Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190820122909/@comment-26006155-20190901180656

If you scroll down to the bottom of this reddit post (the announcement trailer for my "Followup to: Rose Quartz Ate Pink Diamond") you'll find I had a long talk with Alexandrite1234, revealing my notes step by step: https://www.reddit.com/r/stevenuniverse/comments/84d47c/the_followup_to_rose_quartz_ate_pink_diamond/

Basically, the belief that a mother gem must surrender her gem to her children was debunked in the SU pilot episode "Gem Glow", where we see Centipedal has spawned several smaller, gemless children.

Anything made with gem light presists, until it is damaged to the point where it can't recover, and Poofs, vanishing from existance. This was demonstrated early on with Garnet's visor. But you can also make sentient creatures with gem light, which is what the gems themselves actually are.

Corrupted gems besides Centipedal have also created children that remained active even after the mother gem was poofed. And Pearl's holo-pearls have demonstrated a willingness to break their Training Dummy programming on several occasions. These living light constructs are more than mere souless drones, they have lives and minds of their own.

There are many moments in the show that suggest that gems and humans have had intimate relationships in the past. Besides the famous one between Rose and Greg, Amethyst also had a relationship with Greg after Rose became part of Steven's fusion. And we've found that Pink Diamond also had many flings with humans, even back in the ancient days of the rebellion.

These unions created the very first human/gem hybrids. And they fought for Rose Quartz in the rebellion. Rose's secret training base contains The Armor Of The Fallen, a collection of rare material armors that are each custom-tailored to different ancient human civilizatons. You've got a samurai. You've got a crusader. And everything in between. Gems didn't wear this armor, human-gem hybrids did.

These hybrids were the first legendary heros of the world. And they were all larger than life, seeming beyond-human in ability.. because they were exactly that. Somewhere between gem and human, and much more powerful than standard human.

When the Corruption Song went off, it seemingly corrupted all the full-blooded gems on Earth except the handful Rose was able to save. (Although, if some gems were underground, they might not have been hit by the attack, and survived) But human flesh has been shown to block gem scanners and tech in the past, so any hybrids that existed during The Corruption Song would have been shielded from its effects by their flesh and blood.

But humanity has a tendancy to fear what it can't understand. And without the gems around to guide and protect them, these hybrids suddenly found themselves targets of fear, suspicion, jealousy, and eventually hatred from the other full-blooded humans.

Eventually the hybrids found that the only company they were welcome to keep, was their own. So they started to band together into settlesments of hybrids from all over the world, united by their common gem ancestry and strangeness.

Mayor Dewey's ancestor sailed a colony ship that looked very much like The Mayflower to found Beach City. And this ship was immediately greated by a giant monster, which, thankfully, the Crystal Gems were able to defeat. Yet inspite of the gem's warning that Dewey's crew was sailing right towards the Gem Temple, the largest Monster Magnet on the planet where every day was a new danger, Dewey's great great grandfather insisted on settling right there, to found Beach City.

Why there? Because Dewey's band found it was safer having to deal with monsters, gem nonsense, and otherworldly threats.. than it was to try and live in the human world that feared and hated them.

Beach City was FOUNDED by gem hybrids as a relatively safe place for them to live. And whether they realize it or not, all of them are the decendants of ancient heroes who fought with Rose to try and save Earth.

There are two main types of hybrids: Gemless Hybrids, and Bloodstone Hybrids.

Gemless hybrids, like Connie, have gem light in their construction, but are otherwising seemingly human in every detail. Save, of course, amazing strenght and agility. And the casualness that Connie has in swinging a giant sword around with one hand doesn't reflect her stick figure frame at all.

Bloodstone Hybrids, like Renaldo and Lars, have a gem that's actually crystalized inside them from the countless small shards in Beach City's contaminated drinking water. Renaldo (whose theories may sound crazy, but also have a grain of truth to them) flat out describes the process by which Bloodstone Hybrids are made in the episode "Rocknaldo", where he also warns that the whole city is infested with "Rock People", seemingly unware that his amazing powers reveal his own status as one of them.

The Bloodstone hybrids show the food-based mutations that find frequently in Beach City, but not in other places in the world like Empire City. Renaldo mentioned that he's always felt drawn to the Gem Temple, just as surely as all the monsters/corrupted gems are.

Lars' head has always been a recurring them in SU. And Steven was able to accidently possess Lars for the same reason he was able to possess one of the Watermelon Stevens at several times in the story: Because both Lars and the Watermelon People contained part of the gem essense of Pink Diamond, and were essentially still connected to her, and him.

When Steven resurrected Lars, some of that infusion of gem energy was asborbed by the bloodstone in Lars' head, granting him amazing powers and unlocking all the potential within him that he'd never even believed existed before. Which is how a loser like Lars suddently turned into a legendary space pirate.

Beach City is legendary for how weird it is. And how weird the people in it are, too.

The downside of being Special is that it makes you different from other people. And the very thing that gives you amazing abilities, also makes you "weird".

If Steven's going to save Beach City from this attack, he's going to have to teach the residents of Beach City to embrace their Weirdness, and turn it into strength.