エリジウム・ハート♡

My webcomic Elysium Heart is a cyberpunk fever dream about everyman Newt who gets promoted to work at the headquarters of the biggest corporation in the world. Little does he know that he'll soon be drawn into a tangled web of love and desire that he might never be able to escape!

Read it here!

TW: Violence, abuse, implied sexual violence

Standalone art (sometimes NSFW, unlike the comic)

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Feel free to send in requests or ask questions! The comic updates when I'm well enough to work on it.

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As I have said, I plan on making a visual novel to end the series (a capper to three parts of comic.) It will feature the six characters I think of as love interests. The idea is that Monty's dad is on his deathbed, and he finally broke down and asked Newt to come home and visit him to help him get through it. Everyone else follows Newt, so they all end up in Newt's home town and drama starts a-brewing with all these crazy people in one place.

Violetta gets a Newt ending, of course, but I also have an image of a moment where she's on the phone with Angelique and you (as Newt) can either encourage her to try to make up with her or encourage her to leave Angelique alone. I haven't decided whether, if you encourage her to make up with Angelique, that locks you out of the VioNewt ending, or gives you a throuple ending where Vi dates both. I honestly think Angelique and Newt have a weird amount of chemistry, but I can't decide whether its more offensive to make the black lesbian date a man or have the black lesbian be the only one left out of the expansive poly options. In my heart of hearts, I feel it is the latter.

Camille gets a solo ending, but depending on certain actions you take earlier in the game, she asks if you're in love with someone else, too, and if you'd be happier if you didn't have to choose. Then you can answer (again, depending on certain actions) either Leon, Violetta, or no-one. (The CamLeoNewt ending holds a special place in my heart, because it was the originally just going to be who Newt was ending up with, before I realized how to get fucking funky with it.)

Leon has no poly endings in the actual game, but I do think its likely he agrees to let Camille into the relationship down the road in his ending and I might have special dialogue to imply that if you favored Camille during the game. It seems extremely unlikely at first, but Camille and Leon develop a very special bond by the end of the comic.

I feel sad for everyone in endings where they don't end up with Newt, but I think deep down feel the saddest for Leon. I think everyone else could eventually move on from Newt and find love with someone else, but Leon I am not so sure about. (It would have to be someone really special... Like you, the imaginary reader who ships themselves with Leon?)

If you pick Ross it's going to be like "are you sure?" "Are you REALLY sure?" "You MEANT to pick Ross??" Even Newt is going to act kind of beleaguered by the fact that he is choosing Ross. Don't get me wrong. There is a world where Newt ends up with Ross. He's just really irritated by being in that world. He had to fall in love with fucking Ross? Definitely Newt's most aggressive kiss CG.

Ariel's going to be one of the trickier endings. I think she's the only one who has "bad" endings, as she's very unstable and probably going to be the main physical threat of the game (though I think of the "villain" as Monty, since emotionally, confronting him is Newt's final boss. But it's more in the way Elsa is the "villain" of Frozen.) One of the bad ends is Newt/Leon/Ariel. Trapped in her evil OT3....

But her good end is definitely going to involve a lot of Newt insisting that he will try with her, but she has to go to therapy and do the work. He believes in her and he'll be there for her, but she has to show up. And she does. That's her happy ending. That's kind of what the fantasy of all these redemption arcs is. Imagine a world where they do the work :')

Monty ending is going to make me bawl to write, but hopefully cathartic. I recently realized the plot of the game is that Newt and Monty are so so so mad at each other, but it doesn't matter, because deep down they love each other so much and always will.

I want a harem ending where all six agree to share Newt, but I have no idea how to get to this point. I think it's entirely possible, I just don't think Newt is the one ever bringing it up so I need to think of a clever way to get all six of them in a room to agree to this independently of him.

Throughout the game there's going to be phone calls with Ken where he gives Newt advice, mirroring Ken's pivotal role helping Newt out in each of the three acts, and if you play your cards just right, there's a secret Kending where Ken and Newt run away from their overbearing yanderes together.

If you're not interested in any of the six love interests, but still wish to find love, Newt goes outside to meet a friend of Monty's who was late to the party... And he asks their name, which you can type in. It's you, the reader! I don't know how I'm going to depict the reader. I haven't decided yet. I might get really ambitious and hopefully I could make some kind of renpy-piccrew abomination and let you make an avatar for the single CG they're in.

But I think there probably has to be an ending where you can say "No, I'm not looking for love" and Newt doesn't end up with anyone, because even though it is difficult for me personally to imagine an aro Newt because he's so much based on my idea of romance, I think there are definitely readers for whom that would be the most satisfying ending, and they deserve that, too.

There's going to be a conclusion to everyone's relationships with Newt in some way, regardless of the "end" you get. I want it to be a complete conclusion to every arc; who Newt decides to ultimately kiss is just the cherry on top. I think there will actually not be a ton of choices, only the most pivotal ones. I have a set idea of how Newt would act and it's going to carry over even into a more interactive medium--I can visualize a universe where Newt is in love with any of these characters or none at all, but I can't visualize a universe where Newt doesn't behave like Newt.

I guess a the main thing I'm thinking about with these endings is how I want their story to end if that were my OTP. You can tell I spent my formative years in Homestuck because of this strange interactive "all ships are canon" idea I have of how a comic could potentially end, but... It really appeals to me.

I'm always drawn to media that is basically an interconnected web of interesting shipping options, like Homestuck or Steven Universe or Tales from the Borderlands in my imagination. I want every character to be someone who is fun and interesting to imagine being shipped with everyone else.

That's why there's really only the most necessary characters; so I can be efficient enough to make every character interesting and have a complete arc. Even the extended cast like Angelique and Maria who aren't in all three parts are meant to be shippable (I am sooo excited for you all to see Maria's femdom worship arc, I know I'm my heart it's gonna be great.)

Newt is from a Fire Nation colony in the Earth Kingdom, where he grew up with his best friend Monty, the son of the local government figure. Monty is mixed, the result of his Fire Nation dad fucking around with local Earth Kingdom girls, and ended up being an earthbender. Newt eventually leaves his hometown to get a job in the Fire Nation capitol, where he meets and befriends nonbender Ross and starts hearing a voice calling out to him in his dreams.

It's an AU where Sozin died in the avatar state and Raava was destroyed, so Aang never existed and the air nomads were wiped out. 100 years later, Raava has reformed in the Spirit World and Newt (a nonbender) hears her calling out. He manages to meditate and enter the Spirit World to find her, and she binds herself to his spirit, starting a new Avatar cycle. Airbending comes to him first and most naturally, which is a little bit noticeable in the Fire Nation post-genocide. He eventually gets noticed (probably saving someone) and sent to the Fire Lord, Violetta.

Violetta became the Fire Lord through murder and trickery and is a controversial figure in the Fire Nation. She thinks Newt, the first Airbender in 100 years, might be the Avatar (Newt insists that he isn't.) But Violetta insists that he is and hires teachers who throw elements at him and Newt fails continuously and becomes even more convinced he's not the avatar. But as he gets to know Camille (his guard), she makes him feel warm and safe and explains how she connects to the fire and he tries his absolute hardest to connect to the warmth inside him and... A tiny spark of flame appears between his fingers. He's so surprised it's gone in an instant. He's not really sure it was actually there, he doesn't think it was. But Camille is now sure that he is indeed the Avatar.

Newt was raised under Fire Nation rule and not really taught to question it, and also he has no choice, so he goes along with Violetta at first, but eventually Violetta reveals a glimpse of her plans once she has the avatar on her side and Newt gets mad, really morally indignant, that she would ever think he'd go along with something like that, and he's getting worked up and the lamps in the room are burning brighter and the tea in their cups is starting to shake without anyone touching it and Violetta's eyes are getting so big because she was so right. Newt, of course, is going to deny he's the Avatar right up until the moment he absolutely can't anymore.

Meanwhile, Leon is running a secret bloodbending cult at the North Pole. He is convinced, however, that airbenders coming back is cosmically significant and he needs to meet Newt and bring him back to his cult. So he breaks into the Fire Lord's palace and busts Newt out, planning to take him back home. Camille decides to defect from the Fire Nation to come with to teach Newt firebending. Ross also gets mixed up in Newt's escape somehow and becomes the most useless member of Team Avatar.

Violetta, meanwhile, is doing everything she can to hunt them down. She wants her pet Avatar back. So they end up spending a lot of hiding in the old abandoned Air Temples, where Newt tries to teach himself airbending from what the monks left behind.

So he has his fire and water teachers down, but he only knows one earthbender and, unfortunately, he comes with a lot of baggage. But Monty realizes that no matter how he feels about Newt, the fate of the world depends on Newt learning earthbending, so he agrees to be his teacher and joins the team. Ross, of course, inevitably betrays them.

I think Newt learns to waterbend from Leon before he learns how to do anything else. Air is the most natural for him, then water, then fire, then earth. He fucking sucks at earthbending, like he needed another reason to feel weird about Monty teaching him. He's an airbender at heart 😩

Violetta, Leon and Monty are all (at first) hiding that they're mutants and Camille and Ariel are both muties and proud who actively rebel against the status quo, but either way they end up feeling a lot of mutant solidarity with Newt. I feel like the mutant metaphor really adds to this idea they all have (all of them, including Camille) that Newt is the only one who understands them and it's them and Newt against the world. Especially since Newt himself didn't even know he was a mutant until he met these jokers... He just thought he was broken. (See, Newt? You're so alike in so many ways you never could have guessed!)

After Violetta uses Angelique's supercomputer to calculate what Newt's power is, Newt is feeling some type of way about finding out he's a mutant and he tries to talk to Ross about it. Ross has a confession: he's a mutant, too! Ross has only told openly mutant girls he was trying to impress before (including the one he lost his virginity to, who had stretchy power or something that Ross was really excited about that ended up not being all that great.) The feeling of mutant solidarity extends to every love interest!

Probably part of why Newt feels so weird about it is because he grew up keeping Monty's mutant secret and effectively being the "only good one" for him. If it turns out he was only the good one because he was a mutant the whole time, does that make Newt better or worse? Does it matter?

I think Monty finds out Newt is a mutant when the entire world does. He broods on it for awhile and then comes to America to talk to him about because Newt tells him to (the first time Monty has ever been direct in his fucking life, and only because Newt asks him to.) He probably gets kidnapped by Violetta or Ariel but ends up joining Newt's mutant superhero team that is not technically the X-Men but is a subsidiary of them. I'm not completely sure about Monty being a telepath, though. I think he might have shadow powers. Like, able to make shadow minions and manipulate shadows and darkness? I feel like it fits him somehow, I always think of Monty as a goth at heart.

I have this idea that mutant AU goes like this: Olympus is doing supervillain shit in the background, which Newt finds out about, and Violetta subsequently holds him prisoner. Camille helps Newt escape and gets him into contact with Ken who gets the X-Men involved. Her supervillainous tendencies get outed to the world and she dies and loses Olympus. Angelique brings her back and they become supervillains. Newt thwarts them for awhile and then sets his sights on Leon. Leon locks him up, but falls in love pretty much immediately. Probably eventually Newt escapes and Leon dies and Newt brings him back to recruit him to his superhero team which is just him and Camille. Then Monty and Ariel show up. Then it's just superhero status quo I guess.

To elaborate on Violetta being a sledgehammer version of Emma Frost: I think Violetta can turn herself to diamond and generate diamond in whatever shape she wants, including her own body. She can also brute force take over your body and manipulate you like a puppet while you're fully aware you're not the one in control, but she can only use her powers when she's in diamond form, so she can't be subtle with it. Violetta is not subtle.

Leon is, though. I feel like the majority of his power use is just to give people small little pushes in the direction he wants. He has a lot of control with the ability to fully decide what emotions you're feeling. I love the idea of him being able to change Newt's emotions because Newt's anxiety is so bad it means the only time Newt doesn't feel nervous is when Leon is making him feel something else. To have a Dom who can wipe all your anxious thoughts away, even if it means losing control of your will... Well, it's tempting, isn't it? Newt doesn't know if he wants Leon to use his powers on him, but at first, Leon isn't giving him a choice.

Olympus is still a corporation that Newt works at, just more of an Amazon than the dominant institutional force in the world (is there a difference?) I think Newt sniffs out that something's peculiar about Olympus and signs up to be implanted with experimental cybernetics specifically so he can record the process and everything else he sees (Newt is brave to the point of stupid sometimes.) Violetta (who's I guess basically Emma Frost without the telepathy?) meets him through the experimental secret cybernetic program and takes a liking to him.

Hmm... Thinking of everyone's powers is very difficult but fun because mutants can basically be anything, as long as they are accentuating an underlying metaphor for facing prejudice for being different. I think with that in mind the way Emma can turn herself into diamond is really fitting for Violetta because I definitely think her power should involve her physically changing. I think if she's a telepath it's in the most brute force type of way, where she can just take over people by overpowering them with her own will. I don't think it's permanent, but she can force you to do things while you're aware that you're not the one making yourself do it. It definitely scares the shit out of Newt.

I think Newt's power has to be something like Doug Ramsey's (shout out to Cypher my GOAT) ability to comprehend all languages in that it's extremely useful in all but combat situations, where it is virtually worthless, and also something Newt could go his whole life without realizing he was doing. I think he probably has a variety of powers that all combine into a a greater whole. He has a telepathic empathy where he can physically experience others' emotions, including seeing any memories on the surface of their mind. It gives him the ability to intuitively understand people. He has a uniquely calming register to his voice, perfectly frequented to reduce anxiety and doubt in human brains. And his final small power, he thinks at a faster rate than the average person. All these things combine together to make his power the ability to, if given long enough, persuade anyone to do anything. But Newt has no idea he's a mutant at all.

Violetta, who has known she was a mutant but kept it under wraps since puberty, can tell Newt has some kind of mutant power. She has Angelique do tests on him to figure out what it is. Angelique has a super human brain and a fixation on reversing the dead. She also has a supercomputer she's created whose primary function is not to locate and identify mutants like fucking Cerebro, but she guesses she can do this for Violetta and have it figure out her stupid twink's power.

I think the X-Men exist in this AU but Newt doesn't really know that much about them except he has this nebulous idea the X-Men are the superhero good guy mutants, so that's who he should give all this footage to when he gets out, right? Maybe someday he could be an X-Men. Do you think they'd have him?

But Violetta has other plans for Newt. And she knows Newt can make her change her mind so she always makes sure to gag him whenever she starts to feel doubt. She wants to break him into using his power for her.

Camille is a monstrous mutant of some kind, like Nightcrawler. I think she's super strong and invulnerable but she looks like a red devil or something. She was abandoned as a child and Olympus took her in and raised her to work for them.

Olympus is doing supervillain shit in the background, which Newt ends up recording. Violetta probably has ties to the Hellfire Club. Eventually Camille and Newt sneak out and Ken helps them get the footage to the X-Men. (What is Ken? I have no idea. Neither do the X-Men, but he always helps them out when they need a little criminal expertise.)

Violetta ends up dying in the confrontation and Angelique manages to, secretly, bring her back. I don't think she breaks up with her in this AU... With Violetta's chance for corporate power completely shot, they become supervillains. Newt and Camille work against them, but Newt doesn't have the most superheroic power, though the cybernetics do help slightly. He relies on help from the X-Men a lot, but he never really feels like he fits in with mutants other than Camille.

Mike Hawthorne (a former Cosmiconomy exec who originally brings Cosmiconomy to Newt's notice in canon) finds out Leon is a mutant and escapes and tells Newt to tell the X-Men. Newt starts sneaking around looking for information and Leon probably just directly keeps him prisoner right away in this AU. But Newt ends up growing on him and he quickly falls in love.

Leon's powers are like Empath's basically. He can sense others' emotions, but he can also change what other people are feeling to make them feel and therefore do whatever he wants. It can be a small emotional push or fully overriding their will. Since he and Newt both have empathetic powers, Leon feels a huge kinship with Newt and does his yandere thing.

Fish had very similar powers and taught Leon how to use his. Fish was his mentor but no one else in Cosmiconomy knew they were mutants. Newt is the first mutant he's known other than himself. He knows Newt will eventually change his mind on something, but he kind of wants his mind to be changed. He can't keep doing it the way he is now.

Newt probably escapes eventually and Leon dies. (I feel like Grace's power is something fucked up that Leon has been using for evil?) Newt finds out there's a full copy of his consciousness saved on a computer (like the telepathic copies of the mutants on Krakoa) and willingly puts it into his brain. Ariel is a street level supervillain who saw her chance to kidnap Newt while he was here doing this and busts in and nabs him with Leon in his brain.

Ariel's power... I think she has to make her own little pocket dimensions that she can manipulate to her will. It feels like a vivid fantasy, but it's real in that dimension. That's where she takes Newt.

My husband said in a superhero AU Ross would have the most useless power ever. I think I have settled on he has the ability to stop time, but he can't move or act when time is stopped. In theory, that could give you an endless amount of time to think, which could be useful. Unfortunately, Ross does not use his brain, and mostly manages to talk himself into saying the worst possible thing at any given moment.

Monty's power had to have manifested when he and Newt were kids, and Newt and his dad were the only ones who knew. I think he's a telepath, and he peeked into Newt's brain more often than he should have.