>>110892696I just like autistically overthinking things and the one thing the crew is absolutely for sure good at is foreshadowing and lorebuilding in the background. They incite you to yourself think of things, too.
I've also given it some more thought, and boy oh boy if Gems weren't meant to be animalistic, the crew managed to accidentally portray them that way anyways.
Singular Gems seem to mostly be able to stay within their uplifiing-imposed programming. That programming certainly seems to be focused on making them as robotic, self-controlling and 'professional', for the lack of a better word, and is most obvious in the Pearls, but even ordinary Gems are that way, right from the oven, if baked right, having stuff like communication skills, camaradery (and thus, teamwork, mandatory for
a species bad at independent thought) and general social structure already implanted.
Fusions, even of the same Gems, seem to disrupt the programming and render them emotional, just as Aquamarine said - and that's bad. Not because the Gempire is just arbitrarily against emotions, no - it's because that's cutting into the facade of civility and emotions are like a plague for the roboticized Gems, you have one of them start going TOPAZ LIKES TOPAZ and soon enough half your fucking court is crying. Efficiency is lost as a Gem regresses from robotic professionalism to emotional, more life-like instability.
The more gems are in a fusion, the, typically, less balanced and capable mentally it is. Malachite was half-beastlike, Alexandrite was outright a kaiju who very barely pretended to be humanoid, Nicki Minaj had a monkey-maw with plenty teeth and barely could control herself at her best. Fluorite is six gems and she's slow as fuck, a grandma in a species where aging happens only from emotional growth or damage (see Pearl and Amethyst maturing from Rose dying, Greg being there and them having to take care of Steven), Peridot is a little gremlin - and not just a gremlin, at that.
