Roger Brown, Period 1, 4/11/22

 Roger Brown

Period 1

	Vampirism in stories often explores themes of immortality, which in turn beget themes of stagnation. Adventure Time: Stakes, an 8 part miniseries in the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time, explores these themes and much more as Marceline tries to overcome them.	  
In Stakes, Marceline is a one thousand year old vampire who cures her own vampirism. But in purging her vampire essence, she unleashes the 5 of the most powerful vampires she killed 1000 years ago. Marceline has to deal with reemergence of her past, physically, by hunting them down and staking them, and emotionally, by reliving her past trauma hunting vampires in a post-apocalyptic world. 
	The series starts with Marceline in the shade of a tree with her umbrella in the light, just out of reach. She cannot overcome the pain of reaching out into the sun, and so remains in the shade of the tree. In the next scene, she arrives at PB’s house, having seemingly uprooted the tree and carried it there, and asks her to perform the procedure that would remove her vampire essence. She says “when I became a vampire, I was just a messed-up kid. Now it's 1,000 years later, and I'm still messed up. I don't want to spend eternity like this, with this emptiness. I want to grow up”. We know from Marceline’s flashbacks throughout the miniseries, and other episodes from Adventure Time, that Marceline lacked care and affection as a child. There are numerous instances of people in Marceline’s childhood who were meant to care for her, abandoning or neglecting her.  These experiences obviously still affect Marceline as she is extremely reclusive and lives in a cave, and even after 1000 years we know through snippets of her music and poetry that these experiences still haunt her. Just as Marceline was trapped in the shade of the tree because of her vampirism, immortality traps her in her own past, still dealing with the same trauma for 1,000 years. Marceline understands this and wants it to change. Uprooting the tree and asking to be cured shows her will to fight against her vampirism and to take her life into her own hands. By removing her vampirism she begins her journey of moving on and “growing up”, and (literally) taking on the demons of her past. 
	There is something unique about immortality caused by vampirism, in that its victims were previously mortal, and maintain their mortal memories. There are other immortal beings in Adventure Time, such as elemental and cosmic beings, but they are not tormented by their immortality because they have never been mortal, and so are content in their stagnation because of their natures as natural or cosmic forces. The Ice King is a mortal being who gained immortality, similarly to Marceline, however his immortality is granted to him by a magic crown that corrupted his mind, and he no longer remembers his mortal life. So while he has stagnated, he is not aware of it. Marceline is uniquely tormented by her immortality because it was gained through vampirism. She maintains her memories of mortality and is thus trapped by them.