Finn the Humans vs. Disability Tropes

So, a while back I got a comment- Which I didn’t save and I regret that now because even with how small my channel is it was long enough ago that that comment is now lost to the wind. So, whoever you are, I cannot give you your proper credit. [intro] Anyway this mystery person asked me if I’d ever consider doing a video on Finn from Adventure Time. The reason I did not save the comment was because, at the time, I dismissed it out of hand. See, back then, I hadn’t watched Adventure Time in well o

ver five years and I’d never even gotten past season seven. So I just thought, of course I’m not going to do that, I doubt I’m ever gonna pick it back up so I can’t speak on how he’s represented. Except that little comment stuck in the back of my mind, and wore me down over several months because I actually did like Adventure Time back in the day, I just sort of fell off of watching it for reasons unexplainable by me other than it probably had something to do with either my ADD or my depressio

n. Or both. So I sat down to watch the rest of Adventure Time, and also Distant Lands and holy shit am I so glad I did because that ending? And Obsidian? And Together Again coming out of nowhere and punching me in the fucking face with feelings? And baby Peppermint? (I love this dark magic child and will fight anyone and everyone for him) But none of that is the point of this video and also I am so mad at myself for not saving that comment. Thank you whoever you are we are here today because of

you. Ok, so first off, I need to put up some standard disclaimers. I am not an amputee, so I’m not basing this off of personal experience I’m basing it off of what I’ve heard and read from actual amputees. I’m also not going to touch the comics, because catching up on the show alone was… quite enough. And also I know myself. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to read anything, because I inevitably end up binging as much as I can in a short period and then forgetting I was reading it at all

until months later or whenever my brain decides it is a good time to circle back to it. Anyway, in my re-watch I picked up right here. Billy’s Bucket List, the last episode of season five in which Finn goes on a quest to fulfil the titular bucket list, conquers his fear of the ocean- which, in hindsight, is probably trauma related and dear god someone get this kid some therapy- and learns that his biological father is still alive and kicking, out there somewhere in the universe He and Jake then

proceeds to go to Prismo to ask him how to get to the Crystal Citadel, which is basically the most secure prison in the multiverse. Prismo tells them the only way to do that is to kill a wishmaster, which they can do by waking his sleeping host body. Because Prismo is just the dream of an old dude who’ll fall asleep again in roughly 1000 years and yes Adventure Time is fucking wild and I love it. At which point the Litch, who’s been catatonic in the corner for a while now, steps in and actually

kills Prismo’s host body, killing him permanently- for now- Which opens a portal to the Crystal Citadel and Finn and Jake proceed to hitch a ride to find Finn’s bio dad. Except of course when they do he’s a huge disappointment, and the Litch is pulling some bullshit for the 75th time and Finn dips into some deep denial and, in an effort to force Martin- the piece of human scum that unfortunately had a hand in creating our good good best boy Finn the Human- to stay or take him with him or… someth

ing. He ends up gripping an escaping ship of multiverse criminals so tightly and desperately with his grass… sword… arm… thing, that it tears clean off, taking his original flesh arm with it. I have got to pause here and say it really is amazing and a true testament to the skill of the animators that even with such a simplistic style they managed to perfectly communicate a feeling of ‘utterly stunned and traumatised in an ‘everything is blank right now and life isn't real’ sort of way’. Just. Ch

ef’s kiss. Bravo. You hurt my soul but damn did you do it well. Which moves us on to the first big thing I want to hit on! How does Finn cope with his trauma? Poorly! Very poorly, dear god this poor child. Two episodes later we find Finn, deeply traumatised and absolutely furious at Martin, deciding the rational course of action here is to build a tower into space to go find Martin and rip his arm off in revenge. Which is... ♫Daddy's got an arm, and baby's gonna harm his arm by tearing it off hi

s dad♫ ♫Baby's building a tower into space, space is where he's gonna find his dad♫ ♫Daddy's got an arm, and-♫ [apple crunches] [singing muffled] ♫Baby's gonna harm his arm by tearing it off his dad♫ Really not healthy, to say the least. But it’s also very understandable. Anyway, it obviously doesn’t work, it’s extremely dangerous and he nearly dies! But thanks to some mildly morally questionable intervention from Bubblegum he does end the episode in a slightly better place, mentally, so that’s.

.. Something, at least. Which brings us on to the next episode I want to talk about, Breezy. This… is my least favourite episode of Adventure Time. For multiple reasons, but I’ll get into those in a second. The episode finds Finn, still in a deep funk, convincing himself that ‘making out’ with a bunch of Princesses will make him feel better about… everything. Except because he’s, like… what, fifteen? At this point? And hasn’t really had much experience or exposure to kissing and making out and s

tuff, his definition of a make out is a quick peck on the lips. In this episode we’re also introduced to Breezy, a runaway Queen Bee who falls in love with the flower growing out of Finn’s stump- Oh, right, Finn has a flower growing out of his stump. Maybe I should’ve mentioned that earlier. Oh well. Anyway, Breezy become his wingwoman in an effort to save Finn’s flower because they both figure it’s wilting because he’s depressed. So we’re once again dealing with deeply unhealthy coping mechanis

ms, this time pushed along by an enabler. But that would honestly be fine as a theme. Adventure Time doesn’t exactly shy away from harder topics. I mean hell the world itself is the remnants left behind after nuclear Armageddon. But uhh… H-well… LSP: I know all about your dirty deeds. Now it's Lumpy's turn to slump those lips! Bring is in, baby... [kiss noise] Wh- Where're you going? Finn: That's it. We made out. LSP, yelling: Wh- what!? I didn't wait infinity for a dip in the kiddy pool! LSP: W

e're taking this to the deep end. Finn: But... I'm not a good swimmer. LSP 'seductively': Don't be scared, Finn, Lumpy's on lifeguard duty. [very, very faint sounds of a forest at night] [blanket rustles] Listen I couldn’t stand LSP before this episode? Now? Just. Just fucking chuck her out the window, I never wanna see her again, what the fuck. In case anyone’s confused that, right there was sexual assault. And before you try to argue with me here... - Stop it. Get some help. - Finn agreed to w

hat he thought was a make out, aka a quick peck on the lips. LSP wasn’t satisfied with that and pushed things further. Obviously we don’t know exactly what went down on account of the fade to black, but it doesn’t fucking matter! Kissing someone without their consent is assault, and guess the fuck what? Finn did not consent! Or, rather, he consented at first, and then consent was withdrawn, and that was ignored. Which is, once again, assault. Just. God I hate LSP so much. I cannot stand this mou

ldy floating grape or her annoying fucking voice and I hate that she’s essentially the only reason Ooo survived the whole Elements disaster and Augh. Awful. Go throw her in a black hole. Please. Like, yes, Adventure Time is full of flawed characters. That is something I, personally, really like about it. But you see the thing is? Usually? Those characters experience something called development. Something which LSP, seemingly, has never heard of, nor will she ever experience it. Because literall

y every time she seems to have taken even one step forward she immediately careens twenty steps back or it’s all just wiped away, reset to status quo the next time we see her. Where was I? Oh, right. Finn regrows a new fancy Grass Arm which is visually indistinguishable from his old arm except for the fact that he now has a thorn sticking out of his palm. Which, gotta say, if I didn’t know he was going to lose that at some point I would be really disappointed. Because he functionally spends the

next entirety of seasons six and seven firmly rooted in the ‘Throwing Off the Disability’ category of Wiki Tropes. Which is a category that I have quite a lot of problems with. It gives the impression that, to be the hero, a character can’t stay disabled. This is, of course, complete bullshit, but you won’t often hear any piece of media agree with me on that one. Which is quite frankly disheartening, and I think maybe this was part of the reason I fell off of watching Adventure Time back in the

day. Because obviously at the time I didn’t know what was coming. I mean, I didn’t exactly know now either but I had some idea that the new arm was gonna get got at some point. Which is where Fern comes into the picture! Who probably needs a bunch on context because Adventure Time is fucking wild. Okay, so first thing you need to know? Prismo? Remember him? The Litch killed him? Turns out, he set up a contingency plan for that in which Jake could take his original host body’s place in order to d

ream him into existence, while also continuing to exist as Jake because timelines. But this also lead to the brief existence of two Finns until, when they came into contact with each other, one of them turned into a sword. Which the other Finn proceeded to use and call Finn-sword. Yes this show is absolutely buck-wild, next question. Anyway, this is relevant because eventually Finn-sword gets lost, and picked up by Bandit Princess who proceeds to use him for evil, so Finn goes to try and take hi

m back but instead accidentally stabs him with the grass sword. At which point the demon in the grass sword/arm moves over to the Finn-sword and starts biding his time until the end of season seven, where the grass arm detaches from Finn entirely, spawning an entirely new person with all of Finn’s memories who at first thinks he’s Finn but they’re very much different people and he ends up going by Fern instead. And I love him so much. Anyway, Finn is now, finally, back to being an amputee. It wa

s a long, convoluted road we took to get here. But honestly would it even be Adventure Time if that wasn’t the case? Firstly, I gotta get my most frequent criticism out of the way. [clears throat] Amputees don’t sleep with their prosthetics. I just had to make a note of that, because this keeps happening. Anyway, this time Finn is significantly more chill about losing his arm. Probably doesn’t hurt that Bubblegum immediately has a significantly better prosthetic ready to go because, well, she’s

Bubblegum. Of course she does. He’s honestly more worried about Susan and his green doppelgänger than he is about his arm, and he has this conversation with Jake Jake: Is it 'cause you lost the Finn-sword? [bacon slides off with a slimy noise] Finn: No... Jake: Is it 'cause you lost your arm again and it got replaced with a metal one? Finn: No. The arm's cool. Which is just... I love that for him, I really do. It also does make sense, I mean he’s lost this exact same arm once before, under much

worse circumstances. This probably feels like a walk in the park by comparison. After that, though… Well, his prosthetic becomes a bit of a non-entity. Which is so much better than being fuel for inspiration porn or any kind of 'woe-is-me however am I to go on as a hero, broken and defective as I am?' But it is also a bit disappointing. Like, come on, with how much Finn and Jake joke around you really expect me to believe that Finn the Human, of all people, wouldn’t integrate amputee humour into

his repertoire? Not even the most basic and well known ‘do you need a hand’ joke? Really? Okay, sure. But, yeah, he spends the rest of… the entire series, almost just running around, being himself, with a prosthetic. Which isn’t exactly a positive. It’s solidly meh on the representation side because, sure, visually it’s representation but functionally it’s like a skin in a videogame. Once the big plot points about it are done and dusted, it’s literally just set-dressing. It’s never addressed ag

ain, we don’t see him take it off… ever that I can recall, we don’t see any maintenance, hear about what his life is like with it it’s just. There. Which would be fine for a background character, but he’s literally one of the main characters. How hard would it have been to show him doing some basic maintenance on the arm in the background of a scene in the tree house? Or just taking it off for bed? Just inserting literally any small touch that would make it seem more like a real, tangible part o

f the world? But nope. It’s just. There. Aaallll the way up until the finale. Which is just… great. Listen, I love the finale so much, it’s so good. But what I want to talk about here, is when Finn, Ice King, and Betty get swallowed up by GOLB. On the way in, Finn’s arm detaches for the first time since he got it at the beginning of season eight. Then, GOLB starts to digest them all. Meaning they’re getting reverted to their truest selves. Betty gets turned back into the woman she was before she

became utterly consumed by her quest to cure Simon of his magical crown induced Alzheimer’s and/or dementia allegory and Ice King… Well, Ice King ceases to be. He becomes Simon again, his memory returns to him and he is freed of the Crown’s grasp. But what’s really interesting to me, for the purposes of this video, is what happens to Finn. Or, rather, what doesn’t happen. Because he doesn’t change. Finn goes into GOLB’s stomach sans-prosthetic, just himself with his stump and no idea if he’ll l

ive through this. And nothing happens. When being digested back into his truest self he stays the same. His arm does not regrow, because this, right here, right now, stump and all, is Finn the Human’s truest self. It would have been so easy to “fix” him here. To assumed that of course his truest self wouldn’t be disabled and give him his original flesh arm back. But they didn’t! Because Finn the Human is disabled, end to story. He’s been disabled since he was… sixteen? Seventeen? Depending on ho

w you want to count it. He will be disabled the day he dies. And he is completely and utterly at peace with that. After his arm gets lost on the way into GOLB’s stomach he doesn’t get a new one for the rest of what’s left of the finale either. He just hangs out with his stump. When the other humans, his bio mom included, sail to Ooo he runs to greet them sans-prosthetic. In the second episode of Distant Lands, when we see him as an adult, he’s hanging out with no prosthetic in sight. Just chilli

ng at a party with his stump out and a memorial tattoo for Jake on his chest. I know this seems like a weird thing to harp on but it’s so, so rare that we’re allowed to see something like this. Just a character hanging out without their prosthetics. Which, admittedly, I hadn’t even realised until I watched this and realised I’d never seen it before. The next time we see Finn with a prosthetic is in Together Again when he’s an old man and has kicked the bucket. And when he’s allowed to pick liter

ally whatever form he’s ever had over his myriad lifetimes he picks his teenage self post-amputation. Mr. Fox: This is what you're goin' with, huh? Finn: Yeah, it's recognisable. It’s just… it’s so nice to have a character who’s disabled and so utterly chill with it while still noting that they are disabled. Yes, there were some rough patches. Almost all of seasons six and seven, as well as the long void of meh leading up to the finale, but god did they pick up speed at the very end there. All i

n all Finn is… njeh, representation wise for the vast majority of the main series, but honestly I at least am more than willing to forgive that in light of how clearly they showed that’s it’s literally just that easy not to fuck shit up horribly, and for being one of the first pieces of media I’ve seen where a character is allowed to be chill and accepting of his disability. Like I thought I was chill with my body before this, but seeing Finn just… absolutely vibing out, dancing around with no s

hirt and no prosthetic introduced me to a new level of chill I can only strive for. Thanks for watching this video. If you liked it consider liking it and maybe subscribing, I will be back here Thursday after next. Bye. [rustic music]