Sunshine's Mod Blog

Anonymous asked:

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.

paleglow:

Right, though?

You’re seriously spot-on with this observation.

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.