Sugar was encouraged by the creative team to put their own life experiences into the character of Marceline, but when that lead to a planned romantic storyline between Marceline and Princess Bubblegum (yes, Princess Bubblegum, this is, after all, a kid’s fantasy show), Sugar says, the executives at Cartoon Network slammed the door: “We were told something along the lines of ‘don’t you understand you work for a company?’ So I began to see where the walls and ceilings were.” Rebecca Sugar, the non-binary artist and storyteller who both worked on Adventure Time and went on to create Steven Universe, says that when they first started on the former in 2010 “don’t ask don’t tell” was still a national policy and legalized same-sex marriage was still five years away. So I’m really excited you brought this up.” Namaari especially, with her well-muscled physique and asymmetrical haircut, feels intentionally designed to catch the eye of a queer audience. Still she was over the moon to be asked about this particular aspect of the film: “I’m obsessed with Namaari and I’m obsessed with Gemma Chan. Tran was eager to add that just because she interpreted the Namaari and Raya relationship as something more than platonic, that wasn’t the official Disney line. But for the company that started touting its “exclusively gay moments” a few years back, and whose characters have long been embraced by queer communities, Raya has felt for many like one step closer to the surface. But though Raya, like Moana and Elsa before her, is a Disney princess who isn’t saddled with a male love interest in the film, Raya and the Last Dragon is the latest Disney offering to stop short of presenting a major character as explicitly queer. Tran told Vanity Fair that when recording her role for the animated film she decided there were “some romantic feelings going on there” between Raya and Namaari. If that sounds more flirtatious than ferocious there’s a reason for it.
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“Hey there, Princess Undercut,” Raya says with a smirk. The two women, both highly trained fighters and, yes, technically princesses, hail from different corners of the fictional land of Kumandra and are fighting tooth and nail to protect their homes. There’s a moment almost exactly half way through Raya and the Last Dragon when the titular Disney princess (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran) strolls out to meet her longtime enemy Namaari ( Gemma Chan) in battle.