#OH WELL I have headcanons and HERE

[milkywayes]

GARRUS VAKARIAN: DATABASE IMAGE ACCESS. > PT. 1 : 2160, 2166, 2170. > all files backdated according to user preferences: (terran_coordinated.calendar).

[stil-lindigo]

a non-comprehensive guide to my favourite characters in claymore, the best manga you've never read (more under the cut)

don't know what I'm talking about? here's a crashcourse.

[meamiiikiii]

5% of a color headcanon.... two versions since b&w emphasizes the dagger more i think but i still like the warm tones ASFSADA

i am not biased towards rainbow daggers whatsoever i promise (lie)

((also friend is streaming now and im there too!! bit more info linked here, its rated mature tho))

[cosmicvaca]

As a Kakyoin fan and artist, I'm doing my part in giving him a part 4 design 🫡 (OG ask) Throwing my headcanons at you and hitting you square in the face

Ramble under the cut

Noriaki is a successful gallery artist living with his "roommate" on Florida's Gulf Coast (I think the Tampa Bay area, specifically Bradenton, FL). They have a small bungalow near the water, Perfect for them, their office/studios, Jotaro's fish tanks, and Jolyne when she comes from her mother's during the holidays or for summer break. Jotaro is definitely a boat guy they have theirs parked on the side of the house and take it for a spin over at least once a month (or once a week when Jolyne is with them over the summer)

He still does missions for the SWF with Jotaro, but his day job is his art. He works in an abstract/contemporary style and his pieces are large and textural. Jotaro doesn't really get it but still supports his partner, Jolyne loves them though.

Also, he and Jotaro have matching wedding rings: platinum bands with emerald Inserts.

[an-eldritch-peredhel]

You are the daughter of an angelic faerie and an elven king. You have grown up inside the only magical safe-haven of an increasingly apocalyptic land outside. You have wanted for nothing, essentially leading the perfect life, suffering and death playing little role beyond the abstract. Your father will never die, and your mother will never leave, but for tradition you are still crown princess and are educated as such. You love to dance and to sing.

You meet some kind of monster inside your mother's borders, a monster not of her or your making. It stumbled across you, dancing in the forest, bloody and travel-worn and weary and wide-eyed as it stares. You are stronger than it, but you run rather than lunge for the kill. You feel pity, more than fear. And something about him makes the part of you that you inherited from your mother sing.

He tries to follow you, for a year and a day. You are stronger, and faster, and stealthier, and you let him see you sometimes anyways. You are not convinced that he is not a monster, but nor are you convinced that he is.

Spring blooms again to the tune of your song, and you let him get closer than before until you run.

But you hear him speak for the first time. He is a speaker, and perhaps to him you are the monster. You do not run, and you do not kill.

He calls you "Tinuviel"

He calls you nightingale- a little songbird, plain and brown, with a lovely voice. They are your mother's creation, but he does not know this.

He calls you daughter of twilight- perhaps for your skin and eyes and hair, but perhaps because that is when he has seen you most.

He calls you singer- creator of the very fabric of the universe, skilled enough to deserve the title.

You are the most beautiful creature the world will ever see, the daughter of an angel and a king. He does not call you beautiful, or angelic, or princess. He calls you a singer, plain and brown, dark and distant as the approaching night.

He is bloody and travel-worn and weary and wide-eyed as you dare to step closer.

He called you nightingale.

You don't know what to call him, but you hope to find out.

[tainebot01]

The time has come for me to share my concepts for future Kay and Stacey.

[sk-ench]

nahyuta sahdmadhi

[artsysurvivor]

It's soo telling that Halt (a prince-become-ranger who will die if he's alone for 2 minutes) saw Will having a hard time with the death of Alyss and Maddie being a little snotty/bratty and immediately thought "you know what would work?

Ranger training"

[toniyx]

I have some angsty headcanons about Vox. These are relating to his insecurity, mainly.

First of all, I like to imagine he's EXTREMELY clingy, especially to someone who's actually nice to him. But not in an overt way, no—he would never admit it, neither to you nor to himself, but he's deeply, deeply insecure. And so he tracks you around, borderline stalks you everywhere you go, burying it in his head and reinforcing an idea that he's an important part of your life, whether you talk often or not. He's desperate to hold on to any part of you that he can.

Any hint of validation you give to him is taken in ten-fold, and then doubled up against himself later, because, as many times as you say you enjoy his company, he's still going to think you're lying. And so, while you're calmly going about, (somewhat) enjoying your afterlife, he's watching you through the many cameras he has around the ring, snarling to himself any time someone interacts with you. But then, at the end of the day, he lays down to try to rest, and his mind is filled with contrasting thoughts - by all means, he's one of the most powerful overlords in Hell! He could order you to speak to him more! Of course you care about him!

...But... Do you? How could someone like you care about someone like him? And of course he's paranoid, too, wondering if all of this is some big ploy, some attempt to strip him of his power. And so, the next time he looks you in the eyes, he sees a hint of malice—malice that isn't actually there.

I also imagine that Vox would struggle with that with you, regardless. On one hand, it would seem easy to him on the surface, wouldn't it? But he's practiced his ability to feign confidence for decades at this point. He matches your energy perfectly, almost too perfectly, because he knows that the second he slips up and looks away from your eyes, it'll all come crashing down. Internally, he's fighting a battle not to glance aside just to get some relief from the pressure of your attention all on him.

And if you get angry at him, well... this struggle goes up tenfold. Vox deals with fear using anger—you confront him for something he did that both of you know is true, deep down, but he fights it tooth and claw, fully convinced that an argument is supposed to be won, not resolved. His composure slips more and more every second, in a desperate attempt to convince you that you're wrong, but soon you slip from his grasp as well.

He doesn't know how to cope with that. He spends all night at his screens, rage and despair brewing behind the monitor, watching as you spend time with other people, not him. He's desperate, desperate for you to come back and tell him that you love him, but you don't come back. He's hurt you, and now you're gone.

He knows it's his fault, but to others, he pretends it was you all along. He exaggerates how you spoke to him, playing you up as a bad person... but can't defend himself when someone disagrees. And so, on comes the self-destructive cycle again, Vox tearing himself down just as much as he does others, hoping that someday, you'll come back again to fill that empty hole in his heart so that he doesn't have to.

[starfallkaz]

Selwyn x Bree Moments I just know would happen if given the chance

1. so we got Bree cupping Sel’s hair and him relaxing into her touch (everyone say thank you miss Tracy), but we need Bree sitting down on the couch and Sel laying his head on her lap and her fingers stroking through his hair.

Bree quietly muttering under her breathe about how soft his hair is and it’s not fair bc he probably doesn’t need to deep condition and have a leave-in AND twist his hair up, even though sel can hear her the whole time, and he just softly smiles as she strokes his hair

Sel is so content and at peace he starts purring. Like his whole body just vibrates under her touch

after a couple minutes his eyes open and they’re the familiar gold that Bree adores. so quickly he swings an arm around Bree and pulls her down, laughing as she yelps in surprise, and presses their lips together

2. Bree would pretend to sneak up on Selwyn, both of them knowing full-well that Sel could detect it was her for probably over 50m away. And she throws her hands over his eyes. (She’s the only one Sel would ever let do that to him)

3. When one of them wrinkles their brow and the other would just softly kiss away the crease, or if Bree pouted and Sel just lifts his finger up to her bottom lip, tracing it with his thumb bc he could never do that before (he’d just have to stand there looking flustered and clenching his fist like Mr Darcy)

4. Bree when she’s ecstatic or happy (and after squealing with Alice) usually some variation on beaming at Selwyn or throwing herself into his arms. He can’t help but smile or laugh back bc she’s just so radiant.

5, and every time she hugs him and he has his head buried in her neck and the scent of her her her around him he feels like the luckiest person alive. How could she choose him, how?!!

6. Alice convincing Sel that he doesn’t need to come along to watch Bree in her first-attempt at a martial arts class at uni. That’s she’ll be fine and it’s a beginner’s friendly course. And Sel “agrees”.

Of course he’s actually in the rafters looking down. Making sure nobody hurts Bree. Several times he has to physically stop himself from descending to the ground when Bree hurts herself

at the end of the class Alice asks if Bree enjoyed it? Bree declares “it wasn’t for her.” They meet up with Selwyn who ‘emerges from a different building’

He slings an arm around Bree’s shoulder in greeting and she asks “and how did you enjoy my class bat boy?” And Sel tries to play it off but obviously Bree can sense his gaze and knows he was there. And he looks a bit sheepishly off to the side mumbling, “nothing I couldn’t have taught you”

7. I’m also just very here for Alice and Sel having a friendship?!?! Like Ik they argued a lot in Bloodmarked, and Alice was pretty eh about him, but them just softly bickering over mundane things. E.g. Sel commenting that bbq sauce is a disgrace, who would have it on their hot dog? And Alice taking that personally. Bree sighing and smiling bc she knows that Alice is forming a mental list of bullet point rebuttals and she is about to drag this man ALIVE

8. Bree in a crowd at uni and just feels those little pin prick’s on her back and automatically starts searching the crowd for him and moving in that direction. (sel’s heart is beating very fast watching her from the other side of the quad)

9. Sel and Bree still bickering over her safety and how Sel insists that he should be at Bree’s geology trip for a course she’s taking, and Bree thinks that’s silly bc it’ll only be a couple hours and they’re just looking at rocks. And Sel retorts “okay but what if you slip and hit your head on said rocks, then I have to run you back to William.” And Bree laughs, “Sel you don’t need to run me to William everytime I hurt myself in the slightest” and he quietly mutters something about “yes he does.”

10. Sel memorising the feeling of Bree’s body pressed against his when they hug. How he knows her eyes so intimately, how he knows her smile and that little dimple that appears when she’s grinning, and thinks to himself he’d give anything to be the reason for that smile

11. When they’re kissing and Bree kisses his neck, just under his jawline, for the first time. his breathe hitches, and he grasps her and pulls her impossibly close (she’s on his lap at this point). And Bree laughs against his jaw in a way that sends shudders right down his body. Bree pulls away and see’s how he’s barely able to control himself under her touch, his eyes are the deep gold almost brown of melted sugar. And that’s how Bree figures out Sel has a massive thing for neck kisses.

12. Bree endearingly referring to Sel as bat boy, because of his handy knack for dangling upside down, or just reaching high places and surveying the room. Sel pretends not to like the nickname (they both know he secretly likes it)

13. Bree calls Sel pretty at some point and he’s so flustered, he doesn’t know what to say, and not having the right words makes him more flustered which makes him scowl, until he’s just glaring at Bree that she just called him pretty. And Bree raises her eyebrow that she just complimented him but he’s glaring?? At her?? Sel doesn’t have the words to explain, so just pulls her to his chest, pressing a kiss to her forehead hoping that conveys how he’s feeling. Bree just sinks into his touch

14. When they’re kissing and Bree thinks to run her tongue gently along the points of his sensitive canines. The way Sel immediately shudders against her, going limp under her, yet impossibly restrained at the same time. Things escalate from there.

15. Someone calling Sel some vague sort of demon slur, and he shrugs it off but he has to almost physically restrain Bree from defending him. Fully prepared to fight anybody and everybody for Sel.

16. Sel aether drunk and he has to go off and cool himself down in the forest, to get rid of the energy. Bree waiting for him in his room, doing some work at his desk. He pulls himself through the window, stumbling to get his footing.

Bree gently scolds him about using the door when he’s aether drunk. And he stumbles over the room to her and stands between her legs where she’s sitting at the desk. His fingers trace her bottom lip, the shape of her face.

And Bree can just see how bright his eyes are, his flushed cheeks, damp hair. And he’s mumbling under his breathe in welsh, words that sound a lot like she’s beautiful, gorgeous, exclamations of wonder at her

(I need help, I just spent an hour writing this instead of studying. Got me giggling in my bed fr fr). I have many more where these came from if you want them

[skitskatdacat63]

Stop flirting....

[little-mouse-adventures]

A Timeline of Events in the Artemis Fowl Series

If anyone's interested, I did do an actual analysis for where I pulled some of these dates from. But because I cannot type succinctly to save my life, it's 5,000 words long, so that's below the cut. I also put the timeline there again, but in three separate images, so hopefully they load well enough to be fully legible if the above isn't.

A thousand thanks to @sadbitchapologist and @zahnie for their help and advice with this, despite neither of them having any more than the barest interest in the series and therefore having no clue what I was on about. Thanks also to @orangerosebush for fielding completely out-of-the-blue questions about the French school system, so I didn't have to attempt to navigate web search results to figure out what mandatory gym classes were like for the sole purpose of plotting Luc's birthday on here.

An Analysis of the Timelines in the Artemis Fowl Series

A Brief Introduction

The Artemis Fowl series is made up of eight books covering a range of years and events. I wanted to see how accurate the timelines present in the books were, as well as try and plot out some other details implied in the novels but not explicitly stated, to have a better understanding of the overall world-building. To that end, I went through the series and made the above timeline. I colour-coded it based on the relevance of the specific items to certain categories, namely Humans, Fairies, Villains, and the Series itself. This does mean that some things could have fit into multiple categories. For instance, you will see some items involving Opal categorized as Fairy-Specific (such as her college years, as those are fairly neutral to the main plot or her villainy), Villain-Specific (such as her setting up her emergency fund, as that is mostly related to her schemes as opposed to relevant to her existence as a fairy, or part of the main plot of the series), and Plot-Specific (such as her opening the Berserker Gate, the primary plot point for the final book).

Before we really delve into things though, we should establish the baseline assumptions I was working with. Firstly, I am only using the original series. I have not used anything written in The Fowl Twins trilogy, given that those books seem to ret-con a considerable amount of the original information, and that is far too many headaches to give myself. Any supplemental series information, such as the short stories found in The Artemis Fowl Files, or anything from interviews is also not included. The premise here is: using just the original books, what is the event timeline of the world? The second thing we need to establish is that I am using the North American releases of the novels. I did make notes on where each bit of information comes from, but there isn’t really a citation style for this kind of thing, so I’m not sure how relevant that is. The third assumption is that the first book takes place the year it was originally published. According to my copy, the original publication was 2001, with the first American paperback edition coming out in 2002, and the first mass market paperback being released in 2003. This means our starting point is in 2001.

For sake of clarity, this analysis will start with setting the dates of the books and continue on from there.

The Basics of The Books

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the first book, Artemis Fowl (AF). It is actually not until the very end of the book that we get a solid answer for when it takes place. It’s only in the last few pages of the novel that Angeline Fowl leaves her attic room after all the plot points are tied up and announces that it is Christmas Day. This might be cause for concern – Angeline had not previously been established as a particularly reliable narrator – but given that we are asked to believe that Holly’s ‘feel better’ mood booster worked, and that neither Butler nor Artemis balk at or question the pronouncement that is Christmas Day, we’ll accept that it’s true and move on. This means that, with Butler’s earlier announcement that he was stuck doing four months of stakeout, we can say with a fair amount of certainty that Artemis obtained and translated the Fairy Book in September 2001, and managed to capture a fairy in December of the same year.

Moving on to Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (TAI), we are given a decent chunk of information, albeit spread out a bit. The first is the announcement that the ransom drop for Artemis Fowl I is to be held on the fourteenth. The fourteenth of what, you might ask? Well, we are told that Artemis is currently thirteen years old. Clearly, things are past September 1, 2002 (we know Artemis’s birthday is September 1 based on information in both the fifth and seventh books). We are also told that Luc Carrere has been trading with the goblins for six months, starting in July. That puts us in either December or January, but we can narrow it down further since Artemis gives us another helpful clue. He mentions they are not expecting to see the dawn while attempting to rescue his father in the Arctic. There are only a few latitudes on Earth where polar night (of any type) occurs, and at Murmansk, polar twilight occurs between December 10 – January 2. Combining all of this, we learn that TAI takes place December 14, 2002, give or take a few days to either side.

This can be corroborated by information in Book 3, Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code (TEC). After Holly heals Artemis Senior, we are told that it takes over two months for him to wake up. Since we are specifically told two months, as opposed to two and a half or three, we can conclude that the events of TEC take place in March 2003. Mulch gives us some information that confirms this. He was living in LA “less than four months ago,” and since he was conscripted to help with the events of TAI in December, a March plotline fits the bill. We are given further confirmation as well: Spiro mentions that Artemis will be fourteen in six months. A specific date for Artemis & Co.’s attack on Spiro’s Needle can be pulled from the throw-away line that Pex and Chips are “burying” Mulch on the full moon. A quick web search tells us that the full moon in March of 2003 takes place on March 14, and the rest of the events in the novel take place roughly two days to either side of that.

In Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception (TOD), the fourth book in the series, we are given several very clear indications of when the events take place. Firstly, Artemis is contemplating that at fourteen years and three months old, he is the youngest person to successfully obtain The Fairy Thief. Based on previously noted details that his birthday is in September, the events of TOD must take place in December of 2003. Additionally, we are told that things are the middle of winter and Opal has been in a coma for eleven months and counting as of the end of TAI, another December plot.

Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony (TLC) requires the most math and interpretation so far to figure out when it takes place. We know Artemis is still fourteen, so the main events clearly happen sometime between January 2004 and September 2004. Beyond that, we are using a fair amount of context clues. Artemis and Butler have evidently been traveling for four months looking for demons, so we are dealing with events in at least May. But that still leaves us several summertime months to work with, so to establish a timeline here, we will need to look forward a bit. In the sixth book, Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox (TTP), it’s noted that Artemis is not yet fifteen, and has, on multiple occasions, spent the full moon in the study. Ergo, he’s spent at least a few months back from Hybras. If he has been back for two months and not yet turned fifteen, he would have had to have returned by July at the latest, and since he returns almost three years later than he leaves, we are looking at him returning in either May or June. This would have him disappearing to Hybras – and by extension, dealing with the earlier events in the book – in June, July, or August. After his conversation with Minerva, he notes to Butler that they “are planning a June wedding,” which wouldn’t make sense to say if they were currently in the month of June. From all of this, we can extrapolate that the first three-quarters of TLC take place in late July or early August 2004, with the triumphant return of our intrepid heroes occurring in June 2007.

As previously stated, TTP mentions that Artemis is still not fifteen, but is nearly there. He has also been home again for at least two months. This would put the events of the sixth book in August 2007. At least, the events set in the current time period. TTP does bring back time travel, and with it some problems. We are told that Artemis and Holly jump back nearly eight years to Artemis being ten and trying to fund searches for his missing father. This would put the events of the past in early 2000. However, other details presented regarding Artemis Senior’s disappearance, which we will discuss later, make that impossible. Artemis also admits, in TEC, that he was eleven when his father disappeared, not ten. If we take a bit of creative license with our interpretations and base the time-jump to the past on other presented information as opposed to the dates given in TTP, we can say that Holly and Artemis instead return to early 2001. This lines up with further details, such as the sinking of the Fowl Star (as calculated a few paragraphs down in this analysis) occurring in December of 2000, and the textual confirmation in TTP that it’s barely two months past that sinking when Artemis brokers the deal(s) regarding the silky sifaka lemur. Since, at the end of the day, the time jump impacts very little in the grand scheme of things, and the year 2001 actually fits in better with other textual evidence and events, that’s what I’m going with for this timeline.

The seventh book, Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (TAC) gives us a very helpful base point! It takes place on Artemis’s fifteenth birthday, September 1. From our previous results on setting dates for book events, that would be September 1, 2007. The sections in which Butler and Juliet are fighting mesmerized wrestling fans and meeting up with Mulch are noted in the novel as happening “the day before,” which would fall on August 31, 2007.

Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian (TLG), the eighth and final book in the series, creates some problems. If we assume that Artemis starts receiving treatment for his Atlantis Complex immediately after diagnosis in TAC¸ that would put him receiving treatment in September 2007. We are told he is certified as cured after six months. Yet we are also told that the rest of the events of the book take place in the week or so leading up to the Christmas holidays. Everything so far has said that the Artemis Fowl series follows the current calendar, in which case there is no way that six months can fit between September 1, 2007 and December 25, 2007. However, the only reference to Christmas is in two lines noting that the Fowl parents were planning on holidaying with their children on a foreign beach. If we simply say that six months have passed, and they are instead planning on spending the Irish school system’s spring holidays in the French Riviera, everything else lines up much better. So that’s what I’ve done. This would also put the resurrection of Artemis, after the events of the book and a further six months have passed, at roughly September of 2008. There is a pleasing symmetry to Artemis being born and then re-born in September, though if you want to get really technical and say the events of TLG take place during the 2008 March full moon as Opal claims (as noted in another web search as March 28), a six-month wait time for the clone to grow would put the resurrection in October. Still, there is something to be said for having a boy’s ghost haunting a clone of himself close to All Hallows. Since it’s the last plot point of the series, you can choose which you’d like; it doesn’t have to lead to anything else after it.

Let’s Talk Timelines: The Beginning of the Line to The End of The 19th Century

Now that we have our baseline book time periods established, we can get into the math used to determine some of the events in the timeline above. Several events are easy; we are given specific dates for them. Turnball Root meets Leonor in 1938, Juliet wins the Miss Sugar Beet Fair beauty contest in 1999. Other things are based on some basic math, such as Artemis claiming his parents got married fourteen years prior to AF¸ putting that event in 1987.

The majority of the items on the above timeline, however, do take some mathematics, extrapolation, and interpretation to plot out. To try and keep everything organized, we’ll start at the far left of the timeline, and work our way forwards, looking at events oldest-to-newest to explain why they are where they are on the graph. I won’t be getting too in-depth on everything in the graph, since I’m not sure how relevant the notes on the very minor side characters such as Carla Frazetti are, but I’ll at least try to touch on some of the more relevant points.

To start with, the Battle of Taillte was noted in the 2000’s as being ten thousand years ago, putting that at 8000 BCE. Similarly, the last dome breach at Atlantis was apparently eight thousand years ago in the 2000’s, so that would be 6000 BCE. Troll sideshows were legal in the early middle ages, which implies they were not legal after that. A quick web search says the early middle ages ended around 1000. The first crusades were in 1096-1099, and as those crusades are the start point of the Butler-Fowl working relationship, a point for noting that comes next on the graph.

From there, we get into more modern – relatively speaking – events. Briar Cudgeon and Julius Root are noted as attending the LEP Academy together and being raised in the same tunnel, as well as having about 600 years of history together. If one assumes “being raised in the same tunnel” is similar to the human equivalent of “growing up in the same neighbourhood,” we can assume the two were born roughly 600 years ago, in the 1400’s. Vinyaya is portrayed as being of a similar age to Root, so her birth can also be put in the same general era. We are also told that Fowl Manor was originally a castle built in the fifteenth century, that in the early 2000’s the theories of timeline corruption were first introduced over five centuries ago, and that cloning has been banned for over five hundred years, so those three events are also tossed into the 1400’s.

Julius Root is noted as doing his LEP basic training 500 years ago in Ireland, so that would have to be in the 1500’s. He would have attended the Academy before then, putting that in the mid-to-late 1400’s. As previously stated, he was in the Academy with Cudgeon. Opal also met Cudgeon in college, and competed with Foaly for science prizes there, so they were all in school at the same time.

Mulch now enters the picture. We aren’t ever given a specific age range for him, but we are told about his career. He has, apparently, spent three centuries in and out of prison after a couple centuries of success as a thief. This would make him at least five hundred years old. There is a brief mention that he tried the athletic route at college before becoming a thief, so he would have to be an adult at that point, putting his age at roughly 550 years during the events of the series.

We then enter a period filled in from one-off lines throughout the series, presumably added to give some depth to the world. Things about the wine cellar at Fowl Manor being a seventeenth century addition, Captain Eusebius Fowl and his crew dying in the eighteenth century, and Mulch first faking his own death over two hundred years ago.

Time Marches On: The 20th Century

There is nothing of much relevance to linger on between the 1550’s and the 20th century, so we’ll jump ahead to the 1900’s, when we have Holly Short’s birthday. She is in her eighties during TLC, and her father died “over twenty years ago” when she was “barely sixty” as of TAI. Based on that, she would have been in her early eighties in 2002, putting her birthday sometime in the 1920’s. What a doll.

A few more birthdays now appear, and we’ll ignore, for the most part, some of the irrelevant ones. I don’t think we are at all concerned with Gaspard Paradizo’s birthday, or Mikhael Vassikin. We are, however, rather more interested in Jon Spiro, Domovoi Butler, and Artemis Fowl I.

Jon Spiro enters the series in TEC, as a middle-aged American. A quick search on the Internet says that middle age is generally noted as being between the ages of 40 to 60. We are told that Spiro has worked in three main industries over the past two and a half decades. Additionally, we are told that law enforcement has been “trying to put [him] away for thirty years.” If we assume he entered the working world at twenty, spent five years developing his professional self, and then started going down a path of questionable legality to get the police after him, that would put him at fifty-five in 2003, and born in the late 1940’s.

It was a bit easier to determine Domovoi Butler’s age, and we can get more specific with his actual birthday. We are told that he is forty at the start of TEC, and he is still forty during TOD. From that, we can assume his birthday is not between March – December, which means it has to be between January – March. Now, we can just leave things there, but contextually, Butler says in late March 2003 that “a lot of people know [him] as a forty-year old man.” Since I doubt he’s the kind of person who introduces himself by announcing that his birthday was last week, we can assume that his birthday is not in March. Since about half the books in the series take place in December, and there is never any mention of Butler’s birthday coming up soon, we can likely assume it isn’t in January. We can therefore conclude Butler was born in February, 40 years before 2003, which puts his birth year in 1963.

We then have Artemis Fowl I. This one took the most extrapolation to determine. We know he has run an ethical empire for a few years as of 2007, which coincides with his return to his family after being kidnapped by the Mafia. He apparently ran a successful criminal empire for two decades before that, though, so in 2007 he has been working for at least 25 years. Based on the interactions he had with his own son, I’ve assumed he was also taught to take over the family business from a young age. If he started working at his age of majority at 18 (as possible in the 1980’s in Ireland, based on a web search), we can assume he was born in roughly the mid 60’s.

Billy Kong, born Jonah Lee, is one to touch on. He plays a large role in TLC, during which we are given possibly the most backstory of any villain in the series. He was evidently born in the early 1970’s, and was eight years old in the early 1980’s. Mathematically, that can only lend itself to so many birth years, so it’s easy enough to put his birthdate somewhere in 1973, and his brother’s death date in 1981.

While we’re here, let’s talk about the 1980’s. A lot of things happen in the 80’s, so we’ll be here for a few paragraphs. Butler would have graduated Madam Ko’s Academy in the early ‘80s, Artemis I would have started working in his family’s business and stolen some warrior mummies (of note, the theft is only noted as being in Artemis Sr.’s “gangster days,” but if you are a young, rich criminal, you’d likely commit a wild theft in your early years as opposed to your thirties, which is why this is put in here). Additionally, in the mid 1980’s, Holly graduates the LEP Academy and her mother dies, as noted in TTP when she is contemplating missing three years of her friends lives.

Butler would have started his five-year stint in Russia with an espionage unit in the mid-to-late 80’s, and become a big brother in 1985. Juliet is noted at being four years older than Artemis in AF in 2001, and he is twelve then, making her sixteen at the time. We can extrapolate the month from TEC, wherein she is apparently eighteen when she is called regarding her brother’s apparent death. At the time, we are told what gifts she received for her birthday, implying it was fairly recent. Additionally, Artemis was only thirteen at that time, which would make Juliet five years older than Artemis. If, however, we trust that acolytes at Madam Ko’s start their training on their tenth birthday and get one chance to graduate per year, it would make sense for that one chance to be on their birthday, or within a day or two to allow for as much training time as possible. Since Juliet was in the midst of this one graduation evaluation when she gets the phone call and joins the crew for the March heist at Spiro’s Needle, she’d have to be born in March. (We can also corroborate this with some details from AF: if AF  takes place in mid-September, that would be just after Artemis’s birthday, which puts the 4-year age difference back into play.)

Spelltropy begins for the People in 1987, if it appeared 20 years ago from 2007. Artemis I and Angeline Fowl would get married in 1987. They would have their first child, Artemis Fowl II, in 1989, as calculated by Artemis being twelve during the initial siege of the Manor in December 2001. Artemis II’s grandfather was noted as having been dead for over ten years at that point, and it was mentioned in TEC that Angeline married her husband before he really took over the family business, so those events would likely happen when Artemis was but a baby in 1990.

The ‘90s are a period where a lot of things are happening, but few are particularly important. Spelltropy has a cure found, Minerva Paradizo is born, Juliet begins her bodyguard training and her brother refuses to let her shave her hair. These, and other events in the 90’s, are mostly calculated by math along the lines of “Event A happened X number of years ago,” but since the 90’s was mostly a time of worldbuilding events rather than plot events, we’ll just skim over the specific details.

‘You Are Here’: The 21st Century, and Where The Storytelling Begins

Welcome to the 2000’s! The kick-off point of not only the 2000’s, but also the entire series, is the sinking of the Fowl Star. We aren’t given a specific date for this, but we are given enough information to extrapolate the date. Specifically, in September 2001, in AF, we are told Fowl Sr. has been missing for almost a year. In TAI, in December, we are told he has been missing for almost two years. That does have the potential to have the ship go down in either December or January, so we need to use a bit more details from TAI to make a final determination. Mikhael Vassikin and Kamar were told to dump Fowl’s body in the Kola if he didn’t wake up in “another year,” so they’ve been looking after him for one at that point. Fowl Sr. wakes up two weeks before the deadline, and as noted earlier, the ransom drop for him takes place December 14, after he has been awake for perhaps a week. From that, we can tell that the deadline for “another year” was mid to late December, putting the initial sinking of the Fowl Star in late 2000.

The analysis gets a bit confusing at this point, because 2001 is when future Artemis and Holly join the party via time travel, as well as having their regular selves in the timestream. Essentially, we’ve established the timeline for the events of TTP above, so we know the whole lemur fiasco takes place in March 2001. Artemis wakes up at the end of that book thinking about fairies, which ties in rather neatly to him then dragging Butler across three continents for six false alarms (with an assumed approximate 3 weeks between each jaunt) before striking metaphorical gold in Ho Chi Minh City in September. During their time-traveling, Holly also gets a chance to talk to Root, who wonders why she isn’t in Hamburg, which was noted in AF as Holly’s first major failure as a Recon officer and was nearly preceding the events of AF. The time-traveling would also mean that Opal would have had to harvest her DNA for future diabolical plans before March 2001, when her younger self travels to the future. Since it takes up to two years to grow a clone to adulthood, and her clone has to be ready in September 2003, we are a few months off in the time requirements, but really, for a practice that’s been outlawed for 500 years, I can offer a bit of leeway.

We are now well and truly in the thick of the main events of the series. Most of this will be tied into the initial assessments we made way at the beginning of this essay, where we established when each book occurs. Because of this, we aren’t going to spend time on anything plot-related. However, a brief note on Turnball Root and Artemis’s Atlantis Complex is likely in order. Artemis was, as previously stated, dealing with his return from Hybras and the after-effects of stealing magic during July and August of 2007. His Atlantis Complex, and Turnball Root’s plan to escape the Deeps prison, are in full swing in September of that year. We have a brief note in TAC during the evacuation of Atlantis, that Turnball had, a month before, spied on Artemis and noted his Atlantis Complex developing. Therefore, Artemis’s Complex likely came into play in late July or early August 2007. This is close enough to Artemis’s magic theft to make sense for the deterioration of his mental health, and enough time for Butler to have started to notice something was wrong, as he did. We can therefore assume that Atlantis Complex, at least in the case of magic-stealing humans who have a propensity for time travel and getting involved in supremely complicated and improbable plots, develops relatively quickly.

This leaves just one major discussion point from the last few books: the age of Artemis’s twin brothers, Beckett and Myles. The twins are first introduced at the very end of TLC. They are written as being two during the events of TTP, three during the events of TAC, and four during the events of TLG. Regardless of the time-traveling shenanigans of their elder brother, it is impossible for the twins to age two years in the eight months between Artemis’s return from Hybras in June 2007 and the finale of the series in March of 2008, so we need to look at what makes sense.

Myles has already potty-trained himself, and done so at fourteen months, so they must be at least that old. Their other behaviours would make sense for them to be two in TTP. Diapers are still a part of their lives, and their language and vocabulary fit what a two-year-old would have, at least in Beckett’s case. Since Artemis was surprised by their existence, it doesn’t seem likely that  Angeline would have known she was pregnant, or at least not have told Artemis yet, when he went to Limbo. Ergo, they can’t be any older than two, since (one would hope) Artemis would have noticed his mother’s pregnancy if the twins were any older.

Additionally, in TLG, we know Artemis gave his brother a birthday present, so he had to have been around during the twin’s birthday at least once. With this fact, the twins cannot be born between March – June, which just leaves the question of when are the twins born?

 The most logical answer is February 2005. If Angeline was early on in her pregnancy, say six weeks (which is when most women start noticing symptoms), when Artemis disappeared in July 2004, she wouldn’t necessarily have told him yet. Then, if we assume that since most twin births occur around the 35-week mark, that would math out to having the twins be born in February of 2005. Fast forward, and they would turn one in February 2006, and two in February 2007, which puts them at the correct age for the events of TTP. [One could argue, of course, that a twin pregnancy in an older woman (unfortunately, there is nothing in the series to indicate Angeline’s age) and in a woman already dealing with significant stress could result in a very premature birth, thereby voiding any of this math and leaving the whole question of the twin’s birthday unanswered. However, since I’d rather not subject the Fowl parents to the strife and misery of having one son missing and presumed dead, and their younger children in the NICU with a low survival rate, I’m working with the assumption that the pregnancy was a healthy and normal one.]

The brief comment from Juliet in TAC about the twins being three can be passed off by them being a little over two-and-a-half and Juliet not being around as she is touring in Mexico. By the time TLG takes place, in March of 2008, the twins would have had their third birthday, allowing for Artemis to give Myles his chair as a birthday present, Beckett to be old enough to no longer need diapers, and the behaviours to act more like children than infants. While this doesn’t quite allow for the repeated textual confirmations in TLG that the twins are four, we’ll go with what mathematically makes sense.

That brings us to the end of the timeline! Not everything is touched on in the timeline, and not everything in the books is plotted (we are never given enough context to know Foaly’s or Opal’s birthdates, for instance). But the main events of the Artemis Fowl series are all analyzed, mathematically or logically or textually corroborated, and plotted out, for use or ignoring as personal preference dictates.

[clanoffelidae]

As much as I totally get that the Master was being shown as a domestic abuser as much as they were allowed to for a family program in ‘The Last Of The Time Lords’, I choose to instead believe that he was just extremely reactive due to, you know, having just run away from a war that scared and traumatized him so severely that he disguised himself as a human at the END OF THE FUCKING UNIVERSE in order to hide from it, and Lucy just tried to hug him from behind or something when he didn’t know she was there and so he immediately threw a punch on reflex; because it is infinitely funnier to me that way.

Lucy: -walking up behind the master- good morning hone- :)

The Master, an extremely anxiety-ridden and traumatized war veteran who just escaped said war: AH- -throws a punch on instinct-

Lucy:

The Master: DON’T FUCKING DO THAT

Lucy:

The Master: -clutching at his hearts as he tries to calm down-

Lucy: that’s it i’m shooting him

Like it’s just so much funnier to me that way. Free my man he did everything wrong but I don’t care.

[distant-velleity]

Hello!!! I know we don’t interact too much, but I was wondering if I could get Chrysos’ opinion on Allegra? Idk. I love ur rendition on Ursula’s Necklace! And I love his curls!!!!!!

hiiii!!!!

"I look forward to working with you, Mahalath."

so by default chrysos holds respect for his upperclassmen, especially those of his own dorm -- i mean he's really getting into the whole deal-making thing but we can talk about that laterrrr

now im just going off of what i see but in regards to allegra's supposed lack of empathy? i feel like that's not something chrysos would mind too much, or view it as a particular problem (unless it becomes HIS problem) because it has nothing to do with him; so i think i could sum this all up as positive neutrality unless given an important reason otherwise

(also my own thoughts as a bonus: allegra the scrunkly of all time wow <3 i love the creative take on the necklace. ....... also i just noticed the correlation between 'doll-collecting' and his UM ... )

[syn0vial]

god, rereading that scene after doing a bit of a beviin deep dive is making me want to write a oneshot where beviin is actually there for one of boba's panic attacks... why must inspiration always strike right before bedtime? ;_;

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach’s Issue with Queer characters (1/3)

So, someone recently(when i started this draft anyway) left a kind of incoherent rant on one of my posts.  It wasn’t actually related to anything I’d said in the post, and just came across as disjointed babble, so it didn’t warrant a direct reply at the time.  But it did bring up a subject I would actually like to talk about:

How Kubo handles gender queer characters.

I think it’s a little easy to look at the most glaring cases, come to the conclusion that he doesn’t handle representation well, and leave it at that.  That’s valid.  And he’s clearly not well versed or tactful in how he portrays these characters, and it’s really not that unreasonable to judge him for it.  But I also think there’s more going on with it than that really accounts for, so let’s pick at it a little...

By and large what Kubo does is some pretty by-the-books queer-coding villains, and what amounts to casting effeminate men in adversarial roles.  In the big picture, it’s not a good trope to be falling back on: it comes from a bad place historically, and even if Kubo doesn’t mean anything bad by it (and I’ll get into why I think he genuinely doesn’t) it contributes to the momentum already behind it that other, less well intentioned creators and readers inevitably stand to do more direct harm with.

The earliest case of this is actually from Zombie Powder.  Very early episodic villain, Ranewater Calder is a youthful and even girlish looking man who is actually an old man sustained by a youth restoring drug.  He’s a villain of the week type, so the fact that he’s pretty and evil is literally all there is to him.  Moreover, his fixation on youth, his vanity, and his deception (he pretends to be a frail, dainty victim at first) all link directly to his moral character.  Although Calder is himself never made out to be gay, the archetype he's clearly based on is a pretty classically homophobic characterization at face value

But even here it’s not totally black and white...  

There’s a snag in that Kubo’s not writing some 1950s American pulp novel where the perils of homosexuality spell self-destruction or divine/dramatic irony on the loathesome villain; he’s writing a shounen action manga, and it operates on the Rule-of-Cool first and foremost.  Calder isn’t a vehicle for moral preaching by religious conservatives, he’s a highlight character taking up valuable print space in a popular comic.  He’s attractive, he has a cool name, he has a cool weapon with a unique fighting style, and even his vanity and deception aren’t there to make him unappealing, they’re there to make him compelling.

And herein lies the root of Kubo’s problem.  He just likes having cool characters, and he crams them in where ever he can fit them, and that often means in villain roles.  Moreover, although some characters get more vilified than others, even within the scope of villain roles, not all of them get to stick around long enough to be developed as either something other than queer and villainous, or to get the full turn around.  After all...

Yumichika was a villain at first.

And you’ll noticed I hesitated just now at calling it a “turn around” and not a “redemption” or “turning over a new leaf” because frankly, the Shinigami never actually changed alignment.  They were circumstantially the villains of the Soul Society Arc until Aizen turned on them to be the bigger "real” villain.  Technically it was Ichigo & co. that changed alignments from fighting against the Gotei13 to fighting with them.  But relatively aside, Yumichika became a good guy and his favorable portrayal got to outweigh his villainous introduction.

Speaking of which, there’s not a whole lot to go over with it, but Yumichika’s original appearance pretty closely mirrored the profile of Ranewater Calder’s bit in Zombie Powder: a kind of “sissy” prettyboy is obsessed with his looks, and other than just being a guy with a sword pointed at the established heroes making him a villain, that vanity and narcissism make them mean, judgy and vindictive.

But Yumichika came back, and stuck around, and frankly became something of a fan favorite.  And I think this particular development says a lot about how Kubo looks at these situations.  You’ll notice, he didn’t actually have to change Yumichika’s character much to shift him from villain to hero.  Yumichika gets a little less prickly, but he’s still vain and it’s not even something that anyone ever frames as a problem he needs to work on.  In fact, the introduction of his shikai brought into play a new facet of his vanity: Deception.  So we’re back to that Ranewater Calder framework, where the prettyboy has something to hide with his looks, but in Yumichika’s case it’s shown as an almost endearing quality.  He hides his sword’s powers, a reflection of his true self, to fit in.  But this isn’t shown to be a thing to pity, his willingness to sacrifice a part of his own identity is portrayed as a kind of noble restraint.

Now, granted, I don’t think those elements all play nicely together. (In fact, the nobility of his self-restraint is a very dangerous thing to uphold as a virtue) But when it comes to trying to draw a line between message and intent, I think the most pertinent thing to consider as context isn’t actually the villain or hero dichotomy, or even your own personal feelings about the themes in play, it’s the attitude ("attitude" as different from “intent,” mind you) of the creator towards his creations: Kubo seemed to enjoy making Yumichika.

He had fun with his design (the feathers and the weird sweater collar thing) He had fun with the sword, with giving him a secret power.  He had fun writing his vanity rants.  He didn’t have to have Yumichika, he didn’t have to bring him back, and he didn’t have to add to his character, but he did.  He invested his own time and effort and space on the page to him and to making him interesting to have around.

But like I said, Yumichika’s the lucky one.  He came in early, got to have a comeback, and had time to stick around.  But consider that when Kubo was floundering around trying to figure out how to salvage the mess that was the late TYBW arc, he didn’t need to bring back Arrancar, and he didn’t need to bring back the ones he did. (in fact, only the Privaron even make sense in-world, Luppi and Charlotte weren’t convenient choices, they were just Kubo’s personal picks.)  And when he did finally get around to cleaning up the Sternritter?  Bazz-B was an obvious choice to keep, sure (following that Renji/Grimmjow mold of the hotblodded rival who bucks his own organizations rules) but Giselle and Lilttoto?  That was Kubo playing favorites.

Luppi was so short lived, it’s hard to really say anything about him.  He was basically just reusing notes from Yumichika’s first appearance, which again also refer back to Ranewater Calder in Zombie Powder for basic aesthetic and demeanor.  (It’s actually kind of weird that Yumichika never really had any kind of dynamic with Luppi when they fought.)

Side note here, but Kubo really loves to build some of his recurring character types around a certain kind of scene or dynamic.  Byakuya and Ulquiorra both do this thing where they’re supposed to be the stoic unflinching types, but they actually get shocked and surprised almost constantly.  Kubo seems to be going into it with the mentality that he thinks it’s cool when the character who predicts everything and always has everything under control, can’t predict something and doesn’t have it under control, and just reverse engineers a stoic person for the purpose of having them “break character” later.  In this vein Kubo seems to have a real love of very pretty characters shifting into a kind of sinister “ugly mode.”  It wouldn’t serve his purpose to just have them ugly or obviously meanspirited all the time, the ugliness has to be served up in its reveal as that “breaking character” moment, even though that “breaking” moment is itself the core of the character.

Not to get too heady about this little observation, but it honestly feels like something that applies even to Kubo’s broader writing habits; wanting the payoff of a twist, and planning said twist first but then reverse engineering the supporting ruse only as a matter of course.  Just a silly little thought...

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