Chapter 1 of the sequel is up.

[tocryabout]

Summary: Five years after the end of The Aphanes, Joel and his friend Paul are working with homeless mutants in Montreal. When they meet Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, who is offered work with the Canadian government, Joel and his friends become embroiled in a system that may not be as benevolent to mutants as it appears.

Chapter 1 is The Pretty Girl in Santropol, but do go to the contents page first, if only to read the note on language.

Hope you enjoy.

(P.S., man, that summary sounds Sue-ish. It's not, I swear to God! I promise the sort of spazzy bitchy incompetence you're accustomed to from my characters.)

Comments

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

I am so excited. i will read it tonight!

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

That's good to hear, since it sounded like things were fairly sucky. (I knew I was right not to download the new Firefox.)

[(Anonymous)]

This is a great start and I loved your last chapter. And I love Paul/Joel. I read some of you old posts and remember you sayin that originally Joel was going to have a crush on Rogue. So I'm guessing origanally Joel was straight. Is it okay if I ask what made you decide to go in this direction. Again I really enjoyed this chapter. You are obviously a talented writer and I look forward to reading more.

[brownbetty]

Reading this makes me feel all homesick in the good way. That "ouais," put a little knot under my heart.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it.

It's basically just something that swam up to the surface as I was writing scenes with them together. I don't know if they're going to consummate it or anything, but they like each other. They have a David/Jonathan thing going on, and it's relevant to some other themes in the story, so I'm playing with it.

I think it's actually too early to say whether Joel's gay or straight. (With "gay" here meaning "on the whole prefers relationships with men", not necessarily "would never ever touch a woman.") Having emotional problems in adolescence, and being institutionalised and sick, he never had much of a chance to date or otherwise "figure things out" the way healthy kids of that age will. He likes Paul, he has crushes on girls that he can't have, and he spends more time thinking about the barriers to relationships than about what he actually wants from other people. That's a sexuality in transition; it needs to solidify.

Labels make things more confusing rather than less, a lot of the time.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Hee!

People google, man. And one big impediment to starting new religious orders is that all the good names are totally taken.

I suppose it's not impossible that there are priests and religious in fandom, but it must be a tiny and weird minority.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

I miss hearing French too, in Kingston. This is the Angloest of Anglo cities in Eastern Ontario, I swear.

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

This was excellent, as usual. Jeanne-Maire is one of those characters I barely know at all from the comics, but you paint an interesting picture here. Her mental illness was handled very well; Aurora is not a raving loon, just Jeanne-Marie's polar opposite. I'm eager to learn more about her, and how she will become entangled with the government. As experienced procrastinator, I found myself nodding in agreement with her description of realizing that the paper you've put off for a month is due tomorrow.

Joel has grown noticeably, but is still recognizably the boy we met in The Aphanes. His interactions with Paul were both amusing and touching, and if you do intend to go the Paul/Joel route, I'm curious to see how you will resolve such a relationship with Joel's chose path.

A great first chapter, and a great incentive to read more.

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

Joel has grown noticeably, but is still recognizably the boy we met in The Aphanes.

This I'm very glad to hear. Five years is a long time, and I felt like the changes made sense to me, but I didn't know if other people would feel the continuity.

You could kind of tell that Marvel was trying to be realistic when portraying Jeanne-Marie/Aurora, but (a) information on MPD/DID was pretty sensationalised back then, and (b) it was still a bloody superhero comic and they weren't telling the sort of story that had time to deal with abuse and mental illness properly. So she's been everything from normal-but-repressed to completely schizophrenic. That opens up the sandbox considerably for me, of course, so I shouldn't complain. :-P