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fermented-writers-block · 2 years

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Was Amphibia a canonical Swap AU between Anne and Marcy the whole time?

Credit to @thesugarcookieday as the first person I know to ever suggest this theory and to @mira-blue for helping me flesh out this idea plus @swasfews for indirectly inspiring all of this, as I would just like to help expand upon this train of thought a bit further, starting with evidence surprisingly many have overlooked:

"KEEPER OF THE BOX, ONE STRONG OF MIND, three trials await that will return the stones' shine"

Already from the very first trial of the very first temple, it was directly implied to us that the temples were built under the idea that the role of being the box's keeper belongs to the bearer of Wit specifically - or at least, that that was the inherent function the box and temples were created around thousands of years ago. Yet for most of the first two seasons, it is Anne, bearer of Heart, who is treated more like the box's keeper by the show's narrative and framing than Marcy ever is.

Even in The First Temple, Marcy merely borrows the box in order to get the Wit stone to hold onto before returning the box to Anne, who keeps the box in her backpack for all three temple episodes, and during The Second Temple, Valeriana's strong emphasis on "you" while gesturing in the following shots indicates that she was referring to Anne specifically, especially with the way everyone's eyes were focused on her.

Valeriana: "And you possess the music box?"

Anne: "Sure do."

While it's hard to judge the exact degree to which Valeriana's later claim to be the box's "rightful guardian" applies between how she said that while testing Anne, how she also summoned the music box to her with a simple finger move, and how she let Anne leave with the box after everything, I think it remains prudent to remember that - regardless of Marcy's hidden desperation or however Anne wound up having to steal it from the thrift store - the box was overall framed throughout the show as Anne's birthday gift, and she opened it first rather than Marcy.

On Discord, @thesugarcookieday suggested that that detail might have unintentionally swapped possession of the box between Anne and Marcy, while I personally suspect there potentially have been some kind of external or maybe even ‘maternally olm-y’ influence to intentionally switch the two, but whatever the case turns out to be, there’s a second significant piece of evidence for this theory in the temples, which starts with why Sasha isn’t included in this hypothetical swap:

As can be clearly seen with the third temple’s calamity stone charging port, the only race given any focus there is the mighty toad, whom Sasha landed amongst with Toad Tower and Grime’s army.

Sure, there’s also olm/siren theming present with the temple entrance as well as the final trial chamber’s doorframe, but given that the charging ports are THE central keystone location/device each temple was built to lead up to, I would say that the charging port theming likely takes much larger precedence over the rest of the corresponding temple’s theming, which brings us to Anne and Marcy’s…

Although the outhouse charging port in the final cut of the first temple has what could potentially be stylized newt theming, they are not present in the original concept art nor do they appear anywhere else in the final episode for longer than a second. Meanwhile, the clear obvious focus of the outhouse is the comparatively much bigger and more prominent frog in front of which the charging pedestal appears, and is the clear focal point of the entire structure with the final message from the temple.

As for the second temple, while the music box frog appears carved into the top of the charging tower, the fact that the glowing runes directly reference both Valeriana’s staff and presumably the giant statue wrapped around the tower heavily weighs the scales in favor of olms/sirens, particular types of salamander.

In other words, each temple’s respective charging ports subtly suggest that - at least, back when the box and temples were created that is - Wit was supposed to go with frogs and Heart was supposed to go with olms/sirens/aka probably precursors to newts, while Strength was still sitting comfortable with toads.

Heck, the second temple is the only one of the three to directly share any of the box’s aesthetics with the aforementioned frog whatsoever through both the tower and the shield Valeriana has up for sale. That indirectly suggests a strong connection between Anne’s calamity power and the box’s origins compared to Marcy’s power’s connection to the box’s creator(s)’ intentions, and compared to the anvil imagery in the third temple thus potentially drawing a connection to the box’s construction at that.

Add in where Anne and Marcy landed and who they landed among upon arrival to Amphibia, and the probable switch between the two just becomes even more apparent.

After all, Anne landed next to the vibrant healthy greens of the frog-filled Wartwood, whereas Marcy landed in the literally named Newtopia surrounded by cool watery blues.

Notably, though newts are framed as being the smartest in present day Amphibia, the logic of the first temple’s first trial means that Marcy should have arrived with the box in tow regardless of wherever she ended up, yet what what the temples suggest what ought to have occurred between frogs, Wit, and the box instead occurred with Heart this round. Anne and Marcy still respectively fit Heart and Wit the best out of the trio, but their starting situations don't match them at all.

Overall, as the architectural and artistic style of the temples differ immensely from what we've seen thus far of Amphibia's ancient empire/the frobot factories, and as the idea of a music box is VERY incongruous with being a tool for interdimensional conquering, it’s rather unlikely that Andrias or his ancestors were the original creators.

Personally, I doubt that his ancestors were even able to modify the box and temples much in the first place, let alone how they worked in regards to the original calamity trait association for each race. Instead, it seems to me that his ancestors figured out what the box’s intended functions were, then devised machinery that took advantage of and perverted said functions as inputs for much more harmful intentions.

Either way, it’s just fascinating the way the temples seem to tell us one story about how the box was made to be used, how Andrias’ ancestors tells a different story about how the box was used, and how the show’s subtle framing of Anne as the box’s (until recently) current owner seems to be setting up an entirely new story for how it might/will be used later.

I’m sure folks like @borkthemork and @pyroclastic727 would be able to wring more out of the temples with the temple analysis they’ve done than I could, as well as speculate better on what might have happened had Marcy and Anne’s position NOT been swapped, but what do the rest of you guys think?

#amphibia #amphibia theory #amphibia speculation #amphibia meta #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #calamity box

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pyroclastic727 · 2 years

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The Reason Behind Amphibia’s Weird Tone

Amphibia is a show powered by emotions. At its core is this powerful familial bond between Anne and the Plantars. There’s also the relationship between Anne, Sasha, and Marcy, borne of strong feelings and fears and complicated by a pattern of codependency. This show has succeeded at providing emotional gut punches and the cathartic reward of how the characters cope with it.

So then why does Season 3 feel so numb?

It’s especially prevalent when you look at the Anne episodes. Anne really doesn’t feel like the same person she was before.

Before season 3, Anne had a lot of emotional issues. She compartmentalized heavily, leading to a lot of snapping at people and crying over things.

When Hop Pop hid the box, she stormed away and sulked for an entire episode. Then she said she forgave him, which turned out to be an empty promise. The problems didn’t go away overnight, and it wasn’t as if the previous episode suddenly hadn’t happened. The events from before had an effect on the plot afterwards.

Look at Anne’s anger at Sasha. She literally headbutted a guard out of rage at Sasha’s betrayal. We’ve heard these huge lines from her, about not wanting to be pushed around anymore, how Sasha is a horrible friend, and we see that Sasha’s actions are too big to ignore, and Anne can’t stay silent about them.

Even if we look at Anne’s crying. She cried a lot, often over things that just didn’t really matter. Look at the humorous crying in Day at the Aquarium. She’s right in the middle of that sob pile, afraid to leave her frog family behind.

And damn, did she long for her friends a lot. In Best Fronds and Marcy at the Gates, she stares at that polaroid she carries around everywhere. She mentions Sasha and Marcy offhand all the time, reminiscing over all the things they used to do back home, and how she’s excited to spend more time with them once they reunite.

Well, then Marcy died. And Anne didn’t seem to feel anything at all.

I mean, sure, we saw her say that Marcy has to be alive somehow, but she didn’t really talk about it at all after that. And while there have been allusions to her staying up late at night, the focus has seemingly shifted to the goal of getting the frogs back home.

Which, according to her speech in The New Normal, isn’t even her main goal. Anne wants to find a way to get her friends back and make peace with them, and she wants to finish defeating Andrias. Getting the frogs home? That’s, like, her 3rd most important goal. The goals that are closest to her heart are the goals that have to do with regaining her friends and getting revenge.

In The New Normal, we actually did see a lot of this emotion. That episode felt like coming home for a lot of viewers. Anne was reasonably stressed about keeping secrets from her parents. Her dad dropped hints about Sasha and Marcy (when he said “you three--I mean, four”) and we saw their names carved into Anne’s bedpost. Anne even looked at the picture of the three of them, the one she has saved to her phone. We haven’t seen it since.

Actually, Anne has been increasingly more emotionless since then.

I mean, look at her. She’s been staying up late researching ways to get back to Amphibia, but she’s been doing it more to get the frogs home than anything else.

And she’s been going on a lot of irrelevant adventures. Like when she made cookies for the frogs. Or when she took them to the movies.

Actually, after her blue-charged fight with the cloak-bot, Anne seems to have lost interest in her main goal--a fact only highlighted by its pairing with the horrific events that have happened to Marcy.

That’s when we see this overarching pattern: every time Anne uses her powers, the subsequent episodes get less and less focused on Anne’s emotional goals. Hell, they don’t even show as much emotion.

See If You Give a Frog a Cookie, for example. That episode showed a lot of the Plantars in full tears, crying on the floor around Anne. Which seems like normal Plantar shenanigans, until you think about how, in Day at the Aquarium, Anne was crying with them.

Or think about Hop til you Drop, where the frogs do all of this irresponsible stuff. Anne blames herself, almost halfheartedly, instead of getting mad at them for abusing her hospitality and being blatantly direspectful. Which seems like decent character growth, except didn’t she just have a season finale, two episodes ago, where her anger motivated her to try to murder a newt king?

It almost feels like Anne’s desires, her motives, her emotions, are being drained from her.

Or, put another way:

Anne is losing her heart.

And suddenly, this has a lot of chilling implications.

Let’s take, for example, the part in The New Normal where she mentions to Sprig that these powers feel bad, somehow. Every time she uses her powers, she passes out for a little bit. Watching her weakened, watching her energy get drained by these powers, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s not just her energy getting drained.

Using the powers is triggered by a need to protect. By principle, Anne’s desire to protect people is rooted in her love for them--that is to say, an emotional attachment driven by her heart.

It has been logical to assume that the heart gem enhances these qualities. However, enhancing is not the only thing it does.

The most perplexing thing about the Amphibian temples is their function. These temples have been repeatedly used to remove powers. Why would a society set up trials to test that someone is worthy to have their powers removed? Wouldn’t a temple exist to reward powers to those who deserve them?

That’s where it gets kind of creepy that Anne’s heart seems to be drained.

Wouldn’t it be easy to use a test to find people strong of heart, and then let the gem drain that heart from them, to put it somewhere else?

Let’s take a look at Marcy. She used to be a heavily emotionally-driven character, with her fear and trust issues leading her to send her friends to another dimension. Now she has become Darcy, a character known for its cold detachment and robot qualities.

It’s almost as if Andrias’s goal requires Anne, Sasha, and Marcy to be drained of the very qualities that they are strongest at.

Because where else is someone going to find a natural charge for a gem? The temples transferred them, sure, but the charge itself has to be activated by the correct combination, the perfect group of three.

The box hadn’t been activated before. It wasn’t activated by Sasha randomly opening it in True Colors. The only thing that could activate the box by merely opening it was the perfect combination of three people who already possessed each gem’s trait.

Now all the box needs to do is drain it from them.

#amphibia #anne boonchuy #amphibia theories #amphibia meta #amphibia predictions #amphibia speculation #marcy wu #sasha waybright #calamity box #calamity box theory #.pyro #pyro.txt #SHOUTOUT TO TOXICPSYCHOX FOR SAYING HEY MAYBE ANNE'S POWERS ARE DRAINING HER HEART

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luna--dragon · 2 years

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Literally none of the events in the show would've happened if the box gave the warning to Andrias instead of Leif

#YOU HAD ONE JOB #LOOK AT THE TRIO. THEY'RE TRAUMATISED #amphibia #amphibia spoilers #king andrias #calamity box #the core and the king

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ftvs-cm45 · 2 years

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She's seen it all, and she was right to steal the box.

#disney #amphibia #animated gif #king andrias #amphibia leif #calamity box #vision #future #the core and the king #moss man

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sometimes-they-come-back-237 · 2 years

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Della taking the Spear of Selene + Leif taking the Calamity Box.

Both resulting in multiple estranged relationships.

#ducktales #ducktales 2017 #disney #disney xd #scrooge mcduck #spear of selene #della duck #amphibia #king andrias #leif #leif amphibia #calamity box #parallels #the last crash of the Sunchaser #the core and the king

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konote-art · 3 years

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For an Amphibia request, how about your take on like Anne fully tapping into the cosmic, interdimensional, and ethereal power of her gem? After all, she only partially has some of its power left inside of her, and we already saw that her gem still has a TON of power left to be able to make interdimensional portals, so any thoughts on like a Calamity Goddess Anne or such?

The heart

Your ask inspired me so much that I drew a whole illustration!!!

I made her look a bit froggy with her eyes, I think it would be cool since the Calamity box came from Amphibia

I wanted to make the branches in her hair bigger and it looks likes horns now-

(noice)

Anyway!! This piece took me some time, I hope you like it!! :D

#anne boonchuy #amphibia #amphibia anne #super sayanne #amphiba fanart #calamity anne #calamity box #the heart #god anne #my art

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gremnda · 3 years

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Marcy wake up from your coma, complete the polycule

the song is this

#fun fact #i took Anne and Sasha's expressions from actual scenes they look at Marcy in the show #then just slapped a blush on them #idk what you can do with that information #sleep with it i guess lmao #my art #amphibia #amphibia art #amphibia fanart #Marcy wu #sasha waybright #anne boonchuy #sashannarcy #did i spell that right? i hope so #calamity box #calamity trio #pickled marcy

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welcometoamphibia · 2 years

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#amphibia #the owl house #toh #luz noceda #amity blight #lumity #calamity box #crossover #easter egg #knock knock knocking on hooty's door #amphibia toh crossover #girlfriends

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thesapphiccrytid · 2 years

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For a drawing request, how about your take on what a presumably calamity power-related “cosmic” Sasha might look like, if maybe even the whole trio if that’s okay with you?

If that doesn’t strike your fancy, what about Valeriana and Maddie talking about magic/strange and mysterious stuff? Sure might be fun to see the two interact

i was just gonna do a quick doodle but got carried away

i feel like their calamity powers are associated to elements that don't match the color, so anne has plants/earth, sasha has water and marcy has fire

honestly don't think we'll see sasha and marcy's calamity forms, pretty sure that's just gonna be an anne thing but it's still fun to think about

(also open image for best quality bc tumblr is weird)

#also i spent a full day staring at this and have no idea what to do with the background so it's just staying the way it is #amphibia #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #sasha waybright #calamity box #amphibia fanart #fanart

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finalfroevo · 2 years

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I wonder about the broken gem-

And what would happened if it shattered

#plantar ancestor #amphibia theory #amphibia #calamity box #amphibia spoilers

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waveypedia · 3 years

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i’m not ready

#amphibia #true colors #amphibia theory #anne boonchuy #sasha waybright #marcy wu #calamity box #king andrias #amphibia meme

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fermented-writers-block · 2 years

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Purple’s Odd Usage in Amphibia

Simply put, the way purple is incorporated into the show is weird. So much so that I suspect there's actually a secret color quadfecta hidden right in front of us. Let me explain:

We all know how much the magenta green cyan RGB color triad has been emphasized throughout the show, from the gems of the music box to the Red Strength-Green Wit-Blue Heart meaning of the girls’ calamity powers. Yet despite said constant emphasis on this triad, something that has always stuck out to me like a sore thumb are the girls’ color palettes.

For one of THE primary main characters of the show and for someone whose calamity power is BLUE in theming, Anne’s design and most prominent outfits the first two seasons almost overwhelmingly tend to either center around the color purple or use purple as a distinguishing highlight. And despite both multiple chances to acquire new clothes and having brought multiple changes of clothes in her backpack - particularly to the point Bessie and Microangelo’s whole subplot pointed out she seriously needed a change - she still held onto her same purple uniform and merely added a chest plate over it.

In fact, comparing the colors of the trio’s pre-Amphibia designs makes Anne stand out even more, as her association with purple completely precedes even meeting Sasha. And strangely enough, factoring in Sasha’s blue jackets with her magenta themed clothes leads to her and Marcy’s green fulfilling the show’s emphasized RGB color triad on their own. Even in Season 2 where Sasha’s armor transitioned to a more solidly red theming from Season 1′s neutral muddy browns as the seeds of growth were planted, the blue theming in the trio’s designs shifted over to Marcy’s skirt patch and cloak as a primary aspect of her outfit, whereas Anne’s outfit only received a light highlight of blue at a very late stage of the season for just a few episodes.

It has yet to be fully seen where the girls’ changing designs might be heading for this final third of the show, but as it stands, I strongly suspect they will continue to center around and further explore this mysterious Red Green Blue Purple color quadfecta.

Especially considering it also seems to inherently subtly be a large part of either the Calamity Box, portals, and or the power of the gems at that like explored under the cut:

For example, in the S3 intro, the entire music box glows purple, and in True Colors, while it’s hard to tell the exact colors used for the multicolored flash coming from the center of the gems, the sparkles coming off of said flash are subtly colored purple at that.

Furthermore, even the original intro/sequence of the girls being transported to Amphibia features the easy to miss inclusion of purple as an understated fourth color as seen with the four frames the box completely disappears like indicated with the color of the moon, and from the colors Anne flashes as she fully arrives in Amphibia (there’s a few frames where she’s see through or briefly flickers out of existence in between these distinct colors, and white is more of a neutral color than its own distinct thing):

Now, none of the second half of glowing happens in Marcy or Sasha’s theme song takeover, but that can be chalked up to a bunch of factors like the takeovers skipping over the flashing or including it in Anne’s as THE primary intro with the biggest budget and most important version to detail.

Either way, as the confusing mess of colors with yellows and multicolored lightning from the box during the first second after opening like can be presumed to be it essentially “charging up” or preparing the portal process, the four distinct colors of what seems to be the actual teleportation itself still stand out due to being part of the most important aspect of that sequence.

And fascinatingly, True Colors seems to distinguish purple as its own color even further when one takes stock of Andrias’ flashback to before the box’s theft.

In the present day, only the castle glowed blue out of the entire city upon activation, Andrias’ throne remains unlit, and the box’s pedestal is distinctively colored red, blue, and green as a reminder for those wondering.

On a side note, while purple does have its ancient history of being strongly associated with royalty, Andrias’ implicit role as Anne’s narrative foil does make it a bit striking how -with brown being a neutral color for clarification- his trio also splits up this RGBP color quadfecta in the frog with magenta/red, the toad with green, and Andrias with blue while continuing to be decked out in purple between the past and the present.

Altogether, while it's possible to argue that the show crew simply just randomly used purple as a decorative color for fun, I find purple's consistent apparent usage as a distinct color from the magenta green cyan RGB color show triad in A) a scene which has been repeatedly emphasized throughout the show and whose direct surrounding context has yet to be seen, B) both main variations of nearly every episode's opening and as part of THE show's central artifact/the first few things both openings show, C) several glaring discrepancies between how the box is used in the present day and the past, and D) THE main human character's primary outfit despite it raising more questions about why Anne doesn't have blue in her design a bit too much to brush off so easily.

Now, for what the hidden meaning purple could have for Anne and the calamity powers, it’s rather difficult to say. I’m not confident relying on color symbolism due to the hundreds of differing subjective interpretations out there. And relying on the show itself isn’t quite possible yet due to the current lack of attention or explicit meaning attributed to the color so far -especially since the liberal the usage of the RGB color triad and the rarity of purple makes it hard to distinguish where to look.

Overall, this post is meant to draw attention to the weirdness surrounding purple in Amphibia, and while I haven’t been able to come to any actual conclusions yet, I hope that bringing in some new perspectives can help with doing so.

That being said, there are two places that I could see as potential future avenues the show might explore.

First is the easy to overlook split second detail of Valeriana's teeth and pupils glowing purple in Bizarre Bazaar, which given her mysterious order and her position with the inner workings of the second temple I'd say marks this as a potential Chekov's detail:

And second is Hop Pop's berry rhymes from the start of Wally and Anne. When you look at the episode as a whole, the entire opening's focus on said rhymes sticks out from how little of a bearing it actually has on the rest of the episode or on the characters. That, and from how it's the only instance within the entire show where pairings of colors rather than just each color on their own are assigned any sort of meaning whatsoever as follows:

"Blue and red, instantly dead."

"Green and red, be well fed." / "Or was that 'Green and red, instantly dead?"

"Purple and green heals your spleen!"

Note: The following is mainly me going on a highly speculative discussion on the rhymes’ hypothetical meanings and my personal interpretations, so take them as you will

As an aside, while the first two's meanings are rather abstract and hard to decipher to say the least, the episode's focus on Hop Pop's confusion about what the actual ending to the pairing of Green with Red is seems likely to hold some foreshadowing or intentional clue to it. From that, either both meanings are true, neither are true, or it's a matter of figuring out which one is more correct/a case of it seeming one way but actually being the other (though given Sprig didn't instantly die from shoving a bunch of red and green berries into his mouth, my money's on the first positive interpretation as the correct one).

For the third rhyme however, I feel it's important to note that it was said while Hop Pop and the Plantars were walking off and thus quieter and not as easy to hear as the first two, and that as one might notice in light of the rest of this post, it features another case of purple interrupting the show's emphasis of the RGB triad. After all, if it was just about a color triad, the third rhyme ought to have been about Green and BLUE berries instead.

And in contrast to the vague ‘warning/good’ meaning of the first two rhymes, this this rhyme also refers to a specific bodily organ. Perhaps the writers just latched onto the word purely for its rhyming capability with 'green" since medically speaking, it mainly functions as a blood filter, but with some of the symbolism behind the organ, well...

Sure is interesting how "spleen" essentially has become a sister word to 'heart' with an emphasis on anger and such in our modern lexicon. Particularly with the way the primarily purple themed Anne Boonchuy holds onto the blue power of Heart, and how the sole berry rhyme that breaks away from the RGB color theming is about the pairing of purple and green together.

I know I brought up before how the RGBP color quadfecta was split between the girls' pre-Amphibia/friendship designs, but with how Anne's current outfit has red and blue take center stage over her old customary purple plus the way the color quadfecta theming could be seen as having shifted around in S2, it's honestly making my brain supply a hypothetical scenario where next time we see Sasha, her clothes have taken on a purple hue, while Anne's gradually starts losing hers over the course of the season.

After all, Anne's emotions are likely to be put to the test with the amount of repression she has going on and what she'll have to deal with when she gets back to Amphibia, and it would be thematically fitting in several ways if Anne and Sasha find themselves having essentially swapped narrative positions in a third season finale sword fight while wearing the primary colors the other had started out with pre-Amphibia. And there is the whole question about what "Blue and red, instantly dead" could mean as a color pairing, or how the third berry rhyme is about purple and green together "healing the [insert body organ associated with the heart/temper]," which in this scenario could be interpreted as Marcy and a now purple Sasha helping a blue and red Anne with her emotions in some capacity.

Of course, that is just a VERY wild speculative scenario at the moment and it doesn't quite get us any closer to the answer of what purple might specifically mean on its own in the context of the show or the color quadfecta, but like my good ole pal @mira-blue would say, I wonder if all of this together might mean anything...

#amphibia #amphibia theory #amphibia meta #amphibia speculation #anne boonchuy #sasha waybright #marcy wu #amphibia anne #calamity trio #calamity box #long post #VERY long post #final annetagonist theory #corruptianne theory

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