June is Pride Month, and I want to keep talking about important LGBTQIA+ shows and characters. There are so many aspects of love and identity I could discuss when talking about the show Steven Universe, but today we’re going to look at fusion.
Every moment of this show is suffused with the importance and power of love. The titular character is an adolescent boy who we quickly learn is half-human and half-gem, inheriting the gemstone that makes up his belly button from his late mother, Rose Quartz. The gems, we quickly learn, are powerful mineral based beings, with unique personalities and forms. Steven lives with three of them, Pearl, Garnet, and Sapphire. His human father, a kindhearted and well-meaning, if slightly incompetent, man lives in the fictional town of Beach City, at the foot of the Gem’s mountainside fortress.
Gems can also fuse with each other, creating an entirely new being in the process. When 2, or more, Gems fuse, they are agreeing to meld together and become one. The fusion is an individual in their own right, with their own thoughts, moods, feelings, and abilities. Fusions demonstrate a wide range of relationship models, though the first ones we see, and all the functional examples, are based in deep love.
Opal
Opal is the first fusion the show directly introduces, formed when Pearl and Amethyst fuse together. Normally starkly different, Amethyst’s impulsive nature balances out Pearl’s orderly attention to detail. Opal hold traits from both Gems, is sillier than Pearl, but can focus more than Amethyst, for a time. They are friends, and have been for centuries, but do not always get along so well, which is why Opal is a rare visitor to the cast. They can even fail to fuse, when they don’t get in sync with each other properly, as seen here:
Their failure to fuse reflects a failure to communicate. They each do their own dance, and while Pearl is clearly watching Amethyst, the latter is in her own world. She roughly grabs Pearl by the arm, pulling her into the dip, and they fail to become Opal.
Garnet
If you haven’t watched the show, this is a slight spoiler. Garnet is introduced as a singular being, though it is revealed later she is actually a fusion that exists in nearly a permanent state of being. Garnet is the fusion of Ruby, a warrior Gem, and Sapphire, an aristocratic Gem with the power of foresight. Garnet’s existence is built on love, and she returns again and again to love as a driving force. She is respectful of fusions, gets very angry when others do not treat fusion as a sacred melding. She is a strong and stable fusion, which is consistently credited to the strength of the love shared between Ruby and Sapphire, who only separate a handful of times through the course of the show. One of those separations is to try and outwit a group of scout Rubies. Their facade is a failure ultimately, because they are so distracted upon seeing each other playing a game of Baseball that Sapphire slides right into Ruby’s arms on home base and they….become Garnet right there.
Stevonnie
Stevonnie is the fusion created when Steven, half-Gem and half-human, fuses with his human best friend Connie. This should not be possible, but the deeply close and loving relationship shared between the two makes the connection possible. And while, by the end of the series, it may seem as though a romantic connection between the two is developing, their first fusion into Stevonnie comes spontaneously, and when they are young. Steven has been frustrated at his lack of fusing ability thus far with the Gems, and has been explaining his dancing training to Connie. She, who is an anxious and shy girl, commends his bravery for dancing in front of people. They dance together on the beach, and giggling, they touch foreheads in a moment of love and contentment. That is when they become Stevonnie for the first time, a character older than both of them, canonically nonbinary, and half of Beach City finds them alluring. Garnet is the only Gem not alarmed by this accidental and previously impossible fusion, taking Stevonnie’s face in her hands to say:
You are not two people and you are not one person. You…are an experience! Make sure it’s a good experience. Now. Go. Have. Fun!
Garnet, from “Alone Together”
Of course, this happens before we know that Garnet is herself a fusion. It was the first moment I noticed how silly and happy Garnet could be, though, rather than simply the boss of the Crystal Gems. It was wonderful, and the perfect way to support her sort-of child.
Malachite
Not all of the fusions represent love, romantic or platonic, relationships. Malachite, the aggressive fusion of Lapis Lazuli and Jasper, is one such example. Jasper is an insanely aggressive and tough Gem, who thinks fusions are weak, cheating their way into larger forms and more power. However, when she sees Lapis attempting to flee, Jasper yanks Lapis out of the air by her wrist. Jasper is at least three times as large as Lapis, dropping the smaller Gem to the ground in a heap after asking to fuse to get revenge on those who have wronged them both. Just say yes, Jasper repeats over and over, trying to justify why Lapis should fuse with her, when just moments ago fusions were beneath her. Lapis agrees, reaching a small hand to Jasper, who grasps it with her large one, yanking Lapis into a twirl. Jasper looks up to Steven and co. with a wicked smirk, and then Malachite is born.
However, the creation of Malachite was coerced and non-consensual. Like in real human relationships, repeated coercion, gaslighting, and aggressive pressure, do not equal consent. Unlike the stable fusions already shown on this list, Malachite is not a smooth being. She struggles between Jasper and Lapis exerting mental control, and reflects the kind of toxic relationships no one should participate in, if they can.
Final Thoughts
The way Steven Universe illustrates the importance of love and relationships as meaningful, consensual, and communicated is through the concept of fusion. Gems cannot or cannot remain fused when they do not have trust, acceptance, and balance with each other. Some fusions are born of romantic love, like Garnet when Ruby and Sapphire fuse, or Rainbow Quartz, who is born of Pearl’s deeply obsessive love for Rose Quartz. Some, like Stevonnie, rise from the deep love of friendship. This love has the potential for romance, but not the requirement. Completely platonic fusions range from the utilitarian, like Sardonyx (Garnet/Pearl) whose abilities and weapons make her useful, to Smokey Quartz (Steven/Amethyst). There’s familial love: Steg (Steven and his father Greg)
Love of Duty: Mega Pearl (Pearl and Pink Pearl, from Homeworld)
Love of….Hatred?: Bluebird Azurite (Aquamarine and a Ruby)
Love is complex and it is varied. It can be platonic or romantic, true, but it can also be both, or neither, or a fluid mix of them. Love can be what you feel for a close friend, a father, a partner, a lover, and it can be different and similar, and it’s all beautiful. Steven Universe shows the multi-faceted ways love can appear, and that makes it queer, and that makes it important.
Some wonderful person put a supercut of all Steven Universe Gem fusions, enjoy.
Queerly Beloved 
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