#did you mean the opening to a fionna and cake comic????

[fredfilmsblog]

BTS w/B&PC Part 1

The first Bee and PuppyCat Storyboard 2012 @Scribd

Now that Bee and PuppyCat: Lazy in Space is scheduled to drop on Netflix,  September 6, 2022, I thought I would share some of my recollections as to how this special series of Natasha Allegri’s came to be. –Fred Seibert

In the summer of 2012, my company Frederator announced that our Cartoon Hangover YouTube channel would be calling for pitches for what would be my fifth short cartoons incubator, Too Cool! Cartoons. As with all our other shorts programs, my goal was to bring new creator talent to the world. We’d already succeeded beyond my wildest dreams with Genndy Tartakovksy, Craig McCraken, Pendleton Ward and dozens of other cartoon creators.

But, Too Cool! was going to be different. Our other series had been kids projects only, given they were for Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. But, with Cartoon Hangover we had a chance to spread out to a world that had changed dramatically with the internet. Now, cartoon and animation lovers could watch pre-school shows now matter how old they were, the the world of adult oriented cartoons could spread out beyond The Simpsons and South Park.

The question among ourselves was what exactly did “adult” mean.

You can check out all the shorts to find out where we landed, but I have to say, when Natasha pitched the original Bee and PuppyCat storyboard (above), we were a bit perplexed.

Sure, Bee was 20-something, and she opened the cartoon telling us she’d been fired from her job. Adults work, right? And they get fired, right?

But, among ourselves, let me speak for myself here, I thought that adult cartoons that weren’t on network television had a chance to go a little farther than the PG stuff we all were used to. A little “edgier” –whatever that means– a bit naughtier? Whatever vibe I gave out, our vice president of creative affairs and development, Eric Homan, wasn’t sure that Bee and PuppyCat fit the bill.

We all loved Natasha Allegri’s work. Eric, in particular, had noticed her on the crew of Adventure Time, where she’s landed without any background in animation. Creator Pen Ward and Natasha had been trading “diary comics” for several years –both heavily influenced by future Cartoon Hangover creator James’ Kochalka’s American Elf– and Pen brought her aboard his maiden series from the very first day.

And then, there was Fionna and Cake. I won’t go too far down the rabbit hole, but one day we noticed on Natasha’s personal then-blog, this web comic where she’d done the hip thing of the moment and done a gender reversal on Adventure Time. We loved it, put it on the Adventure Time tumblr we’d started, and the readers went crazy. I mean, crazy! Natasha did a follow up, crazy got crazier, and before you know we’d convinced Cartoon Network to do an 11-minute episode in the third season, and it got even more nuts, the highest rated episode until that point. A comicbook series by Natasha followed from Boom! Studios, and cosplayers started showing up to conventions as Fionna instead of Princess Bubblegum. We knew Natasha had the thing.

Nonetheless, was it right for Cartoon Hangover? Eric told Natasha it wouldn’t work, I had concurred, and she started walking home.

More BTS w/B&PC in Part 2.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

When'd you get into Adventure Time the first time, and how'd it happen? Been thinking of giving it a watch (especially after all the good stuff that's been said of Obsidian and, admittedly, all the stuff I've seen you post and reblog), and it got me curious

This is like my favourite story, and it is the only good one I remember from being a teenager (life from back then has been super foggy since I moved out of my mum's but it is all good now):

When I was 15 I made a new friend who wanted to write a comic about Teen Titans with me as the artist, TT being my second-favourite childhood show after DBZ.

I started bingewatching Teen Titans because I now had a computer and was able to do so. I learnt about the voice actors.

Starfire was played by Hynden Walch. I learnt that Hynden's latest role was Princess Bubblegum on Adventure Time. I checked it out on wikipedia. It seemed kind of cartoony for me.

One thing that caught my eye is when the wikipedia page said PB "may have had a past relationship" with Marceline, the vampire girl with the really pretty hair. I was confused by this, and rationalised it to myself as they must have had a history as friends or enemies. It didn't say what kind of relationship and I thought there was no chance of it meaning "romantic".

For the time being, I didn't look into AT further.

A couple months pass. After several months of tension, I get a text while in school telling me that my dad was breaking up with his fiance, and I would need to move back into my mother's place immediately. This was smack bang when I was about to start my GCSE exams - the timing couldn't be worse. My mother's house is a shit hive and I went between having a tiny box room to myself or sharing a messy bedroom with my sister and mother. There were no standards for hygeine and there wasn't a stable supply of food.

I decide to finish my binge watch of Teen Titans. I spend all day doing this every day. I rewatched it once I was done. It was what I did to cope.

At the same time, my Teen Titans comic friend confides in me. She tells me she thinks she might be a lesbian, and she is scared her parents will reject her. I sympathise deeply. At the time, I was waist deep in the closet to the point I couldnt accept certain things about myself either, but having a friend come out to me made me reconsider LGBT matters.

I looked on deviantart and saw some art for "RaeStar". I thought it was wrong to ship them (I shipped RobStar hardcore) but, well, the art was so cute. Their interactions were healthy and sweet. It was nice. This became my low key first gay ship.

Then, I start bingeing RebelTaxi's Teen Titans video reviews.

Once I am dry on Teen Titans content, I see RebelTaxi did a review on Fionna and Cake, and on Ryan North's Issue #2 of the Adventure Time comic.

The first video, Fionna and Cake, was appealing to me. The show had an amazing art style, and a decent sense of humor. I loved that they did something for the fans, making a genderbent fanfic episode based on popular fan characters. It was unprecedented and very post modern.

....But it was the SECOND video that made me take a very sudden interest in the show.

RebelTaxi was referring to a scene with PB and Marcy in the bottom of the Lich's bag. There is a joke where Marcy turns into a tentacle monster. RebelTaxi always makes hentai jokes when tentacle monsters are involved, but he interpreted this scene as referencing the characters' "lesbian undertones".

...Wait, WHAT? Hynden Walch's character and the pretty vampire have Lesbian Undertones?!?! Haven't I heard this somewhere before?!?!

A quick google search of "Adventure Time Lesbian Undertones" later, I discover the Mathematical! Controversy - how an episode with some incredible songwriting seemed to imply they had been girlfriends in the past who have residual feelings for each other. A podcast had been made by the producers fangirling about this possibility, but it was taken down, and the director fired. Nobody had outright said the subtext was not there, but they said they didn't want the podcast to sound like word of god. There had been a lot of upset in the gay community over this. Oh, by the way, there's a gay community of cartoon fans who really ship PB/Marcy.

With a combination of everything, from how my friend had just come out to me and was struggling with homophobia, to how I was a Hynden Walch fan, to how the show had already impressed me with what little I'd seen, I became IMMEDIATELY invested in finding out as much as possible about these potential LGBT characters and their relationship.

So I checked out a ton of Adventure Time videos on youtube. I checked the vids that had Marceline's backstory in, vids with funny moments from PB and all the other characters, I checked Deviantart for fanart where I made my first engagements with the fandom's gay community, I checked the Wiki talk pages to get ALL of the discourse. It changed who I was basically overnight.

I decided Adventure Time was a fun show with clever writing, and absolutely worth my attention. During the break for exams, I binge watched it all day, and then I would cram for my GCSEs between midnight and 3am on the day of the exam. I was addicted!

When I caught up, Goliad aired. This was the first ep to come out with me being in the fandom.

At the time, even though Hynden had drawn me to the show, Marceline was the character I was most invested in. She had the amazing backstory and music and character design. PB was fun, but there was relatively nothing to her character.

Oh boy, that ALL CHANGED with Goliad! People were intensely debating what the episode was saying about her. Is she a good person, a bad person? Why was she so troubled in the episode's opening, and why was Goliad corrupted?

Discourse only escalated with Princess Cookie. The top post on the wikia was "Is Princess Bubblegum evil?"

Thinking about her character was so interesting for me. These two episodes made me realise PB was a character with her own internal battles, who was struggling with the responsibility to do what was right for her people vs what is the Right Thing, with her own psychological wellbeing caught in the middle. My interpretation of Goliad was that PB was a naturally neutral person who had decided to be good, whereas Goliad had been corrupted by Jake's anger, and this contrasted with Finn who was a pure good person. The Princess Cookie episode reinforced my ideas, because she was doing something that was neither objectively good or bad but was a result of her own morality, and it went against Jake's morality. The idea of the "good guys" having such different values was so engaging, and they managed to come around at the end, with baby-snaps being submitted to rehabilitation.

Princess Cookie was also the first episode where PB was shown to be an adult while a currently adult character was a child. Either candy people age quickly, or - more likely - Pb is keeping her age a mystery. After thinking about this, I opened up a page on the wiki forums saying "Is Princess Bubblegum Old?"

This is what sealed my position in the fandom. I became a well known regular of the community after that, on Wikia and then Tumblr. It was my first fandom. So many good memories of theories, debates, analysis and fanart, the satisfaction of my theories being confirmed in season 5 onwards.

The most important thing to me, about engaging with the AT community, was how those initial interactions around the LGBT content were the groundwork for me being comfortable coming out of the closet. If it wasn’t for that, if it wasn’t for speaking specifically to Thisfreemind and Illeity about how gay relationships are perfectly fine and healthy for kids to see, and no less clean than straight relationships, I might be a person with far more conservative views today, and I might have fallen out with several of my closeted friends over internalized homophobia.  

I would have also probably failed high school. My grades improved drastically over the next year, because my online community life had made me happier.  It was comfort and stability during a difficult couple of years.