I’ve been following Adventure Time threads all day in response to the latest episode I worked on: “Wizards Only, Fools”. I think the dialog happening about the rules of Ooo in regards to magic and science is really cool. I’m too tired right now to use a better word than “cool”.

I don’t want to say too much, because I think when a person involved in creating something tries to explain it – it runs the risk of killing the thing. But I also really want to say just a few messy things about it! Sorry!

First off I’d like to make clear that I wasn’t intending on my part to break the magic of Ooo. (One of the worst crimes of fantasy was George Lucas introducing midichlorians!) From my point of view, magic in Ooo exists. Why even call into question such a thing! BUT in my day to day living I’m always fascinated by perspective: when talking to friends and addressing their ideas, it’s endlessly beautiful how we can share identical external experiences and come away with different affirmations. I think about this every day pretty much.

So for Princess Bubblegum, the meaning of her shared external experience is different from Jake’s. And I empathize with PB a great deal because she is relentlessly seeking truth. From my perspective there is no truth… only fleeting applicable ideas that change forever. It’s an opinion based on whimsy and the life experiments that seem to have worked out for me: my own personal pursuit of truth. That’s why I also empathize with Jake and made sure to include his point of view in the episode.

In helping to write the episode, it wasn’t important (for me) to impart an idea of who is right or wrong about magic and science in the land of Ooo. It was important to impart the idea of a complex and contradictory fantasy. It was fun to use a real world issue as subtextual provocation but really it was a way of exploring that dynamic and having fun with both sides of the perspective spectrum. The characters simply are who they are, and will act according to how they see themselves. If there is a moral to be gained from “Wizards Only Fools”, it wasn’t intentional. On my part at least.