Maelle

I think about this so much, and I need to finally get all my thoughts out. 

So it’s absolutely no secret that PB isn’t a good person to anyone who’s watched even a few episodes of the show. But how far does that go?? 

I do think it’s incredibly interesting that Adventure Time dives into the reality of, if immortals do exist -especially in a post apocalyptic setting like Ooo- that it would be extremely hard for them to be good. Just pure lawful good. Another thing i find interesting is that lawful good doesn’t quite exist in Adventure Time? Even Finn can’t fit in that category which is a conversation for another post. 

I adore the conflict between Phoebe and Bonnie, because it really does show the differences between the two characters. Phoebe is the flame king, who’s symbol is to be evil. The flame kingdom is evil. But she’s not. The candy kingdom is the direct opposite, being sweet and bubbly on the outside, but on the inside…

In The Cooler, Bonnie directly admits to this. “I’m PB. I spy on everybody. No big D.” She knows she’s not the perfect princess on a high pedestal that she put herself on. She is a deeply, deeply, fucked up person.

My good friend pointed something out to me a few months back when we were watching her title episode. Even as a child, she’s very… well…

The use of the word “pliable” stuck out to us because… yeah… what? 

I don’t think Bonnie is evil. I don’t even think she’s a bad person. Adventure Time is very good at depicting evil and showing that evil. The Lich, for example, is the living embodiment of evil. In The Comet, the Catalyst Comet says it embodies all that is good and evil, showing The Lich on screen for that segment, but nothing for the “good” segment which I’ve always found notable. 

This image used for Gumball’s ambitions is also something I don’t think should be brushed under the rug. I know Gumball and Bonnie are very different characters since F&C is opposite not just genderswapped, but I still think it’s of note. 

We see PB grow a lot over the course of the show, but we also see the people around her change their perception of her. Finn is a major example. In the first few seasons, he sees her as this untouchable goddess, but you can see his opinion of her change, especially in seasons 9 and 10. And keep in mind, that it was NOT Finn who stopped PB from going to war. It was Shoko. 

We also see that Marceline has to really keep her in check at times; reminding her to have like… basic empathy 

We know that she isn’t proud of her past, and yet continues to make the same mistakes she made hundreds of years earlier. I love her, she’s probably my favorite character. Not just in Adventure Time, but across like… all media. She’s so interesting and well written and there is SO much to dissect.

There’s a scene where an explosion happens, and PB INSTANTLY thinks they’re being raided, and it turns out she puts cyanide gum in emergency places! Because in her head it’s better for the candy people or even herself to die rather than be taken by the raiders! She is very paranoid and probably has PTSD from the past, and this increases fivefold after the Lich nearly kills her.  

What’s sad is that PB’s paranoid, controlling nature is often validated by what we see happen. Disasters are happening all the time, it’s all too big to keep everything safe, she can’t even keep herself safe! 

However when PB learns to relax is when she starts being able to lean on others for help. She’s already doing this over the show by recruiting Finn so that he can do the protecting, I don’t know how long the Candy Kingdom has had heroes but it’s probably been since a little while after the “Obsidian” breakup, and then she learns that ehh, sometimes you have to let your dumb little candy people make their own mistakes. Which comes across as cold but, like, how else are people supposed to learn? 

Then at the VERY END we learnt she made them this way ON PURPOSE because when she was a child she tried to make people more like herself, and it backfired horribly. They weren’t doing what they were “supposed” to do, they resented her for wanting to be a certain way (she was a kid with a brain too big for her boots who didn’t have the maturity to understand this), and then they tried to kill her - PB’s first sting of betrayal. I think this shaped her considerably, she found solace in an environment that she could control after so much chaos, and even though she tried to hold onto her softer nature and desire for family, it eventually got grinded out of her. 

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caitvi

the dictatorship leaving caitlyn’s body when she sees her girl wearing bandages as a shirt