The Amina Universe Overview (Part 1)

The Amina Universe Overview (Part 1)

Hello Rebel here,

So I haven't been active much lately but I'm back now! This time I wanted to talk about an original idea that was really important to me. And that is the Anima Universe.

The Anima Universe is a project I have been working on for a very long time, since I first started writing in fact, and is a multiple series of novels that take place in the same universe. Kind of like the MCU which is why I jokingly call it my BCU (Book Cinematic Universe).

There are eight stories within the project, each with its own themes, characters, and settings. There are many things that connect them timeline-wise and each one affects the other but they still stand on their own. The stories are spilt across two general settings; Earth and a magical planet called Majjia. Plus one that takes place in the wider universe and has a sci-fi feel to it.

Below We'll go over one of the stories and it's characters.

The Magical Core

The Magical Core is the very first original story I ever created. I remember creating the concept for the main Character Celestia on my great-grandmother's porch years ago. I still have the picture I drew of her.

The story of the Magical Core involves a group of four girls; Celestia Nightmare, Zerenity Silver-Moon, and Roxxanne November as they travel through the world of Majjia in search of a woman who is extremely important to them, Saturn Stars. The book is planned to have 14 chapters and takes place over a few weeks. I have an outline for the entire book and have so, so many versions of almost each chapter. It just needs refinement before I feel comfortable publishing it. (BTW The book also changes POVs between certain characters)

Let's go over the protag of the story! (I'll do other characters at a later date I was going to do them all here but the post was getting long)

Celestia Nightmare

Celestia Nightmare is the protagonist of The Magical Core and is the character whose POV we see the most. She's the only daughter of Sally and Jack Nightmare, prominent figures on the planet of Majjia. Celestia comes from a very wealthy well-known noble family known as House Nightmare. Members of House Nightmare have been in so many history books. Like so many guys.

Celestia is an elf and one of the features of that species is the fact that their last names and magic are interconnected. If you have a last name like Earth you have an easier time using Earth magic. Celestia's last name is Nightmare which means she has the ability of fear magic. Fear Magic is a subtype of Empathy Magic, a type of magic that allows people to feel other people's emotions with the downside that they can never turn it off. Once they turn it on it can never be turned off.

Those who have fear magic can see a person's greatest fear and have severe nightmares that feel very, very, real. Most of the time those nightmares aren’t even theirs but someone else's.

Celestia's parents died tragically when she was nine. They were murdered by a group called the Knights of Blood, agents of the evil High Queen Blood Spill, during an event known as the Rosewood Massarce. (The entire town of Rosewood, where Celestia's family lived at the time, was burned to the ground, hence the name.) After her parents' death, Celestia was taken in by a family friend, Saturn Stars.

Celestia has long sunset-colored hair like this. The reason she has this hair color was because younger me poeticly described red hair as sunset and then I really thought about it and decided this look was cooler.

Celestia has complete heterochromia, her left eye is a gentle forest green while the right one is a sharp electric blue, both glow eerily in the dark. I have a narrative reason for this but the irl reason is that I couldn't decide whether or not to give her blue or green eyes and so I gave her both.

Celestia's style of clothing is very casual which matches her personality. She's seen more in ripper jeans or pants with at least a dozen pockets than a skirt. Her outfits are very celestial-themed and she's never seen without her vambraces—silver with a wolf engraving that once belonged to her father and gold with a phoenix engraving from her mother.

Celestia wields a jian sword known as Præstans Tantibus which once belonged to her mother. The sword features a midnight purple and black handle, with the Nightmare family crest delicately engraved into the pommel. The blade itself is adorned with the phrase "Lux lunae me ducet ubi sol non apparet." which translates to "The light of the moon will guide me when there is no sun in sight." and embedded symbols related to the sun god Rad.

Here's that symbol btw (Created by yours truly)

Celestia is such an interesting character and like I mentioned earlier was created on my Great-Grandmother's porch. Her name originates from Princess Celestia and Nightmare Moon from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This origin is the reason she's so sun and moon-coded. I call her an eclipse and based her character arc on the day and night cycle.

When she was a kid she was daylight, bright and cheerful but when her parents died it turned her into sunset. The girl she was died with them and thus the sun set on Celestia of the past and created Celestia of the present making her twilight current. The sun has set but the moon has yet to rise, she's an empty sky slowly getting darker and darker.

Celestia is intelligent but also reckless and impulsive. She can be short-tempered, lashing out when things get too overwhelming. She's chaotic and things that make sense to her don't always make sense to other people. She's energetic, loud, and independent with an extremely active imagination. Celestia is loyal, adaptable, bold, and passionate.

She leads with her heart and is kind, empathic, and idealistic. Celestia is an extremely moral person and believes in doing the right thing no matter what. She's a bit of a mess because of the Rosewood Massacre PTSD and survivor's guilt are things she has. Celestia often feels like a ghost possessing her own body and while she can literally feel other people's emotions is detached from her own. She feels so much it's hard to determine what her and what's someone else. Celestia struggles to identify her own desires, wants, and goals, making her somewhat aimless.

The main themes of the book are life, death, and rebirth but not in the literal sense. A quote that has always stuck with me is this one.

"a dancer dies twice — once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.”

Which begs the question. Can you be reborn after an event that killed you? If there are two types of deaths there must also be two types of life. A literal one and a metaphorical one. This is why rebirth is a common theme. Each character has lost something important to them and must find a way to be without it and metaphorically be reborn.

Celestia, and each of the other main characters, represent rebirth within the story and each of them has death and life characters that represent a path they could have or could go down. The life character is who they could have or would have been had they not gone through their metaphorical death. Life characters are an ideal or a standard they can no longer live up to. While death characters are what would happen if they stay dead. What would happen if they let the pain control them. Rebirth is therefore them taking control of their lives as it is now and choosing to be better than both the life and death characters. Blazing a new path forward to create something that has never been seen before.

Celestia's life character is her mother, Sally Nightmare. Sally wasn't a cheerful person like you would expect from a character who represents life and has a sun motif. She was bright and mesmerizing. A fiery spirit who was charismatic, kind, wise, and hopeful. The ideal warrior and person in Celestia's mind who died protecting those she cared for. Sally is everything Celestia wanted to be and maybe would been if the Rosewood Massacre hadn't happened.

Celestia's death character is the villain of the series High Queen Blood Spill, ruler of the 13 United Kingdoms of Majjia. People talk about the High Queen in hush whispers and dare not speak her name using only epithets and titles like she's some sort of death god. Which is a way she is. The High Queen is strife and discord. Pain and torture. She's introduced sitting on a throne made of bone in a throne room covered in blood with people chained to the wall in various states of harm. Some are nothing more than decomposing corpses and others might as well be as they wait for death to claim them.

The High Queen is a bitter woman lashing out at the world for what it has done to her. She is who Celestia could become if she lets the grief of losing her parents consume her.

The life character is dead and the death character is alive but both haunt the narrative.

(For those who were curious here is the drawing I made of Celestia when I first created her like a decade ago)