Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26198769-20150313212242/@comment-26198832-20150314063911

I don't think it would be a thing where individual gems have a finite supply of magical energy to live off of.

They don't eat or sleep except for when they simply want to enjoy themselves.

They have the potential to live for ever, so long as their gems aren't destroyed.

As for using the captured gems as a power sourse I don't think that would be very plausible either. All of those gems are corrupted or damaged in ways that they can't fix, I'd imagine interfacing with them on any level for the sake of using them as a powersource would only open themselves up to being potentially corrupted as well.

As for the possibility of their being a force destroying their race..... Maybe? Its certainly a possibility. But Peridot doesn't give the impression that that would be the case, she has never once been panicked or in a hurry to reactivate the kindergarten. The only time she's expressed any emotion out side of bordom has been when she was forced to deal with the crystal gems getting in her way, or when trying to convince jasper to stick around earth for a bit so she could finish her mission.

Jasper didn't even seem to care about restarting the kindergarten, she was more interested in returning home and reporting Steven's existance to Yellow Diamond.

That being said I think its very likely that the Gems as a race are potentially having a population issue. But these are beings that can aparently live thousands of years with out any trouble.

On the other hand, aparently when two gems form some semblance of a romantic relation ship, they fuse and prefer to stay that way. Like with Garnet.

THAT would pose a problem in the long run. Yes they could just separate the fusions, but keeping two being who want to be together from being so just results in expending more energy than its worth. Even more so when the fusion makes them stronger and thus more difficult to deal with.

It would be easier for the Homeworld Rulers to just be like. "yall go ahead and fall in love and crap. We'll just go start up some kindergartens to keep our race from dwindling in number."

And I think the only reason kindergartens is a thing is because Gems don't feel a need to reproduce at all.... They're extremely long lived, and if Fusing is the next natural step for a romantic couple that's probably their form of contributing to their race in a "natural" setting. Sure there's, physically speaking, one less gem running around numbers wise. But theres this one new really spiffy Gem in their places that can potentially do far more than their individual parts ever could.

Basically someone like Garnet, would be the gem society's form of having a child, they aren't adding to the population numbers at all, in fact they'd be detracting from it, BUT there would be an increadibly stronger/more versatile gem in their place.

BUT eventually they're gonna run out of hands to manage things.... what's the next step? Harvest minerals from planets and turn them into gems. Suddenly they have a gigantic population boom when ever they need it.