"Fionna and Cake": Complex adult-oriented sequel to "Adventure Time," with two out gay couples and lot of back story and backsides

 

Link to the n*de photos

The Cartoon Network series Adventure Time (2010-18) sent 12-16 year old human Finn (Jeremy Shada, left) and his magical dog companion Jake on adventures in the medieval-style world of Ooo (occupied by sentient candy, slime, and fire beings, plus a few animals and humanoids).  Eventually we learn that this is a post-apocalyptic world where things went wrong during the Mushroom Wars 1,000 years ago.  It gets more complex and much more sinister, with back story after back story, with Lovecraftian cosmic beings pulling the strings of the world, only to discover that there are darker gods changing reality on a whim. 

  All you really need to know about is the only same-sex romance in the series, between the Bubblegum Princess  --really an Elemental, one of the four substances that created the universe and all life, but presenting as a 16-year old girl -- and Marceline, a 1000 year old teenage vampire whose mentor Simon Petrikov put on a magical crown and became the insane Ice King -- got all that?  They become girlfriends in the last scene of the last episode -- typical, no open gay characters until series fade-out. 

Fionna and Cake were a gender-swapping Finn and Jake in the Ice King's fan fiction. Then an omnipotent being decided to bring them to life, and after some adventures, remove their magical powers and memories and place them in a pocket universe designed to look like a 21st century city.  But things are a little off-- generic names like "City Park", backgrounds a little smudged, everything tastes like cardboard, there is nothing but elevator music on the radio, nothing on tv but reruns of Cheers and Friends.  Cake is non-sentient, and Fionna is so discouraged that she keeps getting fired from dead-end jobs.

Episode 1.6, "The Winter King," features a meeting between the male counterparts of the Bubblegum Princess and Marceline: Gary Prince (Andrew Rannells, left), a baker who has discovered a way to give food taste; and Marshall Lee (Donald Glover, below), an aspiring musician who has discovered how to use a guitar. They kiss in Episode 1.7.

Rannells backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Both voice actors are gay in real life.

One day Fionna and Cake find their way to Ooo, where they meet Finn from the original series, now middle aged, and the Ice King, now reverted to human form as Simon Petrikov.  After many adventures on a variety of worlds, they decide that they like their original pocket-universe, and return in time to save their city from destruction under a godlike being named Scarab.  End of Season 1.

We hear all of this in the opening sequence of Season 2: it is told in story form to Simon (the former Ice King) and girlfriends Marcelline and the Bubblegum Princess by a little girl whose back story on the fan wiki is too complex to mention. So maybe the Fionna-Cake universe is still a fan fiction?  

 I think we're ready for a review of Episode 2.1.

Scene 1: Fionna awakens, relishing her new human life, and sets out with Cake into the still-recovering City.  She helps out at the places where she was fired previously, except for the tour bus ("on your left you'll see more destruction"), where tour guide Queenie (a gender-reversed, child version of the evil King of Ooo) calls her a "deadbeat."

Scene 2: Next the Candy Supply Store, where the shape-shifting, still-sentient Cake transforms into a buxom woman so she can flirt with the owner.  Fionna grabs the last bag of cocoa powder, but the evil Lady Cutter steals it and calls her a loser. They fight.

Scene 3: On the street, Fionna gets a call from Simon Petrikov, back in Ooo, who is living with the Bubblegum Princess and Marceline.  He'll start teaching magical arts at the university tomorrow. Meanwhile, Cake destroys all of the posters advertising DJ Flame, Fionna's ex (the gender-swapped version of the Flame Princess, Finn's ex).

Scene 4: In a forest on Ooo, a lion steals an orange from a tomb, and the Huntress Wizard, the middle-aged Finn's estranged girlfriend, gives chase.  She finds it in a cave with a cow and a duck, squeezing the juice into the mouth of the  nearly-unconscious Finn.  He is dying.   

More after the break

Daniel Boone: a Big Man

Daniel Boone was a man --
He was a big man!

Sounds good so far.  When I was seven or eight years old, I was all for watching tv shows about a man, especially a big man.  Especially a big man who was a "dream come-er true-er."  

But Batman was on the other channel.  No kid in his right mind would pick a cowboy over the Dynamic Duo.  I never saw a single episode of Daniel Boone when it originally aired.

I've seen one since, for research purposes. Not a lot of gay content.  Not a lot of cowboy content, either.

1. Daniel Boone (Fess Parker)  is a family man, with wife and kids.  If you have to be a cowboy, at least hang out with other guys.

2. He has a sidekick anyway, Mingo, one of the least convincing Native Americans on tv, actually played by singer Ed Ames (who, although Jewish, became famous for recording the Chrismas song "Do You Hear What I Hear").

3.  It's not even the Old West.  This is Kentucky during the Revolutionary War.

4. While other cowboys were happily displaying monumental physiques, Fess Parker is kept strictly under wraps.  The only cast member to take his shirt off is Darby Hinton, who plays Daniel's preteen son Israel, and his buddy du jour.

Prior to Daniel, Fess Parker had starred in other Disney productions, notably Davy Crockett, Old Yeller, and The Light in the Forest (ignoring the crush of James Mac Arthur).  Afterwards he retired to run a vineyard and give conservative speeches.

Darby Hinton apparently was the first crush of some gay boys of the Boomer Generation, but he didn't have much of a teen idol career (this photo is from Getty Images, not from a teen magazine).

Post-Daniel, he's best known for the sexploitation Malibu Express (1985), as a Magnum P.I. clone who keeps encountering nude women and swishy gay stereotypes while trying to solve a murder.  At least he looks good semi-nude.