Hi! Okay I know I'm sorry I've lowkey been stalking a lot of what you're doing but it's because I really really click with where your brain's at, and I have so much respect for your takes on the show. I'm just so lucky I ran into you just when I was starting to compile an eoa spellbook in my head, lol.
So! Magic questions!
It took me far too long into a rewatch to start paying attention to the magic colors cast by wizards/malvagos (it was Ash who tipped me off that certain casters tend to have certain colors). I know you kind of got into it a little, but I was wondering what helps determine the unique colors? If it's not tamboritas, could it be something more intimate, like personality? Or something deeper? What does Mateo's signature orange glow mean? Would another wizard stereotype him a certain way because of it? I'm inclined to think that color is linked to a caster's spirit/soul, especially since Alacazar's book-spirit is yellow, as is his magic.
If that's the case, is magic itself tied to a person's soul? Elena's emotion-magic is obviously deeply intimate, and though her magic is different than studied spells, maybe there's some linkage between the two? Is magic, at its core, something that touches you inside, something that you kinda "be"? (jeesh okay i see I'm taking "The magic within you" far too literally)
Lot to dump out there but I hope it's food for thought! I have nothing but brainrot so
Hiiii! Thank you, and I'm so sorry for letting this sit for so long 😭
Obviously, there's nothing in the text of the show that defines why different wizards get the colors they do, so all of this is totally speculative. You pose some really interesting questions, though!
The Boring/meta answer is that the colors are just a convenient way to distinguish between who's casting & also what their rough alignment is - warm colors for the good guys, cool colors for the bad guys. Magic battles would be a lot harder to parse if everyone's magic looked the same. But there's a surprising number of interesting edge cases that open the way for magical worldbuilding questions.
Like, there's the case of certain spells tending to be certain colors, regardless of who is performing them. Conglari is usually green when cast, with a few exceptions (orange when Mateo (& Olivia) first use it in "Wizard-in-Training" and pink when Olivia uses it in "Team Isa"), and mitsomo ticarsi's blue overrides both Mateo's orange and the royal guards' red. And like. I have no clue what to make of the implications of that. Like is there something inherent to the spell? What decided those colors? The wizards that first performed the spells? The magic itself? I do love the idea of "living" magic and wizardry as an act of communication with it but there's not really enough examples of these specific-color spells in the show to make any concrete statements about them.
And then there's the case of how Victor's magic stays the same indigo color even when he changes alignment. This case pretty handily dismisses the idea of magic color being defined by alignment as any sort of in-universe rule and makes me lean more toward the idea of the color being intrinsic to the caster. It could be a personality factor, which could help explain in a correlation vs. causation kind of way why so many malvagos have colors in the purple/dark blue range. I.e., whatever trait they have that makes their magic color trend toward purple is also the trait that makes them more inclined to turn to dark magic in the first place. It explains why those colors would be so common among that group while also accounting for cases like Ash's white magic - even if she has the "purple" trait, maybe her "white" trait is just more strongly expressed. This could also explain why all the royal guards have red magic in "Crash Course" - if they've all got the types of personalities that could lead them to joining the guard, maybe that type of personality just manifests as red.
(On the note of "Crash Course", the one thing I'll say for sure is that the magic color probably doesn't come from the tamboritas, since Bronzino's magic is yellow while casting from that same wand. Similarly, when Alacazar uses Mateo's tamborita in "Spirit of a Wizard", his own magic is still yellow instead of Mateo's orange.)
(Also on the note of "Crash Course", that episode shows us what I think is the only example in the show of a wizard actively taking control of someone else's spell. Mateo pulls the wand out of Rico's hands and is able to carefully set Miguel back down from being levitated. The magic stays red instead of turning orange, which I guess is somewhat relevant here? It at least tells us that the caster has a strong influence on the color. But I mostly bring it up because holy shit Mateo took direct control of someone else's spell. Like. Is that. Is that something any wizard could do? Is that significant? Look, I know the writers probably weren't trying to make a statement about Mateo or his relative magical strength there but in-universe I feel like that should be noteworthy. What in the heck.)
But I think the most interesting edge cases are the ones where someone's base magic color actually changes over the course of the show. The two examples I can think of are Elena, whose tamborita magic changes from purple in "Not Without My Magic" to orange in the "Spring Cleaning" short, and Olivia, whose magic changes from orange in "Wizard-In-Training" and "Movin' On Up" to pink in "Team Isa". Elena's kind of a weird case because her own magic does have specific color associations - both her scepter powers and her emotion magic. It's possible that her tamborita magic changing colors implies that the mental state of the caster can influence it as well as (or instead of) personality. While Elena certainly grows and changes over the show, "Not Without My Magic" and "The Magic Within" and associated shorts aren't really all that far apart in the timeline, so such a dramatic change seems unlikely, and like, other magic users grow and change too without their magic changing. But Elena's anxiety magic post-TMW manifests as purple, so maybe her stress about not having her scepter in "Not Without My Magic" is affecting her magic color there?
I don't think tamborita magic color is always indicative of emotion (unless Mateo is just pissed off 24/7 which. not an accurate read of his character, but admittedly a funny one), but I can actually think of one other example in the show that suggests it might contribute in extreme cases. Because while I fully admit it could just be the color settings on my computer or the lighting in the episode or my own perception, I swear to God that Mateo's magic is yellow specifically during "By My Side".
Like. Am I losing it? Am I cherry-picking too much? That's a different color, right? Like I can see a bit of an orange ring around the outside but his magic is usually so much darker/more uniform. Is it just the location/lighting? Like, it's gotta just be that, but the fact that there are butterflies there too makes me wonder if it's a deliberate choice to make his magic lighter for this song. Dude's in such a good mood he temporarily hijacked Elena's emotional symbolism.
Although another possibility here is that his magic is more yellow in that song because he's specifically learning from Alacazar, whose magic is yellow - in both Elena and Olivia's cases, their magic is orange like Mateo's when he's instructing them, but purple and pink respectively when they're casting without him around. If all that's intentional, the Doylist explanation is just Symbolism™, but in-universe it could suggest some sort personal influence - like if you're trying to do magic Like Someone Else, you may mimic their magic color, whether intentionally or not. Although that doesn't really track with the guards' magic being red to Bronzino's yellow. Still, there's room for exploration there, I think.
Expanding on this with Olivia's case, it could be something like, a wizard starts out with magic colors influenced by how they're learning it, and as they get more experience and come into their own as a spellcaster, their own colors start to show through. And this cycles us back around to it potentially being something deeper to their identity, like their personality or something tied to their spirit. It could be a form of self-expression, tying it in with how Shuriki banned magic alongside music and dancing. There's a lot of possibilities here.
I think having worked my way through this post, I really like the idea of it being influenced by a combination of things - personality, emotion, the people you look up to, intent, etc. In that vein, I also really like your comment about wizards potentially stereotyping each other based on their magic - if they perceive their magic as being one color for one reason, it could be easy to assume another wizard's magic is the same, even if another factor is behind it. I wonder if magic color is something wizarding communities even understand in universe.
Anyway, thank you so much for giving me all this good stuff to chew on, and apologies again for the delay. I know I didn't exactly, like, answer anything here but I hope it's still enjoyable to think about!
That’s okay! There’s nothing wrong with liking more than one ship! People are free to like whichever ship they want, as long as they don’t get too carried away, which, unfortunately, it seems like many people in the fandom have. I’ve seen some people who like Gabelena and Eleteo so much, they ignore that Gabeomi and Carteo even happened. I love shipping, but I hate it when it gets to the point where canon relationships are ignored.
Yeah I can understand your point of view on that too. I haven’t really been into the fandom of Elena as much as I have been in TTS, I’m a huge fan of Elena when the show came out. That’s the whole reason why I created this blog in the first place heh🙂.
But then TTS came out and kinda steered me away from the Eoa fandom heh😅. I only recently went back because both my shows TTS and Eoa are over I got back into the Eoa fandom after it ended. I know kinda late for that heh 😅. As for the ships I know a lot if people can get carried away by ignoring certain ships or hating certain ships others like.
That’s why I myself don’t like talking about the ships I like because I don’t want people to argue or start sending hate asks to me about it. (I’ve gotten a lot of hate anons before for my ships).
Aww thank you! Well there’s a whole lot that I caught when I see these two dorks together. I’m not sure if this is the picture your talking about, but if it is I mean just look at them. You can tell they do have crushes on each other, from this scene I get that they are both super shy about telling each other how they feel.
Also you can tell in this picture that it’s kinda awkward at first because I think Mateo really liked Elena, but since she never said anything that she had feelings toward him Carla was the second one he actually in my view really liked. I think they would have a really good relationship because they both know Magic, they both fight in a way, they are both shy and have a hard time showing their feelings.
honestly I don’t think any of them expected to have feelings for each other, but things change and the future is not predictable. These are my thoughts on the ship which I really like and I can see why Disney confirmed this ship, but I also really wish they would have confirmed it with Elena but oh well.😅
What are your thoughts on Isabel becoming Royal Inventor? I know inventing is Isabel’s hobby, but when somebody is titled as “Royal” then that implies that they work for the Royal family. But Isabel is not only part of the royal family, but she is heir presumptive. If Elena dies or abdicates without children, then the throne will pass to Isabel. Isabel’s arc was about learning to become a ruler like Elena. So why make her Royal Inventor, if she could potentially become ruler of Avalor one day?
Narratively speaking, I think it actually makes perfect sense. For starters, while there are certainly themes of leadership in some of Isabel's episodes, I'd argue that her arc is less about becoming a "ruler like Elena" and more about her becoming a leader unlike Elena.
(True to form, long-winded essay below the cut.)
Isabel starts the show as a clingy little kid - from her perspective, she just lost her parents, and she doesn't understand that her sister's new responsibilities mean that she can't spend as much time with her as she used to. A lot of her episodes involve her learning to act independently of Elena. She must develop and defend her own identity, even as she reckons with the limitations of her age.
She goes to school for the first time in "Crystal in the Rough" and struggles to make friends her own age, so she smothers her own identity and tries to just fit in instead. She has to learn to be herself and rely on her own strengths - her skills with math, science, and invention. This episode also gives Isabel her own friend group, independent from Elena and the other amigos. Later, in "Science Unfair", she has to learn to rely on those friends for help. Her sister gives her some advice, but ultimately, she and her new friends finish their project themselves.
Later still in "Class Act", Isabel has to learn to recover from her own mistakes and work with even more people outside of her family, to the point where she's able to teach Elena a lesson about working with difficult personalities in "Norberg Peace Prize". By "Shooting Stars", she's totally confident in her role as a scientist and her ability to give directions related to that role. And in Isa's final focus episode, "Heart of the Jaguar", Elena is literally taken from her, and she must learn to stand up for herself and solve her problems entirely alone.
But even as she learns to become a more independent and confident leader in her own right, she has to deal with the fact that she is still fundamentally Different from her sister. At first, this is largely framed as a function of her age. In "Blockheads" and "Three Jaquins and Princess", she is ignored and doubted because of her youth, though it's her knowledge and ingenuity that solve the problems of the day.
Still, she tries to be one of the "big kids", and in "Sister of Invention", she makes her plea again to be treated as an adult and seen as part of the team. She's ultimately allowed to join the amigos, but it's not because they see her as being like them. In fact, they explicitly say that Isabel can't do what they do... but that they can't do what she does, either. She's allowed to work with them because of her inventions and mathematical skills - that is, because of her differences.
(Arguably, "Science Unfair" has a similar conclusion. Isabel is invited to go to college - that is, invited to join a group of adults - specifically because of her skills with science. Beyond just being her hobby, those skills are at the core of her identity, and they are what tie her to being recognized as a grown-up.)
The point is hammered in further in "Team Isa", where Cristina outright tells her that "you're not Elena and you never will be." Isabel was trying to be a "leader like Elena" and failed, only succeeding when she utilized her and her friends' own unique skills instead of trying to just be like her sister. Isabel and Elena have distinct skill sets, and episodes like "A Gecko's Tale" and "The Family Treasure" emphasize this. Their differing skills allow them to complement each other and give them opportunities to learn, but throughout the show, it's made clear that they are not each other and cannot fully fill each other's roles.
Because again, it's not just that Isa can't do exactly what Elena does. It's also that Elena can't do what Isa does. She tries to handle invention plans in "Sugar Rush", but it only adds to her anxieties, and at the end of the episode, she hands the responsibility off to Isabel, the expert. Elena has to learn to delegate what she can't handle herself.
That's what the Royal Inventor title means. It's respect for Isabel's unique skills. It's an acknowledgement that she's a part of the team. And it's not an act of subordination, but rather a delegation of authority.
So the narrative comes together there. Isabel has gone from a clingy little kid that would hide her interests to fit in to a confident young lady that knows where her skills lie and can be trusted with the responsibility to use them for the kingdom's benefit.
The promotion scene at the end of "Coronation Day" exists primarily for these narrative reasons rather than for making perfect logical sense in-universe. It's meant to showcase how the character arcs have developed - most of them fall apart if you put them under the slightest bit of realistic scrutiny - but if we do want to look at them through that logical, in-universe lens, then frankly, Isabel's promotion probably makes the most sense.
There is a precedent of members of the royal family still working for the royal family. Esteban was chancellor for most of the show and both he and the abuelos were on the Grand Council. None of those three may have had a claim to the throne like Isabel could, but even her claim is pretty meaningless at this point in the timeline.
The only reason Elena had any governing authority as Crown Princess was because there was Literally No Other Ruler at the time. Current heir or not, Isabel won't actually be expected to lead the kingdom unless something happens to Elena, and if Elena ever has kids, then Isa's practically off the roster entirely. So... what's a princess to do in the meantime? Being named Royal Inventor gives her a degree of authority within Elena's court that she may never have otherwise and gives her something to do for the kingdom other than wait around until Elena dies. It's even a job that's in her wheelhouse.
Besides, if Elena does die or abdicate, it's not like being Royal Inventor now somehow cancels out Isa's ability to rule later. Presumably, she'd just ditch the title when she took the throne.
In “Spellbound” Mateo said that the reversal potion for the stone/petrification spell could only be found in the Codex Maru. Another thing that was found in the codex Maru was the information on the Scepter of Night. However, Ash was able to recognize the Jewel of the Scepter upon seeing it. Does this mean that information in the Codex Maru, is known to other Wizards and Malvagos, even if they’ve never had access to the Codex Maru before? Or does only the codex hold certain information?
I think it's probably a bit of both. Like I doubt that everything in the Codex Maru is universally known among wizarding communities, and I also doubt that everything in it is exclusive. Realistically it's just gonna depend on the exact piece of information, but we don't see enough of its contents to really assess where that line is.
More rambly analysis and headcanons below the cut.
Mateo's explanation of the Codex in Spellbound is:
"The kind of magic we need can only be found in the Codex Maru. [...] It's an ancient Maruvian spell book passed down through generations of royal wizards. It contains the most ancient and powerful magic in the kingdom."
Note that Mateo doesn't say that this spell can only be found in the Codex, but that this "kind of magic" can. Personally I didn't interpret this as strictly meaning "the Codex is the only thing that will have this information" but rather "only something like the Codex will have this information." Only a powerful spellbook would have that info, and the Codex is the most powerful spellbook that Mateo, at the time a relatively inexperienced (and honestly pretty naive) wizard, can think of and knows is in the palace. It's also an incredibly lucky guess - Mateo hasn't seen the Codex at this point, he only knows of its existence. He has no way of knowing that akatok and its reversal potion will be in there for sure, but the amigos have no other leads to go off of.
I find the latter two sentences more interesting than the first, honestly. It's an "ancient Maruvian spellbook", but it's not written entirely in Maruvian, since the cover and akatok pages are written in modern Avaloran. And it's clearly not the most "powerful magic in the kingdom" when we consider the secret library of master level spells from season 3, containing spells that even the Codex didn't cover.
Since the Codex was "passed down through generations", written in multiple languages, and not kept with the other advanced magic in the palace, I like to headcanon it as a collaborative work that's added to by each Royal Wizard in turn rather than an ancient relic that's been preserved in that exact state for centuries. It's not necessarily the most powerful spellbook, but it includes whatever each Royal Wizard thought was most important to write down for the next one. A lot of times that will happen to include more powerful or obscure knowledge, since more commonplace spells could be easily learned elsewhere. This could include spells, potions, or relics they learned about elsewhere, justifying why other people might know about them without having ever seen the Codex, and it could include things they figured out themselves during their research that no one else would likely know in advance.
Mateo, of course, would have little to no context for that, and it would be easy for him to assume otherwise without anyone to fill him in.
(I hope he at least jots down that akatok is, in fact, reversible after the next sunrise.)
Re: the Scepter of Night - I feel like that's probably one of the more obscure tidbits of info contained in the book, but we do see it depicted on a mural in Tepet Muul, so we know there are some other places Ash could have learned about it.
Why do you think the Amulet of Avalor turned pink after Elena was released from it?
probably because that's the color it was before she went into it in the first place. the brief snippets of Elena's flashbacks that we see in Elena and the Secret of Avalor show us that the amulet was originally a pinkish-red:
the better question would be "why did it turn purple when Elena went into it?" the amulet doesn't turn purple when Sofia and Vor are dragged into it in Forever Royal, but it does still change color. it's a mix of pink and green as the two are fighting, turns white when Sofia wins and frees Prisma, and then is pink again during the scene where Cedric and co. are trying to free Sofia again:
So activity inside the amulet seems to affect its color, which makes at least as much sense as the concept of a magical rock that can store entire people inside of it. Having it turn to purple, specifically, was likely just an aesthetic choice -- the StF pallet has a lot of purple in it and is Sofia's main color, so the artists probably just wanted it to match the princess initially, and then it became a convenient shorthand later to indicate that it was "occupied". And with red being one of the main colors in the EoA pallet, it makes sense that that would be the color it went back to once its origins were revealed.
For a more in-universe reason, it could be that its color is meant to be reflective of who's in there, as suggested by the pink/green when Sofia and Vor were fighting. I know purple isn't normally associated with Elena, but when she uses a tamborita in Not Without My Magic, it turns out that her base magic color is purple, so it could be connected to that.
(Her tamborita magic is orange in the Spring Cleaning short, but I'd argue the main series takes precedence over the shorts in determining canon if there's a discrepancy.)
Since you are talking about wizards. What do magic spell mean? And what are wizards/Malvagos we know about Mateo, Carla, Victor, Ash, Olivia etc spell color?
Thanks for the ask!
So, I’m assuming you mean what the words of the spells themselves mean? (If not, I may need you to clarify further.)
The spells in EoA seem to have their names derived from a combination of Spanish and Nahuatl, depending on the specific spell. Unfortunately, my Spanish is kinda rusty and my Nahuatl is, uh, pretty much nonexistent, so I don’t have a full 1-to-1 mapping of spell names to meanings. (It’s a future goal of mine, but like, that’s waaaay down the road. I have a lot of other projects right now that I have placed at higher priorities.)
Some examples that I can assess, drawing entirely on my knowledge of Spanish (caveat - I am NOT a native speaker):
llévaluq - from llevar, “to carry”. What’s baffling for me though is that they pronounce it as if it has a single ‘L’ instead of with the double ‘L’, which in Spanish is pronounced like a ‘Y’, making it sound like levaluq, so for a while I assumed it was based on levantar, which means “to lift”, and appropriately also fits.
bajaluq - from bajar, “to lower”
grandeluq - from grande, meaning “big”
conglari - likely from congelar, “to freeze”
nochecer - from anochecer, “to become night”/“to get dark”
esfumarse - which apparently just translates to “to vanish”
siletzi - from silencio, “silence”
doblecazán - from doble, “double”
And all of those are pretty on-the-nose for what those spells do. I imagine it’s similar for the others, but I currently don’t have the vocabulary necessary to determine that in a timely manner by myself.
As for the magic colors, I discussed that briefly in a previous post, and @a-lilacsong recently made a compilation showing most of the spellcasters’ magic colors. In general, good guys will have bright colors like orange, pink, or red, where villains will have purple or dark blue, but this is not always the case, such as the notable exceptions with Ash’s magic being white and Elena’s being purple in Not Without My Magic (it’s orange later in the Spring Cleaning short, which is probably the more accurate one since that’s the time she’s casting magic properly).
If somebody switches from practicing dark magic as a Malvago to practicing traditional good magic, does their tamborita magic aura/color change with it?
It’s funny you should ask that, because @a-lilacsong actually just made a post compiling the different colors of magic in EoA earlier today. Included in the compilation is a shot from Coronation Day where Victor is using magic, and notably, his magic color is still dark blue/indigo as it was before he was un-malvago-ed.
Interestingly enough, that’s the only time he casts a proper spell after his switch to good magic, and Carla doesn’t actually cast a proper spell at all. They both perform a generic, unnamed glowy spell that gives off a swirling gold or yellow light at the end of The Lightning Warrior, when the New Team Avalor is doing their lineup.
However, seeing as A: Victor’s magic color goes back to indigo a few episodes later, B: we have no other post-The Lightning Warrior examples to draw from for Carla, C: Mateo and Gabe are casting the same spell and producing the same color effect, despite the fact that we know Mateo’s magic is typically orange, and D: certain, specific spells will have specific colors associated with them (i.e. conglari always being green, mitzomo ticarsi being pale blue, both of which are showcased in the compilation as well), I’d be willing to bet that this particular spell is not indicative of the caster’s standard magical aura color.
All that is to say: nope, their tamborita magic color is probably going to stay the same!
(Side note, if you are also the Anon that sent me the other ask about malvagos -- I am working on it, but it has run away from me a little bit and turned into an essay. I expect to have that done within another day or two, and I appreciate your patience.)
Hi! I’m the anon who asked the question about the color of tamborita magic! Thank you so much for answering my questions! I think since Fiero, Victor and Carla’s magic auras were all purple related shades, I think my mind thought that those purple shades were unique to Malvagos. So when I saw Victor and Carla’s magic during the Team Avalor lineup, I thought their magical aura had changed color. And yes, I’m the same anon who asked about Malvagos. Take your time! I’m eager to read your essay!
Ahaha, thank you so much for asking! Honestly I’ve been sitting on a bunch of Thoughts about malvagos and how the EoA magic system works for some time, and so your asks have been the perfect opportunity to carry on about it.
Also yeah, it is interesting that purple-adjacent colors seem more common amongst malvagos. I wonder if there’s like, a personality factor that determines what color your magic ends up being, and the people more inclined to become malvagos are just more likely to have “purple” personalities? Food for thought, I suppose.
(Although the meta reason is probably just for the sake of having contrasting magic colors during fight scenes so you can tell when a good guy is casting vs. a malvago. That contrast remains even if Victor and Carla’s colors don’t change, since when Victor casts in Coronation Day, he’s casting opposite Ash, whose magic color is white.)
