#ttt polycule

Darius wants to change. He wishes he'd never been turned into a vampire in the first place, wishes he could grow up and be more than just an immortal teen stuck at the moment of his second conception. He's grateful to his brother (and we will get INto that later) on the basis that it was vampirism, or death, and he doesn't want to die, but he does very much wish he'd been able to stay a human (you might say, he wishes he could live). So he desires change, he wants it actively, BUT due to his own timidity and hesitance, he ends up stuck in a rut. He upholds the status quo because that's what Alonzo wants, and he loves and is loyal to Alonzo despite their strained relationship, and he doesn't want to strain it further by going against him. He acts to give Chaos back its power that it had at the beginning, which it intends to use to return things to the way they were back when it was on top. In Chaos's character sheet we learn that its goal is to regain all its power and cover the world in a constant unending darkness. It LITERALLY is representative of the "put things back to the way they were at the start, and maintain that status quo forever" mentality. And Darius is serving it! More or less willingly!! He wants change, but is stuck still in one place, doing these things he doesn't really want to do because he cannot bring himself to choose the other option.

Jogailla, on the other hand, wants to stay the same forever! This vampire shit rules! He never has to grow up, he never has to get sick or old or die, hell he doesn't even face that much detriment to his quality of life, he's just gotta budget for some excessive quantities of sunscreen and carry his parasol with him everywhere and he's set. And also maybe drink a little blood it's fine. It's fiiiiiine. Right? Of course not. What a lonely fucking sentiment. Jogailla is lying to himself that everything is fine the way it is because life doesn't stop moving just because you do. This is the part that grabbed me by the balls and prompted this entire insane rant. Just that one single little line in a three hour podcast tells me that Jogailla is deeply, deeply lonely. Because of course he is! Of course all of the parts of himself that he refuses to acknowledge want to change! No wonder he's got his heart set on Tammy, on turning her, he's lonely and he wants someone to come be unchanging with him. Fun fact, I saw the art Navickas posted with him doing the Tammyyyyy/Sammyyyyyy thing from Sinners, and she compared him to Remmick, and I didn't get it at the time but I Do Now. He's lonely! He wants someone to join him in this stagnant eternity! AND he is ALSO the one breaking from the status quo by learning witch magic!!! So much of him desperately wants to change but his conscious thought pattern is just on how cool and sexy being a vampire is and how totally fine he is the way things are. Forever :)

Which plays in great with their relationships with Tammy, of course. She is the main character and the means through which the audience views this world, the celestial body around which all other narrative entities orbit, so of course her love interests are going to circle back around to her in some way or another, and we see they're representatives of the two sides of the main theme and conflict surrounding Tammy and the narrative as a whole! She's 17, she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, her grandfather recently passed and so of course she wishes she could just make time stand still. Of course she wishes she could go back to the way things were, "before." She's got her whole life stretching out in front of her and that's scary, and she has grief in her heart and that's hard, and Sia, according to that same interview with Navickas, DOES know what they want to do with their life after high school, and according to Sia's character sheet on Navickas's tumblr they "don't want to be tied down to this town forever," which means Moving Away and Tammy's already lost one person in her life and so THAT'S scary TOO. You know what else is scary? The fact that on top of all of this she's got spirit monsters and witch magic to deal with, too!!!

So let's take a little tangent and follow THAT rabbit hole down why don't we. What IS witch magic? Narratively, I mean. Obviously witch magic is Magic that is done by Witches. But in terms of the story and themes, what is witch magic? Well, it's Change. Our introduction to the story is Tammy's introduction to her new powers. Our assumption as an audience is that Tammy's life was status quo up until That Point (this is how pretty much all stories with inciting incidents work). Itis literally the "and then everything changed when," moment. The magic brings change with it, the magic is Jogailla's subconscious attempt at changing his situation, the magic is what Tammy must accept and learn to deal with, much like her future and grief and life. Which then follows perfectly into her encounter with the first digimon—I mean, spirit, that we see in the pilot, ominous flashback notwithstanding. See the thing is, Tammy actually handles it pretty effectively. I remember watching the episode and thinking "well if it was that easy to seal away the spirit, what was she even freaking out about?" but that's the POINT. The problem isn't that it's hard, the problem is it's SCARY. Tammy has all the tools necessary to deal with life and grief and change already at her disposal. She can handle it. She will, even! But it's scary. She doesn't want things to change because with change comes grief and loss and uncertainty, and those things are scary, especially when you're young and inexperienced. But she can handle it, just like she handles wielding her magic, just like she seals away the errant spirit. She asks "Is it going to be like that every time?" which, yeah! With practice it will become less scary, but only slowly, and by increments. It doesn't matter that she can handle the magic and the spirits and the changes in her life. She's seventeen. Of course she's scared of them.

So here's Tammy, she's dealing (or refusing to deal) with big changes in her life, a lot of uncertainty, grief, witch magic, and now these two (three if we count Alonzo) bozos show up and they're also embodying the conflicting wants and needs inside of her. Now THAT'S a fun thematic setup for a story. That makes the interplay of her relationships with them really resonate beyond the veneer of "cute vampire boys who are into her." (Which is a good veneer, that veneer rules, that is Part Of The Whole Appeal, I fucking love that shit let it NEVER be thought that I am anything other than Team Hell Yeah on the concept of "cute vampire boys who are into her.") Not only do they get to be full characters in their own rights, with lives and motivations and relationships and personal values belonging specifically to them, but they are intrinsically tied to Tammy's narrative and the forces pulling and pushing against one another inside her, much as Jogailla and Darius push and pull against one another as love rivals.

Which, let's talk about their relationships. No not to each other, right now I'm talking specifically about Alonzo, of course I'm talking about Alonzo, goddamn do I need to talk about Alonzo. Because Alonzo adds SUCH an interesting layer to everything. Something all of my friends and I struggled with on our initial viewings of this pilot (because yes I have sat down on my friend's couches and made them watch TTT, I'm writing a fucking essay about this thing of course I'm insane enough about this that making friends watch this is a foregone conclusion) is the fact that, without color, Alonzo and Jogailla are completely fucking indistinguishable from each other. And that's not coincidental. In the credits of The Three Tomes, four additional character designers are credited alongside Navickas, and while I couldn't find a lot of information online about Joshua Roberts or Erin McDowell, Al-Tariq Harris has a couple other projects listed on IMDB, and Tanisha Cherislin has an entire website boasting her decade of professional experience. There is no way in hell all five of these people somehow managed to miss just how identical Jogailla and Alonzo's silhouettes are, that shit is Deliberate. I initially thought it was just a limitation of the pilot animatic (as the two would be very easily distinguished when colored in, Jogailla being ginger and Alonzo being (I'm 99% sure) black (possibly south Asian? I went through his character tag on tumblr and I'm just not actually sure)). However! Upon thinking about it, I think that the similarity in their silhouettes is a very intentional choice meant to prompt the audience to draw parallels between them.

Because Jogailla and Alonzo are similar! More than just their jacket collars and big fluffy bangs! In Alonzo's character sheet on Navickas's tumblr, we learn that Alonzo was once "a simple, meek human… taught against his will to cast aside weakness" and experienced "a terrible loss." Alonzo turned Darius in an attempt to distance himself from the "weakness" of who he once was in his pursuit to become stronger. But we as an audience can then make the very easy logical step to realizing that what Alonzo was trying to get rid of wasn't weakness, but vulnerability. He doesn't like being alone. He wanted someone to have his back, to be in his corner, and someone who, this time, he couldn't lose. Sound familiar? Of course it does, we have already established just how terribly fucking lonely Jogailla is (and how that ties into Tammy, the main character, since right now Alonzo is her most active antagonist). And alright, Alonzo isn't very nice to Darius in the pilot, you could make the argument that Alonzo turned Darius so he would have a pawn or minion to do his bidding. Well then I present to you the thing that stood out most to me about Alonzo from the moment I met him: why the fuck is he Darius's brother?

In most vampiric… everything, a vampire who turns another vampire is that fledgling's Sire. The coven Patriarch (or matriarch, if you read the cool lesbian stuff), taking on a fatherly (or, in the romantic versions (because let's be real all vampire media is romantic media if you have eyes to see it with) a daddydom-like)) lens. If Alonzo's goal really was to have a subordinate person he could direct as he pleased and demand obedience from, it would make absolutely no sense to call himself Darius's brother, rather than sire. Sire is already right there! It's incredibly established throughout vampiric lore, especially more pop culture vampires! He's also "friends" with a priest, which we learn through extra materials like Navickas's blog posts and twitter (bluesky? I don't go to either of them ngl) posts. Anyone who has spent any meaningful amount of time around church folk knows about God The Father, and his sway over his followers and the demands for love, fear, and obedience God The Father commands. So even if Alonzo subconsciously wanted something familial, but consciously wanted someone obedient, father would still be the more prudent option. Now it's vampires blah blah blah obviously nothing is strictly fatherly (or motherly), hence the prevalence of Sire as The Term to use, but still. It would've been so easy for Alonzo to call himself Darius's sire, twist the knife of Darius's VERY OBVIOUS feelings of being indebted to him in order to coerce loyalty and obedience, and use the very same methods we know were used on him during his days as a human to keep Darius in line the same way he was once made to do.

But he doesn't. Because Alonzo, like Jogailla, wants connection. Alonzo stands in the narrative as a front row seat for the audience to look at what Jogailla could be, what he's going to become if someone (cough cough Tammy) doesn't knock some sense into him. Alonzo is the most enthusiastic about serving Lord Chaos. He is the one actively sabotaging himself to make sure nobody and nothing ever has the power to make him feel weak and small and hurt again like he did in the past. But he, despite being a vampire, cannot outrun the simple, basic, fundamentally human need for connection. So he turns Darius, and he calls him brother.

And that is why I think things will end okay between them. Part of Darius's reluctance to actually pursue the change he overtly wishes for is of course his brother! Not only is Alonzo pushy, demanding, and quite frankly a dick to Darius anytime Darius doesn't do things exactly how Alonzo wants them—triggering that social rejection sensitivity we all have in us and that Darius seems to feel especially acutely—and not only does Darius feel indebted to his brother for saving him from death; if Darius actually seeks out the changes in his life that he wants, that's going to put him in direct opposition to Alonzo, much like he is currently in direct opposition with Jogailla. But Jogailla is safe. Jogailla may be attractive, but Darius has no attachments to Jogailla. There's nothing at stake there. It is so, so easy for Darius to take all those uncomfortable, roiling feelings he has for Alonzo, project them so neatly and tidily onto Jogailla, and then be a stupid little bitch about it to him. Which, of course, only makes it easier for him to stay in that nice little rut he lives his life from, wanting change but unable to take the first steps for it. And, meanwhile, while he sits in his rut and wishes for change he won't act on, Alonzo keeps getting worse, and Chaos keeps getting stronger.

See, Darius could put a stop to this whole Chaos business pretty easily at the moment. Chaos is at its weakest right now. Alonzo and Darius have promised to help it, but no help has actually been given. Darius could say "no, I'm not going to do this," but he's not going to. One, because that'd make for boring writing. If a character is going to have flaws we wanna see those flaws explode straight in their face. Two, because Tammy, Sia, and Shirley need a big bad to have a darkest hour to rally against in a spectacular display of character growth, fun magic fight choreography, and the power of friendship. But three!!!! Because he can't! His character isn't at that point yet. He's too afraid of rocking the boat with Alonzo in it, too willing to uphold the status quo, too ready to pretend that everything is fine in the name of keeping the peace until he won't be able to ignore it anymore, and that's going to come at cost to him. See, if Chaos does get powerful enough that, oh no, this is past the point where any of us can stop this, he is going to have to have the inevitable confrontation with Alonzo. And Alonzo, as we can pretty obviously tell from how he's characterized, is not going to take that well! He's not particularly nice to Darius when he likes him, imagine how bad this is gonna get when Darius gets in his way when he's so close to accomplishing what he thinks is what he wants? It's gonna get ugly. We're gonna see exactly and precisely where Jogailla and Alonzo's paths diverge. Because Jogailla is eventually (not before self destructing a little, because We Like To See Characters' Flaws Blow Up In Their Faces) going to get his shit together, and pivot away from a total act three breakdown. Alonzo, if my media analysis skills do not fail me, will not. He's an ass, so we are rooting for him to meet his downfall. He's got a complicated familial relationship with one of the character's we're rooting for, so we want him to be better. This guy is BUILT for a third act breakdown. He's going to explode spectacularly. Darius is going to change, and it's going to be exactly as he feared. It's going to come at the cost of losing a loved one.

Or will it? Because, again, Jogailla and Alonzo are very similar. And if we can assume that the power of love (cough cough Tammy (cough cough maybe also Darius who knows it could be a poly thing or also love comes in many forms and the two of them do clearly matter to one another throughout the various extra materials we see Navickas posting on social medias)) is going to be enough to get Jogailla off the dark path he's going down, it then follows that love might be enough to pull Alonzo back from the brink as well. Ideally after hitting rock bottom first, because I wanna see that man suffer, and also I don't think Alonzo can do anything but double down. I think he's gonna be one of those characters that has to hit rock bottom before anyone can finally convince him to stop digging. He's going to have to be forced to acknowledge that Darius is his own person with his own needs and goals, that he can't just strongarm him into doing whatever he wants and that it's wrong to try. But part of him, the same part of him that turned Darius and called him brother, the part of him that is so lonely and so vulnerable and so desperate to have somebody who won't hurt him or leave him, is going to reach his hand up out of the pit he's dug for himself, and even Alonzo, even Alonzo, will change.

I did NOT expect to talk about Alonzo that much jesus christ I guess I had a lot to say about him. I didn't even really do more than touch on the weird kismesis situationship Thing he has going on with the priest guy that he refuses to acknowledge as homoerotic on account of the fact that he still thinks that he's straight. Anyway.

So what is going to convince Darius to finally turn his back on Chaos and Alonzo and start trying to set things right? Well, as I mentioned, I hope that it's going to be his own shortcomings circling back to bite him in the ass as hard as narratively possible, but if witch magic is the metaphor for Change, and Darius doesn't have witch magic, then how is he going to get from point A to point B?

Tammy. Obviously. She is his agent of change. She is the kind sun whose light the lonely moon reflects. Tammy is the center focal point of the narrative, and the catalyst for Darius to finally leave his brother's narrow path, the bright and fleeting joy that will not wait for him forever. He can pursue her now, or spend forever wishing that he had. Obviously it's going to take some time, hijinks, and spirit battles to get him to that point, but that's all part of the fun.

And that's why I'm team Darius. Oh, you thought I wasn't going to take sides? In my insane rambling essay on a single twenty minute episode and a variety of tumblr posts? Get fucking real. We're taking sides and the side is Darius. Well, okay, I'm personally team "everyone has two hands" and I am vindicated by Navickas herself stating as much during her interview on the Post Modern Art Podcast. When asked which side she was on, she gave a polite non-answer and then also mentioned that Tammy has two hands (2:28:25). So hope burns eternal. Also she's remarked on various blog posts that Darius and Jogailla acknowledge each other as attractive in a merely objective, tooooootally not even serious way. BUT! If it DOES go the classic route that love triangles go, and one pair emerges as the winner from the three, I Am Team Darius And Tammy Should Kiss! All the way! Do I think that Jogailla and Tammy should be deeply important to one another and fundamentally change each other that results in newfound trajectories in their lives that cannot be reversed? Yes, obviously. But there's something so compelling about Tammy being Darius's agent of change. Of a vampire who can no longer handle sunshine finding his own ray of light in a young woman, just as scared as he is but so brave in the face of it all. So hopeful and powerful and capable, doing what he cannot. There is something so poetic about a girl who is so terrified of change and loss and aging, falling for the young man who wants it more than anything, but cannot figure out how to grasp it for himself.

That and I love a shy sadboy I deserve to see him beat to shit and bleeding and I also deserve to see him kiss My Girl I am being fully biased right now The Power Of Love Can Change Him. If Tammy/Jogailla is "I could make him better/I could make her worse" (a reference to a small comic Navickas posted on her tumblr) then Tammy/Darius (Tamrius? I must ask, Does This Fandom Have Ship Names) is "he'd change for me/she could fix me." Because let's be real. As much fun as I have analyzing the Themes of this, it IS still at its core a very silly story about a romantasy love triangle with vampires. And that shit RULES!!! I LOVE silly things that are deeply sincere! I love tropey goop! The tropes are tropes for a REASON and the reason is because they're GOOD!!!! But just as the love triangle with Katniss Gale and Peeta was compelling (in the books!!!! in the BOOKS!!!!) because Gale represented Katniss's desire to continue the cycle of violence as long as it meant she got to get revenge against the people who hurt her, and Peeta represented Katniss's desire to focus her efforts on building and making a future worth living in, rather than languishing over the past, I think part of what makes the love triangle with Tammy Darius and Jogailla so compelling is because Darius, like Peeta, just seems like the obvious option. Both in the sense of, I like him better and he's more attractive to me than Jogailla is (which is good character design to give the guy you want to "win" the heart of the lady), but also because, narratively, this is a story All About Change. And Darius wants that. He actively wants to embrace a future with change in it. AND MAYBE POLYAMORY CAN STILL WIN IF AND WHEN JOGAILLA GOES THROUGH HIS CHARACTER ARC AND LEARNS THAT REMAINING STAGNANT FOREVER SUCKS ASS ACTUALLY AND HE ALSO WANTS TO CONSCIOUSLY EMBRACE CHANGE AND A FUTURE AND COMMUNITY WITH PEOPLE WHO ULTIMATELY MIGHT "LEAVE" BY GETTING SICK OR OLD AND DYING. Polyamory very much can still win based on the projected trajectory of Jogailla's character arc. BUT from a purely thematic angle, if one of the boys is going to win Tammy's affections, it's gotta be Darius. Like it's just simply gotta.

Now, I've mentioned witch magic and its narrative role and its function as a metaphor quite a few times now, so the more observant reader (of which I expect there to be, like, three of you, on account of this essay is incredibly long and about a show that deserves to be more popular than it currently is) has probably realized that I have been dodging the matter of Shirley.

Who is Shirley? Again, narratively, obviously she's a cute little witch girl filled with zest for life and charmingly outdated pop culture references. But if witch magic is the metaphor for change, what then is a witch?

Well, she's Tammy's agent of change, for a start. According to her character sheet on Navickas's tumblr, Shirley was the one who initially misplaced the Tome of Terra, which allowed Tammy to gain witch magic in the first place. But she also fills the character role of mentor. Mentors are very useful characters, as they can parcel out information that the main character doesn't yet have and that the audience needs. Which is a perfectly respectable and functional role on its own, though Shirley's gonna wanna keep an eye out for death flags once Tammy has advanced to a point where she no longer requires Shirley's guidance anymore, since there's not a lot of non-villainous roles that are as fraught with character deaths as mentors are. But it's especially fitting that Shirley, the witch, is Tammy's mentor, because mentors' other role in the narrative is to help cultivate change in their charge. Like how Tammy needs help to cultivate her magic. Oh yeah baby, it's all coming together. We also know from the same character sheet that she is the youngest of the group, and strongly desires to be seen as older and more mature than she actually is. Not only is she cultivating change in our protagonist, but as the future-facing character of our crew she is the one rushing headlong into it, some might say she's even a little too eager to grow up, where Tammy resists that.

So, then, shouldn't Shirley be held as a narrative foil to Sia, Tammy's best friend? It'd make sense, Darius and Jogailla have their thing, and aside from Tammy's mom there's really not anyone else close to Tammy who could be Shirley's—if not foil, at least balance—so it would make sense for the two of them to be opposites on some level, right?

Well, yes actually! If Shirley is the agent that cultivates change in Tammy, Sia is the one acting as Tammy's foundation. Obviously change is important. It's hard and it's scary and it's necessary and sometimes it can really suck, and sometimes it's joyful and freeing and can bring fulfillment. But embracing change should never mean abandoning what is already there; the comfortable, the familiar, the life that you have painstakingly built thus far, the people who matter to you, that's so important. Sia is, as we see in the pilot, Tammy's rock. Anywhere Tammy goes, you bet your ass they're going too. Sia doesn't have any magic, of any kind, but they're also the character who doesn't need it. Unlike Darius, who needs Tammy to be his agent of change because he cannot cultivate witch magic on his own, Sia doesn't need to cultivate witch magic because they have already embraced change (and also doesn't play the narrative role of helping Tammy cultivate change inside herself like Shirley does (or do they? We'll get to that in a minute)). Sia wants to leave town, go to college, have a fun time with their best friend while they're both still here but then launch forward into bigger and brighter things down the road. They would love to be the one the Tome of Terra listens to, but the tome has little to offer them that they don't already have. Hell, they joined a magic fight with a giant screeching spirit (when, from the flashback, we can gather that the last spirit encounter DID NOT GO WELL FOR THEM) with nothing more than a baseball bat and a plucky attitude! And they made it out the other end just fine! They're the friend who more or less has their shit together, and carries with them the joy and attachment of Tammy's past, they stand as living proof that just because new, big, scary things are happening and will continue to happen and are really not going to stop happening at any point because that's how life works, she's still going to have her childhood best friend, right there, right by her side, because as important as the future is, the past will always matter.

But calling Sia a foil to Shirley doesn't exactly feel quite right, either. As we saw at the start of the pilot, and mentioned in Sia's character sheet, they're the one who's always pushing Tammy to try new things, dragging her along on various (mis)adventures and prompting her to become her best self. And with Shirley too, Sia is the avenue through which Shirley gets to try out all these new and exciting foods, Sia showing a laid-back willingness to cover the bill and put up with an hour's worth of faintly awkward conversation just because, well, Shirley's new at all of this! Sia'd be excited if they got to try pizza for the first time, too! And there's something there to that. No life is free from changes, even that nostalgic past (and nostalgia is a liar and a bitch) is not so static as we remember it. We've always been changing, our whole lives, each and every one of us, every single day. Tammy might be tempted to remember her past as this steady, fixed point, but her life, just like her friend, has always been in motion. And she has always handled it, and come out the other side. Nothing's killed her yet, and nothing's about to start doing so. Not if her best friend, the representation of the experiences she's had and the knowledge she's acquired up to this point, has anything to say about it. And not if she, herself, has anything to say about it either, because just as much as she would let Sia drag her along for adventures and ultimately wind up having a nice time, she's going to go into each of these spirit encounters with a little more knowledge than she had for the last one, a little more experience, a little more bravery, and ultimately she's going to look back at this all and smile, because she made it out just fine.

And then Chaos is going to attack, but we don't need to worry about that right now.

I do kinda wish I had more to say about Shirley, other than the fact that we have GOT to get Shekinah McFarlane a better mic (and while we're on the subject the audio mixing on Chaos could stand just a little extra touch of refinement too, thank got we got some official captions up in here I was NOT understanding it, which is a shame because I do think Simmons's line delivery was Excellent). Shirley's so charming and fun and whimsical, and I love her design, and you'd think that as a mentor and a witch I would have more to say about her narrative role and how it relates to the theme of change, but what we have on her so far is fairly surface level. I shall have to look forward to future installments to see what meat I can sink my teeth into there. Also I do have to mention that I do think it's fun that the character who cultivates change in the protagonist and the character who cultivates steadiness in her are apparently going to have their own queer bullshit going on, too. That's very fun For Me <3 Tammy is the center of like, at LEAST two different polycules (yes I am team Tammy/Sia, obviously I am team Tammy/Sia, anyone who has known me for even like three nanoseconds knows I'm of course going to be team Tammy/Sia we've got CHILDHOOD FRIENDS and LOYALTY AND DEVOTION and it would NOT be a stretch to project a little knight/princess imagery onto them of COURSE I am team Tammy/Sia)(Siammy?).

I will also note that it's fun that, Darius and Jogailla are representative of the conflicts surrounding the theme of change in the narrative and for Tammy, while Shirley and Sia are much gentler agents for those same themes. It works, since Darius is literally an antagonist and Jogailla gives off enough trickster vibes we can assume he's not going to take a wholly amicable role, while Sia and Shirley are overtly on Tammy's side from minute one.

The Three Tomes Pilot Animatic (GO WATCH IT. GO WATCH IT AGAIN. ARE YOU WATCHING IT? GO WATCH IT!!)

Post Modern Art Podcast

Breana Navickas's The Three Tomes tumblr