• Member Since 11th Sep, 2013
  • offline last seen Jul 25th, 2023

Justice3442


Horrifically Fun

More Blog Posts230

  • 91 weeks
    Women we are no longer, Ohms we be!

    https://m.

    Poetry alert! Poetry alert! Poetry Alert!

    Oh my! Is that an Aria huggin' Blaze at my keyboard?!

    [Warning, Sharp Edges and DJs Aheads!]

    DJ-p0n3 here with buet butt-kicker Aria Blaze

    JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE AND SUNSET & ARIA B & VYNIL look, we made a poem it's on CommaFull.

    Read More

    0 comments · 705 views
  • 91 weeks
    Short story posting!

    Sunset and I and a bunch of others, (:pinkiehappy: There was a Ninja, some woman with green hair named Gertrude, probably my sister Vengeance, and Lord Skywalker. You know. The one that likes to snorkle.) colabed on a story!

    If you like magic, myth, and also our poetry, please give it a read!

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    1 comments · 441 views
  • 91 weeks
    Blessings of the Supreme Beings and Creators (Blessings for the Terrestrials)

    May the stars above, below, and around you be your guide

    May they shine through the blackest nights, shine on the cloudiest days, and shine through the whitest days

    May the sky keep you. May the clouds watch over you

    May the rains caress and keep you well

    May day bring you joy and night keep you safe

    May the earth and ground beneath you guide your path

    Read More

    5 comments · 421 views
  • 92 weeks
    Like a mighty Pheonix, the Fox Returns.

    We interrupt your irregular scheduled assault on Society Indoctrination to bring more unscheduled assaults on Society Indoctrinations.

    Hey read-a-rinos!

    Remember when using the internet didn't suck and Wookiepedia didn't redirect you to Disneylazyland Star Wars pages?

    Read More

    10 comments · 562 views
  • 98 weeks
    Mother Moon's Sleep and Sister Sun's Serenade

    Mother moon has gone to bed

    Leaving you a book unread

    Sister Sun is here to help you out

    So wash your face at the spout 


    Sister Sun is here behind the clouds

    To keep alit the ground below

    Her light still touches in the shade

    Its still time to greet the day

    0 comments · 289 views
May
28th
2018

Come along with me, to a blog not quite about ponies… Patreon reward for Nova Quill! · 8:24pm May 28th, 2018

Heya, readers. This month’s (yes, this month’s) Patreon supported blog content of Nova Quill/Firimill’s is about a series that’s very near and dear to both mine and my daughter’s heart. Adventure Time! However, I wasn’t asked to provide my general opinion of the series, of which I have many!Nope! I was asked to provide my thoughts on a particular character, that sweetest (in a very literal sense) Monarch, Princess Bubble Gum!

Your nebulous expression is warranted P-Bubs. This is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.

But first you should check out my last fraggin’ blog on Lobo. Because statistically, you did not, and I work hard on these things.

Now then, I’ll come right out and say it, Princess Bubblegum is one of my least favorite characters in Adventure Time. However, she is also one of my favorite characters from the series. I’m guessing that’s a difficult statement to unpack with how entirely contradictory the two sentences are, so I’ll elaborate.

P-Bubs starts out innocuously enough. In the pilot, she’s stereotypical damsel in distress Princess fair. Soon she moves on to well-meaning, but a little too cryptic for her own good at explaining the consequences of things so our hero causes trouble while meaning well. Nothing too out of the ordinary there. Though, as the show rapidly matures it becomes clear that being ‘cryptic’ is something of a big part of Peebles character. While I find this irksome, I wouldn’t call it bad writing. Very few Adventure Time characters show that they’re poorly or inconsistently written throughout the course of the show.

Of course, there are exceptions.

Much like a certain purple pony princess I’m sure we all mostly adore, Princess Bubblegum is a scientist as well as a monarch (though, I suppose technically Twilight would be part of the Oligarchy… anyhow…), as of such she values logic and reason pretty much above all else and this can even supersede her love for her candy people somewhat, at least on an individual level. “Wizards Only, Fools” is a good example of this where, while P-Bubs is willing to go to great lengths attempt to cure Crunchy’s cold through magic, she eventually just science cures him with little regards to his wishes.

The relationship with Finn we see for the first few seasons also works this way. While she likes Finn and seemingly even enjoys and eggs on his affections a bit, it eventually becomes clear to the audience that she doesn’t think Finn is mature is enough for her in her not 13 year old state ( “13 year old” Bonnie got along with a 13 year old Finn swimmingly), or perhaps is just not that interested in love at this point in her life. Rather than inform him of this or try to break it too him gently, she just sort of lets nature take its course so he can work it out for himself.

Clearly, it goes well.

It’s also heavily hinted that something similar has happened between Princess Marceline and Princess Bubblegum, likely taking place before where the show picks up as these two aren’t exactly on great speaking terms at first and it’s clear Marceline who’s holding on to a fair amount of unresolved emotional issues here.

Now, I’m not saying P-Bubs is completely evil or uncaring, though, one can argue she’s a little evil and uncaring about certain things… It’s just that Bonnie is basically a mad scientist type mashed with a benevolent ruler type and often lets one or the other side of her dictate what she wants to do in a given moment under the guise that it’s the most logical thing to do or what’s best for her candy people. On that note, she does clearly love her candy people in that “undifferentiating love” she mentions in “The Suitor”. Still, the more nuanced aspects of interpersonal relationships seem to either escape her, or quite likely, are bits of minutia she doesn’t want to put the time into addressing. This basically has her leaving a trail of damaged hearts in her wake.

Not what I meant, but an appropriate enough visual.

There are other, perhaps less, damaging but more intrusive examples of her just doing whatever she thinks is the best course of action in a given time, such as her constant spying on the candy people and just walking into Finn and Jake’s tree house to collect taxes without asking first. Granted, the candy people also sort of proved they can’t be trusted without constant supervision and I’m not sure anyone understands the concept of privacy in Adventure Time (1:51).

Also, she has something of a ‘loose’ affiliation with morals when it comes to doing things “For the greater good” (for the greater good) which pretty much means P-Bubs is no stranger to imprisonment or possibly even murder if such things will bring a quick resolution to her problems. She’s one of the few ‘good guys’ who totally buys into the idea that the ends justify the means. If her normal and not completely busy plus has had a decent amount of sleep temperament wasn’t naturally pleasant or if she and Finn had met under different circumstances, she actually could have been something of an arch-nemesis to Finn.

In short, Princess Bubblegum, while perhaps well intended in the broadest sense of the word, doesn’t have, or usually make, time for the smaller stuff that’d make it so she isn’t hurting the feelings of others. This comes off as a cold indifference, which she likely doesn’t intend only because she hasn’t given it that much thought. She might even see people reacting this way as “irrational” and reason it shouldn’t be on her to correct their misconceptions even when she was more than willing to string these people along with how she’s behaved.

To compare her once again to Twilight, our favorite book horse quickly gets absorbed in topics and has trouble seeing the forest for the trees at times. However, somepony with a gloriously wavy sparkly pastel mane had the foresight to make sure Twilight understood how friendship works before she was given any real power. Sure, Twilight still messes up from time to time, but she usually can now correct her own mistakes before something serious happens.

Key qualifier here being ‘usually’.

So, of course, something serious happens to Peebles that she could have prevented, (Season 6 and beyond spoilers follow), and that’s the fact she gets ‘voted out’ of her own kingdom. This is, of course, a huge upset to her. Bonnie completely ignored what she, no doubt, considered a bunk election entirely because no rational person would ever vote her out or vote for someone clearly as corrupt as the King of Ooo (members of a certain political party might want to take notes here). This is something of a major turning point for the character as Princess Bubblegum is ousted by the very people she’s ruled over for centuries and even created.

This eventually culminates in one of my favorite episodes of the series “Varmints” in which Marceline finally finds out that P-Bubs is kingdomless and confronts her pink friend about it. Peebles initially dismisses the very idea of telling Marceline as the Vampire Queen wasn’t likely to be rational about it, though Peebles apologizes for this, stating that she’s trying to be ‘less mean’ It’s clear that Bonnie is at least trying to restart her old way of life with a 100% loyal garden kingdom (so far made out of pumpkins… just regular pumpkins). That is, while she’s trying to address her own faults, she’s also eliminating a sort of free will or even sentient variable to avoid the trouble she finds herself in now.

It’s clear the girl is hurting and things really come to a head later when P-Bubs reflects on the fact that it’s been her way of doing things up to this point that has cost her the most here. Specifically, she figured if she just focused on her work, something she had assumed was just self-evidently good, everything would fall into place naturally.

This moment right here is pretty much where P-Bubs went from one of my ‘least favorite’ characters to ‘most favorite’. One of the biggest things missing from her was a sense of personal responsibility regarding the consequences of her actions and it all comes crashing down on her… almost literally. It’s another one of those key moments in the series that helps remind us of that early message that you “never really stop growing”. As one who has to make hard decisions, P-Bubs doesn’t exactly have an Ebenezer Scrooge moment that keeps her from never falling into the same patterns that got her in trouble before, but she at least moves on knowing that she can be a bit of an uncaring monster at times and that she wants to get better.

On that note, the show also has gotten better about showing us key moments from Princess Bubblegum’s past that shaped her into what we saw in the first half of it. So, there’s that.

Plus, if I still hated her think of all the delicious fan art I’d be missing out on. Source.

And that’ll do it for this algebraic entry! Thanks again to Nova Quill/Firimill for her support and topic! Want to get in on the fun? Well, look no further than my Patreon!

Catch you soon if I can keep my schedule for the next three days.

Comments ( 4 )

Heh, good answer to the question, and I mostly agree with you. Thanks for the topic!

Holy crap! Did this go for 6 seasons? Boy did I stop paying attention too soon.

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It's up to 10 right now.

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