#eleena rants

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Just saw something that pissed me off, so: sex favorable aces are asexual. Just because you have sex and maybe enjoy that sex doesn’t mean you can’t be asexual.

Asexuality can include not wanting to have sex whatsoever (sex repulsed aces, which I am personally) or having sex for the sake of a partner but not actively seeking it out/enjoying it (sex neutral), but disliking sexual acts isn’t a requirement to be asexual.

What makes sex-favorable aces asexual is the fact that they don’t feel sexual attraction.

This is something that’s pretty universally shared between all asexual people, regardless of whether you fall under sex repulsed, sex neutral or sex favorable.

Other identities under the ace umbrella also include sexual attraction in their definition, e.g. demisexual, where you only start to feel sexual attraction when you have a bond with someone, and greysexual, where you feel sexual attraction, but only sometimes, under certain circumstances.

Asexuality is not just about the act of sex! It’s not about libido! There isn’t one way to be asexual, and just because you personally aren’t sex favorable doesn’t mean you can tell those people that they’re not actually ace because they don’t fit your definition! It’s shitty!

I’ve said this before, I will say it again: you do not get to dictate other people’s sexualities. Being queer doesn’t give you the right to be shitty to other queer people because you don’t understand their identities. Being ace does not give you the right to be shitty to other aces just because you don’t understand their identities.

Aroace people already struggle to be included in the queer community because people don’t consider us queer enough. Pray tell, why the fuck are we then throwing people out of the ace community for not being ace enough, for not fitting your cut-and-dry definition of asexual?

Sex-favorable aces are already super underrepresented in the asexual community. Don’t tell them to shut up because they’ll “confuse allo people” or they’re “twisting what asexuality actually is”. Do not tell marginalized people to shut up about their identity and experiences, ever.

Allo people are being aphobic and shitty because they do not care about us. They don’t care enough to do basic research, to even try to understand us or take our word for what our identity is. They don’t think we’re queer enough and think we just want attention.

This wouldn’t change if sex favorable aces didn’t exist. The only thing you’re doing is making other people feel shitty about who they are to appease people who already hate us or at least can’t be bothered to understand our identities.

Sex favorable aces can barely say anything online and they’ll immediately be accused of not actually being asexual from all sides. Why the fuck are we contributing to that?

Yes, allo people take the fact that sex favorable aces exist to write asexual characters in sexual relationships. But they write them the same way they’d write an allo person having sex, because they can’t be bothered to try and understand sex favorable aces either! They don’t care about any of us! They just want to make an asexual character allo and take the fact that sex favorable aces exist as an excuse.

This is not on sex favorable aces!! It’s on aphobes being shitty!!!

They’d still make ace characters have sex regardless of this because they don’t think we’re valid and don’t think that sex repulsed people can be in a happy relationship because relationships aren’t “real” relationships without sex.

Sex neutral people also have sex sometimes. We shouldn’t be invalidating them for that either. Stop being shitty to fellow aces just because they have sex and potentially don’t despise it!

Also, this part going out specifically to allos since I keep hearing this shit too: yes, some allo people are absolutely down to be in a relationship with ace people and not have sex. These conversations should absolutely be had before you enter a relationship, draw lines on what you are and aren’t okay with. But someone knowingly entering a relationship with an ace person is not being led on if that ace person doesn’t end up wanting sex! Ace people aren’t being selfish or malicious or manipulative for agreeing to be in relationships with allo people who are cool with having an ace partner!

You have no problem imagining an ace person being in a relationship with an allo person and compromising by having sex with them. Why is it so difficult to imagine the allo person could be the one to compromise and not have sex? Relationships are about so much more than just sex.

[semper-draca]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Have all the stars.🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Oh man anon, I am so sorry it took this long to get back to you, it took me a while to assemble a list. Each star is for a behind-the-scenes detail of a fic (in this case, Iustitia) And I count.... eighteen stars!

1. In ch 59, Lorant drunkenly refers to Vitiate as “V-dude”. When I played through kotfe/kotet, amongst my friends I jokingly called Valkorion “V-dude” 2. This one is probably obvious, but many aspects of the Institutes were based on Native America/First Nations residential schools in the USA and in Canada. Including the uh... abundance of Absolutely Awful. 3. Every single character name for my ‘Big Eight’ player characters have their names based in Tolkien conlang. With the notable exception of Oren, my bounty hunter. He’s the special.  4. The ‘Lucian and Ille adopt a wrat’ plotline was 100% inspired by @fluffynexu‘s fantastic wrat worldbuilding posts. 5. Similarly, most of my military worldbuilding (if you can call it that) is based on @inquisitorhotpants‘s angry ranting about how space fantasy militaries should work and how they fuck up promotions. I include two exceptions in my fic to the ‘proper promotions’ rule - Baras, who doesn’t care as long as it serves his needs and is Sith so no one can stop him. And Kilran, who Does What He Wants.  6. Zirin’s blasters - Mischief and Anarchy - are real in-game cartel market weapons.  7. In very early concepts of the fic (before I even wrote the first version, so back in late 2015/early 2016), Celebris was actually white, with a very ‘snow queen’ design. I ended up changing this cause I didn’t like the idea that the only human character out of the ‘Big Eight’ was white, and because I felt as though a ‘snow queen’ design was overdone and often boring.  8. In ch 23, Gimrizh makes a comment about how Vette isn’t allowed to call her ‘whore’. It’s phrased in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge way to imply that it’s a kink of hers. 9. Pierce being aromantic was a deliberate ‘fuck you’ to the game devs, as in-game the SW is allowed to sleep with Pierce, but not romance him. I figured that if they weren’t going to allow SWs more options, I’d get some queer representation out of it. 10. Un-killing Eleena Daru was a relatively last minute decision. As soon as I knew Malgus would be involved in Vette’s resistance, I knew Eleena had to be alive. 11. Much of Gimrizh’s speed-based combat style is inspired by Namikaze Minato from Naruto, and his Flying Thunder God technique.  12. Megablast Death Engine’s name was inspired by Negasonic Teenage Warhead from Marvel.  13. In the old version, I was going to add a plotline where Gimrizh discovers that her parents were alive. I had even already introduced her mother as a character before the rewrite begin. This was one of the many things that got scrapped in the rewrite, as it didn’t really fit in anywhere and was ultimately pointless for both plot and character development.  14. Multiple chess games and chess metaphors take place in the fic. This required a lot of research, as I’m actually a mediocre chess player and rarely play. 15. Quinn’s old speederbike is based on the in-game Aratech Nightsythe mount. The bike he and Gimrizh build later is based on the Command Corsair mount. 16. Gimrizh’s proclivity for lightsaber tech was because originally I had her crafting skill in-game be Artifice. I swapped to Biochem once I started seriously raiding, but it became an integral part of her character beforehand.  17. @inquisitorhotpants was a guest beta for ch 47, as I asked her to look over a few scenes featuring Lorant and Pierce.  18. The ch 53 title, Early Summer Rain, was based on the Naruto OST track of the same name.

*long exhale* I hope all these tidbits were illuminating or interesting to you all, and thanks again anon (and sorry again for the delay)

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Thoughts on Alador and Odalia in Clouds on the Horizon

So I’ve been meaning to address this either way, but I’ve also been getting a bunch of asks re: my thoughts on how Alador’s been handled in the latest episodes.

Short answer: I did not like it.

Long answer: the gist of it is that I think he’s a good idea of a character that was not handled very well and made worse by how the show handled Odalia.

From the reactions I’ve seen in the fandom, this is going to be an unpopular take. But I feel like others might need to hear this, especially if they feel similarly to me and feel as alone with their thoughts in this fandom as I have since Clouds on the Horizon aired.

I’ll be going over the topic in depth under the cut, be aware that it’ll be long, and, for obvious reasons, abuse TW.

Reblogging is allowed and encouraged as long as you’re respectful about it.

I’m also well aware that this is a pretty resigned post in places, perhaps undeservedly so, but I’m just extremely frustrated and honestly exhausted.

But let’s get into it, shall we?

So from what I gather from Clouds on the Horizon, Alador Blight was supposed to be an actually caring if somewhat absent dad who is abused by his wife and only goes along with her because he’s scared for his kids.

I want to make it very clear here that it’s not the basic concept here I take issue with. I actually think this sounds great on paper, both in portraying that adult men can also be the victims of relationship abuse (physical or verbal) which is super important because that’s something society doesn’t take seriously at all and because it’s nice to see the dad take responsibility and be there for his kids for a change, seeing as even outside of scenarios like this that’s still something that usually falls to the mom.

As for how this was handled… well, that was actually worse than I feared it to be.

Clouds on the Horizon was the first Owl House episode that I was genuinely scared of watching and actually put off watching for hours because I had a feeling they were going to redeem at least one of the Blight parents, but holy shit, even knowing they had way too little time to pull this off no matter which way it went, this was awful.

I want to stress that I in general have massive caveats with abusive parent redemption arcs in media, for a variety of reasons—the main one being that they give false and outright dangerous hopes to actual abused kids that their parents, too, can and will change, and that that change will stick, just to get them crushed all over again. In real life, an abusive parent apologizing is far more likely to be a technique to get the victim back under their control—that’s actually called the “honeymoon phase/reconciliation period” and is one of the big phases in the cycle of abuse, meant to make sure the victim stays with their abuser because “it isn’t all bad”. So seeing an abuser promising betterment treated as something positive, especially if the piece of media doesn’t at least go the extra step to point out how it’s often not genuine, that’s actively dangerous and will hurt real abused kids watching.

Alador, in the narrative they went with, is a bit of a… special case, because as of Clouds, the writers just seem to have decided to pretend he was never an abusive parent in the first place. He paid too little attention to his kids, sure, but that’s just because he was “protecting” his kids and his actual demon of a wife didn’t allow him to take days off.

They really did just take any and all of his accountability away completely and pinned everything on Odalia.

Which sucks because, let me be very clear here, the fact that he’s abused does not give him an excuse to abuse his kids in turn. It sucks that that’s happening to him, sure, but he still hurt his kids, and that hurt doesn’t become forgivable just because he was struggling.

I don’t have an issue with the show writers choosing to portray Alador as an abuse victim, but I do have a huge issue with the show then saying this negates his role as an abuser.

Someone can be abused and abusive at the same time. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.

Abused people sometimes perpetuate their abuse onto others.

For example: one of my former bullies was dealing with pretty major issues herself and that sucks for her and I’m sorry she went through these things but it still didn’t make it okay for her to hurt me and it didn’t mean I forgave her when I found out.

I take a lot of issue with the fact that Alador never apologized, and like I said, he’s not really held accountable by the show in Clouds and beyond, which bothers me a ton.

You know who is held accountable far more than him? His kids.

Amity spent ages making things up to Willow because that she was being hurt wasn’t an excuse for her to be shitty to others. And you can argue here that she thought she was protecting Willow, and even “helping” her. But she still hurt her. And the show addresses that. And she’s reprimanded for that. And Willow gets the time and space to figure out to which extent she wants to forgive her. Which I think they did very well in Labyrinth Runners with Willow getting to tell Amity what she takes issue with.

Speaking of that episode: what was up with the amount of bashing that was going around the fandom for Amity having a trauma reaction and not wanting to lose Willow again? She spent so long making things up to her and is still struggling with that and is struggling to reconcile their relationship of kid Willow that needed protecting vs. older Willow that’s confident and can take care of herself, which, for the record, is normal. Amity wants to make up for not protecting her better as kids in that episode. She’s not maliciously mistreating her. Willow knows this. She’s fine with giving Amity time to get to know her again.

Yet all of Amity’s actually fleshed out redemption arc isn’t enough for y’all not to jump her for the slightest misstep, while Alador gets a pat on the back for the bare minimum?

The twins are held way more accountable than him too. They start out having an awful relationship with Amity and crossing a line with their plan of posting her diary all over school. But Luz calls them out on how shitty that is, and they spend the rest of the series making up for it. Amity says in Adventures in the Elements that they’ve been extra nice to her to make things up to her. And that they apologize a lot. And going forward they support her. (I’ve seen a lot more people suspicious of Ed and Em not being the devil incarnate after Adventures in the Elements than I’ve seen people critical of Alador’s redemption which is weird also.)

We get to see the Blight kids grow into better siblings for each other, to the point that in the end, Amity is even comfortable crying in front of them and venting to them when she’s frustrated. They even know how to make her feel better.

And this is coming out of a relationship where the kids have always been played out against each other. We see this again in CotH—Odalia literally held Amity accountable for the twins acting out when she wasn’t responsible for that at all.

So, toh has been relatively good when it comes to the narrative that being hurt doesn’t mean you get to hurt others with no consequences in regards to the Blight kids specifically. Which is great, and important, and something we need more of.

But how does it handle Alador, compared to his kids?

It pulls a “plot twist, it was the evil wife all along.” And “plot twist”, in this case, means “we’re just going to ignore all of his past behavior and the fact that this has absolutely zero buildup or hints in past episodes and throw this in completely out of nowhere”. Which is just not good writing.

It’d be great that they’re writing an abused husband breaking free from his wife, but… that’s not what’s happening. He’s not written to be an abused husband, or at least not well, and definitely not to be a blameless one. In all of the past episodes, he was a neglecting dad who had no issues standing up to his wife. But we’re just gonna ignore that now, because it was all secretly the evil woman and Alador obviously can’t be held accountable for his actions. He can’t need to apologize for neglecting his kids for years. Really, he was always such an incredible, wholesome dad being forced to be awful!

I don’t know if that’s just me but it very much felt like they just replaced Alador with a completely different character in Clouds on the Horizon. Let’s take a look at how he was written in past episodes, shall we?

In the past, we’ve seen him:

1) join Odalia in telling Amity to cut ties with her best friend (Understanding Willow) which is… a poor introduction if they were always planning to go down the abused dad that’s not actually responsible for what he does to his kids-route?

Also if anyone feels the need to call Amity an unreliable narrator reading this, I’ve been over this, but please just… don’t. Please trust abused kids to understand what’s happening and who is hurting them. You do not know better than Amity. We haven’t seen this scene outside of her memory. She’s the only one who has. You just want an extra excuse to take all responsibility away from someone who has very much been abusive to Amity and her siblings in the past.

2) mostly being too disinterested to intervene or even pay attention to what Odalia is putting Amity’s friends through (Escaping Expulsion) to the point that he told them they’d be executed rather than expelled at first. He was completely impassive in that scene and rather than intervening, he kept playing with Bump’s Palisman.

Again, poor choice if you were gonna go down the “it wasn’t actually his fault at all”-route. It would’ve been so easy to put in a scene where he wants to do something with the kids but is manipulated into staying in the lab for longer, rather than looking way too content when Odalia is around and just have zero hints whatsoever that that’s what’s really going on. Or a scene where he fights with himself on whether to confront her and tell her she's going too far.

3) Speaking of Odalia, the fact that he not only stood up to her no problem or hesitation in Escaping Expulsion once he finally deemed it necessary to intervene (which took way too long considering his wife was using his creations to beat up a friend of his daughter), but that he outright manipulated her, knowing exactly what he needed to say to get her to agree to what he wanted.

This doesn’t match up at all with how he’s portrayed later. Why not show him as fearful of his wife and hesitating because of that, rather than have him be impassive and distracted, when this is the story you want to tell?

Why have him seem manipulative and like he’s helping Amity for all the wrong reasons without as much as a single hint to his actual intentions?

Why make him look awful by making it seem like he could have intervened in his wife’s abuse years ago but just didn’t care enough, if it was always supposed to be the fear of his wife that kept him from intervening?

4) The way he’s acting in Reaching Out, especially at the beginning. Just… why. Why make him act like that if this is the context. Why make him not only actively ignore his child’s wishes when she’s telling him what she wants but try to force her to go to coven tryouts against her will? Why send an Abomiton with her to make sure she shows up? If it was always supposed to be just Odalia, why not at least have him say “I’m sorry, but your mother would never agree to letting you miss trials” or anything along those lines? Even just a minor hint that this isn’t what he wants?

Add to this the fact that he doesn’t interact with his kids to the point that he didn’t know Amity had been dating Luz for weeks. Which is neglecting. Which he’s been for years and which is absolutely not up for debate, or at least shouldn’t be.

Add the fact that other people have to point out to him that he’s been an awful dad, rather than having him realize it himself. Eda and his own kids have to tell him to do better. If he’s been hurting his kids to protect them, how the hell did he supposedly not realize he was hurting them?

Add the fact that he doesn’t even realize how much he’s hurt Amity, that after everything he did to hurt her and after she had to tell him he was doing a terrible job at parenting, he thinks it’s acceptable to just hug her at the first sign of being given a chance because he doesn’t grasp the severity of what he’s done.

He doesn’t hold himself accountable. He doesn’t apologize.

He kept assuming that joining the Emperor’s Coven was Amity’s dream and didn’t even realize that was just what his wife wanted. That’s how little attention he paid to her.

He says he likes Amity’s hair, and despite being supposedly so scared of his wife in the new episode, he says he’ll talk to her.

5) The fact that after Labyrinth Runners, Amity tells Luz her methods of communication were taken away and she was grounded, which leaves the options as either Alador is paying so little attention to his kids again that he’s conveniently unaware, or is aware of the punishment but doesn’t intervene, both right after he told Amity things would change.

This all combined very much paints a picture of a husband and father who has accountability, and who can intervene in his wife’s abuse, but repeatedly chooses not to.

And then Clouds on the Horizon happens, and decides to just ignore that completely.

Alador is not written as an abused father in a way that we as the viewers could pick up on, or that we could go back and see the older episodes in a new light, because this is never even vaguely hinted at. It just ends up coming across like his character is super inconsistent, like I said, I very much felt like I was watching an entirely different person all of a sudden.

Yes, you have probably seen theories about Alador being an excellent dad that’s secretly abused by his evil wife before this episode. Hell, I definitely have. But that’s not because there were any hints. People just ran with him being an “interesting character” meaning he’s a wholesome wonderful person regardless of what was happening in the show and love to vilify women in general.

And even if he was written as a realistic, good, perfect portrayal of a man that’s abused by his wife and him breaking free from her would feel earned and well done, I still would not be comfortable with the way they handled his accountability in comparison to Amity’s. I can’t stress this enough, but that he is abused does not mean his abuse towards his children is acceptable. It doesn’t mean the hurt he caused them isn’t real. It doesn’t mean his children owe him forgiveness. That there’s a reason for why someone acts the way they do doesn’t mean they aren’t to blame for the pain they cause others in the process. There’s no scenario in which I would’ve been content with how they handled that part.

Also, can we talk about how at the slightest sign of change, Alador is immediately forgiven by the fandom for years of abuse that Amity herself hasn’t even forgiven him for? And that people are now acting like he was always an incredible dad?

All while bashing the hell out of Camila who was never abusive and is repeatedly shown to love and support Luz and her creativity? She’s not perfect but the main issue she and Luz have is that they don’t talk to each other enough and aren’t similar enough to understand each other without that. Camila is trying, and we see her try, and we see her be a good parent to Luz and to Vee, but she continuously gets put down and called an awful parent.

I had someone tell me they think Willow’s and Gus’s parents should have been called out for… initially being mad at their kids for being expelled because of actions that they actually committed?

Not Alador. Alador gets to abuse his kids for years and then be patted on the back and widely congratulated for doing the absolute bare minimum.

Interesting double standards to have, considering Alador is a white man and he gets cut so much more slack than the flawed parents of color in the show.

Also @ certain parts of the fandom, reading Alador as autistic does not make this better. It actually makes it worse. Looking at an autistic adult and babying him because “he’s on the spectrum of course he’d struggle to be a decent parent to his kids to the point where he straight-up abuses them, you can’t blame him for that 🥺” is fucking ableist! He’s an adult, not a little kid! Treat autistic adults as adults, for fuck’s sake! Same goes for headcanoning him with adhd!

But I don’t want this reply to focus entirely on Alador because really, he’s not the only character whose writing I was upset about.

Odalia in Clouds on the Horizon was… uh… a choice.

I’m not sure if I can put into words properly how deeply uncomfortable her portrayal made me. She’s an abusive parent and an awful person, that is not in question and will never be, but Jesus fucking Christ. There’s a significant difference between a realistic abusive parental figure (and spouse), which she used to be and which is amazing to have in children’s media because of how rare it is, and her going full cartoon villain in Clouds.

She crosses the line from realistic portrayal to complete caricature. Real people don’t act like that. There’s a world between child abuse and not only attempted murder but being complicit in genocide.

I think that really takes away from the show’s portrayal of abuse in general because it makes it feel less real.

There was really no reason for them to have Odalia be this vicious evil. If they’d toned it down somewhat, had made her not know about the day of unity and just interrupt when they try to tell her because she doesn’t care what happens to their products post being bought, that would’ve changed a lot for me already without even changing much about the episode.

Even Belos is portrayed as more layered and sympathetic than she is, which really does say something. They couldn’t have leaned into the crazy evil woman trope any harder if they’d tried.

And all of this combined was immensely triggering and upsetting to me, as someone who’s suffered through years of verbal abuse from not only bullies but people I considered my friends. People that were controlling and laughed it off when I told them I was uncomfortable, that ditched me at the drop of a hat, that repeatedly put me down and gaslit me and never once apologized, some of them still pretending to be my friends during all this. Either not noticing how much they hurt me, or pretending not to notice while they really just didn’t care.

And they were kids at the time, not even adults like Alador is, who are really on a whole other level of accountability than minors are, especially when it comes to treating their own children who they hold so much power and responsibility over.

I sat there and cried after watching Clouds on the Horizon, and not for any of the reasons the show wanted me to cry.

It made me so deeply uncomfortable that I couldn’t enjoy the episode at all. I won’t be able to rewatch it. There’s so much about it that I love, so many wonderful character decisions it made, but I can’t enjoy it because it’s coupled with all this. I can’t even be happy about one of my favorite fictional couples kissing in a moment that’s actually historical for Disney because this episode made me feel so empty and drained. I can’t rewatch an episode with one of the most adorable kisses in TV history, and have to convince myself not to be too happy about the kiss because it’ll make me even more upset about never being able to rewatch the episode. I have to hope we’ll get another kiss in an episode that isn’t this triggering to me.

A part of me is frustrated with myself because I trusted this show to do better. What did I expect? Of course the woman is viciously evil. Of course you can’t have a healthy relationship where the woman is in charge. Of course a girl’s pain and trauma is less important than showcasing that the man who was partially responsible for said trauma was actually always a good person who can’t be held accountable at all. Of course an abused child had to work for forgiveness and atone for her actions for months and still isn’t fully forgiven, while her dad doesn’t have to even apologize.

I love this show. I think it does a lot of things right and a lot of things well and has made a lot of important steps in the right direction.

But Clouds on the Horizon really, really hurt me. And perhaps worst of all, I’m stuck feeling pretty much alone with this. I’m afraid of speaking up on it because I’m scared people will shoot me down, that they’ll tell me my pain is less important than the poor decisions a writing team made about a fictional abusive man.

It’s not like it’d be the first time members of this fandom put me down and minimize my experiences and my feelings and my pain over something like that. You can disagree with my opinion on this topic, and on any other, but that doesn’t mean you’re ever allowed to weaponize my trauma and use it against me.

I went back and forth a lot about whether to make a post on this, and whether to put it in the fandom tags if I do, because of the bad experiences I’ve had with this in the past. But I’ve decided in favor of both because I need to voice this, not just for me, but for other people who feel like this and who might be feeling as alone with it as I do in a fandom where no one seems to share their thoughts.

If anyone needs a safe space to vent about this, you have it here. You may use this blog in any way you’d like. If you feel most comfortable with that, use asks on anon and I won’t tag them anything except for triggers. My DMs and the comment section of this post are also open to anyone who needs to get something out of their system. Just please make sure to not share any real names or locations, and if you reblog this and add to it make sure to include trigger warnings in case any of your followers might need them.

Stay safe and take care of yourself. If the episode was too much for you, that’s okay. If you need time to recover, take that time. If you can’t take seeing all the posts praising Alador and joking about the whole thing, please remember that it’s okay to block tags, and it’s okay to take a break from social media for however long you need. It’s valid to feel that way. Please do what’s best for you.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

The Hunter discourse is a bit weird to explain, but basically it has to do with him overshadowing a lot of the other supporting characters, and him playing into some white favoritism in the show and fandom.

Ah. I’ve vaguely seen this mentioned in the form of a friend saying that now there’ll be people going into the show thinking Hunter is the main character rather than Luz because people talk about him so much, but nothing too in-depth.

I’m gonna admit that this is coming from someone who hasn’t seen much of the discourse myself, I haven’t been very active in social media fandom spaces a ton lately. (Also side note my personal opinion on Hunter is not important to this post whatsoever but this is not a character bash post, it is a fandom critique one.)

There’s one number I’d like to apply to this whole debate going into it, and that’s the number of character-focused fics. This number is not at all perfect because we don’t really have a reliable tag when it comes to who a story is focused on, but I’ve tried two things.

First of all: what happens if I exclude Luz as a character from Ao3 searches, since she’s the main character and fics that don’t feature her are more likely to actually be focused on the other characters (while especially Gus and Willow tend to just get tacked onto fics if they breathe in them once).

What ends up happening is, we have under 300 fics for Willow left, and Gus has even less than her. He doesn’t actually make the popular characters tag anymore. Hunter, on the other hand, has three times that amount, becoming second most popular character, right after Eda. (For some reason there’s also like 500 fics tagged Emperor Belos, but I feel like that’s probably him being tagged for appearing as a villain in a lot of cases? Though I can’t say for sure.)

The second thing I tried was just excluding Lumity, which painted a pretty similar picture: Hunter was, with almost 1800 fics, still the third most popular character after Luz and Eda, even beating Amity by 500 fics. He has twice the amount Willow and Gus have here.

I’m bringing this up because I’ve seen people say to stop whining because he’s “not as popular as Willow and Gus” because he’s not in as many fics, which may be true objectively, but if you look closer? Not so much. This is also reflected in how unbalanced fan spaces are when you look at Hunter fanart vs. Gus and Willow fanart (or even Edric and Emira fanart vs. Gus and Willow fanart, really).

The fandom as a whole definitely has had the issue for a while that the white characters overshadow the people of color in the cast—the “people who don’t know the show thinking Hunter is the main character”-thing was the same but with Amity a season ago, and there’s in general a lot of imbalance with the amount of attention the white characters get vs. the supporting cast of color, and depressingly at times even the main character of color. There’s so many people who’ve called Willow and Gus boring—and the show definitely isn’t great about it either, considering how much they get sidelined.

Even now that Willow is getting more attention from fans, a bunch of it is in the context of her properly being “shippable” which I have… mixed feelings about, because while I’m happy that that means more Willow content, she’s a super interesting character on her own (Gus too btw) and I wish people were able to appreciate that regardless of her having a potential romantic interest.

Adding to that is how white abusive parents are treated by the fandom compared to flawed parents of color, especially Camila compared to the Blight parents (but also even how Eda, who makes just as many mistakes as Camila and continuously puts Luz in danger especially at the beginning, is portrayed as this flawless perfect parent while Camila is somehow supposedly awful), but also the absurd fact that I’ve at one point gotten a person here that wanted a whole callout post on Willow’s and Gus’s parents after they got in trouble for being expelled, despite that being a very normal reaction from a parent… and the people who continuously call Luz “the Latina” under the guise of not repeating her name in fics while weirdly enough no one is referred to as “the white person”… it’s not good.

This isn’t my first time talking about a bunch of these things, so yeah that the fandom has a racism and white favoritism issue isn’t exactly news, and since Hunter has become super popular compared to other supporting characters that have been around far longer I very much get where that’s coming from and why people are so upset, especially with him being another white character gaining a ton of traction and in parts more than the main character. I was more active seeing this happen with Amity, but I’m not surprised this happening again has people upset.

There’s also the added fact that apparently some of the Hunter fans get incredibly upset at people for not liking him, resorting to actual slurs and hate messages, which, y’all, that’s not okay. It never is. It’s fine for people to dislike a character you like. That doesn’t mean you get to harass them! This shouldn’t even be a conversation we’re having!

I don’t feel comfortable resharing the link to the post I was sent since the OP is problematic in a variety of pretty major ways and I don’t want to add to her platform, but regardless, thank you anon for bringing it to my attention that it’s gotten that bad, I had no idea, Jesus Christ.

Idk if I should actually be that surprised though, considering my first hand experience with people deciding to be awful because I talked about my trauma and the issues I had with the way a character was being handled by the fandom due to this and got some people essentially telling me to get over myself 😬

If anyone following this blog thinks it’s okay to harass someone because they dislike a character you love please get off this blog. To people who are afraid of experiencing this, my advice would be to turn off anon asks because then even if you do get asks that make you uncomfortable at least you can block that person, and people in general tend to be more reluctant to be shitty if they have to put a name to it and can’t hide behind anonymity. I’m sorry to anyone who’s had to deal with that.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Bit of a small theory about Alador's inconsistency from season 1 to season 2. Its possible that the reason he was portrayed as being just as bad as Odalia in "Understanding Willow", despite what we know about him now, is that its how Amity remembers him being based on her present viewpoint of him in that episode. Like, her view of him basically poisoned her perception of him in previous memories of him where he may have not had much of a say in reality. He's certainly not innocent, but still.

Can we just… not? I’ve seen that theory around a bunch and personally find it very harmful and triggering.

Amity’s version of these events is the only version we have. We have not seen that scene from a different angle. Why are people sitting here and insisting an abused character doesn’t remember her own trauma correctly? Why do they feel the need to invalidate the pain of an abused child to make excuses for one of her abusive parents? And yes I’ll keep calling Alador that because regardless of what you think of his redemption arc, he still neglected his kids for years. Amity is an abused child and we still hold her accountable for hurting Willow. I can and will continue to hold Alador accountable for hurting his kids. That you’re hurting doesn’t give you an accountability free card for hurting others, which is a universal concept, not just one to be applied to Amity and no one else. That he was dealing with his own shit doesn’t mean the pain he caused his kids isn’t real. (Also @ anon specifically I know you said Alador isn’t innocent, this part is not directed at you, but I keep seeing people claim he is and am so very fed up with it.)

I have from what I’ve seen across the fandom a pretty controversial opinion in regards to how the show handled Alador, but I feel even worse about how the fandom handles the whole thing. Tell me again why people are out there making callout posts for every slight misstep Amity makes, yet Alador is forgiven immediately once he does one good thing and excuses are made for him at every opportunity regardless of supporting evidence?

Fun fact: from my experience, traumatic events tend to actually be remembered very vividly. Most of the memories I have are vague, especially when they happens years ago. The traumatic ones? Those I remember often down to the dialogue, word for word.

Alador being written super inconsistently is not at all limited to this scene. Even if you do insist on explaining Amity’s flashback away for some reason, it doesn’t fix all the other issues. I’ve been wanting to make a post about the issues I have with the way Alador is written (which is not the basic concept at all, for the record), and keep going back and forth about whether or not to make it because the fandom has dogpiled me before and I’d prefer not to live through a repeat of that 😬

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

I’m not gonna talk about the amphibia shit much and I definitely won’t share the doc because more people seeing the art is the opposite of what I want but for the love of god, if anyone who follows me is under the impression that pedophilia is a sexuality and/or that the sexualization of minors is okay in any capacity, get the fuck out immediately

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For anyone wondering what my opinion on the new episode is, the gist of it is that I really would have needed trigger warnings going into it. And that while I loved so much of it, the part of it that was upsetting to me was upsetting to a level that I don’t think I’ll ever rewatch it. And it wasn’t even the part that was intended to upset me.

I wish I could love this episode. I really do.

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Would you agree that Boscha and her friends got off WAY too easily in "Wing It Like Witches"?

Going through some of my old asks now and finally answering them! Sorry it took so long 😅

So, to answer your question, sort of? I honestly wasn’t that upset about Wing It Like Witches, mainly because the assumption after was that Skara and Amelia and Cat (but not Boscha lol) now had some basic respect for Willow, but hadn’t changed as people. Under that assumption, you can go by saying they‘re not forgiven, and they’re not even good people. But they assume Willow is on their level now and won’t bother her anymore. Which honestly isn’t so bad and can be an interesting view into how people like that think about school in two groups, in the “worthy” and the ones you look down on.

Would have been nice to see Willow get a bit more closure and maybe tell them off properly, sure, but at least she wouldn’t get bullied anymore. I could be content with that. They didn’t apologize, but at least they didn’t bother her again.

What really bugged me, however, was how they handled Skara in Any Sport in a Storm. I’ve talked about her here before but she was not innocent in Willow’s bullying, she actively took part in it and enabled Boscha and laughed. She was never a nice person being forced to do anything, she was just a mean girl. Which is fine.

I’m also fine with her potential to change. They’re all kids.

But she never even apologized to Willow, at least not on-screen. And then Willow not only accepts one of her former bullies into her team, but talks about how under-appreciated Skara is!

And Gus is suspicious of Hunter, but not of her, despite the fact that she’s actively hurt Willow on the past.

Add to that the fact that Amity is really trying and has apologized and Willow still hasn’t wholly forgiven her (which is well within her right, of course, and which I liked a lot)… that really did bugs me, and makes no sense for Willow’s character either.

I’m assuming it’s an effect of the third season getting cut and would have made more sense if they’d had the time to actually go into that, but as is it has the effect of downplaying Skara’s role in the bullying and not giving Willow any space to come to terms with them being friends now.

I think Skara’s character is interesting, but due to the cut episode count she really has little to no character consistency between season 1 and season 2. It’s to the point that you could almost assume they’re entirely different characters. And since they didn’t have the time to do even a small reconciliation scene, I’d honestly have preferred if Willow had just found a different, unknown witch to recruit.

Saying this as someone who was bullied and is not on friendly terms with any of my former bullies and isn’t sure if I’d be even if they’d made an effort, never mind without one, or without even an apology.

So, in summary, I don’t think WILW would’ve been that bad if the bully girls stayed minor characters that don’t really appear anymore aside from group scenes, but because Skara showed up and was on friendly terms with willow in ASiaS I agree that at least she was let off way too easy.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Camila Noceda and Flawed Parenting

A perspective by a flawed person with loving but extremely flawed parents

I’m genuinely baffled at some people’s hostile reaction towards Camila. Like… do any of you have flawless parents that always know the best solution instantly, make no mistakes and never get emotional?

My parents are great. They’re super supportive and I love them very, very much. Overall I think I got very lucky in the parents department.

But god, they are far from flawless. I still live at home, and despite all the good, there’s moments when I can’t take my dad anymore. He’s the kind of dad that stayed up until two am to help me with homework when I was in school, and he does so, so many things to make sure I’m happy. I know that. But despite all of this, I have told my mom in emotional moments before that I’m not sure if I can keep living with him, because for all his good sides, he has a couple of fatal flaws that sometimes make him unbearable.

My mom listens to me and is very open to being educated on certain topics, but she has her flaws, too. She hates when I fight with my dad, and gets so torn up about it that I’ve once apologized to my dad out of fear of her getting into a car crash otherwise. She’s very vocal about certain flaws of mine, and sometimes uses the things she does for me as leverage against me when she gets very emotional.

And both of my parents pay a lot more attention to my brother because he needs it more, because he’s more of a “problem child” while I “seem so capable” even when I’m not.

And guess what? I’m not a perfect child. I make mistakes sometimes, some of them pretty severe. Just like Luz, I’m the kind of person that struggles to communicate certain issues of mine to her parents. I’m stubborn, and when I get emotional, I say very hurtful things sometimes. So do they.

And this has nothing to do with my parents being horrible or abusive. They’re neither of those things.

The takeaway from this should not be that my entire family is made up of terrible people, but that we’re all flawed in our own ways, despite loving each other and trying our best. There’s things about my parents I wish I could change, and there are things about me that my parents wish they could change. And to an extent, that’s perfectly normal.

In our strengths and flaws and frustration with each other, we’re all human.

Specific, spoiler-y Camila and Luz things under the cut since this got very long.

We have no indication that Camila has a pattern of emotionally manipulating Luz. Her “emotional manipulation” as I’ve seen some people put it, is people for some reason thinking that the second you become an adult, you’re suddenly perfect and can no longer make mistakes, lest you’ll be dubbed horrible and abusive.

The whole concept is absurd to me. There is no perfect way to parent. There simply isn’t. Of course, there’s some genuinely abusive patterns that are horrible and inexcusable. But out of the parenting styles that aren’t, which one works depends on a number of factors, one of which absolutely includes that every child is different and has different needs. Camila is an amazing parent for Vee, giving the kid everything she’s ever longed for. She’s not an ideal parent for Luz. And that’s because Luz and Vee have fundamentally different needs.

Likewise, Luz is a pretty great child for Eda, but not a perfect fit for Camila. Luz relates to Eda a lot more than she relates to her mom, and that’s why the two of them have an easier time understanding each other. Both of these mother-child relationships exist, and one is not more doomed to fail than the other, but I think you’ll agree that the better you understand someone and where they’re coming from, the easier it is to communicate, pick up on certain signs, etc.

As mom and daughter, Camila and Luz are both flawed and have issues seeing the other’s perspective because of how different they are. And we should simultaneously acknowledge both of their roles in the issue and give both of them the space to learn and grow past those issues.

Luz struggles to communicate her problems. She doesn’t want to burden people in the demon realm, and it’s a given that this started out as not wanting to burden her mom. So she keeps quiet about her issues. Camila tries hard but can’t read her daughter’s mind, so there’s only so much she can do to understand and help the way Luz needs her to. Hell, Eda, who Luz is a lot more open with than her mom, struggles to help her, because Luz doesn’t tell her what’s wrong. I don’t see anyone calling Eda a terrible mom for that.

Camila tries her best, but she struggles to understand her daughter because of this, and because of how fundamentally different they are. She loves Luz’s creativity, we actively see her supporting it in the new episode—she keeps the weird stuff Luz made because she thinks Luz will regret throwing it away, and even plays along in what she assumes to be some elaborate role play because “she’s glad Luz kept her creativity even though it’s not made things easy for her at school”. But at the beginning of the show, said creativity got out of hand and people got hurt. Luz could’ve gotten hurt. So of course Camila had to interfere. I love Luz dearly, but she thought it was okay to bring snakes to school and set off fireworks inside a school building. Creativity is great. Doing reckless stuff that causes people to get hurt is not.

In sending Luz to camp, Camila tried to have someone else fix her issue because she didn’t know how to help Luz. That was a mistake, and a bad one at that, but she’s realizing that. She looks disheartened when Vee tries to throw out Luz’s stuff, because she never meant to change her daughter or take that part of her away. She just thought Luz needed a reality check—which, for the record, is something the narrative actually agrees with.

Luz spends her time in the demon realm getting reality check after reality check, realizing that even her ideal fantasy world where she has everything she always wanted doesn’t mean she’s free of consequences. She goes overboard constantly, causing:

-Eda to be forced to fly into a trap because Luz is chasing a fantasy (Witches before Wizards)

-Eda to almost be branded by her sister because Luz doesn’t think through why Eda doesn’t use magic to publicly announce her presence constantly (Once Upon a Swap)

-Eda and the twins to get kidnapped by a Slitherbeast because Luz stole Amity’s wand (Adventures in the Elements)

-Her friends to get hurt when she goes overboard trying to help Willow (Wing it like Witches)

-Eda to be captured and almost petrified because Luz thought she could just steal from the Emperor with no consequences in an attempt to help (Agony of a Witch)

I’m like 90% sure these aren’t even all. None of those make her a terrible person, for the record, but as all humans are, she is flawed and makes bad choices. She learns from these experiences and matures, just like her mom had hoped she would at camp. She’s also made friends there, which was another thing Camila wanted for her daughter.

You’ll probably realize that a lot of Luz’s behaviors I mentioned follow one of two patterns: 1. Luz’s idealized fantasy world causing problems, when she walks around with rose tinted glasses and gets people in trouble in the process because she hasn’t thought about the consequences, and 2. Luz trying to help someone she loves, but instead making things worse in the progress. The issue with this one is often that she doesn’t communicate her ideas/listen to the people she’s trying to help—like when Willow and Gus said they’ve had enough of Grudgby, or how she never actually talks to Eda about the healing hat idea before doing something reckless.

…does the latter one sound familiar to you at all? No? Because it’s the exact same thing that Camila did.

Some of the things Luz does are reckless and actively endanger others and herself, and that’s something that I think we need to acknowledge before judging Camila. As Luz’s mom, it’s Camila’s job to interfere in those situations. That she made a mistake while trying to protect Luz doesn’t make her a terrible person, especially as, again, the narrative proves her right to an extent.

I’m not saying her making Luz promise to come back and stay isn’t something that hurt Luz—it absolutely is. But it was born out of desperation. She’s emotional and in shock. She’s so full of pain and regret. She just wants her fourteen year old daughter home safe, and there’s nothing abusive or even morally ambiguous about that.

From Luz’s perspective, what she says is absolutely heartbreaking, but from Camila’s, it’s perfectly reasonable. I doubt Camila has the full picture, but even if she does, she’s had a full fifteen seconds to process that her daughter has not only been lying to her for months, but chose to leave her, and is in the demon realm of all places. Of course she’d be emotional and upset about that! Who wouldn’t? Camila isn’t a robot. If she’d been calm about this I’d be way more concerned, honestly.

My parents don’t get mad that easily, but if I would lie to them for weeks on end, they’d be pissed off too, not even taking the running away from home part into account. That’s a normal thing. People don’t like being lied to. Camila is absolutely devastated in that moment because she’s scared that Luz left because she hates her, when Luz actively states that her leaving wasn’t about her mom—which is another thing we should really be acknowledging.

Abusive parents suck and abuse should obviously never be apologized or trivialized, but saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment isn’t the same thing as being an abusive parent. My parents have done this. I’ve done this. And yes, those things can be emotionally manipulative, but there’s a huge difference in whether that’s a habit or a person speaking out of hurt and desperation in a very specific context. I doubt there’s anyone on the entire planet that hasn’t had a bad moment where they’ve said something like this because they were hurting. People lash out when they hurt, and they beg for reassurance when they’re scared. That’s something we all do.

The whole mindset of “all parents have to be perfect and can never get upset or make any mistakes” is harmful as hell, and honestly also very unrealistic. No parent is perfect, and especially people like me who have a relationship with their parents that’s very good overall should know that.

Once you have a child, parenting is a non-stop learning process, every day for the rest of your life. Taking away that room to grow and expecting perfection isn’t helping anyone, especially not struggling single parents.

And I see Camila as someone who is very willing to learn, because at the end of the day, all she wants is for Luz to be happy. Let’s give her some time to wrap her head around this whole situation. Let’s see what she says once she sees for herself how happy Luz is in that world, may it be via the videos eventually coming through or Camila visiting and meeting Luz’s found family, her friends and her girlfriend.

Ultimately, I don’t think Camila will force Luz to stay at home, but we have to give her some time. She wants what’s best for Luz, and she’s gonna need some convincing that a dangerous magical world is what’s best. I feel like that’s very normal considering the circumstances.

Her and Luz need to work on their communication on both ends, they both have things to learn, but I’m certain they’ll manage to fix their relationship in the long run.

If the bunk bed is any indication, I think Vee is gonna stay in the human realm permanently while Luz sleeps at home but keeps attending Hexside in the daytime. That feels like a solution that keeps everyone happy, and allows Luz to spend time with all the people she loves. I can’t see her being forced to choose at the end.

As a closing statement: Eda isn’t an ideal mom, Amity isn’t an ideal friend or girlfriend and neither is Luz, Lilith isn’t an ideal sister… but that’s because no one is ever an ideal anything. Being flawed is a big part of being human. Everyone has different facets to their personality. Their flaws are what makes them such great, relatable, believable characters.

And I feel the same way about Camila. She’s an extremely believable character that reminds me of my own parents, flawed but very loving nonetheless.

(Also honestly, I think it’s pretty telling that some of you guys immediately bash the black single mom that’s obviously trying her hardest while giving the benefit of the doubt to Alador, who has been portrayed as neglecting and threatened his six year old daughter on screen. This was already a thing before we knew much about either of them, and I’m disappointed but unfortunately not very surprised that it still is.)

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Things Alador Blight did do:

-Verbally abuse Amity along with his wife at her birthday party, forcing her to cut off her best friend

-Being complicit in forcing Amity into a friend group she didn’t want to be a part of, just because they’re business partners with their parents

-Tolerating the necklace Amity has been wearing for several years (mini Amity wore it to her birthday party already)

-Tolerating that Amity is being forced to dye her hair and the twins are being forced to match by their mom

-Go along with his wife’s plan to get Amity’s friends thrown out of school to teach Amity a lesson

-Immediately backing down when his wife tells him she wants the Abomatron to keep fighting Luz until she is “completely obliterated”

-Encouraging his wife to hold up their end of the deal only because Amity is powerful and could become a coven head one day

-On that note, not only tolerating but actively encouraging the academic pressure Odalia puts on their children, seeing how important Amity’s skills specifically are to him

Things Alador Blight DIDN’T do:

-Actively step in when his wife injured and almost killed his daughter’s friend to present their products

-Do anything against Luz and his own daughter being hit with a fucking hammer

-Stop any of the abuse we know of

-Bother to figure out Amity is literally scared of her mom or do anything about that

-Do anything to improve Amity’s situation, or even figure out how miserable she is

Alador clearly isn’t scared of his wife (which was everyone’s favorite theory for why he never protected his kids before). He disagreed with her multiple times throughout the episode, and didn’t seem to care too much when she got annoyed with him. He just doesn’t care that she’s abusing their kids, and that’s when he’s not actively going along with it like he did in Amity’s memory.

I don’t care if anyone thinks of the Blights as interesting antagonists. But I’ve seen so many people downplaying Alador’s role in the abuse his kids endure, talk about him being a good dad and say he needs to like, be saved from Odalia or something. Guys, he’s complicit in the abuse Amity, Ed and Em experience, and as shown in the flashback, actively encourages some of it.

Please hold off on the father of the year badges.

I’ll never get how people can look at abusive cartoon parents and decide those are the people we should be giving the benefit of the doubt.

Alador currently hasn’t done jack shit to help any of his kids as far as we’re aware. Him encouraging Odalia to let Amity’s friends back into school was for selfish reasons, because she’s getting powerful and thus it’s good to stay in her good graces.

Stop calling him a good dad. I’ll throw hands.

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This could just be me, but I kinda feel like Gus and Willow's dads (save for the one with the green hair) should've been called out in "Escaping Expulsion" for just jumping to conclusions and simply grounding them without getting the full story.

One of these days this fandom is going to kill me.

You don’t even know if they didn’t hear their kids out later? That part is you jumping to conclusions.

Their initial reaction was to their kids getting expelled from school for severe property damage and student endangerment—both of which, to be fair, they were involved in. Willow tore like half the school apart with her plants in Teenage Abomination, Gus destroyed detention in Something Ventured, Someone Framed, etc. The accusations the Blight parents made to get them expelled didn’t appear out of thin air—they saw available munition and used it. It’s hard to argue “you unfairly expelled my child for destroying the school” when they did, in fact, destroy the school.

We don’t know how Gus’s dad reacted later on, but Gus did get out of the house one way or another. (Also, gentle reminder here that Perry let Gus and Willow take over his live broadcast in YBOS.) And Willow’s parents deadass planned to quit their jobs so they could homeschool her. They seemed more sad for her than anything in that scene, not like they were mad at her.

Bringing back this part of my Camila post:

There’s a severe difference between “my parents never listen to me and always take other people’s side over mine” and “this one time when I got expelled for severe property damage (among other things), I initially got in trouble”—because the former is an underlying issue in the parenting, while the latter is relatively easy to sort out later. The latter establishes a relationship where you trust each other, and after everyone’s calmed down, you can talk it through, and expect your parents to hear your side, too.

Portraying flawed but overall loving parenting is great, actually! It’s realistic and important! At the end of the day, we have no idea if any conversations between the parents and Gus/Willow happened off-screen—or would’ve, if they hadn’t found a way to reverse the situation as quickly. And no, there don’t always need to be horrid repercussions for a choice that was yes, hasty, but 100% understandable from the parents’ perspective, so long as the children don’t get hurt—which they didn’t.

If we started making callout posts for every little mistake characters made, for each and every one of their flaws, we’d be at this all year. Even if we limit it to just adults—why are you so focused on the parents of color making minor mistakes in one episode and not on how we should call out Eda, who decided it’d be best to lie to King his whole life, and who continuously endangers Luz and almost got her killed, like, several times? She also never told King about her curse, imagine how badly that could’ve ended if King, being the chaotic child that he is, had decided to take the potion without Luz around?

This isn’t me bashing Eda, I love her dearly, and I adore her as a parental figure for King and Luz. I think she gives them both a lot. But I’m sick as shit of her being held up as the “flawless golden standard” by everyone when she’s really not. Eda is flawed, just as flawed as everyone else. And that’s what makes her a relatable, great character! And that’s what makes Willow’s dads and Perry and Camila realistic, great characters. The Owl House isn’t the Willow show, and it’s not the Gus show, but it still manages to make their parents feel like people, in how little screen time we have with them because it’s not the Willow and Gus show.

There’s a serious double standard in the fandom, especially when it comes to the treatment of parents of color vs white parental figures, and it’s clear as day when you just compare Eda to any of to the others, without even going into how the fandom treats the Blight parents (especially Alador) vs Camila.

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I'm glad the twins being jerk faded away and now they're playful but supportive of their baby sister

Okay this is a point and I’m very happy about this too but like

I also sincerely hope Amity stopped tattling on her siblings because Emira said “please don’t tell mom” twice after helping Amity out (in both Escaping Expulsion and Looking Glass Ruins). And like “don’t throw us under the bus after we helped you” should really go without saying, but it does not because Amity screwing the twins over in hopes of getting equal treatment has shaped their relationship for a while.

I’m not saying the twins didn’t go too far in Lost In Language, they absolutely did, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that they weren’t just jerks to Amity for the sake of being jerks. They were jerks to her because Amity constantly threw them under the bus. The prank in LIL was them attempting to get her to stop tattling on them. They say that in the episode.

And I rarely see this part of the relationship addressed by the fandom. It’s always “oh the twins are such jerks” and “oh thank god the twins stopped being jerks”, which yeah, but… this thing wasn’t one-sided.

To be fully clear, all of their behavior was all caused by their parents’ abuse, and Alador and Odalia are the ones who should be held accountable. But the point stands that there’s a huge discrepancy here. The fandom has a tendency to point fingers at the twins for being awful siblings, while completely glossing over the fact that Amity kept tattling on the twins to their abusive parents.

I’m glad the Blight siblings are working on their relationship and learning to move past at least some parts of their respective toxic mindsets. I really hope they can get to a point where Ed and Em can trust Amity and not be scared that she might use whatever they say and do, including occasions where they help her, against them.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

For the ship ask game: skarlow

I’m not tagging this anything, I don’t have the energy to discuss this anymore. I hope it doesn’t show up in the ship tag because anon used the shipname.

I actually cannot believe you guys. I can’t believe I got four people asking me my opinion on bully/victim ships after I’ve both made a very clear stance on both of these ships and stated multiple times that I was bullied in school and am still dealing with the aftermath.

Do y’all think it’s funny to keep asking a victim of years of bullying to address how the entire fandom is constantly romanticizing her experience???

It’s bad enough that it’s happening at all, even though I’m not surprised whatsoever since this is everywhere. Whenever I enter a fandom of a show where someone gets bullied it’s read as romantic. That doesn’t mean I want to see it??? I don’t want to be reminded these ships exist. I’ve literally blocked the ship tags everywhere I could and unfollowed people for making art for these ships because it’s triggering for me to see those. I don’t want to to talk about them. I don’t even want to think about their existence. I’ve made my stance, loudly, so please STOP FUCKING ASKING ME TO DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN! I’m tired of talking about this! I’m sick and tired of constantly having to explain why bullying is shitty and shouldn’t be romanticized!

Also no, Skara/Willow is not better than Skara/Boscha in the slightest, I’ve addressed this before:

https://the-lone-witch-and-secret-room.tumblr.com/post/651329228782075904/breathe-in-breathe-out-yeah-no-that

The only thing that would make me okay with these ships would be if there was no bullying in canon. I don’t want to see a victim dating her bully, ever, but especially not because of how keen most of y’all are to either just ignore the bullying ever happened in the first place or just treating it as fucking flirting. I don’t get it. I’ll never get why anyone finds the idea of being bullied hot, the only thing it is is in fact fucking traumatizing.

If anyone read this entire post and is somehow tempted to try and convince me otherwise? Do us both the favor to spare me and get off my blog. This isn’t up for fucking debate! I spent hours on end crying in bed and I am still super insecure because the whole thing permanently destroyed my confidence! That being bullied made my life hell and that seeing the experience romanticized makes me physically sick isn’t gonna be changed by anyone going “but it’s just fiction, don’t take everything so seriously” 🙃

Please just… leave me alone. Leave me in peace. I’m exhausted. I don’t wanna talk about this anymore.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Do you think we'll see Lilith again? I think some were a bit too serious into thinking she's been written off.

Yeah agreed. Some people somehow went “oh god we’ll never see her again” just because she’s going away for a while and that feels… a little dramatic? I love Lilith but she already got a bunch of screen time in this season and the last, and I’d say among the most character development of the side characters, maybe even more than Amity. Like it’s said on the show she’s planning to do research on the curse, that I’m certain she’s definitely going to bring back to Eda once she has results. I’m sure she’ll be back for season 2B latest.

In comparison, Willow is probably my favorite character because of how much I relate to her, and she was barely in this season at all so far. I miss her, but I’m not worried she’s been written off? At the end of the day, Luz, Eda and King are the main characters, and everyone else has to share screen time and won’t be in all the episodes. Heck, there’s even episodes where not all three of the main characters are present—the last episode didn’t have Eda or King. I don’t know why some people freak out or call it bad writing when a reoccurring character that’s not a main character isn’t around for a while?

It’s hard to work with a large cast of characters. Some are bound to not be around for a while so we can focus on others. I’d hate if we got a very well developed Lilith at the expense of barely seeing Gus and Willow for the rest of the season. Side characters have to split screen time between each other. That’s just how it is. It’s not bad writing, and the world won’t end just because your favorite isn’t around for a bit! You can miss them of course, and I don’t blame anyone for that. I miss Willow a ton. But please don’t jump down the writers‘ throats or call it bad writing! You shouldn’t blame them for having to split screen time to be able to give all of the important side characters a little bit of spotlight in the limited time they have—especially because they won’t even get a full season three.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Temporarily turning anon asks off bc one person was being a creep (and sent their weird ask like five times on top of it), sorry folks!

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Ship ask game: Camila/Lilith

Don't Ship It

Why don't you ship it?

Well… for one, Lilith tried to kill Luz, which isn’t a great way to start a relationship. I know that’s kinda glossed over in the show, but still, I kinda doubt that’s something Camila would just get over.

I feel like Luz would be pretty uncomfortable with that relationship, and Lilith would probably constantly feel guilty (which is already a problem she has in all of the relationships with her family, and honestly, if she gets a partner I think she should get a break from that for once). Between almost being killed by Lilith, the curse she put on Eda and how she screwed over Amity at the covention in season one, I just cannot see her and Luz ever being closer than their current awkward teacher-student relationship. I can’t see them as mom and daughter. I know some might see this as “interesting tension”, but honestly this crosses into a territory of uncomfortable that I wouldn’t be able to read anymore.

Also I just can’t imagine their personalities working well with each other at all? I feel like they’d be awkwardly polite to each, but everything beyond that… is just very hard to imagine for me. I want Camila to interact with Eda (not even on a romance level) because they have things to learn from each other. They both love Luz but show it very differently and have very different approaches to parenting overall. Eda can help Camila understand Luz better, while Camila obviously has more of a clue when it comes to parenting as a whole and having to set certain rules. There’s obvious ways they would (and likely will) benefit from meeting each other. I just… don’t see that with Camila and Lilith at all, not even on a platonic level, never mind a romantic one. They’d probably just make each other feel even more guilty about the mistakes they made (Camila in driving Luz away to a place where her life was at risk, Lilith almost killing Luz) and I honestly feel like they’re the last thing the other needs in their life right now.

Also I know lots of people will probably disagree with this, but I think there’s something kinda questionable about the mindset of “oh this show has a single mom, we need to find someone to set her up with” as a whole. I know shipping is just in good fun for a lot of people and this isn’t something that gets a lot of thought put into it, but everyone’s knee jerk reaction to seeing a single mom being “let’s find her a partner” does kinda give the impression that there’s something wrong with being a single parent. That Camila is somehow incomplete. That she has to find a partner to be happy. There’s of course nothing wrong with a single parent choosing to start dating again and eventually even remarry, and there are things to be explored in step parent dynamics too, since we don’t get those too often aside from the evil step mom trope… but we can’t normalize single parents as long as we think of them as part of an incomplete set.

It would be different if Camila had a canon love interest, but she doesn’t. The show never questions the absence of a father, and I have a bit of a caveat with some people seeing that as nothing but an opening for setting Camila up with someone else whereas the show is trying to normalize single parents. I saw a couple people switch from Camileda to Camilith now that Eda has a canon love interest, and I just… people being so obsessed with setting the single mom up with someone that they switch to a completely different ship the very second Eda gets a love interest instead of just letting Camila be single seriously rubs me the wrong way.

What would have made you like it?

The last thing considered I’m pretty sure the only thing that would’ve made me okay with it would be Lilith being Camila’s canon love interest. I’d at least get it if they had any canon interactions with the tiniest bit of chemistry and Lilith hadn’t tried to kill Luz.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

I… really enjoy these characters separately? Lol

They’re both well-written characters that I like a lot, but the ship is just not my cup of tea. I do wonder if we’ll ever see a scene of them interacting tho.

Ship ask