Plenty aim to relate to and entertain grown-ups, too. Not all cartoons are cheeky or slapstick not all cartoons are meant to impart lessons to kids who are still figuring out the world. Animation is a medium through which all kinds of stories can be told, including stories as emotionally complicated and textured as those of any prestige drama. That’s not only an unfair assessment, it’s inaccurate. So I want to take that challenge, but I also want to approach it the way you would approach children, because I know I am speaking to a lot of actual children.The connection between cartoons and youth often casts an unfair stigma: that cartoons are for kids, kids who can suspend disbelief to relate to talking to animals or who still believe that magic can exist. I would never want to throw this character into the deep end without the love and support of the Gems because that’s what siblings, parents and people who are there for you have to do. I don’t want to avoid that, I want to have it feel like that but also balance that out with the way then you have to talk to kids that are going through something like that and help them understand it. I think the balance for me is trying to make sure that there’s this harsh element to adulthood that we start to experience when we’re becoming adults. But in real life there are things that you just learn. They’re only going to try and do and show him whatever you would do in front of a kid and show to a kid, and try and tell them. I think I started learning that on Adventure Time and I really feel that now.Ĭonceptually, one of the things that I really wanted to do was because it’s all from Steven’s point of view, the show will always be a kids show because Steven is a kid. The show is so much about relationships between different people and how they affect your life and I feel like that has been happening in my life, with my team, and now that’s part of the show. The crew is amazing and I tried to keep the show really flexible at first so that we could really build it together, and now I think it really is this reflection, not just of the things that I wanted to say, but the things they wanted to say and how I’ve gotten to know them and my relationship with everyone on the crew is really reflected in the show. Everyone on the show really got to do something that felt like their voice, and when I was going into making my own show, that was something that I wanted to accomplish with my team. The more I did something that was personal to me, the more he appreciated it, and that was just a revelation to me. Also the fact Pendleton Ward gave me so much freedom to really express myself inside of his show, and I didn’t really know that that kind of job existed with writing and drawing, and making something to me that felt like my personal work. I always wanted to be a cartoonist and an animator, but I never thought I’d be writing songs. Adventure Time was the first show that I got a chance to write on, and it was the first time anyone gave me a chance to write music for a show, which I never thought would be part of my job. So as much as I want to talk about gender politics and make a cool action show that’s really cool, and a funny comedy show that’s really funny, at the end of the day I really want to do something that’s dedicated to my brother. I think that’s the feeling that I want to give to everyone, the feeling of having an unconditional friend that’s always there for you, because that’s really what he was. It was just me and him and the fact that I associate all that kind of media with getting to spend time with my brother.
I think that that sort of comes with that message and that goal for me, because the two of us growing up were best friends and we would do everything together and nerd out about everything together and it didn’t matter the things that he was into and the things that I was into, we were both sort of fantasy nerds and it seemed just to be this universal thing. I think for me, I’m really telling a story about my little brother, and that’s my goal with the show.