There’s an ethical question in Star Trek I’ve seen several people here talk about that I’ve thought about a lot. Basically, what are the ethics of having a romantic or sexual relationship with a non-sentient holographic version of a real person? This issue is brought up several times in canon, but never dealt with well, in my opinion. The main canon discussions of this topic that I remember (and it’s possible I forgot something) are in Booby Trap (TNG) where Geordi has a very brief romantic relationship with a holographic version of a real woman he’s never met, in Hollow Pursuits (TNG) where Barclay presumably has romantic/sexual relationships with extremely out of character holographic versions of Deanna and Beverly, in Meridian (DS9) where a guy wants Quark to sell him a holographic version of Kira to have sex with, and in Human Error (VOY) where Seven has a semi-long-term romantic and sexual relationship with a holographic version of Chakotay.

So, first of all, I don’t think that any of those instances mentioned are morally okay. Booby Trap is the most complicated case morally speaking since, to my memory, Geordi didn’t intentionally initiate anything romantic, though he didn’t stop it once it started either. I don’t want to imply that what Geordi did is morally as bad as the other examples I’m discussing, especially since Geordi is the only character of color being discussed here and his actions are not really equivalent in intention or impact to the other characters’. As an episode, Booby Trap doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of whether or not what Geordi is doing is unethical. In fact, it felt to me as if that question wasn’t something that occurred to the writers at all (until Galaxy’s Child, but that’s a whole other thing and the hologram portion of it is arguably the least messed up thing there, so I’m ignoring it in relation to this topic). Hollow Pursuits does portray what Barclay does negatively, but I feel like the episode is much more concerned with the negative emotional effects this has for Barclay rather than for Deanna and Beverly. Meridian, from what I remember, is the only episode to portray this situation as definitively bad, and Kira is portrayed as justified in being angry. However, the episode is a mess in other ways and does not explore the topic with nuance, making light of it with humor when I think it needed to be taken more seriously. Human Error is in some ways the most baffling case here because what Seven does is portrayed almost positively, as something that is a potentially good step in Seven’s “social development”. Apparently, there is no thought given to what Chakotay would think of the situation. I’ve seen people suggest that the narrative and fandom treatment of Seven versus the other characters is a gendered double standard, which I do think makes sense.

But the problem here isn’t having a sexual/romantic relationship with a hologram, the problem is that the person didn’t consent to having their holographic image used this way. There’s obviously nothing wrong with having sex or a relationship with a hologram not based on anyone’s image, or based on the image of someone who gave clear consent to have their image used in that way. But using someone’s image this way without their consent is pretty obviously analogous to making nonconsensual porn of someone. Do the ethics of this situation change if the hologram is of a historical figure? What about a famous person who is still alive? I don’t necessarily have answers here, but I do think the situation can become more complicated.

And then there’s another factor to consider – is the sexual/romantic relationship the biggest issue here? In the cases of Hollow Pursuits and Human Error, Barclay and Seven’s simulations of the crew are much more extensive than just the romantic/sexual portions. Would it have been all right for Barclay to create potentially offensive and demeaning holographic versions of his crewmates if there was no romantic/sexual component? Would it be okay for Seven to recreate a version of every Voyager crew member and live out an intricate alternate life with them without any of their consent if she never had romantic/sexual relationships with any of them? Is it any less a violation of someone’s rights to use their image without consent for, say, a propaganda campaign for an issue they disagree with, or a story that portrays their holographic version as a horrible person? That second scenario is the plot of the Voyager episode Author Author. This episode seems to take the moral stance that it’s bad for the Doctor to use the images of his fellow Voyager crew members to portray horrible characters, but there are other questions it doesn’t raise. Would it have been okay for the Doctor to use their images without consent if he had portrayed their holographic versions positively? What is the line between an acceptable and unacceptable usage of another person’s image without their consent? Is it ever okay to use a person’s holographic image without their consent? Is such consent implied when a person agrees to holographic scans of their body? What exactly is one consenting to when they consent to have a holographic version of themself created? I don’t necessarily have answers to these questions, I just wish any of these episodes had explored these issues with more nuance. And I do think that it’s important to consider extending the question of consent here beyond sex and romance.

The 100 rewatch: season 4 and the greyest morality ever

While I was trying to write a rewatch review of episode 4x12 The Chosen, it turned out I had too many thoughts on the complicated moral issues and lack of obvious right and wrong stance – so I’ve decided to put them in a separate post.

I don’t think the show has ever achieved this level of moral ambiguity as in these last episodes of season 4. Yes, there are many situations in the show where all options are bad in one way or another, but this is maybe the only time in the entire show where I really can’t say that there is a right or wrong choice. It’s probably the most horrible thing the characters have had to do – leave a number of people to die a horrible death just because there’s not enough place. 

And all of them have to do it, whichever side they’re taking. There is no option here where everyone is saved*. Twilight’s Last Gleaming was the episode where the show first showed me how bold it was – but this time, unlike in that episode, things aren’t made easier by having everyone volunteer to be killed.

*Or rather, there was an option where everyone – or at least the majority of people in the area – could have been saved. But pretty much everyone has forgotten about it. As we’ll find out in the next episode, the Nightblood solution works. If they had tested Clarke, they would have probably known that. If they had tested Emori, they also would have probably known that. In the end, Clarke’s heroic choice to inject herself with Nightblood and volunteer to be tested – ended up saving only her.

It’s interesting that, even now when it’s really in fashion to hate Abby for all sorts of things, no one seems to blame her for basically blowing up the chance to save hundreds – maybe thousands – of people from Praimfaya, which could have also spared them from the horror of the bunker. Abby herself feels so much guilt that she wants to die because she was being utilitarian and willing to test people in a radiation chamber order to find a way to save everyone, which made her feel she was becoming an “evil scientist” – and not because she blew that chance in the end. That’s probably because people generally feel that prioritizing your child over everything else and not being able to risk their life for the human race is completely understandable and not something people (especially mothers) should be blamed for. (…Except when it comes to Clarke in season 5. Hmm. I guess that’s different because people see Clarke’s fear of the Flame as irrational. While Abby’s fear was based on the fact that the radiation could kill Clarke and she had just seen a man die a horrible death that way… but wait, it was also based on a vision she had. Never mind.

Season 4 in particular revolves about the question, which is more moral, thinking about the “big picture”, saving as many people as you can, or saving concrete people that you know and love, or even just people who are in trouble right there in front of you? It’s not a question with a definite answer, and characters have been blamed by others or felt guilty both when they were willing to potentially sacrifice concrete individuals for the salvation of the human race, and when they decided to save people right there and then, risking the fate of the collective in the future.

I used to hate Jaha when I watched seasons 1-3 for the first time, but by season 4, I found myself understanding him better and appreciating him as a character (this was the first time he made my Top 10 characters list!), even if I don’t agree with him most of the time. I get where he’s coming from – and I was with him in 4x10 when he pointed out that the Final Conclave was an idiotic way to resolve the issue of the survival of human race. Someone had to say it. But his reasoning is all wrapped up in the fact that he sees himself as the leader of the Arkers, “his people” – as a group, and prioritizes them over others (like the Grounders), but at the same time, has always been willing to sacrifice any individual person for it, which made his care for “his people” feel not just tribalistic (just as much as any of the Grounder leaders who wanted the bunker just for their clan), but also very cold and impersonal. I certainly didn’t care for him trying to guilt-trip Bellamy by telling him he condemned 314 people to death by opening the bunker. If he hadn’t opened the bunker, he would have been condemning 800 people to death! And if it’s all about “your people”, who’s “your people” more than your family, people you love? Jaha seemed unable to understand that (which is why he didn’t predict what Abby would do to save Kane), since he had already lost the people he loved the most and sort of sacrificed his own son – which never stopped haunted him, but seems to have convinced him that his role of the savior of “his people” is something everyone should be able to sacrifice their loved ones for.

I’ve always mostly leaned to the view that opening the bunker was a better choice than leaving it closed – because it saved a greater number of people (1200 as opposed to 400+). Now, after seeing seasons 5 and 6, I’m starting to question that to an extent, because the bunker turned out to be such a horror show, and now, after the bunker and the gorge, only about 400 people from it survived. However, saving just a little over 400 people in the bunker would have been too few, and others still may have died in and after the bunker, so I still think saving 800 people at the expense of 300 other people was the right choice. This made it a good “Head” choice, as long as Bellamy was right that Octavia could prevent the Grounders from trying to kill Arkers (and ruin their own chances of survival, since they had no clue how to operate any of the devices necessary for producing or recycling air, water and food). And some of the arguments brought up by rebellious Arkers in this episode don’t hold water: “Jaha found the bunker” ignores the fact that he could have never found it without Gaia’s and Indra’s help (and Kane’s and Monty’s – and both of them were also going to be left out of the bunker to die); as for the idea that Arkers deserve more places in the bunker because they’re the ones who are necessary for everyone’s survival for their skills in operating the machines etc. – well, not all of them are necessary for that, and most of the people in Arkadia didn’t like that kind of reasoning back when they learned about the list, did they? If they thought it was wrong when applied to their lives, it’s also wrong when applied to the lives of Grounders.

However, there’s one other line of reasoning that had never crossed my mind before I heard it from a YouTube reactor I like. He thought that it was right that each “clan” got 100 people, because the surviving humans should reflect the diversity of cultures, without any of them dying out. Ironically, that’s IMO the first strong argument why the Arkers maybe should have gotten a lot more than 100 places in the bunker. His argument assumed that all of the 12 Grounder clans have very different cultures. But does what we’ve seen on the show support that? The only genuinely different Grounder lifestyles we’ve seen were from non-warriors like Luna’s Boat people (all dead anyway) and the Shallow Valley community that Madi was from (all died in Praimfaya – we don’t know who the 100 people from their clan in the bunker were), but other than that, it’s hard to see any cultural or other difference between Azgeda,  Trikru, Trishanakru etc. except for minor things like the type of warpaint. It’s the same language, religion, social structure, same prioritization of warriors. While Arkers are distinctly culturally different (and even different in their origin – since it was from 12 different world nations, rather than just USA and maybe Canada) from Grounders, but, thanks to the decision to become the “13rd clan”, are now all but extinct – with maybe 30-40 people surviving to season 6, and all but absorbed in the Grounder-dominated culture of Wonkru. In spite of the fact that Grounders have never won any battles against Arkers, while the latter defeated the Mountain Men, Grounders have always been able to dominate the Arkers by the sheer fact that there was just that many more of them. And the fact is that Grounders did try to screw over Arkers by coming up with the Final Conclave (they were all trying to screw each other and leave all other clans outside, of course, but making survival dependent on being able to win in a Grounder-style fight seemed like a sure way to leave Arkers to die – again), while refusing to share the bunker – and then, when “Skygirl” Octavia won that tournament against the odds, they were happy with her decision to share the bunker. (When you think of it, no one in that Conclave fought to have all the Arkers survive.)

So I kind of get the Arkers’ anger. But whatever the case may be, what was definitely not a good choice was starting another war less than a day before Praimfaya. I guess it was time for Arkers to do that, too, after we’ve seen similar with Grounders before the Final Conclave when they were insisting on fighting a war between each other. Because that kind of thing is a general people problem.

In terms of the “Heart”, of course Bellamy was not going to agree to sacrifice his sister, and Abby was not going to agree to sacrifice her lover. No one should be asked to definitely sacrifice their loved ones for the “greater good”. This kind of choice would leave one feeling like they’ve killed their own heart. I generally think that people really exaggerate Clarke’s “Head” role – which certainly doesn’t mean she doesn’t often act on emotion – but I think that season 4 is when she was being “Head” the most, in the sense that she was doing her best to focus on the big picture and save the human race. Bu that ended up making her feel like she had grown cold and turned into one of the people on the Council… or specifically, that she’s turned into Chancellor Jaha, someone she used to see as everything she hated. But there were always limits to how far she could go in prioritizing the big picture. If Bellamy and Abby haven’t been in the bunker, I don’t believe Clarke would have stolen it and kept it closed, either. But the fact that she was ready to leave her friends like Raven, Octavia, Monty to die (just like the earlier fact she hadn’t put some of her closest friends on the list) made her feel deeply guilty. She’s not proud of being able to make those tough choices to sacrifice people close to her for the wellbeing of the collective. But her willingness to do that has always hit a brick wall when it comes to Bellamy: the list, letting Roan blackmail her into giving Azgeda 50 seats, and finally, not being able to shoot him when she thought that would ensure the survival of the human race. (We luckily never learned if she would have given ALIE the password if her initial plan of torturing Bellamy had materialized.) Of course she was never going to be able to shoot him – but the very fact she thought, for a moment, that she could, shows how much she had tried to suppress her emotions in order to achieve the goal of saving the human race.

This is one of the reasons why Bellamy, in a way, is Clarke’s heart: she needed to get back in touch with that part of herself, back to who she used to be. It’s also why her final mission in these last two episode of season 4 is not to save the human race, but to save the people she loves; why she goes with Bellamy to save Raven, and then stays behind and does everything to save her friends, even when she thinks she’s practically already dead.

And it was Bellamy – the “Heart”, the one whose season 4 arc was all about saving individual people, not just those he loved by saving who we can today – whose season 4 arc ended with him having to make the heartbreaking decision to leave behind Clarke, one of the most important people in his life, because it was the only reasonable decision in the circumstances and the only way to save others.

I agree Cas would never do anything that endangers Jack, but personally rn I'm more annoyed with Jack...wtf is wrong with him? I never liked him, and this complete lack of empathy is the main reason why. And I know they'll 'redeem' him when they show the complete scene, but whatever, he was still willing to go on a road trip with literal Satan after everything...I just can't stand him.

Hi! Sorry for the lateness of my reply but it’s been kind of an hectic day and I came home late.

Well, we’ve seen just a snippet out of context so we can’t really tell what’s going on exactly there, but I don’t really think it’s Jack being cruel or lacking empathy - it kind of makes sense to sacrifice one man if it saves billions? Of course this is Supernatural and things are more complex than that (*Crowley voice* feelings!), but if the context is that they’re considering whether to destroy Michael with Dean inside or let Michael loose risking it to cost a large number of lives (see what happened in the previous planet that Michael inhabited) then the most reasonable (heck, the right) thing to do would be to sacrifice Dean.

Context will give us more material to judge the various characters’ stances on the matter - I am generally wary to make judgements based on trailers because they’re often purposely misleading in order to catch your curiosity without giving the entire thing away (not that whoever makes those promos is very good at it, but hey) - but if Jack is suggesting to sacrifice Dean in order to save many, many other people, I wouldn’t say it’s lack of empathy, I would say it’s the hard choice (always easier to sacrifice people you don’t know, right?).

Then again I’m not saying that if Cas says let’s try to save Dean it’s going to be a morally wrong choice, unless the show frames it like that (I don’t expect them to - we’re way past that point in the narrative where choosing to save someone at all costs was framed as toxic because of a whole baggage of reasons).

Like - the fact that trying to save one person even if chances were low and the consequences of failure were catastrophic (and many lives were obviously going to be lost anyway!, because that’s what happens when you’re invaded by an enemy army that will stop at nothing) was framed by the narrative as a morally good thing is one of the (many, many) things that absolutely don’t work with Infinity War, for instance, so I hope Supernatural is not going to just feed us that we don’t sacrifices lives no matter what just because. I hope it’s more nuanced than that. One white dude is not magically more valuable than several other lives, despite what Hollywood has been trying to tell us. Of course this is Dean, our protagonist that we love and that the show can’t do without, so things will go in a way that allows him to be saved without more than half the population of the universe to just fucking die... (I have way more faith in the Supernatural writers to write decently, so I’m not actually worried.)

I guess what we’re seeing in the promo is a moment where they’re still assessing the situation and what can be done, you know? Maybe at the beginning the only choice that makes sense is to sacrifice Dean and then something changes in the situation and it becomes possible to save Dean without it being an utterly selfish decision, which would put Cas and/or Sam in a position of badness that I don’t think the narrative wants to put them at this point of the story (conflict and dilemmas, yes, but really drastic stuff that questions their entire morality, I don’t think so).

About Jack more in general... I wouldn’t say he’s being written as completely lacking empathy. I find that the most interesting, for me at least, way of looking at Jack is to ask yourself, who among Dean, Sam and Cas is he mirroring in this trait of his/in this thing he’s going through right now? When he struggles with empathy, when he is torn because he doesn’t know his place in the world, when he despairs because he feels like every thing he does is a mistake - which (one or multiple) of our main characters is he being a mirror of?

We’ve seen Sam struggle with empathy (not that he lacks compassion - I’m talking the definition of empathy) and be at odds with Dean because his consequentialist morality clashes against Dean’s deontologist morality. We’ve seen both of them struggle between a more consequentialist approach and a more deontologist approach (ethics... complicated, man). If you add Cas in the mix, even more stuff to consider. We’ve seen all of them, in a way or another, be torn and self-loathing because they feel that every time they do something, they mess up. We’ve seen them engage in different kinds of self-punishing behaviors. We’ve seen them trust the wrong people for the right reasons (which is why I don’t think any of them is going to blame Jack for being willing to trust Lucifer for a hot minute there). We’ve seen them struggle with their biological fathers (well, in Cas’ case, not really biological but... creationist, or whatever :p), too...

I think that when Jack comes off as jarring, it’s because he’s being written as a sum of the main characters struggles, except that Dean, Sam and Cas have had their struggles and flaws spread over more than a decade and split over three people, while Jack is a condensation of a little bit of everything in one person over one season (and often not always exactly written in masterpieces of television writing, eh, I’m not forgetting that), if it makes sense?

I don’t have particular feelings towards Jack (I don’t dislike him but I wouldn’t miss him if he were gone), but I like the way the narrative is exploring the main characters through his narrative, and I trust the producers and writing team to deliver some interesting material in this sense in the season to come.

so i’ve had these jasper asks in my inbox for a while... and it’s about time i addressed them. i’ll be focusing especially on that last one and the idea of “deserving” redemption, + some of my own general thoughts to talk about the su narrative, jasper, her relationship with peridot, trauma, steven, and where we go from here. 

it’s time for another jasper post under the cut. 

steven universe is pretty loyal to the rousseau was right-trope, which basically means that while yes, people are accountable for their actions, everyone are born as a moral blank slate and drawn towards doing what they perceive to be right - if someone is “evil”, it’s because of outside influences, not because they were ‘born’ weak or selfish or cruel. it also implies that anyone has the chance of redemption and renewal. 

one of my more radical stances in fandom is that i don’t think jasper is a bad person. partly because she’s dedicated to a cause she believes is just, and partly because i don’t think any gem is supposed to be “bad”. i think she’s rather selfless - a “neutral good” within her own mind - and to her, the people and places she’s loved are more important than she is. she holds herself to just as high standards as anyone else, if not higher. her views on defects and corrupted gems are incredibly similar to peridot and yellow diamond, and this seems to be the general rule within the yellow sector - your “use” is very much the focus. 

for this reason, it’s deeply unfair to compare her to, say, blue’s quartzes: gems who have spent the last 5000 years with a loving support network of fellow quartzes with and without defects, playing daycare for the zoo humans, not living to fight, under a diamond who wants them to grieve, love, and feel their emotions to the fullest. 

i think it’s also noteworthy that despite living a completely different life, i don’t actually think jasper’s so hardcore against defects as people give her beef for. not really - at least no more so than peridot, who trash-talks pearl and corrupted gems alike. 

jasper’s treatment of peridot herself is the main example of this, and works as an important contrast between how jasper treats gems with defects VS. how say, someone like holly blue treats them (because yes, actions still matter, even if the why makes sense): 

jasper never lays a finger on peridot, insults her, or otherwise mistreats her. in “the return”, she sounds outright bored, because she believes peridot can handle herself when it’s just a handful of gems. she doesn’t define peridot by her defects. peridot, in turn, feels comfortable around jasper - enough to argue with her, roll her eyes or whine (”we can’t leave yet!” “ugh, fine”), and talk shit in a casual way. she doesn’t think jasper will punish her, hurt her or do anything more than argue back.

holly blue seems to terrorize gems on homeworld’s side, physically and verbally. it’s part of her job, but it’s also out of her own perfectionism and impatience, to keep them in line and remind them to defer to superiors. this is before they do anything wrong, and she’s very much wrong to do so. by contrast, peridot can mess up, or even depend on jasper’s help, and the worst jasper will do is tell her how to attack with the ship, or that they gotta get back to homeworld - she’s stressed, but she doesn’t say either in a demeaning, harsh or cruel way. 

jasper is cruel to amethyst, yes, but there is a very important key difference here: amethyst is a crystal gem. jasper doesn’t fight her for shits and giggles, to keep her in line or “just” because of a superiority complex - she sees her as The Enemy(tm). this is such an important difference, because jasper doesn’t treat gems on her own side this way, even when their defects are blatantly obvious. 

peridot, without her enhancers, is basically “useless” - she’s a crystal gem, and she can’t do her job properly without her screen and fingers... but jasper is outraged at what the crystal gems did to her - taking her enhancers, her status, her dignity. she still wants to reason with her, and doesn’t take any shots (physical or verbal) at peridot the entire time - she may have been told someone like peridot no longer has a use, and she does repeat some of yellow diamond’s rhetoric... but a part of her resists that mindset, because jasper’s a very emotionally-driven person. like pink diamond, peridot is in a box labelled “people i care about”, and so anything bad that happens to them is unfair. it’s not what they deserve... and peridot wants to help her. she tries, genuinely, to explain what’s so great about earth. 

this is what i mean when i say jasper holds herself to higher standards of usefulness than anyone else. above all, jasper’s fatalistic mindset is a combination of the “yellow sector” ideology and how she copes with trauma. her base response is that if she didn’t do enough to prevent it, she deserved it. she pities herself, but she sees herself as worthless if she can’t do her job - protecting/avenging herself and others.

she also serves to hold characters accountable, in a way that is reminiscent of lapis in “mirror gem/ocean gem”. jasper’s treatment of the crystal gems seems excessively rude and violent at first, but the show dances a very long dance around her motivations. a lot of the point of jasper’s big episodes is to play with your assumptions - even a relatively straightforward episode like “crack the whip” is really about setting up “beta/earthlings”. not just to show what an empathetic and growing character amethyst has become, but to show why jasper was so desperate for revenge. we got to see her actions before her motivations, so when you find out that oh boy did she have reason, it’s a gut punch. it puts everything that just happened in perspective. 

there’s a reason the show lets steven think jasper is “mean” or “terrible” for a while - and it’s not because she is. it’s because steven, at that point, is holding on to this idea that if jasper’s angry with people he cares about, she’s wrong. everyone he loves are Good. when jasper says something about wanting to beat up rose, or how pissed she is at lapis, that’s just Bad. he “got away” with this mindset with peridot, because peridot was young and didn’t really have any serious beef with the crystal gems. she was “easy mode” - not necessarily a better person, but younger and less cynical about her enemies. 

“why do i never ask follow-up questions?!” is a great line steven says to himself, because that’s exactly how he treated jasper - he eventually tries to help her, but it’s out of wanting to “fix things” more than understanding her. that’s why it needed to fail. steven needed to hear her speech, and to learn the whole story without assuming the other side is evil... and of course, that’s part of what jasper was punished for, too, because that’s how she’s lived her whole life. 

jasper was right about one thing, though - steven only helped after she was declawed. he didn’t care about any of the things she said beforehand. he took every situation at face value, and never considered that maybe she had reason... because that would mean taking a hard look at the crystal gems, his friends, and his worldview. jasper, with her parting words, sort of saved steven from becoming like her - completely entrenched in his own views, never questioning his “side” or the people he cares about. (she wasn’t alone in that, and the whole "bismuth -> bubbled” run was mainly about steven facing hard truths about the people he thinks of as ‘good’, but i digress.)

all of that so he could be punished for not knowing, for assuming, by the show delivering him a failure after harsh truth after failure when trying to help people. jasper being among them, she had to corrupt - a horrible situation born out of assumptions on both sides (that steven is rose and must be held accountable for her actions, that jasper is “bad” and that rose/lapis/ect were right to hurt her). the best way for the show to hurt steven is by hurting others, making him feel both like it’s his responsibility and like he’s helpless... so steven and jasper are a bit alike, in that one, particular self-blaming way.

ok, i’ve gone on and on, but all of that just leads to the current question: where do we go from here? 

after reaching a truly low point, steven had to slowly recover and build himself up again. starting with small human relations - “onion friend” and “future boy zoltron” were both about this, (which is why i’ll fight anyone who says they were just filler). so was “gem harvest”, letting him connect with family he didn’t know he had... and now, after slowly recovering from some pretty harsh trauma, he’s started to explore. he’s asking questions, finally, about the gems on his side. about rose, pink diamond, and about why the crystal gems won’t just tell him everything. this took him to space, to characters he can still help, if he tries to understand them - which is probably gonna be a part of the road ahead.

but then what about jasper? 

...we can’t know for sure, but i think she’ll be back. i really want her to. corruption is still one of the bigger mysteries of the show, as is the whole situation around pink diamond. jasper is the character who is most obviously involved in both of these, so it’s hard to imagine she won’t pop up in either context. by my own view of redemption - which is redemption in the narrative, through learning that she’s a person and not just a “bad” gem - she’s already achieved that. my main focus is really healing, and i think that’s possible. steven wants to help, and he actually understands her now. 

in the same interview we got this gem about jasper, rebecca sugar also talked about wanting to focus on self-love outside of relationships going forward. as someone who’s been alone, isolated and felt completely unlovable, jasper is a great candidate. that doesn’t mean she’ll never get to connect with anyone or have meaningful relationships... but as with steven, she has to recover first, and focus on herself, too.