GrailBot

Augustus (Gus)

Gus is another student at the local magic school and the president of the human appreciation society. He is enamored with humans and reads their magazines and collects their memorabilia. He is friends with Willow at the school and introduces himself as Augustus, but is happy to chop it down to Gus after Luz suggests that is a nickname used for Augustus. His human lore is often incorrect, despite him being considered an authority on the subject.

Best Characteristics: Caring, Friendly, Upbeat, Fast-thinking

Worst Characteristic: Can there be anything wrong with Gus? Me thinks not. . .

Character Design:

He has dark skin, dark eyes, and black curly hair with a stylish fade. He wears a blue uniform. He is shorter than Willow or Luz and small in stature.

Best Moment(s):

Meeting Luz and recognizing her as a human immediately

High Five

Peanut Butter and Jelly?? maybe

Banned Poster

Knocking over the abomination cauldrons with his newly learned high five skill

Quotes:

"Where are your gills?"

"Gus? Nickname? Human nickname? Gus? Call me it. Wow! Gus. This is the best day of my life!"

"Oh man, what a rush!" --in response to high fives

Amity Blight

Amity is another student from the local magic school. She is an overachiever who doesn't mind rubbing her success in the faces of those less capable than herself. She is a bully to Willow who isn't as talented at making abominations as Amity. When Willow takes her place as top student, she gets really upset and tries to prove that Willow cheated. She goes so far that she gets sent to the principal's office, where she convinces him to investigate the suspect abomination himself.

Bonus (because NeoBot is a nerd): Amity means friendship, but she's not really friendly, so like, maybe that name isn't a perfect description of her teenage self. Blight has 2 definitions - 1) disease or injury of plants and 2) something that frustrates plans or hopes. So does her name mean she is a blight on amity? Like she is a disease on friendship? Interesting that Willow is a plant witch and Amity is specifically a blight on plants. The two words are oxymorons no matter how you read them.

Best Characteristics: Competitive, Overachiever, Observant, Brave, Dramatic

Worst Characteristic: Competitive, Overachiever, Prideful

Character Design:

Amity is slim with a green bob, pulled half up. There is a brown star shape at the front of her hair (why? I don't know. . . . I don't understand). She has pale brown, almost yellow, eyes. She keeps her nails black, wears heavy black eyeliner, and wears triangle shaped black earrings. She is always in her purple abomination track uniform. She has an angsty teen thing going on in her style and posture.

Best Moment(s):

She offers to present to the class next to prevent extra homework for the whole class.

She acknowledged and confronted Willow

She brought the principal into a situation of real danger for the school (unknown intruder disguised as abomination)

She asked for extra credit for the day's worth of adventures.

Quotes:

“As top student, it's my duty to tell you to keep at it! Even you could get a passing grade someday!”

Willow

Willow is a student at the local magic school, Hexside School of Magic and Demonics. She was a student of the abominations track, per her parents' desire for her to have maximum future opportunities, but her talent was in plants. She is smart, powerful, hard-working, and thoughtful. Her talent in plant magic is obvious within minutes of meeting her. Her classmates call her Half a Witch, as a taunt.

Best Characteristics: Thoughtful, Heroic, Talented

Worst Characteristic: Lack of confidence, Temper, Desire to make others happy sometimes gets in way of living up to her own potential

Character Design:

Willow is a young teenage girl with big glasses and a bob she keeps tucked behind her pointy ears. She has a larger frame than stick thin Luz and tiny Gus, and is, thus far, always in uniform. As an abomination witch, her uniform was purple, but once she proved her talent with plants and was moved to the plant track, it turned green. She has green eyes and black hair. She has a nerdy look about her, that I totally love.

Best Moment(s):

Her introduction

Losing her temper after Amity left her with her abomination

Growing the seed to save Luz and trapping her principal against the ceiling

Quotes:

“I may get detention, but you'll get dissected!”

“Even if you get a bad grade, it's not a reflection of you as a witch” --to self

“I, uh, took your peptalk to heart, Amity”

The Outro

I finally get to see the Outro! It's just Luz walking through a number of familiar scenes, with some fun characters hanging out in them. It's a very cool way of showing all the beautiful sets and lending credence to the journey that Luz has found herself on. Ending at the owl house with a hug to Eda is also perfect.

SonBot pointed out that Willow's clothes change colors from episode 2 to episode 3 in the outro, and in the next intro. That's a nice little detail I may have never noticed on my own.

So, I finally get to watch the Intro. There is a lot going on here and it moves really quickly. I love the quick succession. The images of the School wizards I'm guessing is the reason I wasn't able to watch it before. Which, fair, I would have been very curious. I love all of King's army of darkness! Quite menacing and cutesy wootsy.

There was a monster of the week?? And I'm stuck on why she's adding a star to the sky at the end. . . but otherwise, nothing new.

The End

So, overall, that was a fun episode. There was a lot going on in this episode. We started with trash digging in a slug and ended after breaking into a school, fighting a powerful wizard and getting banned. . . all while King grew a giant slug from an egg and Eda lost and then won a bet for greatest teacher.

We met several new characters, Willow, Gus, Amity, and Principal Bump. We learned about magic paths - abominations and plants. We learned about the magic school, where Eda obviously experienced a little trauma at some point. We were introduced to the betting log.

All while learning the important lesson that keeping junk in your pocket can save your life?

Stay tuned. We'll be watching the intro and outro then doing some character prespectives. . . And SonBot is going to show us the code we missed and the first clue to reading them.

First wanted poster?

That definitely reads unwanted. . .

Banned? Not dissected?

Looks like the school was better at teaching than Eda. . .

So, I tried to ignore this and not mention it, or maybe I mentioned it lightly, but. . .

I HATE slugs. . . like, there is almost no other living thing that I even mildly dislike. . . just mosquitoes and slugs.

Slugs are so gross. I used to have a cat, that lived outside. She hated coming into the house, so I put her food and water on the front porch. One summer, the slugs decided the food container was a fun place to live. They were all over my porch. And in the food bowl. And in the food container.

And I generally never put on shoes and the thought of stepping on a slug or a snail is so incredibly gross. Especially since, I don't even think it would kill it. . . just mush it around on my foot..

We poured salt all around the porch, which worked, but had to be reapplied.

Also, I don't like killing things in their natural environments, and I felt like a murderer of REALLY gross things. . .

Unresolved trauma, the theme of this episode, yeah?

Oh, holy wow. . .

That is brutal, and honest, and thoughtful, considering the situation she's currently in.

Well. She does not look okay. The anger really pops out in this shot.

That must be an expellable offense? If not a juvenile detention worthy offense. . . . Goodness.

She might end up in a cell next to the veggie fan fic girl.

*Wait, hold on. She was freed.*

Oh, right! It's a seed, and Willow is a plant witch. NGL, I had forgotten that too.

NGL, I had totally forgotten about the greasy slime ball.

A sentence I never thought I'd utter.