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Name: Chris
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fairytalelie
E-Mail: whatineverhad@gmail.com
IM: grayintogreen
Plurk: quasigina
Other Characters: Mabel Pines |powerofmabel
Rocket |beatupgrass
Mr. Gold |undealt
Character Name: Peridot Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG (or just Peridot)
Series: Steven Universe
Timeline: Episode 78: Log Date 7 15 2
Canon Resource Link: Steven Universe wiki and Peridot’s wiki page
Character History:
Peridot’s early history is presently unknown, but we can deduce from various things she says and how she acts that she’s a very young gem (significantly younger than Pearl and Garnet, but probably older than Amethyst) who serves the court of Yellow Diamond. Her age is implied, due to the fact that she doesn’t seem to recognize the name “crystal gems,” and since Yellow Diamond seemed to know nothing about the gems being on Earth, it’s clear she didn’t deem it appropriate to tell anyone but her escort Jasper. This leads me to believe that Homeworld doesn’t indoctrinate its newer gems on the subject of the rebellion, or she would have probably (since it was the most logical course of action) warned Yellow Diamond or her managers that they were still alive.
She claims to be a “certified kindergartener and technician,” which is likely the designation for all Peridots on Homeworld, and this designation led to her sending her robonoids to Earth to repair the Homeworld warp panel, so that she could investigate the kindergarten there (and check on the progress of “the cluster,” a geo-weapon made by the forced fusion of billions of broken gems). However, her attempts were thwarted when, after assuming the site had been compromised and fleeing before the Crystal Gems could accost her, Garnet destroyed the warp again, preventing Peridot from making the trip back.
That… doesn’t really stop her. She sends larger robots to earth with the intention of hacking into the kindergarten and running diagnostics from Homeworld, though most of them are destroyed by the Crystal Gems, much to Peridot’s immense dissatisfaction. At the behest of Steven, the Crystal Gems manage to let one go long enough to follow it to the kindergarten, where Peridot begins to research the status of the Kindergarten via a hologram screen until Steven, determined to talk to her, interrupts her. She interrogates him, believing him to be one of some sort of “infestation,” and asks if “Stevens” have replaced humans as the dominant lifeforms on Earth. Once Steven answers her questions, she attempts to eliminate him with a ruthless lack of compassion (in almost a bored sort of way, honestly), but the Crystal Gems arrive to save him and proceed to rip apart the interface allowing Peridot to access the kindergarten. Before the transmission is cut off, she exclaims that she’s “reporting this,” and that’s the last they hear of her for awhile, though they’re aware that there’s a threat of her returning, potentially with reinforcements.
And boy does she, specifically with a large hand-shaped spaceship, a large gem named Jasper who only came because she wanted to punch Rose Quartz in the face, and the water gem Lapis Lazuli who had tried to return to Homeworld recently after being rescued by Steven, and had since been caught and interrogated for information on Earth by Peridot and Jasper.
Peridot, again, displays her lack of knowledge about who the Crystal Gems really are by telling Jasper that they’re the ones who keep breaking her stuff, despite the fact that Jasper knows damn well who they are, though she’s disappointed by the fact that Rose doesn’t appear to be among them and leaves Peridot to eliminate them herself, which she does with ruthless precision… or, well, attempts to. She’s stopped by Steven’s shield. Recognizing the shield as Rose’s, Jasper’s interest is piqued and after yelling a lot about why Rose looks like a preteen boy and mangling Garnet, she and Peridot capture all the Crystal Gems, and depart for Homeworld on Jasper’s orders, despite Peridot insisting that they can’t leave before they finish what she came there to do.
From here, it’s clear we can tell that Peridot believes herself to be the leader of this mission and that Jasper, being a more experienced and stronger gem is bullying her and pulling rank, much to her displeasure. Most of Peridot’s life can contain the words “much to her displeasure,” so you might as well get used to that phrase.
The Crystal Gems escape due to no one anticipating that Steven is half-human and thus immune to weapons and barriers that only affect gems and while Garnet fights Jasper, Peridot is assaulted and taken captive by Amethyst, Steven and Pearl- the latter of which interfaces with the ship and forces it to turn around and take them back to earth. Garnet, however, throws Jasper into the power source of the ship, heavily wounding her and badly damaging the ship. Taking advantage of Amethyst and Pearl being distracted, Peridot boards an escape pod and flees back to Earth NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.
….Except not really.
As it turns out, the cluster is very terrible, no good very bad news, and Peridot’s newfound exile on Earth with no way of reaching out to Yellow Diamond would eventually lead to her inevitable demise once the cluster emerged and destroyed the planet. Even this knowledge doesn’t prevent her from trying to distract herself by continuing her job to investigate and document the fusion experiments that have taken place on earth (the early “prototypes” of the cluster) inside the kindergarten. Once she’s found and cornered by the Crystal Gems again, however, her clear anxiety and stress comes out, as she fights them erratically and desperately, while on the defensive, showcasing that she doesn’t want to fight them, because they are fucking psychopaths who keep showing up to ruin her life. IT’S NOT LIKE SHE DID ANYTHING WRONG, GUYS. COME ON. SHE JUST WORKS HERE. It’s not her fault you like this stupid planet not destroyed.
She manages to escape using her limb enhancers’ (essentially her armor that allows her to do her work as a technician and also makes her taller) helicopter function (yes you read that right). It should be noted that this is further proof of Peridot’s age and inexperience as she seems to be completely unaware of what her tech is capable of doing, proving that she obviously hasn’t been using it very long. Given how quickly Peridot picks up on things, it’s probably easy to conclude that in her arrogance, she didn’t read a manual or pay attention when she was given the stupid armor, assuming she’d just figure it out on her own. Apparently, nobody just assumes that they can use their fingers to form helicopter propellers and fly away.
Sometime after her escape from the kindergarten, Peridot repairs the Communications Hub to send a message to Yellow Diamond, informing her that her escort (Jasper) and informant (Lapis) are MIA and she’s stranded. The broadcast is powerful enough to hijack all the frequencies in Beach City, but given later events, it’s clear that the message never actually made it to Yellow Diamond at all, if it even made it to Homeworld. At any rate, Peridot is thwarted from making any further calls to Homeworld by the Crystal Gems destroying the communications hub. Because they’re jerks.
It’s clear at this point that Peridot believes the Crystal Gems are just weirdos who like BREAKING THINGS, regardless of Jasper pointing out they’re rebels, because the next time we see her, she’s at the Homeworld warp trying to repair it from the last time Garnet broke it, muttering to herself about how they’re menaces and being more agitated at their rampant destruction than their disloyalty to Homeworld. She’s a practical gem, Peridot. Midway through her repair process, however, the Crystal Gems find her AGAIN, and she proceeds to rant about HOW THEY DON’T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THAN ANNOY HER. She also admits that the planet has an expiration date and she doesn’t want to stick around and find out the exact time of that and tries to shoot the Crystal Gems with a laser blast from her limb enhancers (one more thing she must have figured out on the fly- because she seems genuinely surprised by the effect it had and also didn’t account for the kickback, as it sends her sprawling onto her ass). Instead of fighting defensively this time, she seems to be leading an all out assault against them, though her main prerogative is still escaping, and due to the Crystal Gems having a shoddy team ethic due to Pearl being overzealous, she manages to find a workable warp and flee from them again.
Determined to have the upper hand, Peridot lures the Crystal Gems into a trap, using a stranded Homeworld ship. She seals them inside and sets the weapons on them, hoping to eliminate them once and for all so they’ll stop messing up her plans and breaking her stuff. (SHE’S THE VICTIM HERE.) However, even this brilliant plan doesn’t work, and the Gems manage to escape her clever death traps and find her and corner her in the control room (where she’s becoming increasingly enraged by the faulty ancient gem tech she’s using). She attempts to fly away through a hole she made in the roof (gloating all the while), but Steven grabs her foot to keep her from getting away, and she’s forced to detach that limb enhancer and abandon it in order to escape.
In a complete act of UTTER DESPERATION, Peridot sneaks into the temple and abducts Steven, carrying him back to the Homeworld warp, where she proceeds to go into a panicked tantrum, demanding that he fix the warp like he fixed Lapis’s gem, because every other plan she’s tried to get home has utterly failed and she doesn’t know what else to do. When Steven is unable to produce a result, she becomes even more anxious and clearly terrified, breaking down in front of him and admitting, again, that the world is doomed, though she doesn’t provide context for him. At that moment, the Crystal Gems arrive and Peridot fights them, though the Gems have cottoned onto all of her tactics and are able to dispatch her easily, but not before she tries to bargain with them (Garnet poofs her, however, before she can finish her offer). Once she’s been poofed, bubbled, and sent to the temple (and Amethyst has discarded her limb enhancers), that seems to be the end of it.
Except Steven has always been strangely sympathetic and kind to Peridot, and believes that the Gems acted prematurely because Peridot was trying to explain something to them, and is especially worried because she seemed so scared. Determined to find the answer, Steven sneaks into the temple basement where the bubbled gems are kept and releases Peridot from her bubble, where it is revealed once she reforms that sans limb enhancers she is… actually really small. Once she realizes where she is and sees the other bubbled gems, she becomes panicked, believing the Crystal Gems intend to harvest her. She half-heartedly smacks Steven and after realizing it hurts him, begins slapping him repeatedly as it’s her last line of defense without her limb enhancers. (FEEL HER UNBRIDLED RAGE) Steven demands to know why she’s being so irate and she responds with the following, in order, “YOU POOFED ME INTO A LIMBLESS CLOD, YOU TRAPPED ME IN YOUR BUBBLE DUNGEON, AND YOU CALLED ME CUTE.” Steven protests that he didn’t poof her and that he freed her, which prompts Peridot to reevaluate some things, asking Steven why he would “make such a miscalculation,” proving that she immediately goes to logic and reason before assuming any sort of emotional response. Steven asks her what she was trying to warn them about and she proceeds to have a near-nervous breakdown about the cluster and how her mission went horribly wrong, without, again, providing any sort of context. Steven tries to get her to slow down, but Peridot tricks him and manages to escape up into the house, which would be great, except the Crystal Gems are all hanging out up there, so Peridot’s glee at having managed to achieve freedom is short-lived. After a comical chase wherein Peridot runs around on all fours like a stray cat while the Gems prevent her from escaping, she manages to find sanctuary in the bathroom, which she labels “an archaic think chamber.” She then attempts to flush herself down the toilet.
Realizing that her knowledge of the cluster is all that’s keeping her free (and alive), Peridot uses this to her advantage by refusing to talk to the Crystal Gems, so that they’re forced to keep her locked in the bathroom, which sucks because Steven needs to use that, though he manages to placate her into letting him come in by giving her the only remaining piece of her limb enhancers. As Steven begins to do his morning bathroom ritual, Peridot questions him about various things, wondering if they’re weapons, due to the fact that she’s presently powerless and thinks the Crystal Gems are insane warlords who might try to torture her to get the information out of her. Steven points out that he doesn’t want to hurt her and just wants to help her, forcing Peridot to admit she appreciates the offer, but doubts he can do anything about it. At the very least, it means that of the Crystal Gems, he is the only one she has anything resembling trust for.
And so it goes, as the Crystal Gems continue to try and interrogate Peridot through the bathroom door, while she utterly refuses to cooperate because she hates them and they broke her stuff. Seeing as Peridot won’t crack, the Crystal Gems leave to investigate the matter on their own, entrusting Peridot guard duty to Steven with the caveat that she’s basically harmless and it’ll be fine. (Peridot strongly takes offense to that implication.)
As Steven makes dinner and a thunderstorm rolls away outside, a frightened Peridot emerges from the bathroom, convinced that the thunder is the sound of the cluster emerging. Steven explains to her that it’s just thunder and it happens when it rains, which confuses her, and she admits that she doesn’t know anything about the Earth without access to the screen that comes with her limb enhancers. Steven explains it to her and offers to show her by running out into the rain, to which Peridot expresses immediate concern for his safety, showing that she’s grown fond of him in her own way. Hesitant, but curious, she steps out into the rain and feels it for the first time, honestly surprised and taken aback by the sensation.
The moment apparently sparks something in her, though she won’t admit any sentiment, as she’s a creature of logic and can’t afford to acknowledge any emotional responses to anything. This is proven when it takes her a long time and some awkwardness to actually say “thank you” to Steven for explaining rain to her. She immediately brushes that off, however, as she acknowledges that Steven is a much more intelligent being than the other gems, and that she’s willing to give him information on the cluster, but not the other gems. However, she can’t give him any information without the use of her things, and her logs are backed up in the Prime Kindergarten, which she presently can’t access because she’s a “hostage” in the temple. Steven agrees to take her, but only if she holds his hand the whole time.
Peridot’s immediate response to arrival at the Kindergarten is to jump off the side of a fucking cliff, because apparently despite crying about it ten minutes ago, she forgot she is a smol creature of smolness and cannot run on walls anymore, but it’s fine. She and Steven are gems. They can survive landing face first in the dirt.
As Peridot and Steven walk through the Kindergarten, Peridot asks Steven about how well it was maintained when he emerged, believing him to be “some sort of quartz,” which prompts Steven to explain to her that he’s half-human. She asks him how it’s possible and when he starts to explain it, she decides she doesn’t want to hear that story at all, and they head off to the control room to find her logs. Steven questions the safety of the Kindergarten, because of the fusion monsters that were around when he was last here, and Peridot clinically responds that when “the earth was found to no longer be a viable colony, Homeworld found another use for it.” The terms she uses here, again, show that Homeworld has stamped out any history about the rebellion in its young gems. Furthermore, she goes on to explain that Homeworld chose to use Earth for a series of experiments, involving a gem geo-weapon. The fusion experiments were prototypes.
(when Steven questions her about her part in that, she says “she wasn’t around for that,” and that she read a few hundred years of reports, again hinting at her apparent youth)
Peridot restores power to the control room and begins to work on recovering her logs, which have data about how the cluster is comprised of millions of gem shards and that it’s currently incubating in the Earth’s crust. When it emerges, it will take the entire planet with it, as it will be bigger than the Earth, itself. All of this, she explains rationally and calmly, because while she believed that stopping the cluster was impossible and escape her only option, she now feels confident that the combined efforts of her and Steven will be enough to fix this mess. Steven immediately protests that Peridot is getting ahead of herself, because he’s far from the “expert on Earth” that she claims he is and that they need to inform the Crystal Gems. Peridot is having none of that, however, but their disagreement is cut short by the arrival of fusion monsters.
Peridot hides behind Steven, who produces a bubble to protect them, prompting Peridot, gracious as always, to demand that he do “something actually useful.” The two of them are cornered and only saved by the arrival of the Crystal Gems, and Steven explains that there’s no way they can do this without their help. As the gems prepare to berate Steven for failing to keep an eye on Peridot, she steps in to take full responsibility and agrees to tell them everything about the cluster. It clearly causes her physical pain to do this.
Using Steven and a cardboard box with drawings of the earth and the cluster on it as visual representation, Peridot explains the cluster to the Crystal Gems and stresses the importance of what they have to do- which, apparently, is build a giant drill capable of traveling to the Earth’s crust. As far as getting parts is concerned, she decides that the first step is to dismantle everything inside the temple, and after destroying the microwave, a phone, and the television, Steven decides he has a better idea and takes the Crystal Gems + Peridot to the storage barn.
Pearl proceeds to take lead on the plans to construct the drill and Peridot immediately dismisses her, believing her to be useless because she’s “a Pearl,” who function as servants on Homeworld, not engineers. Despite Pearl’s protests, Peridot’s well-instilled Homeworld classism rears its ugly head for the first time as she dismisses her completely, even laughing in her face (or you know, in the general region of her middle, since she’s short) when she demands to be listened to. She goes as far as to only address Steven when she means to talk to Pearl, assuming Steven is her “owner” and thus speaks for her. When Steven seems confused by the whole concept, Peridot asks Pearl who really owns her and when Pearl denies she has an owner, her only response is, “Then what are you for?” Since Pearl doesn’t have an answer for that, Peridot claims ownership, and seems delighted by the idea of a Peridot “owning a Pearl,” proving she’s not exactly high on Homeworld’s caste system herself.
Pearl blows up at Peridot, who proceeds to school her on the fact that she was made to build things and Pearl was made to take orders and not give them. Steven breaks up the fight and tries to smooth things over by hoping to appeal to the idea that they both can be good at building things, which the two gems wholeheartedly refuse to believe. The only compromise Steven can come up with is for them to both build giant robots and perform a series of tests to see whose robot functions better. The winner will get to be in charge of drill construction.
And so they do. In a shorter amount of time than it takes to say “Get in the robot, Shinji.”
After a series of tests- like a huge series of tests- the gems are tied, and Steven decides that this means they can both lead the project. Peridot refuses to accept this ruling and demands a tiebreaker, and when Pearl tries to shrug her off by saying that the ruling is clear and that they’re both good engineers, she responds that nothing she’s seen here today proves anything, because Pearl will “always be beneath her.”
This prompts Pearl to start a giant robot fight. As one does.
As the two brawl, Peridot continues to trash talk, claiming Pearl can’t beat her because she’s nothing but someone’s shiny toy, and demands to know where she gets off acting like her “own gem,” because she’s just a Pearl. This enrages Pearl, who proceeds to PUNCH PERIDOT IN THE FUCKING FACE. Despite her dramatic speechifying about how Pearls can do anything they want to do, however, Peridot still fucking piledrives her into the ground. Believing herself to be the rightful winner, Peridot emerges from her robot and demands her praise, only to become shocked when everyone rushes to comfort Pearl and express their pride that she stood up for herself. Peridot demands an explanation for why everyone thinks Pearl is so great when she’s the one who won and proved herself the natural leader, prompting Steven to speak up for Pearl and explain why she’s awesome. The Crystal Gems proceed to leave to clean up the mess the robot fight made, and when Peridot questions them about why they’re ignoring the rules of the game, Garnet shrugs and says “welcome to Earth.” This simple moment greatly changes Peridot as she realizes that nothing is exactly fair or how she expects things to be here. It’s another step in the right direction.
And that step leads her to awkwardly apologize to Pearl and admit that she’s remarkable to be able to do what she does for only being a Pearl. Pearl responds graciously by showing Peridot she’s been holding her power drill upside down and the two walk off to discuss drill construction, while Peridot continues to not understand Earth terminology.
At some point, Steven gives Peridot a tape recorder so she can continue to document her observations about Earth and drill construction. She enjoys it probably a little too much. Also, somewhere in all of this, she pushes Greg off the roof to see if all life on Earth has flight capabilities (after observing flying insects), because she is a scientist who doesn’t understand that you can’t push things off roofs, and Garnet has to explain to her, after saving Greg from breaking his everything, that humans are soft and can’t survive long falls like gems can. Garnet is the worst.
Three days into drill construction, Peridot informs Garnet that she should unfuse, because it makes her uncomfortable, prompting an annoyed Garnet to put her in a child safety leash and tie her to a fence as one does, because “her wandering around free was making her uncomfortable.” Peridot doesn’t seem to grasp what the hell she said or why it was offensive, since she was just stating an observation. Her Homeworld prejudices are once again showing, and no one has the spoons to deal with that shit right now.
As Peridot resigns herself to being tied up, Amethyst and Steven overhear her talking about “leverage optimizers,” which they realize is her way of saying screwdriver, prompting Amethyst to ask Peridot what she calls a variety of body parts and finding each technical term increasingly more hilarious. As Steven and Amethyst laugh at her, she realizes that she’s “funny,” a trait she’s clearly never applied to herself before that garners her positive attention, which she seems to crave to an obscene level.
Garnet sends Amethyst and Steven to “chaperone” Peridot as she goes to the Kindergarten to retrieve a drill head for their machine, continuing to document everything into her tape recorder. After hearing her call Garnet a “permafusion,” Amethyst questions her about it, to which Peridot, without meaning to be funny, tries to explain why she finds that offensive and weird, which is accidentally hilarious, because she can’t really get the words out. Amethyst prompts Peridot to keep talking about her feelings on everyone else and she starts getting really into it- again, enjoying the positive attention, especially since it comes from a “superior gem” like Amethyst. She points out that the funniest thing is that Amethyst believes she has to listen to Garnet and Pearl, because she’s a quartz and technically outranks them. However, this takes a dark turn when Peridot points out that Amethyst is defective and undersized, because she stayed in the ground too long and continues to take the joke too far, upsetting Amethyst, who is extremely sensitive about her backstory.
Peridot has no idea what she’s done to offend Amethyst and continues to try and make her laugh, but Amethyst is still angry and isn’t having any of it. When Peridot questions why her “responses are incorrect,” Steven gently has to explain that she hurt her feelings, and that even if what she said was true, it wasn’t something that needed to be said. Peridot at first dismisses this until it occurs to her that Amethyst won’t even look at her and it’s making her feel “smaller,” which Steven explains means she feels “bad” about what she did, even if she can’t rationalize it to herself, and that’s how she made Amethyst feel. She responds by… not rationalizing it to herself and throws a temper tantrum about why she has to care about how anyone feels.
As Peridot bitterly works on the drill, she accidentally sets it off and as it careens towards Amethyst, she rushes to her aide in a moment of severe Lesbihonest. This doesn’t exactly repair her relationship with Amethyst, but prompts her to finally apologize to her. However, she can’t actually spit the words out in front of her, as she is a failure at dealing with emotions, and proceeds to play back her talking about the incident on her tape recorder where there’s both an apology for hurting Amethyst’s feelings and an admission that Earth is stupid and complicated and she’s having to learn and unlearn behaviors and she’s trying to understand, because really she’s not better than any of the Crystal Gems, herself. After Amethyst accepts her apology, she admits to Steven that it made her feel “big.” SHE’S LEARNING…. And afterwards picks up a joke book so that she can be funny without making anyone feel bad, so that’s… important.
Steven gives Peridot a gift of “stilts” (actually cans he painted with flames) to help her feel taller to replace the limb enhancers she lost. Peridot is perplexed by the idea of “gifts” as she’s never been given anything before (a common theme of her character- she doesn’t expect anyone to care about her, hence why she glommed onto Steven first, because he clearly showed her compassion when no one else would, even if she didn’t understand why that was important to her). At first, she dismisses Steven’s gift, claiming she would never stoop so low as to tie Earth trash to her body, but under the cover of darkness, she indulges in the extra height the cans give her.
Peridot discovers television via Steven, who shows her a show called Camp Pining Hearts, which she becomes engrossed in through repeatedly watching a single episode and becomes aggressively vehement and passionate about Percy and Pierre, two characters that she believes form a competent and unmatched pair, and proceeds to rant about it to Steven for hours. Garnet ends up observing this, as well, and finds Peridot’s immersion into Earth culture to be satisfactory.
In fact, Peridot’s beginning to understand a lot about Earth from her own observations about the planet and the time she spends with the gems as she tries to understand their ways- she even agrees to attempt fusion with Garnet to better understand why she’s constantly fused (after watching Amethyst and Pearl form Opal), but breaks it off out of nerves. The fact that she tried to understand Garnet at all, however, is enough for her, and when Peridot protests that she still doesn’t understand, Garnet gets on her level and says “she’s like Percy and Pierre,” which… means she gets it. Finally.
As construction of the drill continues, Peridot becomes confused and irritated when the gems and Steven decide to take a break and enjoy the view, not understanding the concept of pointless relaxing. Steven explains that “working hard is important, but feeling good is important too,” which Peridot doesn’t quite grasp either, so to explain it better, he shows her how to sing by teaching her notes on his ukulele, after realizing that the noise her drill makes reminds him of music. She manages to catch on to the notes unreasonably fast, showing a high capacity for learning when faced with something not bogged down by the necessary emotional responses she still doesn’t quite know how to handle. She still doesn’t understand the point of music, but manages to rationalize it to herself in some way, even as she begins questioning the fact that she has to rationalize it to herself. Steven prompts her to write a song relating to what she’s feeling, which she does in her own mildly insulting way, admitting that everyone here is insane, but she has to be too, because she’s going along with it.
Once the drill is finished through the power of friendship and teamwork over the course of several weeks, the only thing left is to find the coordinates to the cluster. They use Lion to get them to a Diamond base on the moon, where Peridot begins excitedly talking about how awesome the Diamonds are, proving you can take the gem out of Homeworld, but you really can’t take Homeworld out of the gem. Garnet butts in to correct her on her assumption that gems live to serve the Diamonds and Peridot amends her statement that they were “made to serve the Diamond Authority, though some gems don’t anymore.”
The group continues to the control room where Peridot continues to fangirl about being in a place that only Diamonds could walk before. She admires the architecture of the control panel, though admits she has no idea how to turn it on because it’s archaic, and Steven manages to figure it out on his own by sitting in the Diamond’s control seat. Peridot flips out about him sitting somewhere reserved only for the esteemed matriarchs and when Steven points out they aren’t here and offers her the seat next to him, Peridot gleefully accepts a chance to sit on the forbidden seat. From there, she’s able to find the information she’s looking for and goes on to show Steven that the controls here were used to plan the colony on Earth, showing everyone the gem structures that were built on Earth and then taking it a step further and showing them what Earth could have been if it had been allowed to continue as a gem colony, which horrifies the Crystal Gems and Steven. Peridot continues to delight in the concept, believing it to be a more efficient use of resources, and goes on to blame Rose Quartz for dooming the Earth anyway by protecting it from Homeworld, because the cluster destroying it makes it useless to everyone. She’s completely oblivious to the Crystal Gems’ obvious discomfort with this until Garnet threatens her and tells her not to talk about things she doesn’t understand. Steven talks her down and as the Crystal Gems leave, Peridot asks Steven what she did wrong, because she was only stating a fact- Rose didn’t save Earth, she just delayed the inevitable. Steven says that’s not how they see it and that he thought that Peridot finally understood why. He leaves her alone, disappointed in her, and as she joins the group, he realizes she’s taken something from the control room- a mysterious diamond shaped object that’s actually a direct line to the Diamonds.
He corners her inside a broken down truck inside the barn to question her about the Diamonds, to which Peridot responds with more enthusiasm about how flawless and perfect they are, especially touting her Diamond (Yellow Diamond) as the most rational and logical being in the entire universe. Steven begrudgingly points out that she seems very loyal to Yellow Diamond and Peridot agrees, saying that even if she has a truce with the Crystal Gems, she can’t forsake the Diamond she was made to serve. Steven then tricks Peridot into giving him the communicator she stole and locks her in the truck, boasting that she won’t be able to defeat the child safety lock.
Peridot immediately freaks out at this betrayal and tries to beg and cry her way out, until Steven threatens to smash the communicator, forcing Peridot to explain that she has a plan to contact Yellow Diamond and have her sort this whole thing out, because she doesn’t trust that the Crystal Gems will ever actually successfully save Earth, because they let their emotions get the best of them. What she doesn’t explain, because she mistakenly assumed it went without saying, is that she’s hoping to appeal to Yellow Diamond to destroy the cluster and save the Earth, because surely her most rational and efficient Diamond will see that the Earth is more valuable to them as a resource in its present state. Unfortunately, since she made a critical error, Steven assumes that Peridot intends to betray them and send Yellow Diamond back to finish what she started, so she can be a good servant, instead of a friend to the Crystal Gems.
Steven leaves her locked in the car and goes to warn the other gems, but Peridot escapes the car by using the robot she built earlier…. somehow. I’m not sure how. Magic, I guess. Anyway, she gets the communicator back, and a spectacular chase ensues with everyone attempting to get the communicator back from Peridot. After a great deal of Diamond Line hot potato with Peridot berating Steven and the other gems for letting their emotions rule their sense of logic, she finally gets her little green hands on it and proceeds to contact Yellow Diamond, at first only getting her Pearl, who berates Peridot for daring to call on a direct line to the Diamonds.
Yellow Diamond eventually comes on the line, herself, and Peridot introduces herself as just “Peridot,” prompting YD to ask her which Peridot- as it turns out, spending time with the Crystal Gems has given her a sense of individuality and she anxiously responds with her full designation. From there, YD chastises her for being behind on her mission to Earth and questions her about it, and Peridot is forced to lie to her face about what happened to her ship and Jasper to protect the Crystal Gems. She goes on to explain what she believes about the Earth and that she thinks they should terminate the cluster, and proceed to use plans that Peridot has developed to utilize Earth’s resources in a way that doesn’t disturb the organic life living on it. Yellow Diamond, however, doesn’t see reason, much to Peridot’s shock, and irrationally just wants the Earth to be destroyed. When she demands that Peridot board a ship to Homeworld that she’ll be sending and redeem herself for her insubordination and failures, Peridot, in great anxiety, says she won’t go and that she knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that there are things on Earth worth protecting. The fact that Yellow Diamond is being irrational and thus wrong prompts Peridot to utterly betray her, even going so far as to call her a “clod” to her face, because she clearly knows more about Earth than she does. After terminating the call, Peridot realizes what she did and begins to have a panic attack, because she’s a traitor to her Homeworld now and has, through a matter of the programming instilled in her by the Diamonds that makes her a creature of logic and reason, inadvertently become a Crystal Gem, herself.
She doesn’t take it well.
In fact, one might say she takes it horribly.
She spends a great deal of time pacing around the temple, ranting into her tape recorder and alternating between hysterical laughter and freaking out about how she’s supposed to deal with no longer being what she always thought she was, eventually trying to get rid of the recorder, claiming that Steven can have it, because it’s a chronicle of her descent into madness and she “must return madness to its source.” Garnet calms her down by carrying her outside, prompting Steven to listen to Peridot’s old logs to see how she and Garnet became so close. As he listens, he sees the change that’s come over Peridot, the moments where she stops documenting things and begins to use the device as more of a personal diary where she can record her thoughts and feelings and witnesses her change her opinions on the Crystal Gems bit by bit. At Garnet’s prompting, Steven returns the tape recorder back to Peridot.
Abilities/Special Powers:
General Gem Abilities: Like all gems, Peridot is virtually indestructible, so long as her gem remains undamaged. If her “physical body” becomes too damaged, she “poofs” back into her gem where she can safely reform. If the gem becomes damaged or broken, then her reformation will either be incomplete or corrupted or she’ll die.
Though not as physically strong as some gems, due to that not being her gem type’s particular wheelhouse, she’s still stronger than an average human and much faster.
Since all gems have this ability (including Pearls), it can be assumed that she can summon a weapon from her gem, but we have yet to see her do so, suggesting that she has never felt the need of using one, due to her proficiency in other ways.
Her gem functions as a flashlight.
Intelligence: Peridot possesses a genius-level intellect due to her gem type being (seemingly) used as technicians and problem-solvers. As such, she prides herself on her ability to think logically and solve problems rationally without getting bogged down in emotion. She can pick up on things surprisingly quickly when she wants to, to the point where her only real hang-up in doing new things is the fact that she can’t stop asking why she should do it.
She is well-versed in construction and repair and can build and command various sphereical robots called robonoids (that she won’t really have access to the tools to build in eway), as well as build things such as giant robots and powerful drills with just junk she finds lying around.
She is an expert in gem technology, even managing to figure out tech that was archaic and otherwise difficult for her to instantly grasp- she's even shown working with what appears to be an old human desktop computer at one point.
Limb Enhancers: At one point, Peridot possessed body augmentations called “limb enhancers which could function as a computer as well as protect her with weaponized bursts and electricity that can be summoned from the “hands.” (On top of making her taller.) They also have a helicopter function… yeah. Given Peridot’s surprise at some of the functions of these enhancers, it’s pretty clear she’s new to using them, so even she doesn’t know every function of them. As of her canon point, she’s also lost them, but I’m adding them here in case circumstances in game allow her to have them again.
Her Mirror has them also, so… that’s important to note.
Third-Person Sample: This was… wrong.
Peridot had begrudgingly and with great difficulty embraced the fact that things were often insane and beyond her ability to reason when it came to the Crystal Gems, but this was far beyond that. This was… Well…
No other word but “wrong” described it.
One minute she was walking back to the barn, and the next she was standing on a beach. And not the one in front of the temple, either. Even if she were farther down the beach than she normally wandered, and the temple were out of sight, the truth of the matter was given away by the consistency of the sand and, more importantly, the lack of humans allowing the Earth’s sun to sap them of their energy as part of some bizarre sacrificial worship ritual (humans are strange and horribly uncivilized creatures).
Peridot grimaced and dropped a handful of sand back onto the ground, shaking the particles from her hand with exaggerated irritation. “Steven, is this some sort of… joke?” She glanced around, expecting to see him hiding behind a rock, giggling to himself. Realizing that jokes were meant to be funny (this one wasn’t, but she was still learning what was funny and what was cruel), she forced a strained laugh and slaps her knee. “Okay, you got me.”
She was greeted by silence, and it occurred to her, joke or not, that there was just no feasible way for her to be in one place one minute and then wind up in another completely at random- not without the use of a warp, a transport, or Lion- even with Steven’s influence. It flew in the face of everything she knew about traveling between locations quickly and efficiently.
And with that knowledge came the panic that always hit her from behind when her logic and reason failed her. The laugh that came next was no less forced, but now the manic, horrified laugh of someone worried about their fate. “Steven?” She repeated, sounding on edge. Silence greeted her, again. For a greeting, it was terribly unfriendly.
It’s fine. It’s totally fine. She’s just stranded somewhere strange with no limb enhancers, no Crystal Gems, and not a whole lot of hope of fixing the situation efficiently. Oh right, and there’s the undeniable fact that she betrayed her diamond and who knows whether or not she’s sending someone to Earth to break her into pieces right now. Oh no, leaving her for the cluster is CLEARLY not a good enough punishment for the mighty Peridot, who dared to call Yellow Diamond a clod. She’ll probably break her, personally. With her bare hands.
It occurred to Peridot in the midst of all of that, that (A. she was actually saying most of that out loud while frantically pacing in circles around the beach and (B. once finished ranting, she had curled herself in a fetal position on the gritty sand, hoping that it might absorb her into its unfeeling void and hide her from Yellow Diamond’s hypothetical wrath. This was embarrassing and not befitting a gem of her intellect, but she’d been having a hard time of things lately and, honestly, the ground seemed like the best place for her. Maybe she’d fuse with the sand and become an actual clod.
Or maybe she’d get over herself and pull herself together and work on fixing this problem without getting weighed down by hypotheticals that had no evidence beyond her own pride and fear. That seemed more reasonable…. Or it would, when she was feeling reasonable. One thing the Crystal Gems had taught her was that it was perfectly fine to be irrational sometimes.
And she’d earned a little more irrational behavior this week.
First-Person Sample: [the audio clicks on and the world is greeted to a shrill, mostly deadpan voice of someone who is trying very hard not to lose her patience and/or her shit.]
Log Date: Seven-six-one-two.
Despite being nowhere near an active warp, nor traveling inside the mane of Steven’s… pink creature, I seem to have found myself somewhere else on the Earth, given the high population of humans. I have no idea how this has come to pass, but I have found this recording device to document my findings, while I investigate this further.
...And try to find my… [an awkward pause as she tries to hiss out a word and finds it not to her liking and ends up just muttering:] associates, who have probably broken something again.
[silence falls, and then, a little bit later, the voice adds:]
An addendum to that previous log, not only are the Crystal Gems not here, but this device is actually an archaic communicator, so to everyone who can hear this:
[she sucks in a breath and then, shrilly, yells:]
DO YOU SOFT, PATHETIC MASSES OF ORGANIC MATTER HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH? DO YOU NOT REALIZE THAT ABDUCTING ME AWAY FROM MY MISSION MEANS YOU’VE DOOMED YOUR PRECIOUS PLANET? I HOPE YOU LIKE BEING DEAD IN THE COLD, UNFEELING VOID OF SPACE, BECAUSE IF I DON’T GET BACK, THAT IS EXACTLY WHERE YOU’LL BE. YOU DON’T REALIZE WHO YOU’VE LEFT IN CHARGE OF YOUR PLANETARY SALVATION WITH ME STUCK HERE.
[she makes a noise of disgust and adds, calmer, and clearly through gritted teeth:] I don’t know how you did it, but you are going to pay for it, unless you return me to where you found me immediately.
DW username:
fairytalelieE-Mail: whatineverhad@gmail.com
IM: grayintogreen
Plurk: quasigina
Other Characters: Mabel Pines |
powerofmabelRocket |
beatupgrassMr. Gold |
undealtCharacter Name: Peridot Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG (or just Peridot)
Series: Steven Universe
Timeline: Episode 78: Log Date 7 15 2
Canon Resource Link: Steven Universe wiki and Peridot’s wiki page
Character History:
Peridot’s early history is presently unknown, but we can deduce from various things she says and how she acts that she’s a very young gem (significantly younger than Pearl and Garnet, but probably older than Amethyst) who serves the court of Yellow Diamond. Her age is implied, due to the fact that she doesn’t seem to recognize the name “crystal gems,” and since Yellow Diamond seemed to know nothing about the gems being on Earth, it’s clear she didn’t deem it appropriate to tell anyone but her escort Jasper. This leads me to believe that Homeworld doesn’t indoctrinate its newer gems on the subject of the rebellion, or she would have probably (since it was the most logical course of action) warned Yellow Diamond or her managers that they were still alive.
She claims to be a “certified kindergartener and technician,” which is likely the designation for all Peridots on Homeworld, and this designation led to her sending her robonoids to Earth to repair the Homeworld warp panel, so that she could investigate the kindergarten there (and check on the progress of “the cluster,” a geo-weapon made by the forced fusion of billions of broken gems). However, her attempts were thwarted when, after assuming the site had been compromised and fleeing before the Crystal Gems could accost her, Garnet destroyed the warp again, preventing Peridot from making the trip back.
That… doesn’t really stop her. She sends larger robots to earth with the intention of hacking into the kindergarten and running diagnostics from Homeworld, though most of them are destroyed by the Crystal Gems, much to Peridot’s immense dissatisfaction. At the behest of Steven, the Crystal Gems manage to let one go long enough to follow it to the kindergarten, where Peridot begins to research the status of the Kindergarten via a hologram screen until Steven, determined to talk to her, interrupts her. She interrogates him, believing him to be one of some sort of “infestation,” and asks if “Stevens” have replaced humans as the dominant lifeforms on Earth. Once Steven answers her questions, she attempts to eliminate him with a ruthless lack of compassion (in almost a bored sort of way, honestly), but the Crystal Gems arrive to save him and proceed to rip apart the interface allowing Peridot to access the kindergarten. Before the transmission is cut off, she exclaims that she’s “reporting this,” and that’s the last they hear of her for awhile, though they’re aware that there’s a threat of her returning, potentially with reinforcements.
And boy does she, specifically with a large hand-shaped spaceship, a large gem named Jasper who only came because she wanted to punch Rose Quartz in the face, and the water gem Lapis Lazuli who had tried to return to Homeworld recently after being rescued by Steven, and had since been caught and interrogated for information on Earth by Peridot and Jasper.
Peridot, again, displays her lack of knowledge about who the Crystal Gems really are by telling Jasper that they’re the ones who keep breaking her stuff, despite the fact that Jasper knows damn well who they are, though she’s disappointed by the fact that Rose doesn’t appear to be among them and leaves Peridot to eliminate them herself, which she does with ruthless precision… or, well, attempts to. She’s stopped by Steven’s shield. Recognizing the shield as Rose’s, Jasper’s interest is piqued and after yelling a lot about why Rose looks like a preteen boy and mangling Garnet, she and Peridot capture all the Crystal Gems, and depart for Homeworld on Jasper’s orders, despite Peridot insisting that they can’t leave before they finish what she came there to do.
From here, it’s clear we can tell that Peridot believes herself to be the leader of this mission and that Jasper, being a more experienced and stronger gem is bullying her and pulling rank, much to her displeasure. Most of Peridot’s life can contain the words “much to her displeasure,” so you might as well get used to that phrase.
The Crystal Gems escape due to no one anticipating that Steven is half-human and thus immune to weapons and barriers that only affect gems and while Garnet fights Jasper, Peridot is assaulted and taken captive by Amethyst, Steven and Pearl- the latter of which interfaces with the ship and forces it to turn around and take them back to earth. Garnet, however, throws Jasper into the power source of the ship, heavily wounding her and badly damaging the ship. Taking advantage of Amethyst and Pearl being distracted, Peridot boards an escape pod and flees back to Earth NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.
….Except not really.
As it turns out, the cluster is very terrible, no good very bad news, and Peridot’s newfound exile on Earth with no way of reaching out to Yellow Diamond would eventually lead to her inevitable demise once the cluster emerged and destroyed the planet. Even this knowledge doesn’t prevent her from trying to distract herself by continuing her job to investigate and document the fusion experiments that have taken place on earth (the early “prototypes” of the cluster) inside the kindergarten. Once she’s found and cornered by the Crystal Gems again, however, her clear anxiety and stress comes out, as she fights them erratically and desperately, while on the defensive, showcasing that she doesn’t want to fight them, because they are fucking psychopaths who keep showing up to ruin her life. IT’S NOT LIKE SHE DID ANYTHING WRONG, GUYS. COME ON. SHE JUST WORKS HERE. It’s not her fault you like this stupid planet not destroyed.
She manages to escape using her limb enhancers’ (essentially her armor that allows her to do her work as a technician and also makes her taller) helicopter function (yes you read that right). It should be noted that this is further proof of Peridot’s age and inexperience as she seems to be completely unaware of what her tech is capable of doing, proving that she obviously hasn’t been using it very long. Given how quickly Peridot picks up on things, it’s probably easy to conclude that in her arrogance, she didn’t read a manual or pay attention when she was given the stupid armor, assuming she’d just figure it out on her own. Apparently, nobody just assumes that they can use their fingers to form helicopter propellers and fly away.
Sometime after her escape from the kindergarten, Peridot repairs the Communications Hub to send a message to Yellow Diamond, informing her that her escort (Jasper) and informant (Lapis) are MIA and she’s stranded. The broadcast is powerful enough to hijack all the frequencies in Beach City, but given later events, it’s clear that the message never actually made it to Yellow Diamond at all, if it even made it to Homeworld. At any rate, Peridot is thwarted from making any further calls to Homeworld by the Crystal Gems destroying the communications hub. Because they’re jerks.
It’s clear at this point that Peridot believes the Crystal Gems are just weirdos who like BREAKING THINGS, regardless of Jasper pointing out they’re rebels, because the next time we see her, she’s at the Homeworld warp trying to repair it from the last time Garnet broke it, muttering to herself about how they’re menaces and being more agitated at their rampant destruction than their disloyalty to Homeworld. She’s a practical gem, Peridot. Midway through her repair process, however, the Crystal Gems find her AGAIN, and she proceeds to rant about HOW THEY DON’T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THAN ANNOY HER. She also admits that the planet has an expiration date and she doesn’t want to stick around and find out the exact time of that and tries to shoot the Crystal Gems with a laser blast from her limb enhancers (one more thing she must have figured out on the fly- because she seems genuinely surprised by the effect it had and also didn’t account for the kickback, as it sends her sprawling onto her ass). Instead of fighting defensively this time, she seems to be leading an all out assault against them, though her main prerogative is still escaping, and due to the Crystal Gems having a shoddy team ethic due to Pearl being overzealous, she manages to find a workable warp and flee from them again.
Determined to have the upper hand, Peridot lures the Crystal Gems into a trap, using a stranded Homeworld ship. She seals them inside and sets the weapons on them, hoping to eliminate them once and for all so they’ll stop messing up her plans and breaking her stuff. (SHE’S THE VICTIM HERE.) However, even this brilliant plan doesn’t work, and the Gems manage to escape her clever death traps and find her and corner her in the control room (where she’s becoming increasingly enraged by the faulty ancient gem tech she’s using). She attempts to fly away through a hole she made in the roof (gloating all the while), but Steven grabs her foot to keep her from getting away, and she’s forced to detach that limb enhancer and abandon it in order to escape.
In a complete act of UTTER DESPERATION, Peridot sneaks into the temple and abducts Steven, carrying him back to the Homeworld warp, where she proceeds to go into a panicked tantrum, demanding that he fix the warp like he fixed Lapis’s gem, because every other plan she’s tried to get home has utterly failed and she doesn’t know what else to do. When Steven is unable to produce a result, she becomes even more anxious and clearly terrified, breaking down in front of him and admitting, again, that the world is doomed, though she doesn’t provide context for him. At that moment, the Crystal Gems arrive and Peridot fights them, though the Gems have cottoned onto all of her tactics and are able to dispatch her easily, but not before she tries to bargain with them (Garnet poofs her, however, before she can finish her offer). Once she’s been poofed, bubbled, and sent to the temple (and Amethyst has discarded her limb enhancers), that seems to be the end of it.
Except Steven has always been strangely sympathetic and kind to Peridot, and believes that the Gems acted prematurely because Peridot was trying to explain something to them, and is especially worried because she seemed so scared. Determined to find the answer, Steven sneaks into the temple basement where the bubbled gems are kept and releases Peridot from her bubble, where it is revealed once she reforms that sans limb enhancers she is… actually really small. Once she realizes where she is and sees the other bubbled gems, she becomes panicked, believing the Crystal Gems intend to harvest her. She half-heartedly smacks Steven and after realizing it hurts him, begins slapping him repeatedly as it’s her last line of defense without her limb enhancers. (FEEL HER UNBRIDLED RAGE) Steven demands to know why she’s being so irate and she responds with the following, in order, “YOU POOFED ME INTO A LIMBLESS CLOD, YOU TRAPPED ME IN YOUR BUBBLE DUNGEON, AND YOU CALLED ME CUTE.” Steven protests that he didn’t poof her and that he freed her, which prompts Peridot to reevaluate some things, asking Steven why he would “make such a miscalculation,” proving that she immediately goes to logic and reason before assuming any sort of emotional response. Steven asks her what she was trying to warn them about and she proceeds to have a near-nervous breakdown about the cluster and how her mission went horribly wrong, without, again, providing any sort of context. Steven tries to get her to slow down, but Peridot tricks him and manages to escape up into the house, which would be great, except the Crystal Gems are all hanging out up there, so Peridot’s glee at having managed to achieve freedom is short-lived. After a comical chase wherein Peridot runs around on all fours like a stray cat while the Gems prevent her from escaping, she manages to find sanctuary in the bathroom, which she labels “an archaic think chamber.” She then attempts to flush herself down the toilet.
Realizing that her knowledge of the cluster is all that’s keeping her free (and alive), Peridot uses this to her advantage by refusing to talk to the Crystal Gems, so that they’re forced to keep her locked in the bathroom, which sucks because Steven needs to use that, though he manages to placate her into letting him come in by giving her the only remaining piece of her limb enhancers. As Steven begins to do his morning bathroom ritual, Peridot questions him about various things, wondering if they’re weapons, due to the fact that she’s presently powerless and thinks the Crystal Gems are insane warlords who might try to torture her to get the information out of her. Steven points out that he doesn’t want to hurt her and just wants to help her, forcing Peridot to admit she appreciates the offer, but doubts he can do anything about it. At the very least, it means that of the Crystal Gems, he is the only one she has anything resembling trust for.
And so it goes, as the Crystal Gems continue to try and interrogate Peridot through the bathroom door, while she utterly refuses to cooperate because she hates them and they broke her stuff. Seeing as Peridot won’t crack, the Crystal Gems leave to investigate the matter on their own, entrusting Peridot guard duty to Steven with the caveat that she’s basically harmless and it’ll be fine. (Peridot strongly takes offense to that implication.)
As Steven makes dinner and a thunderstorm rolls away outside, a frightened Peridot emerges from the bathroom, convinced that the thunder is the sound of the cluster emerging. Steven explains to her that it’s just thunder and it happens when it rains, which confuses her, and she admits that she doesn’t know anything about the Earth without access to the screen that comes with her limb enhancers. Steven explains it to her and offers to show her by running out into the rain, to which Peridot expresses immediate concern for his safety, showing that she’s grown fond of him in her own way. Hesitant, but curious, she steps out into the rain and feels it for the first time, honestly surprised and taken aback by the sensation.
The moment apparently sparks something in her, though she won’t admit any sentiment, as she’s a creature of logic and can’t afford to acknowledge any emotional responses to anything. This is proven when it takes her a long time and some awkwardness to actually say “thank you” to Steven for explaining rain to her. She immediately brushes that off, however, as she acknowledges that Steven is a much more intelligent being than the other gems, and that she’s willing to give him information on the cluster, but not the other gems. However, she can’t give him any information without the use of her things, and her logs are backed up in the Prime Kindergarten, which she presently can’t access because she’s a “hostage” in the temple. Steven agrees to take her, but only if she holds his hand the whole time.
Peridot’s immediate response to arrival at the Kindergarten is to jump off the side of a fucking cliff, because apparently despite crying about it ten minutes ago, she forgot she is a smol creature of smolness and cannot run on walls anymore, but it’s fine. She and Steven are gems. They can survive landing face first in the dirt.
As Peridot and Steven walk through the Kindergarten, Peridot asks Steven about how well it was maintained when he emerged, believing him to be “some sort of quartz,” which prompts Steven to explain to her that he’s half-human. She asks him how it’s possible and when he starts to explain it, she decides she doesn’t want to hear that story at all, and they head off to the control room to find her logs. Steven questions the safety of the Kindergarten, because of the fusion monsters that were around when he was last here, and Peridot clinically responds that when “the earth was found to no longer be a viable colony, Homeworld found another use for it.” The terms she uses here, again, show that Homeworld has stamped out any history about the rebellion in its young gems. Furthermore, she goes on to explain that Homeworld chose to use Earth for a series of experiments, involving a gem geo-weapon. The fusion experiments were prototypes.
(when Steven questions her about her part in that, she says “she wasn’t around for that,” and that she read a few hundred years of reports, again hinting at her apparent youth)
Peridot restores power to the control room and begins to work on recovering her logs, which have data about how the cluster is comprised of millions of gem shards and that it’s currently incubating in the Earth’s crust. When it emerges, it will take the entire planet with it, as it will be bigger than the Earth, itself. All of this, she explains rationally and calmly, because while she believed that stopping the cluster was impossible and escape her only option, she now feels confident that the combined efforts of her and Steven will be enough to fix this mess. Steven immediately protests that Peridot is getting ahead of herself, because he’s far from the “expert on Earth” that she claims he is and that they need to inform the Crystal Gems. Peridot is having none of that, however, but their disagreement is cut short by the arrival of fusion monsters.
Peridot hides behind Steven, who produces a bubble to protect them, prompting Peridot, gracious as always, to demand that he do “something actually useful.” The two of them are cornered and only saved by the arrival of the Crystal Gems, and Steven explains that there’s no way they can do this without their help. As the gems prepare to berate Steven for failing to keep an eye on Peridot, she steps in to take full responsibility and agrees to tell them everything about the cluster. It clearly causes her physical pain to do this.
Using Steven and a cardboard box with drawings of the earth and the cluster on it as visual representation, Peridot explains the cluster to the Crystal Gems and stresses the importance of what they have to do- which, apparently, is build a giant drill capable of traveling to the Earth’s crust. As far as getting parts is concerned, she decides that the first step is to dismantle everything inside the temple, and after destroying the microwave, a phone, and the television, Steven decides he has a better idea and takes the Crystal Gems + Peridot to the storage barn.
Pearl proceeds to take lead on the plans to construct the drill and Peridot immediately dismisses her, believing her to be useless because she’s “a Pearl,” who function as servants on Homeworld, not engineers. Despite Pearl’s protests, Peridot’s well-instilled Homeworld classism rears its ugly head for the first time as she dismisses her completely, even laughing in her face (or you know, in the general region of her middle, since she’s short) when she demands to be listened to. She goes as far as to only address Steven when she means to talk to Pearl, assuming Steven is her “owner” and thus speaks for her. When Steven seems confused by the whole concept, Peridot asks Pearl who really owns her and when Pearl denies she has an owner, her only response is, “Then what are you for?” Since Pearl doesn’t have an answer for that, Peridot claims ownership, and seems delighted by the idea of a Peridot “owning a Pearl,” proving she’s not exactly high on Homeworld’s caste system herself.
Pearl blows up at Peridot, who proceeds to school her on the fact that she was made to build things and Pearl was made to take orders and not give them. Steven breaks up the fight and tries to smooth things over by hoping to appeal to the idea that they both can be good at building things, which the two gems wholeheartedly refuse to believe. The only compromise Steven can come up with is for them to both build giant robots and perform a series of tests to see whose robot functions better. The winner will get to be in charge of drill construction.
And so they do. In a shorter amount of time than it takes to say “Get in the robot, Shinji.”
After a series of tests- like a huge series of tests- the gems are tied, and Steven decides that this means they can both lead the project. Peridot refuses to accept this ruling and demands a tiebreaker, and when Pearl tries to shrug her off by saying that the ruling is clear and that they’re both good engineers, she responds that nothing she’s seen here today proves anything, because Pearl will “always be beneath her.”
This prompts Pearl to start a giant robot fight. As one does.
As the two brawl, Peridot continues to trash talk, claiming Pearl can’t beat her because she’s nothing but someone’s shiny toy, and demands to know where she gets off acting like her “own gem,” because she’s just a Pearl. This enrages Pearl, who proceeds to PUNCH PERIDOT IN THE FUCKING FACE. Despite her dramatic speechifying about how Pearls can do anything they want to do, however, Peridot still fucking piledrives her into the ground. Believing herself to be the rightful winner, Peridot emerges from her robot and demands her praise, only to become shocked when everyone rushes to comfort Pearl and express their pride that she stood up for herself. Peridot demands an explanation for why everyone thinks Pearl is so great when she’s the one who won and proved herself the natural leader, prompting Steven to speak up for Pearl and explain why she’s awesome. The Crystal Gems proceed to leave to clean up the mess the robot fight made, and when Peridot questions them about why they’re ignoring the rules of the game, Garnet shrugs and says “welcome to Earth.” This simple moment greatly changes Peridot as she realizes that nothing is exactly fair or how she expects things to be here. It’s another step in the right direction.
And that step leads her to awkwardly apologize to Pearl and admit that she’s remarkable to be able to do what she does for only being a Pearl. Pearl responds graciously by showing Peridot she’s been holding her power drill upside down and the two walk off to discuss drill construction, while Peridot continues to not understand Earth terminology.
At some point, Steven gives Peridot a tape recorder so she can continue to document her observations about Earth and drill construction. She enjoys it probably a little too much. Also, somewhere in all of this, she pushes Greg off the roof to see if all life on Earth has flight capabilities (after observing flying insects), because she is a scientist who doesn’t understand that you can’t push things off roofs, and Garnet has to explain to her, after saving Greg from breaking his everything, that humans are soft and can’t survive long falls like gems can. Garnet is the worst.
Three days into drill construction, Peridot informs Garnet that she should unfuse, because it makes her uncomfortable, prompting an annoyed Garnet to put her in a child safety leash and tie her to a fence as one does, because “her wandering around free was making her uncomfortable.” Peridot doesn’t seem to grasp what the hell she said or why it was offensive, since she was just stating an observation. Her Homeworld prejudices are once again showing, and no one has the spoons to deal with that shit right now.
As Peridot resigns herself to being tied up, Amethyst and Steven overhear her talking about “leverage optimizers,” which they realize is her way of saying screwdriver, prompting Amethyst to ask Peridot what she calls a variety of body parts and finding each technical term increasingly more hilarious. As Steven and Amethyst laugh at her, she realizes that she’s “funny,” a trait she’s clearly never applied to herself before that garners her positive attention, which she seems to crave to an obscene level.
Garnet sends Amethyst and Steven to “chaperone” Peridot as she goes to the Kindergarten to retrieve a drill head for their machine, continuing to document everything into her tape recorder. After hearing her call Garnet a “permafusion,” Amethyst questions her about it, to which Peridot, without meaning to be funny, tries to explain why she finds that offensive and weird, which is accidentally hilarious, because she can’t really get the words out. Amethyst prompts Peridot to keep talking about her feelings on everyone else and she starts getting really into it- again, enjoying the positive attention, especially since it comes from a “superior gem” like Amethyst. She points out that the funniest thing is that Amethyst believes she has to listen to Garnet and Pearl, because she’s a quartz and technically outranks them. However, this takes a dark turn when Peridot points out that Amethyst is defective and undersized, because she stayed in the ground too long and continues to take the joke too far, upsetting Amethyst, who is extremely sensitive about her backstory.
Peridot has no idea what she’s done to offend Amethyst and continues to try and make her laugh, but Amethyst is still angry and isn’t having any of it. When Peridot questions why her “responses are incorrect,” Steven gently has to explain that she hurt her feelings, and that even if what she said was true, it wasn’t something that needed to be said. Peridot at first dismisses this until it occurs to her that Amethyst won’t even look at her and it’s making her feel “smaller,” which Steven explains means she feels “bad” about what she did, even if she can’t rationalize it to herself, and that’s how she made Amethyst feel. She responds by… not rationalizing it to herself and throws a temper tantrum about why she has to care about how anyone feels.
As Peridot bitterly works on the drill, she accidentally sets it off and as it careens towards Amethyst, she rushes to her aide in a moment of severe Lesbihonest. This doesn’t exactly repair her relationship with Amethyst, but prompts her to finally apologize to her. However, she can’t actually spit the words out in front of her, as she is a failure at dealing with emotions, and proceeds to play back her talking about the incident on her tape recorder where there’s both an apology for hurting Amethyst’s feelings and an admission that Earth is stupid and complicated and she’s having to learn and unlearn behaviors and she’s trying to understand, because really she’s not better than any of the Crystal Gems, herself. After Amethyst accepts her apology, she admits to Steven that it made her feel “big.” SHE’S LEARNING…. And afterwards picks up a joke book so that she can be funny without making anyone feel bad, so that’s… important.
Steven gives Peridot a gift of “stilts” (actually cans he painted with flames) to help her feel taller to replace the limb enhancers she lost. Peridot is perplexed by the idea of “gifts” as she’s never been given anything before (a common theme of her character- she doesn’t expect anyone to care about her, hence why she glommed onto Steven first, because he clearly showed her compassion when no one else would, even if she didn’t understand why that was important to her). At first, she dismisses Steven’s gift, claiming she would never stoop so low as to tie Earth trash to her body, but under the cover of darkness, she indulges in the extra height the cans give her.
Peridot discovers television via Steven, who shows her a show called Camp Pining Hearts, which she becomes engrossed in through repeatedly watching a single episode and becomes aggressively vehement and passionate about Percy and Pierre, two characters that she believes form a competent and unmatched pair, and proceeds to rant about it to Steven for hours. Garnet ends up observing this, as well, and finds Peridot’s immersion into Earth culture to be satisfactory.
In fact, Peridot’s beginning to understand a lot about Earth from her own observations about the planet and the time she spends with the gems as she tries to understand their ways- she even agrees to attempt fusion with Garnet to better understand why she’s constantly fused (after watching Amethyst and Pearl form Opal), but breaks it off out of nerves. The fact that she tried to understand Garnet at all, however, is enough for her, and when Peridot protests that she still doesn’t understand, Garnet gets on her level and says “she’s like Percy and Pierre,” which… means she gets it. Finally.
As construction of the drill continues, Peridot becomes confused and irritated when the gems and Steven decide to take a break and enjoy the view, not understanding the concept of pointless relaxing. Steven explains that “working hard is important, but feeling good is important too,” which Peridot doesn’t quite grasp either, so to explain it better, he shows her how to sing by teaching her notes on his ukulele, after realizing that the noise her drill makes reminds him of music. She manages to catch on to the notes unreasonably fast, showing a high capacity for learning when faced with something not bogged down by the necessary emotional responses she still doesn’t quite know how to handle. She still doesn’t understand the point of music, but manages to rationalize it to herself in some way, even as she begins questioning the fact that she has to rationalize it to herself. Steven prompts her to write a song relating to what she’s feeling, which she does in her own mildly insulting way, admitting that everyone here is insane, but she has to be too, because she’s going along with it.
Once the drill is finished through the power of friendship and teamwork over the course of several weeks, the only thing left is to find the coordinates to the cluster. They use Lion to get them to a Diamond base on the moon, where Peridot begins excitedly talking about how awesome the Diamonds are, proving you can take the gem out of Homeworld, but you really can’t take Homeworld out of the gem. Garnet butts in to correct her on her assumption that gems live to serve the Diamonds and Peridot amends her statement that they were “made to serve the Diamond Authority, though some gems don’t anymore.”
The group continues to the control room where Peridot continues to fangirl about being in a place that only Diamonds could walk before. She admires the architecture of the control panel, though admits she has no idea how to turn it on because it’s archaic, and Steven manages to figure it out on his own by sitting in the Diamond’s control seat. Peridot flips out about him sitting somewhere reserved only for the esteemed matriarchs and when Steven points out they aren’t here and offers her the seat next to him, Peridot gleefully accepts a chance to sit on the forbidden seat. From there, she’s able to find the information she’s looking for and goes on to show Steven that the controls here were used to plan the colony on Earth, showing everyone the gem structures that were built on Earth and then taking it a step further and showing them what Earth could have been if it had been allowed to continue as a gem colony, which horrifies the Crystal Gems and Steven. Peridot continues to delight in the concept, believing it to be a more efficient use of resources, and goes on to blame Rose Quartz for dooming the Earth anyway by protecting it from Homeworld, because the cluster destroying it makes it useless to everyone. She’s completely oblivious to the Crystal Gems’ obvious discomfort with this until Garnet threatens her and tells her not to talk about things she doesn’t understand. Steven talks her down and as the Crystal Gems leave, Peridot asks Steven what she did wrong, because she was only stating a fact- Rose didn’t save Earth, she just delayed the inevitable. Steven says that’s not how they see it and that he thought that Peridot finally understood why. He leaves her alone, disappointed in her, and as she joins the group, he realizes she’s taken something from the control room- a mysterious diamond shaped object that’s actually a direct line to the Diamonds.
He corners her inside a broken down truck inside the barn to question her about the Diamonds, to which Peridot responds with more enthusiasm about how flawless and perfect they are, especially touting her Diamond (Yellow Diamond) as the most rational and logical being in the entire universe. Steven begrudgingly points out that she seems very loyal to Yellow Diamond and Peridot agrees, saying that even if she has a truce with the Crystal Gems, she can’t forsake the Diamond she was made to serve. Steven then tricks Peridot into giving him the communicator she stole and locks her in the truck, boasting that she won’t be able to defeat the child safety lock.
Peridot immediately freaks out at this betrayal and tries to beg and cry her way out, until Steven threatens to smash the communicator, forcing Peridot to explain that she has a plan to contact Yellow Diamond and have her sort this whole thing out, because she doesn’t trust that the Crystal Gems will ever actually successfully save Earth, because they let their emotions get the best of them. What she doesn’t explain, because she mistakenly assumed it went without saying, is that she’s hoping to appeal to Yellow Diamond to destroy the cluster and save the Earth, because surely her most rational and efficient Diamond will see that the Earth is more valuable to them as a resource in its present state. Unfortunately, since she made a critical error, Steven assumes that Peridot intends to betray them and send Yellow Diamond back to finish what she started, so she can be a good servant, instead of a friend to the Crystal Gems.
Steven leaves her locked in the car and goes to warn the other gems, but Peridot escapes the car by using the robot she built earlier…. somehow. I’m not sure how. Magic, I guess. Anyway, she gets the communicator back, and a spectacular chase ensues with everyone attempting to get the communicator back from Peridot. After a great deal of Diamond Line hot potato with Peridot berating Steven and the other gems for letting their emotions rule their sense of logic, she finally gets her little green hands on it and proceeds to contact Yellow Diamond, at first only getting her Pearl, who berates Peridot for daring to call on a direct line to the Diamonds.
Yellow Diamond eventually comes on the line, herself, and Peridot introduces herself as just “Peridot,” prompting YD to ask her which Peridot- as it turns out, spending time with the Crystal Gems has given her a sense of individuality and she anxiously responds with her full designation. From there, YD chastises her for being behind on her mission to Earth and questions her about it, and Peridot is forced to lie to her face about what happened to her ship and Jasper to protect the Crystal Gems. She goes on to explain what she believes about the Earth and that she thinks they should terminate the cluster, and proceed to use plans that Peridot has developed to utilize Earth’s resources in a way that doesn’t disturb the organic life living on it. Yellow Diamond, however, doesn’t see reason, much to Peridot’s shock, and irrationally just wants the Earth to be destroyed. When she demands that Peridot board a ship to Homeworld that she’ll be sending and redeem herself for her insubordination and failures, Peridot, in great anxiety, says she won’t go and that she knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that there are things on Earth worth protecting. The fact that Yellow Diamond is being irrational and thus wrong prompts Peridot to utterly betray her, even going so far as to call her a “clod” to her face, because she clearly knows more about Earth than she does. After terminating the call, Peridot realizes what she did and begins to have a panic attack, because she’s a traitor to her Homeworld now and has, through a matter of the programming instilled in her by the Diamonds that makes her a creature of logic and reason, inadvertently become a Crystal Gem, herself.
She doesn’t take it well.
In fact, one might say she takes it horribly.
She spends a great deal of time pacing around the temple, ranting into her tape recorder and alternating between hysterical laughter and freaking out about how she’s supposed to deal with no longer being what she always thought she was, eventually trying to get rid of the recorder, claiming that Steven can have it, because it’s a chronicle of her descent into madness and she “must return madness to its source.” Garnet calms her down by carrying her outside, prompting Steven to listen to Peridot’s old logs to see how she and Garnet became so close. As he listens, he sees the change that’s come over Peridot, the moments where she stops documenting things and begins to use the device as more of a personal diary where she can record her thoughts and feelings and witnesses her change her opinions on the Crystal Gems bit by bit. At Garnet’s prompting, Steven returns the tape recorder back to Peridot.
Abilities/Special Powers:
General Gem Abilities: Like all gems, Peridot is virtually indestructible, so long as her gem remains undamaged. If her “physical body” becomes too damaged, she “poofs” back into her gem where she can safely reform. If the gem becomes damaged or broken, then her reformation will either be incomplete or corrupted or she’ll die.
Though not as physically strong as some gems, due to that not being her gem type’s particular wheelhouse, she’s still stronger than an average human and much faster.
Since all gems have this ability (including Pearls), it can be assumed that she can summon a weapon from her gem, but we have yet to see her do so, suggesting that she has never felt the need of using one, due to her proficiency in other ways.
Her gem functions as a flashlight.
Intelligence: Peridot possesses a genius-level intellect due to her gem type being (seemingly) used as technicians and problem-solvers. As such, she prides herself on her ability to think logically and solve problems rationally without getting bogged down in emotion. She can pick up on things surprisingly quickly when she wants to, to the point where her only real hang-up in doing new things is the fact that she can’t stop asking why she should do it.
She is well-versed in construction and repair and can build and command various sphereical robots called robonoids (that she won’t really have access to the tools to build in eway), as well as build things such as giant robots and powerful drills with just junk she finds lying around.
She is an expert in gem technology, even managing to figure out tech that was archaic and otherwise difficult for her to instantly grasp- she's even shown working with what appears to be an old human desktop computer at one point.
Limb Enhancers: At one point, Peridot possessed body augmentations called “limb enhancers which could function as a computer as well as protect her with weaponized bursts and electricity that can be summoned from the “hands.” (On top of making her taller.) They also have a helicopter function… yeah. Given Peridot’s surprise at some of the functions of these enhancers, it’s pretty clear she’s new to using them, so even she doesn’t know every function of them. As of her canon point, she’s also lost them, but I’m adding them here in case circumstances in game allow her to have them again.
Her Mirror has them also, so… that’s important to note.
Third-Person Sample: This was… wrong.
Peridot had begrudgingly and with great difficulty embraced the fact that things were often insane and beyond her ability to reason when it came to the Crystal Gems, but this was far beyond that. This was… Well…
No other word but “wrong” described it.
One minute she was walking back to the barn, and the next she was standing on a beach. And not the one in front of the temple, either. Even if she were farther down the beach than she normally wandered, and the temple were out of sight, the truth of the matter was given away by the consistency of the sand and, more importantly, the lack of humans allowing the Earth’s sun to sap them of their energy as part of some bizarre sacrificial worship ritual (humans are strange and horribly uncivilized creatures).
Peridot grimaced and dropped a handful of sand back onto the ground, shaking the particles from her hand with exaggerated irritation. “Steven, is this some sort of… joke?” She glanced around, expecting to see him hiding behind a rock, giggling to himself. Realizing that jokes were meant to be funny (this one wasn’t, but she was still learning what was funny and what was cruel), she forced a strained laugh and slaps her knee. “Okay, you got me.”
She was greeted by silence, and it occurred to her, joke or not, that there was just no feasible way for her to be in one place one minute and then wind up in another completely at random- not without the use of a warp, a transport, or Lion- even with Steven’s influence. It flew in the face of everything she knew about traveling between locations quickly and efficiently.
And with that knowledge came the panic that always hit her from behind when her logic and reason failed her. The laugh that came next was no less forced, but now the manic, horrified laugh of someone worried about their fate. “Steven?” She repeated, sounding on edge. Silence greeted her, again. For a greeting, it was terribly unfriendly.
It’s fine. It’s totally fine. She’s just stranded somewhere strange with no limb enhancers, no Crystal Gems, and not a whole lot of hope of fixing the situation efficiently. Oh right, and there’s the undeniable fact that she betrayed her diamond and who knows whether or not she’s sending someone to Earth to break her into pieces right now. Oh no, leaving her for the cluster is CLEARLY not a good enough punishment for the mighty Peridot, who dared to call Yellow Diamond a clod. She’ll probably break her, personally. With her bare hands.
It occurred to Peridot in the midst of all of that, that (A. she was actually saying most of that out loud while frantically pacing in circles around the beach and (B. once finished ranting, she had curled herself in a fetal position on the gritty sand, hoping that it might absorb her into its unfeeling void and hide her from Yellow Diamond’s hypothetical wrath. This was embarrassing and not befitting a gem of her intellect, but she’d been having a hard time of things lately and, honestly, the ground seemed like the best place for her. Maybe she’d fuse with the sand and become an actual clod.
Or maybe she’d get over herself and pull herself together and work on fixing this problem without getting weighed down by hypotheticals that had no evidence beyond her own pride and fear. That seemed more reasonable…. Or it would, when she was feeling reasonable. One thing the Crystal Gems had taught her was that it was perfectly fine to be irrational sometimes.
And she’d earned a little more irrational behavior this week.
First-Person Sample: [the audio clicks on and the world is greeted to a shrill, mostly deadpan voice of someone who is trying very hard not to lose her patience and/or her shit.]
Log Date: Seven-six-one-two.
Despite being nowhere near an active warp, nor traveling inside the mane of Steven’s… pink creature, I seem to have found myself somewhere else on the Earth, given the high population of humans. I have no idea how this has come to pass, but I have found this recording device to document my findings, while I investigate this further.
...And try to find my… [an awkward pause as she tries to hiss out a word and finds it not to her liking and ends up just muttering:] associates, who have probably broken something again.
[silence falls, and then, a little bit later, the voice adds:]
An addendum to that previous log, not only are the Crystal Gems not here, but this device is actually an archaic communicator, so to everyone who can hear this:
[she sucks in a breath and then, shrilly, yells:]
DO YOU SOFT, PATHETIC MASSES OF ORGANIC MATTER HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH? DO YOU NOT REALIZE THAT ABDUCTING ME AWAY FROM MY MISSION MEANS YOU’VE DOOMED YOUR PRECIOUS PLANET? I HOPE YOU LIKE BEING DEAD IN THE COLD, UNFEELING VOID OF SPACE, BECAUSE IF I DON’T GET BACK, THAT IS EXACTLY WHERE YOU’LL BE. YOU DON’T REALIZE WHO YOU’VE LEFT IN CHARGE OF YOUR PLANETARY SALVATION WITH ME STUCK HERE.
[she makes a noise of disgust and adds, calmer, and clearly through gritted teeth:] I don’t know how you did it, but you are going to pay for it, unless you return me to where you found me immediately.