So yeah. Stevenbomb 8 was about breaking up and grieving. I think Peridot’s feelings regarding her relationship with Lapis, her grieving and her way of dealing with both of those things were explained to us in one of the most beautiful metaphors she show has used yet: Back to the kindergarden.

I think that last piece of dialogue at the end of the episode actually reflect Lapis and Peridot’s relationship, as well as the posibility for both of them to move on. Here’s what I mean:

I. RELATIONSHIP: “I was a fool to think we could reinstitute life there”

“Guess the country side here is really beautiful…but who cares?! I wanted to have this for the kindergarden!”



Lapis, as we know, is a deeply damaged individual. She has never actually confronted her traumas, never dealt with her feelings and so we have her circling back to defense mechanisms whenever something slightly threatening shows. Her first instint is to fly the fuck away and never be seen or heard of again because if they can’t find you, they can’t hurt you, throw you to war or trap you in a fusion or a mirror. She has “safe” tattooed on her brain, and while none of these things make her a bad person™, they do make her someone who should seek out help before making harsh decissions.

Peridot, on the other hand, is shown to have gone above and beyond- not neccessarily a good thing- to make Lapis happy, to make her feel safe, to provide that bubble-like environment that would give her security and would make sure that nothig bad or threatening ever, ever, EVER, touched her again. She found more artistic outlets as substitutes for her creative, curious mind. She stayed away from CG business (mostly), and instead gardened and grew a wall of crops. She made everything domestic, soft and quiet. In her never ending fear (bc Peridot is shown to be fucking frightened of inconveniencing Lapis) of disturbing Lapis in anyway, Peridot behaved like and enabler, lost herself in the bubble that did nothing to prevent Lapis from losing herself as well.

Lapis and Peridot’s relationship is the land where nothing grows. Is the product of hiding from yourself, running from your issues, numbing your emotions, being afraid of the other. Nothing good can grow there, nothing will bloom in a foundation that lacks equality, communication and trust.

The moment Peridot gets emotional, Lapis invalidates her. The moment she starts being anything other than the goofy, soft and slightly quirky gem and shows herself as a complex individual with worry, fears and irrational attatchments, Lapis can’t deal, so she snaps. And Peridot doesn’t know how not to be an enabler either. This was doomed to fail but still they tried. Peridot tried, Lapis too, in her own way, and damn, it still ended.

II. GRIEF: “once you messed something up, it’s ruined for good and nothing will be able to grow again!”

This one’s pretty self explanatory: Is the classical post- breakup hopelessness. If you failed so bad at something you loved so much, then obviously nothing’s going to work out for you ever gain. Ever. You’re a ruiner so stick it, sucks to be you.

III. ACCEPTANCE: “Even if there was nothing we could do for that one patch of land, there’s still a whole earth blooming all around us!”

The stages of grieving are well known, and Peridot is just inmerse in her process to actually see a light out, so is Steven the one in charge of exposition this time.

The key here is “nothing we could have done for that specific patch of land”. So yeah, relationships don’t always work out. Sometimes, regardless of how much love you put in there, how much work and sweat, nothing grows. And that’s ok .

Some people are adequate for you, some aren’t. The same goes for you: It may be not work out due to compatibility issues, or maybe even you weren’t what they needed at a given time, like Peridot and Lapis. I’m sure they loved eachother, but they just weren’t adequate for each other at the moment. Doesn’t mean that any of them are doomed to solitude or damaged beyond repair, it just mean you couldn’t grow something with that specific person, in that particular patch of land.

IV. She’ll survive: “why don’t we try gardening in literally any other place? it’ll be easier than trying in the kindergarden…that dirt doesn’t care how green your thumb is.”

The clousure of the metaphor is a message of hope: You just invested in one of the lands you could have never helped. That friend or partner that no matter how hard we tried, we could never get them out that hole. Peridot could have never heal Lapis single-handedly, Lapis had to actually want help first. Enabling her tendency to bury emotions was not going to help her. Without communication, without Lapis input and drive to get better, to deal with herself, Peridot could have folded herself in a million ways, and still would not have been able to safe her.

I’m not saying Lapis is bad, I’m saying her relationship with Peridot wasn’t healthy for either of them. The narrative is saying break ups suck, but are sometimes inevitable. They are not foretelling your whole affective life, they’re not dooming you to loneliness, they’re just a painful but neccessary part of life, and maybe your green thumb did not work for that soil, but hey, it doesn’t mean is useless or broken, we should just garden somewhere else.