jupiter ascending au, as per thread request (brought to you by @psychicwaffles, seconded by @fallenwithstyle, dw i will untag you in the next posts it's so i can apportion blame appropriately)

(aka: so the temptation of genetic reincarnation and probing the exact horror of immortality, eugenics and space capitalism got me, what can i say?)

so: let's say the setting is about 5 centuries from now, and lan xichen has been dead for two of them. jin guangyao had been dead for four. what's it called when you pass by someone and almost see them out of the corner of their eye, but they still slip by unseen?

(brought to you by me typing on twitter and trying to outrace @psychicwaffles noticing: bets on when EXACTLY he's going to notice this going down)

but: what is it you call that? it's not deja vu, or ships in the night, or just bad luck - not in a universe where, depending on who you ask, we are either a miracle of intricate and intentional design, or a miracle of accident.

it's either everything - the decision-making of a callous god - or it's nothing.

jin guangyao is born nothing, a hundred years after lan xichen gives up his own search & slips back into the unceasing stream of the universe. and then, he becomes everything.

it's the oldest story there is: a boy is found playing on an isolated outer moon with the exact replicated genes of a chief cultivator so feared in another century that he and his new mother have no choice but to flee for their lives, bribing a cargo ship to take them away.

they run, and run, and in desperation and encircled, the boy who was not called jin guangyao surrenders himself to the reincarnation of his half-brother in return for this new mother's safety. even in another time, he is a filial son.

he ascends the steps of the jinlintai just shy of puberty. from the moment he first breathes the air of this strange and strangely familiar planet; the taste of humidity from great golden solar flares in the sky,

their arcs dyeing everything in the fall of their light with faint gilt, he will never be referred to by his previous name again.

he will be jin guangyao, born again, a living miracle of the human condition, for the next 200 years.

(in his new and strangely familiar rooms, there's a quartet of antique paintings. the first time he sees them, he begins to cry, and has no clue how or why: he is not prone to tears. confusion settles thick in his throat as the huddle of witnesses stare as if witnessing a birth.)

(for the first year, he is kept in seclusion in the jinlintai, while his once-brother, who goes again by the courtesy name he'd had before, decides how to deal with the perfect replica of a boy who once wore perfect mourning white and said pretty things at his - jin zixuan's -

funeral, and all the while -

this jin guangyao claims he does not remember. but he remembers jin zixuan's favourite wine exactly. and perhaps, this time, they are not their father's children.)

the years go by.

if power is a corrupting influence; if time is decay; if we are but dust and only pure gold does not tarnish -

you see where this is going, right? little by little, the boy from the outer moon is left by the wayside. jin guangyao reigns in his skin.

he rules beside his brother over the family's corporation, accumulating ever-greater wealth every year. business is good in an ever-expanding universe, and jin guangyao looks younger every decade.

(youth serum is costly, but the jin are rich. it is a matter of advertisement to defy age. it is, jin guangyao soothes his brother's conscience, simply good business sense: if not them, then who?

their empire is run on ethical guidelines. jin guangyao promises.)

jin guangyao has more than he could have ever dreamed of. and he's told the man who ended his first life with this name is the one he has to thank for it. but lan xichen has been dead for a long time, so long that what survives of him is merely myth and rumour and a handful of

poetry written in in a half-century seclusion taken by the famous zewu-jun on a remote ice planet in his home galaxy. and, this too:

the blood of lianfang-zun, universal traitor, kept preserved in the databases of the library on zewu-jun's home planet. blood wiped from zewu-jun's own hands. skin flakes from the hilt of his famous sword. a dead man's saliva, and this too, this last and final thing:

a lock of hair, cut from what remained after lianfang-zun was successfully eradicated from the world.

it is this evidence, this perfect profile of dna, that had led the genetic reincarnation of jin zixuan to the genetic reincarnation of jin guangyao.

so this jin guangyao owes all he has - the legacy & the money & the constant striving to prove himself better than who he was before, the gossip & the bitchery & the great inescapable wealth -

he owes all of it to a man who allowed himself to age and die, out of hope and time.

in lieu of a death-drive, a person can develop other obsessions.

jin guangyao's becomes the hunt for the next genetic reincarnation of zewu-jun.

[and there we go for now, folks! i hear you yell: but what about the bees recognising royalty? what about the dog-human hybrid soldiers with wings? and i look at you, dead-eyed, gesture at the batshit canon plot of jupiter ascending and say: i am DOING MY BEST HERE, OK.]

[AND YES, THIS IS AN ASSUMED PREQUEL SET IN THE WORLD OF THE MOVIE, AND YES, THIS DOES MEAN THAT JGY IS GOING TO TURN INTO TITUS ABRASAX AND KIDNAP THE REINCARNATION OF LAN XICHEN AND CONVINCE LAN XICHEN TO MARRY HIM]

[YES, THIS ENTIRE THREAD IS JUST A LEAD UP TO ME PUTTING LAN XICHEN IN THE WEDDING OUTFIT THEY PUT MILA KUNIS IN. YES, I HAVE GONE MAD WITH POWER]

[this is a SERIOUS MEDIATION on the dubious ethical nature of "youth industries" and genetics and nature over nurture formed around the basic bitch kernel of a captive bride AU and i am VALID]

[but also xue yang is a cat-human hybrid soldier with wings aka a flying catboy ok i'm showing myself out now]