Oh fuck I uh I just realised that Everything Stays now also gets to be about Simon. He’s changed so much but he’s also exactly the same. The world he lives in is different, alien, isolating. He was a normal man, then he spent some 1000 years in a dreamlike state, and now he’s normal again but everything is different. He carries that trauma in everything he does even though he’s “better now.” He was waiting in the garden so long for someone to turn him around but the underside is lighter. Only he seems to notice that he’s faded. Ever so slightly. Daily and nightly. In little ways
nonono I don't think yOU understand everything stays but also it CHANGES. the mushroom war destroyed everything but life stayed it just had to change. the humans that were left had to change to exist in the world while life was created in so many other ways. life stayed it just became Ooo. Every human we see is changed. they're half mutant or half android or half whatever. even Finn who is fully human could never exist copy and pasted into our world because humanity changes.
but it's when characters refuse this change that we see real shit. Betty refused to accept Simon as ice king she refused to love him for who he changed to be and now Simon is existing all alone in a world he cannot belong in. he is unchanged in a world that is completely different! he has no one to relate to no one to understand him because he wasn't given the chance to change with the world.
because sometimes change is our choice like the second time Marceline becomes a vampire or the way we see bubblegum grow softer or the way we watch Finn grow to be more emotionally mature but sometimes these changes are thrown at us without permission or warning like Simon becoming ice king only to become Simon again or your magic dog big brother dying before your willing to stop adventuring with him or the world ending in nuclear war and creating magic and as much as we may hate these changes we HAVE to accept them cause that's what life does! everything stays! Marceline loves ice king as much as she loved Simon and life goes on after the end of the world but it still changes! and that change can be tragic or beautiful or both and we gotta learn to live with it.
girls when everything stays right where you left it. everything stays, but it still changes. ever so slightly, daily and nightly, in little ways. everything stays.
I was rewatching Stakes again and I was thinking about the moment right after Marceline got turned into a vampire.
"The worst thing? The craving. The color red is the trigger. It's hunger. I'm not used to New Me. It's overwhelming." - Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook!!!
"It's terrible carrying around the darkness left by those creatures. I've never felt so trapped within my own mind and body" - Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook!!!
"You can stop this now, Marceline, it's not too late. You've got power now. I see it. But you haven't paid a price. It's making you crazy. Marceline, there's no one left but me. Would you wipe out an entire species?" - "Vamps About" season 7, episode 8