An Ode to Adventure Time
If you’re my friend, you’ve definitely been subject to my constant references to Adventure Time. I’ve probably made you sit and listen to me go on and on about the show’s animation, its eleven-minute episodes, its subtle way of creating a tremendously huge plot inside of a bunch of laughable hijinks. If you’re a new friend of mine I’m sure I will soon share photos of myself at The Grove in Los Angeles, where I stood in line for seven hours one Wednesday a few years ago to attend the Adventure Time finale premier.
I took the day off work for that event. I couldn’t sleep the night before due to excitement. I arrived so early that no one else had gotten in line yet, so I walked to VeggieGrill and made myself wait for an hour after finishing my salad. Finally, I got in line behind what looked to be a twenty-year-old man dressed as Finn and a younger boy there with his mother. The boy wore Doc Martens with Jake the dog printed on them and his mother wore ones with Marceline the Vampire Queen on them.
The line grew. I read and sporadically spoke to the mother in Marceline boots. She told me, when her son went to the bathroom, that her son is autistic, and that watching Adenture Time was the thing that comforted her son the most. It’s when we talk the most, too, when he’s most expressive, she told me. We sat together when the theatre finally opened- the mother helped me save a seat for my partner who was running late. She asked me what brought me to Adventure Time, why I loved it enough to be at such an event.
I first came to Adventure Time when Hans moved to Los Angeles. As I’ve written before, this period was incredibly difficult for me; the status of my young relationship was opaque on good days, and sitting in that cloud of gray made my anxiety spiral. I went to therapy for the first time, started taking Lexapro. I committed to early morning yoga classes and in the evenings, after work, I would eat dinner, smoke, and turn on Adventure Time until the show’s intro song lulled me to sleep. I clung to my daily rituals because I didn’t know how to exist without them.
There are a lot of things I could list as evidence for why Adventure Time rocks: the queer relationship between two incredible female-identifying characters; the self-sabotage the show’s main character has to reckon with; the examination of grief due to an inscrutable, unfair loss inside of Simon’s story. Lumpy Space Princess… as a whole. The show also allows me to sink into play, to let myself be absurd and goofy. In most of my writing I investigate my own traumas; many pieces require me to look squarely at dark memories, sometimes involving violence. The simplicity and gentleness of Adventure Time reminds me that I’m not defined by my darknesses only. I’m also defined by fart jokes on a kid’s show.
I told the mother this that Wednesday in the theatre. She nodded along and when Hans arrived she clapped and cheered, pure. Her son won a major prize at the screening and at the end of the night I hugged them both. Hans screamed and cheered and put me on his back so I could be tall enough to catch the shirts people were throwing. I had tears in my eyes from the finale, from the joy, from the sheer fact of us being there together.
I guess what Adventure Time did for me is let be me sad. It let me be sad and hopeful. Sad and disappointed. Sad and angry. And it also allowed me to trust that people cared for me. That they would love me and get me through whatever weather was on the other side of this grayness. One of the lines that hit me the hardest in the show is: “This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions, twists all our arms collectively. But, if sweetness can win, and it can, then I'll still be here tomorrow to high five you yesterday, my friend. Peace.”
To me, this defines Adventure Time, and it defines what I needed most at that point in my life, what I need the most even now: the faith that sweetness is still available, that it will be available, and that those who love you will never let you go a day without somehow letting you know you are worth the sweetness the world has to offer. It is this quality I seek out in my most intimate of friends— the consistency, the trust, the comfort. The ‘I’ll still be here.’
If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out my new publication up on HerStry— Bloody Mary. This is an essay I’ve been working at for a few years. In the essay I revisit the slumber party game Bloody Mary through the lens of violences of my own I’ve encountered in womanhood, mostly in romantic relationships. I wanted to investigate my past self in that relationship, and I needed to ask that past me questions I haven’t asked in years. Writing can be so incredibly painful— I’m thankful for the safe space this piece found and for the readership.