#gutlau

[calchexxis]

Hi, big fan

I’ve been rereading Flashbangs and Frag Grenades, and I love the concept of gutlau as a language. It feels so distinctly Zaunite!

I’m curious though what you think it would actually sound like when spoken? Or is it non-standard/just as variable as the written version?

What I tell people in my comments is that Gutlau isn't intended to sound like a specific language, but rather that anyone reading my fic should probably hear it in some mother tongue. Sort of a catch-all 'language of the colonized'. I've had people tell me it sounds like Polish, Yiddish, Tagalog, etc, which is the intent.

[calchexxis]

Hey! Thanks for the shoutout!

Re: Lightcannon as a fandom, it’s kind of a weird story. Bear in mind that Flashbangs & Frag Grenades started pre-Arcane and had something like a hundred thousand words worth of ongoing fic when Arcane did release, and likewise, at the time I started writing, there were less than 100 fics even in the Jinx/Lux tag at all. It was very much the definition of a crackship up until Arcane came out.

Before that, there was very little content about them whether in fic, fan art, or anything else. And what little there was almost invariably was Star Guardian-oriented because that was the progenitor of the ship.

Speaking from experience, at the time there were no consistently updating Lightcannon fics except mine. Jinx was kind of a meme in the community as a sort of wish.com Harley Quinn, and with other more popular ships like Cait/Vi (called Piltover’s Finest back then), Diana/Leona, and of course the K/DA ladies present. Even my own work was pretty sparsely viewed before Arcane came out and people came doggedly searching for cute sapphic copium in the angst-ridden wake of Arcane’s ending.

But that ending changed everything.

I can’t explain how weird it was to see hundreds and hundreds of people suddenly appearing and commenting, then seeing my own personal story tags like ‘Lux is Crazier’ appearing in other fics I had no input in. Even my own personal world creations like the fictional Zaunite language of gutlau being referenced started appearing in other stories. That was to say nothing of the characterization of Lux in almost all of the newer stories being parallel or outright identical to my version of her in Flashbangs where she’s more or less a sociopathic spy wearing a mask of Disney-princess-esque gentility.

To this day, I’ve only ever suspected this, but I can’t help but wonder how much of Lightcannon specifically stemmed directly from Flashbangs, if only because it was, again, the only thing there was to read that was still updating. It was pure luck even if that IS the case, because I had no input on that and it caught me off guard more than anything, but it’s still very weird to think about.

So, thoughts on the whole Jinx x Lux shipping popularity blowing up? Why it happened, do you think it can work, especially with the context of Arcane involved?

I don't actually know the history of that ship, so I can't tell you much about that (someone else please reblog if you have a good timeline!)

I know it certainly bloomed with the Star Guardian skins, casting Lux and Jinx SPECIFICALLY as opposites and bitter rivals who nonetheless come together when it matters because they are bound by bonds of deep affection and mutual need, which, in the context of magical girls which are sapphic as F*** at a baseline, obviously was going to set some things in motion.

Their dynamic also works pretty well just on the trope level. Lux is a optimistic, bright ray of sunshine who wants to see the best and the good in everyone and everything but struggles tremendously feeling inadequate to her responsibilities, and Jinx is a sardonic, detached, self-destructive force of chaos who aggressively refuses to take anything seriously, and whose carefree demeanor hides a deep well of hurt and sorrow.

That's in Star Guardians, mind you, Jinx is... a bit all over the map as a personality across her incarnations, but they generally work well together as contrasting opposites with something meaningful to offer one another.

In Arcane, I have no idea what Demacia would be like, but assuming it goes like it does in the main canon, Lux and Jinx certainly would share some foundational traumas, both of them on the receiving end of rejection and systemic abuse by oppressive hierarchies, and experiencing severe rejection and abandonment by parental and sibling figures.

[smolsawyer]

Hi! I love your blog, and Happy holidays! I was wondering if you know what 'gutlau' means? I've seen it in a few arcane fanfics now and I can't find what it means😅

Hey! Thanks and happy holidays to you too! 🤗

I'm sorry but i have no idea what gutlau is 😂 but maybe some of my followers will know? 😂

[calchexxis]

Post-canon Lightcanno, regarding gutlau and its nature.

All addendums by HG L. Crownguard - Not for publication.

[calchexxis]

Just finished reading Never Knows Best and I get why people are obsessed with Lightcannon now.

They're both messed up in the head (affectionate) and I love them.

Also really like what you did with Gutlau and some of the other lore things (I assume) you added, like the Zaun marriage tradition and such.

Probably going to end up reading Flashbangs & Frag grenades next as well since you got me hooked on Lightcannon.

Love, Penny-

Thank you! And welcome aboard the ship, lol.

And yeah, pretty much all of the Zaunite culture stuff is stuff I outright created while writing Flashbangs & Frag Grenades, and which I expanded on here. It's actually gotten to the point that I semi-regularly have to explain that certain things aren't canon and that I just made them up for my silly gay stories about crazy lesbians.

[julietwiskey1]

Don’t know about lore, but I love the fanon from @calchexxis where Zaun has their own language called gutlau. One of those lore bits that’s good enough to be canon (and let’s be real, that means it’s better than much of the actual canon). Mostly just used within Zaun and with other Zaunites but speak a common tongue with Piltover.

I figure that separate languages would probably fall apart when brought into a game. Where everyone should be able to understand all of the champions equally.

And in arcane we hear multiple languages. In “To ashes and blood” the chant is called out as Shuriman (unsure if it’s a constructed language or renamed real world one). And we hear French, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese in various songs. All but the Chinese happens in the world, so we can assume they all exist in some way. Honestly that’s a bit lazier than what most fantasy projects have led us to expect, but not unreasonable for something more about telling a good story than deep lore.

I have a question for the League lore keepers: what are language barriers like in Runeterra?

I assume there’s some kind of lingua franca but like, are there different dialects? if Jinx goes to a different region would she have to learn the local language/dialect? Or could she get by with whatever is spoken in Piltover? Would she be immediately identifiable as foreign (or from P/Z) because of her accent?

Is there even any lore about this or am I just insane and overthinking it?

[calchexxis]

My Favorite Song — A Lightcannon Drabble

Lux hummed softly along with the radio as she cracked eggs into a bowl. The sun wasn’t quite up, which meant that Jinx was still asleep and would be for a few more minutes until her inexplicable inner clock woke her up to watch the dawn with Lux. She wanted to get an early start on breakfast, though, so that Jinx would have something to eat. She ate so little and so seldom that it was worrying.

Admittedly, she couldn’t taste anything she ate, so Lux understood the disinclination, but Jinx seemed to enjoy the texture of scrambled eggs, so scrambled eggs it would be.

Picking up the bowl, Lux added a dash of cream, salt, and pepper, then began whipping it with a fork as the song moved into the chorus. It wasn’t because Jinx was sleeping that Lux was keeping her voice low. Jinx could sleep through an alarming amount of noise. It was because Lux was fully aware that her singing was terrible.

Frankly, her voice had more in common with a misfiring hextech engine that had caught a cat in its gears than it did with the actual practice of song. Musical studies remained one of the few classes she had ever failed entirely, with her tutor pronouncing her hopeless after six demoralizing months of soul-crushing lessons.

But Lux loved singing.

It was her tiny, secret shame. The one thing she was terrible at, and, because fate clearly had a sense of irony, it was also the one thing she lacked any talent with. So as much as she loved singing, the last thing she wanted was to subject Jinx to the resulting noise.

The eggs bubbled and cooked slowly as the song began to wind down, and it wheeled into the final refrains as they finished in the pan.

Lux was smiling as she hummed through it while doling out breakfast onto hers and Jinx’s respective plates, before dropping the pan into the sink and giving a few more liberal shakes of salt and pepper over her own portion. She skipped Jinx’s. It’s not like she would notice.

Picking up the plates, Lux turned around, and her humming died a throttled, choking death in her throat.

Jinx was standing in the doorway to their bedroom, leaning against the threshold and watching her with wide eyes and a too-wide smile, and from her posture, she had been there for some time. Somehow, Lux had failed to detect her, which wasn’t surprising. Jinx was exceptionally quiet when she wanted to be.

Swallowing thickly, Lux tried to work past her mortified embarrassment and say something—anything—to explain why she sounded like that.

By coincidence, Jinx didn’t give her the chance.

“Why’d you stop singing, Blondie?” She asked. “I like listening to you sing.”

If she weren’t so good at controlling her reactions, Lux would have spent the rest of the morning cleaning up broken ceramic and scattered, scrambled eggs. As it was, she barely kept a hold of the plates through her surprise.

“Oh, I just...you surprised me, that’s all,” Lux said.

That certainly wasn’t a lie, but as she moved to the couch and sat down beside Jinx, passing off the plate and fork as the sun began to peek over the horizon and through the spires of Piltover, Lux reflected on how it really didn’t do justice to how those words had made her feel.

I like listening to you sing.

No one had ever said that to her before.

“Good morning, Lux,” Jinx said, her sibilant gutlau mangled somewhat by her mouthful of scrambled eggs.

Lux snorted, inhaling half of her own bite, then started coughing raggedly, and laughing at the same time before finally clearing her windpipe. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she just smiled back up at Jinx, and said:

“Good morning Jinx. I love you, so much.”

[calchexxis]

Just read a fic written by entirely someone else mention Gutlau and I'm glad to see the Flashbangs and Frag Grenades agenda spreading

Wait seriously?! Can you link it to me?