Fanfic / Fourth Light Series

The Fourth Light Series is a set of stories created by 77xfire. Inspired by the "Amphibia and The Owl House crossover panel" from San Diego Comic-Con 2021, the series combines the author's take on both shows into a combined setting.

The series can be found here on Archive of Our Own and here on FanFiction.Net. The main storyline is currently a pentalogy and has a spinoff series with two stories (the sequel currently being written), and several one-shots with seven being revealed so far.

The stories in the series, by chronological order, include:

Main Storyline

• One Small Change (Part 1): During the trip to Newtopia, Anne Boonchuy reveals a personal secret to her best friend, Sprig Plantar, that causes him to ask a question that results in Anne's human friend Marcy Wu becoming a part of the Plantar family's adventures.
• Love Duel Series:
  • Love Duel (Part 2): When Odalia Blight discovers her daughter Amity is in a relationship with the human Luz Noceda, she orders her to end it. Instead of complying, Amity challenges her to a witch's duel to determine the outcome.
  • Tomorrow's Truth (Part 3): After Luz comes to Blight Manor telling Amity about seeing her mother and the promise she made, Amity becomes determined to cheer Luz up. And the rest of the Blight family may just have their own way to help.
• The Fourth Light (Part 4): After returning home to Earth, Luz remembers her meeting with Anne and decides to look her up. Learning Anne has also returned, they decide to meet up, but King Andrias decides to prevent them from teaming up.
• Recovery (Part 5): After saving Amphibia, Anne and her friends look forward to things going back to normal. However it's clear everybody, especially Marcy, are now on a long road to recovery.
• One Small Change: Act 2: The plot is currently unknown, but the author has stated it's The Fourth Light without the crossover content. The release date is undetermined.
• Til' the End (working title) - The plot is unknown, but it'll serve as the finale of the main storyline.

A True Family Series

• No Matter What: In an alternate timeline where Marcy doesn't find the Calamity Box on Anne's birthday, she finds herself forced to move to Nevada with her parents. To give her hope, Anne (who just came out and discovers Marcy's mutual feelings for her) and Sasha promise to find a way to make it work. The author has stated it's the darkest story in the series.
• A True Family: Picking up from where No Matter What left off, the girls are sent to Amphibia, with Marcy being sent to Wartwood with Anne. That should be a relief, but the downside is that Anne is out cold and won't wake up for some reason. The story was delayed in favor of Finding Family.

Non-Canon Stories

• One Year Later: On the one year anniversary of when they reunited in Newtopia (the day of their getting together), Marcy sets off to make it special for Anne.

One-Shots

The author stated that there will be a collection of these meant to show events that don't affect the overall story. So far, seven have been confirmed: six set during One Small Change and the seventh during The Fourth Light.

• "Smol": While trying to create a shrinking potion with Maddie, Marcy ends up getting doused in it. Now Maddie must find an antidote to help restore Marcy back to her original size.
• "Oh GOD MARCY WHY?!" Set after "The Dinner", Marcy is persuaded to tell Anne and Sasha how she became a Newtopian ranger. Although she's hesitant, but Anne says it couldn't have been that bad. Or was it?
• "Wingfrog Sprig": A What If? scenario; instead of blurting out Anne's crush in front of Marcy, Sprig decides to subtly get them together over the course of their stay in Newtopia.
• "An Angel... OF DEATH!": Set between "A Day at the Aquarium" and "Night Drivers", Marcy tells the story of how she developed a crush on Anne.
• "Overthinking Things": While traveling to the third temple, Marcy asks Anne if she really does like Marcy, which leads to a talk about her insecurities.
• "Go the FROG to sleep!": Marcy's pulling several all nighters again, and Anne's determined to make her sleep before she pushes herself too far.
• "Crossing Paths": While Luz is comforting Anne, Amity takes the Plantars to the mall to help them blend in only for her to somehow see a familiar face.

Unknown Status

• Untitled True Colors take: Basically, it's "True Colors" retold, but with one small change: Marcy doesn't reveal the truth about the Calamity Box to Anne during their first date.

The series as a whole contains the following tropes:

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Through Marcy's journal entries and thoughts in One Small Change, we're shown how guilty she feels about stranding the girls in Amphibia, especially after she starts dating Anne. Notably, she reveals she isn't on good terms with her parents and that they weren't supportive of her coming out, grounding her for a month after she took it back.
  • Anne starts going through this after returning to Earth at the end of the first story, falling to her knees in tears after watching her girlfriend probably get killed. It continues into The Fourth Light, where she starts losing sleep and eventually breaks down from the guilt of being unable to save Marcy and it doubles when Anne sees she got possessed by the Core.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Mr. X makes his debut during the events of "Hop 'Til You Drop" rather than the episode that shares his name.
• Adaptational Explanation:
  • According to "Tomorrow's Truth", the reason Amity wasn't present for the portal test in "Yesterday's Lie" is because she was comforting Emira after she got stood up on a date.
  • Anne gave Marcy her nickname "Mar Mar" after she struggled to introduce herself to Anne during their first meeting.
  • As revealed in the one-shot of the same name, Anne got the nickname "Angel of Death" both due to attacking the last guy who dated Marcy for threatening her and a Freudian Slip on Marcy's part.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Contrary to the confirmation that Marcy's parents truly love her as shown in Marcy's Journal: A Guide to Amphibia, Mr. and Mrs. Wu are depicted as neglectful to her the main storyline and as Abusive Parents in No Matter What, nearly murdering Marcy in the latter when they learn she and Anne are dating.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Anne and Marcy's sexualities are left as Ambiguously Bi and Ambiguously Gay in Amphibia, with both of them being very affectionate and touchy-feely with each other. Here, Anne's a lesbian while Marcy is bi; this also makes them a parallel of Amity and Luz, especially since Luz and Marcy are two Birds of a Feather.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Titan seems to become this through the Copy, who disintegrates Belos the moment it takes control of Luz and uses her to cause mass chaos and injury whenever she used its power until she took control of it.
• Adaptation Name Change: Hunter's cardinal palisman is actually named "Rascal", the series being released long before his true name (Flapjack) was revealed.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Anne and Marcy remained Best Friends throughout Amphibia with only a few ambiguous hints of something more. In this timeline, they undergo a Relationship Upgrade stemming from a mutual attraction to one another.
• Adapted Out: With the direction the series goes for both canons, anything regarding the second half of Amphibia Season 3B (the inner workings of the Core, the recruitment of the Resistance's allies and the fallout between Andrias, Leif and Barrel) and OH Season 2B (The Collector, the Titan Trappers and the truth about Belos being a centuries-old human witch hunter) are omitted.
• Affectionate Nickname: Luz tends to call her palisman Bluebert "Azulito".
• Alternate Universe Fic: One Small Change makes the series this the second Anne and Marcy hook up.
• Arc Words: The phrase "no matter what" keeps popping up throughout the series as Anne and Sasha's way of assuring Marcy they'll always have her back. It gets to the point that it becomes the name of the spinoff story and is consistently name-dropped.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Zig-zagged. Remembering his last meeting with Amity and with prodding from Rascal, Hunter decides to help train the Blight on the ground of owing Luz and Amity a favor (rather half a favor each, since Luz saved his life then escaped with the palismen and Amity gave him the portal key, but only after breaking it and taking half the Titan's Blood within.)
• The Bet: As part of their witch's duel rules, Amity and Odalia make one: if Amity wins, her parents will support her relationship with Luz. If Odalia wins, Amity goes back to being her obedient daughter. With help from Luz and Hunter, Amity wins.
• Beta Couple: Luz & Amity and Sprig & Ivy act as this for Anne & Marcy.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: King Andrias and the Core serve as the series' main overarching villains since Emperor Belos had already been dealt with prior to The Fourth Light.
• Birds of a Feather: Non-romantic examples.
  • Luz admits that with how much she and Marcy have in common, she believes they'd get along perfectly.
  • Luz also has some similarities with General Yunan, namely their Large Ham personalities when it comes to bragging about their accomplishments. Everyone who's had to deal with just Yunan knows that's a problem for everyone else.
  Sasha: Oh, great... now there's two of them.
• Body Horror:
  • The calamity power Anne possesses starts to affect her with blue veins slowly spreading across her body.
  • While using the Titan's power, Luz's body grows horns out of her head and gains fangs and claws.
• Breather Episode: Recovery is meant to act as such.
• Brick Joke: The Fourth Light includes several:
  • In the first chapter, Polly suggests asking the witches if they can help her make magic bombs. Come Chapter 14, she uses such weapons: i.e., explosive potions.
  • Also in Chapter 14, Hop Pop reclaims his empty wallet that Eda stole from him following their first encounter.
  • In "Tomorrow's Truth", Eda warns everyone not to make King do his "squeak of rage" since there's no telling how his voice power would react to it. Fourth Light "Chapter 17: Unity" shows that it creates a sonic wave strong enough to destroy an entire room and send a super-powered person across it.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Having been friends since they were kids, Anne and Marcy becoming a couple puts them in this category.
• Colorful Theme Naming: Bluebert, Luz's palisman, is a blue jay. Seems simple enough.
• Coming-Out Story: While resting after Quarreler's Pass, Anne confides in Sprig that she likes girls and admits she's attracted to Marcy. After he accidentally outs her in front of the girl in question, Marcy reveals to Anne she's bisexual and feels the same way, which leads to them hooking up. Later Deconstructed for Marcy when she admits she took back her coming out after she told her parents. "An Angel... OF DEATH" shows that Marcy realized her crush over a year before the girls came to Amphibia.
• Crossover / Fusion Fic: Between Amphibia and The Owl House, as the Comic-Con 2021 crossover event is canon to the series; on the Amphibia side, it took place three days before the events of "Anne of the Year" and "Reunion".
• Cuteness Proximity: "The Face", a technique consisting of Puppy-Dog Eyes, pouting and a bit of folding ears. Adorable and stupid sad at the same time, it's Marcy's way of getting Anne to go easy on her for not taking care of herself. It's so powerful, it's basically a universal rule that Anne can't say no to Marcy about anything.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Sprig is the character of the day in "Wingfrog Sprig".
  • "Crossing Paths" gives the focus to Amity as she teaches the Plantars how to act like humans.
• Death by Adaptation: Instead of being heavily damaged but living beyond the events of "The Hardest Thing", King Andrias dies due to the strain being possessed by the Core puts on his body, which disintegrates to ash.
• Demoted to Extra: Emperor Belos only appears in 2 chapters in Love Duel, and the sequel reveals Luz has already stopped his plans. It's later revealed she took his life in The Fourth Light.
• Didn't See That Coming: Grime often gets surprised by moments he never thinks would happen and responds by saying "didn't expect that".
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The Core is destroyed within its helmet form after taking a Combination Attack from the Calamity trio and Luz, in contrast to Anne single-handedly destroying it on the moon with the power of all three Calamity Gems.
• Double-Meaning Title: Why is the fourth story (no, the overall series) called "Fourth Light"? It's a nod to Luz's name meaning "light" in Spanish and her being the literal fourth person linked to The Prophecy of The Night, representing the silver Calamity Gem of Spirit.
  Valeriana: "If the three lights were to lose their way, a fourth shall come, and together, they shall seize the day."
• Energy Weapon: In the final battle against King Andrias, each Calamity warrior has a weapon empowered by their own energy (except for Anne, who has her fists covered): Luz's staff, Sasha's heron swords and Marcy's crossbow.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Sasha, upon learning Anne and Marcy are an item, reveals she's been waiting for them to get together and neither was subtle about their feelings.
  • Luz was able to figure out how Anne felt about Marcy in Chapter 2 of The Fourth Light based on how she'd get when Anne brought her up.
  • In the following chapter, Mr. and Mrs. Waybright tell Anne that Sasha came to them for advice on how to deal with Anne and Marcy crushing on each other.
• Everyone Meets Everyone:
  • The plot of Tomorrow's Truth centers around Luz introducing her mother to her closest friends in the Boiling Isles to convince Camila to revoke the promise she had Luz make.
  • The Fourth Light has Luz reunite with Anne and the Plantars and introducing Amity to them and Anne's parents.
• Exact Eavesdropping:
  • Sasha overheard Anne when she realized she developed a crush on Marcy.
  • Odalia spied on Amity in order to learn why she had her father examine Psuedo Blood (duplicate Titan's Blood) and saw her having a moment with Luz as a result.
  • Hunter had a day off and was walking past Blight Manor when he saw the inhabitants of the Owl House and Amity arriving. Out of curiosity, he chose to listen in on Amity's conversation with Odalia and overheard everything about the duel.
• Exact Words: When Anne learns that frogs who date frogs of the same gender exist, Sprig points out she only asked if he knew such frogs, not if they exist in general.
• Family of Choice: After hearing about Marcy's family and watching Andrias say she meant nothing to him, Sprig tells Marcy that she's as much a Plantar as Anne since she's important to her, a fact he reconfirms at the end of TFL.
  • A True Family takes this up a notch: Marcy bonds with the Plantars one by one and they ultimately decide to name her a Plantar.
• Forced Out of the Closet: Downplayed. Sprig blurts out Anne's crush on Marcy in the middle of Newtopia for Hop Pop, Polly, Lady Olivia and especially Marcy to hear.
• For Want Of A Nail: Marcy's Journal reveals that Marcy's father's job had the Wu's relocate to Massachusetts, but here it's Nevada.
• Freudian Slip: Staring at Anne after she tackles her ex-boyfriend Charlie, Marcy calls her an angel. Upon registering what she said in front of her friends, Marcy adds on "of death" giving Anne her other breakup nickname.
• Gender Bender: As Bluebert, Stringbean changes genders too, being identified as male.
• Hand Wave: As confirmed by Word of God:
  • The reason Hunter wouldn't appear after "Love Duel" is due to his fate in the show having yet to be revealed and thus, he can't be prominently featured only for him to be killed off or something. Subverted as of "The Fourth Light", when they chose to bring him back.
  • The epilogue of "Tomorrow's Truth" takes place after the Day of Unity. It was glossed over due to not occuring in canon yet.
• High-Pressure Emotion:
  • In Chapter 1 of One Small Change, being kissed by Marcy and learning about her crush causes Anne to go wide-eyed and her face to heat up to the point that Marcy swore she saw steam coming out of the top of Anne's head.
  • An offscreen variation occurs in The Fourth Light, performed by Amity after Luz calls her amazing and talented. Anne hears it over the phone and wonders if a tea kettle's whistling in the background.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: The plot of "Smol" revolves around Marcy being accidentally shrunken by a shrinking potion.
• Interquel: Six occur during "One Small Change":
  • The events of "Toadcatcher" are set between "After the Rain" and "The First Temple".
  • "Smol" is placed between "Maddie and Marcy" and "The Second Temple".
  • "Oh GOD MARCY Why?!" picks up immediately after "The Dinner".
  • "An Angel... OF DEATH!" takes place between "A Day at the Aquarium" and "Night Drivers".
  • "Overthinking Things" occurs between "Bessie and MicroAngelo" and "The Third Temple".
  • "Go the FROG to sleep!" occurs five days after "Smol" but before "The Second Temple".
• Insecure Love Interest: Marcy shows herself to be one. "Overthinking Things" reveals how she finds herself unlikable and fears Anne likes Sasha more than her and in The Fourth Light, the Core convinces her that Anne forgot about her and started dating Luz in the time Anne had been on Earth, which she believes. Plus the latter ends with her believing she doesn't deserve Anne after everything that's happened, leading Anne ro vow that she'll get Marcy to see herself as Anne sees her.
• Jerkass: In both the main storyline and the A True Family spinoff series, Mr. and Mrs. Wu are described as such based on how they pressure Marcy and forced her to take back her coming out.
• The Matchmaker: As Sasha's parents reveal, she tried to think of a way to get Anne and Marcy to confess and get together, Anne telling her it probably wouldn't have worked. No Matter What shows her following through on this upon learning Marcy's moving, encouraging Anne to tell her how she feels to cheer her up.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Every chapter ends the same way a season of Amphibia does: with the words "End of Chapter #".
  • Marcy's Theme Song Takeover is played in the second one-shot.
• Noodle Incident: According to the epilogue of Tomorrow's Truth, it took a few more weeks for Luz to complete her portal and when she did, the Day of Unity took place. Luz and her friends defeated Emperor Belos and stopped his plans (partly thanks to Luz's palismen Bluebert) covering it up by saying it was a Halloween light show gone wrong. The only collateral damage was that Luz's school got destroyed, giving her a few months of free time. TFL reveals that Luz destroyed the school while possessed by the Titan.
  • As it turns out, Duckweed wasn't the first food critic Anne tried to impress and did something dumb to do it as a result.
• Official Couple: Anne/Marcy, Luz/Amity and Sprig/Ivy.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Eda and Willow managed to create duplicate Titan's Blood using plant and potion magic.
• Open-Minded Parent:
  • Unlike Odalia who cares more about image, Alador cares about Amity's personal growth and thus, has no issue with her dating Luz.
  • Odalia, though admitting she still hates Luz, comes to at least understand what Amity sees in her after she jumped in to help her.
  • Camila comes to see that keeping Luz from going back to the Boiling Isles will do more harm than good, so as long as she has her friends to keep her safe she'll have no problem letting her visit them. She also accepts her relationship with Amity since she's just as much a good influence on Luz as in the reverse.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Marcy was already close with Anne in canon, but now that they have a mutual attraction here, she becomes Anne's girlfriend.
• Retcon: Recovery reveals that Bluebert is actually Stringbean taking the form of a blue jay and changing genders along with it because snakeshifters are so rare, people attempt to capture her.
• Running Gag:
  • Polly refering to Luz as "Better Dressed Anne". Luz lampshades it when Polly refers to Amity by her actual name at the end of the fourth story.
    Luz: She calls you by your name, but I'm still "better dressed Anne"?
  • Someone commenting on Amity's new hairstyle.
  • Grime commenting on how he doesn't expect surprising moments.
  • King complaining about how humans keep calling him cute instead of fearing him.
  • Chapter 3 of TFL starts the one of Anne starts zoning out everytime she remembered a happy memory with Sasha and Marcy from the past and someone has to snap her out of it.
  • In the same story, Sasha keeps placing Anne and Marcy in the same bed while they're unconscious/asleep so they'll get embarrassed when they wake up.
  • Sasha saying Anne and Marcy will get married and mentioning that she wants to be involved with the wedding.
• Sleepyhead: It's mentioned several times throughout the series that Marcy tends to pull several all nighters whenever she has a lot of stuff to do or a lot of stuff she wants to do, causing Anne and Sasha to force her to sleep. "Go the FROG to sleep!" showcases this habit with Anne mentioning how the last time Marcy did this, she went three days before sleeping, a record she breaks by going an entire week without sleep.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Since they were able to escape the castle, Lady Olivia and Yunan weren't subjected to the mind control collars.
  • Grime never fights Darcy, so he never gets his left arm amputated.
  • Most notable of all, Anne doesn't have to use all of the gems' powers at once, so her body isn't destroyed.
• Story Arc: The "Love Duel Series" serves as one.
• Supporting Protagonist: Eda and King have yet to have any major roles.
• Tempting Fate: Sasha, Grime, and especially Anne are incredibly curious on why Marcy would end her song with “Hope nothing bad ever happens to me!”
  Anne: WHY WOULD YOU EVER SAY THAT AT THE END?!
  Marcy: Uh… it just felt… right?
  Sasha: Dude, you are pretty much begging for something to happen to you by saying that…
  Grime: Yeah… probably not the best idea to tempt fate like that.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Sprig realizes he's in for a long talk with Sasha about keeping secrets when she learns he outed Anne in front of Marcy.
• Time Skip: One Year Later, the non-canon entry, takes place a year after Anne and Marcy first began dating.
• Tragic Keepsake: During their first date, Anne gives Marcy a bracelet meant to symbolize their loyalty to each other. After it falls off Marcy's wrist when she's stabbed by Andrias, Sprig recovers it and gives it to Anne and she eventually gives it back to Marcy after saving her from her possession.
• Triumphant Reprise: During the final clash against the Core-possessed Andrias, Anne starts singing "No Big Deal", now joined by Marcy, Sasha and Luz, all four girls powered up and adding their own lines.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: After hooking up with Marcy, Anne becomes more protective of her, going as far as to threaten Sasha after learning she threw Marcy off a cliff. And after hearing the ending of the song Marcy wrote ("Hope nothing bad ever happens to me!"), Anne pulls her into a hug, bursting into tears and declaring she's never letting Marcy go again.
• What If?: Anne came out to Sprig and told him she has a crush on Marcy? He blurts it out in front of Marcy, who admits her own feelings for Anne, and the girls become a couple.
  • The one-shot "Wingfrog Sprig" is an alternate take on this: instead of blurting it out, Sprig waits until he and Anne are alone and suggests he try to learn if Marcy has mutual feelings for Anne during their stay in Newtopia.
• World-Healing Wave: To cure Amphibia of the damage done by Andrias' stripmining, Marcy suggests the Calamity trio channel their power to the ground to heal the planet. Despite Sasha lampshading how cheesy it is, it works.
• You Owe Me: Hunter's reason for helping Amity is because he feels indebted to the girls.
  Luz: Why are you here?!
  Hunter: (smugly) Well, I happened to have the day off, and overheard the juiciest bit of gossip! Then I realized that I owed the two of you a favor, so I decided 'eh, why not?' and decided to help you out! You should be honored!
  Amity: You owe us a favor?
  Hunter: Well, more like half a favor for each of you, since the human did kinda sorta save my life… then took the palismen for herself… and the Blight gave me the portal key… after breaking it…

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