#Marcy Wu's parents

[its-a-me-dre]

As a former socially awkward nerdy teenager (a sentence that feels like beating a dead horse but sorry, that's what I was), I disagree.

There's more reasons to like found family than "My real family sucks, I wish I had another one", personally, I'm absolutely enamored with seeing people not related by blood develop such a close bond, those moments of camaraderie and understanding, the freedom to be yourself without the fear of being cast out. It's the best parts of a blood family and a friend group together, who WOULDN'T want that?

Another factor is Marcy being an only child.

As an only child, I always longed for MORE. Especially in your teens, mom and dad will never be enough, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them but having a more fulfilling social circle that allows you more time away from the family nest is an essential part of development.

Now take all this and add the resentment Marcy feels at moving away and losing her only friends, knowing she might not be able to make new ones. Anyone would be afraid of being alone in that situation, good parents or not, because that's what being a teenager is, you're growing into your own person with your own fears, anxieties, doubts, everything and your parents, no matter how good or bad, are almost completely powerless to do anything about it because of that, because so much of your life is now completely outside what they can influence.

TL;DR "Marcy has bad parents" might not necessarily be true and I just found out I relate to this cartoon character more than anybody should.

"I love the found family trope!" - Marcy in 'Marcy at the Gates'

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

What do you think Marcy's relationship with her parents was like after Amphibia?

Oooooh interesting question mmmm well i AM a believer that her parents are awful, so there's that. I don't think they beat her up or anything but if Sasha fucking Waybright was a better option than them in her most desperate moments, they must be just as bad as her if not worse. Or rather, they must have been failing to provide something Sasha and Anne fulfilled. I've seen people despicting them as emotionally neglectful, which is something I think makes sense.

I do have the headcanon that they didn't really have the patience for Marcy. She was just too hyper, had too much energy, talked too much, got into too many accidents, broke too many things. I think they were often mad at her even when she did nothing wrong, like just generally pissed off most of the time. They found everything she said annoying no matter how harmless and let her know, so she started to feel it was better if she kept quiet. That meant Anne and Sasha were her only outlet to like... talk to anyone at all, and they didn't listen to her much, but at least they let her talk. They let her put on her silly little movies and sometimes humored her by playing a little bit of C&C with her. If Marcy was so happy to accept the bare minimum, it must be because she was getting nothing with her family. The fact that her way of worming her way into people's hearts is making herself useful tells me her parents mostly just appreciated her for her achievements, soooo...

I do think her parents love her. I just don't think they like her, or that they have much patience for her, mostly telling her to be quiet, to do play her little games somewhere else or they just ignore her when she talks. They were desperately looking for her when she went missing and were infinitely relieved when she got back. There were lots of hugs and tears and they didn't leave her side while she was in the hospital. They also felt a bit guilty for ignoring her so much during the past few years. Worrying they'd never see her again made them realize how much time they lost. For some time, they were a lot more patient with her, listening to her talk about her little games and her feelings and how her day at school was and the pretty friendship bracelets Anne and Sasha made for her. It almost felt like everything had been fixed, like everything would change and be alright. She felt a little bit less scared of moving now.

But as time passed, they kinda fell back into their own habits. They were a bit less mean about it, but despite how hard they tried... they just couldn't like their daughter. She was weird and annoying and never paid attention to her surroundings. For the first few weeks she'd wake them up every night at 3am in tears asking to sleep with them because she had a nightmare, and they were okay with it at first, but after a month of her disrupting their sleep they began to ask her to please stay in her room unless it's absolutely necessary. Her heart broke when they said that - she needed them.

She began to call Anne and Sasha whenever she had nightmares, panic attacks or chest pain, and they always picked the phone. Late night videocalls became their new routine, until her parents asked her not to call her friends at night because she couldn't keep her voice down when she did, so she switched to texting them instead.

Only good thing was that they were happy to pay for several plane tickets a year so she could visit them. She'd spend full summers with the Boonchuys, and they even let her spend the holidays with her friends. The latter they did because they knew Anne and Sasha were better for their daughter than they could ever be, though the former was a way for them to catch a break from her. Unsurprisingly, Marcy's mental health improved a lot whenever she was with her girls.

So... they fulfilled their basic duties as parents but often struggled to provide the emotional support Marcy needed, relying on her friends to do the work they couldn't. They do want Marcy to be happy and they do feel guilty for not being able to help her but their lack of patience always gets the best of them. Put simply, they just can't stand her no matter how much they try. They do a great effort to treat her nicely but every word that comes out of her mouth is immensely irritating to them. Actually, maybe they kinda just hate their daughter. They're really happy when, ten years after that whole mess, they hear she'll be moving back to LA with her friend Sasha. Hopefully she'll be happy there, and hopefully they'll get their lives back after 23 years of constant struggle and frustration.

[holly-mint]

anyways mini marcy dump

[cutetanuki-chan]

Sasharcy Vampire Buddies-Roommates

Sasha always was a vampire, while Marcy got turned into one, not by Sasha tho Marcy's also a picky eater, so more often Marcy just drinks Sasha's blood

also Marcy mixing up bag of blood with some energy drink or mountain dew cause why not

[kiwibirb1]

Sashannarcy headcanon: Both Sasha and Marcy took Boonchuy as their last name when they married because they had always felt like a Boonchuy more than a Waybright or a Wu

[wren-writes-things]

wren please tell me you haven't gone to find a hivemind. bc i think that'll traumatise everyone.

What? No. I would never do that. Not in a million years. Nope, no hiveminds here. No need to be concerned whatsoever.

[kiwibirbkat]

Marcy: Therapy? Who needs it! *Addresses trauma through webcomic*

[heart-wit-strength]

It feels like with olivia, the writes set her up as a motherly figure to marcy, only to remember “oh wait marcy isn’t supposed to make friends, better add corporal punishment”

Referring to this post I'm assuming

Well for the corporal punishment, I wouldn't be surprised if those are probably just super normalised things in a place like Newtopia. Given how Newtopian social structure works and how duty and sophistication is the major key that the upper class of amphibia defines itself with? They're all about enforcement, enforcing strict law, sticking to their pride. We've seen examples of how extreme this is. They're willing to execute a toad captain without trial for failing to heed an order. There's an episode about the Newtopia University which I don't remember well but I think it talked about how scholars are treated like prisoners in camps.

Does this influence Olivia? She grew a part of this norm, I think it's implied why she acts the way she does. Olivia's literal worst fear was own mother confronting her on failing to fulfill her vow to protect nature, up and utmost priority. This reflects on her relationship with Marcy, she's trying to be good, she's caring, but she still has it in her; she encourages Marcy to be humble to her duty and expectations be her utmost. Moreover she expects her to meet up to what represents newts as a race. So is the possible consequences when she violates those heavy standards of what the crown expects.

That's almost one trait she shares with Andrias, that duty and family expectations heavily influence her actions.

[balmora-citizen]

One small thing about Marcys parents witch I find odd is the timing they choose to break the news to their daughter, a talk that would be awkward at the best of times.

They told her on Annes birthday?

I mean their daughter and Anne have been basically glued together at the hip for 10 years and they don't remember her birthday? If they didn't forget it was just cruel but like... if you drop of and pick up your daughter at a house at the same time every year for a decade wouldn't you remember? Or write it down? And normally help your daughter remember and pick presents when they were still small?

So they either didn't care (again, cruel. how do excpected that talk to go?)

they know weirdly little about their child's life

or best case it was a stupid oversight but it must have hurt even more for Marcy because of that. excepting a fun day with her girls and then getting those news...

[kingoftheu]

I really liked your take on Marcy's parents in your "Family Wu" fic. It's refreshing to see since a lot of fandom usually depicts them as villainous or monsters.

I hate hate hate the assumption that all parents are abusive until shown otherwise, especially if the child in question has issues.

[pillowfights0098]

Marcy Wu (hc) Fan Theory

She is lying about her book being famous because:

A) Happy ending from the Jo was too good to be true, very little pages. “I made friends & Massachusetts wasn’t so bad!” Except it’s full of homeless, culture snobbery & expensive prices being run by Left-Wingers most of the time. No one in also Liberal-Left California attended her clubs for a reason, I went to Catholic school & they’re pretty tolorant.

B) Her voice is higher pitched when Sahsa ask about her web comic. She shakes her funny looking hand & doesn’t look at Sahsa. Signs someone is lying.

C) Snoopy & Pokemon are canon in Amphibia Universe. Disney could take her content down for copyright infringement.

D) I think that “[but] The real question remains, was it all a hoax?” Meant we should think for ourselves & be scaptical of what we just saw in the series being real. E) I’m friends with an Author & cartoonist. No one watches his content, disney & big cali hollywood is firing animators & cancelling shows like a holocaust book burning. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? Her long hair suggests she is a normie. So assuming she still made friends anyways, they were popular & rebellious like my fellow Canadians during Trudeau’s reign.

(I’m not Neurodivergent, I gossip) Based on a person I knew who sacrificed so much of himself for the truth. His personal, lifelong shame he calls it, started when he was 3 when his mom took him to the for-free govt Doctor. He didn’t remember, only when he questioned his mom many years later. It explained all the government stalking, getting incarcerated & paid silent by women, him being sent to a worse school than he wanted, his life & locker controlled by the liberal schools biases & government. Even sent to a camp. He hated his mother & family after that for judging him to an extent is controlled him. It just made love for learning, joy, tolerance of women & other people worsened because they judged & thought highly about diversity activism (Canadians). Even when every job rejects him for migrants, AI or to save money, his parents still order him into govt paychecks & programs against his will. Marcy’s parents have to be just as left-wing & controlling SJW’s who want good grades. Hence her being “You guys are ruining my life!” There was some ambiguity & pro conservative voices in the TV series - saying tradition still exists with chance & the plantars kicking out a homeless scammer.

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Marcy and her newt moms... baby lesbian adopted by older lesbians... do you see the vision

[nextstop-fixationstation]

I think my most controversial amphibia opinion is that the fact the Wu and Waybright parents didn't need to be shown on screen is a testament to how genuinely hands off they were with regards to their kids' emotional lives compared to the Boonchuys, and that that's actually a good insight into why both Marcy and Sasha are Like That

Like the way Mr. Boonchuy talks to the Plantars like he's used to having three girls in the back of the car, causing trouble, and the way Sasha says, "Hang out with your friends that love you (instead of being a "Good Girl" forced to be with her parents)" and the fact Marcy straight up just runs away without a second thought all point to a distinct lack of closeness. That doesn't mean they were necessarily abusive, but their relationships are genuinely fraught in a way Anne's relationships with her family and community just aren't. I think that's actually a really important thing to note.

Given that, it also explains why Marcy trusts Andrias to the point of unreason because he validates them so much, and why Sasha grows so much when working with Grime and when confronted with Wartwood — an actual community that cares about its own and reciprocates good deeds done.

I think that the decision to call those parents essentially redundant is...ultimately fine. It makes sense. Their lack of presence should be felt and understood as, perhaps, the reason Marcy and Sasha act out the way they do, and it also serves to emphasize just how good the Boonchuys and the Plantars are as guardians

[picturejasper20]

Looking back the ending of Gravity Falls while thinking about endings of other series like Amphibia and The Ghost and Molly Mcgee, Weirdmageddon has a message that is underwhelming when it comes to Dipper and Mabel's relationship and Mabel's potrayal in the show.

This isn't about Mabel getting tricked by Bill. She is a 12-13 years old that in that context she was feeling really bad and not thinking well what she was doing. That isn't relevant to the topic at hand and honestly it isn't a problem she did that, it does makes sense in the episode it happened.

What i have an issue is how the narrative makes Dipper feel bad about considering staying studying with Stanford. This is something that Dipper was interested in and he was very fascinated by anything that was paranormal related. Stanford himself told Dipper he had a lot of potential and the kid was digging into it.

Mabel lashing out and not liking the idea of Dipper staying with Stanford is understandable in the episode Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future. She doesn't seem to have much friends back in her home and her parents are implied to not be the best. She gets scared of Dipper leaving, that's a reasonable fear for a kid to have.

However, as i mentioned before, Dipper is made feel bad about considering choosing something he wants to do. It isn't Mabel who has to learn that things change and sometimes this brings things we don't like. She doesn't exactly consider what Dipper wants for himself, she mainly cares about how ¨she is going to be alone¨ and making her brother feel selfish for choosing his own path or do something that could make him happy.

Yes, she learns that things can't stay the same forever and they are growing up, that itself is a pretty good development for her and overall a good message to teach.

Yet her being codependent on Dipper doesn't get brought up nor addressed, in fact the series seems to praise this behavior of hers. In how Dipper has to do what she wants if not he is a bad brother. Mabel's clinginess and controlling behaviour to an extent isn't called out, which that itself is a problem.

Small edit: I want to add an extra point here that Mabel does have a short scene near the end of the episode that she tells Dipper that she won't get in his way if he wants to stay with Stanford and she was ¨acting nuts¨ in the dream bubble. This is good for her but it does still feel in part that her issues weren't fully acknowledged and it doesn't help she didn't say this until after Dipper told her that he was going to stay with her and not be with Stanford, which is rather questionable in my opinion. It would have been more appropiate in the episode to have this brought up and getting adressed better than for her to wait for Dipper to do what she wanted.

In contrast in Amphibia, Marcy Wu has a similar arc about change. The series explores how she can take her escapism too far and how she can be very selfish in plenty of ways, something that is potrayed as an aspect she has to learn from and realize that it isn't healthy.

Her being too codependent on Anne and Sasha and their overall friendship is potrayed as toxic and the series explores this relationship a lot, having the girls grow over time and think about different aspects they have to work on.

In ¨True Colors¨ it is revealed that Marcy Wu learned about the Calamity Box the same day she got told by her parents that they were moving away. Very afraid of having to leave her friends behind and having to be alone in a new city, she found the Calamity Box and told Sasha and Anne about it. Worth of mentioning she didn't know if it would work but it was a desperate act of her just to not having to move away from her friends yet.

When Sasha and Anne find out about this they are, not surprisingly, very pissed and push from Marcy away for a moment, making Marcy realize her mistake and eventually apologizes for what she did.

In ¨All In¨ Marcy finally comes to terms with how she can't force Anne and Sasha to be the way she wants them to be and that her codependency on them isn't a good thing. She realizes that has to move away to her new home at some point, that things change but that doesn't mean the three of them have to stop being friends.

As you can see, there is a clear difference between how Mabel Pines and Marcy Wu’s characters and flaws are potrayed in the narrative. While Gravity Falls makes Mabel’s codependency and controlling behaviour to be something acceptable and that Dipper should conform to, Amphibia does the complete opposite and presents Marcy Wu’s actions as flaws she has and that can hurt other people, including her friends. She is the one that has to make a change and understand she has to work on herself if she wants to have new friends and keep these relationships as times moves on.

Since we are on topic, one thing that really bothered me is how Mabel created a version of Dipper that is ¨cool¨ and says yes and goes along with everything she wants to do. (Weirdmageddon Part 2)

This has… interesting implications of how Mabel believes that relationships should work, or at least with her brother twin Dipper. A lot has to do with how she and Dipper have very different personalities and she maybe wishes that he was more like her, but expecting someone else to say ¨yes¨ to everything you want is a toxic mentality to have. And the episode itself doesn’t address this enough, it doesn’t bring up to Mabel she can’t expect people to work like this and she should try thinking more about what others wants.

Lets talk about The Ghost and Molly Mcgee. In this series Molly Mcgee often has episodes where she has to learn certain lessons. One of them she learns over time is that often she has to give up control and let what others want to do instead.

A good example of this is ¨Ready, Set, Snow!¨ in which she is constanly trying to make Libby and Scratch to go and play outside in the snow with her without considering they would rather stay inside and sit near the fire for the moment. She spends most of the episode trying to find ways to make them go outside until she gets angry and goes out on her own. She has… quite of a mental breakdown in a sequence song. Scratch goes to check on her but he tells to her that she can’t do always what she wants and what it is important is for her to be spending time with her friends. Molly realizes she was wrong, goes back to the house and she apologizes for how she acted.

Molly has quite a lot of episodes like this, and all this becomes important in the series finale ¨The End¨ when she sees that Scratch has to go back to be Todd even if that means forgetting the memories he got as a ghost, her included. She tells Scratch that she is going to miss him a lot but she knows that forcing Scratch to stay wouldn’t be right. She encourages Scratch to go and ¨live his life¨ because she cares about Scratch being happy.

Similar to Marcy Wu, Molly learns that she can’t force people to do what she wants and she has to let them choose for themselves. She knows that encouraging Scratch to do what he always wanted to do as human is the right thing to do, even if it means saying goodbye to him.

I do understand the idea that Gravity Falls was doing at with something among the lines of ¨Dipper and Mabel not repeating the same mistakes that their uncles did¨ but that doesn’t mean Dipper has to give up his dreams at expense of what Mabel wants. As Dipper said in VS The Future episode: he can still visit and they can still talk to each other. They don’t have to fall apart the same way Standford and Stan did. Just like in Amphibia, if Marcy still was able to remain friends with Anne and Sasha over the years, the same can be applied to Dipper and Mabel as siblings.

If not, it could be rewritten in a way that makes Dipper reconsider that he would like to wait a few years before joining Stanford in his adventures. That he is still a kid and wants to spend a while longer figuring himself out and be with Mabel before making a decision. That way it feels more like a decision he wants to do for himself and goes along with his character arc that he doesn’t have to rush to grow up.

As for Mabel, she has a lot of growing up to do. She has to learn overtime that Dipper is his own person and he can take is own path. That if she wants to have friends or have in general healthy relationships with others, she can’t make it always about herself and people have their own needs as well. She would have to work on her codependency and clinginess she has on others, specially her own brother. This would help her with being a more mature capable individual when she grows up.

This post on itself isn’t me hating on Mabel’s character since she has moments she can be good and i feel a lot of her behaviour comes from not being taught properly and being a teenager. The problem is that the series doesn’t address this behaviour enough and, as result, it comes off as the series giving an unintentional underwhelming message of potraying Mabel’s issues as something that should be acceptable and not her having a dynamic with Dipper that comes off as toxic. It is important to understand to learn to support others and not always make things about ourselves. That sometimes relationships change and we can’t force people to be in a specific way.

[wassupastrik]

"CHECKMATE"

TW!!!

Marcy Wu seemed steadfast and confident, but her resilience crumbled before one person. It wasn't one of her parents, but her greatest fear—Darcy Wu. Marcy was brilliant at chess, but when the game turned into a battle of life and death, her analytical skills seemed to vanish. The field of this game was not a bloody fight but an ocean of tears and suffering. With each lost piece floating in this liquid, the water grew ever more crimson.

A powerful fear drove Marcy to make a fatal mistake: she lost two pawns in this game. But these were not just pieces on the board—they were her friends and loved ones. Two of her closest friends were now gone.

Darcy, playing the queen, and King Andrias checkmated Marcy. Despair overwhelmed her, and tears streamed down her face.

Defeated and broken, Marcy realized that her fear had consumed her. She was left alone in the crimson ocean, surrounded by the ghosts of those she had lost. And in that moment, she understood: sometimes a chess game is not just a game but a harsh reality where the price of a mistake is too high, and the outcome can be fatal.

[heart-wit-strength]

In my defence, in bargaining of inflicting horrifying suffering upon her I have enabled pirate Marcy to commit numerous atrocities and acts of violence as a treat so that should even it out

right?

Someday I’m going to write an angsty Amphibia fanfic purely to target my mutuals for all of the pain they’ve put me through. /hj

Seriously though you guys have a talent for making me experience the horrors of traumatizing my daughter (and future daughters in law). And are all insanely talented so good job!