#Toh criticism

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

Lumity: Controversial Opinion

I have a lot of mixed feelings regarding Lumity. As a young queer, it was important for me and my development. It did a lot for queer representation and the fact that Luz is human means people can’t deny the queerness of it like some tried to do with Ruby and Sapphire by claiming they were aliens so it didn’t count. It is a cute sapphic romance and was very groundbreaking.

That said, it’s not the perfect romance it’s stans make it out to be. In many ways, it’s a wish fulfillment story, Luz gets to be with the rich, popular girl and be the hero of the Boiling Isles. They had some problems that they never really resolved. Luz kept lying and keeping secrets even after promising to be more open. On Amity’s end, her bullying in season 1 was sort of retconned to her parents and Boscha forcing her to act that way when there were several instances of her being nasty to Luz or Willow for no reason. Them breaking up or even taking a break would have taught both consequences. Amity’s bullying did play a role in Luz keeping secrets and she never got called out for it and was woobified.

Hardcore fans may dislike this but them breaking up wouldn’t be the end of the world. It would teach queer youth that queer relationships can have their own issues and breakups like cishet romance and you have to accept that because sapphic relationships are not inherently more pure than het ones. I may be biased towards Lunter but the latter ending up together would show that M/F couples can be queer as well and that it’s not “gay erasure” for a bi woman to end up with a bi man. Again, it was a groundbreaking ship for representation but isn’t the perfect romance and not everyone who dislikes it is a homophobic “parents rights” activist.

[stanlunter]

Dana Terrace on her way to steal everything she sees form other shows instead of making up at least something herself:

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

i really wish eda had retained some of her initial morally grey edge in the later seasons. it feels like she was this cool rebellious and somewhat selfish character in the first season and then she just becomes the resident mom.

i like that she got fleshed out more and we got to see her backstory and see her develop relationships with new characters, i just wish they hadn’t erased all of her initial characterization for that. she basically becomes an archetypical hero, just with some added sass.

i feel like gravity falls strikes a good balance in this trope with stan pines. he starts off as a money-minded con artist and later gets fleshed out into a more complex character, while still being the same money-minded con artist.

we see his backstory, we see him develop his relationship with ford, the kids and even soos and wendy, but he isn’t reduced to just a parental figure. he is still hilariously cunning and greedy, and i love him for that.

idk maybe i just like morally grey bastards too much lol. i really liked eda in the beginning because she was kind of like the female version of stan, but still unique as a character. and i hate that by the end of the series, she became somewhat flanderized. and fans only talk about her in the context of her being a mom to all the younger characters, or in regards to her relationship with raine.

[mr-damian-s-power]

Mini-tangent incoming, but this thing always got under my skin a little bit. Crazy fantasy/sci-fi worlds where the entire main cast is almost exclusively Humans or species that looks almost entirely Human but with a very minute difference. I know it's the ultimate first world problem and really just a nitpick at the end of the day, but I'm gonna pick!

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with having a main cast that is just all Humans or 'Humans but with pointy ears', but when the world they're in contains a bunch of fantastical and interesting looking species, that's where it gets a bit boring.

Star Wars is the main culprit of this! Hundreds of thousands of unique Alien species, but 90% of main casts are Human or 'Human but green', with maybe a single Droid or Alien to break it up if you're lucky. How about a story where the entire cast is a bunch of crazy Alien designs. Or a ragtag group of runaway Droids from different jobs.

Then, you've got the Owl House! The Demon Realm is a world of all kinds of crazy Demon people, but most of the characters of significance are Witches, which are just Humans with pointy ears. Look at Luz's friendgroup, the Hexsquad. You've got Witch, Witch, Witch and magic Human/Witch hybrid clone who looks exactly like a Witch.

Wouldn't it have been cool if one of the Hexsquad were a quirky looking Demon person? Make Willow or Gus a Demon! Luz's first friend could've been a Demon! Fits her characterisation as a weirdo! Hell, make Amity a Demon! Luz falls in love with a non-Human because she can look past physical differences. It doesn't matter that Amity has 6 arms or 12 eyes or is some weird giant Mantis creature, she's still her Batata!

Any other franchises you feel this applies to? Tell me!

-

Okay, tangent over! You may all go back to your tedious lives!

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

I just remembered the "Please. I don't want to see another human life destroyed by this place” line, and honestly did they have scenes of Luz starting to wonder if Belos' had a point and going into the island did destroy her life? If not, they should have had.

No, they did not have Luz ever wonder how the isles affected Belos--except in the storyboards:

Luz still calls him out for trying to destroy the isles and being a hypocrite but there's still that moment of empathy in which she asks point blank: "What do you think they DID to you?!" She briefly contemplates just why someone would go so far to destroy an entire population and what his mindset might be. Unfortunately, this was not included in the final version and Belos' expression is blank instead of pleading.

Then there's this storyboard from For the Future in which Luz, Eda, and King explain to the Collector how people like Amity and Lilith became their friends:

Luz's line about "people being complicated" is in the episode but the entire exchange between her and the Collector is not even though it opens up a lot of interesting ideas and themes. Without it though, the show becomes straight up hypocritical when it states that people are complicated but reduces its villains to generic archetypes and its hero characters as being simply misguided or victims of the villains.

And no, this doesn't mean that the show should have excused Belos' actions or even forgiven him; but they could have and should have acknowledged the complexity of his character by keeping this nuance in and how the characters react to it. By doing so, the message of "people are complicated" becomes clear and strengthens the other characters as well. Luz gets to self-reflect on how she sees other people and learn that even the worst people among us are incredibly complex and have driving forces that are uncomfortably close to our own, thus making it much harder to demonize them. The Collector--instead of being a Giant Star Baby--keeps both his childlike bluntness and keen observational skills that he had in season 2, thus fleshing out the character instead of devolving him.

Regrettably, that nuance is absent from the show and we have a rather black-and-white narrative about Good vs. Evil; people are only ever really "bad" if someone tricked them or if there was a misunderstanding and all the Real Bad People are just selfish jerks who are power hungry and controlling.

This is not compelling storytelling; this is a tale as old as time. And the worst part is that there was a great story in The Owl House but it was left in the rough drafts.

Storyboards by Yasmin Khudari and King Pecora

[flower-boi16]

I Don’t Really Like How Season 3 Handles Hunter’s Trauma of Losing FlapJack

Thanks to Them shows the grand finale of Hunter’s whole character arc throughout the series; he’s healed from his past trauma and abuse he underwent from Belos, and finally stood up to Belos cuts him out from his life. It’s a solid ending to his arc…until you remember that Hunter now has some brand new trauma of his abuser coming back, being possessed by that abuser, and then having that abuser kill his best friend while possessing him meaning that he was essentially forced to watch himself kill his best friend.

And this…never gets addressed. Ok, that’s a bit of a lie, For the Future tries to resolve this but execution is…eh. Hunter spends a lot of For the Future grieving over what happened with FlapJack, with him being more dead set to catch up to Belos then ever. The resolution that the episode tries to give to this is Hunter gaining new powers that he got due to FlapJack’s sacrifice.

Now, I do like what this represents, as it represents that FlapJack will always be with Hunter deep down even when he’s gone, it’s pretty sweet. But….at the same time, it’s also still fairly rushed and doesn’t really fully resolves or addresses Hunter’s grief. We never get to see Hunter come to terms with what happened, his grief still goes unaddressed.

Watching and Dreaming further continues to gloss over Hunter’s grief over what happened and at that point it doesn’t really get much of a resolution, it’s, again, entirely glossed over and not really resolved. The show effectively added in new trauma for Hunter at the last minute in the final season when it didn’t have much time to really address it, so now we’re supposed to just assume that Hunter came to terms with it off screen which doesn’t feel particularly satisfying to me.

I don’t think FlapJack’s death was pointless and it did serve a purpose, but it seemed that writers didn’t have much time to address Hunter’s grief and the resolution we got felt…very underwhelming. Season 3’s ending for Hunter was decent overall but when it came to this aspect I think they kinda fumbled the bag.

[antispopausandstuff]

this might be a hot take, but it feels like a light smack on the face to have Lilith as aroace rep and not include Willow.

now, i have no issue with Lilith being aroace. i love Lilith and there's no actual problem with her being labeled as such.

but in comparison to Willow, who hasn't shown true romantic interest or chemistry with anyone until s2-s3 kinda pushed it in there, i do feel a little bit salty as a questioning arospec person.

i don't particularly understand why there has to be one of every type, when the 'romance' between Willow and Hunter negatively affected both of their arcs and sidelined their true character as a whole. to only have Lilith as the aroace character, when she was an antagonist previously, can possibly send a weird message.

maybe none of this really matters and i'm just nitpicking, but i really would've loved to have Willow as the aroace rep too. there doesn't have to be one way or another.

[tentacledsnakelover]

The Double Standard about the Titan

One thing I have noticed about the show and the fandom is that there seems to be a bit of a disconnect (for lack of a better term) between how the Titan is viewed as a holy figure.

The Boiling Isles is built atop the Titan's corpse, but the only one who put the Titan up as some sort of higher power was Belos. We don't see anybody else really worship the Titan during Belos' reign, and we saw in the Savage Ages that no one really worshipped the Titan either.

When we meet the Titan's spirit in the finale, it is clear he is a flawed being, not some perfect, all knowing diety. But when Luz is brought back with Titan powers, people in the fandom act like she is a (demi) goddess, and that Amity will be swooning over her 'goddess' and that Luz is the show's equivalent of Christ. King is the Titan's son, but his arc was about realizing he doesn't need to be treated as special to be happy. Luz had Titan powers, but she was still just Luz.

[kiwisandpearls]

thinking about it now…I can kinda see what the toh writers might have been trying to do by having Hunter basically turn into Caleb by the end of show (he reverts to his old haircut, has a thing for wood carving which Caleb was seen doing in the portraits, has the same eye color as Caleb). I think they were trying to imply that Hunter kind of…accepted the fact that he’s a clone of Caleb. Which, if that is what they were trying to do:

that is a horrible idea considering everything else about his arc up to WAD.

Up to WAD the writers have shown how Hunter clearly did not want to be like Caleb. Heck the thing that caused Hunter to try and cut his hair was seeing a glimpse of Caleb in his reflection of the mirror in TTT. He gets his old hairstyle back when Belos possesses him. Belos made Hunter and all the other golden guards to be basically clones of Caleb and he says this himself. Everything up to WAD is basically screaming at us that Hunter being like Caleb is not something Hunter wants and is what Belos wants of him, and is not a good thing.

so for the TOH writers to then turn around and give him Caleb’s eye color, give him back his old hairstyle and technically also Caleb’s hairstyle (which I cannot reiterate enough, he tried to cut in a panic because he saw Caleb in his reflection), and give him the hobby Caleb was seen doing in the portraits (wood carving), it not only in a sense gives Belos what he wanted (to make a ‘better version of a friend’) it’s a major slap in the face for everything Hunter’s arc was clearly building up to, refusing to be a clone of Caleb and showing that he is his own person.

so, if it is true that they were trying to do a thing where Hunter accepts that he’s a clone of Caleb (which, I did not say this before but I’ll say this now, is just speculation); 1. That’s a terrible idea and goes against everything Hunter’s arc was building up to and 2. They did not do a good job of hinting or implying this, they hinted everything in the opposite direction of this, that Hunter learns he is his own person.

[owlhousehottakes]

I wish Papa Titan at least apologize to Collector for wrongly imprisoned in the table alone for like millions of years before he moved on.

I struggle drawing Collie with their hat on so.. no hat for this one And idk why I put so much effort into this one. Just felt like it ig.

[prisi]

I think writers/creators should keep in mind that not just because you dislike one of your characters means you should throw all of their development and potential out the window and give them unsatisfactory treatment in the narrative.

Good nigths.

[hikaaa-bi]

i find it funny how people praise the owl house for breaking the trend of redeeming the villain when the show instead took the laziest path with dealing with their villain. i mean, i get it. not all villains need to be redeemed and sometimes, it's just fine to kill them off or defeat them. no character is irredeemable, but sometimes the point is that people refuse to change.

but what they did with belos was just lazy. he didn't need to be redeemed, sure, but his ending was way too anti-climactic. he was such a complex character to just be labelled as Pure Evil™ and killed off at the end. he didn't need to be redeemed, but he at least deserved to be acknowledged as the three-dimensional complex character that he is. he wasn't just a disney-esque villain who did everything for power and had no depth to his personality. he was a symbol of religious trauma and how it affects people. he was a horrible person but also a sympathetic one, because i can only imagine how harmful growing up in the puritan era would have been.

like i said before, the show being cancelled is not an excuse. i was so excited to see all the religious and spiritual themes in belos's past, and all the theories that fans were coming up with. hell, some fans did a better job of representing belos than the show ever did. i just feel like it was a whole bag of lost potential. belos could have been one of the most insanely complex and well-written villains but the creators of the owl house wants to impress its fans, so they pull a "haha we're not like other shows because we can't sympathize with the villain!" newsflash: you don't need to redeem the villain in order to portray them as sympathetic. azula from avatar and simon from infinity train are good examples of sympathetic villains/antagonists who don't get redeemed.

it's even more ridiculous considering how rushed and badly written lilith's arc was, even though she cursed her sister, tried to kill a literal child, and almost got her sister turned to stone. you'd think if the show despises redemptions so much, they wouldn't give lilith a lazy and rushed redemption arc like that, only to render her useless for the rest of the show.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

it always pisses me off when fantasy stories have a cast of conventionally attractive humanoid characters with like,, different colored hair or something. like what do you mean your story is set in this amazing fantastical world with monsters and centaurs and aliens and sentient blobs, but your main cast is just a bunch of average joes?

[mr-damian-s-power]

Going on from my other post about how I feel the 'Aliens that are Humans but slightly different' and 'world of cool aliens designs but the main character is a Human' trends are lazy and boring, here's another thing I just remembered relating to it.

When someone defends it with 'it's for relatability'.

What are you trying to say? That you can't relate to someone if you don't look exactly like them? What kinda dumb bollocks is that? Maybe I just don't get it, being a filthy whiteman, but I find that idea stupid.

If you think I can't relate to the Alien who looks like a sentient pile of orange sludge, or that funky little monster with the body of a Chicken and the head of a Goblin, then maybe be a better writer. Nope, I can only relate to English Human males who have autism, apparently.

What, are we supposed to relate to characters based on skin colour and race? You sure you wanna go down that road, chief?

[mahoutoons]

me: you know i feel salty about how toh handled its characters of colour. let me go to the toh critical tags maybe i'll find people who share my sentiments.

the toh critical tags: "here's why killing off the genocidal white puritan was bad, actually. also huntlow bad."

every other fucking post is about how killing belos was bad or about how huntlow is bad. not a single post about how willow and gus got the short end of the stick in terms of screentime, ESPCIALLY gus whose episode was overshadowed by lumity, not a single post about how raine was reduced to eda's love interest and most of their screentime was them being brainwashed. not a single post about the copious amounts of white favourtism in the fandom to the point that they talk more about amity than luz, who they reduce to being amity's gf. no, lets advocate for the white colonizer!

[anastasia-queen]

The way the Owl House Fanbase reacts towards Lunter & Huntlow.

A ship should complement the story, but it shouldn't be the main focus or derive the narrative, especially for a character concluding their development arc. (Huntlow)

It has been a while since I made an Owl House post. Anyway, I enjoy this meme.