the more I rewatch su the more creeped out I get if...
lapis is supposed to be representation of “a mentally ill survivor who was just lashing out at her abusers and only feels guilty about what she’s done because victims struggle with self loathing”
because right now that is the most popular interpretation of her character. and who knows, I’m not a mind reader. maybe the reason why it’s so popular is because that is the intent of the crew and I’m just too dense and too biased to see things the way other people see it.
but regardless, if that is their actual intent, that really creeps me out because this show has a very well established pattern at this point that goes something like:
lapis: *does something shitty and really hurts someone*
person she hurt: that was my fault, if I did something differently that wouldn’t have happened. :(
and no, I am really not exaggerating. this has been brought up as a plot point in several episodes. (or about as often as we see her “cute” side with steven and peridot) this is one of her major character traits.
what lapis did: steal the ocean
what steven says: (I’m just gonna copy and paste from the transcript)
I’m leaving to fix what I did to our home. I was the one who set Lapis free from the mirror. Now it’s my fault the ocean’s gone. I’m gonna bring the ocean back or get really thirsty trying.
steven blames himself for lapis stealing the ocean. steven’s logic: if he didn’t let her out of the mirror, lapis wouldn’t have taken the ocean away.
but it was lapis’s decision to take the ocean away and try to use it in a desperate attempt to get back to homeworld. steven didn’t didn’t put a gun to her head and make her steal the ocean. lapis never told him that she was going to steal the ocean either so there is no way he could have known or even predicted that this would happen.
(tbh we see this with steven and a lot of characters, not just lapis, but that deserves it’s own post.)
what lapis did (in ocean gem): she attacks the crystal gems with water clones, when steven and connie join the fight, steven’s water clone almost drowns them (or at least almost drowns connie). greg rescues them by running over the water clone with his van. but then the water clone reforms and launches his van into the air, completely wrecking it, and breaking greg’s leg.
I’m sorry that you hurt your leg and that your van got smashed up because of me.
steven blames himself for lapis breaking his dad’s leg. (which happened after he rescued him and connie from drowning) again his logic is: if he didn’t release her from the mirror then she wouldn’t have taken the ocean away. if she didn’t take the ocean away then they wouldn’t have had to go and get it back. if they didn’t have to go and get it back, then they wouldn’t have gotten hurt. so them getting hurt is all his fault.
but lapis is the one who tried to kill them. it’s not his fault that she attacked them. he was always supportive of her, he always wanted to help her, and he made this clear in his words and his actions. but even if he did somehow “provoke” her, nothing he could have done would have justified that level of violence.
Greg: Well she’s a riptide queen and she’s super mean!
Steven: Woah, hold the phone, now give the phone to me. Lapis was not mean, she was just trying to get home.
greg describes lapis as “super mean”. at this point, the only way he knows lapis is her stealing the ocean and trying to murder his son, his 12 year old friend, and the gems. but steven insists that she’s not mean and he excuses her actions with “she was just trying to get home”.
even though the episode has been heavily criticized for trying to “force” lapis to forgive peridot for bringing her back to earth and interrogating her, it is the first episode that addresses the way lapis “lashes out” as a problem. which I think was the point of the episode (besides establishing where peridot and lapis live and their potential friendship in the future). because the next time this topic is brought up is alone at sea, where dealing with her remorse and self loathing over her past actions is the plot.
Steven: Look, Lapis, I know you spent a really long time fused with Jasper at the bottom of the ocean, but you’re not Malachite anymore. And water is a part of who you are. You can’t let one bad experience take that away from you.
Lapis: It was more than one.
Steven: Just give it a chance. I promise we’ll make this the most fun you’ve ever had.
Lapis: Steven, I… Don’t deserve this.
steven assumes that the reason why lapis is avoiding water/the ocean is because of malachite, but for lapis it’s about more than just malachite. as we find out later in the episode, malachite is a big part of that, but she also feels guilty about the events in ocean gem. she doesn’t think she deserves to enjoy the water after she’s used it to hurt people.
Greg: Wow, I think I did a number on that dock. Maybe somebody else should take a shot at being captain. What do you say, Captain Lazuli?
Lapis: I shouldn’t.
Steven: Go for it, Lapis.
Lapis: Don’t put me in charge! Oh, sorry. I mean, y-you shouldn’t trust me with the boat.
lapis no longer trusts herself with power or control. taking control of malachite out of revenge, holding all the power in that living relationship, and how that made her feel, disturbed her.
Steven: [Sighs] I’m so sorry! This whole thing is my fault. I just wanted you to have fun, but everything’s a mess. I shouldn’t have made you come on this trip.
Lapis: It’s my fault. I’m the one to blame.
Steven: That’s not true.
Lapis: I’m really trying to enjoy it out here, but… I can’t stop thinking about being fused as Malachite, how I used all my strength to hold her down in the ocean, and how I was always battling against Jasper to keep her bound to me.
Steven: But it’s not like that anymore. You don’t have to be with Jasper.
Lapis: That’s not it. I… I miss her.
Steven: What?!
Lapis: [Sighs] We were fused for so long.
Steven: But… she’s terrible.
Lapis: I’m terrible! I did horrible things! I-I broke your dad’s leg. I stole Earth’s ocean! Go on! Tell me I’m wrong!
lapis flat out says that she used all of her strength to hold jasper down in the ocean (and how she specifically says she held her down is an interesting parallel to jasper freaking out at the watermelon stevens “you think you can hold me down? nobody can! not anymore”) and that is was a constant fight to keep jasper “bound” to her (as we saw at the end of jailbreak, lapis was somehow able to keep the fusion going without jasper’s consent. so far she’s the only gem we’ve seen who has the power to do this, since the crystal gems fusions will easily break up if their components don’t agree with each other, and while jasper fused with the corrupted gem she couldn’t hold the fusion together.) she also says that she misses jasper after being fused with her for so long.
at this point lapis feels guilty about what she’s done, and she’s turned all of that into self loathing. because even though she’s done a lot of horrible stuff, the fact that she does these horrible things and how they make her feel (this is something she feels like she needs and misses) scares her. even though on an emotional level she wants to lash out, she likes taking her anger out on other people and hurting them, she doesn’t want to be like that. she doesn’t want to be the kind of person who likes hurting people. so she hates herself and thinks that she’s horrible.
(bonus: steven once again blames himself for something that really isn’t his fault.)
Jasper: Let’s be Malachite again.
Lapis: Why… would you want that?
Jasper: I was wrong about fusion. You made me understand! Malachite was bigger and stronger than both of us! We could fly!
I actually think this exchange says a lot about their characters. like rebecca sugar said in a recent interview, the difference beween jasper and lapis/peridot is that while lapis and peridot know that they deserve better, jasper does not.
lapis doesn’t understand why jasper would ever want to be malachite again, because malachite was a horrible experience. but all jasper focuses on is how powerful malachite was. because to her, a gem whose entire existence revolves around fighting and being a soldierm fusion is still just a tactic for battle. the only thing that she “learned” was that fusion happens to be a much better tactic then she thought it was.
she doesn’t care that lapis held her down at the bottom of the ocean (though her attack on the watermelon stevens heavily implies that it was on some level traumatizing for her) she doesn’t care that lapis had to keep her bound to her. if anything, jasper feels that she deserved this treatment because she somehow allowed it to happen. the same way she keeps her “army” in cages and piles on the abuse, she applies those twisted standards to herself. she “let” this happen to herself. she suffers because that’s what she deserves. because she clings to the idea that the world is a fair and just place where people only get what they deserve.
Lapis: I was terrible to you. I liked taking everything out on you. I needed to. I-I hated you. It was bad!
Jasper: It’ll be better this time. I’ve changed. You’ve changed me. I’m the only one who can handle your kind of power.
Jasper: Together, we’ll be unstoppable!
and a lot of people have correctly identified what jasper has been doing are tactics that abusers use when they want to drag their victim back into the relationship. she tries to tell her that she’s the only one who can handle her, that things will be different this time because she’s changed.
but for this line “I’ve changed. You’ve changed me.” context is important. lapis didn’t tell jasper that the relationship was horrible because of anything that jasper did wrong. jasper isn’t saying “I’ve changed” with the implied message that “I’ll stop hurting you”. she says she’s changed and that things will be better after lapis confesses that she hated her and enjoyed taking her anger out on her. the implied message is “yeah, things were bad because you were angry at me. but I’ve changed, things will be better because I won’t make you angry anymore”. which ties in once again, to the general theme where lapis hurts someone, but they blame themselves for it.
Lapis: No.
Jasper: What?
Lapis: What we had wasn’t healthy. I never want to feel like I felt with you. Never again! So just go!
she realized at some point that she enjoyed having total power and control over jasper, and using that power an control to take out all her anger on her. but this horrifies her. she knows that this was wrong and unhealthy, and she never wants to do that again.
jasper does not realize that how she was treated was wrong or unhealthy. she feels like she deserved it. so she desperately wants to go back because having more power made her feel like she was worth more as a soldier (and this is her entire identity, so she felt like she was worth more as a person). she continues to treat others around her cruelly because she also feels like they deserve it.
the reason why lapis is the “good guy” in this episode isn’t because she is a victim who is triumphing over her abuser. the reason why she’s the good guy is because she realized that she didn’t want to abuse anyone ever again and broke the cycle of abuse for good.
so when you try and claim that lapis was “just a poor victim who was just lashing out” you’re erasing a huge part of lapis’s character and her arc.
when you say that her actions are okay or even justified you are supporting this idea that other people need to take responsibility for her actions. that if other people just didn’t upset her then she wouldn’t have had to lash out at them like that.
but this idea is not healthy. steven shouldn’t blame himself for lapis stealing the ocean, almost killing him and connie, and hurting his dad and the gems. and say what you will about jasper, but nobody deserves to be held against their will in a relationship, isolated, and used as an emotional punching bag.
lapis understands this but she is struggling with guilt and self loathing. and the key to fixing this isn’t trying to tell her that what she did was somehow less harmful, or that she isn’t responsible because she’s been through a lot of crap and is struggling with mental illness. it’s learning that you can hurt people and not be a horrible person. even if you badly hurt other people.
and we see something like this in mindful education with connie. she feels so horrible about hurting another kid. she didn’t mean to hurt him, but she still broke his arm. the damage is done. her feeling horrible, not trusting herself anymore, and trying not to think about it or deal with it only made things worse. what helped was offering a genuine apology and talking to the kid about what happened. which isn’t something we’ve seen with lapis yet.
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