Personal revelation about why I love Jasper under the cut
*Sigh* Okay so I just had a very long conversation about some personal issues with a family member and I came to realize, I think, why exactly I am so attached to Jasper as a character.
So I grew up with a mom that was hypersensitive, hyperemotional, and almost dangerously hyper-religious. This combination of factors lead to teen years filled with fights, and with my eventual conclusion that my mom was emotionally abusive (she had never been able to learn how to be anything but that; it’s been that way for generations, really). Just before all the fights and my discovery of the definition of emotional abuse, and following accusations, however, I had become hyperreligious myself. I. Was. Horrible. to be around. I made a great deal of enemies early in high school, largely because I was always letting everyone know how much better than them I was because I was smart enough and I was noble enough to listen to all the great things God had to say!! And they were all going to suffer for their bad choices that made them all horrible people. I lost friends for years in highschool because I treated them like that. I wound up nearly completely alone because I was so convinced I was better than them, even though my religion made me feel like an unworthy sinner. I had weaponized the things I had come to believe, the things that turned out to be oppressive, the things that came from an environment that still makes my stomach curdle to this day. I also came from a tiny, horrible, racist, homophobic, transaphobic, whitewashed, disgusting town that I still despise. I feel like I deserved to get out of there because I am so far ahead of it.
And so did Jasper. She was horrible and tiresome to be around. She HATED the place she was born and raised in, and felt like she was worth more than it all. She was so afraid of being worth nothing, of being defective that she convinced herself she was better than everyone around her, and that everyone who couldn’t keep up was meant to fail. She used the bullshit that Homeworld had fed her and weaponized it against Amethyst and Steven, and even Garnet in Jailbreak. Homeworld, the same place that gave her reason to fear being inferior to begin with.
I want to see her get a redemption ark so badly because I remember the cultish veneration of a higher being (the Diamonds in her case), I remember being held down and made to feel like I was not worth saving because I was different, both from school mates and from the religious people at my church. I remember feeling like I was being beaten. I remember all the guilt and self-loathing I had because, in all my trying to prove how superior I was, I only proved how inferior I was. And frankly, so did she. To this day I’m scared of people thinking that I’m weak; I’m one of those people that will literally hide from anyone and everyone if I’m crying or scared.
I could never figure out what it was about Jasper that made me relate to her and love her even more than I did to Pearl or Peridot. I think her red color scheme and overall sense of rage lends itself more to my fascination too, because I know that I’m still angry about my time spent under my mother and under her church. I still hold so much resentment, and there were so many times I felt like I was in a fight, or felt like punching a wall. Pearl and Peridot don’t have the same boiling bitterness to their origins that Jasper holds that I find so relatable.
Anyways this has been a long and personal analysis brought to you by me. These posts only get made thanks to viewers like you. Thank you. *cue PBS screen and read all of that in that one PBS lady’s voice*