Connie Maheswaran

Connie Maheswaran is the human best friend of Steven Universe and a member of the Crystal Gems.

## Appearance

Connie is a young Indian-American girl with dark brown skin and a slim figure and, prior to the time-skip, was slightly taller than Steven.

She has a prominent nose, black eyes with thick eyebrows, and dark brown puffy hair.

From her debut to "Dewey Wins", Connie's hair was waist-length.

At some point following her fallout with Steven in the aforementioned episode and prior to their reconciliation in "Kevin Party", she had her hair cut down to a chin-length bob and added bangs.

Following the two-year time-skip between "Change Your Mind" and Steven Universe: The Movie, her hair has since regrown to shoulder-length while retaining her bangs, and she wears part of it back with hair clips.

Connie wore a pair of magenta glasses with rose-coloured lenses until Steven's healing saliva fixed her eyesight in "An Indirect Kiss".

She continued to wear the empty frames until the events of "Nightmare Hospital", no longer carrying them afterward.

Connie is usually seen in a variety of different outfits and dresses, including light blue, green, and white clothing: In the first intro, she wears a white-mint green dress, a sunhat, and peach-coloured boots with no socks.

In the second intro, she wears a white, button-down, collared tank top, gray button-up shorts, her pink glow bracelet, and peach sneakers with white bottoms, laces, and socks.

Since "Kevin Party", Connie has started wearing a more stylish and slightly mature style of dress.

During training, Connie often wears a purple fighting outfit with a red bandana around her waist. She is barefoot and her arms are covered with white gauze.

On missions involving outer space travel, Connie usually wears her father's pale brown jacket, which has fur inside and a patch on the left sleeve.

In "The New Crystal Gems", Connie temporarily wears Steven's outfit of a salmon-pink star shirt and blue jeans.

As of the movie, Connie is now taller in height, almost the same height as Steven.

She also wears a white blouse and blue shorts.

## Personality

Connie is a curious girl who is attentive to detail, preparing herself for future events such as the upcoming school year or a mission in the wilderness, but can get distracted if she finds something more interesting like reading Buddy Buddwick's journal or spending time with magical company.

Her hobbies include reading, violin playing, and formerly tennis playing.

Connie is usually level-headed but sensible, convincing Steven about his obsession to certain topics and let them go such in "Beach City Drift", but she feels guilty to the point of notably changing her behaviour, including hitting an innocent student in "Mindful Education".

Learning that some things are natural, she decides to confront her emotions by making amends, clearing her mind and understanding not to let her emotions cloud her thoughts by keeping them in.

She passes this knowledge onto Steven, assuring him he had to be honest about how bad his feelings were so he could move on.

"New Crystal Gems" shows Connie's leadership skills when she told Peridot and Lapis to be themselves and organized their efforts to fix the damage they did.

"Change Your Mind" brings out this aspect of her personality, as she helps Steven convince Blue and Yellow to ease up on their stifling rules and traditions so they would try to convince White Diamond to do the same.

Connie has grown used to the strange dynamic of her friendship with Steven despite her initial uncertainty of it, reacting passively awed and only comments that she loves hanging out at his place when the Gems destroy one of Peridot's robonoids in front of her in "Marble Madness".

She can be a bit deadpan at times, joking about cutting off Steven's hand and in that same instance quickly understands that by poking/tickling Steven she could provoke a reaction from Rose's Secret Armory in "Lion 2: The Movie".

"The New Crystal Gems" demonstrates her eagerness to leap into action and adventure, asking Steven to wait for her so she can go into space with him, though this fails as he and the Gems had to leave immediately or risk losing track of Blue Diamond and his father forever.

"Dewey Wins" displays an emotionally vulnerable side and a sense of integrity for Connie, who, while genuinely happy to have Steven back safely, is also deeply hurt by his choice to give himself up to Homeworld, leaving her and everyone else worried over his fate while also breaking his promise to her that they would always be a team.

She becomes upset when he tries to downplay the situation and disregards her feelings (possibly to avoid facing his own and the harsh reality of the situation for the time being) and decided to take some time away from him so the two could process their respective feelings about the incident alone, remaining silent towards him for several weeks until they eventually reconciled in "Kevin Party".

Originally shy and introverted, Connie rarely stayed in one place for long due to her parents' lifestyle and thus had been unable to form lasting friendships, which left her frequently feeling lonely.

Her parents were very strict and didn't allow her to participate in common childhood activities, such as eating donuts or anything with trans fats and organize her daily activities.

By this time, tennis was the only thing that she remotely enjoys in her life.

This attitude had led her to flat-out lie about Steven's non-nuclear family, due to paranoia at how her parents may react.

Despite her obedience to her parents, she wasn't above exploiting loopholes, such as not buying snacks at a theater and instead of bringing them from Steven's home.

She also would eat what sweets when they weren't present in "Crack the Whip". Connie's friendship with Steven eventually gives her more confidence, eventually standing up to her mother about her strict upbringing and rules in "Nightmare Hospital", even revealing her involvement in magical affairs.

She isn't afraid to barge into the Beach House while shouting "Surprise!" and have around Beach City with Amethyst and Steven, showing how comfortable she has gotten around the Gems.

"Kevin Party" shows nearly full-circle just how far she has grown as a person, laughing and talking with other party guests, something she would never have been able to do at the beginning of the series.

Her more carefree attitude and comfort towards Steven when he feels he had made everyone miserable by abiding by Homeworld's conformities and traditions to impress White Diamond in "Together Alone" caused her to convince him to dance much to his reservation, an inverse of their usual personalities and actions in the episode "Alone Together", which leads to them accidentally fusing into Stevonnie and unintentionally causing an uproar that winds up ruining the ball.

This continues in "Escapism" when she consoles a despondent Steven over their consequent imprisonment and the Crystal Gems' poofing and inadvertently inspires him to use his psychic abilities to call for help on Earth.

"Sworn to the Sword" shows a more confident and aggressive side to Connie's personality when she learns sword fighting.

Due to Pearl's negative reinforcement, she began to display a reckless side, but this was quickly put out by Steven.

It highlights her strong feelings for beloved ones through her dedication to becoming a knight for Steven.

"Gem Hunt" continues to shown her confidence and dedication to the Crystal Gems in how she pushes her to split up to hunt the Gem monsters and is the one to lead when she and Steven hunt the second monster through the forest, while respecting and obeying Pearl.

Despite all her training and preparedness, Connie froze during an encounter with one of the Gem monsters they are hunting, choosing to call Pearl via Steven's walkie-talkie in the end.

She later confides in Steven and Amethyst about freezing during her first mission in the next episode, causing Amethyst to tell her she should stop overthinking things and follow her instincts in battle, just adapting to win.

She takes Amethyst's words to heart as she fares far better when the two of them along with Steven and Lion encounter Jasper and her two Gem monsters, bravely confronting her and prevent her from shattering Amethyst as Stevonnie.

After Amethyst regenerates, she tells her she was right about how she should follow her instincts.

In "Reunited" she has grown as a fighter, leaping into action and tries to attack Blue Diamond with Lion to free them when the rest of the Crystal Gems are incapacitated by Blue's pathokinesis attack, continuing to fight alongside them even her sword was broken.

Steven Universe: The Movie, taking place two years after the end of the fifth season, shows how much Connie's feelings for Steven have grown, as shown at the start of the movie, she waits for him to return from Homeworld and kisses him on the cheek before leaving for space camp, and is quick to return on Lion after learning of the danger posed by Spinel.

She later helps the other Gems save Beach City's citizens from the poison from Spinel's Gem Injector.

During this time, she expresses concern for Steven during his final clash with Spinel, especially after the battle causes the Injector to explode, and relieved to find him alive and safe in the aftermath.

## Skills & Abilities

* Strength: Connie has impressive strength for a girl her size, being able to lift and carry Steven when he was weakened from having his gem removed.

* Swordsmanship: As of "Sworn to the Sword", Connie has become skilled in the art of sword fighting with Pearl as her mentor. She can fight swiftly in light attack or with power in heavy attacks. This allows her rapidly perform several hits, as well as a counter or simply block them. Due to being ambidextrous, she can fight with equal skill with either hand. Her prowess is enough to temporarily hold her own against Gems like Topaz.

* Tag-team combat: Due to the close bond they share, Connie can coordinate her swordplay perfectly with Steven's shield techniques, such as fighting back-to-back to being defended and attack simultaneously or being catapulted from his shield for a powerful lunge attack.

* Wide Intellect: Connie is shown to be very intelligent for her age, knowing a lot about boats from observation and reading very hard books, both fictional and educational, which give her an extensive vocabulary. She can write backward, seen in the short amount of time it took her to write "Harpoon Gun" on a bubble's inside. Her analytical skills allow her to find loopholes in her parents' many rules, notice and remember important details, and make perfectly timed questions in regards to the Gems' strange situations.

* Survival Skills: Having prepared herself from a book about it 20 times, Connie has very impressive survival abilities in the wilderness. She has adopted these skills, perfectly able to locate a spot to hide from the Gem Monsters or make a healthy Vitamin C-rich tea out of pine needles.

* Hand-to-Hand Combat: In addition to her swordsmanship, Connie possesses some hand-to-hand combat skills, presumably through her combat training under Pearl. She is able to grab a fellow student at her school by the arm and throw him to the ground, breaking his arm in the process.

* Heightened Reflexes: Connie's reflexes have been honed to such an extent that she reacts to a perceived threat before she knows what she is doing, attacking a fellow student who bumped into her without realizing it until after the act.

* Musical Talent: At her mother's insistence, Connie practices violin playing on a daily basis. She can play the instrument and sing at the same time, as shown in "Mirror Gem."

* Tennis Playing: Connie is shown to play tennis in "Lion 2: The Movie", which later translates her prowess into sword fighting.

## Weapons

* Rose's Sword (formerly): Bismuth's "finest piece of work", capable to easily destroy the physical form of a Gem, but unable to shatter the gemstone itself. Its design allows it to both cut and thrust efficiently. She also uses Rose's scabbard. In "Nightmare Hospital", the sword and its scabbard are given to Connie by Steven because she is learning how to sword-fight. Since pleading her mother to change her "No Swords" rule, took Steven to follow her to work to secretly obtain the sword, and convince her mother after saving her from the Cluster Gem patients, Connie has used the weapon in all subsequent appearances, using it in combat situations and during her sparring matches. Despite its immense size, she is seen comfortably carrying the sword on her back and drawing it over her shoulder. It is unknown if this is due to the sword's magical properties or if Pearl's training helped her achieve a level of strength fit to use it. In "Reunited", Rose's Sword was broken by Blue Diamond.

* Connie's Sword: As of "Change Your Mind", Bismuth gave Connie a specially-forged sword for her. The sword features a golden pommel, a purple hilt, a gold star emblem at the blade's base, an aqua chappe and a crystalline pink blade.

## Family

* Doug Maheswaran (Father)
* Priyanka Maheswaran (Mother)