#character foils

For example, their present approaches to romantic relationships.

When we look back at the later seasons of Adventure Time, I think it’s pretty clear that Finn’s potential romantic interest was greatly deemphasized, to the point where by the end of the series and going into Fionna and Cake, I feel like Finn is simply no longer interested in romance the way he was in the early parts of the series. Hence his continued casual, on-and-off relationship with Huntress Wizard.

By contrast, it seems that Fionna has much more overt and conventional romantic yearnings. As of the start of her series, it seems that Fionna’s relationship with DJ Flame was relatively much more recent than Finn’s relationship with Flame Princess, Fionna was later close to being swept off her feet by the Winter King, and most recently seems to have developed a very obvious crush on Hunter.

And this contrast gets even more interesting when we start analyzing Fionna’s relationships and how they also contrast to Finn’s. As in, it seems like it hasn’t just been the genders that have been flipped, but the relationship dynamics have been switched around as well.

Whereas Finn was a manipulative asshole to Flame Princess, it looks like DJ Flame was the insensitive jackass to Fionna. And I think it is very easy to imagine much the same reversal happening with Fionna and Hunter compared to Finn and Huntress Wizard. Indeed, I think we may have already seen some hints to it.

You may recall back during the first season, a number of people noted that Hunter actually seemed a fair bit different from Huntress Wizard, namely that he seems much more relaxed, mellow, zen and doesn’t really have the unhinged hyperfocus that we see from HW.

The funny thing is, now I can’t help but think Hunter’s whole vibe feels less like Huntress Wizard, and more like late-series Finn. Heck, his body-type even has a vaguely similar build to Finn by the time of Fionna and Cake! Which in turn plays perfectly into Fionna’s clear parallels to Huntress Wizard this season.

And when we look back at when Finn and Huntress Wizard kinda-sorta hooked up at the end of Flute Spell, I think we get a VERY interesting setup:

While Finn admits that he was very much had a yearning for HW, it is Huntress Wizard who makes the much more overt expression of her own yearning for Finn, and may indeed have even had the stronger affections. And after HW goes on her whole ‘I think hard meat don’t get eat’ spiel, it’s Finn who elects to keep their relationship lowkey and casual with that whole ‘Take it easy, Huntress Wizard’ line.

So I think it’s all too easy to imagine that Fionna and Hunter will get their own version of this scene, except with the positions switched. After all, we’ve already seen that Fionna has a much more clear and overt crush on Hunter, so it only makes sense that she could make the first move just like Huntress Wizard did.

Except that in the context of Fionna and Cake’s setting, I feel like this could all go a lot WORSE for Fionna than it did for Finn. After all, Fionna doesn’t have that engrained fear of getting close to people that let Huntress Wizard be much more accepting of a casual fling.

As in, with a combination of Huntress Wizard’s aloofness and late-series Finn’s disinterest in romance, I think it is actually all too easy to imagine that Hunter drops an ‘I just want to be friends’ on Fionna following any kind of big confession. Likely even complete with an echo of Finn’s own words as Hunter says “Take is easy, Fionna.”

After all, we still have the intro showing both DJ Flame AND Hunter juxtaposed with a VERY upset Fionna, giving a pretty major indicator that Fionna’s crush on Hunter ends BADLY.

And what’s REALLY cool/fun/interesting about all this is that it kind of PERFECTLY sets up Fionna and Huntress Wizard? As in, after all these role-reversals, we are left with Fionna and Huntress Wizard effectively BOTH wanting the SAME THING! They are both left as the ones yearning for a close, emotional and intimate connection with another person, which they can in turn find in EACH OTHER. The only real difference is HW being a lot more repressed/in-denial about it, which is exactly the thing a season of character bonding and romantic setup can break her out of.

"We're not so different, you and I." 🎭🎭🎭

Kris: this part is fairly, obvious, a lot of people have talked about it before, but the dynamic of one character possessing the body of another, and the reveal that the body is still its own person worthy of moral consideration who's capable of being hurt by the possessor. the ending with Pink and her body coming to a compromise that makes them both happy is probably where Deltarune is headed, since, while it's happy to point out the way inhabiting a person as your video game avatar can hurt them, UT/DR is generally a bit more savvy and smart with it's commentary to end with a point of "it's morally evil of you to play a video game" so an ending about how a balance can be struck makes a lot more sense

Susie: so, Susie is probably the member of the fun gang who's parallels are the least obvious, but I do think they're also present. Both Susie and Pink are people using the dark worlds as a means of escapism, which has been fairly standard as a metaphor for the whole game. But chapter 5 takes this detail one step further by revealing that Susie has taken to living in the dark world when not hanging out with Kris. Both Susie and Pink are very close to abandoning the Light World, abandoning reality altogether in order to escape the real difficulties that plague them. For Susie it's a difficult (or perhaps non-existent) home life and the way she's perceived as a no good trouble making jerk by the people of Hometown. For Pink, it's being stuck in a body that doesn't reflect her inner self, that makes her miserable, and presumably being perceived as having a gender that doesn't actually line up with her internal identity. Especially since Pink isn't actually "close" to abandoning the Light World, she's actively trying to abandon the Light World, because, unlike Susie, she seemingly doesn't have any bonds or friendships strong enough to make reality bearable for her. In this way, Pink is a more tragic version of Susie, who can only enjoy life when completely immersed in escapism.