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the-nosy-neighbor · 2 months

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Framing of the stories

There are multiple places where the information given is framed in different ways. In each, there are different theories on who is presenting the information, and some I haven’t yet determined what the framing of the story means.

Doodles: Throughout the site, there are doodles. In the beginning, I think the only doodles were on the comments (and maybe one of the answer pages? Duet?). Those doodles are done in crayon, and are child-like drawings related to the comments. We have bugs and spirals and characters and other things. Each of these drawings are named in a way that addresses the comment directly. More than once, when Wally is mentioned, the artist refers to himself, so I think it is pretty well established that this is Wally.

View the gallery of doodles and references to the comments about halfway down on this page: https://welcomehome.fandom.com/wiki/ARG_Elements/Gallery

Active Drawings: In the July 2023 update, we got the images that are crayon drawings, but unfold before the viewer’s eyes. (Listed by page) Each page has a record and a sound clip

What’s Welcome Home: yellow flower, leads to “Help”

What are you waiting for. To hear me again? Ha ha ha! I think… That means you can hear me.

Your Neighborhood: heart with a smiling face, leads to “you-1”

Can you see me? That’s okay if you can’t. Don’t worry, I know you’re there. You know I’m here too. I will talk to you

So Below: spiral with a straight end, leads to “Neighbor”

There is no dialogue. Only the sounds of Home creaking, groaning, banging, or squeaking. …Morse code?]

Wally’s character page: flower, leads to “Will”

You’re the most! Ha ha ha! ….You’re so still. What are you doing.

This sounds like when you are on the phone with someone when the relationship is new.

About us: gif of 3 hearts, leads to “A”

I have more eyes than I did before. You know how to draw eyes. You draw mine many times. I know it is thanks to you, neighbor, that I can see. But it is still… I can’t… See.

Stickers: star, leads to “i-2”

Do you like to draw? I do. Do you know how to draw an eye? First, you draw a circle. Next you draw a smaller circle inside. Then you color it in.

House: leads to “understand”

Do you like Home? Home is my house. Do you have a Home too? Do you hear it too? You can hear mine.

Guestbook: speech bubble (hello?), leads to “find”

…I can’t hear you …Do you know who I am? We’ve looked into each other's eyes so many times. You’re looking at me now.

YWXOEV: phone, “way”

…Why won’t you answer me, neighbor. Why can’t I hear you. You know me. You do. Please open. Let me in.

“Soon”:

Let me in.

“Will-2”

That’s what an eye looks like. My eyes are black. What color are yours?

The intention of this set up (as has been widely discussed) is to lead the neighbor to put the words into order, hence providing the order of the sound clips, or vice versa. There is some disagreement on the right order:

I will help you understand neighbor, I will find a way soon (*)

o There you are. Welcome Home. Ha ha ha! o You’re the most! Ha ha ha! ….You’re so still. What are you doing. o What are you waiting for. To hear me again? Ha ha ha! o I think… That means you can hear me. Can you see me? That’s okay if you can’t. Don’t worry, I know you’re there. You know I’m here too. I will talk to you. o Do you like Home? Home is my house. Do you have a Home too? Do you hear it too? You can hear mine. There is no dialogue. Only the sounds of Home creaking, groaning, banging, or squeaking. …Morse code?]

”o Do you like to draw? I do. Do you know how to draw an eye? First, you draw a circle. Next you draw a smaller circle inside. Then you color it in. o That’s what an eye looks like. My eyes are black. What color are yours? o…I can’t hear you …Do you know who I am? We’ve looked into each other's eyes so many times. You’re looking at me now. o I have more eyes than I did before. You know how to draw eyes. You draw mine many times. I know it is thanks to you, neighbor, that I can see. But it is still… I can’t… See. Why won’t you answer me, neighbor. Why can’t I hear you. You know me. You do. Please open. Let me in. Let me in.

I will help you understand, I will find a way soon neighbor

There you are. Welcome Home. Ha ha ha! o You’re the most! Ha ha ha! ….You’re so still. What are you doing. o What are you waiting for. To hear me again? Ha ha ha! o I think… That means you can hear me. Can you see me? That’s okay if you can’t. Don’t worry, I know you’re there. You know I’m here too. I will talk to you. o Do you like Home? Home is my house. Do you have a Home too? Do you hear it too? You can hear mine.

Do you like to draw? I do. Do you know how to draw an eye? First, you draw a circle. Next you draw a smaller circle inside. Then you color it in. o That’s what an eye looks like. My eyes are black. What color are yours? o…I can’t hear you …Do you know who I am? We’ve looked into each other's eyes so many times. You’re looking at me now. o I have more eyes than I did before. You know how to draw eyes. You draw mine many times. I know it is thanks to you, neighbor, that I can see. But it is still… I can’t… See. Why won’t you answer me, neighbor. Why can’t I hear you. You know me. You do. Please open. Let me in. Let me in.

There is no dialogue. Only the sounds of Home creaking, groaning, banging, or squeaking. …Morse code?]

With this decided we can pretty much assume that all of the crayon drawings are Wally. However, there is an exception (there is always an exception) of signatures and tic tac toe games.

Signatures: on one page, there are signatures from each of the characters. One would assume that they did their own signatures, but there really isn’t an explanation for it. On the original pre 2023 website, the signatures were a bit different.

Compared to the newer signatures:

Lots of similarities: colors, some of the symbols. A few interesting differences:

Wally has not signed for home. Home is drawn in there, but I can’t say for sure that Wally did it. Wally has drawn a smiley face next to home, and an arrow pointing to the bottom of the house. Seems like a very specific placement.

The fingerprints and paw print are still there, but both multi-colored and more obviously a finger and a paw.

In the older version, some characters don’t have an associated symbol. Frank, Eddie, Howdy, Wally (but the happy face is in both, so kinda),

Signatures changed: Barnaby had a cute one, I like the hate. Julie moves from hearts to flowers, Poppy’s placement changes, eddie’s has a line under it here

Placement has changed to place Wally in the middle.

The tic tac toe board is added. Odd, as Julie already has a symbol, so maybe that is intended to provide some kind of focus or stressor.

Wally added a little flower for us, and there are the hearts in a circle, that look like stamps

Interesting changes, but none really give us an idea of how those came to be. Are they actual signatures or signatures pulled from old artifacts, or are they a recreation?

Find theories on the signatures on r/welcomehomearg at https://www.reddit.com/r/WelcomeHomeARG/comments/129abii/several_theories_based_on_the_signatures/

#welcome home #welcome home theories #wally darling #welcome home arg #tinfoilhat welcome home

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fearlessinger · 2 years

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Time to address the Halcyon Green-shaped elephant in the room aka let me explain to you why I think it’s canon even though it seems like it should not be aka another installment of Tinfoilhatting With Fsinger

I’m really sorry I could not think of a better title. Hope you’re intrigued enough to follow me in this journey anyway.

So. The thing is.

The Halcyon story, taken as it is, does not gel with TOA at all.

And not because it’s OOC for Apollo to have done what Halcyon says he’s done to him… Although I think it is. I think an argument can and should be made – and has been made by @flightfoot before – that this story, taken as it is, is essentially… incompatible with Apollo’s characterization in every other scrap of the RRverse he appears in. (This story, and also the Harpocrates story, which I won’t examine here because it deserves its own post. For now I’ll just say it’s interesting to note that it’s the two additions to Apollo’s background that Rick invented out of whole cloth that share this peculiarity, and I don’t think it’s by mistake).

But whether the Halcyon story breaks the internal consistency of Apollo’s characterization or not is a matter of secondary importance in the face of the fact that the Halcyon story breaks the internal consistency of the TOA narrative as a whole.

Take this excerpt from The Diary Of Luke Castellan:

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

Halcyon shrugged listlessly. The monster spoke for him: “I have lost count. Decades? Because my father is the god of oracles, I was born with the curse of seeing the future. Apollo warned me to keep quiet. He told me I should never share what I saw because it would anger the gods. But many years ago…I simply had to speak. I met a young girl who was destined to die in an accident. I saved her life by telling her the future.”

I tried to focus on the old man, but it was hard not to look at the monster’s mouth—those black lips, the slavering bone-plated jaws.

“I don’t get it…” I forced myself to meet Halcyon’s eyes. “You did something good. Why would that anger the gods?”

“They don’t like mortals meddling with fate,” the leucrota said. “My father cursed me. He forced me to wear these clothes, the skin of Python, who once guarded the Oracle of Delphi, as a reminder that I was not an oracle. He took away my voice and locked me in this mansion, my boyhood home. Then the gods set the leucrotae to guard me. Normally, leucrotae only mimic human speech, but these are linked to my thoughts. They speak for me. They keep me alive as bait, to lure other demigods. It was Apollo’s way of reminding me, forever, that my voice would only lead others to their doom.”

An angry coppery taste filled my mouth. I already knew the gods could be cruel. My deadbeat dad had ignored me for fourteen years. But Halcyon Green’s curse was just plain wrong. It was evil.

Now think back on all the times Apollo compares Nero to Zeus or even Kronos, and all the times he does not include himself too as a term of comparison.

Remember how Apollo equated Nero warning Meg her disobedience would “make him unleash the Beast” to Zeus warning his children to not “get on the wrong side of my lightning bolts”, rightfully recognizing that they are the exact same kind of manipulative abdication to personal responsibility + shifting of the blame onto the injured party that’s a staple of the classic abuser’s playbook? Well, at the same time as he noted that, he was omitting to add that he himself had threatened Halcyon in an almost identical manner, telling his son that to disobey him would “anger the gods”.

And not only was Apollo omitting that, he was explicitly equating himself to Lu instead. Lu, who, yes, was a cog in the abusive machine that kept Meg trapped, but was so against her own wishes, because she really had no other choice, no better options. Lu, who only ever tried to help Meg survive. Who jumped at the chance to help set Meg free as soon as it was offered to her, even knowing that Meg’s freedom would likely come at the cost of her own life.

Remember how Apollo mentally tuned out Nero’s villain monologue right in the middle of the ‘Top 100 Times Apollo Has Failed As A Parent’ section, ensuring that we, the readers, would not risk learning about Halcyon even in this manner?

Because Apollo is the narrator of TOA. He’s the one who chooses what to let us know, and what information he wants to withhold from us.

Bearing this in mind, doesn’t the thought that he’d purposely choose to bury the Halcyon story fill you with rage? It sure has that effect on me! :))) (Yes, those are angry smiles in case you couldn’t tell.)

It’s painfully clear, right from the very beginning of THO, that Apollo’s not oblivious to the nature and mechanics of abuse. Especially abuse perpetrated by parents on their children. He knows exactly what that is and how it works. He calls it by name. He explains it to us and to Meg, repeatedly. He points fingers. At several people.

Never at himself.

Oh, he easily admits to being a “terrible father”. He expresses regret and apologizes for it multiple times. But the implication, all through the 5 books that make up the TOA series, is that he’s guilty of neglect, not of active abuse.

And we know, even though Apollo never even tries to defend himself, that the neglect is not really a free choice on his part. He DOES want to be there for his children. But he can’t. He’s not allowed to. The laws of non interference forbid it, and the consequences of disobeying Olympus’s laws… well the whole series is an example of how dire they can be.

‘Hey, if we don’t get out of this –’

‘None of that talk,’ I chided.

‘Yeah, but I wanted to tell you, I’m glad we had some time together. Like … time time.’

His words warmed me even more than Paul Blofis’s lasagne.

I knew what he meant. While I’d been Lester Papadopoulos, I hadn’t spent much time with Austin, or any of the people I’d stayed with, really, but it had been more than we’d ever spent together when I was a god. [...]

I was tempted to promise we’d do this more often if we survived, but I’d learned that promises are precious. If you’re not absolutely sure you can keep them, you should never make them [...].

So despite how much he wants to – and we know how much he wants to because he tells us, because by the end of the series he’s not hiding it anymore – Apollo can’t promise Austin that they’ll spend more time together, even if they both survive. The uncertainty has nothing to do with the fact that they are currently facing death. Apollo makes it crystal clear.

Right after his triumphant return on Olympus, where he’s welcomed with full honors, he still doesn’t dare state plainly his desire to go back to visit his children and all the mortals who have helped him along the way. “I’ll visit some old friends,” he says, fully knowing how that will be interpreted, and silently accepts Dionysus’ contribution in muddying the waters even further.

I don’t say this to absolve him. It’s right of Apollo to acknowledge that he’s failed his children. That he should have tried more, and harder, to be there for them anyway. That he must try more and harder NOW. And he does.

But none of the above addresses the Halcyon situation at all. The Halcyon situation is simply not the same.

The closest the TOA narrative ever gets to forcing Apollo to tackle a comparable sort of issue is when it introduces Trophonius, the only other son of Apollo whom we see harbor any kind of resentment toward his father… but even in Trophonius’ case, Apollo is guilty of inaction, not of taking active, violent action against his son.

Granted, there’s good reason to suspect that in Trophonius’s time the rules against divine intervention weren’t yet as strict as they are in the modern age, so Apollo does not have that excuse for his inaction there. And Apollo himself admits there was some sort of punitive intent on his part: he felt Trophonius “deserved to face the consequences” of his bad choices. But even considering all this… the Trophonius situation and the Halcyon situation are still light years apart in their substance.

Trophonius used the talent and the opportunities to make it shine that he’d gotten from his father (we can certainly add nepotism to the list of Apollo’s crimes) to fraud and rob his clients, and was left to deal on his own with the fallout of being discovered.

Halcyon was admonished by Apollo to never use the talent he’d inherited, and chose to disregard that admonition to save the life of a little girl. Something which by the way had zero negative consequences that we know of. For this, Apollo personally took it upon himself to actively punish him, by walling him up in his own house and cursing him to become the twisted instrument of death of countless innocent children for the rest of his days.

The two above things… are not the same.

One might even say the two above things stand in contradiction one with the other, but again that’s not the argument I’m making right now. My point is Apollo’s regret for refusing to help Trophonius and Agamethus can’t even begin to cover what Apollo did to Halcyon.

There is nothing in the whole of TOA that can be construed as even just… a viable proxy to at the very least obliquely address the Halcyon story, and what it implies about Apollo as a god, as a person, and as a parent.

And no, Apollo’s memory problems aren’t a good enough excuse for sidestepping this reckoning, because

that only works if we assume the Halcyon story is a single isolated incident and not representative of a pattern of behavior on Apollo’s part… which brings us right back to the idea that it’s actually OOC for Apollo to have done what Halcyon says he’s done to him. And

at the end of the series Apollo gets all of his godly brain power back. And what happens then? He condemns one final, definitive time Zeus’s and Nero’s treatment of their children without even so much as hinting that he himself has been guilty of exactly the same behavior in the past. Not even the distant past, but a few decades ago at most!

Again I ask: doesn’t that fill you with rage? :))

And yet the narrative contract here explicitly requires us to buy into Apollo’s honesty of intentions. No, there is no guarantee that he will manage to keep his promises. There is no guarantee that from now on he will do everything right either. But we are supposed to at least believe that he WANTS to. At the end of the series, Apollo literally asks us to put our faith and trust in him.

But how can we do that in the face of him choosing to never come clean about the Halcyon thing?

We can’t.

So. Where am I going with this? Am I arguing that the novella should be expunged from canon after all?

No, as stated in the title, I am not. There is a very simple way to reconcile the Halcyon novella with the story that is told in TOA, the Apollo that we hear about in the Halcyon novella with the Apollo we got to know in the 5 books that star him as both protagonist and narrator. All we need to do is let ourselves consider the possibility that Halcyon's punishment… was not Apollo's choice.

Yes, Apollo was the one to enact it, there’s no doubt about that. But he wasn’t the one who came up with it. He wasn’t the one who wanted it.

And the clues are there.

All throughout the series, there is one character who is particularly fearful of prophecies. Who condemned Apollo to his own punishment at the end of HOO by citing as a reason that he'd been too quick to name a new Pythia who could speak the future into existence. Who could plausibly have taken issue with Halcyon’s one single act of interference specifically, because it might not look like it but Halcyon saving that little girl's life is the first domino falling in the long chain that will lead to Luke allying with Kronos, the second Titanomachy, and Olympus' stability being threatened thrice in less than a decade. The character whose personal symbols pop up in key moments of the story: the goat Amalthea, the aegis replica destined to Thalia, his own daughter.

“Prophecies,” Apollo tells Meg in THO, rather vehemently, “are the catalysts for every important event—every quest or battle, disaster or miracle, birth or death. Prophecies don’t simply foretell the future. They shape it! They allow the future to happen.”

Zeus takes this to mean that if he can just stop prophecies from being uttered he can prevent any problem from materializing.

Frank looked at Zeus. ‘Um, sir, Your Majesty, can’t you gods just pop over there with us? You’ve got the chariots and the magic powers and whatnot.’

‘Yes!’ Hazel said. ‘We defeated the giants together in two seconds. Let’s all go –’

‘No,’ Zeus said flatly.

‘No?’ Jason asked. ‘But, Father –’

Zeus’s eyes sparked with power, and Jason realized he’d pushed his dad as far as he could for today … and maybe for the next few centuries.

‘That’s the problem with prophecies,’ Zeus growled. ‘When Apollo allowed the Prophecy of Seven to be spoken, and when Hera took it upon herself to interpret the words, the Fates wove the future in such a way that it had only so many possible outcomes, so many solutions. You seven, the demigods, are destined to defeat Gaia. We, the gods, cannot.’

According to Zeus, prophecies constrain the future. They lock people into a predetermined course of action, a predetermined outcome. They take away people’s ability to choose.

There’s a whole debate to be had on whether Zeus is right or not to think so – and a whole other debate to be had on top of that one on whether Zeus truly believes this is the case or just chooses to delude himself that it is because doing so absolves him of responsibility – but for the moment what matters is that Apollo disagrees with him.

‘Zeus was already angry with me for appointing that new girl, Rachel Dare, as my Oracle. Zeus seems to think I hastened the war with Gaia by doing so, since Rachel issued the Prophecy of Seven as soon as I blessed her. But prophecy doesn’t work that way! [...]’

Apollo thinks of prophecy as a guide, not a prison. Ultimately, it’s still up to each individual to make their own choices:

“The only other person I’ve ever known to have this, er, firewood problem, back in the old days, was this prince named Meleager. His mom got the same kind of prophecy when he was a baby. But she never even told Meleager about the firewood. She just hid it and let him live his life. He grew up to be kind of a privileged, arrogant brat.”

Hazel held Frank’s hand with both of hers. “Frank could never be like that.”

“I know,” I said. “Anyway, Meleager ended up killing a bunch of his relatives. His mom was horrified. She went and found the piece of firewood and threw it in the fire. Boom. End of story.”

Hazel shuddered. “That’s horrible.”

“The point is, Frank’s family was honest with him. His grandmother told him the story of Juno’s visit. She let him carry his own lifeline. She didn’t try to protect him from the hard truth. That shaped who he is. [...] By burning his own tinder, he kind of…I don’t know, started a new fire with it. He’s in charge of his own destiny now. Well, as much as any of us are.

Apollo really believes in people’s right to make their own choices. He believes in people’s right to take responsibility for those choices too. But to be able to do that, people need to be informed.

“Die,” I repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Not disappear, not wouldn’t come back, not suffer defeat.”

“Nope. Die. Or more accurately, three letters, starts with D.”

“Not dad, then,” I suggested. “Or dog.”

One fine blond eyebrow crept above the rim of his glasses. “If you seek out the emperor, one of you will dog? No, Apollo, the word was die.”

“Still, that could mean many things. It could mean a trip to the Underworld. It could mean a death such as Leo suffered, where you pop right back to life. It could mean—”

“Now you’re being evasive,” [...] Jason’s stare was unrelenting. I suspected that in the weeks since his talk with Herophile, he had run every scenario. He was well past the bargaining stage in dealing with this prophecy. He had accepted that death meant death, the way Piper McLean had accepted that Oklahoma meant Oklahoma. I didn’t like that.

“Let’s assume you’re correct,” I said. “You didn’t tell Piper the truth because—?”

“You know what happened to her dad.” [...]

“Yes, but you can’t know how the prophecy will unfold.” [...]

Jason shrugged. “[...] I knew you’d be coming to find me. Herophile said so. If you’d just waited another week—”

“Then what?” I demanded. “You would’ve let us lead you cheerily off to your death? How would that have affected Piper’s peace of mind, once she found out?”

Jason’s ears reddened. It struck me just how young he was—no more than seventeen. [...] Despite all his experiences, was it fair of me to expect him to think logically, and consider everyone else’s feelings with perfect clarity, while pondering his own death?

I tried to soften my tone. “You don’t want Piper to die. I understand that. She wouldn’t want you to die. But avoiding prophecies never works. And keeping secrets from friends, especially deadly secrets…that really never works. It’ll be our job to face Caligula together, steal that homicidal maniac’s shoes, and get away without any five-letter words that start with D.”

The scar ticked at the corner of Jason’s mouth. “Donut?”

It’s hard to say for sure how big a part did Jason’s resignation play in sealing his fate. This is not the time for that discussion anyway, but I think it’s important to make note of the fact that Apollo really, really did not like it. That Jason’s resignation is in fact what scared Apollo the most.

I quoted the above passage almost in full because I think it exemplifies and summarizes better than almost anything Apollo’s views on prophecy.

Apollo thinks of prophecy as a beacon in the darkness. It spurs people into action. It lights up their way and pushes them forward, far from the safe stagnancy whose ultimate and truer expression is death (or immortality. But that too is a digression for another time). It doesn’t take away people’s choices: it gives them new ones.

It’s easy to forget, but Apollo is not just the god of prophecy; he is the god of knowledge and truth too. As much as he’s guilty of doing it himself, he does not actually believe in sticking your head in the sand.

"I warned you," a new voice said. [...]

"You dare come here?" Hades growled. "I should blast you to dust!"

"You cannot," the girl said. "The power of Delphi protects me." [...]

"You've killed the woman I loved!" Hades roared. "Your prophecy brought us to this.'" He loomed over the girl, but she didn't flinch.

"Zeus ordained the explosion to destroy the children," she said, "because you defied his will. I had nothing to do with it. And I did warn you to hide them sooner." [...]

"Perhaps I cannot bring back Maria. Nor can I bring you to an early death. But your soul is still mortal, and I can curse you."

All through the course of PJO, HOO and TOA we see Apollo’s oracle – his oracles plural, in fact: the Sibyl of Cumae and the Sibyl of Erythrae too in addition to the Pythia – share everything they know punctually and without fail. It’s their job to warn people about the future on Apollo’s behalf, despite the unwarranted backlash they get for it. Apollo himself is heavily implied to be the one who’s sending demigods their convenient prophetic dreams. And who else but Apollo could be the source of Octavian’s confidence that the Sibylline books had survived the fall of Rome, well before Percy, Hazel and Frank met Ella the harpy?

In TOA, we see Apollo share all that he learns as soon as he learns it, with each and every one of the people he can count on his side. Even when he thinks it will be detrimental, even when he fears their reaction. He still tells them.

The only times we see Apollo be anything less than forthcoming, it’s to cover up the fact that he legitimately does not have the answer. This became extremely clear in TOA, but Percy, who’s much more intuitive than a lot of people give him credit for, had figured it out already in TTC:

"But it's your Oracle," I protested. "Can't you tell us what the prophecy means?"

Apollo sighed. "You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear through the search."

"In other words, you don't know."

Apollo checked his watch. "Ah, look at the time! I have to run. [...]"

So, here’s the million dollar question: why would Apollo be opposed to Hal doing the same thing he himself always does? Sharing Knowledge? Giving a little girl a choice, a chance to save herself?

He wouldn’t. He is not the one who was against it. He is certainly not the one who wanted to see Hal punished for it.

This recontextualizes Halcyon’s words that “Apollo warned me to keep quiet,” because to speak about the future “would anger the gods.” This phrasing is not an indication of Apollo trying to shirk responsibility for the punishment he was threatening his son with. It’s the literal truth. Halcyon putting his powers to good use would anger the gods – not Apollo himself. Gods like Hades who cursed Apollo’s oracle for trying to warn him of imminent danger, or Zeus who stripped Apollo of his immortality for revealing a prophecy “prematurely”. Gods who should very much not be named lest they turn their attention to Apollo and his son.

In this light, I feel it’s pretty illuminating to look back on this line from THO, right out of Apollo’s own mouth:

How could I have been so foolish? Whenever I angered the other gods, those closest to me were struck down.

Of course, Zeus would have been perfectly capable of enacting the punishment himself, much like he'd done with Asclepius, but… with everything we know about Zeus’ parenting and ruling style after TOA… it’s not that hard to imagine he might have wanted to make a point here. It’s not hard to imagine that having to personally deliver the punishment to his own son might have been Apollo’s own punishment for his son’s transgression.

Remember how many times Apollo likens Zeus to Nero? Wouldn’t it make a scary amount of sense for this to be a “Cassius, I’m rewarding you by letting you cut Luguselwa's hands” move on Zeus’ part?

Apollo, in my generosity, I allow you to give your son the horrible news yourself.

And of course Apollo would have taken the offer. Of course he’d have accepted to take part in this sick game. What other choice did he have? Defying his father? Declaring war on the king of the gods? Should he have murdered some of Zeus’ favorite servants again? He’d done it for Asclepius, and still had not been able to win him a better deal than forever jail. Which, granted, would still have been a better deal than the one Halcyon got… provided that Apollo could achieve that kind of victory again.

Something else to consider: Halcyon almost certainly wasn’t Apollo’s only child at the time. And if Apollo had more children, then those children undoubtedly would have become more targets for Zeus’ anger, had their father dared provoke it any further.

Perhaps Apollo should have taken the risk. Perhaps Apollo chose wrong. But there was no path for him to choose that would not lead to the slaughter of innocents.

At least, this way, Apollo could see and speak to Hal one last time. This way, he could leave his son with a promise that his punishment would come to an end.

Because it’s obvious, from Halcyon’s account of his father’s words and actions, that Apollo had foreseen that Luke and Thalia would be the ones to break the curse, and that Hal would be able to escape his misery by dying to save the life of Zeus’ daughter, and therefore had taken care to set up the means for that potential future to be realized.

The book containing the recipe for greek fire, that Hal was strangely confident they would find on his bookshelves.

The safe containing the aegis replica, an item befitting Zeus’ progeny, that only a son of Hermes could successfully open, and that Hal remembers Apollo telling him “was sealed since before [Hal] was born”. Who could have done that, and why, if not Apollo so that Thalia could eventually take rightful ownership of it?

I’d dare suggest, even, that Apollo might have been the one who sent the goat, with the precise intention of luring Thalia and Luke into the trap, knowing that they would make it out thanks to Hal’s sacrifice, with a gift such to ensure that Thalia’s divine father would have no reason to object to the final outcome of Apollo's gamble, and every incentive to overlook how it had been orchestrated.

But of course Apollo would never tell his son “I had no choice” because WHEN DOES HE EVER. Five books and WE are the only souls he’s actually confessed being an abuse victim to, and even to us he’s given zero details. He never makes excuses for himself. He doesn’t think it matters that he could. He holds himself responsible anyway.

He believes that he must, because his father never does.

‘I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.’

I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.

‘But you must understand,’ Zeus continued, ‘only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way… regrettable, but necessary [...].’

I had no choice, is Zeus’ constant refrain. I can’t help you, he tells the demigods. “You did not ask for this,” he tells Jason. “I did not want it.” And yet who could have forced the hand of the king of the gods?

He tells his son “I can’t praise you.” He tells him “I can’t give you credit.” He says “someone must take the blame.” He says “it’s the lightning bolt that hurt you.” He says “you must understand. It was necessary. I had no choice.”

So Apollo refuses to claim the words for himself, even if they are true.

It’s very noble, but also incredibly misguided. It’s the root of all the communication problems he has with his children. The reason why he can’t bring himself to answer Will, and Kayla, and Austin, when they try to tell him that they want him in their lives, not just once or twice, but always, every day. Even they, who know they are loved, have absolutely no idea how much.

“Maybe Apollo meant we’re going to rescue you,” Thalia said.

Hal typed a new sentence: Or maybe I die today.

“Thank you, Mr. Cheerful,” I said. “I thought you could tell the future. You don’t know what will happen?”

Hal typed: I can’t look. It’s too dangerous. You can see what happened to me last time I tried to use my powers.

“Sure,” I grumbled. “Don’t take the risk. You might mess up this nice life you’ve got here.”

I knew that was mean. But the old man’s cowardice annoyed me. He’d let the gods use him as a punching bag for too long. It was time he fought back, preferably before Thalia and I became the leucrotae’s next meal.

Hal lowered his head. His chest was shaking, and I realized he was crying silently.

When Luke and Thalia meet him at the beginning of the tale, Halcyon is resigned to his fate, and terrified that if he tries to fight it he'll be punished even worse, somehow. He's lost all faith in his father's judgment, and, if he ever had any, in his father's promise of freedom too. He's surrendered to utter despair. He resists Luke's demands that he do something, anything, to help both them and himself.

Then Luke manages to open the safe, and Hal begins to realize that… maybe… just maybe... there’s a possibility that his father had not lied to him.

Hal showed us the short novel he’d written: You’re the ones!! You actually got the treasure!! I can’t believe it!! That safe has been sealed since before I was born!! Apollo told me my curse would end when the owner of the treasure claimed it!! If you’re the owner—

He's still terrified. He struggles to let himself dare hope. But eventually he finds the courage to do the right thing once again: use his talent to save the life of these kids who don't deserve to die.

He reads Thalia's future.

And then he reads Luke's.

I could feel Hal’s pulse in my fingers—one, two, three.

His eyes flew open. He yanked his hands away and stared at me in terror.

“Okay,” I said. My tongue felt like sandpaper. “I’m guessing you didn’t see anything good.”

It’s in that moment, as he finds himself in the exact same position his father Apollo had once been, seeing the terrible tragedy in this child’s future that he knows, in spite of his best efforts, he won’t be able to avert… It’s in that moment that Hal finally understands.

Hal picked up his green leather diary. He gestured for me to follow him. We walked to the closet doorway, where Hal took a pen from his jacket and flipped through the book. I saw pages and pages of neat, cramped handwriting. Finally Hal found an empty page and scribbled something.

He handed the book to me.

The note read, Luke, I want you to take this diary. It has my predictions, my notes about the future, my thoughts about where I went wrong. I think it might help you.

I shook my head. “Hal, this is yours. Keep it.”

He took back the book and wrote, You have an important future. Your choices will change the world. You can learn from my mistakes, continue the diary. It might help you with your decisions.

“What decisions?” I asked. “What did you see that scared you so badly?”

His pen hovered over the page for a long time. I think I finally understand why I was cursed, he wrote. Apollo was right. Sometimes the future really is better left a mystery.

“Hal, your father was a jerk. You didn’t deserve—”

Hal tapped the page insistently.

We are not made privy to Hal’s thought processes in detail. Apollo was right, he writes, and he bristles when Luke tries to protest that notion. He taps the page insistently. What is he trying to communicate? Surely he can’t think that Apollo was right to warn him off of trying to use his gift to save people?

Especially because… Halcyon is at this very moment once again defying fate to try and save someone. He is at this very moment trying to save Luke from the terrible future he’s seen.

He knows he doesn’t know enough. He knows he can’t tell Luke what to do. Luke will have to make his own choices. But Hal can make sure those choices will be as informed as possible. Hal wants to give him a chance. He wants to give him hope, something to hang onto when he will be tried. He wants to give Luke what his father had given him.

Because Hal understands now. Not everything, of course, no. He, and Luke and Thalia too, are still missing the most important pieces of the puzzle. But, clearly, Hal understands enough. Enough to make peace in his heart with his father. Enough to trust that he will get the release his father had promised him in death. Enough to die with a prayer in honor of his father on his lips, quite literally dedicating his heroic sacrifice to him.

I heard Halcyon Green, shouting a battle cry: “For Apollo!”

We have no idea what kind of relationship Hal and Apollo had once upon a time. We don’t know what the tone of Hal and Apollo’s last conversation was. Did Apollo allow his heartbreak to show on his face? Did he tell Hal how sorry he was?

Certainly, he would not have blamed Zeus, and he would not have tried to exculpate himself. Which is why Halcyon still ultimately thinks this was Apollo's decision.

And yet, something peculiar happens when Hal narrates his conversations with Apollo. "My father warned me," he says, "my father cursed me". But in between those we get "then the gods set the leucrotae to guard me". The gods. There’s that phrasing again. And it does make me wonder... is this how Apollo presented the whole thing to Hal? Are these Apollo’s own words?

I have to say, I really can see it. This is the will of the gods, Apollo would have said, and just... never specified but NOT MINE. Because he felt that he had no right to Hal’s understanding, let alone Hal’s forgiveness.

Did Hal pick up on that subconsciously anyway?

We don’t know what kind of relationship Hal and Apollo had once upon a time. We know, because Hal tells us, that Hal had faithfully heeded his father’s warning, until the day he met that little girl, and found that his conscience would not allow him to let her die. We know that in the end Hal forgave his father. That Hal, in his last seconds of life, took comfort in his father’s name.

Why would Hal do such a 180 on Apollo in such a short amount of time? Just based on the realization that Apollo had indeed foreseen all this, and prepared accordingly? Because of what he’d seen when he looked into Luke’s future? It’s a hell of a leap from “Apollo can’t punish me any worse than he already has” to “Apollo was right”, and one that really there’s no way to make logical sense of… unless Hal had just been waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to reconcile himself with the memory of his father. Unless, all this time, Hal had wished nothing more than to be able to believe in his father again.

We don’t know what kind of relationship Hal and Apollo had once upon a time. But Hal’s change of heart, and his behavior leading up to his end, would seem to suggest rather a good one. Not too dissimilar, perhaps, from the one Apollo shares with his kids in the present.

Or perhaps Hal was just scared and desperate as he readied himself to die, and grasping for straws because straws were all he got. For all we know, that’s possible too.

But that is not how Hal appears to Luke in his last moments.

He met my eyes, and I finally understood what he was planning. “Don’t,” I said. “We can all make it out.” Hal pursed his lips. He wrote, We both know that’s impossible. I can communicate with the leucrotae. I am the logical choice for bait. You and Thalia wait in the closet. I’ll lure the monsters into the bathroom. I’ll buy you a few seconds to reach the exit panel before I set off the explosion. It’s the only way you’ll have time.

“No,” I said.

But his expression was grim and determined. He didn’t look like a cowardly old man anymore. He looked like a demigod, ready to go out fighting.

I couldn’t believe he was offering to sacrifice his life for two kids he’d just met, especially after he’d suffered for so many years. And yet, I didn’t need pen and paper to see what he was thinking. This was his chance at redemption. He would do one last heroic thing, and his curse would end today, just as Apollo had foreseen.

He scribbled something and handed me the diary. The last word read: Promise.

I took a deep breath, and closed the book. “Yeah. I promise.”

In his last moments, Hal is full of dignity and hope. He finally finds the courage to stand up tall and proud of himself again. I feel it would be doing Hal a disservice to assume that, in those last moments, his renewed faith in his father was grounded in delusion rather than truth.

What was he trying to communicate to Luke in their last exchange? What did he think Luke could learn from his diary? What is the promise that he asked Luke to make? We’ll never know. Luke chooses to not tell us.

Luke chooses to erase Hal’s last words to him from the narrative, and substitute his own.

I couldn’t shake my grief.

Promise, Halcyon Green had written.

I promise, Hal, I thought. I will learn from your mistakes. If the gods ever treat me that badly, I will fight back.

There’s a lot to be said about the way Halcyon and Luke influence each other in opposite directions. About the way Halcyon’s death and Luke’s death mirror each other. About the way Halcyon’s relationship with Apollo mirrors Luke’s relationship with Hermes. I know @tsarinatorment has excellent thoughts re: this, and not only this, that I hope she will share.

But for now this is already long enough, and so to bring us back to my original point… No, the Halcyon story, taken as it is, does not gel with TOA at all. But once you dig just a little deeper under the surface of it… I’d dare say it becomes impossible to rule it out of canon, because it fits too well within canon. It fills in the narrative blanks left by Apollo, who never tells us the details of Zeus’ abuse, and therefore… never tells us about Hal.

To tell us about Hal would require Apollo to admit that he had no choice. No good ones at least. It would require Apollo to admit that he’s not at fault.

But how can he not be at fault? He literally did do this. It was his words that cursed his son. His hands that delivered the instruments of torture.

So Apollo doesn’t talk about Halcyon. But when he calls himself a terrible father, when he berates himself for his failures as a parent, as a person, as a god, you bet he’s holding himself responsible for Halcyon too.

And in this light it’s interesting, I think, to note that despite how Apollo feels re: prophecy there are no known present day children of Apollo who possess the power to look into the future. There’s only Octavian, who is a legacy, and whose gift is implied to have been passed down his family line, and perhaps Georgina, who is in all likelihood a legacy too, possibly even descended from a different branch of Octavian’s family.

We know from Hephaestus that sometimes gods can choose to suppress the transmission of a specific ability to their children. Hephaestus did it with fire, and I don’t think it’s farfetched to imagine Apollo would have chosen to do it with prophecy after Halcyon. Again I know Tsari has given this far more thought than I have, so I pass the metaphorical mic to her.

Finally, I want to talk about how this whole novella is basically a concentrated allegory of TOA, featuring Halcyon as a stand-in for Apollo himself. Forever trapped in his childhood home full of monsters who have stolen and perverted his voice, and that he can never escape because they are inextricably tied to him, and him to them. Punished for the crime of having a functioning moral compass and having chosen to follow it, and after years of death & tragedy that are framed as a direct result of that choice... he has almost completely internalized the idea that he might actually have been in the wrong. He's surrendered. He’s not only accepted the slaughter but has even become complicit in it. He’s become a monster himself.

And then we get Thalia & Luke who are a stand in for all the people Apollo bonds with on his journey, who give him hope again, who reaffirm his conviction that there IS, there HAS TO BE a better way, and reignite his will to fight. After all, he realizes, what does he have left to lose?

I turned my face to the sky. “If you want to punish me, Father, be my guest, but have the courage to hurt me directly, not my mortal companion. BE A MAN!”

To me this novella absolutely reads like a first outline of the TOA series that Rick might have later decided to flesh out and expand upon. The core themes, the central ideas are all in there.

But Halcyon can only find redemption through death. The narrative denies him the chance to survive and do better. He’s only a man, and for him the odds are impossible. He dies thinking that on some level he deserves it – he brought this on himself. He dies still thinking that maybe he was wrong to save that little girl's life.

I wonder if in the first draft of TOA Apollo was meant to die at the end like Halcyon did. In a way he did die, in fact. But he’s a god, and for a god no odds are impossible. So Apollo is reborn through the power that he finally allowed himself to reclaim, because he finally has learned to believe that he was right to want to use it. He was right to want to help people. He was right. He learns the lesson that Halcyon never could. He is afforded the opportunity to keep trying.

#rrverse #trials of apollo #toa #toa meta #halcyon green #the diary of luke castellan

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