#the1a

The host of the show, Joshua Johnson, introduces the listeners to what Steven Universe is, briefly describing its characters with some audio clips to help. He then introduces Rebecca Sugar, who he points out is doing the interview on her birthday, and thanks her for coming. Then he asks about her background.

Coming from independent comics, Rebecca got her start in storytelling through her zines that she brought to small conventions, but then she had the chance to go to animation school (in New York). She fast-forwards a bit to say she bounced from school to Adventure Time to working on her own show. When asked about the origins of the idea for the show, she says it's a pastiche of everything she and her younger brother loved as kids. She describes the show as "reverse escapism"--that the Gem fantasy characters are interested in the everyday human world, and it's also a coming-of-age story for Steven since he is trying to figure out what this Crystal Gem legacy is.

The host then quotes a couple fan comments and then discusses Rebecca's upbringing. She shares that Beach City is based on Dewey Beach and Rehoboth Beach, where her family would vacation every year. They have to make sure the sun comes up where it’s supposed to with regard to the water on the show, because it's an east-coast beach and that's very different from west-coast beaches. In answering a question about expectations and reactions from the network when she pitched, she says she was invited to pitch something and figured if she got her own show, it would have to be something she would love doing, so she brought it in around her own childhood--enabling her to spend time connecting with that time in her life and helping her figure out what she wanted to say to kids--what she wished she had gotten to hear as a kid.

Rebecca explains how the eleven-minute format works well with what she was used to and how storyboarding works in a board-driven show. Boarders write and draw the episodes themselves, so they get a lot of creative control.

Next, they discuss the Gem family and Rebecca's philosophy behind that--why she wanted their family to be so non-traditional. She says each Gem is a representation of one way she related to her brother as an older sibling, just broken up into different people. As she begins to discuss the Gems being "nonbinary women" who are coded female that the male hero looks up to, the host asks her to elaborate on what it means to be coded female. She says they're more like nonbinary women but appear female, and do NOT think of themselves as "women." They don't mind humans gendering them, though.

Rebecca says she identifies as a nonbinary woman herself, and enjoys having the Gems as nonbinary characters through whom she can express herself. She makes it clear that the Gems being nonbinary is subtle in the show, primarily expressed through the way they interact with each other and the world, but that Stevonnie specifically is more obviously a nonbinary character, while the Gems' gender identity is subtler.

After a break, the themes of tolerance and love are discussed, and Rebecca says she included these in her cartoon because they're part of her life. Diversity in her relationships with others has enhanced her life so much, helping her see different perspectives, and she can't imagine why exposure to these things wouldn't make everything better.

In response to a prompt to discuss the LGBT positivity with regard to any shows that inspired her, Rebecca says there was mostly just an absence when she was growing up. She felt alienated because the cartoons she liked best were aimed at little boys in a heavily gendered world. When she got a chance to make her own show, she of course thought of wanting to make a show that appeals to boys too, because that's what SHE liked, but instead of doing that, she learned she could make a "gender expansive" show.

Then they go into opportunities to create shows like hers, with Joshua asking whether the variety of shows on Cartoon Network makes it easier for her to do such an original take on animation. She says definitively that NOTHING about it has been easy because "easy" is following in the footsteps of something that's already been successful, and that's not what she's doing. Now that she's seen what drives children's entertainment and why characters like the ones she wants to create haven't been included before, she's ever more determined to bring these messages to kids. Most notably: being compassionate is heroic.

Rebecca describes having "hit the ground running" trying to discuss relationships in a way that was cool and exciting to people who don't necessarily want to learn about how to have relationships with others. This of course leads into a discussion of Fusions: "how do you make a healthy relationship cool?" On her show, relationships can be characters. She wants people to get excited about the possibilities, about what it will be like to form a relationship with each possible outcome, but also how awful it is when it's a bad fit.

Joshua Johnson attests that the show sometimes slams into "emotional breaks" where the characters must deal with intense drama like betrayal or family revelations. Rebecca agrees that it gets pretty heavy sometimes and that she didn't want to avoid those topics just because it's kids' TV. Rebecca loves the opportunity to include multi-layered, complicated emotions for cartoon characters, especially since they can be so expressive, and you may not have ever seen a cartoon make a face like this. They touch on Mr. Rogers and how he worked with sociologists to convey messages effectively to kids, and Rebecca says she's started doing that too.

The host then reads some more comments from listeners--some of which are pretty negative. One commenter mocks the idea of "feminizing men" for a cause, and that is countered by another commenter who says being in touch with feelings is not a negative trait, nor is it a bad thing to be feminine. Rebecca responds that this attitude is very harmful. It's so important to see models for expressing yourself, to not stifle it, and that children should not be taught that it's best to hide their feelings. Though the Gems are not women, they're models of power for Steven that aren't typical macho power fantasies. He associates the color pink with his will and his agency. So many symbols of weakness and femininity are so arbitrary.

Johnson reads a message from a single dad who uses the show as a point of reference for dealing with his daughters' questions, and then he reads a comment from a mother of boys about how much she loves the music, especially "Stronger Than You." [They play a clip.] He mentions that a black woman with a big afro in their studio uses Garnet as an avatar picture because she identifies with her, and asks Rebecca to talk about Garnet as both a Fusion and a character. Rebecca describes developing Garnet with Ian Jones-Quartey, with whom she is "together," and discusses running the show together at the beginning even though he now has his own show. They very much wanted to include a character with natural hair, and always knew she was a Fusion who had to run HER "show" while staying together, much like they did.

To Rebecca, Garnet is incredibly important because she represents what she loves about her relationship with Ian. Ian is a black man and Rebecca is white, and with their interracial relationship has come some very frightening harassment and opposition. Once when they were holding hands in 2009, they were attacked--she was pulled away from Ian and held against the wall by three men who mocked her, and she thought about the experience a lot when she was creating characters to represent and normalize her "interracial, gender-expansive relationship." The song "Stronger Than You" is about living through incidents like that and not letting that ugliness deter you from being with who you want to be with.

In response to a question about whether Steven's empathy and Garnet's ability to kick butt are responses to negativity and harassment, Rebecca just says Garnet is a relationship that is cool and exciting. After meeting Ruby and Sapphire and seeing that they make Garnet, you know how right it is because you've already fallen in love with who she is before you knew the finer details. Her way of looking at that assault was largely to figure out what would have made those criminals think her relationship was cool if they'd seen it when they were boys.

Johnson then plays a clip from "The Answer" in which Garnet expresses confusion and happiness surrounding the newness of her relationship, and expresses that he spent plenty of time as a confused gay kid (who is now sometimes a confused gay adult). Rebecca relates as a bisexual person and says she did not come to identify that way openly and confidently until she met people she connected with through working on the show. She learned that her orientation is about feelings, not about the partner she ends up with, and that felt like she carried a secret she couldn't discuss. She feared that identifying as bi might make her seem less trustworthy as a partner since some people think bisexual people need multiple partners by nature, or that they just "want attention." These negative stereotypes were things she learned through media, and she wanted to create a counter, a place where people could identify with what she made and be able to talk about it in the contexts they needed. The show helped her talk about it as much as it helped viewers.

Joshua Johnson then asks a difficult question, bouncing off a comment from a conservative man who says he does not approve of the show. Does Rebecca think the show CAN have something for such a man, or has she accepted that not everyone can handle its messages? She says ideally reaching everyone would be nice, but just like with individual people, you can't expect to speak to someone if they just plain are not interested in hearing you. But Rebecca thinks there's no reason everyone couldn't be a part of the honest messages she's including. She's speaking truthfully about relationships as they are in her life.

Speaking about the wedding episode in "Reunited," which depicts marriage between the two Gems Ruby and Sapphire, Johnson points out that it looks like a lesbian wedding by most standards and wants Rebecca to talk about it. She says they'd worked on it for a long time. Weddings are a centerpiece of Disney movies--almost every movie has one--and she wanted to show Garnet as a wonderful relationship that deserves the same treatment.

After playing a clip from "Mindful Education" where Connie and Steven talk about dealing with terrible feelings, Rebecca agrees you HAVE to own your feelings, even the bad ones. The whole episode was to talk about mindfulness and conveying that concept to kids. People (especially children) need TOOLS to process feelings. Going on from that, Rebecca brings up bullying and how we talk about how VICTIMS are supposed to behave--instead of discussing bullies as an inevitability. We need a conversation about what to do with yourself if you have made an error or hurt someone. If you can express yourself and trust each other, learn to communicate, absorb examples of how to process bad feelings and learn to feel better, you can be a more content person, and Rebecca describes being shocked that this isn't more of a priority in kids' media.