Lapis told Steven that she didn't fight in the war. She was merely capture as a byproduct of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But was she telling the truth? If she wasn't fighting in the war, what was she doing so far from Homeworld? How could Homeworld not know one of their own loyal gems, and confuse her for a traitor. Is she hiding something?
Sometimes I remember that people are not suspicious of Lapis and it baffles me.
Like okay:
- Her gemstone is associated with royalty and numerous gods, and in the ancient world, it and the ultramarine blue pigment that it was used to create were worth its weight in gold, literally.
- On that note, Lapis’s pure blue stone and color scheme suggests that she is the highest possible grade of the stone.
- She’s terrifyingly powerful? We have literally never seen other Gems that are capable of the kinds of things she is outside of Rose who is another deeply suspicious probably some kind of special case.
- The presence of Lapis-looking silhouettes in The Answer pretty much confirms she is aristocracy herself because there’s no way someone with those powers and that sense of pride was a servant. If you don’t believe me look back at the absolutely filthy look she gives Jasper for so much as laying a hand on her in The Return. This is someone who says “I don’t care if you’re the leader of this mission and outrank me at this point, you don’t deserve to touch me.” Or Barn Mates, where it didn’t matter to her if Peridot was at the barn first, Lapis had decided it was her space and thus Peridot needed to leave.
- Speaking of The Return, how about in Jailbreak where her justification for going along with Jasper’s plan is almost explicitly that it benefits her to do so? “Don’t resist, you’ll make the situation worse.” This is someone who’s crunching numbers and trying to predict consequences and calculate risks. And it’s not reflective of a larger pattern of helplessness, either- later on the beach Jasper, again, pushes Lapis’s boundaries, and in Lapis’s eyes, this is no longer worth playing along and she turns on Jasper immediately.
- Speaking of Rose, you know how basically everybody who’s everybody has something to say about her? You know how in Ocean Gem Lapis, through the water clones, has a very strong reaction to Steven’s shield, but hasn’t said anything about Rose, once, onscreen?
- And Same Old World! “I was only supposed to be on Earth for a short time.” Doing what? Because she depicts herself not in the Cloud Arena with the other aristocrats but alone in the middle of nowhere and I don’t think she just toddled off for a flower picking trip in a warzone.
- If she was in a middle of a battle, being a tiny, easily-missed person compared to the quartz we see fighting around her, what made Bismuth single her out as a target? Because Bismuth sees violence as permissible to achieve an end but she doesn’t like violence for its own sake- she wouldn’t hone in on Lapis because she looked vulnerable. But she definitely would’ve had to haul the lead out to rush Lapis fast enough that Lapis didn’t see her coming and fly away.
- Somehow, in a way we still don’t know how she accomplished it, she traveled a galaxy away to Homeworld between Ocean Gem and The Message. On her own, with no technology. The popular explanation is she flew to an occupied planet but this would still require her to accomplish interplanetary travel, which is amassive distance.
- People have made a lot about her bonding with Peridot and Steven but the thing is, overwhelmingly, she has shared incredibly little of herself with them. Her making art in the barn with Peridot, Peridot is seriously producing and explaining things relevant to her cognition and feelings while Lapis is repeatedly only sharing at the most superficial level. Sure Lapis, you just like that one show, that’s definitely why you made a display of the main character talking specifically about feeling trapped on repeat when that’s hardly one of the central themes of the show. We don’t really see Peridot doing things that Lapis likes, we see Lapis picking up and participating in things Peridot likes, and other than that, the stuff relevant to Lapis is just “hey remember she does that thing with water, and she likes fish.”
Am I saying Lapis is evil? No, not at all; nor am I saying I don’t like her or I don’t think you should like her.
What I’m saying is, she’s almost definitely hiding things, and in some ways, she’s pretty political with the truth when it serves her- she tends to either lie by omission or make technical half-truths with ambiguous wording to lead people to the wrong conclusion.
She’s a very prideful, even arrogant character who frequently is very clear that she only wants things to happen on her terms, and despite dealing with being imprisoned for a long period of time she still has the muscle memory of being in control and that’s something she has a strong relationship with. Alone At Sea has her rejecting a leadership role because that’s an episode arguably about her dealing with baggage from Malachite and part of that was her establishing complete totalitarian control over Jasper and Malachite. Rewatch Super Watermelon Island. Jasper had to verbally coax Lapis into letting her steer the fusion.
So, in the process of coping, Lapis reflexively balks when she’s offered to take control of other people- occupying a position of power over Greg and Steven. But outside of that one incident? Lapis has zero qualms ordering people around and even when she goes along with someone else’s plan, in Hit The Diamond she takes time to establish her disdain for the plan before deciding to participate and she arguably kind of makes a show out of how little effort she’s putting into her participation.
Lapis is hiding a lot, and in some ways, she’s just not someone who opens up easily at all to others. And I think it’s a fairly important question to wonder what exactly is it that Lapis is hiding?
Twitter: Emerald
