My cockatiel Bandit is molting right now and he looks so nasty 😂

If I didn't know what was happening, I'd be panicking thinking he's sick. Shoot, even though I KNOW what's happening I still am worried about him. 😂

On the plus side, I managed to get some of his shed feathers before he destroyed them so now I have a few intact wing and tail feathers from him for my collection. 👀

I always say the reason I have birds is so I can collect their feathers. It's a joke, of course. Mostly.

Cheeseburger Backpack

Analysis Four

Two more players are introduced in this episode, Jamie the Postman and the Cheeseburger Backpack!

"Hey Mr. Postman bring me a post, bring me the post that I love the most" I love that Steven sings all the time. Me too man, me too. Waiting is always easier with some music lol. Obviously his love of music mostly comes from Greg, last episode he sings along with his CD so enthusiastically even though Greg is kind of embarrassed. Considering later on Steven says that Jamie is the only one who knows where he lives I wonder at what exactly his address is, and how Jamie found it in the first place. We know Barb is also a mailperson and the way she talks there must be other mailpeople around even though we only see Barb and Jamie.

Jamie's sense of humor leaning towards the dramatic is apparent even this early in the game, pretending like he doesn't know what package is for Steven lol. I guess he could just be messing with him because he's a kid, but I like to think that Jamie just knows that he can be himself around Steven. He does have a way of drawing people in and making them feel comfortable. Jamie is absolutely right that it's reasonable that the Gems want Steven to learn to control his powers before he helps out but I don't think he realizes just how real it is. The people who live in Beach City are pretty used to weird things happening, and the Gems being a part of that, but I don't think they realize that it's global. Part of that is probably because the Gems generally like to track down the corrupted ones in the wild before they find the temple, thus keeping them away from people as much as possible. The rest is probably just the general centrism most of us humans are guilty of. We get our first mention of Barb here, in the context of her being Jamie’s boss. I was just as shocked as Steven when I found out she was Sadie's mom, but that's another analysis. I love that little exchange though "Do you know how you can save my world?" Plus Steven's signature with the stars? So cute. And he really must be comfortable with Steven to tell him Barb yells at him, you don't just talk about your boss like that casually, even if it's true and she would probably laugh at you for sharing it anyway. Barb isn't exactly easy going, but she's pretty accepting and she's got a good sense of humor. Jamie is definitely surprised to see the warp pad go off, but not concerned enough to say anything about it, he just wants to know what a Whacky Sack is.

That egg that Amethyst has got opens up my questions about gem reproduction again, Centipeetle had her centipeetle babies and now we have a giant bird that we assume was also a gem that lays eggs? No naturally occuring birds lay eggs that have stars on them, and none that large. I'm leaning towards thinking it could be a gem creature similar to the crystal shrimp we see later in this episode or the lizards that Lion eats regularly. After all there are feathers everywhere and generally when a Gem, corrupted or otherwise, poofs it completely disappears with only the gem remaining. We don't see a bubbled gem either, although it could have already been sent into the temple. I also have to wonder why the bird had the Moon Goddess statue if it wasn't a real Gem. It makes me think of the bubble bird we see later in Giant Woman, who collects other gems and gem artifacts within itself. So many questions about something we never even actually see. And Amethyst's fake caution in getting that egg in the fridge never fails to entertain me.

The Moon Goddess statue comes with a whole other set of questions. I've wondered, and mentioned before, if gem tech was powered by poofed gems for a long time, and there is for sure something to that after what we've seen on Homeworld. Is it a gem that is trapped in a statue, held in its tiny hands? Is the statue perhaps growing out of the gem from the bottom? It's obviously tied into keeping the Lunar Sea Spire intact. I've seen speculation as to why the Gems would even have a goddess of any kind considering they answer to the Diamonds and those are their supreme beings, but I'll talk about that in a little bit. I think there's pretty good evidence that all gem structures have some sort of lodestone, so to speak. There's the Crystal Heart, this statue, there's a large gem powering the hand ship that Peridot uses. Even the gem that kind of takes over the lighthouse. The warp pad even looks like a huge gem that's been embedded in the ground. Not to mention all the walls we saw on Homeworld. I hope this is something they address in Season Six.

This conversation with Pearl about the statue and the Spire has so many hints about both the future of the show and the past from before Steven was born. Pearl is so expressive that we can glean a lot from that short little speech. First she supports my lodestone theory in saying that without the statue the Spire will fall apart, although it would seem it stood mostly okay for quite some time without it, and I wonder how the statue was removed from it in the first place [I think it was removed during the rebellion and if the bird was in fact a corrupted Gem it stands to reason that she's the one who removed it]. Then another hint that the Gems are aliens in her saying the Spire was an oasis for gems on earth. She shows us her power of holograms/projections to give him a visual of what the Spire used to be, including a statue of what appears to be a cross gem fusion since it has two sets of arms. Which, what the heck, cross gem fusions are supposed to be illegal. Her tone of voice when talking about how the Spire used to be is very similar to how she speaks about Rose and is in stark contrast to the flatness in her voice when she says it's abandoned now. It says that she still loves Homeworld in some way and misses the Gems she used to be around, although I'm sure mostly Pink. It's highly probable that it was with Pink she was at the Spire during it's heyday. She wants to save it so bad, and share with Steven it's history. Clues galore about her partnership with Pink and her desire to tell Steven the truth about his mother and himself, but none that we could put together or even fully understand until we actually knew the truth.

We know now that the Spire was a test, I think they probably discussed it thoroughly while Steven was packing his cheeseburger and I really like Amethyst being the one to suggest bringing him along because it would be educational. This is the first time outside of the theme that we actually see the warp being used, as well as getting an idea of what the warp stream really does and the fact that you can leave it, and I have to say that Amethyst in the warp is probably the most elegance she ever shows. Gorgeous.

Seeing the Lunar Sea Spire is pretty impressive, and time really does mean very different things to the gems. A hundred years isn't much to Pearl at all, and yet the last fourteen have changed her more than all the thousands before. The spire probably degrades faster closer to it's deadline to return the statue, although we really have no idea how long it's been removed despite my theory that it happened during the rebellion.

Garnet has to be so careful with what she says so as not to give away the fact she can see the future. She's "sensing" structural instability, it must have been so much easier for her to just say as little as possible even though we get a signature shades adjustment. It had to have been difficult knowing that it was keeping her from bonding with Steven on a deeper level though. Pearl too, keeping Pink's secrets the way she did when she wanted to share, to expose Steven to his heritage. The little nod to Full House was fun though "You got it, dude", and Pearl having no idea what he's talking about. I guess Steven watches reruns lol

It's pretty interesting how Garnet became the leader even though Pearl had been with Rose/Pink the longest, although we didn't know it back then. There's really so much to unpack in the Pearl/Garnet relationship. Some of why Garnet has moved up to being the leader has to do with how Rose was following her, as put forth in Now We're Only Falling Apart, but I think some of it was subconscious on both Pearl's part and Garnet's herself. Sapphire is an aristocrat and at least partially used to being in charge, and even though we've seen no hint of it it's entirely possible she's even had her own pearl at some point. This is both tempered by Ruby's lower class and station being used to being bossed around and exacerbated by her impulsiveness. Then there is Pearl's feelings of being inadequate by herself, needing someone to tell her what to do. Both of them later address and begin to handle these issues, but we see how their former lives seep into their current ones. That comes into play with how they choose to educate and expose Steven as well. They are who we get most of our information on who and what the gems are in the beginning, but they're informed in very different ways. I'm sure there's some former knowledge on Garnet's part just from what Sapphire and Ruby what have seen and experienced before they were and since they’ve been together, but I also think that her future vision plays a large part in the details that she knows. It is the hand with Sapphire's gem that Garnet lifts when she tells the others to stop before they attempt to cross the whirlpool [after touching her two hands together briefly though], and although most of her actions are purely Garnet and not Sapphire and Ruby taking turns or whatever you can see their separate personalities occasionally in the things she does. Like eloquently explaining about the magic that sustains the Spire and then throwing a rock into it to demonstrate. Pearl however doesn't have a magical way of knowing any of this information, she only knows what she's directly experienced and only has one consciousness of memories to draw from. Being a Diamond's personal pearl she had access to a lot of information, managing Pink's day to day activities and working her screens and stuff, but even that is limited and after what happened to the original Pink Pearl Pink Diamond didn't share as much with our Pearl as she could have, and being a Pearl I'm sure no one else thought to explain things to her. Our Pearl couldn't even work the doors at the Zoo.

Before Steven uses his sweaters to jump he gets diamond eyes, and I wonder if that has any significance. I've noticed too that a lot of the backgrounds have diamonds, and not just the architecture like above the arches when the first enter, but throughout the whole show just like, representing light and whatnot. He's so eager to prove himself though, and it seems like Amethyst has more faith in him then the other two.

After the jump Pearl freaks out, Garnet does the hair ruffle I love so much, Amethyst bumps him with her shoulder, and then Pearl compliments him. All of them showing him affection and pride in their own ways, which for Pearl means talk talk talking lol. She goes on quite a bit about the damage, we see on the walls what appears to be tigers because of the stripes but are definitely cats of some kind. Lots of diamond and triangle imagery, statues that are falling apart. The one with the crystal shrimp climbing on it looks very much like another fusion statue. Typing this now I'm formulating a rough theory that they were cross gem fusions that were punished maybe? I don't know exactly how they would statue-ize them, but I suppose it's possible considering what they did to Lapis and the wall Gems we saw on Homeworld. Although, I suppose then Pink would have heard more about cross gem fusion other than that it's unheard of. I don't know, something to think about anyway.

Now, those damn crystal shrimp. Besides Steven continuing to ace his test so far, every time we see some of these gem creatures [not monsters] I start thinking again about how they came to be and am driven crazy. How do they know what to call them, are they like the centipeetles, and if so then why isn't there a mother around? If the mother were to die would all the babies, because the drill gem babies didn't work that way. Peal calls it an infestation. Are they just regular creatures that mutated due to proximity to the Gems magic? I suppose that could solve the lizard dilemma as well as explain Rose's moss. Oh geez I'm kind of getting off the plot of this particular episode, but there's just so much still left unanswered. And here people though that Change Your Mind solved everything. Ha.

Steven starts a downslide with the raft, good idea in theory as evidenced by everyone's reaction [also, how cute are Amethyst and Pearl chanting "cheeseburger backpack"?] but executed badly due to the rapid water. But that's not nearly as bad as realizing he left the statue at home. I said earlier I would talk about why the Gems needed a goddess later and I would like to address that now. I think that it's more of a title than anything. Operating under the assumption that the statue holds a sentient gem of some kind, or is at the very least modeled after one, it obviously has some sort of magical tie to the moon. We know that Gems get their energy from light, so I think this particular one gets special energy/magic from the moonlight. Thus it is referred to as a moon goddess, the fact that it's the lodestone for this particular spire is why it's the Lunar Sea Spire. I do wonder if Garnet really didn't know what would happen or if she was just letting Steven try it to encourage him somehow. I know that's what Amethyst was trying to do in telling him his ideas succeeded 50% of the time, and obviously Pearl was trying to make him feel better. I thought the raft popping back up was a nice touch though.

This time the star closed in on Steven with his tongue out lol, and it's still instrumental Love Like You