The Adventure Time Nightmare.
Last night's episode of Adventure Time really messed me up, man. "I Remember You" is an eleven minute masterpiece starring the unlikely duo of Ice King & Marceline the Vampire Queen. Remember how Ice King is basically a Lovecraft character, driven mad by the magical Crown of Winter or whatever? How he's just like, Gollum? Well, before he was crazy, he took care of young Marceline, in the haunted ruins of the post-apocalyptic world, a millennium ago. It was a brutal tug on the heartstrings, & it messed me up. In my head, I want the last episode of Adventure Time to start with Finn, asleep in his bed, & I want him to sit up suddenly, fully awake, & say out loud "I'm going to save Simon Petrikov." Heck, it doesn't escape me that if the Ice King took off his blue robe & put on a red one, he'd be Santa Claus, basically. By the way; I've decided that Magic Man is Chaotic Evil; I'd previously argued that he was Chaotic Neutral, while Terra said he was Chaotic Evil. I think that argument is answered in "Sons of Mars." The King of Mars, Abraham Lincoln, also couldn't decide if Magic Man was Chaotic Neutral or Evil, so he sent him to Earth as a test. Magic Man failed, & the King of Mars judged him fit for death. I will abide by the judgement of the King of Mars; Magic Man is Evil. Anyhow, the episode really wormed into my brain, & I had a nightmare about Adventure Time. A horrifying series finale. I compared it to what it was like having a companion leave or die on Doctor Who, but worse. I can't really stitch the narrative together perfectly, because it was a dream, but I will try.
Jake is going to die. The Croak Dream is coming; we know that Jake is going to die. The audience knows Jake will die as soon as he sees The Pickup Truck; meanwhile, Finn-- who knows Jake is going to die but doesn't know anything else-- has found a pickup truck & is racing through leaking salt mines under the water, coming to rescue Jake...but bringing his doom. The cave is pitch black; only the interior illumination of the cab light is shown, just all black cell with a little yellow truck interior...& the Banana Man is in the truck bed. Somehow, though, they were separated by time travel; Finn the Last Human was sent back to the world before the Mushroom War, to live out the rest of his life in the last days of the human species. Jake wanted to go save him, but he knew that if he went back to the world before the Mushroom War, there would be less magic, & he would slowly fade, lose his magic, & become a regular dog. To prevent this, he sought out like, several alternate universe versions of Magic Man & got them to give him extra magical "juice" so he could survive the banality of the modern world a little bit longer. A sort of Planescape-esque urban adventure.
Along the way, everyone was worried about The Twister. The Twister was a curse, like a disease, that would start with you hunching your shoulder, over the course of days your spine would kink, & then after a little while your neck would be pinned at a ninety degree angle, ever increasing, until finally it snapped & then you became a zombie, with eyeballs on the end of your fingers. The Twister plagued Ooo & the alternate worlds Jake went to, everywhere. Eventually, though, Jake did make it to the pre-apocalypse world, & found Finn in his apartment...as an eighty-year-old man. Because of time distortion, Jake wasn't in time; Finn had grown old on this Earth, & had come to believe that he had suffered from schizophrenia as a kid, imagining magical dogs & candy kingdoms. When he saw Jake he said "Whaaa?" in a very distinct Finn way, & they had a tender reunion. "I'm real, dude, & I love you, bro!" "I love you too, bro!" There was no way to take Old Finn back: he was too old to survive the process, so Jake decided to stay with him, lose his magic, & become a regular dog. They would grow old together in the modern world, die together. "I'm your bro, bro. Of course I'm staying." They hugged...& then there was a sudden sound, a shout of "who are you & why are you in my apartment!" It was...another Old Finn? Suddenly, the Old Finn hugging Jake's eyes had the undead black & red of the Lich, & he snapped Jake's Neck. That was The Twister; it was Jake's death, echoing across space & time, & all the zombies were under The Lich's control. & the only way to stop The Twister...was to nuke the planet. Which is what the Mushroom War was. That is when Jenny woke me up from the nightmare.