Something I’ve often found really compelling in Adventure Time is how The Grass Sword/Grass Demon/Fern found up becoming one of the most prominent and disturbing antagonists of the series pretty much by complete accident.
Like it’s easy to forget after Fern has become such a prominent character both in the show and fandom, but the ‘curse’ of the Grass Longsword started out and spent much of the show entirely benign. All it really did was cause the sword to stick to Finn. If anything, the sword/curse was quite beneficial to Finn, providing him with a prosthetic arm and activating on several instances to protect him. Really, the entire point of the original Blade of Grass episode was that the sword was actually pretty useful.
It was only AFTER stabbing and later merging with the Finn Sword to create Fern that the ‘curse’ started becoming actively malicious.
In hindsight, I think it’s pretty clear that while the Grass Spider/Octopus/Demon ‘curse’ entity within the Grass Sword may have been malicious, for the longest time it had no way of actually controlling or otherwise influencing Finn. The sword may have bonded to Finn’s body, but NOT to his mind, or more importantly his soul. This left Finn free to use the sword, and later even the grass-prosthetic freely without any danger or corruption from the curse.
But then Finn accidentally used it to stab the Finn Sword. As we see in Two Swords, this for the first time gave the Grass Demon/Curse direct access to a soul, the soul of the alternate Finn within the Finn Sword. A soul that it was able to corrupt and influence and ultimately merge with to create Fern.
This is one of those things that I think a lot of the fandom seems to miss: Fern isn’t some quirky doppelganger or a ‘brother’ to Finn. He is straight up a distorted, corrupted version OF Finn (the alternate iteration of him within the Finn Sword) manifested by the CURSE of the Grass Sword.
As in, basically EVERYTHING Fern does that deviates from the ‘norm’ that is Finn can be considered the work OF the curse. From more overt stuff like his tendency to ‘stab first, ask questions later’ or the times he ‘flips out’, to more subtle things like his brooding or just the fact that he has a noticeably different voice (the voice of the Grass Demon mind you), ALL of these are the product of the Curse.
And it’s this fact which makes Fern a truly tragic character. Because he was effectively doomed from the very start. Despite Fern’s attempts to do good and Finn’s and Jake’s attempts to accept him as his own person, Fern simply could not escape the curse’s influence. Because that curse was the very thing that created and maintained his physical body. It WAS his body. And this curse wanted nothing but to subvert, influence and ultimately CONTROL him for its own ends.
I think we can very easily assume that all of Fern’s failures, all his insecurities, everything that drove him to turning on Finn and trying to kill him and becoming the Green Knight in the final season, ALL of that was the result of the curse’s influence. Trying to whittle and break down Fern’s will so that it could mold him into whatever it wanted. And there was NOTHING Fern could do to stop this. Because the curse made itself a core part of what he was.
When Finn and Fern finally enter his mental world and destroy the Grass Demon in Come Along With Me, we see Fern as he truly is: simply another version of Finn who has been corrupted by the curse.
And with the Grass Demon dead, there is nothing to maintain Fern’s physical body, causing him to soon fade away. In order for this alternate Finn to be saved, he couldn’t exist as ‘Fern’.
Of course this also means that ‘Fern’ didn’t actually DIE at the end of the series. He simply reverted back to his true form: The Finn Sword.
And what I find so compelling and tragic about all this is that NONE of it had to actually happen. The Finn within the Finn Sword didn’t need to be put through all this suffering. Like it seems pretty clear that the Finn that become the Finn Sword was perfectly content being a sword. He didn’t need to be corrupted and spend the last two and half seasons being manipulated by a grass octopus demon.
Because when you think about it, ALL of this happened by accident. If Finn hadn’t lost the Finn Sword to Bandit Princess, or if he’d been able to simply avoid stabbing it with the Grass Sword during his fight with her, NONE of this would have happened. Finn would still have the Finn Sword and the Grass Sword would have likely remained benign and helpful to him. Heck, given how Finn seems to fully regain the use of the Grass Sword in his fight with Bandit Princess, he probably would have been able to duel-wield the Grass Sword and Finn Sword together.
This is really what I find to be the tragedy of Fern: That two of Finn’s greatest tools wound up becoming one of his most dangerous adversaries, and even worse that the Finn who became the Finn Sword was tortured and corrupted for no real reason, all essentially by accident.
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Hot take? Maybe? Idk I saw ppl yelling at Lenore earlier but
idc Lenore was completely justified in yelling at will, even if it wasn’t the best way to get him to be more effective. he literally aided and abetted putting Duke in that wall. Duke begged him for help and he said “…sorry?” He lured him into that cellar USING LENORES FACE. Then the next day, using DUKES FACE, the face of the man he helped put behind the wall, he used the face of someone the misfits trusted (knowing that the guy was suffocating in the walls as he did this) to lure Berenice, eulalie, and Lenore, into the graveyard, where he helped Monty beat the shit out of them.
just bc Monty is mean to will and uses him doesnt mean will isnt making his own choices like he’s not an innocent little baby here he doesnt deserve for Lenore to baby him. Like Lenore, Lenore SO deserves to be mad at will and not gaf about his feelings she DOESNT KNOW HIM and he HELPED IN HER FRIENDS ATTEMPTED MURDER and he literally is an imbecilic little paintywaist so
i will forever advocate in favor of Lenore destroying the piss out of people emotionally idc. I cheer. Annabel, Monty, will, Ada, GET EM GIRLY
I will say that this was goofy as fuck here like ohhhh girl
if he lives 😒
i may deign to spare your life 😡
SHES SO DRAMATIC stop waving that thing around you lunatic - shes rly trying to make up for the fact there’s no bullets, really trying to sell it. you can tell shes an old rich lady 💀 “move swiftly” girl you sound like a train station recording.
I love pluto standing in the back there like a goon
Last thing i love how Lenore is like wtf girl what the fuck are you on about im not your therapist are you serious right now??? Are you CRYING?? Is he really doing this in public??
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tags on that recent dunmeshi poll post are making me so sad
humans are often some of my favorite fantasy races, they're not boring! They're often the race of ambition--what they might lack in particular magical prowess, or claws, or muscles, they make up for in raw numbers, and a competitive drive to keep up with the other races and assert their own place in the world. They're the jack of all trades who ever strive to pick up a little bit of what everyone else can do. They aren't boring, and neither are you: to be human is to persevere and endure, and that is wonderful
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Verlaine: Sorry, who are you?
Adam: I am Detective Adam Frankenstein. I'm visiting Chuuya.
Verlaine: Oh... Oh you were there with him back than... Sorry I didn't remember you.
Adam: Of course you didn't, humans have such terrible long term memory. It's why we robots far out class you all eats chewing gum Want one?
Verlaine: Er, no... What?
Adam: I asked if you wanted a chewing gum, are you okay? I know you humans have poor short term memory but I don't remember it being this bad.
Verlaine: I'm not human.
Adam: Of course you are, my dream is to save all humans. That's why I was with Chuuya to save him and you.
Chuuya: Oi bolt head, are we going or what?!
Adam: Coming, goodbye Paul Verlaine walks off Chuuya I do not have bolts in my head, did you forget? Is there something wrong with your vision. You should've said, how are we going to watch that movie now?
Chuuya: You haven't changed at all have you?
Verlaine:.. So even the robot thinks that.
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you know this is exactly why the conversation between Sukuna and Jogo is one of my favourite moments in jjk. Jogo developed insecurities after his confrontation with Gojo and that encounter weakened his resolve, which in the end made Jogo, this grotesque lava monster, feel like a person.
What I love about this moment is how Sukuna of all people acknowledged Jogo. He reached out and connected to Jogo before his death, which for someone like Sukuna, who believes nobody is his equal, to acknowledge Jogo, was quite beautiful.
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i'm reading crescent city girls: the lives of young black women in segregated new orleans by lakisha michelle simmons and one detail in it is about how although the french quarter during the first half of the twentieth century was overwhelmingly white, a black order of nuns owned a building there, at what's currently the site of the bourbon orleans hotel, from 1881 to 1965. they lived there and ran an orphanage and a school for girls (the order and the school still exist, just in a different neighborhood). i think it's an affecting image that 1132 royale street was so close (a 7-minute walk, just down the street and around the corner) to a high school claudia was pointedly not attending. she probably walked by the building hundreds of times, at night when it was shuttered and quiet. she walked by it when she was 14, 15, 16, 17, just like the girls who studied there, but she was fundamentally separated from them forever. she could go there, even slip into the classrooms or the dormitory where the nuns slept, but she could never get there, across the veil to the place it was during the day. and at first she didn't really grasp what any of this meant because it was novel, even a little exciting, it made her feel special – "i've gotta go to bed when the rest of the world wakes up, so there's less kids to play with..." – but you know it sank in eventually. as the students moved from grade to grade, graduated, grew up, and were replaced by new girls, claudia stayed the same. her and the building, its balconies, its arched windows, the cross against the night sky, unchanging. singular. forever. fuck!!!!!!!!
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