#sorry this is mostly incoherent but tbf on me its past 1am on a school night and ive been sitting here brainrotting for over an hour

[ferretwhomst]

Holy Shit I Just Realized Something (toh finale spoilers and Badly Structured, Massively Long Rant up ahead)

when we first meet willow in early s1, she's in the abomination track and as we all know she is Struggling. abomination magic just doesn't come as naturally to her as plant magic, which is fine, but it isn't being addressed by the school.

soon enough she gets switched over to the plant track as she wishes- i don't remember the exact details of the episode, it's been a little while, but iirc principal bump shows up after willow covers the entire inside of the school in vines and basically goes "no, i'm not punishing you, instead i'm switching you to the plant track because you're clearly more skilled at this type of magic."

which none of us really thought about, right?? maybe some of us were like "hm, that was a bit abrupt" but we didn't think too much of it because we didn't have much of an idea of bump's character yet.

not much later, it's revealed that bump himself is a part of the abomination coven. (it's not exactly Discussed but his sigil is visible in some shots, like this one.) he is bound by sigil to be restricted to abomination magic and nothing else.

one slightly less relevant detail that i find interesting is how he doesn't Look like an abomination coven member, and so he seems a lot less invested in his status as an abomination witch. now you may be thinking: ferret, that's a moot point because 1. not every magic user is going to have their preferred type of magic/coven/track whatever implemented into their design and 2. princy b wears his Principal Robes every time we see him up until the finale, so it would be difficult to implement those details into his design anyway.

now, that second point is actually, uh. Fair. but as for the first point, allow me to explain

here are two prominent abomination coven members, darius deamonne and alador blight

both of them are pretty obviously abomination coven members right off the bat. darius, being a coven head, has a Shit ton of purple in his design to indicate this (and that's not even including his hair). with alador, this is toned down, but it's still obvious by the permanent abomination goo stains on his coat (and also by the fact that he apparently doesn't wash his hands after working on the abomatons /lhj). these two are specialists, in different ways, of course, but ultimately their skills lie in abomination magic, and neither of them have expressed a wish to try other types of magic at this point.

but here's the thing. as far as i can tell, bump is Not a specialist. while he is a skilled abomination witch, we rarely see him make use of the fact except for during fight scenes- he doesn't seem very invested in it. plus, when we see him during the epilogue, he's enjoying a new hobby, which is...

...plant care, much like willow! :)

(side note i love the holes in his hat for frewin's horns)

now, of course you could interpret this as bump simply discovering a New hobby between where wad left off & the epilogue. but to me, this says that all this time he was held back from his passion for plant care for multiple reasons, for example his job as the principal of hexside definitely put a strain on him in terms of how much time he could spend doing things for himself. but now that he's retired, and the coven system has been dismantled, he can spend more time doing things that bring him joy, just like many others in the epilogue.

this means that when he saw what willow was capable of back in s1, and transferred her to the plant track, he was really saying "i see you're struggling, and i won't let you go through what i went through by forcing you to go down a path that isn't yours." and god he means so much to me for that.

anyways end of rant, if you're here reading this i sincerely congratulate you for getting this far without passing away . i am very unnormal about hieronymus bump and it shows.

(also, PLSPLSLSS reblog this if you agree i spent like an hour here sitting here typing this all up on my phone at 1am AHDKDJFJE)