#honestly the list could go on

[billycorn]

Imagining the PMD Partners as frustrated pet-owners trying so hard to care for their humans is hilarious to me.

Like, Hero is great and all, but they're so dumb. Partner is at their wits end and doesn't know what to do. Turns out, they're not the first person to feel that way!

The various partners throughout the years have written journals and compared notes, resulting in: How to care for your human - The struggle of Partners everywhere.

And it's just filled with nonsense like -

Humans don't have survival instincts. You are their impulse control.

Don't let your human pat every stranger they come across!

How to trick your human into going to the vet!

Teaching humans about hygiene.

How to keep your human happy (results may differ depending on the human)

Teaching your human how to control their fire/electricity/etc.

What to do if your human won't eat.

Teaching your human about their species behaviour (e.g. sunbathing, moulting, etc.)

Make sure your human gets regular exercise.

How to create an enriching environment for your human.

So, you're human is an eldritch horror?

What to do if your human is Gen Z

[tortureandtickles]

things that fluster the god damn fuck out of me 🫠

having to hear all the reasons about why someone wants to tickle you, and cute you are while being tickled

BEING!!! TICKLED!!! IN!!! PUBLIC!!!

“behave”

being tied around the ler for a session (CANNOT GET OVER THIS ONE)

gang tickling while one ler is being soft and sweet, and the other is being a complete SADIST

BEING CALLED BABYGIRL

swearing during a session!!!!

being chased around before eventually being caught and tickled

the ler pinning you down but you’re too weak to get out of it 😭😭

blindfolds, gags, noise cancelling headphones, bicep restraints

when someone reminds me how much i love the hairbrush even though i can’t handle it 😭😭

“you’re in so much fucking trouble”

being so mean to me that i have no choice but to do whatever the fuck you say 🥰🥰🥰

[sixteenthchapel]

just a little thought about what sort of names these guys use to refer to this poor priest. well at least one of them is respectful.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Feel like making people miserable today. Anyways, here's Gon experiencing like. Textbook symptoms of trauma in the CAA, in case there was any lingering doubt about this or anything:

Initial denial that the experience happened or was traumatic

[ID: A screenshot from episode 85 of HxH 2011. Gon, eyes bright and with a smile, says "Kite is alive!" End ID.]

Flashbacks

[ID: Two screenshots from episode 95, and a third from episode 110. In the first, Kite's arm is shown in the foreground, bleeding and blurred. In the second, a close of Pitou's wide eyes, looking animalistic. In the last, puppet Kite's mangled and scarred face stares emptily ahead - the scene is greyed out. End ID.]

Intense distress at real or symbolic reminders of the trauma

[ID: Two screenshots from episode 116. In the first, Gon's fist can be seen in the foreground, with Pitou shielding an unconscious Komugi just barely seen. The narrator says "The girl lying before them brought back". In the second, Komugi has a medical respirator on. The narrator continues "images of a broken Kite to Gon's mind". End ID.]

Physical sensations such as pain, sweating, nausea or trembling

[ID: A screenshot from episode 116. Gon's fists slam into the ground as he says "That isn't fair...". Sweat drips down his arms. End ID.]

Extreme alertness/hypervigilance

[ID: A screenshot from episode 116. Part of Pitou can be seen in the foreground as Gon stares at them intensely, crouched on the ground with his arm resting on his knee, obscuring his lower face. End ID.]

Angry outbursts or other extreme behaviour

[ID: Two screenshots, one from episode 116, and the other from episode 127. In the first, Gon shouts "Is something wrong with you?!" as his face contorts with rage. His aura floats black around him. In the second, Gon, his face shadowed eerily with thin lines, says "The next time you try to delay me, I'll kill her." End ID.]

Feeling like you have to keep busy

[ID: A screenshot from episode 94. A close up of Gon's face from the side as he says "I want to focus on my training." End ID.]

Doing things that are reckless and self-destructive

[ID: Three screenshots, one from episode 95 and the other two from episode 131. The first is stylized as a black outline of Gon's figure over a background like parchment or a projector - he's been hit in the face and sent to the right from the force of the blow. The second is a close up of Gon's face, almost completely shadowed, with intense and vacant eyes - he says "I don't care". The third continues with a close up of his eye filling with darkness - "if this is the end..." End ID.]

Feeling like nobody understands ("since it means nothing to you")

[ID: A screenshot from episode 116. In a whitish-room with a crack on the wall between them, Gon stands ahead of Killua, facing away from him. They are both in shadow. End ID.]

Ignoring offers of help and shutting out loved ones... poor Killua :(

[ID: A screenshot from episode 136. A spotlight on both Killua, in the foreground, and Gon, walking away from him in the background. Killua thinks "I wanted you to ask for my help in defeating Pitou!" End ID.]

Self-loathing, self-punishment, and lack of self regard

[ID: Three screenshots, two from episode 110 and the third from episode 131. The first is a close up of Gon's face over Morel asking "When would you try to hurt yourself?" The second is a continuation. Morel looks down at Gon who is facing away from the camera as Gon replies "When I couldn't forgive myself." In the last, adult Gon, staring ahead, is animated in black and white with the only colour being the blood from the stump of his right arm. His left hand grips his shoulder. End ID.]

Blaming yourself for what happened

[ID: Two screenshots, one from episode 95 and the other from episode 130. In the first, Gon hugs puppet Kite around his waist. In the second, Gon stares blankly ahead with tears streaming down his face as he thinks "I killed Kite." End ID.]

Overwhelming feelings of anger, sadness, guilt, and shame

[mechanismslorearchive]

to the person who just sent the ask calling me a strange esoteric god of knowledge (i am keeping the ask as a pet): thanks its my uber autism powers

[qprstobin]

Tommy Hagan I love youuuuuuu people who call you ugly just jealous that you got to press Steve against a car and be horny about it and they didn't

[novelconcepts]

Another year, another absurd amount of books read (296, because if I wasn't reading or writing this year, my brain was on fire). I was asked again for my top books of the year, so here we go: 2023's top 10, in no particular order.

This was the first book I read of the year--literally, vacated the hangout with my wife and sibling-in-laws to sit on their couch upstairs and eat through it. Do you love The Fall of the House of Usher, but wish for a nonbinary protagonist and a lot more mushrooms? This is the book for you! (T. Kingfisher is fucking rad, I made a concerted effort to only list ONE of her books on here, but honorable mention goes to The Twisted Ones for fucking me upppp.)

A gay, post-apocolyptic Pinocchio retelling involving copious robots, found family elements, and a cool-ass treehouse. Klune always hits for me with his unrepentant queer family dynamics and sense of humor. Honorable mention to the first two in the Green Creek series (although that's got a lot more...adult elements in among the werewolves, you've been warned).

I thiiiink I found this through The Homo Schedule podcast (PSA: if you missed out on Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson doing a podcast together, now you know better), and it wrecked my shit. Tons of trigger warnings, as this is a memoir about abuse within a queer relationship, but it's so beautifully written. I personally suggest listening to the audiobook first, then standing anxiously behind someone at a book warehouse sale, hoping they'll set down the only paperback copy so you can swipe it.

A fantastical-historical reimagining in which the KKK is filled with literal monsters, and Black women are resistance fighters armed to take them out. Visceral and intense, and truly an excellent horror story.

Just. Such a soft time travel story about a daughter and her father and cherishing the time you get with loved ones. I was thoroughly unprepared for how lovely I found this one. It's very kind.

Spooky house, take-no-shit redhead, protective sibling elements, bisexual recluse with a sword who really just needs a nap. I haven't found a Harrow book yet I haven't slapped five stars on. She's so good at character and atmosphere, and I'm always surprised at how fast her stories race by.

The whole Daevabad trilogy (of which this is the first book) is just magical. A girl from the mortal world finds herself embroiled with the centuries-long prejudices and wars of djinn in a fantastical city. It's one of the rare stories of its kind that does have a love triangle, but doesn't feel like a love triangle; it's far less interested in the insufferable "who gets picked" than it is in the actual horrors these people are both perpetrating and coping with. It's an intoxicating ride.

Fuck You, TERFS: the book. Given that fact, there's obviously quite a lot of transphobia to deal with, but it's very clear that those people are wrong, and it's a super-engaging (and super-oh-god-what-comes-next) witchy time populated with queer, protective, interesting characters I'm excited to see again in the follow-up.

Have you ever wanted a haunted house story with visceral imagery and a rather lovely twist? Gailey has you covered. As much as I enjoyed The Echo Wife, I think I actually loved this one more, and it makes me so excited to see what else they've got up their sleeve.

One of my final reads for the year, when I was just churning through hardcovers at the speed of sound. I love this book. I recognize it won't be for everyone, but it takes so much of what I love about IT (one of my all-time favorite books, despite its flaws) and twists it through the lens of an author who escaped the Mormon church. It's horrific, it's fantastically abstract in places, it explores childhood and memory, imagination and abuse, and almost every character is queer. It's a great "I simply cannot sleep until I've finished" read.

[izzyspussy]

okay so for the other thing i said in the tags hwqoghks. the way mickey punches that guy so hard he flips over. absolutely unnecessary btw.

but just as importantly. the way ian laughs at that. and the way he grins to himself when the guy insults him because he knows mickey's gonna be his black knight about it lmao.

[gayvampyr]

forgot for a second that oscillopsia is in my brain and not external and i almost tried to record what it looks like to me to show people what i mean

[bonkalore]

Look. I just want that good big brother Jayce content so I can cry over it.

[crybaby-bkg]

cw: mention of previous abuse, dad Dabi, mom reader, mention of childbirth, angst

new dad touya that doesn’t know how to deal with his son. he’s growing too fast and his smiles are so big, but he’s still not sure how to just be with him.

touya isn’t abusive in the slightest, not like his shit for brains dad. he can acknowledge, after you’ve drilled it into his head on cold nights where you had to hold his quivering cheeks in your hand, that he’s better. that he’s trying. that he’s a great dad.

he doesn’t really believe it. it’s hard to believe that he’s a great dad when his son, still covered in that fresh newborn smell, stares up at him with matching azure blue eyes, the little shit, and he finds it hard to smile back. it’d be easier to smile back if he could guarantee a life with no trauma, with the perfect pair of parents, that he’d love him as much as his tiny little face deserved.

touya can still hear the labor and delivery nurse tell him that he must’ve gotten on your nerves for the baby to look so much like him, and that they’ve never seen a baby that fresh out the womb smile so big at their dad. he hands the little bundle back to you, and glares at the nurse who hands him a tissue. he takes it anyway.

touya loves his son. so goddamn much that it hurts, but, he doesn’t know how to be a dad. and he knows that you don’t know how to be a mom either, that it’s a learning process for the both of you. but he’s so scared—he’s terrified that he’ll fuck up this innocent brat with his ruin. with his scars and history and the want to better but never knowing how to just be.

so he leaves. it’s the day after your sons first birthday that you celebrated together in your home.

you thought everything was okay, that he was starting to get the hang of being a dad. he did everything right, why couldn’t he stay? he sat on the floor with your son and changed his diaper and made him giggle those addicting baby giggles? he carried your son everywhere whenever he cried after being sat down without a single complaint? he helped him open his birthday presents? he didn’t smash the cake in his face, only swiped a little icing on his sons nose to hear that addicting baby giggle? he held your son like he could never let him go?

how could he just go like this? you thought he was finally learning and accepting how to be a dad? what happened?

[little-mouse-adventures]

A Timeline of Events in the Artemis Fowl Series

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

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

An Analysis of the Timelines in the Artemis Fowl Series

A Brief Introduction

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

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

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

The Basics of The Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time Marches On: The 20th Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[hemali-smh]

things i will absolutely never tire of in aziracrow (ineffable husbands - good omens) fics, a list:

crowley being so very down bad

'angel'

'my dear boy'

casual corporation changes (fem crowley/azi have my HEART)

kissing with 'reverence' ✨✨

aziraphale speaking in the most endearing olde english

crowley cursing satan internally over aziraphale's everything

both of these idiots knowing their corporations don't need to breathe but feeling like they can't because of something the other has done

crowley snaking out

crowley slurring his words together like 'lemme' and 's'okay' and 'ma'demon'

the bentley playing music that gets in crowley's feels and not stopping even when he asks her to

'shuddup'

crowley wanting to be absolutely enveloped in aziraphale like the cold-blooded serpent he is (azi is his cozy sun warmed rock actually)

freddy mercury

aziraphales 'perfectly manicured hands'

azi absolutely drowning in crowleys amber yellow eyes

all of crowleys glorious fits

'angelic thighs'

crowley napping on aziraphale

wings

'nkg' but not in ways that rip my heart out

[koskela-knights]

Imagine if the AW2 fandom had blown up

Iike fandoms in the early 2000s did or even 2010s when the first game actually came out.

Just imagine the kind of music videos we could've gotten

Bring Me To Life ALAN WAKE FAN VIDEO

Alan x Alice || Everytime We Touch Fan MV

Mr Scratch x Alan YAOI BL

ScratchWake || Malchik Gay NSFW!

What Hurts The Most - Jaakko RIP Tribute

For Your Entertainment - Mr Scratch + bonus yaoiii

HOT AW BOYS 18+ Sexy Naughty Bitchy

Rose/Alan Rarepair! Diary of Rose

Jaakko and Ilmo - Promise of lifetime

Alan & Barry are best friends! (Toy-Box Best Friend)

Mister Scratch Tribute- MONSTER

Ilkka Villi is Mr Wonderful

[lilyoffandoms]

Detective Emma Rose

Part of an art/fic exchange with the loveliest @thosehallowedhalls (see the absolutely stellar fic she wrote for my Trystan x Gabriel here!!! I’m totally normal about the fic I promise and definitely wont be reblogging it every hour on the hour 🤫).

My Art ish Tag: @storyofmychoices @aallotarenunelma

[moe-broey]

Got any body type/anatomy thoughts? FEH has very little in the way of body type variation and I personally like reading that as an open invitation to get silly with it.

OKAOKAYOKAY!!!!!!!! I MIGHT. Have gathered everything.... but I have SOOOOOOO MANY THOUGHTS ON THIS bc you're absolutely right!!!!! It's like a canvas to me...

I have a few directions I take with it! My main one, is to extrapolate features that may be present in the canon design. Taking them Further. I'm so sorry to do this but he is the epitome of this for me, GUSTAV JUMPSCARE 😨😨😨😨😰😰😰

But this is what I mean! I see canon Gustav has a full beard, is big and muscular. Okay. In my mind's eye, that translates to Big Hefty Heavyset type of muscular builds that are more realistic than the 6 pack bulging muscles (that require a lot of prep/dehydration to Look Like That). Also, hairy. Which is why, to fully demonstrate this, he's.... I don't know what he's doing here. This was psychologically taxing on me, but then I reminded myself I Am An Artist and I Hate America. 🫡🧍

Sometimes, if a character fits a certain archetype, I might put a few personal touches into them... mom/mom-like characters who REALLY embody the Doting Caretaker archetype often get the same body type as my own mother. A little honorary thing... though I do wanna be careful as to not restrict a specific body type (esp fat bodies) to specifically stereotypes (aka "mom bod"). Also, a comparison to Sharena! They do share similarities! Henriette's face looks familiar though... and not quite in the way Sharena's does.

Another focal reason I started off w Gustav though, is the second biggest thing I'm Always Thinking About when it comes to character's body types. Which is, Telling A Story.

I've had.... SO many oddly specific hcs about Alfonse...... for So Long..... one of them that's always in the back of my mind is him being at different weights during specific periods of his life. That, for the majority of it/esp his youth, he was almost waifish. He only starts looking healthier when he's out from under his parents' (COUGH gustavCOUGH) thumb (but let's be real, Henriette can be EXTREMELY stressful too... opposite end of the spectrum about it).

Another example of Telling A Story though. Sometimes I trans characters just for funsies and it has no real bearing on anything. OTHER times... my trans headcanons are integral to specific lore beats in my elaborate inner world. ENTER. BRUNO

These are actually from a bit ago I was gonna hold off on posting til I felt I had everything together, BUT. BUT. It's extremely relevant!

In the beginning, I often asked myself, "Why doesn't ANY of the Askr trio recognize Bruno as Zacharias?" MY ANSWER. Is that he looked quite different!!!! In tandem with my silly hcs for him, I feel that Bruno is someone who must care a lot about his appearance. About Looking masculine. I think he's been out as a man by the time he joins the Order, but is early on in his transition (by whatever means that manifests in w ✨ Magic ✨ and shit!!). I think he passes, but definitely Looked Different. Give him More Muscle and a haircut and an even more noticeable voice drop and top surgery he dramatically shows off at every opportunity and a mask that conceals his big beautiful brown eyes with fluttery soft eyelashes and like. Who Is That Mysterious Man...... in that Damnable Mask.........

Okay. Let's back up a minute. What do you mean Lif got mysteriously taller. What does that even mean. I can grant him gaining more weight/muscle, but, Taller???? At his grown up age....?? Well.

Hel's memory of the mortals she claims isn't so good, apparently.... (Eir obviously can't tell anything by the nearly all rotted away bones, but the scraggly long hair is giving her pause...) (also is it the King Hel is thinking of in the first place....? Eir isn't going to ask.)

At this point, I definitely could feel myself getting distracted and decided to just art dump a handful of charas I have strong visions for.

Here, you also see The Secret Third Option of body type design philosophy -- which is. If the design itself isn't giving me a lot to work with. I just do my own thang LMFAOOO 😅 I think Anna def fell into that category for me... where a lot of the story/lore I added for her was purely hc territory, and I went from there. She's broad, tall, muscular, top heavy, but still kinda thin and knobby. Aerodynamic, perhaps....

Sometimes, characters are a combination of these things though... like Mirabilis definitely being a combo of qualities, having personal touches, storytelling elements to her, and doing my own thing for funsies! More about the fairies overall -- I think they all ended up having their basic needs met and were even granted dreams/desires for themselves after becoming Alfar (like becoming exactly as you see yourself, or how you wish to be... which unfortunately only goes so far, can't fully undo the damage done to Mira, but. It's free transition for Triandra, is what I'm getting at LMFAOOO). Which is why each of them did fill out more to varying degrees (again, Mira suffering the most long-term effects from her mortal life, and Triandra, already having an idea/concept of herself at the age she drank the nectar, being able to transition). I have specific human design concepts for them too, that look A Bit different than their fairy designs.... but. I'm still working on that 🧍

Eir is def a storytelling one. When it comes to Alfonse's scrawniness, he was just stressed out so bad it took a physical toll. I don't think there was ever any food restriction (or, if there was, it was a rare occasion/used as a punishment). For Eir, I think something like that would make sense for her though.... lack of access, and frequent meticulously purposeful elaborate abuse from Hel. Eir still looks like you could break her in half, but she does look a lot healthier since her stay in Askr. Another note, though I ran out of space... maybe Ymir looks more like Eir than Hel does. I wonder why that could be....

AND. BACK TO THE START. Extrapolating on canon design elements! If you're going to present me a female chara with big honking bazongas, I'm going to make her fat. Or at very least, Carry Some Weight, like Plumeria does (in that full figured curvy way!). And ESP. ESPPPPPP FOR SEIDR AND GULLVEIG. Where Gullveig has Various Lines about "Oh... I don't know how well these old clothes fit me anymore..." (paraphrasing/off memory I feel like she says something like this Multiple Times). Like. Okay. Well I took that personally. I also just like the idea of her changing over time... always having a chubbier build, but it just keeps going as she keeps growing and changing.

In putting this into words, I'm finding a common thread seems to be weight gain as a sign that someone is being taken care of... for Gullveig, I think it's just a purely neutral change over the course of her life. In Lif's case....... some sort of mix up occurred. I can see Alfonse taking more after Gustav naturally, too, as he gets older though!

One final thought is just, is there a fun little detail I can include? Like giving Seidr and the Seidrs a snake-like face? Doubling as something so cutes and something Intimidating? IT WILL BE DONE. Also Need to get to coloring an illust of Gullveig one day..... the golden stretch marks are soooo cool in my mind's eye...... also just. One Million Piercings. Also as characterization/storytelling. A lack thereof is storytelling, as well.... to me..... ALSO!!!!! SHAPE LANGUAGE!!!!!! I'M SUCH A SHAPE LANGUAGE BITCH!!!!!!!!!

I HOPE. THIS ANSWER FINDS YOU WELL 🫡