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apolloscastellan · 3 months

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You roll like thunder when you come crashing in | Luke Castellan

Pairing: Luke Castellan x female zeus!reader.

Summary: Luke gets injured during capture the flag and you go crazy, it forces you to confront your feelings (Angst+fluff).

Word count: 2.7k

Warnings: injury, loss of blood, use of y/n, female pronouns used to describe reader, ig this is ooc Luke, pre-tlt. Not beta'd we die like men, english isn't my first language, etc.

A/N: This is my first ever time publishing anything I've written so pease tell me what you think!

Luke feels like he’s been struck by lightning the first time he sees you. He is sitting down beside Thalia’s tree, talking to her absentmindedly, when he hears the most gut-wrenching scream he has ever heard. He sees you stumbling up the hill, covered in blood and dirt. You are holding up the body of your satyr protector, who struggles to walk. Catching up to you alarmingly quickly is one of the most terrifying monsters Luke has seen in a long time. You seem determined to keep running, even as your protector attempts desperately to get you to leave her behind. Luke knows he shouldn’t, but as he watches you give up trying to run away and prepare to fight, he wants to step outside of camp limits and help you. It seems like you don’t need his help, though, as you pull out a dagger from the back of your cargo pants and charge against the monster. Luke unfreezes then, calling out for the campers who can hear him to go “find Chiron!” When he looks back at you, you’re finishing the monster off. He forgets every protocol and safety rule when he sees you stumbling, sprinting towards you and catching you just in time before you pass out on his arms.

The first thing you notice when you wake up is that you are not in your room, or anywhere you recognize. You’re also not outside, the view of the sky that had become usual to you covered by a wooden ceiling. You sit up and look around, no one seems to be there, and when you look out the window you realize that it is probably because it is already dark outside. This must be the camp your protector was talking about, you realize. They are not very good at welcoming newcomers, it seems. Once you find a mirror to check that you don’t look crazy you decide to go outside to try to find someone who can confirm where you are, and hopefully help you settle in. When the wind hits your skin for the first time, you feel a chill run down your spine, you wonder how long you were unconscious for. You follow the voices you can hear singing to a plain terrain. A huge campfire lights up the place, teenagers and kids of all ages congregate around it singing, talking, laughing and eating s’mores. They are all wearing matching orange t-shirts. They look like a cult, you think, and the thought makes you giggle. That seems to pull somebody’s attention, and before you can realize what’s happening, there is a quiet murmur going around and everyone is looking at you. You freeze, suddenly feeling like you are crashing a party you were not invited to. You’re about to turn around and run when a boy with dark brown curly hair and a mischievous smile runs up to you. He couldn’t be older than sixteen, but something about him makes him look as if he is in charge.

“You’re finally awake” He whispers with a sigh.

“Sorry, I really don’t mean to be rude but do I know you? Also, where am I? And Why is everyone staring at me? It’s a little creepy”

He laughs openly, turning around to stare the rest of the kids down.

“Everyone, go back to your own conversations, there is nothing to see here” It’s a little crazy that he thinks it’s gonna work, but it’s even more crazy that it works, and everyone turns around within seconds. He extends his right hand towards you “I’m Luke Castellan, welcome to Camp Half-Blood.”

“y/n” you say, still shocked by his obvious power and shaking his hand. “So, this is the place Leela was talking about.”

You look around, Luke’s eyes fixated on you. Leela was your satyr protector, you met her only a couple weeks before arriving at camp. He is still looking at you when your eyes finally find him again.

“It is. The safe haven for demigods. How much do you know about Greek mythology?”

“A fair bit, the same about Camp Half-Blood, is that how you called it? I’m curious and there’s a lot of awkward silences when you’re traveling across the country” she jokes. “I know about the idea of camp, and about the cabins, the godly parent… When will I get claimed? Leela never told me that.”

The smile immediately drops off his face, an awkward grimace taking its place. He looks around, as if trying to find an excuse to run away. He comes back to the conversation empty handed.

It has been a year since you had arrived at Camp Half-Blood. You had found your place, in more ways than one. You were surprisingly good at sword-fighting, archery and Greek, and you had made many wonderful friends. But still, something was missing. You hadn’t been claimed. And because you had never met either of your parents, you couldn’t even rule out half of the options. You had tried everything, from becoming the best at every activity, to giving the most generous offers, but nothing seemed to work. Luke, who had become your best friend, was pulling his hair out in frustration. In your behalf, because how dare the gods ignore someone as wonderful and kind as you, but also in his because no matter how much he knew he loved you and wanted to be with you, he could not make a move without the fear that Hermes might claim you someday. His dad was not the most reliable of fathers. So he went about his life pretending he wasn’t dying inside to be able to kiss the sadness away from your face. The same sadness that was overwhelmingly present as you got yourselves and your team ready for capture the flag.

“Okay” he said as he clapped his hands to get the attention of the rest of the kids, knowing expanding your winning streak would be the easiest way to make you feel at least a little bit better. “Everyone knows what they’re doing? Good, if you don’t, go see Annabeth right now. Blue team, this victory is ours!”

The kids scatter as he walks back up to you. You’re fiddling with your armor, visibly frustrated. He lets you continue to try on your own until you groan in desperation. He takes the strap from you and buckles it himself.

“What’s wrong?” he asks next, his voice soft.

“Today’s the anniversary of when I first got to camp” you whisper. “And I know, I know that people wait for longer, that some never get to know who it is but I can’t help feeling this way. I’ve tried everything, it’s not fair.”

Luke’s heart breaks hearing you talk about your godly parent, the one person who is supposed to take care of you. But that is how the Gods work, they only care about themselves. He promises then, that he’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. For now, he pulls you close to him, wrapping his arms around your body and placing his chin on your head. You pull apart as the bell that signals the start of the game rings through the forest.

“I’ll see you after our win?”

“Definitely.” The smile on his face stays as he picks up his shield, running away from you.

He turns around right before you lose sight of him, giving you a military salute with his sword, pulling a giggle out of your mouth. You have been tasked with watch-out duty. You are a decoy, pretending to guard the flag so the kids in the other team come after you. You’re a good enough sword fighter to keep them entertained for a while on your own. You are bored for a while, until a group of three young Ares kids surrounds you. They are inexperienced and eager to prove themselves which makes them reckless. You could fight them off easily, and get them on their way, but you know that part of your mission is to stall them so you do your best to not give them your best moves. You’ve been sparring for a little bit when something throws you off. Someone is screaming your name. Through the forest you can see a little girl running towards you. Annabeth looks like she’s crying, which is enough to worry you, Annabeth never cries. The Ares kids try to use the distraction to attack, but you dodge their hits, quickly disarming them before running towards the girl screaming your name.

“Y/n! Come quickly! It’s Luke!”

He is the first thing your eyes lay on when you get to the clear Annabeth has led you to. He is on the floor, unconscious, his face covered in blood. You fall to your knees next to his body. Your hands are shaking, aching to do something, anything. There is not much you can do. You haven’t prayed in a while, having given up, but now, as you tear apart your t-shirt to cover the wound and stop the bleeding, and yell at the younger kids to “go find Chiron!” you beg any God that will listen to not let you lose your best friend. Someone touches your shoulder, whispering that you should move away. You’ve never felt this much rage. How dare someone tell you to walk away, to leave Luke’s side in this moment.

“Get off me!” You don't recognize your own voice as the scream leaves your mouth.

You realize slightly too late that the voice telling you to move was Chiron, but as you turn to apologize you are left speechless. The floor where Chiron had been standing just seconds before was completely burnt. When you look up, you realize why. There, shining above your head, was a lightning bolt.

“Zeus” Chiron said, his voice solemn, as the campers who had gathered to see what had happened, kneeled. “Energymaker, King of Gods, Father of Men. Hail, Y/n Y/l/n, Daughter of the Sky God.

You sit outside the back door of the infirmary for three days, unwilling to talk to anyone. For almost all campers, you’ve disappeared. They won’t let you see Luke, the Apollo kids take turns trying to convince you to go to your Cabin and get some sleep. You refuse. That's a new development, you have a Cabin now. A place where you belong, forever, not a temporary solution, or a rest stop, a place of your own. But the thought of walking into an empty, eerily silent mock of a home has you wanting to crawl out of your skin. You’ve become so used to sleeping through the noise of the Hermes Cabin’s campers you doubt you’ll be able to sleep on your own. And what are you going to do without being able to walk two steps and lay in Luke’s bed? Luke, who is currently unconscious inside the infirmary. Luke, who for some stupid reason you are not allowed to see. Luke, who is the reason why you haven’t even processed that you have been claimed. You have been claimed by Zeus no less. The king of the Gods, one of the Big Three. You can’t think of the implications, not when your best friend is battling between life and death so close to you, yet out of reach. You play with the food Annabeth had brought you, trying to forget the worry in her face as she tried to get you to say something. You know that Luke would have wanted you to move, take care of her and all the other campers, but you can't. He can’t be disappointed when he is unconscious. Still, you try your best, nodding at her words so she knows you’re listening. The door opens as you give up eating for the night. Mark, the Head Counselor of the Apollo Cabin looks down at you. He motions you to follow him with his head and you do so wordlessly. You don’t know what to think, and then you see him. He is sitting down, his back propped up with a pillow. He has bandages covering his reopened scar, and he gives you a sad smile when he finally spots you. You freeze for a second, unable to believe your eyes, before running and launching yourself towards him.

“I’m going to kill you” you say through the tears streaming down your face, hiding in the crook of his neck. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

You try to pull away but his arms stop you. You feel him shake his head.

“Don’t you dare, I’m fine.”

“I thought you were dead. I thought…”

“I’m ok… I’m ok now.”

“I got claimed.” You spit out suddenly, which makes Luke pull back, looking at you with wide eyes, a silent question in his face. “Zeus”

You can see his expression turn mournful as he remembers his old best friend. You’ve heard about Thalia, the quiet resentment you held for the girl who had undoubtedly held Luke’s heart had once made you feel terribly guilty. Now, you feel a sort of kin with her you had never felt before. You wish she was still here. You can see in Luke’s eyes he feels the same way.

“Daughter of the king of the Gods” he says finally, trying to be upbeat. “What a power trip. Hope it doesn’t get to your head. How’s the empty cabin? Much easier to sleep I hope?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been there yet” you breathe in and out. “I couldn’t leave you. The thought of anything happening to you…”

“Y/n…”

“No, let me finish. I need to get this off my chest.”

Alone with yourself for the past three days, you had had a lot of time to think. That is all you had done. Think about yourself, and your dad and your friends and the danger all of you were under just for being born. But mostly, you thought about Luke. And how he was the only person you felt truly comfortable with. And how you had this weird, guilt-inducing dislike of Thalia, not because she wasn’t good, you had never met her, but because she had Luke before you ever did, and you couldn’t stand it.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few days,” you finally breathe out. “And I have come to a couple realizations. Luke, I'm in love with you.”

It comes out of your mouth like a shot, unplanned and unbridled. You don’t know how you had planned to say it, but it was not like this.

“You’re what?” too embarrassed to look him in the eye, you shift your gaze to your lap.

“I’m in love with you. I don’t know how it happened, and I honestly don't know why I’m telling you. I guess watching you almost die made me realize life’s too short to keep secrets. You don’t have to say anything at all, but I love you.”

He’s already looking at you when you finally look up, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Nobody says anything for a couple of seconds. You search your brain for a joke, something to say to dispel the tension. You shouldn’t have said anything. You should’ve just kept it to yourself. Before you can continue further down your spiral he finally breaks his trance, pulling you towards him from the front of your ripped t-shirt and kissing you. Your lips move against his almost instinctively, and you can’t think of anything that’s not the taste of his tongue when it finally makes its way to your mouth, or the weight of his hands that have now shifted to your waist. You pull away when both of you need to breathe, but he doesn’t let you get very far.

“I love you too. I’ve loved you from the first day I met you. I’ve always known, you are it for me. I love you.”

At a loss for what to say, you kiss him again. Your hands cradle his face before moving to his curls. You kiss each other as if trying to convey the magnitude, the finality, of your feelings for each other. Luke is right. This is it, for both of you, You have finally found your person. Everything else is background noise from that point forward. You don’t care that the Gods are unfair and neglectful, or that you were born to a world destined to kill you. As long as you have Luke, you know it’ll be alright.

#Annie writes #Annie writes Luke #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan #percy jackson #luke pjo #luke castellan x you #luke castellan x y/n #percy jackson fanfiction #pjo series #pjo fanfic #luke x reader #luke castellan fanfic

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hyacinthusmemorial · 16 days

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TW: Mentions of SA

In my works, and other places, people have been asking me my opinion on Achilles attacking Troilus. I would just preface I’m not an expert on the Trojan War. I was sick the week we did the Iliad in high school and they made me perform as Odysseus when we read the Odyssey and i had no clue what was happening, but I am in the process of reading it now.

I think if you are studying these events from the perspective of the god Apollo, then Achilles kind of loses his Brad Pitt appeal that the movie Troy (which I have never seen) gives him. So if Achilles is your guy, stop reading. I’m thought dumping.

There is something wicked and powerful about Achilles k*lling and r*ping Apollo’s own son on his own altar in his own temple. Because that is the implication of the iconography and artwork.

Achilles drags Troilus by his hair to the altar of his father and the story doesn’t say if Achilles r*pes him, but it is implied. For one it talks about Achilles being overcome with lust for Troilus, who is the image of Apollo in human form. A beautiful golden haired, youth.

Not only is Troilus the son of Hecuba, he’s Apollo’s image. Sources say he is the most beautiful of the Trojans and Greeks. But he has been designated a fate where he represents the city of Troy. Hence the name Troilus. If he reaches adulthood, the city survives. If he dies as a youth, the city will fall.

Athena leads Achilles to Troilus to ensure his death and thus Troy’s fall. She does not account for HOW Achilles kills Troilus.

He sees Troilus on his horse, and he is overcome with lust. I think he probably offers Troilus some sort of deal, come sleep with me and I will let you and your sister go, but Troilus refuses and runs away and hides in his father’s temple. He is a little kid running to his father for help. But, Achilles breaks in, finds Troilus, and enraged kills him either on or near the altar of Apollo.

Troilus is the image of Apollo. He is his son. He is a prince of Troy. I think this is a tipping point for everything—the point of no return.

This seals Troy’s fate, but I think the reason for that are because of Troilus’s death. I think before this point there is the possibility there will be peace. I think Big Bro Hector would have sent Helen back, I think peace would have been sued for and Troy would stand. But Fate has to be accomplished. This is the point where Troy no longer gives a damn—their prince has been m*rdered and r*ped on the altar of their chief god. Priam is upset because he loved Troilus as his own son, and he calls Achilles a child-slaughterer after that. Hecuba is besides herself, and Hector wants to kill Achilles. I think this is the point where they decide that, yes, they are going to die fighting this war, but they have a GOOD REASON to. It’s not about Paris and Helen and Aphrodite and a dumb apple. It’s about a boy being murdered.

But Apollo, Apollo is now vengeance. He is acting as an arm of fate. He’s already peeved at Achilles, who had killed another son Tenes. (A different story about Achilles r*ping someone)

I said this to one of my commenters—an altar is a god’s dinner table. Apollo’s hands are tied by something—either Fate or Thetis or his Father, and he cannot stop Achilles who is savagely attacking his own son on his own table. He has to watch, has to sit there and taste his own son’s blood in his mouth, watch him brutally die.

Achilles’s fate is sealed. Apollo is going to kill Achilles. It’s just nine years later.

In the art, Thetis, Athena, Apollo and Hermes are in the background of this event. Athena and Thetis as support of Achilles, but it makes me curious what Hermes is doing there. Is he holding Apollo back? Has Thetis begged Zeus for Achilles life? Athena regretfully watching as she accomplishes her plan only to realize WHY it worked?

I think in this way you can fashion the Trojan War as a direct conflict between Apollo and Achilles. Everything else is going on around it, but at the heart of it, is Apollo and Achilles. Apollo waiting for his father and the fates to give him the go ahead because Achilles will die, and Apollo is going to take away everything from him in the process. Briseis, Patroclus, and then he’s going to take his life.

Achilles is the villain in Apollo’s story. He’s invulnerable, he’s circumventing fate, he r*pes anything under his power, he disrespects the gods. He is a lesson in what men do when no one can stop them, and the most powerful thing is that the Father wins. He finds and kills his son’s murderer even after all the roadblocks in his way.

Troy is a revenge story, and if I ever get to writing it in my series, it’s going to be written like a revenge story.

#apollo #greek mythology #the iliad #rant post #im open to thoughts #im not an expert #i just have a lot of feelings #but seriously #achilles bothers me #apollo is the only one who should have gotten to kill him and im glad i was not deprived of that #Trojan war #troilus was a little boy #achilles was a young man #troilus was trying to save him and his sister

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hollenka99 · 3 months

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It just occurred to me that Odysseus is going to end up on Ogygia the next time we see him. Which is so funny to me because like

Imagine you've gone through all this shit since leaving Troy some two years ago. It has been hell and you have been losing crewmates here, there and everywhere. But you survive, even if it takes some sacrifices. Only for Zeus to get involved because, while staging a mutiny, your best friend tries to slaughter sacred cattle. So the god of thunder forces you to pick between your life (along with the remaining hope of ever making it home to your wife) or that of your crew (who have all completely given up hope of returning home).

You elect yourself as the survivor, despite how much it pains you. Zeus' thunder strikes the boat, obliterating it and sending you all to the water. Ha, you think as you begin drowning, you should have known. This was probably a ruse to rub it in your face that you fatally betrayed your crew one last time. Water and the bodies of your friends surround you. As it goes black, you think of Penelope and Telemachus, so apologetic that you won't be able to return home to them after all this effort expended as a way of striving towards that goal.

Except... except you don't die? You instead wake up on the sands of a beach, waves gently lapping at you while a woman hovers over you. She explains she is Calypso and nobody is able to come or go from her hidden island. She turns out to not be the worst company around, she's just a bit too forward.

In moments alone, you sit on the shore while contemplating the possibility of spending the rest of your mortal life here with only one other person. You would love to be on the coast of Ithaca instead, your wife and son hopefully beside you. Yet all you can think in these moments is:

I did not condemn my crew to death just to be hit on by another titan's daughter. Hera, please stop testing my undying faithfulness already.

#epic the musical #the wisdom saga #odysseus #nobody tell him he has to put up with this for 7 whole years

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months

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1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist! 🥰💜

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

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rosabell14 · 2 months

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An analysis of Bianca di Angelo's role in the narrative and why bad writing can screw over a character.

For someone with such a limited time in the narrative, Bianca is one of the most divisive characters in the fandom. I've been in the fandom long enough to see how much nuance the fandom lacks when discussing certain characters and Bianca is no difference. But it's more than just viewing the characters' actions in a vacuum. It's ignoring the larger narrative problems. At the end of the day Bianca suffers from one simple problem: she's barely a character outside of her role in Nico's narrative. Like it or not, her entire character exists to die and give Nico issues down the road but Riordan's writing decisions didn't do her any favours either.

I feel like this is a huge issue when it comes to the pjo fandom they often try to come up with Watsonian solutions to problems that are Doylist in nature and Bianca is one example of that.

Case in point: Riordan's shit math when it comes to the Di Angelo siblings and how it messes up with bianca's character.

So when we meet them they're 10 and 12. We learn that their memories of their past is kinda hazy and that they don't remember their parents but that they were in a boarding school, then they moved to the lotus hotel, then they were taken out of the hotel and put into Westover's. And at the end we learn that they're Hades's children born before the oath of the big 3.

Said oath happened after WW2 btw. So 1945 probably since Bianca remembers FDR's presidency.

Now in TLO we get an update on this backstory. Hades is speaking to Maria about moving his children to the underworld or the lotus hotel since Maria doesn't like the former option because the war has put Hades in a bad situation with his brothers and also the prophecy is out, the oath has been taken and they're running out of time to hide the kids. So logic says that it's 1945. And then Zeus immediately kills Maria and Hades tells Alecto to erase the children's memories and put them in the lotus hotel, and honestly? I like this version much better? Because why in the world would Hades Put his children in a boarding school for a few years and THEN hide them in the hotel after they were nearly assassinated? Why not immediately put them in the hotel?

And so we get to our main dilemma. Bianca having to raise Nico. This was already strange to me because it's not as if this is a Jason and Thalia situation where Jason was a toddler and Thalia had to take care of him. Nico is not a baby they have a two year age difference. But of course these kinds of things might matter more if you're young. Even then, in what situation would Bianca be Nico's main caretaker? They were put into a magic hotel that mind you, makes time go faster so for them it was a month or two at best and they would have been given whatever they needed by the staff? Same type of issue with Westover's and the boarding school if you want consider that canon. They would have been taken care of by the facility. They probably wouldn't even have shared classes or dorms? Or am I misunderstanding American boarding schools?

And then, Riordan's bad math strikes again and this time with the characters' ages. Because Nico's age in HoO becomes 14 which would have made him 11/almost 12 in TTC but that's not the big problem, no no no. The problem comes from his official birthday which is 1932.

1932... Which would have made him 13 and Bianca 15 by the time Maria dies. Which is hilarious because with the way the kids are written during her death scene as absolute non players with nary a reaction, you would think they were written to be toddlers who didn't understand anything that was going on.

That royally screws over Bianca as a character (and me as someone who's trying to write a story centered around her). Because her main thing. The one time she's allowed to have complexity is the moment where she talks about how she wants to be more than Nico's caretaker, and she's barely Nico's caretaker at all. The best in universe explanation I can come up for this is that this is how Bianca perceives things because that's all that she literally remembers. Those months in the hotel and Westovers.

Another time the plot kinda messes her up is at the beginning of TTC. One complaint that I often see in regards to her Is how quickly she makes her decision. She does not even hesitate. She does not even wait to see the camp. You know the place that would have taken care of her and Nico which would have meant she wasn't going to be his supposed primary caretaker anymore? She doesn't even wait to see if it was an actual good place for her brother? Spoiler alert: it's not camp half-blood at the time was not a good place for either of them really. Nico did not have a cabin at camp and people were not accepting of him. Hell, people not being accepting of hades and his children was something established since the first book.

But once again, this is a Doylist problem at its core. We need to turn Bianca into a hunter but we also need Artemis to leave so that she can be kidnapped for the main conflict, so she leaves before the hunters even reach camp. Half-blood. So Bianca as a character doesn't even get to make a proper choice between the camp and the hunters. To people who only look at characters on an in universe level, it comes off as very rash and not well thought out.

To be fair, on an in universe level, she's a kid so it's okay if she's stupid, but Riordan wasn't trying to make her come off as that way? He treats Bianca's decision as a legit serious choice and not the rash decision of a desperate child.

And once again, Bianca is here for Nico's sake more than anything. She needs to die. So she takes the statue for Nico. Which is so ironic and tragic if you decide to play it that way. That Bianca wanted to be more than Nico's sister, but her literal death revolves around being his sister. Normally I'd enjoy this level of angsty irony but unfortunately that's how the very narrative treats her as well. Even her post mortem decisions are there to maximize Nico's angst more than that they're there to say anything about Bianca herself. We need Bianca to only appear at the end of Botl so that Nico and Percy can have a conflict but it once again comes at the cost of Bianca herself coming off as callous. What's the in universe reason for this behavior? It's so stupid because in universe, Nico doesn't even take that much convincing? One conversation. One conversation and Nico was convinced to stop his efforts in reviving her. Does she just not know her brother enough? Maybe since they technically know each other for a year max. Does she genuinely think she's that easy to give up on? Is she that conflict avoidant? I actually like this interpretation and plan to use it. There's much to be done with a character who's rash and bold but an absolute emotional coward who'd try to avoid an emotionally charged conversation until they absolutely can't.

Hell even after Botl, it's the same song and dance. Hades makes an absolute vile remark at Nico's expense. TSATS makes it into a joke moment and has you believe that Hades simple said that Bianca would have been a better demigod. No ladies and gentlemen. Hades literally tells Nico that he wished Bianca had survived instead.(The fact that I still think that hades is the best godly parent just shows you how low the bar is more than anything.)

I swear to God I spent so much time racking my brain trying to understand what this could mean for Bianca's character.

This is how I basically look like trying to milk every scene where Bianca is there as a character or is mentioned for every drop of characterization.

At the end of the day, I can't blame most of the fandom for being ambivalent towards her at best. The story by design is about Nico. It's designed for you to sympathize with him and yeah if I'm to look at it from Nico's perspective. He DID get abandoned, regardless of Bianca's intentions. From his Perspective , which is the one most people would take, his sister took the very first chance she could to ditch him for people she barely knew hoping people either of them barely knew would take care of him even though they haven't even seen the place yet, and then ignored him for months while he was desperate for a single conversation with her. Honestly had Nico outright resented his sister for leaving, I think the reaction towards her would have even been worse.

(Another sidenote, my very hot tea Is that I like to believe that had Bianca lived her and Nico's relationship would have become worse as time went on and as the camp's anti hades sentiments really started taking their toll on Nico. But I'm just an angst lover)

Worse is that this story is told from Percy's perspective and these two only have like 3 actual conversations together. One of them is her dying, one is about her making her first main decision and that's at the expense of Nico who's probably the fandom favorite behind Percy and Annabeth and the other is her trying to explain her aforementioned decision to Percy and even then, she talks about it in such broad strokes. "I want to be more than X" tells us about who you one day wish to be not about who you are at the current moment. And even when we have Nico as a POV character, Bianca is only there for "dead family member" trope. There's barely any moment where Nico remembers anything important about her to give her any depth. The cards are just stacked against her. Even the people who are at the "Bianca did nothing wrong camp" are barely interested in her. I swear to god whenever an AU comes up where she's alive, the focus is STILL on Nico. Oh Nico would have been such a happy person had she lived! And Bianca? Uhhhhh she would have fucked off with the hunters I guess?

Can we talk about the hunters while we're here?

If we WERE to talk about in universe scapegoats, I'd honestly choose the hunters. Honestly I could make a separate post about how much I hate how Riordan handled them. But oh dear God the way they're presented just comes off as creepy. The way they initially (up until TOA) only go for young girls because apparently older girls aren't useful once they hit puberty and start developing feelings for people and lose themselves(TTC and Percy Jackson's Greek gods oh dear lord are they terrible in Percy Jackson's Greek gods). How they're basically the heroine dumping ground for when Riordan doesn't know what to do with a female character. How ultimately in universe, Zoe more than anyone is to blame to for Bianca's death by taking an untrained girl to a mission where she KNOWS two people would die at the very least. And she doesn't even watch her properly during the mission. Honestly I could barely feel anything about Zoe's death upon rereads as an adult for this very reason. Or how stupid it is to basically put a child in front of a candy store and expect them to make a responsible decision. Who in their right mind would have young girls as young as nine take a celibacy vow? Oh but you'll be safe with us (never mind that we're not just normal hunters here like the actual myths but actual monster hunters) and you'll totally be able to see your brother when you want (actually we barely visit camp half-blood) oh but you'll be a FAMILY with us! Except you know if you catch feelings or get assaulted(holy hell how Riordan depicts the myth of Callisto makes me want to tear my hair out of my scalp)

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hauntingblue · 6 months

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FRUIT LORE! FRUIT LORE! FRUIT LORE! FRUIT LORE! FRUIT LORE! FRUIT LORE! FRUIT LORE!

#zoro once again sacrificing himself to fight.....#komachijo cant die.... enough people with names starting with a k have died... (kiku kin and kanjuro) maybe its a curse....#who's who was a marine.... WHAT IS THAT cp9 too..... OHHHHH 13 YEARS AGO SHANKS STOLE THE FRUIT!!!! FROM THE GOVERNMENT!!!!!#SHANKS LORE SHANKS LORE!!!! I CANT WATCH ANOTHER EPISODE TODAY FUCK!!!! I WILL GO INSANE TONIGHT AND GET ANSWERS TOMORROW I GUESS #talking tag #watching one piece #episode 1039 #nami promoted zeus aldjsksjsk #the info he stole?? who?? and who is dead?? oh whos who.... he can die i guess he already told jinbe #the heart pirates saying luffy doesn't have a pulse and a smash cut to jinbe saying he is alive 😭😭#jinbe and luffy retrospective.... i love them so much.... best thing to come out of marineford.... .#jinbe saying he doesn't want to speak with him ajdkajsk slay......#nika mention.... omg.... the sun pirates of course... I AM TELLING YOU!!! NIKA IS URANUS THE THIRD ANCESTRAL WEAPON AND THE THREE OF THEM #WILL BRING THE GYOJIN TO THE SURFACE (TO THE SUN!!) <- me when i connect two dots #jinbe got tired of the racism. BEAT HIS ASS!!! BREAK HIS NECK!!! LETSGOOO!!!!#he got him by the tail.... is the secret technique a gyojin haki special????#episode 1040 #yamato furry??!?!?!? damn ace really got the whole deal jesus.#informed consent akdhaka here we dont do medical malpractice lmao is he scared of needles???? lmaooo #this sounds like a me in my gf's ear audio akdhaksjsk #now just noticed that the franky shogun robot has chicken legs just like franky 😭😭#the fucking helicopter tryceratops..... what the hell..... and what is what sword.....#luffy dead on his pirate doctor friend's boat but there is no doctor on board akdhaksk #episode 1041

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genericpuff · 5 months

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ten storylines u think could have been amazing in lo if they had been handled better?

10 already feels like so much for a story like LO buuttt:

1.) the act of wrath plotline, seriously this one felt like it had some of the most lost potential as one of LO's more unique plotlines (and it lost that potential as soon as it was turned into some "oopsy" committed by persephone due to her wrath being a 'gift' from eris when she was a baby??? still bugs me so much ugh) give me back that dichotomy of Persephone and her internalized wrath, dangit.

2.) the Eros and Psyche plotline. it started off so promising as a parallel B-plot to H x P and then seemed to just get dropped halfway through S1 when Psyche got turned into a nymph.

3.) Echo's involvement as a double agent for Zeus. that was clearly the intention when she was introduced but then she was promptly dropped and only showed up again to say "fuck you Zeus" with zero build-up or implication that she had a change of heart. Like imagine if we actually saw her leaking info back to Zeus but then also getting closer to Hera on a personal level and realizing that she didn't want to keep snitching on her. it would have also made the 'big reveal' of Hera kissing Echo a lot more impactful because then they would have had an actual story arc.

4.) Persephone's character development into becoming the Dread Queen. Right now the story wants us to think that Persephone is somehow "better than ever" despite the fact that her version of the "Dread Queen" is being an absolute Karen. But think of how it could have been if her character de-evolution was the point, to show how Hades had corrupted her. Or if they were meant to be actual shitty people and not shitty people that the narrative was trying to convince us were good.

5.) Hades' and Minthe's relationship. It goes without saying that Minthe was wrong to turn to physical violence, but I'll die on the hill that Minthe wasn't being treated fairly by Hades, either. Those three flashback episodes in S2 leading up to Minthe getting turned into a plant were such a missed opportunity to showcase how Minthe became as bitter as she did towards Hades and what their relationship was actually like in the beginning (and why they liked each other in the first place which they very clearly did) but instead it just dragged its heels because obv Rachel didn't want people empathizing with Minthe.

6.) Ares being used as a tool for war by Zeus. It's clear being sent off to these wars is taking its toll on him and it's created a steep divide within the family, especially concerning how protective Ares is of Hera esp when it comes to how Zeus treats her.

7.) The Aphrodite / Hephaestus plotline. Good god I have no idea what the thought process was behind this one, some of the myths she kinda got away with flipping but this was the one that made the least sense to flip. There was so much potential there that was squandered, a lot of it at the expense of Aphrodite and Ares as traditionally powerful and respected gods.

8.) Hades' alcoholism. Minthe was right, simply falling for Persephone and dropping the cigars and brandy to make himself look better for her doesn't make him a changed person. If the alcoholism was linked to his trauma, why didn't we explore that more? Why couldn't we have seen him actually pursue proper recovery and have it not just be "I'm hot for the 19 year old girl but if I'm drinking constantly that'll make me look bad so I'm just gonna put on the best fake persona I can to make her fall in love with me" instead of actually getting to the root of his issues?

9.) The SA plotline. As much as I talk about how shitty it is, I have zero issue with the original depiction of it, I think it was very accurate especially when it comes to coercion. A lot of people assume SA has to be violent, kicking and screaming, begging for help, but coercive assault is often a lot quieter and more about manipulation which that scene nailed in depicting. It's just everything after that that feels completely misfired and more so for the purpose of making Hades look like a better person simply by comparing him to Apollo on the basis of "he never assaulted Persephone!" and it drives me nuts.

10.) Demeter's winter. In the most recent FP episode, while discussing it with pals, all I could really say was, "This was supposed to be a retelling of the Abduction of Persephone". And Demeter's winter is a core part of that story, one of its biggest purposes in Greek culture was using the myths to explain the creation of the seasons. Despite this being a "retelling" of the Abduction of Persephone / Hymn to Demeter, one of the most important characters in the entire myth has been reduced to, at worst, a Mother Gothel Disney villain, and at best, a pointless NPC.

#ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical

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pumpkinbxtch · 6 months

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good morning, a request please apollo/lestrange x reader how percy and poseidon react, if apollo asks the reader to marry him (apollo found his definitive soulmate in the reader)

.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ “beach proposal”

— apollo/lester x fem!daughter of poseidon!reader

summary: Apollo don't needs any other proof to know that you are the definitive love of his life. Hard thing to say like a god. Now he will ask for your hand but not before announcing himself to your father and your brother, Percy Jackson.

warnings: none, i think. yep, still using swear words.

A/N: goood morning (it's late at night) first things first, thank you for share me your cute desires, second, yes i will and here you have. enjoy, please. forgive me if it's not worthy of you.

- From the other side of the milky way, María 🩵

His immortal heart was beating so fast that he thought he could die (reallu, he definitely already knew how it felt)

He kept his eyes fixed on the sun from Long Island Sound. The golden hour illuminated the water and the sweet aroma of strawberries invaded his lungs; the strawberries from camp half-blood. He had never felt this anxious and at peace at the same time.

He had been through so much, he had waited so much, he had wished for so much, but, above all, he loved you so much…

Now he could see everything even more clearly.

The breeze rustled his brown and golden hair.

He closed his eyes, said a blessing and gave thanks. He gave thanks for his journey as a mortal, he gave thanks because he did not allow himself to forget the beauty of being human and because love blessed him when he saw you.

That is, when he actually saw you.

Being a god, you can be everywhere at the same time, but you lose your sense of appreciation for everything that exists. When you're human, uhm no.

From that day on, life afterward was eleven times more colorful, beautiful and full of meaning because you also saw him. I mean, yes. Apollo is a god, who wouldn't see that? But at that moment it was Lester. If before he had no regrets, now even less.

“You'll end up forgetting her, she's just another mortal” They said. “Gods, now she's really in trouble,” the campers said the first few days.

“Another whim? Make sure she doesn't end up so bad this time,” Zeus, his father, reprimanded him.

The small waves broke gently on the shore, and he walked so close to it that his feet were slightly sunk in the wet sand.

—Hey, Apollo!

The named turned slowly, and his heartbeat accelerated even more.

Percy Jackson.

The young man stumbled forward in the sand. He took off his converse, threw them away with a curse, and ran towards him.

—Why did you call me to come here?

His legs began to shake.

— Percy, I…

— Wait — the black-haired raised his hand — And my sister?

He looked at Percy, his brow furrowed and sea-colored eyes examining him from head to toe as if he were searching for clues of some crime in his clothes. Apollo couldn't help but smile.

—In the camp, greeting everyone. She hasn't been here in a while.

The boy noded. The sand splattered from his ankles was washed away by a small wave.

—Neither do I, — said the son of Poseidon, with a certain nostalgia in his voice.

Poseidon…

—But, —Percy searched the god's eyes. Always insightful — We're all in New Rome now. Why bring her first and then call only me?

Apollo reached out and took Percy's hand. All in a slow and careful way. He thought that any rude move and Percy would have an outburst for how close he was treating him. But, to his surprise, it was not like that.

The green eyes admired him with slight confusion, and they walked together into the waters.

To Apollo, every step felt solemn and warm. His heart could feel a spark of joy, but his stomach was clenching with uncertainty.

When the water reached both of their thighs, cut the steps off. The god raised his hand without letting go of Percy, and he felt a kind of current run through his spine.

Percy had never been so quiet since… Well, ever. But apparently the discretion with which he was handling himself helped him keep the attention of the demigod.

Then, a whirlpool emerged from the waters, and Percy's eyes widened.

— Father?

The sea god stabbed his trident into the sand, reaffirming his position in the water. Apollo let go of the young man's hand and made a small bow, something that did not inspire good news in Poseidon.

He looked at his son and then at the sun god.

— Have you called me?

Percy pointed at Apollo.

— He called US.

Apollo's insides seemed to tangle with each other, almost making him vomit. Apollo gently pushed Percy so that he stood next to his father and looked at them nervously.

Poseidon pressed down on the trident and cleared his throat.

— my daughter, Apollo?

—She's in the camp! —Percy rushed to say, earning a silent scolding from his father.

Apollo bowed briefly in respect. Poseidon narrowed his eyes.

— That's true.

— and why isn't she here?

Percy looked at his father and imitated his action of searching Apollo carefully, again. as if he had committed something unforgivable.

The god paused and extended his hand towards both of them, a small golden light shining together at dusk. When the light died out, he revealed a small chest lying in his palm.

Percy looked at him in confusion, completely unnoticed, but Poseidon gritted his teeth.

— I have found in her, what I have longed for since my existence.

Percy gasped, and his mood made a small whirlwind rise around him.

— No! —he shouted.

Apollo calmed his breathing, trying to stay calm.

— I had never met someone like her.

— No! Lie! —Percy pointed at him with eyes full of anger, or that was fear?— It's one thing for you to be lovebirds, but—

—Son of mine…

— is MY sister!— Percy's chest expanded in such a way that Apollo feared for his ribs, he took a step and knelt, bowing his head.

Poseidon would have imagined that such a show of respect would be directed towards him, but no, it was towards Percy.

how could it not be? Apollo knew that the gods were ignoring their responsibilities as parents. He knew that the most important person for you was the one who had taken care of your back in all those adventures, just as you took care of his, it was him, was your brother.

—She was by my side in my time as a human. She has shown me what love is.— Apollo looked up pleadingly.

—And now you just want to take her away, why?

— I won't take her anywhere, I want to take her as my wife.

— TAKE HER-

— Percy — Poseidon's voice vibrated through the waters, Apollo, still kneeling, gave him a passive but firm look.

The sun god rose and stood in front of the two men.

— Poseidon, Percy…

The youngest clenched his fists and a few small tears appeared in his eyes.

—Actually, she has the last word. I just wanted you guys to be… present.

Both Percy, Poseidon and even Apollo knew that very well. Especially Apollo, what would he do if you said no? He'd probably cry for eons (literally) yet he couldn't stop craving the approval of your brother and your…father.

Then Percy's eyes traveled to his back and he opened his mouth slightly. He felt the greatest chills a god could feel, then he turned.

Your silhouette looming over the coast, bright and full of life. Your eyes lit up when you saw those three gathered together.

Before addressing you, Apollo gave them a look. The three approached the shore, they gave Apollo enough space. They would see you from there, where the water surrounded their ankles.

— my dear… — Apollo said sweetly, trotting towards you and taking your hands.

You were confused. Your father, Percy, why didn't you travel together if he came too? Your eyes looked at your sweet Apollo. His current form was the mix of “old” Apollo with Lester.

As soon as he reached your side, you took his hand.

— What's going on? Are you already in trouble? —You asked with a raised eyebrow and a sideways smile.

Apollo smiled and kissed your knuckles without taking his eyes off you.

—Or I'll be.

You laughed, that melodious laugh. He definitely didn't want to be without you.

— you'll be? because...? — You were confused, your hand still hooked on Apollo's. You looked at your father who smiled calmly and then at Percy, who was staring at you; He only made that expression when he was terrified of something.

You turned your gaze to Apollo, now a little more worried.

— Love?

— My beloved — Apollo whispered, just for you. Without letting go, he got down on one knee and the velvet chest from before appeared. You held your breath.

The waters stirred.

— There is no poem, song, melody, or haiku that can describe the feelings you make me feel. You are what I always wanted, dreamed and desired. — Apollo opened the small box, revealing a ring; Instead of a precious stone, a small pearl was placed on the ring with two laurel leaves made of gold surrounding it. A clear representation of both. — Today I ask you to let me be your husband because it is me who is given the honor of being the owner of your affection. I promise to take care of it and treasure it.

Your eyes filled with tears, and you knelt down to your boyfriend's height.

— I would like to — The mass of water shook the banks with more force.

A few meters away, Percy, your brother, remained standing, no matter how much the water tried to knock him down. A smile formed on his lips and the first tear ran down his cheek.

Poseidon took his son's shoulder, and they walked towards you.

You looked at your father, who smiled gently at you and then gave Apollo a stern look.

— At sea.

— On Olympus — Apollo said immediately, determined to win. You raised your eyebrow. Were they fighting over the wedding location?

— The sea

— Olympus

— In the ocean

— Delphi

— Enough! — You snorted and looked disapprovingly at both gods.

Your brother was still silent, certainly not usual. You let go of Apollo and took both of Percy's hands.

Your gaze was shining, that made him feel bad for wanting to shake you and wanting to change your mind.

— You know he's not who he once was, Percy— you whispered.

— I know…

— You even said you liked him, brother

— Shhh — the black-haired covered his sister's mouth — if he listens, won't get over it in years

— I heard — Apollo said between giggles.

Percy pursed his lips.

—Listen, if you do anything to her, I WILL KILL YOU, APOLLO!

—Percy! —His sister shouted.

— I'm going to kill you, I won't forgive you, I KNOW A TITAN-

Poseidon opened his eyes, his sister grabbed him by the neck.

—PERCY! — they both shouted.

Apollo smiled and hugged him.

Poseidon couldn't take it anymore and he was already gone. He promised to have a talk with Apollo.

Percy remained thoughtful, the sun god still hanging around his neck.

—Does that mean you will be Will's stepmother? —He laughed out loud — can't wait to tell Nico.

You and Apollo looked at each other, silently reaching a mutual agreement.

— I think we keep this information for a while.

Percy furrowed his eyebrows and put a hand on his hip. —With those SPIES FROM THERE, I don't think so.

Laughter was heard in the bushes, and around five campers ran when they were discovered.

— Children of Aphrodite. — Percy said, sure of himself — tomorrow, when we get to Camp Jupiter, all they will know.

You shook your head in amusement.

— Oh, brother. What will become of you when comes the day and tell you that I am expecting a child?

Apollo choked on his own saliva and Percy on his bile. At least you had the last laugh.

#maría's shared dreams☆｡ﾟ✧#lester papadopoulos #lester x reader #lester x you #apollo x reader #pjo hoo toa #percy jackson

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