#also even with the shortening aladors arc could have been written a lot better so

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

still not fully onboard with the "alador divorces his wife and becomes a great father that his kids could consistently rely on" idea. but if they do that with amity then you know what i want alador's relationship with the twins to be?

i want it to be like that episode in the good place where eleanor obsessively tries to prove that her abusive mother is scamming her new loving husband and stepdaughter because she needs to believe that her mother's cruelty was a universal constant. because if eleanor accepts her mom could clean up her act for this other kid then she would need to think about why her mother couldn't do the same for her. that's ed and em's reaction to alador trying to be a better dad to amity

[mdhwrites]

FYI, Amphibia actually got to have a full 20 episode season for its third and final season, while Owl House's third season was shortened to three specials. So don't go saying Amphibia exists as an excuse that Owl House could do better without needing more time when that show got to have a full season 3.

Answering this late night because it's just kind of... Frustrating because I chose the examples I did for a reason. The blog they're responding to for context.

So, part of the point of the blog was to compare two elements that got roughly the same amount of time. The same amount of episodes/appearances and critique which one did it better. This is also part of why I stopped the analysis when the characters finish their arcs because Amity finishes her arc BEFORE the show's shortening could have even affected it. Before it could be excused. Dana has said (interview here) that Eda's Requiem was in production when news of the cancellation came down. That is still two episodes AFTER the latest point, the one that is the most equivalent with Sasha's arc, that I place the end of Amity's character arc, Looking Glass Ruins. Amity's arc, or failure to properly have one, is NOT a product of the shortening.

It is just a product of bad, wasteful writing. Amphibia was able to do an arc more impressively, more robustly and more meaningfully to its actually story than TOH was in the same amount of time. The ONLY difference is that yes, Amphibia's plot got to move forward but that isn't an argument in Amity's favor. In TEN. EPISODES (and more appearances), Amity has literally NOTHING to do with the actual overall plot of The Owl House. She is a romantic subplot who doesn't move other characters' arcs forward, doesn't add to the world building besides a single time of going to a new location, or even adds much depths to the themes because of how botched her motivations for her change are. Or, you know, how there's a lot implied Amity but actually very little exploration of her character or relationships (this is part of why Alador's change of heart sucks so much because Amity seems to give zero shits about him before suddenly being a daddy's girl) which isn't nearly as compelling as what Sasha got because her appearances are DRIPPING with character and exploration.

This also ignores that Amphibia is quite literally INFAMOUS for the amount of episodes that don't technically need to exist. There are a LOT of episodes, even in S3, that serve more to add flavor, fun and small bits to theme than move the story forward. I love this flavor because Amphibia is genuinely fun and has a lot of fun with its world so it actually has flavor but... Well, it's not like it couldn't have been shortened. I actually wrote up an outline for how to do it but decided that that deserves its own blog if people are interested because it is still pretty long and doesn't actually address the real problem here.

Amity's arc finishes before the shortening. It wasn't affected by losing out on those extra episodes. It was written as intended for her going from enemies to lovers. That is part of why I feel it's so okay to compare the two because if Amphibia had been shortened, Sasha's arc might have had to get worse. Amity's literally didn't get affected by TOH's though. Maybe how she is post her arc could have been explored more but that's it. Her actual arc to becoming a good person was untouched. I am harping on this because I am SO TIRED OF HEARING THIS FUCKING EXCUSE.

But despite that, her arc also did very little actually with her and/or the world. That's the bigger point. You can argue that TOH had plans to do that post her arc (Reaching Out shoots that concept in the head admittedly) but why wait until then? Why be that wasteful? Even if they had three full seasons with 20 episodes each on average, Amity's arc, at its furthest point, takes up a SIXTH of that time. Ten of Sixty episodes. And in that time, they do such a piss poor job actually exploring her changing and wanting to become different. Meanwhile, Sasha spends 9 segments, because True Colors and the like are counted as one segment in the overall segment count, of a show with 106 segments. A bit less than ten percent. Even if we say 10 segments to include Commander Anne, it's still under ten percent of the runtime, which is WAY less time devoted to Sasha's arc percentile wise while Sasha ACTUALLY FUCKING MATTERED. She is also explored, expands the lore of the world, show us sides of it we wouldn't get otherwise and actually presents compelling, thematic arguments that challenge Anne and the show. Now yes, Amity doesn't literally get the full runtime of her episodes but she gets the majority of almost all of them but Looking Glass. If it's literally time spent on a plot line featuring Amity? She probably still clocks in at just around the same amount of time for her arc as Sasha did for hers.

TOH has flaws that run DEEP. Flaws in priorities, planning, pacing, actually exploring its own world or keeping things consistent. Amity is actually one the best examples of it because while yes, I like the character in S1... It didn't feel like she was actually ready to have her arc wrapped up soon after Winging it Like Witches. There was simply too much potential, too many problems in the way between her and Luz, or her and happiness in general, too little actually explored about her place in the world, for it to wrap up in two episodes or so.

And then it did, despite the fact that it wasn't shortened at that point. Then you look back on her arc and holes just keep showing up. Not because of Disney. Not because it was gay. Not because of the shortening.

It's because it was badly handled and not actually well written, especially when compared to its contemporaries. It just looked that way for a while but looking like something and being something are vastly different.

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Sorry for how repetitive this blog probably is. I'm just really tired of hearing this excuse.

Edit: Shout out to the fact that someone actually, before the blog was published, asked me what would have happened with Amphibia if it had been shortened like TOH. So... I'll set that one for the morning.

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