#and we go to fionna and cake and. hes Okay. hes living a normal life seemingly unburdened by all the problems of ooo

[a-caterpillars-world]

you're gonna be ok, kid

don't tag as ship

[skipppppy]

I still think the most tragic part about Betty’s character is she might’ve actually been able to save Simon and stay together if she hadn’t jumped into the future. We know that he only became the Ice King because he kept wearing the crown despite what it was doing to him. And for a good chunk of time he was so devastated about losing her that he didn’t value his own life enough to resist putting it on again. When PB and Marceline go into the labyrinth they learn that some people (like Santa) had only put on the crown once, gone a little crazy, but still retained most of their sanity and lived relatively normal lives. Even after a few years of wearing the Crown (in Simon and Marcy), he’s still mostly there, and only goes crazy when he puts it on. It STILL takes another 4-5 years of him wearing it for him to decide he’s too far gone to be around Marceline without hurting her. If Betty had stayed she might’ve convinced him to get rid of the crown after he wore it the first time and prevented any further suffering- he would’ve lived with the condition in its most manageable form. They could’ve been okay. They could’ve been happy. Her love for him, her need to save him might’ve been the very thing that ruined him in the first place.

But then they might’ve just died in the Mushroom war if that happened. Without his Ice Powers he wouldn’t have been able to protect young Marcy or himself. None of them would have made it. Which presents a really fucked up paradox. They all survived in the current canon, but at the worst possible price. I’m SO excited to see what Fionna and Cake does with their characters I just know it’s going to have me sobbing in a heap on the floor

[inbarfink]

Okay, so I already wrote a bunch of stuff about how that scene, although it is really sweet, is also kind of a Bad Sign for Simon - how he refuses to learn the Obvious Lesson from the Winterworld adventure (that being the Ice King again is probably a really really bad idea). But I want to talk about it also a little more about what it means for Fionna’s character as well. 

Because while sitting around and wallowing in self-loathing is probably bad for Fionna, especially after being told that she shouldn't be allowed to exist, and Simon is right to try and get her out of her funk. It's also still worthwhile for Fionna to have some introspection about the Consequences of Her Actions. Because she and Cake really did not consider them at all at first. They have a sense of morality and an instinct towards heroism, but they also tend to kinda forget the fantastical worlds they visit don’t exist entirely for their fantasy and have kind of a Protagonist-Centered-Morality fallacy. 

Most obviously you can see it in the market in Ooo. How Cake, in her excitement, damaged and hurt and even killed

A bunch of innocent marketgoers without even noticing. And then Fionna immediately jumped to Cake’s defense against these ‘weirdos’, who were actually just normal kinda-righteously-angry Oooian citizens.

It’s actually very similar to the whole Winterworld situation. Fionna’s assumption that she’s automatically the hero and protagonist of the story and black-and-white view of the situation and her tendency to kick ass first and ask questions later meant that she just recklessly injured a lot of innocent people.

(It might’ve been worse actually cause at least in Winterworld she was at least manipulated by an evil Wizard)

Fionna and Cake clearly have a great potential for heroism, but they do need to be a bit more considerate of the situation and people around them. And it does make sense considering that from their perspective - they’ve been living a very ordinary life up until now (and Cake was literally an animal. A very clever animal, but still not bound by the same standards of morality as the talking animals in Ooo). Action and adventure and fantasy stuff has been purely the realm of daydream and video games for them - and Fionna literally speaks about it in these terms.

(also, Fionna's Main Character Syndrome was undoubtedly validated when God literally told her that she was created to be the main character of her universe)

So yeah, it takes them some time to really process how to be heroes - they need to grapple with questions that Finn and Jake already kinda dealt with seventeen years ago. And actually a lot of those; how to resolve a situation without necessarily using violence, when does a 'villain' actually deserve sympathy and kindness, the importance of the larger context of any given conflict... their confrontations with Ice King all played a big part in that. It was never just him, but he was still a very major part.

And for Fionna and Cake right now, learning these lessons require some amount of personal introspection. So while it was a sweet attempt at comforting, I dunno if Simon’s little ‘the only problem with that universe is that this Alternative Me was terrible because he didn’t even acknowledge or remember Betty as the love of our life and the light of my entire universe’ thing is actually Good. 

I’m not quite sure Simon is the best person to teach Fionna and Cake heroism 101, because he is so focused on the Crown Quest as the thing that brings back Meaning to his life, and because his fatherly instincts just kinda go “Sad Young Person???? MUST GIVE COMFORT!” and also on account of the kidnapping.

I’m sure Fionna is going to become the heroine she dreams about eventually, it’s just going to be a bumpy ride. The best we can hope for is that they accept Simon’s comfort, that she doesn't start believing that she is nothing but an Error for the entire universe like the Scarab claims, but don’t necessarily listen to all of Simon's his words either.