“It was a matter of breaking down the false assumption that same-sex romance is somehow inherently more adult, which it’s not.
“I decided I would rather do this and face that reality than not do this and have a longer running,” she says. The same episode featured heterosexual dancing and kissing. More recently, a Steven Universe episode featuring a “fusion” scene with a lesbian subtext was censored in Britain.
The anime show Sailor Moon featured a lesbian couple, whom US TV networks opted to portray as cousins. Her fears were hardly unfounded: Arthur’s first attempt at LGBT inclusion was shot down in 2005, when its spinoff show, Postcards from Buster, was pulled from PBS after taking flak for featuring a lesbian couple. Sugar was aware that the episode, as well as her decision to come out as bisexual, could lead to funding being pulled or the show being dropped altogether. The wedding decision was not taken lightly. “We tried to bake that into the premise – you already love and care about the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire, because you already love and care about Garnet.” “We wanted you to understand that you already knew Ruby and Sapphire, because you already knew Garnet,” says Sugar. But Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship has been key to Steven Universe since the start. For instance, JK Rowling belatedly revealed that Dumbledore and Grindelwald from the Harry Potter novels had been lovers, a move that was deemed a bandwagon-jumping afterthought. The recent push for diversity in media has seen a rise in “retcon” (“retroactive continuity”) – the addition of new information that alters previously described events. Photograph: Jeremy Freeman/Cartoon Network ‘I can really make characters behave and act and exist outside of the rules that always felt so alienating to me’. When they were married, Ruby, the more masculine of the two, was depicted in a bridal gown, while femme-Gem Sapphire sported a tux – a nightmare for countries that had skirted the depiction of a same-sex relationship by coding Ruby as male. We are introduced to her as a singular character, but it is later revealed that she is a fusion of two Gems called Ruby and Sapphire, who choose to remain fused out of love for each other. “The layer of fantasy in the show allows me to have fun with truths that are not fun.” “There are ways I can talk about my relationship with Ian and the obstacles we face, my own experience with antisemitism, my experience coming out as bisexual as a teenager,” she says. This is addressed in the fan-favourite song Stronger Than You, which is performed by the character Garnet, voiced by the British R&B singer Estelle. When she was 22, she and her partner (the show’s supervising director, Ian Jones-Quartey, who is black) were the victims of a racist assault. Sugar uses the show to process difficult parts of her personal life. This may sound complex, but the show is renowned for its simple approach to often inaccessible themes for children, such as consent, grief, anxiety and abusive relationships. They project female holographic, humanoid forms from magical gemstones embedded in their bodies, which are akin to brains. The titular character is sworn to protect humanity from intergalactic threats, alongside a ragtag gang of ageless alien warriors called Crystal Gems.
It is an all-ages sci-fi romp with lots of heart.
In doing so, she became the first woman to independently create a series for Cartoon Network. Sugar left to continue her work moving LGBT stories from the margins into the mainstream with Steven Universe. Marceline and Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time.