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fawn-tongues · 13 days ago

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a distillation of adolescent rage within bonnie

as promised, here's a bit of an analysis of bonnie, specifically of how much their character is defined and fueled by anger, where that anger is coming from, and how much exactly of it is genuine and how much is there just to feel a bit more safe and a bit less confused. because man, bonnie is so well-written, it needs to be talked about more, and this aspect of them is especially handled really well

i also love them deeply, there's that. okay let's go team

to establish the facts: bonnie being angry is really the first thing we learn about them, and what siffrin's first association with them is at the point where we meet the party. it's even in their first memory's description. see? right there.

and i mean, they have a full right to be, don't they? the country is in a crisis. and while they've grown close to the rest of the party, the reason they're traveling with them in the first place is because they had to run away from their town, which they probably don't remember ever leaving beforehand, and leave their sister behind because she got frozen in time.

this is some scary stuff, especially for a kid, whose peace of mind relies on stability and familiarity. any turmoil introduced into even something as small as a daily routine can seriously mess them up, much less a separation from their one trusted guardian and a displacement of such a degree. i shudder to think what their thought process was when they were running from the curse before siffrin spotted them and the party took them in - they must've been so scared. i can't think about that too long or i feel like crying tho let's move on ok

bonnie is obviously mad at the king. they're so angry. well, who wouldn't be? he's the cause of all this. they want vengeance, they want justice, they want to help take him down! and doing only things they're limited to by the adults in the group feels like it's not enough.

this is a bit of a sidenote but this conversation hints at just how anxious bonnie's attachment style is. we know nille ran away with them from home and are given not much detail besides that, if only because bonnie was tiny and doesn't remember much of that, but both the fact that you don't have to remember something for it to shape the way you are and the fact that nille is probably pretty busy keeping both herself and her little sibling alive may be the reasons for bonnie's fear of abandonment and need to be useful

bonnie's entire friendquest stems from them needing to feel like they're contributing more, that's why they ask siffrin to teach them how to fight. and they ask siffrin specifically because they, despite their strained relationship at the moment, hold him in high regard and trust him to say if something is actually off-limits because, in their mind, he doesn't baby them needlessly.

that's rare for a kid, to not be overly coddled.

ok, back on track from the attachment style tangent, rise rise rise where is your rage back on

bonnie is even more mad at the king when they finally are facing him. and he's crying and despairing, and having the gall to act all pathetic. and bonnie can't take that. they have been so brave, keeping it together this entire time, and this guy, the cause of all this despair, dares to act like that? what gives him the right?

kids often default to expressing simpler emotions they can fully process and understand when an unexpected feeling corners them or when their defense system kicks in and deems an emotion too harmful to fully experience; they round up to the closest emotion they can and go with that. bonnie is, of course, angry, but they're also full of fear about everything that's happening that's getting tuned out for their own self-preservation, and they feel a lot of indignation and confusion about this adult that doesn't even have the decency to have his shit together to the same degree bonnie does. bonnie doesn't understand him or why he did what he did, and it feels unfair that they were staying strong and the king can just fall apart like that. but anger is easier, so it all gets rounded to that.

recognizing the layers of bonnie's emotions and how one is caused by another is key to understanding them as a character. but honestly, the king isn't the strongest example we've got to show this, however - siffrin is a better one.

we're introduced to bonnie with them acting distant towards siffrin. only in act 1 are we able to experience what the natural dynamic between those two has been ever since siffrin lost their eye, and it's genuinely a little heartbreaking. it's a lot of siffrin being awkward and jumpy, unsure how to approach bonnie, and bonnie being huffy and disconnected, not really playing into the conversation.

things are tense and neither of them is equipped to diffuse the situation. it's so, so sad because context clues tell us they used to be close - siffrin was the first one to call bonnie "bonbon" but he doesn't do that anymore, bonnie avoids even just eye contact with him, and the way they're acting is clearly something siffrin believes to be a sign of bonnie decidedly not liking them anymore.

(this "being hated" is a surprise tool that will help us later)

while we don't know why things are the way they are at first, we later learn that it's because siffrin doesn't see getting hurt while protecting bonnie as a big deal. and bonnie is upset that he got really, really seriously hurt to the point of losing an eye and he's just waving it off. there's a few things at hand here that go into bonnie's seemingly simple reaction.

the issue here largely comes from siffrin's avoidance of talking about their internal state. because they waved things off, not wanting to talk about it, bonnie didn't have the chance to talk things through either, and process them healthily. the guilt, fear and sadness stemming from someone you care about getting hurt because they kept you safe all go unaddressed.

additionally, there's a cognitive distortion that kids often suffer from where they think everything happening is their fault, even when they were in no way involved in causing it, may play a part here. because their world is just so small, if kids can't pin the blame on something else (since it may be something they're not aware of or too vague), it doesn't compute, so they immediately place the blame on themselves.

there's of course an additional doom spiral of bonnie acting closed off, siffrin taking it as them hating him, and bonnie taking that as siffrin drifting away, and the cycle perpetuating because no one in the party wants to budge into this. everyone is allergic to communication.

the crux of it is, bonnie isn't really angry at siffrin, not in the way they are at the king. it's just easier for their preteen brain to categorize what they're feeling as anger, as a defense mechanism, and point those emotions outwards instead of keeping them inside. it's easier to lash out than regurgitate those feelings and let them eat away at them. so they act out, and scream, and call siffrin stupid.

and we have one than one example of bonnie lashing out with anger because that's the easiest option. it's certainly easier than figuring out what emotions they're exactly feeling and dealing with them without admitting they're a kid that doesn't understand how to do it alone.

among them is of course the way they act when they overhear the others talking about what to do if anyone dies, and the connected rotten adults event. after that safe room, bonnie is remarkably closed off, and if you go to the poem room, they read the book on funerary rites and then pointedly pretend to not do so when asked what they're doing.

it's an incredibly exemplary interaction, i think. because they're surprised, we get an almost step by step for their thought process, and it goes a bit like this:

i didn't mean for you to see me look at this and i want you to not know about it -> stop talking like you know what i was doing because i don't want you to know about it -> i want you to think it's nothing important so that you're not more interested -> i'll tell you i'm okay because that may make you think you don't need to look -> it's not working, so i'm going to tell you directly to stop looking at what i'm doing, or at me, because, again, i don't want you to know i'm in distress -> i'm feeling a lot of things so i need to expel them in some way, "shut up" -> this is isn't working, i need to deflect and give you something else to focus on

this avoidance and giving over the reins to anger instead of processing anything is something bonnie resorts to a lot when overloaded by a lot of different emotions they can't deal with

in bonnie's mind, talking about it is bad because it's distressing, and scary, and makes them think of awful scenarios they don't want to come true, and not talking about it means not feeling all that, and that's surely better. there's also that defense mechanism at work, the externalizing of negative emotions and pointing them outward instead of letting them hurt the inside. and it kicks in on full throttle when siffrin tries to comfort bonnie.

anyone who's been in an adolescent age in their life can recognize this emotion. wanting someone to just go away, leave you alone, stop talking about something or doing something. to bonnie, if you don't talk about something, it's not real, and siffrin comforting them a. anchors the cause of their state in reality, b. confirms they don't have everything together because they needed comforting in the first place. and that's no good! so they act out. it's like a deimatic behavior, a tactic to scare off something that you would otherwise have no choice but to give in to. they're not unlike a cat hissing and puffing up to seem bigger. you know those spicy kitten videos where they just do firecracker noises at a human hand closing in on them? yeah.

and it works!! to an inordinate degree because the object of it was siffrin who a. is extremely prone to believing people hate him, b. entered a time loop because he cares so much about these people and staying with them. told you that surprise tool would come back. in bonnie's defense, people usually don't rewind time when you do that, and just back off until your emotional state is calm enough that you can talk without feeling like imploding.

it's alright, siffrin just needs enough time to assemble their own thoughts before approaching bonnie again. and when he does, we see how to overcome the obstacle of an adolescent attempting to avoid a conversation concerning unpleasant feelings.

siffrin just gives bonnie space to experience those big feelings safely and explains calmly why something happened in the first place. when they try to avoid a conversation, he just gives them time to think about it instead of giving them any sort of pep-talk, and they talk it out calmly, and make a promise to reassure bonnie that they're both gonna keep each other safe. siffrin genuinely does a remarkable joke here. no one does it better than them nothing awful will ever happen. fans of love and friendship don't think too hard about end of act 3

to drive the point home, we get a bit of an awful reprise of bonnie lashing out as a self-defense tactic in act 5 because they're overwhelmed by just how upset siffrin made them by risking getting hurt on purpose just so they could be stronger. they do the same thing as before, resorting to throwing out hurtful words to scare off the source of all those intersecting negative feelings, and, since they can now, run away.

it needs to be understood that bonnie is not a kid pointlessly angry at nothing in particular and everything around them. their anger is in direct response to too many things happening at once and them having trouble processing all of it, and instead resorting to simplifying their emotions into one very primal one, and expelling it outwards in a form of them lashing out. they're going through an already confusing time of changes you're forced to go through during your adolescence - and a national curse-related crisis is not helping. when given the tools and space to process in an environment they feel is safe, they're not nearly as wrathful.

i guess the tl;dr is this - while they have a bit of a fiery personality and some of their rage is fully justified, bonnie for the most part acts out in anger because it feels like it's keeping them safe and allowing them to not bottle in things that are too confusing to them; it's already a scary world out there for a preteen entering the world of more complex emotions, and being far away from your sister and mid-way through a national crisis is making it even worse.

it might be a bit less noticeable because they spend most of the game upset at siffrin, so we don't see a lot of their sweeter side in one-on-one conversations as much, but honestly, they're such a sweet kid. so cute too, they're extremely endearing. it's no wonder the party is hell-bent on protecting them no matter what.

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