Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar on animation and the power of empathy

Western animation is in the middle of a golden age. Shows like BoJack Horseman and Rick and Morty have emerged as the new standard-bearers for a kind of cartoon that’s sharp, funny, and insightful, capable of dealing with startlingly nuanced themes, like BoJack’s honest reflections on the nature of unhappiness. But few efforts in any medium can manage Steven Universe’s trick of exploring topics like intimacy, love, abuse, and the constant threat of annihilation, while balancing them with thoughts on the simple joy of eating a hot dog. The series started out as a slice-of-life show about a young boy and his magical family, but it’s emerged as one of the most daring, open-hearted series on television today.

The creative force behind the series is Emmy-nominated writer Rebecca Sugar, Cartoon Network’s first female showrunner. Originally a storyboard revisionist for Adventure Time, she broke out on her own to launch Steven Universe in 2013, blending her love of superheroes and magical-girl anime with a story about a kid not unlike her own little brother, Steven Sugar. Four years later, the show has gotten much more complicated; a recent arc sees Steven abducted by his alien enemies, and being put on trial for his mother’s ancient war crimes. But at its heart, the show is still very much about relationships and family in all their forms.

“The thing I always return to is that, for me, it’s about my relationship with my brother,” Sugar tells The Verge. “All of the gems are reflections of some piece of that. I try to always remember that it comes down to that feeling of being able to go home at the end of the day and hang out with your best friend, who’s also your brother. That’s the center point of bringing all these unrelated things together. They’re the things we share.”

Steven Universe doesn’t spark the kind of pop cultural conversations that shows like Game of Thrones spawn, but fan love — particularly online — has allowed it to reach a quiet kind of ubiquity, with comics, books, and video games regularly extending the story. Sugar does her best to be involved in all these projects, providing a unity of vision to something that’s slowly becoming its own expanded universe project. We spoke with Sugar about that vision, what fandom means to her, and where Steven is headed next.

Steven Universe is quietly exploding. What has it been like seeing the show grow into a bigger property?

It's been so exciting! The show is so video game inspired, so we knew we wanted to be very involved when [games company] Grumpyface started working on our first game, Attack the Light. There is so much that can be said about the characters that can be said so clearly in the form of a game. For example, we knew it had to be an RPG. In that game, everyone starts at a super-high level except for Steven, and Steven always defends and heals, but never attacks. You also get chances to chat with the Gems, and you have to choose who you're buddying up to at times. I love that stuff. Steven loves all the Gems, so there's no easy answer if you have to pick sides.

We've had the chance to build on those ideas so much more for the Save the Light, the upcoming console game. Now you get to choose who you're teaming up with, and the relationship-building aspect is way more important. It can build to special moves you can only do when certain characters team up with each other.

Is that freeing on your end, or more challenging?  

It can be hard to juggle the extra projects with the show. There's not enough time in the day, but it's so worth it when we get to explain things in a new way in a new medium. I loved working on the Answer children's book, because of all the meta fairytale storytelling that could only work in the form of a book. Attack the Light felt like that, too, full of things only a game can do, and Save the Light even more so. Working with Grumpyface is very freeing, especially after doing the first game together. They totally know what I like, and they're running with the style we invented for the first game and expanding on it. Inventing a unique style for the first game was very challenging, but building on what we started and working in all the dreams we couldn't fit into the first game has been so, so fun.

My brother is also very involved. He’s excited that we’re actually getting to move around Beach City. He knows where everything is. There’s a feeling that Beach City has of being a real place, in part because it’s based off of the beaches that me and my brother used to visit as kids — Rehoboth Beach, Ocean City. But then Beach City specifically, everything has a specific place in Steven’s mind, and he knows that world like it’s real. Even when we’re discussing story ideas, he’ll be able to chime in and help us and say, “If they’re going to Vidalia’s, they need to make a left.” It’s a real world!

The show has gotten so popular over the last few years, particularly online. How has your relationship with fans evolved, and what does it look like right now?

It's overwhelming. I relate very, very much to the fans of the show, because growing up, I was a very extreme fan of cartoons. The cartoons I loved were such a huge source of strength for me. So with this show, I always wanted it to be something that could be a part of someone's life in that way, a source of strength.

These days, there's so much feedback online, I have a hard time absorbing all of it. It's dizzying. Mostly, I love to meet people in person when I can, at cons or events. I love when people tell me what the show means to them personally, which character they relate to and why. I feel I really get to know people so well, so suddenly. And when it's become an important part of someone's life, I feel so honored. Not everyone understands how a cartoon can mean that much to someone, but I really, truly understand.

There’s a sense that I used to have that there wasn’t really a legitimacy to that feeling. When you love and care about something, even if it’s the world silliest thing, [it] can have weight and be that source of comfort in a way that is beautiful enough to be reflected in a piece of art. And that kind of folds in on itself, because it’s being reflected in a piece of art that’s also a silly piece of art. So you end up in this vortex of beauty and silliness. I’ll spiral into it and sort of have days where I’m like, “This is everything I want to express as an artist,” and other days where I’ll be like, “Ah, that’s a wacky cartoon!” They’re important to me! I want the feeling of the comfort that you can get from a silly piece of pop culture to have the weight and beauty that it has for me in this piece of pop culture that we’re making together.

How have communities on platforms like Reddit and Tumblr shaped the show?

I really don’t believe it should be a one-sided conversation. There’s this book by Roland Barthes called A Lover’s Discourse, and in that book, he describes this concept called an “image-repertoire.” When you have a relationship with someone, your relationship is linked to an image of that person, and the [ideas] you associate with that person. It struck me, as a huge comic book fan, that the extreme love I had for the people who made my favorite comics — I was like, “This is what this is! This is an actual love for them, because I share an image-repertoire with them, except that they have never met me.” I feel that I know them very well, because I’ve shared something with them, but they don’t have anything to associate with me. That just explains everything, this very one-sided relationship I have with the people I’m a huge fan of.

So that made me think about comics and cartoons a little differently. I’m building an image-repertoire with someone; I’m speaking to someone. And I think there are several ways you can approach a conversation with someone. I mean, you could spend the whole conversation just talking about yourself and what you like, and you’re not interested in them or what they think, and that’s not a very good conversation. I want to always move that conversation forward.

“Mindful Education” was a big one for that, because there was so much happening to the well-being of the characters, and also within the fan community. I wanted to respond to it through the show, and I wanted to do that by giving people a tool to process and calm extreme feelings. I can see that people enjoyed feeling very extreme feelings, and I know that feeling of being like, “I love that this piece of entertainment can get me to that mood.” I want it to. I want to interact that way. I’ve always been that way, too. So I thought, “I want to give something where it actually moves you to a place of calm.”

From the start, the show has clearly been influenced by a wide variety of genres. But you've also injected video game culture and web culture, like with Steven's online tutorial shorts. What kind of things do you watch that translate well to your stories?

This really has everything to do with the show being from Steven's point of view. This almost comes down to, “What would Steven himself be watching, and playing, and what would he be participating in online?” He's so earnest, so when we come across something online that is incredibly earnest, it's easy to imagine Steven doing that, too. A reaction video, a song. We were all obsessed with an unboxing video where someone was reviewing these very specific Cheez-Its, and he was just so thorough and genuine about it. It made us want to have Steven do an unboxing. The most accurate Steven Universe tutorial short is actually Steven's snack sushi recipe, which is an homage to Cooking with Dog, but is also an actual recipe invented by my actual brother Steven Sugar. And it's really good!

As the series has evolved, you've done more to explore gender, relationships, and other more mature themes that other cartoons don't touch on. You've said before that you're not trying to make a point with the themes you explore, but do you think it's more important now to do that kind of work in animation than in previous years?

Yes. It's very important right now. Animation is such an incredible tool when it comes to making characters that the audience can empathize with. To watch an animated character and to believe that they're real requires the viewer to project so much of themselves into the drawings they're watching. With a cartoon, you can make something feel classic and iconic and absurdly simple. And so much of the preexisting language for cartoons is heavily gendered. For example, how many cartoon couples are two identical characters, except one has eyelashes and a bow? This is the time and this is the tool to expand people's visual language when it comes to what a couple looks like, and to create gender nonconforming characters that are so compelling that you can't deny their humanity. Because by believing in them, they are already a reflection of your humanity.

To me, exploring stories like that through a cartoon is everything I’m excited about. Cartoons are expected to be, and really need to be, simple and readable and clear. It’s already a lot to ask someone to look at a drawing and think it’s really alive. You need to be able to understand what their expressions mean, and that’s the skill of making a cartoon. So, trying to do subtle, complex stories within a cartoon is very challenging. But that’s what’s exciting about it. Seeing cartoon characters express real, complicated feelings that I’ve never seen a cartoon character emote, and trying to invent what that looks like — that is the fun of this thing. I think the only way to approach that is to tell stories that get characters to a place where you can see on their faces an expression of a feeling that other cartoons haven’t felt before.

What kind of new challenges and ideas will Steven face in the stories ahead?  

Steven is really going to have to turn inward and face himself. Throughout the show, he's put everyone else first, and his main goal has been to become the person his family wants him to be. That's got to shift. He's got to accept that it's impossible to fill the shoes of his mother, Rose Quartz. She was always barefoot.

What’s exciting as we get deeper into the show is making him realize that there are the magic Gem powers, but there are powers that people have as human beings to understand themselves and define themselves and make their own choices. It’s an incredible power that we all have, and are often told to ignore or take for granted. Those are the kinds of powers I’m excited to have him learn how to explore.

Would you say the industry has changed much around you since you worked on Adventure Time?

It's changed completely! There is a demand now for different perspectives, for more diverse stories and characters, and for us to use our platform to make a better world for kids. I'm so honored to have had the chance to be working in TV while this shift has been happening. And there is a demand for the story arcs and character arcs we used to subtly thread from episode to episode on Adventure Time! And a home is brewing for the older cartoon audience that is so dear to my heart, the teens and adults that still love cartoons way too much. That is very new and very exciting.

I find that I’ve changed also. I’ve changed as I’ve been making the show, for so many reasons: learning from my team, doing so much art that I’ve told all the stories I’ve dreamed of telling, so now I’m gonna tell even more! And just trying to figure out what those are. I mean, the overarching process is that there’s so much within that, so many goals I’ve been able to hit on already in the show. For me, the show is a learning experience, and is part of me growing as a person, but obviously never arriving at being finished. I wanna do that with the audience, too.

Where do you foresee the industry going for new artists and animators who've come of age online? What can they expect?

I think it really depends on the artist and how they wanna make a piece of art. If you aren’t interested in art as a conversation, then the focus would be on avoiding outside influences in order to make something with the intent. My intent was to grow and to learn about myself and other people, and to forge relationships with the show. Me being a fan forged so many of my relationships. I guess in a way, what’s really hard for me is, I don’t get to necessarily be in that community. I would like to be. I would like to talk about the show, but I have to go elsewhere. Maybe talk about Riverdale. [Laughs]

I foresee an incredible era of totally new voices coming from totally new places. There are so many resources online, anything you would ever want to know about animation history, and tools for drawing and animating and sharing art that didn't exist before. This next generation of artists can expect that if they make comics, if they finish projects, if they have something truly new and interesting to say and they say it in a way that's entertaining, they will definitely be heard. And if they end up in a corporate setting, they can expect pushback when they're doing something new and innovative. First people will get excited, and then get nervous, because there's no proof what they're doing will work. But that's exactly why it will work.