#Sea wasn't that Jasper was supposed to be the ''abuser'' in that situation trying to manipulate her ''victim'' back into their toxic

[fitia]

Sometimes I think about Steven Universe Malachite discourse and like. wow, people were really killing each other over cartoons, and I witnessed it. And also picked a side.

#fitiaposting #Anyways my thoughts on it is that sometimes SU had a hard time balancing the consistency of its story with the messages it wanted to send #due to the nature of it being a children's cartoon with a very didactic narrative. #Malachite was possibly the worst example of it because at the end of the day I think it's stupid to pretend that the intention of Alone At #Sea wasn't that Jasper was supposed to be the ''abuser'' in that situation trying to manipulate her ''victim'' back into their toxic #relationship. That being said what we actually saw play out canonically was Lapis -- someone inarguably much more powerful than Jasper who #we've seen best a character Jasper LOST to with incredible ease. while nursing a cracked gem and waterbending the entirety of the Earth's #oceans at once -- imprisoning a gem out of spite and vengeance at the bottom of the ocean so she had someone to take her anger out on. #Lapis... pretty obviously had the power in that situation. Hell even admits in Alone at Sea that she enjoyed taking everything out Jasper. #The episode however give Jasper the Walking Red Flag framing you'd find in a ''how to spot an abuser'' PSA so we could have our ''Toxic #relationships are bad kids don't get back together with your shitty ex'' moment. #So it's a bit frustrating because what the writing wants you to ultimately take away from the situation kind of goes against what we all #canonically witnessed... and then it created a massive flame war between people who prioritized reading the Tone of the actual episode vs #people who cared about the consistency of what we'd actually seen depicted so far. #When I think the actual conclusion that should've been taken was ''Maybe Alone at Sea is a poorly written episode and Malachite got an #unsatisfying conclusion actually''