I'm not doing a bunch of Melvin AU related stuff since he's not my favorite, but I'm sure there's a loctation in the multiverse where all the Melvins gather and get to be amongst their ideal peers.
Generation swap, fallen down, and owl house au Melvins belong to @warrior-of-waistbands
ITTHIGSS Melvin belongs to @sugarlol-13
Piqua Mystery Dungeon Melvin belongs to @infini-tree
Bendypants Melvin eblongs to @artistcaptainbendy
Gem Melvin belongs to angrydj (IDK if they are still around)
More Red Diamond AAU doodles (the original Gem AU, as well as Zircon!George, Sapphire!Harold, and Peridot!Melvin belong to angery dj)
I admit that it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role of Spinel OTHER than @artistcaptainbendy’s Spinel!pants (or was it SP!Krupp?*double checks* yeah it was sp!Krupp)
Yes I WAS inspired by Houseki no Kuni/Land of the Lusterous for Melvinborg, in case you were wondering.
Also the ‘Love like you’ lyrics... they seemed highly fitting for this AAU.
Alexandra belongs to me (and Nutmeg is owned by me and artistcaptainbendy).
So after revisiting the Red Diamond AAU, I was all ‘Ok I HAVE to draw for this.’ I did the second drawing first, but then I wanted to add onto it. (And the original Gem AU (as well as zircon!George and Sapphire!Harold) that partly inspired it belongs to @angerydj, so go check their stuff out if you haven’t yet).
(A bunch of notes on the pics are under the keep reading bit)
-For RD!Krupp, I did a mix of his design and a bit of both Pink Diamond and Yellow Diamond I’m also digging the fact that it looks like he’s wearing a cummerbund where the diamond is). My idea was that since if he had ACTUAL hair, it would have been pink, but no one knows that (and this is important if you notice how the colors swap for Pink Diamond and Rose Quartz). I think he’d be as tall as Yellow and Blue Diamond at his largest.
-I tried to keep Zircon!George and Sapphire!Harold’s colors as close as possible to AngeryDJ’s designs for them, but had my own take on their outfits. When I remembered that Sapphire!Harold has one eye, I went my own route with his appearance and gave him an eyepatch. I could see him putting a googly eye on the patch just to be funny, and he’d also have a collection of patches with cool designs (including a gay pride eye patch).
-Alexandra’s (my oc fan child for Edith and Krupp) outfit is obvious considering who she’s in the role of, but I had my own take on it.
-I just see Gooch as some kind of pink gem and I went with a pink tourmaline. And oh my gosh, isn’t he adorable?! ^_^ I love him! I don’t have a clear story for him, but maybe he crash landed on earth after a bout of misfortune and one spaceship from Homeworld. (And is good pals with Bo).
-I felt that Bo would be perfect as a Bismuth (considering her ability to shape shift being similar to his Claylossus form and her making things like he does). I like the idea that he was originally part of the rebellion, was corrupted for quite sometime, and then went back to normal and rejoined his old friends.
-I felt like squeezing in Erica too. Rather than going for the most obvious choice, I picked an emerald because I looked into the lore and apparently they get high authority in the SU world? (Though I placed her gem in her hand as a reference to her VA voicing Sapphire). She’d have a high position in Homeworld, but maybe she was secretly aiding the rebellion in the past and stays quiet when she found out that a few gems were still alive.
So I wanted to make the theory of ‘Gem Parent was alive the whole time’ canon (and I felt like it wouldn’t be as much of a life or death/child or parent situation if the gem parent was a male, or at least that’s what I assume would be the case). But I also had a great ‘what if the gem shattered in half and you get CU and Krupp in separate bodies as a result?’ (which is almost the opposite of the original gem au). I was going to use my actual art style, but then I changed my mind and went back to Pilkey’s style, though I kept the necks the same out of curiosity.
I referenced Rose Quartz’s design a bit of CU. As for ‘what the heck’s up with Krupp’s body’... well, its a consequence from what happened in the ‘Separation’ drabble combined with what happens if someone can’t properly heal you without both halves of the gem. (That and I’m a bit sadistic).
God, pic 2 almost looks like a valentine with all those reds, pinks, and white going on.
More Red Diamond AAU doodles (the original Gem AU and Peridot!Melvin belong to Angerydj. Alexandra belongs to me).
-AngeryDJ does have a canon fusion for Zircon!George and Sapphire!Harold, but I wanted to do my own version (So that isn’t the canon fusion, but I think the fusion DID have a yo-yo as his weapon).
-I have no clue what Krupp’s sister looks like since we have yet to meet her. Thank God for Yellow Diamond’s helmet because then it makes it easy to insert whatever version you have of her until we actually see her (if we ever will).
-I looked up how much red diamonds are worth (since Edith needed some financial help to raise a child and apparently diamonds can create real diamonds in Steven Universe). And I kid you not, they are worth around one million dollars per carat due to how rare they are. Which means I unintentionally made Edith a millionaire before I knew their actual value.
(I don’t know how she’d sell them off, but the world always has people willing to waste so much money just to say they own something this pricy.)
-I hate having to draw characters I hate or are super awful, like Bernice. Luckily I found a way to actually draw her as White Diamond while having a chance to force my wrath onto her. (Is it stupid that I can’t just show her face? Yes. Do I regret it? Nope.)
-Anyone remember that Blue Diamond!Edith idea I had back in 2017? I found an excuse to bring the dress back.
A certain (and very spoilerific, considering when it happens in the Steven Universe cartoon) familiar scene... but with a twist. (Also bit of a warning: there’s blood/ injuries involved.)
Original Gem AU (as well as zircon!George, sapphire!Harold, peridot!Melvin, and tourmaline!Poopypants) belongs to angerydj. Alexandra belongs to me.
(Honestly I was bored and wanted to write something. Then I remembered something I haven’t written out yet which will require a part 2 in the future).
Of all the gems George and Harold had faced, Watermelon Tourmaline was one of the most recurring antagonists. An old gem from their Homeworld days, he had been quite persistent in trying to catch them as well as Red Quartz when he was still around. It was one thing fighting him during the war all those centuries ago, but it was another when it turned out he was still around and was able to come back to earth.
But after he found out that Alexandra had Red Quartz’s–No, Red Diamond’s–gem, he became more dangerous than before. To him, capturing Red Quartz would not only ensure a personal victory over the rebels, but would ensure that no one on Homeworld would ever make fun of him again.
Unfortunately it appeared that this was not going to be like old times. This time he had wised up and had enough back up to ensure a different outcome.
He distracted the sapphire and zircon and their allies with his machines while he himself chased after Alexandra in the destroyed ruins that was once Red Diamond’s base. (It was unfortunate that his young assistant and fellow scientist Orange Peridot decided to ally himself with the little miscreants, but he had other things to care about). Alexandra tried to run away, but Watermelon Tourmaline caught up and all it took was a few attacks from the robot he piloted to make the girl crash to the floor with bruises across her body. He wanted ‘Red Quartz’ to suffer, and held off from doing serious damage, but he couldn’t believe how weak the gem was.
“Is that the best you can do, Quartz?!” Watermelon Tourmaline sneered from inside his robot.
“I’m... I’m not...” Alexandra wheezed as she tried to crawl away, even though she knew it was pointless.
She wasn’t able to crawl away in time when the robot roughly grabbed her between two fingers and held her up until she was facing him. “Stop running away and face me like a real gem!” He sneered. “Show your true self!”
He still thought she was Red Quartz, she realized. He had no clue whose gem in her stomach really belonged to.
Watermelon Tourmaline gave her a sadistic look. “If you won’t, then I’ll make you!” One of the robot’s fingers opened up to reveal a small tweezer like appendage that shot out towards the child and forced her shirt up to reveal the beautiful shining stone in her midsection.
“No don’t!” Alexandra tried to wriggle free. She had no clue what would happen if the gem was pulled out and she didn’t want to find out.
The tweezers pinched the stone and began to tug at it. It hurt so much and Alexandra was screaming as the tugging made her feel as if her insides were going to be ripped out along with it.
“Come on out, Red!”
“NO!” She screamed as she heard George and Harold screaming for her. The moment they arrived on the scene, their eyes grew in alarm and they ran towards the robot with their weapons ready.
But by then it was too late.
The gem finally pulled free–along with bits of human skin and blood that still clung to it.
The child’s scream was almost deafening. It was one of the most awful sounds imaginable.
She was unceremoniously released and she crashed to the floor before anyone could reach her.
Watermelon Tourmaline let out a triumphant laugh as the zircon and sapphire reached Alexandra. “FINALLY!” The robot held up the gemstone that was half coated in blood. “I FINALLY CAPTURED RED QUARTZ! NOW EVERYONE WILL GIVE ME THE RESPECT I RIGHTFULLY DESERVE!”
Both George and Harold had been kneeling beside Alexandra as she cried in pain and clutched her injured navel where the gem once was. They both turned in anger at Watermelon Tourmaline and George was the first to strike. He quickly took out his tie whip and threw it out–willing it to extend as far as it could–until it wrapped around the robot arm’s tweezers.
“GIVE IT BACK!” George yelled as he tugged as hard as he could, while Harold also grabbed onto the weapon and tried to pull alongside him.
“LET GO YOU BRATS!” Watermelon Tourmaline snapped as the robot arm tried to pull away, but the young gems were able to hold their ground.
George tried to pull as hard as he could, but it was clear that something else needed to be done. In a desperate move, Harold took his shield out and threw it at the old gem in the robot. “NO YOU LET GO!” He yelled.
The shield managed to hit Watermelon Tourmaline right in the face, but in the process he pulled the lever for the arm at the same time and not only was the arm able to pull free from the whip, but the tweezers accidentally flung the red diamond into the air.
“NO!” George and Harold yelled when they saw what just happened. George quickly tried to throw the whip out to catch the diamond, but it was like trying to hit a fly with a stick and he missed.
The diamond fell to the ground and cracked perfectly in half on impact before the two halves flung into opposite directions and hit the ground.
“Oh no.” George voiced the fear he and Harold felt as a sinking feeling dropped in their stomaches.
“Ugh,” Watermelon Tourmaline got up and rubbed his face before noticing what happened to the gem. “Oh... well, I guess that’s just as good.” He shrugged. (Though it would have helped his cause if he was able to bring Red Quartz in alive).
“Oh no, oh no, oh no.” Harold shook his head and grabbed his hair as the robot moved its hand towards the broken halves of the diamond. If the diamond had shattered, and the only person who could fix it was now in bad shape, then–
Then to everyone’s shock both halves of the diamond started to glow.
“Wait, what?” Watermelon raised an eyebrow.
“WHAT?!” The zircon and sapphire yelled.
The images that began to form from the broken diamond halves were almost two exact copies of one another. And when they finished, they revealed two very unexpected figures. Both of whom should have been dead and gone.
****
For Benjamin, it was like waking up from a long sleep. He wasn’t able to register or remember much for a few moments as he held his head and tried to come to his senses.
When he looked up, he thought he was seeing himself in a mirror in his Red Quartz form, who was also holding his head and trying to come to his senses.
What he was not expecting was for the mirror image to flinch away. “Red Diamond?!” The mirror image cried out.
“RED DIAMOND?!” Benjamin and his mirror image looked up as Watermelon Tourmaline turned pale pink with shock and nearly jumped out of his robot as he looked at Benjamin. Even though the diamond was dressed a little more causally than normal, and had a faint pink skin tone similar to Red Quartz’s own, there was no mistaking that it was the infamous, long believed to have been dead Red Diamond himself.
“What is going on?” Harold asked George. “You’re seeing this too, right? I’m seeing both–”
“I am.” George nodded as both Red Diamond and Red Quartz were finally face to face, with each persona having one half of the gem that they once had and now had once again.
“You’re–!” Benjamin’s eyes widened as he stared at his counterpart in confusion.
“But I thought you–!” Red Quartz stammered and pointed at his counterpart.
“HOW?!” Watermelon Tourmaline grabbed his hair. “YOU’VE BEEN ALIVE THIS WHOLE TIME?! HOW’S THAT POSSIBLE?! I THOUGHT QUARTZ SHATTERED YOU!”
“Yeah, how are you still alive?!” Red Quartz panicked. He distinctly remembered destroying the evil diamond’s gem in one punch, causing him to flicker out of existence the moment it shattered into fragments.
“Wh-what is–?” Benjamin stammered as he tried to make sense as to where he was. The last thing he remembered was looking at his newborn child and holding her before he gave up his–
Wait.
He looked at the half destroyed, now malformed gem in Red Quartz’s midsection before he looked at his own to see that it was in a similar state.
It was not supposed to look like that. And it wasn’t supposed to be a part of him anymore. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to still exist.
Alarmed, he turned around and the first thing he saw was George and Harold. Both were equally alarmed and horrified (once upon a time, he would have enjoyed seeing that look on their faces and had even longed for it) and they were standing beside a child of about six to eight years old. She was laying on the floor and grabbing her stomach which appeared to be bleeding as the blood stained her shirt and fingers. She was in a state between pain and fatigue, but she struggled to stay awake long enough to look back at him with eyes eerily similar to his own. For one crucial second Benjamin saw his wife in her features–the same freckles, same nose, and even her messy hair reminded him of Edith.
“Da...ddy?” Her voice was barely a wheeze.
George and Harold’s panic increased when they saw the realization in Benjamin’s eyes. When Watermelon Tourmaline noticed that the child was still present, he made a very horrible, stupid mistake on his behalf when he yelled:
“How is his disguise still present?! I thought it’d go away when I took the gem out!”
The deathly calm that fell was a moment of sheer terror for George and Harold.
The moment the zircon and the sapphire saw that the diamond figured out that the child was his own daughter and what had happened to her, they knew something horrible was about to happen.
The fire that began to erupt in Benjamin’s eyes was all too familiar to George and Harold, but they knew this was not the usual kind of anger he had–this kind was the one that was all too rare and far more terrifying. They watched as his body began to tense up and he turned towards the robot and the tourmaline inside it. His clueless other half was still completely lost, but even he saw that the diamond was about to do something unpleasant.
The diamond got up and his body began to flash with light and expand until a split second later a gigantic version of Red Diamond reached the robot and grabbed it. He was not quite at his original full height for some reason, but his form had regained its fire red hue–overcoming the almost human like pink skin tone that he had as Red Quartz and had kept when he originally shedded his original name for good.
They could only watch as Red Diamond tore into the robot. He punched at it and tore its parts off like a wild animal and even the way he was yelling sounded monstrous. The tourmaline inside the robot was screaming in fear for his life and tried to escape out of the robot, but the door was jammed and he couldn’t pull it free.
“Oh this isn’t good!” Harold pulled at his hair.
“Hey we got them all!” Rainbow Kyanite (the fusion of Bo the Bismuth and Gooch the Pink Tourmaline) managed to catch up to them while carrying the easily winded Melvin. Then they saw what was happening, they could only stare in shock.
“What do we do?!” Harold asked George.
“I don’t know, but we got to stop him!” George had no idea what would happen to Red Diamond while he was angry with only a broken gem, but it wasn’t going to be good. Both he and Harold didn’t see Red Quartz looking at Alexandra in confusion (she looked a little familiar to him, but unlike his other half he had no clue who she was or why she was hurt).
“Hey guys, what’s going on?!” The worried Red Quartz pleaded. “Why’s Red Diamond still alive?!”
“Not now!” George snapped as Harold readied his weapon. “Get Alexandra out of here!” He commanded to Rainbow Kyanite. “Melvin, we’ll need your help with this!”
“Right!” The fusion could only respond before letting go of Melvin and carefully picking up Alexandra before he hurried away as fast as possible. At the same time, George and Harold began their own fusion.
Meanwhile Red Diamond continued to viciously tear into the robot as he tried to get to the Watermelon Tourmaline. It had been so long since he felt such anger but this time it was so much worse and he barely registered anything else besides a buzzing in his head, the red in his vision, and the slight pain in his midsection. He didn’t notice his gem not only cracking a little or the angry white and orangish lightning like lines that were starting to flare up across his body.
Just when Red Diamond finally managed to brake the robot into a shapeless mess and was about to reach for the terrified Watermelon Tourmaline, Carnelian quickly grabbed his arm with all four of his arms.
“STOP!” The fusion of George and Harold yelled. While he was taller than the young gems, he was still shorter than the giant Red Diamond to the point that it was like a child trying to stop an adult.
“DON’T STOP ME!” Red Diamond screamed at them, with fangs for teeth and eyes burning an anger. He was oblivious to the beginning of a corruption slowly spreading from his gem–the lines creeping across his stomach and up his arms as he tried to pull free. When he finally managed to knock Carnelian away, he was soon met with a giant yo-yo that wrapped around his body and pinned his arms against his sides.
Melvin readied his arm canon as Red Quartz watched on. He was alarmed at the hatred in Red Diamond’s face–too similar to his own–as the large gem roared and tried to pull free. Why was Red Diamond trying to attack Watermelon Tourmaline? Why was Carnelian trying to stop him?
While Red Diamond was too focused on struggling to get free and snarling at Carnelian, Melvin built up enough energy in his arm canon. The orange peridot took aim and a huge blast of energy struck the diamond in the chest. Without any protective covering to shield himself, the energy blast exploded and the large gem bursted into light.
This time Carnelian was able to catch the broken diamond when it fell and he made sure to quickly bubble it.
Carnelian let out a huge sigh as Watermelon Tourmaline scrambled to get out of the wreckage of his robot. When he was able to pull himself free, he tried to escape, only to find himself hoisted up into the air by Red Quartz himself.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but you must have something to do with this.” Red Quartz frowned at the short gem.
“Me?!” Watermelon Tourmaline spat. “What about you?! Why was Red Diamond fused with you?! Why did he attack me?! Why–?!”
The Watermelon Tourmaline was shot by another blast from Melvin’s canon. He reverted back into his gem form, which fell to the floor, but unlike the red diamond, it didn’t shatter.
“I’ll take that, thank you.” Melvin grabbed the tourmaline and bubbled it as he resumed his usual air of arrogance as a way to mask his own confusion. Red Quartz stared at him, wondering why a gem that normally allied with Watermelon Tourmaline was helping George and Harold instead.
Carnelian unfused and George and Harold reappeared while holding the bubble that contained Benjamin’s half of the gem. It already had a few cracks on it from his rampage on Watermelon Tourmaline.
“What do we do now?” Harold asked, knowing full well that letting Benjamin reform anytime soon would be a bad idea. (He knew what both he and George were in for the next time they’d see him again).
“I honestly don’t know.” George admitted.
“Guys?” The two looked up to see Red Quartz. He gave them a shaky wave before asking “Can you tell me what’s going on now?”
