I remember Blue Diamond's first reveal during Garnet's flashback and all the cool theories and fanfic about Yellow and Blue Diamond's courts, how they treat their gems, the types of gems they employ, the mystery of white diamond, etc.

And then the show just completely drops all the gem worldbuilding a season later. The magic/mythical element from the first season is gone, they shat the bed expanding on the sci-fi elements, the new gem designs gradually got more basic, and homeworld itself looked like absolute garbage.

Petropia rules

>>149452697 (OP)
I don't know how I expected them to look, but yeah I was there when all we had to go off the diamonds were the murals on the moonbase. S1 in general often felt like "Steven lives on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that he should voyage far. Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein."
The extended gem lore definitely had a creepy and ominous feeling because noone wanted to tell Steven any of it, and what we did see of it (Rose's Room, the Weapons, the Corrupted Gems) were very creepy and were big threats. So when the Diamonds actually arrived they were an anticlimax because they were very soft and nonthreatening unlike what we expected. Hell Yellow Diamond got revealed on Midget Peridot's fucking Zoomcall for kek's sake

>>149452697 (OP)
>the new gem designs gradually got more basic
Yeah, what was up with that? In the Ruby and Sapphire flashback the silhouettes of the gems look extremely varied. Then when we get a flashback of the same place later in the series and they’re suddenly all Topazes and Amethysts. It really feels like they stopped giving a fuck after a certain point.

>>149453144
I just realized, some of the silhouettes are what the background gems became during that party episode.

>>149453230
Forgot my image, but yeah, the designs got way uglier after Holy Blue. They also reused a lot of shit too, like yellow Topazes being guards for different diamonds despite there being multiple types of topazes, and all gems apparently sharing Peridot's limb enhancers (like Amethyst) even if they look awkward and don't make sense.

God, every time I think about all the squandered potential of this show, it all boils down to a single phrase: It could've been great.

This thread has been making me go on a nostalgic trip of all the fanfic and fan art over the course of the show's life, and looking back at how amazing it was and (back then) thinking the show would do even better, it now all seems so surreal how little of a shit Sugar and her crew gave about anything besides the main gems and those annoying ass townies.

I still fully believe that the gem lore was just Rebecca Sugar's bait and switch to get people to watch her androgynous, colorful blobs dick around in le comfy beach town

>>149453457
I'm trying to find a fan comic of Rose Quarts during a trial, this predates the actual trial episode, and she had to prove herself through battle. There were Zircons but instead of being lawyers and there just being two, they were judges that represented each of the four diamonds. I remember the art being kind of crude, but the concept and the plot being awesome.

>>149452697 (OP)
The lore is all over the place. Rebecca failed to depict the supposed family relationship Blue and Lapis have.

>>149453581
Anytime I think about Lapis in this show I remember that she hasn't had an actual conversation with a single one of the crystal gems. The only instance we could have gotten an interaction with them was during the Thanksgiving episode, but the Steven POV rule cucked us out of it, just like it kept us from a lot of cool and interesting things.

>>149452942
I think the scope was wrong from the beginning, In the scale of antagonist we go from Lapiz (a wildcard) to Peridot (a bureaucrat) to Jasper ( A soldier) straight to the diamonds (god queens of their species). The scope was so big there was no way to solve this problem without a coup out ending.

Also the zoomcall sort of ruined the world building since it was the most underwhelming way to present your big bad, here we have peridot a low rank gem calling her supreme leader talking to her with relatively shill and yellow diamond just answering like she is a middle manager instead of a god like gem who rules multiple planets.

>>149453581
Blue would have been an even bigger mile. She already has the look for it.

I hated the way pink diamond looked

>>149453755
Yeah, honestly when all we had to see of them were the murals they looked creepy and otherworldy. They’re literally holding planets in their hands. They seem mysterious and powerful and a far off threat not to even speak about. There was that whole thing of Pearl wanting to keep the moon base murals secret from Steven or whatever.
Then because they rushed Peridot and rushed Yellow in suddenly the diamond are middle management Karens and none are scary anymore.

>>149452697 (OP)
>remember Blue Diamond's first reveal during Garnet's flashback and all the cool theories and fanfic

>>149454527
FUCK canon. I'm making my own canon.

The mural depicts the four Diamonds, the highest and most powerful of all Gems. It also depicts the planets within their control. White has the most control, followed by Blue and Yellow, with Pink having the least control, only a single planet within her domain. This single planet is Earth.

>>149454657
Isn't that what the murals mean?

>>149454717
No, because they literally never come up again

>>149453581
It's a real shame. Lapis would have had more for her going on outside of Steven. She is wasted on the barn.

Lars of the stars reboot will fix all of this. Trust.

>>149455119
>inb4, Steven’s POV is swapped for Lars’ so interesting flashbacks are still screed
>inb4 new gem designs look like shit
>inb4 both sci fi and magic elements are all over the place
>inb4 human townies get swapped for gem townies, and also they’ll still waste epsidoes on human townies

>>149454750
It's still just a basic reading of what they do mean. Did you need the show to spell it out even though you understood it correctly the first time?

Bismuth was cool