The only time Marcy is ever seen shoes with laces is in the timeskip. This, I propose a theory: Marcy Wu didn’t learn to tie her shoelaces until she was 23

Not pictured but still relevant: her outfits from the dinner, the mindscape, and the final battle

Another important detail is that we do not see Marcy’s shoes until after she trips. Thus, it is entirely possible that she tripped on her laces and Sasha tied them for her. Therefore, there is evidence to suggest that Marcy Regina Wu never learned how to tie her shoelaces at all

Anne and Sprig

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The episode of the Bizarre Bazaar has been on my mind currently, mainly because there’s just something so damn weird about the episode with the information given knowing that it’s a more plot-driven episode of the show.

There are questions about a new unseen species, the iconography of the hourglass, the question of certain characters’ histories, etc. Just a whole lot of stuff to dive into.

Okay, so it’s immediately after the Archives episode, right?

They’re in the same valley as when they went to the archives, Anne is complaining about the archives not having anything, and we have Polly reading the daggers book from that prior episode.

We could safely confirm that this is immediately after the Archives timeline-wise and is after their escape. The events of the night market and the escape happened in under a day.

Now let us dive into a few interesting details about the Bizarre Bazaar — going from the creatures associated with the location, to the many people associated with a certain piece of iconography.

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Found another section of the red hourglass, and this is the second time Hop Pop has held iconography of the red hourglass (this time with a bug surrounding it too), so what the Hell is up.

Amphibia - The Breaking of the Cycle

There are so many topics that I want to discuss about Leif’s letter scene, but if I had a moment to pick it would be the way Andrias was handled throughout the whole thing.

Because for a story about change, growth, and unconditional love, this moment pulls the full stops and combines everything we know about Andrias’s narrative to an amazing peak, and it all comes down to a few things this story had established before the finale.

That Andrias, out of everyone, has always been integrated into the past whether he liked it or not.

[Word Count: 1,000~]

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The Alas Poor Villian Trope in play

Even though I give The Beginning of the End a lot of credit over its handling and new information, I have to say that The Three Armies does a really good job in being able to show Anne’s current boundaries and where she currently is at communication-wise.

Because throughout Amphibia, especially in Season 1 and portions of Season 3A, one could notice that Anne has always been a very stubborn person yet easy to press when it came to boundaries. She is a very kind and loving person, she loves people so much that she would put all the burden and weight on her rather than tell the people she loves that she is struggling.

And this could be seen in a negative way like in how Sasha treats her in the Reunion flashbacks, or with the smaller stuff, like Anne feeling stressed over getting back home so her froggy family doesn’t become sad.

Of course, Anne has learned to regulate and learn when to place burdens on herself and when to pull away for her best interests, but it could be seen in episodes like True Colors or To Give A Frog A Cookie that this confidence in her boundaries had never been a very solid one. Or at least one where she made it certain, in concise words, on what she truly wants.

She is very much known to do a lot even when it’s not in her best interests when it comes to people she cares for, and that makes the next words she says in The Three Armies even more important.

“All this time I thought I could solve your problems and heal this rift, but I was wrong.”

“There is no quick fix.”

“I can’t solve this problem for you.”

Instead of indulging in the historical debacle of a thousand year divide, Anne realized that the problem in front of her isn’t something that she herself should fix or even be forced to fix at all. She could mediate if she wanted to, but that would mean that she is invested in fixing what had been broken, and not the actual people she is attempting to help.

So it’s amazing to see her lay out her boundaries in a very concise manner in, where the actions and choices aren’t placed on her but rather the others who need to put in their work.

And despite the comedic tone of Anne crying, this is a pretty big deal for her.

She cares so much over the different species to coexist. She wants them to befriend each other, she wants to make sure everything goes well in taking down Andrias and saving Marcy, but despite all the pressures she still had to keep herself in mind and basically put herself first, emotionally and mentally.

So having Sasha support her and witness the collaboration of the castes is a very big step for both of them — where not only do we see Anne choose her mental health rather than the burdens of other people, but this brings responsibility to the different species in healing their rifts and gives Sasha a moment to confide Anne in a moment of weakness.

There is a lot of change, maturity, and growth in this episode, and it really does show how much everyone has developed in getting to this point.

So in The Beginning of the End, we have been given confirmation that in the pre-Amphibia trio dynamic, Anne and Sasha didn’t invest or put in the work when it came to understanding and listening to Marcy’s needs, interests, and investments as friends during their time on Earth.

Darcy even confirming this with the analysis of Marcy’s memories and the flashback that showed said neglect.

And the thing that is breaking me about this is that throughout the series it has been shown that, in particular, Anne and Marcy did grow and redefine their relationship and how they invest in one another as Amphibia went on.

We could see glimpses from the flashback and Marcy at the Gates, that Anne had been enthusiastic to be with her friend, yet never really was shown to be interested with what she was talking about.

Mainly we were shown Anne being confused, focused more on Sasha’s presence in the group (Reunion), or oriented more toward the idea of helping Marcy rather than treating each other as capable equals (The First Temple / Marcy at the Gates).

But as the Season 2 episodes went on, one could notice that the relationship between Marcy and Anne began to grow honest in some degrees. They became honest over their jealousy (Scavenger Hunt).

They became more honest/straightforward over their emotional capabilities (Marcy at the Gates).

And they even had some moments where they showed at some level of vulnerability, not too much, but enough to show that both are important to one another (The First Temple).

In seeing this, we begin to see a progression where both of them are actively redefining their pre-Amphibia friendship to a friendship that is more invested, open, and emotionally trusting as they matured and grew.

And in hindsight you could see evidence of Anne getting more and more invested in Marcy’s interests, emotional state, and life in a way that wasn’t neglectful, but more so out of genuine intrigue and work toward their friendship. Even when Marcy wasn’t there.

Yet the tragedy comes in the fact that no matter how much they developed genuine interest in each other’s friendships and needs during Season 2, there had been moments where miscommunication and neglect did come back and create cracks in their relationship’s foundation. Where Marcy was unable to talk about her fears and secrets, where Anne chose the Plantars over her, and where a King’s manipulation created a fate that both of them couldn’t ignore when Andrias’s betrayal began.

They were both human to react the way they did in their different scenarios, but it’s heartbreaking to know that as Season 2 went on, their friendship deepened a lot more than their pre-Amphibia dynamic ever did, and both of them didn’t know they were walking straight toward a cliff to something inevitable that they couldn’t control.

That Anne trusted Marcy so much that she was blind-sided over her plans. That Marcy wanted so much for Anne to agree and believe in what she wanted to do, but was heartbroken to see that the damage had been done.

And despite all of it, Anne still wants to forgive Marcy.

She still wants to forgive her, to understand why she did the things she did, and it makes the scene on Domino 2 even more poignant, because it implies that Anne had thought long and hard over the reasons why Marcy went with Andrias’s plan in the first place.

Being that Sasha and Anne weren’t good friends when Marcy needed them.

They neglected her needs, they didn’t confide or listen to her when she needed love and affection, and to have Anne go from a kid who did mischievous delinquency without an inch of awareness of it, to someone who is so self-aware over her relationships is such a massive character growth for her specifically.

Anne may have messed up in communicating in the past, but in allowing forgiveness, she is able to see through Marcy’s pain and why — at these desperate moments — unconditional love is so crucial in being able to get through to Marcy when both are readying for their confrontation.

Because Anne knows that these relationships are worth it, and Anne isn’t going to let go of them anytime soon.

And she needs to tell Marcy she’s not going to let go of her.

That she’s not going to lose her again.

There is a melancholy and bittersweetness to Barrel’s story now that we know how the trio’s separation happened.

Because out of anyone who tried during the disappearance of the box, we know that Barrel was following Andrias. He wanted to help his friend get back the box to its “rightful” place and was working his hardest throughout the chase to get that artifact back.

But since he showed hesitation, Andrias saw him nothing more as a failure, someone he couldn’t rely on, and inevitably ordered him away from the capital once as a Newtopian guard to now an outskirts guard — protecting his people, others who couldn’t fend for themselves, all far away from the people he loved.

And he would follow this order without hesitancy.

Up until his inevitable death.

But the thing that makes it bittersweet is how in his job, he showed how dedicated he was as a person.

He followed Andrias’s orders till he died, he defended villages even when his body couldn’t move anymore, he was so revered and noticed for his dedication and loyalty to the people around him that he became a legend to the toad community — a legend spoken now with reverence, kindness, and even through common slang.

“It is said that the one who wields this hammer is the true leader of all toads.”

“Barrel gave his life defending a helpless village from a terrifying beast.”

“By Barrel’s Belly.”

“Barrel the Brave.”

The toads never forgot him even as robots decayed and the ancient world turned into nothing more than memories, and he became a symbol of what the toads could be when united.

Strong, sturdy, and full of loyalty.

@sonofrose had a good post about pacing earlier that I've been trying to put into words for a while. It's about the kind of show Amphibia is and what it shows on an episode-to-episode story. I want to spin off of that a little bit and talk about what Amphibia feels like it's written as to me.

Amphibia is a "portal fantasy" story. In Japan, the name for this genre is "isekai", or "other world." These stories are structured in a very specific way, usually only deviating on a few story beats from author to author. They're all about escapist wish fulfillment.

- The Hero(es) find a way to another world that's challenged by Evil.

- The other world gives them powers, maybe a cool sword, and sometimes has a prophecy that says only the Heroes can defeat the Evil.

- The Heroes have a few setbacks, and then excel in what they do and defeat the Evil. The world is saved!

- The Heroes come back home, to Earth, and then the story ends.

There's a million stories that fit this description, blow by blow. Peter Pan, Chronicles of Narnia, The Phantom Tollbooth, Wizard of Oz, Inuyasha, Digimon, Sword Art Online... from classical fiction to current media, the list is very, very long. Most plots stay the same. Relying on those story beats means the author can expand on the points between them, detailing a world, characters, and unique plot twists that the author wants to communicate as they go without spending too much time with a challenging concept. And the key thing is: the adventure ends when the Chosen One comes home.

Portal fantasy is the rawest form of escapist wish fulfillment fiction that exists. It's a great story concept, the idea that other worlds exist and that fantastic adventures can happen if you only open the right door. Earth isn't interesting. The problems and boring reality of Earth is the starting and ending point, giving the protagonists a simple contrast with the magical adventures they're on. Earth sucks! School sucks! Parents suck! Learn to swordfight, fight evil and save the world! Then go home, return to the mundane - but remember that magic truly exists. It's a really solid plot and one we know and love as a culture.

From the start, Amphibia seems to be a classic portal fantasy. We're shown that Anne, who's thrown into this fantastical other world, can do wild feats of strength, and we learn she has a close friend from Earth locked up by an antagonist somewhere else. The story's clear from there- the Hero has to gain power, experience the world, and then go and rescue her friends and set up the Evil to defeat.

And then Sasha joins the bad guys, duels Anne and falls off Toad Tower.

That moment, the end of season 1, is where all the expectations and logic that Amphibia is just another portal fantasy is shaken. There's setbacks in the Hero's Journey, but in these stories, the children work together- they find the meaning of friendship, they fight Evil, they prevail. They don't spend most of the stories separated from each other and off doing their own thing.

Season 2 spends a lot of time restoring the audience's assumption that things will come back to a portal fantasy's version of normal. We're given the quest, the hints at a greater force with the prophecy and temples, and a Chosen One, finally, in Anne herself. The girls are brought back together and are finally working together! They're learning what friendship means. At that point, it's reasonable to think that Sasha's the antagonist of the series, which is a clever challenge to the basic idea of portal fantasy. The logic carries through, still- even though Sasha's planning to betray them, surely her restored relationship with the girls will give us the good ending after she's defeated and remembers the True Meaning of Friendship.

And then Marcy's secret is revealed.

When Marcy thought she might have found a portal to a fantasy world, she was assuming she'd get that story we're all extremely familiar with- the trio would stay together, learn the meaning of friendship, keep traveling on "to new worlds, so we could have amazing adventures just like this one, forever and ever! Where we'd never have to grow apart, where the three of us could be together, forever!"

Anne and Sasha react in horror. It's brutal. It's a complete betrayal of their friendship.

And it's literally the pitch of any other portal fantasy story.

The world of Amphibia wasn't an escapist wish fulfillment fantasy. It's a real world, with real problems. But Marcy's speech isn't a mistake, and it's not a character flailing blindly. It's the pitch you'd expect when you start watching the show blind. "A child finds a magical portal to another world, goes there with her friends, and adventures with them, growing closer together as friends." It's the pitch Marcy herself would be very familiar with as a kid who read a lot of escapist portal fiction.

And it shows us exactly what the writers of Amphibia are trying to communicate with the show.

Amphibia has always existed as a challenge and critique of the genre of isakei/portal fantasy. Braly's original concept was a story where the hero doesn't get to go home. It didn't end in the way you'd expect of that kind of story to end.

In the version of the show that we have, it does the same thing, in an opposite way. Anne goes back to Earth, the place where these stories end. And the story continues. Because it's not meant to be a portal fantasy. It's meant to be a story about Anne.

It makes perfect sense that the fandom thinks a lot about a version of the story that fits the classic beats of portal fantasy. We're all super familiar with it. It's a good structure of a story. We want to see the Calamity Girls work together, find the true meaning of friendship, and beat the Evil hand-in-hand before going home with a happy ending. That's not wrong of us. I personally love to exist in that space. It's a really rewarding one, with a lot of fun things that could happen.

But it's not the story Amphibia's interested in telling.

Amphibia doesn't care about the story beats of portal fiction. It doesn't care about the Hero's Journey. What it cares about is what is honestly one of the best reimaginings of a portal fantasy story that I've ever seen. The point of Amphibia's story is not that Anne is destined to fight some greater evil, or that Anne, Marcy and Sasha are meant to be the Chosen Ones. The point of Amphibia isn't the fate of a world in the face of an Evil that must be defeated by Good. The point of Amphibia is that Anne has a family who cares about her, and that she has a place to call home. That's the entire point of the story. Everything she does in the story is motivated by that simple thing. She's not meant to fight. She doesn't want to fight. Fighting hurts her, hurts her family, hurts her friends. It's not noble or heroic. The circumstances she's forced into to protect her family makes her pick up a sword, again and again. All she wants to do is protect them.

Amphibia is not a story about Amphibia. Amphibia is a story about Anne and the people who love her.

We're just along for the ride.

well. y'all know the drill, it's analysis time. the mossmen are back babey

and we've got quite a few new interesting tidbits:

not to mention:

just out of curiousity, i looked up whether moss had any medical properties, and ended up with this:

moss preventing erosion and acting as a bandage with anitibiotic effects makes me believe that @/toxicpsychox's idea of the mossmen healing the land or marcy (or both) is very plausible, and would be fitting with their theme of nature and sort of serenity. especially since as i've mentioned before, they seem to act as a barrier against evil spirits

So I’m sleepy but fuck it, thinking about how the basement must have been this horrific, terrible place to Sprig and Polly for so long??? The place they hid in for days after herons killed their parents???? The taste of old coal and soot as the screeching of birds bigger than they know how to measure make a crescendo of death and destruction. The slow creaking of the door opening to their dear old Hop Pop as he gathers them in his arms and weeps because they, at least, are safe. Returning to a Wartwood that’s fallen to shreds and missing various frogs, including their parents. And it’s sat empty for years since, the forbidden boogey man of the Plantar home.

Only for random sasquatch teen Anne Boonchuy to come in and make it her own, scatter teen magazines and prop her favorite tennis racket on a wall. The smell of beetle jerky and the glint of random swords she’d grabbed over time she didn’t know what to do with. And every day it slowly warped from the room Sprig and Polly were in as their parents were killed into Anne’s Room, smth comforting and warm and full of laughter and, somehow, someway, okay to breach again.

I just realised, the intro and outro music of Amphibia are techno themed now...

Because they're on Earth, and there are robots attacking, technology is a significant part of the show now. Which got me thinking, the ending cards and credits montages in the season finales were made to look like old fashioned books, with the text style and painted-on-paper look.

Will the final ending card and credits montage be techno themed? Maybe "the end" will be typed out, and the montage will be like a computer screensaver, or even a photo album like the Gravity Falls ending.

so Amphibia is about change, right?

It's also about loss

Sasha's trying to hold onto something she's lost- an unhealthy and bad relationship that fucked her friends up but now that she no longer has control she sees it as being gone. Everything she does is centered around losing that, compromising her needs and her friends needs (going home) in favor of trying to fix that loss. When Anne rejects that normalcy (twice) she can't believe it and twists further towards trying to hold on. She refuses to change in loss.

the prophecy and the entity that's in the title screen is such a common story in Amphibia that it just shows up on random fancy buckets, huh?

Sarah refusing to change and justifying her choice to die to protect Anne, based on what she believes over what Anne wants.

Sasha choosing to try to change, so she can make up for her actions towards Anne. So she can try to be her friend again.

Sasha choosing to die to protect the things Anne cares about, based on what she believes over what Anne wants.

Sasha realizing that her choice to die means she made a mistake. It isn't what Anne wants. It isn't what Wartwood needs. This isn't changing. It's just her old instinct to fight and die for anything.

Sasha defines herself by her friends, so deeply that when they change, it challenges her perception of who she is as a person. I hope she chooses to live and be better for the sake of living.

The history we learn about Amphibia is pretty sporadic. Sometime between what Andrias calls "a thousand years ago" and present day, a lot of things are implied to have happened- and a lot of different conflicts are mentioned in one-off lines that don't get expanded on. Mind you, the map of Amphibia that we see is not that big. The habitable land can be traveled in less than a few weeks from a very remote region to the capital city. There's no distant foreign invaders, no empires on the horizon that are coming to take over Andrias's kingdom. The question is, then... who's fighting who?

S1E12 - Hop-Popular

Amphibia's society is a race-based social caste city-state monarchy. Marcy says as much, after studying it for a few months. In what appears to be a one-state government with no other societies in competition, why are there so many standing armies sitting around? We honestly know the answer to this already, since Grime tried to execute Hopediah for the crime of being politically active in opposition to the toad occupation. It's played for laughs because this is a show for children, but that is not a normal thing that happens in society. That's the kind of tactics that fascist colonial empires use against their political opponents.

With that in mind, every war in this list is likely either the Newtopian troops invading a formerly independent region of Amphibia, or the fallout of that conquest where people from those regions rise up in arms against him in a revolution.

We don't have a good idea of what the current year is in the world of Amphibia, so it's not clear how long ago each of these dates are. Additionally, details about some of these conflicts may be fabricated or fictional in-universe. If a conflict has a year attached to it, I'm inclined to believe it's part of the world's history instead of being a story in the world, though.

The Horsefly Rebellion - ? vs. ? - "`48"

S2E19 - The Dinner

First off, I have no idea who Campbell Bilgewater is. We're also given no specific date range, so we have no idea what century this happened in. If it happened in 1848, that was at the same time as the Bogwater Wars, which is mentioned next. It could possibly be another name for the Bogwater Wars- Pollyanna Plantar wasn't around much longer after she wrote about them in her diary, so it's possible the name she used for the wars she participated in is outdated by now. Maybe the Horsefly Rebellion was Newtopia's name for the Bogwater Wars that they used after winning the following conflict. But, that's not necessarily supported by evidence in the show, it's just me connecting dots.

The Bogwater Wars - ? vs. ? - 1848

S1E8 - Family Shrub

A village in Frog Valley is named Bog Bottom. We see a variety of non-swampy terrain throughout Amphibia while the Plantars are traveling, so it's possible that "Bogwater" refers either to Frog Valley where it's more swampy than the rest of Amphibia, or Bog Bottom itself. Additionally, during the episode where Ms. Croaker meets Jonah again, he mentions it's been 30 years since "Bogwater Canyon" and that "the guild would take him back" if he took her down. (credit for this connection goes to thesugarcookieday!!)

Is he just a bounty hunter after a target, or were the two actually spies in a conflict during or after the Bogwater Wars? Did the Bogwater Wars take place in Bogwater Canyon? Why was Sadie Croaker on somebody's list, and why did she tell the kids that it'd be "very bad for everyone" if they heard about Jonah attacking her? Was she someone who did the same kind of things Grime attempts to execute Hop Pop for?