Okay so I'm starting to question my sanity on this.. do fully mentally healthy people actually exist? Just like actually happy, functional human beings?
I’ve put off posting this for months because I wanted to find my comics so I could talk about how she fits into this one story wise, but I’ve officially given up on that so AT LONG LAST here’s Lauren in The Midnight Giant!
Comic Lauren is younger and a little less mature than her show counterpart, she has less of a parental role towards Hilda and enjoys messing with her. She’s considered a lot less…reliable by her mother. But she genuinely tries, she does everything she can to help her family and prove to her Mum that she’s capable, but that’s a little hard when Johanna’s focus is on Hilda’s shenanigans so often…
What if Hobie also have powers that most spider-people don't?
When I first saw the this scene I thought it was supposed to symbolise Hobie havning a similar power to Miles, as he was able to break the barrier when the other spider-people couldn't! (Though this could also be because Miles loosened it like he mentioned himself!)
Having watched the movie several times now I'm not as convinced that this is the case, BUT it would also explain how Hobie knew that Miles could use his powers more efficiently if he used his palms and not just his fingers; if Hobie had a similar power he would know how it works!
(Another theory could be that Hobie is using a shockwave from his guitar to break the shield like shown when he introduces himself, though he also appears to have some giant speakers behind him in that scene).
ALSO: At first I thought it was just part of the way Hobie was animated, but I heard someone mention it in a youtube video and now I wanna bring it up too:
Can Hobie teleport?
If we look at the first GIF of him telling Miles to use his palms we can clearly see him suddenly appear much closer to Miles than before!
And in the next shot he appears to be back where he stood before! He actually does something similar another time:
I did not remove anything between these scenes, Hobie literally goes from lying on his back to behind the corner (top left) in a second. And once Peter B appears he's now behind Miles and Gwen (who have both turned 180 degrees to face Peter!) (I uploaded the video to better show what I mean)
Again this might purely be due to the way he's animated and the fact that he doesn't believe in consistency but I think it's fun to speculate nonetheless!
You know, with the fact that Ryn went and got herself petrified within a day of finding out just how willing the Ruby Vanguard are to fuck a wizard up, I do think that, while the bar is very low, Essek (as he is during the course of the campaign) really does deserve some credit for never ending up in such a self-imposed pickle that he needed his allied party to show up and save him from himself. In fact, the only time the Nein directly felt the need to worry about him was when Caleb put him in danger without thinking through certain connections that would be made, and even then, that was more of Caleb feeling guilt-ridden about it than actual worrying.
And to be very clear, Essek absolutely was and still to this day in canon is in a massive, self-imposed pickle, but when it actually comes down to it, the Nein were pretty tangential and superfluous to navigating that, and he's predominantly doing the work himself.
some of y'all: Lestat is so cold to Claudia, no wonder she doesn't consider him her father
the actual episode, told from Claudia's POV: Lestat wearing a silly hat, singing to her, and giving her a meaningful (to him, at least, if you read into what he says about it) gift on her birthday, the three of them dancing together and spinning each other around, Claudia leaning into Lestat's side as they make fun of Nosferatu in the theatre and laughing about it again when Lestat reenacts it for her amusement later, Claudia saying she has a lot in common with Lestat and that he defended her behavior to Louis when he expressed a concern about her being too removed from humanity and not acting quite right around other people, Lestat nervously teaching her how to drive and reminding her that even if she cannot die, she can still be seriously hurt so she should take her safety seriously, etc, etc.