What Was He Really Running From As He Invoked Axolotl's Name?

[ Original Article | Live Example of Skin | My AO3 Skins ]

After posting my other work skins, rotrude requested one for creating newspaper articles/clippings, and after banging my head against a wall repeatedly a lot of trial and error, I came up with this. Now, this is more intensive than the other skins, but I promise to guide you through the whole thing and will try to help if you have any questions.

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D:BH - 28 Stab Wounds Explained

It's 28th so it's the best day to share Bryan's explanation of the famous "Twenty-Eight stab wounds!" scene.

Bryan confirms there is 'a lot of little moments like this in the scenes' but personally I know only about very few of them. "Got it!" / Slamming the table / Pushing away by arm / Angrily gesticulating frustration from boss / More humane movements and expressions Did you guys noticed some other subtle things Connor repeats from Hank? Let's find them :D

I think this is a really valid criticism, OP! Though, maybe I'm just optimistic, but I actually took the ending in a different way. I do agree with you that a lot of these mutliverse shows and movies lately have had that pattern of, "lmao get good loser", in response to valid issues, which is absolutely infurating to see. It feels demeaning, handwavy, and just overall frustrating!

But to me, I think the story of FC was about stagnation vs. growth; and about how wish fufillment isn't quite the way to achieve life of your dreams. Both Simon's and Fiona's stories are about acceptance about the shitty aspects of their lives, but more specifically, they're about how that acceptance begins to pave the way towards joy. At first it seems like it's the same message, but when you look a little deeper, it takes on a different form. Especially once you take in GolBetty and the Lich into account.

Fiona wants nothing more than to live in a magical world, one where she doesn't have to deal with the infurating nature of modern life. But once she goes on her big ol' magical, life changing adventure, she realizes that the world she holds dear is special in its own right. Her joy doesn't come immediately. She definitely seems happier after seeing Gary and Marshall together and not trying to kill eachother- but I think her true development comes from her being able to finally fulfill her dreams; and then being given a purpose: to rebuild their world and town. Sure, it's a lot of responsibility, but she's Fiona!!! I don't think this girl will ever go back to a traditional 9-5 ever again. She's their world's hero now.

Simon, on the other hand, is a bit slower to change. Yet again, though, his story is less about acceptance and more about ingenuity. As much as I hate to say it, because Finn is in no way a "mental health king", I think he was on the right path when tried to take Simon on an adventure to make him feel better. What Simon needed more than anything was to know that he was still needed. That he still mattered. Even though he felt alienated, like an artifact in a museum, he still had a point to be on that shelf. What Finn screwed up, though, was how he went about it. Simon could've gotten through this period by just talking to Marcy and being honest, but he's far too scared of letting her see him that unstable again. But once he's able to talk to Fiona about it, and see for a fact, that his actions mattered: that the simple act of caring for Marcline kept the Vampires from taking over Ooo- he begins to develop.

Again, although his final development wasn't shown until the montage, I think that's simply because we haven't seen the last of Simon. Or Fiona, for that matter. They aren't being told to accept the fact that they have nothing to live for, but to find it.

It's a story about how wish fulfillment doesn't always work out for the best and that sometimes, the true slice of heaven that you've been craving was just a world where you felt like you had a place. It's one where even a god who can make all your wishes come true can end up depriving you of a purpose once it's achieved. It's one about how dreams come true in stranger ways, like Scarab becoming Prismo's apprentice and being given the chance to make his own worlds, too. It's one where even when given the chance to imagine a new reality with your lover, you know it's time to accept the one you have for what it is.

Still, absolutely valid analysis, this was just my take! :D

Wasn’t crazy about the Fionna and Cake ending

A lot of things were fine. Good even. this isn’t about something as simple as “Simon didn’t end up with Betty 😡” because frankly I didn’t ever see that happening. No, it’s about this wishy-washy message I keep seeing in all this multiverse media. Tell me if this one sounds familiar: our heroes are unhappy with some aspect of their lives, like maybe they’re struggling to get by due to bad finances. then they go on some zany, multiverse-spanning adventure where they eventually learn that their universe is just fine!!! and that they’ve got to make the most of it!! (Also usually the big problem is cheaply resolved, like it never even mattered.)

and frankly, this style of story, which we keep fucking seeing, is starting to sound a hell of a lot like “suck it up, buttercup! if you wanted a good life you should have tried harder. have you ever considered getting out of your own way?”

you see this in EEAAO of course. “oh is the world too financially cruel? is your mom homophobic? well have you ever considered just asking nicely about both of those things, you dummy?” And honestly in a lot of ways the ending of Fionna and Cake is even worse. Why should Simon be happy with his shitty job at the fucking human zoo? Why should Fionna be happy with working a shitty job her entire life?

and then you think about who’s actually writing and directing our oh-so-uplifting multiverse stories and it’s like. oh yeah. millionaires. successful people. who actually got what they wanted out of life. they’re not saying *they* should be happy with nothing, no no no. they’re part of the *special people* who get to dream. *you’re* the one who should be satisfied with nothing. and let’s take it even further why not. how many of these successful types even deserve it? how many of them even make beautiful things? not a lot!!

personally, being told by someone who’s living their dream that I should just be happy being a little scrap of nothing makes me want to burn down the whole world. and I would have at least preferred at least a drop of that catharsis in the ending of Fionna and Cake

Rewatching gravity falls rn and this is one of my favorite jokes in the entire show

she's so silly i love her so much

Bill & Ford & A Book, Oh My!

DISCLAIMER: The Book of Bill has Bill Cipher serving as an unreliable narrator. If we go out trying to say something is "definitively a truth" or "definitively a lie", we're going to keep arguing about it until the heat death of the universe. This is just my own personal interpretation of the source material. If you don't agree, that's fine! Also TBOB spoilers abound.

So it's no secret that interest in the dynamic Bill & Ford have (enemies, platonic, romantic, formerly romantic, whichever way) has really skyrocketed since TBOB's release. Of course, there are the 'easy' culprits to point towards, with Mabel referring to Bill as 'being like a needy ex', and the whole O'Sadley's fiasco (Him literally crying over losing Ford and going "one Sixer, please"? Messy. Messy behavior. Still, I think it goes so much deeper than that.

Bill, being the unpredictable chaos entity that he is, also serves as the main antagonist for a show about family and having close bonds with each other. We don't really need to look into his inner psyche that much, because that's just not what he needed to be doing at that point in the cartoon. He's meant to be a way to divide the Pines, really. And a silly little guy. A silly little obstacle. So, naturally, when it came to Bill's arguably "closest" relationship to someone in the show (Ford), it was very easy to interpret it as Ford being tricked by a completely apathetic Bill, who was just using him as a rung on the ladder. And I do want to stress that Ford and Bill's physical actions remain fairly consistent throughout interpretations, and focusing on the fact that Bill badly hurt Ford is important, so if that's how you still see it, then fine by me! No harm no foul!

But I think the relationship, their story, their tragedy just becomes so much more interesting with the lens The Book of Bill has presented. Again, Bill is lying to the character of "the reader", so we can't trust it as a completely unbiased source. But we can speculate on where the "truth" is between these lies.

First of all, Bill's backstory was that he destroyed his home dimension- we knew that already. But now, with the extra content we have about it, we see something interesting- that Bill's backstory mirrors Ford's to an uncanny degree.

Both of them champion their intelligence, although they highlight how it set them apart from others, as well as highlighting their own 'rare mutation/birth defect'.

Again, with this self-isolation already spurred on from their "weirdness", but also as a little aside, I would also like to highlight that Bill being 'ready to be one', looking up at the stars, striving to 'reach' them, is a shared motif he has with Ford, who is also associated with space, the stars, and reaching them.

Bill's 'trying-really-quick-to-convince-Ford' fantasy sequence even has him in a field of stars as a sort of "ultimate wish fulfilment". Remember, this is Bill showing Ford something he thinks would win Ford over, at least a little.

(And I'll take a quick time out for this train of thought to point out- hey! Bill admits he sought out most of his other victims, but Ford summoned him, and it took him by surprise! That adds a fun little layer of complexity to everything, don't you think? Another little layer of humanity for this whole mess- Bill didn't expertly seek out the 'perfect victim' or anything, it was just... luck. Some twist of fate.)

Anyways.

Obviously, the intro page to the 'Sixer' section has a ton of red flags galore (I mean, poor guy's literally depicted as a hapless puppet. C'mon, Bill. Not to mention the "OH BOY HE'S ALREADY SO ISOLATED, IT'S PERFECT" thing.). The game we're playing here is not "How quickly can we woobify and excuse Bill"? No, this guy is kind of a terrible companion no matter how you slice it. He's terrible to everyone close to him, because he's a deeply traumatized character who refuses to heal. BUT, the wording here is kinda deliciously intriguing to me. All of humanity is Bill's puppets, his future victims, but to me, it's clear that he holds a fondness for Ford. From "This is what a partner looks like", to "Me and Sixer could be the perfect team", to "He had what I always wanted- fingers" (drawn to his strangeness, maybe?), "He was destined for so much more", "I looked at his futures and giggled", and most stand-out to me, "Society calls these people freaks, I call them Henchmaniacs!"

Going back to the pre-Book of Bill era I was talking about, Bill's offers for Ford to join him were always in a sort of murky territory for interpretation. The first offer could definitely be read as mocking, with the line "WITH THAT SIX-FINGERED HAND, YOU'D FIT RIGHT IN WITH MY FREAKS!" in particular making it seem like Bill was only saying that to rub Ford's strangeness in his face, and the second offer to join Bill being under a new circumstance- that now Bill is desperate and believes Ford is the only one who can help him. But the Book of Bill mentions the idea of Ford becoming a Henchmaniac more than once, and also has Bill upset at losing Ford and claiming "he'll be back", as well as Bill seeming to use "freak" more like a badge of honour, and having previously complimented Ford's six fingers (In the Sixer intro page, he highlights Ford's fingers as a quality he likes, and in the pages about bodies, he states that "humans should have more fingers". To me, that first offer reads more now like Bill being genuine about finding Ford a place among his misfits. ...Although, the moment Ford says no, he does zap him into a statue. So. Y'know. He's still got issues.

(Yeah, again, red flag city. "Just hazing"? Bill, none of what you were doing over there was okay! You might have suppressed everything traumatic that happened to you, but that doesn't mean you can go around traumatizing everyone! Good lord.)

Bill has already been imply to like other characters because they remind him of himself. Pointing towards a connection with a character Bill DOESN'T have a weird undefinable ex-partner thing with... Mabel! Alex has says in multiple official media and interviews that Bill sees a lot of himself in Mabel, and essentially, that he thought Mabeland was the perfect prison because if HE liked all that awesome, uncontrolled chaos over any family or friends, why wouldn't SHE? And we see that again in TBOB. So basically, what I'm saying is that we have two characters to back up the fact that Bill seems gravitated towards humans or other living beings that he views as being 'like him'- beings he can relate to! So, y'know, what does that say about Bill and Ford?

There's also Bill's plans for the reader and "Weirdmageddon 2.0", where he portrays the reader as getting to, like, perch on his arm like a little bird and get their own little crown? And specifically calls out Ford for not going through with things?? Okay, Bill??

AND Ford not only being the only human mentioned on the list of people he "definitely doesn't miss so stop asking", but also having his own category? Alright, man.

Of course, another point to the 'Hey, maybe Bill can actually feel emotions towards humans besides complete and total apathy' club is this page here, which has ALSO been hotly debated! Certainly, we know he's telling the truth about his home dimension being destroyed, and we know that he's lying about the 'monster', but some interpret this scene as Bill not being remorseful at all and playing his reaction up to earn Ford's sympathy. And me, personally, I dunno if I agree. I feel like the specific inclusion of Bill "looking distant, more distant than I'd ever seen him" (Mirroring the fact that he keeps blacking out when thinking about all his large-scale massacres) and him "laughing joylessly", I think this sequence is meant to tell us that Bill actually is being vulnerable with Ford here, it's just hidden under layers and layers of deceit, whether towards himself or Ford or both.

And finally for my Book of Bill collection stuff, there's the stuff that could be read as more romantic in nature. In the 'love' section, Bill claims he doesn't love anyone, but, like-

Come on. You can disagree with me that it's Ford, but he does have exes. And he's clearly not over them. Shrimpy little liar. And then there's the fact that a lot of his hokey 'advice' is stuff he ends up directly doing to Ford.

These rats.

The Love Cage.

The Book of Bill really outlined all that in bold, but in my opinion, it was never an entirely new revelation! Bill seems to hold a preference for Ford over other humans in the show. He shows up in Ford's dreams just to say hi, tease him, and gloat (Mabelcorn) unlike the other two dream appearances he's made (Dreamscaperers, Sock Opera) which were exclusively for business purposes. Unlike every other character that gets exclusively one nickname for their zodiac sign, Ford gets multiple (Fordsy, IQ, Sixer, smart guy, brainiac, the list goes on). Bill asks Ford to join him TWICE, whereas anyone else who tries gets their face rearranged, put in a cage and made to dance, frozen in stone, etc etc. And finally, I think, the most emblematic of Bill's weird, specific relationship with Ford, is that whereas everybody else gets turned into stone, Ford got turned into gold.

Which kinda sums up their whole thing up pretty well? Bill gave him special treatment by turning him into a golden statue (similar to yellow ha ha), always holding him close, but, like... Dude. You still kidnapped a man and turned him into a statue and then threatened to kill his niece and nephew. I don't think it will change his opinion on you if he's the Most Pampered Hostage, Actually. And, of course, I can't emphasize enough that Bill was still incredibly abusive to Ford! It's an unhealthy dynamic! I just don't think that we need to explore the relationships between characters as simply "Well, this character abused the other one, so we shouldn't really think about why or what they feel personally, because what they did was bad, so there". But the fact is, none of my analysis of Bill here changes the fact that the torture happened!

Bill & Ford interest me because they're a tragedy in motion. We can see that Bill and Ford mirror each other in a multitude of ways, and we can see that they both do have positive feelings towards each other at the time they meet, and we see that Bill very desperately wants Ford to be just like him in the unhealthy ways; the ways that make Bill destroy entire universes and compartmentalize it all, because maybe then, he can finally have the companionship he so deeply aches for. Bill and Ford both had tough, lonely upbringings, but Ford moved on from that "I don't need you" mentality. That's what saved him. Bill didn't, and that's what got him where he was in the end. I feel like that's just so much more interesting than Bill just being a flat entity that makes abuse Happen to Ford, just as another Event in his life. I mean, isn't it just SO much more interesting that Ford humanizes Bill, in a way? That Ford makes him- in Bill's own words- "sentimental"? That a chaotic dream demon has regrets and loves and favourites and connections? It's the same thing with Fiddleford & Ford, although, obviously, to a MUCH lesser extent than Bill & Ford. But you get what I mean, right? You know that Fiddleford and Ford are going to undo each other in the end, and the path to that downfall is... it's telling a story! I like the story of it all! I think that's what I've been invested in and intrigued by all these years- the story, the tragedy of Bill and Ford. No matter what form it takes.

(Plus, as tumblr user fordtato pointed out in their own essay (not tagging because this post is messy enough as is oh god), hey, Ford now has two incredibly queer-coded narratives, with one of them being about how he recovered and was able to heal from an abusive relationship. And, well, I think that's just neat.)

Anyways, that's the end of the post. Thanks for reading this long!

Would anyone be interested in an Owl House Fangame RPG? (Spoilers for finale insuing)

I'm considering turning my old fanfic plots into a playable fangame, but I wanna make sure that's something that people would actually, yknow, play. So, here's my ideas!

1. Season 4 "The Game"

This would primarily be a game focused on wrapping up some unfinished storylines/rebuilding the Isles. I believe one of the main bosses would likely be the Titan Trappers since they were puppetted in WAD.

I think this would be the closest to a traditional rpg game, but I'm leaning more towards an unconventional combat style considering the way magic works in TOH. Regardless, combat wouldn't be a primary focus of the game. It'd be more exploration based and decision based, fleshing out the other areas of The Boiling Isles and all that jazz.

Possibly, the final boss may be the other archivists? I think in this one, by the end, you'll have the Collector in your party.

2. Side Stories

This would be more so a collection of routes trying to tell the stories that, sadly, The Owl House team never got the time to tell. These likely wouldn't actually be RPG games, but they're RPG maker, but I'm not sure how many of them there'd be, but I do have a few ideas for various routes, like:

-Wittebros Backstory (You play as Caleb, and it covers bits and pieces over the years up until... Well, you know the rest.)

-Hunter, Dale, and The Bat Queen (Focuses on two different interconnected plots. One is a story about The Golden Guard being tasked to find the last known Palistrom forest, only for those plans to get detailed by one sweet old man. Yadda yadda, learning ensues. And, the other is a story focused on Hunter going into the Palistrom forest with a few friends to start on some conservation efforts, facing his past, and him getting a new job.)

-Divorce Simulator (I think you know what this one's about :) )

-Vee (Have no idea what this one would be about, other than a game adaption of that MorningMark concept of Cabin ???- or one focusing on just her adapting to the human realm.)

3. TOH/GF/Amphibia Crossover

Okay, so I know probably nobody will vote for this one, but it's one that I have too many ideas for!

Basically, it's just going off the idea that after The Collector got that gross green stuff on him, from Belos, he was affected by Titian magic; screwing up his magic a little and making him semi-immortal rather than fully immortal. The Collector says they're going off to "grow up," but really, their main goal is to just find their siblings and find out what's going on with them.

This leads the little guy to the last known whereabouts of one of his siblings, Gravity Falls. Again, the dude's magic is kind of iffy, and he ends up crashlanding near the Mystery Shack and gets taken in by the new Mr. And Mrs. Mystery... Who... Somehow, are way more connected to Luz than he thought.

This is the closest thing to an RPG out of all of them because the main focus of the game is basically trying to stop the multiverse from splitting entirely. It'd be the casts from both TOH and GF; with a healthy addition of amphibia references.

In this universe, all of the archivists are just God's from other Disney Channel cartoons. And yeah. Told ya I had a lot of ideas!

Btw if anyone would be down to help either with writing, art, or music- please dm me! I can totally do it on my own, but I thought it might be nice to put it out there.

hey did you guys know its the pines twins’ 23rd birthday today? I had no idea.

anyway, here’s a thing I’ve been working on for a while. This was originally supposed to be for the show’s 10th anniversary back in June, but I definitely didn’t anticipate how long it’d take and had to push it back to the end of August. It feels like an appropriate way to send off the summer :]

ps: as per gf tradition, there’s a hidden message along the first 10 pages

stay weird etc etc

Here's a silly little comic I did in whiteboard >:) enjoy!

bonus whiteboard art below!

Thinking about the implications of EP 8, Jerry, a little too much. The idea that death without life is meaningless and life without death is terrifying. The concept of technology and ai surviving far beyond our mortal human existence, and the loneliness and confusion that stems from not being confined to time.

The idea of a bloodthirsty being, such as the Lich, getting absolutely everything he could dream of: all life eradicated in an instant, only to realize that he has nothing left to do for the rest of eternity. The idea of being the only other being in existence, made of metal and wire, and being forced to grapple with why YOU survived. Out of everything in the universe, the trees, the grass, the animals, the people, YOU are all that's left. You and Jerry.

To be in the room with the being that killed all life, and the one being you can't kill. Sure, maybe it'd be easy. You just need to hit them hard enough, and they'd be gone. Forever.

But then what's left?

You. Alone. You'd be the only tree left to fall in the forest, unable to make a sound. You can cut yourself down, but what, then? What. Then.

You see this creature made of electricity and love, talk about the world like it's still there. And for a moment, it makes you believe that you still have a purpose. To have one last person walking around in the fossilized forest is enough, because maybe, if they're lucky, they'd find an axe and cut you down. Maybe you wouldn't know if you could make a sound...

But they would.