Quick psychology lesson! According to Sigmund Freud, the brain can be divided into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The ego is probably the one reading this, since it’s the mediator and seat of consciousness. The id is the one that pushes you to do all the things you want, and it is the home of your repressed desires. The superego is the one that repeats everything everyone else has ever said to you, and urges you to follow society’s guidelines.

Naturally, this is all a load of bullshit, since Freud is really bad at analyzing personalities. However, he did get something right. While the dynamic of id-ego-superego is useless in one person, it’s really useful in creating a fictional group of three.

Here are some examples, to put it into context. Harry, Ron, Hermione: ego, id, superego. Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl: ego, id, superego. Ego is the mediator and decision-maker, who either is the leader or the last word. The id is the emotion, often the impulsive one.

And the superego? Uptight, paranoid, takes the moral high ground…well, that’s Amity.

In the history of superegos, you tend to get two types of characters. Either you get a caricature of rules, someone who always says “no” to the main character’s plan and is obsessed with safety and caution. Or, if your writers have more than half a brain cell, you get someone like Pearl or Amity. Since I’m only a season into Steven Universe and don’t yet know how Pearl’s simping turns out, we’ll focus on Amity.

Mainly, why do well-developed superego archetypes like Amity always end up being the biggest simps?

The answer lies in….・゜゜・ Repression! ・゜゜・．

Look, the whole point of a superego is to embody everyone who doubts you. And if you’re a well-written superego, that really just means that you’re overly self-conscious and have a tendency to internalize what other people say about you.

Amity is a perfect example of that. When Luz cheated in Covention, she was so mad about that. Why? Because Cheating is Bad. Now why would Amity care so much about being seen as honest, and not cheating? Hmm…maybe because she cheated at life? She was born into a rich, distinguished family, and now she’s a rich, distinguished person. So why wouldn’t she be determined to prove to people that she came about her power and intellect naturally, with no unfair advantage from her parents or mentors?

And the whole being afraid of rejection thing? Well, that comes from her parents and Willow. When she was forced to cut Willow off, she learned what it was like to be hated for who she is (that is, a distinguished, untouchable star student). For her entire life after that, everyone she met hated her, because to them, she was cruel enough to cut off her best friend for no reason. To Amity, everyone hated her because she was a powerless coward.

(No wonder she seeks to be part of the Emperor’s Coven and praises Luz for how fearless she is).

For Amity, wanting things hasn’t been great for her. If she follows her id (or, her desires and fears), she ends up losing something or someone she cares about. If she cares for her friends, she loses them to her status. If she cares for her authenticity, she loses it to her reputation. So she has done what anyone in her situation would do to protect themselves: she has closed herself off from wanting things.

That’s where Luz comes in. Before Luz, Amity had strong, impenetrable walls. But even stronger than those was the steadily mounting pressure of holding back all her desires. Amity wants to be loved. She wants to freely be herself. She wants to be able to let her guard down and not overthink her every move and be dorky and authentic and messy and imperfect around someone. She already had all these desires for the other extreme, feelings that she has never felt before.

So when she met Luz, all the human girl had to do was give Amity a space where she was never punished, never judged, always forgiven. Fortunately for us, Luz was so hell-bent on making like Azura and befriending her rival that she gave Amity the space required to grow.

And that’s where the simping started.

Amity spent her whole life at one extreme. With Luz giving her a safe space, she could experiment with the other extreme.

And she did.

She blushed. She worried aloud, letting herself be vulnerable. She was physically clingy to Luz, holding her hand at every opportunity. She danced with Luz. She flung herself at Luz, which is my favorite scene in the entire show. She cried in front of Luz. She was tender and gentle around Luz. She let herself be cringey and regrettable and messy and everything she wanted to be.

In doing so, she became someone who anyone with a brain cell can’t help but to love. She became relatable and forgivable and lovable. 

She also became the biggest simp of all time. But we’re okay with that, because she also became something she hasn’t been in a long time: happy.

Abomination: You’re a…star

Amity: Aw, it’s like mine! Only much smaller and meaningless.

Here’s my analysis of this, because it’s 11:52 at night and my brain STILL won’t let me think of anything but Amity Blight.

Why did Amity’s abomination say that? On the surface, it might look like the setup for her dark punchline. Or, I can go on a rant that justifies her motives and adds hidden depths to her character, because I relate to Amity. 

I’m sure you can guess what’s going to happen below the cut.

Keep reading

After the events of Understanding Willow, one of the main roadblocks to Lumity Canon is how oblivious Luz and Amity are. One might go so far as to say they’re being Useless Bisexuals/lesbians. 

The evidence seems to support that. Amity has let go of her tsundere act and turned into the Biggest Simp of All Time (which I am so glad they included, since it really represents the Repressed WLW Experience). Luz made it her life mission to “befriend the Amity.” They are clearly interested in each other: in spite of that, they think the other person isn’t interested. Why is this?

It’s not uselessness on their part. Luz and Amity have different love languages, and this disconnect causes them to not realize that their crush is reciprocating.

Let’s start with Amity, since she’s the most obvious about her crush. Her love language is physical touch. You see this in so many ways: she holds Luz’s hand for 24.71 seconds, she blushes when hugged, and when she tries to take Eda’s bell from Luz, she looks like she’s about to tackle Luz.

Furthermore, her jealousy stems from the same thing. When Luz returns from Willow’s brain and immediately hugs Willow, Amity looks like a kicked puppy. She sees physical touch as evidence of a crush, and seeing Luz give that to Willow, she assumes that Luz’s hugs mean she likes you platonically. For the record, she’s right. 

Finally, you can see where she gets the idea from. Her parents don’t ever hug her. Her friends don’t touch her. She built a pedestal for herself, making herself socially untouchable. Since no one likes her (up until Luz came along), and no one gets close enough to touch her, Amity equates touch and love in her mind. That’s part of why she gets so annoyed when her siblings force their touch on her: she doesn’t believe they love her (they publicly shame her all the time!), so for them to touch her feels like a lie.

Luz’s love language is very different. Sure, she likes to hug people and touch people, like Amity does, but for the most part that doesn’t mean anything. She uses a lot of typical affection signs in platonic or familial ways: for example, she tells Eda and King that she loves them, she hugs Willow a lot, and she calls Amity “baby.” Of course, there are still some traditional signs, like how she blushes around the Blight twins. But for the most part, she’s that person who dishes out affection at any opportunity.

Her true feelings are shown through grand gestures and acts of service. Her whole life, Luz has wanted to be a hero. She idolized the way that Azura would fight great monsters in order to save people or whatever. In the Boiling Isles, she always gets involved in wacky adventures, racing into battle and chasing after magic that many considered to be impossible for a human to learn. So it only makes sense that she would redirect that towards the person she loves.

And if we use that perspective, it’s clear that Luz likes Amity. As early as the Witches’ Duel, she showed concern for how Amity felt, by running after Amity when she was upset. In Lost in Language, Luz declared her goal to befriend the Amity, and does a great job: she makes bad jokes, she cosplays as Azura, and she lends her precious Azura book. In Adventures in the Elements, Luz learns a second spell for the sole purpose of being in the same class as Amity. She also goes all the way to the market so she can meet Amity outside of her parents’ scrutiny. Then, in Understanding Willow, Luz can take any responsible person into Willow’s brain, but instead she chooses the one person Willow doesn’t want to see, because Luz wants her. 

To a lesser extent, Luz also shows feelings through words of affirmation. After the Witches’ Duel, she goes so far as to tell Amity that she’s not a real witch. She renounces her life’s goal to make Amity feel better. You see a lot of this in Willow’s brain: she never judges her, and she works hard to convince Amity that they will fix this. Therefore she uses her words to lift Amity up. When they’re recounting Amity and Willow’s memory on the beach, Luz listens to Amity talk and calls her words cute. She probably got this response from being an Azura fan, and later from writing fanfiction. It’s a lesser response than her grand gestures because she probably got into writing later than she became enamored with schemes and plots.

Of course, neither person catches in on the other person’s affections. For Luz, she thinks she has finally gotten Amity out of her shell. All that hugging and hand holding and arm holding and chest touching? Since Luz equates touch with platonic affection, all she thinks of that is that Amity is finally a comfortable enough friend that she’s willing to touch Luz. 

For Amity, she thinks that Luz is naturally flirty with everyone, and only likes her as a friend. Since Luz is always doing zany adventures, Amity sees that as Luz just being herself, rather than Luz’s way of showing affection. And Luz always has something nice to say about everyone, so it doesn’t hit Amity that Luz’ kind words mean something different for her.

Fortunately, there is still hope for them. Both girls are smart (being the top student and the first human to learn magic), and Luz is notoriously good at thinking outside the box. Luz is bound to figure it out at some point, unless Amity hoards the brain cells and figures out how to ask Luz if she likes her. 

Episode 15 showed Amity at the most expressive she’s ever been throughout this entire series. Above is a collage of a 11 expressions I’ve seen from her (there’s one accidental repeat but I didn’t save the document and I’m lazy), and in every single one of them, she is sad or scared. I love seeing Amity having an expression other than her Resting Blight Face, but I hate that that expression is a negative one.

A lot of the reason Amity was scared throughout this episode has to do with the fact that this is also the first time Amity messes up badly. I mean, she’s an arsonist now! And if that’s not bad enough, Luz is also going to see all the things she did to Willow, from Willow’s perspective: how she used Willow’s greatest insecurity to get rid of her friendship, 

This begs the question: why does Amity care?

I mean, if I committed arson on someone’s mind, while living in a magical place, I would be a bit panicked. But if it were my parents’ fault that I ruined my friend’s life, I would be apt to blame them, rather than blame myself for it. (I would also tell my friend about the ban). And I would never try to erase myself from someone else’s memory; if they met me, then they’re stuck with all the experiences I’ve given them. 

So why would Amity go so far as to burn herself away?

I mean, this proves a lot of stuff. Sure, Amity is an arsonist, which is really cute. But arson is only cute when it doesn’t hurt someone. Amity’s arson was designed to erase herself completely from someone’s life. This means that there’s a strong part of her that believes that Willow would be better off if she had never met Amity. 

As someone who has gone through mental health issues, this is extremely concerning.

Amity doesn’t believe she is capable of being forgiven. 

Let’s analyze this. First off, there’s the fact that she sees hers and Willow’s memory hanging up and looks terrified. I would say her face drains of color but she’d have to have color to begin with. Regardless of that, she literally sees a memory, hanging up alone in a classroom. No one is even close to it, yet she knows that if anyone sees that, she’s toast.

So then she decides to burn it?! As lovely as that is to mock, there is something deeply disturbing that she is more inclined to try to kill the memory of herself, and risk killing Willow. It’s practically self-h*rm symbolism, with how Amity intends to hurt herself but ends up emotionally scarring a bunch of other people.

Why did she do this? Because she doesn’t know forgiveness. All she knows is that, once Luz figures out, she’s going to be mad. She’s going to hate Amity. And she wasn’t wrong.

But in Amity’s life, that’s it. All she gets is mistake and punishment. Every time she slips up, whether that’s with having a friend like Willow, or the library incident, or bad grades, you bet that she gets punished for it. Otherwise, why would she be so apt to delete herself from Willow? She doesn’t think Willow or Luz will ever forgive her.

Now let’s flash forward a bit. Even in Willow’s brain, Amity still tries to hide stuff. The hopeful part of her sees this as a date. I mean, Amity thrives in places away from her parents (the library, the Knee, Willow’s brain), and that’s where she tends to have romantic breakthroughs with Luz. Not to mention that she is all over Luz–hugging her, blushing at her, grabbing her hand, throwing herself at her. Amity wants this to be quality time with Luz, away from the rest of the world.

Of course, there’s still a big part of her that is seeing what’s happening with Willow and wants to hide it. She does her best to stop Luz from seeing her memories, getting to the point where Luz literally holds Amity back by the face (which is my favorite Lumity moment). She seems perfectly fine with large parts of Willow’s memory being missing. Even when faced with immediate danger, she needs Luz to literally push her into a memory, because she personally would be okay with burning away in Willow’s mind. 

You can see, throughout it, how often she’s scared. The only times she smiles in this episode is when Luz is doing something to cheer her up.  As for the rest of it, she still thinks Luz is going to punish her.

It worsens at the end. When Amity has to face what she did to Willow, she’s terrified. She literally hides behind Luz, which would be extremely romantic if it weren’t for the fact that Amity was scared, and here on this blog we do not like when Amity is scared. 

Furthermore, she lets Willow say her entire monologue before she refutes it. Amity is so used to punishment that it’s instinctual to let Willow reap her full emotional damage on Amity. And only then does she show that her parents made her do it, and she literally didn’t have another option. She was (mostly) innocent in this, and yet she still sat there and took the punishment. As someone who’s sought punishment for something I was innocent for, I can say that this was a force of habit, combined with some intense gaslighting on her part. 

Then isn’t it so poetic that Luz comforts Amity? I mean, look at this! 

Luz literally says “I’m not here to judge.” Has anyone ever said that to Amity before? As a part of the popular clique, you bet that Amity is subject to constant judgment. When she gets home, she gets even more judgment. Even Edric and Emira are always looking for ways to embarrass her. Amity is constantly shamed and ridiculed and punished for her mistakes. For Luz to offer no judgment, no hard feelings, nothing but kindness and acceptance? It’s enough to make Amity’s walls come crashing down.

Of course, her walls can’t crash down for too long. Sure, Amity gets to keep her tiny hand wrapped around Luz’s when they first pop out of Willow’s brain. But it doesn’t last long. And then Willow wakes up, and Luz goes crazy. Calling her “my girl,” hugging her so hard that Willow will never forget her again.

Meanwhile, look at Amity’s face! She’s devastated! This is the moment when she realizes: it doesn’t matter. Sure, Luz can say nice things. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Luz doesn’t like her. She could hug Willow like she hugged Amity, with even more vigor than she gave to Amity. That’s because Amity will never be perfect, never be kind, never be enough for Luz.

Or so she thinks, until she waves, and Luz waves at her slyly. And then Willow offers forgiveness, meaning that those two can interact at school. Once again, Luz proves Amity wrong, that she can be forgiven, and she really has nothing to be sorry for, because she’s allowed to make mistakes.

At this point I’m pretty sure the majority of the fandom knows about my love languages post (and if you don’t, then you’ve heard of bloodraven55′s update). For those of you who don’t feel like reading that entire essay, here’s the gist of it: Luz shows love through acts of service while Amity shows love through touch. They are therefore oblivious to each other’s feelings because they don’t realize that that’s how the other person shows love. 

So the only way for Luz to overcome her oblivion, and for both to realize the other reciprocates, is for each one to understand the other’s love language. 

Fortunately for us, they did! This episode of The Owl House had Luz and Amity taking massive strides in understanding each other and showing affection in ways that the other will understand.

We’ll start with Luz, because she did quite a bit. In the past, she has used touch as a way of showing friendly affection towards everyone she meets. For example, she hugs Willow, like, every time she sees her. (It got to the point where many of you made like Amity and assumed there was some romance building up between the two). And she’s always clinging onto Eda or letting King climb all over her. 

But in this episode, something changed. Luz was a little more purposeful with her affections. Sure, she hugged Willow. But she didn’t really touch anyone else in this episode, even Eda or King. When she touched Amity, however, it was purposeful. Giving her the confidence symbol/hair clip and touching her hands gently while doing so. Carrying her when she was hurt, even though she has weak nerd arms, because after Amity’s fear-filled life, Luz is determined to be her fearless champion.

Speaking of the weak nerd arms…did you notice that Luz’s arms were weak until after Understanding Willow? I mean, when you think about it, her shows of arm strength are always around Amity. Dancing with her at Grom, carrying her to the infirmary…. And this all happened after she spent time in Willow’s brain, learning about how touchy Amity is. The moment she realized Amity likes being held, she suddenly became stronger. This means that either she collapses in exhaustion when she gets home after spending time with Amity, or she exercises every day so she’ll be strong enough to carry Amity.

And the thing is…this stuff worked. In previous episodes, Amity was a gay disaster. But this episode took it to entirely new heights. She’s at the stage that I would’ve labelled as a “bad crush” and then undertaken some serious gaslighting, conditioning, and avoidance strategies to stop from hurting that person (oh look internalized homophobia). She’s panicking at everything Luz says. She’s blushing so much that Luz probably thinks she has a skin condition. Her gay thoughts are so strong that she’s saying them, rather than keeping them to herself. Luz is doing the things that make Amity fall faster, and Amity is falling faster. (Literally).

And now: Amity. Amity’s journey is even cooler because in this episode, there is concrete proof that she actually realized Luz’s love language.

But before that? Amity was still doing what makes Luz happy. Luz likes grand gestures/acts of service, and Amity sure delivered. 

The episode literally started with her roasting Boscha. Which is huge. Ever since she was a child, Amity has been forced to keep Boscha as a friend, even though she hates her. So now, for to just stand up to her, asking when she will grow up, and effectively ending their friendship? That’s amazing. It takes courage, and it’s exactly the thing that will make Luz fall.

But then, she and Luz had that conversation on the bleachers. The one where Luz literally said, “Winning this game is the only way I know how to help.” Luz genuinely doesn’t understand that people can be comforted in ways that don’t include elaborate schemes. And now that Luz has spelled it out for her, Amity finally gets that.

So that’s when we see a change in the way Amity shows affection. Immediately after hearing Luz say that, and then watching Luz agree to…well, to pretty much die for Willow, Amity immediately gets Willow and Gus for help. She throws away her social life and risks catching even more feelings for Luz, by agreeing to play the game with her. 

At this point, you can tell she doesn’t expect reciprocation. She’s not losing her status, risking incurring her parents’ wrath, and risking Luz rejecting her and hating her forever, just so Luz will like her. She’s doing it because she knows Luz will be happy if she does that. That’s what makes it such a grand gesture: she’s willing to throw away everything that makes her happy, just so that Luz can be happy.

And then, she doesn’t lose all that. What she does lose: the integrity of her leg. Guys, Amity literally got her leg broken for Luz. At a tiny after-school fight. She’s in a cast. She had to suffer through Hooty picking her up and moving her. Even though things didn’t go as badly as they could go, she still sacrificed a lot so Luz could be happy.

Luz and Amity are learning. They have effectively swapped love languages in the past episode, just to make each other swoon. Their days of oblivion are soon coming to an end, since they’re both doing everything they can to make each other fall in love.

Caption: I’ll be your fearless champion!

Well Isn’t That Terrifying?

Here’s what we know: The Grom Tiara shows you “unspeakable danger in guises that fill your heart with dread.” Grom is “not exactly what she [Luz] expects.” And now Luz wants to be Amity’s “fearless champion,” a phrase associated with protecting someone from danger?!

Here’s what I’m predicting. Grom is a competition (a grom-petition, if you will). Some people dance, but some people have to put on the tiara and fight their worst fears in order to…that I’m not sure. Protect their date? Restore their date’s honor? Earn the approval of the Blight Parents to prove that they can date their daughter? Win a cupcake to give to The Amity? Either way, winning it is a show of magical prowess and strength–and it’s not really something that Luz can easily win. Since she’s, you know, a human.

So for her to agree to be Amity’s champion? That’s concerning. 

Now, there is a chance that this could be “Wing It Like Witches.” Either way, both of those episodes are written by the Molly Ostertag–aka wife of the CEO of heartbreak, Noelle Stevenson. Also, the word “fearless” makes me think Grom, since that episode literally comes with a fear hat.

So, let’s say this does happen. I don’t think it’ll be too terrifying. Probably just your standard Luz messes up, she has to kiss-and-make-up with someone, and Lumity grows closer together. Unless, of course, Molly takes some notes from her spouse and makes it so the Blights find out about Luz and forbid her from seeing Amity. Or Luz could see something so bad in her fears that it’ll give her PTSD.

Either way, the real horrifying thing is the fact that everyone gets fursonas.

Anyways, so you know this scene?

We’ve been saying it’s the gayest scene of all time. It’s indisputable evidence that Lumity is canon. That Luz’s crush isn’t one-sided. That Amity’s facade for being a cool, confident tsundere has completely fallen apart at the sight of someone so sweet and funny as Luz.

But when it comes down to it? It doesn’t make sense. Why is she so concerned about this? They’re literally friends whose hearts race a little more when they’re around each other and who worry too much about impressing each other. How does Luz going to the same school as Amity change anything about that dynamic?

The most popular theory is that Amity is afraid of people assuming things about her. Like, that she’s not perfect because she’s close to someone. That she isn’t a top student if she has a weakness. That her gay panic is making her unreasonable.

Which is totally valid. But What If….

What if something happened before?–something with her and Willow? I mean, think about it. The Owl House doesn’t seem to have overt homophobia. Both Edric and Emira wink at Luz, even though in a heteronormative society, only Edric’s wink would be seen as blush-inducing. Viney has her own arc of warming up to Luz, getting her face next to Luz’s, making me paranoid that Lumity wasn’t going to be a thing since she was putting the Luv in Luviney. I think it’s safe to say that there is no explicit homophobia in The Owl House (Which we are all grateful for).

So why is Amity so concerned about this messing with her image?

I mean, other people can date. Amity has parents, so there’s at least one couple in this show (and who knows? maybe the majority of witches are aro/ace). Besides that, people flirt all the time (mainly with Luz). So romance doesn’t seem to be taboo here, at all. In fact, Amity having a girlfriend should make her more popular, and should be a status symbol, like it is for humans.

Besides that, what was it that Willow said about Amity? That Amity started doing better in school than Willow, so they drifted apart?

Why would she drift away?

[TW discussions of homophobia] As a Flaming Homosexual, there are two main reasons that I drift away from my close friends. One, they turn out to be homophobes and I realize later that I was better off without them (which is an entirely different story). Two, I had a crush on them and had to make sure that they wouldn’t stick around. Three, I went to a different school. That’s it. My purely platonic friends, once they get really close, don’t leave me, and if we do end up drifting apart, it doesn’t bother me like it does Willow or Amity. Since Amity’s life story and personality resonates with me profoundly, I can use my experiences as evidence.

And as for bullying old friends? I only do that in the first two scenarios, as a way of coping with the fact that my homosexuality made me lose friends. (Don’t worry, I don’t do it to their faces. Only ever around my family, actually. It’s usually me making fun of homophobes, so that’s justified.) [End TW]

So here’s my theory: Amity had a crush on Willow. And that changed everything.

Think about it: there are several different schools. Principal Bump mentioned Hexside, Glandis, and Epidermis, I think. (I know the other schools were named after skin). What if Willow didn’t originally go to Hexside? That would explain how she got her plant skills, only to end up at a different school. So she could’ve come to Amity’s school, and that made everything change.

If that’s not what happened, then there’s still the fact that Amity got good at school and used that as a way to run away from Willow. What if she was afraid of hurting her? Like, she got close to Willow. Willow trusted her to be her friend. But Amity started feeling things for Willow (who could blame her? I mean, it’s Willow we’re talking about), and she panicked. She couldn’t fall in love with her best friend! It would scare her. 

So Amity ran. She made a cult of mean girls, so Willow wouldn’t have any friends. Because if Willow had nowhere else to run to, she would run to Amity. But Amity was scared, too, because by that point she had ruined things. So she built a wall, swearing never to fall in love again. She would keep Willow away. She would become the perfect student, throwing herself into her studies and never questioning them, in order to forget Willow.

And she did. Almost.

But then Luz showed up. Willow finally had a friend, but more than that. Willow protected Luz, in the same way she used to use her plant magic to protect Amity. She hugged and high-fived Luz. Amity had lost her edge, lost her superiority. She had finally lost Willow for good. Her ex-best-friend had moved on.

So can you blame her for making an enemy of Luz?

Of course, then Luz had to complicate things. There’s a reason why everyone has cliques: people who can befriend everyone complicate things. They make you have to cooperate with people you don’t like. They make it impossible to run from your problems. Can you hate your friend’s friends? Amity needed to make sure that Luz never became her friend. 

But she failed. Not only did she fail to keep Luz away from her, but she got a crush. The same feeling she felt for Willow were back. And now Luz was associating with Willow, following the same path that Willow did. It’s no surprise that Amity is panicking. That Amity’s only first day interaction was to high-five her, something that only Luz, Gus, and Willow shared beforehand. And after that, it’s no surprise that Amity avoided Luz for the rest of the day, opting to hide in the hall and pep talk herself out of her gay panic.

And as for now? It’s only a matter of time before Amity has to face what she did to Willow. Two episodes, to be exact.

So this episode was interesting. Lilith pretty much killed her sister. Why the fuck would she do that?

Even more interesting: why is Belos like that? How did Hooty put his head through one of those guards? Who the fuck is the Titan, and why does everyone like him? And how are these all tied together?

This episode was a metaphor for capitalism

…and another delicious step towards radicalizing the youth into dismantling this fucked-up neo-feudal system.

We’ll start with Belos. 

Emperor Belos is a weird name, don’t you think? We all thought it was spelled “Bellows,” but it wasn’t. In fact, it’s five letters, starts with Be, ends with os, and describes a megalomaniac emperor that restricts people’s freedom in order to accumulate wealth for himself.

Sound familiar?

Emperor Bezos Belos created capitalism. He saw the beauty of magic and decided to make himself the most powerful.

Belos created a system that destroys the masses and boosts his power.

 I’m dipping into fan theory a little, because the fan theory fits. We know that people get branded with coven magic that makes it so they can only specialize in one area. We know that Belos is the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. We know that the excess magic, magic created by restrictions, has to go somewhere.

It’s the same system that many viewers see all the time. A job takes up all your day and tires you for the night, so you can only do one skill for the rest of your life. Jeff Bezos is the most powerful man in the United States. Excess money, money taken by restrictions, has to go somewhere.

The magic goes to Belos, like how the money goes to Bezos. Belos created capitalism, and he won it.

The guards aren’t real. 

Look, we’ve never seen their faces. They’re all the same. Why would you work so hard to get to the top, just to become a nameless, faceless killing machine?

Oh, also Hooty stuck his face through one. There is nothing under the armor.

Why? Well, it’s the same reason you see all those celebrities going around flaunting their wealth and bragging about how hard they worked. Like all those songs about how they grind every day and work harder than everyone else while you’re out clubbing, and that makes them dope. And then you take a closer look at them and see that they had a small loan of a million dollars fueling them, or an entire talent agency behind them, or their dad was a famous country star in the 80′s. 

They’re fake. They’re hollow. They’re a ploy created by the capitalist emperor to try to delude you into working harder. 

Let me put this into perspective. I guarantee that every single one of you has heard stuff like this: “Hard work makes you successful.” “I put in the work, and that’s why I’m successful.” “If you work hard enough, then you can be as successful as Mark Zuckerberg.” 

And unless you’re a robot or really lucky, I’m sure all of you have failed at this. Maybe they told you that hard work would make you good at math, so you spent 22 hours a week working on calculus, only to pass it by 3 percentage points and have it destroy your perfect 4.0 GPA. Maybe they told you that if you talked to people enough, then you would make friends, so you spent a lot of time talking to people, only to end up lonely and friendless. Maybe they told you that if you did well in school, you would get a good job, so you spent all your time working hard to be a good student, and then ended up in a soulless, dead-end job.

The guards are there to delude you. Look, who really gains from you being productive? The answer is the ruling class, the CEOs, the government, the bourgeoisie. It has always been that. All you get from working is a paycheck that lets you survive. They get a paycheck that lets them get rich. Just like Belos gets the magic and productivity of the specialized coven witches.

The guards are there to trick you. The truth is that nobody can join the Emperor’s Coven. It’s just there to make you think that hard work will make you successful. Then you spend your entire life working hard, trying to prove to the person in charge that you’re worthwhile. You give your whole life to the Coven, and they give you nothing. 

Magic is supposed to be something you pursue for fun. Being skilled at things, being good at something beautiful…that’s supposed to be something you do because you want to. But they took that and made it into a source of productivity. It doesn’t matter if you make good content. All people fucking care about is if you upload the day of premiere, if you make a lot of content quickly, if you maintain a million different conversations with strangers who expect you to be the most interesting person in the room. They don’t care how it hurts you. They don’t care how you crack from the stress. How you cry when you think no one can see you, and then you check your phone and someone can see you, someone did see you, and you have to put on your face and be the charming, magnetic person they want you to be. (oh by the way that’s why I wasn’t online much last week)

And it ruins it. Suddenly you can’t watch The Owl House without being stressed. You can’t make any content. You can’t make spells as powerfully as you want to. Your passion is replaced by perfectionism and insecurity, a voice telling you to keep being the best at what you do, or else they’ll forget you and let you die.

There’s also the Titan. 

So nobody has mentioned him before, because in addition to the Boiling Isles being a hellscape full of witchcraft and queerness, it’s also full of atheists. 

But suddenly we have people saying all this shit about him? Shit like, he gave witches the gift of magic, and then they learned to use it in a civilized manner, since being uncivilized was disrespectful?

I mean, first off, that’s fucking wrong. The island gives people magic. The island, which just so happened to be shaped like a titan-sized human. But the island/titan gives everyone all types of magic. Hell, even Luz gets to use magic, and she’s human. 

It sounds really fucking familiar. (tw for discussion of homophobia and colonialism and misogyny). It sounds like when the news is on and they show some Tr*mp supporter talking about how fetuses have more rights than people and it is their holy duty to take away a woman’s control over her body and force her through unbearable pain and into an 18-year commitment she didn’t want to make. It sounds like all the times people tried to say homosexuality should be illegal, citing a single line in a book written two thousand years ago and heavily edited by a European king. It sounds like all the times people said God wanted them to conquer, to own the entire earth, to force the other races into pain to support them.

This is that bullshit thing people do where they commit awful sins and justify it by citing the will of God. 

Or, it’s the Coven using religion as an excuse for evil.

Look, the Emperor’s Coven is clearly colonizer-coded. Saying that people’s original form of magic was wild (and showing a picture with the same joyous, rowdy energy of an 18th or 19th -century Black or indigenous party), and that it was God’s will for them to be “civilized?” Sounds like that thing that powerful white people did where they went and murdered people and forced them into their twisted capitalist system. God, gold, and glory, is what they said, because history books just love to omit the gore.

Lilith is passing the abuse cycle along. 

You know, like a good little colonizer. God I fucking hate her. She’s a MILF, in the sense that she’s a Mother I’d Like to Fling off a cliff. 

Ah, enough screaming about how much I want to drown Lilith in a tub of Hooty’s mucus. Let’s go into why I want to do that, and how she took the evils of capitalism and just…adopted those.

So, Lilith is sick and twisted for what she did to her sister. But, uhh, that’s the point. You see, there are so many other people out there like Lilith who would do the exact same thing, if given the chance. These are the people who do mean things when the teacher isn’t looking, and then act nice and try to frame you. These are the people who will hate you if you’re better than them. These are people who would do anything to bring you down, if you dare outperform them.

It’s greed, my friends. The mental illness that capitalism blesses us all with.

Lilith herself said it: she dedicated her entire life to the Coven. What she wanted was to be the best. And she almost was…except for her own sister. Someone who lived with her, annoyed her at home, bested her at school. Someone she could never beat, no matter how hard she worked. And her sister was younger than her, too! How insulting was that? Lilith wanted to be the best, and someone in her exact situation did better than her.

Lilith was insecure. And it consumed her.

But why? Why does insecurity consume her? I mean, no one can be motivated by insecurity forever. Well, not unless someone conditions it into you.

The lovely thing about the capitalist system is the morals it teaches you. Things like: “You’re only useful if you’re the best.” “Being school smart makes you smart, while being social smart or sports smart or creative smart or fandom smart is worthless.” “Your worth can be quantified by numbers and is based off arbitrary measures like your income or your grades.” Things that can and will drive us crazy if we let ourselves believe them.

And it did drive Lilith crazy. She got so twisted by a society that said being good at magic is her only worth. Look, Lilith used to be good at things, probably. She was good at sports. At times, she slips up and does an okay job of being Eda’s sister. She has a powerful presence when she’s in a room. And she’s wicked good at manipulating people. 

But that didn’t matter. Lilith bought into the lies. She let herself believe that magical skill was the only way to measure her worth. And since she needed to be the best, she hurt Eda for it.

The beautiful thing is, Eda didn’t buy that. "It’s my power, kid. And before you showed up, I spent my whole life wasting it.” Is what Eda said, as she used up the last of her power, the last of her life, to save Luz. In her final moments, she proved that she’s not like them. She’s stronger than them.

None of this matters. Not magical prowess. Not the hierarchy. Not the promise of joining the Coven and having more power than anyone else.

The only thing that matters to Eda is her family. Her real family. Her Luz, King, and Hooty. And by extension, Willow, Gus, and Amity. Those are Eda’s real reason for fighting, for dying: to protect them. Look, there’s no way she would’ve come out of that fight alive. She has a family, and her love for them is stronger than greed or jealousy or capitalism. 

Lilith never understood that. She thought the water of the womb was thicker than the blood of the covenant. Or, that the water of the womb and the blood of the covenant are stronger than the bonds of found family. She thought it didn’t matter if Eda loved, her, only if the Emperor loved her. Fucking bitch.

And now, a little something to worry about, before we go. Amity Blight. The girl who wanted to join the Emperor’s Coven more than anything, who dedicated her whole life to doing well in school, to being the best, to being perfect.

And then she met Luz. She fell for Luz. Now she’s in a tricky place, where habit and conditioning want her to join the Emperor’s Coven, but her heart wants her to do the impossible and destroy capitalism.

She wasn’t in this episode. Funny that being injured and unable to work ended up saving her from watching her future mother-in-law die. So she bought some time.

But Luz’s true mom is dead. This is the second mom she has lost, and she’s only fourteen. As powerful as King and Hooty are, Luz needs Amity. Luz needs Amity to support her and help her get back her mom.

So Amity has to make a choice. Fear and insecurity, or love and a high chance of death? 

She’ll probably choose death. Because that’s the message that this family-friendly show is giving us kids. Fuck capitalism. All you need in life is to do what makes you happy and be with the ones you love.