Ben's Faves: Part the Third

Adventure Time

Although Adventure Time’s current season stretches into 2012, I’m including it on this list anyways not only because I’m a huge fan dying to sing its praises but also because in its third season, Adventure Time has shaped into one of the best fantasy shows on television. Seriously.

On a post-apocalyptic earth that has been renamed the Land of Ooo, nuclear fallout has created a world full of mutant hybrids, talking objects, and evil monsters. The last living human (or so it seems) is a heroic boy named Finn who lives in a tree house with his best pal Jake, a shape-shifting bulldog. Their adventures reveal an enormous fantasy world that encompasses a “lumpy space” dimension resembling a lumpy, modern-day America; a Candyland-like Candy Kingdom ruled by Finn’s crush Princess Bubblegum;  a 1000-year-old vampire named Marceline who plays the bass guitar; a crystalline fortress ruled temporarily by a tiny, green elephant; an underworld filled with cannibalistic skeletons; a cross between hell and Tartaros called the Nightosphere; a Cosmic Owl who presides over the Land of Ooo like Aslan; and an entire parallel universe containing everything just mentioned but with everyone's genders swapped. Every episode of the show develops this universe a little more, either filling in a previously hazy detail or introducing some new character or locale.

Adventure Time approaches its massive world with the same fun-loving attitude of its protagonists. In this show, epic battles with demon lords end in fart jokes and Finn’s abduction leads to goofy, childish singing. As juvenile as the show can be, it also displays a broad tonal range, slipping easily from goofiness into poignancy or romance or even genuine creepiness. The humor and fun are always there, but they never prevent the show from exploring diverse emotional territory.

In “Dungeon,” an episode that exemplifies the show’s range, Finn runs through an underground dungeon where he is confronted by evil creatures, gold-barfing treasure chests, and a Venus fly trap door. He’s not terrified but narrating gleefully and laughing. As Finn busts out of a trap, two glowing eyes appear and put an end to his happy monologue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9_iQ1FSnp8

Looks a little like MewThree

A cute kitten's head is revealed to be the tongue of a more sinister beast, and out of the darkness slinks a demonic cat. With slices of its body eerily missing and a long purple tail that looks more like a vein protruding from its side, the cat is a little threatening and more than a little creepy. Although its dialogue—revealing it to be, hilariously, only somewhat omniscient—and Finn’s backtalk leaven the mood, the cat’s presence is legitimately menacing and pulls Finn and the show into frightening territory. So frightening, in fact, that this “guardian angel” shows up, scarring young viewers for life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgbrw8wbvWg

In its most recent season, Adventure Time has moved increasingly toward stories like “Dungeon,” stories that push the show into new emotional terrain. With an anything-goes approach and a huge world to play in, the show often pulls us into moving scenes when we least expect it. In Adventure Time’s recent Christmas special, an otherwise cheery holiday episode suddenly breaks into the Ice King’s past, revealing his tragic, Lovecraftian origins. In one of my favorite episodes, Finn awakens from a coma to find everyone is missing except for Jake, who seems to have lost his mind. The whole episode is creepy from start to finish, but no moment is creepier than the one in which Finn discovers who’s behind everything. (Not so much for who it is, which is fairly obvious, but for a surprising and ultra-creepy motion that being makes when discovered.)

Nope, not telling you who/what it is. Watch the episode for yourself.

I know Adventure Time is not a show for everyone. Even for those who aren't immediately disinclined toward liking cartoons, the show’s fondness for puerile humor may be a turnoff. But Adventure Time is doing something truly unique on television right now. It’s telling emotionally resonant stories in a huge fantasy world in a way that’s always fun and never less than hilarious. As much great television as there is these days, no show brings me greater joy than this cartoon about a boy, his dog, and their epic adventures together.

I love Finn's pasta limbs

I'm sold!  I think a bunch of episodes are on dvd, and if you’re clever with YouTube searching, you can find quite a few there too. If you’re really sneaky/not afraid to watch illegally uploaded videos, Google your way around and I’m sure you’ll find some. Also, there’s the legitimate way to watch them, on TV every Monday at 8.    

Here's Some Stuff About Fantasy

Pizzaheads! (By putting that word into your eyeballs, you have implicitly agreed to it as your new nickname.) So I was writing up my faves part the third, but the post eventually spiraled into a discussion of fantasy as a genre and I was like, "Man, this is getting out of hand. It has little to do with what I had intended to talk about." Rather than just (wisely) deleting what I'd written forever though, encasing it in the netherworld of my consciousness, I am instead (unwisely) going to post it here on the internet so it can go in the netherworlds of all your consciousnesses! Hurray! It's just like we've Avatar hair-connected! Only that was supposed to be sex? Gross. Whatever. Hate that movie.

This is one of the first images that shows up when you Google image search "fantasy."

As a genre, fantasy begins without limitations. The sun doesn't have to be a blazing ball of plasma, it can be the physical incarnation of an Aztec god. A spider bite results not in a trip to the ER but in arachnid super powers. A wardrobe in Christian England can contain a magical world that ultimately looks a lot like Christian England. The limitless canvas of the fantasy work is at once immensely liberating for the writer even as it poses extreme authorial risks. It’s hard enough sustaining believability and tension in a world designed to be as realistic as possible, so when you create a world where a potion or a chant can demolish gravity or rewrite someone’s DNA structure, as a writer, you've let loose a dragon, so to speak. But if you, like an authorial Hiccup the Viking, can rein that limitlessness in and impose on it a strict set of rules that you damn well stick to, you can hopefully make that freedom work to your advantage and produce something great. (It is probably no coincidence that within most fantasy works involving magic, there is usually a high price to be paid if a character breaks whatever the established magical rules are. The dicta of the magical universe bind not only the writer but the characters within that universe too.)

Unfortunately, unlike Hiccup, you cannot train your magical universe with dead fish

There remains always, though, that potential that you’re going to drop the reins and get burned. Every new magical trinket, every new mythical creature, every new bit of chaos you introduce to your world makes it just that much harder to keep things under control. In the fourth Harry Potter book, for instance, after Harry sees Cedric die, he later does not see the thestrals on his way home. In an interview somewhere or other, J.K. Rowling explained that this was because death first needs to sink in before thestrals become visible—a response that smacks a little of retconning to me, but regardless, this scene exemplifies exactly what I’m talking about. The way thestrals work, as explained in the fifth book, suddenly renders an otherwise ordinary scene from a previous book anachronistic (at least without the explanatory interview). When fantasy is done really badly, the resultant logical loopholes can be infuriating verging on insulting. The “How It Should Have Ended” YouTube series recently mocked the ending of X-Men: First Class for the numerous ways it falls apart on its own established terms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-5tMPInetg

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And that's what I wrote. Hope the netherworld of your consciousness has been enriched. Tune in probably tomorrow for the post I was trying to write tonight! (What will it be?? Something to do with fantasy? Yes.)