mage-cat:

For my followers interested in Steven Universe who manage to avoid the fandom discourse (shame that the term “fanwank” has fallen out of use), this question is regarding this post by Lauren Zuke, who the internet hive mind has determined probably left their story boarder position on the show a few months ago. Official word on that matter will likely not come to light until the last episode they worked on is scheduled to air, whenever that might be. The thrust of the post is that when Zuke created scenes with Amethyst, Peridot, and Lapis, they did so with the mindset that Amethyst and Peridot were a crush that turned into a friendship and Peridot and Lapis were a slowly growing romantic relationship. Also, they repeatedly point out that this mindset is not necessarily reflective of the rest of the crew. On to the question.

The root of my opinion here lies in how I understand the development process of the show. Rebecca Sugar is the showrunner. As such, she is the one in control of the long-term storylines of the show and is the one primarily in charge of breaking those arcs down into episode concepts. Those concepts are then assigned to (normally) two-person boarding teams. The boarders then plan out the exact beats, details, and jokes. Aside from Zuke’s first episode (Chille Tid with Lamar Abrams) their boarding partner has been Hilary Florido, who has been with the show since season 1.

In the episodes that Amedot shippers most like to point to for canon support, “Too Far,” “Too Short to Ride,” and “Beta,” Amethyst and Peridot’s relationship is intrinsic to the plot. There is no pitch for those episodes that does not include Amethyst and Peridot. Rebecca Sugar intended them to have multiple episodes with intense interactions.

The moments that people who ship Lapis and Peridot point to are not plot-intrinsic. The blush between them at the end of “Barn Mates” and Peridot saying “I already have one” when seeing an ad for cute roommates in “Too Short to Ride” are beats that a boarder can add in and ambiguous enough that they can slip through the approval stage. You could write the barn scene in “Beta” without Lapis there and while you would lose a few jokes, you would not lose the thread of the plot. (Peridot shows Amethyst her art projects. Amethyst’s disinterest signals to Peridot that something is wrong. Steven tells Peridot that Amethyst’s mood as Jasper-related. Peridot suggests visiting the Beta Kindergarten.) The episode pitch may very well have not have included Lapis, and Zuke’s joke ideas were good enough to merit her inclusion.

Also, people who are better than me at telling the various boarders’ styles apart have determined that, in the Florido/Zuke episodes, the best Amedot moments (including the infamous Drill Scene that really launched the ship) were boarded by Florido, who seems to now be partnered with Amber Rogers based on a picture of the crew offices that included a door with their names on it. Zuke did a lot of good work on the show, but they were not responsible for all the shipping fuel on the screen, just most of the forced-feeling stuff.

Please note, however, that I have no affiliation with Steven Universe or the animation industry in general. I’m just a librarian living in Louisiana with a couple of film studies classes in her past and over a decade of experience in internet fandom wank. Take all of the above with a grain of salt. I could be wrong.