#media comparison

Indie, Magical Girl Version

Anime-Inspired, Action-Oriented Version

Comic Book Scientific Superhero Version

Afrofantasy, Chosen One with Archery Skills Version

Okay so I’ve been sitting with this for a while, and as a POC myself, I really want to talk about how The Owl House and Amphibia approached BIPOC representation—because honestly? Amphibia did it way better.

Let’s start with The Owl House. Luz is a Dominican-American girl, right? But it really felt like her cultural identity was just there. Like, surface-level (not saying this is a bad thing but I wish her background was explored more). She’s brown-coded, yeah, but the show barely explores what that means for her. There’s a few references (her mom, her name, the occasional food mention), but it never felt like her heritage shaped who she was or how she saw the world. Luz could’ve been literally any background and the plot wouldn’t change. That’s a little disappointing for a POC main character—it feels like the representation was more of a checkbox than something fully integrated into her story.

Now contrast that with Amphibia. Anne is Thai-American, and it shows. Her culture is part of her character in a natural and loving way. We see her family, we see Thai food, the language, traditions, even a whole episode set in a Thai temple in LA. Her identity isn’t just an aesthetic, it matters to who she is and how she moves through both Earth and Amphibia. It’s never forced, it just is. THAT’S representation.

And I’m not saying Luz isn’t important representation—she is. But as someone who’s always hungry for deeper, more authentic stories about people like me, Anne’s journey just hit so much harder. She felt real. Luz, while a fun and quirky protagonist, just didn’t have that same level of depth when it came to her identity as a young woman of color.

Compared to Anne’s cultural depth, Luz often felt more like a character with BIPOC aesthetics rather than fully realized representation. It wasn’t entirely absent, but for a groundbreaking show with an openly queer Latina lead, the lack of a deep cultural presence was a missed opportunity. The Owl House did incredible work with LGBTQ+ representation, but imagine if Luz’s Dominican identity was explored with the same level of care that her queerness was. That would’ve been everything.

Anne’s story wasn’t about being Thai, but her Thai identity was always present. Luz’s story, however, didn’t integrate her Dominican identity as naturally—it felt more like a label rather than a lived experience. That’s why Anne’s representation felt more effective (to me at least); it was simply part of her, without having to be a grand statement.

Anyway, this isn’t about tearing down one show or putting the creators on blast. Both shows did so much for queer and BIPOC kids in animation. But I do think it’s okay to want more.

Like something I don’t think is brought up much is that Taylor is in someways based on Carrie from the Stephen King novel of the same name not a lot mind you but some broad strokes elements via pop culture of bullied girl/kid with powers as a trope comes from the novel right.

with Taylor’s trigger event not being that different from the start of the Carrie novel (a bullied teenage girls powers awakening via trauma related to bullying and female hygiene products) also the Carrie is referenced on the first chapter of worm explicitly as what the story wildbows telling isn’t so I don’t think what I’m going to comment on was intentional.

But the last lines of the book Carrie actually within the headspace of Carrie white before the rapping up of the story from other perspectives is this. “And suddenly it didn’t seem to matter anymore nothing would matter if she could turn over and see the stars, turn over and look once and die.”

In comparison the last lines from Taylor we get in the close first person perspective of the main novel when we know 100% she’s alive is “I looked away. I looked up. My eyes were wet. So many stars. The universe so vast. We’re s-so very small in the end”

Why do I think it matters that Taylor got to see the stars

Why I think this is cool is that it sells the biggest difference between the themes of these stories both are tragedy’s built around teenage characters and how they see the world and it’s impact on them Both stories are less focused on one singular bad guy and more on systemic problems and how they effect children the stories of Carrie white and Taylor Hebert as written are the result of a series of institutional flaws from authority figures who should have been there to help them but ended up falling short combined with personal decisions on there own end as they lash out as a result of there trauma spiralling over the course of the novel

ending in a full mental break from both characters interestingly by this point carries mind touches others via telepathy during her rampage and is even called a gestalt near the end by sue while Taylor in part merges or gets closer to the queen administrator and controls other peoples bodies and can fell them struggling against her

The fact that Taylor can see the stars as she dies shows that worm is a more optimistic story than Carrie while in the latter the town of Chamberlain is not rebuilt and everyone moves on as the government denied the existence of the tk phenomenon, looks for a scapegoat to pin blame on, and no real change has been made on a social level to stop another Carrie in spite of any debates shown in the novel on the topic. In worm while earth bet is abandoned we see the building of a city something new being made from the ashes the people who Taylor effected like Aisha and Defiant are seen to be living there lives to the best of there ability the former remembering her friend in her own way and the latter genuinely content hell Valkyrie gose to therapy and seems like she’s on the path to rehabilitation. Most notably the death of scion effected the cycle the big genre fiction metaphor for massive interconnected systems that effect people. These changes aren’t perfect by any means the wardens seem to be in the position of repeating the flaws of the protectorate with legend being a focus and the comparison made between him Valkyrie and Chevalier and the triumvirate, or how teacher is doing whatever it is he dose.

And of course there’s the aftermath character wise for these girls deaths and the fact that worms epilogue is ambiguous Taylor is either still alive in a parallel world or in some kind of afterlife or dying dream she gets a potential chance to experience beyond her teens and continue to grow as a person she still has her scars but she has a chance to work past them while in Carrie sue who’s also psychic feels Carrie die like a candle going out in a dark tunnel in spite of how much religious imagery is present there is no after life she’s just dead and she goes through a similar process to Carrie at the start of the novel the stress and trauma of the event impacting her for the rest of her life and in a wider scope the story ending with the idea that due to the lack of change something like this can happen again

Both stories very different outside of broad character beats mentioned here while both are tragedies but worm has a battered optimism that makes it possible for the world to change after the novels setting has burned down even if it’s not perfect things are improving people can work toward a better world if slowly, painfully, unevenly and hampered by past trauma and that idea compared to the comparative hopeless situation of kings work dramatic irony showing us that these people die and this town burns before we see it ourselves is why it’s important that Taylor could see the stars while Carrie could not

gay people would rather fight each other for decades with weird philosophical arguments than admit to having feelings

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Episode 4—Maki vs the Zenin Clan // Kill Bill: Volume 1—The Bride vs the Crazy 88

when parrot said he likes bsg i said "i dont really like war shows" and he said "its not really about war" im like bruh its about war. they're talking about war strategies. they're talking about the military strategies. Star Trek, has them sitting there talking about the political implications of a single decision. its an ethical dilema. i dont know what the fuck these guys are on about its just a bunch of old white men going on about the council of the 12 . and then each guy gets a girlfriend

but also i thought i recognized the dusty blonde and its because he is Face from The A Team

also when i say they look like a "younger" i mean they look like twinkified luke and solo

its like what if we made every character han solo except if he was a cop

Let me explain:

It is Y2K-era Japan. You want to write a social commentary on the nation's judicial system through the lens of a young male protagonist assisted heavily in his pursuit of justice for all people by a companion spirit who provides supernatural assistance and tidbits of knowledge the protagonist could not acquire through natural means. The story spends a lot of time sifting through the protagonist's sarcastic internal monologue and questioning whether his individual methods of pursuing justice could actually cause more injustice to fester.

The protagonist's rival is another young prodigy who upholds the status quo of the judicial system for (at first) purely personal reasons. Somebody dies in just about every episode, and a great deal of time and energy is spent pursuing the killer. Entire arcs are dedicated to the moral repugnance of corporate greed and how little it takes to convince people used to wealth and status to kill in order to maintain their position. These stories have been immensely popular for the 20+ years since inception, and adaptations of each include manga, anime, movies, and musicals in both Japanese and English.