Steven Universe Shaded Tea Room

Pink Diamond

I'm about to go in. And before one of you say I'm taking a dump on Pink Diamond, I'm not. This is what we see. Some of you just refuse to see it and this is actually a common writing trope that I should research more called "Characterization Marches On." When a series is first established, you can sort of play around with the characters a bit. Garnet was forever serious, Amethyst was basically a teenager and Pearl was motherly. As the series progressed, their personalities sort of shifted a bit to sibling like relationships. With Pink Diamond or her persona of Rose Quartz, we got it in reverse. 

Now when we first get introduced to Pink Diamond, she's evidently appeared to be a bubbly, over-friendly Gem, showing excitement at the idea of contacting a fleet, had an assertive personality, expressing her feelings quite loudly most likely to display her beliefs that she belonged to the Great Diamond Authority. However, Pink also seemed to be short-tempered, immature, possessive, selfish, spoiled and needy. This was first shown when she demanded a world and fleet of her own, threw a tantrum and angrily punched one of the glass dome panes of Yellow Diamond's jungle moon base after being told to act like she was significant. And in "Volleyball", it's revealed that she inadvertally broke Pink Pearl to the point even White couldn't fix her with her ever famous tantrum. 

We also get a glance of what the rebels saw her as, a dictator. But that could have been lies or an act, who knows. Plus she never really thought about the consequences of her actions. She assumed the Diamonds wouldn't miss her ( not true) if she was shattered and they only cared about their colonies instead of seeing them as busy adults. Her lies ultimately caused a lot more harm than good. Yes, the Earth was saved, but at the cost of countless gem lives. She basically forgot about Spinel and she snapped on the wrong person. Steven basically had to clean up her mess and a lot of innocent Rose Quartzes were imprisoned and was almost possibly shattered. 

Does this erase the good she did? Well no. This just makes me question a lot of things. Like what would have happened if she lost the rebellion?  After all, she expressed to them her desire to preserve Earth's lifeforms, the other Diamonds constructed a zoo for Pink to keep humans...as creepy as that was. A lot of the older gems know who she is and there may be some sort of censorship to preserve her from the newer generation. Steven also has to deal with the reprocution of her many...many choices. 
So in summary, we're basically getting a backwards redemption arc...if that makes sense. Like she isn't a bad person, she just made a lot of fucked up life choices and we're now seeing the consequences of those actions. I think Rebecca and the Crewniverse is doing this for a reason. We only know bits and pieces of what happen, from different sides. So there is no clear picture of who Pink Diamond is until we figure it.