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(from the episode familiar)

Steven: Call me... Lasagna.

Pearl: Steven, stop, you're going to break her.

LITTLE DID SHE KNOW

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how show steven would handle spinel:

"spinel thank you for turning off your injector. here, come with me. we've still got a lot of work to do, and i want you to be a part of it. you don't have to be alone anymore."

how movie/SUF steven handles spinel:

"well now that THAT'S over with, lets just forget it ever happened and focus on fixing garnet and beach city! bye spinel have fun being liberated from your past!! *walks off*"

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why didn't white diamond's power work on pink steven?

white diamond was a flawless gem leader who could do no wrong, and she was always right. when steven and pink steven were separated, that ended. suddenly, she was flawed— she made a wrong assumption. everything pink steven was represented her imperfection, and from that point on she had no control, so her powers didn't work. she blushed pink. she was wrong, her entire world view, her entire philosophy was wrong. she was powerless.

also, if the theory is true that the three diamonds have always existed together from the start and pink was created later using exotic material that may have crashed on homeworld... it may be because pink's gem is just made of slightly different stuff than normal gems, and so her powers are more... unpredictable, erratic, and powerful. certainly, something exotic, from beyond the realm of normal material, could stand up to white's power, which relied on the predictable and containable.

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I wonder what role cactus Steven plays in the future

i think "cactus steven" is a lot more important than we think it is... it's one of our villains after all, isn't it?

first off, what is the depiction of cactuses... cacti... cactusi in the show overall? minumum to none. they show up in the desert, they're not exactly prominent. no data on that front.

a re-ocurring theme with steven (and possibly pink diamond) is gem constructs or his powers or gem constructs created by his powers do not obey him in the way he intends.

exhibit A) frybo, which was told to stand there and make people eat fries. it did that by attacking them and going out of control.

exhibit B) watermelon stevens start attacking people to defend steven, going out of control.

exhibit C) cloud connie is like a poster child for this: "you want me to not... do what you want?" and then she attacks steven... going out of control.

generally, he has no control over gem constructs he creates that are made of organic life. cactus steven is BIG, too, bigger than jasper, and it's got more humanoid features than any other organic gem construct he's created, even having arms and legs.

the details of its creation may be as simple as steven spitting on a cactus—out of spite? maybe a very large cactus to begin with? maybe he even gets pricked by a cactus and it somehow creates that behemoth?

as a narrative tool, cactus steven could be a metaphor for him confronting some side of his own nature that he feels he has little control over. maybe cactus steven is lashing out and attacking people and needs to be stopped. then again, maybe steven is.

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theories:

aquamarine+eyeball fusion... check.

jasper is a drama queen who's probably starting a rebellion, or at least a one-gem rebellion... check.

steven is possibly mind controlling gems with his diamond powers (pp and wd both have the same pose in the intro and this trailer)... check?

that corrupted gem with the belly gem is possibly an uncorrupted rose quartz... check??

the rose quartz we see in the trailer is an unbubbled zoo rose quartz... check?

the rose quartz we see in the trailer is THE rose quartz and it's a flashback... check?

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why does pink pearl do crack?

because mind control cracked her physical form... she was mind controlled for a long time. now in the new promo, possibly steven can mind control other gems as well? idk, pink white diamond in the intro and pink pearl's crack growing makes me think mind control...

maybe steven is learning to do with gems what he did with lars and take control of their bodies?

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what’s up with the sand castle?

avthe sand castle is a structure that’s created by the desert glass. the desert glass is embedded in a pillow, and is a gem artifact that, well, creates the sand castle. here’s an image of the sand castle in its full glory from “buddy’s book”:

in this episode, rose doesn’t seem to be very concerned with retrieving the gem inside of the sand castle. but... was she even aware of there being a gem inside of the sand castle? perhaps she simply thought it was another gem heritage site on earth. we know spires were for intellectuals and the arenas were for important fighters, so maybe the castle was used during the war by one of the sides as a temporary base that could easily be transported. 

if it was used by the rebels, though, would she not know that there was a gem powering the structure? actually, it seems to be the case that she did know, as evidenced by... lion.

lion appeared in “buddy’s book” as the lion with the heart shaped nose. we know now from lars’ experience how lion became what is now (pink and dead), but what he was doing before steven met him isn’t quite as clear... okay, maybe it is. he was protecting the desert glass. rose assigned him to keep an eye on the sand castle, it’s pretty obvious from his introductory episode where the only reason he follows the crystal gems to the beach house is to contain the desert glass. once it’s bubbled, he just kinda... hangs around after that. i mean, he finished his job.

one more mystery surrounding the sand castle, though, is this... what happened to it? in “steven’s lion”, garnet says this: “the power in the structures has turned aimless.” so if it wasn’t aimless in rose’s day... but it counts as a corrupted gem today... but it wasn’t behaving like a corrupted gem in rose’s day... but now it is... what happened?

really, there’s not enough evidence to go on. all i can guess is that a corrupted gem powering an object continues to power the object like it normally would, but slowly loses cohesion with time. somehow rose had a hunch about this, and had lion protect it.

there’s some more disturbing implications about this, though... rose must have known that was an actual GEM powering the structure, whether corrupted or not, and she chose to hold off on bubbling it. are gems that power things not supposed to be conscious? very possibly.

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I wonder why the snake people created the gems, where they meant to be used as weapons or something

consider this, if wormy boi is indeed a snake person and the creator of gemkind: multidimensional biological warfare.

in the episode "keep beach city weird", steven puts on a snake person costume and ronaldo interrogates him, saying "wave forms seem normal for a twelfth dimensional being of this size." suggesting sneople are multidimensional. and we know how ronaldo can occasionally be a seer.

we also know the gems are technology, and their injectors are shaped like real-life bacteriophage viruses which inject hosts with their own genetic information, and then use the host to make more bacteriphages.

so, then, snake people are multidimensional beings that created gemkind to wage biological warfare on all organic life in our galaxy.

and it would've worked, too, if not for pink diamond. she wasn't one of the original diamonds, she came later.

she possibly came in a comet made of special mineral material, so it looks like they poured some special diamond essence on that, and it may have made pink diamond. i don't know, it's really ambiguous and hard to say. but if that's the case, it means pink came outta nowhere and ruined the gem society that would've continued its operation without letup, eventually destroying all organic life.

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what are snowflake obsidian gems made for?

in the episode "bismuth", bismuth states that one of her purposes was to "build another arena for important fighters to fight in."

while we can assume that means quartz soldiers were produced for fighting in arenas, quartz seem just a bit low-caste to be fighting in what seems like gladiatorial tournaments. they're more like foot soldiers. but there is a gem that i think would make a very good gladiator...

snowflake obsidian's very design includes, basically, battle armor. in rebecca sugar's concept art for the character it says the white markings on her were even supposed to look like battle scars. in summary, i think that snowflake obsidian was created to be an "important fighter" in the arenas.

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why does lapis have mirror powers?

lapis has the ability to create mirror duplicates of other gems out of water, and she has the ability to create a mirror out of water that projects her memories. while doing so, her eyes even become reflective like when her gem is cracked. oh, also, her eyes are reflective when her gem is cracked! 

it can’t be that lapis gems naturally have these abilities, can it? it would be an awfully big coincidence that lapis was trapped in a mirror and she had these abilities. so why does lapis have mirror powers?

i think it’s because she was trapped in the mirror. something to do with the mirror gave her special abilities. i think it must have been the length of her stay in the mirror. it’s almost like part of the mirror’s gem “coding” overwrote or corrupted lapis’s gemetics.

alternately, maybe they trapped her in the mirror because she had mirror powers? but what’s the chance they would have a gem-powered information mirror lying around to trap a gem with mirror powers in just to spite her?

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what is the song escapism about?

i've seen a few theories, and none seem to touch on the simple fact that the main singer of this song is AJ michalka, stevonnie's voice actor, and backing vocals are provided by zach callison (steven) and grace rolek (connie). what does this tell us?

there is a direct correlation between connie and steven being imprisoned on homeworld and this song. the choice of stevonnie as the singer despite connie and steven being unfused indicates the lyrics represent both of their emotions about their situation.

because this song is about being free from the prison tower and homeworld in general, we can also draw a connection to pink diamond, who was seemingly no stranger to this exact tower and the sentiments of these lyrics.

...we can draw a figurative comparison to pink diamond for, like, everything in this show, can't we?

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why didn't rose go back for spinel?

this one's pretty bad—it's because spinel would've instantly given rose quartz away as pink diamond. spinel was probably a unique gem, created specifically for pink. it would've looked pretty suspicious if suddenly rose quartz showed up with a spinel trailing behind her. so pink diamond, even after realizing how terrible it was to leave spinel behind, decided going back for spinel wasn't worth the risk.

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why wasn't lapis corrupted?

earlier in the series, we see gems embedded objects that they power and control, such as the desert glass, the obelisk, or the lighthouse gem. lapis was embedded in the mirror and she wasn't corrupted, so why do we assume these gems were?

the desert glass started to create disparate, chaotic structures in the desert so we could see how it might be corrupted. the other two, however, we know must be corrupted or otherwise they would've reformed the moment they were dislodged from their structures, the same way lapis did. something about the nature of their corruption, or the way corrupted gems react to being embedded in objects, caused them not to reform.

so what protected lapis? well, there's one big difference between lapis and these gems: lapis was cracked. the corrupting light must only be able to effect gems that are sound. one possible proof of this is that gem shards weren't corrupted by the corrupting light—their mind isn't in a whole enough state for the corrupting light to effect them.

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why pearl's gem is oval-shaped

this is less of a theory, more of an analysis. why is pearl's gem an oval cabochon while yellow and blue pearls have round cabochons? i'd like to point out that pink pearl's gemstone is also an oval cabochon. the shape of the respective pearl's gemstone parallels the shape of their diamond's gem.

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why pearl was on her default setting

it's because after having had pink pearl taken away from her, pink diamond didn't want another pearl customized for her. she didn't want a replacement for pink pearl. so she chose the default option.

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how are gems really made?

i’d like to point your attention to this reddit AMA in which rebecca confirms that “[diamond essence] is an important part of the substance injected into kindergartens.” so, we know the extraction chambers from “familiar” are meant to extract diamond essence/sweat, and that’s a key ingredient to how gems are made.

but wait, there’s more! lets ask some more questions. in garnet’s flashback in the episode “your mother and mine”... why are these gems carrying rocks?

and when it’s revealed that gems planned to hollow out the earth, why are they hollowing it out? could they really use THAT many resources? where is all this material going, what is it being used for? they’ve gotta be converting some of it into energy somehow because it can’t all go towards construction, or the resulting construction would be VERY large.

now consider, please, lapis lazuli. we know from yellow diamond in the song “what’s the use of feeling (blue)” that “a lapis terraforms”, and indeed, lapis’s hydrokinesis would be very useful for carving out rock. but there are many gem structures in the sky, or built to conform with the surrounding terrain, so... what would lapis gems even be terraforming?

now do you recall what rebecca said? “[diamond essence] is an important part of the substance injected into kindergartens.” what’s the other part? peridot has the answer to all of our questions. in the episode “gem drill”, peridot states that the peridotite outside of the drill cabin is “made of the same stuff as peridots.”

conclusion: the substance in the injectors is a mix of diamond essence and actual mineral matter that has to be mined out of the planet. all of the planet’s mineral resources are used either to create energy, to create new structures, or to be crushed up and mixed with diamond essence for use in new kindergartens. 

lapis lazulis largely assist in this process by being miners. they help carve out stone and smooth the walls of kindergartens so injectors can create gems of fine form. once they’re finished, individual gems can go in and sift through the rubble for the valuable minerals and retrieve them for processing, which is exactly what those quartz gems were doing in garnet’s flashback.

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in order for gems to be created, they need life essence to suck out of a planet. that means that in order for gems to even still be made on homeworld, there is still some semblance of life there, and that once it was a planet with a thriving ecosystem. homeworld still has a breathable atmosphere for a reason, after all.