pear ☆

insp blog ✦ art acc

[paptello]

HEY!

guess who’s back after four years? ME!!!

I’ve been on my art account all this time but I decided to log back in today. I honestly miss having an insp blog, reblogging stuff, and adding tags so I’m gonna start using this account again!

[prissnukem]

[twilightofthesandwiches]

Thinking about the kinda blurry lines between Simon Petrikov and the Ice King’s identities again. Because I feel like the Winter King really is a fascinating case study of just how complex the situation can be.

Because the Winter King is a Simon/Ice King who found a way to get rid of the Madness and Sadness of the Crown by forcing it into someone else while keeping all the Magic to himself. And by doing so he regained some sense of his old Simon Petrikov identity - but at the same time he became an irrevocably different person.

Because the Madness and Sadness of the Magic Crown don’t work, like, totally separate from Simon’s brain, I think. Like, the whispers of the secrets of the ice and snow are probably entirely from the Crown. But then there’s the most iconic expression of Ice King’s Madness - the Princess Kidnappings. 

Simon might’ve described the Candy Queen as having the Crown’s Madness projected into her. But romantic obsession and kidnappings have been established as a mad reflection of Simon’s psyche ever since the episode that first established Simon's existence.

So it’s not just the Magic Crown’s Madness projected into Peebles. Candy Queen’s behavior is probably not indicative of, like, how PB would act if she put on the Crown herself. It’s specifically Simon Petrikov’s brand of Madness and Sadness that has been shoved into her head. 

And losing Betty will always make Simon very Sad and maybe a little bit Mad, the thing the Crown did was exaggerate and twist these emotions until he’s kidnapping sapient blobs of slime in hope they’ll marry him. You can’t fully separate Ice King’s mad obsession with princesses from Simon’s love for Betty. So it’s no wonder that when the Winter King artificially rid himself of one, he also lost the other.

And in general, so much of Ice King's Madness and Sadness was fueled by Simon's loves and his regrets - and so when they are truly wiped away, we are left with a very happy and very sane Simon who is utterly callous, cruel and selfish. One who has lost so much of what made him Simon Petrikov in the first place, maybe even more than he ever did as Ice King.

The Magic Crown drove Simon crazy, that’s true. But the particular way he turned crazy was based on his specific psyche and personality. And so Ice King always had that little hint of Simon hidden in him and now, no matter how ‘normal’ and ‘sane’ he is - Simon will always have a bit of Ice King in it. And without it… well, he won’t be much of the Simon we know and love.

[strovii]

[kingofooo]

Prismo the Wishmaster Time Room concept drawings by supervising director Steve Wolfhard

[bim0ngsam0ng]

bubbline

[seasonofprophecy]

I cannot wait to see Simon struggle with resisting the pull of the crown and beating himself up over his urge to relapse into its influence and let its power carry him away to the point where he loses himself and I cannot wait to see his moments of lucidity where he's disgusted at himself for ever having ceded himself to the crown and I cannot wait to see his following moments of confusion where he's appalled at the notion of ever being away from the crown and I cannot wait to see how his fate as the Ice King in the Adventure Time canon is interwoven into this back and forth and I cannot wait to let the Fionna and Cake creative team ruin me with the concepts of cycles and fate and resistance to cycles and faith and whether or not such resistance is futile or fruitful

Also can't wait to see the godawful repercussions of having a skinny Ice King on screen

[seasonofprophecy]

It shouldn't be that serious but I haaate people summarizing Simon and his struggles in Fionna and Cake as the symptoms of one mental illness or another. Like, his struggle with being content now that he's Simon again echo depression and he very well may have it. The way I've seen some people examine his character and conflict through a pathological lens, though, just picks out what words and actions they can diagnose as some documented and studied condition. They divorce his character and conflict from his setting, his time as the Ice King, and how he fits in the extended narrative of Adventure Time.

Simon is a pre-mushroom bomb era human in a post-mushroom bomb world. The people he knew, the surroundings he's come to understand, and the life trajectory he had going are all long gone. He's come to in a new society where things function in much more fantastical, irrational, and advanced ways. He's been a part of this society- even shaping it- as the Ice King, and now he must continue playing into the happenings of Ooo as Simon Petrikov. The new civilizations are alien, the new Earth functions by new social and natural laws, and he has the remains of new life that disgusts, horrifies, and humiliates him.

Simon spent almost a thousand years as a man stripped of his former values, dignity, and cognisance. As the Ice King, he lost his ability to control himself, and inflicted what would accumulate to be significant harm unto others. He learned how to get along with others by the end of his time as the Ice King, but those years were a blip in the span of a near millennium, and the degree of self-control he learned was basic decency. Simon spent his life before the mushroom bomb developing to be a composed and academic man, and endured having his antecedent personal growth and his own autonomy regarding his identity nullified by the ice crown.

Adventure time is a fantasy show that explores the consequences of the endless possibilities inherent to a fantastical setting. Powerful magic and magical existences destroy and ruin lives, abundances of mystical organisms amount to exhausting effort to defend oneself from danger, and the lack of predictability of what the world has to offer someone next spells out a compromised sense of security and stability.

Simon/the Ice King's story is one example of the show's exploration of the undesirable side of fantasy, and one story that's been built on for over eight years now. It's a story with circumstances unique to the show, with numerous writers informing its contents, with some parts planned and some spontaneous. It's a charged story, and it's narratively reductive to effectively whittle Simon's character and conflict as the showing of a real world mental illness

[dysaniadisorder]

,,,I hope you dont mind me adding my thoughts but I feel like I have to disagree?

like, objectively, yeah, you're right about Simon & his circumstances & the world of the show. ,,,but that's also what adventure time is. a show. a cartoon, at that. it was a kids show, meant for kids to see themselves or their friends or their families in (i know many people who were in love with simon & marceline's plotline as kids because they had family members with dementia or something similar). and we were all kids when we watched it and now all we're a little older and it's grown up a little more, too.

it's still... a TV show. it's its own fictional story but parts of it are meant to symbolize real life and speak to the audience in that way. like in varmints– yeah, the objective heavy overarching plot there is that bubblegums lost everything she worked so hard for and spent her entire life building up with her own two hands, and yeah losing your kingdom to some douchebag guy is not exactly something anyone in reality is gonna relate to. but when she outright says that she "pushed everyone away" and that "if [she] shut everything out and just focused on work it would all be okay." and at the end when she says she's crazy tired, and has been for a long time...... that's something an audience can understand. the overworking, from school or actual work or even just hobbies, the exhaustion and the lonliness she caused herself, that's what we're supposed to be able to relate to.

it's a fantasy world, and so the stakes are gonna be tremendously high in a way they literally just cant be in reality. yes, there's a giant weight to the fact that simon spend millenia literally losing himself and everyone he's ever loved. ,,,,when you connect that to what is almost explicitly real-world depression, it's not 'whittling down his character'- it's interpreting the show and characters in your own way through your lense, which is.... what you are supposed to do with shows.

saying that simon is depressed or even suicidal isnt a disservice to his character at all, even in the fionna campbell intro she casually mentions wanting to die, and has trouble getting out of bed. and simon has a lot of trouble smiling and making it convincing, and even finn tries using real-life mental health methods to help him (keeping him distracted and such) (even if they dont work).

it just feels like in a show where its shown over and over again that simons experiences are affecting his mental health negatively,,,, its weird to think that relating to that experience or putting a word on it is somehow like. bad. or missing the point of the show.

[seasonofprophecy]

I don't deny the potential of relatability to Simon's character. I said myself in the tags of my original post that I relate to him. After I became physically and neurologically disabled, I felt I had lost much of what had defined me before. I'm also mentally ill. I have various mental illnesses, but depression is one of them. I even relate to Simon back when he was the Ice King. Not depression, it's one of my unspeakables that make me relate to his delusional and destructive behaviour.

What I'm talking about is how people simplify Simon's character and conflict as, "He has depression", when there's a whole story to why he's so despondent. He's a 21st century human man stuck in a post-apocalypse fantasy world surrounded by people who know him better as a totally warped version of himself. He's a character from a show interested in exploring its own genre beyond what is seen as desirable. He's a part of an eight year old story whose writers took to exploring even deeper with supplementals on a platform less restrictive than a channel like Cartoon Network.

I'm not talking about the children who watched Adventure Time. I'm not talking about the children who related to him. I'm not talking about people who relate to him at all. I'm talking about the adult viewers of Fionna and Cake on HBO Max interpreting his character and conflict as solely depression. I'm talking about people who make the choice to examine him and come away with something that doesn't require the full consideration of the extended narrative Simon belongs to. I'm talking about people who conclude that everything about the way he acts, everything about what he's struggling with, everything about his story is depression. Just the one thing.

Depression isn't his entire character. Depression isn't his entire conflict. Depression is unlikely to be the whole of Fionna and Cake. There is more to Simon as a character, his struggles, and whatever story he inhabits than one topic. It isn't inherently reductive to interpret him as depressed, but it doesn't require much effort to leave it at that and not think there's anything else worth deducing about his character. I'm not saying that everyone is doing this, but there are people who do, and that's what I'm bothered by.

I don't care if people don't want to watch Fionna and Cake for fun, without fully analyzing every character and every story beat and all the things the writers are trying to do. That's something I want to do, and I know not everyone else wants what I want. What I'm irked by are the people who do want to analyze characters like Simon, but only look at what they can easily and quickly understand. Depression is still stigmatized, but in recent years, so many people have broached the subject that it's become familiar. While misconceptions still linger, the general public has come to not treat depression as something horrific and mystifying, at least to the same degree as conditions like psychosis and schizophrenia. This response is already too long, but there's something about the interpretation that Simon is just depressed, and something about how the only conditions people are willing to talk about when psychoanalyzing characters at all are depression and anxiety.

TL;DR: I think saying Simon's whole thing is only depression and just depression and is all because of depression is low-effort, not everyone does it but some people do, go ahead and watch the show and have fun I'm just expressing my annoyance on my Tumblr blog

[adz]

art by Hannah K. Nyström, storyboard artist for adventure time

[hannakdraws]

Adventure Time - Fionna and Cake ep 1-2 tomorrow!!

[kingofooo]

by writer/storyboard artist Hanna K. Nyström

 premieres Thursday, August 31st only on Max

[strawberry4milk]

taffy

[iradraws]

Taffy mikus

[kingofooo]

by guest storyboard artist Nicole Rodriguez

[kingofooo]

Fionna & Cake promo by supervising director Steve Wolfhard

[htnnm]

[jaubaius]

14 Wind Turbines Aligned In A Row In Nevada

[eiilese]

what if the strawhats had different roles on the ship⁉️ i swapped everyone’s roles except for luffy because i can’t imagine him being anything but the captain

these are loose redesigns since their canon designs don’t really read as their roles all that much to begin with. some extra doodles and ideas for this in the cut !!

nami, vice captain: i took a lot of inspiration from her beta design!! canon nami already bosses everyone around so she fits right into the role. she wields an extendable staff (usopp still makes it for her); she lost her arm over the time-skip like how zoro lost his eye. i LOVE drawing cargo pants and boots, so she ended up with a sorta bottom-heavy design. frankly it’s probably not her style but i like how she looks

zoro, the cook: my foolproof logic is zoro uses swords = good with knives. he does not use katanas to cut produce however, just normal knives. i was trying to go for “sweaty ramen guy” with the towel around his neck. the majority of the shit he cooks would probably be drowned in alcohol. he also wears his bandana the majority of the time now!! it completes the ramen guy look

sanji, the sniper: i also took inspiration from his beta design for this!!! he has guns!! and perfect aim of course. i was going for more of a mafioso look so germa 66 would be like, a mafia organization on top of all the other villain shit they already do. he has two guns but i didn’t draw a holster bc that’s annoying🤞 he lights his cigarettes with his guns. how would that even work? don’t ask me

usopp, the navigator: his artistic talent lends itself to creating perfect maps! he also still tinkers, making nami’s staff as well as having a specialty for compasses. he uses a slingshot still (no perfect aim we gotta nerf him) and shoots weather-related projectiles. his goggles serve as binoculars, they can zoom to several different distances. i drew him in his zou outfit purely bc it’s my favorite one

chopper, the helmsman: he would predominately use heavy point while maneuvering the wheel. i changed his hat up to look more like a sailor’s cap, with an anchor symbol instead of an X. to be honest i don’t have much else bc helmsman doesn’t bring much to my mind :(

franky, the musician: ROCK N ROLL BABY YEEAHHH come on his stage presence is unmatched. he’s still a cyborg, he has instruments all over his body like apoo does but they were installed manually. his personality changes depending on what genre he’s playing but rock n roll is his default B) (ex. classical calls for a refined gentleman)

robin, the shipwright: her devil fruit gives her as many helpful hands as she needs! she developed nami’s arm (definitely installed some random shit she did Not ask for). she has a robot mecha that she’s able to pilot all by herself using clones. i changed her orange sunglasses to goggle eyewear

brook, the doctor: the irony of being nursed back to health by a literal skeleton 💀the irony of being the doctor of the rumbar pirates yet being the only survivor, saving no one from the poison 💀 i went for a plague doctor look! IM VERY HAPPY WITH HOW HE TURNED OUT i was really tempted to give him the plague mask too, but i feel that would’ve changed his appearance too much compared to the others

jinbei, the archaeologist: the shape of this man demands a little pair of round glasses on his face. he’s an intellectual i tell you!!! plus still a fishman karate master. the history of joyboy and fishman island being so intertwined is how he developed an interest in history

[eiilese]

there is this post that i Think came from reddit (here) about getting in a van with these groups of people. nami’s van is the right answer btw