Please Ignore the Wanted Posters
is an AU of The Owl House in which Luz opens the portal door several years early at the age of eight, and when Camila is with her. As a result, the Nocedas make a deal with Eda; they help her with the stand while she gets the ingredients she needs, and in exchange Eda cures Manny. Hijinks immediately ensue.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Abilene Paradox: Willow hates Abomination magic, in part because she's no good at it, and would rather use Plant magic, but is afraid to tell her dads this because they tell her how Abomination magic leads to better career options down the line. On her dad's side of things, they love her and want what's best for her, but because she doesn't speak up about it before meeting Luz, they falsely think that she's happy studying Abominations, and given Harvey's own regrets about not going into Oracle magic when he could, he'd gladly let her switch if she really wanted to.
- Adaptation Expansion: Since this takes place before Manny's canonical death, we get a lot more detail about him. The main things are that he's a former soldier that ended up working for the Department of Extrasensory and Extraordinary Phenomena, a secret government group that investigates the paranormal... unsuccessfully, with no confirmed paranormal events before Manny met Eda, which he keeps from the rest of the group.
- Age Lift: Luz ends up in the Demon Realm several years earlier than in canon.
- Arranged Marriage: As part of her twisted plans to set Luz and Amity up, Odalia tricks Luz into agreeing to a marriage contract with Amity.
- The Caligula: Manny's boss, Benedict Alexander, is a true believer in the paranormal (something his organization has found zero evidence in), and is only able to keep the lights on because he has enough blackmail material that it would result in the United States being at the center of a World War should any of it leak. Manny seems intent on keeping his job not only to support his family, but he thinks he's the only thing keeping Alexander from acting out his "murderous impulses" onto random people off the street.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Part of Manny's job is apparently to keep his "unstable lunatic" boss Benedict Alexander from taking that last plunge into total insanity.
- Cruel Mercy: After Vee drains the magic from Belos, at Manny's suggestion Eda uses memory tweezers to extract all of his memories of magic and the Demon Realm and throw him into a Best Buy. According to Masha in the epilogue, he lived on the streets of Gravesfield for a few years, unable to convince anyone of who he was, before dying (reportedly of tuberculosis) about a year before the epilogue's events.
- Death by Adaptation:
- Warden Wrath is seemingly killed by Camila when rescuing Vee.
- Lilith kills Terra after interrogating her for information on the Day of Unity, then kills Kikimora when she escapes her own interrogation.
- Manny kills Odalia after her attempt to force Luz and Amity to get married despite their age is foiled.
- After Hunter is forced to fight Grom, a mob of angry parents and teachers rises up against Belos, and Faust, who Belos brought back to Hexside after Bump is petrified gets his throat torn out for his callous attitude.
- Masha's mother was implicitly alive in canon. Here, she dies near the climax of the story.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes a lot of work and pain, but in the end Manny is cured, he and Camila get together with Eda and move to the Isles with Luz, and Masha ends up going the Isles to learn magic and be with Vee.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Given how out of touch Belos is with what Earth is currently like, when he hears that Manny is Spanish and works for the government, he assumes that he works for the Spanish Inquisition.
- Godzilla Threshold: After Belos kidnaps Vee and flees through the portal after the people of the Isles turn against him, intent on starting his crusade again using Vee as proof to gain supporters on Earth, Manny calls his boss and tells him that there's been an incursion.
- Legend Fades to Myth: There hasn't been regular contact between Earth and the Demon Realm for so long that many individuals in the Isles (like Bump and Odalia) didn't even believe that humans existed before they met the Nocedas.
- Mistaken for Related: When Bump meets Luz for the first time, he's surprised to learn that Luz is not Eda's biological daughter.
- Not Worth Killing: Given the fact that Belos is still planning the Draining Spell, he doesn't bother to chase after Steve for helping the Nocedas, as his sigil means that he'd be doomed anyway.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Besides hiding the band of rot in his face, Belos's only disguise when he enrolls Hunter in Luz's class is an "absurdly fake" handlebar mustache... despite the fact that Hunter is the only person alive who knows what Belos looks like under his mask anyway, so he doesn't really need a disguise.
- Plagiarism in Fiction:
- The holy book Belos's Titan faith uses, the "Malleus Maleficarum", copies large sections of the Bible almost word-for-word.
- He also plagiarized other Earth media, like "Romeo and Ghouliet".
- Point of Divergence: The main "point" is that, when Camila and Manny are telling Luz that Manny is terminally ill she runs off into the woods and opens up the portal several years early. Obviously, this has ripple effects:
- Camila is there when Luz first meets Eda, and Camila and Manny make a deal to help run Eda's stand for the summer in exchange for Eda helping cure Manny.
- Her enrollment in the baby class at Hexside causes her to meet Willow much earlier than canon, leading to her helping Willow get into the plant track early.
- Luz is also able to help Willow and Amity repair their friendship much earlier than in canon.
- Thanks Eda rejecting Warden Wrath earlier at Parent-Teacher Night at Hexside, he ends up kidnapping her with the intention of feeding her to the captive basilisks, forcing Camila and Manny to rescue her. The result is that Vee is rescued and adopted by the Nocedas ahead of canon, Steve makes an early Heel–Face Turn after discovering the basilisk project, and Warden Wrath is seemingly killed by Camila.
- Hunter meets the Nocedas, Willow, and Amity much earlier than in canon due to Belos putting him undercover in Luz's class, and Manny is able to trick Belos into exposing how little he cares for Hunter, allowing them to take him in as part of a deal.
- Terra and Kikimora die at Lilith's hands.
- Lilith rescues the Collector's disk from Belos.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Not only does Belos hate witches and demons, but he has no respect for Catholics ("papist scum") or Spanish people, thinking he would do the Draining Spell on all of Spain if he could.
- Polyamory: Camila and Manny eventually both get together with Eda.
- Sdrawkcab Alias: When Belos takes Hunter to Hexside to go undercover in Luz's class, he calls himself "Mr. Selob". Predictably, the Nocedas figured it out immediately.
- Shipper on Deck: In a twisted variant, Odalia's visions of possible futures via her Oracle magic let her know that Luz and Amity will be successful, rich, and well-respected in the futures they end up married in, so she plans to set them up.
- Shout-Out: Chapter 3 ends with a reference to Monty Python's Flying Circus.It wouldn't do to not expect the Spanish Inquisition, after all.
- Ultimate Job Security: The only reason that Manny's boss Benedict Alexander is still remotely employed by the CIA, even just in DEEP, is that he's got enough blackmail material that if he ever got released, the USA would apparently be at war with 17 countries, including itself.
- Villain Has a Point: When Belos gets some new information on the modern United States, one of the things he complains about is people putting up Christmas decorations ridiculously early. Manny has to agree with him there.
