TRIP MCCROSSIN
Turn down the lights. . . grab a flashlight.
. . . and a blanket . . .
There are monsters—very, very creepy monsters—that lurk in the dark. They can fly, turn invisible, and they are super strong . . . and they love the color red. They need that color to survive, and they’ll do anything to get it. Funny thing . . . isn’t red the color of your blood? It wouldn’t be that hard to suck it out, would it? . . . Not hard at all for those creatures.
What kind of monster is it? You know . . . vampires, of course! Laugh if you want, but they could be hiding behind any corner, just waiting for the lights to go out. And then, there’s nothing that you can do to stop it! It’ll just slither right up to you, and before you know it . . . CHOMP . . . you’re vampire food! Don’t believe me?
I heard of a vampire that haunted . . . or I should say hunted . . . in this very place. Centuries ago, her lust for red drove her to go on a murderous rampage. Powered by darkness and hate, the vampire killed everyone in her path. As she waded through the carnage that she had wrought, the vampire smashed their skulls just for the fun of it. She didn’t even have to bite their necks; she could hypnotize her victims with her eyes and they would lie down before her, offering themselves to her on their own! Then, using her magic, the vampire would feed off of the helpless folk, hunched over her victims, breathing in their vaporized blood mist.
That’s the tale of the Vampire Queen. Or so I’m told. I heard it from a very reliable source . . .
Okay, okay, maybe Marceline isn’t that bad with her kickin’ bass skills and her soft spot for Finn and Jake. But Marceline has done some pretty bad stuff. I have to give her credit, though; hanging around Finn seems to remind her what it means to be a better person.
They boys are pretty terrified of Marceline at first, as she kicks then out of their house and tries to drain Jake of his blood, but it doesn’t take long for Finn to have a change of heart, and Jake does too, eventually.1 The boys come to see her as having the potential for evil, but also a tendency to avoid inflicting evil by sustaining herself with shades of red, rather than blood. In this, Marceline’s in the good company of a variety of popular-culture reflections of vampires and other demons—the Twilight, Underworld, and True Blood stories, for instance. But Marceline is cooler than the rest of them, and it isn’t just because she has a pretty kick-ass grunge rock thing going on and doesn’t sparkle (thank Glob).
When people who are potentially very bad resist their capability to be bad, we tend to be pleased, relieved, and even appreciative. We may find what bad behavior they do display not so bad after all, in light of what could have been worse. It helps, though, if we see some remorse, or at least regret. And that might really be a problem. Finn and Jake have come to trust Marceline, but does she show enough regret for her past evils? The evil she has done might be forgivable, but only if she is ashamed, right? And Marceline isn’t very good at that sometimes, or even just showing care in general. Remember when her dad was rampaging around eating souls? Marceline was pretty preoccupied just trying to get her ax back . . . while her father killed a lot of innocent people! Maybe Finn and Jake are wrong . . . maybe Marceline is a monster.
Temper, Temper
In “Evicted!,” once Marceline has successfully turned Finn and Jake out of their tree house, they find and remodel a cave as their new home, only to have her turn up to claim it as well. Finn again gives in, as Jake urges: “Vampires will kill you, remember.”
But things go even worse this time. “I’m gonna let you keep this cave,” Finn chides, “but only because Jake is my home, and he’s way better than all your homes combined!” “You’re right,” she retorts. “I guess I’ll take him too . . . bite him a little, maybe turn him into a zombie.” This, Finn won’t allow.
“Let go of Jake!” he cries. “Make me,” Marceline answers back, which he does by knocking Jake from her grasp. Now she’s really mad, and morphs into giant-bat-monster form. Finn’s not discouraged, but also no match for her, ultimately. As she closes in on him, Jake summons the courage to fly to Finn’s defense. He succeeds, but is bitten in the process, Marceline appearing to suck the life entirely out of him, throwing his withered carcass contemptuously to the cave floor. Enraged, Finn lunges for her, with a right hook that she admits “actually hurt,” which finally coaxes her out of her rage and monstrous form. She glides Finn to the cave floor, laughing, and, to his embarrassment, kisses him on the cheek.
Finn is confused. “Why didn’t you just kill me?” “’Cause that was fun,” Marceline answers, as if it was so obvious, “I haven’t fought like that in years.” Equally confusing, to Finn and also to Marceline, Jake has survived unharmed: “Before she bit me, I used my powers to shrink all my guts into my thumb.” Marceline decides that Finn and Jake are “pretty hard core,” and allows them, in the end, to return to the tree house.
So Finn and Jake are alive and well, and having won Marceline’s approval, they’ve also won their old home back. We’re relieved, and perhaps we’re also inclined to forget, or at least forgive, Marceline’s earlier behavior. Unfortunately, this includes having fully intended to kill, or at least harm, them both. Okay, and sure, she’s returned Finn and Jake to their home (somewhat graciously, given that it did belong to her), but she also long ago abandoned it. Doesn’t reclaiming it in the first place seem a little mean-spirited and wrong? Either way, in both cases—trying to kill the boys and trying to evict them—she shows no remorse or regret, which has to trouble us. Dude, . . . she just tried to kill Jake! That doesn’t seem like something you just laugh off, but Finn does. . . .
In “Henchman,” we open with Marceline watching Finn and Jake horsing around on a dinosaur skeleton. As she does, we hear her utter a “hmm,” which tells us that seeing them has given her an idea. We cut, then, to Finn and Jake observing her, abusing her elderly henchman. When he pleads for compassionate release, they watch her amuse herself instead by abusing him further. Jake’s petrified, but Finn resolves to free the henchman. “If it isn’t my favorite little goody two-shoes,” she quips, as if she’s been expecting him. “How’re ya gonna pull that off,” she challenges, “hero?” Finn, always brave, tells her, “I’ll do what I have to do . . . I’ll even take his place!”
As Marceline’s new henchman Finn is required to do all kind of things that seem evil, at first, but really, aren’t bad at all! Finn learns that Marceline is “not how she seems,” but “a radical dame who likes to play games!” It was all an elaborate practical joke, as it turns out, which even the former henchman was in on. “Dang, man,” Marceline jokes, “I didn’t think you’d ever catch on!”
Where does this leave us? Well, practical jokes can be annoying, yes, sometimes in the extreme, but they’re not typically evil, we think. We might have thought that abusing the former henchman, even for the sake of the overall fun of pranking Finn, might certainly qualify as evil, but in the end we find that he was actually just Marceline’s “old diving buddy.” And there may not be enough harm involved in turning an elderly pianist’s red bow tie white, even if against his will, especially if he ends up liking it better that way. But there’s also no evidence that he’s another “old diving buddy.” So we have to assume that he is truly terrified at first by the prospect of being dinner. Finn is just as truly horrified to be forced to help feed the pianist to Marceline. So this “harmless” fun really isn’t harmless at all. The pianist terror is real, as is Finn’s fear and anguish. And worse, Marceline again lacks any obvious remorse or regret after the fact.
Not to mention, Jake is never really let in on the joke and spends the whole time thinking he has to save his friend from an evil vampire. Sure, in the end Finn and Marceline make Jake think he’s saved the day, but to do it, Finn lies to Jake. Isn’t there something pretty crappy about putting Finn in the position of deceiving his best friend? And in the end, again, we get no remorse or regret from Marceline for being part of the scheme.
In “It Came from the Nightosphere,” we open with Finn helping Marceline record a song, deeply personal in nature, about ill treatment she suffered as a young girl at the hands of her dad, Hunson Abadeer. The ill treatment in question is relatively trivial—eating her french fries—but the song is heartfelt, and Finn is moved, and so we are too. Finn is so moved that he finds out how to summon her dad and does so, to his and Marceline’s horror. After all, “Dad” also goes by the name “Lord of Evil.”
Once in Ooo, Abadeer doesn’t spend much time with his daughter. He chastises her, takes the ax she turned into a bass (a family heirloom) and then leaves to go on a killing rampage, “sucking up all the souls in Ooo.” Finn, with Marceline’s grumpy help, tries to defeat Abadeer, so they release the stolen souls, and return him to the Nightosphere. Finn’s positively beside himself, mortified to have “unleashed evil on Ooo!,” and determined to right the wrong. Marceline, on the other hand, is more selfishly motivated. “I’m only coming with you,” she moans, “to get my bass back,” though later she admits that she also wanted to return Dad to the Nightosphere because it’s so “emotionally exhausting” to have him around. She just doesn’t seem appropriately concerned with thwarting Dad’s nasty business.
What might make this more acceptable, for some, is how messed up Marceline’s relationship with her Dad is. At a key moment, in response to Finn’s complaint that their “co-ordinated” effort is maybe not so co-ordinated, she admits, “I just want my dad to care about me.” Okay, fair enough. Her pain does seem deep and genuine, and we’re bound to ask whether it somehow justifies her actions. But Dad’s out and about sucking up souls, so, however unloved she feels, maybe she could muster a bit more enthusiasm for stopping him. Seriously, helping people not lose their souls should be more important than any of her own personal emotional stuff. This is all made worse when, once she gets her bass back, Marceline up and leaves Finn to fend for himself.
Finn appears to be out of moves. He knows that the only thing that will allow him to attack successfully, free the captive souls, and banish the Lord of Evil back to the Nightosphere is Marceline’s voice. But he can’t convince her to stay, and so plays instead the recording of the “fry song” he helped her to make early. The ruse works, and in the midst of the resulting father-daughter reconciliation, Finn attacks, the souls are freed, and Dad’s once again banished.
Finn and Marceline collapse to the ground, physically and emotionally exhausted. All is well again, as they stare up at the sky and watch the freed souls drift about as they migrate back to their bodies. But again, we’ve got no hint from Marceline of remorse or regret for having abandoned Finn. So far, there really isn’t a whole lot of reason for Finn to trust Marceline. He’s a good guy, right?, and young, he’s probably a bit motivated by her vampiric wiles. But what about Jake?
Is That a Small Dog in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
What must Jake think of this? How, in this light, can he be heading for a change of heart about Marceline? But hold on — where is Jake? In times of trouble, Jake is always at Finn’s side, but he’s gone during the whole soul-sucking fiasco! I mean, think about it, Jake comes to view Marceline as a friend too, eventually. But how can we even wonder how Marceline’s behavior in all of this can be moving him toward a change of heart toward her, if he’s nowhere to be found?
“What’s with that pocket on your shirt?” Marceline asks. We hear this and notice for the first time what we should have noticed before. Finn’s normally plain blue shirt has a new pocket, visibly and inexpertly stitched on for the occasion. “Oh,” he replies, “Jake’s in here.”
So Jake has been at Finn’s side the whole time. He was just too frightened of Marceline, we assume, to accompany him to the earlier recording session except covertly, shrunk down to pocket size—and still too frightened later on, to emerge and join in Finn’s struggle with her dad. But we have to wonder: from the safety of Finn’s pocket, how can he not have been at least listening in? And if he was listening, he must trust Marceline even less. On the one hand, he has no clue what’s going on because he’s too scared, and on the other, he knows what’s going on, and it still too scared. So what possibly could cause Jake to change his mind about Marceline . . . especially since she hasn’t done much to demonstrate he was wrong?
When he eventually reveals his change of heart regarding Marceline, Jake explains that his “fear was based on ignorance.” His newfound courage must be based, then, on some newfound wisdom—he’s “been learning a lot about vampires lately.” But what precisely has he learned? We can speculate about what’s not laid out in available episodes—say, how Jake might have hit the books, researched vampires, how they feed, the conventional wisdom that since they’re no longer human, they lack the normal moral resistance that humans have to killing little boys and their dogs. But what we know from available episodes, and in particular the one at hand, is what Jake has learned about Marceline specifically, from the safety of Finn’s pocket.
That means that the ignorance he cites is ignorance of what “mitigating factors” can explain the bad things that people who act badly do, which can make them seem less bad, or at least less easy to condemn. The only thing that makes sense is that Jake was listening in and he also noticed how messed up, how crazy dysfunctional Marceline’s relationship with her dad is.
After all, what Jake’s learned is that her dad is the Lord of Evil. And if that’s not bad enough, judging from her mournful “fry song,” he treated her really badly as a child. And worse still, Marceline’s really old, and so has suffered the resulting hurt and resentment for a really long time. So maybe, Jake learns that he should consider being friends with Marceline, because her bad actions are not just the result of her choices, but also a result of things that happened outside of her control, things from her past and childhood. It’s kind of like when a friend has a really annoying habit that you finally yell at them about, and then you learn it’s something they do because they were abused as a kid. It’s one of those, “Oh, crap, sorry . . . I didn’t know, Bro” moments.
But still, . . . something nags at me. Okay, Marceline comes with some serious family baggage, but she still doesn’t seem to show much regret or shame for trying to kill our heroes, ditching Finn to fight a monster alone or letting millions die at her father’s mouth-orifice thing . . . Even if there is reason to understand why Marceline is the way she is, doesn’t she have to show remorse for us to forgive her? Isn’t that the difference, say, between two criminals who were both abused as kids, but only one regrets the life of crime? We understand why both are messed up, but we only forgive the one who recognizes it’s wrong and wishes to do better!
A Spoonful of Prosperity Makes the Blood Flow Again?
Okay, how about this example? Remember when Finn, Jake, and Marceline are exploring the underground Sand City where Princess Bubblegum has sent them to retrieve the mysterious “spoon of prosperity?”2 Jake’s made a mistake that’s trapped them in the Sand City, and then another mistake that deprives Marceline of ways of feeding other than sucking blood—human or canine!
The episode is taken up with Jake’s and Finn’s efforts to try to feed Marceline’s need for red before she loses control and feeds off our heroes. And it does seem, for a little while, that Marceline really does want to avoid killing her friends. But all the boys’ efforts fail, and they are saved just in the nick of time when PB comes to the rescue, literally on a gigantic tunneling sand worm. Marceline latches onto PB and drains her instead. “Thanks, Bonnie,” Marceline says, using one of the derisive nicknames she has for the princess. “That’s enough low-grade red to get me home, at least.” Then, with no hesitation, she adds, “Come on, guys, let’s go,” only adding to our amazement at her lack of regret and remorse for putting PB in danger, not to mention her general lack of concern for the princess’s well-being. The same is not true for Finn and Jake, who were visibly horrified at the princess’s being bitten, in general and instead of them. “Are you all right, PB?” Finn frets. Clearly she’s not, but has enough life left to ask, “Did you get the spoon of prosperity?”
The spoon of prosperity, as it turns out, will sustain someone in need (like PB!) if only they can press the spoon to the tip of their nose and let it hang there unsupported. Those of us who’ve tried this trick with a regular old spoon know that it’s not as easy as it sounds, and perhaps this is appropriate for a trick that will literally save your life. Be this as it may, it’s an impressive bit of magic, and it rescues the princess. “Peeps will never starve,” the princess coos, “in my eternal empire.” And the magic lulls us again, it seems, into thoughts of all being well that ends well, and so on, and we are inclined yet again to forget, or at least forgive, Marceline’s bad behavior. Except, again, we’re missing any regret or remorse on her part, which, yet again, has to trouble us.
Finn and Jake have learned a lot about Marceline, and, through them, we have as well. Over time, we’ve come to learn more about Marceline’s childhood shortly after the Mushroom War, about her beloved protector, Simon, before he became the Ice King . . . and then forgot her. All of this helps to fill out a picture of someone who, as vampire, may have moral standards different from conventional human ones, but who also resists acting in immoral, doing so only when necessary…or when it’s really fun and not overly harmful. What’s troubling about her story, though, is what also sets her apart from related “good vampire” storylines like Twilight, Underworld, and True Blood. Marceline lacks the ability to regret—or simply chooses not to regret—the behavior she knows does harm, sometimes even to her friends!
In most vampire stories, Marceline would be one of the “bad” vampires, encouraging her goody good, “sparkly,” friends to just cut lose, have some fun, and occasionally, if the situation demands, do something naughty. But this is what’s weird: Marceline is one of the good guys in Adventure Time, or at the very least, the good guys seem to treat her like she’s good. And it isn’t like Finn and Jake don’t know she does evil now and then, because a lot of the crappy stuff she does, she does to them! Maybe Marceline is just kind of like that uncle that you have to invite to the holidays—you know the one I mean . . . yeah, he’s gonna break some stuff, but he means well, and the kids enjoy playing with him, and he’s got funny stories from the crazy life he’s led. . . . You just have to keep him away from sucking down too much blood, . . . I mean wine. . . .
Marceline’s storyline presents us with a serious choice. Should we accept her as she is, without further condemnation? Or should we prefer that she be more like her kin elsewhere in popular culture, acting all depressed and whiny (or at least a bit regretful) about their mistakes? It’s worth thinking about. After all, that will tells us how we should think about and treat people who sometimes do bad things in our own lives, like good ol’ Uncle . . .
1 Finn’s change of heart occurs in “Henchman,” the second episode in the story line, and Jake’s in “Go With Me,” its fourth. The intervening third episode is “It Came from the Nightosphere.”
2 “Red Starved.”