After the End, it’s Adventure Time: Reimagining the Post-

apocalyptic Human in Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time

Zachary Stephens

Stephens 1

Each episode of Adventure Time opens by launching its viewers

into an acrobatic aerial overview of an eclectic, fragmented

collection of landscapes, scattered with remnants of a past

evocative of contemporary human civilization. This is the Land of

Ooo, a bold new world emerged from the remains of one more

familiar. The Land of Ooo is the product of a human apocalypse,

but it troubles certain notions of the post-apocalypse. Where

many post-apocalyptic narratives seem concerned primarily with

humanity’s struggle to survive and rebuild in the aftermath of

the apocalypse, Adventure Time presents a vibrant, flourishing

civilization rebuilt by posthumans in the absence of a dominant

human society. As a result, the few scattered humans that remain

in the Land of Ooo have been afforded a unique opportunity to act

outside of the structures they were once responsible for

creating. As outsiders, Adventure Time’s humans are freed to

determine how they interact with the structures of posthuman life

and, at the same time, how they interact with the radically

decontextualized remains of their own human civilization as it

Stephens 2recedes further into the past. As it stands, human history in the

Land of Ooo has been halted in its apocalyptic rush toward the

future, but Adventure Time sees human history taken up in the hands

of a few scrappy individuals with the means to help negotiate it

both through a changed world and its own remains. In the Land of

Ooo, humanity is othered in order to separate it from the remains

of the pre-apocalyptic world, and thus placed at odds with the

problematic pre-apocalyptic ideologies that seek to creep forward

from those remains. By repositioning humanity as the other in a

largely posthuman, post-apocalyptic landscape, Adventure Time

creates a space in which to reimagine how humanity can and should

interact both with ideologies of its past, and the unfamiliar

ideologies of posthumanity in order to pave the way for a new

vision of the post-apocalypse.

Before launching into detailed discussion of Adventure Time’s

universe, some sort of working background should be established.

First, Adventure Time takes place in “The Land of Ooo,” which is

essentially a version of post-apocalyptic Earth. In the show’s as

of yet unchanged opening sequence, a planet closely resembling

Stephens 3Earth rotates to reveal that a substantial portion of its surface

has been destroyed. The destruction is the result of “The

Mushroom War,” first mentioned by name in the episode entitled

“Video Makers” (S2, E23). Further details of the war are revealed

in the episodes “Finn the Human” (S5, E1) and “Jake the Dog” (S5,

E2), which introduce “The Mushroom Bomb” and identify it as the

source of the war’s apocalyptic conclusion. By association of its

name, the bomb suggests a nuclear conflict, as do images

associated with radioactivity and nuclear aftermath, such as

glowing green waste and unexploded ordinance bearing the

universal warning symbol for radiation hazards.

In addition to its nuclear implications, the bomb has had a

large scale mutagenic effect and all but a microscopic segment of

the human population (at present five human characters can be

accounted for) has been wiped out. Based on information from the

episode “Finn the Human,” the events of Adventure Time take place

roughly 1000 years after this cataclysmic destruction, and the

structures of human civilization have been largely rebuilt and

replaced by other, posthuman forms of life. The most prominently

Stephens 4featured example of this is The Candy Kingdom, a nominal monarchy

ruled by Princess Bubblegum. As her name suggests, Bubblegum is a

sentient, anthropomorphized piece of Bubblegum, and her subjects

are also literal candy people. The Candy Kingdom is essentially

the Land of Ooo’s closest approximation of a “cradle of

civilization” and it serves as a point where many of the series’

main characters converge. This includes the series protagonist,

Finn the Human, a human boy in his early teens; Finn’s adoptive

brother, Jake the Dog, a mustard-colored dog with the mysterious

ability to completely alter his physical size and shape; the Ice

King, once the human Simon Petrikov, an insane survivor of The

Mushroom War whose body and mind have been ravaged by a weird

magic crown; Marceline, the vampire queen, a hipster vagabond

vampiress with roots in the show’s cosmology; and The Lich an

evil, living dead entity who threatens to destabilize and

completely destroy Ooo and all life that remains in it.

From its inception, Adventure Time is framed to be deceptively

didactic. In the “Series Pitch Bible” presented to Cartoon

Network as a canonical framework for the show, Finn the Human

Stephens 5“doesn’t know why he feels compelled to protect good from evil;

it’s just something he understands is necessary” (McDonnell 26).

Naturally opposed to Finn is The Lich, who “embodies absolute

evil. He doesn’t give long monologues about how he’s going to

rule the world, or waste time by sending out evil henchmen”

(McDonnell 31). This sort of singular, obsessive evil is further

elaborated by Princess Bubblegum in “Mortal Folly” (S2. E24),

when she warns Finn and Jake that The Lich’s “only desire is to

destroy life.” Despite his being presented as a somewhat binary

“evil” character, The Lich is deceptively complex and plays an

essential role in articulating the post-apocalyptic space that

Adventure Time’s Land of Ooo inhabits.

First of all, in that he lacks much greater depth than a

point of origin and a singular motive force (to destroy all

life), The Lich is less a character than a husk of a character

that embodies that motive force. Appropriately then, The Lich is

depicted in a state of living death which, in the realm of post-

apocalyptic theory, suggests a fundamentally apocalyptic

liminality. In James Berger’s book After the End: Representations of the

Stephens 6Post-Apocalypse he employs the work of Slovenian theorist Slavoj

Žižek to articulate living death as “the place between the two

deaths, an area simultaneously following and preceding the

apocalypse” (Berger 43). The first of the two deaths here is the

persistent cycle of biological death and the Second Death, as

described by Žižek, is “the radical annihilation of the symbolic

texture through which the so-called reality is constituted”

(Žižek 134). As a husk, The Lich functions to represent the First

Death both through his living death and through the prominent

images of desolation and nuclear decay in which his supernatural

powers are manifested— hence the glowing pool of radioactive

waste that constitutes his “Well of Power” and its location in a

ruined subway station.

Through these visual elements, The Lich signifies the trauma

of Adventure Time’s First Death: the Mushroom War. In a more

abstract sense, The Lich is also a vehicle for the Second Death

which bears a resemblance to Freud’s concept of the “death drive”

or “the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to

lead organic life back into the inanimate state” (Freud 380).

Stephens 7Taken up and worked through Žižek’s conception of the living

dead, the “death drive” is articulated by Berger as “an

annihilating enjoyment of the trauma’s return” marked by “the

repetition of trauma that ends in obliteration” (Berger 43). If

within Adventure Time, the “First Death” is the formative

catastrophic event that resulted in the Land of Ooo as the viewer

comes to know it, The Lich is not only a visual representation of

that event “that inevitably hints at the unrepresented genesis of

this post-apocalyptic world” (De Cristofaro 70), but he is also

an embodied symptom of its trauma.

Ostensibly, The Lich is “a substantive representation of an

Event that is inherently unrepresentable” (De Cristofaro 71). Yet

he “remains directly linked” to Adventure Time’s apocalypse in a

way that gives the apocalypse a tangible presence. The episodes

“Finn the Human” (S5, E1) and “Jake the Dog” (S5, E2), are

essential in negotiating this link. Both episodes focus on a

return to the Mushroom Bomb in order to explore alternate

apocalyptic possibilities. In this way, the apocalypse is

represented through the Mushroom Bomb as a moment of radical

Stephens 8possibilities from which multiple post-apocalyptic timelines can

spring forth. In the alternate Farmworld timeline, where The Lich

is absent, his apocalyptic potential and death drive are

unwittingly assumed by the Farmworld version of Finn. The

persistence of death drive in some form serves as a link to the

Mushroom Bomb’s detonation, which overcomes unrepresentability by

representing itself as a nexus of possibilities for the post-

apocalypse. The Lich is only one of these possibilities, as such,

however, The Lich embodies the Mushroom Bomb’s apocalyptic role.

In the case of The Lich as death drive, his very existence

seems predicated on a relentless desire to repeat the trauma of

the Mushroom Bomb, or “an annihilating enjoyment of the trauma’s

return” expressed in part by his maniacal laughter at Finn’s

attempts to foil prevent the “obliteration” of Ooo. His

connection to this interpretation of the death drive becomes

evident in the follow-up episode to “Mortal Folly,” “Mortal

Recoil” (S2, E25). The idea of traumatic repetition is

immediately evident in the title’s pun on Shakespeare’s “mortal

coil.” The mortal coil of apocalyptic trauma is about to be

Stephens 9recoiled and begun again in the post-apocalypse. The events of

“Mortal Recoil” are precipitated by what is actually a failure on

Finn’s part to defeat The Lich at the conclusion of “Mortal

Folly” (which itself has a rather suggestive title). After

resisting The Lich’s ability to enthrall his enemies with the

oppressive allure of the death drive, Finn attributes his force

of will to the power of “liking somebody a lot.” Finn understands

his success to be the result of his romantic feelings for

Bubblegum, but he remains too embarrassed to rightly identify

them as love.

Historian Dominick LaCapra provides a useful insight for

framing this moment. In order to combat The Lich’s “annihilating

enjoyment of the trauma’s return,” Adventure Time requires “a

nonfetishistic narrative which resists ideology” and which “would

involve an active acknowledgement and to some extent an acting

out of trauma with the irredeemable losses it brings, and it

would indicate its own implication in repetitive processes it

cannot entirely transcend” (LaCapra 199). Finn can be seen to

fail in defeating The Lich because his resistance to The Lich’s

Stephens 10symptomatic death drive is still itself a function of an

ostensibly heteronormative fetishization of romantic love.

Furthermore, that fetishization is problematized by a coexisting

expression of masculine stoicism: Finn is embarrassed by his

emotions. Fittingly, “Mortal Folly” ends with the absurd Ice King

dropping Princess Bubblegum, the object of Finn’s love, into The

Lich’s nuclear “Well of Power.” “Mortal Recoil” picks up with the

extremely irradiated Princess Bubblegum being rushed into the

emergency room of the candy hospital where she is apparently

saved by an emergency operation. However, it becomes apparent

that Bubblegum has been possessed by The Lich and begins to enact

his symptomatic death drive despite Finn’s romantic rescue

attempt.

The Lich as Bubblegum tasks Finn, still enamored and

confused, with collecting a bevy of pre-apocalyptic cleaning

products, matches, and lighter fluid in order to concoct a

makeshift version of his “Well of Power” in a bathtub. Acting on

The Lich’s instinct, Bubblegum then proceeds to consume the

contents of the tub which cause her to grow into a massive

Stephens 11grotesque toxic creature. The haphazard process of transforming

Bubblegum demonstrates that The Lich facilitates “the repetition

of trauma that ends in obliteration” to whatever extent he is

able, often by drawing on remnants of the pre-apocalyptic world

and thus subtly recalling his position as both “following and

preceding the apocalypse.” Consequently, Bubblegum’s visual

representation becomes roughly approximate to the trauma evoking

form of The Lich, and she begins to act out his death drive by

demolishing the Candy Kingdom. Only by admitting that “liking

her… didn’t work,” thus indicating his own “implication in

repetitive processes,” and forming a provisional alliance with

the Ice King is Finn able to finally defeat The Lich, albeit

impermanently. While The Lich remains, Finn has in some sense

begun taking steps toward resisting recognizable contemporary

ideologies like masculine stoicism and heteronormativity.

The full breadth of implications that spring from The Lich’s

husk effectively allows the nuance of Adventure Time’s post-

apocalyptic setting to overcome the didacticism suggested by the

show’s initial pitch. Instead of an “embodiment of absolute

Stephens 12evil,” The Lich as death drive presents viewers with a connection

to “the post-apocalyptic sense” that “almost always entails the

desire for another, more complete apocalypse” (Berger 42). In

this case, “a more complete apocalypse” seems to entail an

apocalypse of normative ideologies. Thus The Lich is pivotal in

understanding Adventure Time as both a post-apocalyptic work and a

work that understands the apocalypse as always already post-

apocalyptic.

This point is perhaps best captured in the event that sets

the “Mortal Folly” / “Mortal Recoil” storyline in motion. As

“Mortal Folly” begins, Bubblegum invites Finn and Jake to

meditate with her, and in her meditative state she sees a vision

of The Lich’s return. Panicked by her vision, Bubblegum takes

Finn and Jake to the top of an enormous and presumably ancient

tree in order to show them the place where The Lich was trapped

in amber during a previous conflict with a hero named Billy.

However, this visit to the Lich’s makeshift prison, itself

prompted by Bubblegum’s prophetic vision, is exactly what allows

the amber to be compromised and The Lich to escape. In Berger’s

Stephens 13words, “the events envisioned have already occurred, have as good

as occurred. Once the prophecy is uttered, all the rest is post-

apocalypse” (Berger 6). Even in suggesting the possibility of a

more absolute apocalypse, the presence of The Lich is in this

sense already inherently post-apocalyptic.

Furthermore, The Lich’s liminal existence “simultaneously

following and preceding the apocalypse,” is further complicated

by his posthumanity. According to Žižek, the Second Death, or the

more absolute apocalypse that The Lich pursues as death drive

“liberates nature from its own laws and opens the way for the

creation of new forms of life ex nihilo” (Žižek 134). In keeping

with the apparent simultaneity of the apocalypse and post-

apocalypse these “new forms of life” already exist because The

Lich exists; The Lich in embodying the Second Death presupposes

the conditions that Žižek describes. In the context of Adventure

Time, the qualifier ex nihilo is inherently posthuman because the

“nothing” from which new life forms are created is a condition of

the human apocalypse that The Lich, as one of the living dead,

simultaneously results from and embodies. Thus, The Lich provides

Stephens 14a means of moving toward a framework for posthumanism that

considers the implication of truly “new forms of life” that exist

in the land of Ooo, particularly Princess Bubblegum and the candy

people.

Though it will become evident that Bubblegum and the candy

people must be differentiated from the living dead, Anirban Kapil

Baishya’s understanding of living death us to transition away

from The Lich and toward a more apt formulation of Adventure Time’s

posthumanism. In his article “Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Science

Fiction & the Post-human,” Baishya addresses the prospect of

posthumanism from within the framework of living death. Thus far,

we have understood living death through The Lich as a means by

which the apocalypse and post-apocalypse exist simultaneously,

and thus create the possibility of posthuman life. For Baishya,

the state of living death is posthuman in and of itself in that

it “represents a liminal state of being that is within the

boundaries of the political state, but is produced as a species

of ‘bare life’ -- human life reduced to a pure biological counter

and nothing more” (Baishya 8). Importantly, Baishya’s

Stephens 15interpretation of living death remains fundamentally liminal, as

in the case of The Lich.

However, this liminality is a function of Foucauldian

biopower rather than the death drive. In a sense, biopower

represents an opposing instinct to the death drive and this

dynamic helps frame the relationship between Bubblegum and The

Lich. As Baishya interprets it, biopower “essentially means the

total regulation of human life by means of political power” (5).

Within this scheme “an essential function of the seat of

political authority then becomes the governance over ‘life’ and

by corollary the stalling of ‘death’ to maximize the potential of

‘life’... in other words, the prevention of ‘death’ and its

associated forms infiltrates the boundaries of ‘life’ creating a

scission between what must live and what must die” (Baishya 5-6).

In the case of Adventure Time, Bubblegum fulfills this role more or

less literally, but with one distinction: Bubblegum totally

regulates not human, but posthuman life.

Even from Adventure Time’s first episode, “Slumber Party

Panic” (S1, E1) we see Bubblegum perfecting a chemical formula

Stephens 16that raises her sentient candy subjects from the dead. When Finn

asks Bubblegum, “When we bring the dead back to life, will they

be filled with worms!?” her response provides the quintessence of

her biopolitical ambitions: “If my decorpseinator serum works,

then all the dead candy people will look as young and healthy as

you do.” Bubblegum not only seeks to eliminate death from the

Candy Kingdom, but she also seeks to eliminate even the

symptomatic visual appearance of death that marks the living

dead. In doing so, she would effectively repress the traumatic

memory of death. Though the decorpseinator serum initially fails,

creating a horde of living dead candy people, Bubblegum corrects

the formula and succeeds in resurrecting her undead subjects as

immortal, vibrant candy people. Consequently, living death as a

liminal state collapses, “bare life” becomes life, and “‘death’

and its associated forms” become signs of absolute otherness with

The Lich representing, in that sense, the most radical other.

Thus, Bubblegum “emerges as the sovereign arbitrator that

decides what is normal and by corollary makes decisions over life

and death” (Baishya 8). By Biashya’s reasoning, this is a

Stephens 17condition of the “state of exception,” “an extreme situation

where the law operates by being suspended” (7). Bubblegum, as

sovereign arbitrator, is therefore characterized by a

totalitarian governance over life and death that reduces the

candy people to “a species of bare life,” but not the same

species as Biashya’s living dead because Baishya’s living dead

are necessarily human. Their humanity is essential in linking

them to “repressed memories accruing from the images and

narratives of traumatic events in modern history” (Baishya 2).

Thus, Baishya’s living dead are not entirely posthuman inasmuch

as they rely on a degree of humanness in order to meaningfully

signify the apocalyptic trauma that created them. The Lich

occupies a similar situation as his always-already post-

apocalyptic liminality relies to a certain extent on his

recognizable association with the trauma of the apocalypse, ergo

with humanity.

Recalling that Bubblegum enacts her biopolitical

totalitarianism by repressing “‘death’ and its associated forms”

and thereby both The Lich and humanity, the aesthetically perfect

Stephens 18chemical immortality of the candy people ultimately denies not

only the trauma of death, but the trauma of the apocalypse as

well. Thus, not only is Bubblegum a biopolitical totalitarian,

but she is also fascist in her repression of Ooo’s historical

trauma. This is what makes Ooo and the candy people truly

posthuman: within Bubblegum’s state of exception, which to an

extent spans the whole of Ooo, the post-apocalypse is actively

repressed in favor of a utopian impulse. Not only are the candy

people literally created by Bubblegum ex nihilo in the absence of a

collectivized human presence, the Candy Kingdom exists outside of

the human history that led to Ooo’s apocalypse.

However, this history-less quality of Bubblegum’s

biopolitical state problematizes its categorization as a state of

exception. In fact, it more closely resembles a state of nature

in that respect, as the “crucial difference” between the state of

nature and the state of exception “is the historicity inhering in

the idea of the state of exception” (Baishya 14). The Candy

Kingdom as a history-less biopolitical state is, like its

inhabitants, inherently liminal, but this can be understood as a

Stephens 19condition of its posthuman existence. Generally, the state of

nature is posited as a means of questioning human nature. In the

absence of humanity, its most basic function can no longer be

accepted as a given. Where, for the most part, the tendency of

the post-apocalyptic narrative has been to position humanity on a

new horizon from which to begin the process of surviving,

rebuilding, or dying out entirely, Adventure Time places

posthumanity upon that horizon in an expansive, liminal space

between the state of exception and the state of nature which is

simultaneously apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic.

However, Adventure Time moves forward from this horizon of

strange and new possibilities by dropping the few remaining

humans, utterly displaced from history, at its fringes. It is

from this position that Adventure Time asks us to reimagine how its

human characters function in a world that has no context for

them. Furthermore, Adventure Time becomes a potential challenge to

claims like those of Claire P. Curtis who writes in Postapocalyptic

Fiction and the Social Contract: “We’ll Not Go Home Again” that

“Postapocalyptic fiction reconfigures the conditions under which

Stephens 20humans live and demands that humans rethink their premises for

peaceful living together” (5). Curtis, however, is too quick to

presuppose that humans will be the only ones living together

peacefully in the post-apocalypse.

Bearing in mind that Adventure Time’s state of nature has been

resituated in a posthuman context, it is no longer just a space

in which humans must “rethink their premises for peaceful living

together,” but a space in which humans must invent anew a set of

premises for interacting with posthumans in a much broader sense

than peaceful living. This dynamic forms, in part, the basis for

Finn the Human’s largely provisional interactions with the

various posthuman communities across the Land of Ooo. If, as

Curtis claims, “postapocalyptic fiction moves humans from the

state of nature through the social contract and to a new civil

society” (5), Adventure Time instead moves posthuman life through

these stages, and makes humanity an other who is free to interact

with the structures of posthumanity from outside of their

constraints.

Stephens 21

This is perhaps best illustrated in the episode “Goliad”

(S4, E10). The premise of “Goliad” finds Princess Bubblegum once

again exercising biopolitical dominance over life and death in

the Candy Kingdom through the creation of another posthuman form

of life: the candy sphinx, Goliad. After her “brush with death at

the hands of The Lich” (“Goliad”) in the “Mortal Folly”/“Mortal

Recoil” storyline, Bubblegum is forced to acknowledge that,

despite having ensured the immortality of her subjects, she

cannot do the same for herself. Yet the candy people, reduced as

they are to a species of bare life, depend on Bubblegum’s

absolute normative authority for their very existence. For the

Candy Kingdom to continue to exist in her absence, a large vacuum

of biopower would need to be filled, so Bubblegum recognizes the

need for a successor.

However, Goliad is not simply a successor. Rather, Goliad

comes dangerously close becoming a narcissistic function of

Bubblegum’s desire to recreate her self as the logical ends of

candy life. Bubblegum’s narcissism raises similar concerns to

those that Teresa Heffernan expresses for the totalizing

Stephens 22potential of The Enlightenment's “universal man” in her book Post-

apocalyptic Culture: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Twentieth-century Novel.

Much in the way that Heffernan positions the universal man,

Goliad is Bubblegum’s attempt to give “birth to [her]self ex nihilo

as a rational, omnipotent, autonomous creation” (Heffernan 141).

Despite her posthuman characteristics, Bubblegum’s existence

seems to echo the archetypical enlightenment thinker, and Goliad

is her perfect, rational (candy) being. But, where “the rational

being in Kantian philosophy secures the possibility of universal

value and truth” (Heffernan 9), Goliad arrives as a blank slate

that points toward no universal values or truth and has no

intuitive moral sense.

Though Goliad was essentially meant by Bubblegum to be the

final component in her totalizing effort to create a deathless,

history-less, and now rational utopia within the Candy Kingdom,

she instead becomes a means by which the shortcomings of

Bubblegum’s vision for society are exposed. Bubblegum’s plan for

Goliad begins to unravel when, in a state of serious sleep

deprivation, Bubblegum allows Finn and Jake to watch Goliad for

Stephens 23the day and fill her brain “with knowledge on how to rule a

kingdom.” Because Goliad represents a nascent political

authority, her empty and impressionable mind becomes akin to a

state of nature apparently in dialogue with the possibility of a

social contract. However, Goliad’s state of nature is inherently

problematic. Although it essentially functions to extend

Bubblegum’s own state of exception, it lacks the order inherent

in Bubblegum’s utopian vision and ad hoc monarchy. Without that

order, the blurring of the state of nature and state of exception

represents a real danger. As Baishya notes, because “‘the state

of nature’ inheres in the idea of the ‘state of exception,’” an

unpredictable apolitical state of nature like Goliad’s can

“mak[e] way for totalitarian power to operate in absolute ways”

(Baishya 14). In effect Goliad’s receptivity to “knowledge on how

to rule a kingdom” is already biased toward absolute authority

and even a nominal social contract like Princess Bubblegum’s

monarchy is bereft of meaning.

This becomes evident as Goliad’s notion of a social contract

dissolves in favor of an even more severe biopolitical

Stephens 24totalitarianism. Initially, Finn leaves Jake alone with Goliad so

that he can begin to construct an obstacle course for Goliad to

train on. In the span of time that they are alone together,

Goliad witnesses Jake increase his physical stature and angrily

impose order upon a group of unruly preschoolers by yelling, and

finally barking at them. From Jake’s example, Goliad’s highly

impressionable mind rationalizes a rudimentary notion of “the

Hobbesian motivation of fear” (Curtis 146). In a Hobbesian social

contract “the fear of punishment” (Curtis 38) is understood to be

what motivates individuals to alter their behavior according to

the rules of a civil society. For Goliad, it is enough merely to

see the efficacy of Jake’s Hobbesian display, and she applies it

immediately in forcing the same preschoolers to complete Finn’s

obstacle course.

Finn, whose basic instinct is to “protect the well-being of

most everything” (McDonnell 27) is concerned by Goliad’s outburst

and instead appeals to her rationality, calmly informing her that

“leading isn’t about scaring people. You gotta stay calm and use

your head” (“Goliad”). The result is twofold: first, Goliad

Stephens 25reveals a third eye and reveals an ability to seize control of

Finn’s body, as well as the obstacle course, and guide him

through it. Although Finn would be able to complete the course

himself with a degree of nuance and skillful coping, Goliad is

content to telekinetically levitate Finn through the entire

course whilst manipulating the obstacles. Though Finn protests,

“You can’t just control people, or whatever. It’s messed up,”

Goliad understands the course simply in terms of its completion,

as she explains, “this way’s good, everyone did what I wanted --

really fast, no mistakes, calm like you said; this definitely is

the way to lead, definitely” (“Goliad”). If we consider Goliad’s

conclusion in terms of a social contract, Goliad understands

power to be the sole source of authority. Thus, Goliad, as “a

rational, omnipotent, autonomous creation,” has absolute power

and absolute authority.

Unfortunately, unlike Bubblegum’s biopower which values

“life,” albeit in a severely reduced capacity, Goliad’s power is

exercised amorally and without concern for life. In an attempt to

pacify Goliad with reason, Bubblegum gently explains, “You see

Stephens 26this fat bee? She gets pollen from this flower, but she’s gentle

and makes the flower happy and pollinated. They both get what

they need, and that’s how a leader should be” (“Goliad”). But as

Goliad understands it, “Bee cares not for flower. If getting

pollen hurt or killed flower, bee would not care. Bee is stronger

than flower. Goliad is stronger than bee. Goliad is stronger than

all” (“Goliad”). Despite her apparently benevolent intentions,

Bubblegum’s totalitarian regulation of the Candy Kingdom and its

role in the creation of Goliad inevitably led Goliad to develop

this perspective.

At Goliad’s core is Bubblegum’s attempt to realize the

totalizing potential of her vision for the future of the candy

people, but this vision evokes a fundamental problem of

normativity that Heffernan draws again from the idea of the

universal man. Underlying both the creation of Goliad and the

conception of the universal man is a “narcissistic desire to

recreate the other in the image of the self, to institute an

absolute norm, to share the same genetic code, to eliminate

difference…, to create a species as its own end (beyond

Stephens 27evolution)” (Heffernan 156). Goliad, as an immortal, rational,

omnipotent, and autonomous candy creature becomes Bubblegum’s

response to her biopolitical other: death. Bubblegum’s response

to death, to the possibility of an ending, is to institute life

as the absolute norm by installing Goliad as an absolute

biopower.

However, in doing so, Bubblegum essentially creates life as

an end in and of itself, which fundamentally amounts to bare

life, and as a result “forcefully shuts down ethics” (Heffernan

156) through its absolute normativity. For Jacques Derrida, the

interplay between ethics and normativity represent a fundamental

impasse: “if there is responsibility, if there is an ethical and

free decision, responsibility and decision, must at a given

moment be discontinuous with the normative or the ‘normal’”

(Derrida 200). In Goliad’s response to Bubblegum’s bee metaphor,

we see Goliad reach a point of normativity that abdicates

responsibility for death and thus for all life that exists

outside of Bubblegum’s totalized biopolitical vacuum. Without

that responsibility, Goliad’s decisions as a leader are

Stephens 28inherently normalized to perpetuate bare life by erasing the

other. Thus, ethics become an impossibility and the danger of an

amoral Goliad purging all others from the Land of Ooo of becomes

a clear and present danger.

This possibility of a postapocalyptic world without ethics

positions Finn to take on the radical role of restoring them.

Oddly enough, we see this role realized in the creation of

another candy sphinx. Immediately after Goliad expresses her

realization that she “is stronger than all,” Bubblegum begins to

concoct a plan to “disassemble her and try again” (“Goliad”). The

viewer is clued into this plan by a voiceover revealed to be the

result of Goliad reading Bubblegum’s thoughts, indicating

Goliad’s rapid progression toward omnipotence. This progression

is further emphasized in subsequent scenes that depict Goliad

effortlessly manipulating hordes of enthralled candy people to

combat Finn and Jake as they attempt to buy Bubblegum time to

enact her plan: to create another candy sphinx.

Given the results achieved in Goliad, the creation of

another candy sphinx is problematic, but the new sphinx, Stormo,

Stephens 29is both fundamentally and recognizably different, though not only

for his flowing blond hair. When Goliad engages Stormo with a

rational appeal based upon his likeness to her, Stormo responds

with hawk-like screeches. The apparent incomprehensibility of

Stormo’s language is an immediate indicator of his otherness, as

is his choice to engage Goliad in a psychic battle “sacrific[ing]

himself to keep Goliad in check for all of eternity” (“Goliad”).

Stormo’s choice confuses Finn, prompting him to ask Bubblegum,

“If Goliad and Stormo are the same, how come Stormo is a good

guy?” (“Goliad”). Stormo is a “good guy” precisely because he is

not the same as Goliad, or as Bubblegum puts it “Oh, that’s

simple, I used some of your heroic DNA in Stormo’s recipe”

(“Goliad”) Unlike Goliad, the addition of Finn’s DNA ensures that

Stormo “share[s] the same genetic code” neither with Bubblegum

nor with Finn. Where Goliad is purpose built to “eliminate

difference,” Stormo is constituted through difference.

In fact, the problem inherent in Goliad’s conception is

exactly her sameness, or her normativity expressed through her

perpetuation of Bubblegum’s dominant self which abdicates

Stephens 30responsibility to the other and leads to the impossibility of

ethics. Stormo is able to reintroduce the possibility of ethics,

and thereby combat Goliad because through the incorporation of

Finn’s DNA he is literally “constituted in a play of difference,”

and thus “necessarily reaching out and responsible to an other

that is also within” (Heffernan 156). The fundamental difference

that sets Stormo apart from Goliad is a deeply instinctive sense

of his responsibility to the other that originates from the

presence of “an other that is also,” again, quite literally,

“within” him. Perhaps most strikingly, that other is a human:

Finn the Human, precisely.

Imbued at a precognitive genetic level with Finn’s heroic

nature, Stormo is able to engage Goliad in an eternal and deeply

symbolic struggle not only to prevent the erasure of the other,

but also to ensure the possibility of ethics in the post

apocalypse all because “it’s just something he understands is

necessary” (McDonnell 26). At a fundamental level, both Finn and

Stormo operate on an intuitive sense that their existence is

contingent upon that possibility. Furthermore, Stormo

Stephens 31demonstrates how Finn’s otherness opens up the possibility “to

understand the self/other as a liminal, interconnected place

where responsibility involves a singular response that needs to

be negotiated, that needs to make space for the other that is

discontinuous with the self, that is capable of the love of an

other” (Heffernan 156). As an other, Finn provides the

discontinuity necessary for Stormo to resist the totalizing

normativity that Bubblegum imposes upon Goliad. In choosing to

fight Goliad perpetually, Stormo makes the “singular response…

that needs to make space for the other” because stymying Goliad’s

ambitions effectively prevents normativity from erasing the

other, and thus the possibility of ethics, from the Land of Ooo.

Stormo’s “singular response” however, originates in Finn. As

an individual who “cares about the well being of most everything”

and who does not “know why he feels compelled to protect good

from evil” (McDonnell 26), Finn’s morality is at its core

motivated by an intuitive responsibility for the other, but in

the land of Ooo, nearly every other being is Finn’s other. In

order to follow his heroic intuition, Finn’s ethic must

Stephens 32necessarily be an ethic of difference and otherness. What exists

within Finn, and what Finn provides to Goliad is an almost

boundless capacity to love otherness that is inherently

“discontinuous with the normative.” Finn’s unflinching commitment

to heroism, expressed through Stormo’s self-sacrifice, is the

ultimate singular response because its very essence meets the

conditions that Derrida proposes for the existence of an “ethical

and free decision.”

In addition to demonstrating that Finn’s otherness is vital

to the possibility of ethics in the post-apocalypse, the events

of “Goliad” demonstrate that Finn’s heroism becomes the example

of an ethic that embraces difference. The inclusion of Finn’s

“heroic DNA” in Stormo becomes, in a broader sense, a metaphor

for the way in which Finn is enabled by his otherness to

radically alter the ethical ideology of the post-apocalypse. As a

radical other in the Land of Ooo, Finn seems to become an

exemplary human for Adventure Time’s viewer; “differentiated, but

not to remain so” Finn’s ethics become an example for how

humanity ought to be (Cormack).

Stephens 33

To that end, Finn’s engagement with post-apocalyptic

ideologies can actually be traced through his relationship to a

kind of cultural artifact: The Enchiridion, “A book meant only for

heroes whose hearts are righteous,” (“The Enchiridion” S1, E5).

Within Adventure Time’s universe, The Enchiridion is figured as manual

of heroism, filled with broad advice for heroic conduct, but the

fictional Enchiridion shares its name and, in some sense, its

function with another book: Epictetus's The Enchiridion, literally

Epictetus’s “manual” (Salomon 7). There is even a suggestion that

the fictional Enchiridion is an artifact of Ooo’s decimated human

civilization when it appears, held by archaeology professor Simon

Petrikov (now the Ice King), in a newspaper clipping (“I Remember

You” S4, E25). Despite these apparent similarities Epictetus’s

The Enchiridion is not a manual of heroism, but of stoic ethical

advice.

Nonetheless, The Enchiridion’s presence in Ooo bears with it

certain implications. In its similarity to the original, there is

compelling evidence that the fictional Enchiridion, as a cultural

artifact from before the apocalypse, provides a possibility for

Stephens 34stoic ethics to enter into Adventure Time’s post-apocalyptic

culture under the guise of heroic advice. In his thesis “Keeping

the Lights On: Post-Apocalyptic Narrative, Social Critique, and

the Cultural Politics of Emotion,” Jeremy R. Grossman terms

cultural artifacts that survive the apocalypse “post-apocalyptic

remains” and The Enchiridion as such raises questions as to what its

“ideological transmogrification or stability suggests about which

discourses are legitimated in the culture from which” Adventure

Time “emerges” (ii), but most importantly, “what societal values

[it] implicate[s] for our culturally-defined possibilities for

the future” (4). The Enchiridion is a fairly straightforward post-

apocalyptic remain because it is literally an ideological text,

and thus not tied abstractly to an ideology. It is even more

straightforward, however, in the way that its relationship to

Finn seems to flagrantly disregard any sense of reverence for

Epictetus’s Enchiridion while simultaneously demonstrating how Finn

progresses beyond Epictetus’s teachings.

The Enchiridion is degraded progressively through its

appearances in the show: it is satirized, treated with needless

Stephens 35gravitas, thrown at a tiny home invader, given to a bear, and

finally destroyed when used to open a portal to the multiverse.

The Enchiridion’s degradation provides a novel background for

instances in which Finn outrightly rejects the tenets of

stoicism. This dynamic is already at work when The Enchiridion first

appears in its eponymous episode. The episode centers around

Finn’s quest to acquire The Enchiridion through a series of “trials

designed to test [his] heroic attributes,” but also, as Jake

explains to Finn, “to mess you up, to mess with your head” (“The

Enchiridion!” S1, E5). The trials place Finn in the kind of

morally ambiguous situations that Epictetus might categorize as

“whatever are not properly our own affairs” and thereby “beyond

our control”( Epictetus 17). When Finn rescues a group of gnomes

only to have them capriciously begin “blowing up old ladies,” he

is genuinely troubled by the experience whereas a good stoic

would by Epictetus’s reasoning write it off as “an accident of

mortality” (26). For a stoic, the life of another, or an other

for that matter, must necessarily be treated with absolute

indifference because, in a “rational philosophy of control of

Stephens 36Self” (Salamon 11), anything discontinuous with the self is

beyond control and thereby burdensome to our freedom.

Because Finn’s ethic and moral sense are motivated by a

profound sense of responsibility for the other they are

fundamentally at odds with stoicism as a “rational philosophy of

control of Self and of adjustment to the Whole” (Salamon 11).

Even the notion of “adjustment to the Whole” is impossible to

reconcile with Finn’s role in the Land of Ooo. For an other, and

especially for Finn, the very idea of “adjusting to the Whole”

runs the risk of allowing oneself to be subsumed by a totalizing

biopower when, as has already been suggested, this would end the

possibility of ethics as a whole. Ultimately, Epictetus advises

his readers “to keep your will in harmony with nature” (21)

without the knowledge that nature can be regulated by a dominant

political authority. If “to live in conformity with nature” is to

realize stoicism, then Finn’s ethic of difference must be lived

in nonconformity with both Bubblegum’s rational totalitarianism

and stoicism as paths that lead to the same end.

Stephens 37

Appropriately, when Finn completes his trials and is

presented with The Enchiridion, the book’s keeper, Mannish Man,

reveals that Finn deserves it not for embracing “an asceticism of

the emotional and the sensitive life” (Salomon 11), but for being

“the goodest of heart and most righteous hero I've seen here.

Tenderness, ingenuity, bravery, nard-kicking ability, and when

you took that giant ogre's dollar…” (“The Enchiridion!”). And of

course, at the moment in which it still holds an unknowable

degree of potential to introduce stoicism into the Land of Ooo,

Finn opens The Enchiridion to reveal a chapter entitled “How to Kiss

a Princess,” wryly flaunting Epictetus’s maxim of chastity and

ensuring that The Enchiridion will forever remain a cheesy satire of

an ethical text that has no place in contemporary or future

ethical discourse.

The ultimate failure of The Enchiridion to realize its

potential as a meaningful post-apocalyptic remnant showcases

brilliantly that Adventure Time is less concerned with legitimizing

established discourses than it is with allowing Finn to subvert

those discourses with a refreshing sense of humor and

Stephens 38irreverence. And yet, Adventure Time’s levity does not detract from

the gravity of its endeavors. The fact that “tenderness” was one

of the qualities that earned Finn the right to own The Enchiridion

demonstrates Finn’s decision not to “control his passions, his

love, his tenderness” (Salamon 11), but to embrace them. During

his trials, when a giant scoops up and devours Jake, Finn is

motivated by fraternal love to rescue Jake, despite the fact that

stoicism places “the lives of those we love” firmly outside of

our control (Salamon 11).

However, Finn’s decision to act heroically out of love for

Jake, while rejecting the emotional asceticism of stoicism, also

gets at a deeper underlying structure. From a stoic perspective,

Finn’s decision is a sloppy take on Epictetus’s reverence for the

“natural tie” of masculine love that obligates a man’s duty to

his father and brothers (29). But Epictetus’s understanding of

the family again relies on a fixed state of nature which has no

bearing on Finn and Jake. This should become immediately apparent

in that Finn is a human and Jake is a portly, mustard-colored,

magical dog, as are Jake’s parents and his brother Jerome.

Stephens 39

Nonetheless, Jake’s parents adopt and raise Finn alongside

Jake in an oddball provisional family unit. Finn and Jake’s

family avoids “leapfrogging back past historical trauma to some

imagined age of solid family values” (Berger 187) and instead

refigures the family as a unity constituted in difference. In

this way, the structure of the family unit is altered “to make

space for the other that is discontinuous with the self, that is

capable of the love of an other” (Heffernan 156), and again that

other is Finn. The very basis for the family unit in Adventure Time

is made possible by the Mushroom War’s othering of humanity and

the family therefore emerges “directly out of the greatest moment

of trauma, out of the apocalypse itself” (Berger 187). This makes

it possible for Adventure Time to “work back” to that “greatest

moment of trauma” and “retell” it “so as to make possible new

histories and new futures” (Berger 183). At its core Adventure Time

is not a nostalgic lament for the ideological structures lost in

the apocalyptic destruction of human civilization, but a

celebration of the possibility that the trauma of this perceived

loss can be negotiated productively. This becomes evident through

Stephens 40the two of the other human characters in the Land of Ooo, Moseph

“Moe” Mastro Giovanni and Susan Strong, who are both actually

cyborgs.

Moe is a unique case because, thus far, he has made only a

single, brief appearance on the show in the episode “Be More”

(S5, E28). Moe’s influence is instead primarily felt through his

creation BMO, a sentient robot who lives with Finn and Jake in

their tree house. Together, Finn, Jake, and BMO, form a

provisional community of others. As discussed, Finn and Jake are

already part of a family unit whose basis is a love of otherness,

but BMO adds an additional, technological element to otherness

that surprisingly manages to evoke technocultural feminism in a

literal and unexpected way. As Linda Howell frames technocultural

feminism in her essay “The Cyborg Manifesto Revisited: Issues and

Methods for Technocultural Feminism,” it “understands

technologies not as inanimate machines, but as lively,

historically significant, and highly social actors” (Dellamora

199). It will become evident that BMO helps introduce this

conception of technology into the Land of Ooo.

Stephens 41

In a sense, BMO is historically significant in its

relationship with its creator, Moe. As we discover in “Be More,”

Moe is an actual human survivor of the apocalypse, though he is

now kept alive by a life-support system composed of cheerful

artificial organs. Moe himself is vitally important to

positioning cyborgs in the Land of Ooo. As David Porush writes in

his essay "Hacking The Brainstem: Postmodern Metaphysics And

Stephenson's Snowcrash," “the result of the inscription of a

utopian vision onto a human is a cyborg: a natural organism

linked for its survival and improvement to a cybernetic system”

(Porush 551). Thus far, we have been concerned primarily with

Finn, a human who resists Bubblegum's totalizing “utopian

vision,” but Moe has willingly inscribed a certain utopian vision

upon himself. However, Paroush’s statement risks being reductive

in that it imposes a utopian impulse upon Moe’s cyborg existence.

Paroush positions cyborgs in such a way as to suggest that human

identity is subsumed by the perceived utopian function of

technology. Surprisingly, Moe seems keenly aware of this fact.

When Finn asks Moe if he is human, Moe simply responds, “My

Stephens 42skin’s human” (“Be More”). In some way, Moe understands that his

identity has been inextricably linked to the technology that

keeps him alive.

Ostensibly, this is referenced by the episode title “Be

More,” but to “Be More” does not suggest that Moe poses himself

as the product of a utopian union of humanity and technology.

Rather, it is taken from something Moe tells Finn, “I must've

built what, like, a million MOs. But BMO is very, very special. I

built BMO to understand fun. And how to play. You see, I made BMO

to be more” (“Be More”). Moe’s vision is not for himself, but for

BMO to forge a new and meaningful relationship with humanity that

positions technology as a “highly social actor” in Howell’s

words. Moe reveals in an earlier piece of dialogue that he had

intended BMO to take care of his son, but never started a family

of his own, so he “sent BMO off into the world alone. Hoping he

could find a family of his own. And then maybe even find somebody

else's little boy to take care of.” (“Be More”). Moe sends BMO

“off into the world” in order to interact with humanity, and

thereby “Be More” without necessarily becoming the vehicle for a

Stephens 43utopian technological vision. BMO is not meant to change

humanity, per se, but to change the ways in which technology and

humanity interact.

Ultimately, as an extension of the problem inherent in Moe’s

cyborg identity, BMO comes to demonstrate the way in which

technology has become a contested site where different ideologies

for vie for dominance and how this poses a risk to humans who are

inextricably tied to technology as part of their identity. But

BMO’s apparently technofeminist realization as an animate, social

technological being allows it to resist being categorized by a

particular ideology and thus “to embody the conditions of

existence in which history might be written differently”

(Dellamora 210). Unexpectedly, BMO achieves this through a fluid

and often irreverent adoption of different gender roles and

sexual identities. In the episode “BMO Noire” (S4, E17) BMO

enacts an elaborate personal fantasy by adopting the role of an

archetypically heteronormative, masculine, and misogynistic

private eye. At the same time, the role of the private eye’s

unfaithful female counterpart is taken up by BMO as the voice of

Stephens 44a chicken named Lorraine. In another episode, “BMO Lost” (S5,

E17), BMO falls in love with a bubble and together they act as a

couple of genderless guardians for a lost baby. And in the

episode “Holly Jolly Secrets Part I” (S3, E19), when Finn wants

to use BMO as a VHS player but does not know where to insert the

tape, BMO looks directly out toward the viewer and candidly

states, “It goes in my butt.” In these instances, the ambiguity

of BMO’s apparently genderless state is used as a vehicle to

alternately satirize a traditionally heteronormative narrative,

legitimize nontraditional family units, and coyly suggest

homoeroticism.

Yet, these are only a few instances in which BMO, like Finn,

humorously subverts recognizably contemporary ideologies.

However, BMO is differentiated from Finn because it provides a

means of exploring the outcome when gender and sex are used to

politicize the genderless space of technology. At the same time,

BMOs resistance to being categorized persists in every iteration

of its identity and demonstrates the possibility that, through

technology, one is empowered to choose how one is identified and

Stephens 45by what ideologies. In that sense, BMO introduces the possibility

that “gender and sex” in Adventure Time can be “considered as fluid

technocultural commodities rather than global transhistorical

identities” and thereby become “tools for resisting the kinds of

violence that install women in traditional roles” (Dellamora

214). From this paradigm emerges Adventure Time’s second cyborg

human: Susan Strong.

From her introduction in her own eponymous episode, Susan

Strong is a female character concerned with identity. When Finn

first encounters her living underground with a tribe of

“Hyoomans,” humanoids wearing animal hats like his own, it is

ambiguous whether or not Susan and the Hyoomans are biologically

human at all. By the end of the episode, when all the Hyoomans

but Susan are revealed to have mutated fish gills hidden under

their hats, Susan’s nature is still less clear. The episode

closes on Finn asking Jake, “Do you think she was human, or just

another wild animal?” To which Jake responds, “We’re all wild

animals, brother” (“Susan Strong” S2, E18). Finn agrees in a

pensive voice, suggesting profoundly that even humanity as he

Stephens 46knows it is perhaps the product of a certain set of social

constructs that Susan manages somehow to resist.

In the episode “Beautopia” (S3, E14) it becomes apparent

that Susan Strong actively chooses to resist being represented as

a human by wearing her animal hat. In the episode’s final

moments, Susan allows Finn to feel under her hat without taking

it off. Finn’s response is at best confusing, and although he

ostensibly “knows” whether or not Susan is human, the expression

on his face does nothing to enlighten the viewer. Rather, Susan

continues to unsettle Finn’s preconception that other humans will

necessarily appear as perfect likenesses of himself. Whether or

not Susan fits neatly into Finn’s conception of humanity, he

comes to respect her difference and thereby opens himself up to

representations of humanity that expand beyond his own arguably

normative representation as a white male.

Susan’s third and most recent appearance, in the episode

“Dark Purple” (S6, E29), expands upon these ideas by

reintroducing the technofeminist undertones extrapolated from the

preceding discussion of BMO and its cyborg creator Moe. “Dark

Stephens 47Purple” begins with Finn, Jake, BMO and Marceline the Vampire

Queen waiting in the parking lot of a ruined convenience store

for a delivery of “Super Porp” a pre-war soda and post-

apocalyptic remain with the disturbing jingle: “Super Porp it

hits the spot, it messes with your train of thought. If you’re

thirsty and out of shape, get down on that fizzy grape!” (“Dark

Purple”). Super Porp’s jingle bluntly satirizes the weird social

malaise of complicit consumerism, and thereby prompts some

concern. When all of the characters sing the jingle - in that

sense falling into the trap of Super Porp - they run the risk of

standing “shoulder-to-shoulder with the absolved consumer of

corporate goods” (Grossman 149). In that sense, they become

complicit with the normalized pre-apocalyptic social malaise that

creeps into the present through the remains of a morally

ambiguous corporate entity.

After witnessing a fleet of ominous red-eyed robot drones

drop a delivery of Super Porp into the suspiciously intact

vending machine, Finn and Marceline voice concern over the fact

that Super Porp has somehow continued to exist for nearly one

Stephens 48thousand years despite the Mushroom War. In response, Jake

advocates remaining blissfully ignorant to the very real

possibility of Super Porp’s moral failings: “Okay, listen. So,

okay, we could go track down the mysterious source of Super Porp.

Do up a fuh-real, end up fightin' some big soda-computer-god-baby

or whatever... We totally could. But... Super Porp is good. So

why question this good thing, man? Why?” (“Dark Purple”). Because

continuing to blindly participate in a culture that normalizes

ignorance of the monstrous “soda-computer-god-babies” hiding

behind corporate entities is not a “good thing, man.” Although

Super Porp succeeds in interrupting Finn and Marceline’s train of

thought, allowing Jake to pose Super Porp Day as “a happily-ever

after construct in which cultural knowledge and ritual endure

unaffected” (Grossman 149), “Dark Purple” proceeds by positioning

Susan Strong to tear that construct down, literally.

Before discussing Susan Strong’s reaction to Super Porp, it

is helpful to establish the ways in which Super Porp becomes

problematic for Susan as a woman concerned with her identity. One

of the major problems with Super Porp, from the standpoint of

Stephens 49technofeminism, is that it uses technology to appropriate the

image of the female with its bubbly grape mutant mascot Cheryl.

Cheryl is depicted on every vending machine, and her soothing

maternal voice endorses every dispensation of Super Porp. Cheryl

relegates the role of women to the endorsement of suspect

domestic goods, but inherent in her endorsement of the drink is a

perpetuation of the patriarchal corporate culture that relegates

her to this position. Given the presence of a character like BMO,

Adventure Time does not seem like the sort of show that would stand

for this degrading and normalizing depiction of women. In any

case, Susan Strong certainly does not stand for it. When the Porp

drone arrives among the Hyoomans, Cheryl’s vending machine

incarnation, is revealed to have become an impromptu matriarch to

whom the Hyoomans actually answer “We will, Cheryl!” when she

utters her catchphrase “Enjoy Super Porp!” (“Dark Purple”). This

rightfully incenses Susan who instead answers, “No, Cheryl. Susan

will not enjoy!” In some senses, Susan suggests that she will not

enjoy remaining complicit with the appropriation of her female

form, and so she rails against the drink as “fake juice” that

Stephens 50“Tough-guy Hyoomans do not drink!” (“Dark Purple”). Meanwhile, in

the midst of Susan’s tirade, the Porp drone scans the Hyoomans

until it finds a baby, at which point it swoops down, grabs the

baby, and begins to fly away.

By now, Susan is seething with anger, not out of maternal

instinct to protect the child, but in an acknowledgement that the

child is as of yet unacculturated to worship Cheryl and her

providence of “fake juice,” and to participate in the absolution

of Super Porp’s moral responsibility. Susan is prepared to fight

Super Porp and its warped mascot Cheryl in order that “we might

actually question whose story gets universalized” (Grossman 149).

Will it be the story of a child being indoctrinated by a

patriarchal ideology and corporate culture that uses technology

to appropriate the image of women (and steal babies)? Or will it

be Susan’s struggle to strengthen her own identity and the

identity of the Hyoomans and help them avoid the constituting

allure of “fake juice”? In a spectacular display of empowered

destruction, the answer is provided by Susan. As the Porp drone

begins to flee with the baby, Susan latches onto it, riding it

Stephens 51into the monolithic Super Porp factory. Once inside, she proceeds

to destroy a cardboard cutout of Cheryl, calling her “a fake

style bubblehead,” though, given the oddly symbolic destruction

of the cutout, she may as well be disavowing Cheryl as a

patriarchal construction of a woman.

Susan then makes her way to the factory floor where she

finds the horribly mutated employees lamenting the fact that they

are disallowed from drinking the pure Porp concentrate. The

factory workers have been reduced to an existence in which they

worship the commodity of Super Porp while simultaneously

perpetuating its existence, and thus the existence of the

corporate structure that produces it. The baby merely factors

into their calculus as a source of more Porp, as one worker

cryptically says to another: “Aw, cheer up, girl. Maybe we'll get

bonus reg Porp after that new baby gets processed” (“Dark

Purple”). When Susan begins to fight the workers, they are unable

to reconcile the complete alterity of her moral agency and anti-

Porp violence. They attempt to fight back while uttering

workplace platitudes like “Are you new here?” and “Where’s your

Stephens 52hairnet?” Part of the mutation of the factory workers is

essentially the absolute loss of their autonomy in lieu of a

dependence upon Porp and thus a de facto habituation to

suggestively unethical practices like processing babies. This

extreme degree of normalization echoes the creation of bare of

life, and this it stands to reason that Susan’s moral outrage

exists completely outside the register of the mutated Porp

workers.

As a result of her scuffle on the factory floor, Susan is

forced to tear off her hat when it gets coated with sticky Super

Porp and begins to suffocate her. In doing so, she reveals two

details: first, that she is human and thus her resistance to

Super Porp is a part of Adventure Time’s larger movement toward

resisting pre-apocalyptic ideologies that threaten to normalize

humans in the post-apocalypse. And second, that she is a cyborg,

like Moe, and thus her human identity is tied to the perceived

role of technology in the post-apocalypse. As noted, Super Porp

uses technology to appropriate the image of women for the

purposes of the patriarchy, thus, in some way, Susan’s attack on

Stephens 53Super Porp is also a choice to combat the appropriation of female

representation by a technological post-apocalyptic remain.

Susan’s revelation of herself as a human and a cyborg becomes a

moment in which she takes control of her cultural representation.

Yet Susan’s actions are not taken out of choice, but in

order to survive. The baby is an extension of this idea: in order

to survive, the Hyoomans must seize control of their

representation and fight the problematic ideologies that actively

acculturate them. When Susan finally confronts Cheryl, it is

revealed that Cheryl’s purpose is to raise the baby in order to

create another Cheryl and thus perpetuate normative patriarchal

and consumerist ideologies. Susan’s response is to uppercut

Cheryl and reclaim the baby. The wounded Cheryl laments “Good

job, bozo. Without a new Cheryl, brand awareness will go straight

down the toilet. Our in-your-face flavor will be lost forever.

Who are you to condemn our weird ancient ways?” (“Dark Purple”).

The answer? A female, a cyborg, and a human who has chosen to

play an active role in deciding which cultural ideologies will be

allowed to define her and disseminate amongst her peers.

Stephens 54

Susan Strong is one of the most radical humans to appear in

Adventure Time because she takes up Finn’s role in resisting pre-

apocalyptic ideologies, but she demonstrates the ways in which

those ideologies can come to constitute and define human identity

by instead forcefully dictating how she will define herself. In

essence, Susan bursts forth from the possibility that humans can

and should seize the means by which they are represented and

create a “nonfetishistic” image of humanity for themselves, so to

speak. Through Finn and Susan, and through Moe as a facilitator,

the post-apocalypse becomes a space in which humanity is freed to

negotiate the pre-apocalyptic structures and ideologies that

would define it by instead defining itself in resistance to them.

By first becoming othered, humanity can return to itself with a

greater degree of agency in deciding how its history will

progress. As a result, humanity also plays an active role in

redirecting the posthuman course for the Land of Ooo’s future by

infiltrating and transforming its posthuman structures. Finn’s

otherness enables him to take on Bubblegum’s totalizing utopian

impulse by reintroducing a sense of responsibility to the other

Stephens 55and thus creating a juncture at which humanity and posthumanity

can coexist. Where Bubblegum would seek to end history by

repressing difference, Finn’s ethic of difference forces

Bubblegum to reconcile the role of humanity in shaping the post-

apocalypse. In taking up human history and beginning to negotiate

it through the Land of Ooo, Finn intertwines humanity with

posthumanity and helps historicize the Candy Kingdom, thus

providing a means to undermine Bubblegum’s totalitarian state of

exception without disallowing or subjugating her posthuman

existence. Rather, Finn embraces posthumanity and demonstrates

that the future cannot be pursued through a totalizing normative

vision, whether human or posthuman, but rather through the

formation of a provisional community of others constituted in

difference and deferential to a shared history. As a whole,

Adventure Time suggests that creating a progressive vision of the

future is up to all of us, the humans, cyborgs, and candy people,

and it celebrates our movement toward that future each time Finn

screams “It’s adventure time!”

Stephens 56

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