Some more thoughts on Barn Mates

I got this submission over email, and I’m not too sure how to credit it. But I do want to talk about it a little, so here it is!

Peridot’s behaviour towards Lapis in Barn Mates is very similar to how Pearl acted towards Garnet in Friend Ship. An overzealous attempt to make things better. Its an interesting parallell because in Friend Ship, Steven held the position (with Amethyst) that Pearl and Garnet needed to talk with each other. Where in Barn Mates, he kept coming up with ideas for gifts and gestures instead of just telling Peridot that she should apologize like she did with Amethyst in Too Far. Granted, Pearl and Garnet have a previously established relationship where Lapis and Peri doesn’t. This ep showed how Peridot is still learning since she is naive and blunt to the point of being pushy. Because she was being oushy. It shows that Steven has a weakness in how he wants everyone to get along right away instead of letting it take time. And it really showed how petty and vindictive Lapis can be. She seems to just want to blame everyone else for everything, even acting Peridot was purposefully being an ass even though there’s no way she knew about Malachite. And the tape recorder….there’s no way it won’t come up again. She literally just crushed Peridot’s coping mechanism and called it garbage.

There are some parts I want to talk about a little more, because of how spot-on I think the observations are.

1. The idea that Steven really just wants people to get along.

I know I’ve mentioned it a couple of times before. Where the CGs were used to using violence and aggression as the first line of defence, because of the war and being socialised that fighting equal strength, Steven is against fighting, against tension and miscommunication. He’s all about getting people together through peaceful means.

That’s a noble worldview, but sometimes, Steven wants to push for understanding right away and letting people shine and get along so much, that he doesn’t get to stop and really listen to what’s going on, because not everyone deals with their relationships in the same way, not everyone is comfortable with the same things. This doesn’t make Steven “bad” in the slightest. We all have our flaws, and to those saying that Steven’s character is sugar, spice, and too good to be true, here’s the thing: He’s flawed as well. It’s not something we actively see, because we’re seeing the show through Steven’s eyes, it’s Steven’s universe. But these flaws are present nonetheless, and they make his character that much more whole.

A really good example would be Sadie’s Song. As the episode progresses, we see Sadie get increasingly uncomfortable with how Steven and Barb are running her performance. Sadie voiced her concerns out in her own way. In a very Sadie fashion, she dropped hints and tried to change the subject. We’ve all done this one way or another, because we didn’t want to offend the ones who care about us. After all, they’re doing it because they care, right? And this is Sadie. She’s been unable to tell her mom for years that she didn’t want to go through with the extremes of her interests. Her mom still brings her those stuffed animals and packs her lunch every single day. She doesn’t like bringing it up, and she loves her mom. Barb clearly loves her too. There’s nothing inherently bad about what she and Steven were doing for Sadie. The thing is, they didn’t stop to listen to what Sadie herself wanted.

Steven’s eager to make things right and make people happy. In Frybo, he said all he wanted for all the heroic things he’s done is the smiles on people’s faces. But Steven is young. The submission is right in that sometimes people need time to process things. Lapis has only very recently had her freedom. The time she spent out of the mirror compared to the thousands of years she was trapped in it, that’s a drop in the bucket. I’ve talked before about how vindictive and ‘grudgy’ Lapis can be and that’s because of what she personally went through. She’s got her way of dealing with things, and it’s not necessarily good for her or anyone else. That’s where Steven tried to step in. He was helping Lapis cope by giving her a place she could call home away from Homeworld. Because home is a very big deal to Lapis. During the time she was trapped, all she wanted was to go back home; when she was freed, she went straight home. This is despite everything that Homeworld did to her during the war, because deep down, she blames the CGs for starting the war in the first place.

She’s had a singular, almost obsessive mission for so long, and that goal was what kept her going. She felt something back home was worth everything she’d gone through. And she lost that. Lapis needed a safe space for herself, but she didn’t know where to find one. Steven, displaying his usual level of perception, caught on to that, and offered up the barn.

2. On Lapis’ issues with Peridot

I doubt that the methods used to interrogate her and extract information were as brutal as those during the Rebellion. During the Rebellion, Homeworld trapped her in a mirror and ordered her to answer (and she couldn’t say anything else other than what was asked of her). That act stripped her of autonomy and identity. It dehumanised her and made her feel like a tool to be used instead of anything she once was. Adding insult to injury, she was just left behind, not a tool important enough to be brought home.

That’s demoralising. And whatever interrogation methods Peridot used were probably harmful as well, but I doubt they were as bad, because Lapis was able to sneak out and contact Steven. She was trusted with only a Peridot and a Jasper to go back to Earth. There are other signs that Homeworld now probably isn’t as brutal as the Homeworld of the past. For instance, Ruby’s first fusion with Sapphire had the penalty of getting her shattered without question and without explanation. While I think YD had an incredibly volatile reaction at the end of hers and Peridot’s argument, the concerns leading up to it: Peri’s failure of the mission, losing her escort, and her appeared ineptitude at her job, didn’t lead to any threats of shattering or something similar. Peri would be reported to her superior and probably face a punishment more bureaucratic than anything. YD was going to send her to her next mission after Peri lost an entire ship “by accident.”

I’ve written before that Homeworld’s shift towards technology also means they’re less maul someone with a sword and more fill in paperwork now. As such, the entire exchange with Lapis was probably very unpleasant, but more than anything, it dredged up the memories of Lapis’ earlier interrogation in the mirror, and that’s what she couldn’t accept. She values her identity, her autonomy, herself. Being used, even in this manner, as an informant (because she came from Earth thousands of years after the last survivors, of course Homeworld would raise a few eyebrows), makes her feel awful.

But Lapis is vindictive. She’s not over it. She’s projecting the things she’s frustrated with about new Homeworld on Peridot.

Homeworld isn’t the way it used to be. She said as much in The Message. And Lapis doesn’t like it. She’s had her sights set on “Homeworld,” the one she left behind before the war started. It was what gave her hope she could make it out of the mirror and it kept her going. So her surprise at everything that’s changed makes her not only upset, but angry. To her: How dare Homeworld change and leave her behind and not feel like home any more?

And who embodies the newness of Homeworld perfectly? The shift towards logic (at least what it tries to do) and technology, and an office like bureaucracy, and away from courts and nobles, and wars fought with gems and swords. Peridot.

In the old days, a gem like Peridot probably wouldn’t even have existed. Theirs was a culture which was live and fight, or die. A gem like Peridot, who needed limb enhancers to do her job, would have been useless to them in that society, particularly because assistive technology hadn’t been made yet. The lower positions, aside from Pearls, who were more decorative and a status symbol, were reserved for soldiers and fighters. These are things we see Peridot learn on the job, while on Earth. Because Peridots probably aren’t taught combat. There’s actually a space for gems who just don’t have to fight but serve a utilitarian purpose on Homeworld now.

Peridot is seamless with technology. She can interact and interface with technology as though it’s second nature to her. She calls her limb enhancers her “foot” but refers to her physical feet as something like gravity connectors.

I’m certain if Jasper or any of the gems who imprisoned her were there, she’d face Lapis’ ire as well. But Peridot is a pretty good target for her anger, given all those reasons.

3. Peridot’s behaviour and the tape recorder

One thing I’m certain a lot of people noticed, was how much Peridot tried to get Lapis to forgive her and even start liking her. Peridot is still Peridot. She’s still her analytical self. But as she said, “It’s different now!” She’s seen the logical value in Earth and her new friends. And this means she’s definitely seen the value in getting on someone like Lapis’ good side. I’m not saying that Peridot has all these ulterior motives for befriending everyone. It’s just that all these things make sense to her and that’s important, because Peri acts based on how much things make sense to her. If for Amethyst, things “feel right” as seen in Reformed, Peri’s rationale is that things make sense, and that’s the only way for things to feel right.

Something we start to see, though, is that Peridot has rejection issues of her own. In Message Received, she tells Steven “How could you do this to me, the lovable Peridot?” And I strongly feel that she meant it. It’s not only that she’s naive because she doesn’t know a lot of the historical baggage everyone carries. But she also has trouble sensing how people feel, and pre-empting how her actions and words might affect them. That’s why saying things like “thank you” and I’m guessing “I’m sorry” don’t come naturally to her. They don’t carry a tangible value in conversation or a relationship. We give those words meaning. We say that you’re rude for not apologising or thanking someone.

So these things escape Peridot. She needs to go over them again. That’s why the tape recorder (and her own logs from her limb enhancers) are so important. The processing is what helps her understand everyone else.

Peridot has difficulty picking up on how people might be feeling if they don’t explicitly tell her. But she knew that the tape recorder was the perfect thing to give because this feeling was something she was already familiar with. Everything she said about everything being new and scary and needing processing, that’s very true for Lapis. Earth has changed; Homeworld has changed. In Same Old World, Lapis confessed these things herself, and that’s how we know her actions were those of spite, particularly crushing that tape recorder.

It shows Peridot is starting to become more perceptible. It’s something she’s picking up from people like Steven, and as we’ve seen, Amethyst (I got cho’ number!). She’s reading people a bit better now, and that’s a leap from her old comfort zone.

And because of this, I really hope that tape recorder gets fixed. It’s helped her come a long way and it can help a lot more as the show progresses.

These are pretty fragmented thoughts brought about by the submission, but they all tie in to the idea that these three characters all have different ways of processing the world and everything else around them. They’re going to butt heads from time to time because of this, but when they can work it out, they get a glimpse into those other worldviews and for me that makes their characters a lot richer.