VictoryLearning: A genius chilling going through the stages of grief and becoming a superhero as a way to cope and honor his deceased brother.

ExiledLycan: Pillsbury dough boy got his medical degree meets angsty teen and befriends college students to help bring teen’s killer to justice.

What is the plot?

VictoryLearning: Big Hero 6 is a movie in which a misguided teen was being set on the right path and just when he was about to start his journey, he loses one of the most important people in his life. He is grief-stricken and through the help of his friends he finds a coping mechanism but becomes misguided once again. But from beyond the grave his brother helps set him on the right path again. And with his friend’s help they put a stop to a man on who is on a warpath of revenge.

ExiledLycan: Big Hero 6 is about a teen with no real plan or desire letting the last lessons he gets from his late brother guide him forward to not only find his but to avenging his brother in a way that honors him. Going from genius delinquent to the leader of team of genius heroes, and Fred.

Who was your favorite character?

VictoryLearning: This a hard question to answer because I like all of the main protagonists for many different reasons. But if I had to choose I would probably choose Honey Lemon as my favorite. The reason why she is who I would ultimately choose is because of her chemistry skills. I find it amazing that once she gets her bag that she designs with Hiro, she just busts out chemical equations off the top of her head to make this foam that looks like elephant toothpaste. Honey Lemon also just has a lot of personality and kind and sweet which is probably why Fred gave her that nickname.

ExiledLycan: Ooooh I’d have to go with Baymax. I love the other characters but Baymax was just such a fun character. A lot of funny moments in the movie came from him along with a lot of the more meaningful moments too. Although a robot he definitely didn’t feel robotic. Watching gain more personality as the movie went on learning from Hiro was so nice to see. Reminds me a lot of The Iron Giant, which is probably why I enjoy Baymax.

What was an impactful scene to you?

VictoryLearning: Tadashi’s death was a very impactful scene to me because of the dialogue of Hiro yelling for Tadashi reminded me of one of Disney’s other movies that highlights the importance of brotherhood. The scene in Brother Bear where Sitka “dies” and Kenai is yelling for Sitka is what I am reminded of.

ExiledLycan: The “Tadashi is here” garage scene at the end. It is such a heart breaking scene and as a brother, I am a middle child, I resonate with it a lot. The feeling I get when I put myself in Hiro’s position in that moment is gut wrenching. I will never be prepared for when it’s time for my brothers to go and this scene of Hiro finally accepting his lose breaks my heart every time.

What was the theme of the movie?

VictoryLearning: I think the theme of the movie is grief, the topic is hinted at in the beginning of the movie after Tadashi saves Hiro at the bot fight and they are in their shared room. When Tadashi says “Oh what would mom and dad say?” as he was trying to think of what to say to Hiro to knock sense into him. Hiro brings up that they have passed and that he was 3 when it happened. Hiro’s tone is him trying to play off the words as if they are no big deal but deep down it might hurt him to say it out loud. Then later he loses Tadashi and isolates himself from everyone even his guardian his Aunt Cass. The rest of the movie could be interested as a metaphor for coping with grief because Hiro turns out not to be the only character going through grief. Callaghan is also grieving because his daughter was lost in an experiment gone wrong and is presumed to be dead. The difference between these grieving characters is how they approach their grief and their support systems or lack thereof.

ExiledLycan: I would have to say the theme is grief. They talk about it the whole movie, Hiro’s and Tadashi’s parents, the aftermath of Tadashi’s death, becoming heroes to take down Callaghan. Throughout the movie you see the five stages of grief. Denial, the moment the explosion happens Hiro doesn’t want to believe he’s dead. He continues to call out to him knowing as smart as he is no one could survive it. Depression, Hiro goes into a depressive state refusing to eat, interact with people, or be productive. Bargaining, becoming a superhero to capture the man who got his brother killed as a way of seeking control over anything on Tadashi’s death. Then there’s anger; when Hiro learns Callaghan is alive and Tadashi sacrificed himself when he didn’t have to. To add on Callaghan’s attitude to learning he went in to save him only cemented his anger. And now finally acceptance, towards the end at the last “Tadashi is here” garage scene, Baymax plays a compilation of video diaries that Tadashi made during the creation of Baymax. Hiro sees his brother in his purest form and finally lets out everything he’s been holding onto. Hiro isn’t the only example either Callaghan is also an example of grief, but more so what it can do to someone who holds onto it.

What are your thoughts on Hiro’s character?

VictoryLearning: I like Hiro’s character progression throughout the movie. Throughout the movie, we see Hiro progress through 4 of the main 5 stages of grief. While we don’t necessarily see him work through denial, we see Hiro go through anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance.

ExiledLycan: I also like Hiro’s character. He’s a fun character to watch, the genius kid architect who still acts like a kid is one of my favorite tropes. He just has so much charisma and he very much feels human.

What is your favorite plot twist?

VictoryLearning: Learning that Callaghan is the one behind the mask and not Krei. Because it takes the story from a businessman using the technology to get revenge on the military to finding out the man behind the mask is a hurt parent getting revenge on the man responsible for his daughter’s “death”.

ExiledLycan: There’s pretty good one’s in the movie but I will have to say my favorite plot twist is Callaghan’s daughter Abagail is alive.

What do you like about the setting of the movie?

VictoryLearning: I like that while the setting is supposed to be a mix of Tokyo and San Francisco, the movie seems to be heavily weighing in on the San Francisco half infrastructure wise and incorporates the Tokyo half through parts of the culture and some character designs.

ExiledLycan: It’s hard for me to say, if I had to choose I like the turbines in the air. It’s just a small thing that gives the city character.

Out of all the inventions Hiro makes throughout the movie, which one is your favorite?

VictoryLearning: My favorite invention that Hiro made or rather this invention he made with the character Go-Go is actually Go-Go’s superhero suit. I like the design of it and the animation how Go-Go skates with her new suit look really amazing. I also like the design of the discs and how the attach to Go-Go’s forearm, as well as the function of them returning to that placement it reminded me of how Captain America throws and catches his shield sometimes.

ExiledLycan: To this day I still love the micro bots, they just seem like a fun device to have.

What do you think of the relationship between the characters?

VictoryLearning: I like how all the character interact with each other because in some scenes it really does show how Go-Go, Honey Lemon, Wasabi, and Fred have all been friends longer than they’ve been friends with Hiro but even throughout the movie they do try to include Hiro as mush as they can.

ExiledLycan: I think it’s a good description of a diverse friend group. A number of different personalities coming together in a way that feels natural. They balance each other out and keep each other in check. With Wasabi always being on edge, Go-Go being calm for everyone, Fred trying to make light of situation by comparing it to comics, Honey Lemon trying to keep some reason within their crazy situation, and then of course Hiro being focused on the task whatever it may be. Their interactions with each other, to me, give a real life friend group.

Would you consider Callaghan a villain?

VictoryLearning: No, I would not consider Callaghan a villain. Callaghan lost his daughter to an experiment gone wrong and she is presumed dead due to the experiment is using a wormhole and her body never came back through the wormhole. So Callaghan blamed Krei who was at the forefront of the project. When he is finally able to face Krei with help from the micro-bots gathering the pieces of the portal this line sticks out to me. “My daughter is gone because of your arrogance.” To me Callaghan is a mourning father who is willing to go to extreme lengths for his revenge. When we look at what is the difference between villains and antagonists, it boils down to their morality as characters. Villains are a part of the antagonist branch, where an antagonist can be a villain but not every antagonist is a villain. The antagonist of the story is a character with an opposing force to the protagonist's story. Where a villain also fills that role, they have another key component, they are inherently evil, and they will easily choose to harm others or exploit them. When I hear the word ‘Villain’ one of the first names to pop into my head is The Joker, he is a well written Villain. We know he’s a villain because he shows that to us with his actions. At any chance to get an edge over Batman, Joker takes it and runs as far as the opportunity will take him. I don’t think Callaghan falls into the category of being a Villain.

ExiledLycan: Originally when I was younger and even continuing into adulthood I had thought yes, Callaghan was a villain. But after a discussion with VictoryLearning, reanalyzing him as someone with a better understanding of media I have changed my answer to no. Callaghan is a grieving father. Does that excuse his actions? No. But he didn’t become a villain for power it was all for revenge on the person he blamed for his daughter’s death. I put him as just under the same category as I do Mr. Freeze. Freeze being a man desperate to save his wife at any cost. When I look at Callaghan now I think of a scene from Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The scene is in the episode titled New World Order, the scene being Bucky’s date with Leah. Leah brings up how those who have lost their partner are called widowers and when your parents die you’re called a orphan, but there’s no word for what you call a parent who lost their child. He is an antagonist yes, but a villain no.

Iron Man Armored Adventures was a 3D CGI show that aired in 2009 right at the beginning of the MCU. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you check it out, it’s a good watch. This show isn’t connected to MCU Tony, it has it’s own story very different then the one we all know. Starting with the biggest difference, Tony is sixteen years old. The show itself is decently written, Tony is still given an arrogant air to himself while also putting in a bit of that hero anxiety of being afraid to lose the family he has if his secret got out. Oh yeah that too, Tony doesn’t reveal his identity automatically, in fact it’s not revealed until much later. Rhodey is given the responsible older brother and moral compass kind of role, at times he came off as self righteous. On screen he kept Tony in check trying to ensure he never went too far. Making sure Tony never crossed the line from justice to revenge. I’ll explain more about the characters as they appear.

At the start of the show they introduce Tony and Rhodey, with the ladder showing off the Iron Man armor he had just made to impress his father. Tony then goes to Stark Tower where we meet his father Howard Stark and one of the main antagonist of the series, Obadiah Stane. Like all adaptions of him he’s a greedy, power hungry, ruthless, narcissistic, and sadistic old man who would be willing to do what it takes to get more power. Even upon seeing Iron Man for the first time, after he saved lives, all he could think about was getting his armor to mass produce and sell. And over course he uses any dirty trick to get what he wants bringing in a few reoccurring villains.

Stane walks into the office furious Howard rejected his idea to turn one of Tony’s new inventions into a weapon to sell to the military. Another thing different with this universe is that Howard and Tony are actually against making weapons. After the confrontation with Obadiah Howard and Tony board a plane to check on the machine that Obadiah wanted to alter. It’s here where the main focuses of the first season is shown. Howard is explaining the history of an artifact he found, one of the Makluan rings. The plane held the armor so he could show it off, he walks off to it to put it on but when he reaches it the plane explodes killing his father. But thanks to the armor he survives only barely, getting the famous heart implant.

The show then does a short few months time skip, where it’s revealed because Tony is only sixteen Stane gets control of the company until Tony turns eighteen. After confronting Stane he goes to school, the Tomorrow Academy a prestigious school, which he has to go to because it was one of his father’s last wish. It was later revealed by Tony’s guardian, Rhodey’s mom, that if he didn’t do well in school he wouldn’t inherit the company. At the school we’re introduced to a couple more characters, Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts.

Happy is a student at the school due to an athletic scholarship, he’s not the brightest lightbulb in the box. He’s not really ever focused on only being a comedic relief when on screen. Pepper Potts however joins Tony and Rhodey as part of the main cast forming a trio. Pepper is the daughter of an FBI agent named Virgil. Unlike Rhodey she has to figure out Tony is Iron Man. The show gives her a desire to become an agent of justice like her father, whether it be joining her dad in the force or being a SHIELD agent, she favors SHIELD more, even going as far as logging into her father’s account to learn what the FBI is investigating. Upon meeting Tony she informs him that Stane was under investigation after Howard’s death theorizing because he had the most to gain with his death he was a possible suspect.

This revelation prompts Tony to don the armor to go spy on Stane, it’s here where Iron Man makes his debut to the city. A train was speeding towards Stark Tower predicted to slam into their generators which would have leveled the building. Tony redirects it onto another, unfinished, track forcing him to go after it and stop it before it lands in the middle of the city. After the heroic scene we meet our second main antagonist the Mandarin who had set up that accident to get the Makluan ring that was in Howard’s possession now in Stane’s.

The Mandarin was first Xin Zhang, but his step son Gene Khan would secretly overthrow him taking his ring and the title of the Mandarin. He would then steal the second ring from Stane during a weapons showcase that Tony was trying to investigate. Gene will later befriend Tony to search for other Makluan rings, with each one there was a test that the team would have to figure out together. Gene himself wasn’t really a villain, yes he lied and manipulated the trio but he never allowed them to get hurt. He actually had a conscious and to a degree he cared about them, even saving their lives more than once. But he was obsessive and has an inferiority complex which is what put him on his villain path.

Through out the show they do cameo episodes introducing other heroes and villains such as the Hulk, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Jean Gray, Justin Hammer, Dr. Doom, The Controller, Ghost, AIM, MODOK, Rhona Burchill, Magneto, and allot more. And of course name drops like Captain America, Dazzler, the Punisher, Moon Knight, Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Thor, and a number of others.

Okay now for my review, the show has a decent story with plenty of twists, some can be seen from a mile away and others hit you like Truck-kun, out of nowhere and hard. The animation is a bit tricky for the most part its good but when it comes to lighting or certain actions it can look a little bit off at times and some voice lines don’t match their lip movement. But really that’s to be expected from an early 2000’s show. The voice actors voice their parts really well I can’t really say I have any complaints about their acting. But the writing can be dry at times, lines feel repeated like with Rhodey whenever he goes off on Tony about doing the right thing. Some times the characters get hypocritical like again with Rhodey when Tony would spy on Hammer or Stane, or with Pepper when they bring up mutants and having them be registered. She talks about justice but has no issues with the registration, the show tries to make it seem it’s not so bad by having her say “I didn’t say I didn’t like all mutants, just the evil ones”. Problem is that doesn’t really help her case when she was cautious about Jean even after she said she was in trouble, being hunted by Magneto. Tony isn’t off the hook either He has his own issues. At times it felt like his reactions would turn on a dime and do a 180.

But besides all that I enjoyed the show, it’s not anything ground breaking or fantastic. In my opinion it’s not a waste of time but of course feel free to build your own opinion if you haven’t watched it and share. That’ll be all for this post, sorry if it’s not done all that well still figuring it out. Until next time be sure to check out all our other posts we try to post every weekend so keep an eye out. Have a great day and you all be safe out there, peace.

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Backstory time! Arcane was released on November 6 of 2021 and since then I heard a lot of people talk about how great the show was. I kept telling myself, “Man, I should watch Arcane when I have a chance.” But I forget stuff quickly so I never remembered to actually watch it until recently. As soon as I started watching the first episode I was hooked.

I was not prepared for the animation, it was so eye-catching with how the characters were animated. The story was amazing! I watched the first episode which is I think about 45 minutes long, I thought I was watching it for 2 hours. There was so much story and so much action, so much that I thought there’s no way this was less than an hour. Then I looked at clock… mind blown.

I do want to talk about every aspect of this show I really do, but I want to save the deep dive for another time and for now just brush over the show.

SPOILER WARNING! IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ARCANE AND WANT TO WATCH IT AND BE SURPRISED THIS IS YOUR WARNING!

And with that out of the way, let’s get into it. The first scenes of the show were brutal. Showing that there is a division between people. And there is a special pair of girls whose parents were killed, and they are adopted by a man on their side of the line. Now I know this doesn’t entirely make sense but when I first watched the show, I didn’t know who any of these characters were and there was only audible dialogue for what one of the characters was singing. The rest before the intro was playing was instrumental music, while the scenes were playing out. In those scenes the dialogue wasn’t needed the animation of the scene and the music was all that was needed to hopefully make the audience feel empathy towards the characters.

And that is one of the things I love about the writing of the show, they knew when to use dialogue and when to use the animation to show facial features, and body language or maybe focusing on a scene one second longer to give an impact instead of using dialogue. So to continue on with the story these now orphaned girls are taken in by a man who we later learn is named Vander.

A timeskip happens and the girls are older and now they have two other friends and they are akin to a crew. Later it’s implied that these 4 kids were all taken in by Vander. Vander is portrayed to be the one in charge if not a very important figure in the Lanes. The Lanes is a part of the “Undercity” where this part of the story primarily takes place because this is where the orphaned girls named Powder and Vi live with Vander and two boys named Mylo and Claggor.

The four attempt a heist in Piltover the more financial stable side of their city. The heist is successful for the most part until someone tries to take their loot when the group returns to the Undercity. This snowballs the events of the show. The boss of the guy who tried to steal from Vi and the others conducts an experiment with a drug/serum that would later be called Shimmer.

And it’s revealed that the chief of the Enforcers from Piltover has an agreement with Vander to keep peace between the Lanes and Piltover. And the boss named Silco conducts his experiment that results in the death of the sheriff of the Enforcers, and one of Vander’s close friends and Vander himself being taken by Silco.

While trying to save Vander, Mylo, Claggor, and Vander himself were killed. In the heat of the moment and a lot of emotions Vi blames Powder. Power had been previously called a jinx by Mylo and Vi calls Powder a jinx in such a way that it hurt to hear that as she was walking away leaving Powder crying and screaming for Vi to come back and not to leaver her. The enforcer that was accompanying the sheriff essentially kidnapped Vi and locked her away in a prison. It’s unknown if Silco might have ordered him to kill her but the point stands that Silco was under the impression that Vi was dead but she was actually alive in prison.

More years pass by and the young teen and preteen are now young adults, Vi is still in prison and Powder goes by a new name, Jinx. And Jinx works for Silco. And since the day Vander died and Vi presumably to Powder abandoned her, Silco raised her like his own daughter. We get introduced to other characters as well, such as a two scientists named Jayce and Viktor. Together they create technology that also applies magic and they called it Hextech. After the years Timeskip Piltover has really changed by applying the use of Hextech and its advancements to the city.

Different plots happen because the main group of characters are getting fleshed out and have their moments to shine. So for the two scientists they are focusing of advancing their Hextech and making sure it’s safe to use for the public.

Meanwhile with Vi, an Enforcer is looking into a case regarding crimes at the border between Piltover and the Undercity, when one of her witnesses who was a criminal from the Undercity gets sent to prison. The same prison Vi is at, and Vi recognizes the person to work for Silco so she beats him up. The Enforcer Caitlyn finds out about that and chooses to talk to Vi, and they end up teaming up with the goal to find evidence against Silco and to bring him down.

Jinx is still with Silco and has thought Vi was dead since the night Vander died as well. So as the story moves forward Jinx has changed from when she was Powder. Season 1 ends with Vi having to learn and accept that her sister Powder is gone and Jinx took her place. Jinx also shoots a powerful bomb as an attack against Piltover. At the time that I’m writing this Season 2 has not be released yet, only the trailers are released.

I have briefly gone over most of the story of season 1 and in my next post I will go more into depth about the show. Until then see ya next time.

I personally feel like in comparison to the other characters Bloom’s character is obviously one of the characters that gets the most spotlight and is therefore one of the most “fleshed-out” characters. I say fleshed-out in quotes because while I like the ideas that Winx club brings with every season, at a certain point it becomes a bit too repetitive. In season 1 all the characters were being fleshed out for the first time setting the ground work in their appearance episodes to show us at first glance what they are like. And from then on they should be showing up the flaws of each character and showing us how they overcome some of these flaws by being challenged.

The writing for Bloom in the first season wasn’t bad, but it was already setting up things about Bloom’s character. Finding out she was a fairy in the first episode and showing how differently her parents reacted to this information was interesting. Bloom was excited to hear that she could go to Alfea and I thought that was a nice direction, we were finding out Bloom wants to learn how to be a true fairy. From there Stella encouraged Bloom to lie to enter Alfea as a student who had changed her mind at the last minute and Bloom was uncomfortable with that. That detail shows the audience that Bloom is an honest person and doesn’t like to lie. Bloom comes clean with her dorm-mates and they become friends so from there she is acting as her true self and being honest with them.

Bloom’s character arc in Season 1 is her self discovery, from finding out that she’s a fairy, to finding out that she is the last princess of Domino. Bloom learns more about her powers and learns just how cruel the Trix can be. She also learns more about her feelings to Prince Sky who had swapped identities with his best friend and squire Brandon, on top of that secret she finds out Sky had a fiancé despite dating Bloom. This causes Bloom to lash out and run away because she feels too hurt to stay in Magix. Bloom then feels defeated when the Trix forcibly took some of the dragon’s flame power to essentially boost their own magical abilities.

It is revealed later in the show that because Bloom truly believed she lost her power of the dragon flame, she couldn’t use any of her fairy powers. But she had to learn from Daphne that the Trix could never truly take the dragon flame from her. And she was able to overcome this obstacle to her character and rediscover her power by looking deep inside herself. Daphne describing this as, “Nothing that doesn't happen to us all. You had doubts. You were afraid. You came to believe that what you loved most dearly could be taken away from you. But the truth is no one in the whole universe could ever steal your past, your dreams, or your magic powers.”

All of these are major events to Bloom and they tell us about her character by her actions or even just her reactions. And I feel like this was decent writing of her character but there things I didn’t like as well. For example Bloom is very quick to try and run away to solve her problems on her own. I didn’t mention in this post but Bloom was also tricked by the Trix to believe that she was the incarnation of the 3 prime-evil witches only to find out the next day in the show that it was a lie. But when she still believed the lie, Sky who was with her when she “learned” about being the incarnation, took Bloom back to Alfea.

Bloom ran away from Alfea to go to Magix the city away from where the school was because she believed that it was too dangerous for her to be around her friends and everyone at Alfea. I didn’t like that Bloom as a character was quick to give up. She found out she had a destiny for evil and chose to give up on her dream to be a fairy. Granted that is a valid concern but still if she really wanted to be a fairy I think Bloom’s character would have had more determination to avoid her evil fate by asking for help.

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To cap off Season 1 Bloom uses her rediscovered dragon flame powers to help Alfea, good witches of Cloud Tower and the Specialists of Red Fountain to defeat the Trix and they are imprisoned for their crimes against the magic dimension. The fairies and specialists have a party to celebrate the defeat of the Trix. Bloom confides with Sky that she has a lot more questions about her past before she was adopted on Earth and questions about her birth parents. And Sky reassures Bloom that she’s not alone implying that he will be there for her.

I have some issues with the continuity of the show as a whole, for example in the actual episode that aired is season 1 when Bloom learns what happened on Domino. The narration said that both of Bloom’s parents went into exile by choice to grieve for their daughters, believing they lost both of them. But in later seasons or one of the movies, they reveal that Bloom’s father was caught by the prime-evil witches when they were being banished, and Bloom’s mother not wanting to be separated from her husband sent herself into her husbands sword.

Season 2 the show introduces a new species and group of characters from that species, pixies. The writing of the show has that each of the Winx meet their bonded pixies. Bloom bonds with a pixie named Lockette, the pixie of portals. The introduction of the pixies confused me for a while but as a viewer I just brushed it off to be the new plot point.

There is also a new villain introduced to the show that has the pixies captured and his name is revealed to be Darkar. He also releases the Trix from their rehabilitation at light rock monastery and recruits them to help him in his goal. I thought this was a good way to reintroduce the Trix but in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting them to bring back the Trix to be enemies to the Winx again. I did like how it was shown that while the Trix are back they are working for Darkar, so Dakar is the overarching villain for the season.

Season 2 also brought in a new character whose name randomly changes at the series progresses for some reason. When she is introduced she is named Layla, who is a princess from Andros. Much like Stella is a princess Solaria. Layla is an interesting character that they brought in and added her to the Winx group, I also liked that they introduced her character as she has a bonded pixie already and is friends with the pixies of pixie village. So when they bring in Layla’s character she is already essential to learning what had happened.

They also introduce a new character as a professor for Alfea a male paladin, and I thought the design for the character was interesting because he had wings that can appear and disappear at will. What is unfortunate that I realized after watching the series again was that this character was the only one of this species shown. And after this season I think his character becomes just a background character and hardly talks. Later in the series the term Paladin is brought back but it’s unclear if it means the name of a species or class, because the “paladins” later in the season are similar to the specialists of red fountain so it is possible paladins could be the name to refer to the students of a specific school as well.

While watching season 2 one of the things that I liked was the addition of the 4 pieces of the codex addition to the world. It really help bring in why the three main schools of Magix had a truce or alliance with each other. As each school had a piece of the codex and the final piece was in pixie village. One thing that I found confusing was that after mentioning and showing that pixies can bond with fairies to become bonded with one another, one of the guardian pixies who is protecting a piece of the codex mentions that instead of to a fairy she was bonded to the library where the codex piece was hidden. This is the same with the guardian pixies at the two other schools I assume because the show doesn’t really touch up on that.

Another thing that I found interesting about this season was that the main villain Darkar used a one of his minions to cast a spell which basically corrupted Bloom making her turn evil. Now hear me out, that was so interesting to me because most of the time in cartoons the hero is the hero and that’s that for the whole show. So seeing Bloom turn evil and help Dakar in the last couple of episodes really surprised me.

This season did give some more information into Bloom’s history, such as we learn her parent’s names. Her father is named Oritel and her mother is Marion, Bloom also has a dream where it’s a memory from when she was a baby seeing the blurred silhouettes of her parents and a younger Daphne.

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Another thing that happens in this season is that the Winx learn how to do Convergence magic. The concept of convergence magic shows that it’s different from how the Winx normally combine their magic. But when I was doing research on the Winx Club Fandom wiki it shows that the Winx have performed “convergence magic” prior to this season despite the second season having Faragonda barely teach it.

Season 2 also brings in a new “transformation” of sorts. It’s called Charmix. According to the show any fairy can earn her Charmix by overcoming a great personal difficulty, such as a strong fear or a certain weakness holding them back. I thought this was an interesting element to add in the second season. Especially after showing that while the Winx can still fend off the Trix they struggle because the Trix are stronger while the Winx were not much stronger than how they ended season 1.

I thought the idea of the bad guy wanting ultimate power for selfish gain was cliche but I did like the idea of the Relix. The power of the Relix is sealed away in another dimension that can only be accessed when the four pieces of the codex are united and combined with the power of light and dark. For the show they did create another way to open a portal to the Relix dimension but I kind of expected that when the show was taking the direction it was with an Evil Bloom working for Dakar.

But as always the season ends with a happy ending and the Winx defeating their villains. This concludes everything I have to say about Winx Club’s second season. Check out my other posts or my boyfriend’s posts on the blog. See you all in my next post.

Jedi Knight turned Sith Lord who would later return to the light. Revan was both the greats Jedi and Sith of his time, as a Jedi he would save the Republic during the Mandalorian wars and as a Sith he would bring it to it’s knees.

Revan had many teachers in his time as a youngling and padawan all of which believed he was destined for greatness, little did they know how right they were.

Revan started his path to fame during the Mandalorian wars, at the start the Jedi didn’t join due to the Council being cautious believing the Mandalorians were pawns in a trap by the Sith. So they wanted to wait till the Sith revealed themselves but the Republic was losing the war. Planet after planet the Mandalorians spread their control on the galaxy, many Jedi were getting impatient wanting go out and do what they were trained to do. Two Jedi had stepped up defying the Council and went out of their way to convince other Jedi to join them in entering the war. Those two Jedi were Revan and Alek (Later renaming himself Malak after the Council put out an arrest warrant for him).

Revan and Malak quickly went through the ranks becoming high ranking officials in no time. As their fame grew the trust and loyalty of their soldiers grew too. Their soldiers would do anything for them as later shown when they would leave the Republic to join them after their fall to the dark side.

If you’ve noticed Revan’s attire you probably realized he’s wearing a Mandalorian helmet. It’s not the helmet of their leader or an important Mandalorian figure, it has a little more significance than that. The helmet belonged to a female Mandalorian, currently unnamed, who was killed by her commander after trying to stop the genocide of the Cathar people. Ten years after her death Revan found her helmet while trying to find evidence of the Mandalorians atrocities. Picking it up he gets a vision of what occurred, angry and finding a new drive to stop the Mandalorian threat he puts it on vowing to not take it off till the Mandalorian threat has been vanquished. Revan would wear the helmet long after the Mandalorian wars going into his time as a Sith.

After winning the Mandalorian Wars all the Jedi who joined Revan and Malak returned, save for one Jedi Meetra Surik, only to start a new war that would be called the Jedi Civil War (JCW) or Second Sith War. Although called the JCW Revan and Malak had declared themselves Sith but most of the people don’t see the difference between the two. Revan formed his Sith Empire in order to take of the Republic in anticipation of another Sith Empire hidden in the Unknown Regions. Like the Mandalorian wars the Republic was losing, having just survived the Madalorians only to have their heroes and many of their soldiers turn on them they were unprepared and very tired. Revan had them on the ropes and he would’ve been victorious had the Jedi not gone for a hail marry attack on Revan’s ship sending in Bastila Shan and a team of Jedi Knights.

They were successful debatably only because Malak turned his ships turrets on his Master’s ship a blast hit their position killing some of the Jedi and leaving Revan barely alive. Bastila saved his life and brought him to the Jedi council. Not knowing where Revan and Malak got their ships and technology they the decided the only way to learn this information was through Revan. But he would never tell it willingly, so instead they erased his memory believing with enough familiar areas and events he would lead them to how he gained so many resources. And this worked, after saving Bastila on Taris and escaping the Sith army, along with a Republic soldier named Carth Onasi, a twi’lek girl named Mission Vao, a Mandalorian named Canderous Ordo, astromech T3-M4 and a wookie named Zaalbar, they go to the Jedi enclave on Dantooine.

There he goes through his Jedi training again picking it up easily due to muscle memory he was given his first assignment to go to ruins where a pull to the dark side was sensed. There he found the dark jedi Juhani, a Cathar padawan who believed she had killed her master when in reality she had just injured her. After a duel and some convincing Revan redeems her and she returns to the Enclave; she later joined him on his adventures. After this Revan and Bastila enter another set of ruins where after successfully completing trials they found a piece of a Star map. The same Star map Revan and Malak found years ago that lead them to a self maintaining factory called the Star Forge.

However because it was only part of the map they would need to go and search the galaxy for the other pieces. Through visions Revan knew which planets to search, after some “convincing” the council allowed Revan and his allies to go in search for the Star Forge. Visiting Mannan, Tatooine, Kashyyyk, and Korriban; throughout this search they would gain new allies including an old Jedi knight named Jolee Bindo and an assassin droid HK-47, who would later reveal he was Revan’s assassin droid after unlocking its memory unit.

While searching for the Star maps Revan would help his teammates with personal issues such as when he helped Bastila retrieve her father’s holocron from the cave of a Krayt dragon for her mother, even helping them reconcile. He helped Carth find his long lost son at the Sith academy and reunited them. He would also cause set backs for the Sith Empire. Like when he went to the neutral planet Mannan and exposed the Sith’s under the table deals with Mannan officials and the stopped the training of Selkath force sensitives and the chaos he caused in the Sith Academy on Korriban resulting in the Sith’s fall once again.

As the journey went on and Revan’s strength grew so did his connections with his allies. The major connection he grew was with Bastila, over time they grew close and fell in love but Bastila wanted reject that love, growing up as a Jedi she was told that emotions and attachments were a path to the dark side. And knowing Revan’s true past she didn’t want to risk putting him back on that path and revealing his true identity.

But that concern didn’t matter because after getting the 4th Star map Revan and his allies are captured by Malak on his Sith flagship the Leviathan. After escaping their cells Revan, Carth, and Bastila head up to the Bridge while everyone else went to their ship to prepare to take off once they get the tractor beam turned off. There Carth is face to face with his old mentor Admiral Karath who betrayed him after joining Revan and Malak when they formed their Sith Empire. After a quick battle with him and a few Dark Jedi they turn the tractor beam, Carth had his chance to get his revenge but with some convincing from Revan and Bastila he doesn’t finish Karath. But that didn’t matter for he didn’t last very long due to his injuries but in his last moments he revealed to Carth that the man he had been traveling with was the Dark Lord himself. This causes an argument between Carth and Bastila which is cut short due to the urgency of their situation. They would rush to the hangar but are cut off by the new Dark Lord Malak.

Malak, realizing Revan had no memories revealed the truth, this would shock Revan as suddenly all the dots start to connect. A fight would ensue but being unprepared Malak was winning, not seeing a choice Bastila would shut a door between her and her allies forcing them to leave without her. Bastila was captured would later be tortured into joining Malak in his Sith Empire.

After getting the last Star map they would travel to the Star Forge but due to an unforeseen disruptor field which forces them to land on an unknown planet. After a rough landing they would investigate their new surroundings due to their stabilizers. During their rough landing they notice other shipwrecks could be seen, they choose to search these wreckages in hopes of finding the parts they need for repairs.

Upon stepping foot on the land they soon realize they’re surrounded by the planet’s inhabitants, a long forgotten species and the architecture of the Star Forge called the Rakatan.

The Rakata go on to explain their history to Revan and his allies saying how they once had an incredibly powerful empire, enslaving countless and stripping their planets down to the core for resources. They were once powerful Force users, focusing more on the dark side. Of course with the Star Forge being crafted with dark side powers it would corrupt their species even more resulting in civil war. And while they fought their slaves made a disease that would nearly wipe out the Rakata but that wasn’t the worst of it. They would soon realize that their connection to the Force would disappear for unknown reasons, later revealed to have been caused by the plague.

They would then help Revan shut down the planet’s disruptor field so that the Republic can attack the Star Forge and allow Revan to board it. There Revan and his team will find and fight Bastila who had turned to the dark side, she had been using her battle meditation technique to help Malak’s forces win the battle. After the fight Bastila was redeemed by Revan and they had truly accepted each other’s love damning the consequences. Bastila would then use her battle meditation to aid the Republic turn the tide of the battle. Revan would then face Malak on his own, the battle was fierce as Malak would drain the life an power from captured Jedi throughout the battle giving himself more power. Ultimately it was in vain as Revan struck him down, even while he was dying Revan never gave up on Malak hoping to redeem him, but it never came to fruition.

Revan and his team would escape the Star Forge in time escaping its destruction. They would return as heroes, Revan and Bastila would later on have a son named Vaner Shan. He lived in peace for a while, til he started having visions about the unknown regions. Feeling a dark looming presence and wanting to protect his new family he left with the Ebon Hawk and T3-M4. And that would be the last time anyone will hear anything on the hero til years later when he was found by Meetra Surik. But that’s a story for another time.

Revan would meet his end 3 centuries later, yes Revan lived well over his life span. Due to Emperor Vitiate putting him in stasis, after Revan tried assassinating him. In those 300 years Revan would subtly influence the Emperor into never invading the Republic saving countless lives. He would meet his end soon after his first attempt to destroy the Empire but part of his spirit would refuse to die and become one with the Force so it turned to the Dark side and live on. Eventually the light side of Revan’s spirit would appear and merge with it’s counter part and finally help the galaxy defeat Emperor Vitiate ending his story.

Revan’s legacy and Sith holocron would go on to help Darth Bane invent the Sith Rule of Two forever making the Sith that much more dangerous and his story would go on to inspire many to become great Jedi. Revan’s story although crazy and a little confusing but no one can deny it was a great one.

That’s all on Revan, hopefully I can get my next post out faster. I hope you enjoyed and learned something new. May the Force be with you

While doing research for this post, I found out that the most recent version of Carmen Sandiego, first started as a video game from 1985. The game did so well that in addition to game sequels, the franchise created shows and books based off the adventures of Carmen Sandiego.

When I started watching Carmen Sandiego (2019 reboot) I told my mom and she shared with me that she had memories of Carmen Sandiego with real life actors. So with a bit of research I found out that the Carmen Sandiego my mom was referring to was a game show called “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?”. This game show ran from 1991 to 1995 and an animated cartoon with the title, “Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?” ran on FOX Kids from 1994 to 1999. There was also a spin-off of the game show “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?” that was titled “Where in time is Carmen Sandiego?”. This spin-off also aired on PBS and ran from 1996 to 1997.

The most recent show for the Carmen Sandiego franchise is a Netflix original show titled after the famous thief herself, “Carmen Sandiego” it first came out on Netflix in 2019 and officially ended in 2021. The show “Carmen Sandiego” follows the iconic character of the franchise and gives the character a new story. In the original game Carmen was just a thief who was the head of an organization of thieves called V.I.L.E. The 2019 reboot changes Carmen to have been part of V.I.L.E. but she becomes a thief who steals from V.I.L.E. only to return the stolen goods back to where they belong.

The first couple of episodes are mostly showing the audience that Carmen is a thief and gives the backstory to how Carmen got to where she is. Carmen’s backstory is as follows. She was found as a baby abandoned in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Carmen was brought to V.I.L.E. Island, home and secret headquarters to V.I.L.E. a secret organization of thieves. Carmen doesn’t know who from the faculty found her and brought her but she had her suspicions based off how the faculty treated her. She was raised by “a revolving door of nannies” and she was not only taught how to read, write, and other basic skills, she was also taught about the culture, geography, and languages each of the nannies had to offer.

She was the only child on the island of V.I.L.E. as the faculty were older adults and all V.I.L.E. operatives in training were in about their 20’s. None of the agents ages were actually confirmed in the show but it is speculated that based off the designs of the agents we see they are in or around their 20’s. Carmen didn’t have a name so she received a code name as a replacement, as per rules of the V.I.L.E. Academy, only first names were allowed until the students received their code names. Carmen’s code name at the time was Black Sheep.

Black Sheep got away with a lot of things just because of one Faculty member showing favoritism to her. Black Sheep even played pranks on a very important person for V.I.L.E. who goes by the name of Cookie Booker. Cookie Booker is the accountant and bookkeeper for V.I.L.E. and once a year on December first she goes to V.I.L.E. island to upload an encrypted hard drive containing sensitive data that V.I.L.E. didn’t want to be transmitted wirelessly. When Cookie Booker would visit the island Black Sheep was always ready to greet her and the captain of her boat. And by greet I mean she threw a water ballon and the two adults. One year the captain had enough and was going to punish Black Sheep but she didn’t make it easy. By the end of the chase one of the Faculty by the name of Coach Brunt protects Black Sheep from the Captain and he accidentally drops his cellphone. Black Sheep discreetly picks it up and keeps it out of curiosity, because cellphones are not allowed on V.I.L.E. island.

After Black Sheep grew a little older she began to feel jealous of the V.I.L.E. agents who graduated from the school on the island and got to travel the world as master thieves. One day the phone she stole from the captain and had hidden in her room started to vibrate. Black Sheep cautiously answered the phone and met a boy who went by the name “Player”. Black Sheep made friends with the boy and this interaction inspired Black Sheep to try and convince the Faculty to let her join V.I.L.E. Academy.

Black Sheep makes her case to the faculty of V.I.L.E. to be accepted into the school even though she is younger than their usual recruits. The Faculty reasoned that she was a special case and admitted her into the school. From there Black Sheep officially moved into the dorms and began her training to become a master thief. After some time December 1st came around again and Black Sheep convinced her dorm-mates to prank Cookie Booker with her. After getting trouble the group ultimately gets detention and they use that time to think of their future codenames for when they graduate.

The school year was coming to a close and all that was needed was the students needed to pass their Final Exams. If they did they were the next 40 thieves of V.I.L.E. and would go on to plot their first caper. After her Final Exams Black Sheep found out she didn’t graduate and decided to tag along on her dorm-mates first caper anyway. While on the mission Black Sheep finds out the truth about V.I.L.E. and after that Black Sheep decides that she needs to get out and away from V.I.L.E. for good. December 1st rolls around and it’s heavily raining and Black Sheep decided it was the perfect time to strike. The phone Black Sheep had on her was confiscated so she stole it back and reached out to Player wanting to use her thief skills for good.

So Black Sheep with some encouragement from Player decided to steal the Hard drive Cookie Booker brings for her upload and run away with it. Black Sheep does exactly that and finally leaves V.I.L.E. Island and adopts her new name Carmen Sandiego. That is when Carmen’s journey begins.

This has been my dip into Carmen Sandiego. Stay tuned for the next post.

The first Mandalorian we see was on the big screen in Star Wars episode 5 Empire strikes back, Boba Fett. Although not a true Mandalorian he was raised under the culture by his father Jango Fett.

(Green armor is Boba and blue armor is Jango)

The armor of the Mandalorians is iconic, something recognized and envied by all who see it. Not just because of its unique design but also because of the metal its made of, Beskar. One of the few materials in the known galaxy that can deflect blaster bolts and the blade of a lightsaber. It is one of the most valued elements out there due to those reasons. However it can only being found on Mandalore and the Mandalorians aren’t too keen on sharing the precious element. Very few outside of the culture personally hold anything Mandalorian originated, and even less of those that were given such items as a gift. One that comes to mind is an attire that Ahsoka Tano wore at the Siege of Mandalore which was gifted to her by Bo-Katan Kryze.

It wasn’t given to her just for protection but also out of respect, as shown by a very special design on the tunic. The diamond threaded outline on the chest is called the Kar’ta Beskar or Iron Heart it’s a very important part of Mandalorian culture. That small design is on every Mandalorian chest piece ever crafted, representing the indomitable spirit of all Mandalorians.

The armor is usually passed down from parent to child to wear when they come of age or after death, unless they are a foundling which in some cases they will be given their own set sometime down the line usually if they’re a different type of species or if the armor was lost. A foundling is similar to what a padawan is to a Jedi, except where the Jedi and padawan relationship is a teacher/student type, a Mandalorian and foundling relationship is more of a parent/child relationship, shown by Din Djarin and Grogru.

Now, a little more on the culture there are many factions all of which follow under more or less the same code with some added rules. An example being The Children of the Watch (CotW), a faction of Mandalorian religious zealots who follow the ancient way of the Mandalore. The code the CotW follow is back during the Old Galactic Republic era, 3994 BBY 3700 years before the High Republic era, the time of the Mandalorian War where they recked havoc across the known galaxy. But that era deserves it’s own post as it has one of my favorite characters from Legends so I won’t be delving too deeply into it today. As I mentioned the CotW followed the way of the Mandalore one rule they had was about taking off their helmets, no one is allowed to see their face besides a loved one. So as a way to show affection or respect to one another in public they turned one of the most aggressive attacks into a term of endearment, the head bud.

Now they didn’t smack their heads together like rams. They would instead lightly tap their foreheads together, this term of endearment was called the Keldabe kiss and is still used by todays Mandalorians. The gesture isn’t just used romantically either it was used as a greeting between family members and close friends as well.

Now for my last piece of lore as I feel I’ve rambled on long enough. There is a sigil that all Mandalorians fall under regardless of factions or clans, the Mythosaur.

For as long as the Mandalorians have been around so has the Mythosaur sigil. Legends say that Mandalorians would ride them into battle. Of course those are just stories, as a Mythosaur hasn’t been seen in centuries it is really unknown if the stories are true but who would dare question the Mandalorians ability to tame incredible creatures.

That is all I will say on the culture of Mandalorians in this post. I hope you enjoyed todays post and learned something new. May the Force be with you and have a great day

Many know his story but many seem to believe his fall from grace and into the dark side was a quick one. That point of view is a wrong one. Anakin’s fall was not something that happened overnight it started even before the Clone Wars. It started from the very beginning of his training as a youngling.

Since the beginning the Jedi council have been cautious about Anakin even thinking of denying him in joining their ranks due to his age. This was the spark of distrust between Anakin and the Council, it only grows worse due to Mace Windu who at every turn spoke of his distrust of Anakin and his dislike of Anakin’s actions. Part of Windu’s distain for Anakin is his own jealousy, though he would never admit it as Jedi aren’t allowed such emotions. But because of Windu’s own arrogance and distrust Anakin never felt he was apart of the order.

This disconnection has lead Anakin to look elsewhere, Obi-Wan although a great mentor and brother was not what Anakin was looking for. He needed a father figure which many believe Qui-Gon would have been perfect for the role had he survived his battle with Darth Maul. Ultimately this search lead him to Chancellor Palpatine the only one who “believed” in him. Palpatine has since groomed Anakin into his apprentice. Putting seeds of doubt into Anakin’s mind, fueling his own distrust of the Council, which was also being fueled by the Council’s own actions. With having him spy on a friend, those who know Anakin’s personality know that Anakin is loyal to his friends and his friends alone, as said in the Revenge of the Sith novelization.

Obi-Wan: You weren’t there. You didn’t see his face. I think we have done a terrible thing.

Mace: We don’t have the right answer. Sometimes there isn’t a right answer.

Yoda: Know how important your friendship with young Anakin to you, I do

Mace: You think Skywalker won’t be able to handle this? I thought you had more confidence in his abilities.

Obi-Wan: I trust him with my life. And that is precisely the problem.

The other two Jedi Master watch him silently while he tried to summon the proper words.

Obi-Wan: For Anakin, there is nothing more important than friendship. He is the most loyal man I have ever met—loyal beyond reason, in fact. Despite all I have tried to teach him about sacrifices that are the heart of being a Jedi, he—he will never, I think, truly understand.

Yoda: Do you fear that perform his task, he cannot?

Obi-Wan: Oh no. That’s not it at all. I am firmly convinced that Anakin can do anything. Except betray a friend.

With all this said, it’s not to dismiss Anakin of his choices, his actions were his own and they too had a part in his fall. His own arrogance, pride, and disobedience cost him so much down the line. Such as a spot on the rank of master, which was something he had been trying for for years. But because he would blatantly disobey almost every order given to him the Council couldn’t trust him with a task that didn’t require an unorthodox method to complete. Had he chosen to act differently the events that occurred would have had a much different result. Anakin Skywalker is not a role model but a cautionary tale. His story is one of love, loss, betrayal, and the loss of one’s self.

SPOILER WARNING: I ADVISE THAT YOU WATCH THE SHOW BEFORE PROCEEDING!

As a second warning, the Hazbin Hotel show, pilot, and Addict music video were all created for mature audiences.

With all the warnings out of the way, now let’s get into the show. I was counting down the days when the first episode would come out, then I was pleasantly surprised when it was the first 4 episodes would all come out at the same time. At the time that episodes were being released I had decided to try and watch the live premiere of the first episode on Amazon Prime’s official YouTube Channel. There was a live countdown with the clocktower from the show on the official Instagram and as a separate video on Amazon Prime’s official YouTube channel.

So during the live premiere of the first episodes I experienced some lag while I watched it, I’m not super tech savvy but that might have been because so many people were watching the premiere. I didn’t look to see how many people were watching it live and I tried to not look at the chat because I didn’t want to miss parts of the episode.

Season 1, episode 1 is titled, “Overture” a fun fact about this is that an overture is an orchestral piece at the beginning of an opera, suite, play, or any other extended composition. So I thought that was an interesting fact, within the first 2-3 minutes of the show we get some lore.

Now if you are new to the blog I did cover some things from the pilot that the creator Vivziepop has on her YouTube channel, now obviously some things might no longer be canon. Such as the Addict music video. Before the first 4 episodes of the show came out it was announced that the Addict music video was no longer considered canon.

Back to episode 1, so we get a story with similar animation to the beginning of the pilot. There is no definite shading and most of the figures were drawn as silhouettes. We hear the narration of this story and come to find that it was Charlie staying this story. The story Charlie tells us is as follows,

So I was immediately captured by this story, because it expands on how Hell was created which is something new in either Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss. This story also shed some light on Lucifer’s character which we have had little to no information on from the Hazbin Hotel pilot and a couple of references from Helluva Boss. Now I just want to remind everyone that I will be referencing and pulling some details from Helluva Boss because they are both shows within the same universe just following different characters with different plot lines.

This introduction to Hazbin Hotel shows not only how Hell was created but also how Charlie came to be. How Lucifer and Lilith fell in love, why they were sent to Hell, and it alludes to show why Charlie started the hotel. After watching the whole show and watching this episode again, I see characters that will come up and it shows how they truly felt about the establishment of the exterminations.

After this story it shows a book closing with the title of “The Story of Hell” and we see and confirm it was Charlie narrating the story. She holds a key and says to herself “Don’t worry mom. I’ll make you proud.” This immediately tells me that Charlie’s character holds her mom in a very high regard. Which is fair, I for one hold my parents in high regard. So the episode continues with Vaggie coming in and having dialogue with Charlie, and we find out that Charlie hasn’t heard from Lilith in 7 years. Which is an interesting theory question. “Where is Lilith and why did she leave 7 years ago?”

After this Vaggie takes Charlie downstairs because Alastor wanted to show them ‘something’. Now if you don’t know or remember, Alastor is a very powerful sinner who has an alias as “The Radio Demon”. In the pilot Vaggie warns Charlie to not make a deal with Alastor which at the time of the pilot I didn’t understand why. But as I started watching this series in full, I finally understood what making a deal meant.

So after Vaggie and Charlie leave the room the show cuts to show Alastor’s commercial. Which didn’t really showcase the hotel but more made fun of Charlie’s hotel and was making fun of Charlie overall. Angel dust throws in his two cents about the commercial and Charlie gets a call on her phone. The caller ID shows it’s Lucifer, so Charlie gets up and walks away to take the call while the others have a different discussion. The episode doesn’t show us Charlie’s conversation with Lucifer until the very end of the call, and she is very excited. Charlie calls Vaggie over to where she was taking the call excitedly and tells her that Lucifer called because the Leader of the Angel Army wants to meet and Lucifer asked Charlie to go instead.

This is when the first song of the series starts with Charlie singing the song “Happy day in Hell”. Now this a different warning if you have not seen the show but are reading this post, Hazbin Hotel is a musical series. If I am not mistaken there is two songs per episode. Now after the song ends Charlie enters the clocktower which for the show is now also a Heaven Embassy. Inside Charlie finds the leader of the Heaven Army and one of the exorcist angels waiting. Now before the show came out we. the fans were teased about these two specific characters with art and gifs by Vivzie on her Twitter account. So some people already knew their names to be Adam and Lute. And right off the bat, I did not like Adam. That was when I paused the episode, groaned in frustration to the TV, then continued the show.

Real quick before I continue talking about the episode, I want to talk about writing characters. or more accurately my thoughts on the first impression we as the audience get from Adam. Now I only knew what his name was, I did not know what Adam’s personality would be like. So this was a solid first impression, but I am a picky person with shows and movies. Obviously in this storyline Demons and Angels are at odds with each other, but what is different is right off the bat from Charlie’s story we see that in the show the Angels are the Antagonists. And for me, when I watch a show the Antagonist needs to interest me in a certain light depending on the kind of show I am watching.

So in Hazbin Hotel the way Adam is portrayed at first impression is an ass. Which is oddly enough something I expected but not in the way Adam was written. I was expecting an Angel that is prim and proper looking down on Demons with this high and mighty kind of perspective kind of asshole. But Adam is portrayed like a stereotypical Fraternity jock guy kind of asshole. And it is revealed that Adam and presumably Lute as well couldn’t even be bothered to be in Hell physically. In the picture below Adam is on the left and Lute is the angel on the right.

The show cuts from Charlie struggling with Adam to Vaggie and the other members of the Hazbin Hotel. Besides Vaggie, Charlie, and Alastor at the Hotel it’s also Angel Dust, Husk, and Nifty. Vaggie tries to make a better commercial to use instead of Alastor’s. Vaggie has her own struggles with that adventure and the show cuts back to Charlie having to deal with Adam and him bragging about his sex life. I don’t like Adam as a character, but I love that I don’t like him. The writing of his character is just enough to be like “Ugh! I don’t like you. Get off my screen.” but it’s not too annoying for you to click off the show. He’s a dick and you just wanna see him get what’s coming to him. It’s also at this point that Adam says his own name making it clear for everyone who this guy is. Adam, the first man, the same Adam Lilith left. And Charlie even makes this distinction and has a line that says, “That explains so much.”

Adam stops talking about himself and Charlie moves the conversation to try and convince Adam to support her Hotel. Charlie does this by playing to Adam’s ego and trying get him to acknowledge that the overpopulation of Hell is a mutual problem between Heaven and Hell.

The show cuts from here to Vaggie struggling to make a new commercial with everyone from the hotel. Alastor offers to help Vaggie seriously with commercial on one condition. Which is that she never asks him to engage with “…this frivolous Television technology ever again.” Also the glitches in the image below is part of the show.

Then it cuts back to Charlie still struggling with Adam until she finally yells out that the overpopulation of Hell is a mutual problem. But Adam just laughs at her statement. Adam says the overpopulation isn’t a problem and really starts to show his true colors a little. Charlie tries to reason with Adam and tries to express her point of view by saying “But these are souls...Humans souls just the same as the ones you have up in heaven.” But this goes back and forth between Charlie and Lute. Lute saying the souls aren’t the same and saying sinners earned their spots in Hell.

Charlie defends the sinners saying everyone makes mistakes and Lute argues angels don’t make mistakes. Lute then walks around the table to behind Charlie saying something that I think crosses the line. Lute says to Charlie “The only reason you're still here is because daddy gave you and your hellborn kind a pardon from an exorcist blade. How does that feel, to know how little you matter?” I immediately paused and I’ll be honest I made a look at the character and didn’t say anything for a second before hitting play. First off, that was extremely rude of Lute. Really shows how little respect she as a character holds for any hellborn or Sinner Demon. Then Adam says the meeting is almost over and Charlie rushes to present her Hotel. This is when the second song of the episode starts and this is a song with Adam singing called “Hell is forever”.

So another thing about the songs in the show is that they are not just songs to put in the show to be catchy ear worms. The songs also help progress plot or show more of the world building. In the case of “Hell is forever” Adam says a line that is very significant to the plot, “Long as I've got your attention. I guess I should probably mention. That we made the determination. To move up the next Extermination!” Which is a very big deal because the Exterminations were only an annual thing. A couple lines later Adam says that the angels will be back in six months. Charlie tries to stop Adam but gets kicked out of the room, and the next scene shows Charlie going back to the Hotel defeated.

When Charlie walks into the hotel Vaggie leads her to a couch where everyone is looking at the TV. Vaggie tries to surprise Charlie with the new commercial they all made but right after Vaggie in the commercial says the opening line, it gets cut off for a news report. The news shares with all the demons of hell that they were told by the Heaven Embassy that the Extermination was moved up. Immediately sinners were panicking about the moved up date.

Then for the final scene there is what is presumably a drone sent from Heaven that scans and finds a beheaded corpse of an exorcist angel. The head is completely missing from the nearby area that the drone shows. And it is revealed to us that the death of this angel is the reason why Adam moved up the Extermination, and he plans to kill all the demons this time. This is one of the things I found interesting, in the show there is a distinct difference between demons and sinners. Sinners are the human souls who were damned and went to hell, Demons refers to the different kinds of Hell-born demons. So when Adam said “But, don't worry, when we come back, there won't be a demon left alive to pull a stunt like this again!” He used the word Demon intentionally, implying he might disregard the no killing hell-born demons pardon from Lucifer.

And with that, we have finished episode one of Hazbin Hotel. I liked this episode as the first episode of the show. Not only did we get a refresher on character introductions, such as with Husk and Nifty, we got to see more of the world compared to the pilot where we saw I think about 3 confirmed locations. We also got to meet our antagonists and get a glimpse of their personalities. This episode was just full of everything I could want to the introduction of this show.

Now if you all want to stay up to date when I post, consider subscribing so you don’t miss when I upload. And if you become a paid subscriber you unlock some perks. And as always if you guys have any suggestions on what you want to see me talk about let me know in the comments.

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Today I will be talking exclusively about the music video “Addict”. Now I will be giving the warning now, I will be talking about things mature themes and there are themes that may be triggering to some people.

So first off after the pilot aired back in 2019, there was no other Hazbin Hotel content specifically. Then in 2020 Vivziepop released a music video on her channel featuring in the thumbnail the character Angel Dust. Now by the time this we came out we hadn’t seen much of Angel Dust besides from the pilot and livestreams by Vivziepop where Angel Dust came up in conversation. But so if when we click on the video to watch we are met with the traditional disclaimer that Vivziepop has put because her Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss animated shows are meant for mature audiences.

The warning reads as “Warning: This video contains graphic language, adult content, flashing lights, depictions of sexual assault, abuse, and addiction. This content is intended for mature audiences only (18+) viewer discretion advised.” When I saw this for the first time I was surprised by the ‘depictions of sexual assault, abuse, and addiction’ part because while Vivziepop has made the premise of both shows clear.

The setting is Hell, there is obviously going to be bad people doing bad things but it was shocking to me that it would be brought up and shown rather than only acknowledging these actions happen to other characters that do not necessarily appear or talk. After the disclaimer the scene fades to black for a second and immediately shows a character we only saw in a couple frames from the pilot. I don’t remember exactly if this character’s name was revealed before or after the music video dropped but his name is Valentino.

Valentino is shown as one of the Overlords in a scene where Vaggie is explaining Alastor’s history in Hell to Angel Dust. But back to the music video, we are shown Valentino with two demons by his side, one seems to be a Succubus demon and we are introduced to this type of demon in Helluva Boss, the other looks to be like half cat half woman kind of demon. I know she doesn’t look like a Hellhound but she could also be a sinner demon.

The video is dead silent while we see Valentino blow out some smoke from a cigarette he is smoking and the smoke forms an outline of a heart while he shows a big grin. Valentino has sharp teeth and also seems to have a gold tooth and the setting of where he is unclear, except the lights are dimmed down low and his eyes and his teeth seem to glow. The next shot shows like a catwalk and stage at first with a curtain, but some lights in the shape of hearts turn on and off guiding attention to the curtain as it opens.

On the stage is a couple of raised platforms like stairs and a pole where it seems like the character Angel Dust is. The backdrop is pink lighting in the shape of a spiderweb with a heart in the middle and we get the sound of the music starting up. Then we see a couple of shots of other demons at tables turning their attention to the stage and we see that Angel Dust takes a breath. That is when we hear Angel start to sing and it becomes apparent that this is a performance.

This is Angel Dust performing as a stripper, at whose club is yet to be determined as we go through the video, we then get a shot of Valentino again. This time he is looking and watching angel and in the animation we can see the silhouette of Angel Dust’s reflection in his heart glasses. Now when I pause on that small scene his grin is unsettling to me, but I thought that was just his design when I first watched this.

Then Valentino blows some red smoke like earlier when he was shown smoking his cigarette, but he blows the smoke towards Angel Dust and the smoke moves not like real smoke. The smoke moves smoothly and almost like Valentino is controlling the shape of the smoke itself. Because when the smoke gets to Angel Dust, he’s on the pole and the smoke moves around his arms, shoulders, and neck running under his chin and creating a form like a hand. The hand has an extending index finger running under Angel Dust’s chin in what looks to be like Valentino is seeking Angel Dust’s attention.

The orientation is that Valentino and his two demon girls are in a booth of some kind that is a distance away but not too far away from the end of the catwalk. Angel dust makes his walk down the catwalk looking at Valentino while singing his song but the animation and the song lyrics play well with each other. Right now I am going to talk about the animation but I do want to talk about the lyrics. In two scenes we can also see the same demon that was with Angel Dust at the beginning of the Hazbin Hotel pilot, as he is standing near the catwalk drunk and looking at Angel. Well he looks drunk, he’s holding an alcohol bottle but I’m not completely sure he’s drunk.

Valentino looks at Angel dust confused and curiously, and Angel Dust starts to walk back on the catwalk. The demon from the pilot tries to climb onto the catwalk and Angel Dust kicks him in the face off the catwalk, but he does it subtly. And then this is the part in the video where Angel Dust is continuing to dance and the same smoke from earlier comes back wrapping around Angel Dust’s wrists and neck. And in the motions that Angel Dust is doing the smoke moves as Angel Dust inhales it. Now a quick breakdown of some of these scenes before I continue.

So this red smoke is unclear if it is specifically tied to Valentino or if this is maybe just was smoke looks like in Hell and Valentino has the power to manipulate it. At the time this came out the only content Vivziepop gave us for Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss was the pilots for both shows and this music video. But from most shows the pilots are considered to be non-canon as some details are subject to change for when the real show comes out.

The next scenes continue with Angel Dust being well himself or at the very least the persona he puts out into the world but then we get quick flashes of different scenes. They happened so fast I couldn’t process them and I actually had to go back and slow down the video to pause and look at these flashes. In the flashes it seems like it might be a flashback of some kind with Angel Dust in more simple clothes.

By simple clothes I mean he is wearing a a long sleeve crop top kind of shirt, short shorts, and his usual stockings kind of socks. But what absolutely breaks my hear is that he’s lying hugging himself and crying. And we saw in the pilot that Angel Dust does have the capacity to care for others, because he looked like he felt some guilt for kicking Charlie while she was down about the hotel.

Another insight this flash gives us is how close Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb actually are. Because in this same flash we see Cherri Bomb is sitting next to Angel Dust while he’s on the bed. The way she’s drawn we can see her eyebrows and it gives off that she seems worried and she is looking at Angel Dust. From this image we quickly flash back to Angel Dust currently laying on the catwalk and after he does some slight movement we get another flash of an image.

This flashback shows Angel Dust in the same clothes still on the bed with Cherri Bomb but now he’s laying on his right side he looks like he has on arm around him and one hand on his forehead where his hairline is. He looks almost like he’s clutching his hair and he still has tears in his eyes but he looks more hurt than depressed. Cherri Bomb has also moved positions and looks like she might be trying to give Angel Dust a hug. She’s on the bed on her knees and has one hand visible on one of Angel Dust’s arms.

There is another flash back to current Angel Dust and he moves again more on the catwalk and we get another flash of Angel Dust on the bed in the same clothes. Cherri Bomb is still with him. Angel Dust has his fist clenched against his face while he doesn’t have anymore tears he still looks hurt, not physically but definitely seems emotionally. His extra set of arms wrap around his stomach but not like he is hugging himself. Cherri Bomb is laying on her back next to Angel Dust and she just simply has her hand on his back with a worried look on her face.

From that flash we go back to Angel Dust and while he moves on the catwalk a bottle of alcohol rolls close to him and the perspective of the video changes to where we are at eye level with Angel Dust as if looking from the catwalk. Angel Dust moves his arm and seems to knock the bottle off the catwalk and it free falls. As the bottle falls it flips and the alcohol that falls out changes to a cloth and the tip of the cloth ignites making the bottle of alcohol into a molotov cocktail. It seems to just explode from the center of the bottle revealing a new scene.

Now there is a street on fire and a broken a Molotov cocktail bottle on the ground and smoke coming up from the fire and this smoke is not red. The smoke from this fire which is green. The smoke is actually different colors, there is a pink, violet, and dark purple which is distinctly not black. Then on top of the building behind the smoke is the dark silhouette of Cherri Bomb and her glowing red eye with a ‘X’ as her pupil. Cherri Bomb can also be seen holding a Molotov cocktail in her hand before the smoke clears and we see Cherri Bomb’s new design.

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Now just like any story we have to start at the beginning. As far as I’m aware there hasn’t been any evidence to where Luz was born and the earliest glimpses we can see of Luz are when she’s a little kid. There is no confirmation at what age she is but in some of the glimpses she is considerably younger than when we first see her.

What is unfortunate is that aside from a couple photos Luz has, the only glimpses of Luz’s childhood that we get are in the first “episode” of Season 3. Now I put episode in quotations because while technically it’s an episode, Season 3 is made of 3 special length episodes. This happened because of things behind the scenes between Disney and the creator of the show Dana Terrace. Dana had a different plan for Season 3 but when she got notified that the owl house was going to be cancelled, Dana had to make do with the timeframe she had to end off the series.

But back to Luz Noceda’s timeline, there are no definite ages to say when the events happened but there is a clip near the end of the first special in season 3 where we as the audience see that Luz has a video diary on her laptop. The video diary goes back to when Luz was a child and the family had just moved to Gravesfield, Connecticut. Luz’s mom, Camila also has a nightmare/memory dream in the same episode but the dream sequence happens before the video diaries are shown. If you know the specific timeline or have your own theories let me know in the comments.

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After a bit of research I was able to make a better assumption of when events happened. So one the earliest events that I think happened was that the Noceda family moved to Gravesfield, Connecticut. This is the oldest video diary Luz has that is shown, and I will explain my reasoning for this. The earliest ages we see Luz in the show is in 3 different instances. Again one is the video diary of when they move to Graves field, and one key detail is that Luz has long curly hair and a missing tooth in this video diary.

I also have brought up that Camila, Luz’s mom had a nightmare/memory sequence, where she remembers how Luz was being judged by other people for being quirky. The first memory that is shown with Luz being young is when she finds the skin of a snake and excitedly shows it to other kids. But the kids are disgusted by the snake skin and when Luz says that the shedded skin means there is a snake nearby and that it got bigger, the kids run away screaming. This memory of Luz shows Luz with 3 braids, and a missing tooth in the same position of the missing tooth in the video diary. While this is a very small detail, teeth take a while to come in when you loose one, so while I’m not sure which one happened first it can be assumed that they happened around the same time as each other.

My assumption is that they moved to Gravesfield first. Because a detail young Luz in the video diary gives us is, “So we moved. Mom says it’s because the house isn’t pretty enough, but I think it’s because there’s a better hospital for Dad nearby.” This means Luz’s dad is sick and needs hospital care. So my assumption is that the memory Camila has is an outing that they have while Manny, Luz’s dad is in the hospital getting treatment.

The only indication of what Luz’s age could have been when she moved to Gravesfield is that she was younger than 7, because of some evidence from Luz. One of the episodes titled “Sense and insensitivity” Luz shows a photo she’s been saving to be her about the author’ picture and she already has her short haircut. The other video dairy entries show Luz young with long hair until she has a mishap. I assume it’s after this entry that Luz keeps her hair short to where we see her in the first episode. But while there is a distinct timeline in Luz’s video diaries there some details that came through in other episodes.

So after we see Luz in her youngest age the next video diary shows Luz depressed, “I think this might be the worst week ever.” Luz has some tears in her eyes and says, “But Dad left me this book. I can’t wait to read it.” Lo and behold the book is the first Good Witch Azura book. So immediately my heart is wrenched because Luz has lost her father to whatever illness he had. That is very sad and heart wrenching, especially since Luz is shown to be very young. But now it makes so much sense as why this book holds so much meaning to Luz, and why she was absolutely terrified in the first episode. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

After this clip the next video diary is Luz excited about the book saying how she loved it, and a detail to notice is that this might either be a couple days after for a week after we just saw Luz get the book. My reasoning for this is the details in the background, Luz now has an Azura poster and some drawings of Luz being a witch with Azura.

The next clip of Luz we see in her video diary shows her room is more decorated with posters and drawings. She has a bookshelf that is filled with the Good Witch Azura book series as well as other books. Luz seems to have longer hair and displays a sword saying, “Look at what I got at the convention. I’m gonna cut my hair with it.”

There is another clip of what happens right after she does just what she says. “That was a bad idea.” And Luz had a what looks like a botched up hair cut. Her hair is significantly shorter but I assume that Camila found out and helped fix the haircut. I think this is when Luz found her signature hair cut and took a photo with the haircut to be her about author photo.

From there the next time we see Luz older is when she’s in high school, Luz’s mom recalls when Luz auditioned for Juliet. And Luz’s video diary goes to another entry which seems to be the day of Luz’s book report. The same book report that lands Luz in the principal’s office in the first episode. In my previous post I talked about the pilot and the flashbacks it had to events that happened before the first episode which were all incidents that could have all happened in one school year.

One detail of Luz’s life before the boiling isles is that on the anniversary of Luz’s dad’s passing, Luz and her mom have a tradition. They would pick flowers for each other and visit her dad’s grave, and the Luz and Camila would spend the day together.

After Luz discovers the demon realm her life changed drastically. Luz had to learn many things about the demon realm. And while the demon realm on the outside seemed different from the human realm there were also parallels we the audience could find.

After Luz’s adventure to help Eda and King in the first episode she decides to stay in the Demon Realm. So the next day Luz starts as Eda’s apprentice. Luz has so much energy and is excited to become a witch with her own staff, but Eda tells Luz that it’s going to take time for Luz to become a witch and normally witches are awarded their staffs from school. However, Eda makes it clear to Luz that since Eda is her teacher, Luz will have to work to earn her staff. Eda’s first task to do Luz to do is to deliver packages of potions and to sell potions to the citizens of Bonesborough. King is sent with Luz to make sure she stays out of trouble since she doesn’t know much about the boiling isles yet. While out delivering packages and selling to people, Luz confides to King that she was hoping for more.

Feeling disappointed that she might not live the fantasy she was hoping for, Luz decides to deliver the last package and wants to go back to the owl house after. The place where Luz goes to deliver the package seems like something out of a fantasy and didn’t really fit in with the rest of the boiling isles. Luz meets a wizard named Adegast and he just gives Luz a map and a quest. Saying that Luz is a “Chosen One” and that she will be able to pull the Celestial Staff from where it’s stuck. Luz accepts the quest and Luz and King go back to the owl house and while Luz getting some things for her quest. King tells Eda what happened with the wizard. Eda and King make fun of Luz for believing the wizard and the map.

Eda tells Luz the map is bogus and when she sees Luz is disappointed Eda tries to cheer her up saying that soon Luz “won’t look like such a mark”. Luz still feels down and asks for privacy and she sees that in the light there are hidden words on the map that say “The path will only appear to the worthy.” Luz then decides to go on the quest alone. Luz finds that the quest she’s on and the people she meets fulfill her fantasy quest desires.

Luz continues on her quest and Eda follows after her because she didn’t trust Adegast. Luz gets to the end of her quest and Adegast reveals to Luz that he fooled her from the very start as a way to get to Eda. Adegast even offers Luz a chance to live her fantasy but she resists because she knows it’s not real even if during the quest she felt special. Luz and Eda work together to beat Adegast. Luz is once again disappointed but Eda has an idea to cheer her up.

Eda shows Luz the boiling isles but from a different angle that she’s been seeing since she got there. Luz asks Eda how she knew that Adegast was lying and I know I used this quote in my post about Eda, but it’s just so good. At least it hits a certain spot for me.

And with that episode 2 of season one ends with Luz, Eda, and King watching the sun set on the boiling isles. Now I know I didn’t get to dive deep into Luz’s character in this post, but I felt getting her past and her beginning on the boiling isles was a lot of information to throw at you guys. So because Luz is such a vital protagonist to the show, her timeline may be split into multiple posts. It’s a little early to tell so stay tuned for the next post.

There is deep lore the talking about both shows, for instance in this Hellaverse there are 7 rings of Hell, one for each of the 7 deadly sins. But there is also confirmation from the creator herself Vivziepop that Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss while in the same universe would be telling narratives from different perspectives.

Hazbin Hotel would be taking place in the Pride Ring, because when human sinners die they become Sinner Demons in the Pride Ring. Sinners can’t leave the Pride Ring, only Hell-born Demons can travel between all of the Rings. This sets up why in Helluva Boss we normally see more Hell-born demons such as Imps, Hellhounds, Succubi, Baphomets, Demons of the Ars Goetia, and the 7 sins.

Helluva Boss features three imps and a Hellhound who have a freelance business in the Pride Ring. Their business is called I.M.P. standing for Immediate Murder Professionals. I.M.P. was founded by an imp named Blitzo, and he has two other imp employees. Their names are Millie and Moxxie, these two imps are actually married. Blitzo also has a Hellhound employee that is his adoptive daughter named Loona.

So the business Blitzo has is to offer his services to the sinner demons of Hell, so if a Sinner wants someone who got them sent to Hell killed, Blitzo, Millie, and Moxxie go to Earth and kill who they are hired to. Now how I.M.P. gets to Earth is by using magic, cliche I know, but this is special Hellish magic that isn’t available to just anyone. So far there have been only two ways to get to Earth and one is more legal than the other.

The legal way for demons to cross from Hell to Earth is with an Asmodean crystal which are only given to demons from Asmodeus himself. The other less legal option is how Blitzo is currently traveling to Earth, which is using a grimoire that has a spell that Loona uses to open a portal to Earth when they leave and again when they are ready to come back.

The grimoire that Blitzo uses for his business isn’t actually his book. The book belongs to a Goetia Prince named Stolas. At the beginning of the series Stolas has a wife and a child. His wife is named Stella and Stolas has a daughter named Octavia. Stolas has the grimoire to perform his duties as a Prince of Hell, and Blitzo stole his book after they spent a night together. Now in the show they use more explicit language but I’m going to try and avoid that as much as I can.

The pilot of the show sets up things for the show but when season 1 episode one of Helluva Boss was put onto YouTube some things were changed. As the show progressed some aspects of the show changed and evolved with the characters. One thing is that every episode even the pilot has the disclaimer that this show is an adult animation. But as the show continues the disclaimer page would show gradually different animation.

One of the first frames we see at the beginning of the pilot after the disclaimer is a shot of a building and a sign in the bottom left side of the screen saying “Welcome to Imp City”. After watching the pilot and rewatching it, the sign is a clue that Imp City is located in the Pride Ring. We find out that in the building is I.M.P. has their office in there and at the beginning of the pilot we are introduced to a character who we find out is named Blitzo later. Blitzo is conducting a company meeting to brainstorm ideas to drum up business. Blitzo addresses his two imp employees by name, Millie a female employee and Moxxie a male employee.

After Millie throws out an idea for a carwash and Blitzo shoots it down saying “This is Hell Millie, no one cares about cars being clean here.” Blitzo throws out the idea of getting a Billboard and Moxxie shoots down that idea saying out loud very annoyed, “We can’t afford a billboard sir.” Blitzo then moves on asking if everyone forgot what service they provide, and the conversation goes on to talk about a commercial that Blitzo paid for and shows it.

The commercial also has a jingle for I.M.P. that showcases the premise of Blitzo’s business, this displays to the audience what to expect when they get clients in the show. But the jingle gets interrupted abruptly because while aiming at a woman, Moxxie accidentally shoots a kid who walks between him and the woman.

After the ordeal it cuts back to I.M.P. at their office and Moxxie says how it was Loona’s fault that it happened, and he continues to complain about how bad Loona is at her job as the secretary and dispatch for the company. The pilot gives us a general idea of what the character’s relationships to each other are like but because it is the pilot some things did change when the first episode was made.

As all the characters start to argue with each other the kid that Moxxie shot interrupts and is shown that the imps have managed to keep him alive after kidnapping him from the hospital they took him to. Ok, trust me that sentence makes sense when you watch the pilot.

So the kid interrupts the conversation and insults the I.M.P. team and Loona gets a text from the client that the kid was actually the target. So they kill the kid and send the body back to earth, and they are seen by a news team. And the last line of the pilot before the credits start to role is from Blitzo saying, “You’re welcome!”

The first official episode of Helluva also does some setup for the show but these are more official ideas for the show. The first episode starts with a scene of a schoolhouse that looks cute a friendly, like something out of a kids show. With a voice-over saying this person was a good person before something happened and that they had been good all their life. We see a school teacher freak out when her students remind her that it’s her husband’s birthday and she remembers she didn’t get anything special.

One of the students suggest calling him for a special happy birthday surprise, so the teacher video calls her husband on the computer, only to see him cheating on her. Obviously she is upset and goes to leave and in a bling rage she shoots the woman her husband was cheating on her with and then she shoots her husband. Seeing that her students saw what happened she decides to commit unalive. I will not explain that further.

But then we find out that the teacher ended up in Hell and is explaining this story to Blitzo in his office. Blitzo tells the woman that from her story it sounds like her husband and the woman he was cheating on her with are probably down in Hell with her. The teacher retorts saying that the woman survived and that the woman was considered a hero for surviving, and was given money from a lot of people. The teacher then hires I.M.P. to kill the woman she despises from when she was alive. The episode continues with Blitzo, Moxxie, and Millie going to Earth to do the job.

Moxxie has a moral issue when Blitzo attempts to kill the woman they were hired to kill because she looks like an innocent wife and mother of two children. It doesn’t help Moxxie’s moral issues that Blitzo describes her as “A happy mother who just got out of the hospital.” After Moxxie hesitates slightly Blitzo goes to kill the woman but Moxxie makes Blitzo miss his shot. Then we see how the woman and her family reacts to the gunshot.

Which is a surprising reaction, the family that looked nice and wholesome prove the saying that “looks can be deceiving” true. The woman asks her husband in a sweet voice what it was and the husband replies, “I don’t know Martha. But, whatever it is… they’re gonna be tomorrow night’s dinner!” And he pulls out a shotgun, but what is more surprising is that Martha, the same woman that I.M.P. is trying to kill puts down the tray she’s holding on the table.

She smiles, reaches down under the table and pulls out a shotgun as well and a glass of wine. She drinks all the wine and throws the glass down on the floor and says, “Alright kids. Guns out.” So at this moment it becomes very clear that they are not the wholesome and innocent family they pretend to be. Martha and her husband chase after Blitzo and Millie while Moxxie is captured by the two children. I was surprised how easily Moxxie was captured, and if you have seen the episode let me know in the comments how you felt about it.

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Martha chases down Blitzo while Millie is being chased by Martha’s husband. Millie tries to kill Martha’s husband but he hits Millie with a glass bottle and knocks her out. While Blitzo is being chased by Martha Stolas calls him and now we get a bit more information on how their relationship is in the show now.

Stolas is a little less aggressive about what he wants from Blitzo. Stolas sets the ground rules that he is willing to let Blitzo keep his grimoire for an entire month except one night during the full moon of the month. Blitzo gets found and captured by Martha, who has gone from innocent looking to looking like a crazy and evil woman.

While Moxxie is still with the children Martha and her husband attempt to burn Blitzo and Millie at the stake as a way to banish them back to Hell. She also reveals herself as a Satanist but her attempt to banish Blitzo and Millie fails with Blitzo saying that her fire doesn’t hurt them. Martha then decides to just shoot Millie and Blitzo but before she can Moxxie kills her.

As Moxxie frees Millie and Blitzo Martha’s husband gets away. Blitzo calls Loona saying they’re ready to go back and Moxxie says he left something at Martha’s house and runs back. Moxxie calls the police on Martha’s husband and children then he returns back to Blitzo and Millie. Blitzo and Millie walk through the portal that Loona opened and Moxxie turns back to look at Martha’s house. He sees that police are there and they blow up the house, and Moxxie seems traumatized and the immediate next scene is everyone celebrating with the teacher that the mission was successful while Moxxie still looks traumatized.

With that the episode ends and the credits roll. I will talk more about the rest of the show in later posts. Trust me I wanted to write more and hopefully get to some more characters. But I think this is a good point to end this post, I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you guys. So stay tuned for the next Helluva Boss post.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images or gifs used in this blog post.

Luz Noceda is a typical teenage human girl. When we are first introduced to her Luz is portrayed to be quirky, as she demonstrates her book report with a doll and snakes. Luz is in the principal’s office when we see her with a doll and a couple of snakes in one of her hands. Luz’s mom is also there, she tells Luz in a gentle but firm manner that Luz needs to ‘grow up’ in a sense. Luz is reminded of why she has been in the principal’s office three times before now, and we see that Luz is very… in the nicest way possible, creative.

Luz is shown to have been in the school play of Romeo and Juliet and by the dialogue she seems to have been Juliet, saying “Oh happy dagger, give me death!” and she pretended to stab herself with a spork. But she also seemed to tear the dress open a bit and sausages fell out as her intestines as Luz played dead.

Another instance is during an unknown class, Luz made a model of a baby griffin, but she made it as taxidermy, using what looks like a pigeon and a squirrel, Luz also says in this flashback, “Now for the final anatomically correct touch, spider breath.” Luz opens the pigeon’s beak and spiders come out of the mouth, all the other students scream while Luz seems to be unfazed and is curious why everyone else is freaking out.

The next instance shows Luz at cheer tryouts, where a girl does a backflip and Luz says as a response, “You think that’s impressive? Check this out.” Luz then flips her eyelids inside out. Honestly people who flip their eyelids inside out kind of freak me out. Like cool, you guys can do that but your skin is the way it is for a reason.

Then it cuts back to Luz currently being in the principal’s office for her book report. Luz is then told again by her mom that “..If you can’t learn to separate fantasy from reality, you may need to spend the summer here.” And Luz is shown a pamphlet for a summer camp called Reality Check Summer Camp. I’ll be honest watching this for the first time, that hurt. To have your mom tell you in front of the principal that if you don’t shape up, she’s going to send you to a Summer Camp where you learn to stay inside the box.

I felt bad for Luz. Luz then tells her mom that she’ll stop being weird, then the snake she holds in her hand jumps at the principal and bites him, and Luz asks out loud, “That doesn’t count right?” Then I became slightly confused because the next cut shows Luz with a messenger bag backpack standing outside a house which is shown to be where she lives when Luz’s mom comes walking out. So what I’m confused about is because, in the following pieces of dialogue, it’s revealed that Luz is being sent to the Reality Check Summer Camp, so does that mean that the book report was an end-of-the-year kind of project? Or was this a time skip and we just assume that Luz did something else that influenced her mom to send her to this summer camp? While watching the series again, I haven’t found any evidence in the show that gives a definitive answer. But moving back on track, Luz’s mom tries to help Luz see the bright side of this. I think it’s sweet but also just twisting the knife, Luz didn’t want to go to this camp, and her mom is trying to get Luz to see the bright side by saying, “Learning to appreciate public radio” I’m sorry but how is that a plus?

Anyway, Luz tells her mom what she likes to do instead of the examples of what her mom suggested she would be doing at this summer camp, “I like editing anime clips to music and reading fantasy books with convoluted backstories.” When Luz said what she liked to do, I instantly felt a connection. Luz suddenly became relatable to me. Then her mom said this and I felt so sad for Luz, “Mija, your fantasy world is holding you back. Do you have any friends? Real ones, not imagined, or drawn, or reptilian. Summer camp is a chance to make some friends, but you need to try.” I felt sad that Luz didn’t have friends, I would love to be her friend. I even remember saying that out loud to Luz as if she was in the same room.

But I also just want to try and explain things to her mom, because she did have a point, going to summer camp is a chance to make friends, but at least send her to a summer camp where she’ll have fun. I personally have never gone to summer camp. My summers were always with my family, and we would usually go camping, to the beach, or sometimes we would just stay home. But I always wondered what it would be like to go to a summer camp, then I remembered one big reason I could never bring myself to ask my mom if I could go to a summer camp, I would be homesick real fast. But to get back to Luz, as she tells her mom what her actual interests are she takes out a book from her bag. After her mom said that Luz’s fantasy world was holding her back, Luz walked over to their trashcan that was out on the curb and open. Luz’s mom says that she has to try and make friends and asks Luz if she can do that, I could hear Luz’s soul die just a little when she responds, “Yes, mom.” These two simple words but depending on the inflections and how these words are said have many meanings. Now I may have exaggerated slightly about Luz’s soul dying, but she did sound defeated. Luz’s mom leaves for work after giving Luz some kisses on her forehead and tells her to be careful and to text her mom when she gets to the camp. But I was happily surprised when Luz’s mom spoke Spanish, because that made me connect with Luz’s character a little more.

Almost immediately after her mom leaves Luz goes to grab her book out of the trash but finds it missing and freaks out slightly. Luz looked slightly up to see that a distance away behind the trashcan was a little owl with a sack in it’s beak. Inside the sack was Luz’s book and she chases after the little owl. Luz follows the little owl through the door of an old house in the woods near where she lives. And this is how Luz traveled to the Demon Realm, specifically onto the Boiling Isles. But I will remind you guys, as I describe these events about Luz, this is the first episode and introduction to the show.

I took the time to go more in-depth about this specific part of the first episode for a reason. Luz is one of the main characters if not the main character of the show, and this part of the pilot plays a key role in how the show truly begins.

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I was surprised and interested that the beginning of the pilot started with a song and an animation similar to a puppet show kind of aesthetic. Then it changes to show a more traditional animation but with character designs that surprised me. Most of the animation I had seen at the time was mostly normal humanoid, characters that looked like normal people. So immediately the show had me with the designs of the characters and even characters that were only made for the background. Then the pilot gave a taste of the plot. The setting of this pilot and show would be in Hell, all the characters were demons. The show’s main plot that was presented in the pilot is that the character Charlie is attempting to open “The Happy Hotel” a hotel that rehabilitates sinner demons and tries to get them into Heaven.

Hell seems to be portrayed as a lawless metropolis and the first few minutes of the pilot show dead demons slaughtered. Then after a character who would be revealed to be Charlie motions her finger to the sky and it looks like a shot of magic leaves her hand whistling and causes fireworks in the sky. This is a signal to other demons who appear out of hiding and some take the weapons left on the corpses of demons. There is a shot that shows a clock tower and there is a timer under the clock face that resets and says, Next Cleanse 365 days. This shot and the whole clock tower, in general, reminds me of the clock tower in Halloween Town from “The nightmare before Christmas”. After this, we are introduced to another character briefly who is later to be revealed as Angel Dust, and the scenes move on to show two other demons who are fighting each other in a turf war. This then switches to a news network in Hell called 666 News and they are covering the turf war between the two demons. The anchorwoman brings up the next segment being an interview with Charlie who is the princess of Hell.

The show then cuts to show Charlie preparing for what she is going to announce, which is the opening of her Happy Hotel. Other demons who are watching the broadcast either silently judge Charlie or just laugh saying she’s crazy for thinking a sinner can be redeemed. Then Charlie decides to express her belief on how a sinner can be redeemed and how much she believes in her hotel through a musical number. After that everyone on the set starts to laugh at Charlie and the anchorwoman ridicules Charlie, and Charlie states that they already have a sinner as a patron at the hotel. Charlie then states how he’s improved and when asked who this mystery demon is, Charlie responds with Angel Dust. Angel Dust has a pre-existing reputation of being a real bad sinner in Hell and just as Charlie lists off how he’s changed his sinning ways, the news gets a report on someone joining the turf war. That someone being Angel Dust and he’s fighting alongside Cherri Bomb who is one of the two demons fighting the turf war.

This embarrasses Charlie, and the anchorwoman and the other demons laugh and ridicule Charlie even more. Charlie retaliates and takes the news anchorwoman’s pen and calls her a cuss word. They presumably get into a fight and the pilot cuts to Angel Dust with Cherri Bomb. Angel Dust tells Cherri how he’s allowed to stay at Charlie’s hotel rent-free if he “plays nice”. So Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb keep fighting against the other demon and we get some shots of Charlie fighting the anchorwoman and we see all the characters yelling as they are fighting. Then the pilot cuts to the awkward drive home, Charlie and her best friend Vaggie, who was helping her prepare for the interview before it all went south, and Angel Dust all in the backseat of Charlie’s limo. Angel Dust gets yelled at by Vaggie about how his actions ruined the Hotel’s reputation and it seem like a joke, but Angel Dust doesn’t take the talk seriously. Charlie tries to look on the bright side however very slim to nonexistent it is. When they get back to the hotel we can see that Charlie was really hoping for people to want to come to her hotel, she had streamers, a welcome banner, and balloons set up at the check-in desk. Angel Dust goes to a refrigerator and gets a popsicle and takes the opportunity to ridicule Charlie for her lack of guests. But he regrets it shortly after seeing how depressed Charlie is over what happened. Angel attempts to try to console Charlie but he doesn’t seem to be able to bring himself to do that.

Charlie takes a step out of the hotel and calls her mom, but she gets the voicemail box, this piece of dialogue is very interesting because we as the audience get a glimpse into all the doubts Charlie has that he hides with er optimism. She calls her mom and says, “Hey mom, um, I know I keep calling and you must be busy. Really busy. But, um, the interview didn’t go well and I don’t know if I’m going to make a difference. I-I don’t know what I’m doing, I could really use some advice mom. I-I think dad was right about me. eh-ha-ha anyway, I’ll stop talking before this gets long. L-love you, bye.” Then she hangs up the phone.

But from this dialogue we can see how she may be possibly treated by her parents at home. Her mom might have been the one to encourage Charlie to pursue the happy hotel and her dad might have been the one to tell her that she couldn’t do it. After seeing Charlie’s design and this scene, I would recall the musical opening. There seems to be a silhouette of Charlie’s character design and another silhouette that shows up behind her that seems to look at Charlie’s, and the lyric that plays for this part of the animation is, “Why have I always been a failure?” So this gives a lot of insight to possibly what Charlie meant in those few lines.

When Charlie hangs up the phone she walks back inside to the hotel, but not longer after she goes inside there is loud banging knocking coming from the other side of the door. Which I think is stange because she was just out there talking on the phone so I feel like she would have seen someone walking to the door before they started knocking, unless she was oblivious. When Charlie opens the door she sees a demon who opens his eyes and starts to say hello but is cut off by Charlie opening and closing the door. Charlie asks Vaggie very concerned on what she should do because, “The Radio Demon is here.” Vaggie says to not let him in, but if Charlie listened well things wouldn’t be very interesting now would it?

So Charlie opens the door and now when the radio demon talks it becomes almost very obviously why he is called the radio demon, his voice sounds like a radio show host from maybe the 50’s. And he offers his help to Charlie to help run the hotel, and Charlie and Vaggie are extremely skeptical. Because the radio demon has a reputation but his reasons for doing so are unusual, “Why does anyone do anything? Sheer absolute boredom.” The radio demon only wants to help with Charlie’s hotel because he views it as a new kind of torture for the sinners who would want to try and redeem themselves and fail miserably. And while the Radio Demon talks with Charlie, Vaggie is now sitting next to Angel Dust on a couch watching Charlie and the Radio Demon. Angel Dust asks who he is and Vaggie seems surprised that Angel Dust doesn’t know who he is considering Angel Dust has been in Hell longer than Vaggie.

Vaggie then explains who the Radio Demon is and we find out his name is Alastor. Alastor seems to have been in Hell for a long time but one of the thinkgs Vaggie sayas about Alastor throws me off, “He began to topple Overlords who had been dominant for centuries, that kind of raw power had never been harnessed by a mortal soul before.” The wording of this makes me think is there a chance that Alastor isn’t a sinner. But one quick search and I found out on the Wiki site he is a Sinner demon but until the show airs there isn’t much known besides the pilot and what Vivziepop has said about the characters. Once Vaggie finishes her expplanation to Angel Dust, he kind of brushes her story off and laughs saying that Alastor doesn’t look threatening. Leave a comment if you agree or disagree with Angel Dust’s assessment based on the folowing image of Alastor.

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Vaggie tries to warn Charile against accepting Alastor’s help, but to Charlie’s insistence, Vaggie corrects her warning to not make any deals with Alastor. Charlie tries to console Vaggie asking for Vaggie to trust her, and Charlie tries to be assertive in accepting Alastor’s help with no strings attached. Alastor immediately accepts the terms and offers his hand while asking, “So it’s a deal then?” Charlie thankfully declines saying “no deals” honestly if she had shaken his hand for whatever reason, I would have facepalmed and died of shame. Charlie uses her position as the princess of Hell to “order” Alastor to help with the hotel, she tries really hard to be assertive but she still comes across like a little bit of a pushover.

Alastor complies easily and takes a look around the lobby of the hotel, then asks Charlie where her hotel staff is. Charlie explains that Vaggie is the only staff employee and Alastor laughs saying she will need more than her. Once having a look around seeing how Charlie is understaffed, Alastor offers to cash in favors to liven up the place. Alastor seems to have some kind of hellish magical power, because this is onlt the pilot there isn’t that much of an explanation yet. Alastor summons a female demon who he introduces as Nifty, Nifty almost immediately takes up the role as a housekeeper and starts to clean up the surrounding area.

Alastor summons another male demon who was at a poker table and Alastor adresses him as Husker, and Husker refuses to be part of the crew. Husker is won over by some cheap booze and now the hotel has a bar, which angers Vaggie because the hotel is meant to discourage sin. Charlie gets excited over the new demons that will be joining her helping with the hotel. Alastor has his own musical number about the hotel but calling it “this hazbin ho-” before he’s cut off. The crew walks out to see who attacked the hotel and it is the same guy who was fighting Cherri earlier, and he tries to pick a fight with Alastor. The next scene I think was just a way to show off Alastor’s power and how crazy he is, which I’m not against but still I’m not sure having this scene happen progressed anything.

Alastor brushes off the scene he made with his hellish magic or whatever exactly is is and as the camera pans up to the sign, it changes from Happy Hotel to Hazbin Hotel, with Alastor’s final lines start to stray from him talking to the other characters to him talking to the audience. “This is the start of some real changes down here. The game is set, now, stay tuned.” He laughs and it slightly deepens as it fades out to an outro music piece and the credits roll.

I loved this pilot for a long time and was so excited when I heard that it was picked up by a production studio by the name of A24 in 2020. Since then I have been excitedly waiting for when the first Hazbin Hotel episode would air, but so far that hasn’t happened yet. Recently it was announced that the first episode would come out in the Summer of 2023, but due to current events and the writers’ strike the release seems to be pushed back until further notice. I am sad that the release was so close and now the wait continues, but I will wait however long it takes because I have high hopes for Hazbin Hotel based off it’s sister show Helluva Boss. But more on Helluva Boss in a later post. There is also an official music video provided by Vivziepop, the creator of Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss but that too will be another post for another day.

When I finished season 1, I couldn’t wait for the next season and when the second season was announced, I counted down the days to the release date. I was that excited about a cartoon, but after I finished the show and looked at the name of the creator, Guillermo del Toro. The name had felt familiar to me like it was related to a movie, so I looked him up on the internet and found out that Guillermo del Toro was one of the writers behind the 2004 movie, Hellboy. When my dad showed me Hellboy for the first time I was in awe of the story, so when I found out Guillermo del Toro created the show I was beyond ecstatic.

Let’s start with the basic question, what is this show about? Well, dear viewer, the show follows Jim Lake Jr., the first Human Trollhunter, and his journey to protect the good Trolls of Heartstone Trollmarket and put an end to Gunmar, leader of the Gumm-Gumms. Now I understand for the people who have never seen the show that sentence doesn’t really answer the question, so let’s unpack it.

Let’s first talk about the world this story is set in, Trollhunters is set in Arcadia Oaks, California for the most part as this is where our human protagonist Jim Lake Jr. lives with his best friend and sidekick, Toby Domzalski. They also go to high school at Arcadia Oaks High together.

But there is another setting in the show that is unknown to mankind until Jim is chosen to be the next Trollhunter called Heartstone Trollmarket. Heartstone Trollmarket is the home of good Trolls such as Blinkous Galadrigal, otherwise known as Blinky in the show, and AAARRRGGHH!!!, which is one of the characters’ actual names. But this place is hidden from mankind by using magic, where a magical tool is needed to open the door to Heartstone Trollmarket.

There is another location important to the story of Trollhunters called, The Darklands. The Darklands is presented to be another world that is magically separated by a bridge, Killahead Bridge, and this is where the main villain of the show and his army is trapped. The main villain is Gunmar and his Gumm-Gumm army, now before you laugh yourselves silly, according to the lore of the show, Trolls have their own language called Trollish or sometimes Troll-speak, and Gumm-Gumm is Trollish for “bringer of horrible, slow, painful and thoroughly-calculated death”.

Now that we’ve covered the key locations, let’s go over the key characters. First let’s talk about the main character Jim Lake Jr., Jim lives in Arcadia Oaks with his mom Barbra. Barbra has been raising Jim on her own since he was 5 and at the start of Trollhunters Jim is about 15 years old, and he helps to take of his mother as well. One day Jim and his friend Toby are almost tardy for school and take a shortcut through an empty canal, but Jim gets to the canal first and once he makes it to the bottom he waits for Toby. After Jim calls out for Toby to hurry he hears a voice calling “James Lake”. Toby joins Jim at the bottom of the canal while Jim follows the voice to the pile of rubble. The voice calls again startling both Jim and Toby, and Jim removes a rock and finds the Amulet of Daylight, he then picks it up but the boys realize they are late for school so they leave in a hurry. This was the start of Jim’s journey of becoming the Trollhunter.

Later that night Jim is greeted by Blinky and AAARRRGGHH!!! and they attempt to offer their help to guide Jim but Jim freaks out and faints. Honestly so would I, but after some convincing and a pretty good speech Jim accepts Blinky and AAARRRGGHH!!!’s help. The two Trolls then show Jim and Toby who the Trollhunter would be protecting, the Trolls of Heartstone Trollmarket. At first, Trollmarket didn’t accept Jim as the Trollhunter because he was a human and not a Troll. Especially Draal, the son of the previous Trollhunter, and Vendel, the leader of Heartstone Trollmarket. But with time the Trolls accept Jim as the Trollhunter and Toby as Jim’s friend, and Jim juggles having a double life of being the Trollhunter and being a high school student. For most of the show, Jim tries to balance his life and meet the expectations of being the Trollhunter, while also keeping to his own beliefs and morals.

Toby is Jim’s childhood best friend and Toby has been very supportive of Jim through their adventures. In the beginning, when Jim was freaking out about the mantle of Trollhunter and the responsibilities he would have, Toby reminded Jim that he had asked for life to be more exciting. When Jim accepted his role as Trollhunter Toby tried doing whatever he could to stay with Jim to help him in his Trollhunter duties. During one adventure when Jim was shrunk down to the size of a gnome, which in Trollhunters a gnome is possibly no bigger than 1 or 2 feet, Toby helped Jim complete his Spanish presentation that he had to do at school. Toby would also help shoulder some of Jim’s responsibilities as the Trollhunter in situations where Toby could handle the task and in emergencies. Toby also becomes close with AAARRRGGHH!!! after Toby and Jim visit Trollmarket so much. Toby is written to be a very comedic character and I like it, it fits his personality well. Toby is one of the poor unfortunate souls, for he is cursed… with braces. I have had braces, so when Toby was shown at his dentist/orthodontist I felt his pain. Although for comedy one of his trips took 8 hours, I never had to have that much work done and I’m gonna need you guys to trust me, my teeth were all kinds of crooked.

Claire was introduced as Jim’s potential love interest, in the first episode Jim looks at her like he is in love. The history teacher character Mr. Strickler even comments to Jim, “Talking to will be much more effective than staring at.” We find out within the next couple of scenes that Claire is part of the school play. After the awkward interaction with Jim in Gym class, Claire invites Jim to the play auditions. The next time we see Claire is the next episode when Jim attends the play tryouts. Jim used the tryouts as an excuse when Mr. Strickler saw Jim in his Trollhunter armor in the boy’s locker room. Claire and Jim end up getting the leading roles of Romeo and Juliet, and the next time that we see Claire is at rehearsals for the play.

One night when Claire is in danger, Jim protects her, reveals his secret of being the Trollhunter, and comes clean with Claire about everything. Claire finds out from Jim that her baby brother was switched with a changeling, which is a troll that has a human familiar and can change from being a troll to appearing as their familiar at what their age would be. The next day Claire covers for Jim while he is fighting Bular, a Gumm-Gumm, and Jim makes it to the play right on time to perform with Claire. At the end of the performance during the curtain call, Jim tells Claire that he will do everything in his power to save her baby brother. Claire corrects Jim by saying ‘they’ will do everything they can to save her brother, and from then on Claire integrates herself into Jim’s life.

Blinkous Galadrigal is one of the first trolls shown besides Bular and the Trollhunter prior to Jim. Blinkous often uses a nickname instead of his full first name, he is referred to as “Blinky” by almost everyone around except Vendel, leader of Heartstone Trollmarket. Blinky as a troll is larger than an average human male and has blue stone-like skin. When trying to convince Jim to accept his new role as the new Trollhunter Blinky gives Jim a very inspirational speech. I love it and when I occasionally remember it, I like to use it as an affirmation to motivate myself.

And right before Blinky gives this inspirational speech, Toby taps Blinky with a metal ladle, and when the ladle hits Blinky there was a ‘clink’ sound. It also seemed that while Toby was hitting Blinky he was more annoyed than he was hurt. Blinky becomes a teacher to Jim to help him be the Trollhunter at the beginning of the show. But just like with Claire, Jim’s relationship with Blinky grows and changes to where near the end of the show Blinky and Jim have a kind of father-and-son relationship. Blinky also has a good relationship with AAARRRGGHH!!! as they seem to be friends. At one point Blinky was turned into a human and Blinky got to experience being out during the daytime. Blinky also got to have the experience of being human and Jim had to be the teacher. Also, nobody judge me too hard, but when I first watched this show I didn’t really pay attention to Blinky’s voice. Then my dad introduced me to Frasier, and when I watched the show the second time around, I realized the actor for Frasier voiced Blinky, which is Kelsey Grammer.

The final character for this post is AAARRRGGHH!!! who is a troll who is even bigger than Blinky. AAARRRGGHH!!! is an interesting character because at the start of the show, AAARRGGHH!!! is shown to be a troll of very few and a limited vocabulary. AAARRRGGHH!!! is a giant troll with grey stone skin and later in the show it was revealed that he was a Gumm-Gumm general, and before the battle of Killahead, which is a very important event for the trolls, AAARRRGGHH!!! defected and became a good troll. Early in the show AAARRRGGHH!!! was revealed to be a pacifist and Blinky specifically stated, “AAARRRGGHH!!! renounced his violent ways long ago.” AAARRRGGHH!!! helps Blinky to train Jim as the Trollhunter and AAARRRGGHH!!! becomes close with Toby where they become each other’s ‘Wingman’. AAARRRGGHH!!! is a specific kind of troll called a Krubera which are very sensitive to light due to their lifestyle.

AAARRRGGHH!!! was forced to adapt to the light since he was taken from his home at a young age and was drafted into Gunmar’s army. AAARRRGGHH!!! also at the beginning of the show was shown to have certain triggers that he was afraid of and when he came to his senses he tried to calm himself down. Toby tried to play a shooter game like Call of Duty with AAARRRGGHH!!! and AAARRRGGHH!!! freaked out. He would hold his head and repeat “Pacifist”, I honestly felt so bad and wanted to know why AAARRRGGHH!!! was so traumatized. But Toby didn’t press for details and decided to play a non-fighting game with AAARRRGGHH!!!. After about halfway through the show AAARRRGGHH!!! breaks his pacifist oath and now has a vow to protect Toby and his friends with violence if he absolutely has to.

This show has very interesting characters and while watching the show I loved seeing how they would interact with each other. The story is also very interesting and I will say that the ending was very good. I can’t say I wanted the ending but it did give me a sense of fulfillment. I typically have a standard for show endings, because when the show ends the ending should be impactful. So when I get to the ending of a show and that is a confirmed ending not that show was cancelled without notice, I expect to cry at the end. I want to feel sad that yes this is the end but not tears of despair, I want to cry because the show made me feel that I’m saying good bye to a dear friend that I don’t know if I will see again. I want to be able to look back at previous episodes and cry tears of joy because of the adventures they had that I as part of the audience got to witness.

I also like this show for the reason that it is part of a trilogy and all three shows influence each other in some way. There are even episodes that two shows share, where the main characters of both shows interact with each other, but in Trollhunters it’s from Jim, Toby, and Claire’s perspective, and in the other show it’s from the other main character’s perspective. Stay tuned for the next post.

Disclaimer: Spoilers for the Winx Club season 1.

Because of the number of retcons made to the show throughout the years, some details are up in the air for specifics but I will be talking about all the main points that happened in Bloom’s life. Let’s start at the beginning, Bloom was born as the second daughter to King Oritel and Queen Marion on a planet called Domino. Bloom’s older sister is Daphne, who is the crown princess of Domino. When Bloom was still a baby her home was attacked by The Three Ancestral Witches. The Three Ancestral Witches were three ancient evil witches who served Lord Dakar, the shadow phoenix. Lord Darkar sent The Three Ancestral Witches to destroy Domino and steal the Dragon’s flame.

Later in the show, it is revealed that there was a 4th villain that helped destroy Domino with the Ancestral witches named Valtor. But anyway, back to Bloom’s story, the Ancestral witches attacked Domino, and Daphne at about a teenager or young adult age gave the Dragon’s Flame to Bloom and sent baby Bloom through a portal onto the planet Earth to keep her and the Dragon’s flame safe. Now if you have seen the series, at the beginning within the first and second seasons, when they bring up the destruction of Domino, everyone talks about Daphne like she’s dead. Even Bloom does, saying things where Daphne’s spirit is helping to guide her, but later on in the series in Season 5, Daphne states that she is not dead per se but is rather a disembodied spirit. So that was a big and loud retcon to me, going from having Daphne dead to her being cursed by Sirenix, which is a fairy form.

So Bloom as a baby is sent to Earth, but she was left in a burning building. Bloom was safe though, the power of the Dragon’s flame was inside her and she as a baby was able to create a barrier around herself to protect her from the flames, this was when a human firefighter named Mike found Bloom. Mike and his wife Vanessa would adopt Bloom and raise her as their own daughter. A detail I didn’t understand is Mike and Vanessa didn’t have any knowledge of Bloom’s true identity or heritage, so how did they guess Bloom’s birth name? While Vanessa is a florist, I can see why she might think of that as a name, but that just seems highly unlikely that Bloom would still be named Bloom after being adopted by two strangers.

That aside, Bloom is raised by Vanessa and Mike as a normal girl she even gets a pet rabbit and names him Kiko. Later in the series in Season 6, it’s shown that Bloom had a childhood best friend in school named Selina, and the two of them would play in a field filled with flowers that was nicknamed, “The Forest of Flowers”. Bloom also had dated a boy named Andy who was a good friend of hers, but the time they dated was never stated just that it was before Bloom got involved with the Winx. So by the time the series starts, the only clue we are given within the show is that Bloom is 16 by the time it is summer vacation. We do not see Selina at this point in the series nor is she mentioned, but one day during Bloom’s summer vacation she visits the park with her pet rabbit Kiko.

At the beginning of the series, Bloom finds out that she is a fairy. This happens because during one day during Bloom’s summer vacation on Earth her pet rabbit Kiko showed her something unbelievable. Bloom saw a fight between a fairy who would become known as Stella and a troll. During the fight, Bloom used magic unconsciously, and later the same night Stella tells Bloom that she is a fairy. The girls are attacked by the same troll with another troll and a group of boys from the Red Fountain school of Specialists, come and save the girls. Bloom decides to go to Alfea with Stella. From there Bloom meets her dormmates and friends named Musa, Flora, and Tecna.

Throughout Season 1 Bloom grows to be a powerful fairy and her and her group of friends who name themselves The Winx Club overcome challenges, some are caused directly by The Trix. The Trix being a trio of young, powerful, and evil witches. Bloom and the other girls would then develop feelings for boys who happen to be the same group who helped Stella and Bloom before she attended Alfea. Bloom specifically would start to like a boy named Brandon, and Brandon would be introduced as Prince Sky’s squire.

One night Stella leaves for a date with Prince Sky but comes back acting strange and accuses Bloom of stealing her ring which is strange, because the night before Stella gave her ring to Bloom for safekeeping. So Bloom and the Winx investigate to find out why Stella is acting like that and they found out on the threshold of a trap that it wasn’t Stella. The Trix reveal that they were behind the whole thing and hold Stella ransom for her ring. Bloom makes the hard choice to give up the ring for Stella’s life.

The Winx would travel to the Witches’ school, Cloud Tower, to try and steal Stella’s ring back from The Trix who are students at the school. After stealing the ring they find the Cloud Tower archives and they look around finding information on Witches and Fairies. But Stella in an attempt to kill a bug accidentally set some of the archives on fire. While looking for a way out Bloom hears a voice calling for her and seems to show her a way out of the archives. This voice would later be revealed to be Daphne, Bloom’s older sister. After this the Winx would be punished by having their powers revoked by the Headmistress and the girls would have to wait until the Headmistress decided to give them back.

The same night The Trix decided to destroy Alfea as revenge for the Winx intruding into Cloud Tower, while all of Alfea except the Winx went to a concert. While at Alfea and seeing that the Winx were there, The Trix summon a monster to destroy them, but the Winx along with help from The Specialists, the group of boys that the girls know, they defeat the monster. The Winx and the Specialists lure the Trix to Headmistress Faragonda’s office where the Winx bring in Faragonda, and she sends the Trix back to Cloud Tower and writes a formal complaint to the Headmistress of Cloud Tower. After this episode Bloom starts to have dreams that involve Daphne, hearing her voice call for her and sometimes seeing Daphne as she is depicted as one of the nine nymphs of Magix.

More time passes by and Bloom visits her parents on Earth, and while she’s in the kitchen with her mom cooking, something in oven starts to burn and causes a fire. Bloom then uses her magic to extinguish the fire and get rid of the smoke. While on Earth, Bloom discovers that she can see people’s auras, and when she walks in on her mom with two men in her mom’s flower shop, Bloom can tell the men are up to no good. When Bloom warns her mother to back out of the deal, she does so but the two men threaten her and anonymously harass her. It gets to the point where Bloom has a dream that turns out to be a vision of her mom’s flower shop on fire, so Bloom warns her parents and they investigate. They arrive at the flower shop to find it engulfed in flames, so Bloom uses her magic to try and keep the flames at bay, while doing so she enters the burning building. Bloom’s dad goes with her and while in there Bloom gets another vision, this time she see’s her dad saving a baby from a fire. Bloom comes back to reality and her dad hears the sound of someone calling for help, so Bloom uses her magic to help her dad save the person in need.

Bloom uses her powers to calm down the fire slightly long enough for the firefighters to get there and once they start to put out the fire Bloom and her parents find out that the man they saved was the two business men’s driver who they had set the shop on fire. When Bloom and her parents return to their home she confronts them about her vision, and her parents tell her that she is adopted.

Bloom is now confused and curious about her past, and she wants to know who her real parents are. So Bloom talks to Brandon and asks him for his help and advice. She also tells Brandon that she might find a clue in the Cloud Tower archives because of what she and the other Winx saw the last time they were in there. Brandon comes up with a plan to help Bloom and together they travel to Cloud Tower, where unknown to Bloom, The Trix used their magic to trick and lie to Bloom. The Trix showed Bloom a fake vision and the “truth” that scared Bloom into wanting to isolate herself. But a nice witch named Mirta told Bloom the real truth about the vision The Trix gave her, soon a battle breaks out and The Winx who were looking for Bloom help defeat The Trix. But Mirta is turned into a pumpkin by Icy and Bloom along with the Winx promise to try and change Mirta back.

Some time later, Bloom hasn’t been sleeping well because she dreams of Daphne but when she wakes up in the middle of the night she can’t fall back asleep. She starts to sleep in classes so many times that she is called to Headmistress Faragonda’s office. The episode continues and Bloom is called to Ms. Faragonda’s office again but Bloom thinks she’s in trouble for something other than sleeping in class. Faragonda uses magic to take Bloom to learn more about her past, and Bloom is at the bottom of Lake Roccaluce into a cave. Bloom walks towards the center of the cave and Daphne appears in front of Bloom hold a jewelry box and inside the box is a crown. Bloom doesn’t know what it means yet.

Bloom has some time to think about what happened and she notices that Brandon seems to be creating distance between them even after she explained that the vision at Cloud Tower was a cruel trick by The Trix. Desperate to get answers Bloom decides to sneak into the Red Fountain Exhibition and the other Winx join her. While at the Exhibition, Bloom gets separated from the group and accidentally bumps into Diaspro and Diaspro drops a device. The device had a holographic image of Brandon, and Diaspro calls Brandon her boyfriend. Bloom is then confused on why Diaspro called herself Brandon’s boyfriend and Bloom assumes the worst, that Diaspro is one of The Trix in disguise. So Bloom tries to get Diaspro alone before attacking her and during the fight between Bloom and Diaspro, Bloom finds out that Brandon lied about who he really was. Brandon was actually Prince Sky, and Bloom is heartbroken to find out that Sky lied about his identity and that he was engaged to Diaspro and flies off.

Bloom leaves Alfea for what seems like permanently and goes back to Gardenia with her adoptive parents. Bloom tries to live a normal life again rarely using magic, but she misses her friends and Alfea. Bloom is eventually attacked by The Trix, and they reveal to Bloom who she really is, that she is the last princess of Domino and that Bloom is the guardian of the most powerful magic in the known magic universe, The Dragon’s Flame. The Trix take this magic from Bloom and leave, Stella comes to try and bring Bloom back to Alfea and finds Bloom trapped in ice and Bloom’s adoptive parents tied up.

Bloom goes back to Alfea and tells Headmistress Faragonda that The Trix stole the Dragon’s Flame from here and that she knows her true history. The rest of the last episodes of the series at include Bloom are about her trying to regain her Dragon’s Flame power to be evenly matched with The Trix. Bloom has a journey of self-discovery and help from Daphne, with Daphne telling Bloom that she was getting in her own way. Once Bloom has confidence in herself she fully regains her powers and uses her magic to defeat The Trix.

With that Bloom’s journey through season 1 comes to a close. These are all the important events for Bloom’s character because each event has had impact that shaped Bloom.

This is all the events that show some kind of growth or we can say some regression within Bloom’s character. But nevertheless these are events that help shape Bloom’s personality and have major effects an her character. Bloom had to make a hard choice and that displayed that she valued her friends life so much to give up The Sword Ring, or it’s sometimes called the Ring of Solaria. Bloom is shown to be kind and caring of her friends and tries to help them when they need it. But she does have destructive qualities that she tries to justify, shown by the times she ran away from Alfea, she tries to isolate herself. the first instance she ran away because of the false vision from the Trix, she justified it as being for the good of everyone. She also chose to isolate herself the second time she ran away because she was heartbroken of learning the truth about Sky letting her emotions get the best of her. But these qualities and flaws are what make Bloom a relatable character because she as a character feels real emotions and like some people she feels them intensely. But this is only Bloom’s development through season 1. So stay tuned for when I talk about Bloom in season 2.

Now to get back to the task at hand, in this blog post, I will be talking about the 3 main protagonists, Luz, Eda, and King.

Disclaimer: I do not own any photos or gifs used in this blog post. Nor do I own the characters that I will be talking about.

I will be talking about the characters as I have finished watching the whole Owl House series. So if you have not seen or finished it, be warned this blog post has spoilers.

The first character I want to talk about is Edalyn Clawthorne. Edalyn Clawthorn has two alternative aliases, Eda the Owl Lady, or simply just Eda.

Eda is an essential character in The Owl House because, without Eda, Luz would have never stumbled into The Demon Realm. Eda is a wanted criminal by the society Emperor Belos has established. Eda refused to join a coven and was labeled as a wild witch and has been avoiding the Emperor’s coven scouts who act as law enforcement.

But this is only one side of Eda that we are exposed to early on in the show. Later we find out that Eda is cursed, she was cursed when she was young, the show never really said how old she was but I would guess like 12 or 13 honestly. But I’ll be honest while it’s good writing and I like the reason for the curse, but the situation is kinda dumb. Eda gets cursed by her sister, Lilith, who is the older sister and the reason Lilith curses Eda is so she could win a duel to join the Emperor’s coven.

Honestly nice writing for it but if I could talk to this character I would tell her that is a dumb reason to literally curse someone. She does try to save herself in the retelling of how Eda got cursed by saying, she thought it would be only for a day, but I mean, come on. A literal child goes to “The Night Market” which is a black market that opens at night in Bonesborough, and it sells items that range from rare to authentic to illegal. So this kid is walking through this market and finds a curse and this curse is described as “A spell that would take away her powers” Keep in mind again that Eda and Lilith are sisters and Lilith still bought the curse and cursed Eda while she was sleeping. Yeah, she was sleeping! Have you no honor Lilith?

So instead of the curse taking Eda’s powers away for a day, still sounds extreme, she would transform into an owl beast and would seem to lose her sense of self. The show never said how Eda came back to her senses when the curse activated but it would be safe to assume it was for a short period of time. Eda had been seeing different healers from the healing coven because her mother wanted to get rid of the curse. Eda had a very complicated relationship with her mom because of the curse, but it does make sense after we got an episode dedicated to the relationship between Eda, Lilith, and their mom.

Eda’s mom was very worried, as I would imagine any mother would be when her youngest child is randomly cursed. Lilith never told anyone that she cursed Eda. So Eda’s mom, Gwendolyn didn’t know how Eda got the curse but as a concerned mother, Gwendolyn was going to make sure Eda was cured of it at any cost. Eda also has a strained relationship with her father, as when Eda was young and still lived at their family home attacked her father as the owl beast. It was unintentional for Eda but she scarred her father all across the left side of his face including missing his eye.

The attack from the owl beast not only cost Dell his left eye, but damage to his hands, and this was a heavy price for Dell. Eda felt bad about this after she had transformed back into herself and after her mother called for witches from the healing coven, the feelings of anxiety, guilt, and anger towards the owl beast grew. All these emotions caused Eda to run away from home while no one was watching her. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame Eda for running away, that is a lot to be dealing with, and she’s still a kid. Eda is still in her teens and has to deal with a curse that she can’t control or predict.

As Eda runs away she comes across a ruin and trips over a half-buried suitcase, when Eda takes the suitcase out, she touches an emblem that looks like an eye on it and the suitcase changes into a door. The door opens and shows that the door is a portal, but the portal leaves to an unknown world. This is how Eda found her way to the human realm. Honestly, that was some nice writing for the origin of Eda having access to the human realm.

But like I just said, that was Eda’s origin that lead to her becoming a wild witch. Eda since then has been running from her parents, and when she chooses to not be part of a coven, she becomes a wanted criminal. There is no confirmed timeline of Eda’s life but at some point, she got into a relationship with her friend from school, named Raine Whispers. And at another later point, while Eda has been on the run from her parents and presumably the law already, Raine breaks up with Eda because of a lack of trust in their relationship.

Somewhere else down the line, Eda finds her Dell’s old tower and fixes it up, and builds a house at the base of the tower. This becomes Eda’s home where she finds a way to sustain herself while avoiding being caught by the Emperor’s coven. There is no confirmed time but at some point, Eda meets Hooty, and Hooty attaches himself to the house becoming the house demon for the owl house. I really would have liked to get more info on what happened in those unconfirmed years of Eda’s life. I think there may have been ideas for it but due to the show’s cancellation there needed to be sacrifices.

I love Eda’s backstory and I just wish I could have seen more. At the beginning of the show when all of the characters are being introduced we learn that since Eda has a portal to the human realm, she uses her palisman Owlbert to collect human objects and sells them in the demon realm at a market. We also learn that she has a potions business that is her main source of income. Throughout the show of the Owl House, we see Eda grow and change just like all the other characters, Eda started to care about Luz and became more than just her mentor while Luz stayed in the Demon Realm.

At first, Eda uses Luz so that King can back an object that was meaningful to him. Eda cares for King like a mother but since she has her curse she seemed to be close but not too close. When Luz decided to stay in the Demon Realm, Eda was confused. But it looked like that Eda admired Luz’s determination to become a witch as she was curious herself if Humans could even perform magic. Eda eventually warms up to Luz and shows to be motherly to Luz and King throughout the show. So much so that at the end of season 1 Eda sacrifices her safety to make Luz a cloak made out of witches’ wool. And later in that episode, Eda makes the choice to use what is left of her magic keeping the curse at bay to save Luz.

Doing that made Eda turn into the owl beast forever, or it should have. But Belos managed to bring Eda’s mind back while she is still in the owl beast form before she would be petrified. Which is similar to a death sentence for the witches. Luckily Luz manages to free Eda, King, and Lilith. King and Lilith were in the same cage as Eda because Lilith wanted to help free Eda so she wouldn’t be petrified. And once at the safety of the owl house, Lilith cast a spell that split the curse between her and Eda. I’m just saying though, this act of heroism doesn’t really make up for her cursing Eda in the first place.

After that, in season 2 Eda has to learn how to do magic like Luz, with glyphs because the curse drained all her magic. The same applies to Lilith because they split the curse. Eda has a hard time learning at first because Eda doesn’t like to learn by the rules, which isn’t out of line for her character. All the flashbacks didn’t happen yet when the series got to that point, but one thing we did know about Eda at this point was she hated school. Honestly, I liked school, now I wasn’t crazy about going to school but I also wasn’t the person trying almost everything to not go to school.

Later we find out that it wasn’t that Eda hated learning, but she didn’t like being restricted, which is honestly a good trait because it justifies some of her choices and actions. Eda apparently wanted to learn magic from every track at Hexside when she attended, but she wasn’t allowed to so Eda settled in the potions track. She didn’t like that she was restricted but she excelled in magic, but she was also seen as a slacker and troublemaker in school.

This comes back into the “present” in season 2 when Eda lost her magic and had to learn how to cast spells with glyph magic, Eda doesn’t want to learn the basics of mixing glyphs to perform more complicated spells. The way witches use magic is different from using glyphs, and Eda had to learn this the hard way, which again is not unreasonable for her character. Eda has this sense of pride and has a hard time admitting she is wrong. This behavior is the opposite of her sister and I like that kind of contrast between sisters. They aren’t the same because of the backstory and the qualities of the characters.

Eda has shown to be a very powerful witch throughout the show and her reason for this is that while others have joined the coven system and chose only one specific kind of magic, she hasn’t. So while other people who are not part of the Emperor’s coven are restricted to only one kind of magic, Eda self-proclaims herself to be the most powerful witch on the boiling isles. Eda is very powerful in raw skill and seems to only be matched by her sister Lilith.

Eda is a very interesting character, her backstory is so interesting, her character design is pretty cool, and her character development is very well written in my opinion. We even get a glimpse at what is in store for Eda in the final episode in the Epilogue after Belos’ defeat. Eda opens a new school, her school is the University of wild magic, where she is the headmaster. Eda wanted to learn more than one track of magic but was allowed. In her school, multiple tracks of magic are not only allowed but encouraged and there are multiple courses that all deal with wild magic or missing magic. Eda got to teach what she wanted to learn, and other aspects of her character are embraced, she has resolved some of her issues. Eda came to terms and accepted the curse as part of her and has embraced it, she made up with her ex-partner and they are presumably back together, and she is on better terms with her family.

Eda has a point with this quote, and honestly, I love this quote. Eda told this to Luz because Luz wanted to believe she had some kind of predetermined fate of destiny in finding the demon realm. I would be lying if I said I have never imagined something similar for myself. As a kid, I always believed that one day I would stumble upon a magical world or find out that I had magical powers, something, or anything to give me a reason to feel special and that I was special for a reason. But that wasn’t in the cards for me, so I stopped waiting to be chosen, but where I went wrong is that I gave up for a while.

Now, I still don’t believe I was chosen by any kind of deity, but I’m not waiting around for someone to send me on an adventure. I’m writing my own adventures and now I am sure I’m on the right path. That’s all for now, I’ll talk about the others who live in the owl house in my next Owl House post.

BYEEEEEEE!

First I want to talk about the main characters, the Winx club. At the beginning of season 1, the club had 5 members. Now in the show, they rarely refer to their group as a club but treat it as just a normal group of friends. But in later seasons they start referring to their friend group to be a club.

I like the way the show started the first episode, when I first saw Winx Club the previews made it obvious that the show would be about fairies. But at the beginning of the first episode, we get a scenic display of a city and it changes to a drawing of said city, and we see the main character’s bedroom with a voice-over. After some dialogue, it is revealed that the bedroom belongs to the main character Bloom, and the first voice giving the voice-over was Bloom’s mom trying to get Bloom to wake up. Bloom’s mom then tells Bloom that she’s late. Bloom jumps out of bed worried she’s late for school, getting ready as quickly as she possibly can. I can’t relate to being late to school, unfortunately, because my mom was a teacher, when she woke up at the crack of dawn to get ready for work, she woke me up too. When I first watched this I thought to myself, “Wait a minute isn’t she supposed to be a fairy? Why doesn’t she use magic? Why doesn’t she have wings?”

The episode continues on that Bloom is just a “normal” 16-year-old girl who wants some more freedom and for her dad to treat her like 16 year old and not a little kid. Bloom has a pet rabbit named Kiko, and Kiko is quite the character, he almost reminded me of Courage from Courage the cowardly dog. Bloom takes her rabbit to the park and Kiko walks off on his own. Why someone would let a rabbit go off on their own even in a cartoon is beyond me but in fairness, Kiko isn’t really animated like a real bunny so the logic is a little flexible. Kiko comes back to Bloom yelling and trying to get her attention to see something. Bloom follows him and finds a battle going on. A fairy with wings and a staff is fighting creatures and an ogre. I like how the writing of this scene shows that the character Bloom has a kind heart, without having magic and seeing strange creatures she joins the battle to help the fairy in need. The scene also shows that Bloom has a lot of courage to join the fight with her only weapon being a thick broken branch from a tree. At one point in the fight Bloom uses magic to create a shield the monsters bounce off of, but she does it without noticing. I always like the hidden power kind of trope.

Bloom helps to drive back the creatures and they leave using magic, right after the battle the fairy falls to the ground, and her hairstyle and outfit change. Bloom takes the girl back to her house and explains what she saw to her parents. In that scene we see Bloom’s dad being very skeptical about magic, which is decent writing in my opinion. In a world without magic, it is a normal reaction to deny seeing magic, especially if you are afraid of it. So it was realistic writing to have Bloom’s dad being skeptical of the fairy who we as the audience learn is named Stella. Stella tells Bloom that she a fairy by the magic she used in the fight earlier, and asks if Bloom is going to be attending Alfea. The way Bloom’s character is written is very interesting, all of this is brand new and extraordinary, and yet Bloom has an open mind to all of it.

The Ogre from the fight is shown to be talking to 3 girls who are clocked and only their eyes are visible, but we can hear 3 distinctively different voices. The 3 girls sent the Ogre to try and take Stella’s ring that turns into her scepter but obviously, he failed, so that angers the girls. We get an interesting flaw of this character who is called Knut. In all honesty without subtitles I would have never known that there was a silent ‘K’ in Knut’s name. Knut is stated by the girls to be a nearsighted ogre, and Knut has a pair of glasses but he is self-conscious about wearing them. The girls ridiculing Knut for being nearsighted doesn’t help his self-confidence to wear them, but this is an interesting flaw for the ogre. Knut tells the girls what happened and the girls are interested in how a girl from earth was able to fend off the creatures, so using a piece of Bloom’s pant leg that one of the “ghoul” creatures bit off of her, Knut uses a “Hunting Troll” to find Bloom. It seems that the hunting troll would be a magical equivalent to a bloodhound. It was never explicitly stated in the show if certain creatures were exclusive to Earth. They did show later in the show that there were dogs from other worlds in the Magic dimension but even that dog looked different from dogs from earth shown in background shots.

Knut takes the hunting troll to earth to search for Bloom, they find Bloom’s house and attack Bloom and Stella. After a bit into the battle Stella reveals she called “The Specialists” for help. The Specialists turn out to be a group of teenage boys who seem to be like knights. The Specialists help to take care of the hunting troll but Knut gets away at the end of the fight. Stella then introduced the 4 boys by name, Riven, Brandon, Timmy, and Prince Sky. These boys restrain the hunting troll and leave. The next morning Bloom’s dad is cleaning the mess the fight with Knut and the hunting troll made of the house, and Bloom has decided to go with Stella to Alfea, embracing that she is a fairy.

Once at Alfea, Stella and Bloom see an older woman checking students in with a list of registered students by name and what realm they are from. I like this kind of introduction that while the Magic dimension isn’t explored yet we as the audience get this kind of glimpse like, ‘Yeah, there are other planets with magical creatures and people who can or can’t do magic from these places.’ Stella suggests that Bloom tells a lie to get past this, as Stella has a letter from a girl that was going to attend Alfea but changed her mind. The girl who Bloom would be attending in her place is a princess, and when introduced Stella says she herself is a princess, and the specialist Prince Sky, this gives insight that there are planets/worlds/realms that have a monarch government type.

Bloom poses as the Princess Veranda of Callisto for the time being and goes through the orientation for the new year of fairies for Alfea. After they finish, Stella and Bloom go to find their dorms, Stella and “Veranda” are in the same dorm area. Now I have never gone a boarding school and when I went to college I did not stay in the dorms. But the way this dorm area was in the show was as follows, from the hallway the door lead to a common room kind of area and from that common room were doors that lead to the bedrooms. Now I actually curious for any of my readers who has been in a dorm, is that an accurate or at least similar representation? Let me know in the comments.

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Stella and Bloom meet the other girls who share the dorm area, Bloom as Veranda has a roommate, Stella has a room all to herself and there are another pair of fairies who share a room in the same dorm area. Bloom’s roommate is a nature fairy named Flora, I am a fan of puns sometimes or when character names have meanings. The rest of girls meet, and we are introduced to Tecna and Musa. Stella suggests that all five girls go out to the nearby city of Magix to have dinner and bond together.

In Magix, Bloom is disappointed when she sees that the capital of the magic Dimension looks like a normal city. Where she wanted to see a fairytale kind of city, filled with all sorts of magical creatures and magical items being sold at many establishments. When in the reality of the show, magic is overly exposed, but is rather subtle. When a flying car passes by and pulls to where there are no visible parking spots, the driver snaps his fingers and a parking spot is made in between two cars. Honestly I would have expected the world to be filled to the brim showing off all the magic too, but this was an interesting choice to make for displaying a world of magic.

The group of friends continue in search of a restaurant and Knut who is looking for new frames of his glasses sees from the store Bloom and Stella. He rushes to tell the 3 girls who ordered him to try and take Stella’s ring that changes into her staff. He states that the girls are in Magix and might be able to handle Bloom themselves. Bloom and her new friends enjoy dinner and Bloom ends up having to use a payphone from Magix to call her parents because her phone from earth is considered old technology in the magic dimension. While Bloom is talking on the phone she sees that Knut is watching the group and follows him when he goes to report back to the three girls he works for.

Bloom gets discovered and the three girls attack Bloom for eavesdropping, Bloom ends up frozen in a block of ice and the other girls find her and the three still unnamed girls. Bloom’s friends transform into their fairy forms and fight Knut and the other girls who through dialogue are implied to be witches. Stella at the end of the battle uses her ring that transforms into her staff to teleport everyone even Bloom away from the area. While warming Bloom up with her magic, Stella let’s the cat out of the bag calling Bloom by her name instead of Veranda. Stella explains everything on the way back to Alfea, and when the girls arrive they are caught by the headmistress and the Head of Discipline, the same woman who conducted the orientation. The girls are scolded slightly and confront Bloom about her lie, to which Bloom tells the truth about who she is and pleads her case to stay at Alfea.

Bloom is allowed to stay and the girls return to their dorm happy that they can all still be friends and will be at Alfea. But as the girls walk away the headmistress and the Head of Discipline exchange interesting dialogue, “I didn’t think there were any fairies left on Earth.” “Me neither, I thought they all disappeared centuries ago.” So this dialogue is very interesting.

Bloom suggests to all the girls that their group should have a name, to which Stella adds that the three witches they faced have a name of their own. The three witches refer to themselves as The Trix. and together the group of friends decide to come up with a name and they eventually all agree on Bloom’s suggestion, which is Winx.

This was overall a nice introduction to meet the main characters, the main antagonists, as well as seeing some of the key locations of the show. This has been part 1 of my evaluation of Winx Club, we covered the introduction of the show, next time I will be talking about the Winx Club members.

I like many different movies that Disney made, I was a Disney kid growing up. My mom was very strict about what I could watch on television and Disney Channel was one of the few channels I was allowed to watch, mainly because of the educational Disney junior shows. One of my favorite movies by Disney is Brother Bear, if you have not seen this movie, I suggest you watch it. If you don’t like it, that’s fine.

For any of my readers who don’t know this movie, Brother Bear is “…A story about how a boy became a man, by becoming a bear.” This movie did not state outright where and when it took place but by doing research I found that Brother Bear is set in the pacific northwest after the last ice age. This information is from D23 which is “The official Disney Fan Club”. We start off seeing 3 Native American brothers, They are getting fish for a coming-of-age ceremony for the youngest of these three brothers. We find out the youngest brother is named Kenai, the middle brother is named Denahi, and the eldest brother is named Sitka. We are shown that in their culture when someone comes of age the village shaman travels “to where the lights touch the earth” and “the great spirits” give the shaman a totem for the member of the village coming of age.

Kenai gets presented with his totem, and we get an explanation that when young boys learn how to live by the virtue of their totems they get to put a handprint on a wall that has handprints of their ancestors. Kenia’s totem is “The Bear of Love” to which he doesn’t understand what it means, Kenai’s eldest brother Sitka relates to him, telling Kenai that he felt the same when he got his totem. We then find out that because Kenai didn’t tie up the fish so animals won’t eat it properly, a bear came by and ate all the fish. Kenai goes to find the bear and the basket of fish on his own, but his brothers follow him. The brothers get attacked by the bear on a glacier, and in an attempt to save his brothers, Sitka cracks the ice causing the area where he and the bear are to fall into a nearby river.

The bear survives but Sitka unfortunately does not and a funeral is held and Sitka joins “The Great Spirits”. Grief-stricken Kenai goes hunting the bear that caused Sitka’s death and intends to kill the bear out of revenge. Kenai’s other brother Denahi follows after Kenai to try and stop him, but Kenai finds the bear first. The bear tries to run away and Kenai keeps chasing it eventually chasing it up a peak and cornering it, when the bear attacks Kenai to survive and escape, Kenai kills it. But the bear’s death does not make Kenai feel better about Sitka’s death. The spirits form streams of light that spiral down around Kenai and the bear on the peak, the stream of light then band together and resemble water, creating what looks like a glowing waterfall. Out of fear, Kenai avoids the water but after a couple of seconds of the movie, he carefully steps in the now-collected water and walks to the waterfall and touches it. The waterfall instantly bursts out orange and yellow lights similar to an aurora borealis and covers the sky above Kenai, in the lights shadows of all kinds of animals walking, running, flying, or swimming are seen. These are “The Great Spirits” and from this aurora borealis of spirits, a giant eagle flies towards Kenai and as it lands, the eagle changes into Sitka who looks at Kenai disappointedly and looks back at the bear. The bear is then changed into a spirit, Sitka as an eagle lifts Kenai by his shoulders into the air and through magic, Kenai is changed into a bear. After the Kenia is turned into a bear and landed safely on the ground of the peak he was on, the spirits leave and lightning strikes and it starts to rain as Denahi catches up to where Kenai as a bear now is.

Denahi finds pieces of Kenai’s tattered clothes from his transformation and Kenai disoriented as a bear, Denahi thinks the bear in front of him killed his little brother. Kenai attempts to stand up like a man but when lightning strikes in between Kenai and Denahi, Kenai looses his footing and falls down the side of the mountain into a river and floats down to a river bank. Grief stricken by thinking that he lost both his brother in very little time to bears, Denahi now hunts Kenai thinking he is just a random bear that killed his little brother. The movie does somewhat of a time skip that is the next day. Tanana the shaman of Kenai’s tribe finds him and nurses him to consciousness, but when Kenai tries to tell Tanana what happened, in his ears he sounded normal but to Tanana he sounded like a bear. “Kenai, honey, I don’t speak bear.” At that moment Kenai looks at his reflection and proceeds to freak out, you know, like any person would if they were magically transformed into a bear by their dead brother. Tanana manages to calm down Kenai and explain to him how he can turn back into a human, he has to go back to the mountain where the lights touch the earth and talk with Sitka’s spirit. When Kenai looks up after the explanation he finds that Tanana has disappeared.

Kenai then comes to find out that he can understand other animals perfectly and he gets stuck in a bear trap when he meets a bear cub named Koda. Koda and Kenai make a deal in the strongest possible form, the famous pinky swear. Koda helped Kenai get down from the bear trap and in return Kenai would accompany Koda to a Salmon Run. The Salmon run is explained as a large gathering for bears to eat Salmon, and “practically next-door” is the mountain where the lights touch the earth. Most of the movie from then on is Koda and Kenai traveling together to get to the Salmon Run and Denahi is tracking Kenai and attempts to kill him failing each time. Kenai and Koda make it to the Salmon Run and Kenai sticks out like a sore thumb for his lack of bear knowledge, but he grows to understand the bears he has met, at the Salmon Run there is a tradition of storytelling. When it’s Kodak’s turn for a story, Kenai starts to remember previous events and panics as Koda tells the story of his mom meeting 3 human hunters. But Kenai knew the story as when his brother Sitka died, and Kenai realizes that the bear he killed was Koda’s mother.

Kenai runs away from the Salmon run in a panic at his realization and a while later Koda finds him. Kenai then tells Koda that he has a story to Koda, and Kenai tells Koda the truth about his mom, and how she isn’t coming. Koda runs away and hides from Kenai not wanting to believe what Kenai told him. Kenai follows for a while trying to console Koda but Koda is unresponsive to him so Kenai goes to the mountains nearby to go and talk to Sitka’s spirit. While climbing the mountain, Kenai gets to an area on the mountain where there is snow and furious winds, there Denahi finds Kenai and almost kills him. While this is going on Koda comes to his own realization and follows where he saw Kenai go. Koda saves Kenai from Denahi and and once again almost kills Kenai who was trying to protect Koda. But at the last second an eagle intervenes and glows the colors of the aurora borealis of the spirits. The spirits shine in the sky and the bears at the Salmon run can see the lights. Sitka in his spirit eagle form carries down Kenai transforming him back into a man, as well as changing the snow area where they were to a grassy one with flowers growing.

Sitka flies down and lands changing to his spirit human form, Sitka takes Kenai’s totem that Denahi has been carrying around on his spear, he closes Denahi’s dropped jaw at seeing his brother as a spirit, and takes Denahi’s cloak to help cover Kenai. Koda calls for Kenai, but Kenai can’t understand him anymore. Kenai holds Koda and realizes just how much he cares about Koda, and Sitka hands Kenai his totem. The Bear of love, and Kenai tells his brothers “He needs me.” and Denahi makes a comment of “He looked better as a bear.” Kenai laughs a little and smiles but shows his worry for Denahi. Denahi reassures Kenai that no matter what he chooses, he will always be his little brother. While Kenai and Denahi have this moment Koda has his own moment his mom as a spirit. Kenai is transformed back into a bear and the three brothers share a hug like in the beginning of the movie. Sitka and Koda’s mom run and join the spirits again, the movie ends with a ceremony for Kenai to put his paw print on the wall with his ancestors as he learned how to live by his totem’s virtue.

I personally loved this movie growing up, mainly because it was cute and funny. But as I got older I started appreciating the movie more and more for the themes it had. I also found the idea of the totems interesting. So I did some research on where the idea for the totems in the movie came from, turns out the idea for the totems came from Native American Astrology. While it is not exact there are a couple parallels between how the astrology is in real life and how Disney put their own spin on it. I was interested by this, so I took to the internet! I found a website with the Native American Astrology Spirit Animals, and I found out my Spirit Animal is an Otter.

Another reason why I love this movie so much is the music that’s in it. There are a few musical parts of the movie that have singing in another language, but I still like the music part itself, the rhythm, the tempo, the way the music was composed to fit the scene.

I like the animation and the portrayal of the “Great Spirits” as the form of an aurora borealis. I just personally loved this movie because it felt like a different experience. It was different to see “Great Spirits” and how it’s portrayed as the collective life force and obviously spirits of people and animals alike.

I will put a link to the website I found with my Spirit Animal being an Otter. Let me know in the comments what your Spirit Animal is.

I remember watching a lot of movies growing up but a movie that I can remember very well, and one that made a huge impression on me was, The Pagemaster.

I remember this movie very well and I love it to this day. For my readers who do not know about this movie, I recommend you watch it at least once. Now the gist of the movie is that a little boy named Richard Tyler who is played by Macaulay Culkin is sent to buy a box of nails because Richard’s dad is building him a treehouse. Richard is a very cautious child and while he is riding his bike to the hardware store he gets caught in a thunderstorm. Richard takes shelter from the thunderstorm in a nearby library, the librarian Mr. Dewey meets Richard and assumes that the boy came to the library for a book so much so that Mr. Dewey does not give Richard a word in edgewise and gives him a library card. But Mr. Dewey is disappointed when this isn’t the case.

Richard tells Mr. Dewey that he is only in the library because of the storm, Richard then asks Mr. Dewey if there is a phone he can use to call his parents to let them know where he is and that he’s alright. Mr. Dewey points down a hall and tells him that there is a phone down the hall that he can use, Richard follows the directions and finds a large rotunda, with a mural on the ceiling. The mural depicts 4 famous literary characters, Dr. Jekyll and his counterpart Mr. Hyde, the legendary pirate Long John Silvers, Captain Ahab and the white whale Moby-Dick, a fire-breathing dragon with a knight, and in the center of the mural is a wizard.

Richard is in awe at the pictures but as he stands still the water dripping off him creates a puddle and he slips and falls flat on his back presumably knocking him unconscious. When Richard wakes up he finds the lights of the library turned off and hears distant sounds. After a few seconds, the paint from the mural drops from the ceiling onto Richard and the floor around him, he runs in fear and the fallen paint forms a dragon before gushing toward Richard. The paint moving was made with CG animation. He returns to the rotunda where paint from all the surrounding hallways comes back to the rotunda and covers Richard and all of the walls and books of the library.

Now this is where the movie changes from live-action to cartoon animation, and nearby comes the wizard from the mural but not as detailed. I personally love the lines from this character. He approaches Richard and says, “You are an illustration.” I just think Christopher Lloyd portrayed this character very well. Richard asks who this man is, to which he responds, “I am The Pagemaster. Keeper of the books and guardian of the written word.” Ah, I love this so much! This line gave me more respect for librarians than I already had, and I loved going to the library as a child.

Richard then asks where the others from the mural are and The Pagemaster replies that they are there and all around. Richard then asks if The Pagemaster can help him leave, to which he obliges, and starts walking to show him the way out. The Pagemaster leads Richard to the Fiction section and explains the wonder of fiction, “Where all is possible! Where a boy’s imagination… can take root and grow to incredible heights! Where a boy’s courage is a wind that moves him to discovery.” The Pagemaster sends Richard down the long hall on a book cart crashing into a telephone booth. Now Richard’s true adventure begins, as he will meet new friends and face three challenges in Horror, Adventure, and Fantasy. The names of the section also are the names of his three new friends and they are books.

As Richard faces these challenges he faces his fears, gains some courage, and becomes close with Horror, Adventure, and Fantasy. While they travel through the Horror section, books come to life when they are opened, this is then used again as a way to help Richard face the final challenge. Together The books and Richard make it to where they can see the exit sign. They reach the top of a mountain and face two giant French doors that look like a book and have the advice The Pagemaster gave to Richard at the beginning, “Look to the books”. They enter to find The Pagemaster and a half-sphere with energy going through the top.

Richard gets upset with The Pagemaster and tells The Pagemaster about his adventure but in an annoyed way. The Pagemaster then remarks, “Yet, you stand before me.” Making Richard reflect a little and The Pagemaster continues, “Think boy! What kind of an adventure would you have had if I’d brought you here with a turn of a page?” Where the light is, comes the challenges Richard faced to confront his fears, which were the 4 famous characters from the mural. And they all congratulate Richard for making it to The Pagemaster.

In the reflection of the half-sphere, The Pagemaster shows Richard no longer as an illustration asleep on the floor at the Rotunda. Wanting to go home with his new friends The Pagemaster uses magic to send Richard, Horror, Adventure, and Fantasy back to the real world through the rotunda. The rotunda ceiling returns back to the mural and when Richard wakes up he finds his friends in their regular book forms. The Librarian, Mr. Dewey comes to find Richard on the floor and helps him up, and goes to pick up the three books to put them away, but Richard stops him and tells the librarian he wants to check them out. Mr. Dewey tells Richard that the library has a policy that only two books can be checked out at one time, but he makes an exception. The movie ends with Richard in his treehouse that he was previously afraid to climb asleep from reading the books, we as the audience see shadows of the fantastical books as it fades to black.

There are multiple reasons why I love this movie. I love the beginning when The Pagemaster shows fiction to Richard. He creates a paper out of nowhere and when he throws it up the page becomes a giant. And throughout the movie when books are opened the contents of the book come to life. I just love that books can take you anywhere, and this movie showed that. I also love certain lines throughout the movie that I can make connections to real life, especially now that I am older than when I first saw it.

One line is from Adventure, “Be careful lad, not all sharks are in the water.” As a kid, I didn’t really get it but now I get it. For the context of the scene, Adventure and Richard were stranded on a piece of wood as a makeshift raft surrounded by sharks, and in the distance were pirates in a dinghy. Richard calls out to them and they row towards the duo and are taken to Long John Silver and forcibly recruited into his crew.

I am a sucker for puns, I have a dry sense of humor it might as well be a desert. But puns will always at the very least get me to crack a smile, so I appreciated all the book puns in the writing. “Mhm, a classic misprint” said by Fantasy as an insult towards Adventure. “Even books have spines.” A line by Adventure essentially telling Richard to man up when they are attempting to escape from the Horror section. Of course, there is the classic quote, “You mustn’t judge a book by its cover.” said by Fantasy in regard to Horror.

Another line that I took note of was when Richard says “You guys are my only friends” to Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure. Which as sad it may sound, for some people books really are their only friends. For a while as a child, I didn’t have many friends and during recess, I would go to the library and read books or help out the librarian. My librarian would try to encourage me to go to recess and play with the other kids, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I felt like I didn’t fit in with the other kids. But slowly as I grew up I came out of my shell and made friends, but I still like enjoying a good book.

Overall this book made a huge impression on me as a child, do you guys have anything like that? A book, a movie, a TV show, a song, etc. Let me know in the comments.