Peridot

PLAYER

NAME: Possum
AGE: 28
PREFERRED CONTACT: awkwardpossumOTHER CHARACTERS: n/a

CHARACTER

NAME: Peridot
AGE: 3000-ish Years (no exact age)
CANON & CANON POINT: Steven Universe/Up to date with the most recent point of SU: Future
RESERVATION LINK: HERE.
HISTORY: Wiki Link!

PERSONALITY:
If I had to distill Peridot's whole personality down to a single catchy sentence, it would be "horrible little tech goblin with a heart of gold." She has what one might call a ‘strong’ personality, in that she tends to be loud, blunt, abrasive, and doesn’t always think about her words before she opens her mouth. Energetic and passionate (often to the point of obsession), Peridot rarely does things in a manner that can be described as anything less than "turned up to 11". She's the kind of person who falls into her various hobbies and interests with an obsessive tenacity, doing things like watching a single episode of a TV show she likes over and over and over for a full 24 hours straight and launching into making extravagant and detailed shipping charts based off of that minimal content. In a single word, she's... Eccentric.

Peridot's early days with the Crystal Gems were full of a lot of hurt feelings and misunderstandings due to her previously sheltered life and general lack of socialization. She would spew out offensive and bigoted opinions without a second thought, and then fail to grasp why people would react to the things she said with anger. Largely this was because she spent the first several thousand years of her life doing nothing but working day in and out in isolation as a technician, conforming obediently to Homeworld’s rigid societal rules. As a result, she was poorly socialized, and never really learned how to factor unpredictable forces such as emotion and sentiment into her perception of the world. Letting such things cloud one’s own sense of objectivity was something that her leader Yellow Diamond was supposedly immune to, and like a good homeworld gem Peridot modeled her own behavior after her idol. Because of this, she had a hard time empathizing with people on Earth, and in the beginning she even lacked the proper terminology with which to discuss her own feelings. (We see this very early on in the episode "Too Far" when she tries to explain her feelings of frustration and guilt to Steven)

This isn’t quite as much of an issue now as it was when she first came to Earth; she is far more mindful of other people’s feelings now, and has a better sense of when to keep her thoughts to herself. Her roots as a scientist and engineer are at least partially to thank for this, as her previous job still informs her approach to problem solving, and the way she navigates the world. She’s always assessing new things and new situations carefully, and has zero shame about asking an endless number of questions. This is likely how she was able to adapt to life on Earth so quickly (compared to say, Lapis or Jasper), despite arriving there as an alien who was completely naive of the world outside her own tiny personal sphere. Peridot is keenly observant and seems to learn things by example, copying the mannerisms and actions of others (she picks up a LOT of habits and speech quirks from Amethyst in particular), and trying new things out for herself whenever she gets the chance. She has a curious mind, is eager to learn and picks up on patterns and learns new skills very quickly (if you're a musician, for a frustrating example of this just look to the episode "It Could've Been Great" and watch how absurdly fast she picks up an understanding of musical theory).

In some ways, this is all still a bit unnatural to her, and more often than not she’ll fall back on her intellect before her emotions when it comes to tackling a high pressure situation. Besides, old habits die hard; experience has cured some of her naivete, but you can’t really fix stubbornness, which is something Peridot has in spades. While she has gained a capacity for teamwork over the course of the series, she still very much has her own way of doing things and isn’t afraid to make that known through petty tantrums and arguments. That "objectivity above all else" world view still rears it's ugly head sometimes, and she tends to hold the view that, until proven otherwise, everything in the world has a “correct” path of simple cause to effect. This pretty much always lines up with how SHE would do something, and she can get pretty rankled real quick if something does not meet her expectations or give her the results she wants.
She applies this philosophy to social interactions as much as anything else, and it took her a while to understand that there’s not really a “correct” way to, say, react to a joke or an apology.

Peridot also has a proclivity for egotistical and self-aggrandizing behavior, often talking herself up or over-selling herself by using self-descriptors such as “precious” or “powerful” or “valuable”. It used to be that she’d focus on her own needs to the exclusion of everyone else’s, but now she knows how to strike a better balance and put her friend’s interests close to—or even sometimes above-- her own. She still talks herself up quite frequently though, usually in a manner that strangers will find grating or off-putting. It’s arguable that a lot of this behavior comes from her upbringing on Homeworld, where a gem’s usefulness and rarity determines their social standing. Additionally, Peridot is an “era 2” gem, meaning she was created during a time when her home planet was operating under a shortage of the resources needed to create new members of their race. This lack of available material accounts for her small size and lack of natural gem powers, and it’s possible her habit of bragging is a method of justifying her existence in some way, compensating for her physical shortcomings by attempting to highlight her cleverness and great intellect.

This may also similarly influence her attachment to material belongings; she has been shown to be extremely possessive of her things such as her limb enhancers and tech, because she considers those things a large part of her identity; in “Too Short to Ride”, she blurted out that “(tech is) all that I am” when Amethyst tried to wreck the new tablet that Steven got for her. This shows a severe lack of confidence underneath that veneer of ego, which is kind of tragic?But also like... On the other hand. One of her favorite activities is flaunting her knowledge for the sole purpose of showing off how much smarter she is than most people, and making them feel dumb. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION, she literally admitted this to Amethyst and Steven (in the episode "Back to the Kindergarten"), because she is horrible.

So, that's a lot about her weaknesses and flaws. But what about that "heart of gold" part?

While Peridot can be abrasive, she really doesn't have a single cruel (metaphorical) bone in her entire hard-light body. She's caring and passionate, and she has grown to be an extremely loyal and dependable friend. Even if she’s averse to saying it outright, she shows how much she loves her friends through her actions; she loves to clown around and try to cheer them up with her ridiculous antics (literally bending over backwards to make Lapis laugh) and bad jokes. She cares a LOT about what her friends think of her (ex: she was extremely upset when Amethyst was mad at her for making jokes at her expense in “Too Far”, and Lapis leaving at the end of “Raising the Barn” utterly devastated her, launching her into an extreme depression that took ages for her to get over). She is very considerate of Lapis’s past trauma and tries to be protective of her, admonishing her other friends for treading too close to triggering topics. The ending of “Hit the Diamond” also showed us that she is willing to put herself in harm’s way to defend her loved ones, as she tried to surrender herself to the Rubies in order to get them to lay off the others. “Raising the Barn” lent further credit to this courageous streak, as Peridot was extremely reluctant to leave Earth behind when it seemed like it would soon be under immediate threat from the Diamonds. Lapis wanted to turn tail and hide, but Peridot was determined to stay and fight and defend what they’d already created there.


ABILITIES/SKILLS:
Passive abilities:
•Doesn’t age (bc gems are bullshit immortals)
•Very sturdy, with a high damage threshold (even by gem standards). Like all gems she also has the ability to release her physical form when injured and return to her gem to recuperate. Essentially, she can’t be permanently harmed or killed unless her gem is directly damaged, and it takes quite a bit of damage to force her to dissipate her form.

Active abilities:
•Can generate translucent green bubbles around dormant gems (and other objects) and teleport them to a set location.
•Metallokinesis. She can move metal objects with her mind, which lets her do ludicrous things like fly around on a hovering garbage can lid. The heavier the item, the more effort it takes for her to enact her will upon. She has been steadily improving her skills over the course of the series; by the time SU the Movie rolls around, she’s able to hold back a significant amount of collapsing scaffolding, and it's implied that she lifts Spinel's giant injector at least part way out of the ground.

Regular skills:
•An exceedingly fast learner who is extremely good at memorizing patterns and lists. She picks up on most new skills with ease, and creative problem solving is a strong suit of hers.
•Familiarity with, and the ability to create, extremely advanced technology. She’s a natural born engineer, so past knowledge combined with natural skill for tinkering and figuring out how things work means she can understand new tech very quickly.
•Horticultural knowledge. She and Lapis started a farm together, and by SU Future Peridot is running a massive greenhouse full of all kinds of plants and teaching other gems how to care for them.
•Artistic. She loves to make weird abstract installation art, specifically, but she also enjoys comedy and performance. Basically she’s just a weird little savant.

INVENTORY/COMPANIONS:
•No companions
•Electronic tablet; this is like, the only thing that Peridot consistently carries around with her. It’s an iPad thing that Steven gave to her, and she loves it.

FACTION CHOICE:
Moon Temple!

REASON:
If I'm being honest, I could make a strong case for Peridot being in either faction, but I think she's a more natural fit for the Moon Temple at heart. While she's an extremely creative (and often impulsive) individual, logic and reason are the foundations of how she has learned to interact with the world and she's typically not really prone to acting on her gut alone. Given the proper room to breathe, she likes to ask questions, and gather data and information to better understand the world around her. When it comes to playing the long game, she's much more about planning ahead and creating a solid plan of attack before moving forward. That isn't to say she's INCAPABLE of pulling out the stops when the situation calls for it, because she can and she will; it's just not her typical MO.

TATTOO:
First Quarter Moon, on the back of her left hand.

SUITABILITY:
Peridot has no fear of fighting when it comes to protecting the things she loves, and while she'd probably have a ton of questions for the traveler deity (and just be questioning everything in general because that's just how she do), she'll commit without hesitation if it means saving her world. Though she lacks actual experience with full-scale war, she's very proud of her status as a Crystal Gem rebel, to the point where it kind of gives her a lot of unearned confidence? So. Getting her to agree to a fight would not be a hard sell.

As for how she'd contribute once she's actually there, things will admittedly get a bit more complicated. If she makes ANY friends on while neutral turf who happen to be in the Court of Stars, she will start to question why this problem needs to be solved with more fighting, and she will become pretty insistent on trying (or at the very least discussing) more peaceful solutions. She's also going to have a lot of questions about the metaphysical forces that are causing the decay of Fellden (and by extent, all of the player worlds), and will want to understand how the war ties into it.

Though she's pretty scrappy and does not back down from a challenge (even when it would be in her own best interest to do so), Peridot would do best contributing to the effort somewhere OFF the battlefield. Analyzing data and brainstorming creative solutions are more in her wheelhouse than punching/stabbing is.

SAMPLES

NETWORK:
One
Two

LOG:
One (in-universe TDM thread)
Two (Slightly older thread that shows a bit more introspection)

NOTES, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS: Nada!