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fearlessinger · 3 years

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So, a little less than a month year ago (this is all my fault, I take sole responsibility for this loooong delay), I got roped into reading The Trials Of Apollo by @flightfoot’s amazing meta. I loved it more than I could have ever anticipated, and I’ve been gushing about it non stop to her on discord. We had a lot of fun reviewing the series and taking it apart to overanalyze bit by bit, marveling at the way it keeps growing layers and dimensions the longer one looks at it. Finally, we took out a google doc. The following is result n.3 of our combined excited ramblings, and… well it sort of turned into a full on dissertation. Whoops.

“You must make your own choice.”

Reconstructing Apollo’s Journey within Riordan’s Narrative

Much too self aware to be egotistical

Not the kind of feelings that gods have (read on ao3)

“So,” I said glumly. “We’re going to get a ride from your brother, huh?”

Artemis’s silver eyes gleamed. “Yes, boy. You see, Bianca di Angelo is not the only one with an annoying brother. It’s time for you to meet my irresponsible twin, Apollo.” (TTC 45)

This is Apollo’s introduction in the series, courtesy of his sister Artemis, the only true ally he has on Olympus, the only one he believes would care at least a little bit if he died. Apollo is “annoying”, she says, “irresponsible”, and before he has even entered the scene, she’s managed to call him “lazy” too.

He does absolutely nothing to dispel this image of himself when he gets there.

The twins’ back and forth is a practiced dance that the Hunters and the young demigods are mostly passive spectators or unwitting participants of.

I missed you, Apollo says, I was worried. Where are you going? but he says it in such a way that it comes across as obnoxious rather than caring, and her rudeness and irritation feel fully justified as she replies that it’s none of his business.

He recites some self aggrandizing poetry knowing it’ll be met with eye rolls and light mockery. He flirts with the girls knowing he’ll get rebuffed. His friendliness always stops just short of feeling completely pleasant and genuine.

He takes the time to acknowledge and address all of the people present and still somehow comes across as if he’s just trying to put himself at the center of attention.

He LARPs an amicable first meeting, systematically sabotaging each and every one of the numerous overtures he makes, while his twin sighs and shakes her head in the background.

It’s all incredibly calculated... until it isn’t, and the real desperation at the heart of it shines through.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Apollo said. “You don’t deserve an honor like driving the sun chariot.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Don’t sweat it! Maine to Long Island is a really short trip, and don't worry about what happened to the last kid I trained. You’re Zeus’s daughter. He’s not going to blast you out of the sky.”

Apollo laughed good-naturedly. The rest of us didn’t join him. (TTC 52)

The Apollo we meet at the beginning of this story is a thousands of years old deity so desperate to impress a bunch of kids he just met he immediately offers to let them drive his cool car, only to then find himself having to pressure into it the one kid who didn’t want to do it, because she’s the only one that the Lord of the Sky wouldn’t instantly strike down.

“Nero wanted Meg to depend entirely on him,” Apollo will observe in the not so distant future. “She wasn’t allowed to have her own possessions, her own friends. Everything in her life had to be tainted with Nero’s poison,” he will say, noting how now that the girl has formed an attachment to him, he himself has become a weapon in Nero’s arsenal. “If [Nero gets] his hands on me,” he’ll predict with perfect accuracy, through no power other than the ability to see clearly the parallel between Meg’s situation and his. “He [will] make her feel responsible for my pain and death.”

There are no things in Apollo’s life, not even the things that by all rights should belong entirely to him, that are safe from his father’s interference. There are no choices he’s truly allowed to make without his father’s permission and approval. If he dares, those who are close to him will pay the price.

In the halls of Olympus, to grow close to anyone is an unforgivable weakness, and to care is a punishable offense. Apollo has to act in secret even just to search for his twin when she’s lost, to send help her way.

So Artemis cannot, will not speak in her brother’s defense before their father.

“I can always charm Father into forgiving me,” she tells Apollo. But she cannot charm Zeus into forgiving her brother, and she can’t directly take him on any more than Apollo can. All she can do is try to talk some sense into her stubborn, reckless twin.

“It’s you I’m worried about,” she tells Apollo, a rare confession of love that is also a clear reproach. You were stupid. You were careless. You should not have angered Father.

Artemis is far too aware of all the ways their father’s judgement is unfair, all the ways their father’s rules are stifling, damaging, even plain wrong, not to understand that there are very good reasons to oppose him. Still, as she pointedly reminds her brother of his taking part in Olympus' first and only attempted coup, of his killing the makers of the weapon that their father had used to kill Asclepius, she makes it clear she disapproves.

It’s never a good idea to antagonize the King of the Gods. Artemis, unlike Apollo, is smart enough not to do it. She’s smart enough to have separated herself from the rest of them as soon and as much as she possibly could. She does good where she can, to the extent that she can, far away from Olympus, making sure to never give Zeus reason to look her way.

‘Meg,’ said the emperor, ‘I am trying so hard to keep the Beast at bay. Why won’t you help me? I know you are a good girl. I wouldn’t have allowed you to roam around Manhattan so much on your own, playing the street waif, if I didn’t know you could take care of yourself. [...]’ (THO 288)

There are a lot of parallels between Apollo and Meg, that become more and more evident as the story progresses. But there are a lot of parallels between Meg and Artemis too.

Meg, Apollo notes, is clearly Nero’s favorite. She’s allowed comparatively more leeway than the rest of her siblings. She’s told she has earned it. She’s made to feel important. Valued. Trusted. She’s told it is her responsibility to keep the Beast at bay. It’s all an illusion, of course. She has no power over her stepfather’s choices. But it’s a nice, comforting illusion. It’s tempting to believe it.

A part of Artemis still does, even though she absolutely knows better. Sometimes Zeus does listen to her. If only Apollo did too. If only Apollo just followed her advice, if he just lay a little lower, if he were a smidge more humble, a bit less ambitious, a bit less emotional. If he just learned to let things, to let people go. Maybe everything would be fine.

Artemis has had many more years than Meg to figure out how to best take advantage of Zeus’ favoritism. She has instituted her own personal cult, her very own “all-maiden mafia”, as Apollo tellingly calls it, within the confines of which she gets to be the uncontested rule maker. She grants her followers immortality for as long as they’ll serve her – only for as long as they’ll serve her – to keep them safe, to keep them close, to keep them loyal. She created another, better family for herself. She strives, and for the most part succeeds, in being a much more wise and compassionate head of it than her father is.

She knows full well her brother could never get away with doing the same.

But it's much more comforting to tell herself she earned and deserves her privileges, than it is to admit they represent a wrong she doesn’t have the power to right.

It’s easier to think of Apollo as irresponsible than reflect on the fact that she, who had not hesitated to pierce through with her arrows Asclepius’s mother for daring to hurt her beloved brother’s feelings, did nothing when Zeus decided the boy must die.

For as much as she strives not to be, Artemis is very clearly her father’s daughter, and she has internalized just as much of her father’s bullshit as her brother has.

Apollo brought it on himself. He was stupid. Careless. He should not have angered Father. This is what Artemis would rather think, and at least on some level, Apollo wants to agree with her. There is a perverse sort of comfort in the idea that his father would not strike him or his loved ones without reason. If Apollo deserved it, then that means, in a way, that he’s still in control of his fate.

I have done nothing to earn this strife, he tells us, over and over again at the start of his own pentalogy, in exactly the way that will lead us to conclude that he absolutely has. He wants to be pitied, and yet, at the same time, to be pitied is the last thing he would ever want. He wants to be understood, and yet, at the same time, the very thought of it terrifies him.

Because in his rare moments of honesty, Apollo can’t really find it in himself to believe in his own innocence either.

The truth is he WAS stupid, and careless, and maybe Artemis is right. He should have just kept his head down. Maybe he really is just a vain, power hungry fool. Maybe he’s deluded, to think he could do better. To think he could do more than his father does.

Apollo has done many bad things in his long life. Not all of them to survive. And power should make good people uneasy. So what does it say about him that he wants it? Does it matter that he wants it for a just reason? Does it matter that he would be taking it from a tyrant? When Zeus took it from his own father, he was full of righteous anger and good intentions too.

The truth is, Apollo is nothing like his father. But Zeus doesn’t see it. He only sees the ways in which Apollo is exactly like him.

Father hates me because I’m too full of awesome, Apollo says, because joking about it hurts less than acknowledging it as truth. The only thing you’re full of is your own inflated ego, Artemis says, for the exact same reason.

But it is true. Apollo is punished for his achievements just as much as he is for his transgressions. He is the most radiant and accomplished of all of Zeus’ offspring. It doesn’t garner Apollo any sympathy that he says this, definitively solidifying the impression that he’s nothing but a ridiculous, pretentious brat, but he has no sympathy points to lose with us, because despite all appearances, he’s never really intended to earn any in the first place, and he has no sympathy points to lose with the rest of his brothers and sisters either, because they all resent him and envy him in equal measure for it. He is his father’s biggest pride, and the biggest threat to his rule. He is the son that should never have been born, and that Zeus can’t bring himself to kill like his own father would have.

We’ll never hear in Apollo’s own words the details of Zeus’s abuse. Apollo chooses not to share them. But once we know to look, we can see the scars all over him. All over Artemis too.

That day on Delos, in front of Leo and Hazel and Frank, Apollo and Artemis are, like usual, acting out a script that is centuries, maybe millennia old, which the young demigods can do little more than awkwardly witness or play along with.

I am unjustly mistrusted, Apollo says, dramatically scoring his own wallowing with his ukulele. Well, maybe if you hadn’t accepted to be worshipped above Father... Artemis says. He’s just mad I’m more good looking than he is! Apollo wails. Artemis pretends to gag.

This is how the two of them cope. They have a routine. They keep going through the motions of it, even long after it stopped reflecting their reality, well past the point where it’s become detrimental to them.

There must have been a time where Apollo’s pride and arrogance weren’t just flimsy covers for self hatred and fear. There must have been a time when Artemis’ jabs were more affectionate than genuinely frustrated. But that time has passed.

And Apollo has not been a real threat to Zeus’ power in millennia.

The Apollo we meet at the beginning of this story has done everything he could to make himself as non threatening as possible.

Gone is the frighteningly capable god of the myths. The one who took initiative. Who went out to slay monsters himself, rather than send some heroes to do it in his stead. The one who decided to teach himself to shoot arrows. To heal wounds. Who loved learning new things, who loved sharing knowledge. The one who decided to give a chance to a lonely centaur ostracized by everybody, to give a home and an education to the children of the gods. The one who set up a slave freeing business in his temples. Who’d gift immortality to a couple of girls for free, no conditions, no strings attached, because he was impressed and moved by their reckless bravery. Who’d lovingly carve the wood of his own bows, steal the Fates’ thread to make the strings. Who was warm, and kind, like the sun. Who was loved by all. Who earned more and more people’s prayers even for things that did not fall under his domain… until they did.

Gone too, is the god whose anger cut down the innocents. The one whose hopeless hunger for love devoured people whole. The one who’d sneer at his siblings because he knew he was better than them, because they might have had more of their father’s goodwill, but they never had even a fraction as much of their father’s attention. The one who got Daphne and Hyacintus killed because he’d been the last to realize that while yes, it was all but impossible for almost anyone, including other deities, to strike back at Apollo himself directly, it was so, so incredibly easy to hurt him by hurting the people he loved. The one who refused Trophonius and Agamethus a second chance. The one who relentlessly bullied Harpocrates. The one who wouldn’t accept the death sentence imposed by the King of the Gods on the son he had orphaned and saved and raised and cherished more than anything in the world. The one who’d fight back. The one who’d rebel.

The Apollo we meet at the beginning of this story is not really Apollo anymore. He’s a flashy idiot, and nothing more. He revels in appearing as dumb and incompetent as possible.

The first thing we learn about the poetry god is that he’s a bad poet. The first thing we learn about the sun god is that he’s a lazy, irresponsible sun driver. It doesn’t take people long to realize the god of prophecy is just as clueless to the meaning of his oracle’s words as anyone else is.

“I taught the kid everything he knows,” Apollo tells us of Percy, looking directly into the camera, knowing perfectly well we are aware that it’s a lie, while conveniently forgetting to ever mention he was Chiron’s teacher.

He even tries to pretend, for a handful of pages at the beginning of book 1, that he has NO IDEA how human pregnancy works (a notion he’s quick to abandon and never brings up again, possibly realizing this is slightly too outrageous a claim to make, for a guy who famously performed emergency cesarean on his dying lover to rescue the life of the infant she was carrying).

I remember one time I rained plague on a city by accident, he says. Whoops.

He’s the annoying loser we’ve all had to deal with at one point or another, who doesn’t get that the more celebrities he brags about knowing, the more he exposes himself as a fraud.

“Want some archery tips?” he keeps asking people who are clearly not interested nor in need of lessons.

He is the last person on the planet you’d ever want to turn to for answers or help.

Well, maybe not really the last. But close.

He keeps marveling and acting offended that people – especially the people who know him, like Chiron, like his twin sister – would look to him for solutions. That they would trust him to come up with a plan. That they would think he has the ability to put things right.

Artemis glared at Apollo. ‘Hazel Levesque, your brother is still alive. He is a brave fighter, like you. I wish I could say the same for my brother.’ (BOO 312)

Artemis reprimands Apollo for defying their father, but at the same time she does it, she also calls him a coward for not being willing to do it again. She wants her brother to keep his head down, but when he does, she’s disappointed in him. She knows he can be better than that. She wants him to be better than that. Whatever punishment their father has in store for Apollo this time, surely it can’t be that bad. Surely. Apollo is just being a drama queen, as usual.

Apollo does nothing to challenge this assumption. It’s the one thing he can do for her: let her hold onto the illusion that he’s fine, still fine, he’ll always be fine. That she doesn’t have to feel guilty for being luckier. For being unfair to him. For not being able to protect him.

Artemis returns the favor by going along with this ludicrous charade of his that she is not quite able – that she is not quite willing to understand. Even as she rolls her eyes at him, she helps him stage the elaborate pantomime that will allow him to follow his conscience while fooling everybody – and most of all himself – into thinking he’s much more stupid and cruel than he actually is.

Despite everything, no matter what, Apollo and Artemis are a team.

When the demigods arrive on Delos, the twins are ready. They play their part to perfection. Artemis: the sympathetic, reasonable one. Apollo: the spineless egotistical brat who has to be practically coerced into helping. They sell the hell out of this act.

But it is, in fact, an act.

Try to strike a deal, son of Hephaestus, Artemis tells Leo, all but winking exaggeratedly in his direction, as she takes away Hazel and Frank to brief them on the state of the enemy forces and leaves him alone with her supposedly murderous brother.

Leo remembers the story of how Hermes got away with cow theft in exchange for the lyre. My brother loves a good bargain, Artemis had said. The hint couldn’t be more clear.

But the truth is, Leo has zero bargaining power. There is absolutely nothing he could do to force Apollo’s hand. He even notes this in his internal narration, growing seriously worried for a minute that Apollo might just straight up take the Valdezinator from him.

Apollo does not do it. He doesn’t even attempt to haggle over the price.

‘I will give you this advice for free. You might be able to defeat Gaea in the way you describe, similar to the way Ouranos was defeated aeons ago. However, any mortal close by would be utterly …’ Apollo’s voice faltered. ‘What is that you have made?’ (BOO 318)

Reading it from Leo’s pov back then, this sounded simply like Apollo getting distracted by the shiny new toy. The timing of that distraction might have been peculiar, but it had to be a coincidence, considering that Apollo had been lightheartedly discussing the pros and cons of killing Leo himself just a couple lines before.

Now, 5 books later, there’s a lot more to be read in Apollo’s voice faltering right as he realizes that Leo is planning to die. There’s even more to be read in the fact that after learning what Leo needs the cure for, Apollo doesn’t even try to pretend he doesn’t want to give it to him anymore. He insists, in fact, even though he knows, by this point, that it is not actually necessary to ensure Gaea’s demise, and allowing a mortal to get his hands on it will only worsen his punishment.

‘Here’s the plan,’ Lu said. ‘I know for a fact Nero has cameras in the office building across the street. It’s one of his properties. When we burst out this door, his surveillance team should get some good footage of us on the roof.’

‘Remind us why that’s a good thing?’ I asked.

Lu muttered something under her breath, perhaps a prayer for her Celtic gods to smack me upside the head. ‘Because we’re going to let Nero see what we want him to see. We’re going to put on a show.’

Meg nodded. ‘Like on the train.’

‘Exactly,’ Lu said. ‘You two run out first. I’ll follow a few steps behind, like I’ve finally cornered you and am ready to kill you.’

‘In a strictly play-acting way,’ I hoped.

‘It has to look real,’ Lu said.

‘We can do it.’ Meg turned to me with a look of pride. ‘You saw us on the train, Lester, and that was with no planning. When I lived at the tower? Lu would help me fake these incredible battles so Father – Nero, I mean – would think I killed my opponents.’ (TON 56)

Apollo is rightly horrified to learn that Lu helped Meg fake-kill people in front of Nero rather than help her escape. But horror immediately gives way to understanding. “And are you any better?” he asks himself. No, of course he isn’t. He and Artemis have been doing the exact same thing for centuries, if not millennia. They both chose lies and subterfuge to outright defiance countless times. They both had, effectively, nowhere near as much of a choice as they like to think they had.

The Apollo we met at the beginning of this story was already powerless in all the ways that matter. He’d given up on everything that made him, him, in the hopeless attempt to mold himself into the kind of person his father would respect, and at the same time, impossibly, the kind of person his father wouldn’t perceive as a challenge.

“You neglected your duties,” Zeus said as he sentenced Apollo to this latest punishment, right before accusing him of having been too good at his job.

The game has always been rigged. Apollo is damned no matter what he does.

Zeus, like Nero, like Caligula, like Commodus, like all the tyrants that Apollo couldn’t help admiring and feel inadequate in front of, believes in power as a means to push people down. Apollo could never make himself believe the same thing.

But he could act like he did. After all, he’s the god of acting too. So he could fake being great and terrible, knowing full well he should never allow himself to truly be the first, and could never bring himself to truly be the latter.

Apollo is nothing like his father. Not because he doesn’t share any similarities with him. On the contrary. He and his father are very much alike. They are both liars. Manipulators. They both have a tendency to ignore the unpleasantness of reality by rewriting it inside their own heads and convincing themselves that that’s the truth. They both have the acting prowess and the stubbornness and the sheer power required to force the people around them to join in their game of pretend.

And like his father before him, Apollo too wants to make things right. He wants to be better, he wants to do better than his father does.

So he does what his father always refused to do. He learns from his mistakes.

It’s no coincidence that Apollo’s worst crimes are all things he did in the distant, ancient past. Niobe’s sons and daughters. The Cumaean Sibyl. Koronis. Trophonius and Agamethus. Harpocrates. Despite how keen Apollo is on convincing us that yes, even now, he’s the kind of person who could and would happily turn a kid into a lizard just for having dared talk back to him, the truth is it’s been a long, long time since he intentionally lashed out in anger at someone.

‘Meg, have I ever told you about the first time I became mortal?’

She peered from under the rim of her ridiculously large helmet. ‘You messed up or something?’

‘I… Yes. I messed up. My father, Zeus, killed one of my favourite sons, Asclepius, for bringing people back from the dead without permission. Long story. The point is… I was furious with Zeus, but he was too powerful and scary for me to fight. He would’ve vaporized me. So I took my revenge out in another way. [...] I couldn’t kill Zeus. So I found the guys who had made his lightning bolts, the Cyclopes. I killed them in revenge for Asclepius. As punishment, Zeus made me mortal.’

Meg kicked me in the shin. ‘Ow!’ I yelped. ‘What was that for?’

‘For being dumb,’ she said. ‘Killing the Cyclopes was dumb.’

I wanted to protest that this had happened thousands of years ago, but I feared it might just earn me another kick.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It was dumb. But my point is … I was projecting my anger onto someone else, someone safer. I think you might be doing the same thing now, Meg. You’re raging at Caligula because it’s safer than raging at your stepfather.’

I braced my shins for more pain.

Meg stared down at her Kevlar-coated chest. ‘That’s not what I’m doing.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ I hastened to add. ‘Anger is good. It means you’re making progress. But be aware that you might be angry right now at the wrong person. [...]’ (TBM 237-238)

These are not the words of someone who’s only just now realizing what he did wrong in life, and what the right course of action actually is. They are not the words of someone who cannot truly comprehend the value of life and of loss other than his own. They are not the words of someone who has never before done some extensive, thorough self examination.

But Apollo offers no explanation for his change of heart. He doesn’t even really acknowledge it. He’s only willing to talk about this to the extent that it can save Meg the pain of making the same mistake.

This fits the larger pattern of Apollo’s narration, which becomes more and more clear the more we get to know him and start being able to parse the lies from the truth. Apollo never makes excuses for himself. Not really. Not for the things that matter. He never takes credit for any of his real accomplishments.

The killing of the cyclopes wasn’t just an act of retaliation. It was Apollo’s best chance to get Zeus to reverse Asclepius’ death sentence. Yes, it was wrong of him to use innocent lives as leverage, and yet, if he hadn’t done it, his son would still be dead.

But that’s no excuse. Apollo knows this. He doesn’t even try to present it as such. In fact, he doesn’t even mention it.

The god of the storybooks was quick to anger. The Apollo we meet at the beginning of this story… isn’t. Oh, he pretends to get mad about all sorts of things. But he doesn’t, not really. His real anger is reserved for those who deserve it, and even then, he keeps a tight leash on it.

“I believe in second chances. And thirds, and fourths,” he tells Lityerses. “But I only forgive each person once a millennium, so don’t mess up for the next thousand years.” The Cornhusker, who’s old enough to have personally witnessed the real events that some of the mythical tales starring Apollo are based on, knows to take that warning seriously.

The Apollo of now still gets attached ridiculously easy to everybody he meets. He is still fiercely protective of the people he loves. He is still pathetically desperate to be loved. He is still alarmingly sensitive to rejection. But he isn’t the kind of person who’d ever consider getting revenge through an innocent. Most of the time, he isn’t the kind of person who thinks of revenge at all.

As I was cleaning up the dinner plates, Emmie caught my arm.

‘Just tell me one thing,’ she said. ‘Was it payback?’

I stared at her. ‘Was … what payback?’

‘Georgina,’ she murmured. ‘For me … you know, giving up your gift of immortality. Was she …’ She pressed her lips into a tight line, as if she didn’t trust them to say any more.

I hadn’t known I could feel any worse, until I did. I really hate that about the mortal heart. It seems to have an infinite capacity for getting heavier.

‘Dear Emmie,’ I said. ‘I would never. [...]’ (TDP 284-285)

The Apollo of now is, to be fair, still a bit of an asshole. He still has a scathing remark for everyone and everything. On a bad day, he isn’t above taking out his frustration on a convenient target. But he never goes further than words, and he only picks opponents who can fight back at the same level, with the same weapons as him. His first instinct, even when he feels ashamed of it, even when he feels like he has to quash it, is to protect the weak, rather than bully them.

All these choices come easy to him. Natural. When we meet him, at the very beginning of this story, the Apollo of now has been making them for long enough that they’ve become a habit. That’s what he does, again and again, while trying to convince both us and himself of the opposite. He does the right thing by habit. He doesn’t even have to think about it most of the time. In fact, by his own admission, he has not consciously thought about it in a while.

And yet, as soon as he’s confronted with his past sins, he immediately recognizes them for what they are. Even his weak attempts at reframing his bullying of Harpocrates as “teasing” last less than a couple of paragraphs.

“I was a god then!” he cries. “I didn't know what I was doing!”

Apollo never makes excuses for himself. Except for this one. This is his biggest lie. The one he keeps clinging to, even after shedding all the others. The only one he actually believes.

I didn’t know, he says, I didn’t know back when I was a god. I didn’t feel loss like this. I didn’t understand. It’s my mortal conscience which I totally grew overnight, that’s making me aware now for the first time ever.

But it isn’t true.

Apollo is still mourning the loss of the humans he loved thousands of years after their deaths. He’s still carrying the grief and the guilt with him. He regretted those hasty curses cast in a moment of anger almost immediately. “I’ve apologized a million times!” he yells at the ravens.

“I can’t undo it,” he confesses. He says it with the certainty of someone who’s tried.

Gods don’t apologize. Gods don’t feel regret. They don’t wish to go back on their choices. But Apollo always has.

My smile crumbled. I felt my ardour cooling, turning stormy. ‘Don’t anger me, Sibyl. I am offering you the universe. I’ve given you near-immortal life. You cannot refuse payment.’

‘Payment?’ She balled her hands into fists. ‘You dare think of me as a transaction?’

I frowned. This afternoon really wasn’t going the way I’d planned. ‘I didn’t mean – Obviously, I wasn’t –’

‘Well, Lord Apollo,’ she growled, ‘if this is a transaction, then I defer payment until your side of the bargain is complete. [...]’ (TTT 132)

Like many people who’ve grown up in abusive households, Apollo is starved for love. And like many of his fellow abuse victims, he sees love as a transactional affair. He doesn’t really believe he can have anyone’s love unless he’s able to offer some material good in exchange for it.

“Ask for anything in return and it’s yours,” he tells the Sibyl, before she’s even had the chance to reply to his marriage proposal. He doesn’t think he can have her love for free. He knows, deep down, that he can’t blackmail her into giving it to him either.

He is desperate enough to attempt it anyway.

“Nothing good ever happens to your lovers,” the Sibyl frantically reminds him as she tries to find a way out of the corner he’s backing her into. But Apollo already knows that. Nothing good generally happens to any mortal close to him. His lovers, his children, his friends.

“I convinced myself [this would be] the one true romance that would wash away all my past missteps”, he says. But it’s painfully clear that his feelings for the Sibyl run no deeper than a superficial infatuation. This is not about her. It’s not even about romance, really. “Marry me,” Apollo tells her. And as horribly misguided as it is, the offer is sincere. He doesn’t want a fling. He wants companionship. He wants redemption.

Unlike those of his twin sister, the boons Apollo offers to his followers are irrevocable. He can’t take them back, because he never meant to be able to do it in the first place. He never planned to use them as an instrument of control.

Because Apollo doesn’t want followers. He doesn’t want servants. He wants friends. He wants to trust that the people he’s blessed will never renege their alliance to him. He refuses to even contemplate the possibility that they might betray him... or simply change their mind.

He’s lost too many people already. He is terrified of being alone. He’d do anything to avoid that, even disregard the Sibyl’s own feelings, her own fears, only stopping a hair breadth from taking away her choice altogether.

In the end, his divine family on top of the clouds is all that he has. His father, Zeus, whose highest expression of regard is to say “you have done me proud”. His mother, whose love has never had the power to shield him from his father’s wrath. His twin sister, whom he does not resent for running away, because he knows that in her place he would have done the same. His son Asclepius, for whom Apollo could not win a better fate than eternal imprisonment. And so, so many others who have nothing but contempt and envy for him, who’d clap and laugh at his misfortune exactly like they all, he included, did from their safe, horrible haven above the clouds, looking down on those they considered lesser than them.

“Everyone deserves someone who can wash away their curses by making them feel loved”, Apollo says. Like so many people in similar circumstances, he too clung to the fantasy that some day, somehow, he would meet the right person who’d finally make him whole. “But that was not my fate,” he says now. He had to let go of that dream the moment he realized that it, too, was starting to hurt innocent people.

When Venus taunted him with the insinuation that Reyna might actually be the one for him, finally, after all that time, Apollo did nothing. He dutifully stayed far away from the young woman, where he was sure he belonged. And when Reyna finally rejects him, he isn’t surprised. He can’t find it in himself to even resent her laughter. He doesn’t feel entitled to her or anyone else’s love. Not anymore.

The Apollo of now loves in secret, silently, while he loudly proclaims that he doesn’t. He loves without hope of that love ever being returned. He gives far more than he ever expects to receive. He’s caught off guard every time someone offers him compassion, a kind gesture, a kind word. He struggles to believe even Meg could actually care about him the way she so obviously does. “Just because she had lied about being my friend,” he thinks, barely a couple of days after having met her, “did not mean I wasn’t hers.”

To want to do right by people, to want to do better, are “not the kind of feelings that gods have” he thinks, still, at the beginning of the very last book. That’s what he’s been told, over and over and over again by his father and the rest of his horrible family. That’s what, in time, he’d learned to believe. That his desire to love unreservedly, that his resolve to learn from his mistakes were a defect of his character. That they were his vices, rather than his virtues. Gods aren’t supposed to care. They aren’t supposed to feel. They aren’t supposed to change, let alone want it.

But Apollo isn’t a person. He is a god. And so, obviously, yes, these are very much the kind of feelings a god has.

Because the truth is, gods are people too.

The Apollo of thousands of years ago made a lot of stupid mistakes. He was a child, bound to the whims of his abusive father, desperate for even the smallest morsel of love, the smallest bit of security, the smallest measure of control, to the point of being willing to settle for even just the illusion of it. He was a bully, determined to take what he could get, even at the expense of an innocent. And he was a god. There was a lot, as a god, that he could take from those who had less power than him, just as easily and as quickly as he thought of it.

“I should have known better than to share the pain,” he says. He was an idiot back then, like all bullies are, no matter how compelling their motives may be.

But he did know what he was doing. He’s always known. That’s precisely the reason why he doesn’t like to think about it. It’s precisely the reason why he stopped doing it.

When we reached the doors, Reyna took Meg’s hand. She turned to me: Ready? Then she planted her other hand on my shoulder.

Strength surged through me. I laughed with soundless joy. [...] Reyna’s power was awesome! If I could just get her to follow me around the whole time I was mortal, her hand on my shoulder, a chain of twenty or thirty other demigods behind her, I bet there was nothing I couldn’t accomplish!

I grabbed the uppermost chains and tore them like crepe paper. Then the next set, and the next. The Imperial gold broke and crumpled noiselessly in my fists. The steel locking rods felt as soft as breadsticks as I pulled them out of their fittings.

That left only the door handles.

The power may have gone to my head. I glanced back at Reyna and Meg with a self-satisfied smirk, ready to accept their silent adulation.

Instead, they looked as if I’d bent them in half, too.

[...]

Humbled and ashamed, I grabbed the door handles. My friends had got me this far. (TTT 275)

This moment, right here, is the closest we ever come to meeting face to face the terrifying god of the myths. It lasts no more than an instant. The Apollo of now is not that kind of person anymore. He made the choice to be better than that, well before this story even began.

“Power makes good people uneasy rather than joyful or boastful”, he says at the end of book 3, pausing the narration to impart a concise but very important lesson on us, the kids at home, like he so often does. “That’s why good people so rarely rise to power.”

Apollo could not kill his father, like his father had killed his grandfather, like his grandfather had killed his great grandfather. He could never even bring himself to try. But he could learn not to drag innocent people into the line of fire. So that’s what he did.

“He’s evil. You’re good,” is the advice he offers to Meg when she most needs it. “You must make your own choice.”

These words, too, came easy to him. They were not in any way a revelation. He knew them by heart. He’d tried, once, to put them into practice himself.

But he could never truly convince himself that his father was evil. He could never truly convince himself that he was good either.

Even now, in his moments of biggest vulnerability, he still cries out for his father. Even though he knows that his father doesn’t care. He knows that his father will not save him. Even so, he still can’t help indulging in the fantasy that maybe, just maybe, his father will take pity on him. That Zeus, his king, his abuser, his dad, would not just let him die.

He knows full well it’s a lie. But he doesn’t want to let go of it, because if he does… what is he left with?

Overnight, Helios had vanished. I didn’t know what final prayer to me as the god of the sun had finally tipped the balance – banishing the old Titan to oblivion while promoting me to his spot – but here I was at the Palace of the Sun.

Terrified and nervous, I pushed open the doors of the throne room. The air burned. The light blinded me.

[...]

Slowly, the fires receded before me. By force of will, I grew in size until I could comfortably wear the helm and cloak of my predecessor.

I didn’t try out the throne, though. I had a job to do, and very little time.

I glanced at the whip. Some trainers say you should never show kindness with a new team of horses. They will see you as weak. But I decided to leave the whip. I would not start my new position as a harsh taskmaster. (TBM 355-356)

Apollo has honed the art of holding people’s attention with his words so they won’t notice his actions to perfection. He’s gotten so good at it, and so used to doing it, that sometimes even he struggles to believe the truth.

But this is the truth. This is how Apollo thinks of power. A job. An obligation. A responsibility.

He never sought to supplant the former solar deity. But people prayed to him, and he listened. And on that morning of some millennia back in time, all alone in the sun palace, with no audience to perform for, he didn’t let his pride and ambition get the better of him. He didn’t let his fear of being judged and overruled dictate his choices. He didn’t waste time trying out the throne. He decided to leave the whip.

It was love that gave Apollo the sun. And to be loved, when you’re used to thinking of love as a transaction… to be loved is to be in debt.

That’s the hardest thing about making your own choices. You have to be responsible not just for your own mistakes, but for your own success too. Then people start looking up to you. They start trusting you not to let them down.

The Apollo we meet at the beginning of this story has let down far too many people, far too many times to be able to trust himself with that responsibility anymore. He has effectively convinced himself that he should never have it. That he does not deserve it. That the best he can do, for everybody, and especially for himself, is to just stop doing.

This way, he can be sure he will never become like his father.

He will never truly be great. He will never truly be worthy of the redemption that he so hopelessly craves. But at least he won’t be a monster. Not like his father is. He will play the role of the self centered, carefree vapid blonde like his life and sanity depend on it, because they maybe, actually… kind of do.

#trials of apollo #toa #toa spoilers #ton spoilers #rrverse

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rowanthestrange · 3 years

Note

Yo! Care to go into some more detail on why you’re so convinced that Swarm is the Master? (I very much see where you’re coming from) but I’m intrigued

Because how many gold gilted, velvet wearing, leather gloved, weirdly Doctor horny, queer-vibing, demi god larping, finger snapping, scheme planning, imprisoned ‘forever’ but whoops-ing, Doctor knowing, companion envying, powerful as all hell but petty as fuck being, monologuing, mind controlling, personal space lacking, four-beat-series-3-score having, game playing, manipulating, murdering, TARDIS stealing, time warping, central villain psychopathic weird ass Doctor-fuckers do we genuinely think this baby *slaps the universe’s hood* is gonna successfully sustain.

The Doctor’s going round in circles, the Master is also going round in circles. Somehow it has resulted in this guy either in the past or future or the timeline where the Time Lords didn’t successfully stave off turning to stone but somehow embraced it, I don’t freaking know. The Master’s had no nose before and been a sentient pile of charred flesh and plasma, being whatever this thing is isn’t even a leap. Once he was a ghost snake with a voring problem - and not the way round you’d expect a snake to have it.

If you’re saying do I think it’s ‘our’ Master with his memories of ‘her’, the Valiant, whatever? No. But as with Martin!Doctor the details are irrelevant, because it walks like my duck, quacks like my duck, and is camp and tasteless like my duck, so god help me it’s my duck.

(And on a meta level I’m vibing with a deep link of The Master quoting Shelley’s Ozymandius, Ozymandius is best candidate for the Pharaoh of Moses, that’s the story of two not-siblings having an Egypt-destroying tiff because neither would conform to the other’s will but something more powerful was pulling the strings, plague of locusts destroy everything, flux, I’ll send the Swarm I’ll send the horde thus saith the (Time) Lord, let my people go.)

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deafeninggardenerpanda · 3 years

Text

Kirby and Bandana Waddle Dee arrived at the tower. On the way, Kirby inhaled a lots of big peaches, so he was full.

"Huhh ... I ate too much. My stomach is satisfied for a little while, but there’s an all-you-can-eat party soon, too."

"It's not an all-you-can-eat party, Kirby. King Dedede and Meta Knight are waiting for you at the top of this tower."

"The top of this tower? Oh yeah, I’ll get hungry if we head to the top. Then, King Dedede’s kind heart is really doing its job well!" Kirby jumped up energetically. "Let's go! We'll be hungry right away if we climb such a tall tower!"

"H-hmm ... " Kirby’s misunderstanding was pretty unlikely to be cleared up. Bandana Waddle Dee was troubled, but he tried to enter the tower with Kirby anyway, when suddenly—a pair stood in front of the two and quickly blocked their path.

King Dedede and Meta Knight.

Bandana Waddle Dee was stunned. "Huh? His Majesty King Dedede and Sir Meta Knight ... those two, aren’t they in the tower?"

"There was a change of plans!" King Dedede said, seemingly distinguished.

However ... his voice was strange, somehow. It was higher-pitched than the Great King’s usual voice and felt cute, in a way.

King Dedede continued, becoming increasingly arrogant, "Let us teach you the rules of the tower before we start fighting all out!"

"That's why we were waiting for you here!" Meta Knight said. Him too, his voice was a little cute.

"Um, excuse me ... are you two really real?" Bandana Waddle Dee said in doubt.

"Eh?"

"Your voices are different than usual ... "

King Dedede and Meta Knight flapped their arms in a kerfuffle.

"W-w-what did you say, Bandana Sir ... err, Waddle Dee!"

"Of course we’re real! You see, I also have the treasured sword, Galaxia!" Meta Knight pulled out his sword.

"Hmm ... the shine of the blade, it’s like aluminum foil has been stuck on it ... " Bandana Waddle Dee said, increasingly suspicious.

"N-noisy! Let’s do this!" Meta Knight thrusted at them with his sword.

"Wah!" Bandana Waddle Dee panicked, but Meta Knight staggered and lost his balance.

"Whoops~!"

Next, King Dedede raised his hammer. "Such insolence! Take this!" Kirby jumped with joy as King Dedede attacked him.

"It's an exercise to make me hungry! Thank you, King Dedede!"

Kirby skipped and hopped around. King Dedede couldn't keep up with his movements and immediately sat down, out of breath.

“Hah ... Hah ... Kirby ... is a scary guy!" Bandana Waddle Dee snuck up behind the slumped King Dedede and pulled on his robe as hard as he could.

"Waah! What are you doing!" The robe came off.

No, not just the robe, but the costume of King Dedede was taken off as well. What appeared—was a Waddle Dee.

"After all! I thought it was strange!" Bandana Waddle Dee shouted as he pulled on Meta Knight’s mask.

"Waah! Stop it, stop it~!" Meta Knight struggled and uttered in a pitiful voice. The mask came off. After all, its contents were Waddle Dee. Kirby blinked in surprise.

"What! I thought you guys were too weak for those two! Where are the real ones?"

"Maybe they’re at the tower’s summit." Bandana Waddle Dee turned to the two Waddle Dees with a slightly angry look. "Why did you pull such a prank! As the leader of the Waddle Dee Corps, I’m ashamed!"

"We’re sorry, Bandana Sir."

“But it wasn't a prank."

The two Waddle Dees apologized, downhearted. "We were waiting here to explain the rules of this tower to Kirby."

"Rules?"

"Yes, this tower is the Buddy Fighters Tower. Buddy, as in a partner, that is. If you don't have one, you can't enter!"

"His Majesty King Dedede is preparing various gimmicks in this tower! You can't proceed unless you make it past us!"

The two Waddle Dees seemed to be here to explain the rules.

"I appreciate you two explaining the rules to us, but why were you disguised?" Bandana Waddle Dee asked.

"Well ... " The two Waddle Dees struck a gallant pose. "Because it looked strong, because it was cool ... Grrrrr!" they shouted.

" ... I see."

Everyone was getting aggressive because of the shooting star’s influence on this place. They were sorely itching for a fight. The Waddle Dees longed to be strong, so that was probably why they disguised themselves so boldly. Bandana Waddle Dee looked back at Kirby.

"Sorry, Kirby. I didn’t explain it to you properly. To enter the tower, you need to have a buddy. Let's go find you a buddy."

"A buddy? Oh, you mean a partner? Because you dance at a party, and it's more fun to dance with a partner!"

"Err ... well ... It's not really like that ... "

"Then, I like you, Waddle Dee!" Kirby shouted, his voice full of energy.

"I’m no good," Bandana Waddle Dee said in a hurry.

"Why not?"

"Because I can’t fight ... "

"Ehh? But it'll be more fun with you, Waddle Dee!"

"This tower is full of danger. You need to team up with a strong buddy to reach the top floor ... "

"Oh yeah, King Dedede challenged me to a battle to make me hungry, but it’s okay!" Kirby did a somersault. "If any enemies come out, I'll beat ’em up!"

"But ... "

"Let's go early! The party will start!" Kirby rushed into the tower.

"Oh, wait, Kirby!" Bandana Waddle Dee had no choice but to chase after him.

Kirby finally stepped into the tower and began looking around restlessly. Inside was like the halls of Castle Dedede. The floor sparkled and many elegant pillars stood proudly. Already, it looked like it was ready for a dance party.

"Will we have a party here, I wonder? But there's no feast or music."

"Be careful, Kirby," Bandana Waddle Dee said on high alert. "His Majesty King Dedede is definitely supposed to be making a gimmick to catch you off guard ... "

"There is no gimmick! Let's go upstairs!" Kirby found the stairs and tried to run up them, however, two enemies appeared before he could.

"T-that’s!? Kirby!?" Bandana Waddle Dee shouted involuntarily.

Two warriors blocked Kirby and Bandana Waddle Dee’s path. Their faces and bodies looked just like the real Kirby’s, but their colors were different. One was light blue and carried a long whip, while the other was yellow and carried a bomb. Kirby’s eyes widened as he looked them over.

"Just like me ...!? Oh, are these guys Waddle Dees in disguise too?"

Bandana Waddle Dee nodded. "Looks like that for sure. Hey, both of you, drop your disguises and lower your weapons ... " But the enemy attacked without a word. The light blue fighter lashed out his whip and tried to strike Bandana Waddle Dee. "Ah! What are you doing!"

Kirby jumped out and protected Bandana Waddle Dee, taking a direct hit to the head while doing so. Bandana Waddle Dee raised his voice.

"Kirby!? Are you alright!?" he shouted.

"Totally! I’m not worried at all!" Kirby grabbed hold of the whip. The light blue warrior staggered as he snatched it away.

"Eyaah!" The two warriors, light blue and yellow, were thrown into each other. Their eyes spun as they toppled over. Already, it seemed they didn’t have the strength to get back up. Bandana Waddle Dee approached the two and pulled on their faces.

"Huh? It doesn’t seem like these Kirby’s are a disguise."

"Really? Then, who are they?" Kirby looked at the two lying on the floor. "Hey, who are you guys? Why are you just like me?" he asked. No reply.

"Maybe these two are the gimmick made by King Dedede," Bandana Waddle Dee said.

"Gimmick?"

"He made warriors that look exactly like you to fight the real you."

"How?"

"Hmm ... I wonder how, too. I wonder if he used the Kirby Printer ... but that machine should’ve been broken ... " Bandana Waddle Dee and Kirby thought about it, but had no clue.

"It’d be a big mistake if this is the idea that King Dedede came up with. They’re really weak," Kirby said.

"Yeah ... but that’s because this is still the first floor," Waddle Dee said anxiously as he looked up at the ceiling. "The higher you climb, the stronger the enemies that appear will be."

"No matter what kind of guys come out, they’ll be no problem, no problem at all! I'll beat them all with a great big whomp!" Kirby climbed the stairs enthusiastically.

< Previous | Table of Contents | Next >

#kirby #bandana waddle dee #king dedede #meta knight #waddle dee #kirby fighters 2 #Kirby: Kirby Fighters the Destined Rivals!!#kirby light novel #translations

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writesology · 3 years

Text

Celtic this is all your fault

Extras mentioned in AO3 will be below the cut! And regarding the whole weekly update thing, I tried my best to keep to it, I really did, but it was kinda too much pressure and I got easily burnt out, so hope ya'll don't mind me updating when I can ^u^

The cart mentioned in AO3 ^^^

“Dedede, get off the cart.”

“Aww, but why? Riding on these is always the best kind of fun!”

Meta Knight sighed, landing beside the king. “The Dees and I came here to help you gather supplies for the construction of the Buddy Tower, not to supervise you as you act like an utter fool.”

“Mety Knight! If I didn’t know ya as well as I did, I woulda said ya hate me!”

“I’m very close to hating you if you don’t get off right now, challenge to Kirby be damned. I can very well fight him on my own terms without your help.”

“Ooh, is the esteemed Meta Knight passin’ up a challenge? Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Hmph. Come on, we need to find materials and we will not find them if you are lazing about on the cart.” The puff unfurled his wings and began to fly off.

The penguin smirked, grabbing onto the handles at the front and looking at his knight. “The way yer wordin’ yer sentences, it’s almost like yer not strong enough to pull this here cart with me on it.”

Meta Knight froze, his wings flapping slower as he landed again and turned to glare at the king. “What did you just say?”

“I’m jus’ sayin’, maybe ya don’t want me on the cart ‘cause yer not strong enough to-” Dedede’s sentence was cut off with the warrior’s paws gripping onto the handle of the cart and a fiery glare.

“I’ll show you just how strong I am.”

“Left, Meta! All the wood is on the left!” Dedede held onto his hat as the knight flew through the store at record speeds, the Dees holding to the king’s fluffy robe and clutching various materials that they’d picked up, their eyes sparkling with joy.

“Your wish is my command, my liege!” The cart and its riders skidded to the left- somehow not colliding into a single thing- and the king whooped as they flew past the paints. One of the Dees reached out, catching the handle on a bucket of yellow and pulling it onto the cart. Another Dee hooked onto some blue, and the Waddle Dee clinging to the penguin’s hat somehow managed to gather a bundle of paintbrushes.

“Right, Meta! Turn right!” A Cappy jumped out of the way just in time, a look of shock on their face as the knight, king, and Dees zoomed by on their cart.

Meta Knight briefly turned to face them, his wings flapping as quickly as they could. “I can see it! You all get ready!”

“Ya got it, caballerito!” Dedede crowed, the Dees around him chirping happily- some hanging onto their previously caught materials and others getting ready to grab onto the incoming wood. The planks passed by in less than a second, the knight’s Mach-speed flying almost blowing them straight off the shelves, but when they turned into a different aisle and the king looked back, there was a big pile of wooden planks with Dees hanging all over it, all of them trying to keep it from flying away.

“Have we got everything?” The warrior shouted, the cart hurtling down the aisle.

“Everythin’ but the tiles, an’ those are comin’ in tomorrow! Let’s go!”

“Right, the checkout is just around the corner! Get the Deden ready!” Dedede pulled a large bag of Deden out from his coat and grinned, shooting a thumbs up to the puff. “And… now!” The cashier, who had just finished helping another customer, yelped as the bag dropped onto the counter with a loud thump.

“Keep the change!” The king hollered as they barreled out the door, the cart and its riders quickly disappearing from sight.

“There,” Meta Knight said smugly, stopping the cart and gently landing on the hood of the penguin’s car. “Was that strong enough for you?”

“That was hella amazing, Meta! We shot through that store like no tomorrow! I’m so happy I’m doin’ this whole Buddy Tower thing with ya, yer so strong an’ cool! I bet the Dees loved what we just did. Ain’t that right, Dees?” The Waddle Dees cheered and nodded happily as they started loading the wood and paint onto the car.

“Well, I’m glad it was such an enjoyable ride for you all. As for me, I’m quite sure my wings will be sore for days to come. I haven’t flown that hard in years.”

Dedede smirked, leaning closer to his knight. “Sounds to me like you’re gettin’ older, Mety Knight.”

“If you still want to build this tower, I suggest you shut up before I go back in that store and tell the manager whose fault that joyride really was.”

“Hey, no need to be so harsh, caballerito! Ya know I’m jus’ messin’ with ya, an’ as thanks, I’ll serve ya ice cream in bed or somethin’.” The Dees squeaked with a job well done before the king could say anything else. “Looks like they’re done loadin’ everythin’, so if ya can watch the car for me, Meta-”

“Say no more. Hurry back, or we’ll drive off without you.” The penguin flicked his knight’s mask in retaliation, and got up to take the cart back. As he approached the front of the store, he was greeted by the manager, as well as the entire staff.

“Great King, not to sound rude, but what the heck was that?” The manager asked in disbelief.

Dedede raised an eyebrow, something that technically he can't do because he has no eyebrows; just take that as a metaphor. “Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, princess! Was there somethin' wrong with what me an' my precious knight did?”

“The thing wrong, Great King, is that you scared our entire staff and half the customers in the store with that… ride of yours! I appreciate your patronage and all, but I would like it much better if you were never to come back again. You and Meta Knight both.”

“So we’re bein’ banned?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Huh. Well, we do already have everythin’ we need, so that’s fine by me! Jus’ lemme return this here cart, an’-”

“No! Just… just leave it there and we’ll take care of the rest. Please, I insist.”

“Great! Thanks!” The king waved and walked back to the car with a wide grin. When he got there, Meta Knight was already sitting comfortably in shotgun, the fifty or so Dees they’d brought to help all huddled in the backseat.

“You have that grin on your face that tells me I should be prepared for something dumb,” the knight said, looking at the penguin’s face intently. “What happened?”

“Ok, so hypothetically, if I told ya we’d jus’ been banned from this here store for what we jus’ did, how would ya react?”

The warrior blinked in surprise, then groaned. “Why did I expect anything else…”

#life in dreamland #my fanfic #crack #meta knight #king dedede #waddle dee #cappy #metadede #nova damn it celtic this is all your fault #why must you be this chaotic of an enabler

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faejilly · 4 years

Note

ohhhhh can i ask after the wing!fic (which is one of my FAV TROPES EVER)? what it's going to be/any lore you'd like to share?

SO YES

When trying to write magical wing-fic about people who are capable of going incognito, I had to decide how they’d hide them. (And how Clary could grow up without hers, because hiding a magical Shadow World would be entirely impossible if you had wings.)

I have this theory that part of the reason the Nephilim raise their children so quickly is that, when they’re young, full of angelic power and blood that they can’t yet control, they are especially tempting to demons, easier to sense (and obviously also easier to kill, if they’re caught). For all the Nephilim are terrible to their children, the show did a good job of showing that they love them, so they have to believe that raising generation after generation of child soldiers is necessary.

(This is emphasized by Maryse’s line in 3b, about how she raised her children to survive. She has no illusions now that she did it badly, but the only way she could have done what she did in the first place is if she truly believed they needed to be raised that way.)

So. Nephilim children are full of a wild, almost feral magic. Angels are eldritch, beyond comprehension, are so much more and other that it’s not easy to balance that and being human. Nephilim have to be trained, physically/mentally/emotionally to have control so that they can get that first rune as young as possible, because it is that enkeli rune that shapes their angelic heritage enough that they can survive it without losing themselves to it.

(This is also part of why I will never be on Team Immortal Husbands in terms of what I write; it’s important to me that Alec & Magnus choose to be human as much as possible rather than something other. I feel like that’s rather the whole point of Alec’s arc, that he truly believes he is not, cannot be better than the Down Worlders, that he’s forcing himself to admit that just because he defends Mundanes it doesn’t mean they’re lesser, just... different. Otherwise humans turn into pets rather than people, and how much easier is it then to believe Down Worlders are pets gone feral, wild animals that have to be put down? Each piece lends itself to each next one, enforcing the idea of Nephilim Superiority, when they’re still supposed to be human. They’re supposed to be protectors, not supremacists, that’s where the Clave goes wrong, where Valentine went wrong, that’s what he cannot ever let himself be.)

And that moment when they get their first rune is also when their wings manifest, that moment when they claim their power and their heritage, is the moment that they, idk, corral it to fit within their human frames and human desires. That is the moment that they become Shadowhunters, rather than demon prey.

That is ALSO why deruning is such a severe punishment, why it usually ends in death. It’s not just that they’re tempting prey for demons, (though that is how most of them die), it’s that they can no longer control themselves, their blood is as much of an enemy to them as the demons who crave it, without the power of the runes to balance it out.

Clary obviously doesn’t have an enkeli rune, and equally obviously hasn’t been eaten by demons or exploded from uncontrolled angelic magic despite her extra-potent blood, which means something else must have been done to suppress her power.

Not just that her memories are pulled out, the actual magic of her heritage has to have somehow been hidden away from her as well as everyone else.

And it can’t just be a glamour that someone else is maintaining, because the show’s pretty clear that stuff that’s glamoured is still there.

Though I have thoughts on that too! Because some warlock’s have wings or tails or horns or things that stick out and would hit people so their glamours couldn’t just be a visual illusion, they had to somehow... hide.

(SIDE REC: @ralfstrashcan‘s lovely little bit of fic & meta about how the fuck does Alec always pull his bow & arrows out of nowhere. Possible magic options that aren’t glamours!)

Sometimes, glamours are just visual illusions. (See Alec’s quiver in the gifs in that meta post above.) Presumably, Magnus’ glamour over his eyes is just an illusion, because otherwise all that flickering and changing of his vision between normal eyes and cat eyes would give him a headache. :D

Cat’s glamour over her skin and hair is probably just a visual illusion as well, because it’s just color, but if you think Lorenzo Rey would let someone who brushed up against his arm feel scales if he didn’t want them to? Crazy-talk. He’s got to be able to hide the texture as well.

(I think Seelies can only cast the sort of glamours that are visual illusion, because anything else would be lying about what’s really there, and Seelies can’t lie. But that’s a whole separate post about fae and elves and folklore, so.)

Even if we assume there’s a second level of glamour which makes the thing not entirely there physically, it seems clear that it’s still kind of there to the person, that there’s some intangible feedback that must still happen, because otherwise it’s like disappearing body parts and that’s weird? And also it would need a different word than glamour, like, wtf, that’d be a dramatic difference.

SO, Nephilim can “glamour” their wings so they’re not there there, but they still get some physical/emotional feedback themselves, because they’re still winged people, their wings are part of their angelic heritage, they wouldn’t just deny them.

But if Clary knew she had weird powers and wings, again, the whole hiding from the Shadow World plan wouldn’t work.

So she’s got to be under like, a full-blown curse suppressing her everything. (A curse that was developed by warlocks for those few exiled Nephilim who managed to have the resources to pay for a way to survive? The way Max Trueblood’s still alive out there, so some day I can write a reunion between Maryse and her older brother.)

ANYWAYS

I forgot where I was going with all that, whoops.

TL;DR: Wings are neat, magic is weird, Nephilim are fucked up but it’s more interesting if there are reasons.

#my sh rambling #sh meta #shadowhunters #wing!fic #Anonymous #jilly answers

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moriavis · 4 years

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My first prompt to you! Um um okay -thinks- OH, uh, if you'd like, Coldflash, biker gang!au? 50s, modern, or futuristic! Up to you ^-^ Maybe they're in opposing gangs and form an alliance? Maybe Barry's their science guy who Len takes an interest in? Maybe Barry's a new meta that the Rogues gang take an interest in recruiting? -flails- I dunnoooo >.

Ha. Ha. OMG, so this has apparently been sitting in my askbox for two years I’M SO SORRY.

Do I have more prompts that are two years or older? Yes. Yes, I do. I’m trying, guys.

For now, I hope you all enjoy this one! Welcome to a No Powers AU where motorcycles are only mentioned sparingly, and everything is PG. ^^; (Also on AO3)

~*~

Everyone in Central City knew to leave the Rogues out of the races. They were intense, unpredictable, and you were more likely to crash your bike trying to avoid their stunts than lose the pink slip fair and square. They brought too much attention to the scene.

Even Cisco agreed, and he was so into Lisa that aliens could see it from space.

Despite the unanimous exclusion, Barry wasn't entirely surprised when the Rogues showed up at the Friday races anyway. "Told you they wouldn't stick to the ban," Oliver murmured.

Barry shrugged. "The Lian Yu team didn't like it either, but they learned."

He folded his arms over his chest and cocked his head to the side as he counted them. Lisa, of course, with an uncustomary sulk on her narrow, gorgeous face; Mardon, easily recognizable with his visor popped up; Rosa Dillon, popping gum loudly as she inspected her nails.

Sara swaggered up to Barry and stood at Oliver's side. "You want me to take care of them?"

Barry shook his head. "No. They're a Central group. They'd be offended if outsiders read them the rulesheet."

Sara snorted and rolled her eyes. "Territorial bastards, all of you."

Barry laughed and ran his hand through his hair. "We're not all that bad. Square up. We're doing this the right way."

The three of them gathered together in a triangle, and Sara said, "On three. One. Two. Three."

Oliver beat Barry's paper with scissors, and Barry scowled good-naturedly as he turned to Sara for the second round and lost again, rock to paper.

"Cheer up, kiddo," Sara said, reaching up on tiptoes to ruffle Barry's hair. "They wouldn't have wanted us to be the ones to send them away."

Barry sighed and turned to the Rogues, who—bizarrely—had stayed back patiently, as if they were waiting for someone.

Barry straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked toward Lisa. "We don't want any trouble with you."

"If it were up to me, we wouldn't be here." Lisa folded her arms over her chest, her glare intensifying.

Barry folded his arms over his chest. "It's not up to you?"

The sound of an engine cut through the air, and he turned to meet the newcomer—his bike was a gorgeous and sleek Ducati, painted in blues and silvers. Barry was impressed despite himself. Whoever the newcomer was sure had a sense of style.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Lisa's scowl morph into an amused grin, and then the new rider kicked the stand down and pulled off their helmet.

Barry's breath caught in his throat. He was frozen, catapulted instantly back to the past, where he was fifteen and everything he wanted was encapsulated in the man next door who always had motorcycle grease on his hands.

His palms were sweaty. He wasn't even wearing his good jeans, and he was going to kill Lisa.

"Hey, Lenny." Barry's voice was weak and thready, but he didn't even care, butterflies coming to life in his stomach with a surge of nerves. The narrow blue hazel eyes. The smirk. Oh, god, he'd started going silver.

Leonard gave Barry a slow once over, and Barry gravitated a step or two closer. "It's been a minute, kid."

Barry licked his lips, his heart pounding like a drum. "Yeah, it's… I didn't even know you were back."

"Trainwreck's been blowing up my phone over this racing gig you've got going on. Thought I'd come see what the excitement was all about." He got off his bike and dangled his helmet off one of the handlebars before he turned his attention back to Barry. He stepped closer, and his voice was low in a way that sent shivers down Barry's spine when he spoke again. "Maybe you and I can come to an arrangement."

Barry jerked his head to point out Oliver and Sara. "The arrangement has to make sense to them, too."

Leonard shot them a dismissive glance and fastened his attention back on Barry. "Let 'em race. I'll keep them under control, and anyone who gets too frisky is out. Cross my heart." He drew an X over his heart and smiled, the slow curl of his lips leaving Barry reeling.

Without a word, Barry turned on his heel and walked back over to Oliver and Sara.

"Rawr." Sara arched her eyebrow. "You okay there, Barry? You look like you've been hit by a truck."

"Whatever he said to you, the answer's no." Oliver said, crossing his arms over his chest and glowering past Barry.

Barry gathered himself together with a small shake of his head. "He said that if we let them race, he'll keep them following the rules. He'll take care of anyone who doesn't."

"And you believe him?" Sara asked.

Barry nodded. "Lisa and Len were my neighbors growing up. Lisa's a bit out there, but Len kind of keeps her under control. Mostly."

"Mostly." Oliver frowned. "Yeah, that's exactly what I like to hear about the group that almost got us all arrested."

"I trust him, Ollie," Barry said firmly, narrowing his eyes. "I mean, yeah, chances are Lisa dragged him back to Central because I'm more likely to listen to him, but it'll backfire. She hates being under his thumb."

"That'll be interesting," Sara said, shooting another look toward the Rogues.

"Fine," Oliver spat. "Fine. But only because I trust you." Barry beamed at Oliver, who scowled for good measure and turned back to his bike.

Now that they all agreed, Barry went back to Len. "Okay. They can rejoin. Keep your promise, or they'll be ejected permanently this time."

Axel whooped, punching Mark's shoulder in excitement, and Lisa shook her head, sauntering up to Len's side. "Guess I should've pulled out the big guns months ago."

Barry pursed his lips as he looked at Lisa, but he couldn't find anything else to say, so he just shook his head. "No funny business this time, okay?"

Lisa smiled another one of her enigmatic smiles, and then turned back to the other Rogues. "We're free to mingle, ladies and gentlemen. Have fun, and remember to behave."

It was going to be a disaster.

Barry sighed softly to himself and headed back to his own bike. It took a second for him to realize that Len was walking along with him. Barry turned just enough to see Len without stopping. "Are you racing?"

"Depends," Len said easily, giving Barry that crooked smile that he loved way too much. "Is the Scarlet Speedster going to be on the track?"

"Ugh, you've heard that one, too?"

Len shrugged. "I like the alliteration."

"Well, the answer is no," Barry said firmly. "Not tonight, at least." He steered them away from the noise of the crowd as the races began in earnest, and stole another look. "How long are you staying?"

"Haven't decided yet. 'M staying long enough to make Lisa regret asking me to come back." They laughed together at that, and then fell quiet, watching as Shawna won her race against Zari. Len cleared his throat, and Barry startled, embarrassed that he was so hyper aware of Len, even after all these years. "Lisa told me you went to college in Keystone."

"Uh. Yeah. Aced my classes, too."

"Should I be hurt that you didn't visit me?"

Barry rubbed his hand over his face. Fifteen minutes, and Len was already pulling out all the embarrassing feelings he'd had when he was sixteen. His flustered, agitated longing. He stole another look at Len and promptly flushed when he realized Len was looking at him.

"You know why," he whispered. "You know why I didn't visit."

Len stared at Barry for another long minute, and then nodded once, short and sharp. "Okay."

"Okay," Barry echoed, although he didn't really know what okay was in this context. "Great. It's been nice seeing you again."

"Are you still living with the Wests?"

Barry startled again and fought the urge to just throw up his hands and walk away. This was stupid. He was stupid. He was supposed to be done with this a decade ago, and it was freaking impossible, how Leonard Snart just breezed into his life and made him a skittish teenager all over again. "No, I've… I've got my own place."

Len nodded again, a thoughtful look crossing his face. "Do you remember the stink eye Joe used to give Lisa when I brought her over to play with you and Iris?"

"No," Barry said honestly. "Joe was never the one I was looking at."

Len swallowed and looked down at his feet. "Barry, I—"

"Can we just—not do this now?" Barry interrupted, running his hand through his hair as he looked away, toward the next race that was setting up. "I'm embarrassed and we're in public, and I don't want to talk about anything tonight."

"Okay," Len agreed, and Barry was grateful that he could at least follow the flow of his thoughts this time. "Give me your address, and I'll come around. Wednesday, maybe?"

Something blue-screened in Barry's head, and he heard himself say, "Sure. Bring dinner. Pizza or something."

Leonard shot him a cautious—almost grateful?—look and nodded. "I can do that. Wednesday, then."

There was a low droning in Barry's ears as he held out his hand for Len's cell and accessed his contacts. It grew into static when Barry realized Len still had his old number programmed, and he wondered with a brief flash of alarm if he was just going to have a panic attack right here.

Somehow, shockingly, he managed to give Len his phone back and then walked away, toward the other side of the long stretch of road they currently occupied, all like he was a perfectly normal person who knew where his body was. Someone handed him a beer, and he twisted the top off, staring at Len from a distance. His focus was intent on the current race, and Barry struggled to take a calm breath.

"He could pick me up without breaking a sweat," he breathed.

"You better believe it," Lisa said with a laugh, and Barry jolted back to himself in surprise. "You're still a beanpole, honey."

"I can't believe you told him to come back, Lise. He should've had nothing to do with this."

Lisa pouted, twirling her long, dark hair around her finger. "Can't a girl feel bad? It's an apology."

Barry turned to face her, a frown pulling at his mouth. "It's a fucking mind game, and I don't appreciate it."

Lisa dropped the pout. "Maybe I want you guys to be happy together. Ever think of that?"

Barry raked his hand through his hair. "If you brought him back just for me, I'd say you're crueler than I thought you were."

Lisa raised her hand to his shoulder, pausing when he shrugged her off before she even touched him. "Barr, listen—"

"I'm fresh out of ears tonight," Barry admitted. "I'm going to head home. Just… please. Stop trying to help me, okay?"

Lisa's mouth twisted into another small pout, but she nodded and stepped away.

Barry caught Oliver''s eye and silently let him know he was going, and then he went to his bike, unclipping his helmet and straddling the seat with a surge of relief. There was nothing like being on his Triumph—maybe some time out on the road would help clear his head.

He revved the engine once and spun around to face the road. Another second, and it was just him and his bike and the asphalt beneath his wheels.

No Leonard Snart needed.

~*~

Come Wednesday, of course, he was a wreck.

Barry woke up too early, a headache pounding in his temples and a message from STAR Labs about one of the laboratory samples he'd processed the day before. Running into work at least shifted his anxiety from Len into a more tolerable work anxiety, and he was able to focus on the lab's backlog of testing samples.

Around six, he got his first text from Len, a simple: Name the time and your pizza toppings.

He needed time to get home and take a shower, and he was about to ask for pepperoni when it occurred to him that it was pork. 8pm and a veggie lovers?

You remembered. :)

Barry took a deep breath and pressed the phone to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut. That little smiley face was going to end him.

Of course. See u later.

Concentration thoroughly shot, Barry turned to some paperwork that needed to be filed and used the rest of his shift to get caught up. He skipped out a little early so he could take a shower before Len came over, and then burned some of his restless energy by picking up around his apartment.

At 8pm exactly, there was a knock on the door. Barry counted to five so he didn't seem so eager, and then answered it. Len was dressed down, in dark jeans and one of those moisture-wick long-sleeved shirts, and a chill of sheer want raced down Barry's spine. Just as Len promised, he was balancing a pizza box and a six pack of beer in his hands.

"Hey," Barry said, like he wasn't falling apart at the seams just from seeing Len again.

"Hey." The corner of Len's mouth curled, and Barry stepped aside to let him in.

"I'll get plates," he said unnecessarily, and he stole a minute to get himself under control as he got plates and napkins. "Get it together, Barry. You can spend one night catching up with him."

Hardly satisfied, Barry grabbed everything and headed back into the living room.

The first few minutes were quiet as they got their food and drinks and started in. Barry was trying to avoid looking at Len without looking like he was trying to avoid looking at Len, and he wasn't entirely sure how successful he was.

After two slices of pizza were eaten in the awkward silence, Len cleared his throat. "What is it that the Central City Citizens do?"

Barry grinned, relaxing against the couch as Len brought up a safe topic. "We do coast to coast drives, some charity. I really want to become a local chapter of BACA, but we have to ride with them for a year before they'll consider us."

Something in Len's face lightened as Barry talked, and he looked down at his plate, fiddling with a bit of leftover crust. "So you don't participate in turf wars."

Barry rolled his eyes. "Len. Of course I don't. We have a zero tolerance policy on drug running and murder. The Rogues even mostly agreed. The races we have aren't exactly legal, although it's a good way to blow off steam and kind of have fun together."

Len nodded, setting his plate on the coffee table and turning his full attention back on Barry. "What got them pushed to the sidelines?"

Barry set his plate down and mirrored Len's position, resting his arm on the armrest of the couch as he curled his foot beneath him. "They're thieves and sometimes they make bad decisions that reflect on the rest of us. Mark and Axel decided to rob a bank and go on a high speed joy ride. Got the attention of the CCPD, and then led them almost directly to the rest of us."

Len frowned. "Looks like they aren't serving any time."

Barry shook his head. "Lise has contacts with some lawyers around town. She got it thrown out of court on a technicality. Which, fine, I don't have any hard feelings. But I will stop their behavior from jeopardizing the rest of us."

Len smiled again and nodded in agreement. "I'm proud of you, kid."

"I'm not a kid," Barry said fiercely, meeting Len's eyes. "And I didn't do it for you."

"Touche." Len cocked his head, turning on the laser-focus that Barry had sometimes envied when it wasn't directly pointed at him. "How are you, Barry?"

"I'm fine." Barry met Len's gaze straight on—he wasn't a child anymore, and he wasn't afraid of looking at someone just because he was attracted to them. "Iris is a reporter now. Lisa still comes over for Sunday dinner at the West house. You're the one who left."

"I didn't leave because of you—"

"It sure felt like it!" And there it was, the hurt and embarrassment bubbling to the surface like a lanced wound, the way it always did when he thought of Leonard. "I told you how I felt, and you were practically gone in a week."

Len sighed. "It was bad timing, but I can't say I was sorry about the way things worked out. You were sixteen. What was I supposed to do?"

Barry bolted to his feet. "I love you!" The words dropped like stones between them, leaving ripples of shock in their wake. "Loved." Barry's voice cracked, and he desperately hoped that lightning would just strike him dead where he stood. "I loved you. You could have at least said goodbye. I'd earned that, at least."

Len looked away from Barry, staring at the carpet with a distant, thoughtful look in his eye. "You're right. You did. I'm not perfect, Barry. Sometimes people just screw up."

Barry sighed and turned away from Len, crossing his arms over his chest. "I thought I was over it. That I was over you. And you just waltz back in and turn me inside out like it's nothing."

"It's not nothing." The couch creaked as Len stood, and he took hold of Barry's elbow, turning him around with a gentle touch. His eyes were so dark.

Barry swallowed and struggled to find his courage. "Don't look at me like that. Not unless you're going to do something about it."

Len stared at Barry and raised his hand, brushing his fingertips against Barry's cheek. It sent shivers racing down his neck, goosebumps rising against his skin. "You're always so impatient."

"I know," Barry admitted. "It's something I've been trying to work on." His fingers twitched at his side. "And maybe there's nothing between us. Maybe it's all been built up in my head for so long that real life can't possibly match up—"

Len pressed his fingers to Barry's mouth, halting the flow of words. "I'm going to kiss you now, if that's okay."

Barry responded by stepping into Len's space, curling his fingers around Len's shoulders and pulling him in. It shouldn't have been good—their lips met a little off center, and Len tasted like pizza and beer, but then Len's hand settled into a solid weight against the small of Barry's back, drawing him in, and the heat of Len's body soaked into Barry in a way that made him want to melt.

Len pulled away first, and Barry licked his lips, dropping his head to Len's shoulder in defeat. "Shit," he said wretchedly.

"What?" Len asked, cupping his hand over Barry's nape and stroking the sensitive skin with his thumb.

"I'm so into you," Barry confessed, and he startled when Len began to laugh.

"Really?" Len's voice was rich with warmth and surprise. "When were you going to tell me? I had no idea."

"I can't believe you're mocking me!" Barry protested, raising his head to glare at Len, who pulled him in and pressed a gentle kiss to Barry's jaw that made him melt again. "You're not fair." He turned his face to try to steal another kiss, and paused. "We can't tell Lisa about this."

"We'll play it cool," Len agreed. "It'll drive her crazy."

Barry stepped away and looked earnestly at Len. "I'll slow down. I'll wait until you're comfortable."

Len averted his eyes, his gaze skittering over the coffee table. "I ain't Grandma Esther's china, Barry."

Barry laughed, soft and embarrassed. "Okay. I take your point. Let me put it this way instead. The Diamonds are playing against the Starlings tonight. Do you want to stay and watch?"

Len smiled, so fast Barry would've missed it if he hadn't been watching like a hawk, and nodded. "Sounds good."

"Just so you know," Barry said as they settled back against the sofa and he turned the TV on, "they're going to get absolutely dusted."

Len shot him a glower. "Those are fighting words. You wanna go?"

Barry smiled until Len turned his attention toward the game. A warm, fizzy sort of hope bubbled in his chest. Maybe this time, he'd be lucky.

~*~

#my fic #coldflash #tumblr prompt #a-redharlequin

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sangfearmoved · 6 years

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how does soda respond to the death of a stranger vs the death of a loved one?

if she’s not the one that killed the stranger, she doesn’t care. she doesn’t even put up much of an act, not really — she’s busy, everyone knows that, she’s got better things to do than mourn some random coworker or a dude who showed up to her class a couple times or the eccentric old gal who donated to shellendorf and gawked at the scrolls soda brought in ( past the passing validation those people gave her ). she’ll give a perfunctory “oh, that’s so sad” then make an excuse and move on with her day.

no one questions it, either. “she’s agent three, you know,” they’ll mutter; “she’s seen a lot of death, she must’ve just gotten numbed.” or “pardon them,” maybe, “they have a hard time dealing with grief. our deepest sympathies.”

even the death of a loved one lacks a hard-and-fast sense of grief for her: she wanted to see her brother dead for a good while, and he still doesn’t mean much to her. her definition of “family” is skin-deep at best and as far as she knows, all her relatives are dead or gone. she’ll refuse to admit people mean a lot to her long after she realizes she couldn’t live without them, and she doesn’t believe in the permanence of anything, so she’s more than inclined to bottle up the feelings and throw them out to sea.

soda sturmaz doesn’t understand death. for as much as she’s seen, caused, feared, the concept of someone being gone forever just does not compute. she never saw her dad die, her brother was never actually gone. her mom’s just missing. the octarians weren’t that hurt; the respawn pads were right there, after all.

she’d be in denial as long as she lives — the feelings would numb, fade, be forgotten. whoever it was just was never there all along. they never meant that much to her. she didn’t open up just to get hurt, nothing was taken from her, she never made a fool of herself over something like love. she hadn’t been naive; she hadn’t hoped that maybe, just this once, something would’ve stayed put.

one half of soda’s a hopeless romantic — she puts her whole heart and soul into whatever she does, puts a whole lot of hope into people, and rushes headlong into emotion. the other half’s pragmatic, critical, the part that knows hurt’s coming and tells her run for cover, that she knows that nothing good ever stays and a killer — a disappointment — like her doesn’t even deserve it. so she’s stuck between the lines — between wanting to feel sad but believing emotion is a barrier to efficiency, and so she doesn’t choose, she never picks a side, never ends up disappointed, and never believes anything’s for real.

#will smith pose w just the hands #somehow this turned into a brief summation of soda's core theme and how it manifests in her character #whoops #that last paragraph is clumsy but i don't want to edit it #send me more asks like this tho y'all i like being unnecessarily poetic #✧┊ ▐ sunglasses.#✧┊ ▐ inboxed.#✧┊ ▐ here is what you left for dead (hc.)#or meta i suppose but ?????????????? im LAZY

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f-117-nighthawk · 4 years

Text

I’m in a Playlist Mood

I was scrolling through my dark matter tag looking for something I made a while ago to reference in the next chapter of Carry Me Home and ran across my last playlist explanation post. It put me in the mood to think about this again, and I’ve added...a lot. The playlist might’ve actually doubled in length since then (Thank You Abyss) and I’ve moved some stuff around in order. So, more playlist meta under the cut (it’s LONG)

So first thing: I’ve actually created two new playlists (well, one new one and actually made the third playlist have more than two tracks) since that post jhadsfljd. Working forwards in time (kinda), we have:

Dark Matter: The Road to Ruin

The Road to Ruin is the Main Playlist, the thing I use to write to, the thing I lie in bed and listen to to think up new things, and half the thing that keeps the timeline in place (it’s actually more updated than World Anvil rn whoops). Here we have overarching plot hooks, character development, and the story of six Paladins and their friends trying to save the universe.

Turn the Lights Out I sort of explained in the last post and I can’t think of too much more to add. The TLDR is it’s about the Lions (and, well, technically [REDACTED] too....) and sort of why I refer to a fully-melded Lion-Paladin duo as Spirits.

(I was here/Will you welcome and recognize me/I'll be there/I was here/Will you dread me, will you despise me/I'll be there/For the last living thing)

Remnants of Stars is again about Galran philosophy and the actual process of the quintessence nurseries filtering quintessence back into the universe. But the bit about giving in to know the truth becomes important much, MUCH later.

(As children of space/With stardust in our veins/We will give in to know the truth/We are the remnants of stars)

Your World Will Fail, Dark Matter, and Eater of Worlds are about [REDACTED], about what happens between that instant between the first plank time and the next. They’re an overarching theme, but also the event that everything else builds from, whether that be interpreted as the beginning of the universe or the Voltron comet crashing into Daibazaal.

(Your world will fail my love/It’s far beyond repair/Your world will fail my love/It is already there)

(Bring me your soul/Bring me your hate/In my name you will create/Bring me your fear/Bring me your pain/You will destroy in my name)

(Can’t imagine the violence/The rage and the love in my madness/I am the eater of worlds and I’m looking for someone to feed me)

Apocalypse 1992 is actually the main story of Through Apocalypse Skies, although its framing story is shortly after String Theory. It happens between parts of Awakenings, detailing the rise of [REDACTED] and the final hours before the destruction of everything sentient species knew beforehand.

(Fly high through apocalypse skies/Fight for the world we must save/Like tears of a unicorn lost in the rain/Chaos will triumph this day)

You Keep What You Kill covers the slow degeneration of the Empire between The Fall and the Battle of Arus. The knowledge harshly taught by the Thuanial War is forgotten under the influence of Zarkon, Haggar, and [REDACTED]. Marzin and Galraasa quickly rise the ranks as the Empire’s left and right hands, like omens of destruction before them. The four are the ‘holy half-dead,’ the ones who shape the devouring of the universe before them.

(Defying dimensions/These ruthless creatures will steal your soul/Breaking away from the chains of mortality/They won't be taken down/Bow now to the holy half dead/The master to death mongers calls)

The Seven Sisters is about Keith, mostly, and connected to Closure via its influence on Child From the Stars (Lost in the Dark) and also to Memories of a Girl I Haven’t Met

(I cast my hope upon The Pleiades/The Seven Sisters who would come for me/They'd fall to Earth to grant a child's dream/But I'm still waiting)

Starlight is the newly added Adashi song. Here, it’s the sad part, based around the time that the SFSS Genesis launches for Kerberos. It also is sort of about Shiro’s thoughts throughout the war as he watches ‘from distant skies’ (and influences String Theory kinda)

(At night the earth will rise/And I'll think of you each time I watch from distant skies/Whenever stars go down and galaxies ignite/I'll think of you each time they wash me in their light/And I'll fall in love with you again)

Abyss is Awakenings again. It’s specifically the Red Lion waking up on Sendak’s ship to her new Paladin, but also sort of the rest of the Lions as they find new Paladins for the first time since The Fall

(Open my eyes in a daze/How long has it been? Am I so out of place?/Warmth I can no longer feel/My mountain is gone, I'm surrounded by steel/The strangest of structures arises ahead/Seems to be held up by nothing/Where have I gone, do I dream?/How can the stars be all I can see?)

Who Will Save You Now is about the Paladins in First Contact. It’s the video messages they send to their families, the warning that Something Is Out Here that they need to prepare for. It’s a declaration of protection for Earth, but a recognition that the Paladins may not be able to do what they say.

(I will not take from you and you will not owe/I will protect you from the fire below/It's not in my mind/It's here at my side/Go tell the world that I'm still alive)

The End of the Beginning and Nobody Gets Left Behind are the aftermath of the Battle of the Sarnan Nebula, the end of season two. The End of the Beginning hasn’t been posted yet, but it’s also the second of the four Closure fics. The End of the Beginning also has influence on String Theory.

(Every night I die just a little/All this time, I'm caught in the middle/All your life, you fought with no winning/This is just the end of the beginning)

(Don't even try to pretend/That you're rough and just as tough/As when you're missing a friend/Attack and take him back/Cause when the team isn't whole/You've got a hole in your soul)

A Simple Plan is sort of part of The End of the Beginning, but really takes place after it. It’s the newly shuffled Team Voltron attempting to track down Lotor as Haggar tries to keep him under her control, and the new Black Paladin’s slow shift away from the things that he was pushed into and to the Blade. (And... guess what... it has influence on String Theory!) Fun fact I found out recently: The Spiritual Machines are by and large also the people behind Les Friction, which explains so much.

(What is this space we’re climbing/What is this place we’re stuck in/Why do we feel we’re sinking/How do we get out – get out of this)

Memories of a Girl I Haven’t Met skips all the way over Naxzela and to the Mission to the Baaria Shipyards, the first major offensive that isn’t somehow connected to canon (even if only a very very small part of it is actually at the shipyards lol). This is also the song that solidified Keith’s very queer identity in Dark Matter.

(In this lonely place, bathed in silence and thoughts of you/I can't see your face but I'm trying to envision you/So are you really out there? Are you awake with memories/Of a boy you haven't met yet who's wished upon the Pleiades?)

TRIALS (reimagine) and String Theory are.... hoh boy. [REDACTED], [spoilers], and the turning point for a lot of things, which is why it has the honor of being the separating fic between my two main Dark Matter folders. TRIALS being on here is a fun story, because I associate that song very heavily with my main Star Wars fics, since that’s where the series title comes from, but the reimagine version of it gave me such strong Dark Matter vibes, it ended up here. It has heavy influence on the first part of String Theory, and is what I’ve been using for general pacing of the first half. String Theory itself isn’t the weirdest song on the playlist, but it’s really hard to find the connections to it without several layers of abstraction and backstory on [REDACTED]. String Theory is also weaved into a good chunk of fics before it.

(The ending won't be forgotten/It's written in the stars and the hieroglyphs/Sending the lionhearted/The stones break bones, but we're venomous)

(You don't believe in space/You don't believe in light/You don't believe that anything is well beyond your might/We walk across the sky and beneath the ocean floor/We're never going anywhere we've never been before)

House on Fire is the aftermath of String Theory, and a large vibe of We ARE Struggling Together! (Rise Against says it’s about parenting???? lol fuck that) (okay but actually, switch the parental love part to sibling love/general familial love and that’s a pretty good description....)

(So I'll just hold you like a hand grenade/You touch me like a razor blade/I wish there was some other way right now/Like a house on fire we're up in flames/I'd burn here if that's what it takes/To let you know I won't let go of you)

Belgrade is the klance song! It is a) bop b) always stuck in my head because it is That Good. The line in the chorus about ‘sweet songs of seduction’ is eternally funny to be bc a)they’re both ace and b)QPR’s don’t usually involve seduction as far as I know. Belgrade also leads almost directly into...

(We pretend in the darkness/We pretend the night won’t steal our youth/Singing me the sweet songs of seduction/Let me be the fool, fool, fool/Who will live and die for you)

Here to Save You is about Sam. Mostly. It’s also about Pidge. And Zaivorge cannons.

(A slave for humankind/I made sure I would survive/To stay alive/Now it's time to move on/When there's nothing left to prove/I'm coming to get you)

Iron is what eventually replaced Ten Thousand Against One. The plot has actually changed a lot since it was that song like. two years ago (three?) at this point. It has more of a focus on Keith knowing what’s going on due to [spoilers] and coming to accept parts of himself that are suddenly very obvious (kiiiinda the third closure fic?)

(You can't live without the fire/It's the heat that makes you strong/'Cause you're born to live/And fight it all the way/You can't hide what lies inside you/It's the only thing you know/You're embracing that, never walk away)

Birthright and Firewall are not exactly a direct result of Iron, but they wouldn’t happen how they do without it. They’re actually largely about Lotor, but then [REDACTED] swings back into the fray and things learned in String Theory/the framing story for Through Apocalypse Skies hit in full force.

(The voices in my head have all begun to sing/(The voices in your head have all begun to sing)/And they sure as hell hope I am listening/(I sure as hell hope you are listening!))

(They come to your dreams with illusion/They come to bring shape to your mind/You know how to stop the intrusion/We all have to fight for our lives)

and then, The Day the Earth Collapsed

(How much time has been elapsed/Since the day the earth collapsed?)

Here Comes the Reign doesn’t come into full effect until several months after Birthright/Firewall after Galraasa meets their fate, but starts with The Day the Earth Collapsed. It’s largely about Haggar and [REDACTED]

(You made something they can't take away/Now bring the fire of the burning sun on everyone)

Closure is placed where the fourth of its fics is. Closure in general is a lot of Keith’s character development and some of the struggles he goes through to accept his place in the universe and the fact that yes, he does have people that care about him. The last fic is me shining a brighter light on Closure’s chorus and taking a ‘last goodbye’ as never needing to say it again

(I am the child from the stars/That got lost in the dark/Between heaven and hell/I am forced to live on/I am the cause when you sin/I am the demon you skin/But there is no more tears to beautify/This is my last goodbye)

Ember and Soulbound are two closely related missions involving both Voltron and the Blade (specifically the Dark Whispers) in which [REDACTED] comes in with a vengeance, and some revelations about certain people’s fates are had. Soulbound is actually sort of from Krolia’s perspective.

(Dark matter falling from the sky/Dancing flames reflecting in your eyes as you watch them burn/Watching all your riches witches burn)

(Soulbound, endlessly forever/Locked between the darkness and the light/Don't drown in the swarming, blackened rising/Hold on to humanity and fight)

Darker Matter and Other Worlds Than These are. Well. [REDACTED] and [spoilers] and String Theory’s revelations rearing their ugly head once again, but this time with extra context and just a little bit of [spoiler]

(Dream yourself away/The pull of you shredding time and space)

(There are monsters in the sky/There are demons in the sea/I have seen them with my eyes/I've seen what you won't see/Pull the wool out from your eyes/It won't shade your frail belief/In the end we cannot hide/There are other worlds than these)

Godhunter is a fun one. The combined effects of String Theory, Soulbound, and Darker Matter/Other Worlds Than These come to a head and Team Voltron goes, well, hunting.

(She's been watching for a century/With hatred, and with scorn/If you know the hunter's coming/Then you hide or keep on running/'Cause she's slain the gods before)

My Darkest Hour is revenge for Godhunter, as well as a distraction from it, although Godhunter continues all the way to Louder than Words.

(When the sun comes crashing down/When the world is spinning round and round/I will face what must be my darkest hour)

Faster Than Light is almost direct aftermath of My Darkest Hour, and sort of the inverse of Godhunter, where now Team Voltron are the hunted, even as they attempt to continue hunting. Oh and, Marzin and [REDACTED] are big parts

(Once more we're flying fast as light/Dark matter passing in the night/Pursued by a force we can't outrun/As we hurtle towards a dying sun/We maneuver through the remnants of a moon/On the solar winds of supernovas/There is not a place to hide, the Matriarch is close behind/It's plain to see she's coming for us all)

The Reckoning, This is a Call, World on Fire, The Wind that Shapes the Land, and Louder Than Words are the finale, what everything has been building towards. Earth’s faction, Haggar, [REDACTED], Voltron, the Empire, and the Coalition, all clash together in a final desperate bid to finish or prevent the final result of Your World Will Fail/Dark Matter/Eater of Worlds.

(I see your face, find peace of mind/Between the madness and the sadness and the fire burning/The end of war, the great divine/We'll see the day of reckoning)

(This is a call to action/This is a call to arms/All lives for one, together/There are no false alarms)

(World on fire with a smoking sun/Stops everything and everyone/Brace yourself for all will pay/Help is on the way)

(Search within/Uncover the will to win/Turn against the tide that washes o'er/Find the strength to fall and rise again/Open up the gates, unleash the force/I am the wind that shapes the land/Old as time and twice as strong/Oceans arise at my command/I alone can carry on)

(We have the force to fight/We have the blinding light/A war is more than heard/Coming in louder than words)

Dystopian Fiction

Dystopian Fiction is focused on what happens on Earth during the main playlist. I split it out because putting stuff like Cross the Line on the main playlist was getting clunky, and I figure Adam and Veronica (and the rest of the Paladins’ families, but mostly those two) deserve a chance for their story to shine on its own.

Dark Matter is on here because title track, but also it does end up with effects.

(Don't stop, don't think/Move up, don't blink now/On your knees pray for rain/Don't breathe when you take your aim)

Codebreaker is Adam’s song! I have him primarily as a cryptologist for the Garrison, teaching on the side and as a reserve pilot. Aviators says Codebreaker is actually about Cyperpunk 2077 but uhhh Fuck That it’s about Adam being The Best and dealing with...

(Codebreaker can't you find/Can you read between the lines of code?/Tell me all that you know/How far down the hole does it all go)

Cross the Line is the Éskhayklos’ image song. They’re a neo-luddite movement turned terrorist group that are upset with the way the Sol Federation is trying to fix Earth, stating that humans are the one that pushed it into this state, they should leave it to die and die along with it. Akane Shirogane was their worst nightmare. Cross the Line fits because, well, they crossed the line when [spoiler beep] and they were happy about it. (And “human cause” comes into play later when they pick up anti-alien leanings)

(Cross the line, redefine, break away unbent, unafraid/Together we stand in the dark/Seeking the light and what is right, together we cross the line/Our journey will come to an end and then our human cause will be/Justified)

Who Will Save You Now here is about Sam, and the aftermath of Here to Save You, in addition to its referenced role in the main playlist

(Alone with this vision/Alone and blind/Go tell the world I'm still alive)

The Day the Earth Collapsed is exactly what it says on the tin.

(How much time has been elapsed/Since the day the earth collapsed?)

Dystopian Fiction is the title track for this part. With the events of The Day the Earth Collapsed, the Garrison and our heroes on Earth are at their lowest point. It really is a piece of dystopian fiction, between [spoiler] and [spoiler]. And also: “Nobody can shoot me down, not just yet” is about Adam bc Fuck Canon

(I'm a dead man/In the wasteland/I'm a soldier fighting for superstition/Under search lights/In the long nights/We've been written like dystopian fiction)

The Reckoning is the only one of its little subset that made it over here, because it’s the only one that references events from before its eponymous fic (both verses are Very Earth)

(We're all alone, walking in twilight/The night has been long and so many have fallen/Feel no remorse, light will be breaking/Our freedom is worth it all)

Filaments

Filaments is the least complete, mostly because it’s the ‘sequel series’ of sorts. I have ideas for it, but I still haven’t posted most of the major story beats from the main portion of Dark Matter, so I’ve been purposefully putting it on the backburner. I do have enough to write Carry Me Home and put some foreshadowing in other fics.

Dark Matter is here because, well. A) Title track, B) yes, it still has effects. It’s the overarching theme, after all. Filaments sort of has a subtitle itself, which is ‘The Undoing,’ after the other part of the lyric that the subtitle of the main playlist comes from. It’s about undoing a past mistake (that wasn’t obviously a mistake until much later) and reconciling the events of Your World Will Fail.

(I am the keeper/I am the secret/I am the answer/I am the end)

Filaments is the title track of this part. It’s... a little hard to explain why without giving away the entire plot (what little I have planned lol) but it’s about the connections between different parts of the universe, and some fall-out of Darker Matter/Other Worlds Than These.

(These glowing filaments/Conducting this enchanting/Sarcophagus that's holding us)

Starlight is, again, Adashi song, and this time the happy part

(Don't leave me lost here forever/I need your starlight and pull me through/Bring me back to you)

Carry Me Home is what I’m in the process of writing right now, and it’s about the aftermath of the Quintessence War, specifically about how Shiro decides to settle down on Earth and what he does to build himself a home.

(Carry me home to the morning light/carry me home before you wave me goodbye/Oh, carry me home...)

#i am dark matter; your road to ruin #wow it's 2am #i spent like three hours on this #playlist #enjoy the spotify links #i really did not realize just how much I've added to the playlist this year #it's abyss's fault #i just. really love the playlist #it is my masterpiece #my brother makes fun of me for this but like #you DON'T make super complicated playlists for stories??#i reiterate i really really love this thing #anyway i should. sleep #i mean the semester is over i cn stay up till two but that doesn't mean it's wise #can't wait for me to finally post everything so i can gush about the playlist without smatterings of [REDACTED] tags when it shows up #DM Playlists

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simple-heroics · 5 years

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Nejire Chan and Ryukyu with a Quirkless Hero S/O

Baby blog’s first ask, baby blog’s first ask, baby blog’s first ask – !!!! And answered with no less than 2554 words. Whoops. I was really inspired by this ask and got ahead of myself. So no promises on every future ask getting this same amount!

Nejire Hado

Okay. So, I love Nejire. I do. And I don’t want Nejire Nation to come after me for this but I have to be real: Nejire…is an insensitive dick when she first meets you. 😬😬😬

I said what I said because it’s true. This is the girl who just straight up asked Todoroki how he got his scar in the front of the whole damn class. Get this girl a goddamn filter.

Given how rare Quirkless people in your generation (see amazing meta here), it’s extremely likely that you are the first Quirkless person Nejire has met. And Nejire has questions. Many, many questions - some of which humming with implicit bias.

“Woooah, y/n, I didn’t know there were still people born without Quirks! I thought only old people were Quirkless. When did you find out? Did you have to get x-rays? Do you really have an extra joint in your pinky toe? Were your parents sad you didn’t inherit their Quirks?”

Um, ouch. Nejire, what the fuck, that’s practically bullying! (On the bright side, you form a sort of comradery with Tamaki as you both understand what it’s like to be “sweetly” picked on by one Nejire Hado.)

You’re not even the same class, her being in the hero department and you having just scraped into general studies by your teeth after getting your ass handed to you the practical exam. So, you know, you two are in a completely different sections of UA and realistically you two would hardly ever see each other outside passing in the halls, forget actually interacting with any kind of frequency.

Wrong.

Apparently your Quirklessness is such a novelty to her that Nejire actively seeks you out. All. The. Time. Somehow, she always finds new questions to ask about your lack of Quirk - unintentionally othering you in the process - and then others that are completely random. Why would she care if you like boba tea or not? why do you think, you dork

And when she finds out that you, too, want to be a hero? The questions blister.

“How are you going to fight people with really strong Quirks? Has there ever been a Quirkless hero before? I wonder what kind of agency would take you on…”

What makes these questions all the worse is that you know that there’s nothing malicious about them; they were honest, prompted by genuine curiosity. You’ve learned the difference a long time ago but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

And to have it come from her? A student from the the coveted UA hero program, one the Big Three at that? Someone gifted with a phenomenal Quirk and this bubbly personality and charm and a cute face and - ? yeah you may already have a crush whoops

These feelings - along with an entire lifetime of mockery and prejudice - eventually boil over…

Your fist slammed into the wall next to you. “Yes, Hado, I get it. I’m frickin’ Quirkless.”

Nejire jumped, cut off mid-sentence. “Y/n, what - “

Your nostrils flared as you inhaled sharply. “Surprise. I’ve been Quirkless my whole life! I don’t need you - or literally everybody else - to remind me. But you wanna know what?”

Her typical smile fell, expression melting into something strangely blank and watchful.

“Being Quirkless doesn’t make me weak. I may not be in the hero course or strong like you but I still got into UA. I got all the way here without a Quirk and I’ll become a hero without one, too! So quit looking down your cute nose at me from that pedestal and watch me.”

Nejire’s bright eyes blinked once, twice, long eyelashes fluttering. She tilted her head. “You think my nose is cute?”

Jerking back, your face heated up. “That’s what you got out of that?”

“No, I got everything else,” Nejire said. Somehow, her eyes seemed brighter - sparkling as they looked at you. A smile returned to her lips, different from others you’ve seen from her before. This one made your heart stutter. “I never thought you were weak, y/n. Actually…you wanna know what?”

Clasping her hands behind her back, she stepped closer to you.

Crap, crap, crap - did you just piss off one of the strongest students in the school? You cringed against the wall behind you, floundering between embarrassment and panic and - whatever this weird feeling in your stomach was. You blamed the Lunch Rush.

Nejire peered up at you from under her eyelashes. “I’ve already been watching.”

Haaaaa! Turns out Nejire kept pestering you and asking you so many damn questions because she had a huge crush on you.

Just to be clear, Nejire does sincerely apologize to you. You two have a long, long talk about boundaries and what’s going too far.

Fairy girl also makes it up to you with that boba tea she asked you about awhile ago and then some 😉

Okay…okay, so I actually waited to add this part because it’s something you wouldn’t quite pick up on at first and only really notice after Nejire eases up. That is: Nejire is/was kind of the only one bugged you about being Quirkless.

Well, when you first started at UA, there was the usual ribbing which eventually mellowed out and you chalked it up to your classmates just getting bored with it. This sudden “boredom” happened coincide with the time you first caught Nejire’s interest.

Who overheard some things.

All I have to say is this: Have you ever seen a really, really nice person finally snap? If your answer is “no”, good for you. You don’t want to.

ANYWAY. Nejire is a very supportive girlfriend. If you want to be a hero, she’ll help you in every way she possibly can.

She invites you to train with her, Mirio, and Tamaki. Her own personal stamina training helps you, and the other two happily offer tips to help you out.

Nejire is super creative and actually comes up with a lot of ideas on ways. Sometimes, she goes on entire tangents while brainstorming different ways you can kick ass.

Hell, she even brings you up to Ryukyu! The girl nearly begs the Pro to let you at least train with her agency. Ryukyu gently declines, knowing that she herself isn’t a fitting mentor for you 😔 unlike a certain someone in Ryuko’s life if you read below wink wink

Totally uses her privilege as a hero course student to request specific items from the support department just for you to try out and experiment with. As it turns out…this is exactly the kind of boost you needed.

Nejire brags - no, gushes about you. A lot. She still constantly brings up the fact that you’re Quirkless to anyone who will listen but there’s a distinct undertone of pride there.

Because you were so, so, so strong. You held your head high even when others laughed at your goal. You stood up for yourself. You trained relentlessly, pushing yourself harder every day, and inspired Nejire to do the same.

Nejire remembers the classmate who quit the hero course, how they had so much promise and this amazing Quirk yet still crumbled under the pressure. You, though? You never let something like being Quirkless stop you from pursuing your dream.

You’re already a hero in Nejire’s eyes.

And you look so cute when you get all flustered, she’ll add laughingly after one of these tangents. She loves you so much and can’t help singing your praises, much to your never ending embarrassment. Guess she never quite outgrew the unintentional bullying, huh…

But no. You also help Nejire grow as a person. She never forgets the time you confronted her before you began your relationship.

Gradually, she learns to be choose her questions with a little more care, to stop and consider them before asking. Nejire becomes more conscious of other people’s feelings and how her words may affect them.

It’s unlikely that you’ll ever transfer to the hero course. However, you shouldn’t let this deter you and Nejire reminds you that not every hero got their license through a hero course. (Gran Torino didn’t.)

Other couples talk about someday moving in together and maybe adopting a dog. You and Nejire talk about what it will be like to open up a hero agency together. (A pet friendly one so your eventual dog can go to the office with you.) Your beautiful fairy is just that confident in your abilities and your relationship both.

And with a girl like Nejire Hado by your side, you can’t help but think anything is possible.

Ryuko Tatsuma

This one I tweaked a little bit as Ryukyu is an adult, ergo so is her s/o. At this age, it’s make or break: either s/o made it as a hero or just didn’t. There is no more “trying” with bills to pay. So let’s say yes, her sweetie absolutely made it as a hero! ^^

You met during a briefing for a joint mission early on in your hero careers. Ryuko didn’t give you too much thought at first. You blended in with the rest of your colleagues, and she herself focused on the briefing. You likely wouldn’t have spoken if not for being assigned to work together.

You two were partnered up because your individual talents and weaknesses balanced each other out: her Quirk is pure strength but it disallows much room for finesse while you specialized in agility and typically ran undercover assignments but were vulnerable to more brutal attacks.

You also find that you two just…naturally worked extremely well together. You just clicked.

The villains didn’t stand a chance.

“That went better than planned,” Ryuko said as you both watched police officers escort the cuffed drug traffickers into the back of police vans. A hero’s job was never fully complete until

Still high on the adrenaline, you laughed loudly. “No kidding.”

Arms crossed, Ryuko looked at you from the corner of her eyes. You had a thin, long cut that traced the curve of your cheek and down the corner of your jaw. It would definitely scar but on you…she imagined it would look quite distinguished.

However, it was an unnecessary one.

“You didn’t use your Quirk, though.” There was a silent admonishment in that simple statement.

To her confusion, you sent her a very dry look. “That’s because I don’t have a Quirk to use.”

Ryuko’s eyebrows nearly rose to her hairline. Her lips parted, forming small o-shape. “…ah.”

To say Ryuko was intrigued would be an understatement. And you appreciated that she didn’t make a big deal about it. She just accepted it, accepted you.

So, you two keep in touch, compare notes on similar leads, give each other tips on each other’s cases, maybe volunteer for certain missions when you hear the other is on it. Communication on the Hero Network turn into texts. Pretty soon she has your coffee order memorized from when she delivers it to you during your late night stakeouts, and you find yourself watching and then rewatching Ryuko’s press conferences.

Because you’re both supportive of your friends and colleagues, right? Right? Yeah, right. You quickly fell head over heels for each other.

Ryuko didn’t make a Big Deal out of you being Quirkless. However, even she’s internalized some of the stigma - making her a little protective, even quietly defensive. It’s something she had to work on a lot in the beginning of your relationship.

And sometimes it’s hard to watch her soar to higher and higher above you, both literally and figuratively. You’ve made your dream of becoming a hero a reality with your own two hands but there will always be kernel of internalized prejudice inside you.

And it fucking hurts.

You and Ryuko have a lot of late night conversations - about your occasional jealousy, your frustrations, her own conflicting desires to let you take care of yourself and shield you, the microaggressions from colleagues, how the public questions your abilities.

It’s hard but these conversations deepen your relationship, as any conflict would.

Your dragon girlfriend picking you up for a private flight always cheers you up, though.

Also, general pro-tip: don’t say shit about the Dragon Lady’s s/o. Ryuko lets you handle it ‘cause you’re a badass and growing Quirkless has lead you to perfecting your clap backs. And it always gives her a good chuckle to hear your witty retorts.

If however you aren’t in the room but your name is in someone else’s mouth, Ryuko handles it. And that’s that.

She is in the top 10 for a reason, you know.

Ryuko is a professional on the field - no flirting, rarely any cute couple banter - but anyone can tell how the Dragon Hero feels from how she looks at you.

Even from meters away, arms crossed and focused on the task at hand, she sends you these brief but intense glances from the corner of heavy-lidded eyes. Often a soft smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. Ryuko could be deep in tactical conversation with another hero yet those looks she make it feel like you’re the only person in the room she really sees.

Yes, Ryuko knows you’re perfectly capable.Yes, she respects you and your skills. Yes, you two have mutual professional boundaries so neither of you are emotionally compromised on the job. Hell, it’s rare for your patrol schedules to even line up.

But if anything ever happens to you in the field and she’s there, she will go absolutely draconic. I’m not saying Ryuko goes this far but she comes pretty damn close. shit I should totally write that

Afterward, when you come to in the hospital and find out what happened, you scold her a bit. She can’t just lose control of herself like that, not with a Quirk like her, no matter what happens to you.

But honestly? Quirk or no Quirk, you’d do the same for her.

Ryuko has no control over the hero rankings, as she said, and wouldn’t put herself in the top 10 (we stan a humble queen) but you? Why aren’t you higher up??

Lowkey loves watching you at work. She’s too dignified to make a big scene or brag but no one is immune to the inherent eroticism of their s/o kicking villain ass. Like, oof look at her baby go. Good god, that’s her s/o. How did she get so lucky?

Ryuko is just in complete awe of you. Through countless hours of training, discipline, and sheer force of will, you’ve become a formidable hero in your own right. Even people blessed with astounding Quirks don’t always make the cut but you - beautiful, strong, Quirkless you - do and you excel.

More than that, you know what it’s like to be scared and hurt and targeted and vulnerable from living with the prejudice that comes . And instead of letting this jade you, you use this to empathize with others. You use your personal hardship motivate yourself further to protect people going through the same.

Simply put, you are her hero.

Damn, I didn’t know I was horny for Ryukyu until this happened. It’s like my Gay Awakening all over again. 🥵🥵 I think I’m gonna need more asks for the Dragon Queen in the future.

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bilgisticallykosher · 5 years

Text

Devil On His Shoulders And Lesser Demons All Over The Place; AKA Well, There Goes The Metasphere

As a note, I actually don't believe that Mandy is that angsty. The rumors of her sadism have been greatly exaggerated. As another note, I'd just like to apologize to everyone. Inspired by Devil On My Shoulder by Lime. Or the shortened version, DOMS. Which is ridiculous; clearly Mandy is the only dom here.

Words: Just under 2000

Lime sighed, careful not to cause too much movement to his little "shoulder devil" as he secretly liked to think of her. Mandy was great, and the scenarios were fun to think about, but he could never actually write them. He loved his characters too much to ever hurt them permanently. And yet…

Well, at any rate, he was still out of ideas. And this little (heh) theoretical session hadn't helped any. Maybe he'd have to start from scratch after all. The curtains fluttered in the windless atmosphere, and a bright light flickered from beyond them. Lime squinted. What in the heck?

"...and since he doesn't know about the others living in his house, he doesn't get them out from the flooding!" Mandy concluded her dreary thought. She looked up and blinked. "Hey, what's that-" She cut herself off with a soundless noise that might have very well been a curse, as a fire bird flew in out of nowhere, and landed lightly on Lime's other shoulder.

He flinched, but it turned out to not be hot, just pleasantly warm.

"Um, hi?" He greeted, bewildered.

"I know I'm not exactly one to talk," the phoenix began, definitely actually talking, "but I think you can do a little better than Miss Not-So-Infinitesimally Angsty." Mandy gasped.

"How dare?!" The phoenix, who Lime now realized was Phoenix, rolled their eyes.

"I'm just saying, there's maybe an imbalance there on hurt/comfort you know?" They had a point.

"Hey, I know how to do comfort!" Mandy huffed. "I get plenty of comfort from readers screaming in the comments." Lime groaned. Phoenix, being one of her screaming readers, slapped their face with their hand- er, wing.

"Alright, I think I need some backup," they said, muffled through their feathers. They dropped their wing and sent out a fire symbol. Lime couldn't quite see what it was, or if they used their mouth like a dragon, or if it was a feather or something. Pretty awesome, though.

And suddenly there was a purple butterfly hovering in front of him. At least this newcomer wasn't too hard to figure out.

"Nyn?"

"I hear you're having trouble with some plot ideas?" She seemed excited and willing to help, something Lime was very grateful for.

"Yes, thank you so much, I can't seem to get away from the really awful permanent death ones." Lime stared obviously at Mandy, who just shrugged nonchalantly, spinning her magic pen around.

"Ah. Yes. Well, I've got the perfect solution!" Her voice was so sweet-sounding, it was like music to his ears. Phoenix nodded their head.

"Yes?" Lime listened raptly.

"Kill 'em anyways." He froze. Surely, he must have misheard.

"Wh-" he floundered for coherent English. "What?"

"If you wanna kill them, kill them!" There was a snort from his shoulder.

"But your stories are usually so cute! And fluffy!"

"Usually,” she emphasized. "Unless Mandy picks the wrong number." Lime turned to Mandy, horrified.

"Whoops," she deadpanned.

"I wrote a fic about the werewolf getting a kitten," Phoenix said reproachfully.

Then he got distracted by a voice at his feet.

"Heya!"

"Aah!"

"Woah!"

"Geez, now I know how Virgil felt," the voice joked. Lime looked down. It looked like...a box? With little cat features? That was adorable, but admittedly very confusing. He had to contain himself from petting. His talons twitched.

No! Big, scary dragon! Rawr! He wouldn't cave to some weird kitty box!

… Who was he kidding? He'd be cuddling it within the hour.

Mandy squinted, staring down at the creature. She steadied herself on Lime's shoulder before sliding down his arm. He grumbled something about safety that went unheeded.

"Kat?" She asked, tilting her head. "Is that you?" The box- Kat, apparently- nodded.

"Yep. I'm here to help out!" Mandy squinted.

"Why the heck do you look like that?"

"Well, like my username. You know," she sighed, Callboxkat? Box Kat? Box cat? Yeah."

"Wait, isn't it supposed to be a callbox? As in a telephone booth?"

"Yeah, but the author doesn't watch Doctor Who." Kat watched Nyn fluttering back and forth, repressing her newfound cat urges.

"Wait. I thought we were the authors?" Phoenix furrowed their eyebrows.

"Listen, this is already so meta, does it really matter?" Kat raised an eyebrow.

"Fair point." Mandy jerked her thumb back in Lime's direction over her shoulder. "So, do you have any suggestions?"

"Do I?!"

"Do you?" Lime echoed back at her.

"So I was thinking," she box-stepped over to one of the lower-set universe basins, "you take some of your tiny characters,"

"Yeah…" He considered the few universes where he had borrowers.

"Then you slap a tail on them, and have them almost drown!" She concluded triumphantly, lithely swaying her own tail at the mention of them.

"Almost drown them?" Lime asked warily.

“Almost drown them?" Mandy asked with a gleam in her eye.

"Okay, that's it." A new voice called out. Lime thought he recognized it, turning his head to confirm. Yep, there Allison was, dressed in her own witch outfit of purple and teal. "You," she pointed at Mandy with her magic quill "have had enough angst for the day. You're being cut off."

"No!" Mandy pouted, readying her puppy dog eyes.

"Yes," Allison crossed her arms triumphantly.

"Um, not to encourage her," Phoenix spoke up, turning to face her, "but haven't you been just as guilty of angst recently?"

"What do you mean?" Allison frowned, confused.

"Yeah!" Kat turned to her, "all those Perspectives lately have been pretty heavy and angst-laden."

"Wh- hey, first of all, recently is subjective, we wrote those a while ago. And we've had a lot of fluff in there, too!" Lime considered this.

"Vampire Perspective, Pet Perspective…" he listed off.

"Mandy's been choosing the wrong numbers," Nyn nodded.

"And! And Lilliputian, Freezing, those were also recent-ish!"

"Face it," Mandy suddenly appeared next to Allison, leaning her arm on her friend, "we're in the same boat now." She flopped over dramatically into her arms. "I've corrupted you."

"Noooo…"

"Hey, Allison, what's that building on your hat, by the way?" Phoenix asked. She sighed, and threw a photo version their way.

"Arc."

"Oh my god." There were snickers around. Mandy was still draped over Allison, shaking her head at the truly awful pun.

"PSSSST!" Everyone turned around. There, as if summoned by the bad humor, was a stick figure, looking shifty-eyed, and unmistakably Lefay. She was wearing a trenchcoat, and hat. Of course, the hat wasn't the typical hat associated with a trenchcoat. It was, instead, an umbrella-hat.

"Um," a new voice came in before they could address that. They turned back, seeing a small snail with a dorsal fin on his back. Fin. Lime was starting to see a terrible, terrible pattern here. "I was also invited, but, I don't know, maybe I should leave? You guys are all so cool, I think I probably don't belong here."

"Fin, please!" Everyone chorused together.

"Alright, alright!" He acquiesced, really taking in the room. "Hey, I guess not everyone's cool, you're looking pretty hot, Phoenix!" He made finger guns at them somehow, and they laughed at his antics. Lime smiled, before remembering the previous interruption.

"Hey, Lefay," Lime started, slowly, turning back to her, "why's there an umbrella on your head?"

"The costume store was out of trench hats-"

"There's no way that's what they're called," Allison balked.

"-so I decided to go with the rain theme. And I got this instead!" She patted the umbrella headband happily before tensing, and crouching inward, voice lowering to what was definitely not how she spoke a second ago. "Pssst. Hey, hey kid. C'mere. I hears ya need some help with your woiks."

Lime took a moment to mentally translate this. He was uncertain, but he did need help with his works. He twisted his long, scaly neck over to where she stood.

"Yeah, alright."

She opened her trench coat wide, causing a flinch or two throughout the group, to reveal what was lined on the inside. Lime could identify a turnip, a rutabaga, celeriac, a parsnip, a yam, taro, a daikon, and jicama. "Um…" Lime was confused. "What-"

"Oh my god" Kat put her paws over her face.

"Did youse need help wit' some titles?" Lefay waggled her eyebrows. There was absolute silence, aside from some traitorous snickering from some of the others.

"..............No," Lime decided on as his response. "Titles I can figure out later, but I just need some story ideas to title in the first place."

"Oh, why didn't you say so!" She responded in her normal voice. "I can totally help with that!" Lime brightened. Lefay smiled back, and then promptly fell to the floor, pillow under her head, asleep.

Lime flinched back, and turned back to the rest of the room, slumping his head in his hands.

"This is never going to work," he lamented. "I'll never get a new idea like this!"

"Well," Nyn cut in, "maybe that's your answer." Lime slowly lifted his head, squinting in confusion. "I mean, if you're not coming up with ideas this way, maybe this way isn't the way to go about it?"

"Right," Allison agreed, as Mandy un-flopped from her. "Just because this works for some people, or even if it's worked for you before, doesn't mean you have to use this method."

"Inspiration comes differently for everyone." Kat piped in, tail swishing in excitement. "You shouldn't feel pressured to choose one specific way and stick to it."

"And if you're forcing yourself to come up with ideas, doesn't that negate why you're writing in the first place?" Phoenix added.

"Heck yeah!" Fin shouted. "Writing fanfic is supposed to be fun!" Mandy gently put a hand on his arm.

"You shouldn't feel pressured at all. If you can't think of something to write, you don't have to." Lime looked up at her, she smiled gently down at him. "You're allowed to not write. You're allowed to take a break. You're allowed to put yourself first." Lime sniffed out a laugh, before looking at all the smiling, encouraging faces of his friends and fellow fanders.

"Okay, I give. You guys are right." He stood up on all fours, nails clacking against the wood floor. "Now let's get out of this…" he looked around again, frowning. "Wait, where are we?"

"Looks like a stage of some sort?" Kat voiced, uncertainly. A voice sounded from all around them.

"I'm a theater, sweetheart." Brook responded. There was a rimshot.

"You know, it's things like this that make me really glad that I picked my authorsona myself." Lime deadpanned. Allison and Mandy nodded.

Over in the corner, a shovel fell over onto a sketchpad in agreement.

"Yeah, I don't know who's doing this," Mandy spoke a little too nonchalantly, "but these are really, really bad. Like, objectively terrible. I mean just completely awful. As if whoever did it started with zero sense of humor, and then got worse." Hey, watch it, witchy, I’m in control of this story. "And I'm in control of a lot more stories, I can make angst like you wouldn't believe," she cheerfully stated, appropriate of nothing, according to the others' perspectives.

…I surrender.

Mandy smirked, satisfied, before bounding over to Lime's back. "So, wanna give us a ride back?"

"Sure," Lime offered his hands out, palms flat for everyone (except for those with wings) to climb on. When everyone had settled, he spread his wings, and took flight. As he faded into the horizon, he mumbled to himself, "Maybe I'll write something with Virgil…"

About a minute after he left, Lefay jolted awake.

"Alright! I've got like six more plausible ideas for AUs, there's this one where-" Lefay paused, looking around. She seemed distressed for a moment, before continuing. "-but I never figured out what happened with the incident with the noodles. TIME FOR MORE RESEARCH!" She pointed dramatically up to the sky, before immediately flopping back into sleep.

BONUS!

There was a ringing sound. Every set of eyes snapped to the source.

"Are you ringing from your body?” Allison asked Kat incredulously.

"I've got a phone in the box," Kat blushed, fishing it out.

"Getting a call, box-Kat?" Mandy grinned wickedly. Kat barked at her. Mandy frowned.

"Why-"

"I love dogs," she shrugged.

@callboxkat @delimeful @hiddendreamer67 @theatresweetheart @lefaystrent @infinimay @enby-phoenix @arc852 @justanotherpurplebutterfly @eatingashovel (not by name but you make an appearance)

#callboxkat #arc852 #delimeful #hiddendreamer67 #justanotherpurplebutterfly #infinimay #my stories #authorsona #enby phoenix

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fearlessinger · 3 years

Text

“You must make your own choice.”

Reconstructing Apollo’s Journey within Riordan’s Narrative

Much too self aware to be egotistical

Not the kind of feelings that gods have

You have heard of imposter syndrome?

As if you could have immortality or meaning, but not both

The sun’s indifference

Art thou sure that is thy wish? (read on ao3)

Finally, Apollo stops lying to our faces every other paragraph about what he really thinks and feels. He stops wasting time and energy pretending that he doesn't mean, that he doesn't want to do the right thing. That he doesn’t care about everything and everybody. He's done being ashamed of it. He won’t hide from who he is anymore.

It should be a liberating choice, but it doesn’t feel like it. Far from it. Now that he doesn’t let himself cower behind his lies any longer, now that he refuses to flinch away from reality and take refuge in the imaginary stage play he’d gotten so comfortable writing and acting out inside his own head, he can see with agonizingly perfect clarity how much he'd screwed up. How much time he's wasted. How much blood is on his hands.

There was no climbing cage going to the second level – just bare metal rungs against the side of the girder, as if the builders had decided, Welp, if you made it this far, you must be crazy, so no more safety features! Now that the metal-ribbed chute was gone, I realized it had given me some psychological comfort. At least I could pretend I was inside a safe structure, not free-climbing a giant tower like a lunatic. (TTT 247)

The guilt he felt before was nothing compared to the guilt he feels now without the buffer of pretense. As hollow as it was, he misses the comfort that his safety cage had given him. But the only way to make the climb was to leave it behind.

Oh, Jason Grace … I promised you I would remember what it was to be human. But why did human shame have to hurt so much? Why wasn’t there an off button? (TTT 134)

Apollo did many bad things in his long life. Some of them, many of them, he did because he was backed into a corner. Because he had no choice, or because he’d been made to believe that he didn’t, and accepted that that was the truth. But he can’t, he won’t let himself acknowledge it, not even now that he’s finally allowing himself to put the right name to what he’s experienced at his father’s hands.

He is not like Meg. He is not a child. He is responsible for his own choices. He should have known better. He should have tried harder. He will have to keep trying, somehow, whatever it takes, no matter how hopeless it seems, once he’s back with the rest of the gods, back within the fold of the little abusive cult that he calls family, high above the top of the Empire State Building, because unlike Meg, he’s never getting free.

He keeps insisting that human shame is different, because he needs to believe that when the time comes he won’t jump at the chance to turn it off, shut it down, bury it in the sand and never look back, just like he’d done with the godly one, which is exactly the same.

Have you ever had an experience so painful or embarrassing you literally forgot it happened? Your mind dissociates, scuttles away from the incident yelling Nope, nope, nope, and refuses to acknowledge the memory ever again? (TTT 43)

He’d done it to survive. But that’s no excuse. Deep down, Apollo has always believed this. He has to find a way to do better anyway. He has no guarantee that he will. He doesn’t have anything but his desperate, stubborn resolve to keep his promise to Jason, to himself, to everybody.

I will be Apollo. I will remember.

When had I last felt ‘whole’? I wanted to believe it was back when I was a god, but that wasn’t true. I hadn’t been completely myself for centuries. Maybe millennia. (TTT 316)

The problem with getting used to lying all the time is not that you end up forgetting what the truth is. You don’t. Not unless you want to. And Apollo could never truly bring himself to want to. No, the problem with getting used to lying all the time is that, after a while, the lies start to feel more real than the truth itself.

Apollo knows who he is, but he has not allowed himself to be that person in a really, really long time. So long, that he isn’t quite sure how to do it anymore.

But he can’t afford to wait to figure it out until after the crisis has passed. The hourglass is running out of sand.

Lupa stood before the altar. Mist shrouded her fur as if she were off-gassing quicksilver.

It is your time, she told me.

[...]

‘My time,’ I said. ‘For what, exactly?’

She nipped the air in annoyance. To be Apollo. The pack needs you.

I wanted to scream, I’ve been trying to be Apollo! It’s not that easy! (TTT 95)

“Continue to act strong,” Lupa tells him. Apollo understands. Her advice makes sense to him. “Half the trick to being a god,” he had told Meg their first morning together at Camp Half Blood, “is knowing how to bluff.”

He can do that. He’s been doing it this whole time. So maybe he just needs to switch his old act for a new one. The vapid, selfish, privileged brat for the reformed ex villain seeking redemption. The latter feels more right. It definitely feels closer to the truth, and to the end goal, than his previous routine.

The problem is, ultimately, it’s still an act.

‘Did you just use the term skedaddleth?’

I TRY TO SPEAK PLAINLY TO THEE, TO GRANT THEE A BOON, AND STILL THOU COMPLAINEST.

‘I appreciate a good boon as much as the next person. But, if I’m going to contribute to this quest and not just cower in the corner, I need to know how –’ my voice cracked – ‘how to be me again.’

The vibration of the arrow felt almost like a cat purring, trying to soothe an ill human. ART THOU SURE THAT IS THY WISH?

‘What do you mean?’ I demanded. ‘That’s the whole point! Everything I’m doing is so –’ (TTT 138)

Apollo has spent so long trying to be someone other than himself, there’s almost no one left who truly knows him anymore. The characters he played are all that most of the people around him have ever known.

And he doesn’t get to correct their assumptions. He doesn’t get to make his case to the arrow. How would that even go? You see, I’m not actually an asshole, I just pretended to be! I swear I didn’t mean it!

Nobody wants to hear that. To anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of having to put up with it, the two looked exactly the same.

And, contrary to popular belief that he himself had carefully planted and cultivated, Apollo can read a room.

I began to speak, the Latin ritual verses pouring out of me. I chanted from instinct, barely aware of the words’ meanings. I had already praised Jason with my song. That had been deeply personal. This was just a necessary formality.

In some corner of my mind, I wondered if this was how mortals felt when they used to pray to me. Perhaps their devotions had been nothing but muscle memory, reciting by rote while their minds drifted elsewhere, uninterested in my glory. I found the idea strangely … understandable. Now that I was a mortal, why should I not practise non-violent resistance against the gods, too? (TTT 91-92)

The Romans still pray to the gods. They still prayed to Apollo too. And yet, none of them really has any idea who Apollo is. Most of them never cared to know either. Why would they? Gods aren’t people. Gods aren’t friends. They are beautiful golden idols to appease. They might grant someone a wish, sometimes, if that wish is something they already wanted to make happen anyway. They don’t actually care about anything but themselves.

And Apollo was just like the rest of them.

It doesn’t matter that his indifference was always fake. From a distance, it looked real. From a distance, it looked the same as that of any of the other gods. And Apollo was oh so very careful, at all times, to keep his distance.

He still is.

He calls Zeus his abuser, but he only does it in the privacy of his own head, and in the pages of these books that won’t be read by any of the people who could actually give him sympathy and support.

Gods aren’t supposed to need sympathy. They aren’t supposed to need support. They aren’t supposed to be helpless.

Apollo feels safe in telling us, because we can’t do anything, we can’t offer anything to him other than a listening ear.

But even to us Apollo doesn’t explain, because the truth is Apollo doesn’t WANT to explain. It’s incredibly hard for him, still, to admit that he was never as in control of his own life and choices as he liked to think and pretend he was.

This, too, is who Apollo is. He believes that he had no right to be a victim.

So, even as he admits it, he won’t let himself acknowledge how that shaped every single one of his choices, of his thoughts, of his beliefs even.

He will take all the responsibility, because he can’t admit that, even at his most powerful, he was always powerless.

He can’t let go of the illusion of control, not so much for the sake of his own pride and dignity – if there’s one thing that’s been made entirely clear by Apollo’s narration at this point, it’s that he really doesn’t care anymore about making himself look good – but because he’s still desperately grasping for some proof, any proof, that he truly can do better, and that he truly will be able, this time, to make a difference, that he will be able to avoid repeating his mistakes, even though the circumstances and the people that taught and helped and pushed him to make them will always be there.

To admit that he was always powerless would mean admitting that at the end of these trials, even if he succeeds, especially if he succeeds, he will be powerless again. And that is unacceptable.

So no, It doesn’t feel good to be Apollo. It doesn’t feel liberating. It still feels like shit.

‘I can’t believe I used to think –’

‘That I was your father? But we look so much alike.’

He laughed. ‘Just take care of yourself, okay? I don’t think I could handle a world with no Apollo in it.’

His tone was so genuine it made me tear up. I’d started to accept that no one wanted Apollo back – not my fellow gods, not the demigods, perhaps not even my talking arrow. Yet Frank Zhang still believed in me.

Before I could do anything embarrassing – like hug him, or cry, or start believing I was a worthwhile individual – I spotted my three quest partners trudging towards us. (TTT 142)

Apollo knows who he is. As much as he still pretends otherwise, he has no illusions about it. He’s exactly the sort of person that he strived so hard to become. He is someone nobody would miss, except maybe Frank Zhang, who, like Apollo’s children, like all of the people Apollo is ever so grateful, ever so surprised to be able to call friends, is too kind for his own good.

He’s the worst of the gods, and a rather terrible human being too. Too vain and insecure to stop caring what people think of him. Too much of a selfish coward to make peace with the finality of death, and with it, the possibility that he won’t get another chance to remedy his failings. Entitled enough that he still, despite everything, thinks he has a right to hold into his hands the power to make a difference, and arrogant enough that he still, despite everything, wants to believe that he can.

Are you sure, the arrow asked him. But what other choice does he have?

No one else who has the power to do so will lift a finger to stop the emperors. No one else who has the power to do it will wrestle the future out of Python’s jaws.

So it has to be Apollo, just like the first time.

He will have to take responsibility for all of it, because someone has to, and no one else will.

And when he succeeds, IF he succeeds, he’ll have to go back to his comfortable golden prison in the sky, and try to remember what it was like to be a person rather than a god, hold onto those memories even after everybody else who’s been witness to his struggle will be long gone.

I dreamed of homes. Had I ever really had one?

Delos was my birthplace, but only because my pregnant mother, Leto, took refuge there to escape Hera’s wrath. The island served as an emergency sanctuary for my sister and me, too, but it never felt like home any more than the back seat of a taxi would feel like home to a child born on the way to a hospital.

Mount Olympus? I had a palace there. I visited for the holidays. But it always felt more like the place my dad lived with my stepmom.

The Palace of the Sun? That was Helios’s old crib. I’d just redecorated.

Even Delphi, home of my greatest Oracle, had originally been the lair of Python. Try as you might, you can never get the smell of old snakeskin out of a volcanic cavern.

Sad to say, in my four-thousand-plus years, the times I’d felt most at home had all happened during the past few months: at Camp Half-Blood, sharing a cabin with my demigod children; at the Waystation with Emma, Jo, Georgina, Leo and Calypso, all of us sitting around the kitchen table chopping vegetables from the garden for dinner; at the Cistern in Palm Springs with Meg, Grover, Mellie, Coach Hedge and a prickly assortment of cactus dryads; and now at Camp Jupiter, where the anxious, grief-stricken Romans, despite their many problems, despite the fact that I brought misery and disaster wherever I went, had welcomed me with respect, a room above their coffee shop and some lovely bed linen to wear.

These places were homes. Whether I deserved to be part of them or not – that was a different question. (TTT 171-172)

Everyone deserves a second chance. Everyone deserves to feel loved. Everyone deserves to be recognized. Everyone deserves a home. Everyone, Apollo keeps telling us, keeps confirming with his actions, with his choices, because he really does believe it. Everyone. Except him.

In his golden prison above the clouds, Apollo has been taught that gods shouldn’t want, that gods shouldn’t need any of these things. Gods aren’t people. Gods are not like the rest of us. When Apollo said this, back at the beginning of this journey, it just felt like hilariously misplaced haughtiness. It’s much easier now, 4 books later, with the curtain of lies finally out of the way, to recognize in the familiar rhetoric the common refrain of abuse victims. Good people deserve good things. Normal people deserve good things. Even bad people deserve a second chance. But not me. Never me.

Apollo has a lot to feel guilty about. But he doesn’t stop at that. He feels guilty for things that he had no control over and objectively bears no blame for. He feels guilty for things that quite frankly aren’t a big enough deal to warrant any assignment of blame. He feels guilty for things that weren’t bad at all and he should maybe, actually, rather take pride in.

In his golden prison above the clouds, he’s been taught to feel responsible for everything.

And he does. He spends the first half of book 4 beating himself up for all that is wrong with the world, his guilt threatening to consume him both metaphorically and quite literally, taking the form of the poison inexorably spreading through his body that he, unlike every other mortal human in the city and at camp, in defiance of all of Pranjal’s medical experience, inexplicably can’t manage to fight off.

Gods are powered by belief, and a god’s belief can quite literally shape reality. For a god, intent is action. For a god, wanting to do something might as well be the same as having already done it. Apollo doesn’t want to die. And he doesn’t. But now that he finally looks at himself again without the filter of pretense before his eyes, he finds it incredibly hard to still believe that he shouldn’t.

“YOUR FAULT,” Zeus thunders in his memories, the only thing Apollo remembers of the six months that preceded his fall. “YOUR PUNISHMENT.” That’s why Apollo is here. To do penance for the sins of them all. And as much as he tried to protest it, it does make a perverse sort of sense to him. Deep down, there’s a part of him, still, that believes he deserves it.

It’s not your fault, Apollo tells Meg. The two of them are very much alike. He understands her. He has no trouble figuring out that she blames herself for his condition.

He has a lot more trouble, still, 4 books in, to imagine that she might actually care for him enough to be afraid of losing him, even as the obvious truth is staring him in the face.

It’s because of all the time we spent together, he rationalizes, equating himself to the little peach demon who’s been the only other semi constant presence in Meg’s life as of late in seeming complete earnestness, by all measures sounding like he’s genuinely unable to grasp the absurdity of such a comparison.

Like many people who have grown up in abusive households, Apollo is starved for love, and like many of his fellow abuse victims, he sees love as a transactional affair. He doesn’t really believe he can have anyone’s love for free. He keeps being caught off guard, feeling ashamed every time someone shows him even just a modicum of compassion. He allows himself to pursue physical intimacy, but friendship? Companionship? Understanding? No, those are off limits. There’s no way he can pay the price of them.

He was shocked that Will and Kayla and Austin would be so kind and welcoming to him when he was a powerless, puny mortal. He struggled to accept their acceptance, their eagerness to help him. Why would they waste their love on him when he clearly had nothing more to give them in exchange for it? “A father”, he’d thought, “should give more to his children than he takes”.

He thinks about Artemis now, about the way he used to call her his baby sister, “to annoy her,” he says. His next words betray the real reason, though. Despite how much she clearly finds me annoying too, he says, I suppose that, unlike Artemis, Meg really needs me.

That’s what the whole “baby sister” thing has always been about: giving himself the illusion that there’s something he can do for Artemis that will justify her wanting to hold onto him, because without it, without her actually needing him for anything, he can’t bring himself to believe that she’d care.

And Apollo knows. When he chooses to, he never has trouble distinguishing the lies from the truth. He’s always known, deep down, that his twin has never needed him. “Artemis understood me,” he tells us. “Well, okay, she tolerated me,” he amends immediately after. “Most of the time,” he adds. “All right, some of the time.”

But “with Meg,” he says, “I felt as if it were actually true.”

He can believe Meg’s love, unlike that of Artemis, unlike that of his children, of everybody else, because he has the means to buy it. He finds comfort in this thought, even as he realizes that he’s already behind on mortgage payments.

“What a horribly insufficient friend I had been,” he thinks.

As he offers her the hug he’d wanted and never dared to give her before, under the mistaken assumption that she wouldn’t accept it – let alone welcome it, he takes all the blame, once again, as he’s well accustomed to.

It’s not your fault, he tells Meg any chance he gets. It’s not your fault. You deserve better. But he is not like her.

In his heart of hearts, Apollo truly does believe he is the lone exception.

Of course it’s all his fault. He is a god. That’s the very definition of being responsible for everything.

“I [will] tough it out until the moment I [keel] over,” he vows, pretending to be shocked at the thought as if that’s not exactly what we’ve seen him do for 4 books straight, as if the only difference isn’t that now he’s admitting to what he’s doing, committed to the new narrative of self improvement he’s chosen for himself just as resolutely as he was to the old fiction of selfish, uncaring entitlement that he’s finally discarded.

Apollo loved to whine, so long as there was no chance of being taken seriously.

But as soon as he realizes that he is, in fact, truly at risk of being believed, he immediately shutters himself off.

He doesn’t deserve his friends’ concern. He refuses to add to their worries. There’s nothing they can do to help him anyway. Apollo needs a miracle. They all do. And they are only mortals. At most, they can buy him some time. The rest is up to him, as it rightfully should be.

What do mortals say – Suck it up? I sucked it way, way up. (TTT 60)

After 3 books of sifting through Apollo's lies to get at the increasingly hard to miss rising mountain of facts, we understand that Apollo is, in fact, observant, keenly perceptive, and incredibly self aware.

Now that he's stopped lying to us every other paragraph about what he really thinks and feels, we are finally able to see where his real blind spots lie.

“I was tired of others keeping me safe,” he says. “The whole point of consulting the arrow had been to figure out how I could get back to the business of keeping others safe.”

As is clearly apparent, by now, from the way he chooses to tell and frame this story, Apollo doesn’t really consider anything he does as a mortal as worth acknowledgement, let alone praise. He keeps noting how others help him, while paying no mind to all the times he has helped them in turn. He feels that everything he did up until this point counts for nothing.

The entirety of his long term plan hinges on regaining his godhood, and his current short term plan is to jump through near impossible hoops in order to perform a ritual that will hopefully allow him to call for divine intervention in time. Not just any divine intervention either: the real deal, “actual grade-AA-quality” help, minor gods need not apply.

His first reaction to discovering himself powerless, way back in book 1, was to swear those stupid oaths on the Styx because the mere idea of being anything less that superhumanly perfect at the things he’s supposed to be famous for horrified him. It didn’t matter to him at all that he was still good at them. More than good in fact! He was still a prodigy by human standards!

But human standards are not the standards Apollo has ever been measuring himself with.

I need to get back to the business of keeping others safe, he says. What he means is, he wants to get back to a place where he’ll have no use for other people’s help. He wants to get back to the place where he’ll have enough power to do everything himself.

In his mind, there can be no give and take. There shouldn’t. Because he is not a person like any other.

A father, he’d said, should give more to his children than he takes. And what are mortal creatures to divine immortal beings, if not frail, clueless children?

This is, to Apollo, what it truly means to be a god. This is his responsibility. To be the solution to all problems. To be endlessly strong, and never in need. To be the father who always gives and never takes.

For him, being able to do anything less than everything isn’t enough.

He is in awe of his mortal friends’ bravery, of their resilience, of their hope. He is grateful for their kindness and generosity. He appreciates everything they’ve done for him. But he feels guilty every time he’s forced to take anything from them. He feels like he shouldn’t. Like it’s wrong of him to even just accept what’s freely offered.

He admires their strength. He finds it genuinely commendable. But he has higher standards for himself. He is a god. They, in the end, are only mortals. There’s only so much they can do.

Now that he’s stopped role playing the asshole, Apollo would never say the latter bit out loud. And he doesn’t. But there’s a part of him, a small, secret one, deep down, that is actually thinking it.

“If Will and Nico were here,” he says at one point, “they would just be two more people for me to worry about.”

Apollo believes that he should be strong enough to carry all of this on his own shoulders. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s what gods, the ones that actually matter at least, are for. Apollo should be the only one worrying.

The truth is, even with his newly instated policy of emotional honesty, there’s still so much he simply doesn’t tell anyone. Not even us.

Better not add to our worries. Better for us not to know.

And yet, Apollo’s too intelligent to be entirely stupid, and too decent to be entirely unfair.

He does not make the mistake of keeping crucial intel to himself. He shares all of the knowledge he gains, even when he expects it will do more damage than good. He stands by his beliefs, and he believes in people’s right to make their own choice, even if that choice ends up being the choice to run away.

“I can’t fall into line like a good soldier,” Lavinia tells him. “Me locking shields and marching off to die with everybody else? That’s not going to help anybody.”

Apollo understands. He’s never liked mindless obedience and pointless sacrifices either.

But despite how well he understands her, despite how much of himself he sees in her, even – or perhaps precisely because he sees himself in her, despite having witnessed her unwillingness to back down from a fight several times, he’s quick to assume the worst of her, and of her faun and dryad friends too. Of course they must be running away. They’re mortals. Powerless. What else could they possibly do?

“How simple it would be to destroy their fragile confidence,” he thinks, looking at the people making lighthearted chatter in the mess hall. “Fragile” is the word he uses, also, to describe Meg’s state of mind, an assessment so shockingly patronizing, standing in such stark contrast to all the times he’s praised her strength and bravery all throughout the past 3 books, and in this book too, that it almost feels out of character for him.

But it isn’t. This, too, is who Apollo is.

Asclepius, god of medicine, used to chide me about helping those with disabilities. You can help them if they ask. But wait for them to ask. It’s their choice to make, not yours.

For a god, this was a hard thing to understand, much like deadlines, but I left Lu to her meal. (TON 226)

This is a story about power and privilege. Apollo was born a one percenter not just by mortal standards, but by godly ones too. He was always eager to help, and able to give on a scale that dwarfed every possible attempt to give back on the part of anyone on the receiving end of his blessings.

He doesn’t want to think less of them because of it. He refuses to. He took his human son’s advice to heart, so much so that he remembers and recites it reverently millennia after it was first given to him.

Apollo really does believe in mortals’ right to self determination. He keeps telling them to make their own choices. He is determined to respect them. But deep down, there’s a part of him that wonders just how much of a difference their choices truly can make, when they are backed by so little power. There's a part of him, too, that wonders how informed those choices can be, when they are based on so little life experience, so little knowledge compared to his.

He's so quick to dismiss people's good opinion of him. Their willingness to put their trust in him. Even their love.

They don’t know better, a part of him thinks, still, even now. They will turn away the moment I disappoint them.

Turns out, there’s some real condescension under all the fake one. Much subtler, much harder to spot, and entirely benevolent, but condescension all the same.

Are you sure, the arrow said, unknowingly asking precisely the right question for the wrong reasons, that what you really want is to go back to being the same person you were before?

#trials of apollo #toa #toa spoilers #rrverse

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pseudoneiiric · 4 years

Text

meta post: lili and her gender

let me go on the record to say that i fucking love lilian eyler with my whole heart, like, i typed all this out and im so fucking emotional about her! in the past, i've written things about hello charlotte and how the lgbt representation is... lacking, let's call it, and i've also made a few headcanon posts here and there about lilian's transition and her relationship with gender. so i thought, you know, let's actually write a whole ass thing about it. so here it is.

content warnings: gender dysphoria, suicide attempts, homophobia/transphobia in the original source material

PART 1: ETHERANE'S BAD TAKES so... etherane did not handle lgbt stuff well, like, in the slightest. lili is canonically genderfluid, as seen in one of those little profile things that etherane drew that doesn't actually show up in any of the games. but her genderfluid identity isn't handled well at all in the actual source material. actually, in general, hello charlotte is pretty transphobic. to cite one example, there’s this journal entry in hello charlotte 3 talking about “defective” charlotte vessels, and one of the things that can make a charlotte vessel “defective” is for them to be born amab or intersex. this already has some really bad vibes, but then we remember also that one of the big functions of charlottes is apparently for them to be sexualized (yikes!!!!!) and so we also get this weird kind of like, “trans people aren’t hot” kind of take?

but anyway. when it comes to lilian specifically, she never actually states in canon that she’s genderfluid or otherwise trans, not even in the spinoff visual novel, which, by the way, would have been the perfect place to address her gender identity, and she consistently uses he/him pronouns. we don’t actually get to see any of her thought processes about her gender at all — like at this point, i can’t even say it’s a non-issue because that would imply that they even mentioned her gender in canon. the only time we can potentially extrapolate from canon that lili might not be cis is when anri mentions that charlotte is lili’s self-insert oc. that’s kind of heavy-handed with the whole “charlotte being the female name for charles”, but that’s another matter. the point is, with the lack of any canon basis that lilian’s even vaguely questioned her gender, the reveal that she’s actually genderfluid with like, two pieces of artwork that are detached from the actual game feels very pxrfxrmxtxvxly xnclxsxvx (performatively inclusive) especially considering how.... etherane talked about lilian’s gender in particular within the actual canon material.

after all, the story behind lilian is effectively that, after she was born, her mother was forced to abort her second child, a daughter that she would name scarlett. doing so plunged her into a really deep depression that eventually took on delusional qualities. so ever since lilian was about three years old, her mother has been referring to her exclusively as scarlett, asking her to ‘ be a good girl ’ and similarly raising her as a girl. we can see here that etherane seems to have implied that genderfluidity is something that happens because other people make it so, and isn’t an identity and lived experience. (bad take!) although, albeit unintentionally, i think etherane did lay some groundwork to talk about lilian’s relationship with her gender, specifically with regards to her projection onto her oc, charlotte. in high school, when she’s more active on the internet, we see that she’s going by charlotte and using she/her pronouns. anri, her irl friend, is pretty openly critical of that, but she sort of brushes off anri’s complaints and continues to present as feminine online. now, there’s this fanfic writer who goes by the pseudonym “c”, and lilian very quickly takes an interest in him. the way she talks to c, who doesn’t know her irl, compared anri, who does, is just like flat-out like they’re completely different people.

compare, her with c:

to her with anri:

i also wanted to mention that lili does occasionally act more “femininely” with anri, but it’s never to the extent that she does with c, and in general, affectionate banter is sort of... outright ridiculed in their friendship both ways. see this one exchange:

anri: >:) always up for some roasting lili: right? <3 <3 anri: now you’re the one being gross

unrelated but it fucking kills me that anri was like “ily <3” and lili went “gross” so she went “kys” and lili deadass goes “that’s better” like that’s what anri is referencing when she says “now you’re the one being gross” and im like... please just be healthy friends who don’t wish death on each other???

it’s also worth noting that c doesn’t know that she’s not “actually” a girl, and literally when they meet, she goes like, “it’s you who should be disappointed in me. charlotte turned out to be charles, whoops! i bet you were hoping that i’d be a cute girl.” and that’s... really depressing, like, she ended up really leaning into that cutesy side of her when she was talking to c and now she feels the need to be a lot more... sarcastic and bitter, like how she is with anri, because now c “knows the truth about her”, that she’s “actually been a guy all along”.

in any case, i think the intent that etherane was going for with this was kind of like... “lilian’s actually a repressed cis gay man!” which is . not great. it gives off this really gross vibes where it’s implied that since lili was raised as a girl and is into men, she got “confused” and started going by she/her online because she couldn’t come to terms with her sexuality or whatever. and that’s just such a bad take!!!

not to mention that a really important part of lili’s backstory is... her germaphobia. she has persistent delusions accompanied by visual hallucinations where she sees people as “parasites”, which visually manifests as them rotting or decomposing. because of that, she wears gloves all the time and is repulsed by physical touch. but when she meets c (whose real name is vincent) in person, she pretty much instantly goes for skin-to-skin contact with him, where she takes off her glove and holds his hand. and like, sure, that’s sweet, but that’s really not how mental illness... works. in the slightest. she doesn’t react at all when his hand touches hers, despite the fact that she has literally had panic attacks in canon from touching things without her gloves. and it gives off this implication that mental illness can be cured with romance somehow, and that’s a really bad take!

this feeds into fandom understanding that like, well, if lilian sees vincent as pure and allows him to touch her, then Obviously she’d let him kiss her, they could probably have sex, etc. and like... she’s canonically asexual though! and that brings us to the other implication, that asexuality is somehow... caused by something. like, there’s nothing in canon to state that lilian experiences sexual attraction (or even really romantic attraction, like i know etherane went off in heaven’s gate and did a lot of ship tease, but she never really outright says she’s crushing on anyone), but judging from the way etherane handled lilian’s gender identity, i have a sneaking suspicion that she established lilian’s asexuality with her mental illnesses specifically in mind. lilian’s autistic, germaphobic, has severe ocd, and she’s been sexually assaulted in the past. therefore, she must be asexual! that’s the sort of vibes i get from the game, and im not here for it. similarly to how her genderfluidity was handled, she makes no actual statement in canon that she doesn’t experience sexual attraction. the closest she’s ever come to this is when she says to anri in heaven’s gate that she is just straight up not interested in kissing (to which anri is like, “well what if it were vincent owo??” which. ugh. anyway). it just seems really strange to me to design a character with severe mental health issues with regards to physical touch and then just sort of treat it as a given that she’s asexual. it’s another example of etherane implying that lgbt identities are results of traumatic experiences or symptoms of mental illness and not an identity or lived experience. you can be sex-repulsed and not be asexual, and while i understand that many people do identify as ace due to trauma and other such things, it still feels like really bad rep when taken with the way lilian’s genderfluidity was portrayed.

PART 2: HOW “CHARLES” IS DIFFERENT FROM “LILIAN”

throughout hello charlotte, lilian identifies herself as a passive observer, someone who doesn’t directly interfere in events. this applies mostly to her existence in false realm, where she’s like... a god, and doesn’t want to interfere in the balance of the world. but i believe she also has always seen herself as an observer. in her very first scene, the one where she and anri are watching someone get bullied, she’s the one who tells anri that there’s no point in getting help. because her role is just to observe. to take pictures for anri, to be a good girl, to say yes to everything and to never express her opinions, feelings, thoughts.

and honestly, i think the main reason for that is that she’s dysphoric. whenever she talks about herself, she’s really self-deprecating, especially compared to when she talks about charlotte. i feel like the main reason why lilian detaches herself from the world and refuses to really perceive herself is because she’s fundamentally disgusted with her gender presentation. and like, we can see in the two times that she’s presented femininely (with c and in that one comic) that lili is just so much happier and more bubbly when she’s presenting as feminine. you can literally see her stop dissociating and becoming more present in the moment because she’s just. so much more comfortable in her skin. compare:

these pictures with this one:

it’s funny i was going to say that there is a picture where she’s presenting as masculine and actually smiles like a person, but guess what! she’s texting c! so she’s actually performing femininity!

but the point is, like... when she’s presenting as masculine, especially in the canon pictures rather than etherane’s art, she just doesn’t look... happy. and then we compare that to how much more present she seems when she’s presenting as feminine, and how much more comfortable she seems in being, like, happy! and cute! but there is a downside to this. and that is...

PART 3: DIFFICULTIES IN LILI’S TRANSITION

in my sort of... “main verse” for lili, i have it so that her suicide attempt failed and that she was somehow... saved from drowning. mother passes away and she starts to... soul search a little bit and find a reason to live, and somewhere along the line she starts to transition socially. that means she starts transitioning at a pretty... extremely vulnerable point in her life. in the year between 18-19 years old, she’d be a wreck. she’s growing her hair out, but she feels insecure about it. she starts to wear skirts, but only at home. she buys makeup and never wears it. it’s a long process for her, because it’s one thing to go by she/her online or to claim she’s just a gender-confused gay boy and a completely different thing to come out as a trans woman and to actually see herself as a woman and not some kind of imposter. considering that she was raised as a girl, she would have a large amount of guilt over transitioning, feeling like she’s going to be seen as confused, or that her gender identity is a direct result of her childhood trauma. but she’s not just worried that others will see her that way: she’s worried that she’s going to see herself that way.

and for a long time, she probably does see herself that way. for a long time, scarlett would probably treat her transition as some kind of attempt to personify her unborn sister and comply with perceived expectations rather than an attempt to feel comfortable in her own skin. she’d get nervous that she’s somehow becoming scarlett, because though she’s always thought it would be easier if she’d just been her sister, she’s never really wanted to be scarlett. she’d be scared to wear mid-length skirts, scared to put her hair up in a bun, probably even scared to wear red for a time, all because she’s scared of somehow losing herself and becoming her alter.

because of her caution and concern with identifying as a trans woman and not as the “safer“ gender identity of genderfluidity (where she can say she’s trans but never actually have to “push boundaries” by wearing feminine clothing or using any pronouns besides he/him), it would likely take her a very long time to take the step to medically transition. she’d likely never get any gender affirmation surgeries just because of how invasive the procedure is, but hormones would probably be something she’d look into once she’s much older and has a more stable income.

i mentioned before that before her transition, she uses dissociation and observation as a way to cope with her gender dysphoria. she saw herself as someone who didn’t really participate in the world, was a class ghost, invisible to everyone and a minuscule part of a vast universe. but upon transitioning, she’d feel much more actively self-conscious. once she starts to present in a feminine way, she’d feel like she’s being seen, like she’s actually participating in the world, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

she’d be much more prone to stammering, especially when saying her name, and would blush far more often. she’d be afraid of saying the wrong thing or messing up somehow. and on top of that, she’d likely feel predatory for talking to others, always wondering if others find her cute or repulsive, always wondering if someone will perceive her and harm her in some way.

she’d very likely also feel really guilty about her own emotional experience. because she’s so used to being a passive observer, a puppet that only does what others want, she would feel like it’s selfish to be just... content. she’s so actively disgusted with herself before she transitions that she’s never allowed herself to be mentally present for a happy moment in her entire life. she always second-guesses, always dismisses positive things as a mere coincidence, and after she transitions, when she starts being more present in her life, she’d feel so guilty for just allowing herself to be happy.

because of that, she has some trouble with presenting as feminine consistently — she’d vary the “level” of her feminine presentation from day-to-day, where she might go full femme one day and another day stick with a beanie and a pair of slacks. she’s much more comfortable with presenting as more traditionally feminine when she’s at home or with trusted friends in a private space, but around 19 years old, she makes a vested effort to remain in public spaces. she’d time herself, saying, “for one hour, i’ll stay in this café while wearing a skirt, and then i can leave,” and she’d gradually increase the amount of time she spends in public spaces. and eventually, eventually she does end up feeling really comfortable with her gender presentation and falls into a more static sense of style. she really likes clothing design, so she ends up wearing a lot more dynamic outfits when she’s more comfortable with herself, and she probably also mildly gets into cosplay.

i also like to think that she reconnects with anri during her young adult years. either it’s like, right after her suicide attempt (i’ve written before that she’d had anri listed as her emergency contact and forgot to change it when she moved), or it’s at some point after she starts transitioning socially. i think it’d be really sweet for them to be friends in a more real way, and the sheer concept of anri teaching lili how to properly apply makeup and to set her hair is just so fucking sweet i might die. they both deserve to have friends so i think this is just a step up from hello charlotte canon.

#long post //#lilian eyler: study.#ive been working on this post for days. im fuckign emotional about her

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