Feathers like Gold and Blackberries
is an AU of The Owl House in which Luz is not human, but instead a Nephilim, the child of a human and an angel, and has had several adventures of her own by the time of the story. Unfortunately, these escapades have scarred her both mentally and physically, and chasing cryptids and hanging with the Mothman mean that she's not exactly fitting in. When she finds herself in the Isles, it's a dream come true, as she can not only make new friends, but she can learn a new kind of magic to avoid overly relying on her angelic powers and their side effects, and so a new adventure begins...
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Luz's father — the Archangel Michael — created Luz as a ritual sacrifice for his father God and only barely showed a paper-thin veneer of paternal affection towards her until then, even creating his "human"-aspect Manny to fulfill his role in the family-unit when he couldn't be bothered. Otherwise, he saw her more as an extension of himself, not allowing her to have any human friends while growing up and erasing their memories if she ever tried. By the end, he had Camilla's soul destroyed and permanently crippled Luz with a soul-destroying sword before Luz had to kill him in self-defense.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While Luz had plenty of baggage in canon, her problems pale in comparison of Aluzial's. For one thing, her status as a Nephilim has brought her nothing but contempt from her angelic relatives and she never seems to have anything nice to say about them. Then, her own father kills her mother and tries crippling her for life, forcing her to kill him in self-defense.
- Adaptational Villainy: While he never officially appears outside of photographs in canon, Luz's dad Manny was nothing but a loving husband and father. Here, Michael is a dutiful soldier of God who saw Luz as nothing more than an experiment, eventually killing Camilla and attempted to ritualistically sacrifice Luz to make God more powerful, voicing nothing but his contempt for his half-breed daughter when he dropped his paper-thin veneer of paternal love.
- Anti-Magic: Something about Luz resists spells being directly cast on her, at the Covention the illusionist at the Illusion Coven's booth fails to activate the illusion that was canonically cast on her, and when Amity tries to put her under an Everlasting Oath like in canon the spell circle shatters without taking effect. Unfortunately this means that a healing spell that Eda attempts to help her deal with her damaged wing does jack squat. Potions seem to work just fine though.
- Back from the Dead: During the Wailing Star, the image of Luz's father Michael it brings to life smites Amity, breaking her soul apart. Thankfully, Luz is able to revive her.
- In a following chapter, Luz reveals that she revived her mother after her father killed her. Notably, Luz is only able to do this because she's a Nephilim, as to revive someone who's been smited you need a soul yourself so you know how to repair the broken soul.
- Blessed with Suck: After the Fall, Luz ended up with a lot of excess angelic energy inside of her. While this gives her a significant power boost, it disrupts the balance between her human and angel sides, giving her angel side a personality of its own that Luz calls Sarial, and causing using several of her abilities to burn her soul. Part of why she's so interested in learning the magic of the Isles is because it won't have the same negative effects.
- Brain Uploading: While Luz is described more like a living battery, this is basically Michael's plan for Luz. God is slowly dying and he had Michael create Luz — a being with both a grace and a soul, making her the only truly eternal being — so that he can make himself truly eternal and rule over the universe forever.
- Broken Angel:
- Luz's wing was nearly ripped off her shoulder, preventing her from flying, and leaving her collarbone in two pieces. Even worse, because angel and Nephilim wings are normally intangible and invisible, her options for treating it are extremely limited. She even drops the trope name during her I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me moment with Amity at Grom.
- The angel that goes after Vee, mistaking her for Luz, also looks like his wings have been put through the ringer, looking completely featherless.
- I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: Luz is taken aback by Amity asking her out, wondering why Amity would be interested in a Broken Angel like her.
- Came Back Wrong: Discussed after Luz revives Amity after the Wailing Star animates a drawing of Michael. While the revived person doesn't have any changes to their core personality, Luz prompting the soul to heal causes some interesting changes (with Camila her driving got worse, she gained the ability to speak French as well as English and Spanish, became left-handed instead of right-handed, and she can now skateboard for some reason). Luz explains it to Edric by repairing a broken mug that still has cracks; saying that broken things can be repaired, but are never quite the same afterwards. Disregarding that, both Camila and Amity's eyes are visibly different after their revivals.
- Complete Immortality: Under normal circumstances, a Nephilim is completely unkillable, as the soul and grace combination causes any damage to one to be repaired by the other, which is why God had Michael sire Luz, in order to allow a dying God to become truly eternal. Luz's wounds only stuck around because she was hit by a blade that damaged the soul.
- Cool Uncle: While most of Luz's aunts and uncles view her as an abomination, her Uncle Lucifer is the only angel that's unambiguously on good terms with her.
- Disabled in the Adaptation: Besides her damaged wing and collarbone, Luz's right knee was somehow damaged to the point that she needs a brace to move around effectively.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Luz insists that her angelic abilities are not magic, but instead more like bending reality to do what she needs. Eda counters that that's what magic is.
- Entertainingly Wrong: After seeing Luz, Lilith starts to suspect that she's Eda's biological daughter, and that her wings are a result of her inheriting the curse. She's wrong, but it's not an unreasonable conclusion.
- Expy: Luz's Uncle Lucifer is obviously based off of the titular character from Lucifer (2016); he's missing his wings, he quit his time ruling over Hell and is now lazing about in Los Angeles, being the most pro-human of his angelic siblings.
- Flash Step: While Amity lost her skill in Abomination magic when Luz revived her, she instead gains some form of teleportation magic.
- A God I Am Not: Despite her powers, Luz doesn't really like the idea of being treated like a divine being (even if she technically is half one). After she revives Amity, she tearfully tells Eda that she hates the idea of Amity looking at her like she's a God.
- God Is Evil: Luz's abuelo — God — responds to any angels wanting to be anything other than an obedient soldier with oblivion. It's also implied that Luz's family puts her through Half-Breed Discrimination as part of The Chain of Harm enforced by him. It's eventually revealed that God had commissioned Luz to be concieved and born so that he could have her ritualistically sacrifice so that he could continue his absolute sovereignty over the universe indefinitely.
- God Is Good: Luz's opinion of the Titan, in contrast to the above. When at the Knee, she's in awe of what the Titan created for those who would follow.
- God's Hands Are Tied: Despite their power, gods are, according to Luz, heavily restricted by the rules of their existence, which is why it was so important to Luz's abuelo that humanity had free will.
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: Luz's feathers are a mix of gold and purplish-black, befitting the fact that, while she might be quirky and weird, she's still a good person. It also seems to represent the duality of her existence.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Many in Luz's angelic family had this opinion toward Luz to varying degrees.
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Luz's uncle Raphael is currently trying to free the Horsemen in order to destroy humanity.
- Insistent Terminology: Luz insists that her angelic powers are not magic.
- I'm Having Soul Pains: Sariel emerging damages Luz's soul little by little, which is not pleasant.
- Invisible to Normals: Angel wings are usually invisible and intangible to non-angels, though the shadows of said wings can be seen sometimes when they use their powers. Interestingly, Amity can see and touch Luz's wings, and Lilith can see them too, along with Edric and Emira later on, if mistily, which is apparently the result of a blessing on the Blight bloodline that split due to them being twins.
- Loophole Abuse: Luz's angel side is able to take over during the Moonlight Conjuring that Luz, Gus, and Willow do because the chant for the Conjuring is a prayer to the moon, but it's vague enough that "Sarial" could "mistake" it as a prayer to her and siphon off some energy from the Conjuring and show up.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Part of why Luz is wary about a relationship with Amity is that she's immortal, and Amity is not.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Luz was apparently involved in several adventures before ending up on the Isles, like sealing off Hell.
- Power Gives You Wings: When Sariel takes over when Luz is on the Knee, Amity notes that she has a second set of pure golden wings.
- Satan Is Good: The only paternal relative Luz has a genuine connection with is her Uncle Lucifer, who fills in the role of Cool Uncle and father-figure that her actual father Michael fails to be.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse were sealed away by the entire heavenly hosts in the past, but now Raphael is setting them free.
- Self-Made Orphan: About a month before the story began, Luz killed her father Michael.
- Shout-Out: When explaining the Human Realm has some demons, Luz briefly thinks of Alcor.
- Soul-Cutting Blade: The sword that Luz has can cut souls, and is what caused her wounds.
- Superpowered Evil Side:
- After her Fall, Luz's "human-side" and her "angelic-side" developed an imbalance, her angelic-side manifesting as Sarial. While Luz certainly thinks she's evil (especially since is causes harm to her soul whenever she takes over), Sarial behaves more amoral, manifesting when a duty needs performing.
- It's also implied that Luz's father operated on a similar system: the Archangel Michael is his angel-side while Manny is his more human-side. It's even implied that they can manifest as two different individuals if they really wanted to.
- Title Drop: Lilith uses the story's title to describe the look of Luz's wings.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Luz's injured knee and wing, apparently a combination of them being inflicted by a Soul-Cutting Blade and her issues with properly integrating the power she absorbed from God interfering with the normal Nephilim Complete Immortality.
- Wrong Context Magic: Luz's abilities are unlike anything the Isles have ever seen before.
