YMMV / Learning to Breathe Underwater

• Genius Bonus: Steven mentions having had a pet goldfish named "Mister Kintsugi." Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, and based on the philosophy of treating broken objects not as things to be thrown away, but items that should be treasured because their history is a part of them. Fits pretty well with Steven's philosophy of seeing everyone as deserving of a second chance, regardless of where they came from or what they did in the past.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This fic was finished well before Stevenbomb 4.0, aka the Peridot Redemption Arc, was released, so some scenes or plot aspects look a little goofy in contrast to how canon turned out:
  • Pearl being horrified at the idea of Steven growing facial hair. In "Steven's Birthday", she's just as pleased for him as the other Crystal Gems.
  • Yellow Diamond being a chilly, rational, emotionless Social Darwinist looks a lot funnier after "Message Received", not just because canon!YD is, fittingly for a kids' show, a lot less chilling and aloof, and a lot more prone to making weird faces: Learning To Breathe's YD matches up almost exactly with canon Peridot's near-fanatical rhapsodizing about how she imagines Yellow Diamond to be. Just like Peridot, fans (and the writer) fell for YD's hype.
  • Peridot being so confused about how human romantic relationships work that at one point she's convinced that Sadie is planning to traumatically inseminate Lars ("That's BEDBUGS, Peridot!"), despite her having access to the entire internet. Fast forward to "Log Date 7 15 2", and it turns out that all it takes for media-starved Peridot to form a highly sophisticated, complex understanding of human interpersonal relationship dynamics (and become a filthy shipper into the bargain) is a single episode of a cheesy Canadian teen soap opera. A single episode.
  • How Lapis wound up in the mirror after the episode "Same Old World" aired. While it was Homeworld who placed her there, it wasn't because Lapis was sent her to Earth to fight and failed. Instead, she was a civilian who went to Earth to visit, and while there was poofed by a Crystal Gem, had a Homeworld soldier mistake her for a Crystal Gem and place her in the mirror, and was interrogated for information on the Crystal Gems, which of course she didn't have. It was during the mass exodus after the failed efforts to stop the rebellion that her gem was cracked, and she was left staring at the sky through the mirror until Pearl found her.
  • Lapis being a Deadpan Snarker (especially in Chapter 2) would come to canon in Hit the Diamond.
  • Lapis not being much of a fan of Earth literature in Chapter 3 becomes this when we see her reading at the end of "The Kindergarten Kid" and is doing so in the background of the short "Video Chat" until Peridot gets her attention.
  • The general presentation of Emerald becomes this after "Lars of the Stars", where an Emerald is driven to her wit's end by the Captain Harlock-esque shenanigans of the protagonists.
  • Garnet's comment that the Diamonds, at first, treated Rose Quartz's rebellion like a temper tantrum instead of a real threat became oddly prophetic with The Reveal that Rose was actually the Secret Identity of Pink Diamond, a young, naive Gem who was treated as Just a Kid by her her fellow Diamonds.
    • More on Rose's characterization, within the fanfic itself: She was a Homeworld leader/commander with authority over other Gems and, unusually for a Gem, showed concern for the welfare of lesser-ranking Gems, but was outranked by the Diamonds. They occasionally humored her by letting her do things like adopt outcast Gems, but stifled her attempts to make life better for their subjects. On Earth, she became fascinated with organic life and began the Rebellion to save all the planet's living things. All of these traits turned out to be a pretty close match to the show's version of Pink Diamond.
  • Lars' canon ethnicity was unknown at the time of writing, so the author made him half-Vietnamese. They weren't too far off; he was eventually revealed to be half-Filipino.
  • When Peridot explains that her Gem Buster robots are for smashing Gem criminals, Greg asks if Gems even get defense courts or trials on Homeworld. "The Trial" reveals that Homeworld does have lawyers in the form of Zircons.