{"id":3023,"date":"2015-11-19T15:45:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T21:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3023"},"modified":"2015-11-20T05:03:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T11:03:06","slug":"clarity-and-the-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3023","title":{"rendered":"Clarity and the Comet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the season 6 Adventure Time finale, I’ve seen and heard interpretations about what exactly Finn “is”; most notably in the AT podcast Conversation Parade. You can listen to them talk about it in episode 4, around the 13 minute mark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"S6e27_Comet_nudging_Finn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“…one of the comets as it was revealed in I think it was the season finale… was a blue comet… which was Finn. And it fell to earth and Finn became a butterfly, and then took on many more forms, until he’s ultimately Finn.. which lends the idea that Finn is either a deity or a space alien of some kind. So we gotta grapple with that”<\/em> – John Moe<\/p>\n

So this episode posted on itunes before I was interviewed for episode 7. At the end of my interview, I was compelled to tag a correction regarding Finn-as-cosmic-diety, but something stopped me. Maybe at the time I felt it was the right of audiences to interpret the work. But as time passes, and as I see this crop up over and over, it seems like just an awful misreading. So for my Lodge readers who care about this shit – Finn is not<\/em> a cosmic deity or an alien. Finn is a normal human boy.<\/p>\n

Finn’s soul arrived on Earth by way of a mysterious living comet. But all of our souls arrived on Earth by way of a creative explosion that sent us hurtling through the void. Earth itself is a living, cosmic being, and the souls that inhabit it derived from the same material that formed stars and planets billions of light years away. The theme of reincarnation was used to imply the specialness\/non-specialness of Finn as his soul migrates through time in different identities and meets other incarnations of other souls. Finn is “special” not because in another life he was a glowing pink turd or a butterfly, but because he decided to be great in this moment. Perhaps since he arrived on the catalyst comet, there was some destiny involved, but which came first? The cosmic promise of what he would do on Earth, or the nature of his soul in the first place? What was Finn like before he was carried on the comet?<\/p>\n

Again for the record, Finn is a normal human. But the fact that I have to state that somewhere calls into question the method of writing I used during Season 6; leaving ideas open, not pinning down clear throughlines, or marking narrative paths for the audience. If you’ve been following my thoughts for that past several years, you’re aware of my growing skepticism about typical TV writing, and probably tracked my desire to break away from those prevailing forms.<\/p>\n

So when I see over and over an egregious misreading such as “Finn is either a deity or a space alien” it makes me wonder, “How ambiguous is too ambiguous for television audiences?” The answer is “I don’t know, and it makes me depressed that I possibly can’t take viewers deeper down into the wildest regions of imagination and wonder.” This shit truly bums me out, because I recognize that in the world of TV there is an apparent artistic ceiling. You can play around a lot with conventions and subvert expectations, but taking people out in the wilderness means losing a lot of them.<\/p>\n

ADDITIONAL NOTE (11-20-15): I think I should clarify that I’ve really enjoyed listening to, and participating the Conversation Parade podcast. I’m really just taking issue with one misread that has sort of spread itself around the internet, and what that means (possibly) about how we think critically about television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the season 6 Adventure Time finale, I’ve seen and heard interpretations about what exactly Finn “is”; most notably in the AT podcast Conversation Parade. You can listen to them talk about it in episode 4, around the 13 minute mark. “…one of the comets as it was revealed in I think it was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3023"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3028,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions\/3028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}