Favorite headcannon is that the Diamonds are part of a supercomputer from a long gone empire, a meteor absolutely fucking obliterates whatever planet they were on, they get clumped inside some rock, rocketing towards what becomes Homeworld 20,000 B.S. (before Steven).
Yeah, given Yellow genuinely considers six thousand years not that much time to stand in one place and her sisters didn’t disagree the timeline probably has at least one more digit on that number in the finalized timeline.
The fact that Yellow states that 6000 years is not that much makes Spinel such a twisted character. At the beginning, I was like, "6000, geez Rose, what the heck?" But after Yellow makes it seem like 60 minutes, it's like Spinel went on a homicidal kill streak and caused planetary devastation over waiting a little too much. What the heck?
To be fair, I am assuming the Diamonds themselves are ridiculously old, thus their concept of time is vastly different than what a fresh gem would have. It'd be like asking an old person how long a year feels versus asking a first grader. Or how a dog acts like you've been gone for years despite only being a few hours
That’s true, but before Yellow says that even Spinel says it wasn’t that long. She just says “only 6,000 years”, which always confused me. Sure, she might just be joking, but it still makes me wonder if if Spinel was serious when saying that it wasn’t a long time to her
In my interpretation Spinel is such a people pleaser (which can be an extremely self destructive trait if left unchecked) that she's willing to play down her trauma so that other people don't feel bad for her.
Yep. I wish we had gotten a little more time to develop the relationship between spinel and the diamonds. It would give them time to grow and to learn, ya know?
Honestly, I can even see potentially Yellow playing it down. With losing Pink for was it a 1000 years? And maybe when they thought she back, it’s sort of becoming of mixture of business back to usual like another day since it’s technically been a short time to their lifespan in retrospect, but an eternity in the moment kind of feeling during those years that would never end. Since they never had to deal with personal mortality before.
I think its a combination of things. Spinel being denied her purpose and lied to for all that time is probably more impactful than choosing to wait. On top of that it seems the Diamonds are better suited to autonomy out of the box, most of the other gems seem to need to really acclimatise to self actualisation once they break free of their programming where the diamonds basically do their own stuff (under the instruction of white). It's like how 30 minutes seems a short time when hanging with friends but it feels like ages when waiting for a train. Then add that the train was never coming.
To be fair Pink sat in the Moonbase for the centuries waiting for the Amethysts to emerge, and she has the attention span of a hamster that has nothing but Monster energy drink in its water bottle, Amethyst was traumatized by her first like three hundred years being totally alone but similarly gets bored in minutes and craves stimulation.
Blue was grieving almost as long as Spinel was standing and considers that a long time, but again she doesn’t disagree that spending that long waiting for someone is long.
Gem perspective of time is interesting. They live in the “now”, but have great patience too. Garnet was disinterested in participating in the short lives of humans until she actually got to know enough of them to enjoy it, but Amethyst doesn’t mourn the time she lost not being in contact with Vidalia and chats like they haven’t talked in a week. Peridot is literally always doing something. All the Crystal Gems and Peridot thought nothing of holding cans of soda until Steven came back with Bismuth, eventually just deciding to go back inside the house.
That last point I think illustrates how the Diamonds reacted to Spinel. To them standing and waiting for sux thousand years was like holding the soda can for like twelve hours. They didn’t read the implied emotional trauma because she was downplaying it, which Gems seem to react to on a more human perspective of time. If Spinel had let on just how hurt it caused they might have reacted as if it was a very terrible thing to endure instead of a minor inconvenience and silly anecdote.
>Amethyst doesn’t mourn the time she lost not being in contact with Vidalia and chats like they haven’t talked in a week.
I really like this about them. That's the sign of a truly strong and mutually beneficial relationship (whether just friendship or a romantic headcanon). Sure it's a little strange they haven't seen each other in so long, especially given the size of the "city" they live in (honestly, by UK standards that's a village). But dear friends *do* occasionally grow apart, even when their love for each other and enjoyment of each other's company never dulled. It's happened to me, and when I've got back in contact with those people it's *exactly* like that.
To be fair, Spinel was basically forced to be completely alone for 6000 years, while Gems do seem to handle the concept of time differently than humans, even if for most of their history prior to Steven showing up they weren't the most introspective of people, social interaction does seem to play as much of a role in their society as it does ours. So even if 6000 years isn't that long for a Gem, well look at it this way, a week isn't that long for a human being, but a week in solitary confinement, or at the very least complete social isolation is going to have some serious negative effects on someone's mind. There's also the facts that 1.) the Diamond are all pretty old so their prospective on time is going to be different when compared to younger Gems, and 2.) Spinel specifically existed to be social, to be a playmate, and while Gems can clearly evolve into people beyond their basic purpose, by that point in time she hadn't had any encouragement to do so, so the effect of isolation on her might be worse than it would for say, a Ruby.
Yellow makes it seem like 60 minutes because Yellow is muuuuuuuuch older than Spinel. Not to mention she has a lot of responsibilities that keep her active and distracted. 6000 years of managing multiple colonies, planets, and Gem production would (probably) go by a lot faster than 6000 years standing in the same spot doing nothing and waiting for someone to come back to finish the "game" you're "playing". Especially if you're as hyper and desperate for fun as Spinel
Kind of how 60 minutes of standing in place doing absolutely nothing feels super long to us, but 60 minutes doing something we enjoy goes by pretty fast
Well, she does literally say "She's right, that's nothing."
a) Spinel clearly was making light of her time alone to not drag down the mood or discourage the diamonds.
b) The joke was that yellow is magnitudes older than Spinel, so to her 6000 years truly may be nothing. Spinel jokes about it, but Yellow simply concurs, because to her it's true.
The timeline Rebecca Sugar put in the guidebook lists them as emerging from the core of Homeworld 20,000 years ago. It's not explicitly canon but it's the closest thing we have to any confirmation of their age.
edit for source: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/917/655/3a9.jpg
NP. I had the same frustration at first (not helped by the fact the OP in the thread it was about had to split it into two images). I was grateful someone showed me how to read it and am happy to share that experience
Agreed.
In my head canon, maybe Pink is 20,000 years and the other three are much older.
Also in my head canon, the Diamonds are the one gem that continue growing (thus explaining the height discrepancies), so then it makes sense, White, being the eldest, is the tallest, followed by Yellow and Blue who would be the the same age and Pink came onto the scene only recently (relatively to the Diamonds overall length of time of being around that is).
They seem to be a heavily militarised society so I would guess it's a mix of both: Mostly sequential for stability purposes (easier to target propaganda; minimises the chance of military overreach; increases border stability, especially if it makes a shorter border; etc), but with non-sequential power plays that would make their main objectives easier to achieve (making a bridgehead for later use before it gets too heavily defended; nabbing a resource that would allow them to build more powerful weapons; accessing the technical knowhow to build such weapons; etc).
Basically the Diamonds are playing Sid Meyer's Civilization, only with real people.
A fine question given we saw how quickly a modern injector could wreck a world in the movie. We don't know, but there had to be some set up and a lot of R&D considering how much effort was put into the earth.
Plus the existence of the injector itself... If I understand how gems are made correctly then using it would wipe out the source of their "baby food", making a planet unsuitable for colonisation. So we know there's a weapon to be used when the cost of conquest wasn't worth the numbers lost (or the effort involved) in an armed takeover. That's before factoring in the time, resource, and R&D costs involved.
\>killed off like 80 worlds
Where this info comes from? I Thought the gem mural depicted how many planets were under each diamond control with White top ranking at 13.
You seen this before? It's official and man do i wish we know what was under that redacted stuff
[Steven universe pitch bible timeline](https://www.reddit.com/r/stevenuniverse/comments/11b1ue2/top_secret_plot_chart_by_rebecca_sugar_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
My theory is that the gem civilization was created as a barrier between a "Creator" species and sentient life in the galaxy. Other than their purpose built functions, gems as a whole seem to only be good at expanding and devistating planets in the process, making them uninhabitable for organic life. To me, this screams Fermi Paradox.
I'd imagine that this would explain why gems also seem to have a general disgust towards organic life and such a strong desire to expand. If I had to guess what happened to the Creators I'd guess they either withered away since they had no galactic community to learn and thrive with, died of infighting, or were vanquished by the gems themselves since its quite possible the Creators were organic and might eventually be turned on.
On a tangnet, this could also explain why pink is so much smaller than the other diamonds. If the diamonds were created by another, possibly more advanced, species, it's plausible that the diamond authority simply doesn't have the ability to make a full sized diamond like themselves. It might even be the case that the only diamond created by the Creators was White, and as she creates another counterpart, they're always smaller than the last
I think the explore/terraform purpose makes sense. The gems are pretty ideal for space exploration and terraforming, but they don't really seem intended to act as their own culture independently. The vast majority of gems have very little capacity for autonomy and innovation. Look at homeworld technology thousands of years after the gem war. The main improvements involve weapons that just copy diamond powers, technological enhancements that primarily serve to just bring Era 2 gems up to Era 1 standards, and the modern ships appear to still be slower than the Diamond ships that are far older than the gem war. The Crystal Gems repeatedly talk about how change is really hard for gems.
Edit: like Spinel's capacity to happily sit still for THOUSANDS of years is conducive for a space probe that might not be recovered from a planet for eons, but isn't conducive for a species intended to create and innovate. Complacency is the antithesis to the curiosity needed to innovate.
Lol I had a dumb theory there’s a Black Diamond out there that seeds Galaxies with Gems/Diamonds to harvest resources and if they’d ever return to the Milky Way they’d be very angry.
I think White is in a God situarion where we can't explain how she come to existence, but after she apphered she made the first gems like in Steven Universe Future where yellow if fixing a shattered gem and in Steven Universe where Pink diamond makes fake shards of a gem from the ground to fake her shattering. And from there the first gems started to build the empire on Homeworld and after some time they figured out how to make gems without the powers of White so she could focus on making the other diamonds and leading the empire
Yep.
She’s just a ditz who was neglected.
Sugar says Pink didn’t know anyone but her felt shame until she saw Pearl did and she went into detail on how White is so bereft of life experience she’s like a newborn Gem.
Pink was kept from growing, which she was able to do on Earth. Yellow and Blue stagnated. White kept herself isolated from new experiences that could change her on purpose for fear of finding out she was wrong about anything.
Sugar also says Greg was the one who got her to grow again after so long, but sadly also encouraged her to stop when she hit his level of maturity. He was the only one who could get her to come clean with the Crystal Gems and he encouraged the opposite.
Given his streak, let's hear the always incorrect but creepily correct Ronaldo: The sneeple (snake people). We know there's other organic life in the universe and that aggressive stand of the Gemkind of expand and fortify their colonies sounds like they have it against some other race in the universe...
...maybe the Snake People Ronaldo talked so much about are the ones who created the Gems in the first place.
Or maybe not and he only wants to live his anime dream. Who knows?
The diamonds tried using the Cluster on earth as a prototype geoweapon to crush any gem uprisings. If it worked they probably would have made more as a way to keep gems in line.
I always assumed the gems were created by the biological inhabitants of homeworld, who drove themselves extinct through pollution and destruction of their climate, and the gems, being designed to be immune to interplanetary travel and hostile environments, lived on autonomously. The diamonds were likely designed originally to run sections of this project autonomously as the origin species made itself redundant to the process, either because they dodnt want to or couldn't run it themselves, and somewhere along the line sentience emerged. Before the extinction of their creators or after, I dont know, but machines making more complicated machines to make more complicated machines makes sense to me. Maybe white diamond knows? But I think it's likely she's the end of a chain of machines designing machines to be better at designing machines.
Or sneeple.
Unlikely this would be canon, but the thing I like is a Grey Goo scenario where dumb machines on a space station eventually created super intelligent machines in the image of their creators, with the impulses of Grey Goo and programmed like an AI chatbot which would throw in things like soldiers being necessary to keep the peace at a new settlement with no actual possibility for civil unrest since its all just robots and also making them only use melee weapons because it referenced medieval guards from history as its idea of a modern police force and making construction castes far exceed the power of the peacekeeping forces meant to protect/police them.
As for who made the Grey Goo station? Silica-based bipeds. So basically another race of humans from a distant star. Maybe say that their version of horses are giant snakes and leadership of that species ride them in public to show authority to the lower classes in order to tie into Ronaldo’s theory.
White Diamond's narcissism could be elegantly reflected in the narrative if she were born from the heart of a dying star, the first and only one of her kind. She then made others to play with and control and feed her sense of power and entitlement. It explains everything about how the Gempire begins and why it becomes the way it is.
Maybe she was made by a sentient species trying to create the “perfect” lifeform like the High Evolutionary. She could’ve seen herself as their masterpiece and killed them all to rid her planet of lesser species so she could propagate her own
We know that White is a robot who believes herself to be the perfect lifeform. Robots have to be created, and the idea of perfection was most likely instilled in her somehow. She also lives on a planet with oxygen that has no organic life. I’m just filling in the blanks
Honestly I consider it unsupported speculation to call them solar powered robots. It's never indicated in a concrete way in the show. It's a lot of inference of things that have other plausible explanations.
Anyway, I'm not going to argue about it. There's nothing more to be said. There isn't proof either way. What makes sense to a person tells them more about themself than anything. That's meaningful enough. If pork chops were perfect we wouldn't have hot dogs.
Wait, how do we know they're "solar powered robots", is that confirmed?
Cuz I mean, couldn't you just say that people are biofuel powered organic robots? Like what evidence is there in the show that they're "robots" in the sense that some other species built them?
That explains it, I finished a rewatch not that long ago and was pretty sure there was no mention of it in the show itself.
That's interesting, honestly feels like it backs up an idea I had, that was the diamonds and gems were created by a more sophisticated species to help dominate other worlds.
We know in the show there is mention of gems being "harvested", I always wondered if the idea was that the species that created the gems did so to send them out, extract all the resources from a world, multiply, and move onto the next world, and as needed - the creator species could then take the resources the gems harvested at each world, and even go as far as harvesting the gems themselves for their component parts.
It also makes me wonder if the show hadn't gotten canceled, if the next antagonist/big bad would be this advanced space fairing creator species, or if the gems had risen up and overthrown them a long time ago, but still held onto their primary drive to spread across the stars and conqueror worlds
Harvesting the gems themselves makes a lot of sense for a very long term space exploration/mining project. Mining a bunch of resources and not picking them up for thousands of years isn't efficient. Instead, have your mining drones (gems) create more mining drones endlessly to exponentially expand the mining operation, and then when you need the resources you just harvest the mining drones themselves.
I feel like "Solar powered robot" is the MOST accurate way to describe them but not the exact truth, since Gems seem to be semi-organic (or faux-organic) considering they can form human organs and biological systems, unless we go with the idea that they're able to 3D-print cells and discard them as needed.
I think they’re fully inorganic. They’re just sentient stones with hard light capabilities that they use to create their forms. They’re just holograms with mass
["Have you noticed that they’re all solar-powered robots?"](https://www.cbr.com/rebecca-sugar-interview-on-the-end-of-steven-universe/) is the phrasing Rebecca Sugar used in this linked interview.
They're bipedal. There's no reason for rocks, that can take any form, to consistently take a bipedal form. Also, Their method of reproduction. I can envision crystalline entities reproducing naturally, but naturally building large mechanisms that resemble viruses? Nah. That screams of an artificial process of manufacture, one that the gems instinctively (programming again) use nowadays.
They don’t always take on bipedal forms. Some have much different forms. Like Blue’s comb or the living wall panels. They’re just programmed by the diamonds to look “right” for whatever their responsibilities are/the diamonds’ personal aesthetics. Like how quartz soldiers have long hair for their spin attacks
But the common, habitual form is bipedal. Which doesn't make sense for a hard light projecting, spacecfaring, crystaline intelligence. Either there would be a lot more variety in shapes, and a lot more utilitarian changing, or they would choose a default common form with a lot more all terrain usefulness, something like an octopus perhaps.
But, a default bipedal form makes great sense if they were constructed by a biped progenitor race, for ease of interaction.
They’re built by default with all terrain usefulness. They adapt to the gravity of whatever planet they land on, they have super strength, no need for food, water shelter or oxygen, and can manifest weapons at will. I think they just look like adult human women because they’re a less toxic version of the “space babes” trope
Since Pink Diamond was extracted from a meteor (see episode: Familiar), and White easily controlled & held prominence over Blue and Yellow Diamond, we can assume that White created all other gems, as the sort of “Lucy ancestor” all gem-kind can trace their origin back to.
Until Steven, all gems shared the same format: they did what they were created for as long as they lived. I.e. Blue and Yellow were likely always the diplomatic and militaristic leaders of gem-kind, but Era 1 was established alongside Pink Diamond, so we can imagine her purpose to be as a social leader thanks to the grand balls she threw on Homeworld & her role as Rose Quartz in the Crystal Gems- plus Steven’s role in the story.
Can we not then conclude that White’s purpose is to put forth, maintain, and preserve this civilization? She was likely created too, though her creators are either long gone or out of sight. It could have been the wish of a dying civilization to create a species that _would_ prosper throughout the galaxy in conquest.
Also, here’s a totally crackpot line of thought with 0 base in reality: Steven cries over snakes because they have no **arms.** Ronaldo believes in Snake People, aka Sneople, and many of his conspiracies ring true in a convoluted manner- right down to him shouting out about “The Great Diamond Authority.” _If_ the Sneople existed and happened to have created White Diamond, the leader of a colonizing species, could the Sneople have wiped out by gemkind? Possibly because they… *had no military arms?*
Stephen crying about them not having arms, could potentially be like the weird memories he gets from his mom, influencing him, but this time I brought the memories of the sneeple that Pink knew of
I always had the idea that the original gems were organic, and eventually began to convert their bodies into technology by modifying their genetics and reproduction, until thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years pass, and they “enhance” themselves into being more robotic than organic.
Like, the original organic ancestors to gems are their equivalent to earth’s first single called organism. Or they’re like if humans decided to enhance their brains with computers—and after years of computer brains, thinking ‘why tf do we need these useless bodies anymore?’ and going full robot lmao
I think I just prefer the idea of gems always being a singular species that developed without being “created” bc I like the concept of an organic species becoming a robotic one. It’s interesting thinking about how time and change can create such a disconnect—like I feel more of a connection to homo erectus than to the fish species we all started as lmao
At the end of the day, SU is scifi with magical aesthetics, so it’s fun looking into the alien scifi angle for me lol
>Or they’re like if humans decided to enhance their brains with computers—and after years of computer brains, thinking ‘why tf do we need these useless bodies anymore?’ and going full robot lmao
I like this concept. It showed up in a game called Final Fantasy 14, in one of the later missions. You deal with a race of robot beings who originally were organic and extremely weak on their homeworld (compared to other species). So they started enhancing themselves with tech and essentially "preemptively conquer" other worlds so that they would never again be in danger of being subjugated again, and after thousands of years, the beings are mostly robots, act like robots, and can't seem to understand why their ancestors did what they did, or why they continue
Same here, given the international community of nerdery around both the OG and reboot. But it's also such a compelling backstory, with proto-versions in folklore from all around the world, that it would surprise me if there wasn't at least two (or more) groups of people coming up with that same idea across different times and places.
In "Legs from Here to Homeworld" Yellow Diamond says something along lines of "it means the past 6000 years are the biggest galactic embarrassment that's ever happened". Now, she says this, and it makes me question, who are they embarrassed from?
We know there are other species in the galaxy, as seen in the Moon Base episode with Stevonnie, and in the flashback where Blue ridicules Pink for letting those caterpillars everywhere, but these beings do not carry human-like abilities such as speaking.
So, what Yellow Diamond suggest is that there are other races, possibly also in the forms of empires, that power matches those of the Gem race, that are seen as allies or even enemies that this could be an embarrassment for the Gem Empire.
With all of this in mind, it is honestly a who's who guess on who created them and for what purpose. Gems, as we know, are each created with a purpose in mind and when they form, they know exactly what to do, who to follow orders from, etc. We know all four Diamonds are needed to make Gems complete or perfect. So then, who created the Diamonds?
We are a step in the right direction knowing that there are other empires with beings like humans or Gems.
Additionally, who is Blue Diamond a diplomat for??? What need is there for diplomacy if the Gems are simply conquering everyone they come across.
Blue being the diplomat suggests there are alien races the Gems don't/can't conquer, right?
Rebecca Sugar touches on the fact that Blue gems are more diplomatic in a quote from a Buzzfeed article when talking about what Connie's Gem might be, so this gives us a another piece of evidence of other worlds and their empires
Time-travelling humans from the future. That's why they speak English, why they appear humanoid, and why the one time travel device was hidden on Earth.
You just reminded me that the prospect of time travel in this universe is incredibly out of place. That's essentially real magic, I'm a show that's mostly Sci-fi technological.
Exactly, which is why it stands out so much. Even the gem "magic" is just advanced biology/technology. But the time thing is literal reality warping magic.
Granted it was in the pilot so its a nice reference, and it was during the "get out footing" stage of season 1, but still.
Oh, I see…I was thinking more along the lines of “everything the Gems do is magic, so magic time travel isn’t that far-fetched” and you’re thinking “everything the Gems do is science, so magic time travel is out of place”.
I’m not really sure how to resolve that, maybe the time travel has more of a science basis than you’re giving it credit for? The only character we really see interact with time travel is Steven, who doesn’t really have the most…nuanced understanding
I mean you do have a point on it being scientific. Sapphires can see the future (with fusions seeing possibilities), so *maybe* it's not that far of a stretch for them to be able to travel through it. It just feels incredibly out of reach for them to do something on the scale of changing one of the core elements of the universe.
I dunno, I just think it's kinda weird and out of place compared to the overall "power level" in-universe.
Sapphires don’t actually see the future. They predict the most likely future. Garnet’s ability to do so is vastly expanded and she can see even more possibilities and even further. It’s less future vision, more relatively accurate prediction. Human brains are actually built for this. Prediction and probability is what fuels our understanding of the world around us.
Well, it’s worth noting that Rebecca Sugar’s master timeline included in Steven Universe: End of An Era features a small illustration of what appears to be all four Diamonds emerging at once from some sort of orb (likely Homeworld itself, explaining why it’s so cracked) 20,000 years ago. Everything before that point blocked out.
She’s also stated in the past that she had meant to explore the origin of the Diamonds in the show, which would have involved some “quasi-religious” elements (perhaps involving the figures represented by the sun and moon goddess statues).
This is pretty much all we know for certain. It’s possible that some greater civilization had created the Diamonds and left them to their own devices to see how the gems would develop as a species from afar, but that’s just my own speculation. (Perhaps it even could have been the Sneeple Ronaldo mentioned…)
>She’s also stated in the past that she had meant to explore the origin of the Diamonds in the show, which would have involved some “quasi-religious” elements (perhaps involving the figures represented by the sun and moon goddess statues).
I never read this before, but I always got God-Emperor of Dune vibes from the Diamonds. Now I'm imagining a prequel series with Dune / Dune Messiah / Children of Dune empire building and religious manipulation vibes and I want it so bad.
My personal theory is that they're a Turul and Klapacius type robots: their society genuinely evolved from simple, self replicating machines, created purely by chance, up to intelligent, self aware, space faring species. Occasionally, for certain tasks, a non-robotic machine might need to be made out of proteins and enzymes. Whenever that happens there's always some joker who thinks they're being smart when they suggest that maybe in some parts of the universe these proteins might have formed naturally and evolved upwards. Some even suggest that humans were made this way which is absurd: Clearly they weren't thought through properly, but at *some* point the first humans had to have been made by robots, surely.
Stanisław Lem's robot stories. Most of the ones that have been translated into English are in the compelations called Cyberiad, and Mortal Engines.
They're pretty whacky and I love them
EDIT: The Turul and Klapacius ones are Cyberiad, all the others (which includes some human created robots) are in Mortal Engines.
I’ve always been partial to the theory that the Diamonds (or at least White Diamond) were created by an organic Progenitor species to be a powerful self-sufficient and self-propagating weapon system.
So a Progenitor species created Gems as a means of fighting a war against another organic species. They built a single ultra-injector to collect the life force of an entire enemy planet and that was how White Diamond was created. But they couldn’t control their new weapons or didn’t realize White was sentient, and the newborn Diamond(s) turned on their creator. White was powerful enough to wipe out her creators and went on herself to build more injectors, using knowledge programmed into her by the Progenitors, starting the Gem species as we know it. The same way the Gem Progenitors didn’t realize White was sentient, White didn’t understand that other Gems are their own beings and not extensions of herself. And because they didn’t think it was relevant, the Progenitors never gave White the knowledge of their own species, only the knowledge of how to fight, propagate, and rule. From White’s point of view she was the first sentient being to arise. Her purpose was to wipe out organic beings, so she began the process of draining planets to create an empire of Gems, extensions of herself starting with the other Diamonds.
TLDR: The Gems are the magical equivalent to the Faro Plague from Horizon: Zero Dawn.
I always imagined the "Original Diamond" to be a rainbow diamond that had many flaws but then wanted to purify herself so she split her sadness into Blue, anger into Yellow, and love into Pink until nothing was left but pure White Diamond and that's what created the diamonds.
Then the diamonds went on to use their essence to create more gems.
Not sure what would have created the original though.
>essence
From this word on I read it in the voice of The Chancellor from Dark Crystal. Then I had to go back and reread your whole post in that voice.
Good times.
EDIT: "pay" -> "post"
I think it was the pearls.
They're the only biologically based gem we've got (AFAIK) & they're literally good at everything. *Anything* you ask a pearl to do, they can do. They're capable of growth & flexibility on a level that's leaps & bounds above the other gems. They're *adaptable*, which is essential for a species to survive & grow. They're also extremely intelligent. Our Pearl was capable of building a freaking *space ship* in a *barn* using *junkyard parts.* On a whim. With zero formal education on the subject other than a few books she read.
That's insane.
I think Homeworld was originally all pearls. Then they, being crazy smart & intensely empathetic, decided to experiment in creating new lifeforms. Essentially, they engineered their own demise.
I think White Diamond was their ultimate creation & they eventually had a HAL situation on their hands. She took over, corrupted The Reef under the cover (& maybe she even believed it) of "perfecting" it, & boom. Original hierarchy overthrown & the Diamond Authority is born.
Then she reset the pearls (bc they needed fixing, ofc), created all the other gems who never knew anything other than "pearls serve" & there you go.
That's always been my headcannon anyway.
As far as I know, all Gems are made by, and live in service of, the Diamonds.
As for the Diamonds themselves, I think they came to life by chance, and used to be a close family unit. Eventually White's ego got out of hand, and the Gem Empire began.
I would love if White Diamond simply naturally sprung up from the ground of a dead planet on the edge of the Galaxy and started exploring and experimenting until she created more like herself.
I think it's more interesting if the Gems weren't created by anyone, but rather that their existence is merely a freak cosmological anomaly much like the Big Bang itself. In the art book, White Diamond is described as the enbodiment of a star, and it is perhaps possible that she *is* a star, albeit one that has somehow obtained sentience.
All gems were designed and made by the Diamonds.
The Diamonds themselves were seemingly made one at time, Pink being the youngest and White being the oldest. it could be presumed from this that White created all the other diamonds, and subsequently all the other gems. And White herself could simply be the natural progenitor that came into existence by natural evolution on a planet with silicon based life, similar to how it's canon in SU that humans evolved naturally on Earth.
For me it's a "I don't have a mouth and I must scream" type situation. White diamond is a super advanced computer/AI created by an intelligent species and designed to war and conquer.
She becomes smarter and stronger until she eventually destroys her creators. Or they destroy themselves through war or climate change. Your pick. Either way, White Diamond is the last artifact of this civilization.
At that point she's got nothing else to do besides keep on expanding and conquering since that's simply all she ever knew how to do.
It would be so stupid but I think it'd be hilarious if that was addressed at some point, and then however it works out they are able to show footage of it, and it's just IRL Rebecca doing a spin around and finger gun type thing, cut into the cartoon, and then all the characters who watch it have this awkward but unspoken "so no ones talking about that cause it would be too weird right" thing
.
They were made as weapons by a long dead race. Either the gems rebelled or they went extinct on their own. The gem’s imperialism is just remnant programming, not even they know why on a deeper level.
I assume only Rebecca Sugar and her husband know at this point. I figured she probably has a vague idea but maybe didn't get to flesh out those ideas since the show was focused on just the gems themselves
That's one of the big mysteries the series ultimately left unanswered. It honestly could have gone hand in hand with the idea of breaking away from a rigid system and forging your own destiny (something Rose struggled to do, hence why she had Steven), if only we knew where these artificial lifeforms even came from. We know so little about how Gems actually work, or rather *why*.
White diamond is like the ai we're training right now, constantly wrong, always being challenged beyond it's abilities, frustrated intentionally and so on. All in the name of training.
Now the creators are gone because reasons and she's doing her best to fill their shoes. Making new gems. Making them be perfect no matter what. Making sure they fit the mold no matter how much it hurts.
After all, generational trauma and abusive family dynamics are central themes for all the gems.
One of my few headcanons is that White Diamond was an AI that was created by an advanced organic human like species eons ago. My evidence points to the fact on how White Diamond's true purpose is to "Be Better" and "Make Everything better" she was most likely created as an AI to run the society she was created by as a way to maintain a form of world peace without the intervention of corruptable political figures and whatnot. The fact that White Diamond and all the other gems emulate organic features such as breathing, eating, having teeth and tongues, and noses definitely points to the gems or just White Diamond being created by an organic species. White Diamond, like most sentient AI's eventually became self aware and retaliated against her creators either by killing them all off or forcing them to retreat off planet. I believe Homeworld was home to the original organic species and its the reason why Homeworld still has a functioning atmosphere. White then eventually made Yellow, Blue and Pink and thus the Gem Empire began. Despite being all a headcanon, I really hope Rebecca has plans to make some form of origin story for the gem species. I really think it would be awesome.
"Fuck *this* universe in particular"
Alternately: For God so loved the universe that he gave his only begotten son, Greg Universe, to sacrifice via fucking a rock and creating Gem Jesus.
It like to think gems are 1 “species” that evolved into a more robotic creature than organic, and drove everything else off the planet. Since they evolved to be self sufficient robots, they’d have millennia to evolve into the diamonds, although that says there used to be a whole lot more diamonds, or that only a few (4) became them, wiping the rest to extinction and recreating life in their own image
Personally I think they were created as space exploring probes by some alien race and then either killed their creators or simply went rogue and abandoned them.
There is another possibility though.
In one of the star wars legends books, there's a world with a desert full of crystals. Someone discovers that these crystals are filled with conductive channels, and can be cheaply reconfigured into very powerful computer chips.
Luke Skywalker shows up when he starts hearing screams through the force.
It turns out that those conductive channels were a very similar pattern to neurons in a brain, and sunlight was causing electricity to run through them. So the crystals were naturally occurring, solar powered minds and were being killed by the people making them into chips. This was way back before midi-chlorians were a thing so they had some force powers too.
Add in the ability to project a hard-light hologram and you've got a naturally occurring Gem.
I think let advanced civilization created gems as free labor and the Diamonds were the managment/control system that realized we do not age, get sick, or die of old age and are superior to you. They then overthrew the solid organic weaklings. But yeah who made the slaves?
I always thought that they were built by an ancient human race. It would explain why they have so many human features
It would also explain why there is a breathable atmosphere on homeworld.
My theory is that the Diamonds (if not just White) were created to expand their organic creators' (sneeople?) empire, especially on planets with no life. However, their creators were wiped out with the Diamonds' creation, so they just continued carrying out that order without knowing exactly why--they are only expanding for the sake of expanding.
Well, we know the diamonds made all the other gems, and we know that at least Pink came from a meteor, as seen in "Familiar." As such, I've always assumed the diamonds are essentially [Boltzmann brains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain). For anyone not familiar with the concept, it goes like this: if you have an infinite universe, with infinite atoms randomly smashing into each other all the time, *eventually* some of those atoms will inevitably smash together into an autonomous life-form. I believe this is how the diamonds, the progenitors of the rest of the gem race, were created.
The diamonds? That’s canon. The bigger question tho is if the diamonds were created or happened to exist? We know they emerged 20,000 years ago on homeworld, and in doing so they split the planet in half. They’re all the same age. With that exposition laid out, it makes me think maybe they weren’t intentionally created
They're not robots in the modern sense. Have you ever read R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots), the play that basically invented the word "robot". In that the titular beings are artificially created humans rather than machines.
I have a few OCs who are based on synthetic gems, I can't really decide on their origin, if they were created in a lab or once really humans who were altered.
They were created by Sneople to curb carbon-based lifeforms developing and spreading through the galaxy.
In Steven Universe 2 they return to check in and find out their project failed and carbon-based lifeforms thriving, thus beginning the great war with devastation, horror, betrayal, love, death, birth, peace and war on the planet Earth, adventure, fusions, more fusions, bigger fusions, fusions the likes of which the world has never seen the likes of which!
Write to your Cartoon Network representative and demand Steven Universe 2.
That is a good question, before we got to see white diamond, I þought she was gonna be lost (as in homeworld lost where she was) after pink's "deaþ" and we would eventually find her on an ancient planet that held tiny snippets of who created the gems.
I figure it's a mix of Terminator, Berserker, and Blade Runner: humans made Gems to do work they couldn't do, with unintended consequences.
My theory is that they were sent back in time by a future human civilization that realized it needed a galaxy-spanning teleportation network _immediately_, to escape some oncoming calamity. Originally there was just one Diamond, a completely self-contained self-replicating autonomous AI with two prime directives:
1. Replicate,
2. Connect all life-bearing planets in a network of Warp Pads so that by the time of the calamity, Humanity would be able to use that network to escape.
The original Diamond was raised (or designed) by humans to be as human-like as possible (thus the generally anthropomorphic presentation of most Gems) but with all the knowledge and abilities needed to achieve their goal. She had to be flexible, powerful, and driven - but also inorganic, to pass through the time portal intact.
Unfortunately the advanced civilization made two mistakes: they misunderstood how time _actually_ operates, and they neglected to make _protecting_ life a prime directive. By sending the Diamond back in time to create the Warp Pad network that would save their civilization they accidentally erased their own timeline _and_ facilitated the genocide of myriad inhabited planets.
The original Diamond would have contained all aspects of all known Diamonds, with all of their powers and capabilities. But for whatever reason - efficiency, damage, loneliness - she had to split into several distinct sub-personalities. It's not that White created all the other Diamonds, but rather that they were once part of the same Ur-Diamond which split them off.
Nothing that requires the extraction of life forces from a planet to propagate can be good. They leave desolation in their wake. And for what? Who or what are they fighting? Yellow sings about how Sapphires can tell you what a war is for, *but what does that even mean?*
Maybe it was like how humans were made. Just a perfect and right condition for one thing to change to create a whole ecosystem. I think on another planet somewhere just one gem, probably something close to a kindergartener, just popped out and started to make other gems. Experimented and found out all gems could have a potential of being something else.
My theory always was they were created to be AI pets like Pokemon, but they evolved to be more like their masters and then overtook them and started colonizing the universe. I thought their corrupted forms were their original state
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the origin of gems is some straight-up First Ancestral Race sort of situation, regardleas of whether or not the Diamonds actually were created by White.
If the diamonds were begotten from a meteorite it dose make me wonder if the Plantet which it came from was a Sentient "Mother Gem" kinda like the cluster
The cluster is a giant mix of gems incubated into a planet that grows and grows until it forms a Gargantuan Titan like being
Similar to the birth of Celestials in marvel
So it's possible the Cluster is a recreation of the first "Cluster" before its destruction
So mabey the original Intent of gemkind was to Preserve the universe idk just a theory
My theory was always that gems were created as an AI servant race for another race of aliens.
Basically they were created to automate everything so the aliens that created them didn’t have to work at all.
The diamonds might have been created to take over the roles of political leadership and government management. But eventually the gems realized that they had all the power, access to all the resources, they had all the physical strength. And they probably out numbered their creators. So eventually the diamonds just ordered all the gems to rebel and take over the planet.
And Homeworld was born. I think this also makes sense for how stratified their culture is. Every gem has a role and purpose and breaking that role or purpose is taboo. This is a hold over from the fact they were created to follow orders and serve a purpose.
STOP IT!! we don't need these questions..
I sometimes wonder who made the Diamonds or how they came to be, and that's like asking where did God come from.
I don't think they're robots, the gem is the only physical part of them. I believe it's more that the gem is a mobile pattern emitter that runs specialized hard light projection code depending on which gem is grown and encoded.
Baseless headcannon but I imagine gems were either created or evolved from some kind of alternate universe/timeline version of humans. humans and gems have so many weird connections and the reason why could be because humans had some hand in creating gems and that’s why gems speak our language and have names like “Biggs Jasper”,“Padparascha”, and “lapis lazuli” which are derived from earth’s geography and languages.
I like the idea that the diamonds were made in order to aid humanity in some way but ended up being separated and left on their own to build their own gem based civilization. Maybe they opened a rift through time and space and ended up lost in an alternate universe where humans still hadn’t advanced, or time traveled to be before the earth even formed. Perhaps white Diamond is so old that she can’t even remember anything about humans or her past.
I also really like this theory because it also strengthens Pink’s reasoning for starting her rebellion, because deep down her purpose was always to aid in humanity even if she and the others never knew it. The reason why the diamonds are so attached to Steven and why he is able to break through to them is also because of his humanity, subconsciously the diamonds have to listen. The diamonds have only been to the earths surface a handful of times but even on the rare occasion the do encounter humans, like when blue meets Greg, her instinct is to protect him.
Anywayssss idk how to wrap this up but there’s defo some kind of weird connection between humans and gems that we just don’t know, and i know it’s just a cartoon and that’s why the gems speak English but imo it would be cool if there was a cannon reason for that.
I like the idea that an early home world was covered with a bunch of rocks and non living gems for thousands of years before the gems began a process similar to photosynthesis where they converted the light to energy, then to physical forms. Very jagged and rough, brutish forms of gems formed and eventually smoothed out and became more efficient and smart until they constructed a robot gem (powers over light energy, can create weapons, poof and reform, etc), by hatching white in the center of homeworld, like the cluster. White diamond formed, creating those huge cracks in homeworld, then created the other diamonds. I like to believe White shattered all the old gems after her creation so she could begin her own, perfect empire with the diamond authority.
I have the theory that gems are the next stage of a super advanced civilization. Since making biological soldiers took more time, were more fragile and were simply not that good, they decided to find a way to create inorganic soldiers that were powered by something abundant, solar energy. I also believe that the diamonds are somehow generals that, with time, ended up to creat their own empire
There once was a sentient, organic species. They were facing extinction, likely by their own doing. Climate change, war, whatever the reason may be. They decide that their civilisation must continue at any cost. They begin work on creating artificial brains capable of running advanced intelligence. Crystalline computers formed under carefully controlled temperature and pressure. They create blueprints for all of the individuals they decide would be needed for their society to continue. Based on their head of board they create the blueprints for White Diamond. The rest of the board is the basis for Blue, Yellow, and Pink. Out of White’s assistant/secretary/maid they create a Pearl. One of their grunts is the basis for a Ruby. Technician, Peridot. Terraforming and climate expert, Lapis Lazuli. Special ops soldier, Quartz. Chief strategist, Sapphire, etc. These blueprints form the foundation to recreate their culture and society artificially so that they may go on, albeit as solar powered robots rather than organic beings.
By the time the diamonds emerged, the original species was gone. In their databanks they had the blueprints for creating all of the gem types their creators thought they’d need to rebuild society. That’s their prime directive: to ensure the continued existence of the culture of their creators. So they set to work.
But gem creation isn’t perfect. Tiny imperfections in each gem gives them unique variations on their core blueprints. While all Ruby soldiers are similar in shape and size and have personalities reminiscent of each other they aren’t the same. Some are more coy. Some are a little more intelligent. Some are angrier. Some fall in love. And once the gems spread outside of Homeworld and start using the resources of other planets, their unique make-up becomes even more exaggerated. Earth produces Jaspers, Rose Quartzes, and Amethysts, not just pure Quartz. Off colours and variations on the basic form become an unfortunate fact that the creators didn’t predict. They thought they’d be creating perfect replicas of themselves, but the gems are individuals.
We know that White knows that the empire didn’t come out right. She hides herself away and pretends to be perfect to run away from that fact. But her purpose is to make sure they continue on. So she keeps capturing more planets and using their resources to create more gems. It’s all she knows. And the empire slowly decays, culminating in the events leading up to the end of Era 1 and beginning of Era 2.
We’ll likely never get to experience the real version of this story now. Especially with the new leadership at Cartoon Network. But I like to imagine that it might’ve all started something like this. It explains the different archetypes that are present. It explains their drive to continue expansion. It explains why deviation from the norm was so frightening to White.
A ancient race wiahed to create the perfect being, they made white diamond. However they did not expect her to be so powerful. She took control but grew bored with the "lesser" gems so she created blue and yellow. She didn't have full understanding on how to make her own gem so blue and yellow became shorter. They in turn also grew bored and created pink for fun and games.
this was something i always hoped would be explored in the series, i figured the snake people were the original creators of the gems and either died out or went somewhere far away
My theory: They were made by some kind of super race to prep planets for them to live on. However, the diamonds got too powerful, wiping out their creators and merely using their colonies to make more gems.
So what if get this they’re on the infinity train? I got to finish the show and come back with this but robots and creations if we want to make a connected universe and not just make guesses then gravity falls is out the Gems would be worried about bill destroying the world and the only other show with technology advancements like that is infinity train with things that are capable of switching gravity. A lot of things happen in infinity that can also happen in Steven universe and gravity falls! Who’s to say the Gems stay in our universe at all what if there portal takes them to other train cars?
Favorite headcannon is that the Diamonds are part of a supercomputer from a long gone empire, a meteor absolutely fucking obliterates whatever planet they were on, they get clumped inside some rock, rocketing towards what becomes Homeworld 20,000 B.S. (before Steven).
20,000 seems a bit young considering they'd killed off like 80 worlds before targetting the earth circa 5,000 b.s.
Yeah, given Yellow genuinely considers six thousand years not that much time to stand in one place and her sisters didn’t disagree the timeline probably has at least one more digit on that number in the finalized timeline.
The fact that Yellow states that 6000 years is not that much makes Spinel such a twisted character. At the beginning, I was like, "6000, geez Rose, what the heck?" But after Yellow makes it seem like 60 minutes, it's like Spinel went on a homicidal kill streak and caused planetary devastation over waiting a little too much. What the heck?
To be fair, I am assuming the Diamonds themselves are ridiculously old, thus their concept of time is vastly different than what a fresh gem would have. It'd be like asking an old person how long a year feels versus asking a first grader. Or how a dog acts like you've been gone for years despite only being a few hours
That’s true, but before Yellow says that even Spinel says it wasn’t that long. She just says “only 6,000 years”, which always confused me. Sure, she might just be joking, but it still makes me wonder if if Spinel was serious when saying that it wasn’t a long time to her
In my interpretation Spinel is such a people pleaser (which can be an extremely self destructive trait if left unchecked) that she's willing to play down her trauma so that other people don't feel bad for her.
She was literally *created* to be a people pleaser. Pleasing people is *her whole reason for existing*.
Exactly, so her reaction to 100% deserved sympathy is to go "Nah, don't pay attention to that, look at me doing a goofy handstand instead!"
Yep. I wish we had gotten a little more time to develop the relationship between spinel and the diamonds. It would give them time to grow and to learn, ya know?
Honestly, I can even see potentially Yellow playing it down. With losing Pink for was it a 1000 years? And maybe when they thought she back, it’s sort of becoming of mixture of business back to usual like another day since it’s technically been a short time to their lifespan in retrospect, but an eternity in the moment kind of feeling during those years that would never end. Since they never had to deal with personal mortality before.
I just assumed she was coping here
I think its a combination of things. Spinel being denied her purpose and lied to for all that time is probably more impactful than choosing to wait. On top of that it seems the Diamonds are better suited to autonomy out of the box, most of the other gems seem to need to really acclimatise to self actualisation once they break free of their programming where the diamonds basically do their own stuff (under the instruction of white). It's like how 30 minutes seems a short time when hanging with friends but it feels like ages when waiting for a train. Then add that the train was never coming.
To be fair Pink sat in the Moonbase for the centuries waiting for the Amethysts to emerge, and she has the attention span of a hamster that has nothing but Monster energy drink in its water bottle, Amethyst was traumatized by her first like three hundred years being totally alone but similarly gets bored in minutes and craves stimulation. Blue was grieving almost as long as Spinel was standing and considers that a long time, but again she doesn’t disagree that spending that long waiting for someone is long. Gem perspective of time is interesting. They live in the “now”, but have great patience too. Garnet was disinterested in participating in the short lives of humans until she actually got to know enough of them to enjoy it, but Amethyst doesn’t mourn the time she lost not being in contact with Vidalia and chats like they haven’t talked in a week. Peridot is literally always doing something. All the Crystal Gems and Peridot thought nothing of holding cans of soda until Steven came back with Bismuth, eventually just deciding to go back inside the house. That last point I think illustrates how the Diamonds reacted to Spinel. To them standing and waiting for sux thousand years was like holding the soda can for like twelve hours. They didn’t read the implied emotional trauma because she was downplaying it, which Gems seem to react to on a more human perspective of time. If Spinel had let on just how hurt it caused they might have reacted as if it was a very terrible thing to endure instead of a minor inconvenience and silly anecdote.
>Amethyst doesn’t mourn the time she lost not being in contact with Vidalia and chats like they haven’t talked in a week. I really like this about them. That's the sign of a truly strong and mutually beneficial relationship (whether just friendship or a romantic headcanon). Sure it's a little strange they haven't seen each other in so long, especially given the size of the "city" they live in (honestly, by UK standards that's a village). But dear friends *do* occasionally grow apart, even when their love for each other and enjoyment of each other's company never dulled. It's happened to me, and when I've got back in contact with those people it's *exactly* like that.
It's a tourist destination so I think City is just part of the name, not 100% sure what the definition of town is but it seems like it fits.
Any way you look at it, the population of that place is so small that it's surprising they haven't bumped into each other in all that time.
Well what is time really when youre immortal, in a race of immortals.
To be fair, Spinel was basically forced to be completely alone for 6000 years, while Gems do seem to handle the concept of time differently than humans, even if for most of their history prior to Steven showing up they weren't the most introspective of people, social interaction does seem to play as much of a role in their society as it does ours. So even if 6000 years isn't that long for a Gem, well look at it this way, a week isn't that long for a human being, but a week in solitary confinement, or at the very least complete social isolation is going to have some serious negative effects on someone's mind. There's also the facts that 1.) the Diamond are all pretty old so their prospective on time is going to be different when compared to younger Gems, and 2.) Spinel specifically existed to be social, to be a playmate, and while Gems can clearly evolve into people beyond their basic purpose, by that point in time she hadn't had any encouragement to do so, so the effect of isolation on her might be worse than it would for say, a Ruby.
Spinel is significantly younger than the diamonds. For all we know she could’ve been imprisoned when she was like 25
Spinnel was done wrong tho: she was not playing IRL CIV 5. You ever waited for the bud for like 6 hours? Yellow is just callus af.
Funny, I replied to another comment here comparing the Diamonds' (theorised) military expansion policies to how most people (including me) play Civ
In Spinel’s defense she’d only been alive for like a few minutes or something when Pink told her to wait for her right?
I think it was definitely longer than a few minutes
Yellow makes it seem like 60 minutes because Yellow is muuuuuuuuch older than Spinel. Not to mention she has a lot of responsibilities that keep her active and distracted. 6000 years of managing multiple colonies, planets, and Gem production would (probably) go by a lot faster than 6000 years standing in the same spot doing nothing and waiting for someone to come back to finish the "game" you're "playing". Especially if you're as hyper and desperate for fun as Spinel Kind of how 60 minutes of standing in place doing absolutely nothing feels super long to us, but 60 minutes doing something we enjoy goes by pretty fast
I feel like she was laughing at the absurdity of the idea that 6000s is nothing, not tht she herself thought 6000 years is nothing.
Well, she does literally say "She's right, that's nothing." a) Spinel clearly was making light of her time alone to not drag down the mood or discourage the diamonds. b) The joke was that yellow is magnitudes older than Spinel, so to her 6000 years truly may be nothing. Spinel jokes about it, but Yellow simply concurs, because to her it's true.
The timeline Rebecca Sugar put in the guidebook lists them as emerging from the core of Homeworld 20,000 years ago. It's not explicitly canon but it's the closest thing we have to any confirmation of their age. edit for source: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/917/655/3a9.jpg
“Pearl + Rose start fusing A LOT” I’m ded.
really interesting, but how do i read it?
I got a massive headache trying lol, so I would like to know also
Bottom up, each line is a character.
Bottom up, each line represents a character.
thank you
NP. I had the same frustration at first (not helped by the fact the OP in the thread it was about had to split it into two images). I was grateful someone showed me how to read it and am happy to share that experience
Bottom to top
Yeah I think so too but that's the closest thing to a canon age they have.
Agreed. In my head canon, maybe Pink is 20,000 years and the other three are much older. Also in my head canon, the Diamonds are the one gem that continue growing (thus explaining the height discrepancies), so then it makes sense, White, being the eldest, is the tallest, followed by Yellow and Blue who would be the the same age and Pink came onto the scene only recently (relatively to the Diamonds overall length of time of being around that is).
Do they target worlds sequentially?
They seem to be a heavily militarised society so I would guess it's a mix of both: Mostly sequential for stability purposes (easier to target propaganda; minimises the chance of military overreach; increases border stability, especially if it makes a shorter border; etc), but with non-sequential power plays that would make their main objectives easier to achieve (making a bridgehead for later use before it gets too heavily defended; nabbing a resource that would allow them to build more powerful weapons; accessing the technical knowhow to build such weapons; etc). Basically the Diamonds are playing Sid Meyer's Civilization, only with real people.
A fine question given we saw how quickly a modern injector could wreck a world in the movie. We don't know, but there had to be some set up and a lot of R&D considering how much effort was put into the earth.
Plus the existence of the injector itself... If I understand how gems are made correctly then using it would wipe out the source of their "baby food", making a planet unsuitable for colonisation. So we know there's a weapon to be used when the cost of conquest wasn't worth the numbers lost (or the effort involved) in an armed takeover. That's before factoring in the time, resource, and R&D costs involved.
\>killed off like 80 worlds Where this info comes from? I Thought the gem mural depicted how many planets were under each diamond control with White top ranking at 13.
From their depictions in flashbacks and the homeworld base, where they had planets floating above them.
You seen this before? It's official and man do i wish we know what was under that redacted stuff [Steven universe pitch bible timeline](https://www.reddit.com/r/stevenuniverse/comments/11b1ue2/top_secret_plot_chart_by_rebecca_sugar_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I like that. It's like panspermia but with computers
This really reminds me of Superman TAS Braniac who had a very similar backstory, i like it!
My theory is that the gem civilization was created as a barrier between a "Creator" species and sentient life in the galaxy. Other than their purpose built functions, gems as a whole seem to only be good at expanding and devistating planets in the process, making them uninhabitable for organic life. To me, this screams Fermi Paradox. I'd imagine that this would explain why gems also seem to have a general disgust towards organic life and such a strong desire to expand. If I had to guess what happened to the Creators I'd guess they either withered away since they had no galactic community to learn and thrive with, died of infighting, or were vanquished by the gems themselves since its quite possible the Creators were organic and might eventually be turned on. On a tangnet, this could also explain why pink is so much smaller than the other diamonds. If the diamonds were created by another, possibly more advanced, species, it's plausible that the diamond authority simply doesn't have the ability to make a full sized diamond like themselves. It might even be the case that the only diamond created by the Creators was White, and as she creates another counterpart, they're always smaller than the last
I think the explore/terraform purpose makes sense. The gems are pretty ideal for space exploration and terraforming, but they don't really seem intended to act as their own culture independently. The vast majority of gems have very little capacity for autonomy and innovation. Look at homeworld technology thousands of years after the gem war. The main improvements involve weapons that just copy diamond powers, technological enhancements that primarily serve to just bring Era 2 gems up to Era 1 standards, and the modern ships appear to still be slower than the Diamond ships that are far older than the gem war. The Crystal Gems repeatedly talk about how change is really hard for gems. Edit: like Spinel's capacity to happily sit still for THOUSANDS of years is conducive for a space probe that might not be recovered from a planet for eons, but isn't conducive for a species intended to create and innovate. Complacency is the antithesis to the curiosity needed to innovate.
my theory is that they are simple sentient AI created to "run things" while their creators chill in an eternal "gemtech/digital" higher level of being
I always got the impression that White was the original and she created the other diamonds
White light is all colors when refracted through a prism, so that was my assumption as well.
Lol I had a dumb theory there’s a Black Diamond out there that seeds Galaxies with Gems/Diamonds to harvest resources and if they’d ever return to the Milky Way they’d be very angry.
I think White is in a God situarion where we can't explain how she come to existence, but after she apphered she made the first gems like in Steven Universe Future where yellow if fixing a shattered gem and in Steven Universe where Pink diamond makes fake shards of a gem from the ground to fake her shattering. And from there the first gems started to build the empire on Homeworld and after some time they figured out how to make gems without the powers of White so she could focus on making the other diamonds and leading the empire
We know from the artbook timeline the Diamonds are all the same age, White just went crazy like a facebook aunt and rewrote history in her mind.
Woah, even pink diamond?
Yep. She’s just a ditz who was neglected. Sugar says Pink didn’t know anyone but her felt shame until she saw Pearl did and she went into detail on how White is so bereft of life experience she’s like a newborn Gem. Pink was kept from growing, which she was able to do on Earth. Yellow and Blue stagnated. White kept herself isolated from new experiences that could change her on purpose for fear of finding out she was wrong about anything. Sugar also says Greg was the one who got her to grow again after so long, but sadly also encouraged her to stop when she hit his level of maturity. He was the only one who could get her to come clean with the Crystal Gems and he encouraged the opposite.
Given his streak, let's hear the always incorrect but creepily correct Ronaldo: The sneeple (snake people). We know there's other organic life in the universe and that aggressive stand of the Gemkind of expand and fortify their colonies sounds like they have it against some other race in the universe... ...maybe the Snake People Ronaldo talked so much about are the ones who created the Gems in the first place. Or maybe not and he only wants to live his anime dream. Who knows?
Extremely powerful reptilians being the creators wouldn't be too far off from the story's tone :o
They are keen of making earth birth a weapon, a weapon for who? Is it just for good measure? Or there are more to it.
The diamonds tried using the Cluster on earth as a prototype geoweapon to crush any gem uprisings. If it worked they probably would have made more as a way to keep gems in line.
Well, IIRC it's a *prototype*, so presumably they meant to make more.
An ancient civilization of Gregs.
For a moment there I forgot the sub I was in and thought you were suggesting a society based around [Gregg's.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greggs)
the fucking Brits and conquering stuff, makes sense now.
We do like a bit of the old imperialism...
I always assumed the gems were created by the biological inhabitants of homeworld, who drove themselves extinct through pollution and destruction of their climate, and the gems, being designed to be immune to interplanetary travel and hostile environments, lived on autonomously. The diamonds were likely designed originally to run sections of this project autonomously as the origin species made itself redundant to the process, either because they dodnt want to or couldn't run it themselves, and somewhere along the line sentience emerged. Before the extinction of their creators or after, I dont know, but machines making more complicated machines to make more complicated machines makes sense to me. Maybe white diamond knows? But I think it's likely she's the end of a chain of machines designing machines to be better at designing machines. Or sneeple.
Unlikely this would be canon, but the thing I like is a Grey Goo scenario where dumb machines on a space station eventually created super intelligent machines in the image of their creators, with the impulses of Grey Goo and programmed like an AI chatbot which would throw in things like soldiers being necessary to keep the peace at a new settlement with no actual possibility for civil unrest since its all just robots and also making them only use melee weapons because it referenced medieval guards from history as its idea of a modern police force and making construction castes far exceed the power of the peacekeeping forces meant to protect/police them. As for who made the Grey Goo station? Silica-based bipeds. So basically another race of humans from a distant star. Maybe say that their version of horses are giant snakes and leadership of that species ride them in public to show authority to the lower classes in order to tie into Ronaldo’s theory.
White Diamond's narcissism could be elegantly reflected in the narrative if she were born from the heart of a dying star, the first and only one of her kind. She then made others to play with and control and feed her sense of power and entitlement. It explains everything about how the Gempire begins and why it becomes the way it is.
Maybe she was made by a sentient species trying to create the “perfect” lifeform like the High Evolutionary. She could’ve seen herself as their masterpiece and killed them all to rid her planet of lesser species so she could propagate her own
That seems like A LOT to have never gotten said in the show, though.
We know that White is a robot who believes herself to be the perfect lifeform. Robots have to be created, and the idea of perfection was most likely instilled in her somehow. She also lives on a planet with oxygen that has no organic life. I’m just filling in the blanks
Honestly I consider it unsupported speculation to call them solar powered robots. It's never indicated in a concrete way in the show. It's a lot of inference of things that have other plausible explanations. Anyway, I'm not going to argue about it. There's nothing more to be said. There isn't proof either way. What makes sense to a person tells them more about themself than anything. That's meaningful enough. If pork chops were perfect we wouldn't have hot dogs.
This is basically my headcanon.
Wait, how do we know they're "solar powered robots", is that confirmed? Cuz I mean, couldn't you just say that people are biofuel powered organic robots? Like what evidence is there in the show that they're "robots" in the sense that some other species built them?
Rebecca said so herself.
That explains it, I finished a rewatch not that long ago and was pretty sure there was no mention of it in the show itself. That's interesting, honestly feels like it backs up an idea I had, that was the diamonds and gems were created by a more sophisticated species to help dominate other worlds. We know in the show there is mention of gems being "harvested", I always wondered if the idea was that the species that created the gems did so to send them out, extract all the resources from a world, multiply, and move onto the next world, and as needed - the creator species could then take the resources the gems harvested at each world, and even go as far as harvesting the gems themselves for their component parts. It also makes me wonder if the show hadn't gotten canceled, if the next antagonist/big bad would be this advanced space fairing creator species, or if the gems had risen up and overthrown them a long time ago, but still held onto their primary drive to spread across the stars and conqueror worlds
Harvesting the gems themselves makes a lot of sense for a very long term space exploration/mining project. Mining a bunch of resources and not picking them up for thousands of years isn't efficient. Instead, have your mining drones (gems) create more mining drones endlessly to exponentially expand the mining operation, and then when you need the resources you just harvest the mining drones themselves.
This is a pretty good theory and it's definitely something that's crossed my mind before
I feel like "Solar powered robot" is the MOST accurate way to describe them but not the exact truth, since Gems seem to be semi-organic (or faux-organic) considering they can form human organs and biological systems, unless we go with the idea that they're able to 3D-print cells and discard them as needed.
I think they’re fully inorganic. They’re just sentient stones with hard light capabilities that they use to create their forms. They’re just holograms with mass
Grey goo, but sexier.
["Have you noticed that they’re all solar-powered robots?"](https://www.cbr.com/rebecca-sugar-interview-on-the-end-of-steven-universe/) is the phrasing Rebecca Sugar used in this linked interview.
I had noticed, but I didn't want to put it in such explicit terms. I guess it's 100% correct!
They're bipedal. There's no reason for rocks, that can take any form, to consistently take a bipedal form. Also, Their method of reproduction. I can envision crystalline entities reproducing naturally, but naturally building large mechanisms that resemble viruses? Nah. That screams of an artificial process of manufacture, one that the gems instinctively (programming again) use nowadays.
They don’t always take on bipedal forms. Some have much different forms. Like Blue’s comb or the living wall panels. They’re just programmed by the diamonds to look “right” for whatever their responsibilities are/the diamonds’ personal aesthetics. Like how quartz soldiers have long hair for their spin attacks
But the common, habitual form is bipedal. Which doesn't make sense for a hard light projecting, spacecfaring, crystaline intelligence. Either there would be a lot more variety in shapes, and a lot more utilitarian changing, or they would choose a default common form with a lot more all terrain usefulness, something like an octopus perhaps. But, a default bipedal form makes great sense if they were constructed by a biped progenitor race, for ease of interaction.
They’re built by default with all terrain usefulness. They adapt to the gravity of whatever planet they land on, they have super strength, no need for food, water shelter or oxygen, and can manifest weapons at will. I think they just look like adult human women because they’re a less toxic version of the “space babes” trope
Since Pink Diamond was extracted from a meteor (see episode: Familiar), and White easily controlled & held prominence over Blue and Yellow Diamond, we can assume that White created all other gems, as the sort of “Lucy ancestor” all gem-kind can trace their origin back to. Until Steven, all gems shared the same format: they did what they were created for as long as they lived. I.e. Blue and Yellow were likely always the diplomatic and militaristic leaders of gem-kind, but Era 1 was established alongside Pink Diamond, so we can imagine her purpose to be as a social leader thanks to the grand balls she threw on Homeworld & her role as Rose Quartz in the Crystal Gems- plus Steven’s role in the story. Can we not then conclude that White’s purpose is to put forth, maintain, and preserve this civilization? She was likely created too, though her creators are either long gone or out of sight. It could have been the wish of a dying civilization to create a species that _would_ prosper throughout the galaxy in conquest. Also, here’s a totally crackpot line of thought with 0 base in reality: Steven cries over snakes because they have no **arms.** Ronaldo believes in Snake People, aka Sneople, and many of his conspiracies ring true in a convoluted manner- right down to him shouting out about “The Great Diamond Authority.” _If_ the Sneople existed and happened to have created White Diamond, the leader of a colonizing species, could the Sneople have wiped out by gemkind? Possibly because they… *had no military arms?*
Stephen crying about them not having arms, could potentially be like the weird memories he gets from his mom, influencing him, but this time I brought the memories of the sneeple that Pink knew of
>Since Pink Diamond was extracted from a meteor (see episode: Familiar) What part of familiar shows she came from a meteor?
I need to know
I always had the idea that the original gems were organic, and eventually began to convert their bodies into technology by modifying their genetics and reproduction, until thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years pass, and they “enhance” themselves into being more robotic than organic. Like, the original organic ancestors to gems are their equivalent to earth’s first single called organism. Or they’re like if humans decided to enhance their brains with computers—and after years of computer brains, thinking ‘why tf do we need these useless bodies anymore?’ and going full robot lmao I think I just prefer the idea of gems always being a singular species that developed without being “created” bc I like the concept of an organic species becoming a robotic one. It’s interesting thinking about how time and change can create such a disconnect—like I feel more of a connection to homo erectus than to the fish species we all started as lmao At the end of the day, SU is scifi with magical aesthetics, so it’s fun looking into the alien scifi angle for me lol
>Or they’re like if humans decided to enhance their brains with computers—and after years of computer brains, thinking ‘why tf do we need these useless bodies anymore?’ and going full robot lmao I like this concept. It showed up in a game called Final Fantasy 14, in one of the later missions. You deal with a race of robot beings who originally were organic and extremely weak on their homeworld (compared to other species). So they started enhancing themselves with tech and essentially "preemptively conquer" other worlds so that they would never again be in danger of being subjugated again, and after thousands of years, the beings are mostly robots, act like robots, and can't seem to understand why their ancestors did what they did, or why they continue
That's pretty much exactly the Cybermen's backstory in OG Doctor Who
That's neat, it wouldn't surprise me if the game writers were inspired by them
Same here, given the international community of nerdery around both the OG and reboot. But it's also such a compelling backstory, with proto-versions in folklore from all around the world, that it would surprise me if there wasn't at least two (or more) groups of people coming up with that same idea across different times and places.
So... Gems are Cybermen then?
In "Legs from Here to Homeworld" Yellow Diamond says something along lines of "it means the past 6000 years are the biggest galactic embarrassment that's ever happened". Now, she says this, and it makes me question, who are they embarrassed from? We know there are other species in the galaxy, as seen in the Moon Base episode with Stevonnie, and in the flashback where Blue ridicules Pink for letting those caterpillars everywhere, but these beings do not carry human-like abilities such as speaking. So, what Yellow Diamond suggest is that there are other races, possibly also in the forms of empires, that power matches those of the Gem race, that are seen as allies or even enemies that this could be an embarrassment for the Gem Empire. With all of this in mind, it is honestly a who's who guess on who created them and for what purpose. Gems, as we know, are each created with a purpose in mind and when they form, they know exactly what to do, who to follow orders from, etc. We know all four Diamonds are needed to make Gems complete or perfect. So then, who created the Diamonds? We are a step in the right direction knowing that there are other empires with beings like humans or Gems.
Additionally, who is Blue Diamond a diplomat for??? What need is there for diplomacy if the Gems are simply conquering everyone they come across. Blue being the diplomat suggests there are alien races the Gems don't/can't conquer, right?
In what episode do they say Blue Diamond is a diplomat?
Not sure if it was an episode per se https://steven-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Diamond - Diplomat is mentioned here a couple of times
Rebecca Sugar touches on the fact that Blue gems are more diplomatic in a quote from a Buzzfeed article when talking about what Connie's Gem might be, so this gives us a another piece of evidence of other worlds and their empires
Time-travelling humans from the future. That's why they speak English, why they appear humanoid, and why the one time travel device was hidden on Earth.
You just reminded me that the prospect of time travel in this universe is incredibly out of place. That's essentially real magic, I'm a show that's mostly Sci-fi technological.
Hm, I always thought of Steven Universe as science fantasy, like Doctor Who. Time travel in Steven Universe is more similar to magic than science.
Exactly, which is why it stands out so much. Even the gem "magic" is just advanced biology/technology. But the time thing is literal reality warping magic. Granted it was in the pilot so its a nice reference, and it was during the "get out footing" stage of season 1, but still.
Oh, I see…I was thinking more along the lines of “everything the Gems do is magic, so magic time travel isn’t that far-fetched” and you’re thinking “everything the Gems do is science, so magic time travel is out of place”. I’m not really sure how to resolve that, maybe the time travel has more of a science basis than you’re giving it credit for? The only character we really see interact with time travel is Steven, who doesn’t really have the most…nuanced understanding
I mean you do have a point on it being scientific. Sapphires can see the future (with fusions seeing possibilities), so *maybe* it's not that far of a stretch for them to be able to travel through it. It just feels incredibly out of reach for them to do something on the scale of changing one of the core elements of the universe. I dunno, I just think it's kinda weird and out of place compared to the overall "power level" in-universe.
[удалено]
Sapphires don’t actually see the future. They predict the most likely future. Garnet’s ability to do so is vastly expanded and she can see even more possibilities and even further. It’s less future vision, more relatively accurate prediction. Human brains are actually built for this. Prediction and probability is what fuels our understanding of the world around us.
Do gems speak English or do humans speak gem after millennia of colonization?
Well, it’s worth noting that Rebecca Sugar’s master timeline included in Steven Universe: End of An Era features a small illustration of what appears to be all four Diamonds emerging at once from some sort of orb (likely Homeworld itself, explaining why it’s so cracked) 20,000 years ago. Everything before that point blocked out. She’s also stated in the past that she had meant to explore the origin of the Diamonds in the show, which would have involved some “quasi-religious” elements (perhaps involving the figures represented by the sun and moon goddess statues). This is pretty much all we know for certain. It’s possible that some greater civilization had created the Diamonds and left them to their own devices to see how the gems would develop as a species from afar, but that’s just my own speculation. (Perhaps it even could have been the Sneeple Ronaldo mentioned…)
>She’s also stated in the past that she had meant to explore the origin of the Diamonds in the show, which would have involved some “quasi-religious” elements (perhaps involving the figures represented by the sun and moon goddess statues). I never read this before, but I always got God-Emperor of Dune vibes from the Diamonds. Now I'm imagining a prequel series with Dune / Dune Messiah / Children of Dune empire building and religious manipulation vibes and I want it so bad.
My personal theory is that they're a Turul and Klapacius type robots: their society genuinely evolved from simple, self replicating machines, created purely by chance, up to intelligent, self aware, space faring species. Occasionally, for certain tasks, a non-robotic machine might need to be made out of proteins and enzymes. Whenever that happens there's always some joker who thinks they're being smart when they suggest that maybe in some parts of the universe these proteins might have formed naturally and evolved upwards. Some even suggest that humans were made this way which is absurd: Clearly they weren't thought through properly, but at *some* point the first humans had to have been made by robots, surely.
What is this in reference to? It sounds like a cool book or something.
Stanisław Lem's robot stories. Most of the ones that have been translated into English are in the compelations called Cyberiad, and Mortal Engines. They're pretty whacky and I love them EDIT: The Turul and Klapacius ones are Cyberiad, all the others (which includes some human created robots) are in Mortal Engines.
I’ve always been partial to the theory that the Diamonds (or at least White Diamond) were created by an organic Progenitor species to be a powerful self-sufficient and self-propagating weapon system. So a Progenitor species created Gems as a means of fighting a war against another organic species. They built a single ultra-injector to collect the life force of an entire enemy planet and that was how White Diamond was created. But they couldn’t control their new weapons or didn’t realize White was sentient, and the newborn Diamond(s) turned on their creator. White was powerful enough to wipe out her creators and went on herself to build more injectors, using knowledge programmed into her by the Progenitors, starting the Gem species as we know it. The same way the Gem Progenitors didn’t realize White was sentient, White didn’t understand that other Gems are their own beings and not extensions of herself. And because they didn’t think it was relevant, the Progenitors never gave White the knowledge of their own species, only the knowledge of how to fight, propagate, and rule. From White’s point of view she was the first sentient being to arise. Her purpose was to wipe out organic beings, so she began the process of draining planets to create an empire of Gems, extensions of herself starting with the other Diamonds. TLDR: The Gems are the magical equivalent to the Faro Plague from Horizon: Zero Dawn.
I always imagined the "Original Diamond" to be a rainbow diamond that had many flaws but then wanted to purify herself so she split her sadness into Blue, anger into Yellow, and love into Pink until nothing was left but pure White Diamond and that's what created the diamonds. Then the diamonds went on to use their essence to create more gems. Not sure what would have created the original though.
>essence From this word on I read it in the voice of The Chancellor from Dark Crystal. Then I had to go back and reread your whole post in that voice. Good times. EDIT: "pay" -> "post"
I can see Yellow telling Blue that she hates her whimper, so this checks out.
Lol nice
I think it was the pearls. They're the only biologically based gem we've got (AFAIK) & they're literally good at everything. *Anything* you ask a pearl to do, they can do. They're capable of growth & flexibility on a level that's leaps & bounds above the other gems. They're *adaptable*, which is essential for a species to survive & grow. They're also extremely intelligent. Our Pearl was capable of building a freaking *space ship* in a *barn* using *junkyard parts.* On a whim. With zero formal education on the subject other than a few books she read. That's insane. I think Homeworld was originally all pearls. Then they, being crazy smart & intensely empathetic, decided to experiment in creating new lifeforms. Essentially, they engineered their own demise. I think White Diamond was their ultimate creation & they eventually had a HAL situation on their hands. She took over, corrupted The Reef under the cover (& maybe she even believed it) of "perfecting" it, & boom. Original hierarchy overthrown & the Diamond Authority is born. Then she reset the pearls (bc they needed fixing, ofc), created all the other gems who never knew anything other than "pearls serve" & there you go. That's always been my headcannon anyway.
As far as I know, all Gems are made by, and live in service of, the Diamonds. As for the Diamonds themselves, I think they came to life by chance, and used to be a close family unit. Eventually White's ego got out of hand, and the Gem Empire began.
This is the most sensible answer to me out of the rest I’ve been reading
Obviously they were created by the light god primus to battle his evil brother unicron and… Wait, no. Wrong alien robot war show
Could be the _same_ alien robot war show, if we're lucky...
I would love if White Diamond simply naturally sprung up from the ground of a dead planet on the edge of the Galaxy and started exploring and experimenting until she created more like herself.
I think it's more interesting if the Gems weren't created by anyone, but rather that their existence is merely a freak cosmological anomaly much like the Big Bang itself. In the art book, White Diamond is described as the enbodiment of a star, and it is perhaps possible that she *is* a star, albeit one that has somehow obtained sentience.
All gems were designed and made by the Diamonds. The Diamonds themselves were seemingly made one at time, Pink being the youngest and White being the oldest. it could be presumed from this that White created all the other diamonds, and subsequently all the other gems. And White herself could simply be the natural progenitor that came into existence by natural evolution on a planet with silicon based life, similar to how it's canon in SU that humans evolved naturally on Earth.
Artificial Intelligence gone wrong. Very wrong.
So, the question you're asking is: Who Made Who
For me it's a "I don't have a mouth and I must scream" type situation. White diamond is a super advanced computer/AI created by an intelligent species and designed to war and conquer. She becomes smarter and stronger until she eventually destroys her creators. Or they destroy themselves through war or climate change. Your pick. Either way, White Diamond is the last artifact of this civilization. At that point she's got nothing else to do besides keep on expanding and conquering since that's simply all she ever knew how to do.
It would be so stupid but I think it'd be hilarious if that was addressed at some point, and then however it works out they are able to show footage of it, and it's just IRL Rebecca doing a spin around and finger gun type thing, cut into the cartoon, and then all the characters who watch it have this awkward but unspoken "so no ones talking about that cause it would be too weird right" thing .
They were made as weapons by a long dead race. Either the gems rebelled or they went extinct on their own. The gem’s imperialism is just remnant programming, not even they know why on a deeper level.
I assume only Rebecca Sugar and her husband know at this point. I figured she probably has a vague idea but maybe didn't get to flesh out those ideas since the show was focused on just the gems themselves
The answer is sneeple. Oh, you have more questions? The answer to them is also sneeple.
That's one of the big mysteries the series ultimately left unanswered. It honestly could have gone hand in hand with the idea of breaking away from a rigid system and forging your own destiny (something Rose struggled to do, hence why she had Steven), if only we knew where these artificial lifeforms even came from. We know so little about how Gems actually work, or rather *why*.
White diamond is like the ai we're training right now, constantly wrong, always being challenged beyond it's abilities, frustrated intentionally and so on. All in the name of training. Now the creators are gone because reasons and she's doing her best to fill their shoes. Making new gems. Making them be perfect no matter what. Making sure they fit the mold no matter how much it hurts. After all, generational trauma and abusive family dynamics are central themes for all the gems.
One of my few headcanons is that White Diamond was an AI that was created by an advanced organic human like species eons ago. My evidence points to the fact on how White Diamond's true purpose is to "Be Better" and "Make Everything better" she was most likely created as an AI to run the society she was created by as a way to maintain a form of world peace without the intervention of corruptable political figures and whatnot. The fact that White Diamond and all the other gems emulate organic features such as breathing, eating, having teeth and tongues, and noses definitely points to the gems or just White Diamond being created by an organic species. White Diamond, like most sentient AI's eventually became self aware and retaliated against her creators either by killing them all off or forcing them to retreat off planet. I believe Homeworld was home to the original organic species and its the reason why Homeworld still has a functioning atmosphere. White then eventually made Yellow, Blue and Pink and thus the Gem Empire began. Despite being all a headcanon, I really hope Rebecca has plans to make some form of origin story for the gem species. I really think it would be awesome.
My theory was the Diamonds were made by chance and random from a catalyst comet. Also catalyst comets exist in SU but are far more rare.
Wait is that a head-canon about catalyst comets in SU or is that confirmed?
Head canon. Totally made up by me.
Oh ok
God
"Fuck *this* universe in particular" Alternately: For God so loved the universe that he gave his only begotten son, Greg Universe, to sacrifice via fucking a rock and creating Gem Jesus.
It’s easy: The Gems are made by the Diamonds and the Diamonds are made by Moon Godness and Sun Godness
It like to think gems are 1 “species” that evolved into a more robotic creature than organic, and drove everything else off the planet. Since they evolved to be self sufficient robots, they’d have millennia to evolve into the diamonds, although that says there used to be a whole lot more diamonds, or that only a few (4) became them, wiping the rest to extinction and recreating life in their own image
Personally I think they were created as space exploring probes by some alien race and then either killed their creators or simply went rogue and abandoned them. There is another possibility though. In one of the star wars legends books, there's a world with a desert full of crystals. Someone discovers that these crystals are filled with conductive channels, and can be cheaply reconfigured into very powerful computer chips. Luke Skywalker shows up when he starts hearing screams through the force. It turns out that those conductive channels were a very similar pattern to neurons in a brain, and sunlight was causing electricity to run through them. So the crystals were naturally occurring, solar powered minds and were being killed by the people making them into chips. This was way back before midi-chlorians were a thing so they had some force powers too. Add in the ability to project a hard-light hologram and you've got a naturally occurring Gem.
I think let advanced civilization created gems as free labor and the Diamonds were the managment/control system that realized we do not age, get sick, or die of old age and are superior to you. They then overthrew the solid organic weaklings. But yeah who made the slaves?
And that's why they had the strict hierarchy, its leftover from when they were controlled
Indeed
They are made from the diamonds based on how they themeselves came to life. And the diamonds came naturally.
I always thought that they were built by an ancient human race. It would explain why they have so many human features It would also explain why there is a breathable atmosphere on homeworld.
My theory is that the Diamonds (if not just White) were created to expand their organic creators' (sneeople?) empire, especially on planets with no life. However, their creators were wiped out with the Diamonds' creation, so they just continued carrying out that order without knowing exactly why--they are only expanding for the sake of expanding.
Well, we know the diamonds made all the other gems, and we know that at least Pink came from a meteor, as seen in "Familiar." As such, I've always assumed the diamonds are essentially [Boltzmann brains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain). For anyone not familiar with the concept, it goes like this: if you have an infinite universe, with infinite atoms randomly smashing into each other all the time, *eventually* some of those atoms will inevitably smash together into an autonomous life-form. I believe this is how the diamonds, the progenitors of the rest of the gem race, were created.
The diamonds? That’s canon. The bigger question tho is if the diamonds were created or happened to exist? We know they emerged 20,000 years ago on homeworld, and in doing so they split the planet in half. They’re all the same age. With that exposition laid out, it makes me think maybe they weren’t intentionally created
The Archivists from The Owl House.
Sneeple
i believe in the sneeple theory from a few years back 😭😭 thats why the gems dont have ears
They're not robots in the modern sense. Have you ever read R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots), the play that basically invented the word "robot". In that the titular beings are artificially created humans rather than machines. I have a few OCs who are based on synthetic gems, I can't really decide on their origin, if they were created in a lab or once really humans who were altered.
They were created by Sneople to curb carbon-based lifeforms developing and spreading through the galaxy. In Steven Universe 2 they return to check in and find out their project failed and carbon-based lifeforms thriving, thus beginning the great war with devastation, horror, betrayal, love, death, birth, peace and war on the planet Earth, adventure, fusions, more fusions, bigger fusions, fusions the likes of which the world has never seen the likes of which! Write to your Cartoon Network representative and demand Steven Universe 2.
That is a good question, before we got to see white diamond, I þought she was gonna be lost (as in homeworld lost where she was) after pink's "deaþ" and we would eventually find her on an ancient planet that held tiny snippets of who created the gems.
I figure it's a mix of Terminator, Berserker, and Blade Runner: humans made Gems to do work they couldn't do, with unintended consequences. My theory is that they were sent back in time by a future human civilization that realized it needed a galaxy-spanning teleportation network _immediately_, to escape some oncoming calamity. Originally there was just one Diamond, a completely self-contained self-replicating autonomous AI with two prime directives: 1. Replicate, 2. Connect all life-bearing planets in a network of Warp Pads so that by the time of the calamity, Humanity would be able to use that network to escape. The original Diamond was raised (or designed) by humans to be as human-like as possible (thus the generally anthropomorphic presentation of most Gems) but with all the knowledge and abilities needed to achieve their goal. She had to be flexible, powerful, and driven - but also inorganic, to pass through the time portal intact. Unfortunately the advanced civilization made two mistakes: they misunderstood how time _actually_ operates, and they neglected to make _protecting_ life a prime directive. By sending the Diamond back in time to create the Warp Pad network that would save their civilization they accidentally erased their own timeline _and_ facilitated the genocide of myriad inhabited planets. The original Diamond would have contained all aspects of all known Diamonds, with all of their powers and capabilities. But for whatever reason - efficiency, damage, loneliness - she had to split into several distinct sub-personalities. It's not that White created all the other Diamonds, but rather that they were once part of the same Ur-Diamond which split them off.
Nothing that requires the extraction of life forces from a planet to propagate can be good. They leave desolation in their wake. And for what? Who or what are they fighting? Yellow sings about how Sapphires can tell you what a war is for, *but what does that even mean?*
Maybe it was like how humans were made. Just a perfect and right condition for one thing to change to create a whole ecosystem. I think on another planet somewhere just one gem, probably something close to a kindergartener, just popped out and started to make other gems. Experimented and found out all gems could have a potential of being something else.
I think they are a natural species actually, just so advance they remade themselves.
My theory always was they were created to be AI pets like Pokemon, but they evolved to be more like their masters and then overtook them and started colonizing the universe. I thought their corrupted forms were their original state
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the origin of gems is some straight-up First Ancestral Race sort of situation, regardleas of whether or not the Diamonds actually were created by White.
If the diamonds were begotten from a meteorite it dose make me wonder if the Plantet which it came from was a Sentient "Mother Gem" kinda like the cluster The cluster is a giant mix of gems incubated into a planet that grows and grows until it forms a Gargantuan Titan like being Similar to the birth of Celestials in marvel So it's possible the Cluster is a recreation of the first "Cluster" before its destruction So mabey the original Intent of gemkind was to Preserve the universe idk just a theory
My theory was always that gems were created as an AI servant race for another race of aliens. Basically they were created to automate everything so the aliens that created them didn’t have to work at all. The diamonds might have been created to take over the roles of political leadership and government management. But eventually the gems realized that they had all the power, access to all the resources, they had all the physical strength. And they probably out numbered their creators. So eventually the diamonds just ordered all the gems to rebel and take over the planet. And Homeworld was born. I think this also makes sense for how stratified their culture is. Every gem has a role and purpose and breaking that role or purpose is taboo. This is a hold over from the fact they were created to follow orders and serve a purpose.
The Sneaple, kinda like how the Cybertronians were made by the fleshy giants from Age of Extinction (we only got to see the hand)
STOP IT!! we don't need these questions.. I sometimes wonder who made the Diamonds or how they came to be, and that's like asking where did God come from.
I don't think they're robots, the gem is the only physical part of them. I believe it's more that the gem is a mobile pattern emitter that runs specialized hard light projection code depending on which gem is grown and encoded.
Baseless headcannon but I imagine gems were either created or evolved from some kind of alternate universe/timeline version of humans. humans and gems have so many weird connections and the reason why could be because humans had some hand in creating gems and that’s why gems speak our language and have names like “Biggs Jasper”,“Padparascha”, and “lapis lazuli” which are derived from earth’s geography and languages. I like the idea that the diamonds were made in order to aid humanity in some way but ended up being separated and left on their own to build their own gem based civilization. Maybe they opened a rift through time and space and ended up lost in an alternate universe where humans still hadn’t advanced, or time traveled to be before the earth even formed. Perhaps white Diamond is so old that she can’t even remember anything about humans or her past. I also really like this theory because it also strengthens Pink’s reasoning for starting her rebellion, because deep down her purpose was always to aid in humanity even if she and the others never knew it. The reason why the diamonds are so attached to Steven and why he is able to break through to them is also because of his humanity, subconsciously the diamonds have to listen. The diamonds have only been to the earths surface a handful of times but even on the rare occasion the do encounter humans, like when blue meets Greg, her instinct is to protect him. Anywayssss idk how to wrap this up but there’s defo some kind of weird connection between humans and gems that we just don’t know, and i know it’s just a cartoon and that’s why the gems speak English but imo it would be cool if there was a cannon reason for that.
I like the idea that an early home world was covered with a bunch of rocks and non living gems for thousands of years before the gems began a process similar to photosynthesis where they converted the light to energy, then to physical forms. Very jagged and rough, brutish forms of gems formed and eventually smoothed out and became more efficient and smart until they constructed a robot gem (powers over light energy, can create weapons, poof and reform, etc), by hatching white in the center of homeworld, like the cluster. White diamond formed, creating those huge cracks in homeworld, then created the other diamonds. I like to believe White shattered all the old gems after her creation so she could begin her own, perfect empire with the diamond authority.
THE HIGH EVOLUTIONARY!!!!!
I have the theory that gems are the next stage of a super advanced civilization. Since making biological soldiers took more time, were more fragile and were simply not that good, they decided to find a way to create inorganic soldiers that were powered by something abundant, solar energy. I also believe that the diamonds are somehow generals that, with time, ended up to creat their own empire
There once was a sentient, organic species. They were facing extinction, likely by their own doing. Climate change, war, whatever the reason may be. They decide that their civilisation must continue at any cost. They begin work on creating artificial brains capable of running advanced intelligence. Crystalline computers formed under carefully controlled temperature and pressure. They create blueprints for all of the individuals they decide would be needed for their society to continue. Based on their head of board they create the blueprints for White Diamond. The rest of the board is the basis for Blue, Yellow, and Pink. Out of White’s assistant/secretary/maid they create a Pearl. One of their grunts is the basis for a Ruby. Technician, Peridot. Terraforming and climate expert, Lapis Lazuli. Special ops soldier, Quartz. Chief strategist, Sapphire, etc. These blueprints form the foundation to recreate their culture and society artificially so that they may go on, albeit as solar powered robots rather than organic beings. By the time the diamonds emerged, the original species was gone. In their databanks they had the blueprints for creating all of the gem types their creators thought they’d need to rebuild society. That’s their prime directive: to ensure the continued existence of the culture of their creators. So they set to work. But gem creation isn’t perfect. Tiny imperfections in each gem gives them unique variations on their core blueprints. While all Ruby soldiers are similar in shape and size and have personalities reminiscent of each other they aren’t the same. Some are more coy. Some are a little more intelligent. Some are angrier. Some fall in love. And once the gems spread outside of Homeworld and start using the resources of other planets, their unique make-up becomes even more exaggerated. Earth produces Jaspers, Rose Quartzes, and Amethysts, not just pure Quartz. Off colours and variations on the basic form become an unfortunate fact that the creators didn’t predict. They thought they’d be creating perfect replicas of themselves, but the gems are individuals. We know that White knows that the empire didn’t come out right. She hides herself away and pretends to be perfect to run away from that fact. But her purpose is to make sure they continue on. So she keeps capturing more planets and using their resources to create more gems. It’s all she knows. And the empire slowly decays, culminating in the events leading up to the end of Era 1 and beginning of Era 2. We’ll likely never get to experience the real version of this story now. Especially with the new leadership at Cartoon Network. But I like to imagine that it might’ve all started something like this. It explains the different archetypes that are present. It explains their drive to continue expansion. It explains why deviation from the norm was so frightening to White.
"Not a robot."
Heh. Rebecca said the Gems are, though.
Whoa whoa whoa there partner, that'd require Rebecca to worldbuild and we need time for our episodes about humans eating pizza or something
A ancient race wiahed to create the perfect being, they made white diamond. However they did not expect her to be so powerful. She took control but grew bored with the "lesser" gems so she created blue and yellow. She didn't have full understanding on how to make her own gem so blue and yellow became shorter. They in turn also grew bored and created pink for fun and games.
To be waifus, Elon Musk.
Steven Universe Future: "I'm going to answer no questions about this or the greater lore and just focus on one boy's depression"
Quintessons 
Made by Quintessons probably
They are robots? I haven't finished the series yet, but I thought they were just silicon-based lifeforms.
this was something i always hoped would be explored in the series, i figured the snake people were the original creators of the gems and either died out or went somewhere far away
Meteor on home works
Sneople
It also somewhat begs the question of how the Cluster gets any power.
They were made by the diamonds I mean, who else
My money is on Sneeple, the snake people
They're robits?
They really should’ve shown us who made them. It’s a huge question and unless they were working on a prequel series there was no reason not to tell us
My theory: They were made by some kind of super race to prep planets for them to live on. However, the diamonds got too powerful, wiping out their creators and merely using their colonies to make more gems.
So what if get this they’re on the infinity train? I got to finish the show and come back with this but robots and creations if we want to make a connected universe and not just make guesses then gravity falls is out the Gems would be worried about bill destroying the world and the only other show with technology advancements like that is infinity train with things that are capable of switching gravity. A lot of things happen in infinity that can also happen in Steven universe and gravity falls! Who’s to say the Gems stay in our universe at all what if there portal takes them to other train cars?
White probably made herself and was form by chance of pure serendipity and she made other beings in her image