Refrain - fin.

I'm a lunatic. If you're here, so are you.

Why?

Because this ship is self-indulgent wish-fulfillment to the nth degree. On one hand, there's a guy so perfect and so heroic and so much better than everyone else. On the other, there's the eternal virgin badass that is down to earth and more human than the rest of the gods. And from either side, that's some version of perfection personified and a claim of the other in romance.

Because this ship is somehow the most popular in the most favorited stories by a huge margin. People read fanfiction to indulge themselves, so why should anyone be surprised, really? The forbidden is permissible, the taboo is out for all to partake. And what is written shapes what will be written, for why else would there be so much of it after some measure of popularity?

Because this ship is the source of numerous bad and overdone tropes I won't even name. There is something novel in witnessing the dreams of amateur writers who go so far on skills so few, and with every bit of story is some sense of honesty ringing true. Of protecting 'innocence' or revenge for innocence destroyed. Resonance is powerful and ends up in echoes of mistakes, and then echoes of those mistakes.

Because this ship fundamentally relies on undermining either character to make work. Putting them together violates the core of both characters. The loyalty that surpassed immortality and the plain honesty and truth in aromanticism, of throwing the agency of a preteen or feminist symbol into the garbage. Or also that of surrounding characters, whether it be in flattening to one-dimensional caricatures.

And you/I still read on.

Because there's appeal in the transformative and transcendent love. Because there's truth in the misogyny along with the faults. Because there's familiarity in characters you've grown to care for.

So you found me. Probably not the first of the ship you've read, and all the better if you if it isn't.

Because for all my (your?) disagreements with the concept, there is some story that can perhaps circumvent all those troubles.

There has to be a story that doesn't effectively kill off old loves and erase the powerful characterizations in canon. There has to be some way of bringing these together in a way that is fulfilling and meaningful and isn't just wish-fulfillment trash.

As much as a demythologization of this type of story is what is deserved, there are some aspects worth reaffirming. There is something valuable that can be written here that is worth the garbage it will perpetuate. There is something that can come out of this that, while not perfect, is worthwhile.

Miscellaneous Myths: Orion by Overly Sarcastic Productions on Youtube (released July 10th, 2020) goes over the history of the myth of Orion and covers his connection to Artemis—how romanticized versions are post hoc additions by a Roman writer which got blown up by historians with an agenda when recovering stories. This was something I tracked down in my own research and referenced in the first chapter of Refrain, but the video puts it plenty concisely how an Artesian romance is ... no.

But I'd still written the fic. For while the romantic part is inescapable wish fulfillment, the ideas of free will and determinism, of trauma and coping, of hope and recovery, of truth and falsehood, of language and love, of divinity and symbols, and of mortality and life. For all the wrong reasons to pick Artemis for this—almost the entire host of her mythology—there are some right ones too: her closeness to mortality, her strength of conviction, her adaptability, her extremity. So in holding true or taking advantage of those aspects, there is a story about gods, about ideals ... and how they can change.

No darkness is greater than the light.

Nothing is pure.

The Harbinger - The Huntress - The Harvest

Gray Dreams - Compilation of discontinued and old works. Currently: Hunt of the Maelstrom v1 and v2, Kalends of Kingdoms v1 and v2, Fireworks in Rain, and Refrain v2. Reprise and Resolve may be moved here.

Hunt of the Maelstrom - Will have minor edits to keep in line with a new vision and will hopefully be underway.

Nightmare Shores - An experiment of imagery. Inspired by Lovecraft and The Sandman. May be moved to Gray Dreams.

Black - inc.

6/20/20 - Summer Solstice & New Moon