#it's also a thing where race is just. not a big thing in amphibia

[mdhwrites]

I really love your post about why the anti-discrimination theme falls flat on TOH.

Honestly, applied to Amphibia, the issue is taken care of. From S1, we saw how frogs are treated and the injustice and inequality in the whole hierarchy. For example, despite being called Frog Valley, there are no frog majors but toad majors like Toadstool and he used to be awful and greedy.

Then we have the toad lords and soldiers who subjugate towns like Grime used to instead of protecting them. And the newts are either annoyingly arrogant like Duckweed or inside their own world, that kind of is explained in how Newtopia looks so fancy while the rest of Amphibia is medieval and surrounded by monsters.

Most importantly, many characters have a point of view or conflict related to the hierarchy and the state of their society. The Dinner and The Three Armies showed the biases of Grime, Beatrix, Hop Pop, Tritonio, and others against each other but instead of leaving it like that to be pessimistic or not addressing it, all Amphibia faced those issues to create a more harmonious and just society for everyone.

Okay so two things first. 1: Context for Amphibia fans is that I did a blog discussing how TOH accidentally discriminates against the demons of the demon realm and only promotes the most human of them, thus making a theme of anti-discrimination... Rough to put it mildly. Link here. 2: I don't think Amphibia explicitly has a theme of anti-discrimination either. It touches on it in ways but those ways are mostly due to one of its other core themes: Community. That's not all surprising either because it's hard to talk about community without also talking about inclusivity to those communities and allowing those communities to at least have a personality.

Now yes, you're absolutely right that the end of the series actually explicitly discusses the actual bigotry that each culture has towards each other in admittedly not my favorite but a fine episode. I actually want to expand from just the literal text though for why I think Amphibia does such a good job at not demonizing any of the races despite the fact that two of them may as well exist to be villainous. After all, the toads and the newts are often adversaries to the main characters. Wasn't that a problem for TOH?

Yes... Which makes it a good thing that the first adversary for Anne is the frogs.

Actually deep diving how Amphibia handles race, inclusivity, etc. like that is FASCINATING. You could probably do an entire college essay based solely on this one aspect because the show actually portrays multiple versions of communities and acceptance into them masterfully. I'm going to only briefly touch on each but I could probably say more on all of them and this actually includes humans as well which arguably might be Amphibia's one stumble on the issue but it's not a big one.

Let's start with that inflammatory line though. Of all the races, the frogs are actually just explicitly the most racist. They are against ANYTHING they don't know. Even other humans after Anne are entirely based on their perception of Anne. It actually takes Anne returning and showing fallibility for Sasha to become her own person to the community who is on par with Anne despite all she's done for them. Before then, the closer you are to her in their eyes, the more acceptable you are. They explicitly state this with Marcy. Otherwise, you're just a weird thing to potentially be purged because you are dangerous for being unknown. This is explicitly something Anne has to overcome, including one episode where she becomes popular by becoming more frog-like through her zits. The Plantars are the closest to being progressive in the town and even Polly can get swept up into mob mentality when the people get ready to take down Marcy (if I'm remembering the joke right).

The upside to the frogs is supreme loyalty to each other. While Toadstool is self serving and selfish, even he eventually figures out that he likes the frog way of thinking. The community you are a part of means the world to you. It is arguably the most important thing besides family. They play at war with each other because no one can actually hate someone in this community. Once you are in, you have the protection of ALL. It's just getting that acceptance is hard.

So even the race we spend the most time with is actually still flawed in some way. It is not perfect. How about the one that theoretically is the most evil? One could argue the Newts but that's more got to do with the combined culture of Amphibia which we only get Andrias as a main show of besides the one episode in the past. I do not want to say Andrias represents all newts, even if his ideas are still obviously in the current culture of newts, hence why I won't say they're the most antagonistic.

The toads on the other hand are fascinating because while they are brutal conquerors and willing to subjugate others, they're also theoretically the most inclusive. They are the closest to a meritocracy in Amphibia. If you can prove your battle prowess and ability to lead, even a gangly weirdo from another world can rise quickly and take a role of power. However, this culture is also part of why they're such a joke/a problem. The passionate rise to the top while the grunts are mostly going to be complacent and the toads still push a "Got mine, fuck you" mentality so that once a job is done, selfishness takes hold. This is why they're good at taking a city but bad at keeping it because they lack discipline because as a community, they don't have either a national ideal to work for like the newts or each other like the frogs. Each one proves themselves but that also makes each of them in competition with one another. It also explains why they're willing to subjugate a people because if they were worth their own lives, they would be able to resist.

Grime is actually the exception here from everything we can see. Beatrix even takes a loss from a frog better than Grime. Grime is different from a lot of Toads though and seems to hold a more personal need to prove himself, rather than that being strictly personal. He gets knocked down lower on defeat and rises higher in triumph. It takes longer than it likely would have with other captains for him to recognize that Sasha's ability to get rid of her guard is impressive and deserving of re-evaluation because he's not willing to admit he's wrong. He is the one toad who will take a city and stay vigilant because he is stubborn enough to not want to lose those gains no matter the cost, hence why he seems to constantly look for a status quote he can keep a hold of rather than seeking endless glory. Sprig challenges that most explicitly and so he lashes out with anger rather than the admiration that he should. The admiration that the toads who Anne first met liked in her when they thought she could be ruthless and strong. Those toads in fact accepted her WAY faster than even potentially the Plantars as Sprig needed his life to be saved first.

Next let's talk about the newts. We get weirdly more time with their society than even the toads but I don't know how much I'd say we actually learn about it which is an issue with Marcy as well. Buuuut this actually is in line with their culture. They're more of a melting pot where they are both more enlightened in that everyone gets a fair shake but they're much more rigid. It's probably the closest to modern America we get where you CAN apply for an important job but you need the connections, open doors, etc. like that to get it. You can prove yourself but it will only get you so far and people will only care so much.

A large part of this is actually in how the newts specifically treat Marcy. Where as someone so high in the ranks for toads would be respected and have friends simply due to being so outstanding, see Sasha, Marcy has a position but no acceptance beyond that. Respect but no friends. They are willing to use her because she is the most useful tool for a job but they aren't going to act like they'reclose with her for that. Not without, sadly enough, a reason to. Olivia keeps her at arm's length, the other advisors don't really seem to actually have a relationship with her but Andrias does because she fits into his plans best if she trusts him.

Sprig also gets to demonstrate this because his interesting worldview gives him a position in the society but no special treatment besides getting that position. He still has to prove himself in all the same ways and while some quirkiness is allowed, you must keep THEIR peace. Even the frogs allow for more individuality once you are in their community. But again, it's a little rough when it comes to the newts because Marcy isn't actually a look into their culture like Sasha is for the toads as she never gets episodes just about her in Newtopia like Sasha does with Grime. I'd be intrigued about what the journal potentially changes about this.

ANWAYS, for the last one we have the Thai community and humanity. Or more so the former. I don't know if there's a unifying concept for humanity as a whole, which is befitting the treatment of the trio's mix of perspectives as well, but more a theme of optimism. That people may be lazy and a bit self serving but most people's hearts are in the right place. That they care.

The Thai community is the only one I really want to talk about because Thai Temple is admittedly one of my favorite episodes of Amphibia period. As someone who grew up in Alaska, I actually related to Anne not seeing the beauty of her culture really well. There's a highway in Alaska that sandwiches you perfectly besides mountain cliffs and the ocean and it is GORGEOUS. Aaaand I stopped caring about it because it became routine. I closed my mind to it. Like nature will accept you though if you are willing to give it the time, so is the Thai Community at the temple. If you show interest, interest will be shown back. That's why the Plantars are easily adopted into it because the people there want to share who they are, they're probably just not used to people actually being interested.

There's more I could say that dips more into the community aspects but how they treat Anne, Oum and Bea are a different subject (all of it positive and makes me sad as a straight white dude who doesn't keep religion honestly) but yeah, I hope this shows how Amphibia looks at acceptance, community and how different people treat those who are different in varying ways. Like I said, this is also still mostly scratching the surface as probably a lot more could be said about each. Even the original ask brings up how the walls of Newtopia cuts the newts off from nature itself while somewhere like Wartwood has to live in harmony with it.

End of the day though, it's still almost an incidental biproduct that no one in Amphibia feels half baked. Every society has a purpose and role to its storytelling and that helps make it a more cohesive work with a lot less accidents than be interpreted in awful ways. Seriously, if you have not watched Amphibia, GO WATCH AMPHIBIA.

I can guaranty the show will accept you, even if you don't love it like me.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#amphibia #amphibia critical

[calliecat93]

2022 was a year where I focused on improving and starting to like myself. To some degree I succeeded, in others I failed. I've taken the steps to improve my anxiety and I'm doing pretty well since starting taking meds. The anxiety is still there, but it's becoming a lot more manageable. As far as liking myself... let's just say that some days are better than others. It's still super easy to fall into that void and be so hard on myself, but I have better awareness as to why I do and how to manage it. Overall I'm in a better space than I was back in 2020 when my anxiety/mental health really went downhill.

This has however affected my online life and Tumblr. I accomplished pretty much nothing. TBH I think it was necessary to both begin focusing on my actual life and to just enjoy being online again instead of imposing these expectations on myself. I hope in 2023 I can begin doing more again, but no promises. I'm taking it day by day. It doesn't help that a lot of my fandoms either had their shows end (Amphibia), I've stepped away from for multiple reasons and plan to remain stepped back when things resume (RWBY, The Owl House), or I've just lost interest in.

Really I'm gonna be honest... I'm in a terrible rut concerning animation. There's barely anything I want to see. Recent decisions like with HBO Max severely impacted my enthusiasm. Some stuff like Bob Iger coming back to Disney helped, but overall... I'm at a low point. I've always been so passionate about animation... but right now it's dead. The last time I got like this when I was 13-14 I got into classical animation to reignite it. But I feel like I've explored every single avenue over and over. IDK, there's just nothing left to excite me and IDK how to reignite the passion this time around. Most stuff I indulge in nowadays are cooking shows, some documentaries, and RuPaul's Drag Race which I doubt anyone's interested in me posting about. I have been rewatching Ed, Edd, n' Eddy which has been fun so maybe 2023 will be better, but yeah... I just hate feeling like this.

As far as RL goes, we lost our dog Lovebug after sixteen years and that was hard. There's some other stuff with some relatives that has stressed me out, but for the sake of privacy I won't discuss it on here. There's also the multiple celebrity deaths/deaths of childhood icons that REALLY hurt. Gilbert Gottfried, Angela Lansbury, Mom McGrath, Emilio Delgado, Pat Carroll, Kevin Conroy, Jason David Frank, and those are just the ones off the top of my head. Otherwise, 2022 wasn't my worst year. There's been a lot of changes, both good and bad, but I've certainly had worst. 2022 was a rough but overall okay year. At least I made it to the end in one piece.

What's in store for 2023? IDK yet. I have some ideas, but I don't want to open up about it quite yet. I'm hoping to get blog stuff running more, but ultimately this is what I do for fun. I need to focus on my actual life. That was probably my biggest takeaway from this year. I also turn 30 in February, so... that'll be fun. I have something big hopefully happening that I won't talk about until closer to the time, but I am SOOOOO excited for it~!

Happy New Year everyone~! See you in 2023~!!!

[thekingofwinterblog]

Roadmap after Amphibia

so since a surprisngly large amount of people have come to follow me for my Amphibia posts, i feel i should give some explanation for how im going to go forward now that the show is ending.

Namely, im obviously cover the finale, and talk about things i notice in it as i usually do, and make character analysis about them, but since there obviously won’t be more content coming, and speculation and predictions will not be a relevant thing anymore next week, there will be a limited amount of stuff i can make about it once the show is done.

Also, despite what it’s become, this is not really an amphibia blog. just a tumblr where i post about stuff i find interesting, character analysis and the like. Honestly im very surprised that so many people actually like my amphibia content. but alas, all good things must come to an end.

that said, i do have some larger posts planned that i’ve been planning to do for a while now, before i mostly stop making huge amphibia posts, so if you like my takes, stay tuned for them in no particular order.

An overview of EVERY single instance of the girls being superhuman, from “Anne or beast” to “the Hardest Thing”. There’s a lot of those.

An analysis and speculation about Sasha’s relationship with her parents, and how they both destroyed her ability to love others in a healthy way for years. Might be influenced by the finale, depending on wheter we get to see Mr and Mrs Waybright before the show ends.

“The Weak Link”, where i go over and break down Sasha and Marcy’s relationship from Sasha’s point of view and speculate on why Sasha came to view Marcy as the distinct second most important person in her life compared to the single most important person in her life; Anne(as opposed to both Sasha and Anne who regards the other two as equally important in their eyes). Probably gonna be the most contentious Take i have on the series.

A big post finale analysis where i compare the show in length(Plot, story structure, and of course characters) to the 3 best western cartoons from after 2000, Avatar the last airbender, Ducktales, and Gravity Falls, and give my take on where i find it overall in terms of quality by comparison.

Also, not a post about Amphibia itself, but i am going to start writing on one of two Amphibia AU’s stories i’ve had floating around.

---

Option 1, is set in a world wher Aldrich has an “unfortunate” accident right before the original trio goes to the box storage room, thus derailing the entire original backstory. The box is still lost, but at a much later point in time, after andrias has conquered and subjugated Earth, along with several other worlds, and since Andrias in this story has little interest in exterminating life on the planets he conquers, the various races of those worlds are incorporated into the empire, and many brought home to amphibia.

the story is set long, long after the empire fell, and the humans stuck on the planet have long since been forced to integrate into this world and have a currently uneasy, but relatively stable relations with their fellow amphibians.

If i go with this story, it will be more of a political tale, as the feudal structure of this society, and how it’s affected each of the girls backgrounds in this story will be front and center, along with the regular wacky amphibia stuff.

Anne, the daughter of a couple of chefs from Newtopia, finding herself stranded in the most remote province the empire has, Sasha, the daughter of a noble family of Dukes, forced to make her own way because she’s the second child, and as such has no inheritence to speak of despite her martial skills, and Marcy, a huge nerd for all things occult and magical, who’s actions set into motions the three girls being forced to leave Newtopia.

And as in canon, the three childhood friends eventually come into contact with a certain box, which will affect both their world, and Earth down the line....

gonna be incorporating a lot of the beta designs for the girls if i go with this one.

---

Option 2, basically just the regular girls being swapped around, though the story actually diverged a bit before the girls were sent to amphibia.

Sasha is the MC, who is sent to the Plantars, Where she quickly begins making friends, but also sees her relationships blow up spectacularily as they tend to do, and her having to grow from that.

Marcy is sent to Toad Tower, where after a rough start begins to flat out isekai this setting, using her massive intellect, her knowledge of chemistry to make gunpowder, introducing a lot of more modern stuff to Grime’s army, be it tech, tactics, or just way of thinking. Ultimately ends up being convinced the King is evil for creating the current system, and conspires with Grime to topple the tyrant as any good Isekai protagonist would have.

Anne ends up in Newtopia and that is all i have to say about it.

Basically a retelling of the series, just with some major changes that completely changes a lot of dynamics.

#amphibia #roadmap

[valerianavow]

Let's Talk About War.

The history we learn about Amphibia is pretty sporadic. Sometime between what Andrias calls "a thousand years ago" and present day, a lot of things are implied to have happened- and a lot of different conflicts are mentioned in one-off lines that don't get expanded on. Mind you, the map of Amphibia that we see is not that big. The habitable land can be traveled in less than a few weeks from a very remote region to the capital city. There's no distant foreign invaders, no empires on the horizon that are coming to take over Andrias's kingdom. The question is, then... who's fighting who?

S1E12 - Hop-Popular

Amphibia's society is a race-based social caste city-state monarchy. Marcy says as much, after studying it for a few months. In what appears to be a one-state government with no other societies in competition, why are there so many standing armies sitting around? We honestly know the answer to this already, since Grime tried to execute Hopediah for the crime of being politically active in opposition to the toad occupation. It's played for laughs because this is a show for children, but that is not a normal thing that happens in society. That's the kind of tactics that fascist colonial empires use against their political opponents.

With that in mind, every war in this list is likely either the Newtopian troops invading a formerly independent region of Amphibia, or the fallout of that conquest where people from those regions rise up in arms against him in a revolution.

We don't have a good idea of what the current year is in the world of Amphibia, so it's not clear how long ago each of these dates are. Additionally, details about some of these conflicts may be fabricated or fictional in-universe. If a conflict has a year attached to it, I'm inclined to believe it's part of the world's history instead of being a story in the world, though.

The Horsefly Rebellion - ? vs. ? - "`48"

S2E19 - The Dinner

First off, I have no idea who Campbell Bilgewater is. We're also given no specific date range, so we have no idea what century this happened in. If it happened in 1848, that was at the same time as the Bogwater Wars, which is mentioned next. It could possibly be another name for the Bogwater Wars- Pollyanna Plantar wasn't around much longer after she wrote about them in her diary, so it's possible the name she used for the wars she participated in is outdated by now. Maybe the Horsefly Rebellion was Newtopia's name for the Bogwater Wars that they used after winning the following conflict. But, that's not necessarily supported by evidence in the show, it's just me connecting dots.

The Bogwater Wars - ? vs. ? - 1848

S1E8 - Family Shrub

A village in Frog Valley is named Bog Bottom. We see a variety of non-swampy terrain throughout Amphibia while the Plantars are traveling, so it's possible that "Bogwater" refers either to Frog Valley where it's more swampy than the rest of Amphibia, or Bog Bottom itself. Additionally, during the episode where Ms. Croaker meets Jonah again, he mentions it's been 30 years since "Bogwater Canyon" and that "the guild would take him back" if he took her down. (credit for this connection goes to thesugarcookieday!!)

Is he just a bounty hunter after a target, or were the two actually spies in a conflict during or after the Bogwater Wars? Did the Bogwater Wars take place in Bogwater Canyon? Why was Sadie Croaker on somebody's list, and why did she tell the kids that it'd be "very bad for everyone" if they heard about Jonah attacking her? Was she someone who did the same kind of things Grime attempts to execute Hop Pop for?

Western Toad Invasion - Western Toads vs. Frog Valley militia? - 1853

S1E8 - Family Shrub

"Western Toads" implies toads from the West were the aggressors in this conflict, which probably refers to the West Tower toad army. If I had to guess, I think that the Bogwater Wars were the combined villages of Frog Valley uniting and throwing Newtopian forces out, and then the Western Toad Invasion was a war started five years later by Newtopia to re-conquer the Valley and establish a tower and standing army there - the South Tower, where Grime eventually takes command.

S1E20 - Reunion

If my theory is right about the Horsefly Rebellion and the Bogwater Wars being two names for the same conflict, that would explain why both Grime and Hopediah know a lot about it - it would have been a local conflict to Frog Valley. Both have shown interest in general military history throughout Amphibia, though, so it's not hard evidence to support my theory.

Both the Bogwater Wars and the Western Toad Invasion definitely happened in the 1800s, because Pollianna wrote about her participation in them and lived 180X-185X. Notably, her date of death is marked as "185X", meaning she died in the years following the Western Toad Invasion ('54-'59).

The Sand Wars - Newtopia Army vs. ? - Recent

S2E4 - Toadcatcher

Since Yunan is the youngest newt to ever achieve the rank of General, and was also a major player in this conflict (assuming that she isn't lying in her constant character introduction), it must be recent- or still ongoing. It could explain why there is no standing army besides the guard in Newtopia when the toads show up. Newts don't appear to be involved in toad army affairs or leadership, the toads are just expected to enforce and collect their laws and taxes. Of course, she does also say she had an army "once", so maybe she just got them all killed somehow...

General Insurrection & Failed Coup D'état - Present Day

S1E20 - Reunion

S2E20 - True Colors

History is still deciding how this particular conflict is going to shake out, but it doesn't feel like it's the first time Andrias has seen rebellion like this by far. It's happened before, and will continue to happen as long as the current political situation allows it to, like Marcy said. Andrias's lazy stopgap government is a corrupt farce that lives for war. It's what he's been dreaming of for a thousand years. As soon as he has that key back, he goes to invade another world. And Amphibia has seen so much of that, in the millennium he's spent stranded there.

What an incredibly well-written show.

#amphibia #amphibia analysis #king andrias #amphibia meta #amphibia theory #captain grime #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #andrias leviathan #sasha waybright #avowonder

[dawnsy]

Have some nice autumn Marcanne UwU

Fall is my favorite season and I just had to write some amphibia stuff about it so here's a relatively short little writing about Marcy and Anne climbing an oak tree on a nice autumn evening.

(Also I barely did any editing so sorry if its not the best)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~You'd think that with how clumsy Marcy is, and how easily she trips over thin air, that she wouldn't do well in high places. But there was always something different about trees.

Marcy never fell out of trees for some strange unexplained reason. Marcy was familiar with climbing up long smooth branches, so much it was almost instinct climbing up the large oak tree. Marcy trusted the tree and all its twigs and branches, she knew them and knew they wouldn't let her fall, and she never did. When Marcy was growing up she never had a great home life, her parents never provided her safety or comfort and more often than not only caused her stress and anxiety. Marcy never felt at home at her house, she felt trapped. Within the walls there was no escape from the constant judgement of her parents and their comments about how she should be studying, working harder, not wasting her time with ridiculous fantasys. Marcy always needed to escape from her parents and all their high expectations. Luckily in a small park only a short walk from her house there was a huge oak tree. This tree wasent the biggest tree in the world but it was decent sized and the branches reached far outwards from the trunk. The park was usually empty, since it wasn't very big but it was mostly just trees and fields, the great oak sat near the edge of the park that looked over the city. a large fence kept everyone away from the cliff side that was more of a downward slope scattered with random bushes and foliage that eventually led to neighborhoods of houses below. From a young age Marcy started climbing that tree almost every single day, she would spend hours up in the branches listening to music or reading an interesting book. Her favorite thing was to watch the sun set at the very  top of the tree, from there you could see over various surrounding houses and gaze upon the distant city outline against the setting sun. It was a sight Marcy had seen many times before yet it never failed to amaze her.

    This time was different though, Marcy wasn't alone.

    "Are you sure about this Marcy? It seems kinda…. high." Anne called from below as Marcy scrambled onto the second lowest branch and turned to look at the brown haired girl  looking up at the tree with a worried expression. She was kinda beautiful just standing there the warm glow of the setting sun, the golden beams lighted her features and made her eyes shine brightly. Her hands were inside her hoodie pocket, she stood on the leaf littered ground, her black hoodie really standing out against the browns and oranges of the leaf litter, but her chocolate brown hair seemed almost invisible. "Come on Anne, I've done this hundreds of times.." Marcy grabbed a nearby branch without even looking at it as if she had every branch memorized, and extended her other hand below her towards Anne "just trust me." Marcy said. Anne looked at her friend's hand, unease rising in her throat at the thought of falling from the high branches. Her gaze wandered to Marcy's face. She gave Anne a sweet and reassuring smile, her cheeks lightly blushed against the chilling autumn air. Anne smiled back feeling a pang of longing in her heart making her head spin for a moment as she grasped her friend's hand and used it as support as she pulled herself onto the first branch. It was a good thing Anne was so fit from playing tennis cause pulling her whole body weight up onto the branch was actually quite difficult, so much so she wondered how the heck Marcy managed it. Marcy released Annes hand as Anne hung her legs over the edge of the branch and grabbed another above her with her now free hand. She hated the weird hurt that stung in her heart as Marcy climbed away, but it only motivated Anne to keep climbing. 

    Marcy honestly looked like a professional athlete climbing that tree. While Anne was constantly struggling to find good footing or climb onto the next branch Marcy was moving with a graceful almost majestic ease as she moved from branch to branch in seconds. While Anne was only about 5 branches up Marcy had already just about reached the top, or Anne assumed she had, she couldn't really see her friend through all the different branches and leaves surrounding her.

    By the time Anne reached the top she was panting like a dog. Despite the cold air Annes body burned with heat and her arms stung from all the times she had to pull her whole body onto a branch just using her arms. As Anne stuck her head out of the thick top layer of leaves she fought to catch her breath, she could feel a variety of leaves and twigs tangled in her hair and her palm was scraped from the ragged branches. It took Anne a second to look up after emerging from the top of the tree, but as her eyes wandered up towards the light of the sun as it set over the horizon beyond the silhouette of the bustling city in the distance Anne couldn't help but let out a small gasp as she stared in awe at the view. "Amazing, right?" Anne jumped a bit hearing a voice and looked over at Marcy who was sitting nearby, the top of her body sticking out of the leaves as she gazed into the distance. Anne nodded and Marcys eyes came down to meet hers, marcy moved her arm and patted what Anne was assuming a large branch below the leaves right beside where she sat. Anne carefully climbed over to her and sat on a large branch that stretched out right below the thicket of golden leaves. Anne could feel the warmth radiating from Marcys body only an inch away from Annes own and she suddenly forgot about the frosty chill that filled the air. "I love it up here, it's like a whole other world." Marcy said her words seemed to carry into the small breeze that began to blow through Annes hair. Anne wasn't looking at the view anymore, she was looking at something much more beautiful. Marcy sat there, her face outlined by the golden light, her brown eyes shining in such a way they looked like they were glowing brighter than the sun itself. Anne let out a small sigh that came out into a warm puff slightly visible in the cold air as she pulled her knees up to her chest and folded her arms above them tucking her chin inbetween her folded arms as she followed Marcy's gaze back out towards the view. Marcy was right, it was like its own little world. The leaves looked like solid ground as if you could walk right on them, like you could build a small house on the tree top and wake up each morning and gaze upon the morning sun shining through your window. Anne let her mind drift into delicate fantasies of waking up in that house with Marcy each morning, hearing the birds chirp, feeling the nice cool breeze through a open window and looking out at the city like it's another universe that could never reach them, nobody could bother them, just her and Marcy there forever.

    Anne was torn from her fantasies by Marcys weight pressing against her side, She glanced over at her friend who sat with a warm smile and half closed eyes as she leaned against Annes shoulder. She looked so peaceful like she could fall asleep, she stared out at the view while she fiddled with something in her hand. Anne peered down squinting against the bright sun trying to see what Marcy was holding. Marcy's small hand was curled around a small brown acorn that she rubbed and slid around her fingers mindlessly. Marcy had always found comfort in textures, and the soft yet solid and smooth shell of the acorn felt nice in her hand. Anne smiled fondly at the small motions, she had always found Marcys little fidgets to be the most adorable thing in the world. But as the acorn slid through her hand it slipped in between her fingers and despite Annes quick reflexes trying to catch it the acorn fell down through the leaves, hitting a few branches as it fell out of sight. Marcy looked down at it for a second then let out a little whimper of disappointment. Despite the acorn's absence her hand continued to move making a claw and then flattening back out into an open hand over and over as if she was squeezing something. Anne gazed at it for a moment then as her hand opened up Anne moved her own hand quickly over to it and befor Marcy could react her hand formed a claw again making her fingers curl around Annes. As their fingers intertwined Marcy looked at them for a second a look of surprise on her face with a hint of a pink blush, but Anne was unsure if it was from the sudden gesture or the cold air. Marcy looked up at Anne and locked eyes with her staring for a moment with a look of awe before softening to a sweet smile. Anne felt a glow in her chest as her heart raced and her face warmed with a blush of its own.Marcy began to move her fingertips slightly rubbing them back and forth against Annes hand, the new texture was warm and soft with a bit of roughness but it was much more comforting than a random acorn. Their hands still intertwined, Anne and Marcy shifted closer together, a blazing ball of warmth against the cold air. Marcy rested her head on Annes shoulder and Anne rested her head on top of Marcy's. The other girl's breath blew warmth across her neck as she sat their head tucked perfectly beneath Annes own.They watched the sunset until the stars began to appear against a dark sky. but neither made any attempt to leave. They sat there in warm silence treasuring this moment where they could be one without having to worry about anything else in the universe. And they didn't need a house, they didn't need a world separate from this one. They just needed each other, and that's what they had.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Almost all of that was based on personal experience btw.

also I cant fricken wait Amphibia season 3 is only one week away ahhhhhh

Alright thats all bye bye now :3

#amphibia #amphibia snippet #marcanne #i love autumn #anne boonchuy #marcy wu

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia Weekly Season 3 Reviews: Fight at the Museum/Temple Frogs: A Most Jellical Hell

Hello all you hoppy people! We’re on to Week 3 of my weekly coverage of Season 3! I’m Jake, I review stuff and it’s time for a bit of news and speculation before we move on to today’s episodes. 

So picking up from last week where we got the episode titles for the second half of Season 3a, we now have the summaries to go with them, so it’s time to ooo and ahh over the latest episode summaries and see what’s ahead fo rour heroes, and speculate what that might entail. 

Mr. X": Anne takes the Plantars to the movies, while the Boonchuys try to stop a government agent from finding them.

I’m mostly excited about this one because RU MOTHERFUCKING PAUL IS COMING. I haven’t watched Drag Race, you may now boo, but I love him in anything she does. Their work as Jackie Slithersteen in Harvey Beaks was a series highlight both times they showed up and it’ll be intresting to see them in a more serious role. Also it’ll be fun to see the Plantars at a movie theater. I love a good movie theater shenanigans story. 

"Sprig's Birthday": Anne tries to give Sprig a great Earth birthday.

Nothing really to say here other than this one’s probably gonna hurt. 

"Spider-Sprig": Determined to make his mark on Earth, Sprig becomes a superhero.

I haven’t gotten to mention it on this blog as I haven’t covered anything Spider-Man adjacent, but I absolutley LOVED spider-man and hoped this would be some sort of take on that. And given we see a doc ock esque guy using the Annsterminator’s arm in the season trailer, this is going to be REALLY fun.  And while the title could just be “oh generic because he’s a superhero” Sprig DOES have most of Peter and Ben’s powers: he can crawl on walls, has incredibly agility and speed, and his tounge is a good subsittue for webs. He only lacks the strength and spider sense, which give shim a mild handicap but nothing he can’t handle. Point is i’m so ready for this.

"Olivia & Yunan": Back in Amphibia, Olivia and Yunan try to rescue Marcy.

Dammit I already used the sinister bug saying things were good.... hmmm

Haven’t broken this one out in a while. Or the bug one come to think of it. But yes we finally get the incredibly gay rescue episode.. which is bound to end very horribly because we’ve seen the trailer. They PROBABLY shoudln’t of shown nightmare marcy. Just saying. Kinda spoils the suprise. 

"Hollywood Hop Pop": Hop Pop tries to make it as an actor in Hollywood.

This one was inevitible and will likely be fun. Next. 

"If You Give a Frog a Cookie": Anne trusts a questionable scientist who may have found a way to get them to Amphibia.

KATE MICCUI BABY! FUCK YES. God her and keith david on the same show it boggles the mind...

"Froggy Little Christmas": Anne attempts to surprise her mom with a Thai Go float for the Christmas parade while the Plantars struggle to understand the holiday. Meanwhile, King Andrias plans a deadly surprise.

The big one! A heartwarming christmas story, rebcca sugar writing a song and PLOT ADVANCMENT. Who could ask for a better christmas present?

So with all that covered it’s time to dive into this weeks’ episodes!  Join me under the cut, full spoilers, etc etc. 

Fight at the Museum:

We open with an answer to one of the most burning questions of the season: Where do the Plantars sleep in the Boonchuy house?

Look we had no real clear layout of the Boonchuy house and no real answer as Anne was apparently sleeping alone in “The New Normal’. I can wait on the other stuff because I KNOW we’ll get lore answers eventually because this show is fairly consistent at giving them, just at a slow pace between one off adventures, something this very episode lampshades in it’s own way. 

The answer is their all crashing in anne’s room, but all plenty comfy: Sprig has a beanbag, Polly’s sharing the catbed with Domino, which .... just.. just look at it. 

My heart just exploded from adorable. And Hop Pop is , judging by the first ep alternating between the floor and Anne’s bed. Seriously the boonchuy’s HAVE a couch he could use that. 

Anne however has been awake all night, can relate, trying to find a way back to Amphibia to save her girlfriends, the town and you know both worlds from the sexy wrath of Keith David as a Salamander. 

But the realistic consequences of running 24 hours for several days in a row, especially as a child who needs rest, are catching up with her and she’s barely concious the next day, still hoping to spend it the same way she spent the night. The Plantars.. want to watch a british soap opera. My mom could relate... and so can I just replace “British soap opera” with “sitcom about the deep state”.  Hop Pop points out the honest facts: they’ve ALSO been working hard to find a way home, if offscreen, but they can’t burn themselves out. Trust me it’s not fun. I’ve burned myself out doing this and I don’t hold the fate of countlres worlds in my hands. I’ll get into the why of Anne’s desperation in a bit. 

Mrs. Boonchuy roasts her daughter about researching for once before agreeing with Hop Pop. She needs to relax for once.. and Mrs. B needs to clean all the slime that’s built up in the house so their asses are going to the museum. Anne needs to catch up on missed School, the plantars can learn more about earth , and The Boonchuy House can stop smelling like a ninja turtle. Everyone wins!

We get an adorable montage of the plantars enjoying the museum while Anne nearly passes out a bunch: Sprig marvels at dinosaurs (”Guess you had a monster problem too huh?”), Polly relates to cavemen and Hop Pop is horrified to find earth people think the earth is round (It is)... and signals to Anne he needs to be kept as FAR away from the internet and B.O.B. as froggily possible. 

Anne however is still obesseivly researching... until they find a clue int he museum itself and we get a rather huge move forward in the overall lore:  Said pot depicts Andrias’ frog friend who looks a LOT like Sprig coming out of a portal, gifting the box to a bunch of vikings. She DID steal it after all as I suspected.. I never thought Andrias lied about that outright.. he simply didn’t see she did it to PROTECT people from him and his god. 

They then run into the Museum’s curator, Dr. Jan, an utterly nice woman who has a side hobby in crytozoology and is utterly curious abotu this mysterioius pot and would be HAPPY to help them. Anne turns her down and shoos her away, while Hop Pop wants to know why. \

Anne dosen’t know if she can trust her.. and that’s not only fair but ties into the very reason her obession is at it’s peak. It’s something that hit me this episode> For us True Colors happened about 5 months ago. We’ve had time to obesses over it sure but as simple observers we could move on to other shows and nonsense. For Anne? It was a just a little over a week ago BOTH her best friends/love interests deeply betrayed her, she fought off an invasion, found out the kindly king helping her was a tyrannical  monster bent on multiversal conquest, thought her best friend died, saw her new robot brother actually die,  went super sayian god super sayian, had one of the loves of her life stay behind so she could escape and saw the other stabbed in the gut while she was helpless to stop it. All in one fucking day, most of that in the span of a couple of hours. And she hasn’t REALLY gotten a break since: she had to emotionally reunite with her parents, spend hours explaining to them what happened after they had the whole frogs thing sprung on them by Hop Pop’s incompetence, was locked in her house for a day, had to fight off a killer robot, found out her new powers really hurt and is deeply disturbed by them, had to keep the plantars from getting themselves killed constantly, barely escaped a mall, had to stop her little brother’s shenanigans by driving a runaway truck with no breaks, and then had 8 cavities removed in one day just to top it all off. 

Like when your watching it week to week it dosen’t really register how much trauma this poor child’s been through and how short the time span’s been till you sit back and REALLY think about it. Though I did think about the timeline.. and by that was reminded by the episode list Reunion takes place three months after Anne arrived on amphibia, not only meaning the series has ALWAYS had a strict timeline, but that season 2 takes place over two months, perfectly slotting everything into place. 

Point is she’s been through a LOT and after the two people she loves most and the last kindly stranger she met stabbed her in the back and into her gut, it’s understandable why she wouldn’t be quick to trust someone she’s only met 5 seconds ago. She could be a goverment agent or something. They don't know. 

Anne being cautious here, especially since Hop Pop has the GALL to call her paranoid.... a week after again he WATCHED MARCY GET STABBED IN THE GUT BY THE MAN THEY ALL TRUSTED AFTER MARCY REVEALED SHE SENT THEM ALL TO AMPHIBIA ON PURPOSE.

But her plan.. isn’t as acceptable. She wants to be bi, do crimes and rob the museum at night. Hop Pop BARELY agrees to it while naturally Sprig and Polly are on board. I’m pretty sure when Poly conquers the world at 12 be gay do crimes will be the worldwide motto. Sprig just likes to be an ally. 

At any rate our froggy heroes deck themselves out in matching emo hoodies anne had because.. well she WAS dating Sasha, and rips once up for polly. Anne of course, having already had 80 outfit changes in her backpack alone, has a classic break in black ops outfit. 

The break in goes suprisingly well. Phase One is to distract the Guards... which would be a genuine issue if they weren’t at this level of competence

So they simply have hop pop distract them by pretending to be a cat...

Look you’ve seen the top, you know what he actually looks like, I know what he actually looks like. You already have the jellical nightmares. I’m not giving you more by giving it more time to sear it’s way into your soul. I will say they did hilariously mimic the stage makeup of cats well. I’ll also say they did well giving my worst fears and nightmares form. 

The kids roles are SLIGHTLY less traumatizing. Sprig takes out the camera’s with his tounge and Polly turns out to have razor sharp teeth because apparently Spirg and Polly’s mom had an affair with a Critter. I mean she’s ball shaped, has razor sharp teeth, and hungers for blood. The signs were there all along this just proves it. 

So our heroes sucessfully break and enter, and get the vase. But as Sprig notes this being a heist their contractually obligated to have a twist.. and this one was set up earlier as we saw the Annsterminator forced to patch into the local antenna to scan for them, as it’s scanner was damaged in the fight. But it finds them via the one security camera Sprig DIDN’T sabotage, meaning he finds them, sets off the alarms and leaves our heroes trapped. 

The result is an AWESOME fight across the museum as the plantars use EVERYTHING they can. From the cool stacking attack using armor, swords and a mace, to anne grabbing a sword again once again proving her strength to hop pop USING A MOTHERFUCKING GUILLOTINE TO CHOP OFF AN ARM WHILE SHOUTING EAT THE RICH. 

Cumulating in Anne holding Annsterminator off while the plantars DROP A DINOSAUR SKELETON ON HIM. 

Sadly bones don’t beat metal... they can beat off metal but that’s a whole other discussion, point is the Annesterminator escapes and nearly chokes the life out of Anne till Dr. Jan comes in along with the security so he books it out of there the only way he knows how

Dr. Jan quickly covers for them with the guards who are luckily still this level of smart

So they buy it, especially since the plantars had to ditch the disguises to be effective. Thankfully she’s not mad about the damage or almost theft and more curious as to what the hell any of this is, as you or I would be let’s be fair here. 

So they fill her in offscreen and on screen she offers to help, notcing Anne is near passing out and needs rest before they can get to work and Hop Pop points out the simple truth: They can’t do this alone. And it didn’t hit me before, because they’ve come so far.. but they really can’t. I’m so used to shows and media like this where it’s left on the teen protaganists and maybe one or two adult shoulders I forget sometimes.. those people have limites. The Plantar-Boonchuy’s are plenty badass, talented cooks and all around just the best people warts and all, pun very much intedned... but at the end of the day none of them are, as far as we’ve been told as far as Anne’s parents are concerned, Engeineers, scientists+-, historians, superheros, sorcerers supermee.. the kind of people who can help them get back where they once belonged. As we’ve seen the best Anne can do is research, and she’s looking into something that is, at least as far as the public knows, impossible, meaning at best there’s a portal at a goverement black site.  With Jan being a historian and into this sort of weird paranormal stuff, she has contacts and tools to help them. She can’t whip them up a portal.. but having someone who can look into Amphibia’s history with earth is better than nothing. 

So Anne accepts it, seeing Jan IS genuinely+ as good as she acts and agrees to her quid pro quo of sleeping in exchange for working on this. That night Jan studies the pot and takes Anne’s suggestion of running a black light over it for hidden messages, because why not. Shockingly there is. 

Fight at the Museum was excellent, letting the emotinal consequences of last season hit Anne in a subtle way. I do feel they need to talk about it eventually especially since we STILL haven’t heard from either of the girls parents. The fight scenes were also visually spectacular as always and cleverly used the museum setup, as well as having the Annesterminator loose an arm as setup for later episodes as we’ve seen. All in all another stellar episode from the show’s best season. 

Temple Frogs:

Picking up where we left off, Anne wakes up rested, refreshed and ready to eat that horse. And Jan messaged her about the temple so the Plantars are all excited to go learn about it. Given this is a children’s cartoon you just KNOW that means the adults in Anne’s life who aren’t frogs have other plans that are going to lead to a life lesson. 

Sure enough the Boonchuy’s are headed to the Thai Temple for market day, a day for the local Thai Community to gather to set up stalls, participate in activities relating to said culture and in general just bask in the joy of community. Anne being a teenager with a world saving mission wants no real part of this but the Plantars do and Mrs.B wants her ot stay AT LEAST an hour. Still no name, though apparently Mr. B’s is Jeff so that’s at least ONE down. I missed it but apparently this episode reveals it.

Anne reluctantly agrees and the family heads down to Temple. The Plantars end up feeling right at home as the number of stalls and sense of community feel just like their own market days back home. Anne has grown jaded with it mostly due to having gone here her whole life. We even see an adorable picture of her as a younger kid. It’s precious. 

The Plantars are more than happy to explore her culture, respectfully, and Anne lets them loose since they have an hour to kill and she’s on Sample duty.  The following part is easily the best and most charming part of the episode: The Plantars each find a part of Thai culture to enjoy and fit in with, without approrating it, and the local Thai community warmly welcomes them to join in.  It allows Matt to show off his cultural heritage and a bit of his own past, clearly having gone to similar gatherings at some point, and share them with the children, teens, and grown ass peoples (points to self) watching this.  I fully learned stuff with this as Sprig and Hop Pop’s activities are things i’d genuinely never heard of and googled to get the names right as while i’m fine with missing a character name or something, as this is usually from memory and on the day the episode comes out (this one’s way later than usual because the last two days have been kinda busy). It happens. But I flat out refuse to misspell something that people put their heart and soul into. It’s just genuinely nice to learn something about a culture that’s not my own, to learn neat stuff I never knew and genuinly apricate it. I honestly need to do this more often, as I genuinely LIKE learning new stuff and bits of history, in the most respectful way possible off course. 

Sprig wonders around till he finds a game of Takraw, a kick based ball and net sport. It follows similar rules to volleyball except you can only use your feet to hit the ball, making it far more acrobatic and a sport i’m now fully interested in looking into as the idea of a bunch of talented athletes doing spider-man style moves while hitting a ball only with kicks sounds utterly awesome. And keep in mind i’m not a sports guy normally, i’m only now casually intrested in Soccer/Football because of Ted Lasso and Wrestling because of the hard works that goes into it, the intresting histories and the nice dollop of bollocks. So the fact this show got me intrested in a sport at all is a feat. Sprig casually kicks a ball back, already having the impressive talents for acrobatics and strong legs needed for the sport, and is naturally invited to join in. 

Hop Pop is next and he finds Khon Dancing, where dancers act out the life of the god Rama via dramatic, well timed movements whle wearing glittery costumes and really awesome looking traditional masks. While not mentoined in the episode the story is told by singers on the side whlie the actors pantomime everything else. Hop Pop is naturally drawn to anything theater and fits in perfectly. 

Finally there’s Polly who finds herself at Thai School, where they teach thai to children every week, Anne herself later remarking she used to go (Thoguh failed to really learn more than a few phrases. Turns out Polly is a natural, having learned the language from Mrs. B’s soap operas, and thus impresses the other kid.. minus one calling her a show off but that one can be thrown in the hole with Polly’s other enemies when she conquers our puny planet. 

Anne notices her mom giving back a LOT of tupperware and getting some back, but thinks nothing of it. Me on the other hand? I got EXACTLY what this meant and reacated accordingly. 

Anne finds out it’s only been ten minutes and decides fuck it she’s leaving and gathering everyone.  I was dreading these next scenes as I figured , given the conventions of this kind of plot, Anne would drag her family away from their apprecation of her culture and get called out by them AND her mom for being an insesntive dip. But Matt Braly’s too clever for that. Instead as Anne’s clearly touched to see each of her surrogate family immersing themselves in her culture and truly loving every minute of it, and seeing her community gladly embrace them. She dosen’t bother them or even let her presecene be known, she just watches fondly and let’s each one go about there way. She’s especailly proud of Polly, baffled because Anne herself barely learned any Thai, but still proud she’s fluent in it. It shows anne’s heart: She gets that while the Plantars clearly miss home.. they likely also  miss their community and is glad hers is helping fill the void. 

So Anne decides to fly solo only to run into her mom whose rightfully pissed Anne couldn't wait AN HOUR. The episode really does well setting up Mrs. B as being in the right too. I point this out because WAY too many cartoons have the adult be right because adult. This isn’t AS prevalent nowadays but growing up in the 90′s and 00′s I saw this a lot. Here Mrs. B is right.. because she’s right.  Before we even get to the episodes heartwarming and heartwrenching reveal, the fact is she acknowledges how important this is, even without knowing the full stakes, and gladly compromises to let Anne only stay an hour, so Anne still helps her and reunites with the community (having gotten heavily cheek pinched by old ladies earlier), but gets to go get the important info they need. The Plantars are fully willing to take the detour to the temple for most of the day and offered no resistance, so there’s no making them feel bad. The only one who’s impatient here is Anne and while understandable, it’s not really excusable given Jan didn’t say anything like “I might of found a portal home”. There’s no immediate payoff to whatever she’s found, and thus no reason it can’t wait an hour and help her family out and reunite with a bunch of people who thought she was lost and hurting, which to a degree she was. 

So even without the next reveal, Anne was kind of a jerk for not staying and helping. The next reveal though clinches it: As I guessed the tupperware was all from dishes the community cooked for the Boonchuy’s while anne was missing, so they wouldn’t have to in the deep depression of loosing their daughter. Not only that the whole community stepped in and helped do shifts at the restraunt and whatever Jeff and Mrs. B needed during the worst moments of their life. And it’s very telling Mrs. B DIDN’T tell Anne till it was clear she needed to know. SHe didn’t want to burden her daughter with what they went through because Anne didn’t go on purpose. It was an accident, she didn’t do anything wrong, and she worked hard , as she likely outlined, to get back. Telling her how much her absence hurt them was unecessary. But telling her now, so she can now how much the community helped them, without asking anything in return, how much these kind people  made it so the Boonchuy’s surviived the worst 5 months of their lives with their buisness and sanity in tact, that was necessary. And Anne DOES geninely feel bad about being a dick about it now she realizes not only just what her parents went through, but how much this community really matters. 

Bigger issues crop up though as it turns out the Annesterminator has dragonfly drones it sent after her. Anne brushes them off as being from the school newspaper, some reporters were seen earlier trying to get the scoop on her absence. This also puts her disappearance to me around late may early june given we have the Christmas special coming, and the plantars had to get back for the harvest, with the Shut In, , non canon or not, taking place in october and just after the Plantars returned. Which would mean these eps take place in early novemeber or late october. Look I have all eterneity and a few more weeks of episode to figure out the timeline. Point is dragon flies a comin and Anne prepares for a fight.. as does the temple. You mess with one of them, you mess with all of them and EVERYONE organizes to fight, with Hop Pop, Sprig and Polly putting their new skills to work: Hop pop uses cermonial swords to cut down dragonflies, spirg and his new team use the ball to take some out, and Polly organizes everyone. Everyone elses uses pots, pans and wahtever to kick ass. IT’s a sight to behold. Sprig and Polly finish them off with a Takraw Spike Special, and our heroes win. Unfortunately their also fully unmasked in front of a large crowd, and we get that close up from above. 

The good news though is the community warmly embraces the Plantars and dosen’t need to know where they came from: They stood with them when they needed to and very clearly took care of Anne. That’s all they need to welcome them. Anne is touched by this and decides to stay both out of respect for her community, and because it’s now not just hers.. but the Plantars too. Plus more people she can honestly tell the frog thing to so that’s nice. 

She gets karmically rewarded for this as Dr. Jan couldn’t wait, and having gotten a text from Anne earlier, drove down here. So Anne not only gets to bask in community but gets her clue. ducking behind a tree, Jan reveals the black light message.. and it’s nothing she can read. But thankfully Anne has Marcy’s journal. 

Look if the shipping wasn’t at critical mass enough now Anne just.. casually  has Marcy’s things in her bag. Though frankly wanting to run away together, blushing a lot together and ... let’s just save time and say just about every scene with Anne and Marcy kinda already told us everything, this is just more blatant evdience their lesbians together. 

The message says “Find the mother of olms, she’ll lead you to her destiny” So they have a CLUE... but no earthly idea who she is and I only know what an olm is because of the recap page for this episode on TV Tropes. It’s a species of Salamander. Still it’s better to have SOME direction than none and wether this gets the Plantars home or helps them be Andrias it’s SOMETHING. So point for Jan and for Anne. 

Thai Temple is an utterly fantastic episode. It embraces Thai culture, gives us more text to what went on while Anne was gone, has another fantastic fight scene and is just a joy to watch, bucking most of the conventions fo rthis kind of plot to create an utterly heartwarming tribute to Thai Culture. Easily a contender for my best of the year list and that is a tight race and I suspect with only more episodes left it’s only gonna get tighter. I had to give this show an extra slot, 6 instead of 5, simply because it has SO many episodes this year. 

Next Time: The Moment’s we’ve been waiting for. Polly tries to rebuild Frobo with the help of some cosplayers, while the Boonchuy’s FINALLY find out the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Bring it on. 

If you enjoyed this review consider commissioning an episode, as I haven’t covered any of season 1, and am happy to, along with several ducktales episodes and all kinds of good disney and non-disney stuff. Just shoot me a message or ask, pricing details are on my blog. Or if you want a guaranteed review a month and for me to review an amphibia a month, just shoot over to my patreon. Just one dollar a month will get me to review one episode of amphibia season one (and that’s aa half hour by the way not the 15 minutes0, guaranteed, and 5 gets you a guranteed slot a month. A bit more gets the owl house. So join on up 

LINK IS RIGHT HERE. DOING THIS HELPS KEEP THIS BLOGS LIGHTS ON SO PLEASE DO. 

Thanks for reading

#amphibia #temple frogs #fight at the museum #sashannarcy #anne boonchuy #sprig plantar #polly plantar #hopidiah plantar #mrs boonchuy #jeff boonchuy #doctor jan #thailand #thai culture #takraw #sepak tawkraw #khone #thai #dinosaur bones

[galaxy-girls-universe]

Alright, alright, time for a RANT!

Big City Greens, Amphibia, and The Owl House all premiered their latest episodes and I am HYPED and need to talk about them, so here goes. SPOILER ALERT!!!

Big City Greens releases a new Season 2 episode tonight. The first part of the episode showed Cricket taking the rest of his family out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. Somehow, Cricket insists that he’s paying for dinner and buys a TON of food. At first, the whole family stuffs their faces with food, until they are full. When it’s time for dessert, Cricket asks his family what they want, but none of them want to eat anymore. Cricket still orders an ice cream for himself. When Cricket’s “ice cream” comes, it is revealed to be a gigantic sundae that IF the family manage to finish in an hour, they will get their meal free. The family is too full to eat the ice cream, although they try really hard to do so. Since they can’t pay for their food, the rest of the family brainstorms ways to pay for their meal, leaving Cricket to finish the giant sundae by himself. Cricket tries to find a loophole in the rules to get out of eating the ice cream (since he himself is now full) but fails. The Greens begin to panic, thinking they will never be able to leave, when Cricket decides to pull through for his family. He finishes the entire sundae by himself, in just under a minute, making his family’s meal free. The second part of the episode takes place on Fathers Day. Tilly is working extremely hard on her gift, while Cricket is lazy, and makes something super quick. However, when they give their gifts to Bill, he loves them both equally. Tilly smugly thinks that Bill is just saying that he likes Crickets gift to be nice. The Green kids devise a plan to test this theory. They give Bill really bad gifts, and he still says that he loves them. He admits that he was lying when Tilly gives him a box of spiders. He admits thinking that the gifts were weird, listing off the especially weird ones, including Tilly’s hard made gift in the process. Tilly’s feelings are badly hurt, and she rushes off to destroy the other gifts that she had made her father in the past. Before she can destroy them, Bill tells her that even though he thinks her gifts are weird, he still loves them, because it came from the heart.

Amphibia kicked off its 2nd season (after about a full YEAR of waiting). This is the show that I was most excited about. The episode kicked off with Anne and Sprig hanging out on the roof of their house. Both of them recall the battle that took place between Anne and her former best friend Sasha at the end of season 1. Anne is clearly a little traumatized by the incident, but shakes it off like it’s no big deal. Hop Pop pull up with a giant trailer wagon (dubbed the Family Wagon, or “fwagon”) and says that he thinks a key to getting Anne home is to travel to Newtopia, a city full of wise newts, that might know how to get Anne home. Anne also hopes to find her other friend, Marcy, in the journey. Hop Pop sends Sprig and Polly to pack, and tells Anne to give the spare house key to a frog named Chuck (a tulip farmer who played Bugball with Anne in season 1), who is going to be watching the house when the Plantars are away. Anne doesn’t trust Chuck to keep the house safe, and feels a tiny bit guilty that the house could be ruined while the Plantars are helping her, so she decides to attack-proof the house herself. Anne buys a mysterious potion from Loggle the woodsmith that’s said to protect crops. Meanwhile, Sprig is having a hard time deciding what to pack, and Polly decides to mess with him. After Anne puts the potion on the crops, it doesn’t protect them, but rather, it brings them to life! A giant vegetable monster gets caught in Anne’s traps, but falls the wrong way, and crushes the house. Anne’s eyes flash blue (like in the very first episode in season one!) and she attacks the veggie monster for destroying the house. She then admits to the Plantars all of her concerns about the trip, and how it was her fault that the house got crushed. Hop Pop tells her not to worry, and just then, a gust of wind magically puts the house back together! It’s revealed that it was Chuck, who can fix things really quick, which is why he was trusted to watch the house in the first place. The second part of the episode kicks off right as the Plantars leave the Valley for the first time. Anne, Sprig, and Polly want to explore the wonders that the rest of the world has to offer, but Hop Pop pulls out a giant rulebook and says that they must follow every rule to stay safe, which mean no fun for the kids. Anne decides to fake motion sickness to get the cart to stop, and then her and Sprig rush off to explore some ancient ruins. Hop Pop chases after them, leaving Polly alone with the cart. Sprig falls down a hole, with Anne right behind him, and they find tbemselves in a technologically advanced room, with a weird assembly line system. Sprig accidentally pulls a lever (no doubt a throwback to the Family Shrub episode where Sprig likes to pull levers), and gets Hop Pop trapped inside the assembly line system. Anne rushes after home to rescue him, while Sprig frantically tries to turn the machine off. As he tries different thinks, Hop Pop’s rulebook gets destroyed by the machine, which ends up breaking the system, and therefore, stopping it from hurting Hop Pop. As the exit the weird hole in the ruin, it explodes behind them. It turns out, Polly took the cart on a joyride, and almost kills herself. The kids all promise to follow the rules better, and Hop Pop promises to not be as strict.

The Owl House kicked off season 1B (after months and moths on hiatus from the mid season finale). A book fair has come to the Boiling Isles, and there is a writing competition that Luz wants to enter. After seeing how much publicity authors get, King decides to join to. He and Luz decide to work together. While Luz’s ideas are more romantic, King wants to have a ton of violence in their novel. Meanwhile, Eda overheard her sister Lilith looking for a flower that can give you eternal life. She decides to race her sister to get to it, to prove that she isn’t old and slow like Lilith thinks she is. When Luz takes a break from writing, she comes back to see that King has taken over the project, and gotten rid of most of her ideas. This makes Luz angry, and she decides to write a story on her own. King submits his work to a publisher, who loves his story, and pretty soon, King is a bestselling author. Luz, however, is still struggling. As Eda and Lillith race to get the bloom, they realize that the flower does not exist, and they have both been scammed. They easily take down the scammer with their magic, working as a team. King tries to write a sequel to his novel, but is haveing a hard time without Luz’s help. When he asks for her help, she refuses, still insulted. Kings publisher traps both Luz and King after finding out that King did not write his novel alone, and forces them to make a good sequel. The duo escapes, and the publisher eventually finds another person to use as the next bestseller. When Eda arrives home, she finds King’s book lying on the table.

Saturday nights are going to be the best! A full hour of my favorite shows each week! Okay, I hope you enjoyed my rant, because there will probably be more next week! Until next time!

#amphibia #big city greens #the owl house #amphibia season 2 #new episode

[mdhwrites]

What's your opinion in The Owl House villains? (The bad guys I mean not the misunderstood ones)

So the villains I haven't discussed yet mostly boil down to the one off villains and the coven heads, though the coven heads are effectively the one off villains of S2. I would also count Tibbles in this because him coming back from time to time hardly matters to the broader point. THEY'RE ALL THE FUCKING SAME. They're all just some sort of asshole out for selfish greed who barely actually interacts with the characters. The best of all of these is King's Publisher and that's mostly just because he's the one that actually has a neat magical gimmick to him that feels genuinely threatening and creative. Everyone else is fine at best, boring at worst. But it's hard to really care because none of them really matter. Even Tibbles is just there to facilitate higher stakes and barely that even for the most part with how things are framed. They're never given interesting personalities, they're never given much to do and most usually have at best one fun moment that might make them memorable or a good design and then move on. They're also the majority of the demon representation of the show, while there are no good demons (unless you count Hooty who is comic relief) amongst the main cast. The only reoccurring one that could be considered good is Big Nose, Dana's literal self insert. That's not a joke, that's what Dana has said from what I hear. And it's really awkward the fact that the ugly demons are contrasted so heavily with all the beautiful elven people. Honestly, the more people around me have talked about it, the more I probably need to do a deep dive on both how bad the implications of the twin races and beauty standards are (even Luz would be considered easily conventionally attractive and Willow is the definition of "More to love" when it comes to including a heavier set character) and why it's probably not done with the malice or the like. But let's actually swing back around to a more fundamental problem with the literal narrative structure of most of these one off villains. See, when Amphibia uses a monster escalate stakes, it's usually related to the actual plot. As an example: The lovebirds being used during a romance episode so they are thematically on point. Or giant flies highlighting the garbage that Hop Pop is selling and the larger rot he is introducing to the town. You don't get to say that with most of the one off villains. They have a point to be there but they're so business minded that they don't contrast or help the moral or thematic point of any given episode. Not only is this just pointless storytelling, it creates a deeper, more fundamental issue of them not being able to properly able to interact with the cast. Hooty's Moving Hassle is actually one of the best examples of this. In BOTH plots, the escalation caused by the villain only matters in that it facilitates downtime for the characters to talk to each other. Gus, Willow and Luz aren't interacting with people who think might is right and thus putting Willow down for her weakness but instead the angst is focused on Amity, making her the 'real' antagonist of the A plot to the point where the hunters effectively don't interact with the kids outside of threatening their lives and that doesn't say anything about anything going on. The only memorable thing about them is the line about wanting to shove kids off of cliffs because that is just genuinely an amazing joke. They at least DO get a resolution that is thematically coherent because the situation the kids are put in can only be fixed by Willow finding confidence and taking them all out. It's not a good ending because it's too easy and we don't even get to actually enjoy a fight out of it but it is narratively coherent at least.

Meanwhile, in the B plot, that side of the episode is effectively about Hubris and admittedly, Eda gets in trouble for assuming she's the best Hex'em Hold Em' player out there. But what happens after that? Eda, who only picked up the game this episode so it feels incredibly forced that she is this obsessive with it (which isn't technically bad for a kid's show but bad for TOH which wants to be serialized), talks to King, feels bad, promises to throw the cards away and then they luck into being saved when Hooty crushes the stall. There isn't an actual resolution that shows any growth or thought on Eda's part, just convenience and words while Tibbles isn't really being arrogant but smart. He also is barely interacting with the two besides treating King as a doll which is an excuse to put him in funny outfits but him being treated as a child, even by episode six, is getting repetitive by then and they don't do anything clever with the outfits besides the most obvious 'this is embarrassing' ones that any show does. And those are BOTH villains the show will use again but still not manage to ever find an actual thematic purpose to them. It's honestly bizarre that TOH sets up a rogue's gallery at all instead of just allowing it to be either the EC or the world that is the threat. Oh wait, they also do that which means no one gets to return more than twice after their initial showing besides FUCKING KIKIMORA. This even goes for fucking Hunter and Belos who barely get to be in the show, let alone as antagonists properly, because they're just throwing in too many of these wastes of space. And all of this is without getting into the fact that none of them come off as real threats. Because so often they have no part in the actual drama and their treating it businesslike, they're not actually even menacing the characters much. They're just doing the same thing they always do. I'll give Tibbles that at least. He seems to be reveling in being a villain instead of just doing his job. But this also goes for the heroes. They care so little about the individual villains, instead focusing on their personal problems, that it feels like the villains are dismissed by the characters as they don't treat this as a real problem. Frankly, if the personal stuff the villains were facilitating was good enough, that might be okay. These are one note characters after all that we're mostly not going to see again. But... they're not. This includes the Coven Heads where Terra is barely an aspect of her one proper villain episode, Falls and Follies, and has nothing to do with solving Luz's fears about the promise (which... I LOVE the fact that the promise is effectively entirely dropped from the series after that episode without resolution. Just adore that such a massive cliffhanger is mostly brushed under the rug afterwards, even to the point where Luz's choice to stay in the human realm isn't about the promise but entirely other problems.). Theoretically, Labyrinth Runners has Gus dealing with his anxiety but... He also already knows how to do that well enough to teach it to Hunter and what causes the anxiety feels very similar to MANY other life and death situations that Gus has been in so it feels kind of cheap, not helped by all the other elements in that episode that make it less about Gus, who is the only one that has any reflection in the villain in that episode and that's only because of their shared magic, but instead a Hunter episode.

And those are the better villains. A lot of S1's one off villains are used for King plotlines, even down to the only unique villains in Once Upon a Swap being for while Eda is inhabiting King. And can we all agree that King has really shitty personal plotlines that never feel they stick until his entire character is thrown out in S2 to be replaced with daddy issues? I mean, literally two of his episodes are considered the worst in the show by most of the fandom.

And he's dealing with such compelling personal issues like not fucking your friend over in a creative project or don't try to literally isolate someone from the rest of their friend group. Technically good lessons that are also not handled great frankly, especially when the latter still sympathizes with King by having him have the argument of missing Luz which will only be reinforced him being the ONLY character who acknowledges that Luz living in both realms might not be only a good thing.

And I mean, you compare this with almost ANY even halfway decently regarded kid's cartoon and it's frankly embarrassing. Rise of the TMNT, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, and Molly McGee all blow it out of the water. Danny Phantom and Kim Possible were doing way better over a fucking decade ago. Even FUCKING FAIRY ODDPARENTS, especially early on, was doing better than this at making those episodes not only entertaining but having the villains make sense to what moral dilemma Timmy was facing in a given episode. And that series literally is about wish fulfillment. It's just bad adventure writing. Honestly, it's bad writing as even antagonists like Boscha don't keep focus during their episodes. Like Boscha's episode theoretically tackles bullying by actually bringing in a bully character proper besides Amity. Instead, it's WAY more focused on Lumity and just sports shenanigans and Boscha being a bully barely registers besides "She has a bad attitude because she actually gives a fuck about her sport instead of treating like a game." Like... Her team abandons her and I'm just left with the question of "Do none of you fucking care how you perform? Is Boscha literally the only one who likes this sport in this school?"

I almost brought up Matt here but he IS in fact just meant to be misunderstood since after his first episode, he's really just a good guy with snark. Frankly though, his first appearance is one of the best in terms of actually having a villain who plays into the character angst of the episode. Then again, he was obviously meant to be a part of ANOTHER rivals to lovers ship like Lumity so get fucked I guess.

This all honestly begs the question of why the main cast weren't their own antagonists as well. Why there aren't more episodes about them clashing if the only point to all of these villains is that they're meant to facilitate conversation? Amphibia did this plenty where there might be a monster but it is ABSOLUTELY the characters antagonizing each other that is the actual villain and allows for compelling looks at their relationships. Their good sides and their bad... Oh. Well. I guess that does explain it. Can't really have Amity be an antagonist again unless you want to remember that she started as one of the worst people, not characters but as a person, in the show. Or have Luz purposefully look like an asshole. Or Willow. Or Gus. Or literally any of the main cast. They can only be bad on accident. Like losing a game you think is rigged in your favor. Fuck that.

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#TOH Critical #The Owl House Criticism

[thekingofwinterblog]

Some worries about Amphibia 3B

So just something that worries me now that we have seen a full list of all the episode synopsis. also, SPOILERS, obviously.

"Commander Anne": Anne is made leader of the Wartwood Resistance, even though she's not good at the job.

"Sprivy": Sprig and Ivy devise a scheme to be together.

"Sasha's Angels": A team of Resistance fighters gets captured by ruthless marauders.

"Olm Town Road": Anne and her friends search for the ancient city of Proteus.

"Mother of Olms": Anne and the crew meet with Mother Olm, the keeper of ancient prophecies.

"Grime's Pupil": Due to dire circumstances, Grime is forced to train an apprentice.

"The Root of Evil": Anne and the Plantars get stuck in a strange village of plant lovers.

"The Core & the King": King Andrias confronts the demons of his past.

"Newts in Tights": While on a recon mission, Anne and Sprig confront an old mentor.

"Fight or Flight": Anne tries to rescue an old friend from one of King Andrias' robot camps.

"The Three Armies": Anne and Sasha must convince the frogs, newts and toads to work together.

"The Beginning of the End": The final battle begins.

"All In"

"The Hardest Thing"

Not counting the 3 part finale as separate episodes, there are exactly 14 episodes left of Amphibia.

And frankly, just looking at these episode blurbs, it seems a ludicrous amount of these look like they will feature neither Sasha nor Marcy as a main focus.

Let’s go over all of them.

commander Anne will undoubtledly feature Sasha front and center in some way, so that ones not a problem.

Sprivy will be focused on Ivy and Sprigg, and maybe Sasha and Anne will be featured, but they probably will not be all that much in the spotlight.

Sasha’s Angels will be a Sasha focused episode.

Olm Town Road speciffically mentions Anne and her “Friends” So Sasha may, or may not be amongst that catagory depending on wheter or not she and Sasha make up very, very quickly.

Mother of Olms is a sequel, so it will feature the same cast. So wheter Sasha will be amongst those depends on the previous episode.

The Root of Evil speciffically notes Anne and the Plantars, and not Anne and her friends.

The Core and the king is the big flashback episode, and so will probably feature Darcy in some capacity.

Newts in Tights speciffically mentions Anne and Sprig on a mission, and an old mentor. Probably neither Sasha nor Marcy.

Fight or Flight will probably be the big confrontation episode between Anne and Darcy.

The Three Armies is an episode where Anne and Sasha will work together to convince the three main races of Amphibia to work together as one in preparation for the final battle. Darcy might be featured.

The beginning of the end, is where the endgame begins. Darcy will probably be featured here in a major role.

All in is the point of no return. So Anne, marcy and Sasha.

And the hardest Thing is of course the finale, so undoubtedly will be all about Anne, Marcy and Sasha.

So i might have to admitt i was completely off about 3B once it’s done, but frankly just from looking at these episode guides, im noticing that a lot of them seem to go out of their way to note that she either wont be in them, or leave it very ambigious wheter she’ll be featured.

In fact, lets break down which she HAS to feature a major role.

Commander Anne, Sasha’s Angels, The Three Armies, The beginning of the end, All in, and the hardest thing.

that’s 6 out of 14.

and 4 of those are literarily at the end.

Now maybe i have to eat these words in time, but frankly it sounds from these like Sasha is going to be a side player in the first half of season 3A, only to come back and be a main character only when the show reaches the endgame.

And Darcy? Darcy is even WORSE somehow. if these aren’t misleading, and Marcy actually shows up in 3 armies, then she will be a main focus in 6 out of 14, just like Sasha, and unlike Sasha, she seemingly won’t be showing up as a main character until 7 episodes in. that’s half the season. And She’s the main final villain. It really does sound like the writers took the whole tuxedo mask meme “my work here is done” “but you didnt do anything” that some people linked her with to heart.

And then there is the final episode. The Hardest Thing.

fermented-writers-block had a theory that The ultimate endgame of the story is simply Anne, Marcy and Sasha letting go of each other, not in a bad way, but simply accept that they had too toxic a relationship and that wheter or not they can truly be friends or not in the future they need to break off at the moment.

so “the hardest thing” is to let go/move on.

And frankly im starting to believe that too. because it seems to me that despite promising that this part of the series will be all about anne, sasha and Marcy and their bonds, these really do make it sound like that for half the season the three won’t actually interact much in these plots.

frankly it sounds like all the trio’s interactions will mostly be crammed in at the end rather than actually being developed over the course of the season. If so, and if the trio actually does go their separate ways as suggested by the title, then it sounds to me like we’re heading for a repeat of the final season of Steven universe. where the big final arc that the entire series was all built on, on the trio moving on, is going to be too rushed and crammed into too little space to actually work.

and even if “the hardest thing is to forgive”, then it really does sound like none of the girls will get the focus needed to make this an organic development.

I really, REALLY hope im wrong, but it really does sound like the trio will only be interacting together for real, true development in the final end portion of the series. Essentially doing the exact same thing that Season 2 did, with them only getting together near the end, only this time its the actual ending, and there is NOTHING after this.

Again, i hope im wrong. i hope that both Sasha and Darcy gets plenty and consistent screentime this season, but if these summaries are generally on the level, it sounds like the team spent way too much time on Earth, realized that they had to get back to Amphibia, then realised that they had plenty of other stories they wanted to tell besides the main trio, and as such had to either cut those stories, or make Sasha and Darcy’s roles much smaller, and they choose the second option.

#amphibia #amphibia season 3 #amphibia season 3b #worries #serious worries #sasha waybright #darcy #marcy wu #anne boonchuy #spoilers