Putting this up top: I will admit my original response wasn’t well thought out and poorly worded. I can see what I’m reading there as not what I wanted to say - it implied BD as “Completely Unreasonable” when her reaction was actually “Very Excessive” and “tunnel visioned”, against a reasonable target. Add on the shitty mood I was in and I can see how it’s easy to take it all the way.

It was in the midst of a long, exhausting last 48 hours, including everything from little shits breaking things at the place I work to one grandmother having a fall at near midnight because she had to answer the phone of a shit of a relative, having someone close to me have a breakdown over a sketchbook due to sheer getting overwhelmed, a nine-hour day, a notably shortened lunch break (that was just because the crowds got too busy as I was supposed to start, and being first, if I did my whole lunch just late it’d hold up everyone else) and one HELL of a hailstorm at my other grandparent’s house that made fully fleshed-out roads look like bush tracks, and dropped hailstones the size of marbles, and fucked up a car they've just taken off comprehensive insurance. Needless to say, it also caused a blackout. And a good portion of this post comes after the first solid sleep in a few days, but a larger portion comes BEFORE that.

If, as a result of that, I put more vitriol than necessary in the first response or this response, I am sorry.

I’m going to assume that you’ve just jumped to the conclusion that because my point suggests she could be that callous to ruby, that (like a fair few people you contend with on this idea) she could be that callous to anyone.

Which just ain’t what I see, broski. If you subscribe to the beliefs that Lapis may be a part of BD, and I believe that it’s still plausible, then the instantaneous response has to be that Lapis wouldn’t act that way to everyone either. She instead forms a deep bond with Steven, at least from what we’ve seen.

Let’s start with the first problem. Who is actually supposed to take down Pearl and Rose after Sapphire is poofed?

Not Ruby alone, that’s for sure. My suspicion is that maybe Sapphire predicted based on all Rubies being punch-happy, and assumed her method of stopping Pearl Hurting Sapphire involved tackling Pearl. But even then, it’d take at least one more Quartz, probably several more, to take down Rose and the Terrifying Renegade. And there’s no way the Sky Arena and its throngs of aristocrats are guarded by four quartz alone.

So the onus isn’t on Ruby alone - it’s on Ruby and all the guards who just went slack jawed rather than dealing with the rebel leader and the murderous hat rack.

Nor could Ruby have known anything about what was going to happen. Only three people there knew the war was going to end if this played out as predicted, and nobody there knew that their escape would result in homeworlds eventual loss. It might not have, if BD had prioritised giving chase over punishing Ruby. For all they knew, they were going to get a report shortly that a guardian airship had shot Pearl and Rose down, ending the war less than an hour later.

Nobody else there gets to act like Ruby saving Sapphire was some grand, grievous event because of the consequences, because the only consequence was as much on every staring guard as it was on Ruby.

So they act like that only because of my actual point: Rubies are expendable. Ruby says that herself, and everything else we’ve seen suggests that gems at large view and reinforce the low rankers as either interchangeable and expendable or outright objects. Ruby all but says that no one would care if she specifically dies, and it’s still a viewpoint she’s carrying six thousand years later.

The killing of a loyal servant isn’t as likely to result in some disastrous loss of loyalty if EVERYONE there, even the loyal servant, literally believes that there are thousands, possibly even -illions exactly like her and she can be replaced in an instant.

I’m not calling her some completely heartless tyrant. I’m not saying she can’t care about others. I’m saying she doesn’t care about any one of the thousands of low-ranked Rubies, and views them as expendable - like many similar views shared by old human monarchies and dictators.

Also! I never said Garnet herself couldn’t be brash. But now you feel the need to bring up one episode, I’ll raise you another: Marble Madness. The one where someone calmly asks questions of Peridot before limiting her effectiveness and because of that, that someone nearly died. Not to mention smashing a small potentially weaponised vehicle to bits before asking questions is a less than perfect analogue to ordering the immediate shattering of someone who is the only person of the seven soldiers involved who didn’t poof and did exactly what she was told to do.

On top of that, Steven being in that thing is something Garnet couldn’t have predicted. By your own reckoning, she can only predict based on what she knows. If she assumed he’d just blindly follow orders, then it would be crazy for him to be in that thing. If she was entirely correct about Stevens behaviour, it’s still crazy to consider the pilot of this machine is Steven. Because Steven would have returned the ship were it not for people Garnet didn’t know, and everyone else Garnet sorta knows amongst the humans - Greg, Connie, Jamie - would most likely have been responsible and turned it in asap.

Add on the potential threat of destabilisers, and I make my point - a snap in-combat decision involving a vehicle of unknown equipment is not even close to a snap decision involving the fate a grunt doing what you told her to do, unaware of your full intentions, and fully presenting herself as the sole responsible member in a situation that was well beyond her knowledge, control, or even close to sole responsibility.

Finally, because I read the tags and it adds to my assumption you’ve assumed more than I said: did you know I live in Australia? Where there is no death penalty? But let’s talk about it re: the American death penalty. You do not get the death penalty after five seconds of discussion with no time to explain your actions. You get the death penalty after several court meetings, with lawyers and shit to explain your case. That the punishment system just seems to be “what the boss-gem says, goes” is something we don’t even do in in-war cases, and a current stalemate between your forces and the forces of the rebellion is no time to be pulling out such high-stakes punishment.

On top of all that, while the mindset of BD is more complex and definitely more justified than the standard case you assume I’m comparing her to verbatim, the reaction you say is so disastrous to a mindset like this is… Exactly what Sapphire did. Sapphire immediately stops seeing BD as “my Diamond” and sees her as “My Diamond going to kill an innocent gem". That’s exactly the reaction you say is what would bring down tyrants who act this way - and as it turns out, causing the Sapphire to have to leave just pushes her into the arms of the enemy, giving them the future vision they sought to take from BD in the first place.

There are two key differences between BDs case and a Standard Tyrant Murder. The first is that, unlike many examples, the person taking the punishment is actually somewhat responsible, and could be argued as the key culprit in the plans failure (though she’s not the only one, nor could she have known the “right action”). She’s not some random courier who is only the messenger of bad news. That’s a massive difference, and it changes the reaction from “completely unreasonable” to merely “very excessive”.

But the other difference is what makes it different but arguably just as bad: that only one gem, not even Ruby, second guesses or even hesitates on this decision, because the scapegoat taking the full wrath is an expendable Ruby and who cares if a Ruby dies. Because it’s Blue Diamond, and the Diamonds are perfect and can do no wrong. And because of that difference, there is a similarity between BD and the Standard the Tyrant - the reaction that messes things up for the ruler who made the dodgy call.



Let me be clear. I don’t think Blue Diamond would just react that way to anyone who slightly displeased her - any bearer of bad news. I think that, because in her time possibly hundreds of thousands of seemingly identical rubies have risen up, attacked the enemy, and been poofed or shattered, she’s stopped caring about any individual Ruby, and the culture at large has largely come to believe the idea that Rubies are expendable. I believe the only reason Sapphire doesn’t hold that idea is, like I said before, she assumed based on Ruby being a punch-happy maniac over being her protector, and this surprise has shaken her view around this one gem.