so I've been thinking. about zeus' plan in toa and how this world works and
mythological figures can't die. it has been established. the belief system guarantees that as long as they stay alive in the cultural zeitgeist, they will return
but what zeus was doing in toa... he bound apollo's consciousness into a mortal vessel. his emotions and feelings and personal opinions and moral values. all the things that you can only gain with lived experience
and most importantly all things that are not known or written about. those are his inner thoughts. and they were all carefully isolated and bound into a permanent fixed state. solid and material in the ways a god should never be
a god's sense of self is remarkably fluid and fragile after all. they have to fight for every bit of personhood and to hold onto it... is an active effort. it's not their natural state
so I wonder... was that the plan then. since to kill "apollo" is impossible by the rules of the world. then to kill all his self sustained parts. his interiority, the things only he would have known, the things that made apollo apollo
and then when "apollo" ended up reforming it would be someone purely made out of the cultural perception and mythology of "apollo". without any of his personal opinions or unknown to the public experiences. his public image that is, of course, completely loyal to the king of the gods
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It's one of Tasha's silly AU ideas that I don't have time for, but we might as well have some fun with it anyway.
Nea has been told her entire life that, if Mama says to run and run fast, you do it. You don't ask why and you don't beg, you grab the emergency backpack from the closet and go.
After a few months trying to get by and stay off everyone's radar, she has learned that survival is way harder than it sounds in her survival handbook. She doesn't know where her mother is and who they were hiding from. She just knows that it's cold out, she's low on supplies, and she has nowhere safe to go.
Metis did her best to shield her daughter from the threat looming over them both in her ex-husband and the fact that she alone knows what he did. She wanted the girl to be prepared but not center her entire life around it when she's been so careful to get far away and cover her tracks and most likely nothing will ever happen...
She certainly regrets the choice when Basileus's brute squad is in front of their door and she knows they're not both getting away this time.
Ares likes being outside in every weather, with his friends or, more often, on his own on the vast grounds of his parents' estate that include their own forest and small creek. They live far out from the town, and his mom had to fight hard to make his dad allow him to go to school and not be tutored at home.
Ares still feels trapped here sometimes, but he doesn't have time to dwell on his own family life when he starts to suspect there is someone hidden on the grounds that shouldn't be there...
Hera married a fairytale prince. At least that's what she says if anyone asks. It's not proper to bring relationship problems into outside conversations, her husband and her agree on that, and either way, she doesn't have much to complain. He's not there much, sure, and she knows if she looked for signs of infidelity, she would find them, and in hindsight, perhaps she should have pursued her college degree and gotten a driver's license instead of relying on Zeus's money and staff.
She doesn't need either of these things, of course, he makes sure she and Ares are well-taken care of, so there is really nothing to worry about...
Either way, she really needs to call someone about the phone line again, the stupid thing never seems to work when she needs it to.
hehe
Here are picrewssss
Nea (Athena) Winrow -- Ares de Olyver
Metis Winrow -- Zeus (Basileus) de Olyver -- Hera de Olyver
So yeah, basically Metis ran away from Zeus with baby/toddler Athena after he committed a crime that she knows of. He's very influential and has been looking for them ever since while marrying his then (and unaware) side-chick Hera who was pregnant with a son of his.
Zeus' personnel find Metis and Athena's apartment and Metis sends her daughter on the run so she can escape their clutches while she stays, her fate currently unknown.
A few tough months after, Athena (who only knows herself as Nea) happens to find shelter at the only place she should not have walked into - Her father's property.
like I said, I can't really write this cos my life is already falling apart as is, but I have ideas for the plot and I would love to have some fun with it with ya'll
as usual with stuff I won't write, feel free to get inspired, just please tag me so i can see it :D
@sarnai4 here's what the picrews i showed you are for
@luskaandsissi tag for idea contribution <3
*note* Hi everyone! This will be a unknown multiple part fic following Apollo and reader after the war against Gaia. I haven’t finished ToA, so I will be taking some liberty in writing this fic. My end goal is to go beyond TSATS and create my own ending for the characters.
My brain is being mean today, so would any of y'all be interested in an AU where I make Zeus even worse than usual?
I have this vision in my head of where when Athena is born, Zeus, upon remembering the prophecy about how she'll be be better and smarter than him and Metis combined, basically decides to make her into his own personal weapon so she'll never try to overthrow him.
He does this in secret so that his brothers and the rest of the council won't realize what he's doing and try to turn her against him. It ends up turning into a sleeper agent/winter soldier kind of situation, with Athena basically blacking out when he gives her certain orders.
Pallas's death is one of those orders.
More, including Apollo and Athena angst, under the cut!
And up until God Games it works really well for him, but when she defies him over Odysseus he reacts the way he does in most of my fics and gives her brain damage.
From there, because I love me some angst, he brings Apollo into the same kind of training, basically wanting him as his own personal healer and a way to get his weapon back to full health more quickly.
But pulling in Apollo turns out to be a massive mistake on Zeus's part, not that he realizes it at first, because Apollo is kind to Athena in a way that no one else on Olympus has ever been. He talks to her, heals her, treats her as her own person and not an extension of Zeus.
Athena latches onto him hard, the two of them becoming extremely close and protective of each other.
Zeus actually makes things worse for himself on that front by further isolating the two, basically setting them up in public to be seen as his favorite children and turning the rest of their siblings against them.
Eventually, several millennia later, Zeus gets so out of hand that even Poseidon, Hades, and Hestia(though not Hera) agree that he needs to be brought down. So they call a meeting with the rest of the Olympian Council to decide what to do.
Apollo and Athena are in attendance, but they're both extremely worried about what Zeus will do to them if these efforts to overthrow him fail and he finds out they were part of it.
Aphrodite ends up using her charmspeak on Athena at some point* and Apollo freaks the fuck out upon seeing Aphrodite make Athena 'Go Gray' as they call it.
*Not sure why yet.
Apollo shoves Aphrodite away from Athena and it breaks the charmspeak, waking Athena from her trance.
Athena then also freaks the fuck out, asking Apollo what she had done in a total panic because holes in her memory never mean anything good for anyone.
Apollo calms her down, tells her what happened in detail, then flashes them both out.
Chaos descends.
Apollo pops back in 10 minutes later to threaten Aphrodite into never doing that to Athena again.
And that's all I have so far, but I'm working on more
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Apollo (Percy Jackson)
Additional Tags: Author Is an Apollogist (Percy Jackson), Whumptober 2024, Emotional Baggage, Prompt: Emotional Angst, Prompt: Giving Permission to Die, Fear of Death, Zeus Being an Asshole (Percy Jackson), Zeus Bashing (Percy Jackson), Suicidal Thoughts, Ficlet, Identity Issues
Series: Part 20 of Starthorn's Whumptober 2024
Summary:
Self sacrifice was unacceptable for immortals, but they were used to sacrificing others.
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also apollo is very much an optimist who never gives up and zeus fucking hates it
he keeps escalating putting him in more and more of the most heinous circumstances that would literally pulverize anyone's mind with despair so he would just. break. and he just goes *inhale* *focused Intense gaze* *through gritted teeth* "I can work with this"
it's a matter of principles and baked deep into him being the personification of Light
it's very important to me he's Very Much This
The Sun. Will Rise. Again. and that's both a promise and a threat
Not sure if you’ve brought it up before but I’ve been thinking about how rrverse Hermes mentioned inventing the internet and how his family didn’t appreciate it. It was played off comedically, but I wonder what it felt like to create something that, at its core, is meant for connection and guidance- only to see it be a danger magnet for your children and other demigods, who therefore have to avoid using it.
OH THAT'S SO FUCKED UP. FUCK.
it hadn't occurred to me. can this guy get just one W????? haven't seen evidence for it yet
but yeah this would make his interaction and thinking he ruins everything he touches issues even worse. as if we needed any more of that
hermes was already one of the most essential gods for. erm,, life. but the invention of the internet made him The single most influential and impactful of the modern age no questions asked. it's probably the purest incarnation of a domain any of the gods will ever get. this is pretty much the modern equivalent of prometheus giving fire to humanity. it changed the landscape of society
so to have confirmation bias that yes, he endangers people. Exactly in the way zeus says he does
which is !!! Not True!! because you're ignoring the part where he's literally built for interacting and interfering with people. as in it factors in in his powerset. as in HIM NOT DOING IT IS WHAT ENDANGERS THEM. AS IN YOU JUST MADE YOUR CONNECTION AND ACCESSIBILITY POWERS AVAILABLE TO LITERALLY EVERYONE AND THEN CUT OUT THE PART THAT MAKES YOU THE MOD AND ADMIN
that's the insidiousness of zeus' abuse, he turns gods against their domains. and then when they're inevitably in immeasurable despair and depression and failing at everything they try, he lies the blame on their actions and intentions being inherently doomed to fail (when it truly has nothing to do with that, they were being set up to fail) (but it's hard to distinguish reality when you have such flawless false equivalents. and narrative propaganda. and are living under constant stress and anxiety and fear)
Some questions I got in the notes of one of my posts!
Can you tell us more about Athena and apollos friendship? When’s hades going to talk to the others? Will Trition ever get to fight zeus? Why did Athena’s death end Zeus’s reign, on like a symbolic level. She doesn’t seem relevant here but what does Athena think of Pallas? Did she ever tell Ody and Co about her?
So, one by one! And I'm actually going to put the answers under the cut because I don't want this post to be a million miles long
Athena and Apollo, in basically all of my AU's, are both very lonely people at their core. They're both supposed to be half of something, Athena and Ares as gods of war, and Apollo and Artemis as the sun and the moon.
But neither of them fit quite right in those places, there's something just off enough that the things they're supposed to do, supposed to be, don't come naturally to them. And they hate that.
Apollo covers it with a smile and a slightly airheaded cool older brother act. Athena covers it with icey distance and cold disdain.
Hades isn't going to talk to the others for a while. In like, any of my AU's, probably. Any AU that involves Athena or Apollo in the Underworld? Means someone, somewhere on Olympus, fucked up massively enough that he's the one stuck doing damage control.
And if Athena is actually dead? He's not saying jack shit until she's strong enough to protect herself against them. He'll say something to Apollo once it's clear that he's the only one she trusted, but that's it.
Because the thing with Hades in my fics? He is both possessive as hell, and holds grudges to the ends of the earth. And currently, his niece is dead, making her both his family and a member of his kingdom.
She's also traumatized as all hell, recovering from a kind of pain that she should never have been exposed to, and his brother did that to her. Using power that was, by all rights, under his domain. And the rest of their family did nothing. They didn't even realize anything was wrong until she was already dead, for the Fates sake!
So yeah, he's not saying shit until she asks him to or he decides they can be trusted again. Not even Hestia is getting a word out of him.
As far as Olympus is concerned? She's fully dead. She never arrived in his realm.
They let his niece die. Now they get to deal with the consequences of that decision.
And oh boy, Triton. I haven't decided yet on what I'm going to do with Triton because we have basically no personality for him in canon beyond him not liking Percy while in the middle of a war. We get one scene with him and that's it.
But while I'm not certain on him fighting Zeus, he's definitely going to be fighting Poseidon for the right to fight Zeus! And if he manages to get to Olympus, he's gonna fight anybody that tries to get between him and Zeus.
I love feral overprotective characters, so I'm extending that to Triton here. He's now lost both his daughters to Zeus and he's not going to stop until the god is punished for it.
And there's three major reasons Athena's death ended Zeus's reign.
The first is the prophecy from before her birth. In some translations(others often saying it would be the second child of Metis, born a boy) it was said that she would surpass him in one of two ways. If she was born a boy she would become ruler of the gods after Zeus. But if she was a girl she would be better and smarter than both her mother and father combined. So Zeus swallowed Metis when it became known that she was pregnant in order to avoid being overthrown.
The second reason is because Zeus managed something that no one else ever has. He killed a Goddess. And not just any goddess, but an Olympian.
But prophecies in this verse can't be avoided, only certain circumstances changed. The second vision Apollo had(visions sent to him by the Fates are different from prophecies, they're warnings for him specifically because they like him) was one way it could have ended, but there are hundreds of others.
Because Athena didn't fade, and they know that for certain. She left a body behind, that doesn't happen when a god fades.
*I don't know what I'm going to do about her body yet, but she definitely left one*
There are barely more than a handful of beings that don't belong there that can say such a thing, and three of them were Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades themselves when they went to scatter Kronos' remains. And he wanted to send them back there for eternity.
And the third is that, even if he hadn't killed Athena, he still went too far to be allowed to remain as King. He planned, admitted to, and was both fully willing and prepared to trespass in Hades' domain simply to punish a pair of demi-gods for a perceived slight. And not just any demi-gods, but two demi-gods that not only saved his reign from Kronos, but survived Tartarus Itself to save his reign from Gaia.
And as for Pallas...
Even just admitting that he was planning to attempt it was enough for it to be considered a violation of the Ancient Laws. But should he have actually tried? With Hades own stolen power over his own subjects?
Whether he succeeded or not, Hades would have been well within his rights to give him the Kronos treatment.
Athena, by the time she dies, doesn't have very many memories of Pallas left. She remembers her death, remembers the aftermath, remembers being banished and sent back to Olympus because of it. Primarily because of how traumatic it all was for her.
On her very best days she remembers what Pallas was like while she was alive, while she was happy. She remembers how the two of them called each other sister. How she came to see Triton as a father because of it. How the two of them once interrupted an important meeting on accident and instead of being punished they were allowed to stay and give their own input.
But the vast majority of her time in Atlantis is lost to her over the years.
She did tell Odysseus and his family some things about her, but not very much. She was ashamed of what had happened, and she hates that she played such a major part in Pallas's death.
Poseidon, when he ordered her to leave Atlantis, made it very clear to her that he blamed her for his granddaughter's death. This was before they knew of Zeus's involvement, of course, but by then it was far too late to take back his words.
Triton refused to speak to his father for centuries after the news of Athena's banishment reached him. And it was only made worse by the fact that Poseidon hadn't even told him himself, instead leaving the job to Amphirite who in turn left it to a palace messenger.
