I think Bill projects onto Mabel sometimes, especially in Sock Opera and Weirdmageddon. He sees her as a little selfish, a little chaotic, and a lot more fun than Dipper (at least, in the way that Bill defines fun), and that’s clearly all stuff that he represents too.
But I’d argue he also sees himself in Mabel’s reluctance to grow up. It’s true that Bill has been around longer than humans can even wrap their minds around, but he’s still immature. He still throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way — he’s just a big, selfish kid himself, and he doesn’t want to grow up either.
And he’s not entirely wrong when he identifies these similarities in Mabel, but he vastly overestimates the strength of her selfish tendencies while underestimating the strength of her caring nature and her loyalty to her family.
We see it in Sock Opera, where Bill expects her to hand over the Journal rather than make a sacrifice for Dipper’s sake, and we see it again in Weirdmageddon, when Bill has complete faith that Mabeland will prove inescapable — but unlike Bill, Mabel is a good person who loves her family, and both times Bill’s plans are foiled. (Meanwhile, we know Bill had a horrible relationship with his own family, and I think that plays into how he expects Mabel to behave — hence the term “projection” feeling especially apt.)
[ID: The first image shows Bill Cipher floating in a street in Gravity Falls during Weirdmageddon as he says: “This party never stops!” The second image shows Mabel sitting at her brightly colored office desk in Mabeland, gesturing enthusiastically to Dipper, Soos, and Wendy as she says: “Here the sun shines all day, the party never ends…” /end ID.]
Bill is a villain who has never grown up in a show that’s about growing up, and that seems like a very deliberate choice. He offers Mabel an escape from reality that he sees as so tempting, so irresistible, that he thinks it would take “a will of titanium” to overcome, and he completely brushes off the possibility that the Pines might break out of it.
Maybe that’s because Bill knows that an idealistic world like Mabeland, full of nonstop partying and free from any obligation to grow up, is exactly the type of trap that would work on him.
(Some sources/quotes that first sent me down this line of thinking below the cut.)
vaporwave
gummygunk
snowghoul
stormborns
izzy806
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
