One thing that has always interested me about Jasper is how despite being connected to the other Earth gems such as the Famethysts and the gems who were born in Beta Kindergarten, she never seems to mention them at all.
Which begs the question: What happened to Jasper after the Gem war finished?
To answer this, i think it would be a good idea to start from the beginning: the Beta Kindergarten.
According to Peridot in the episode Beta, the Beta Kindergarten was a ¨rush job¨, a process that was a mess from the start, she described how the angles made a terrible place to make a Kindergarten, she mentions how a few gems came out sideways.
Well, Peridot explained to Amethyst and Steven that it was build during the rebellion: Halfway through the rebellion, Homeworld scrambled to generate extra soldiers on the ground. Look at this! The holes don’t even line up! It’s like they just threw Injectors down wherever!
This means that Homeworld rushed the Kindergarten to get an army to stop the Rebellion, they didn´t care that the project was executed correctly, they needed more quartz soldiers and it didn´t matter that the gems came out wrong, what was important is how fast the came out of the ground.
@introvert-celeste Has made a few posts about this in the past, she explained how this was probably the same place in which Lapis was caught in the middle of a battle in the flashback she showed Steven in ¨Same old world¨
Remember that this scene was not imagined by Steven,is based of Lapis´s memories.
If one pays attention to the gem soldiers´ design in this flashback, it´s easy to see that they resemble Jasper a lot. That means that´s is very likely they were gems who were born in the Beta Kindergarten.
Another detail in Lapis´s flashback is how easily the gems poof, this is not surprising since most of the gems from Beta were considered defective.
One of the few exceptions to that rule was Jasper
Peridot described Jasper´s hole as ¨perfect¨ in Beta. This made Jasper one of the strongest quartz soldiers ever made. In a way, she was the ¨Ultimate Quartz¨ for Homeworld. She was considered a role model for other quartz soldiers. She was described by Eyeball as the ¨The kindergarten quartz that could¨ in Back to the moon.
¨I was on the ground in Facet 6 when I heard the tale of the Facet 9 kindergarten quartz that could. They said you popped out of the ground with your helmet on, and took out 80 Crystal Gems before the sun went down.¨
Jasper was considered a champion warrior, a gem that came out of the ground prepared for battle and ready for her role.
But.. what happened to Jasper after the war ended?
I think is easy to assume she was separated from the rest of the Earth gems, because even though she was a gem who came from Earth, she was still considered an excellent quartz by Homeworld´s standards. Her ¨sisters¨ were sent to the Zoo while she stayed on Homeworld.
The problem for Jasper was that despite being respected by many gems, she still felt like an outcast, in her mind, she was a Earth gem, and that meant that there was something wrong with her. No matter how strong she was, it was not enough for her. She still felt she needed to prove to other gems (and herself) that she wasn´t a defective gem.
¨Jasper is a bully in the truest sense. Deep down, she’s afraid there’s something wrong with her, so she has to feed her ego. She has to put other Gems down to stay on top. Who she is and where she’s from gnaws at her all the time. She has a fantastic reputation, she’s considered the greatest Quartz soldier produced on Earth, and that might impress other Gems, but it will never be good enough for her. She will always feel held back, and she’ll always feel the need to go further to get ahead.¨ -Steven Universe: Art & Origins
Jasper is also very different in comparison to the Famethysts and the rest of the Earth gems.
The gems who live in the Zoo seem to be very social, laid-back and like making jokes like Amethyst. They are friendly and are expressive as well, unlike Jasper, who usually tries to hide her emotions and doesn´t want to let anyone in.
By being a Earth gem on Homeworld, Jasper became obsessed with never showing any weakness or anything that made her look vunerable. She wanted to prove to everyone that she wasn´t weak like the rest of the gems who came from a ¨garbage planet¨. She was different, she was special and she wanted to keep things that way.
Jasper might have thought of the Famethysts as ¨lesser gems¨ who didn´t deserve to live on Homeworld as they were ¨defective¨ and ¨wrong¨. She didn´t want to be be associated with them.
The downside was that she never had someone who could understand what she was going through.
During the series Jasper is potrayed as a character who lacks friends or companions. She´s usually seen alone in the episodes she appears, this lack of support system contributed to her self-destruction, as she didn´t have someone who could her help her or at least talk to about her problems.
This along with her inferiority complex and her obsession to getting revenge on Rose Quartz is what finally led to her own corruption.
