#I haven't touched or figured out how fucking human society works it makes me cry just thinking about it

[star--nymph]

In regards to Dolly, was she just found? Did Artemis procure her by some unholy means or more just pure happenstance end up discovering her and then go, yes, mine, mine now, love this abomination against human existence, takin’ her home naming her Dolly and giving her all the things because how can he not when she’s that adorable. But also like is there a plan for her beyond grow and become what you wish, as I end up thinking, if she doesn’t have a focus like Artemis, will she not just become the greater danger if/when Kass puts a bullet in his head. Or is she like a hidden sleeper that if one could look beyond the lens of vengeance for a hot minute one might see that Artemis? Likely not the worlds worst possibly enemy to have for as absolutely wretched he is. If I’m interpreting Dolly’s bio correctly.

(tw- implied child abuse--and no not by Artemis)

Ho, okay so. To explain how Artemis got her means I have to explain Dolly’s entire thing in full, so sit back because this is going to get into some world building and cosmic nonsense.

(Side note: I love how every time someone asks about how Artemis got Dolly, it’s ‘WHAT THE FUCK DID HE DO’ and ‘DID HE STEAL HER’ to which the short answer is no, this is very much a ‘I have fucked my self into a situation I can not fuck my self out of’)

So Eua’s creation and its many Elder Gods are shrouded in mystery. What’s known is at some point many eons ago, the elder gods that had physical manifestations had some kind of battle with each other and it reformed the planet. Some elder gods vanished, some supposedly went to sleep, and some dissolved and became one with the planet. The battles or perhaps the bodies themselves left behind pockets of scars, deep tainted holes that corrupting the land and creatures near it, becoming deadly to most other beings. Somehow, humanity sprung out of all this and built their world off what could be the very remains of their gods. Cities built on what could be giant chairs, expose hands, only temples, skulls, and arms. Humanity having to constantly fight and form their world against strange giant beasts that jump from endless festering holes, eventually uniting under one flag to battle against them. This is the climate that society on all fronts was based on with Eua. There are gods, there is some semblance of magic or power left over from them, and there are monsters that will kill you if you wander too close to these uninhabitable lands, if nature doesn’t kill you first. Hell, it’s why the military split into two fractions: the human fraction and the beast fraction (and yes being aside to the beast fraction is considered the worse of the two).

As a result of all this, religion is a funny thing on Eua. There’s not really a question of ‘is there a god’ because the answer is ‘yeah look out your damn window, I’m pretty sure your Vespa is parked in one’. The questions are more ‘why are the gods asleep’, ‘are they still alive?’ ‘Can they hear us?’ ‘Do they care?’. There’s also the concept of the abstracts of cosmic gods, one that they CANT see but know exist in theory, or the concept of death on Eua, in which most people believe that most souls turn into stars and some souls get stuck on the earth for one reason or another ghosts—and that evil souls rot in an empty abyss until they are rendered down to nothing by sheer weight of oblivion. I want to describe all this because I don’t want anyone to get the idea that religion on Eua is a bad thing or that its an atheist society. There are very much religion, the study of the gods, the respect and belief in the land itself, and they are varied and nuanced just like our world.

And THEN we get to underground cults. Now these guys are the little freaks who want to start playing with shit they shouldn’t. They want to name gods, contact them, harness their powers, even wake them up (which is insane because we’re talking beings that are anywhere from giant leviathans to FORMLESS CONCEPTS BEYOND HUMAN PALE). Some of this can be harmless, the equivalent of like using an oujia board and telling your friends that Jesus just spoke to your and he says buy more nfts. But then there’s the people that hide in what they believe are centers of powers deep underground and out of the sight of society—and some are depicted to the study and deep reflection of their chose god. But others go too far and start using any means to contact them.

(You're probably wondering where Artemis falls in between all this and the answer is none because Artemis doesn't ask for worship of a god, he's specifically demands worship of him. His platform is fuck the gods, I'm hotter and so are you.)

With that I can touch upon one specific cult known as the Cult of the Butterfly. Situated in a cave network and it’s temple carved into solid rock, the Cult of the Butterfly is dedicated to a creator entity known by several names: The Cosmic Weaver, The Reality God and the Butterfly. The Butterfly is a being believed to exist on a higher plane, weaving into reality both time and different worlds. It is one of many creators of gods, but it’s realm is that of sewing all universes into one big tapestry, never meeting but endlessly connected through the same threads and a singular hand. Occasionally, The Butterfly will take a physical form of a butterfly which wings encompass every color and light and fly through its realities. It's believed catching a glimpse of it in it's physical form will give you a glimpse of the scope of the cosmos (why you would want that is anyone's guess, though).

Reasonable, I suppose, that this cult exists except it's main desire isn't to simply worship or by chance see The Butterfly. Members of the cult want to specifically awaken the Butterfly, turn its gaze upon them, and capture it--and they believe the best course of action is to make it listen to them. But listen requires loudness, it requires being so loud the universe can not ignore you. It requires loud, painful, agonizing screeching the likes of which not a single being can simply turn away from.

You see where I'm going with this.

It's here that Artemis, chasing his own pursuit on how to unlock godhood, that he's introduced to the Cult of the Butterfly and the Red Priestress--otherwise known as Phoebe Evans. Call it his own holy pilgrimage, he had gained access through another cult he had been studying with and was allowed to look through their archives under Phoebe supervision. Now the thing is about Phoebe, without giving too much away, is she that she's her own brand of awful. A spoiled brat whose endless drive for ego and power drove her from being just a high school mean girl into a full blown tyrant of her own cult. Where Artemis is a bottomless pit of hatred, Phoebe is overflowing fountain of egomania.

Turns out, they were into that. So, ya know, they fucked. I mean they didn't like each other but were they turned on? Yes, absolutely. Sometimes you find someone you utterly loud and also want to bang. It happens. Then Artemis went on his way, found exactly what he was looking for, and erupted out of a literal hole as the new stunning god of this forsaken world and Phoebe was pissed.

Not because she liked him or anything but because he did the impossible and he did it because he was already a freak of nature. He found a way to be somehow already the most powerful thing in the world and then jump the shark from humanity into actual godhood. That was supposed to be Pheobe. That should be Pheobe. And now she's finding out that she can't because she's normal human and to be human means you can't cross that fucking line?

No, absolutely not there is a way.

Then Phoebe finds out she's pregnent and she's figures out, alright. So she can't become God, but what's second best to God? How about the Mother of God.

So here's the thing. I have not exactly figure out the next part of this or how she did it. All I know is that Phoebe does manage through a heighten dream state to meet on the same plan as The Butterfly, grab it, and eat it--allowing it to find its home in the fetus inside her. Nine months later, a child with cosmic eyes is born unto it and Phoebe...is not happy. Because besides the whole eye deal, this child is normal. Just a random newborn baby. Boring, useless, weak. This is not what she was looking for. She wanted to be the Mother to user in The Butterfly's wisdom to the world, not spend her time changing diapers, waiting for it to wake the hell up in this infant's skull and realize its divinity. If you haven't notice, Phoebe, as ambitious as she is, isn't exactly patient. So she returns to the original plan; trying to wake The Butterfly up, just now in a new form.

Phoebe is not kind to her new child/new god. She doesn't have to be. If she's a real god, then she can withstand what she does next. If she isn't, then she can start all over.

Three months later, Artemis--back on the surface and just turn his own crime gang into a full-blown culure--gets word that Phoebe gave birth. Considering he was told that cult doesn't get many visitors and there were exactly many men in it, well...Like I said, Artemis fucked himself into a situation he could not fuck himself out of, so he might as well go check.

Cut to him arriving to a blood covered temple and finding his child bound to an alter by chains. Now I won't say exactly what happened with Phoebe or the Cult of the Butterfly after that but lets just say after that day, they weren't operating anymore. Artemis unchained Dolly, fell in love with at first sight, and decided that if she's going to look like a little doll, she might as well be called that--besides, one of his mother's favorite songs she used to sing to him was Hello, Dolly. He likes to think she would have liked the name. Dolly responded by blinking and her cosmic eyes changed to his violet. And that was that.

And so was the story of how Artemis came to find Dolly. Completely was not his fault for once but he must say, it was the best and only good thing he's ever done.

As for what Dolly is, well. She both a natural thing and abomination. It's a very odd thing to be both a human child (because for all intents and purposes, Dolly is human) and also be cosmic god. She is hopelessly in between mortality and immortality--all knowing and still learning. For Dolly, it's like her brain is a giant book but she does not have the reading level to understand what's in front of her. One day she will, and her powers are going slowly everyday, but at the same time, she is a very normal eight year old girl with a very normal eight year old body. If she pushes too hard, her the god part of her might start to awaken and break out of her, return to where it's supposed to be. Like, by virture of what the Butterfly was, it was never supposed to be IN a timeline. Being IN a timeline now means instead of there being a SINGLE VERSION OF ITSELF there are now SEVERAL VERSIONS OF THEMSELVES ACROSS TIMELINES AND WORLDS. AND THESE VERSIONS CAN NOT MEET OR EXISTENCE WILL RIPE APART.

Dolly is THAT. She's not the end all, be all but she's sure up there as far as concepts go and now she's an eight year old girl who is both extremely old and extremely new at the same time and all she wants to do is draw pictures her and her father holding hands.

And for the record Artemis is aware and he loves her. He doesn't want anything from her except to love her. The fact that Dolly is an actual literal god and he's technically running a grift was incidental and would be kind of funny if he wasn't violently aware that one day Dolly will be on her own and lose her less shard of humanity and any awareness she has of him along with it.

As for what he has planned for her. Just for her to grow up. Dolly wasn't in the plans and the plans were just to destroy the world. She comes along and he decides 'well, why not destroy the world, remake it, and then give it to her after I'm done?' It'll be like baby's first planet. Trial run for when she goes out and starts being literal god.

My plans for Dolly? I don't know. I mean part of me does know but it would be kind of a spoiler for her development. I have a storyline as Dolly gets older but that's so far in the future right now. Dolly could be a danger as she grows or she could turn out to be a benevolent or just uninterested. The problem I think for everyone else outside of Artemis, like Kassandra and Blaine, is that despite seeing the powerset Dolly has, it's hard not see her as just a little girl--and that she might not turn out to be anything more than that. She's just little kid with, yes, a bad father but there's a chance she won't end up like him. There's a chance she could change. Right now, I think when Kassandra looks at Dolly she's just...sad. Sad because she knows what she has to do and maybe she doesn't want to make another little girl an orphan. It's not that she unaware of the threat Dolly could be, it's just that she has hope that maybe that won't be the case. Cause the alternative is hurting a small child for a possibility and Kass won't do that.

And Blaine. Well, Blaine has his own reasons to be sad over Dolly and starts with he wishes he had known about her sooner.

Either way, it's good that Artemis is an actual good father who doesn't use Dolly. Maybe treating her like just a precious little girl is the best thing you could do a little god.

Although, I will add Dolly is as lonely as you might think she is--and maybe Artemis holds onto her a little tighter for that reason too.

(side note: given Dolly's power of being able to jump through realities that DON'T involve, it does give her room to exist in any canon. Funky, huh?)

(additional side note: Dolly has a phobia of butterflies, specifically red butterflies. I wonder why)

ANYWOO. THAT WAS A LOT. UM. SORRY. I hope that answered your questions? If you or anyone else has more, feel free. I am clearly an endless book with this story.