So if there’s one thing we can agree on it’s that Jasper is a problematic character. That’s fine to acknowledge, not every character that everyone likes has to be a perfect brownie of an angel like Steven Universe.
But.
BUT.
The fever pitch to which the harassment of anyone who even LIKES Jasper has reached is fucking bonkers to me.
One of the reasons I like the Steven Metauniverse is that fan theories and character analyses have been (up to now) comprehensive and really fucking well-rounded. Lately, though, it seems like folks have decided “to hell with that shit” and are just shitting on anyone who shows an inkling of an interest in the character.
Man, hell. It’s not hard to do critical analysis of a character. Jasper is not an especially egregious character in Steven Universe, compared to the obvious fuckery that Peridot wreaks and to the unknown threat Beach City and Earth faces from Homeworld.
Fuck sake.
PREACH.
My add on:
Just remember, if you’re in the SU fanbase and you’ve been bullying people who like Jasper / ship Jasper with other characters, please remember you’re garbage, okay? Promise?We like the bad characters, we know she is evil. That does not mean we agree with what she does. You can enjoy problematic characters without condoning what they do. Do I like lapis? Yeah! Did I forget the fact that she literally tried to drown two children? No! Do I love Jasper? HELL YEAH, did I forget she killed garnet and the rest of the gems to supposedly execute them on homeworld? NO, I KNOW SHE IS EVIL, BUT I LOVE HER FOR IT.
It’s not even a “we love the bad characters” thing, it’s like
People are treating characters who were literally written with complexities in their behavioral makeup like they’re SOLIDLY good or SOLIDLY evil.
I’m comparing Steven Universe to any number of Studio Ghibli films because fuck it SU is a fucking animated masterpiece on Ghibli’s level so bite me:
The main villains in most Ghibli films (I can think of Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke off the top of my head) are great villains not because they are solidly bad but because they are usually trying to solve the main problem in the given movie (or are fighting a conflict caused by it/trying to use a piece of technology that caused it) in ways that run orthogonal to the protagonist. They are shown as emotionally and contextually complex characters FOR A REASON.