Steven Universe/YMMV

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• Abandon Shipping: One it was revealed that Garnet is the fusion between two very committed lovers, most shippers stopped pairing Garnet up with other characters.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: While Pearl definitely seems to love Steven, episodes such as Rose's Scabbard have cast her in a darker light. Does she genuinely care about Steven, or does she only care about him since he's essentially Rose reincarnated? And to branch off the latter, does she secretly hate him and blame him for Rose not being around?
  • Did Rose Quartz truly return Pearl's affection in a romantic way, or did she simply love her as a friend?
  • Rose's personality is also subject to a ton of this, thanks to evidence that she could have been one of the Homeworld's leaders before the rebellion. Was she truly the pure-hearted hero the Crystal Gems talk her up as? Was she a brutal, merciless rebel who defected for her own selfish reasons? Or was she simply a good person who happened to be ruthless in battle against her enemies? Her reasons for giving birth to Steven have also been cast into a negative light as well. Is Steven's birth meant to be a way for Rose to truly go through a human's experience? Or could he simply be a particularly useful pawn of Rose's against the Homeworld thanks to his human heritage making him somewhat resistant to their destabilizer technology?
  • Reactions have been mixed on how truly antagonistic Peridot is. Is she really a vile piece of work, or is she simply a "cog in the machine" for the Homeworld, and merely apathetic towards Earth's fate?
    • Peridot's age has also been called into question, with some painting her as being the Gem equivalent of a child thanks to her immature behavior, small size, and lack of awareness as to how her powers work. Others simply think she's as much of an "adult" as the rest of the cast and merely has childish, dorky mannerisms.
• Base Breaker: Pearl has the fans split into two camps: there are those who love her for being a highly flawed, tragic individual who nevertheless is still a very funny and competent character, while others loathe her since she tends to go too far in her lowest moments and comes off as completely unsympathetic. Very rarely will you find anyone who's merely neutral about her.
  • Speaking of Pearl, there's the matter of her attraction to Rose. Is she a sympathetic Woobie with an adorable crush on her hero, or is she an entitled creep who needs to get over Rose and move on?
  • There's also Lapis Lazuli. According to who you talk to, she's either a very sympathetic Anti Villain who didn't mean to cause as much trouble as she did, or an incredibly selfish Jerkass for potentially endangering the world and attempting to drown two innocent children in her attempt to go home.
  • People either love Onion for his creepy behavior and evil actions, while others loathe him for the same reasons. Depending on your point of view, his genuine desire to make friends with Steven may or may not offset his more selfish actions.
  • Fans either loathe Lars for being a highly-unlikable Jerkass, or love him for his rare moments of kindness and hints of Hidden Depths relating to his psyche.
• Broken Base: Should male Gems be introduced to the show, or not? This is a question that has caused all sorts of fights among the fandom.
  • Should Jasper be redeemed, or is she better as an evil psycho?
  • The question of Greg being a better parent to Steven than the Gems is a highly contested topic in the fandom.
• Draco in Leather Pants: While Lapis Lazuli is a very sympathetic character, there are far too many fans who are willing to paint her as a pure-hearted angel who can do no wrong and ignore her more selfish and inexcusable actions such as stealing the world's oceans in order to get back home, almost drowning Steven and Connie when they posed absolutely no threat whatsoever to her, and almost killing Greg when he came to help. And of course, while Jasper is a pretty nasty piece of work, keeping her forcibly fused as Malachite against her will is going too far.
  • Peridot. Yes, she is hilariously dorky, and yes, her budding friendship with Steven is adorable. But that still doesn't excuse her trying to reactivate the Kindergarten, trying to kill Steven and the Crystal Gems on multiple occasions, and acting like an all around Jerkass to anyone not named Steven.
  • Despite her incredibly unpleasant and violent attitude, there are plenty of fans insisting that Jasper isn't as evil as fans make her out to be and is only considered irredeemable for being a muscular woman, never mind the fact that she's served the Homeworld as a loyal soldier for 6000 years and counting, was more than happy to have Steven killed despite it not being necessary before realizing that he had Rose's gem, gave him a black eye and knocked him out when she could have simply carried him onto the ship unharmed, and forced Lapis to fuse with her in a manner that is portrayed eerily similar to a rape or domestic violence scenario.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Greg Universe, the self-proclaimed "Coolest dad this side of the Cosmos". Thanks to his easy-going and friendly nature as well as his willingness to go out of his way to be a great dad to Steven, is it any wonder that he's one of the best-loved characters in the series?
  • Ruby and Sapphire as well, since they're not just an adorable couple, but also because their existence proved the widely-accepted theory about Garnet being a fusion.
  • While they don't show up all that often, the Crystal Gems various fusions tend to be pretty popular with fans. You have the stoic yet sweet Opal, rowdy and rambunctious Nicki Minaj-voiced Sugilite, and the elegant yet prideful Sardonyx, who are all very well-received with fans wishing that they'd make more appearances.
  • Thanks to averting the ever-so-common "All popular teens are assholes" stereotype, Beach City's resident cool kids Jenny, Buck, and Sour Cream are pretty popular among the fanbase.
  • Lapis Lazuli, whose portrayal as a tragic, homesick Anti-Villain did a lot to endear her to the masses.
  • Then, there's Peridot. While she had fans from the start, it wasn't until she started showing just how dorky and silly she was that her fanbase really grew. Needless to say, the fact that she's slowly developing into a better person and a possible new member of the Crystal Gems has made lots of people very happy.
  • Jasper has had far less screentime than Lapis and Peridot, and thus hasn't shown much more of her personality beyond "nasty hypocritical brute". And yet, she's just as popular as the other two, mainly because she's so good at being loathsome, and her design (big beefy body, wild mane of hair that reaches the floor, orange skin with camouflage-style stripes) is considered to be among the best shown in the series so far.
• Evil Is Cool: Jasper, whose status as a no-nonsense, vicious Badass and her seriously cool appearance endeared her to the fanbase overnight.
  • Same with the violent and out-of-control Sugilite, but that tends to happen when you're a 50-foot tall purple Oni-esque berserker voiced by Nicki Minaj.
• Evil Is Sexy: While not exactly "evil" per se, Lapis Lazuli is definitely a looker.
  • Ditto for Jasper, who a lot of fans find attractive because of her shapely hips, beefy body, long wild hair, and hot temper.
• Fan Dumb: Steven Universe is infamous for having what is considered to be one of the most hostile and intolerant fanbases of all time, thanks to numerous incidents such as when fans chased writer Matt Burnett off of Tumblr over a simple continuity error, threw a stink over the Uncle Grandpa crossover episode and harassed members of the show's staff, posting inflammatory reviews for a real life Keystone Hotel that could have seriously hurt business, and harassing fanartists who draw characters in different ways (Such as Rose Quartz with a more petite frame, Garnet as non-white) so badly that one such artist actually attempted suicide.
• Moral Event Horizon: As shown in Keeping it Together, the leaders of the Gem Homeworld (which likely includes Yellow Diamond) have long since crossed it. They authorized sickening experiments involving taking shattered Gems and bringing them back to life through fusing them together, which results in the creation of twisted hybrid abominations who are in a state of constant agony as a form of punishment for defecting.
  • Speaking of that, there's also the matter of them also okaying the creation of the Cluster, an enormous forced fusion made from millions of shattered Gem shards that is spending its time incubating beneath the Earth's crust. When it hatches, it will destroy the Earth upon emerging. While you can possibly justify the Kindergartens as possibly being the only way Gems can reproduce, there's just no justifying anything regarding forced fusion.
  • Garnet felt that Pearl crossed it in Cry For Help by secretly repairing a communications hub Peridot was using to broadcast messages to the Homeworld so she could trick Garnet into fusing with her for a quick power trip. While she DID end up forgiving Pearl, it took a good long while for it to happen.
• The Scrappy: Even the most controversial characters in this show tend to have defenders and fans, yet there are still a few who are potent hate-magnets. One such character is Ronaldo, who is widely detested for being a one-dimensional character with little depth aside from being a loony conspiracy theorist whose antics are far more cringeworthy and annoying rather than amusing.