Steven Universe Screams: What About Lapis
Steven Universe is a show that goes out of its way to discuss emotions, relationships, and dealing with trauma. Its characters struggle with themselves and each other to ultimately work through their issues, or continue running from them. Which is why the way Lapis Lazuli’s trauma and emotions are dealt with in the show is so bizarre to me.
The relationship between Garnet, Pearl, and Lapis offered the perfect chance to prove Greg’s point that “there’s no such thing as a good war”, but they completely missed it. Pearl and Garnet’s treatment of Lapis is a prime example of good people doing bad things and making really terrible mistakes. They directly benefited from what happened to Lapis during the war. Meanwhile, Lapis represents how repeated trauma can compound into anger, resentment, and deep issues with trust. But there’s no release for anyone so far, and at this point, it feels a bit too late.
Presumably, Lapis went to Earth to help out with the colony in some way, though we don’t have any real specifics on what she was doing there. Obviously, this is shitty and colonialist, and being honest, Steven Universe doesn’t do a great job of addressing the gems’ colonialism, but I digress. Unlike her counterparts on Earth, who had a chance to realize what Homeworld was doing was wrong and come to terms with it, Lapis was immediately trapped in a situation where she had no room to grow. Instead, she was left to stew in her bitterness and anger as the world went on without her.
The Crystal Gems didn’t want to take responsibility for their actions, instead hiding the truth about what the mirror that housed Lapis really was. Pearl could have let her out and shown her the errors of Homeworld, but instead she not only kept her trapped as a slave to be used, but also actively tried to cover it up when Steven found her. Pearl didn’t even take the time to figure out what kind of gem she had trapped, saying “how was I supposed to know the gem in there was so powerful?” She’s willfully ignorant about what she’s done. Despite knowing that another gem was trapped in the mirror, Pearl ignored it and made no attempts to speak with her, most likely to keep Lapis from becoming a real person that was being exploited. There’s a huge lack of empathy and compassion here that isn’t necessarily unusual for Pearl, but is startlingly out of character for Garnet.
With other Homeworld gems, like Peridot and Navy, Garnet is patient and welcoming, but when it comes to Lapis, she’s distant at best. We never actually see the two interact on a one-on-one basis, or have any positive interactions whatsoever. The show makes her character startlingly shallow in this regard; Garnet is apparently only willing to interact with new gems when they have some relation to her, be it Peridot’s aversion to fusion, or Navy’s status as a Ruby. It seems that if a new gem doesn’t have some kind of direct connection to Garnet, they’re not worth interacting with, and what’s more, they’re not worth protecting.
The one time we see Garnet threaten Steven with violence is when he’s attempting to free Lapis. Garnet is so desperate to keep their secret hidden, that she chases Steven down and is on the brink of actually hurting him. She still ends up grounding him for what he does. Again, she grounds him for having the audacity to free a gem they’ve kept prisoner and exploited for thousands of years. This is wild and out of character for her, and yet Lapis seems to bring that out of both Garnet and Pearl for a weirdly yet-unexplained reason.
Despite originally being the one to save her, Steven also seems to have some strange blind-spots when it comes to Lapis. In “Same Old World”, she explains how she came to be in the mirror to Steven. We, referring to both the audience and Steven, see her interpretation of events and come to realize why she’s so angry and resentful of both Earth and The Crystal Gems. Time and time again, the show positions Steven as an extremely sensitive and empathetic person, often to a fault. So how can he experience how physically and emotionally draining going back to those memories was for Lapis, and not do anything to make them talk it it out like he does with LITERALLY everybody else. Why are her emotions and issues with the Crystal Gems always put off like they don’t matter?
Steven was willing to lose sleep to the point of physical damage to help Kiki, who’s the definition of a side character, learn that her feelings are important and that she needs to advocate for herself for an entire episode, and yet Lapis, who’s a member of the main cast, still hasn’t gotten anything close to that with The Gems. It feels so inconsistent to have Steven characterized as always being willing to help and always trying to fix people’s relationships, and yet he still hasn’t tried anything to push the Gems towards taking responsibility for their part in Lapis’ pain and helping all of them heal.
Honestly, I still can’t find a reason for this gap in character development and taking responsibility that the show has adopted. It feels as though there’s going to be some big plot developments for Lapis when she returns from space, but at this point it will likely be too little to late. While I’m interested to see what comes of the repeated allusions to Lapis having a darker side than what we’ve seen so far, the resolution I actually want to see and that feels necessary for the character has been tossed to the wayside for too long. Even if they do try to tackle it in the episodes we get next month, I’m not sure it’ll be worth it at this point. Hopefully, they can prove me wrong.
