Headscratchers / Steven Universe Season 2

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Joy Ride

"Joy Ride"

• How did Peridot's escape pod land just outside of coastal American Beach City, if the hand ship fired said escape pod towards what looked like either inland Ontario or inland Quebec?
  • Well, several factors can be put into consideration. Among them are how fast the ship/escape pod was falling, as well as the movement of the earth which any manner of flight must take into consideration.
  • The escape pod had a flight system. Peridot could have just set it on course towards the temple's general area.
    • Probably in the hopes of rendezvousing with Jasper and Lapis Lazuli, whose state she wouldn't be aware of. She'd probably also want access to the wreckage of the Hand-Ship.

Say Uncle

"Say Uncle"

• Why is Uncle Grandpa crossing over with this show? With the comedy and animation style of UG, it would make more sense to cross over with Teen Titans Go! or The Amazing World of Gumball.
  • Well, it was probably up to the creators when it came to choosing the other show. Whoever was approached first with the pitch of a crossover (whether it was UG's creator or Rebecca Sugar) probably got to choose the show they'd eventually get to crossover with. Or maybe the creators themselves came up with the idea together and pitched it to the network.
  • It's Rebecca Sugar's idea. Might have to do with the fact that the Crewniverse loved Uncle Grandpa and that the she and Peter Browngardt were friends.
• Is it possible that UG's canon skit has more meaning than on first appearance?
  • It definitely pointed at the possibility that Steven's shield is activated by different emotions than his bubble. Bubble activates when he wants to protect himself and maybe someone else. Shield activates Specifically when he wants to protect someone dear to him.
• I keep seeing complaints, both on tumblr and this very wiki that Pearl was out of character in "Say Uncle". How? This is the Gem who went completely nuts over the fact that a fountain she liked had a bunch of weeds in it, I think breaking down after being trapped in a featureless void is perfectly in character for her.
  • Maybe not so much out of character, but a lot of people who canon her as autistic and identify with that thought it was too exaggerated or her only trait in that episode.
  • But freaking out over change is a well documented sign of autism (and one that I suffer from). And change doesn't get much worse than being in a completely different reality.
  • Pearl was upset about the fountain because of her devotion to Rose, not because she's autistic.

Story for Steven

"Story for Steven"

• Taking Greg's own challenge to heart in his song: "Some say I have no direction. That I'm a lightspeed distraction. But that's a knee-jerk reaction." Okay, Greg — you left college with I assume some talent in music to become a musician, and had a chance at success. Rose came along, you were rather smitten for her, and then you made a car wash? While that is a direction towards love, it's not exactly like everything went well for you afterwards, did it? I mean, you're a car wash owner and you seemed to never got off the ground, right? Things must have been really tough for Steven growing up until he went to live with the Gems, I'd say.
  • There's nothing wrong with being a car wash owner and he'd already given up his dream of making it big because he wanted to be with Rose. Steven is provided for with food, clothes, a cellphone, etc. Since the Gems don't work, Greg is probably providing for him. Meaning he's earning enough money to support himself and Steven. So things probably weren't that tough I'd say. And even if they were, considering that he has a son who he has a good relation with, and before that, got to enjoy years with the woman he was in love with, it seems things DID go pretty well for him.
    • Now to figure out why a man running what seems like an economically sustainable business still lives in his van.
    • Seems pretty obvious to me; he gives most of his money to Steven and the Gems. None of them have jobs, yet Steven has electricity, water, food, multiple (albeit old) video game consoles and video games, lots of toys, a smartphone, and his constant patronage of the Big Donut, the French fry place, Fish Stew Pizza...
    • That makes sense. Being Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet likely don't have jobs. I just assumed since of course the temple doesn't use electricity and no one is going to argue with the superpowered space rocks with who owns the temple, the house that Steven stays in is off the grid and just uses the temple's power and maintenance, but having every dime he has go to Steven's well-being being Greg does have a somewhat successful business makes sense.
    • Actually old video games may be a sign that there plenty of money being made. Anyone who collects old video games can tell you that they gotten more expensive than modern games due to increased demand.
    • Maybe Greg had those "old" video games since he was young and gave them to Steven after growing up.
    • Yeah, it was actually confirmed on Twitter that Greg pays for everything; food, electricity, etc. Also, in the extended theme song he builds the house himself. Greg gives literally every cent he makes to Steven while he lives in the van.
    • My question is why do the gems make Greg out to be a completely inept loser? I at first figured Greg was just some stray Rose picked up and liked for what was inside, but Greg is responsible, caring, smart, talented, and an all around good dude. And he was sort of attractive. I get there is some animosity because of what happened with Rose, but I don't get why they need to paint him as a mess, when he is probably the best parent Steven has. Greg is stable, understanding, way more emotive, responsible, and understands human child needs. One thing that Greg is not is a mess.
    • Greg is a successful human, and the Gems have never really been good at understanding what that means. They don't eat, so providing for a dependent is something they forget. They don't need money, so earning it has no value. Their reproductive cycle doesn't HAVE children, so they don't appreciate their unique needs. Greg was initially considered a mess because he balks at the things that they consider mundane (eg: raise a magic child and punch monsters into space).
  • Greg lives in the van because he wants to (this is made explicit in "Mr. Greg" when he has the money to buy a house but refuses to do so; but even before then, he owns the car wash and it's clearly a large enough building that he could convert part of it into a home if he wanted to.) Regarding why the Gems think Greg is a loser, though, remember that none of them are impartial observers, since they blame him for Rose's "death".
• I understand that Greg wanted to be with the love of his life and "success is how you define it" or whatever, but I don't understand why he hates Dad Sourc-I mean Marty so much. Greg definitely could have made it. Before this episode it was implied that Greg wasn't that great, but he could write songs and sing and definitely could have made it if he made it to Empire city. I'm mostly just wondering why he gave up on his dream so quickly for a woman he didn't even know the name of.
  • Given what we saw of Marty and the turnout of one for Greg's concert, I think it's safe to say that he was a terrible excuse for a manager. On top of leeching out a ridiculous 75% of all earnings and forcing Greg to do all the work, he completely failed to bring in an audience. All he did was have sex with one groupie and drive. After all that and demanding that he abandon the woman of his dreams, it only seems right for Greg to cut him out of his life entirely.
  • Also, consider that Marty is a deadbeat dad for Sour Cream, if Sour Cream even knows him at all! Not only is Vidalia gone, Marty's not a part of his son's life. A big-hearted guy like Greg would never let that go, especially considering his choice to stay with Rose and Steven.
  • Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I don't think we should judge Marty or Greg's chances of making it big based on his own flashbacks. The fact Marty was portrayed with pointed teeth and not given a single nice line makes me think Greg was exaggerating a lot of what happened in that episode.
    • Since Vidalia has the same opinion of Marty as Greg does ("dunno where that fool is! Don't care either"), we can assume that Marty really was as bad as the flashback portrayed. Also, in "Mr. Greg", he featured in a hamburger commercial and still has the sharp teeth.
• Why did Amethyst (and Pearl, for that matter) look shorter and younger in Greg's flashback? Amethyst is six thousand years old, and we know from the fact that she still fits perfectly in her hole that she hasn't grown or shrank an inch since popping out of the kindergarten.
  • Both of them simply altered their default appearances, likely after regenerating at some point prior to the start of the series. In Pearl's case, maybe she just added a little bit of height.
  • One theory could be that they changed their appearance to look older as Steven was growing up.
    • How does Amethyst still fit in her hole, then, if she's been changing her appearance as Steven ages?
    • Amethyst has always been short. Amethyst as she is now looks much older due to changing her clothes and mannerisms, but she's still about Steven's height. She probably didn't get much taller at all.
    • But she did grow. Her, Pearl, Garnet, and Rose are a little shorter than when the show is taking place and before Rose died. I guess when they re emerge from their gems and get new clothes they grow an inch too? Rose is the only gem that always has the same outfit every time we see her, so because of her greater combat abilities and being the leader she doesn't reform as much. But then the picture during the American revolution Amethyst has all her hair and they all look the right height. Who knows
    • Actually, someone on Tumblr [1] did a post where they showed the Gems are about the same height and even look the same, they only look younger because A) Outdated 80's clothes and B) Everyone looks tiny next to Rose because she's like, 8 feet tall!
    • Amethyst and Pearl still have much "younger" proportions (e.g. Pearl's enormous head) though.
    • Gems are as old as they feel, correct? When Greg met Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst, they were enjoying their salad days. Amethyst had time to explore and be a kid, Pearl could be youthful and dote on Rose, and Garnet could be a full-time action hero without worrying about a child's welfare. The Homeworld Gems were long defeated, and the team had Rose as an anchor. Losing Rose and caring for Steven has forced them all to "grow up" — if not in actual height, then in appearance and attitude.
  • It's just animation errors, in some shots the proportions were off-model.
    • I wrote off my initial reaction to them looking younger as the psychological influence of them wearing intentionally 80s clothing and hairstyles, but the artists involved have stated explicitly that they don't care about staying on model. As long as the heights of all the characters are more or less proportional to each other the actual animation will allow them to grow or shrink as much as is necessary to fit the mood of the scene. We also gotta consider that their "young" selves are only ever seen in Greg's flashbacks, and human memory is imperfect. He thinks of them as being younger and remembers them looking younger as a result.
• In "Story for Steven", Marty asks Greg whether he's been sticking pennies in the van's tape player again ("you weirdo"). Is there any reason anyone who's not a small child would do that?
  • As an adult with ADHD, I can say that I do a lot of weird shit when I'm not bothering to try to check my impulse control. That's not the only possible explanation, of course, just one possibility.
• Backstory confusion: If Marty is in fact Sour Cream's father, and he was conceived in the back of Greg's van that night, how old is present-day Sour Cream supposed to be? Steven is about 12 or 13 years old, so at least that much time has passed. Greg is most likely in his late teens or early twenties during that flashback, and looks to be in his early or mid-forties present day, so the events of the flashback may have happened around twenty or twenty-five years ago. So is Sour Cream in his early twenties? Or did Greg just age really hard?
  • The whole "Marty and Vidalia are Sour Cream's parents" thing is pure Fanon.
    • Not as of "Onion Friend"!
    • I guess Greg just aged really hard.
  • It was never stated when Sour Cream was born so it's possible it happened a few years after Story For Steven.

Love Letters

"Love Letters"

• Okay, so with "Love Letters", Garnet suggests that Love at First Sight does not exist. Funny, since in order to maintain her fusion, Garnet and Sapphire's fusion cannot lessen or in any way diminish to maintain its perfect cohesion. Since that's true, their love must have incredible staying power, something which initial attraction must account for. Therefore, either Garnet and Sapphire have no argument...or there's something about their relation which accounts for it, and therefore does not separate them regardless? And in that case, are we assuming that attraction doesn't have a place for love? Not sure that message really connects that easily. And if she's trying to say that True Love isn't a thing, I want to introduce her to both Greg and Rose Quartz.
  • Not believing in love at first sight in no way prevents her from believing in strong, lasting emotional bonds. It just means that she believes that love grows over time.
  • Greg thought that Rose was cute at first, but he didn't develop an infatuation when he first saw her. Jamie didn't learn a thing about Garnet before writing that letter. Not the same situation.
  • Garnet did not at any point say that True Love does not exist. What she was saying was that the initial infatuation, what is known as Love at First Sight, is not love. It's just attraction, infatuation, lust maybe. Love on the other hand is something that requires time and work. Something that requires the two people to know each other very well and accept their good and bad sides. Love at first Sight Could develop into real Love, but in itself is not true Love.
    • A better question would be, why does Garnet say love-at-first sight does not exist and you have to know a person to love them, when Greg and Rose barely know each other before he quits his whole career for her and this is treated as romantic?
    • Technically, did Greg quit his whole career, or just fire his crappy manager? And Greg is "kind of a mess", remember. He's a good guy but he's hardly meant to be the show's unilateral role model for viewers. And it's possible for the show to have a certain lesson in mind without having every single character follow it.
    • Well, the second flashback episode, "We Need to Talk", does go into this exact thing. After a few months both Greg and Rose realized that a relation based on that initial infatuation was unfulfilling, and they didn't really know each other. What they did was talk to each other, work things out and slowly build a proper, loving relation. They worked at it. So Garnet may very well have been thinking about that as a perfect example for why "love at first sight" was an unrealistic idea. Not to say a first-infatuation relation can't lead to one of true love, but it takes effort for it to do so.
    • Rose and Greg had a love-at-first sight thing, but you must remember, the Crystal Gems don't think too highly of Greg. From Garnet's perspective, Rose hooking up with Greg may be an example of why pursuing love-at-first-sight is a bad idea.

Reformed

"Reformed"

• If there bodies are more or less solid light projections from their gems, now I think in one episode Amethysts got digestion problems from eating rotten food. Why would the gem bother making organs for their bodies, it seems like those would only just give you weak spots in a fight.
  • They probably don't have organs and Word of God says they don't need to eat or sleep. That being said, they probably still have some way of absorbing the stuff they consume in case they want to do it.
    • In "Fusion Cuisine", Pearl says she hates how food goes through her. I think their physical constructs are more than light projections. They are probably authentically "human" bodies, but since they make their own energy to power their shapeshifting bodies they just don't need to eat. Since Amethyst got sick it is likely they have actual human organs that they do not have to use, but when in use can be vulnerable to typical human ailments.
    • Not to mention Rose Quartz must have had some certain body parts to be pregnant with Steven. So the question remains is why do they need to make organs when they project a human body.
  • Have the Gems' bodies ever been considered hard light? They've always been treated as organic.
    • I thinking the idea came from the episode where Amethyst gem cracked and her body did all the weird stuff that looked more like a hologram malfunction then anything a physical body would do.
    • The short "What Are Gems?" has Pearl describe their humanoid forms as being similar to holograms, but with mass.
• Amethysts seemed to be really fragile in reformation, it took Pearl getting stabbed to force her back into the gem. Haven't we seen Amethyst take harder blows then that and stay formed?
  • It did look as though the Slinker managed to "poof" Amethyst very quickly, when she's previously been shown to be pretty tough. That said, Garnet is both strong and skilled, and even she was wary of fighting the Slinker, not even attempting to intervene when Amethyst managed to get the thing in the open for a short time. Perhaps Amethyst getting forced back into her gem so quickly on all three (four?) occasions was a sign of how dangerous the Slinker is; stealthy and powerful.
  • Also, a lot of Amethyst's forms were hastily constructed, and may not have been as hardy as Amethyst's usual body.
• How did Amethyst have Pizza Steve's sunglasses, despite "Say Uncle" not being canon according to the producers? Is it possible that it is partly canon for the Steven Universe episodes due to Steven mastering his shield to save Uncle Grandpa, and partly canon for Uncle Grandpa due to him helping a kid as per usual. The plot hole is probably the reason she has them due to being in an unknown realm, possibly canon, possibly not, which can explain somewhat the reason Amethyst has his sunglasses
  • Uncle Grandpa didn't invent sunglasses, and Amethyst has a ton of junk that references other fiction. How did she get a Mario item block? Who cares, it's a cartoon.
• Amethyst ate a lot of food before they went to find the Slinker. So why didn't the food reappear when she got poofed? Gems can't digest food after all, they just pass it all through.
  • Considering the Crew doesn't seem to like closely examining how disgusting it can be for Gems to eat (cf. that cut joke where Amethyst describes eating to Peridot), I'm guessing they either didn't think about it or didn't feel like animating a soggy bolus slapping onto the floor.

Sworn to the Sword

"Sworn to the Sword"

• Where are people getting the idea that Pearl is suffering from PTSD? Because she shouted Rose's name instead of Steven's? Uh... isn't that already a common trope in fiction? It's not always indicative of someone having PTSD.
  • Because, more than once Pearl has had emotional breakdowns in regards to Rose? Despite acknowledging the brutality of the war, she seems determined to remember it as something glorious and right? She's almost obsessively protective of Steven, and seems to have some fairly severe self-esteem issues? And the blurting out the name thing suggests she's trying to project her own relationship, or what she perceived as her relationship, with Rose onto Steven and Connie. Which is itself, not that healthy.
    • Eh, I always interpreted it as grief. OP here, serious question: is it even possible to get PTSD from relationships (that are not abusive)?
    • There's probably quite a bit of overlap in Pearl's case, between the grief and PTSD, as she made it explicitly clear that she only stayed on Earth and fought for Rose.
    • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can come from anything traumatic, it's most commonly associated with survivors of war because war is usually traumatic for everyone.
• How in the actual heck is Connie the strawberry and Steven the biscuit? Steven has a pink gem, wears a pink shirt, and is the sweetest child in the history of the universe. Heck, roses and strawberries are in the same family Rosaceae!!! I think we all need to just admit that Steven is the strawberry and Connie the biscuit here and accept that that's the way it is and there is nothing wrong with that.
  • Strawberries are pretty feminine fruits when you think about it. There's nothing feminine about a biscuit though. The real question is why Connie is a strawberry instead of jam.
    • Since when does this show care about strict, obsolete gender roles? Since never. Steven is the clear choice for strawberry.
    • And Connie isn't? In any way? At all? They seemed to care about gender here and Steven ISN'T the clear choice. Because she's the strawberry and he isn't. If he really was "the clear choice", the writers WOULD have made him the strawberry and we wouldn't be here. Besides, Gems don't HAVE a biological gender; they just LOOK female. We're talking about a human and a hybrid that HAVE genders here. Why don't you ask Rebecca or any one of the creators on their Twitter and find out for yourself why Connie's the strawberry and Steven's the biscuit?
  • I think you're looking at this the wrong way. Steven is the biscuit because he, like Rose, is what holds people together (in addition to a biscuit being similar to a shield in that it protects what it houses). Their family is an amalgamation of a lot of different flavors (let's say meats (Garnet) and vegetables (Pearl) and dressings/extras (Amethyst) but without the bread/biscuit to hold it together and give them a reason of being there, they're just random stuff. For Connie in particular, the strawberry jam, that's not really something that's eaten on its own. Before she met Steven, she felt alone (unused on a shelf) and through her friendship with Steven, she found more purpose.

Keeping It Together

"Keeping It Together"

• Why do the Homeworld Gems not know about the Crystal Gems, I mean at least one of them could have fled from Earth to make a report, or was every gem assumed to be killed/corrupted?
  • Peridot doesn't know about the Crystal Gems. What the Homeworld Gems as a whole know is still unknown. Peridot apparently didn't even know why Earth was cut off, so she doesn't seem to have much intelligence besides Earth having a kindergarten on it.
  • Jasper seems quite familiar with the Crystal Gems. It seems the Homeworld Gems left Earth after losing the war. Peridot reveals that the Red Eye from the first episode was scanning the planet for Gems, but since it got destroyed she didn't get data that the Crystal Gems were there.
  • It's starting to sound like the war ended with both sides basically being nuked, with Garnet, Amethyst, Rose, and Pearl surviving solely because of Rose's shield. Every other member of both sides burned. There would have been no one to report back to Homeworld, and when Homeworld eventually sent the Red Eye to check, the Crystal Gems destroyed it before it could do anything.
    • Jasper personally fought against Rose. I think she and some other Gems abandoned Earth once the Crystal Gems started winning, whether or not there was also a "nuke" element near the end. Homeworld probably figured that Earth was just too much trouble at the time, and they could wait a few millennia and re-invade it at their convenience.
  • Turns out all these answers are a bit right. When the war ended Homeworld Gems left, but it's strongly implied that they used a weapon to corrupt all Gems on Earth. Thus the only Gems left after Homeworld left are the Crystal Gems because Rose's shield protected them. Homeworld hasn't been back to see the Crystal Gems survived and so didn't expect any non-corrupted Gems.
    • It seems as if Homeworld erased all records of the rebellion and that the Diamonds assumed that the Crystal Gems had all been corrupted.
• This troper is always frustrated when the Gems don't use more of their unique ability's in situations when they really should have. For example, when Peridot escaped she was being chased by Amethyst and Pearl, why didn't Pearl just use that laser ability she used on the crab monster and the Watermelon Stevens to shoot her down or why did they not try to fuse into Opal to shoot her down, or have Garnet shoot her Gauntlets at her...
  • Peridot's a small, fast moving target who would probably be hard to hit.
  • Even then, why couldn't they shapeshift into something that could fly to go after her? We saw Amethyst doing it before, and Pearl said all gems could shapeshift. Maybe Peridot can fly faster than them, but they don't know that. Why didn't they even try?
  • Burnett answered this on Twitter, albeit jokingly. The answer was basically because the plot demanded it.
• Before Peridot gets interrupted, she's noting that the fusion experiments are "developing properly". Like, going according to plan. Those random-limbed monsters did not look anything remotely like a success to me. What the heck do they even think they've accomplished here?
  • Proof of concept that merging broken Gem fragments creates permanent forced fusions. Also not how the gem shards themselves were merged together. The technique or technology used to do so could be used to repair shattered Gems by correctly attaching the shards, or when perfected could be used to create a Frankenstein's Monster-esque super Gem. Of forcibly merge a broken Gem with an intact one as a Gem Resources Power up, most likely triggering a One-Winged Angel form for the gem that tries it. But that's just a theory. A HORRIFYING theory. Thanks for reading!
  • That line can mean multiple things. One possibility is merely that the process of gluing them together has worked, rather than meaning that the entity that Garnet encountered was the desired end result.
  • Peridot had what she came for, she took the working experiment and ran. What we see are the "aberrations".
  • Maybe they are developing properly, and they take some time to fully merge into a more humanoid form? Garnet and Steven interrupted the process early.
• So… Are the fusion experiments the only way to create gem monsters? Because Garnet knew that the gem monsters used to be gem people, but was completely surprised by the nature of the one in this episode.
  • Obviously not because they definitely state Gem monsters are due to "Corruption".
• How come Pearl and Amethyst aren't nearly as freaked out about the fusion experiments as Garnet was? Those are clearly the living body parts of their dead comrades!
  • Did Garnet even tell them about the experiment on screen? I thought that they only showed up after Garnet bubbled the amalgamation creature. Anyway, they aren't a fusion, so it would probably have somewhat less of an impact.
  • Rewatch the scene. Garnet didn't react in horror until she actually saw that they were Gems forced together. Pearl and Amethyst didn't know they were Gems just by looking at them.

We Need to Talk

"We Need to Talk"

• Why didn't Garnet get upset at Pearl tricking Rose Quartz into fusing with her?
  • She didn't trick her?
    • Pearl told Rose Quartz she wanted to fuse with her in order to give some flair to Greg's music video when, in actuality, she did it to make Greg jealous. That sounds like tricking Rose to me.
    • Simply put, neither Garnet or Rose Quartz knew Pearl was scheming, Garnet didn't even realize Pearl was doing it during "Cry for Help" until she admitted it. Presumably they just never found out.
    • I wouldn't call it tricking, they both were on the same page "fuse into Rainbow Quartz and show off for Greg", they just did so for different reasons. It's not enough to anger Garnet but Garnet made her opinion on the matter clear when she decided to give Greg advice and not Pearl.
    • Also, it was Pearl and Rose fusing, not Garnet. Garnet knows other Gems don't take fusion as seriously as she does, so she probably doesn't care as much about why Pearl and Rose might decide to fuse.

Chille Tid

"Chille Tid"

• Why does Pearl like watching Steven sleep? What did it mean when she told the others that they'd have to take over for her?
  • For the second one, it was because Lion was sleeping on his face. She needed to make sure Lion didn't suffocate him.
  • She's extremely anxious and watching him means nothing bad can happen; might also just bring back good memories of Rose. As for telling the others they'd have to take over, she thought the issue was that SHE was watching him while he slept.
  • Rose used to watch Greg sleep. It seems that Gems just find sleep fascinating.
• It's been well established that the Gems get all the energy needed for living from their gemstones, to the point where Pearl's lived for thousands of years, part of which where spent fighting in a war, without ever sleeping. So why did the Gems all get tired out?
  • It's hardly the first time the Gems have shown fatigue. Even Garnet was too weary to move after Sugilite spent over a day constantly overworking her components' bodies. It could probably be assumed that even if Gems don't need to sleep, they still can't run at all capacity indefinitely. At some point, they would need to rest, if for nothing other than to relieve mental exhaustion.
  • They don't NORMALLY need to sleep, but their ability to self-recharge is not infinite, and they can reach a point where their energy output exceeds their energy input, and thus find themselves needing to remain relatively idle to catch up. Or, as humans put it, "sleep".
• Does Pearl's dreams of pizza (and someone dressing in drag as Rose) suggest that the Uncle Grandpa episode might just be a little more canon than the writers said it was?
  • It wasn't about pizza or drag, it was resentment at Greg for taking Rose away from her.
  • I'm pretty sure the logic there was pizza = food, food = disgusting, Greg + food = disgusting.
  • Uncle Grandpa's statement that none of this is canon was itself non-canon.
• Does Pearl truly care about Steven as a person or only because of Rose?
  • Of course she does. There are tons of moments where she's looked after him, she's still allowed to have issues regarding Rose though.
• OK, so a small fall will crack a Gem as was the case with Amethyst. How would a number of small weak spots deal with the massive pressure of the ocean? Is Lapis somehow controlling the water surrounding Malachite so the pressure doesn't immediately crush all those gemstones to a pulp? And if she is, since she doesn't show any sort of regard for herself, what's stopping her from letting the pressure effectively kill both her and Jasper?
  • It wasn't a small fall, but a long fall and direct impact with a hard surface. Plus, we don't know how deep down Malachite is. It's entirely possible she's at a depth that a rock could survive unscathed.
    • Not only was it a long fall with a direct impact, but she had the entire weight of her body coming down on top of it. If her gemstone had been falling by itself (for example, if she was poofed beforehand), it might not have cracked.
  • Lapis is certainly capable of controlling water pressure. Steven walked into the base of her ocean-tower, and then was lifted from that point into space in less time than it took him to run out of air. As neither of those flattened him, it's clear Lapis can ignore whatever water physics rules she wants.
  • While Gems are based off actual gemstones (ore similar) that doesn't mean that they are actual stones, I.E. Pearl is not an actual pearl. Following this, it's possible that they naturally resist high pressures, but cannot handle sudden impact. Also, Lapis not showing regard for her own safety is not the same as her having Death Seeker tendencies. Similarly, she may not have the stomach to outright kill Jasper, settling for trapping her instead.
• In “Lion 3: Straight to Video”, Pearl says that she likes to watch Steven sleep, often. So how does she not know how to sleep at first? Wouldn’t she think to mimic what Steven does when he sleeps?
  • She's obviously not there when he first FALLS asleep, or else he'd already know about this. So she's only ever seen him when he's ALREADY asleep, which means the process of achieving this state would still be a mystery to her.

Cry for Help

"Cry for Help"

• If Pearl likes fusing into Sardonyx so much, why didn't she just ask? You'd think that no two Gems would understand fusing just to feel good about yourself than Ruby and Sapphire.
  • Shyness, probably.
    • She did, in "Coach Steven", only to be blown off by Garnet.
  • That was for the sake of a mission. If rejection was a problem, this episode should've fixed that the first time Garnet asked to fuse.
  • Gems can only fuse if they're mentally, physically and emotionally in sync. Even if Garnet was willing to fuse just so Pearl could have fun and feel better about herself it would still fail because Garnet doesn't feel those things. That's why Pearl kept rebuilding the communications hub, to give them a clear goal they could both agree on.
    • Precisely, Garnet would no more "pity fuse" with Pearl than she would "pity date" Jamie. It would hurt more than help, for reasons that she explains in "Friend Ship".
• How did Garnet not see Pearl's betrayal in Cry For Help? One would think that she would have been at least somewhat aware of that possibility.
  • She couldn't predict Peridot coming to Earth either. It could be that her future vision is limited to her present knowledge and what questions she is seeking the answers to. She didn't consider the possibility of anyone else reconstructing the tower and focused completely on Peridot, so she didn't see the outcome where Pearl was the culprit. Note that she did say that believed Peridot was evading her future vision.
  • The above may be true but in the episode Future Vision didn't Garnet say that she sees multiple outcomes like Steven various injuries or even when she let Steven borrow her future vision so he could figure out when to bring Connie back to her parents. In the case of "Cry for Help", I'd guess that Garnet probably saw Pearl fixing the tower but found it to be so outrageous that she didn't even consider it.
    • Just because she can see multiple outcomes doesn't mean she can see all outcomes.
  • Sapphire's future vision only shows her what she personally will see and experience in the alternate futures. So she probably could see that the tower was going to be reactivated, but she couldn't see that it was Pearl doing it because she wasn't going to be there, so she just assumed Peridot was doing it using some approach that she couldn't figure out how to cover.
• Fusion Gems generally seem to have a combination and/or balance of their components' personalities. So where exactly does Sardonyx get her hamminess? That doesn't sound like either Garnet or Pearl.
  • Pearl likes to show off her skills (especially to Steven) when she's not being neurotic. Garnet likes to be stoic and mysterious, but is clearly emotional (even while dead-panning) and solves problems with violence (as she lamented in "So Many Birthdays"). Combine those two and you have the perfect recipe for a Large Ham (and if you throw in Pearl's precision and dexterity and Garnet's ability to predict how things turn out, the perfect stage performer).
    • There's other examples of Pearl's tendency to show off, too: doing a ridiculous dance and chant to summon a simple roll of police tape; her grandiose boast about "the perfect battle" and "we shall let our swords decide" when fighting Holo-Pearl; etc.
  • Most of what we've seen of Ruby has been in situations warranting her anger, but she's definitely quite an expressive gem, and she does seem to have softer moments. Pearl's also quite excitable and more of a Dance Battler than other gems, and even Sapphire, it would later be shown, has a giggly side ("There's my Laughy Sapphy!"). So expressive Ruby, dancer Pearl, and giggly Sapphire = Large Ham Stage Magician Sardonyx. Alternatively, considering the theory that Sugilite's personality is based on Sapphire getting overpowered by Ruby and Amethyst, Sardonyx may be angry Ruby getting shushed by Pearl and a giggly Sapphire.
  • Hamminess kind of goes hand in hand with confidence, so Sardonyx having this trait this makes perfect sense as all of Garnet's fusions (or, at least, the fusions where Garnet is two-thirds of the equation) have variations of confidence, because Garnet herself is extremely confident. While Garnet's confidence manifests in her being incredibly content with herself and her identity, Sugilite is cocky and boastful, Sunstone wants to give guidance, and for Sardonyx, hamminess.
• If fusions have the memories as their components, how did Garnet not know Pearl was using her?
  • Fusions carry common memories of their component gems, such as knowledge of certain people, emotional association etc. But they do not share every possible thought each fusee has. Also I feel that Sardonyx would have to actually be actively thinking about Pearl's scheme to keep fusing for Garnet to find out.
• We see from Sardonyx knocking out the top pillar of the hub that said pillar is necessary for the entire hub to work. Why not just hide that part in Lion's mane so that the hub can't be repaired again?
  • And who is the Gem most likely to think of that? Pearl. And which Gem is deliberately leaving things intact so she can keep fusing? Pearl.

Keystone Motel

"Keystone Motel"

• Why didn't anyone offer to go with Greg if he was so worried about the guy he was buying from being dangerous? Any of the Gems would've done it. Even if Garnet defused, Ruby and Sapphire could've defended Greg. Hell, if the strength Steven shows sometimes isn't typical of other humans, even he could've handled an axe-crazy human.
  • I think he was mostly joking about being worried about the risk of the online salesman being a psycho murderer. The main reason he brought Steven along at all was in hope he might enjoy staying at a motel, so he didn't want to use him as a bodyguard over probably-unwarranted worries about a very unlikely risk.
• Why did Greg even bother booking a motel room in the first place? He's already accustomed to living out of the back of a van, so why would he suddenly feel the need to have a real bedroom when traveling?
  • For Steven to have a nice time.
  • He still likes beds, even if he's used to not having one.

Onion Friend

"Onion Friend"

• Okay, it's revealed that Vidalia is Onion's mother, and is still living with them. Quick question though: why the heck has she not disciplined Onion yet? And she can't not know about it, because Onion once tried to drown the town in toys, which would be hard for him to cover up.
  • She could just be a very laissez-faire parent who doesn't believe in discipline.
  • The replicator incident only lasted a few minutes and all evidence disappeared when Garnet smashed the wand, Vidalia probably has no idea it happened at all.

Friend Ship

"Friend Ship"

• Peridot's newly unveiled Shock and Awe powers would've been real useful to pull when Amethyst was literally standing on her in "Jail Break", especially since she explicitly uses them to get out of Amethyst's whip a second time. Though she does wriggle her arms around to get one of her fingers touching the whip, when the first time, her arms were locked behind her back and such re-positioning wasn't possible. It could be she can only release electricity through her fingers, rather than just lighting up her whole body.
  • It's entirely possible that Peridot only brushed up on combat skills after she was separated from her giant warrior escort.
• Can Peridot not use the warps to go back to Homeworld? They don't seem to be one way paths, so why doesn't she just go back?
  • All the warps not shattered on Earth are local. The giant Homeworld warp was broken precisely to keep that from happening.
• Am I stupid, or was the ruined ship standing at a significant angle, while its interior seemed perfectly level? Peridot fires her arm cannon straight up through the center of the dome, which is not facing up in exterior shots. I can only assume the ship's artificial gravity had been turned on the entire time.
  • I noticed that too. The only ideas I can offer is artificial gravity like you said, or they just didn't think about it.
• How did Garnet and Pearl fuse when there wasn't enough room to dance?
  • To paraphrase, Burnett explained that they did basically what the below said, which is essentially a hand-based dance in the confined space.
  • They probably did dance-like motions with their arms that didn't require moving around. Fusion probably doesn't need dances that resemble normal human dances.

Nightmare Hospital

"Nightmare Hospital"

• How could anyone ever mistake the shard fusions for regular people? They're literally twisted masses of mismatched limbs.
  • Maybe she mistook it for some sort of birth defect?
  • But a regular human wouldn't be able to survive that kind of birth defect. They have no face, so wouldn't be able to breathe or eat!
  • Dr. Maheswaran has already met Alexandrite, and she didn't even react when they turned into three smaller women. It's been shown several times that humans are actually rather nonchalant about gem stuff, which makes sense since gems have been on Earth for thousands of years. Granted, humans often try to avoid it, and I don't think it was ever common for human doctors to take in gems as patients, but they're still used to it. The gem mutants are obviously in a lot of pain and they look humanoid enough to not be admitted to a veterinary hospital. And Dr. Maheswaran probably takes the Hippocratic Oath very seriously.
  • Possibly more horrifying, magic is known and relatively common and humans don't generally panic when it comes involved, pairing this with the forced fusion creatures being admitted to a hospital and being treated as human. Maybe humans being magically distorted and mangled used to be a common problem?
• I might be interpreting this the wrong way, but does it seem to anyone else like Dr. Maheswaran doesn't really care about Steven's safety?
  • I don't know where you got that idea. I don't think she particularly LIKES Steven, but wanting him to die is completely out of character.
    • Not caring about his safety is not the same as wanting him to die. The few times we've seen her during a dangerous situation, she doesn't seem to consider Steven's safety even in passing. Naturally she'd be more concerned for her own daughter, but many adults will attempt to protect their child's friends if they are present, so her lack of visible concern for Steven stands out a bit.

Catch and Release

"Catch and Release"

• Are the Gems' clothes a part of their body? I assuming their clothing was also generated by their gem like their body.
  • It's probably a part of their projected identity, if not truly parts of their body. Given that shapeshifting seems to be a fairly common power, appearance is probably just a matter of preference and propriety.
  • We have seen Garnet take off her glasses and show they are mundane objects. it would probably be more accurate to guess they are like their weapons. constructs made by them, but not actually a part of their bodies.
  • It seems to depend on the gem. Garnet, as mentioned above, can freely take her glasses off, but Peridot has to ask what a shirt is.
    • Peridot doesn't know what Earth inhabitants call fingers, though. The best answer to this is in "Chille Tid", where Garnet chooses to shapeshift a lifejacket in her colours instead of wearing the one matching the others.
• Why didn't Peridot make her own spaceship pre-"Catch and Release"? She wouldn't have had trouble stealing components from human dwellings.
  • I assume it because there really nothing to build a FTL engine with? My evidence being that Pearl didn't manage to put one her rocket.
  • Peridot finds ancient Gem technology painfully archaic to work with. She probably would have even harder time building something as complex as a spaceship from human components; even Pearl's turned out to be a failure and she's worked with human tech for much longer. Yes, they were able to make a robot suit from junk in the matter of minutes, but that was a case of Rule of Funny and relatively simple requirements; something breaking halfway through won't mean fiery death for everyone involved.
• Why didn't Peridot's foot disintegrate after being disembodied? Gems are made of light, and their gemstones are the source of said light, so why is it that Peridot's foot stayed in its physical form after being cut off from Peridot's gemstone? These aren't gem weapons.
  • It could be that the foot wasn't truly a part of her body, but rather a prosthetic. Which does raise some interesting questions about why Peridot would need a set of prosthetic legs.
    • Sapphire doesn't seem to have feet, either. Might be that some gems just don't make a complete body. Or Maybe she screwed up when she built her body?
    • Sapphire does indeed have feet as stated by Rebecca Sugar.
  • Do Gem body parts fade when separated from their gemstones? We haven't any of the Crystal Gems get a limb lopped off, but some of the gem monsters had smaller minions that survived remotely. If the injury isn't enough to force her to retreat into her gemstone to heal, the body part might just stay intact, wherever it is.
  • Or her foot might have faded after the scene ended.
  • Garnet can fire her fists off like rockets, and they don't disappear until they explode. So, this isn't the first time that we've seen a gem detach their body parts.
  • Maybe Peridot isn't really a gem. Maybe she's an android.
  • It is worth noting that gem technology has really advanced, and none of the Crystal Gems understand it very well. Peridot might be working by completely different rules.
  • Her feet and hands are prosthetic limbs, which can be detached and are separate from her gem body.
• Peridot seems very ashamed/disturbed of how small she is to the point that she got limb enhancers to counteract this... but her body's a construct of light, and the Gems can shapeshift. So why doesn't Peridot just shapeshift into a taller/bigger form?
  • The Gems probably have an upper limit to what kind of size they can support without collapsing that varies by the type. There was an episode where Amethyst took her Purple Puma form for a serious fight, though I can't remember which one, but she got poofed out of it almost immediately. Peridot probably can't assume a much larger form and it would be pretty unstable, too.
  • That was in "Ocean Gem", and Amethyst did indeed lose that fight. Moreover, in "Reformed" she tried to regenerate with a larger body but it didn't last.
  • Aside from the problems with making a larger default form than you can sustain, Peridot doesn't seem to know how to use any of her powers, not even shapeshifting.
• How did Peridot know Steven was the one who fixed Lapis' gem? Just as she claimed in "The Message", we know for a fact that Lapis didn't tell Peridot of Steven's existence (as she didn't recognize Steven in "Marble Madness" nor did she know that the Crystal Gems were still on Earth). So how does Peridot know this? How did she know Lapis had a broken gem in the first place?
  • Lapis' broken gem was clearly visible on the mirror she was encased in, and given what Pearl said about the mirror, it was an often used method of teaching so Peridot might have come across a picture. Also they had Lapis in captivity: she said nothing about Steven and even denied he is affiliated with the Crystal Gems when Jasper identified them, but she might have mentioned her gem having been cracked and healed. After all, there were bound to be questions about where she was for all that time.
    • If that is he case, then assuming Rose Quartz's healing tears were common knowledge, this would explain why Jasper was expecting Rose on Earth. Once Peridot learned that Steven is the Rose Quartz gem, she put two and two together and came to the conclusion that the Steven is the one who healed Lapis.
  • Peridot could have interrogated Lapis between Garnet's destabilization and Steven breaking out.
• Why couldn't Rose's Room say what Peridot was going to say when she was poofed, when it could show the secret ending of Golf Quest Mini that Steven didn't see clearly?
  • Because he did hear the ending, just not clearly. The Room took the memory and filtered out everything else. Since he never Peridot never finished her sentence the Room couldn't pull the same trick.

When It Rains

"When It Rains"

• More of a curiosity than anything, but since the bubble shield seems to do a decent job of providing protection and entirely encircles those within, is there any particular reason why Rose's shield seems to be considered a better option? There's some subtle implication in the show that Rose's shield is stronger/more durable than Steven's bubble, but has it been established officially at any point (perhaps by Word of God) that this is the case? Or is it simply that Rose's shield has greater mobility and therefore is more useful in combat?
  • Probably just mobility. rolling around in a hamster ball isn't exactly useful in combat.
    • Indeed, considering there's not much you can do while inside the bubble, it seems to be more useful for escaping and hiding (or staying in place, but, y'know, not getting hit) than combat proper.
  • Perhaps the bubble, being much larger than the shield, consumes more energy.
  • We've seen the bubble burst/pop on multiple occasions, whereas the shield only seems to go away when Steven runs out of energy for it.
  • The shield also has other abilities (which Steven hasn't fully figured out), disrupting Lapis' water clones, and also capable of being used as a throwing weapon.
  • As of "When it Rains", it seems that the bubble starts to give way when enough force is applied, while the shield can stop the main gun of a huge spaceship without a scratch.
• Steven is explaining his parentage to Peridot and she asks if he's a hybrid. She asks this question already suggesting this, as if she understands what a Gem hybrid is. Then when Steven attempts to explain, she immediately says she does not care as is this is nothing new or special. The Crystal Gems can barely comprehend Steven themselves, and Rose didn't seem to know much about how he would turn out before he was born, besides being half of him. This troper finds this suspicious. Not only that has anyone ever noticed how completely useless Peridot is? Without her enhancers she is a complete liability, she doesn't seem to have any weapon or powers at all. Get Ruby or Sapphire mad and by themselves they can cause a lot of damage, without even moving, so it isn't because she's small. She's even more useless than Steven, the human/gem hybrid. What exactly is Peridot? Could she also be a hybrid?
  • Pearl isn't that far above human strength, and she's confirmed that she wasn't built for battle. Peridot seems to be this taken to the extreme, with the addition of having barely any combat experience to back it up. They both appear to be some sort of servant or scientist class gems, never meant to engage opponents themselves. I also wonder if, without earth to form gems in, the Authority have been forced to grow substandard gems on other, less promising planets.
  • Remember that the Crystal Gems have not had any contact with Homeworld for thousands of years, so there could've been a few hybrids that were created during the time that they remained separated.
  • She might just be trying to pretend she already knows just for the sake of her ego. There are a lot of things she doesn't know, so she wants to pretend she at least knows about gem hybrids.
  • When she said she didn't care, that might have been less saying that she was already familiar with gem/organic hybrids, and more that she didn't care to have it explained at the moment, given that they were kind of in the middle of something.

Back to the Barn

"Back to the Barn"

• Is it just this troper, or did Pearl seem to unnecessarily blush a lot? I don't see the reason why she was intensely blushing at the mention of other Pearls.
  • Imagine if somebody started to casually explain to your surrogate son the fact that not only are you not a unique individual, but your predetermined purpose was to be little more than property. You'd be humiliated and flustered too.
• So, Peridot revealed a lot about Gem society and racial boundaries. Pearls are servants, Quartz are warriors and leaders, fusion is not meant to last forever. Question: What type of gems are Ruby and Sapphire? They aren't Quartz gems like Amethyst or Rose, they are minerals. What could their use have been in gem society? Especially with the immense power either of them have.
  • It could be that Ruby and Sapphire were meant to venture or act in extreme environments that most gems couldn't deal with. Ruby seems to be more than immune to most any level of heat, with the same being true of Sapphire and cold. There are a lot of planets with extreme conditions, but that would otherwise be rich in resources, and I doubt the Homeworld would let them go untapped. In fact, Lapis Lazuli might be meant for something similar. Some of Peridot's comments have suggested that the Homeworld doesn't have much water, so she might have been meant to serve on planets that have a lot of water on them like Earth.
    • "The Answer" has, funnily enough, the answer! Rubies are common and physically strong, so they serve as soldiers and bodyguards. Sapphires on the other hand, are rare and prophetic, so they serve as aristocrats and fortune tellers.
• How did Peridot manage to singlehandedly build the giant robot? Yes, I know she's supposed to be a genius engineer, but she's also by far the weakest full Gem shown so far (even weaker than Steven, in fact), and it looks like a lot of the parts that the robot was built out of would be way too heavy for her to lift. Compounding this is the fact that not only the parts, but also the tools, she had to use in the build were human-made, and at that point she had so little experience with such things that she didn't even know how to hold a power drill correctly. Put all that together, and it seems pretty strange that she singlehandedly managed to build it so quickly (or at all, for that matter).
  • Rule of Funny?
• Why is Pearl so strong? She was created to be a fancy, largely decorative handmaiden, yet she has extreme superhuman abilities.
  
  Granted, for a long time she was still the weakest gem we'd seen, and much of her effectiveness comes from her Dance Battler fighting style that taps into aptitudes that it makes sense for her to have, since a fancy maidservant/butler/whatever to the highest ranking gems would be expected to be graceful.
  
  But she still has abilities that technique alone can't account for, and Peridot's out-and-out wimpiness compared to her (and even to Steven) shows that it can't be explained away as Gems having such a high "baseline" strength that even the weakest of them can be expected to be as strong as Pearl.
  
  Why were Pearls given super strength? Was it an accidental side effect of Pearls being made in small batches or one at a time using different processes than regular Kindergartens (Peridot mentioned there only being a few hundred of them)? Were Pearls deliberately better-made, cutting fewer corners, than a lot of other mass-produced civilian gems, since Diamonds and such can't be seen with ones that were less well made? Or was it so that they could carry the aristocrats' heavy luggage without straining? Why?
  • Maybe Pearls are actually very weak by Gem standards. We've never seen Pearl use much of her strength, and certainly not to the upper limits that some of the others have shown. They probably did design Pearls to be comparatively weaker, it's just that that still seems powerful by our standards as humans. But it's as low as Homeworld thought was reasonable. Being an entire race with superpowers, it's understandable that they would have some different standards about that sort of thing than we do.
    • Except she's still much, much stronger physically than Peridot, who is hardly superhuman at all. Pearl hardly represents the lower bound on Gem strength; even if she's weaker than warrior-class gems, she still massively outclasses at least some of the other "civilian" gems. However... Peridot is the only Gem we've seen so far that's weaker than Pearl, and she is much newer. Maybe Pearl's success in the rebellion caused them to pre-empt such a thing from happening again by deliberately making all new civilian Gems from then on much weaker. Maybe at the time she was made, Pearl was at the lowest level of strength known to any Gem? Maybe making extra-weak Gems like Peridot requires substantial changes to the Kindergarten equipment, and at the time they made Pearl they thought so little of the possibility of uprising that they just didn't bother.
  • One fairly obvious possible explanation: Peridot specifically said that Pearls' responsibilities include holding their master's stuff for them, so maybe Pearls are made stronger than other civilian gems just because sometimes their duties might include carrying something rather heavy. A Peridot-strength Gem of Pearl's size couldn't lift a Diamond's toothbrush.
  • Pearls do not have super strength, Pearls are weak by Gem standards. The fact that Peridots are weaker doesn't change that, it just means they lack normal Gem strength as well.
  • This is explained in "Too Short to Ride" as being because Peridot is an Era 2 Gem, they are less well made than Era 1 Gems like Pearl, which would explain their lesser innate strength.
  • Also as a status symbol, a relatively strong pearl (as long as she was still graceful, attractive and intelligent) might be desirable by larger Gems like the Diamonds and more senior Quartzes as a sign that they could afford a high quality servant/accessory (as well as because larger Gems might use equally large equipment that would need to be carried and stored at times by their Pearls in their gemstones).
  • Also worth noting—our Pearl is a war veteran who has spent millenia training and pushing herself in order that she can grow more capable than she was originally programmed to be (as seen "Sworn To The Sword''). Peridot, meanwhile, is a techie who has always used her limb enhancers up until a few days ago. It's really not surprising that Pearl can best Peridot in terms of physical strength.

Too Far

"Too Far"

• Why does Peridot refer to body parts with complicated terms, like "touch stumps" for fingers or "gravity connectors" for feet, when she referred to her robot parts with regular terms like fingers or foot?
  • It'd be like calling one of those claw grabber things your hand. You're using it for what your hand does but it's not really your hand. As to why she uses the more complicated terms for her real body, she's an alien. Who knows how Gem culture came to name their parts.
  • I guess it sort of shows how she felt better about her robot parts than her actual body, since she felt bad about how small, weak, and clumsy her actual body is by Gem standards. She preferred her robot body to the extent that in her mind, the limb enhancers were her "real" fingers and feet, and the actual parts of her light-body are just irrelevant underlying components. It may not be that terms like "touch stumps" and "gravity connectors" are standard terminology amongst Homeworld Gems, it may instead be that those are idiosyncratic technical jargons that Peridot invented to refer to her own limbs by since she had mentally dissociated from them and preferred to think of her bionic enhancements as her actual limbs.

The Answer

"The Answer"

• Why does Sapphire only have one eye when every other Gem has at least two?
  • Maybe all Sapphires have one eye as a side effect of having future vision. This is most likely a reference to Greek mythology where Cyclopes had sacrificed their second eye in order to see into the future.
  • Sapphires aren't the only Cyclops Gem types. Nephrites are one-eyed too.
• Why does Sapphire's gem turn red when she and Ruby form Garnet?
  • Same reason Ruby's turns purple when they form Sugilite with Amethyst.
  • All fusions change the color of their component gems to match. Opal's gems are all rainbow-colored, Malachite's gems are all green, etc.
  • I was always under the impression that the Gems on this show were actual specimens of the gemstones the characters are named after. It's not just that they're changing color. The gem in Sapphire's hand is an actual sapphire and the gem in Ruby's hand is an actual ruby, and when they become Garnet, they both magically transform into actual garnets. Which happen to be red.
• There seems to be some discrepancy as to how competent Pearl was during the war. In "The Answer", she was described as "terrifying" and was shown singlehandedly taking down two Quartzes at once with her swords. Granted, they may not have been battle hardened veterans like Jasper, but that's still impressive. But in "Sworn to the Sword", it showed her as hopelessly outmatched by foes of such scale, such that her repeated attempts to intervene in fights between Rose and such enemies were completely unhelpful and just resulted in getting herself poofed immediately. Similarly, "The Answer" showed Rose and Pearl exhibiting actual decent teamwork, as opposed to how "Sworn to the Sword" portrayed their battlefield dynamic as Pearl always trying to "defend" Rose in an utterly inept way.
  • It's worth noting that all cases of Pearl being poofed in "Sworn to the Sword" were shown in the same animation style as Steven's insane speculation about the risks he faced in "Future Vision". That makes Pearl's incompetence the same level of canonicity as Cookie Cat being evil or the magic wasps. Garnet said that Pearl took fearless pride in sacrificing herself, but it's just Steven's imagination (and his worries about Connie being hurt in a similar situation) that made it a regular occurrence.
    • I suppose that's possible, but Garnet's phrasing seemed suggestive of Pearl often making some really poor choices on the battlefield.
  • Gems are ridiculously long lived, and we don't really know how much the war went on. It is completely possible that the "Sworn to the Sword" scenes was early in the war, with Pearl just learning to fight and being overzealous on Rose's safety (and maybe still "obeying" her "programming" to be an accessory to her owner) while "The Answer" might be later(some months, some years, a few decades, etc). She might even be relating to Connie how bad she was when she started, and while she still tried to protect Rose, she changed from "Get all the hits meant for Rose" to "Eliminate everything before they have a chance to hit Rose"
    • I always assumed "The Answer" was near the beginning of the war, since Rose hadn't built up her army yet and seemed to literally have no followers at the time besides Pearl. Also if Pearl learned her lesson about how to support Rose in a more sensible way, you'd think she wouldn't be teaching Connie to emulate her own mistakes as to how to approach the situation if she acknowledged and corrected them herself. Also, if Pearl's incompetence was all prior to "The Answer", then Garnet wouldn't have known about it because she hadn't joined yet.
    • I assumed it was the "last" of the first wave, as they are well known. Most of their first allies destroyed/captured and them making a last attempt at Blue Diamond. And then they got reinforcements. Pearl isn't good judging human behavior, so she might have wanted to make sure Connie would defend Steven first, besides as much as she loves him, she though Steven wasn't much of a fighter.
    • As far as Pearl's tutelage of Connie goes, in between "Pearl learns pragmatism" and "Pearl teaches Connie" there was "Rose died". Rose, the person Pearl was obsessed with protecting at any cost, died in a way she could do absolutely nothing to prevent. Deep seated emotional issues can be managed but rarely "fixed", and Rose's death would have been the perfect catalyst to wake them up.
  • Another consideration: the opposition shown in STTS looks FAR more impressive than in "The Answer"; a huge, thirty-foot tall, vicious looking Gem that I'm going to assume is likely a fusion of three or more Jasper-grade Quartzes. Seriously bad odds there. It's possible that against the kind of odds we see in The Answer (a few surprised Quartzes and a single three-Ruby-fusion) Pearl did a perfectly fine job serving as a deadly and level-headed sidekick to Rose, but when up against something huge and terrifying like that, Pearl would have a panic attack, flip the hell out, and think something to the effect of, "YUP, NOT LETTIN' ROSE FIGHT THAT THING, LEEEEEEEEERRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYY!"
    • If you look at it Pearl has the same strategy in both scenarios: throw herself at the most dangerous Gems around and poof them so Rose won't be in danger. It's just that in "The Answer" the enemy forces were within her competence zone so her attack was successful.
  • At least, "Now We're Only Falling Apart" gives us an answer of when "The Answer"'s events happened: It was one of the first waves of attacks of Pink, disguised as Rose, and Pearl, disguised as the Renegade Pearl, with the intent of scaring Homeworld Gems away.
  • "The Answer" shows Pearl from the perspective of the essentially newborn Garnet, whose experiences consist of the noncombatant Sapphire and a lowly grunt Ruby. At that point in her life, facing someone like Pearl would be terrifying. As she grew older her perspective changed and she realized that Pearl often threw herself into things that were over her head; her flashbacks in "Sworn to the Sword" reflect a more complete view of Pearl. This doesn't mean that Pearl isn't a terrifying badass, just that part of what made her so terrifying was that she would often push herself beyond her limits, and once she was older and wiser, Garnet realized that doing so had costs and risks, which Pearl would often take recklessly.
• Why did Sapphire tear up after defusing from Garnet for the first time?
  • Sometimes, people seeing or hearing for the first time tear up because of the overwhelming sensation. Sensory overload, or even emotional overload, could have happened to Sapphire who had literally, for the first time in her life, experienced not only melding minds with an individual but seeing out of more than one eye for the first time. Depth perception, you know.
• Why are rubies (precious stones) considered "common" and low enough to just serve as foot soldiers that can be easily spared when Sapphire is "rare"?
  • Because Rubies, the magical Gem kind, are common with unimpressive powers while Sapphires are rare with highly useful abilities. There's no reason an alien species would follow the values humans have assigned gems. You'll notice there were only four Diamonds when on Earth there's tons of them.
  • Yes, of course, but there's also tons of sapphires on Earth. Sugar seems to have mirrors alien Gem culture after actual Earth gems- diamonds are the most valuable and strongest, quartz gems are plentiful, pearls are high-class accessories, etc. I just found it strange, then, that a precious stone here would be common as dirt on Homeworld.
  • Gem amount may have nothing to do with how common they are. it may also have to do with the energy needed to create them or use materials other than actual gems. also the amount of gems may be different in Steven universe than our universe.
• Why are two of the Ruby guards so childish when they're thousands of years old, trained soldiers?
  • Because that's how Rubies act. We've seen our Ruby act just as childish.
• Why didn't Sapphire forsee "Rose Quartz's" true identity being revealed? If "Rose Quartz" had been captured as Sapphire foresaw, her true identity would have been revealed, and Sapphire should have been able to forsee that. So why didn't she know who "Rose Quartz" really was?
  • Sapphire only sees the most likely POSSIBILITY, not the actual future. Rose Quartz being Pink Diamond would be extremely unlikely to her. Garnet, with her better future vision couldn't even foresee it. Sapphire also didn't know Rose Quartz wasn't actually a Rose Quartz. She also only seemed to see what she would actually see, that sort of thing wouldn't be shown in front of her.

Steven's Birthday

"Steven's Birthday"

• Why was Steven struggling to stretch out his limbs? Why couldn't he just FEEL old, like in "So Many Birthdays"?
  • He was trying to look how he thought someone his age was supposed to look. But at the end he IS supposed to look the way he does, meaning if he tried to "feel" 14 he'd look the same.
  • Two possible reasons: 1. He thought of stretching because he saw Amethyst do it earlier to hang the banner and it didn't occur to him that there was another way; 2. he did consider it, but remembered that the last time he used emotion to change his age, it nearly killed him, so he went with what he thought was the less risky option.
  • He COULDN'T have just "felt older", because not feeling old enough was the entire problem.
• It seems really hard to reconcile "So Many Birthdays" with "Steven's Birthday". In the former, it is established that Steven's age is based on his state of mind. This point is then forgotten and never spoken of again, and his age is never again shown to fluctuate.
  
  When "Steven's Birthday" finally rolls around, the applicability of this point is not brought up, and instead of trying to use this to make himself older, he simply tried shapeshifting himself to look taller and therefore older, although he couldn't sustain this.
  
  The strain he puts on himself has an effect that sort of brings up his weird aging, but instead of being based on his state of mind, it seems that he reverted to an infant simply as a half-gem alternative to poofing, from straining his gem too much by shapeshifting too big a form.
  
  At the end he's shown to have sprouted his first facial hair, which suggests that he was actually aging normally after all and doesn't grow because he just has dwarfism or something, even though his adult forms in "So Many Birthdays" were taller than his usual form and of average adult height.
  
  Is their any interpretation where these two episodes make sense together, or am I forced to just chalk "So Many Birthdays" up to Early-Installment Weirdness and/or Broad Strokes?
  • Steven's involuntary aging and shapeshifting are separate powers. Him being unable to maintain his older-looking body was because he was using shapeshifting instead of the age he was mentally. Him turning into a baby was a result of overexertion, not mentally being a baby. His facial hair at the end shows that he has grown a little mentally.
    • That doesn't really seem to address the fact that the whole conflict of the episode is caused by anxiety that seems like it wouldn't exist if anyone remembered what they learned about Steven's aging in "So Many Birthdays". The episode came across as if how Steven's aging worked was still a mystery to everyone.
    • You're acting like he can easily control how old he feels. Can you control how old you feel? Nobody can just turn a certain state of mind on and off at a whim, and before anyone counters with him doing that in "So Many Birthdays", I would point out that that was a more adrenaline-charged situation; feel younger now or DIE. On his 14th birthday, there is no such risk. And no, the shapeshifting and aging aren't really different powers at all; they both come back to the basic fact that Gem bodies are hard-light holograms projected with a certain, limited amount of energy, and that they can reconfigure those forms at will. Hell, even Fusion is basically the same thing, they just meld their holograms into each other.
    • A) It's not so much that he's merely unable to control his feeling-based age shifting, as that everyone in "Steven's Birthday" (including himself) seems totally unaware of it. It's not brought up.
      B) Steven's body is not entirely a hologram like the other Gems, he's partly-biological.
      C) Age-shifting in "So Many Birthdays" didn't strain him like deliberately shapeshifting a larger form did, so it seems to be somewhat different in nature (at least for him).
      D) What saved him from dying of age in "So Many Birthdays" wasn't an adrenaline rush for fear of his own death, but seeing the gems freaking out about it made him spontaneously feel like (therefore become) a healthy adult to scold them to calm down.
      E) Another sub-headscratcher: if his age-shifting powers from "So Many Birthdays" are still fully canon and not just some discarded relic of before the writers had quite figured out where they were going with this, why didn't he suddenly grow older during "Full Disclosure" when he was hit with the realization of how serious the situation was? (Yes, I know he still responded to it rather immaturely, but his aged forms in "So Many Birthdays" weren't very mature either, the point is he felt older).
    • (Hoo boy, I just realized that this page is getting freaking LONG. I think we're gonna need to break it apart soon like with WMG.)
      A) Maybe they didn't bring it up because it's irrelevent. Everyone there who knows about it knows enough of the rules to realize that it's not worth mentioning.
      B) True, but we've seen clearly that in many aspects, it still behaves like a gem body, otherwise he wouldn't be able to fuse or 'shift at all. In this case, I think we just need to wait for canon or Word of God to better explain how Steven's body specifically works.
      C) That's because of the timeframe. This was explained pretty clearly: a Gem's body has a set limit of how much energy it should put into the size of it's form, which they can exceed via 'shifting, but they run the risk of hurting themselves if they do it too long. In "Birthday", Steven's trying to maintain his larger form for the better part of a day (looked to me like at least from about mid-morning to late afternoon, so let's call it eight hours.), but in "Birthdays", he was only doing it for about fifteen minutes or so, just long enough for his stroll down to the Big Donut and back. Not enough tume to cause any backlash.
      D) True, I did forget that, but it only further proves my point that "how old you feel" is not something you can control.
      E) Hmmm, dunno, that's a good question. Maybe after the adventure on the ship, his body didn't have enough energy and couldn't be bothered to shapeshift until later, and by that time, Connie had talked him down into feeling a bit more like a kid again.
  • The two episodes don't contradict one another at all — in fact, they end up complementing each other. In "So Many Birthdays", Steven began physiologically aging due to a subconscious reaction to how old he was feeling — his body adjusted his "age" to match how he old he felt. In "Steven's Birthday", Steven was consciously trying to transform himself so that he could remain with Connie, and, as conscious actions tend to be, was much more physically taxing (bending your arm is simple, while flexing your bicep will tire you out fairly quickly, and the harder & longer you do it, the more tired you become). His transformation into a baby was twofold: one, a snapback from overexerting himself; two, a subconscious image of himself and his fears that Connie will continue to grow while he remains a child forever (personified as he being a "baby"). Later, after he returns to his normal age after Connie's reassurance that she'll never leave him plus a good night's rest, Steven's subconscious again alters his body... only this time, it's a very subtle age-up, one that reflects how Steven views Connie age-wise. Simply put: Steven's desire is to grow up together with Connie, and so his body will (subconsciously) do exactly that — cause Steven to age at the exact same perceivable rate as Connie for the rest of their lives.
• This one requires a lot of thinking (probably way too hard) about the timeline. "Mirror Gem" takes place near the beginning of summer (which we learn about after Steven talks to Connie), and the barn episodes seem to take place in summer as well (in "Same Old World", Steven notices the trees starting to change). This means Steven's birthday must be late summer, correct? Now, "Winter Forecast" happened in between, so the two summers mentioned before must be different years. Now, in this episode Connie acts surprised to learn that Steven is fourteen. But... when we piece together all the previously-stated facts, she must have at least known about Steven's off-camera thirteenth birthday. Did she really not ask or hear about his age then?
  • Presumably she was away and couldn't celebrate with him.
• Steven is show to be immersed in popular culture, and several of his friends are teenagers... So how come he never realised he doesn't look like a typical kid of his age before Connie pointed that out?
  • It was never suggested that Steven himself never noticed.
• If there's a Warp Pad right by the barn, why couldn't Steven go back to Beach City for his birthday? For that matter, why couldn't he go back regularly to get food and sleep?

It Could've Been Great

"It Could've Been Great"

• It’s obviously done for the sake of plot since Steven otherwise wouldn’t have been able to come with them, but why would the Gem base on the Moon have a breathable atmosphere if Gems are The Needless?
  • The Gems communicate with spoken language. Spoken Language requires sound, and sound requires an atmosphere. Presumably they took gasses from Earth to put an atmosphere in the moon base. Or Steven doesn't actually need to breath but he and the gems thinks he does, there've been some hints along those lines.
    • That doesn't explain how Eyeball can be heard talking to Steven despite being outside his bubble while they're drifting away in the middle of the void in "Bubbled", though.

Message Received

"Message Received"

• Why on the Earth did the Gems not immediately bust the Diamond communicator as soon as Steven brought it to them?
  • They probably were taking their time since they thought Steven successfully subdued Peridot.
  • They weren't even entirely sure what it was and how it worked. For all they knew, attempting to destroy it could've made it explode, or something. So they were being careful.
• It seems that each Pearl's gem placement corresponds to the placement of the Gem they belong to. Both Pearls that belong to a Diamond have their gems on their hearts, matching them, and matching their color. Pearl is not the same color as Rose, who also has her stone on her stomach, while Pearl's gem is on her head. It's also getting clear that Rose is not an ex-Diamond, she was probably just the erased Pink Diamond's soldier. So who did Pearl belong to?
  • It is possible that Pearl was a reject, and Rose toke Pearl underneath her wing. As in the other Pearl's seem to be a lot more submissive then Pearl seems too be.
  • Alternatively, the gem placement is largely coincidental. This seems be vindicated by the Rubies in "The Answer", who all had their gems in different places.
  • There are also theories that she used to belong to White Diamond, who did have her gem on her forehead.
  • Given Peridot is quite effusive on the glories of Blue and Yellow Diamond, but has nothing to say about White or Pink, there's definitely something up with White. As many people have noted, our Pearl is pretty much white in color.
    • "A Single Pale Rose" reveals that Pearl belonged to Pink Diamond, who was indeed Rose.
• This is a really weird question, but what is up with Yellow Diamond's absurdly long neck? And she didn't have it in the extended intro, meaning they apparently looked back at that design and decided it'd look especially sinister for whatever reason.
  • Her neck looks about the same in the extended intro actually, accounting for the weird perspective (Peridot and Lapis look almost as tall as Jasper).
• Why does Yellow Diamond not know about the Crystal Gems? When Peridot first saw Steven (before she came to Earth) she saw and was introduced to the Crystal Gems. That's why YD ordered a Jasper to accompany her in the first place, because Peridot put them in her report. Why did she even have to ask Peridot what happened to the ship, when she was told there were rebels?
  • Maybe Peridot never actually dealt with her directly, and Yellow Diamond's orders to Jasper were "Find out what this idiot tech wants and get her to stop wasting my time".
  • Even if Yellow Diamond knew of/remembered the Crystal Gems, them destroying the ship wasn't the only possibility. Mechanical failure, accident, or even Lapis breaking out were all potential reasons it might have been damaged. Remember that the ship was invulnerable to any Crystal Gem weapons, and they were only able to reach the reactor because Jasper took them aboard (something that wasn't in the original mission plan). Yellow Diamond knew rebels were a possibility, but decided to ask Peridot what happened and didn't anticipate she'd have any reason to lie.
• So what exactly is the gem hierarchy? We know that Diamonds are the top of the food chain, but where does that leave everyone else? Are Pearls higher than Rubies since they directly serve the Diamonds, or are Rubies higher since they're soldiers and Pearls are treated as nothing more than decoration; according to Peridot? What about Jasper's and Peridot's relationship, it seemed that Jasper was in charge of the mission to earth; but Yellow Diamond said that she assigned Jasper to Peridot as though she had control.
  • I imagine it's not totally that simple, that each type of Gem was made for a different task and a different spectrum of authority. Jasper is a high ranking military Gem and would likely be able to boss around Rubies all day, along with being able to command military expeditions. She's not however technically Peridot's boss, as Peridot is a civilian tech. Jasper was purely escort... until they bumped into the crystal gems and Jasper personally identified them, at which point it became a military mission that she was in charge of (and Peridot is still clearly annoyed that she's being bossed about and told what to do). Pearls on the other hand seem to me like secretaries, their rank secondary to the practical authority they gain from their job. As they control access to the top rank of gem society, even Jaspers would have to give them respect unless they want that Pearl to be whispering in a Diamond's ear about the merits of reassigning them to the deepest regions of space. No doubt Peridot has good reason to be a little snotty with Pearls, especially if the levels of smug we saw from Yellow Diamond's is normal.
    • Pearls have no authority at all, they're not even considered actual people, they're accessories to the Gems that own them. So far the hierarchy as we've seen it goes Diamonds on top, rare gems with great or unusual powers as their court (Saphire and Lapis), Quartz gems, Rubies, Peridots and with Pearls beneath everyone. Basically the rarer and more powerful you are the higher up the caste system you're placed. Although it seems there's some slight wiggle room depending on the type of mission they're on, as Peridot seemed in charge of the Cluster mission until Jasper identified Rose Quartz.
• So, Gems' physical forms are projections and they all have the ability to shapeshift. But it has been shown that most Gems are disgusted by humans and look down on them. In fact, they were around long before humans even existed. With all of that in mind, why do all of them look so much like human women, even in distant flashbacks? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it from a meta, Most Writers Are Human standpoint, but in-story, the logic just isn't there.
  • Since Gems were around long before humanity maybe they're disgusted by us because they see us as an inferior knockoff or something. Gems don't look like humans, humans look like Gems. And the Gems don't like that.
  • This is flat-out WMG territory, but it it's possible that the first gems were created by advanced Human Aliens (which may not exist anymore) for some purpose, and they decided to make them look like women by default, which remained standard in Gem culture.

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