...yeah this was basically already my headcanon. Huh. While superficially similar (colour-coded caste-based hierarchical society, conquest-driven space empire, bullshit magic powers, ruled by a powerful female figure with fabulous fashion sense revered almost like a deity), troll and gems have one key difference: Trolls are all about interpersonal relationships, and Homeworld gems....I really don't get the feeling that they are.
Homeworld gems seem to define themselves by their function, though Peridot maybe skewing this. As in, it may be a Peridot thing, we don´t know yet. And I keep wondering if Jaspers being grumpy and rude and Peridot being terrible at social is because on homeworld, roles are so strictly defined real cooperation isn´t really needed?
so my character concept for my current d&d character was "Jasper's trollsona." this is the picture i currently use as her character portrait: she's a tiefling, who are basically part demon. she has grayish skin, orange horns and eyes, and she Big. she's a Brawler, which means she just. punches people. in many different ways, but her weapons are her FISTS. and i took a feat specifically so she could headbutt people as an attack! i honestly want to draw a proper portrait of her, because she's awesome and all the official art of Tieflings look like they're dressed as a Sexy Demon for halloween. need more big beefy bara demon ladies.
This is true. (However, consider: Megido Pearls. Rustbloods ARE the lowest blood caste, and Pearls are a slave caste...and I have immense feels about both, of course...)
Tall, athletic, ladies are so one of my types. (Okay tall ladies in general.) Be they Jaspers or Tieflings or Porrim Maryam, or whatever! Megido/Pearl comparisons are....intriguing. I must admit. I really like that 4th and 5th ed pulled the Tiefling into greater prominence and gave us the Dragonborn so that everyone who really wanted to play a half-dragon could do it now without being broken, but I dislike the way that 4th streamlined Tiefling appearance and made it more monolithic. I liked the exercise of creativity that 'okay, so what was your demonic ancestor? Do you even know?', or the 2nd-edition-style fun of rolling a couple of times on a random table. Peridot might be skewing the gems-defining-self-by-function, but there's also Garnet's accounts of Ruby and Sapphire, and there's the way Jasper is so very...I'm going to say goal-oriented. It's unreasonable to imagine gems from different castes -don't- work together because even in a society that treats people like pieces of an industrial machine, sometimes you need to bring many different talents together, or you have one person supervising another, etc. Peridot's obviously comfortable enough around Jasper to talk back and complain, which means....something. I'm not sure what. Promoting a sense of 'you are your job' also might encourage gems to take pride in their given roles and focus on that...which is certainly better than getting weird notions and running away to what I saw a poster on another forum call, 'Rose Quartz's Free Love Hippie Commune.'
I was thinking you have functions that are so narrowly defined, different gems can mostly cooperate even if they personally despise each other because they define themselves by their jobs, whereas with humans, getting along at least on a superficial level is needed to work together. Where humans have various cultural structures meant to make bonding possible for cooperation, gems have doing ones jopb no matter what, including the other gem being a shit. Which would work so long as everyone follows it. Basically, cogs in a machine rather than individuals with feelings. Which clearly would make the CG stand out.
I think that gem-caste and gem-function may be two different things that are firmly intertwined, since "quartzes are soldiers and higher caste" doesn't necessarily say what kind of soldier they are; a body guard and a commander and a special forces guy can all have reasonably equivalent ranks and castes without having the same exact function, and can be anywhere from meat shield to downright cerebral. That being said, I'm pretty sure Peridot is pushing a little harder on the function part, if only because the crystal gems are very hippie-liberal what with their identities outside of function and feelings and emotions and stuff, which is weird to see from a "my diamond (and therefore my general command structure) values Rationality And Sense Without Emotion" perspective I bet. I'd love to see how White Diamond (and maybe Pink Diamond) actually ran their respective legions, since BD had a fancy court aesthetic going on, while YD seems a lot more corporate tycoon. I wonder if gems are sorted into particular Diamond groups on creation, or if there's a marginal attempt at establishing personality/aptitudes before tossing them in one group or another. Are rubies exclusive to BD, like Sapphire was implied to be? Are quartzes as a class general, with specific types (like Jasper) serving specific diamonds? We know pearls are slaves in every diamond's court, and someone on tumblr mentioned that the cut/facet identity might be another clue on how utterly denied of personhood the cabochon cut means they are, but as far as I can tell they're the only gem we've seen that has cross-court functionality. Everyone else has been a pretty specific gem under a specific diamond (though that's probably in part because of naming limitations, but I'm sure we'll see more about this as time goes on.)
My thought on Sapphire was that she didn't specifically serve any of the four diamonds? Basically that, Sapphires are a particularly difficult or resource intensive Gem to make, and a few of those turn out to be seers, with Homeworld being unable to just order up another one. So there are, oh, 6 or so seer-Sapphires for the whole empire. They're rare enough that they are highly valued and treated with respect, and only consulted on by the highest Gems, but serve no Court specially. There just aren't enough of them, and they go where the Empire needs them. Losing Sapphire would therefore be a pretty big hit - not as bad as if Seering was unique, but still! It's not like she's easily replaceable - which puts a bit more contrast with her and Ruby.
I speculate Sapphire served Blue Diamond, because Sapphire addressed Blue Diamond with "My Diamond", and I would think it would make the most sense to address that to the Diamond you were created to serve? not every Diamond.
but it's possessive. which is similar to things like 'My King,' 'My Queen,' etc., which would only be used when addressing the king/queen/whoever who you served.
Well, I figured that you basically had to address any Diamond like that. As a lower-caste Gem, you are serving them, even if it's not directly. And I think that usually you would use something like 'my lady' or 'my lord' even if you weren't talking to the lady or lord of your home? IDK.
i think it's prolly more, uh, damning is the only word i can think of but it doesn't quite fit, oh well, that Blue Diamond claimed that Sapphire was a member of her court.
@chaoticArbiter yes, absolutely, that does cause a problem. since the honourific's a noun, though, not an adjective, the "your" doesn't work ... I still think people not directly subject to a ruler/figure of authority still use similar honourifics though? like, even if you were visiting someone else's court, "my Lord" or "my Lady" was still fairly common (i think) i dunno. I personally quite like the idea of gems belonging to the Diamonds' courts, but I could see it being an all-purpose honourific too. (I really like whoever came up with "Your Brilliance" in the Escape from Homeworld RP. that's fantastic.)
there are mother fuckin spoilers in the motherfucking su tags and I can't tell if they are fake or not either way I'm really mad >:(
I completely forgot about this. true. although it is pretty apparent some Gems belong to certain courts, I think, based on BD claiming that Sapphire belonged to her court. and I mean, 'your king' wouldn't really have worked either--king was just one of the things a king was called, and I think similarly, Diamond might just be one of the things the Diamonds are called. so 'Your Brilliance' or 'Your Eminence' or whatever might be used to address the Diamonds you don't serve/sometimes the Diamond you do serve, while 'My Diamond' might be saved specially for the Diamond you serve.
Found out the "spoilers" are most likely fake but why are people posting "fake" spoilers? Who enjoys that at all? The people who are excited and don't care about spoilers are going to be irritated that they are fake, and the people who don't like spoilers will be mad because... well, spoilers.
you talking 'bout that thing with Spoiler: ?? i dunno, to be safe, i guess Jasper sticking Lapis with a destabalizer with the caption or tag "no more lapidot :)"? was thinking it was prolly ship hate or whatever, in reaction to the actual leak that made for ship happenings. Or I assume it did.
