Give me Pebbles

In “Keystone Motel,” Greg had the following quote:

However, we have NO EVIDENCE in the show that Garnet likes to eat (as of the day I’m posting this in April 2017). In fact, literally every time she’s presented with food, she doesn’t interact with it or eat it, and never acts like she cares about it. Pearl makes a big deal about not eating, but Garnet’s eaten in the show as often as she has: ZERO TIMES.

In “Together Breakfast,” she helps make the Together Breakfast, but seems uninterested in it. (Granted, nobody else eats it either.)

In “So Many Birthdays,” she doesn’t care about the birthday food.

In “Beach Party,” Garnet sits in front of an untouched hot dog and comments that they don’t need to eat.

In “Warp Tour,” she bakes cookies but has no intention of eating them herself. They were intended for Steven, but Amethyst eats them.

In “Bismuth,” Pearl doesn’t bother to get a plate, but everyone else has pizza, and Garnet alone isn’t eating it.

And in “Gem Harvest,” Garnet doesn’t partake at the feast.

The closest we get to Garnet eating something in the show is from a scene in “Secret Team,” when it’s strongly implied that she drinks a sugary soda drink with Steven. When she arrives at Fish Stew Pizza, Steven has ordered drinks for them. You can see Steven has sipped some of his while Garnet’s is full.

Then she picks up the cup like she’s going to drink from it, though you don’t actually see her do it.

And then you see her set it down, with the liquid in it diminished. She probably drank the soda.

Though the sodas are back to the levels they were at before the next time we cut to a side scene of them, so who knows. There was also another time she ALMOST ate, in “Back to the Barn.” She was about to eat popcorn:

And then she literally shook her head and didn’t eat it, like she’s trolling all of us who want to see if she eats.

HOWEVER.

Garnet canonically eats multiple times … IN THE COMICS.

In “Doppelganger,” a short in the original comic run Steven Universe #4, Garnet eats a double-scoop ice cream cone while hanging out with Steven.

In Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems #1, Steven teaches the Gems about roasting marshmallows over a campfire, and Garnet plays along, happy to eat the marshmallows.

And in the 2017 ongoing comic series, Steven Universe #3, Garnet is seen in the background of a crowd scene apparently eating or about to eat a donut. (I assume it is a donut, not a bagel, because Beach City businesses are offering their specialties here and the Big Donut is included.)

What do all these instances of comic-book eating have in common?

THEY’RE ALL SWEETS.

OBVIOUS CONCLUSION: GARNET IS A SUGAR FIEND.

This theory may be further supported by the fact that she was the only Gem able to make an acceptable cake for Steven for his birthday in “Birthday Bake-Off,” a short included in the original Steven Universe comic run, #1. Amethyst and Pearl had failed to make edible cakes, and then Garnet shows up with this:

Aaaand it’s not even really a cake, just solid icing.

I think the big thing that really grinds my gears is the way it’s repeatedly shoved down my throat that I am supposed to feel sorry for lapis during the whole malachite situation, even though the narrative also acknowledges how what she did was wrong.

and I do feel sorry for her… to an extent. like yeah, it definitely sucks to be lapis when peridot dragged her on the ship as an informant, it sucks to be lapis when jasper grabbed her and tried to manipulate into fusing. for someone who has a massive trauma around being trapped, questioned, and used as a tool, the events leading up to malachite were super triggering, and her emotions in that moment (desperation to get control again) are understandable.

and even after the fall out from malachite, it sucks that she feels guilty and she’s “afraid of her own power” those are not pleasant emotions to experience. but you know what? at the same time I’m like “good. she should feel bad.” because what she did was not acceptable on any level, and her feeling remorse over it means she is not a horrible person.

but I call bullshit on me having to feel sorry for her during malachite. oh, it sucks being at the bottom of the ocean? it sucks being trapped in a toxic relationship? you’re the reason why you’re at the bottom of the ocean. you’re the reason why it’s even staying together. boo fucking hoo. I don’t care how “hard it is” on her to hold someone prisoner and take her anger out on them.

and I really don’t care if the crew somehow thinks that’s “cold” of me or whatever. for those several months she held malachite together, she had all the power and control. she was an abuser, full stop, and sorry not sorry, I am not going to shed any tears about how bad an abuser feels while they are abusing someone.

and you know, the same exact thing applies to jasper too! I really like speculating all the sympathetic reasons why she behaves the way she does. but I don’t feel sorry for her while she’s beating the shit out of amethyst on a physical/mental/emotional level. I don’t really feel sorry for her when her army runs away from her. (maybe that’s why I’m like… one of the only jasper fans I know who felt exactly zero sympathy at the “nobody I fuse with wants to stay” line.) sympathetic reasons or not, she was being a piece of shit who treated the people around her like garbage. 

and unlike lapis, the narrative doesn’t expect me to feel sorry for her. in fact, the narrative actively discourages me from feeling sorry for her.

so…. why again am I supposed to feel sorry for lapis while she was abusing jasper, and it’s “cold” if I don’t, but I am supposed to hate jasper? because lapis felt sorry afterwards and jasper didn’t? (even though jasper’s worldview is consistent enough where she’s not just hurting people with no remorse for shits and giggles, she hurts herself too because she’s just that messed up?)

sympathetic reasons put horrible decisions in context. they do not excuse them.

so yeah. I really, really don’t appreciate the way I am expected to feel like lapis is this poor sad little angel who just couldn’t help herself because she was triggered, and I have to focus all my attention about just how sad she feels, while at the same time they acknowledge that what she did wasn’t acceptable. 

Personally i thinm Lapis and Malachite probably would have benefited from something of an "Onion" treatment. Onion is a cute, lonely kid and thats something convayed to us very early in the series----but it doesn't come to a point where we forget he's a delinquent. And Steven admits to not fully understanding him and makes assumptions. Once he connects with Onion, we have that little "in conclusion" seen at the end of Onion Gang and we're good.

That might be a very juvenile way conveying subversive character expectations, but...well... Steven Universe is ment for juveniles.

In contrast to his treatment of Onion, Steven acts like he understands Lapis well and gives her complete support from the get go. I think "Alone At Sea" is meant to convey that Steven doesn't really understand Lapis and was in denial that his friends trauma coping meathods could manifested into something ugly and problematic.

((And tbh I don't wanna hear that trapping Jasper was fine because Lapis wanted to protected Steven, among other things. Like come on now that chain scene in Chile Tide was some g-rated torture if I ever saw it. Don't tell that wouldn't be in-universe problematic, no matter the context))

But Steven never falters on the sympathy train and there's no "Aha!" moment to summerize the point of the scene like in Onion Gang. The complicated message of the episode becomes even weaker because you have to go in with a magnifying glass to get that, despite her overtly violent personality, Jasper's displaying clear signs of Stockholm's, low self esteem and just general signs that she's had a war-torn life. By text book definitions, Jasper would at least be a victim inside Malachite, but people don't see her as capable of being a victim in any circumstances. Just as Lapis' subversive traits are undercut by arguably inappropriate framing devices, Jasper's are also under cut by showing her as frightening and dangerous nearly all her moments of vulnerability and defeat, with like one exception.

As a pretentious adult, I can enjoy the convoluted story telling for Jasper and Lapis to a point. But considering this is a baby show for baby (and up), it's just not enough. Add in some emotion baggage you see on tumblr and you got The Discourse.

me, an intellectual: