Ants, Eyes, Butterflies, and the Hole in Marcy’s Heart

Ever since True Colors aired, I’ve wondered at the sexual implications of Andrias skewering Marcy with his flaming blade. Sometimes a sword is just a sword, I know. Sometimes a large man ramming his gigantic sword through an adolescent girl in a way that draws attention to how small and vulnerable she is by comparison, is just a large man ramming his gigantic sword through an adolescent girl in a way that draws attention to how small and vulnerable she is by comparison (220)1.

But the sexual violence imagery kept piling up—especially in the Core’s possession of Marcy (307b).

Andrias puts a person inside of Marcy (307b): symbolic impregnation,2 foreshadowed by the fertilization imagery that precedes her impalement (220, above). The binary data that floods her body, ganking her physical autonomy (307b), is akin to a swarm of gametes, the “DNA” of the Core—which is itself both impregnator and, as a disembodied robot head, the child.

Compounding the impregnation imagery is the facehugger-like claw that snatches Marcy from the safety of Olivia and Yunan (307b). This might seem like a stretch, but Alien’s facehuggers are referenced more overtly in Marcy’s debut episode (206), so the callback seems noteworthy.

Finally, the Core keeps Marcy’s consciousness “locked in a little room” while piloting her body (314b). This strikes an eerie parallel to Apothegary’s spores, which make Sprig feel like “a prisoner in my own body” (119a) and which symbolize sexual abuse.

The big question is: Why does Marcy live out an extended rape metaphor within the dreamscape of Amphibia? Let’s start with the most obvious explanation.

Answer #1: Marcy was sexually assaulted and impregnated sometime before leaving Earth. Her impalement and possession is a reenactment of that trauma. If Andrias is a mythic stand-in for Marcy’s father, then her dad is the likely perpetrator.

I think it’s important to sit with this reading and not dismiss it out of hand for being too upsetting. Amphibia is a coming-of-age story, and sexual violence is a part of many people’s childhoods. Young teen girls are assaulted more often than any other age-gender demographic. About half of child sex abuse is committed by family members.

That Marcy willingly returns to her parents is a strike against this idea, or at least against her dad being the rapist—although it’s not out of the question that Marcy would choose a known evil over fear of the unknown after all the horrors she experiences in Amphibia.

But in any case, it’s not the only explanation.

Ants vs. Newts

Mind-body dualism is a recurring theme for Marcy. The Shadow Fish are incorporeal ghosts, defeated only once they become flesh and blood (210a). Triple B declare themselves “analysts” as they scoff at “field work” (206). Decapitation, a literal separation between head and body, shows up three times in conjunction with Marcy: the ant head presented to Olivia (206), the Toadstool clock tower (215a), and Fleafy (216b). The Core alienates Marcy’s brain from her own flesh (314b). And way back in her debut episode, Newtopia is a paragon of intellectualism and culture, while the invading barbariants are driven by animal instinct (206).

The barbariant-newt conflict is also gendered. The ants have a queen with no king; Newtopia, a king with no queen (206). They are earthly, bodily, mortal, female; we are enlightened, disembodied, our rulers immortal (307b, 314b), our king male. They procreate and die; we preserve and persist.

So when the ants threaten to “turn Newtopia into a giant anthill” (206), the fear is not just body overwhelming mind, but also female displacing male. Accordingly, the anthill evokes a uterus (given the focus on queen-as-mother) and breasts (a mound of female earth). This is firmly Marcy’s episode, Marcy’s mission, Marcy’s triumph—and Marcy’s body dysphoria.

He witnesses his own reflection, and it is horror: a jump scare that causes him to recoil in fear (210a). Apparently, Marcy doesn’t like looking at himself. I count this as another point for body dysphoria, backed up by the fact that he alone doesn’t keep his copy of the trio’s photo.

Marcy, like a Shadow Fish, fears the mirror because it embodies them—makes the fact of their female flesh undeniable.3 The butterfly which distorts their visage signifies metamorphosis, change—puberty.4

The recurring rift between mind and body is symbolic of Marcy’s tendency to get “in the zone”: to shut out her physical surroundings and focus with single-minded determination on a puzzle, game, or some other mental task (206, 214). This is plausibly the result of an innate neurodivergence; autism and ADHD are common headcanons. But dysphoria provides an alternate, or at least supplementary, explanation: Marcy’s body is the unbearable reality from which she escapes to her head.

Answer #2: For some trans folks, the mere existence of unwanted sex characteristics feels like a violation on par with rape. The extended sexual violence metaphor of Andrias and the Core—the betrayal, the loss of autonomy, the abject horror—communicates Marcy’s relationship to his own body as puberty takes its hold.

The Penetrating Gaze

Marcy’s psyche spawns monsters with prominent, leering eyes: the Core (307a) and the Shadow Fish (210a). This could just be a symptom of Marcy’s social anxiety, their “trouble looking people in the eye” (207a). But given the sexual symbolism already present in the Core’s treatment of Marcy, I’m inclined to view it as a kind of ogling.

Andrias’ sword is part of a Biblical allusion that we’ll dig into later. For now, just note that “a flaming sword turned every way” (Genesis 3:24)5 evokes the omnipresent, red-orange glare of the Core, and thus conflates the act of looking with the act of assaulting.

During the mirror jump scare, Marcy’s gaping, toothy maw is a callback to “bad boy” Branson, whose open trap (210a) is both lepidopteran and yonic.6 Through the plant, butterfly with teeth becomes synonymous with vagina dentata, a fantastical defense against rape. For Marcy, then, puberty is a time to throw up defenses against the possibility of sexual violence.

Answer #3: The leering gaze which haunts Marcy represents unwanted sexual attention from peers or adults directed at her maturing body. Rape and pregnancy are not reenacted traumas, but unrealized fears: the horrifying endgame of all this attention.

Between Anne and Sasha’s dueling7 and Andrias’ flame blade, swords are sexualized. Marcy is the only one of the trio who doesn’t wield a sword, a possible hint that he’s ace.

Answer #3a: Marcy’s discomfort with sexual attention is compounded by their asexuality.

A popular interpretation of the prom poster and Sashanne fusion (Amphibia 307b) is that Marcy is attracted to both of her friends; she’s afraid that they’ll start dating each other and that she’ll be left behind. After being confronted with this nightmare, Marcy becomes the leering eyes, villain of her own story (307b). Even earlier, Marcy’s fear of her own reflection likens her to the other set of oglers, the Shadow Fish (210a).

Perhaps Marcy fears the power of his own gaze—thinks he’s hurting Sasha and Anne just by looking at them, wanting them. And perhaps the fiery phallus (220) belongs not just to Marcy’s rapist, but simultaneously to Marcy himself, sprouting unwanted from his heart, which will soon bear one of a set of red eyes (307b).

Answer #1a: As a result of an assault, Marcy was forcibly given sexual knowledge beyond their years, which colored their perception of both Anne and Sasha. Marcy has a lot of shame attached to the assault and to their own experience of sexual attraction.

Answer #1b: Marcy believes her assault to be the source of her transmasculinity.

Back to Paradise

Marcy thinks he and his friends can keep adventuring “forever and ever” and “never have to grow apart” (220). Perhaps Andrias hinted earlier (off-screen) at his ability to cheat death, or perhaps Marcy just assumes that he’ll find the secret to immortality somewhere in the great wide multiverse. Either way, Marcy does not want to die.

The phrase never grow also implies not growing up. We’ve already discussed Marcy’s fear of puberty, which they might associate with unwanted sexual attention, sexual trauma, or dysphoria-inducing body traits.

The dual anxieties of mortality and puberty are united in the image of the butterfly, which symbolizes not only metamorphosis and change, but also (as any post–season 2 Amphibia theorist will tell you) death; and in the barbariants, who play not only the queen to Newtopia’s king, but also the fleeting individual lifespan to its timeless immortality. Female flesh, mortal flesh—for Marcy, it’s one and the same.

This duality is reflected in the Biblical story of original sin. For those unfamiliar with the myth: After God creates the universe, he makes two humans, Adam and Eve, and gives them free reign of the bountiful Garden of Eden (Genesis 2). The humans are allowed to eat from any tree in the garden (2:16), except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17). A malicious serpent tempts Eve to disobey this rule (3:1–6), who in turn tempts Adam (3:6). The humans previously existed in a state of childlike sexual innocence, “not ashamed” of their nakedness (2:25)—but after eating the forbidden fruit, they become able to conceptualize evil and shame, and they cover their naked bodies (3:7). For their disobedience, God casts them out of Eden (3:23).

The show alludes to this passage rather strongly with its inciting incident—Anne is tempted to disobedience and theft, with the music box functioning as the forbidden fruit, and then the friends are cast from the only world they’ve ever known: literally Earth, but also childhood, symbolized by the gated playground from which they depart (Amphibia 101b), and on Anne’s thirteenth birthday (120) no less, a cultural milestone for the start of adolescence.

All that’s to say, the story is very much present in Amphibia. And beyond its role in the inciting incident, it shares with Marcy’s dreamscape a tight connection between sexual maturity and death. In forbidding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cautions that “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). He makes good on this promise after they disobey, cursing them with a mortal life full of struggle and strife: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (3:19). God exiles humans from Eden to make sure they stay mortal, for within the garden is a tree whose fruit grants immortality (3:22–23), and if the humans ate that, it would completely undo the whole dust unto dust punishment.

Marcy has a particular, peculiar concept of immortality: she wants to escape death by returning to a state of perpetual physical childhood. This helps to explain many of the seemingly arbitrary infant symbols which coalesce around her—zombies are babies because they defy the natural cycle of life and death; disembodied heads are babies because Marcy wants to decouple physical growth from mental growth, freeing her consciousness from the baggage of an aging, growing, sexual(ized) body; robots are babies because of her transhumanist aspirations—as well as Marcy’s affinity for those symbols, especially plants (210a, 215b, 216b) and robots (215b, 216a).8 Deathless childhood is loosely synonymous with transmasculinity, and in particular medical transition, since sexless is loosely synonymous with male under the male = mind, female = body schema.

God leaves a flaming sword to guard Eden against the humans’ return (Genesis 3:24). Remember that Earth is the Eden from which the trio have been cast. Marcy tries to go back (Amphibia 220), symbolically signaling a desire for immortality—i.e., medical transition—and Andrias impales him with a flaming sword (220).

Answer #1d: Marcy is a victim of homophobic rape—sometimes called “corrective” rape—assault motivated by a desire to “fix” their non-normative gender identity.

Conclusion

Well, that was a lot. In lieu of a single thesis, I hope this post serves as a more up-to-date record of how I’ve been thinking about the sexual violence metaphor built into Marcy’s character arc.

Some of the explanations I provided are mutually exclusive, but most of them aren’t. Marcy could be trans and a survivor of assault and generally uncomfortable with sexual attention and guilty about desiring Anne and Sasha. Or any combination thereof. Maybe she’s dealt with rape threats but hasn’t been assaulted. Maybe she was actually raped, but pregnancy is an unrealized fear. Or I’m wrong about everything.

In any case, there’s a lot that’s left unstated, a lot to be unpacked, and a lot that I’m probably missing. Further lines of inquiry that I’d like to pursue include:

• Darcy as a twisted wish fulfillment of Marcy’s immortality fantasy: body no longer maturing (per the axolotl helmet), mind uploaded to the Core.
• The justification for patriarchy written into the myth of original sin.
• The “bad boy” comment directed at Branson in light of Marcy’s possible transmasculinity.
• Marcy’s relationship to plants more generally. (See below.)
• Heart as the severed bridge between mind (Wit) and body (Strength).

I might update this post if I turn up anything coherent.