#and hunter could see what belos was doing the whole time he knows belos would do anything to get the blood

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

Yes yes fire imagery with belos but american witch trials never burned witches at the stake. European trials did that. American witch trials hanged them. (Except for a few fringe cases lmao i think a dude was pressed to death with stones)

Drowning was used as evidence to prove someone was a witch. People would tie you to a chair weighed down with rocks and if you drowned then you were innocent, but if you survived you would be deemed a witch and probably executed. It was a situation where youd die either way and that was kind of the point because a lot of these accusations really were just people trying to get rid of social outcasts.

Hunter almost definitely didnt know any of this but the scene where he tries to drown himself was. So thematically appropriate. Identity crisis aside, he was a witch in everything but biology. And by now he is even a wild witch, the exact kind that phillip despised the most. But phillip is no longer human. No longer a good puritan man, even if he still believes he is.

So a wild witch tries to drown himself to bring down a not-human. Both of them, in belos's eyes, an abomination of god and the natural order. hunter didnt know but given how easily belos left his body later belos could have avoided drowning at any time. But he keeps possessing hunter to hold him underwater and kill his brother (who had fallen in with the witches and was now no better than one himself) once and for all.

But hunter doesnt drown. Not because he has witch powers to save him but because camilla, his new mother figure, dives in to save him. Because unlike the "witches" of phillips time, hunter is no longer a social outcast. He has a family now. He is loved. Something that belos no longer has

[roodles03]

The First Kiss

Things have been rough for them for pretty much their whole lives, but especially recently.

For Willow, being trapped in the human realm separated from her fathers, not knowing if they're okay, having little to no hope of ever returning home, and knowing the Boiling Isles might be in ruin due to the Collector was a lot to deal with. Flapjack's death, Belos still being alive along with seeing the Isles in a apocalyptic state confirmed so many of her fears.

Boscha was the icing on the cake, sending her into a boderline panic attack/mental breakdown that nearly ended with her suffocating not only herself, but also her best friends.

Meanwhile, Hunter has lost his beloved palismen, Flapjack, after having his body controlled and getting possessed by his abuser, who he thought he was finally safe from. He had died after sacrificing himself to save his friends, and Flapjack is the only reason he's still alive to tell his story, but in order for Flapjack to save him, he had to give up his life essence to revive Hunter. Hunter now has to continue living on without Flapjack. He misses him every single day. He thinks about him all the time. He wishes he was still here every waking moment. But Flapjack is never coming back, and that is almost impossible to handle at times.

But what Willow and Hunter do have is each other. They love each other and want to get through things together. They can help each other heal and give each other comfort through their pain. And Willow wants to assure Hunter that no matter what, she'll be there.

Hunter feels the same way, and he assures he'll be there for her too. Half-a-witches like them always stick together.

The half-a-witch statement is what Willow needed to hear her whole life.

In that moment of love, without thinking, Willow cups Hunter's cheeks and pulls him in.

Hunter, meanwhile, has no idea what's about to happen until their lips meet. He's shocked at first before quickly embracing the kiss. His emotions overrun him almost instantly.

When Willow separates, she immediately realizes what she just did, and she freezes. Hunter feels like he has to say something, but his overwhelming emotions make that incredibly hard. He has no idea what to say. He's too shocked for anything comprehensable to leave his mouth, and even if he could formulate a sentence, just one word would make him burst into tears.

Willow can hardly scoundure up an sentence herself, but just saying one word causes Hunter to be overwhelmed with joy. He's never felt so loved before. It feels amazing. He starts happily sobbing as the two pull in for a hug.

(Wow, my inner fic writer came out, didn't it-)

Pretty much everything went right for this comic and I'm really happy with how it came out. It definitely took a very long time for me to finish this due to uni, but it was worth the time and effort.

[whoistrash]

Why change matters and how Amphibia did it better than The Owl House.

"Watching and Dreaming" made me cry a lot during its premiere. I was amazed and, I'd say, dazed by it. Then I forgot about it for a while. Now I finished re-watching Amphibia for the first time since TOH ended. My hype died down, and I have some thoughts. A lot, actually.

Amphibia's ending was incredibly painful and made me sob like a baby for two whole weeks the first time I watched it. That's because it was not only beautiful and heartbreaking, but truly GOOD. Brilliant, actually. I absolutely agree with a statement that any other ending would literally be a contradiction to the whole main plot, especially Anne's arc. The girls had to learn to let go in order to grow as individuals - the thing they had the biggest problem with. Saying goodbye was the only logical option, plot-wise. It still hurt like hell, though. Separating the multidimensional, against-all-odds relationships (especially my beloved spranne. Ouch, ouch, ouch). The Owl House does no such thing - everybody stays together. They live happily ever after.

Paradoxically, I think that it's the main reason why I'd choose "The Hardest Thing" over "Watching and Dreaming" every single time. I know we shouldn't really compare them in EVERY aspect, since TOH had way more things to deal with in the final episode, but the fact that Luz got to not only stay, but to freely travel between worlds as she pleases really took the whole "growing up and finding your true self no matter what the other people do/say about you" thing out the door. Luz from season one, episode one, and Luz from the finale are not really that different. Well, she certainly became more traumatised and depressed than before, but in terms of personal growth? Nope. Luz - from the very beginning - was cheerful, open, caring and very selfless, willing to literally help every stranger she met no matter how it would affect her. She had little to no boundaries, but, well, you can't argue that she was A GOOD, SELFLESS PERSON. Now, we could say that her arc here would be learning that sometimes you should put yourself before others, that you can't save everyone, that you can't trust every person you meet. And she learns it! She fucking does! She helps Philip not knowing who he will become, and then suffers from the consequences, because she helped the wrong person. And then it's all erased, when she saves Collector's life and meets Papa Titan (or whatever we call them).

I have so much to say about this. All of TOH's "villains" (Amity, Lilith, Hunter, The Collector) that were given a redemption arc literally get turned into lifeless, edgy trauma dumpsters, that suddenly loose all of their previous character, quirks and sass (well, maybe except for Lilith, she just started to express them differently, I think, but still, it was WAY too big of a change). I won't dwell on it (since many, many fans called it out already - as they should), and will focus on something different. The only one marked as irredeemable is Belos. Good. Okay. He's irredeemable, because he's a white, christian puritan who won't listen to anyone but himself. Also a genocidal maniac. That's the lesson for Luz here. "You can't save everyone. Some people are just straight up evil". And it's very, very true. But.

From all of the "villains" I mentioned before, Belos is the one that had the most reasons to, let's say, take a dark turn. Those reasons are what makes him irredeemable - he's just too convinced he's right, because, in his mind, he has evidence to prove it. But how do we learn about this? Maybe by seeing his part of the story? Maybe by learning about his brother and Evelyn, about their relationship? It couldn't be straight up awful, since Philip literally brought his brother back to life over and over again, he wanted his brother, or at least the picture of Caleb that satisfied him the most. There was more to it than only "you betrayed me and now I will hate you forever". Do we get to see any of that? No. Instead we get an all-knowing, all-doing being that literally choose Luz as "the one" for being kind and trusting, that convinces her that Belos is, indeed, a lost cause. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Luz, the person that on the literal episode two was told that there is no such thing as a "chosen one" and that she can't always hop into action to save everybody, because, it's, well, not always possible, DOES EXACTLY THAT in the finale by taking a bullet for The Collector, the, you know, very freshly redeemed and suddenly cute and funky villain, whom Luz trusts immediately. AND SHE IS REWARDED FOR IT BY BEING MADE THE CHOSEN ONE. BY A GOD-LIKE BEING THAT CLAIMS TO BE ALL-KNOWING AND CAN DECIDE WHO IS RIGHT AND WHO IS WRONG, BECAUSE OF PERSONAL (King) REASONS. Just like, you know... Belos? The irredeemable villain? And then Luz lets go of the moral dilemmas that's been keeping her up at night for the past months, makes up her mind, defeats the bad guy, learns nothing, and gets to stay in the Boiling Isles and on Earth. With her beautifully redeemed girlfriend and friends whom she kept secrets from and lied to out of fear of being ostracised (you see the pattern here, right?) for, again, months.

I love Amphibia. I love The Owl House. But Amphibia handles it's "villains", generally wronged characters and the whole change/no change thing way better. Well, maybe besides the Core - they got a bit wasted in my opinion. But still. Sasha. Grime. Marcy. Andrias. Anne herself. They learn and change. And more importantly, they face consequences and come to understand and accept them. There's no "chosen one" here. Anne gets the proposition because she's the first one to use the music box for good in literal millenia. A fact, plain and simple (not an opinion based on personal motivations), that makes sense plot-wise, and adds so, so much to Anne's arc. Because Anne from season one, episode one wouldn't care. The one from the finale cares very damn much. And that's the biggest difference.

Saying goodbye makes the message way stronger. The more I think about it, however, the more I'm starting to be afraid that there's no The Message in The Owl House to begin with. Luz learns very little, yet ends up with everything she ever wanted. There's no power behind it. The "find the right people and choose to trust them, not everyone will be your friend" and "some things are out of your control, some people are just bad" aspect is even weaker, as proven by basically the whole season 3. I will end it by my favorite quote from Amphibia, that I think about on daily basis. Have a good day, y'all.

"Change can be difficult, but it's how we grow. It can be the hardest thing to realize you can't hold on to something forever. Sometimes, you have to let it go; but, of the things you let go, you'd be surprised what makes its way back to you."

[toastling]

Ever wonder what would've happened if The Owl house aired in 2013?

That's right.

We would have had an OWLSTUCK.

They would've been rendered accordingly and there would've been a short-lived comic spoken of fondly by both fanbases.

Anyway here are some kids and their classpects.

Luz Noceda - Page of Light. Duh. Most obvious one on this list. You *could* make a very strong argument for Page of Hope too, but aside from her name literally BEING Light, I think it fits a bit more. Too bad you can't multi-aspect. Though let's be real, if anybody COULD, it would be Luz Noceda, so who knows, maybe that's her special Snest (in-world Sburb variant) given gift.

Amity Blight - Witch of Breath. Breath is a lot to do with one's self in the sense of self-actualization and understanding. She needed a lil help getting there but I feel Amity fits this quite well!

Willow Park - Mage of Life. In Homestuck, Life as an aspect is most closely tied to healing, but it can also be quite literal, as we do see Life aspected characters resurrect dead friends. I think if any aspect would allow one to wield life in the most literal sense via battle plants, it'd be, well, Life!

Gus Porter - Seer of Mind. This is a class and aspect wombo combo that fits him to a goddamn T. He's far sharper about others thoughts and natures than people think, including himself. Learning to trust in his intuition is his arc. He has a pretty good grasp of others, even if he does tend to try to focus more on the good bits than the bad, even when the latter may be pertinent.

King Clawthorne - Prince of Blood. Literal royalty in name and nature, with the Blood of the Titan running through his veins whether he realizes it or not. A Prince is an active destructive class with incredible offensive capability, one that destroys its aspect or through it, in this case, Blood. As a Titan, that potential is there for King. But we know the little guy wouldn't use it unless he had to. Right?

Hunter - Heir of Time. Of all the characters, no one fits the aspect of Time better than Hunter given his relations and just how many of him have existed throughout the ages. And as for Heir, I mean, could it be any more obvious?

Vee - Sylph of Space. Conceptually, Space means a lot of things in Homestuck, and is seen by the fandom as one of the "fundamental" aspects. A common theory is no game has a potential to win without both a Space and Time player. But one thing Space represents is Form and Boundary. It is the amorphous stage the play of reality is set upon. What better for a shapeshifter? Sylphs are essentially a Healer class.

Masha - Rogue of Doom. A Thief steals for their own benefit, and a Rogue for the benefit of others. Masha Stole Doom from the entirety of her Reality Check Summer Camp crew, *especially* Vee, giving her her very first friend, potential crush, and a new home and lease on life.

The Collector - Lord of Void. He is Everything and Nothing and can create or uncreate both at will. The Lord embodies their aspect to the absolute. They are a Master class, all-powerful and uncontested in their domain. He is a leftover from a previous game of Snest, one played between just two people, the other, of course, being...

Papa Titan - Muse of Life. We've never seen an adult play any variant of Sburb. But to deal with the Collector and his games, I think he may have had no choice. A Muse, too, is a Master Class, but far more passive. The Titan is how all life in the Demon Realm exists. The Titan *is* the Isles. How much more Life-aligned can you be? And as effectively just a corpse at this point, obviously, he's pretty passive.

Emperor Belos - Knight of Rage. A perfect mastery of his aspect to both directly harm and to manipulate, a truly terrifying foe. Again, adults aren't normally players, but, you better believe he's the reason this whole damn apocalypse happened in the first place.

Boom wrote that up in like 20 minutes, welcome to my special hell.

If by chance somebody actually *likes* this and wants more for some godforsaken reason, I'll give the kids a strife specibus too.

[sergeantsporks]

I honestly always thought that Lilith's resentment of Hunter stemmed from her being jealous of his "close" relationship with Belos.

Lilith was a frigging teenage girl when she joined the Emperor's Coven. She had an estranged relationship with both of her parents at that time. She was also isolated from them. Belos presents himself as an affable authority figure to the Isles.

If she didn't quickly start viewing Belos as some sort of pseudo father figure, I'd be seriously surprised.

And Belos, given that his whole "thing" was manipulation, had to have picked up on that. I'd be genuinely shocked if he didn't outright cultivate it!

Especially since doing so would've assured him of Lilith's loyalty (Until, you know), sowed discontent within the higher ranked members of the Emperor's Coven (Since they all want to be "close" to Belos), and presented an excellent opportunity to cause pain to the Clawthorne family. (And we all know that he's not wholly beyond being petty like that, lol.)

In addition to giving Lilith one damn good reason to hate Hunter's guts from the day he set foot in the Castle for the first time. LMAO.

This random kid appears out of nowhere and he's somehow the Emperor's nephew?!? So of course the expectation will be that Belos is going to dote on him and give the little tyke whatever he wants, up to and including a powerful position within the Coven. Likely without the kid having to lift a finger.

XD Poor Hunter could've literally spent his whole childhood worshiping the very ground Lilith walked on and she still would've despised the poor child. There was literally nothing that he could ever do that would be "right" in Lilith's eyes. Because his mere presence is an affront to her!

As it also is to all of the other Coven Heads.

Which is, naturally, exactly what Belos wanted. Can't let his little child solider have other trustworthy adults in his life. No, Belos needs to be the only person he can 100% always trust and thus, turn to in times of trouble.

:( Poor Lilith, poor Hunter.

Yeah, I know I've talked about Lilith being like "Finally, I'm going to get out of the shadow of my sister, I'm no longer going to be second-fiddle in the eyes of an authority figure to a prodigy, excellent" only for a new prodigy pop up and take the spotlight and all the attention of her top authority figure 20 or so years later. Like. She must have been screaming.

But honestly? I think you're right. I don't think Hunter did anything, not at first, anyway. We see in Thanks to Them that a lot of his posturing and pride/confidence literally comes on and off with his physical mask. Underneath, he's just... kind of a dork loser who's pretty adorable. Sure, he's not PERFECT, it's not TOTALLY a persona; the "golden guard" does bleed into Hunter and vice versa, but I can definitely imagine all the other coven heads (and ESPECIALLY Lilith, who's already predisposed to feel threatened by people whose seeming "natural" talents exceed her hard work) coming in already expecting him to be a nepotism brat.

Hunter is nothing if not someone who tries very hard to live up to people's expectations of him. So even if he wasn't some annoying little twerp at first and was just a genuinely curious and excited kid who wanted to hang out with The Cool Kids (coven heads) (especially considering we know he wasn't really allowed near the other scouts), I have no doubt that he started leaning into their expectations of "bratty kid who can do whatever he wants because he's the emperor's nephew" after the first few rejections. Which would only make their perception of him justified in their eyes, which would only make him worse, etc. etc. So even if he was a perfect angel at first and worshiped the ground the other coven heads walked on, like you said, he definitely became/acted like the brat they all thought he was by the end.

[astrolavas]

what tracks do you think Hunter took in hexside?

i'm 100% certainnnnn he was multitrack, like i know for a FACT.

i do wonder whether he took all tracks or if he omitted some, though. he's got sm curiosity in himself and he loves to learn things. he may not be able to do magic like most witches but he's so good with general magical knowledge and he knows so much theory, has memorized lots of info abt the most niche magic things, and he loves research and so he manages to find his own unique ways to exist in a magic society powerless. feel like he'd definitely be open to taking all tracks. AND these... 1-2 years in hexside that he got were the first time he could truly experience school, so it's also possible that he'd try to get as much of that knowledge and experience as he could in that limited time.

i feel like if he were NOT to take any track, it'd be oracle, since it's tied to things like seeing the future and fate/destiny/spirits, and that's something hunter would not really want to play with much, considering how much he cares abt things like choosing your own future, and also considering the whole…. grimwalker/caleb business so gah... but we also don't KNOW anything abt oracle magic so kxjsjks who knows! it might be something different completely.

then for some tracks, i feel he could just not care that much, possibly not enough to take them, if they were not rly anything related to what he's into, like construction... (but still possibly enough to at least try them)

i feel like a track that he'd especially want to take would be beastkeeping, since it's probably somewhat tied to creating palismen and also just relates to animals (which he loves) and it's a track related to eberwolf and even camila; i feel like he'd enjoy it.

then there are also other tracks that are related to his loved ones, like the abomination track (feel like he'd defo want to impress darius with that one, and learn as much as he can) and plant and illusion tracks; which are not really his "thing" BUT something his friends love. i feel like he'd at least try it. tbh the plant track would also tie in with his palisman-making future well, since those ARE made of wood, so he likely has to know how to take care of palistrom trees too somewhat, at least the basics just in case. illusions wouldn't have this much of a practical use but could still be interesting and intriguing to learn so... maybe? temporary at the very least.

i like to think that he'd be taught some instrument by raine in his free time as well so bard track courses could definitely fit in his graphic too. not sure how long they'd keep up, considering you need your own magic to do bard magic, but i feel like even without that he'd learn some theory at least, and just play an instrument normally, OR maybe there'd a way to let him participate fully (through the instruments' magic or sth???)… either way, a possibility also, even if temporary!

then there's also potions; and i feel like he wouldn't necessarily be particularly interested IN potion-related stuff, at least not to the point where it'd be his "thing", but it's still sth interesting to learn and, depending on how many proper accommodations for his lack of magic he'd get in other tracks, it's also a course he can fully engage in, AND he did wear that potions track so it might've even been a partial hint for that. he'd be good at potions i think.

i feel like, with the whole system reform and belos' fall and luz's influence, they definitely added like a wild/ancient magic history course too, even if glyphs didn't work anymore, since that'd cover an important part of erased/forgotten history that was important to remember, and hunter would LOVE that. he's very passionate and already knows sm abt that specific magic knowledge so he'd runnn for it if that was a track available as well. THIS is his favorite thing to study and learn about.

i like to think that he got some specific accommodations that made classes possible for him with his lack of magic, and so he got to learn and do things in his own way, and with that he defo decided to truly learn ALL of it (or at least, all that was interesting to him) (a choice he probably slightly regretted some random night where he had like 10 unfinished assignments to do kxjsjsjk) and just, just….. he got to attend hexsideeee and learn magic, learn "wild" magic, experience school and meet with his friends everyday and everything and GAHHHGHHH. IT MAKES ME SO !!!!

but yeah, like. he couldn't use glyphs for classes anymore but there still HAD to be a way. palisman magic maybe (i feel like he definitely waited a while til he made waffles though so maybe he could use owlbert or even stringbean sometimes in that case, similarly to flyer derby)? or those training wands, or even some other techniques that'd help him with his courses. especially with bump being the prinicipal and eda slowly stepping into the teaching career, they DEFINITELY wanted to figure sth out for hunter specifically. and definitely did!

(sth sth both bump and eda being good teachers who truly care abt the well-being of their students and the right approach to acquiring knowledge….. i know these old ppl were doing a LOT of digging and thinking and planning to give hunter the best options for his education)

anyway- YEAH! multitrack hexside hunter...... so real. him being able to learn everything he's passionate about, being able to experiment and discover and find out what he likes, now that he's free to do so. cuz even if he decides something isn't for him after some time, he still has the FREEDOM to determine that himself. the freedom to try everything, the freedom to decide for himself. yeah... yeah.

[sepublic]

Actually, what was Dell's stance on Gwen's obsession with curing Eda's curse? I suspect him getting disabled contributed a lot to that, but I wanna know his side of the dilemma, especially when Gwen was going to sell some family heirlooms to Wortlop. Based on her dialogue, I think Gwen's dealings with Wortlop only started recently, so she might not have brought it up to him at the time.

Lilith does mention reconnecting with Dell once she moves back in with Gwen, which makes it sound like the parents are still living together; Likewise, her letter to Hooty (released during that one livestream) has Lilith lament how she's been unable to help Dell with palismen carving.

I'm curious as to what Dell was up to, because he does mention helping the Bat Queen with replanting the palistrom forests, which could take him across the Boiling Isles as a whole and not just the right arm. So between Dell's objective and Gwen's, that might've meant the two would be separated for extended periods of time, which would've made Dell less likely to notice and comment on the Wortlop thing.

Still, did Dell agree with Gwen trying to cure Eda's curse? Or did he respect her relationship with it, especially since he learned to live with a disability of his own? He seems a lot more attuned to Eda's complicated trauma and guilt regarding the curse, so it might make sense for Dell to not want to aggravate that by obsessing over 'fixing' his daughter.

But in that case, what did he think of Gwen sabotaging Eda's remaining parental relationship that way? Dell wasn't in contact with Eda for a while, so he'd only be hearing Gwen's side of the story, so maybe she downplayed the severity in her oblivious parent way. Or did Dell know and actually dispute with Gwen over it, or could he not change her mind because Gwen is still her own person who can make her own decisions, even if she might consider her husband's opinion more than her daughter's.

I wonder if there could've been any tension over their disagreement on how to handle Eda's curse, and the effect it was having on Eda; For all we know, the two almost got divorced, or were! And Dell planting palistrom seeds with the Bat Queen sounds like wild magic, given Belos' reaction to Hunter's suggestion in Hunting Palismen; Which would make Dell a wild witch and a fugitive. I don't think we ever see a coven sigil on Dell, and even if there was that didn't stop the CATTs. And given Gwen's frustration with the Healing Coven and her expressed distaste towards Belos for attempting to murder her children, I wouldn't be surprised if both parents were anti-coven, or at least fairly lax towards wild witches.

So then, what of Dell's relationship with Lilith? Would being a fugitive, either openly or in secret, keep him from interacting with his firstborne? How did Dell feel about her status as its head witch, given his implied defiance to the system and him having memories from before Belos' reign, no less? Did Lilith know what he was up to, or did he have to hide that from her? If she mentions wanting to reconnect with him, that suggests they were also estranged in those thirty years. Did Dell also contribute to Lilith's feeling of neglect by favoring Eda, as Gwen did?

Man, it's just like. Thirty years of four Clawthornes doing their own thing and feeling separated from the rest and their own limited knowledge and perspective of what their families were up to.

[jess-the-vampire]

To be fair, the whole mind reading thing with Belos in canon isn't necessarily unheard of, seeing how Odalia could do the same with her Oracle magic.

Then again, she specifically needed an enchanted amulet in order to communicate with Amity telepathically, so we're back to square one here.

i think i mentioned it before in the past, but belos's powerset is a little wonky, i'm not really convinced he wasn't rewritten between seasons because of some of these detials.

he has this artificial magic, something that is kinda neat and was a dead giveaway he wasn't a normal witch, but the show never really explains what artificial magic is and how it works exactly. Toh has rules for it's magic so it is a wonder exactly how one creates a "Fake magic" on the isles. (Like at one point they maybe imply it's coming from his arm glyphs but that doesn't explain his staff or hunter's staff)

Collector claims he taught belos magic, but outside of the draining spell....we don't really know what he means by that specifically.

and then you have his curse, which is a whole mess in itself, he's got several abilities, some of which just kinda....happen. Not to mention the rules of his curse aren't really clear to an audience member who thinks about it in more detail, like how much control he has over the curse for example (He has scenes where he clearly has control but there are others where he clearly doesn't), or why he was cursed and for what reason, or if the palisman are an extension of life or just to keep the curse at bay (Maybe both? but why would he do this before even seeing caleb again?) ....and also....what the glyph arm is even about. Heck, i'm not quite sure why belos can talk to the palisman in his head, but hunter can't communicate with flap in his own if we're to believe both are being used for a similar purpose of giving the other magic and life. (I mean maybe you can say the fact Philip forced them to give up their lives puts them in some kinda limbo, and not flap who chose to move on, but Philip can also apparently remove them from his head so like-)

(I've heard a LOT of people go on about belos's curse being played for sympathy from the other characters, that he's faking it and it's another addition to how bad of a person he is. And i'm not saying he never faked it, he probably did in some of these scenes, but there's also a lot of scenes where he's clearly in pain and not in control of the curse, so it's clearly not something he's faking for sympathy all of the time. I get the impression this is just because the show really didn't do the greatest job making how his curse functioned clear to the audience that a lot of people are now convinced he was never in pain when he clearly was since he has scenes where it makes no sense to fake it.

Like my best interpretation that makes the most sense is he does have outbursts and he does get hurt but he takes advantage of them, weaponizing his own pain and curse to his benefit where possible)

and then.....we got this power from season 1, which never comes back and is never explained. It could be arguably an oracle power, but oracle magic might be the most underexplored magic covens in the show next to healing, so i genuinely have no idea if that was the intent or even what oracle magic does in this world. I would think if it had use like this belos would use it more often, would of avoided a lot of future issues had he done so.

This might sound a bit nitpickey, it's just i spent a lot of time trying to decipher his abilities to use in my work and i ran into a lot of walls trying to figure out how any of this works in the universe of the show.

he feels like he needs a character bible, there's just a lot here that doesn't quite make sense and i would of loved to have explained in better detail.

and the show usually (Mostly) makes sense with it's magic (Trust me, belos isn't the only character in this show whose magic abilities drive me nuts), i think eda's curse is actually well handled and well explained to the audience. You really understand how her curse works, how she controls and works with it, and it remains consistent in it's abilities.

belos just has way too many abilities, some of which just kinda happen, a lot that aren't entirely explained, and half the time i wonder why he never uses some of these powers at other points in the show.

this fact might not bother some people, but if you're someone trying to study his powers for your work, like me, it's really noticeable.

i think what happened is they needed belos to be able to do several things for plot reasons (He needs a fake magic to hide the human twist, he needs to possess hunter for reasons, he needs to pretend to be human for one scene at the end so now he suddenly can shapeshift, he needs to find out about luz stealing from him so sudden kinetic powers) and then it just became way too much.....i think they should of kept it simpler and less vague if you ask me.

the man has far too many abilities, and too little explanations for why he has them or how they work.

Having some proper limits to his powerset and being able to go from A to B To C on how he works would do miles for him.

[comet-soda-lite]

Lore answers & info from the Post Hoot, which I’m organizing by the unanswered questions I had from my previous post. This may not be entirely comprehensive of all the info from the post hoot, could definitely be missing some things!

What’s the history of Hooty? Was he always a part of the the Owl House or did he move in at some point? Why was a mini-Hooty in the Titan’s eye socket??

Confirmed that an offhand comment by the YouTuber thethirdbill about Hooty in Papa Titan’s eye socket was right. Couldn’t find the clip of exactly what he said, but I think it’s something about Hooty being a tapeworm? Hooty hole?

What’s the history of the Portal Door & Key?

Mentioned that the eye in the Portal Door is the Titan’s missing eye.

What exactly is the Tower Glyph (the one that King carved on his collar) and where does its magic come from?

The origins of King’s Tower is related to a character we all know, who now has amnesia about it. Likely the Bat Queen considering she’s the only character who explicitly has amnesia (but I personally like to think it’s Tibbles).

What are the nitty gritty details of the Wittebanes & Evelyn's story?

Caleb and Evelyn had a super loving relationship... until it was ruined lol. Not much more info on that.

Is Evelyn a Clawthorne?

YES!!! The Clawthornes are all descended from Caleb and Evelyn! Hunter and Eda are not aware of this fact.

What are the details of Flapjack’s origin? Whose Palisman was he exactly?

As was depicted in the trailer ride in Thanks to Them, Flapjack was gifted to Caleb by Evelyn (as she found him more reasonable and less violent than everyone else in Gravesfield), and was essentially his first true introduction to magic.

To Belos, Flapjack is a representation of the corrupting force that magic, the Demon Realm, and Evelyn all had on his brother, hence the line “Goodbye, Evelyn” when he killed Flapjack. That line was never meant to be literal (as I have been saying this whole time lol).

What's the history of the shack in the woods? Does it have any direct relationship to the Owl House? Who used to live there? The Wittebanes? Evelyn?

Dana’s thoughts on the matter seemed to not be 100% final (so if it was actually incorporated into the show, we could have got something different), but she said maybe it was the Wittebanes’ house a long long time ago. And when Eda first entered the Human Realm through the Portal Door, she came out at the shack, which was even more dilapidated than we see it now. She then spent years fixing up the shack alongside fixing up The Owl House, one being her home in the Human Realm and the other her home in The Demon Realm.

Other things off the top of my head said in the post hoot that I didn’t mention in my last post:

“Snake Palisman is in the logo” theory confirmed real

Hunter is bi, Willow is pan!!!

Ratador is Alador’s Palisman ?!?!?!?!?

There’s another ending for the show that Dana has wanted to do since the beginning, but it didn’t work within the time constraints. Too much would need to be set up. If we ever do get a sequel show, she would use that finale to cap it off.

Collector ages too slowly to have a timeskip design

[thousand-winters]

Do you headcanon Hunter as having any issues with food/ eating from the EC?? I’ve been projecting myself way to hard lol

It's likely he definitely has some issues with that, because frankly... his whole life there was SO bad.

Mostly I figure Belos didn't really withhold food from him or anything like that, not directly anyway, because Hunter was supposed to be an scout and then his Golden Guard, if he just doesn't give him food, Hunter is going to end up passing out and being unable to do his training and his missions. Which, you know, it's not like it was vital for Belos, but he did keep the appearances of Hunter being important to him to some degree.

Now, I say not directly because while I imagine Hunter had his meals in the mess hall or whatever the Emperor's Coven has for that, just like everyone else, he ended up not getting as many meals as he could have because he felt too committed to his duties. It's clear he didn't sleep properly already, and if he had too many responsibilities, he probably cut corners when it came to eating as well, very "oh, I think I'll be fine if I just have one meal today, this work is more important".

Also, there was the guilt factor, with Belos constantly reminding him he took him in and gave him everything he has, so every time he failed a mission or simply didn't perform to the level that was expected of him, while I personally don't think Belos would straight up go "you're not eating today" or anything like that, Belos would very much make him feel like a waste of resources. He took him in, he gave him a place, a room, food, clothes, and Hunter can't even do what's asked of him? Ultimately the guilt would have made Hunter simply decide that he has NOT earned the right to go get some food because he has obviously disappointed his uncle. I feel like it fits Belos' methods of manipulation in which ultimately he made Hunter feel like he deserved everything bad that happened to him and at some level he didn't have to punish him himself for it to work.

The one instance he could be a little bit more carefree with that, I feel, is his missions. Because Eclipse Lake also showed that those were like privileges to him, and being withdrawn from them was horrible to him, which makes sense with the extra context in Thanks to them that it was the only times he was even allowed outside of the castle. I'm basing this solely on that one box of crackers in Separate Tides, sue me, but I think he would feel that he's worthy enough during those, because the emperor has entrusted him with them, to not have to feel like he hasn't earned food.

The problem would be that anything he got that wasn't assigned rations would have to come from his own pocket, and he probably had an assigned budget for each mission, so I don't think he could constantly afford snacks and fun things anyway, so even if it was the one moment he let himself have a little treat, it wouldn't happen often.

Once he's living with Darius and Eber, this is absolutely going to come up. Maybe not right away because he also would have gotten a positive and healthy example from his friends at the Human Realm, but I could see him getting a bad grade at school or something like that and then just... deciding he can't go eat because he failed and he can't just go and waste resources when he can't even do that, right?

... So the short answer for if I think he has food/eating issues is yes.

[flower-boi16]

Why I LOATHE The "Amity Hates Hunter" Headcanon

In the TOH fandom, there's a certain headcanon that's been floating around in the community. You've probably seen a fan comic or two about and even an animatic video, that being, the "Amity hates Hunter" headcanon. After analyzing the show further and gaining a better appreciation for it, I can safely say that this headcanon absolutely sucks. Now there's nothing wrong with people having headcanons or anything, you can headcanon whatever the hell you want, but I really feel that this headcanon in particular spreads a really bad misconception about Amity and Hunter's relationship and kind of misses the thing the show is going for. So in this post, I'm going to analyze this headcanon and why it just. Does not work.

1. What Is The Premise of The Headcanon?

Before I dissect this headcanon let's first establish what this headcanon is about. Basically, the premise of the headcanon is that Amity doesn't fully trust Hunter after his redemption since she hasn't forgotten about the time he threatened Luz's life so he could get the titan blood key from her, and so she still dislikes him and hasn't bought his change yet. She would be more skeptical of him, basically.

Alright, so now we've established what the headcanon is based on, let's now get into the real meat of why this headcanon doesn't work. I'm going to talk about Eclipse Lake, Any Sport in A Storm and Labyrinth Runners and analyze each episode in terms of how they demonstrate why Amity wouldn't hate Hunter.

2. Eclipse Lake

Eclipse Lake seems to be an episode that is heavily misunderstood by the "Amity hates Hunter" crowd to me, as some people seem to forget certain things about Amity and Hunter's relationship here and ONLY focus on Hunter threatening Luz to Amity's face. This is where I bring up my first major point here; that being, Amity relates to Hunter. Amity and Hunter are directly meant to be parallels to each other, and Eclipse Lake does pretty clearly show that. Hunter throughout the whole episode basically does a "you and me are not so different" thing with Amity, with how they both have to live up to the standards of the people they care about and are afraid of disappointing them, and eventually, when Amity sees Hunter literally dig his own grave, Amity realizes that he is right, they are both kids held up to high standards by their shitty parents that they are afraid of not meeting.

And THIS is what people often miss here; Amity relates to Hunter. She's been in the same position and circumstances as him - after all, she knows exactly what it's like to have shitty parents, so she would empathize with him given their similar circumstances. And this could also mean that Amity would realize that Hunter, in some way, is being abused by Belos - which again, she would empathize with given she used to be in similar circumstances to him. She wouldn't hate Hunter, she would empathize with him because she sees herself in him, she knows what it's like to be in his position, to have parents who force you under pressure to meet high standards that you may struggle to meet.

Then we get to the moment that kickstarts this headcanon - Amity giving Hunter a hand in friendship, only for Hunter to betray her trust after he notices the titan blood key, and then threatens Luz's life in front of Amity so she could give him the titan blood key. After that, Hunter flies away with Amity having a disappointed expression on her face while she looks at him. I think some people tend to misunderstand this moment too - now, do I think Amity would trust Hunter after this? Not exactly, but that's until we get to...

3. Any Sport in A Storm & Labyrinth Runners

I'm gonna cover Any Sport in A Storm quickly since there isn't much to say, but it and Labyrinth Runners support my second major argument here; Amity doesn't have a reason to hold Hunter's past actions against him anymore. In Any Sport in A Storm, Hunter disobeys a command he was given by Darius just so he could protect his friends and fix his mistake, and at the end of the episode Willow shows Luz and Amity a group picture of the emerald entrails, ofc they see Hunter in the pic and they gasp and the episode just kinda ends after that.

Now, after Eclipse Lake, it is correct to assume that Amity wouldn't trust Hunter, though she could still heavily see herself in him and relate to his situation. But now in Any Sport, Amity is just given the information that Hunter disobeyed an order he was given and went out of his way to protect his friends, we don't know the exact conversation that happened after that moment but it's still a sign to Amity that Hunter's making a turnaround. "But Hunter kidnapped Amity's friends!" Why yes, he did, but he also went out of his way to fix his mistake and again, disobeyed an order he was given which would have risked his position in the EC. I don't think the other characters, including Amity, wouldn't factor that in. So while Amity still wouldn't fully trust Hunter - she would still see some signs that he is making a turnaround.

Then comes Labyrinth Runners. Now, I want you to pay attention to what Hunter does in this episode, because it illustrates my point of why Amity wouldn't hold any of Hunter's past actions against him anymore. In Labyrinth Runners, he...

Saves Gus from Adrian

Helps save the school

Gives clear information on what's going to happen on the day of unity

I think what Hunter does in Labyrinth Runners does make up for his past actions, which keep in mind aren't the worst things characters in this show have done (Cough Cough Lilith kidnapping and almost killing Luz in her battle with Eda Cough Cough, Amity almost getting Luz dissected Cough Cough), and so it wouldn't be out of character for Amity to trust him, especially when he saved Gus, aka, one of Amity's friends. This combined with the past stuff I mentioned about how Amity sees herself and relates to Hunter AND how Amity could just see Hunter as someone who was just lied to and manipulated by Belos which, I'm pretty sure the whole hexsquad would see him like that, means that Amity doesn't have much of a reason to be an ass to Hunter.

He's fully proved he's trustworthy, the others trust him, and so would Amity. I think it's also worth pointing out that, I don't think Amity would blame Hunter for what he did in Eclipse Lake. She knows why he did what he did, and again, she's been in the same circumstances as he was; I don't think she would blame Hunter for being desperate to gain his abusive parent's approval to meet his expectations since she was in the same position too.

So, in conclusion, Amity wouldn't hold any of Hunter's past actions against him, she doesn't have much of a reason to do so, since now he's proven himself trustworthy. However, a lot of people tend to ignore all of the stuff I just mentioned, and they create fanworks where Amity threatens Hunter in some way, which leads to a certain thing about this headcanon that pisses me off...

4. It Makes Amity into an Asshole

I think this is my biggest issue with how the fandom often characterizes Amity and Hunter's relationship; Amity just becomes an unlikeable asshole in all fanworks that spread the "Amity hates Hunter" headcanon. I am not going to name any examples here because you've probably already seen at least one fan work portraying Amity this way. Fanworks like these tend to ignore all the stuff I previously said in the last two sections and have Amity be an asshole to Hunter, which actually VERY OOC for her.

As if these works try to portray Amity as some kind of girl boss who "Is so protective of her girlfriend and will murder anyone who tries to harm her!", which is fine until you factor in all the outside context, once you do, Amity doesn't come across as a protective girlfriend in these fan works, she comes across as an asshole bullying an abusive victim when she has NO REASON to. Amity isn't a girl boss in these fanworks, she has no reason to treat Hunter like this for the reasons I already mentioned, yet people ignore ALL OF THAT in favor of Amity threatening Hunter cuz it makes her "cool" I guess.

Amity would be the first person to understand Hunter's situation and why he did what he did - she's been in the same position as him, and now, when he's proven that he's trustworthy to her, why should she be an ass to him? Do you see why it's annoying how OOC Amity is made in these fanworks? Really, this headcanon should just be called "Amity bullies Hunter" because that's what it is, Amity being an asshole to an abuse victim when she has no reason for doing so. I don't mind the idea of Amity being a protective girlfriend for Luz, it makes sense for her character, but when it comes to Hunter the fandom flanderizes it to an absurd degree.

5. Conclusion

I could talk about this longer and mention how this headcanon was basically formed from nothing but avatar comparisons and nothing else but I haven't seen Avatar yet so I can't really comment on that. Besides this post getting long enough already (I saw when I've made far longer essays on the internet). In conclusion; Amity wouldn't hate Hunter. Not in the slightest. This idea thankfully is starting to become abandoned by the fandom with more people recognizing that it is just. Does not work. And while that's nice I still kinda thought it was time for someone to fully analyze why this headcanon does not work (and that person was me babeeeeeeeey). So uh ya....bye.

[findmeinthefallair]

A Look at Hunter’s Complex PTSD (Part 2)

I forgot to add in the first post last weekend that I am taking excerpts from Parts 2, 4 and 5 of the book ("What My Bones Know" by Stephanie Foo), in case anyone plans to get a copy of it.

I didn’t use anything from Parts 1 and 3, since 1 involves the author recounting her own childhood trauma while 3 is about the cultural and historical events that are tied to the generational trauma in her family and community, which she researched to find answers.

Also..with two of the Owl House specials remaining, which would definitely give us more major Hunter moments…any additions from those two episodes that relate to the book excerpts will be added as new posts, e.g. if any scenes from For The Future are relevant to this Part 2 post, I will be making a post titled A Look at Hunter’s Complex PTSD (Part 2B).

Anyhow if all this sounds confusing now, there will ultimately be one grand masterpost listing every single part. As usual, take care with the warnings of mentions of abuse and trauma ahead. Here goes, for Part 2:

Hunter’s history differs only slightly from the above. He also played a caretaker role to Belos during the latter’s rage episodes:

which shows the failure on Belos’s part, especially since he’s in the guardian/caretaker role, to own, regulate or seek his own help for his difficult emotions, but it imbued Hunter with that sense of feeling “special”. The Golden Guard role was his, and his alone. Belos could then reinforce the whole “wild magic is bad” narrative, exploit how Hunter loved to feel special and wanted, and continue abusing the boy.

But as Hunter tried harder and harder to get Belos to love him the way he wanted, he too experienced a growing vigilance and desperation that was destroying him more and more, as he was worn down further over time.

I’d say it was like this for Hunter too. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t please Belos enough. It wasn't fixing things and it felt as if he was a ship slowly sinking. As his desperation grew, you could say he ventured out further beyond established boundaries, and Hollow Mind was the culmination of the courage and support he spent the previous episodes building up.

He, just like how it’s stated in the book page above, ended up woven more into the world, sewn emotionally and professionally into a network of lives. He made trusted friends and healthier company at last. Ultimately, all those actions he took nudged him along the path meant for him, and it even ended up with him being brave enough to say this in Hollow Mind:

To ask the ultimate question, "What did you do to the other guards?". The question that got Belos to decide “Okay, time to off this Grimwalker and then make another”.

Following that heart-stopping moment, Luz saving his life, both of them escaping, and then the panic attack scene that we all remember, Hunter’s story isn’t over yet. 

With where he is now, in the middle of S3, he might be mentally and emotionally operating in a way that I can deconstruct while we wait for the next episode.

I am inclined to agree with these.

It’s just…so likely for Hunter. It was the case for me, since the first 5 years out of my 7 years of seeing therapists (2014-2020) were either just talk therapy or with ineffective therapists that I didn't trust enough. It felt more like just maintaining healthy enough functioning in my daily life, rather than having what felt like proper breakthroughs.

What Hunter needs first and foremost is to just continue experiencing the precious trust and presence of the good people he has formed good relationships with. Everyone is now in survival mode and would need the same manner of support.

Frankly, almost everyone in the show needs that too. The Isles will be going through some form of collective grief, if not already.

Processing all that has happened to him, in his young mind, will be hell of a lot of work. He can’t nicely fit all of that horror into a framework of cold logic, and I doubt the mess can be solved just by “talking things out”. After all, he has Complex PTSD: and being entangled in damaged formative relationships (Belos and the Emperor's Coven, basically) - not necessarily involving just people, or his relationship with himself, but also himself with the world - is the centerpiece of Complex PTSD.

Cold logic can't exactly help you make sense of why you lacked warmth in your formative relationships (the more technical term is "primary relationships" where your primary caregiver(s), a parent/guardian, is supposed to supply you with security and warmth in their relationship(s) with you).

The clearest analogy I can think of for how he’d need some time before talk therapy could ever benefit him, is when a computer does that thing where it shuts down outside of your control, in order to prevent further damage. When you switch it back on by pressing the power button, it usually acts as if nothing happened before that. This numbing and calmness has been essential in the short-term for Hunter to function, one example being from Hollow Mind:

because his emotions being almost completely shut down here were crucial for survival: for his legs to carry him, with Luz’s help, to escape Belos’s mind. If he didn’t have such a shutdown, he may have frozen in place due to being too overwhelmed, making it harder for Luz to shake him into being lucid to follow her, and Belos would’ve been able to apprehend and capture him all over again in the mindscape.

Survive first, fear later.

There is the possibility that with Flapjack’s death in particular, he might swing towards more dissociation than ever before. The reason why dissociation happens in the first place is because the brain, like the computer, would be overwhelmed if it stayed online any further. It’s a protective built-in mechanism to numb intense psychological pain. That computer can still work overall for some time, but boy oh boy..it would need some repair shop work at some point to even perform basic functions.

If his best friend’s death, by his hands, shocked us in the audience as much as it did, it goes without saying: he himself is carrying a massive amount of shock. The thing is..for the time being his attention is diverted to fighting back and going after Belos, making sure everyone else is safe. But we shall see how his mental state will be after the fighting is over.

This pattern of shutting down/short-circuiting and then coming back online without proper deep healing, would be detrimental long-term if it keeps happening and if it continues past the point where things start to be truly safe for him. It can sadly go on for years if e.g. a child is trapped until they move out as an adult, which would mean the road to healing is having to thaw out of several years’ worth of survival mode and hypervigilance.

To remain isolated would be the biggest obstacle in any stage of his recovery. Thankfully he is now the furthest thing from isolated, where the story left off. Check out how different the screenshots are below omg…the effects of Belos isolating him versus where he is now:

A consistent theme has been an ongoing tension between his fears and what he chooses to do anyway. It ain't just great storytelling, it also feels damn real because I'm willing to bet many of us experience the same tension in our day-to-day living.

E.g. in Labyrinth Runners, the panic attack he had:

is what made the later moment so much more powerful, when he decides to run towards fear to help Gus:

Over time, he has repeatedly made decisions where he prioritizes care for others, the desire for connection and wanting to do what is truly right, over the fear of being hurt and rejected. My personal fave example of how he worries for others’ safety is this seemingly smaller moment, but it’s honestly heartbreaking and reveals hell of a lot about who he is:

He is so terrified that Belos is back, quivering and exasperated, yet he doesn’t want Luz to call anyone else to help them: and in no way does he do this to show off or anything, he wants to protect his loved ones. But this tenacity that exists alongside his gentle spirit is what got him to rebel more and more throughout Season 2, leading him into greater danger and well..unfortunately all of that plot was also building up to what Belos did to him in Thanks to Them.

…yeah. Talk therapy is not what I think this kid needs right now, not till there is restored peace all around him. Because talk therapy requires quite a bit of usage of the brain’s prefrontal cortex - the part responsible for reasoning and logic - and it is activated when we are in conscious control of our thinking. And facts such as “My ‘uncle’ chose to lie to me my whole life” can’t be understood and analyzed in the same way as a math problem can be deciphered :’) How does one make sense of something like that?

Poor Hunter can only accept the reality that Belos chose to do all that, and a key part of this acceptance is to affirm his own strengths and believe he can accept such hard truths. To achieve such acceptance, treating his condition would most likely require subconscious work that is experiential in nature (involving deeper parts of the mind than just the prefrontal cortex) as opposed to just analyzing and taking things apart. Because I don't think simply talking about this:

on top of a childhood of being manipulated, will get this poor kid to where he'd like to be.

My former supervisor calls experiential subconscious work “heart work”, not “head work”...i.e. experiencing one’s feelings and relationships in a safe space. All of Hunter’s military training and duties are most definitely “head work”, all about strategy and withholding trust, which means “heart work” - building trust and finding authenticity in his relationships - has been a new journey for him. His network of relationships and perceptions need a major, positive reframing. And there are so many emotional wounds, oh Titan, so many from Belos.

Hunter is likely to benefit from experiential subconscious work such as the increasingly popular Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) modality for therapy, because EMDR can be an effective treatment if a client experiences discomfort in the form of physical bodily sensations whenever their trauma is triggered, though it is not necessarily for everyone who suffers from trauma. A Boiling Isles version of EMDR might involve Illusion magic...if a therapist from that Coven can draw out mental images of clients to project into the therapy room, that would be a cool simulation and cool parallel of how therapy works in our world.

EMDR was the biggest, most revelatory thing for me in my own recovery but a coursemate of mine found it to be too much and too direct: instead, she benefited from the Emotion Freedom Technique (EFT) approach which was more physical in nature and relied on tapping acupressure points on the body. Idk, maybe I matched better with EMDR because I have an innate curiosity about things, even if it has gotten me in trouble many times in life (this sounds like Hunter as well) :S Whereas EFT was the better fit for my coursemate because she wanted a sense of attachment and connection with herself via the specific sense of touch.

Disclaimer: I am not yet certified in EMDR, god it will be years before I can afford the training fees but I have been on the receiving end of it as a client in many sessions. So I am no trained expert in it at all.

We see Hunter experiencing physical distress related to his trauma, which is why the EMDR technique, that aims to reduce trauma-related distress experienced in the physical body, could be the right match for him. Since he loves the Ruler’s Reach and Cosmic Frontier, he might like how EMDR is like letting your subconscious re-tell your story as a heroic triumphant story, and the treatment feels like rewriting your painful memories while still acknowledging how they actually happened. Because the treatment helped me learn that it is possible to hold both of those in your mind.

To sum up EMDR the best I can, the client replays their difficult memories in their subconscious imagination. It relies on a phenomenon called bilateral stimulation (BLS) which is related to how making left-and-right motions (e.g. going for walks, or swimming) while holding upsetting thoughts in our heads, helps to reduce the intensity of such thoughts.

The general process involves:

Helping the client prepare an imagined safe place to go to (Hunter might choose his fave location from Cosmic Frontier, since clients can choose fictional places if they like) and if needed, a safe person (he might choose Camila) to come rescue them in their mind, in case revisiting the bad memories becomes too distressing. The therapist gets the client to experience the safe place and person, then describe to the therapist what they see, hear, touch etc with as much detail as possible. There will be several practice rounds in those safe spaces, before the client is supposed to do the same imagination thing with their scary traumatic memories in later sessions: once they are experienced with visiting their safe places.

Desensitizing the pain and distress of traumatic memories, working through only one memory at a time, where the therapist gets the client to hold the painful memory in mind while also performing left-and-right physical movements e.g. client moves their eyes left and right, following the therapist's hand motions. The therapist regularly checks in with how the client feels and also measures 1. the intensity of the client’s distress (using the Subjective Units of Disturbance or SUD scale, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest distress level imaginable to the client) and 2. The strength of the client’s positive belief about themselves (using the VOC or Validity of Cognition scale, on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being complete trust in the positive belief). The aim is to reduce the SUD score to 0 or 1, and increase the VoC score to 7, per memory that the client decides to process with the therapist. This would definitely take at least 3 sessions per memory, based on my experience.

The desensitizing step takes multiple sessions (estimated to be 8-12 sessions for simpler traumas, and many more sessions for complex traumas) helps to make room for new positive beliefs about oneself e.g. “I am worthy of love” to take up more space in the client’s mind, while the emotional space taken up by negative beliefs like “I am unlovable” gets smaller and smaller.

In my experience as an EMDR client, you are just supposed to let your subconscious flow and alter each memory during the desensitizing, because it isn’t about how realistic the memory was, it’s about what meanings you’d like to put into the storyline of the memory e.g. going from “I deserved that abuse” to “You know what, I’m gonna try protect myself”. This means Hunter could incorporate his fave fictional scenes and elements into his own story. I found that my brain went from accurately replaying my traumatic memories, to adding in new things or replacing original parts of each memory. And best of all, I wasn’t actively choosing all these changes - I just let my subconscious run on its own, since it is outside my conscious control anyway. E.g. in a memory where my own abusive mother was yelling at me during a car ride, I saw a tall red tree (red is my fave colour and I feel strength whenever I see it) rapidly growing out of the road directly in front of us. It could cause my mother to lose control of the steering and brake hard, and I could quickly unlock the front passenger door to exit the car and run to my own safety. The most real thing about this was that I now got a taste of how it would feel to use strong boundaries with my mother in real life, and the coolest thing was seeing how my own brain went off on its own to write an encouraging story, which is what mattered and allowed my positive beliefs about myself to start taking root. It all started in my imagination, guided by the therapist.

The best way of putting it is..I realized that when the original traumatic events happened in my life, the bad events happened which then installed negative beliefs about myself (and the world) into my brain's programming, breaking my trust in almost everything except my escape spaces like gaming and art. With EMDR, after feeling the safety of trusting my therapist and my safe place, I had to let my brain create the positive version of the above: letting improved versions of those traumatic events be written by my subconscious: which helped to usher in the positive opposites of those negative beliefs.

It would be too lengthy to go into more detail here about how EMDR could help our boi, so I will instead cover that in my future case formulation post that is separate from this series. But EMDR is not the only way to reach a point of having positive beliefs about oneself. Some people may be able to reach that stage without therapy, using resources like a strong support network and doing meaningful work and activities, which is completely valid and fine as well.

EMDR was the tool that helped the book author reach her first ever breakthrough in her mental health journey. It helped her realize that stuff from so long ago, which she thought she had gotten over, needed to be revisited in order for her to start feeling love for her inner child and younger self. Feeling love for yourself and understanding self-love is very hard work, and it’s not the same as shrugging “Yeah, I guess it’s good to love yourself” and knowing it in theory as an observer.

That section of the book is sort of like how Hunter becomes more and more able to draw strength and other positive qualities e.g. courage, trust, etc, from himself, on his own. The rest of the Hexsquad and Camila came in to help and save Hunter first, which gently reinforced a healthy narrative over time that he is in fact deserving of love, getting him to believe along the lines of “You know what, I don’t want to try being useful to Belos anymore, because what he did to me and what he does as the Emperor is wrong”. This understand was further reinforced when he was the one to extend help to Gus towards the end of Labyrinth Runners.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this post is how Hunter’s friends helped to positively reshape the way he saw himself, when they modeled how healthy relationships should be for him. Many posts have already made in the fandom about how this was the case in every episode that Hunter was featured in (from Hunting Palismen onwards), so I’ll only show the recent examples from Thanks to Them below:

I like how during all of his screentime, it wasn’t obvious to us whether he had good beliefs about himself, right up until we see him at his happiest, in his cosplay outfit and secondly when he expresses his desires out loud to Belos while being possessed.

Learning healthy behaviours from positive influences outside of himself (sometimes, in therapy speak we call this “introducing a foreign element” outside of the client’s own familiar world, to introduce real change), because he had no reference points to draw upon from his own knowledge, is what got him to begin understanding and believing he deserves better. Such recovery work can’t happen within a vacuum, since no man is an island. Some form of connection is needed as a catalyst.

And ajhdhkjkljdfd I am so so proud of him that he could already practice these modeled behaviours himself at least a couple of times, supported by Flapjack's love, after being equipped with the love he needed:

Now, without Flapjack, I am on the edge of my seat wondering how he sees himself, and while he will never be the same again..I wonder how he will find his way back to liking who he is. I hope to see a more in-depth, layered and raw version of these where he has to face himself...and Flapjack is not going to be there this time..:

Especially since his “I like who I am right now” has been so greatly challenged by Flapjack dying by his own hands.

The author's breakthrough after meeting her younger self in her imagination, during her own EMDR sessions, was that she now understood in her heart, not just knowing in her rational head, that her parents did not provide her with healthy love. With that, it became clear what it was that she needed.

This is crazy important. Gradually, Hunter made his way from merely knowing (suspecting that the 'love' provided for him by Belos was not right) to fully understanding (feeling what love is supposed to be, through his friends and Camila). This concept references what I said very early on in this post about “heart work” vs “head work”. Head knowledge is the knowing part that looks for facts and can be reached quickly, but heart knowledge - trusting, believing, seeing the meaningful significance of something - can be tough to find without the aid of a support network, therapists and any form of meaningful inspiration.

The following life-changing truths that the author found in the challenging parts of her EMDR therapy sessions, are truths that were also revealed to Hunter in his character arc through difficult experiences:

I'm sure there will be amazing upcoming dialogue where his support network and found family help to further reaffirm the positive beliefs that he has began to trust about himself.

And that’s that for Part 2!

I wonder if any of the above was helpful, and feel free to comment and discuss in the notes.

Importantly, to put up a word of caution here: please do not try any EMDR on yourself under any circumstances, of course xD

Which stuff did you guys find the most interesting from this part? If anything above is pretty complex for you, feel free to DM me or comment to ask further questions~~

Part 3 will be posted next weekend.

[avatarmerida]

Pleeeeeeeeease do a one shot with THAT crew art...

You know the one I'm talking about...

(I'm God's miracle)

I do know it. It controls my every thought.

I haven’t seen anyone do it with evil!Hunter (insp @soldrawss) so here’s my attempt at combining the two. In my take of this version, Hunter is aware he is a grimwalker the whole time and basically has to do the Emperor’s bidding to justify existing (nothing new there) but he is aware that Belos is a liar and evil and he also believes he is these things because why wouldn’t he be? In case it’s not clear, this would be after ASIAS in a AU where Hunter keeps trying to recruit Willow to the coven as an excuse to talk to her. It’s less angst and more Megamind (who fully believes he is angsty so) ok bye

---

“Well well well,” came a familiar voice from behind her. “If it isn’t my favorite plant witch.”

“Hello to you too,” Willow asked, unfazed by his “dramatic reveal” as she was so sure he had intended it to be. She did not look up from her comfortable spot on the ground where she sat, gathering soil into her little pail. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Golden Guard? Did you follow me up here or were you just waiting menacingly in the shadows for me to show up?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the business of the Emperor’s Coven with a civilian,” he said, giving her a non answer. “If you’d truly like to know why I’m here I suppose I could entrust that information to a new recruit.”

“Hmm pass,” she said, staying focused on her task with her back to her but feeling his eyes on her. He wouldn’t ask what she was doing, he would either pretend he already knew or ignore it all together.

“Do you need any help?” He asked, uncharacteristically small. Hmm,that was new. He was clearly hoping she’d have a more elaborate response and the prepared retort he had up his sleeve wouldn’t make sense, not that digging in the dirt made any more sense.

“No, I’m almost done,” she said, shoveling the last bit of soil into her pail. It was excellent soil, a shimmering dark turquoise that helped plants be more lively and vibrant. It was well worth the distance Willow had to travel to obtain it and collecting it was relaxing. It was quiet out here, an abandoned building made it seem off-putting to other people but Willow welcomed the calm atmosphere. There was hardly anything out here to capture the attention of the Emperor’s Coven. 

But that seemed to be the case wherever she found herself lately.

“Ya know it’s dangerous to be out here by yourself,” he said, kicking at the ground not expecting her attention to linger elsewhere.

“Well I’m not here by myself now am I?” She asked with a smirk he could hear. Months ago she would be terrified to find herself alone with him, especially knowing what she knew now about the Emperor’s Coven. He did not deny it when she confronted him about what the Coven and the Emperor were really like. He was not ashamed, he claimed, rather he was content with his place and what that meant. He was delighted with the rumors depicting him as ruthless and cruel (and this was mostly from the mouths of her friends) but somehow her experiences with him differed.

He loved a crowd, a perfect chance to act boastful and righteous and flaunt his status. But when it was just them his insincerity did not seem very sincere. She suspected he never spent enough time with anyone for them to see beyond his little character, but she had seen enough repeat performances to pick up the inconsistencies. By now she could tell when his words were empty, when he was leaning into this character that he was forced to method act. But she could sense he didn’t know who to be around her, and she felt that was some of his best work.

“Ya know, the Emperor’s Coven has tons of dirt,” he tried to say casually, feeling things had been silent for too long.

“What?”

“Uh, well that’s why you’re here right?” He sputtered.

“Oh so your business can stay a secret but mine can’t?” She said as she stood up and turned to face him. She could’ve sworn he stood straighter when she did.

“The Emperor makes it a point to know everyone’s business,” he said in a low, cool voice as though he himself was the Emperor. He tried so hard to intimidate her but she somehow always remained composed, as though she was merely humoring him. She wiped her hands on her dark green skirt, the access dirt blending in nicely and shook her head at him.

“Well then ask him what I’m up to,” she shrugged walking past him, purposely brushing past his shoulder as she did. She heard him chuckle deep in his throat, as though she had said just the right thing.

“I’m not so sure he’d be pleased with you trespassing, little plant witch.” the Golden Guard said with a cocky smile. He has stopped wearing his mask around Willow, maybe because it was easier to see or maybe because he thought she could be swayed by a pretty face. She’d have to ask him one of these days.

“Pssh ‘trespassing?’” Willow laughed, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “There’s nothing to trespass out here, it’s totally abandoned!”

“Exactly,” he said, following slowly behind her. “There’s a reason for that; it’s condemned. Strictly off limits.Dangerous.”

“Aww so did you stalk me all the way here because it’s dangerous and you wanted to make sure I was safe before you kidnapped me again?”

“Pssh, what?” Hunter could never place her tone, how it was both sweet and sour, how it asked a question that seemed to already hold the answer. It was like an argument that he wasn’t sure how to win. “Of course not. W-why would I care about what happens to a foolish half-a-witch like you? If you’re foolish enough to come here, you deserve to learn the consequences first hand.”

“Hmm, I could say the same thing about you,” Willow sighed, looking over her shoulder at him. “But which half-a-witch is more foolish? The one who came here or the one who followed her here because he wanted an excuse to talk to her?”

“It’s business!” Hunter insisted, picking up his pace as his voice got higher. “My job is to enforce the rules and will of the Emperor and the signs on the perimeter clearly state-.”

“So are you gonna arrest me?” She asked,  quickly turning on her heel causing him to nearly bump into her.

“I-I could.” He stuttered, his eyes unable to decide where to look.

“Hmm, well you can’t join the Emperor’s Coven with a criminal record so... okay, go ahead.” She set her pail down and placed her arms out as though she was ready to be escorted to prison.

He was taken back. Very rarely did his banter get a response let alone ones so calm and silly. But she always managed to call his bluff and he couldn’t tell if she was wearing him down or winning him over. Either way, what a fine addition to the coven she’d be..

But she was right, and Hunter could hardly back down from what he said without contradicting his whole deal and risking losing the advantage he thought he had. This girl wasn’t scared of him or intimidated by him, heck she wasn’t even annoyed by him. His usual tricks didn’t work on her and as much as he wanted them to, it was somewhat refreshing. But either he had followed her here and hadn't stopped her or he was waiting for her and didn’t speak up right away. He barely understood why he mentioned the trespassing, the Emperor didn’t care about this area he would find the time wasted unless Hunter had actually caught a wild witch.

He was working on it.

“So um yeah I uh-.” But before he could verbally dig his own grave, the ground began to shake. A large crack formed between him and Willow and they both kept back to avoid falling in. The crack quickly sped up and reached the remains of the building, causing it to fall forward, heading towards the pair. They quickly jumped out of the way as the rest of the buildings followed like dominos.

As the walls came crumbling down around them, Hunter went to teleport away dodging the debris as he located the way out. As he looked out of the corner of his eye to see which way the plant girl was going, his heart or the equal equivalent sank when he saw her laying on the ground. A large collection of bricks had fallen on her foot and Hunter watched her remove them as a look of pain overtook her face.

She was so focused on her current situation that she didn’t see another pile was headed her way. By the time Willow did notice it was almost too late and all she had time to do was close her eyes and brace for impact.

But she was not met with the impact she had been expecting.

The next thing she knew, she was in a blur of light. Settings came in and out of focus, the constant, jagged movement made her dizzy but it was somehow sort of mesmerizing. She looked up and saw her savior, serious and sorrowful looking ahead at his destination and not being distracted by the wide eyed girl who clung poetically to his chest.

He darted from point to point, the ground growing more unstable by the second. His focus and grip never wavered as Willow took the opportunity to memorize his features. They seemed to compliment him in every sense, they made the transition from stern to soft so seamlessly. His edges were sharp, his jawline so defined it seemed to direct her to his eyes like an arrowhead. Willow had never seen this in his eyes before; it was less certain than the way they held anger but it was softer than the fear they had known.

She wanted to see them closer, but she felt the look would vanish if she entered his sight.

When Hunter felt they had traveled a safe distance, he stopped and hid behind a wall, making sure no other threats had followed them. Willow watched in wonder as he panted, his eyes desperately scanning their surroundings to make sure there would be no more surprise demolishment. He brought her closer, as though shielding her from unseen doom as Willow’s head fell instinctively on his shoulder as she listened to the sound of him breathing.

“Are you okay?” She whispered, close enough that she could see a fresh wound above his eye, another for his never ending collection.

“We should be safe here,” he said, more to assure himself than her, not quite answering her question. Something about him saying ‘we’ and not ‘I’ or ‘you’ made her heart spin. 

“Hunter?”

“Yeah?”

“You can put me down now.” Willow said, feeling as though Hunter had forgotten she occupied his arms. He held her like she was nothing and everything at the same time. Like he didn’t want to risk dropping her. Like she was precious to him. Like he wanted her close. A boy with no good in his heart as he so adamantly claimed to be could never hold someone like this. She wondered if his kindness was hidden from him or by him. She wondered if it felt familiar or forced, because it felt nice to be close to.

“Oh, right.” He said as though it was really no inconvenience and had simply slipped his mind. He suddenly became conscious of how tight his grip on her was as he gently placed her back on her feet. It felt unnatural to do something so gently, but something about her made unnatural things happen easily. As her feet touched the ground, a sharp pain shot up her body and she winced as she shifted her weight. Hunter instinctively crouched down back to her side for her to lean on him to take pressure off the leg “Sorry about that.”

“‘Sorry?’” She repeated, the shock distracting from her pain, She gave a small laugh. “D-did you just apologize to me?”

“Uh, I mean I-.”

“Were you... worried about me?”

“What? No!” Hunter’s face turned bright crimson, in embarrassment, in anger, infatuated.

“You were!” Willow exclaimed victoriously, as she summoned a large flower to sit on, as Hunter was desperate to pull away. “You were worried you might hurt me!”

“No! I meant sorry for...”

“Oh my Titan, you can’t even think of a fake reason!” Willow accused in delight, adjusting her dress as she made herself more comfortable. “It’s true!”

“Shut up!” He spat, contorting his mouth into a twisted frown. “I-I didn’t even mean to say it!”

“Exactly!” Willow said, pointing her finger at him, small yellow flowers bursting around her to emphasize her point. “You didn’t even mean to! You did it without thinking! Deep down inside of you, there is good!”

“Shut up!” He said again, but this time the embarrassment in his voice outweighed the anger. He tried to walk away from her but his pace was not a quick as it could be, he had no destination in mind.

“You did follow me to make sure I was safe,” Willow said smugly, hoopping off her her seat to skip beside him as tried to avoid her direct gaze. “You care about me.”

“No I don’t!” He insisted, hastening his pace.

“Really? Then why am I over here where’s it safe? Would’ve been easier to have just left me, ya know. Let me ‘learn the consequences first hand’ and all that, right?”

“I was looking out for myself and you were in my way,” Hunter lied quickly. “You just got lucky, but it wasn’t on purpose!”

“You had plenty of chances to put me down,” she pointed out with a bright smile, summoning a vine to carry her to adjust to his speed. Her knee high sock had gotten torn and she could tell her leg was slightly bruised and scratched, but she could worry about that later. “And I’m pretty sure you told me to ‘hold on.’ Now why would you say that to someone whose safety you didn’t care about?”

“I owed you one,” he grumbled, pausing for a moment to try and figure out where they were.

“Would someone truly evil care about his debt to a mere half-a-witch?” Willow stopped behind him, removing her hair from her braids to redo them. She knew he wouldn’t leave with a question like that in the air. He stopped too.

He did not have a response, but he wished he did. He could not blame it on a code of honor because he knew that she believed that he believed he did not have one.

“You care about me.” She stated sweetly. It was not a question.

“So what if I do?” He asked softly, trying to appear as though it was no concern of his, whether or not it was the truth. “The amount someone like me can care about someone doesn’t add up to much. I wouldn’t let it go to your head.”

“So what if I do?” Willow said back, mocking his solemn tone as she twisted her hair back into a braid. “Maybe I care about you too.”

“Another foolish decision on your part,” said Hunter, regaining the steady control in his voice as he summoned his staff, knowing he couldn’t risk staying with her longer. “But I know better than trying to tell you what to think. You’ve made it clear that my opinion is of no value to you.”

“It has value,” she said slowly, disliking the braid she had made and undoing it, giving up on the endeavor. “It values me, so it’s not composed entirely of bad taste.”

“I’ve been very upfront about-,” he said loudly as he turned around to face her, not realizing how close she was standing to him. The vine she summoned for support elevated her slightly so she was at his eye level, her hair free and forming small curls around her face in a way he had never seen before. Their faces were mere inches apart but she did not flinch or pull  away but he swore she held her breath. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “-about your value to me.”

“For the Coven, right?” She said gently as though she had to remind him. “It’s just that, I feel like during our meetings lately, you’ve been trying more to change my feelings about you, and less about the Coven.”

“The coven and I are essentially the same.”

“To you, maybe, but I have no interest in the coven,” said Willow, allowing her vine to set her down as she tried to apply gently pressure on her leg. “So how is it that I spend so much time with the coven head?”

He turned his gaze to the ground and did not answer.

“I highly doubt you pursue all candidates this thoroughly, I highly doubt you have the time,” continued Willow. “With all the time you’ve spent chasing me you could’ve found about ten more qualified recruits. Can you honestly say I’m worth ten scouts?”

“You’re easily worth 100.”

“How?” She asked, honestly perplexed. “Because I have potential? So what? Plenty of people do. You said the coven is no place for emotions, well that’s where my power comes from. Recruiting me would remove the thing that made you want me in the first place. You’re smart, surely you’ve realized that.”

“It's because you’re stubborn, “ he said, looking up at her like he believed he was invisible to her. “You aren’t swayed by fancy words and status and it’s not because you don’t see their worth. Your approval is guarded, it’s selective, and rare things tend to be valuable things.” His voice did not ooze its usual smugness, he said it like he was reciting a poem to her. His voice held something back as though he could not bring himself to say too blunt a compliment. He removed his worn glove and reached out to brush a loose strand of hair behind. He could not place the reason for the gesture.

Willow let out a small gasp, half lost in the complement half breathless from the cold touch of his hand lingering against her cheek. He turned around to walk away, hoping it looked convincing that he could get very far this time.

“So if I had liked you when we first met, you wouldn’t value my opinion?” She called after him.

“If you had liked me when we first met you wouldn’t have really known me.” He called back.

“Does that mean you’ve changed?”

He stopped for a moment and thought about what that implied. She liked him now? Is that what that meant? How? He hadn’t changed as far as he was concerned, but he had never been someone else’s concern before. He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. He vanished into a flash of gold before appearing in front of her again, no other destination in mind.

“What’s to stop me from kidnapping you?” His voice was cold and demanding, the way it was always supposed to be. “You’re weak, you’re hurt, you’re helpless! I could take you to the castle and throw you in a cell! I could bring you before the Emperor and frame you for any number or crimes! I could-! Er... I could...”

“That’s what you could do, but what will you do?” Willow winced, the pain in her leg growing. “I think if that’s what you wanted to do you would’ve done it by now. But you haven’t. Because you’re worried about my comfort and you’re thinking about what’s best for me.  You’re stalling because you don’t know what you want to do. I feel like true evil doesn’t hesitate.”

He inhaled sharply, cursing himself for hesitating to respond to her. He should be long gone by now, or at least be pretending he was in control of the situation. But he had saved her with no ulterior motive in mind, and the reason that did come to mind was impossible. He didn’t like her seeing him like this, but why did he care what she thought?

“I see how you fight,” said Willow gently, reading his thoughts. “You antagonize and trap and dodge, but you rarely strike. You love to talk and it’s like you’re trying to distract from the fact that your blows are never fatal. You refuse to attack unless it’s totally necessary. Doesn’t seem very bloodthirsty to me.”

“It’s called strategy,” he said. “It’s smart to preserve energy, it’s efficient. That way you don’t end up hurt and in your enemy’s clutches.” He gestured to her current state as though it proved his point. But Willow only smiled. She did not consider him an enemy but did enjoy her time in his clutches.

“So you know I wouldn’t have left you there either,” she said and he just groaned at how she was able to see more than what was supposed to be there. Everyone else accepted he was no good and scary, why couldn’t she? Wasn’t he supposed to want her to?

“Well. since you value loyalty, let’s see you try and join another coven now after the Emperor’s Coven saved your life,” he scoffed as though that had been his plan all along and he hadn’t just thought of it.

But she could see there was no true flair to his actions or ulterior motive lurking in his words, he was simply not used to going against orders in a way that he could not justify. It would have been fitting for his persona not to save her, it would have been tactical to lure her into an agreement before doing so and taking advantage of her position. So why hadn’t he? Why would he risk his life and have nothing to show for it?

“Thank you Hunter.” She said softly. She was the only one who said his name like that. His name was not freely given, but she had managed to weasel it out of him. She hadn’t had to try very hard.

“When you join the coven you won’t be able to address me so informally.” he said, putting his glove back on.  

“I think that’s one reason you’ve become less insistent that I do.”

“You have many?”

“I think you’re scared,” said Willow. “I think you’ve been doing what you’re told and are trying to convince yourself that it’s what you want to be doing but it’s not. But you’re scared because you know what Belos is capable of doing if he ever found out. I think you feel trapped and alone so you don’t listen to the part of you that wants something different because you don’t believe you’re allowed to. Because you know that’s what Belos believes.”

“So you think about me often, do you?” He said, hearing what he wanted to hear or at least trying to make it seem like he did.

“Or maybe you’re just impossible,” sighed Willow, seeing she wouldn’t make any ground in that subject matter today, standing up as much as she could.

“Grimwalkers are supposed to be impossible,” Hunter pointed out. “We’re taboo, an unforgivable sin, we’re damned from the moment we open our eyes. We can be nothing but ruthless...”

She rolled her eyes, as he continued his classic “born to be bad” speech. She should’ve known it was only a matter of time before he needed to prolong his presence with a monologue.

“Yeah, okay.” she chuckled, believing him less and less every time. The speech was more to assure him than her at this point.

“It’s true!” He insisted, the tips of his ears turning red. “I am heartless! And cold! I-I haven’t even asked you if you’re okay besides I don’t care! Because I-.”

“Because you’re checking my vitals like you think I can’t tell,” Willow finished, noting that while he did not say anything he eyed her injury to ensure it was leveled properly to reduce the pain. He was no healing expert, but he had suffered enough on the job injuries to know a few tricks. “You’d leave any other recruit out here to fend for themselves, so why am I any different?”

He looked up at the sky, it was getting late. He was tired and hungry and he knew Willow was meant to home before dark. He would think of something clever to say another day. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” said Hunter quietly as he swiftly went to scoop her up again. Consciously picking her up allowed Hunter to overthink it. He cautiously placed his arms around her back and under her knees and held her close and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, locking her fingers together to keep her close. If not for what he would later label his momentary lapse in judgment, he would never have the opportunity to be so close to her without seeing fury in her eyes. Now, they held a calm flourishing field of green, they held pleasantly surprised gratitude and maybe... admiration.

He didn’t teleport unless it was necessary, certain the sharp movements would aggravate her injury and flying was no better. So he held her in his arms and walked back to the path, traveling in silence as Willow tried to make sense of the moment.

But it was all in his head. Because at the end of the day, he knew what he was.

He knew he was the latest and therefore the greatest and maybe the last in a long line of disappointments. He was born heartless, his emotions were nothing more than a clever manipulation to imply there was variety beyond disgust and anger. He was told what he was and what he was meant for and he was oh so good at doing exactly what he was told.

He would outlive the others. He would see the plan through. He would not be distracted. He had never had an issue sticking to these mantras until he found himself risking everything to keep a silly plant witch around. He dared to think he could keep her around if he could convince her of the benefits. But why did he want to keep her around any way he could? How was he supposed to explain the twinge in his chest when he became overly aware of how close she was to him, resting safe in his arms?

No one had ever looked at him this way. Her eyes weren’t sizing him up or predicting his next move or scanning him for signs of weakness. Her eyes graced him because she was glad he was there. His eyes weren’t reverting to her every so often because he was monitoring her for a surprise attack or suspected her disloyalty or because he thought she was impressed by him. He wanted to see her face because it made him feel safe, it sent a shot through him that envied fear and lighting.

“Is the whole ‘you care about me’ theory completely off the table?” she asked once their surroundings became familiar again.

“Grimwalkers can’t feel love,” he said casually, as though it was a common fact and not something so devastating. It was a rare truly serious moment so Willow did not cheekily mention the fact that she had not said the word “love” as he set her back on the ground, her house not far from here.

“Well, that doesn’t make you a monster,” said Willow. “Plenty of people don’t fall in love or feel attraction, but that doesn’t mean that-.”

“No, I mean...” Hunter loved correcting people, but his evidence against her claim came with a personal toll that he hoped she wouldn’t ask him to clarify and act as though it was something he didn’t mind about himself. “...I mean, we cannot feel love and we cannot be loved. We can feel fondness, I suppose, and gratitude but no more than is required to know the value of something. But our skin is thick, an armor, meant to deflect any type of affection that threatens to weigh us down. How can a creature without a heart ever feel-.”

Willow interrupted his latest monologue by grabbing the sides of his face and pulling him down to her to place a strong but gentle kiss square on his lips. Despite her warmth, he was frozen. Sweaty, shivering, stunned. Her lips curled into a smile and Hunter’s thoughts were consumed with why. Was she delighted in the action alone or was it all done for his reaction? Had she frozen time or has they been in this moment forever? Was she just trying to shut him up? He’d ramble on forever if this was the punishment. But his chest felt like he had drank of water from the boiling sea, fizzling and burning and bubbling and the warmth spread to the rest of his body and numbed him like her touch contained venom.

He was melting from the inside out and somehow it was painless. His eyes widened in shock at the source, blissfully unaware of the ailment (or maybe she just showed no visible signs?) as she held him in place. It was as though then their lips touched, the world around them became more colorful. Willow had her eyes closed, perhaps because she already knew how colorful the world was. She was the brightest thing in it, after all. Had that always been the case?

His chest was on fire as she pulled back to look at him again, her hands lingered on the sides of his face which was now entirely red. He felt dizzy and dopey and turned around, had this been a trap she had planned for him the whole time?

“What have you done?!” He demanded angrily with a rage Willow had not seen in him before. She couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t speaking only to her. “D-Did you just curse me? My existence is already a curse! Why would you want to add onto it? Why would you-?”

“I didn’t curse you, I kissed you,” said Willow simply as though the two were often confused for each other, her voice carried an airy giggle. “It’s a way to show affection. It’s a gesture of thanks and... love.”

“Is that what this is?” He screamed, referring to the waves of fireworks in his chest that she could not see but somehow understood. “You gave me the ability to love?!”

“Well, I don’t think I gave it to you, but I think that maybe you-.”

“Well, take it back!” Hunter demanded, pulling her close to him by her shoulders and joining their lips as she had done in a swift motion. Unlike the way his hands had flailed behind him when she initiated the contact, she got over her surprise very quickly and leaned into it, reaching up to put her arms around his neck to return the pressure and keep him steady.

It felt just as scary as the first time but somehow easier. She was smiling again and while Hunter had no idea what he was doing, he was pretty sure he wasn’t doing it wrong. As he relaxed and allowed his eyes to fall closed, he could still see the dazzling display of colors as he tried to inhale the faint smell of wildflowers in her hair . Relaxation did not come naturally to him so he was quickly brought out of the moment as he suddenly remembered how he had gotten back into whatever this was and pulled away. Willow followed him as though she wasn't ready to part and when he looked at her, he saw her face decorated in a kindred flush as though she had just done battle. Another trap! Surely staying too long in the “kiss” allowed her to send the curse back to him because he felt so compelled to brush her hair out of her face again and that must be why.

“Curses aren’t really a plant magic thing,” Willow whispered, her hands still clinging to his chest. He wondered if her leg was still bothering her. He wondered why he even cared. “Just so you know.”

“Well, then it’s a reaction to one of your flowers or pollen or something,” he said. “I’m just having an allergy attack.”

“Or maybe you were raised by a liar,” said Willow. “Who convinced you that you were immune rather than neglected because he allowed no examples of any form of love.”

“Maybe...” Hunter began, dwelling over her words. He stepped back as his eyes widened when he found a solution that pleased him. “Maybe... I am the Titan’s miracle.”

“Oh geez,” Willow groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose as Hunter’s ego increased and he began to pace, drafting a speech of what this could mean. “Well I’m getting out of here before you make me regret this. But… see you tomorrow?

He stopped. Something about the nonchalant way she said the words tickled his ear like there was something more buried in the words. He had just been thinking about how much her magic had improved in mere weeks, thinking about how powerful she would be if given months. He thought about how her power could benefit the coven. He thought about her often. He thought about her outside of her use to the greater good, he thought about her smile, her laugh, the way she placed her hand beneath her chin when she said something snarky, the soft peridot color of her eyes and how they shined beneath her glasses when she rolled them at him and the way she-.

The way she was the only one who made him feel this way. A way that wasn’t worthless or vindictive. A way he wasn’t supposed to feel.

“Do you intend on needing rescuing again?” Hunter inquired, looking at her over his shoulder his throat suddenly feeling tight like the question he really wanted to ask was stuck and struggling to be known. This tight dizzy feeling that he felt whenever she was around, this growing need to be beside her, did she feel this way about him?

In response, she sent a detailed yellow flower with long dramatic petals littered with pale red stripes. She sent in on a long strong stem so it reached his eye level taking in every detail. It was a remarkably unique flower and did seem particularly special at first but as he brought it closer he saw just how intricate its details were, the small patterns within the petals invisible to the casual onlooker. The scent was sweet but subtle, a pleasure you had to be close to in order to experience. He could tell this was not a flower found in nature, this was of her own design.

The flower’s vine wrapped itself around his wrist like a corsage, twirling around his pinky link it was sealing a promise. She had made her way safely into her house by now and they had an unspoken agreement that this space was off limits. But he knew their paths would cross again. He could use returning her pail of dirt as an excuse to see her. He could say her injury was a liability of the coven and he was obligated by the Emperor to monitor her. 

Or maybe he didn’t need to explain himself, he was the Titan’s miracle after all.

[polyhexian]

*holds up a weird plotbunny* So this one's kinda different. It's not quite Agony and not really eventually and is kinda mostly inspired by that second-to-last shot of the Jabberwocky animatic.

Jasper dies.

It goes down exactly like it does in Jabberwocky. The moments after happen the same way we saw them in the Collector's memory in Agony. At first glance, there's no difference.

There's a lot of aspects about magic that TOH never fleshed out. I don't even think that's because of the whole cancellation debacle, I think it just wasn't important to the story. Aside from the basics, the details about how magic works are delightfully vague and give a lot of leeway to play around with--even if it's annoying that some fields of magic were barely touched on at all.

We don't really know much about oracle magic in general, but ghosts and spirits exist. Hooty coughed up a bunch that one time. We don't really know how they occur, but if our own ghost lore has anything to do with it…

Jasper died desperate to protect his child. If you want to go the unfinished business route, Hunter is still in Belos's clutches. Jasper's final moments were intensely emotional and unjust and pretty much perfect to cause a haunting.

Except he doesn't haunt a physical place.

Hunter's nannies remark on how unusual it is for a baby to sleep through the whole night. He'll wake up when he's hungry or needs a diaper change, but never for no reason. Belos has never had an infant Grimwalker before so he chalks it up to the lack of humanity and spins some words about the Titan's small blessings, blah blah blah.

Hunter rarely has bad dreams as a child. Sometimes one will try to take hold after a bad day, but it's always pushed aside, and it almost feels like someone he can't see takes his shoulders from behind and gently steers him away to kinder thoughts. (When he was very young, it was a much larger hand holding his own, and shaggy blonde hair and bright magenta eyes like his and a gentle smile as he was led to nicer thoughts. But that stopped before he could remember it.)

As Hunter grows older and his responsibilities and expectations pile up, it gets harder to find kinder thoughts to steer to. But the nightmares are still held at bay. The nights after a punishment when he's cried himself to sleep, he dreams of strong arms holding him against a broad chest, his head tucked under someone's chin, and he doesn't know why but he feels safe.

Jasper is…idk, how does one cope with being dead and accidentally haunting your son's mindscape? It wasn't PURPOSEFUL that's for sure. There's so much that can go wrong here. But for the first few years it's like, Hunter's a BABY, he's a TODDLER, at the very least Jasper can be there for him for now! Crap he's learning how to talk, better back off, wouldn't do for Hunter to start telling people about having an imaginary friend. Except double crap, Hunter's life is shit, there's no way Jasper won't help him, he'll just have to make sure he manifests in Hunter's dreams mostly as a sensation and faceless if he has a form at all.

Obviously this can't go on forever cuz that'd be unfulfilling for the plot but idk what would actually trigger them meeting, so to speak. Hunter passes out on his mountain trial or gets knocked out during training/a mission and Jasper is desperate to get him to wake up again? Hunter innocently hyperfixates on oracle magic and mindscapes for a month, realizes from his readings that his dreams are actually really unusual, and purposefully dives into his subconscious to confront Jasper himself? Darius is a jerk to Hunter and Jasper is so angry about it that he accidentally fully manifests in Hunter's dreams while he's angrily pacing around the mindscape that night and when he realizes Hunter is staring at him he just kinda freezes awkwardly like, shit?

Also not sure how to navigate the reveal… I feel like they have to come to some kind of terms or agreement with each other. Like, the end goal here is that Hunter 1) Understands that yes, he's been haunted his whole life, and 2) Understands that he cannot tell anyone about it.

It's not even for Jasper's sake, though Hunter might think it's for Jasper's sake. I imagine one of Jasper's biggest fears is some oracle witch realizing that Hunter has a ghost in his brain and telling Belos. Thank Titan Osran doesn't pay much attention to the kid. Jasper doesn't really want to haunt his kid, but he REALLY doesn't want to deal with the fallout of an exorcism. If Belos learned that Jasper has been haunting Hunter this whole time, he'd kill Hunter immediately, just as a precaution.

I also imagine Jasper wouldn't come clean about everything for a very long time. Belos will let Hunter live so long as he's loyal. Jasper would love to get Hunter away from Belos, but he's dead. So Hunter has to stay loyal until there's a viable escape route. Jasper isn't going to spill everything about how Hunter's a Grimwalker and Belos is evil and Hunter needs to run away, it won't help and it'll add to the poor kid's stress and he'll have to pretend he didn't know these things and then he'll slip up and Belos will kill him. All Jasper can really do is offer emotional support and advice.

But this is Hunter we're talking about so like. A little emotional support and advice goes a LONG way. Hunter becomes extremely attached to his live-in brain ghost, who may or may not be his family. Look at this, an AU where Hunter actually wants to maintain his sleep schedule because it gives him access to the one person who gives him positive attention, even if that person is incorporeal, and also dead. He infodumps about whatever he's reading about lately, or he rambles about some issue he's having while Jasper helps him think through the problem solving, and he really appreciates all the tips Jasper gives him about fighting and using the artificial staff. (Maybe in this AU Jasper actually teaches Hunter how to teleport, not Lilith.)

Hunter would dive into oracle magic over this, too. Just a personal side project, y'know, no big deal. Idk how much oracle magic a magicless witch could use, Luz at least seemed to be able to use that one crystal ball a bit. But at the very least Hunter could probably establish a better link to his mindscape, allowing him to choose to talk to Jasper even when he's awake.

And that's all the general ideas I have for this, I don't have very many specific ones, but here:

Belos starts in on the child abuse, and Jasper realizes that Belos didn't hurt him because Jasper was imperfect, Belos hurt him because Belos hurts people, and Belos was always going to hurt Hunter.

Would Darius's relationship with Hunter continue as it did in canon, or would Jasper decide "screw this" and tell Hunter exactly what to say to Darius to make Darius realize "holy shit is this Jasper's kid and am I shooting myself in the foot here??"

Hunter really does like Jasper but as the years go by Jasper slowly starts insinuating that he doesn't like Belos and by canon he might even be trying to get Hunter to question Belos because he's getting desperate and it causes a bit of tension.

Luz and the gang trying to talk or argue or fight with Hunter and he grunts and glares at her but his standoffishness is also covering for the fact that his attention is split by Jasper going SHE KINDA HAS A POINT, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HER, ASK IF YOU CAN CRASH ON THEIR COUCH.

Flapjack chooses Hunter and is also fully aware that Jasper is present and both of them are like "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck"

Hunter and Jasper being absolute dumbasses who reinforce each other's dumbassery over very stupid things. Hunter goes undercover at Hexside like "I bet teenagers like authority and rules!" And Jasper has never been a teenager and is too dead to read parenting books but he did know some scouts who joined the coven as teenagers so he's like "Sounds right to me!"

As Hunter's friendship develops with Willow, Jasper watches all the trees in Hunter's mindscape slowly morph into willow trees.

Hollow Mind happens and through the handwavey powers of mindscape magic Jasper also manages to be there somehow. Caleb Wittebane's Hallucination Ghost is also lurking in Belos's mindscape and the two of them just stare at each other for a minute. Belos sees Jasper but figures he's just some weird manifestation of his guilt for killing his brother's clones, even when Jasper punches him in the face while the kids escape.

Hunter having his melt-down post-Hollow Mind and freaking out because YOU KNEW??? And Jasper tries to apologize and tries to calm him down but Hunter is so upset that he just shuts down that mental connection and refuses to sleep for 24 hours until he passes out at Hexside. He expects Jasper to show up and yell at him or try to explain or something, but instead his dreams that night are like the ones he had as a kid--strong arms and supportive silence and apologetic love.

Belos tries to possess Hunter in TTT and Jasper is just like SURPRISE BITCH. It doesn't go well for Belos, but it goes much better for Flapjack.

Idk what the endgame would be here, exactly, but I feel like Jasper can't haunt Hunter forever. It's not fair to either of them, Hunter needs privacy in his own mind and Jasper needs to pass on peacefully. But if you go the unfinished business route, well, Hunter is safe after Belos is dead, and he has real living friends and a support network now, so Jasper COULD move on finally. A bittersweet ending.

Hdjsjdnnf Ghost Dad (1990)

Maybe he tells him oh, he's the memory of the last Golden guard here to help train him, yeah, sure, that's most of the truth!

I do also kind of like the idea of him manifesting as like a Ghost-Ghost sometimes because. I want him to meet Papa Titan. I want him to Learn All The Lore. Also to go play cards with kings dad when Hunter is hyperfixating on like algebra or something that jasper finds boring and a little frightening

GOD tho... Ghost jasper running into ghost Caleb in Belos' mindscape.and they stare at each other in silence. I'm imagining Jaspers lips parting with this look of shock and apprehension like he wants to say something, but then he hears Hunter cry out in the distance as he gets schlorped up by the ground and his eyes linger for just a moment before he turns and runs in his direction... And you just see Caleb's head turn silently to follow him, then his expression shift ever so slightly toward pity before the camera cuts back to the action

And the DRAMA of brain ghost j-

Oh my god. Brain ghost jasper. Oh my god

The DRAMA of brain ghost jasper jumping from the darkness in front of Luz and hunter between them and Belos and hunter being like :0 when Belos recognizes jasper and is fucking PISSED to see him.

I don't even know how this would fit in but I have this image in my head of Darius sneering at little Hunter and saying like your predecessor would be ashamed of you and jasper is so fucking filled with vicious anger and passion that he just sort of snaps forward and accidentally possesses the little guy. Tiny little like ten years old hunter staring up at Darius with an older man's eyes and-- I don't even know what if have him say but it would be something sharp and so unsettling it fully throws Darius the fuck off his game like hang on what the hell. And jasper is immediately like oh fuck oh shit [poof] leaving hunter like what. The hell was that. Why did I just say that

Oh my god possession arc brain ghost jasper..... R/possessthemback

[roodles03]

Huntlow sexuality and relationship headcannons:

Ever since the confirmation of Willow and Hunter's sexualites, I've been thinking a lot about their past experiences with love and crushes before. As well as how that affects their relationship currently. So let's waste no time. (This is gonna be a LONG post so be prepared.)

Willow:

Willow has had tons of crushes growing up, on boys, girls, and enby folk alike, but everytime they never went well. Whether she had the guts to ask them out or not, It was either someone way out of her reach, or someone who didn't like her back. (Or straight up didn't like her at all.) And worst of all, whenever Boscha and her gang found out about any sort of crush Willow had, they would tell the whole school and pick on her to death about it. This led to Willow eventually thinking that no one would ever see her that way. That no one would ever want to be her girlfriend. That she never had a chance with anyone she'd ever like. Whenever she developed a new crush, she wouldn't tell anyone. Not even Gus, and would bury and repress those feelings until they were gone.

However, everything would change when she met Hunter. Hunter was the first person to ever like her romantically, and even though he wouldn't confess for months, he showed clear signs with his body language that he, in fact, had feelings for her. However, Willow had dug herself in a hole so deep at this point that she never even noticed. Well, she did, but she had beat herself down so much that she just assumed Hunter was shy, or he was always nervous and flustered like that. After all, he had never interacted with peers his age until they met. He probably was always like this.

Willow had developed feelings for Hunter in the human realm, but the idea of having another crush was incredibly scary for her. Not to mention, the fact that it was on someone she was actually super close to made it downright mortifying. She knew her luck with crushes, and she bullied herself into a mindsight where she truly beileved Hunter would never in a million years like her back that way. The thought of him actually liking her was impossible in her eyes, so, she did what she did best whenever she had a crush. Repress her feelings until they went away.

However, this time they weren't going away. In fact, they were only growing stronger, and it terrified Willow. She didn't know how much longer she could hold these feelings in for, but then, during her meltdown in the detention pit, where Hunter saved her life from nearly suffocating herself, and told her just how much she meant to him, and that it was okay to let oneself feel things, she no longer began repressing her feelings for him. Which is why Willow didn't start blushing at him until then. She finally let herself feel romantic feelings again, and she immediately began showing Hunter how much he meant to her too. It wasn't long after that when Willow realized Hunter was showing obvious signs he liked her, not only that, but she realized that he only showed those signs around her and no one else, thirdly, he had been showing signs for months now that she was looking back.

Willow couldn't beileve it, someone liked her. Someone actually liked "half-a-witch Willow". The one thing she had to do now was confess her feelings for him, but somehow, doing that was just as terrifying as before. She holds off on it, but holds off for too long. Hunter starts attending Hexside, and her fears of being bullied for her crush return, and she has no idea what to do.

Hunter:

Despite queerphobia not existing in the demon realm, Hunter experienced it in an indirect way. Belos definitely was queerphobic, (I mean, come on, this is the man that killed his own brother for falling in love). and he definitely didn't want Hunter to learn about the LGBTIA community considering just how isolated he was. If Hunter fell in love with anyone that could spell a huge problem for his usefulness towards him.

So Hunter had absolutely no idea that queer people existed. However, he definitely experienced queerness in himself. In the little free time Hunter had, he read fictional books or watched movies and TV shows approved by Belos. Hunter didn't really know or understand it, but he would develop crushes on his favorite fictional characters, of both boys and girls. Sometimes even drawing self-insert fanart or writing self-insert fanfiction in his free time. Belos had literally never told him anything about queer people in hopes he'd never discovered it. This backfired as when Hunter first saw it when he found out Amity and Luz were dating, he didn't question it at all. He thought it was completely normal.

Hunter, at the time, definitely knew what romance was and that romantic feelings existed, but he had no idea how that felt. Hunter just assumed his feelings for those fictional characters were something everyone felt. However, this all changed when he met Willow. This was the first crush he had on a real person, and it was the first time he really noticed that he felt different towards her then anyone else he had ever met. It's the first time he notices this feeling. However, he had absolutely no idea what he was feeling. In fact, he thinks something is wrong with him. Like he's been cursed or has come down with some strange illness. This confusion continues when they get to the human realm, where Hunter's feelings only grow more. He learns more about queerness for Amity and Luz, picking up that what he's feeling is actually romantic love. This is when he looks back at those fictional characters he used to grow attached to, and then he realizes he's bisexual.

However, even after realizing all this, he's too scared to tell Willow how he feels. He thinks that she wouldn't see anything in him. That he doesn't have chance with such a powerful witch like Willow. It doesn't help that at this point, he's still hiding the fact he's a grimwalker, terrified at the fact that if she finds out she'll hate him. So he keeps his feelings inside and doesn't tell anybody, afraid he'll mess everything up. And even if that wasn't a factor, he had no idea how to express how to felt for her.

When Willow has her meltdown in the detention pit, Hunter is heartbroken to hear Willow say those things to herself. They're almost all things he has told himself before, and he can't stand to see her go through what he has gone through. He saves her, and tells her just how much she means to him, finally finding the words to say how he feels. This, of course, touches Willow immensely. And soon, Willow tells him how much he means to her, too, and that's when Hunter realizes he might have a slight chance with Willow now.

[mdhwrites]

whats your opinion on caleb and evelyn (at least from what very little we know of them-)

imo the whole caleb clawthorne thing is like. one of the most pointless things in the show ever

I have called them and their connection to Belos "TOH's final trick". TOH has a single trick up its sleeve that is great for fanfic writers and TERRIBLE for a narrative. They introduce really compelling relationships and ideas and then they never do anything with them. It happens with Amity and Luz, Amity and Willow, the Hexide Squad and the Coven System, Hunter and Belos, etc. etc. All of these concepts present tantalizing issues that one could really delve in deep to and find a lot of meaning... But TOH isn't interested. It is more interested in a blog about how deep Amity's character is implied to be rather than doing anything with that depth, hence why so many people hooked onto how awful the confrontation with her parents would eventually be and then the show itself just... Has her in like three minutes of that episode and her confrontation doesn't feel like the main point of it even if it's the climax. And then it's effectively over and any issue between Lumity is never brought up again.

Caleb and Evelyn are the same but with a bit of FNAF storytelling thrown in. The pictures are vague after all so people can interpret them in different ways for what they mean. The cast has been coy as to the actual events. It's a multiple choice backstory for your villain that ranges from irredeemable monster to sympathetic villain. That way the show can claim to have a complex villain that doesn't technically invalidate the fact that they have no interest in writing a complex villain, nor do they want to need to.

But it was also one straw too many. Lumity getting together paid off in some way that old narrative baggage of Amity's, even if less powerfully than it could have. Hunter being possessed and fighting off Belos doesn't have the weight it should and I have problems with how selfish the reasoning is rather than ideological but it is a payoff to that relationship. However, a genuinely real amount of time is spent in S3, and S2, building up that Belos is something more than a genocidal, egotistical asshole. Caleb and Evelyn are a LOT of this. So what's the payoff?

There is none. Beating him isn't an ideological victory. They don't come up like Lief did for beating Andrias to pay that off. In fact, they come up less in the final fight than they do during the fight in King's Tide where the heroes LOSE. So they spent some of the very limited time they had to wrap up their story on a subplot about Belos' backstory that doesn't actually inform us of anything, doesn't affect anything and has no payoff except the most obvious one.

It's literally Willow's story except for your PRIMARY ANTAGONIST'S BACKSTORY.

The fact that the majority of the meat of it is done in a really just AWFULLY animated set piece who's literal writing is boilerplate at best does not help it at all. The best parts of this mechanically are the portraits in Hollow Mind and they're vague and that's IT. Otherwise, it's clunky for the most part. I'll give the moment when monster Belos sees Caleb as he tries to take on a new form is neat but it tells us nothing and feels out of character in the end that he'd give enough of a shit to be haunted by his brother, especially after he's killed his brother so many times. Honestly, the Golden Guards looking like Caleb even NOW just makes me think the Collector is right: He likes hurting his brother. Why else would he not finally stop after the hundredth betrayal? Unless he gets off on the moment of their betrayal I guess.

It's just not good and a casual fan is going to like it even less because they won't really absorb and think the portraits so to them, it's just one really awkward sequence in the first special, an eerie sequence that doesn't add to anything in the second and then is sir not appearing in the third. That's not engaging.

Since little of it is engaging, it fails to function as a trick. After all, any magician will tell you that everything is about misdirection in their craft. Without it, a trick becomes nothing but smoke and mirrors instead of magic.

======+++++======

Btw, mentioned FNAF so may as well say here: Saw it and really liked it. I keep considering making a blog about it and then just... not.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

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