#julietteanalyzes

[juliettedunn]

Season 3 Lumity

There’s been a new era of Lumity I’ve seen since Season 3 began, despite their relationship being relatively out of focus. I’m not just talking about the angst, though obviously yes, Luz is very depressed and that impacts how they interact. But it’s more than that, and I really like the direction it’s gone with their romance.

I noticed it right away with the rain scene,the way they interact here is different from before.They were always ultra affectionate,but there was a tentative, blushey energy. Here that is gone,they are fully comfortable with each other, no longer nervous,and deeply romantic.

It truly feels like they’ve been together for a while now, had time to progress in their relationship. They are in a new stage, and that’s apparent in all their interactions. It’s why they don’t blush so much anymore, which is actually quite normal.

They are seeing each other more clearly, not only recognizing but becoming very familiar with all their tendencies and habits. In many ways their interactions are MORE romantic than they were previously.

Before, they were absolutely adorable and innocent. Now they are matured, deeply in love, and incredibly tender.

I appreciate how much time their relationship has been given to progress. Usually it’s only the pining phase.

With Lumity, we have a silly pining phase, an early relationship phase where they are ridiculously sappy and nervous, and now a phase where they are completely comfortable and see each other on a much deeper level.

They are so tender now, with their expressions and the softness of their affection.Though Luz is having severe mental health issues, the two are deeply aware and caring of each other. It is sadly rare to see this level of healthy communication and understanding in media.

It means so much to see a mutually loving and supportive relationship progress past the crushing phase and blossom into something deeper and more intimate.

And while their relationship is fairly out of focus in S3, the bits we do have are masterful and make me even more attached to the ship than before. I adored the silly crushing era, but this more mature and tender era of Lumity is EVERYTHING to me.

#lumity #the owl house #toh #luz noceda #the owl house luz #amity blight #julietteanalyzes

[juliettedunn]

Luz’s Softness in Thanks to Them

We all knew Luz was going to have an angst arc in Thanks to Them. Her angst had been building long before then, and King’s Tide was the final straw.

Angst is popular in characters like Amity and Hunter, who act cold and mean as a result of deep pain on the inside. If they cry, it’s in secret, hidden away from anyone who might see through their confident persona. The “bad but sad boy” / “I act like I don’t care but I secretly do” type, to quote Luz.

That’s not what Luz does. Luz cries multiple times in  front of others in Thanks to Them, and even has an emotional outburst in front of her teacher in classmates.

It’s the classroom scene that has a lot of people saying Luz is being “cringey,” and that they have to cover their eyes from “second-hand embarrassment.” I’ve seen post after post mocking that scene, saying Luz needs to “sit down and shut up” and that she has a “y/n complex.”

Whether a vulnerable person gets sympathy or ridicule from others is based on mysterious standards of what are acceptable and unacceptable ways to act when we are at our worst. And what is acceptable for some isn’t acceptable for others (white favoritism, especially in the fandom’s response to Hunter’s over-the-top emotional displays vs Luz). 

Luz’s outburst in the classroom was highly impulsive and not something many would do, but Luz doesn’t know how to ask for help, not when she feels too guilty to confide in her friends and family.

Luz is at best passively suicidal in TTT. It’s actually one of the first times she DOESN’T see herself as the main character, she sees herself as the selfish villain, the “evil Lucy” rather than the good witch Azura. Her self esteem is at an all time low, to where she doesn’t think she truly deserves love.

It’d be so easy to lock herself away, bottle those feelings inside and turn cold. Many thought this was the direction her character was headed in. And Luz does indeed isolate and keep her inner feelings secret.

But she remains soft and tender-hearted, constantly cheering on her friends and supporting Hunter through his hardships even when she herself is at her worst. She even lets her silliness peek through, calling a possum a “little angel.”

Despite her low self esteem, she very clearly WANTS someone to help her and intervene. She wouldn’t have had the classroom outburst if she didn’t think there was some worth in making her feelings clear, some hope that someone might respond to her and perhaps tell her something different. Which makes it even more heartbreaking when the class gives her a weirded out look and then ignores her.

If someone behaves this way in real life, it should be taken as a serious warning sign, not as a “Oh my god that’s so cringe” moment. 

You can see multiple times in the episode Luz fighting her depression, like when she goes to cuddle with Camila. When she asks Camila to let her stay in her bed, it struck me how amazing she really is for being able to do that.

Luz feels she doesn’t deserve to live, yet she still desperately wants to. She wants to hold on so much that she manages to seek comfort, despite her guilt telling her she shouldn’t be receiving it.

When I was her age and in her mental state, I didn’t have the ability to do something like that. Seeking help when you’re in that kind of state is one of the hardest things to do, and Luz does it multiple times.

For people to call her a cringey embarrassment for having an outburst is in very poor taste, and a bad sign for how we view signs of mental illness in real life.

Not everyone who angsts will be like Hunter and Amity, becoming aggressive and/or cold towards others. Not everyone can hide behind thick skin. Some become softer and more sensitive, cry more easily. The latter is in fact the healthier and often more difficult option. 

Some expected a cold, withdrawn cynic, hiding away her emotions. Instead we got a messy, tender-hearted girl desperately seeking help in impulsive outbursts.

The fandom is finally starting to focus on her angst and trauma, but let’s not forget the strength that lies in her unfaltering softness as well.

Luz is a loving, kind, strong, beautiful disaster, and she deserves better from this fandom.

#luz noceda #the owl house season 3 #toh #thanks to them #the owl house #julietteanalyzes

[juliettedunn]

Witches Before Wizards and The Collector Parallels

Witches Before Wizards is crucial to both Luz’s character development as a whole and foreshadowing for the Collector.

In the episode, Luz actually states her core wish of being understood that she only fully realized in For the Future. Just before her rude awakening, she says “I always suspected there was a reason no one understood my wacky antics back home!”That is quite cool that you can see her wish so clearly on!

Luz doesn’t understand why she is an outcast. She is lonely, misunderstood, and desperate for some kind of meaning to her life.

She is easily taken in by the saccharine, technicolor world that Adegast presents to her. It is an easy one. Everything plays out in a perfectly predictable and safe manner. She is misunderstood because she is the Chosen One, and now she can be surrounded by friends who cherish her as she goes on to complete her quest.

Only, they aren’t true friends. There is no depth to anything that happens. She has no real relationship with them, they only speak predictable lines. Contrary to her core wish, they can’t actually understand her, because they aren’t real people, merely…puppets.

Literally, as when Adegast reveals himself, he commandeers all the “friends” she had made, their faces melting into grotesque puppetry.

Mocked and isolated so many times before, of course Luz doesn’t want to be subjected to more pain. The real world holds grief and uncertainty. But it is also the only way Luz can have true and meaningful bonds.

She has to allow that vulnerability, that uncertainty. She has to embrace a strange landscape, one quite often grotesque and horrifying, to reach the messy, deep bonds that come with it.

And she has. Despite being beaten down, Luz has found friends and family who understand her, and made a place for herself in the Boiling Isles. She has now realized her core wish of being understood, and with that self awareness, she is more powerful than ever.

She doesn’t need a perfectly saccharine universe to find happiness. She can embrace the real one, including all the grief that comes with it.

This is the same lesson that the Collector must learn. The Collector lives in a world of puppets too, one of his own making. Every day, he plays out that saccharine fantasy, scripted and stiff. King told him about Luz’s adventures, and the Collector was enamored.

But he doesn’t know how to have such a genuine experience or bond, so he flattened the experiences, simplified and purified them into the “messed up version” of Luz’s life now going on.

It is a sign of Luz’s maturity that she recognized how messed up it was. She no longer wants a world that’s cute and feel-good on the surface, but on the inside is empty and cold.

And that is what The Collector’s life is, right now. It’s hollow. King is the only real thing there, and he forces King to play out the scripted performance as well.

The Collector may think he is happy, but he isn’t. He can’t find real happiness with such a life. He is lost, lonely, and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know how to have a genuine bond, and so he desperately tries to make it work with his puppet show.

At the end of Witches Before Wizards, Luz rejects her puppet fantasy. I am sure the Collector will as well. Likely, with Luz’s help, as she gets through to him and uses her own experience with loneliness and isolation, that wish for a perfect world that understands you, to show him a path toward true meaning and connection.

#the owl house #toh #luz noceda #the owl house luz #the collector #enzo gabriel #julietteanalyzes

[juliettedunn]

Gus Porter: An Appreciation and Analysis

I loved Gus when he seemed to be a fairly simple comic relief character, but very quickly he shows himself to be more than that. He may not get as much screen time as the main characters, but he does have two episodes where he is a main focus, and he reveals a lot of depth.

Gus has the common trope of a nonhuman obsessed with human culture and thinking of humans as interesting animals to study.

His obsession with humans is very intense: he founded a human appreciation society, he collects human artifacts, dreams of traveling to the human realm, and memorizes as much information about humans as possible (even though most of it is incorrect). If it wasn’t obvious, humans are clearly his special interest.

Gus is very poor at picking up on other people’s manipulations. In Through the Looking Glass Ruins, he is instantly trusting of Bria and fails to notice several warning signs that she has less than pure intentions.

He is also incredibly eager to be accepted into the group. The whole time, he is basically completely blinded by excitement at getting to hang out with “cool” kids. We learn more about where this stems from in the second Gus-centric episode (and one of my personal favorites), Labyrinth Runners.

In a flashback, Gus doesn’t notice a kid is exploiting him until he happens to overhear the kid admit it. He fully believes the kid genuinely wants to be his friend, just like he does later in his life with Bria.

Both times, he takes what people say at face value, the thought not crossing his mind that they could have ulterior motives.

One of his lines in Labyrinth Runners really struck me. “Everyone thinks I’m the smart one. So why do I act so dumb?”

Gus is what is considered a gifted kid; he’s two years younger than the rest of the Hexsquad because he skipped grades.

And the way he is portrayed in the show is very true to the typical gifted kid experience.

Gus is praised for being smart. He’s been bumped up grade levels, he’s considered a prodigy, he very clearly does amazing on tests. So like all gifted kids, he takes that on as part of his identity.

But someone can’t be smart at all things. And Gus is poor at reading other people. So despite being academically adept, he misses social cues, cues which are very obvious to everyone else.

He doesn’t notice when other kids are pretending to be his friend only to exploit him. That’s something that a lot of autistic people have a problem with.

And in Labyrinth Runners, he fails to recognize Willow, his best friend of many years, as an illusion, whereas Hunter does, despite only having met her once. She was definitely acting out of character, but in a way that would require an understanding of her mannerisms, something Gus doesn’t have a good instinctual grasp on.

His attempts at cheering people up aren’t always the best either. Though Luz did end up getting admitted to Hexside, he prepared for her to fail, and got consulting messages ready. This took the form of giant blue letters saying “Better luck next time.” Obviously, these words are very blunt and come across as quite cold. It is not something that would have made her feel better, but Gus clearly thought that it would, further showing that he doesn’t quite understand how best to comfort someone.

Same with Willow, where he sends her a bunch of illusions to console her and just ends up making the situation worse, unable to figure out the right ways to comfort someone in need, even though he has a huge heart and really wants to be there for his friends.

He’s the best at being there for Hunter. He teaches him the breathing technique, and gets him involved in the Cosmic Frontier fandom. Hunter is also bad at reading social cues and also is autistic I believe, though that’s a whole other discussion. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that’s who Gus is best at comforting, someone who is also rather unconventional with emotional issues.

Gus’s failure to see through people trying to manipulate him, and his failure at knowing how to comfort his friends, leads him to believe he is “dumb,” which greatly hurts his self esteem.

Notice, also, that Gus is always trying to entertain his friends. He’s funny, and he knows this and is actively trying to be. Why? Because if he isn’t smart, at least he is funny. He wants to be liked, wants to be seen as cool. And he’s just starting to enter the age where most gifted kids start to falter, where the lack of studying abilities really starts to catch up.

When I hit that stage, I definitely also tried to be “the funny one.” Autistic people are almost inherently funny to neurotypicals, and if people aren’t praising you and admiring you for being smart, at least they’ll like you if you’re funny.

If he’s not fulfilling his “value” as either the child prodigy or the comic relief, then what is his purpose? Such is the crisis many gifted kids go through when they go from being far ahead of their peers, praised as geniuses, to still being above average but certainly not the absolute one in a million wonder that many people told them they were.

Now for another amazing part of Gus - he has shut downs. When he gets overwhelmed, he hits a breaking point and curls up, completely unable to function any longer. Because his magic is so powerful, it impacts his surroundings too. In Labyrinth Runners, he is so overwhelmed he casts a spell over the entire school.

Shut downs and panic attacks feel like this. Of course, they don’t involve real magic like in the show, but the way the school appears as a trippy, foreign landscape they have to navigate is true to how it feels to be overwhelmed as an autistic person. Even though there is no illusion magic, the familiar quickly becomes foreign, and places I’ve been a hundred times before feel wrong.

Willow teaches him a breathing method, and I actually use that breathing method too. I don’t know if it inherently works or if it’s because it’s connected to The Owl House, which is my comfort show, but I actually move through panic attacks and disassociation episodes much faster ever since I started using that technique.

Finally, Gus stims! You can’t tell me that him grabbing the bubble wrap, knocking over items due to lack of spatial awareness, happily shouting “Look at all this human stuff!” and then intently focusing on popping all the bubbles until it was over was not the most autistic thing you’ve ever seen.

Gus is a great portrayal of an autistic gifted kid heading into burn out, academically intelligent but far too trusting, believing everyone acts at face value, and falling very easily into exploitation because of it. Adopting the identity of child prodigy and witty entertainer, and taking a serious blow to his self esteem when he can’t live up to those ideals.

Happily, he now he has real friends, most of whom are neurodivergent like him! As I said before, the almost instant understanding and bond he and Hunter have is largely a result of them both being autistic; they read each other very well and instinctually know how to help each other. I love their relationship so much.

This was a lot longer than I anticipated, but I just had a lot to say about him. He’s getting a lot more appreciation form the fandom recently, but he still is fairly underrated as a character. I love him so much even though I don’t talk about him as much as I talk about other characters, and I do wish he would get confirmed as autistic on screen (though the most I can ever hope for is Luz getting confined to have ADHD, and even that I really doubt). Still, I know he is autistic, and he is amazing.

#gus porter #the owl house #toh #gus toh #gus the owl house #autistic #actually autistic #the owl house gus #julietteanalyzes

[juliettedunn]

Boscha, Willow, and Amity in For the Future

Boscha in this epsiode was less about her as a character and more as a way to signal the growth of Willow and Amity. For both to have developed far from that environment, and then to return to it as the stronger people they have become, is really interesting.

Willow falls back into her old insecurities. Even though she has proven how adept she is at plant magic, and has increased in confidence, when placed back with Boscha it’s hard to shake the old memories.

She had already been close to a breakdown, and Boscha was the final straw.

She never got a true confrontation with her past the grudgby match, which was important but not enough to shake years of bullying (bullying that not just Boscha but Amity too took part in).

Hunter’s affirmation of her and his line about her never calling herself “half a witch” again was so helpful to her, because half a witch is a name that has followed her since she was very small, something that made her feel worthless.

But now Willow has friends on her side who help lift her up and make her believe in herself. She is confident in her own abilities, and now she will feel safer to lean on others.

She is not the little girl who shrunk and apologized for her struggles. Boscha hadn’t realized that, and when Willow says “Don’t think I’m finished with you” that leaves me hope perhaps she will be able to fully confront her again.

And Amity, interestingly, had a moment where she sits on an abomination almost directly paralleled to how she does in her very first scene. Only under entirely different circumstances, as she rejects the persona she previously had.

The similarity is superficial because she has fully discarded that mask persona. Odalia is the main hand in its creation, but Boscha was a major part of that as well, and when she finally gets to tell Boscha “I can’t be who you want me to be” it’s really cathartic.

Boscha doesn’t want Amity, she wants the false persona of Amity that she and others in Amity’s life created.

Tying back to what Amity said to Luz when they discussed Palisman, Amity now feels free to reject those expectations put upon her and to choose who SHE wants to be.

This fight with Boscha was a true affirmation of how she feels free now, unrestricted by social conventions and parental and peer pressure.

She had been growing past those ever since she met Luz, but those months in the human realm far from her abusive home environment, among friends and a mother figure who were supportive and affirming, gave her the strength to fully and confidently break away.

So Boscha may have been gross and uncomfortable in this episode, but her role was perfect to highlight both Amity and Willow’s development.

#the owl house #toh #amity blight #willow park #boscha #the owl house season 3 #julietteanalyzes

[juliettedunn]

Witches Before Wizards and The Collector Parallels

Witches Before Wizards is crucial to both Luz’s character development as a whole and foreshadowing for the Collector.

In the episode, Luz actually states her core wish of being understood that she only fully realized in For the Future. Just before her rude awakening, she says “I always suspected there was a reason no one understood my wacky antics back home!”That is quite cool that you can see her wish so clearly on!

Luz doesn’t understand why she is an outcast. She is lonely, misunderstood, and desperate for some kind of meaning to her life.

She is easily taken in by the saccharine, technicolor world that Adegast presents to her. It is an easy one. Everything plays out in a perfectly predictable and safe manner. She is misunderstood because she is the Chosen One, and now she can be surrounded by friends who cherish her as she goes on to complete her quest.

Only, they aren’t true friends. There is no depth to anything that happens. She has no real relationship with them, they only speak predictable lines. Contrary to her core wish, they can’t actually understand her, because they aren’t real people, merely…puppets.

Literally, as when Adegast reveals himself, he commandeers all the “friends” she had made, their faces melting into grotesque puppetry.

Mocked and isolated so many times before, of course Luz doesn’t want to be subjected to more pain. The real world holds grief and uncertainty. But it is also the only way Luz can have true and meaningful bonds.

She has to allow that vulnerability, that uncertainty. She has to embrace a strange landscape, one quite often grotesque and horrifying, to reach the messy, deep bonds that come with it.

And she has. Despite being beaten down, Luz has found friends and family who understand her, and made a place for herself in the Boiling Isles. She has now realized her core wish of being understood, and with that self awareness, she is more powerful than ever.

She doesn’t need a perfectly saccharine universe to find happiness. She can embrace the real one, including all the grief that comes with it.

This is the same lesson that the Collector must learn. The Collector lives in a world of puppets too, one of his own making. Every day, he plays out that saccharine fantasy, scripted and stiff. King told him about Luz’s adventures, and the Collector was enamored.

But he doesn’t know how to have such a genuine experience or bond, so he flattened the experiences, simplified and purified them into the “messed up version” of Luz’s life now going on.

It is a sign of Luz’s maturity that she recognized how messed up it was. She no longer wants a world that’s cute and feel-good on the surface, but on the inside is empty and cold.

And that is what The Collector’s life is, right now. It’s hollow. King is the only real thing there, and he forces King to play out the scripted performance as well.

The Collector may think he is happy, but he isn’t. He can’t find real happiness with such a life. He is lost, lonely, and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know how to have a genuine bond, and so he desperately tries to make it work with his puppet show.

At the end of Witches Before Wizards, Luz rejects her puppet fantasy. I am sure the Collector will as well. Likely, with Luz’s help, as she gets through to him and uses her own experience with loneliness and isolation, that wish for a perfect world that understands you, to show him a path toward true meaning and connection.

#the owl house #toh #luz noceda #the owl house luz #the collector #enzo gabriel #julietteanalyzes