Close-Reads — A Jasper Case Study (Part 2)

A Jasper Case Study (Part 2)

Origin Story: The perfect gem

So I think a good place to start for the Jasper case study is from her beginnings, because right off the bat we have a very interesting narrative. Jasper is the perfect gem. In a society in which your rank and abilities are predetermined by your gem-etics, Jasper already has a lot of things going for her.

She has a perfect and deep exit hole, meaning that she formed exactly the way she was supposed to. And that’s something. In a process very similar to how human foetuses develop in vivo, even with all the conditions met, all the regular check-ups, monitoring, vitamins, and minerals, there’s no guarantee that the delivery is going to go as planned. The baby might end up in breach position, there may be somethings that could not be screened or observed prior, and these can complicate the pregnancy and delivery. In the same way, gems can be given all of the best conditions to grow.

Take Amethyst in the Alpha Kindergarten, for example. The Alpha is the biggest Kindergarten, likely because it has the most ideal conditions. The soil is probably great for growing quartz gems. Each gem was spaced well enough apart so that they had sufficient space to grow and mature. Even the positioning of the injectors as they entered the ground should have been just right, to prevent any gems hurting themselves while exiting their holes.

Peridot makes all of these conditions clear when she explains to Steven and Amethyst why the Beta Kindergarten was considered inferior. The fact that Homeworld even has to have engineers who are “Certified Kindergarteners” show that growing gems is an exact science, and even science has a margin of error.

The second thing about Jasper’s origin is her size. She’s huge. The show makes a big deal about that. Even if size is relative, she’s consistently shown as a huge gem. That is in part because of how her hole was placed. It’s given wide berth from the other gems in the Kindergarten. Even in the Alpha Kindergarten, gems were arranged in a neat and evenly spaced matrix. This means that Jasper’s huge size could owe to her being created in the Beta Kindergarten. Because the circumstances allowed her to not be put into those even spaces, she grew a lot bigger than was expected.

Gem-etically speaking, Jasper should have all the advantage in battle, and that should translate into her acquiring a higher position back on Homeworld. And on its own, that’s incredibly interesting. Because Jasper is the underdog of Homeworld. The Beta-Kindergartener who proved her worth. And as I talked about before, that expectation based on her gem-etics is pressuring her and causing her a lot of stress. It’s harmful. On one hand, we have a very solid premise right here.

But on the other hand, there are a lot of attempts to typecast her and that leads to bending the premise over backwards. That’s what I would like to respond to here.

1. Homeworld isn’t lying to Everyone

As early as Too Short to Ride, there have been comments floating around about how Homeworld appears to be lying to gems about their actual abilities. The proposed reason is that lying to them keeps them weak and easily subjugated. In the past, I’ve covered how Homeworld is working under a very old set of assumptions while being in crisis. They’re stuck in their old ways because these are supposed to be efficient, but by shutting out new thinking, they’re not becoming efficient either.

The thing is, it’s likely they don’t even know that Era 2 Peridots have metallokinetic abilities, because they’re just assumed to be the watered-down versions of Era 1 Peridots. That reluctance to explore and to take risks is very much characteristic of someone with little to no resources. People who don’t have disposable income are unlikely to invest the little money they have because they can’t risk it. At the moment, Homeworld, running out of resources, is poor; the poor are risk-averse.

Think of how much more work would get done if their technician-engineers could just manipulate the small parts of the machines they’re working on instead of spending more time and resources on tools and other operations, as well as the costs of mistakes.

Because Peridot’s metallokinesis isn’t about being physically strong. It’s not about how much she can lift, but how precise she can be, as with the ring-toss game in Too Short to Ride. It would be more efficient and more effective for specific and meticulous tasks to make use of those powers, but it’s not what’s happening.

Akavakaku submitted:I’ve been wondering this ever since Beta, but… do you think Jasper’s hole in the Kindergarten has been “fixed?” Either by Jasper herself or someone who had an interest in claiming she was a “perfect” Quartz. Because there’s a lot of suspicious things about it. Size is relative in the show, but Amethyst is shocked by how huge the hole is, despite already knowing Jasper’s height. Peridot tries to brush that off, but at that point she was trying to downplay the impressiveness of the hole so I’m not convinced.

Second, it seems like there’s already hyperbolic claims surrounding Jasper’s origins. Eyeball’s stories about her portray Jasper as a hero-worshipped legendary figure. I think it’s really unlikely she actually emerged from the ground with her helmet on, given what we know about weapons as central to a Gem’s identity and chosen rather than intended purpose. So that raises the question of what else about Jasper is exaggerated.

And just looking at the hole itself, it really does seem too perfect. With the flexing arms and all, I’d find it unlikely even in the alpha Kindergarten, but a hole with not a single technical flaw even to Peridot’s standards does seem pretty impossible in the beta Kindergarten. Furthermore, Jasper’s gemstone is tiny compared to other Jaspers,’ like a sliver of the intended size and cut, so I don’t think she really is the Ultimate Quartz that Peridot assigned her hole to.

Or as an alternative… could that hole somehow actually be Rose’s?

So to sum it up, people claim Homeworld lies to keep its gems weak. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, when someone arises who is strong and is powerful according to Homeworld’s standards, that has to be a lie too.

It’s a clear inconsistency in the way Homeworld is being portrayed, when in fact, the rules back on Homeworld have been shown to be very static and suffocating for all the gems involved.

Now, let’s engage the ask and look into the reasons Jasper cannot be the “perfect” Quartz, who came out of that hole in the Beta Kindergarten. Note that I’m not attacking this submission personally, but I will be using some of its main talking points because I feel like it puts the other theories on the matter pretty comprehensively. Really, nothing against original asker.

2. Jasper is huge for a reason

I’m going to start with this point first, because it leads into the other ideas that I’m going to discuss. It questions the very premise of whether someone like Jasper plausibly could have come from the perfect hole.

The first question I want to ask in response is “What do you mean by perfection?”

It seems that much of this argumentation comes from the error of conflating the perfection of Jasper’s hole and exit, which refer to her physical and gem-etic characteristics, with everything else about her. The doubt arises because somewhere, somehow, we’d think that a perfect gem wouldn’t have done the things Jasper does. Or that a perfect gem wouldn’t have made the mistakes that Jasper did. Or that a perfect gem wouldn’t be like Jasper.

But who gives the assessment of the hole the first place? Peridot. Peridot is a very pragmatic and logical character, she tends to talk about things as they are. Her description of the hole likely refers to only that hole and nothing else (think of all the jokes about programmers, milk, and eggs). In fact, may, often hilarious, misunderstandings come from Peridot’s taking things too literally at times.

Peridot: Jasper…

Steven: This is Jasper’s hole?

Amethyst: It’s huge.

Peridot: Oh, come on, we already knew she’s tall. Let’s take a closer look.

Source: SU Wiki

Peridot is an expert in this field. She knew just by looking at the hole that it was Jasper’s. And while Peridot was as taken aback as the others, a few moments previous show us that it’s not really the size that’s getting to her.

Peridot: Look at this, the holes don’t even line up! Hehe, it’s like they just threw injectors down wherever!

Peridot: Oh, and that one? This Carnelian came out sideways! How could she not, the walls are curved! Hehe, what a joke.

…

Peridot: I tell you, it really makes you appreciate the Prime Kindergarten, Amethyst. Your Kindergarten was so thought through! Sure, you might have spent extra time in the ground, but everything else is stacked in your favor! Great location, great holes, even spacing, consistent depth, a real kindergartener gets it it right.

…

Peridot: What you want to see is no angle on the exit. A clean, strong silohuette. None of these holes come close!

Source: SU Wiki

Peridot’s definition of “perfection” really rests in the conditions of the hole: The angle of exit, the curvature of the walls, the spacing of the holes, their depth.

When she talks about Jasper’s exit hole as the most perfect she’s ever seen, I don’t doubt that. The asker of this question does not doubt that either. The idea now is whether we can equate that hole to being Jasper’s or not, and there comes the idea of size.

In Too Far, Peridot does talk about size with Amethyst. She holds up her hands and sort of estimates the size that Amethyst’s hole was supposed to be. What comes out is that Amethyst’s hole is a little less than half of what an actual hole should be.

Given that, Amethyst should come up to a little lower than Jasper’s waist should she be an ordinary Jasper. But in many representations, it looks as though she’s dwarfed by Jasper’s height.

It’s true that proportions and lengths are often inconsistent in Steven Universe, so it may be better to talk about how Jasper’s relative height factors in.

In Jail Break we see that Jasper stands taller than Garnet, a fusion. In a scene in which both of them are lunging, Jasper is maybe half a head taller. And in many moments in the show, when Amethyst stands next to Garnet, she’s only about half the latter’s height.

Jasper is huge as a character; it’s indeed a feat for someone coming from the Beta Kindergarten. And I think that is in part why the stories about her origin are as legendary as they sound.

Physically speaking, it’s plausible for Jasper to have come out of that hole. The next question is whether narratively speaking, it makes sense that it was Jasper who came out of that hole.

Theories have been given as to who the alternative owner of the hole could be. And we’ll talk about that next.

3. On the idea that “the perfection of the hole is more suited to a character like Rose.”

There are two ways this idea branches out. Either the hole belongs to someone “more perfect” than Jasper, or it belongs to no one at all. Both have very different subtexts and I’ll be talking about them here.

When we equate the idea of perfection with someone like Rose, we have to ask “why?” What are the preconceived notions about perfection that cause us to attach it to something “good?” Or, for gems, more conventionally feminine? Especially when we talk about appearances.

Because Jasper’s appearance was meant to look like the stereotypical villain build of big and wide, with a deep voice and angular eyes. That’s exactly what SU is trying to show us. We’ve been introduced a character, who, in almost any other franchise would be the villain. Pure evil, with no redeeming value or attempt at a backstory beyond, “When I was young X bad thing happened to me and now I vow revenge.”

But we see that Jasper isn’t like that. She has depth and motives. She has an honour code she was describing in the image above in Earthlings. She had a plan and wanted to prove herself. She was hurt by the war and she’s reacting to it destructively and hurting people in turn. She was both the victim and the abuser in an incredibly unhealthy relationship and now she’s all alone with nothing left.

That’s not the modus operandi of someone just here to rule the world or smash people for fun. There’s a clear motive. It does cause a lot of damage. Jasper is not absolved from the things she’s done, but, and there’s a big “but,” she’s someone acting according to a context, a set of circumstances. She didn’t just wake up one day and decide to be “evil” in the way she’s being portrayed.

In fact, her self-destructive tendencies stem, again, from her idea of an honour code. That gems have to be in their place and be great at being in their place in order to deserve a place in a system that protects them in the first place– Homeworld.

Jasper had always tried to expend as little energy as possible when taking on her enemies. In The Return, Jasper used the destabiliser as a non-lethal way of immediately taking out the strongest member, Garnet. And then she knocked out Steven after taking off her helmet, knowing he was a human at that point and would probably not survive a full-on attack.

Even at her worst, in Alone at Sea, the first thing Jasper did was to talk to Lapis. Steven was a target right there. She could have taken him hostage in a heartbeat. But she didn’t because that would be a lot of effort on her part.

To me, it’s very odd then that in Crack the whip she savagely rips at Amethyst’s self-worth. Yes, she has harsh words for all of the Crystal Gems, but she’s especially hard on Amethyst. Because it scares her that had things in the Beta been a little different, she would have been just like her.

The idea of her own inferiority, that she can never match up to the “perfection” in her gem-etics, scares her. And she keeps running from it by clinging on to what she believes is being strong.

Under her own code, your innate abilities determine who you are. And hers are supposed to be perfect. By extension, she’s supposed to be perfect. But she doesn’t feel like she is. And that’s because some tiny part of her knows perfection is impossible.

Notice that the idea of “every gem having its place” is the very backbone of Homeworld’s social stratification system. Jasper is torn between her own experiences and the theoretical code she built her life on. And in hindsight, it’s a very similar experience to the one that caused the Crystal Gems to rebel in the first place.

So why does it not make sense for Rose to have that hole? Because Rose had her epiphany from somewhere else. Rose is already painted as special and one-of-a-kind and perfect, even though she wasn’t all those things. Adding this to her backstory doesn’t offer the punch that it does Jasper’s. Rose’s story is about deconstruction. We watch what really transpired in her life and we deconstruct the archetypal mother goddess figure. We find out she was goofy, flawed, impulsive, and really bad at interpersonal relationships.

Jasper’s story is the opposite. We’re going from the archetypal villain to someone who is just like us. Someone told all her life that she was going to do great things, yet never feeling like she accomplished anything. Someone convinced that she had all the potential in the world, but never could quite match up to her expectations.

Then there’s the idea that the hole is no one’s at all, which leads me to my next point.

4. It’s completely possible the hole comes from the Beta Kindergarten

One thing that was cited in opposition to the “This hole is really Jasper’s” evidence we’ve seen in the story, is that Eyeball appears to have an exaggerated account of Jasper’s birth.

I’m certain that Jasper wasn’t born with her helmet on. But I think it goes to show what role her creation played in the Rebellion. The very fact that someone from an “inferior” Kindergarten came out the way Jasper did, and then made a name for herself by fighting and making good use of the innate strength she got from her great exit, means that in a time of war, she’d be a great beacon for how Homeworld is still going strong. It’s a message to all the gems losing morale at the time: If the Beta Kindergartener can be this big, buff warrior, what more the rest of you?

And it reinforces Homeworld’s rhetoric that it’s your gem-etics that define your capabilities.

It wouldn’t make sense for Homeworld to “plant” that story. There would be too many witnesses (i.e. everyone else who emerged from that Kindergarten plus the officers in charge) to corroborate Jasper’s origin story. Why go through all the trouble and effort and resources forging a story of morale like that when it would be much easier making up a story of, say, a heroic rescue mission or a successful stealth mission? It just doesn’t seem practical to go through all the effort of bribing/threatening people to go with that story, especially because it’s wartime and they have much bigger things to worry about.

Just thinking about it, Jasper’s entire life is predicated on the needs of someone else, in a very “My Sister’s Keeper”-like fashion. Because the Alpha forces were insufficient, the Beta forces were put in, not to be trained as a long-lasting troop, not to join gem society, but desperately an attempt at holding onto Earth. And I did talk about why Homeworld felt it was important to hold down Earth. Many of the Beta quartzes likely did not survive given their compromised state upon emerging, their relative lack of training, and being on the losing side in the midst of a war.

Jasper must know, somewhere in the back of her mind, that her existence may not have come around at all if those circumstances weren’t in place. She must know that she was designed to be back up and nothing else. And all her life, she’s been trying to prove she is much more than that.

On a final note, why do we feel someone like Jasper doesn’t deserve that hole, and someone like Rose deserves it more? Again, for me it goes back to the idea of Jasper still being seen as the “bad guy” and Rose being seen as the “good guy.” We can’t equate perfection with badness. And maybe that’s the point.

This hole was not there to make Jasper seem even more superior. In fact, it’s the one of most humanising aspect of Jasper’s story: That this entire time she’s been struggling with the very foundation of her beliefs. It’s a struggle of hers everyday, only instead of going the way of the gems and saying “maybe there’s something wrong with Homeworld’s logic,” she’s taking the opposite route and saying, “maybe I’m just not trying hard enough to remain consistent with Homeworld’s logic.”

And I want to end with this idea:

In On the Run, Pearl tells Amethyst, “You’re the one good thing to come out of this mess.” One neighbourhood over, that was Jasper.

It shows how limited our scope of viewing the world in SU is, because we’re viewing it from the perspective of Steven, a member of the Crystal Gems. It doesn’t explicitly consider the notion that on Homeworld, there were also friendships, growing up, training, trying to be something everyone expects you to be.

Jasper’s origin story explains so much of her actions and it gives us a glimpse into the kind of thinking that dominates Homeworld discourse. Taking that away from her, when it has been canonically established, only serves the purpose of making her appear much less dynamic than she is, or if not, make Homeworld appear the same.

If you liked this post, you might be interested in these:

Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: Origin StoryPart 3: During the WarPart 4: Relationship with Peridot Part 5: Weapon AnalysisPart 6: Fusion- Relationships, Lapis, and Malachite Part 7: Insight into CorruptionPart 8: The Road to Redemption

I’ll link to the other parts when they’re up! We are done!