hrhosmer:

People have been throwing around a lot of half-baked theories about how Onion is a Homeworld gem, or even Yellow Diamond. I think it’s much more likely that Onion is…



… one of Rose’s sentient plants!



Our first pieces of evidence are obvious. His name is Onion. He kind of looks like an onion, in shape and color, and with that little tuft of hair.



In “Watermelon Steven” we found out that Rose was able to make sentient plants. Steven was able to make sentient watermelons after spitting out a bunch of watermelon seeds. This is likely made possible by his healing spit. Rose had similar abilities, but her healing powers came from her tears. So in order to make sentient plant life, she probably had to cry on the seeds. How convenient, that onions make you cry. It’s not hard to set up a scenario in which Rose Quartz cries on an onion, thus bringing it to life.

This would explain Onion’s penchant for violence and seemingly evil behavior. I think his behavior is more chaotic neutral though. Since Rose’s plants “lived to fight” and Onion is growing up without Rose’s guidance (or any substantial parental guidance, even), his violent actions are more out of boredom than any actual evil impulse. It’s even shown in “Onion Trade” that he stole Steven’s Ranger Guy out of boredom, since he spends all day waiting for his dad to come home. And like the vines at Rose’s fountain in “An Indirect Kiss”, he’s “a mess without her guidance.” The vines and other plant life there are similarly mistaken as violent and evil when they attack Steven and Amethyst, but it is more accurate to say that they’re just chaotic without Rose Quartz.

So then how do we explain the presence of his father, Yellowtail? It could very well be that Yellowtail is his adoptive parent, and took Onion in after Rose became Steven. Alternately, since Onion appears to be younger than Steven, he could have been created by Steven accidentally, before he knew about his abilities, and then Yellowtail found him. (However, it seems like if this were the case, he would obey Steven.) Or, Yellowtail is the sentient plant, and perhaps Onion is a human/plant hybrid of sorts. Since Rose sacrificed herself to create Steven as a human/gem hybrid (probably with hopes that he could be weaponized against the Homeworld) she may have conducted similar hybrid experiments with her sentient plants. This, too, would explain why Yellowtail and Onion seem to have a unique shared language. It is also possible that this language could just be a non-English language common within the SU universe, but if it is, it’s not one that Steven recognizes, since when he hears them talk to each other he says “Huh. I guess they don’t need words.”

This also puts Baby Melon’s kidnapping in a new light. It wasn’t surprising to anyone to see Onion steal Baby Melon right in front of Steven. But what if his motivations were deeper? What if Onion related to Baby Melon on a different level, because they have similar roots? (Haha get it? Cuz onions… are roots…. XD) What if Onion recognized Baby Melon as a sort of sibling? What if the kidnapping was less about Onion being randomly morally bankrupt, and more about him trying to find out more about himself?