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Spreading misinformation is something I’ve come to expect from posters who harass character and ship tags in this fandom. But since Alone At Sea aired, there’s been a new one floating around that disturbs me as an abuse survivor: claiming that the episode was based on a “bad relationship”/“abusive relationship” Rebecca Sugar had. They cite this interview from the MoCCa Arts Festival this year as “evidence”, in which she talks about Margo In Bed, an unfinished comic of hers from 2010-2011 which featured a “proto-Lapis”.
As expected, the interview wasn’t exactly at all what they were saying it was.
Her actual words were that she was coming through a “bad breakup” at the time that Margo In Bed was being created, which isn’t nearly the same as saying “abusive relationship” or “bad relationship”. No further details were given. I’m not saying that an abusive relationship wasn’t a possibility, but SHE did not want to talk about it in those terms, and for people to twist her words to further their narrative about a cartoon character pisses me off, to say the least. It smacks of the same survivor-outing “does not apply to coping survivors! uwu uwu~” disclaimer that all the dedicated harassment blogs have.
The only link she gave between the character Margo and the character Lapis Lazuli, besides visually, was one we’ve heard before:
“It’s a story about emotional manipulation, which ended up being a huge part of Lapis’ character.”
She further went on to laugh about how “I don’t even remember what the words were going to be” on the unfinished Margo pages. I wasn’t able to find the complete work, if it even exists, only the random pages she’s posted here and there. None of them are given context. Yet I’m seeing claims that the Sonic lookalike character was a proto-Jasper, etc. etc.–more projection being passed along as fact. The creator herself doesn’t remember the dialogue, but somehow these folks know EXACTLY what she REALLY wanted to say!
Hate a character, hate a ship, be that person who tags harassment, whatever. But if you have to misrepresent and flat-out lie to try making your opinion seem more legitimate than others’–well, you’re gonna have to work harder to fool others the way you’ve managed to fool yourselves. And it’s frankly fucking creepy how you try to do just that. :T
I did a little digging and it turns out that the origin of the abusive/bad relationship twisting is from one or two people who claim that they totally have sources but, “out of respect” for Rebecca, were not going to reveal them and you should PM them if you want the sources.
If they had any respect for Rebecca, they wouldn’t be twisting her words and using her personal life to bully and harass fans of her show.
Honestly one of my biggest gripes (besides obvious others) is the continuous assumption that Lapis is weaker than compared to Jasper when it has been shown multiple times that she is incredibly strong, and even more so when surrounded by bodies of water like the ocean of course. She pulled her own fusion down to the bottom of the ocean for assumed months, she basically slam dunked the ruby ship, and she team rocketed Jasper back into the ocean. How is she weaker than Jasper or any gem.
It seems like people are so desperate to pigeonhole her into this “helpless victim” archetype, that they are more than happy to go on blithely ignoring everything we have seen of her since her debut in Mirror Gem.
And I really mean everything. She re-formed with a cracked gem after thousands of years without a body, and was thus understandably a little weak on her feet, hence the stumbling and taking hold of Steven to help her stay upright. That seems to be the image of Lapis that everyone (at least the above-mentioned folks who only see her as a victim) has: she is a delicate flower, weak and in need of protection.
Never mind that, not two minutes later, she completely wiped the floor with the rest of the Crystal Gems. Never mind that, in the very next episode, she stole the entire ocean, in a decidedly misguided attempt to get home. Never mind that when the Gems traveled out to confront her, she attacked them and once again wiped the floor with them, only stopping short of killing them all when Steven went up to talk to her.
He got to the top of her water tower and there she was, looking sad and lonely and weak. But people have to remember, she made that tower that she was sitting on looking sad. And she did all of this with a cracked gem. I’ve seen it said countless times before: if she was that powerful with a cracked gem, how much stronger must she be now that she’s healed?
And you’ve listed off a lot of her accomplishments since then. So, yeah. We know she’s powerful. And, those of us who have some sense (and have not put our fingers in our ears while shutting our eyes and humming loudly) are aware that she is has just as much anger in her as she has sadness.
Lapis is obviously a character prone to melancholy and fits of brooding, which I think is perhaps partly because she knows this about herself: she also has a hell of a temper. The only reason she seems so sad all the time is because she has a lot of guilt and fear about the things she’s done already, and the things she knows she could do, if she got mad. She doesn’t like herself when she’s mad, and I don’t know that she likes herself at any other times, either.
People, I guess, misread her brooding and sad faces as her being helpless and weak and scared about it, but it’s the absolute polar opposite of what is really going on with her.
Especially after Alone at Sea, we can tell that she knows she can be terrible—and she is struggling with this part of herself. She doesn’t feel terrible because she’s been abused and brainwashed into believing she’s bad. She feels terrible because she has done terrible things. People need to recognize this. Yeah, she went through some terrible abuses, and those experiences can help to explain her terrible behavior, but they do not justify it. Period.
What Lapis needs now is for people to acknowledge her concerns and help her work to minimize the danger. Not for people to tell her that she’s an innocent angel who did nothing wrong except for the Bad Things that Bad People Made Her Do (because, obviously, I doubt it needs to be said that that’s not accurate at all).
To summarize: yes, you’re exactly right. I wish people would recognize that being prone to depression does not make her a weak and helpless victim, because it really gives her no credit.
Was gonna to a write up about this but I think you got it pretty much covered lol.
I mean for crying out loud, they set up that even Jasper falling to her knees that she was this BIG weighty gem aaaaand…one shot.
Lapis could have done something when Peridot was firing at the gems or when Jasper was originally defeated, they were at the ocean BOTH TIMES.
”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.
”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.
So Lapis straight up admitted to LIKING keeping Jasper trapped. She admits and recognized what she did was BAD and terrible. But she liked it?
I’m glad she realizes what she did was horribly toxic. “I was terrible to you, I liked taking everything out on you. I needed to.”
What’s eerie is how Jasper was talking. Like holy Stockholm syndrome. “I’m the only one that can handle your kind of power!.” She was HAPPY she could survive Lapis?? Red flags, bb no. And Jasper WANTS this? The damage is deep on both ends, like we predicted.
Also oh hey look, we were right about Lapis being able to kick Jasper’s ass. 6_9
“First you need a gem
at the core of your being. Then you need a body that can turn into
light. Then you need a partner you can trust with that light.”
Remember how much hate we got after Jailbreak aired, for saying that Lapis did not need to fuse with Jasper to “protect” Steven? I’m glad this also finally put to rest the idea that the initial fusion was forced, too. Just that “no” at the end of Alone At Sea, and look at that–no fusion.
Lapis admitted her role in this tragedy long before fandom at large probably will. 9_6 I really hope that helps her grow past it.
Jasper is going to need more than that to recover, though. Lapis absolutely broke her. Steven really needs to recognize both of them need help. It isn’t always a simple matter of “big picking on small”–and I think that’s a trope that’s needed to be turned on its head for a long time. Leave it to the Crewniverse!
This should go without saying, but someone just liking Jasper is no excuse to harass them. Not even a hour later I’ve been seeing it pop up in several places.
So Lapis straight up admitted to LIKING keeping Jasper trapped. She admits and recognized what she did was BAD and terrible. But she liked it?
I’m glad she realizes what she did was horribly toxic. “I was terrible to you, I liked taking everything out on you. I needed to.”
What’s eerie is how Jasper was talking. Like holy Stockholm syndrome. “I’m the only one that can handle your kind of power!.” She was HAPPY she could survive Lapis?? Red flags, bb no. And Jasper WANTS this? The damage is deep on both ends, like we predicted.
Also oh hey look, we were right about Lapis being able to kick Jasper’s ass. 6_9
tfw Jasper is the only Gem here that didn’t try to kill Steven or destroy Earth (lately)
tfw Jasper coerced Lapis into fusing with her which is a completely unsubtle metaphor for abusive relationships….which is a perfectly good reason for multiple people in the fandom to not want to see more of her…………………………………………………..
Coercion involves using force or threats to make someone do something. Jasper is a huge asshole, but at least recognize the real reasons she’s a huge asshole. She isn’t a beautiful cinnamon roll but she also is not a rapist ffs.
If Malachite wasn’t just an example of what happens when two gems fuse who do not care about each other, only their own personal goals, that sure would make this pic the crew taped on their doors and blogged everywhere pretty awkward:
Jasper-chan~
And would sure make Garnet a victim-blamer: “Yikes. THEY are really bad for EACH OTHER.”
So seriously, she’s a good ANTAGONIST without tacking shit onto her she didn’t even do, and you’re missing out on a lot of really cool character development with Lapis by turning her into a freaking woobie that can’t defend herself. Lapis in most of the episode was in a state of apathy. We know she could have kicked the crystal gem’s butts easily by herself, Jasper wasn’t going to be a physical threat to her at all, especially with the ocean right there. She wanted to give up, be left alone. Complete apathy that even disappointed Steven. Complete apathy that made her turn away and let Peridot fire a laser at him, with not even a word. She tried to help him, yeah, but when things did not go as planned he was on his own.
Speaking of words: “Lapis, listen, fuse with me!”
“How long did they keep you trapped here on this miserable hunk of rock?“ “These gems, they’re traitors to their homeworld. They kept you prisoner. They used you. This is your chance to take revenge! Come on, just say yes.” She didn’t threaten to hurt her. At all. She was trying to sway her against a common enemy. No threat of physical harm, nothing. Not even a “or you’ll be sorry!” You could say pressure but again, not under a threat of violence. Canonly, stated by the creators, FUSIONS CANNOT BE FORCED. Jasper knew she was beaten on her own so she knew fusion, which she hated, was her only chance at completing her mission, and so she grabbed Lapis and ASKED. Asked not with physical threats, but a reminder what the crystals gems did and the planet she wanted to get away from.
Jasper–who lost to Garnet when she had no "fancy tools”–ASKED, and Lapis, a very powerful gem who we KNOW can take on at least three other gems with her own gem broken, agreed and then refused to let Jasper go. When Malacite was being dragged into the ocean, we see Jasper is terrified and thier faces split, with Lapis yelling “I’m done being everyone’s prisoner! Now you’re MY prisoner, and I’m NEVER LETTING YOU GO!” Jasper screamed “NO!” So quick question.
