one of my favorite subgenres of writing tropes is "[insert common trope] but how traumatizing and emotionally taxing it'd actually be to go through is addressed and worked through."
I eat that shit UP. I love you chosen ones with massive emotional trauma and a crushing fear of disappointing the people around you! I love you kids who were lied to that they were chosen ones to manipulate them and were taken advantage of via being promised a purpose and something to keep them going! I love you stories where the hero and villain used to be best friends that show how horribly painful that split is and how crushingly isolating it feels! I love you stories where the comedic relief character has massive fucking issues nobody pays attention to! I love you stories where teenage heroes are actually addressed as "hey why the fuck is everyone treating a child like this???" I love you stories about siblings on the other side of a war that show how crushing that separation is! I love you stories where the protagonist not having parents isn't just played for explanation or tragisad points, it's addressed as massively traumatic! I love you isekais that address how terrifying itd actually be!!!! I love you sins of the father stories that address how unfair and horrible and painful it is and the complicated emotional reality that is revenge and guilt and grief and responsibility!!! I love you stories about monster slayers that actually address the potentially gray or difficult undertones!!! I love you stories where the protagonist was on the wrong side and abandoned their home that address how terrifying it is to leave behind everything they ever knew!!!
I love you trope subversion in the form of "yeah, we're gonna do this trope. but how do THEY feel about it?"
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Airis in the Owl House
(Happens before S2 E10)
Airis ran and ran, running from the monster who, who, hurt her so much. She was happy! And than he had to come and ruin it!! As she ran she sniffled and squeezed her eyes to try and push back the tears but they where already falling.
She yelped when she tripped over something and slammed into the ground scrapping her already oozing injurys, causing her to scream in pain.
Luz was walking through the forest at night, she knew it wasn't the best idea but it was one of those nights where she had a nightmare and missed her mom to the point where she couldn't sleep. She froze when she heard a scream.
Determination suddenly blazed through her and she ran towards the direction the scream came from.
Airis laid there and whimpered, what was the point? He would find her no matter where she hid. At the sound of a twig snapping she snapped her head up and in the direction it came from, her pupils dilating as she looked.
Growling at the sight of someone she tried standing but her legs quickly gave out from under her, surfacing a whimper from her damaged throat.
"Hey, hey, it's okay I'm not gonna hurt you." The strange girl spoke.
"Ggrrrrrrr!!" Airis growled as she backed up only to bump into a tree. Her eyes widened in fear. Seeing no way out Airis started whimpering in defeat.
"Shhhhh, it's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you." The human smiled before sitting in front of Airis just out of arms reach.
Airis's ears drooped as she whimpered, and made confused noises.
"I'm Luz what's your name?" Luz asked with a tilt of her head and a smile.
Airis tried to say something really she did but nothing came out resulting in a sob racking through her.
"Hey, hey, no it's okay! Why don't you just write your name in the dirt?" Luz suggested reassuringly.
She made a warbling noise of excitement comframation before writing Airis in the dirt facing Luz.
"That's a pretty name, Airis." The human girl giggle and smiled.
Airis grumbled in embarrassment annoyance as a blush crept onto her face. When she looked up Luz was closer to her and reaching out her hand towards her.
"I promise I won't hurt you. I only wanna help you, please." Luz asked with sincerity.
Airis looked into Luz's eyes and all she could see was promises of safety, home, trust, and love.
Hesitantly Airis grab the humans hand, and as soon as she did she fell off the edge. In a second Airis pulled Luz to her chest and buried her head in her hair and Sobbed. She let it all out, years, and years of hurt and pain, she let it all out.
Luz comforted this creature she had just meet but she already knew that she was her new friend, and Luz would do anything to protect her new friend. She rubbed comforting circles in between Airis's wings as Airis sobbed.
It broke something in Luz to hear such pain and anguish coming from such a beautiful creature. How could anyone think of hurting Airis? Luz didn't know but she would protect her from whatever hurt her.
As Airis Sobbed Luz whispered. "I promise you're safe with me."
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How The Owl House did amputee representation right before Eda ever lost her arm - Disability in Media
[ID: A screenshot of Eda from The Owl House, an old woman with pale skin, very large, grey hair and pointed ears in a red dress. Beside the screenshot on a dark pink background is text that reads "Disability in media, How the Owl House got amputee representation right before eda ever lost her arm." /End ID]
Dana Terrace's The Owl House has some of the best disability rep I’ve seen on a Disney channel show in a long time, with Eda, the main character’s mentor, being one of many stand-out examples.
Plenty of people have discussed how Eda’s curse and the loss of her magic can work as an allegory for disability and how refreshing it is to see a story (especially one aimed at a younger audience) who’s focus is not on her “overcoming” it, but learning to accept it as a part of her and go from there. Eda’s story tackles a lot of subjects that are often mishandled in other examples of disability representation, from the subject of parents who refuse to accept, to glass siblings and much, much more, The Owl House handles all these topics beautifully.
But one thing that dawned on me during my most recent re-watch of The Owl House is how well Eda (and later Lilith) worked as amputee representation, long before Eda actually lost her arm.
One of the side effects of Eda and Lilith’s curse is that sometimes their body parts, mainly their limbs, can fall off. It doesn’t hurt them, and Eda is seen removing them intentionally at multiple times in the series, but they can always be reattached.
[ID: an image of Eda holding her sister Lilith's hand. Lilith is a pale woman with long, black hair, wearing grey clothes. She is looking at her other arm suprised, as her hand is missing. Luz, a Latina girl with short brown hair and a purple hoodie is looking on, smiling. /End ID]
While most likely unintentional, the way the show depicts this with Eda in particular is exactly what I wish more people would do with their prosthetic-using amputee characters.
Eda detaches her limbs, especially her legs, when they’re inconvenient or when she’s relaxing.
[ID: an image of Eda laying on the couch in a bathrobe, her hair in a towel. She has taken her legs off, throwing them to the other side of the seat. /End ID]
The fact that this is mostly played for laughs is actually a good thing in my opinion (though obviously, the show’s overall tone is part of that), as it shows the audience who are mostly children and teens, that in a world of weird and downright scary (from the perspective of the characters) things, this isn't one of them. It’s just a thing she and Lilith can do, and it can even be funny.
[ID: An image of Luz and Eda dressed as pirates. Eda is sitting on the ground, her legs detached and off screen somewhere. /End ID]
It does startle Luz and Lilith on a few occasions, but that’s more because they didn’t know the curse could do that, but once they’re introduced to it, it’s never really brought up as a big deal again.
I’d love to see more amputee characters who do this with their prosthetics. So often media is almost afraid to have amputees take their prosthetics off on camera or on the page. For some folks, our prosthetics are like a part of our bodies, but that doesn’t mean we never take them off. Show your leg amputee flop on the couch and throw their legs across the room. Have them go without on occasion, not because they have to, but because they just don’t feel like putting them on.
Likewise, the owl house creators never shy away from showing Eda when her limbs aren’t all attached. A lot of media, and kid’s shows in particular, will avoid having an amputee character’s stump visible if they ever do take their prosthetics off - treating that part of the character’s body the same way they treat gore or nudity. I’ve talked before how this actually does have a real impact on how kids in particular react to amputees - I’ve legitimately had kids I worked with cry when I took my prosthetics off, then immediately calm down when they see there’s nothing "scary" under my socks.
As much as I love How To Train Your Dragon, it’s very guilty of this. Hiccup looses his leg at the end of the first movie, and wakes up with his prosthetic already attached. The Netflix series has a few instances where he has his prosthetic off, but the camera almost always avoids showing it until he can cover it up again, or is super zoomed-out so you wouldn’t be able to “see anything”. To their credit, they do get better with this in the last movie (though it's still always covered), but for the majority of the series, they are very reluctant to have any shots where hiccup’s leg is in view without the prosthetic (unless they’re very far away).
[ID: a screenshot of Hiccup from How To Train Your Dragon 3, a white man with short brown hair, and one leg missing, wearing armour made of black dragon scales and no prosthetic. He is holding onto toothless's head, a black dragon. /End ID]
Ironically, Eda does (permanently) loose an arm at the end of season 2, but I don’t really have much to say about her as amputee representation on that front, since she’s absent for a lot of Season 3, and when we do see her again, everything is so hectic, the story doesn’t really have any time to focus on her missing limb (which is reasonable). I will say, I do appreciate that they kept the amputation when she's in her owl-beast form in the finale, but there's honestly not much more to say about it. We do see her again in the epilogue after she’s had some time to settle into the amputation, wearing a hook prosthetic, but it’s, once again, too quick to really say anything from a representation standpoint. There's a few little nit-picky things I could bring up, like the fact they seemed to change the type on amputation she had (when she looses it, we see the split was very close to the elbow, but in the epilogue she has most of her forearm again) but those read to me more like animation mistakes or an odd prosthetic/clothing designs rather than a representation issue - and as someone who's worked in animation, given the stress the team was under for the finale, I'm not really worried about it. Like I said, it's more nit-picky than anything.
[ID: A screenshot of Eda, her hair tied back and wearing a red robe and a hook for her right hand. /End ID]
Despite all that though, I still think Eda is still good amputee representation, but mostly because of how they depict her curse’s side effects rather than her actual amputation. She’s honestly one of the only characters that I think you could refer to as “amputee coded” (outside of maybe Teen Titan’s Cyborg), and I genuinely wish more creators would treat their actual amputee characters the same way the Owl House treats Eda in that regard.
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Endless things to say about these two...
Luz means "light", while Hunter was named by Belos in accordance with witch hunters:
Their encounters with one another in Hunting Palismen and Hollow Mind would set future events in motion:
and also led up to Luz telling him "You're family now":
What happened in Thanks to Them reflects the Hollow Mind paintings shown below:
Belos took both of their lives, and we hear a contrast between Luz saying "I feel like I should be used to this by now, but...I still don't know what to say" and Hunter expressing the desires which he never dared to express in Belos's throne room, since the Titan had yet to pass the wisdom of choosing oneself to Luz:
They were pulled out of the water in which they were sinking, by the parent of their adoptive sibling (who also cared about them deeply):
The loved ones who revived them, passed them the last of their strength in order for these kids to have new life:
And King's dad asked Luz to choose whether she'd receive his life force which he offered, while Belos coercively violated Hunter to use his body like he would a puppet.
The things that Luz and Hunter went through, in parallel, underscore the clash between Belos who told endless lies about the Titan's will, and the Titan himself - King's father - who had very different plans for the Isles. Caught in between:
They were put through so much.
(The big comparison post I made before thinking of this analysis - it's just a picset and not a meta/analysis - is here: link)
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