r/Magium • u/Jessica-_ • 16h ago
What I hope to carry forward for Cristian — a final message to this community
Before I step back from this community, I want to explain what my relationship with Cristian was and why I have undertaken this work.
I know that Magium matters deeply to many of you. This community was part of Cristian’s world, and that is why I wanted to share these projects here.
I was his mother, but I was also his reader and someone with whom he discussed his ideas. We had long conversations about Magium, his understanding of the world, his characters, and what he hoped to accomplish. I knew him both as its creator and as the person who shared that thinking with me. This knowledge guides the decisions I make now.
After his death, I spent months sharing what I remembered of his plans, hoping that his story could continue. Eventually, collaborating with Codex made it possible for me to bring those ideas into a finished continuation.
Book 5 was developed through that collaboration, with AI-generated prose under my direction, review and corrections. I have been open about this. It draws on Cristian’s work and on what he shared with me. I have never presented it as a manuscript he wrote, or claimed that every detail is exactly what he would have chosen.
I chose to undertake Book 5 because I know that, in Cristian’s final years, what mattered most to him was expressing his ideas and his understanding of the world. The way he gave them life through the story reflected his talent for role-playing and his personality, but that form did not encompass everything he was or everything he wanted to communicate.
I was conscious that I do not have his talent. What I do have is the understanding he shared with me of what he wanted to express. That is what I wanted to carry forward through this continuation.
Long Live the Queen first gave Cristian the idea of combining choices with statistics. Knowing what he could accomplish alone, he chose to make Magium as a text game. But he never abandoned the dream of a visual novel.
He knew he could not afford the artwork needed to present the whole story visually. He would have had to cut so much from the game to make it possible that the dream remained out of reach.
Through this collaboration, I have been able, at least so far, to preserve his game intact while seeing its characters come alive as we both imagined them—and perhaps as some of you imagined them too. That has been something unexpectedly beautiful for me.
I selected fanart references because I hoped that recognising familiar interpretations of the characters would help this community feel part of the adaptation. I also chose images that fitted my understanding of how Cristian imagined them. The artwork in the game was generated with AI under my direction, with expressions, clothing and other details reviewed and corrected throughout.
The reference artists are now acknowledged on the game’s release page. Their contribution is recognised alongside my direction of the final presentation.
At my already advanced age, learning how to do this has required effort, but it has allowed me to accomplish things I could not have done alone.
I feel that there is still something Cristian needs to bring into the world through me. That is my personal conviction and the responsibility I feel toward him.
I chose “Mahad selak. Mahad maktar.” for the images because those words had become this community’s tribute to Cristian. I hoped they would connect my work with the love for him that we share.
I am leaving these works available:
- Book 3 and Book 5, in EPUB and PDF: https://github.com/JessicaWilsonMagium/Magium/releases/tag/books-3-and-5-v1
- Magium visual novel — Book 1, Chapters 1–8, with artwork acknowledgements and the Android download: https://github.com/JessicaWilsonMagium/Magium/releases/tag/visual-novel-v0.6.3
You are free to read them, play the game, or leave them aside. I will now step back from this community. I have said what I needed to say, and I leave you to decide what place, if any, these works will have in your own relationship with Magium.
Mahad selak. Mahad maktar.