wanted to bound off of @sarahzedig's post about steven universe without rebugging, mostly because i don't think im really adding much to the topic of children's cartoons and imperfect artwork. but i wanted to talk a little about TOH in relation to the same topic.
i sometimes see people on twitter or youtube comments criticizing the show, and rarely see blame levied directly at dana terrace for the issues they have with the show... but i do see it happen. and i'm not sure if it's because they're ignorant to the situation Owl House was in (which is pretty damn similar to SU, an emphatically queer show produced by a company owned by conservative billionaires) or if it's just maliciously ignorant, willfully ignorant to how that kind of executive management can affect a piece of art.
To me, TOH was wish fulfillment of a childhood i never had. i saw luz, a quirky kid who never fit in at school, who just wanted to be silly and have fun. school bored her, but learning didn't; she just needed to learn in her own way. that part of her childhood mirrors my own. Where it splits off is when she finally finds her queer found family, is accepted by her immediate family, and her found family all goes through extremely traumatic events together. they fight through it together, they help each other up when they fall apart, they love each other.
i never had that as a teenager. my parents didn't know how to console me when i had my autistic meltdowns. they started calling me lazy when my grades slipped to the point of failing multiple classes due entirely to the increasing presence of pure rote memorization and reading over practical applications and visual assistance. no, im not going off about "school should teach taxes and car maintenance," i mean math used to be "two apples plus two apples" and now it was "solve for X because I told you to."
Life became incredibly hard for me all at once. my hormones were flaring up as it does in all pubertal teens, i didn't know at the time why school had suddenly become so hard after i spent so much of my life loving it, i developed an extreme anxiety trigger about school, i became jealous of all the kids who seemed to fit in so much smoother than i did, and my parents didn't know how to help me and refused to learn how. i never had a proper childhood, it was robbed from me by anxiety, undiagnosed autism and neglectful, willfully ignorant parents. i tried to have romantic relationships as a teen, but even into my late teens and early twenties i wasn't really looking for a romantic partner. i was looking for someone to take care of me.
The Owl House shows me an alternate universe where I could have had all that. Where a parent learns from her mistakes and finally accepts and understands her child, the child's found family who consoles her and cares for her, friends who deeply respect and trust her, a girlfriend who cares for her and whom she cares about in equal manner because her found family and her mom are both making sure her needs are met. I never had any of that. I wanted that.
a couple days after the show was over, these realizations all sunk in and i cried. i grieved for the childhood i never had and the teenage years i lost because of the neglect and anxiety. but it was an emotionally overwhelming moment i needed to have, because up to that point i had convinced myself that my childhood was normal. i believed it was a good childhood and i was just spoiled and entitled. i believed that my parents were good parents because they never struck me. to be fair, my mother is trying. she's using my name, and she refers to me by gender neutral means when talking about me to her friends and coworkers (which honestly i think i like more than using female references anyways). she's gone through a change much like camila, finally trying to understand me and respect me as an adult. My dad, however, is an unforgiveable asshole who still uses my fucking deadname even though he loves to blame HRT for the reason i'm struggling so much to this day. Fuck him.
But like, overall, my childhood was shit. my parents were not prepared to be parents. they, like many others, were forced into it by heterosexual hegemonic "Life Milestones" and child-rearing was one of those milestones that heterosexual couples were just expected to achieve. This doesn't excuse their neglect; they had every opportunity to learn and grow. It took my mother a long time - quite a few years after I became an adult - to come around. There is no excuse for this; they had all this time during my childhood to change, and they never did.
i see so much of myself in amity. one parent seems to give a shit but is muzzled by the abusive other-half, but doesn't stick up for their child in the significant manner the child needs. amity has so many high expectations lofted onto her, which she only wishes to achieve because she fears punishment from her abusive parent. but through her friends and her girlfriend, amity's able to find what she needs in her found family just like luz. i never had that, either. i still don't. as hard as my partners try, there's only so much they can ever provide as long-distance partners to somebody who still lives with an abusive, explosively angry parent. (that's not to say they're doing nothing; they're giving me everything they could possibly give to me over long-distance. the distance is the only thing keeping them from doing more.)
like, sure. plot is hella rushed in season 3, some elements of the plot happen off-screen or are entirely left out for fanfic writers to pick up on, some bits and pieces here and there in the story are obviously being fucked with by upper management. but i don't think any of the criticisms people have about the show can actually be pointed at the showrunner, because every complaint i've ever seen is exactly the same type of complaints i've seen about steven universe, with the exact same simple explanation. these two queer stories were fucked with by upper management.
idk how to draw a decent conclusion that makes this whole longpost have some sense of closure, but im kinda done typing now.