Grass Head

yeah together again got me alright

Batfam as B99 quotes part 4:

It’s not that good compared to the previous ones but meh, these are the leftovers after all.

Oh god, the surveillance system. 

It’s because of the weird, unsettling creations, her omnipotence through the surveillance system, overall conception of the Candy Kingdom, and alliance to powerful creatures (Marceline), that she’s subtly likened to a god.

The mixture of hushed blues and vibrant golds in the mural in The Thin Yellow Line mark the duality of PB. Her visage in the very end subverts the motherly vibe seen in centuries old paintings. PB instead looms over, ambiguously threatening. Her expression is neither entirely warm nor entirely angry. 

Just like Man’s recurring depiction of God, hence the fear.

I love the muted tones in the background of PB, because it can have many interpretations. Behind the maternal glow of Bubblegum, there’s a whole warehouse of skeletons. You can’t always get a proper read on her. I wouldn’t so much as call it cognitive dissonance because PB’s kindness can exist with terror. There’s no need to pick lanes.

What makes the mural even more flooring is how it foreshadows her status as a god-like figure in the Elements miniseries.

She looms over the landscape, this time her status as a deity practically realized.

She isn’t just limited to her own dominion. She uses Marceline’s song to turn other elemental creatures into her own. She even turns Flame King Phoebe into her saccharine servants (Phoebe, the same person who nearly destroyed Ooo from kissing Finn)!

Despite this, there’s a method to her madness.

Again, PB isn’t a stranger to the questionable. But notice how her actions became even more so after her near-fatal run-in with the Lich in season 2′s finale. Three quotes from Goliad, Burning Low, and Varmints offer crucial insight into PB’s darker, but sadder traits.

“As the Princess of the Candy Kingdom I am in charge of a lot of Candy People. They rely on me. I can’t imagine what might happen to them if I was gone. And after my brush with death at the hands of the Lich *yawn* I realized something. I’m not gonna live forever, Finn. *Whisper* I would if I could…but modern science just isn’t there yet.”

She’s so burdened with the wake-up call to her own mortality that she creates Goliad, at the cost of her mental health. She hasn’t slept for 83 hours here, brushing the air as she tells Finn and Jake of how she conceived Goliad.

“Sometimes you want someone and you want to kiss the and be with them, but you can’t. Because responsibility demands sacrifice.”

I’m pretty sure she was hinting at Marceline, but I digress. PB’s cold nature is proof that she takes the concept of sacrifice to extreme degrees. She’s willing to halt her relationships if it means securing the welfare of her people.

PB operates on a mother-driven anxiety, an ever growing vulnerability she copes with by bottling it up. This comes to a head in Varmints, after her and Marceline trade playful verbal blows at each other. Varmints progresses with PB realizing that no, she doesn’t have everything under control. Marcy takes another playful jab at PB until she finally breaks down with this.

“I tried, I really, really tried. I just…I thought that if I could just shut everything out and focus on work, it would all be ok. And look where they landed me…all I managed to do is push everyone away. I pushed you away. I’m sorry, Marceline. I’ve been a real dinger to you.”

Princess Bubblegum is less an unhinged “war-crimes” scientist and more a mother trying to make the world a better place for her kids at the cost of all other relationships. Phoebe calls her out in The Cooler for her unsettling practices, to which PB shows a degree of repentance from hearing someone actively call her bad. 

Bubblegum is the mom who comes home from long, grueling work days. She resents it, but forces a smile because she doesn’t want to worry her kids. Because if she becomes openly vulnerable, they’ll become worried and vulnerable too. She’s been doing the job for hundreds of years with more and more added onto her plate.