Fanfic / Confessions (Amphibia)

After her failed attempt at conquering Newtopia, Sasha had resigned herself to a life in the dungeons. She had not expected to be visited by her two former best friends. And she had certainly not expected them to confess their love to her.

Confessions is an Amphibia Alternate Universe Fic where Sasha and Grime's invasion of Newtopia happened much earlier in the timeline, while Anne and the Plantars were still staying there, and without the support of the three other Toad Lords. As the invasion is repelled, Sasha is left in a prison cell where she is confronted by Anne and Marcy, both of whom are in love with her and want to attempt a relationship despite the less-than-favorable circumstances. But can the three of them really reconcile their conflicts and have a healthy relationship?

The fic can be read here on Archive Of Our Own. The first part, "Confessions", is about the girls starting their relationship, while the second part, "Cell Dates", explores how that relationship goes.

The fic was completed on February 26th, 2023.

Tropes

• Action Girl: All of the Calamity Trio are capable fighters, shown of in chapter 20 when a dinner is attacked by assassins. Anne and Marcy immediately get up and fight of the assassins with whatever they have on hand, and Sasha, once she gets over the guilt preventing her from fighting, is the most capable fighter of them all.
• All Take and No Give: Sasha outright describes the way her friendship with Anne and Marcy should be as "I lead, you follow". Unlike most examples, she genuinely doesn't know any better.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Or grandparents in this case. Anne doesn't want to talk to Hop Pop about her feelings for Sasha because he'll try to give her something gross like relationship advice. When she eventually does, he gives genuine and sound advice, though he does get to the embarassing relationship advice later.
• Amazon Chaser: Anne finds herself thirsting over Sasha's warrior's physique, and during the dinner attack, both her and Marcy admire Sasha's skill as a fighter. Anne even notes with surprise to herself that she's apparently into warrior women. Of course, neither are slouches in this department either, and they find it just as hot in each other.
• Ambiguous Syntax: In chapter 18, Sasha tells Anne and Marcy that she's sorry. It comes across as apologizing for not having told them about Lord Redd's plans earlier, but what she actually means is that she's sorry that she'd do it again.
• And the Adventure Continues: The fic ends with Anne, Sasha, and Marcy leaving Newtopia along with the Plantars, intending to seek out the three temples and a way back home. The ending leaves a lot of plot threads open for readers to imagine themselves, including the three temples, Sasha and Marcy coming to Wartwood, and the inevitable events of True Colors.
• Arranged Marriage: Implied. One of the lords Marcy and Anne talk to in chapter 9 invites Marcy to his 16 year old son's birthday party, describes him as a "charming young fellow" and "budding scholar" whom Marcy would get along well with. Anne has to resist the urge to pull Marcy closer.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Lord Redd shows up remarkably unlikeable and entitled, but crosses the line when he reveals that he wants Andrias removed from power because Andrias has allowed power to be taken from the nobility it "rightfully" belongs to and given to lowborn merchants and freeholders.
• Awesomebut Impractical: Wheelhouses, like the one lord Jamison Redd travels in, are described as great for traveling in style and comfort, but pretty unreliable, given that they're essentially houses on wheels.
• Batman Gambit: When going for a snack run for Sasha, Anne insist that they get chocolate covered flies, despite knowing that Sasha doesn't like insect food. She hopes that Sasha will refuse to eat them so she can have them herself. This backfires because Sasha is so petty that she'll eat snacks she hates just to stop Anne from having any.
• Beard of Sorrow: When Sasha finally sees Grime again, she's heartbroken to see that his beard has grown out again, after she just convinced him to shave it and get out of his depression.
• Belated Injury Realization: During the Dinner Attack, Sasha gets a dagger to her stomach, but doesn't register it as more than a pinch in her stomach and thinks it's just a minor scratch until after she's killed the assassin and the battle is over.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Poor lady Olivia has to deal with the affairs of state, the rebel cells, and two teenagers who desperately want to give their POW girlfriend more privilieges.
• Beneath the Mask: While Sasha gets angry often, her rant after Marcy gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in chapter 6 is the first time Marcy sees beneath the angry exterior and realizes that Sasha is trying her hardest not to cry.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Marcy is generally a sweet and nice girl, but when interrogating the assassin who tried to kill Sasha, she gets a wicked glint in her eye and is not above threatening with death.
• Big Brother Instinct: Sprig is actually Anne's adopted younger brother, but the sentiment remains as he warns Anne against spending time with Sasha, worried that she will hurt her again.
• Big Damn Reunion: After months apart, Sasha and Grime finally have a chance to talk in chapter 17. Sasha is heartbroken and guilty to see her captain broken, dirty, and chained to the ground, while Grime is just happy to see that his lieutenant safe. Sasha offers to do anything to help him, anything he asks, even if it would mean ruining all of her relationships, but Grime simply tells her to go, and live well.
• Bittersweet Ending: The fic ends with Sasha and her girlfriends riding of to a hopeful future, intending to look for the temples and a way back home. However, Grime is still imprisoned, Marcy's secret is still not revealed, and Andrias' betrayal is still looming in the distance.
• Born Unlucky: Where the Calamity girls ended up when they arrived in Amphibia was apparently random, but Sasha got the worst out of it by far. Anne ended up with a kind Found Family and Marcy became the guest and loyal ranger of The Good King (or so she thinks). Sasha, by contrast, was immediately thrown in a dank and rotting cell and had to build herself up to become Grime's second in command through nothing but her own charisma. This experience influences a lot of her views on the world, and leaves her just a bit resentful of Anne and Marcy.
• Both Sides Have a Point:
  • The first major fight between Sasha and Anne in the fic comes when Sprig accuses Sasha of only being friendly (since Anne hasn't told him about their romantic relationship yet) to manipulate Anne and Marcy. Sasha in turn is furious and says a number of rude and insulting things about the Plantars. As Marcy argues, Sasha was out of line saying those things, but it was also unfair for Anne to agree with Sprig's accusation. Sasha is a very manipulative person, but she does genuinely love her girlfriends.
  • After learning the full extent of what happened, Marcy finds herself seeing Sasha's point in the Toad Tower fight. While Anne knew Hop Pop personally and saw him as a grandfather, Sasha did not and only knew him as some random rebel figurehead that Grime asked her to take care of in return for giving her his aid. Killing him, while cruel, was the fastest and least violent way to put down the rebellion so she could get back to finding her friends and returning home, with Hop Pop merely being a victim of circumstance not unlike the dead rebel leaders Marcy reads about in history books and doesn't think much about. While Sasha was wrong, and trying to kill Sprig was inexcusable, Marcy can still see why she did it.
• Brick Joke: In chapter 2, Sasha spends a while staring at the blue mushroom light in her cell out of boredom. Three chapter later, she gives a "strangely detailed list of grievances" about it.
• Bully Hunter: Sasha is a bully herself, but that doesn't stop her from going after anyone who's mean to Anne and Marcy, be they classmates or amphibians. Apparently she did this so often that Anne learned to recognize when she's about to do it by the "revenge face" she makes.
• The Cassandra: Sasha is often disbelieved and distrusted, even when she's telling the truth. Marcy often disbelieves her when she points out some of Andrias' more tyrannical actions, only accepting it when Olivia or Andrias himself confirm it. When she reveals that Lord Redd has been conspiring against the throne, the only ones who believe her are Marcy and Anne, who freely admit that it's mostly bias speaking, and Andrias, who knew all along but pretends to doubt her.
• Category Traitor: With the exception of Percy and Braddock, almost every toad sees Sasha as a traitor for selling out to Andrias and trying to convince them to do so too. That includes Sasha herself, who is under immense guilt for the whole deal. Her guilt gets even worse when about half the toads actually accept her offer.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Confessions is a cute oneshot about the girls confessing their love for each other and wanting to try a relationship. Cell Dates is a 21-chapter longfic about how unhealthy their relationship is, set against the backdrop of cutthroat Newtopian politics.
• Character Development: Sasha goes through a lot of it.
  • In one of the first chapters, Sasha manipulates Anne and Marcy into getting her snacks and then refuses to share them. In chapter 16, Anne and Marcy bring her food and drink while she's working in the field, and she refuses it because she doesn't want to enjoy a priviliege that the other toads don't get.
  • In chapter 20, Sasha, still suffering from guilt from attacking Anne earlier, sees how much the Plantars care about Anne and how happy they make her, and starts to accept them, even if mostly out of guilt. By the end of the chapter, she risks her own safety to protect Hop Pop.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Chapter 17 ends with Sasha, having just talked to Grime and been told to live her life the best she can, charging at Cecil, apparently to attack him.
  • Chapter 20, the penultimate chapter, ends with Sasha passing out from a stab wound.
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • Invoked. During the ceremony where Sasha is supposed to swear loyalty to the king, he has her wear a pink dress, the color of her calamity gem. All her outfits from that point are pink, which she finds herself a bit offended by, seeing it as an attempt at making her seem passive and harmless.
  • Lord Jamison Redd wears red.
• Commonality Connection: Marcy and Sasha both feel like Anne likes the Plantars more than them, though Marcy has learned to live with it.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Sasha has this big time, between her girlfriends who want her to swear loyalty to king Andrias so she can be freed from prison, and to her toad friends, who are imprisoned with her and she would have to betray to swear loyalty to Andrias.
• Continuity Nod: Anne mentions that she's familiar with how the Amphibia legal system hands out forced labor. Comes across as a Noodle Incident to everyone else, though Olivia is unsurprised.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: When Sasha swears up a storm, Anne covers Polly's ears.
• Crying Wolf: Sasha makes it absolutely clear that she does not trust Andrias. Given what she has done recently, her girlfriends don't trust her judgement. Too bad she's completely right about Andrias being untrustworthy. The same happens when she accuses lord Redd of being duplicitous, though this time Marcy, Anne and Andrias do believe her.
• Decadent Court: the Newtopian Royal Court is filled with entitled nobles scheming to get the King's favor, hoping to arrange politically advantageous marriages, and backstabbing. Earning the King's favor in anything is reliant on having the crowd of nobles and common folks on your side. Poor Marcy, as the King's favored advisor, stands in the middle of it and so does eventually Sasha.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Played for Laughs: After Jamison Redd petitions to have Sasha work for him and gets the court on his side, Olivia calls on Marcy and Anne in the hopes that they might manage to quiet Sasha's loud protests. She didn't consider that Anne is louder than Sasha could ever hope to be.
  • Later Played for Drama when Sasha is training and Anne asks her to spar. Anne doesn't consider that the subject of swordfighting might still be a sore subject for Sasha, so she continues to push despite Sasha's repeated refusal, until Sasha finally has enough and attacks her.
• Distracted by the Sexy: During a tickle fight with Sasha, Anne gets her first feel of how the toad workout regiment improved Sasha's physique, and gets very distracted.
• Dramatically Missing the Point:
  • Marcy and Anne continuously assume that Sasha's loyalty to the toad is merely transactional, that she maintains her loyalty to Grime and the rebellion out of some misguided sense of owing them, and as a result try to reassure her that she doesn't owe them anything and is free to join Andrias. In reality, Sasha is loyal to the toads out of genuine friendship, and she has very good reasons to not want to join Andrias.
  • When Sasha refuses to spar with her, Anne assumes it's simply out of pride or stubborness, not wanting to risk Anne beating her again, so she starts pushing. In reality, it's because Sasha is terrified of hurting Anne like the last time they fought. Anne doesn't realize her mistake until she's pushed Sasha's Trauma Button hard enough to cause a Freak Out.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • A large portion of the issues faced by the Calamity trio is the fact that neither Anne nor Marcy know anything about Sasha's experiences in Amphibia. As far as they know, Sasha joined up with the first and best evil army she found and marched straight on the capital. In reality, Sasha was at first imprisoned, then freed herself by cunning and manipulation, developed a close bond of friendship with her former captors, and only marched on Newtopia once Newtopia went out of their way to antagonize them.
  • Anne and Marcy also works on the assumption that King Andrias is The Good King and therefore the rebels that resist him are evil. As anyone who's seen the show knows, while the toad rebellion are certainly no bleeding hearts, Andrias is much worse.
• Elite Mook: During the Dinner Attack, there is no indication that the knife-wielding assassin is anything special, but he manages to hold his own against Sasha for a minute and even manages to stab her before she kills him.
• Embarrassing First Name: Cecil, Sasha's second guard, is actually named Seashell. Given that Luke Nounverber is not convention in Amphibia, and his parents were just Giver of Lame Names, he tends to go by Cecil. Sasha still calls him Seashell.
• Empowered Badass Normal: During the dinner attack, Sasha briefly manages to tap into her calamity powers to save Hop Pop. Not enough to go full Calamity Sasha, but enough to move with superhuman speed.
• Entitled Bastard:
  • Sasha expects Anne and Marcy to be willing to share everything with her, ignoring such details as Sasha being imprisoned for trying to overthrow the king Marcy works for. Subverted with her relationship with the toads, as Sasha is willing to go to great lengths to help them, even when they hate her for swearing loyalty to Andrias.
  • The various nobles of Andrias' court are exactly as entitled as you would expect of nobles from a millenia-old monarchy. A group of them come to court to ask Andrias to resolve an argument over pocket change, and Jamison Redd demands justice for the orchards that the toads plundered despite already having been offered compensation for the damages and the rebels being imprisoned simply because Sasha, one of the rebels, is free from prison and part of the court.
  • Redd turns out to be even worse when it's revealed that his goal is to overthrow Andrias because Andrias has (supposedly) allowed smallfolk to gain power similar to that of nobles, just because he hates the idea of nobility having to share any kind of power with simple lowborn.
• Erotic Literature: Olivia reads one named In the Heat of the Swamp in her off time, and privately praises the author's use of... description.
• Evil vs. Evil: Andrias is obviously a tyrant with sinister goals, but the other villain of the fic, Lord Redd, is just as bad, seeking to regain the power he feels he is owed because he was born noble.
• Extreme Doormat:
  • After spending the entire fic as an Entitled Bastard, Sasha's guilt over nearly getting mad enough to hit Anne during one of their fights causes her to make a turn in the other direction, quietly going along with whatever Marcy and Anne ask of her, including going against her better judgement and swearing loyalty to king Andrias. She's even hesitant to confront Marcy after learning that Marcy has been telling everything she said in their private conversations to Olivia, despite being hurt by the breach of trust. Even when she does confront her about it, the second Anne tries to get involved she represses her anger again.
  • When offering a deal on behalf of the Newtopian government, Sasha accepts any hatred and degrading that the toads give her for being a traitor, as she herself is struggling with immense guilt over what she did.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Inverted. Anne can’t believe that Grime would actually care about Sasha, or that Sasha would care about him in turn, because she sees Grime only as a sadistic sociopath.
• Fatal Flaw: Marcy’s naivete. While her blind trust in Andrias can be justified by his skill in manipulation, Marcy’s trust crosses the line into blind obedience and hero worship when she refuses to believe Sasha’s claim that Andrias had a bounty put on Grime’s head. Olivia later confirms that Sasha was telling the truth.
• Fantastic Caste System: As in the show, Newts are the top of society, being scholars, administrators, and artists. Below them are the Toads, serving as military and local leaders. At the bottom are frogs, as merchants, artisans and peasants. Hop Pop in particular is shocked at the idea that a newt could be farming.
• Fantastic Racism: Sasha really doesn't like frogs, which can be attributed in part to most of her view of Amphibia coming to her through a toad perspective, and part to her experience with the Plantars being far from positive.
• Fantastic Slurs: In the show, it's a running gag that toads forget what Sasha's species is called and call her a "hummus". In the fic, this is used as a racial slur by an assassin Marcy interrogates.
• First-Name Basis:
  • During her interviews, Marcy notes that Percy and Braddock refer to Sasha by her first name, which she notes as odd given Sasha's apparent dislike of amphibians.
  • Sasha and her guards, Cecil and Harold, call each other by each other's first names.
• Freak Out: After Anne repeatedly pressures Sasha into a sparring match despite Sasha's insistence that she doesn't want to (stemming from her not wanting to repeat the Toad Tower battle), Sasha eventually snaps and attacks until Anne is beaten and terrified. Sasha proceeds to fall into depression over what she did, not helped by Anne and Marcy avoiding her.
• Friendly Enemy: While they are technically no longer her enemies by then, Seashell and Harold appear to have developed some genuine care for Sasha, with Seashell doing his best to give her relationship advice and Harold refusing to leave her in the care of Lord Redd's guards until making sure she'll be alright.
• Gaslighting: Something Sasha does unintentionally most of the time, but which Anne has learned to recognize and tries to call her out on. Whenever Marcy or Anne points out something weird she does, she'll insist that she doesn't do it and it's just Marcy and Anne seeing things.
• Gender-Blender Name: Sasha names the guard weevil she befriends Princess, not having realized it's a girl until Marcy points it out.
• Genre Savvy: When an agent of the rebellion approaches Sasha with an offer from an unknown benefactor, Sasha points out that they are in the house of a nobleman, and she was led there by the noble's weevil. Lord Redd is obviously involved, so he can get his ass out there and speak to her personally. She's right, and he does.
• The Ghost: King Andrias, despite being the Greater-Scope Paragon and Greater-Scope Villain depending on who you ask, does not appear until chapter 10. The Newtopian government is instead represented by lady Olivia.
• A Girl and Her X: While working at Lord Redd's estate, Sasha befriends one of the guardian weevil. It is at first outright hostile to her, but Sasha brings it scraps of food from breakfast every morning until it turns friendly, and Sasha grows fond of it because it reminds her of her dog back home. Sadly, she doesn't get to keep it when she returns to Newtopia, despite her best efforts (read: kidnapping). Marcy pulls some strings to let Sasha keep him after Redd's properties are confiscated by the crown.
• Going Native: While Sasha appreciates her first proper bath in months, she later finds a second bath the day after to be too opulent and inconvenient, despite having taken daily baths back on Earth. Cecil and Olivia also note that she acts toad-like at times, like with her growling, and she quickly has to prevent herself from breaking Anne's arm when she steals her food. The author describes her as having assimilated to toad culture to an even greater degree than Anne has with frogs.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: It's mentioned that prisoners are often prevented from having a way to tell time as a way to break their wills and possibly even drive them mad. Both Newtopia and Grime have employed this tactic.
• The Good King: Subverted. Even Andrias' faux good attitude has some signs of tyranny. Notably, Grime was sentenced to death, had a bounty put on his head, and the Ax-Crazy general Yunan sent to kill him, all for a single failure after a lifetime of service. And he ordered Hop Pop's execution.
• Grew a Spine: Anne, over the course of her time in Amphibia, has learned to stand up for herself and knows how to recognize Sasha's abusive and manipulative behavior. Sasha doesn't like it one bit. Somewhat downplayed in that recognizing the signs and standing up for herself does not undo the hold Sasha has over her, and she still finds herself succumbing to Sasha's pushing more often than not.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: A big whoopin load of it, complicated by the fact that all parties involved think it's a case of Black-and-White Morality. Sasha and Grime are a Manipulative Bitch and brutal warlord respectively, but their only knowledge of Andrias is as the tyrant that put a bounty on Grime's head. Anne and Marcy know Andrias as the kind and fatherly king he presents himself as, but also ignore Grime and Sasha's legitimate grievances, and think Grime is The Sociopath who doesn't actually care about Sasha.
• Healing Factor: After injuring her hand in a temper tantrum, Sasha heals remarkably quickly. The girls don't think much about it, though it's implied it might be a manifestation of her Calamity powers.
• Heel–Face Turn: At least publically, Sasha goes from being an imprisoned rebel leader to a member of the King's court, serving at his right hand.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • The realization that she nearly hit Anne causes Sasha to curl up in a corner of her cell and refuse to say anything other than that she wants to be left alone for hours.
  • Sasha once again enters this state after Anne pushes her too far and they have a physically violent fight, leaving Sasha lying in bed without moving for days out of guilt.
• Hidden Depths: Invoked. In order to get the toads as good a deal as she possibly can, Sasha asks Marcy to teach her the intricacies of Newtopian tax policy. She is later seen arguing with Lady Olivia that a 10% tax increase is robbery.
• Horse of a Different Color: It's mentioned that Newtopian guards ride crawfish. They also use weevils as guard dogs.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: In his POV segments, Cecil, the second guard assigned to Sasha, notes how weird it is that Sasha is female despite being larger than a full-grown newt.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Sasha argues that her joining up with the Grime and trying to kill Hop Pop was just her doing what was necesarry to get Grime's help in finding her friends and going home. That said, she doesn't really regret it. Andrias later uses the exact same reasoning to explain why he ordered Hop Pop's death.
  • Averted with Sasha later, who is torn up by the guilt of betraying the toads and swearing loyalty to Andrias, and thinks of herself as selfish for doing it just to be with Anne and Marcy. Percy and Braddock, on the other hand, are understanding and try to assure her that, since the rebellion failed, they don't blame her for doing what she needs to be happy afterward.
• I Have Your Wife: Lily Frond, an agent of the Rebellion, works for them because her family works for Lord Redd, and he threatened to have them fired and never given work anywhere again if she didn't comply.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • Sprig asks to come with Anne to Redd's estate to make sure Sasha doesn't try to kill her with an apple or something. Anne assures him that she won't, and haven't done anything like that since they were in third grade.
  Sprig: So what I’m hearing is that it’s a possibility.
  • During the dinner attack, Anne fights with a plate.
• Innocently Insensitive: Marcy and Anne don't realize that by continuously pressuring Sasha to join them and denounce the toads, they are just making her feel awful because the toads are her genuine friends.
• Insistent Terminology: Marcy isn't interrogating the toad POWs, she's interviewing them. It's very transparently an attempt at making herself feel better.
• Instant Expert: Sasha has never trained with a spear before, but can handle one good enough to fight of the assassins at the dinner. Downplayed since while she can fight with them, she's not as good as with her sword, and ends up getting a stab wound for her efforts.
• Internal Reformist: Sasha would love to overthrow the Newtopian aristocracy, but where she is now she can't really do anything close to that, so she instead spends much of the second half of the fic arguing with Lady Olivia over the treatment of the toad prisoners.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In chapter 7, Anne and Marcy learn more about Sasha's early days in Amphibia, namely that she was imprisoned in the southern Toad Tower.
  • In chapter 8, Marcy learns the details of the fight at Toad Tower.
  • In chapter 11, Sasha learns that Marcy has been feeding her recountance of her time in toad tower to Olivia, driving a wedge between them.
  • In chapter 21, Anne tells the Plantars about her relationship with Marcy and Sasha.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Chapter 13 opens with Sasha cuddling with Marcy and Anne after their sleepover. And then her handmaidens burst in unannounced.
• Irony: Sasha is mildly insulted by how all the outfits Andrias chose for her are pink. While she doesn't have a problem with the color, she sees it as an attempt at making her seem pacified, feminine, and harmless. Given that pink is the color of Sasha's calamity gem, the reality of why the color is associated with her is quite the opposite.
• It's All About Me: During Lord Redd's staged attack on the palace, several nobles insist that the rebels must be attacking to assassinate them specifically.
• It's All My Fault: After Sasha gets stabbed during the dinner assassination attempt, everyone present blames themselves for it. Marcy blames herself for not being good enough to stop it, Anne does the same but with the additional guilt of having pressed Sasha's Trauma Button and then blamed her for having a Freak Out, Hop Pop blames himself for having been careless enough that Sasha had to protect him, and Cecil and even Harold both blame themselves for failing to protect her.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Platonic version. Sasha offers to do anything for Grime's freedom, support a powerhungry noble, overthrow the king, break him out of prison, and ruin her romantic relationships. Grime tells her that they had a good run, but he doesn't want her to sacrifice her freedom and chance at happiness for his sake.
• Jerkass: Lord Jamison Redd is remarkably unlikeable, both in the expected sense of being a narcisistic self-important noble, and in the way of being so petty he wants Sasha working as a slave at his plantation for her part in the rebellion. Even Olivia wishes she could strangle him, and Sasha repeatedly wishes she had ignored her better judgement and just killed him first chance she got.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Sasha and Grime were doing it for ultimately selfish reasons, they are also right in pointing out how unfair it is that Grime got a death sentence for a single failure after a lifetime of loyal service.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: During the attack on the dinner in chapter 20, everyone of the main characters get up to fight despite wearing fine dinner clothes. Special attention is drawn to Sasha, who fights with a spear she took from one of the assassines while wearing a fine pink dress.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Andrias is villainous and tyrannical, and established the caste system in the first place, but he allows lowborn to gain power equal to that of nobility by wealth, unlike Lord Redd, who wants noble blood to be the end-all be-all of power.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Anne and Sasha haven't told Marcy about their fight on Toad Tower, leaving her very confused when Sasha admits that the reason she's so loyal to the toads is that they were there to pick her up after Toad Tower, whereas Anne was not.
• Loose Lips: Marcy is pretty bad at keeping secrets and frequently slips up and nearly says them while excitedly rambling about something. She nearly tells Sasha about the rebellions before catching herself, though Sasha picks up on her slipup.
• Manipulative Bastard: Sasha is an extremely good manipulator, even without meaning to. At one point she is able to get Marcy and Anne to go against their better judgement for her sake, despite both of them knowing that she's manipulating them.
• Meaningful Name: The newt guard is named Harold, as in the memetic phrase "Harold, they're lesbians."
• Mirror Character: Over time, it becomes clear that Anne and Marcy have a lot more in common with Sasha than they would like to admit;
  • Like Sasha with Grime, Marcy has a close relationship with an authority figure and is loyal to them in part to earn their approval.
  • Anne tries to hide it, but deep down she is bitter that Sasha would chose her loyalty to Grime over her girlfriends, the same way Sasha is upset at Anne's deep bond with her adopted family.
• Moral Myopia: Anne points out that it's rather hypocritical of Sasha to have such an issue with the Plantars, since Sasha has her own Found Family in Grime. Of course, this comes immediately after Anne dismisses Grime as a sociopath who doesn't actually care about Sasha, so Anne isn't free of hypocricy either.
• A Mother to Her Men: "Mother" might be a bit far, but Sasha is very beloved by the toads under her command. When Marcy interrogates them, almost every single one she talks to praises her leadership and training for turning them into an elite army, and several express genuine admiration and concern for her safety.
• Mugging the Monster: Off-screen, the Plantars were mugged by someone who was then immediately after mugged by Polly.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Almost hitting Anne during their worst fight yet is the first time in the fic Sasha expresses legitimate horror and regret over what she has done, and immediately goes into Heroic BSoD deciding that Anne and Marcy should just leave her.
  • Sasha gets it again when Anne accidentally pushes her too far and they have a fight, snapping out of her anger when she sees how terrified Anne is.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Sprig does not approve of Anne's relationship with Sasha, though it's hardly unjustified considering that Sasha tried to kill him.
• Mythology Gag: Marcy finds the evidence that damns lord Redd behind a tapestry, just like how in the show Sasha and Grime find a mural that depicted Andrias as a tyrant behind a more benign tapestry.
• Named by Adaptation: Olivia's last name is given as Synanceia.
• Never My Fault: Sasha's fatal flaw. She refuses to listen to either of her girlfriends if they so much as imply that she might have had some fault in their fights.
• Nice Guy: Cecil/Seashell, one of Sasha's guards, is, as she puts it, annoyingly friendly. He does his best to befriend Sasha despite being there to guard her, gives her relationship advice as best he can, and helps her and the toads out when they're working in Lord Redd's field.
• Noodle Incident: While researching the calamity box, Sasha comes across a story about a cursed shovel wiping out a town. This event is never detailed, though Sasha does show Anne a drawing of dead frogs out of spite.
• No-Sell: Andrias' goofy old man act has been playing everyone for fools for centuries. Sasha immediately doesn't trust it.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Sasha describes lord Redd as arrogant, and thinking of himself as beyond consequences. Anne quickly points out that she sounds like she describes herself, which Sasha relents, but insists that she's grown beyond that.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Harold is usually very quiet and expresses no emotions whatsoever, but Olivia knows his tells and can tell he's angry and frustrated after Sasha gets stabbed.
  • Olivia also finds herself hoping that Sasha will survive, though insists that it's only because her value to the Crown and not because it would break Marcy's heart if she didn't.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Like in the show, Andrias plays the kind, bumbling monarch to distract from the reality that he is a cruel tyrant with terrible goals. Sasha isn't fooled, and is determined not to underestimate the King.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Sprig laughs at how crazy the idea of Anne dating Sasha is, since it'd mean she was dating someone who tried to kill them and keeping it secret from everybody. This is precisely what Anne is doing.
• Obviously Evil: A subversion. Marcy calls the Toad Army this, and while it certainly fits the bill in many aspects, it also shows how shallow her worldview is. She is shocked that Sasha would join "such an obviously evil army", when Sasha actually had very valid reasons for working with the toads.
• Oh, Crap!: When Sasha calls Marcy traitor for having told Olivia about their private conversations, Marcy initially thinks she's talking about the whole thing with the music box and has a moment of this reaction.
• Only Friend: Grime admits to Sasha that she is probably the only true friend he has ever had, and certainly the closest.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • The first time Marcy and Anne notices that Sasha has become an Extreme Doormat rather than just being sensible is during their first sleepover after Sasha becomes part of the court, where she isn't as confident or taking charge as much as she usually is during sleepovers.
  • When Sprig reminds her of the fight at Toad Tower, rather than being pissed, Sasha just goes completely blank.
• Open-Minded Parent: While Sprig and Polly are suspicious and critical of Anne's close, supposedly platonic, relationship with Sasha, Hop Pop is suspicious but trusts Anne to make her own choices.
  Hop Pop was great.
• Ordered Apology: Anne forces Sprig to apologize after he makes a cruel remark to Sasha about the toad tower fight, and for having laughed at her when she got attacked by a weevil. Sasha in turn is forced to apologize for having brought up Toad Tower in the first place and having called Sprig ugly.
• Pacing a Trench: Anne has a tendency to pace when she's nervous, and Hop Pop at one point tells her to sit down before she wears a hole in their hotel room.
• Parting-Words Regret: After the dinner attack, Anne is worried that her last interaction with Sasha would be the incident in the training yard.
• Poisoned Weapons: The assassin who stabbed Sasha had a poisoned dagger.
• Polyamory: Anne and Marcy resolve their mutual crush on Sasha and each other with this. Unfortunately, being polyamorous does not actually solve the underlying issues of their relationship.
• Poor Communication Kills: After Sasha enters her Extreme Doormat phase, Marcy and Anne completely fail to recognize how hurt and out of character she is, assuming she's merely being reasonable and not freaking out when she's actually repressing her feelings out of fear that they'll hate her if she is honest.
• Punch a Wall: Sasha does this after Anne tells her she doesn't trust her. Realistically, she seriously hurts her hand, though it heals quickly.
• The Quiet One: Harold, the guard assigned to Sasha's cell, never says a word.
• Rage Breaking Point: Marcy finally blows up at Sasha in chapter 6, calling her out for her entitled and selfish attitude and for leading a rebellion that she is now stuck cleaning up the aftermath of. Which in turn leads Sasha to blow up with her grievances, like the king putting a bounty on Grime's head or how useless and lost she feels stuck in a cell while her girlfriends are out having fun together.
• Redemption Rejection: Sasha is frequently confronted with how horrible she has been to her girlfriends in the past, but every time she comes close to a Heel Realization, she instead doubles down.
• The Resenter:
  • Sasha really hates the Plantars, and especially Sprig, for what she sees as them having stolen away her best friend.
  • After Sasha joins Andrias' court and is sent to work with the toad prisoners in lord Redd's field, a lot of the toads resent her for her betrayal, refusing to include her in conversations and not helping her with the work. She does make some headway in earning their friendship again, but accidentally ruins it by feeding a few scraps of bacon to a guard weevil, unintentionally parading her priviliege in front of the toad laborers.
• Rich Bitch: It's mentioned that Sasha usually paid for Anne and Marcy when they went out shopping on Earth, and she's certainly a bitch.
• Rite of Passage: Sasha recounts how toads prove themselves by going out to slay a particularily dangerous beast. Grime had her go through it while teaching her swordfighting.
• Sadistic Choice: Lord Redd offers Sasha the chance to free Grime from imprisonment, overthrow Andrias, and ensure fair treatment to the toads, which has been her goal from the very beginning. However, doing so would mean replacing Andrias with someone even worse, go against her principles, and likely destroy her relationship with her girlfriends.
• Secret Relationship: Marcy and Anne can't be open about their relationship with Sasha because Sasha is a prisoner of war from a hostile rebel army, not to mention what Anne's family would think if they learned she was in a relationship with the girl who tried to kill them.
• Shout-Out: While traveling to Lord Redd's estate, Anne entertains herself by making up stories about the guards.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: When they try to be civil, Sasha and Sprig end up with this. Most of the time it devolves into open hostility soon after.
• The Social Expert: Sasha is an extremely skilled manipulator, which is evident not only in how she has both her girlfriends wrapped around her finger easily, but in how she picks up on the affairs of the Newtopian court better than Marcy, who has been neck-deep in court politics for months, in just a day, how she routinely manages to get her guards on her side, even the guard weevils, and how she easily convinces the toads to accept Andrias' offer, then has them go from resenting her to liking her again within a few days.
• So Proud of You: After hearing about Sasha helping dismantling Redd's conspiracy, Grime quietly expresses his pride in her for having managed to screw over the nobility despite being part of the court.
• Spoiled Brat: It's mentioned that the Plantars were mugged by a rich kid who got bored and wanted some thrills, and when Polly turned it around on him and made him face consequences, his family immediately stepped in to get him out of trouble and accused the Plantars of having attacked him and lied.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Between Sasha, the captive lieutenant of a warlord who tried to conquer Newtopia, and Anne and Marcy, who are loyal (Anne more so from association with Marcy) to Newtopia's king.
• Switching P.O.V.: Between Sasha, Anne, and Marcy, with occasional insights from other characters. The alternating pov ensures that the reader gets insight into all the girls' issues without one side coming across as the clear bad guy.
• Takes One to Kill One: Sasha jokes that it takes a rebel to rat out a rebel after she helps unravel Lord Redd's rebellion.
• Third Wheel: Inverted. Sasha and Marcy end up feeling like the third wheels on one of their dates with Anne because Anne invited the Plantars along and spends more time with them than her girlfriends. She realizes in hindsight that it was rude of her.
• Timmy in a Well: In chapter 16, Sasha's new weevil Canine Companion shows up to her room at night and gets her to follow it. Though it leads her to something far more sinister than a child in a well.
• Too Important to Remember You: A few nobles pretend to forget Sasha's name as a power play.
• Undying Loyalty: Anne and Marcy are surprised at just how loyal Sasha is to Grime, refusing to turn her back on him even when offered freedom. Sasha is even willing to ruin her relationship to her girlfriends for Grime's sake.
• Ungrateful Bastard: A bad habit of Sasha's. When her girlfriends buy a bunch of snacks for her (defying Olivia's orders to do so), her first reaction is to complain about the type of snacks they bought.
• Villain Has a Point: Marcy has to concede when Grime points out that it’s a bit hypocritical of her to complain about Sasha’s imprisonment in Toad Tower when Marcy is currently complicit in imprisoning Sasha in Newtopia.
• Wardens Are Evil:
  • The guards in the Newtopian prison are cruel and abusive to the prisoners, which sits wrong with Marcy despite her Undying Loyalty to Andrias.
  • Lord Redd's guards are just as bad, harassing toad workers without consequence. Sasha wants to step in and prevent it, but Marcy stops her.
• What If?: The toad rebellion attempted to conquer Amphibia before Sasha reunited with her friends, and without the Toad Lords' support.
• Wham Line: After being told that Andrias is a good guy who'd never do anyone harm one too many times, Sasha lays this truth down on her girlfriends, which is later confirmed by Andrias himself;
  Sasha: King Andrias is the one who told Grime to kill your old frog friend.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Marcy, like in the show, assumes she's in a fairly standard high fantasy story, working for The Good King of The Good Kingdom. When an army marches on the gates of Newtopia, she assumes they're a typical evil and tyrannical army, even if her best friend is leading them. She fails to consider that the real situation in Amphibia is much more complicated, and never questions why Andrias is opposed by rebels.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: Sasha admits that she's not sure where the cheese comes from since there are no cows in Amphibia. Marcy is about to explain before Sasha tells her that she doesn't want to know.

---