#hettimir

fanart sneak while I’m here

            I didn’t spell the story outright here, because there wasn’t time for it, and ultimately I trust hypothetical viewers to put it together; Hettie Cutburn attacked the Bat Queen to deliver her to Belos, but instead snagged her children as the Bat Queen escaped, too injured to realize who she left behind. Hettie settled for this and headed back to the castle to deliver her ‘gift’ to Belos (which he misinterpreted as the scalpel), but Belos, in his fear, sent her on a mission she technically kinda already did, but technically failed at.

            Taking things literally, Hettie silently accepts this mission, and decides to rectify her mistake using the children she already nabbed; Like Osran, she also looked through the Owl House’s loot, and took the Bat Queen’s whistle, figuring out its function. Her plan was to summon the Bat Queen, only to hold her kids hostage to capture her, and then offer all four to Belos. In his fear of Cutburn, Belos not only cheated himself of actual help, but inadvertently created the opportunity for that whole family to make it out. Seems fitting!

            Thus, we have the backdrop for Hettie’s plan, for our main protagonists to stumble across. With Emira, I’d always wanted to explore her character, give her development since everyone else in her family got some, including her fellow twin who should be of equal standing; Plus, I’ve always been fascinated by her desire to find her own identity, to be her own person, the potential obligation to Edric and how it’s difficult to balance these.

            But then S2 added more; The parentification, Emira having to be the older sibling for everyone, even the parent… Her getting into healing as an obvious extension of these duties. And I wanted to discuss these things, I wanted to give Emira a storyline I’d have loved to see for her; The chance to be her own person and do things for herself, and let go of the responsibility.

            Given her inclinations towards healing, I wanted to discuss that in regards to all of this, and with Hettie being around… It all seemed obvious, even if making the meeting and the logistics of it all work in-universe was a bit of a struggle.

            With the Blight kids, I’m working off of comparisons, as well as what Dana half-joked about Edric being the least favorite Blight child; So I created the dynamic of Emira being molded into the new Odalia, as the showperson who advertises with illusions instead of making business predictions with oracle magic. She’s the matriarch. Conversely, Amity is the Alador, as the Abomination engineer. Both are molded to be as much like Odalia as possible, of course.

            Where does that leave Edric? This and his feelings of being a screw-up are why he’s the least favorite. Plus, I’d noticed that Edric was the only kid not to hang out with his dad in the epilogue. Doylist limitations aside, I decided to craft a fun narrative of Edric not forgiving his father; Not enough to interact with directly for fun. He’s still chill enough years later to co-exist in the same space, but with others as a buffer, their attention towards someone else anyhow. I want to give abuse victims the continued discomfort they owe, even in light of knowing objectively that youre abuser is doing better and making legitimate amends!

            Conversely, Emira expresses ambivalence, a See and Find Out approach to Alador. She’s not actively looking for him like Amity, not going back to a relationship he once gave her. Nor is Emira insistent on resentment like Edric; She’s just open, willing to see which side Alador goes, and which of her mixed feelings she’ll side with to embrace the situation and make it easier for her because Emira is just trying to survive at this point (And address the larger ills of the company, as she mentions to Amity later). Emira being between her siblings’ different feelings makes her a mediator, which is typical for this poor parentified kid.

            The epilogue implies that Emira is the Blight kid hanging out with her dad the most, on a consistent basis; It makes sense given their goal to undo the sigils, which applies to Emira’s intention to be a healer in terms of things like studying medicine and the like. I’d have liked to have created room for Emira to find a parental figure of her own, but in the end there just wasn’t enough space for it, in regards to some other stuff I already had in mind and how it played into her fellow protagonist Luz’s arc, no less…

            The most I could do was the Bat Queen and Eda expressing admiration for Emira, with Eda’s offering to Emira being taken up; Not exactly about hair, as I’ll discuss in a bit, but definitely something to make up for in Reaching Out, how Emira wanted a T-shirt from Eda and didn’t get a chance to hang out with her. Even if we don’t see it, the setup and promise is hopefully enough of a guarantee. With the Bat Queen, I did consider her offering the whistle to Emira as thanks, but then realized it created a retroactive plot hole because why wouldn’t she use it the next episode, when sabotaging Blight Industries with Edric?

            So without Eda or the Bat Queen, I’ve settled for just the implication; That the adult who will help Emira from her parentified role is one who helped start it in the first place, Alador. Emira is willing to forgive Alador because he’s offering to step into the role that she’s been asking him to fulfill, that she had to do herself. And I like the implication that Alador is now there for Emira the most, the most parentified of his kids. A scene where Alador makes a similar promise to Emira as he did Amity is also a consideration, but again; Only so much time, these two are in different places, and while a phone call could work, I’m not sure how to make it fit naturally.

            The background for Emira has her being expected by Odalia to run the house in her absence, do a bunch of chores, keeps the others in place, and Emira does, somewhat. She definitely cuts corners but she has every right to do so, and she puts on a show of directing her siblings in front of their mother when it comes to practical concerns. But outside of Odalia’s view, Amity sees the twins cutting corners and feels the need to point this out, in addition to Odalia comparing the kids constantly to put them into competition.

            For Emira, she lets go of looking after Amity because alas, she sees it as another way for her to subtly rebel against what Odalia has imposed. Edric supports her, of course. And even when she does take care of Amity in front of Odalia, it’s in an obligatory way without any real emotional connection, leaving Amity emotionally starved.

            And we see that this isn’t fair on Amity, who eventually starts tattling on the twins because she’s ostracized by them; And so they retaliate, culminating in their proper debut in Lost in Language. But they finally begin to understand afterwards what they’ve done, and so Emira makes things up to Amity, and starts being an actual older sister, and not just the performance of one. And yet this still plays into what Odalia wants; Odalia does initially mourn that the kids aren’t competing anymore, but Alador as always suggests this could work out in another way, namely the kids being more cohesive in fulfilling the family agenda, which Odalia accepts.

            Emira has an arc kind of like Luz in this sense; She made mistakes and vowed to compensate for them… And then proceeded to overcompensate, thus feeling more parentified when she had to take in Amity’s emotional baggage and not just her own. But tragically, what other choice does she have? Emira had to step up to her role as a bigger sister in a genuine way. And so the callback to Emira asking Luz to give her some space during Reaching Out, when Luz really needed someone but Emira was already busy with her sister.

            It’s implied that Amity told Emira about why her girlfriend acted as such afterwards, and once more Emira feels guilt, that she should’ve done more. But Luz of course gets it, and absolves Emira. So like Luz, Emira’s realizing she doesn’t need to go that far either and her initial claim that she deserves more and better is still valid.

            As I struggled with deciding Emira’s storyline within this script, I decided that a story about her asserting her needs to her family… Would still be a story about Emira being stuck with her family in some capacity. It’s easy to do the part where a character asserts themselves, but what happens next? What about the actual exploration bit? It’s why I love Amity’s arc, she got to achieve that huge climax… And then explore the part afterwards.

            So Emira gets to be away from her family, doing her own thing with Luz; She’s interacting with Luz not as her sister’s girlfriend, but a legitimate friendship of her own. I love Luz’s dynamic with the twins, how they think she’s the coolest person ever, after years of Luz thinking she’s so lame; Seeing these effortless cool kids praise her just feels so strange! And it was fun acknowledging that the twins were technically friends with Luz before Amity was.

            This leads us to Emira getting the chance to reiterate, reflect, and appreciate the freedom and choices she’s made, to her own bond. I wanted to make Emira’s healing magic more than just Emira leaning into parentification; I wanted Emira to do it on her own terms, so that’s why I clarified her motives, and a distinctly non-maternal application of them. It’s why her healing magic is more oriented towards herself and her own body, than focusing on another; I wanted this magic to be for her.

            This is of course a great segue into making Emira trans, after all the theories of one twin being trans due to the logistics of identical twins being different genders… And I made it fit naturally within the dialogue and the themes! And the specter of Odalia and how she’s trying to mold her daughters into being more like her!

            So Emira isn’t dealing with her mother directly, but Hettie Cutburn is a symbolic specter. This gives Emira a way to fight back, in spirit, just as Luz and King did so with Osran earlier. Emira’s dealing with two different choices she’s made for herself, being co-opted by powerful, feminine women who lean into matriarchal roles, who are trying to make Emira’s decision about herself into their attempt to mold Em into the maternal role she’s trying to avoid. They claim to care for their charge but they’re clearly selfish and aware of it. And Emira discards that curse with her decision at the end to never be a mother! Eda and Belos may have to live with their curses, but not this kid…!

            I also wanted to explore the nuance of being trans, about deciding your own appearance, how this is different than the usual rhetoric of accepting your body for how it is. So for kids who are confused about whether they’re just self-loathing or truly want this, I repeated the distinction I’ve seen discussed; Sometimes, you will change your appearance for others. This is bad. You must self-examine for that. But it’s good to change your appearance for yourself. This is self-affirmation, this is actual expression (as Darius might say), this is why gender affirming care is usually valid and not inherently equivalent to women who undergo plastic surgery that will only worsen legitimate insecurity.

            Ultimately, these challenges are things both cis and trans girls/women can resonate with, so even if Emira is explicitly trans, I hope cis girls can also feel seen, and that this script shows that cis and trans women have a lot in common that they should embrace. Hence Emira having her female gender performance evaluated by people whose opinions she’s not asking for; Cis or trans, girls deal with this. Even if Emira’s trans baggage isn’t quite the same as IRL due to transgenderism being socially accepted in the Boiling Isles, there’s always the metaphor just like Lumity being questioned by Odalia as akin to homophobia/racism, there’s how it at least applies to cis girls as well, etc.

            There’s a theme of body positivity, hence Emira’s gross spells, and how this juxtaposes her as a pretty rich girl that Luz might have a crush on; How she’s breaking that pristine aesthetic as imposed by her mother. Emira casually announcing she has a period for the sake of normalization. Because again; The nuance in the epilogue of Emira still having her zits, but still dressing nice, still making clear decisions about her appearance.

            Her hair was unkempt but now Emira needn’t worry about making it look good when it’s short, even as Emira embraces her acne because it’s about allowing convenience where you don’t care. She knows she’s not doing this out of shame but self-love, and this is why these things work.

            Plus I just thought it’d be fun to provide a backstory for Emira cutting her hair; At first it was just as simple as expressing the possibility, but I’m very pleased with how it actually became plot-relevant, and a parallel to Eda too! So Emira missed out on hanging with Eda, but like Edric, she technically learned from her… Even if she’ll drop the lesson later, haha. Emira can always grow her hair out in like an instant, it’s ironic she prefers hair in other places like her fingers, where it’s seen as ugly for girls.

            So both forms of magic, Healing and Illusions (itself about aesthetics) are about Emira’s own aesthetics, about affirming her own choices. So you could see Emira being a doctor who helps people affirm their gender identities, doing surgery for this reason, incorporating illusions for herself and others. And of course Emira helps with undoing the sigils four years later, because that just affirms how she wants to give people choices, and how her choice for Healing wouldn’t have been possible with the sigils.

            At the same time! This isn’t just about Emira’s character arc. It’s also about Luz’s. On the surface it’s about Emira… But also, Emira talking about herself is a way for her to uplift Luz, it’s her example she’s using. And she even directly praises Luz herself! It’s about exploring Luz’s feelings, about reaffirming the decisions she’s made as well, and that someone like Belos cannot co-opt this for his narrative, anymore than Odalia and Hettie can for Emira.

            And between this and Luz, previously, affirming she still has agency against Osran… It’s all set up for Luz to give her palisman the same choice. Because with the timeframe of these Lost Hoots, I needed to have Luz not figure out Stringbean’s form just yet, and figured I should justify it further by showing her thought process.

            Initially, the inspiration would’ve come from Emira just asserting her own choices, even turning down a Palisman offer by the Bat Queen because she’s still too busy with her own appearance; But thankfully I checked the original dialogue about Luz explaining her reasoning and was like. Oh yeah no Luz did this because she was inspired by herself! So then I cut that detail out… But then made it work because Emira talking about her own decisions segues into appreciating Luz’s decisions.

            So in the end, it’s still about celebrating what Luz has done, making her feel good about it, and thus going through with Stringbean as a result! Luz sees how her own choices inspire someone to make her own choices, let’s repeat that with her palisman! So Lost Hoots is the backstory for Stringbean, it’s a framing device, it begins establishing that Luz is still caught up on the appearance, and ends with her figuring it out!

            And tbf, Luz and Emira have the parallels of making their own decisions about themselves; So here, we also have this strange Luz-Odalia parallel because they’re both “mothers” to Emira and Stringbean respectively. With Luz, it’s actually understandable and justified for her to project her own self onto her Palisman creation, to literally mold that Palisman in her image.

            But Luz triumphs over Odalia by granting Stringbean agency, which makes Stringbean a parallel to Emira in that way, because Luz and Em are also alike. Odalia tries to enforce herself, whereas while Luz is projecting a bit of herself onto Stringbean, it’s for the purpose of giving Stringbean the same freedom she got, so it’s not really the same thing either.

            While we do see Luz assert this part aloud in canon, initially we didn’t see Luz figure that part out directly, within the strict words of this retroactive script; In fact, OKaF originally didn’t have Luz figure out Stringbean onscreen! The original idea was that it would simply provide the backdrop for the audience to realize what inspired Luz, but Luz herself would not outright confirm it; You can just tell.

            But I felt, looking back, that the reason why the transition from the final scene of OTWAT to the reveal of Stringbean’s egg in CotH worked was because it was pretty seamless; The next time we cut to Luz, we still see her at the Latissa hideout, and we understand she already carved Stringbean by that point. But when I inserted the entirety of Lost Hoots between that, it just didn’t work out; Sure, I had Luz acknowledge why she hasn’t carved Stringbean just yet.

            But with the story then just veering away from it entirely, it felt like it forgot about it, so when we suddenly reveal that Luz carved Stringbean offscreen, we’ve missed the crucial setup that OTWAT’s ending had to this, because the setup was displaced by a bunch of other stuff. I needed to redo the setup all over again, which I initially avoided to avoid redundancy. But then it just made the story feel jarring, it made the reveal feel a tad emptier.

            I suppose having this extra stuff for Luz still compensates for it overall, it’s still a decent net positive. But in the end I care about Luz a lot, I want to do her justice. And a scene where she suddenly reveals she knows how to carve her palisman after the adventure was better, but still not enough; It still felt like there wasn’t enough emphasis for the shenanigans with Hettie Cutburn, and her pep talk with Emira, to suffice. And it still felt out of nowhere. So I had to add the bit of Luz pondering over what her palisman would be, her getting an idea based on what Emira pointed out about Luz’s own life… And THEN the decision!

            So now we have an actual storyline within this episode that establishes Stringbean; It’s still part of a larger storyline that TiS plays into. But it feels like the question of Luz’s palisman is a legitimate quest that she succeeds in, and not an afterthought. It works in the context of the actual canon, going from Point A to Point B, but with Lost Hoots, that creates a lot of space that ends up feeling empty.

            This also led to some fun in-character ruminations for Luz, to reflect some degree of self-awareness regarding herself, which plays into Emira’s point later on! She’s not completely blind, her being reflective is a thing she does, Luz can just be too critical. But in the end Luz is emotionally receptive with herself at times, from the climax of Reaching Out, to even littler moments like acknowledging her own mistakes with Owlbert in Escapse of the Palismen! Speaking of Palismen…

            My current idea is that Luz’s concept sketches are a bat, scorpion, and dragon;

            It's meant to be a cheeky, retroactive bit of foreshadowing to have Luz’s concept sketches (the ones we see) be a bat, scorpion, and dragon; I liked the bat idea because of its symbolism, so Luz had a moment of self-awareness to bring it up. But also, it kinda preps up viewers, in a timeline where Lost Hoots aired chronologically with the show, to think Luz’s palisman would be one of these choices!

            But then we have the egg; But then again, it might still be there! So when Stringbean becomes the bat… and then the scorpion, and then the dragon, and then her true form! It’s like Luz gave her palisman a bunch of options, and Stringbean chose them all, as Luz herself did. She didn’t just give her agency, Luz gave things for Stringbean to start off with, and you could say the same for Eda and the isles as a whole for Luz, and both gave her that Palistrom.

            But I have to consider, Willow already guesses a bat right before the reveal of Stringbean, and TTT also had Luz suggest an octopus; So varying the possibilities for Luz felt more right to me. So instead, I might have another take where Luz consider giraffes, because they both found homes in each other’s realms, beings of two worlds…

            Luz would’ve said something like this, at first, but then I had her simply say they both visited each other’s worlds; I don’t want Luz quite owning up to her home in the demon realm just yet, if it’s at the beginning of an episode where she admits to Emira that she’s not sure if she could still stay, and ultimately she’s still in a state of uncertainty about which place Luz could have, much less if she could have both. And the cat was obvious, a reference to Luz saying things are going full-circle back in OTWAT, plus another bit of fun speculation early in the fandom with her hoodie, and a connecting point to her girlfriend!

            Eda praising Luz for sticking to her promise was a fun line, because I think it adds more nuance to Luz not telling the others about helping Belos meet the Collector, not yet she clarifies; Because she already has a recent example where she initially held something off due to her own indecision, only for that to work out as she did stick to that promise! So Luz doing it again makes it work in her head, but it’s not really the same thing but of course she thinks it’s the same. There’s no stakes giving herself time to do her Palisman, but there are emotional stakes to Luz keeping this secret and hurting herself and her loved ones as she isolates for longer and longer.

            And to be fair; She does try to commit to it, after all! She tries to tell the others at the end of Thanks to Them her decision to stay behind at least, when Belos revealed the other secret for her. Luz’s mom intentionally kept Luz from doing so, and Luz appreciated the effort to spare her privacy for something suicide-coded for a bit, but made it clear she still intended to follow through. So again, more nuance to Luz’s decisions, she does go through with it eventually. And maybe it’d have turned out better if she could’ve revealed these things on her own terms, hoo can necessarily say?

            It was also fun alluding to the egg Luz was carving; I did consider having the Bat Queen confirm that Stringbean is unprecedented in this regard, but I had King say it because I wanted Luz’s brother to have more participation in that reveal, and just more of a reaction in general; He’s closer to her. And the Bat Queen does see and doesn’t dispute, so I think it still works. In general I preferred it to be a more intimate moment between Luz, Eda, and King… But doing a whole separate scene messed with the flow, and tbh I think having Emira and BQ respectfully, quietly, and supportively observe still works?

            And since Emira did help inspire Luz, I think she’s allowed to know ahead of time. Because Luz’s point about Eda not being the only person to inspire; It wasn’t just a fun callback to Eda’s arc in TiS, but it also has a dual meaning here as well. Luz inspired Emira, but Emira inspired Luz… technically via Luz’s own inspiration so what goes around comes around!

            Also also I know that Luz confirming Stringbean and her have another thing in common is about them both choosing, as she later reveals. But given the whole gender discussion here, the revelation of the egg in the next episode could be interpreted as Luz saying she’s an Egg, as in Not Cis. Hence her line about getting what Emira means with regard to her gender.

            I left that line open-ended enough; She speaks of deciding her own appearance, so is it just that or is Luz referring to messing with her own gender? Being a trans girl, or just trans in general? Nonbinary, bigender? All of the above? Who can say, but I’m confident this girl ain’t cis and really that’s all we need to know. I’d like to keep it somewhat up to interpretation because Luz is a Schrodinger’s Cat in this way, she can be everything all at once and I think that’s more fitting to her character.

            I did entertain retroactively making this scene the reveal of Luz’s decision to carve an egg by having the camera reveal her concept sketch at the end, but I decided I didn’t want to supplant the canonical reveal. You could argue I already did so with Odalia being a traitor who knows about Belos’ BS, but to be honest I just found the scene where Luz explains her palisman to be so powerful that I didn’t want to undermine it; It was that good. But I could help lead into it.

            It does create some intrigue and suspense, a wonder of what these characters could be referring to, and I’d like to think the egg does live up to the setup; Aside from the trans allegory to half-jokingly make, there’s Luz confirming that similarity with Stringbean is their shared agency, I mean Stringbean presumably decides her own name the way Flapjack wordlessly communicates his own to Hunter! Overall, the careful thing about this scene was returning the momentum of Luz’s story back to the topic of her palisman, without repeating what she and Eda say about Stringbean during the egg reveal. So no Eda asking why Luz did it, and no reveal of the egg itself!

            I considered having Luz actually whisper it, unheard to the audience. King would’ve been surprised, but then claimed the design as a reference to a certain stage of life, so it still counts as him! The idea was to make this alternate timeline viewer wonder if it IS a Titan… Or maybe the bat, because King will eventually have bat wings! Or the dragon, because he kinda resembles one if you squint? But you have to go back; It’s the egg! He was an egg so Luz technically paid homage after all.

            Alas, the poor scorpion got no hints; I didn’t want Luz to ramble for too long on her options. But in the end, it wins out in another way; Stringbean sadly never gets the chance to snakeshift after her first display… Aside from the moment she creates a scorpion stinger for herself! So the scorpion gets its own unique rep there, and that made me content.

            And when Eda asks how Luz got inspired, she doesn’t say outright what her thought process is for the soon-to-be-revealed design because when screentime is precious, I’m not repeating what she’s going to say in canon in the next episode; So I alluded to how Luz’s explanation for prioritizing the Ivy mission over carving her Palisman, which of course spiraled well beyond what she expected. It was nice to get into what I consider Luz’s fatal flaw; Her tendency to get caught up in her own head.

            It comes up throughout the show, and especially during her depression in S3. I find it pretty relatable, as is Luz attempting to subvert that by distracting herself in Reaching Out, only to miss the part about how getting out of your head is for the sake of talking to others; And that’s what Luz does! Sure she listens too much to Vitimir and Ivy… But she also listens to Eda and Emira. And it was nice affirming how Eda’s actions go beyond; She inspired Perry, who motivated many across the isles, as it’s implied. She also inspired Luz, who then helped inspire Emira, who then returns the favor.

            Initially I didn’t get to fit it in, but then I realized I could; I liked the awkwardness of Emira guessing what’s going on between Luz and her mother; Em knows what happened between herself, her siblings, and their mother… But at the same time, she knows it isn’t necessarily the same with others. Maybe they really do just need a good talk. But Emira doesn’t want to risk not telling Luz what she needs to hear, so she risks some awkwardness by applying her own situation.

            It was a nice acknowledgement, which ties into the previous script, that in the end Luz shouldn’t worry about what her mother approves; It should be her happiness first. But it’s not quite right to dismiss the matter of Camila in her life either, especially when this show emphasizes connections, not letting the status quo rip families apart; Especially in the context of PoC! Luz shouldn’t have to reject her mother of color and her Dominican heritage in favor of a white mentor and a Slavic-inspired culture, they can and should co-exist!

            Emira’s white mother (who really is being White in the entitlement and greed from a place that never needed it) is not the same as Camila, who is struggling against the status quo. Camila and Odalia both struggle with their systems, but there’s still a clear divide, just as there was with Amelia and Willow prior, and while that was emphasized less in favor of what they have in common, here it’s emphasized more because Odalia’s a lot more of a mess than a kid who’s just a bit privileged but got over any bullying pretty quickly in the grand scheme of life.

            In the end, Luz still holds onto hope, as the show makes the distinction that if push comes to shove, she should still choose herself. But there’s also another bit of nuance I’d initially observed with this show; That at some point, her apprehension over staying in the isles evolves from the issue of her mother’s approval, to the inherent moral quandary for this world as a whole, given what Luz did for Belos, and thus “did” to hurt an entire society.

            We know Camila didn’t really mean it and acted out in the moment, but then calmed down, reflected, and had a proper apology prepared. But it doesn’t matter when Luz comes back, and that keeps things from being solved too easily. Luz struggles more, which makes her peace of mind feel so much more earned. It makes Camila’s struggle more complicated, as she’s forced to come to terms with not just accepting her kid, but herself, in order to avoid being a hypocrite as her daughter also struggles with. And the realization Luz is understood leads to Stringbean, it leads to her overcoming the moral quandary that isn’t even a moral quandary and that’s the point. It all ties together.

            So all in all, it was nice to have Luz voice her thoughts aloud, and to set us up for a lot more trouble even when she and Camila reunite. But it still segues into Emira pointing out that Luz does do good for this world, with herself as an example!

            The interplay between Luz and Emira was a lot of fun here, it’s among my favorite this whole Lost Hoots batch. Them being sisters, their little antics and how they surprise each other. And how Emira’s attempts to assert herself are also kind of about Luz, too… And when Luz finally lets herself appreciate Emira’s help, she notices and points out; Hey, I see you. I see that you’ve been trying to help.

            Originally the scene would’ve had Luz’s sudden moment of inspiration be interrupted by a voice on the speakers across the hospital, telling the nurses to prepare moving patients to the jugular for the Day of Unity. I thought it a good way to keep Luz from getting engrossed in her thoughts, which could make for a quicker transition, esp since I was trying to keep an already long script shorter while still making room for this more explicit version of her Palisman-anxiety storyline. I found it a bit melancholy, a reminder that this is the point of no return, not just for the isles and for the season but really Lost Hoots itself, this is the final speculative script, the last bit of the unknown of something new, and then back to the hard, known definitions of canon!

            But I cut it out. I think I prefer Luz just naturally noticing, on her own, Emira’s intrigue; And what this says for Luz, about Luz noticing how much Emira is invested in her, Luz being aware of the people around her. It fits better into her arc and it feels sweeter, it feels appropriate that Emira trying to place her attention onto Luz just reminds Luz of what she needs to do in return.

            And so when Luz tells Emira she’s not just a good sibling but a great friend… The prioritization of the bonds Emira chooses versus the obligations she has. The recognition of the pressure, the need to be recognized at all; That in her self-pity, Luz was exhausting someone trying to help, who also needed help. The relief for both that comes in reciprocating. And it was such a wonderful moment between these two sisters-in-law, something that wasn’t even in the first draft, but discussing Emira with others online inspired me to give more credit to her pressure. I’m really happy with it.

            I give Luz and Emira something else in common; People who are into body horror and the grotesque, but also forget themselves as they constantly focus on others, and worry too much about living up to their role as the helper, only for them to remind one another that maybe they can do their own thing for themselves and are just as loved and appreciated for it.

            And this segues nicely into Luz being the one to guide Emira during the chase sequence; Emira gets to follow someone’s advice for once, instead of having to decide everything, it feels like a relief! Initially it was pretty much all Emira, save for Luz’s idea to use the whistle and waste Hettie’s time. But then I realized that Luz has been in the healing track much longer than Emira, and has a background of healers in her family; Wouldn’t she know more?

            So I struck a nice balance between Luz and Emira knowing; Luz knowing basic stuff about the body, while Emira knows stuff more pertaining to magic. Thus, Luz bringing up oxygen, while Emira points out the limits of a certain spell. This revised draft really makes them feel more like equal contributors and not just Emira bringing Luz about.

            And it’s not devaluing Emira’s expertise either (though I’ll always prioritize Luz over her), because again; Now we have this following up Emira as someone who’s done so much for others, and can now receive guidance after passing it out herself. They’re supporting each other, Emira’s not the only one babysitting the Bat Queen’s babies, hence Luz helping out.

            And even if she does, Emira reiterating afterwards that she doesn’t want to be a mother is valid. As she said with her own siblings and people in general, Emira will help as necessary because it’s right; Unlike her mother who continues to screw over others despite her current privilege because she wants more and lets her baggage continue to define her, Emira does have baggage over being forced into a caretaker role, but she knows her privilege, she calls out the greed of Blight Industries and other groups in the very next episode.

            And so she’ll still do her part instead of insisting that she gets a complete pass for it, and turn a blind eye to her privilege and what she should be doing with it; If not using the money of Blight Industries, using her familial status to try and tear it apart from within so no more suffering can be encouraged to profit from.

            So she has done her part, that plays into the initial premise of talking down their parents, and the part of the Blight kids and family in this rebellion; Otherwise, Em isn’t seeking out the nurturing role. This plays into her Healing magic; It’s far less about others, and about herself, it’s about Emira directing her attention and the magic she’s learning inward.

            Her foil Hettie also does the same! Indeed, Hettie might act maternal and nurturing, but she’s clearly selfish about it, even with Belos, making a note of it at one point. And so we have selfish healers, and one of them acts maternal and is imposing maternal ideas onto Emira… Suggesting that in the end, Emira isn’t actually helping anyone, either, if she goes with Hettie’s role of the nurse. She can do just fine studying medicine, or being a surgeon.

            Emira’s not the only one dealing with a parental specter, either; I wanted to incorporate the lore from the cancelled S1B episode Homesick, the motif of Luz as a Healer I’d considered back in 1A when speculating on her magic track before we found out it was all. But the writers still felt the same in storyboarding that episode at all!

            Manny’s haunting the narrative again, as he briefly did in SMA. Luz approaching the hospital is apprehensive; It’s not just that it’s creepy or empty, because the isles being empty is very much in reference to OTWAT earlier showing these migrations, which lends to a somber atmosphere.

            It’s the recognition of the hospital, as we later find out, as where Manny slowly died. It’s a traumatic experience for Luz… But then she also acknowledges, oh yeah! Manny was an ambulance driver. So it’s not just all bad for her; For a while, the hospital was a symbol of her dad’s heroics, a beacon of hope in his job that he always went back to.

            Luz might feel like Hettie Cutburn; A healer who does more harm than healing, whose love is destructive. Hettie hugs people like Luz hugs King; Roselle and Dottie represent King’s frustration over people like this, and they work with Hettie. Of course Luz never went that far, King still loved her… Hettie is far too eager to claim triumph for healing others, whilst Luz is practically in denial of the restoration she’s performed. Luz has mixed feelings about the hospital and the associated legacy of her family as healers, and then she runs into a caricature of herself.

            Both Luz and Hettie begin their quests trying to heal an older person they look up to, who is struggling with a curse; Indeed, Eda and Belos are paralleled in their relationship with their curses. They might come across as silly, overly eager idiots to some, but they’re actually quite clever and adaptive, and have the patience to experiment and innovate on a technical level; Hettie’s a lot older than Luz, so she’s managed to hone her healing magic to her own body to do some impressive regeneration! They can both be a bit short-sighted and impatient for immediate gratification, Emira herself had to deal with the consequences of Luz going for that training wand.

            But in the end, Luz conquers her own impatience and continues to win out for it, plans ahead; Whereas Hettie is a lot more on the fly, changing on a whim, and sabotages herself for it. Luz respects Eda’s boundaries and has the relationship she wants with her. Hettie… to be fair, Belos would never give her a loving relationship, even those who are respectful get screwed over, look at so many beforehand! And Cutburn doesn’t know it, but she deserves to torment Belos. All that said, she’s not getting what she wants from him, or anyone else; Except maybe Roselle and Dottie, but they’re not patients who have the eternal patience (Puns!) Hettie demands from them, but not herself.

            I loved leaning into Luz’s feelings of being a problem child who causes chaos. Only for a trickster like Emira to affirm that she liked Luz for that. And in the end, Luz is a healer, her disruption is what challenges the status quo hurting people. It was fun giving her the tornado glyph because wind is an element of change I always liked assigning Luz back in S1, because she flies alongside the Owl Lady. And it’s an element of chaos, as Luz shows back in SMA, complimenting Vitimir’s own chaotic potion experiments.

            So after Luz affirms herself, we have the specter of Manny protecting her with his knowledge; Thereby showing that yes, he still loves her. He still cares. She has not failed him. Her healing effect on Emira (and Eda) is accomplished in the hospital, Luz outmaneuvers Hettie (just as Emira literally escapes the specter of maternity she represents), and is met with the Bat Queen, whom she helped heal earlier, in contrast to Hettie who injured her to begin with.

            In the end I had to strike a careful balance; Maintaining the setup to Luz’s despair, and still giving her hope. Because she’s pretty hopeful when she carves Stringbean out of inspiration for her own choices! She’s still trying! King’s Tide brought despair yes, but the very next morning in-universe Luz put herself back together and kept trying; There was still a lot of fun and joy.

            People have to remember that Luz’s depression came gradually across two months of trying, as she slowly realized she might not make it back. Hence the despair’s return. And Luz is getting these affirmations from people she’s left behind in the demon realm, especially Eda and King, who she feels she can trust more with her ‘sin’ because it’s about that core trio in the end, man.

            So Luz has the setup to consider giving up her dream if it continues to be destructive, as seen in SMA. But then there’s hope in realizing she still has agency in TiS, Luz does good helping the Bat Queen and her babies, she succeeds in getting back those memories in LtG. And Emira shows her the good she’s done to the Blights in OKaF, which happens full scale right after with Alador standing up for the family; If only Luz had been there to hear his thanks!!!

            And still her depression makes sense after two months, after admitting that there’s still bad things she can’t change and they’ll still happen, hence being cut off after the Day of Unity. In fact, having agency makes you responsible, which makes Luz feel guilty for failing; It’s not the absolvement of things being inevitable, as Perry initially hoped.

            Yet acknowledging her own agency is also necessary alongside acknowledging that she was tricked, and at the wrong place in the wrong time; These come together in Hunter making his point in S3 that Luz was manipulated, but she can take the opportunity to undo the harm if she wants to. Giving characters the affirmation I want while still maintaining the rhythm of their storyline at this point and the eventual breakdown; As with Willow, it was tricky but interesting.

            Luz is trying to take care of Eda in this episode, and her concern for Eda is clearly a parallel to what happened with Manny in hindsight. Motherhood is a motif, after episodes about Sisterhood and Fatherhood, even TiS is also about Parenthood in general! The Bat Queen arc is resolved here with her finding her kids, and I had the chance to finally use that whistle.

            And even if Emira still doesn’t get to properly hang out with Eda, her storyline does end with Eda expressing approval and offering guidance, as well as the Bat Queen also offering approval; Emira may not want to be a mother, but she definitely needs one and respects those who are, so now she has two thanking her for helping them be mothers by saving their kids.

            I also wanted to very briefly acknowledge why she and a few other characters don’t have palismen, not even in the epilogue. Alas, I had to settle for just… Emira talking about not wanting to be a mom, which immediately leads into the Bat Queen explaining how the palismen under her charge are children to her; For some, it’s a hassle they don’t necessarily need, and they’d rather direct their time and energy into other forms of magic. Or anything, really! Many palismen are created by their owners so I guess in a metaphorical way they are parents to them, depending on whichever interpretation you think is appropriate.

            There’s also Odalia! This was one of the first things I knew I wanted to tackle in Lost Hoots; How Odalia knew about the draining spell, and why she assumes her family is exempt. That’s definitely something the show was forced to skip over, and yeah I agree in how other characters are a greater priority. But with Odalia…

            I wanted to show why Alador thinks he can talk to her; She’s someone insecure, and thus puts up this not entirely false front of needing him. On some level she does, she’s afraid that she needs him, more than Alador needs her. But in reality, Odalia could easily ignore Alador’s advice if it goes against what she wants; So while she has ‘listened’ to Alador’s advice, he doesn’t realize this distinction. He thinks she’ll listen to him in general.

            Hence Escaping Expulsion; Alador gets Odalia to back down by explaining how the situation can actually be beneficial to her. But the fact that he even starts off with the ethical side to it, when Odalia would never care, is indicative of his misunderstanding. Alador’s input has always been about how X is actually better for Odalia, or Y is an alternate method to get what she wants (Think back to what I said about how their kids banding together may risk unionization, but it could also make them a more cohesive workforce). But in CotH, there is none of this; He’s telling her she needs to outright stop, and that’s when her true colors show.

            And I showed that Odalia still cares about Alador! This is not mutually exclusive from her caring more about what Alador can do for her. So she’ll defend his honor if Odalia doesn’t see any reason for this to be mutually exclusive from defending and prioritizing herself. She cares for him in her own twisted little way. But you can see how the stress of knowing her betrayal and being called out builds up to Odalia in CotH having to make that choice between Alador, and what Alador can do for her.

            This episode leads directly into CotH, this episode ensures every Blight has development and a storyline of some sort. Emira discussing her mother leads to her actual mother, who gets the setup for the payoff of her confrontation with Alador. The Blights are a pretty consistent part of the show, with Amity just below the core trio in billing; So it makes sense we develop more and lead up into this final resolution before the big season finale with the Day of Unity. Odalia is the corporation destroying the world, and after her is Belos, the social conservative.

            I know I just said these four episodes have two halves; One about the Basilisks and the other of the Bat Queen. But you could argue the Bat Queen duology intersects with another; The Blight Family duology. Specifically with Odalia and Alador, so that’s fun.

            Likewise, it was fun exploring Darius and Odalia’s dynamic; I’d considered exploring Darius’ feelings through a reunion with Hunter… But there’s only so much space, Hunter is one of the least priorities for me here. And in the end, it was sufficient exploring Darius through his interactions with Odalia; Plus, it gives more motive to Darius. I’ve always had my HCs about him seeing Abominations as an art form that Alador has commodified.

            So it’s nice to reiterate motives for Darius outside of what happened to those white boys; That he has opinions on a craft personal and chosen for himself. He has issues with the system. And this plays into Darius reiterating his feelings and doing this for himself, as his bond with Eberwolf makes Hettie’s later threat feel harsher.

            His artistic opinions also serve to characterize Darius’ falling out with Alador and Odalia, and those two, more; The implication that Odalia and Darius both were tutored by the Golden Guard, as a parallel to Amity being tutored by Lilith, and how Amity points out that Odalia wanted to be a covenscout.

            There was already a falling-out with Alador, and Odalia initially took Darius’ side because she likes him more, plus they’ll be together in the same coven, right? But then she felt the sting of being overlooked, and so came crawling back to Alador out of revenge, and a way to find her own agency outside of the coven through her company… Only to eventually come back to it on her own terms, sort of.

            Odalia’s penultimate line in the show is wishing someone would acknowledge her potential; I had a lot of fun in letting that motivate her, the irony of her opportunistic greed recognizing the potential of others. And the parallelism with her daughter doing a bunch for other people, but wishing someone would recognize her in turn; And Luz does!

            And of course, that’s how Belos gets her; Odalia isn’t stupid, but like Belos she isn’t always as smart as she thinks she is. At the same time she’s missing out on context, which hearkens back to what Osran, mentioned later, says about most oracles; They’re working on what they know. Odalia understandably can’t imagine why anyone would do all of this if not for some sort of monetary gain or power, because she has no context for how ridiculous Puritans can be. Similarly, Gus in the prior episode also alludes to not really getting it, just understanding it’s still a thing.

            It also doesn’t help that for Odalia, her entire understanding of her world has been completely shattered, and nothing makes sense now; So rationalizing this development in a way she can understand is what she does to feel in control, to feel like things are logical and can be worked with. That need for it all to make sense and thus negotiable, almost like another one of her business deals, is what Belos takes advantage of.

            Indeed, Odalia attempts to assert agency and confidence by approaching Belos with a business proposition, and that assumption that everyone else is like her leads to her undoing. She can’t imagine people not feeling the same way about things, nor not being motivated in the same ways, and it plays into Odalia’s disconnect with her children, with Darius, etc.

            Lost Hoots starts with a B-plot about empathy, and here we end with a B-plot about the lack of it. Like Vitimir, Odalia needs to believe she can somehow salvage this revelation, and make all of her devotion to the coven system still worth it in the end; As King would say, nobody wants to believe they’ve dedicated themselves to a lie. So Odalia operates on massive copium to insist her life’s work didn’t just enable a meaningless genocide, that in the end it still worked out for her, or would.

            At best, Odalia might’ve snagged herself a bit of vengeance, but in the end, she’s like Kikimora in that they ruined themselves by clinging to a toxic mindset afterwards, instead of exposing Belos as soon as they could’ve. The parallels are obvious with Belos implicating Kikimora’s knowledge, as well as both of them being adults trying to take advantage of children in S3; One is just more successful than the other. And Odalia embraces similarities, as well as the knowledge of any company from the old life she’s about to abandon, with her offering of Roka.

            Belos’ lie about his true goal was based on a HC that contributed to me making this whole fic, in fact. I considered Belos’ lie about the draining spell’s purpose being different; It’d instead funnel power into himself, or the moon would create a new army, something like that. But I settled for my original plan, because it placed a lot more leverage onto Odalia, so it’d make more sense for her to agree to this, thinking she could turn the tides if she ever needed to.

            And of course that’s what Belos was thinking as well. And so when he also brings up Odalia replacing Osran, you think of this scene, and their next interaction, and how Odalia mentions wanting her potential recognized. Of course she fell for that. When he praises the Abomatons, Odalia sees it as Alador’s and her own work (because Odalia encouraged Alador to upgrade the Abomatons at all) being recognized. As with Alador, Odalia is really looking for what she wants to hear, not what she needs to, and Belos at least understood this.

            This also tracks with the plan involving manipulating children, which Odalia claims to do perfectly! To an extent, yes; But this is contrasted this very episode with Emira asserting herself away from Odalia, so her control is not as absolute as she’s hinging this new plan on to be. And while there was supposed to be more with Odalia’s resolution in the Archives, in the end I’ll just have to settle for Odalia crossing this line because she thinks she can control kids, and wants to be recognized…

            So for two whole months, Odalia is forced to realize she can’t manipulate a particular child and is instead controlled by him, before this makes her lament that she isn’t recognized; And then Belos shows up and Odalia regrets it. Only to not be recognized at all, he was gunning for Raine! So she’s okay at least, but in the end Odalia can’t have it both ways like she claims; Either she’s not recognized and safe, or she is and… Yeah. Odalia will have to take the former instead of Belos.

            Belos is a misogynist, the first episode is about Eda dealing with a form of misogyny via Warden Wrath that technically isn’t the case in-universe due to the setting, but symbolically is. This show was made in response to a misogynistic claim that nobody would be interested in seeing a young girl and her mentor, an older woman. The witch trials were inherently misogynistic, Belos wants to murder a woman he feels threatened by. He demands Luz validate him. He’s a misogynist.

            So fittingly, both of his appearances in this batch are about feeling threatened by a woman who can hurt him; He technically, successfully manipulates them away. But not without feeling manhandled, not without being screwed over in some regard; Belos lost the Bat Queen’s children, after we see how his curse’s Palisman demands are growing.

            Belos fears Hettie, who like Warden Wrath occupies a paradoxical position; She’s a powerful woman whom this patriarchal figure can’t fully control and is intimidated by for it, yet at the same time her cutesy, self-infantilizing demeanor plays into a lot of IRL internalized misogyny of late; Particularly, the link with fascist citizens infantilizing themselves to distract from the fact that they’re very much grown, lucid, malicious adults, or at the very least should know and act better.

            Hettie and Belos are alike in that cheeky way, although Cutburn is much more genuine about enjoying the aesthetic for herself. All the while, Emira clearly struggles with parentification, but is uninterested in infantilizing herself, nevertheless being mature enough to take responsibility whenever she has to, while still letting herself be a kid again. Hettie’s offer of misogynistic control may offer absolution, but Emira owns up and this leads nicely to her calling out her mother’s unethical practices that she’s benefitted from, but now rejects.

            Belos’ bad luck extends with him technically getting Odalia to not threaten his spell… But he was stricken with a binding oath. The binding oath was a fun callback to Covention, and the implications it has for Amity. Odalia says this isn’t a children’s binding oath; So Amity’s might’ve only hurt Luz twice as much, which is still insane but this is Amity before her development, tbf. Or I’ve considered the HC that it’d just create a glowing message over Luz’s head that she broke her oath, if she ever breaks it.

            But here, it comes back naturally as a way for Odalia to secure, in her own eyes, her family’s safety. I wanted to create consequences that don’t contradict what we see on-screen, but are still consequences; So the idea of your pain being worsened tenfold made sense. Belos thinks he can get out of this (plus he still has to take the oath, what choice does he have?) by just being the coward he usually is. Luz ruins this, and upon applying that sigil, Belos has been haunted by Odalia’s insurance for the rest of his existence.

            Odalia still digs her own grave, you can see how she snuffs out the last of her compassion when she sees Alador and decides her plans are more important; And right after remarking that unlike Kikimora, she could have it both ways. She’s forced to make that choice and like Kikimora, she chooses the coven. To Odalia, being strong to face Belos, and being strong to force her family into going along, are both the same thing.

            I really wanted to show the transition from an abusive mother who still loves her husband and isn’t a complete monster, to… a complete monster. Odalia is perturbed by the genocide like anyone else, but in her greed and confusion, decides there must be some monetary benefit behind this, something worth genocide; And that’s when she loses her mind. With Darius calling out Odalia as someone who is fine with profiting off of and even encouraging violence, perhaps this was the inevitable conclusion to her mentality.

            So while Odalia does have an explanation for supporting the genocide, it doesn’t matter to Alador because ethics are his concern; And for Odalia, she doesn’t bother explaining, because what’s more important is the betrayal of Alador not blindly trusting her to begin with. Even if she had explained how the family was safe and secure and due for wealth (they weren’t), that wouldn’t address the underlying issue, they’d still keep fighting.

            But as awful as Odalia and the coven heads are, they don’t deserve this from Belos and are due their revenge. Belos might scare Odalia for a bit later on, but even then he has to focus on saving himself over getting back at Odalia, who flees; And of course, Belos prioritizes getting to the Collector in case she’s trying to warn them. He never gets the chance for revenge, or to make Odalia undo the oath. Maybe she can’t, this is an oath for adults.

            How is the binding oath still oracle magic, when it deals in pain; Which Hettie alludes to falling under healing when discussing a numbing spell? Different forms of magic can accomplish the same effects; Construction can make you jump higher because gravity is turned off. Beastkeeping can enable you to fly by copying a demon’s anatomy. Bard magic can levitate. Oracles can summon ghosts to lift you up. The nine magics have distinctions, but in the end they’re not supposed to be strictly separate, as Eda insinuates as early as the third episode.

            Oracle magic is perception, it deals in spirits and ghosts and how they interact with bodies; So through this channel, a binding oath can make you perceive pain tenfold. And thus Belos’ final moments of agony have Odalia contributing; The final thing Belos feels, the pain of having his brains smeared into the dirt, are something Odalia is there to add to in spirit.

            I got to play into Odalia being scared of Belos, to thinking she has control and is safe from him. I played into Kikimora’s lack of creativity in how she’s repeating the lie Belos told Odalia but making it real! Plus Odalia investing in Kikimora at all, because now we see why she thinks Kikimora will be alive after the draining spell.

            And it’s a callback to her reward from Terra, which I speculated might be sincere in the context of the genocide; Obviously not because Belos can’t even turn off the sigil for himself, due to having never anticipated he’d get sigil’d, and being too racist to willingly spare people.

            I have a HC that Odalia and Kikimora actually met up after the Day of Unity, repeated Belos’ lie, and decided to make it true for themselves; Odalia would manipulate the Collector for them both, while Kikimora would groom the children. Of course Odalia chose the more lucrative target, the one who’d get her more power… Only to realize she was in over her head when manipulating a child not beholden to or impressed by her, whatsoever. And Kikimora just wanted away from that kid after all of the failure, when she could’ve potentially exploited her contribution in freeing the Collector. Alas!

            I also had fun deciding how Odalia even knows; Abomatons having security footage is too much of a giveaway, because then Belos wouldn’t buy them if Odalia could just check; Someone would at least warn him about it. But Odalia being able to check programming, seeing how this came before Perry’s broadcast (a distinction I almost didn’t add in), using a ghost… Again, oracle magic is his undoing, after Osran failed and ended up fulfilling Belos’ plans.

            In the end; It’s because of Darius. The rebellion’s effort wasn’t for nothing; Their Plan A failed, for reasons I’ll elaborate on. But the act of getting everyone together led to the draining spell being undone anyway, the CATTs’ efforts still worked because of decisions they chose to make, because of butterfly effect.

            Darius got together the kids, and him destroying that Abomaton led to Odalia learning the truth. This leads to her investing in Kikimora with the Abomatron. Without Darius, Luz wouldn’t have even been sent to Blight Manor, nor would she need to without Odalia doubling down. Kikimora wouldn’t have kidnapped Luz, nor would she have made it to the skull without the Abomatron. King wouldn’t have followed her all the way there; King wouldn’t have come across the Collector with Kikimora, who turned out to be the true savior of the isles, because the Meek shall inherit. Funny how fate works!

            So Darius’ efforts do pay off, as does Perry’s broadcast buying time for King to do all of this. It could’ve gone even further; I liked re-contextualizing the Blight kids staying at Blight Manor, and trying to convince their parents. Not only do we have Perry’s message to add to it, but it makes Darius more clever about something he obviously noticed to begin with; The CATTs might’ve still sabotaged the ritual if Raine and the others hadn’t been detained by the Abomatons. If those Abomatons had been turned against the coven heads…

            Alas, Odalia and Kikimora prolonged the fight for the remote, Odalia sent covenscouts that made the group crash, so by the time they made it to the ritual, as they were also on their way to save Luz, it was already well into effect before Alador’s remote could be within range to shut down the Abomatons there. And Alador couldn’t even make it there when there were too many Abomatons overwhelming him for this remote to reliably turn off at a time; It wasn’t designed to turn off so many at a time, why would it be?

            Making these weapons, and so many; He would’ve never guessed such a situation could backfire on him and even the world so badly, in the end I imagine Alador always had a bit of arrogance to side with Odalia over Darius, and it almost ruins things once more; But thankfully, before it’s too late, not just for Al himself but the isles.

            Thus, it’s a back and forth, people trying their best. Darius anticipates how much trouble the Abomatons would be after Belos correctly predicts how much they could help (that’s why Kikimora was there and yet that leads to Darius’ other unintended contribution working out)… While failing to account for how much they could backfire, because I think it’s important to demonstrate that Belos can sometimes be an arrogant idiot who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, because of his disinterest in the mechanics of the world around him, the very thing that drives him to this pointless quest and its suffering for him; I imagine it’s why he carved glyphs into his skin instead of using tattoos.

            So Darius got into contact with these kids, who already take him seriously because of Hunter, and while Dari never quite gets to interact with them, it’s fun to have him convincing Alador and Odalia’s kids to rebel against them, not that they weren’t already doing so. It makes what Amity, Emira, and Edric do feel larger, not that shutting down the Abomatons isn’t justified in that season finale, which was the reason I added more context; I bet those kids guessed it, too!

            And it helps add to the connectivity of this rebellion; Our protagonists are all coming together. It’s still a bit doomed, and in the original canon it makes sense that with there not being enough time both in-universe and on a writing level, they couldn’t coordinate as well. But since there is time, let’s make use of it! Whatever hopelessness is lost is fine I feel, given the net gain from Lost Hoots, and the revelations that Kikimora drops.

            That revelation kind of leads to her and Roka indirectly saving the day, an Abomaton ruined it, only for an Abomatron to somehow fix it. Irony. I imagine Kikimora would let the realization that she was the savior, after all, get to her head. And this contrasts with Vitimir, who thinks he’ll be the savior, only to guarantee everyone’s doom by giving Belos intel on the sabotage.

            I still dunno how Belos (possibly) anticipated the CATTs coming into his mindscape, if he expected assassins but didn’t know their identities, or just adapted on the fly to people showing up there. But given Belos didn’t know of Flapjack and only knew of a hat being taken in a room where security would’ve been rigged anyway, I know damn well any expectation was because of someone else, probably a prophecy by Osran. Same goes for what Kikimora says about eyes everywhere; She’s just generalizing because she doesn’t know the exact method herself. But I saw the chance to elaborate.

            Originally, Vitimir and Osran would’ve found Lilith’s old scrying potion, and reversed the connection to spy on Lilith and learn of the plan. I would throw in a line about the connection being only a glimpse, to explain why Darius and Eberwolf weren’t implicated. Vit and Ozzy’s team up would’ve prompted Graye to team up with Mason out of desperation!

            But I decided I preferred how Lilith had the last laugh against Belos by punching him; I didn’t want to undo that by having Belos exploit something she made against him, for the sake of the others. I didn’t want Lilith’s sincere effort that strengthened her bonds to be turned against her.

            So thanks to Lilith, I changed it up; Instead we have the implication that Vitimir taught her the scrying potion, and was always going to have this plan even if he didn’t. I set limits to the scrying potion to explain why it wasn’t used more; It only showed a hallway Lilith stood guard in, not even a meeting room. Lilith used her hair instead of her whole self, of course.

            And if the scrying potion has limits, this is why everyone can’t just use it… But then this ties back to the airship I added at the end of TiS mostly for fun. And suddenly it all worked out; Vitimir saw the airship Raine, Steve, and Eda were on. So he saw the disguise, the Abomatons were sent to look for Raine and Steve. But he didn’t see Darius and Eberwolf, which is why the other coven heads are surprised by their involvement.

            Belos seemed to have anticipated it, since he’s been noticing Darius’ feelings since Hunter’s coronation as Golden Guard. But he didn’t bring it up to the coven heads, figuring they’d handle the situation, and to be fair they still did. But he really thinks he’s so clever in noticing Darius, as if he wouldn’t have been blindsided by a decoy and the power of Eda’s curse. He’s naturally wary of anyone who’d motivate another Caleb to be anti-genocide, but that’s really it.

            Lilith wasn’t the only factor, I’d also jokingly considered Vitimir having a cameo in Hettie’s hospital, and reacting to Luz. So when I came with this new idea, suddenly it all came into place with Vitimir sabotaging Hettie, because I wanted to show how coven heads backstab each other and their own mission in order to take credit. And this is what gets him the scrying potion’s angle, while also creating a fun interaction between the two; Vitimir anticipates he’ll need a distraction, so he frees the other patients and is correct.

            But Hettie doesn’t realize this and wants to pay him back; Hettie is right behind Vitimir on their way to the ritual in King’s Tide, so perhaps she’s obliviously shadowing him out of gratitude, believing there’s actually something there between them. And Vitimir just has to put up with it, having not wanted anything else to do, setting things up to be done with Cutburn (One must implore the Titan; Why do all the bad bitches go to those who don’t appreciate them??!?).

            It’s funny, because before this they didn’t really care for each other; Hettie felt the same way towards Vit as she did everyone else. Vitimir saw her as a bit of a ditz. But through pure accident and circumstance, now they’re stuck together and will be even after the Day of Unity and the Collector’s reign. But per Vitimir’s philosophy, adapt and consider if there’s something else he could use her for… Vitimir can step his foot down around Hettie, but we’ve seen she can do the same. Equal leverage between two toxic baddies!!! Even if she might realize or suspect the truth, I don’t think it’d stop Hettie from pursuing Vitimir anyhow, because it still technically happened, and why not chase on a whim?

            (How then she does feel about the situationship between Vitimir and Lilith? Probably an immediate gut reaction of rage towards this “Skank whore bitch” because Internalized Misogyny before immediately calming down and having fiendish enthusiasm over the thought of them being a messed up throuple. She would NOT care about Lily’s sexuality. Poetically, feeling put off only to quickly see an opportunity is how Vit feels about Hettie.)

            Plus, the unsurprising revelation that Hettie’s patients are often healed, but she still keeps them around! I had fun adding a jab towards healthcare workers who violate their patients’ privacy for clout, and tying that to Hettie being an “E-girl.” Plus Hettie’s whole slasher vibe, the HC of her limited healing so she’s not unstoppable, but still a Terminator, and the push and pull of exploiting her limits. And just the horror of Hettie surviving the fire, again like the Terminator. Have I mentioned I love the Terminator?

            Hettie was so much fun here; Being unstoppable. Having limits, but don’t think you’ve won just yet; She’s clever enough to find a way around. And so when our protagonists flee, it’s justified when Hettie shows how she can still keep fighting, and almost crashes LEK. And the way the Bat Queen’s spell went with the established weakness, and how it’s something Vitimir could exploit, and create a cover of helping Hettie with… Oh yeah, it’s all coming together!

            Roselle and Dottie were added just for the sake of callbacks to an episode I felt deserved more appreciation. The way they act is quite like Hettie, Cutburn is just their behavior taken fully seriously. I always love how TOH recontextualizes things, so Lost Hoots was my way of doing that in full force, while adding my own bits. Thus, Roselle and Dottie are an echo chamber of madness with Hettie.

            My HC is that they’re senior coworkers who took Hettie under her wing when she first became a nurse; They bonded over their shared fantasies. And when Hettie became coven head, she gave them huge pay raises. But they still work because they love this specific job, to the point where Roselle and Dottie do their own version of it in their freetime! Gal pals. I don’t think they recognize Luz because it was such a brief incident in their larger lives, and vice-versa.

            Elaborating on healing magic was a lot of fun; I feel relatively satisfied with how I’ve expanded on all the covens, except for Beastkeeping. I couldn’t find room for that. But I like to think that it’s like being a Pokemon trainer, and tailored to boosting your own beast, or even adopting demonic traits like Eberwolf does! Plus symbiotic relationships, like Eberwolf having fleas and so many other parasites in their body, but they help each other.

            I imagine the communication barrier between beast and witch to be something that can drive at least one mad as they strain to translate and adapt to a totally foreign way of thinking to deliver commands… But Eber was raised by Direwolves and can walk both ways of thinking just fine, and that’s how they’re a coven head. After reading The Jojolands’ latest arc after finishing the script for OKaF, I’ve considered a story where Eber’s parasites fight Hettie’s pathogens, borne of her own body, inside of someone’s body to save them!

            But again, I digress; There are still other worldbuilding ideas I could’ve done. I was happy to finally figure out, after months of being stumped, where Hettie’s hospital would be located; I wanted it someplace that could feasibly be along the path towards Latissa, from Palm Stings. But it also had to, feasibly, be a place Emira would go out of her path to go towards. I’d considered maybe the jugular, or the shoulder, but wasn’t sure how to characterize either. But then it all came together when I recalled how Dell mentioned visiting the ‘Mandible’ back in Eda’s childhood, presumably to help heal her curse.

            I always found it curious the distinction between Mandible and Skull; Is the Titan’s lower jaw not as sacred, that Dell could be allowed to visit, despite potentially being a wild witch? Does it represent some bridging point between the rest of the body and the divinity of the Skull? But then the finale came out, I saw the Titan’s prominent tusks. And at some point it clicked to me; Could one not interpret the tusks of the Titan as, well… Mandibles? And if they’re separate enough from the main skull, perhaps by having fallen off; It would be important, but not too important, right?

            Since there are two mandibles, I had to decide upon which one; So I chose the Right Mandible, because the geography worked better with LEK and Emira’s trajectories. And as I thought about how one would characterize this place, it seemed fitting to play into how we’re always told to brush our teeth, to get pearly whites, etc. The theme of sterility and purity fits nicely with a place so close to a divine site, but also the workplace of the head of the Healing Coven…

            And so of course Dell would go here to find a cure, because this place is obsessed with purity; Plaque forms way too readily, like on any tooth, so it’s somewhat inspired by the environment and not just snobbiness. But there IS a snobby attitude, I’d like to imagine; If the Right(eous) Mandible, which does a pun on its name as being the superior, is all clean… What of the Left Mandible? Perhaps that community allows its plaque to roam freely. It’s all fun ideas and potential that alas, can’t be fully expanded upon even if you wanted.

            I was a bit inspired by this very fancy mall I’d recently went to, so of course this ivory city is a rich neighborhood, it’s obsessed with cleanliness, with personal appearance like anyone who can invest that much into pearly whites from their dental insurance. It’s sacred, it’s important, it’s a site of healing so imagine how expensive the operations are here. It’s exactly the place Emira would find the expensive kind of healing cream, and as for why Odalia didn’t move the family there…

            Well, I guess she wanted to be close to Blight Industries, but the Right Mandible would not allow such a building built upon its premises. Plus, Blight Industries IS messy with Abominations (cue the irony of Darius), and again like with Hexside, I imagine personal nostalgia made Odalia opt to stick with the Right Arm. But it’s all the Right Side of the Titan’s body, hence why Dell doesn’t have to clarify which Mandible he’s going to, because for the people of Bonesborough that’s their Mandible; For Palm Stings, it’s the Left Mandible haha. Could I say that Kikimora’s mismatched tusks foreshadowed different Mandibles? Hoo knows…

            If you’re wondering, I don’t think Hettie was necessarily born at the Mandible, and I don’t think she was operating back when Dell visited; I think it’s a Chicken or the Egg situation, where the best healers gravitate towards the Right Mandible. Given my headcanon that Hettie initially worked with Roselle and Dottie… They seem based in Bonesborough, however I don’t want Hettie to be from there, if only because it makes the world feel smaller to have that many coven heads from the same place. So who knows? Maybe she IS a demon of the Mandible, and her pale appearance and horns play into it. How fitting that Hettie’s teeth get knocked out, just for her to show their prevailing spirit; Opposite to the plaque outside!

            I initially didn’t have the ending sequence of LEK arriving back at Latissa, but I decided to include it after all. I feel the episode ending on this cliffhanger of Odalia’s deal feels more in line with how the show’s episodes work; But in the end, it felt a bit too sudden to jump from LEK flying off, to everyone already being in the Latissa hideout. So I added their return to make the reunion feel more of a natural cut. It also gave me the opportunity to add in Raine, and the new hope that LEK brings, not just on a rebellion level because without them it would’ve been doomed, but a personal one because Raine’s spent too much on the greater good, they deserve the ‘lesser’ good for themselves and their happiness!