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File:Hiei-teargem 7476.jpg

Crying gemstones can be a sucky blessing. Unless Hiei is your big brother, of course.

Cquote1
"...and it was so cold and scary in there, that Albi began to cry dragon tears... Which, as we all know, turn into jellybeans!"
—"Albi the Racist Dragon", Flight of the Conchords
Cquote2


Basically, when a bodily fluid or organ becomes a Mineral MacGuffin once shed or forcibly separated. Typically this only happens when the character shedding, bleeding, or cut apart was already highly magical or supernatural, or a spell of some sort was placed on them. In rare cases, a Muggle experiencing powerful sorrow or happiness can make this happen by virtue of their incredibly intense emotions.

On the other petrified hand, if taken with violence or from those Made of Evil, these might become highly cursed as a form of revenge.

Likely body parts to be crystalized include:

Compare Organ Drops. Contrast Crystal Prison. The jewels made in this way all benefit from All-Natural Gem Polish.

Examples of Body to Jewel include:


Anime & Manga[]

  • The Ginzuishou (AKA Silver Crystal) in Sailor Moon, which forms (at least partially) from Usagi's tears.
    • And the Shitennou in manga, their corpses turn into their namesake stones.
    • The first anime has the people who held the Rainbow Crystals.
  • Yukina's tears in Yu Yu Hakusho become valuable jewelery, which has people trying to make her cry for its value as unnecessarily cruelty.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, the Philosopher's Stone is the crystallized souls of several sacrificial victims transmuted into anything from a stone to a liquid to a crystal. In the 2003 anime adaptation, it's a similar case, only the sacrifices' entire bodies are transformed instead of just their souls.
  • In Princess Tutu, the pieces of Mytho's shattered heart look like red gems. In fact, the red gem pendant that turns Ahiru into Princess Tutu is one of them.
  • In the anime version of Chrono Crusade, Fiore says that her heart is a gem similar to the jewels she uses in her spell casting. In the manga Fiore herself isn't a victim of this trope, but she uses her powers to trap the souls of people inside gems for Aion to fuel his powers with.
  • In Bleach, Ulquiorra's eyeballs can be removed, and, when crushed, form a mist that shows his memories to all who inhale it. The eyes do regenerate, by the way.
  • In one chapter of Ah! My Goddess, Hild extracts a crystalized fragment of herself from her body and gives it to Keiichi to use against Hagall.
  • In Dragon Quest Legend of the Hero Abel: the Big Bad creates monsters from gemstones, killing them makes them revert to those stones. Probably the anime's attempt to justify the Money Spider aspects of the games it's based on.
  • Kite: Akai had some of the orphaned Sawa's parents' blood fashioned into an earring, which has been her most prized possession ever since.
  • In Inuyasha, the Jewel of Four Souls comes from Kagome's body when she is injured. It makes sense: she's the reincarnation of the powerful priestess who guarded it (Kikyou), and it was burned with her corpse after she was murdered.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, whenever a Magical Girl contracts with Kyubey, they get a Soul Gem that grants them their magical powers; The Corruption they gather as they fight Witches is stored inside. They must not let the Gem be completely corrupted, and the best way to stop it is to use the Grief Seeds that the Witches drop when they die to purify the Gem. What the girls don't know is that their souls are literally stored in the Gems, making them Liches in one or another sense, and ther Grief Seeds are actually the Soul Gems of the Witches - because they used to be magical girls. Logically, when the girls do find out, none of them take it well.
  • Princess Tutu has the shards of Mytho aka Prince Siegfried's shattered heart; they look like big, chapped rubies. In fact, one of them is the pendant that Ahiru uses to get her human body AND transform into Tutu; without it, she'll be back to be a duck forever.


Comic Books[]


Film[]

  • In Merlin miniseries Queen Mab sheds one tear which turns into a small crystal, and gives it to her champion, King Vortigen for protection. Vortigen disregards magic, and in abandoning it, gets killed by Merlin for his arrogance. Merlin even comments: “Only one tear was shed for Vortigern, and his pride had cast it away. He paid for it with his life."


Literature[]

  • The Paul Jennings short story Tonsil Eye 'Tis features a character who grows a third eye on his finger, which cries tears that grow into garden gnomes. That sounds absurd, but the character goes on to make a living selling the gnomes.
  • The Star Trek novel Tears of the Singers is about this trope, with an Anvilicious don't-kill-baby-seals plot.
  • The Thirteen Clocks had a woman who cried gemstomes whenever she was sad. Unfortunately by the time the heroes came around, her tears dried up completely due to people telling her sad stories so much. However... she also cries gems when she's laughing hard only for them to turn back into water after two weeks. Long enough for the heroes' purpose.
  • The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg, one of Aesop's Fables.
  • Presumably, the Canim bloodstones from the Codex Alera. It's never fully explained what they are, but they grant protection from the ritualists's Blood Magic, and bleed when they do so (implying limited uses). As such, high-ranking Canim Warriors (the ritualists' rivals) often have several bloodstones embedded in their weapons and armor. This saves Tavi's life, twice.
  • In Robin Mc Kinley's The Hero and the Crown, the last drop of blood a dragon sheds is a ruby.
  • Six of Swords by Carole Nelson Douglas: the tears of the heroine, Irissa, turn into "coldstones." She at least implies on one occasion that the hero is deliberately trying to make her cry so he can sell her tears. It turns out he was deliberately trying to make her cry for another reason.
  • In the Chronicles of Amber, the Jewel of Judgment is an eye of the Serpent of Chaos.
  • Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (part of the Magic Shop series): "Dragons weep diamonds."
  • The dragons in Elizabeth Kerner's trilogy (Song in the Silence, The Lesser Kindred, and Redeeming the Lost) have "soulgems" in their foreheads, placed as if a third eye. The telepathic dragons achieve their most intimate communications when they touch soulgems. When a dragon dies, the living gem shrinks and hardens, so that it looks like an actual cut gem - but the gems are carefully kept, because the dragons can communicate with their ancestors through their soulgems.
  • In Tanith Lee's Lords Of Darkness, Ferazhin, who was created from a flower, has tears that turn into gems. A Drin takes them and turns them into a beautiful collar, which is sent to upper-earth. Any mortal who sees it has to have it, causing murder and mayhem.


Mythology[]

  • Some mythos have dragons weeping diamonds.
  • The Kalevala said that the Finnish hero Väinämöinen's tears turned into pearls.
  • The Norse goddess Freyja was said to weep amber and gold—in poetry, gold might be referred to as "Freyja's tears".
  • In Chinese mythology, jade is sometimes said to be the crystallized semen of a celestial dragon.
  • The Incas called silver "Tears of the Moon" and gold "Sweat of the Sun".
  • In Japanese mythology, samebitos, which resemble humanoid sharks, shed tears that turn into pearls.
  • Several fairy tales (more exactly, of the Aarne-Thompson tale 480 type: the kind and the unkind girls) tell of a Nice Girl who helps out a powerful magic being (often a fairy), so that jewels or pearls will come forth when she either speaks or cries. On the other hand, the girl's Jerkass sister or stepsister is cursed to let out frogs and vipers when she talks because she was rude to the magic being instead. The better known one is Diamonds and Toads by Perrault; others of the same kind are Shita-kiri Suzume (The Sparrow with the Cut Tongue), Mother Hulda, The Three Heads of the Well, Father Frost, The Three Little Men in the Wood, The Enchanted Wreath, The Old Witch and The Two Caskets.


Real Life[]

  • Given that both human body and diamond mostly consist of carbon, the former can be turned into the latter. For example, LifeGem will turn a lock of hair or the cremated remains of a person into gemstones.
  • Depending on their composition, kidney or bladder stones sometimes come in pretty or even sparkly colors. Not bad for crystallized urine.
  • Amber could count, trees are living beings after all.


Tabletop Games[]

  • Dungeons and Dragons.
    • Dark Sun Thri-Kreen, once they start to produce venom, chew a special herb to have their drying saliva turn into hard crystalline material.
    • Forgotten Realms has the gems known as "King's Tears", said to be the crystallized tears of long dead wizard kings. Each one contained an image of the thing the king loved most.
  • The Dragon-Gods of the (true) Dragonwright pantheon (as opposed to the Splugorth-backed fakers in Rifts all have different properties to their blood or scales. Given that they're DRAGON-Gods the size of naval cruisers, getting them without their permission is another matter entirely.
  • The Palladium Mystic China expansion to Ninjas and Superspies included, among other Chi Magic spells, the spell "Weep Beans of Life". The caster wept tears that turned into tasty beans that healed whoever ate them.
  • In the Exalted setting, there's a very powerful artifact known as the Eye of Autocthon. May or may not be Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • In Warhammer 40000, whenever the Eldar goddess Isha cries, her tears become soulstones that the Eldar use to protect their souls from Slaanesh.
    • Eldar blood also crystallizes instead of congealing.


Toys[]

  • 1980s doll line Rose Petal Place. The resident family of a Victorian-style house moved away, and the little girl took one last stroll through its garden, weeping, before they left. Her tears changed some of the flowers into little maidens, and their houses, cars, etc. were similarly transformed toys and gardening implements. Each doll/accessory was thus marked with a "crystal" tear.

Video Games[]

  • MARDEK RPG: Chapter 3 features Dreamstones, which are crystallized thoughts.
  • Rose the elf in Dragon Quest IV cried precious gems and humans constantly tormented her to get them. Made worse when you factor in tears she cried due to joy would crumble right away, but tears of sadness wouldn't.
    • In the DS remake, Rose's tears always crumble when touched. It's implied that elves can make them break apart at will to keep people from collecting them without their approval. Any satisfaction one might feel at knowing the bastards never profited from their evil ways soon gets offset by the realization that this likely didn't stop them from trying. As seen when she's abducted and beaten to the point of death by thugs.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask the moon of Termina is apparently alive. It can cry, and the resulting crystal-like Moon Tears are highly prized by Terminans.
    • Also in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the spanish traslation of the game makes Evil Crystals the "petrified hearts of malicious monsters". Fittingly, the Zombie Bokoblins are the ones dropping them.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Magicite is the crystalline remains of an Esper, which can grant spells and Summon Magic to the holder.
  • l'Cie in Final Fantasy XIII get their souls crystallized early on in the process. When they finish their focus and turn into statues (which are just empty shells), they can be revived later as long as the crystal gem is intact.
  • In World of Warcraft the blood of Yogg-Saron becomes Saronite, a nigh-indestructible metal that drives people mad. It's used to make the highest-level weapons and armor for the Knight in Shining Armor classes, as well as fortresses for the Scourge.
  • In Tales of Symphonia this starts happening to Colette, but is ultimately reversed.
  • Tales of Vesperia has this as the fate of Entelexeia upon their deaths.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, all Silvites are born with shards of the Silver Moon Crystal in their bodies. However, removing these crystals kills them, as does using the ones inside their bodies as a last resort.
  • One of the charms in Planescape: Torment is a Tear of Salieru-Dei, shed by martyred Harmonium officer during his execution.
  • One Oblivion quest revolves around finding Garridan's Tears, magic crystals.
  • A key element of the Jumi story arc in Legend of Mana is that anyone who cries for the Jumi will turn to stone. This specific trope comes into play during the end of the Jumi story arc, when the lead character cries for the Jumi and their tear becomes a Teardrop Crystal, which heals all of the Jumi.
  • Earthbound has the status effect Diamondization. It turns a party member's entire body to diamond, and makes them unable to do anything until healed.
  • The Starbits from Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (which you can collect in the backgrounds with the Wiimote and use them to either feed Lumas or stun enemies with) are actually made from Rosalina's teardrops.


Webcomics[]

  • Soulstones, found in the Earthsong 'verse, formed of semi-sentient minerals which make up the consciousness of planets (read the comic, it's much clearer there) crystallise out of characters' blood INSIDE THEIR CHESTS. If not dealt with correctly by teleporting the relevant character to Earthsong, they then proceed to spontaneously explode.


Web Original[]

  • The Whateley Universe plays this straight with Silver, a supporting student character who sweats Mithril...which in that universe has a number of convenient mystical properties but is usually rather difficult to produce even alchemically. Needless to say, once that fact was discovered, the staff was quick to crack down on any attempts to casually exploit her talent, and there has been at least one kidnapping attempt while she was off the school grounds already.
  • In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, one of the mystic "trinkets" the Ancient-God-Turned-Supervillain Dagon possesses is the "Eye of Aztathoth", a huge spherical crystal that allows him to spy on nearly every location on earth at will. At first the hero just thought it was an ultra-powerful version of the standard crytal ball, but it was later revealed to be an actual eye from the dead god Azathoth.


Western Animation[]

  1. Not to be confused with blood diamonds, which are ordinary diamonds sold on the black market by African warlords.
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