YMMV / How I Wonder What You Are

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite having a fairly light presence in the actual cartoon, Blue Pearl has become a favorite of both the fans and the authors. Seeing as she's Steven's adopted caretaker and has gotten a lot of the Steven related character development that the Crystal Gems didn't get in this AU, it's not hard to see why.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Crystal Clarity. Because both stories were inspired by the same photoset and have similar premises, some fans believe one fic ripped off the other and get into arguments with other fans over it.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Crystal Clarity, whose very own cnv99 created the original post that inspired the Faded Blue team in the first place.
• Funny Moments: Peridot thinks that "Greg" is a title who is given to those who are designations of useless scrap.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Steven is actually the son of a Diamond? Wow! Sure glad that this is fanfiction, because the real show would never do that! Oh, wait...
  • Steven's reaction to the Bubbled Gems is almost exactly identical to Bismuth's in "Made of Honor," with him thinking it's a prison full of people. The only difference is that they manage to tell Steven why they're keeping those gems bubbled before he frees one, which Bismuth did. Tellingly, that particular episode came out months later.
  • Crosses a bit with Harsher in Hindsight, but an issue Steven has encountered with a pair of Lapis' in Future is that despite the old order being removed, they still want to continue their old jobs of terraforming. Similarly, Pearl is having trouble comprehending Blue Pearl's insistence on staying with Steven, even though her old master is gone.
• Nightmare Fuel: Garnet's vision in which she accidentally kills Steven, not realizing that his body is organic. The scene is described very graphically and there's no Gory Discretion Shot. On top of that, it's not even made clear that it's a vision at first.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Steven calls Rose Quartz out on shattering Pink Diamond, unaware Rose is actually Pink herself. Even worse, Rose thinks Pink "dying" still was the best option since she sees the Diamonds as unable to reason with - tellingly, her first reaction when she realized Blue Diamond passed on was "at least she won't hurt someone anymore".
  • In a (canon) side-story, Rose actually mourns for Blue Diamond, because they were still sisters and Rose still held hope that one day, Blue would come to understand her viewpoint. And it will never come to pass now - because Steven may have inherited his mother's gem, he's not Blue herself.
  • Similarly, the Gems are devastated when they learn that though Steven can cure a corrupted gem's madness, he can't return their memories.