#wsd replies

I only finished rewatching S1 so I can’t comment on a (re)rewatch perspective, but I’m not sure any of the girls were a third wheel, exactly.

I do think Marcy internalized a lot of her problems and feelings, instead of sharing them, out of fear of being rejected. At the same time, she was also somewhat careless in her interactions with others. I’m not saying it’s a bad trait, just something to recognize. I’m not going to get into that any deeper because I’ll fall into a hole of “who has to manage relationship dynamics when someone doesn’t intuitively recognize certain dynamics” and I’m own uh life experiences. As for Anne, I do think she was the most likely to do things whether she was comfortable doing them or not.

Overall though, I think each of the girls was projecting a certain way “she had to be” for the others to continuing being her friends. These projections led to a lot of problems in the plot of Amphibia which was resolved by the end (and talking and growing separately from each other).

I’m afraid I don’t have very in-depth thoughts (or more precisely I hadn’t thought about this idea until asked*). But from my few days brewing on it my answer is: I think it’s idea of self-love is something I would have been grateful for when I was Anne’s age and I think it’s tackled pretty well.

As an addendum, I felt only Anne really had an arc defined by discovering self-love. To me, Marcy’s arc was about coming to term with facing unpleasant things, and Sasha’s was recognizing how she wanted to be a better person/grow. I also don’t see any of the Plantars needing to learn self-love. Sprig might come closest but to me, his arc is more about finding a friend, someone who will actually like him/spend time with him, and it’s less him learning to love himself but finding the friend who will love the himself he already is pretty open about expressing/seems to like.

As to what I mean in more specifics (because of course), I’m having a hard time arranging it my head coherently. But essentially: I felt Anne’s arc to self-love was handled very gradually.

Sorry; I didn’t see this right away.

I personally felt it worked okay? Because Anne was so focused on getting back that she didn’t have a lot of time to “freak out” or “be upset” and then this was interposed with “Don’t work yourself into a frenzy/sleep deprived state”.

Whenever I try to imagine what a better presented reaction to trauma would be, I’m left unsure how it would work? Because Amphibia is not trying to tell a trauma story, but one about growth and change.

More specifically, there were certain narrative parallels that happened when Anne returned to earth (e.g. a reverse of her situation but with the Plantars, since the story is about Anne and Plantars), plus important cultural details.

Additionally, I thought Anne’s response as a 13 yr old made sense to me reflecting back on being 13 yrs old. Admittedly the latter is my biased recollection and there may be 13 yrs old who feel it wouldn’t. I felt that if I’d been that age, my approach to the situation would just be to focus on what was happening right in front of me and making sure I didn’t lose any of the family I’d found, rather than being upset.

From her ignorant disobedience (Pandora opening the box despite being instructed not to, Eve eating the fruit of Knowledge of Good & Evil & convincing Adam to do the same,) all pain & strife in the world springs. With Pandora & Eve both being the first human women created in their respective mythos, these stories have an inherently misogynistic quality to them. The same is true with The Tale of the Rose; Anthy, seemingly the only girl in the world who cannot be made a — princess (so in some way echoing the "first woman" thing,) is blamed for plunging the world into pain & suffering by disobeying. And is literally crucified for it.

It’s all good.

First: That’s a solid argument and I can see it’s applicability to ‘The Tale of the Rose’.

It brings to mind (α) Bluebeard - where a wife’s curiosity gets her into trouble but she triumphs, and (β) the deconstruction of said myths & fairytales cf. Bluebeard. Basically one of the “morals” at the end of Perrault’s Bluebeard critiques the wife’s being curiosity. I feel that falls into similar ground as Eve and Pandora. This has been pointed out and reimagined in retellings and reinterpretations.

Second: The comparison brings out what makes Anthy’s situation different (to me) is the cause of her “causing harm to the world” and being crucified for it — from what we can glean, she’s acting out of love, though the story presents it as jeslousy (she is the only girl who can never be a princess).

I feel like there’s a lot to dissect in (1) the rewriting & reimagining of religious myths (Eve as a positive force willing to learn & live) via whose telling the story and (2) the witch/princess dichotomy. And I still think it’s very interesting to discuss, so yeah, fun times, good analytic point.

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I think the girls each feared she was the third wheel.

Thank you!

I associate Ariel with being very curious — she wants to learn and explore and understand.

She’s the kind who, to me, would get lost in libraries or museums or anywhere where there’s things to learn. She full of passion but it’s very much spurred on by a drive to understand and learn/see new things. To me, Ariel wants to learn what things are (“why does it... what’s the word? Burn?”) simply for the sake of understanding. She wants to learn because she’s curious.

While I’ve never been a big Potter fan, I lean toward Ravenclaws having an impetus to learn. They don’t have to actually be studious or bookish. With Ariel, I can’t think of any character I’ve come across (at least from Disney) who exhibits that more than her, so that’s where I (still) stand on that.