#jupiter meta.

[gravesung]

DRAKARTH CONSERVATORY for Arcane Excellence and the Drakarth Archival Preservation Society (called the Archive for short) are technically one and the same. The Archive came first, with the Conservatory built next to it by arcane researchers who wanted to mold from each generation an upper echelon of societal perfection: soldiers, politicians, researchers to lead the charge into every new era. Drakarth, crowned by its star arete student and its globally-recognized faculty, stands as an institution to strength that, if you can survive it, guarantees a successful life.

Key phrase: if you can survive it. Not all is well here, and the people who uphold Drakarth's ideals would do just about anything to keep their secrets buried.

Be careful, now, and don't follow the moths.

STRUCTURE & EDUCATION.

Honor, virtue, reason and might are the four tenets of what Drakarth sees as excellence. Each class attends three years of school: the honing year, the building year, and the trial year. The honing year is spent on basic training, though its true purpose is weeding out those with outstanding potential from the crowd. During finals at the end of the year, all of the freshmen are pulled solo, in pairs, or in threes for individualized Surprise Tests made to test their weaknesses and push them to their limits. These can be anything: 1v1 tournaments, grueling survival challenges, written exams, dungeon delves... the list goes on.

By the end of year one, less than ten percent (80-100) of the students pass their trials and continue on. The rest are shunted into Drakarth's sister schools and outer universities for lower-intensity studies. The ones who pass are called CENTURIONS, and even if they don't graduate top of their class, the title in itself is incredibly prestigious.

Year two, the building year, is spent exploring what makes each student special. Their advisors craft and constantly adjust custom curriculums that balance the student's strengths and weaknesses within the four tenets.

It's supposed to be individualized, that is. The academic system fails so many young people, and Drakarth is not only no exception to this, but a stunningly cruel example of it. (hiii jupiter.) Some of the students who are rejected, or who drop out mid-year, are literally never seen again by their peers. No clue where they went, no contact, nothing. No one seems to think this is weird. They just couldn't cut it, you know.

Third year: tournament arc! Students spend their time fine-tuning the skills they have built over the last two years and training for a schoolwide capstone tournament after finals. These serve as a display of Drakarth's newest exceptional stock to interested parties: military, government, scientific agencies, like sports recruiters coming to games.

Being top of the class each year is a high enough honor in itself. At least, from an outside point of view. Those in the school, the faculty and staff, and the attached families know the truth: there is one particular honor that everyone is chasing.

There is an opportunity every year for someone to be awarded the title of ARETE. For the last two decades, that opportunity has come and gone: the Conservatory and Archive staff simply haven't seen a student who exemplifies the four tenets at an outstanding, better-than-perfect level.

That doesn't stop every student from shooting for it, though.

Drakarth's arete is treated somewhere between a political hero and a messiah. They become the face of the Conservatory and, to an extent, the country it resides in. They attend conferences and war meetings, make speeches to young hopefuls, fight in wars — essentially, they go where the society needs someone to look up to.

LAYOUT.

The Conservatory itself is built from a set of old stone buildings, their architecture Gothic with a twist of occasional surrealism and a focus on open space. At the entryway, flags bear the school crest: two eagles locked in combat in front of a crossed pen and sword, framed by the area's native wild roses. The eagles represent might, the pen represents reason, the sword represents honor, and the roses represent virtue. 

The ballroom, where public-facing functions and schoolwide formals take place, resembles a modified cathedral without pews. Along the back wall, where altars may sit, the leftmost refreshment table bears stacks of wine glasses filled with red, white and bubbly varieties. The center table is adorned with savory hors d'oeuvres, and the rightmost table shows off sweets and pastries of many types: tiny cakes, croissants and canele and cups of custard, spiced honey cake and filled buns, and more. The food and drink items seem to replenish themselves. 

The Archive, directly adjacent to the ballroom, is two floors high and three floors deep. The ground floor acts as a public library for basic arcane knowledge. The second floor acts as the Conservatory’s private library and study space. Underground levels are for artifact storage and Archive property that is only accessible with a research permit and an approved written request detailing what exactly will be used or studied. 

There is definitely not an ancienty secret society involved. There is no eldritch deity of forbidden knowledge sealed under the Archive. Don't follow the moths.

The school training grounds take up about a football field's worth of outdoor space, different sections of the field set up for different types of training. A large dirt square provides space for hand-to-hand combat; dummies of different materials provide resistance to elemental damage for spellthrowing; one entire half of the field is for sports rather than combat. Things do get mixed up sometimes. 

This field is also cleared out when it comes time for end-of-year trials, challenges that test the might, honor and knowledge of each year's students. Most don't make it out of them alive. That's just how things are. The trials with the most fanfare are Tournaments, which are the capstone of Drakarth's graduating class. The students are placed in small groups and pitted against what is essentially a public dungeon crawl. Those who succeed receive a magical artifact and graduate from the Conservatory, some with honors and some simply good at surviving. 

And, of course, there's the college town. Drakarth is out in the countryside, but establishments, homes and businesses have been built around it over the centuries as many alumni and their families end up teaching after they graduate. Favored by Conservatory students is CODA, a lounge that transitions from a cafe to a classy bar in the evenings.

Questions?

graphic template credit

[artbyblastweave]

A few years ago, there was a thread on r/asksciencefiction where someone was fishing for a superhero story with an inverted Omni-Man dynamic, or a setting where Homelander's initial presentation is played straight- a setting where the Superman figure actually is the paragon of morality he's initially presented as, but no other superhero is- a situation where you've got one really competent true-blue hero standing head-and-shoulders in power above what's otherwise a complete nest of vipers.

Someone in the thread floated My Hero Academia; while I haven't read it, my understanding is that that's not really an accurate read of what's going on with Stain's neurosis about All-Might being the only "real hero," that the point of that arc is that Stain's got an insane and unreasonable standard and that taking an endorsement deal, while bad, isn't actually grounds for execution. My own contribution to the thread was Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility, where a major part of the backstory involved the faux Justice-League's Superman analogue having a little accident because he's the only one who thought they were morally obligated to go public with the secret life-extending macguffin that the rest of the team is using to enforce comic-book time on themselves and their loved ones; while only a couple members of the team are directly in on it, the rest are conveniently incurious. And Jupiter's Legacy gets tantalizingly close to this- The Utopian, a well-meaning stick-in-the-mud, ultimately gets blindsided and couped by his scheming brother who creates a superhero junta staffed by a Kingdom-Come-style glut of third-gen superheroes, who are framed as fundamentally self-interested because only came onto the scene after most of the situations you legitimately need a superhero to handle have been neutralized. (The rub, of course, is that the comic is also highly critical of the Utopian's intellectually incurious self-righteously 'apolitical' approach to superheroism- if for no other reason than that it left him in a position to get blindsided by a coup!) While Jupiter's Legacy gets the closest, all three of these are only loosely orbiting around the spirit of the original idea, and there's something really interesting there- particularly if the Superman figure isn't hopelessly naive in the same way as Utopian. Because first of all, if you're Metaman or Amazingman or whatever brand-name alias the writer goes with, and you really earnestly mean it, and you put together a team of all the other most powerful heroes on earth in order to pool your resources, and then with dawning horror you gradually begin to realize that everyone in the room besides yourself is a fascist or a con artist or abuser or any other variant of a kid with a magnifying glass eyeing that anthill called Earth- What the hell is your next move?

Do you just call the whole thing off? Can you trust that they'll actually go home if you call the whole thing off? I mean you've put the idea in their heads, are you sure that they aren't going to, like, start the Crime Syndicate in your absence? Do you stick around to try and enact containment, see if getting all of these people on a team makes them easier to keep on a leash? But that's functionally going to make you their enabler pretty quickly, right? Overlooking "should you kill them-" can you kill them? You're stronger than any individual one of them- are you stronger than all of them? The first time one of them really crosses a line in a way you can't ignore- will that be a one-on-one fight? Are they the kind of people capable of putting two-and-two together and pre-emptively ganging up on you if you push back too hard? Do you just start trying to get them killed, or keep them at each other's throats so they can't coordinate anything really nasty? Can you squeeze any positive moral utility out of them, or is that just a way to justify not doing the hard work of taking them down? There've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that Superman in specific would be a good person, and there've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that superheroes in general would be good people. Something to be done, I think, with questioning the default assumption that everyone Superman becomes professionally close to would be good, and to explore how he'd handle it if they weren't.

[tagthescullion]

I feel like HOO could have done so much more with Percy literally (well, *he* meant it metaphorically) swearing on his life that the Argo meant no harm to New Rome. Like Octavian convincing the other Romans that they had a right to kill Percy bc Percy swore on his life and the ship attacked. Percy notes straight out in SON that Octavian will try to kill him if the ship attacks, but the series went nowhere with that.

RIGHT??? it's so obvious HoO was written for money and deadlines bc all the little details go nowhere. in the first series luke dies bc of a promise he made like 8 or 9 years before (and bc of plot but it was a nice round thing), here they're like "oh whoopsie, you swore on your friend's honour with your life and then they were maniac bombers and yet.. we shall forgive you, worry not, lad"

I need repercussions, that's the fan bit of mythological/fantasy settings, that promises mean shit bc otherwise characters aren't pressed to be noble, and that adds drama!

was percy lying? no, he honestly thought they wouldn't y'know, blow shit up! but they did, too bad, the romans shouldn't be inviting percy to uni, they should HATE him!!! they're full on keeping promises and they have a rather black-or-white thinking (which is a debate for another day)

there's a thing in HoO that happens in lots of stories, but still, that is that only 7-10 people really know what's happening! the rest are blind to everything, CHB and CJ know nothing about the quest, about the extent of the tartarus situation, about the statue, about the reasons behind the bombing of NR/why the romans have surrounded them! and yet by the end it's like "oh well, everything's all right anyway!" and they didn't even proper joined forces over gaia --that last battle is, and allow me to use a vintage word, ghastly--

[nepobabyeurydice]

wait actually let me explain how stupid the timeline for CJ is.

Jason is given to Lupa at 2

We time skip and Jason already in the fifth cohort this happened sometime between his 4th birthday to twelfth.

Reyna arrives one year later, Octavian is presumably a already there too along with Dakota, Gwen & Bobby.

The Charleston quest happens with Reyna and Jason and (?) either Jason or Reyna are already centurion or (?) is

Jason strangles the Trojan Sea Monster

…Either Jason or Reyna become Centurions or both if the (?) was the centurion on the quest.

At ~15 Jason is scouting with several others to storm mount Otherys, Reyna is presumably a few months into be being praetor despite it being only three years despite long-timers Jason and Octavian who are very influential just not having that position.

Same three days as TLO the Romans storm Mount Otherys, presumably losing many people and having no ‘hey claim your fucking kids’ should lack the ability to make up the numbers.

~Jason is made Praetor, probably after hacking Krios to bits with zero godly intervention except maybe Hera at one point. (save jason and kill thalia type of deal which fits her)

~Two weeks later Nico shows up with Hazel and Thanatos goes missing around the same time (no one died in that time? Not from festering wounds or attempted suicide after the battle they just witnessed??)

~December, Jason goes missing could also be late November for Hera to properly gaslight Leo and Piper and get them in place.

No one goes looking for Jason despite it being 3 days to a month of him being gone outside of California because *superstition*

Presumably, the Camp continues to function for 7-9 months without a 2nd Praetor especially one of their more powerful ones with direct ties to Juno just not being there

Hazel becomes a full blown member (the good shit)

Frank arrives two weeks after his mom’s funeral….That’s not long enough?? Percy probably stayed with Lupa for at least a month for him to learn all that, Frank should be there later than Percy, the same time as Percy or Rick should fix his timeline issues.

All of Jason’s work for the past 6-12 years has just vanished into thin air in 7-9 months and no one tries to hold on to his ideas for camp.

Yeah, I don’t completely understand the timeline either. The first 10 years of Jason’s CJ is so mysterious and we don’t even know what was Reyna’s cohort or centurion despite it probably playing a role of why she so quickly rose to praetorship. I personally go with her Cohort being the Second and her centurion being a descendent of Jupiter and later on Bellona giving him some weight to put behind Reyna as his successor.

Frank’s little timeline weirdness is mostly not taking into account the distance between Canada and California along with the timeline Rick gave Percy who is usually the prodigy in picking up skills. This is why i’m trying to pepper in events in my HOO collection on Ao3 because there is nothing. Fucking nothing and it’s stressing me out.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Not to get pedantic (oh who am i kidding that’s most of this blog) but I am genuinely fascinated by the potential applications of the established canon in HoO and TOA that the gods canonically have both historic and regional forms, and can appear as specific versions of those forms and have kids of those specific forms, which influence what powers the kid has/what pantheon they fall under/etc etc (and also the implication that demigods can be born under multiple forms of a singular deity). This is somewhat backed up even earlier in the first series when we’re told that Percy has earthquake powers because of his father being Poseidon “The Earthshaker” (which is Mycenaean Poseidon) - which could also tie into why Percy generally takes leadership roles, is hopping in and out of the Underworld a lot, and is apparently particularly powerful for even just a Big 3 kid, since all that would line up with Mycenaean Poseidon being generally put at the head of the pantheon and also being a chthonic deity.

Now this gets really interesting when we start looking at deities being combined and conflated, because a.) the Romans weren’t the only ones doing that and b.) the Romans had their own gods originally, they didn’t just take the Greek ones and slap a new name on them. They merged a lot with their own preexisting deities alongside adopting worship of deities from other cultures as the Romans spread (and the Greeks also did this), and c.) the ancient Greeks and Romans did exist at the same time.

Like, we know in terms of the Greeks and Romans that if their godly parents are “equivalent” then their demigod children are siblings, just like if Greek demigods have the “same” godly parent then they are also siblings. However, very few Greco-Roman gods are one-to-one, and a lot are like three gods in a trench coat, and then if you want to get into historical forms then you can start running into weird things like “Well, if you go back far enough, these two Greek gods may have originated from the same thing-” and also if we’re talking historical forms, again, the Greeks and Romans existed at the same time! Which means there would be historic forms of godly parents that are both Greek and Roman! So like, where do we go from there? Would Hazel be equally siblings to a child of Plutus as she is to Nico because both Hades and Plutus were conflated into Pluto? Orcus was also conflated with Pluto - does that mean when Nico killed Bryce Lawrence, he was killing his half-brother? (cause then that parallels just a couple chapters later when Will faces off against Octavian-) Are there demigods who, depending on their godly parents’ form(s), are technically both a Greek and Roman demigod? If Hermes and Pan possibly originated from the same god, does that mean all the satyrs are siblings with the Hermes kids? If we want to get into all the nonsense of Dionysus’ origins and Zagreus and Hades, does that mean Nico is technically siblings with Dionysus kids? Does Dionysus joke about this during their therapy sessions? Are some demigods in certain cabins siblings with kids in other cabins but each others’ siblings aren’t siblings depending on what form their godly parents were in?

I have a headache now.

[catofadifferentcolor]

Greek God Thoughts: The Heart of the West (4/?)

One of the things that has always honestly, genuinely troubled me about the Percy Jackson series is the idea of the Heart of the West.

It's not the idea itself - Western Civilization which views itself as the direct inheritor of Ancient Greek and Roman culture is something which very much exists and which has been a very powerful motivator of empires for millennia. The Russian Empire, for instance, called itself The Third Rome, to say nothing of the innumerable lives lost trying to replicate the actions of Alexander the Great.

No, my problem is the fact that it moves.

Or, rather, that the timing and placement of these moves as hinted at in canon makes no sense. There's no earthly way anyone would have called the United States the Heart of the West during the 1860s, yet the Roman/Greek distrust is supposed to be a driving force behind the war and the the impetus for the two groups to be separated. And how would all of this worked when they were shunting around between countries in Europe anyway? Would the actual Mount Olympus serve as a backdoor to Olympus itself?

So this is my attempt to make sense of the movement of The Heart of the West as far as PJO is concerned.

Ancient Greece

Obviously the first Heart of the West is Ancient Greece, given we're talking about Greek Gods and Ancient Greek culture. This would have begun with the Gods and continued at least until the conquest of Greece by Phillip of Macedon in 338 BCE - Mount Olympus formed the border between Thessaly and Macedon in antiquity after all - and probably continued well into the Roman Republic. Olympus remains at Mount Olympus so long that the idea it might ever move should seem absurd - and, when all things are taken into account, have been the home of the Gods for as long as all the other put together.

Ancient Rome

But how do we account for Ancient Rome? It came onto the scene in 753 BCE, before even the Pentecontaetia, and adopted much of the Greek Gods and culture as their own.

I argue that the Gods remained primarily Greek until the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE. After that, they are predominately thought of and act as their Roman forms, with the main entrance to Olympus moving to somewhere on the Capitoline Hill. There's still a "bridge" or "backdoor" to the original Mount Olympus, but it's like an old rope bridge over a deep ravine - sure, you can use it, but most won't risk it. The change from Greek to Roman should seem near complete to outside observers, and might have been if not for later events.

Constantinople

The Heart of the West remains in Rome until 330 CE, when Constantine moves the capitol of the Empire to Constantinople. This begins as a very Greek city which is quickly and drastically Romanized, but over time returns to its largely Greek roots. (That is, for all the western Roman empire became Latinized, the eastern, Byzantine part largely remained Hellenized.) A lot of the palace coups the empire is famous for can be framed as the Gods' Greek and Roman aspects at war.

It was not a good time for demigods, with both CJ and CHB existing in a near-constant state of civil war.

All of this continues until the Fourth Crusade, when Latin Christians besiege, sack, and eventually conquer the city in 1204. Just as the people, books, treasures, and relics carried westward were said to fuel the future Renaissance, the crusaders also carried back the Heart of the West. But where to?

Holy Roman Empire & France

I argue that after the Fourth Crusades, the Heart of the West went first to the Holy Roman Empire - which did after all claim continuity with Rome - and France - which was culturally dominate even when it was not politically or militarily. Perhaps it started in one and moved to the other, or bounced between locations depending on the generation, or had two sets of main entrances to Olympus for most of this period.

The exact details here are where I'm most fuzzy. All I can tell you is that the Heart of the West would have left France with the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Or perhaps it was a lingering death, ending no later than the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Regardless of the details, it is certainly gone by the time the French Revolution gets underway.

British Empire

Given how its inhabitants viewed themselves as the natural, direct inheritors of all the best parts of western culture, it makes sense that Olympus would move to London during the height of the British Empire. It's vast merchant marine and impressive navy far outstripped anything else of the time, which reads as very Greek to me in a way that Napoleon, for all he was trying to echo parts of the Roman Empire, never quite managed. (It is a headcanon of mine that Horatio Nelson was the last great son of Poseidon before Percy. Hell, perhaps Napoleon was a son of Zeus and the Napoleonic Wars were just another Big Three kids fight as far as PJO is concerned.)

But for all canon's talk of Washington being a son of Athena and the American Civil War being a clash between Greek and Roman camps, the Heart of the West remains in the British Empire until the Second World War. There are a variety of reasons for this, not the least because I envision the concept of Heart of the West as an intersection of cultural hegemony, military strength, and economic vitality that, while not quite aligning with the modern idea of superpowers, certainly has some overlap.

For all the American Frontier Wars succeeded in asserting US military and cultural dominance on a regional basis, compared to the cultural, linguistic, legal, and historical legacy of the British Empire at the same time, it is impossible to argue the fledgling United States had the same. (It was, in fact, one of those cultural, linguistic, legal, and historical legacies.) It would take until the Spanish-American War for the United States to start approaching the same level of influence... and the Second World War itself for the British Empire to start declining enough for the Heart of the West to take up residence elsewhere.

United States

And so there we have it - the Heart of the West could not take up residence in the United State any earlier than 1944. (If one wants to be particularly pedantic, unless the entrance to Olympus moves within an area after it gets settled, it couldn't arrive in NYC any earlier than 1931, when the Empire State Building was finished.) I imagine this was a quick wartime move for the Olympians and their children, happening virtually overnight compared to some of the other power shifts, and that this is reflected in the camps. Particularly CHB.

After all, if the Second World War was supposed to have been caused by children of the Big Three, there would have had to be multiple adult children of the oldest gods for this to happen. If those children spent any time at CHB at all, the Greek camp would have had to have had more than just a few small cabins for only the children of the Olympian gods - it's just a matter of logistics. You'd need bigger cabins - and presumably ones with multiple rooms so that the adults aren't bunking in the same room as the little kids.

The CHB we see in PJO is therefore the result of this quick wartime move - the handful of kids too young to be involved in the war throw something together quick that will get them by until the war's over and things go back to normal. But because of the Oath things never go back to normal: most of the adult demigods died in the war, and there aren't any new children of Zeus or Poseidon. Demigods start dying younger because the adult siblings that would have trained them just aren't there, and the ones that remain never know camp was any different. CJ, not having been as involved in the war, is set up along its usual lines on the opposite coast.

But what about the Civil War?

The Civil War - and, indeed, all the other places mentioned as the Heart of the West without it making sense to have been such - can be put down to the fact that the Greek Gods do not stay in Greece. The whole idea of the Heart of the West is one wherein Western culture spreads outwards from a culturally dominate center.

The Civil War? One could argue that Ceres would have been drawn to the plantations in the American South, as they'd bear some resemblance to the plantation farms of the Roman Empire. Hephaestus might have been drawn to the industrialization happening in New England and Athena, ever the flashpoint, would certainly have had a hand in a fledgling democracy. Shake and you get a destructive war that draws in allied demigods without the Heart of the West ever twitching in London.

The Heart of the West is mentioned as having been in Spain or Portugal? Perhaps some gods took more interest in these parts of the world than wherever Olympus happened to be at the time - Poseidon probably had a huge hand in the Age of Exploration, and wars anywhere in the world might have drawn Ares' or Mars' attention - but their presence was never enough to cause a wholesale shift. Perhaps these places could have become the Heart of the West but never succeeded in displacing wherever held it at the time; their influence was felt to greater and lesser degrees by the campers as a whole, but Olympus never moved.

TL;DR?

As much as I love PJO and should not expect a children's fantasy series to have a self-consistent backstory which makes sense when viewed in light of certain historical realities... I do. I've tried to logically make sense of The Heart of the West and the various locations which Olympus might conceivably be thought to dwell in light of actual history, but am far from an expert in the subject.

That being said, I stand by the Heart of the West having been:

Greece / Mount Olympus (??? - 197 BCE)

Roman Empire / Rome (197 BCE - 330 CE)

Eastern Roman Empire / Constantinople (330 CE - 1204)

Holy Roman Empire / Vienna (1204 - ???)

France / Paris (??? - 1715/1759)

British Empire / London (1715/1759 - 1944)

United States / New York City (1944 - ???)

GGT: 0,1,2,3

[daeva-agas]

Speaking of the Senshi/Shitennou pairs. I was kind of curious why those stones in particular, right. Kunzite and zoisite are so unusual that I think only gemstone aficionados know them, and even though jadeite and nephrite are somewhat more commonly known names IIRC it still made people mess up the mineral names back in the day.

Well, uh, so, it was alleged that Takeuchi-sensei chose them to match the character and personalities of the senshi they're partnered with, so... Excuse me while I go overthink this and have a meltdown in suffering.

In the first place, supposedly the "inner senshi" are officially meant to be called "guardians"/"guardian deities" (守護 or 守護神). Haven't seen the raws, so I can't confirm, but that's what the JP media says. The term "Shitennou", as many are already aware of, are originally a term used to refer to a set of 4 Buddhist guardian deities.

If true then it just feels like they're all intended to be perfectly matching sets from the start, and it just never made it into the story.

I read that Sailor Moon was originally meant to just end with the Dark Kingdom plot, so maybe sensei intended to have a Romeo and Juliet sad ending where everyone just dies in the end?

These are all based on Japanese gemology guides (same as what I used to research for the Shitennou knight titles), since I imagine it's more likely to be the one Takeuchi-sensei had access to. These may differ from international ones.

(Warning: Long post)

In the manga sensei specified that the zoisite is the blue one, that's also known as "tanzanite". The blue variety of zoisite, among other things, means "calm and intelligence".

The connection to Ami/Mercury's character is very straightforward and obvious.

In terms of romance, a zoisite also means "subdued expressions of love". It really makes me think of how gentle this pair looks in the splash art sensei drew.

Kunzite means "premonition of a lover". It's specifically oh dang when I saw this because Minako was "special" among the senshi in the way that her character vibes are based on "love" (because Venus, goddess of love), rather than the original elemental name attached to the planet. It fits enough to make you pause and wonder if this it truly a coincidence.

The planet venus originally has the element of "gold/metal". The gold is reflected in her design somewhat, but her senshi identity is more related to "love". The other girls' names matches their planets' element names. E.g Jupiter = mokusei = wood, Ki(no) = wood/tree. Mercury = suisei = water, Mizu(no) = water.

Also Venus's relationship with Kunzite ended up being the one who got the most hints actually shown in the manga, so... I do wonder.

The two jades are less overly specific like this, especially Nephrite, but well.

Jadeite is the native jade from Japan, and has been long used to make magatama since ancient times. As such it's always seen as a deeply spiritual stone, that can protect against and/or ward off evil. A perfect match for Rei, who is a miko. One wonders if sensei chose the stone because of Rei being a miko, or if she made Rei a miko after choosing this name for the one matched with her.

Edit: Japanese Wiki claims Rei being a miko was based on Takeuchi-sensei's personal experience as a part time miko. So then Jadeite had to have been named/chosen to fit her, if this theory is true.

Not to mention that Akuryou Taisan, the evil-banishing spell, is something that she uses quite often.

Nephrite is the most confusing one here, because I'm not really able to find the connection. That's why I initially had strong doubts about the rumour/claim about the gemstone names' connection to the senshi.

In the gemology guide that I referenced, its meaning is "charm of maturity". I suppose Mako has always felt like she's older than the other girls, because her hobbies (cooking and home decor) feels really motherly.

Other than that and the stone being a deep green colour similar to Jupiter's senshi outfit I'm not entirely sure. (in the manga, sensei says nephrites are "always deep green" even though IRL that's not the case)

----

Just my additional comments after reading everything that I did:

In terms of colour, I like to think Jadeite is a red jade. Not just to match Rei, but in the manga Jadeite's stone is always coloured the darkest (it's almost all-black). Of all the various jades, red is one of the darker-toned ones.

The shading can be arbitrary, especially if sensei was just tracing from reference photos. Dark green jadeite also exist, so for all I know this is intended to be green too.

But if I use the logic that the stones are matched with the girls' character, I think red just fits the best. In gemstone language the red jade means "tenacity" and "willpower". Green jades tends to be associated with things like harmony, prosperity, luck, and so on. It doesn't feel very Rei-like.

Also, the nephrite jade being a "soft jade", it's associated with very cuddly meanings such as "warm" or "gentle", which makes me laugh even more than the "wisdom" one.

Unless, again, these words are more attached to the matching girls' character, rather than the guy in question, because yes I think Mako is definitely very warm and gentle and fluffy and very huggable.

Although other-coloured zoisite varieties were said to have different meaning, it looks like blue is the predominant zoisite colour in Japan. A lot of Japanese gem sites tend to automatically just say "it's blue" while describing zoisite, even though there's obviously other colours out there.

Sensei did specify it's "blue zoisite, a.k.a tanzanite" in the manga, so I think she's aware of the other colours having different meanings attached. Some articles also had mentioned Takeuchi-sensei's family runs a jewellery store?

I wonder if this is why Crystal went with the gemstone's healing properties for Zoi's title though, because the gemstone words overlaps too much with Mercury in a very in-the-face way. The other meanings are Hope, Mystery, Pride, and Noble, and maybe those don't make very good title names? Like, the only viable one is probably Hope, though I feel like it would be even more confusing if Crystal said Zoi is the "Knight of Hope" or whatever.

Another thing about Kunzite is that its meaning also include "pure and everlasting love", but the website caveated this that this is a saintly kind of love (for the gem's association with Holy Mother Mary). So it's not necessarily something to get overly excited about in terms of SenShi headcanoning, but, well, it's there.

"Shitennou" in Japanese pop culture is generally used to just mean "4 very important people", so it didn't have to actually mean anything. Like, a few samurai in history had their "shitennou", who are just the best 4 generals serving under them. Most famous being the Tokugawa shitennou, but other samurai lords actually have their own so-called shitennou. It's just that if the senshi are officially named "Guardians", then this changes the context.

[takiki16]

Hey so I am starting to get into Jupiter Ascending fandom (a couple years late but what can I say). I was thinking of writing a fic. Do you have any resources for JA extra information?

Thanks in advance. Also I am loving your fic (it's how I started getting into the fandom lololol). can't wait to reread!!!

HOOOOOOO BOY!!!!

I'm paging @bemusedlybespectacled, @gallifreyburning, @vr-trakowski, @sorrelchestnut, @florentinequill, @fuckyeahjupiterascending, @vrabia, and honestly ANYONE ELSE who wants to chime in here, bc HOOOOOOO BOY!

(I made that sweet puppy in fucking 2015 on my dying laptop in the travel study dorm in DC, JUPITER ASCENDING HOW I LOVE THEE)

The eternal fucking tragedy of Jupiter Ascending is that the wider world doesn't love it like we do. Does it have every single thing that turns my crank, id-wise? Sure! Does it have gorgeous over-the-top sequined costumes and extravagant set pieces that remind you at every minute that this movie specially thanked Swarovski Crystal in the credits? Sure! Does it have theeeee single most pinpoint reading of MY PERSONAL FEMALE GAZE that Channing Tatum has ever done? (sorry mister Magic Mike, but you do not even come CLOSE to "may I kill him?" in terms of sexy) SURE! Was this movie a commercial or critical success? Absolutely not 😔

There isn't, as far as I'm aware, an art book. There isn't an official novelization. There isn't even an actual script posted to the usual internet databases that isn't just an automatic shitty talk-to-text rendition of the movie dialogue. There are concept art paintings and old cast interviews floating around, and this auction website where the Wachowskis auctioned off some of the props from the movie, but as far as canon resources and extra material beyond the movie itself there isn't much. A quick duckduckgo search would probably be more helpful to you than anything else, if any of the websites still have the articles up - it WAS eight years ago, and doesn't that just break my fucking heart.

My corner of tumblr LOVED this movie. In 2015, there were TONS of posts gathering interviews, posting concept art, making cosplays, all the signs of a small but healthy fandom ecosystem. However, we call this the blue hellsite for a reason - not all of those resources are still there, and the ones that survived time and incompetent archival site coding are probably difficult to find. I would definitely recommend trawling the JA tags of all the blogs I tagged at the start of this post, as JA introduced me to two of my longest and most beloved of all mutuals. ALL of their insights were key to A Fine Chain.

There is also my own jupiter ascending tag and my more specific jupiter ascending meta tag, although I don't know how bored you are lol. The general JA tag is 105 pages - I would almost recommend just starting at page 105 and working forward from there since it chronicles my descent into kinky space angel werewolf brain rot pretty nicely. There are also my ao3 bookmarks for JA.

I WILL SAY that it has been 8 years, and I have changed into a very different person than the one I was when I first saw this movie. I don't REGRET the first few chapters of A Fine Chain, or any of my breathless meta posts, but I do think that if I were to write any of them over again, I'd hope that my writing style has matured and I'd have lots more extra material to draw from. Actually graduating from law school, writing long fic in another fandom, and generally percolating more as a person has given me lots of new perspectives on JA that make it more interesting even as I still enjoy it (for example, HBO's Succession is ODDLY RELEVANT and I wish there were more JA fanwriters to take advantage of that fact).

...I hope that was helpful? I will ETERNALLY mourn the fact that this fandom wasn't isn't bigger - we haven't even broken 1k on ao3! But EYE MYSELF am here to discuss JA stuff as long as this weird spurt of creative energy sustains me, and my inbox is always open!

[kideaternomnom]

I just fully realized that Makoto cooks so well because she had to learn how to fend herself early due to her parents' passing.

....Now whenever I see her make good food for the girls' I'll feel a bit sad-

[thisloveforyourmom]

something i also don't think is emphasized enough is how much more camp jupiter has in terms of resources for demigods. i'm torn on thinking that rick riordan knew what he was doing in making it mirror the might of the roman empire and that he did it subconsciously, because i really feel like he would have emphasized it way more if he knew what he'd written here.

because the thing is that when reyna talks to annabeth in mark of athena, and says that if the legion decides to destroy camp half blood, they're dead, annabeth kind of brushes it off and goes "well, don't underestimate us" and so we're led to believe this will kind of be a confrontation of equals. that is not how it would happen. if the legion had two warmongering praetors who were both equally invested in wiping camp half blood off the map, it'd just be gone.

to start off, camp half blood is and has always been smaller and a more dangerous place to exist than camp jupiter. both camps have very strict barriers that need constant policing - and it's easy to forget and think that the barrier around camp half blood has always been there, since it's been there since percy has been there, but the barrier around CHB only existed as of annabeth's arrival, when thalia died and zeus created it. think about that. in every book, the barrier around the camp is an extremely important tool of survival, entirely because so many demigods live inside it. what must it have been like living there without one, with dozens of demigods all drawing monsters to the same place? anyone who was at camp prior to annabeth remembers that time. and what's crazy is that annabeth had only been there five years, and not many people had been there before she had, probably in part because of the fact that it was basically just a training ground with people who understood you and not a truly protective space. most likely, this also contributes to the fact that for the vast majority of demigods it's just a summer camp, and that come the beginning of the school year they have to go back into the world to try their luck again, which itself makes the population smaller as demigods die outside of protection during the school year. percy alone survived attempts on his life every single time he left camp, which he was encouraged to do to stay with his family.

prior to that, there were no significant borders, and camp half blood doesn't seem to do any kind of recordkeeping on the adults who 'graduate' and leave. what you get is a very small, young, insular community of people who can only rely on each other, and even then not very well because they're all teenagers. camp jupiter's first and biggest advantage is that they have terminus and the little tiber. not only does this mean there are two extremely well defined borders - one around new rome, the other around camp jupiter - the important thing is that camp jupiter and new rome residents have to do almost no work in terms of policing them. they draw their power from other sources. it's not clear if the tunnel is the only entrance into the camp - i'm of the stance that it's not, considering percy, frank, and hazel "get a ride" to the station from a roommate in their barrack, and i don't think anyone would own a car if a right angle turn maintenance tunnel on I-5 was the only way to use the road - but if it is, that's an incredible chokepoint for anyone trying to get in. just physically, this allows camp jupiter alone to be twice as large as camp half blood.

even ignoring the immediate effect that has on the war, since camp jupiter is on the offensive and their defense measures don't apply, camp jupiter is already hundreds of years ahead of the game. their demigods have been protected from the beginning, and what's more is you don't have demigods leaving this protection to do things like go to school. only one roman demigod we know of has a family to return to - Frank, who had his grandmother for the first half of SoN - but there's never a discussion of him leaving camp to see her. it's not implied to be a strange thing at all for legion members to reside permanently with the legion; if anything, it might be mandatory as part of their years-of-service clause. and it's important to note here that they're not leaving to go to school, but they're still getting an education good enough that it's noted many demigods muster out to go to college, whereas demigods like percy struggle to make it to high school graduation. they're provided an education that is not only a safe environment, but accommodates their disabilities. and they can do this because they have a setup that allows demigods to regularly make it into adulthood, at which time they can begin to give back to that community.

and they do make it to adulthood, and they do give back. gwen and octavian are both explicitly around college aged, and neither of them are noted to be particularly out of place among camp jupiter for that, whereas luke was considered a bit old compared to the rest of the campers. legion members are sent on quests with a letter from the praetor to give to ex-legionnaires, who are then expected to provide any help they're able. iirc, you never see an adult greek demigod in the PJO books, much less one that helps percy on his quests. it's unclear if the legion would call ex-legion members to war, or if they'd be obligated to accept, but even if not i bet a lot of them would should the letter come. like, camp jupiter truly is the child of an empire. if you look it's impossible not to see. there's been a privilege there from day 1 that put them at such a dramatic advantage over the greeks that there's a reason the gods never allowed them to find each other for real. because reyna was right: the legion would have fucking destroyed them.

[gutsybitsies]

Thalia, babysitting 3 year old Nico and 5 year old Jason

Thalia, touches hot stovetop: FUCK that hurts

Jason: ...fuck?

Nico: FUCK

Thalia: oh shit

Jason & Nico, running around like headless chickens now: FUCK OH SHIT!!! FUCK OH SHIT!!!!

[gravesung]

its so convenient that i got into stsg a couple months before nanowrimo, because riposte and jupiter are SO RIDICULOUSLY them-coded it’s been like. it feels like the missing inspiration puzzle piece. they’re kind of like if stsg’s personalities were swapped but their stories remained the same?

riposte is like… if satoru had suguru’s personality. calm, disciplined, logical, everything needs a reason and nothing should be decided or done lightly. but she’s also slated to be not only top of the school, but one of the most honored positions in their wholeass world — and her rival for that position isn’t jupiter. she’s going to surpass him eventually, even if she mistakenly believes they’ll be side by side forever.

jupiter is like… a less emotionally stable/intelligent, more insecure, more angry geto. both of them went through heinous shit that changed them, but at the same time, both of them already had that seed of darkness in them that allowed them to make the choices they made. unlike jujutsu society which values satoru’s (and jupiter’s to a lesser extent lol) apocalyptic levels of raw power, drakarth values riposte’s versatile, controlled, intelligent power. and that’s just. at his core, NOT the type of person jupiter can force himself to be, so he’s destined to be in second place forever.

and like. here’s the thing. if riposte — the one person whose opinion he actually valued in all this mess — had accepted that, or maybe if his parents had accepted that, or any member of faculty or mentor, if ANYONE had seen the pain he was experiencing underneath his loud personality, he probably couldve been stopped. but everyone pushed him and pushed him and told him he wasn’t enough — and the person who noticed it was Moth, and boy howdy is jupiter just the perfect, powerful, insecure, isolated vessel for cult indoctrination.

i just think they’d have some super interesting talks about their respective blue-themed, extremely powerful messiah-coded best friends who they ultimately betray for world-destroying cult reasons HFKSFBSJDH blows a kiss. he’d join ur cult suguru

[artbyblastweave]

If youre still doing it, heroify Lex Luthor

The fish-in-a-barrel answer is Tony Stark, but the intuitive answer, not to mention the version I've actually seen executed at least twice- is that you ask the question- what if he's right, about Superman being bad news?- and then you go from there.

I'm actually going to take this opportunity to talk up one of the few Mark Millar comics that I recommend wholeheartedly, Jupiter's Circle, which is interesting in that the setting's Luthor analogue, Jack Hobbes, is essentially playing Luthor's cope-and-seethe angle completely straight, as a thing which he legitimately believes and which he's ultimately basically correct to believe in spite of most superheroes being at least decent people.

What was interesting to me about this portrayal is that Hobbes eventually decides that he miscalculated, that he can do more good by working with the Utopian as his friend and confidant than by fighting him every step of the way. It's a straight-up Lex Luthor redemption story. But the thing is that the setting of the comic as a whole is predicated on the idea that he was actually completely correct- although he doesn't live to see it, although he dies thinking he was initially misguided, the long-term trajectory of the setting is that superheroes eat the world, politics and activism alike subordinated to their petty grievances and soap opera idiocy. A major plot point of the second volume of this was that Not!Batman's turn towards militant leftism gets completely written off by his 1960s contemporaries because they're so used to reading his behavior through the lens of whiny rich-kid superhero interpersonal drama that they just can't parse it correctly. The comic advances that there's a self-centeredness and egotism inherent to the superhero that makes them suck ass at effecting long term positive change, but they also aren't going away, and they can blow up skyscrapers. At the point where I stopped reading, the setting was implied to be caught in a kind of boom-and-bust doom cycle where the superheroes gradually create a singular hegemony, then collapse into hyperdestructive infighting over what to do with that hegemony once they run out of conventional supervillains to fight- the aftermath of which clears the board for a new wave of the classic silver age cops-and-robbers game, which then gradually hegemonizes, ad infinitum. (This is a line of thinking that crops up in a lot of Millar's capepunk work once you know what to look for- Wanted, Old Man Logan, and to some extent The Ultimates all being examples.)

Another example of Heroic Lex Luthor, which I've written about before, is the comic Edison Rex, a comic whose pitchline is that the setting's Luthor analogue, the titular Edison Rex, turns out to have been completely correct that the setting's Superman analogue was an unwitting sleeper agent for an alien invasion, and steps up to replace him as Earth's foremost protector after finally neutralizing him- but since all he really knows how to be is a supervillain, his management style and problem-solving methodology from his time as an ends-justify-the-means anti-superman crusader translate to the new job with extremely mixed results. The comic ran 18 issues and remains unfinished, but it was pretty good.

[tagthescullion]

Do you think Luke knew about Jason? Maybe Thalia told him, maybe he found a picture of Jason in Thalia's backpack after her apparent death....I like to imagine he did, and that this was a factor in him turning against the gods (along with Thalia dying and his mother)...It would fit the theme of "the gods inevitably causing their own problems". (The only loophole would be why he didn't bring up Jason in TTC when trying to convince Thalia to join him)

by the time luke was possessed by kronos, he certainly knew about new rome/cj, it'd be foolish for him not to. tho it does make me wonder how kronos changed between kronos and saturn and how did that affect luke. was he possessed by one titan or like one and a half?

I do think he knew about jason. I wrote a fic a while back in which luke goes visit beryl during his (failed) quest and due to plot reasons he does find out about jason but is kindly warned to keep that to himself. I don't think he knew the whole deal though, just that he was another forbidden child and that he was killed for whatever reason (hera's jealousy or hades' revenge would be luke's theories)

when did he find out jason wasn't dead but in a secret roman demigod camp? I'll guess around TTC when they're in sanfran. I mean, he spent his teenage years being told "oh no, sanfran is so very dangerous" but as the leader of the monster army, he'd know there weren't more monsters than in other places, so he'd investigate and find out

I circumvent the plothole of him not telling thalia bc if the roman/greek conflict affected gods, it might've affected titans too, so kronos --weak as he was already-- wouldn't want to weaken himself further, so he'd forbid luke from telling her.. that or he knows about the roman camp but only later finds out who leads it (jason wasn't yet praetor at the time)

[sandmark]

STATISTICAL CHARACTER ANALYSIS: take the linked quiz from the perspective of your character, then select 5-10 results from the ' complete matches ' list that you feel resonate with your character the most.

one: alina starkov (shadow & bone), 91%.

two: elizabeth bennet (pride & prejudice), 87%.

three: buffy summers (buffy the vampire slayer), 86%.

four: mulan (disney), 85%.

five: ciri (the witcher), 84%.

six: katniss everdeen (the hunger games), 83%.

seven: rogue (x-men), 82%.

eight: rei hino/sailor mars (sailor moon), 81%.

nine: makoto kino/sailor jupiter (sailor moon), 81%.

ten: storm (x-men), 81%.

tagged by: @brutalmasks ! tagging: @zipkick, @khrused, @preyeir, @anmaries, and you !

[aroaceleovaldez]

Okay these tags on this post reminded me of a HoO/TOA thing that I complain about a lot but I don’t think i’ve ever elaborated on here:

[Image ID: Tags from @fr0zenpepsi​ reading - “#and jason fUCKING DIES before he even get fixed like #you dont know how excited i was when the diorama thing was mentioned like #make him artistic too!! make him be into architecture too! #and he plays lacrosse???? #like his character has sooo much potential yet hes just a boring white guy :< #thats prolly why his death is pretty lame #it meant a lot to the plot but like do we even know who we lost?? #more than half of the fandom doesnt even like him bc hes just so plain :/ #also hazel is a queen and i love her shes literally the best” /end ID.]

One of the big issues I take with both HoO and TOA is that literally every death in both series feels cheap because death has lost consequence. For the majority of HoO it’s at least somewhat still of a risk, but even things like Tartarus feel extremely lackluster when we actually encounter them - Tartarus especially after we saw how much it affected Nico, but then Percy and Annabeth’s plot armor kind of negates all of the threat and it feels like they don’t actually experience much more than their usual threats down there or that it has any lasting effect on them. And after Leo’s “death” we’re basically solidified into “Death has no consequence” because we just finished a series with at least SIX INSTANCES of major or minor protagonist-aligned characters notably directly cheating or miraculously avoiding death (Jason, Hazel, Gwen, Frank, Jason again, Leo), not including also miscellaneous minor antagonists. Which is aggravating because you can make a “Hey, these characters can’t die!” plot work, especially if that’s the root problem they’re trying to solve! It does work in TLH and SoN! And we’ve even seen it before in Battle of the Labyrinth when Percy fights his half-brother!

But HoO basically nullifies all consequence the characters face from MoA onwards and post-BoO “death” carries no weight, because by this point we have so many excuses to get around it or avoid it or come back from it that who cares! And this continues to be a thing post-TOA! Even just in the plot summary of Chalice Of The Gods we’re introduced to YET ANOTHER “Cheat death!” item! And I’d bet we’re gonna get one in TSATS too cause we’re almost guaranteed to see Damasen again, and the like one singular myth that exists referencing Damasen also specifically mentions an herb called “the flower of Zeus” that can revive things from the dead.

And it’s extra annoying because in TOA we keep getting character deaths shoved in our faces and told we should care about them, but either they’re characters we have little to no emotional connection to (such as, like, All Of Camp Jupiter in Tyrant’s Tomb when the camp is threatened and we’re told we should care, but we’ve barely seen the camp at all besides beginning of Son of Neptune and beginning of Mark of Athena, and the only living characters we get to actually see in Camp Jupiter from before TOA are Gwen, Dakota, Don the Faun, and our HoO protagonists.)

And Jason’s death is particularly annoying because a.) He’s essentially cheated death twice already [Piper bringing him back from either death or near-death when he accidentally witnessed Hera’s true form, and then his whole spear injury that was slowly killing him but was healed with [checks notes] the power of friendship], and b.) the scene DIRECTLY PARALLELS HIS FIGHT WITH MIDAS. Which, you know, he WON. VERY EASILY. And you can’t even argue “oh but this time Piper and Apollo were right there so he couldn’t have done the same thing!” because PIPER AND LEO WERE THERE WITH MIDAS. Heck, so was Lit! Who also survives and comes back in TOA! So not only is there no excuse for Jason to have not somehow miraculously avoided death (alongside every other TOA character, basically), but he SHOULDN’T HAVE DIED IN THE FIRST PLACE because THAT’S NOT A FIGHT HE SHOULD HAVE LOST! Him losing that fight is directly contrary to what we know about his character! And “he shouldn’t have lost that fight and died” doesn’t feel tragic here, it’s just aggravating! It’s just bad writing! And there’s no way around it because nobody cares about characters dying by that point in the series anyways because it doesn’t mean anything! We’ve had too much random death fodder in HoO (like the Hunters) directly alongside characters experiencing little to no consequence when they should from their experiences (Percy & Annabeth in Tartarus, literally every character nearly dying, etc.). The only characters we do see experience any kind of lasting consequences from near-death experiences are Hazel having blackouts in Son of Neptune (which are magically erased by Mark of Athena) and Nico being heavily implied to be permanently physically disabled after Tartarus (which is half-ignored when not plot relevant in TOA and completely ignored in the short story Un Natale Mezzosangue, which gives me reason to suspect it will also be ignored in TSATS). Not to mention Frank’s curse is also randomly erased in Tyrant’s Tomb, which is extra stupid because by following the logic of that scene his curse should have been lost back in Son of Neptune when he freed Thanatos, because he was using his curse for the same exact reasons with the same exact mindset. He literally did his character arc twice. Whatever.

HoO and TOA are just such a mess writing-wise of Rick trying to haphazardly incorporate as many myths as he can with zero attempts at cohesiveness that it doesn’t make any sense (I invite you all to read just the Team Statue chapters of BoO and take a moment to process how absolutely nonsensical it is) and he fails to consider the consequences of including certain myths, both in terms of how their aspects will impact the larger plot and also the historical context behind those myths and if how they’re being applied is offensive.

TL:DR: Jason’s death is stupid from literally every angle and HoO and TOA have a problem with literally any kind of narrative consequence.