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Fragments from:

Surely there are better things to spend 88 billion US dollars than on torturing people and kicking people out of the place they've made their home.

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Comic Telephone Game

Calling all GF artists and non-artists, come finish this comic!

Rules

- one panel per person

- reblog and post your panel

- make sure to reblog the most recent panel

- shitty drawings are a bonus

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this was (as far as i can tell, ope) fantastic analysis! infinity train, excepting a few key moments, does come across very raceblind in how its characters are written.

though i do look sideways at the line "This points to a weakness that I can sort of see in Infinity Train in general, where they push societal problems into purely the realm of personal failings."

i think that that's... kinda the point though? passengers enter the train having something "wrong" in their life, and exit with that thing "fixed"- but who decides what is wrong and that it needs fixing and how it should be fixed? why does that justify months or years spent in a nightmare dimension where you and/or people you care about could die?

tulip is upset about her parents' divorce and doesn't want to talk about it. she's trapped on the train for 5 months and only gets her exit after a friend appears to have died. jesse needs to learn how to say no. he's trapped on the train for a month and gets his exit while leaving behind his friend with a cult set to murder them. grace is a lonely and antisocial child. she's trapped on the train for 8 YEARS where she forms a murder cult, nearly dies, and watches her best friend die horrifically. ryan and min-gi aren't talking to eachother or doing what they really want. they were on the train for who knows how long, where they were also nearly killed before receiving exits.

the train makes arbitrary judgements about how passengers are living their lives, without regards to the circumstances/society surrounding them, traps them in a dangerous place where they could die for months or years until they "fix" their "problems", and then dumps them back out into the "real world" with all that lost time and new trauma, which means they're probably worse off than they were before.

the train is a metaphor for prison. "pushing societal problems into purely the realm of personal failings" is what prison does.

The writing blindspots in Infinity Train with respect to race

To get this out of the way, I love Infinity Train! It’s one of my favourite shows! I started writing fanfiction because of this show, and it still inspires me every day. 

I really do think that Infinity Train as a whole is a very thought provoking children’s show and I applaud it for exploring darker themes relevant to psychology and psychological well-being, which are topics often overlooked not just in children’s media but for adult media as well. However, I do want people to acknowledge some of its shortcomings, especially because it is a show that is dealing with such heavy and complex topics, and also positions its human characters as coming from a world which is pretty much a stand-in for our own.

Now I know that the storyboard artists for Infinity Train were quite diverse, but I don’t really know if it’s the same for the writer's room. The reason why is that as a POC viewer, it really does seem obvious to me from the way that the POC characters were written pre-season 4, that their race was mostly an afterthought.

Okay and to be perfectly clear, this is NOT A BAD THING. This is just a neutral thing. Obviously we don’t need every single story with POC characters to have to be about their experience as a specific racialized person. There are experiences that are shared among everybody no matter what race they are. I am not saying that you need to do super in-depth research into every single cultural nuance of every ethnic minority before writing them. It depends on if you really want to delve into how their heritage or traditions or specific life experiences inform their character arc. Not every character arc is about that. And it shouldn’t be!

With that being said, I do think that perhaps the writers should have tried to consider asking themselves very basic surface level questions on how being non-white would inform the problems and conflicts their characters would face. They don't need to know the ins and outs of each culture for each of their characters, but they could have just asked “How would I feel/react to others if people made weird assumptions about me based on my race? How differently would my parents raise me if they were afraid of prejudice or discrimination?” I think they should have reflected on that before setting in stone the backstories for their POC characters, especially with respect to Grace.

Part 1: GRACE'S PARENTS

So I am not Black myself, but I have had many conversations about Grace with one of my friends in fandom who is Black, and we both do get the sense that Grace’s race was very much just an afterthought to her characterization. To be clear, this is NOT because she has very wealthy parents. I am well aware that there are Black Americans with generational wealth. However, knowing what we know about affluent Black people in the real world, how Grace’s parents treated her makes absolutely no sense.

For example, among extremely wealthy people of any race, networking and knowing the right people is of the utmost importance. This is why so many rich people send their kids to prestigious private schools so their kids can get a heads start on knowing the progeny of other one-percenters. If you look up famous people with famous kids, chances are you’ll see a list of all of the very exclusive private academies that they all went to (looking at you, The Strokes). This is the case for wealthy people of all backgrounds, not just white people. And honestly, I imagine that the pressure is at least double for the kids of wealthy POC parents to get to know the right people as early as possible to be able to open as many doors as possible, in order to mitigate the inherent disadvantage of being a racialized person.

But what did Grace’s parents do? According to her, they never sent her to school of any kind, only having private tutors teach her, and her ballet instructor only made her join the other kids in her class once for a recital or something? This is, for lack of a better term... buck wild.

In addition, her parents are American diplomats. Diplomacy is an extremely people-oriented position. If anything, her parents would want her to not only be in the best private school, but to be the best student in school, to know the best people, to join the school clubs that all the other diplomats’ kids are in, and train her from a young age to be a social butterfly. Yes I know that diplomats will often leave their home country and be stationed somewhere else for long durations, and yes their kids could be taken out of school then, but some diplomats just enroll them in a different institution in the visiting country, or not take them out of school at all. This is what the IB Program was invented for, actually. Her parents being diplomats does not justify never enrolling Grace in school. In fact, it makes it less justifiable. 

The fact that they did the extreme opposite of that is so illogical to me that I wonder if perhaps the writers just cobbled together a whole bunch of tropes that they think apply to rich people without actually checking if any of it makes sense, doubly so for rich people who are non-white.

I think the reason why is because they wanted Grace’s parents to stifle her growth and her natural social skills, but on the Train, she can be who she truly is. I definitely agree that Grace finding herself and being able to truly blossom into the girlboss she is on the Train is a great plot point from a characterization perspective. However, I do not think that it should be because she was being stifled by her parents. The solution is staring the writers right in their face, but they can’t see it because it’s a blindspot for them.

What they should have gone with is: Grace's inability to become a social butterfly and a queen bee in her daily life is because she is a dark-skinned Black girl!!!

Her parents have extremely high expectations for her socially. They could have pushed her to make friends with kids she didn’t like just because they wanted to be on better terms with their parents for networking or diplomacy purposes – which they could have shown with that one girl from her ballet class. Missed opportunity! But no matter how hard Grace tries, she will never be seen as the perfect girl because of other people’s assumptions about her just based on her race. 

Once she’s on the Train, Grace then uses her people skills and finds that they’re a lot more effective there, because it’s no longer Earth’s society, it’s a different world, literally! Plus this even allows her to be a little bit more mean, a little bit more honest, something she wouldn’t be able to get away with in the real world without being punished for it harder than her white peers. We already see hints of this with how she interacts with Simon, a white guy who is the same age as her. 

CAVEAT: The dialogue where Grace reveals that she never went to school was something that she told Hazel in a private conversation. So it could be that she did go to school, but lied about it to seem more relatable to Hazel, who had never been around other kids before. Lying is in character for Grace because she would pretty much do anything to get on somebody’s good side. But the way that they had her voice actress deliver those lines, and the way that her expression changes when she talks about how lonely she was indicates that she was telling the truth. To be charitable, I suppose we can land on the reading that Grace told Hazel a half-truth. She did go to school, but she was frequently taken out of class or skipped semesters because of her parents’ jobs as diplomats. So her loneliness in that instant is at the very least truthful. Your mileage is going to vary on this interpretation of course.

This points to a weakness that I can sort of see in Infinity Train in general, where they push societal problems into purely the realm of personal failings. “It’s not because of society that Grace couldn’t succeed, it was solely due to her abusive parents” being just one example. 

Never forget this monologue from a Black father to his daughter in Scandal:

Part 2: JESSE'S ARC WAS PRETTY GOOD THOUGH

The thing is they actually did write a POC character having to deal with a problem that was society-oriented quite well, at least in my view. Although, I am still pretty sure it was still coming from a race-blind method of writing the characters. Otherwise I feel like Jesse’s status as an Indigenous American would have come up more than a grand total of one time. That they could do this well for Jesse makes the fact that they didn’t do the same for Grace quite disappointing. 

Jesse’s main issue that he had to overcome was he kept caving to peer pressure and had trouble saying no to others for fear of disappointment. Now, this problem is universal, and it’s not solely something that is specific to Jesse’s race or ethnicity or cultural background. In fact, I am quite certain that they wrote Jesse as a character without even considering that this problem he faces is relatable to POC experiences. But I definitely know a lot of POC in my life who do take on more responsibilities than they can manage, or feel a higher pressure to fit in with their peers. Hell, I’m that POC in many cases! It’s kind of like background radiation to us as minorities that we just have to do more emotional labour in order to be seen as equals. That’s just the reality of the situation. You can understand and relate to Jesse’s problem without being Indigenous/Native American, but at the same time it feels like a natural problem for him to have, because he is non-white!

I will admit that a personal blind spot of mine is I don't know and haven't had the chance to speak to too many Indigenous people, so there could be aspects of Jesse's arc that don't really make sense. If you are somebody who knows more than me, please feel free to correct me! I would love to hear how you felt about Jesse's characterization and arc as an Indigenous person!

Part 3: SEASON 4, THE ASIANS 

Alright now it's time to tackle stuff that I actually could have any ounce of authority talking about? Which is how they wrote Ryan and Min-Gi in Book 4. I myself am Asian-Canadian. Specifically, I am a first generation Chinese-Canadian but I've been in Canada since I was six so I find a lot of the experiences of second generation Asian-Canadians more relatable to me. In addition, my partner is fourth generation Japanese-Canadian, so his dad would be the same generation as Ryan's dad. (I also am really really into rock music, but that's besides the point.)

What they got right:

So first off, I could tell that they really did consult Asian people in writing this season, so good on them! The difference in how Ryan’s parents raised him in contrast to Min-Gi’s parents felt very natural and realistic to me. Ryan’s family is more westernized and has assimilated more into broader Canadian culture. 

The fact that Ryan has an English name and not a Japanese name immediately shows that. Min-Gi’s parents not choosing an English name for him is a bit of a surprise; very few Asian immigrants go without an English name back in the 20th century. Even nowadays it’s extremely common for us to go by English or Western names that we, or our parents chose, instead of names in our native language. But there are good reasons to not choose an English name. Perhaps Min-Gi’s parents wanted him to have a closer tie to his Korean roots, or perhaps if they travelled back to Korea to visit family it would be easier for them. 

Also, Min-Gi’s parents not supporting his dream of becoming a musician and want him to get a stable job in… I think it was finance? Definitely true back then as it is today. I’m not entirely sure how Ryan’s parents feel about his life choices, and we’ll get into that later.

The character arcs for Ryan and Min-Gi are excellent. This dichotomy of wanting to do the good, responsible thing that your parents want for you because they want you to have the best chance at a good life, and doing what your heart tells you to do, is an extremely relevant character arc. It’s a life decision that is not just an Asian thing, but something anybody can relate to. However, in East Asian cultures that were generally influenced by Confucianism, which includes both Korean and Japanese culture, upholding your duty as a child to not disappoint your parents in any way is something that Asian cultures are prone to emphasizing to a great degree. We see this in other media centered on the Asian immigrant experience as well, such as Kim’s Convenience, Turning Red, and Everything Everywhere All At Once.

What was a bit puzzling to me:

So I'll start off with the thing that definitely raised many many eyebrows if you were an East Asian or Southeast Asian watching the show: Why were Min-Gi's parents so friendly with Ryan's parents when they're Korean and Ryan's family is Japanese?!

So like, not to bring politics into it but… World War II happened. It affected, you know, the world and stuff. And in the Pacific Theatre (god I hate that term), the Imperial Japanese Army… invaded Korea?? Among many other countries??? And did a bunch of war crimes?????

Like, Japan was invading other countries well before WWII even started… This is common knowledge… for Asian people that is.

Yeah I know what you're gonna say. “But Ryan's family is Japanese-Canadian!! They wouldn't have done those war crimes! They would have been sent to internment camps!” Yeah dude, I know! My partner is Japanese-Canadian, remember?! And even if I didn't know him, we learned about the internment camps in history class. It's pretty common knowledge among progressives in Canada and the US. George Takei did a whole musical about it. 

But that's not how racism works. I can speak from personal experience that the scars of WWII trauma in Chinese and Korean communities run deep. Even my own parents needed a bit of convincing to be okay with me dating my partner, and my parents were born two decades after WWII ended. My partner said that one time when he and his grandmother got into an elevator with an elderly Korean woman, and at first she was friendly, but once she realized they were of Japanese descent, the elevator ride became deathly silent afterwards. 

So when you have Min-Gi’s parents, who were probably born during or slightly after WWII, immigrate to Canada, and then be like… totally okay and hunky dory pals with Ryan’s parents just because their kids were born the same day in the same hospital…? I mean sure, anything can happen. But it definitely speaks to how abnormally accepting, forgiving, and welcoming Min-Gi’s parents are. 

To be clear, this isn’t something that pulled me out of the experience, personally. Yes, it is strange, but it’s not impossible for a Korean family to be super okay and friends with a Japanese family. Maybe it’s because their small town has very few Asians and so they have to stick together due to solidarity or something. Maybe Min-Gi’s parents are the type of Christians that believe in the inherent goodness of everyone and giving everyone a chance. Maybe they are just extremely progressive and see Ryan’s family as Canadian more than Japanese (highly unlikely), or they know about the internment camps and that was enough to get over their biases toward them (also unlikely). I dunno, anything can happen.

The other thing that bugged me was that they really didn’t explore Ryan’s relationship with his family to the same depth as Min-Gi’s relationship with his family. 

They already set up the contrast of like, you have an immigrant who is more connected to their cultural background, and a third generation descendent who is less connected, and more alienated from his cultural background. That kind of stuff can really weigh on you as somebody who is a minority. You feel like you simultaneously aren’t Canadian enough because you aren’t white, and that you’re not enough of your cultural background because you had to assimilate, or were forced to assimilate. 

Yes it makes sense why Ryan would throw himself into his music, and be disconnected from his family. But they didn’t take the time to really explore why he is that way. Ryan barely talks about his family except randomly mentioning that they don’t care what he does with his life. I don’t even know if that really makes sense that they don’t care what he does? Maybe Ryan thinks they don’t care, but his assumption is wrong? Either way they don’t explore this point that much. Even if his parents were more assimilated they would still care if Ryan had a non-standard job, such as being a musician. There is a gap between Ryan and his family/parents that was alluded to, but not explored. Feeling like you come from two worlds but not neatly fitting into either is so quintessential to the immigrant experience of Canadians (and also Americans) it’s a shame they only paid lip service to it. 

I mentioned in a different post that Ryan would be monolingual while Min-Gi would be bilingual, and how this could cause tension between them. I imagine Ryan definitely feels inferior to Min-Gi in that sense of loss and disconnect with his heritage, just as Min-Gi is jealous that he feels he doesn't have the freedom to pursue his musical career in the same way that Ryan can. This is all stuff that can take a psychological toll on people, and is something which the Train as a metaphor for therapy should have been primed to tackle. But unfortunately we didn't really get that.

There is a term among the Chinese Diaspora known as “Hollow Bamboo (竹杠)” or “Rising Bamboo (竹升)” [more info]. It's an insult tossed at kids of Chinese ethnicity from judgemental adults for being unable to read/write Chinese or who cannot speak Mandarin/Cantonese/other Chinese languages fluently because they've been “too westernized”. They say we “look Chinese, but are hollow inside, like bamboo.” I don't know if there are equivalent terms for other Asian diaspora/immigrant communities but there must be. This term is controversial, and in my own opinion very unfair, because it blames the kids for this loss of cultural identity when there are so many different factors at play that makes them lose it, all of them outside of their own control. 

Again, I think this is a blindspot from the writers just not understanding how much this loss of cultural identity is such an integral part of the experience of being an immigrant, and that it's not only felt in first or second generation Asian-Canadians, but also third or fourth generation, and beyond. It's scary to go out there and redefine what your culture means to you, and how to pass it on to the next generation.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it, a summary of the strengths and the weaknesses in Infinity Train as it pertains to writing about racialized characters. Just want to restate that a lot of what I pointed out is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things and I do overall think the writing is solid. I am not going into this to say that I expected the writers to do a good job, because generally my expectations for media and pop culture to portray POCs respectfully is quite low. At least they didn’t fall back on tired stereotypes, which is a low bar to clear, but it is where the bar still is these days.

If on the off chance Infinity Train does get uncancelled and renewed for more seasons, I hope they take these lessons and craft better narratives for their POC characters. Maybe hire some more non-white writers while you’re at it!

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Survivors allergic to long immunity challenges and it’s sad

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Let’s go Mary!!!!!!

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It’s hard to care when the result of the episode is determined by how many people lose the dice roll on a journey

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This shit is kinda giving survivor South Pacific and not in a good way

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Why are they getting so heated about this

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Alright survivor! I’m out for the rest of the season so I’m gonna enjoy tonight while it lasts!

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i don’t get the people that complain about criticism being in the main tag for a fandom. Can they not like something and also acknowledge its flaws???? Why should criticism of a piece of media be separate from general discussion of it? …..you know your favorite things aren’t perfect right?

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(Source)

The affected voters — those whose paperwork was mishandled and whose voter files lacked their SSN and driver's license — have until FIRDAY, APRIL 18th to contact their local board of elections and attempt to cure their ballot. If you voted in North Carolina last November, you can check whether your vote has been challenged at "The Griffin List" website: link.

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Infinity Train Season 1, Episode 1

Each season of Infinity Train is very short, and heavily packed with mystery and character development, so introducing the characters and mystery has to happen efficiently, and accurately, and as unawkwardly as possible. And while seasons 2-4 each have their own masterful introductions, season 1 by far has the most to introduce and does it just so well. So here it is- a minute by minute analysis of season 1 episode 1 of infinity train- THE GRID CAR- spoilers for the whole show ahead

Opening of Infinity Train is train tracks with the barricades going up to let a school bus through. Two kids get off the bus, our protagonist Tulip and her friend Mikayla. They start walking home and we learn a lot of things very quickly.

Tulip is about to go to game design camp in Oshkosh, and is making a game for it.

Tulip and Mikayla have a friendly, joking friendship. She's supportive of Tulip even tho she hates video games

Tulip's parents are divorced and Tulip lives with her mom and her dad lives somewhere else. The divorce is recent.

Tulip gets closed off when asked about Mikayla about it. She insists she's fine, and then leaves Mikayla behind. Mikayla tries to stay supportive, but Tulip doesn't reply

Also on this walk home, we see Tulip and Mikayla walking by a lake, and see their reflections. A bookend the audience won't recognize until the end of the season when Tulip returns home and has no reflection. (Also, Lake’s first appearance!!! Hello my darling!!)

Tulip gets home and goes upstairs immediately, despite her mom trying to say they need to talk. Her mom is openly frustrated.

In her room, we see a countdown to game design camp set to 0 days and an award for Best Hypothetically Proven Hypothesis in the Scientific Odyssey Trials. Tulip goes to her desk, remarks that her game isn't working, fixes the code a bit, and the game works. Tulip talks to both the game, and has a fake conversation with the man on the front of her coding book.

Tulip gets called again by her mom and groans, coming out of her room to be told that her dad can't take her to game design camp. Even before the bad news, Tulip is cold to her mom, and after she's upset, bringing up a contract her parents signed that says she could go to camp if she got up her English grade.

Her mom explains that her dad mixed up the dates and has work, and she also has work. Tulip gets even angrier, saying their divorce "messed everything up" and that it isn't fair. Her mom tries to explain again, and Tulip gets frustrated to the point of tears before backing down, saying "whatever, I can't go" and walking away. Her mom tries to get her to talk about it, and she says she's going back to her game.

In her room, Tulip is still upset, throwing the game design camp flier across the room and crying. She sees a picture of her parents and her together and gets more upset, then gets a text from her dad where he apologizes and asks her to call and talk, which she ignores. the theme music starts up as she puts on her winter g

ear and climbs out the window, the title appearing as she runs out into the snow.

Out in the woods, now dark, Tulip looks at the flier and remarks, "300 miles is not a quick hop". Does she have a plan for how she's going to get to Oshkosh in time for game design camp? The audience will not find out, because at last, our titular train is here.

All it has to do is show a sign saying Oshkosh, and logical Tulip, makes-her-parents-sign-a-contract Tulip, says "oo, that's lucky" and get on.

She wakes up in the snow, and has a snarky conversation with herself, thinking she'd dreamed the train. Walking past three snowmen and messes with their appearance, and runs into one-one, who asks her if she's his mum or has come to kill him. She says no, and asks if he's a toy, and says he has good speech recognition.

He says he doesn't know what his mum looks like, saying she might be large or small, like a bagel (the place he's been ripped out of in the engine is bagel shaped as we'll find out). He asks if she's looking for her mother too, and she says she's not looking for her parents. She, annoyed, says she's going to game design camp. When asked about why she's going alone without her parents, she gets frustrated and tells him to leave her alone and go back to being whatever he is.

One-one says he doesn't know what he is. They come across their first door, and One-one says it's impossible to open and the only way out is death. Tulip (our token thumbs-having protagonist this season) opens the door easily.

Tulip sees she's actually on a really big train, and gets excited. She starts asking excited questions about the train, that One-one seemingly doesn't have answers to. "Wait, what's in the next train car?" she asks excitedly, running to it and seemingly not seeing the wasteland around the train.

In the grid car, she's "back to being oppressed", and plays around for seemingly quite a while, and builds a replica of her game. She mentions she has only built one game.

((((Interesting, isn't it, how Tulip has only made one video game, that isn't even working until the day she leaves for camp, and is still so upset about not getting to go to game design camp that she runs away? me thinks tulip is enjoying the wonders of a brand new hyperfixation, and is in tandem using it to avoid her feelings on her parents divorce)))

One-one tells her his name, and she says it's a kind of weird name, "unlike my name, which is Tulip and is perfectly normal".

She throws her glove at the ceiling to hit a block, and notices a glowing green 115 on her hand. Yelling, she asks what it is. At the same time, the train lurches to a stop, and she goes outside to finally notice the wasteland the train is in. "Do you know what Wisconsin looks like?" "I want to say it looks like this?" "No, this is not Wisconsin."

Tulip sees a passenger being sucked off the train (yeah that's how I'm gonna word it idc) and panics. "What happened to that guy?!" she asks, and One-one answers, "You're kinda in a bad place right now."

Deciding she doesn't want to be on the train, she gets off, and One-one follows since he can't remember if she was his mum.

Yelling and running until she gets stuck in some mud, Tulip meets the ghoms- black giant bug-like creatures. Three things happen in quick succession- the ghoms start to chase her, the train starts to move, and Tulip gets unstuck and starts to run back towards the train, One-one singing Yakety Sax and claiming he made it up.

She makes it back on the train, but the ghoms sprout wings and follow her into the grid car. She runs there, using the blocks to help, but gets stuck underneath a ghom as it starts to suck away her life force(???), with her starting to look wrinkled until One-one pops off and takes the ghom out. Back to normal, she's surprised he can split in half, and then starts throwing stuff at the ghoms until One-one makes a wall that lets her out but stops the ghom.

Exiting the car, she takes a moment to breathe, and starts to figure out her next step. "There has to be a way off this train that won't kill me. Okay, everything has rules, even crazy things have their own logic. It's a train, right, trains have conductors. One-one, is there a conductor? Please tell me you know the answer."

"Conductor? I think we have one of those. But he would most likely be at the engine."

Tulip goes to the edge of the train and looks out at the unending line of train cars before her, looks down at the glowing number on her hand, and looks out, determined. "I'm getting off this train."

End of episode.

.

This episode is such a glorious introduction to Tulip.

Tulip is someone who is kind and playful with her friend, until her friend tries to get her to talk about her parents divorce, then she gets closed off. She's someone who is cold and closed off to her parents, angry when real life doesn't work like how she thinks it logically should work, and self-isolates upon again being asked to talk about it. Upset and alone, she ignores a third attempt to get her to talk.

Running away, she gets emotional and abandons all caution to impulsivity. She talks to herself and makes jokes when alone. She meets One-one and ignores a fourth attempt to get her to talk. She gets excited and curious about the train, to the point of ignoring its surroundings at first. She's playful with One-one in the grid car, until she realizes how trapped she is, and after panicking and trying to run away, gets determined. Even crazy things have their own logic, and she is getting off this train.

That's a lot of character intro to get through in ten minutes without it feeling clunky!! Especially because only four of those minutes are outside the train- they used those specifically to so naturally demonstrate why Tulip ends up on the train.

This episode also introduces One-one, his existential lack of knowledge, his lack of memory, and his quest to find his "mum". And it does all of that subtly enough I didn't think hardly anything of it until my first rewatch!

This episode also sets up important things for this season and beyond, including the ghoms and the consequences of running away for too long (super important in season 3!), how terrifying exiting the train looks like to an outside observer (informs the Apex's goals to get their numbers higher not lower!), and the first mention of the being haunting the narrative of the entire show- The Conductor (whether that's Amelia haunting most of season 1 or One-One haunting most of seasons 2-4).

This episode is so fantastic as an opening episode and I love it so much and I love this show so much and I love Tulip Olsen so much.

considering doing an analysis of every single time tulip's number changes lmk if you'd be interested!

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i go to bars and coffee shops and breweries and libraries and thrift stores all the time by myself and i have a chill banger time i love my own company. so why is the grocery store a warzone. im fighting for my life. barely make it out alive. if someone even looks at me i want to blow them up with my mind

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i'm drafting up a whole second-by-second analysis of inifnity train season 1 episode 1 and tulip's introduction, but for now can i just say that it means a whole lot to see a character (and a girl character at that!!) who is logical and methodical and struggling with her own emotions, but isn't cold? like tulip loves coding, has a whole book of notes and theories about the train, gets frustrated when things don't work out how they logically should, and is in complete denial about her feelings regarding her parents divorce. but she still jokes around with mikayla, wears the flower one-one gives her, leans down so she can dance at height with atticus and one-one, helps lake without question, forgives amelia. i love tulip so much

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From Wing it like Witches to Escaping Expulsion

            I believe I’ve gone over it before, but it’s interesting how Wing it like Witches and Escaping Expulsion have pretty similar structures; You have the A-plot in which this toxic person from Amity’s life exuding Queen Bee vibes takes issues with Luz, Willow, and Gus, going out of her way to target them, with Amity’s friendship with these people she’d designated as losers offending them. This builds off of the revelations in Understanding Willow regarding the people who’ve gotten in the way of Amity’s original friendship with Willow.

            Luz has enough of the attack and takes initiative, but when she feels results haven’t been made, she eventually agrees to demean herself as a servant to the antagonist, with Luz subjecting herself to straight-up physical punishment. This incites Amity to step up and save Luz, making a point to the antagonist that they don’t control her; Likewise, Willow and Gus find out and make their support clear.

            Our protagonists don’t exactly “win” the battle but it all works out unconventionally, in part thanks to the support of someone who’d otherwise been going along with the antagonist, but was more of a follower already miserable with her, who’s taken a liking to/already had one with the protagonist.

            Meanwhile you have the B-plot, where Eda and Lilith are competing with one another on some level to show who’s better at a skill, a rivalry hearkening back to their school days. King is there for moral support, one of the sisters proves to be the better, and Hooty sides with Lilith! Eda lets go of her pride to prioritize who she cares about.

            I wonder if it was intentional, given how both of these episodes build off of Amity’s birthday incident and are about her resolving both parties that contributed to her ensuing isolation from people she actually cares about. And again, looking at the differences, WilW is an episode about Luz’s development; It’s about Luz making a mistake regarding her hero complex, and accepting that she worsened the situation even if she did have some justification. Amity is there to support Luz in this, while having a character moment of her own. Conversely, EE is about Amity standing up to her parents, especially Odalia, as Luz supports her on how difficult it is.

            At the same time, EE does allude to Luz’s own mental state; Namely, that she hasn’t fully shaken off her baggage from the prior episode. She comes across as conscious about what happened in WilW as well, since this time, Luz’s initial attempts to resolve the issue are alongside Willow and Gus; And while she does end up trying to take matters into her own hands again, she doesn’t involve her friends this time. She makes sure the only consequences are towards herself, for the sake of helping Willow and Gus, since Luz crucially excludes herself when mentioning how they don’t deserve to be expelled.

            And it’s pretty sad and reflects the duality of Luz’s S1 arc and how she did learn everything, more or less, but then throughout S2 has this overcorrecting attitude from it that culminates into her suicidal depression. Again, she got the immediate lesson correct, that Luz shouldn’t have involved Willow and Gus against their will; But then she takes it too far in deciding she shouldn’t have involved them at all, when in reality, the point is that she needed to do it WITH them, not for, not without.

            So in that sense, you can see how WilW kinda haunts Luz here, how she implicitly recognizes the situation and is trying to do it the ‘right’ way this time, yet understandably failing to be optimal in her handling because she’s a teenager. WilW was the big moment where Luz really internalizes the issue of her hero complex, and fittingly this coincides with Luz learning the Titan’s last glyph, because from that point onward, it’s essentially all on her and the people she teaches on what she can do with that magic, what she can find.

            Speaking of! We call back to WilW’s rivalry between Eda and Lilith and explore it from a different angle as well. WilW was about Eda proving herself the superior sister, and even her act of compassion just cemented how Lilith is at her mercy; Lilith appreciates it, but it still stings, and leads nicely into the very next episode where the extent of her inferiority complex is REALLY revealed, and Eda asserts without shame that she IS better than Lilith!

            So EE challenges these things once there’s room for Lilith to get some credit after she legitimately acknowledged her own wrongdoing and made up for it across two concurrent episodes. Now we get to question the idea that Eda was always inherently better, because sometimes Lilith’s by-the-books approach can get results where Eda’s chaotic methods don’t, and I think it’s true to life because while one size doesn’t fit all, I don’t think people set by-the-books as the status quo for no reason to begin with. Eda and Lilith have both lost their magic, so they’re on equal footing, starting off from the same place again, and it’s a chance for Lilith to shine when ordinarily she’s the stunted one failing to catch up due to her cult indoctrination.

            It’s almost like an apology on Eda’s end; That after Lilith’s apology, Eda has to admit that she was wrong about Lilith in some regards as well, that she had her own issues and arrogance in implicitly demeaning Lilith as the lesser sister since they were kids, as the gullible one who wasn’t smart enough to see the obvious propaganda; And y’know, that hits harder given her protégé is Luz, who later bonds with Lilith on an adventure where they both relate to each other, and as Luz later finds out, proves they’re not so different when it comes to being fooled by the coven.

            And of course Eda forgives Luz for that, she always would’ve and it wasn’t even her fault to have been fooled once on something pretty understandable. Likewise, Luz is the one who’s teaching Lilith, who’s the most receptive to her, because Lilith provides things for Luz that Eda doesn’t, and vice-versa. It was really neat to see in Elsewhere and Elsewhen.

            I guess my point is that we’re retreading the same beats, but from a different perspective, another angle, and it makes the thing feel pretty worthwhile; Especially since it’s pretty easy to miss the similarities, at least given how long it took me to notice, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else point it out, not on this site at least! And it all sets up how these characters have grown (maybe not 100% for the better in Luz’s case) in how they respond to the same thing from before differently, while giving others a chance to shine this time. 

[hed-romancer]

*grabs your hands and speaks to you in a tone that is so gentle* they/them pronouns stop being universal once you learn a person's pronouns. Sometimes that person's pronouns will include they/them and in that specific case you are allowed to keep using those pronouns for that person. In any case where you learn a persons pronouns and that person doesn't use they/them, you should no longer use those pronouns for that person. If you continue to use they/them pronouns knowing that person doesn't use them, you are now misgendering that person. Kindly stop doing that please. Thank you, I love you.