thinking about how hunter never got a fucking break until thanks to them. he goes from failing at eclipse lake to doing anything he can to male up for it to betraying new friends to learning he betrayed new friends to risking a fucking beating to make up for betraying his new friends to attempting to capture some criminals to his entire reality crumbling in front of him to mortal danger and near-certain death to protecting someone else to running in a panic to homelessness and starvation and never leaving that mindset to Oh Shit It's Him He's Gonna Kill Me to Please Don't Let Him Kill Me to needing to save a friend to immediate retraumatization he needs to put aside to soothe the friend to having to explain how they're all gonna die to joining the rebellion and fruitlessly planning how to save the world to Don't Tell Them to not-homophobia-orb to Why Am I Luz (also fighting) to Oh God She's Been Captured And It's My Fault to having his life source drained gradually through a sigil to YOU'RE LYING to Uncle Just Fucking Died to being stranded in another realm and needing (thinking he needs) to protect his kin from the authority figure.
Not ONCE in that stretch of time did he get to stop and process anything. He still has to come to terms with his uncle being evil, and by now he's been splatted by a star child. He has to have been so tightly wound the entire time. The moment he felt safe at the Nocedas' house, I have no doubt that everything just fucking CRASHED into him at once. my guy probably went catatonic for days on end. When there's no threat of death to keep you driven, there's nothing to stop the absolute terror and betrayal, and I'd be shocked if he wouldn't be paralyzed by fear.
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ok sorry the OTHER thing about lucienne is like. as previously stated she is dream's handpicked emissary from the waking world to the dreaming she's the diplomat in chief she's the translator she's the bridge. because the dreaming is, in a very real way, dream's own psyche, this is tantamount to giving lucienne a tremendous degree of access to his interiority and by transitive property also tantamount to entering into a deeply emotionally intimate relationship with her (unimportant for the purposes of this post whether that relationship is platonic or romantic).
now, in general, looking at the pattern of dream's close emotional relationships—dream doesn't share himself with people as a rule (beyond the access that all things that live have to the dreaming; but i'm talking about his self here, the one he doesn't like to acknowledge he even has), but when he does share with people, it's with people who have some shadow on the soul, so to speak. just looking at attested relationships in show canon, his deepest emotional connection seems to be with death, who embodies the duality of light and dark even better than he does himself. calliope is the muse of epic poetry—heroism and tragedy—and also bears the sort of divine pride that led her to cut dream off for hundreds or thousands of years when he wronged her. the less said about that other guy, the better, but he's no sunshine-rainbows-unicorns type—he's a soldier of fortune, a bandit and a killer, a man who profits from the sale of human life. even best bird matthew, in comix canon, had a sordid past that will maybe be partially retconned for the show but has still been gestured at.
dream likes the complicated ones. he's drawn to them. they speak to something in him that he won't acknowledge in himself (he has to be Whole, fully integrated, without reservation, because he is the king and he is the dreaming and if the dreaming ain't whole then the universe is in trouble—but he feels that ache nonetheless).
all that is to say: when people try to portray lucienne as dream's Designated Well-Adjusted Neurotypical Friend, i begin to harm and maim.
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frederick chase, legacy
thinking about frederick chase, who grew up in a family that knew about all the things everyone else couldn’t see, not because those things touched them, but because they used to. thinking about frederick chase, who’s a little too strong, sometimes, who’s a little too quick, sometimes, who has a strange aura of power that he didn’t earn but his great-great-great-grandfather did. thinking about frederick chase, who wants to be normal, who is almost normal, who is almost able to ignore the things that have too many eyes and razor sharp teeth and kill children in alleyways--but not him, never him, he doesn’t show up on their radar, not anymore. thinking about frederick chase, who is dizzingly, maddeningly grateful for his own cosmic insignificance because he knows what happens to heroes.
thinking about frederick chase, nerdy and goofy and gangly and too smart for his own good, but more or less a normal guy once he moves out of his parents’ house. thinking about frederick chase, who graduates summa cum laude studying heroics of the human kind and gets his pick of grad schools and flirts with another TA at three am while they both pretend to grade papers and ignore their research. thinking about frederick chase, who falls in love with gray eyes and sly grins and stubborn pride and shows that by arguing and teasing and fiddling with his glasses and showing off, just a little, just to make her laugh.
thinking about frederick chase, who takes her home to meet his family, only for his sister to gasp and his father to drop his wine glass and his mother to bite her lip and his brother to watch with wide, jealous eyes. thinking about frederick chase, whose blood is almost all red, whose life is almost all safe, whose legacy is almost all forgotten, it’s been so long, who’d almost escaped completely, whose feelings of betrayal are sharp, vicious things. thinking about frederick chase, confronting a goddess, terror and anger making his voice shake, and what that must have looked like, a mortal lecturing the divine, how that must have made athena wonder and plot and plan.
thinking about frederick chase, who wakes up exactly one year before he has to present his dissertation to a baby on his doorstep with his hair and her eyes who he knows just by looking at her is doomed, doomed, doomed. thinking about frederick chase, who lives off of coffee and ramen and hasn’t showered in a week and still isn’t even twenty-eight, who never wanted any of this, who was never asked if he did, who feels violated and alone and afraid. thinking about frederick chase, who tries to give the baby back because he knows what happens to kids in alleyways when the monsters (or the gods) are hungry and knows he’s not enough to protect her, who’s told he has no choice but to try.
thinking about frederick chase, who keeps his daughter because none of this is her fault and gods forbid athena take any responsibility for the life she created without his consent, who names her annabeth for favor and oathkeeping and grace, who raises her the best he can even though he’s convinced he’ll outlive her, his clever little miracle child who represents every single one of his parents’ warnings and all the ambitions his brother’s ever sought. thinking about frederick chase, who reads to her and braids her hair and puts her in a playpen with a box of legos while he teaches his classes and comes back to find her building temples and shrines and skyscrapers with her chubby toddler hands. thinking about frederick chase, who knows his daughter is smarter and more powerful than him, who knows exactly what all that wit and strength is meant to protect her from and how little either will matter, in the end.
thinking about frederick chase, who has every member of his family stolen from him before annabeth steals herself away. thinking about frederick chase, who never once blames her for it, who wants her safe, even if it that means being far, far away from him. thinking about frederick chase, who messes up and says the wrong thing and forgets, sometimes, that for all her cleverness, his daughter isn’t a mind reader and needs to be told that she is precious, that she is cherished, that she is everything he’s ever been afraid to lose. thinking about frederick chase, who doesn’t know how to raise a demigod, only how to mourn one, so he fails, and fails, and fails, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how deeply he loves.
thinking about frederick chase, who, when given the chance, shows his adoration by brainstorming new building ideas and telling old college stories and making midnight breakfasts and shooting at titans with celestial bronze bullets. thinking about frederick chase, who grows and shifts and tries to see his daughter in real time, not only in those last moments he knows are coming, when she’s that kid in the alleyway and he’s not enough, never enough to stop the monsters from coming for her. thinking about frederick chase, who never once makes his peace with it, but works for the rest of his life to earn his own peace with her.
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