ukelele-boy

[ukelele-boy]

Lazy drawing

Based off this shirt (i can't find the post this shirt came from)

[ukelele-boy]

What is this bow-looking hairstyle on the Apollo Belvedere? Is there some sort of historical context or did they just think “this fucks” and move on?

[ukelele-boy]

baby will solace awwwwww awwwwwwwh awwwww

[ukelele-boy]

Apollo picking people up and showing them off like cats

When you're a 3000-4000 year old grown man but you're dad still picks you up like a 5 year old/when you're 15 year old teenager and your friend is ageless god who was for a bit another mortal teenager picks you up like you're a weightless cat

(Aristeaus is more like 'dad huh?' while Leo is just straight up not computing the current situation)

Moly is ticklish especially under the armpits, a wiggly cat.

While Chiron is too big now to be properly picked up, this does not stop Apollo from trying.

He did 100% get picked up when he was a wee baby though (which must be an extra strange sensation for someone with 4 legs)

(also rip me i can't draw horses)

And bonus, Chiron getting carried like a sheep cause he zoomed too much and fell asleep.

[ukelele-boy]

I am so easily amused

[ukelele-boy]

This is my first post! I’ve gotten back into drawing and decided what’s the harm in posting it 🥳

[ukelele-boy]

the whump fan’s dilemma

[ukelele-boy]

DQ Date!

Vers without the stickers/sparkles under cut

tumblr ate the quality faster than I could get my own ice cream 😪😪😪 click to make it slightly clearer lol

Happy gay month ‘cuz you know you gay and stuff [/ref]

[ukelele-boy]

You know what, how Apollo acts in the pjo verse which contrasts with his domains and legends actually seems to fit into today's climate if you look at this generation and specifically the arts.

We can't have anything serious anymore. There always has to be jokes or flashy colors. Just sitting down in emotions and letting art (specifically movies/shows) be still for a bit is something that is avoided and even cringed at. It can be seen as childish actually. Like, anything 'sappy' belongs in a children's media. I even see it in everyday life where it's hard to be serious with even those closest to me because it feels either cringey or toooo open.

Apollo is like the god of the arts. Music and poetry. Those mediums Im pretty sure were always taken pretty seriously. Was traditionally supposed to make you think. But now, today's most popular music is frankly not going outside the box, not taking many creative liberties, and they don't say much of anything important. They go by the rules.

No, that kind of art mostly falls on small time creators. This is mostly because of big rich corruptions ofc and it has affected everything. There's no room for something too bland or boring. Today, Art is loud and entertaining but it says nothing. And I think pjos Apollo in the beginning (his mask/persona) fits that perfectly.

He's constantly lying to trick seemingly both him self and most importantly Zeus that he doesn't care about anything. That he has no motives. That he's an idiot. And he's loud and arrogant about it. He plays into an annoying frat boy like persona. Not like a traditional poet or the god of knowledge.

This pjo story almost mirrors our today's society perfectly. The rulers of the land are getting more and more controlling. In response the people, the ARTS, are doing their best to appease the order their under because they are scared. It's only when creators get angry enough, where they have something to fight for, that the arts start to take a turn and become a powerful force. (Like after ToA)

I think it's a neat metaphor.

[ukelele-boy]

Please ignore this I just wanna put it up here so I can sleep peacefully knowing I didn't draw furries today, I also wrote this on a temporary notes app so I had to put it in my saves, which is here

Look. Apollo is hot. Apollo is powerful. Apollo is a plague god, a music god, and everything in between. But here’s the thing: he’s a bottom. And I say that with my entire chest, supported by mythology, art, and frankly, how he acts like a piece of shit and a theater kid with abandonment issues in every text ever written about him.

APOLLO IS A BOTTOM PLEASE LORD HELP ME I NEED MORE CONTENT OF SUB APOLLO PLEASPELEPSLDASKS- I am not coping.

Apollo, for all his beauty and power, sucks in love. Every. Single. Time. (Not every single time, he does have a few W's :DD)

Like:

Daphne: Apollo gets hit with a love arrow and becomes obsessed with a forest nymph. She gets hit with a “get-away-from-me” arrow and RUNS. So what does he do? Chase her through the woods like a Greek regency idiot. She begs her dad to save her, he turns her into a tree.

Hyacinthus: Possibly the gayest myth. Apollo and Hyacinthus are playing discus like dorks in love when BAM—wind god gets jealous, redirects the discus, and kills Hyacinthus. Apollo is DEVASTATED. He cradles him. Cries. Turns him into a flower. sir you are the god of medicine and you’re still curled up mourning instead of resurrecting.

Cyparissus: Another sad gay myth. Apollo gives this boy a deer. The boy accidentally kills the deer. Apollo tries to comfort him but Cyparissus is like “no I wanna cry forever” and turns into a cypress tree. why do all your boyfriends turn into plants and leave you???

Each time, Apollo is the one left behind.

Apollo acts like he’s in control: confident, smug, flashy. But if you dig a little deeper? He’s the most emotionally repressed, insecure perfectionist, melodramatic god out there. He needs everyone to like him, he spirals when things don’t go perfectly, and he cannot take rejection without emotionally combusting.

This man would 100% start a relationship acting like the hot one with all the power and then be the one going “🥺 do you still love me” two weeks later. It’s giving control freak who secretly craves softness. It’s giving pathetic wet cat dude who just needs to be taken care of pleaseplease-

Also, fun fact: in actual Greek art, Apollo is beardless, slim, pretty-boy coded. Not big and burly like Heracles or Ares. His whole aesthetic is “untouchably beautiful and slightly tragic,” and the Greeks did that on purpose.

Apollo invented both music and sobbing. Not really, but spiritually? Yes. He’s the god of:

Poetry

Music

Truth

Prophecy

Plague

Healing

Knowledge

Etc

All his domains are either creating beauty or dealing with suffering. Tell me that’s not peak bottom-coded. He’s not out here charging into battle screaming. He’s playing his lyre and silently falling apart in the corner because someone misread his poem.

Even in Roman times, poets and artists treated Apollo like a fragile flower boy. The statue Apollo Belvedere (Vatican Museums) shows him posed like he’s about to give a dramatic monologue about his latest crush ghosting him.

Eva Keuls (The Reign of the Phallus) if I am not mistaken, describe Apollo as participating in non-hegemonic masculinity, i.e., not the top dog. He’s not Zeus or Ares. He’s complicated, emotional, performative—he holds power, but doesn’t wield it the way you’d expect a top-tier Olympian to.

Let him be soft and taken care of, Cowards

Apollo is dazzling, dramatic, deeply lonely, and honestly just wants to be loved in ways he doesn’t know how to ask for. He radiates power, but inside? He’s just a guy who cries over his exes and composes sad music at 2am.

No but like genuinely, the amount of fanfic potential bottom Apollo has-

[ukelele-boy]

All the Apollo's I've draw and uploaded to this account so far!

[ukelele-boy]

meanwhile to me apollo is something like this

just,, lots of light. inescapable, absolute and piercing and reaching every corner. the third image is what I interpret apollo's arrows as, just scouring

also eye imagery. his gaze has to feel like it's Piercing through the fabric of reality itself (like an arrow!!)

he's just,, by nature the least subtle person there exists. he's literally Truth

this is kind of how I imagine apollo's eyes whenever I picture him

it's a starburst that's kind of a crosshair

[ukelele-boy]

youre not “bad at art” you just need to find a character to latch onto to where you draw them 1 million times and you improve dramatically

[ukelele-boy]

The Twins of Olympus, forever in balance, the duality of light.

the idea that they look the same as kids, basically indistinguishable but now look different due to their different lives and personalities and how people perceive them

they both changed but they're also the same

(ie, Artemis kept the hair texture, Apollo kept the hair colour)

[ukelele-boy]

I think something I really like about having a hyper fixation on the pjo Olympic gods (specifically Apollo) is that I can study the symbolism of all the characters and it actually means something in the story.

Like, because they are symbols themselves symbolism is almost uniquely important to this story specifically. It's of course important to other stories but that's usually from a writer/reader perspective. like we can see it but the characters in the story are unlikely to (unless it's meta). In stories featuring Greek gods and monsters tho...

[ukelele-boy]

So will I

I have finally found a literary reference to Apollo riding griffins:

"When fair Apollo leaves Delphi's shrine and visits the altars of the north, Castalia's waters differ in no wise from those of any common stream, nor the laurel from any common tree; sad and silent is the cave and the shrine without a worshipper. But if Phoebus is there, Phoebus returned from Scythian climes to his Delphic tripod, guiding thither his yoked griffins, the woods, the caves regain their voice, the streams their life"

– Claudian, On the Sixth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius (trans. Maurice Platnauer)

Thank you Claudian, I shall cherish this.

[ukelele-boy]