Twenty years ago, Clancy Miller left Beach City, leaving his ex-wife Barb and their daughter, Sadie.
Now he's back in town for a job, and Sadie hopes to learn more about him - sometimes, though, it's best to just let sleeping dogs lie...
Red Sadie
is a series of Steven Universe fanfics by E350tb, where Sadie's father is a government agent, and his sudden return changes the lives of everyone involved - especially Sadie's.
There are currently two works in this series: The Eye of the Storm, and Ruby Stars.
Note: all spoilers for The Eye of the Storm will be unmarked. You have been warned.
Tropes for the series as a whole:
- Shout-Out:
- The Eye of the Storm: Amethyst mentions that she thinks Peridot getting mad at Marzio Party is really funny.
- Ruby Stars:
- In response to Sadie saying that she's never seen Buck angry before, Jenny says she should see him playing "Super Bash Bros.", to which Buck bitterly replies that Smirby is incredibly cheep.
- In one chapter, Connie notes that a jukebox was unplugged because "Someone set it up to play What's New Pussycat 21 times in a row."
Tropes for The Eye of the Storm:
- Cerebus Retcon: Within canon, Amethyst and Greg's interest in Li'l Butler was obsessive but relatively tame, simply serving as the eventual backdrop for their falling out, while Rose, Garnet and Pearl did nothing to stop them. Eye of the Storm reveals that Rose, Garnet, and Pearl purposefully used the two's love for the show to keep Kay a secret from them while she adjusted to Earth.
- Entertainingly Wrong: To keep Clancy from taking Kay's gem back to the government, Barb asks Greg to pick up the box the gem was in to hide it. Greg, however, had no idea what was in the box or that Barb and Clancy had any involvement with the Gems, so he assumed it was a gift for Sadie's birthday, and figured the safest place to hide it would be in Barb's closet; he also had no idea that as he was walking into the Miller residence, Steven, Connie, Amethyst, and Sadie were ransacking Barb's room to figure out what she was hiding.
- Foreshadowing: Before Clancy leaves her office, Nanefua notes that despite being her dad, Sadie looks nothing like him. It's later revealed that he isn't actually her father.
- The Reveal: Clancy isn't Sadie's father. Her "father" is actually Kay, a Ruby, meaning Sadie is half Gem.
- Wham Shot: Sadie digs through Clancy's dropped wallet in an attempt to learn more about him, and instead stumbles upon an old picture of him and Barb discovering a crashed Roaming Eye, revealing they both have more stake in the Gems then she thought.
Tropes for Ruby Stars:
- Character Development: Inverted. Amethyst's relationship with Pearl temporary deteriorates back to the constant, heated arguments of Season 1 due to her fury at her and Garnet for not telling her about Kay.
- The Dragon: Seraphinite is White Diamond's right-hand Gem, acting as her voice and being there in her place when White can't or doesn't want to be. White trusts her enough that she gifted Seraphinite a weapon imbued with her Mind Control powers should she ever need them.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: While Sadie's passed out, she experiences the day Kay emerged from her hole, which occurred thousands of years ago.
- Eye Colour Change: Sadie's eyes permanently change from green to red after Kay's gemstone melds back into her.
- Fusion Dance: In "Beta Buddies", Steven and Connie Fuse into Stevonnie to combat a giant Corrupted worm. After they, Amethyst and Sadie cling to the worm while it burrows underground, Stevonnie and Amethyst in turn Fuse together to become "Smokonnie Quartz" to poof the worm before she can dig back up and attack them again.
- Internal Reveal: Seraphinite uses her powers to read Pearl's mind after noticing her hands automatically swoop up to cover her mouth, discovering that Rose Quartz, and by extension Steven, is Pink Diamond.
- Irony:
- Lapis fled the Earth to escape the Diamonds' wrath, only to get captured and used by White Diamond's Dragon.
- Buck, one of the most chill and levelheaded people in Beach City, tells Sadie that if she needs to scream or let out her anger, she should do it.
- Hidden Depths: Buck shares with Sadie that he's a fan of old steam locomotives while in an abandoned train yard they were shooting a music video in. As he's The Stoic cool guy, Sadie is a bit taken aback by it.Buck: Pretty cool backdrop, huh? I think it's a Baldwin E2 Atlantic. Early 1900s. Pretty rare, huh?
Sadie: (Beat) Never took you for a train buff.
Buck I used to sit in the corner of the library during recess as a kid. Train books had the biggest pictures. - Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- The fic's summary wastes no time in saying that Sadie is half Gem, something that was built up to in the previous fic.
- Later chapters casually incorporate the show's reveal of Rose Quartz being Pink Diamond, which took years and a curveball before it was revealed.
- Playing with Fire: As she's part Ruby, Sadie has the ability to summon fire, which she unfortunately finds out by accidentally setting a wooden support beam on fire and causing the warehouse they were in to go up in flames.
- Poor Communication Kills: In Amethyst's anger over being kept in the dark about Kay, she convinces the others to not tell Garnet and Pearl that they're going to try to put Sadie's gem back into her. Sadie later passes out due to the incredibly poor reaction between her body and her gem, which forces a visit to the Sun Incinerator so Peridot has the right technology to resuscitate her.
- Sudden Eye Colour: Sadie's eyes are described as green pre-gem lodging, while they're black in the show.
- Wham Line: Clancy states that Sadie having Kay's gem is very bad, and not because the government wants it or because it's giving her powers she doesn't know how to control. It's because of "the network", the systematic mind control used by White Diamond to keep the Gems in her court under her power at all times."The psychic control network," replied Barb, "That kept the Gems that belonged to White Diamond in line."
- A Wizard Did It: When Greg asks how Rose was able to remove Sadie's gem with no consequences, as Steven needs his to live, Barb and Clancy simply reply, "Gem magic".
