The Fact That This Is 80 Fucking Years Ago But Still Just As Relevant Is Terrifying.

she's so silly i love her so much

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

the doctor says three sips a day will make the visions go away

Bill & Ford & A Book, Oh My!

DISCLAIMER: The Book of Bill has Bill Cipher serving as an unreliable narrator. If we go out trying to say something is "definitively a truth" or "definitively a lie", we're going to keep arguing about it until the heat death of the universe. This is just my own personal interpretation of the source material. If you don't agree, that's fine! Also TBOB spoilers abound.

So it's no secret that interest in the dynamic Bill & Ford have (enemies, platonic, romantic, formerly romantic, whichever way) has really skyrocketed since TBOB's release. Of course, there are the 'easy' culprits to point towards, with Mabel referring to Bill as 'being like a needy ex', and the whole O'Sadley's fiasco (Him literally crying over losing Ford and going "one Sixer, please"? Messy. Messy behavior. Still, I think it goes so much deeper than that.

Bill, being the unpredictable chaos entity that he is, also serves as the main antagonist for a show about family and having close bonds with each other. We don't really need to look into his inner psyche that much, because that's just not what he needed to be doing at that point in the cartoon. He's meant to be a way to divide the Pines, really. And a silly little guy. A silly little obstacle. So, naturally, when it came to Bill's arguably "closest" relationship to someone in the show (Ford), it was very easy to interpret it as Ford being tricked by a completely apathetic Bill, who was just using him as a rung on the ladder. And I do want to stress that Ford and Bill's physical actions remain fairly consistent throughout interpretations, and focusing on the fact that Bill badly hurt Ford is important, so if that's how you still see it, then fine by me! No harm no foul!

But I think the relationship, their story, their tragedy just becomes so much more interesting with the lens The Book of Bill has presented. Again, Bill is lying to the character of "the reader", so we can't trust it as a completely unbiased source. But we can speculate on where the "truth" is between these lies.

First of all, Bill's backstory was that he destroyed his home dimension- we knew that already. But now, with the extra content we have about it, we see something interesting- that Bill's backstory mirrors Ford's to an uncanny degree.

Both of them champion their intelligence, although they highlight how it set them apart from others, as well as highlighting their own 'rare mutation/birth defect'.

Again, with this self-isolation already spurred on from their "weirdness", but also as a little aside, I would also like to highlight that Bill being 'ready to be one', looking up at the stars, striving to 'reach' them, is a shared motif he has with Ford, who is also associated with space, the stars, and reaching them.

Bill's 'trying-really-quick-to-convince-Ford' fantasy sequence even has him in a field of stars as a sort of "ultimate wish fulfilment". Remember, this is Bill showing Ford something he thinks would win Ford over, at least a little.

(And I'll take a quick time out for this train of thought to point out- hey! Bill admits he sought out most of his other victims, but Ford summoned him, and it took him by surprise! That adds a fun little layer of complexity to everything, don't you think? Another little layer of humanity for this whole mess- Bill didn't expertly seek out the 'perfect victim' or anything, it was just... luck. Some twist of fate.)

Anyways.

Obviously, the intro page to the 'Sixer' section has a ton of red flags galore (I mean, poor guy's literally depicted as a hapless puppet. C'mon, Bill. Not to mention the "OH BOY HE'S ALREADY SO ISOLATED, IT'S PERFECT" thing.). The game we're playing here is not "How quickly can we woobify and excuse Bill"? No, this guy is kind of a terrible companion no matter how you slice it. He's terrible to everyone close to him, because he's a deeply traumatized character who refuses to heal. BUT, the wording here is kinda deliciously intriguing to me. All of humanity is Bill's puppets, his future victims, but to me, it's clear that he holds a fondness for Ford. From "This is what a partner looks like", to "Me and Sixer could be the perfect team", to "He had what I always wanted- fingers" (drawn to his strangeness, maybe?), "He was destined for so much more", "I looked at his futures and giggled", and most stand-out to me, "Society calls these people freaks, I call them Henchmaniacs!"

Going back to the pre-Book of Bill era I was talking about, Bill's offers for Ford to join him were always in a sort of murky territory for interpretation. The first offer could definitely be read as mocking, with the line "WITH THAT SIX-FINGERED HAND, YOU'D FIT RIGHT IN WITH MY FREAKS!" in particular making it seem like Bill was only saying that to rub Ford's strangeness in his face, and the second offer to join Bill being under a new circumstance- that now Bill is desperate and believes Ford is the only one who can help him. But the Book of Bill mentions the idea of Ford becoming a Henchmaniac more than once, and also has Bill upset at losing Ford and claiming "he'll be back", as well as Bill seeming to use "freak" more like a badge of honour, and having previously complimented Ford's six fingers (In the Sixer intro page, he highlights Ford's fingers as a quality he likes, and in the pages about bodies, he states that "humans should have more fingers". To me, that first offer reads more now like Bill being genuine about finding Ford a place among his misfits. ...Although, the moment Ford says no, he does zap him into a statue. So. Y'know. He's still got issues.

(Yeah, again, red flag city. "Just hazing"? Bill, none of what you were doing over there was okay! You might have suppressed everything traumatic that happened to you, but that doesn't mean you can go around traumatizing everyone! Good lord.)

Bill has already been imply to like other characters because they remind him of himself. Pointing towards a connection with a character Bill DOESN'T have a weird undefinable ex-partner thing with... Mabel! Alex has says in multiple official media and interviews that Bill sees a lot of himself in Mabel, and essentially, that he thought Mabeland was the perfect prison because if HE liked all that awesome, uncontrolled chaos over any family or friends, why wouldn't SHE? And we see that again in TBOB. So basically, what I'm saying is that we have two characters to back up the fact that Bill seems gravitated towards humans or other living beings that he views as being 'like him'- beings he can relate to! So, y'know, what does that say about Bill and Ford?

There's also Bill's plans for the reader and "Weirdmageddon 2.0", where he portrays the reader as getting to, like, perch on his arm like a little bird and get their own little crown? And specifically calls out Ford for not going through with things?? Okay, Bill??

AND Ford not only being the only human mentioned on the list of people he "definitely doesn't miss so stop asking", but also having his own category? Alright, man.

Of course, another point to the 'Hey, maybe Bill can actually feel emotions towards humans besides complete and total apathy' club is this page here, which has ALSO been hotly debated! Certainly, we know he's telling the truth about his home dimension being destroyed, and we know that he's lying about the 'monster', but some interpret this scene as Bill not being remorseful at all and playing his reaction up to earn Ford's sympathy. And me, personally, I dunno if I agree. I feel like the specific inclusion of Bill "looking distant, more distant than I'd ever seen him" (Mirroring the fact that he keeps blacking out when thinking about all his large-scale massacres) and him "laughing joylessly", I think this sequence is meant to tell us that Bill actually is being vulnerable with Ford here, it's just hidden under layers and layers of deceit, whether towards himself or Ford or both.

And finally for my Book of Bill collection stuff, there's the stuff that could be read as more romantic in nature. In the 'love' section, Bill claims he doesn't love anyone, but, like-

Come on. You can disagree with me that it's Ford, but he does have exes. And he's clearly not over them. Shrimpy little liar. And then there's the fact that a lot of his hokey 'advice' is stuff he ends up directly doing to Ford.

These rats.

The Love Cage.

The Book of Bill really outlined all that in bold, but in my opinion, it was never an entirely new revelation! Bill seems to hold a preference for Ford over other humans in the show. He shows up in Ford's dreams just to say hi, tease him, and gloat (Mabelcorn) unlike the other two dream appearances he's made (Dreamscaperers, Sock Opera) which were exclusively for business purposes. Unlike every other character that gets exclusively one nickname for their zodiac sign, Ford gets multiple (Fordsy, IQ, Sixer, smart guy, brainiac, the list goes on). Bill asks Ford to join him TWICE, whereas anyone else who tries gets their face rearranged, put in a cage and made to dance, frozen in stone, etc etc. And finally, I think, the most emblematic of Bill's weird, specific relationship with Ford, is that whereas everybody else gets turned into stone, Ford got turned into gold.

Which kinda sums up their whole thing up pretty well? Bill gave him special treatment by turning him into a golden statue (similar to yellow ha ha), always holding him close, but, like... Dude. You still kidnapped a man and turned him into a statue and then threatened to kill his niece and nephew. I don't think it will change his opinion on you if he's the Most Pampered Hostage, Actually. And, of course, I can't emphasize enough that Bill was still incredibly abusive to Ford! It's an unhealthy dynamic! I just don't think that we need to explore the relationships between characters as simply "Well, this character abused the other one, so we shouldn't really think about why or what they feel personally, because what they did was bad, so there". But the fact is, none of my analysis of Bill here changes the fact that the torture happened!

Bill & Ford interest me because they're a tragedy in motion. We can see that Bill and Ford mirror each other in a multitude of ways, and we can see that they both do have positive feelings towards each other at the time they meet, and we see that Bill very desperately wants Ford to be just like him in the unhealthy ways; the ways that make Bill destroy entire universes and compartmentalize it all, because maybe then, he can finally have the companionship he so deeply aches for. Bill and Ford both had tough, lonely upbringings, but Ford moved on from that "I don't need you" mentality. That's what saved him. Bill didn't, and that's what got him where he was in the end. I feel like that's just so much more interesting than Bill just being a flat entity that makes abuse Happen to Ford, just as another Event in his life. I mean, isn't it just SO much more interesting that Ford humanizes Bill, in a way? That Ford makes him- in Bill's own words- "sentimental"? That a chaotic dream demon has regrets and loves and favourites and connections? It's the same thing with Fiddleford & Ford, although, obviously, to a MUCH lesser extent than Bill & Ford. But you get what I mean, right? You know that Fiddleford and Ford are going to undo each other in the end, and the path to that downfall is... it's telling a story! I like the story of it all! I think that's what I've been invested in and intrigued by all these years- the story, the tragedy of Bill and Ford. No matter what form it takes.

(Plus, as tumblr user fordtato pointed out in their own essay (not tagging because this post is messy enough as is oh god), hey, Ford now has two incredibly queer-coded narratives, with one of them being about how he recovered and was able to heal from an abusive relationship. And, well, I think that's just neat.)

Anyways, that's the end of the post. Thanks for reading this long!

shoutout to kal cabbagegunk for providing me the screenshot

not a big fan of AI but this is a top 10 video of all time for me

Simon Petrocov has two hearts, and the very existence of this fact implies that Golb possesses an infinite glitch, specifically when it comes to organs. Let me explain my horrific thought process.

During a spell, Ice King, trying to "steal Princess Bubblegum's heart," accidentally brought his own heart to life. If you watched the early seasons of Adventure Time, you probably remember him. Ricardio, the smooth talking heart.

But the one thing I didn't realize was that Ricardio actually never fused back with Simon, meaning that up until Come Along With Me, Ice King literally didn't have a heart. But once he was broken down by Golb, presumably, he was reset back to a time where he did have a heart. Because yknow, humans need those.

So basically, my thoughts are that it'd be insanely easy to harvest organs in Ooo if you ever came across Golb, and yknow, could survive that encounter without being zapped into puzzle pieces.

Maybe it only worked for Simon because Betty wished to have the power to be able to keep him safe at any cost, and maybe that means Simon literally doesn't have a heart anymore, and my whole theory is debunkable... But if that IS how it works: infinite organ farming.

matching not-a-tattoo ideas for you and your twin!

so that mention of brands in the new book huh

Yknow, at first, when I saw the latest episode, I had been a bit disappointed with the route that they took Simon and Betty's romance; but after thinking it over quite a bit, I think I appreciate the route they took, despite how differently it makes me see the characters. Sometimes, the right thing for a story isn't always the best thing, just like how in life, not everyone makes the right choices all the time. Emotions make life beautiful, but they also muddle things up.

I've never been one for a teacher x student type romance. That whole power imbalance always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Since Simon was just a guest speaker, it wasn't quite the same, but I think a lot of people, including myself, saw those parallels. But, I think the whole idea of unhealthy/obsessive/codependent love has always been centeral to their relationship.

Unlike some may assume, the unhealthiness doesn't stem from that part, though. Yes, there's a small age gap. Yes, Simon made a ton of mistakes. But with further analysis, nothing about it is painted as your stereotypical incredibly unhealthy teacher/student ship. Instead, it's their issues and strengths that create chaos.

There's nothing about their relationship that can be considered grooming, and I say this as someone who's personally been groomed. They didn't get into a relationship until after Betty tried to leave the second time, and there's absolutely nothing about Simon that screams "predator." You know how he is with Marcy and Finn, and pretty much every child he comes in contact with (when he isn't throwing away their favorite books). Hell, even Ice King had standards and lines he wouldn't cross. Their issues stem from their insecurities as professional nerds, and as two broken, lonely, people.

When you're a student, especially one who's passionate about the subject matter you're learning about, you can't help but put your teachers (the good ones, I mean), on a pedestal. They're these untouchable gods who have somehow cracked the answers to questions you haven't even asked yet and who are there to guide you. And as a teacher, you want nothing more than to see a student thrive, be happy, and enjoy your lessons. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing your student take your lesson, and run with it, and go farther than you ever could. From the start, these two towed the lines of codependency.

Simon was laughed at by his fellow professors and other archeologists for believing that the Enchiridion existed; which couldn't have been a good feeling as a professional. Sure, after the expedition with Betty, he was rewarded with all the glory one could wish for; but that isolation must've been horrible. He must've been seen along the same veins as the "Ancient Aliens" guys, as a crackpot conspiracy theorist, barely deserving of his PHD. I can imagine just how much of a relief it'd be to have someone so brilliant as Betty agree with your findings, and be willing to help you prove once and for all, that you aren't crazy.

Betty seemed to struggle with connecting with her peers. I'm mostly gathering this from how willing she was to sacrifice everything for Simon, I'd bet he was the only genuine close relationship, romantic or otherwise, that she had. We (or at least I) don't know much about Betty's backstory, but I think at least that much can be surmised. In Ep 8 FC, she mentions her mother, and in season 9 or 10, we see her calling someone before she met Simon... But, that's about all we have for close relationships. How many people would you jump through a portal for? Become god for? Sacrifice your sanity for? To have someone you admire, think that you're basically the strongest, bravest person they ever met in the world and to actually be needed by them... From what we know about Betty, she definitely had a savior complex of some sorts. Happens to the best of us, but still. She got so used to sacrificing things for Simon that she never thought about going back to Australia with him to continue her study, or both studying different things together, just helping him.

They both gave each other what the world deprived them of: validation, love, and respect. But because neither of them had anyone else to rely upon, to provide them with those bare necessities, they became unhealthy for one another. Neither of them has truly lived without the other because they were eachothers home. Their food, water, and shelter.

So, in a lot of ways, I think it was for the best they added this extra layer. It helps you truly understand the imperfections of their relationship, just how desperate both of them were as two nerdy little archeologists, to find and keep the love they had alive.