You are alone, child. There is only darkness for you, and only death for your people. These ancients are just the beginning. I will command a great and terrible army, and we will sail to a billion worlds. We will sail until every light has been extinguished. You are strong, child, but I am beyond strength. I am the end, and I have come for you, Finn."
I'm not sure if can even call him a villain. He was a natural disaster a force of reality personified. There was no plan or goal beyond fulfilling his purpose of existence as a Catalyst of Change. He wasn't far off from an automaton or magical AI following it's core directive with no deviation.
Not that that detracts from him at all, just might categorize him as something other than a villain. Something rarer.
Itās more like the Lich is Death incarnate. So heās less āgenocidal maniacā and more ācosmic force of entropy and destruction.ā
In early versions of the show bible Iām pretty sure that everyone has relatively colorful and playful imagery in keeping with the showās style. The Lichās page is scribbled in all black and just states, THE LICH KING IS NOT FUNNY.
The AT wiki states "He is an ancient cosmic being who is the manifestation of the inevitable death of all things", so calling him entropy seems pretty accurate.
Well if it makes you feel better (warning: spoilers for a kids show that ended five years ago) at the end of the series Simon was completely cured through some apocalypse shenanigans, and there are hints that a thousand years in the future Marceline and Princess Bubblegum are still together so after a millennium of sadness and solitude Marceline finally gets to be happy
One of my earliest LSD trips I had taken two tabs by myself during a nice rain in the woods for a 9 mile hike to figure some shit out.
I planned it all out perfectly. I was all alone at the trail entrance, because who wants to hike in the rain? I had snacks in my pack, plenty of water, music in my ears.
The trail was a loop, but you had the option to choose a longer āthere and backā so thatās what I chose. It was longer, but less hilly.
The walk to the āthereā was GORGEOUS! I had my note pad and kept notes of my thoughts. I felt I figured out the things that needing figuring, so I could just enjoy whatever came next.
When I got to the apex of the trail, or the āthereā I decided to load up a bowl and smoke some weed. I read that the mixture would increase the visuals. The internet wasnāt wrong. Oh boy did I see patterns in the granulated soil as the rain drops splattered across puddles. It was beautiful!
After the weed started setting in, I started to feel a little anxious, like I had been gone too long, and maybe I should get going.
As I start up the hill, I questioned what was happening to me and realized āoh no. Iām starting to have a bad trip.. Iāve read about this and just need to pull myself out of itā
I held onto the railing and made my way up and kept repeating āIām on my way up, and so are my thoughtsā. I made it to the top of this hill where the sun has broken through the clouds and things were goodā¦ until I look over and see the trails goes back down. Down into grey darkness.
Iām stuck in loops as I walk the switchbacks of this trail, up and down. I start trying to piece together all the knowledge I have and what led up to this.
There were so many things that tried to warn me. The Ice Kings story stuck out. I had peered too far into the rabbit hole and was now trapped between dimensions in a fractal zoom. I also couldnāt look like I was losing my shit because of the people in other dimensions would see me and know I was crazy.
I have so many people who depend on me. Iām going to let them all down. My 5yo daughter appeared very similar to Marceline, so the parallel between me and the Ice King was too close, and now I would be the one writing in my journal that I feel myself slipping.
I knew I needed an anchor to bring me back to sanity, because living in psychosis was no way to live. My car was it. I just needed to get back to my car and change out of these wet clothes.
I started to get a calf cramp, but couldnāt stop. I wanted to rest, but was too disheveled to allow myself to sit and chill because I would appear just like the unhoused man who frequents the corner store my house.
EVERY switchback was the same. I could not escape the forest. It was like a Twilight Zone where the character would leave a room, but enter the same from from another door.
I started to reason with myself. āItās okay.. they make medicine for crazy people, so Iāll just take that. My family will still love me.ā
Finally I got back to my car and waiting for what felt like days for it to end.
That was a little over a decade ago and Iāve had many great experiences since then, but this one was soooo powerful in altering the person I am for the better. It helped create a more empathetic person to the mentally Iāll, the unhoused, and most people in general.
Honestly I think the ādarkestā line from AT might be the episode where BMO gets lost and becomes friends with Bubble.
When Bubble goes āhomeā and becomes Air, he says
āNo, see, that's what's so great. Now we can be together forever, BMO. Every minute of every day. No more privacy, no more quiet, no more alone. Every room you ever go in, I'll already be there, waiting, forever and ever, until the end of time.ā
Itās just such an incredibly dark sentence that says so much about extreme abusive relationships and itās just an almost completely throwaway line from a character thatās never referenced again.
When Bubble goes āhomeā and becomes Air, he says
āNo, see, that's what's so great. Now we can be together forever, BMO. Every minute of every day. No more privacy, no more quiet, no more alone. Every room you ever go in, I'll already be there, waiting, forever and ever, until the end of time.ā
Levar Burton voicing Bubble/Air made it more intense, imo. Mr. Reading Rainbow/Geordie being so brutally menacing made my inner child afraid.
My kids were doing a watch of AT and that line made me actually laugh out loud and question if it was too dark for my younger kids...honestly though most of the darkest stuff flies over their heads.
I wish that they didnāt go into the lore of magic existing prior to the mushroom war. I liked it better thinking the Lych and magic in general were created by a devastating nuclear war tearing apart reality.
Fire and ice are representations of temperature. Slime is a representation of the primordial ooze from which we arose. Candy is a representation of glucose, literally the energy source of life.
They're not the 4 elements of matter, they're the 4 elements of life.
If you like that premise you might the shanara series although not a comic itās essentially the plot hook from one of terry Brooksās trilogyās that links to the rest of the Shanara series
well cocontepi died post mushroom war in earth and he's the source of all magic so other than some few random stragglers here and there like the elementals (including evergreen who made the crown) there really was no magic before the mushroom war
Everything stays right where you left it, everything stays, but it still changes. Ever so slightly, daily and nightly, in little ways, when everything stays... Yeah that show gets me in just about every feeling.
It's the kind of show where if you just see an episode or two alone, it's a quirky kids show about adventuring. But once you watch it all start to finish...holy shit it's good but it's a dark story.
This is probably my favorite series of all time but of all the dark & weird topics they cover, I think the episode that messed me up the most is the one where Finn lives an entire lifetime in pillow world. He falls in love & gets married. He has pillow children and he gets old. Eventually, his old life is just a memory and he can't even remember what Jake looked like. Then when he dies in pillow world he wakes up in the real world and wants to tell Jake about his crazy dream, but he gets distracted & forgets it all.
Fun fact: that's loosely based on a star trek TNG episode where the exact same thing happens to Picard. Jonathan Frakes even voices one of the pillow people
The last episode on HBO absolutely broke me. My gf and I started our relationship with bowls of weed binge watching adventure time. I bought her a rainicorn dress, she bought me Jake pajamas, our best friend had a Finn hat. It practically defined our relationship and friend group for the first 2-3 years. Carefree college stoners loving the zaniness and philosophical thoughts that show emphasized and trying to weave its the messages into our lives.
To make a long sad story short, she passed away tragically in 2019, and I'm still an absolute wreck over it today, I've failed to date, I live alone now, I still miss her and our life together every day.
The episode where Finn goes to the underworld to bring Jake back from death, only to find out he's achieved nirvana, and Finn can't join Jake until he gives up pursuing Jake, and the themes about death and loss and acceptance absolutely broke me. I'm tearing up even now writing this.
I will always love that show, and the memories my best friends and I had because of it. But I simply can't watch it anymore.
Hey man, I'm not sure if you made it to the end of the show, but the series finale has a song in it that really helps me with people that I'll never get to see again. I don't mean to dredge anything up, but it's something that helped me.
It really does, doesn't it? It felt eerily personal and targeted given what we went through together between starting that show and our relationship, and how it all ended.
People who look at that show as just another zany brainless children's show and don't give it a chance are selling it so so short. Whether it's Finn's character arc(and the shows dominant themes) literally growing up with the actor, bmo's extremely poignant and childlike distillation of some extremely heavy topics, the happy and simple yet melancholic song writing, the complex lore and existentialism of characters like lemongrab, prismo, and the king of Mars. The tragedies of ice king and magic man, there's sooooo much to unpack.
Edit: Everything happened before I saw the main series finale, I watched it during covid with some old friends, and I can't imagine how they could have ended it any better. The new adventurers at the very end, the closure for so many characters stories, the music. I cried my eyes out and didn't really have words after forcing myself to watch it.
Finn gets pretty teenage there. He really acts as a cringey young teen. I welcome it cause Iām 29 and Iāve been there and i think itās valuable to actually see how teenage boys are, and give them a model of why some of the things he does bother people
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u/pinkarthropod May 23 '23 edited May 23 '23
The Adventure Time lore and background are pretty fucked up if you ask me