AC97 
All In (Amphibia) was quite... outstanding.
||Marcy Wu definitely mauls Mabel Pines in regards to "how did they handle a false fantasy land where it's exactly what they hope for." She ultimately had the Wit to see through it, see it for what it was.||
||Andrias is probably one of my favorite villains, very interesting mindset to me. I really liked how his rematch with Anne was more than fighting, but also in a philosophical sense. The way it ended... it hurt. So bittersweet. I rationalize him being that way with Marcy in TC as it being him trying to tell himself "she's just like Leif, so she deserves these consequences," but in the end, he couldn't stop caring, despite himself. Kind of surprised about him being a cyborg, but not entirely. He saw himself as having come too far, done so many horrible things... so he listened to Leif. He opened his heart, and let Anne (Heart) tear through him, so he'd be forcibly stopped. Keith David did an *outstanding* job in selling his emotional scenes. It really recontextualizes things when it was revealed the Core wanted him to *immediately* kill Marcy, but ***he*** talked it into the "Drain their power using the Temples which are a way to pass on the responsibilities of that power, get the Box" plan.||
||Darcy/the Core was pretty damn brutal, to literally cut off Grime's arm (he pushed Sasha out of the scythe's way) and *make a **"disarmed"** joke about it,* and it cut Sasha in the back. The damned hivemind's supreme lack of empathy (not *truly* capable of understanding what makes others tick beyond a surface level) and brutal sadism was its downfall||
||Sasha was a badass, through and through, the way she pushed on, through her injuries and pain, to finish it.||
...there really was a lot to take in on that one.
I can appreciate how I once expected Belos from The Owl House to be a ||more sympathetic villain, being well-intentioned on some level, compared to Andrias, but I was proven spectacularly wrong in a compelling way on *both* counts, with Belos being so *thoroughly* twisted on every level, and Andrias being a full-blown tragic villain, given all the context.||
Definitely interested to see how it ends; pulling a repeat of SVTFOE's last season seems nigh-impossible at this point.
||Marcy Wu definitely mauls Mabel Pines in regards to "how did they handle a false fantasy land where it's exactly what they hope for." She ultimately had the Wit to see through it, see it for what it was.||
||Andrias is probably one of my favorite villains, very interesting mindset to me. I really liked how his rematch with Anne was more than fighting, but also in a philosophical sense. The way it ended... it hurt. So bittersweet. I rationalize him being that way with Marcy in TC as it being him trying to tell himself "she's just like Leif, so she deserves these consequences," but in the end, he couldn't stop caring, despite himself. Kind of surprised about him being a cyborg, but not entirely. He saw himself as having come too far, done so many horrible things... so he listened to Leif. He opened his heart, and let Anne (Heart) tear through him, so he'd be forcibly stopped. Keith David did an *outstanding* job in selling his emotional scenes. It really recontextualizes things when it was revealed the Core wanted him to *immediately* kill Marcy, but ***he*** talked it into the "Drain their power using the Temples which are a way to pass on the responsibilities of that power, get the Box" plan.||
||Darcy/the Core was pretty damn brutal, to literally cut off Grime's arm (he pushed Sasha out of the scythe's way) and *make a **"disarmed"** joke about it,* and it cut Sasha in the back. The damned hivemind's supreme lack of empathy (not *truly* capable of understanding what makes others tick beyond a surface level) and brutal sadism was its downfall||
||Sasha was a badass, through and through, the way she pushed on, through her injuries and pain, to finish it.||
...there really was a lot to take in on that one.
I can appreciate how I once expected Belos from The Owl House to be a ||more sympathetic villain, being well-intentioned on some level, compared to Andrias, but I was proven spectacularly wrong in a compelling way on *both* counts, with Belos being so *thoroughly* twisted on every level, and Andrias being a full-blown tragic villain, given all the context.||
Definitely interested to see how it ends; pulling a repeat of SVTFOE's last season seems nigh-impossible at this point.