TO THE LIBRARY!

Lost in Language

Another great episode set in another fascinating location in the Demon Realms. This episode centers on Luz’s adventures in a mystical library and misadventures with Amity Blight’s siblings. Yes, this episode is dedicated to further thawing the ice queen’s throne with Luz resolving to become her friend. Unfortunately, she falls in with her devil-may-care older siblings.

As you might’ve guessed, most of Amity’s angst comes from being bullied by her older sister and brother, Emera and Edric. As the trope commonly goes, she takes out her abuse from them on her own friends, but with a rather surprising twist. Rather than openly mean, they’re simply mischievous but deride Amity for spoiling their fun with her sour disposition. I suppose this arrangement makes for a nice change, but it introduces a few headscratchers.

Originally I would’ve thought that if Amity had siblings at all, she’d be the oldest, pressured by her parents to set an example while letting the younger rugrats get away with murder. If she had older siblings I thought it would be a Ron Weasley type situation where Amity would feel eclipsed by her other family’s superior talents and thus strive to prove herself or hide her feelings of inadequacy behind a haughty exterior. This may still be the case, with the twin’s natural gifts making them confident and aloof while Amity had to be fastidious to gain distinction. However, if this is true, it isn’t brought up in the episode.

I still find it odd for Amity to be the voice of discipline in this scenario given she’s the youngest. Cavalierly deciding to give Amity an attitude adjustment, they rope Luz into infiltrating the Library at night and raiding her secret reading lounge for her diary. This goal just happens to coincide with another of the Demon Realm’s astrological events, “The Wailing Comet”, whose magic brings all the books in the library to life. Hijinks ensue that awaken my nostalgia for The Pagemaster movie…

Curiously, when they’re made out in their attempt to embarrass Amity, they quickly lose interest and decide to go “goblin tipping” elsewhere. A bit anti-climactic, but I suppose it fits that pranksters like them have short attention spans. Overall, the introduction of these characters feels a bit oblique to me. What’s more, for what little role they play, they seem rather…attractively designed. It’s really prominent just how good-looking they are! Even Luz takes notice, blushing profusely at their compliments. *sniff sniff* This smells like…shipping bait! *hiisssssss* But, if there’s one thing I agree with them on, Luz is a cutie!

With the Double-mint twins departing, Luz and Amity are left to fend off a creature brought to life by their mean-spirited meddling with a character in a picture book. That’s what you get for putting The Necronomicon of all things in the children’s literature section…

They restore Rumplestilskin back to his cute self and depart the library on more amicable terms with each other. As it turns out, Amity is a fan of the same book series with which Luz is so fervently obsessed: The Good Witch Azura. I figured they’d eventually bond over something nerdy like that, though just as Luz does it raises the question of how human teen-fiction ended up in the Demon Realms. Perhaps Amity bought it from one of Eda’s human junk shops? With the frequency it’s brought up in the series, it may have a bigger role to play in all this…

Aside from that, we have Eda and King’s B-plot: caring for the baby of a powerful (and wealthy!) demon called “The Bat Queen”. Though this tangent is a fairly stale one, it introduces a character who gets enough attention to make me believe she’ll appear again. She appears as the head of an Asian woman attached to a pair of bat-wings, likely a creature from Eastern folklore, not that I’d know. She’s downright disturbing, so I’m not sure where that puts my theory on the demons of the Boiling Isles being under a collective “cuteness curse” (see my review of episode four for more details). I’d hate to see a MORE nightmarish version of the thing we saw at the end of the episode…

But, at the end of the day, it was another good one!

Overall: 8/10