#and sasha...also exists

[ordinaryschmuck]

You're allowed to like Sasha Waybright. I don't mind if you like Sasha Waybright. Sasha Waybright can be your favorite character of all of fiction and I don't mind that.

...But never come to me, a guy who has Amity and Hunter in his top five favorite Owl House characters, and tell me that Sasha has a better redemption arc than Amity and Hunter. Sasha's redemption arc was all kinds of messy, going back and forth with making me wonder if the final conclusion SHOULD be that she gets redeemed, primarily in episodes like "The Third Temple" and "The Dinner." "The Third Temple" is an episode of Sasha proving to Anne that she's a different person, only for it to end with it being planned from the beginning that the whole thing was meant to be a sham. Granted, this leaves the episode in this space where it's up to interpretation of how much Sasha does and says in this episode is all an act or if there's some truth behind it. But when it comes to a redemption story, especially one so late in the series with a character who only appears in FOUR EPISODES at this point before things go to hell, it's best not to let things up to interpretation. And then you have "The Dinner," an episode that makes the point abundantly--EXPLICITLY--clear that Sasha has not changed and doesn't WANT to change. And when an episode like that happens TWO EPISODES before the big season finale, one that acts as the turning point of her character, I feel like some things were lost in the mix.

And then you have Amity and Hunter, two characters that grow, develop, and better themselves in EVERY. EPISODE. THEY. APPEAR IN. There's rarely any backsliding, they gain more layers into WHY they are the way they are as people, and their outward change always reflects their inner change. Amity four appearances in feels like a different character than in her first. Hunter feels different after four appearances than he did in his first. Sasha feels the same throughout her time on the show, until Season Three where she finally decides to change and most of her growth and development happened OFF SCREEN. Because Amphibia is a show that prioritized characters doing silly nonsense instead of character growth. We could have gotten an episode about Sasha's motives or the growth of her character, but Sprig going to college and Hop Pop being an actor were apparently more of a priority.

*HUFF*...Sorry. Someone showed me a post about how Sasha is better than Amity and that just made me frickin' lose it.

[ratatatastic]

the things ekky has done or said that i cant stop thinking about. the 4 minute cut.

[aaahple]

I think the Warden, Sten, and Zevran would make for a very comedic shoujo love triangle but one of those fake filler arc ones where it’s Sten x Warden all the way and Zevran is just there to reap chaos. Based on the fact that my warden in game did in fact romance Zevran, but only because Sten was not emotionally available at the time

[robynrileyart]

hi i'm very very new to the magnus archives but i really wanna draw fanart!!! i don't want to go into the tag or do any searches bc i don't want any spoilers. can you please answer the poll below regarding the characters' visuals?

[carefulfears]

okay the hank & mia ask i've been struggling with: i genuinely have no real thoughts about this show, just intense feelings. like i truly love it, all the characters and relationships, but especially these two. and i just wonder at all the ways they're similar. i always go back to the scene on the balcony

i have intense feelings about this show too and a hard time articulating so many of them, this topic included. it's funny because this is something that i've talked about absolutely non-stop for coming close to a year and have broken down from seemingly every angle and i still don't know how to pull it all together or what to say, where to start. most people who would care have heard me run the talking points through a thousand times over.

they asked duchovny this question too ("is mia at all similar to hank?") on the season 2 DVD and i literally hopped out of my seat when i heard that in my longest "i've been saying" ever, because it's something that i find very interesting and emotional but that i was a little surprised to find was as intentional as it is in the text. one of the first times that i talked about it was this tweet: "they're very similar people and it drives me crazy...when you have a dead mom, an absent dad, and you act out by putting yourself in dangerous disrespectful sexual situations."

and i used the word "disrespectful" because there's a quote of duchovny's that always reminds me of mia: "hank's lack of respect is really for himself, not for anybody else." which i think is an insightful observation about mr. moody and his relationship to women and culture and himself, but that also relates a lot to this idea of "acting out" and of sexual encounters as infringing on something personal. which is an experience familiar to that of a young woman trying to develop those relationships and sense of self, during a very spongy time where it's easy to infringe upon.

and so yeah what i'm saying is basically that hank moody has the constitution and coping mechanisms and vulnerabilities of a teenage girl (or as i put it in this tweet: "he has abandoned 16-year-old girl swag")

or how duchovny answered when they asked, is mia at all similar to hank, on the DVD: "you kinda know that there's...that her behavior is being driven by some problems, you know, and you wanna reach out and try to help that. and i think hank has a little of that too. you know, obviously they've got a history that makes everything complicated. but i think that he feels paternal towards her more than anything."

or how madeline zima put it: "mia is a wealthy girl who has had every luxury and is now probably really bored. she's been touched by hank's writing- it may be the only time she's been affected or stimulated in that way. so she's looking for something new, something exciting, and she finds that. and i don't think hank has found many people who are on his wavelength."

mia is the only character on the show that can really go toe-to-toe with hank and match him and never waver to him, which is why she's so diabolical to a certain demographic. they even call it out in the show: "did you see how completely unfazed she was by hank? i mean, no offense, he's a cool guy, but it was kind of pathetic, right?" (dani to charlie after the book meeting)

the only times that hank ever really surprises her or throws her for a loop or catches her off guard is when he's genuinely investing in her. (like when she's struggling in her writing class and he tells her that he'll help her if she just writes something and lets him read it, her eyes go SO WIDE when she has the "really? you'd do that for me?" line.)

and for the most part, outside of the obvious, mia doesn't surprise hank either. he is the only person in the world who really knows her and what she's doing and what her life is like.

we were talking in the group-chat the other night about the scene in season 2 when karen says that mia asked her opinion ("it was like she was kind of asking my approval") on dating an "older man," a scene that's one of my favorites of the series and such a delicious example of dramatic irony.

hank is instantly on offense ("i hope you shut that shit down immediately." / "why would you say something like that?" / "that's foul." / "this gross 'older man' thing.")

while karen is so much more relaxed and talking about her own times in college and how it can be a "valid life experience" with "the right guy."

and what i love about this scene is that they aren't having the same conversation, they aren't talking about the same thing, but so much of that difference is what we said: karen thinks that mia is her, hank knows that she's him.

the kind of dynamic that karen imagines when she hears her 17-year-old stepdaughter who is about to graduate and travel the country say “older man” is a world away from the reality that mia actually inhabits, and that hank knows about. as jaden pointed out when we discussed it, when karen finds out that mia is having sex with lew ashby, she freaks the fuck out!! she goes and throws shit at him and yells and cusses at him and rants at him about how she’s a child. (and hank has the nerve to go “you’re the one who condoned it” during their “parental units” phone call L.M.F.A.O.)

karen tries to look after mia and be there for her (“we are meant to be taking care of her”), but they have such a strained relationship always. and she really isn’t equipped, especially as kept in the dark as she is. it’s honestly really sad the way that you can tell mia regrets pushing karen away.

but hank knows her. he says it himself in mia culpa: “i know you. you’re a mischievous little fuck, but you’re not malicious.” (in the same scene where he tells her that she can do better than her exploitative boyfriend, that karen loves her, that becca looks up to her. holds her hand when she tears up)

and they’re able to say anything around each other. it’s this twisted thing where no one else knows their secrets. i was thinking about the other day, how duchovny always says that his favorite thing about hank moody is that he always tells the truth, and his favorite thing about mia lewis is that it’s the one time he doesn’t. it’s this pervasive exception to a rule that bonds them. the most devastating thing about it all, to me, is that there comes a time when you realize that there is no one else looking out for this girl. there is no one else who looks at her teacher and knows there’s danger. there is no one else that she feels she can call to come get her when she’s in trouble. there is no one else to read her writing or ask where she’s going when she leaves the house. (“my own father has never so much as helped with my homework” / “my dad’s always out of town, i don’t think he cares about my whereabouts”)

but they can tell each other and joke with each other and ask each other (loser shit for grown ass mr. moody but still). one of my favorite moments is when the print review of “mia’s book” comes out and she hops on his bed to wake him up so they can read it together: “it’s our review in the times!” (so much talk and discourse over her stealing his manuscript, it’s their story, it’s their book.)

in more ways than one, considering that both books (hank’s “modern day answer to lolita” and mia’s “nabokov meets judy blume”) are responses to their big secret that they intend for the person closest to them to read. hank is heartbroken when karen won’t read his new book, and we know from charlie that all it takes is “the first page” to figure out the truth. mia wants her dad to read hers, and when he calls it a “fantasy” about hank, she nearly blows the whole thing when she gets upset and snaps “who said it was fantasy?”

these are ultimately two people who want to be seen, who want to be understood, who want to be taken seriously- and they both put that pervasive truth on paper then immediately in the hands of the person that they each should fear ever finding out. it’s the defining moment of their lives, and they both try, and they both are still left with just each other. (what a trap it can be when the person you relate to the most is the most regrettable thing that ever happened to you)

it's these circumstances that lead to the scene on the balcony, my favorite of the series. they haven't seen each other since the arrest. she's back in town for the trial. and everything is so awful. each character is so much darker and weighed down. and every single time that we see mia in season 4 she's drunk or drugged or crying or all of the above.

it always makes me sad to think of her at 16 or 17 or even 19, joking around and being her "mad as a hatter" self, and then to see her on that ledge. hollywood's latest victim.

in a couple of weeks she'll be shaking in a court room, looking over at him from the witness stand, but for today she's on the balcony. remarking how easy it would be to just let go, just fall off. and still, no less tragically, there's only one person to come get her, and know what to say.

"you know what we need to do, mia?"

"what's that?"

"we need to forgive our fucking selves. you understand?"

[sodo-warriorsdesigns]

MOTHWINGGG :3

[supercantaloupe]

sleepover saturday: unpopular theatre/art opinion of your choice, whatever you'd like to talk about :)

enough biomusicals enough jukebox musicals enough jukebox biomusicals. society has moved past the need for jukebox biomusicals. if there ever was a need to begin with

more classic broadway shows in revival and in schools already. orchestral players deserve the work and modern theater kids need to be humbled. you'll listen to annie get your gun and sit with the outdated and hokey and #problematic elements and you'll LIKE IT. it develops character.

and anna garcia was 100% right in her smartypants society presentation about how no we should not forgive theater kids and how we should punish specifically annoying modern musical theater kids by forcing them to sit down and listen to parade and company. she's so right about everything.

[ask meme]

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I'm still early on so their relationship could strain but I'm loving the idea of Zolf trying to sort of be a dad figure to Sasha and failing because he simply can't reach her versus Cel sort off just going "Eh I think he is my favorite" and basically adopting Zolf as a sort of dad.

[sheltershock]

Thought of the evening: how does the nuances of the agent [surname] system work?

Because it seems like most agents just use their surname(Oleander, Nein, Vodello, Mentallis, Forsythe, etc.), but some agents have numbers(33)?

But also, what if your surname changes? Hollis has a line about a husband, so does that complicate the naming system? In her memory vaults she was going by Forsythe since her intern days, so either she was married back then or it’s possibly her maiden name. Do all agents go by their maiden names? If Milla and Sasha got married and changed their surname, they’d have the keep the old names right? You can’t have two “Agent Neins” or “Agent Vodellos” that would cause too much confusion.

But what about sibling agents? Norma and Lizzie are sisters, and are both in the intern program. Are the Psychonauts going to have two Agent Navidads? Or if Frazie joins to be an agent, would the chaos of having two “Agent Aquatos” cause problems? Maybe in the case of siblings they’d go by their middle names? So Agent [Middle Name].

And what about the numbered agents? Did the Psychonauts start at one and have since climbed to thirty-three? Why do some agents get to have their surname attached and not others? My personal headcanon for the numbered agents I thought of while planning a fic is that numbered agents are actually agents recruited who are part of a witness protection program, and thus it’s to hide/contend with changing identities. But there’s no in-game explanation as far as I’m aware.

Also not really apart of the Agent thought, but there’s the tiny paradox of Sasha and Milla being “international secret agents” who work for an espionage agency, but also being celebrities in universe and are getting their names and faces printed on magazines. Does the world assume that the names “Sasha Nein” and “Milla Vodello” are false identities? Honestly the idea that True Psychic Tales and all the terrorists they fight believe that these are fake names/stage names when in reality they’re just their real names is a little amusing. That they just believe that they wouldn’t be open enough to use their real names, but its like reverse psychology. Or the idea that they’re able to sneak in places and not immediately get caught is because their enemies are like “no, that can’t be Agents Nein and Vodello, that would be too obvious.”

[mercuriallily]

"I can't do this anymore," I say as I continue to do it

[happi-tree]

soooooo i don't have much new to post for wipweds this week so i thought i'd grab a little something from my archives! a ton more people were curious about The Raven and The Dove than i expected, so here's a little excerpt from my amphibia school for good and evil au! in which marcy learns a tiny bit of archery and sasha has some Feelings about it 💗💚

[nobodieshero-main]

i'm having more side quest ideas

[cloudsentapollo]

MAG 161 and MAG 162 are making me insane

[raskoelnikov]

films that i think it would change tma characters lives if they watched it

tim: the lost boys / 10 things i hate about you / 500 days of summer (hes A joseph gordon Levitt enjoyer)

sasha: fantastic mr fox / any wes anderson movie she would love him / carrie / heathers

martin: the lighthouse / lady bird / punch drunk love

jon: midsommar / the vvitch / evil dead / any campy horror movie Actually i need him to.

elias: american psycho / jennifers body

[duckduckngoose]

Can my brain please stop making eleborate illustration ideas before even considering how the characters look like in my head

[beeapocalypse]

haunted once more by a dumb character idea