Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26208943-20150224183255/@comment-1211308-20150320035923

Haruko-chan wrote:  I have also liked to think this was the case because I assumed, when Steven was created, half of his essence came from Greg and half came from Rose.

 Rose Quartz is a very old and extremely powerful, skilled, charismatic gem so I can't imagine, if Steven were holding the entirety of Rose in himself, that his human side would stand a chance of manifesting itself; His humanity would be overwhelmed by the force of the full Rose Quartz presence.

 Additionally, Steven is a manifestation of the love shared between Rose and Greg so I think Rose would want Steven to be equal parts Greg and her. As we've recently learned, when two gems love each other, they will give up the whole of themselves to fuse with the whole of their partner to form a completely new being that is stronger than either but equal parts both of them. Conversely, a very, very basic approach to the concept of human reproduction is that a child is formed through the union of half of each parent's DNA into a full person. Therefore, since Greg is biologically limited to only being able to provide half of himself, Rose would have to match Greg and only contribute half of herself for Steven to be an equal union of the two.

 So, if this is the case, Lion could simply be the byproduct of this human-gem fusion process. He could be just the excess parts of Rose that didn't go into Steven, which could also serve to explain Lion's inconsistent behaviour. If Lion is the manifestation of excess Rose then he wouldn't be a complete being and wouldn't have many of the full personality traits of Rose.

 ... But, this is all just my personal theory. It pleases me to think this way and I thought it was a decent enough theory to share but I'm not married to the idea and would just as easily accept others if and when they are demonstrated in the series.

 I just want to end off with one little notion that occurred to me as I was writing this. If Steven is equal parts Greg and Rose then he would be even-steven~ ;P

 I agree that Rose would certainly want for Steven to be equal parts she and Greg. Furthermore, being likely one of the most wise of individuals from an extremely advanced and ancient race of sentient magical gem people, I expect Rose is very deliberate in her speech and would not have used the specific word 'half' in saying "Steven, I'm going to become half of you" if she did not literally mean it (She could have said "I'm going to become part of you" or "I am going to become you" or any other phrases to the same effect if they had been more accurate of a description).

 However, I do not agree that in order for Steven to be equal halves Rose and Greg that Rose would have to leave half of herself out of his formation.

 As you pointed out, natural human reproduction essentially consists of the combination of two DNA strands, one from each of two parents. But given the artificial means (either through advanced technology or "magic"), a unique individual could theoretically be formed from a single parent. A diploid cell of one person could be split into haploid cells and then rejoined in a different configuration. The resultant individual would have the same genetic make up of the single parent but they would be expressed differently and thus would be physically unique.

 If in whatever process was undertaken to make Steven, something along these lines occurred with Greg's DNA, then there would be a whole person with which Rose could fuse and thus she would constitute half of the resultant Steven.

 And yet, despite my belief that the whole of Rose is within Steven, I could still be persuaded to accept that an aspect of Rose exists within Steven. In "Watermelon Steven", not only did Steven give sentience to the watermelons but they also grew to mimic Steven's physical shape. I think that this serves to indicate that some form of imprinting or transference of self occurred when he animated the plants. Although the reactions of the other gems indicates that Rose never created Rose-shaped plants, the method Rose used to animate plants may have been the same. So, if Rose created Lion, then there is a possibility some imprint or aspect of Rose exists within Lion.