Join This Fandom: Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe

There are dozens of online writers praising Rebecca Sugar’s animated series Steven Universe, which is feminist, queer-positive, and generally amazing. Allow me to join them.

Steven Universe is the comic, sentimental, epic story of a boy named, what else, Steven Universe, who is the newest member of the Crystal Gems. Said Gems are superheroine-like beings committed to saving the Earth and its inhabitants from monster-like threats. In the first few episodes, we learn that Steven’s mother, Rose Quartz, was a Gem, too, but she gave up her life and form so that Steven, a half-human Gem, could be born.

Let me tell you about some of the things I love about this show. Although its inclusion, humour, and creativity were exactly what my soul needed when I sat down to watch it, instead of going over what others have analysed more carefully than me, I’ll concentrate on its brilliant elements that are covered less often.

1. Superpower of love done right.

When you see someone’s ultimate power is “love,” how many of you think of this? I know I do.

In Harry Potter and many other franchises, the protagonist is said to have the power of love — they survived or are immune because someone loved them, they make the right choice at the climax because of their loving relationship with a friend or significant other, they pull the thorn out of a lion’s paw and earn its help later on.

All that seems more like the power of “being a decent person” — which, although certainly not unworthy of praise or deserving to be taken for granted, is like saying a character has the “power of math” because they can add and subtract and multiply instead of being, you know, a Will Hunting-type genius.

No one in Steven Universe ever says that Steven has the power of love — the most we hear from them is that Steven’s mother was the sort of person who saw the best in everyone and made people feel good. But they don’t have to say anything. Steven shows his super-love skills over and over.

He is always considerate and thinking of others, not in the Goofus-and-Gallant way but in the way that matter-of-factly shows that wanting people to be happy comes naturally to him. He considers himself friends with every character in the village, even the snarky teen whose insecurity comes out as cruelty to everyone around him and the creepy kid whose behaviour is unreadable. His impulse is always to make friends with enemies, try to figure out why his antagonist is acting this way, no matter how certain the other Crystal Gems are that he’s courting disaster.

Steven is a genius at love. And, over and over, his capacity to genuinely care about other living beings, to put himself in their shoes and see the best in them, is what enables the Gems to save the day. Without losing the excitement or the comedy or the cool powers and fight scenes.

2. Our understanding of the cartoon’s universe grows with Steven’s.

At the start of the series, we don’t know much more than Steven does: there are these super-powered beings who present themselves as female. His mom was one of them, and now he is too. They go do cool things like fight monsters and go on missions to neat ancient temples full of traps.

Similarly, we understand the characters the way Steven does. In particular, we get a child’s view of the teenage and adult characters.

But as Steven grows, the events of the series force him to learn more. Who and what are the Gems? Why are they here? How did everything get this way? What happened to bring everyone to this point? What are the Gems trying to do, and why? As Steven learns about new facets of the people he loves and the missions he joins, we learn along with him.

Steven’s story starts off as the kind of fantasy many of us indulged in when we were kids. What if I had superpowers? And I fought monsters with other people with superpowers? That would be awesome! When we concocted schoolyard games like these, “plot” and “making sense” didn’t matter — the point was to do cool, dramatic things.

But just as growing up leads us to new kinds of games with more complex logic and less straightforward rewards, Steven’s adventures develop his understanding. The problem isn’t as simple as restraining monsters. There’s a context to what’s going on.

Likewise, the relationships we have with our childhood caretakers and mentors, parents, teachers, coaches, etc., changes when we become adults too. When we’re very young, we’re sometimes surprised to see our teacher at the grocery store — how can he do something as mundane as shopping when, to us, he is literally only what we see in the classroom? But adults don’t think twice: he’s a person, like the rest of us, with his own dreams, ambitions, and personal story.

Although we start off seeing the adult characters as always-reliable parental or older-sibling figures, as Steven grows, we begin to understand them as people. We understand the feelings, sorrows, and personal histories invisible to a younger Steven’s eyes.

3. The adult characters are well developed without taking over the story.

However, the downside to learning more about the adults around us as we grow up is that sometimes, their faults disappoint us. But Steven Universe allows its adult characters to have flaws — sometimes, serious ones — and shows us how they ultimately help Steven love the people around him better.

For instance, the adult Gems and Steven’s dad hurt each other deeply sometimes. Some of them are never going to be good friends with one or more of others — there are too many painful memories in their pasts or strong personality conflicts. Yet we can see, as Steven does, that they love and support each other at the same time (and that sometimes, his presence is the catalysis for this love). And even though their flaws mean they sometimes hurt Steven, they all love him too.

More important, although we learn more and more about the adult characters’ personal conflicts, it never loses its focus on Steven and his journey.

Because Steven cares about his comrades, their pain hurts him. He wants to do right by the people around him and help them feel better. Their struggles are never presented as “here is this adult character’s lonesome woobiness, OMG” but “here is something about that character that affects Steven’s daily life.”

This keeps Steven at the centre of the story, as he should be. No matter how complicated or involved the plot and other characters, we always see everything through Steven’s eyes. This gives the whole series, even in its darkest moments, an undertone of hope and love — Steven’s hope and love that everything will turn out okay for the wonderful people around him.