Fundamentally, "The Owl House" is an allegorical story dealing with the dichotomy at the heart of the "American Dream", with Luz representing the ideal of America as a Melting Pot of Nations that brings together all the peoples of the world, while Belos/Philip represents the Manifest Destiny crap about how America exists to serve the interests of rich White Cishet Christian (preferably Protestant) Men and no one else. Both of them literally follow the classic American Immigrant Story™ of coming to a new land with nothing but the clothes on your back and making your way in the world with cleverness and ingenuity and intelligence. Luz even goes so far as to fall in love with the daughter of a prominent rich family and win her love in return like she’s in “Hamilton”. But whereas Belos attempts to destroy the Isles’ beautiful culture and/or twist to suit his own purposes so that he can kill and destroy everyone and everything on them, Luz accepts the culture of the Witches as her own and helps to restore it to its former glory after Belos is destroyed.

It’s also kind of a Christ allegory wherein Luz is a dark-skinned person raised by a working class single mother in a distant corner of the world’s most powerful nation who comes to a world straining under the weight of a truly terrible tyranny and helps people heal from their trauma and pain and love for her redeems or at least helps to redeem several flawed and broken people and her name can potentially even be taken as a reference to the messianic solar deity Sol Invictus and/or the Jewish concept of the Ur Ein Sof…oh, and her whole thing is descending into the Underworld and offering her life up to save its inhabitants and denizens.

(And no, I will not attempt to read Christian meanings into “Amphibia” or “The Ghost and Molly McGee”. “Amphibia” is a Buddhist story wherein the Calamity Trio (or at least Anne) are destined to transcend physical reality/Samsara and become deities/Bodhisatta through their good deeds and kindness, while Molly McGee is a personification of Tikkun Olam/a potential Tsadik Nistar who heals the world without realising just how much of a positive impact she’s been leaving on people, at least at first).

@disregardcanon @lady-asteria @witch-apologist @awakefor48hours @candyskiez

TOH Fans: OMG, you should watch The Owl House, there's gay witches that kiss on screen!!

Plot points about government corruption, ethnic cleansing, living with a chronic disability, white washed history, working through grief, having abusive parental figures, overcoming suicidal thoughts, and more

The “Wish” songwriters: Here’s a beautiful song about the hero and the villain singing about their contrasting perspectives on the central MacGuffins of the story, with the villain treating them as a resource and power source to be hoarded and controlled while the heroine recognises them as the truly beautiful and personal things that they truly are, and this is a song structure that’s a subtle homage and development of the idea that Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz tried out in the “Heaven’s Light”/“Hellfire” duology back in “Hunchback of Notre Dame” in 1996.

Certain animation fans: Well I think it would have worked so much better if it was just a more somber version of “I see the light”, ie a generic love duet between Asha and the Star Boy Love Interest.

@writerqueenofjewels @whencartoonsruletheworld @birdsareblooming

people saying at all costs is weird because it sounds like a love song really don’t get that deep love is does not only come in romance, like i’ve seen the same people call you’ll be in my heart a love song when that context is so different in the movie

@noa-nightingale @strangesmallbard @carcosa-commune @cynicalclassicist

Just to be clear, I don’t think Jessie is a stupid person, far from it, in fact. She is a very smart, well-spoken person in all of her videos that I’ve seen.

However, what I do think is going on with her and this video is that she, like a lot of Leftists and Liberals across the internet, is suffering from what I like to call Star Wars Derangement Syndrome, a phenomenon which I will illustrate below:

Tumblr Jews: Calmly and logically explaining why the Jewish people felt the need to establish a nation state in their ancestral homeland after every other option had been exhausted and how Hamas cares more about destroying Israelis than saving fellow Palestinians

Tumblr Goyim: Oh I get it! Hamas is basically the Rebel Alliance and Israel is basically the Galactic Empire! 

Basically, Jessie is someone who, like a lot of online Leftists and Liberals, gets her politics less from reading actual philosophy and history books and more from her engagement with movies, TV shows, cartoons, comic books, anime, and/or video games. As a result of this, she tends to filter her thoughts and opinions on these complex phenomena like the Israel-Palestine Crisis through a lens of the pop culture she’s absorbed throughout her life + whatever history they vaguely remember from middle school and/or high school and/or poorly sourced, poorly worded Tumblr posts. And quite frankly, Americans of all political stripes have a bad tendency to see morality as a team sport where there’s a Good Team who only ever does Good Things and an Evil Team who only ever does Evil Things. And as far as they are concerned, the Western Powers like Israel and the United States and the United Kingdom are the Evil Team and the Third World is the oppressed Good Team who are a band of scrappy rebels fighting back against The Big Scary Evil Imperial Powers (let’s just ignore that Hamas is a billionaire-led organisation funded by a nuclear power in the form of Iran and the very wealthy nation of Qatar). And everyone is either on one side or the other. Like, you’ll notice she doesn’t specify what Ira Steven Baehr’s specific objections to Jonathan Glazer’s speech actually were, right? Like, it could have been as simple as “Don’t compare the Holocaust to the Palestinian Crisis, especially because part of what made the Holocaust so unspeakably horrific is that it was a mindless Genocide For Genocide’s Sake against populations that posed no threat to either the German People or the German State, whilst Hamas actually does and has done all manner of horrific shit, and the Palestinian War going on currently is horrific because innocent people who are already subject to all sorts of atrocities by their own government are now being subjected to even more atrocities from a foreign government and thus are suffering under two unspeakably awful authoritarian regimes”. I severely doubt a guy like Ira Steven Baehr is going to write that “Actually, Netanyahu and Likud dropping White Phosphorus on residential neighbourhoods and drone striking babies in hospitals is Great! It’s exactly what Mosheh and Eliyahu would have wanted in the Tanakh! How dare you question our Torah, Mister Uncomfortable Dramas with Great Sound Design! You just don’t get it, you villainous boged, you!”.

*Beleaguered sigh* I really hope that Jessie’s upcoming video that she’s releasing later this week lets her speak in a more nuanced manner about these issues and shows a more complex and whole understanding of all of these issues.

@dachi-chan25 @disregardcanon

Okay I... am maybe not the best person to talk about this but I have serious problems with Jessie Gender's new video, When Your Favorite Creator Turns Out to Be Zionist.

Let me first say - I like Jessie Gender. I watched many of her videos and I think she has a lot of very interesting, moving, important things to say about topics like queerness, humanity and such.

But this video just... irked me.

I do not like how she talks about Zionists and Zionism. I have seen how the word Zionist is used against Jewish people. I am not the best person to put it into words but I do not like it when it is used as an insult or implied to be inherently a bad thing.

She seems to use it to mean "person who supports Israel's actions" (implied to support what she calls a genocide throughout the video) and that... is not right.

There are other issues I have as well with the video, like comparing the I/P situation to the Holocaust. There are more things but I am honestly not qualified to speak on them.

Before someone accused me of "supporting a genocide" - I do not. I wish for peace and safety for Palestinians AND Israelis. (And since I have been called a Zionist in the past - I do not consider myself to be one.)

I am just generally disappointed by a creator I like tbh.

I don't think I got my thoughts across very well. I'll be on the lookout for posts made by Jewish people about this video.

Honestly, is it just me, or can this be seen as Riordan making commentary on how much World War Two has been lionised and mythologised in global and especially American (if we’re being honest) popular culture to a very similar extent as the Trojan War was lionised and mythologised in Ancient Greek culture. Especially since, if I remember correctly, the Trojan War is said in some myths to be a thing Zeus devised to curb the numbers of demigods and heroes who were all running around because of his own licentious escapades.

@uncleasriel @disregardcanon @cynicalclassicist @carcosa-commune

Oh my god, I forgot the “world war II was a fight between kids of the big 3” angle of Percy Jackson. Rick the fuck was that?

If any of my Jewish and/or Muslim and/or Palestinian mutuals want or need comfort or support in these trying times, I’m still here. And I’m happy to help.

Well get through this together.

@dachi-chan25 @disregardcanon @cynicalclassicist @carcosa-commune @beyondmistland

Is there any one misconception about the Middle Ages that particularly sticks in your craw?

Probably the biggest one is just the whole “Dark Ages” idea, where everyone just suddenly became idiot cavemen around 500 AD and stayed that way until 1700, never bathing or thinking anything, and that if anyone did have an original idea, the Church would shoot it down right away and have them executed. 

Of course, there was some technological setback after the Roman Empire fell, but we’d experience that too if our federal government and infrastructure suddenly disappeared over a weekend. Medieval Europe survived through more than just one event that could be considered apocalyptic in nature. They weren’t stupid, and they weren’t just banging rocks together. Significant advancements in chemistry, metelergy, architecture, education, warfare, and philosophy were made during the middle ages.

Also–and I’m guilty of this too, in this very post in fact–it’s a poor idea to even just call it “the Middle Ages” or “the Medieval Period”. The Middle Ages is a time period spanning approximately 1,200 years, so it’s wrong to lump it into one time period. It’s massive and a LOT of things happened. 

My favorite example to put this in perspective is this: 

The Norman knights on the Bayeux Tapestry were as old to a knight in full Dark Souls-style(16th century) plate armor as that 16th century knight is to us. And the Middle Ages had already been going for over 500 years before the Bayeux Tapestry was made. 

It’s actually much better broken up into dozens of little time periods based not only on time but on geography as well. 

Fantasy writers and artists should take not as well, because having a Viking fighting alongside a man in full plate armor is as anachronistic as having a man in full plate armor fighting alongside U.S. troops in Iraq. 

Please reblog if you think that “they/them/theirs” is a valid set of pronouns.

this post must be reblogged by everyone

what's so striking to me about younger queer generations rn isn't the lack of knowledge about queer history, but the complete unwillingness to engage with it, when confronted with an identity or history they haven't heard of before they react with disgust rather than curiosity. (for example) instead of asking where the leather pride flag came from and what the leather community is and represents they immediately question the need for something like that to exist, not even willing to listen and learn from both elders and peers. this is also more broadly a problem in leftist spaces in general, being reactionary is somehow the default now, and anything that's different or unknown must be an attack and bad. really hoping y'all manage to grow out of this deeply conservative way of interacting with the world.

And I think part of what adds to the tragedy of all this is that, as tragic and self-hating as she is…Jinx/Powder still deeply wants to be a brave hero just like everyone else in “Arcane”. More specifically, she and Caitlyn both want to be the heroes from specific types of stories. More specifically, Caitlyn wants to be the Brave Heroic Cop/Gumshoe Detectice who Brings Down the Evil and Oppressive Crime Lord who’s ruining the Undercity, while Jinx wants to be The Brave, Spunky Teen Rebel who Brings Down the Oppressive Government System with the Power of Punk. So basically, Caitlyn wants to be Judy Hopps while Jinx/Powder wants to be a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Hobie “Spider-Punk” Brown.

However, to put it bluntly, “Arcane” is not that kind of story. One of its major thematic points is that you can’t just save the world by defeating the One Big Bad Guy because there is no One Big Bad Guy or Big Bad Evil System that’s responsible for all of the world’s misery and suffering. So instead of instantly solving the undercity’s problems, Vi, Jayce, and Caitlyn’s destruction of the Shimmer factory just mildly inconveniences Silco and implicitly deprives the Zaunian people of jobs and security under Silco’s regime. And yet not destroying the factory would probably have allowed Silco to continue hurting and exploiting people for their labour, so there was no one easy solution that would have solved everything.

Ultimately, when you get right down to it, the real hero of “Arcane”…is Ekko. He’s the one who, despite all of the darkness and misery and pain of the Undercity/Zaun, still manages to create something good and meaningful and wonderful amidst all the pain and chaos. And that’s in large part because, unlike Jinx or Silco or even Vi and Caitlyn, he isn’t looking for an enemy to fight, but rather just seeing people in need and providing them with food and shelter. And that is the ultimate difference between Silco and Ekko as characters, especially in terms of what they view as Zaun being liberated from Piltover’s de facto rule. Where Silco wants Control and Domination with himself as Zaun’s supreme ruler, Ekko wants Community and Connection and does not feel the need to be validated as leader just because he leads the Firelights.

And that is why Ekko succeeds and Silco fails.

@dachi-chan25 @uncleasriel @disregardcanon @cynicalclassicist @carcosa-commune

I think one of the things I find most fascinating about “Arcane” is that nobody has a motivation of, like, “I’m just bad!” or “I’m greedy!” or “I just like to hurt and/or kill people!”.

SEE YOU GET ME.

Even the genuinely awful people have real human motivations. Even if the person is fully aware they're bad, they have a HUMAN reason for doing it. Jinx is a fascinating example. She thinks she's irredeemable so she desperately tries to reclaim it, to make her worst mistakes a part of her that makes her stronger, that makes her special and not just someone who ruins everything. She can use the only thing she ever does to make someone proud of her. She stays Bad so to speak because if she tries to change, that means losing the only person she believes still loves her, that means ending up alone and messing everything up again, and this time having no one to fix it for her. She's so INTERESTING. It's just. God! All the characters feel like PEOPLE and they never let you forget they're people. And that's what's so fucking cool. They never ever let you forget that this is a person making bad decisions or doing bad things, not some nebulous Bad Entity.

You know, I think it’s very telling that Rick Riordan chose to make a point in “The Lightning Thief” that the Golden Age described by Hesiod in “Works and Days” was mostly just Titan propaganda that serves to cover up how humans were exploited and oppressed by Kronos and his siblings.

Leaning into the fact that all Half-Bloods are canonically neurodivergent and marginalised within society, there’s a lot to be said about how Kronos and Luke’s whole plan is recruiting kids who feel the system/The Olympian Gods have failed them into what’s basically a cult that promises them the restoration of an alleged “Lost Golden Age” where people like them get to be on top of society again. You might say their goal is to make Mount Othrys great again.

(Also, I also get the feeling that Riordan knows what a sexist pig Hesiod was and wants to call him out and roast him just a little).

@disregardcanon @uncleasriel @cynicalclassicist @carcosa-commune @unclerickfanblog

something something the original percy jackson series being published in post 9-11 america. something something luke castellan and the kids who went off to fight a war for "america's honor" or whatever and coming back angry and damaged about it but not directing it in a way that helps get rid of the problem

Justice for Coyote Vs Acme

I know I'm a little bit late to the matter, but I just want to express how much I despise the way Warner Bros. have been treating their cartoons as of late. From the shutdown of Cartoon Network Studios, to the cancellation of this movie; it's obvious that David Zaslav and the execs of Warner Bros. Discovery have zero respect for the animation industry.

The fact that a team of writers, animators, producers, directors, and actors were all called upon to work on this movie, putting their all into this movie to ensure that it is the best that it can be, only for it to be thrown in the garbage before it ever had the chance to see a glimpse of the public eye. It is sick. It is sick how easily David Zascrap screwed over this film, just because he didn't see it as "profitable". It is so obvious that the primary goal of WBD is to churn out as much money from their films that their filthy hands can grasp, and they will happily cancel a project that they don't believe will turn those profits.

But what David Zascrap dosen't realize, and what he will NEVER realize, is that the art of animation goes far beyond just profits. Animation is art, and it should be treated as such. What if a museam decided to throw out a Picaso painting just because not enough people were looking at it? People would see that as outrageous. Therefore, we should apply the same logic to this situation. All animation must be preserved. They are art, and (especially if done well) will remain priceless until the end of time.

Thankfully, the vast majority of people in the animation community are against WBD's decision to cancel Coyote Vs Acme. It's very likely that the film is set to be deleted forever, which would be a terrible fate for this movie. People need to speak up, and bring to light the mistreatment this movie has recieved. The more we make our voices heard, the more likely the big corperations will listen.

And to the animators, writers, and everyone else who worked their asses off to make Coyote Vs Acme, know that the community sympathizes with you. You guys work hard, and you deserve a lot more credit for all the hell you have to go through to make these movies possible.

And to you, David Zascrap, I'm sending Wile over to your office with a 10-ton anvil. He'll be there in 15 minutes.

[Image description: The trans and non-binary flags]

since the old version of this post was flagged for 'adult content'...

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!

along with that, reblog if your account is a trans non-binary spectrum safe space or owned by someone on the trans enby spectrum!

Even if you don't love Catradora as a romantic relationship, you have to admit Nate Stevenson put a lot of complexity into both Catra and Adora as individual characters and into the intricate tangle of love and pain and trauma and regret that is their relationship to each other.

oh definitely agree he weaved an excellently well written relationship that explores love within the confines of an oppressive system and then the resulting trauma as well. and then catra and adora separately are just so well rounded I could talk about them for hours; they literally feel like real people!!

Okay. Then tell me why Putin went through the trouble of invading the entire country with weapons and tanks and missiles lobbed against its cities? Why were Russian soldiers allowed or mayhaps even encouraged to commit horrifying acts against Ukrainian women? Why were Ukrainian children kidnapped and taken back to Russia? This doesn’t seem like something a Putin who was just trying to protect the innocent people of Donbas from Ukrainian nationalist aggression would not allow.

ukraine may be fighting the biggest modern empire in the world that wants to take its colony back to oppress and subjugate its people and culture as it has been for CENTURIES but that still not anti-imperialistic enough for some people

Proving a point to my boyfriend.

PLEASE REBLOG if you (male or female) believe it is perfectly okay and natural for a guy of any age to cry

Which ND Stevenson story is this again?

Diversity win!! The golden child and the scapegoat are kissing on the mouth!!!

"Aphrodite loves terfs" do you really think a goddess of love formed from a literal penis and the mother of Hermaphroditus, an intersex god who was associated with androgyny and feminine men, fucks around with transphobia?

she is a literal trans icon and to deny that will get you smited by all the gods