”I was wrong about fusion, you made me understand. Malachite was bigger and stronger than both of us. We could fly!”
“It’ll be better this time, I’ve changed! You’ve changed me!”
Hoo-boy, Jasper.
The context of that dialogue is so important.
The “change” was Jasper fighting against the fusion, fighting for her freedom, seeing fusion as power instead of a shameful act.
While the act of fusion cannot be forced, Lapis DID force them to stay together as Malachite: Jasper screamed “NO!” when Lapis was pulling them underwater, and Lapis’ subsequent struggle to keep her subdued in chains, a sentence she meant to carry out forever. It seemed disproportionately cruel, a punishment, where a bubble would have worked. In Chille Tid, Lapis refused Steven’s offer of help. With Alone At Sea, we were given Lapis’ real reasoning for doing all this in the first place. It wasn’t to protect Steven, this episode proved how little a threat Jasper was to Lapis or the Crystal Gems at the end of Jailbreak.
It was to have power over someone else, giving her a sense of control she was denied for thousands of years. For what she suffered from both the Homeworld Gems and the Crystal Gems, for what she suffered in the mirror, she wanted to be in that position of power, and so the cycle continued. I don’t even think it mattered who it was, Jasper was just the opportunity that presented herself first.
And it scares Lapis that she liked the harm she dealt. She shows guilt over it, but that feeling, that need is still there. To deny that she openly admitted she liked hurting Jasper misses out on postive character growth! In her refusal to give into temptation this time, she has hopefully taken a first big step to moving forward.
Jasper hasn’t been given the opportunity for healing. It was really disappointing to see Steven of all people ignore the chance to defuse the situation in the more gentle way we’ve been used to with him. And Jasper is SCARRED now. When we first saw her, yes, she’s an antagonist, but she had agency, confidence, and strength. Now she was on her knees begging to be Malachite again, PROUD she was able to weather the torture she had endured. She wanted to be free when the fusion began, now she just wants it back no matter what it cost her. Knowing Homeworld’s stance on fusion, she is now willing to throw away her loyalty to Homeworld as well.
She didn’t call Lapis a monster to make Lapis look BAD, she meant it as a COMPLIMENT.
Help them BOTH, Steven. They both need it, they need it bad, and like Centipeetle, it’s not something healing spit (or a punch) can do.
Yeahhh.
Like, really, yeah. We’ve known (I think you guys have been saying it, too) for a year now that Lapis did not have to fuse with Jasper in order to subdue her. That was never about protecting Steven. (We saw in Alone at Sea what Lapis could do to protect Steven from Jasper if that was what she wanted to do.) I feel like Lapis’s expression as she offered her hand to Jasper there on the beach said everything. To me it was pure anger, without fear or worry.
So—yes. Lapis took out her feelings of rage and helplessness on Jasper, just like you said, continuing the cycle of abuse by doing to someone else what had been done to her. The fact that Lapis felt fear, guilt, and shame over her behavior didn’t change that she’d already done those things. But—yes! You’re exactly right; that she felt bad about it does at least indicate that she’s on the path to changing and getting better.
Now here’s something I haven’t approached yet today: it seems like Steven disappointed a lot of fans in Alone at Sea. I can understand why, but at the same time, I think it’s fitting in a way. Steven is a teenager, and even then only just. He still has so much learning and growing to do, and I think this will be part of that. We’ve seen him doubt himself before, and we’ve seen him do regrettable things in his excitement about certain ideas.
It’s only fair for Steven to have flaws, and we were always bound to see them eventually.
He’s very, very loyal to the people he loves. He would very obviously do anything for them. The flip-side of this is that if someone hurts a person he loves, he’s going to hold a grudge, and he’s going to really, really dislike that person. Something else to consider is that he doesn’t always listen to people when they try to tell him how they are feeling.
Steven used language he would never have used before, when he saw Kevin again at the car wash, to describe how much he hated him. Going back a little ways, he completely ignored all of Sadie’s obvious signs of discomfort when he got it into his head that she was going to perform and be amazing. Connie had to talk him down from going all in for revenge, and he didn’t recognize Sadie’s distress until she had a complete meltdown and yelled at him.
Then we have the trouble with Lapis on the boat. She was desperately trying to tell him that she isn’t perfect and she does carry some of the blame for the things that happened, but he ignored her, because he was so determined to make her feel better that he didn’t want to hear why she felt bad in the first place. He got excited about his goal, and just refused to acknowledge anything that he didn’t see as immediately helpful to achieving it—even though that meant pushing Lapis deeper into her bad feelings in his efforts to bury them, instead of helping her work through the bad feelings to get past them.
Steven has a huge amount of passion in him, and sometimes, maybe, he is going to need help to channel that passion into good things… because if he becomes too passionate about the wrong things, it will have devastating effects. We’ve seen hints of this. I suspect we’ll see more to come in the future.
And omg. I have to quote this about Jasper because you really nailed it.
When we first saw her, yes, she’s an antagonist, but she had agency, confidence, and strength. Now she was on her knees begging to be Malachite again, PROUD she was able to weather the torture she had endured.
I want to see Steven help Lapis and Jasper, too, because they really need it, but I think that, before he can truly help them, he still has a lot to learn. For one thing, he can’t be blind forever to the flaws of his loved ones and the virtues of his (perceived) enemies.
Steven learning to accept deep flaws of his friends is definitely something he’s going to need to learn. I think that’s a route we’ll be taking based on how–well–can’t just put a band-aid on Centipeedle to heal her. And based on his new dream powers, maybe that’s where we’ll be going next?
Lapis and Peridot(Remember how cold SHE started off? Like when she fired the ship at the gems?) also did awful things on their road to redemption, but Steven had their back since the beginning so here’s hoping SOMEONE gives Jasper that chance. Maybe we’ll be surprised and someone else will?
I mean from Jasper’s perspective, fusion was a battle TACTIC. A last ditch desperate one, in her case in particular. I’m sorry but grabbing someone and reminding them why they hated the planet and asking to fuse doesn’t exactly deserve being dragged into the ocean forever. I don’t count attacking the earth because Lapis didn’t seem to care about that anyways(Not relevant to the mission 6_9).
Hell, I’d even consider what PEARL did to Garnet a much MUCH worse situation because she knew the importance behind the trust of fusion.
tldr ITS COMPLICATED