#the owl house needed work on execution in writing

[daystarvoyage]

Hello owl fans, I wanted to give my critical breakdown on When I first watched Owl House, now rewatching it, looking back at a well known character in

This very 3 part topic focusing on

Everyone's fan favorite Amity who I like to call

(Little Miss Self Insert) Amity analysis & why she’s popular

Literally the same (Real) hair color as the creator

DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK ON THE CREATOR But a Critic that could benefit the show & educate viewers, POC, BIPOC (Bi meaning black indigenous, Person of color) REP,

(don't Hate appreciate), if ya can't Face different opinions or anyone with an open mind who can critic just being nasty/policing people, There's the Portal Door to outer space.

Ok aight Lets start to this 3 PART topic post

I indeed love my run of Amity as a character because she made an impactful LGBTQ show great, along with her endeavor on how she developed as a character. ( Also Green Hair AMity is Better.) because she had great drive melding her into the person she is, having to face her parents, falling in loving with luz.

Due to the high demand being a lgbt character at times, (even though we been starved and wanting more rep) has at times repercussions and flaws,if the writing, narrative & pacing is compromised in the show which shown after rewatching the series ANOTHER TOPIC.

I'm fully aware that she's a well-known fan favorite character ever since the show's green light along the panel interview with Dana Terrace hyped her up during the debut panel of the other shark cartoon she worked on, DOWN BELOW

After Rewatching the show I felt there was more to her then just being luz girlfriend,

(like other characters to never get there titular moments at time like the Hexside students.)

and how she was written in a one-sided straight forward manner which people overlook cause we had proud lgbt content to gush over, googling, blushing eyes and the creator saying no romance in the series yet we have a two girls hogging peoples potential and spotlight?!

which contributed to her name trending more & talked about compared to our main POC character (which I find weird & Staggering at times.)

Theres proof from a Good post on here THATS IMPORTANT BELOW

Now we got that outta the way 3 major reasons LETS GO

The Favoritism

I feel the favoritism in fandom really says about how the show reacts TO OUR favorite characters, yes a world and great characters can be executed in titular episodes or moment you can let them see shine,

but diving into the season 1 of the show had its Rocky start till they started the real action in season 2 not to mention the kiss scene which put everyone on good edge however hogged (a titular poc spotlight.)

There's proof on how poc people in real life are depicted in media as something negative and gross yet caucisian people are giving everything handed to them in a silver spoon.

so here's a article ill bring up cause these types of behavior says in how poc see ourselves

Heck thats how we got that lumity controversial pic

(IF YA KNOW YA KNOW)

ill pull up with article on black media effects real life

I truly did feel the intent on the show at times was made selfishly at times,

Which there's a link about a unique article that sheds some light on this situation on how it treated Amity and why she was made into a self inset character. Showing relationship run throughout the show.

you can be able to write a good cartoon series and make an impact on fans, spilling your life on the show you care being in there shoes,

However don't let it sacrificed the many aspects excusing plots, and narrative with tonal whiplash & poor characterization.

Hope Your here with me now lets get on to

Shipping discourse

these girls took over the whole world by storm, to the point the fandom only cares about these girls, nothing beyond,

(social media numbers don’t lie on searched characters and many aspects on the owl house.)

if not them but solely for Amity herself. which I felt really was a selfish writing move. Cause I really did love the character until she was written good however shoehorned to being a hollow shel of herself and discourse did no favors.

It irks me to no end cause we have a prominent poc character said previously, who gets not talked about a yet amity is the one y’all favor to? At the point y’all really don’t show y’all don’t care about black, Poc, or BIPOC and there contributions to media.

it pains me to see a show like this has been nothing but a whole show of contradictions and ill-pacing,

And i know why we stand with the ship or any sexuality reveal with any character to gain a following or popularity for that matter is this a good term of how we gotten lgbt media uprising

(which I understand we crave years ago. )

PERFORMATIVE SEXUALITY (Article & Term HERE .)

Not to mention the celebrity worship yall put onto amity herself which is responsible for it

Where gonna make this quick so last session and hoep you have a good one afterwards thanks

The Colorism Issue (Glad fans are speaking out)

Its just facts that we see white or white-passing as something to be congratulated and praised for compared to what poc go through cause we POCs & myself have to work tens time harder for what we want, (one issue for another session is?)

WHY IS THE NOCEDA FAMILY HAVE DIFFERENT SKINTONES?!

FIX IT Titan

For media especially Disney has treated Poc if not BIPOC IN live action if not animation to an extent is degrading, you have kids on jessie acting any way without severe repercussions such as how they Treat BIpoc Characters with utmost disrespect. Which is shown throughout our favorite shows. (also shows how the show loves it kids cause it suffers no consequences.)

Now May wonder why i put in Princess & The Frog

We do see great chemistry to the show and movie example

The similar girl dynamic that will be is Tianna and charlotte

There relationship is done better, I do feel there was little bit of colorism played into this and alas not to mention tiana poc friends characters being black but non existing, however I do feel to a agree they really stretched on how we should have diversity in a negative way which I’ll get into in a sec.

Its at this point charlotte is the sweet spoiled girl and felt amity was favored cause of how she was written that way, they tried to make her favorable because you guess or see she’s WHITE.

Which shows not only poc characters are secondary in animation or forms of media, also how Luz is written in a white space, but with amity

She was gonna be depicted as a favorable one cause of how she was written LIKE CHARLOTTE

(To the point people started seeing charlotte as the main character form princess & the frog.)

Having the cultural representation & also inconsistent characterization shine to the point where we could’ve had great characters shown and debut yet

Have two girls take over the show as a whole really?!

oh reminder the diversity happen yet being sacrificed for a shoehorned lgbt content and activism to the degree it over whlems the show with

amity being a type of reverse mammy to make her look better for luz to counter her spicy latina ways, like a unruly tomboy to kiss the white favored girls booty, knowing full well the fandom will police anyone saying otherwise.

The article I’ll show about gearing our diverse audiences which I feel Disney needs to do a lot better on cultural representation, and harmful stereotypes as this.

ARTICLE ON HOW STEREOTYPES CAN BE IN MEDIA

Hoping I said it well, since there's so much to add to this however hope we can be reasonable on the comment section, so hoping we can have a civil discuss on about this topic thanks for reading this far you have a goodnight and great day where you are

with love kyoko cane

[sepublic]

Dana Terrace Q&A at Weebcon 2025!!!

            Since I don’t see anyone else posting it (despite not being the only person recording, I noticed at least two others), I may as well show my recording of the Dana Terrace Q&A from Weebcon 2025! I actually got to ask Dana a question myself, more on that a bit; But as for the rundown:

            If she was transported to the Boiling Isles, the person to teach her magic would of course be Eda; Dana sheepishly hesitated as she said it because it was so obvious, but at the same time what other answer would there be, besides maybe Bump??? She joked that Eda would probably get her killed, but still!

            Out of the voice cast, Wendie Malick as Eda really stuck out to Dana, being a professional who knew exactly what to do, and a pretty well-known one at that; It was Dana’s first time as a showrunner so she was inexperienced in guiding the VAs, but Wendie helped encourage Dana to offer her input.

            If asked what track she’d be in, Dana acknowledged her self-insert and acknowledged they were an Oracle, and also Beastkeeping, though noted it’d been two years, so she had trouble remembering; Indeed, IIRC she said in a Post-Hoot after the finale that her self-insert was supposed to be in Construction? Or maybe I’m just making that connection because back during the 2020 Reddit AMA, Dana brought up Construction due to being a more artsy coven.

            Dana was excited how she, JBO, and Zach now had the opportunity to do all of the grosser, tense, emotionally intense things they wanted to do with The Owl House in Knights of Guinevere. KoG was actually developed towards the end of TOH’s run, in fact; During Dana’s freetime, she’d keep herself from going insane by working on this project, and eventually pitched it to her fellow head writers, who helped Dana develop the idea further. Eventually they pitched KoG to Glitch a year later. Dana described it as “messy” and “experimental” but also “fun.”

            I find this revelation interesting, because given how long production in animation takes, it always amazed me how quickly Dana was able to get another show running, after TOH ended! So learning it was technically in the works since before TOH ended fits things nicely into a timeline here; Dana didn’t simply take a surprisingly short showrunning hiatus and then come up with this, it was being formulated as TOH was wrapping up!

            No surprise, Disney and Glitch are “Night and day” in their treatment of artists and showrunners, with Dana mentioning she feels taken care of by Glitch, treated nicely.

            If Dana had the opportunity to voice one of her characters, she said –if she was suddenly good at voice acting- King, due to his “explosive range” while mentioning a KoG character who has yet to debut.

            Pitching a show is starting an idea, working on it from months to year; TOH only took a couple months before Dana pitched it to Disney, because she needed to do this, to try and see if it got any traction. She brought it a room of 2-3 people who pretended to be interested, because they’d heard a bunch of other pitches that day, so when Dana stood out, it felt nice. It takes three months for executives to decide if they want to move forward on it, and then another 3-6 months, etc.

            Dana got be involved with the voice actors as much as she wanted to and could, with seasons 1-2, she was there for almost every performance. With S2B and S3, Dana could trust Eden Riegel to direct in her place as she was more involved with writing at the time. Dana was mostly involved in writing, in figuring out the scripts and working with the weird curveballs Disney threw them; Some solutions were successful, others not as much. There were many limitations in S1.

            Every performance of Hooty by Alex in the booth was hilarious; He’d often start riffing in Hooty’s voice and going a full minute longer than his actual two lines to say. They were able to use a couple of Hooty lines, but most were unused.

            This was the part where us fans were invited to line up and ask questions!!!

            If Dana could change one thing about the show (other than the cancellation) she admitted to wanting to rewrite Once Upon a Swap LMAAAAOOOOOOOOO-

            To come up with the concept of TOH’s universe, Dana started off with the initial concept that she disliked a lot of fantasy novels and stories. So when she created, it came from a place of cynicism and negativity (not always great, in her words), and she liked to challenge herself to take something she disliked and found frustrating, and figure out a version of it she could love. So Dana turned this fantasy world into something more gruesome, scary. She put a horror spin, gave everything teeth and claws; Make it fun for her!

            Five years ago, the character Dana related to the most was Luz because of plenty of her stories, esp in regard to her father’s death at a young age and not fitting in. But now that Dana’s thirty-four, she relates to Eda a lot; She finds herself becoming more isolated and against the world. At some point she might start wearing solely red dresses.

            When creating the concept of the Collector, Dana’s thought process was wanting to create someone very ethereal and childish, and had this thought of a child flying through space, who never understood death, and liked to create chaos and destruction in his wake. She doesn’t really know why. The thought process and the galactic aesthetic of someone like that was very interesting to Dana; The Collector ended up being one of her favorite characters.

            (I find this info very vindicating, as I’ve seen people speculate that the Collector not knowing of death was a contradictory retcon done in S3 to make them more sympathetic; No, that was always the idea, since the very beginning! Since they rewrote the Collector prior to S2B, mind you; Before that, Dana confirmed during her Gallery Nucleus that they originally had a different personality and direction as seen in 2A, which is likely why that depiction was made into a separate character, an Archivist. But by Elsewhere and Elsewhen, a Collector oblivious to death was always the goal. We’re getting Ship of Theseus here about characters during the development process.)

            Onto my question!!! I asked about the Watching and Dreaming storyboard in which Odalia would’ve been there alongside the Hexsquad, watching the horizon after Belos’ defeat, and how Rebecca Bozza confirmed there was a cut confrontation between Camila and Odalia in the Archives.

            Dana mused that if Camila ever met Odalia, it probably wouldn’t be a pretty situation; There’d be a lot of glares. But there’s no canonical confrontation, so Dana could only pretend that Camila would’ve smacked her.

            I think Dana may have misheard my question? And/or she didn’t recall what they had planned for the finale (I was too shy to clarify, press her about it); It makes me wonder if the idea had been too shortlived, and the writers juggling so much (in addition to Dana handling KoG, as we’ve just discovered), that it’s since slipped her mind after two years. This does make me wonder if it was, in some part, a fluke by the storyboard artist; After all, Clouds on the Horizon had storyboards in which Amity wore the portal key necklace while confronting her mother within the Abomaton bubble.

            Of all the TOH scenes Dana wrote, her favorite was the whole third act of King’s Tide; She co-wrote it with Zach Marcus. Dana handled a lot of how it paced out, the way the dialogue came out. Sometimes Dana writes a script and it’s the most painful, struggling experience for her; So difficult to perfect and get out, requiring a thousand changes. But for King’s Tide, there it was! And she’s very proud of it. Dana has a hard time looking back at the show, because it’s like an old sketchbook for her; She’s always wishing she could’ve done something better. But King’s Tide is one of the few episodes she can say she nailed that one.

            (God I feel that. Personal aside, I think something a lot of writers take for granted is their ability to always look back and edit and revise at their own leisure, even after posting, whenever they want, until the end of time. But writers for shows don’t exactly get that luxury, especially when a script needs to be finalized so animation and everything else, its own beast, can follow suit. Can’t easily update a script –esp at the last second- without demanding the rest follow!)

            Two questions about KoG; What was the moment when Dana worked with Glitch that made her realize the difference between it and Disney? Dana was very cautious going into Glitch, and as she told some there, that she was going in like a stray cat who didn’t trust anyone, like she was left out in the cold. But slowly, over the course of the year, Dana realized Glitch actually treated their artists with respect; If someone says something isn’t working and offers another way, Glitch actually listens and changes! Wild! They’re a company (she’d rather say “group of people”) that seem very determined to learn and grow and make sure everyone’s doing right. Glitch is a far cry from Disney.

            The other question was what was the process of Glitch doing 2D animation for KoG instead of its usual 3D; Did Dana have to convince them, or were they open from the start? Dana thought Glitch was always excited to do 2D, and one of the things she was able to offer was her experience in doing a 2D show and how production for it would look. It was an arrangement that worked out for everyone, where Dana got to create her own pipeline for the show which has been working very well this far. There’s no odd restrictions from Glitch’s management, it’s been very nice.

            In regards to cosplays she’d like to see of her characters, or which stood out to her, Dana once saw a 7-foot tall (before the horns!!!) Belos cosplay that was size-accurate via giant platform boots underneath the cloak; It was awesome. Dana always loves seeing King costumes because they’re essentially giant furry suits, but she speculates it’s also why she doesn’t see many of them, because furry suits can be very intense to make. But Dana was very excited to see any KoG cosplays in the future.

            This part intrigued me, because the day prior, a fan dressed as the princess from KoG had shown up to meet Dana Terrace and I’d come across them, exchanged info, and clarified that the schedule for Dana had updated since it was announced back near the end of February; At first she was going to be there for all three days of Weebcon, but could only be there for two (On her Bluesky account, she did allude to some trouble occurring to her that Friday, which may have been the reason for this change). I’d reassured the cosplayer they hadn’t missed Dana or done anything wrong…

            And lo and behold, the person who asked the question had also met this cosplayer, and brought it up to Dana! Dana was excited and wished she could’ve seen, and asked for anyone with a photo of the cosplay to tag her on Twitter or any other social media.

            What Dana listens to when doing art is True Crime podcasts, which sucked her in during the pandemic. Other than that, she listens to classical music, as it fires certain neurons within her brain that get her very focused; She has a hard time watching anything when drawing. Sometimes Dana goes into psycho mode, pure silence; Earplugs in, nothing but the beat of her own heart, and pure focus. Locked-in, takes a certain insane mood for sure.

            A fellow Raine cosplayer asked Dana what she was most excited for in regard to KoG, and she said Episode 4!!! There’s lots of stuff Dana and co. are planning; Obviously the pilot’s not finished right now, but the things they’re thinking about are very exciting and she’s excited for everyone to see the character designs and stunning animation. Dana lamented that if she kept going, she’d end up saying something she wasn’t supposed to. She’s so quiet posting online, because otherwise she’d just be posting KoG and inevitably slip up. Overall, she’s excited.

            If Dana got to do Owl House with no restrictions, Dana absolutely would’ve leaned more into the horror theme; She initially pitched it as PG-13 and leaning more into horror, though this doesn’t mean they would’ve taken away any of the heart or sweetness between the characters (Which I’ve suspected and really appreciate to hear; Always good to have the heart beneath it all). All this means is that the intense scenes would’ve been more intense, and the tension between characters more intense.

            Overall the art direction might’ve been grittier; But during development, executives kept suggesting the crew round out the characters to make them more appealing, and at some point Dana was frustrated because her personal art style has a lot of straight lines. She would’ve liked to have leaned more into horror and the original vision, BUT she’s still very happy with how it came out.

            Someone I met and talked to earlier about Isabelle Rosalini’s role in the show, and the enormity of the feat, also brought it up again with their question about whether there was a TOH design where Dana had a specific actor in mind to play them.

            The interviewer, at that point, had the perfect segue to bring in none other than Zeno Robinson himself, who I’d just found out was going to be at Weebcon the first day I attended, and even got a signed print from him! I’d wondered if he was going to be there at Dana’s QnA and forgot to ask him about it, but of course he was. There was no way he wasn’t going to be.

            Going back to the question, Dana decided she’d want everyone to be voiced by Zeno. But in all seriousness, Dana said she wasn’t allowed to answer that question.

            If Dana hadn’t made TOH through Disney, was there a specific plotline she wanted in the show that couldn’t be added or was axed because of “the rat”? Dana would’ve loved to explore the Bat Queen’s arc (talk about good timing with the prior question mentioning Rosalini, which Dana acknowledged) and had a whole thing planned, it was going to be very sweet and somber. Dana loves drawing the Bat Queen. But when they had to cut down plotlines, BQ unfortunately had to be cut.

            Dana’s reaction to the internet’s reaction to various TOH developments wasn’t a specific one; Her stomach was always in a knot whenever an episode dropped, and she and some of the crew would watch the comment section on the sides of livestreams. It was always stressful, even if overwhelmingly positive; Zeno could relate.

           Zeno mentioned how when an artist gives so much of themselves, the art is never finished in their eyes; They could’ve always done this, or added this thing. (“It was like 90% there” Dana concurred). It’s the most presentable version within the time constraint they’re given, but sometimes it’s never like that 100% finished product one wished they had, so it’s tough as an artist to look at something objectively because you just don’t get why everyone likes it. Zeno sometimes re-listens to his Hunter audition, which Dana found so good, and wonder how he got cast. Dana clarified it was the part where Zeno freaked out.

            (Can I say how much we take for granted as fans that we can always, at our leisure, go back to update and improve our own works? Or take as long as we need to create the best version of something, without any deadlines to meet?)

            If there was a full S3, Dana confirmed to Zeno he would’ve voiced every single hypothetical Grimwalker, and that they would’ve alluded more to Darius’ mentor, talked about it more plainly for sure. Dana joked about doing it in a S4, but also clarified that would never be in the cards… Supplementary materials on the other hand!!!

           Zeno mentioned wanting to see an exploration into the past of Hunter and the prior Golden Guards, and their connection to Caleb and Belos; Like a single graphic novel, Dana concurred, as there’s so many storylines in TOH that would make awesome TOH one-shot comics. She joked to Zeno about it being time to pitch spin-offs, with Zeno replying it’s been enough time.

            When coming up with the magic system for TOH and how it contributed to the characters, and what her inspirations were, Dana explained it all stemmed from the basic idea that Luz herself can’t do it; Everyone else around her can do it so easily, with a literal flick of their wrist. Luz has to work extra-hard in drawing the complicated designs each time and remembering them, learning how to combine them in different ways, and the worst part, finding them in the first place, which Luz didn’t even know she had to do at first.

            So it might not have been the most elegant place to begin building a magic system, in Dana’s words (if she could go back and redo it, she’d have some better solutions to some walls they ran into), but for her any kind of system, be it worldbuilding or magic, has to start with how it affects the main character, why it affects the main character, what’s the purpose of the system in the first place.

            In regard to the (leaked!!!!) pitch bible, which Dana was chill about, there are a lot of things she wished she’d kept from it; The main thing she learned as a first-time showrunner was that she needed to stick to her gut more. She had to trust her instincts more, because if she didn’t like what she’s doing or the suggestions being made, then she’s going to have a miserable time for the next four years.

            One of the changes Dana did like was Lilith going from Hexside’s principal to head of the Emperor’s Coven; Being a principal just wasn’t as exciting as being behind enemy lines. Plus we got to see her fall from grace, which was really funny for Dana (same here for me). It’s tough; One needs to learn to stick to what they love, but also learn not to be precious(?) at the same time, because new and better ideas come all the time, and one needs to learn to let go of old things to embrace the new and cool things. At the same time! You need to learn how to see what’s unnecessary, and stick to an older idea; It’s a balance.

            (I feel this one a lot with GEverse.)

            Dana can’t clarify on how many KoG episodes there will be, just that the pilot is in production.

           Dana has taken inspiration from artists such as Tatsuyuki Tanaka, who she’d murder to draw like; She was just looking at some of his works before arriving to Weebcon. Hieronymous Bosch was a huge inspiration for TOH, though she doesn’t necessarily want to draw like him; She still derives from him. She loves Naoki Urasawa, and Dana and Zeno love his Pluto, which makes Dana cry everytime she reads it; She admires Urasawa so much as an artist and storyteller. He’s one of her top favorites ever.

           What’s the deal with Hooty and the Titan? It was a symbiotic relationship. Worms are a type of parasite.

            Dana would’ve loved to put a scene in S3 (it was one of her original ideas for it!) building off of how Belos tried to manipulate Luz in King’s Tide on the basis of her being human like him and so he’s trying to “help” her; She wanted to make that moment so much more longer and manipulative by setting a scene in an autumnal forest, where the leaves are falling, it’s quiet and serene and creepy, and Luz and Belos are speaking about their experiences with death.

            With Luz it was her father Manny, with Belos it’s his brother Caleb; Obviously, it’s very different circumstances, with Luz pointing out her father died. Belos killed Caleb. Them having a very intense conversation was something Dana always wanted to do, and she’s so sad she never got to do it.

            (To go on a tangent, I find this fascinating for obvious reasons, and I think the writers managed to somewhat adapt the concept into the final episode? There’s the parallels in Belos bringing up their similarities as “witch hunters” in order to gaslight Luz, as well as his Woe Is Me schtick about Caleb, only for Luz to shut it down with the very blatant point that Belos murdered Caleb, he brought that entire situation upon himself!

           In general, the parallels still manage to speak for themselves, so you can feel them shadow that canon callout by Luz. So even if the exact idea didn’t go through, I think the spirit of the contrast between these two deaths that motivate Hero and Villain in opposite ways, because of opposite roles they played, culminates in Luz having every right to call out Belos’ hypocrisy, as the theme of Death asserts itself before the Collector learns later on.)

            If TOH was given a PG-13 rating and Dana could insert one F-bomb, she deliberated on either Hooty or Eda saying it; It would take her so long to figure out where in the show. Perhaps if Hooty met Belos, he’d say it there.

            The final question: How much does an actor know about a character when coming into an audition, and how long have they known that information prior to the audition? According to Zeno, usually there’s a description and a bit of what the character is about, maybe there’s a bit on their arc. Sometimes productions are incredibly detailed, or just detailed enough. Sometimes he gets a basic idea of a character’s trajectory, their traits and inspirations, other times it’s just the main personality traits and what they like; You usually know what you need to know, and not much more than that.

            For example, Zeno didn’t know Hunter’s real name when he auditioned; He was just the Golden Guard, with Dana explaining they were being very cagey about his name, not sure of how much they could put out about him. Zeno saw his face and five lines, but one can infer things from lines; It can provide more insight into personality than the description itself.

           All in all, it's surreal to not only be in one of these Q&As, but to have recorded it myself, rewatch my own recording as I transcribe, summarize, and analyze as I normally do, and even get to ask a question myself! It was difficult figuring out which question to ask, though it appears some got away with two, but alas I was shy about appearing greedy. I suppose I overthought it, and in the end everyone who lined up got to say theirs! I guess one could say I didn't actually get my question answered after all; But if I get the fortune of another chance, I'll try something different, both as a question and potentially a drawing request! If fate deems it so.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

https://www.tumblr.com/muffinlance/759432968373731328

I can’t help but think this post applies to The Owl House regarding modern fantasy issues in comparison to LOTR.

Man, comparing toh to Tolkien just invokes the hydrogen-bomb-coughing-baby meme, doesn't it?

I reblogged the post separately because it hits the nail right on the head. A lot of modern fantasies do operate as a power fantasy and that's fine in of itself, but it's also really repetitive and doesn't provide much food for thought.

Tolkien is interesting though because he is widely considered to have "created" the modern fantasy genre, but most of his imitators recreate the surface level of his works and not any of the themes. In Tolkien's time, there was no "fantasy genre" as is commonly understood now. There were "fairy stories" but they were regarded as for children. Tolkien drew inspiration from medieval literature, mythology, Christianity, (not to mention language!!) as the foundations of his world, so it's going to be tackling different themes and operate in a completely different framework than later fantasy works.

I think any work worth its salt has to say something. A fantasy work doesn't have to handle the same themes as Tolkien in order to be considered Serious (TM) but it needs to use its world and characters to their fullest extent. The dragons just can't be dragons.

Taking this to The Owl House, it starts off with its protagonist learning that this new fantasy world is not like the fantasy world of her books, thereby setting her up to learn not to treat reality like a piece of fiction she can imagine herself the hero in. But then, this is largely dropped in favor of her learning to be a witch. But then she spends less time with her mentor learning about magic and more time with her soon to be girlfriend and getting into high school drama. She doesn't really earn her magical powerups by learning something about herself as expected in stories like this, instead the glyphs are largely handed to her by the narrative. By the end, toh has its hero repeating her catch phrase before finishing off The Evil Emperor Who Has Blighted the Land in an attempt to callback her first appearance in the pilot. But the circumstances are near identical and it just demonstrates how the protagonist has not grown at all. It's a complete failure of writing, forget about fantasy writing.

In the end, does toh have a successful thematic statement? No, not really. It can't commit to any one plot thread so it just leaves the whole thing underbaked and thematically incoherent. Its sister show, Amphibia, has a similar setup and actually successfully executes its themes. Its protagonist also doesn't appreciate the fantasy world she's stuck in but learns to see the inhabitants as her family and friends, all the while maturing in the process. There's even a subplot about learning to separate reality from fantasy and how treating everything as a game can have life or death consequences!

To sum it up, toh tries to have something deep to say and does make a few gallant attempts but its structural flaws ultimately undermine any overall message. It basically is a power fantasy with some window dressing and it would be nice if the wider fandom accepted that instead of praising it for having Important Themes (TM).

Sometimes a dragon is just a dragon.

[branmuffins22]

13, 26, 35, 39, 44 from this ask game

Ooo, that's a lotta questions!

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?

The short answer? NOT EXACTLY BUT I REALLY REALLY SHOULD

The longer answer?

Technically, I have almost every major plot point written down in some form or another before I write a thing. That said, they usually aren't in any sensible order, and are buried in a mess of a channel in my private discord server, where ALL my brainrot goes.

When I write, I mostly just pick a starting point from one of my notes, and walk it forward from there. I tried properly outlining for one of my fics, and it got me... somewhere, but for the most part, my brain just doesn't work that way. An outline becomes a task list, and I can't stand task lists.

My current system is kinda horrid, but I'd be more worried about someone getting bored sifting through all my scattered notes than getting a headache from them.

26. What’s your biggest distraction when writing?

That one's... probably a tossup between a lot of things. Bodily needs, background streamers mentioning something I actually have an opinion on, my mother barging in with shame and deadlines for cyclical tasks (man, I need out of this house), my twin having something funny to show me... basically just ~Life~, lmao.

I guess part of the problem with my current life situation is that I don't have a lot of time that's truly, unequivocally my own, so I get pushed and pulled around by whatever or whoever calls my attention loudest.

...Or maybe that's just the adhd talking.

35. How much has writing fic changed your life?

SIGNIFICANTLY.

Now, I've been known to struggle with feelings of situational/emotional permanence, so I could be a little biased by the fact that it's my current biggest hobby, but at this point, around half of my social life happens in fandom/fanfiction circles, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.

Two years ago, I didn't read for fun. Like, full stop. I only started doing that after Thanks to Them released, when the hiatus brainrot got me seeking content and community from more than just the show itself and the friend who got me into it. I think the very first fanfic I read was a oneshot someone cross-posted to tumblr, which somehow convinced me to join both tumblr (technically rejoin tumblr) and Ao3 around the same time. Well. maybe a month or so apart, because of the weird account-creation queue thing Ao3 has goin' on. But still.

I don't think I started to consider writing my own fanfiction until I read A Blight on Bonesborough, by GeminiAlchemist, and got a bunch of ideas from the way they expanded upon the lore and magic system and characters and all that of the Owl House.

From there, it kinda took over my life completely, lmao.

I wanted to write about Luz's experiments with glyphs, and some potential avenues of missed opportunity brought to my attention by The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, by IdeaHunter, and that eventually turned into the Artificer|Overthinker AU (to this day i still haven't picked the name).

Later, I wanted a story about Luz experiencing human high school again after all the dust settled, and after reading a fun fic whose premise was great but whose execution didn't quite scratch the itch (Luz Noceda and the mysterious case of her imaginary girlfriend, by Imkindagayyk), that slowly evolved into Masha and the Very Normal Nocedas (which I actually started writing over a year ago, and still haven't gotten to a postable state with even a single chapter, lmao).

Ever since, I've pretty much been rotating some fic idea or another in my head 24/7.

Nowadays, I wake up and check ao3 for fic updates/new fics, I read while I cook and eat breakfast, I browse tumblr for new stuff from my faves and mutuals, I check ao3 again every few hours, sometimes (but not often) I find the motivation and such to actually write, and I kinda keep up like that all day.

It's maybe a little excessive/obsessive/destructive/etc, but fanfiction kinda defines all the intentional parts of my life right now.

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

Voice and gimmicks.

The most prominent examples I can think of are the various literary tropes I try to imbue certain characters and such with. I usually write in 3rd-person limited perspective, so the characters' voices influence not just the way I write their dialog, but the way I write entire scenes.

There aren't any good examples of it in either of the fics I've actually posted so far, so you'll kinda just have to trust me on this, but a great example is the way I establish the POV character of a given scene.

It's easier for some characters than others, and I haven't come up with a gimmick for every character yet, but I try to open each scene with a literary trope that emphasizes some aspect of the POV character's voice.

For example, scenes written from Luz's point of view always start with speech, either hers or directed at her. Luz is a rambunctious, chatty, and kinda awkward character, who tends to exert herself on every situation she comes across, so I figure an unconventional (and arguably obnoxious, according to some people) opener works great for her.

Hunter is an outwardly-cocky character with some deep-seated self-worth problems (and a very slanted worldview besides), so his scenes always start with a self-affirmation of some kind, usually followed by a contradiction. Often, he's either intentionally or subconsciously trying to convince himself of something, or to do whatever it is he's about to be doing in the scene.

Vee is a bit of a special case. Like Luz, her scenes start in media res, but she tends to borrow the gimmicks of characters around her. She's a shapeshifter, and learned about life in the outside world as a doppelganger, so she has a tendency for mimicry, intentional or not. She also has a secondary gimmick, one that's a bit more her own, in that narration about her often finds itself filled with alliteration, especially involving the letter S (since she's sort of a snake, and snakes hisssss (and doing it with the letter V was too hard lmao)). It started as a running gag she played on Masha in MatVNN, but then I couldn't stop using it, so it's kinda everywhere now.

Masha is a superstitious (though slightly apathetic) character with a keen eye (and no attention span with which to wield it). They tend to seek out meaning even where there isn't any, and thus often completely miss the broader details in favor of the little things. Their scenes start with an isolated excerpt, usually a tarot reading. In an ideal world, the readings would foreshadow both the events of the scene and at least one of the ways they've misinterpreted them, but unfortunately, I haven't yet actually learned enough tarot to do that. It's a big part of why Masha and the Very Normal Nocedas is taking so long to get to a postable state 😅.

That's pretty much all the opening gimmicks I've worked out so far, but another one I'd like to mention has to do with the way magic is written.

Whenever a spell is cast, I whip out my thesaurus and try to sprinkle in a few words nearby that relate to the kind of spell being cast. For instance, I might say that when Willow casts a wall of vines, she first "plants her feet on the ground", or "stifles her budding anger". Before Luz casts an invisibility spell, she might think about "hiding the cards she was dealt" or maybe "her hands disappear into her pockets". Stuff like that.

The way I imagine it, magic taps straight into the caster's homonculus (broadly, the part of their brain that decides and understands what encompasses "the body") in such a way that the caster becomes part of the spell just as much as the spell becomes part of the caster.

Luz in particular, having the knack for magic that she does, tends to start this process of "becoming the spell" as soon as she decides to cast it, not just at the moment she actually casts it. It's like working yourself into the headspace of a thing, before sitting down and doing it. I've got a whole huge segment in one of my more dramatic fics that's basically an entire page of this kind of thing, with Luz preparing to cast a really big spell (or, well. technically a pair of big spells (TECHNICALLY technicaly it's one normal spell being used to prepare to cast the two massive spells. it's a whole thing)). It honestly might be the highlight of my writing portfolio, which is a huge shame because it's a MASSIVE spoiler.

Anyways, uhhh yeah. I really like gimmicks.

44. Rant about something writing related.

WELL SHITDAMNFUCK, IF ONLY I READ ALL THESE QUESTIONS AHEAD OF TIME! I COULD'VE SPARED SOME OF THOSE PRIOR RANTS FOR HERE!

Well. Guess I aughtta find something else to write about.

How about the ultimate enemy, the scourge of our people, the cornerstone of suffering itself, the dreaded and feared, the great and terrible:

Writer's Block.

It may come as a surprise to the ignorant among us (hehe, amogus), but I, too, suffer from Writer's Block from time to time! In fact, I'm even suffering from it right now! And I have been for the past... oh goodness, over 2 months now.

I had one good day of writing, in all that time, which only came about because I nearly fell asleep in the tub. I somehow daydreamed my way into a really good turn of phrase that I just HAD to put into context for Backlight and Bitrot.

So far, that singular scene, set (the equivalent of) several seasons into the story, remains both the only thing I've written for that fic, and the only thing I've written at all since January.

It's infuriating! I have all these ideas, all these things I WANT to write, all these people I want to share these ideas with, all this time, all this passion, all this brainrot, and yet I Just! Can't! Write!

AUGH!

It would be one thing if I'd simply run out of ideas; I could call this whole thing something pretty like a "dreaming phase" or a "break in order to recharge" or whatever. But I've been dreaming for ages! This break has been in no way relieving! I'm just wallowing in my inability to do the things i love, while the world moves on around me!

You've had an excellent way of phrasing this for yourself, recently: "The executives are on vacation."

It's not some pleasure cruise for me! Those darn jerks (basic brain functions) who dictate every little thing that goes on around here just fucked off to who-knows-where! Completely blind to the consequences (stagnation, suffering, shame) of their absence, and how those affect their employees (me)! I just work here, man! Lemme do my job! I wanna do my job, but I can't if you don't let me! Ugh.

I want to write so goddamn bad. I've got all these projects to write for, all these brainrot spores to spread. I've got so much I want to accomplish, and yet my dumb bitch brain can't seem to get the memo. Work phone is powered off, I suppose.

It's gotten to the point lately that even those random notes to myself have slowed down. I'm having less new ideas than before. I'm picking old ideas out and polishing them less than before.

I'm worried I might end up having to find a way to cater my writing to the dumb mammal part of my brain somehow, in order to bring some momentum back. Write about something crude and easy and filled with every instantly-gratifying fantasy I can imagine.

No more of this 'careful thought' and 'consideration for themes' junk, we want it LOUD and we want it NOW.

Ugh.

Writer's Block is the worst.

What a bummer to end on. Oh well, I'm gettin' kinda sleepy, and I'm out of questions anyways. Thanks for the ask!

[hsal]

CLONES

A brief drabble about their tragic nature.

I've been sitting on these thoughts for a hot minute, but it definitely plays into why I love them so much.

To begin with, a simple question must be asked. Why is cloning necessary/ beneficial to the cloners. Is it for population? A specific set of skills that individual possessed? Convenience? Sentimentality?

Regardless, these are people who are created with alterior motives. You don't 'just make a clone', they are made to serve a purpose.

A couple of case studies in media showcase their tragic nature, and why I'm absolutely obsessed with these goobers. Specifically, I will be talking about Hunter from the owl house, the clones from starwars, and Sam from Moon (2009). I am writing this from my phone, and refuse to run this through word or the like. If there are any typos or poor grammar I apologize in advance LOL

drum roll please 🥁🥁🥁 CLONE NUMBER 1

1. Hunter (TOH)

Alright, spoilers for the owl house I guess for seasons 2 and 3. Keep scrolling if u wanna watch, just keep going till you see the next set of clones.

A recreation of a brother, Hunter was meant to fill a void in his 'uncle', Belo's past. While Belos motives remain unclear, it's certain that he couldn't live without his brother. He could never let go. He couldn't move on from his old beliefs, that witches are vile and the magic they use an affront to God, and he couldn't accept Caleb's newfound life in the Iles.

Was Hunter made to replace Caleb and groom him into a better version of his brother? Or perhaps it was revenge for his betrayal.

Either way, Belos needed his brother. Hunter wasn't made to serve a purpose in the traditional sense. It's arguable that the majority of the boiling iles would serve better as the Golden Gaurd. But the tasks undertaken by the Golden Gaurd are meaningless, and dont really matter. It's an empty tittle that Hunter could never live up to, as the ideal Golden Gaurd would literally be Caleb. He was designed to fail.

To Belos, he and his brother should have worked together to save humanity from the witches, and like everything else, he couldn't let that dream go. Instead, he used magic to bring his brother back, corrupting himself, and becoming the world's biggest hypocrit in the process.

My man literally made a clone farm, harvesting the grimwalkers when he deemed them right for the picking and moulded them into what he wanted. If they were faulty and didn't resemble his brother, he discarded them. If they betrayed him again, into the pit. Belos saw the grimwalkers as disposable, cheap mockeries of his brother. And no matter how many times they failed, he always tried again.

2. Clones from starwars

The clones from starwars served a 'singular' purpose as soldiers of the Republic. Assured quality and quantity, they faced the front lines for civilians who viewed them as little more than property: meat droids.

The kaminoians prioritized efficiency. How better to get high quality soldiers to the front lines than breeding them to fight. Their engineered genetics, accelerated ageing, constant training, yielded the greatest army the galaxy had ever seen.

Or so the Jedi thought.

A grand deception, the clones were always meant to fulfill a secondary purpose. One that removed all their agency, personality, and emotions to execute the Jedi.

People who they worked closely with for the last 3 years, nearly a quarter of their lives with, they were designed to betray. The clones viewed themselves as disposable, and some of the few people who challenged their perspectives, who cared for them, they were forced to murder.

The clones were always designed to kill and remain steadfast in the gruellest situations. However what made them unique was their individuality, independence, and ability to adapt. In such conditions, it was no wonder why they values loyalty above all else. Loyalty to their cause, and to their brothers. And even these few values were stripped away in favour of a grand scheme.

Each one of the paragraphs could have an entire post dedicated to the completexities, and is truly just the surface level of the tragedy of the clones. Perhaps another time. Lmao

Sam (moon 2009)

Ok this is a bit of a niche one. I watched this movie a little girl and it really stuck with me for some reason. For those who Havnt watched it, here's a bit of background.

(Spoilers) basically, a corporation that mines helium on the moon is manned by 1 man, Sam, and an AI GERTY. Receiving calls from his daughter and wife, Sam is excited to soon be returning to earth. However, Sam was never meant to go back, for he was a clone of the original man who operated the mining facility. Clones were used as disposable men on the facility to ensure that the mines would constantly be manned.

There were many clones before him, his wife and daughter simply a means to keep the clones sane. The industry's usage of clones is of convenience, a simple and cost effective means to maintain operations at a lower cost.

CONCLUSIONS

Holy sh*t I love clones. A common theme is their disposable nature, as they are often seen as 'less than their origonals', as their humanity is called into question. While the chip arc is the most blantent with this, another key element of the clones is their individuality. Nature vs Nurture. Purpose vs independence. Individuality vs collectivism.

At the end of the day, they are fiction. However the wide range of stories and themes that can be told based off their tragic conception is why I love them so much.

[havendance]

Hi! I love your writing and it's always a treat to see what WIPs your working on. As someone who struggles to write longer, more complex fics, I'd love to know more about your writing process if you're open to talking about it.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoy them!

For me, writing longer fics was definitely something that I had to work up. When I was starting out writing I still got ideas for longer fics, I just struggled to execute them. I've got a few that I know I'm just not going to finish. A few things that really helped me to write longer works are:

1) Getting a regular writing habit. I know this is really common advice, but I needed to build up my writing stamina. I still wouldn't say I'm a super quick writer. Long fics take me time to write, but I know I'm able to commit to writing something longer and am more confident in my ability to successfully keep to a project.

And then like I said at the begining, this was something I had to work up to. I'd been writing fic for years by the time I finally finished my first multi-chapter fic idea. And then, it was only 4 chapters (and they weren't monster sized chapters like Batman for Dummies), but that gave me to confidence to start larger stories.

2) I know that I need to have a plan for a story if I want it to succeed. I need to know how it'll end. I've got a fic that's going to stay unfinished with 4 out 5 chapters because I just didn't know how to end it and I've since moved on from the fandom. I don't need to have everything figured out, but for me, knowing the conclusion is important. For example, in Batman for Dummies, I knew from the beginning (okay well, once I'd finished reading No Man's Land and started doing serious planning beyond, 'uh, idk they team up, this will totally be a one shot') that I wanted to end with Tim and Helena on New Years Eve and Tim saying 'you could keep being the Bat, if you want to' and Helena saying. And a lot of stuff changed by the time I got there! But having that destination in mind helped me.

In general, for really short fics, I don't really do much planning at all, I just go because I can hold the whole shape of it in my head. For one-shots I'll plan it out scene by scene and then write. For multi-chapter fics, I try to have the major beats and shape of the plot laid out. And then, as I write each chapter, I'll break things down further. Often when I'm writing, things emerge and change and then I'll go back to my overall outline and update it. Personally, I can't break down a whole long fic in-depth before I start writing. I've got to do it in increments. So my first outlines are typically really detailed for the first bits and then vaguer as they go on.

Most of the longer fics I've finished so far have had a limited number of chapters which means that I've gone in with a strong opinion on where those chapter breaks needed to go. With Batman for Dummies, I knew I wanted 4 chapters that roughly corresponded to the four seasons and also it fit nicely with the fact that I'd read No Man's Land in four volumes. The other longer fic I've completed for Batman recently, The King is Dead, Long Live the King, was also one where I had a very clear idea on how many chapters it needed. It was conceived in three parts, and while I briefly entertained the idea of breaking it into two chapters, I knew it wouldn't work that way.

So far, I have yet to succeed in writing a fic that needs more than a handful of chapters. (I tried nanowrimo a couple times and I started cowriting an epic for the Owl House with my bro.) In those cases, a lot of the time, I broke down plot beats in a more episodic manner and then broke those up into chapters. Almost like mini-arcs. Most of the time, I've just run out of steam before I can make it all the way through (for the fic I was co-writing with my bro, we both got writers block at the same time and never came back), but some day I believe I'll succeed! (Some day I will return to Knightfall once I get the big beats and arcs for that fic laid out.)

I think the final piece of advice I would have is don't be afraid to jump around between projects. Whenever I got to the end of a chapter of Batman for Dummies, I was always like 'man, I need to do something else' because they were long and it took a lot out of me. Jumping between projects gives me time to get out of the funk that I can get into when I spend a lot of time and energy on one idea and then I can come back and get all re-enthused when I come back around to it.

And of course, this might not work for you, but hopefully there's something in here that can help you as you try and write longer things! I wish you luck! I'm still working away at that journey myself :)

[rosewendybros]

Revisitedecember6 #7 - Rainbow Brite 2014

Happy New Year, everybody! To brighten things up and give you seven swans a-swimming, here's a re-review that goes out to my good friend and fellow reviewer, @@Takostu64 (formerly TheRainbowElfBoi).

Now, the 80s gave birth to a plethora of memorable Saturday morning toy icons, most we wouldn't have learned if not for Robot Chicken. One of which was what my friend called their "ultimate 80s comfort show", created by Hallmark - Rainbow Brite! It's not a masterpiece, and wasn't as memorable lasting 13 episodes and a couple movies here and there in its original run, but dammit, it sure was cute to the point it really felt satisfying. One girl unifying the world, one boy winding up in the new world for his adventure... the show says it all. But after its run, one would might think it would have a chance at rebooting. In reality, it did - it's timeless, but at the same time, feels like it's bound to the 80s. Sure, it was brought back in 2009 and then brought back again five years later, but both couldn't stand up to the chance of being rebooted due to how successful Friendship is Magic was. That and well, if you believe Takostu, it's worse than you actually remember! Don't believe me, check out her for it! Since I'm a different breed of reviewer than her, I respect her opinion on it, and I do admit it sucks, but bear with me until I'm done.

The story begins when a boy named Brian finds a mysterious key, which then starts to glow. When the glowing stopped, he was riding a mysterious rainbow to an alternate world. There, he meets Rainbow Brite (as played by Emily Osment), and of course, since he's from Earth, it's a lot to take in for him, Rainbow Brite herself being part of it, even though most Earth people can't see her. As it turns out, it's got something to do with his key. But word on the rainbow-colored street is that a darkness is on the prowl. Her name is Dark Princess and she plans to bypass into Earth and turn it colorless. No color means no energy, and that's a bad thing! A bad thing, that's also a task reluctantly befallen unto Rainbow Brite's former friend, Stormy. Brian's key may now be in Stormy's possession, but he's not gonna turn a blind eye on Rainbow, can he? But that was only the beginning. Stormy's attack did what her mistress told her to do - and the breach in the Color Barrier was successful. Little did she know... Stormy had been lied to. Even though she had retrieved the Ring of Hallow Light from Brian's room (which was brought to Earth long ago to keep it safe from the wrong hands), one little question against Dark Princess meant immediate betrayal, sending her back to Rainbow Brite the way she should've been with her - as friends. The reunion leads up to the third and final episode, where at the end, the color is restored thanks to a new upgrade bestowed upon Brian.

And that's pretty much all you need to know about Rainbow Brite (poorly executed, at least - almost treated like the way Ubisoft treated Rayman) crammed into three episodes that feel more like a 45 minute OVA. Then again, the DC comics short series Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld (I'm not sure if many of you still remember that), may be shorter than it in a 11 minute special, but might be more worth looking into than this color puke. Again, that's my 2 cents, and it's there if you wanna watch it.

Side note: Even after a decade since this reboot's debut, I'm glad some of the crew who worked on this moved on to bigger and better things - like Rachel Vine writing for The Owl House and Emily Osment as the voice of Courtney in Dead End: Paranormal Park.

[byoldervine]

In honour of this post getting over 600+ notes (holy frick thank you!) I’ll be adding to it!

How To Always Have Writing Ideas… (Part 2)

When Time Away Doesn’t Help:

1. Reread. Read the last paragraph or two back to see what flows naturally. If that doesn’t help, reread the whole chapter. If not, the chapter before that. If one chapter back still doesn’t get you anywhere, don’t bother going further; it looks like another method may be required

2. Cheat sheet. Check your plot points to see where you’re supposed to go from here. If Point A is the last plot point where you felt comfortable and Point C is where you need to go next, what does Point B need to tell the reader in order to connect the two?

3. Skip. I know that lots of people, myself included, absolutely hate skipping because they don’t know how to fit it all together neatly afterwards, but I’ve been getting caught up on a few scenes of my own WIP lately and after just leaving a marker with the barebones of what I need to do and then moving on to the next point I’m comfortable writing, my productivity has shot up. Both times I did this more recently, I ended up meeting my weekly word count goal on a Monday morning because the inspiration and motivation were able to just flow unhindered

When Inspiration Is Lost:

1. Stealing Research. Read books, watch movies, consume story-telling media. Take parts where you think “I like this, I’d love to add this to my writing” and tweak it, like I thought when I saw The Owl House giving their human protagonist glyph magic. Take parts where you think “How did they come up with such a good concept and execute it so poorly even I could do better” and fix it, like I thought when I saw certain aspects of Miraculous Ladybug (I basically watch it as a staple of what not to do writing-wise if literary analysis is your thing)

2. From fic to fricked. The main concept of my current WIP Byoldervine originally came from The Unholy Fic™️ that I wrote in lockdown after I realised that I could just change a few names around and have a full-on standalone story that nobody would ever suspect was inspired by that specific media. If you wanna try and guess, I’ll be ridiculously impressed if anyone gets it right. But the point is, any old fanfiction you might have written as a dumb teen can be used as a jumping point

3. Make your ass jealous of all the shit coming out of your mouth. Start pacing your room rambling about the first thing you think of, even if it’s random BS, and keep up that flow. Even if you’re saying “I don’t even know what to say next, where am I even going with this, how is this supposed to help, that damn Tumblr blog lied to me to make me look stupid” then first off, you’re absolutely right, second, sometimes letting our random thoughts go unfiltered can help us to externally process it better than we can internally process it. This is what I end up doing every time I go on a logic loop about a show or a book and I’ve found it not only gets that out of my head since I’ve put real world words to it, but it also leaves me comparing it to my writing and getting excited about what I’ve learned so I can apply it or improve it in my own work

How To Always Have Writing Ideas…

For A New Story:

1. Keep a list. Any time you have one of those sudden bursts of inspiration in the middle of writing a separate story, don’t quit your current WIP or pretend you’ll ‘just remember it’, put it into a separate list. You can always go back to this later on

2. Writing prompts. Look them up, use random word generators, pick a random object you can see, whatever helps you come up with any idea at all. Write a few paragraphs. Can it evolve from there?

3. People watch. Go to a public place and make up backstories for the strangers you come across. That man in the hat is using it to hide his elf ears. That woman with the bright pink hair didn’t dye it, she’s secretly the main character of an anime trying to dodge all the tropes and cliches. That toddler is actually a guardian angel reincarnated to watch over their new baby sibling. What brings them to this place? Where did they come from? Where are they going next?

To Continue An Existing Story:

1. Act it out. Say the words aloud, act out what your characters are doing, get props or people to act off of if you need to. See what feels like the most natural progression of the moment

2. Coffee shop AU, or other substitutional one-shot. Good for establishing dynamics between two or more characters, or even just working out a lone character’s day-to-day. Just write a few paragraphs about your characters entering a coffee shop or similar appropriate establishment/ordinary location. What do they do? What do they order to eat/drink? What do they say to each other? How do they treat the staff and other customers? If all else fails, write what they do after they leave, as if it were an ordinary day for them

3. Rubber duck it. This is something programmers use to work out where they went wrong in their code, but I’ve found it can work for figuring out story stuff as well. What you do is get a rubber duck, or any other object of focus, and start explaining your problem to it out loud. In this case you can read your chapter to the duck, or even give it the full run-down of the plot so far. Warning; side effects may include getting frustrated that the problem was right in front of you and subsequently throwing the duck

For Both:

1. Writing graveyards. I talked a bit about them in a previous post, but writing graveyards are basically just the folder you store your deleted scenes in instead of yeeting them into the void. Reread those, see if they have anything you can recontextualise or repurpose

2. Combine ideas. My WIP Byoldervine is a combination of two separate plots I had that I realised I’d be able to combine - twice. I first realised I could put together my ‘angel and demon heroes protecting humans from a war between heaven and hell’ story and my ‘quest through the fantasy realm to find the ingredients to a cure for a dying god’ story into the same universe as two sides of the same story as a duology. Then I realised I could just remove a few characters, tweak a few plot points and mash them completely together into one book. Combining them works wonders and minimises worldbuilding

3. Go out with friends or family. I guarantee that the one time you’ll be flooded with inspiration is when you don’t have an opportunity to write it down

[idleglowingpixels]

talk about Collector

WHYYYYYYYYYY okay now that I got that off my chest let's get serious LMAO

Before I dive in too deep, to any other ppl reading, THIS IS YOUR FAIR WARNING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ANY CRITICISM OF TOH. Something that is really apparent in this fandom particularly is that a lot of ppl refuse to allow and accept genuine criticism discussions, dumbing it down to personal biases, misinterpretations of the text (or in this case, the show), and proclaiming "It's intentional that the show did that!" every time someone breathes something negative about it. This is ESPECIALLY annoying with the "Blame Disney/the shortening" nonsense -- a key skill in television writing is to be capable of working with the allotted time that the studios give you. After they were told Season 3 got cut short, they still had 11 22-minute episodes of Season 2 and all three 40+ minute episodes of Season 3 to conclude the story in a satisfying way.

Seeking and reading criticism posts outside of the general tags, ignoring warnings on posts that give forewarnings, then getting mad and upset that someone criticized your comfort show is generally an unhealthy behavior, especially if you're not in a good mental state. If you can't take people criticizing something you enjoy, and more-so if you deem it your comfort media, and feel the need to bother them because you made yourself upset reading their posts, you've got a lot of soul searching to do. That, or maybe you should log off until you can handle it.

Also, obviously, spoilers ahead for TOH, as well as Amphibia because these shows parallel a lot more than I want them to. :')

---

I have a LOT to say about The Owl House from a critical and writing perspective, and I feel like the show is EXTREMELY overhyped for what it actually is. I feel its sister show Amphibia executed much of the same/similar themes better, and that's not even a bias thing. Just from the way both shows are written, you can tell which one feels more competently structured from a narrative standpoint (and, let's be honest, which one is actually funny).

Okay enough about general opinion, let's get to Collector. From a character design perspective, GOD I love this little guy, both the reflection/shadow form and the actual form are distinct from the rest of the cast. I'm a big Sun and Moon design/symbolism enjoyer (Sun and Moon from FNAF, Sun and Blake from RWBY, Celestia and Luna from MLP:FiM, etc.) so these types of characters are always welcome. And while their voice annoys me personally it ABSOLUTELY fits them, so no matter how annoying I find it I don't think I'd want them to have any other voice.

But that, unfortunately, is the only props I can give to Collector.

The show is FULL of redeemed antagonists that range from okay (I'd like to think Amity was decent enough and Hunter was alright but definitely should have been introduced earlier so his redemption was a slow burn but this post isn't about them so I'll end this note here) to "what the actual fuck" (Idc what anyone says, there is no excuses PERIOD, Lilith's redemption was the absolute worst redemption arc I think I've ever seen AND I'VE SEEN CATRA'S), and Collector is very much on the lower end of that scale. We hardly see them overall and their character writing is rushed beyond belief -- and again, I'd like to reiterate that that is ENTIRELY on the writing team for the show. Disney and the shortening DID NOT DECIDE TO KEEP COLLECTOR IN. The writing staff were aware of the time they had left and made the decision to shoehorn them in and expect everyone to just be okay with it.

From a writing perspective, they bloat the story exponentially and 100% should have been left in the drafts or saved for future content like what Dana said she might do if she is able to through books and such. If we only get hints of the other Collectors, this one should have STAYED hints with them.

We have essentially no significant amount of time with them outside of Hollow Mind and the season 2 finale before season 3, and what we DO have of them in season 2B is so drastically different I'd consider 2B Collector and 3 Collector as two different characters entirely. And before you tell me, "They're different because sun/moon symbolism!" "They're different because Belos and King influence them differently!" etc. etc., don't waste your time. Yes, those are good explanations as to why they feel so different between seasons, but that does not make the writing of the character inherently good. Allow me to elaborate:

In S2B, of what little we see of Collector, they are extremely sadistic in nature, and while they appear childish the writing of that lack of care for others is ABUNDANTLY CLEAR. And it seemed that way even as Belos first encountered him as Philip in the flashback episode. There, they weren't yet "influenced" by Belos and his plans; hell, he hardly had an actual plan yet.

Skip ahead to Hollow Mind, easily the best episode of Season 2 imo, and Collector is taunting Belos, mocking him and his schemes. Saying things like "Ooh, you were mad!" and "I'm starting to think you make those [grimwalkers] just to destroy them. You have fun with it, admit it!"

I cannot find any reasonable explanation as to how or why Belos would influence Collector into doing such things. Why would he want a little pain in the ass making fun of him for hundreds of years? And by his response to Collector's taunt about the grimwalkers and Hunter, "Of course I don't, Collector. It hurts every time he chooses to betray me," he took offense to their words, but kept his tone from shifting to anger as he does with everyone else because of Collector's power.

Belos doesn't want Collector thinking he doesn't like them because of their abilities, but he does want to stay on their good side for information. For knowledge of spells. And he puts up with Collector's annoyances because of that.

Essentially, that wasn't something Belos taught them or influenced them to do. All Collector knows is to adapt to their friends' behaviors, yes, but Belos is like, over 400 years old. I don't know about you, but I doubt with the way he speaks and how he's written that he would taunt his underlings in the same childish vain as Collector, and do so enough for Collector to pick up and mimic that behavior.

Now to the finale, their appearance is pretty much just them getting duped by Belos and sent into the depths of the titan skull, where King ever-so-conveniently finds them, making the pinky swear that releases them.

They maintain that mocking attitude even after Belos betrays them, calling King "boring" for calling them Mr. Collector and feeling generally disinterested by King before he promises a game to play. And even after they're released, they continue the attitude further with the whole "I remember someone throwing me off a bridge...I'm not angry, though!" bit, only to send Belos to his "death" moments after, deeming it as a game of tag. They've seen Belos kill grimwalkers first hand, fully aware that their lives mean nothing, and replicated the behavior by returning the favor to Belos (or so they thought). Their lack of care continues when they nearly try to do the same thing to the Hexsquad, people who didn't even do anything to them, before King stops them, changing the subject before they can cause further harm.

After stopping the draining spell, Collector continues the destructive maliciousness they have all the way to the end of the episode, and that's the impression of them we're left with. They were sadistic, uncaring and childish, but only learned the behavior of killing from Belos -- even though Belos didn't actually die, the intent was to kill him, and they were fully planning to continue with the Hexsquad.

And then...We get to Season 3.

Just a side-note, I think it's a safe assumption to say the first 2 seasons of The Owl House took place between roughly 2 months, as Luz was outside waiting to leave for a summer camp after the school year ended before initially arriving in the demon realm. Going off of that assumption, in Part 1 Luz returned to school as she returned to the human realm, presumably in late August/early September due to her living in Connecticut. And since Part 1 takes place in the timespan of about 3-7 days, the last day being Halloween, the timeskip only brought us about 2 more months ahead. Keep this in mind.

After Luz and co. return to the demon realm in Part 2 -- objectively the worst episode of the season -- we already see King's influence on Collector since they turned everyone into puppets instead of actively injuring or killing them when they don't comply. Still bad? Yes. But from how it looks in Part 3 with the Hexsquad, it seems more like the puppets' consciences are just comatose or an alternative to sleeping, maybe in a REM-like state. But of course, the show didn't have enough time to explain that further over all the nonsense in Part 2.

Anyway, when we see Collector in Part 2, they're still being childish, which is unfortunately the only thing that stays consistent with this character. They then say two lines that were the most god-awful writing decisions I've seen in a hot minute, and this show is STOCK FULL of really bad "this is peak humor LAUGH" moments like this.

They say that Eda has this "cool aunt vibe" and such, which sounds like one of those "character dynamics/tropes" posts on social media like Tumblr and whatnot. It comes off as really pretentious in the writing, and was shockingly unfunny to hear for a show that calls itself a comedy. Another line that frustrates me, more-so for lore reasons, is when they ask Odalia to make pizza bagels, when it was previously stated that human food is inaccessible to Luz during her time in the demon realm. So not only is it contradicting that whole thing (Eda actively struggled to find food for Luz that she could eat), how would they or King even know what one is or how to actually make one??

It seems like a small point to get heated over, but it once again feels like one of those stupid one-liners that one of the writers thought was the funniest shit they've ever thought up and kept it in because they knew die-hard fans would just laugh it off and brush it off as a joke, and that the writers forgetting about Eda's maternal struggle to feed her adopted kid is Disney's/the shortening's fault because they're at fault for everything wrong with the show...and not the ppl who wrote it.

Regardless, this whole shtick is extremely out-of-character for the way they had spoken in Season 2, and from what I can recall (I'm not gonna rewatch the entire show for the sake of a single post), King never talks like this. Luz does around him, but he himself doesn't talk like this.

I've discussed with friends before about this, including Robin (the one who asked me to talk about this), but from Part 2 onward Collector gets the same Luz-like writing every character that gets redeemed suddenly dawns out of the blue. I started calling it luz-ification, but it doesn't just happen to Collector.

It happened to Hunter, where his more cocky and ego-centric dialogues from early 2A was dropped for a more "comedic" personality and an anxiety-ridden character, though it's later eluded to that his cocky attitude was him masking his true self, so I try to keep it to that perspective.

But this happened to Lilith as well, where she suddenly started acting like "Cool Aunt Lilith" IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING HER ADMITTING TO CURSING EDA AND ALLOWING HER CAPTURE. WITH NO CONSEQUENCES TO BE FACED OTHER THAN THE CURSE SPLIT WHICH IS HARDLY UTILIZED IN THE SHOW.

(Side-tangent: Characters facing little to no consequences for their actions is something that goes on so much in this show but this is long enough already and I really don't like talking about this shit for long 'cause I could be using my time on better pieces of media, I'm sure there's plenty of posts explaining this point elsewhere by ppl who enjoyed TOH more than me)

Hell, it even happened to Amity for a hot minute. For some moments in the show she's written really off-character and saying things that just completely contradict how she's typically written, but then goes back to the more sassy and balanced character later on.

This post has gotten WAY longer than I wanted it to be, but to keep me from spending even more time on this, Part 2 shows a drastically different Collector, to the point that they do not by any means have the same character writing as they had before. They got luz-ified. Using social media lingo they couldn't even have access to in canon, and being written to quite literally just sound like a mini-me of Luz with the more obnoxious undertones of the childish thing.

Point is, they mimic these behaviors of Luz that they wouldn't even have reasonable access to learning from, because she's in the human realm for almost all the time after their release. It only makes sense in Part 3, when Luz is actually there for them to see her behaviors in action, but even that is so contrived and rushed that it feels unrealistic and narratively unnecessary. Remember what I said before about the timeskip only being 2 months? Yeah, 2 months isn't nearly enough time for a character to fundamentally change who they are as drastically as Collector.

Now to the part where I talk about Amphibia really quick and mention how it did the whole "having an alternative threat acting as a mini-boss" thing a million times better than this shit ever could. King Andrias, paralleling Collector for this particular scenario, is shown relatively early on that he's an antagonist to the audience. It's later revealed as a plot twist not to the audience, but to the characters, who least expected it. They don't waste time trying to throw off the audience with red herrings or telling its audience "He's not a bad guy, he's totally not going to be evil later on." They just show the audience he's evil and keep the story moving.

He's given enough time to feel like this ominous, looming threat, and True Colors masterfully showed how messed up this guy is and the lengths he is willing to go to ascend to the Core and cheat death, just as the souls within the Core had. His motive to avoid death and return Amphibia to the world-conquering ideologies from centuries' past is what made him such a love-to-hate villain. And the motive to cheat death in a children's cartoon? Metal as hell. The Core also parallels Belos here, and further on in Season 3, being the one manipulating Andrias through his fear of death in order to make him do what they want him to.

In the third season, Andrias continues his work by the Core's demands, only giving up in the final battle when he's read a letter from someone he had considered a friend long ago, which admittedly didn't have much set-up but it was at least the focus of an entire episode prior to the big pre-finale.

At the end of the series, he's shown to have moved on, allowing himself to age naturally and to stop using technology to keep him in pristine condition for eternity. He accepted the natural cycle of life, and in turn accepted that he will come to pass one day. He wasn't a perfectly written character, but considering what it's being compared to? Leagues better.

Like I said before, TL;DR, Collector is the bloatware of The Owl House's plot. They were shoved in as a last minute addition because they were the writers' "precious bean silly goose little gremlin blorbo" that they couldn't just keep in the drafts with the rest of the collectors. So instead of maintaining what little integrity the show's writing had to begin with and follow through to the end with the Day of Unity plotline being the series finale (Which was VERY OBVIOUSLY WHAT THEY WERE GOING FOR), they essentially made a side quest distraction that dragged the story on for longer than it needed to, wasting the audience's time.

I'm not mad that the Collector exists, I just find that their inclusion in the series did more harm than good for the writing. The show has a serious issue with giving screentime to unnecessary characters like the miscellaneous Hexside students, giving characters too much screentime (The biggest offender for this is Amity, there's more episodes centered around her than Hunter, Willow and Gus combined) and not giving ACTUALLY necessary characters enough screentime (Looking at you, Emerald Trio).

I really want to rewrite TOH, and if I feel the need to rewrite a show, it's usually because there's too much fundamentally wrong with it for me to give it anything higher than a 6/10 overall. But I've already got a whole AU and a whole rewrite in the works for two other series I care wayyyyy more about, so that's gonna have to be left to other writers in this fandom.

---

If this post is how you've stumbled upon my page, hi :') Feel free to ask me about more or to elaborate on smth I said here if you want clarification, but if you check out my intro post and see another mutual interest we have maybe ask me about that instead of TOH please and thank you

[daystarvoyage]

Glad Certain fans are calling out the toxicity in fandoms, hey everyone back in action for a long wait.

Hello, Everyone, It's Kyoko Cane Of Daystar Voyage Giving You A Quick Update of what's been going on,

I have been off Tumblr for a while due to situations in fandoms, & Life, if you don't know yes I am a blogger and content creator who does cosplay & creates art, I also focus a channel on animation, Family entertainment & Fandom Topics With Some variety.

But I am back now gonna try to make this a short message cut into three parts cause I have to start packing for Momocon, now that's the introduction out the way let's get on to these parts on the sections from future videos, calling out show flaws and my love for all animation & why you should give it praise,

NOW LET'S GET IT ON

1. Very Proud of People calling out Fandom Discourse on Shipping & toxic problematic stuff, way to go

when animation got through the good times of the golden age of animation 80s & '90s through my times experiencing it myself, i do love people have a natural conversation about their favorite shows and fiction & nonfiction works, it felt really organic to see others commend me for talking about things out without hiding behind a electronics, seeing growth in positive ways,

I for one watch any new shows that are lighthearted in its comedy story & world-building with good writing that excels and few who have a lot to learn from them. (Example Disneys Kiff Big City Greens Amphibia & Haileys On It) Along With light-hearted anime shojo & Josei to be exact, have really put me into a comforting mode and have made me look at a perspective of what characters have to offer.

however, that's not without its negatives.

The 2000s & 2020s later with the uprising of the cost of living, and jobs declining it really did take a toll on people's mindset without a safe space to have open-minded discussions due to toxic fandoms on the internet propelling popular media. (escapism etc)

though our love of media contorts and distorts in many ways that's not without negatives

i have suffered a lot from a recent fandom the Owl House recently,

Oh forgot to mention one part the fanfics are coming out great for the Owl House movie fanfic and short story I have to make for the Witterbane Origins so they are cooking in the oven as we speak Release coming soon

now you are wondering why I brought this series to light.

well we know things have become problematic with its fandom from shipping, writing & character exposures, I for one have been scammed in this fandom cause i wanted a specific ship (lunter) keychain & i was placated & gaslighted into thinking i got a finished product, unfortunately, it wasn't preserved properly & Toxic nonfactors who hide behind a character who wish they'll give them time of day. SEE AT THE BOTTOM BELOW

AND HAVING TO DELETE VIDEOS OF SHIPS BESIDES HUNTLOW OR LUMITY CAUSE OF BULLYING ITS DISGRACEFUL AND NASTY BEHAVIOR, DOWN Below

Yes there’s proof and FACTs THE FANDOM CANT TAKE A LOGICAL REASON AND CALL OUT THE WRITING AT TIMES., so I’ll be discussing that soon in a future video, cause nothing stopping me

Up above pics 👆 this is a prime example of how fandom has become toxicity from characters being defined by their sexuality, TV tropes not properly executed in good ways, and today's culture following suit of creators compromising the show to the audience's liking (do to fandoms)

be it Racism, Poc Representation compromised & white favoritism & supremacy. There are times the show shows bad writing & and of course shipping discourse just to make up these flaws however it doesn't save them, cause this shows fandom needs a wake-up call so ill be roasting & giving reasonable and logical critiques 247.

That is all for number 1 and I'm proud of the fandoms talking about the owl house flaws in the show

, we as fans of past present of future animated lovers should have been giving this content and I'm not bashing the owl house but waking up people to how yall act as a whole, from yall bullying other creators from new upcoming Disney shows too which is not ok, so much to say but ima save for future videos

2. Future Videos will not stop me from talking & ranting on issues be it unscripted or scripted to get my feelings out.

ill will be getting back on camera for soon with the many topics on my polls from past posts here and will be discussing my favorite genres Shojo & Josei on how the Western audience perceives it as compared to back in the day

It's been such a great way to use Tumblr to open my mind to others who agree knowing I don't have a big following.

( cause you know people all act the same on social media who lack creativity or originality)

Ill be using my channel to create content to understand my world as a genderqueer person and to know that everyone needs to bring out a confident you and speak your mind on terms & causes that matter cause where all on this earth and where all the same if we open our minds.

3. Your all Welcome to message me afternoons only (don't go too far on boundaries) Yes fanfics are in the oven, & will be doing photos at momocon cosplays YES ILL BE MAKING ENTERTAINING SHORTS and have a blessed starry day.

Last segment right now im doing better however will be going to the doctor when I can, Also Advise people to have a life outside of fandom.

I use art as a way to create and diffuse from bullying on social media cause I am single and looking for love does play a part cause as a black person, where seen as scum Not desirable, and just nothing and unpretty.

but I for one say otherwise, cause I'm defined by my heart of gold and jolly disposition, airing out my stress with art and content.

So make sure to check out my Latest videos on channel daystar voyage.

so I leave to yall for a while I may post often about other content when I have time and an update on the amity video coming up but shorts will be out in the meantime thank you so much.

[princesshalfdemon]

and it’s easy to forget all of this. that this kind of representation we’re seeing in children’s cartoon isn’t something they can just make for free.

as regular people using tumblr and twitter and ao3 and ff.net, we can write and draw and make headcanons and ship whatever we want.

there’s no risk to us for doing this. there’s no risk for shippers drawing and writing lumity, catradora, korrasami, etc. we can do whatever we want. but getting this stuff on big networks? disney, nickelodeon, cartoon network, and FIGHTING for it when executive’s first reactions was probably audible groaning at the showrunners about the possible controversy they might get?

we need to start understanding that unlike them, there’s a huge risk to this.

Dana doesn’t get to just walk in and say “hey Disney i want to make a show and it’s gonna have a canon bi kid and a lesbian kid and they’re gonna develop their feelings on-camera,” and those execs just said “oh shit yeah that sounds awesome here’s the keys to the kingdom!” Dana has literally stated that without things like the rupphire wedding and that which came before there would BE no lumity. and for this victory, The Owl House has had it’s third season reduced to three special episodes, and the idea of s4 is so laughable at this point it will be a miracle to see it happen.

WE, the fandom, can produce this endlessly for free for ourselves without risk; I genuinely and sincerely wonder if Dana will ever be able to work with Disney again after this, i would not be surprised if they simply refuse to work with her after TOH ends. we forget that for these people, it comes with sacrifice and risk of professional ostracization. because WE do not sacrifice to make this content a reality we forget that people like Dana and Rebecca do.

for YEARS we have heard things about “ITS NOT PROGRESSIVE ENOUGH/TABLE SCRAPS.” fucking goddamn Lily Orchid even made a post that was like, ranking these shows and grading them based on “representation rep” and only giving TOH an A while giving everything else lower than a C and some of ya’ll ate it up like candy.

people are fighting for this and risking their careers because they CAN’T just be anonymous people on the internet to make it a reality. and it makes me happy that we’re FINALLY starting to acknowledge this, but not enough people seem to be aware of this. too many of ya’ll are still trying to make this some dick-measuring contest between lumity and everything that came before it, also because some aired around the same-ish time. it’s not. it’s really genuinely not.

[arcane-ish]

I'm genuinely confused by your post. It seems like we have overall a pretty similar take on how the dynamics were behind the scenes in Arcane.

Animators add flourishes but the writers got to see the product and to "wave them through" so we can presume they were okay with them

Cutting happened on storyboard level, not on fully animated level

The writers "did what they set out to do". Which to me means they weren't under big pressures/brutal cuts from the higher ups.

But how does that gel with your original post where you across like you are making excuses for the writers/for presumably bad writing. You stage it as if was a case of "they would have done better writing (such as resolving subplots better), but they were just forced to because their original plans were shattered by cancellation, just like it was in the Owl House".

This is what I'm disagreeing with. I haven't read any evidence that they were planning to do multiple seasons of this Piltover and Zaun story. If you have quotes, please provide.

My point about animators isn't that animators were on a conspiracy against the writers. My point was that these are the only concrete stories I'm aware of where we had a "Somebody from creative wanted something (ie a second Timebomb montage) and got told no by the higher ups (in this case the writers, with good reasons/as is their right ".

There is no comparable story about "oh no, the writers totally, concretely wanted to do x, but their hopes were dashed".

All "the writers were exploring different options" (such as "a big battle of Zaun with evil space robots and blimps attacking Piltover which is heroically being defended by Cait and Vi" like in the concept art) seem to me like cases they discareded for story reasons and not because Netflix or Riot told them no.

And from my memory none of the "multiple season" stuff EVER said they wanted to do Piltover and Zaun/these characters that long. From what I remember even after season 1 they openly talked about switching to different regions. Because IMO there is no way they thought the story of Cait/Jinx/Vi/Viktor/Jayce would work for 7 seasons. The fact that FANS think maybe 3 seasons would have been better than 2 (because they didn't like season 2 or thought certain developments needed more space) is something fans think, I have seen no evidence that the writers wanted even just 3 seasons and were shot down.

that the reports of them cutting the spicy stuff came out of Netflix and executives saying “you can’t go this far.”

The story that Christian tells is that they were told "if you do this you will get a higher rating in that and that region" and they didn't want to get a higher rating than Teen, also because they were worried it could affect the rating of League as a game.

I also have to call nonsense on the “they just didn’t care” thing too, because that’s projection. You said so yourself that in interviews they seemed really proud of their work. I’m sorry but you can’t have it both ways. Were they proud, or just didn’t care? It can’t be both.

I don't get why you think that is a contradiction? What i meant was "they cared more about certain storylines than others, because they cared less or not at all about certain things, these things were not in season 2, they were happy with season 2 because the things that mattered to them they put in".

Ie if they had wanted to do an in depth story about Vi's prison trauma or about the socio economic dynamics of the Council families or the complex geopolitics of Noxus, they would have put it in. But they didn't. Because to them it's more important to have a scene where Ekko gets to hug Benzo again.

There are certain topics that fans would have been interested in seeing that they probably wouldn't have put in even if they had been forced to do nine seasons, just because it's an area they weren't interested in covering.

Like, I really like Warwick and would have loved to have like a bigger focus on for example:

his past like more actual details on the Day of Ash and how everything happened there

his time with Singed and the torture he had to endure

a meatier more poignant role for him in Act 3

But the fact that these are things that would have improved his story for ME personally doesn't mean that that was ever on the writers' radar. It's just as possible that from their point of view they said everything they wanted to say about him.

To me it often sounds like fans are projecting their desire for 3 seasons onto the writers with little evidence that the writers were planning or even wanting that.

Again heavily based on Christian's statement:

We always had a specific story in mind. Look, you could have stretched it, I'm sure. But for us, it was always just like we started with this in mind. I think there's also a personal angle to it as creatives. We've all seen the TV shows, where clearly the writers are running out of juice. How inspired can you stay about the same thing, for how long? It's been nine years for us, with these characters. I think there's a responsibility aspect to this, also, where we're like, this is what we had in mind.

This is the story that we had in our heads that we want to tell. It's irresponsible to stretch this to a point where it feels like we can't even really do it justice. I think that was a big part of it. We don't want to overdo it.

Note that this interview was posted on November 7th, so it was done before Act 3 aired and before people started criticizing them for not doing the finale right. So this isn't him pulling the pity card because people are yelling at him, that was when everything still looked good (and again based on how he acted on social media I think he fully expected season 2 to slap and be enjoyed by his target audience)

The fact that he sounds tired as fuck and that very much doesn't want to do the other regions and talks about finding different writers who are passionate about the Noxus characters the way he was with Piltover and Zaun to me sounds like he doesn't have the passion to tell more stories right now. Or the only stories he would be interested in telling right now are stories that he knows wouldn't work as a popular tv show (like some light hearted yordle stuff).

I do still feel like there were shenanigans behind the scenes because originally the animators were boasting about how cheap season 1 was to produce. There were very few legitimate 3D sets and zero lighting. Nearly every shot was a digitally painted background and the characters were just painted for that scene meaning there was very little work on the production side of things. But then after season 2 ended it came out that Arcane was the most expensive animated tv show ever made. So what’s going on there? Were they just lying?

That doesn't make sense to me. I remember Arcane being expensive as fuck was a huge topic after season 1 already. I don't know what you watched or read, but maybe it was video to justify why they would get a new season even though season 1 was expensive as fuck because they had a lot of the ground work?

But a lot of season 1 coverage was about just how expensive it was and that it took 6 years to make because they had to completely reboot in the middle. (imo season 1 is the only with the choppy production history, season 2 seems to have exactly as long as expected when they announced it, so it seems to have been a speedy and smooth production overall compared to season 1, especially if you factor in Covid)

It was also a big topic on the animation focused channels I was watching (that they animate even side scenes like let's say Mel talking to her servant like it's the most important thing in the world when a normal animated show would focus their attention on their key scenes), that no normal tv show can afford to look like that and something like Arcane season 1 was only possible because Riot has a fuckton of money to just throw around.

They were already saying 10 million an episode around season 1. 18 episodes + marketing budget you easily come to 250.

So no, I don't think that there money/animation shenanigan for season 2 (beyond of what came due to covid) and they weren't lying about season 1's cost because if you look around, they were already upfront of season 1 being freakishly expensive.

I wouldn't rule out that season 2 was slightly more expensive but that is mostly because it was more ambitious, like having a lot of different outfits and hairdoes for characters, while in season 1 the characters look mostly the same in Acts 2 and 3. But no, my impression is not that season 2 was disproportionately or unexpectedly more expensive. I can search my old season 1 posts, but let me assure you, it was certainly a topic there that from a strictly financial point of view, it was always completely an unfeasible proposition. (I remember there being articles along the lines of "for the love of God, do NOT now expect your other animated shows to look like that, because nobody sane can afford to make a show like that, this only works because Riot shits money and is willing to throw it away")

[again the weird thing is that overall we seem to agree on a lot. i also think that Arcane seems like a pretty normal progression to me in quality and fan reception. I have watched SO MANY SHOWS with promising first seasons where people were so hopeful about all the awesome potential and how great the show was going to explore all the lore it was hinting at (just top of my head: Lost, Heroes, Supergirl, Once Upon A Time). When a show is young you can project into it how awesome it's going to be and how well it's going to follow through with its setups. But as the futher seasons drop the "possibility space" gets smaller as how it's going to be isn't just in your head anymore (people realize the things they were hoping for might not be covered) and it turns out the writers are just mortals after all]

In the end, yes, it's vibes, but imo many of the things criticized in s2 (ie the Viktor world in danger plot, the montages, the move away from Vi as the clear lead) to me feel more like examples of too much artistic freedom (nobody telling them it's a dumb idea), not too much restriction.

(with the Black Rose stuff as maybe the exception, but even there I have my doubts that there wasn't some "omg, the League lore nerds will go apeshit" thinking going on and that being the reason why it's that ob obnoxiously long, ie even if Riot told them to put in Black Rose buildup I would be surprised if they micromanaged how and how long it had to be)

See, I’ve been down this road before.

The Owl House was a show on Disney that was immensely popular. A second season was announced and we all were happy, and especially happy for the creator who was trying their best to have a lgbt+ positive show made by Disney of all companies.

Then we got word it was cancelled.

The creative team working on The Owl House was already in the middle of production for season 2 when they got the word. So Dana Terrace pleaded (Behind the scenes) with Disney to give them enough time to wrap up the show. Disney promised them 3 hour long specials, the equivalent of 6 episodes, to wrap everything up.

So now The Owl House team is stuck. Half of season 2 is already in mid-production. Those initial episodes already in production can’t be changed without a lot of money they don’t have. So Dana and her team hunker down and completely toss out everything they had planned and re-write the entire second half of the season.

They do their best to pay off subplots that were established, but there’s a lot of season 1 and the first half of season 2 that just have to be dropped and ignored. The focus of the show has to be about Luz, so a lot of character development for secondary characters gets scrapped entirely. They simply don’t have the time to waste on fleshing out Luz’s friends or their arcs.

Despite all the hurdles, and the sudden shift halfway through season 2, they managed to produce an amazing show that ends satisfyingly strong.

And yet what were the initial complaints from fans?

“It ended too fast”

“The side characters didn’t get development.”

“Why are we wasting time with ___?”

“They never paid off ___ subplot!”

“The writing suffered.”

“Characters did a 180 out of nowhere.”

“Too much stuff was left as background details you have to pause to see.”

Gee, does any of that sound familiar? A lot of the initial criticisms were about how the stuff fans wants to see happen were left on the sidelined and few people seemed to care that the production was literally cut in half and the creators were not allowed to finish what they set up.

Now we don’t know what happened with Arcane, but there does at least seem to be the sense that they planned on multiple seasons, started production with multiple seasons in mind, but then were cut short halfway through production, must like The Owl House, and had to radically shift gears to pay off the stuff they had set up or wanted to get to in a much shorter timeframe than they had planned.

And in my opinion, they did the best they could with what they were given. Characters still have arcs. Storylines continue and get resolved. The themes of the show stay consistent. Yes, there’s more magical stuff but that was always a given. And in the end the show tells a beautifully tragic story of how the cycles of violence perpetuate when systems ignore empathy.

But what are the biggest complaints from fans?

“It ended too fast”

“Some characters didn’t get development.”

“Why are we wasting time with AU?”

“They never paid off ___ subplot!”

“The writing suffered.”

“The characters do a 180”

“The politics were abandoned”

“Too much stuff was left as music video details you have to pause to see.”

It’s all the same whiny “criticisms.” Refusing to acknowledge the realities of show production and blaming the writers for stuff that is out of their control.

And I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I’ve been around a long time and I’ve see SO MANY SHOWS not get the endings they deserve, have storylines that ruined characters, have actors pass away, have season finales with a cliffhanger than never gets paid off… the amount of stuff I’ve seen where the show doesn’t end satisfactorily is mind boggling. You have no idea how fucking LUCKY we are that both The Owl House and Arcane ended as well as they did given the shitty circumstances they were dealt with.

I just can’t fault the creators for doing the best they could with what they were given, or taking the bold risk of punching maybe just a little bit higher than they should’ve. I’d rather they try and come close to succeeding than not try at all.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Isn’t it funny that any perceived shortcomings of Steven Universe’s writing was always blamed on the crew rather than executives and shortenings that were compromised to allow an openly queer wedding, but when you so much as utter one mildly negative thing about The Owl House, you’ll hear nothing but “THE SHORTENING” from stans and any writing flaws are always deflected onto executives? And TOH is always held up as the most important queer show ever and people willingly overlook its flaws with queer and minority representation, while Steven Universe was bashed by people constantly overanalyzing the hell out of it?

It certainly is ironic. I wasn't in the SU fandom so I missed all the Drama™ but I've heard second-hand about some of the absolutely bat-shit takes. I'm also unsure if fans knew how extensive the executive meddling was from Cartoon Network, which could explain why they defaulted to blaming the crew (I could also be completely wrong here). However, TOH stans take it too far in the other direction and blame everything on Disney. It seems like they don't like to hear any criticism of the show regardless how valid so they immediately point to the cancellation as the reason for the show's faults.

Now to be fair, the cancellation did not help at all and it's completely insane that the crew had to wrap everything up in three long episodes instead of a full season.

I don't blame Dana Terrace at all for never wanting to work for Disney again.

But in the end, we should remember that no show is without fault and that representation is not a zero-sum game; one show will not have the Best Representation Ever, it all builds off one another. Steven Universe broke new ground and paved the way for more explicit queer rep which allowed executives to even green light shows like The Owl House in the first place.

It does everyone a disservice to pit queer media against one another; shows like this need to be supported, not drowning in Discourse.

[wifelinkmtg]

gotta get back. back to the present samurai jesent

*wh-cha*

I am ten goddamn sets behind but I have to catch up because we’re almost back to The Horniest Goddamn Plane In All Of Magic Canon (that’d be New Phyrexia, babes!) and if I don’t cover that in uncomfortable detail, then what was this blog even for? We got some ground to cover, so let’s get going.

CORE SET 2021

Good news! Unlike Core Set 2020, this one isn’t a complete wash!

Indulging Patrician (art by Miranda Meeks)

Meeks giving vampire-fuckers exactly what they want here. Rose-tinted diaphanous silks & equally-diaphanous bats, the delicate damask patterns, the bridal carry, the victim’s languid pose, the collarbones, the blood - but for me, it’s the contrast between the vampire’s self-possessed hauteur and the trickle of blood down her throat that really makes this work.

Liliana, Waker of the Dead (art by Anna Steinbauer)

Liliana almost always makes the list, of course, but usually she gets here through raw displays of power and dominance. Steinbauer’s taken a different tack here, though, constructing this pastoral idyll centered around Liliana as a Gothic heroine. Is that sharp-edged pensiveness hesitation? Regret? Whatever it is, it’s a vulnerability we don’t usually get to see with her. This is easily, easily my favorite Liliana. It’s also about forty percent more Audrey Hepburn than typical, which. Yeah, that works for me.

KALDHEIM

man i just really do not care for the art direction in Kaldheim if I’m being honest. “viking plane” has a lot of potential and most of the art here is well-executed i just can’t help but feeling like the briefs the artists were given were kind of half-assed. like they have gods of DEATH and FEAR and they just look like whole foods hipsters. still, though! couple of hot valkyries.

Eradicator Valkyrie (art by Tyler Jacobson)

You really have to appreciate when someone just fully commits to a vibe. She could have stopped with the corpse paint and the black and gold everything but she went that extra mile for the blue flame wings and the smoldering pillar of the damned.

Youthful Valkyrie (art by Anna Steinbauer)

Yeahhhhh, I knew I could count on Steinbauer to deliver something ineffably sapphic. Hot, broody warrior angel fits the bill. Thank you for your service as always, ma’am.

HONORABLE MENTION: Jorn, God of Winter (art by Magali Villeneuve)

I gotta give credit where credit is due: in one of the drier sets in a very neutered Magic the Gathering era, Villeneuve has made a god who one million percent fucks. This rules.

STRIXHAVEN: SCHOOL OF MAGES

You know, I figured there’d be more candidates at wizard college, if for no other reason than there’d be more girls with glasses - but no, not even Goth Entomologist House OR Bitchy Poet Vampire House produced a single hit between the two of them. Here’s what we do get:

Professor Onyx (art by Kieran Yanner)

Liliana Vess: MILF professor version. I don’t need to say more than this, the scenario writes itself. Still, I do wanna pause and note the shoulder battlements. This is a woman who knows the value of fortifying gun emplacements, by which, yes, I do mean her tits.

Dragonsguard Elite (art by David Rapoza)

Oh yeah this is genuinely horny. Big owl glasses, perfect facial features, picturesque windblown hair, a dramatic display of power, those curves. I’ve really missed art that manages to be self-indulgent but not boring. More of this!

ADVENTURES IN THE FORGOTTEN REALMS

I have a great deal of resentment about the D&D crossover sets in terms of flavor. You can’t make Lolth, Zariel, and Mordenkainen planeswalkers in Magic canon and then be like oh well but no not really it’s not like they can go to Ravnica or something like that. Motherfucker then they’re not planeswalkers! You didn’t even bother to make Lolth hot! That was a fucking slam dunk! Three different D&D sets and you didn’t even include a single marilith!

I could keep going, at great length, but instead I’m choosing to be responsible and talk about the hot girls.

Ingenious Smith (art by Nicholas Elias)

I’m going to confess to spending an unspecified-but-lesbian amount of time watching Simone Giertz build weird shit on youtube. This scratches that same primal dyke itch of wanting to watch a clever, funny woman make something with her hands, but with bigger biceps.

Djinni Windseer (art by Livia Prima)

Look, man, sometimes what you want is a hot blue lady in a tornado.

Kalain, Reclusive Painter (art by Justine Cruz)

Cruz is almost a complete newcomer to Magic the Gathering here, which is really impressive because Kalain is the clear stand-out of this set. I personally wouldn’t choose to paint in my finest red doublet, but obviously this is a deficiency in my commitment to the Byronic artist Aesthetic. Obviously I don’t glower intensely enough. Obviously I don’t dress enough like a mildly-genderfluid Prussian vampire. Rest assured Kalain will be making none of these rookie mistakes!

I genuinely have so much gender envy about Kalain, holy shit.

OKAY progress made. This was the tail end of the drought. We got two Innistrad sets next, and whatever else you wanna say about those sets, I’m pretty sure we get more hits in even just one of them than we did in the four sets covered here together. Next time we got: girls accessorizing with bones, girls accessorizing with snakes, Hot Crossbow Autumn, woman laughing alone with shovel, dog mom, and so, so many vampires.

[welcometogrouchland]

I would argue that the bi flag on Hunter's jacket in Thanks to Them does confirm his bisexuality. Because what other reason would the Owl House crew have for putting it there?

See on the one hand I agree and want to treat it as confirmation, both bc I'm biased and bc the crew has done this before w/ the lil decorations on Eda's belongings in season 1, and even something like Masha's nail polish in the same episode as hunters lil bi rainbow. And bc you're right! All things considered, there's very little chance that Dana as executive producer didn't catch it and then approve it.

But in my mind I know that that might be all it was. Just a hc Dana agrees with, which doesn't feel fair to hold up as canon, no matter how much I love it, since ppl don't always have to take the author's personal opinions into account when forming an interpretation of the work.

I think the most likely scenario for how the bi rainbow got there is that the colour designer (who. I wanna say was Dresden Douglas? If I'm remembering her Twitter thread of props in TTT she coloured correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong) added that bi rainbow of their own volition, rather than it being a top down order, which is a bit different to me in terms of like. Canonicity.

it's just not as solid as I'd like it to be! Bc I know fandom gets contentious and I don't like the idea of people shutting others down bc of something circumstantial.

Again, I agree with you anon, with my limited knowledge of how toh's production works, I think it's very likely that the bi rainbow was left on hunters sweater bc the creator writes/views him as bi. I view it as confirmation. But I'm just shy of stating that as a fact simply bc it's so miniscule and inconcrete compared to things like Dana saying Amity's a lesbian in a Reddit AMA, or Lilith's letter from the livestream and then her VA saying on insta the next day that Lilith is ace.

Which isn't to say that I need Dana Terrace to put in writing "Hunter is bi" for me to incorporate it into my interpretation of the show. It's already a part of how I view the owl house as a piece of fiction. Hunter is bi to me and I think it adds to his character and the shows overall message goals (not that it has to, rep doesn't need to justify itself, but it is something I feel (not that rep needs to justify itself, that hunter being bi adds to him)). But if I was going to say "hunter is canonically bi" to an outside observer, I'd want more than what we have. I'm an academic and I like citing my sources! And until Dana answers my letters, I have no source </3

(/j about the letters thing, I can't read)

[rayllumkissing]

Dana's Owl House AMA, a summary

• Eda is about mid to late 40s, and it's the same with Lilith except she's 2 years older. Gus is 12, Willow is 14 and King is "???????" years old

• When Lilith joined the Emperor's Coven, she dyed her hair to look "intimidating"

• Dana appreciates the positive press coverage of Enchanting Grom Fright, and she appreciates the negative ones as well "because I live to troll jerks :)"

• The teacher that Amity referred to as mom back in Lost In Language was not Lilith, in fact they're not really close and Amity lost a lot of respect for Lilith after Covention

• We may see more of Viney, Jerbo and Barcus soon

• When asked about what Luz's favourite anime was, Dana replied with a lengthy list stating that she thought about it too much

• Amity and Luz are confirmed to be lesbian and bisexual respectively

• Amity might dress in a "punk aesthetic" to impress people but she's more of a jock in Dana's mind

• When asked about King's broken horn, Dana just replied with "all will be revealed eventually"

• Dana hopes Season 2 will make us cry

• Originally, the gems on Eda and Lilith's chests was just going to be an in-world fashion choice. But during production for The Intruder she decided to use Eda's gem as a visual aid for the curse

• There's more to Amity's parents than we know, which can be either good or bad for our main cast. Also, Dana had fun writing Mr Blight stating that he was interesting

• We may see Luz celebrate her quinceanera (her 15th birthday) but that's if the show gets a third season

• Luz is Amity's first (big) crush

• We'll get to know everyone a bit better in S2

• Hooty apparently has an evil twin, Booty (I'm pretty sure this is just for laughs though)

• In the first episode, there was a background character that looked similar to Amity in design (the one with the pink stripe). Dana revealed that Amity did have a different design originally

• Edric and Emira are salty about getting stood up at Grom but they'll get over it as "they'll have plenty of distractions"

• There will not be a musical episode

• It was a last minute idea for Dana to include "Talk to the glyph, witch!" in Young Blood, Old Souls

• According to Dana, Disney is "historically weird" in terms of merch

• "Bird-themed things are generally a Clawthrone thing"

• Dana has always wanted to do an official graphic novel

• Eda and Lilith are confirmed to have more sibling moments

• Dana has no least favourite character design, but the puppeteer in Witches Before Wizards freaks her out

• Eda has been to vegas before and was not impressed

• Eda will win against Lilith in Hexes Hold'em, but most likely by cheating

• When a witch joins a coven, they're physically unable to perform magic outside of that area. Basic spells like levitation for small objects can be done but with great difficulty

• Witch is a gender-neutral term, wizards are a title which you can call yourself and "warlock" is akin to "edgelord" in the Demon Realm

• Spencer Wan is the only in-house animator (animation supervisor) for Season 1, and to acquire this Dana had to sit through many meetings with executives to get this position. The in-house animator for Season 2 will be Kofi Fiagome

• We can expect parental conflict, a lot of emotions, island exploration and new characters in S2

• Lilith's palisman is alive like Owlbert

• If Eda's curse can be healed her hair will not turn back to its original colour

• Belos has specific inspirations which will be revealed in S2

• King's backstory is deeper than we think

• Amity and Willow's relationship has a long way to go, but the air between them is definitely lighter now

• When asked about the codes hidden in the show, Dana said that in high school, Dana would spend her summers in Russia, and her and her Russian classmate would pass each other notes that was a mix of both the English and Russian alphabet. From there their secret language developed and changed and helped inspire the codes, along with Gravity Falls

• Luz would play minecraft and spend all her time building castles and coming up with stories for the towns she built

• Dana has many favourites on the show, but she loves Eda and King. She tends to like the characters she has the easiest time writing

• Willow works out every morning. Unlike Boscha, she doesn't brag about it

• Everything that people responded to from S1 (especially the last few episodes), there will be more of in S2

• No one's really sure what Hooty's made of

• Many Boiling Isles sculptors and architects are part of the Construction Coven

• Eda's bile sac stopped producing the chemicals needed to produce magic on her own. It's still there although it's useless now

• Luz is "a bit of a bonehead" when it comes to Amity's signals (Dana doesn't mean this as an insult)

• 4 years ago when Dana pitched the original idea for the show an old writing partner told him that no one would watch a show about an old lady, so she made the pitch bible out of spite

• Creepy Luz was actually a joke in response to the line, "maybe I'll meet a hot yet vulnerable upperclassman" from The First Day, but Dana likes the doppelganger theory and will neither confirm nor deny that she exists

• Dana likes to think that Boscha and Amity's moms have a rivalry from childhood and still compete with one another through their kid's achievements

• Edric and Emria's hair is naturally green like Mrs Blight's while Amity's hair is naturally brown like her dad's and Mrs Blight likes her children to be...colour coordinated

• The demon on Principal Bump is named Frewin, that's all for now

• The application of glyphs and their uses will be covered in Season 2

• A palisman is our world's equivalent of a "witch's familiar"

• Witches will usually carve their palisman from a special type of wood in their teens in school or with parental supervision

• A palisman uses their own source of power outside of a witch's bile sac 

• Witches can join covens when they graduate school, and if they're talented enough they can leave early and join a coven

• Why King wears a collar will be revealed in S2

• Yes, Dana is aware of Lego Eda's existence