⇨ THE EPILOGUE

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 61
Where: The Carnival
What: After all the rescues team return, it will be matter of tending to the wounded and getting the hell out of dodge. The Ringmaster can handle the fleeing part, but someone will need to look after those in the medical tent. Or, maybe, you just want to show up and ask what the hell happened.
Warnings: Some messed up consequences of faerie fuckery.

IN REPAIR↴ As the minutes tick past, all four rescue groups will eventually return. Everyone in the carnival is encouraged to help out, ensuring that the rescues and victims both are taken care of after the fact. You can tag in here as rescuers taking care of business around the carnival, victims recovering, or other workers checking in to see what's going on. This log is for general aftermath threads, made by anyone.

Comments

[periphrasing]

"I don't really know how to explain that," Peridot admits, shrugging again. She's a lot more calm all of a sudden, like she's just out of energy for arguing for the moment. "Not killing people just because it's convenient or doesn't suit our needs is definitely a part of it."

[stompadour]

"... There's a difference," says Jasper, who considers killing people just because it's convenient to be kind of gauche for anyone who isn't a Diamond, "between just not killing someone and going out of your way to save them when you don't have to."

[periphrasing]

"Well yeah, but letting someone die just because you don't see how you'll get anything out of it isn't exactly a great thing to do either," she counters. "Ugh. Believe me, I know it doesn't make any logical sense, it's just what feels right, okay?"

[stompadour]

Jasper just stares at her, perplexed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

[periphrasing]

"Which part of what I just said is giving you trouble specifically," Peridot says with the air of an underpaid math teacher dealing with a frequently confused but well-meaning student.

[stompadour]

"What feels right?" says Jasper. "You can't decide what to do just because you like how it feels." Come on, Peridot, this is why you have infallible matriarchs to decide what's right for you,

[periphrasing]

"Why not?" is Peridot's bland, probably completely infuriating answer. She genuinely wants to know why Jasper thinks that, though. She can make a pretty educated guess, but she wants to hear it from the gem herself, in her own words.

[stompadour]

"I -- what? What do you mean why not? You're just a Peridot -- if every gem just decided to do what they wanted everything would collapse--" She pulls a face. "But I guess you don't care about that, do you."

[periphrasing]

Peridot pulls a face; she actually looks genuinely offended, hurt even, by that last comment. "Of course I care," she says, crossing her arms at her chest. "I mean-- I don't care about maintaining the Diamond's ludicrous and flawed totalitarian grip on every single aspect of our society and every gem's life-- But I do care about our race, and about Homeworld."

She sighs, glancing away again. "You know what actually made me decide to join the Crystal Gems? I talked to Yellow Diamond. One on one."

[stompadour]

Jasper frowns. Her expression as Peridot says she cares about gems and their Homeworld is extremely skeptical, but her next remark is just baffling. "What about it? I've talked to Yellow Diamond. She hand picked me when we pulled out of Earth."

[periphrasing]

"Well I talked to her about some of the discoveries I had made while I was stranded on Earth. About how I had discovered there was potential to glean knowledge and extract resources from it based off the habits of the native organics. Two things that would have without a doubt, been absolutely beneficial to Homeworld."

Peridot unfolds her arms again, fists clenched at her sides, shoulders hunched. "I conveyed all all of this to her, and before I could even explain my reasoning, or my findings, she cut me off and she said that she didn't care about resources. She told me RIGHT to my face that the only thing she cared about was blowing the stupid planet up, just so she could have the satisfaction of wiping it off of all our star maps!"

She's starting to get loud again, bristling at the mere memory of the conversation. "Yellow Diamond, Jasper! Yellow Diamond told me this! The Diamond who is supposed to be the most logical, the one who claims to value objectivity and efficiency over emotion and all else-- She chose her own feelings! Over doing what was best for her gems, for our PLANET..."

Need she go on?

[stompadour]

Jasper listens, her eyes narrowing slowly. When Peridot is finished, her expression doesn't change.

"... Did you ever consider," she says flatly, "that the Diamonds were on Earth thousands of years before you were -- that Pink Diamond's operation had already made note of anything that garbage planet had worth using--? Of course she didn't care what you had to say, do you think any of it would have been news to her?"

[periphrasing]

And now she's straight back to being full of ire. Jasper gets another stupefied glare.

"Oh, wow. Did I consider that?" She laughs humorlessly. "Did I-- Peridot-- a gem absolutely and COMPLETELY loyal to the Diamond Authority at the time, fail to consider for a second that maybe I could be the one who was wrong? That it was FOOLISH or INSANE of me to assume that the Diamonds had made some sort of mistake?" She's practically leering, as much as someone who is the height of a 2nd grader can effectively sneer.

And then all of a sudden: "OF COURSE I CONSIDERED THAT, YOU CLOD!" she howls, flailing her arms up and down in an aggressive, frantic gesture, practically hopping with rage. "I'm a kindergartner with standards, Jasper! Do you honestly think I would have gone on that mission without reading and memorizing absolutely every report that was possibly available about the findings of that colony?! I studied hundreds of years worth of content, and in all of those reports there was not a single mention of anything close to what I discovered!"

She takes a step back, forces herself to take a calming breath. "Besides, that's hardly the point of what I'm trying to tell you anyway."

[stompadour]

That reaction actually makes Jasper lean back in alarm.

"Well --" She scowls. "What was the point, then? That Yellow Diamond made one mistake--?"

[periphrasing]

"Yes!" Peridot says desperately, ears drooping. She's back to sounding tired, and quiet. "But more than that-- It made me realize that Diamonds can be flawed. What's more, they don't always know or do what's best for everybody! And if Yellow Diamond was wrong about that... What else could she be wrong about?"

[stompadour]

"... That's it?" says Jasper. "That's the entire reason you defected?"

[periphrasing]

"It's a pretty big deal, Jasper!" Peridot exclaims. "Literally from the moment we claw our way out of the Earth we're told that the Diamonds are perfect, the Diamonds are infallible and flawless, but they're NOT. And..."

Pausing, she huffs and hunches her shoulders, glancing away again. She knows she's definitely going to lose Jasper's attention on this next part. But she needs to say it.

"I was also happier and more enriched in those few weeks I spent with Steven and his friends than I was during any other of the thousands of years of my life before that. And if Yellow Diamond was wrong about Earth, then who the heck is she to say that it's wrong for me to live to be happy!?"

[stompadour]

Jasper stares at her.

After the war for, Jasper was the only one of the surviving Earth quartzes to be selected by Yellow Diamond for active service, rather than being holed up in Blue Diamond's nostalgia museum with her humans. For a while, Yellow Diamond kept her fairly close, Earth's only success, and while these days she spends more of her time on boring escort missions, in those early centuries after leaving Earth she witnessed a fair few instances of... decisions made by Yellow Diamond that were perhaps motivated more by anger than anything else. This isn't news to her. It's just that, for Jasper, those have never been reasons not to obey. The Diamonds aren't in charge because they're infallible; they're infallible because they're in charge.

That's just how it is.

"Because that's selfish!" she says incredulously. "You picked being happy over doing what you were made for, what Homeworld needs you for?!"

[periphrasing]

That cuts deep, because it's not entirely wrong. Peridot prefers not to use such a negative word to describe it, but on days where her guilt and that deeply ingrained sense of duty get the better of her, she has definitely thought it before.

Hearing it come from Jasper, she feels the need to reclaim in more than ever.

"Yeah? so what if I did!?" she snaps.

[stompadour]

"You..."

She squints in incomprehension.

"I think we're done here. I don't understand you and nothing's going to change that."

[periphrasing]

"What?"

Peridot is bristling again. She was about to call this conversation quits, but having Jasper send her away is just. Unacceptable? She NEEDS to get the last word in.

"Um, no? YOU don't dismiss me. I'm done talking to you! So. GOODBYE!"

And she marches away, and promptly goes to huddle with Lapis. Eat your heart out, Jasper.