Peridot

Peridot is a protagonist and a member of The New Action Squad.

## **BIOGRAPHY**

Peridot (specifically Peridot Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG) is a member of the Crystal Gems who made her debut in "Warp Tour".

She was originally a Homeworld Gem technician and a certified Kindergartener. After being stranded on Earth following the events of "Jail Break", she acted as a recurring antagonist until becoming more of an anti-hero and pseudo-antagonist by establishing a truce with the Crystal Gems in "When It Rains" to help them save the Earth from the Cluster. She officially became a member in "Message Received" after she defied her Homeworld superior, Yellow Diamond. For some time, Peridot lived in the barn with Lapis Lazuli, but began residing in the Crystal Temple after Lapis fled the planet with their home in "Raising the Barn".

As of the events of *Steven Universe: The Movie*, she lives with Lapis Lazuli and Bismuth in Little Homeworld.

Outside of Beach City, she is also a member of The New Action Squad serving as Clemont's assistant and one of the Squad's researchers alongside Gibson.

## **APPEARANCE**

Peridot has lime-green skin and pale chartreuse yellow hair styled into a tetrahedron shape. When she blushes, it is green. Her true eye color is dark green, which is usually tinted by the yellow color of her visor. Her visor works similar to Garnet's, it being a part of her form yet not molded to her body. Her mouth and tongue are bluish-gray, and she has a pointed upper lip. Her gemstone is located on her forehead.

After her regeneration shortly before "Change Your Mind", Peridot's bodysuit now covers her entire chest and is green at the top with a pale chartreuse yellow star on the front, and her leggings are bright green with a dark green star on each knee. The area between her chest and leggings remain dark green. She also now wears pale chartreuse yellow boots.

Her visor is bigger and is now transparent yellow, butterfly-shaped, and exposes her forehead. It also tints her eyes as a brown-gold color as opposed to green with her previous visor.

As shown in "In Dreams", Peridot's visor is removable.

## **PERSONALITY**

Initially, Peridot appeared to be calculating, ruthless, and loyal, as shown in her readiness to kill Steven and the other Crystal Gems in "The Return" when asked to by a higher authority. She takes her work seriously, crushing one of her Flask Robonoids underfoot when it was damaged and useless to her during "Warp Tour". Examples of Peridot's loyalty are shown during the events of "Jail Break". Although she disagrees with how Jasper is running their mission and is shown to be annoyed, she still takes orders and goes along with what Jasper has in mind. Another example of her loyalty is shown when she was driven to complete her mission and return to Homeworld despite no contact from Yellow Diamond and has been shown to cling to Steven when she is scared.

After "Jail Break", Peridot became increasingly frantic in her attempts to contact Homeworld, knowing that the Crystal Gems' continuous interference with her mission would leave her stuck on Earth when the Cluster emerges and destroys the planet. Her behavior is shown to be more erratic, in "Keeping It Together", for example, when flying away with her helicopter fingers, she smiles down and laughs hysterically, and her facial expressions are exaggerated throughout the episode. In "Cry for Help", she interrupts all television signals with her own broadcast from the Communication Hub begging Yellow Diamond to rescue her. She even resorts to kidnapping Steven so he can try to repair the Homeworld Warp with his healing spit during "Catch and Release". When Steven is unable to solve her problem, Peridot becomes hysterical and breaks down with the realization that she is stuck on Earth with the Cluster. After reforming into her natural self with no limb enhancers, she becomes very juvenile and paranoid, assuming that harmless household items are "weapons" and that hostility drives every action from the Crystal Gems. However, once comforted by Steven, she becomes much more relaxed and cooperative, although she still refuses to cooperate with the Gems and sequesters herself in Steven's bathroom.

Because Homeworld is a caste society, Peridot viewed the Crystal Gems as some being more superior than others, which often led to her unintentionally offending them for a long time. In "Back to the Barn", she acted very condescendingly towards Pearl due to her position in Homeworld's caste system as a made-to-order servant and refused to acknowledge Pearl's skill as a technician for this reason. After a competition between self-built robots, however, she concedes that she may have been wrong. In "Too Far", She shows a strong aversion to fusion, referring to Garnet as a "permafusion". In "Catch and Release" she refers to Garnet as a "filthy war machine" due to the Homeworld belief that fusion should only be used for combat. She has also stated that Garnet makes her "incredibly uncomfortable." She does try to appeal to Amethyst's favor, as she sees Amethyst as the closest thing to a "normal" Gem, by getting her to laugh despite Peridot being incredibly socially oblivious and unfamiliar with the concept of humor.  Peridot has a difficult time apologizing for her behavior but is willing to. It is shown in "It Could've Been Great" that while she likes to follow the rules she gets slightly excited when she breaks them (e.g. sitting in an elite Gem's seat). During her time with Steven and the Crystal Gems, she begins to realize that Homeworld's philosophy is very flawed, and she defects as a member of the Crystal Gems. She admits to having some lingering feelings over Homeworld in "Gem Drill". She reveals that while she had made peace with her decision to defect, it was tough to give up the old emotions of her past life.

Peridot repeatedly shows arrogance and self-aggrandizing behavior. It is likely that her inflated ego, slight condescending attitude, and bragging (ex: calling herself the new leader of the Crystal Gems) is a way of compensating for her own insecurities. As shown in "Too Short to Ride", she suffers confidence issues due to seemingly having no Gem powers of her own since Homeworld has lacked in resources to give powers to her kind upon creation. However, this quickly changes when it is discovered that she has latent ferrokinetic powers with which she made the most out of her time at Funland with Steven and Amethyst. In "Earthlings" Peridot overestimated her ferrokinesis and bragged to Jasper about it. In "Back to the Kindergarten" she was finally convinced to leave the bathroom when Amethyst mentioned she could make her and Steven feel dumb with how much Peridot knew. In "Made of Honor", Peridot treats Bismuth's arrival as less important than her being the only one to keep her drink up. Out of all of this egocentric and arrogant behavior, the most extreme example was by far during "Reunited". When Blue Diamond attacked, despite Peridot's lack of real damage, she demanded Blue Diamond to fight her and then congratulated herself for her trajectory when Bismuth threw her. However, this behavior is not without consequence. When Yellow joined Blue in the attack, Peridot without hesitation went to taunt her, not fearing the by far more dangerous Gem. This leads to Yellow immediately poofing her.

## **TRIVIA**

* On the podcast, according to Rebecca Sugar, a very old concept for Peridot was a cyberbully for Steven whom Steven would meet. She and Ian Jones-Quartey also explained how this somewhat factored into Peridot's character as she was originally someone from far away who was comfortable threatening Steven and the Crystal Gems.
* In response to the implication (from her earliest appearances) that Peridot is a "main antagonist", Matt Burnett stated, *"Pretty quick to judge poor Peridot... I wouldn't call her an antagonist just yet, and def. not the 'main' one"*.
* Peridot shares many traits with the titular character of *Invader Zim*, including short stature, skin tone, an over-zealous nature, and general ignorance of Earth.
* She seems to like the stereotypical green alien: in "Log Date 7 15 2" she wears shorts with green alien faces on them and in "Too Short to Ride" she wants a plush alien. In "Beta" she has taken to wearing the plush's bow tie while the plush floats in the aquarium.
* Peridot's wearing the plush's bow tie and her uptight personality concerning impressing guests in "Beta" is similar to Felix Unger from *The Odd Couple*.
* In The Steven Universe Podcast, Ian Jones-Quartey and Rebecca Sugar revealed that Peridot's habit of calling people a clod was derived from a joke Ian Jones-Quartey would do, which was calling people a clod in a weird voice for not understanding or believing in a subject matter.
* Peridot is said to be thousands of years old by Lapis in "The New Crystal Gems", although this is still a matter of uncertainty.
* According to Michaela Dietz, Zach Callison has a theory that if Peridot and Steven fuse their fusion would just be even smaller, and adding Amethyst in would shrink the fusion even further but make them louder; Michaela and McKenzie Atwood agree that the idea would be good for the show as being small would help them infiltrate places.
* Her "helicopter-fingers" ability was conceived by Raven Molisee.
* The two times Peridot has been poofed have been for opposite reasons. The first time was by Garnet because she was a Gem loyal to Yellow Diamond threatening both the Crystal Gems and the Earth. The second time was by Yellow Diamond because she was a Crystal Gem protecting Earth.
* She has an overly technical term for most body parts (e.g. ears are "head holes", hands are "touch stumps", feet are "gravity connectors", etc.). Whether or not this is a common trait among modern Homeworld Gems or a personal quirk is currently unknown.