I'd say that rant was totally called for. You're completely right.
I don't want to devalue Amity's growth, but I've already plotted out a maximally-angsty downward spiral for her and I'm not veering from that course now. I'll try to write it in a way that's still respectful of her agency as an individual and the progress she's already made. Even so, if it reminds you of those other stories where the writers just want to turn Canon Amity into their ideal versions of Beta Amity, I'll understand if you need to stop reading.
Definitely wouldn’t expect you to veer course and I’m excited to see it happen😁 And it’s not like that, really it’s more certain words in how our conversation was going that reminded me of those types of fics then your fic itself. I like your fic😁 Perhaps I have issues with it here and there and it doesn’t always match how I interpret the characters but it’s still a cool and fun fic with an interesting concept😁 Though I’m not sure what you mean by “their ideal version of Beta Amity”
You're familiar with Beta Amity as a concept, yes? My understanding is that the fandom saw a drawing of her and collectively made up a personality to go along with what they saw. Since the fandom is made up of many individual people, there's some variability in her characterization and behavior from fic to fic. Some writers want her to be totally-composed, others want her to be... less so. Blight in "Adventures in Turm Isle" and Amity in "Witches Among Humans" are both Beta Amity, but they are not the same.
I've seen a number of fics in which Luz and Amity are separated for an extended period of time as an excuse for them to grow into their Beta designs, and when they meet again Amity has reverted to being cold and hard so Luz has to win her over all over again. I assumed that those were the fics you were talking about.
Yeah I’m completely familiar with the betas. Love the concept of Beta Sibling AUs. I just don’t typically think of those fics as being beta fics, just fics with an older Amity and Luz years later after a separation with Amity having become mean and cold again. I also think the term “perfect version” or whatever the exact word was confused me a bit. Plus though they do use the beta designs sometimes they also often don’t.
I don't get the appeal of Beta Sibling AUs. I get the appeal of letting Luz and Amity interact with alternate versions of themselves from literal alternate dimensions, like in "Adventures in Turm Isle," but editing Beta Luz and Beta Amity into the story as Luz and Amity's elder siblings feels too clunky and convoluted to be interesting. Realistically, if Luz had grown up with an older sister she would be a VERY different person.
I’m just super soft for Sibling relationships so I absolutely adore these AU’s. Though I do agree to some extent it does often bother me how somehow having an entire other sibling in their lives never seems to change the cannon characters at all. Though Luz tends to bother me the least when it comes to this actually. I can easily still see her picking up all the interests she has in cannon and still have a lot of the same issues as in cannon. You seem to think having a big sister would make her an entirely different person. How come?
It would change one big thing about her: her self-reliance. Luz grew up with an overworked single mother, no siblings, and few-to-no friends, so she learned that the best thing was to deal with all of her problems alone, because her mother had too much on her plate already and nobody else cared. That's why she doesn't want to tell Amity about any of her issues, it's why she feels guilty about Eda spending her apple blood money on griffin eggs and tries to insist on capturing the selkidomus on her own, and it's part of why she casually takes responsibility for righting any injustice she sees around her.
If Luz had Beta Luz as an older sister, Beta Luz would have helped her with stuff, so offers of love and support wouldn't seem so foreign to her.
Hmmmmm. I can certainly see the point in that, with her sister there she’d be a lot more used to having help available and therefore accepting it. Though I feel like a lot of those problems would still exist even without her having to be so self reliant. I feel like there are a lot of complex causes for a lot of Luz’s behavior not just one thing. I definitely see accepting help and love and talking to others about her issues being easier for her than in cannon, but I think she might still struggle with it. Also having a Beta Luz big sister helping her so much could easily lead to the same feelings still manifesting but in a different way. For example Luz could feel a bit suffocated always having her big sister watching over her shoulder and bailing her out and want to do things on her own to prove herself, or she could start feeling immense guilt over having to have her big sister “clean up her messes” so often and start to want doing things herself as to “not be a burden”.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite fics with a Luz that has a Beta Luz big sister. It’s called Loyalty and Light. It tries its absolute best to be as cannon compliant as possible which I find a bit frustrating and constraining at times, but the author does their best to think about and come up with good reasons for why things are so cannon compliant.
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