and in Charge: She towers over her teammates at a minimum of seven feet tall.
• The Leader: Unofficial but de facto leader of the Crystal Gems, since she is the only one that can sense incoming threats. Her levelheadedness also makes her well-suited to moderating the more polarized personalities in the team. She makes a point of respecting and listening to the other Gems, though, and Pearl (as seen in the header quote) seems uneasy about the idea of Garnet as a literal leader, suggesting that Garnet is reluctant to officially step into the role Rose Quartz left vacant.
• Leitmotif:
  • Her associative instrument is a high, distinctive synth sound. After her regeneration in "Jail Break", a synth bass (different from Amethyst's) was added as well. Her instruments are most clearly demonstrated in her song from the same episode, "Stronger Than You".
  • The melody that Sapphire sings in "Jail Break" is closely tied to the fusion between her and Ruby. It's incorporated into "Stronger Than You", and in "The Answer" we are shown its origin during the song "Something Entirely New". Greg also plays it on guitar during their wedding in "Reunited".
• Lightning Bruiser: Both the strongest and the fastest of the Gems.
• Literal-Minded:
  • Thanks to her The Comically Serious demeanour, she takes some suggestions very literally which is Played for Laughs several times.
    Steven: [providing video game instructions] Just punch and you'll be fine.
    Garnet: [proceeds to punch the screen] I did it.
  • When she first met Rose, Garnet began spouting one question after another, processing about Earth and the reason behind her fusion from Ruby and Sapphire. After Rose tells her to never question her existence, she takes this to heart after Rose's passing. Since then, she rarely, if not ever, asked a single question about anything.
• Living Emotional Crutch:
  • In a lesser extent than Steven, but both Amethyst and Pearl look out for Garnet in order to have some self-assurance on their own issues. See Always Someone Better above.
  • Ruby and Sapphire are both a crutch for each other, Ruby becoming next to useless with fear and self-doubt without Sapphire around to reassure her. Sapphire depends on Ruby just as much, but being rather stoic and having future sight, she is less obvious about it.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Garnet's leadership style tends to be fairly reactive, which makes sense: Sapphire's powers of foresight are based on the actions of others, not her own, and Ruby tends towards hotheaded impulsiveness. However, as Peridot points out, this means the Crystal Gems often lack a real sense of direction or purpose when an enemy isn't on their literal doorstep.
  • Her future vision can also overload her with possibilities if she tries to see too many futures at once (like trying to predict the future for five cats), and just because she knows many ways things might go doesn't mean she knows which possibility will actually occur — the baseball game resolution of "Hit the Diamond" was an improbable future, sure, but it still ended up happening. Her interpretation of which future might occur is also limited by her personal biases — she is surprised by Steven giving himself up to Aquamarine because she was expecting Steven to act as he would pre-Character Development. Since she has to actively look to see the future, problems she wasn't aware of beforehand can also take her by surprise, like Homeworld gems' arrivals and the events of "Cry for Help" (she looks for the Crystal Gems finding Peridot, but the actual culprit was Pearl).
• Love at First Sight: Garnet tells Jamie in "Love Letters" that love at first sight doesn't exist because true love requires time and work and at least knowing each other. In "The Answer", we see that Ruby and Sapphire did somewhat fall in love within their first meeting, but their constant fusion over several millennia still affirms her statement that staying in love takes effort.
• Love Freak: She's a fusion, a manifestation of Ruby and Sapphire's love for one another, though having no desire to extend that union, they naturally are going to have an affinity for romance and seeing others in love. The first look the audience got at a truly exuberant Garnet was her reaction to Stevonnie, and later her reaction to Smoky Quartz was even more dramatic. She was also fascinated with the Off Colors, particularly Rhodonite. Garnet described Fluorite, six gems in a relationship, as "beautiful".
• Made of Good: Garnet sees herself as the embodiment of Sapphire and Ruby's love.
• Mama Bear: Will occasionally become this for Steven. Special mention goes to "The Return", where she absolutely loses it towards Jasper for targeting him.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In gemstone mythos, garnets are known as stones that provide protection to their users from evil.
    Steven: Garnet, you keep us safe by scaring off the bad guys. Just like a mom would!
  • Estelle's birthdate is January 18, and people born in January have a garnet ^note the actual real-life gemstone as their birthstone.
• Monster Progenitor: Of a sort. "Now We're Only Falling Apart" reveals that she's the first known fusion of different gem types.
• Morph Weapon: In "Warp Tour", Garnet is able to increase the size of her gauntlets, easily quadrupling their size, and deal increased damage at the cost of reduced speed. This was also hinted during "Garnet's Universe" and could also suggest that Steven knew about it before its proper debut.
• Morphic Resonance: She has Sapphire's hourglass figure and puff sleeves, and Ruby's coloration and square afro.
• Multiple-Choice Future: Garnet is established is having "Future Vision", an ability that allows her to see into many different probable futures. Many of these range from mundane to incredibly improbable (ranging from various comical deaths to chasing away the Ruby Squadron with a game of baseball) and are selected by the choices people involved in such outcomes make.
  "No one can see the future. I can see options and trajectories. Time is like a river that splits into creeks or pools into lakes or careens down waterfalls. I have the map, and I steer the ship."
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Her arms are as thin as sticks, yet she's the strongest of the Crystal Gems.
• Nice Girl: While she does have her flaws, Garnet is the nicest of the Crystal Gems (sans Steven and Rose). She displays the most trust and respect in Steven and isn't as bigoted towards humans like Pearl and Amethyst; she even refers to Earth as her home.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: A big part of why Garnet seems to be Strong and Skilled compared to Pearl and Amethyst is due to the fact that she's actually a fusion and fusions of different types of gems are typically stronger than any single gem barring Diamonds and Quartzes. When it comes to comparing Garnet's feats to a fusion's, she's actually quite weak.
• No Navel, Novel Birth: Whenever Garnet wears midriff baring clothes, she appears not to have a present bellybutton, possibly due to the fact that Gems (let alone Fusions) aren't born at all like humans.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Along with Steven, Amethyst and Pearl, she is one of the four main protagonists of the show. But said show is exclusivly told from Steven's Perspective.
• No-Sell: She can swim in lava and is immune to electricity-based attacks (probably due to her own electricity-generating powers).
• Not So Above It All:
  • What with Garnet's personality as The Comically Serious, it's easy to assume she is "above" the others' antics, and she does sometimes have a no-nonsense attitude. But while she may keep a stoic demeanor, she often willingly goes along with weird things Steven or Amethyst want to do without the slightest hint of complaint.
    Steven: If they got to spend some time with you, they'd realize how fun, and smart, and mysterious you are!
    Garnet: Hehe, "mysterious".
  • She was not happy when the Diamonds attacked Earth during Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding reception, shouting at Blue that it was supposed to be her special day.
• Not So Stoic: As the series progresses, she starts to show facial expressions a little more often. Look at her in "Garnet's Universe"; she's smiling the whole time she's playing along with Steven's antics. This is especially the case regarding Steven learning fusions; her first noticeable facial expression is a huge grin at seeing Stevonnie, and she completely freaks out upon being introduced to Smoky Quartz.
• Number Two: As Steven slowly steps up to control his powers and grow as a person, Garnet relinquishes her position to him in good faith, though she'll still take charge when the need arises.
• Odd Friendship: Garnet and Greg, of all people, are rather good friends. She was highly supportive of his pursuit of Rose and according to Word of God they play tennis together regularly.
• One True Love: The product of two Gems who truly and completely love each other.
• One-Way Visor: Her sunglasses, which cover three eyes in a different color each.
• Only Sane Woman: Being the most together Gem, she often has to rein in the others.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • When Garnet admits to being scared of Blue Diamond, it shows just how dangerous the Diamonds are.
  • Garnet is the most stoic Crystal Gem, always seems to have her head on straight, and her fusion is completely and perfectly stable. When she involuntarily defuses, it is either a sign of extreme anger ("Keystone Motel"), fear and horror ("Keeping It Together"), or shock/sadness (when she discovers that Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond).
• Open-Minded Parent: As opposed to Pearl, she's more willing to listen to Steven and let him figure things out by himself.
• Out of Focus: In terms of character focus, Garnet has gotten the least out of the four main Crystal Gems. Arguably Garnet stopped getting development after Season 1, whereas Pearl, Amethyst and Steven have received tons of focus and character development. A stretch of seven consecutive episodes in Season 3 feature no dialogue from her whatsoever. She starts getting more development again in Season 5.
• Overly Long Scream: In "Know Your Fusion", Garnet screams for 16 seconds straight when Smoky Quartz reveals themself and their destructive power. Not out of fear mind you, but sheer glee.
• Permafusion: The very first example ever shown in the series, though it takes until the end of season 1 to reveal her status as such: Garnet is the Romantic Fusion between Ruby and Sapphire, who've stayed fused together ever since they accidentally did it while the former tried to protect the latter. Then, upon meeting Rose Quartz and Pearl, Garnet was encouraged to stay fused, and as shown in many flashbacks, she spent thousands of years merged together until the present day. After reforming from being poofed by Jasper, Garnet spends fused nearly the entire show's run, with her only defusing during moments when Ruby and Sapphire are too shaken or rattled to remain in harmony together.
• Personality Powers:
  • When asked to describe how she summons her gauntlets, she describes it as both a marriage between Pearl's overcomplicated and Amethyst's uncomplicated methods at the same time, as well as "link[ing] your mind with the energy of all existing matter, channeling the collective power of the universe through [her] gem[s]". This not only hints at her being a fusion from the radically different Ruby and Sapphire (creating the recurring dualistic themes surrounding her), but acts as an effective Establishing Character Moment for the stoic and zen Garnet.
  • Out of all of the Crystal Gems, Garnet is both the strongest and most durable, capable of taking max amount of physical punishment, knock back monsters that can flick the others away like popcorn, deflect lightning bolts and can even swim through lava. This reflects that compared to Pearl and Amethyst, she is the most stable and held-together, possessing an indomitable will and leveled head that makes her an effective leader.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Relatively speaking. She may be the second tallest Crystal Gem, but she is the fourth-smallest fusion in the entire series.
• Playing with Fire: Though she never generates fire herself, she can swim through lava without issue, which is why she goes to retrieve the Earth Beetle. According to Word of God, this is an ice bath to her, while the core of the sun would be a hot tub. This ability comes from Ruby, who can generate extreme heat.
• Power Fist: Her weapons, summoned from the gems in her hands. Bismuth upgrades them to include spiked knuckles.
• The Power of Love: As expounded upon in her "I Am" Song, Garnet is more than a mere fusion of Ruby and Sapphire. Their love for each other and their friends is what drives her. It's also what makes them such a perfect and long-lasting fusion. Just for comparison, it's a minor miracle if Pearl and Amethyst can maintain their fusion for six minutes. Ruby and Sapphire can maintain theirs indefinitely. The only things that can separate them are if they choose to, their body being destroyed, or a severe emotional conflict.
• Power Palms: Both her gemstones are embedded in her palms.
• Pride: A rare case of this being a good thing; her pride in her status as a fusion affirms her strength against Jasper. That said, she can occasionally take her pride in her abilities too far, which is part of why Sugilite is so unstable.
  Garnet: We don't need to be careful. We just need to be huge.
• Promoted to Parent: In the flashbacks when Rose was still alive, Amethyst dressed and acted like a five-year-old child, while Pearl and Garnet acted more like they were teenagers. Now that's Rose gone, Garnet became the mother figure of the group — a role she struggles with since she's either unable or unwilling to help Pearl and Amethyst with their emotional issues, until they become problematic enough that they effect team missions.
• Pronoun Trouble: Played with during her song "Stronger Than You". For most of the song, Garnet switches between "we" and "I" pronouns, likely because Ruby and Sapphire had just re-fused and she was still adjusting herself. But during the final verse, when she finally turns the fight around on Jasper, she switches to "I" and "me" exclusively, and refers to Ruby and Sapphire as separate to herself, cementing her complete re-fusion.
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance: Does this often, though not always, when she's focusing on Future Vision.
• Purple Is Powerful: She has a couple of light purple elements the first color scheme we see in the series. After Ruby and Sapphire refuse into Garnet, her new color scheme has more of a purplish tint.
• The Quiet One: She rarely speaks at all. When she does, she almost never uses more words than absolutely necessary to get her point across.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: She's in charge, and she can fight and defeat Pearl and Amethyst, quite literally, single-handedly, at the same time.
• Rank Up: After Rose's death, Garnet became the leader of the Crystal Gems.
• Really 700 Years Old: Garnet was formed about 5,750 years ago when Ruby and Sapphire accidentally fused. Her component Gems are even older than that.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Most willing to listen to, or at least humor, Steven and others out of the Crystal Gems.
• Red Is Heroic: Her outfit is mostly red and she's The Leader of the main heroes.
• The Reliable One: Out of the four Gems, she's the most reliable and careful. When the Gems get into trouble, a typical solution is to 'Go get Garnet'.
• Rocket Punch: She fires her gauntlets as projectiles in "Watermelon Steven".
• Romantic Fusion: She's a fusion of two Gems so madly in love with each other that they stay fused all the time. Garnet is explicitly the embodiment of Ruby and Sapphire's love.
• Rubber Woman: Garnet can use her shapeshifting powers to elongate and enlarge her arms.
• Rule of Symbolism: The amount of Fashionable Asymmetry that manifests in her physical form seems to reflect the degree of unity between Ruby and Sapphire, her component parts. When they first fused, they were essentially a complete mishmash of red, blue, pink, and purple. As noted above, each time she refuses, she appears purpler overall, and by the end of the series, she's almost completely balanced on both sides, with only the belt-like structure around her waist in two different tones.
• Seers: She seems to be aware of incoming danger and events, which is why Pearl and Amethyst prefer to do missions with her than without. Expanded upon in "Future Vision", where she describes her third eye as allowing her to see possible outcomes of future events and make the best choices given what she can see at the time. She seems to be able to command this vision at will as well.
• Shipper on Deck: A professional one, no less: she's made of ship.
  • In hindsight, her reaction to Stevonnie makes it clear she's one for Steven and Connie, after the reveal that she's a fusion of two lovers herself.
  • In "We Need to Talk", the flashback shows Garnet giving Greg love advice in regards to Rose.
  • She's also more than willing to provide useful pointers to right any existing ships that are taking on water and listing in front of her, regardless of what she thinks of the individuals involved (even if she knows they won't listen). But, when the relationship is listing, in flames and going down with all hands, be it a fusion or not, she'll also willingly attempt to help torpedo it out of its misery. If no saving it is possible or desirable on a moral or ethical level, that kind of ship is way better scuttled than saved, in Garnet's level-headed opinion.
• Shock and Awe: She has electric powers as a result of Sapphire's ice and Ruby's fire. She can generate at least enough electricity to power an unplugged arcade game and charge a car battery, and is capable of redirecting lightning bolts. It took quite a while for this ability to actually be used in combat, but she eventually redirects an enemy's electrical attack and sends lightning across the ground as an attack.
• Shoulders of Doom: Combines this with Giant Poofy Sleeves. Transfers this quality over when fusing into Alexandrite.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Apparently sees some sort of rivalry with Kofi Pizza:
  • She has a tendency to destroy his property without caring about his reaction. In "Steven Floats", when the Gems need a way to communicate with a floating Steven, Garnet breaks into Kofi's car and steals his phone.
  • In "Restaurant Wars", she puts all her cooking skills to create the greatest ketchup-infused french fries (a fusion of foods) ever cooked, siding with Mr Fryman in the process.
• So Proud of You:
  • Her smile at the sight of Stevonnie, the proof of Steven being able of successfully fusing, after she stated that she believed he would be able to pull it off, has heavy undertones of being this trope.
  • After spending most of the episode arguing with Amethyst about not treating her form properly, she's visibly relieved and smiles in approval when the other gem finally chooses a form that she likes best.
• The Spock: She's always calm and thinks logically.
• Spirited Competitor: While mostly level-headed, she occasionally demonstrates a fierce competitive spirit. This is best seen while playing volleyball, Steven Tag, and arcade games.
• Squee:
  • She had the biggest Squee when Steven and Connie fused into Stevonnie.
  • And when Steven and Amethyst fused into Smoky Quartz.
• Statuesque Stunner: Garnet is the tallest of the group and at least one person considers her beautiful. Also the fact that she's a fusion created from a loving relationship between Ruby and Sapphire probably counts towards that as well.
• The Stoic: Almost always keeps her cool.
• Strong and Skilled: In comparison to Pearl and Amethyst, Garnet has plenty of combat skills and plenty of power to go with them solidifying her status as The Ace in the team.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She's sugary nice towards Steven. The Ice part comes from her being The Stoic and The Quiet One most of the time, though she's never actually mean.
• Sunglasses at Night: She wears her visor day or night and even in dark caves. Its main purpose seems to be covering her third eye so she doesn't freak out any humans she might encounter.
• Super-Empowering: She can temporarily pass along her visions with a kiss to the forehead, demonstrated with Steven.
• Super-Strength: Seems to be the physically strongest of the Gems; she's able to hold back a mother centipeetle's tail, chuck Amethyst hundreds of feet away, and easily overpowers Amethyst (even when she's taking her much larger Purple Puma form).
• Super-Toughness: She reveals that she can swim in lava in "Giant Woman", and is the only one of the three that can. Word of God states she's actually much tougher than this and the core of the Sun would be the equal of a hot tub to her.
• Supporting Leader: With Rose Quartz gone, Garnet takes the position of de facto leader of the Crystal Gems, but Steven is still the main protagonist of the series. Subverted as the series progresses and Steven slowly steps up and takes the position of leader himself, with Garnet becoming his Number Two. Though she will still step up if ever needed.
• Take That Me: "You can't trust love advice from those two hopeless romantics."
• Talking to Themself: A truly rare moment of weakness for a fusion like Garnet. Witnessing the horrific fusion experiments Homeworld is conducting is so traumatizing that Ruby and Sapphire end up letting out their individual fury and disbelief while still fused as Garnet. While this is going on, the camera flips to only show one side of her face at a time, each with different expressions. It happens again in "Keystone Motel" as she tries to handle Pearl's betrayal of her trust; unlike before, she ends up splitting into Ruby and Sapphire before she's done.
• Taught by Experience: Garnet seems to be fond of this teaching method. Whenever Pearl starts being too overprotective, she puts her foot down and lets Steven work things out on his own.
• Team Dad: She scolds the other Gems for mocking Steven in the pilot and in later episodes she will be the most likely to try and get Steven to solve problems on his own.
  • In "Secret Team", the others desperately try to hide a dangerous mistake from her and are more focused on arguing with each other (Amethyst and Pearl) or being part of a "secret team" (Steven) than the damage the mistake could have caused. When she finds out, she stages a fake monster attack to get their attention and scolds them for them letting petty divisions distract them from being a team. The jacket Steven gives her to wear in "Maximum Capacity" even says "Cool Dad!"◊
  • Subtly acts as one to Peridot during "Log Date 7 15 2", offering her approval when she tries new things on Earth and admonishment when she pushes Greg off the barn roof to see if humans could fly.
• Third Eye: Has one covered by her shades, allowing her to see possible future outcomes at any given moment.
• Took a Level in Badass: Her existence is one for Ruby and Sapphire. Individually, they are a Red Shirt and Non-Action Girl respectively, but when fused, Garnet can go toe-to-toe with Quartzes like Jasper.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: She was also the first to thank Greg for deciphering the Wailing Stone's message in "The Message" while Pearl and Amethyst were going bonkers over Lapis' message about the Homeworld Gems coming to Earth, showing that she is starting to think less of him as a burden.
• Took a Level in Kindness: As she bonds with Steven, she becomes less stoic and starts showing more open affection and emotion while still maintaining her cool demeanor. By Season 2, not only does she smile more often than she did in Season 1, she's also more relaxed and playful like she was in the flashbacks.
• Tough Love: How she leads the team, in contrast to Rose. She's caring and fair, but stern and no-nonsense. Unfortunately it has the unintentional side effect of exacerbating Pearl's and Amethyst's personal problems.
• Triangle Shades: She almost always wears her triangular futuristic orange tinted shades, which cover all three of her eyes. After Ruby and Sapphire refused, her shades are now colored in a soft pink and blue color, instead of pale orange, and different light sources cause different colors to reflect off of them.
• Trickster Mentor: Her preferred method of dealing with Amethyst and Pearl's emotional issues is to send them on a mission with Steven, so he can help them work through them. This approach has its limits since Steven is still fairly young after all, and he has issues of his own.
• Two Beings, One Body: She's the result of two beings fused on a spiritual level. That doesn't happen even in this universe, at least not with same-Gem fusions.
• Unreliable Expositor: Basically, there are things about the rebellion that Garnet was lied to about, meaning that many things she says about the rebellion, Pink Diamond and her Zoo are inaccurate.
• Unreliable Narrator: She gives an inaccurate account of Pink Diamond's personality, story and demise, and her supposed disdain and apathy towards life on Earth is contradicted by the Human Zoo. Her death by Rose's sword contradicted by the fact it cannot shatter the gem itself, only slice through physical forms. With the latter, Steven is starting to suspect something is off. "A Single Pale Rose" reveals that she told the story as Rose told her, and she believed her account to be true.
• Used to Be More Social: A mild example. Flashbacks show that Garnet still had no social skills with humans, but she was more emotionally open before Rose's "death".
• War Is Hell: Unlike her fellow senior Crystal Gem Pearl, Garnet doesn't look back on any part of the war with the Homeworld fondly, even calling a major battle they won as "a maelstrom of destruction and death".
• The Watson: Garnet was conceived by the show's creators to be a "reverse Watson" — instead of asking questions constantly, she never does at all.^note Although Sugar admits she messed up by making "Can't you see my relationship is stable?" a line in "Stronger Than You", though even that is a rhetorical question. This turns out to be because Garnet did nothing but ask questions about herself when first formed, until she encountered Rose, who told her "No more questions. Don't ever question this." Notably, when stricken with Identity Amnesia in the movie, she asks even more questions than she did when first formed.
• Weak, but Skilled: Compared to most two-Gem fusions, Garnet is relatively weak and limited in offensive capabilities, but makes up for it in emotional stability and a more powerful future vision. "Relatively" being the key word here as she is a physical match for some of the strongest of single Gems.
• Wolverine Claws: Bismuth upgrades her gauntlets to include these.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: She's essentially a walking one of these, with her fusion combining fire and ice both in personality and power-set. Word of God is that fusions that combine opposites like these produce a more powerful result than ones that don't.
• You Are in Command Now: Became the leader of the Crystal Gems after Rose's death. Although she's a great battle commander, she does struggle when it comes to the team's emotional problems.

Amethyst

Amethyst

Voiced by: Michaela Dietz

"I will fight for the world I was made in!
The Earth is everything I've ever known!"

^{Click here for her third outfit}

^{Click here for her second outfit}

^{Click here for her first outfit}

^{Click here for her outfit during Greg's story}

^{Click here for her outfit when she emerged}

Pearl: Ugh, you are just so childish!
Amethyst: Yeah, yeah, don't forget reckless, vulgar, loudmouthed; and that's just what makes me so awesome!

Amethyst is the youngest of the Crystal Gems (not counting Steven) and the resident Wild Child of the team. She loves to instigate pranks and act ridiculous even in the face of danger, which can sometimes result in innocents like Steven getting caught in the middle of her antics. Having been 'born' on Earth, her behavior is the most human-like of the group, and she has happily adopted human customs like eating and sleeping (neither of which Gems actually need to do). Due to her unruly nature, she often chafes under the discipline of the two older Gems. As the series progresses, her rebellious, moody attitude is revealed to stem from an inferiority complex she feels when compared to her teammates, including Steven.

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• Acrofatic: Yes, she is curvy, but she can run and jump in sync with her teammates and can move at impressive speeds, especially when doing a Rolling Attack. She's also somewhat of a specialized case: as a Quartz soldier she should normally be about seven feet tall, but due to her taking too long to emerge from the kindergarten her growth was stunted, so instead of growing up, she grew out.
• Aliens Love Human Food: Amethyst loves to eat, although she doesn't need to, and will scarf down practically anything, from moldy burritos to engine oil.
• All Drummers Are Animals: The least mature of the Crystal Gems has a drum set as her instrument of choice.
• Always Someone Better: Is revealed to feel this way about Steven in "Steven vs. Amethyst". Perhaps this is the most defining aspect of her personality as a defective lab experiment who despises her origins.
• Animal Motif: Not blatantly obvious, but Amethyst seems to (like Steven) have a general cat motif going on. She has a cat smile, has transformed into a cat a few times, has a wrestler persona called the Purple Puma, and has an extremely independent attitude and curious nature one would expect from a cat. To drive the point further, the intro of the pilot showed her resting on top of a couple of big cats, and her whips tend to have multiple ends, like a cat-o-nine-tails.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Before Steven came around, Amethyst was the youngest Crystal Gem. Her Shapeshifter Default Form even looked much younger right before Steven was born, despite the time since then being a very small part of her current lifespan. She is also the youngest Earth Quartz because she emerged late.
• Bad Impressionists: Amethyst's attempts to disguise herself as other people are hampered both by Morphic Resonance and her consistently terrible impersonations. She barely makes her voice sound any different, lazily parrots some words she remembers them saying, doesn't bother to remember basic personal details (up to the names of the people she's trying to fool), and vocally tries to affirm her supposed identity ("It's cool, I totally work here!").
• Berserker Tears: Cries during her fight with Pearl in "On the Run".
• Beware the Silly Ones: She's usually quite laid-back and goofy, but when she gets upset, she gets upset.
• Big Eater: To the point where she tries to chase Steven down in an attempt to get her hands on the Together Breakfast he made. It's noted that since she's a Crystal Gem (and the one born on Earth instead of Homeworld), she doesn't actually need to eat, but she likes to do it anyway. She'll also pretty much eat anything, with no table manners: as a late-night snack she is seen eating macaroni and cheese powder — not the macaroni but just the powder, straight from the packet, and just shoving it into her mouth with her hand. She thinks it's delicious and asks Steven if he'd like some. One Season 1 episode sees her happily chowing down on a five-year old tuna burrito. Oddly enough, this actually made her sick, and this is someone who drinks motor oil.
• Big Fun: Quite stocky and pudgy, and she's easily the most laid back and fun loving member of the Crystal Gems sans Steven.
• The Big Guy: She's smaller than Garnet by default, but Amethyst is the one most likely to rely on brute force. This is because she's a Quartz Gem, the soldier/warrior caste, and even though she's half the size she was supposed to be, she still has a Quartz's strength.
• Big Sister Instinct: Amethyst is the closest to having a sisterly relationship with Steven and is quite protective of him. Also doubles as Mama Bear. In a twist of irony, as Rose was actually Pink Diamond, Amethyst's "mother" in as close of a way Gems can have, Steven in a way is her little brother.
• Birds of a Feather: With Vidalia. One reason why she and Amethyst are such great friends because they're both free spirits.
• Black Bra and Panties: Her first outfit clearly shows a black shoulder strap on whichever side her tunic slips down (usually on her right). Though, when she's sketched by Pearl and Peridot in her underwear in "Back to the Barn", it's shown to be pretty modest, consisting of a sports bra and boxer-briefs.
• Blank Slate: In the Movie, she's hit with the rejuvenator, a weapon that causes Gems to revert back to their original personalities. Amethyst uniquely loses any knowledge or ability to do things besides imitating others. It's implied that this is what she was like when she first emerged and that the other Crystal Gems had to teach her everything, including how to talk. It is also implied that this state was caused by her having been in the ground for longer than normal, as Gems usually emerge knowing how to talk, what kind of Gem they are, and their role in Homeworld's caste system.
• Born as an Adult: Downplayed; Amethyst was born physically grown like most gems, but her emerging 500 years late meant she was born a Blank Slate not knowing how to do anything, or even how to talk. As seen in The Movie, newborn Amethyst was about as close to a human infant as a Gem can get.
• Boyish Short Hair: Amethyst had much shorter hair around the time Greg and Rose first met, reflecting her tomboyish personality and her status as The Baby of the Bunch before Steven was born.
  • The Movie reveals she emerged from the Kindergarten with this hair.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Amethyst is the "rebellious teen" of the Crystal Gems and frequently at odds with Pearl, the "mother" of the team.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Extremely strong, but she doesn't think much of training, preferring to improvise. A one-on-one battle with Jasper quickly leads her to reconsider.
• Brutal Honesty: She'll often make harsh statements, even dire revelation, bluntly and sometimes enthusiastically.
• Butt-Monkey: Being encased in a block of ice, repeatedly thrown at the Red Eye, blasted by Lion's sonic roar... Amethyst is a prime target for most of the show's physical humor.
• Cain and Abel:
  • The Abel to Jasper's Cain, as both were born from Earth Kindergardens (different ones, but still). Amethyst even refers to Jasper as "sis" after Jasper's physical form was destroyed.
  • Thankfully averted with the "Famethyst", the other Quartzes from Earth, who inmediately accept her as part of them.
• Carpet of Virility: Not her default form, but her Purple Puma wrestler persona has a very thick carpet of chest hair.
• Character Development:
  • Amethyst's maturity increases in very small increments, as does her self-awareness; both likely benefit from her very gradually working through her underlying self-loathing. Because of this, she has also gained better control of her emotions when someone pushes her Berserk Button — compare how she handles it in "On the Run" and later in "Too Far". Probably the biggest change to her character happens late in Season Three; her insecurities of being an inferior Quartz Gem come to a head when Jasper mops the floor with her and Steven's skill and fighting ability matches hers. She's since then become more serious, more open to accept help from others and has shed her Brilliant, but Lazy traits.
  • Then there was her meeting the "Famethyst". She saw that she was loved by the Gems of Homeworld for who she is, regardless of her size or skills. And this is what gives her the courage to give up wrestling because she doesn't need it anymore.
  • Sometime before "What's Your Problem?", Amethyst has taken notice of how much responsibility Steven has taken on over the last few seasons, so she decides she won't dump her emotional baggage onto Steven anymore and spends the episode trying to get Steven to open up about his own issues and feelings. This is partially so he can still be a kid, and partially because Amethyst has realized that she needs to step up maturity-wise with Garnet literally falling apart over the "Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond" reveal and Pearl being too close to the issue to actually deal with it. Steven takes note of her development and points out she's somehow become the most mature of the Crystal Gems, much to her comical horror.
  • Likewise, for the first three reasons she idolized Rose and put her on a pedestal. Jasper mocks her for how Rose said that Amethyst was perfect the way she was, and Amethyst starts to realize how much the Quartz's legacy is burdening Steven after they have a friendly sparring match. When the Pink Diamond reveal happens, Amethyst is shocked but starting to reason it, and realizes that Rose meant well but was flawed with her actions. She admits that she and Steven are left holding the burden of that legacy and it's not fair to either of them.
• Characterization Marches On: In an early episode, she throws up after eating a moldy burrito. She never gets sick from eating anything else over the course of the series, no matter how weird or inedible it is.
• The Chew Toy: In almost every mission, she takes the most physical abuse. Sometimes it's simply because she runs directly into it.
  Amethyst: [A Gem having to regenerate] just happens sometimes! Usually to me.
  Garnet: Always to you.
  Amethyst: Hey, I'm scrappy, whaddaya want?
• Color Motif: Purple.
• Companion Cube: She adopted rocks as friends during her early years in a canyon with no one else around to be a friend.
• Cool Big Sis: Rather than a Parental Substitute like Garnet and Pearl, Amethyst is more like Steven's cool and rebellious older sister figure who likes to have fun with him. Given her age compared to the other Gems, she's also chronologically much closer to being a "teenager" by their species' metric. Ironically, as Rose was actually Pink Diamond, essentially Amethyst's "mother" in a sense, she actually is Steven's older sister.
• Crazy-Prepared: After being left in the dust multiple times by Peridot's helicopter-fingers, she taught herself off-screen to shapeshift into a fully-functional helicopter in preparation to chase her down again if necessary.
  Amethyst: [after Peridot flees the barn in her giant robot] Oh-ho-hokay! I've gotten ready for this! [transforms into a helicopter] GET IN!
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Amethyst is hedonistic and childish, but can hold her own against the more disciplined and mature Pearl in combat.
• Cuddle Bug: Amethyst is very outwardly affectionate.
• Destructive Savior: The Gems in general don't care about accidental property damage, but Amethyst seems to cause some deliberately — she whips a dumpster in half in "Gem Glow" just to demonstrate, and Lars complains that it isn't the first time.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Her dialogue in "On the Run" is reminiscent of an unplanned child.
  Amethyst: You want to pretend none of this ever happened! You think I'm just a big mistake!
  • Her disconnection from Garnet and Pearl on various pieces of their race's history, and how much friendlier she is to the natives of Earth, is also similar to how second generation immigrants who feel a stronger connection to their new home, compared to the older generations who see their original 'country' (e.g. Homeworld) still as their true 'home'. She doesn't get the cultural, racial, or even language barriers that normally comes with these types of families, though.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Amethyst feels that both Garnet and Pearl don't respect her, which feeds into her self-hatred over being a Kindergarten-made Gem.
• Elite Mook: Amethyst and Quartzes like her are the rank-and-file soldiers on Homeworld. However, due to being raised by the Crystal Gems, Amethyst is much better at improvising and using abilities that other Gems take for granted like shapeshifting.
• Epic Flail: Her whip after being upgraded by Bismuth with spiked spheres like the head of a morningstar.
• Establishing Character Moment: In one scene of "Gem Glow", as her leitmotif begins playing, she explains to Steven that rigorous training to summon weapons is "no fun" when he inquires about summoning weapons, and that she can use her gem whenever she needs to do so. She then provides a convincing demonstration by casually summoning her whip with her eyes closed and breaking a dumpster in half while munching on a doughnut with crass chewing sounds. This pretty much establishes her personality as the Brilliant, but Lazy Wild Child of the group.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Before Steven was born, Amethyst's hair was shorter, reaching near her chin. Her current hairstyle a longer version of her old one, though considering that Gems have complete control over their physical appearance, she may have just decided at some point that she looked "cooler" with longer hair.
  • It could have been due to her hanging out with Greg and Vidalia, both of whom had long hair.
• Extreme Omnivore: Since she eats only for the enjoyment of it, she's tried some strange things. She swallowed a whole cloud, which caused her to swell up and inflate like a balloon, and scarfed down a decades-old moldy burrito (although said burrito did make her violently sick). She also enjoys engine oil on sandwiches as she scarfs it down while licking the oil.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Downplayed, as her tank top itself is symmetrical, but she always has the right shoulder strap slightly off to the side. When she regenerates, her new top fits on both shoulders, to Pearl's delight. Her first form also has a small tear in the pants above the left knee, which is still visible on the "patched up" pants on her second form.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • She has serious anger issues and can forget what skill she does have when she becomes mad enough.
  • Beneath her anger issues are her insecurities and shame from knowing that she was originally meant to be an evil Gem, and that she is a runt.
• Fat and Skinny: The fat one with Pearl.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Thief of the group, who depends on unpredictable tactics like shapeshifting.
• Flight: She is the only Gem who has been shown shapeshifting into a form capable of flight. When she needs to fly, her preferred form is an owl, but she can also turn into a helicopter.
• Foil:
  • Pearl and Amethyst play off each other by being opposites in every respect. Pearl is well-mannered, dainty, hard-working, and protective; Amethyst is a slob, ill-mannered, lazy, fun-loving, and irresponsible. Physically, Pearl is skinny while Amethyst is fat. Pearl's weapon is rigid and pierces while Amethyst's is flexible and crushes. Their differences can even be seen in the way they sit◊.
    Steven: Where did you get these? I thought they stopped making them!
    Pearl: Well, we heard that too, and since they're your favorite...
    Amethyst: We went out and stole a bunch!
    Pearl: [annoyed grunt] I went back and paid for them.
  • She's revealed toward the end of Season 3 to also be this to Jasper. Amethyst was the last and smallest Gem to come from Earth's primary Kindergarten, which was otherwise planned and executed as an ideal facility, but still came out as "an overcooked runt" according to Jasper. Jasper was from the Beta Kindergarten (which was brought online during the War with the sole purpose of producing Cannon Fodder), but is, in Peridot's own words, "the ultimate Quartz".
  • She's also one to Steven. Both are fun-loving and jokey and generally considered the most childish of the Crystal Gems, but whereas Steven is positive and optimistic Amethyst does it out of her insecurities and self-loathing.
• Force and Finesse: The force to Pearl's finesse.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Deconstructed throughout "Reformed": Amethyst is a bit self-conscious due to the personality quiz Steven was trying to get her to participate in, and each time she gets "poofed" by the monster, she regenerates with a poorly thought-out form based on what she thinks other people want of her. She ultimately takes a form like her old one, but switched the color of her top and pants, because it "feels right" — basically a form she is comfortable with.
• Freakiness Shame: Amethyst is ashamed of her "Kindergarten" origins, which differentiate her from the other Gems. Pearl comforts her by telling her that she always thought Amethyst was the one good thing to come out of Kindergarten. As of "Too Far", it seems she's no longer ashamed of being made on Earth, but rather that she came out small from being in the ground too long, instead of the behemoth she was supposed to be.
• The Gadfly: She sometimes likes to poke fun at her fellow Gems just to get a rise out of them. She'll also delight in some of the chaotic situations occurring in Beach City, even when she should be doing something to help:
  Steven: Amethyst!
  Amethyst: Hey! Why is doughnut guy breathing fire?
  Steven: I tried to prank Lars but I used too much fire salt!
  Amethyst: Steven... that's hilarious.
• Gasshole: Because of her horrible table manners and bizarre culinary tastes, she let out a loud burp (she even breathed fire while burping) after drinking three bottles of cooking oil before a meal.
• Gender Bender: While Gems are sexless, they tend to default to female. Amethyst, however, is perfectly fine assuming explicitly male forms, as pointed out by the guidebook.
• Genki Girl: Loud and full of laughter, she finds everything amusing, but can be very emotional and isn't afraid to act on impulse.
• Given Name Reveal: Though Gems lack conventional names, her "Gem Identification Code" is revealed by the Amethyst Guards from the Human Zoo: Amethyst Facet-5 Cut-8XM.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Inverted. Amethyst wears purple clothing and even has purple skin, but is pretty much the opposite of graceful.
• Handicapped Badass: When her gem was cracked in "An Indirect Kiss", she was still able to protect Steven from the sentient thorns.
  • She is, for all intents and purposes, constantly 'handicapped'. Being a runt, she is significantly smaller and weaker than most 'regular' Amethysts, but it doesn't stop her from being a brave and effective fighter. And that's before she starts fusing with her friends.
• Heavy Sleeper: Lion knocked her across the room with a roar, and she just told Steven to keep it down. And she doesn't even have to sleep or get tired, indicating she just didn't like to be interrupted while enjoying herself.
• The Hedonist: Amethyst spends most of her time off-mission indulging herself in one way or another. Crystal Gems don't need to eat or sleep, but Amethyst likes to because she thinks they're fun.
• Heel: She plays one in her "Purple Puma" wrestling persona, and gets pretty well into the role.
• Height Angst: Extremely short due to her delayed emergence, which she's insecure about to the point of being a Berserk Button.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • When Pearl shows up in Kindergarten while Amethyst is showing Steven her origins, Pearl confronts the situation with an attempt to be level-headed. However, the way Pearl words her argument sparks a BSOD in Amethyst as she recklessly fights Pearl to a stand-still before escaping to return to the hole she literally came out of.
  • Goes into one after being defeated by Jasper, who Stevonnie then manages to defeat without her.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Due to her dark past, she bears a tremendous amount of self-hatred and sometimes feels out of place among the other Gems despite maintaining a cheerful, happy-go-lucky personality. She thinks that the other Gems look down on her as well. She thought when Steven learned of her past that he might look down on her, too. She gets this particularly bad in "Steven vs. Amethyst" after her defeat at Jasper's hands.
• Heroic Second Wind: Thanks to Steven, after she failed to seriously damage Jasper with her upgraded whips, which allows them to fuse into Smoky Quartz.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Vidalia as of "Onion Friend". They're very close and Vidalia's house is full of paintings of Amethyst.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She is good at reading people's emotions and keeping the group stable during a crisis, as seen in episodes "So Many Birthdays" and "Steven the Sword Fighter". Taken even further in "An Indirect Kiss", where if you reverse her backward dialogue when her gem is damaged and she's becoming undone at the seams, it's revealed that she's trying to calm down Steven and assure him that she's going to be fine.
  • All the way back in "Tiger Millionaire" there are hints that Amethyst is very insecure about how others, especially Pearl and Garnet, perceive her. This is explored further as the series goes on.
    • "On the Run" provides her backstory; she was made on Earth in "the Kindergarten", where "bad" Gems were once made. She harbors unresolved stress from being reminded that she's supposed to be "bad" and she's kept this hidden until this episode.
    • "Reformed" shows that she worries about living up to Garnet's standards. It also shows she's deeply insecure about her past and how people see her.
    • "Cry for Help" has her regret Sugilite getting out of control in "Coach Steven", feeling that she was the one responsible for Sugilite's destructive nature and that Pearl is a better fusion partner for Garnet than her, and defends Pearl repairing the hub as an excuse to fuse with Garnet again, since she also understands the Power High that results.
  • She is the first of the Crystal Gems (outside of Steven) to act friendly to Peridot. And she obviously valued their friendship, considering she was as upset as Steven when they believed Peridot was planning to betray them in "Message Received".
  • While Amethyst is like this on an individual level, heightened empathy may also be a latent characteristic of her entire cut of Gem. When Greg breaks the collective hearts of the entire Human Zoo population by refusing to choosen any of them, the Amethysts immediately offer them shoulders to cry on and genuine words of comfort.
  • "Restaurant Wars" reveals that Amethyst is a surprisingly skilled cook, making food so good that it causes Kofi and Mr. Fryman to end their feud so Steven would shut down his make-shift restaurant.
  • In "What's Your Problem?", Amethyst tries to apply her usual fun-loving antics in order to distract Steven. When probed, she acknowledges that Steven is always taking responsibility for everyone's problems (especially in regards to her, Garnet and Pearl) and that she doesn't want to keep doing that to him. Steven calls her the most mature of the Crystal Gems for this.
• Hypocrite: Amethyst has no problem with Peridot making insensitive comments about her friends. However, the moment Peridot does the same thing to her, she becomes greatly offended.
• I Am a Monster: Being a result of the Kindergarten, a project which tore the Gem civilization apart and nearly killed the Earth, Amethyst believes she was made to be evil. It's made clear that her past deeply burdens her and makes her feel as though she's an embarrassment to the Crystal Gems.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: She believes she's an embarrassment — a "monster" — due to Kindergarten, the place she was "born".
  Amethyst: I never asked for it to be this way. I NEVER ASKED TO BE MADE!
• I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: A platonic version in "Cry for Help", where she feels that Pearl is a better fit to fuse with Garnet after her role in Sugilite going out of control in "Coach Steven".
• I Just Want to Have Friends: She was very close to Rose, so when Rose began her relationship with Greg she was deeply hurt. It says something that she's usually seen hanging out with Steven (who in a way is Rose) and not Pearl or Garnet. It's possible she feels this way because she lived in an empty canyon, adopting rocks as friends, for the majority of her lifetime thus far. She likely latched on to the person (Rose) who saved her from that.
• Immortal Immaturity: Amethyst is about 5,000 years old, yet still mostly acts like a teenager. This is probably because she's younger and less traveled than Garnet, Pearl, or Rose, having been born on Earth and spent much of her early years (possibly an entire millennium) with nothing but an empty canyon for company. In "Story for Steven", she acts and dresses like she's seven. The events of the series do inspire Amethyst to mature, to the point Steven tells her in "What's Your Problem?" that that she's the most mature Crystal Gem.
• Ironic Name: In gemstone mythology, amethyst stones are used to increase spirituality, sobriety and balance. The character Amethyst is all about enjoying the earthly pleasures for the kicks, likes physical fighting, and is the most prone to mischief.
• Irony: Amethyst is the most prone to damage of the three Gems and is even stated to have her body destroyed most often, yet she is the last one to "poof" and change her design on-screen.
• Jabba Table Manners: She tends to eat loudly and obnoxiously with little regard for table manners.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Amethyst steals, is quick with insults, and is the first one to laugh at misfortune, yet pals around with Steven the most and was the first to willingly befriend Peridot. In general, while she can be generally brash, she is a sympathetic friend who knows how to be sweet and comforting when her friends need it, especially if it's Steven and even Pearl.
• Kick the Dog: Amethyst is prone to hurting people due to her hedonism conflicting with what other people want and causes unnecessary tension with others, but the most blatant example is when Amethyst, when upset that Greg wanted to spend time with Steven instead of binging a show with her, turns into Rose and proceeds to taunt him to try to look at at the form of his dead lover while Greg could do little to stop it. If Steven hadn't been there, things could have only gotten worse.
• Knight of Cerebus: A heroic example, it was only in "On the Run" that it was revealed she was made in the Earth-destroying Kindergarten, and does not take it very well, to the point of actually fighting Pearl over it. Let's just say it was NOT one of her more comedic moments.
• The Lad-ette: The laziest, crudest, and most hedonistic of her fellow Gems. She picks her nose in public, shapeshifts into the guise of a mean, boisterous male wrestler for the heck of it, pees in the ocean, and eats without any table manners.
• Late to the Tragedy: She emerged long after the Gem war has ended, and is also the last gem to emerge from the Prime Kindergarten, a symbol of everything bad the Gem Empire has done to Earth and countless other planets.
• Leeroy Jenkins: The downside of her impulsiveness is that Amethyst tends to jump into battle against stronger enemies without any strategy, most notably against the Slinker and Jasper. The former poofed her four times in close succession and the latter nearly shattered her gem after beating her into a pulp.
• Leitmotif: Her music usually consists of a distinct rhythm made by a synth-drum and some accompanying bass.
  • In contrast to the other Gems’ leitmotifs, there is no single, fixed melody that has been definitively labeled "Amethyst's Theme" because no two instances of her music are exactly the same, which reflects her loose cannon nature.
• Like Brother and Sister: While Pearl and Garnet act more as Parental Substitutes to Steven, Amethyst's relationship to him is more sisterly, as they both viewed Rose Quartz as a parental figure.
  • Amethyst is not only the youngest of the full Crystal Gems, she was also born on Earth, long past the Gem War. Because of this, she doesn't have the Fantastic Racism or hangups of Gems from the previous 'generation', and is far more (pardon the pun) down-to-earth, like Steven. Because of this, she and Steven relate to each other much better, as each are still trying to find their place in the world, and she also sees Steven's problems from his perspective much easier than Garnet or Pearl. This is part of the reason why she ends up being the first gem Steven fuses with.
  • Although if one considers gems made on the same planet for a single Diamond siblings, as Amethyst did for Jasper and the "Famethyst" in the Zoo, her and Steven actually are related — the Rose Quartzes were apparently also made on Earth, making Amethyst the gem equivalent of Steven's aunt. Then it turns out Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond, who all the Earth-born Gems were made for, so they're "like" (half)-siblings in more than one sense.
• Lightning Lash: In the Light Trilogy (Attack the Light, Save the Light, and Unleash the Light), she can electrify enemies with her whip to disable them for a few turns or until they're hit with another attack.
• Literal-Minded: She thinks grounding Steven means burying him until he learns his lesson.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Until Peridot told her in "Too Far", she had no idea about how she would place in the Homeworld Hive Caste System. Also, the other Crystal Gems never told her about Bismuth or Rose supposedly shattering Pink Diamond, and when White Diamond is mentioned and the other Crystal Gems react in horror, she lets out a confused "What?"
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Inverted. Amethyst has hair that reaches her ankles, but tends to be a lazy and careless slob. By contrast, Pearl's hair doesn't even reach her shoulders, but is the most conventionally feminine of the group.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Throughout the series, it is implied that she had a mild mother/daughter relationship with Rose Quartz, making her like an older sister to Steven. With the reveal that Rose Quartz was really Pink Diamond — the gem that commissioned Amethyst's creation — an argument can be made that she actually was her mother (or at least the closest thing to a mother gems can have).
• Mad Eye: Amethyst's left eye has a subtle but consistent squint after she reforms from Jasper poofing her in "Crack the Whip", most likely as a result of her rushed regeneration.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: She considers the many other Quartz gems made on Earth as sisters (her "Famethyst").
• Meaningful Name:
  • The amethyst stone is often associated with the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine and partying, appropriate considering Amethyst's hedonistic and counterdependent personality.
  • The "What in the Universe" book says that amethyst attracting positive energy and giving people peace of mind fits her, since she needs to learn to be more positive about herself.
• The McCoy: She's impulsive, emotional, and often puts having a bit of fun at the expense of others before her own duties.
• Mini Mook: Quartzes like Amethyst are the standard soldiers on Homeworld, but due to a staying in the ground too long Amethyst came out much smaller than intended. However, she is also much faster and more agile than other Quartzes, and she is much better at shapeshifting than most Gems shown in the series.
• Morphic Resonance: When shapeshifted into any of her many forms, in addition to the usual skin color and gem, she usually also retains her characteristic cat smile and full lips.
• The Muse: Vidalia and Amethyst are long-time friends. Vidalia has taken up painting, and admits to Amethyst being her biggest inspiration.
• My Greatest Failure: In "Cry for Help", she feels responsible for and extremely ashamed at Sugilite's destructive rampage in "Coach Steven". This makes her even more depressed when she has to form Sugilite again to break the communications hub beyond repair.
• The Nicknamer: Tends to call people she's fond of by affectionate nicknames—for instance, "Ste-man" for Steven and "P" for Pearl. When mad at Peridot for the perceived betrayal by the green Gem, she angrily states she's "taking back all the cool nicknames she thought up for her" and plans to call her mean ones. And after Peridot reveals she was trying to SAVE Earth and insults Yellow Diamond to her face for the latter's refusal to listen, she happily calls Peridot "Peridactyl" while exclaiming how cool what she did was.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Along with Steven, Garnet and Pearl, she is one of the four main protagonists of the show. But said show is exclusively told from Steven's perspective.
• Nose Nuggets: She revels in picking her nose, and in "Fusion Cuisine" pulls out a strand of mucus while doing so.
• Objectshifting: Unlike other Gems, Amethyst has used shapeshifting to fully turn into objects, though she'll always have a face visible somewhere. She's duplicated functioning machines and even electronics, including a helicopter that carried multiple people. Sometimes this is practical, often it's for pranks, and sometimes it's just a bizarre hobby in of itself.
  Amethyst: (Believing Rose shapeshifted into Steven) But it's been so long, like months! That's longer than I was a toilet!
• Odd Couple: With Pearl. Amethyst is the disorganized, messy, and instinctive counterpoint to Pearl's precise, careful neat-freak personality. When they stop antagonizing each other they make a great team, and even better friends.
• Old Friend: With Vidalia. They used to hang out together a lot, but they drifted away for a while before meeting up again in "Onion Friend".
• One of the Kids: She's the one who most often pals around with Steven, and has a very amiable relationship with Connie as well.
• Pass the Popcorn: Amethyst is the kind to sit by minor crises while having a snack, such as during Greg and Pearl's conversation, the mech fight with Pearl and Peridot, or Lars running around breathing fire — which she was partially responsible for. She even offers popcorn to Connie during one of these moments.
• Personality Powers:
  • Amethyst admits that her weapon-summoning is an act of impulsivity. This not only fits in with her being a gem from a warrior caste — thus summoning a weapon would come natural to her more than the others — but fits her carefree and thoughtless lease on life.
  • While all gems (sans Peridot) can shapeshift, Amethyst favors this ability more so than most other gems, using it both in and out of battle in a variety of ways. This can be read as a hint at her insecurities as an off-colored gem, constantly changing her appearance in small and big ways out of a need to fit other people's standards.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: She was originally created on Earth alongside other Gems, but instead of joining the Gems from Homeworld she ended up joining Rose and the other Crystal Gems in defending Earth. Justified, considering she emerged long after the war had ended, the Crystal Gems the only remaining gems populated the planet aside from the Corrupted Gems.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's barely taller than Steven, but she is strong enough to split solid rock. This is because she's a Quartz Gem, designed to be a soldier/warrior, and while she's technically "an overcooked runt", she still has some of that power at her disposal.
• Platonic Life-Partners: She looks like she might have this dynamic with Greg, if "Maximum Capacity" is of any indication (plus, she's the Gem he's known the longest outside Rose). Their personalities are quite compatible, up to a point, but Greg will abandon his hedonism when he needs to be responsible for something, whereas the even-more-hedonistic Amethyst would manipulate him just so they could keep watching an old sitcom together, even becoming violent or emotionally cruel whenever he wanted to leave.
• Playing with Fire: She can coat her whips with purple flames that can create large explosions.
• Power Stereotype Flip: Although Amethyst's frequent use of shapeshifting generally fits her spontaneous personality, it's also ironic in that she's terrible at lying and acting (she can't even understand the concept of improv).
• The Prankster: One of the main things she uses her shapeshifting for is pranking. This can be seen when she joins in Greg and Steven's water-hose fight while in the shape of a cat to confuse them and with her "Dumb Police" prank which involved shape-shifting into a policeman and spraying Steven with a water gun for allegedly being dumb.
• Pungeon Master: Makes puns at every opportunity, including when giving people nicknames.
• Purple Is Powerful: Can fight Pearl to a stand-still while being still relatively new to the group, and her skin and clothing are purple.
• Raised by Orcs: Amethyst was created by the Homeworld Gems' attempt to make new Gems at the cost of the Earth. The first people she ever meets and ends up joining are the Crystal Gems, who wanted to protect the Earth from the Homeworld Gems. The irony of this situation is not lost on her, and has resulted in some self-esteem and self-loathing issues, to the point she believes she's a monster or parasite because she was made by the very situation those closest to her fought to stop.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The impulsive, care-free Red Oni to Pearl's Blue Oni.
• Rolling Attack: Uses one against Pearl in their fight at the Kindergarten in "On the Run", the first time it's shown clearly (there's a hint of it in "Watermelon Steven"). This serves as foreshadowing when it's revealed that another Quartz, Jasper, also has this ability. In later seasons, Amethyst uses her spin dash a lot more frequently, even when masquerading as a human, to Steven's annoyance.
• The Runt at the End: Jasper calls her an "overcooked runt". In "Too Far", Peridot states that, as a Quartz Gem, she should be at least twice as tall as she is now, and she came out several hundred years later than she should have.
  • A subversion. Jasper is considered "perfect" by Homeworld's standards. But Rose (who is really Pink Diamond, and both their Diamond and maker) regarded Amethyst as her ultimate creation: a Gem free from the restrictions and prejudices of Gem society they rejected.
• Sad Clown: Despite her happy-go-lucky gig as the team's comic relief, as the series trudges on, it's revealed that Amethyst actually has quite the fair share of burdens. In fact, her sarcastic, rebellious attitude is rooted in her feeling inadequate and defective compared to her fellow Gems.
  • "On the Run" reveals that Amethyst has some unresolved issues over her Kindergarten origins that she hid so successfully Pearl had no idea they were as bad as they were.
  • "Maximum Capacity" reveals that she resents Greg for "stealing" Rose away, since after she met Greg, she wasn't there for Amethyst anymore.
  • "Reformed" shows that, as laid back as she acts, she's very easily upset by introspection and worries that she doesn't live up to Garnet's standards.
    Steven: ...She doesn't want to think about herself.
• Sense Freak: She likes eating, even though she doesn't have to, because it "feels weird" (she basically eats for "shits and giggles" in its purest and most literal sense, since she not only likes eating for pleasure only, she also likes the sensation of when the "mush" passes through her body i.e. digesting food and excreting bodily waste).
• Sentient Vehicle: She can shapeshift into a kiddie car ("So Many Birthdays"), a helicopter ("Message Received"), and presumably other types of vehicles as well.
• Shapeshifting Trickster: Amethyst uses shapeshifting more than almost any other gem, often to pull pranks and make jokes (though she's not very good at actually deceiving people).
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Like Pearl and Garnet, she ships Steven and Connie.
  • She (with Steven) encourages Pearl to talk to Mystery Girl.
• Sizeshifter: Can shrink so small that her Gem takes up at least as much of her body as the rest of her.
• Snobs Vs Slobs: The source of friction between her and Pearl, where she's the slob.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Yes, applied to a cartoon character. "Story for Steven" tells of when Greg first met Rose Quartz. He also met the other Gems, with Amethyst still looking, acting, and being treated like a 7-year-old. She's several thousand years old. Presumably her interaction with Greg and/or Vidalia helped her mature a bit.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: The Wise Guy to Pearl's Straight Man more or less any time they're onscreen together.
• Stepford Smiler: In almost every episode that isn't focused on her, she behaves hedonistic and rebellious, though the show progresses to reveal that she's had a very troubled past, from being alone in the Kindergarten for a millennium, to the loss of Rose Quartz, and the fact she's a product of Homeworld's kindergarten.
• Stout Strength: Were you expecting anything less from a Quartz warrior, even if she is defective?
• Supreme Chef: "Restaurant Wars" reveals that Amethyst is a surprisingly skilled cook, making food so good that it causes Kofi and Mr. Fryman to end their feud so Steven would shut down his make-shift restaurant. She is the only one of the Crystal Gems (besides Steven) who eats regularly, so of course she would have a sense of what tastes good and what doesn't.
• Swapped Roles: In the early seasons, Amethyst is the Cool Big Sis to Steven's naive Cheerful Child. By the time of the movie, Steven has matured into a young adult and Amethyst unexpectedly gets hit by the Rejuvenator, reverting her to an infant-like Blank Slate. During the song "No Matter What," to help Amethyst get her memories back, Steven leads her around Beach City showing her all the things they usually do together, acting like a supportive and loving older brother the entire time.
• Tomboyish Voice: Her voice is a bit deep and raspy, courtesy of the naturally husky Michaela Dietz, which is more apparent when she yells.
• Tranquil Fury: She's very clearly pissed in "Too Far" after Peridot (unintentionally) insults her by calling her defective, but (aside from using her whip to remove an injector's drill head) she keeps a cool head and chooses to give the other Gem the cold shoulder instead.
• Transformation Exhilaration: Amethyst frequently transforms into just about any shape and enjoys every bit of it, much to Pearl's annoyance.
• Trash of the Titans: Exaggerated. Amethyst's "room" (actually a large cavern) is filled with enormous heaping mounds of garbage that she's collected over the centuries.
• The Unapologetic: Amethyst is very quick to admit to her faults and accept blame for mistakes, but she never apologizes for them. Instead, she either treats these issues like they're unimportant or takes it as a compliment.
  Pearl: Amethyst, I blame YOU for this.^*About Steven's fingers being morphed into cats without being able to change them back
  Amethyst: Eh, that's fair.
• Unskilled, but Strong: She is less experienced than the other Gems because she was born relatively recently, and she lacks Pearl's discipline, yet she is still able to fight Pearl to a standstill by relying on brute strength. This makes even more sense when you realize that she's a Quartz Gem, Homeworld's warrior/soldier caste, and while she's technically "defective" by their standards, she still has an edge against Pearl, whose own caste is essentially a Servant Race. Deconstructed in "Crack the Whip", where the skilled AND strong Jasper completely outclasses her and would have killed her had Stevonnie not stepped up. As a result, she begins making an effort to try and break out of this.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A mild example. A flashback in "On the Run" reveals that while Amethyst was still rambunctious, she wasn't as rebellious as she is in the present day. "Story for Steven" and "We Need to Talk" back this up, and "Onion Friend" implies that Vidalia had something to do with it.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Pulling her whip out of the gem on her chest evokes this.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Pearl and Amethyst spend almost all of their shared onscreen time arguing, but every once in a while there's a subtle indication that they do care about each other.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Most Gems can shapeshift, but she's one of the few who gets any mileage out of it, though Morphic Resonance still applies. Peridot's comments indicate that Amethyst is unusually skilled at this for a Gem.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Amethyst turns out to really value Garnet's approval, as seen in "Reformed".
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • As Pearl stated, she and Greg used to hang out all the time and usually watch Lil' Butler. Then, one day, they stopped doing so for unknown reasons. It's implied by their argument at the end of their recent viewing that Greg likely wanted to stop watching at some point to go see Rose and Amethyst interpreted it as him caring more about Rose than herself, since the argument was prompted by him trying to do the same to go see Steven.
  • To a milder extent, she and Pearl used to be very close, as seen in the flashback for "Story for Steven", but they're more antagonistic to each other now. This was also hinted at in "Giant Woman" where Amethyst says Pearl is no fun "anymore", which she regards as being the reason they never form Opal.
• Weapon Specialization: Her primary weapon, summoned from the gem in her chest, is a whip. Either as a single whip or two if need be. Bismuth implies that whips, at least of the quality Amethyst produces, are rare among Quartz Soldiers, and upgrades the ends of it to act as an Epic Flail.
• Wild Child: "On the Run" implies that, after she was "made", she just hung out around the place she popped out of the Earth until Rose Quartz found her after an unspecified period of time (implied to be at least 1000 years in "Rose's Scabbard"), explaining a lot of her Womanchild behavior. In flashbacks to when Rose and Greg dated, Amethyst acted like a combination of a hyperactive child and a dog, literally running after a thrown stick.
  • In The Movie, after being hit by the rejuvenator she's basically a Blank Slate that just mindlessly repeats the words, actions, and/or form of whoever's around her, which implies that the other Gems had to teach her everything.
• Womanchild: Some of her antics are reminiscent of a teenager acting out. Her yelling "I don't wanna!" when Garnet tells her to go back to the temple in "Tiger Millionaire" is a good demonstration. She's actually young in comparison to the other Gems, having been created on Earth instead of hailing from Homeworld. This is further enforced by the fact that during Greg's flashback in "Story for Steven" she's much younger in appearance than she is now.
• Wrestler in All of Us: In "Tiger Millionaire", she's shown to be an underground wrestler. She takes the same form and begins using wrestling moves again in "Ocean Gem". Her verse in the extended theme takes place in the wrestling ring from "Tiger Millionaire".
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In the Kindergarten, Amethyst admits her self-loathing in a fit of both rage and sadness. When Pearl learns of Amethyst's hidden self-deprecation, she replies with:
  "You're the one good thing that came out of this mess. I always thought you were proud of that."
• You Are Not Alone: Her self-hatred finally comes to an end when she meets the Famethyst in "That Will Be All"; all of them have been treated like dirt by Holly Blue Agate for being from Earth, a failed colony and the site of Pink Diamond’s death, and many are "defective" in similar ways to Amethyst — and because of this, they wholeheartedly accept her as one of them.
• You Are Number 6: She learns that her original designation was Amethyst Facet-5 Cut-8XM when she meets her Kindergarten sisters. She's shown to be ecstatic about this revelation, since it means they all remember her.
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Amethyst is more prone to emotional outbursts than the other Gems, which can cause her to morph from a goofy prankster into a reckless berserker. This is how she managed to fight Pearl to a standstill, despite the fact that they both know that Pearl is more skilled.

Pearl

Pearl

Voiced by: Deedee Magno-Hall^{Other Languages}Sachiko Kojima (Japanese)

"I will fight in the name of Rose Quartz,
and everything that she believed in!"

^{Click here for her second outfit}

^{Click here for her first outfit}

^{Click here for her outfit during Greg's story}

^{Click here for Pearl during the rebellion}

^{Click here for Pearl during her time in servitude}

"Humans just live short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they're part of something bigger. They want to blame all the world's problems on a single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone's control."

A perfectionist and intellectual strategist, Pearl is the mental powerhouse of the Gems. She strives for structure and logic and gets easily flustered when things don't go as planned. She is driven to keep things orderly, and is most protective of Steven. The slightest hint of endangering Rose's son will immediately result in Pearl seeking to get him to safety. She is nervous and uptight, has some trouble speaking emotionally when others are upset, and is a little quietly resentful that her strengths are not ones Steven considers admirable.

---

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Pearl's spear is able to cleanly slice through solid stone.
• Ace Custom: She did the customizing. Her kind are a made-to-order Servant Race that's just supposed to stand around and look pretty, with Peridot even referring to her as a "model", but her training and equipment have made her much more powerful than her fellow Pearls. Just ask the two Quartz Gems she curbstomped in Blue Diamond's court. It also seems other Pearls are specifically designed to match their owner, while Pearl spends a long time regenerating to change her look to her preferences.
  • This is best contrasted to when she is reset to her default state in the movie. It's revealed that the owners of Pearls can customize them before they "appear" and identify their owner by name. Given the confusion, Pearl instead appears in her default form, that of a happy servant/advisor though with Greg as her master. Her memory is restored when Greg and Steven fuse and use The Power of Rock to remind her of her growth.
• Animal Motif: Pearl has several bird-like traits, though not blatantly obvious. Her very pointed, beakish nose is the most noticeable, along with her hair which somewhat resembles the crest of a blue jay or cardinal. Her pearl gem on her forehead looks like an egg, and Steven even tried incubating it like one when Pearl was recovering. Pearl's whole body is long and reedy like a crane's, and her ballet dancing could evoke a connection to Swan Lake. Amethyst refers to her nagging as "squawking". She can rotate her head 360 degrees like an owl. In The Movie, she gets reverted to her pre-Rebellion state and latches on to Greg as her owner, bringing to mind the way baby birds imprint on the first thing they see when they hatch. Last but not least, her protectiveness of Steven makes it easy to call Pearl a "mother hen".
• Anime Hair: Her hair, when viewed from the side, looks like a triangle.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance:
  • Pearl's weapon is a stick with a point at the end. Pearl herself is a stick with a point at the end. Her face is also the same oval shape as her gemstone.
  • Her pointed hair is shaped somewhat like a rose bud, evoking the name of Rose Quartz, the Gem she dedicated herself to serving.
• Bad Liar: She gets very visibly nervous when lying.
• Badass Bookworm: Pearl is shown to be quite knowledgeable in engineering, as she was able to repair and upgrade Greg's destroyed van and was able to construct a spaceship out of scrap. It is possible that Pearl is the most educated of the Crystal Gems, since she seems to excel in aeronautics and aerospace engineering as well.
• Badass Driver: Pulls off impressive tricks in Greg's Dondai when evading the cops on the way to a rock show in "Last One Out of Beach City".
• Badass Teacher: As of "Sworn to the Sword", Pearl begins teaching Connie about swordsmanship.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: She is comically inept with Onion on her own, although she does much better as part of Rainbow 2.0.
• Battle Butler: She's incredibly skilled at fighting, and not just for someone who was made to serve others.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: She's noted to have one in-universe (and shows it, since her voice actress is a Broadway alum). Both Blue and Yellow Pearl are shown to have similar voices, implying this may be part of an inborn skillset for Pearls.
• Beautiful Slave Girl: Like all Pearls, our Pearl was made to stand around and look pretty as a status symbol for higher-class Gems. However, thanks to Rose Quartz she's managed to grow beyond this, becoming a skilled engineer and warrior. Though she is shown to still be struggling with the after-effects of her past as one of these. But in "A Single Pale Rose", it's revealed that she served Pink Diamond, who turned into Rose Quartz. That's why she's so loyal to Rose.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Implied. According to Pearl, Rose made her feel like she was "everything". Given that she was supposed to be Rose's slave when she was Pink Diamond but that Rose treated her like a confidant and an equal instead, this is justified.
• Berserk Button:
  • Untidiness, which is Played for Laughs.
  • On a more serious note, casting doubt on her relationship with Rose, as evidenced by her reaction in "Rose's Scabbard" when she discovers that Rose hadn't truly confided all of her secrets in her.
  • Being discriminated because she's a pearl. It earned Peridot a punch in the face.
• Betty and Veronica: The "Betty" (Rose's bodyguard and very first ally in the war against Homeworld) to Greg's "Veronica" (aspiring human musician) for Rose's "Archie".
• Beware the Nice Ones: She is very sweet to the people she likes, and it takes quite a lot to make her mad. But in "Back to the Barn", Peridot begins picking on her for being created as a made-to-order servant. Pearl gets very ticked off at that, starting the episode off with a very angry speech towards her.
  Pearl: Now you listen here you tiny twerp! In case you've forgotten, you're on OUR turf now, and I did NOT fight a thousand-year war to take orders from the likes of YOU!
  • Near the end of that same episode, Pearl finally gets enough of Peridot's teasing, and gives her one HELL of a right hook.
• Bifauxnen: Not in her normal attire, of course, but she certainly looks this way whenever she wears male-oriented outfits (i.e. a tuxedo).
• Birds of a Feather: With Connie. Both are intelligent, have an attention to detail, and have a tendency to be overly hard on themselves in the face of perceived failure.
• Blade Enthusiast: Pearl has a large collection of swords. While she is a skilled swordfighter, she also seems to simply collect them as a hobby, and indeed, they're not even her primary weapon in the present day.
• Blood Knight: Pearl is occasionally shown to have a gleeful love of battle.
• Blow You Away: In "Sworn to the Sword", Pearl is able to channel clouds in the direction of her choice — having the channel towards her when fighting Connie and away from her when Steven interfered.
• Blue Means Smart One: Pearl's gemstone is white, but she's the only one of the initial Crystal Gem trio who wears blue. She's an intellectual strategist who usually serves as The Smart Girl for the core team.
• Blush Sticker: Prone to a blue-colored blush of this variety, as well as a Luminescent Blush. Sometimes used to indicate a Crush Blush when talking about Rose, or just to express embarrassment or frustration.
• Bodyguarding a Badass:
  • Deconstructed; Pearl tried to act as a bodyguard to Rose, but she got herself involved in fights she could not win, even though Rose could have handled them. Reconstruction as well; when your feared bodyguard is a lowly Pearl, it speaks volumes about just how serious a threat you are.
  • Taken up to eleven when she reveals she's actually Pink Diamond's personal Pearl, and Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond! She was bodyguarding one of the four most powerful Gems in the universe. Also justified, since Rose being poofed would have exposed her original identity.
• Boom Stick: Pearl's spear can fire energy blasts in quick succession. She can charge it for a sizable explosion. A sufficiently agile or skilled opponent can dodge them, though.
• Boyish Short Hair: Inverted. Pearl's hair doesn't even reach her shoulders, but she's the most feminine of the Crystal Gems.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Flashbacks shows Pearl acting like this when she was younger, mostly towards Greg. She even looked the part.
• Broken Bird: Pearl suffers from a lot of confidence issues, always desperate to prove that she's smart and right. Her unhealthy and obsessive relationship with Rose was her validation and emotional pillar for many millennia. Losing Rose has not been easy for her, especially now that she has to be that pillar for the likes of Steven and Amethyst. "Cry for Help" seems to indicate that she has a bit of an inferiority complex as well. She knows that she's physically weaker than Rose, Garnet, and even Amethyst. That normally doesn't bother her, but being fused with Garnet gave her a Power High and reminded her of how weak she is. When Rose was around, her undying loyalty and eagerness to do anything she wanted made up for it. Rose's death hit her the hardest, and she's still trying to cope with it.
• Butt-Monkey: Mild example. She's occasionally suffered Amusing Injuries, notably bitten twice by Steven Jr. in "Giant Woman" and by Amethyst in "Rose's Room" and hit with Cactus Steven's spines in "Prickly Pair".
• The Champion: Deconstructed. Pearl was Rose's most loyal and devoted follower. However, that devotion had its darker (and obsessive) side: Pearl would often put herself in needless danger in order to assure Rose's safety, despite Rose being very vocal about not wanting Pearl to do so. And now that Rose is gone, Pearl is struggling with coming to terms with it and deciding what to do with her life after spending the last thousands of years dedicating it to serve Rose.
• Character Development:
  • Pearl gradually learns to accept who she is. For example, note her different reactions to being "a Pearl" in "Friend Ship" and "Back to the Barn".
  • While she's still fairly serious, Pearl has become more open to having fun or telling jokes.
  • Out of her friends, Pearl had the most indifference towards humans, making her the biggest Noble Bigot of them all. However, "Last One Out of Beach City" has her intentionally befriending humans in order to move on from the past.
  • She verbally acknowledges Rose’s flaws in "Now We’re Only Falling Apart", a major contrast to earlier in the series when Pearl put her on such a high pedestal.
  • At the end of "Reunited", with Steven's help she finally snaps out of her "Do it for her/him" complete devotion, and starts fighting harder while shouting "I do it for ME!"
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Later episodes have firmly established that Pearl doesn't like to eat, considering the whole process to be gross and uncomfortable; however, several early episodes seemed to suggest otherwise, as she was willing to join in on a meal Steven made in "Together Breakfast" and was happy to take what she thought was an offer for pie in "So Many Birthdays". A comment on a crew member's Twitter gave the latter a Hand Wave by explaining that she likes the process of pie (as in baking).
  • In some earlier episodes, Pearl acted more childish and less maternal, closer to her characterization in the pilot.
• Cheated Angle: Because Pearl's most distinguished facial feature is her conical nose, her face is rarely shown from the front; her model sheet◊ doesn't even have a front view. Even when the rest of her face seems to be pointing directly at the camera, her nose is slightly turned to one direction◊ or another◊. One time we're shown a horizontally centered low shot, it's (very deliberately) strange-looking◊. In her song "It's Over, Isn't It?", Pearl has an entire 360-degree spinning shot focused on her, and they still manage to never have her look directly at the camera.
• Chick Magnet: Between the episodes "Last One Out of Beach City" and "A Single Pale Rose", she has apparently managed to get at least nine different women to give her their phone numbers. She's also had at least one male admirer in Bill Dewey. In Future, Pink Pearl/Volleyball seems to have a certain chemistry with Pearl, and it turns out Bismuth has been nursing a crush on her for quite a while.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Oh boy, Pearl's obsessive clinginess towards Rose is... truly something else.
  • She was quite proud knowing that Rose confided in her alone the location of some of her deepest secrets, but when Steven reveals that Lion had already shown it to him, she became very upset by the fact that Rose hadn't truly confided everything in her and takes it out on Steven in "Rose's Scabbard".
  • In "Story for Steven", she reacts to Rose showing interest in Greg by jealously pointing out that she can sing too.
  • In "We Need to Talk", she fuses with Rose into Rainbow Quartz just to spite Greg and rub it in that he will never be able to fuse with Rose like she can. She tells him he's just a "phase", and is visibly distraught when her claim gets disproven.
  • While she's on better terms with Greg in the present, she appears to still harbor some resentment towards him subconsciously, as seen in her dream in "Chille Tid" where she tells Rose to "forget about Greg" so they could travel the galaxy together.
  • The depths of her obsessive jealousy are explored in "Mr. Greg", where we learn Greg was the latest in a long string of male lovers Rose had. Pearl didn't mind the other men as they were phases and she assumed Rose would eventually choose her because First Girl Wins. Pearl was never able to accept that Rose made a definitive, final choice, and it was to be with Greg and not her. By the end of the episode, Pearl and Greg are working on building a true friendship.
  • Deconstructed following "A Single Pale Rose" where it's revealed she was made to love Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz with all her heart and spend her life with Rose, so losing Rose is a literal ongoing existential crisis for her.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Subverted. As a defective Pearl, she has the colors of all the Diamonds, White, Yellow, Blue and Pink, thus cannot belong to any one master. It ends up being Double Subverted as she's still Pink Diamond's Pearl, just... with a new form, good enough to deceive other Gems from a glance (it was enough to fool Jasper, after all). She was not, however, Pink Diamond's original Pearl. She was a replacement given to Pink Diamond after Pink Pearl got too familiar with her.
• Condescending Compassion:
  • A lot of her attempts to comfort Steven over his Power Incontinence come off as this. In "An Indirect Kiss", Steven even says it feels like she's saying they don't want anything to do with him.
  • It even extends to interactions outside of Steven, such as her initial attempt to comfort Amethyst after their fight in "On the Run".
• The Confidant:
  • In "Rose's Scabbard", it's revealed she was privy to secrets Rose kept from the other Crystal Gems. It hits her rather hard when she learns that Rose still had secrets known to no one, not even Pearl (specifically, Lion's existence, and the secrets physically contained inside him).
  • It turns a little justified as one of those secrets that not even Pearl could handle turns out to be Bismuth's betrayal.
  • Raised up to eleven in "A Single Pale Rose", where we discover that Pearl was the only person who knew Rose's true identity as Pink Diamond.
• Control Freak: Pearl will immediately become comically distressed if something is asymmetrical.
• Cool Sword: She has a sword collection, and "Steven the Sword Fighter" shows that she can fight quite well with them. However, her weapon is still her spear, though she can change its length and use it as a sword. Flashbacks to the war show that she used to fight with the saber she wields when training Steven and Connie.
• Cultured Badass: Pearl is the most enthusiastic when discussing Gem culture to Steven. She can also play the violin and collects swords as a hobby.
• Dance Battler: She incorporates ballet into her fighting style.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Poor Pearl has had a lot of pain in her life. Seen as nothing more than a bauble in the eyes of her Homeworld's society, having to fight a war that affected the emotional levels of all the Gems involved, and the loss of the person she loved most.
  • Considering Rose and Pink Diamond were one and the same and she was her Pearl, she saw when Pink came up with her “Rose Quartz” disguise and decided to start a rebellion on her own colony. Then saw how after Pink’s wishes were ignored by her fellow Diamonds, she came up with the drastic plan to fake her own shattering. This caused her enough trauma to keep her from using her shapeshifting powers ever again. Then seeing most of her friends be forcibly mutated.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of someone with an Inferiority Superiority Complex. Pearl's ego is frail due to how she lived in Homeworld where those of her Gem class were considered mere "pretty decoration" and status symbols, and her confidence was maintained and grew thanks to Rose's presence. But, once Rose was gone, most of Pearl's confidence took a nosedive. She doesn't know how to act naturally confident without using someone else to project herself her own issues on. This come ahead in "Cry for Help".
  • Of someone with Undying Loyalty. Pearl was Rose's closest confidant and bodyguard and kept all her secrets, including the nature of her Secret Identity. Everything she did of her own choice was to serve Rose, because she loved her so much. She would have happily stayed by Rose's side for the rest of eternity—but without Rose, Pearl is completely lost and has no idea what her purpose is in life, because she has built so much of her identity, if not her entire identity, around being so devoted to her Diamond.
    Pearl: Everything I ever did...I did for her. Now she's gone, but I'm still here.
• Defrosting Ice Queen:
  • Pearl was apparently much more dismissive of humans in the past, and used to be particularly nasty to Greg because she saw him as a rival for Rose's affection. Losing Rose and raising Steven has softened her up quite a bit.
  • This can also be seen in her relationship with Amethyst. They start off antagonistic towards each other but throughout the series there's a visible, gradual change in their demeanors when interacting, particularly after the events of "On the Run", that shows them growing closer and coming to accept their differences.
  • Pearl has been the most aloof and dismissive towards Greg, mostly because of his romance with Rose. Even after having Steven, she is still somewhat frosty towards him. It isn't until "Mr. Greg", when Steven has them talk about their issues with each other, does she begin to warm up to him.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: "Mr. Greg" explores just how lost Pearl feels without Rose by her side, wondering what to do with herself. Becomes more important in the episode "A Single Pale Rose" where we learn truly Pearl's devotion is a very part of her core being, her design, and she truly lost what was defined as her purpose when Rose gave birth to Steven.
• Desperately Needs Orders: Pearl was made to be a servant on Homeworld, and following the orders of a superior comes naturally to her. She loyally followed Rose Quartz's teachings and stood by her side for thousands of years, but now that Rose is gone, she doesn't know what to do with herself.
  Pearl: No matter how hard I try to be strong like you [Garnet]...I'm just a Pearl. I'm useless on my own. (begins to weep) I need someone to tell me what to do.
• Determinator: Her song in "Sworn to the Sword", Jasper's remarks, and Peridot's explanation of what a Pearl is meant to do signifies that Pearl was not made to be a warrior (and may in fact be a "defective" Gem), but through her sheer obsessive desire to protect Rose at any cost, she became a powerful and skilled swordsmaster.
• Devoted to You: Pearl was vastly devoted to Rose, and by extension, her cause, to the point of being unhealthy and obsessive. Given how Rose was actually Pink Diamond and what we know of Pearls, this devotion is actually a feature of Pearl, inherent to her.
• Dishing Out Dirt: In the episode, Giant Woman telekinetically controls sand to illustrate to Steven how she and Garnet's Fusion Dance works.
• Ditzy Genius: Pearl is a knowledgeable Gem who can build things like rockets when she has the right tools. Too bad her concept of sensitivity is subpar.
• Dramatically Missing the Point:
  • Though Pearl was the closest to Rose and knew her better than anyone else, she doesn't seem to personally understand the majority of her beliefs. While she does work to defend all life on Earth in honor of everything that Rose stood for, her character quote nonetheless shows a striking contrast between her and Rose's attitudes towards organic life.
  • On a more personal level, why her and Rose did not work out like she wanted it to: Because Pearl is a servant first and foremost, it's how she frames her relationship toward Rose/Pink Diamond. She clearly indulged in the position of Rose's confidant and being treated equally, but Pearl never grasped what Pink Diamond was looking for in an equal partner. Pink wanted someone to love her for who she was and out of choice while Pearl put her on a pedestal and later it's heavily implied that she was made to love Pink, replacing her original Pink Pearl. While she was not blind to her faults, she was pretty content with what they had while Pink was looking for more, to change, and to grow. It's ultimately why Rose chose to be with Greg as the latter demanded to be treated with equal respect and helped Rose grow and become better, empathizing with her better than Pearl ever could. Even now, it appears she has not grasped what was it Pink really wanted, or at least, does not fully understand.
• The Dreaded: "The Answer" reveals she was this to the Homeworld Gems during the rebellion, with Garnet referring to her as Rose's "terrifying renegade Pearl". Considering that she's part of a Gem subspecies made to be little more than a pretty accessory, yet was able to effortlessly take out two Quartzes entirely on her own, this makes sense.
• Dual Wielding: While most of the time she uses a single spear, a flashback to the early days of the Crystal Gems shows that she used to fight very effectively with a pair of swords.
• Eternal Love:
  • Between her and Rose Quartz. Confirmed by "Rose's Scabbard", and given Rose's responses in the flashback/hologram, according to Rebecca Sugar her feelings weren't unrequited.
  • Alluded to between Pearl and Garnet, as well. Pearl quickly turns to Garnet as a source of safety and comfort, and their dance in "Alone Together" has definite romantic/sexual overtones (a close and intimate tango that ends with Garnet pinning Pearl against a wall while Pearl blushes).
• Exact Words: In "Message Received", Steven asks Pearl if she knows Yellow Diamond's Pearl, to which she replies that not all Pearls know each other. She never says that she doesn't know Yellow Pearl, and later revelations make it clear that she does.
• Exorcist Head: It's not emphasized or commented on but Pearl can fully rotate her head 360 degrees. This aligns with her bird motifs, a similar trait being famous in owls. At first this was shown by her hologram, which could be overlooked due to its nature, forgetting how literal and meticulous Pearl would be to have such an inaccuracy. It only comes up again in "Change Your Mind" when a White Diamond controlled Pearl casually spins her head around after standing up, likely alluding to trope namer to emphasize the possession. It explains where Sardonyx and Alexandrite get full on Abnormal Limb Rotation Range on seemingly every joint, as they inherit this ability from Pearl.
• Expressive Hair: Her hair droops and becomes noticeably disheveled when she gets stabbed in the gut. It also sticks straight up when she panics in "Say Uncle", and "So Many Birthdays".
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Pearl's selfishness in wanting to feel special has indirectly hurt others (Steven in "Rose's Scabbard", and Connie in "Sworn to the Sword"). It finally bites her back in "Cry for Help", when she keeps rebuilding the communication hub in order to fuse with Garnet, so she can feel Garnet's confidence and created a giant rift between all three Gems for four episodes.
  • Her Innocently Insensitive nature has led to major problems with other characters — it made Steven once think that she doesn't care about him ("An Indirect Kiss"), had Amethyst believe that Pearl considered her a mistake ("On the Run"), and nearly had Connie throw away her self-esteem ("Sworn to the Sword").
  • A subtle one, but Pearl has a habit of having a frame-set of obsessing over the past. It makes her unable to move forward in a productive manner. "Last One Out of Beach City" has her actively trying to resolve this flaw so she can move on. It seems to be working, considering in the episode she willingly went to a concert with Amethyst and Steven as well as crushed on and got the number of a woman (admittedly one who looks like a human Rose gone wild, but it's a step in the right direction).
• Fat and Skinny: The skinny one with Amethyst.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Mage of the group, who uses the most conventional magical abilities.
• The Finicky One: In earlier episodes, Pearl's Neat Freak tendencies, poor response to attempts at humour, tendency to nitpick and easily stressed nature made this her defining trait. As the show went on and more of her character and motivation was revealed (in addition to her relationship with Amethyst improving), these traits became more downplayed.
• First Love: She was Pink Diamond's.
• Foil:
  • Pearl and Amethyst play off each other by being opposites in every respect. Pearl is well-mannered, dainty, hard-working, and protective; Amethyst is a slob, ill-mannered, lazy, fun-loving, and irresponsible. Physically, Pearl is skinny while Amethyst is fat. Amethyst's weapon is flexible and crushes while Pearl's is rigid and pierces. Their differences can even be seen in the way they sit◊.
    Steven: Where did you get these? I thought they stopped making them!
    Pearl: Well, we heard that too, and since they're your favorite...
    Amethyst: We went out and stole a bunch!
    Pearl: [annoyed grunt] I went back and paid for them.
  • To Steven, as two gems that are arguably the closest to Rose. Steven barely knows his own mother since by definition his birth means that she cannot exist at the same time, but comes to be genuinely inspired by Rose's ideals and love for everyone. Pearl loved Rose and believed herself to be the gem that knew her the most, but mainly fought out of a blindly obsessive loyalty towards Rose rather than necessarily believing in the same ideals (at first, at least).
  • To Blue Diamond. Both are mourning someone, the same person in fact. While Pearl seemed to be obsessed with Rose at first, she eventually grew out of it and moved on. Blue, on the other hand, still heavily mourns Pink Diamond to this day, and is basically what would have happened if Pearl didn't let go of her obsession.
• Force and Finesse: The finesse to Amethyst's force.
• Forgetful Jones: If you take note throughout the series, you'll notice that Pearl can actually be quite forgetful sometimes. Must be where Opal gets it from...
• Freudian Trio: Of the Gems who were close to Pink Diamond, Spinel (Id) follows her desires for Revenge and attempts to destroy Earth after having Gone Mad From The Isolation, Crystal Gem Pearl (Superego) is The Smart Guy of the Crystal Gems, and Pink Pearl/Volleyball (Ego) has a balanced and playful personality.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In "The Answer", Garnet tells Steven that Pearl was genuinely terrifying to other Gems, apparently not just despite, but rather because she was a "mere" Pearl who had made herself into a deadly threat to the Rebellion's enemies.
  • And this was when it was just her and Rose trying to scare every gem off the planet.
• Gadgeteer Genius: On multiple occasions, Pearl has demonstrated a high level of skill in mechanical engineering, ranging from reverse-engineering Flask Robonoids to constructing a combat-ready robot in a moment's notice, as well as constructing a rocket in an attempt to leave Earth, proving herself able to compete with an "expert" mechanic such as Peridot.
• Gag Nose: Pearl has a very long, triangular nose that protrudes almost straight outward. Played with in that while it is deliberately silly looking, no one comments on it, nor does it keep other characters from finding her attractive.
• Gagging on Your Words: Whenever Pink Diamond is brought up in conversation, she is prone to cover her mouth. While at first it comes across as a nervous tic brought on by war memories, "Gemcation" implies that it is something ingrained into her to an almost pavlovian degree, actively getting in the way of her talking about it to Steven. In "A Single Pale Rose", it is revealed that her owner Rose Quartz (who was actually Pink Diamond this whole time) gave her last decree as a Diamond — to tell no one the truth about her identity — complete with having her cover her mouth with her hands as she did so.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's a Lipstick Lesbian who's more or less the Team Mom, hates getting messy, and is a skilled dancer... as well as a swordfighter (though a Lady of War at that), engineer, and veteran of a thousand-year war. And her most-worn piece of formalwear is a tuxedo.
• Good Is Not Nice: Pearl may be dedicated to defending the Earth and humankind, but her condescending nature towards both is not a positive trait and actually gets on people's nerves.
• Green-Eyed Monster: She used to be very jealous of Greg and Rose's relationship, having wanted Rose to love her exclusively and constantly obsessing over her. Her dream vignette in "Chille Tid" shows that, subconsciously, Pearl still views Greg as the thing that came between her and Rose. Her relations with him are often somewhat strained as a result. "Mr. Greg" has the two talk about their issues, and she seems to be getting better about this.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming:
  • Pearls as a whole are meant to be servants or ornaments for other Gems. The Crystal Gem Pearl is a Master Swordsman, engineering genius, and is her own master, treated as an equal by her fellow Gems (though, as "Friend Ship" showed, she's struggling with that last part). Jasper outright calls her defective for being more than what a pearl is supposed to be. When she first started becoming "defective" she confronted her master, Pink Diamond, about it, telling her that she needed to be replaced immediately. When Pink said no to the request, Pearl told her about how she fantasizes about living a different life, one where she was just a runaway Pearl living free on Earth with Rose Quartz, and then all but demanded that Pink order her to stop acting defective. Pink instead ordered her to never stop. The freedom aspect of the trope is ultimately subverted in that Pearl never stopped serving the person she was made for.
  • While not able to directly defy Rose when she gave an order as Pink Diamond, eventually Pearl managed to work around the order in "A Single Pale Rose" to completely subvert it.
• Happiness in Slavery: Downplayed. Since Rose Quartz was actually her owner Pink Diamond the whole time, there's a lot more ambiguity whether Pearl joining the rebellion was ever her fighting for her own freedom or just doing what would make her owner happy. Episodes like "Mr. Greg" imply it's a bit of both, as she talks about both freedom and Rose's attention in turn as positives. Similarly, flashbacks imply Rose herself never really wanted Pearl to be her slave, encouraging Pearl when she had thoughts of her own and calling her "My Pearl", which according to Word of God is how Gems refer to a superior (such as "My Diamond").
• Has a Type: Prior to "Last One Out of Beach City", Pearl has shown no attraction to anyone, Gem or Human, other than Rose Quartz. In that episode, Pearl quickly develops an obvious crush on a tall woman with a curvy build and pink hair. Steven calls this out as soon as they get back to the car. "Now We're Only Falling Apart" also reveals Pearl's the one who came up with her beloved Rose Quartz's appearance originally.
  Steven: Okay, nobody's going to say it? She kinda looked like Mom. You noticed. I noticed. We all noticed.
  • She's also shown to be very physically affectionate and emotional with the big, tall, muscular Bismuth. Future shows that Bismuth has a crush on Pearl, and they are still very affectionate with each other, though there is no clear indication that Pearl has any romantic feelings.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Since she was originally designed to be a simple courtesan servant, at first she only had the ability to create holograms. To work around this, Pearl created a holographic double to practice her swordfighting and became skilled enough to Curbstomp quartz Super Soldiers. She has also somehow retooled her light manipulation to fire laser beams, which is either a rare ability or something she developed over time based on Bismuth's reaction.
• Heartbroken Badass: Pearl is still grieving over Rose's "death", though she is trying to get beyond it for her own sake.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She often acts overconfident, but "Coach Steven" reveals a lot of insecurity on her part when it comes to being physically strong.
  • In "Space Race", she is shown to miss space travel very much; her desire to return to space severely impairs her judgement skills, which is demonstrated when her attempt to fly Steven and herself to space almost gets the both of them killed.
  • She was also revealed to have been deeply in love with Rose Quartz, and still misses her dearly because of this. She had a Heroic BSoD in one episode when she realizes that Rose kept secrets from her as well.
• Hologram: Her gem can project holograms, made of Hard Light as necessary, and this appears to be an ability unique to Pearls if not Pearl herself. Notably, she has made hologram clones of herself to fight (usually used for training), a very detailed hologram of Rose, and has been shown to unconsciously project her dreams while sleeping. And once, to cheat at volleyball.
• Hot-Blooded: She loses her normally calm demeanor whenever she gets enthusiastic about something, which is fairly frequently.
• Hypocrite:
  • Pearl criticizes Amethyst for bringing Steven into wrestling (or what she deems a "circle of violence"). However, she has been revealed to be a Blood Knight who still revels in the war.
  • She reasoned Rose keeping secrets away from the other Gems with her as having been for "their own good", and keeps a lot of secrets from Steven, but she got extremely upset when she discovered that she was on the receiving end of some of Rose's secrecy as well.
  • Pearl stresses at one point that fusion should be used for deadly situations. However, a flashback shows Pearl fusing with Rose just to make Greg jealous, and, to a more dramatic extent, Pearl kept repairing the Communication Hub in order to trick Garnet into fusing into Sardonyx so that Pearl could feel Garnet's confidence and perfect relationship.
  • Pearl tells Greg about how Fusion is the ultimate connection between Gems. Ignoring how Fusion was originally seen as little more than a battle/utility tactic, Pearl uses it to exploit her partners to validate herself. She just used it with Rose to make Greg jealous, and would later do the same to Garnet to feel her confidence.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Along with wanting to be unique, Pearl also wishes to be physically strong like Garnet and Amethyst.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Pearl's incredibly low self-esteem stems from her intense desire to be unique.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: She acts haughty and self-assured, especially in regards to humans. In reality, she's deeply insecure about her strength and her desire to be special. This likely comes from the fact that she's a member of a Servant Race on Homeworld.
• Informed Ability: Mentioned being able to shapeshift as early in "Cat Fingers", but has never been shown to use it.
  • In "A Single Pale Rose", the reason why she doesn't shapeshift is revealed. The last time Pearl shapeshifted, it was to assist Pink Diamond staging her shattering, and this led to the Diamonds retaliating with corruption, with nearly everyone Pearl knew being afflicted.
  • In "Snow Day" she surprises Steven by willingly shapeshifting to play Steven Tag, implying that she is starting to work through this trauma.
• Innocently Insensitive: Doesn't pick up much on what Steven or other humans say or think until she steps over the line.
  • She was unable to realize how upset Amethyst was about her origins.
  • She said her quote above about how humans' lives aren't meaningful to Steven, who is half-human, and would have been most likely hurt and insulted by her statement had he not been concerned with Ronaldo at the time.
  • When Steven is feeling guilty over trusting Peridot, Pearl tries to console the upset Steven, but the reaction he has on his face clearly shows that she only made things worse.
    Garnet: This is no time for feeling horrible!
    Pearl: That's right. You can feel horrible all you want back at the temple.
• Insecure Love Interest: "Sworn to the Sword" has Pearl using a song and Connie as frames, to indirectly refer to herself as a "nothing" when in comparison to Rose, who she deeply loved.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Seems to hold this opinion of Earth. She is the most reluctant to indulge in Earth-based culture, and jumps at the chance to leave in "Space Race". This seems to come less from actually looking down on Earth and more from having been there for so long that she feels trapped there, as she planned to come back (relatively) soon, and has expressed in "Serious Steven" that she finds the Earth beautiful. "Rose's Scabbard" revealed that her main reason behind her decision to stay on Earth was to be with Rose.
• Insufferable Genius: Pearl is not insufferable most of the time, social skills notwithstanding, but she's not used to being wrong and gets agitated when told that she is.
• Interspecies Romance: She (a Gem) gains a crush on Mystery Girl (a human).
• Ironic Name: Pearl is the Crystal Gem who keeps herself most separate from humans and even hates eating because she finds the process so disgusting. And yet, her namesake gem is an animal byproduct. Pearls are partially organic, being mostly made of nacre (a composite of a mineral and oyster proteins) and natural pearls usually have a core made of organic tissue — it's basically how oysters isolate parasites and prevent wounds from becoming infected.
• Irony:
  • Despite knowing what it was like to be treated as weak by other Gems because she's a pearl, one would think Pearl would have the greatest empathy for humans. Turns out, she has the most apathy for them. It's sort of justified in that Pearl was never treated badly as a servant.
  • "The Answer" reveals that the extremely insecure Pearl was The Dreaded for the Homeworld Gems.
  • Pearl is shown to have the most bigoted views on humans throughout most of the series. Come season four, she now has a mutual attraction with a female human.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As snobbish and condescending as she can be, when she states something with her Brutal Honesty, she usually has a valid point.
  • While Pearl's above character quote was condescending and bigoted towards humans, she wasn't wrong in suggesting that Ronaldo's actions are mostly done because he wants to feel important. And despite the harshness of her words, she's not incorrect in pointing out that humans often have elevated perceptions of their own importance and ability, as well as their tendencies to scapegoat in situations beyond anyone's capability to control.
  • It was a hurtful statement, but in "Rose's Scabbard", Pearl was technically right about Steven knowing nothing about his mother, something he himself acknowledges in "Lars and the Cool Kids" and "An Indirect Kiss".
  • Her angry outburst at Connie for working with Steven to defeat the Holo-Pearls in "Sworn to the Sword" was out of line (not to mention her spending the entire episode worsening Connie's already low self-esteem), but she made a good point: Steven won't always be there to protect Connie from danger.
  • Her conversation with Greg in "We Need to Talk" was obviously a jealously-motivated attempt to discourage him from pursuing Rose. Even so, she was never lying about how little Greg knew about Rose, nor the fact that his relationship with her at the time was just another "phase", which prompted Greg to have an important "defining the relationship" conversation with Rose.
  • In "Rising Tides, Crashing Skies", Pearl argues that the Crystal Gems should stay in Beach City, despite attracting dangerous corrupted Gems, because they were there first. As callous as she puts it, the people of Beach City were the ones who chose to move and/or stay there despite the clear and obvious danger.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed. Pearl displays the most traits of a Noble Bigot and has a hard time taking people's feelings into consideration, but she loves her friends and has made an oath to protect the planet Earth from Homeworld. She becomes a full-on Nice Girl in The Movie and Future.
• Kick the Dog:
  • During Pearl's Heroic BSoD in "Rose's Scabbard", she snaps at Steven for suggesting why Rose would keep secrets from Pearl specifically, gives him a nasty Death Glare when he calls to her, and she doesn't bother helping him when he's dangling on a mountain.
  • For the almost entirety of "Sworn to the Sword", Pearl basically teaches an already insecure Connie to think of herself as less important than Steven.
  • In the Whole Episode Flashback "We Need to Talk", a young Pearl deliberately fuses with Rose in an attempt to make a young Greg insecure in his relationship with her. Then, she smugly tells Greg to his face that he'll never have a true bond with Rose.
• Killer Rabbit: Pearl-type Gems are supposed to be harmless, weak, decorative servants. This Pearl isn't, to the point she was known as "Rose's terrifying renegade Pearl".
• The Kirk: She tries to balance out logic and emotion. Most of the time she's the one to come up with a plan, but she also doesn't mind engaging in cheering Steven on or scolding him in a motherly fashion.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare: Despite her general lack of understanding when it comes to human culture, she is shown to enjoy music to some degree. However, she has extremely strange taste in music. For example, one of her favorite "songs" is a commercial jingle for a car mechanic called "Cam's Cam Shafts".
• Lady of War: Pearl is very graceful in battle, given how she combines ballet and swordplay in her fighting style. This is taken further with her calm and composed nerve in combat.
• The Lancer: She acts as the second-in-command to the less talkative Garnet.
• Large Ham: Shows shades of this when she and Garnet pretend to be a Heel tag team that wants to "destroy all wrestling". She even throws in a maniacal laugh for good measure.
• Leeroy Jenkins: According to Garnet, Pearl had a habit of jumping into battle to protect Rose without any concern for her own safety. See Heroic Sacrifice above. With the reveal in "A Single Pale Rose", this is implied to actually be because she couldn't let Rose get poofed under any circumstances, as it would reveal her gem was actually Pink Diamond's.
• Leitmotif: It's a prim and proper piano piece.
• Light 'em Up: Although less overt than some gems, Pearl can manipulate light to form holograms (some of which are solid) or channel it offensively through her spear to create laser beams.
• The Lightfooted: She provides the trope image while dancing on her tiptoes on a glass balcony railing in "Mr. Greg".
• Like a Son to Me: Pearl seems to see Steven as the son she and Rose could never have, and even blurts out, "That's not my baby!" when confronted with a jealous Pizza Steve posing as Steven in the "Say Uncle". Similarly, in "Historical Friction" she attends Steven's play and loudly fawns over him from the audience like a mother excited to see her child's school production, and nervously covers Steven's eyes when Garnet and Amethyst perform their Fusion Dance in "Coach Steven".
• Literal-Minded:
  • In "So Many Birthdays", Pearl is horrified when Steven tells a joke about her, not understanding how a joke works.
    Steven: Why did Pearl throw butter out the window?
    Amethyst: You did what?
    Steven: To see a butterfly!
    Pearl: [mortified] I never did that! Steven... are you telling lies?
  • Back when she was a much younger gem, before she started learning how to think outside of the box, she tended to interpret even offhanded comments literally. Though she's better about it now, she occasionally slips back into the default Pearl mode of trying to follow orders precisely as given.
    Rose: Could you imagine that running a colony would be this dull?
    Pearl: I could imagine it, if you would like me to, my Diamond.
• Loophole Abuse: Has only one case of this. When Pink Diamond leaves her old life behind and stages her own shattering, she gives Pearl one last order to "never speak of this again". However, she never said anything about showing other people her memories, which is how Pearl shows Steven what actually happened to Pink Diamond.
• Loving a Shadow: Downplayed. Despite her deep and lingering obsessive love for Rose Quartz, there are multiple hints that her adoration prevented her from seeing certain facets of their relationship and of Rose herself. Aside from the secrets Rose kept, the Dramatic Irony section of her profile here notes how there was much about Rose's philosophy that Pearl didn't understand. With the reveal that she knew that she used to be Pink Diamond and Pearl used to be her servant, it is unknown if Pearl truly loved her as who she really was or her current identity more, though she begins to acknowledge Rose/Pink's flaws and grow out of this unhealthy obsession.
• Luminescent Blush: Pearl gives off a bright blue blush from time to time.
• Mama Bear:
  • Expect her to flip out if Steven is ever in danger. She's almost always the first one to worry about his safety and try to get him out of a dangerous situation. In "Tiger Millionaire", she scolds Amethyst for using her powers on humans, only to draw her weapon and threaten Ronaldo when he kidnaps Steven, thinking he was a "snake person" in "Keep Beach City Weird". Her protectiveness is even Played for Laughs when it's mentioned that once when he was a baby, she mistook the babysitter for a kidnapper and threw an entire jungle gym at her.
  • She becomes protective towards Connie, as seen in "Gem Hunt".
• Master Swordswoman: Her sword collection isn't just for show. Still, her modern weapon of choice remains a spear.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In gemstone mythos, pearls are often associated with virginity, beauty, modesty, purity, and happiness. They're also the astral gemstone for the Cancer sign in the Western zodiac, which carries an association with motherhood.
  • In modern society, pearls are on par with diamonds for being a symbol of wealth and status. On the Gem Homeworld, Pearls are a slave-race of servants that their owners purchase as a status symbol, as well as being the only companions the Diamonds keep (before Spinel, anyway).
• Mental Picture Projector: She doesn't need a machine; she can do this on her own, as seen in "Cheeseburger Backpack" and "Serious Steven".
• The Mourning After: She loved Rose with all of her heart and still loves her, even if all she has now is memories.
• Ms. Exposition:
  • Very quick to explain Gem culture when prompted, or not, especially to Steven. However, she's very reluctant to tell Steven about the darker aspects of Gem culture, such as the Kindergarten.
  • In the movie, when reverted to "factory settings", she sings about the functions of the other Gems in Homeworld society, in the process revealing the name and intended purpose of the villainous heart-shaped Gem — Spinel.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Skinny as a rail, but just as strong as a near-unbeatable alien warrior is expected to be. On the other hand, she seems to only be physically strong compared to humans as opposed to other Gems. Pearl has described herself as having to use skill and determination to compensate for not being "built for fighting".
• My Beloved Smother:
  • She's not Steven's actual mother, but she can act this way towards him. If there's even the slightest whiff of danger, she'll want to take Steven back home while the rest of the Gems do the dangerous stuff. While it doesn't help Steven grow as a Gem, she has a point considering how many times he's almost gotten himself killed. She apologizes profusely when she realizes that she almost got Steven killed herself in "Space Race". Steven bluntly admits that with how many times his life has been put in danger, he's gotten used to it. And out of all the Gems, she's the one who tries to skirt around the darker aspects of Gem history around Steven, believing that he's too young to know about it.
  • Pearl acts as this to a lesser extent to her fellow Gems, which can account for half of her and Amethyst's arguments.
  • In the non-canon Uncle Grandpa crossover, she outright refers to him as her "baby" during one of her many, many mental breakdowns during this episode.
    Amethyst: Hey, where's Steven?
    Pizza Steve: [dressed as Steven] Looking for me, Pizza Steven Universe?
    Pearl: [gasps and hides behind Garnet] That's not my baby!!
• My Master, Right or Wrong: She loved Pink Diamond, and their relationship was arguably far closer than even Pink's older siblings. She was willing to follow her mistress headlong into rebellion, permanent exile, and even risk shattering.
• Mysterious Past: How Pearl became so devoted to Rose that she'd join her rebellion is quite a mystery. Raising further questions is the evidence that Rose was not Pearl's original owner — the two other Pearls we've seen look like their owners while Rose and Pearl look nothing alike, and the one time Pearl describes working for Homeworld, she conspicuously avoids specifying who she served under.
  • During "Gemcation", when Greg and the Crystal Gems believe Steven's depression upon coming back from Homeworld stems from what he experienced there rather than his fight with Connie, they pressure Pearl into talking to him about what she knows about Homeworld. When she cannot seem to get anything out of him, she begins to talk about the Diamonds and nearly confesses to something she has trouble admitting to until Steven reveals why he is upset.
    • Not only that, it seemed like she was unable to speak about it. Her hand covering her mouth seemly involuntarily. Her piano theme even became wild and dissonant during that moment. And it isn't the first time that's happened when the topic of the Diamonds came up either.◊
  • Turns out that Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond in disguise, and Pearl was HER Pearl (meaning she was specifically created to serve Pink Diamond). Pink Diamond's last order to Pearl before becoming Rose Quartz permanently was to forbid Pearl from "ever speaking of it again," as Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz never wanted to look back.
• Naginatas Are Feminine: Her weapon is/looks a lot like a miniature naginata, though she uses it as both a polearm and a fencing saber, and she's the most feminine of the Crystal Gems.
• Neat Freak: Pearl is so obsessed with order and cleanliness that when the Crystal Gems drew up a chore wheel with Dusting, Laundry, Mopping and Dishes on it, she crossed off everyone else's name and substituted her own.
• Nervous Wreck: Not always, but Pearl does not handle pressure well.
• Noble Bigot: Harbors some prejudice against humans, at least subconsciously, probably at least partly due to the fact that her decision to remain on Earth was made out of devotion to Rose. She is very protective of the half-human Steven and helps to protect full humans. Her overall attitude toward humans seems to be similar to most humans' attitudes toward animals: a mix of indifference, bemusement, and thinking they're "cute" on occasion.
  "I saw humans get on fine without power for millennia. You used to hunt and gather. [chuckles] What happened to that?"
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Does this pose while laughing in "It Could've Been Great", though the laugh is not of the "OH-HO-HO!" kind like Sardonyx's.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Along with Steven, Garnet and Amethyst, she is one of the four main protagonists of the show. But said show is exclusively told from Steven's Perspective.
• Non-Standard Character Design: She is the only Pearl we've seen with multiple colors. Notably, she seems to have used the varied color scheme even when she was Pink Diamond's Pearl, instead of adopting her Diamond's colors as Blue and Yellow Pearls do.
  • Also, while most Gems are seen to be an Amazing Technicolor Population with improbable shapes and sizes, Pearl looks the closest there is to looking like a human. She has pale skin, blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair, and a very normal body shape skin to a human’s. Ironic, considering she was a bigot towards them for a long time.
• Noodle People: She's the slimmest of all the Gems and could probably hide behind a post if so inclined.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Tends to get clingy when stress starts getting to her. Mostly with Garnet.
• Not So Above It All: In "Snow Day", she shapeshifts for the first time in millennia to join Garnet and Amethyst in playing Steven Tag.
• Odd Couple: With Amethyst. Pearl is the neat freak, of course.
• Odd Name Out: She's the only Gem, barring Steven of course, whose name is an organic gemstone (produced by or from a living thing), instead of a mineral gemstone (formed by geological processes). This fits with her Gem type: Pearls are made-to-order servants rather than being grown in Kindergartens.
• Old Soldier: It's pretty easy to forget that she's one of Rose's earliest supporters and a battle-hardened warrior who was known as the "terrifying renegade Pearl", particularly when she's standing next to Garnet.
• Only Friend: To Pink Diamond, before she became Rose.
• Only Sane Woman: Garnet normally takes this role when they're all together as a team, as Pearl is usually Not So Above It All, but when only with Amethyst and Steven, she tends to come off as one.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "Rose's Scabbard", she's in such a bad state that even with Steven hanging precariously at the bottom of a cliff, she doesn't make a move to help him.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: She's prone to saying insulting or upsetting things without intending to, which leads to many an awkward moment.
  • "Amethyst, you're not a mistake, you're the byproduct of a mistake." Eek!
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Her first and second outfits utilize a pastel variation on this trope, with peachy pink and golden yellow playing off different shades of teal.
• Parental Substitute: Out of all the Gems, she fits this trope the most for Steven. In the absence of Rose Quartz, Pearl often behaves like a standard mother would towards Steven, such as occasionally scolding him, being the first to panic when he's in potential danger, and helping him clean his room on a regular basis. She even refers to Steven as "my baby" in "Say Uncle". (The fact that she was in a romantic relationship with his mother is likely the reason for this.)
• The Perfectionist: Neat, orderly, and disdainful of any form of mess.
  "Symmetrical means both sides HAVE TO BE THE SAME!"
• Person of Holding: After doing a (ridiculous) chant, she's able to summon various objects from storage out of the gem in her head. "Sworn to the Sword" reveals she doesn't need to do the pose and drawn-out yell at all, but does so anyway.
• Personality Powers:
  • Pearl describes the process of summoning her spear as a complex and methodical process, comparing it to the laws of physics on a flower-petal while also describing it as a "dance", reflecting her harmonious, yet strict and calculated personality, as well as just how hard she has worked to become an effective fighter.
  • Pearl has the ability to project holograms to create Hard Light clones of herself in training Steven and Connie, an especially ironic example as she tends to psychologically project her own dynamics and insecurities onto them.
• Picky Eater: Pearl is disgusted by the entire concept of eating.
• Pining After Protagonist's Parent: Pearl was deeply in love with Steven's mother, Rose Quartz. Rose ended up with Greg Universe and had a child with him. Pearl loves Steven like a son, but remembering her can be awkward for Pearl, as shown in "Rose's Scabbard". It's why she doesn't think highly of Greg as well.
• Pink Means Feminine: Downplayed, as blue is much more prominent in Pearl’s designs, but nonetheless, Pearl incorporates a pale shade of pink in all of her clothes (i.e. the leggings in her debut design, socks in her first regeneration, the shoes in her next regeneration, etc.).
• Power Incontinence: When dreaming in "Chille Tid", her hologram power activates by itself, showing her dream to Amethyst and Steven.
• Prone to Tears: Pearl gives Steven a run for his money in the crying department, to the extent that Peridot expresses confusion and annoyance towards her "spontaneous singing; crying; singing while crying." Given her Dark and Troubled Past, this makes some sense.
• Proper Lady: Despite her Noble Bigot tendencies, she's immensely graceful, tidy, and (usually) mature.
• Psychological Projection: Pearl has done this, particularly in "Sworn to the Sword", where she ended up (temporarily) indoctrinating Connie into the mindset that she was "nothing" compared to her liege, Steven, and that to protect him she needed to be willing to put herself into hopelessly dangerous situations and even die for him without hesitation. It is revealed that during the war, Pearl "took great pride" in giving her life for Rose Quartz, using herself as a shield and getting needlessly "killed" numerous times despite Rose being much stronger than her and fervently objecting to Pearl senselessly putting herself in danger.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • The uptight, neurotic Blue Oni to Amethyst's Red.
  • To a lesser extent, she is also the Blue Oni to Pink Diamond's Red.
• Really Gets Around: Has no less than 9 phone numbers stored in her pearl, 4 of which are begging her to call. The post-season 5 podcast had Word of God confirm that she's dated many human women since "Last One Out of Beach City", but has yet to meet anyone she wants to pursue a long-term relationship with.
• Renaissance Man: At least in comparison to the other Gems. Pearl has demonstrated knowledge in a variety of specialized disciplines, including mechanics, astrophysics, aeronautics, chemistry, history, swordplay, and (obviously) dance.
• Replacement Goldfish: She is Pink Diamond's second Pearl, after she damaged her first one and she was taken away from Pink Diamond by White Diamond.
• The Resenter:
  • It's subtly implied she wishes she was the leader of the Crystal Gems and not Garnet, since in "Arcade Mania" she's extremely reluctant to admit that Garnet's the one in charge, because she was in the Crystal Gems long before Garnet joined up. However, this was likely because she will always consider Rose Quartz as the leader of the Crystal Gems.
  • As noted above, she harbors resentment towards Greg for winning Rose's love. As of "Mr. Greg", she finally seems to be moving past this.
• Retractable Weapon: Her spear has a shorter "wand" form.◊
• Sand Blaster: She is briefly shown manipulating sand as a visual aid in "Giant Woman", though this may have a display of general telekinesis. She never uses it again after.
• Satellite Character: Deconstructed. Pearl's entire identity was being Rose Quartz's loyal confidant and servant, and was happy to be such... until Rose died, and she's left struggling to find a purpose for herself after spending so much of her life as a servant.
• Secret-Keeper: She was the only one who knew that Rose and Pink Diamond were the same person, but Pink ordered her never to tell anyone.
• Servant Race: Pearls are a servant race on Homeworld, treated as property for other Gems.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: In "Warp Tour", when Steven's allergies are acting up, she tells him to sneeze into his "antecubital fossa", i.e., his inner elbow.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Pearl's already attractive (Mayor Dewey in particular singles her out as "The Hot One"), but she looks especially good in men's formalwear. Steven and Greg both note she looks great in the tailor-made tuxedo they buy for her in "Mr. Greg", and she looks just as good in the waiter's shirt and pants she wears in "Restaurant Wars".
• Shipper on Deck: She seems very eager to try to get Steven and Connie together.
• Shipping Torpedo: Jealous of his relationship with Rose, Pearl makes a point to flaunt her and Rose's passionate fusion dance in front of Greg, rub in his face that fusing is something that she can do with Rose that he can't, and tell him that he's nothing but a "phase" for Rose, all in the flashback in "We Need to Talk". Ironically, it backfired on her as this was what prompted Greg to get closer to Rose and furthermore, help Rose gain a better understanding of loving an individual and thus falling for Greg.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Her outfit gradually grows less traditionally feminine over the series, and is eventually shown as more feminine in flashbacks, moving from a pastel sundress while she lived on Homeworld to a miniskirt at the start of season 1, which she trades in for a ribbon in "Steven the Sword Fighter", then finally a jacket in "Change Your Mind". This reflects Pearl slowly letting go of her Homeworld-assigned role and her dependence on Rose for validation.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She was deeply in love with Rose Quartz. The very Gem who treated Pearl like an individual, instead of "just another pearl". This is deconstructed in the series though. Besides feeling like she was nothing when in comparison to Rose, Pearl put Rose on a pedestal and couldn't accept that Rose would keep stuff even from her. This is something that was explored in "Rose's Scabbard".
• The Smart Girl: She's the Gems' main strategist.
• Smug Smiler: Whenever she's right about something — a trait Amethyst hates.
• Snobs Vs Slobs: The source of friction between her and Amethyst, where she's the snob.
• Stealth Pun: Her being Steven's primary mother figure may be a reference to the material called nacre, or in other words, mother of pearl.
• Stepford Smiler: Her relationship with Steven is implied to be built off of this on her end in "Rose's Scabbard". Having been obsessively in love with Rose Quartz, Pearl is still deeply saddened by her death, and because he's Rose's son, Pearl sees very much of her in Steven. "A Single Pale Rose" makes this worse; she knew that Rose having a baby would kill the Gem, and was sobbing in private about it even though Rose was so excited. She also feels extremely guilty for going along with Rose aka Pink Diamond's plan to fake Pink's shattering and save the Earth. It doesn't help that she had to shapeshift into Rose to make the ruse plausible, since as Pink jokingly points out, she can't shatter herself. Then Pink ordered her to never tell anyone; if not for that Geas, Pearl could have told Steven the truth about his mother way back in Season Three, and she said she wanted to reveal the truth.
• Stepford Snarker: One of the ways she hides her own insecurities is by snarking at Amethyst's (perceived) shortcomings. This largely disappears after season one though.
• Stern Teacher: "Sworn to the Sword" proves Pearl to be a strict and firm teacher when instructing Connie on swordfighting. She's much less strict when she's training Steven in "Steven vs. Amethyst". (Besides likely having learned in the aftermath of "Sworn to the Sword", those methods simply wouldn't be very effective with Steven or Amethyst.)
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: Bears a Diamond insignia not only on the jumpsuit she wears in "Space Race" and "Back to the Barn", but also when she fuses with Garnet to turn into Sardonyx the same symbol appears on her feet, presumably coming from Pearl's part of the fusion. Considering she is still loyal to her Diamond, Pink Diamond, this is justified.
• Straight Man: Especially around Amethyst.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: The straight man with Amethyst more or less any time they're onscreen together.
• Stronger Than They Look: She has the most slender and delicate physique out of the Crystal Gems but this doesn't stop her from splitting large boulders in half with a single kick and tanking multiple powerful blows from the likes of Sugilite without getting poofed or shattered.
• Stupid Sacrifice: In "Sworn to the Sword", Garnet explains to Steven that Pearl did this a lot for Rose, jumping in to protect her even when it wasn't necessary. Subverted when it turns out that Rose is Pink Diamond, and her getting poofed would expose what her gem really is.
• Subordinate Excuse: For thousands of years, Pearl devoted her life to serve and follow Rose, whom she was deeply in love with. There's also a deeper reason: Rose is Pink Diamond, her original Diamond.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Pearl dotes over Steven, is friendly with her fellow Crystal Gems and Connie, and is apathetic towards other humans.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maid: Downplayed. Although she's weaker than specifically combat-oriented Gems like Rubies or Quartzes, and she relies largely on agility and finesse to be effective in combat, Pearl (and presumably the rest of her kind) was still able to get very strong by human standards. This is despite the fact that she was created specifically to be a largely decorative maidservant that wouldn't often have much need for superhuman strength. Comments about Homeworld's production methods suggest Gems made in her time were over-engineered in terms of strength and power, and only later started cutting back once they ran low on resources.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Though she mellows out later on, in the first season, Pearl has little patience with Amethyst or Steven's mischief and immature behavior, and she barely acknowledges Greg's existence.
• Sword Beam: Pearl can fire arrow-like energy blasts from the tip of her spear. She can also charge it to perform a more powerful version. In all cases, it's merely a long-range attack that isn't effective on fast or skilled foes; she's never shown firing it while moving on her own, the blasts travel too slowly to be useful on a moving target (vs. Amethyst), and it seems to telegraph enough that the shots can be dodged (vs. Bismuth). When they do hit, it's a one-hit poofing for something along the lines of weaker gem mutants, and sort of a severely weaker version of Opal's arrows.
• Take a Third Option: Back when she served Homeworld, her past outfit is a dress with blue sleeves, a yellow bust, and a pink hem.
• Team Mom: Though Garnet is also a maternal figure for Steven and is the leader of the team, Pearl is a more hands-on motherly substitute for him and the 'caretaker' of the Crystal Gems as a whole, being the one who does most of the housework (apparently for the sheer enjoyment of it), makes schedules, and generally keeps the group focused and in line when she's able to. In "Fusion Cuisine", Steven pegs her as the most mom-like of the three when trying to decide which of them to bring to dinner as his mother, and the only reason he doesn't just take her is because she finds eating disgusting.
• Token Good Teammate: Though she isn't exactly this to the Crystal Gems, she was definitely this to the Homeworld Gems before she and her Diamond, Pink Diamond, secretly defected.
• Tongue-Tied: She always knew Pink Diamond was never shattered and she and Rose were one and the same. However, Pink Diamond ordered her to never speak the truth to anyone. For this reason, Pearl could never reveal their secret, even if she really wanted to. If she tried, her hands would cover her mouth to silence her. She finally got around this by just showing her memories to Steven.
• Took a Level in Badass: "Back to the Barn" makes it clear that Pearl and other pearls are a Servant Race on Homeworld, and weren't "made" for fighting or inventing, meaning that Pearl had to learn to do both. Now, she is not only an experienced sword fighter, she is also an mechanical engineer and the "brains" of the Crystal Gems. (Has a mean right cross, too.)
• Took a Level in Kindness: She acted outright malicious to Greg in "We Need to Talk", telling him that he's just a phase to Rose, and rubbing it in that he will never be able to fuse with her like she can. In the present, while she seems to lack faith in Greg at times, the two are on relatively good terms and are capable of working together amicably, particularly when it comes to fixing or building things. "Mr. Greg" has them both at becoming better friends to one another, and by the movie, she is happily taking bass lessons from him.
• Tranquil Fury: In "It Could've Been Great", this is her reaction to Peridot gushing over Homeworld's plans to turn Earth into a Gem colony, not caring that it would have resulted in the extinction of all organic life on the planet, and then blaming Rose Quartz for canceling the project to boot. She never raises her voice, but her tone is filled with rage and her expression is downright murderous.
  Pearl: Rose Quartz believed all life was precious and worth protecting.
• True Blue Femininity: All of her outfits throughout the series incorporate blue in some way, and she is the most feminine of the Crystal Gems.
• Tutu Fancy: She has a ballerina-inspired design and her first outfit is a complete aversion, as both her hair and clothes are short enough that they'd never get in the way. Her second outfit plays this straight to a small extent, as it has a large ribbon draped over the back of her legs.
• Uncatty Resemblance: Played with. She's one of only two Pearls to be a different color scheme and have a different Gem location compared to the mistress she was supposed to be for, her gem is white, and on her forehead, like White Diamond, even though she was made for and served Pink Diamond. Meanwhile, White Pearl's gem is on her belly, like Pink. Pearl's gem does have a slight pink tint, just as Blue Pearl and Yellow Pearl do with their respective colors, but the rest of her color scheme incorporates very little pink.
• Undying Loyalty: "Rose's Scabbard" reveals that she was fiercely devoted to Rose, and chose to stay on Earth mainly because Rose had chosen to stay. "Sworn to the Sword" shows how devoted — during the War, she frequently threw herself into extreme danger to protect Rose, and judging by the tone of her argument with Steven, did so even though Rose herself was begging her to stop. Turns out there is a very good reason for that: She's the Pearl to Pink Diamond.
• Unreliable Expositor: Before "A Single Pale Rose" and "Now We're Only Falling Apart" Pearl literally could not tell the truth about Pink Diamond or how she was Pink's Pearl. Because of this, when Pearl wasn't stopping herself from speaking on the topic she would rely on Exact Words and omitting the full truth. For example, in "Message Received", when Steven asks if she knows Yellow Pearl, Pearl says that not all Pearls know each other. While this statement is technically true, she didn't actually answer the question. It's later shown that Pearl did know Yellow Pearl.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: From Homeworld's point of view, anyway. Her innocent attempts to fulfill her original purpose of making Pink Diamond happy led, by Pink's own admission, to the creation of Rose Quartz and Pink seeing the beauty of Earth, which then caused the rebellion by the Crystal Gems, the corruption by the Diamonds, and centuries of depression suffered by Blue and Yellow that followed. Of course, if she hadn't, Earth would've been dead from the colonization and Pink wouldn't have seen the error of her ways.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Pearl will go ballistic for Rose.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Pearl and Amethyst spend almost all of their shared onscreen time arguing, but every once in a while there's a subtle indication that they do care about each other. i.e., after Amethyst's Dark and Troubled Past is revealed to Steven and Amethyst shuts down, Steven asks Pearl to help her, which she does.
• Walk on Water: Pearl can walk on water as seen in "Together Breakfast"; an ability Opal and Lapis Lazuli share with her.
• Water Is Womanly: Pearl is somewhat water-associated, with her room in the Temple being full of fountains and pearls in real life being formed by aquatic animals. She's also the most conventionally feminine of the Crystal Gems: her dancing tends to take its cues from ballet, many of her outfits integrate a dress-like or skirt-like element, her combat style stresses grace and elegance, and she's the Gem who most feels like a substitute mother to Steven.
• Weak, but Skilled: She's not the strongest Gem in hand-to-hand combat, as Pearls as a norm are essentially a Servant Race with little combat capability, and she lacks the sheer strength Amethyst and Garnet have. Pearl is conscious of it and compensates with tactical thinking and precision — and basically, any time that gives her an edge, it's enough. In fact, if you watch for it, Pearl's the Crystal Gem most likely to go for a one-hit kill/poofing.
  • In "Coach Steven", she feels both jealous and insecure because Steven looks up to Sugilite's raw strength and suffers a Break the Cutie moment when she's unable to stop the Gem fusion alone. She does it anyway, turning Sugilite's character flaws to her advantage.
  • This comes to a head in "Ocean Gem", where she does the best out of all the Crystal Gems in their Mirror Boss fights, just by there being such a gap in skill between her and her water clone. The clone eventually splits into two, but it turns out that two Pearl clones with a spear each is not greater than a single Pearl Dual Wielding spears. (And if you look closely, it doesn't look like her clones were in solid form when Steven dissipated them...)
  • She also has a pretty good right cross, according to "Back to the Barn" and a bit of swelling in Peridot's cheek (and Peridot can come out pretty much unscathed from falls off tall cliffs and being crushed under lots of large rocks/a massive boulder).
• We Used to Be Friends: A milder example. She and Amethyst used to be very close, as seen in the flashback for "Story for Steven", but they aren't as close in the present storyline. A few episodes, such as "On the Run", show them awkwardly becoming closer again, sometimes bringing up issues they hadn't properly dealt with before, such as Amethyst's feelings about her origins.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She sometimes gives this to the other Gems and Steven, but found herself on the receiving end of one of these in "Cry for Help".
• Wrench Wench: Just like other Pearls seen in the show, her nature as a maidservant in a highly advanced alien civilization gives her quite the tech expertise.
  • She manages to fix Greg's van off-screen, despite having no experience doing so. Judging by the oil stains she's covered with, she didn't use magic to do it; judging by how badly wrecked it had been, she probably used her Super-Strength.
  • In "Space Race", she builds a nearly-functional (nearly being a key term here) spaceship with outdated plane parts in a barn, showing off knowledge about aeronautics and engineering while trying to teach Greg and Steven.
  • She built an EMP weapon in anticipation of Peridot's attack on Earth, incidentally rebuilding one of the damaged Robonoids as a test subject.
  • In "Back to the Barn", she even builds a fully functional Mini-Mecha out of the same outdated plane parts as the spaceship in the same (very short) amount of time as Peridot.
• The Xenophile: By the time of "Future" she has completely flipped her initial attitude toward humans and has developed a genuine interest in human culture. Granted, she still has some strange mannerisms such as randomly offering toilet paper as a greeting and singing along to commercial jingles on the radio, but thankfully her new human friends appear to find these traits endearing.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Garnet tells her this in "Friend Ship".

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