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#toh discourse
they-call-me-haiku · 7 months
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i find it funny how people praise the owl house for breaking the trend of redeeming the villain when the show instead took the laziest path with dealing with their villain. i mean, i get it. not all villains need to be redeemed and sometimes, it's just fine to kill them off or defeat them. no character is irredeemable, but sometimes the point is that people refuse to change.
but what they did with belos was just lazy. he didn't need to be redeemed, sure, but his ending was way too anti-climactic. he was such a complex character to just be labelled as Pure Evil™ and killed off at the end. he didn't need to be redeemed, but he at least deserved to be acknowledged as the three-dimensional complex character that he is. he wasn't just a disney-esque villain who did everything for power and had no depth to his personality. he was a symbol of religious trauma and how it affects people. he was a horrible person but also a sympathetic one, because i can only imagine how harmful growing up in the puritan era would have been.
like i said before, the show being cancelled is not an excuse. i was so excited to see all the religious and spiritual themes in belos's past, and all the theories that fans were coming up with. hell, some fans did a better job of representing belos than the show ever did. i just feel like it was a whole bag of lost potential. belos could have been one of the most insanely complex and well-written villains but the creators of the owl house wants to impress its fans, so they pull a "haha we're not like other shows because we can't sympathize with the villain!" newsflash: you don't need to redeem the villain in order to portray them as sympathetic. azula from avatar and simon from infinity train are good examples of sympathetic villains/antagonists who don't get redeemed.
it's even more ridiculous considering how rushed and badly written lilith's arc was, even though she cursed her sister, tried to kill a literal child, and almost got her sister turned to stone. you'd think if the show despises redemptions so much, they wouldn't give lilith a lazy and rushed redemption arc like that, only to render her useless for the rest of the show.
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spop fans 🤝 toh fans
using the classic “the show was cancelled/there wasn't enough time” excuse to justify the creators' poor writing choices
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flower-boi16 · 15 days
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Istg people in the toh community be PRAYING on the downfall of huntlow for no damn reason 😭😭🙏🙏 like my brother in christ are you that serious on sending full blown paragraphs on how you wish to see Hunter in agony and pain because he got rejected by willow? Mfs need mental evaluation, need a check in with the therapist, mfs need to unpack some hidden trauma of them being rejected themselves, and these are the same idiots who be shipping LUNTER, half of my disrespect to that ship since it's absolute dogshit and the shipper are the most insufferable and obnoxious people on planet earth (from interactions dw I'm not shitting on them for no reason) you can't convince me otherwise, but like fr I lowkey wish the toh community wouldn't be so quick to hate on ships because of it being a bit rushed and not having much chemistry, like don't tell me to my face you're an huntlow anti and are proud abt it, like girl you want a cookie? An award? You're not different for being the weakest link in the community
I'm really just going to say it; Huntlow discourse is some of the dumbest discourse in this whole show I've ever seen. I'm not a big Huntlow shipper but the sheer number of terrible takes I've seen for the ship is insane, then again it has Hunter attached to it and Hunter is a magnet for awful takes so why am I surprised.
The amount of times I had to defend this ship is embarrassing.
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waywardsunlight · 7 months
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You shouldn’t draw Willow if you can’t or won’t draw her fat. Almost every drawing of her I see is her skinny and I’m so tired of it. Willow is consistently drawn wrong including IN THE SHOW ITSELF where she’s off model skinny for a minute and I think fat people have a right to be upset about how everyone portrays and draws her. She’s fat. Willow is fat. And she isn’t Hunter’s and Gus’s mom, or making Amity mean to her again intentionally bc that misses the point of her character/arc.
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aunt-kats-chats · 1 year
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Unpopular opinion: I wish they kept Phillip Wittebane as the main antagonist and didn’t include the collector at all
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parliamentoftoh · 2 years
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I’m sorry but gonna ship discourse here because I read the worst possible tiktok thing about huntlow and it’s been appropriately dragged on twitter by others but I have to do it here too because I have Thoughts
Hunter doesn’t ‘need to learn about rejection’. Full stop. He doesn’t. 
I don’t care if you mean ‘oh he needs to learn about ~healthy~ rejection’
No he doesn’t. Shut up. 
Hunter needs to learn - and his ENTIRE ARC HAS BEEN ABOUT him learning - about accepting love that isn’t conditional on useful he is.
Whether or not you want romantic love in the form of a little teen romance to play into that arc is your own business but genuinely wanting this boy to experience MORE REJECTION has absolutely no point and serves no purpose in the character arc we have been given for him. 
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sanyu-thewitch05 · 2 years
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So I was strolling through Twitter and came across this tweet.
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And it got me thinking for a minute, cause I didn’t know Luz was Afro-Latina. For an Afro-Latina, Luz’s hair is incredibly straight. I’m not saying black people, Afro-Latinos, and people of African descent can’t have naturally straight hair, BUT the majority have curly, coily, and or kinky hair.
It was also fairly weird because I found the friend of Dana’s that’s talked about in the tweet. The tweet above is absolutely right when they say they don’t look alike.
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Here’s her Twitter account
She also has a tumblr by the same name as her Twitter account that’s also linked in her Twitter bio.
Which brings me to the redesign pictures that was shared around Twitter and Tiktok
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I admit they look way more accurate. I personally think Luz should of had more obvious features that she was Afro-Latina. This is my opinion as someone who’s black, feel free to add your opinion.
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trooper-924 · 2 years
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Other people have gone into why the “one sided Huntlow” takes-- you know “Hunter needs to learn healthy rejection” and other takes in that vein--are kind of crap, but what truly bothers me about them is this:
It just seems like some people dislike Huntlow so much that just not wanting it to happen is not enough. They have fantasize ways for the ship to be totally and utterly destroyed, even if it flies in the face of how Hunter and Willow are portrayed on the show.
For example, what started the current Huntlow discourse going on tiktok and twitter right now is someone on tiktok saying that they wanted Willow reject Hunter causing him to get angry so that Willow would “put him in his place”. Like, it’s not just enough for Willow to turn down Hunter’s advances, Hunter also has to be turned into a selfish, angry asshole who has to be taught a lesson just to make the ship as unappealing and nonviable as possible. It’s petty and pathetic at the same time.
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I love the owl house but I don't understand why everyone is praising the PTSD and child abuse representation there. I know a lot of people relate to it, button me it is really sanitized.
I'm tired of "oh my god my abuser turned out to be bad I never suspected that!!" kind of representation.
As a kid I KNEW my parents were shity. I told my mother to go off herself multiple times, I hated her, I was telling everyone what was done to me everyday at my home. I hoped them to change, I wished, but I KNEW they were bad people. I tried to fight back when I was hitted multiple times, I ran away three times, I always told people that they were horrible parents and that I am suffering. No one ever listened.
I was doing this since I was EIGHT.
I am tired that my story is considered "not child friendly" I was a child. I know there's other kids going through it right now and they DESERVE being represented.
I know that a lot of people relate to Amity and Hunter, and, I guess, maybe a lot of kids actually really never suspected that their parental figures were abusive or never tried to fight back until some moment, but I am so so sick of never actually seeing my kind of situation represented.
I want to see a kid who PERFECTLY understands that they need to get out, failing multiple times, fighting back, not in just some final moment, but constantly fighting back and getting a happy ending not just after that one magical moment of realisation or whatever.
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kindofsortofmaybe · 2 years
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the only valid toh discourse is whether willow’s season 2 hair is in braids or pigtails
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they-call-me-haiku · 6 months
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whenever someone says they dislike huntlow, the usual comeback from toxic huntlow fans is that “you're a misogynist and you don't want to see the woman in a relationship being stronger”. so i want to address this issue today. is huntlow bad only because willow is stronger than hunter and isn't a damsel in distress?
in my opinion, absolutely not. that's not the case. i myself am a fan of subverted tropes and relationships where the woman isn't just a passive damsel with no personality. i like seeing independent women and i like seeing men being vulnerable for once.
to demonstrate my point on why huntlow doesn't pull off this trope well, let me compare it to a ship with a similar dynamic: sokka and suki from avatar the last airbender.
let's go through each of the reasons why sukka works as a ship where huntlow fails.
1. Does it make sense for the characters?
the first question here is: do the roles of the strong independent woman and weaker man suit these characters?
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sokka was introduced as.. just a guy. he was a regular teenager who wasn't trained in combat. he could fight well enough if he wanted to and being the only man in a village full of mostly children and elders, he was the best warrior in his village (if we are even to believe his claims in s1, that is).
suki, on the other hand, was a trained warrior. she had spent her whole life training in combat and fighting to continue kyoshi's legacy. in her very first appearance, suki is confirmed to be a skilled warrior who is much stronger than sokka.
this setup makes perfect sense. it wouldn't come as a surprise later on that suki is stronger or a better fighter than sokka, and would have to rescue him or help him out in a moment of crisis.
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now let's come to huntlow. in s2, hunter is introduced as the emperor's right-hand man who is young but powerful. while most of his intimidation factor came from his artificial staff, it was clear that he was not an amateur and had decent combat skills.
this assumption is only solidified when we see him go head to head with amity, only losing because 1. he was using a new staff 2. he was sleep deprived and 3. he was in an extremely erratic emotional state.
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willow, on the other hand, was the sokka in this relationship. she was a regular teenager who grew up in a normal family and went to a regular magic high school.
she was certainly incredibly skilled in plant magic but she was not a trained child soldier like hunter. she had a lot of potential to be a good fighter but she had only recieved the education that every other student had recieved. not to mention, most of her stronger magic came from her emotional outbursts.
so.. does the whole girlboss-malewife dynamic work with huntlow? no. it really doesn't. even if willow trained and grew as a witch, there's no reason why she should be stronger and more skilled in combat than hunter, who had to pass seemingly impossible trials in order to qualify as the golden guard. especially since after the first half of s2, hunter was not only weaker than willow but just weak in general.
i get it, he doesn't have natural magic like the others. but he was still shown to be a very competent fighter. he was also shown to be cunning and strategic, being able to find a way out of any situation if he wanted to. but after joining the hexsquad, he is dumbed down to willow's shy and pathetic boyfriend, who doesn't really do much on his own.
2. are they in character when in a relationship?
when writing a relationship, this is really important. if you write a relationship where one or both characters have to act wildly out of character to make sense for the relationship to happen, those characters are not compatible. it's like when your friend acts uncomfortably different around their crush or partner.
let's start with sokka and suki.
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sokka is goofy, cynical and quick-witted, with or without suki. his relationship with suki doesn't drastically change his character, but it does improve it. suki helps sokka change his misogynistic worldviews and respect women, but apart from that necessary improvement, sokka is still the same. he is not out of character when he is with suki.
as for suki herself, we don't see a lot of her away from sokka but it's still safe to assume that she is being herself around sokka. she is not forced into a new role in order to be in a relationship with sokka. the times we do see her on her own, she is pretty much the same rational, independent and nonchalant person that she is around sokka.
and yet, both of them have incredible chemistry and very clearly care for each other. it's not one-sided and it doesn't feel unnatural.
but huntlow?
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hunter is introduced as a sarcastic and bratty but deeply traumatized teenager. he is quick to start a banter with whoever he is with, he tends to talk too much, and he generally has a nonchalant attitude to cover up with trauma.
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but with willow? hunter is not just shy or awkward around her, he is a completely different person. i can understand that being attracted to a person can make you act strangely sometimes. but with hunter, that awkwardness never fades away. he is always blushing around her, he is often portrayed as pathetic and helpless, and constantly needing willow's support and guidance.
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as for willow, she is introduced as this insecure and good-natured teenager. after her confrontation with amity, willow is pushed to the back for a while. all we know about her at that time is that she's the supportive mom friend of the group. she builds her confidence after a while but she is still shown as a kind person who doesn't use force on someone else, unless necessary.
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but with hunter? willow is suddenly not just confident but also dominant and forceful. she basically snatches him from the sky and drags him to the ground, just to invite him to her flyer derby team. hunter is practically terrified at this point, but it's played off as a fun cute-meet. later, when hunter wants to leave the team for understandable reasons, instead of respecting his wishes, willow once again forces him to join her again.
i wouldn't call willow toxic or abusive, because she isn't. but i would say that she didn't respect hunter's boundaries in the slightest. she doesn't treat anyone else the way she treats hunter. she's not exactly mean to him but she also does not seem to respect him as an individual. again, she is written wildly out of character just so that she could fulfil the role of the “powerful girlboss” in the relationship. and it doesn't help that a dominant and forceful figure is the last thing hunter needs, considering how he was controlled and abused by his uncle his whole life.
3. Equality
it is my opinion that in a relationship, both individuals should play an important role. and they should balance each other out, instead of clashing with each other. it doesn't necessarily have to be an “opposites attract” situation, they just need to have qualities that brings a balance to the relationship.
in sokka's and suki's relationship, we've already established that suki is the brawn. she's the trained warrior and her agility, skill and speed are her strengths. sokka, on the other hand, is the brains. suki is still a rational and smart person but sokka is the strategist, the “idea guy”.
here, there's a balance. neither sokka nor suki are weak or incompetent, they're just skilled in different areas.
but when it comes to huntlow, willow is the brawn while hunter.. does close to nothing. after meeting willow, he's basically useless. the most impactful thing he does is stand up against belos in “Thanks to Them” and rescue willow from a short fall in the next episode. otherwise, he is mostly pushed to the back despite, again, having a personality and his own strengths prior to meeting willow. the problem here isn't that hunter shouldn't be weak or vulnerable, but rather that he is forced into the damsel role when it goes against his original character.
4. Screentime, interaction and development
one thing that huntlow and sukka had in common is neither ship had too much screentime together. suki wasn't officially part of the gaang until s3 and before that, she just gets two interactions with sokka. but these interactions were used to their fullest potential.
when they first meet each other, sokka and suki do not get along well. sokka was convinced that women aren't good warriors and his pride is hurt by the fact that suki is stronger than him, while suki is understandably put off by sokka's misogynistic and condescending attitude. after he tries to teach her how to fight and is consequently defeated by her, sokka rethinks his worldview. he goes back to suki and asks her to teach him how to fight, apologizing and admitting his mistake. suki agrees to teach him and through this, they bond. it is revealed at the end of the episode that both sokka and suki may or may not have a thing for each other. afterwards, sokka has to leave and suki has to stay behind.
their next meeting is a lot more brief but even here, we see a clear demonstration of their dynamic. sokka is overjoyed to see suki but he still hasn't moved on from yue, so when suki confesses to him and tries to initiate a kiss, sokka rejects her. suki apologizes to him later for what happened, and sokka kisses her as a confirmation that he has now moved on and likes her back. we see a clear respect of boundaries and personal choices from both sides.
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finally, after suki is captured by azula, sokka frees her and they are reunited again until the end. at this point, they're basically a couple. there's no more awkward blushing or stuttering; they're just a pair of teenagers who are in love with each other. they have a bit of playful banter and they're very casual and comfortable around each other.
suki was originally supposed to be a one-time character so it's incredible that they pulled off on the best ships in atla with her and sokka. their chemistry was undeniable from the beginning, and the writers knew how to expand on it.
now let's come to huntlow. hunter and willow meet each other for the first time in the s2b episode ‘Any Sport in a Storm’. willow is looking for candidates to join her flyer derby team and she sees hunter flying on his palisman. completely unprovoked, the willow who normally never attacked or forced something on people for no reason, decides that the best way to scout this random guy she doesn't know is by encasing him in vines and dragging him to the ground, destroying the concrete in the process. this may have been portrayed as something of a slapstick comedy, but that kind of humor never stuck with me.
after willow explains herself to hunter, he agrees to join her team, thinking it would be an easy way to recruit students into the emperor's coven. fast forward, they get a few members to their group.
hunter notices that all of these members are visibly slacking off and gets discouraged. he turns to leave and willow stops him in his tracks. when she tells him to give them a chance, hunter ‘opens up’ to her a little, by telling her that he had to earn chances, especially as a “half a witch”. this comes out of nowhere because we never see hunter being referred to as half a witch by anyone prior to this. there were certainly characters who disliked him, like lilith and kikimora, but they called him names like “golden brat”. in fact, it's not even clear if anyone other than hunter and belos knows that he has no magic. the whole half a witch line was added so that hunter and willow would have something in common.
willow, instead of reasoning with hunter or respecting his choice to leave, drags him to the ground once again and seemingly teleports him back to the flyer derby team. while this may not have been done with malicious intent, it was still another instance of willow invading hunter's boundaries and forcing him to do something.
hunter is convinced that the team is, in fact, competent. he plays the game with them and has fun doing it. after getting the team captured to join the emperor's coven and saving them from darius, the episode ends with darius turning out to be the good guy and hunter getting a penstagram (or whatever they call it, i forgot).
after this, the huntlow scenes are very scarce. we barely see them interact, especially not alone with each other. in the next episode, we see willow standing up for hunter and hunter blushing and recognizing that the fake willow isn't willow. while this would be sweet for an already established couple, since hunter and willow barely had a bond at this point, it just comes off as hunter being observant. which is somewhat in character for him.
afterwards, there's just a sprinkle of this ship, most of it consisting of hunter being shy and nervous around willow. and willow treating him like she treats everyone else. there's no sign of willow liking hunter back until literally the episode before the finale. where, instead of focusing on hunter's recent trauma with being possessed by his abusive parent and losing his best friend, the show decides to focus on willow's issues instead. of course willow deserves her own arc, but she already got it back in s1. there was no reason to give her ANOTHER issue to work on, just so that hunter can comfort her and give her a reason to like him back.
overall, it was really forced and these two characters never had the kind of natural chemistry that sokka and suki did. their interactions were either awkward or surface-level wholesome. we get exactly two (2) episodes where they interact properly and even that isn't done well. it just feels like these characters were pushed into a ship dynamic that they didn't naturally fit into.
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their crimes and problems with their redemption arcs under the cut!
catra:
crimes:
War crimes
Abuse of power
Corruption
Reckless endangerment
Psychological abuse
Assault
Terrorism
Attempted regicide
Attempted mass murder
Attempted world domination
Attempted cataclysm
Conspiracy
Mass destruction
Abduction & kidnapping
Unlawful imprisonment
Brainwashing
Theft
Torture
Treason
Usurpation
Coercion
Stalking
Mutilation
Aiding and abetting
Illegal use of weapons
Espionage
Crimes against peace
Crimes against Etheria
Altering reality
how was her redemption arc carried out?
she was only redeemed in the final season and her arc wasn't as drawn out as it should have been.
she never faces any consequences of her actions and is forgiven by her victims almost immediately, either after a vague apology or no apology at all.
she continues torturing and abusing people around her, especially her love interest, adora. her redemption arc doesn't mean anything since she never actually changes.
the diamonds:
crimes:
Multiple planetary conquests
Mass invasion
Mass terraformation
Attempted omnicide
Crimes against the universe
Cruel and unusual punishments
Unlawful executions
Slavery
Oppression
Propaganda
Abuse of power
Mass murder
Terrorism
Ecocide
Genocide
War crimes
Hate crimes
Corruption
Psychological abuse
Brainwashing
Unethical experimentation
Mass forced confinement
Mass destruction
Mass forced transmutations
how was their redemption arc carried out?
same as catra, their redemption was done during the final few episodes of steven universe, and it was way too sudden to be realistic.
they never face any consequences of their actions and still gets to retain their positions as cosmic rulers.
they do, however, seem to put in some effort to change, although it's not clear if this is helpful. steven also does not seem to forgive them.
lilith clawthorne:
crimes:
Malediction
Attempted murder
Child endangerment
Hostage-taking
Kidnapping
Coercion
Malefic
Treason
Cheating
Torture
Abuse
Assault
Aiding and abetting
how was her redemption arc carried out?
she only had to make one sacrifice and that was the extent of her redemption arc.
she is also forgiven too quickly by the people she had hurt.
she does change for the better, and proves to be an ally to the heroes (albeit being an underutilized character).
sasha waybright:
crimes:
Abuse of power
Psychological abuse
Attempted murder
Treason
Terrorism
Harassment
Vandalism
Theft
Usurpation
Animal cruelty
Conspiracy
Kidnapping
Incrimination
Sabotage
Child endangerment
how was her redemption arc carried out?
we only see the beginning of her redemption, the rest of it happens almost entirely off-screen. this was a lazy choice, as we never see an actual “arc”, only the beginning and the end of it.
she is almost immediately forgiven by her friends. there is some lingering suspicion in some episodes, but not enough for everything she had done prior to that season.
however, she also seems to have turned into a better person and doesn't repeat any of her past toxic behaviour.
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flower-boi16 · 15 days
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Shipping wars are embarrassing in of itself. TOH is a magnet for these kind of things, I personally really don’t care about canon ships since I stick to my own bubble but good god.
Don’t harass people over their ships, the best you can do is block that person and get on with your life.
LEGIT tho. TOH is a magnet for horrendously shitty takes and critiques, especially when it comes to the show’s ships.
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waywardsunlight · 2 years
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On the twitter discourse, I read the whole complaint and I think it’s super unfair but a lot of the responses are misunderstanding it. They’re saying they’re upset that TOH is appropriating Jewish history because Dana isn’t Jewish. But that’s totally off because Dana is an ex-Catholic telling a story about Catholicism, Hunter’s arc, Caleb, everything about Belos and how he interacts with people and his method of genocide are all Catholic/christian. The critique can’t hold up because the holocaust parallels are fairly surface level and it doesn’t work with the overall themes that the show is going for. So no, it’s wrong. It’s worse that people are taking this complaint and taking it way farther than they should be/ harassing crew and other fans. No, it’s not about UWU-ifying Belos, the actual complaint was that Dana is appropriating Jewish culture. 
I agree with the complaint that people UWU-ify Belos but I think it’s okay to have AUs and explore that character in other ways. I don’t know what Dana can do about that but I guess ya’ll are gonna complain. 
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aunt-kats-chats · 1 year
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Another TOH unpopular opinion:
I can’t stand Huntlow
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catgirl-catboy · 10 months
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God, in one of the ToH discourse things you reblogged op literally came back just to say "um I only read half of that but wrong. Don’t defend yourself why do you even care? you just wanna argue bye" Like she cared enough to start talking shit! OP was in her 20s 😭
Yeah. The biphobia and casual fetishization of wlw makes the fandom pretty damn inhospitable to me. Ironically, every time I try to comment on Amity's writing and how my girl was reduced to a sexy lamp in late s2 and s3, the cries of lesbophobia can be heard for miles.
Not all Lumity fans are like that, but enough of them are that I try to stick to reblogging art of the less common ships, even though I want to RB SO MUCH ART OF LILITH AND HUNTER, YOU FEEL ME?
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