“I to this day will not forgive Steven Universe for screwing over Jasper. If Peridot and Lapis and even Spinel can get redeemed or save why not Jasper as well.”
Ok, it SERIOUSLY pisses me off how TERRIBLY Jasper was treated throughout the entirety of Steven Universe. I mean, I’m not gonna say that Jasper is an innocent party! But did she deserve the awful treatment she was given? HELL NO! She was NEVER given the chance to make anything resembling a positive relationship with ANYONE, never given a chance to work through her trauma, never even given an arc that was done for HER OWN DAMN DEVELOPMENT!
Worse still, she wasn’t even granted NEAR enough screentime by the creators to get any meaningful amount of character development! I checked the SU wiki, and she made a notable (in my opinion) appearance in only about 12 episodes, including Steven Universe: Future! You wanna know how many episodes where she was brought up in conversation without actually showing up? 15. Jasper was mentioned more times than she was actually appeared on the show. Steven Universe had 180 episodes in total (including SU:F) and a whole movie. You’d think that Jasper would’ve been given more time in the spotlight, considering how important she was to a LOT of characters’ developments! (ex: Lapis, Amethyst, and Steven.) I mean, for crying out loud, we had to wait for TWO AND A HALF YEARS for her to make a brief appearance at the end of Change Your Mind!
Like, I get the fact that that SU was never really “about” Jasper. It was mainly about Steven; the clue’s in the name. But even just a few episodes-long side story or a short comic would do! That’s how desperate I am for her to be given something even RESEMBLING closure!
Just, like…is it really so wrong to want my favorite fictional character EVER to have at least gotten a LITTLE more development?
Welcome to the club we have t-shirts and trauma relating to the one GNC character getting absolutely shat on by the narrative.
I’m really fascinated by kids media analysis posts on tumblr that are obsessed with the physical punishment of the antagonist and see killing them off as a subversive and interesting writing choice that knocks mainstream media down a peg
someone smarter and with more time than me please write about how steven universe (both within the narrative and by writers) is often positioned as an lgbt exploration of classical disney tropes and one of the most common criticisms of the show is that the antagonists do not resemble the queercoded villains of classic disney nor are they physically punished like them
1) She actually isn’t that much older than Amethyst! Ame emerged 5000 years ago and Jasper emerged only 200 years before that.
2) That fact is odd, though, since both Guide to the Crystal Gems and dialogue in the show itself suggests that Jasper emerged 5500 years ago. The guide states that she started fighting in the war 5500 and the Peridot claims that Beta was constructed halfway through the rebellion because Homeworld was pressed for soldiers. It’s likely that Beta was constructed then and the gems incubated for 300 years, but it’s still strange.
3) Related, but this timeline also confirms that the war properly started 5500 years ago, so it’s possible Peridot was referring to that. The rebellion technically lasted 1000 years, but if she’s just counting the period where armies were actively fighting, Jasper’s emergence does fall right in the middle.
4) Also worth noting that the fighting started while Lapis was still active, 100 years before the war formally started.
5) Jasper’s timeline mentions getting “evaluated,” and this section states that all the loyal Earth Quartzes were also “evaluated” after the war. It seems that Jasper was the only one who passed and was subsequently adopted into Yellow’s army, while Blue hoarded the rest of them at the zoo. I mean, we already knew that, but I always figured Jasper was brought into Yellow’s army based on her feats during the war alone, but apparently they were all actually tested.
SO…since this gem looks like Jasper I’m just aggressively imagining her when she first emerged as a bright-eyed young Quartz earnestly trying to be the best soldier she can be and almost immediately getting the optimism beaten out of her. She came out of the ground guns blazing, the Agates told her to take out every gem with a star, and by the Diamonds, that’s what she did. She did it to get their approval, and later on she did it to show her Diamond her loyalty and devotion. As the only successful Quartz from Beta, she had a difficult image to live up to, and the Agates made it abundantly clear that her feelings would only hold her back. A rift quickly formed between her and her sisters. Isolated without their love and influence, she became bitter, vengeful, and unsociable, moved more by revenge for Pink’s death than anything else.
Jasper fans after the lack of lore surrounding Jasper’s future in EOAE and the crew basically saying ‘Jasper’s redemption wasn’t worth telling’ in S5 during the recent AMA:
An AMA went up today and they say nothing about Jasper except in an answer about ‘stories they couldn’t fit in’ to which one of the crew says ‘yeah we had had to cut stories we didn’t think added to the overall messages we were trying to get across’ and specifically calls upon Jasper’s redemption as an example.
Wow, jesus. Once again, they basically say fuck gnc women. Jasper’s story? Not important enough to work in to the show! This keeps getting just… worse and worse. Jasper deserved BETTER.
