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Oh my glob! “Adventure Time” actor Olivia Olson confirms Marceline and Princess Bubblegum dated

Rise up, you Bubbeline shippers! Take heart, you lovers of Sugarless Gum! Olivia Olson, voice of Adventure Time‘s Marceline the Vampire Queen, recently confirmed at a fan event that Princess Bubblegum and Marceline totally dated. To anyone with working eyeballs, it’s been pretty obvious for a while that the surly vampire and the nerdtastic Candy Kingdom ruler are crazy in love with each other, but it’s always nice to hear that showrunner Pendelton Ward is putting that out there on purpose.

There are lots of videos from the event, but this one is my favorite because of the fan’s on-camera reaction: If you can’t watch the video, or just want to copy and paste her answer all over Tumblr, here’s the full text of what she said:

I was at the studio on Tuesday and Pen was actually there because he was recording for Lumpy Space Princess [crowd goes wild!] and I wanted to ask him a lot of questions, because he’s trying to write the book and stuff, so I wanted to pick Pen’s brain a little bit. And he says, “Oh, you know they (Marceline and PB) dated, right?” And I said, “Wellll, that’s what I figured from all the creepy fan art.” [crowd goes wild again!] And I said, “Are they going to do it on the show at all, or can we say anything about it in the book?” And he’s like, “I don’t know about the book, but in some countries where the show airs, it’s sort of illegal.” So that’s why they’re not putting it in the show.
And then Tom Kenny, in his Ice King voice, said: “It was illegal here until 2013, for god’s sake!”

There have been rumors swirling around for years that the Adventure Time creative team has gone as close to the edge as Cartoon Network will allow them to go with PB and Marceline. Most recently, in the graphic novel Marceline and the Scream Queens, Princess Bubblegum goes on tour as a roadie for Marci’s band, and the two of them get closer than ever, with Bonnibel finally responding to Marci’s jealous overtures by explaining how important Marci is to her.

And then in last summer’s “Sky Witch” episode, PB retrieves Marci’s teddy bear, Hambo, by trading a t-shirt Marci gave her to a witch that collects sentimental affection. “The physic resonance on Hambo is nothing compared to this baby,” the witch says as Marci and PB fly back home with Hambo safely in hand. (PB sleeps in the shirt, p.s., and wears it under her princess clothes and inhales the scent of it when she wakes up in the mornings.)

I hope Pendleton Ward & Co. will be able to push Cartoon Network out of their comfort zone with PB and Marci. The argument that showing a same-sex relationship in a cartoon is “too adult” is just crazy. There’s nothing “too adult” about the dozens of Disney princesses falling in love with princes. And there’s nothing “too adult” about the princess of Candy Kingdom falling in love with another girl. It’s as disingenuous as it is reductive to imply that queer relationships are only about how two same-gendered people have sex. No five-year-old on earth singing “Part of Your World” and then turning around to ask her mom what kind of sex positions Ariel and Prince Eric are into. Love is the most popular theme in mainstream animation. And, dudes, love is love.

Unless you’re Lumpy Space Princess, in which case: love is a lumpin’ battlefield.

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