CWs: bullying, absent mothers, animal neglect, internet fame

Nix Magdalene is, first and foremost, an art kid influencer. Everything it does revolves around its love for making art, presenting art, and getting attention for it. Its online facade is fluid and keeps switching around to fit new trends and appear more attractive to its fans, and as a result it prides itself on being malleable and able to be discussed by all. All attention is good attention.

Appearance

Nix is 6"6 (198 cm). It is very lanky and thin, but has some lean muscle on its arms and legs.

It has shoulder length, straightened black hair that has been cut in a layered fashion, similar to a wolf cut: Long bangs cover the right side of its face, and there are two distinct layers of hair that fan out to the sides. Two longer strands of hair frame its face. It has dark brown eyes and wear bold, exaggerated makeup focused on eyeliner and eyeshadow. It has a nostril (nose) piercing and 4-6 ear piercings. Her ear piercings can either be studs, bars, hoops, or dangly earrings on her lobes (which are the most common).

It has a tattoo on its right arm: It is a rose just below the shoulder, with 4 thorny vines running out of it and across her body. This matches with Anhema's tattoo, which has the same rose but with 7 vines instead of 4.

Nix wears a different outfit every day: It loves to go bold and campy with designs and colors, and especially loves themed outfits. In a casual getup, it usually wears a large coat off the shoulders, a crop top, pants/a skirt, and boots. It ALWAYS wears a hat - typically a beret - of some kind.

Personality

Nix is charming, obnoxious, and charismatic. It fashions itself after every movie's Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope & the I'm Not Like Other Girls trope. It loves being famous, and is happy to adjust the way it presents itself - in appearance and pronoun usage - to get more attention.

However, when it also falls into being everything for everyone it loses a sense of core self when everyone sees Nix differently. It’s ignorant of its own personal issues and stresses for this exact reason. It’s too busy showering in affection and projecting the newest trend to even be aware of itself, much less issues that can easily be repressed.

Nix is aroace, and loves Anhema like it loves art. It showers her in affection and doesn't mind if Anhema doesn't reciprocate, although it will act very dramatically hurt. It loves beautiful things and will always see Anhema as beautiful.

The Nix characterization principles go as such:

• Nix talks like they’re terminally online. Hey bestie, real girlie, so true exie...
• Every other sentence it says is self-affirmative (Ex: “In this video, we’re going to be doing a giant watercolor canvas and then recreating it in acrylic. I’m amazing at both mediums, of course, so this will be fun for me and even more fun for you to watch this.”)
• If you’re also an artist/influencer in the same art realm, you’re immediately on their shitlist. Everyone's a terrible little rival who is simultaneously a threat and also pathetic and far from matching up to them. In this case, Nix is extremely passive aggressive/ straight up aggressive.
  • If you’re not on its shitlist, Nix acts like an overbearing aunt. Keeps talking about how cute you are, engaging you in conversation / talking at you when you don’t care about responding, etc etc.
• A little dense. It does not self reflect.

Background

Childhood

Note that Nix's story is heavily intertwined with Anhema's, and so a lot of these plot details between them are similar but Anhema-heavy.

In Nix's early years, it was very authentically dramatic and "cringe": it was ostracized from its peers throughout the entirely of school on the basis that it was weird. However, instead of feeling lonely and hurt like most other kids would, it instead rewired its brain into believing that other children are gawking and avoiding them because its quirky and special and the other kids don't deserve them. This mindset protected it from the vast majority of bullying in school, but as an effect Nix is incapable of doing any kind of self reflection. Any criticism slides off of it like water on a raincoat because its already so used to any negativity being attributed to people not understanding my vision -> they dont get it -> so I'm blameless -> so I'm better than them.

The relationship between Nix and her mother is tense - they're similar, and they should like each other, but they don't.
It's similar to the movie Ladybird: Fenix loves Nix but doesn’t believe it’s living as its best person, and Nix appreciates Fenix but takes everything she says as a challenge towards the way it lives its life. They’re both too hardheaded to budge.

MEETING ANHEMA

Nix meets Anhema on the street, and immediately becomes infatuated. It flirts incessantly and constantly with her while Anhema goes on minding her own business.

One day Anhema falls down the stairs, breaks her neck, and nearly dies. Instead of taking her to a hospital, it instead hauls her back to its house and tries to play nurse. This repeats over the next few years until Anhema goes into house arrest/rehab. At one point Nix comes over and is hilariously insensitive about this.

Post-Main Plot

In bullet point form because this spans ~80 years.

• Anhema quits her retail jobs and becomes a mailman.
• Nix and Anhema get divorced and remarried 3 different times. They also renew their vows every other year, to Nix’s insistence.
  • Every divorce/marriage/vow renewal has an elaborate, over the top theme party.
• Kuya gets old. This dog is pushing 30: His hair falls out, he doesn’t move much, he gets very tired often. He still loves Anhema a lot. What a good boy.
• Kuya finally dies. Anhema is distraught and doesn't leave the house.
• One month in, Nix doesn’t get why Anhema’s not done grieving and makes the following thought process: Why is she crying => Her dog just died => If she gets a dog again she’ll be fine => buy Anhema a dog.
• Nix does exactly that. Anhema quite literally throws them out and wordlessly divorces Nix for the fourth time.
• Anhema stays at her parent's house for a while.
• Nix goes back to its mother’s basement and still doesn’t get it. It still has the puppy and doesn’t know how to take care of it, to the point where the dog's health is very nearly threatened.
  • The puppy gets taken away and Nix gets assigned some community service.
  • Nix realizes a little bit late that its actions have consequences.
• There’s a good 10 years where Anhema doesn’t talk to Nix at all. After a few failed attempts of Nix trying to stop by and buy Anhema’s forgiveness with presents, it gives her some space.
• Insert time gap here.
• Nix and Anhema finally come across each other again. After dodging Anhema’s attempts to punch them, Nix actually apologizes and asks if it can just be in Anhema’s life again.
  • Anhema: Ugh. Godammit. Okay.
• Insert another time gap here. They get married again and at the great milves age of their late 60s, actually start being domestic and living a calmish life.
  • Nix tries to communicate and listen to Anhema better by writing down what she says in a little notebook and posting sticky notes around the house.
• Eventually Nix dies. Anhema stays home for two years straight, where she slowly goes through and organizes Nix’s paintings.
  • A good chunk of them are self portraits, and the majority are portraits of Anhema.
  • After organizing all of them, Anhema puts up a museum of Nix’s art and puts the rest of its self portraits around the house.
  • Nix’s will and letter.
  • At its request, Anhema lies about how Nix dies every time someone asks.
    • Neither of them actually know what Nix was dying from.

Connections

Halcyon

Halcyon (Hal for short) is Nix’s only friend and sort-of mentor. She’s an older sculptor that looks like disney channel's cool older sister x skater girl aesthetic: she has shoulder-length messy hair and a backwards cap, with loose-fitting clothing. She has both a husband (who is Nix and Anhema’s divorce attorney) and wife (who gives Anhema the dogs she fosters later on in life). She met Nix because Nix thought they were so cool in passing it just kept sticking around until Hal accepted that’s her life now.

You could say Nix has a bit of a crush on Hal, but it's more like a strange idol obsession. It wants to be their best friend. This is a bit strange to Halcyon because she’s ~7-10 years older than Nix: She keeps trying to set boundaries, but Nix keeps wanting to be best friends. Eventually, she falls into the older sister role for Nix instead.

• Nixema's friend* circle is literally just Hal’s family.

Wren

Wren Robin is a banksy-type rival of Nix. He’s the type to do NFTs, nail a banana to the wall, debate on what art means for the purpose of irritating people, and he wants Nix sooo bad. So bad it's actually really funny because Nix is aromantic and a lesbian. Even if Nix wasn’t a lesbian, it still hates him so fucking much it actively unleashes its followers onto him like a pack of rabid dogs. He exists SOLELY for the purpose of letting everyone know how mean Nix is.

• video reference
• Fun fact: He hates birds.

One absolutely vital part of Wren is that he can’t be drawn: All of his interactions with Nix are online. He cannot have a physical form, otherwise he will usurp the spotlight.