Relationship dynamics in the Land of Ooo, and other things
Boy likes Girl. Girl is too old for Boy. Other Girl likes Girl, but Girl isn't sure what to do about Other Girl. So Other Girl is frustrated and lashes out at Girl. Boy just wants to be friends with both of them, and doesn't get the tension. Oh, and did I mention this was a kid's show?
Cartoon Network's Adventure Time is known for its cute and colorful characters and weird sense of humor. Recently it broke interesting ground by making an episode set in the completely genderswapped reality of Ice King's fanfiction, where Finn the Human and Jake the Dog were replaced by their female doppelgangers Fionna and Cake. The show played it off in its usual tongue-and-cheek style, but a lot of fans were impressed by the creative staff's decision to handle gender dynamics in such a clever way. In the color-coded worlds of kids television, where boys like gross things and girls are soft and pretty, and anything that violates these norms make parents and censors very nervous, Adventure Time came out to say that girls can be adventurers and boys can be princes who need rescuing. Because sometimes evil queens creep on cute princes and try to force them into marriages too, am I right? And because girl heroes can carry huge swords and punch evil in the face all day for fun, because that's what adventurers do.
Sometimes adventurers and princes can even fall in love, sure. Cue flowers and first dates, and the cute romantic musical segment about true love and junk. But do you know what lesson was waiting for Fionna at the heart of it? You don't need a relationship to validate you, because you're fine by yourself. You don't need a prince to make you feel special, because you're already special. Americans live in a culture where girls are fed lines from books and magazines, and taglines from movies and on the fronts of glittery t-shirts, about needing boys' attention twenty-four-seven in order to feel good about themselves. (We're all familiar with Twilight, yes? Okay, just checking.) So I don't know about you, but I think telling girls they're fine the way they are is a damn good message to have on a kid's show.
On the episode What Was Missing, this seemingly silly kid's show again seemed to take steps at chipping away at the rigidity of parental worry and network censors. It does this by showing something I don't think I've ever really seen before in this particular medium. Queer relationships on primetime children's television? It might be more likely than you think.
Okay, so, Finn loves Princess Bubblegum. When she was de-aged back to a thirteen year old, they had a brief but sweet little romantic sojourn, and it was all rather nice. Now PB is back to her eighteen year old self, and therefore over Finn. Even so, Finn is friends with both PB and Marceline, who PB has always seemed to dislike. Marceline's feelings for PB have always been rather antagonistic, but it's been played off as a rivalry. (PB is an uptight princess who loves science, Marceline is, well, the hipster queen of the underworld and such. These things just happen.) Now a lot of fans suspect that the context of PB and Marceline's relationship is much more complicated than it first appeared. Yes, they're former friends who now have a rocky association, drawn together again because of Finn, but might it be more?
And what's so bad if it were?
Yeah, so it's a kid's show. This was a story about friendship, even when that friendship is complicated. As it stands, this shows has some great characters and relationships in general, and portrays them in really interesting, and even poignant, ways. But if the relationship between PB and Marceline were more than that, where's the harm? The creative staff at Frederator Studios is aware of fan speculation on the topic (as well as the fanart, fanfiction, and everything else that comes along with it), and if it's true, it would be fun to see. And if it's not, well, that's why we have the internet.
I expect to see PB/Marceline t-shirts on Etsy within the next week. Don't let me down, fandom.
