#the archive long post

[rosesradio]

the archive//pjo vigilante au

⚠️ long post warning ⚠️

for all intents and purposes, the gods were dead.

at least, that's what they want you to think--for their safety lies in a secrecy so strong, it leaves the mortals below with hardly any acknowledgment of them.

but what do you do when there are no gods, no explanation, and you one day find flames dancing along your fingertips, or shadows bending to allow you passage through darkness?

do you become a hero, the same way you would in any other universe? or do you use your abilities for gain, as you were left with nothing?

for all intents and purposes, the gods were dead.

but their demigod children were very much alive.

so this is an au i’ve not really talked about a lot—it was my side project, my “scrap fic” that was giving me a much harder time than my “main fic” (ivory rain).

It’s been giving me such a hard time, I’ve decided to “retire” the au, aka post it publicly. this is to open it up to conversation and opinions, as well as open my inbox to any potential asks or even drabble requests for any aspects of the au that spark an interest. this is not opening up this au for everyone to write. please do not take my ideas. i am positive i’m far from the first person to come up with a pjo vigilante au, so if that’s of interest to you, feel free to explore your own ideas for what that au would look like.

at this point, the main reason i am posting this is because i don’t see myself writing a full fic with it. i won’t say never—under certain circumstances and intense revisions i may piece something together, though it’s highly unlikely. i plan on sharing most of my ideas, though for the sake of exploration i will keep a few to myself (such as spoilers on who dies in my original concept, etc).

with that out of the way, let’s get into the meat and potatoes—the au itself:

warnings: grooming mention, homelessness mention

in this au, the gods have zero contact with mortals or demigods other than to perform their duties (such as Apollo with the sun chariot). in the event that they come down to interact with mortals to, uh…hang out (movie!grover voice: hookup!), they go by an alias, so no mortals know about the gods’ very real existence. like most things that suck, you can blame zeus for that one.

that being said, camp half blood does not exist. heroes must train relentlessly on the streets, seeking out others like them with no label for what they really are. the gods have been too weakened by the disbelief of mortals to do anything as monsters ravage the earth. the demigods must survive, form alliances, and protect the citizens of New York.

as the demigods don’t know they are demigods, they are labeled into two categories: “Empowered” and “Bugs”.

Empowered experience all the demigod symptoms with powers to match, and they are often revered as superheroes if they happen to use their abilities to defend mortals. Examples of Empowered include Percy with his water powers, Leo, Jason, etc.

Bugs also experience the symptoms of being a demigod, though they have no visible powers. these demigods are sometimes looked down on as “weaker”, and some debate if they even are special, or simply mortals with the bad luck of attracting monsters. Examples of Bugs include Annabeth, Luke, Reyna, etc.

the demigods are also in two different groups with rivaling ideals:

the vigilante side includes: Percy, Hazel, Frank, and Nico. This side believes that the origin of their abilities does not matter as much as using their abilities to protect the people.

the researcher side includes: Annabeth, Luke, Piper, and Leo. This side believes that the origins of their abilities/the mysteries of the monster attacks hold the key to stopping the attacks. They will do anything in their power, even breaking the law, in order to find answers.

the other side of town: in my mind initially, Jason, Thalia, and Reyna were staying on the other side of town, not getting into the rivalry in the city and just doing what they could to stay alive. this of course can & probably should be altered for other interesting dynamics. i probably would have to keep Thalia out of the main plot of Luke and Annabeth, but i’ll get into that in a minute.

now, for the dynamics & histories:

percy works with his mom at Sweet on America. He is moved out in this au, even though he’s still 16. He does this to protect his mom, though she is not a fan of the arrangement. he also protects the people under his blue mask, using the alias Riptide.

Percy and his mom also volunteer at a homeless shelter, where he met and befriended Frank when he needed a place to stay.

Hazel, Frank, and Nico live with Percy, using their apartment as a base of operations, like the teen titans. Hazel is known as Jewels, Nico as Necromancer, and Frank as Captain Creature (for the bit).

at one point, Nico and Bianca were on Percy’s team, until Bianca was killed on a mission. Nico then went off on his own, joining Luke & Annabeth & Piper in a quest to find answers and get his sister back. After a period of time on the researcher side, Nico began to have second thoughts on their methods and escaped. He was eventually welcomed back by Percy, though a slight distrust remains at Nico’s double-agent trip.

in an effort to bring his sister back to life, nico accidentally brought Hazel back. Hades, being too weak due to erasure and lack of mortal interactivity, remained unable to do anything about this (and perhaps he did not want to).

nico’s latest curiosity is the researchers’ newest team member, someone he’d never met while working with them. unlike most of them with their cheap eye masks, this newest member has an Iron Man level suit, as well as a knack for blowing things up.

———

on the researcher side, annabeth, piper, and leo live at luke’s apartment, working odd jobs to afford the rent. one side of the building was damaged in a monster attack, so they get a discounted rate (lol). also, leo fixes things for the landlord here & there to get a further reduced rate.

Piper first sought annabeth out in school, noting her as an award-winning academic researcher for their school. she offers her money and anything else she might want in exchange for finding her mom. this side quest helps a friendship form between the two, and eventually Piper runs away from home after a monster attack to live with her (much like Percy, she does this in part to protect her dad).

Leo is the newest member of their group, and he built himself what is essentially an iron man suit to do work for the researchers—“work” being things such as robbing banks, intense interrogations, etc. he knows who Nico is in and out of the mask thanks to his team already knowing his identity. He meets Nico when he saves him from a monster attack as Necromancer, and the two form a tentative friendship. Nico often visits him in disguise to talk to him (the researchers having moved apartments to stay undercover as nico knew their previous location), and Leo hides his secret second identity as The Inventor/Pyrotechnic/man of many names etc in order to glean more information from him…and also maybe get closer with Nico, what’s it to you 👀

Annabeth and Luke’s dynamic…sigh. this is where the darkfic vibes come in, cover your ears.

annabeth and luke have much of the same relationship as they do in the books, though over the course of this au, it takes a turn. Annabeth’s crush grows stronger and luke, seeing this, takes advantage of her trust and innocence. he grooms her into a romantic and (borderline) sexual relationship. now, seeing as she’s a 16 year old teenager and he’s a 23 year old man who practically raised her as an older brother figure, one might see how that’d be several layers of toxic & wildly messed up. but that’s darkfic for ya! this is why i’d keep thalia from meeting luke and annabeth the way she had in the books, otherwise she would hunt luke down for sport with all of us cheering in the background lol.

this arc also coincides the push by luke to become more violent and harmful in the research effort. Soon enough, it’s obvious that he is uninterested in research of a potential higher power. Instead, he wishes to eliminate all threats to his intention to rule over all demigods and establish his own system.

potential big spoilers aside, i planned on ending the au with both percabeth & pipabeth, where annabeth dates both of them (piper and Percy would probably be platonic, but i’d be open to them all three dating depending on how that dynamic would work). annabeth’s story ending with her healing, whether or not she “officially” ends up with better partners, is crucial for the kind of hurt/comfort i have in my fics.

i was also open to valgrace in this and kind of switching out jason in nico’s role, though it didn’t take long for me to realize it wouldn’t really work, and valdangelo is a better endgame narratively.

so, that’s all i have. terminology, history, dynamics. i have a handful of drabble-length scenes written, though i really wasn’t getting the right feel for them. i hope you guys like this au either way, and feel free to send me an ask about it if anything interested you. thanks for reading this far <33

[mangozic]

my dead goth son and his friendly neighborhood personified concept of insanity

[watcher0033]

Y’all, the Archive admins are made up of VOLUNTEERS. And they have been working for 12-13 HOURS STRAIGHT.

I better not hear any complaints when donation period comes around. OR ELSE.

cosplay by @woahchriswoah on Twitter

EDIT: How do we show appreciation to the volunteers? For me reading these deep dives on OTW issues u guys apparently it's been said multiple times that one of their objective statements is to have paid staff for ao3 and there's a surplus of donations they haven't used up or the other community solutions that needs to address. For those more financially literate feel free to analyze, snipe me or add to the discussion etc. linked here by deepa. They’re cool and these yearly analysis they did aint no joke.

But Seriously what can we do for these volunteers? The probable burn out from this entire fiasco would be no joke. @ao3org

[teafromthemicrowave]

Oliver Banks.

[wonuhui]

seventeen as tumblr text posts [2/?]

[aziuuu]

SEASON 4!

Well, that was fun,

I got carried away with adding effects and it turned out great!

Have some beaten up Elias/Jonah as a treat lmao

[peachtinzz]

aint he pretty

alts below the cut

[twentyonefirstmates]

i just cannot stop thinking of jon trying so hard to grieve for the real elias after he Finds Out because elias died scared and alone to the same power that destroyed jon, because elias was also forced to watch his own body become entirely alien to him as he became Something Else, because elias and jon have both been tortured and Changed by the same man, because jon might be the only person in the world who understands what happened to him and is definitely the only person in the world who cares.

But also, jon can't think of elias' face without having to choke back a scream, cant utter elias' name without wanting to cry, cant think about elias' body without the feeling of being watched, worms burrowing into his skin, the agony of not being able to remember his friend's face, his mind being broken, hellish flames on his hand, falling from a great height, a knife against his windpipe, plastic fingers against his skin, dying, coming back wrong, darkness beyond everything hes ever known, dirt in his lungs, losing everyone hes ever loved, strings controlling his every move. He cant grieve for elias without grieving for himself. And he know, he knows, he Knows that none of it was ever elias' fault. Elias was just some poor stupid idiot who ended up in an evil place and had his life stolen by an evil man, just like jon. Jon knows elias never actually did anything to him, but he cant forgive him for the things done by his body. He wants to grieve, he tries to grieve, he does grieve. But he can never grieve properly for the man who was lost because he is inseparable from the man who took him.

[iwhoneverbelievedinwar]

(grabbing your face) do you remember simon fairchild's statement about how he became an avatar. how he fell and the sky embraced him. i think about it all the time. how it would feel to be embraced by the vast. the entity that is about how you are insignificant before the endless void, holding you. the fact that being an avatar of the vast means loving a contradiction: you are insignificant and the entity of the vastness of everything else holds you in its embrace and takes away your mortality.

i wonder if when simon told that one guy enjoy sky blue if the reason he laughed while saying it was because he was sharing his own joy. if in his own way he wasn't being generous, sharing the experience that changed him forever. i wonder if as much as he spreads terror, maybe what he really wanted was to share that experience, and that's why he picked someone who loves sky-diving, someone who was also in love with the sky.

i wonder if that guy who was eaten by the sky isn't out there now, saying the sky held him gently in the huge jaws of endless blue, and he cried with joy as he understood. if what for his mother was a horrible experience that killed her son, for him wasn't the liberation from his mortal life and worries before the realization that we are nothing.

i wonder if simon was afraid, too, before he was in love or while he was in love with it, if he can even distinguish his love for the vast from his fear from it or it's just another facet of his adoration, something he can offer to it, if when he said he loved the sky he meant it like that, like we often love a god, with fear as strong as our adoration.

[monakisu]

lawlight toxic yuri i never posted

[justicewasserved]

so I see a lot of people going "hahaha wild that Jon thinks everything (such as the apocalypse) is his fault when it REALLY isn't" and they would be correct but I keep thinking about why it is that he's like that. I think a lot of people simply put it down to "that's just how he is as a person" when I really think it's more of a combination between personality, how he was brought up (not that well) and the web.

in mag 81 he's never that specific about what his grandmother was like, and is very clearly trying to make her sound better than she actually is. but to me it sounds like she instilled a feeling that any and all problems that occurred throughout his childhood was his fault, or made worse by him. I'm thinking something like "I'm feeling so bad right now because I have to pick you up from school every day." and if she did do this, clearly it worked because he is, in his statement as an adult, retroactively pinning the blame for all his childhood problems on himself for being a "deeply annoying child". I really think that it's not normal to think you are to blame for someone else bullying you and that it was probably caused by his grandmother making him think he caused everyone's problems.

the mr spider event shocked him in a lot of ways but one of the main things that shook him was that he felt like he could've prevented what happened and he could've saved the guy's life. obviously this is ridiculous - it's clear to us that the web pulled him down the exact path which would lead someone else to interrupt his reading and get captured themselves. however Jon does not know this and clearly thinks he should've done better. I think that this, along with his upbringing, started the distinct way of thinking that he has where he decides that everything is his fault.

the web knew this would happen and then utilises it to make sure his crushing sense of responsibility causes him to get all 14 marks and then to, unwillingly, play his part in removing the fears from the universe.

[ihatebrainstorm]

You already know I'm gonna say the simpatico sillies <333

Perhaps paired with a song? Idk I've been in a music mood lately

Apologies I've been slow getting to these requests ksdfks, but here! A Simpatico dump to make up for loss time >:D)-(

And tbh I associate a bunch of Saint Motel's songs with the two of them, so here's one that reminds me of Percy lmao:

[occudo]

So this day last year (September 25.) I posted my very first TMA fanart, celebrating Jmart day- after that, I may or may not draw them a few more times.

Well, I did start a comic series where Gertrude is still around, so they have a more normal time.

And maybe made a couple of safe house drawings.

And a Victorian AU version of them, which became a P&P-themed series of fanart.

And I maybe made a fanart for a really good fic by @milkteamoon where Jon is a vampire.

And maybe after that, I made another AU where Jon is a witch, and Martin is his knight, named The Magus Archives, loosely inspired by arthurameslove 's fic.

And I got commissioned by the lovely @cirrus-grey who then wrote a fic for them.

And maybe I made a couple other smaller AUs with them, who knows.

So glad that I spent the last year drawing these two for a very normal amount.

Let's hope next year will be similar :'D

[rennebright]

罪人 :浦和ハナコ 罪名 :公然わいせつ by L.L.L [Twitter/X] ※Illustration shared with permission from the artist. If you like this artwork please support the artist by visiting the source.

[the-magnus-protocol]

Art masterpost

[lunacias]

are you still listening?