#apollo especially

[dreamsy990]

have you drawn any of the other gods besides athena? 👀

mightve acccidentally become part of the epic fandom whoops. anyways a couple yeah. none of these are digital but have some rough design ideas i threw out in class

bonus telemachus and buppy

[kiwinatorwaffles]

[skellagirl]

help help help I can't stop drawing gay lawyers

Trucy should be brown and I'll die on that hill

The fact that Klavier is 5'11" and Apollo is 5'5" 🥹 I love a height difference

I am convinced they drew Valant's hair Like That (tm) in-game because otherwise we would have all fallen madly in love with him

Wesley is my favorite witness in Apollo Justice, I'm so sorry for my shit taste 😔

I've drawn Godot without a mask before but I wanted to do it Again because I am still enamored with the idea of him having white eyelashes

Aromantic Miles means so much to me

I get that it's probably just the way they drew his jacket but why is Miles's little court sprite so caked though 😭

[satsuha]

(6-2) shocking reunion

[vegaly-art]

In honour of the release of God Games I have decided to draw the 6 challengers in Athena's way <3 <3. I love them so dearly you have no idea. And man I really have not been making enough EPIC content. I ought to get back to those animatics I've been planning and at least finish a small section of them. That'd be nice. asjdgsajd

[serafphim]

CAN U TURN THEM ALL INTO RODENTS ID LOVE TO SEE IT, ANY KIND OF RODENTS

here's apollo n josh! ill do the others eventually

[heliological]

things you probably don't want to hear from your lawyer

[kastalani123]

There's something about the idea that gods change according to belief.

There's something about Aphrodite having to drop her sword and shield and pick up a makeup brush and mirror.

There's something about Zeus's Crown overtaking his hospitality.

There's something about Ares being scrubbed of his care with blood.

There's something about Hera's care being thrown in her face because of her cruelty.

There's something about Dionysus having his artistry and wildness ripped away from him due to his partying.

There's something about Hermes losing his chthonic connections in favour of his trickery.

There's something about Demeter surrendering her fierce, protective love and power over life and death to become a hysterical mother.

There's something about Athena's femininity and protectiveness fading to make her grip her spear and grasp her thoughts tighter.

There's something about Hephaestus forgetting his creations' finesse and intricacy to focus on pure function and efficiency.

There's something about Poseidon's earth-shaking rage that causes waves to rise above the tallest mountains being reduced to occasional vengefulness.

There's something about Apollo giving up his herds and truth and wisdom and plagues to speak the future and heal the wounded through song.

There's something about Artemis turning from children and childbirth to fixate on the wilderness.

There's something about the idea that gods change according to belief.

[sethmp3]

Omfg....

I AM ON MY KNEES.

[my-name-is-apollo]

Having a "I've connected the dots" moment on why Zeus is so affectionate with Apollo, and I don't know why I'd never considered it before that Apollo's youth could be a reason.

Iamblichus, The Life Of Pythagoras (trans. Guthrie)

So there was this sentiment that young boys are the dearest to the gods, and the gods are especially attentive towards their requests. And since Apollo is a perpetual young boy himself, with Zeus being the one to grant him this gift in one version, it makes sense that Zeus has granted so many of Apollo's wishes. He spared Prometheus and Periphas upon Apollo's request even though he was personally offended by them. He agreed to suppress Gaia and Athena upon Apollo's request when it came to the oracular business. He even revived Asclepius to console Apollo despite Apollo's frankly disrespectful reaction to Asclepius' death.

Apollo might be fearsome, powerful, and even reckless at times but when he kneels down in supplication, all Zeus sees is his little boy that he loves so much, and he can't help but give in to his requests (well, most of his requests at least). And as far as the text is concerned, and if I'm interpreting this correcltly, Apollo's youth is interestingly tied to his helpful nature because besides using his own powers to help the humans, Apollo can also help them by supplicating to Zeus on their behalf, as Zeus is more likely to grant a request when it's coming from him.

[iheartgirlzn]

i was thinking about trials of apollo and how apollo acts with meg in the books and i couldn’t help but think of will, autsin & kayla and the rest of his dead children.

i can imagine those three being like: ‘why couldn’t he love his own children how he does with meg?’ and ‘why couldn’t we be the ones to make him see that being mortal isn’t bad and that it’s important to love?’

I CAN JUST SEE THEM BEING A TEENY BIT SALTY TOWARDS APOLLO AND BE ENVIOUS OF MEG AT FIRST — BECAUSE IF IT WERE ME AND SOME RANDOM CHILD THAT TOOK MY DAD HOSTAGE SPENT MORE TIME WITH HIM THAN ME I’D BE A LIL BIT UPSET 😭

[demigod-shenanigans]

Re: Reyna joining the Hunters and why I think it’s actually really depressing

So for a variety of reasons I’m not a huge fan of Reyna’s arc ending with her joining the Hunters of Artemis. Part of that is rrverse characters should be allowed to be single without joining the eternal celibacy club, but that’s not a problem exclusive to Reyna. I also think handling asexuality in the context of celibacy by choice is… messy by default, especially if it’s your one confirmed ace character.

Beyond that, though, there’s a bunch of context surrounding Reyna’s life and personality that just make that choice seem really sad to me?

I’ll split this into three thematic subsections and put the second and third one under the cut because this got pretty long

Reyna and her sense of duty:

I highly suspect Reyna’s fatal flaw is her sense of duty. This is never explicitly confirmed (because no one except Percy and Annabeth has confirmed fatal flaws), but duty is the theme her entire character revolves around. Basically from birth she’s raised to believe the fate of New Rome lies on her shoulders. A lot of her actions in the books explicitly link back to her sense of duty.

She runs herself ragged trying to find Jason and trying to manage a job made for two people on her own before Son of Neptune.

A lot of her conflict stems from the fact that what is necessary to protect her home (leaving her post and following Jason) inherently clashes with the rules of that home.

Reyna also actively chides others (like Lavinia in ToA) for leaving their posts and not sharing that same sense of duty.

Because of this, like Jason, Reyna is never really able to be a kid.

Joining the Hunters sort of does a good thing in that it allows Reyna to gain some distance specifically from New Rome, which her fate and also a lot of her trauma regarding her upbringing revolves around.

But it doesn’t allow her to be a kid any more than being a praetor at Camp Jupiter did. Potentially less so, actually, seeing as the Hunters are basically always on the move doing something important while at Camp Jupiter you probably have regular days off and a city to visit and relax in always right around the corner.

Reyna lays down one duty and immediately commits herself to the next one. She doesn’t grow and learn that she doesn’t have to carry the fate of the world on her shoulders. She just trades one burden for another.

—————————

Reyna and her emotions:

The timing of Reyna’s choice to join the Hunters seems really off. New Rome is mostly destroyed and just suffered a catastrophic amount of losses. Reyna absolutely has a right to step down as a leader, but this seems like an odd time for her to do it, especially considering she just completely up and leaves instead of at least sticking around to help rebuild her home and then join the Hunters after. As someone so fundamentally defined by her duties and her loyalty to New Rome, why does she spend half a day off-screen and then suddenly decide actually she’ll leave her destroyed home and all those grieving people for someone else to deal with? It just seems really out of character for her.

This begs the question: is Reyna really making that choice because she figured out it’s what she wants, or is it because she can’t deal with what happened? Because looking at all the destruction and attending all the funerals—deaths that happened while she was technically in charge but unable to be present, people she was supposed to protect—reminds her of every way she’s failed her home?

Also, Jason just died.

Jason was Reyna’s best friend for years. He was the first person she allowed herself to grow close to after her sister left her, and very possibly the first person she ever fell in love with. She never properly got to make up with Jason. Very likely they were both afraid to be hurt again. They both thought there’d be time for it later. But there wasn’t. There isn’t. She only got her best friend back in a coffin, and even in death, returning to New Rome (to her) wasn’t Jason’s choice.

Reyna leaves the place where they grew up together, the duties they used to share and all the memories—memories that were just hers, no longer his, since he never properly got them back—two days after she watched his pyre burn.

How much of that is her leaving because she wants to, and how much of it is the fact that she can’t keep her walls up and keep herself going in the place that used to be theirs, where Jason’s ghost is staring back at her at every corner? How much of her leaving is her unwillingness to deal with her grief?

Reyna running away from her feelings is an ongoing theme. It makes sense from a lot of different angles why she’d do it.

She was raised by an abusive father who often turned his feelings (what child Reyna would have seen as “love”, but was primarily paranoia/anger) against her and Hylla.

It’s also addressed directly that Reyna worries if she feels nervous or scared, her emotions will cause the camp to worry as well—her power is quite literally to project her own emotions outward, so if she does that with negative emotions (intentionally or unintentionally), it would cause problems. Suppressing them feels safer. On top of that, in her role as a leader, she has to provide a certain sense of confidence and assurance even when she herself doesn’t feel it.

Joining the Hunters instead of facing those feelings is not exactly a great way to heal in that regard.

————————

Reyna and the weight of Bellona’s prophecy:

As far as we’re aware, Camp Jupiter has faced more threats in the few years Reyna was in charge than it has in centuries. First the Titan war (which Reyna must have arrived partway through, depending on how early the Romans even knew about and were involved in what was happening there), then the war with Gaia, then the Emperors.

And obviously that’s not actually Reyna’s fault—Reyna is, in fact, a huge contributing factor to why these disasters weren’t a lot worse and didn’t claim even more lives. But this is all put on the shoulders of a girl who knows her fate is intricately linked to the legacy of Rome.

A girl who is already convinced that her love is fundamentally destructive and keeps other people from being happy. Her father spent her entire childhood suspicious of Reyna potentially betraying him—and, because she ended up killing him in self-defense, it’s very easy for a traumatized ten year old to internalize that maybe that suspicion was totally warranted. Then Circe’s Island gets destroyed. Then Hylla finds her happiness with the Amazons by leaving Reyna. Then Jason leaves her, seeming so much happier with Piper and Leo than he ever was with her.

Everyone she loves always seems to be happier without her.

So maybe the best thing she can do for New Rome—a home that she loves and that has faced so much destruction in the short time she’s spent there—is to leave.

Maybe the best way to keep New Rome safe (because New Rome’s survival is linked to Hylla and Reyna’s bloodline continuing to exist) is to make herself immortal and preserve it that way. Because, unless Reyna dies in battle, she could live centuries—potentially thousands of years—as a Hunter. She can’t ever properly go back to the home she loved, because that’s not how the Hunters work. But she’s still bound to her fate by her blood. She’s still doing her duty to New Rome by living as long as she can.

It’s not something she can ever be free of.

The worst thing about this is I think Reyna choosing to find a fate for herself outside of New Rome could have actually been a great way to conclude her arc, but god do I wish it was executed differently and actually given proper exploration/space to breathe instead of just resolved by taking her off-screen for a few hours and then sticking her with the group of female warriors that barely gets to have any plot relevance outside of conveniently coming to people’s rescue.

[satsuha]

one of the reasons i like what aa6 did for apollo so much is because i feel like he's accidentally a really nice example of a third culture kid and i......... never really thought i'd see that kind of experience in the kind of media i like. apollo returning to khura'in and all his conflicting feelings regarding dhurke and khura'in just make me Feel something

it's a lot of projecting from my part but i don't think apollo fully views either khura'in nor japan/US as home, there's just something about viewing a place as your childhood home and even if it is the place you imagine yourself returning to, things are just... different now. he's different now, and the literal home (dhurke's mountain hut) he'd wanted to return to just isn't there anymore... khura'in might've been his entire childhood, but the experience he got was so different from the other locals that he really doesn't know much about the average khura'inese lifestyle at all... khura'inese is probably his mother tongue, but he's so out of practice that he has to relearn it from scratch

i think again, i prefer apollo being japanese because i can just imagine that it was so difficult to fit in when you're so different and you're just so unfamiliar with the same experiences that everyone else had growing up... it's the kind of environment where i can't blame him for growing up not wanting to ever talk about his past, not when he's finally managed to fit in and seem Normal for the first time in his life...

i just feel like it's... easy to say that apollo is returning home to khura'in but there are so many loaded feelings that came with that and the idea of home is such a subjective one that i don't like the answer being so clear-cut. it's more like, on a good day apollo probably considers both khura'in and japan/US his home but on a bad day he thinks about how he'll never really belong in either place. it's another thing when i wonder if apollo ever resented dhurke for the decision to send him away even when he knows it was good for him... or even his real parents for taking him to khura'in in the first place? just imagining, or wishing even, that he could have been fully khura'inese like nahyuta or japanese/american like clay then maybe his life wouldn't have turned out this way.....

i don't know LMAO apollo eventually settling back in khura'in is so cathartic yet so tragic to me at the same time. it's a really weird feeling to not have a citizenship or to speak the language in the place you consider home... heck he doesn't even have a physical home in khura'in when he decides to stay?? it's just. i have a lot of thoughts about this. third culture kid apollo is important to me...

[m3llowm1sh]

your honor im obsessed with them

[gingermintpepper]

Writing Apollo-as-a-young-deity is fun because sometimes it involves completely making shit up based on the loose outline of a story told through old poems, prayers and plays and other times it involves researching the totally legit and well documented ancient art of studying sheep livers to make sure your statesmen don't accidentally piss off Jupiter.

In completely unrelated news, if anyone has any recommendations for books about bird augury, that'd be wonderful.

[milomilesmib]

There's a bunch of new fans who have never read the books, looking at posts by people who have read the books absolutely DYING over every Percabeth interaction, followed by "he's going to give up immortality for her." Us who have read the books are like "hell fucking YES he is" but those who haven't read the books are like "ah yes a hyperbole/theory about their relationship" because THEY DON'T KNOW. I'm so excited to watch these new fans experience all the heartbreak and love throughout the series.