Moonbeam: A Timeline series companion

timeline series brainrot

Ok so my friends and I like to do this thing where we talk about our stories for hours on end and I swear to god we come up with the BEST ideas together, if you've ever listened to me gush about my dragon fanfic for two hours on the phone i owe u a life debt. anyway, here's some misc ideas we had i feel compelled to share:

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Darkstalker's spell to save Eclipse, although he didn't realize it, probably basically restructured her entire body, and, like, speed-ran her through three months or so of dragonet development. Idk what was wrong with her exactly--I don't know a lot about infant mortality, but probably it was just that one or more major organs weren't developing right. When Clearsight was saying she had this gut feeling something was wrong with Eclipse, that's what I was referring to--I guess she just really didn't luck out with the genes or whatever. So, let's say her heart was fucked up, right? He would have had to, in that split-second, magically replaced that heart with a brand new one. Meaning Eclipse is literally, even now, sustained by magic--it lives inside of her, it literally is the only thing keeping her alive. She is a walking animus-touched object. Her organs are perfect, she's, like, eerily healthy. I like to think as a result of this, she's not immortal, but she's very... death-resistant? Like she can die of old age, but she's not gonna get cancer or lung disease because every cell of her body was restructured to be the ideal picture of health. Like, her immune system is insanely good, especially for a kid in the dragon equivalent of the 18th century, with no vaccines or anything like that. She'll just speed-run through a whole cold in an afternoon and be fine, stuff like that.

But that's not just true for her, it's true for Way too, because he was effectively speed-run through the same three months or so of development, meaning his vital organs/entire being are basically woven with magic. I like to think he has a similar thing to Eclipse, just slightly less severe, where he struggles to differentiate between what other people want and what he wants, which was shown in the whole Trailblazer fiasco.

This is gonna come back as a theme later for him--and maybe Eclipse, but it's spoilers, so I can't tell u anymore :>

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Ok so no one asked but here is my entire Queen Carmen backstory that WILL come back later, thank you for asking.

So, Carmen actually has a husband, he's just not very present with the whole war thing, and probably didn't have the energy to deal with negotiations--he's as laid back as she is intense, and his name is Cloud. They're a total opposites attract situation--she keeps him from staying in his room and painting or writing all day, he keeps her from running herself to the ground or jumping to extremes. They were a genuinely happy family, before Sunset died in the SeaWing massacre. But after that they just fell to pieces. Carmen acted out, becoming more rash and extreme, and Cloud just withdrew into his room, and started painting this mural on his walls of his daughter, trying to relive every moment with her. He never really wanted another kid, but Carmen saw it as the only way to "replace" Sunset, so he just kinda went along with it. For context: Carmen would have been pregnant around the time she declared war on the NightWings.

Anyway, she's obsessed with this kids life being exactly like her sisters—she wanted to sit in her grief and misery, be reminded of it every day, meanwhile Cloud just wanted to escape it, numb it out with extravagance and luxury. That's why she allowed the NightWings to come—a small, irrational part of her wanted to ask Darkstalker to make her unborn child exactly like her older sister, effectively the closest thing he could do to bringing her back from the dead—that would have been what she'd ask out of him in an alliance. But her terror of magic overrode that eventually.

She wanted every inch of this kids life to be perfect—so she kind of Mother Gothel'd her. Her eldest had left the palace and died, so Sunset was confined to one wing of the palace—she wasn't even allowed outside. Carmen named her Sunset II, because of course she did,  and literally would have dragons killed over things like burning her breakfast. One of her friends when she was really little was play-fighting with her, and accidentally hurt her, and she killed this one year old child right on the spot. She got mad at Sunset for being sad too—because I give you everything, how dare you! She lived in her sister's old room, wore her sister's old things—it was so creepy.

Meanwhile, Cloud was just kinda watching this from the tower he'd confined himself too, working on his mural. Carmen was gone most of the time, fighting in the war, so he was the only parent consistently there, but he couldn't stand to be around Sunset, who had been made with the purpose of replacing his dead daughter—but he couldn't stand to be reminded of it.  Anyway, this is all actually v plot relevant but i can't tell you because it's spoilers.

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My favourite thing to do is imagine Dark and Clear being really old, idk, I think they're just really cute. So anyway, consider: what if, when he realizes he's gonna die, after living to, like, 170 or something absolutely ridiculous, he enchants his scroll to pick someone new to wield its power after his death--and, like, a bit of himself to live on in it so ensure that no one abuses the power, like the opal ring in The Dangerous Gift. And bc most of his grandkids aren't biologically related to him, since most of the darkclear kids are some flavour of LGBTQ+, that's how magic ends up getting passed down through the family line.

You can also choose someone, but he was probably very tired and old and didn't want his 400+ grandchildren to feel like he was picking favourites. But rather than specifically descendants, he accidentally just wrote "family" so after he dies, it goes to CLEARSIGHT for a hot sec, until she dies maybe a year-ish later, and then it goes to his grandaughter, Way's daughter, Destiny Greatness Andromeda Clearsight (yes, Way and Precocious literally invented middle names, all their kids have FOUR NAMES and it's horrible). She's also a seer like Clearsight, and a really powerful one at that, so Clearsight, while she was alive, helped her hone her power in that regard. Yes, I have a whole story for Way's daughter btw--she has a forbidden romance with Trailblazer's daughter, and it's terrible. She does debate club and deserves the whole world.

Anyway, as the millennia pass, and their family line becomes increasingly indistinguishable--so it just starts picking the dragon most fit for the job, at first just NightWings and then eventually it just starts popping up all over the continent by the time three thousand years or so have gone by, and it becomes a bit of a legend.

Oh, and it's kind of like the avatar line in ATLA--everyone who wields it leaves a little imprint on the scroll, and whenever the current user needs help or guidance, the person who you need most will appear to you.

(POV you're Destiny, listening to the ghosts of your grandparents beg you not to turn Auntie Shadowhunter orange at the next family reunion, about to do it anyway.)

Oh, and Clearsight's bracelet is a bit like that too--after she's gone, it becomes a family heirloom, passed down from kid to kid. She writes a Book of Clearsight type situation, but it's really just a family thing and that's it, no religious undertones--and so they both get to live on in little ways.

Also, they get little statues in the great diamond where they're, like, staring into each other's eyes, what more could they ask.

Is it weird that whenever I write a couple I eventually start thinking of how they'll die??? My parents had me late so I've seen a LOT of relatives on their deathbeds, idk man.