just a Kalgan girl

"But things are not otherwise." (Isaac Asimov-Foundation and Empire)

[antinael]

The last chapter of my Foundation Series fanfiction "Not All That Glitters" is up:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

It all started around January 2025, when I began posting here a series of scenes only loosely tied together and tagged "#fanfiction idea" and "#foundation oc".

I badly wanted to turn them into a fanfiction. But the vague plot was faulty. So I changed it significantly, until "Not All That Glitters" took shape.

It was fun!

[antinael]

A day in the life of 😍🤩

[cringe-but-freee]

Two men and the Mule-

[antinael]

I've been having absurd Foundation Series fanfiction ideas lately, which most probably, to 99,99%, will never see the light of day because they violate canon in an almost blasphemic way.

They violate one of the canon facts which make the Mule the Mule: his sterility. A significant part of who he is revolves around the fact that he is sterile, so giving him a child feels excruciatingly wrong.

So this story would be an abomination on two levels:

⚡ canon: the Mule is sterile;

⚡ biology: if someone is sterile, they are sterile. No exceptions, unexpected phenomena, nothing.

And I am not Apple TV +, so I feel awkward even thinking about it.

But this OC unexpectedly started fleshing herself out in my head and I like her very much, so this is why I am still giving these ideas a (small) chance.

⚠️⚠️ Attention! This story takes place in the canon universe, where the Mule was defeated by the Second Foundation! This story has nothing to do with my "Foundation's End" series, where the Mule is victorious. ⚠️⚠️

So, the Mule has a lover. He is indeed sterile, but due to some strange biological phenomenon he procreates. Neither he, nor his lover know she is pregnant when he dies. About six months after his death, his lover dies in childbirth.

The child is a girl. The girl ends up in an orphanage on Trantor. She is named Adria and given the last name Nova - there is a predefined repeating series of surnames given to orphans by the Trantor authorities purely for administrative purposes, and she ends up being a Nova. Not that this would matter.

She is a rebellious girl, uncapable and unwilling to fit in a broken society.

She keeps her gift of reading and influencing emotions to herself, not being too good at controlling it.

She runs away from the orphanage and ends up in a street gang, being accepted for her "gift" of pickpocketing (that is not her real gift, but anyway). She also plays the flute in the streets for money, but what she earns is never enough, hence the need to belong to the gang.

One thing leads to another and the Second Foundation starts pursuing her. (I don't know which these "things" are 😅) Realizing she is hunted down by telepaths and being a clever girl, she soon grasps who her pursuers are. And who she is. And whose daughter she is.

Taking after her father, Adria is quite vengeful and is now determined to expose those who defeated her father. The galaxy by now is pretty divided in terms of liking the Second Foundation: there are the Kalgan authorities who regret the Mule's passing and suspect interferences on the part of the Second Foundation, there are the First Foundation authorities who are not fond of the idea of the Second Foundation ruling the galaxy from the shadows.

She just aims to expose the Second Foundation, not to destroy them (she is just 16 wtf). The girl does not do it for power, but for justice, as she has the least intention to rule any empire.

After the final battle she suffers brain damage and ends up in a hospital on Kalgan. She either loses her powers, or she temporarily loses her powers. Exposing everything also means that now the Galaxy knows who she is.

There is this scene in my head where she is in the hospital ward and opens the window, only to be blinded by paparazzi flashes. She hastily closes the window just when a doctor comes in: "Mis Nova, please understand that opening your window is strictly forbidden! Please go to bed, you need rest."

She suddenly understands why her father wanted privacy so much. So the first thing on her to do list after getting out of hospital is to vanish.

There is this scene in my head when she tries to pickpocket Channis! 😂It is her first pickpocketing failure. A weird mental contact flashes between those two: she knows she is in trouble and Channis recognizes that power. I think this is how the Second Foundation finds out about her.

I call the scene/chapter when she defeats the Second Foundation "The Web and the Magnifying Glass". This is because somewhere in "Foundation's Edge" (I think), the First Speaker (or was it Gendibal?) mentions a powerful attack which must be performed by all members simultaneously and is called "a total web". Or something similar, something with a web anyway. When they want to do the web thing on her, she takes refuge in the Mule's palace. She is basically surrounded when they start the web thing. But she finds a Visi-Sonor (the Visi-Sonor). Knowing she has nothing to lose, she starts playing it, and the instrument magnifies her powers, hence she defeats the Second Foundationers who surrounded the palace.

Adria is 16 (for now, I might change my mind later). Hence writing this thing, if I ever knew how to write something so complicated, would mean writing... le gasp... YA!!! I don't have any problem with YA, except I don't know how to write a teenager, I am not good at writing a teenager! She is wise and precocious so that could make my life easier, but still.

Now, to the name symbolism!

The resemblance between the last name (or the 3rd and 4th syllables of the endless name) of the Gaian character Sura Novi and Adria's last name, Nova, is obvious. But not random. Adria is half Gaian, whether anyone likes it or not (I don't).

Her portrait, relatively accurately generated by Gemini:

Maybe one day I will be able to fit all pieces of the puzzle into a fanfic, with all apologise for going against canon so much. In a way I am glad I can't write this thing, because writing it would make me feel uncomfortable.

On the other hand, I do like this OC.

Life update

I have very little free time now and choose not to spend it on social media. I'll still be around, but not as much. Anyway, you can always find me on DeviantArt and ArtStation, as Antinael.

[antinael]

Guess the teenager 😄

This is an attempt at a 16-17 years old Mule - the age I headcanon him escaping Gaia. I think he turned out a bit older though.

Luckily I can use the Liquify filter in Photoshop to alter face features. Because according to ChatGPT everyone has full lips. Absolutely everyone. 🤦‍♀️

[antinael]

Worlds

Pandora has Unobtanium,

Arrakis has Spice,

Drosma has Drosium,

All planets are nice.

Terminus has science,

Trantor thinks it's won,

But there's no planet

Quite like Kalgan. ⚡️💜💫

[antinael]

Managed a version of his alternate persona. 🤩

He looks so lame and as if he hasn't slept in days. Making music must be exhausting. I gave him a dj set because I can't imagine a Visi-Sonor.

ChatGPT + Photoshop, because GPT insists to make him more attractive than he actually is.

[antinael]

I did some heavy GhatGPT prompting these days. Combined with Photoshop, it resulted into these babies:

ChatGPT tends to alter face features, even if I tell it a certain version is the final version and prompt it not to alter face features from that point on.

And then I have to struggle with it again, to bring it back to how it was when I informed it about the "stable" version.

Only after some usage the conversation gets long and I don't find the stable version any more.🤦‍♀️

The way it alters face features is by always making the person a slightly bit prettier with each generation. 😂

If I knew any 3D modeling I would turn this into a 3D model, but that is way, way beyond me.

Bonus:

[antinael]

From the "songs which remind me of Mulana" category, I give you

⚡️ Jungle - Pray ⚡️

The first stanza is mostly what Lana would say to the Mule and the second stanza is what he would say to her. But I think everything goes either way also.

The lyric "it's not like we're be here forever" kind of breaks my heart though. 😔

They are two damaged people fixing each other. 🥰

[antinael]

Not all fanfics have to be written. It is perfectly ok, and even liberating, to have fanfics which only live inside your head. Either because you are more comfortable with it, or because you lack the time/energy/inspiration to write them, or for various other reasons.

An unwritten fanfic still exists, but not on paper. It exists as a place to return to when you feel sad, or bored, or happy, or waiting for the bus, or whatever.

And it doesn't mean it will never be written! Maybe it will be, at some point, when the time is right, when you've heard a song which triggers it, when you feel like it!

As for me and the fanfic I enjoyed writing most of all, "Not All That Glitters", #mulana's story is not over yet. Even if the "Foundation's End" series is finished, I still get back to that AU, I still think of and imagine it. I do worldbuilding sometimes.

But I had to give it an official ending. Otherwise it would have lasted forever and dragged and dragged, and I don't like leaving things like that.

However, who knows if at some point I won't get back to it and write a companion fic to it? It is why I rarely say a fic is truely over.

It would probably go like...

"What is that?"

"I am braiding your hair, I've been doing it for some time now."

"That's not a braid..."

"It is a braid made of braids."

"I hope you know how to unty this thing."

and

"I am so glad you graduated! Now you can be my official pilot and we won't stay sepparated whenever I leave on a mission."

"Me too! But what if the other pilots think I'm too unexperienced to step directly into such a role?"

"A former Drosmian Great Node space miner, unexperienced? You've got to be kidding me, maybe they are unexperienced compared to you."

and

"This is so unfair! You know everything about me and I can't even know your real name or home planet!"

"But I don't know my real name either, it's too long."

"..."

and

"You are the man of my dreams."

"Some nightmares you have."

and also

"You promised you'd refurbish the Drosium mining fleet! It's been four years and you haven't done anything!"

"You think it's that easy? I said I am on it and I didn't lie! But these things don't go as expected! And no, I am not just like the Foundation because, unlike them, I did start taking measures to modernize the fleet and am not interested only in the Drosium because some dead guy says so."

and then

"Do your eyes have a little green?"

"No, sorry to disappoint you."

and after a while

"Do you have a pill for headaches at hand?"

"Yeah, here you go. It's the fourth time this week."

"You keep track?!"

and on one night

"Magnifico, huh?"

"Yeah."

"It suits you."

[antinael]

Things I headcanon the Mule did in between when he escaped Gaia and when he decided to be a conqueror:

⚡ Maybe didn't use his powers from the begining.

⚡ Switched some crappy jobs paid by the hour; maybe got screwed over a couple of times, because reading books on human societies back on Gaia is different than actually living in one.

⚡ Used his powers incorrectly the first couple of times, triggering the wrong emotion(s).

⚡ Long hair. He cut it either when he decided to conquer the Galaxy, or after "Foundation and Empire".

⚡ Played Visi-Sonor on the streets for money. Was also chased by the police because of this.

⚡ Loved once, was betrayed.

⚡ Was almost signed to a record label, but got screwed over bigtime, lost all his money and ended up homeless. Maybe this was the trigger for his conqueror career.

⚡ Maybe at first he didn't even want to conquer the whole Galaxy. Maybe he intended to stop at his first planet, or at Kalgan. But found this thing was addictive and couldn't stop. Not to mention he was also very good at it.

This, mixed up with his still existing fear of Gaia led to the rest.

I hc he was 16-17 when he escaped and 25-26 when he made his first conquest, the pirates' asteroid. This means almost 10 years of adventures and disappointments. 💜

[antinael]

Little does anyone know that, in my Foundation fanfic "Not All That Glitters", I had about five different versions for the scene where Channis breaks Lana's Conversion and the Mule finds out Lana is in love with him.

The competition was tight, but I ended up finally settling for the version I ended up publishing.

In one of the versions, the bomb Lana was supposed to drop on the Second Foundation was a nuke, only the Mule had lied to her that it was a hydrogene bomb only intended to cause local destruction (which is also what I settled for in the published fic).

When Channis breaks her Conversion he wants to make sure she attacks the Mule, so he goes:

"Tell her about the nuke, First Citizen!"

To which the First Speaker agrees: "Yes, First Citizen. Why don't you tell her about the nuke?"

This puts the Mule in a position of a total disadvantage, as he is now cornered by both the Second Foundationers and, worst of all, his love interest who just now happened to find out he lied to her.

And Lana faces the Mule, totally ignoring Channis and the First Speaker (just because the Mule lied to her with something so serious doesn't mean she suddenly likes the Second Foundationers): "Is it true First Citizen?"

And this version would have been nice, only there would have been this tiny little problem. It would have been way to similar to this scene here 😂:

Whoops! 😅

Luckily I realized in time. I was writing a Foundation fanfic, not an Avatar fanfic disguised as a Foundation fanfic, what the heck!

But it happens.

Curious about the ending of this unpublished scene?

Lana would have dashed to the control panel and nuked the Second Foundation ships surrounding them. Lana, the Mule, Channis and the First Speaker wouldn't have been affected, because they were all inside a Drosmian mining ship. And such mining ships reject radiations.

This is the story of how I accidentally wrote a Foundation fanfic scene too similar to an Avatar scene.

[antinael]

Here I am searching up Mr. Leonard Meisel, it would be nice if I found a photo online somewhere. ☺️

I have to read Asimov's autobiography "In Memory Yet Green", adding it to my must read list.

[antinael]

All characters are great, but only one has his initials imprinted wherever you expect the least. 🤩

[antinael]

[antinael]

Being a telepath in a relationship with someone who loves you back must be an amazing experience.

You get to see yourself through their eyes. As such, you find out you have qualities you never thought about.

If you thought you were ugly before, you find out that, while you are not absolutely gorgeous (which is something subjective anyway), you are not so bad either.

And your self confidence rises accordingly, though you do have moments of feeling self aware and not good enough.

But that is totally ok.

[antinael]