What's Creative?: (Rebecca) Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

Take a moment, remind yourself to take a moment and find yourself

Take a moment and ask yourself if this is how we fall apart

But it's not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay (Here Comes a Thought)

Rebecca Sugar, a 31-year old Maryland native, started off her career drawing comics for her high school’s newspaper, Silver Chips, and later attended the School of Visual Arts in New York for university. During her time there, she developed her skills as a director, writer, and animator in the field – her thesis film Singles won the award for Best Experimental Film within the school showing her talent as both animator and filmmaker (Amidi). After her graduation, Sugar continued her career as an artist by joining the Adventure Time team as a storyboard revisionist before quickly being promoted to writer, storyboard artist, and songwriter because of her immense talent. Later in her career at Adventure Time, Sugar started production on Steven Universe, the first show by a solo female creator in Cartoon Network’s twenty-year history.

Steven Universe is an all-ages animated “Westernized Magical Girl” series airing on Cartoon Network and is a story that follows a group of warriors called the Crystal Gems that protect Earth from otherworldly threats. The team is made up of Garnet, Pearl, Amethyst, and the titular Steven Universe.

Overall, the series is built on a science fiction world, with the Gems as gem-powered aliens and Steven Universe himself as the half-alien, half human protagonist. Nevertheless, despite the otherworldly nature of the series, it is about the coming-of-age story of Steven. What's most important is how this young boy lives his life surrounded by positive, female-coded role models and the importance of love, acceptance, and tolerance. Furthermore, the Gems serve as a perspective that allows the audience to experience reverse-escapism. Because the Gems are aliens that have never experienced humanity as a culture, they are fascinated with simple aspects of what makes up humanity and escaping the fantastical elements of space to experience reality. Ultimately, by having the Gems learn to understand the little things that make humanity beautiful, it also reminds the audience that fantasy shows like Steven Universe isn’t all about escapism and reality can be just as beautiful as fantasy.

Although the series is extremely fantastical, the settings, characters, and themes are homages to Sugar’s life. Steven Universe is modeled after her younger brother, Steven Sugar. Beach City, Steven Universe’s hometown, is based on the beaches she and her brother used to visit in their hometown in Maryland. Furthermore, the show is best known for its diverse voice cast and its messages of love and acceptance. What draws so many millennials to the show is that Sugar, as a bisexual nonbinary person, opens the door for all people, young and old, to see themselves within the characters. For many people within the LGBTQIA+ community, there is little to no representation on TV. Children’s TV tends to be especially gendered and it can be hard for young children who see themselves as “different,” to fully understand their identity when there are no resources to tell them that what they are feeling is valid and real. Thus, what makes Steven Universe so unique is that it refuses to shy away from creating a “gender-expansive” universe that isn’t limited by a binary. The Gems, since they are not human, are nonbinary but are female-coded, similarly to Sugar. However, while this is important in context, it is not treated as significant within the story. Ultimately, the overall story is about how compassion is heroic and positive relationships can be both cool and exciting to children.

In Sugar’s creative process, she never creates with an ulterior vision in mind. Her first step in creating characters or writing is to “just start” without a plan in mind. With this, her creations come to life without force and she “seems to want to draw someone like this.” This reflects Andreasen’s idea of the creativity and the unconscious in which creation is done in stages. Specifically, Sugar’s first step in creating is reflective of incubation in which the mind is wandering freely without censorship.

The show is creative and groundbreaking because of its willingness to push the typical boundaries of exposing children to difficult topics and increasing visibility of the LGBTQIA+ community. Within the show, characters talk about their anxieties and practice mindfulness together. There is a female-coded Gem pining after the mother of Steven Universe. Two female-coded Gems marry each other. Additionally, the theme of reverse-escapism isn’t something you normally see in a show for kids, but it can be incredibly important in that although there can be some level of fun within the adventures had by the Crystal Gems, there’s nothing that’s worth more than peace and love on the planet Earth.