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Characters found in Steven Universe.

Warning: All spoilers for the first two seasons and some for later seasons are unmarked. It is highly recommended that you watch those episodes before reading these sheets. Proceed at your own risk!


  • Crystal Gems and AlliesClick to Expand 
  • Gem FusionsClick to Expand  (Unmarked Spoilers)
  • Homeworld GemsClick to Expand 
  • Gem MonstersClick to Expand  (Unmarked Spoilers)
    • Little HomeworldClick to Expand  (Unmarked Spoilers)
  • HumansClick to Expand 
  • OtherClick to Expand 

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    Gems in general 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gems_su.png
Pearl: Our bodies are just projections generated by our gemstone. Think of it like a hologram, but with mass.
Amethyst: Nice mass.
Garnet: I know.
— "The Classroom Gems", "What are Gems?"

A race of immortal, shape-shifting mineral-based aliens originating from a place only known as the "Gem Homeworld".


  • Achilles' Heel: Destroy or damage their gemstones and they're screwed. Even merely cracking a gemstone greatly increases the likelihood that it will break completely, both because of how easily the crack spreads and the incapacitating effects on their bodies.
  • The Ageless: Gems do not age, and are born as adults.
  • Alien Fair Folk: They at first appeared to be some sort of magical fae-like race, but were revealed as aliens halfway into the first season.
  • All-Natural Gem Polish: As described in Bizarre Alien Reproduction below, Gems, such as Amethyst, are sprouted directly from the ground and all so far appear to be worked into unique cuts. Possibly justified by the apparent artificial nature of their creation.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Humans are portrayed with skin colors that are either realistic or slightly off from real life, but Gems have all kinds. Amethyst is purple and Pearl is pearly white. Rose has peachy pink skin. Lapis Lazuli is a deep, vivid blue, Peridot is lime green, and Jasper is orange with a red tiger-stripe pattern. Downplayed by Garnet, who is brown, but with a red tint matching her color scheme not seen in any dark-skinned human character; this also subtly avoids the tendency for this trope to only apply to light-skinned characters. When Ruby and Sapphire fuse back into Garnet, her skin has a more purple tint, reflecting the mix of red and blue from her component Gems.
  • And I Must Scream: Shattering a Gem is revealed to result in this; each fragment still technically, alive, but unable to form anything with just a shard of their consciousness left. Shards are aware of their incompleteness and want to be whole again, but there's nothing to be done. Then, in "Homeworld Bound", it's shown that Yellow Diamond is tracking down as many pieces of shattered gems as possible to put them back together, with the intention of doing that with The Cluster.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: While it's mostly evident in their color palettes, the Gems' designs incorporate aspects of their namesake. For example, Garnet's afro is cube-shaped (the common form of actual garnets), Jasper has tiger-stripe patterns over her skin, Rose Quartz's dress has a slight petal design in the folds, etc.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: Gems can blush unusual colors despite not having blood. They're also seen gasping for air in "Cheeseburger Backpack", but indicate they don't actually need to breathe like Steven does when going on an underwater missionnote . Their bodies are merely constructs created by their gemstones, they don't need to eat nor sleep (although they can choose to eat, and can feel fatigue and require rest), and they can literally fuse with members of the same species. They also come out of holes in solid rock.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Gems, notably explored with Amethyst, literally pop out of the ground after being "made". Because they use the life energy of the planet they are formed on to develop, this process will eventually make said world uninhabitable to biological lifeforms. This is the only known way Gems make more of their kind, though it raises the question of how they first came to be. In "Gem Drill", Peridot notices the peridotite in the Earth's mantle and mentions that she formed from the same substance on Homeworld.
  • Body Motifs: The Gems' gems locations can be tied to their personalities and habits:
    • Pearl's gem is located on her forehead; she's very much the intellectual of the group, and acts with her mind. So far, she is also the only known Pearl with her gem in this location. Despite being built as a servant, this Gem can think for herself.
    • Amethyst's gem is on her chest, and she's very quick to act on instinct or intense emotion (her bout of acting out as Purple Puma, for instance); she acts according to her heart. She also has very sexually liberal clothing and dances, and one could interpret the placement of her gem reflects that too.
    • Garnet's gems are in the palms of her hands; while she's also very intelligent, she's more a gem of action, and the placement on her hands could be seen as a metaphor for being willing to get her hands dirty. As a fusion, her two former personas could just as easily be renamed her "left arm" and her "right".
    • Steven's inherited gem is located in his stomach; he goes by gut instinct. Rose Quartz's was also in the same place and one could think of the gem being near her womb. Word of God says a belly placement means that the Gem is quite intuitive.
    • Lapis' gem is located on her back; her main goal is looking back and wanting to return home. According to Rebecca Sugar, it also signifies vulnerability and her lack of control and direction: an important part of her is exposed to the rest of the world in a place she herself can't see or reach.
    • Peridot's gem is also on her forehead. She's logical to a nearly robotic level, with little time for things like mercy and kindness until she's had considerable Character Development. Like Pearl, she can often react to things quite literally even when they're to be taken as metaphors.
    • Jasper's gem is located where her nose would be. She's clearly stubborn, uncompromising, and generally a tough customer... in other words, she's hard-nosed.
    • Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond both have gems on their chests, but unlike Amethyst, they’re both rather cold. You could say that given that their gems are positioned over their hearts and are, well, diamonds, they're pretty hard-hearted. Though it's also revealed that they care very deeply about each other. Their Pearls both have gems in the same place as their respective masters as a Servant Race form of Uncatty Resemblance.
    • Bismuth's gem is also in her chest, which, like Amethyst, represents how she loves having fun with her comrades. How it protrudes inwards shows how much she's internalized her desire for revenge against the Homeworld elite to the point where she's become no better than them. Put another way, she has a hole in her heart.
    • Aquamarine's very small gem has a shape, color, and position resembling a tear drop going down her face. It's ironic in the sense that she's not one to cry for others, with her mocking tone bringing Crocodile Tears to mind. It's also a reference to teardrop tattoos, which are often associated with prisoners and/or murders.
    • The Topazes have their gems on either side of their head, giving their fusion the appearance of earmuffs and signifying that they ignore everything but their commanding officer's orders.
    • White Diamond also has her gem on her forehead, reflecting how hard it is to change her mind.
  • Born as an Adult: Gems do not experience adolescence "in the human sense" and the hole Amethyst was born from is the same size as she is now. Both of these suggest that the Shapeshifter Default Form Gems take is the same physical age at birth as it will be for their entire lives. In the "How are Gems made?" short, Garnet and Amethyst specifically state they were never babies. On the other hand, Gems choose their default form, so they can look younger if they want to, as the Crystal Gems did in the past.
  • Capital Letters Are Magic: Though the series is primarily in non-written media, official sources (such as the interactive story Your Magic Mind and Body, and Rebecca Sugar's AMA) capitalize "Gems" and their various types (not just when referring to individuals using their type like a name).
  • Cast of Snowflakes: As seen by the page picture, Gems come in every kind of shape and size, custom-made for every kind of task.
  • Clone Army: Gems of a single kind deliberately look extremely similar, tend to dress similarly, go by the same name (if you can really even call them names), are differentiated on Homeworld by serial numbers, and share a single voice actor. They have variances in gem placement, hair, color, speech, and minor physical features (Yellow Pearl's nose is turned up much further than the Crystal Gem Pearl's), but major differences (e.g. Amethyst's short height) are seen as defects in creation.
  • Color-Coded Stones: The color of their gems themselves are those most heavily associated with their namesake, and the color schemes of their bodies follow from there. Gem fusion even makes the gemstones change color to match the fusion's namesake.
  • Color-Coded Wizardry: A Gem's magic seems to match the color of their gem, though sometimes it's only a hint in a mostly-white glow. They keep their basic color scheme when they shapeshift and their magically-generated weapons follow it too.
  • Combo Platter Powers: There doesn't seem to be a particular overarching theme to the various unique abilities the Gems sport. Amethyst can run a fiery energy through her whip, but her other shown ability is a Rolling Attack. She also favors shapeshifting more than the other Gems, enough to actually use it in combat.
  • Complete Immortality: Downplayed. While a shattered gem is for all intents and purposes "dead" and is treated as such by other Gems, they're actually still alive and conscious. We've never seen a method to actually kill rather then permanently incapacitate a Gem- an early monster of the week shows that even grinding one down to dust won't do the job.
  • Data Crystal: Besides being a Heart Drive, a Gem's jewel seems to have some computer-like functions, such as a hologram projector; to drive the point home, a rebooted Pearl introduces herself with a song titled like a file path. Gems that have been damaged to the point of no longer being sentient can be used for storing data, basically being their equivalent of a Wetware CPU. This has also happened to a still-living Gem at least once.
  • Deader than Dead:
    • Since Gem bodies are holographic projections, lethal injury to said bodies ("poofing") will simply cause Gems to revert to their Heart Drive and later regenerate their form (although they can be surrounded by a magic bubble, preventing this from occurring). Cracks in their gem will cause their physical form to be corrupted and can be healed (though only two people can do it — Rose Quartz and Steven), but if the gem is fully shattered, they're done for. The shards can form random moving limbs, but have no real thoughts or personality, just a desperate desire to be whole. Even Rose Quartz's healing powers can't save a shattered gem.
    • Change Your Mind and Future clarify the extents of Gem death - giving birth to an organic lifeform and passing the gemstone onto them is the only known way to completely wipe a Gem from existence, with the Gem itself inhereting the offspring's persona and reforming as such if forcibly extracted. Further on, Fragments shows the Diamonds' collective power can restore even a shattered gem if most of the shards can be reassembled and that Yellow Diamond by herself can repair shattered Gems as revealed in the following episode, albeit with cracks and the associated erronous forms.
  • Discount Lesbians: They are a One-Gender Race of sapient rocks with No Biological Sex that use forms that look like human women. They still hold romantic feelings of attraction to each other and, in a few rare cases, humans of either sex. However, no one suggests that they are different than human women in terms of sexuality in either direction — humans tend not to realize or care that they are aliens. When Pearl falls for a human woman who seems to return her interest, the implication is clearly that both are attracted to women. Their sexless nature isn't even stated in the show, just implied by their Bizarre Alien Reproduction.
  • Eating Optional: Gems can eat and drink, but they have no need to do so. Guide to the Crystal Gems states that, to even be able to eat/drink/breathe, Gems have to deliberately make a Shapeshifter Default Form with the relevant organ systems. The Crystal Gems have all done so because Rose thought it would make it easier to relate to humans. Word of God revealed near the Series Finale that Gems actually get their energy from absorbing ambient starlight.
  • Emotional Maturity Is Physical Maturity: Gems are born fully grown then never age, but their appearance of age tends to reflect their personality. Amethyst, Peridot, and the Rubies are all short, young-looking, and very immature. Yellow Diamond, who's been a leader of Homeworld Gems for many millennia, has some pretty heavy lines on her face, while her contemporary Blue Diamond lacks those lines and has permanent dark blotches under her eyes which are missing in a flashback to before Pink's shattering. Flashbacks to when Greg met Rose (very recently in terms of a Gem's usual lifespan) showed Amethyst, Pearl, and Garnet as considerably younger-looking and less mature than in the present.
  • Emotional Powers: Each Gem activates their power by relying on a different emotion, which is why Steven initially had a lot of trouble learning how to use and activate his gem; the advice the other Crystal Gems gave him was tailored-fit for their powers only, Steven has to rely on love to activate his powers.
  • Everyone Has a Special Move: Each Gem has a power unique to them, usually a weapon. Some have one or more other abilities specific to them as well.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel: They have long since mastered it. While the Warp Pads are teleporters, their ships have shown to be able to travel between galaxies in reasonable times. Some Gems, like Lapis, seem capable of Casual Interstellar Travel under their own power.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Getting shattered is the only known way to permanently put a Gem down for good, but it's revealed that even individual fragments are still alive, with a shard of their original consciousness. This is not a good thing.
  • From a Single Cell: As long as the gem is intact, the entire rest of their body will eventually be regenerated if damaged. This regeneration is slower than most examples, as a Gem may take time to reformat their Shapeshifter Default Form. A Gem like Pearl may take two weeks, whereas someone like Amethyst could rush through it in seconds with mixed results. The only way to actually kill a Gem seems to be destroying the gemstone itself... and even then, fragments will still survive and come to life as disembodied limbs. Even when shards are ground into powder suitable for use in paints, like those on the scroll in "Together Breakfast", a form of life remains. Gems are very hard to kill, and it may be impossible to eliminate even the tiniest fragment of life without reducing them to their component molecules.
  • Gem Tissue: All of them have a gem somewhere on their bodies (which is the only part of them which isn't made of Hard Light).
  • Gravity Master: Gems apparently have a limited and unconscious ability to manipulate their own gravity so they'll always move around the same regardless of what planet(oid) they're on.
  • Green-Skinned Space Babe: Gems are polymorphic sentient rocks taking human female forms, although not always conventionally attractive ones.
  • Grew Beyond Their Programming: They are deliberately manufactured with a purpose in mind; Quartzes are soldiers, Peridots are engineers, and Pearls are ornaments given to higher-ranking types of Gem. Rose Quartz turned her back on this when founding the Crystal Gems, and encouraged her fellow Gems to find their own paths in life. For example, the Crystal Gem Pearl has embraced this in learning to become her own person. She's a skilled fighter and a talented engineer, among other things. Bismuth looked up to Rose Quartz specifically for this, as Bismuths are normally construction workers, which she grew sick of. Unfortunately, the path she chose was one of warmongering and bloodlust, leading to a falling out with Rose and, later, Steven.
  • Hard Light: Their physical forms are just projections made of light, but they can interact with the world around them as if they were solid. In the "What Are Gems" segment, Pearl even states that their bodies are essentially holograms with mass. The Series Bible clarified that Gem bodies are actually manipulated gas and photons imbued with a special particle that replicates solid matter, which is why bubbling prevents them from regenerating - they can't absorb enough ambient gas to reform.
  • Heart Drive: They don't just have magical gemstones — they literally are magical gemstones. Any other part of them can be replaced, but a damaged gem apparently won't conveniently heal by itself and affects their ability to maintain a physical form. Should any damage befall their gemstones, a Gem's body will undergo uncontrollable glitches that worsen until the damage is repaired. A gem breaking is fatal — the shards will be alive and form limbs and respond to stimuli, but they're not people anymore.
  • Horde of Alien Locusts: Not only do they strip a planet of its life energy and organic material, they also strip it of its inorganic material, rendering the planet a hollowed out husk with massive holes in the crust and a core in the center (as shown by the image of a potentially colonized Earth in "It Could've Been Great"). At least the Tyranids leave a lifeless rock behind.
  • Hostile Terraforming: Gems, as what is essentially a Horde of Alien Locusts, do this to all the planets they inhabit. They strip it of its life energy, organic material, and inorganic material, rendering the planet a hollowed-out husk with massive holes in the crust and a core in the center holding the crust in the shape of a planet. And that remaining crust has Gem technology and Gem architecture on it for Gems to use and inhabit.
  • Human Outside, Alien Inside: They seem mostly human on the outside, with the Crystal Gems' bodies resembling humans even more from the inside, to the point of having many organ systems rendered redundant because they're The Needless and don't reproduce. However, their bodies are just constructs which, in the Crystal Gems' case, were made to be more humanlike on the inside. Their gems, which are their "real" bodies, couldn't bear any less resemblance to humans.
  • Human Resources: They seem to have a habit of recycling other Gems (or their pieces) to power their technology, blurring the line between organic and inorganic equipment. Examples include Lapis Lazuli's mirror and the gem shards from "Frybo".
  • Immortal Immaturity: Gems are born as they always will be and never age, as such, they have no natural means or reason to developed emotionally or mentally, barring extreme circumstances they usually fail to grow past. The Crystal Gems and later the Diamonds and rest of Gem-kind end up needing Steven to help them and teach them to grow as people.
  • Immortal Procreation Clause: Regular Gems are all non-aging and don't reproduce at all. Rose Quartz is the exception, creating a womb to birth the half-Gem Steven, at the cost of her own existence as her Gem became part of him, making this quite an inexplicable occurrence from a Gem perspective. It's eventually shown that Gems are made artificially from the essence of the Diamonds injected into the earth, at the cost of draining all life from the surrounding area.
  • Improbable Hairstyle: Their hair doesn't seem to act like human hair. Gems like Peridot and Yellow Diamondnote  can have their hair stay in bizarre shapes constantly without need of treatment. And the two Zircons we've seen have what looks like tight hoods, but are actually just hair that extends to their chins and necks.
  • Ironic Name: If their names aren't meaningful, they're this. They can also be both.
  • Light 'em Up: As beings made of light, this ability comes up occasionally, like their use of their gems as flashlights and their blinding flashes.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Thus far, the only times a Gem has changed their clothing has either been temporary or after they reform from damage. Even then, the permanent changes tend to be fairly minor, such as Pearl exchanging her skirt for a longer shirt or Garnet shifting her color scheme from predominantly red to predominantly purple.
  • Little People: Rubies, Sapphires, (Era 2) Peridots, and Aquamarines are normally the size of young human children. Pebbles and the “Beetles” are an exaggeration, being extremely tiny.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The show never draws a hard line between the magical and natural/technological regarding gems nature, abilities, or equipment. It seems to be an indeterminate combination of both - though the show stopped using the term "magic" sometime in the second season, making the concpt a bit of an artifact.
  • Mental Picture Projector: Pearl, Peridot and a dormant Gem have all demonstrated the ability to project holograms of their design. Pearl's at the least are demonstrated to be Hard Light.
  • Missing Reflection: In the Future episode "Growing Pains", it's revealed that the only part of Gems that show up in radiographs are their gemstones, as the rest of their bodies are made of light. Being a half-human hybrid, radiographs of Steven show a skeleton and a gemstone.
  • Morphic Resonance: Despite their ability to shapeshift, Gems maintain traits such as their coloration, voices, and gemstone in any form they take. As shown in "Reformed", the Gems have a "default" appearance that they must choose when they regenerate from their gemstones. Garnet's coloration has changed multiple times over different incarnations, which seems to be unique to fusions — Sugilite too has different coloration in her two appearances.
  • Mundane Utility: Gems, beings made of light, can use their gemstones as flashlights.
  • The Needless: Their gems provide their bodies with energy, meaning they don't need to sleep, eat, drink, or even breathe, although they can make bodies that are capable of doing so if they wish to. Amethyst embraces all of them with gusto. However, overworking themselves still causes physical and mental exhaustion that sleeping would best take care of. Word of God eventually clarified that Gems are powered by ambient light, so concievably they might run out of energy in complete darkness - though who knows how long that would actually take . . .
  • No Brows: The majority of full Gems lack eyebrows, something Steven and all the human characters (but Onion) have. They may gain thin eyebrows as necessary to make certain facial expressions.
  • No Biological Sex: They technically have no sex, with the only exception being the half-human (and male) Steven, though they tend to look feminine and they all refer to each other with female pronouns. It's also stated by Word of God that Steven's mother, Rose Quartz, specifically had to shapeshift a womb to carry him in and this had never been done before, and his birth resulted in her "death" for all intents and purposes since he inherited her gem.
  • No Navel, Novel Birth: Seems to be standard for all Gems, as Garnet's beach outfit and Lapis Lazuli show. It's a sign that their bodies are constructs of their gemstones, not born from another living being. Steven, the only Gem born from another Gem, has his gem where a normal human's navel would be. In "Change Your Mind", after White Diamond extracts Steven's/Pink Diamond's gem from Steven's body, it's revealed that Steven doesn't have a belly button either.
  • No Need for Names: It's easy to overlook because several gemstone types are acceptable human names, but the Gems are called by their type rather than being indicative of individual names. While the Crystal Gems are so few that it causes little trouble, it becomes relevant when Yellow Diamond asks Peridot which Peridot she is, forcing Peridot to state a long serial number to specify. It also makes the group at some points call Pearl "our Pearl".
  • Nonhumans Lack Attributes: Unless they shapeshift, they don't have visible nipples or genitalia due to having No Biological Sex, no matter how revealing their clothing is.
  • Non-Human Non-Binary: Rebecca Sugar has suggested that the Gems don't really have a gender binary from their own perspective, but pretty much roll with being identified as female because they don't really mind or care.
  • Older Is Better: Sometime after the rebellion on Earth, Homeworld altered their Gems' designs to cope with dwindling resources. The "Era 2" Gems made since then are less capable outside of their given role, and use technology to compensate.
  • One-Gender Race: Word of God confirms that the Gems have No Biological Sex, though all of them appear female and use "she/her" pronouns. The only exception is Steven, who's a Half-Human Hybrid. The creator also states that to most Gems, his mother having a child with a human is "unnatural". "On the Run" reveals that the Gems are grown/"made", and that they just pop out of the ground after forming. The show's supervising director, Ian JQ, went so far as to confirm this in a Tumblr post by specifically linking to the trope page as a reference, citing the Namekians from Dragon Ball as another example.
  • Only One Name: All Gems of the same kind go by the same name, i.e. all Peridots are called Peridot and all Pearls are called Pearl. Homeworld differentiates between Gems of the same kind by serial numbers involving their "facet" and "cut"/"cabochon".
  • Organic Technology: Ironically, despite Gems being inorganic lifeforms, both the "old" Gem technology left on Earth and the modern type currently used by the Homeworld Gems have a lot of parts like bodily organs: the Crystal Temple has a giant heart with arteries, the Gem-producing Injectors in the Kindergarden look like bacteriophage filled with viscera, and Peridot's ship is shaped like a human hand and has a bunch of vein-like tubes running through it.
  • Perpetual-Motion Monster: Gems never need to eat, drink, or sleep (although they do get fatigued), and don't require oxygen, but they can completely regenerate from almost any injury and seemingly live forever as long as their gem is unharmed. They can choose to eat and drink, but they don't gain nutrition from it. The Series Bible stated that the only things they need to maintain themselves are some form of gas to create their bodies from and some exterior light source for power.
  • Person of Holding: Gems (most often demonstrated by Pearl) can store objects in their gems. This is described by Amethyst as, "like a wallet but more infinite". It's a world unto itself in there.
  • Power Glows: A Gem's gemstone often glows when they activate their powers.
  • The Power of the Sun: Word of God stated after the Series Finale that Gems are powered by ambient starlight.
  • Race-Name Basis: Gems don't really have names, but are just referred to by what type of Gem they are — for example, all Pearls are named Pearl, all Rubies are named Ruby, etc. Individual Gems have a long designation for facet and cut, but it’s only for official records. It doesn't help that members of each type tend to be largely identical.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Most of them (sans Steven) have been around for centuries, if not millennia. Amethyst, the youngest Crystal Gem apart from Steven, was "born" about 5,000 years ago. As of only a few years ago when Greg first met Rose, Amethyst looked like a 7 year old herself. While it's not known how much older Sapphire and Ruby are, Garnet herself is officially 5,750 years old, as it was that many years before Steven's 14th birthday that Ruby and Sapphire first fused together. Pearl was given to Pink Diamond thousands of years before they ever came to Earth.
  • Rock Monster: Technically, their gems are their actual bodies and everything else is just a construct.
  • Rock Theme Naming: All but Steven are named after a kind of gemstone, usually similar to the kind they have in their body, and even Steven's middle name is Quartz. This caused Peridot to assume Steven was a type of rock, and that Stevens had replaced humans as the dominant race.
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: They generally look like humans with impossible hair and skin tones and gems embedded in their bodies. They are actually living gemstones who use shapeshifting to create humanoid bodies, technically making them Starfish Aliens. Some of the latter shown Gems are more blatantly inhuman even in terms of their constructs, bordering on Humanoid Aliens.
  • Self-Constructed Being: Their gems create the rest of their bodies. Pearl describes it as "like a hologram with mass".
  • Shapeshifter Baggage: Their shapeshifting can create and remove mass freely. They can even have their body "retreat into" their gem, leaving only the mass of the gem itself. In the "What Are Gems" short, Pearl even says their bodies have mass despite being made of light. And despite his body being organic, Steven can do the same, to a more limited extent.
  • Shapeshifter Default Form: Each one has a form and set of clothing they revert to when not consciously exerting themselves to shapeshift. It's an odd mix of both "preferred" and "true" form: Gems choose how they want to look when they regenerate from gemstone form, and this will add to the time it takes them to reform. There seems to be a ceiling to how much they can alter their physical forms, but things like wardrobe, coloration for fusions, and hair style appear to be minor enough to apply as their default. All of this is setting aside the fact that the only "real" part of their body is their gem, which does not shapeshift apart from changing color, or rotating in the new form.
  • Shapeshifter Swan Song: Inverted. If their humanoid forms are mortally damaged, they dissolve the forms back into their gems to regenerate, and once they're ready to be used again, they regenerate them with a new design. They quickly cycle through their past regenerations as silhouettes while doing so before settling on the newest one. In addition, in "An Indirect Kiss", Amethyst's gem is cracked. It's a potentially fatal injury that the late Rose Quartz had the ability to heal. As the crack worsens, she has trouble keeping her physical form together and speaks backwards.
  • Significant Double Casting: Whenever there are multiple instances of a Gem, they share a voice actor; all Pearls are voiced by Deedee Magno-Hall, all Amethysts are voiced by Micheala Dietz, etc. This reaches truly impressive levels in "Hit the Diamond", where Charlyne Yi voices SIX different Rubies (seven if you count the Ruby fusion) and still makes them sound vocally unique. The exceptions are the Diamonds, who have unique voice actors to go with their unique appearances, and White Pearl, who shares the voice of Christine Ebersole with White Diamond, and that was because White Diamond was using her as her puppet.
  • Silicon-Based Life: Save for the Half-Human Hybrid Steven, the Gems are inorganic entities.
  • The Sleepless: They don't need to sleep, but doing so is still shown to be a quick way of treating exhaustion for them.
  • Sleep-Mode Size: If badly injured, the Gems are able to retreat into their gems to heal, during which they can take some extra time to redesign their default appearance. It's eventually revealed that Steven has a variation. Overuse of his shapeshifting powers reverts back to an infant to recharge and recover.
  • Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Gems can summon a weapon from their gems. They can summon as many as they're willing to hold indefinitely if they break.
  • Society of Immortals: Every Gem is The Ageless, and they cannot be truly killed unless their gems are destroyed (and even then, the shards often retain a fragment of consciousness, making it closer to Death of Personality than true death).
  • Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: Zig-Zagged: They're capable of regularly performing acts that defy human comprehension, but at the same time no one is going to mistake anyone but the Diamonds for gods, and there are fairly well-defined limits as to what they can do. They refer to a lot of what they do as "magic", but they may be using that word just as a way to explain it that humans and Steven can more easily wrap their head around. (See also: Clarke's Third Law.) They do have machines that they need to use for some purposes, but these machines don't really look like machines, more like magical artifacts.
  • Superior Species: Zig-zagged. Gems are far more advanced than humanity both physically and technologically, even Era 2 Gems like Peridot who are "only" The Ageless and The Needless. Mentally and societally, Gems are still in a Feudal Future with an incredibly restrictive caste system despite their age. And individual gems can often hold on to their prejudices and issues for thousands of years, with the Crystal Gems needing the death of their leader Rose Quartz and her son Steven's help just to start moving past their personal issues (and on Homeworld it's expected for all Gems to be a Static Character).
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: They don't need to breathe, so they can spend indefinite amounts of time underwater.
  • Super Soldiers: Quartz Gems are supposed to be huge and powerful soldiers. Amethyst stayed in the ground too long and missed out on the "huge" part as a result, though she's still pretty powerful.
  • Super-Strength: Most varieties of Gems are stronger and tougher than humans to varying degrees. Even Steven seems stronger than a boy his age should be, for example, he is able to effortlessly fling Connie around during fights and pick up older teenagers to rescue them. The physically weakest Crystal Gem, Pearl, completely overpowers the one human she ever fights.
  • Superpowered Robot Meter Maids: Gems are designed for specific tasks, yet the older ones seem to all have shapeshifting, Super-Strength, and unique powers that don't seem applicable to their intended purpose. It's only more recently, in the face of resource shortages, that Homeworld started toning down the breadth of their abilities for the sake of optimization. But even Gems made since then seem capable of powers they did not know of and were never intended to have.
  • Technically Naked Shapeshifter: They are explicitly shown to be able to change their clothing along with the rest of their bodies using their Voluntary Shapeshifting, and these clothes are implicitly a product of the same shapeshifting that makes their bodies. They can even use their powers to change clothing by itself.
  • Technicolor Eyes: As with Amazing Technicolor Population, this seems to be a thing for the Gems.
  • Teleportation: Gem tech includes Warp Pads, which teleport Gems to a specific location.
  • This Was Their True Form: Seriously injuring a Gem's body reduces them to their gemstone, which is their "true form". However, if a Gem is actually broken (i.e. dead), the shards may or may not construct random body parts. Gem tech apparently exists to make shards animate uniforms and act as drone soldiers which turn on their commanders, and these shards appear inert when not near fabric. It's not yet explained how Gems are corrupted, but they seem to lose sense of what their "true form" is and turn into Gem Monsters. And then there's the forced Gem Fusions...
  • Time Abyss: Amethyst is around 5,000 years old, Garnet is established to be 5,750, and Pearl at one point makes a remark about how humans used to hunt and gather.
  • Time Dissonance: Being thousands and thousands of years old, the Gems clearly don't view time the same way humans do. They hardly seem to notice once when Steven went missing for a week, they treat centuries the way we may treat months, and they feel 1,000 years without TV is a perfectly reasonable punishment for Steven misbehaving. At one point, Pearl makes a comment about how humans used to hunt and gather similar to a comment a parent today would make about how they didn't use to have cell phones. When she takes Steven into space, she even playfully mentions that they'll be back in 50 years, totally ignoring that Greg may have died until then and that Connie would have been a grown woman entirely detached from Steven. Not to mention Steven would have aged, though he can control that to some extent.
  • Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction:
    • Their gems vary in size from about golf ball to softball sized, dwarfing even the largest (cut) terrestrial jewels.
    • Taken up to eleven with White Diamond's gem, which is bigger than Steven's entire body.
  • Ultimate Lifeform: Every once in a while, a Gem emerges from the ground perfectly cut, which means she is the strongest of her Gem type. The only known perfectly cut gems are Jasper, a warrior, and Spinel, an entertainer made specifically to be a Diamond's companion.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifter: All Gems have the ability to change parts of their bodies or their entire bodies, unless they were made in Era 2. Amethyst does it regularly, Garnet does it rarely, and Pearl almost never does (the one and only time it is seen, she turns into a pale version of Rose). Changing to and maintaining a shape other than a Gem's Shapeshifter Default Form takes concentrations and effort. Holding it for a long time can lead to a loss of control and possibly other negative effects, especially if the altered form is bigger than the usual one.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Living Forever is No Big Deal for gems that remain in one piece, but there hasn't been a known way to actually 'kill' a Gem for good. The closest they have to a permanent destruction is getting Shattered, and even then it's revealed that individual fragments live on with a shard of the original consciousness — alive, desperate to be whole again, and yet unable to do anything about it by themselves.
  • World of Technicolor Hair: As with Amazing Technicolor Population and Technicolor Eyes, this seems to be also a thing for the Gems. Rose has pink hair, Amethyst's is pale purple, and Pearl's is orange (sort of). Garnet has black hair in the series, but in the pilot, it seemed to be very dark red. From "Jail Break" onward, Garnet's hair looks slightly purple in the front under normal lighting. Lapis has dark blue hair and Peridot has bright yellow hair. Jasper's hair is a very pale orange. Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond have yellow and blue hair, respectively. Steven averts this by having brown hair.
  • Wound That Will Not Heal:
    • Ecological wound variety. Their Planet Looter way of reproduction completely drains the resources of an area so thoroughly, that the area remains barren and lifeless even after more than 5,000 years have passed.
    • Although rare, Gems can sustain psychological trauma that results in long-lasting injuries that don't heal through normal rejuvenation methods; even if their gemstone is undamaged and intact, the damage to their psyche will manifest in their physical form. Gems hurt in this way need to confront and move past their trauma in order to heal from it.
  • You Are Number 6: Because Gems tend to look alike, aside from the placement of their gems on their bodies, they each have a serial number to know which Gem is which.

Types of Gems

    Sapphires 

Sapphires

All voiced by: Erica Luttrell

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Rare aristocratic Gems with ice powers and the ability to see into the future.


  • Blue Means Cold: They have ice powers and predominantly blue color schemes. A rarer variety is the Padparadscha Sapphire, who instead has a pink/orange color scheme.
  • Cyclops: The Crystal Gems' Sapphire only has one eye; it can be assumed that the same is true of other Sapphires.
  • Fantastic Honorifics: On Homeworld, the proper way to address a Sapphire is "Your Clarity" or "Your Grand Clarity". It is not known if this is a term specifically for Sapphires or a way to address aristocratic Gems in general.
  • Fire/Ice Duo: They have ice powers to contrast the Rubies and their fire powers. Real rubies and sapphires are both varieties of the same mineral, corundum.
  • High-Class Gloves: All Sapphires wear elbow-length gloves in either blue or white.
  • Inhuman Eye Concealers: Sapphires always have hair that covers their eye.
  • Little People: They're about the size of a human child.
  • Meaningful Name: Real sapphires are associated with smarts and intellect.
  • Proper Lady: Sapphires tend to be calm, graceful and composed.
  • Seers: Alongside having ice powers, Sapphires have the ability to predict the future.

    Lapis Lazulis 

Lapis Lazulis

All voiced by: Jennifer Paz

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Blue Gems with water powers, whose purpose is to terraform planets to be made into Homeworld colonies.
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  • Flight: They have the ability to fly using wings made out of water.
  • Ironic Name: Real lapis lazuli stones dissolve in water.
  • Logical Weakness: They have hydrokinesis, the power to manipulate water. This makes them nigh-unstoppable on water-covered planets like Earth, but utterly powerless on others, like Homeworld.
  • Making a Splash: They can form structures, weapons and golems out of water. These structures can be tall enough to reach space and contain all of a planet's oceans.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: They can each manipulate enormous amounts of water, enough to completely reshape planetary landforms and restrain beings with Diamond-level strength.
  • Water Is Blue: Blue color schemes and water powers.

    Quartzes 

Quartzes

Voiced by: Michaela Dietz (Amethysts, Ocean Jasper), Kimberly Brooks (Jaspers, Carnelian, Cherry Quartz, Rose Quartzes), Christine Pedi (Holly Blue Agate)

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Tall, strong Gems made to serve as soldiers. This group includes Amethysts, Citrines, Jaspers, Carnelians, and Rose Quartzes. Agates are a sub-type of Quartz that hold positions of authority over groups of other types of Quartzes.
  • Big Fun: Most Quartzes are seen to be jovial and fun-loving.
  • The Ghost: Of the known varieties of Quartz, Citrines are the only ones not shown onscreen.
  • Heroic Build: Quartzes are tall and bulky with a muscular build.
  • Muscles Are Meaningful: Quartzes are typically created to act as soldiers, and most have the muscles to show it.
  • Super-Soldier: The elite soldiers of the Gem empire.
  • Wild Hair: Amethysts and Jaspers have long, shaggy manes of pale-colored hair.

    Rubies 

Rubies

All voiced by: Charlyne Yi

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Small red Gems with fire powers, created to be the foot soldiers of the Gem armies.
  • Blood Knight: Since they were made to be soldiers, Rubies are enthusiastic about most things they do, including fighting.
    Ruby Soldier #1: Hey! Can't wait for those rebels to get here!
    Ruby Soldier #2: Haha, yeah! When I see those rebels, I'm gonna punch them right in their faces!
    Ruby Soldier #1: What are you sayin'? I'm gonna punch them all over their bodies, and then it'll be over.
    Ruby Soldier #2: What if I just punch you?
  • Expendable Clone: They're not as valued as the Quartz soldiers.
  • The Ditz: Most Rubies aren't that smart and are easily fooled, as shown by the events of "Hit the Diamond".
  • Dumb Muscle: The majority of Rubies don't have much in the brains department. They are, however, tremendously strong.
  • Fire/Ice Duo: They have fire powers to contrast the Sapphires and their ice powers. Real rubies and sapphires are both varieties of the same mineral, corundum.
  • Fire Is Red: Red color schemes and fire powers.
  • Heroic Build: Much shorter than Quartzes, Rubies are small but bulky and muscular.
  • Hot-Blooded: In general, Rubies tend to be enthusiastic about fighting.
  • Irony: Rubies are treated as expendable by Homeworld, while real rubies are nearly as rare and valuable as diamonds.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They may be tiny (about the same size as a human child), but they can pack quite a punch.
  • Playing with Fire: As shown by the Crystal Gem Ruby, Rubies possess fire powers that contrast nicely with the Sapphires' ice powers.
  • Super Gullible: It's way easier than it should be to fool a Ruby. They can be tricked into believing a shapeshifted Amethyst is actually a Jasper and only looks different because of her tan from Earth's sun.
  • Tomboyish Voice: All Rubies are voiced by Charlyne Yi, and have pretty low-pitched voices, albeit with a great deal of variation in-between. Eyeball and Army have noticeably raspy and gruff voices, while Navy and Leggy have higher voices.

    Peridots 

Peridots

All voiced by: Shelby Rabara

Green Gems made to serve as engineers and technicians. To compensate for the resource crisis, they were made smaller in Era 2.


  • Cool Shades: All Peridots wear translucent, triangle-shaped visors.
  • Made of Iron: Despite not having much combat capability, "The Kindergarten Kid" shows that Peridots are surprisingly durable and can take a lot of physical punishment without poofing.
  • The Smart Guy: They're mainly used to perform technological work.
  • Shorter Means Smarter: Era 2 Peridots are about the same size as a Ruby or Sapphire, and are given limb enhancers to compensate for their small size.
  • The Unreveal: Era 1 Peridots are never shown in person, though a group of tall Gems among the crowd in "Legs From Here To Homeworld" resemble the type.

    Pearls 

Pearls

Voiced by: Deedee Magno-Hall (most Pearls), Christine Ebersole (White Pearl)

A Servant Race that works as attendants and handmaidens of higher-ranking Gems. Owning a Pearl is considered a status symbol on Homeworld.


  • Beautiful Slave Girl: Pearls are made for and owned by high-ranking Gems as a status symbol. Peridot describes the main functions of Pearls as standing around, looking nice, and holding stuff. They have also been seen acting as secretaries and courtroom artists.
  • Dainty Little Ballet Dancers: The standard Pearl has a waifish, slender build with a tutu-like outfit and ballet slippers.
  • Gag Nose: All Pearls share the same long, conical nose.
  • Noodle People: This is a common trait amongst all Pearls. They are by far the skinniest Gems in the series.
  • Person of Holding: One of their notable features is the ability to hold and store a seemingly limitless number of their owners' possessions inside their gems, appearing as a layered pocket dimension built upon their psyche and almost like a Genius Loci.
  • Slave Race: Pearls are regarded more as living status symbols than individuals, and are expected to be utterly submissive and obedient to their owners. Some individual, higher-ranking Pearls such as Yellow Diamond's Pearl have more autonomy and authority, but the vast majority of Pearls have little to no freedom.
  • Standard Hero Reward: When Eyeball is yelling about wanting to bring Rose Quartz's gem back to Homeworld and be hailed as a hero, she exclaims, "They're gonna give me my own Pearl!" while laughing maniacally and chewing on the handle of her dagger.
  • Uncatty Resemblance: They're custom-made to resemble their owners in color and gem placement.


Alternative Title(s): Save The Light, Attack The Light, Steven Universe The Movie, Steven Universe Future, Unleash The Light

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