Anonymous: I just thought of something! We know that the point of the Kindergarten was to create more Gems, but for what reason? Why would they need to create more Gems? You have any theories?

as a species, gems are incapable of reproducing biologically. splitting a gemstone in half damages or destroys the gem herself, and since there is no known method of regenerating broken gems–Rose’s and Steven’s healing powers can only repair, not regenerate–that precludes asexual reproduction. gems lack gem-specific reproductive organs, so they’re also incapable of reproducing with one another sexually. while Rose proved that gems can replicate other species’ reproductive organs in order to procreate with them when she had Steven with Greg, that only resulted in a new human life, not a new gem. Steven’s “gem half” is–in all likelihood–literally Rose’s gem. to create a full gem-human hybrid and not just a new human, Rose had to give up her physical form to pass her gem–or herself–on to Steven so her gem would become his gem.

but reproduction is intrinsic to all life, so it follows that gemkind would find a way to reproduce despite the fact that they’re inorganic-based lifeforms. Kindergarten is that method.

as many of you have pointed out, the “old gem junk” Amethyst refers to…



…resembles a bacteriophage in both design and–based on what we can infer at this point–function.

bacteriophages are viruses that are incapable of reproducing on their own. to do so, they attach themselves to and penetrate bacteria to inject their genetic material and hijack the cell’s reproductive processes to create more and more bacteriophages. in many cases, this process is fatally parasitic: the host cell ultimately bursts, releasing the new virus copies—which in turn seek out new hosts.

like a bacteriophage, the old gem junk injects a new gem/the components necessary to create a new gem to incubate in the earth. to mature, each new gem absorbs/consumes its share of the host planet’s natural resources. this process is also fatally parasitic, causing irreversible damage to the host planet that eventually leaves it inhospitable to its native organic lifeforms. but gems can still inhabit the husk-planets, because they don’t require food, water, or oxygen. so it’s likely that once the planet exceeds its use for gem reproductive purposes, the gems can still use it as a colony.

of course, “the first gems” had to originate somewhere. assuming that they occurred spontaneously and naturally on Homeworld, then it’s still likely that Homeworld could only support the creation of new gem life for a certain amount of time. (which doesn’t account for the possibility that the gems didn’t develop and build Kindergartens on Homeworld to speed up the gem-creation process, which would only have sped up the planet’s “demise.”) once it reached that limit, the gems had to turn their sights to new planets to continue propagating their species. if they hadn’t already developed and pioneered Kindergarten tech on Homeworld, then they did just that at this point: create a method to reproduce artificially as an invasive species on other planets. personally, I think Homeworld will be a “dead” planet covered in gem technology.

so at its core the question of, “Why create more gems?” boils down to, “Why reproduce?” which is self-evident because all life possesses a fundamental drive/instinct to create more of themselves. gems are functionally immortal, so that drive/need would be a lot less urgent for them than it is for life on Earth, but a civilization without any new individuals is a stagnant one. they would need new/more gems to advance quicker, if not advance at all.

still, anon–I think you have your finger on the pulse point of a bigger possibility, specifically, “Why Kindergarten?”

like we’ve said, Kindergarten could have been devised as a method to speed up or enable the creation of new gems on other planets (or both). the reason for this–as well as for gemkind’s intergalactic expansionistic/colonialistic empire–could be as simple as the reason why humans will eventually try to expand out into space from Earth: depletion of space and natural resources on Earth that limits how many people can survive or live on Earth. on the other hand, there could be another stressor…like, say, a war with another species that’d necessitate gemkind to create new gems at an unprecedentedly quick pace. even if the gems won that war millennia ago, it may have been the catalyst that set gemkind’s expansionism in motion. there may not be a “need” for it anymore; expansionism may have just become intrinsic to gem civilization….

now, I’m not sure if I believe that’s the case myself, but it is a possibility, and it was astute of you to realize it! thanks for your question!