#Apollo is failing

[greekgodssitcom]

Artemis: That’s just a really sad slice of pizza

Apollo: Wanna see a sadder slice of pizza? Look in the mirror

Dionysus: That’d be a sick burn if we were all pizzas

[spokelseskladden]

*draws lester one billion times just because*

[willthespy]

as promised… pt 2 of this post with will (he did definitely have an emo phase in middle school trust)

also willthespy thought of the day is that i 100% want to become so good at art that people like it sm they turn post notifs on. like whenever i do that for artists i LOVE their art and i think thats just…a nice goal??

honestly my art goal should be graduating my arts class but mehhh…. c’est la vie

[kkas-art]

Once again it's time for @klapollo-minibang ! Sometimes, you just need a 6 months trip across the Mediterranean to think about your feelings, riiight? Klavier's first stop: MONACO✨

Check out @bacony 's piece to find out where the journey goes next! And go read the whole fic "May I Always Be On Your Mind" by @subdomjellyfish / Julian_CourtJester (ao3) !! And again thanks to everybody making this possible ❤️💜

[bayetea]

jason and hazel's beef in hoo was always way more interesting than whatever percy and jason had going on sorry. the differences in gravity and intrigue in the jason/hazel relationship vs jason/percy are only further compounded by the ways they're connected and the ways that their stories are similar

because 1. they have a HISTORY they knew each other before he went missing!!!!! they were in the fifth cohort together!!!! hazel is the ONLY person on that ship that was in jason's life before he disappeared and had his memories stolen. yes they didn't know each other well but I really think that was a bad writing choice rick made. can you imagine if they used to be friends/if jason had been a big brother figure to hazel only to go missing for months and then they have a very awkward reunion on the argo because he barely remembers her and then she's even more betrayed because he doesn't wanna save nico initially. the drama. we could have had it all man

2. beef between a son of poseidon and a child of zeus/jupiter from the grace family? yeah been there done that why are we doing this again. god I wish we had gotten a big fight between a child of jupiter and a child of pluto instead

3. their beef regarding nico was way more high stakes than the silly alpha male posturing rick was trying to force between jason and percy especially considering how mega nerfed jason is written in hoo because no one's allowed to be on equal footing with percy

4. the tacit layer of betrayal in jason being hazel's ex-centurion/praetor only to end up choosing chb (to be clear this particular conflict belongs to jason and reyna and is more impactful between them - but since hazel is actually on the argo and reyna isn't she can still be an opportunity for this camp jupiter/camp half-blood conflict to be explored with jason)

5. I'm just gonna say it - I think hazel ought to have complicated feelings about white authority figures in a military camp as a black girl from the freaking jim crow era (not that this would have ever been explored satisfactorily in the books because as far as rick is concerned hazel is colorblind and hardly ever thinks about race despite growing up segregated. which is crazy unrealistic but whatever)

6. something something about the parallels that jason and hazel have about making hard choices about their pasts in order to have a more fulfilling future

7. this isn't necessarily interesting in and of itself but I just think it's neat that they're both big three roman kids with greek siblings that they didn't grow up with. what could have been interesting is jason seeing how close hazel and nico are and feeling some type of way about everything he never got to have with thalia and some exploration into how that impacts his feelings about the rescue mission

8. they both have really awkward romantic conflicts in their pasts that intrude upon the present (whether he and reyna were ever even slightly romantically involved or not) because the jason/reyna thing is written as a initial source of conflict/uncertainty for jiper in the same way that hazel/leo (sammy) was a conflict for frazel to grapple with. this is interesting to me because hazel is connected to reyna and jason is connected to leo. like there could have been a moment of connection over letting go of pasts loves to wholeheartedly pursue new ones in the way that both of them are (were) with piper and frank

(unrelated but having no frank or hazel pov in mark of athena sucks So Bad and I hate it. it was the first time they ever have relationship problems and we only see it through someone else's pov. I am going to bring this up forever because I'm still mad about it)

9. they both died. this bullet is a joke but I just thought I should put it here

10. percy is a well-established character and hazel and jason are new in hoo. percy has 50 povs in hoo and hazel has 28. economically speaking it would just be a more effective use of your limited pages to spend more time developing important interactions and conflicts between two new characters (esp new big three kids) who already have a more interesting foundation than the one involving our previous protagonist of 5 entire books

11. beryl grace and marie levesque. that's all

imo hazel and jason are the most weirdly written new additions to the main cast but I strongly feel that rick severely underutilized the way that characters like those two could play off of each other. hazel isn't just a sweet little cinnamon roll she is passionate and contemplative and morose and guilt-ridden and jason isn't just a bland rule-follower he is kind and committed and loyal and conflicted and they're both painfully self-sacrificing and I just think it's such a shame that these two characters with great concepts on paper and so many obvious threads to connect them didn't get as much as attention as.... whatever happened in kansas did

and I mean if you like the jason/percy conflict that's fine, but I think it's worthwhile to compare the merit of them because rick chose to centralize and build up to one more than the other when he had such perfect material to expand on the other instead and I think that says something about his biases. and I think part of the issue is that rick struggles with strengthening tension and applying complexity to conflicts between male/female characters that aren't romantic or onesidedly antagonistic like clarisse/percy. we have several noteworthy conflicts between male characters but when women are involved it's like rick doesn't know how to put them on equal footing and apply platonic depth. imo this is just another reason why big three girls (hazel/thalia/bianca) don't get to be as powerful and transformative in the overall narrative as big three guys (percy/jason/nico). all this world-changing narrative weight is afforded to big three kids but hazel in particular is weirdly excluded from all of that and doesn't get to have much impactful interconnectedness with the prophecy or with other big three kids. what happened to big three kids being super dangerous when put together or when they're on opposing sides of conflicts!!!!!!!! we had impactful percy/thalia and percy/nico and jason/percy and jason/nico conflict where is the fleshed out jason/hazel beef!!!!!!

anyways tldr all I'm saying is that jason and hazel complement each other well and rick was too hung up on the Colliding Of Alpha Male Strong Dudes (that he didn't even write well) to see everything that hazel and jason could have had instead

[moodyseal]

TOApril Day 1 - Missed Target

«What about you? How exactly did you… uh, do all this?”

I suppose he was talking about the piles of ash and rice, the broken chairs and control panels, and the blood of my enemies decorating the walls and the carpet. I tried not to laugh like a lunatic. “Just lucky?”» (TON, chapter 26)

Tfw an entire group of evil bodyguards tries to kill you but you're a literal god

[saturdaysky]

You may resist, but it's too late. You already embraced the powers the parasite gave you. You leveraged them to manipulate, to dominate, to survive. Your nature is no longer your own.

Mayhew failed the save to resist the Emperor's offer, and I have never been more pleased at a consequence! What an amazing moment.

Timelapse, line drawing, and character musing beneath the cut.

This choice!! Or rather, this lack of choice!

I love, love, love how failing the save made Mayhew's own will ambiguous, even to himself. He didn't want to be changed, he didn't want to forfeit his humanity (gnomanity)...or did he? He resisted. He opened his mouth to say I will not, but the door to his mind was already unlocked, power welcomed in. Mayhew will never know who unlatched it.

Also, while this is a Gale run -- Mayhew and Gale make each other worse in the most devoted, well-meaning way; the heavens will rue their names -- it also kind of feels like an Emperor run. A subtextual badwrong not-romance.

The Emperor and Mayhew are allies of circumstance turned intimate enemies. The Emperor listens to Mayhew's every thought, gives protection which Mayhew needs, offers advice and temptations which Mayhew takes. Mayhew likes the Dream Guardian; Mayhew cannot shut the Emperor out. Mayhew would see the Emperor dead, if he let himself think about it, but he would miss him after he was gone. And, of course, Mayhew is too curious for his own good, and the Emperor is full of answers.

For the two of them, partial ceremorphosis is a kind of consummation: what could be more intimate than shaping someone from within and without? Metaphorphosis is a gift, by one telling, and a horror story by another.

You are exquisite, the Emperor praised. Mayhew will never know if he became so by his own will.

(He failed the save by one (1) point.)

---

Timelapse! It includes all the silly things I drew for my friends, including: 1 tonsure, 3 neon signs, 2 cat emoji, 1 crotch face, and the emperor's armor drawn with my left hand. Spot them all!

Lines!

I don't usually work primarily with line, but I love it. In some ways, it's easier than painting, and in other ways much harder. I find I can't fudge things as much with linework as I can with paint; because the stroke is smaller, I have to be more specific. Even if I abstract details away, I need to understand the underlying form until I know what I am abstracting. It was fun having to be so rigorous.

[demigod-shenanigans]

Feeling some type of way about Leo deciding Jason is the one who needs saving when Jason’s been the one saving people all his life.

The thing is, once they realize what the prophecy means, Jason decides if it’s him or Leo, it has to be him. He outright states this in his narration twice:

As much as Jason loved his life, he couldn’t let his friend die for his sake. He could never live with the guilt. ~ House of Hades

He knew the risks. But he wanted to take those risks himself, not put them on Leo. ~ Blood of Olympus

And the thing is, Leo knows this. Jason never tells him, but Leo still knows it. He doesn’t tell Jason and Piper his plan because he knows they’d never allow it. Because he knows Jason, stubborn hero leader that he was raised to be, would never let it be him.

Leo knows Jason would die for him and he will not allow it.

Thinking about how one of the first things Leo says when he manages to string words together after learning what happened to Jason in The Burning Maze is “He did what Jason always did. He saved the day.”

[the-tortured-fangirl-department]

I want Apollos reaction to the amount of readers that are in love with Lester💀

[thereseuwu]

Drew/sketched Apollon again :^0

(I wanted to go with a painterly vibe but I can't paint </3 so I scrapped the idea... DSKFDSFK I was heavily inspired by Wolfy the witch! But don't tell them that. I just love love love their artstyle X^D)

Here's my failed attempt at painting him X^D

[u3pxx]

wait a minute this isn't apollo

[genericpuff]

my unabridged thoughts on 278-279:

[wingedfoolnearthesun]

i was stressing out over learning how to properly read and interpret the tarot cards i was getting (chronic ‘if i’m not good at something i should never try again’ mentality), and all of i sudden i heard such a clear sentence in my head telling me to “stop focusing on this spread and focus on the other you’re doing so well on. don’t stress on deity identification. you don’t need it”. i immediately felt my anxiety fade away, faster than it’s ever happened before.

[orphicachilles]

Every media i consum i will find a blonde man to go crazy over

[apollosothertwin]

Apollo loves doing other people’s hair, but he never learned to braid his own normally because he always had someone to do it for him

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

The whole Star Wars universe is so insane actually it's making my head hurt

Putting aside the fact that the entire galaxy is interconnected via space travel with more cultures and societies than the human mind can comprehend, the history is so, so old. The spacefaring history of the galaxy goes 100,000 years into the past, that's twice as much as the time between today and the extinction of neanderthals. And look how long it took us to figure out space travel, the history of individual planets will be even older. Look how long ago before the movie timeline SWTOR takes place, and there's already so many ancient ruins. No matter how far back you go, there will always be something older. Lost cities, technology, cultures covering the surfaces of planets. Entire civilizations built on whalefalls they believe to be mountains. So many remains of space vessels scattered on planetary surfaces, and even more that were left to float through space forever, their crews long dead. The spaces between planets are vast and there is nothing that would allow corrosion and decay except the UV radiation from stars. Stray too far from regular hyperspace routes and you might encounter these ghosts.

The entire galaxy is a graveyard