My "Adventure Time" Problem

There are so many reasons to love Cartoon Network's "Adventure Time." It's a traditionally animated cartoon series that takes place in a free-form, abstract fantasy world called The Land of Ooo. It operates by kid logic, so mountains can be alive and have feelings, your best friend can be a dog that changes sizes at will, and there are lots of different princesses who are mostly really cool, except for the Lumpy Space Princess, who is kind of a drag. The animation is old school, and I mean rubber-hose limbs, Looney Toons cartoon physics, squash-and-stretch old school. Character designs are simple, but have the energy and spirit of children's drawings. Our heroes, Finn the human (Jeremy Shada) and Jake the dog (John DiMaggio), mainly concern themselves with having awesome adventures, but often find themselves getting into difficult moral conundrums that require creative thinking to resolve. The stories are smartly written, bursting with weird and wonderful ideas, and it's no wonder "Adventure Time" has attracted such a passionate fanbase.

Over the past few weeks I've watched several episodes at random to familiarize myself with the show, along with a lot of clips. I liked them all, more or less, but there was only one episode where everything really clicked for me, and I found myself really getting attached to the characters. And wouldn't you know it, that was the infamous "Fionna and Cake" episode, where the characters appear as gender-swapped versions of themselves for that single episode only. Now Finn's a perfectly fine hero kid, but the second I laid eyes on Fionna, the kind of rough-and-tumble girl they used to call a tomboy who was "all about swords," I wanted to see more of her. Her design appealed to me – Fionna is pretty much just Finn with a shock of blonde hair and a hippier torso. This means she's refreshingly free of traditionally feminine visual indicators, even the ones people don't really think about like clothing and choice of weapons. And she gets to come to the rescue of the prince that she might kinda have a crush on, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris. And do battle with the evil Ice Queen who is always trapping people in blocks of ice. And, in the end, Fionna decides for herself that she's not really interested in dating anybody just yet and would prefer to remain focused on adventuring. Alas, in the closing moments it's revealed that the whole episode has been fanfiction written by Finn's regular enemy, the Ice King (Tom Kenny).

So now I'm stuck, a newly minted fan of a version of "Adventure Time" that really doesn't really exist aside from one very special episode, and the promise of another sometime in the nonspecific future. The only way to get more of Fionna and Cake is to delve into fandom content, which is always a tricky prospect, especially for kids' shows. Then again, Fionna and Cake only exist in the first place because one of the artists on the show, Natasha Allegri, posted a bunch of unofficial drawings and comics featuring the pair on her Tumblr. The reaction was so positive, that the "Adventure Time" creators decided to incorporate them into the show itself, which makes it one of those incredibly rare times when something fan-created became part of actual canon. Many, many "Adventure Time" fans have embraced Fionna and Cake, so there's no lack of interest in their further adventures. I've seen plenty of fanart featuring Fionna around, along with abundant cosplay photos. And it just brings up again that Cartoon Network has been pretty bad about putting out shows with female protagonists in recent years, even though they've been called out on this so many times.

But back to "Adventure Time." The more episodes I watched, the more apparent it became that it really was only that one Fionna and Cake episode that I had connected with. Watching Finn and Jake on their adventures is okay, but I'd much rather be watching their girl (and cat) versions, and I can never quite make myself put those feelings aside. I do appreciate everything that "Adventure Time" has managed to accomplish, but I just can't seem to enjoy it on its own terms now. This is a very odd relationship to have with a cartoon, and I'm not sure how to fix this. I'm not sure that I can fix this.

This has been one of my weirder adventures in media, but I guess that's kind of appropriate in this case.
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