Adventure Time

This is a /co/ related article, which we allow because we find it interesting or we can't be bothered to delete it.

Look familiar fa/tg/uys?

Adventure Time is an Awesome show about Finn Mertens and his friend Jake as they adventure in the post-apocalyptic world of Ooo which was devastated by thermonuclear war. The planet is missing a large chunk, Finn is the last human, and Jake is a magical shapeshifting dog.

The setting & lore

Adventure Time was one of the first if not the first cartoons of the new 10s that moved away from "adventure of the week" format to also include and overarching storyline and build up it's lore to an unusual amount for a "kids" cartoon, not rivalling 40k or LOTR mind you but having a history that spans millions of years and having a ton of interconnected characters that each get some development and spotlight.

The sections ahead will naturally contain a fuckton of spoilers so be mindful of that.

Short history

The seminal moment that would lay the groundwork for virtually all subsequent events in the AT universe occurs in the frigging Cretaceous Era of Earth when a Catalyst Comet is detected heading towards the planet. The comets always bring forth some (agent of) change which the current inhabitants usually don't want or fear so an artifact - the Ice Crown is created in order to stop the impact. It fails and the planet goes through a transition. Fast forward to the 21st century and humanity nukes itself for unspecified reasons with one bomb falling onto the original comet that bore a being of pure evil - The Lich. This war either wipes out all life or mutates it into precursors of later beings that inhabit Ooo, helped along with the return of magic. About 1000 years later the series proper starts and takes place mostly over a period covering 5 years. After that the future is not so thoroughly explored though a further 1000 years into the future (about ~4000 AD/CE) we glimpse the land of Ooo develop into an even more advanced state than the 21st century humanity was with implications that it will fall just as the prior did (though again not without leaving it's own offspring).

Metaphysics

• The world of Adventure Time is set in a multiverse with a number of world and dimensions co-existing with our own, such as the Nightosphere, Lumpy Space, Spirit World, Dead worlds and more. These can be accessed by either wormholes or powerful artefacts like the Enchiridion.

• Time travel is possible but usually can only be done via powerful magic. Persons can be brought back from the past or a temporal intervention can be done in order to create a new timeline.

• Magic exists though it can enter into periods of dormancy as was the case around the 21st century. It can take a myriad forms though the most common ones are through magical artifacts and spells.

• The afterlife is a proven fact and consists of 50 worlds with roughly increasing splendor and quality, thus the 1st world is the equivalent of hell while the 50th is essentially paradise. The world one goes to is determined by one's morality or lack thereof although the 50th world is attained by being free of any desire, including the one to get there. Persons can return to life via a myriad of methods though all being complicated or requiring significant power.

• Undeath is also possible as exemplified by everyone's favourite vampire waifu and other undead such as ghosts and skeletons, and as the Example of the Lick shows it is possible to "regenerate" back into life though possibly at the cost of regressing physically and mentally.

Deities & Cosmic Entities

The world of Adventure Time is home to several powerful entities that could be considered at least gods with lower case g, these are:

• Cosmic Owl - A being that informs people that they will have a premonition or a croak dream.

• Grob Gob Glob Grod - A martian deity that protects the solar system from various threats and other powerful beings.

• Orgalorg - A cosmic entity desiring conquest that attacked a Catalyst Comet to gain it's power.

• Party God - A giant wolf head that floats around and manifests wherever there are parties.

• GOLB - A god of chaos, mutation and possibly evil itself, attacked Mars before coming to Earth in the series finale and being neutralised by another individual "mantling" them.

Races

There are too many minor races and one-offs to mention so go for a wiki walk if you are feeling about loading up on the lore. Aside from that the two most impactful races during the series run are:

• Humans - Once the only dominant sentient species on Earth. They were pretty bog standard until they (nearly) wiped themselves out in the Mushroom War. After that their civilization suffered a significant decline due to most being either dead or mutated. It is worth noting that several groups (mostly tech-oriented) managed to ride out the apocalypse and establish themselves in secluded parts of the world of even off-planet entirely. Finn actually originates from the former, being born on an archipelago inhabited by a technologically advanced society of humans that later make contact with Ooo.

• Candy People - The creations of Bonnibel Bubblegum who is herself a subspecies of a candy person. They inhabit the Candy Kingdom which is one of the most developed polities of Ooo. They come in many kinds and have some regenerative ability and though they are as intelligent as humans they are often naive and childlike. As time goes on they start showing sings of increasing willfulness and questioning of Bubblegum's authority.

Magic

Magic in Adventure Time permeates the world and is quite common occurrence as opposed to the distant past. It generally comes in several distinct forms:

• Wizard magic that is performed by said wizards although this kind seems to have some drawbacks as it causes sadness and insanity over time.

• Artifact Magic which stems from powerful items such as the Ice Crown that is capable of granting wishes or the Enchiridion which enables dimensional travel.

• Elemental Magic which originates from one of the elementals (Candy, Slime, Ice, Fire and anti-elemental Lumps). This form of magic can be extremely powerful and subdue large portions of the world under, making large swathes of land covered in ice or converted to saccharine candy landscapes.

Important Dudes

The show has a metric butt ton of characters (literally hundreds), nearly all of which appear multiple times over many episodes. For obvious reasons, it would be too long to list them all here, so let's focus on the main cast in no particular order.

• Finn Mertens the Human

Despite the show's thoughts, Finn is not the last human. Counting half humans, cyborgs, Simon the Ice King and mutant zombies there may be a few hundred left. For all intents and purposes however, there are only about four beings that can be called "human", and Finn is one of them. A real bad ass boy adventurer and champion of the Candy Kingdom, Finn is a teenage boy that ages as the show progresses, being sixteen during season six, and twelve during season one. Finn has horrible luck with the ladies, and basically acts like a complete retard around them. Finn has some major issues from abandonment in the forest, and being one of the last known humans.

• Jake the Dog

A dog thought to be magical, but we now know to be something completely different even if his parents never told him. His abilities become more pronounced and potent as the series goes on, starting from only being able to change his size and shape, to being able to create complicated objects and even shift himself into a fucking car. A horribly immature father of five, Jake still has it going good as a former career criminal and partner to Finn, even being a multi millionaire at one point. Jake is currently dating Lady Rainicorn the Rainicorn, although that is not focused on as much these days.

• Marceline Abadeer the Vampire Queen, heir to the Nightosphere, daughter of Hunson Abadeer.

Marceline is, as the name suggests, a vampire and half Demon about one thousand years old, and is old enough to have lived through the Mushroom War. She is a highly talented bass player who plays amazing songs that are also pretty fucking deep, and are nearly always about her shit childhood in the nuclear wastes, her daddy issues, or her woes at being immortal and outliving almost everyone she knows. Is a very sexy lady who has lost track of her moral code after hundreds of years. She also has a soft spot for a certain Pink Princess.

• Princess Bonnibelle Bubblegum

A Gum Golem, newly revealed embodiment of the Candy Elemental, and ruler of the Candy Kingdom, Princess Bubblegum (or PB to her friends), is an amoral sociopath who decided to be a good ruler. To this end, she protects her Candy People with a single-minded determination, fully able and willing to use evil methods to do so, although she will avoid it if possible because she actually has some standards. In essence, PB is the ruler of a Police State, with full video and audio surveillance and micro chipping of all her subjects at all times (which isn't as hard as it sounds considering the average candy citizen is dumber than a bag of pop rocks). Despite this, PB sets out to be the best ruler she can possibly be, resulting in a happy, healthy, and wealthy kingdom even at her own expense. Being a brilliant scientist, PB is the literal mother of the Candy Kingdom, having made them herself in her lab, and even her own city.

• Flame Princess

A Princess literally made of fire with extreme control over her flames and the ability to hurl around fire. Flame Princess became a love interest and girlfriend for Finn, before his stupidity in the face of girls and his coming to terms with his sexuality caused him to fuck up in spectacular fashion and ruin the relationship. Originally so powerful that she might've burned the world to ashes, the Flame King abandoned her in the forest. When the resulting inferno brought the attention of Princess Bubblegum, she gave two choices to Flame King. Either seal away Flame Princess, or Bubblegum would. Suffice to say, when Flame Princess found out, she was especially pissed. Flame Princess eventually usurped her evil father, and took the throne for herself, where she has proven to be a capable ruler, if a bit naive and irritable.

• Simon Petrikov, The Ice King

Simon was originally a archeologist before the Mushroom War, and was engaged to his fiancee Betty, but all of this changed when he discovered a Crown. When he put it on for a joke, he was overcome with visions of madness, and trying to defend himself from them with the ice magic that the crown brought, he frightened the ever loving crap out of Betty. Originally a bad guy, he has developed from a evil lecherous man into a sad, largely harmless sick old man kept alive by his magic crown at the cost of his sanity. After the war Simon raised and protected Marcelline, and acted as a father figure to her in the nuclear wastes, resulting in a strong relationship that he cannot remember. Eventually, fearing his loss to the crown and it's madness, Simon left Marcelline, having provided for her as best he can. In his current state, the Ice King is a rather minor threat who works best with constant supervision; he is a sort of frenemy to Finn and some other wizards, and is easily defeated if he actually starts anything.

• The Lich

The Lich is not funny. The Lich exists to destroy all life in the universe, and has managed to do so once in the series. A cunning, clever threat, the Lich in every fight immediately focuses on the biggest threat to him and destroys it, and has never been defeated the same way twice. The Lich is extremely manipulative, able to trick Finn and Jake more than once, and is capable of stupidly powerful magic that can corrupt, posses, and control those around him. Whenever the Lich makes an appearance, someone has either died, or come very close to it, and for that is considered a very scary legitimate threat by everyone. After the battle in the Cosmic Citadel, a super max prison designed for the worst of the worst of the galaxy (which the Lich destroyed outright in minutes), he was transformed into a twelve-foot tall toddler. But despite the innocence of the newly-christened Sweet Pea, the Lich is inside, patient, and waiting to get out and wipe out all life.

• King of Ooo

Despite what this sack of crap would tell you, he is NOT the rightful king of the world, and is a conman, fraud, and all-around horrible person. In his first appearance King seemed to be a bit of a nutjob, claiming that everything belonged to him by right (including the sun) but never actually pushing his claims or demanding authority beyond the right to marry people, which was actually legit as he had the proper authority granted through the appropriate paperwork. His second appearance quickly disabused the notion that he was a harmless idiot when he tricked Sweet Pea into being accessory to theft by lying about being a kindergarten teacher, and then tried to "take care of him" when Sweet Pea started to tell his parents about his days at "school". The King is on this list solely because he, in addition to being a huge dick, is was Princess(!) of the Candy Kingdom! He achieved this by taking advantage of a few loopholes and pushing the law to breaking point to become a democratically elected leader, much to Princess Bubblegum's anger, rage, and disbelief. She later dethroned him. He is also made of earwax.

Other

It is quite obvious that Pendleton Ward, the show's creator, is a big nerd. He clearly took many, many pages from RPGs, specifically D&D. The show is notable for referencing cubes, bear lore, the eight schools of magic, and an endless cavalcade of fucking memes. This is probably why some fa/tg/uy chose to add this page here.

Adventure Time started out as a simple "random is funny" cartoon. Add a grim and dark background to a colorful and funny show and you attract the kiddies and adults alike! The thing most people don't see, though, is that as other shows mimic its formula with mixed success, Adventure Time has actually moved away a little from the pure random, and now big episodes seem to be mostly split into two groups: The artistic (or batshit insane depending on your point of view), and the extremely serious and dark.

For example, after the battle of the Cosmic Citadel, Finn struggles with depression. Yes, the main character of a kids' cartoon has to struggle with depression after losing his girlfriend, having his father abandon him again, and becoming mutilated when he loses his arm. Shockingly enough, they actually do the best job of representing this stuff than any other media or cartoon, not overblowing it to shock or make you have feels, but gets to the core emotion and feelings that others just ignore.

Overall if you like the silly but also awesome you'll like Adventure Time. If you want something new, edgy and takes dark risks, you'll like new Adventure Time.

Plus, the Demon Cat of Approximate Knowledge (that bares resemblance to a Displacer Beast) would be an awesome creature to fight.

To sum up Adventure Time nicely, imagine what would happen if Spongebob Squarepants and Hunter S. Thompson played a game of Dungeon World.

Adventure Time Quest!

The first Adventure Time Quest! is viewable at http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12612753/

Gallery

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  A prophecied older version of Finn.

External Links

Adventure time is rife with quotes, sayings and clips that can form-fit any occasion.

• rage!
• rule 34!
• punishment!
• wtf!
• newfaqs!
• /b/tards!
• horrible jokes!