my pronouns are he/him. this is a toh sideblog made specifically so that i can be a menace to society without making my dear mutuals on main suffer.
im not interested in ship discourse or fandom purity culture. what i find most important in any piece of art is what makes it compelling: regularly (at least for me), that ends up being things people can deem "problematic."
the biggest example when it comes to TOH specifically is that i view belos' treatment of hunter through the lens of incestuous abuse (and the way children as a class are treated within society). because of this, i will be talking about and reblogging content about empgold (and wittecest as an extension of that). i'm not a survivor, so please let me know if i say something insensitive
my favorite characters to talk about are luz, hunter, and belos. i ship lunter & amillow, but i think lumity and willuz are cute. i dont like huntlow as it is in the show canon, but obviously i think it's totally fine to ship them.
i wont maintag (specifically, i wont use full names for character tags and won't use the toh/the owl house tags)
original post tag: h.post
original art tag: h.art
original character tag: h.oc
salt: toh crit
bro. he had MAIN CHARACTER energy. not saying he had to be the main character but it's absurd how the writers made such an insanely skilled character with a powerset that is so insanely versatile and expansive (you're saying he can make ANY kind of illusions, look into a person's worst memories and also torture them by forcing them to relive their worst memories??) and then were like "nah he's the black best friend, he's just there for emotional support ?? like ???
In all honesty i would LOVE to get Wittebane content in the book but im terrified on how Dana is gonna handle it knowing how inaccurate the Wittebanes are. Not only that but you cant write Caleb in ANY way stable since he was raised only by the public and was put on high stakes for his time. I dont know if Dana really cares that much for the Wittebanes enough to actually take the time to research Child Development or Colonial History and I know it'll make me mad
What was the point of establishing that Eda runs a potions business if nothing is ever done with it?
It doesn't really come into to play after the 2nd episode. When the first episode for the second season happens, Luz talks about how The Owl Fam is financially struggling because they lost the portal door, so they can't sell human junk anymore. But wasn't that just a side gig done on weekends? Making and selling potions was supposedly Eda's main way of making money, and we know she and Lilith can still make potions because they both do it in the first episode, but running the business never comes up.
still very funny to me that dana terrace, famously not a big fan of disney, who also has a show criticizing them, is still working with them to make a graphic novel for her series that already ended. lol
look. as an artist myself it fucking sucks when youre not able to make the art you want to make, when youre not able to tell the story you really want to tell. but to go against your own morals in order to tell that story is, frankly, kind of appalling? working with an exploitative company that you have been criticizing is pure hypocrisy. you care about your morals? dont work with them. dont write for them. dont draw for them. even if they keep going with the story, dont help them with it. dont bark without any bite if you actually give a damn about what you claim to stand for.
still very funny to me that dana terrace, famously not a big fan of disney, who also has a show criticizing them, is still working with them to make a graphic novel for her series that already ended. lol
us weirdos have to stick together 🥹 ✨ 💖 🌈 but you should genuinely die if you ship a non-canon ship I don't like. No it's not problematic in the slightest it just goes against my headcanon so I hate you and hope you keel over and rot
I'll forever mourn the way TOH set up the Boiling Isles's social darwinist, might-makes-right, fuck-you-got-mine ideology and then just seemingly abandoned it when the Belos/Philip reveal came around.
I mean, the concept of strenght/magical prowess is present hanging over so many characters' heads, like:
Luz being having to work hard at spell casting due to not having a magical bile sack;
Eda's curse sapping away her magic, which gets her to lose every ounce of respect her peers had towards her after she she loses her magic for good after s1;
Lilith cursing Eda out of fear she'd lose to her in the EC tournament and still struggling to catch up even as Eda's curse worsens through the years;
Willow's later-bloomer status causing her be (seemingly) abandoned by Amity as a kid and then bullied by her peers at Hexside, only to become popular after proving herself to be talented at Plant magic;
Amity struggling with the pression put on her to be the perfect witch, even acting mean despite regretting it due to believing she can't show any weakness (on top of blaming herself for being "too weak" as a child to stand up to her parents for Willow);
Gus being insecure about Illusionist magic due to it been seen as weaker than other types of magic;
Hunter telling Luz that if he wasn't taken on by Belos, he'd have no future due to being born with no magic;
Boscha being able to get away with murder (both literally and figurativelly) due to being the Grudgby captain.
Considering that disability is a huge theme on this show, you'd think that social-darwinism would be the thematic enemy to beat, especially when colonialism/imperialism/fascism are all rooted in the idea of hierarchy betwen those who are deemed "superior" and those who are deemed "inferior".
I honestly don't get why set up this underlying thematic issue for over 1 and a half seasons only to turn around and go "Actually, the main issue of this fantasy world is not that raw power is viewed as more important than solidarity and basic decency, but that some bigoted (human!) puritan guy is scamming everyone into participating into his death cult".
And because it requires to be said, NO, I DO NOT THINK that the inhabitants of the Boiling Isles deserved to be genocided for their social-darwinism, even if it somehow wasn't part of Belos's plans. I personally think that this thematic swerve is a way to the story not have to deal with the duality of Boiling Isles being somewhere Luz can belong and achieve her dreams AND ALSO a fascist hellhole that looks down on her for simple being human.
i'd be interested to hear more about the de-aged philip au if you're willing :-)
HI ANON!!! i am SO sorry for not getting to this sooner. things have been. uh. happening? both good and bad.
the de-aged philip au is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: instead of being killed in WAD, belos gets de-aged to philip from a few months after caleb has left with evelyn (with no memories of anything after that) and promptly gets adopted by camila. the idea formed during one of my usual "think about belos for 3 hours straight" bouts where i was pondering what philip would be like if he wasnt raised in a violent cult. and then realized that i could just Write That if i actually wanted to.
it's mostly fluff. philip is by all means a pretty average kid. he's not a saint, just..... normal. sure, he might have spent the entire 11th year of his life convinced he would get thrown away by this new family because everyone throws him away eventually (everyone except caleb, but that's not true anymore because caleb did leave, because witches arent evil, so caleb just left on his own-), and sure he might be banned from the secret magic realm that his sisters spend pretty much all their time in and sure his sisters' friends are pretty suspicious of him (what has HE ever done to them, anyway? not fair...!), but if he ignores that there's really nothing interesting about him. at least, there isn't riiiight up until he starts getting these... dreams.
he doesn't like thinking about them.
that being said, it's not like he's an idiot. he is aware he was, apparently, the almost comically evil emperor of that secret magic realm. and that he tried to kill his sisters at some point. and that he--or at least that other version of him--killed caleb. but he's known that since he was, like, twelve. he's had two years to get used to it. he's not the same guy! camila and luz and vee made sure he really understood that.
but it's hard to keep thinking that way when he's getting the memories back. sure, it's all murky, kind of like he's looking at it all through a bunch of water, but he remembers killing caleb, now. he remembers what it was like to try and kill his sister and countless others. he remembers what it's like to break open a palisman and gorge himself on it, just to keep the curse at bay.
speaking of the curse... yeah, that's kind of a small issue. but he can take care of it himself! surely it won't be getting any worse. surely.
right?
i cant write a whole thing on the spot right now, but rest assured it gets a lot worse before it gets better, featuring philip isolating himself from everyone that loves him and convincing himself he deserves to suffer because there is a version of him out there that did all those horrendous things. and in the meantime, camila is worried sick about her son, luz and vee are trying to figure out how to get him to open up, and the rest of the kids are torn on what to do, culminating in a botched suicide attempt and a lot of talking it out and a bunch of ugly feelings.
i just want to write a story about a kid realizing the way he was raised was wrong and getting the chance to live without adhering to strict puritan standards for the rest of eternity. and of course he's still kind of maladjusted, because you cant escape the inherent trauma of growing up mentally ill and/or neurodivergent in a society like ours.
there's also luz and vee and camila (and hunter) stuff going on but this is the "de-aged philip" au primarily so the focus is on him.
i'd be interested to hear more about the de-aged philip au if you're willing :-)
HI ANON!!! i am SO sorry for not getting to this sooner. things have been. uh. happening? both good and bad.
the de-aged philip au is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: instead of being killed in WAD, belos gets de-aged to philip from a few months after caleb has left with evelyn (with no memories of anything after that) and promptly gets adopted by camila. the idea formed during one of my usual "think about belos for 3 hours straight" bouts where i was pondering what philip would be like if he wasnt raised in a violent cult. and then realized that i could just Write That if i actually wanted to.
it's mostly fluff. philip is by all means a pretty average kid. he's not a saint, just..... normal. sure, he might have spent the entire 11th year of his life convinced he would get thrown away by this new family because everyone throws him away eventually (everyone except caleb, but that's not true anymore because caleb did leave, because witches arent evil, so caleb just left on his own-), and sure he might be banned from the secret magic realm that his sisters spend pretty much all their time in and sure his sisters' friends are pretty suspicious of him (what has HE ever done to them, anyway? not fair...!), but if he ignores that there's really nothing interesting about him. at least, there isn't riiiight up until he starts getting these... dreams.
he doesn't like thinking about them.
that being said, it's not like he's an idiot. he is aware he was, apparently, the almost comically evil emperor of that secret magic realm. and that he tried to kill his sisters at some point. and that he--or at least that other version of him--killed caleb. but he's known that since he was, like, twelve. he's had two years to get used to it. he's not the same guy! camila and luz and vee made sure he really understood that.
but it's hard to keep thinking that way when he's getting the memories back. sure, it's all murky, kind of like he's looking at it all through a bunch of water, but he remembers killing caleb, now. he remembers what it was like to try and kill his sister and countless others. he remembers what it's like to break open a palisman and gorge himself on it, just to keep the curse at bay.
speaking of the curse... yeah, that's kind of a small issue. but he can take care of it himself! surely it won't be getting any worse. surely.
right?
i cant write a whole thing on the spot right now, but rest assured it gets a lot worse before it gets better, featuring philip isolating himself from everyone that loves him and convincing himself he deserves to suffer because there is a version of him out there that did all those horrendous things. and in the meantime, camila is worried sick about her son, luz and vee are trying to figure out how to get him to open up, and the rest of the kids are torn on what to do, culminating in a botched suicide attempt and a lot of talking it out and a bunch of ugly feelings.
i just want to write a story about a kid realizing the way he was raised was wrong and getting the chance to live without adhering to strict puritan standards for the rest of eternity. and of course he's still kind of maladjusted, because you cant escape the inherent trauma of growing up mentally ill and/or neurodivergent in a society like ours.
there's also luz and vee and camila (and hunter) stuff going on but this is the "de-aged philip" au primarily so the focus is on him.
