Danny looked down at the seemly innocent cup of tea in front of him, hand clamped tightly over his nose and mouth. His mother had made it for him when he claimed to have been sick and couldn’t go to school today, claiming it was some sort of purifying tea that he had to at least try. And Danny was sick, some sort of ghost virus that had his powers fritzing out, and he was desperate to go to Frostbite to figure this out. His mother sat opposite of him with a kind, expectant smile.
How was he supposed to tell her he couldn’t drink Blood Blossom tea?
Listen when people say they want Percy to go on a villain arc most times I see it as they want him to go dark, want him to start murdering, maiming, going full Luke, etc. And I support that. If anyone deserves to kill people it's this kid.
However, let us be realistic for a moment, because I quite like the other alternative. Villain arc Percy usually entails "he's finally had enough of the Gods bullshit & will do things his own way". Let us think on this. What would Percy most likely do in this situation? Would it really be murder right off the bat?
I think he'd be the pettiest, annoying little shit there is. And because one can't usually threaten the Gods in a way that truly matters, but they can make them sweat really hard.
This goes beyond ignoring their calls and leaving them on read. He refuses to give food offerings unless it's the nastiest shit known to man. Bribes the cyclops into hucking huge objects up Mount Olympus before they all scurry off. Finds the olive tree Athena gave to Athens, and while he wouldn't have the heart to destroy it, he'd for sure rip off a branch & mail it to her (Annabeth nearly had to put them in witness protection).
Eventually it gets to the point he has Nico on speed-dial and offers him a shit ton of fast food & a 'get out of Percy's quest bullshit free' pass if he could hop into the Underworld and yoink up some annoying spirits or dead monsters to piss off the Gods. When the Gods get pissed at him Percy just silently pulls out some safe-for-demigods phone like "hang on I wanna see how many happy meals I owe Nico for bringing Typhon back up". They know he is not bluffing.
Could the Gods counteract him? Yeah, sure, Hera gave him amnesia and it was like 90% effective for a while. However, he kind of went off the rails, everyone else went off the rails, and then they had even more Roman nonsense to deal with. If anything it both solved but also made even more problems. And a much angrier Percy. So, frankly, they're very confident it could work, but they're a little worried about what the aftermath would be.
Ares suggests just killing him. Poseidon takes offense to this. Artemis scoffs and says even Ares couldn't beat him. Everyone stops for a moment. The question is not asked verbally. But it is seen in the darting eyes and shifting seats.
Can they kill Percy Jackson?
Well, sure, they must be able to. He's a powerful kid, no doubt, with powerful allies, but they are Gods. Of course they can kill him. So that's not the real question, they wouldn't dare really entertain such a thing to ever confirm if it was true, but this is rather the layer of frosting hiding the real atrocity of a cake underneath it.
What will they lose trying to kill Percy Jackson?
What will remain standing in the face of some 18-year-old who lived one of the hardest knocks of life, loves so much it makes them sick, is so completely unaware of his own strength not even they know its full extent, and currently has absolutely zero fucks to give about the end of a reign longer than he will ever understand?
They decide to quietly shut the lid on that whole fiasco and let Percy do whatever he wants.
Unfortunately, they can't exactly ignore everyone else. And everyone else is who Percy cares about the most. So, think of it more like leaving a grenade in a locked box in the attic. Just hope and pray you've moved out before something gets curious and starts rummaging around up there.
FINALLYYYYYY. My guys of the jury, this has a tracked 30 damn hours and boy does it feel like it. ANYWAYS, I return for more AU shenanigans because Get Redeemed Loser AU lives in my head rent free. Felt like a nice way to experiment with more vertical style comics? Which is SM EASIER TO PANEL THAN CLASS LAYOUTS. I get why they're so much more common nowadays. Comic,,, so satisfying but at what cost,,, i'm tired. So proud of the top half tho :3.
Okay back to AU brainrot, Mark and Wasp fighting over one of their core differences! I think this is early in their relationship where Mark still thinks Wasp can at least understand what it's like being Nolan's son, only to get smacked in the face with how pride Wasp holds in that title. Anyways, look below to see my suffering made into video.
local artist redoes like 4 damn panels 8 bajillion times and screams into the sky ♡ also if you want fic of this au you should read the fic that @avisisisis wrote about it, ooooo you wanna read it so bad, it's good :3
@prudensvulpes requested Sora with Dylan Hollis' energy where he has his own cooking channel! Thank you so much for your patience! And this was alot of fun to do! I used Dylan Hollis' "Fake Apple Pie" tiktok (shortened to certain moments and some moved around for comedic effect!). I hope you like it and thank you again :)!
And here's a bonus sketch because I couldn't resist drawing Sora's face lighting up the same way Dylan Hollis' does when a recipe is actually good!:
hi can i just say that i absolutely love all of the designs you gave allnthe iterators and their slugcats !! i especially love UI's scugs they r so pretty,,, may i ask for a few doodles of them. perhaps
Thanks alot!! Im glad you like my lil headcanons!!! *hands you doodles of the cats and their evil cat mom*
something I keep coming back to, because other than 'ok but what about this canon divergence --' what I apparently really dig into is stupid world building details, is like.
how does the list of 10,000 actually uh. handle di feisheng coming back and being around again.
like he was the second ranked guy, right, Li xiangyi was top ranked, both of them "died", congratulations number 3 you're now top of the jianghu, everyone automatically moves up two ranks! ranking fights continue as normal, the three saints duel/kill their way up to the top eventually, all is gucci in the world.
except uh, a decade on, di feisheng is... actually not dead, was never dead, and also, he clearly beat Li xiangyi (because Li xiangyi is dead and di feisheng is uh, not), who was the last guy in the line of combat succession top ranked guys, making di feisheng presumably Top Ranked in terms of 'beat the guy who beat the guy [etc] who was top ranked'! no one has beaten di feisheng, therefore he is still, presumably, the top ranked guy because he hasn't uhhh actually lost a fight about that.
but it's been a decade? everyone else has spent ten years fighting the line of combat succession that forked from the guy who was number 3 a decade ago, and who does not fall into the line of direct combat succession for top rank at all, on account of the two idiots apparently taking each other out/mass rank promotion incident in the east sea.
basically: are there a lot of arguments in the jianghu about who's Actually top ranked, because like. on the one hand, fuck you, you can't walk away for a decade and waltz back in at number 1, snooze you lose, and on the other hand, fuck you, he's never actually lost! therefore he is undefeated in rank, therefore he's the top ranked guy!
(everyone gets another headache when it turns out Li Xiangyi is also still alive, because like, ok, now there are three people who have all been thought to be top ranked, who the fuck do you have to beat to be Actually For Real The Best)