Echo

i am... not a digital artist. and i should never touch colour ever ever ever ever again. but the brainworms insisted, so here is Mu Qing after one of his many qi deviations, on Zhiyu Yao peak.

in an AU where dazai is a painter, and oda was a writer-

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the moment I really latched onto him was when he basically dropped everything and tried to dive into the forest to go save his kids. bro wasn’t actually a selfish idiot like he kept making himself look like. bro was an emotionally constipated loving loser (affectionate) and loveable. he would risk the wrath of styx to save these kids. positively skrunkly

oh and his power! look guys the former protagonists always had some power to back them up, some good strength. this guy? first not demigod protagonist and he goes from straight up zero to launching a guy to the clouds with his bare hands. and tfw he uses his voiceTM. BEGONE SNAKE! and he acts so pathetic lol and if you look through whatever sunglasses he’s wearing and you look at the things from 3rd person pov dude what is he doing. he just flew off a road driving a car, and puts himself in front of the gremlin child to face one of those creepy zombie things that scream FOOD!!. bro straight up stabbed himself. bro sings the most heart wrenching song that even giant ants that don’t even understand what he’s saying get the point to the extent that they go catatonic with depression.

and holy cheez-its what kind of pain tolerance does this guy have?? dude??? you fell from the literal sky above the Empire State Building which like literal greek heaven (ouch) straight into a dumpster and then gets beat into unconsciousness by a pair of thugs under Nero like??? and with broken ribs, injured nose, hurt shoulder, etc. he walks up the stairs, runs through the woods insane. dude is literally insane. he gets flayed alive, forgets his other half, trapped in place by molten chains all at once and still trying trying to walk wth like this guy’s pain tolerance is beyond ouranos. idk how he does it I can’t even tolerate a hot summer day.

bro gives advice to a lost gremlin child who betrayed him anyway, helps her defeat her abuser the way he never could. and he grew, like everyone around him, to something better, something hopeful. “you’ve changed” heck yeah!! we love to see it

and humor?? like random mentions of things no one else in pjo would give you like playing the zither at 2am, godly toilet seat, ares roundhouse kick, waking up in Argentina. I love that they’re so offhand but they’re so funny and random

the haiku. they’re hilarious, works of art.

the characters. Chiron. Chiara. Damien. Austin. Kayla. Cecil. will. nico. Rachel. Lavinia. emmie. Josephine. heck even Commodus. lityerses. Abelard. Diana. frank. Jason. piper. the trogs. lu. reyna omg. meg. aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA I love them so much! just how they fit in with his own journey of self and how they grow with him, like a garden, like an orchestra building its crescendo together, in unity. little things like reading frank’s admiration of apollo first in hoo, and now we get apollo’s side of it, and he’s so cute. Reyna’s whole journey of “finding the one who will heal her heart”. (gods I loved that thank you rick.) and will’s “dad!” and making apollo literally weep and meg: “the beast is dead. I killed it.” and taps her head and I’m just so proud of them.

“YOU ARE NO GOD!” he isn’t the same god who fell to earth in the winter. he likely won’t be ever the same ever again. ‘cause he’s gonna work to being better. he’s saving the world, but he’s also having a journey of his own self, rediscovering himself, building onto himself like everyone else, they’re all gonna be a better version of themselves.

“Ah, Halloween. It makes the heart happy.” Patton turns the lollipop in his mouth, savouring the sweet taste, before removing it with a popping sound. He smiles. “There’s something about it.”

“Oh, there’s many things about it.”

Leaves crackle as Janus saunters past him. As always, he is impeccably dressed, a long coat, hat and yellow gloves. He stares into the distance and Patton wonders what he is seeing there through the autumn mist.

“Yeah, I guess you’d like it.” Patton shoots a smirk at him. “Everyone all dressed up… disguised as someone else.”

Janus spins around, eyebrows contracted in honest disbelief. “How is it that we’ve had so many of these visits and you still know so little about me!”

“Uh… ‘cause you don’t tell me anything.” Patton shrugs, his chest feeling strangely tight.

“You’re right, I don’t.” Janus’s face is illegible, and full of so many changing emotions that Patton becomes dizzy as he tries to decipher them all. “No one is disguised here. It’s just a little… make-believe.”

Janus starts to stare into the distance again, into the unknown. Silently, Patton nods, somehow uncomfortable near a Janus who is suddenly tame and attentive, not sarcastic or sharp-tongued as usual. It is so incredible, so unfamiliar, so not Janus at all, that for seconds it feels as if reality has received a crack, like a broken mirror that can only depict a distorted picture of reality.

And as if that wasn’t unusual enough, Janus begins to sing. It’s soft and gentle and Patton feels (against his will) very receptive and exceedingly charmed by so much beauty.

‘It’s exactly that,’ thinks Patton stunned. It’s the soft and gentle underneath the impregnable fortress that makes it so hard to resist him. If Janus were just cold and insensitive through and through, how much easier it would make this whole situation.

But he is not. He’s just pretending. Make-believing…

Janus lies to the whole world, just as Patton does, because what is their silence, what is their not naming their feelings other than that? A huge lie that piles higher and higher the longer it remains unspoken.

“You know, maybe things are going to be okay,” Patton says in a voice filled with hope that is bubbling hot and consuming inside him. “Maybe they aren’t… just a fantasy.”

Janus turns to him and a single painfully convoluted emotion glides across his face. “Yes,” he says, sounding softer than usual. “Maybe.”

The loveliest lies of all.

-one of the few platonic relationships THAT STAY THAT WAY

-they both managed to separate themselves from their abuser/tyrant AKA nero and zeus

-meg actually acts like an annoying tween (at 12 i was a menace)

-SUNFLOWER SIBLINGS :))))

-the true found family trope

-their whole dynamic is just this:

meg:haha lester ur so dumb lol

some random person: yeah lester

To the point other cabins get jealous.

They will do the most basic thing and Apollo will scream and cheer like they just won the Olympics.

Will caught a medicine bottle before it hit the ground? “THATS MY BOY! LOOK AT HOW ATHLETIC AND SMART HE IS! IM SO PROUD OF HIM”

Kayla fixes her bow? “SHE IS SO CREATIVE! I WOULD GIVE ANYTHING TO SEE HER HAPPY!”

Austin plays one single note? “IMAGINE BEING MUSICALLY GIFTED, A HANDSOME BOY, AND A DEMIGOD! THATS MY KID HE IS SO AMAZING! IF ANYONE DISAGREES YOU ARE WRONG!!”

Oh you think Nico is safe from this?

That’s Apollo’s future son in law and he will do less than the bare minimum and get praised for it.

Nico gets up? Not even at a good time it could be the middle of the day but he gets up? “LOOK AT HIM GO! HE’S GOING TO BE MY SON IN LAW SOME DAY! HE’S SO STRONG MY SON GOT SO LUCKY!”

Meg isn’t safe either.

Meg puts her shoes on? “GO BESTIE GO! SHE EVEN LOOKS LIKE AN ICON WHILE PUTTING HER SHOES ON! I WISH I WAS THAT AMAZING”