#gemsona guide

The very first thing you have to do is (for me at least) the most fun and interesting part- finding your gem! While you certainly can choose a gem just based on a color scheme you like, I’ve found their crystal meanings often correspond to the characters.

The first thing you want to decide is whether you (or your character) tend towards your natural abilities and personality or tend to reject or move away from, for a lack of a better term, your ‘soul’ or who you are. Do you embrace who you are or try to change yourself? 

If you tend towards your ‘soul’, you are looking for a gem that represents what you are like at your best, and what your strongest qualities about you are. 

If you tend to reject or move away from your ‘soul’, you are looking for a gem that represents what you are moving away from. This doesn’t necessarily have to be your natural personality, but rather what you tend to seek to not be like. Crystals however generally do not represent negative qualities, so you would be looking for neutral or perhaps even positive qualities that you (or your character) moves away from. This is certainly not to say if you choose a rejection gem you don’t have positive qualities, but that there are certain qualities you do not want to associate with yourself.

Keep in mind however, even if you are making a gem version of yourself, if you choose to be on the homeworld rather than in rose’s army, you would be subject to homeworld’s influence, and would most likely need to pick a rejection gem. 

For me, I have always been about embracing who I really am (for better or for worse) so I would choose a gem that would be me at my best. 

Next, you need to choose a gem that fits either your natural qualities at your best or the qualities you want to abandon. For this, I used 

http://meanings.crystalsandjewelry.com/a-to-z-list-of-crystal-meanings/

However, if you don’t feel like going through each letter of the alphabet looking for gems, one of the best ways to lower your options is to choose a color or a chakra you feel fits best, and check the gems they list that correspond to it. (The links are below the alphabet links)

I actually went through letter by letter and found my gem- Eudialyte. It represents personal power, trust in yourself and others, and opens the heart chakra, a chakra I resonate strongly with. 

This is the gem! I think it’s really beautiful. 

Speaking of that, the next thing you need to do is find a picture of your gem. A quick google search will cover this, and I would suggest to seach “cut emerald” or “cut garnet”, as you’ll get more clear colors and the gem’s gems are usually cut anyway.

Next, save the image and then head to http://www.pictaculous.com/

This will generate a color scheme based on your image. And while you could use the color scheme generated as your color scheme for your gem, I would suggest going one step further. 

Find the color you like most and copy down it’s HEX code (the 6 character code on the right). I chose #801D2E, because not only is that the main color of the gem, i find it’s a beautiful merge of dark red and dark pink. From here go to http://paletton.com/ and change the Base RGB code towards the bottom of the wheel to your hex code. From here, generate a monochromatic color scheme.

You can also use an adjacent color scheme but most gems seem to stick to monochromatic. 

From there, check the presets and pick one that you like the most! This will give you 5 colors to work with when drawing (or commissioning) your gem! 

This is my color scheme- A nice mixture of reds and pinks, which are the two colors eudialyte represents. 

The next two parts tend to go hand and hand and inform each other, so you can really do these in any order. These two parts are the weapon and the dance style used in both fighting and gem fusion.  

The weapon seems to be mainly based around personality-

Garnet is incredibly hands on, often resorting to fighting and punching as the solution to problems. When it’s something that isn’t as hands on, she actually tends to panic (See: So many birthdays and Fusion Cuisine). Fighting gloves work perfectly for her in this regard. Boxing gloves require great strength to use, but also great control. They also protect your hands from getting hurt when punching, which goes along well with Garnet’s protective nature. 

Amethyst’s whip is an interesting one, and one I think is rather funny. Can’t you just imagine Amethyst not wanting to move to get something and using her whip to grab food or a soda? It’s a very creative weapon, and one that has more practical use than just fighting. Amethyst would be the one to not want 500 different tools, she’d want an all purpose tool, and the whip works incredibly well for this. She uses it for whatever the situation needs- much like her shapeshifting.

Pearl’s weapon is a spear (but she also loves to use swords, which are similar), a weapon that takes incredible control to use. And also as she puts it, it’s about waiting for an opening to strike. Pearl is very much about the flow of life and is incredibly analytical. She needs a weapon that uses her skills to the fullest extent, and a sword is exactly that. While she loves to use swords, a spear gives more reach and more versatility, since you can throw the spear or hit from farther away. This fits pearl’s personality in that she never likes to directly approach a problem and when put on the spot she often flounders. (See: Full Discourse)

And while this is skipping ahead, the weapons also work incredibly well with each dance style.

Garnet is based on the Waacking dance style, which is made of quick, sharp, and hard movements. Imagine if they gave her a sword or a whip and she fought like that- it would just not work. 

Amethyst is based on the Club Dancing style, and is all about fluidity and utilizing your whole body to dance to the beat. The fluidity would rob the boxing glove punches of their power, and the constant body movement would open up too many holes with a sword, so the whip goes fantastically with this dance style.

Pearl is based on ballet, which is all about control of your breath and balance. It takes a lot of thought and effort to keep your core and back straight, which are needed for those amazing spins and jumps. At once incredibly sharp and incredibly fluid of a dance, it works amazingly with both spear and sword fighting.

And while we haven’t seen Rose’s dance style, her character is based around pure unconditional love and nurturing. She would have to have a defensive weapon to go along with this, and a shield is what you think of with a defensive weapon. However, a shield can also be thrown, or used to bash, so it does not leave one entirely unable to fight back. 

So, if you are going with your weapon first, first I would choose whether you think you’d work better with a mainly offensive or a mainly defensive weapon, or something that shifts between the two. 

I chose a hybrid of offense and defense, with a focus on defense. 

From there, you can search weapons or even come up with your own- I chose a glass reflective shields that can split up into either 2 smaller shields or 8 square projectiles. I have to choose whether to direct my energies to offense or defense, and while doing one I can’t really do the other. 

If you are choosing your weapon after your dance style, make sure you fit your weapon to the flow and movements of the dance style itself. 

Now the dance style is generally also based on personality.

I already went over each of the gems dancing styles and I think it’s obvious enough with those descriptions where it fits with their personality.

I chose for my gem the lyrical dance style- it’s based in ballet which I have a lot of love for and experience with, but is more about personal expression than tight control, and is a lot more fluid. Since the shield I chose tends to work as an extension of myself, and my gem is all about personal power and the heart, I felt that the lyrical style really captured my personality and could be used effectively with my weapon.

Next, the placement of your gem is fairly simple but it tends to correspond with the personality and where the majority of your energies come from. 

Pearl is always analytical and legalistic, so her gem works perfectly on her head. She also has a connection to the crown chakra which represents harmony, guidance and knowledge.

Garnet is incredibly hands on and kinesthetic. While we see her work in abstracts like with her future vision, even there she often is more of a do-er than a thinker. While pearl would most likely get caught up in analyzing all the possibilities of time, garnet works through the possibilities and chooses which one is best. Her hands work perfectly for her gems. 

Finally, amethyst is all about intuition and being herself. She often shapeshifts according to her mood (rather than using it to cover up her real self like a mask, it becomes a tool of expression for her) and her weapon is summoned via intuition. While the gut might work with intuition, I think the heart works the best- even her intuition comes from understanding and trusting herself. 

Now, I bet you are wondering how Rose’s on her stomach fits in with this. Now, for the most part Rose has been more of a symbol than a character in her own right. She’s been the symbol of motherly love and devotion, and the ultimate feminine strength symbol. The belly button is where the umbilical cord was attached, and we often think of the stomach growing bigger during pregnancy. This ties into her mother archetype. 

For mine, you can probably see it coming, but I chose the heart- I see the heart as connected to the soul of who someone is, and also a symbol of emotions and personal strength, all parts of my character.

It’s also worth noting that the gem placement needs to work with your weapon. Lapis’s gem on her back is the only way her wings would work, and the gems on her hands is the only way Garnet’s gloves would really work. 

Finally we get to the final part- the look of your gem. There’s not too much I can offer here, other than to try and incorporate the dance style and the body you would need to really pull off the style. (Imagine Pearl attempting to Waack or club dance) 

Also it of course tends to go with the gems personality. Garnet’s is incredibly simple, with hard lines that work well with her dance and fighting style. Amethyst’s clothes seem mostly for comfort, almost something you can imagine lounging around the house in. It also shows off her curves very well, something I bet she really likes about herself. And pearl not only has ballet shoes and often leotards from ballet, but flow and curves are a huge part of her costume design, going along with her sense of flow and harmony. 

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Now all of this and I haven’t even gotten to talk about fusion yet. 

Fusion works the same in many of these aspects, although you generally want to find a gem that not only corresponds to the crystal meaning, but also is close to a fusion of the two colors. 

Your dance styles will also be from the two gems, so you don’t have to worry about that.

The weapon is also chosen about the same way, but it is also a combination of two weapons. It can be as obvious as sugilite’s wrecking ball made out of the two gloves and the whip, or as abstract as the bow, somehow formed with the sword and the whip fusing into a curved bow. 

While the theory hasn’t been proven yet, I do support the gems are more humanoid the better their connection and I also believe their weapon is a representation of that as well. However, this is hard to tell with only seeing the weapon of two fusions, so you’re free to ignore this. Sugilite, with their unstable relationship has a weapon which is literally just the two weapons attached to each other, while Opal’s is more of an amalgram of the two. This could even work in the looks area- Sugilite doesn’t really have a cohesive look- it looks like garnet and amethyst’s clothes smashed together. While we see Stevonnie’s and Opal’s outfits have more cohesion and form to them. 

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