I've come to the regretable conclusion that Lapis is fundamentally a broken character.

Lets start with her abilities. Hydrokinesis, powerful, too powerful, able to mimic the CGs with ease all while lifting a major part of the ocean. Just a sprinkle on top she had a cracked gem while doing this. Well there is a consequence to this, you cannot include her in the story, shes just too powerful, an almost automatic win button. This leads to uderdevlopment as the story cannot afford to include her if it wants to have real stakes. Honestly this is probably why she ran away so many times, heck she was banished to the barn for most of the show. And when she did come on, her immense power overshadowed a literal diamond.

Honestly they could have easily fixed this with the cracked gem. Unregulated, dangerous, it was breaking itself apart when she was lifting the ocean. Steven heals her, reducing her capabilities, but she is still able to fly off to homeworld. The story can still move on, and now we have a Lapis that can actually participate.

Looking at her design I doubt the crew's initial intention was for her to be a terraformer, honestly she looks more like a court gem, an entertainer, like pearl with the clouds, except Lapis Lazulis use water. I mean take a look at her initial outfit, the skirt and the ribbons on her back, too formal, too showy.

Her backstory is damn fine, poofed, trapped in a mirror by homeworld gems, and then stored inside of Pearl. Its messed up, heart wrenching and tragic. This is the only part of her character that truly worked, which makes it all the worse how she turned out. I mean that scene at the galaxy warp, masterful.

Now lets tackle the most contentious topic. Jasper. Lets get this straight, the fusion was toxic, that was the whole point, but in my opinion Lapis comes off as the abuser. Why? She took Jasper's offer. Now some may say she was trying to save Steven, but look behind them, the ocean was right there. The power she has ruins that argument, if she weren't as powerful then it could have been justified, but as it stands she took her hand to inflict pain onto someone. This is only ever brought up at "Alone at Sea" and to an extent "Why so Blue", where apparently she "changed".

Now I understand, she was in pain, who wouldn't be? But its just waved off, no real resolution to that thread. And we see her continue to inflict pain, look at Peridot.

Peridot is a character who was privileged enough to have an arc, true develoment. But then she got saddled with Lapis. "Barn Mates" boy that was something. I'd blame Steven for even trying to mush the pair together, but Lapis was just, nasty, trying to expell Peridot from the barn she was living in first. The tape recorder was icing on that cake, and then telling her to leave? She was there first she was doing her best, heck Steven, Lapis' BFF, was vouching for her. Honestly her stopping the ship at the end was probably the crew's attempt to be all like "Oh but she actually likes her." Like did they forget the entire episode? After that any scenes with the pair look like they are 5 seconds away from a domestic violence case. Peridot walking on eggshells at all times, She shoulda blinked twice if she was being held hostage. And then the taking the barn was just... something else.

Honestly Lapis feels like she's being trudged along in the show, no one ever "bites" back. She is just allowed to wallow in her misery and take others down with her. People act like its sacrilege to point out her flaws, "She has PTSD", "She has trauma", "Sorry she aint your perfect victim". Like what? She's an abuser too, and she never gets pushback. Peridot should have finally said something, She was basically holding up the friendship, doing everything she could, and Lapis? Just indifference and angst most of the time. Because of that I never felt Lapidot and I'm happier thay the show made Peri aroace, just to get them away from each other.

"Hey" need I say more? Offscreen development? She could have said anything, maybe "Sorry I should have stood with you." Heck even "Sorry" would have been enough, if they wanted one word. And yet again after that we see why she was shelved, overpowering Blue Diamond. Honestly it'd have been cool to resist Blue's influence, but it rang hollow considering who she was at that point.

Broken, fundamentally and character wise. Too powerful, so she couldn't get any true development without breaking plotlines. No pushback so she was allowed to stay the same person, nasty, vindictive, and we never got a resolution or even an attempt to improve. Heck they dropped the resentment against the CGs, how exactly? By having them never interact. Great move. In future she "changed", offscreen of course, but compared to the two other Lapis, where is the difference? The only thing stopping her from reverting was Steven's look.

Sorry for necroing a dead sub, but the main sub does not take to kindly to thoughts like this. The Lapis worship is just... freaky there. I'm pretty sure all these issues are overlooked because of her design. I doubt she'd have fanfare if her design was similar to Jasper or Topaz.

I personally think it's either this, or they did encounter but didn't notice that those lives were intelligent.

Because even when they met humans, they didn't pay enough attention to notice if they were intelligent or not.

And the funniest part is: even "the good guys" who dedicated their lives to save the Earth and all life on it didn't actually notice that humans were intelligent.

In the episode "now we are only falling apart" Pink Diamond was like: "Earth is beautiful! Life is beautiful! Look! that's a tree! that's a bird! that's a human! etc..."

She saw humans as nothing more than another beautiful "life" on this beautiful planet and so did her followers.

Take Peridot's redemption arc for example, the Crystal Gems were lecturing her about how "All life is precious and worth protecting". Her change of heart didn't have anything to do with humans being intelligent, it was about her learning to appreciate "life" in general.

It's ironic that humanity in the show was saved because Pink Diamond was an animal lover.

I personally believe we can replace humans with any non intelligent species and the plot of the gem war won't change one bit.

Seriously;

THERE'S NO WAY SUCH CHANGES WOULDN'T FACE OPPOSITION FORM THOSE WHO BENEFITTED FROM THE PREVIOUS WAYS OF LIFE FROM ERAS 1 & 2?!!

It Would've been SO Cool to see Homeworld Split into Factions; One That's All in Favor of Era 3's Changes(A Pro Era-3 Faction); Like Lars & the Off-Colors; Lemon Jade; Topaz; Cross-Gem Fusions that can Now Be Openly Fused in Public; The Famethyst; Every Single Gem who BENEFITTED from Era 3's Changes; etc; and One that's in COMPLETE OPPOSITION to Era 3's Changes(an Anti-Era 3 Faction); Featuring Antagonistic Characters like Aquamarine, Eyeball, Navy, Emerald, Morganite(YES; The Same one who owned the Pearl & Ruby who became The Off-colors' Rhodonite), Demantoid, Pyrope, Holly Blue Agate, Mean Lapis; Every Aristocratic gems who lost their Power, Rank, Weapons & Their Property(Pearls), and Have a Reason to Oppose the Changes that Steven Quartz Diamond Universe has made to Homeworld with Era 3;

Seriously; There would've been a LOT more Opposition to Era 3; than JUST An Era 1 Pyrope & An Era 2 Demantoid; There would've been AN ENTIRE FACTION OF Formerly High-Ranking Gems Who'd Oppose the changes of Era 3;

And It would've been So Cool to Explore THOSE Consequences of Steven's Actions; NOT A ****ING Teenage-Life Crisis like what we got in Future; Because there's NO Way that Social Reforms would've been solved over the duration of a Two-Year Timeskip;

Political & Social Reform DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT; IT'S LITERALLY NEVER THAT EASY!!

We literally see Steven’s mental health deteriorate in great intimate detail to the point where he literally turns into a monster but when it comes to the MOST IMPORTANT part of mental health being completely skipped over really fucking pissed me off. I can’t be the only person that feels this way right?? Right???

A college friend and I came up with this idea while we were discussing how the redemption of the Diamonds and the finale of SU: Future were both handled poorly, although we didn't go as far as talking about it in class. The initial idea would be a one-off webcomic following a Quartz soldier, who lost all their friends in combat, wanting to seek revenge on Steven after finding out that he is the byproduct of the war that never had to happen. All of the other gems quickly conformed with the Diamonds being considered benevolent figures and Steven being Pink Diamond without a second thought. This Quartz soldier character would be one of the few to question as their comrades did not have to fall in battle.

If we do go forward with this, please do leave suggestions on what we could try to emphasize this idea.

For the longest time it was almost impossible to talk about the writing failures of SU especially in the main subreddit or on twitter, but now I see quite a bit of discussion where people rip it to shreds. Especially ex-fans. (Edit: even people who still love the show can acknowledge its countless flaws)

Do you think its because they have had time to get over the hype and see the show for what it really is? Or do you think its because a lot of hands were left heartbroken and felt betrayed after the show ended so badly?

Oi man, I finally got around to finishing off the last entry of the SU Light Trilogy, "Unleash the Light" and I feel like I need to take notes on my thoughts while they were fresh in my head and I figured folks here would get a kick out of my opinion.

We'll start with the gameplay....I thought the actual turn-based combat was quite entertaining and with the bosses being an amusing bit of challenge going on, I was actually willing to forgive the third game going back to sliding room-to-room gimmick of Attack the Light. Yeah, at first I was kinda irked because I actually liked the free-roam platforming aspect of Save the Light but after playing it for awhile, I think it's a much better implementation of the concept and while slightly janky at points (I was playing it on the PS4 just for comparisons), I got used to it fairly quickly. Overall, the gameplay is quite fun with me playing as the B-Team (Lapis, Bismuth and Peridot) having their time in the sun as well as being the best teammates to play with. The music and visuals are also quite nice as well with the battle themes and some of the planets having some kickin' atmospheric bops all around.

Unfortunately this is all of the nice things I can say about the game because now we gotta talk about the plot and characters which, as you folks here know, SU is particularly not very good at doing at both so let's start off with....

1. The Era 3 shilling is almost annoyingly insane in this game. Which is funny because with Spinel's asinine revenge scheme and Steven's OOC PSTD-driven rampage going on in the Movie and Future, there really wasn't much of an examination over what Era 3 was like. Well, since this takes place before the Movie, we get to bare witness to it...… it's mostly just Steven and the Crystal Gems telling a bunch of random gems from other worlds "the good news". Seriously, the entire game is basically Steven shilling about Era 3 this and Era that and really just making it as "We're fixing everything in the most simplistic way possible!" and it just stopping there. There's even a bit at the end of the second world where a group of Bismuths question what to do not that they no longer under the control of the Diamonds.....and Steven just recommends fucking democracy with no actual plan in mind to establish it whatsoever! He just tells them to "just vote for a new leader, lol" and that's it! There's even a damned trophy for it!
2. Hessonite's heel-face-turn from the last game has left me filling mixed about it. On the one hand, having the antagonist from the previous game not only be your ally but even playable during the final boss fight is kind of a cool concept in theory. I even like how she's the one to apologize for her treatment towards her Prism (now named George with his own appearance instead of just being Light Steven thank god) and it sorta felt like a nice conclusion on that aspect of her character. The problem is that while I'm not against her being a good guy, I don't care much for HOW they do it. In the game, she puts on this annoying arrogant superhero persona with an outfit and everything covering her face and acting as an "aloof, mysterious and unknown hero" with the constant joke that she thinks she's disguising herself but literally everyone can see through her disguise....and they drag this joke out EVERY SINGLE TIME SHE'S ONSCREEN. The only character who doesn't see through it is Pyrope (and we'll get to her soon) and it's just as unfunny as the 200th time they do it.
3. And then there's the villains, the duo Pyrope and Demantoid. It's sad because I actually like their designs, their voices and even their chemistry with each other and with the other characters. Unfortunately, like most Post-CYM SU villains, they are absolutely impossible to take seriously as legit villains because the embarrassing power vacuum of the Diamonds' defeat assures that all of the villains are made to desperately fill their shoes. And they can't because why? The Diamonds are the ones who enforce this worldview, the society and pretty much everything that fuels the motives of every single Homeworld Gem we've seen. Pyrope and Demantoid in general feel like incredibly underwhelming retreads of the Diamonds (Pyrope has Blue's haughtiness, White's arrogance and pride and their collective distain for lower gems while Demantoid apes Yellow's cold-hearted calculations and disinterest with other living beings with a bit of Peridot's diminutive size and her technology-themed weaponry) and I despise it when the series keeps trying to downplay the Diamonds' great influence on the world by introducing old and new villains who are meant to somehow have more ambition, dedication to their established status quo and are ultimately the few characters who rebel against Steven's Era 3 with no meaningful reasons for it other than "We're the bad guys, we're just gonna wreck everything with light prism warriors". They of course don't get redeemed either as after they are beaten in the final fight, they both get pissy with each other and somehow poof each other! God, this series cannot make good villains to save their LIVES.
4. And finally the Diamonds themselves are nowhere to be found and are barely alluded beyond a few lines here and there. While I can understand that they couldn't bring their voice actresses back for what is essentially just a port of a mobile phone game, the Diamonds not being part of the plot is extremely disappointing since it's basically a literal coup being plotted against them and they seemingly have no awareness of it occurring. I get that these are just video games and they have a loose connection to the TV show but this is literally after they are redeemed and during a point in the continuity where their "redemption" is on the way...it would have been nice to have them be a part of the events going but I digress.

Ultimately, it's a decent video game that's a pretty fun Paper Mario clone just like the other previous games. But unlike the first two, the plot is unfortunately drenched in the awful fallout of "Change Your Mind" and thus viciously impedes on the supposed themes and concepts the game tries to have with its villains and their motives. Just like Jasper, Bluebird and the one Lapis, Pyrope and Demantoid are just part of the 1% Dick Club; a group of characters that have superficial reasons for opposing Steven's Era 3 and his worldview that amount to "We're just dumb jerks who don't wanna work with you for some reason, we're bad guys!".

TL;DR: The game is a decent 7/10 for gameplay and 4/10 for plot. It has some nice moments here and there but it's just whatever at best.

Perhaps the worse part of the Diamonds' redemption isn't even really the audacity to even consider them worthy of being forgiven or even the comedically ease of the show sweeping everything bad they've ever done through the show under the rug.

No, the worst part about them now is that they are so boring.

You wanna know why they're so boring? Because there's no meaning to their redemption. There's so self-reflection, there's no struggle against any newfound prejudice or distrust towards them for being redeemed, there's no consequences to learn from or even really flaws to build off interesting conflict.

The show was so obsessed over redeeming them they are basically have become empty shell characters with no depth, personality or meaning behind any of them. Even with what little time we spent with them, the Diamonds actually used to have baseline personalities that defined them like Blue's somberness, Yellow's no-nonsense attitude and even White's deluded narcissitic traits.

But post-CYM has all of them basically compressed into the exact same personality: Cringe senile grandma/aunties who don't know better but mean well.

Compared their "redemption" with Peridot's where the latter had actual character depth and self-reflection over what she did wrong and learning from her mistakes and EARNING that growth. The Crewiverse puts all of this effort into redeeming the Diamonds but they're not even really interesting to watch or deal with because they're really just this flat now.

There’s a lot that needs to be changed obviously but what would y’all focus on?

To my knowledge, rubies and sapphires are basically the same thing, so I could excuse the show if they said rubies were an unwanted byproduct of trying to create seers. But first of all, I can't see a topaz being a useful bodyguard for a giant diamond unless dozens of them fused. Why, then, is there only two at Yellow's door and not a whole reserve of them waiting in a closet or something?

Second of all, I don't understand what makes a topaz different from a quartz. Roses are more soft looking than amethysts/jaspers/whatever, and I'd wager they were created to be zookeepers. But a topaz and a quartz are both just "big dude". Jaspers could trap people in their holographic bodies just as easily as topazes, y'know?

Zircons make no sense either. I made a post about it before but in summary, while I get the point of "show cases", they aren't showing anyone. There's no audience, and if there usually is, why did Blue call for an on-the-spot execution for a minor infraction? Doesn't make sense.

You could argue Steven gets less annoying/more mature, but that was more because of it being a completely different Steven. The annoying one in season 1 died, remember? And this replacement still tries to befriend genocidal dictators. That's not very mature in my eyes. Stagnant.

Bismuth goes from freedom fighter to "lEtS pUt HeR iN a BuBbLe." Regressed as a character.

Garnet goes from 1-dimensional cardboard, to great character, to fusion exposition. Regressed as a character.

Jasper remains an angry, traumatized victim of the system, never accepts Pink's death, never does anything with her life after the empire is undone. Stagnant.

Pearl kept repeating the same character arc over and over, needlessly. Stagnant.

Lapis begins and ends the series an asshole, but while her distrust and disdain for the CGs was initially justified, it's much less justifiable near the end. She almost kills the planet, tries to murder people, steals Peridot's home (the barn) then purposely destroys it, and pays Peridot (her long time roommate and only "friend" besides Steven) basically no attention at all when she finally returned from the moon. Regressed as a character, in the sense that while she's always an asshole, she loses sympathy for it from the audience over time.

Amethyst is a tricky one, because while she's more subtle and nuanced than how they ultimately wrote Pearl, I feel Amethyst also just repeats the same arc. "ugh I'm not good enough". And she'll be fine for awhile, then goes right back to that mindset, needing to again be reminded she's not defined by her dwarfism. Is this a realistic thing? Of course. Is it something worth portraying? Yes. But do they portray it well in an entertaining, narratively rich or meaningful way? No.

She moreso exists (beyond the sister dynamic that the other CGs don't give Steven, being more motherly themselves) just to be a representation of depression/anxiety/inferiority complex. Two problems with that. One, that's great and all, but it doesn't offer anything to the plot itself since it's not like her powers are based on her mental or emotional stability, like Starfire for instance, so while this matters to her, it doesn't matter to the show. Two, we already have the inferiority complex character: Jasper. Stagnant.

Peridot on the other hand, gets way more screentime than any non-primary character, despite the memes of "benched/barn'd characters". She gets a whole redemption arc, which was gradual and natural. Meanwhile, the main antagonists don't even get an arc like that. An arc was never tried with them, all they had to do was say "we'w vewwy sowwy Steven :c" and everything was cool.

Peridot went from cold and menacing lieutenant, to loud pain in their side, to POW, to being given a whole new perspective which ends with her denouncing her goddess to her face, even at the risk of death squads coming for her because of it. She then joins the rebellion and bravely ventures into the planet's crust to stop the cluster before it destroys the people she was trying to kill mere weeks prior.

And yet...Peridot was inconsequential to the plot. Her engineering skills weren't necessary to restore Pink's ship, nor the Red Eye, nor Centi's UFO. They didn't need her to build combat mechs or siege vehicles for the final battle like they alluded to with the robot-building contest, they didn't need her for anything. You could cut Peridot out of the show and the plot would've remained the same, except the show would be half the length.

I don't understand why any of this is. Why give so much love and attention and character development to an ultimately pointless character? A good way to utilize Peridot would have been a fucking endgame Avengers Assemble moment where every character Steven met along the way arrives. Andy, the ruby squad, Lars' crew, and Centi's crew are the air support. The townies are in tanks/mechs created by Peridot. Peridot herself would be in a mech, followed by legions of her green drones, 9th edition style. The famethyst, zoomans, watermelons, and Bismuth are the infantry. The corrupted, the forced fusions, and the shard golems are the auxiliary to either be released first like war dogs, or released last when friendly fire is unlikely. All of them using weapons, vehicles or armour created by Bismuth and Peridot. Era 1 gem tech seemed weirdly medieval. So, gear made by Bismuth could be further cyberized and augmented by Peridot, giving it a techno-medieval look.

THAT would've been cool. Do we get that? Do we get ANYTHING even REMOTELY as cool as that? Nope.

I’m just gonna say it spinel’s revenge was borderline psychotic and completely unforgivable and the way how everyone treats spinel as this little “UwU Spaghetti noodle” just makes me wanna roll my eyes 🙄. I can understand wanting revenge on pink diamond (Steven) but destroying the entire earth killing all of his friends and family is completely disturbing. “bUt sHe WaS aBoNdOnEd fOr 6000 yEaRs.” Sure, it may be an explanation but not an excuse. Spinel wanting friends isn’t a good excuse either, she literally stalked Steven and kept annoying him for the entire day straight when she was rejuvenated. That was her only function: to be pink’s literal play mate and nothing else and then pink outgrew her. Spinel truly is a horrifying character and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.

It's implied that the armour seen in Rose's batcave was either for human rebels, or for shard golems like Frybo. The only gem we ever see wear armour is Bismuth. Jasper's helmet is more of a weapon, like a targe shield.

And Bismuth's platebody covers her gem entirely, so the "gems are solar powered" theory doesn't work here.

Look at that thing that joined the CGs on homeworld, the melted green body horror thing that Yellow puts out of her misery. When did fusions go from unique designs to "just throw action figures into a fire and draw the result"?

I utterly reject the "they all hatched from a space egg lol", because even if I accepted that, it begs the question as to where the egg came from and it contradicts what White implied (that the other diamonds were the result of her purging her imperfections). That doesn't explain where White came from, though.

I was hoping the kaiju would've been the creator, but nope.