The Peridot's Progress was a long, meticulous arc of successive small steps. Peridot started off as a bigot, but one with irrepressible curiosity, and the intellectual integrity to accept the truth in front of her and not reason it away with mental gymnastics if it's an inconvenient truth. When her Goddess showed her how flawed she was, she didn't make excuses for her, she accepted her behaviour for what it was and allowed herself to get disappointed, frustrated, and angry.
"One case of true curiosity had the same sort of redeeming power in rationality that one case of true love had in movies." Peridot asks and inquires and examines. "Why are you fused all the time?" Loreweaver does a really great analysis of the process on his liveblog. I'm largely borrowing from him.
About the Zoo, it isn't evil, as such. I don't think engineering the Eloi from The Time Machine is wrong, so long as you don't eat them.
...Maybe that's where White learned about children? Or maybe she read reports while the colonizing was active?
Someone mentioned that White seeing the whole series from Steven's perspective would be an amazing but unworkable example of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, but from what we've seen, I think it would work fine. Nothing in-series actually 100% contradicted White's theory that Steven is Pink Diamond until Pink Steven happened, I could totally see her seeing the whole series through his eyes and still believing herself to be right.
It also explains how she perfectly knew human concepts and terms, as well as what each of the Crystal Gems fatal flaws are (from her perspective).
I forget if you guys talked about this, but what do you guys think Rebecca and Ian mean by saying that the show will be "very different" and that they hope we're not waiting for "more of this, because this is over" despite Steven Universe continuing?
Time skip? Different characters? New narrative themes and a different general tone? Because they may it sound like it is going to be entirely different going forward, so I'm thinking it's going to be a very radical shift.
The biggest shift I can imagine is them dropping the Steven POV, so that they can show all their concepts from a variety of perspectives.
Not that I think that's what's going to happen.
I legit think what they are talking about is just hype and hyperbole, and whatever change happens it's not going to be particularly massive.
They said in an AMA that it wouldn't be Steven Universe if it wasn't from his perspective. So I don't think that's likely.
I'm a bit worried that they mean "No more story arcs or adventures" but even that wouldn't be a deal breaker of they use the So L stuff they have to its maximum potential. No more pretending that the Gems and humans are just ignoring each other politely. The uncorrupted C Gs integrating into Earth society. How Lapis, Peridot, and Bismuth integrate (or re-integrate) into the main group.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.Apparently, according to the podcast, Pearl has been "playing the field" ever since S. That's where all those phone numbers in her gem came from, girl's been getting out and fucking dating fucking all the lesbians and bi girls she can.
I would argue that White Diamond is beyond redemption. That she is an utterly loathsome villain. What she does at the end of the season cannot redeem her for all she's done. It's difficult to imagine her doing anything that could earn her forgiveness for orchestrating and controlling an oppressive dictatorship and numerous genocides, enslavements and personal abuses and violations for thousands of years.
I kind of wish they'd done something similar as with the character of Lord Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2. In that film, the villain knows deep inside that everything he's done is awful and is making himself and others miserable, but that realization doesn't prompt him to change his ways because he knows he's already gone too far and that redemption and forgiveness is straight-up impossible. So instead of trying to change his ways, he just doubles down on his villainy, hoping that it'll be worth it in the end.
Realistically, White Diamond should be in a similar position. Even if she realizes that what she's been doing is wrong, she's already committed far too many atrocities to be able to realistically earn forgiveness. Fixing the corrupted gems doesn't undo the millenia of deaths and misery she's caused. No one could be blamed for never forgiving her, regardless of how she moves forward from here.
As discussed earlier, redemption and forgiveness are not the same thing. White Diamond, and the Diamonds in general, can fully become better people. That doesn't mean their victims have to forgive them in turn. Garnet and Bismuth, for instance, hate the Diamonds. Steven may love the Diamonds, because that is in his nature (and nurture), but I think it'd be interesting to see how the others feel. The Diamonds can't really be punished: they're too powerful, both due to their abilities and their empire.
I think that can be a very important message. You can become better, but that doesn't mean the people you've harmed have to forgive you.
Some ideas for future plots, of various levels of seriousness:
- Topaz visits Earth to apologize to the humans she kidnapped.
- Aquamarine visits Earth to "apologize" to the humans she kidnapped.
- Lars and Steven investigate Lion's history to try to figure out how Lars' resurrection affected his aging.
- As part of a cultural exchange program, Sadie Killer and the Suspects perform on Homeworld.
@Pushover: Oh wow, Pearl really is a player, haha!
Topaz attempts to apologize to Onion and Vidalia gets out her shotgun.

In fairness to Peridot’s heel face turn, we got an entire episode montaging her various earth experiences and some small steps forward
And her first impulse was a compromise between her own indoctrinated diamond centric beliefs and the Crystal Gems’
But as they say, never meet your heroes and/or creator gods
Forever liveblogging the Avengers