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froggyworlds · 2 years

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super duper spoilers for the Paradox Box AU, so if you’re reading the fic and don’t want to know what happens next, this’ll all be under the cut (also I don’t want to clog up y’all’s dash with an oversized post)

I’ll start with the non-spoilery basics: the Paradox Box AU is an AU in which the calamity trio is sent back in time to when they first arrived in Amphibia, and have to deal with not only their prior knowledge of the situation but also their past selves, who are EXTREMELY confused as to what’s going on.

note: I am. fricking very tired, it’s like two thirty in the morning right now, so if anything (especially stuff near the end) seems less coherrent than usual, that’s because it is. because my brain is stuffed with cotton.

MAJOR spoilers for rest of the AU and a little bit of Amphibia S3B under the cut:

the AU starts with Darcy killing Anne in TBotE, which causes the music box to have a panic attack and send the trio back in time, restoring everyone’s calamity powers in the process (though this doesn’t become important until much later).

future!Anne wakes up badly injured in the forest outside of Wartwood, much to her past self’s confusion, and takes on the name the Soldier since both her past self and Hop Pop refer to her as such.

future!Sasha ends up wherever she first warped into Amphibia along with her past self. they both get captured by toads and because of her commanding vibe, I guess, Sasha starts calling her future self the Commander. (they hate each other btw. Sasha is literally everything the Commander used to be and now hates about herself, and the Commander represents the so-called “better” version of Sasha that she a) doesn’t want to become and b) is mildly threatened by, both physically and from a ranking standpoint.)

and Marcy... ohh, Marcy’s in for some fun, we’ll tell you that much. she actually trips backwards down the staircase instead of headfirst (too preoccupied with looking at her future self to really look where she’s backing up), and breaks her arm instead of her leg, meaning she can’t write in her journal much in the very beginning or has to have someone else do it for her. she dismisses Darcy as a hallucination caused by interdimensional travel at first, because she really only looked at them for a few moments.

because of the stab wound that she sustained in The Beginning of the End (which in this case was The End of the Beginning, maybe?), the Soldier spends a good chunk of season one recuperating in the Plantar’s basement and doesn’t mess with her past self too much. she is really excited when Domino 2 comes along, much to everyone else’s confusion, but otherwise isn’t very active in the plot until after the events of Toad Tax/Prison Break.

the Commander actually punches her past self in the nose after getting fed up with her manipulation of the toads. it’s quite fun. (for us. not for them.) Sasha then proceeds to gaslight her future self into thinking she’s just as bad as she used to be, and the Commander calls it quits and leaves in the chaos of the heron attack.

she ends up in Wartwood, where she reunites with the Soldier. Anne and the Plantars effectively become the live slug reaction meme for the rest of the season. it’s fun.

quick note: for some reason, Darcy can function without the cord in this AU, because I think it was bs that it needed it in canon and I also think it’ll be infinitely more fun when it’s harder to “expell the night” or whatever.

anyways, Darcy actually goes back to the castle, though it mostly snoops around in the basement and occasionally peeks out to follow Marcy around. eventually Marcy decides to start looking for it, and gets to the point where she does actually find the secret entrance to the Core’s chambers. things... go interestingly from there.

namely, Darcy plays one of its best cards- emotional manipulation. it knows what happens to Marcy in the future. it has the physical scars to show her its claims are true. her friends leave her for a bunch of frogs, Andrias literally stabs her in the back, and in the end, the only one who cares about her is the Core.

she doesn’t belive it at first, but it’s technically not wrong.

back in Wartwood, things don’t go too badly until Reunion. then things go really badly. Anne’s perception of Sasha and of the Commander are very different. there’s a softness, and a willingness to listen to both sides of an arguement instead of forcing her opinion on others, that the Commander has. and Anne realizes, with a little bit of confusion, that Sasha isn’t like that. and she also realizes that’s kind of fucked up.

Anne’s perception isn’t the only thing that changes, of course. Sasha’s perception also changes. namely, her depth perception. more on that in just a moment.

the Soldier and the Commander stay behind in Wartwood, partially because they want nothing to do with this and partially because Sasha wants nothing to do with them. see, the Commander is set on the idea that as long as they don’t intergere, the timeline will right itself and things will work out. the Soldier was actually planning to tell her past self everything about the future eventually, but the Commander convinced her that staying on the sidelines and revealing as little about the future as possible was a better idea.

...it was not a better idea.

anyways, at Toad Tower, when they have their fight, Anne’s sword slices a few inches higher in canon. like I said, Sasha no longer has depth perception. Anne feels really bad, and wonders if, subconciously, it was on purpose. it very well might’ve been, I dunno!

Toad Tower collapses with Lean On Me playing like in canon, and Anne heads back to Wartwood like in canon. except she’s just a little bit mad.

“is there anything else about the future you’re not telling me?” actually, what is the plan with telling her about Marcy getting stabbed? don’t do it? oh? okay, then.

there’s a few shenanegains in the fwagon, the group heads straight to Newtopia instead of all over Amphibia, and Sasha adjusts to now having only one eye. Marcy mostly just plays Flipwart and has a mental breakdown.

there is certainly a Marcy who is at the gates, though it isn’t the usual cheerful one Anne knows from home. she brushes it off as generic traumatic experiences everyone probably has at one point or another in Amphibia, and only the Soldier and the Commander think to question it. because if they’re here, then it’s like that Darcy’s here, too.

though Marcy acts like she’s never met her future self (and technically, she... hasn’t. she’s met the thing inside her future self’s body, but never actually has a conversation with the Host. not like the Host is capable of holding coherent conversations at this point anyways).

things in Newtopia happen, and then it’s time for the Plantars to head back to Wartwood and get the musix box. and that’s when things perhaps start to go a little more wrong than before.

Anne, as she does in canon, leaves Marcy for the Plantars (just as Darcy said she would). the Commander goes with her for... some reason, likely to pick up whatever she left in Wartwood, and thus leaves the Soldier and Marcy alone in Newtopia together.

the Soldier does not prod into the glaring Darcy (or rather, lack of Darcy) issue and instead awkwardly tries to spend time with the girl she hasn’t seen since the day she was killed (the she being killed could either be Marcy or Anne, depending on if you count seeing Darcy as seeing Marcy and OH MY FROG my brain is TURNING TO MUSH.)

Frobo still very much exists in this AU, and not only that, but Joe Sparrow is SO TIRED, MAN. three extra kids to carry, along with the canon group, yeesh. #GiveJoeSparrowABreakInThisAU

he’s the only one I actually feel bad about hurting.

the temple episodes precede as in canon, again with the Soldier and the Commander hanging back from the temples, though they both make sure that Anne knows not to charge the blue stone fully (”but Marcy said it has to be fully charged to work-” “Marcy might’ve been lied to. or maybe the book she read about it was wrong. but trust me, in my timeline I don’t charge it completely and it works totally fine. the sooner you get out of there, the better, and charging tht one takes a really long time.”).

The Dinner, in canon, is one of the most awkward episodes of the series. in this AU, it’s even worse. this is the first time anyone has seen the full extent of Sasha’s eye injury besides Percy, Braddock, and Grime (Anne caught a few glimpses of it but didn’t really process them in the moment, and no one else was really there to watch besides the Plantars, who could barely see), the Commander and Sasha still hate each other’s guts, and everyone is lowkey wondering about where future!Marcy is, for a whole range of different reasons.

Battle of the Bands isn’t too bad, though for the Commander and the Soldier is mostly involves them worrying about Marcy and getting emotional when the trio sings “No Big Deal.”

things were, most definitely, a big deal. and they know that more than anyone.

True Colors is a nightmare.

in canon, Sasha betrays the gang, Andrias is revealed to be a villain, and Marcy is revealed to be the reason everyone is stuck in Amphibia in the first place.

in this AU, Sasha betrays the gang, Andrias is revealed to be a villain, Marcy is revealed to be the reason everyone in stuck in Amphibia in the first place, Darcy makes an appearance, and the Commander and the Soldier are revealed to have known this would all happen the whole time.

on the plus side, we get all the fun stuff canon never gave us! calamity Anne vs. Darcy? hell yeah! calamity Sasha before THT? HELL YEAH! Sasha cutting her hair short? HELL YEAH!!

on the minus side, everyone is even more emotionally destroyed than in canon. we won’t go into details because. honestly. as much as I’d love to go in-depth with what happens in this nightmare of a dream of an episode, it really can’t be done justice unless it’s written out, and that chapter isn’t coming in the fic for a while. so for now, just use your imaginations. it’s really painful.

after it all - once the Solder and the Commander have been captured and everyone else has fled back to Wartwood to prepare to fight back against Andrias and the Core, and Marcy’s truth has been laid bare and all of her friends have left her, just like Darcy said - Marcy just. gives up, pretty much.

she doesn’t want to have to deal with the crushing weight of the emotions warring inside her. she doesn’t want to have to live with the fact that once again, the people she loves have left her.

so she falls back into the twisted safety of the Core, and starting with the first episode of season three, there’s not one Darcy, but two.

and it’s SO MUCH FUCKING FUN.

literally can barely form words anymore with how tired I am, but the two Darcys situation gives such brainworms,, maybe tommorrow I’ll expand upon the chaos in there, but for now take the rest of this calamity. I’m going to bed before I pass out unintentionally.

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