merfairymakes

[merfairymakes]

Just in time for pride month, it's Polka Dot Gem!! She is a skinny Dalmatian Jasper, as you can probably tell

Like with Firefly, I will be borrowing a lot of story elements from my friend's fanfic, C Listers. There will be some key backstory differences here though.

TW: Mentions of abuse

Like many quartzes, she was made with the purpose of being a soldier, but due to her defect she found herself falling behind a lot of the other quartzes she trained with.

So, the gems in charge of her handed her over to STAR Labs to see if they could "improve" her with their experiments.

They found a way to infect her gem with an inter-dimensional virus which gave her control over "dots" that could do several things. These include melting things/gems, create portals, levitating dots that can be ridden, discus dots, and bubbles strong enough to contain most gems that still have physical forms.

But there are major drawbacks to these powers. First of all she has to deal with full-body chronic pain every day, with it getting worse the more she pushes her powers to their limits. Secondly, if she does not expel dots at least twice a day, they will kill her.

While in STAR Labs, the lead scientist would physically and emotionally abuse her and the other gems that made up Project Cadmus. Eventually, Dots killed this scientist in a moment of panic, and then fled the labs.

Immediately after, she was consumed by guilt and began hallucinating the lead scientist berating her. Believing she was now a horrible person, and to spite the lead scientist, she became a villain.

But as of recently, she's been trying to be better. She's getting therapy from Harley for her mental illnesses, and now that she has a new partner, she's starting to become more confident.

Base by: @pocket-gems

Individual designs under the cut

[merfairymakes]

Okay so basically this whole canon I'm making is pretty much based on the fanfic, C Listers by my friend because I'm obsessed with it. So naturally I had to add Sarah Cassidy in Pearl form.

For those uninitiated, she's a therapist at Arkham, and she shows up in the Arkham video game series as a minor character.

In this iteration and in C Listers, she becomes Firefly's girlfriend. She's very empathetic and does her best to balance supporting her patients with minimizing the harms they cause.

Also, this isn't specifically about her, but I will also note that the biggest difference between Gotham Gems and C Listers (aside from the gem stuff) is that I will be entirly skipping the Strange/Arkham City arc.

I used a base from the show for her, and as usual I will add the transparent version under the cut.

Yeah I've decided I'm doing C Listers now. So here's Firefly! A Fire Agate!

CW: Mentions of Abuse

When she first emerged, she and another Agate were under the mentorship of an older pair of Agates, a practice which is pretty standard in this Era of gemkind.

What wasn't typical is how said mentors essentially failed to do any mentoring whatsoever. On good days they were neglectful, and on bad days abusive.

They were eventually taken away and sent to spend the rest of their formative years at a boot camp, where the instructors were very against any "organic activities," and abusing any gem that had a single inkling of being interested in "acting like an organic".

Eventually she graduated and spent some time in the gem military proper, then once she had accumulated enough credits, she went to school to work in pyrotechnics and other special effects.

She had a pretty successful career in movie magic up until she was framed for a fire that happened on set. So she got her revenge on the gem that framed her and met Killer Moth, who convinced her to become a rogue and team up. They've been working together ever since.

Base by @pocket-gems

As usual, individual designs under the cut

[merfairymakes]

Yeah I've decided I'm doing C Listers now. So here's Firefly! A Fire Agate!

CW: Mentions of Abuse

When she first emerged, she and another Agate were under the mentorship of an older pair of Agates, a practice which is pretty standard in this Era of gemkind.

What wasn't typical is how said mentors essentially failed to do any mentoring whatsoever. On good days they were neglectful, and on bad days abusive.

They were eventually taken away and sent to spend the rest of their formative years at a boot camp, where the instructors were very against any "organic activities," and abusing any gem that had a single inkling of being interested in "acting like an organic".

Eventually she graduated and spent some time in the gem military proper, then once she had accumulated enough credits, she went to school to work in pyrotechnics and other special effects.

She had a pretty successful career in movie magic up until she was framed for a fire that happened on set. So she got her revenge on the gem that framed her and met Killer Moth, who convinced her to become a rogue and team up. They've been working together ever since.

Base by @pocket-gems

As usual, individual designs under the cut

[merfairymakes]

Ha! You thought I was gonna do another A Lister, didn't you? But nope!!! It's Killer Moth babeyyyy!!!

Anyway

Moth had a very rough start in life. The Aquamarine meant to mentor her took one look at her and her weird coloration and decided to Karen out to the Peridots that grew her, pointing and screaming about how "unacceptable" she is.

Despite the Peridots' best efforts, she took the purple inclusion as a sign that she was defected, and refused to take her in.

Many years pass, and she found one job that was willing to hire her despite her "defect". It was pretty sketchy, but she didn't have many options, so she accepted.

Her job was pretty standard for an Aquamarine, being an archivist and artifact curator. The whole thing was basically a money laundering scheme, as well as a way to smuggle and sell stolen goods under the table.

Eventually, the authorities managed to catch on, but she managed to make it out before everything came to a head.

After that she came up with a scheme of her own: to get paid protecting the not-so innocent. Thus, Killer Moth was born.

Base by @pocket-gems, and individual designs under the cut.

[merfairymakes]

Next up is Mister Freeze! Or just Freeze here, since there's no misters in gem society.

Her backstory is roughly the same as it is in BTAS, with some adjustments to make it work with gem biology.

Basically, Nora (who is a Pearl in this AU) was shattered and then repaired, but something went wrong with the process and her gem couldn't fully reform a physical form for her, just kinda glitching out and keeping her in the floating, humanoid but otherwise featureless phase.

Freeze is still a scientist in this AU, and so she uses her position to try and find a cure for Nora, but is ultimately found out, and in the process she spills some of the chemicals she was using on her gem.

This gives her ice powers instead of water powers, along with a similar condition to Nora where she loses her physical form when her gem is above freezing.

So, she makes a coldness gauntlet to cover her gem, and armor for the rest of her since she can't fly anymore due to her ice powers just freezing her wings every time she tries to form them.

As usual, transparent close-ups of her forms are under the cut

Credit to @artifiziell for the base, and to the show for the left hand.

[merfairymakes]

Next up is Peridot Riddler!! (CW for mentions of abuse)

As you can probably tell, she's a lot taller than canon Peridot, and that's because growing gems isn't 100% dependent on diamond essence anymore.

Instead, it uses the essence of the gems they're trying to make with a bit of Diamond essence mixed in. So, she's able to reach her full height despite the shortage of Diamond essence.

Riddler's first job was to work in the very same Kindergarten that she was grown in. Her main job was as a maintenance worker, ensuring the growing vats were running smoothly and churning out gems in a timely manner.

The head Peridot in charge of the Kindergarten was not a fan of the way new Gems had to be taught to do their jobs instead of coming out knowing everything they need.

So, she'd take her frustration out on Riddler and any other new Peridots by responding with physical abuse whenever she would make a mistake.

Because of this, as soon as her training was over, Riddler went to look for a new job and found one in a different facility, one more focused on engineering and software development.

She worked hard at this job for years, building up credibility and accomplishing quite a bit, earning the company a great deal of notoriety.

It gave her a lot of pride, believing she had risen above the crowd, but it all came crashing down when her superior took all the credit, mocking her for believing she'd be rewarded for all her efforts.

So, she turned to villainy, both for revenge and to gain the fame and recognition she always desired.

(Slighty adjusted) base is by @pocket-gems

Individual designs under the cut

[merfairymakes]

For Scarecrow, I decided to go with an orange Jade, mainly because I headcanon that outside of balls, Jades act as overseers to various factories on planets.

As per usual, her backstory is relatively consistent with the one Scarecrow had in BTAS. I do add on some other details from the comics as well.

As you may have noticed, Jade Scarecrow is a skinny version of the jades seen in the show. So as a result, she spent a lot of her early life being bullied for her defect.

This lead her to develop a fascination with fear, and a desire to master it both in herself and others. So naturally, she became a researcher dedicated to this cause.

Unfortunately, her methods were deemed too unethical by her peers, and she was kicked out of the college and effectively banned from any further research.

So she became an overseer at a chemical plant in Gotham, secretly using the chemicals she had access to in order to formulate fear toxin, which she would use in order to terrorize the institution that kicked her to the curb.

All her other crimes after that are similarly dedicated to spreading and studying fear, as well as maintaining her position in Gotham's underworld.

Base is by @pocket-gems

As usual, transparent close-ups are under the cut

[merfairymakes]

For Poison Ivy, I went with a Petrified Wood because of course I had to go with something plant-based. She's also the first of the gems I'm drawing without a canon counterpart.

Credit goes to @artifiziell again for the base, and for the gem type.

Now, time to get into her lore! First I want to start out by explaining the role Petrified Woods have in Gotham gem society. Initially their purpose was to prepare planets for colonization by bringing all life to peak fertility.

But after a major civil war and the remaining diamonds stepping down as leaders, Gotham began shifting it's gem production into more sustainable methods. Petrified Woods were a key part in this, maintaining the organic life Kindergartens instead of letting gem production to suck all the life away.

Eventually a new way to produce gems was discovered and developed, but I won't get too into that just yet. The important part is that the process involves growing and harvesting organics.

All Petrified Woods have an innate ability to sense how a plant is doing, whether it needs water or sunlight, how deep its roots go, or if there's some kind of affliction keeping it from growing.

For Poison Ivy specifically, her connection with plants has always been much higher than most, to the point where being around plants that are being harmed causes her a great amount of distress. So you can imagine how she feels about the practice of harvesting plants to make new gems.

The last straw for her is when the land that nature preserve she was maintaining gets taken away from her to make room for a new prison for defective gems. The project of course, being headed by Brown Zircon (aka Harvey Dent). Her backstory differs from BTAS in that instead of poisoning her, she lures Zircon into her greenhouse and imprisons her in a plant, leading Batquartz to investigate where she went.

As usual transparent close-ups are under the cut

[merfairymakes]

Next up is Mister Freeze! Or just Freeze here, since there's no misters in gem society.

Her backstory is roughly the same as it is in BTAS, with some adjustments to make it work with gem biology.

Basically, Nora (who is a Pearl in this AU) was shattered and then repaired, but something went wrong with the process and her gem couldn't fully reform a physical form for her, just kinda glitching out and keeping her in the floating, humanoid but otherwise featureless phase.

Freeze is still a scientist in this AU, and so she uses her position to try and find a cure for Nora, but is ultimately found out, and in the process she spills some of the chemicals she was using on her gem.

This gives her ice powers instead of water powers, along with a similar condition to Nora where she loses her physical form when her gem is above freezing.

So, she makes a coldness gauntlet to cover her gem, and armor for the rest of her since she can't fly anymore due to her ice powers just freezing her wings every time she tries to form them.

As usual, transparent close-ups of her forms are under the cut

Credit to @artifiziell for the base, and to the show for the left hand.

[merfairymakes]

Keeping it a bit more simple with Two-Face! Naturally I had to make her a Zircon, since she is a lawyer after all. Again, her backstory is pretty much the same as in BTAS. An explosion explodes and heats up half her gem, making her look like that. She has cracks on her face because of course it was a traumatic experience.

Pay attention to the diamonds on her elbows in her first form, it will come up later ;)

Base by @artifiziell

As usual, individual transparent designs under the cut

[merfairymakes]

Next in line is Joker Spinel! Not much of a divergence from Batman canon here, aside from her being able to stretch like Spinel from Steven Universe. And yes, I do mean "her." No male gems here, since I'm already taking some other liberties when it comes to canon just to make certain characters' backstories make sense.

As usual, the separate, transparent versions are under the cut.

Base by @artifiziell

[merfairymakes]

Wrong Blog! Send asks here please

Harley Quinn as a Pearl!

She's the first in a list of gem designs I'm going to make for Batman characters. Basically, in this AU I'm re-imagining Gotham as if it were gem homeworld, trying to balance elements from both Steven Universe and Batman.

I will not be doing the rest of the DCU because idk how I'd deal with the alien origins for a lot of the characters in the Justice League and beyond.

Her backstory in this AU is basically the same as in Batman canon, so I'm not gonna get into too much detail. She meets Joker, jumps in the chemicals, etc. I will say that the chemicals did make her emotions a bit more extreme though instead of just vaguely "crazy." That's really the only difference though

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an ask!

Transparent individual designs under the cut

[merfairymakes]

A blue pearl nicknamed "Eyepatch" who used to serve a sapphire that hardly acknowledged her. So once the diamond authority was disbanded and era 3 started, she took this opportunity to finally leave and went to little homeschool, where she eventually volunteered to be part of a ship that went around looking for lost gems, and telling the gems that are causing problem to stop.

Patch's role on the ship is similar to that of a secretary, getting the paperwork in order, and explaining to gems their rights in era 3, and the changes that come to it to any gem that may not have gotten the message.

She's very timid around new people, as she is not used to being paid attention to, in either a positive or negative light. As a result, she's pretty easy to fluster, but she slowly gains confidence as she gets to know her crew better. She is especially close to the aquamarine that serves as the ship's captain.

[merfairymakes]

This Ruby and Peridot were traveling to some far off colony with a cache of technology when suddenly something in the engines broke and the ship crashed on an undiscovered planet. They were the only two survivors, with the other four rubies shattering on impact.

Unfortunately for these two, they absolutely HATE each other, and now that they're the only company they have on this planet, they're gonna have to learn to deal.

Peridot has the know-how to fix the ship, but they're going to need a lot of replacement parts to get it working again. Not only that, but there is plenty of hostile wildlife, which Ruby can generally handle.

Basically, this all culminates in them having this toxic codependency where they really cannot just go their separate ways and have a decent chance of getting out of here. That's not gonna stop them from fighting contantly though.

[merfairymakes]

A scene from Welcome Back, by beloved partner @lizluvscupcakes 's fic/AU!!!!! Please go give it a read if you can!!!!

[merfairymakes]

Local Beetle Found Dead of Rizz Overdose

Robbie Robs belongs to the wonderful @clownsuu!!!!

This ship prompt I came up with has been bouncing around in my head for awhile, so I figured this funny beetle man would be the perfect target for y/n’s charms >:)

[merfairymakes]

For my beloved partner, @lizluvscupcakes and her incredible fic, Welcome Back!!

Here’s the link if you haven’t checked it out yet!!

Summary: After fifty years off the air, Welcome Home has been retconned into the 21st Century, which has been no time at all for everyone there. But Wally has been aware for fifty years, and doesn’t take kindly to the sudden adjustment. OR, Wally is inadvertently gaslit after fifty years in actual hell.