I want connie to meet peridot. Connie would be so interested in gem culture and history and tech! And she could probably help with teaching 'no humans can be cool and equals to gems' thing. ...imagine peridot meeting Stevonnie. Or seeing a human use a Quartz's sword.
Spoiler bellybutton ruby is the sweetest little strawberry muffin and I want to give her a grand tour of earth and all it's wonders. Like kittens and those little rainbows you see in sprinklers.
...actually Spoiler: Sudden thinks So, we all thought that Homeworld was pretty intense about all Gems filling their purposes and doing what they are meant to do, right? And that they expect Rubies to be more or less the same as each other, and basically disposable. That's what I got from the Answer at least. But by that logic all these Rubies should've been broken and replaced - which makes me wonder, did the modern Homeworld get more lenient or do they not have much of a choice about who they can break now? If even common Rubies are kept alive even if they don't act like soldiers. Maybe Homeworld has been having issues with its Kindergartens?
well.... Spoiler considering that the Earth would've been drained of...something had the Kindergarten been allowed to continue, and Homeworld needs to continually conquer planets to make more Kindergartens, I think it stands to reason that the Kindergarten drains the planet and then has no more power to make Gems. and it is possible they're experiencing a strain on finding new planets to make Kindergartens--so they have to keep every Gem that's produced now because they can't just make more. maybe they even exhausted a few of their Kindergartens during the war with the CGs, and now are hard-put to find new planets to make Kindergartens out of. I think it would make sense for them to not have much of a choice about who they can break--Homeworld doesn't seem much more lenient now than it was originally, so I suspect it's the latter. I KNOW
I had kind of figured that there were ways to make sort of... low quality kindergartens? By seeding asteroids with basic atmosphere and bacteria like a giant petri dish and then planting injectors. You wouldn't get many gems and probably not of a GREAT quality but it'd be something. I figured that when the Earth colony was in its early stages that they made some of those, gravity-tethered to the ships, and sent them off. Though that's assuming they had a journey long enough for a full incubation.
my headcanon re: gem birth and kindergartens: gems naturally occur on Homeworld! it's got the right composition in the crust plus radiation from the star(s) it orbits plus *coughs, waves hands* life force, for certain types of naturally occurring rocks to gain sentience. but for gems to occur anywhere else, they need to be injected manually. the birthrate on homeworld is too low for their expansionist empire, which is why they go off-world and create kindergartens-- can't conquer a galaxy with one planet's stable population!
I feel like Gems that are low quality in any way would be instantly crushed, though, so the asteroids wouldn't be worth it in the end--too few Gems would live up to standard, unless they were really hard-pressed to get more Gems. I don't think Homeworld's likely to be all that lenient, not with Yellow Diamond's attitude.
By low quality I meant more that you'd never get a rare sort of Gem to grow properly, but common ones are fine. You'd get plenty of Rubies without issue but if you tried to seed a Sapphire there'd be problems.
aaaah. I mean, possible? but that wouldn't make sense for why the Rubies we saw today were....different. I doubt Homeworld is more lenient, I really doubt it.
Five subpar Rubies can make a fully functioning Megaruby, and rubies seem to mostly be fusion fodder anyways, so. Samey or smart rubies maybe aren't super necessary.
The other Rubies we saw in The Answer were not especially clever either. I'm just assuming Rubies aren't expected to be.