So, you hear lot about the Cool Kids as analogs of the Crystal Gems. I have many theories now about Dewey and Jamie being analogs for Ruby and Sapphire (and becoming a ship as a result) since Reunited aired, snapping and crackling in my brain like the small twigs of an eastern European pine forest. Here are six points I've been thinking about for an unhealthy amount of time:
Point 1: Color palettes
Bill's color palette is kind of hard to ignore - it's about as close as you could get to making one of the human characters bright ruby red - pretty much a coral color. Jamie’s default mailman outfit is blue, kind of like Sapphire - simple enough.
You'd think Bill’s suit is just grey, but that's a weird color theory thing going on - it's actually shades of purple! Ruby has a little dark purple in her outfit - Garnet has even more. Also, Bill and Jamie also have one bit of blue and red each - Jamie with his chucks and Bill with his tie.
Their appearance in the rupphire wedding is a rubber mallet to the skull as color palettes are concerned:
Bill has ditched the tie, so he has a bit of blue around his shirt collar. Jamie’s belt is dark red. That’s two instances now of hinting at each other’s colors somewhere in their outfits!
This is also the only time I think we see Jamie in a blue shirt that isn’t his work uniform - why blue? Dude wears blue all the time at his day job and his one dressy shirt happens to be blue, too? This feels SO INTENTIONAL.
Point 2: Watery stuff and firey stuff
Jamie ends up in or around water a lot!
In Love Letters alone there’s a ton of stuff - being a total moon calf out in the rain; throwing the mail he was supposed to deliver into the ocean. Then there’s Garnet’s line that first gets Jamie sweet on her in the first place: “I’m a really good swimmer.” Swimming! Water!
He throws a bucket of water on Steven in Historical Friction
He ends up *in the ocean* with the others in I Am My Mom.
You might make a parallel with him and Lapis here because it’s water instead of ice, but water in some form is a common theme with the gems of Blue Diamond's court, so to me it points to a Sapphire thing. Water here = ice. I’d even predict something happening in a future episode with Jamie being cold or dealing with ice - we’ll see!
There’s also the whole theme of Blue Diamond's gems being more emotionally-focused, too. An analogous human would wear his heart on his sleeve a bit - falling in love at the drop of a hat, being overly dramatic and so on.
Warmth or fire tends to be a running theme for Bill, some of the most obvious things:
Melting ice cream in Joking Victim *and* Political Power.
The fireworks show he arranged.
Steven’s bit in Political Power about how, "Mayor Dewey was hiding things from you ... because he loves you," and then you see a shot of a nice fire in the fireplace.
His skin color is basically a perpetual sunburn.
In Political Power, Bill has the line, “you can't control what happens in the world but you can control how people feel about it - that's the real weight I carry - making the good people of Beach City feel better...” Now, he isn’t very successful at keeping people calm ultimately, but he tries, and even references Ocean Town being destroyed because of people rioting/panicking! Water = emotions Fire = composure.
There's weird bits of crossover here, too: Bill gets sprayed in his first appearance, and Jamie accidentally sets his quill on fire while writing his letter to Garnet. They don't do well using each other's elements, do they!
There is only one big counterexample to this I can find, yet even THAT is telling. To be fair, Bill is very much The Boss in Historical Friction and even a bit of a jerk, but then you see this bit at the end?
Jamie gets a fire in his eyes when he gets the position as director of the community theater. Who really started that fire, though? Who gave Jamie all that power? Bill did.
Point 3: Bill has a type
Bill has a crush on Pearl! And hats off to Pewey shippers - ship what you want and live your best life! But I'm afraid I have to bring this ship up from the depths just to sink it, because for my purposes it's a red herring:
Out of the main three Crystal Gems, who does Jamie portray best? Pearl!
Bill is into slender types with big noses, basically. There’s some fun headcanoning to be done about WHY Bill is so ridiculously transparent with Pearl and this hasn't been the case around Jamie. Perhaps he's over-compensating for a crush on Jamie? Perhaps he never thought of Jamie like that before and that will lead to a bit of development for them both? Now that Bill isn't mayor anymore, maybe he feels he can be a little more open about himself. Who knows?
Point 4: SU Tap Together
This post on the SU Tap Together game. tl;dr - they give Dewey and Jamie VERY SIMILAR abilities to Ruby and Sapphire as starters. I doubt it's coincidental.
Point 5: Buck’s dad
Pretty much the whole fandom agrees that Buck is an analog for Garnet. In some way, Garnet is the product of Ruby and Sapphire. Would it not make sense that Buck would have two dads to parallel Garnet's two 'moms'?
I am calling it now - Buck is going to get a second dad - a dad that can ultimately help foster his interest in art in a healthy, supportive way that his other dad hasn't been able to do up to now; a dad who is a creator and artist in his own way - as an actor! Jamie's gonna become Buck's second dad!
Point 6: It's time!
This is more meta, but we have several canon/near-canon fem ships. Would this show really have SO many sapphic and het ships and then have little-to-no men together? It just feels like next logical step to ALL THE inclusiveness that makes this show what it is! Dewmie is endgame! Soylent Green is people!
That's pretty much it. I’m kicking myself because way back, with all the hints at Garnet being a fusion so early, we all might have missed one of the most obvious ones - that the analogs for the gems that made her up as a fusion were there from the beginning and no one noticed!
So, that's it. Grab a brochure and a stale cookie on your way out. Thanks for reading!
