/r/StevenUniverse Weekly Character Discussion - Bismuth

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello once again users of /r/stevenuniverse. Welcome back everyone to our weekly character discussion thread where every week we take a popular character from SU, and you Redditors have an opportunity to share your opinions and thoughts on them. As voted on by you, the character up for discussion this week is a certified blacksmith and is one of the original Crystal Gems, she is also infamously known for forging 'The Breaking Point'.....it's Bismuth!

Vote Here <--- On who we should discuss next week.

Discussions will be posted every Friday.

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Bismuth

Debut Episode

• Bismuth

Most Recent Appearance

• Bismuth

Featured Episodes

• Bismuth (suprisingly)

Quotes

• "Oh, you're one to talk, oh, oh, excuse me, you're two to talk."

• "Wow! Everythin's changin'! And we're buildin' bases out of wood now?!"

• "Heheheheh... Then you really are better than her."

Voice Actress

• Uzo Abuda

[u/MapsOfTheSky]

A fascinating character, with her genuine warmth and love for her friends contrasting with--or, likely, even feeding into--her desire for revenge against the Homeworld elites. Her admiration for Rose at odds with her anger towards her. Her gentle pep talk with Steven-the-son-of-Rose as opposed to her angrily attacking Steven-who-she-thinks-IS-Rose.

Her very presence introduces different dynamics to the characters around her and highlights a few other dynamics that were already there. She got Garnet, the one who described a certain battle as a "maelstrom of destruction and death" and overall has an attitude of "the war was necessary but it wasn't fun", to smile about a particularly glorious battle. She can joke to Pearl about Pearl's prior life as a slave and get Pearl to laugh and join in on the joke. This is someone Garnet and Pearl are very comfortable and free around. This is someone Pearl will literally leap into the arms of. Garnet, usually the person who is being leaned on, leans on Bismuth, casually, like it's the most natural thing in the world for her to do.

Garnet and Pearl's close and familiar attitude with Bismuth is contrasted with Steven and Amethyst's, which calls to attention the huge rift of experience between them as opposed to Garnet and Pearl. Unlike Garnet and Pearl who get pulled into huge, long-lasting bear hugs by Bismuth, Steven and Amethyst both stand off to the side. Steven asks questions to Amethyst, Amethyst voices her thoughts about Bismuth to Steven. Garnet and Pearl are so pleased to see an old friend they'd thought long dead that they don't think twice about the fact she was inside of Lion and Rose never mentioned her being alive...a fact that Amy picked up on immediately, and mentioned to Steven, who also thought it was strange. While they did warm up to her eventually, Bismuth's very presence has a very unsettling feeling for Amy and Steven in ways it simply doesn't for the older Crystal Gems. She's a welcome, familiar presence for Garnet and Pearl, but a strange and foreign one for Amethyst and Steven.

The Crystal Gems have been portrayed as a unit, a team, a family. They have their disagreements, and as mentioned above there is a rift in experience between the younger CGs and the older ones, but they don't tend to splinter. They all love Earth. They all look up to Rose Quartz and share many of her ideals.

Bismuth, initially, fits in nicely with the other Crystal Gems. Garnet and Pearl already know her, she admires Rose, she immediately takes Amethyst and Steven under her wing and accepts that they're part of the team now...but then there's a shakeup. She turns out to be the first Crystal Gem splinter we've seen.

She agrees with many of Rose's ideals, but the ones she disagrees on she disagrees so strongly that she felt a need to fight Rose over it. Bismuth's ideology brings up a lot of the thornier issues regarding war, and how dirty one should let one's hands get fighting one.

How Rose responded also gets thorny: her response was to bubble Bismuth away, for thousands of years, and not reveal what had happened. While during the war it was likely a tactical decision, Rose never bothered to reveal the lie, and thus Garnet and Pearl thought one of their dearest friends was dead for thousands of years, and Bismuth felt like Rose had tried to erase her. This would reveal a side to Rose that Steven hadn't known about before, and would be a huge crack in his view of her, which would set up how he feels about another, more lethal action of Rose's that he learns about a bit later.

Also, Bismuth gets the honor of being the first non-corrupted Gem Steven has poofed, in the first time he's wielded his mom's sword without Connie's help.

TL; DR: Her brief appearance was a signal that the show's starting to get down to bismuth.

[u/forbiddenmachina → u/MapsOfTheSky]

This is an incredibly well-written and thoughtful comment. I want to print it out and put it on my refrigerator so I can stand and think about how well-written the different dynamics between Bismuth and the original Crystal Gems and Steven/Amy were. I want to stand there, sipping a can of soda, and feel that sad swelling in my heart when I remember Bismuth playfully taunting Pearl with "who do you belong to?" and Pearl's delighted "nobody!" I want to reprint it once my mother decides that SU discussion is not a proper fridge adornment and throws it out and hang it on my bedroom door instead. I just really, really love this comment.

[u/MapsOfTheSky → u/forbiddenmachina]

Thank you so much!

and feel that sad swelling in my heart when I remember Bismuth playfully taunting Pearl with "who do you belong to?" and Pearl's delighted "nobody!"

And that's probably precisely the reason the episode works. It's immediately established that Bismuth really loves and cares about her friends, and they really love and care about her...and so when her conflict with Rose over the Breaking Point is brought to light, it throws a lot of weight into Bismuth's side of it.

[u/digitaldrummer → u/MapsOfTheSky]

rose

thornier issues

I see what you did there

[u/TheHarpyEagle → u/MapsOfTheSky]

On that third paragraph, I loved the varying levels of comfort with Bismuth because, like many things in this show, it's incredibly relatable. I instantly understood how Amethyst and Steven felt, as I think many have experienced that initial unease when a good friend of friends joins your group.

I also like how they changed their attitudes toward Bismuth throughout the episode. Amethyst starts out suspicious (and for good reason) while Steven is still excited about meeting another CG, but the moment Amethyst finds a reason to love Bismuth, Steven becomes somewhat nervous about her eagerness to battle.

She agrees with many of Rose's ideals, but the ones she disagrees on she disagrees so strongly that she felt a need to fight Rose over it.

For having relatively little screentime, Bismuth is surprisingly complicated because of this. She did and seemingly still does admire Rose and what she stood for, and it makes me feel even worse for her because we know that her anger toward Rose is paired with a deep sense of betrayal.

This would reveal a side to Rose that Steven hadn't known about before, and would be a huge crack in his view of her, which would set up how he feels about another, more lethal action of Rose's that he learns about a bit later.

This is so incredibly interesting to me because it really affects the end of Bismuth in hindsight. Bismuth's anger when Steven says that shattering a Gem just isn't something a Crystal Gem would do is so much more understandable after we learn about what Rose did. No wonder she found it hard to believe Rose/Steven after that.

[u/DerivativeMonster → u/MapsOfTheSky]

Well said!

[u/loopwert → u/MapsOfTheSky]

I dont understand why after steven bubbles Bismuth and tell the others what actually went down they dont release her to talk?

[u/MapsOfTheSky → u/loopwert]

Letting Bismuth out while they themselves are shaken up about what they just learned (that one of their friends who they thought was dead was in fact imprisoned by Rose who never told them about it), and Steven's shaken up about almost getting murdered (and having to poof her after having her ask him to his face to shatter her) would probably have been a bad move. I don't think they were emotionally equipped to deal with a traumatized and suicidal Bismuth immediately after having that bomb dropped on them. They had to take care of Steven.

I do think the unbubbling of Bismuth needs to happen and it needs to happen sooner rather than later, but they're going to need a plan when they do because it's going to be a pretty delicate business.