#sorry got carried away but Greg is fascinating because a lot of him is left honestly kind of ambiguous

[sigurdjarlson]

Greg headcanons?

*greg voice* ah I see you want some of the ol headcanons for Gregory J Hirsch...Gregcanons if you will haha-

1) his mother had him young and that’s partially why Ewan is so distant with him. He sees having Greg so young as something that ruined her life a bit and Greg didn’t even end up being worth it in his eyes. Oof.

2) As one would expect from someone raised by their mother, he’s a mamas boy. Unfortunately his mom isn’t the most maternal of people. She loves him but she’s similar to her father in a lot of ways, emotionally distant.

3) There’s always been some level of envy and jealousy Marianne projected when she talked about her uncle and cousins. Greg picked that up whether he realizes it or not, it’s where his almost odd sense of entitlement comes from. Why doesn’t he get anything? He’s got Roy blood too. Why didn’t Ewan give them things like Logan did? (not knowing the abuse inflicted on the Roy kids)

4) Greg didn’t have a lot of friends. He’s always been very socially awkward and a generally anxious person. He was an easy target. So when people act like that towards him now he’s used to it. He’s used to the perpetual disappointment that always radiates from his grandfather and mom. He’s used to being joke and people treating him like a fly at a picnic. Annoying and off-putting.

He can take a lot in regards to psychological pain, after all. (It bothers him deep down, how could it not but he chooses not to think about that)

5) Greg loves his grandfather and I think Ewan loves him deep down but Roys are incapable of healthy human relationships. It doesn’t stop Greg from wanting that connection from the only constant male figure in his life. He tries but gets rebuffed every time. It would be more shocking to him if he didn’t brush off his attempts at affection.

6) Greg doesn’t cry a lot. He panics and will dissolve into a pacing, anxious mess but he does not cry. Maybe it’s because he learned early that crying doesn’t make people come running any faster (Ewan often told Marianne not to come running every time Greg cried as a child or she would “spoil” him),

He’s learned it doesn’t fix anything it just earns him annoyed and exasperated looks from people he loves and he also learned it doesn’t bring people back when they leave either. So..he just doesn’t cry unless something really pushes him to his breaking point.

7) Greg has never felt wanted anywhere in his entire life. When Logan said he likes him he grabbed onto that with the desperation of a drowning man grabbing a life raft. Suddenly boar on the floor was water under the bridge because frankly he’s never felt wanted or even liked by his own mother or grandfather. Certainly not his dad who took off and never looked back.

8) His parents divorce wasn’t pretty. He remembers his mom crying herself to sleep at night for a long time after he left, he remembers them screaming at one another and exchanging harsh words when his father was still there. When he was a child he simply closed his eyes and hid in his room when they fought. When his mom cried he tried to comfort her but she only cried more

9) his mother as I mentioned earlier wasn’t the most maternal type. She loves Greg but is distant and harsh at times.

However he can remember being very sick as a kid (flu nothing deadly but he was super sick) and he remembers his mom running her fingers through his hair soothingly, bringing him soup. She was doing all that stuff moms should do. Caring for him and he..felt loved.

He would never admit it to anyone but sometimes he hopes he got sick again so she would do it again. Maybe he even pretends once and he cringes at the memory. How pathetic. (In his eyes)

10) The worst way anyone can hurt him his to simply..leave. He hasn’t yet wrapped his head around the fact that his grandfather might not EVER want anything to do with him now after the whole suing Greenpeace thing.

Some bonus +

11) if someone outright and genuinely said they were proud of him and like have him a hug he’d probably cry for the first time ages

12) he brought up the papers to Kendall on the plane after coming back from the bathroom. He felt genuinely shitty that Kendall was going to jail for him and realized he had the power to stop that. It was honestly such a rash decision on his part because there was no way he could be sure Kendall would succeed in the takeover.

13) even as he manipulates and betrays people he isn’t doing it maliciously. Greg doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He avoids it as much as he can in the sense he tries to keep himself neutral. He doesn’t want to make anyone unhappy with him. He wants to stay on everyones good side and still get the stuff he wants. The nature of the game however doesn’t allow for neutrality or for you to be everyone’s friend.

He doesn’t feel good when he hurts someone. Not only does he have a tendency to miss social cues that say he’s hurt someone but he just doesn’t really think about the consequences of his actions? He just acts. Which leads him to well be in the situations he gets himself into.

After the whole cruise situation however he realized no one is looking out for him. “Greg Sprinkles” and it hurts. He’d been wanting to be a part of this family but..he isn’t. Not really. It’s part of why it was so easy to turn around and help Kendall (even if he ends up turning on Kendall not long after. I think he’s just learning he can’t trust anyone in this family)

14) He loves Tom, more than he ever wants to admit even to himself but sometimes he also really hates Tom. He hates Tom for treating him like he does. He hates Tom for pulling him into the cruise situation and not letting him leave ATN. Most of all he hates Tom for making him love him and making him realize he really is just like his father.

15) Greg is a strangely forgiving person and it comes down to him not wanting to lose people. So he’ll forgive anything. It’s better than being alone. A kiss with a fist is better than none. Any anger or resentment he keeps deep inside him and maybe one day he will explode for our viewing pleasure

16) Greg is at his core, in this situation he’s found himself in, focused on survival. He’s been at rock bottom, he knows how miserable it is. He’s greedy because he’s never had these things before and now that he has them he doesn’t want to let them go. He doesn’t want to go back to how things were. He’s also becoming increasingly aware that no one has his back (except Tom and Tom is volatile and confusing so I wouldn’t be surprised if Greg had doubts about that)

So, there’s a desperation to survive in him that makes him capable of anything, for better or worse. He doesn’t have anything to fall back on if he fails. He’s going back to the bottom. The Roys will never have that problem, their father will never truly cut them off because he’d have to give up control of them. Greg if he plays the wrong hand might end up back in Canada, broke and nothing special again.

Luxury isn’t something special to the Roys. They have grown up with it. They expect it without even thinking about it. It’s new to Greg, it’s something special and it’s something that can easily be taken away. He doesn’t want it taken away.

He wants to be seen. He wants people to notice him and like him. He wants someone to tell him he’s worth something. He wants love. He wants affection and respect. He wants to belong. He wants financial security and then more. He wants to be taken care of and pampered. He wants to be a part of a family. He wants and wants. He wants a lot of things and he wants them all at the same time.

And as he watches his cousins, who are generally kind of shitty actually, get the world he wonders why he doesn’t get that too, he’s a Roy in everything but name right? (He wants to be one so badly) Doesn’t he deserve some too? What makes him less worthy than them?

[lesbianmichelmishina]

okay so: here is my Big Post on Rewriting SU. this is super long like 7 pages in word so here it is under a cut, mobile users i am so sorry. the basic gist of it is to keep it as close to the original as possible while dodging character assassinations, giving underdeveloped characters some breathing room, sorting out the mess that is rose’s character, and so on.

season 1:

so before we begin, character design tweaks! i'm focusing on the main three gems here, who would all look more alien. sort of like they’re wearing alien battle uniforms. there's a reason for this. the exception would be amethyst who would be slightly more earth-y and modern. this would change as they get closer to the human race. the other big thing to mention is that the temple statue is now of pink diamond, not the all-CG fusion.

anyway, things would progress basically the same as they did in the original until coach steven. this episode needs to be HEAVILY altered to improve sugilite. first of all i would tweak her design to be less like a racial caricature. second of all, as much as i love nicki minaj, we should probably have sugilite voiced by someone less expensive. third of all, the issue isn’t that sugilite’s violent or anything – it’s that she just really wants to impress steven but is going completely the wrong way about it. at the end of the episode steven declares that he loves garnet, amethyst AND sugilite! hugs!

things stay a little more on track until we reach ocean gem. i would tweak lapis to look more like the actual gem for starters. what really changes in this episode is its effects: steven becomes curious about the gem homeworld, and about how all of these corrupted gems got into this state in the first place. to his surprise, the crystal gems don’t want to talk about it.

well, screw that! steven is going to investigate this HIMSELF. with connie because connie’s awesome and also pretty curious about an alien world and gem history because duh. they start with that mysterious gem inside lion’s mane – or at least they would, buuuuuut connie points out that she’s probably corrupted and wouldn’t be much help. so instead, they just go generally poking around.

this, unfortunately, leads them right into the path of the robonoids.

things change even more when peridot shows up. first of all, more emphasis is placed on her yellow diamond insignia – it’s this, not her presence alone, which causes the OH FUCK moment for the crystal gems. steven has many questions and the gems finally, maybe around the time of the test, tell him the truth: they were sent here by their people after a terrible war for the earth, in order to protect the human race from the corrupted gems and technology left behind. they don’t really interact with humans because they’re there to make sure the human race develops normally and with as little alien influence as possible.

the only problem with this is that there’s a really powerful gem called yellow diamond who really, REALLY doesn’t like humans, and wanted to take the earth for gemkind. in fact, that entire war they just mentioned was fought specifically to get yellow diamond off the planet. she was banished to her own corner of the galaxy with her followers and has presumably been brooding on the loss ever since.

and now a peridot with a yellow diamond insignia has just shown up.

well, that’s okay! says steven. surely we can just call the gem homeworld and tell them that yellow diamond is causing trouble again. right?

wrong. the communications towers got sabotaged, presumably by peridot. they can’t fix them. they’re cut off. if yellow diamond’s forces show up then they have to deal with it themselves and there is no way that they can fight off an army on their own.

cue the message. on her way home, lapis flew smack into a forward scouting crew sent by yellow diamond and now she’s their unwilling informant. all she can do is send them a warning and try to protect steven.

rose’s scabbard also changes so that pearl does try to catch steven when he falls, though she fails and he has to catch himself. everything else is the same after that.

season two

so, peridot is loose somewhere, and malachite’s totally a thing they’re going to have to deal with at some point. hooray.

first of all: sworn to the sword. this episode needs to be fixed so that we don’t have pearl emotionally abusing connie. i've written an alternative stts before focusing on garnet, but i'm actually going to leave this one with pearl in this rewrite. the difference is that it’s going to be about pearl overcompensating for not being designed to be the most martial gem. she overworks connie, connie calls her out on it, and pearl has an identity crisis because… maybe she really is just a glorified assistant. well no, she’s actually a pretty good teacher, she’s just being kind of overzealous! pearl apologises to connie and loosens up a bit.

the first major thing that changes is the week of sardonyx because SWEET LORD ALMIGHTY those episodes need a fucking facelift! peridot starts broadcasting from one of the towers she sabotaged in order to get yellow diamond to come pick her up. and yes, it is actually peridot doing it this time! not pearl! the titular cry for help, however, now belongs to garnet. she keeps having to fuse to fix this and while she LIKES fusion, she’s starting to get kind of stressed over it all. it doesn’t help that pearl reaaaaaally likes this, or that amethyst is getting super upset that it’s not HER fusing. eventually garnet just fucking loses it from stress. she doesn’t want to be seen as just a fusion and she’s EXHAUSTED from trying to lead the others now that rose is gone and everything is going to hell! pearl and amethyst rapidly realise that they’ve been super insensitive, but it’s too late – garnet fries the tower’s control panel because apparently she has to do everything herself.

keystone motel builds on this – steven and greg invite garnet on a road trip in order to help her destress. it doesn’t work. garnet falls apart from stress, quite literally, but ruby and sapphire aren’t doing much better. steven manages to reassure them and they refuse. garnet's still not doing great, but her head is a little clearer now.

onion friend and historical friction are more about amethyst and pearl realising “hey, we fucked up there”. they both come to the conclusion that they really need to make it up to garnet and fix this…

…leading into friend ship, where they’re BOTH going overboard on catching peridot! ultimately all three of them get stuck in the trap, and garnet finally lets it out that she CAN’T be the strong one, she CAN’T be everyone else’s foundation, she’s stressed and upset too. amethyst and pearl explain that they never meant to hurt her and that they only want to spend time with her, but that they’re sorry they DID hurt her and want to try to help her handle things. alexandrite triumphantly bursts out of the trap and subsequently fails to catch peridot… but that’s okay, she tried. and they’ll get her next time. TOGETHER.

then we go into the peridemption arc. and this is where things start swerving. i'm changing the cluster.

it's not a weapon because it’s going to crack the earth open. it's a weapon because when it activates it will release a song that will corrupt the remaining gems AND nuke the brainstems of every living thing native to earth. it’s a cleaning tool for yellow diamond’s new conquest of earth. see, earth is pretty awesome because its crust has a ton of minerals in it which could produce one heck of an army. it actually already DID! that's where amethyst and jasper came from! if yellow diamond can take back the earth, she can rebuild her armies and get her revenge on the other diamonds!

…OTHER diamonds…?

oh yeah, there’s four total, or at least there were. this is about the point at which we get to the answer, which has to change heavily for one big reason: blue diamond is not a villain any more. spoilers! trust me, i have my reasons.

anyway, ruby once served yellow diamond, whose forces had intercepted a ship sent by blue diamond to earth during the war; a ship which carried a sapphire seer who was going to assist pink diamond. sapphire saw this whole thing coming, naturally, and she knows that when help – in the form of pink diamond’s most elite military unit – arrives, they will be shattered and pink diamond’s side will take a terrible blow. ruby, meanwhile, is also having a bad time of it – she feels outcast amongst her fellow rubies because she actually doesn’t want to fight the other diamonds. she doesn’t like any of this, but she follows because she sees no other way out.

pearl and rose show up to raise hell. sapphire just sighs because she knows this is it for the earth, but ruby refuses to accept it. she makes the split-second decision to push sapphire away from ruby’s own comrades, creating garnet. AND EVERYONE FLIPS THEIR SHIT. this has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. what the fuck?! well, whatever it is, yellow diamond’s forces are HORRIFIED and decide to just shatter their own treacherous ruby. pearl and rose, meanwhile, are like “lolwat”. ruby panics, but sapphire grabs her and hauls her to an escape pod while the cgs distract the others by running away themselves. (“cross-gem fusion?? this was not in the plan. WE’RE OUT OF HERE. and maybe we can make the guards go after us instead of those two while we’re at it.”)

now the episode plays out a lot like it did before, with ruby escorting sapphire to a communication hub and the two falling in love along the way, until the end. ruby and sapphire have created an entire new way of being. rose is fascinated and excited, pearl is like “holy shit lmao you’re awesome let’s be friends”, and when they get in contact with blue diamond to explain what happened to the mission, garnet declares that actually, she kinda wants to stay on earth and fight with the crystal gems. ruby doesn’t want to go back to yellow diamond and sapphire doesn’t want to leave ruby. blue diamond is just like “…well… okay then?? i mean i have no idea whose court you belong to any more so i guess you get to pick! and you picked pink!”

things play out the same from there for the rest of the season.

season three

things immediately derail.

they don’t beat malachite. yeah, that pep talk in the ship was cool and all, but alexandrite is still kind of a mess from stress and internal disagreements. the melons do manage to chase malachite off, though. now, they do get the cluster to shut down… temporarily. they can’t outright deactivate it yet and if more of yellow diamond’s forces show up and reactivate it there’s not much they can do!

oh, and while trying to recuperate after the malachite mess, five rubies show up and play baseball with them. their orders are to shatter peridot and recover jasper. forget about lapis she’s not important. steven persuades them to go to neptune. now they have four problems: internal disagreements and tensions, malachite, the cluster, and more of yd’s armies showing up any day now. AND THEY STILL CAN’T CONTACT HOMEWORLD!

now then, i'm going to nearly completely abandon the previous episode structure and go for something different entirely. i'm not going to point out particular episodes to be replaced, just general trends. here we go:

bismuth the episode still has to happen, but it’s going to change. first of all, bismuth doesn’t get re-bubbled at the end. secondly, the reason rose objects to the breaking point is pink diamond, because pink diamond was assassinated and rose objects to any more true deaths. bismuth points out that they can’t just shoo yellow diamond off and expect her to behave. even if they win, she’s going to come back! she’s not going to stop trying to take the earth and impose her own order onto the universe! she wants to put all the gems into boxes, instead of letting them decide their own paths, as the others had begun to. AND OH LOOK, GUESS WHO WAS FUCKING RIGHT?! the episode ends with steven accepting the lie his mother told and telling the gems the truth, beginning the process of the crystal gems breaking away from rose.

i would put bismuth near the beginning of the season, actually.

peridot, being the expert on the cluster, is the one who leads the efforts to try to destroy it permanently. the breaking point just isn’t enough to save those forcibly fused gems, though it HAS proven effective at breaking apart the smaller ones. in the process, steven, peridot, connie and bismuth make an effort to find out how exactly the song works.

meanwhile, the main three gems are still after malachite, and are trying to work through thousands of years of issues at the same time. pearl wasn’t a slave this time around, but a secretary of the worst stereotypical kind. if she wasn’t happy with that, but can’t win as a warrior… who is she? garnet's still stressed from having to lead the others, and these revelations about rose aren’t helping. there's a thousand ways this could go wrong and she has to be prepared for all of them. amethyst is struggling with her own self-esteem, especially after meeting jasper and learning that the person who valued her the most – rose quartz – was actually kinda dubious herself.

the fight to stop malachite takes a turn when to everyone’s surprise malachite doesn’t want to keep fighting. oh, lapis doesn’t want to be a prisoner again, and jasper would like to get off this planet tyvm, but malachite? she’s TIRED of this. so tired. she's got all three of the main trios’ issues at once: she doesn’t know who she is, she has to keep fighting when she doesn’t want to, and she REALLY hates herself.

in the meantime, team cluster find out more about pink diamond herself from bismuth. the four diamonds had different views on humans. yellow wanted to destroy them and use the earth, blue wanted to leave them alone and see how they developed, white was in the middle of yellow and blue, and pink wanted to co-operate with humanity. she was born on earth too, y’know!

…which leads to the big change: the humans get actively involved in understanding and fighting the corrupted gems. greg gets some better gear with his new cash and starts trying to make a song that can take on the corruption. kiki gets her hands on magic gem artefacts and starts learning how to use them. the cool kids lead the frontline efforts to protect the city, while mayor dewey organises things. onion’s capacity for mayhem, egged on by his parents, proves an effective anti-ruby deterrent. sadie still has her fish-murdering skills. lars gets a reality check and starts trying to use his experiences of being angry and bitter to relate to the corrupted gems. (lars the gem whisperer. everyone is stunned.) ronaldo’s blog becomes useful as he starts collating information on the gems and the things left behind. connie, who has the most gem experience, is working on the cluster but does help to rally the others.

ultimately, the endgame of this season occurs when malachite brings the three groups together by accident. this is when THE BIG REVEAL occurs about pink diamond.

pink diamond had herself martyred on purpose. blue and white weren’t coming to help, still too divided over what the proper thing to do with the earth was. she was desperate. she wanted to protect her planet. and so, she asked her greatest warrior to do something utterly unthinkable, something which would save the earth but at a massive price.

pink diamond asked rose quartz to kill her. to shatter her. to pretend to betray her and go over to yellow diamond. pink diamond’s death would get her sisters’ attention and pink diamond was willing to die for this belief in the potential of earth. but rose refused. she wouldn’t do it. she would not become a killer to save the earth. pink diamond pointed out the consequences if “winning peacefully” failed, rose quartz still refused. all life has value! but what about the lives of the humans, of all the other living beings of earth? rose, personally, refused to kill.

so jasper did it instead. that’s why she hates herself. rose quartz threw her under the bus, and she’s spend five thousand years working for “the enemy”, seen by all gems as the greatest murderer in the galaxy. and she can’t believe she did it, and regrets it every day, and has come to LOATHE the earth in response because it’s the only way she can cope with the guilt of killing her diamond.

ultimately, the cast face a revalation. a huge, horrible one. malachite actually finally defuses solely from lapis’s shock at the truth about pink diamond’s assassination. jasper is fully expecting to get shattered now. it's over and she can’t even be upset about it. she’s so upset, she loses control and starts to corrupt.

“…thanks, sis.”

jasper looks up from where she’s fallen. amethyst is there.

“okay, so… you did something horrible. something you feel so bad about, even to this day. and i totally get why! but, like�� if you hadn’t done that, i wouldn’t be here. steven wouldn’t be here. none of these people would be here. and i know i'm super tiny and puny, but honestly? i’m glad i exist.”

and jasper just. looks at her in disbelief.

and one by one… all the gems there come out with their reactions to this mess. they all know that it’s wrong to kill, that jasper shouldn’t have been in this situation and neither should rose or pink diamond, but DAMN if the secrecy and lies that rose has spun around her to protect her own image aren’t rocking them right now. like, what the hell?!

but… jasper saved the human race, even if it was at a terrible cost. so the human race want to save her, too.

the first gem to be fully saved from corruption, through steven’s healing powers and the song that greg, connie and sour cream play, is jasper.

onwards?

beyond this, the focus of the show shifts. the crystal gems have reached a turning point – to be open with each other, to be honest, and to co-operate with humanity. i would just generally scrap s4 as is and focus on how the humans and gems come together to protect the earth and each other.

jasper and amethyst develop a sisterly relationship, and work through their self-esteem issues together. lapis seeks out a place in this new world and finds one, dealing with her trauma in her own way, and helping out with the defence effort because she is NEVER going to be a prisoner EVER AGAIN. peridot at some point obtains new limb enhancers and works with bismuth on making things to protect the town. (i would also throw in ame/dot after too far, BUT i am chill with anything that isn’t jas/pis or the godawful “canon” version of lapi/dot.)

the rubies show up again, and come to like earth too. from them, we get a perspective on yellow diamond’s regime from the very bottom – a place where no one can be themselves or express themselves outside of their caste. the rubies get a taste of freedom and go for it.

pearl moves on. if last one out of beach city happens, it’s not with someone who looks that much like rose. garnet doesn’t have to be “the strong one” anymore and can embrace who she really is. amethyst ditches her kayfabe to be a real hero this time. steven works through his complicated feelings on his mother alongside greg, and while he still loves her and believes in the peace she fought for, he is NOT gonna be like her. connie becomes independent and really, truly “grows up”.

the corrupted gem episodes change focus to dealing with the internal issues of each gem and healing them with the song they made. eventually, this can get upscaled to the cluster itself. that, along with desperately trying to contact homeworld, would be the plot of s4.

the gang do make it to homeworld, but in a different context. first of all that godawful zoo does not exist. secondly, blue diamond is far more sympathetic for a good reason – she’s heartbroken still about pink and is horrified to learn of what really happened to her sister. but hey, looks like pink was right about humans and gems working together. blue diamond – and eventually white diamond – agrees to send aid. help is coming, just hold out! that would likely be the s4 finale.

s5 is the war against yellow diamond. now, how they’d actually handle yellow is a bit awkward because we can’t ask a fourteen-year-old to kill someone and making someone else do it just repeats the problem with jasper! instead, steven is upfront about the fact that actually killing someone DOES sound really horrible in practise, and everyone’s sympathetic to his point there.

ultimately i would have an impaled on her own sword sort of affair. blue and white show up to help and yellow is pretty much outgunned. they tell yellow to stand down so they can sort this out, but yellow refuses and tries to attack with her own version of the breaking point or w/e. steven jumps in to protect whoever she’s attacking, and the shield makes the weapon rebound and hit yellow in the gem, shattering her.

the division of gems is over. blue and white will mourn both of their sisters, but will take yellow’s armies under their wings themselves. lapis returns to homeworld, FINALLY, but agrees to visit every so often because she’d miss her friends. the former corrupted gems spread out across the earth to spread the message: humanity has friends in the stars. we are strong, but you have an imagination and a capacity for freedom which we adore.

but there’s still some gems still corrupted, and a lot of the gem tech is still unsafe, and the second battle for earth caused a lot of damage. don't worry, though! because there’s a team of alien warriors who have dedicated themselves to protecting this planet in one way or another. they will be the bridge between humans and gems.

that’s why the people of this world believe in garnet, amethyst, pearl, peridot, bismuth, jasper…

…AND STEVEN!