Fanfic / Luz Clawthorne

Luz Clawthorne, also known as The Luz Clawthorne Saga or the LCU (Luz Clawthorne Universe) is an ongoing Owl House Alternate Universe Fic by JP-Ryder and BuckJohnson.

One night on Earth, Eda Clawthorne came across a car crash while searching for human items to sell in the Demon Realm. She finds the driver has died but her infant daughter, Luz, is unharmed. Initially, Eda plans to keep the kid until she finds somewhere more suitable to leave her but by the time she does, she can't bring herself to do it as she and Luz have grown attached to one another and she decides to raise her.

The first book/season, Hexside's Number One Delinquent Witch, begins 14 years later when Luz has become a juvenile hellraiser at Hexside School of Magic and Demonics not unlike Eda in her youth. Unfortunately, all that troublemaking bites her in the butt when Principal Bump informs Eda of her actions and the consequences they could bring. Now Luz must begin putting in some serious effort to change that while dealing with other issues and trouble that may affect her family, her friends, and her future.

The second book, Two Worlds, One Family, follows the events of the last one, focusing on Luz adjusting to all the changes she's experiencing in her life, Amity trying to find a new purpose for herself and all while the Clawthorne family has to face new dangers at both Belos' hands and from beyond the Boiling Isles.

A third book has been confirmed. The series also has two One-Shots: Krampmus Shenanigans, a Christmas-style story which takes place during the Boiling Isles holiday equivalent which has Krampus as its mascot; and Somhaim Tales of the Boiling Isles, a Halloween-esque Vignette Episode. For April Fools' Day 2022 and 2023, What If? chapters were included in Book 2, showing what would happen if Luz had been taken in by people other than Eda, along with side-chapters called "Sidetracks" focusing on characters outside the main cast.

A spin-off based on Helluva Boss, and Hazbin Hotel to an extent^note The Hellaverse being confirmed to be part of the series in Chapter 25, titled Helluva Dad was published on June 18th, 2023 and can be read here and here.

You can find the series on Archive of Our Own here and FanFiction.Net here.

Warning: Because of the series' length, heavy use of Wham Chapters and constantly changing status quo, spoilers for anything in Book 1, including anything regarding Reunion Falls, will now be unmarked, as will anything after Chapter 103 for Helluva Dad. Remember this.

General trope examples:

• Adaptational Backstory Change
• Adaptation Name Change
• Adaptational Nice Guy/Girl
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul
• Adaptation Species Change
• Ascended Extra

---

The fic provides the following examples:

A

• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: St. Epiderm has a student council which Donna is a member of. Under Danny's leadership, they focus on issues from dealing with their new students to the lunch menus.
• The Ace: Hexside, Glandus High, St. Epiderm, and Merlin Meadows all have top students in each of their tracks who show skill in their field and magical power. In order:
  • Abomination: Amity for Hexside, Goregon for Glandus, Peter Bloomhog for St. Epiderm.
  • Bard: Tito Jackwitch for Glandus, and Cat's brother Dog Harwitch for Merlin Meadows.
  • Beast Keeping: Dusty Bring'ems for Hexside, Nina Fangs for Glandus, Lindsay Shystream for St. Epiderm, and Dusty's rival Kevin Shrubs for Merlin Meadows.
  • Construction: Simon Saltstar for Hexside, and his brother Cain for Glandus (which he earned on his first day after defeating the previous title holder, Barty Grumbles).
  • Healing: Cat for Hexside until Viney surpassed her, Bangles, then Asi for Glandus, Donna Masterskull for St. Epiderm, and Bangles' sister Brenda for Merlin Meadows.
  • Illusion: Glandus got rid of its illusion track so they didn't have one of these (until it turns out that the current queen, Emily Tricks, was a highly skilled illusionist), while St. Epiderm has Riley Strange. Chapter 133 reveals that Emira serves as Hexside's top illusionist.
  • Oracle: Hexside's best oracle is Celine, Kadabe was Glandus', and St. Epiderm has its Student Council President, Danny Dilburn.
  • Plant: Amelia was Hexside's only to be quickly outmatched by Willow, Glandus has Weaselton, and Word of God confirms that St. Epiderm has no single top student for its Plant track as Veronica Rex, Beel Zatar, and Cross Drakescale could all fit under it because of their own specialties.
  • Potions: Boscha was Hexside's until she was put in the Detention track and later transfered to Glandus, being replaced by Barcus in the interim, Ruth was Glandus', and St. Epiderm has Sarah Atos, the daughter of the Coven Head before Weevil Vitimir.
• Action Girl: Most, if not all, of the female characters prove themselves to be one, especially the girls in the main cast.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Doubling as Not So Above It All, Amity has a habit of laughing at things she otherwise never would've before befriending Luz. It seems she got that habit from Odalia.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Having lived on the Boiling Isles all her life, Luz's been subjected to discrimination at the hands of its residents. The worst example being when a mob of people threatened to beat her to death at the Slayground, were it not for Eda's intervention.
  • Amity also suffers from this. Besides having the same abusive parents from the canon, early on in the series, she's mugged by criminals, leaving her traumatized. Later, she's not only attacked by said criminals again, but it's revealed she's also being influenced by a demon feeding off her misery and nearly succeeds in destroying her mind. All of this results in her being put in counseling.
  • Skara gets some as well, as she's kidnapped by a shapeshifter and forced to undergo her first transformation into a werewolf.
  • Although living in Amphibia probably hasn't been better for the Calamity trio since they were sent there as kndergarteners, Sasha has clearly been affected the most by her time in the toad army. Nevertheless, she'd rather stay in it as she believes there's nothing left for her on Earth to go back to.
  • Gus gets hit hard by this as well. He learns that his mother used love potions to make his father stay with him, making him wonder if she even loved him until he saw she didn't. Then he accidentally killed a sadistic human, landing him in counseling and leading to him going through a goth phase.
• Adaptational Badass: Her altered upbringing has given Luz combat skills she didn't have in canon, as well as a talent in urban art and she can take down anyone or anything that makes the mistake of challenging her. She becomes even more of one when she develops her cambion form.
  • Amity shows signs of growing more powerful than she was in canon, being able to level an entire factory, and that's without having proper control over her magic.
  • Despite losing her magic from splitting the curse with Eda, Lilith makes up for it between using glyphs and unlocking her harpy form early.
  • Anne, Sasha and Marcy all unlocked their calamity powers at some point prior to or during Anne and Sasha's duel at Toad Tower, with Anne and Marcy able to tap into them at will without any signs of fatigue showing from using them.
  • The heads of the Construction, Healing, Oracle and Potions covens get to show their fighting skills more here, killing or detaining the entirety of the Bards Against the Throne.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Everyone at Hexside, especially the Troublemakers, debut earlier than in the show. This later applies to Lilith, Steve, Perry Porter, Emperor Belos, the Golden Guard/Hunter, Willow's dads, Odalia, Alador, Raine Whispers and the BATT's, Darius, Vee, Gwendolyn, Dell, Bria, Gavin, Angmar, Eberwolf, Terra Snapdragon, Ghost, and Belos' brother.
  • The same goes for Gravity Falls characters, as Tad Strange debuts during the fic's version of "Summerween" and the Society of the Blind Eye appears halfway through what would be Season 1. Ford also technically debuts when the story has reached "Dreamscaperers" and "Gideon Rises".
• Adaptational Explanation:
  • Chapter 39 reveals that Lilith got the idea to curse Eda from someone else: Odalia.
  • "Somhaim Tales of the Boiling Isles" reveals that Eda obtained the Owl House and Hooty from Baba Yaga, who inspired her to become a wild witch.
  • In Chapter 45, Kitsuni explains that the Coachman is able to transform children into donkeys by lacing food with Fae dust.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change:
  • Luz's hair is now much longer than in canon and has an orange streak dyed into it, referencing Eda's original hair color. In Book 2, she has it in a bobcut with several orange streaks
  • Rather than cutting her hair short after dying it lavender, Amity leaves it the same length until she dues cut it.
  • During his goth phase, Gus keeps his hair in locs, which didn't happen until the epilogue in "Watching and Dreaming" four years later. He also dyes the ends blue and purple.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • In canon, Odalia was an Evil Matriarch who manipulated her daughter, threatened her friends, and sold out her own species to Belos believing she would be rewarded. In the LCU, she sees the consequences of her actions, strives to be better, and joins the Covens Against the Throne in order to make the Boiling Isles a safer place for Amity, who's put in danger from Belos after becoming half-Fae.
  • Mason was just as dedicated to Belos as the rest of the loyalist Coven Heads, hoping to reap the benefits of it. Ulrich, on the other hand, is more selfless as he wants to ensure his family's safety. So when he learns Belos' true origins from Lilith just over a week before the Day of Unity, he also sides with the CAT's to protect them.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Because of the Slayground incident, Luz invokes a Jerkass Façade by acting tough and messing with anyone who gets on her bad side which inevitably garners their fury. When she decides to provoke the monster hunters during the moonlight conjuring, Willow openly calls her out on this behavior, straining the friendship between the two.
• Adaptational Karma:
  • Edric and Emira respectively suffer from a swollen hand and broken nose at Luz's hands after she learns they were planning to steal Amity's diary. A few minutes later, they're scared off by Puck Goodfellow who claims the money they were going to pay Luz for helping them.
  • Piniet also suffers this to the point of it becoming a Humiliation Conga.
  • Surprisingly enough, Mabel gets called out for her pushy attitude and trying to change people into how she believes they should be, earning a "Reason You Suck" Speech from Luz.
  • Boscha isn't immune, either; after causing Luz and Amity to break up near the end of Book 1 by exposing Amity as Lilith's spy, her friends abandon her (with Skara (her crush) laying into her for her hypocrisy about exposing liars), while Principal Bump removes her from the grudgby team, suspends her for a week with the addition of putting her on the detention track, and prohibits her from playing sports on school grounds.
  • The Coachman is killed via impalement on a set of iron bars and due to a one-sided deal with the Baron, is dragged off to the spirit world by the children he punished.
  • For trying to assassinate Hunter, Kikimora gets her face kicked in by Luz until she coughs up blood and is later tortured by Belos, who spares her life but decides to have her demoted to coven scout.
  • Terra lived through the Day of Unity, the Collector's takeover, and Belos' final attempt at victory in the show but here, she dies by Belos' hand for numerous crimes committed by her criminal organization since begore the empire was created.
• Adaptational Late Appearance:
  • Kikimora debuts later than she did in canon (granted it was in a flashback, but it would still be one episode if converting chapters to such.) Same goes for Warden Wrath.
  • Clara, the blonde cheerleader seen in the series premiere, doesn't debut until the story's almost reached the events of "Eclipse Lake".
• Adaptational Location Change: Gravesfield isn't the main Human Realm setting setting in this timeline: instead, it's Gravity Falls.
• Adaptational Sexuality:
  • Long before Lilith was confirmed to be an asexual aromantic, she was dubbed bisexual in this story, having dated Odalia and Stanford Pines in the past. Odalia is also bi because of this and marrying Alador.
  • Emira and Viney, who end up in a relationship, are changed from Ambiguously Gay to actually gay and bi, respectively.
  • Skara is also confirmed to be bisexual, due to dating Bat Boy (or Raptor as he's known here) and later dating Willow.
  • Hunter is gay and is dating Edric at the start of the story instead of bisexual and getting a Ship Tease with Willow while Gus is implied to be aromantic.
  • While Anne and Marcy don't have their orientations confirmed, them dating each other contrasts their Ambiguously Bi statuses in Amphibia.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Boscha's more villainous that she ever got be in the show, which causes her to serve as Luz's Arch-Enemy in Book 1. She actively tries to hurt the human physically by brutally maiming her in the semester exams, then emotionally by showing her that Amity's spying on her for Lilith, causing Luz to break up with her.
  • Prof. Hermonculus (now Prof. Blanc) gets replaced as the Abomination track teacher in favor of Prof. Sheldon Snope. After a few failed revenge attempts and trying to get rehired, Blanc gets hired at Glandus High and supports them in the school war.
  • Hinted for Moon Butterfly, who started a war with monsterkind and utilized Solarian Warriors to wipe them out, which Star notes played a role in Mewni's demise.
  • Preston Northwest far more than qualifies. He broke Pacifica's arm years ago and paid the Blind Eye Society to erase her memory along with those who knew about the incident, then he attempted to become mayor of Gravity Falls to take over the town, kill Dipper for trying to expose him, and slapping Pacifica when she tries to stop him.
  • Darlene, the spider person who preyed on male pick-up artists like Stan, has long since moved on to eating whole families, especially children by the time she's a Monster of the Week here.
  • Most of the Coven Heads who sided with Belos fall into this: Terra is the ringleader of a criminal organization and worked with a mind demon to overthrow Belos, Adrian Graye fathered an illegitimate child and altered the arrest record of her parents so they'd be petrified and the child would die, Osran had his predecessor (Boscha's aunt) killed for doubting Belos so he could take her place and near-successfully has most of the students in a school branded before the Day of Unity, etc.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Greater Basilisk is defeated much quicker here in its debut than in canon. In the show, it took Luz and the Troublemakers working together and taking it by surprise to defeat it: here, Eda takes it down in five seconds. This, however, only applies to its first appearance as it nearly succeeds in killing Puck later on until Jerbo intervenes.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The series ends up centering The Owl House in a multiverse based around the many franchises listed under Intercontinuity Crossover.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Technically speaking, Amity falls into this when her eyes change colors from gold to pink in universe.
  • Lilith gains white streaks in her hair after being brought Back from the Dead and to wash away the influence the previous Emperor Coven Head had on her, Lilith dyes her hair back to her original red color but keeps some dark blue streaks.
• Adaptation Deviation: Several events from the parent work are altered in some way. The most obvious example is Amity and Lilith becoming main characters, the former appearing in nearly every chapter in Book One while the latter decides to stay at the Owl House instead of leaving with Gwendolyn (at first) in Book Two.
• Adaptation Expansion: The story greatly expands the plot of the main series beyond its 40 episodes and three specials and there's several things, such as character backstories, minor events or any other miscellaneous things that are expanded upon, such as the home lives of the Banshees, Eda's time in the Human Realm, the story of what happened to Gus' mother, and most importantly the history of the Wittebane brothers and how they came to the Demon Realm.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In killing Camila by accident, Lilith caused Eda to meet Luz when she was an infant.
• Adapted Out:
  • Everyone and everything related to Gravesfield (the parent work's main human world setting) falls under this since Camila decides to raise Luz in Minnesota. This gets subverted in Book Two; while Camila confirms that she and Luz did live in Connecticut for a time before Luz's father died, Gravesfield itself is later mentioned by name during a flashback to the 17th century in "Socket to Me", where it also briefly appears. The Noceda home in Connecticut appears as well in a nightmare during "Deserve Nothing". The town also appears in flashbacks during "The Ballad of Eda" where it was revealed to have been renamed Gatesfield. The town's modern day citizens, such as Jacob Hopkins and Masha, are officially introduced in "Chapter 72: Escape from Gatesfield".
  • Because Luz's experiences here differ vastly than in canon, she doesn't carve Stringbean's egg and gain the snakeshifter as her palisman. Instead, Luz gains a companion in Atticus, a purple mockingbird whom powers up her glyphs and symbolizes her being a true Clawthorne.
• Age Lift: The fic started long before "Echoes of the Past" aired, so King is six or more years older than in canon as he's living at the Owl House and able to speak fluently by the time Eda brings baby Luz home. Chapter 47 reveals he's 20 years old.
  • It's in the reverse for Camila: due to being dead before her revival, she's mentally coping with it by looking like she did when she died, making her appear 14 years younger than in canon.
• All Myths Are True: The series takes place in a setting where it seems like this is the case, one such myth being Frankenstein's Monster.
• Alternate Self:
  • Since Rick and Morty is included in the series' lore, of course the Smith-Sanchez family have witch counterparts here.
  • It's hinted in "Chapter 86: Closing the Gates" that Luz saw at least twelve versions of herself from alternate universes just as Stan's portal activated.
  • It's played straight in the fourth sidetrack, which shows that Eda, Lilith, and Hooty all have alternate counterparts in Amphibia.
  • All The Owl House and Amphibia characters from The Owl and the Frog are confirmed to be variants of the characters who appear in this story.
  • Word of God confirms that Lindsay and her friends are witch/demon counterparts of the Mane Six and the Equestria Girls. Cheese Sandwich is also confirmed to be a stallion version of "Weird Al" Yankovic.
• Alternate Universe: The series is set in one where Luz is Eda's adopted daughter and grew up in the Boiling Isles. Additonally, in this universe Philip/Belos and his brother were adopted by witches and raised in the Boiling Isles as well. All the shows and movies added to the series as time goes on qualify it as Crossover Alternate Universe. The holiday one-shots each serve as this to the main story, both being set in a different season while the main story, like the show, is set during the summer. The "What If" chapters also acts as such. It's later confirmed by the Calamity Guardian that The Owl and The Frog, an Amphibia/Owl House crossover, acts as such.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: While there are some characters in the Boiling Isles with non-standard complexions, they were normally demons. Here however, witches such as Tina, Emily, or the Graux Sisters have such skin colors.
• Ambiguously Related: Hunter believes that William, the previous Golden Guard, and Vina Charmspell, the leader of the Emperor's Coven before Lilith, are his parents, according to Belos. This ends up being a big fat lie since he's a Grimwalker and William had a son named Caleb.
• AM/FM Characterization: Several character's core personalities can be identified by their taste in music: for example Luz and Eda, being rebellious women, favor rock but have softer sides which are shown by their liking of Prince.
• Amicable Exes:
  • Despite the way they left things before meeting again, Eda and Stan have fallen into this. After unwillingly taking on the responsibilities of parenthood, they often exchange techniques to help their kids and advice to deal with their current issues. It's also strongly implied the two are still attracted to each other.
  • Lilith and Odalia had once dated in the past during their time at Hexside. They ended things because of their careers leaving no room for a relationship, but still remain on good terms to the point that Odalia named Lilith as Amity's godmother and gives her a room at Blight Manor for whenever she stays with them. However, it becomes strained when Odalia learns Lilith had been using Amity to spy on Eda and Luz.
  • Wendy and Robbie later fall under this territory. After dealing with ghosts, living video game characters and monster clowns, Robbie becomes fed up with living in Gravity Falls after getting kidnapped by members of the Blind Eye Society (which ironically would have freed him of the stress of those attacks) and decides to leave town, ending his relationship with Wendy as a result because he knows she won't wanna go with him. Wendy doesn't hold it against him, and they agree things between them wouldn't have worked out long-term.
  • Like in canon, Eda and Raine don't hold any hard feelings when they see each other for the first time in years after their break-up.
  • Averted for Ford and Lilith: Ford leaves the Boiling Isles due to distrust in Emperor Belos' motives and asks Lilith to join him. She refuses due to believing Belos won't cure Eda if she abandons him, thus Ford knocks her out with a potion before escaping. When Ford later returns, Lilith acts hostile towards him.
  • The beginning of Book 2 implies Luz and Amity have fallen into this. Luz may have decided to forgive Amity for spying on her, but they're uncertain about where their relationship stands. Later subverted when they get back together.
  • After not having any contact since they broke up, Edric and Hunter slowly begin to fall into this in Chapter 107: "Resolutions".
• Ancestral Weapon:
  • The Sword of Adam was created by Adam Blight and enchanted to be linked to abomination magic which he uses: in present day, Amity obtains the sword. This also extends to Adam's Magic Staff as Ghost was his palisman and Amity would later bond with her.
  • This extends to Boscha's palisman Hogarth, who had been passed down through her family for three generations.
• And I Must Scream: Those who fall victim to either the Inner Demon or The Forest of Fear are forced to relive their greatest fears and regrets, which destroys their minds until there's nothing left.
• Animal Theme Naming: Cat's family, the Harwitches, are all named after animals; in addition to her, her older brother is named Dog, her younger brother Moose and her parents are known as Zebra and Swan.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Luz comes to specialize in animation magic along with her glyphs, eventually creating a spell that brings several objects in the Owl House to life. She later brings her metal bat to life and accidentally does the same to a magic guitar.
• Anonymous Benefactor: A woman named Director Gates is working with the Society of the Blind Eye in order to obtain the portal key. The Shadowy Secret Expozers mention having one of their own, later revealed to be an actress named Vanessa Pierce.
• Arc Villain: Each book has a secondary antagonist who has a direct conflict with the protagonists as opposed to Emperor Belos keeping his distance and biding his time.
  • Boscha acts as the overall primary villain of Book 1 as her rivalry with Luz caused a great deal of trouble. She temporarily steps down during the second half and her mother Nicole takes over before forcing her back into it at the end of the book.
  • Emily Tricks serves as the first villainess of Book 2 in the "Glandus War" Arc, as her own hatred against the Clawthornes leads to her declaration of a school war between Hexside and Glandus, all while she actively tries to kill Luz.
  • The "Human Realm" Arc has Director Gates serving as such for the Human Realm side of the story while the Shapeshifter/Puck Goodfellow working for the true villain, the Inner Demon does so on the Demon Realm side.
  • For the following two arcs, Mel, a troublemaking Fae, steps into the role as she and her gang cause mischief and drama for the Boiling Isles and later kidnaps Edric, King, and the Holder brothers Cups and Mugs and brings them to the Underworld to keep to herself as pets and prisoners.
  • Given the titular group being the villainous faction, the "Tarot Guild" arc would put Terra Snapdragon, AKA the Producer, into the position.
  • Belos for the "Day of Unity" arc.
• Arc Words: "Exams to Survive" & "Changes" end with the words "Everything changed", in regards to how Luz's condition will change her life and affect Emperor Belos' plans.
• Aura Vision: Oracles, trickster demons and Fae are able to see the auras surrounding people.

B

• Back from the Dead:
  • As of Chapter 51, Camila has been resurrected, courtesy of the Baron.
  • Chapter 82 ends with the revelation that Puck is still alive, albeit with the unmasking of being the Shapeshifter.
  • And not long after that, Angel is revealed to have been brought back from the dead.
• Badass Biker: In "The Ballad of Eda (Part 2)", Amity creates a motorbike from abomination goo after reading a book she got from Gus on human motor travel, which she starts using to travel around Bonesborough. In the aforementioned chapter, she sports an outfit that completely fits the trope.
• Ballad of X: Chapters 58 and 59 make up the two-part chapter "The Ballad of Eda", the series' version of "Eda's Requiem".
• Barred from the Afterlife: Upon death, spirits stay in a waiting room (which represents limbo) where souls end up if they're either unable to move on to the "good place" or if they choose not to move on due to Unfinished Business, unavenged deaths or if they still had someone back in the mortal realms. Camila stayed there until the séance, and ended up right back there until her resurrection.
• Batman Gambit: Upon learning of Odalia's demand for Amity to end her friendship with Luz, Lilith gives her one: either she allows the girls to continue spending time together, or Lilith will order an investigation on Blight Industries under the threat of treason for her Abomi-tons being used as a personal army. It pays off and Odalia relents.
  • Later on, Emperor Belos makes one in sentencing Luz and Eda to be petrified, using them as bait to draw in Puck so he can finish the fae off.
  • Lord Oberon of the Fae gambles on holding a meeting with the Order during the school war so Miss Heinous can kill Luz and Amity without Kitsuni stopping her. It fails and they get what's coming to them.
• Beach Episode: Chapter 89, titled "The Obligatory Beach Day!", has both of its main plots focusing on this. While Boscha and her friends hang out at Tibilas Bay with several St. Epiderm students and fight a monster, Luz takes her friends to the Human Realm to relax at Echo Creek's pier.
• Benevolent Genie: Anu Bist, the half-genie, half-jackal demon who becomes the new teacher of the Detention track following the Covention, is a trickster demon which thrives on causing mischief and chaos. In reality, he wishes to genuinely teach his students, encourages their mixing magic and wants to help them find their inner strength.
• Berserk Button:
  • Luz won't tolerate anyone who messes with or even insults her, her friends, her adoptive family and especially Amity. She also Hates Being Touched and being called some "thing".
  • Eda retains her canonical one of people messing with Luz, but now that she's her daughter it's taken up to eleven.
  • Since Willow treasures plant life, calling her a vegan is a big mistake.
  • Never make a comment about Gus' mother or you'll regret it. Same goes for Cain Saltstar and Zee Drakescale.
• The Bet: The ones from canon remain, but with added conditions or alterations:
  • In "Witch's Duel or Don't", the terms of Luz and Amity's bet are changed: if Luz wins, Amity can't interfere with her personal life. If Amity wins, Luz has to admit she can't learn from all the covens. On top of that, Luz has the troublemakers organize a betting pool against her so they can make a profit when she wins. Ultimately the duel never happens, and they're forced to give refunds since no one bet on a forfeit.
  • "I Ain't Troubled Yet!" offers the first original one of the story: Anu Bist challenges the troublemakers to a battle using their mixed magic skills where if they beat him, he won't tell Principal Bump about the Secret Room of Shortcuts. It later turns out he was bluffing.
  • In "Swap or Not", Eda and King go through the usual bet of seeing whose life is harder without Luz, who heads off to do her own thing. After it goes horribly wrong, the two both agree to clean Hooty together as long as they never mention the day's events again.
  • In "Exams to Survive", Principal Bump allows the troublemakers to use their mixed-magic abilities in the exam duels and makes them a deal where if they can apply their talents and impress the judges, he'll allow them to become the first students to take multi-track classes. They all succeed in doing so, but it's subverted in Luz's case when she decides to take only one track.
• Beta Couple: Willow & Skara are this to the fic's main pairing, Lumity. Every other couple falls into this to both.
• Better as Friends: Mabel makes several attempts at flirting with Gus, but when he says he isn't interested in dating at the moment, she accepts being his friend.
• Big Bad Ensemble: In addition to Emperor Belos and the Emperor's Coven, other villains of the story include Boscha, her mother Nicole, the Blind Eye Society and their benefactor Director Gates, the Inner Demon and Dolly Tempus.
  • Book 2 drops Boscha, Dolly and the Blind Eyes in favor of Emily Tricks, the entirety of Glandus High, the Shapeshifter, the Tarot Guild, and the Horned King while adding on Bill Cipher, Capt. Hook & Smee, the Archangels, Mel and her gang, Draco and Seth's army, the Queen of Hearts, Jafar, Maleficent, Ursula, Grimhilde, the Huntsman, and possibly the Weird Sisters, King Andrias and the Core.
• Big Brother Instinct: As established above, King has known Luz since she was an infant, so he's quick to try to protect and keep her out of harm's way especially after the Slayground incident. As Luz grew older, she would develop this same mindset for King along with Dipper and Gus (in the cases of the latter two, it's due to her suspicions of them being friends with older girls she thinks might hurt them.)
  • After learning about Amity getting mugged, Edric and Emira vow to start looking out for her more.
  • Anne also has the same feelings towards her own adoptive siblings, Sprig and Polly.
  • Amity becomes very protective of Kay Thians after she takes custody of her following Levi and their father's arrests.
  • Word of God has stated that Tyrone has this mindset for the rest of his friends.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Initially downplayed near the end of Chapter 25, where Luz gives Amity a peck on the cheek without thinking after bringing her home. Then it's played straight when she attempts to leave and Amity pulls her into an actual liplock that they enjoy at first but leaves them speechless and frozen in shock afterwards.
• Big "YES!": Luz lets one out when Amity tells her they can keep hanging out after the exams.
• Birthday Episode:
  • The first quarter of "Chapter 31: Have a Little Hex with my Friends" shows the kids attending Skara's 15th birthday party.
  • "Chapter 90: The Steve Chapter" is set on Mattholomule's birthday and focuses on Steve working before he later attends the party with their family and all of Matt's friends.
  • "Chapter 108: The Errands in the Willows" is set on Willow's 15th birthday. She hangs out with Skara, Amelia, Cat, Viney and Bo during the day, has a party with her friends in the evening, then travels to the Human Realm for a human-hosted party and she, Skara, Luz, and Amity all have a double date at night in Gravity Falls.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Two occur in the Demon Realm after the "Underworld" arc.
  • Lindsay, whose sexual orientation is Ambiguously Bi, falls for Cross since she believes he's the new Golden Guard, only to learn that it's actually Emily Tricks, leaving her confused and ironically not realizing that both were serving as the guard at first. The triangle is resolved in Chapter 121: "Coming Off a Little Shystream" when Emily comes to see that she isn't ready to enter a romantic relationship anytime soon and pushes Lindsay to get together with Cross.
  • Another begins in "Chapter 111: So IFWOT?", where Donna (who's actually bisexual) decides to go out with Cross to get her mind off of Nina, who's dating Lambi at the time. It's implied to be because she's using him to make the werecat jealous and fizzles out since Donna ruins things between them as a result; she and Cross later admit to each other they like other girls but still go on another date so Donna can make it up to him.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Living on the Boiling Isles has made Luz accustomed to eating the local cuisine, even ordering off-menu food whenever she visits Gravity Falls. It turns out to be a hint to her body evolving.
• Blackmail: Chapters 98 and 105 has Cross reveal that he's working as Adrian Graye's apprentice because Graye caught him practicing Wild Magic and threatened his family unless he worked for him. Hunter helps Cross get out of the deal in Chapter 108.
• Body Horror: Luz's transformations involve her limbs extending and her feet twisting backwards all to the sound of snapping bones.
  • As always, the transformation into a donkey is just as terrible.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Hooty is a frequent upholder of this, once referring to himself as the "greatest character in the story".
• Breakout Character:
  • Nina Fangs, one of the Glandus top students and an enemy during the "Glandus War" arc, and Donna Masterskull, The Ace of St. Epiderm's Healing track, Nina's crush, and The Leader of her own superhero team, both became more prominent after the arc's conclusion, even being the main focus characters in Chapters 93 and 94.
  • Emily, the Arc Villainess of the "Glandus War" arc, and Cross, one of Epiderm's top Plant students, both get forced into replacing Hunter as the Golden Guard by Head Witch Graye and become friends while falling for the same girl, who has crushes on both of them. Eventually, they're both promoted to the main cast after Chapter 120.
• Break Them by Talking: This is the signature tactic of Emily Tricks, as she often attempts to undermine people's confidence in themselves and those close to them while trying to turn them against Luz and her family.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Near the end of Book 1, Luz and Amity break up thanks to Boscha outing Amity as Lilith's spy. While they make up and agree to stay friends at first, they get back together in the fifth chapter of Book 2.
• Brick Joke: At one point, Luz calls Amity's abomination "Phil". A few chapters later, it's revealed that the name ended up sticking.
• Bridal Carry: Luz ends up carrying Amity this way on several occasions, especially in Book 2 when flying using her cambion wings.
• Bully Hunter: Luz's (initial) delinquent behavior was often directed towards anyone who picks on her friends. The first book would go on to deconstruct this behavior as inherently destructive; while she tries to make her pranks karmic in nature, the resulting fallout tends to harm people uninvolved (like her pranking Amity for picking on Willow by planting ghosts in her cauldron cancelling Abomination classes and ruining Amity's reputation). Half the time, like with Boscha, this results in a Cycle of Revenge, creating an escalating war between them that causes Luz's friends to be caught in the crossfire. In both cases, Luz trying to make it about defending her friends ends up jeopardizing her friendship with Willow because it comes across as her being Secretly Selfish and hoisting moral responsibility for her actions onto her friends.
  • Puck is also shown with these traits; however, he messes with whoever he sees as jerks before they can even cause trouble, which leads to them getting severely hurt.
• Bullying a Dragon: If someone messes with either the Clawthornes or the Hierons, you better pray for them.

C

• Captain Superhero: In the Boiling Isles exists a comic series known as "Captain Coven", which is a Propaganda Piece meant to promote the Coven System. Edric and Hunter are both fans of the series, and it's a Commonality Connection that led to their relationship.
• The Casanova: Inverted and Played for Laughs: some characters joke about how Gus often hangs out with several girls they believe he's dating, Eda even referring to him as a young Don Juan.
• Cast Full of Gay: To an even greater extent than its parent series, as it's clear that every female main character has or had a non-hetero love interest.
• Central Theme:
  • Family. Throughout the series there's been numerous kinds of families shown, mainly focusing on Family of Choice and children who are Happily Adopted, of which the heroes are shown to have healthy bonds born of trust and honesty that flourish given time. In contrast, several villains don't have such close ties, parents often manipulating each other or their children for their own benefits or actively attempting to sabotage those they oppose. There are also Anti-Heroes and villains who fall sorely in the middle.
  • Forgiveness. Being open to forgiving others and being able to owe up to your mistakes is a much healthier way to live than holding grudges out of spite and refusing to hold yourself responsible (Nicole is the perfect example of the latter, as was Boscha in Book One and Gus in Book Two (briefly)). At the same time, it's made very clear that you don't have to forgive someone immediately or at all (Luz and Willow both gave each other space; Willow accepted Amity's apology, but didn't forgive her right away; Amity hadn't completely forgiven Lilith, but they came to better terms until she did). However, there's still a difference between not forgiving someone and being spiteful.
  • Change. Things can't remain the same way as you've always known them, so when it happens, it's best to learn how to cope and adapt with it. This is best seen with Amity's character arc of going nameless and officially making her home in the Owl House only to be thrustted into the human world right when she's (and the readers) comfortable with the life she has there now.
    • Likewise, nobody's perfect, and people are all changing, improving, and learning as they go and sometimes, they're not willing to change for the better.
  • Choices and responsibility. People can either face the consequences of their actions or pass them off as if it has no effect on them or they never even caused said actions. Luz started off acting completely juvenile at Hexside and Eda let her do whatever she wanted before they were both informed of what could happen to them if they didn't turn things around: this led to Luz taking her studies seriously and Eda becoming a more responsible parent. On the other hand, the Hierons live by never accepting (or acknowledging) that they're in the wrong and it has long-lasting effects with Boscha losing everyone's respect for hurting Luz and Amity while Nicole's continued denial eventually leads to her wife throwing her out of the house over her Skewed Priorities.
  • Standing up for yourself and shaking off bad influences. Several characters have been proven to be toxic influences on those they're closest to and while some remain complacent to taking their abuse, others will realize they're the problem.
• Character Development: Several characters have this, Luz especially given she's the main protagonist and has a very different personality.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: In Chapter 109, due to all the chaos they were experiencing, Luz proposes to Amity, much to everyone's shock as they're still teens. Luz, however, clarifies that the ceremony is this, both as a way to keep her and Amity connected no matter where they are, and also practice for when they're old enough to make the jump for real.
• Christmas Episode: Two entries in the series focus on both Christmas and the Boiling Isles equivalent, Krampmus, which features Krampus as the holiday icon.
  • The one-shot "Krampmus Shenanigans" shows Luz convincing Eda and King to return all the Christmas presents Eda let the kids unknowingly steal to all the kids in the Human Realm with Willow and Gus tagging along while Amity tries to find a Krampmus present for Luz.
  • The sidetrack "How Calypso Saved Krampmus" has Skara tell Nina about how Calypso fought a being known as the Krinch who attempted to steal Krampmus presents.
• Companion Cube: Luz's bat, which she later brings to life and dubs "Brucy".
• Connected All Along:
  • Throughout Book 2, Emperor Belos is shown to have associated with beings from other worlds and realms, such as Eclipsa Butterfly and King Andrias as Philip Clawthorne. It also turns out that he knew Gabriel Gates and the Inner Demon when he first made a portal to the Human Realm and made a deal with the Horned King at some point.
  • "Chapter 69: That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles" reveals that Camila was friends with Abigail Gates and she named her Luz's godmother, a revelation that devastates Luz since Eda's experience with the Gates family made her and Luz believe that Abigail was a modern day witch hunter.
  • "Chapter 78: Let's Dip Into the Time Pool Again!" shows that Ghost was the palismen of Amity's ancestor, Adam Blight, who was also the boyfriend of Belos/Philip Clawthorne.
  • Chapter 108 notes that Lilith learned that Cross' mother Clair is a member of the extended Clawthorne family. This means that Cross is biologically related to Eda, Lilith and Beocrow along with being a cousin of the latter, Luz, and King.
  • "Chapter 111: So IFWOT?" changes everything by revealing that injury-prone Butt-Monkey Dusty Bring'ems has ties to, of all beings, the Collector.
• Courtroom Episode: "Chapter 96: Blight vs. Blight" has Odalia attend a trial and facing off against Alador's parents in order to free him of their influence over him. Unfortunately, she loses and is stripped of the Blight family name.
• Crossover: Starting from "Chapter 17: Raising Human", the story becomes intertwined with the events of Reunion Falls, another Alternate Universe Fic based on Gravity Falls.
  • "Chapter 57: No Big Deal" adds in another Alternate Universe in the form of Amphibia.
  • Book 1 ends with the revelation that Star vs. the Forces of Evil is part of the story. Chapter 75 officially has focus to the series, being titled "Amity in Echo Creek".
  • Chapter 79 has a four-way crossover featuring the cast of American Dragon: Jake Long, with the Philip family from Enchanted and Randy Cunningham also appearing as Team Dragon aids Willow in finding a way home.
• Crossover Couple: Boscha, an Owl House character, begins dating Tom Lucitor of Star Vs. the Forces of Evil in Chapter 69.
• Crossover Relatives: "Chapter 18: Reunion" shows that Eda is legally married to Stan Pines, so Dipper and Mabel are Luz and King's step-siblings and Ford is their uncle. On the other hand, this means that Lilith is the twins' aunt.
• Crush Blush: Luz starts having these once she begins crushing on Amity, and it later becomes mutual when the latter realizes her own feelings. Same goes for Emira, who's crushing on Viney, and Skara, who has a thing for Willow which also becomes mutual. It's also implied for Pacifica towards Mabel. Lindsay also has these due to her crushes on both Cross and Emily.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Anyone who goes up against the Clawthornes will lose, no question. At least until Eda and Lilith faced the Golden Guard (in Eda's case, she was succumbing to her curse).
• Cycle of Revenge: In the beginning, Luz's constant retaliation against any enemies who messed with her or her friends would result in their attempting to get her back. Falling out with Willow gets her to start seeing how much of a double-edged sword this is and she would eventually end the cycle herself.

D

• Dark and Troubled Past: Plenty of these for several characters.
  • During her first outing from home at 5 years old, Luz snuck away from Eda while they were running errands and went to the slayground. While playing on the swings, she flew off and her hood fell: once everyone saw her ears, they proceeded to beat her until Eda came to help. By then, Luz had suffered serious injuries that left her traumatized.
  • Ms. Traveler reveals to Miss Heinous in "The Glandus War: What is it Good For?" that Oberon took her from her parents, Eclipsa and Globgor, when she was an infant.
  • Donna's birth parents were killed when she was an infant by Lupe, the Big Bad Wolf, on the orders of her uncle Draco, and her twin brother Andros was lost and somehow ended up spending his life on another Titan.
  • Puck was once a human named Kumar whose mother died shortly after giving birth to him. He was adopted by Queen Titania only for Lord Oberon to find someone else for her to focus on, allowing him to abuse Puck for several years. Even after leaving Avalon, Oberon would find Puck and stab him with an iron blade, thus causing Puck to lose his memories.
• Dark Secret:
  • The end of Book 1 reveals Lilith accidentally caused the accident that killed Camila and orphaned Luz.
  • Book 2 slowly reveals the fact that Slasher Brooke is a werewolf and that his daughter, Skara, has inherited his condition.
  • Sarah Atos has one that she considers very huge, even more that the fact that Cross is a dragon. As Chapter 132 reveals, Sarah's a full-grown homunculus that was created by her father to help him expand his scientific knowledge.
• Darker and Edgier: The story touches upon more darker and realistic features than canon was allowed to, focusing on issues such as discrimination, PTSD, and bloodshed.
• Deal with the Devil: Lilith ended up making one with Baron Samedi after he saves her from dying, owing him her soul. Luz later makes one with him to save her, and he asks the girl to acquire the Inner Demon's soul for him before the Day of Unity.
• Death Glare: Used very often by numerous characters, Luz being the most obvious example. Even gets name-dropped in Chapter 11: Eda shot one at the mob that attacked Luz before unleashing the pox curse on them.
• Delinquents: Well, of course Luz starts off as one of these. Otherwise, what reason would the first book be called "Hexside's Number One Delinquent Witch"?
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Camila automatically falls into this because, well, she dies (though she does retain her two speaking roles from canon Season 1). Subverted when she is brought Back from the Dead in Book 2.
  • Tibbles becomes both a Harmless Villain and an Unknown Rival to the Clawthorne family, his role as Eda's elixir seller in the Night Market going to Vanz Ator, Katya's vampire father.
  • By the time Book 2 surpasses 50 chapters, Viney, Jerbo, and Barcus are dropped from the main cast due to becoming Out of Focus and their character arcs being completed, with Nina and Donna taking their places.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In canon, Manny dies from an unspecified cause when Luz was a young girl. Here, he dies in a workplace accident while she's only a newborn.
• Dimensional Traveler: The Order seems to be composed of these, as are the Third Race and the Yokai, and it's implied that the Traveler family is made up of them. Per the timelines of Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty, and Star Vs., Ford, Rick and anybody with dimensional scissors act as such.
• Disabled in the Adaptation:
  • Both Tinker Bell and Eda lose an eye by the events of Book 2, something that doesn't happen in either of their canons.
  • Hunter gets his right arm torn off by Luz between the events of "Eclipse Lake" and "Yesterday's Lie".
• Disney Death:
  • Lilith is nearly killed by Hunter when he captures Luz, and she's kept alive by Baron Samedi until Dr. Bride saves her life.
  • Word of God confirms that death is only temporary for the Fae, as they shown waking up in different places moments after they die. Subverted with the Coachman, who's Dragged Off to Hell not long afterward.
• The Dragon:
  • Dolly Tempus and Puck serve as this for the Inner Demon.
  • Belos is this for the Horned King, bringing about the Day of Unity to free him so he can send the entity to another realm.
• The Dreaded: Luz is seen as this to both the students and staff of Hexside and the people (mostly the adults) of Gravity Falls.
  • Julia Traveler is also seen as this to everyone, even Luz, Eda, Boscha and the Trickster Demons.
  • Principal Faust continues to be one, and becomes the second person who can scare the crap out of Luz.
• Duels Decide Everything: Beast Keepers tend to settle all disputes between them by battling each other using their beasts.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In Chapter 3 and "Krampmus Shenanigans", Emira is called Elmira. The rest of the story after uses the correct name.
  • The Plant and Ice glyphs are initially refered to as Earth and Water.
• Elemental Armor: Simon Saltstar, Boscha's cousin, uses Construction Magic to create stone armor.
  • In Book 2, Amity starts to utilize her abomination sludge to create a symbiote-esque bodysuit, complete with webs.
• Elseworld: The "What If?" chapters of the series are set in timelines where Luz was raised by Lilith or Abigail, not Eda.
• Emotion Suppression: Characters throughout the series tend to do this to forget their past pain, with Luz, Eda, Amity and Emily being prime examples of suppressing their fears or Gus and Cain Saltstar supressing their respective anger and sadness regarding their mothers in Book 2. Willow, as always, tends to not talk about her problems at all.
• The Empath: Puck is able to calm down the Slitherbeast when it's angry, and Amity, due to obtaining some of his power, discovers she can do the same.
• Everyone Can See It: Willow, Gus and Hunter immediately pick up on Luz's crush on Amity without her telling them. Edric and Emira realize Amity's feelings as per canon, and Ed also figures out his twin's attraction to Viney in an instant. Bo, Amelia and Cat (and later Odalia) see how head over heels Skara is for Willow while Luz picks up on it from the other way around.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Luz and Eda consider muggings the lowest thing a criminal can do. The former also doesn't approve of plagiarism.
  • For all of her Alpha Bitch traits, Boscha can't stand liars or anyone pretending to be something they're not and refuses to be a snitch. Hypocritically subverted when she herself strays into said territory.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Barcus plays this role several times, as his aura-reading capabilities allows him to sense evils that his friends can't.
• Extra-ore-dinary: Construction track students show the ability to create objects out of steel on top of stone.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The last 8 chapters of Book 1 occur over the course of three days.
  • Chapters 52 to 67 occur over the course of almost two weeks, with the Glandus War taking place in a single day during the second week.
  • The "Underworld" arc, consisting of Chapters 101 to 107, plays out over the course of a little more than a single day.
• Eye Color Change: Several characters have this to represent their eyes glowing from a power boost or from being consumed by their anger. The most prominent examples are Luz (whose eyes turn blue to show her Titan powers activating) and Amity (whose eyes change from gold to pink to represent her severed connection to the Blight family's magic, before that turning purple to showcase her growing power.)
• Eye Scream: The fic's plot was kickstarted by Luz invoking this on Boscha. First she tricked her into pepper spraying herself (convincing her it was perfume), then followed it up by dumping soda into them and in her attempt to throttle Luz, Boscha was tripped by the human and landed on a table which resulted in mustard getting into her third eye. The end result is her having to wear an eyepatch. Several characters receive and endure black eyes over the course of the series, or even lose their eyes like Eda.

F

• The Fair Folk: The Fae play a huge role in this fic and they don't have the best reputation in the Boiling Isles for a reason.
• Fan Art: The author created a design for Luz's appearance in this story as well as Skara's mom, Calypso. Buck also had a friend create a design for Puck.
• Fantastic Racism: Like in The Owl House, humans are considered beneath witches and demons. However, this ends up being slightly mutual as the Gates family lead their own organization which deals with killing witches, with the previous Director Gates calling Eda "it" after seeing her transform into the Owl Beast.
  • The Fae are considered extremely dangerous on the Isles because of the Pied Piper, who they believe kidnapped an entire generation of witchlings. It's later revealed that the Collector is actually responsible, but they are still a Fae.
  • Witches of the Emperor's Coven also seem to hold lycans by low standards, harrassing or beating them to death for not adhering to the rules they've set in place, all while being willing to try a lycan youth as an adult. Among said witches are Lambi's mother Awassi Lambada and Amelia's cousin Jeremy Grift.
  • Emperor Belos is confirmed to hate every species that isn't witchkind, a stark contrast to his canon self. He revived and tortured the basilisks, hates the Fae due to Oberon kidnapping an infant Meteora Butterfly right after Eclipsa entrusted her daughter with him, hates humanity due to G.B. Gates betraying him by killing several members of his adopted family and stealing the portal, forced lycans into secrecy while subjugating werecats and restricting them to the Torso Villa, is implied to hate Amphibians due to King Andrias rejecting his proposal to help him stop the threat he saw in his visions, and committed genocide against dragonkind for alledgedly practicing Wild Magic. In fact, Belos' bigotry towards humanity is so infinite, he plans to send the Horned King to Earth to feast on them as revenge for what the Gates family did to his family and boyfriend.
• Fighting for a Homeland: This is Emperor Belos' overall goal in the series: visions from the Weird Sisters say he will save the Boiling Isles from an otherworldly being so witchkind won't be killed off. He won't stop until he prevents this outcome from happening, no matter what he has to do to see it through.
• Flashback: These are utilized throughout the story, often showing Luz's childhood, other times recent, never before seen events that fill in important info. They often lead to Flashback B Plots of Whole Episode Flashbacks.
• Freak Out: Luz is prone to having episodes of beating someone severely should they push her over the edge.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Whenever he wants to have his own adventures without the Clawthornes, King apparently spends time with Morton and Tiny Nose.
• Freudian Excuse: Luz initially held a deep resentment towards teachers as she believed they simply push students like her around. This mindset stems from her early days at Hexside, when she overheard her teacher from the Healing track admit she was only acting like she cared about her and would kick her out of school if she had the chance. In retaliation, Luz sicked the escaped Choosy Hat on her, which forced the teacher to retire and landed Luz in Detention.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • The "League of Witches That Helps", a superhero group led by Donna Masterskull and consisting of her friends and fellow students from St. Epiderm, is also called "LOWTH".
  • Gibson Oscorne's weapons company is called "S.C.O.R.N.", or the "Sorcery Circle Operations Rituals Network.

G

• Gender Flip: Puddles is a male in the fic, since the griffin wasn't revealed to be female until "Any Sport in a Storm", which came out long after the fic started.
• Given Name Reveal: Select characters receive last names: ex. Viney's is Potts, Boscha's is stated to be Hieron, Skara's is Brooke (which doubles as a Shout-Out), etc. Also goes for characters who aren't named right away or are unnamed in canon.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Luz's eyes are said to glow blue when she's having an episode. It turns out to be the first signs of her condition.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Several examples.
  • Bill Cipher, as per his canon. Besides the known examples from Gravity Falls, he's implied to have been the reason why Mewni was pulled into the Nightmare Realm, as well as being implied to be involved with the threat from the Weird Sisters' vision to Philip.
  • Lord Oberon and the Collector. In the past, Oberon sent the Collector to kidnap witchlings as payment for the Pied Piper ridding the Boiling Isles of the Colo Colo infestation when the witches wouldn't pay for his services. Instead, the Collector sent the witchlings to a location not even he knows, which is why the Fae are labeled a menace, especially Sly. In addition, Oberon commands Miss Heinous to kill Luz and Amity during the school war for killing the Coachman and was responsible for kidnapping Meteora after the Magic High Commission made a deal with him to take the baby hybrid so a monster wouldn't become queen of Mewni.
  • Tibbly Grimmhammer II, also known as "The Boss", commands the Tarot Guild, an organization specializing in witch trafficking and the person Emily and Principal McScream answer to. It later turns out he's just a figurehead and the true leader is "The Producer", AKA Terra Snapdragon. Both would play a role in Emily's rise to villainy.
  • The Inner Demon turns out to be behind the Shapeshifter's actions, having possessed Puck following his resurrection and using him to push forward his agenda, making him the true Arc Villain of the Boiling Isles events in the "Human Realm" Arc. He's later shown to be in an alliance with Terra to end all life on the Isles by expanding the Forest of Fear.
  • Isaac Gates, Angel's mother, Victor Frankenstein, and Blind Ivan were all involved in turning Angel into the present day Director Gates when they brought her back to life after the Owl Beast accidentally killed her and then erased her memories of Eda, turning her into a ruthless magic-hater.
  • Philip Clawthorne is responsible for bringing Gabriel Gates and the Inner Demon to the Boiling Isles, which led to the latter becoming a mind demon while Gabriel not only had descendants who carried on his Villainous Legacy, but shot Philip's boyfriend Adam in cold blood, which led to Philip becoming Emperor Belos.
  • As the sidetrack "Grim Grinning Ghosts" reveals, Maleficent orchestrated Grimhilde turning into the Evil Queen by impersonating the Fairy Godmother, making her responsible for Grimhilde's death and being trapped in the Magic Mirror.
• Gut Punch: The series already showed signs of this early, but it was the story of the slayground incident and Luz's trauma from said event that cemented its Darker and Edgier tone.

H

• Half-Breed Discrimination: Lycan witches don't have the same rights as ordinary witches in the Boiling Isles due to the belief that they're considered savages. This applies to dragons and would later extend to Amity after she becomes half-Fae.
• Handicapped Badass: Besides Eda and Lilith losing their magic as a result of splitting the curse:
  • Due to witnessing her abomination Phil showing sentience before being petrified in the Book 1 finale, Amity finds herself unable to make a proper abomination in Book 2 so far. However, that leads her to use her sludge in more adaptable ways.
• Handshake Substitute: All of Luz's friends tend to exchange fistbumps; what makes it special is that it's unique to the Demon Realm inhabitants. Luz typically teaches them to a witch to officially symbolize her friendship with them, as she did with Amity and Skara.
• Happily Adopted/Interspecies Adoption: Obviously, Luz is Eda's daughter by adoption. Chapter 26 reveals Eda has the papers to prove it.
  • The same goes for Barcus, who was adopted by a witch and a fish demon.
  • As per canon, Eda also adopts King as her son.
  • Blubs and Durland, two humans, practically adopt Vee, who's a basilisk, after offering to find her a new home until they officially take her in.
  • After marrying Damien, Clair adopted his daughter Zee, who is half-dragon.
• Hard Truth Aesop: There's about as many of these as there are central themes.
  • The people you look up to, even a parental figure, foster parent, or mentor, will turn out to be heavily flawed in their own ways even if they shape you up to be the person you are today. For instance Luz idolizes her foster mother, Eda, but throughout the story, she comes to understand that Eda isn't the perfect witch, even when learning that Eda was responsible for hurting innocent people in the past, like Emily and Angel. Amity initially looks up to Lilith as a replacement mother figure, before realizing that Lilith is just as flawed as her birth mom. Hunter feels the same towards Belos, up until he learns of his true plans for Luz and his plans to unleash the Horned King onto the Human Realm.
  • Luz had originally kept some truths about what the Human Realm is really like from Gus and her friends because she feared they wouldn't understand much of the racial prejudice and history it has. She had to accept it was best to just admit those flaws so they can understand the cultural differences.
  • Cutting off family ties just to escape an intoxicating parent may be the right thing to do, but there are some long term consequences when other members of your family are affected by your choices. Amity became nameless because she was disgusted with Odalia for suggesting Lilith to curse Eda, but this results in Edric and Emira running away to live with Geist which leads to Edric being manipulated by Mel, and Alador pushing Odalia away and being brainwashed by his own parents.
  • Spending time apart from your partner can be good. Otherwise, it wouldn't be healthy if you're with them all the time. Emily/Stella are a cautionary tale if a couple spends every waking moment together.
  • One can't expect anyone who's ever done wrong to get instant karma or be fixated on seeing someone deserved justice. People will do wrong even for the most trivial of things, but they're not as bad as the true evils around them. The Grim Goblin and Nicole are big examples in wanting certain characters to get justice, even trying to pass it themselves. This applies more to Mel, who sent Emily to the Underworld as punishment for her crimes.
  • If someone owns up to their own mistakes, but they still continue to do horrible things, it's best not to stick by that person anymore, even if they are family. Again, Hunter, after learning what Belos had done to prevent his Self-Fulfilling Prophecy to the point of murdering his brother William, decides to fight Belos alongside the Clawthornes.
  • Stan nearly ended the world just to get his brother back, but unlike canon he gets arrested by the Agents for a lot of his past crimes. The same can apply to Mabel after she ran away from home to meet her twin brother, as when the agents called her parents, they immediately took her home without allowing her to spend more time with her brother and friends.
  • People who've done horrible things can't be Easily Forgiven when given a second chance: they have to earn forgiveness, and even then they aren't guaranteed to get it. Cross and Lindsay both agree that while Emily doesn't deserve to be punished in the Underworld, she is still guilty of having done horrible things. So when they bring her back and they help her become a better person, many people (Luz especially) are skeptical she wants to turn over a new leaf.
  • Similar to the previous example, people aren't obligated to forgive someone that wronged them. Boscha has the right to not forgive Puck for giving her the injury that resulted in her scar. Luz, Nina, Gavin and Tito refuse to forgive Emily because of how she hurt them. Amity is not on good speaking terms with Hunter after what went down in "Deserve Nothing" and "Tragedy at Eclipse Lake", not introducing Puck to him. The same can apply to Hercules and his daughter, who hasn't forgiven him for killing her even if he was under someone's influence.
  • Sometimes people don't know what to do with their futures even when they plan things out. Emily wasn't sure what to do after returning to the Isles, Zee was planning on dropping out to avoid joining the coven system, Tabrella Diamanto (a teenage mother) wasn't sure if she wanted to follow her dreams of fashion design at the cost of raising her daughter or letting her parents do so, and Lindsay's older brother Hendrick couldn't figure out which coven to join because he has so many passions that he couldn't narrow it down to a single choice.
• Harmless Villain: Tibbles ends up becoming one due to his Demoted to Extra status.
• Hated Hometown: Gatesfield is this for the Gatesfield teens, Abigail, and Angel prior to her death. All of them were disgusted by how the town projected an ideology of being perfect when in reality, everyone talked about each other's problems behind their backs instead of helping one another. There's also the town's Christian beliefs making it near-impossible for non-heterosexual couples to exist, Clara being unable to come out as a lesbian until the group have left the town and Abigail just never coming out. After staying in Gravity Falls, the Gates consider moving there and arranging for Clara's friends and Nora to stay as well instead of returning to Gatesfield.
• Hate Sink:
  • Nicole Hieron, one of Boscha's aforementioned mothers, is this. Given her intense hatred towards Eda, she doesn't hold Luz in high regards, encourages her daughter to make the human suffer and prides herself on upholding the family name by any means necessary, especially revenge. When Boscha fails to do so, she takes matters into her own hands and when it puts her in a tight spot, she'll simply pay off those who try to take action against her.
  • Craig the coven guard also serves as this: he allows Boscha to severely beat Luz during their exam duel just to sent a message to Eda, allowing no one to intervene or stop the duel and intending to arrest Principal Bump for allowing the child of a known criminal to attend Hexside. He sinks lower after leading a siege on the Owl House with the intent of killing everyone as payback for Lilith firing him, while admitting he was planning to kill Lilith and steal her job before she fired him.
  • Emily Tricks definitely qualifies as this: from declaring a school war to conquer Hexside to openly beating Luz up for Eda cursing her with Boiling Zits, stabbing both Luz and Nina Fangs, her ally, with her sword, trying to kill Gus, threatening to break her own palisman when she's on the verge of losing to Maya and abusing her girlfriend Stella Northstar, it's clear she's several shades of unhinged and has few redeeming qualities. It's later inverted when Emily becomes a Tragic Villain with a Hidden Heart of Gold.
  • Mel and her gang sink even lower than Emily: Mel has Trini arrange an affair between Odalia and Lilith to convince Alador to divorce Odalia so Mel can manipulate Edric into distancing himself from his family and she can keep him as a witch pet, not to mention outing Amity as half-Fae and a recent non-believer in the Titan just for kicks on to of it. Trini nearly kills Luz in the Bonesborough Brawl, Blazer stabs Loona, Jackson Hearts kidnaps Donna to force her to marry him, etc.
  • As said before, most of the Coven Heads who are working with Belos each have their own reasons for falling into this. Aside from Terra, Osran is the biggest target for causing Delara Saltstar's death, branding several students from Merlin Meadows, torturing Zee, knocking out a coven scout before they can commit treason, and having both of them arrested and imprisoned in the Emperor's castle.
  • Felicity Fox sinks to canon!Odalia, if not canon!Belos levels by the final story arc of Book 2, attempting to kill her only child (whom she never even wanted in the first place) when she overhears that she knows about the Draining Spell and is okay with mass genocide so long as she can keep her magic.
• Healing Factor: After Luz takes a knife to her back fighting muggers, Cat discovers the wound healed itself, an ability of Luz's transformation.
• Hearing Voices: In Book 2, Luz starts to hear a strange voice demanding her to devour Palisman souls. It's later revealed to be the Horned King and that Emperor Belos, Hunter, and the Inner Demon also hear it, implying he only speaks to humans. Angel Sinclair heard the same voice while living with Eda in Latissa, which prompted Angel to make Eda take her back to Earth.
• Heartwarming Orphan: Many characters in the series are orphans, such as Luz, Donna, and Emily. Scooter Crane ran an orphanage that doubles as a place to train future bards, which is where Donna, Amber, and Derwin once lived. When Eda gets put in charge of running the orphanage, she uses her experience with her own kids to handle and help the kids with Donna volunteering there.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Amity has a penchant for creating swords out of her abomination goo. At the end of the "Glandus War" arc, she claims the Sword of Adam from Emily.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Jerbo and Barcus, Amelia and Cat.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The reason Edric and Emira took up pranking was to rebel against their mother trying to control everything in their lives like she does with Amity. They refused to be friends with anyone she chose and pranked all of them, which is why they're not friends with anyone in their classes.
  • The same can be said for Puck: despite all the mischief he causes, he wants to have some humanity and experience genuine friendships. It's also shown that he has memory issues and doesn't remember those he's befriended in the past.
  • Cat has a strong passion for hairstyling and was a Gamer Chick since her youth.
  • Alador's parents gave up on trying to understand him in his youth, and he still resents them for it. As such, he decides to find a compromise on spending time with his own kids so history doesn't repeat.
  • Luz has been implied a few times in Book 2 to enjoy fine literature, such as Stephen King and Mark Twain.
  • Amelia is shown to be good at organization, very good at calculus, and has an interest in law knowing what happens should a child be abandoned.
• Homosexual Reproduction: In addition to the canonical example of Willow's fathers:
  • Boscha is revealed to have two mothers in Chapter 2.
  • Bo has two dads along with her mom, also revealed in Chapter 54.
  • Chapter 67 shows Donna Masterskull also has two mothers named Diana and Gladys.
  • Tyrone Ironwood mentions in "Chapter 82: Shaping Up or Nothing" that he has two fathers.
  • Randy Cunningham, whose parents never made an appearance in his series, is shown to have two moms in "Chapter 113: A Long Overdue Reunion".
  • Damien had two fathers, but Drayden's husband died twenty years prior to the series.
• Honey Trap: This was pretty much the definition of Perry and Jenny Porter's relationship, as he was forced to fall in love with her.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Mattholomule, who was constantly scared by Puck and ended up TO'ing Boscha who punishes him. In order, he's tied to a chair in front of an exploding cake, used as a "William Spell" target, forced to volunteer for testing a potion that turns his head into various fruits, and thrown to a demon squirrel and shaken like a ragdoll.
  • Piniet is savagely beaten by Luz, then attacked and burned by all his writers after they're freed by Puck, and is eventually Killed Off for Real by Kikimora to make sure he doesn't reveal anything about Luz.
• Hypocrite:
  • Emperor Belos has the nerve to out Lilith for using Amity to spy on Luz and Eda, yet has no issue with using Hunter for the exact same reason, albeit worse. Later, he repeatedly declares Luz to be his family, but he doesn't consider the rest of her family to be in the same vein, as he lets Lilith suffer constantly without trying to help her.
  • Emily Tricks tends to talk down on Gus for being an illusionist, which is considered useless by Glandus students, only for Gus to learn that Emily herself is a powerful illusionist.
  • In a heroic case, Eda encouraged Susan Luong to be open with Jonathan Long about her family being dragons, but acknowledges how she couldn't bring herself to open up to Raine about her curse.

I

• An Ice Person: Bo as per canon, as well as Luz (via the ice glyph but later, also by her own magic.) Cat is later revealed to have the same proficiency, as are Amity, Emira, Tina, Cross and Danny. Emily later becomes this by learning the ice glyph because of Luz using it to mess with them.
• Iconic Item: Luz has two; her (later sentient) metal bat and her deck of glyph spell cards. She gains a third in her spiked bracelet.
  • Donna always carries around a strange key, which is revealed to be a keyblade in "Chapter 67: After the War".
• If Only You Knew: Luz used to believe that Eda was Lord Calamity, the creator of the Secret Room of Shortcuts, because Eda was the kind of witch she wanted to be. She eventually stopped believing it and refuses to learn the truth because of what Lord Calamity represents to the troublemakers, never figuring out she was right.
• I Got a Rock: Dipper says this word for word in Chapter 19: "Summerween Fright".
• I Have Many Names: Trickster demons and fae are known for using several different names and aliases throughout their lives. For example, when Anu Bist becomes a born-again genie, he renames himself to Jack.
• Innocuously Important Episode:
  • Chapter 56 reveals that Bangles, the mummy girl who mugged Amity in Chapter 4 and later got arrested thanks to Luz, is one of Glandus High's Top Students. Her arrest is listed as one of the reasons why Emily declares war on Hexside.
  • Eda cursing everyone at the slayground who attacked Luz has a more overarching effect when Emily confesses that she was one of the victims of the Boiling Zit curse and it's another part of the reason why she declares the war, not to mention why she holds a grudge against the Clawthornes.
• In Spite of a Nail: Although some things change, the rest often stay the same as canon such as Lilith being revealed as Eda's curser, her defection from Belos, and splitting Eda's curse between them.
• Insult of Endearment:
  • Originally, Luz calls Amity "Little Miss Perfect" in regards to her status. But as they grow closer, she begins using the term more affectionately.
  • Hunter refers to Luz as a "little psycho" when he first met her (on account of her trying to beat him with a golf club for insulting her and Eda); he calls her this again as such on their way to Dog's party.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: In addition to Gravity Falls, the story is shown to have connections to other Disney animated series such as Kim Possible, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Amphibia and DuckTales (2017). It also features links to movies (namely Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Princess and the Frog, Mary Poppins, Pinocchio, Hercules, Aladdin and Snow White And The Seven Dwarves.)
  • Chapter 16: "Mischief Gathering" establishes a connection to its first non-Disney series with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, featuring an appearance from Cheese Sandwich and a nod to Discord.
  • "Good from the Bad" shows the story is also linked to the BlackHorror Dramedy Hazbin Hotel, a fact that's brought up again in "Chapter 73: Viva Last Vegans!". Chapter 100 adds onto this with the inclusion of Helluva Boss.
  • The Book 2 trailer features witch versions of Rick and Morty. "Recovering" also features a vocal cameo from the actual Rick, who later makes additional appearances along with the Smiths.
  • It's shown that there's also ties to Sleeping Beauty and American Dragon: Jake Long.
  • "Somhaim Tales of the Boiling Isles" feature cameos from Chi-Fu and Shan-Yu from Mulan and The Ghost and Molly McGee's Scratch. However, these appearances are non-canon due to the one-shot's events. The latter does become part of the series in Book 2.
  • Another non-Disney property that the story is linked to is the Nickelodeon television movie The Electric Piper.
  • Even video game continuities are included, as Chapter 63 begins showing connections to Kingdom Hearts.
  • "Viva Last Vegans!" also connects the series to Pixar movies, with Bigfoot from Monsters, Inc. confirming the Monster World is another one of the many realms in the multiverse.
  • Chapter 79 links live-action movies to the series with the inclusion of Giselle, Morgan, and Robert Philip from Enchanted while Chapter 104 throws in Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Interdimensional Travel Device: Several appear throughout the story such as Eda's portal and key, Ford's dimensional portal and later Dr. Frakes', the Calamity Box and dimensional scissors created by Hekapoo.
• Interquel: The "Pride Special: A Skarlow Date to Remember!" takes place during the third act of "Prelude to War (Part 3)".
• Interspecies Friendship: As per canon, witches and demons get along well in the Boiling Isles and Luz being the Token Human makes her this with the local Mage Species.
  • Vee still remains the Token Non-Human on Earth, but she's friends with the Pines family and their acquantances.
  • Eda is friends with Stan Pines and in her teenage years, Angel Sinclair, a couple of humans.
  • Of course, the human trio in Amphibia still become friends with the populace, with Marcy joining Anne in befriending Wartwood's citizens on top of the Plantars.
• Interspecies Romance: There are other witch/human couples besides Luz/Amity and Caleb/Evelyn, as both Clawthorne sisters each have a romance with the elder Pines twins.
  • Vee, a basilisk, slowly develops feelings for the Mewman, Star Butterfly.
  • Since Jackie's half-mermaid, she and Marco qualify for this when they start dating.
  • Cross (being half-dragon, half-witch) ends up dating Lindsay (a winged cyclops-witch) and Donna (a hybrid between a witch and an alien).
• It Can Think: Upon learning she's part fae with a moving shadow, Amity learns the shadow's sentient and names them "Sam" as proof of that.

J-K

• Jerkass to One: After having a Jerkass Realization, Abigail no longer shares her family's hatred of witches, but she still loathes Eda and punches her in the face when they meet for the first time in 30 years. If anything, Abigail hates Eda even more now upon learning that she is Luz's mother, believing that Eda took Luz (her goddaughter) away from her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Many characters such as Luz and Puck act aggressively to people, but all they want to do is protect the people they love.
• Karma Houdini: Here, Harry Houdini was a wild witch who escaped arrest from the Emperor's Coven, which led to the creation of the term In-Universe. Played straight often.
  • In "The Rescue", Emperor Belos kills Puck and frames him for attacking him.
  • By the end of Book 1, Bria escapes punishment for beating up Mattholomule. Becomes Karma Houdini Warranty in "No Dancing Around".
  • The above-mentioned chapter reveals that Jenny Porter (Gus' mom) forced Perry to fall in love with her and escaped to the human realm to avoid arrest.
• Karmic Trickster: Luz attempts to be this whenever she tries getting back at anyone who picks on her friends, but ends up coming off as a Bully Hunter, as does Puck Goodfellow, who still fits this trope to a "T".
• Killed Off for Real: In Chapter 17, a badly beaten Piniet is poisoned by Kikimora so he doesn't reveal anything about Luz's condition.
  • "The Forest of Fear" has the Greater Basilisk attempt to kill Puck only to be attacked by the slitherbeast and blown up by Puck's shadow.
  • In "The Rescue", Puck is stabbed to death by Emperor Belos.
  • In "Stranger Danger", the Coachman is stabbed against iron during his fight against Luz and Amity, then sent into the afterlife by the sprits of children he cursed.
  • "A Surprising Visitor" reveals that the Baron sacrificed Puck's shadow in order to give Camila's spirit a vessel that would allow her to take a physical form.
  • In "Deserve Nothing", Maya, Boscha's canon Palisman, dies after she is wounded in a fall from the Golden Guard's airship and has her magical essence accidentally devoured by Luz. Zig-zagged in that her physical body is destroyed but her soul lives on in Luz's mindscape.
• Killer Robot: The Exorcists from Hazbin Hotel fill this role as they kill off magical beings in different realms for undisclosed reasons. It's later revealed that the bots were created by the Archangels to destroy worlds of magical beings, with Mewni being a victim of their actions.

L

• Laser-Guided Karma: The entire mob that attacked Luz as a kid was cursed by Eda with boils that excreted zit pus when popped.
  • Boscha regularly suffers this for her antagonistic actions:
    • In "Exams to Survive" and "Changes", she savagely injured Luz as payback for threatening her on her first day. In the latter, she pays for it by getting even more injured after Luz transforms, and Amity punches her for her actions before she ends their friendship.
    • In "Everything's Gone Wrong", she reveals to all of Hexside that Amity's been spying on Luz and Eda for Lilith which caused Luz and Amity to break up and slanders Luz for humanity's past in witch hunts. As punishment, Boscha loses her last chance to win back her friends, gets suspended from school for a week, removed from the grudgby team, prohibited from playing sports on school grounds and is to be placed in the detention track once she returns.
  • Craig is stripped of his rank, kicked out of the Emperor's Coven and locked up under Lilith's orders for letting Luz and Boscha's duel get out of hand. Lilith later kills him for leading a siege on her home in order to kill her and her family.
  • Bangles and Zepher (the muggers that jumped Amity), along with their third, are knocked out by Luz and stuffed into a trash can by Hunter, who takes them into custody.
  • Nicole also takes this, but she actually deserves it:
    • She nominates Luz as Grom queen hoping she won't stop the Fear Bringer and all the Isles will blame her for its escape. After Luz does succeed, Lilith gives some coven guards an order to confiscate her fountain as fake evidence (the statue of which gets broken) and Eda and King spray paint the words "The Hieny House" on her home.
    • Later, for helping Boscha with her plan to break up Luz and Amity, she gets a broken nose from Odalia and is barfed on by King following the petrification ceremony which the crowd records.
    • For getting Luz, Amity, Willow and Gus expelled along with blackmailing several people including Skara's parents, she's removed from the Parent Creature Association, given a restraining order banning her from Hexside and suffers a curse that reminds her of when Eda pulled a prank on her, leaving her wailing in agony.
  • The Coachman experiences a long overdue Karmic Death after centuries of getting away with his crimes.
  • Once it's revealed that she orchestrated Luz and Amity's breakup and tried to make Boscha take the fall, Willow, Viney, Amelia and Cat beat Dolly up and leave her hanging by a vine in a tree. She's later betrayed by the Inner Demon, who turns her into a doll and leaves her to be used as a chew toy for a demon dog.
• Last of Their Kind:
  • Vee and the rest of her basilisk siblings were revived from extinction only to be used as test subjects by the Emperor's Coven. It later turns out that Donna's uncle Draco is a witch/basilisk hybrid, and he intends to revive the species to wipe out witchkind on the Boiling Isles.
  • As Chapter 107: "Resolutions" reveals, the Drakescale clan are the last dragons in the Demon Realm due to Belos having the species wiped out during the Were-Fever outbreak for allegedly practicing Wild Magic. Clair is the only full-blooded witch, while Cross, his half-sister Zee, their father Damien, and their grandfather Drayden are half-dragon.
• Literal Surveillance Bug: In "Recovering", Hunter, on Belos' orders, bugs both the Owl House and Blight Manor with Rusty Smidges modified with gemstones that can allow the Emperor to listen in on the residents of both so he can know any move they try to make against him. Camila discovers the one at the Owl House, which Luz destroys and Eda decides to warn Alador and Odalia of the one they might have.
• Living Shadow: The Fae all have these. Puck had one until he banished it. The Coachman commands an entire army of them, and Miss Heinous was turned into a Fae, so she gets one as well.
  • The Book One finale reveals Amity has somehow gained one, and it's later confirmed that she's now a Fae on account of her deal with Puck to save the Clawthornes from petrification.
  • In Book Two, Camila Noceda is this, Baron Samedi having used Puck's shadow as a vessel for her soul.
• Living Weapon: The entire reason Belos considers Luz valuable; he sees her developing magic and her Titan form as the perfect combo for his war against the Human Realm on the Day of Unity, intending on making her a soldier under his command. It's later revealed that Belos plans to possess Luz in order to use her power to face the threat to the Isles he believe only he can stop, as her body hasn't been corrupted by the Horned King.
• Loss of Identity: Along with Lilith's canonical arc of learning who she is after losing her magic and job, Book 2 focuses on Luz and Amity each experiencing the same thing: Luz tries to figure out what makes her who she is (whether she's human, a 'cambion', or something else) while Amity (after losing the ability to summon full abominations and declaring herself nameless) works to create her own path forward and work around all the obstacles that come her way.
• Love Potion: Deconstructed. Jenny Porter used these to make Perry return her feelings for him. However, they're extremely illegal and she left him and Gus to evade capture from the Emperor's Coven for it.
• Love Triangle: In addition to the two Bisexual Love Triangles, there's a few others.
  • The "Human Realm" arc ends with one between Vee, Masha, Clara, and Star being hinted at, with Vee and Star having feelings for each other, Masha taking an interest in Vee, and Clara (who's interested in Masha) being jealous of Vee as a result. This doesn't last as Masha comes to see that Vee's not interested in her and she likes Clara back.
  • Chapter 89 has one between Ukla, Kyle, and Muka of the Graux Sisters form with Kyle developing a crush on Ukla without her realizing it while Muka shows signs of liking Kyle.

M

• Malicious Misnaming: There's a few occasions where Luz refers to Boscha as "Bitcha". In turn, Boscha (and a few other people) call her "Luzer".
• Mayfly–December Romance: As young adults, both Clawthorne sisters dated the Pines brothers; Eda and Lilith are canonically in their mid-40's in present day and Stan and Ford are both in their 60's. This would make the Pines twins about 15 years older than the Clawthornes when they each dated.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • After accepting who she's become since the petrification ceremony and all the changes with it including her becoming nameless, Amity takes the surname "Goodfellow" in honor of Puck.
  • Following a talk with Amity, Boscha and her mother Athena take the latter's pre-marital name "Saltstar" to distance themselves from Nicole for good.
• Metaphorical Marriage: At the beginning of the "Tarot Guild" arc, Luz and Amity have one of these to act as something to keep them close regardless of the hardships ahead of them, and as a promise to one day marry for real. Of course, Luz did have a time trying to explain to everyone that she wasn't trying for an actual teen marriage.
• Middle Name Basis:
  • Stella Northstar prefers using said name over Glinda, due to how old it sounds.
  • Sully also falls into this category; his first name's Harvey but Gilbert gave him his nickname when they were kids due to knowing four Harvey's already.
• Missing Mom: Gus' mom disappeared after leaving her family five years prior to the fic's events. It's later revealed that she's currently in the human realm.
• The Mole: "Maternal Aspiration" reveals Lilith has been using Amity to keep tabs on Eda and Luz to make up for abandoning the duel at the Covention.
  • Belos also uses Hunter as one in order to learn of any developments regarding Luz's condition.
  • Felicity Fox has her daughter Felicia transfered to Hexside so she could get info on Luz and her friends. When Luz finds out, she makes Felicia her personal information broker.
  • Ms. Heinous is implied to be one for Lord Oberon, working as a teacher at Glandus High.
• Multipurpose Monocultured Crop: Abomination go can be used to create numerous things, including paint and animals. King questions how adaptable the stuff is when he and Amity are escaping from Alador's parents in their run down factory.
  King: (as murals try to capture them) The paintings are alive!?
  Amity: They're made from Abomination paint!
  King: What can you not make with this stuff?! (An abomi-shark pops out of the river.)
• Musical Episode: Several chapters will include a song which is usually a Song Parody.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Several times throughout Book 1, some characters sport cat-eared hoodies like the one Luz wears in canon. Luz even wears her exact hoodie in "Blighted by the Light" for an actual gag.
  • Vee's human form is based off of Wendy's pilot design.
  • In "Understanding Lilith", Ford is shown recording all his findings on the Boiling Isles in a new journal. Gravity Falls: Lost Legends reveals that Journal #1 has a section on the Boiling Isles and that a fourth journal was written after the series finale.
  • In "Going Through Changes", Prof. Blanc uses his canon name, Hermonculus, as a fake identity to get his job back.
  • The second half of Book 2 begins to incorporate pieces of MoringMark comics into the story. The most notable utilizations are the bits diving into Willow's past, when she attacked kids with her plant magic when she was a kid and her fathers locked up that memory so she can't remember it.
  • Vaggie's full name is "Vagatha", which was only true for the Hazbin Hotel pilot, but became non-canon in the series.

N

• Named by the Adaptation: The Abominations professor is dubbed Herbert Blanc, the goat cyclops Bard student in the Human Appreciation Society is christened Elliot, the blonde Oracle student is known as Tyler and Willow's fathers double as this and Adaptation Name Change along with Blanc. Several minor characters are also given names they didn't have in canon.
• The Nameless: Names hold power in the Boiling Isles and if a witch speaks from the heart and disowns their family name, they're cut off from their family's magic which is practically impossible to undo. This happens to Amity in Chapter 50 and Boscha's older brother Boris is later revealed to be nameless in Chapter 54.
• New Season, New Title: Each book has its own unique title; Book 1 is Hexside's Number One Delinquent Witch; Book 2 goes by Two Worlds, One Family.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
  • Among the Terrible Trio that makes up the Glandus Top Students; Cain is the Nice, Tito is the Mean, and Nina is the In-Between.
  • Between all three Golden Guards, Cross is Nice, Emily is Mean, and Hunter's the In-Between.
• The Nicknamer: Luz will often give nicknames to everyone, ranging from affectionate to humiliating to even the occasional Insult of Endearment. Puck, Geist Grunhar, Bill Cipher, and Masha are also known for this habit.
• No More for Me: A guy Eda once got baby toys from decides to lay off the scotch he's drinking when he sees Eda disappear through the portal.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Like its parent series, LGBTQ+ discrimination is nonexistent in the Boiling Isles. Many characters are attracted to the same sex. Luz even admits that her liking both girls and boys isn't a problem in the Isles and because she was raised in the Isles, she doesn't get the human realm's heteronormative society. That's not to say that the Boiling Isles are perfect...
  • Later revealed to be played straight in Amphibia, attributed to some denizens reproducing asexually while others can change their genders.

O

• Oblivious to Love: Viney had no clue about Emira's obvious attraction to her. Same goes for Mabel with Pacifica's feelings and Gus with Amelia's.
  • Initially, Skara seemed to have never found out about Boscha having a thing for her, but the Pride Special and Chapter 66 reveal that she knew all along.
• O.C. Stand-in:
  • Nearly every recurring or minor side character from The Owl House receives this treatment. The most prominent examples are the Banshees, all of whom get fleshed-out personalities and characteristics of their own, with Boscha and Skara becoming part of the main cast as a result.
  • Since the named human characters from Gravesfield besides the Nocedas haven't had enough scenes in The Owl House proper to have any real characterization (or, in the case of human!Gus, haven't actually appeared in the show), their personalities here are made up entirely from scratch.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Intrusive, annoying, clueless Hooty develops one with the spontaneous, accepting Puck Goodfellow, who also befriends the rebellious Luz and the rule following-turned-equally rebellious Amity.
  • Timid, reserved, hates-confrontation Vee forms one with equally-reserved, battle-hardened, quick-to-fight Star Butterfly.
• Official Couple: Luz/Amity, as per canon (despite briefly breaking up). Edric/Hunter were later revealed as such (until Edric dumps Hunter in Chapter 56). Barcus and Cat respectively hook up with the Cerberus Sisters and Simon during Grom, and Emira manages to win over Viney. Chapter 45 has Willow and Skara get together.
  • There's the Glandus queens, Emily Tricks and Stella Northstar, but they broke up.
  • Chapter 57 confirms that Sprig and Ivy still end up together, with Anne and Marcy entering a relationship long before they did.
  • At the end of Chapter 67, Boscha gets together with Tom Lucitor.
  • Chapter 81 has Robbie and Tambry getting together, while Chapter 84 has Mabel and Pacifica becoming girlfriends.
  • Chapter 113 shows Dipper and Candy getting together with Clara and Masha following suit.
  • In Chapter 130, Cross begins an open relationship with Donna and Lindsay, the latter suggesting it so he can date her without having to break up with Donna and allow them all to explore how things go instead of ending them prematurely.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There's eightteen sets of characters with the same name: Tyler the Oracle tracker share his name with Tyler Cutebiker; Lambi's real name is Mary, which is the first name of Amelia's mother and an alias of Ms. Traveler; Tom the Demon Hunter shares his name with Tom Lucitor; Eyepatch's real name is Kevin, and he shares it with a Beast Keeping student; Wendy Corduroy shares her first name with Wendy Darling; Steve the coven scout unknowingly shares it with Steve the Good Samaritan (Blind Ivan after losing his memory); and Ruby, Donna's locker gremlin shares her name with Vitimir's aide Ruby Friday; and of course, there's the subverted case of Stanley and Stanford Pines.
  • The name "Gus" is milked four times between Gus Porter, Gus Gordon, Gremlin Gus, and the human Gus the latter knew in World War II.
  • There's also four characters named "Jack": Jack Frost and Jack the Bouncer in the trickster god nightclub appear in the first book. In the second Anu Bist renames himself to Jack after becoming a born-again genie and Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise serves as the Token Adult in Neverland.
  • The name "Larry" is shared between a coven guard who's friends with Eda and an obnoxious Attention Whore who claims he's "The Chosen One".
  • In a Meaningful Name sense, this also goes for both Luz and Nora Gordon, whose names both mean "light" in different human languages (Luz being Spanish and Nora's full name "Leonora" being the Greek version).
  • The name "Jeff" is used between the leader of the gnomes in Gravity Falls, Agent Trigger, and the Huntsman, who's Named by the Adaptation.
  • Veronica Rex shares her first name with the spider-person from the Magus Bazaar.
  • The name "Sam" is also used between two characters: Amity's sentient shadow and Sam Shin, Willow's estranged godmother.
  • Averted with the name "Jenny" as Jenny Porter shares her name with Jennifer "Jen" Foxworth, who was nicknamed Jenny in her youth.
  • One of Cat's ancestors is named Carter, and a coven scout in the present is also named Carter.
  • Basilisk #6 uses the name "Ivy" in honor of his fallen sibling, Number 4. Said name is the same as Sprig's girlfriend, Ivy Sundew.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Puffer and Lambi. It wasn't until Chapter 67 that their nicknames were revealed to be created from their actual names, and everybody calls them these even when they (supposedly) learn them.
• Open-Minded Parent:
  • Several parents in the Boiling Isles (such as Eda, Alador, even Belos) give their approval to whoever their children befriend or date.
  • Subverted in Gatesfield: the adults refuse to allow their children to challenge the status quo that's set into place in the town, Masha's parents notably getting rid of all her occult possessions and not acknowledging her name change. Double subverted with Nora, as she sees how grave the situation of Willow being imprisoned for being a witch and her son and his acquaintances breaking her out is, agreeing to help the kids get the witchling out of town, but this is zigzagged as while Nora is more open to learning that several magical creatures exist, she's taking it slow in accepting that.
  • Dell's brother Brolin taught his children to keep one so when Beocrow's mother Denise learned the Drakescales were dragons, she accepted it.
• Our Fairies Are Different: The Fae have several unique abilities thanks in part to several Disney characters being said creatures. They have living shadows, can turn into dragons, use their dust to alter someone's body, and teleport between realms.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: The Coachman's dragon form is a two-legged wyvern with his arms becoming wings.

P

• Parodies for Dummies: In order to understand Luz's transformation, Viney asks Dr. Bride, Luz's physician, if she has anything for studying a human body. The doctor gives her a book called "The Human Body for Dumb-Butts."
• Pet Baby Wild Animal: Since Chapter 88, King takes responsibility over a baby demon squirrel he names Maurice after accidentally injuring him.
• Placebo Effect: From "Human Date" to "The Reveal", Luz is given a bracelet from Vanz Ator to help control her condition per the advice of Anu Bist. In the latter, Emperor Belos reveals it's nothing more than this.
• Platonic Co-Parenting: In Book 2, Eda takes to raising Luz and Amity (and possibly King, who's no longer a kid) alongside Lilith, her sister. It becomes a 3-way split when Luz's resurrected mother Camila attempts to help out in this regard only to fall back to two when Lilith moves out.
  • Zig-zagged for Lady Olivia and General Yunan, as they raised Marcy, but are in an on-again, off-again romance.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: During the moonlight conjuring, Luz's attempt to launch a salmon at Boscha via slingshot, then actually using it to pelt the Demon Hunters with eggs starts an argument between her and Willow about how Luz always goes too far with getting revenge and causes more harm than good, all while she tries to justify it as defending her friends. As a result, their friendship becomes strained and they stop hanging out together for several chapters with Luz using that time to think about how she can be a better friend. They eventually make peace and renew their friendship.
  • Skara and Bo later fall into this when Boscha forces Skara to end their friendship to maintain her popularity, otherwise Boscha would do it herself. Willow calls Skara out for not standing up for herself and she tries to patch things up; however, Bo rejects Skara's apology and challenges her to a witch's duel at the semester exams to make her feel her pain. By the duel's end, the two forgive each other and decide to start over.
  • This ends up happening for Puck and Gus with Luz and Amity:
    • Puck messes with Boscha during a grudgby game as payback for beating down Luz at the semester exams, ultimately ending with Boscha getting a scar on her face. Since Boscha hasn't messed with anyone since then, Luz ends her friendship with him because what he did wasn't justified, and Amity follows suit. Although Amity later forgives Puck, he's killed before Luz can have the chance to: nevertheless, she forgives him during their funeral for him.
    • Gus spends the first quarter of Book 2 mad at Amity for spying on Luz's family for Lilith, which is fueled by his recent discovery of how his mother forced his father to fall in love with her. He believes Luz only forgave Amity because she spiked her with something, which strains their friendship. It takes Mattholomule talking some sense into him and him encouraging Matt to stand up to Bria that he decides to forgive Amity and apologize for hurting Luz.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: The cast of American Dragon: Jake Long have also been made older as their exploits occurred in 2006, six years before the events of the series.
• Pocket Dimension: Adding to the Secret Room of Shortcuts, "Mischief Gathering" features one that Luz follows Anu Bist into, where time moves faster and trickster demons gather from every realm at a nightclub-esque place.
• Poor Communication Kills: It never once occurs to Hunter to explain that everything he does as the Golden Guard was because of the Weird Sisters' vision about the mysterious entity laying waste to the Isles, so Luz naturally doesn't believe any of his actions are justified which leads to her and all her friends disowning him as such.
• Posthumous Character: Camila is already dead within the first moments of the fic.
  • The Lucitor and Avarius families (minus Tom and Ludo) are later revealed to have suffered the same fate.
  • Manny, Abigail's brother Joseph, and Gus G.'s father Luke all perished in the same fire caused by an explosion at their workplace, Department A.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: A double female example. After sharing the aforementioned above kiss, Luz and Amity stare at each other dreamily before they realize what they just did and completely freeze up. As a result, Owlbert flies under Luz and takes her home while Edric and Emira bring Amity inside once they congratulate her for taking the initiative and realize she's in shock.
• Private Tutor: To help Luz get her grades up in order to pass the semester's final exams early on, Principal Bump assigns Amity to tutor her which will also help the latter get a higher grade after her abomination project goes haywire and causes the classroom to be overrun with ghosts (unbeknownst at first to either of them, the event was caused by Luz.)
  • In a not-so-private example, Skara asks Viney to tutor her when she joins the Beast Keeping track to get her up to speed and Viney agrees to it.
• The Prophecy: The final quarter of Book 1 shows that Belos believes in one based on visions that the Weird Sisters showed him. Apparently, he's destined to save the Boiling Isles from an interdimensional threat and be praised as a hero: because of this, he'll do anything to make sure his "destiny" happens. It's later implied to be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
• Psychological Torment Zone: The Forest of Fear, domain of the Inner Demon, increases the negative emotions and thoughts of anyone who enters it. The longer someone stays, the more they're consumed by their fear, regrets, and guilt, until they turn into trees and become part of the forest.

Q-R

• Quest for Identity:
  • A minor case with Puck in Book 1, as he has Laser-Guided Amnesia and tries to remember his past friends and how to fly like when he was Peter Pan. He eventually pieces everything together when his shadow mentions Wendy Darling's name.
  • Played straight for Donna in Book 2; Donna finds herself hoping to uncover her life about her birth family before Lupe and Draco killed them as she struggles with overcoming her insecurities about her feeling like an outsider and moving past her Hard-Drinking Party Girl in order to figure out who she was meant to be.
• Raised by Wolves: After finding Luz, Owlbert suggested this for her: Eda even considered it but declined since she knew they would just eat the infant.
• Real After All: Puck eventually reveals himself to be Peter Pan, and everything about Neverland as well as the Darlings are real as well. Book 2 continues this by bringing Capt. Hook and Smee into the Big Bad Ensemble.
  • The same goes for Ms. Traveler, the real Mary Poppins.
  • This also goes for Dr. Frankenstein, his monster and the monster's bride, who's actually Dr. Bride.
  • The story of Pinnochio is also real due to the appearances of the Coachman, Jiminy Cricket, and the Blue Fairy.
• The Red Mage: As per canon, Viney, Jerbo and Barcus are these due to their mixing magic. However, instead of Luz, Amity is the fourth student to become one of these because of her talent in both Abominations and Illusions.
  • In Chapter 53, Luz and Skara decide to multi-track in both Bard and Beast Keeping to learn how to control their respective conditions.
  • Chapter 60 shows that a girl named Jessica is studying both bard and healing.
  • As of Chapter 67, Edric, Emira and Mattholomule have joined their canon additional tracks early, and are joined by Puffer and Lambi, who both return to the Abomination track while continuing to study in Construction and Healing, respectively.
  • In Chapter 92, Cat signs up for Bard, Illusions, and Potions on top of Healing, as she wants to expand on her potential.
  • Chapter 111 shows that Principal Rashwood of Merlin Meadows has approved of multi-track studies at her school, which Danny's sister Fan credits Luz for.
• Reduced to Dust: This is what happens to a fae when they're killed with iron.
• Related in the Adaptation: Luz is Eda's adopted daughter, thus making Lilith her aunt while Gwendolyn & Dell are her grandparents. King getting adopted by Eda in Book 2 officially makes him her brother.
  • With the confirmation that Abigail Gates is Luz's godmother and Clara's mother in Chapter 69, Clara is now Luz's godsister.
  • "Chapter 60: Prelude to War, Part 1" reveals that Darius and Gavin are father and son, something exclusive to the story.
  • The seventh sidetrack shows that Sasha and Molly Jo (who never appeared together in Amphibia) are cousins through their mothers, who're twins. This makes Robert Otto Sasha's granduncle.
  • Chapter 131: "Hollow Mind at Last" reveals that Lilith is Hunter's biological mother, as Belos used her blood to create Hunter since he couldn't make a stable grimwalker using the decayed remains of his adopted family.
• Replacement Flat Character: While she starts out just as much of a Hate Sink as she is in canon, Odalia ends up getting more depth as a character when her previous relationship with Lilith is revealed and she becomes self-aware enough to start prioritizing Amity's health and happiness more. When this happens, Boscha's mother Nicole Hieron replaces her as the fic's most prominent Obnoxious Entitled Housewife. Even though Odalia's manipulative nature hasn't gone away, Nicole is still this to her just like how Boscha is this to Amity in canon.
• Rescue Arc: The "Human Realm" Arc serves as one on the Demon Realm side, as Luz works overtime to make a portal to Earth in order to bring Amity, Willow, Gus and Eve back with their human allies having to protect the witchlings from Department A.
• Retcon: A few things were altered after chapters were rewritten. For starters, Luz was initially stated to have been in the potions track prior to the series' beginnings before it was clarified that it was actually the Healing track.
  • While Tibbles kept his full canon name of "Tibblet-Tibblie Grimm Hammer III" in Book 1, he is renamed to "Tibbles Trembly Grimmhammer III" from "Stranger Danger" onwards and it extends to his father, Grimmhammer II, AKA the Boss.
  • After it was confirmed that Mattholomule and Steve are half-brothers, the authors erased their chosen name for Matt's at-the-time unnamed older brother, Oskar.
  • Ukla was initially depicted as a dragon biped demon. As of Chapter 89, she's now a lizard biped.
• Reverse Mole: Near the end of the "Underworld" Arc, Hunter returns to the Emperor's castle after staying at the old Clawthorne home under Lilith's care in order to spy on Belos for the Clawthorne family on top of advocating for Amity's safety, freeing Athena, Tom, and Tito from prison, and getting Cross out of his deal with Graye.
• Running Gag:
  • Hooty talking to a butterfly and Breaking the Fourth Wall.
  • Luz flicking King on the nose when he says something insulting.
  • Amity currently has four;
    • Anyone who hadn't met her for themselves refers to her as "the minty-haired girl" (exclusive to Book 1).
    • Amity calling one of the Clawthorne sisters "mom", due to seeing them as Parental Substitutes.
    • Having to remind people that she renamed herself to "Amity Goodfellow" in Book 2.
    • Her Aura Vision causing her to know when people have had sex.
  • Witchlings usually refer to Soos as the "Gopher Man".
  • Eda making weight jokes about Odalia.
  • Someone commenting on how Gus attracts several girls, going as far as to say "You think you know a guy."
  • Dusty Bring'ems and Eve Slipknot suffering from constant misfortune as a result of overconfidence and bad luck, respectively.
  • Characters being told that they sound like someone they know.
  • Hades being referred to as a cheapskate.
  • The constant Continuity Nods to the "Pleasure Island incident", with Barker being referred to as "the crazy Coachman".
  • Emily gasping when she "remembers" something that's already common public knowledge.
  • People believing Lilith is Eda's younger sister when they first meet the Clawthornes.
  • Ghost, Amity's cat palisman, eating sentient things, such as Acorn the Pixie.
  • People lampshading how Randy's Ninja smoke bombs smell like farts.
  • Nina has two;
    • Both Felicia Fox and Andrea Pinkjoy often Jump Scare her, causing her Shock Collar to electrocute her even though the werecat doesn't get angry.
    • One of the Brookes walking in on Nina doing something embarrassing in her room.
  • People noticing that Hikari is as tall as Amity.
  • Cross making Accidental Puns.
  • Zee trying to set Cross up with girls.
  • Everyone saying Vee looks adorable for a basilisk.

S

• Second-Act Breakup: Due to the Hierons taking revenge, Luz and Amity suffer from this when Amity's deal with Lilith is revealed to Luz. They do get back together, though.
  • Edric and Hunter later experience this themselves when word reached Edric that Hunter's the Golden Guard and he bugged his home and the Owl House so Belos can keep tabs on his and Luz's families.
  • Edric would later have another one with his girlfriend Mel, as she kidnaps him to keep him prisoner in the Underworld and outs Amity as half-Fae to the rest of the Boiling Isles. She initially laughs it off, but it becomes permanent once Mel is defeated and slated for punishment.
• Security Blanket: Otabin is one for Luz, who kept a copy of the book ever since Eda first read it to her after the slayground incident and even made the main character her Imaginary Friend before she met Gus and Willow. Safe to say, she became more attached to him than Amity did.
• Security Cling: Upon seeing Luz after nearly getting attacked at Dog's party, Amity immediately hugs her and doesn't let go.
• Setting Update: Instead of being implied to take place in 2022, the events of The Owl House and many other series now occur in 2012, which Gravity Falls took place in.
• Sharing a Body: After absorbing Maya's essence against her will and learning her soul's stuck in her body, Luz offers to share control of her body with Maya until they find a better solution.
• Shed the Family Name:
  • After seeing how her paternal grandparents refuse to help their children recover from their deformed abomination states for fear of their reputations being ruined and realizing Odalia does use people to get what she wants, Amity disowns herself from the Blight family name effectively severing her connection to their magic and becoming nameless.
  • Because Boscha disowns Nicole as her mother for getting Athena and Tom sent to jail, she starts using Athena's surname "Saltstar" instead of "Hieron" in Chapter 113.
  • Averted with Clair. While she did marry Damien under a different surname, she hadn't disowned the Clawthorne name before they got married.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Cat/Gus fall into this when it's discovered that Cat is attracted to Simon and Gus sets them up as Grom dates. However, it leads to the tease of Amelia/Gus, which ends up sinking too as Gus is implied to be aromantic.
  • Masha/Vee tanks as a result of their Adaptational Romance Downgrade as Vee falls for Star and Masha comes to see that she has a mutual attraction with Clara.
• Ship Tease: In addition to the Official Couples, it happens between Eda/Raine, Anu Bist/Kitsuni, Donna/Nina, Bo/Mattholomule, Lilith/Ford, Lilith/Odalia, Star/Vee, Nora/Mr. Poolcheck, Lindsay/Emily, and Cross/Lindsay. Eda/Stan and Emily/Zee are also implied. And after Amelia learns Gus P. doesn't like her, she starts to have some with Gus G.
• Shock and Awe: In her battle against Anu Bist, Luz is shown to have cards that emit electric attacks. It's later revealed to be a combo between light and fire magic. When she develops her own innate magic, she starts creating her own electric attacks that she channels through her instruments.
  • Lilith, despite having her magic weakened, is able to shoot lightning bolts through the streaks in her hair (at least in her Raven Beast state.)
• Shout-Out: Now has its own page.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Owlbert found the Noceda's car crash and brought Eda to it, thus intertwining her future with Luz's.
  • The day of the Wailing Star, Cat saw Luz talking to the Blight twins in the library and told Amity about it: that led to Amity tailing all three of them that night which led to her helping Luz when she had a panic attack. Actually, Cat indirectly gave Luz the opportunity to own up to the ghost infestation, which led to Amity forgiving her, Luz realizing her crush on the girl and eventually, their relationship.
  • The Weird Sisters had a colossal influence in the rise of Emperor Belos: centuries ago, they told Philip Clawthorne that he was meant to save the Boiling Isles from an impending threat and continued to maintain contact, thus changing his destiny.
  • Emperor Belos and Vanz Ator had an equally massive role in each other's lives: Vanz gave Philip Clawthorne the chess set that would be the key to his future intellect as Belos and Philip would be the reason Vanz got sent to the Demon Realm and turned into a vampire, leading to him adopting Katya and all the events that would ultimately shape Luz's life.
• The Smurfette Principle: Cat appears to be the only girl among the Harwitch siblings.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The Summerween Trickster is spared here as the Pines twins, Soos, Candy and Grenda don't encounter him.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Bards, Illusionists, Potionists and Constructors are given a lot more focus than in canon, be it current students or alumni:
  • For bards, the students consist of Skara, Levi, the Cerberus Sisters, Elliot, Tito Jackwitch, Luz, and Cat while alumni are Raine, the BAT's, Perry, Slasher, and Beck Saltstar.
  • For illusionists, there's Gus, Edric, Emira and Mattholomule as well as the newly named Louis and Scotty from canon, Amity, Cat (who're also multi-trackers), Emily Tricks, the Arc Villainess of the "Glandus War" Arc, and Riley Strange. There's only two known alumni so far, Adrian Graye and Diana Masterskull, one of Donna's mothers.
  • For potionists, Boscha (until she ends up in the detention track for a brief period), Eileen, Ruth, Witch Morty, Sarah Atos, and yet again, Cat are the most well-known students while alumni are composed of the Clawthorne sisters, Nicole, Athena, Jenny, Vitimir and his successor, Staggertarious Atos.
  • For constructors, Mattholomule (again), Horace, the Saltstar brothers (Simon and Cain), Tyrone Ironwood and Stella are known students while Gilbert, Sandra, Samwitch Saltstar and Donna's other mother Gladys are alumni.
• Start of Darkness: The Slayground-turned-Boiling Zit Incident acted as such for both Luz and Emily: both girls ended up getting hurt by people who wronged them (Luz was nearly beaten to death by all the other kids just for being human while Emily (who only witnessed Luz's beating) was one of the victims Eda cursed as payback before she could help) and they both used it as a springboard to become stronger, but became complete, brutal psychopaths as a result. But while Luz would eventually grow to become a better person, Emily doubled down on her Jerkass nature.
• String Theory:
  • Gus' father, Perry, has a board in the Porter's basement in order to figure out why several events involving Luz don't mention her, where his wife currently is, and the purpose of the Day of Unity.
  • Book 2 shows the Clawthornes have a stringless conspiracy board regarding not just the Day of Unity, but also Belos along with his connection to Eclipsa as Philip and his journal, the portal door and the Inner Demon.
• Strong Family Resemblance: After undergoing sex change, Beck is shown to be the spitting image of her mother, Delara.
• Suddenly Speaking: Sort of. Eileen becomes able to communicate with everyone thanks to Luz giving her a dry erase board. Same goes for palismen to a small degree, given that only Amity, Simon, and Skara can understand Ghost, Flint, and Jimmy, respectively.
  • It's played straight with Maya; despite being a palisman, her possession of Luz allows her to communicate with witches.
• Super Mode: Luz's Cambion form, which grants her Super-Strength, Super-Speed, bulletproof skin and the ability of Flight.
• Swapped Roles: In a reversal of canon, Luz develops feelings for Amity and kisses her first.

T

• Take That!:
  • The Book 1 prologue has Eda make one to The Twilight Saga, stating every vampire and werewolf in the Isles would stake her if she tried to sell one of those books.
  • "Incidents and Family Secrets" has Luz be confronted by students of Hogwash School of Magic for attacking one of their own. She proceeds to mock him for thinking he was "the chosen one", saying that pressuring some poor kid with high expectations for your own needs wasn't healthy.
    • The same chapter mentions a criminal known as Stary Watterfly was arrested for magical terrorism over "not getting a boyfriend".
  • In "The Reveal", Puck (now revealed to be the real Peter Pan) makes a dig at Peter Pan for both the stereotypical Native Americans of Neverland and how messed up it was for Pan to cut off Captain Hook's hand and feed it to the crocodile.
  • The Love Potion trope is looked down on by both authors, and its use here is also a jab at the Harry Potter theory that Harry only loves Ginny because of them.
• Taking It Well: After becoming nameless, Amity finds herself accepting lowered grades for making mistakes and not letting people judge her as she no longer has to do so to satisfy her former parents.
• The Talk: The very title of Book 1's 13th chapter, where the A-Plot focuses on Eda describing this (and a few stories of her youth) to Luz after she develops a crush on Amity.
• Team Member in the Adaptation:
  • Amelia and Cat weren't part of the Human Appreciation Society in canon, but here they join after befriending Gus and expressing interest in it.
  • Perry joins the Bards Against the Throne not because he's now a Bard, but because he's suspicious of everything regarding the Day of Unity on top of the Media Coven covering up Luz's existence as she was growing up.
  • Odalia and the Bat Queen both enlist in the BAT's successors, the Covens Against the Throne, with Odalia joining because Amity will never be safe from Belos' anti-fae prejudice until he's defeated.
• There Are No Therapists: Constantly averted. Ever since Ms. Traveler's introduction, characters start holding counseling/therapy sessions for those with massive emotional trauma.
• Title 1: The first book, which has "Number One" as part of its title.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • Luz started out as an abrasive troublemaker who, after putting a strain on her friendship with Willow due to her desire to seek revenge, started to work towards bettering herself.
  • Skara has a small case of this as her ending her friendship with Bo coupled with a talk from Willow has her evolving out of her Beta Bitch disposition to become nicer to people.
  • This is Boscha's Story Arc in Book 2; after driving away all her friends over her own tendency to get revenge and becoming a social pariah, she's encouraged by Tom to break free from the Hieron family's creed and standards to become a good person.
• Tragic Dropout: Levi Thians, a Bard track student, decides to drop out of Hexside as a result of being mugged, the Emperor's Coven hiring his father's workers which weakened business, and his father now expecting a newborn. Luckily, he can work in the Fishing Coven like his father, so at least he's got a plan for his future.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer for Book 2 gives away the twist that Lilith would choose to stay at the Owl House instead of leaving with Gwendolyn to make up for lost time with her and join Luz in facing Malphas' trials, fighting the paper dragon.
• Transplant: All the characters of the series listed under Crossover and Intercontinuity Crossover act as such.
• Trapped in Another World: This is how "Chapter 70: Tragedy at Eclipse Lake" ends, with Amity and Ghost being thrown through the portal to the Human Realm by the Inner Demon possessing the Shapeshifter with no way to return to the Boiling Isles. The following chapter, Willow and Gus are also sent there, with Gus ending up in a desert and Willow being aprehended by Director Gates' soldiers in the woods nead Gatesfield.
• Trauma Button: Grabbing Luz and threatening her life causes her to relive the slayground incident.
  • After getting mugged, Amity is triggered the same way.
• Two Lines, No Waiting:
  • In addition to splitting the plot's focus between characters in every chapter, some chapters split the focus between the characters in the Boiling Isles and those in Gravity Falls.
  • The "Human Realm" Arc runs with this: while everyone in the Boiling Isles is dealing with the absences of Amity, Willow and Gus, the aforementioned witches try to find a way home.

U

• Uncertain Doom: Besides Tom, Sean, Ludo, Rhombulous and Meteora the fates of most of Mewni, including Star Butterfly, haven't been revealed and it is unclear if they were able to escape Mewni's destruction.
  • "Chapter 59: The Ballad of Eda (Part 2)" has Vanz Ator be attacked by Bloody Mary which somehow leads to Grimhilde the Evil Queen being freed from the Magic Mirror. Grimhilde runs Vanz' shop, claiming he's out on an expedition with no clue to his fate.
  • In "Prelude to War, Part 3", Investigator Hardy Boils is captured by members of the Tarot Guild for trying to uncover their organization and is fed to something called "the Beast". He isn't seen after the "Glandus War" Arc ends.
• Unfinished Business: At first, Camila thought her spirit couldn't rest until she made sure Luz was taken care of. Following the séance, however, she realizes something else is stopping her. Lilith hopes it's something other than her confessing to causing Camila's death.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Skara has unintentionally helped the Inner Demon twice.
    • In "I'm Fine Memories", she aids the Inner Amity in extracting memories not knowing she plans to destroy the one symbolizing Amity's feelings for Luz. Skara does try to stop her, but fails and Inner Amity burns up all of the memories by mistake, putting Amity at risk of being mentally destroyed.
    • Skara's actions in the above example allowed Dolly to acquire the memory of Amity's deal with Lilith to spy on Luz and Eda, which she gives to Boscha, who exposes the secret to the entire school including Luz, causing her to dump Amity and ultimately end up alone in the Forest of Fear and at the Inner Demon's mercy.
  • Vanz Ator has indirectly influenced Luz's life and pulled other people into such a position.
    • In "To Serve", he sold Boscha a book on how humans saw witches, which she used to slander Luz and culminated in her and Eda being captured and ordered to be petrified.
    • The Book 1 epilogue reveals that he sold Lilith a pair of dimensional scissors to find Eda in the human realm and she accidentally attacked the Noceda's car in self defense, which led to Camila's death and Luz's adoption by Eda.
  • Odalia is also this, since "Understanding Lilith" reveals that she was the one who put the idea of cursing Eda into Lilith's head, though like Lilith she had no idea that it would be permanent.
  • Amity isn't immune to this either; declaring herself nameless would be the core reason her family becomes fractured and her repeatedly pushing Lilith away everytime she learned of her mistakes would lead to Lilith giving up her life and being possessed by the Baron.
• Unwitting Pawn: Puck became one when the Inner Demon possessed him not long after his brief death.
• Vacation Crossover: Chapters 18-20 of Book 1 has the Clawthornes and Gus take one to Gravity Falls.
• Villain Takes an Interest: Emperor Belos becomes intrigued with Luz upon learning about her condition, tasking the Golden Guard to monitor her until he tells her what it is himself and requests she join him to control it. After that, he does all he can to keep tabs on Luz and her progress.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Luz and Hunter have this sort of friendship, often trading insults but otherwise having a great deal of respect for each other. At least until she learns how he's connected to Belos.
• The Voice: The actual strange voice that's been mentally communicating with Luz and Belos.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Several characters from Beast Keepers to Fae transform into different animals, the latter being able to change their appearance and identity on a whim.
  • In Book 2 Luz, seeing that she always transforms in times of stress, starts to learn how to control her cambion form. Now she can summon her wings and claws at will.
  • Naturally, Genie continues to take unlimited forms on a constant whim.

W-Z

• War Arc: The "Glandus War" Arc in Book 2 focuses on Hexside and Glandus High having a school war with Glandus trying to conquer Hexside as payback for being conquered in the past. The war ends with Hexside's victory.
• War from Another World: Based off the surveillance drone that Director Gates sends to the demon realm, Belos comes to the conclusion that the human realm is about to start a war with the inhabitants of the Boiling Isles and declares it as proof that the Day of Unity must succeed. Not to mention, both Neverland and Mewni are implied to have been ruined by such wars.
• Wedding Episode: Chapter 109 has a faux wedding between Luz and Amity, which acts more like a promise ceremony to solidify their bond's strength while they're separated during Amity's temporary exile to the Human Realm.
• Weredragon: Fae look human and often transform into dragons. The Long family is an obvious embodiment of this, and the Drakescale family represents that witches can also fall into this category as well.
• Wham Line: Luz has 2 lines in "Changes", which ultimately define how much she's grown up at that point in the story. The first is her decision to only study one track for the time being. The second:
  Luz: "I've decided... to join the Bard Track."
• What Does She See in Him?:
  • Or rather, "what does she see in her?". Willow and Gus are initially confused with why Luz develops feeling for Amity. In another example, Eda never figured why Lilith ever gave Odalia a chance.
  • Gender-inverted with Edric towards Mel, as everyone comes to realize how much of a toxic influence she is but he doesn't see that until after she kidnaps him to keep as a witch pet.
• What If?: Luz had been orphaned as a baby, adopted by Eda, and raised in the Boiling Isles her whole life?
  • The chapter named as such between Chapters 53 and 54 is one showing what would happen if Lilith, out of remorse, adopted Luz and raised her in the Emperor's castle.
  • Later, another such chapter between Chapters 97 and 98 shows how Luz would turn out if she was raised by Abigail in Gatesfield.
• Winged Humanoid: During her second cambionic transformation, Luz gains a pair of bat wings, giving her the power of flight. It becomes more in line with the trope when she learns how to summon her wings without fully transforming.
• The Witch Hunter: With Emperor Belos being an Adaptational Nice Guy due to growing up in the Demon Realm, this trait goes to Gabriel Belmont Gates and his descendants, with Angel Sinclair-Gates currently running an organization dedicated to finding the Demon Realm and holding a grudge against witchkind.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Many characters have naturally-colored hair that isn't normally common besides the Blight and Hieron families. There's even an explanation as to why Randy falls into this; each of his moms have red and blue hair.
• Worldbuilding: Many chapters will expand the lore beyomd connecting all the different series together, such as the reasons for why the Fae are banned from the Boiling Isles, how The Order was formed, how the Horned King got sealed within the Titan's bones, and where the Colony, the alien conquerers Donna's mother Astronema had originated from came from.
• Worthy Opponent: Following their exam duel, Simon praises Willow for her strength and wisdom.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The Shadowy Secret Expozers, with a "Z". This ends up distinguishing them from the original Shadowy Secret Exposers.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Emira calls Amity "Mittens" all the time so when she uses her actual name, the gravity of the situation has to be a serious matter.
• Younger Than They Look: Discussed: Simon is 14 but since he works out and went through witch puberty, he looks and sounds like he's in his 20's.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: Despite her initial hesitance and Belos' attempted manipulation to stop her, Amity willingly sacrifices her home life and public status to save Luz and her family in the Book 1 finale, even though it brands her as a wild witch.
• Zombie Advocate: The former Gatesfieldians (Clara, Masha, Dana, Rudo, and the Gordons) don't share the speciesist ideals of the Gates family and the Archangels, fighting to protect Willow from them and help her get home while being fully supportive of Luz and her loved ones. Blubs and Durland feel this way towards Vee even after learning she isn't human, and Clara's mother Abigail is just as against her family's beliefs as her daughter and her friends.

LC Presents: Helluva Dad

• Adaptational Sexuality: Loona is implied to be bi in this series.
• Adaptational Villainy: Unlike in canon, the Exorcists target all kinds of demons, and not just the Sinners.
• Anthropomorphic Shift: What happens to the animal mortals that end up in Hell, notably Shere Khan, Scar, and Zira.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Lord Gaap, Cruella De Ville, Shere Khan, Dr. Sonya Mera, and Ursula are the chief antagonists with Foxy Loxy and Valentino being set up as villains.
• Continuity Nod: The events of Chapters 100, 101, and 103 are constantly brought up due to Mel's actions and Loona, Blitz, Moxxie and Stolas' aiding the witches who needed to get to the Underworld.
• The Ghost: Because of the events of the "Underworld" arc from the main series keep being brought up, Team Hell-and-Back^note Luz, Amity, Eda, Willow, Gus, Boscha, Lilith, Hunter, Cross, and Lindsay can be mentioned at any given time as a result.
• Honorary Uncle: Blitz's old heist buddies, Lars and Harvey, became these for Loona after Blitz adopted her.
• Once per Episode: Like the source material, there's at least one musical number per chapter.
• Parental Substitute: Blitz raised Loona as a single parent, but Verosika Mayday became the closest to a maternal figure Loona has in her life.
• Pool Scene: Whether it's at the Triton or another location, these are very frequent.
• Prequel: Loosely acts as one to Helluva Boss, and "Hazbin Hotel" to an extent as Charlie is inspired to build the Happy Hotel following a visit to the Triton.
• Puppy Love: Octavia, who's only 11, gets some Ship Tease with Cray, a fellow Goetian kid whom Stella sets her up with.

---