Bubbline

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About

Bubbline refers to the ship between the characters Princess Bubblegum and Marceline in Adventure Time. After first being teased in Season 3 of the show, the show made the ship canon in the finale, when the two characters kissed.

Origin

Adventure Time first teased romantic tension between Princess Bubblegum and Marceline in Season 3, Episode 10 of Adventure Time, "What Was Missing,"^[1] which aired September 26th, 2011.^[2] In the episode, Marceline sings a song called "I'm Just Your Problem" which hinted at a romantic tension between the characters (shown below). Furthermore, Princess Bubblegum later reveals that she wears a shirt Marceline gave her as pajamas.

[This video has been removed]

Spread

The ship had been talked about fans prior to the show teasing it. The oldest extant fanfiction on Archive of Our Own^[3] is dated May 6th, 2011. However, all subsequent fanfictions on the site are dated after the airing of "What Was Missing." Fan art depicting the characters as a romantic couple has long proliferated on sites like Tumblr, Twitter, and DeviantArt (examples shown below).

On May 26th, 2016, YouTube Marcella Howard published a compilation of moments between Marceline and Princess Bubblegum showing how their apparent romantic relationship evolved over the course of the show to that point. The video gained over 3.8 million views (shown below, left). On July 15th of the same year, channel AreTheyGay? posted a video discussing the characters' relationship on the show, gaining over 1.7 million views (shown below, right).

On September 3rd, 2018, in Adventure Time finale, the ship was made canon when the two characters kissed (shown below).

[This video has been removed]

The moment was celebrated by fans and covered by publications including Nerdist,^[4] Newsweek,^[5] and Comicbook.com.^[6]