On Rubies (Part 1 of 4)

Anonymous said:

I’m not sure if you’ve seen the newest episodes (Hit the Diamond, in particular) but I was curious on your thoughts about the Rubies, as well as any thoughts on Lapis Lazuli’s & Peridot’s character development thus far?

This is probably going to be lengthy (and I’ll have the other half of the ask in another post). So I’m going to divide them into a series of posts with different aspects I want to discuss about the Rubies. With that said, I’ll link to the other posts as always when I’m done.

What I find very interesting about the Rubies, is that we’re treated to Rubies across time. We have Rubies from before the war (Deltoid and Opisthenar), from after the war (Doc, Eyeball, Army, Leggy, Navy), and we have our Ruby, who’s been through both times and everything in between. As such, we have an idea how not only the Rubies, but also society has changed through time, particularly that of Homeworld.

Just a note: This series of posts will have some gem analysis and some gem placement analysis to supplement the usual character analysis.

1. Origin and Function

We know that Rubies are soldiers and that they don’t rank very highly on the Homeworld hierarchy. Since Peridot spoke a little about Peridots and peridotite, I think there are some similarities between how the gemstones are made in the series and how they’re made in our universe.



Given this, some people have already talked about how rubies are made of corundum, which is in turn a transparent mineral made of aluminium oxide. What gives rubies their red colour is impurities in the mineral, namely chromium, which substitutes some of the aluminium ions.

One other thing about rubies is that they can be made cheaply in the laboratory through a process called flame-fusion synthesis. In this process, the solution I mentioned above is superheated and dripped. The solution then crystallises and forms the ruby.

I don’t want to dwell on these too much, because sapphires have close to the same creation processes, but with iron instead of chromium giving its colour. But I think they do offer an idea of how Homeworld is able to create these gems. I mentioned in my Gem Abilities post how Homeworld’s definition of rarity may not match ours. This is because Homeworld planets may have vastly different makeups from ours. Whichever compounds they are likely to find in abundance would be common to them. If this is the case, Rubies must be relatively easy for Homeworld to produce, and to minimise resources, something akin to the flame-fusion method is probably used.

This would fit in nicely with Rubies’ ability to superheat their bodies to the point of auto-igniting the air around them, creating fire. I feel that their pyrokinesis works differently in different atmospheres, but I stand by superheating as the fundamental ability that they have.

If this is the case, then they would be abundant enough to be common gems. I feel that they aren’t incredibly high level even as soldiers. Above them rank the quartz gems, who are bigger and I’m assuming more physically powerful. Additionally, quartz abilities, such as the spin-dash attack, can be taken as more versatile than the pyrokinetic powers in a war zone, where pyrokinesis is a little more unpredictable.

2. Rubies have been socialised to behave the way they do

I say this because thus far, Rubies have been portrayed to us as Amethyst bluntly put it, “Rubies are dumb.” This isn’t a function of their actually lacking the mental capacity, but rather Homeworld doesn’t train them to think the way we’ve seen the other characters do. Being “dumb” the way it was described by the characters, would probably refer to the Rubies being more perceptible, knowing things about their potential enemies, and knowing their own forces enough to notice the impostor among them. I get that these things are rather necessary in battle, but I also think that Rubies are not often assigned to missions alone.

Our own Ruby isn’t completely free of this, at times sweeping, characterisation. Many people portray her as the bumbling oaf of her relationship with Sapphire, claiming that she’s less able to keep calm and process the big picture.

In The Answer, we see that the Rubies are assigned as guards to a Sapphire. In Hit the Diamond, the Rubies are sent to retrieve the quartz soldier. In both cases, Homeworld expects that someone is going to take charge of these Rubies and tell them what to do. In these examples, they’re given one job at a time only. We don’t hear the Ruby Guards say “I’m going to protect Sapphire and then capture these rebels if I’m given the opportunity;” we just hear them say “I’m going to punch them!” because that’s their job. They were told to protect the Sapphire from incoming threats.

In the same way, the Ruby Squad in HTD come in and don’t question the Earth practices of baseball. They were told to find Jasper at all costs. So ignore that this is a weird tradition, ignore that that human is purple (if they were even briefed in the first place, as I’ll explain later). What we’re interpreting as a lack of intelligence can actually be severe tunnel vision.

I have a feeling that given their size and their abilities, Homeworld doesn’t think they can handle more difficult or more complicated missions. As such, Rubies always travel in groups, because Homeworld might think it increases their chances of success. Contrast this with Jasper’s Earth mission with Peridot and Lapis. Three gems, with only one having military experience coming to a former rogue planet. It’s possible Homeworld thinks that quartzes and other gems can handle situations better than Rubies can.

And all this shows that socialisation hugely impacts development and acquiring skill sets. Homeworld doesn’t assign them complicated missions. Homeworld doesn’t teach them how to problem-solve or assign them missions requiring more than brute strength. As a result, they don’t acquire those skills. They don’t pick up on smaller nuances that could help them do the mission more effectively. The reason Homeworld always sends more than one Ruby at a time is so that in the event a problem occurs, they can fuse, get really big, and crush something.

So to be a successful Ruby, this is what you have to do; this is what your Homeworld looks for. Very subtly, it’s a message that tells Rubies their brawn is prized and that’s their contribution to their Homeworld. It’s the same kind of insidious expectations that tell us that if we’re tall we should play basketball and not something like join the chess team. As these Rubies (or any other gems in their respective ranks) meet others like them, they are socialised again to act like them, to fit in with their peers.

For me this grouping/squad system for lower ranking gems has a two-fold effect. First, it promotes a lot of groupthink and group mentality. If the Rubies feel they have somewhere to fit in by acting a certain way, it makes them less likely to change those ways. It’s difficult to be critical about something when it appears all your peers are cool with just punching things. Second, it’s for survival. They’re soldiers, and even in our universe soldiers are trained with their comrades so they get familiar with one another and are willing to help each other. It greatly increases their chances of survival.

This is utilitarian Homeworld. It wastes their resources to have gems just die all around them when these deaths could have been prevented. Although having more critical Rubies would be an asset on their missions, they’d inadvertently created a class of soldiers who aren’t, because they’d been assigning Rubies on missions that don’t require it at the core.

3. But there’s still some sort of merit system on Homeworld that allows some soldiers to get promoted

Doc’s entire presence oozes authority. She has the visor, something none of her squad members have (I’m just going to refer to them as a squad from now on). She stands on the ship and gives orders and directives. She looks out for her squad members, such as pulling Leggy with her when they’re about to leave and to not leave her behind.

But Doc is a Ruby just like the others. She’s also a bit more critical, making sure to count her squad members and actually question Ruby’s motives when she says they can’t search the barn. “Why not?”

And I’ve said this before, but I think that since Homeworld reached its technological boom, it’s done away with courts and monarchies and made its hierarchy more bureaucratic. We know Peridot has a supervisor; we’ve seen the relationship YD has with YP (more boss-secretary than queen-handmaiden); we are given hints to these processes, systems, paperwork, that make everything run back home.

One thing of note that Peridot said in Hit the Diamond, is this:

Peridot: I disobeyed a direct order from Yellow Diamond, and I called her a clod… to her face! Pearl: Oh, honestly, you call everyone a clod. Peridot: Yes, but not everyone has command over all the armies of Homeworld waiting for the word to shatter me!

Source: SU Wiki

Because from what we’re led to believe, Homeworld is in the age where logic and reason are rule, with YD at the helm. It’s not just the military faction, because Peridot, a technician, is under YD as well. Utility is key, and the more skills you have, the more use you can be. Yellow Pearl is doing secretarial work now, has a voice (a very vocal one), and makes faces, a sharp contrast from earlier notions of Pearl’s having to just stand there and look pretty that we saw in Blue Pearl.

So if a Ruby (or any other gem) managed to differentiate herself from her peers in the right ways, in the ways Homeworld idealised, we see that’s rewarded as Doc is made squad leader. This speaks volumes of the shift that’s happened on Homeworld. It’s not as progressive as we’d like, but there’s a change there.

For instance, Doc is still the squad leader of Rubies. I doubt she’ll have a chance to lead a group of, say, quartzes in her lifetime. But it goes back to the idea that completely sadistic and evil dystopian societies just don’t work in operationalisation. When you push people to their breaking points, you’re going to have a rebellion. But we see time and time again how loyal people are to their home, even after everything that’s happened to them, like Rose and Lapis.

I’m starting to think that Homeworld tried really hard to create the ideal society, where each gem-type has a specific role and function. But that system stifles progress and development, because it limits what each gem can do and typecasts them into unchangeable roles. It prevents the exchange of ideas, building upon experiences. What Homeworld is doing isn’t okay, but it’s starting to look more and more like they’re doing bad things with good intentions in mind for their people, and less like they hate their own people to begin with.

The next posts are going to be character analyses on the different Rubies we’ve seen in the show. I’ll put a link to them below this post when it’s been finished and update the blog when all the posts are complete, so stay tuned!

If you liked this post and want to see the others:

Part 1- Origin, Roles of Rubies (Plus some thoughts on Homeworld)

Part 2- Doc and Eyeball

Part 3- Army and Leggy

Part 4- Navy and Ruby Squad Fusion