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rnelodyy · 1 year

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The Owl House And Restorative Justice

At the end of Season 1 of The Owl House, it is revealed that Lilith, the main overarching antagonist of that season, was the one to curse her sister Eda, one of the protagonists, to win a tournament when they were teenagers. This information causes Eda to fly into a screaming rage and attack Lilith, and understandably so.

Eda’s curse is essentially a chronic illness, one that, in Eda’s own words, has ruined her life, being the reason she’s considered a social outcast and why, before meeting King and Luz, she hadn’t gotten close to anyone in years. In season 2, it’s revealed that the curse is why she pushed away her partner Raine to the point that they broke it off with her, and that during a particularly bad flareup, she accidentally maimed her own father, leaving him half blind and with permanent nerve damage to his hands, making him unable to continue working as a Palisman carver. The curse has ruled Eda’s life for decades now, so to Eda, this is the ultimate betrayal.

In the first episode of Season 2, Lilith has defected from the Emperor’s Coven, split the curse between Eda and herself to mitigate the symptoms for her sister, and has moved in with Eda at the Owl House. While Lilith herself still feels guilty and feels she has to make it up to Eda, everyone else, Eda included, has seemingly either forgiven her or chosen to look past it. Eda even makes fun of her for feeling bad about cursing her, and Lilith’s guilt is seemingly absent for the rest of the series.

The response to this was… Less than stellar, shall we say. A lot of people were angry, saying Lilith got away with her crimes without even a slap on the wrist, and that Eda’s forgiveness of her was far too sudden.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of critique. Amity spent years bullying Willow after her parents forced her to break off their friendship, and when she began trying to mend that relationship, the response from fans was that Willow should have been a lot more angry at Amity, and that they went back to being besties far too soon. I’ve even seen this criticism leveled at Hunter for the things he did while working for Belos, at Vee for impersonating Luz for months to trick her mother, and at Luz for hiding the fact that she helped Philip find the Collector from her friends. And it does seem strange for the show to keep tripping on this same point again and again.

Except, it’s not really. Because I think that, when viewing this show from a different angle, those supposed flaws are actually symptoms of something very important to understand – The Owl House operates on a system of crime and punishment that is very different from our world’s.

More specifically, our world mostly utilizes retributive justice. The world of The Owl House utilizes restorative justice.

So first, what do those terms mean? Broadly, they’re two different forms of handling interpersonal disputes, or dealing with crime.

Retributive justice is the one our current justice system uses, where the focus is primarily on punishing the perpetrator. Retributive justice can mean detention, suspension, expulsion, jail time, monetary fines, some kinds of community service, exile, or in more severe cases, corporal punishment or the death penalty. It’s the lens most people view the world through, where if someone hurts you, hurting them back is the correct response.

Restorative justice is a very different approach, where you instead focus on helping the victim recover from what happened, and rehabilitating the perpetrator to prevent this from happening again. Restorative justice can look like verbal or written apologies, monetary compensation for costs and trauma, therapy for both victim and perpetrator, education for the perpetrator, mediation between victim and perpetrator, a restraining order, etc.

When viewed through a retributive lens, The Owl House lets its characters get away with a lot of shit. Lilith cursing Eda, Hunter rounding up Palismen knowing they’ll be killed, Amity tormenting Willow for years, it’s all stuff that, in a retributive environment, they should be punished for, and they’re just not. Eda is only genuinely angry at Lilith for two scenes, Amity and Willow fix their relationship very quickly once Amity starts making amends, and Hunter isn’t punished at all.

However, I believe the story of The Owl House is best viewed not through a retributive lens, but through a restorative lens.

Let’s look at the Lilith-example again. Lilith’s offense was cursing Eda, which she did because she wanted to win a spot in the Emperor’s Coven. Knowing Eda was better than her, she cast a curse on her, thinking it would only last for a day. But when the time came, Eda forfeited the match, soon after which she transformed into the Owl Beast and was pelted with rocks until she ran. The curse turned out to be very permanent, and Lilith spent the next 20 years trying to fix her mistake by working for Belos to try to capture Eda, since he promised to heal her curse.

However, when she finally succeeded, Belos went back on his promise. Instead of healing Eda, he ordered her to be publicly executed. When Lilith protested, Belos essentially told her to shut up, that it was the Titan’s will, and left her there.

So, having realized her method of fixing her mistake has gone real bad, Lilith sneaks down to the Conformatorium to free Eda herself, but arrives too late and finds Luz instead. After a brief fight they end up teaming up, and Lilith leads Luz to the elevator, but they are captured by Belos and Lilith is thrown into the cage with Eda. There, she restores Eda’s partially petrified body, and after fleeing with her, Luz and King, uses a spell to split Eda’s curse evenly between their two bodies.

From a restorative justice point of view, Lilith has done pretty much everything she reasonably could do to fix things. She’s denounced the Emperor’s Coven, returned Owlbert to Luz, helped Luz find the elevator to the execution platform, saved Eda from petrification, apologized to Eda, and while there’s no way for her to cure Eda’s curse entirely, she took on half of the curse at great expense to her own health, in order to ease Eda’s symptoms.

Eda isn’t angry anymore because in her eyes, Lilith has already fixed things with her. Punishing her more at this point is pointless. What more could Lilith do, really? What other lessons could she learn? The only thing that punishment would bring at this point would be more suffering.

Let’s look at another example: Amity and Willow.

Amity’s offense was breaking off her friendship with Willow because she was a late-bloomer, bullying her for years, and allowing her friends to do so too. Willow is left with horrible self-esteem issues because of this, and combined with her failing grades, turned her into a horribly shy and withdrawn wallflower (no pun intended). After she’s moved to the plant track she starts actually getting better, but Amity and Boscha especially continue to torment her. While Amity’s bullying of Willow does peter out over time, Willow is clearly still extremely resentful of her. In an attempt to make Willow forget their friendship, Amity accidentally sets most of Willow’s memories on fire, leaving her confused, amnesiac, and unable to grasp basic concepts like that chairs are for sitting in.

Luz pushed Amity into fixing Willow’s brain by going into her mind together and piecing her memories back together. There, the Inner Willow revealed what happened to Luz and the audience.

At this point, Amity shows her that her parents were actually the ones who forced her to end the friendship because they didn’t think Willow was a suitably powerful or influential friend, threatening to make sure Willow would never get accepted into Hexside if Amity didn’t force her to leave. Amity then apologizes to Willow for going along with it, and for the bullying, and vows to make sure her friends never mess with Willow again.

Willow accepts her apology, but also makes it clear that, while it’s a start, she’s not yet ready to accept Amity in her life again. Restorative justice has not been fully attained, because to Willow, Amity hasn’t fixed everything – Boscha and her squad are still bullying her, and still consider Amity one of them. This changes two episodes later, when Amity tells Boscha to grow the fuck up when she starts bullying Willow again, and joins her and Luz’s Grudgby team despite her personal issues to get Boscha to back off. Willow doesn’t make a grand gesture of forgiveness in this episode, but it is after this point where the two become comfortable around eachother again.

Did Willow forgive Amity too quickly for years of trauma? Maybe. If she had chosen to continue keeping Amity at a distance I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her. But in the end, Amity fixed the mess she caused as best she could, and has proven herself to want to be a better person, to want to be Willow’s friend again. She worked hard to prove herself to be a person worth trusting, and Willow decided to give that trust a chance again.

And while they did become friends again, that friendship was clearly still affected by what happened, which led to bumps that the two of them had to work through. Like in Labyrinth Runners, where Amity’s overprotectiveness over Willow makes Willow feel like Amity thinks she’s incompetent, and still only sees her as the helpless person she used to be.

Willow continuing to be mad at Amity and punishing her for what she did wouldn’t be an unreasonable reaction, but it wouldn’t have fixed anything. It would certainly have an impact on Amity, seeing her former best friend rejecting her attempts to make up for what she did, but the hurt on both sides would have continued festering, because deep down, Willow missed Amity too.

In Hunter’s case, there’s the question of whether he can even be held responsible for his actions. The Palisman-kidnapping in specific was explicitly done under duress – if he failed he would face verbal and physical abuse, and be threatened with his nightmare scenario: getting thrown out of the Emperor’s Coven.

And that’s not an empty threat either. Hunter has no magic, and Belos has drilled it into him that witches without magic have no future. Without the Emperor’s Coven, his only future prospects would be starving to death on the streets or wasting away in prison. Either way, Hunter would be alone, without family or friends, without a job or job prospects, without anyone to turn to for help. Any child would be terrified of that. Hunter wasn’t always acting on direct orders – in fact he defied direct orders to stay in his room in Eclipse Lake to go look for Titan’s Blood, and then again in Hollow Mind to arrest the rebels. But he made those choices based on the idea that Belos wouldn’t want him if he was a failure, and that he needed a chance to prove that he could still be useful.

And contrary to popular belief, Hunter does know right from wrong. He has a very strong moral compass, he’s just been forced to ignore it in favor of doing whatever the Emperor wants. To shut up that little voice telling him he’s doing the wrong thing, he uses what’s called a thought-terminating cliche, a statement that feels so fundamentally true that the argument need not continue. In Hunter’s case, that statement is “It’s for the greater good.” Sure, kidnapping his new friends and abducting Palismen to feed to the Emperor and threatening someone who’s been nothing but kind to him to take the portal key from her girlfriend and justifying terrorism makes his stomach feel like he swallowed a cactus and saying it out loud makes him sound like a horrible person – but it’s for the greater good. He’s doing it to serve Belos, and Belos knows what’s best.

So by the time Hunter is out of active danger and able to rest and recover from what happened to him… what would further punishment accomplish? He already knows that he did fucked up shit while working for the EC, and he’s proven time and time again that while he’s not fighting for Belos’s approval, he’s actually a genuinely kind-hearted kid. Punishing him now would likely cause him to react very poorly, because he’s been at the wrong end of that stick so often that he’s developed severe PTSD because of it.

And if you think restorative justice is still in order – Hunter is currently hyperfixated on making sure Belos can never hurt anyone again, and for the long term, he has expressed that he wants to become a Palisman carver when he grows up. While it won’t bring back the Palismen that were killed, it will help the current Palisman population recover and reintroduce Palismen to witches who may have had to give up theirs.

When viewed through this lens, the writing of The Owl House starts to make more sense. As a show, it is extremely forgiving towards its characters – they’re still held accountable for their actions, but as long as they’re willing to grow and learn and fix the damage they caused, they are very quickly forgiven.

However, I do understand why these writing choices can be… controversial, so to say. Because it doesn’t feel very satisfying, does it? When someone hurts you on purpose, your first impulse would be to try to hurt them back, that’s just how people work.

That’s the hardest thing to come to terms with when you become an advocate for prison abolition for example – you’re not just arguing for freeing a guy who got 5 years because a cop found weed in his pockets, you’re arguing for the release, and most importantly, the humanity of some of the most vile, disgusting people this planet has ever produced. Even now, when someone commits a truly awful crime and gets sent to prison for life, my first thought is “Good, I hope they rot in there.” But that’s not justice. That’s just revenge. And revenge is not something we as a society should want to build our justice system on.

It’s not satisfying to see Lilith go from using Luz as a human shield in her fight against Eda to sleeping on the couch in Eda’s house within 2 episodes. It’s not satisfying to see Willow let Amity back into her life when Amity has hurt her so badly before, or to see Hunter become romantically involved with Willow after he literally abducted her the first time they met. But that satisfaction isn’t really the point. Revenge is satisfying in the moment, but an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and if someone shows a genuine willingness to change, it’s often better to give them a chance to.

However, my final point is about what happens when this approach fails. Because not everyone is willing to change. Some people, when faced with the consequences of their actions, decide to dig their heels in and refuse to admit fault, or blame the victim(s), or use those same thought-terminating cliches that Hunter used to justify their actions, “I was just following orders” being a big one.

And thus, we come to Belos.

If Belos showed a willingness to change, a genuine one, not an attempt at manipulation, should he be given the chance to? That vengeful part of me is VERY empathetically saying no. But logically, reasonably, he should be given that chance, if only because he’s a human being and no human being deserves to be mistreated. That doesn’t mean his victims are obligated to forgive him or be around him again, in fact I think that, for the sake of Hunter’s mental health, Belos should stay as far away from him as humanly possible. But he should be given the chance to start over, to truly better himself and do something good with the rest of his life.

But Belos isn’t willing to change.

Belos is a product of a bad environment and grew up with a cult-like mentality and hatred for witches that he had to adopt for his own safety. It’s hard to break out of that mentality, but not impossible. Case in point: Caleb. The tragedy of Belos’s character to me is that he had so many chances to change, so many people to help him make that leap, but all of the people who offered him that help ended up dead by his hands because he couldn’t handle the idea that he may have been wrong.

At this point, Belos is stuck. Changing would mean not only giving up on his life’s work, but acknowledging to himself that everything he’s done, mutilating his body, killing his brother, slaughtering thousands and installing himself as God-Emperor of a population he despises more than anything in order to facilitate a genocide, was completely pointless.

He can’t admit that to himself. Especially the thing about Caleb’s death. He’s sunk-cost-fallacied himself so far into a corner that all he can really do when faced with opposing viewpoints is dig his heels in even deeper and lash out in a rage at anyone who challenges him. Even now, when his body is literally falling apart at the seams, he’s still trying to commit witch-genocide, because it’s all he has.

Restorative justice doesn’t work in this case, because the perpetrator needs to be receptive to it. Logically you would assume the show would default to retributive justice, and characters like Willow and Camila do take a very vengeful glee in imagining themselves beating the snot out of Belos. But right now, the primary motivation of the Hexsquad and Hunter in particular when it comes to Belos is to end the threat he poses. As long as Belos is alive and free, he will continue to hurt and kill people, and if he can’t be talked down, he needs to be either contained or killed to prevent him from causing more harm.

The Owl House provides, in my opinion, a very nuanced take on restorative justice. It shows how it works in action, how different situations impact what it looks like, and what happens when it’s simply not an option. It’s not the most satisfying story to tell your audience, because when someone hurts our babies we want them to suffer, no matter how sorry they say they are. But in this case, I think that sacrificing that bit of audience comfort is worth it to tell the story like this.

#the owl house #the owl house meta #toh meta #toh lilith #toh amity #toh hunter #toh belos

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anistarrose · 7 months

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[ID identical to alt text: two screenshots from The Owl House finale. The first is the Titan telling Luz: "I am both king and queen, best of both things!"

The second screenshot is Luz reacting with a warm, slightly awestruck smile. End description.]

it could just be part of her generally awed demeanor in this scene (because, like, who wouldn't be awed about meeting the Titan?), but I'm really soft over the look in Luz's eyes when her little brother's dad eschews gender norms.

because this Luz, who's bi, who doesn't want to choose between literal worlds, and who doesn't want to choose between feminine and masculine gender presentation. who's textually gender non-conforming, and incredibly easy to interpret as genderqueer, multigender, nonbinary, or any combination of those and more.

[ID identical to alt: a screenshot of Luz in a t-shirt with purple and white stripes, along with green sweatpants. It evokes the genderqueer flag, which is displayed next to her. End description.]

in the narrative, queerness is taken so in stride that Luz never even seems surprised by how normalized it is in the Boiling Isles — and from the start, she isn't afraid to show her own bisexuality either, which I think speaks volumes to how Camila must've raised her in a very accepting environment. but still, there's something to be said about how special it must be for Luz to meet the Titan —

who is King's dad, who is the source of all her magic, who the literal ground she's been walking upon —

and for Luz to realize: "oh, him? the closest thing to a deity of this world? she's actually a lot like me."

#the owl house #luz noceda #papa titan #the owl house meta #toh meta #folks i rewatched the finale the other day and i am NOT normal about it #the entirety of luz and the titan's relationship just makes me want to lie on the floor bawling (/positive)

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fan-of-chaos · 1 year

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Forgiveness and kindness in the finale of Owl House

One of the things I loved about the finale was showing that forgiveness and kindness are good things, that they can change people for better and that keeping an open hand for somebody to grab on is a beautiful and sometimes very healing thing. That it can change so much to just keep an open heart and try giving people another chance. Try forgiving them.

Like Luz and Eda and King did with Collector. They choose to be kind to them, to reach out and to try showing them a better way even when they didn’t need to. When they had every reason to be mad at him. And it changed everything for the Collector, who was hurt so much by everybody in their life, who didn’t understand the reality of his actions. It made all the difference in the world for him that somebody was willing to listen. To try forgiving and offering kindness even thought they did so much damage to everyone.

But.

They also showed the reality of it. That sometimes it just doesn’t work. Sometimes the person that we turn our kindness and our forgiveness towards isn’t willing to accept it and isn’t willing to work to better themselves. Isn’t willing to look at themselves and realize that what they’re doing is wrong. That they made a mistake. That they hurt others. They aren’t willing to work towards the better future.

Just like Belos.

Belos who refused to change. Belos, who looked at the kid he used and discarded, who was now offering him a hand in forgiveness, offering him kindness he was just taught to give and decided to not give a fuck about it. Who decided to take that kindness and destroy it. Belos, who to the bitter end was unwilling to look at himself and see what sort of person, what sort of monster he became. Belos, who refused the hand reaching out to him again and again.

And thats the beautiful and painful reality of forgiveness and kindness. It doesn’t work every time. Sometimes it backfires, like it did when Collector offered it to Belos. Sometimes it gets you or people you care about hurt. Like it did with Luz. And for it to work the person on the receiving end has to be willing to accept it. To work towards the betterment, towards being a better person, towards not making the same mistakes.

Sometimes when you give a chance to people, they will disappoint you. They will take your kindness and throw it back at your face. But does this mean we shouldn’t offer second chances to people? Does it mean that we shouldn’t forgive or be kind?

No.

Because there is always a chance that it can save people, just like it did with Collector, just like it did with so many characters in the series like Amity, Lilith or even Hunter. Because there is just as many people who will take the hand you offered and it will mean the world to them. It will change everything for them.

And I think thats beautiful.

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redwiccanrobin · 9 months

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Sometimes I stop and think about how lonely Amity must have been in that first season. Sure, she had friends. Sure, she was popular. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t lonely.

She was surrounded by people she didn’t care for all that much. They didn’t seem to care much about her either outside of her title of being a Blight. Whenever we see her with them, she always sort of looks as if she’s not entirely engaged with them. Not really paying that much attention to what they’re saying. It makes sense as she was more so friends with them to appease her mother. She cut off the one friend she had to satisfy her parents. She did so as she always sought and craved their approval.

Then this girl came along. This girl who was kind, bubbly, funny. This girl who wanted to be Amity’s friend even with how rough their introduction was. This girl who tried everything in her power to be Amity’s friend. Amity let her in and eventually fell in love.

Her childhood friend she was forced to let go of was back in her life. They grew closer, able to work through their past. She had her best friend back. And with her, a group of even more friends that came to mean the world to her. All because of a kind, bubbly, and funny girl who was determined to give her a chance.

#the owl house #the owl house meta #amity blight #lumity #this is very messy #i’m sorry

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a-hobit · 2 years

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GUYS HUNTER CANT SWIM

I bet that none of the people from The Boiling Iles can swim!!! The place where most people would learn how to swim — a large body of naturally occurring water IS FUCKING BOILING?!

Also I bet fucking Belos can’t swim either because of the whole “if you float/can swim you’re a witch but if you can’t you’re not” thing that the puritans had going on!!!!

No wonder Hunter threw the Titans blood in the shallow lake and then immediately started drowning!!!

#BRO??!?#toh #hunters a fucking GENIUS #Toh Hunter #the owl house #the owl house meta #toh spoilers #the owl house spoilers

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ashanimus · 1 year

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On Hunter's Fighting Style and Eclipse Lake

So: Hunter and fighting. Thank you @carpisuns for enabling me.

What he does is he sets up a guard position, and immediately tries to move to an enemy’s blind spot. He would have learned that to compensate around a casting opponent before he had magic--his only hope without a magical staff would be “defend defend defend” and get close enough to break their guard. The goal is a decisive blow to the head or neck to end combat. The priority is staying up because if he’s pinned or disarmed, he’s screwed.

The ability to teleport means that he starts in a strong defensive position and basically gets a sneak attack, rinse/repeat/adapt. Generally speaking he has to end fights as fast as possible, and given that he trained without magic his whole strategy is built around DEFEND first, decisive strike, DEFLECT magical force (a stick can't hope to counter it without magic). We also see a little bit of this implied training with his parkour abilities. Without the ability to fly, or the ability to summon plants to carry him to his destination, he would've had to learn all of this physically. Let's dig into some of the details of how this separates Hunter from most of his opponents. Let's talk about FIGHTING!

Most witches take their magic purely for granted. Because of this, it is likely uncommon for people to turn their own bodies into extremely efficient machines like how martial artists or athletes are required to. In their own way, these skills are generally probably pretty impressive to the average witch outside of combat — and within it they're surprising at least for the first few seconds. And in combat, seconds are really what matter. Most actual fights are over in less than 10. And one of the things that separates a trained fighter from a casual brawler or the average person defending themselves is the conditioning it takes to actually respond in time.

Most people don't respond to fight stimuli by fighting. Most people go into freeze or flight. When it comes to serious fight training, one of the first things that happens is called conditioning. For sports that means getting the body into a particular kind of well, condition — but for combat the conditioning is also mental. If you've seen stereotypes of things like Army boot camp where the drill sergeant is yelling at people and slinging abuse constantly, that's actually part of it. I am reliably told they try not to do this as much anymore. But if you're doing something like Krav Maga which is more or less brutal streetfighting but formalized in a dojo environment that is absolutely part of the training (or at least, it was part of mine!).

Specifically, when you're learning the throw punch or doing a series of them, what they will have us do is scream and swear at our opponents (and they will sometimes scream and swear at us during spars or drills) in order to condition our minds as well as our bodies for the ugliness of an actual violent confrontation. Yelling, intimidation, insults, swears those are all part of the human "puff up and look big" thing. The other thing about conditioning in this way is the instructor teaching someone how to be hit and actually hit back. As I said before, most people tend to sink into freeze or flight. The average person who has not been trained needs to be hit an average of six times before they're able to summon up the nerve to strike back. By then, the confrontation is almost always over.

The reason I outline all of this is because it highlights the conditioning gulf between Hunter and the others, as well as trying to explain how he’d be approaching most enemies and WHY. Speed and dexterity is obviously critical, but the approach matters immensely as well.

This is especially true when you have a combatant like Hunter who is starting from a punishing disadvantage against the vast majority of his casting opponents. Without magic, the only weapon he has is his body. When you train on a weapon, that weapon becomes an extension of your body. As such, a critical part of this kind of training is gaining an awareness of the body in order to hone in mind-to-muscle control. Martial artists, dancers, etc have a scary amount of precise control in this way, not that much different than an excellent musician who understands their hands and the intimate ins and outs of their instrument. Developing awareness, control and practice is what creates reliable muscle memory. This more than anything is Hunter’s (and any martial artists tbh) superpower.

Witch's magic is shown to be driven by emotions, thoughts and feelings.

This gives them the benefit of reflexes helping them out in the face of sudden danger, but nobody is invulnerable to the sudden appearance of somebody inside their personal bubble hitting them in the temple with a really big stick. If Hunter is on target and playing for keeps the confrontations is over, witches duel: won. Even without magic.

Once Hunter has access to magic, his muscle memory is the same, with added oomph and a battle style combat-ready witches would be baffled by. Brawlers would be exceedingly rare on the BI except for niche sports and probably those highly unusual witches and demons who practice a form of magical martial arts. One or more of these unusual individuals would have helped train him (someone had to and Belos seems like he’d move like a broken ikea chair on his best day when he’s not a bone-rotted goop monster). Likely more. Hunter was obviously not allowed to get close to any teachers (I would expect that they were under strict orders to stay distant or otherwise motivated).

So most of this is context to kind of the depth I saw and how Hunter's fighting movements are animated, but now let me go into how his actual personality and emotional conflicts affect his ability to fight.

Over the course of the show, we can see a pretty direct correlation of his emotional state and priorities to his efficacy and fight. Basically, when his goal is directly aligned with how he feels about it, he’s very good. But when those things have conflict, his effectiveness goes down. When we first meet him as the GG, he is very intimidating and using heavy amounts of magic from the staff Belos gave him. He rolls easily through his first encounter with Luz, etc etc. And even though neither Eda or Luz are capable of putting up too much of a fight, he's goofing around for the entirety of that encounter, you can hear the smile even while he's dodging — and it's one of easy confidence. He can trust his body to do most of that pretty much automatically which frees him up to pontificate.

Against Kikimora he was effective because despite the fact he was self-sabotaging his mission, it was within his moral alignment. He was defending himself, but Luz had moved him, and he protected her. Protecting, generally speaking, his Hunter’s preference and his entire fighting style is based mostly on defensive forms. And being by nature a gentle person, defense feels better — especially when he knew Luz was doing the right thing in protecting the Palismen. It was one of the instances that we see where his intelligence was able to overcome his brainwashing long enough to act on it, and the Avenue was Luz's respect and kindness. That being said, fighting Kikimora was more of a struggle or at the very least a more even contest. Even debilitated by the sleeping nettles, Kikimora was not a pushover and he did end up letting his guard down pretty significantly and that she did get the first hit on him, distracted as he was by his emotional moment with Luz. The giving of the name was an explicit show of vulnerability that was immediately exploited by an opponent who if she had aimed slightly to the left would've caved his skull in.

Now, Eclipse Lake is a little more interesting. There were a ton of factors that led to him fighting to a standstill with Amity. I wouldn't really call it a loss either, but I'll get into that in just a second.

Hunter is at this point fueled by anxiety. He started the entire endeavor by deliberately disobeying a direct order from the mouth of the Emperor to try and make up for a recent failure that Belos has let Hunter believe is affecting his favor. Already that's an unbelievably emotional place with incredibly high stakes. At this point, we're well aware of the fact that Belos treats Hunter brutally. The best case scenario for returning empty-handed after disobeying a direct order is a beating that would probably leave him with more scars than he started, but what Hunter actually fears is being replaced. While at this stage he doesn't regard his life as something that necessarily belongs to him, but the successful outcome of this might as well be life-and-death.

Deliberately disobeying the Emperor does actually have a material impact on how Hunter arrives at the Knee. Because this is a stealth mission, he wasn’t able to bring his mechanical staff--the thing that would give him away to Kikimora. Flapjack had not fully become his palisman yet. Which means that Hunter hiked up that mountain after Kikimora and her party, navigating waist deep snow knowing that if he was caught she would kill him. He also knows that she is currently surrounded by her partisans, and it is super unlikely that any of them would stick up for him in a way that would put them at odds with her. With no support, no ability to take a break and probably no rations he was probably pretty hungry, tired and dehydrated by the time Eda and Amity had made it up there. And they had the benefit of being able to fly. That's one thing I don't see people talking about enough when it comes to considering the relative strength of Amity and Hunter. The little rag-eared bastard had already had a very very long and physically arduous and miserable day, maybe even more than one!.

He also bit off more than he could reasonably chew with those disadvantages in mind. He only has to make one mistake and he’s toast. He didn’t account for Flapjack dragging him to Eda and Amity’s feet. As far as he knew, they could have really hurt him, or left him--having no guarantee or even expectation of Flapjack’s assistance. But none of this changes the fact that Hunter spends the next couple of hours tied up. Amity wasn't gentle (why would she be?). We see him rubbing his wrists and stretching his shoulders out once he is free.

Cartoons often don't make anything of this gesture, but the truth of it is this: if you been bound for any length of time, especially in the position that Hunter was, what it does is it yanks on your shoulders, your chest, it hurts the hell out of your elbows and you lose feeling in your hands. The minute you’re released, all the blood goes back into those areas and it hurts like hell. IT REALLY HURTS. And you're stiff.

Which finally brings us back to the actual confrontation between Amity and Hunter. Hunter has experienced incredible emotional highs and lows over the course of this journey. There were probably at least three or four times where he was almost killed. He is tired as hell, frozen stiff, probably in pain, almost certainly hasn't eaten or had anything to drink for a very inappropriate amount of time and he has no weapon. He's also on the brink of despair and crackup. And his mission? At this point, he’s staring down the barrel of guaranteed failure. When Amity is talking to him and trying to comfort him, he is so up a creek that for a moment he actually is hearing what she has to say. Given the depth of his devotion to Belos at this point that is saying a lot about how he feels about his prospects at the moment.

So when he sees the key, he attacks her out of desperation. Pure emotion. He has to at least try. There is no scenario where an unarmed combatant can wrestle the armed abomination prodigy with auxiliary support. Then Flapjack joins the fight, and that changes everything. You can see it in how his expression changes once he takes what's offered: magical aid. Suddenly he has a fighting chance. A fighting chance.

However, he is now using a weapon he's never used before — and I think that has a huge impact on how that fight went. Palismen are shown to respond to their wielder's thoughts. Later, in ASIAS, we can even see Flapjack responding to Hunter's mind when he's doing all the staff tricks to impress the students. This leads me to believe that wielding a Palisman staff is less like swinging an inert stick and more like moving a limb. And when your entire fighting style depends on knowing exactly where your own center of mass is at absolutely all times, that would change Hunter's balance, and throw his timing and physicality off.

All things considered, given the unbelievable disadvantage that Hunter started with, I kind of wish the fandom gave him more credit. With his emotions in absolute tatters in addition to being a physical disaster and using a new weapon, he is absolutely at his worst here! Amity is fighting from a position of knowing she has backup coming in addition to the backup she already has in King. Even then, she's fighting to get away from him. And Hunter, in addition to using a new tool and all of the aforementioned problems is going full out on the attack-- which is very contrary to how he prefers to fight. When you go this feral into a combat, the emotional place itself is a disadvantage.

And even after all that? Amity didn't beat him. They fought to a standstill.

She has a blade to his throat, he had Flapjack on her hand. With Flapjack in his possession, if for any reason she tried to open his throat he would still have the option of flash stepping away. She might have cut his neck enough to bleed, but not enough to kill him instantly. In holding the way she did, she missed her chance at a fatal opening (and she's never killed anyone before. Interpretation is out for Hunter, I generally don't headcannon him as ever having killed directly with his own hands although I do think he's done some real damage).

He says to her, "Listen. You're strong, and I'm tired. If this continues, you'll probably escape. But here's the thing: we know where to find you--and your human."

The first part of that statement has way less to do with Amity's training or skill as an equal to Hunter's (she clearly has a little, but if you're as good as Hunter is at his age, you would've started at around three years old and that probably was not the case for Amity), and more a statement of the fact that Hunter is actually physically exhausted and there is the slight possibility that Amity might be able to outlast him in terms of endurance. But what I think is a lot more pertinent is the reality that Hunter has an incredibly small window of time to achieve victory before Eda the HARPY OWL LADY comes flying through that tunnel to beat his already exhausted ass.

He also says: "If this CONTINUES". And he even says probably. He's incredibly fucking tough at least in terms of what he's capable of enduring before he falls down and can't get up.

If Eda did come through to help Amity, the best case scenario for Hunter at that point is they leave him senseless or in too rough of a shape to escape from Kikimora. Kikimora openly despises him, is extremely petty/cruel, and is surrounded by her own partisans (who have demonstrable willingness to murder teenagers!). She screeched about how excited she was about exacting revenge (and unbeknownst to Hunter she absolutely knows how disposable he is in the grand scheme of things!).

She’s a lot more interested in Hunter’s blood than Titan’s blood at the moment. Hunter would die BADLY and slowly at her little claws if she got him.

So he tries a last-ditch measure by leveling a threat Amity that he couldn’t hope to carry out even if he wanted to. It's ironic that the only reason that they were both able to achieve a partial victory here is because Hunter was able to effectively empathize with her enough to see his own vulnerability in her and squeeze it.

To all that stuff about how his emotions affect his ability to battle, if we look at what happened on the day of unity, at that stage he was still unable to confront his abuser and would-be murderer. He did not strike Belos once, and spent the whole time playing defense on behalf of his friends, taking up a defensive position and otherwise moving them out of harm's way. He's in the process of actively dying and his right (dominant) arm is paralyzed, so his form is pretty crap but this speaks to his iron will to stay breathing for as long as he can. And he's lasted a lot longer than the most affected adults. The lack of a bile sac probably comes into it a bit...but it's not the only factor here.

So yeah! I hope that this provides a little bit more nuance to the conversation! And again, thank you to the animators and storyboarders for taking such time and care for portraying Hunter’s fighting with respect to his personality and arc.

For anyone interested in my meta and analysis, please check out the "ash's owl house meta" tag on this blog and/or follow @idlescree for my video essays! We have more in the works coming soon :)

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@skyelights-xox @rainbowangel110 @bookworm010307

#the owl house #toh #toh hunter #hunter noceda #amity blight #the owl house meta #the owl house analysis #ash's owl house meta #idlescree

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yestheantichrist · 2 years

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Now, we all know about the Wittebane brothers statue in Gravesfield

But rewatching the episode a couple days ago, I found out something:

PHILIP IS SHORT

#either the person who made the statue was like ‘well we gotta make them the same height or it’ll look stupid’#or Philip specifically told the person who made the statue to make him not look short compared to Caleb #toh #toh meta #the owl house #the owl house meta #the owl house memes #toh memes #philip wittebane #the owl house philip #emperor belos #caleb wittebane #hunter toh #hunter wittebane

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batpalisman · 1 year

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thinking about what the light glyph means in luzs story. its her first step towards being a full blown witch. its part of her guilt over helping belos. its part of her bond with eda. its in the opening, in some of the earliest promo images, in the promo art for the series finale. it was in the fireworks she set off in the conformatorium in ep 1 and in the stars at the knee. it means wonder and the gift of the titan. its the first tangible proof that humans can do magic. it helped her find the titans blood in gravesfield, and, again how she helped belos inadvertedly. its her signature spell. its, in a way, her.

#gnawing at the walls yet again folks #the owl house meta #luz noceda #watching and dreaming #toh #the owl house #does this mean anything? whos to say. certaintly not me.

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animerunner · 2 years

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This sign on the way out in Convention is a lot more terrifying after S2

Like it was kinda before but now it’s even more so.

#the owl house #the owl house meta

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idlescree · 9 months

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youtube

“This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

How does the Owl House define evil? What makes Belos so profoundly irredeemable? What is the true source of Good in this story? Today we will be taking a look at how the moral core of the Owl House doesn’t lie with a battle of Good vs Evil, but rather Understanding vs Willful ignorance–best exemplified by our hero Luz Noceda and our villain, Phillip Wittebane/Emperor Belos.

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Music - @ohgeeeznotagain (Thanks again!) Eyes On You" (Instrumental) - The Owl House ORIGINAL SONG [Oh Geeez] • "Eyes On You" (In...

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Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. Thank you all so much for watching, wear sunscreen, and have a wonderful day!

#the owl house #the owl house meta #toh #toh luz #luz nodeda #phillip wittebane #emperor belos #toh belos #toh hunter #hunter the golden guard #hunter owl house #amity blight #toh amity #we are back baby #Youtube

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dragonflyable · 2 years

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Something tells me Dana LOVES foreshadowing in her art....

#dana terrace has my heart in her hands #dana terrace #toh #the owl house #thanks to them #promo art #season 3 #s3 #toh hunter #hunter noceda #hunter wittebane #toh spoilers #the owl house spoilers #toh meta #meta #the owl house meta #my own meta

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hooty-stan · 2 years

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This scene is actually a lot more full-circle than I originally thought

Odalia has done this before. She discouraged Amity's friendship with Willow and forbid her from seeing her again. Losing the one healthy relationship she had at the time was the snowball that led her to becoming a bully

It isolated Amity from any kind of affection for years. What's even worse is that Odalia invalidated any autonomy Amity had and taught her that she did not have the right to choose the people she associates with

Once again, Odalia is deciding who Amity will and will not love, but Amity isn't a child anymore. This moment is not only in defense of Luz. This moment is for her younger self who couldnt stand up to her mother. This moment is for Willow and all the pain Amity caused. Amity needed this catharsis to put those incidents behind her and get out from under her mother's shadow

#the owl house meta #toh meta #amity blight #willow park #lumity #odalia blight #clouds on the horizon #the owl house season 2

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selenestarmoon · 1 year

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The Collector: Another Victim of Belos' Abuse

We know that Belos is a abuser in every sense of the word and that although he has abused all of the Boiling Islands as a whole, his favorite targets are children, he focuses on children because they are much easier to manipulate and isolate.

Belos has abused children before: we saw it with Hunter and the other grimwalkers,

he wanted to do it with Luz

but what many forget is the fact that Collector is a child and was also abused by Belos.

While Belos may not directly physically abuse Collector, there are many ways to groom, manipulate, and abuse a child that do not involve physical contact at all.

In this post, I mentioned how abandonment and isolation had affected Collector and he was desperate for any kind of company and to be free and Phillip took advantage of that, promising to free him if he taught him magic and the draining spell in return. This made Collector easy prey for Belos as even though he finally had company, Collector was still isolated as the only one he could see and interact with was Belos.

Belos controls everything in his life: who he sees, who he talks to, when he can talk, when he can even experience something about the world.

Also, from the way we saw their interactions, Collector genuinely believed that Belos was his friend, he taught Belos powerful magic and draining spell without hesitation because he believed that Belos wanted to be his friend even when he started to doubt him at the end. Collector still considers Belos his friend and decided to trust him and was willing to keep his promise to help him first while Belos only manipulated him and isolated him, he could barely stand it as he was about to hit him when he told him that the human world had changed or that when Collector complains to Belos for not fulfilling his part and he only covers him with a blanket and throws him off the bridge.

Collector's trust towards Belos is bolstered by the fact that he is the only one Collector has interacted with for 400 YEARS since his imprisonment as Belos keeps him hidden and has not interacted with anyone else to the point that no one knows about his existence, Kikimora only knew that Collector existed because she was eavesdropping on Belos and Luz and Hunter only found out about Collector's existence by seeing Belos' memories but if it hadn't been for those facts neither Kikimora nor Luz nor Hunter would know that Collector exists. This is an abuse tactic in which the abuser keeps the victim isolated so that the latter completely depends and trusts only the former, this isolation tactic was also used by Belos with Hunter and the other grimwalkers.

Many comment on how Collector dismisses grimwalkers as objects that Belos creates to destroy them and how Collector sees the hunting of Titans, the lives of others and the destruction as a game making him look cruel but contrary to what everyone believes, Collector is not cruel out of malice but for this:

What Sundowner means by this is that children do cruel things not out of malice but because they simply have no morality in the beginning so they don't know right from wrong until someone teaches them and if no one teaches a kid that what is right and what is wrong, the kid will simply do horrible things because they believe that it is normal or that they are right and if a kid is surrounded by adults who do bad things and/or teach them to do horrible things as a good thing, the kid will simply imitate them because it's all they know. Basically kids do bad things because in their own innocence they don't know they are doing something bad in the first place.

The Collector is a kid and kids mimic the adults around them. We know that the other collectors preserve life by force and kill anyone who opposes them

and Collector isn't interested in doing the same as the other collectors and he just wanted to play and have friends

but he imitated the other collectors way of acting because they were the only adults he had and therefore they were the only thing he knew. After the war between his kind and the Titans, and by extension his imprisonment which was for an incredibly long time, the only adult in the Collector's life has been Belos, who is a person who has done a LOT of horrible things, so even putting aside the fact that they have unbelievable cosmic powers over reality itself, of COURSE he have no concept of the value or life or the suffering of others, of COURSE he sees people as toys, that's what's been modeled for him by the literal los only adults in his life at all for hundreds of years!

Collector is literally a kid with a lot of power in his hands who was surrounded by adults but all of them did horrible things and none of them bothered to show him that what he was doing was wrong because they didn't care about Collector as a person but only about his power and/or get some benefit out of it, this is clearly isolation, exploitation and neglect and all of these are forms of abuse.

This is even seen with King because despite the fact that, unlike the other collectors, titan trappers and Belos, he only wanted Collector to use his powers to save his friends but that doesn't take away from the fact that he used him and that he didn't care about Collector as person and only released him by his power. All these cases make Collector probably believe that it is normal to hurt others, lie and that friendships are utilitarian and friends always betray each other when in fact friendships aren't forged by the use that people have nor are they something that is forced on others but are forged for the love, respect and trust that exists between people. However, unlike the other collectors, titan trappers and Belos, King recognizes that Collector is still a child and that he is afraid of being alone and wishes to talk to him.

Little by little with the help of King and other people and healthy relationships that Collector builds, Collector will learn to distinguish between good and evil and that not everyone wants him for his power, but rather for who he is, Collector will gradually learn what a true friendship and/or healthy relationship is like, and with this Collector will grow as a person, learning to have a moral and emotional maturity by having people who love him for who he is and not for what he can do.

#the owl house #the owl house spoilers #the owl house meta #the owl house analysis #toh #toh spoilers #toh meta #toh analysis #the collector #toh the collector #the owl house collector #philip wittebane #emperor belos

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