Are you doing okay? We missed you at the devil's sacrament. He mentioned you by name. Everyone was looking around and cheering until we realized you weren't there. If you need to talk I'm always here. At the aforementioned devil's sacrament.
A Very Long List of Lityerses Headcanons (based in geographical, mythological, scientific, and anthropological accuracy...part 1/?)
lit is my goat hes gotta be the most underrated riordanverse character out there and i wish there was way more content out there so heres some headcanons of him that i did specific research for because i have been obsessed with this guy for precisely 570 days. feel free to use this if you're writing any fics because if these become widely accepted headcanons i might have a chance at shaping his character YAYYY
UNFORTUNATELY there are some warnings we must take into consideration, so tw/cw for: a lot of violence, domestic/child & sexual abuse, body horror, heavy metal poisoning, vague descriptions of wounds & infection & blood, mental health issues, all sorts of bigotry associated with ancient greece (e.g. child marriage), talk of puberty & sexual topics, and...death.
Im sorry if I missed anything! Feel free to anon-ask me anything for it to be warned/edited/removed from this list!
that being said, click keep reading with discretion. it gets dark and is a very dead dove thing.
lets start with some basic information:
Ancient Phrygia was located in modern day Türkiye so if he was born there he would have middle eastern features (Turkish, Kurdish, or Levantine). this means there shall be no whitewashing in fanart!!! ts pmo!!!
Chronologically he would be around 2000+ years old considering the riordanverse canon but since he was revived he retains his appearance and physical form at his time of death.
Unfortunately his myth is super vague about how old he was, except for the fact that he is a young man as offered by rick himself.
Considering he was slain by Hercules (using the Roman name here bc its more popular) he would have to have been old enough to put up a fight against Hercules post-12 labors since thats when Hercules is most often depicted as having completed this sidequest. So that puts him in a very awkward spot, because even though hes a swordplay genius hes also fighting probably the most powerful demigod ever. So I'm gonna put him at around his late teens to early twenties, maybe 19-25 ish
His scars and pre-ToA injuries sustained that I'm going to be explaining are based off the official art on the wiki page.
The three scars on his right eye would be pretty detrimental since that's his primary eye and he is right handed (judging by his sword hand). Considering that a wound would have to reach the dermis to leave a scar his eye would have sustained damage from the cuts. So he might be partially blind, or have issues associated with his right eye.
The two scars shown on his left arm are interesting because he has a shield in the official art, which means that it would be pretty hard to sustain those unless he wasn't using the shield or the shield shattered.
The other scars are not as interesting so I'll leave those up to interpretation in terms of how he got them.
Clearing up the cornhuskers thing here. That's the football team of Nebraska, USA, and he most likely got it at an event or something.
It's not given to what extent he has adapted to modern life but considering that both he and Midas speak English in The Lost Hero he would have to be pretty adjusted.
Midas speaks English a little better/less formal-textbook-y in The Lost Hero so Lit would have been too busy with training/sword practice to practice, and considering he calls his own father "you majesty" and his sister Zoe got turned to gold for talking too much, he probably wouldn't have been allowed/inclined to speak anyway.
Probably has an accent when speaking English (*swooooon*)
With the amount of modern tech and magically operated gimmicks in Midas' mansion he would probably be pretty well adjusted by the time The Lost Hero rolls around.
Midas' mansion does not have running water because it undoes the golden touch, but he is wearing a bathrobe when we first meet him, so the showers would have to dispense something else like soap or sparkling water or something that keeps everyone clean and shit. Idk what it would be since everything i can think of is disgusting if I had to shower with it so ill leave that up for interpretation.
Addressing the other mythological (and even more obscure) son of Midas: Anchurus
A sinkhole appears in Phrygia, the oracle says Midas has to sacrifice the most precious thing in the kingdom, Anchurus understands the assignment and rides his horse into the chasm and it closes. Cool
But i think maybe it wasn't him that was the most precious thing in the kingdom, it was the horse: a prized stallion (maybe a gift from some god, Dionysus?) that Midas can no longer ride because hes probably too fat and he can't handle allat. Also he doesn't want to turn it to gold.
I think that anchurus was getting too popular with the people and so Midas took the perfect opportunity to look good while getting rid of him as a potential heir, even though he lost his prized horse. it was a strategic move because he could just pretend hes mourning anchurus and shit. no one would have a clue
so thats how anchurus died ig.
Now let's take a look at his sister Zoe who im convinced is a baddie fs:
ancient phrygian women's roles are kind of complicated so i'll explain it here
The cult of Cybele (the mother goddess associated with fertility, wild nature, and madness) was formed in phrygia, and the cult gave women significant household religious ritual power and in religious institutions.
However, Zoe is not a very significant character so I'm assuming she was not a religiously involved figure since her dad Midas was the king
So she would have followed the traditional role for women: stay quiet, get married, have kids and shit
Considering she was the princess she'd probably have been polished as fuck and married off for some military alliance with another greek nation
Interestingly, Lit has no significant feelings towards Zoe being turned to gold in The Lost Hero, so that means they probably had a falling out earlier on in life to lead to this apathy.
This is js pure speculation and dramatics but I think when they were younger, Zoe didn't want to get married, so she threatened to kill Lit, Midas' bodyguard/son, if she was forced to marry some old sweaty guy, in a fit of panic. She tells Lit this: "If he makes me do this, I’ll kill you. I swear I will. That way he won’t have anything left." And obviously that doesn't go over well with Lit
So thats why they highkey hate each other. But she might have forgiven him or something like that because Lit would have to be un-golded if he is to appear in The Dark Prophecy later on. Considering none of the other gold people in Midas' mansion would be particularly inclined to do that, I would guess that it was Zoe who took pity on him.
We don't hear any more of her so I like to believe that she took over the mansion in Nebraska and lives as the queen and shit. Probably installs running water in that place. talks a lot. she's goated I wish we couldve seen more of her.
I think the sibling order would be in order of oldest to youngest Anchurus -> Zoe -> Lit just because Lit's desire to prove himself is very youngest-child-esque. Not that I'd personally know what that's like but yeah. Also anchurus isn't mentioned at all in the riordanverse so he probably died first.
Side note here: I once had a dream where Zoe was my best friend and I visited the mansion when her and the rest of the un-golded statues killed Midas to help her plan the burial. Lit was there and I visited his bedroom which was pretty fire looking a lot of muted blues and greens and an alaskan king bed. he had an ensuite bathroom and a walk in closet, a flatscreen tv, and a wall of weapons. also a bay window. idk where I got all this from in my subconscious but yeah. Zoe's room was very y2k core and she had a purple radio and a crazy record collection and a conversation pit with a ton of throw pillows. We didn't end up planning the burial and i dont remember what happened with Midas body but we did roll around in the conversation pit and talk about shit. hmu zoe i miss u we should hang again sometime. ttyl or something.
and finally some assorted headcanons about lit to end this off:
turned to gold very often as a form of punishment by midas for any sort of disobedience
Gold is a very malleable metal so when he becomes a statue midas gets sculptors to make him look better so his body is not his ykwim. body horror. sorry about that.
gold dust gets stuck in his pores so obviously heavy metal poisoning. Midas has a magic pill that fixes it (probably just regular water to un-gold him from the inside) that he doesnt get if he's being rebellious.
Trained from a young age to be a bodyguard and a national tourism thing (reaping contest & killing galore or whatever) to bring in more money for his daddy
considering dynamics from back then was probably abused by his mentors or maybe his own father
fears intimacy and being touched because he associates it with very unpleasant things (being turned to gold, abuse, body horror).
his Demeter lineage and nature powers (like maybe Meg McCaffrey's) were suppressed because they didn't fit Midas' image of the warrior and whatever. so he was selectively edited to only be able to use the super swordsman part of Demeter's talents.
citizens hated him because he was the one to do all his daddy's dirty work like executing citizens or whatever, which was just in Midas favor because he wouldn't want his son being too well-liked or else the population would want to dethrone him and shit
thats it for now I have a couple more ideas but its more linked to an oc idea that I had so lmk if yall would want to hear it bc i love my oc i think shes awesome and super original type shit.
The most disappointing part of the Lost Hero graphic novels was the fact that we didn't get to see the Lit v.s. Jason scene. I understand that graphic novels take longer to create and they cannot keep everything from the novels but imagine what it'd look like!!
We could seen how Lit looked or Zoe (Midas daughter) looked like! AND see Jason fight Lit and do the lightning thing. LIKE COME ON!!!
this was highkey a bad move because now they have to either retcon it (corny) or not make the ToA graphic novel at all because a huge part of lit's initial dialogue is hating leo. damn it.
Messaging people for the first time is so hard. What am I supposed to say? Like, "You seem really odd and your blog intrigues me. Do you want to have philosophical conversations or perhaps talk about fictional characters?" What! Whatever. I will just follow you back and stare at your blog with my big beautiful brown eyes.
Reblog if you're okay with people coming into your DMs with the "you seem really odd and your blog intrigues me, do you want to have philosophical conversations or perhaps talk about fictional characters"
i don't like litpollo as a ship. They're too brother coded. Plus the age difference?
If Caleo is hated for the age difference...yk i don't think i should get hate for this but if I do oh well. It's the result of being on the internet is all. Anyway
AGREED. i don't ship them as anything other than platonically and honourary siblings. i don't get mad when people ship litpollo but there's WAY more posts about litpollo than there are lityerses x reader and that's a bit funky /neut. like, when people show evidence, i still don't really consider it. like, i can see them teasing each other and wtv, but not, like, dating, yk, people?
y'all, literally cememt, you and me, bro, we got ish in common
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