NAME: Quix
AGE: 29
CONTACT: quixocalypse
CHARACTERS IN GAME: None


CHARACTER NAME: Steven Universe
AGE: 14 (Physically delayed aging so he looks more like a pre-teen.)
CANON Steven Universe
CANON POINT After 'Change Your Mind'
HISTORY: Here, in gratuitous detail.
PERSONALITY: Steven has come a long way in a very short amount of time. When he was just two years younger, he was naive to a fault, and so recklessly enthusiastic about pursuing his destiny as one of the Crystal Gems that he was prone to accidentally endangering himself by plunging ahead a bit too excitedly. He felt left out by the rest of the group due to his lack of real gem powers, and by the fact that they frequently left him behind out of a desire to protect him until he had more experience. He has always been a thoughtful and kind child, but his youthful exuberance frequently blinded him to the feeling of others, not realizing that they were being made uncomfortable until he was told.

Two years of training, lethal danger, and heartbreak have refined that kindness into something far more compassionate and enduring than it ever had been before. He's grown in strength rapidly, and along with it he's developed an extremely dedicated sense of responsibility - arguably too much of it, for a child his age. Steven tends to place everyone else's feelings before his own, because his own sense of empathy makes it impossible for him to ignore when someone else is in pain. He wants to help everyone he meets if he can, whether they be friend or enemy, and the conflict inherent in his situation has been wearing on him more and more as the months pass by. He finds it difficult to think about his own feelings, and particularly his own problems. He doesn't want to dwell in his sadness because he's the kind of kid who's always been naturally cheerful, and after a series of bad luck and mistakes the stress in his life has become literally more than he can deal with, resulting in him suppressing it out of the desire to remain strong for everyone else.

He dislikes conflict, and though he's learned to become more assertive with time, his inclination is still to avoid it whenever possible. This is why he tries to pacify people first and foremost without thinking about the impact of their actions on her own emotional well being, and considers his inability to help people a personal failure, even if they are actively fighting against him. In his own words he says he "believes in everyone", and though his faith has been tested, he's never lost it entirely. He recently wrote a song called "Still Not Giving Up" in an attempt to approach his most hard to deal with feelings, and that phrase is an excellent summary of his approach towards his own struggle. He's been hurt a lot over time, but he keeps pushing forward regardless, and always with the best intentions.

Outside of the struggles brought on by recent years, his childhood was a good one. He has a caring and wise father, and three mentors that he considers his family, all of which who love him very much. He's a person who naturally has a great deal of light in them - he's always joking and laughing and trying to allow himself and others to have fun despite the trouble that might come their way. He's naturally artistic and a prodigy musician, and has a wide variety of talents and interests that he actively explores. Steven knows what love is because he's been given it, and he does everything he can to spread that warmth to others, whether or not they try to hurt him in return.

One of the biggest emotional struggles in his life has been him understanding and coping with the legacy his mother left behind for him. Given that she was very important and well loved to the rest of the family, and that she gave up her life to create him, it created a difficult precedent from the day he was born - for the longest time, his loved ones would compare him to her, and see signs of her in his actions. Given that the gemstone that was her body has become a part of him, he's honestly been forced to wonder whether he is really her, and whether his identity as Steven is an illusion meant to hide her from the mistakes and pain she wanted to leave behind. Not many people can relate to the struggle of possibly being your own mom, but it's something that has haunted Steven for years.

With time, however, he has started to find answers to these existential questions. Through many tense emotional trials, his family has come to see him as his own person. Though White Diamond, his most daunting antagonist, tried to convince him that he was nothing more than a disguise for his mother to hide behind, it was finally revealed that his gem, when separated from his body, was still just him. Two halves of the same person. The realization that his mother is gone forever, and has been since he was born, is oddly enough an affirming one, and a real game changer for him psychologically. At the canon point I am using, he has just recently had this revelation, and the confirmation that he really just was himself all along. To a kid who has been constantly compared and mistaken for his mother his entire life, this is a key piece of validation that will grant him new confidence and self esteem in days to come.

Self love has been a hard win for Steven, but towards the end of Season Five, he has shown that he is beginning to respect himself for who he really is: just Steven.

CANON POWERS: All of Steven's abilities come with a disclaimer - there are a lot of them, because as it turns out he has the gem/powers of what was essentially a goddess/queen of the gems, and one of the four sources of all gem life. He's got a lot going on. However, Steven has a far from complete grasp on them, and I am totally open to nerfing any of these powers as requested/generally toning things down. All of his powers have the capacity to exhaust him with use, and a lot of them are dependent on willpower/mood, so everything is limited by how tired he is and how much he's already done. His weirdest and most intense powers are probably his healing/life giving abilities, which I am happy to underplay or nerf based on what seems reasonable, in the event that an event comes up where canon powers are a factor.

SHIELD SUMMON: One of his most signature moves, Steven can summon a magical shield from his gem that seems capable of blocking most forms of damage. It can also be used as a thrown weapon, Captain America style. Steven can summon his shield as big or as small as he needs to, and can also summon multiple shields at a time. When a magical attack hits the shield’s surface, there’s a chance that it will destabilize or nullifying the spell. The shield tends to dissipate if Steven is stunned or too exhausted to keep it going.

DEFENSE BUBBLE: Steven can summon a pink bubble barrier to surround himself and others. It offers better coverage than his shield, but it’s also less enduring. While at its best it can defend against a spaceship crash from orbit, it is also frequently stomped to the point of popping/breaking by various monsters. He can purposefully explode the bubble outward to knock back enemies, as well as make the exterior of the bubble spiky and inflict damage with it.

HEALING/RESURRECTION: Steven’s saliva/tears/sweat/body fluids have healing properties that work on both humans and gems, as well as inanimate objects. It will magically repair things that are damaged. In the past it’s been used to heal broken bones, ripped teddy bears, as well as genetic ailments like Connie’s near nearsightedness. It does have its limits, though, and can’t fully repair things that are extensively damaged. Additionally, his tears have been shown to be capable of resurrecting a biological body that has recently died with renewed health and some inorganic/magical physical characteristics (like a magic zombie), but this has only happened once within canon and he can't do that on call, so this won't ever happen unless the mods/player allowed it an a bunch of other emotional needs were fulfilled as well. In game terms, it will only heal things with OOC permission, and will leave behind damage based on what is interesting to the player.

IMBUING LIFE: Rose Quartz was said to have been able to grow plant warriors to defend her in combat, as well as grow magical, moving defense vines and the like. Steven's main usage of this has been to grow an entire garden's worth of essentially sapient watermelon people (by accident) which seemed instinctively inclined to protect him. After he scolded them all for being violent, they left into the ocean. Months later they were discovered on a remote island, apparently having developed their own functioning community complete with agriculture and family structures. The average watermelon person only lives for a couple weeks. In much more recent canon, however, it's been shown his fluids can also give life to small rocks. He can use this power consciously by putting any body fluid on seeds before planting them, though it's usually spit.

PHYSICALLY ENHANCED: After lots of training with his gem powers, Steven has become inhumanly strong, fast, and durable. This isn’t anywhere near Superman levels, to be clear – it’s more like he runs faster than most humans could, and can survive getting smashed through a rock wall, at the cost of being worn out. Strength wise he can lift a lot for someone his size, like an entire trunk of heavy musical equipment by himself, or a tall stack of boulders. Theoretically he can throw a pretty brutal punch, but his combat style is inherently defensive so he rarely exploits his strength offensively.

DEFYING GRAVITY: Steven can jump super high, and then control the rate of his descent. This basically means he can moon jump up into the sky and float there for as long as he wants. Carrying extra weight doesn’t do anything to affect his float time, either. He can only use this power float/walk on air, and cannot fly in a more traditional sense.

SHAPESHIFTING: Full gems are capable of shapeshifting into just about anything, though it can take a lot of energy and they are only capable of holding it for a limited time. Steven can mostly just make his limbs get longer or shorter at this point – most of his experiences with shapeshifting have been somewhat traumatic and so he rarely does it. His first experience involved accidentally transforming himself into a mutant pile of cats, accidentally rapidly aging himself into an old man, and expending so much energy trying to pretend he was older that he ended up involuntarily turning back into a baby for a while. It is definitely not his strong suit and almost always goes badly for him.

FUSION DANCE: All gems are capable of fusing with one another in order to create an entirely new being that combines their emotional and physical traits. Fusions are more powerful than just the sum of their parts, and frequently end up with new abilities and personality traits based on the relationship of the the gems forming them. Steven’s half human heritage means that he’s also capable of fusing with humans, which he has with his friend Connie on several occasions. Fusions only work if the people doing it are sufficiently “in sync” with each other emotionally, and so this would only be for very close CR.

ASTRAL PROJECTION: Steven can leave his body and travel into the minds of other beings, especially while they are sleeping, with two potential results - 1) he can potentially possess the being's body with his consciousness, or 2) he can interact with the being's dreams in a lucid manner, bending the dream reality with willpower and interacting with the dreamer. He's only possessed someone this way once and doesn't want to again for ethical reasons. Obviously neither of these things would happen without OOC permission, and could be reasonably shut down by any character with the mental fortitude to do so. His own body is left vulnerable/comatose while he does this. If he astral projects around people that are awake, he can get close to their 'consciousnesses' (represented in a non-literal psychic landscape) and speak to them like an invisible ghost via two-way empathy and telepathy. The target seems to feel him as an unseen 'presence.'

RECEPTIVE EMPATHY: Steven's empathic abilities are honestly pretty vague, but it's been said that his powers "help him to connect to people". In a few cases Steven has said that he can feel the emotions coming from another gem, and this is also implied to be how he can access Pink Diamond's memories from his gem/why he is so receptive to Blue Diamond's projective empathy powers. It's impact on his daily life seems fairly minimal, though, so it can generally be assumed he's not suffering a constant deluge of loud emotions from the people that surround him, and he's never overtly used it to determine someone's hidden intentions or anything like that. So, I take this to mean that he has strong emotional intuition and is supernaturally receptive to psychic projection, rather than anything approaching telepathy.

MISC GEM STUFF: Gems can all do a variety of minor magical things, that mostly seem to involve interacting with gem technology. They can "bubble" objects and teleport them back to whenever they consider to be their home. They can interact with gem-built warp pads. A full gem is capable of putting their bodies back together after it is destroyed, provided that their gem is still intact. It is not yet clear if Steven can recover in this manner, due to his human heritage, but probably not. There is evidence that lack of immediate needs like air will put him into a coma until his organic parts can function again, instead of outright killing him.

MUSICAL PRODIGY: This is the only ability here that isn't overtly magical. Steven has "perfect pitch", in that he can tell what musical note sounds are just from hearing them once or twice. He can also play pretty much any instrument he's ever picked up skillfully. He's also pretty damn good at improvising music, both lyrically and from a composition standpoint.

OTHER: Steven's gem can apparently be pulled out his body with enough brute force, at which point he divides into two halves - his gem half and his human half. Both sides are completely dysfunctional without the other. His human half starts to physically die immediately without the gem magic to support it, and his gem half seems to be missing his soul/personality. All either side wants to do is rejoin with their other half until they manage to do so with physical contact. This is probably useless information because it's hard to imagine it coming up but I find it fascinating so I just wanted to have it be established in case it ever becomes relevant. If uselessly splitting into two people needs to be nerfed I would probably just assume the gem would not reform into a person on its own and would just lay inert until reconnected with the human part.


CRAU INFO: N/A
MAGIC ABILITY: Steven will gain the ability to build pink crystal constructs, not unlike how Elsa from Frozen can build structures and objects out of ice. These constructs are made out of a gently glowing diamond looking gem material, and their durability is fueled by the psychic power of his emotions - that is, if he is focusing on supporting them with strong emotions, focus and determination, they will become very resistant to assault, but if he succumbs to feelings of hopelessness or doubt, they will become fragile and possibly shatter. An average or neutral emotional state will have the structures be strong enough to support themselves and hold weight, but any significant force put towards breaking them will have a good chance of causing them to crack. This ability is limited by the following:

1) While these structures can persist without his direct concentration, there is a limit to how much material he can support at once. So, if he starts building too many structures at once, the older ones will start falling apart when he runs into his limit. Creating any large structures will also just generally tire him out, physically and emotionally, and he'll need time to recharge afterwards. Also, if something is actively trying to break his structure, attempting to hold it together will take an additional toll on him. Pushing himself too far in either regard will result in him becoming emotionally numb for a while afterwards, having ostensibly used up all his feelings.

2) If his emotions run wild the structures make break or form in ways he doesn't necessarily want them to, reacting to impulsive desires. For example, overwhelming fear may cause him to create a wall structure in between him and whatever is scaring him, and until he calms down he won't be able to control the wall or make it go away.

3) He can't conjure anything overly complicated or intricate, like machines or complex tools. It's mostly intended to be used as a shield, or build simply structures like walls, stairs, and generally things you could reasonably craft out of stone.

ANY WEAPONS/MAGICAL ITEMS?: A ukelele is basically a weapon, right? I've decided he'd not going to bring his shield along in a solid form because it doesn't even have a handle and would be sort of useless.
ANY PETS?: N/A


LINKED SAMPLE: Thread with Astoria