#The time paradox

[penultimatestalematewithdeath]

Choosing to believe Artemis’ “polymer frame” aircraft is indeed a fiber composite frame that is being mis-labeled in narration. For my own sanity.

[laeliana]

After Artemis told Angeline everything about their misadventures with the People:

Angeline: "I... understand. But... Minerva is... you know... normal?"

Artemis, chuckling: "She's human, if that's what you're asking, Mother. I'm afraid that normal is a bit too much stretching the truth."

[the-lampman]

I have a question for the Artemis Fowl fandom

Let me know what you think in the notes, I am genuinely curious what people think about this since I don’t recall it being brought up a lot

Explanation/ramblings under the read more

I spent pretty much my entire drive home from work thinking about this, and it might just be driving me a little mad… If I start talking about chocolate truffles, shoot me.

In The Arctic Incident, Opal is depicted as sadistic, psychopathic, and megalomaniacal. But throughout most of the books, she remains calm and composed, until Cudgeon’s betrayal sets her off and she flies into a rage (and then a wall).

When she returns in The Opal Deception, her sadism, megalomaniacal-ness, and delusions have been dialed up to 11 and then some. She’s lost the plot, gone bonkers. And this is explicitly stated in the book, that the coma changed her.

Then comes The Time Paradox, where we get to meet Opal from before The Arctic Incident… but she behaves the same as she did in The Opal Deception. Which is a bizarre inconsistency, I don’t get it.

I dunno, maybe pumping herself full of animal brain juice was making her loopy, but I don’t recall that being stated… though it’s been a while since I read The Time Paradox.

I think it would’ve been interesting if Past!Opal acted more like TAI!Opal than Present!Opal. Maybe instead of having her pose a physical/magical threat, she could pose more of an intellectual threat. That’d make an interesting AU come to think of it… if I had all the time, motivation, and energy in the world…

[joellalovestoread]

Artemis Fowl fandom this is my shameless plug.

JOIN THE ARTEMIS FOWL ROLEPLAY COMMUNITY! we only have 2 active canon characters

@thesecondartemis-fowl and @d-butler-at-your-service (that’s me!)

SERIOUSLY YOU CAN BE ANYONE IT’S HONESTLY SO FUN AND IT WOULD MAKE IT SO MUCH BETTER FOR YOU GUYS TO HELP US REVIVE THIS FANDOM! YOU CAN BE HOLLY, BECKETT, FOALY, NO1, LAZULI. PICK A NAME (other than butler and artemis preferably) YOU CAN EVEN BE ARTEMIS SR (that’d actually be honestly hilarious)

just tag us in a pinned post if you decide to join (which I really hope you do!) so we know we can interact with someone new now!

and @myles-fowl if you’re still alive it’d be reaaaaaalllllyyyy cool if you’d rejoin us too (no pressure though! If you don’t want to you ABSOLUTELY do not have to feel obligated to come back)

[cantheywinthehungergames]

@rockett-to-the-purple-moon

Tribute Name: Artemis Fowl II

Age: 12-15 (biologically)

Restrictions: Can only use tools and weapons supplied in the Hunger Games arena

If you would like to see a character aged 12-18 enter the Hunger Games, please submit them through my asks. 19+ aged character submissions are currently closed.

Please also look at my pinned post for submission rules as well as a list of previously submitted characters prior to submitting your character.

[azuriewillow005]

I can't stick to one idea at a time so I changed the Extinctionists' courtroom thingy

(save me I'm terrible at drawing structures)

[d-butler-at-your-service]

Look at this cute little lemur I found on pintrest!

brings back memories eh, @thesecondartemis-fowl?

[anna-undaunted]

“In another time” Holly said, and kissed him on the cheek.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Past Artemis and Present Artemis Are Not Allowed in the Same Room

If Number 1 kind of nudged the door open to time travel and wibbly wobbly timey wimey shenanagins in Lost Colony, then Artemis full-on kicked it down and yeeted a grenade through it in this book. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox.

As per usual, SPOILERS ABOUND below the break.

There are a ton of things about this book that are amazing and in order to stay at least a little organized, we're gonna use HEADINGS this time around! That's not to say the headings are in any particular order, but life has been lifeing and I need a little help making sure I gush about everything I want to here. Because while Eoin Colfer introduced time travel in the last book, this one is a whole TIME PARADOX PLOT!

Opal Koboi, Empress of our Hearts

So, there are places for nuanced, complex, morally gray villains who have carefully throught-through ethoses and who are compelling because of their tragedy. Those kinds of villains are great.

Opal Koboi is not that kind of villain.

Opal Koboi is a villain in the classic Disney sense. She is absolutely unhinged, wants nothing more than to be Empress of the Goddamn World, and absolutely revels in setting things on fire just to watch them burn. She is rock-solid on her own worth, she is terrifyingly intelligent, and she is equally fun when she is strutting around in her own success as when she is pitching a dramatical cats tantrum because somebody said "ethics" in her presence. Our girl is sheer fun from start to finish, and honestly I love how consistent she is.

In this book, we see Opal before the events of The Arctic Incident, and it's great to know that she has ALWAYS been unhinged and glorious. If anything, this book shows us that the plan to use the B'wa Kell to take over Haven was weirdly vanilla for Opal. Sucking the bodily fluids out of endangered animals to basically Captain America super serum herself is...way more on brand.

The bit where she is too narcissistic and paranoid to stay in character as Angeline Fowl for more than like 60 seconds once Jay Jay is in the room is also AMAZING. Talk about getting in your own way...

Artemis vs. Artemis

So sometimes as a series gets increasingly lengthy, it's good to remind readers and character how much your protagonists have grown. Eoin Colfer decided that time travel was a great way to take advantage of this, and reveled in it by giving readers 10-year-old Artemis's opinion of 18-year-old Artemis and vice versa for the entire book, and it is SO FUN. They both hate each other, and understandably so. They both also have qualities that the other begrudgingly respects, and ultimately they need BOTH Artemises to resolve the plot.

We also get some really lovely instances of Artemis outsmarting and bamboozling himself. This conceit had every chance of coming off as cringe as hell, but Colfer handed it with enough humor and humanity to make it feel real rather than like a whole book devoted to a vanity plot centered on Artemis thinking he's the best thig since sliced bread.

Artemis...That was WILDLY Uncool to do to Holly

Ok, so Artemis has grown a lot over the course of five books. He's matured. He's learned how to be a reluctant antihero. He and Holly are legit friends. Which somehow manages to make it EVEN WORSE when Artemis full-on knowingly tricks Holly into thinking that she not only gave his mother a fatal illness but also started a plague that at one point killed 20% of the fairy population in three years. There's honestly no coming back from that kind of breach of trust.

And no, giving Holly a chance to say goodbye to Commander Root does NOT make Holly and Artemis square. It nicely ties up a loose emotional thread, but it does NOT square the emotional devastation of infecting a friend's mother and starting the plague 2.0. That is possibly the least believable relationship dynamic in a book where Artemis and Holly KISS (no, we're not gonna talk about it, they were both under the influence of the time stream and it doesn't count).

The truly wild thing about this is that Artemis before the fairies was a cold-hearted little bastard capable of incredible cruelty, but once Artemis understands feelings and emotional relationships, he's suddenly capable of hurting people WAY MORE than he could when he was a tiny robotic human. And of course the person he takes aim at is HOLLY SHORT. Like, FFS, Artemis. You did less damage when you had the emotional intelligence of a gold ingot...

Butler

Domovoi Butler is too good for this world and we do not deserve him. Artemis sure as hell does not deserve him, past OR present. Past Butler full on calls 10-year-old Artemis out on the act that he is *checks notes* handing over the last of a species to a group of fanatics to be horribly murdered in a kangaroo court, fully sells a sentient elf to those same fanatics, does not emotionally let Artemis off the hook when he is experiencing guilt and shame over being an accessory to murder and extinction, and TURNS THE PLANE AROUND to go save Holly and 18-year-old Artemis from the extinctionists. And thats just past Butler.

Present Butler is such a goddamn badass that he resists a juiced-up Opal Koboi's mesmer so hard that he gives himself a heart attack. Not even Opal Koboi can pull a 180 on Butler's moral compass, and even when he can't fully fight her off, he can resist in little ways, like sticking breathing tubes in barrels. Someone let this man retire happily, he has MORE THAN earned it at this point.

Baby's First Ecocritical Text

Environmentalism and ecocriticism have been very present as secondary themes in the Artemis Fowl series from the very first book, but this is, I believe, the first book where this theme gets really explicit and has real, concrete plot consequences and implications. The "hunting animals to extinction is bad for [list of reasons]" isn't the deepest or most nuanced version of the argument, but it doesn't have to be. The audience for these books are middle graders and YA readers. They get a concrete introduction to ecocriticism and some very comprehensible examples of the consequences of extinction and pollution, and that's going to be enough for more of them than you'd think to keep thinking and reading about the issue.

I highlight this because so few middle grade and YA books do ecocriticism at all, let alone this clearly and concisely. I suspect we will see more of this as climate change keep wreaking absolute havoc on quite literally everything, but these books did it before it was cool, and I really appreciate that about them.

Overall, this book is not my favorite of the series. Time travel can be a hard sell, even if you weave the complexities of time travel around a relatively simple fetch quest. As per usual though, the character work is never not entertaining, and I do enjoy rereading this one periodically.

[beautifulenemychild]

I’m rereading Artemis Fowl and I just got to the middle/end of time paradox and my heart is kinda breaking? Like, Holly and Artemis were so close. And then arty had to go and fuck it up by lying to her and making her feel so guilty. I didn’t even want them to be a couple just that level of closeness that they had, it was so, idk, harmonious? I’m currently very heartbroken for them and idk why haha. The kicker was Holly being sure that ‘the most she and Artemis could ever have now was what they’d always had- grudging respect’ fuck arty. Why did you have to do that? You idiot, you could have HAD A REAL, CLOSE, BEST FRIEND. ANOTHER PIECE OF YOU, FOWL. Idk idk, it’s just they were even brought closer by all of the time stream stuff and sharing a consciousness pool.

[yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere]

artemis fowl, i love you forever

forever obsessed with artemis fowl who, upon realizing that he needs a fuckton of money in order to keep searching for his missing and probably dead father, doesn’t reach for his impeccable hacking skills or his ability to flawlessly recreate artistic masterpieces in order to commit art theft but instead runs the most absolutely insane and convoluted plan that’s ever been constructed (rivaled only by the insane and convoluted plans he constructs when he’s older and aided by time and practice). based solely, by the way, off of what basically amounts to the fairy bible which is written entirely in verse AND in a language that no human being has ever been permitted to see let alone translate. and the plan WORKS

[laeliana]

"I wish Minerva was here."

Holly looked back at Artemis, puzzled: "Why? I mean, I get that she's your girlfriend and everything, but why now, in this exact moment?"

Artemis made a small gesture towards his younger self, awaiting for them: "Because she has a lot of experience in putting that little prick where he belongs to."

[evercelle]

[azuriewillow005]

I have absolutely no idea exactly how the Extinctionists' courtroom looks like so I gave up and complementary-coloured everything

[laeliana]

100% Artemis during The Time Paradox

Dear younger self,

you stupid fucking cunt.

[spectraling]

"They're soulmates" oh it's way worse than that

~ quote from marsadist