.The story is about a human girl named Morrigan Thomas who, after slipping into a hole in a quarry on a dark and stormy night, is attacked by Jasper in the Kindergarten. In a flash, Jasper is inexplicably poofed and Morrigan has transformed into the Gem Morganite. From hereon, Morganite joins the Crystal Gems and attempts to protect the Earth and fight alongside them as she meets new friends and fights unlikely enemies.
This fic is well known for being written by the beta reader of the notorious Free! fanfiction Chlorine Grown Roses, a fic sharing similar problems that was written by Akira's friend SonicXKimmy172. Akira is also writing a Black Butler fanfic titled Blackest Of Nights, which isn't much better than Morganite.
Just like Chlorine Grown Roses, a chapter-by-chapter critique of Morganite can be found here, given by the ever-fabulous character-critique-central admin Great White. Though all of the chapters are currently reviewed, they are queued to be posted every Monday. Due to the death of Akira's grandmother, however, CCC has postponed these reviews for an unspecified amount of time.
Morganite contains examples of:
- Adaptational Wimp: Kunzite says in Chapter 13 that Lapis was mind controlled by the Himitsu because she's weak. Canon has reinforced several times how powerful Lapis' water powers are, and in the mental department, she was able to hold Jasper in Malachite for months without a break.
- Anachronism Stew: When in the canon of Steven Universe does Morganite take place? It's implied to take place after Jail Break due to the presence of Jasper in Chapter 1 (which, confusingly enough, takes place six years in the past), but at that point in canon, Jasper and Lapis were fused as Malachite under the sea; thus, Jasper couldn't have made Morrigan into a Gem and Lapis couldn't have killed Sonia in Chapter 4 and stolen the ocean unless it was set after they unfused in Super Watermelon Island, but in that case, Peridot and Lapis should be with the Crystal Gems. Lapis does leave in Raising the Barn, but that doesn't explain Peridot's absence, and in any case, by that point in the show Jasper was corupted (which happened in Earthlings). It could be justified by the story being written before Peridot's redemption, but if that was the case Jasper and Lapis would still be fused, as Catch and Release (where Peridot begins living with the Crystal Gems) took place prior to Super Watermelon Island, when Alexandrite de-fused Malachite.
- Artistic License – Biology: Well, Gem biology, at least. The most glaring example is seen in the first chapter, wherein Morrigan becomes Morganite by being strangled by Jasper and dropped in some kind of magic puddle. Needless to say, biology (along with basically everything else) doesn't work like that.
- In the show, it's fairly obvious that Gems have their gemstones attached to their body in some way (Steven's is on his belly button, Pearl's is on her forehead, etc.), no matter whether they're from or what their origins are. Enter Aquamarine and Cinnabar, who both have gems attached to pieces of their clothing; Aquamarine's gem is on the obi of her furisode, while Cinnabar's is on her necklace. This is later explained to be because they're members of the Himitsu group, who all disguise as humans and wear their gems as if they were accessories despite such a thing being impossible for Gems to feasibly do.
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The Zircons from The Trial do have their Gems appearing on their cravats, although in this case they were still connected to the gem's body.
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- In the show, it's fairly obvious that Gems have their gemstones attached to their body in some way (Steven's is on his belly button, Pearl's is on her forehead, etc.), no matter whether they're from or what their origins are. Enter Aquamarine and Cinnabar, who both have gems attached to pieces of their clothing; Aquamarine's gem is on the obi of her furisode, while Cinnabar's is on her necklace. This is later explained to be because they're members of the Himitsu group, who all disguise as humans and wear their gems as if they were accessories despite such a thing being impossible for Gems to feasibly do.
- Author Avatar: Akira-chan claims to have subverted this trope by giving Morganite poorly-written social anxiety, though the two characters still have a lot in common. Morganite's human last name, Thomas, is even similar to Akira's real life last name, Thomson.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "we, and kunzite, and me" from Chapter 8.
- Also, the description of Morganite's appearance after becoming a Gem in Chapter 1 uses the word 'pink' to a disgusting extent.
- Expy: Just like Chlorine Grown Roses, Morganite rips a character right from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair in the form of Morganite's friend Sonia, who looks, acts, and even shares the same name as Sonia Nevermind.
- The backstory for the OC Kunzite seems to be ripped directly from the anime Sgt. Frog, even down to Kunzite's obsession over Gundam.
- After Akira says that she's finished Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, two OCs appear in the fic who seem to be ripoffs of Tatsumiya and Samekichi/Sal, along with possible influences from other characters in the game. It's also revealed that there were aquatic Gems who lived under the ocean that resembled sea creatures or mermaids, which is ripped directly from Wadanohara.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Aquamarine and Cinnabar, when questioning what Gundam is, sound it out in Japanese ("Gan-dam-u?").
Aquamarine is wearing a kimono, though, so there's a small chance that the two aliens living in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean off of the east shore of the United States could have origins in Japan.- For some reason, the convenience store in Chapter 12 is consistently called a 'konbini'. Inside, Morganite meets a girl named Shouru Himitsu who has (what can be assumed to be) a Japanese accent and, at one point, even speaks in Japanese.
- Gratuitous Spanish: In Chapter 5, Morganite changes into 'moreno' (brown) socks, and though this could easily just be a misspelling of the word 'Mayor', Mayor Dewey is called 'Mejor' (best) Dewey in Chapter 7.
- Hypocrite: Kunzite insults Morganite's outfit in Chapter 13 despite the fact that she was the one who gave her the outfit in the first place. Morganite even points this out, to which Kunzite gives no rebuttal.
- Jerkass: Although everyone in Morganite has their fair share of Jerkass in them, the most glaring of them is Kunzite, who constantly insults and berates Morganite for no good reason and inexplicably seems to become racist towards Aquamarine and Cinnabar in Chapter 9 just to make matters worse. This was pointed out to Akira by character-critique-central on numerous occasions, to which Akira defended Kunzite by saying that she was just stressed out because she lost her Gundam.
- Kids Are Cruel: Morrigan's friends when she was eight, Delilah and Holly, are unnecessarily cruel to her without any motivation whatsoever. While they're written off in the next chapter in favor of kinder friends, Kunzite—who had may as well be six, based on her attitude and appearance—quickly picks up where they left off,
along with being variably worse because no one dislikes her for her bad attitude except for Cinnabar, who's later revealed to be a villain anyway. - Manipulative Bastard: Kunzite motivates Morganite to do things she doesn't want to in some of the earlier chapters by telling her that that's what Sonia would have wanted her to do.
- Mark of the Supernatural: Shouru Himitsu has a red eye and a blue eye (though both are apparently her left eye). In all likelihood, this is because she's a Gem.
- Meaningful Name: Morrigan Thomas' name is probably intended to be ironic in some way because, as Delilah points out in Chapter 1, she shares her given name with Morrigan, the Celic god of war. And her last name was probably selected because of its similarity to Thompson, the author's last name.
- It's also averted with Gem names, which usually have a meaning in gemology that is either connected or deeply ironic to the character (And often both at the same time. None of the Gem names in Morganite have any meaningful connection to their gemology meaning.
- The new character in Chapter 12, Shouru Himitsu, has a Japanese name that translates to 'Schorl Secret' (or 'Secret Schorl' in Eastern order, which is how she gives Morganite her name), making it painfully obvious that she's a Gem in disguise and probably belongs to the Himitsu (Secret) group introduced in Chapter 13.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Apparently, wearing a bandage to cover the gem on her throat is enough to keep Morganite's identity as a Crystal Gem a secret from the people she attends school with, despite her pink skin, pink eyes, and pink hair.
- In Chapter 13, Kunzite tells Morganite about an association of Gems called Himitsu who are trying to take over the world by posing as humans. Known members so far are Aquamarine—who has bright blue skin, blue hair, and lives underwater—and Cinnabar—who has pink skin, red eyes, and lives underwater. Who'd have guessed that they were Gems? And if the new character Shouru Himitsu—who not only has the name of a gemstone in Japanese and has the name of the association for a last name—happens to be a member, she's doing a pretty bad job at disguising herself, too.
- Plot Hole: If Lapis stole the ocean, where did she put it? In the show, she created a pillar with it so that she could reach outer space, but no such thing happens here. It's just entered Hammerspace, it seems.
- In Chapter 13, Kunzite says that when the Crystal Gems find Lapis, she'll be unconscious and would have just fallen out of mind control. However, a few paragraphs before, Kunzite reasons that she stole the ocean because she wanted to expose the Himitsu, who made her kill Sonia. In a timeline sense, this means that she was mind controlled, released from mind control long enough to take the ocean, and mind controlled again so she could be knocked unconscious.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: The wrong 'there', 'their', and 'they're' are used constantly, along with the wrong 'to', 'two', and 'too'. Besides that, characters also get this treatment, with misspellings being somewhat common. Some particularly amusing misspellings that come to memory include 'meeply' instead of 'meekly', 'groled' and 'scoofed' instead of 'growled' and 'scoffed' (respectively), 'diock' instead of 'dock', 'shrecked' instead of 'shrieked', and 'reisen' instead of 'reason'.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Sonia's death comes randomly in Chapter 4 after three chapters of nothing but casual canon breaks and fluff.
- Shout-Out: Some very poorly executed ones can be seen here, such as with Aquamarine and Cinnabar being referred to as 'seadwellers' on numerous occasions (which is either a Shout-Out or a complete coincidence) and a random mentioning of 'determination' turning into a random paragraph-long author's note about the source it's referencing.
- Chapter 5 is titled 'Beautiful mourning', which may be a shout-out to the song "Beautiful Morning" from the Danganronpa OST. And on the topic of chapter titles, 'Good ship hunting!' seems to be a reference to the film Good Will Hunting.
- Even if Morganite is routinely as dumb as a pile of rocks—along with most of the other characters in the fanfic—at least she had the sense to see how suspicious a Japanese teenager standing alone in a convenience store who doesn't appear to be human asking to speak to her in private is and lied about having company because she felt like she was being threatened.
- Take That!: The author's notes of Morganite after the third or fourth chapter begin getting really heated, and Akira-chan often goes on rants about evil plans to take down her critics and brags about how much better her writing is than they make it out to be. This comes to a head when Akira kills all of the sharks in the ocean within the canon of her fic just to spite character-critique-central, who is a known aficionado of sharks. Apparently she has another villainous 'punishment' in the works, but it has yet to be revealed.
- Technicolor Eyes: While Morganite's pink eyes can be excused because of her status as a Gem, her friend Doobie is described as having purple eyes.
- The Ghost: Connie is mentioned at least once in the fic, but she's never seen or heard from on screen. Morganite's parents are also not present.
- Took a Level in Dumbass: A lot of the canon characters suffered from this, especially Steven, Pearl, and Ronaldo. Steven is made out to be entirely useless and oblivious to the dangers around him (as seen when he sleeps on the couch while Kunzite destroys his house and the Gems struggle to contain her), Pearl is uncharacteristically ditzy to the point where she forgets that humans have to go to school, and it would take an entire article to summarize how stupid Ronaldo is portrayed to be in the few chapters he appears in.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Kunzite originally seemed to be a shy and cute character in her introduction chapter (and even appears to be rather unassuming in the page image for the fic, which was drawn by SonicXKimmy172), but she hit a downward slope after that.
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Morganite overuses commas even more than Chlorine Grown Roses. Fitting, since Akira has a part in writing both fics.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After debuting in the first chapter, Jasper is never seen or mentioned again.
- Until he reappeared in Chapter 10 to contribute basically nothing to the story, Doobie seemed to be missing from the story after Chapter 3 despite one of his best friends getting the ax.
