#Bonnie does not live in a society until she accidentally creates one

[sickgraymeat]

I think that, for a lot of her life, Bonnie is very much unaware that the world is not a fun game. (EDIT: more accurate phrasing might be “that a fun game is not the world.”) I think she puts a lot of unconscious and semi-conscious effort into avoiding reality for her own safety and sanity, but I don’t think she actually tries to use others as pawns. She’s very isolated emotionally speaking (as in she is around a lot of people but rarely makes deep connections with them) and struggles with empathy. She makes things a certain way, it keeps her and her loved ones (okay mostly Neddy) safe, so she sees no reason to change it, even if/when she’s unhappy. This bitch was born with a certain amount of understanding of the living world and how to interact with it, and for a long time, she had no reason to doubt that that was all there was to it. She was a child (emotionally and socially and experientially) who thought she was a grownup simply because she was smart and capable of keeping herself and her brother alive and him content. While Marceline’s emotional growth was stunted at a hugely volatile stage, Bonnie’s was nipped in the bud— in the root, really.

When the loneliness of being a child with adult priorities started to weigh on her, she used a picture of a happy family and the ruins of their home as her entire blueprint for interpersonal relationships. These people are grownups, so they will take care of me. That’s how it works because I read that somewhere.

Can you imagine the shock she must have felt when she first met Finn and Jake? Jake lets his baby brother play with swords and go on dangerous quests, sometimes even on his own?? Can you imagine, then, what Jake must have told her? Finn is a scrappy kid who will play outside in this fucked up world no matter what we do. He’s safer with the ability to defend himself than he would be if he never faced danger. He’s not much like Neddy. Not all people who fill the same roles are much like each other (still a relatively unfamiliar concept to her). Finn loves fairytale stories and grandeur and helping people— he’s like Bonnie. So yes, she will play knight and princess with him, because it keeps them both safe, and because it’s fun! It’s her chance to be kind of like a kid, and there are even some threats (IK) that are easy to delegate because they won’t hurt Finn the way they hurt her! But she’ll also protect him, even if it’s just by allowing him to train and sending him on missions she knows he can handle. Even if her protection hurts him and/or other people.

You’re fighting the knight, you’re seeking the dragon’s hoard, you’re trying to vanquish the demon. You don’t stand a fucking chance with the princess watching you, because unlike them, she’s not worried about being consistent or happy or good. She doesn’t even know what good is.