#like I remember the dinner with him Marcy and PB where he internally seemed unhappy as Ice King and still wanted to be free

[punbeam]

Not to assign cartoon characters mental illnesses like some sort of Youtube Clickbaiter, but the way Simon is treated in Fionna and Cake feels specifically reminiscent of how our society is hypocritical about bipolar/manic depressive people.

I don't think this is controversial to say, but in the original Adventure Time Simon-as-Ice-King just felt like a general mental illness allegory. Not to say it was executed perfectly, since again it was a generalized allegory and often focused on the people around Simon VS him, but it did manage to cover a fair amount of nuances: acknowledging when Ice King's behavior was a reflection of the mental illness Crown and not Simon; the conflicting dynamic of growing up with a mentally ill Magically Cursed parental figure; Treat People Who Are Mentally Ill Cursed As People.

But in Fionna and Cake where Simon isn't Ice King anymore? And everyone is going on about how cooler and more fun and more creative Ice King was compared to Simon? It just seems like the fantasy equivalent to people fetishizing manic depression in creatives and saying stuff like "The pills will kill your creativity" and "What if Van Gogh wasn't depressed, wouldn't his art be so much worse?"

And in the show we see Simon internalize all these comments! Over and over again people are saying he's pathetic as Simon and can't do anything special as Simon, unlike Ice King. So between all of that and his own warped nostalgia of the past, he uses the slimmest opportunity to volunteer to be Ice King again, even if it hurts him!

The worst part is we know that rn Simon is damned either way. Depressed as Simon, the people of Ooo avoid him and don't try to connect with him, and he is too afraid of being a burden and reaching out to Marcy for help. And if he relapses turns fully back into Ice King? They'll treat him like a party toy for a while before discarding him when he gets "too crazy" and the novelty wears off, and he'll probably lose his only support network.

That being said at this point (Episode 4) it's hard to tell which direction all of this will go. Tom Kenny has mentioned how this show features the most emotional VA work he's ever done, so it's fair to say that whatever happens next in the series with Simon will be intense and even heavier than it already has been.