#destapé una olla que no sé si debería haber destapado

[starberry-cupcake]

your tags make me worry. did lapidot become canon behind my back?

I also received a reply about this so I’m answering both things under read more because the su fandom scares me a lot lol 

count-di-luna replied to your post “Reblog and put in the tags something seemingly everyone in your fandom…”

this! Peridot has way better chemistry with Amethyst anyway and Lapis just needs her space

First, I don’t know if they’re “canon” but it’s very heavily implied in the show that there’s something going on between them that’s more romantic than not, for what it seems like to me. The way in which their relationship is shown isn’t in the same way as the relationships of other characters that don’t have romantic relationships, so I don’t know what to tell you. 

I’ve been told about some “behind the scenes” reasons why this was, I don’t wanna delve into any of that because I care about what the story depicts in this instance, so I’m leaving all “behind the scenes” reasons the crewniverse may have aside. As for the “behind my back” part, probably, since we haven’t seen the development of their relationship kind of at all, aside from when there’s some conflict Steven needs to get in between, so if it’s happening, it’s going on behind all of our backs. 

When it comes to the comparative aspects with other ships, I don’t really have much opinion on the majority of fanon SU ships, it’s not something I’ve ever been much involved in, so I can’t really say what ship is better or not. 

What I wanted to focus on for my tags, what really makes me a bit uncomfortable when it comes to Lapis and the way the fandom sees her, is that a lot of the things that are criticized about her come from writing problems, which is not to diss the crewniverse because SU is fantastic and I love it, but I do feel Lapis hasn’t been handled well as of late.

I feel like her whole reaction when she left and took the barn would have been taken less harshly by fandom had it not been at the expense of a relationship that had little to no development in-show and that was with a fan favorite character that everyone loves. It wasn’t so much Lapis’s reaction and her choice of leaving what made fandom react like they did but the way in which she left Peridot, which represented a state in a relationship we never saw them arrive at because they were always off-camera.

Lapis has had too much trauma related to other people exercising choices for her for me to be comfortable with her having a relationship so soon with someone who had her as a prisoner before, someone who was Jasper’s second in command in the ship she was kept in. Which hey, I’m totally cool with redemption arcs and I feel Peridot evolved and learned maybe more than most characters on the show, I’m not saying Peridot is the same she was or that she doesn’t deserve to be trusted, she absolutely does, but making it romantic in such a short period of time and WITHOUT SHOWING IT ON SCREEN is too much believability to ask for me tbh.

I wish Lapis’s arc had centered on her recovery and her healing without having to compromise her decisions to romantic relationships. I wish we had taken more time to develop her trauma in a way that makes more sense to the plot, because I hate when people say they’re tired of her whining or they hate her for not fighting.

Lapis represents a very important part of war, she is, from the group of Gems, the one who was most affected by BOTH SIDES of the fight. She was a war prisoner and considered an enemy by BOTH the Diamonds and the Crystal Gems and, as such, was imprisoned for so long, until Steven listened to her.

She then decided to imprison herself AGAIN to save the one person who had shown her kindness, because it was the only way she felt she could. And when confronted with that, she was manipulated into thinking that it was only with someone toxic, with someone who wanted to use her at the time, how she could have any value.

Lapis deciding not to fight is a valid, important and realistic part of war. She is a victim who was once and again mistreated by EVERY SIDE of it. It’s understandable that she’d want to flee and it’s powerful that she not only came back but used her sadness and her scars as a way of facing a major enemy. She had felt worse. 

She was a prisoner of war, a survivor of abuse and was banished from every place she knew. She had no home, not in Homeworld, not on Earth, and it’s understandable and valid that someone who was faced with this past would choose to not stand for people who let her down. 

It is, however, understandable that she would come back and fight for Steven, because he is the character Lapis was shown to have a trusting friendship with. Steven was the one who listened, cared and healed her, he is the one who offered her a home and, most importantly, the one who, no questions asked, respected her decision to leave without pressuring her into staying to fight a war that had destroyed her. This is a friendship the show took time to show me and develop, Lapis caring for Steven like an older sister, more so than a mother figure, as most of the other gems are (there’s a parallel dissertation here between Steven’s mother figures when he has never had a present mother, but that’s another subject matter entirely). I didn’t need from Lapis more than this pure friendship, a sibling sort of bond. 

So, when it comes to this friendship, the conflict of Lapis leaving and then coming back makes narrative sense. The strain of the decision and of Steven’s understanding of her leaving have implications that are easy to understand because we’ve seen the friendship develop. 

When it comes to Peridot, I was lost. I didn’t understand where this strong emotional bond had formed and how, when the episodes they had together didn’t quite showcase a development aside from “they’re getting along better”. Added to that, their personalities don’t really fit in a way in which you could fill in the blanks easily, because Lapis is a complicated character that tends to be unpredictable with others, because of her long isolation. 

It isn’t that a romantic relationship wouldn’t be possible or that it takes away from her character, it’s that it gives a layer on her decisions that makes her choices questionable in the audience’s standpoint, because you don’t know what’s going on between them but you’re gonna root for Peridot because she’s the easily likeable one of the two and because she’s staying to fight. 

It stops being about trauma, war and fear and starts being about the betrayal of someone’s trust. It undermines the importance of a character like Lapis, imo, when the conflict of her choices is transformed into a romantic issue where clearly Peridot will be the favorite to be on the “right”, because as a viewer with nothing to lose it’s easier to understand that fighting is the “right thing to do”. It’s easy to have an opinion on war and political strife when it’s about fictional characters in a fictional world, it’s easy to say “the right thing is to be brave and fight the authority”, but within that situation, it wouldn’t be that easy. 

So, basically, my problem, all shipping preferences aside, is that, for a show that is otherwise amazingly written and planned out to the t, this whole situation seems shoehorned and strained and causes fans to turn on a character whose representation of trauma, ptsd and past abuse should be something to understand more. 

Again, this is not to hate on the crewniverse (past or present) at all, it’s their story to tell and I’m grateful to be able to hear it, this is just my opinion as an adult with access to the internet and nothing better to do at the time, so my opinion isn’t worth a damn. They did their best and chose to tell this story and that’s ok. I heard that some people have been rather aggressive to some of the crew for this before and I wouldn’t dream on doing that at all, so please let’s not do any of that.