Comic is discontinued, but episode summaries are currenltly being posted and linked in the masterpost! Asks are open, but just be aware I might not get to yours. My main account is @yogurthoopsart !
Here, Luz accidentally slips into the Demon Realm seven years before canon events. Without a way back home, she is secretly taken in by Emperor Belos and is raised alongside Hunter as his younger sibling and second Golden Guard – her human status hidden from everyone but her new uncle and brother. As the siblings grow closer and stronger over the years, they settle on a goal: heal Belos with wild magic, preferably without him finding out until he’s healed.
With Hunter having someone he trusts to bounce his wild magic ideas off of, and with Luz all too ready to abuse her authority for the greater good, things are going to happen a little differently here.
Comic discontinued. Full AU Synopsis can be found here.
This AU has a TVTropes Page!
Warning: This AU will include discussions and visuals of sensitive topics such as violence, child abuse, and manipulation. Updates and asks that include these topics will not be tagged. Proceed with caution.
Read the FAQ before submitting questions!
Comic Parts and other extras under the cut:
Extras
The timeline for pre-comic events can be found here.
Colored References can be found here: Sibling Default Outfits, [more coming soon]
The Lying Witch and the Warden
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9
Witches Before Wizards
Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18
I Was a Teenage Abomination
Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31
Hello, I was wondering if the next episode synopsis was still in the works or if you decided to cancel it. Thank you.(PS: I love your art!)
Oh! Thank you! for the compliment and the polite inquiry.
I'm kind of updating as i get the motivation to write. It isn't cancelled! It's just slow going. I'm trying not to stress about it too much, but i will apologize since that means there will be long stretches of time between synopsis updates for you guys (if that wasn't already clear lmao). Hope that clears things up!
man. I wish we knew the intricacies of why Hunter calls Belos his uncle. Like, was Hunter told that Belos's brother was his father? The whole situation is always vaguely referenced as "our family" rather than with specifics so it's all very open ended.
Hunter immediately clocks the previous Golden Guards in Hollow Mind as "family" even before he finds out he's a grimwalker, but whether or not he knew he was related to them beforehand is vague. He doesn't seem to have a strong reaction to Darius having the prev GG as a mentor, only focusing on being deserving of the symbol rather than living up to a family member's legacy specifically.
His admission to not knowing what happened to the old Golden Guard can be taken two ways: 1) he doesn't know they're related, and legitimately has no clue what happened to Darius's mentor, OR 2) he knows they're related somehow, so his fate must have been connected to wild magic, but Belos never tells him specifics of what wild magic kills their 'family'.
Anyway, all this to say: the fact that it's so vague makes it hard to pinpoint what Hunter thinks his familial relationship to Belos is. Hunter is EXTREMELY young for his hypothetical father to be close to Belos's public age (im guessing around 70 or 80, based on how long the emperor had been in power + his preaching during the savage ages. im assuming people don't know he's over 400 years old). Maybe Belos could be a great uncle and a previous Golden Guard could have been Hunter's father, but his reactions towards any mentions of prev GGs aren't really strong enough.
My current theory is that Belos told all the GGs that he was their actual uncle, and it worked out because all the Golden Guards before Hunter were older (and belos would have been a few years younger). The age gap would have been significantly smaller, and it would have made sense for Belos to be around the same age as their hypothetical father. It's only when Hunter comes in that it doesn't really fit, but since Boiling Isles families don't really fall under typical familial structures, he could afford to be vague about it and have Hunter fill in the gaps himself.
But yeah. Jesus. Day 600 of wishing we had a Belos character bible.
so over a year ago i made this as a collab piece with @yogurthoopsart 's au @toh-tagteam-au, where i did half a comic and they finished the other half with their au hunter interacting with my au's characters and we posted them together.
they uh, never finished their side of the collab sadly, and it's been over a year, so i guess since the collab seems to be off after i asked them if it was.....i might as well post my half since i spent so much time on it and would rather it didn't go to waste.
It's really a shame, i was looking forward to having seen it finished and seeing more adventures of this au crossover, especially with their hunter and my au characters and sharing it with you guys, but i hope this will suffice despite it being old now.
While im on perpetual Toh hiatus i do want to shout out my actual art blog @yogurthoopsart because im seriously considering stopping posting to instagram as a main art account. Just got locked out of my personal account (not my art one like what happened last time) but i was reminded at how Absolute Trash insta is at resetting passwords and the like.
But if you like my comics, writing, and art, feel free to check it out! Be warned i have a self-ship fnaf thing going on atm but ill also be posting other stuff there more often now that im considering instagram to be off the table soon.
Tag Team AU Synopsis – Escaping Expulsion + Keeping Up A-fear-ances
Synopsis Masterpost Link
Previous Part [Separate Tides]
Next Part [Echoes of the Past] [coming soon]
Obligatory comment on how it's been [checks watch] oh jesus, it's been five months. Okay. Damn. Totally my bad.
Let's get back to it then!
Escaping Expulsion
Opens up with Hunter teaching Lilith and Eda glyphs! Not for long, though. This is a pretty Luz-centric episode.
We leave them to cut to the Blight Industries private sale! It opens pretty similarly, Amity faking being defeated, when she spots the Golden Guard mask in the crowd. She doesn’t want to look embarrassing in front of Luz/she wants to get this over with so she can talk to her about What The Hell Happened at the petrification ceremony, so she easily takes it down without any effort. The crowd disperses.
There’s probably a cutaway to Owl House shenanigans, with Lilith and Eda freaking out over the super glyph – I haven’t written it in-depth. Probably a moment of Lilith and Hunter working together and being awkward about it because Hunter obviously doesn’t vibe with her still.
CUT BACK TO THE NEXT SALE. Odalia tells Amity to do her best (sinister). Amity sees Luz in the audience and waves nervously. Then she goes into the Abomaton performance. Except when it gets to the fighting part, it actually starts attacking her for real.
Amity manages to get a few good hits in, but it eventually overwhelms her and she’s about to get smashed before Luz jumps on stage and blocks the hit. She takes it down with the staff and turns to the audience, telling everyone the show is over and to go home – this is coven business now.
She turns to Amity and helps her up, asking if she’s okay. Amity nervously insists that she was fine and didn’t need the help, when Luz says it’s okay to need help. They have a moment before Odalia and Alador approach.
Before Luz leaves entirely, Amity approaches Luz to ask what that was about, and why she hasn’t been around for the past few days after the petrification ceremony. Luz nervously tells her that it’s coven business, and now that she’s the head of the Coven she might not have time to tutor her anymore, so they’ll be seeing each other less. Amity gets sad at that, reminded that Luz’s role as the Golden Guard is a higher priority to her than their friendship, and sadly tells her to be safe before leaving.
Luz watches her go, somewhat regretful, and has to be spurred on by the other scouts in her entourage to head back to the castle.
Keeping Up A-fear-ances
Opens at the Owl House, where Lilith is slowly turning into an owl beast. Hunter is the one to quickly get the elixir from one of the hiding places and bring it to her. Lilith apologizes to Eda again for cursing her, having just experienced what Eda has been going through for years, and Eda commends Hunter for his fast reflexes. Hunter says that it's nice being able to help Lilith and Eda with their curses after being unable to help Belos with his own.
When they’re alone, Hunter tentatively asks Lilith the details of how she cursed Eda, and Lilith explains that she found the scroll in the night market. They talk a bit about how curses are majorly not known about since they’re technically classified as wild magic due to how varied and unique they are, and no one would want to study something they’d get arrested for. It’s why Hunter and Luz had so much trouble finding more than basic information on how to heal them. (We’re sprinkling in the set-up for Hunter’s season 2 sub-plot here)
Then Gwen visits like canon.
Eda comes out, Gwen announces that she’s going to heal Eda’s curse, and everyone is flabbergasted. Especially Hunter, who has spent basically his whole life trying to heal Belos.
Eda is unimpressed, and sends her off like she does in canon. Hunter asks her what the heck is up, and Eda explains how her mom returns every year to unsuccessfully heal her curse. Hunter is skeptical, but ultimately intrigued. Even if he’s not trying to heal Belos anymore, he’d still like to know more about curses since there’s literally nothing written about them. In a twist from canon, Lilith joins them for the same reasons PLUS needing to impress her mother.
(Also, King hasn’t gone through the events of Echoes of the Past yet, so Lilith doesn’t have anyone to commiserate with.)
There’s a few shenanigans of Lilith and Hunter working together very well, although it being considerably awkward. They bring up morbid Emperor’s Coven jokes (to the confusion of Gwen), and they generally get along pretty well. Hunter wishes they could have been on good terms like this in the coven, and Lilith explains that it was her fault they weren’t – Luz and Hunter’s relationship reminded her of her old relationship with Eda, and that she was incredibly jealous. She genuinely apologizes, and Hunter apologizes in turn for not being very kind to her either.
Gwen cuts in here, and they get the Healing Eda Show on the road. Stuff happens like canon, and Eda starts to turn into the owl beast. Gwen stops Hunter and Lilith from giving Eda her elixir, saying that she got rid of all the ones back at the house as well. Lilith starts laying into her mom for never listening to her, eventually spiraling to the point of turning into her own owl beast. Eda sees Lilith crash through the trees just long enough to be confused before she herself changes fully, and they have their owl beast fight in Bonesburrow.
Gwen changes her mind the same way as canon, and everything is pretty much resolved similarly with the one difference of Eda not knowing Hunter was involved when she wakes up. Later that night, when Hunter eventually approaches, the sequence is supposed to highlight Hunter’s curse-related trauma and Eda’s attitude towards making sure her kids get involved at an absolute minimum (re: why she kept it a secret from King before meeting Hunter). Basically, he grovels like he would for Belos, and Eda tells him to stop because it’s cringe (affectionate).
Gwen asks again if Hunter is sure that he’s not Eda’s son, or even Lilith’s. Apparently, Hunter’s similarities to Dell are incredibly uncanny – not just his appearance, but his personality that Gwen has seen all episode. Hunter seems pretty sure that he isn’t anyone’s grandchild, since he knows he’s a grimwalker, but Gwen says she’ll look into Dell’s family tree anyways just to see if they’re not distantly related.
And then Lilith reveals she’s leaving with Gwen, similarly to canon.
Hey, welcome back! Are you working on this project again or here to announce a new one?
I'm back to working on the synopsis posts! I wanted to have both Escaping Expulsion and Keeping up A-fear-ances in the same post, and the latter is giving me some trouble. Stepping away for as long as I have has definitely helped me look at it with fresh eyes, though. We're getting there slowly but surely.
I know how it isn't the point of belos character but I would love to have a episode about him, caleb and evelyn.
I'm assuming you mean in the context of the Tag Team AU? That's how I'm going to be answering this question, but apologies if you were referring to canon!
I understand where you're coming from. I've been seeing some people get upset about how the legacy trio didn't have any screentime in WaD, and for all intents and purposes an AU has the ability to explore things that weren't focused on fully in canon. I just... don't really know how I can expand on the story more than it already has been told. The AU doesn't affect their story very much, and I think the show has done a really good job at elaborating what happened without drawing attention away from Luz, Eda, and King.
I'm in the camp of believing the legacy trio aren't... super important. Their actions definitely apply to Belos's character and backstory, but that's about it. It especially rings true with the way the Tag Team AU is panning out – Belos is straight up abandoning his obsession with "saving" Caleb's soul in favor of "saving" Luz's.
That being said, I have some concepts about Elsewhere Elsewhen involving Evelyn that I'm throwing around in my mind, and any conflict involving Belos in season 2 and 3 is going to involve some deeper feelings considering both protags were pretty much raised by him. Caleb will just have to keep haunting the narrative for now.
You know with the context of TOH ending it's really funny having the headcanon that King is Bill Cipher reincarnated. Like diversity win: the eye-of-province gaslight gatekeep girlboss dream demon that wanted to end the world and almost succeeded was reborn as a baby god who was adopted by a chronically ill queer witch and craves tummy scratches. His sister is the Chosen One™. His dad is bigender. The axolotl knew what it was doing.
OH also it looks like we get a glimpse at the rest of King's glyphs when he forms the bubble shield since they're different from his dad's! I'm going to assume the one we see on the left is an ice glyph bc it would be pretty neat if we partially know the first two glyphs that Luz learned in canon.
I really like how Thanks to Them makes Belos physically and literally represent his core character traits of manipulating people and discarding them the second they fulfill their purpose and are no longer useful to him by making his main powerset in the episode possessing things and then discarding them, usually completely stripped of life.
Something something Belos manipulating one and possessing two canonically genderqueer characters who are "annoyingly powerful" to further his own goals. Something something Belos being a parasite using the achievements and power of people who are traditionally taken advantage of or othered in irl society, one of which being the god of a culture he's trying to destroy. Something something Belos never had any power of his own, and everything he's ever done came from him shamelessly stealing from everyone else.
are you gonna try to flesh out s2 first and then post the synopses rapidfire like you did for s1? or post them as they get done?
I'm going to try and flesh out the main and sub plot of season 2 first, and then release them as I actually finish writing the synopsis posts. Hopefully after fleshing it out, it will be rapid-fire since I'll know what I'm doing lmaoooo. Season 2 isn't as,,, solid? As season 1? It's a weird balancing act I didn't know NEEDED balancing until I started really writing the season 2 episode synopsis posts – I want to be able to set up things early in the season so they make sense later on.
There's some really specific set-up I need to incorporate into the episodes to make Hollow Mind, King's Tide, and Season 3 itself really hit, but it's proving difficult as there's so many moving parts. There's King's titan situation which I want to differentiate from canon instead of copying the Echoes of the Past, Knocking on Hooty's Door, Edge of the World development; there's Luz's situation in the Emperor's Coven and her... whole deal that develops; and then there's Hunter's ongoing subplot revolving his relationship with curses. Out of these 3, the King situation is currently being the most difficult.
I know how season 2 ends, it's just a matter of getting there realistically and setting up season 3 that's being a pain. I'm lowkey planning on seeing how Watching and Dreaming wraps up the Collector situation, bc that might help knowing how the series ends.
COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FERAL. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. LUZ GIRL IM SORRY YOU'RE GOING THROUGH A TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE BUT YOU'RE PULLING THAT SHIT OFF SO MUCH BETTER THAN HE DID.
What would Belos be telling Luz about the Day of Unity? Personally I am imagining him not telling her people will die because he knows Luz isn't ready to hear that yet, but explaining it a little differently from how he sold it to the public/the Coven Heads... maybe hyping up her specialness to explain why she won't need a coven seal for it, or talking about how he's excited for the future they'll create together after the DOU (...when they return to the human world as the conquering heroes)
Oh man, I REALLY like that concept. TT Belos isn't going to go totally in that direction, but if he was a tad more emotionally stable/logical like how he is in Canon then this is def the path he would take.
