Route 29: ｍｏｄｓ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
these_balls) wrote2010-04-27 11:40 pm
these_balls) wrote2010-04-27 11:40 pm
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Understand the secrets and have some fun
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Peridot | Steven Universe | Reserved/Re-apping! 1/2
Name: Possum
Personal Journal:
E-mail: impossumblerp@gmail.com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: AIM: thesnarkypossum Plurk:
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: N/A
Character
Name: Peridot
Series: Steven Universe
Timeline: “Log Date: 7 15 2”
Canon Resource Links:
Steven Universe Wiki has a pretty in-depth history section now, but in summary:
Peridot was initially introduced as an antagonist, sent to Earth to case out the planet’s status and report back on the progress of some seriously nasty Gem experiments that were still going on there. When zapping to the planet using warp pads and conducting her work via remote controlled technology ceased to be a feasible option, she and two other gems arrived from Homeworld via spaceship, to complete the mission that was laid out for her by their leader, Yellow Diamond.
They were thwarted of course, as antagonists on kids’ shows often are, and Peridot was stranded on an unfamiliar alien planet in hostile territory, without her escort or her informant to help her. Eventually the Crystal Gems succeeded in capturing her (after several failed attempts), though she was almost immediately released by Steven. Trapped on Earth and with little other choice, she is now willingly working with the Crystal Gems to try and stop the earth-destroying menace that is The Cluster.
Personality:
Peridot has come quite a long way since she appeared for the first time. A younger gem with little life experience outside of the confines of her job, there is much we have learned about her since she began living on Earth and started working alongside Steven and the other Crystal Gems, and there’s a night and day difference between the Peridot of the past and the Peridot we see now.
In her first appearance, Peridot exuded a calm and detached aura. She was hyper-focused on getting her job done and getting it done well, doing precisely what she was assigned to do with swift efficiency. Being in a controlled environment where nothing immediately cataclysmic happened (and armed with the knowledge that, should something go wrong, it could be solved with a simple report back to her superiors for further instructions), she pulled the job off with little to no incident. She even reacted calmly in the face of minor snags on the way; discovering evidence that the site may have been compromised did not trigger a Chicken-Little style meltdown. On the contrary, because she knew what to do and how to handle things in advance, she very calmly pressed pause on her work and went to report the anomaly with haste.
In actuality, Peridot is not as calm or as experienced as she would like her enemies to believe. Though she is a naturally brilliant technician, she does not perform well under pressure and comes off more like a grad student sent into the field for the very first time, rather than a seasoned veteran; she’s all book smarts, and no street smarts. Unexpected turns and changes of circumstance throw her for a loop and lead her to panic and grow flustered very easily, and this is demonstrated with increasing frequency with each subsequent appearance that she makes through the series.
The change of attitude does not come without reasonable cause. Peridot is thrown way out of her depth when she becomes stranded on Earth, where she is in very serious danger and has very little idea of how to proceed. Far from the calm persona she projects when recording her log at the Galaxy Warp, the message she sends to her superior, Yellow Diamond, shows her growing steadily unhinged and desperate, starting out with her trying to craft a sensible request for help, and ends when it swiftly falls apart into a panicked plea for rescue.
These examples represent two extremes of Peridot’s complex personality, but it isn’t until Steven reaches out to her in “Catch and Release” that we get a good sense of what she truly is. Naturally suspicious, arrogant, boastful, and easily frightened by the unknown, Peridot is very much a product of the highly segregated caste hierarchy that Homeworld represents. She is extremely confident in her abilities as a technician and seems to revel in lording her skills over the others, firmly believing that she’s the only one of the five of them that’s capable of doing what she does, because she’s the only one who’s “officially” qualified for it – she initially can’t accept that Pearl might be as good of a technician as she is, because the intended function of a Pearl is as a more or less ornamental servant or vanity piece. Peridot outright refuses to treat her as an equal, even when Pearl proves herself an even match. After witnessing Steven and the other Crystal Gems defend and support Pearl so unconditionally, though, Peridot eventually reaches an understanding with the other gem, and she learns to work together with her with something more closely approaching mutual respect.
Respect is not something that Peridot easily affords to others unless they are of a gem type that outranks her, and humans are barely even worth consideration in her eyes; she is aggressively disinterested in their affairs, and blows off explanations of things that she deems irrelevant. She makes no attempt to hide her rather nasty personality around those she’s used to considering beneath her, and she has a tendency to be extremely snide and rude to most people as a result. On the other hand, she will act out and suck up in an attempt to gain the favor of those she does respect and/or see as an authority.
Slinging petty insults is a favorite tactic of hers, and Pearl mentions that she is prone to throwing “temper tantrums” when she becomes aggravated to the point of being overwhelmed. Desperately insecure in unfamiliar social situations, she’s impressionable, and will sometimes pick up gestures, language and habits and parrot them back at people in an attempt to seem witty or “in the loop”. We see this happen a few times, such as in “Catch and Release” when Steven uses the “What’s that on your shirt” bit to get her to look down so he can flick her nose. She attempts the same move a few minutes later, but messes up and says “What’s your shirt?” instead. This kind of behavior projects an image of immaturity, particularly by human standards. She is also incredibly defensive, and becomes infuriated when people fail to take her seriously. She does not enjoy being called “cute” or “harmless”, which hints at a strong, hidden desire to be respected, and that she considers such descriptors to be degrading.
Contrasting that, Peridot can be very cold and ruthless, which is another likely byproduct of her Homeworld influenced morals. In “Marble Madness”, she thinks very little of harming Steven, and would have crushed him with a giant remote-controlled hand without a second thought had Garnet not intervened. She also doesn’t have much concern for what the Cluster or the Kindergarten will do to Earth until she becomes trapped there and it directly affects her own safety. Often callous in social situations, she’s blunt and speaks in what she considers to be absolute truths, without any consideration for the damage her words may cause to the feelings of others. Emotions in general seem somewhat foreign to her, and when forced to talk about them she describes them in vague terms, like calling the sense of guilt that she felt after upsetting Amethyst as making her “feel small”. In general, she just doesn’t do very well with social interaction. Whether this is a result of her upbringing on Homeworld or merely an inherent facet of her personality is anyone’s guess, but the end result is the same: Peridot struggles greatly with engaging with people in abstract, emotional terms. She struggled so much with verbalizing her thoughts properly under the pressure of a face-to-face interaction that she had to record her apology to Amethyst on a tape recorder.
She’s also cocky, cruel, and tends to be a bit of a bully when she thinks she’s in a safe and untouchable position, or when she thinks that she has the upper-hand. Contrast that with the cowardice that she displays in “Keeping it Together”, wherein the Crystal Gems wound up chasing her all over the Kindergarten, while she evaded them with the increasingly ridiculous gadgets she had at her disposal. In this case, Peridot was clearly panicked and terrified (if her constant wailing and yelping as she tried to dodge their attempts to catch her are any indication), since she was physically in the same place as the lot of them and in very real, tangible danger.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
As a rather sheltered and inexperienced individual, Peridot has her fair share of weaknesses and nasty personality flaws.
Her social skills are pretty sub-par, even among other gems, though it’s especially egregious when it comes to interacting with residents of Earth. She displays a very linear way of thinking that can often lead to her misunderstanding and deeply upsetting others without her even meaning to, such was the case in “Too Far”. Amethyst found Peridot’s scathing descriptions of her fellow Crystal Gems to be hilarious and laughed uproariously at them, which encouraged Peridot to continue to behave that way. Of course, Peridot simply could not understand why Amethyst didn’t find it as funny when she moved on to targeting her with her rude jokes next. It’s as if Peridot views social interactions almost like they are mathematical formulas, where a certain combination of actions will always yield the same results. She fails to recognize a successful conversation as a shifting thing, containing infinite variables that one needs to learn to adapt to in order to achieve the desired results.
She is very efficient, and this kind of doubles as both a strength and a weakness. Peridot performs tasks quickly and without any nonsense or idling, but that same efficiency can lead her to be very terse and callous with people. She’s impatient to an extreme fault, and becomes aggravated when things don’t move at her pace, which causes her to get sloppy and make mistakes.
As far as practical skills go, Peridot is a capable technician. This is her function as designated on Homeworld according to her gem type, and she demonstrates it constantly by using and maintenancing advanced gem tech, and easily building advanced contraptions (such as a giant, pilotable robot, for example) with ease. Though this is a widely applicable and very useful skill, it’s also the only one that she knows. She’s extremely cocky and overconfident in her abilities, but also panics easily and, much like Pearl, has a hard time adapting to changes in plan. The argument she got into with Jasper over readjusting the parameters of the mission that they were both on highlights this pretty well.
Her greatest strength, on the other hand, is that she has the capacity and willingness to learn from the Crystal Gems, and shows a desire to desire to grow as a person. She is aware that she has a lot to learn about living on Earth, and openly expresses a desire to understand things better. Though somewhat set in the close-minded ways of her home planet, on multiple occasions Peridot has shown a willingness to compromise and/or readjust her views on things. Her relationship with Pearl is a great example of this.
As a final but important weakness, it’s necessary to note that her knowledge of Earth is completely abysmal. At the canon point I’m taking her from, she at least has the benefit of some basic experience under her belt. But, considering that before she started hanging out with the Crystal Gems she had no idea what simple things like thunderstorms, wheels, towels or toilets were, she’s still bound to struggle with some things. Human expressions and phrases also confuse her greatly, as she tends to take things very literally, but she usually catches on pretty quickly once the actual meaning is explained to her. Peridot is bright and inquisitive… she just happens to have lived a very sheltered life in a culture completely different from our own before she met Steven.
2/2
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: I'd like for her to get her Elgyem back if that's ok!
Password: Pumpkin seeds!
Samples
First Person Sample:
[ The video feed starts with her face veerrryy close to the camera. She readjusts before starting: ]
Alright, which one of you dolts wants a horrible obnoxious bird--?
[ She’s cut off by the distinct voice of a chatot, which is echoing her last few words from where it’s perched in the background: “Obnoxious bird, obnoxious bird!” Peridot whips her head from the camera to glare over her shoulder at it. ]
GaaaaaAAHHHH, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!
[ “Shut up! Shut up!” The chatot chimes right back, making Peridot wince. She turns back to the camera, looking even more hassled than before. ]
Look, I caught this horrible beaked menace because it was following me around, mocking me and loudly repeating private conversations for everyone in the vicinity to hear. I had no choice. There was no other way to get rid of it!
[ “Get rid of it! Get rid of it!” Peridot pauses to take a deep, shaky breath before continuing, dragging her hands down her face.] Please… Please, someone just take it from me. [ When she removes her hands from her eyes the look on her face is one of sheer, pained desperation, a miserable grin plastered on her face. ] We don’t even have to trade, I’ll just give it to you! For free! [ “For free! For free!” Says chatot. The gem kind of looks like she wants to cry. ] The only condition is that you just get it as far away from me as possible. My number is attached to this message. PLEASE HELP ME--
[ Chatot takes this moment to launch itself at the camera, squawking raucously. Peridot is shrieking obscenities, unseen behind a wall of fluttering feathers. The video cuts off there. ]
Third Person Sample:
Gems don’t really do ghost stories. Gems don’t really do ghosts, because death is not as much of an inevitable conclusion for members of their race like it is for humans. Thus, Peridot has little context for these so called “ghost type” Pokemon that she’s been sent out to catch from Burnt Tower, of all places, in the middle of the flipping night, because apparently that’s the only time of day in which they’re guaranteed to appear.
She so misses the days when she didn’t need to sleep to survive.
“Diamonds it’s dark in here,” she grumbles to herself, eyes adjusting slowly to the inky black. She also misses the days when she still had her limb enhancers, instead of having to rely on multiple separate devices. She could have sworn that she packed a flashlight for this expedition, but when she’d dug through her bag to look for it moments ago, she’d come up empty handed. And so, instead of nice, reliable technology, she has…
“Can’t you do something about this?” she waspishly demands of her Elgyem, who is dutifully floating at her side as usual. It turns its expressionless gaze up toward her, blinking slowly, and then lifts up its stubby little multi-colored fingers. They glow softly and blink, casting an eerie, technicolor halo in a short radius around itself. It’s not very effective.
“...Wow. Thanks,” Peridot growls sarcastically, rolling her eyes. She hates this. Having to rely on other gems to do things for her was bad enough, but have to rely on these tiny little organic creatures that aren’t even sapient? She’s really out of her element in this world.
“What else what else what-- a-hah!” She gropes at her belt for another Pokeball, releasing the monster inside as soon as it’s in her grasp; Houndour emerges, nearly impossible to see against the gloom. “What about you. Can you lighten things up in here?”
There’s a pause, shortly followed by a burst of flame that illuminates the whole room. It just throws its head back and starts spewing fire straight up in the air??? Unbelievable??? WHY WASN’T SHE MORE SPECIFIC WITH HER ORDERS? Tongues of flame lick at the already burnt rafters above, and Peridot’s too shocked by her blunder to act for a moment.
“No no no no no no no no!!” the gem hisses frantically, voice cracking with panic, brain finally catching up. She forces Houndour back into its pokeball and stands there, stock still, bathed in darkness once more as she strains her ears, listening to see if that idiotic display managed to wake up one of the caretakers. Are those footsteps? Those sound like footsteps.
Screw it, she’ll take a failure for this job. It’s time to go.
She snatches Elgyem up under her arm and books it back outside, swearing under her breath and berating herself the whole way...
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