Stuck on the Junasso project. What’s next? Keep moving. Keep reading. Reading, particularly, that which will fertilize the soil most favorably for the next one…
This schlocky romance project is also ~3 years old. I want it to stay a novella: quick moving X-men pastiche, where of course the reader knows there’s a mutant academy, alien invasions in the background, etc. Casually throwing ridiculous corny details at you, the way the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible does.
This one involves two adults who had a crush on each other in their school years. This is mutant school, of course – the Gray Matter Institute. Leith is a reality manipulator whose full powers were not at all evident in youth. Nathan started off moderately powerful, but kept growing well after his peers topped out. Leith was bullied for dissenting from the school’s strongly insular pro-mutant culture; Nathan always thought Leith was in the right but was too afraid of social ostracism (again) to speak up.
The big conflict point is Branwen, a mutant girl whose powers are over pleasure and pain. She can “stock up” on pleasure by torturing people, and she does so by finding flimsy pretenses to torture non-mutants. She then redistributes the pleasure for social favor. This is widely known but not commented on. After incidents mount, Leith makes a socially disastrous attempt – something like making a speech in the cafeteria – to get the school authorities to crack down on Branwen. Utter humiliation. Leith, who had privately spoken to Nathan before and knew Nathan was also agonized, tries to make eye contact with Nathan, who avoids it. This is before Leith becomes hot shit, powers-wise. Nathan would have thrown his weight behind Leith if Leith had not chosen such a poor time and place to make a stand. But he also knows he should have supported Leith anyway. It is the great shame of his life.
JK Rowling said of Remus Lupin that his fatal flaw was that he liked to be liked. This is Nathan’s, too.
When Leith comes into his powers, things get very awkward in the school. Upon graduation, Leith pointedly refuses to join the adult league, even though they would be a huge value add. It’s becoming clear that Leith is a contender for the most powerful mutant in the world. They are widely distrusted by other mutants after this. Always uncomfortable to have someone you bullied in middle school be capable of leveling continents. Leith refuses to help or hinder the league when aliens attack, and spends most of their energies collecting books from other universes and hosting orgies. (Behold what a non-threat I am!) They are called the Wildwife.
(Leith is assumed by other characters to be nonbinary because they went out of their way to get a hermaphroditic body when their powers came in, but in-universe is referred to by a mix of pronouns, none of which they dispute. I haven’t decided what sex they used to be in their youth. Many of my characters change sex or become double-sexed by choice, but because I as an author am uninterested in writing about gender itself – especially in an American discursive milieu I find poisonous and tiresome – my characters will also rarely touch upon it.)
Nathan, on the other hand, grows into his powers more slowly. It is well into adulthood that it becomes clear that he is also one of the most powerful mutants. Ten years after graduation, it is known that he and one other schoolmate will become the leader when Professor X Doctor Gray Matter steps down. The story starts here. In the midst of some chaotic “robots coming through a dimensional rift” situation, Nathan is kidnapped by an unknown third party, and tortured. (By an alternate universe version of Leith, I think.) When he is rescued, his powers are out of control. The only person on earth capable of guarding him while he recovers is Leith.
In fact, I think the only person capable of rescuing him was Leith, so Nathan has to deal with the embarrassment of being found naked, physically carried through a Zelazny-style corridor of universes by someone who despises him, and being dumped on the ground in front of his friends. Nathan does not disclose to his colleagues that his kidnapper was a Leith alt. Nathan, even before the kidnapping, is very weird about Leith. He feels a responsibility to the League and he feels that if only he had done better by Leith and the Institute, Leith would be among the fold. He admires Leith to a painful degree for resisting groupthink. Leith represents freedom and integrity and wildness. And while actually spending time with the adult Leith will certainly dispel the image Nathan has built up of them, Leith in fact has those qualities in spades. And it is through exposure to Leith that Nathan will be able to take those virtues into himself and become a good leader.
(On the other hand, Leith has demonized Nathan, and exposure to Nathan will lead them to admit first Nathan’s good qualities – he is practical, political, deal-making, flexible – and second that Nathan (and others) did not help Leith in their teens not because they were bad people but because Leith showed a lack of these qualities and made a poor stand. Leith has always known the second thing but avoided thinking it out of embarrassment. But they’ll have to, to forgive themself and others.)
Upon receiving Nathan and the large payment they required for the favor, Leith is confronted with a problem: the throughway that runs through all realities has become blocked several universes away, and their alts – who become increasingly different as you get away from the story’s universe – have been unable to resolve the issue. The council of reality manipulators would like Leith to also take a look. They can’t leave Nathan to go on a multi-week investigatory jaunt, so they take Nathan…
And do what exactly? How embarrassing: I don’t know much at all. Leith’s alt – the one who tortured Nathan in the first place – is responsible for the blockage. The resolution has to intersect with Leith’s core pain – that of standing up for what they believe in, to their ingroup, and being rejected. We also have to address Nathan’s, which is failing to do the same.