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itissadbutitsmy-artblog · 23 days ago

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I was wondering whether you have any thoughts on what an outsider's perspective on the candy kingdom would be? Are the vibes off if you're a traveling merchant stopping by? Whats pb's reputation like internationally etc. ?

YOU GAVE ME A THINKER. POLOGIES IN ADVANCE.

okay so 1: i know people can come in. there's a train station :) at first i thought No one comes in but then i rememebred there's a train

anyways i think that candy people.. like. .. their two main character traits are "overly friendly and welcoming" and "high strung and tense" so depending on what happens youll have very different experience. whether the shopkeep you visit is just chilling or whether you run into some really excitable guys who want to hug you and rub their faces on yours just because you seem nice really depends on like. the weather.

but like. something that keeps getting to me is theres so much of the candy kingdom. there's the little close-to-the-castle bit, the folks that we see at all the princess's parties, that you sorta think of when you think of The Candy Kingdom. the goofy guys who dont seem to have jobs except maybe being castle staff who, again, dont do much. they just sorta idle around and follow their own fancy.

but there's also, like, apartment buildings, and the train station. there's restaurants. there are telemarketers and lawyers. a pharmacy! and a hotel! everyone who we see who lives and works outside of the little castle vicinity seems to have a much more recognizable life. there's a town.

they have a job they go to regularly (root beer guy and cherry cream soda, their coworkers, the pizza sassy's employees, the hotel staff, daycare workers, teachers, pharmacists (ANN MY GOAT)...). they have houses. there's the tavern area, too! which, once distant lands and fionna and cake comes around, has cleaned up considerably and become a nice place for everyone to hang out!

so. lots more to the kingdom than just the goofy dance party cast that we usually see. now. what would you see if you just wandered in. i mean besides the skeleton arm in the sewer there. hello?

i mean first off some weird ass business is probably going down and youre going to have to nip into a shop and be like dude.... did twenty people who all look the same just run past chased by twenty people who also look the same.. and the shopkeep will have to be like ohh yeah i dunno about all that i just heard the princess was really pissed off. shes sitting on the wall with finn and jake if you need her. do you wanna buy a broom. pb has her hands in the politics of everyone else, and finn and jake hang out there. things just HAPPEN in the candy kingdom. there's always something or other going on.

honestly. i wrote a lot. but go back and watch davey? that's how it's like to walk into the candy kingdom as a stranger i think. finn treats it a little different because he's lived there his whole life and never needed to pay for services there, none of this is weird for him it's just weird that no one is greeting him, but that's what it's like. there's three guys just holding an impromptu dance party on the street and when you stop to watch them from 2 inches away they do not stop or react. when you steal someone's goods they yell at you quite matter of factly and hold no apparent ill will towards you when you seem apologetic and give it back, even though you can't pay for it. when you slam into the store and ask for a job they just give you one. they know your name by the end of the day and say goodbye warmly. on the surface it's not weird. it's just kind of vacant in some levels and it's overly friendly on others.

the goofy-party-city-guys-that-you-think-of-when-you-think-of-the-candy-kingdom, that seems to be the part of the candy kingdom pb is most interested in maintaining. we Know she is opposed to the CK becoming a citylike attraction for visitors. (or at least, gumbald really wanted it to become that. and she just wanted to hang out with him instead. and once he became dance party central, she was like, this is good. dance for me. let's all dance forever)

that's what she focuses on most. those are the people she hangs out with. those are the people she watches like a hawk. those are the people she brings to her parties. the goofy party guys. not the people with jobs and houses and kids. cinnamon bun was a goofy party guy and he was trusted with important jobs, but she also knew what he did in the privacy of his own home and she made him change it. james was a Job Guy and he got to hoard men in his house unchecked until she decided to let him die and that's when she found out. there's like a split in where her focal point of What The Candy Kingdom Is is aimed. i mean. look at this. place. not maintained. it's not where all the Jobs Guys live, but it's not where her party people live.

so folks living outside the kingdom probably think of the candy kingdom, and think about the goofy party guys, and don't even realize theres a whole town in there fully formed, writing prescriptions, traversing career changes. that's what pb puts forward as what her kingdom's all about. dance party. sweet happy joy joy. as you saw she's definitely not maintaining the tavern area (OR HELPING THE FOLKS LIVING THERE. BABY BOOKING THE MARSHMALLOW KIDS? DUDE.) but honestly the rest of the non-party town doesnt seem much better if root beer guy (and his coworkers) and james's mental states are anything to go by. their houses are nice they have good jobs but they're depressed and theyre bored.

theyre still candy people, any of them have the capacity to go into a goofball flip out over something unimportant, i mean peppermint butler is the straightman and he says some of the most insane off the cuff things out of any of the cast. root beer guy talks like a calmguy and he still jumps up and down when hes overexcited. he walks straight through bushes. literally all of them will calmly accept wild ass things like some panicked regent grabbing them and sticking them in their mouth to suck on with no complaint, that's just life in the candy kingdom for you (theres a delicate balance between What Scares Them and What Is Mildly Ruffling But Whatever. peps used to LOVE getting scattered all over everywhere.). if pb is to be believed literally all of them need cuddles and soft touches to survive. and everyone's so lonely. they might be calm and normal folks with jobs when you meet them but then they're also just so casually touchy and warm and if some horrible thing happened they'd be so surprisingly efficient about it. third time their life has been endangered this week, dude, let's head out the back way, there's a safe meeting space behind the fire escape.

there probably is something off about a bunch of really, freakishly friendly guys who act like the whole world is going to end any second now. there's this undercurrent of "aw, man, mom's gonna KILL me" to everything they do that's very weird for a bunch of guys who were openly made in a laboratory and probably don't have a mother or a childhood to speak of. and also just world-ending terror in general. they're so scared. especially the ones pb coddles. but i've also seen them step up when the chips are down, scared as hell.

candy people are nothing if not loyal to the end and i think passing merchants and visitors would get none of that. theyd just get this bad first impression from too many people smiling too vacantly at them. Smiling too much and being so, so mundanely normal. that, or theyd accidentally forge a deathly serious lifelong friendship with some taffy guy who tripped over them just because the clouds were in the right position or something

like they seem so painfully normal to me but if you interact with them more than a minute or two, or if youre going through the whole town and not just popping in, buying a chocolate bird, and leaving, you're going to get that "why are all of them smiling the same way" thing. why are all of them skittish. even the ones who are heading off to work. the ones with kids. why are they looking at you like. that.

candy people do like. explode when theyre confused or freaked out but like. theyre also wildly easygoing. this is the "i need a job" "can ya sweep brooms" city. this is the city that had two zombie outbreaks in the last five years and not all of its citizens exploded from fear about it before getting turned. this is the city that just decided to oust their goddess mother from her throne because a con man said it was cool to do it. i think nothing phases them. i feel like theyd freak if a non-candy person wandered in but then i rewatch like, davey, and they just dont care. so no matter what YOU the visitor thought, THEY would treat you as calmly or overly-lovingly as their fancy took them

now

whats pb like internationally. i mean. it varies! right! i think she's gotta be overall respected. the wizards LOVE her and she does NOT respect them at ALL. she needed to buy something from their city, KNEW that she had a good political relationship with them, and instead of just like, asking, she snuck in which is forbidden on several levels, and when they said that's ok because we like you but you do have to perform some contrition, she yelled at their leader that their entire culture was built on flawed pretenses and every single practitioner of their beliefs was stupid. like OK. i dont think they like her anymore. halfway convinced the real reason peps is blocked from wizard city is because he spent so much time trying to liaison with them after that debacle and he flubbed it somehow. anyways. and phoebe! phoebe HATES her! but she still tries to meet her professionally every time. and every time, pb lies to her and undermines her. i know she's Trying to be Better. but we don't see that part. it's very tasty! im SURE phoebe isn't the only one in that position with her, even if she is the only one getting through to her about the surveillance getting out of hand! im SURE the wizards aren't the only society she has openly snubbed in such a way.

she seems to be very much in the Center during events like the meeting of ooo royalty and the tart meeting and stuff. mainly because finn's there doing something and she has to stand up and be like FINN! LET ME EXPLAIN! because he's her knight the main character. i get the feeling especially early on that she's The princess, and i know it's because it was early and she was the only one that was really around, but it's kinda nice how that frames her as The Princess to Finn. she's His Princess. and it circles out over time as he circles away from his singular focus of loyalty; his heroics are focused on Slaying Evil Everywhere, not on Protecting This One Princess, much as pb expected otherwise when she signed him on. um. i'm sidetracked but it also means that, because of her focus within finn's point of view, i ended up seeing her as Very Influential among the royals of ooo -- maybe the first princess who really came into power, or maybe she was careful with her treaties so she came out on top most often. she has a brother to protect, after all, a brother she can't move. i think coming at the politics aggressively early on, when everything was resettling after the war and the loss of the dominant species, so that her territory and her assets are protected ironclad, probably came off bad at first

(are these outfits similar. they feel so similar to me. her shoko outfit and her apparent warrior tendencies back then and the way banana guard 16 describes her in one shot of her standing on a dozen defeated enemies)

..but now, it just means she's an Established princess, a Rock. someone who is Always There. Dependable, like taxes, not necessarily safe nor dangerous, but yeah, she has a trade relationship with us, and we don't get to keep our most valuable materials, but we don't lose anything we need to keep going. that's pb in politics to me. umm. h

ok that was too much i think i lost track of your question lots of times but i kept wanting to talk about candy people ahehe.

ok i meant to just queue this but i wrote a bunch of tags i'll just throw here then i'll stop talking:

i REALLY Like the writing of pb as THE princess. and how its just because finns the protagonist. and shes established early on. it has such a fun narrative implication, it's fun from a writing perspective because she's always THERE and always at the CENTER of everything. is she really? maybe?? but maybe breakfast princess is just as intricately political as her and we just dont know. cuz all we ever see is pb screaming that everything will DIE if we dont do things her way bc shes the one who figured it out and etc. other similar things she does that makes it feel like well maybe shes the smartest maybe shes the most involved maybe... but idk if she really is! she might just be FINNS princess and also very nosy so shes always onscreen and in everyones business! incredible writing.

#adventure time #mister 20 page essay over here #candy kingdom #asks #carlandrea #candy people #long post #not art #im just gonna queue this im . ive said too much!#also yes. she has a brother she cannot move. that absolutely impacted her politics.#of course her focus was on safety and guards and vigilantes and careful treaties. of course she needs her own eagle eye on every paper #that goes through her office. she can't move her territory. she can't let anyone into her property. her brother's in there and hes scared.#'ive said too much' he says + proceeds to write fifteen paragraphs more

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many-gay-magpies · 25 days ago

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I just finished watching The Old Guard (banger movie by the way, absolutely recommend if anyone’s been debating it), so naturally my brain went the route of Old Guard DBDA au. I don’t know any details; all I can think of so far is that Charles and Edwin are a pair of immortals that have been at it for a while together, and the timeline of the story starts with the appearance of a new immortal: Crystal. As for what’s beyond that, idk—are there other people on Charles’s and Edwin’s immortal team? Or are they just a duo? Idk if the immortality loss thing happens to either of them, I’m leaning towards no if it’s just the two of them… but like. It would fit SO well.

I’m already kind of envisioning that it’s just been Edwin and Charles, doing good and helping people from the shadows for decades (or maybe even centuries if we stretch out the timeline a bit); not a direct role-for-role cast replacement of the Old Guard, but more of an insertion into the story structure/world. Like, Edwin as the older of the two, having become immortal a while before Charles and almost immediately getting trapped and spending a canon-adjacent length of time being tortured for his abilities—then escaping a short while before Charles appears and he starts having dreams about him. Their deaths could even be similar to canon: Edwin gets sacrificed (literal sacrifice rather than a prank this time) or maybe even put to death for suspected homosexuality and comes back; Charles dies of hypothermia and internal bleeding after his “friends” turn on him, but he doesn’t STAY dead. Edwin has dreams of cold, and pain—utter impenetrable cold—and of an attic, and a lake, and he sees Charles’s face—he decides he has to find him.

Then Crystal comes around, and maybe she has a similar background to canon—maybe even with the memory loss? Like, her toxic ex-boyfriend kills her and she comes back without a bunch of her memories—some kind of complication with the process—and she gets them back gradually over the course of the story (probably as multiple deaths clear things up/shift things back to normal). When Charles and Edwin find her, there’s a lot of complicated emotions, stemming from—well, both of them wondering why NOW, why another one after probable centuries of it just being them, but where Edwin is resistant and standoffish (he doesnt trust new people this close, why did it have to change, their life was FINE as it was), Charles is excited to have a new person around!! Someone they won’t lose!! Someone like them!! And meanwhile Crystal is just,, fucking REELING from this and also maybe being stalked by her crazy power-hungry toxic ex-boyfriend who was maaaaybe in the government the whole time and dating her because her parents had whopping political status. It’s a lot.

Shit, maybe Esther could even be another immortal—one Edwin and Charles don’t know about; one that’s removed from the dream-connection somehow, or one that they haven’t been able to pin down/get clear enough memories from to realize it’s a whole other person and not just, like, them having weird dreams and shit. And maybe Esther LOSING her immortality correlates with Crystal gaining hers, and Esther tries to figure out a way to steal the boys’ immortality somehow to get hers back… or maybe she’s NOT an immortal, but more of a Merrick-type character that finds out about the immortals and wants to take their power for herself? Idk.

Last thing I’ve been thinking about is, I want Niko to be an immortal too… but is she an immortal from the start? Probably not. Maybe she’s a normal mortal girl they meet while dealing with Esther and all get really attached to, who then breaks everyone’s hearts by dying when she tries to help Crystal get the boys back from Esther, providing Crystal’s first big lesson about the futility of relationships with normal human beings (while still being worth the pain for the value of the love while its there)… UNTIL she comes to in her grave in Japan weeks or months later, and the inside of a coffin shows up in all of their dreams. Or something.

I am hereby inviting anyone who wishes to participate in this idea with me to do so, in any way you please

#add-on ideas or completely different interpretations of what a dbda/old guard crossover/AU could look like. all is welcome #magpie thoughts #dbda #dead boy detectives #the old guard #is the cat king an immortal to? but one that’s not on The Team because he likes his solo life just fine and also Charles hates his guts #because he hits on Edwin every time they meet up?#the possibilities are endless #payneland #Edwin Payne #crystal palace #god im just thinking about how PERFECTLY Edwin’s torture fits into this scenario… he gets captured and killed over and over and OVER again #for more years than he can count… pushed further and further; torn up in more and more horrible gruesome ways every time; because every time #he heals and comes back; good as new… even if it takes a week for his body to regenerate from being chewed to pieces… he comes back…#until he learns to fight his way out. until he maps the entire facility they keep him in—its changed over the years; gotten more advanced.#moved location—and forgets more ways of killing his captors than most soldiers ever learn. and he makes it out #then a few years later. he isnt alone anymore #and Charles… Charles who is glad he didn’t die but he still lost his chance at LIFE… he is glad he left his house with all his dad’s anger #but he never got to GROW UP… never got to make a family (better than the one that made him) or get a job or graduate college (im mentally #aging them up a bit in my head. just because) or any of the things he’d planned to do… and he loves Edwin SO MUCH and wouldn’t trade this #for ANYTHING now that he has it. but he never got his mom out. she turned away from him when she was on her deathbed because he was the same #age he’d been when he left forty years ago and she didn’t believe it was him. years that he would have been able to have going back home for #family dinners—or having his mom come to him; or going wherever she’d gone if she got away from his dad—lost to checking in on them through #papers and records and windows and down the booth at a restaurant with a mask on his face so they couldn’t tell it was him. things edwin #doesnt quite understand; things he doesn’t get because he doesnt even remember his parents or family.#he’s always seemed so much happier without them—like he didn’t even need those memories—and Charles tried to do the same.#and if we want to bump up the ‘’time goes on’’ angst. throw a little sister into the mix. make him have a younger sister named Clementine #who he has to watch grow up from a distance. who he visits on HER deathbed (maybe instead of his mom) and who pushes him away. or who DOESNT #push him away but its still heartbreaking because the last time he saw her she was a teenager or a little kid and now she’s an old woman. he #never got to watch her grow up and now he’s losing her. and he’s stuck behind.

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