When we first meet Lapis Lazuli, she is already a prisoner.
Her gem is lodged in a mirror in the midst of a war on Earth, a planet far from her own. Authorities of her Homeworld want to use her as a spy; they have mistaken her for a Crystal Gem, one of the rebels who want to prevent the earth from alien colonization, and so they force her into a mirror that will reflect the rebels’ movements.
But she is not a rebel, and she does not know what they want her to know — so she repeats their words back to them, fruitlessly, until they abandon her. And that is what we, the audience, see at first: a mirror, a stone, lying in the sand. When Steven finally picks her up, she has lived thousands of years this way.
Trauma lives in the body, and that is where we so often confront it. But I want to talk about what happens when trauma deprives you of a body, of your agency, even as you fight to regain it. This is what Lapis is tasked with overcoming from the very start.
Lapis might actually be the strongest warrior on the show, in part because her powers are so tied up in an earthly element — water — and she can harness its massive power. We have seen her raise the oceans of the earth on a column that stretches far into space, or bring a massive wall of water crashing down on her enemies. But she does not often use her strength to battle others.
Jasper sees this power and yearns for it, knowing that Lapis’ powers can do real harm to a vulnerable Earth. She tries to manipulate her against the Crystal Gems: “They kept you prisoner. They used you. This is your chance to take revenge.”
And she does take revenge — on Jasper, the most cartoonishly evil character on the show, one who seems to fit the archetype of an abuser who misuses their power. Lapis turns this power dynamic on its head: after fusing with Jasper, she immediately binds their fusion, Malachite, in chains, dragging them beneath the ocean. Here she can keep them both prisoner and prevent Jasper from doing any more harm, she tells the Crystal Gems.
In Steven Universe, fusions usually embody the trust and love between characters who have built something greater than the sum of their parts. But used wrongly, fusions can trap characters in an abusive dynamic. In Malachite, Lapis’s trauma has taken physical form, and she fights hard to maintain it as Jasper struggles to break free; she believes that keeping Jasper in chains is her duty. But in doing so, she has sacrificed her own body and voice, her ability to exist alone.
This is where the show diverges from so many portrayals of trauma survivors as weak, from the way we so often call them “victims,” from the question of why people stay in abusive relationships. It’s very clear why Lapis stays, and that staying is not necessarily weak. This relationship, bound together beneath the sea through the force of her sheer will, requires enormous strength. All those elements co-exist in the same episode.
The trauma of that experience stays with Lapis, even after Malachite is gone. After the Crystal Gems forcibly un-fuse her from Jasper, Lapis has her own body back, and she is listless. Occasionally her indifference gives way to fear at the sight of water, where once she was trapped.
But her narrative takes a turn in “Alone at Sea,” when Steven tries to re-acquaint Lapis with water on a daytime boating trip and Jasper reappears out of the ocean.
Until this point, Lapis’s fusion with Jasper seemed to be a heroic act, a sacrifice she makes to save her friends. But in this episode, talking with Jasper, she admits that she had missed her, that she had drawn satisfaction from their dynamic. “I liked taking everything out on you. I needed you. I hated you,” she says.
There is no simple survivor narrative, and Steven Universe doesn’t offer one here. Some viewers may see this as an admission that Lapis was also abusive to Jasper; others might think that, in a desperate attempt to save herself and others, Lapis adopted the tactics she needed to survive. Perhaps both of those statements are true. Perhaps it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that both of those statements can be true.
Here’s what we know: when Lapis finally says no, finally breaks free, it’s in the form of a fist punching Jasper. This moment sees Lapis fully in control of her body, using her power to its fullest in one gorgeous act. She’s taking Greg and Steven by the hands, and they’re flying away. As they glide over the water, Steven says, “Hey, the ocean’s really beautiful from up here.”
“Yeah,” Lapis agrees. “It is.”
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