#i thought i'd write it down

[calamitoustide]

Lily, oh Lily I just loathe you lately...

microfic - jegulily/regulily - 1.7k

  It started with a kiss. 

One Regulus wasn’t even included in. He wasn’t even there, he didn’t see it, and yet he replays it in his head almost constantly. It’s the first thought he has in the morning, he carries it with him through lunch. White knuckles braced against the table as he stares longing towards the other side of the hall, his ears ringing and he can’t hear anything anyone is trying to say to him. His friends all make comments but he doesn’t notice them. His mind is too loud, thinking of soft skin and eyes that bite. He forgets his notes, it doesn’t matter, they’re not even there. He lays awake at night unable to close his eyes without thinking, thinking, thinking. 

He should be thinking about James. He should be obsessively counting his every step. It’s how this whole thing started. James is everything, he hung the moon, and every single star in the night sky. He walks around the halls calling out to everyone by name, his smile hung wide across his face. And yes, Regulus thinks of him. He thinks of his sweat covered skin as he skips off to the locker rooms after practice. He thinks of him drunkenly coming up to him, leaning close to his ear to whisper nonsense. Even if he can’t understand it Regulus clings onto every single word. He thinks of how he looks in the morning, a sight Regulus has only seen a handful of times and yet he cherishes it like it’s the world. He thinks of his hair all messed up, and his eyes wide and soft like an infant. He thinks of him stretching out his exhaustion and the little moment his shirt lifts up to reveal what’s underneath. He thinks and he thinks and he thinks, but he’s not looking over at him. He’s looking at her. 

The rumors of James Potter and Lily Evans finally working it out spread like wildfire. It’s embers branching out until there wasn’t a single person who didn’t know about it. Their kiss happened in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, apparently no one was there, but there are always sources. Always whispers. Regulus woke up to a burn to his cheek, and a crackling outside of his window. His friends looked over at him, pity drowning in their eyes, but none of them said anything. None of them knew how. It was Pandora who finally brought him over, holding his hands gently as she broke him the news. He can’t remember his reaction. He just remembers the moment his face dropped, but he wasn’t thinking of him, he was thinking about her. 

He never minded Lily Evans before, he barely gave her a second glance. He saw her sometimes in the library, she always sat alone, pushed in the back. Even in the darkest parts of the castle the sunlight always tended to reach her. It covered her and highlighted every freckle on her face. Her eyes were always soft with contemplation, but Regulus didn’t care for her much. He always heard about James’ crush on her, of course he did, but he never cared. He didn’t think it would go anywhere. He thought to himself Lily Evans was as blind as a person can be for rejecting James. He could never understand it. How could she get James to even so much as look at her and not truly understand what that meant. How much other people would die for him to look at them like that. Resentment climbed in his liver, it overwhelmed him. Before it was a scoff at any remark. It was an eye roll at the stupidity of Lily for thinking James would just be there when she realized how daft she was truly being. 

Though the only stupid person truly was Regulus, for James was there waiting for when Lily finally opened her eyes. He was there to chase after her, like the tail-end of a shooting star. James ran circles around her, watching her like she was everything, like she was his entire world. He held open every single door for her. He’d make himself bleed for an ounce of her attention, and she never never cared. She never cared before now, but Regulus has been here. He’s been here and Lily just walked the epitome of angel dust to smile and beckon James over to her like he’s a dog on a leash she’s holding. 

“Regulus,” Pandora’s voice catches him out of his retched mind. 

“What?” Regulus snaps, not taking his eyes off her. Her with her perfect skin. Her with her perfect everything. 

“You’re going to drill a hole in her head, you know,” She comments. 

Regulus finally releases his gaze, “What are you talking about?” 

It’s just the two of them. Barty and Evan ran off somewhere, and Dorcas well she’s always with Marlene now anyway. Pandora looks over at him softly, her eyes filled with pity, “You don’t have to pretend you’re looking at James when it’s just me.” 

Regulus furrows his eyebrows, shaking his head, “I’m not just looking at her.” 

“You’re looking at both of them?” Pandora suggests. 

“Yeah,” Regulus answers, lies dripping from his mouth. 

Pandora smiles, “James walked away five minutes ago.” 

Regulus head whips aside to find her right. It’s only Lily, laughing at something one of her friends are telling her. She throws her head back like she’s a little kid. Coated in innocence in a kind of nostalgia not many people can reach towards. Sunlight nips at her face as her nose crinkles in a laugh. Her beauty endless, it’s like a knife to Regulus’ skin. Every perfection he finds in her is a scar on him. 

“Regulus?” Pandora calls out again, as if she’s talking to a child. “Is there something you need to tell me?” 

“Like what?” Regulus grumbles, looking back down at his plate, trying to fight the pull to look over at her. It’s like he’s under a spell, he’s certain she’s behind it. She wants him to look at her. She wants for all of this. She’s out to get him. He looks up again. She’s still sitting there. Why is she still there? Shouldn’t she be off chasing after James? Shouldn’t she be at his feet beck and call? Shouldn’t she be giving him the world right now? Why is she still just sitting there? 

Pandora hums, “Nothing.” 

Regulus looks over at her, “What’s your problem?” 

“You’re torturing yourself,” Pandora tells him. 

Regulus hesitates, he opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. In any other world this would be torture. He’s staring off at the girl who’s got the one thing he’s been begging for his entire life. He’s never wanted something as much as he’s wanted James. Looking over at Lily should be torture. It should kill him. It is. It’s the sweetest kind of torture. It’s a twisted lullaby. It’s a stinging on his cheek. 

“Unless,” Pandora starts, “You want to be looking at her.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Regulus says quickly. 

Pandora reaches out to grab his hand,  “I’m gonna hold your hand while I tell you this.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Regulus tries to cut her off but when Pandora gets something in her mind it’s hard to resist it. 

“I did it with James,” Pandora explains quickly. “I’ll do the same now. You’re in love with Lily Evans.” 

“I am not in love with Lily Evans,” Regulus argues. 

Pandora narrows her eyes, “You’re not?” 

“No.” 

“Why are you staring at her?” Pandora asks. 

“She’s with James,” Regulus answers weakly. 

“Why aren’t you watching him then?” Pandora questions. “Do you even know where he is? You used to always know, you used to have his schedule perfect.” 

Regulus shrugs, “I’ve gotten busy.” 

“Right,” Pandora scoffs. “So you wouldn’t mind if I called her over here.” 

“Pan—“ 

Before he can even finish Pandora is raising her hand. Shouting out across the hall, “Hey, Evans!” 

Regulus scrambles for something to hold, to bring Pandora’s hand down and stop her from this, but it doesn’t do any good. Lily’s already looking over, her eyes dazzling in the sun. The rest happens like a dream as she leans over to her friends explaining that she’ll be going. She walks over on clouds and then she’s in front of him. His stomach ties itself together. His mouth opens but nothing comes out. 

“Hey,” Lily says, leaning across the bench to put her hands on the table. Her perfume reaches Regulus’ nose and it’s overwhelming, it’s making him slip back, like he’s in an ocean, drowning in all the waves. 

“Hi,” Pandora replies. 

Both of their gazes go towards him, but Regulus is only looking at her. 

Lily smiles with his silence, he wants to kill her. She looks away and he wants to kill her even more, “You still working on that potion?” 

“You know it,” Pandora tells her. “It’s close to being done now.” 

Regulus doesn’t care what they’re saying. He just watches Lily. He can’t look away. She’s the greatest thing that’s ever existed, and she’s got James Potter wrapped around her finger. Its should be him. 

She doesn’t stay long. Before she leaves she looks back over at Regulus, “Goodbye, Regulus.” 

“Bye,” he forces out, his tongue resting uncomfortably in his mouth. 

She laughs, it’s as soft as fresh daisies and she’s doing him in, “You’re cute,” she says, like it’s nothing, like it’s not eating Regulus whole. “I’ll see you two around.” 

Then she’s gone again. Walking down the hall, her hair blowing behind her like a fucking magazine ad. There can’t be someone that perfect. She’s just a person. She’s nobody. She’s the one James wants. She won his heart over. She’s the one lying beside him. And all Regulus wants is to lie when she lies. Lily Evans is poison and it’s slowly driving Regulus mad. She’s everywhere, like a call of the wind. He’s nothing worshipping at her feet, it makes him uneasy. 

“So,” Pandora breaks the echoing silence. “Not in love.” 

Regulus swallows thickly, his eyes still stuck in the last place she was, even if she’s moved on, “Not in love,” he forces out. 

The ache is endless, and bullets line his skin. A scar for every beauty, for which Lily Evans has infinite. 

[hedgehog-moss]

I was talking with a friend the other day about how I was fascinated with American school life when I was a teen because it seemed so different from how things are in my country (I knew about US high schools thanks to Hollywood, an accurate and trustworthy source) and we talked about which aspects of US schools felt foreign or strange to us and one thing I brought up was, how American teens only seemed to have like 15min for lunch (I had 1h30 here in France), as evidenced by the cafeteria scenes (no one seemed to eat a proper four-course meal? I definitely never saw a separate cheese course), and I was like, I envied a lot of stuff about US schools but not this

... and I went looking in my old diaries to see if I ever wrote about this, and you know what? I was wrong. I did envy their school lunches which, like almost everything about US schools, felt intriguing and different and cool. The reason middle school-me thought American school lunches were superior to French ones is because, since American teens in TV shows only seemed to get like 4 chicken nuggets and a milk carton for lunch, their lunch tray was very light and they could hold it with one hand under it, the other hand in their pocket or holding their bag strap on their shoulder all casual-like. Sometimes there was no tray, even!

I envied these American teenagers for their lunchtime nonchalance. I would have liked to handle lunch in this cool-cat way but my French lunch tray being loaded with 4 different heavy and breakable plates, I had to hold it carefully with both hands. In my view this was unfair as the hindrance of governmental nutrition guidelines made French students look like uptight nerds, unable to strut around the cafeteria with one hand in our pocket like we didn’t care. Same for the absence of lockers in our schools, we had to carry all our books on our back all day like studious turtles whilst the beautiful 25 year old American teens on my television casually leant against their lockers chatting with friends then strolled around school with just a couple of books tucked under their arm like they were in Dead Poets Society. Thank god there was an ocean between us, imagine a French kid entering a US school cafeteria carrying 3 binders and 5 textbooks in their big rucksack and holding their tray with two hands like a complete loser

Note that these comparisons are quite worthless since I don't know what US school life / food is like in the real world (I imagine it varies a lot!)—I just find it funny to re-read old diaries and discover what was important to kid-me. Discussing these little cultural differences gleaned from US TV series, adult!me is like "yeah I remember being intrigued & envious about a lot of things! Not their school lunches though, they didn't look balanced and nutritious"—meanwhile middle school-me, focused on what mattered, was like, imagine what we could be... imagine being able to hold your lunch tray with 1 hand instead of 2 thus accessing a realm of coolness unfathomable to us in our backward country

[bluewolfangel01]

Levi: "I don't understand why you like someone as pathetic as me, I'm not that good at anything other then being a nasty useless otaku, (insert more self degrading here)."

Mc: *blank faced, moving sneakily close to Levi and picks him up bridal style*

Mc: "Snake <3."

Levi: *Stunned silent, he doesn't move for a few moments, then his tail curls around Mc's leg, and leans into their touch.*

Levi: "Y-yeah...."

[kellysketches]

hobie brown!!!! the man that you are!!!!

[msnihilist]

"It's been quite a while since I got to see our counterparts like this, dearest," Anti-Cosmo remarked to Anti-Wanda. He grinned down at the three fairies in the cage beneath them. "Miserable."

"Shoot, it must've been at least twenty years!" Anti-Wanda remarked. "Longer for you two, though, huh?"

Cosmo cradled Peri's head in his lap, keeping him on his side so that he didn't choke if he vomited. Wanda sat next to her boys, rubbing a hand soothingly between Peri's wings, like she used to when he was a baby.

She felt close to tears. Her baby was so sick that she feared he wouldn't make it... And they had their anti-fairy counterparts to mock them through the whole awful ordeal.

"Don't you two have anything better to do?" Wanda snapped at them. "Terrorize someone else for a change! We're plenty miserable without you here."

"Oh, please don't think that we're trying to make you feel worse." Anti-Cosmo shook his head. "It's more like we're here to enjoy the show."

"I even made popcorn!" Saying that, Anti-Wanda procured a bag of popcorn. She held it out for Anti-Cosmo to help himself to a handful.

Wanda clenched her jaw in frustration. The smell of food just made Peri's convulsions worse. She shushed him, trying her best to be comforting as her son dry-heaved.

With shaky fingers, Cosmo brushed Peri's curly hair away from his sweaty forehead. He met Wanda's stare, his eyes tight with concern. "Wanda..." He started, but said nothing more.

What was there to say? What was there to do? They were trapped, and the situation was getting worse by the minute.

As a last, desperate bid for her son, Wanda cast her voice up to the anti-fairies. "Please, can't you at least ask Dev to make a wish? Something small! Peri has magical build-up, and he..." Wanda swallowed, unable to say it. "You don't want the same thing to happen to Irep, do you?"

Anti-Wanda hummed as she pretended to think about it. "Now, correct me if'n I'm wrong, darlin', but that ain't how anti-fairies work, innit?"

Anti-Cosmo adopted a similar look of faux thoughtfulness. "No, you're right, strumpet. I believe that anti-fairies aren't affected by their counterparts deaths, merely by any action which might undo their creation. So our precious child is going to be perfectly fine."

Something inside of Wanda shattered. All she could think was that this wasn't fair; she hadn't had enough time.

"Please..." She tried again anyway, because it was all that she could do. "Please don't let my son die."

Anti-Cosmo laughed. "Enough with the melodrama. I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this. You ought to be used to it. After all..." He adjusted his monocle, lips curling into a vicious smirk. "This isn't the first time you two have lost a son."

His words hit like a slap to the face. Wanda was too stunned to reply — torn between the urge to sob and the burning desire to kill someone.

Not a day went by in the last ten thousand years that Wanda hadn't thought about him. And now she was going to lose her youngest son, too. What had she done to deserve this? Why was fate so cruel?

Why did love always have to end in "goodbye"?

When he didn't receive a response, Anti-Cosmo huffed and turned away. "Look on the bright side — perhaps the loss of a child to bond over will be enough to keep your fragile relationship hanging on for another thousand years or so."

Anti-Wanda giggled, looping her arm through Anti-Cosmo's and leaning on his shoulder. "Give a holler when he's ready to pop, y'all! I love me a good confetti shower."

The two anti-fairies drifted away, cackling together. Wanda felt numb. She was so angry that she had looped right back around to feeling nothing. She was completely calm.

Cosmo reached over and took her hand, entwining their fingers. "What are we going to do?" He asked.

Wanda took a deep breath. She squeezed his hand back, placing her other hand on Peri's head. "Whatever we have to do to protect our son," she promised.

She had failed once already, and once was too much. Not again. Never again.

As long as Wanda still had the strength to flutter her wings, she was going to do everything in her power to defend her family.

AO3 link.

[cake-chad]

Something something Gideon always inevitably wakes up with Kremy on or curled up next to him because being cold-blooded he seeks out the literal furnace sleeping next to him every night.

Frost is usually nearby too, but only if they're sleeping outside and not in beds, he's not cold-blooded but he is a cat, of course he likes to be near a heater too.

And now that I think about it, Torbek would be there too, having gone through what he has and severly underweight, his circulation is terrible and despite having his own layer of fur, he just can't stay warm on his own, so he sleeps sandwiched between Gideon and Hootsie

Just. A whole cuddle puddle of all of them, Gricko curls up next to Hootsie, Twig sleeps under Gideons arm, and when Pigtunias around she acts as a pillow for him

I love cuddle puddles and I love characters who naturally make everyone more comfortable to sleep around them 😭😭

[journey-to-the-attic]

there's a moment in lesson 45 of nightbringer where mc falls off a thing (again?? is this foreshadowing?? i'm going to rule-of-three this and wait to see if it happens again) and satan tries and fails to grab their hand to catch them, but now i'm imagining the same thing happening with satan and ik except he does succeed, but it's her right hand and the prosthetic just POP comes straight off

[blot-squisher]

So the Entity had its favorites on both sides. Dwight, the first proper Survivor, and then Kenneth for a while. At least until Danny came along and started showing off his creative methods of fucking with the Survivors during Trials. Seasoning that fear and despair with that extra helping of good stuff, ya know?

Anyway the main point.

You know on the flip side of that, the Entity had to have a least favorite. Someone it looked at and silently questioned, 'Why the fuck did I pick you up again?' Not outright hate, mind you. Just, like, a mild disinterest. Boredom. A kind of 'ooh shiny new toy annnnnnd I'm over it. Into the back of the closet to collect dust with you' kind of dislike.

Anyway, in this essay I'll go into absolutely no detail or depth on my thought process as to why I think it was Freddy and Quentin.

[empressofmankind]

Did you really think I wasn't going to inflict a dreadful colour scheme on him?

[laughhardrunfastbekindsblog]

Finished the Umbara arc tonight and...

I rewatched this specific shot, like, twelve times 😍😍😍

Nice to have moments like this when, you know, other scenes come up...

"Live to fight another day, boys." 💔

"Everyone, stop firing! We're shooting at our own men! Look, we're clones! WE'RE ALL CLONES!" 😭😭😭

Thank heavens for Rex being as observant as he is, noticing the tiny bit of chin showing under the fallen clone's helmet, and going to investigate 💔

So now that I'm sufficiently sad, next up is the slavery story...

[ragsy]

Hey uuuuuuuuuuuh what character organization tools do people use these days? As in, somewhere to store information about them, but also somewhere that I can easily link and share that info? Is toyhouse one of those? What's the deal with toyhouse?

[owl-with-a-pen]

From the second Brainy had turned up to the DEO that morning, he’d been in one hell of a bad mood. Confrontational didn’t even cut it – to Alex, it was like he was on a goddamn war path.

It had started out tame enough, maybe that was why she’d let it get as far as it had, but as well trained as her agents were against interrogation scenarios or an alien threat, no one was invulnerable to the inescapable pain of workplace microaggressions. Brainy had been subject to them himself in the past, but today he was the all-out perpetrator. It seemed he had something negative to say about everyone; mostly degrading remarks on their various intellects, going as far in some cases to mark them out on a scale from one to one-point-three. That was hardly news to Alex, although she hadn’t seen this kind of behaviour out of him in a very long time.

It had all come to a head not even a couple hours into Brainy’s shift. All it had taken was one too many poorly veiled insults targeted at one of her newer agents. By then, Alex could tell the difference between Brainy’s unintentional habit of being improperly blunt and whatever the hell he was seeking to achieve here.

It wasn’t like Brainy to act so purposely cruel, even on some of his darker days. He’d often experienced difficulties navigating his own intellect against his regular-minded co-workers, especially since the inhibitors had come off, but he’d never been openly hostile to them. Not like this. This was something else, like he was itching for a fight.

He got his wish when his goading finally hit the mark and the new hire stood from his chair. Alex knew the signs, but when their bickering exploded into a full-on argument, her voice was lost beyond the commotion.

Things escalated far too quickly, and she was much too late to stop the first punch from being thrown. Expectedly, Brainy dodged expertly out of the way, but the fire in his eyes was unmistakeably one of challenge, enough that Alex realised he had absolutely no intention of sticking to his usual evasive manoeuvres.

Shit. He wasn’t on the defence at all. And, when Brainy stepped into the agent’s space, ring-hand closed into a tight fist, she knew she couldn’t let it get any further.

Before Brainy could make his move, Alex shot into the fray, grabbing for his shoulder. The second she touched him, he tensed all over. Alex could feel the muscles in Brainy’s arm grow taut beneath her fingers, a strength building inside of him that scared her more than she would have ever admitted.

Kara’s powers had been a part of her life for so long that Alex often believed herself immune to the kind of fear seeing that sort of raw ability might inspire. Brainy wasn’t on a Kryptonian’s level by any means, but there was something unnerving about his strength that didn’t hit quite like Kara’s. It was a quiet sort of power, one he mostly kept hidden. A formidable ability that crept like a sleeper cell inside his implants and every shred of data that he had stored within his AI core.

She could feel all that and more brewing inside of him now, and when Alex tried to pull him back, he didn’t budge. She might as well have been trying to move a ten-ton statue.

Despite the panic pounding in her chest, Alex kept her cool. She waited a beat, measuring her movements, before trying again. This time, thankfully, Brainy relented. Although his body was still coiled tight, he let himself move with her momentum, stumbling a half step towards her.

Alex disguised her relief with anger, hissing into Brainy’s ear, “What the hell has gotten into you today?”

Brainy rolled his shoulder easily from her grip, righting himself in the process. “I’m fine,” he muttered tersely, his voice so rigid that she could barely see his jaw move.

Alex eyed him sharply. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she said, before raising her voice so that everyone could hear, “Agent Dox, with me!”

Any agent caught gawking at the scene quickly turned back to their work. Alex dismissed the string of apologies coming from her new hire, instead instructing him to cool off before returning to duty.

A senior agent like Brainy wouldn’t be getting off quite as lightly.

As Alex marched Brainy down the corridors of the new DEO building, she could feel him crackling at her heel like a storm cloud ready to strike. She bristled, preparing herself for the worst at every turn.

“Where are we going?” Brainy asked instead, his tone indifferent. As though he hadn’t tried to incite a war at 9 in the freaking morning.

“Somewhere private,” Alex returned, pushing open the door to one of the medical science labs. Today was her lucky day, it seemed, because the room was totally deserted.

She ushered Brainy in behind her before he could argue, directing him to the closest chair. He followed her instructions begrudgingly, taking the chair and swivelling it backwards before collapsing into it, folding his arms across the backrest with a scowl.

Now they were alone, Alex allowed herself to relax just a little, shedding some of the status that came with her rank. Her team had always been like a family to her, but Brainy was family, and now that she had him in a controlled environment, she could see his anger for what it really was. A tumultuous cover-up that was starting to crumble from the moment he’d sat down.

His frustration was plain in his body language, the way he wrung out his ring finger with his other hand like it was his only lifeline. She’d seen this behaviour before; it wasn’t hard to guess where it had come from. The why, though? That was a lot harder to pinpoint.

“What’s going on, Brainy?” Alex asked gently, folding her arms. When he glanced at the floor, twisting his ring even harder, she sighed. “You know you can’t just explode on your co-workers like that. I really thought we were past this.”

Brainy ruffled in affront, his mood souring even further. He glared up at her. “Past this?”

“You know what I mean,” Alex snapped, rubbing the bridge of her nose in frustration. “The point is, I haven’t seen you this riled up since—well, since ever. Something’s going on with you.” She narrowed her eyes, pressing her hip against the workbench at her side. “How have your talks with Kelly been going?”

Brainy leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across one another with a definitively neutral expression. “Confidentially.”

Alex could already feel her jaw begin to tense. It was times like these she really wished Kelly wasn’t so damn good at her job. She took her clients’ privacy incredibly seriously, even when it came to her friends. Especially when it came to her friends. Even as her wife, Alex was none the wiser on what she and Brainy discussed behind closed doors, other than the few small updates like he did well this session or I think we went back more steps than we took forward today.

“Alright,” Alex decided, lifting her chin. “We’ll do this the hard way, then. Stand up. I need to perform a full body scan.”

Brainy’s mouth fell open in outrage. He scoffed indignantly. “I’m fine,” he repeated through clenched teeth, an air of superiority creeping into his voice. He held his shoulders high. “Do you really think I wouldn’t be aware if something was impairing me?”

“Stand up,” Alex repeated. “Now.”

Brainy rolled his eyes but stood on her instruction. He remained still while Alex ran her equipment over him; too still, she thought. Whatever he was trying to hide from her was starting to surface, they both knew it.   

Alex’s worry only grew stronger for him.

Once the tests were done, Alex watched the results roll through on her tablet. His temperature was fine – his implants checked out, too. In fact, according to her equipment, nothing was running abnormally where the techno aspect of his physiology was concerned at all.

When her focus shifted to organic functions, however, Alex’s eyes widened in surprise.

Brainy’s heart rate wasn’t just through the roof, it might as well have been hanging out in another galaxy.

Alex hefted the tablet in her arm, throwing it out for Brainy to see. “You call this fine?”

Brainy scanned the results, shying in on himself defensively as he absorbed their meaning. He shrugged, folding his arms. “Kelly tells me that fluctuations in heart rate are normal for the emotional stressors I have experienced.”

“Well, yeah,” Alex nearly laughed, “but not all the time, Brainy! Something triggered this.”

When he refused to meet her eye, Alex bit her lip, carefully placing the tablet back on the counter. “Brainy,” she tried again, hesitating before taking a step closer. “Paired with what I know about your biology, this has all the tells of an anxiety attack.” She smiled sadly. “I don’t need to be a therapist to know that’s why you lashed out today.”

Brainy scoffed again, but his fingers tightened around his biceps. Alex had a feeling that if he’d been squeezing anything else in the room, it might’ve just snapped in half.

She scanned his face again. He didn’t wear his image inducer as often since the installation of the new DEO, but Alex wondered if he sometimes used it covertly to alter certain smaller features. Like the tell-tale bruising of someone who’d been avoiding their bed one too many nights in a row.

She frowned. “Have you been sleeping?”

Brainy froze. “O-of course.”

For a twelfth-level intellect, his lying game was about on par with Kara’s. Alex tried not to smile at his expense. Instead, she not-so innocently tugged at her jacket pocket. “So, if I texted Nia right now, she’d tell me the same thing?”

“It’s not that,” Brainy hastened, straightening his back. “My functions are running within normal parameters; my sleep is… is fine. Nia would corroborate.”

“Right,” Alex said slowly, raising a brow. “So, just today, then?”

“Why is this so important to you?” Brainy muttered. He was clearly tiring of their little back and forth. Maybe that was her way in.

Alex took another step forward. “Because you’re important to me,” she said, before glancing at the ceiling, “and because you’ve kind of pissed everyone on the day shift off so far. And it’s not even ten o’clock. That might be a new record.” She took his arm again, smiling when he reluctantly met her eye. “This matters, Brainy. I can’t put you back on duty like this. In fact, I think I have enough justification from these readings alone to put you on a mental health day. Even if your sleep is fine, it might be a good idea to take it easy.”

Brainy practically baulked at the suggestion, staggering out from under her hand. He shook his head vigorously, turning away. “Alex, that isn’t necessary. I don’t need to take it easy. I-I can’t.”

His voice nearly broke on that last word, enough to make Alex’s heart twist. “Why not?”

Brainy ducked away from her, and though she could only see half of his face, she knew he was trying to shut her out. She reached for him again, catching his elbow. “Brainy—hey, please.”

Maybe she’d broken through, or maybe he’d run the calculations on the likelihood of being let out of this room without telling her something. Either way, he finally relented.

“I can’t take it easy,” he told her through his teeth, his voice dangerously low. “Because… because, today is difficult for me.”

Alex’s brows knitted together worriedly. She squeezed his arm without thinking, trying instead to remember what day it was today. Had she missed some kind of anniversary? Naturally, she thought of the first day Brainy had arrived in this century, but that date had been and gone with nothing close to this sort of an emotional upheaval.  

Worse, then.

Then, Alex caught it. Brainy’s free arm shifted as his hand passed across his forehead, knocking a few blond strands away from his eyes. His fingers lingered for just a second, agitating across invisible surface scars.

Alex’s heart plummeted into her stomach. She felt nauseous. “Brainy,” she asked slowly. “Is—is today the day your father…?”

Brainy’s eyes were far away, reviewing the lab’s floor tile by tile. He didn’t say anything for a while; his chest was locked tight, as though he’d forgone the need for oxygen at all. Alex held her breath along with him, long enough that her lungs started to burn.

“Time,” Brainy muttered eventually, “dates… they’re all different on this planet, in this century.” He bared his teeth into a pained smile, his arm winding around his centre. “And yet, no matter what changes, I always know that day. I can feel it.” He shrugged, biting the inside of his cheek. “Call it a burden of a Coluan’s physiology.”

Alex squeezed him again. “Oh—Brainy…”

“Don’t,” he said tersely, wrenching his arm from hers. His eyes were wide, his expression open. “Don’t treat me like I’m… wounded. I—I only wish to keep my mind busy. And-and ever since my inhibitors came off I-I find that there’s never enough to occupy it. There are always spaces that are left empty, where-where those memories, those emotions resurface.”

Alex sighed. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but that’s exactly why I can’t let you work today. You understand that, right?”

Brainy gritted his teeth, lowering his head into a tight nod.

“Have you told Nia about this?”

“She knows,” Brainy croaked, looking sheepish. “I told her I-I needed space.”

“And then you came here.” Alex’s smile felt strained. “She doesn’t know you went to work today, does she?”

“I thought it would be easier.” Brainy sniffed, swiping at his face. “To be somewhere that no one knew. But that doesn’t matter if I can’t control this—”

“Hey,” Alex said gently, taking his hand. “Anniversaries can be tough. You know, when we were kids, Kara could never stomach her Earth birthday, either.”

Brainy’s breath stuttered past his lips, and he looked at her in confusion, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. His hand clenched uneasily around hers, willing her to continue.

Alex smiled. “She hated it, actually – her words, not mine - because it reminded her of everything she’d lost. My mom… she tried to turn it into a sort of celebration, to make it a happy day, but focusing on it in any way just sent her over the edge.” She winced. “You should’ve heard the screaming matches.”

Brainy huffed out a surprised laugh.

Alex grinned. “So, one day, I told Kara, suck it up for a second, you’re coming with me. And…” she chuckled, the memory flooding back all too easily, “I made her walk. For hours. Through the woods. No flying allowed. And we kept going and going until eventually, we came across this little creek. I told her to listen to the water. Just— put every one of her senses into that one thing. The bubbling of the water, the fish whipping their little tails, the smell. It wasn’t a magic cure-all, but for that moment, it helped.” Alex wound her hand tighter around Brainy’s, drawing them closer together. “You don’t have to put your focus into work, Brainy, you can pick something simpler. One sound, or one thing that makes you feel at peace.”

Brainy narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Yes…” he considered slowly, “that does sound pleasant.” He cleared his throat, shifting his tone. “Running water is one of numerous nature-specific sounds that are utilised for relaxation of the human mind. Nia has several of the ocean’s waves on her white noise app, although, I had never considered using it myself.” The furrow to his brow deepened. “But if I were to draw all of my processing power into one singular stimulus, it may be… beneficial.”

“What were you thinking?” Alex prompted.

Brainy glanced at her quickly before looking away again, a private smile twitching the corners of his mouth. “Flying… often clears my head. Perhaps I should try to find something up there. Above the noise, as Kara once put it.”

Alex nodded her encouragement. “That sounds like a really good place to start.”

Brainy returned her nod confidently, letting go of her hand as he made to leave. No hesitation, no debate. Just one direct thought leading onto the next action. Alex couldn’t help but smile.

Before he could make it out the door, she called out to him: “And, Brainy?”

Brainy paused, turning back to look at her.

“Thank you for sharing this with me.”

Something passed through Brainy’s expression before he lowered his head into a dutiful nod.

Fondly, Alex watched him go. He was certainly less tightly wound than he’d been before, though she knew he still had a way to go yet. At least this was a step in the right direction.

She supposed, in quite the literal sense, it was only up from here.

[viric-dreams]

Weeks after learning of the Commodore's death--when he could no longer lie in bed consumed by grief, after he was forced to get up, to feed himself, to keep going--Roberts had visited the Dark-Spectacled Admiral. There was no love lost between the Admiral and the Commodore over the years. Roberts had heard plenty of the stories of the Commodore's frustrations upon return from his many trips to London. He hadn't seen the Admiral himself since he was barely more than a child. Yet he had to try.

As the years had gone by, the old guard had slowly faded out of the picture, until there were so very few people left who remembered the olden days. Remembered the Commodore as Roberts knows--knew him. The man who was full of jokes and life, whose charisma captured a room. One who cared. A man who'd spent hours yelling encouraging words through a layer of crumpled steel, trying to grant some level of comfort to a trapped and terrified child, to at the very least abate some of that terror in what could've likely been his final moments. The man who had slowly faded into placidity and smiles and bright nothingness as the years had gone on.

The Admiral was no friend to either of them, not since the schism, but perhaps he might remember the friendship the two had once had. Perhaps he might care that he died. Perhaps there is someone else who remembers the man, the same one Roberts does, and feels something at his passing. He has to try.

He adjusts his spectacles, hiding the puffiness of his eyes from view, and knocks on the door.

[mushroomsie224]

Thinking about them again and realising that I don't like the idea that Greylock was practically a bully to Cedric in their schooldays or that Cedric hated him. To each their own, but I think they're just two dorks with a bit of rivalry who get super competitive at times. They get along quite well together when they're not competing! Well, and when Greylock's not pranking him. He's just the annoying friend, I guess. I don't want Greylock to ever stop being annoying, and I want Cedric to be seriously concerned if he does stop.

As for why Cedric wouldn't consider him a friend: this is Season 2 Cedric. Literally his whole arc is about friendship.

[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.

[piromina]

amélie being the rabbit in the representation play because the name 'amélie' means work and rabbits represent hardworking. rabbits being a symbol of fertility yet amélie is incapable. the saying 'breed like rabbits'. eostre being the goddess of fertility and taking the form of a rabbit. rabbits meaning quietness, cautiousness, observing from a distance and choosing not to get involved in her sister's tricks. rabbits meaning tricks, though, as in a rabbit coming out of a hat. a cowboy's hat? when the rabbit and the hat meet, there is suddenly a need for magic and witchcraft. sorcery. some witches took the form of rabbits. the witch used magic. the witch caused mischief with their new rabbit and hat and sorcery, unlike before when she was the quiet, observant, clever one. rabbits constantly being portrayed as foolish despite this, as prey for the hunter. falling into their trap. rabbits representing love, but not love exactly, not requited love, just love. the feeling. when the rabbit's lover sees her, it is bad luck. when a hare crosses your path, it is a bad omen, and you are destined to die. however, a rabbit's foot is good luck. good fortune. if the rabbit's lover wants good luck at the moment, is sick and dying and needs good luck, they would need the foot. not the rabbit - just the foot. and if ripping the foot off of the rabbit would give them the foot, then they would do that. rabbits do not represent requited love. just love. not love for the rabbit. love for good fortune. love for good luck. love for oneself. good fortune for the lover, not for the rabbit. the rabbit is a symbol of innocence. as it innocently falls into the hat. the hat is a metaphor, a trap, a perfect pitfall. and the rabbit has fallen into it. it gets pulled out by the neck, caught in a chokehold unable to breathe, and laughed about among the audience. until one day, the hat and the cruel magic weaken and die. the rabbit's son takes on the role of magician afterwards. it is not a rinse-and-repeat situation, as the rabbit's son is not a rabbit. he gets to fall in love and have that love returned. the rabbit's son is a magician, but would never use that power to hurt people. he is a creation of sorcery and witchcraft, of a rabbit and a hat, and he is something, someone, special. he is not a rabbit. the name 'félix' means lucky. the rabbit's son gets to have good luck without the foot of the rabbit. he gets to love and be loved back. he gets to share a heartfelt kiss and have good luck. he always manages to get what he wants, because he is a magician. félix fathom is not an innocent rabbit.