#his father and then GOING OFF TO SPACE in a rocket powered by peddling like you're on a bike. oh also butler is there. because artemis

[orangerosebush]

“Do you remember the hall of portraits in Fowl Manor?”

Myles presumed this was rhetorical and did not answer.

“Everyone on the left side of that hall died because of the fairies. Fowl and fairy, friends forever. That’s our secret motto, right? Well, it cost us. My own brother. My grandmother. Two uncles. My stepsister gave her own life for a squadron of LEP paratroopers. My mother lost an eye. I lost a leg.”

“The Fowl Twins Deny All Charges.” by Eoin Colfer

See, I'm torn on how to deal with this frankly blink-and-you-miss-it unhinged piece of (what I've taken to calling) nouveau-canon. In TFT2, Fowl Sr. makes the claim that the residual magic on the Fowl Estate caused a certain predisposition towards discovering magic, and that the Fowls have, in fact, been helping keep the existence of the People secret throughout the ages — which is how all the members of the Fowl family whom he lists off died. Or something.

On one hand, it's a new series, we need conflict, etc, etc. This could a weird retcon of the original series' canon, which is pretty explicit about the fact that even if the magical residue has predisposed the Fowls towards a belief in the supernatural (which even culminated in Fowl. Sr. soooort of kidnapping a dwarf when he was younger, before being swiftly mindwiped), Artemis is the only one who has had the kind of consistent and sustained contact with the People that could be called an alliance. Like, we can say that perhaps Fowl Sr.'s claim of the Fowls helping the People maintain their hidden existence is true as of the TFT series, but in terms of what is canon in the first eight books, the idea of any form of "Fowl and fairy" existing pre-Artemis is pretty sans evidence.

On the other hand, it's very possible to read this as Fowl Sr. being deeply, deeply deluded about the Fowls' relationship to magic. Not even in the sense that he is lying, nor that he is obstinately choosing to ignore reality so as to hold these beliefs. He mentions:

“I didn’t remember any of [the history I just mentioned regarding Fowls and the People], because they mind-wiped me years ago, but Artemis stimulated my hippocampus before he left. And I realized that the fairies were attracted to us because of the residual magic in the Fowl estate.”

Like. "Stimulated [his] hippocampus"? Moreover, the fact that he claims that he came to this realization after his "hippocampus stimulation", which is suggestive of him creating this worldview that posits the People have been responsible for nearly every tragedy that befell the Fowls in his lifetime (a brother that died! a stepsister that died! both people we have never heard about!), and then having started to alter (unconsciously, perhaps) those aforementioned tragedies to fit into that new ideology. I mean, wouldn't the People have remembered if the 12-year-old holding the People hostage for a ton of gold was somehow related to a human woman who "gave her life for a squadron of LEP paratroopers"? That's exclusively going off the assumption that the stepsister example is true — if the Fowls had since time immemorial been aiding the People, then the People's perception of humans in general would have been radically different. No matter how you cut it, the narrative math does not, will not, can not add up.

The lack of basis in reality the recollection Fowl Sr. has of events is only further highlighted by him claiming he "lost a leg" because of the fairies — and even Myles calls him out on the fact that if anything, he only lost a leg because the People were willing to help save him.

So... idk. Personally, I lean towards the second reading (i.e. that something went really, really wrong when Artemis — and God knows why he would agree to this — consented to perform electroshock/deep brain stimulation on Fowl Sr, who was worried about missing memories from past potential mindwipes).

However, is that the intended reading? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ only time will tell, I guess!

[orangerosebush]

something something, susan sontag's notes on camp, something something re: artemis performing ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY on his father and then GOING OFF TO SPACE in a rocket which is powered by peddling like you're on a bike. oh also butler is there. because artemis can't sustain the sort of fitness level required to peddle off into the stars. There do not exist words sufficient to describe how funny the new series canon is.