One Small Change is an Amphibia fanfic written by 77Xfire
found here on FanFiction.Net and here on Archive of Our Own. According to the latter, it is Part 1 of the Fourth Light Series.
The premise follows as such: what would happen if after "Quarreler's Pass", Anne told Sprig something so personal, he ends up asking a question that ultimately changes more things than either of them realize?
Quite a lot, actually. Not only does it lead to something different for Anne and Marcy once they reunite, it also leads to Marcy joining the Plantars on the journey back to Wartwood. What happens after that will certainly change a few things.
The story began on October 21, 2021 and was finished on December 1 with a tease of a sequel posted one week later. The sequel, The Fourth Light (which also acts as a crossover, the third story of the author's Love Duel Series and the fourth story of the overall FLS), began on December 15th. Additionally, there are several one-shots that take place during the story's events that can be found here on FanFiction.Net and here on Archive of Our Own.
One Small Change contains examples of:
- Accidental Hero: Marcy's attempt to save Anne from being turned to stone by the Chicka-lisk leads to her tripping and taking the full blast herself.
- Accidental Pun: When Anne admits she's a lesbian, Sprig thinks it means she's a specific kind of human known as a "LesbiAnne".
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
- Through Marcy's journal entries and her thoughts, 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.
Word of God has confirmed it will continue into the sequel.
- Adaptational Explanation: 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.
- 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.
- Affectionate Nickname: Along with her usual "Mar-Mar" and "Marbles", Anne takes to calling Marcy "Marcemallow".Marcy: That's a new one!Anne: I thought of it roasting marshmallows.
- Ascended Extra: Marcy becomes the main character of the story starting from the second chapter.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Downplayed. Once she gets confirmation on Anne's official orientation, Marcy kisses her cheek, revealing her feelings for Anne.
- Blunt "No": After Sprig learns Anne's orientation, this moment happens:Sprig: So… I'm almost scared to ask… since you like girls and all…Anne: (bluntly) No, I never liked Sasha that way.
- Bookends:
- The story began with Anne worrying over Marcy and Sprig needing to comfort her. It ends the same way when Anne breaks down crying after watching Marcy get stabbed by King Andrias.
- The first and last one-shots focus on Marcy having a problem, Maddie trying to find a solution to it, Anne aiding Marcy and ends with the girls having a Sleep Cute moment.
- Broken Tears: Once everything catches up to Anne after returning to Earth, she collapses and cries worrying she might have lost Marcy and was unable to save her.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: After entering Newtopia, Sprig asks Anne out loud for reconfirmation that she has a crush on Marcy... who's a few feet away. After Anne runs off embarrassed with Marcy tailing her, Hop Pop tells his grandson how stupid that was.Sprig... you really messed up...
- 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. "An Angel... OF DEATH" shows that Marcy realized her crush over a year before the girls came to Amphibia. Later Deconstructed for Marcy when she admits she took back her coming out after she told her parents.
- Continuity Nod: Anne explains to Marcy the time she and the Plantars met Luz Noceda during her brief visit to Amphibia. Polly still refers to Luz as "Better Dressed Anne".
- Crush Blush: Anne and Marcy have these before and after hooking up.
- 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".
- Didn't See That Coming: Grime's reaction to Marcy capturing him at the waterfall, then to learning Anne and Marcy are dating.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Sasha flat out reveals that she caught on to Anne and Marcy's mutual attraction because they kept staring at each other whenever they saw the other in a sports uniform, even saying Marcy was pretty much drooling watching Anne during tennis practice.
- Dramatic Drop: Marcy's bracelet falls off her wrist to the floor after Andrias impales her.
- Everyone Has Standards: Wartwood citizens may be slow to accept, and even slower to respect, it's even the town motto, but they instantly accept Marcy once they learn she's dating Anne whom they consider one of them. They also don't care that both of them are girls.
- Everyone Knew Already: 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...
- Exact Eavesdropping: ...of course, Sasha also overheard Anne when she realized her crush.
- 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.
- 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: Not wanting to be separated from Anne again, Marcy decides to join her and the Plantars on the return journey to Wartwood while King Andrias prepares the supplies for the quest to the first temple.
- After arriving in Wartwood, Marcy is immediately accepted by the citizens after they learn she's Anne's girlfriend and following the battle with the Chicka-Lisk, Marcy reveals she sent the wish list to the king and had him buy all the gifts for the citizens, who brush off their suspicions that the Plantars intentionally summoned the beast. As such, the events of "New Wartwood" don't occur.
- General Yunan arrives in Wartwood to drop off the temple supplies, and she informs Marcy of her mission to track Grime and Sasha. Marcy joins her to try and get Sasha to patch things up with Anne, only for Sasha to throw Marcy off a cliff and be saved by Joe Sparrow and General Yunan before flying off; Sasha does take Marcy's words under consideration.
- When Sasha and Grime meet up with Anne, Marcy and the Plantars at the third temple, Sasha gives Anne a more genuine sounding apology having chosen to take Marcy's advice.
- The night before the return to Newtopia, Marcy tells Anne the truth about the Calamity Box during their first date and while Anne is shocked, she understands why Marcy did it and promises to find a way to help her.
- Although Sasha still starts the rebellion, she surrenders to Anne instead of dueling her and gets her to hear her out about the mural of Andrias.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Spell out the first letters of the first 11 sentences in the final chapter. What do you get? THE OWL HOUSE.
- 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.
- The Gadfly: Both Sprig and Sasha wasted no time teasing Anne once they learned she has feelings for Marcy:
- Upon learning it, Sprig realizes Anne's crush is why she's so worried about Marcy and intends to milk it as long as possible. He stops when he sees Anne hugging her knees in concern.
- After Sasha learned about it, she had Marcy dress up as a cheerleader during one of Anne's tennis matches, throwing Anne off her game due to how good she thought Marcy looked in sports uniforms. Anne ended up taking the ball to her face a few times.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Marcy accidentally invokes this. In the battle against the Chicka-lisk, she tries to save Anne from being turned to stone only to take the hit herself. Anne quickly guesses she meant to get both of them out of the way and tripped.
- High-Pressure Emotion: 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.
- I Lied: Anne discovers during her first date with Marcy that she didn't get through to her parents about her coming out.
- In Spite of a Nail: The journey to Newtopia remains the same as do the events during the arc of the Plantar's stay in the city.
- Sprig and Polly still drive Bessie the last few miles of the way to the valley due to Marcy getting into the zone while reading Bessie's driving manual. She completes it when they get to the cliff, completely unaware they even did anything.
- Almost everything that occurs during Marcy's stay in Wartwood and the temple quest remains the same as well.
- Sasha still instigates the toad rebellion, which leads to Anne refusing to trust her claims about Andrias, ultimately leading to him impaling Marcy with his sword and claiming the Calamity Box while Anne and the Plantars are sent to Earth.
- Interquel: A lot of them, mostly the one-shots:
- The events of "Toadcatcher" take place 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".
- It's Personal:
- After Marcy get petrified and Anne starts to cry in grief, an enraged Ivy leads another charge against the Chicka-lisk to avenge her.
- Later when Sasha confronts Anne trying to close Newtopia's gates, Anne states that after everything she's done, the thing Anne can never forgive Sasha for is hurting Marcy after going back on her word to make up with Anne.
- Jaw Drop: Anne and Maddie react with wide-eyed, mouth agape shock when a sleep-deprived Marcy actually convinces herself a sleep potion was an energy drink.Maddie: Did… did she just convince herself that it WAS an energy drink?!Anne: … The power of Marcy's mind is beyond mortal comprehension…
- Kick the Dog: After getting Marcy to admit to Sasha she knew the truth about the Calamity Box, Andrias twists the knife further by telling her he remembers when she called him "dad" by accident, telling her he instantly figured out what that meant after hearing about her past and that to him, she was nothing more than a tool he used to further his plans.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Anne intended to come out to her parents on her birthday but the girls' arrival in Amphibia stopped that.
- 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.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After Andrias admits he played her and says she means nothing to him, Marcy becomes full blown furious and charges in to attack him.
- Parental Substitute: Marcy reveals to Anne that she's come to see King Andrias as a second father due to her relationship with her own father. She also accuses Anne of seeing Hop Pop as a surrogate grandfather.
- Promoted to Love Interest: Marcy towards Anne. While they're very close friends in the canon show, they're girlfriends here.
- Running Gag: Marcy needing to remind herself to reinforce the rope she uses with her crossbow.
- Sequel Hook: The bonus ninth chapter features three familiar people and their companion somewhere else.
- Serious Business: When Anne starts crying about Marcy, Hop Pop makes the decision to call Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy to help calm her down.
- Sleepyhead: "Go the FROG to sleep!" showcases Marcy's tendency to pull all nighters whenever she has a lot to do or her desire to do a lot causing Anne and Sasha to force her to get some sleep. Anne mentions how the last time Marcy did this, she went three days before sleeping, a record she breaks by going an entire week without sleep.
- Something We Forgot: In the final chapter Anne, in her grief, notes she feels she's forgotten something important and Polly dismisses it saying she wouldn't have forgotten it if it was. What Anne had forgotten was hers and Marcy's promise to contact Luz as soon as they got home.
- The Stinger: The bonus chapter shows the ending scene of the epilogue of "Tomorrow's Truth".
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Was It All a Lie?: When the toad rebellion gets underway and Anne starts chewing out Sasha, Anne question if Sasha meant anything she said, even her support for Anne and Marcy's relationship. Sasha admits with a look of guilt that she at least meant that.
- 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.
