#i havent rambled this long about lars in a minute sorry

[unproduciblesmackdown]

s2g that moss has even been foreshadowing that lars was gonna get briefly killed like…not that specific but since we’re shown that the moss is lars and the flowers have a bit of gem in them…………

ppl are always weird about stuff everywhere smh but like…theres been obviously weird things like being way more ok with ancient beings ready to destroy all life on the planet than lars being too ill-tempered or doing something selfish like…i see that…. like lars doesnt need to be redeemed for anything jeez. every episode where he does something crap its on a minor scale vs like endangering lives or something and he gets k.o’d for it and then makes some sincere form of apology like? theres your redemption…i guess maybe people expect him to become acceptable overnight maybe but thats how people work and then every episode is like The Lesson of the Week instead of a closer look at a character and another step in their development as people figuring themselves out

like literally every character has issues smh! in like this and everything also but like….honestly lars has been a super self conscious and anxious teen from the start and really unhappy and like sometimes he does dumbass shit but who hasnt. if you think youve never hurt people you havent been paying close enough attention

anyways one of the things i really dont like? despite general overall stuff like teenaged lars momentarily losing his patience and realizing he’s in the wrong and immediately trying to make amends = him being judged more harshly than like….every millenia-old actually murderous actual antagonist introduced…. is that overall? its like really really clear really early on that he’s always struggling with a lot of mental health issues, and a common theme is irl people who really do have disorders pointing this out. like, that point can be made for every character in su and lars isnt The Mentally Ill One who alone represents the whole of the universal mental illness experience because obviously that doesnt exist and its a very unique and personal experience, and people dont have to directly relate to lars or any other character with such problems to verify their own. but lars and the cool kids is like super upfront about anxiety and he obv has really low confidence and low self worth and i’ll fight anytime about island adventure hinting strongly at depression—in addition to having him state outright that he feels lonely and isolated all the time. and like, he hates the job he works all the time, he’s not good in school, he and sadie feel an early connection but they obviously had to do a lot of work on that and step on each other’s emotional fingers along the way to finally get to where they are now—which i’m guessing is dating but without acknowledging so or at least not to others, he isn’t very close to his parents currently, he starts the series with 1.5 friends maximum and cant even approach the cool kids besides being desperate to be friends with them

like clearly he’s unhappy and for a while sadie and steven are probably the people closest to him even tho he is a lot more annoyed by steven at the start of things when steven is more little-kiddish than he is now…..but lars still acts mostly like himself around them But at the start him and sadie have too many complications and uncertainties to be really comfortable and again steven doesnt really come across as very mature, with lars pointing it out just now how stevens changed in that way, and it being difficult anyways for lars to confide in anybody

so like lars is and has always been super super defined and restricted by his fear of everybody he encounters, specifically being afraid of being hurt by them / fear of being disliked. i like to say that i think the way he prevents himself / his image is meant to be a way of controlling the reactions he expects people to have: i.e. making people dislike him is less scary/painful than being judged badly while hoping for the opposite. but i also never like saying that anyone who consciously cultivates their Look is faker than someone who doesnt put any thought into it, or is lying to themselves or others or whatever, i just would bet thats a part of it. but moreso than that, the fact that he’s irritable and ill-tempered all the time fits really well as a result of being so unhappy and afraid and trying to deal with it solo. it’s not about him not caring about people, when on an unrelated note but related-to-the-universal-human-experience he does something thoughtless or mean or just generally crosses a line, he notices immediately when someone feels hurt, and he’s shown to immediately feel bad, arguably to a fault and going too far with how guilty he feels. but anyways clearly even though he has the capacity to hurt people’s feelings, he’s very sensitive to that, he cares deeply when it happens, and he doesn’t want to hurt people. like apologizing with any genuine depth to it right off is an incredibly difficult task even for grownass adults, and lars is already really good at it. its wild that people think of him as super cruel and selfish when it’s clear that he’s very emotionally vulnerable and doesn’t have the capacity to callously disregard other people’s hurt feelings

anyways a point i’m taking a really long time to come around to is that lars is a really good example of someone who’s young and unhappy and isolated and really struggling with a lot of things and afraid of everything and the fact is that usually when youre looking for characters who are struggling with this kind of shit you get one-dimensional, maybe even one-episode characters like the person who shows up for the very special episode where everyone has a serious talk and learns a serious lesson and the Depression Character never shows up again, having gone off to be depressed somewhere else since we already know about depressed people. or depression and anxiety is something that can be solved literally overnight if you just confront the root cause, like eliminating the life problem that made x depressed or giving y a makeover or throwing them a surprise party to show them they have friends or something. or you learn that joe the bully is actually just physically violent because he is insecure, whoa man. or the Sad Kid is a running joke and a periphery character and their parents are getting divorced etc etc etc etc

the point is that lars is a main character and even when he learns things about himself that put him in a better place than when the episode began, his issues still don’t vanish (and i wouldnt be surprised if people use that as evidence that his character doesnt “grow”). and dealing with / revealing some of his issues arent a special episode, its just an episode, and its about him. he’s developed over and over and he’s shown to be a complicated person. he’s shown to enjoy things and have interests and a life. he’s a regular character as much as anyone else is, he isnt set aside in a special category

but the thing is that maybe people expect Mentally Ill™ characters to be more of the hamfisted media clichés with zero nuance and about as much accuracy to them? because there’s always the sweet-and-soft kind of person who’s surely dealing with mental illness acceptably because they make up for it by being pure and noble and something approximately like a newborn lamb. like depression is being maybe a bit cagey and avoidant and crying a lot and writing poetry (which will later be revealed as their secret talent!!) and sighing and generally just waiting for someone to approach them, very gently because they are shy and nervous like a fawn, and that savior will cure them with love and also with showing them how beautiful life is!!! and then they will start wearing more colorful clothes and they will be happy and the depression is over now, because someone just had to show their delicate, beautifully wounded soul the light

trauma? you can tell someone has Trauma because they act very stoic and strong 1000% of the time no exceptions but it is just a façade. they will never talk about The Thing. they will finally talk about the thing because someone pries about it with pure intentions and it is a big dramafest and theyve never talked about this before and everyone cries and its super serious and heavy and the person is a bit softer after that because they could finally let it out that one time. thanks, another savior. having disorders is just having turned away from the light

the point is that irl obviously things are very different and its rare to see people with such issues being treated the same as any other character and being able to grow in a realistic way and being able to have flaws the way that everyone else does, not having to be a pure defenseless dewy-eyed baby kitten who someone strong and Normal needs to rescue and put on the right path away from these problems forever. being pissed off and frustrated and confused but trying a lot of different ways to figure things out anyways is a lot more common, the way lars reacts to and deals with his vulnerability is a lot more realistic than just being a fairy-tale in-distress type figure. his character feels a million times more like he was developed by people who understand what its like to be experiencing what he does and developed for people who can relate to him, rather than being made by and for people who cant directly relate and who tend to make content thats wholly inaccurate and treats that kind of thing like an Other issue for Others that you only need to learn bullet points about because if its going to be a part of your life it’ll be a fleeting, one-time thing, not your everyday reality

i mean, its unsurprising that lars is actually pretty comfortable with steven now, given how long theyve known each other, but also how relentless steven is in being supportive of lars and treating him like a friend. its not surprising that it took lars this long to accept that, or that it was in part forced along by being stuck in a “we might die” scenario with steven. and its important to point out that this wasn’t just lars changing that made their relationship better, but steven growing as a person as well. if you put both if them in that situation during the start of the series, they could probably get along better than usual still, but you cant say that this is the first sign of lars developing any more than you can say this is stevens first development. lars has been struggling with himself just as steven has, although not in a fate-of-the-world way till now. lars couldnt be so conscious of his own fear and frustrated with it, and steven wouldnt have the maturity to do stuff like freakin sacrifice himself for earth by separating himself from the other crystal gems, much less lend lars the emotional support needed to give lars enough confidence to protect the off-colors

lars has been developing the whole time and even if people look at individual episodes and think lars learns nothing during them, i cant see how anyone could deny that this isn’t a turning point for lars as much as its the culmination of a gradual path he’s already been on. not to mention that “turning point” has implications like “redemption arc,” as if lars was inherently bad or worthless at the start of the series. he wasn’t; none of the characters were, but each character and all of their relationships were least developed of course. we see details and different sides of the donuts right away, and they both care enough about steven to treat him more as a little brother than a customer and to humor him sometimes. theyve always been important, and the fact that lars has always been a main character in the set of protagonists and that steven has always been a friend means that he cannot be converted by a “redemption” arc. he’s already there smh he’s always been there. seriously name one episode where he’s done something shitty and didnt do anything to make up for it. the only thing unresolved rn is he couldnt fight topaz for sadie, and he said himself he felt guilty over it, and it was already at that point the boldest thing he’d done and like, its not that unreasonable for a wisp of a teen to be terrified by a giant gem warrior that he had zero chance of doing anything to anyways. it wasnt glistening heroics but if thats gonna condemn lars like throw me in the pit too i guess. then he went and died for twelve individuals and left himself defenseless in hostile unfamiliar territory so that steven can go back to earth so thats something. but before all this alien drama like, again…..he’s always directly apologizing for shit and he’s just making everyday kinds of fuckups. he beats himself up about stuff. and gets beat up. and really like doesnt ever require an apology when he’s the one to get hurt, which isnt a requirement by any means and which is probably part of him thinking too badly of himself

the point? that maybe i still havent made besides saying i was gonna make it like half a dozen times?? is that lars is a really real portrayal of a person dealing with things in a real way. and its not the “pain is transcendent” thing where if someone is Suffering from mental illness it makes them wiser and kinder and holier than us regular people. its not where all you need to help someone with mental illness is one incidence of reaching out and telling them you love them and look at the stars and isnt it lovely. its not where disorders themselves are an arc and at the end, people’s personalities will be indistinguishable from that of those who never experienced what they did. its where dealing with this shit is normal and human and everyday and its not beautiful and its not gonna make other people “inspired” or get to feel good about themselves as your savior. its about pushing people away or having them avoid you anyways because they can hurt you in ways they can’t understand as being hurtful and shits confusing and sometimes kids will lash out and i bet lars was a lot more Difficult closer to stevens age than he is now. its about characteristics that seem ugly or repulsive or otherwise don’t directly cry out for help. its about shit staying with you even while you’re trying to figure out how to work through it. its about the unpleasantness of it all but also the real humanity behind it, not just using it as some device. lars’s problems are about lars and belong to him

and yeah of course he hurts people, but literally all the characters do; it has nothing to do with having disorders or not. everyone hurts each other even though they love each other, sometimes with the best intentions or 0% knowingly because they just have to figure out more things about themselves and each other. everything is about people making mistakes. lars is no worse in that matter than any of the other characters, he just happens to have a less appealing/inviting personality, god forbid less relatable. in the recent episodes he didnt have his usual defensive abrasiveness, even his frustration with steven in “stuck together” wasn’t that significant, and wasnt even much directed at steven. after that he was just scared, without it being masked by anger. he could be brave for the other gems because he knew he wanted to be brave and he knew how it felt for them to be so afraid and he was finally told that it was an okay thing that he still felt terrified. he could be completely himself with steven because of all the ways steven has gotten to know lars and refused to stop valuing him and how steven has grown to be someone who could protect others on his own in serious situations—which in this case included supporting lars emotionally as well as protecting him physically. if lars was dropped in that situation with the kid who just learned to summon his shield and was having an ice cream crisis five minutes ago, he couldnt trust or rely on him or count on him for encouraging advice. the way lars is in the wanted arc being so different from earlier episodes is as much about stevens development as lars’s really

like the real lars is and always has been deeply sensitive to peoples feelings (to the point he feels extremely vulnerable to them e.g. afraid of being hurt by being regarded negatively) and he’s always cared about the people he feels close to and he’s always been capable of moments of bravery for the sake of others and he likes wrestling and he’s good at cooking and he’s a dumbass sometimes and he watches scary movies and plays video games and sucks at school and is grumpy and is passionate and is scared and is a huge nerd with nerd parents and he never got over feeling hurt by the explorer club incident and he doesnt like fries and he and his coworker like each other and relate to each other and he sees steven as his annoying little brother and he doesnt know what he wants and also he’s a bi icon, it must be exhausting

lars has always been good and complex and i might be willing to forgive my slight disappointment in people realizing he’s good only now if and only if they go back and acknowledge that he’s been good this whole time. like obviously he doesn’t have to be your Fave or even “liked” to just be not hated or to be recognized as a complex, solid character. lars is so, so developed, probably more than any other human. he’s always been important, even before his importance had direct cosmic significance. he’s always shown signs of being thoughtful and caring and soft, and the fact that he’s hurt people he cares about and who care about him isnt evidence that he’s bad, not only because of the fact that literally all the Good characters hurt each other, but because irl hurting people you love isnt even necessarily evidence of a failure, its just an inevitability, and what happens following the event is whats a lot more telling than the fact any negative emotions were ever a part of a good relationship

anyways what’s definitely true is that lars didnt need to die. it wasnt a necessary atonement for anything lars has ever done. he didnt and doesnt need to be redeemed. he just was willing to risk his life for gems in a situation he could immediately relate to, and that risk happened to win out momentarily. besides, what lars was overcoming in that situation was his own fear, it wasnt anything that caused the stuff in the past that people seem to think so badly of him for. he was also protecting steven, sure, but steven was pretty much fine by the end of it coz of his shield. but he also hadnt ever really Not protected steven or anything so he didnt really need to make up for that or whatever

also one more thing ive always meant to bring up is that lars doesnt think much of himself and is prone to being too hard on himself but i know there are probably plenty of people who believe him when he says he needs to “deserve” being alive again. nah!!!! lars always deserved it