I've been dabbling in a project, mostly world building and not actual fic because my brain is a strange creature, but I have decided that in my interpretation of the PJO universe, Athena is ... well a strategist in all things.
Including the creation of her children.
The way I'm envisioning it, creating a child from her own mind isn't really a task she undertakes casually.
Yes, she does it occasionally as a "gift" to a mortal whose mind she admires. There's no romantic or sexual relationship, but it's an intense, consuming relationship all the same.
Children born for that reason (or for just that reason) are rare though. Athena might have many favorites, but she's also proud. Who deserves a child entirely crafted by a Goddess? Only the few.
I think, in a normal decade, the number of Athena campers is actually on the lower end compared to most of the other Olympians.
None of the Campers outside of Athena's own children every really figure it out, and Chiron, who knows, would sooner die than tell them.
But when there are many children of Athena, like there are in Annabeth's childhood, it's a sign that something strange or terrible is coming.
Athena is a strategist, the right hand of Zeus, his favorite child, the one who forsees and attempts to dismantle threats to Olympians' power. She moves the pieces into place without hesitation or sentimentality.
And the easiest pieces to control, of course, would be her own children.
Other demigods have other immortal parents to listen to, no matter how strong their desire for victory or their inherent cunning. Her own children are fragments of her own mind- much more reliable. Much easier to predict.
And if in the years leading up to whatever disturbance she forsees she chooses mortal parents for her children with calculation, with an eye for the skill sets and temperaments she predicts most needing in the dark times ahead...well, the child and their parent should be honored by her forethought.
It isn't even that she has no affection for the parent or child, in so much as she is capable of affection. But Athena is always, always three steps ahead, and her actions always have intent. Her children are no different.
A demigod, ultimately, is a weapon in the hands of the gods. It's best that the ones she chooses are well-crafted.
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A complete travesty in the Good Omens universe? Michael not being portrayed the leader of angels.
She's supposed to be the Supreme Commander, and she's supposed to be the boss. I sincerely suggest you don't fight me on this hill. For Hell's sake, the actress has the perfect vibe... A crime has been commited here.
Therefore, I swear to fix it in my fanfictions. General, I'll do right by you. ❤
If you can't tell, in spite of being on the opposite side, I'm attached to this figure. I'm protective of this figure. I'll defend this figure with claws and teeth.
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marty hart's cyclical return to praising family as THE thing that keeps a man grounded, stable, and happy (specifically in pointing out that rust DOESN'T have a family) even as flashbacks show him spiraling into jealous macho violence as he lies to, mistreats, and destroys his family over the course of multiple affairs (by which he deliberately steps outside of and away from his family despite his wife's best efforts to get him to reconnect and step up to be the family man he sees himself as)
vs
rust cohle's repeated excoriations of the idea of individuality and personhood and the stupid self-centeredness and entitlement that comes with saying "I, a human being, matter to the universe, and the things I do matter", an ideology he carries for years and waxes poetic on for his interviewers as late as 2012, even as he obsessively works himself to the bone to get justice and resolution for the victims he's assigned and ultimately to protect children from the powerful and dangerous people who want to brutalize them
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I see this held up as major proof of Dean's badness, but couldn't it also be proof of Cas having faith Dean can get past anything without Cas having to change his behavior? The way it's structured the onus is on DEAN to work through it, not others to change or make amends. ---- CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.
I see what you mean in a general sense, and it's extremely possible that Cas is thinking about his own past fights with Dean and Dean forgiving him, and from the perspective of the critique you have in mind that you're refuting, I agree. But of course deancrit casgirls will forever insist that Cas has never in his life done anything harmful to Dean either accidentally or on purpose, so any time Dean might dare try to hold him accountable for anything, he's actually just making shit up and being toxic and controlling, so here Cas is just apologizing for his own abusive relationship. You can only get their take by being deliberately obtuse/disingenuous.
That said, the context of that line (from 15.13 "Destinty's Child") is Cas answering soulless Jack's question about whether Dean will eventually forgive him for murdering Mary.
CASTIEL: Hey, Jack.
JACK: Cas, you know what's good about being dead?
CASTIEL: Uh, as I recall, very little.
JACK: Well, when you come back, you – you really get into all that life is. Hot, cold, sweet, spicy, funny, scary.
CASTIEL: And are you? "Into it"?
JACK: I want to be. But I don't... feel things the way I used to. Before I lost my...
CASTIEL: Your soul.
JACK: I used to feel things. In my bones. It was glorious, and sometimes unbearable. But I felt them. Now, I understand joy or sadness, but... I know those things aren't in me. I understand why Sam and Dean were angered by what happened to Mary...
CASTIEL: By what you did to Mary.
JACK: Yes. I see that I've caused them pain. And it's clear that things have changed. Especially with – with Dean. Will he ever forgive me?
CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.
JACK: How long will that take?
CASTIEL: I don't know.
And yeah—I have seen people refer to Cas's little speech here as "condoning child abuse" and other bullshit. Because how DARE Dean not forgive soulless Jack for murdering his mother (something soulless Jack is unable to actually really acknowledge he did). I mean clearly any time someone murders your mom because she made them mad and threatened their sense of security by asking if they're okay and saying their concerning actions can’t stay a secret… That’s just natural understandable stuff! You need to forgive the person who murdered her instantly and if you don’t idk you’re kinda overreacting don’t you think? :/ I mean your mom probably deserved it kind of anyway for reading the room so wrong and talking about getting a person help. And I mean if you don't forgive the person who killed your mom or do anything trying to stop them from hurting more people you're really a child abuser... toward an adult... who murdered your mother in cold blood and is unable to even understand why it was wrong in any sense other than an intellectual one like he read it from a book... preferring to refer to it as "What happened to Mary" instead of acknowledge it as something he himself did because he was mad and felt threatened—which is what he circled back to in "Jack In The Box" too. It's only when Jack gets his soul back that he's able to actually feel true empathy, acknowledge his real actions and the gravity of them, and give an actual sincere apology. Because his soul is actually important—something this fandom refuses, by and large, to notice.
Anyway, this fandom's take on Mary's murder and soulless Jack vs. regular Jack is overwhelmingly a bag of wet third grader vomit and feces so what can one expect?
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I think one thing I will say about the finale was that the most problematic aspect of the concept of the show was how it feels like they had to use the Fionna and Cake plot to Trojan horse a resolution to a swathe of loose ends Simon and Betty's arcs had. They pulled it off even better than I ever wanted to let myself hope for for the most part but I would say my main issue if anything was how cramped the finale felt when I think they could have left a lot more up to season 2 speculations (especially with the resolutions for the alt universes, they didn't really feel necessary when they basically just had to egg Scarab).
I feel I liked the understated melancholies of seeing Simon recontextualized and kinda infantilized in that temporary form hosting his mind, and some people have said the Casper and Nova thing felt hamfisted but I thought the vibes were too cute to care that it wasn't particularly "efficient" as far as metaphors go, but that does slow down the pace which probably crunched the ending a little harder :'). But it also worked in further showing the sad side-effect of the crown on Simon's relationships, including that of stunting his ability to have ever matured in his understandings of love and his relationship with Betty. I also think their last scene in the memory worked because it was Simon reconsidering how he viewed their relationship for the first time, even if his attempt to do for Betty what she did for him would have just been an inversion of their original flaw, the scene rests on them understanding it's unchangeable anyway, so that decision doesn't matter so much and it's not something for Simon to dwell on.
I also feel I liked the scene a lot in spite of how scarce it felt in the finale was because of what was most conspicuously unaddressed, which was just the sheer logistical impossibility of any different choices they made having possibly been any "better." It sticks out because Betty says they could have made better choices, which kinda seems to situate their relationship in a vacuum as if there wasn't a very high likelihood had they done anything different at that crossroads, they would have just been literally nuked into orbit regardless. Sure, it seems like enough time had passed for them to have worked out their relationship better at least and then died, but that kinda seems better by an arbitrarily less tragic amount, and really it seems the least tragic possibilities ever were either that they conceive their relationship more healthily, Simon finds the crown and protects Betty from exploding somehow and also doesn't warp her to the future, and they live some terrible survival life but at least they get a chance to live something kinda fulfilling and Betty probably would have taken care of Ice King decently for the remainder of her life once Simon was gone while also having a better understanding of what had happened to him. The only other hand would be that she also was still warped to the future he finds the crown but Simon had not enabled her self-sacrificial tendencies and so she becomes less undividedly obsessed with saving him and instead integrates into Ooo more properly and also accepts what had become of him (I find it hard to think she would have just let him die either way though lmao).
That all said, they had been around a long time to have reflected over everything. I think it is a bit of an issue that they don't really allude to that, but I find it easy to believe that they did recognize how thwarted a happy ending would ever be for them by all angles of their reality, yet they still had that tender ache of that simple and small tragedy just between them two that still exists within the torrent of catastrophe that engulfed them and the breadth of their fate. So much horror in their lives but they reconnect and find themselves primarily concerned with that last regret of not having been able to make the ideal relationship they quite thought they had.
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