It’s Not A Plot Hole, It’s Foreshadowing

The Burning Maze is my favorite TOA book and it brings me so much pain… so much pain… but I LOVE IT!!!!

I love that Grover is in it! (He is one of my favorite characters from the series) and Meg dealing with going back to her childhood home! The Arrow of Dodona was, as always, a fantastic character.

It was nice to see Piper and Jason again and that, even though they broke up, they still deeply cared for each other. Caligula was such a good antagonist and Medea was also so good, especially with Piper taking revenge and killing Medea.

Crest was such a fun character and his death is kind of traumatizing, like, Apollo is trapped, in literal pain and forgetting himself as Grover and Meg were dangled over Helios’s essence and Crest kept distracting Medea even as he was stabbed by her like… that’s SO FUCKING DARK!!

I love how it ended with Apollo vowing to keep Jason’s promise to remember to be human.

Other miscellaneous things that I enjoyed was also:

Apollo’s dreams that involved Caligula, like the one in which he ordered a guard to kill Tiberius and the one in which he basically pretended to be the Sun God.

I also liked Caligula’s motives in that Apollo was VERY valuable to him alive, but rather than being like Commodus, who wanted to kill him so that he can rename Indianapolis to Commodianapolis, he wanted to take Apollo’s remaining essence and combine it with Helios’s to become the new Sun God (not to say that I didn’t like Commodus’s motives, it’s just that Caligula is very interesting in that he wanted to become the Sun God)

Honestly Caligula as a whole was such a good character. He has such an intimidating presence throughout the book, and I loved it when he finally got to see Apollo he kind of gushed over him, being excited to finally have him in his clutches, and I love how after Apollo stabbed himself he was all ‘I won’t touch a sorceress’s purse’ and how he was so upset that Piper was knocked unconscious. Honestly if there ever is a TOA show they gotta cast the Emperors right because all the Emperors are horrible yet interesting in their own merit.

I love the conversation that Jason and Apollo had before they left his dorm. I love how Jason tells Apollo that he tried to defend him to Zeus and that Apollo was shocked. I love how Jason made him promise to remember his experience being human and how, even to the last book, Apollo is still thinking about the promise he made.

I love how Meg is just able to show Apollo her memories?? How the fuck did she learn to do that??!! Also the fact that it’s never addressed how she can do this.

Speaking of Meg, I love how revenge obsessed she is, like she was full on ready to murder Caligula and how at the end acknowledges that she was taking her anger for Nero out on Caligula instead (not to say Caligula doesn’t deserve it, but moreso that she realizes that instead of confronting her feelings for Nero, she pushed those feeling into killing Caligula) and I love how Meg is such a strong character, having to deal with going back to her childhood home and having to revisit those old, painful memories of a happier time in her life that was taken away from her, and how, in the final book, she confronts Nero and finally stands up for herself and as she says ‘defeats the Beast’. I just love Meg’s arc.

I love Apollo’s self sacrifice. He has always been a somewhat selfless character, willing to save others over him, but this truly defined his character, how he was willing to do anything to save his friends, and how he most likely would have succeeded had it not been the Arrow of Dodona. I also love how Meg calls him a hero and how his perspective of what defines a hero is being changed.

I love how Wah Wah has SUCH a hatred of Tip Toe Through The Tulips by Tiny Tim that he would rather tell Apollo and Piper where the shoes are than to bear through the music.

I also love how, to me, the kind of dark comedy of Caligula taking your very words LITERALLY!! It’s almost comical how a character vows something only for them to realize ‘oh shit’ as Caligula gleefully fulfills on that promise (like when Wah Wah would give his heart to Caligula or how he ordered for a poets tongue to be cut out and dipped in silver so that they could see his ‘silver tongue’) it’s just… Caligula is SUCH a good character!

I love how Aloe Vera is constantly fretting over anyone who has any injuries. I just like how Apollo wakes up sometimes covered in Aloe Vera’s healing slime.

I love the entire Macro’s Military Madness section. I love as Macro was talking about taking Apollo and killing the satyrs that Coach Hedge was struggling to open a pack of grenades. I love how Apollo landed in another dumpster again and how he peed himself and got himself some pink camo pants.

I love Coach Hedge, he’s such a funny character, especially when he was ready to fight the Automatons in Macro’s Military Madness and had to basically be dragged away.

The entire section of Apollo in molten chains as Medea tries to kill him is such an intense moment. It is such a dark scene, especially as Apollo is loosing himself, loosing his memories and how he is in pain and his skin is being described as being cracked open?! It’s such an intense scene and is one of my favorite moments in the book and one of my favorite moments in all of the Riordan-verse books.

I love the Meliai and how they say ‘HAIL TO THE MEG’ I just love how badass they are. I also love how after they kill Incitatus everyone is just staring at the Meliai with shock and horror.

There are so many other amazing scenes in the book! Honestly it’s one of my favorite books of all time. Honestly the TOA series is so good! I do admit that Apollo is sometimes annoying with how arrogant he is, but his character development is so good! I adore these books so much, so if anyone can recommend me any good fics PLEASE DO!!!

Had a dream this morning that Archive of our Own had a Random button which would simply take you to a random fanfic, like Wikipedia has. (AO3 does not appear to really have this, I checked and couldn't find one, but I kinda wish they did.) Someone had started a game where whatever fic you got, that was your new fandom, which is very fun! I would love this meme in real life.

The problem came in where so many people used the button that it broke and just started sending everyone to Stealing Harry, and like...I have fond memories of Stealing Harry but it's not my best work and nobody should be assigned to be a Harry Potter fan in this day and age.

So I decide to go off and find Astolat and demand she fix this but when I finally did (there was a whole quest) she turned to me like the baddie in a horror flick and said, "But that's the most random story there is" in a dark voice and I was terrified and woke up.

In the cold light of day I know there are more random stories by me on the archive, let alone by others, but I'm not going to try to get back there to argue my case. Pretty sure whatever I spoke to was actually the demon specifically assigned to plague fandom and not Astolat at all.

I'd say "get thee behind me, demon" but I know just how many porny fics on AO3 begin with that premise. (I've written some.) Begone foul spirit, and take your Satanic Panic with you!

‘it’s not one. there are two of them.’

strangers from hell, ep.10 || the hole by hye-young pyun

"B-but Palestinians can get their freedom with peace not violence 🥺🥺" no. Screw your feelings. The armed resistance against colonizers and murderers is what will give Palestinians their freedom and what will eventually achieve real peace.

An enemy that bombs and uses white phosphorus against civilians doesn't know nor practice what your broken moral compass describes as "peace". Freedom was proven throughout history not to be achieved through kneeling and asking the oppressor to kindly stop. Freedom needs to be taken by force. Your little Utopian way of thinking doesn't work in the real world. Your feelings don't matter because you're not the one living under occupation. Your feelings don't matter because you're not one of the thousands of children who lost their limbs. You're not one of the children who became orphans due to this genocide. You're not the mother who lost her child to the carpet bombing. You're not the father carrying the remains of your child in plastic bags. You're not the newlywed woman who lost her husband. You're not the one at risk of either getting killed any second or losing your loved ones in the blink of an eye!

"Peace" is not really a thing you see during a live ethnic cleansing!

the idea that it’s ‘creepy’ to interact with things posted a long time ago is so terrible for artists and contributes to the pressure to be constantly creating new work, at an unhealthy and unsustainable rate. I hate it so much.

can someone explain what's going on i literally have no idea

also rip eugene he's so dead lmao

i feel kinda bad for donald i was literally cringing watching him have a mental breakdown in the middle of his office like damn

jimmy and ben getting along is such a strange visual

poor donald😢😢hopefully he wont have to resort to selling his versace sweaters to eat now!!

Genuinely one of the best things in fiction is letting a character have a real ugly cry. Get out of here with that ‘single silent tear’ bullshit, you cowards. I want the catharsis of an actual emotional breakdown! Make it noisy, make it wet and snotty and gross! Make it ugly and unfiltered and raw!

"But I finished [Near and Mello] together as a set, and although they aren’t particularly laid out as such, I still feel a bit like they’re twins." —Obata Takeshi

whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same:

i. low sky, mahmoud darwish. ii. the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire, ritika jyala. iii. kadan, 2008. iv. the dreamers, gilbert adair. v. @nathanielorion vi. nagiko, 2016. vii. elektra, sophokles (tr. anne carson). viii. wishbone, richard siken. ix. inbred, ethel cain. x. the boy who, tirol. xi. monster portraits, del samatar and sofia samatar. xii. in the field, @nathanielorion xiii. death note, "use" ch77. xiv. gut symmetries, jeanette winterson. xv. mystic union; fire and wine: poems, john gould fletcher. xvi. @inukai_0055, twitter. xvii. the carnivorous lamb, agustín gómez-arcos. xviii. my sister, the serial killer, oyinkan braithwaite. xix. the beatrice letters, lemony snicket (text); a quiet visitor, holly warburton (art); @unpardonablesins (edit). xx. ada, vladimir nabokov. xxi. this is how you lose the time war, amal el-mohtar. xxii. the borgias, s3e10, showtime. xxiii. @antaarf xxiv. @vilicity xxv. @boymiffy