Annoyingly Autistic About Things

Ofc Nero and Commodus were horrible in their own ways, but all three members of the Triumvirate present their own unique brand of awful.

For Caligula, I think about how insanely invasive and creepy wanting to literally be someone is. Nero will settle for Lester killed with a little flare. Commodus's main goal was also to kill Lester (deep down I don't think that's what Commodus really wanted, but I don't think he'd realize until he'd actually done it and realized it didn't make him feel fulfilled.)

But back to Caligula. For Caligula, killing Lester is not enough. Even killing him with all the flair both Nero and Commodus wanted to is not enough. Caligula isn't planning Lester's death with all that fanfare because he wants to make a big show about it. He's doing it because he has to conduct the proper rituals, which means peeling Lester apart layer by layer and consuming every part of his essence.

He does not, of course, manage to do it. But I think so much about what it must be like to fear dying in the most invasive way physically possible. Dying at the hands of someone who is picking apart all of that which makes you you. Dying at the hands of someone who is consuming your divinity, your powers, your very soul. It will be agony and it will be so utterly exposing.

If Caligula had gotten his way, Lester would've died with every private, intimate little moment stripped from him. Every emotion, all the dread, fear, shame but also all the love and joy, laid bare for Caligula's taking.

All for someone who is obsessed with this idolization of who Apollo as a god was and what Caligula thinks that means.

That, too! Distracted by his trials and used to a lot of attention and worship, I don't think Lester quite puts together how odd Caligula's level of obsession with him is. He doesn't realize how weird it is to be the subject of Caligula's idolization, treated by Caligula as something to be claimed and consumed. Within his own inner monologue, he acts as if he finds wanting to be the sun the most natural thing for a power-hungry emperor, and sure, yeah. But like. He is obsessed, specifically, with this false version of who he thinks you to be, Lester. And he's going to kill you to become you.

Then there's horror of Caligula then intending to walk into Olympus and take Apollo's throne and the fear Lester had that the other Olympians may actually allow it to happen.

Lester was hunted down by Caligula, then lured into a trap. He began the painful experience of having his very life essence strained from him. And if that process had actually finished, he would have died fully believing his family was about to let the man who obsessed over having Apollo's identity to the point of murdering him and consuming all that he was simply take his place in the family.

Now whether or not the Olympians would've actually let Caligula be one of them is another matter entirely, but since I'm focusing on how Lester feels in all of this and what he imagines the situation is like, what matters is that Lester thinks that'd be how it would go down.

All of this objectifies Apollo, both from Caligula's perspective and Lester's own. It treats being "Apollo" as some sort of thing to have instead of just... who Lester is. And Lester himself contributes to this objectification when he believes that if Caligula takes the identity of Apollo, that will be good enough to also take his family and other connections on Olympus, his sunhorses, his home. Everything. Not just everything in Apollo's memories, not just all his powers. All his connections with the people around him on Olympus and everything he owns, too! Caligula's now, as if being the Apollo the Sun God matters more than being Apollo the brother, the god, the friend, the person ever did.

I just thought of how both in this context and outside of it he himself (Lester? Apollo?) thinks of “Apollo” as this third body idea which is separated from him. He is Apollo and Apollo is him, but he keeps saying “Apollo is such” “Apollo doesn’t such” etc. He treats his own identity as a glorified (or hideous, depends) persona that is. Not him. But something else. And he does it so naturally and so mindlessly that it doesn’t even read too weirdly.

Could it be because he currently literally isn’t his old godly Apollo self but Lester the mortal? Could it be that his entire life has been a facade of intricate masking and so much of “Apollo” is now dishonest role play bullshit that he doesn’t even associate this role with himself? Could it be that he doesn’t WANT it to be himself, because that would be too painful - both for terrible things “Apollo” has done or experienced, and for how he used to be so powerful but is now (relative to that) completely helpless as Lester? Could it be because a god is more than a persona with identity, memories and experiences but also eternal, eldritch divine force which (to Cali’s delight) may be taken away from the identity and passed onto someone else, yet remaining the same thing

my brain: hey kinda like how nero separates himself from "The Beast"

i will never get over the fact that Apollo/Lester fully attempted to kill himself in order to save Meg, Piper, and Jason

and him immediately being like, no no no I do not deserve that kind of credit it wasn't a sacrifice cause obviously Madea was going to save me like I wasn't trying to die I knew I'd survive it was just a distraction that was it and like I didn't even aim for the heart so it wasn't even anything big

like bro whether or not you thought you'd survive is not the point, the point is that you stabbed yourself to save them, he fully stabbed himself in the chest with an arrow to save them, and like what if they were so fucking shocked and freaked out that he just did that that Madea couldn't react fast enough to save him, he stabbed himself in the fucking chest, what if they assumed he hit his heart or a lung and didn't even bother to try and save him

we need to talk about the fact Apollo

A FUCKING GOD

Part 3/3

and some apollo meg extras that didn’t make it in

RR verse is on the "Olympus will fall" timeline and Zeus' actions are speeding it up.

In the recent decade there has been several great prophecies back to back. And people have remarked how weird it is that there have been so many. What if the reason is because of Zeus?

Remember, in greek mythology there is a major theme of how Your Fate Cannot Be Defied. And Zeus, king of Olympus, has a major Fate: being overthrown. However he managed to "defy" it by eating Metis.

My idea is that he has been forcefully clawing out a future where he is still king of Olympus. By doing this, he is literally changing the flow of fate. And obviously fate wants to correct itself, so the harder he fights it, the more counterforce he triggers. All prophecies meant to lead to his overthrowing are suddenly sped up. Olympus begins to lose power. Zeus is aware of this. He is also aware how people are becoming suspicious. And he needs a scapegoat. And who better than the god of prophecy who is also a threat to the throne?

Apollo mentions that Zeus blamed him for his oracle revealing a prophecy "too early" and therefore causing it to happen early. However, everyone knows it's not possible to actually cause a prophecy to happen early...so why would Zeus even have this weird line of thought? everyone probably dismissed it as Zeus being irrational, but there a juicier theory this ties into:

Apollo being the one to overthrow Zeus.

The idea of "fall of the sun, the final verse". What if this is the final prophecy that is meant to happen before Zeus is overthrown? And what if the fall this speaks of is actually when Apollo fell close to chaos? When he pulled himself together there?

What if he reformed different from his original godly form. He was literally almost gone, his body was disintegrating. Maybe he pulled himself together using the energies of chaos. Apollo himself isn't aware of this, due to a suspicious memory gap between him clawing up from the cliff and him waking up next to Artemis.

And this adds to another headcanon of mine, the fates choose Apollo to be the god of prophecy on purpose. At first glance, this is a horrible match. If they wanted a good servant, why would they choose someone so closely tied to his heart and so likely to fight fate? Someone who dares get them drunk just to extend a human's lifespan? UNLESS... they WANT him to eventually try and defy fate??

Imagine if fate was a compass and Zeus had forcefully wrenched the needle point at a bleak dark future where Olympus falls with him. And this river direction has been set so deeply in stone and run on for so long, it has worn a grove and become the mostly likely future.

you need someone willing to fight, someone to wrench the needle out. SOMEONE FAMILAR WITH FATE AND Prophecy. Someone who has the power to fight it and win. Someone who has the will. Perhaps a baby god who was willing to fight Python, and who would have likely died there. But if he successfully did take on the powers of prophecy, one day that same godling would fight Python again, would absorb the powers of chaos to recreate himself.

Perhaps not today and maybe not even for the next four thousand years

but one day that godling would stare down at that wretched compass hand and decide to yank the flow out of its place. And maybe, that godling means a chance for Olympus to have a different future.

Anyways that's my crazy theory i hope it wasn't too confusing. It also links up with my other story theme idea about fate, hope and apollo blah blah blah, which i rambled about in a different post.

This is what I've thought since reading the tower of Nero, but i always knew something was up with the memory wipe thing. Why wipe Apollos memories when what you want him to do requires his memories? And the Six month gap never made sense.

And he was completely mortal! He never had the option of nectar/ambrosia to heal himself, which I think wasn't the case in the other times this happened. It makes sense if Zeus was trying to kill him.

And the ending of Tower of Nero made this make sense to me. Because Apollo pulled himself up. None of the other gods came to help him(Unless I misremember). He did it all on his own, and seemed to gain his divinity on the way up.

Plus, if I remembered correctly, Zeus was not happy to see him in that meeting. And Apollo's own words called Zeus a tyrant(or something along those lines) ruling over a false democracy.

On the one hand, in greek mythology Zeus does not have a prophecy hanging over his head like Kronos did. All the prophecies Zeus defies/misdirects are actually focused on other people: Metis and her second child; Thetis and her child. (Unless you count the Prometheus Bound, which as far as I know is the only piece of literature where it is explicitly prophetized that Zeus will be overthrow).

On the other hand, the Greeks had a cyclical idea of time: like day follows the night, like the season all cycle into each other, all events will sooner or later return in some way.

So why does the cycle of succession in Greek mythology seem to stop with Zeus?

Well, the simple answer is that he appears to have broken the cycle.

The essay "Children of Zeus in the Homeric Hymns - Generational succession" by N. Felson breaks down the steps that characterize the succession myth. There are two crucial steps at the beginning:

The father hates and/or fears his sons.

The father tries to obliterate these sons.

In actual Greek mythology, Zeus never does either of these, so the cycle never starts and he stays in power forever.

Furthermore, Kronos' reign was a "Golden age" because he allowed for no threat but also no progress to manifest, and everything stagnated. Zeus instead allowed humanity to develop and grow.

(I swear I am getting to a point, just stay with me a bit more)

Coming back to the Riordanverse, we are shown an Olympus on the way of decay and gods who have long lost their old glory and are almost shadows of themselves.

Zeus especially, has started to follow in his father's footsteps and has become a tyrant, intolerant of any opposition and incurant of humanity and the demigods.

I think the events that happen in the series are the final dominoes in a long series, that starts when the Ancient laws are put in place and the contacts between the gods and humanity are restricted. As the gods are forgotten and lose more and more power over centuries, Zeus becomes more and more afraid and therefore paranoid that he is going to lose his throne. Therefore, he starts to be more oppressive towards his family - his subjects -, who in turn lose faith and trust in him and become more and more willing to go behind his back.

When Kronos' threat re-emerges after millenia, we see a lot of gods breaking the laws and helping the demigos behind Zeus' back.

At a certain point (I would bet after TTC, when Artemis is kidnapped and Apollo can do practically nothing to find and help her directly), Apollo realizes that he needs more power to protect his loved ones. So what does he do?

He tries to get more power. He is already one of the most popular Greek Gods, so he looks to expand into the Roman Camp where he is regarded almost as a secondary god. He talks to Octavian. He helps the augur rise in the ranks.

And it all spectacularly backfires when Gaea chooses to makes herself known again after millennia.

For the first time, the gods are helpless and completely dependant on the demigods to be saved. Once the Giants are defeated, Zeus needs a show of force to prove that he has not lost control, the he is still the king, the most powerful one, and the he will be obeyed.

And in a single, masterful move, he both finds a scapegoat and elimates the biggest threat to his rule.

The one who went behind his back and flaunted his laws the most.

The one whose sight is farther and whose knowledge is greater than Zeus' himself.

The one who has proven he desires greater power and is actually willing to act to get it.

Apollo.

Of course, Zeus cannot eliminate Apollo directly or the other gods would revolt against him. So he finds an excuse. And there is just the perfect one!

Apollo is a god of prophecy, and what has caused all the trouble of the past few years?

Prophecies!

The incredible effectiveness of this manipulation resides in the fact that Apollo has been neglecting his oracles. It is not implausible to think that he has lost control of them. Everyone can see that Zeus has a point and Apollo needs to be punished, right?

Here is were we get to the real tragedy.

Do you remember what I said before, about the cycle of succession? Do you remember the steps that make it begin?

The father fears his sons.

The father tries to obliterate his sons.

Blinded by his paranoia and his desperate desire to keep power to himself, Zeus kickstarts the succession cycle entirely on his own!

And like for his father and grandfather, his attempt to suppress his son backfires spectacularly.

When Apollo pulled himself up from Chaos he did not just gain back his divinity. He finally has a purpose. He knows who he is and what he wants. He is reborn into the god he wants to be.

I think to justify all this as "it was the Fates' plan all along" does a disservice to Apollo and to the series. The theme of defying Fate is important in Trials of Apollo. Jason dies because he cannot see his prophecy ending any other way and just accpts that's what's going to happen. Frank survives even if his piece of wood is destroyed.

Individual actions and beliefs matter.

Some events are destined, but prophecies are mere sketches and not the finished picture. The guidelines on the weft of the universe, and not the complete weave.

How they manifest in practice, how the sketch on the canvas is filled in, to continue with the metaphor, depends on what every person chooses to do.

Some sequences are fixed and taking the first step will eventually lead to a second and a third and so on till a predtermined ending. But people can choose to take that first step or to abstain.

Thalia refused the Great Prophecy while Percy took it upon himself.

A young Zeus refused to follow in his father footsteps, and the old Zeus is on the path of ruin.

It's not all predetemined. People have choices.

disclaimer: this is just plot setup for my fanfic and I am playing fast and loose with Greek mythology and concepts in RR verse.

In my headcanon, the fates and fate itself are different entities. Imagine caretakers rather than the embodiment itself. The Fates guide threads, but Fate itself is an emergent force created by accumulated actions & resistance. Like how Apollo is a god of the sun but he isn't The Sun. And prophecies are more like very accurate weather forecasts based on patterns and history rather than something set in stone. When Apollo spews a prophecy, its more taking a translation of the most likely future. So occasionally u can "defy a prophecy". But its more like changing ur actions and behaviors enough so it doesn't apply anymore. But the common belief is that prophecy cannot be defied, since no one really knows how prophecy or fate works, they can only make guesses.

I think that the prophecy of Metis and her son is important because its specifically concerns her kid ruling over the world aka taking Zeus' spot. And Zeus ate her to prevent this specific thing from happening. So it's not just recently that he begun to fear being succeeded.

In RR verse and greek myth, a lot of bad happens because people try to defy their fates, like what happened to Odepius, where in the end all the accumulated bad happened all at once. So I am introducing a similar idea where actively defying a fate can lead to it stacking pressure like a dam. And Zeus' fate is caused by none other than himself, his own accumulated bad actions cause his own downfall. But because he's the king of Olympus, he's making his downfall have huge collateral damage for everyone around him aka creating a compass needle pointing towards the destruction of olympus.

In recent times a bunch of End of the gods rule prophecies are exploding through as the dam cracks. (my in universe explanation for why so many great prophecies happened back to back, though I know its probably just RR needing material for his books lmao)

What the fates did is more like promote a young general with potential (apollo) to help win a future anticipated battle (unclog the zeus from the suez canal). Its not guaranteed that Apollo would succeed.

And yes individual actions and beliefs can create or change fate. That's how Zeus made his fate, not in the way he wanted, but instead made him fated to be overthrown. So prophecies started to come. And he doubled down. With actions that even more set his fate in stone. So he is feeding the cycle himself. The prophecies cause him fear and paranoia so he becomes a Tyrant and thus people become more tendency to rebel hence he tightens his grip even more. Over and over.

But now because he's held it back for so long, its at the breaking point, more extreme prophecies are starting to hit (aka the most likely future is now bleak) . His empire is cracking due to his rule, the gods are weakening and his enemies are sensing an opportunity.

That's why Apollo will be the goat. He has already shown he can change his mind and behaviors even after so long and even though its hard. And he cares about the lives of those around him enough to create change. And he's a stubborn mule that refuses to give up.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me you are comparing Fate to a river. This river has a correct flow, and one can only follow it or defy/obstruct it? Doesn't this metaphor mean there is only one correct path, even if not planned by a sentient entity?

I agree with your view of the Fates (the Moirai) not being the same thing as Fate in the context of the Riordanverse.

I do not share your view on prophecies however. It is quite clear (and even explicitly said by Chiron in THO if i'm not mistaken) that in the Riordanverse prophecies are not just "weather forecasts" of what might come, but that they actively shape the future.

The very examples you bring - Oedipus and Zeus - are proof: self-fulfilling prophecies.

Had Oedipus' parents not gotten a prophecy, they would not have abandoned their child. Had Oedipus not been foretold he would kill his father, he would not have left his adoptive parents and ended up in Thebes where he killed his actual father and then married his mother.

If there had been no prophecy, no one of these tragedies would have happened!

The danger of Python having control over Delphi is that he can, to a point, modify the future, and we see this happen! Python forces the prophecy that Apollo will fall, and that happens!

(But not exactly how Python hoped, because words are important. Intent is not binding, but the actual words that are spoken are).

Personally, I think that "defying a prophecy" means to make it come true in unexpected ways, and it referes to a different kind of prophecy (a kind that is not self-fullfilling).

When a prophecy is short and unambiguous (you will marry your mother! Your son will overthrow you!) it's when people try to fight back and cause the very thing they are trying to avoid to happen. This type of self-fulfilling prophecy does not allow for individual choice.

But when a prophecy is less clear cut and more open to interpretation, that's when people's choices become critical. This is the only type of prophecy we see spoken in the RRverse (with the exception of Python's, maybe), and it is one that helps the characters understand what they have to do and which decision they must take.

You can work with these prophecies. You can decide which, out of all the possible meanings, is the one that is going to manifest.

Apollo talking to Jason in TBM is the main example of this. "Three letters, starts with D". The word "die" is never spoken, but Jason chooses to hear it anyway. And so he makes his last stand. Apollo, on the other hand, tries to argue. "It could mean many things. It could mean a trip to the Underworld. It could mean death such as Leo suffered, where you pop right back to life". He is the god of prophecy. He knows what he's talking about.

To me, defying the prophecy would have been to try and fit some other word or some other interpretation into that gap left by what was spoken.

Defiance is not about avoiding the outcome, it's about the characters actively working to change what they can (themselves, or the world) in order to make the best out of what they cannot.

It will suck, and they will pull through anyway.

The story of Metis does indeed prove that Zeus has been afraid of losing his power for a long time. However, as I said, I think that Zeus' fear and paranoia got worse over time as the gods' influence over the world waned.

Furthermore, Metis' prophecy has one particularly interesting characterstic: the sources we have of it (Hesiod's Theogony and Pseudo-Apollodorus Bibliotheca, mainly) say that the son would become the king of gods and men. Nowhere (that i know of at least) do they say that her son would overthrow Zeus. Zeus as an individual (rather than as his role as king) is technically not involved with the prophecy at all! It is not his fate!

It's a technicality, sure, but prophecies are built on technicalities.

Zeus isn't stupid. He knows how their world works. He knows the cycle. And the first step for the cycle to start, the prerequisite step (that i had previously omitted for simplicity) is that the father has to sire the son.

It seems like a small difference, but it's not. It is what allows Zeus to eat Metis and get away unscathed.

There is no son.

Therefore, the prophecy's premise is gone.

Furthermore, since there is no son the cycle cannot be triggered!

Does this sound like rubbish? Possibly. But words are critical (just look at Python's last prophecy!)

I agree that RR never really specified (and tbh I don't think he even thought out) how Fate and prophecy function in detail, so it's all up to interpretation.

To come full circle to the inital metaphor of the river, my headcanon is Fate as a river branching off into different streams. No one knows what's at the end of each branch or if there is an end at all, and there isn't a single path forward.

Normal people are swept up in the current, but they can choose to dive into side branches when the opportunity presents itself, thus changing their course.

People gifted with prophecy can sometimes get an aerial view, so that they can know if and where there will be branches. Or if the river will plunge you to destruction in a glorious waterfall. A prophecy is a map of the possible paths forward. You cannot change the course of the river, but you can choose which branch you are going to follow.

@toapril-official day 8 - anniversary

Listen, man. He’s had a long day.

ok i've been watching way too many true crime lately, and, like. 90% of serial killers target women and most of them also grape them at some point, and i'm just listenning to this and thinking that they'd be on Alastor's hit list for sure.

The claim is that the other boys' flaws have a positive spin to them, like Sam being more empathetic but I actually think Sam's main flaw in season 4 is that he feels like he doesn't have enough power. Part of this is because he wants to save people but a bigger part of it is that HE wants to do something and he wants the power to do it (disclaimer: love Sam a lot. I literally do not care he made stupid mistakes in S4. I love him enough that I my heart he did nothing wrong and is perfect) The main way Ruby was manipulating him was by enticing him with power, with having the ability to take out any demon. Of being the one to kill Lilith. I think this stems from his anger at demons and his anger that he wasn't able to stop Deans death in s3. Anger at his life too probably since his dad was a fucking asshole.

Anyhow, Sam in S5 learns to combat his want for demon blood and eventually becomes the hero and stops Lucifer. But his flaw was a need for power. Which he lies to himself about and at first he dresses it up 'to save people' AND maybe at first it was, but as time went on that changed, the more he drank the demon blood the more his motivations were corrupted. Which makes his arc in S5 that much sweeter

So here is how I imagine they would react to a pregnancy depending on who has had it 👍