Marceline
Marceline (full title: Marceline the Vampire Queen) is one of the main characters in Adventure Time and the main protagonist of the miniseries Stakes.
Marceline is a fun-loving and playful 1,000-year-old vampire queen. Unlike a traditional vampire, Marceline does not need to drink blood to survive; rather, she consumes the colour red, or other similar tints. Marceline is also an avid musician who plays an electric bass guitar, which she crafted from her family's heirloom battle-axe. As of "Come Along With Me", Marceline and Princess Bubblegum have resumed their romantic relationship, and is currently Bonnibel’s girlfriend again.
Physical Description
Body Features
Marceline has light blue-gray skin, crooked fangs, and long, midnight black hair that reaches to her feet. She also sports two marks on her neck, which are the marks of the bite that turned her into a vampire. Her tongue is sometimes bifurcated, like a snake's, but other times looks like a normal human's. This may stem from her shapeshifting powers, allowing her to change its appearance as she pleases.
Identifying Characteristics
Marceline's general appearance, particularly her blue-gray skin, fangs, and pointy ears, is an apparent result of her demonic heritage, and she shares all of these characteristics with her father. From Marceline's maternal side, the episode "Everything Stays" revealed that she possesses genes from a dark-skinned race, although evidently, the phenotype associated with these genes are recessive.
Special abilities
From her demonic father, Marceline inherited the power to absorb people's souls and minor control over fire as shown in evicted's first look at the fire kingdom and her use on candles.[40] It was also implied by her Farmworld counterpart that her half-demon nature extended her natural lifespan, as Farmworld Marceline was able to survive for at least 1000 years, albeit old and withered.
After absorbing the essence of several powerful vampires, Marceline gained several supernatural powers. From The Fool she gained the power to fly; from The Empress the ability to turn invisible; from The Hierophant she gained the power to shape-shift (e.g. taking the form of a bat, a wolf, a reptilian creature, a large tentacled monster and she can even copy the form of other creatures if she has time to study them)[41]; and from The Moon, the ability to rapidly heal.
Marceline is immortal and unaging as a vampire. Meaning, as long as she isn't killed, she could live forever.
She lit up all the candles in Finn and Jake's house with a wave of her fingers.[19]
She can move things using her mind.[19][24] She probably obtained this power from Vampire King, but this hasn't been confirmed.
Marceline can raise the undead to serve her.
Marceline is capable of consuming the color red from an object she bites, while the object itself remains physically unharmed.
She can fire red energy beams from her arms that are able to restrain people.[21]
As a result of absorbing the Vampire King's dark cloud half, she can now communicate with a miniature mental projection of him. During the turmoil of the Gum War, Marceline was able to releases the vampiric essence she absorbed from the Vampire King, transforming into a similar black, cloud-like form. In this state she was powerful enough to defeat one of the creatures created by GOLB.
According to Ward, she is ambidextrous, which explains her ability to play bass with both hands.[42]
Marceline is a very talented musician and songwriter, and is proficient at singing and playing her basses.
Apparel & Accessories
Her main outfit features a dark gray tank top, dark blue pants, and red boots.
Marceline wears different outfits in most of her episode appearances. For example, in "Henchman," she wears a dark violet strapless dress with a dull pink sash, lilac-purple stockings with dark purple stripes and pink heels.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Roughly a thousand years prior to the events of the series, Marceline was born to a demon lord named Hunson Abadeer and a human woman named Elise.
Marceline and her mother both survived the events of the Mushroom War, a mysterious and destructive war that ravaged the earth one thousand years prior to events of the series. One of Marceline's earliest depicted childhood memories is of her living in a trailer with her human mother, who recounts to her the story of how she met her father.[5] Marceline's mother was suffering from an illness, however, attempted to keep it hidden from Marceline as not to worry her. She had her draw a map of the land to get to a secret "club house" where there was supposedly a party happening. However, as Elise's health slowly worsened further, she told Marceline to go to the hide-out on her own, where she was left alone, believing her mother had abandoned her due to her demonic powers.[7] The hide-out had many skeletons of other humans, and their fate is most likely from the same illness Elise was suffering.
During this time, Simon Petrikov—the man who would become the Ice King when he was overcome by the power of his crown—found Marceline in the ruins of a city and gave her a stuffed animal named Hambo to cheer her up; by the events of this episode, she is apparently 7 years old, as stated by Simon.[8][9] The two developed a caring relationship, although the crown ruined Simon's mental health, forcing him to leave Marceline alone.[10][5] During this period in her life, Simon presumably somehow managed to reunite Marceline with her father (possibly by traditionally summoning him),[11] only to be disgusted by his cold and heartless ways. Although she attempted to tolerate his evil and selfish antics, she eventually severed all ties with Abadeer after she discovered him eating fries that she had bought for herself.[12][13]
Becoming the Vampire Queen
In the following years, Marceline roamed the Land of Ooo and eventually befriended a tribe of humans. These humans wore animal hats, presumably to hide the fact they were indeed humans. At first, they were understandably fearful of Marceline, however, after following them for some time, a member of the group, Two Bread Tom, sat down and played the guitar to the few remaining members of their group. Marceline heard this, and sat down behind a bush to play the same song Tom was playing. Because of this, they viewed Marceline in a brighter light, and realized she was just trying to keep them safe. She became their guardian and ally, and she helped them kill vampires, who had taken over much of the land. Marceline soon discovered that, upon killing a vampire, she was able to acquire their unique abilities thanks to her demonic power to absorb souls.[5] The human tribe was attacked by the Vampire King while repairing a boat, and Marceline defended them. However, when she tried to fight the Vampire King herself, he pinned her down and bit her. Although she eventually managed to slay him, she was turned in the process, becoming the last vampire in Ooo.[14]
Roaming the Land
At some point, Marceline met Princess Bubblegum, the sovereign of the Candy Kingdom. Marceline gifted her a Rock T-shirt during a music performance and they became romantically involved.[7] The two would often avoid official royal meetings and explore the Candy Kingdom's elaborate rock candy mining complex, although as time went by and the mounting stress of running the Candy Kingdom became more and more demanding, Bubblegum started pushing Marceline away.[15] This reached its climax when Marceline accompanied Bubblegum to the Glass Kingdom who had asked for her help defeating a dragon attacking their kingdom. However, Marceline didn't take the whole thing seriously and bugged Bubblegum for attention causing her to lash out and tell her to go home. Hurt, Marceline sung an angry song to her about how she didn't care about her or her "stupid Candy Kingdom". Marceline's song managed to defeat the dragon but this signified the end of her and Bubblegum's relationship.[7] The animosity between them would last for many years.[15][16][17]
Later, she began a romantic relationship with a magician named Ash. How they met is still unknown. The two would move into the Tree House, but their relationship would come to an end after Ash sold Hambo, her most prized possession, to Maja the Sky Witch.[12][18]
Marceline eventually comes into contact with Finn and Jake when she forces them from their home. However, she returns it to them after finding the cave they found a better place for her.[19][20] Following this, Marceline tricks Finn into becoming her accomplice. However, Finn soon discovers that Marceline is not evil, but rather fond of mischief and pranks. Soon thereafter, the two develop a friendship.
Personality Characteristics
Vices & Personality flaws
Typical vampiric weaknesses. It is worth noting that while vulnerable to sunlight, as is common in vampire lore, she does not dissolve right away. The nuance to this in the Adventure Time world is that vampires are vulnerable specifically to direct sunlight. Marceline is capable of unrestricted movement on a bright sunny day provided that she shields herself sufficiently, which she usually accomplishes with a combination of a parasol and a large sunhat, sometimes with the addition of full-length gloves to cover her arms. According to Marceline, moving around on a bright day still hurts mildly, comparable to scraping her knee, but she can bear it.
Like typical vampires, Marceline cannot see her own reflection in a mirror.
She has revealed that she cannot digest syrup.[43]
Whenever she doesn’t consume enough red-colored objects, Marceline goes into "feral mode", a state in which she becomes ravenous out of hunger. This rabid state subsides once Marceline consumes a sufficient amount of red.
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