Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4224349-20150212230234/@comment-25464947-20150213052727

Aclysmic wrote: Marhawkman wrote: Interesting thought.... but what distinguishes whether a gem can manifest a proper body? Pearl seemed to be essentially comatose when she was temporarily incapacitated. This gem seemed to be fully aware but with no proper body. We can take into account the shards from "Frybo" that took over clothes. The shards in "Secret Team" that scattered around everywhere on their own. The fact that despite Lapis being trapped in a mirror and her gem being cracked she was still aware. I could even argue that Desert Glass from the episode "Steven's Lion" cannot form a physical body but could form a fortress by possessing or project its magic on the sand around it. Maybe that's just how they make buildings? Since the last episode confirmed that they can create new gems, I wouldn't be surprised if they made some with specialized functions such as controlling machines and building fortresses.

Well, at least this explains why the gem shards from "Frybo" behaved differently than the ones from "Secret Team": It was a "possesing" gem that got split up to animate an army of living armor.