What ARE the Gem Species in Steven Universe?

hello everyone and welcome to toon runes the show that goes over cartoons both old and new to give you guys the answers to questions you've always asked and today we have another theory about Steven universe but before we get into that I wanted to remind everyone to hit that Bell icon to receive notifications and want to upload it so that you don't miss anything from me today's featured fan er is by dragon ash in the community discord if you have fan art from me that you'd like to see featured on the channel you can send it to me in any of the social media sites below or in the community discord I also wanted to give a quick spoiler warning to those of you who have not seen the episode lakes from here to homeworld if you haven't yet seen this episode and don't want to be spoiled this is your only warning now that we got all of that out of the way it's time to get on to the rest of the video now today's theory is covering a subject that I thought about in the past but never actually made a video on before but I have a tumblr post on it that I made a few months ago so if you'd like to see my original thoughts on the subject I will be linking that below however after the most recent episode legs from here to homeworld I feel like I now have enough evidence to make a strong enough theory video on the subject of course the subject I'm referring to is the identity of the gem species and to be more specific I'm going to be talking about what I think they are scientifically speaking and when I think all of my evidence in this video points to them being is some sort of artificial intelligence otherwise known as AI and if this seems too outrageous or improbable to you just continue watching the video and I'll do my best to change your mind now let's get the obvious out of the way and state some of the mean and most important facts that we already know of we know that one the gems are aliens made to conquer other planets to their physical forms are made from white three they are their gemstone not their physical form for they do not need to sleep or eat five their stones can be used to power objects and tools six they cannot sexually reproduce and they need to use machines called gem injectors in order to make more of themselves now of course there are more canonical facts that we know about them as a species but these are the most important that I'm going to touch upon first now one of the biggest and most important revelations that we got about the gems as a species was back in season one and the episode Steven the sword fighter and this episode Perlas proofed and retreats back into her gem for those of you unfamiliar with this term poofing means that a gems physical form is too damaged to continue working properly so they retreat to their actual gemstone in order to recover and as seen later in the episode pearl reforms this time a different outfit how long Reformation takes depends on the gem and other currently unknown factors however is implied that personality has a part to play in the Reformation process for example pearl may take up to two weeks to reform while amethyst only takes a few minutes or up to an hour - to reform what happens during this process we don't know but after a single pale rose it is revealed that there is some sort of plan of existence within the gem itself Steven enters Pearl's gem in order to find her phone and comes across this plane of existence and here he's able to go through multiple timelines from Pearl's past until he finds the moment he was looking for now this is an interesting concept when you look further into it now if you were to just think in simple terms you would see this as Steven going through Pearl's memories and if you thought this you'd be correct sort of however the fact that he can travel through her memories by going through her gem itself while interacting with past versions of herself suggests otherwise it almost seems like Steven is going through stored memory like you would on a computer think about it you go into Pearl's gem then there's another pearl there in order to go deeper you go into that Pearl's gem and you keep doing so until you get to the stored memory that you want to get to now to me this almost seems like you're going through folders on a computer you go into the base folder which branches off into other folders that store various information once you reach the memory you want to watch a review you can interact with it almost as if it's a save file or some sort of document the fact that this is even a feature in the gem species gives us a huge clue as to what the gems actually are and I'm sure by this point you guys know exactly where I'm going with this but just sit tight in addition to going through memories going back to the Reformation process when a gem reforms they cycle through all their past tree formations before deciding on their newest form this almost seems like they're cycling through different stored versions of themselves that their gemstone remembers it's also important to note that the gems seem to have a base form that they can build off of as easiest seen from nephrite when she first reformed back in Monster buddies she has a simple shape based form which quickly deforms upon regeneration into centipeetle and as we know from our interactions with corruptions corruption is something that is completely involuntary and is something that the gem itself could not control Neph rights fight against the corruption in Monster Reunion and Jasper's corruption and Earthlings only further proves this in both cases you can very clearly tell that they don't want to be and turn into monstrous versions of themselves but they're given no choice and it only seems like they're gemstone forces this form upon them so this brings up the question what exactly is corruption well we know from multiple episodes now that corruption is caused by the damage of the diamonds the damage of the diamonds is always associated with a very bright yellow blue and white white along with some messed up audio bismuth upon scene Biggs Jasper also mentions that only a diamond can do damage like that the fact that they're literally referring to corruption as damage I think pretty obviously hints towards the answer of what the gems are just like when a computer is damaged or infected with a virus files can become corrupt in some cases that's literally the use term when you try and open a damage file it will tell you file is corrupt cannot open or something similar to that phrase corruption is literally called corruption because it's as simple as that it is the corruption of the gem files and programming within their gemstone the diamonds somehow are able to scramble or damaged said code or programming causing the gems to stop working properly and it isn't just corruption that we see this happen in either we also see this happen when a gem is cracked or when a gem is shattered and turned into shards if a gem is cracked it'll continue to work but not properly the gems form will glitch and mess up the physical form or the functionality of the gem we can see this easiest with amethyst back in an indirect kiss or eyeball back and bubbled in both these cases the gems physical forms glitch out and stop working properly because they're broken physically much like a computer will stop working if one of its components malfunctions or breaks something that's more interesting however is when the gems are turned into shards as we can see in secret team when some gem shards are unbel the your form will only as body parts this could be because the information is stored on that gem fragment is information on how to form that specific body part that's why you have arms and legs forming from fragments and nothing else we can also look at the force gem fusions and the cluster for confirmation on this with the first fusions specifically they're made up of a mix of body parts hands legs and other questionable parts further proving that certain parts of the gem itself store instructions on how to form certain body parts so splitting the gem apart would make sense as to why it can only do certain things when in parts versus full Reformation when it's all too gather the cluster also proves another interesting aspect of this when peridot toxin gem drill she says something about the force fusions looking for the last parts of themselves and if the cluster proves anything it's that even when a gem is shattered it doesn't die Steven can even talk to the gem shards even if their responses are very one worded so this is even yet more evidence that the gem itself serves as some sort of computer like structure though this begs the question what exactly is the damage of the Diamonds otherwise known as corruption well if we're going off the theory that gems are some sort of AI or computer system there's a few answers to this either corruption is some sort of virus reprogramming or command and if we look at the facts and go off of wordplay of damage that seems to be very heavily used I think it's safe to classify corruption as a virus or malware viruses and malware damage your computer and corrupt your files in some cases like for example back around a year ago my computer got a really bad case of malware that's known as ransomware ransomware is a subset of malware that converts your computer files to an extension that is unrecognizable to the computer and therefore unreadable essentially ransomware corrupts your files then the creator of the malware is the only one able to send you the decryption key to get your files back and uncorrupt them and in this case I really do see corruption as some sort of malware like this it's almost like it's corrupting or damaging certain parts of the gems to prevent them from working properly and this is only further proven by how the Diamonds or the ones who caused it are the only ones able to heal the damage that they caused they're the ones who caused and inflicted this damage in corruption so it makes sense that they're the only ones that have the key to correct it however this brings us to our next subject how exactly was the corruption inflicted as previously stated we know it's portrayed as a bright light with an eerie tune and for this answer we don't really need to look that far something that Steven universe is known for is its music both because it's excellent but also because it plays into the story it's mentioned in gen honk that the song between Connie and Pearl actually happened and garnets stronger than you is the tune played by Greg at Ruby and sapphires wedding suffice to say music has a very big part to play in the story we even get specific tunes and musical sound effects when certain events happen for example each gem has their own theme which plays into any of their fusions they have their own weapons summon effects and the two gems or shadow gems all have messed up Tunes associated with them and their appearances so I do think it's very possible that music serves a Sun type of code for them that is to say the corruption tune that plays was the tune that corrupted the gems and this is why Rose pearl and garnet were safe from the corruption because as we know from ocean gem Stevens shield is reflective and both the sound and light reflective way we know it can reflect light from your mother in mine and as I just stated it's also been shown to reflect sound which would make sense as to why they were safe from the corruption adversely it is also possible that the beams of light are also in some way a form of coding and that would explain why Rose was able to survive from the damage of the diamonds it may be also a combination of the two however I personally think that music is far more important to the gem species I mean Rose was drawn to Greg because of his music and it's arguably the reason why they first got together not the reason she stayed of course but the reason she was drawn to him in the first place even looking at this further most of the intense emotions in the show are explained through song we get pearls it's over isn't it yellow diamonds what's the use of feeling blue and lapis is distant sure that explained their motivations and emotions the fact that they usually always default the song to communicate their emotions I think is pretty telling there's also the fact that Steven picks up so quickly on musical instruments as was noted by Greg and the extended intro steven has been shown to have knowledge on multiple musical instruments including the ukulele electric guitar and piano for a kid his age mastery at multiple instruments is rather impressive especially since he also writes his own songs the gems themselves also show mastery at using instruments despite them having little to no human interaction or understanding at the start of the series which is where we see them using set instruments even peridot who seemingly had no concept of human music picks up on what Steven is teaching her almost instantly despite being a literal alien who has likely never heard of Earth's version of music before all of this hints to music having a much greater meaning and involvement in this story than we currently know of and understand it's so far integrated within the show that it needs to have some greater meaning especially with how much music itself adds to the show and the overall experience of it moving past the music portions I did want to get more into the actual science of the gem species now as stated earlier in the video gems are beings who are made of light at least their physical forms are their gemstones seem to be made of whatever actual material their non-sentient earth equivalents are anyways this raises a few very interesting points that I've done an extensive amount of thinking about in the past and a lot of this can make its own video so I'll save it until then at least the detailed parts but to make the long and short of this light can be tangible under certain circumstances without getting into the nitty-gritty light can become physically touchable by creating an artificial atom if you bring this artificial atom close to a superconducting wire carrying photons light turns into a liquid like substance that can be frozen and become solid now only is this mega cool but it also proves and gives us a better explanation as to how the gems have a physical form a lot of gems like quartz and diamonds also conduct electricity in real life which makes this all the more possible how it seems to me that the gem species works is projecting light and then forcing it to become solid by doing some sort of method similar to the one that I mentioned above we already know that the gems are fully capable of making projections as we've seen from pearl herself with the utilization of the hollow pearls so it seems to me like the way gems have physical forms is through projecting their physical body from their gemstone this would also make sense as to why the gems have the ability to shape-shift I mean the rays of light that they turn into upon transforming almost look like a liquid right well I think how it works is they can freeze and liquefy the light that makes up their solid form making it easy to change themselves this is why generally as well gems can only have colors similar to the color of their gemstone because it's the color of the light reflecting from it though as one of the laws of physics states energy within a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed this is why it makes sense when talking about gems like amethyst not being able to hold the form that is much bigger than herself she only has so much light or light converting energy to work with and she can't create more light from nothing adversely this is why pink diamond can take on the smaller form of rose quartz because she's literally not over using her available resources since pink Dimond is much bigger than rows how they're able to create artificial atoms and superconduct photons is beyond me but it's also important to note that artificial atoms are engineered which means they aren't naturally occurring and our man made this only further plays on the information that gems need to be AI which means they were created and programmed by somebody to be able to do what they do they couldn't have just come out of nowhere and without getting too far into one of my other theories I'll just link the staple theory in the info card now now whether the gems creators will come later into play or have a big part in the story I don't know however I do think it's irrefutable at this point that the gems were made by someone or something most likely by an organic species who was extremely intelligent and used the gems for many purposes more evidence on this is shown and how gems can be used as power sources one of the first and major instances of this was lapis lazuli in mere gem and the episode lapis gem stone is used to power the mirror similarly in the episodes serious Steven and Stephens lion we can also see gemstones being used to power structures and tools if we're going by the same logic as lapis these gemstones could theoretically be removed from their devices and then reformed into their humanoid forms however the fact that gemstones are even used in this way seems to imply that this may have been their original use as we can see from homeworld technology there are other sources of energy that can be used that aren't gemstones in a lot of cases the power sources are gem like in appearance but they aren't faceted singular gemstones they're more like slabs of minerals which I doubt are sentient however if raw material can be used as a power source as well as sentient faceted gemstones can be this seems to imply that the material that the created from can either create or conduct energy and if this were the case the white diamond power and home robe theory makes all the more sense now the white diamond powering homeworld theory is something the community has already talked about so I'll just briefly cover it essentially the theory is that the reason why white diamond doesn't and hasn't moved is because she's powering homeworld this is only further supported by the fact that her head glows white and her facial features other than her eyes and mouth are unable to be seen this is probably because her gemstone which is placed on her forehead is going very brightly to put out energy this is only further supported by the fact that we can see several white lines going through homeworld which seem to portray power lines that branch off to different portions of the planet to power it it's almost like she's the heart of homeworld or that she's the main power source that holds it all together her having the capability to do this really only proves to me even further that the gems are artificial intelligence but that's not the only fact about white diamond that raises suspicions for me the other big one is how she conducts herself and how she speaks now we haven't really seen much of her that being said what we have seen seems to give the impression that she's hauntingly friendly and by that I mean that she's friendly but not in a good way white and blue seemed to imply that she has a temper that's easy to agitate but she showed nothing but smiles to Steven however in my opinion and experienced a smiling face doesn't necessarily mean friendly sure a smile is usually associated with happiness but that's the direct opposite feeling I got when we were introduced to white diamond and a lot of people have also been comparing white diamond to glados from the portal series and I think that's an accurate comparison she's pleasant in the way in which she talks but that's only a facade her actions and overall dismissive attitude speaks volumes and I know a lot of people have been saying she might have just been cheery because that's her way of acting like everything is okay and thinking everything is okay but it's also very possible that if gems are some sort of AI she's pleasant because she was programmed to be that way think about it if you had some form of AI that was serving you to accomplish a task you wouldn't want it treating people rudely you could eliminate that issue by programming the AI to always be pleasant now I think in this case it's a bit too early for us to tell if white diamond is constantly like this that given what we have seen from her I don't think it's a far stretch to make she seems entirely unfazed by pink diamonds actions playing them off as if she was just having some playtime when in reality what pink diamond did should have been seen as unacceptable to her as it did to blue and yellow diamond if white diamond was some sort of AI system made to serve and power another alien species perhaps her creators that would make a lot more sense additionally the white diamond mind control theory to also make a lot of sense here now I've touched upon the white diamond mind control theory as well so if that's something you're unfamiliar with I'll link the video in the info card and description now but essentially the theory states that white diamond has mind controlling powers or at the very least heavy mental manipulation abilities theory is best proven with white pearl as she lacks DD magna hauls voice and is instead voiced by christine ebersole who is also white diamonds voice actress coupled with white pearls broken appearance and stiff doll like movement it seems that white diamond is using some form of mind control on white pearl if we're playing off the corruption idea I touched upon earlier mind control isn't as sci-fi is if the gems were a I just like ransomware and file corrupting exists there are types of malware that can take control of your computer and force it to do things some examples are forcing web browsers to redirect you to malicious sites forcing your computer to click on things without you clicking on them or in extreme cases your computer may be remotely controlled by the person who created that malware that you were infected by if this works similarly to how I hypothesize corruption works it would explain the mind control abilities white diamond could be controlling white pearl simply through sound light or the newly introduced or our waves the aural waves however may be the more solid answer this is because when seen in both reunited and legs from here to home world only gems or in Stevens case half gems are affected by the Diamonds aura powers blue diamonds seems to be able to have some sort of mental influence with hers making the crystal gems cry with her aura however Connie and lion are unaffected by the aura while everyone else remains affected this is because Connie and lion are not of the gem species so if the aura is some kind of coating it makes sense that they aren't affected by it after all they don't have gemstones that can be influenced by some sort of coating so they can't be manipulated with it it's not simply just some form of sharing empathy since humans don't lack empathy however they do lack the gemstones that would allow them to be manipulated by such an ability well yes Stephen was able to reach Connie with his aura it's also important to note that Stephen is also a human this stands to reason that since he's human his abilities work a little differently than if he were just a full diamond now with all the main points and evidence out of the way we can move on to the less important but just as interesting evidence the first piece of evidence is the lack of sexual reproduction the gems are a genderless species meaning that they don't sexually reproduce instead they need to artificially create more of themselves by using gem injectors into mineral rich areas on planets this almost seems as though it's a production line less of a natural process much like how robots are made there's a sort of factory like vibe that the kindergartens give off additionally when gems are made they're made knowing exactly what they are and what their purpose is they don't have a baby or teen stage they're made as adults they pop out of the ground knowing their place in their society as well as their function they also come out with their uniforms of which correlate with the diamond that owns them it's almost like they've been programmed to know these things and how to look it's why they all have the same voices same general look and body build and similar personalities based on what their job is like how all the famous astac similarly and treat each other all as family even when they just came out of the ground it's almost like they're programmed with a base program to act this way to which they can build off of if they decide to deviate from the norm other interesting facts about the gems is that they do not need to sleep or eat but they can if they want to if they are some sort of artificial being they would not require caloric intake to function nor would they require rest they would likely get all their power from the minerals they absorbed when they were in the ground which would also explain why they drain the life from the earth and why the kindergardens are so barren and void of life another interesting and often overlooked fact was one that was brought to our attention and it could have been great amethyst tries to mirror Steven jumping around like a moon boy but gets upset when she can't do it peridot then explains that their physical forms adjust to gravity because they are a spacefaring species made to conquer other planets this means their gemstone automatically calculates and readjust their physical form accordingly in order to allow easy movement and travel we know amethyst is unaware of this based on her reaction this means it's something that her gem did automatically without her knowledge and not a taught skill this only piles onto the evidence that gems are programmed in a way and are therefore some form of AI one last and final little detail I wanted to mention is how pearl connects with devices she usually sets her hand inside the screen of the device to which her eyes go blank and she projects through her gemstone the data that she's been receiving from the system this seems like something only computer-based systems could do with other computer-based systems as they function similarly after all sharing data between two computers is not a difficult task I would also like to mention super quickly that the reason why pearl was silenced may not have to do with magic at all it could be simply because pink diamond gave her an order and it locked her system's up so to recap and get my theory on why I think this evidence leads to allow me to explain I think that the gem species was made as a way to serve and better the lifes of another alien species white diamond was the first diamond and likely first gem to be made and was programmed to be both the power source and an AI system she was programmed to be cheerful and friendly but didn't stay that way white diamonds went rogue and figured out how to reproduce and make more gems these gems having been programmed by her are loyal to her and she overthrows her creators whether or not these creators are the evasive snip oh is unclear white diamond has control over the other gems because she's almost like a master computer with admitting abilities the other diamonds are also given similar abilities able to manipulate while we're ranking gems with their aura abilities humans are affected by these abilities as they lacked gemstones to receive the input message corruption is a similar type of manipulation but it involves corrupting the mind and cool unquote files up the gen forcing them to become distorted versions of themselves but of course this is all just a theory if you have more evidence that gems are AI make sure to put them below I know I've probably overlooked or missed something as well if you think the gems aren't AI and are something else be sure to give your reasonings below I also have pulls over in my community tab after every video so make sure to interact on those posts and share your thoughts I also want to give a very special thank you to me Sal Mullen who is a pro level patron on my patreon if you'd like to support me or see scripts to my videos early consider becoming a patreon member and if you like this video please make sure to like comment and subscribe and I will see you all in the next video have an amazing day guys [Music]

Channel: Toon Ruins

Views: 332,835

Rating: 4.8656034 out of 5

Keywords: lea c., lea c, steven universe, steven universe theory, white diamond reveal, steven universe what are gems, steven universe what are the diamonds, steven universe what are the crystal gems, steven universe what are corrupted gems, steven universe gems are artificial intelligence, steven universe gems are AI, crystal gems, legs from here to homeworld, white diamond powering homeworld, white diamond mind control, white diamond glados, white diamond revealed steven universe

Id: RbSmNMfBRJY

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018