Personally I think her design is unnecessarily chunky. The coat just looks weird, would be much nicer if it was sleeker and the shoulder pads weren´t so weird. As for bodytypes, I am Sir Not Appearing In This Show. All of my squish tends towards the hips and we haven´t got anyone like that yet.
I feel like CN is super tonedeaf about what people actually want to see. I've seen nothing positive about the new PPG, for instance, and Teen Titans Go! isn't some shining beacon of popularity either...but we're getting a lot more of them than of SU, which is well-loved by many demographics and critically acclaimed.
Yeah, it's really weird. Though, I think adventure time and gumball are still getting regular new episodes, though I don't know how well those are advertised.
I'm a taller, top-heavier Amethyst with skinnier arms. Spoiler We still don't know if any of them knew she was sentient, though. Since Steven healed her gem, Rose Quartz could have. If they knew and did nothing, that's a similar level of "Not okay, guys." I'd guess Turquoise, since lapis lazuli is an opaque stone.
I laughed at the ubiquitous turnpike sign, but then it just turned into another "Jersey is filthy & its people are nasty" non-joke.
Yeah, it was mostly the sign that got me. apparently the joke was written by a writer who did live there as a kid so it was meant to be more self deprecating, which is fair enough, i make self deprecating jokes about growing up in NJ too. but of course there's a difference between 'people from nj laughing at this joke because the turnpike really is a nightmarish hellscape' and 'people not from nj who have the idea that the entire state and its people are all garbage' and i'm not 100% keen on people who are brushing off people from the area that were actually bothered by the joke. the jokes about the state can feel almost like a personal attack at times, and is a big part of why i often don't tell strangers what state i grew up in. the turnpike can be pretty gross, but it's not especially any more gross than any other interstate that gets a lot of stinky trucks traveling between cities. there are also parts of jersey that even lapis might have been happy to see or consider living in that would've been nice to see. i've always been a big fan of the wetlands in south nj, and there are plenty of beach city-esque beach towns.
You know, I was actually a little surprised the episode ended with Lapis deciding to stay here-here. I thought they were setting things up that she'd decided she wanted to stay on Earth, but not on Beach City, and so was going to go on a round-the-world flying adventure exploring lots of places and checking in with Steven via gemskype or something.
I'm not sure if this is the place to put this, but I've been going over lapidary and geology terminology hoping to find things that would be good to toss into Gem dialogue in RP and fic: Fracking (seen this one used already) Cirque ("A steep-walled hollow in a mountain side, shaped like an amphitheater, or bowl, with one side partially cut away"; clearly this is what Gem amphitheaters are called.) Hardpan Retrograde Spoil (the material discarded from mining or quarrying, probably used for a "useless" person) Flaw Jamb peg (an older, more rudimentary kind of gemcutting, possibly their equivalent of "cobble together" or "jury-rig"?) Swag is apparently an actual, legit jewelry term. It doesn't mean anything like what it's usually used for, but who cares what it actually means, Gems should say "swag".
Spoiler Am I the only one who heard "and what about that dark place?" and my mind went straight to The Lion King?
I've been thinking about it, and there's something very sketchy about the backstory Lapis gave to Steven. Spoiler She was on Earth during the war for no reason she gives, couldn't get away 'in time' and was poofed by a very strange looking gem, even though she'd been on a battlefield full of Homeworld gems getting poofed when she was found by a purple 'Homeworld soldier' she was mysteriously assumed to be a Crystal Gem, placed into a mirror to be interrogated for answers she couldn't give, then mysteriously left behind when the Homeworld gems (all in blue shades in her flashback) fled. Like, all of this raises WAY more questions than it answers. Why was she even on earth? Who poofed her and whose side were they on? (Angular gem on chest, multicolored dreads - Bismuth, perhaps?) Why did the mysterious purple Homeworld soldier assume her to be a Crystal Gem when the battlefields were full of Homeworld gems getting poofed? How was she kept attached to that mirror before she was cracked? How did the Crystal Gems know to tell Steven that the mirror Lapis was placed into was bad news, way back when they rediscovered it? I suspect there's a lot more to her backstory than just being an unfortunate caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. My wild guess is that if Bismuth was a Homeworld gem, Lapis could have been a double agent, sent in to join the Crystal Gems and spy on them for Homeworld, but for some reason got caught, mistaken for an actual turncoat and poofed.
Mmmm, not sure about that- Spoiler The episode time constraints do limit how much detail she could go into, for one thing. I'd need something actually casting doubt on her story, rather than it just failing to cover everything, before I concluded she was hiding something. I would love to know why she was on Earth, but once she was there, well, active war zones aren't known for being difficult to get killed in. Then there's not much reason to assume she'd know why they thought she was Crystal; interrogators usually don't answer questions and of course her communicative abilities to even ask were very limited, though I'm not sure how much of that was from being cracked. I figured the CGs just considered the mirror potentially bad news because it was a Homeworld artifact. No one is pleased when a piece of tech salvaged from their enemies suddenly displays signs of sentience.
Well, yeah, the episodes are very short and that limits detail that they can get into, but the show consistently uses that limitation to good effect. My point is that there is plenty of room Lapis's story for all sorts of interpretations and hidden meanings, and I can't imagine the SU crew not using that to their advantage. I am certain that if they wanted her story to be unambiguous, they would have written it that way - and not have stuffed it into the last third of the episode if it needed more elaboration than it got.
Well, obviously there are sinister things that could be made to fit her story, I just don't think it's "sketchy" except maybe in the sense of "just the basic shape". ...I might be getting overly defensive because of past experience with Jasper stans bent on digging eeeeevil out of every little thing Lapis does or does not say ever. Am I?
I kind of feel like you are, especially since I distinctly labeled my wild guess as a wild guess and never said anything about Lapis being evil. If I'm somehow right? That doesn't make her evil, that makes her complicated. Like all the gems are complicated. Spoiler Like, double agent doesn't automatically equal 'bad guy'. We've seen enough backstory at this point to be able to guess that back during the war, the Crystal Gems were pretty much terrorists from Homeworld's POV. A double agent going to spy on the gems could easily feel 100% like this was a good and necessary thing she was doing. We know the Crystal Gems are good people... but we also know their perspective, and us viewers are assumed to have a perspective that totalitarianism like we see on Homeworld is a Very Bad Thing. A gem who misses Homeworld and who potentially wanted to act in the best interests of a society that she valued is not made a bad person because the society she came from is deeply flawed.
We're still supposed to have a 'Summer of Steven' thing? I haven't heard about that NOT being a thing suddenly.
I am pleasantly surprised by all the awesome meta the fandom s producing after the new episodes. It's so refreshing after the hiatus was filled with shipping wank. I am also always pleasantly surprised by the writer's on SU, because even if things don't go in the direction I thought they would, or my headcanons are shot down, I am never left feeling bitter or disappointed. Like I thought for sure that the crystal gems had something to do with Lapis being in the mirror, but even if they didn't, the backstory they gave Lapis is compelling in it's own way and it is so vague that I am still left asking questions and wanting to know more.
