#when it came out i was the same age as Artemis

[scribefindegil]

My beloved tattered copies of my Artemis Fowl books that I got from library sales are the love of my life. I’m 90% sure I’m so snarky in my writing because of these books. Artemis and his relationships with everyone are so well done. The eye swap thing still gets me. What a duo. What a series. God do the last three really….. do things. I am still mad about Artemis losing his magic immediately yes. And for them making a character so powerful they have to keep making excuses why he’s not around. And… well. You know. But goddamn if I didn’t consume them like 800 times as a kid and goddamn if I’m not so sorely tempted to reread them now that you’ve reminded me (and maybe finally actually read fowl twins)

Listen, the last few books sure made . . . . Choices. AND YET. Even when they were bad (and sometimes they were very bad!), they never did it in a way that made me want to stop reading, which is honestly very impressive! The characters remain recognizable and entertaining and their relationships are compelling even as the situations they're in become increasing Like That, and the characters are what I'm here for.

They're not books that I would necessarily recommend to people who didn't grow up with them but man. I love them so much. Artemis' character development is so good. Every single thing about Holly Short is so good. The whole weird messy found family of it all is so good. The way the later books veer from heist narratives into fairy-tale structure is . . . like, objectively bad, but man does it manage to hit me where it hurts thematically.

Don't even get me started on the eye swap; I'm obsessed with the ongoing progression of how these characters look at each other, because with the magic of control so closely tied to eye contact at the beginning there's always something in the way--mirrors and shields and helmet visors--and it's a huge display of trust to actually meet eyes without any sort of intervention, and the swap ties into this and takes it to the next level and! UGH! (Was literally ANY of this intentional? Knowing Colfer, probably not! Doesn't stop me from losing my mind about it though!)

(I have not read Fowl Twins. I have not even read their cover blurbs despite staring at the audiobook versions every day when I worked at the bookstore. Has anyone read Fowl Twins? And can you tell me if Holly's in them? If not I do not care.)

[captainmera]

Was evelyn ever ALMOST caught by witch hunters?

I WROTE IT, BECAUSE DRAWING IT TAKES TOO LONG.

For some reason, I forgot I could just...... Write these little shorts with little illustrations alongside it, instead of drawing out the whole thing and it takes forever. So... here ya go! Two more little drawings beneath the cut with some text!

Roger growled through the gap amongst his ivory. He could not wrap his head around why his rival was standing there with bow and arrow, willing to.. What? Shoot him? For this woman. Barely a Christian woman, even. "What are you going to do?" Roger gestured at Caleb's homemade weaponry. "You're going to shoot me if I don't leave?" "Maybe." Caleb said, still not tensing the bow. "My brother's a real clever guy, he knows a lot about the body. Did you know that arterial bleeding is the most fatal?" "Uh-" "Looks the most accidental, too." Roger furrowed his brows. Caleb's brown eyes were void of warmth. "What are you saying?" "I'm saying I'm holding a bow. I'm saying I'm pretty good at using it. I'm saying I'm a woodsman, you're not. I'm saying that if I wanted to accidentally shoot you and hide your body, I could. And if you were discovered, it's an arrow in you, not an English pistol wound, or a knife. And nobody knows you were ever here." "...You're not serious." "You can always find out." "You're bluffing, I've never seen you use a bow and-" "Leave my property." Caleb repeated. "And if you are going to accuse my friend of witchcraft, you better have more than suggestive or spectral evidence." Roger glowered back, held his hands up in peace, and backed away. "Fine, I will." And left the way he came through the woods. Caleb waited until he couldn't see him any more, before locking the door and pulling the curtains. Roger had never liked Caleb, but before his rival took a break from witch hunting, Roger had at least had a competitors respect for the man. But respect turned to suspicion. Caleb had been acting strange for awhile... Glum and a lot more quiet. Then that woman showed up. And now the cove were against spectral evidences? Caleb had been the most frequent and outspoken about how witches found a lawful loophole by using supernatural means to get away with their crimes. As it was difficult to prove that a witch had tormented someone in their dreams, for example. And Roger agreed! Sure, Caleb was annoying, but they had both been amongst the best and the worst of hunters, being the same age only meant the two lads butted head to stay in their spot as head of a patrol. Being a witch hunter was a competitive sport, almost, it was hard to explain unless you participated. They were not friends, but Roger was sure if the roles had been reversed, Caleb would've been suspicious too and, honestly? Caleb would've tried to save Roger. It was just good sportsmanship. And this whole thing smelled wicked. Caleb turned to Evelyn. "Are you alright?" "I don't know.." She said and looked at her hands. Artemis had crawled out onto her shoulder to give her a comforting little spider hug. "My magic.. It didn't work." "What?" Caleb abandoned his bow by its place next to the backdoor. "It's not working?" "I don't- I was trying to make it work, he saw me. I'm sorry." Caleb lift her chin up. "Hey no, it's alright. Maybe.. You've just been here too long?" "No that's not it. I know it isn't." "Maybe you're ill?" She smiled up at the crease of worry on his forehead. He was trying to sound calm and proper, and she knew that tone of his. That rougher, almost demanding, serious tone. That tone he used with Philip and his friends when they were turning to him for leadership and give them orders - even if he was just as anxious as them.

His eyes flickered away, noticing that she had caught him spiralling with worries. He shook his head to get out of it and straightened his back. "Are you ill?" He repeated with a softer tone "No, I dont think so." "Not witch-ill, human-ill?" "No... I don't have any symptoms." "Hm.." Caleb thought back at when she had visited him at his job. "Oh, was it the sprig of dill tea?" Evelyn's eyes lit up. "Oh! Oh right that did taste awful!" Caleb couldn't help but break out into a soft scoff. "Well, good to know that folktale is true." "Huh?" "It's said sprig of dill keeps witches and evil away. That's why we drink it at the morrow' meeting." Evelyn's lips pressed into a line, feeling a little silly that she had so readily accepted tea from a bunch of woodsmen-slash-witch hunters. Of course they would be drinking things like that out of superstition.

"Right." She brushed her vest. Caleb snorted. "Stop it! I was afraid!" "Sorry, sorry. I'm sure it's only temporary." Evelyn looked at her hands. "You think so?" "Yeah. But.. Why don't you stay here, just in case, until it comes back. Yeah?" "Appreciated." "Of course." Evelyn swayed her skirt bashfully. "Caleb?" "Mh?" "Thank you." She pulled him in so she could plant a kiss on his cheek. "You've been my hero today." Caleb's limbs were full of pink and red butterflies. He laughed nervously and swatted his hand around in the air. "Oh! PFSH! O-Of course! I can't just- You're a maiden in distress! It's only the right thing-! Anytime, milady." And theatrically rolled his hand before bowing to her. And that got him in the right height for both of her hands to cup his face. "I think you deserve one more then." And kissed him on the side of his nose, his forehead, and when his smile spread his lips wide across his face, she kissed the dimple by his side. And that was enough. Caleb crumbled, and turned away from her with an incoherent sputtering of words. She smiled. Caleb put his face in his hands to cool, stroked them through his hair and coughed. "TEA?" He offered, gesturing at the stove. "Er- not, that tea, better tea." "Sure." And took a seat nearby him.

[rosabell14]

The hunters of Artemis, Reyna, and Asexuality in Riordan's writing

I kinda started thinking about this since Reyna became a hunter. I could never articulate why I hated this Choice. I was asexual after all. Shouldn't I be happy about this rep? We Ace people barely get any after all. Then I realized that it's because I just didn't like the hunters as ace representation. And I didn't need to be grateful for mediocrity.

You want to know why the hunters of Artemis suck in general? And as Ace rep specifically? Because Riordan did not write them with that mindset.

Like people are so busy hailing this man as the king of representation in literature(blegh) that they forgot how heteronormative and white(sometimes racist) the original series was. Y'all really think this man was thinking about writing asexuals in the year 2007? Get real. What Riordan was doing was a white man trying to write feminism and failing (there's a reason most of his female characterization of female characters boils down to tough "not like other girls" characters who are dicks to the boys around them yet also to the girls around them if they're jealous)

Now onto the hunters.

The hunters when first presented in TTC are not a group of asexuals but rather religious celibates. Fantasy Pegan nuns if you may. The first problem arises when their ages are brought up.

"Then the archers came from the woods. They were girls, about a dozen of them. The youngest was maybe ten. The oldest, about fourteen..."

Remember, before ToA gave us Emmie and Jo, the hunters WERE all young girls. Now why in the world are they so young? Especially when in the actual myths, the hunters could come from any age whatsoever? Well the reason is a doozy.

"Are you surprised by my age?" she asked.

"Uh… a little."

"I could appear as a grown woman, or a blazing fire, or anything else I want, but this is what I prefer. This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray."

"Go astray?" I asked.

"Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. Forget themselves."

Hooo boy. What a way to phrase it. Going astray. Losing themselves. This kinda confirms that the reason why Artemis goes after young girls specifically is because she only wants girls who have yet to finish puberty. Girls have yet to discover their own sexuality. Now I'm not a representative of Asexuals everywhere, but I'm pretty sure most of us don't discover our sexuality at the age of ten. Let alone have the maturity to decide to become celibates about it. And let me reiterate: celibacy is not sexuality. Sure asexual people CAN choose to be celibates but it's not the same thing at all. In fact Zoe and Thalia are big cases for this. Both of them had liked men before(herakles and luke) but joined for their own reasons. Thalia to escape the prophecy and Zoe out of heartbreak. Hell, Bianca herself is mostly swayed by the idea of having no responsibility and a new family.

Now Rick does another thing that goes against the myths. The exclusion of make hunters. Artemis frequently hung around or taught male hunters who respected her. Daphnis, Scamandrius, freaking Hippolytus whom Artemis greatly cared about. Oh but we need to come up with bullshit reasons why Nico can't just join the hunt with his sisters so the hunters of Artemis are all: Ewww men. Also note how at no point does Riordan mention people who fall in love with women.

Now the next point is the oath itself. Artemis says this:

"What oath?" I said.

"To forswear romantic love forever," Artemis said. "To never grow up, never get married. To be a maiden eternally."

When I tell you that Emmy and Joe were retcons . Rick was freaking INSISTENT on the hunters being kids. Also note the three points: to never fall in love, to never get married, to stay a maiden.

I mean I think I don't need to explain why obsessing over the virginity of young girls is creepy. Does Riordan think girls older than fourteen can't keep it in their pants? And let me be adamant here Riordan only cares about the virginity Clause here. He mentions falling in love and marriage because he sees them inherently intertwined with sex.

Now onto the wording of the oath itself:

'I pledge myself to the goddess Artemis. I turn my back on the company of men, accept eternal maidenhood, and join the Hunt.'

I mean you might be able to interpret men here as mankind and therefore excluding women as well. But I have many reasons to believe that Riordan didn't even CONSIDER women as a possibility(someone inform this man that lesbians existed smh 😞). Also note that falling in love is not mentioned in the actual oath but maidenhood is.

Now onto the next big issue. Percy Jackson's Greek gods and its chapter on Artemis. It basically confirms all of my problems.

"IT’S NOT THAT ARTEMIS HATED ALL MEN, just most of them. From the moment she was born, she knew one critical fact: Guys are kinda gross."

No mention of girls. In this chapter Percy(Rick) brings up Artemis' disdain for dudes over and over again.

“Let me be a maiden forever, Father,” Artemis said, twirling her finger in Zeus’s beard. “I never want to get married.---- But you can grant me a bunch of followers: ocean nymphs, river nymphs, wood nymphs—what the heck, how about mortal girls, too? Any girls who want to join me can become my followers, as long as they remain maidens like me. They should probably make the decision when they’re about nine years old, before they get interested in boys, because after that, they’ll be all distracted and of no use to me.”

Yikes yikes yikes. Ladies and gentlemen the age has been lowered to 9. Freaking 9. Also I guess girls older than that don't need Artemis' protection then? (the real problem is that older/married girls should be out of Artemis's jurisdiction and under the protection of other gods like Hera, Hestia, and Ares. But Hestia is barely there. Hera is terrible and the Amazons also suck)

Now when I tell you that Artemis' big point was about virginity, I mean it. This actually has mythological evidence.

The myths actually DO mention what happens when female hunters fall in love. Rhodopis and Euthynicus were two hunters who offended Aphrodite by choosing a chaste life so she had Eros make them fall in love. However note that they weren't booted out of the hunters for falling in love, but rather after having sex in a cave. THAT was what Artemis took offense to.

Another myth is the story of Aura. A huntress who offended Artemis by comparing their breasts(Greek mythology am I right?). Saying that her breast were better than Artemis' because they were smaller and hey maybe that means that Artemis isn't actually a maiden. Artemis punishes her by making her lose her VIRGINITY. She goes to nemesis for revenge. Nemesis goes to Eros who makes Dionysus fall in love with Aura and when Aura refuses his advances he ties her up and... Yeah you can guess where I'm going with this.

But hey! Those myths aren't in the Greek gods book. You know which myth is? The myth of C(K)allisto. And this one angers me so much I want to chew on the drywall.

The way Riordan writes it. Zeus turns himself into Artemis, brings Kallisto's guards down with the disguise, gets close to her and then when Kallisto REJECTS Artemis' supposed advances, forces himself on her. I need to say this again. Kallisto does not fall in love, she isn't seduced, she does not break her oath. But we still need a reason for her to be yeeted out of the hunters so her lack of maidenhood it is

“You were my favorite,” Artemis said. “If you had come to me immediately, I could have helped you. I would have found you a rich, handsome husband and let you settle into a new life in the city of your choice. I would have allowed you to retire from the Hunt with honor. You could have gone in peace. Zeus’s assault was not your fault.”

Kallisto sobbed. “But I didn’t want to lose you! I wanted to stay!”

Artemis felt like her heart was breaking, but she couldn’t show it. She had rules about her followers. She couldn’t allow those rules to be broken, not even by her best friend. “Kallisto, your crime was keeping the secret from me. You dishonored me, and your sisters of the Hunt, by not being honest. You defiled our company of maidens when you were not a maiden yourself. That I cannot forgive.”

I want to slap this man so hard he flies to the opposite side of the universe. We are not here to blame victims of assault guys! Except we are! But with extra steps. If you get attacked, it's not your fault, but If you are too scared to admit the truth then you deserve to lose your only safe space and turn into a bear. Oh nooooo Kallisto DEFILED Artemis' company by being an icky non virgin. The moment you lose your virginity even if it's not your fault you get punished. But not because I'm gross but because YOU lied. How terrible! And he expects us to feel for ARTEMIS???

But rosabell! This is how things go in the myths. What was uncle Rick (bleghhhh) supposed to do? I don't know... Choose a different version of the story? There are versions were Zeus/Hera are the ones who transform Kallisto into a bear. There are versions where Kallisto actively CHOOSES to sleep with Artemis. Granted it's still assault because she's being lied to but at least then, she'd have a degree of autonomy in the events. At least Artemis could rightfully accuse her of breaking her oath. But noooo, Riordan doesn't know lesbians exist. He actively makes Zeus into a canonical Ra*ist. Why is he on the throne again?

(the fact that this book came out AFTER HoH y'all 😭)

Once again, Riordan sees maidenhood(virginity)/love/marriage as intertwined. This is NOT what being on the aroace spectrum means. You can fall in love but not have sex. You can have sex but not fall in love. You can have sex AND still be an asexual. You can be married and still be a "maiden". Riordan doesn't get to claim to be such a progressive ally for retconning the hunters in 2017, TEN years after he first introduced the hunters because he suddenly remembered that lesbians exist.

Or more like because he doesn't know what to do with his female characters. The hunters more than anything are Riordan's heroine dumping ground. If you don't want it put them in relationships, either kill them(Bianca whose main purpose is to die) or make them eternal virgins(the hunters, Rachel). The fact that some people genuinely think that Calypso should have joined the hunters astound me. Girl suffered for years because of the gods and you all think that the best thing outside of Leo for her(not that I like Caleo) is to become a servant to the gods? Because you can't perceive a female character doing anything else if she's not in a relationship. Like with Thalia, this at least made sense on a strategic level because she didn't want to reach sixteen. Oh but we also don't know what else to do with her so she needs to want to be a hunter after the war is over so we give her a half-assed argument with Luke and now she can be all: wah wah Zoe you were totally right about boys. And the cherry on the cake is that she doesn't even get to be in the final confrontation with Luke or say goodbye to him because of a freaking STATUE. And after pjo her personality becomes Zoe 2.0 and her and Jason get ONE measly meeting.

When I first spoke of not liking Renya joining the hunters this is what I mean. Riordan had so many options with Reyna. Why did she have to leave her esteemed position which she worked so hard for? Two boys rejected her? Why couldn't she go reconnect with her sister more then? She could have joined the Amazons. But nooo Riordan was so allergic to the fans asking him wether she could be Bi or a lesbian. For the stupidest reasons too? Oh Reyna being a lesbian would come off as stereotypical because she got rejected by two guys beforehand! My dude, do you think people don't say the same thing about us who are on the aroace spectrum? That we say we are aro/ace because we got rejected before? Come up with a better excuse next time.

My brother in Christ couldn't even allow Reyna to talk about her sexuality and whatnot. It couldn't even be fully about her. No. He had to turn Reyna into his own mouthpiece admonishing the EVILLLL fans who may have shipped Thalia and Renya. He literally had her say the word "shipping". How cringe can you get? And then he had the audacity to admonish the fans by saying: Why does a strong friendship always have to progress to romance?

It's a sentiment I agree with but coming from this man, it's extremely hypocritical? I don't know Richard maybe because YOU are obsessed with shipping? No character can escape your shipping hands unless they're eternal virgins or dead. You literally turned the Argo2 into Noah's ark2. So much attention focused on shipping that the seven barely felt like friends.

Why does Reyna need to join the hunters? She can choose to not relationship without having to become a servant to female Peter pan.

This is actually a really adequate metaphor when you consider that Emmie and Jo say that they have not met Artemis in YEARS and Apollo mentions that the two of them were lucky she let them LIVE. god can you imagine joining Artemis when you are 9? At an age when you have still not finished maturimg cognitively and therefore shouldn't be trusted on taking a freaking celibacy vow(were you even given the talk yet that age) and after 70 years you decide you want to leave? If you're lucky Artemis will part with you on good terms but SIKES every person you probably knew before joining is now dead. Where is THAT angsty Bianca fic?

Speaking of Bianca. How she was handled also angers me. In another post, I've already talked about how the hunters barely gave her adequate information before letting her join.

How Zoe was the main reason for her death. Zoe KNEW that at least 2 people might die in the quest she was given and yet she decided to bring the least experienced girl to the quest and couldn't even watch her properly.

But you know what else pisses me off? The fact that THEY should have been the one to tell Nico about his sister's death. I've always hated how Chiron made Percy the CHILD tell Nico the other CHILD about his sister dying. But more than anyone, it should have been the hunters' responsibility. Bianca was THEIR responsibility. She died in a quest to save Artemis. The least they could do was tell her remaining family of her fate. The Doylist reason of course is that we need to kickstart Nico and Percy's complicated relationship and have Percy discover that Nico is a son of Hades. But in universe, the fact that they immediately fuck off from the camp upon regrouping makes them come off as extremely selfish. We don't even know if Bianca was given a funeral by them or not. We see Artemis being upset about Zoe but we never see her react to the news of losing Bianca.

[solar-wing]

⚣ Remember 🥷🏻

⚣🥷🏻A/N → This was a bit of a challenge for me for some reason. Maybe it's because we still don't know how exactly Jason died or what he was like when he was on the team so I had to go off what we know about Jason already. Plus, the fact that he doesn't have his memories really got my creative juices flowing. I did not proofread thus like the others cause I'm trying to focus on finishing my other fics. Also, here it is again for you @acoustickitten Anyways... WARNINGS: Emotion & Angst, Mentions of Death, NSFW warnings included on Patreon NSFW Version Here👈🏽

⚣🥷🏻Summary → When Jason died, your world fell apart. You and he had a special bond that you didn't share with anyone else on the team. So, when the chance to be reunited with him came as an invitation to Ra's Ah Ghul's island, you quickly took the chance to be with your old teammate, friend, and crush. Only you didn't expect to find him different than you remembered.

⚣🥷🏻Words → 4.2k

REBLOGS and replies are greatly appreciated, please! 💛

⚣ ENJOY 🥷🏻

You were so glad you hadn’t given up.

When your previous team appeared on Infinity Island to rescue their friends, the Red Hooded Ninja battled with Nightwing, your old leader and friend. Ra’s ordered you to stay out of sight, as he didn’t want your former teammates to know you were here yet. Your mission was too important for them and yourself. So, you watched from one of the windows as your friends fought with your League allies.

Back in 2013, you had been recruited to the team by the Justice League when they discovered you on the streets of your city fighting crime with your meta-abilities. You could see into and read people’s thoughts, much like Miss Martian. Except your powers seemed to be stronger, seeing that you had the ability to control and enter someone’s mind at will and manipulate their thoughts. Along with flight force-field manipulations, you were quite the adversary. So when Batman, Captain Marvel/Shazam, and Black Canary showed up one day to offer you the chance to use your powers in a team environment, you figured, why not?

You were alone, having lost your family at a young age, and your adoptive family wasn’t much better, seeing you and your abilities as freaky. They just wanted to get whatever money they could off of you. So you accepted their offer and took on the mantle of ‘Psicon.’ Besides, living in the Cave was awesome. The Team was way more welcoming, and you felt like a part of a family for the first time, growing a special relationship with one of the members, Jason Todd, aka Robin.

Both of you and Jason had similar backgrounds and connected from that. The team often joked that the saying was true opposites attracted because you two couldn’t be more different from each other. Strong in your own rights, you were reserved, while he was outgoing. You thought with a slow, calculative mind, and he was impulsive. You were no pushover, but you mostly kept your thoughts to yourself, whereas he was very outspoken.

But, you found joy in your differences with each other. You shared similar interests and grew a strong bond. Over time, your feelings became less platonic and more romantic, which your friends loved to tease you for. Dick, Kid Flash, aka Wally, and Artemis mainly, before the latter two left the team for college. 

You hadn’t known if Jason felt the same towards you, but Dick encouraged you since the two had a special relationship, both being Batman’s sidekicks and sharing the mantle of Robin. Not at the same time, of course. When Dick picked up the mantle of Nightwing, Jason had become the new Robin.

You were planning to confess your feelings to Jason but never got the chance. 

A mission you weren’t on had gone left, and though you never found out what had went wrong, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened when everyone had returned except for Jason. Dick tried to comfort you as he felt your pain, along with Batman, but it did little to help. You were heartbroken. 

Jason was the only one who knew your history, as you hadn’t told anyone else. He knew some of your deepest secrets and insecurities had helped you through dark moments, and now he was gone. And it wasn’t just for you, as your friends and teammates had noticed your impact on him.

Maybe that’s why some had joked about how Jason held a soft spot for you. He was always nice to you, of course. But, he always had a level of sass and bluntness he’d give others but never towards you. Your friends, even Bruce, had mentioned how they saw that you’d tapped into a more gentle side of Jason none of them ever could see or would be allowed to see, at least.

So, no. Dick couldn’t understand where your pain. No one could. 

After that, a distance grew between you and the team since everyone refused to tell you what had happened. Then, in 2015 a little over a year later, Batman recruited a new Robin, Tim Drake, and you had fucking lost it at that point.

Furious at Bruce and Dick for being so willing to replace Jason, you went off on them, feeling they had dishonored him. Your teammates tried to calm you down, but your fury had been on a different level none of them had seen before. Even Conner was unsettled at the rage spilling off you, being considered the literal definition of anger issues himself. It was safe to say you had no relationship with Tim. While you weren’t hostile or bitter towards him, you had no incentive or want to build a friendship.

At some point, you received a mysterious envelope. Where it came from, you didn’t know, but what was inside it had your attention immediately. It was a letter asking for your aid in an important matter. And whoever wrote it apparently had particular need of your ‘talents.’ You were prepared to ignore it until you saw another note inside, only it wasn’t a note at all. It was a picture, a recent one.

Jason.

He was alive. You could tell cause he looked a bit older than the last time you saw him. Though, just by looking at the picture, you could see something was off. That usual egotistic but confident spark you always noticed in his eyes wasn’t there. Both the corners of his mouth were straight instead of one side upturned up a bit, leaving him with his natural smirk. 

In truth, his blank gaze at the camera caused an unsettled chill to go through you. It was as if you were looking at a ghost of Jason instead of an alive one.

But it was him.

He was alive somewhere, and after so long of only feeling hollow and numb where your heart should be, you felt it stirring in your chest again.

You didn’t know if the others knew, and you weren’t planning on telling them. You’d contemplated leaving the team for some time, and Tim’s recent addition only made that decision easier for you. So the next day, when everyone was asleep, you packed your clothes and disappeared that night, not saying goodbye to anyone.

That’s how you ended up with the League of Shadows and the Al-Ghul family on their island. When you saw Jason for the first time, you wanted to run to him, hug him, and sob into his shoulder. Part of you didn’t believe he was alive, needing hard proof of living flesh in front of your eyes. Truly enough, even looking at him, your mind still couldn’t believe he was there. He still had that strange blank look on his face, though. When you first entered the room, he stared at you, which creeped you out even more now that it was in person.

You found out Ra’s and his family were the ones who recovered Jason’s body and had used the infamous Lazarus Pits to revive him, and while the pit’s healing and life-restoring abilities did that, there were consequences. He explained that the Pit tampered with Jason’s mind, sending him into a feral and almost animalistic state, and though they tamed him, his mind was scattered, and memories were gone.

That’s where you came in. Your telepathic abilities had been recognized exceptionally for their strength, surpassing M’Gann’s powers. With your ability to enter and manipulate minds, Ra’s suspected you could restore Jason’s memories, bringing him back to himself.

At first, you were unsure since you didn’t know the consequences that could come if you tampered with his thoughts. When you’d voiced these concerns, Jason had turned his head to you, a curious gaze replacing his blank expression. Ra’s and Talia observed, speechless as he made his way to you, head tilting in confusion as he stared into your eyes. You didn’t move, watching his hand come up to your face and one of his fingers slowly caressing down your cheek.

“Psi…con.”

It was your turn to be speechless. You felt tears come to your eyes and shut them, attempting to hold yourself together. It was too much. Clenching your fists at your side, you choked on a gasp as you forced yourself not to cry. Even Talia felt a bit emotional at the sight of your grief, though she didn’t show it, remaining poised as ever.

“Ah, it would seem your presence has already triggered a spark in his mind. You two must have had a significant connection for him to recall your name.” Ra’s pointed out, eyeing you with an intrigued look.

It didn’t take much convincing after that.

“I’ll do it.” You stated with no hesitation in your voice.

That same smile Ra’s held when you agreed was the same one on his face now in 2019 as you and Talia holding baby Damian had come out just in time to see the Bio-Ship flying off to hear Jason uttering “Gray…son” in a slow, and almost zombie-like speech.

You had begun to lose hope. Jason, now the Sensei’s Red-Hooded Ninja, was trained as a guard and protector. He was no longer of a feral and animalistic sense of mind but more of a living, mindless zombie, understanding and taking directions well. However, the sessions he had with you were not making much progress. 

Every time you’d gotten close to having a breakthrough or found what you thought was a crack in the haze around his mind when working, you got shut out. It was as if something was trying to keep you from getting to Jason’s inner mind and releasing his memories, and you didn’t think there would be much you could do anymore, as nothing seemed to be working.

So, expectedly, you felt your heart pause and your body still when you heard him. Barely feeling like you could move, tears had once again come to your eyes at hearing the first word in the four years you’d worked in healing Jason’s mind.

“Ah, your memory is finally returning. Excellent.” Ra’s said before he turned in your direction, nodding for you to come to his side. “Your work is starting to pay off. I’m aware of your frustrations in this quest, but tonight has proven your efforts are not in vain. I want you to continue your sessions more frequently. This could be the start of him fully regaining his mind.” You nodded your head before turning back to walk inside, Jason trailing behind you from Ra’s order.

He followed you to your room, where you went inside and rummaged through your drawers before finding the desired items. You turned to see him standing in the middle of the room, the red glow from his robotic eye mask bright in the moonlight from your window.

“Please, sit.” You asked.

In your sessions with him, you always spoke with a gentle tone. You didn’t want to command or order him around like the others. You communicated with Jason as you always had before, hoping it’d bring familiarity and comfort. Over time, it seemed to work. Jason notably sought you out whenever something distressed him. For whatever reason unbeknownst to you, this had pleased Ra’s.

Even if you were having little success restoring Jason’s mind, Ra’s had noted that while everyone else had Jason’s obedience, you held something more precious, his loyalty and trust.

Tonight, you hoped you’d found what you needed to achieve that first and ultimate objective. When your old teammates showed up, and you watched Nightwing and Jason battle, it reminded you of the old days before he had died. You three goofing around in the control room during sparring and training.

After hearing him utter Nightwing’s name and thinking back to the first time he uttered your old superhero name, it hit you like a ton of bricks. 

Those moments were all triggers for Jason. Things that evoked emotion and nostalgia from him, like when someone smells a dish their grandparent used to make when they were a kid or hearing a song that reminded them of a special moment. 

It made you remember a comment Jason once made about how when you talked, it calmed him. He said how he found your voice relaxing and that he could just listen to you speak about whatever, and it would bring him peace. Not really knowing what he meant by it, you remembered very well how it made you feel and how it still makes you to this day.

Thinking back to the night you came to the island, you realized Jason hearing your voice had been his first trigger, which helped him remember your retired name. Fighting with Dick brought back the nostalgic feeling of when he used to spar with him in the control room, helping him remember his name.

So, you intended to create more triggers. Whatever prevented you from fully accessing Jason’s mind and releasing his memories was obviously weak to emotional pulls. Those pulls could come from anything that held a feeling of significance or nostalgia in his memories.

Grabbing what you needed, you joined Jason on the ground, crossing your legs before placing everything in front of him. You had a small collection of Jason’s things he’d given you or stuff you had borrowed from him and forgotten to give back. You had some of his favorite books, old batarangs, and even one of his eye masks from his Robin costume.

He looked at everything on the ground, picking some things up and observing them before placing them back down.

You’d tried this tactic before, but with your discovery, you figured maybe there was something you needed to do or say to help spark something. Jason thumbed through some books and messed with the Batarang a little, but you had to be careful since you weren’t sure if it was one of the ones that could explode.

When he picked up the eye mask from the Robin costume, his head tilted while looking at it before turning to you and holding it between his hands, making you grin at his adorable confusion.

“It’s your old mask. It goes over your eyes. Here, I’ll show you.” You explained, holding your hand out, allowing him to place it in your hand.

You brought it up to your face and put it on before showing him, “See? Like the one you have on, it goes over your eyes.” You said.

Jason stared back at you before he looked down and pointed at the space next to you. Realizing what he was asking, you nodded, “Yeah, you can sit next to me.” You expressed, patting the spot next to you

He got up before moving to the spot and placed himself back down before turning to look at having to tilt his head down slightly. He pointed to the mask on your face, silently asking for it. When you took it off and handed it to him, he just looked down at it, turning it to study it from all different directions.

“Do you want me to help you put it on?” You offered.

He turned his head to you, that glowing robotic mask staring at you before you saw him slowly nod. Turning your body to face him a bit more, you reached your hands up slowly, “May I?” You asked, referring to his current eyewear.

He paused for a moment before nodding. Gently placing your hands on the sides of his head, you grabbed the mask and lifted it from his face, able to see his blue-green eyes, taking time to enjoy them since it was rare you ever got to see them. He rarely removed his mask, and only when you were doing intensive work with your telepathic powers on him did he sometimes remove it.

You were caught in his gaze as well as he was with yours. For a moment, it felt like you were back in 2013 before everything had gone wrong, and it was just you and Jason, staying up at night talking about anything and everything that came to your mind. The memories brought some tears to your eyes, and you were shocked to feel a finger come up to one of them. Jason was looking down at you, and though he mostly still held a blank expression, you could see underneath a bit of concern etched into his gaze.

“I’m okay.” You assured, or at least attempted to.

Wiping your eyes with the sleeves of your robes, you gave him a quick smile, which seemed to relax him. You hadn’t even noticed he was tense.

He turned back to look at the mask before slowly placing it on his face. A bit smaller now since he’s grown, it was like you were looking at him as the day you last saw him. You loved how his hair was still slightly curled over his forehead with the mask, not being able to notice it as much when he wore his ninja hood.

You raised your hand slowly to his face, pressing your palm against his ear. Whether or not he snuggled into your hand was totally not important and did not cause swooning in your gut.

Alright, you’re a liar. But you’ve been through a lot these past few years. You’re allowed to have this moment.

“Okay, Jason. We’re going to do what we do in every single session. But, this time. I’m going to project some of my memories into you. Is that okay?” You asked. Consent is key.

He nodded his head after a moment, training his eyes on you as you closed yours. He kept focusing on you while you channeled your memories into your hands to pass on to him. Eventually, he closed his eyes, welcoming your power into his head.

There were flashes of different moments from your past, all relating to you and him. Some were moments of you guys training together in the sparring room with Dick. There were times of you two together on missions, and one particular memory when Jason’s big mouth got you both into a less-than-desirable situation once again. But he managed to get you out of the sticky mess by using said big mouth again. That memory always brought a smile to your face. You remembered being so mad at him and then laughing at it like madmen when you returned to the Cave.

In each of these memories, Jason was wearing the mask. It was a part of his identity. Not just as Robin, Batman’s sidekick, but as Jason Todd. The boy who just wanted someone to care about him.

Suddenly, your head flooded with more memories, some you recognized as not your own. In your physical body, you could feel Jason tensing in front of you, shouting out in pain. It was working!

You managed to unlock part of Jason’s memories. Concentrating, you could see some of these moments from his past. And to your shock, they all seemed to involve—you. You saw the first day you’d met the team and Jason for the first time. You’d thought he was an obnoxious little twat, emphasis on the little since you were taller than him at that point, and you had voiced this thought as well. Over time, he caught up with you. And now, he’s got a few inches over you.

“Did this nobody just call me a little twat?”

That wasn’t your voice, nor was it your words. You did call Jason a twat that day, but you’d never call yourself a nobody.

You caught another memory of when you and he were with the team fighting against Dr. Ivo and Amazo. That fight left many bruises on your body since Ivo had decided to make some upgrades. When Amazo managed to get your powers and use them against you, it’d trapped you in your thoughts, torturing you with some of your worst memories. Jason pulled out of there while the others had managed to distract it long enough and eventually take it down. He’d overheard some of what you were crying out about and decided not to push.

When you had returned to the Cave, Jason followed you outside to get some air and think for a moment. You had warmed up to each other a little, and Jason had started telling you about his background and how he came to be Batman’s sidekick. After some contemplation, you told him about your past and how the Justice League found you. He had made a joke saying all you needed was the staircase and a letter from a white owl, and you could be the next Harry Potter.

You punched him in the arm for that joke,

“Hmm, kid’s not as bad as I thought he was. Packs a punch too.”

It took you a minute to realize, but you eventually got it.

These were Jason’s thoughts from those memories you were witnessing, his own inner dialogue. It was interesting to see some of the moments he found precious, things you had never even thought about before or remembered at the very least. And now, you were hearing it from his point of view. You used to always make a joke with him that you’d pay big money to know what he was thinking about sometimes.

“If he knew what I was thinking, I’m sure he’d either smack me or punch me, maybe both. Wouldn’t do anything except make him hotter.”

Pardon? Can we rewind that last part?

Did Jason call you hot? Like hot, as in attractive hot? Or, hot as in, ‘Ah! This bitch is burning. Get them away from me,’ hot?

Looking at Jason’s other memories with you, you could also feel some of his emotions from those precise moments. You felt annoyance from earlier thoughts, typically around the earlier parts of your relationship. Amusement at times when you and he would get into a silly argument. Or when you went on one of your excited rants about something. The further you got along in his mind, the more you felt his feelings change, becoming more intense. Curiosity turning into fondness. Admiration becomes the urge to protect.

A particular memory had caught your mental attention. One that you recognized was about a week before the mission that would ultimately lead to the end of Jason’s life. Dick and Jason were at their house, Wayne Manor, and they were talking while working in the Batcave.

“So, how’s everything between you and Zatanna?” Jason asked while practicing his kicks and punches on one of the training dummies.

“It’s good. She’s still a little upset over Nabu’s refusal to release her father’s body for no more than an hour, but she makes do with it.” Dick said, turning to face him from whatever he was doing on the Bat-Computer.

Things had gone quiet for a moment, Dick looking a little smug before he spoke up, “So, you and Y/N?” He smirked.

You felt a clench in your chest and didn’t know if that came from Jason or yourself.

“Shut up,” Jason said.

“I’m just saying, you two seemed to have gotten really close over the last few months. You’re actually considerate and somewhat respectful when you’re around him too.” Dick commented.

“Fuck you, and again. Shut up.” Jason responded.

Somehow, you could feel the small smile that formed on his face.

“You want my advice—”

“No.”

“Tell him how you feel and ask him out,” Dick continued, ignoring Jason. “And I’d do it soon. You didn’t hear this from me, but I’ve heard someone else on the team has eyes for Y/N too. So, if I were you, I’d hurry up and take my chances. You never know how long you have until it’s too late.”

An unpleasant toil in your stomach blossomed at that sentence, but you felt curiosity at the same time. You just didn't know if one or both feelings belonged to you or Jason. You did wonder who harbored feelings for you on the team though.

You couldn’t dwell on it any longer though when you were tackled to the ground, forced back to reality. Opening your eyes, you saw Jason on top of you, looking at you with another feral look, only it wasn’t the same as the one he had when you first arrived on the island. This one was wild but in an attractive way. His sea-like colored eyes staring back at you but with a darker look. It had you on edge but also ☀️feeling very hot with how he pinned your arms to the ground.

“I… l-lo– love … y-you.”

Your entire body froze as his head fell against your shoulder. Feeling his chest move against push against your back with his breathing, you could only turn your head slightly to stare at his before he turned to face you. The dark haze in his eyes was now gone, and his blue-green ears were staring back at you with the same adoration you’d always seen before whenever he looked your way.

He remembered you.

☀️ | DC Masterlist | ☀️

☀️ } Masterlists | ☀️

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Do you think Wally and Artemis settled for each other? They both seemed interested in M’gann and Conner until they found out those two were dating - makes it seem like they were each other’s second choices if they only got together because they realised that they couldn’t date their crushes

No, I wouldn't say that at all. Actually, I fully believe that if Wally or Artemis had had a chance with M'gann or Conner, it wouldn't have worked out anyway, and I'm not sure that either of them would have expected it to. You know when you walk into the first day of school and you go around deciding who your crush is going to be for the year? That's how I interpreted their crushes on M'gann and Conner. It wasn't serious, and very clearly wasn't reciprocated by either of them, which is exactly why Wally and Artemis chose to pursue them because it ran no real risk of being fulfilled.

In Wally's case, we watched him spend the entire first season flirting with practically every single woman he came into contact with, regardless of their age/availability/lack of interest in him. Wally's flirtatious behavior wasn't out of genuine attraction or any expectation of his advances being accepted, but was rather a habit he'd developed as a method of covering up his own insecurities. We know Wally was impulsive and often immature, and he played that persona up purposefully throughout the entire first season. He encouraged people to view him as the flirt and the class clown because it was easier than letting them in on his true feelings. Wally lacked confidence in himself and felt constantly overshadowed by everyone around him, hence him taking on the role of the easygoing jokester in the group so everyone would be too distracted to notice how insecure he really was. It's literally said in the show multiple times that a big part of Wally's personality is his denial in anything he doesn't want to confront.

Wally's crush on M'gann, just like his thing for Black Canary and every other woman he meets, is just a front for him. The only reason M'gann was the main target for his flirting was because she was the only girl on the team for a while, and because she was nice enough to not have a real problem with it or tell him to stop. She never took it seriously, and I don't think Wally wanted her to. If M'gann and Conner had never gotten together, that wouldn't have given Wally any more of a chance with her because his "feelings" for M'gann were more of a habit he'd developed than any kind of genuine romantic feelings. (Not to suggest that they aren't close and don't love each other as friends, because they definitely do, but that's as far as it goes.) Wally's crush on M'gann was all about Wally putting up a facade to cover up his inner insecurities and had very little to do with M'gann herself.

In that same vein, Artemis' crush on Conner was never fully about Conner, but more about Artemis' own (surprise, surprise) insecurities during her first few months on the team. When Artemis first encountered the team, it was because she saw Superboy get smashed through a window in the fight against Amazo and followed him to discover the rest of the team. That was Artemis' first interaction with them, being led in by her "white rabbit," so from the beginning she had a connection with Conner in particular. She viewed the encounter as her way out of her old life and into her new one as a proper hero.

Like Wally, Artemis spent the entire first season covering up her real self with a "badass cool girl"-type persona, both to hide the secret about who she really was, and to keep the others from getting a whiff of how insecure she felt about her place on the team. These are teenagers we're talking about, after all. Everything is about convincing the people around you that you belong. During Artemis' very first mission with the team, she came off as brash and overly confident, and she purposely made a remark about Conner's attractiveness through the mind link where everybody could hear it. She wanted them to see the connection she'd made, as if it would cement her place as part of the group. She and Wally have the exact same coping mechanisms, and Artemis spends all that time criticizing Wally for it without realizing that she has been doing the same thing to Conner that he does to M'gann.

It's also made clear to the audience even before Conner and M'gann are established as a couple that Wally and Artemis had developed feelings for each other that were stronger than their crushes on M'gann and Conner. The obvious example would be in "Bereft" when Wally and Artemis had chemistry and showed genuine attraction to each other straight from the get-go once they didn't have the baggage of their old memories forcing them to hide behind their respective personas. When they met M'gann, Wally didn't show an ounce of interest in her until he'd regained his memories and began to act accordingly again. Then "Failsafe" happened, and Wally revealed how deeply he cared for Artemis after her death, becoming more fixated on saving her over anyone else who had been killed. Artemis showed signs of attraction towards Wally early on as well, as shown in her reactions to Wally flirting with M'gann in "Denial," and her jealousy when M'gann kissed Wally on his birthday. In the comics, she even got back at Wally for flirting with M'gann by asking out Conner right in front of him:

And a good amount of these incidents happened before either of them knew about M'gann and Conner becoming a couple; the ball was already rolling whether their crushes were available or not.

Tldr; Wally and Artemis would have ended up together whether M'gann and Conner stayed single or not because the "crushes" they had on both of them were never that deep in the first place

[alneedssleep]

Headcannons about Apollo pt.1 

PSA: This is mythology Apollo stuff but most of this applies to Percy Jackson Apollo as well. 

Apollo loves no sibling more than Artemis, but he is closer to Athena. They bonded over being the favourite siblings, gods of knowledge/wisdom and the fact Athena was somewhat in charge of teaching/raising him when he first came to Olympus. 

Apollo is the only other god besides Zeus to have the epithet ‘Moiragetes’ meaning ‘Leader of the Fates’. There are also only two moments of fate being averted in the entire mythos – once when Zeus swallows Metis and then again when Apollo tricks/convinces the Fates to extend Admetus’s lifespan. I imagine this means they are both capable of altering fate, it is just usually not worth the trouble. 

Adding on to the previous hc, I also imagine Apollo has pure white eyes. As in, no pupils or irises. This is a trait I imagine the Fates share as well. Zeus would as well if he had gift of prophecy, but he doesn’t. 

Apollo has the epithet ‘Lycegenes’ meaning ‘born of wolf’ or ‘born of Lycia’. Both work since his mother spent some time in a form of a wolf while pregnant in some versions and she is also a prominent goddess in Lycia. Lycia is in modern day Turkey, so I imagine Leto, Apollo and Artemis have some Turkish features. Specifically, they all have an aquiline nose (though you also see that in Greece), darker skin and (in the PJ universe aka the modern day) all three occasionally wear head scarfs. Not hijabs obviously since those are religious, but sheer fabric with a bunch of different designs relating to their sacred symbols wrapped around their head and hair. 

Apollo was less of an older brother and more of a parent to Hermes, Dionysus and even Hebe when they were young. It was only once they were much older that Apollo started treating than more like siblings but will occasionally fall back into old habits. 

Hera and Apollo have a better relationship than expected. They, along with Athena, mostly bonded over their shared woes of dealing with Zeus (who is not as bad as PJ Zeus but is still, you know, a king. And kings are rarely great.) 

Apollo is the most all-knowing of the non-primordial gods. He has the domains of truth, prophecy and knowledge and, once he gains the sun in roman times, can also see anything that happens during the day. This makes him stupidly well informed. Even his cousin Hecate, Aunt Asteria, Grandmother Phoebe and Grandfather Koios are not as well informed since they only have the domain of prophecy and, even then, only have a specific kind while Apollo, seemingly, has access to every kind of prophecy. 

Apollo (and Artemis) are Gods of Youth and, in Apollo’s case, he even has an epithet explicitly denoting him as an eternal child: ‘Acersecomes’ meaning one with unshorn hair. Boys in ancient Greece grew out their hair and generally cut and dedicated their hair to Apollo after reaching adulthood. As a result, Apollo not only has long curly golden hair, but is also unable to age any older than 15 since 16 was the age of adulthood back then. I imagine this would be the same for Artemis as well. (If we are including the PJ universe here, then they would be able to age up to 17). 

[faetthorn]

Probably my only contribution to the Pathologic fandom

Some important words below, if you're a patho fan take the time to read them

TW: pedophilia, SA, grooming, racism, colonialism

So I got into pathologic in july and almost instantly got hit with a post about the allegations from back in 2021 against Nikolay Dybowski, game creator and founder of Ice Pick Lodge. He’s groomed several girls ages 15-18 and inclusively has used his position as a member of HSE University in Moscow to do so. 3 years on and people have all forgotten this and are happily cheering for the bachelor route like nothing ever happened 

Yes I know you all wanna forget abt the uncomfortable situations, after all "what can we do" right? I wish I could just pull a switch in my brain and forget too, but I'm a victim of SA and child grooming, and I can't play this game without remembering what its creator did. The worst part is that the characters mean a lot to me. I got into pathologic while suffering from ptsd related nightmares and Daniil, Artemy and Clara brought me a lot of joy and comfort. Even now they and some elements of patho’s story mean the world to me. It hurts to be constantly reminded that everyone is against you, no matter how much you appreciate their work, no matter how much time and money you put into doing it.

I'd properly join the fandom and start calling for a boycott and for these allegations to be discussed and reminded of again but I just know it'll never happen. I'd be ignored or get a thousand replies "oh but the employees, they have nothing to do with it!!" "it's just a game!" "it'll get you nowhere!" “age of consent is x y or z in this country!” "stop being a vindictive little bitch!" "*insert rape threat here*" I expect to receive 0 support on this post and I'll block anyone I need to. Just wanted to let this out of my chest even if nothing will change: Petitions don't work, they never did and they never will. Passivity and politeness never got ME shit, at least.

DOXA, the rus student newspaper investigating these allegations was raided by police (1, 2) and recently considered an undesirable organization by the government. The courts and police would never do anything about this and they’re clearly more invested in persecuting student groups that have even the most basic feminist goals. HSE University didn’t get involved in any libel suits so as far as we know Dybowski wasn’t even fired. Not only is he the creator and chief writer of the games but he's also the head of the studio. Spreading awareness and boycotting is the only way justice can be made (at least in a way non-russians can participate). If you’re considering playing pathologic i cannot recommend it and i don’t want to be the reason someone gives more money to Dybowski. You don’t need more harmful shit when you have 2 games, a dlc and wonderful fandom content the game would never make canon. Hell, PIRATE all the games if you really need to. When the bachelor route comes out the IPL employees will have already been paid for it. Also, let’s not forget that WE DON’T KNOW where the profits we give will go. They might go to CP, they might go to the rus army attacking Ukraine and occupying former USSR territory and Syria.  

I wonder why it's so easy for you all to rightfully call to boycott anything related to zionism without making excuses but then when it's a pedophile with countless cases of grooming and very probably rape you all stay quiet and do nothing just because it's your precious little interests. It's almost like it's all performative

In the same vein, there needs to be a discussion about how violently racist this game is because this art came from anger and sadness. I’m not indigenous but i’ve followed native activism for years and i wouldn’t have the beliefs i have today without the opinions of indigenous people. I know feeling betrayed by the art you use to cope with how horrible reality is is tough. Not only does this game have extremely racist stereotypes and portrays natives as a monolith, but it’s also unsurprisingly misogynistic in an extremely colonial way (need i remind you of Willow, the way the herb brides are dressed or the fixation with portraying steppe people as woman-sacrificing brutes). Not to mention the extreme cruelty of patho 2’s endings. Which is way more insulting when it’s directly tied via the in-game use of Buryat language and inspirations to the native peoples of Siberia who Russia colonized and whose culture is still actively repressed, at a time when the weight of colonization (environmental catastrophe, poverty, sexual violence and more) makes indigenous people commit suicide at a way higher rate than any other ethnicity in many countries, and this includes the native people of Siberia who this game “pays homage” to (1). This fandom in general needs to start being way more critical and checking their own racism too. And to any native patho fans i’m obviously not here to tell you how to feel abt patho’s racism

Well, there it is. I have no hope left to ask anyone to boycott the bachelor route or the other projects Dybowski's created but if this makes you think about the things you throw money at it’ll be something

Edit: I apparently need to clarify something since certain people have been pestering me about it. I'll keep standing behind the part where I say the profits (not the money used to pay the employees, the PROFITS) might go to CP and the rus army and I'll expand on why. The CP part is more than obvious, after all we're talking about a guy who has been sexually abusing underage girls since allegedly at least 2012 with full impunity. The army part might seem like a stretch but if it does to you there's things you need to understand. To pro-Palestine people it's already common knowledge that misogyny and sexual violence play a HUGE part in colonialism and in russian colonialism it's no different. Dybowski is a misogynistic, violent abuser (because YES csa is violence, always), with racist, pro-colonial views as seen in pathologic. It's a REAL RISK. No pro-Palestine person would ever buy something from an israeli with Dybowski's track record who has given absolutely no statements on the invasion on Palestine while said invasion is ongoing, so the same should apply to Russia. And let me repeat once again: we are not responsible for the IPL employees' well-being and payment. Dybowski is.

[mask131]

I have a question about Zeus and Kronos. SEVERAL actually. Their relationship gets more confusing the far you dig into it.

How did the ancient Greeks see their relationship? How did they see the whole conflict between the Gods and the Titans?

In modern works, Kronos and the Titans are almost always portrayed as evil, monstrous tyrants, and Zeus and the Olympians as the young heroes that bring them down.

However, in Greek Mythology, Kronos' reign was the Golden Age, an utopic and paradisiac time of peace, happiness and prosperity, and Zeus is the main responsible for bringing pain, disease, and death to humankind through Pandora.

And to make matters more confusing, patricide was a huge sin in ancient Greek culture.

Was Zeus and Kronos' story a heroic tale of order overcoming chaos, or a tragic "Paradise Lost" type of scenario? Is Zeus a hero for deposing his father, or fallen hero that only escaped divine retribution because he himself is a god? Who was in the right in the conflict between Olympians and Titans? How am I supposed to interpret Hesiod's Theogony?

This is a very complex question that opens the door to many, many possibilities. But long story short: in the Olympians vs Titans conflict, the Titans were definitively in the wrong, and yes we are supposed to root for the Olympians.

Remember, the Olympians are supposed to be the "big goods" of Greek mythology - or at least, mostly positive figures. The enemies of the Olympians are by extension our enemies because the Olympians represent order and civilization. The Gigantomachy is the best representation of that, as the Giants were literaly designed to kill and destroy and nothing else. Same thing with Typhon, chaos and terror embodied.

Now what was the problem with the Titans? Long story short, many things. But what we have to understand is that the Titans are being supposed to represent... yes chaos in a way, but also a more brutal, primitive form of the universe. Yes the Titans are gods like the Olympians - but they are not the same kind of gods. Older, rougher. For example take the Olympians - they are kings and queens over the principles they control. Poseidon rules over the sea but is not the sea ; Zeus' decisions control the weather but he is not the weather. When we go by the Titans, however, we have beings such as Helios who was the literal sun or Oceanos who was the literal ocean. The Titans reflect the primal forces of nature, the rough and brutal, less humanized elements, more personifications and embodiments than deities as we understand them today. So what was the object and purpose of the Titanomachy? The "taming" and ordering of the world. Some Titans sided with the Olympians, and thus became more human and more "ordered" and found a place for themselves within an organized world. Themis for example, who as the embodiment of the Law and of Justice, would of course choose the Olympians' side. Also note that, outside of Themis, none of the Titans reflected any concept or principle part of a civilization. The Titans were violence (Iapetos whose name means "piercer", and Kronos who castrated his own father), the Titans were animals (many are the titans with strong animal motifs), the Titans were the sea and the moon and the sun and the light and the earth... They were literaly born out of the sky and earth. But what came with the Olympians? When Zeus got onto the throne, he started creating new gods through his many marriages and alliances: he brought forth Apollo of the art, Athena of wisdom and peace, Artemis of the hunt of the wild, Hermes of all the sciences, and the Horai, and the Muses, and sometimes even the Moirai themselves. Zeus organized the world and brought many of the concepts we cherish so much today.

Not only was the problem with the Titans that they were primordial and brutal forces of nature, but the problem with the specific Titans that went at war against the gods is that they literaly refused to let fate be and time pass. Kronos' flaw and fault is the most common of all mythology: fighting an oracle, trying to destroy a prediction, trying to avoid his fate. He was foretold he would be overthrown by his son. Not destroyed, not mutilated, certainly not killed (because gods cannot die, they are immortal), but just overthrown. And he refused this. He refused to have his throne taken away from him - he refused to let generations change, to let youth come. He had obtained his throne for right reasons (he punished the sins of his father) and yet through bad means (mutilating his own father). As such he got the throne but was fated to let it go, and know a "lesser" version of what he had inflicted upon his father. But he refused this.

Not only that, but he actually ended up repeating the mistakes and crimes of his father Ouranos. By not just bringing a stasis, but by literaly causing a regression. Imprisoning back the Cyclops and Hekatoncheires he had set free ; and then swallowing back into his belly the children he brought forth, literaly reversing the natural cycle of time. So Zeus' war against Cronos was justified to allow the world to continue its own maturation, and evolve further. And from a world of brutality, barbary and regression, we reached an age of order and civilization.

Now let's take the second side of the problem - the whole "Ages of Mankind".

It should be recalled that the Ages of Mankind story comes from Hesiod's "Of Works and Days", not from his "Theogony". And "Of Works and Days" is not supposed to just be a cosmogony like the Theogony, but rather a didactic work. It isn't about mythology per se, as the true topic of the work is agriculture, and all sorts of advices on how to take care of your field, woven with philosophical and moralist lessons about the importance of hard work. The mythological story woven in the work is meant to be an illustration of why humanity has to work, and is tied to all sorts of socio-philosophico messages, making it closer to a fable in many ways. It should also be taken into account that the "Ages of Man" story is tied in "Of Works and Days" to the legend of Prometheus, Epimetheus and Pandora. A legend also told in "Theogony"... but with slightly different details. For example, in the Theogony the story is very misogynistic as the curse of Zeus is... literaly women. As in, women are evil, and that's it. The version of "Of Works and Days", slightly less misogynistic, is the one with the famous Pandora jar later turn Pandora 's box, and there the evil is contained within the jar and is all a convoluted plan to force the "clan" of Prometheus to end up cursing the humanity they favored. Hesiod was never afraid of contradicting himself - even within the Theogony you have opposite stories, such as how in one part the Moirai are aughters of Zeus and Themis, in another daughters of Nyx that predated Zeus.

Anyway, all of that being said, I want to point out something important: in the Ages of Man storyline by Hesiod, Zeus is not supposed to be the one that caused the misery of mankind. At least not directly. It is true that the Golden Age and the first humanity is said to have existed/been formed under the rule of Cronos, while the Silver Age, which was a downgrade, occured when Zeus arrived on the throne. But the text does not say that Zeus was the one who caused the downgrade of humanity. There is definitively a change, an evolution, but it doesn't mean it is Zeus that "corrupted" humanity. In fact, the text does say that Zeus kept around the first humanity as powerful spirits to help, guide and enrich the following humanity. And Zeus' "rule" is not all bad, as there is a mention of one of the humanities brought forth under him being the Heroic Age, which is considered one of the best humanities after the Golden Age. The legend isn't actually about Zeus "ruining" humanity in any way, as the message Hesiod tries to give here is rather that humanity is living through a sort of natural decline... Yes, Hesiod was quite pessimistic, and honestly you can hear a bit of the old as time rant "Young people are doing everything bad, the world is getting worst and worst, wasn't it better before?". You can literaly hear Hesiod doing his youth-hating-grandpa-rant through his tale.

Afterward, we have to consider the whole Prometheus-Pandora-Zeus triangle... And this is where things get tricky and dual. Now I can't possibly embrace the full scope of the implications of the Prometheus legend. There is a reason he is such an inspiring and powerful figure even today - and Prometheus is one of the most complicated entities of all of Greek mythology. But here is the thing I wanted to say... Yes Hesiod does say and explain that Zeus created all sorts of evil he inflicted upon humanity because he was unhappy with being deceived by Prometheus. In "Of Works and Days" it is an especially strong point because the entire text is about explaining why humanity has to work so hard, and why labor is needed by humanity, and why if we have benevolent deities we must still be burdened by chores and toil. And in general this is an answer to the very same problem that the Genesis of the Bible poses: Why would a benevolent god inflict us a life of suffering? Why do we have to work to eat and why isn't the superior power providing us, if they love us so much?

In the Biblical text, this is explained by the original sin, and by all this being a punishment for humanity's original flaw. But in the Greek texts we have something very different - as it is inflicted... to punish Prometheus? That's what Hesiod's text tells us and/or implies, by making the equation "Zeus got tricked by Prometheus, he got mad, and as a result he unleashed evils on humanity". This is what led to so many readings of Zeus as some sort of petty tyrant who wounded humanity to just get back at Prometheus. And this is partially true in Hesiod's myth... But not the whole truth. Because Hesiod insists on a very important fact: he stands as both a human speaking to other humans, and thus he cries over the misfortune of humanity and our suffering, and he explains it comes from Zeus and thus it is why it is unescapable... But he also stands as a devout Greek, as a herald of the gods' words, as someone inspired by the Muse - meaning he also has to point out that Zeus was in the right. This is why, when you compile the dual legends in "The Theogony" and "Of Works and Days", you get a very ambiguous Prometheus, more of a anti-villain by Ancient Greeks standards.

For example, the idea that Zeus got mad upon discovering he had been cheated by Prometheus is a misconception when it comes to the Hesiodic text. When you read Hesiod's text in the Theogony, what does it say? It says that Zeus was not fooled by Prometheus' trick, during the partition of the cow (when it was time to decide which part of food ent to the gods, which part went to humanity). No, Zeus, as king of the gods and superior god, is all-knowing and all-seeing, and the text does say he did knew of Prometheus' trick as soon as he laid eyes on the divided cow. He did play along with Prometheus' trick, but he got massively angry - not at being cheated, no... he got angry at the idea that Prometheus had rigged the game, and had tried to deceive him. See this as some sort of betrayal - he entrusted Prometheus with doing a fair share, and he discovers the Titan had rigged the game. Similarly, when Prometheus stole the fire, Zeus got angry because it was a theft - a theft opposing his law and decisions, an act of rebellion against his position as a king - and yes he would dislike humanity, because now they literaly had a stolen good that they were not supposed to have. Remember that Zeus is a god of justice whose deal was punishing criminals and enacting the law - so of course, a cheater, a scammer and thief like Prometheus would displease him, especially when he is not just a rebel that opposes Zeus' very rule... but also who threatens the cosmic order.

I said it before - in Ancient Greece everything was about balance ad harmony. Humanity had to be "balanced". And the actions of Prometheus literaly placed humanity out of balance. When the partiton of food came, Prometheus rigged the game so that humanity would have the best part. As a result, Zeus had to inflict an "handicap", a "flaw" to humanity so that they wouldn't be too overpowered. This was the removal of the fire. But then Prometheus stole the fire back, making humanity over-powered again. And so Zeus decided to bring the ultimate "handicap", the ultimate "flaw", the ultimate "evil" that would never go away... Because that's another thing with this legend. Zeus never takes away what had been given by the gods. When the partition of food was done, Zeus did not fight it. Zeus removed the fire yes, but when Prometheus gave it back, he did not remove it again. Once something is gifted, it cannot just be snatched back - again, Zeus respects the laws, the promises, the customs. A choice is a choice, a gift is a gift. Which is why, to weaken humanity, Zeus had to GIVE something instead of remove it. And this gift was A) in Theogony, Pandora. Because the Theogony's misogynistic take on the Pandora myth is that SHE was evil because women are by nature evil and ruin humanity. B) in Of Works and Days, the gift of the jar containing all the evils and misfortunes. Which, as I said, was a clever plan to have Prometheus' own family balance his over-powering of humanity by having THEM bring upon humanity something bad. As a way to even things out. When Hesiod evokes the person that brought misfortune upon humanity, when he describes the source of all the evils mankind has to suffer through, he doesn't speak of Zeus... He speaks of Epimetheus. Or of Pandora. But not Zeus. Zeus isn't the "culprit" in Hesiod's texts - rather it is either Pandora (for, misogynistic time, women are inherently curious and curiosity - and women in general - is evil), or Epimetheus (for being a dummy who gets seduced by pretty appearances, doesn't think of anything before acting, accepts any shining gift and is too naive for his own good, trusting both his enemies and the people he doesn't know). Oh yes, the human in Hesiod will cry and lament that Zeus is persecuting humanity... But he will make it clear it was the fault of Prometheus and Epimetheus (Pandora doesn't get much of the "culprit" treatment" because she is either seen as A, the evil Epimetheus brought into the world, B, just a tool and extension of Zeus' own will, and so not an actual "culprit").

The final piece of the puzzle that allows us to understand a bit more the tale of Hesiod is that we have to recall what was the worst crime ever in Ancient Greece. Hubris: for humanity to believe itself equal or above the gods. This was the manifestation of the Greeks' immense fear of unbalance and disharmony, when the low humans tried and believed themselves to be above their natural condition, about to rival with the immortals who were perfect in body and mind (well... absolutely perfect in the religion, much more flawed in the myths and literary works). And all the actions of Prometheus worked on bringing forward humanity close to hubris. By giving them a food better than the gods', by leaving them the full mastery of fire - especially since at the time it was the early humanity, the "golden age", those long-lived, happy, careless, ageless humans that were basically Tolkien's elves - Prometheus was literaly building rivals for the gods. Remember that what Prometheus did was seen as an act of rebellion and disobediance towards Zeus' order, ruling and position... Betrayal of his king, so to speak. Zeus had to inflict on humanity something so that they wouldn't get too overpowered or too similar to gods - he had to inflict on them something that would remind them that they were mortals, not gods, and that the world did not belong to them.

And THIS is where the "Silver Age" problems come from. As I said before, when Hesiod uses Cronos and Zeus to evoke the Golden and Silver Age, he uses them more as chronological markings than anything. By making the Golden Age Cronus' era, Hesiod places this humanity in the far, far, far away distant past, in a time beyond what is mythical - in a time before the actual organized time of the gods people knew, before what humans understood of humanity. And Hesiod insists in his texts that the ills and the worries brought by either Pandora's presence among humanity (Thegony) or by the jar of Pandora (Of Works and Days) are what caused humanity's downfall as they started aging, and falling sick, and losing their happiness, and living shorter... So long story short, it isn't because Zeus became king of the gods that the Golden Age became the Silver Age. It is rather because of the chain of events started by Prometheus - it is because of all the punishments Zeus had to took against the rebellious and cheating Prometheus that the original humanity became another. So... while yes, Zeus did send the evil, the texts of Hesiod also make it clear it is kind of Prometheus' fault. Hence the anti-villain status: yes he tried to favorite and help humanity, and thus is our hero... But he also tried to destroy the order of the world and is the reason we were cursed in the first place, so he is still a villain. Mind you, in the times after Hesiod the Greeks would come to gain a much more positive view of Prometheus - but I am focusing here only on Hesiod since it is what the question is about.

The best metaphor I would have would be : all those incidents we have today when we favorize and protect one species in an ecosystem because it is "cute"... and by doing so, we ruin the entire ecosystem. This is literaly what Prometheus did, as the trickster-rebel, and what Zeus had to fight as the god of order and balance. (And again, we have an Hesiod that is literaly doing grandpa rants about how the "good ol' times" were better and the "youth today is crap", so of course he would offer us a myth where the established order and ruling monarchy is praised, while the rebellious opposition is demonized... with the nuance that the rebellious opposition protected us humans, and thus we have this very ambiguous territory.) It is no wonder that in modern fiction dealing with Prometheus, a question arises that was first brought forward by commentators of Greek myths: did Prometheus act out of excessive love for humanity, or more to get at Zeus? Both options are possible: in "The God Beneath the Sea" for example Prometheus is this tragic figure of someone who loved too much humanity and tried to protect it at all costs... But in the French novel "Prometheus the revolted" by Janine Teisson, he is more presented as a cunning, exploitative schemer that uses humanity as a tool to discreetly try to get back at Zeus, because while he sided with him, he could never fully accept his new king due to his older Titan alliegeance. Which interpret is correct? We can't tell, because the older record is just very ambiguous...

As a final, final note, we have to bring in more "outside-the-text" context to the whole situation. Because these stories were told within a society that had an established hierarchy, an established religion and established morals differing from our own, hence why we can lack some key information to get the nuance. For example, in "Of Works and Days", Hesiod cries and laments about one of the punishments of Zeus against humanity - hiding the grain of plants below the earth, and forcing humans to work to grow their crops and their food. A punishment which is nuanced when you remember something from Greek religion that the text does not speak about: Zeus was one of the favorite gods of farmers and crop-growers, and seen as their ally, because he was a god of fertility and agriculture. Zeus was the god of weather - but of good, fertile, helpful weather. Zeus sent the fertile rain that made the plants grow and the earth alive ; and he also sent all the sunlight needed for fruits to mature and plants to be healthy. This was in fact part of his dicotomy with Hades - Hades kept the grain under the earth to protect it, and then Zeus helped it grow into a plant above the soil. (And yes, this is tied to the Persephone legend in some ways). When you know that, you realize that Zeus might have cursed humans with having to work hard and search hard for their food... But he also clearly helps them to do so by sending the weather needed for the crop to grow well.

Just like how he is said to destroy the various humanities of the Ages of Man one by one to punish them or due to other incidents... But he then grants them some pretty sweet things. Like how the Golden Age humans became Greek-equivalent of guardian angels, benevolent semi-divine entities, or how the men of the Silver Age were said to be among the "Blessed" in the afterlife, and supposedly to dwell in some sort of paradise...

Of course the issue is infinitely more complex, and there's entire books written about this, so this is just a fragment of synthesis. But to return to the original question... Cronos, and the other Titans, were not at fault for oppressing humanity or being tyrants, no. From what Hesiod gives us to read, the Titans in fact had nothing to do or didn't care about humanity in the first place - since before Zeus' time we have no record of any god mingling with humans. We'd have to wait for the Olympians for humanity to become "interestng" or even "desirable" in the yes of the gods. No, Kronos' true crime was a cosmic one. The Titans had to be overthrown because they refused the natural flow of time and the natural evolution of the world, because they repeated the same oppression they had delivered the world from (Ouranos'), because they had enforced a stagnation and even a regression, perfectly symbolized by the image of the father swallowing the babies as soon as they are out of their mother's belly. The gods do grow - but they grow trapped within their father's stomach in a perverse, reverse pregnancy, and in a mirror of how Ouranos' lust also prevented life from spreading forth into the world. And we'd have to wait for Zeus to force a new "birth", through making his father vomit, for the gods to finally be able to accomplish their purpose in life - change the world and make the universe go forward...

As a final note, and I think this is something Jean-Pierre Vernant said (but a lot of what I said above comes from Jean-Pierre Vernant): Zeus overthrowing Cronos is a symbol of the rule of brute strength and violent tyranny being stopped. How did Cronos reached the throne? By castrating his father. How did he maintain his rule? By imprisoning his siblings and devouring his own children. What happened when he was challenged? A cosmic war. And Cronos ruled alone as sole king over the universe. But when Zeus came into the world... He was first of the gods, yes, but he still shared the world with his brothers, so that there were three "kings of the world". His first instinct was to ave sex once he was king, yes, but he didn't just "have sex". He symbolically or officially married the most important goddesses (Themis, the Law/Justice, Mnemosyne, Memory, Metis, Prudence/Wisdom) to bring forth the embodiments of order and peace: the Horai, the Charites, the Muses, the Moirai, Athena... And, unlike Cronos who had imprisoned his siblings as soon as he was king, Zeus accepted and rewarded his allies among the Titans, making entities such as Themis, Helios or Hecate first-rank deities in the new pantheon. AND, while he did overthrow his father, it was in the result of a long war, without any brutal mutilation, and what he merely did was imprison him - and perhaps even latter forgave him and released him according to some stories. So we are definitively into a much better rule than the predecessor.

[shellem15]

Was scrolling through the Ludinus tag because I enjoy seeing critters drag his bony ass, and suddenly had some thoughts about ludi and the gods. Keeping the narrative roles of gods and myths in mind, I want to talk about the gods' role in Exandria on a metatextual level, and how it ties into why Ludinus is a big stupid idiot (to put it in simple terms).

So, some preface: in real life religion and mythologies, gods aren't real people (shocker, I know). But the things they represent are real; gods and myths are just ways of explaining real world phenomena. This is why their characterization can be really whack. Zeus, for example, is a dick because in real life, kings are dicks. Artemis is both a protecter of hunters and their killer because, in ancient greece, when you went out into the woods to hunt, either you came back alive or you didn't. You can't analyze the gods as real people because they're not people-- they're concepts. You always have to keep these narrative roles and the historical context in mind when reading these myths. You can't judge them by our modern morals and values, because for one these myths are from ancient times, and also because the characters in these myths aren't humans that follow human moral codes or ethics.

So, in Exandria, the gods are real. And from what we've seen so far, they exist in a weird sort of space. They are both people, and concepts; mortal-like but also not. When analyzing the gods as concepts and roles in a narrative, it's pretty clear that the gods act in ways that align with their domains. The Everlight is merciful because she represents the concept of redemption; Asmodeus is hateful and cruel because he represents tyranny and domination; the Wildmother is both nurturing and brutal because nature is both of these things. You can't remove their actions from their domains, it is an intrinsic part of themselves.

Additionally, the actions they take represent certain themes. The Changebringer defeated Asmodeus in the calamity because freedom is the only way to beat tyranny. Same with the Everlight and the Dawnfather being the ones to strike down the Crawling King (with help from the Moonweaver and the All-Father), because these two gods represent hope, which defeats despair and suffering (I know despair isn't technically Torog's domain but it fits with the rest of his character so I'm gonna throw it in there.) The Raven Queen's ascension is representative of the Age of Arcanum as a whole, of the dominance of wizards over the world. The actions of the gods cannot be separated from their domains, and they cannot be separated from the general narratives seen in Exandria.

These overarching narratives can also be seen in the actions of mortals, too. The Age of Arcanum fell because of hubris. Because mortals thought they could best the gods and the world itself and it backfired on them. It's those rich guys who tried to go to the Titanic and their submarine got imploded by the water pressure. If you fuck around, you're gonna eventually find out. You can't beat the world you live in.

This detail of besting the gods is one I want to focus on with Ludinus. His whole thing is killing the gods to get revenge and "free" Exandria. But how is killing the gods freeing Exandria? The gods are Exandria. Even if they can't physically manifest avatars, they're still a part of it. The gods, being concepts, are written into the fabric of Exandria itself; you can't separate them from the world because they are the world and the world is them.

This fact is why the complete banishment of the Betrayer Gods didn't work; they are a fundamental part of Exandria and how it functions. Their return was, narratively, inevitable, because you can't remove concepts like violence or tyranny or betrayal from the world; they are here to stay, whether you like them or not. That doesn't mean you can't minimize their impact, just that you can't remove them entirely.

This is also why the Matron's ritual did work. When she killed the god of death, she wasn't destroying the concept of death itself, just putting it under new management. The same with Vecna ascending and becoming the god of secrets-- he took over an already existing domain. No fundamental concepts were created or destroyed, it's just that the faces that represented them changed.

Ludinus, in his denial of the gods, is denying the world itself. Both the good and the bad parts of it. He thinks he can remove the gods but keep Exandria mostly intact, but that's not how that works. He's so caught up in his trauma and revenge that he misses the bigger picture. In forsaking the gods, he forsakes the world. In killing the gods, he would be killing Exandria as we know it. (And that's why he's a big dumb idiot).

[kewrnage]

revival of hearts.

synopsis. ever since jason formed the outlaws, he thought his love for you slowly slipped away, especially in artemis' presence, but then he realized something that's because of you.

꒰ pairing ꒱ — jason todd x fem! reader.

꒰ genre ꒱ — angst with a happy ending.

Should you truly act as if everything is fine? You genuinely don't know. 

Those many months he spent apart from you felt like ages, since it had almost been a year for him without your touch. It lingers, the way his thumb would brush against the back of your hand so delicately. You missed it, dearly.

You couldn't utter his name without disbelief. Only his face, with some long-lasting war scars. Jason, it merely comes an expression of incredulity, just like the day he told you you were trapped in another's loving hand. 

Until now, your heart had been unable to bear the weight of the anguish struck in your chest, caught in the liberation of a broken heart, that he had found another, just right when he had said it right to your face on that meet up. He did fine without you. Artemis must've been a great company to him.

Is he actually to blame? He is, after all, a vigilante, which means he gets a lot of chances to meet fresh faces. You'd always assumed that the two of you shouldn't be in proximity, that a vigilante and a regular citizen couldn't prevail, and the uncomfortable truth became a reality. 

It had been a year since you haven't seen him, though such a thought would linger in the most random moments. Since you failed to let him escape your mind— his image still haunts you, his name still spoken amongst the stories from the underworld and in the dark alleyways.

Because you blocked his number, the plethora of missed calls and text messages couldn't reach you, blinded by your pride and anguish, you didn't know. and he merely abandoned what the two of you shared.

Though, toward the end of Jason's journey with the Outlaws, an unconfirmed connection he had with Artemis, eventually came to a finality too. Their hearts were linked, but for a brief time, they thought everything about them was platonic.

Artemis bid goodbye to Jason with an epiphany realization of their tie on the eve of their departure, imploring him to return to you no matter what, telling him that perhaps his true home was in your psyche. They parted ways after that. It is unknown when fate will bring them back together.

But, for the time being, Jason allowed himself to bask in the afterglow with his erstwhile comrades before attempting to discover and stand in your path once more.

He spent a week separating himself from you and gathered ideas for ways to get you in touch with him again.

As the sun shone brightly, you stood out among the golden daytime crowd, with strands of light falling on your hair and eyes. A few feet away, he had seen you with both of his eyes and was suddenly caught by the actualization that he too missed you.

He was drawing nearer to you gradually as you followed closely behind the crowd. His feet were betraying him; he isn't quite ready yet, but this will be the turning point.

A hand abruptly made contact with your shoulder, causing you to be frozen in your steps. Your curiosity was piqued by the lovely parole of your name, prompting you to turn around as your eyes met those softened gazes of piercing pupils cast in your way, which was a bit close to you.

You stayed motionless for a nanosecond until you recognized the person in front of you—the one who was there in your voyage of amorous reverie, which you thought had ended. It caught you off guard since your heart was bursting out of your throat and dropping out of your chest at the same time.

In front of you, he stood tall yet his heart was weak. "I'm sorry for all those months I couldn't get to you," he continued, regretting in tone and eyes that he never returned. He can imagine the content look on your face when there hasn't been conflict between the two of you in those earlier times.

Despite the fact that it failed to convince you to forgive, doubts still remained as evident in your trembling voice when you questioned, "and I waited for nothing. Were you happy with her?" Your uneasy sigh accompanied the inquiry.   Witnessing you in such a state, where your heart visibly sank due to the distressing memory of his departure, caused him distress as well.  

He hesitated upon being asked that question sincerely. Despite the lingering emotions within him, Jason felt compelled to respond truthfully, confessing that he still holds deep affection for you. "Yeah," he murmured softly. Anxious, you await his subsequent answers, desperately attempting to prevent tears from blurring your vision.  

"But I realized," he mused wistfully, tugging at his lips with a hint of bitterness, as he delved into memories of his encounters with Artemis. Despite the passing of several months, thoughts of you lingered in his mind, yet articulating them seemed unattainable at present; the elusive words he sought eluded him still. 

"She was just a companion, a friend, a sister..." He let out a long breath, acknowledging his defeat with a firm expression. With deeper exhalation, he confessed, "Even if I was with her, I still think about you." His words continued to reveal the truth, and the heavy feeling on his chest disspated, providing a slight sense of comfort, albeit he remained conscious of your startled response. He knows, it was a lot for you to take in.

You stayed hesitant, both of you fortifying for yourself against your apparent sudden outbursts. "I know I made a mistake but will you give me a chance to make it up to you?" This question, you've yearned to listen to, although your gaze betrayed you as tears of warmth streamed down your cheeks, you quietly sniffed. You were still angry with him, but you couldn't reject the fact that your affection for Jason still existed.  

He feels pain witnessing your current state, especially when he is the cause of your tears. Unsure of how to help, he scooped you into his arms tenderly while you continue to weep, releasing all your whirl of emotions with each teardrop. He remains steadfast, ensuring that you won't slip from his warm and safe grasp.  

Jason displayed patience as he awaited your calmness, gently stroking your back in an attempt to bring you comfort.   His heartache for you slightly diminished when the tears in your eyes dried off.  

"Are you okay?" Was all he could manage was to witness your attempt at regaining composure, yet you remained entangled in a state of fragility, you hastily nodded. He sighed in a slight relief. 

"I promise, I'll make it up to you no matter what." He added, as he hadn't allowed his arms branch out, but was still securely curled about you, as you buried your face in his chest, allowing yourself to be alleviated by his tender touch. This causes his lips to curve into a contented smile, and because you seek solace in his touch, he is more than happy to oblige.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

From Criminial Mastermind to Fairy Tale Hero: The End of Artemis Fowl

Here we are, everyone: The final Artemis Fowl book. It has been a journey revisiting the first series I was old enough to follow and fandom, and it's wild to me that we're finally at the end. Especially since I picked up the first Artemis Fowl book in late elementary school (I'm genuinely not sure when though, because the first book came out in April of 2001, when I was in fifth grade and it's very possible I didn't pick the book up until sixth grade, which would have put me at 11, same age as Artemis in that first book) and the final book came out in 2012, when I was in my junior year of undergrad. So at that point, Artemis, Holly, and Butler had been part of my life for a long time. And now here we are, to say goodbye to them again after this leisurely re-listen/read. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian.

Artemis grew and changed so much across eight books, which makes sense because holy cow do kids change a LOT between 11 and 15. We get so busy living life in those years that we don't really think about how much we truly learn and grown between prepubescence and full-on teenagerhood, but that is a time of massive change, and I think that more than anything else really justifies how Artemis goes from a chillingly vampiric child to a teenager with enough compassion and empathy to understand that sometimes the right choice is a heroic self-sacrifice for the people that your people (both humans and the people, in this case) love. Artemis also did a really interesting version of that thing so many teenagers do where they hit a point where they can't just phone in their abilities anymore and have to actually put effort in, but for Artemis it was emotional rather than intelligence. And yet even when making said heroic sacrifice, we have the absolutely beautiful callback to the end of book one, where Artemis drugs his mother, Butler, and Juliet to keep them from being harmed by the bio-bomb. To stop Holly from preventing him from stopping Opal, Artemis sedates her. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Except where best villain ever Opal Koboi is concerned. By this book, Opal is so disconnected from reality that she is willing to risk literally going nuclear to escape captivity, and then just...casually sparks off the apocalypse because if there is one thing our girl wants, it's to be Empress of the World, and if that means using spirit zombies and an ancient fairy doomsday device, then I guess it's a good thing she's already versed in black magic. Or something. Opal is fully and completely off the rails at this point, and if you catch yourself referring to yourself as "Mommy" in reference to the spirits of several scores of ancient elven berserkers who would--barring a geas--murder you for it, you might want to stop and take a long, hard look at your life choices. And maybe don't forget that you've cloned yourself, because that's the kind of little detail that can completely ruin your chances of being Empress of the World.

Holly quite possibly deserves every medal that exists for managing to drag Artemis's extremely out-of-shape butt through increasingly dangerous and high-stakes missions while navigating fairy politics and *checks notes* breaking up with her commanding officer after a disastrous date where they both got kicked out of a crunchball match. (And once again...HOW DARE Colfer leave this in exposition and not show us this amazing disaster of a date!?!?) Holly has also just been through the emotional wringer with Artemis and every time he decided to double-cross or lie by omission to bring off a plan and every time he does something infuriatingly human that drives up her blood pressure and yet makes the mission succeed. And then she has to sit there and watch him die to save humans and fairies. Seriously, the fact that Holly Short is a functional being rather than a hot mess is nothing short of a miracle.

And then we come to Butler. Long-suffering, super fucking over it, broken-hearted Domovoi Butler. Artemis got DAMN lucky that the whole "put my spirit in a clone of me" plan panned out, because if it hadn't, Holly was entirely correct: Butler would never have recovered. Butler and Opal might be my two favorite characters in the entire series at this point. That's not where I started--for a very long time, Holly was my favorite character, and Commander Root still gets an honorable mention--but as a grown-ass adult (I'm not doing that math for you, if you want to know that I'm old, you do the math), I cannot escape how dedicated, competent, kind, and just AWESOME Butler is. I feel like the vibe here is very similar to the thing that happens when you watch Sound of Music as a kid and either Maria or one of the kids is your favorite character, but when you come back to it as an adult, Captain Von Trapp is EVERYTHING (RIP Christopher Plummer, we loved you). Butler has a similar vibe but in a different genre.

So, I was an adult and had enough experience of watching fandoms to see the mixed reactions to this book being released. People were sad the series was ending, people were disappointed because the series had seemingly drifted, and people loved it. My reaction was pretty mixed, because I had a lot going on, I knew there were good things here but I was also kind of missing the heisty, criminal mastermind vibes, but also OPAL KOBOI. So I was pretty unsure how to feel about this book when it came out, and then I didn't reread it for literal years because I went to grad school.

Returning to this book now, I have suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch respect for how Colfer tied up the series and how he pulled off a new Irish mythological cycle, but updated for the twenty-first century. I have enough life on me to appreciate the changes Artemis goes through, and enough literature degrees to have a new and deeply fulfilling perspective on the series structure. Last Guardian is not my favorite book of the series--it's not even in the top three--but I think that what it does is genuinely impressive and I love how you can finish this book and go instantly back into the OG Artemis Fowl. The story does not, strictly speaking, have to end. And that is a vibe I can 100% get behind.

I deeply love the Artemis Fowl books, and I cannot recommend the series enough. They have so many strengths, are incredibly well-written, and they live rent-free in my head even now as an adult.

[yourfavoriteearthshaker]

OOC:

Hey! Here's some things about my blog and oc now that this is a RP blog.

Main oc:

Nickname: liz, lizzy, lizabeth, child of thy sea God, percy jackson but with both mommy and daddy issues, the 'goth one'(that one is still on debate)

Name: Elizabeth

Age: 16

How old was she when she came to camp: 5

Year rounder or no?: year rounder

Age when claimed: 15. Right after battle of Manhattan.

Joined Kronos army or no: almost. And then she became bisexual. Nvm she joined the new one

Friends with rp account: @thementallyunwellapollochild

Mentally stable?: ...

NO.

Favorite sibling?: Tyson. Duh.

Any alive family members?: not that she knows of.

Weapon of choice: DAGGA

GF: @the-golden-childofthesun 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰😍😍😍😍😍😍😋😋😋😋😋

Other godly relatives?: Her great ×idek grandparent is a child of hades and she can see ghosts. Am I saying this cause of Sam and Colby? Yes. Yes I am.

Making it so she can see ghost.

If she wasn't truamatized by her mother, meaning she would not be missing, she WOULD be a ghost hunter like Sam and Colby with her friends (and in the pjo universe with nico)

Other oc's without accounts:

Marcie

Cassie

Carter

Velvet

Olivia (hunter of artemis)

Damian (Olivia's dead twin)

Casey (his account is on my computer anyway)

Veener (same as casey)

Kora

Aiden

Purple: children of dionysus

Orange: children of apollo (marcie) and vulcan (veener)

Pink: aphrodite

Green: hermes (carter) and demeter (velvet)

Red: ares

Blue: unclaimed

I see each roleplay account/group as different universes!!! So if my oc is seeing one account and seeing another account it is a different universe!!!

On break on dc account ‼️‼️

My other roleplay accounts:

@thatunclaimedchild

@/the-random-anti-hero

I'll edit more when I've figured out more to add 👍

[shmowder]

HE IS SO DRAMATIC. Daniil you just met those people and you're saying the person who killed this stranger may as well be considered your killer???

Also wait it was Isidor who invited the Bachelor into this town, not to mention how Georgiy describes him as your colleague. did Isidor and Daniil hold some kind of an acquaintance relationship? Exchange letters and such? Did Isidor ever write about his son to him?

You have the choice to imply that this isn't the Bachelor's first time visiting this town. They might have meant it in a player meta aspect, but it could also be that this isn't the first time Daniil obliged Isidor's invitation, huh.

"Not so long ago, a naive man that I was..." Daniil is 29 years old during the events of Pathologic classic, which is coincidentally the same age as the stamatin twins and why him and Andrey used to attend the same university before the latter dropped out. Maybe he visited the town for those twins instead during those times? It takes 5-6 years to earn a medical degree, which means Daniil was around 24/23 when he met Andrey.

Artemy however is 26, and he left the town 10 years before the event of the game, meaning he was around 16 years old. Which is exactly when the 19y old Stamatin twins moved to town under Nina Kaina's request. Andrey had more than enough time to become acquainted with the town and rope a naive 23 Daniil into dropping for some drinks, which is where he might have met Isidor in his brief visit.

I highly doubt Daniil and Artemy came into contact with each other before the events of the game, the timeline just doesn't align for them to have met even if Daniil did in fact visit the town briefly before.

[not-someone-you-adore]

-her dad got remarried to a woman that literally started to hate her for "endangering her children" knowing DAMN WELL it wasn't her fault. Even if her stepmother changed for the better it wasn't always the case. -Step mom kept her from interacting with her step brothers and especially her father -she was tormented with nightmares of her biggest fear -she ran away at the age of 7. How about I say it louder? SEVEN! not enough? Lemme spell it out. S E V E N! she was SEVEN when she ran away. And for a time before she met Thalia and Luke she was ALONE she left her family and made her own. But it didn't last because a Cyclops nearly killed Thalia and she was turned into a tree and pronounced dead. -she had to get over that at the age of 7 because she arrived at camp the same age she left her previous home. -she had to bear the fact that Luke had betrayed them. Someone she looked up to and loved. -she had to be reminded of cyclops when Tyson came into the picture. -Yeah she accepted him as her own brother and family later but having a cyclops, the same thing that she thought took Thalia's life on the team bore down on her like betrayal hand the hands of Chaos and was pressing on her shoulders -speaking about pressing on her shoulders, let's talk about how she bore the weight of the sky. Percy got 2 visions. One where Luke passed the sky to Annabeth. The other when Artemis took the sky off of Annabeth's shoulders. These 2 visions were separate. Meaning that Annabeth was holding the sky for quite some time. Definitely longer than Percy. She was COMPLETELY drained and exhausted. More so that Luke left her to carry it alone. -she was told Luke died but couldn't believe it -Luke visited her but she couldn't bring herself to kill him. A promise she kept, but like didn't. -not as important but the whole "perachel" thing -her half brother died in front of her after passing his work to her -she then proceeds to get stabbed in the shoulder for Percy and nearly freaking dies AGAIN -the person she loved but then loved as a brother started to thrash her around, even if it was another entity in control -HER blade was the one that killed Luke. HER BLADE. imagine how she must have felt holding and fighting with it after -then she got a break -SIKE HER BOYFRIEND DISAPPEARED FOR 8 MONTHS CAUSING HER TO OVERWORK HERSELF TRYING TO LOCATE HIM -she was called worthless by Athena, her own mother, and was given a coin that could have led her to her death -oh they got reunited JUST BEFORE NEW ROME WAS BOMBED NEARLY WIPING ANY CHANCE OF BECOMING ALLIES -realizes she needs to go on a solo quest that ends with the mother of the spiders that have been tormenting her. Seems easy right? Yep! You could even do it with a broken ankle! -she gets the Athena parthenos 🎉🎉🎉 ….aaaaand promptly falls into Tartarus with her boyfriend -puts all her trust in Reyna, who she had probably interacted with for 20 minutes tops to escort the statue of her mother -demon grandmas blind her and make her think Percy broke up and left her -she watches her boyfriend nearly choke a goddess with some scary blood bending shit -she had to step down as a leader and leave Bob and Damasen. Do you even know how much that may have DESTROYED her!? -then she embarks to where her mom and soon-to-be father-in-law's rivalry started to then battle the literal Earth's children, get tossed back to CHB, quite literally, and promptly starts fighting like they weren't just done with mass murdering her great great grandma's other children -immediately thereafter practically watches Leo 'die' -as she is about to go to college and finally get an ounce of a normal human life her friend Jason dies. You guys don't even know how strong their bond must have been after all that. They are so similar but so different at the same time. No way that they didn't bond. -then she learns Nico is going back to Tartarus to get Bob and it hits her that she didn't even think of Bob. She felt so damn guilty

....

YET

She is scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure.

YET

She looks beautiful

[orangerosebush]

What tickles me about the first book in the AF series emphasizing Artemis' vampiric appearance is that you could argue that he is one, in a sense. Here is an excerpt from Nina Auerbach's Our Vampires, Ourselves:

Auerbach's musing that "[vampires] are disturbingly close to the morals they prey on [...] vampires are neither inhuman nor nonhuman nor all-too-human" is what strikes me here. In many ways, vampires are monsters that lurk within human bodies and under human faces -- which reflects how although Artemis may appear human (and is, uncontestably, human at the start of the series), his nature puts him at the most remote border of the category. The reaction that many human background characters have to Artemis (until ~TOC) is to shudder!

For example, in AF, you have the following:

“Nguyen had heard the name Fowl before—who hadn’t in the international underworld?—but he’d assumed he’d be dealing with Artemis senior, not this boy. Though the word “boy” hardly seemed to do this gaunt individual justice.”

Then, in TEC:

“The waitress scurried to the kitchen, relieved to escape from the pale youth [Artemis] at table six. She’d seen a vampire movie once. The undead creature had the very same hypnotic stare. ”

Artemis is equally ill-fitted to human society as he is to fairy society. It's true that in the first book, Artemis plays up what makes him unsettling to give off that impression of having something powerful and monstrous barely contained beneath a feeble human exterior. The only way for him to command respect as the current heir to the Fowl name is to imply through behavior that appearances are not what they seem; to imply that despite his age, he is of equal importance and power to his (presumed) late father. But Artemis' strangeness transcends performance. He is, by nature, uncanny to those who receive him.

This is what Sigmund Freud says of this quality in his essay The Uncanny (trans. David McLintock)

But Artemis' vampirism goes beyond character, it is also behavioral. If he is a vampire, what does he vampirize? Artemis is, to put it bluntly, skilled at being the heir to a criminal empire. The Fowls have sustained themselves by draining the world around them of wealth the second they came into existence. And how did they come into existence? By stepping onto the shores of Ireland during the Anglo-Norman invasion! We aren't given much in the way of lore for the Fowls, but they are implied to be old money. That historical power, in turn, implies at least some sort of relationship to British colonial activity in Ireland.

Further, the Fowls have maintained their power over the years by leeching off of the physical power and protection offered by the Butlers. Until Colfer starts allowing Butler's character to grow beyond his employment, his dynamic with Artemis is weirdly reminiscent of a vampire and familiar; the world that Butler gives Artemis access to isn't the day, but rather the adult world. When Artemis' parents are out of the picture in the first book, the only reason Artemis is able to "prey" upon the People is because Butler acts where and when Artemis cannot.

Not to mention -- and I say this with love -- Artemis can be a bit of an energy vampire. He delights in antagonizing, he relishes in drawing out a triumph over an enemy. For example, by the second book, Artemis has driven a handful of school-provided therapists to quit from how drained their interactions with Artemis left them; Artemis is remarkably good at teasing out what would get under one's skin the most.

There's also the matter of Artemis draining some of Holly's/No1's/Hybras' magic in TLC. Although there isn't a scene in the series of Artemis drinking blood, I think that theft of magic can invoke a similar effect in Auerbach's framework.

[evangelineshifts]

ɴᴏᴡ ᴘʟᴀʏɪɴɢ: I know the end - Phoebe Bridgers

3:03 ──────ㅇ───────── 5:44

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

Name ➻ Evangeline Paris Devereux

Age ➻ 14

Zodiac ➻ Gemini

S/O(s) ➻ Percy Jackson

Godly parentage: legacy of Artemis & Apollo (Roman)

Backstory synopsis ➻

I am the vessel of προστασία, Goddess of Protection, making me the goddess of protection. Prostasía dates back to the very beginning of titanomachy, she is one of Kronos’ sisters but she betrayed him and sided with the Olympians along with Άμυνα, Goddess of Defense, as they grew fond of mankind. They were the original Goddesses of protection and defense but it was prophesied that she would fade and they needed a way to preserve her as she was very important for the protection of mankind and Olympus. The prophecy mentioned a girl lost in time to take the spirit of Prostasía.

Kronos went after my parents after he figured out what they were hiding and who I was. They were hunted by Kronos and killed and I was saved by Hestia. I was frozen for thousands years before Hestia came back for me. The same thing happened to Savanna (vessel of Ámyna; legacy of Aphrodite and Bellona) a year or so later.

The ‘triads’ were born 5 centuries after we were so I would have help and company. They all have gifts from three different gods hence the name ‘Triads’. Savanna and I are appointed their leaders as we have gifts from the 13 main Gods (along with the more minor ones but those only come occasionally) There’s Zorya, Avalon, Audrina, Viveca, Adonis, Kalen, Egan, and Zale.

Zorya is a daughter of Persephone with gifts from Artemis and Thanatos.

Avalon is a daughter of Apollo with gifts from Hera, and Melinoe.

Audrina is a daughter of Aphrodite with gifts from Hecate, Tyche.

Viveca is a daughter of Demeter with gifts from Hestia and Harmonia.

Adonis is the eldest son of Dionysus and he was gifted by Eros and Pallas.

Kalen; Son of Athena and gifted by Phobos and Nike.

Egan; Son of Hephaestus and gifted by Hermes and Asclepius.

Zale; Son of Ares and gifted by Hypnos and Iris.

(Note: I literally made who they were gifted by with very little knowledge on the gods so if stuff doesn’t make sense ignore it 😭)

When Hestia came back she took all of us and placed us in the care of a trusted demigod, Margaux St. Louis, where she ran a home for orphan demigods in Massachusetts. We lived there ever since with no knowledge of our destiny and what was to come. Started going to CHB at the ripe age of 5 and never looked back.

A/N- if anyone is greek and finds issues with the translated names pls let me know cause I have no idea if they’re actually accurate I just used google translate 😭

If you have questions my ask box is always open!

✧ dividers by @benkeibear !