#pjo daphne

[hyacyntart]

ToA but Every. Single. Villain. is Apollo's ex

[pjo-ship-polls]

Apollo

These are only for romantic pairings, not platonic.

Favorite Apollo Ship?

Apollo/Percy

Apollo/Hyacinthus

Apollo/Lucius

Apollo/Naomi

Apollo/Hermes

Apollo/Lityerses

Apollo/Nico

Apollo/Hermes/Percy

Apollo/Rachel

Apollo/Daphne

Apollo/Will

Apollo/Favonius

Voting ended onNov 11, 2024

The ships in the polls are the twelve (12) most popular ships for each character based on the number of fics on AO3.

F.A.Q.

Ship List:

Apollo/Percy (perpollo)

Apollo/Hyacinthus (hyapollo)

Apollo/Lucius (apollucius) 

Apollo/Naomi (apollomi) 

Apollo/Hermes (apollomes) 

Apollo/Lityerses (litpollo) 

Apollo/Nico (nicollo)

Apollo/Hermes/Percy (perpollomes) 

Apollo/Rachel (rachello) 

Apollo/Daphne (dapollo) 

Apollo/Will (willpollo) 

Apollo/Favonius (favollo)

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

I saw a couple of posts here and on ao3 where you talked about how TOA Apollo has a stilted view of romantic relationships. Would you be comfortable explaining that, it got me really interested!

OKAY

SO

gonna be putting this under a cut for length

Apollo and relationships. Specifically, ToA Apollo and relationships.

let's see if I can formulate the thoughts into words.

Right off the bat, Apollo does have a hard time avoiding those red flags (hello, Commodus), so much so that he can see them...he just ignores them.

This already tells us that he doesn't have the healthiest view on relationships, or what specifically a healthy partner would be like.

In RRverse canon, these are all of his confirmed, canon relationships/love interests;

Hyacinthus

Commodus

Naomi

Darren

Latricia

Cyrene

Daphne

Sibyl

(I probably missed some asdfhjk)

Anyway, I've noticed that in canon, Apollo's relationships tend to fall into two categories; Sweet or Sour, we'll call them.

Now the majority on the list are Sweet! They are fulfilling relationships with no indication of any bitter feelings- Apollo is not shy about telling us about his love life, and certainly doesn't keep it from us when a relationship went south.

What I find interesting is that all three of the Sours can help pinpoint Apollo's more jaded/stilted view on romance.

Let's kick off with Daphne.

First things first, Apollo is quite literally forced to fall in love with her. Like. That has GOT to screw with a guy. What's more, is that when Apollo explains to us how Eros's arrows work;

What people do not understand: Eros’s arrows can’t summon emotion from nothing. They can only cultivate potential that is already there. Daphne and I could have been a perfect pair. She was my true love. She could have loved me back. Yet thanks to Eros, my love-o-meter was cranked to one hundred percent, while Daphne’s feelings turned to pure hate (which is, of course, only the flip side of love). Nothing is more tragic than loving someone to the depths of your soul and knowing they cannot and will not ever love you back. The stories say I chased her on a whim, that she was just another pretty dress. The stories are wrong. - The Hidden Oracle

There's an implication that he and Daphne may have actually been...friends. Or at the very least acquaintances.

It's never stated in canon when Daphne happened, and the mythology itself is weird about the timeline, but it certainly happened earlier in Apollo's life.

Imagine being forced to fall madly in love with someone you know and they are made to despise you.

The self-confidence definitely took a blow here.

What's more...

When she begged Gaea to turn her into a laurel tree in order to escape me, part of my heart hardened into bark as well.

Apollo tells us plainly that what happened with Daphne shook his views on romantic endeavors. Though, it didn't keep him from engaging in romance, either.

Now, back to Commodus real quick. We already covered the No Red Flag Bell with him, and honestly, I won't spend too much time here because I got a whole meta list waiting to dissect these two XD

But Sibyl reveals something else about Apollo and romance- sometimes, he sees it as transactional.

The story of Apollo and Sibyl does differ from the mythology of them- in mythology, Sibyl tricks Apollo into granting her a long life, and he kinda just shrugs and says 'okay, but you didn't ask for eternal youth either so...whoops?'

In ToA, Rick switches it up a bit by having Apollo grant Sibyl a long life after she jokes about it, and when she further rebuffs him, he curses her with no eternal youth.

Alas, I knew what I’d been thinking—that she was a pretty young woman I wanted to get with, despite the fact that she was my Sibyl. Then she’d outsmarted me, and being the bad loser that I was, I had cursed her. - The Tyrant's Tomb

I promised you life, not youth. You can have your centuries of existence. You will remain my Sibyl. I cannot take those things away, once given. But you will grow old. You will wither. You will not be able to die.

Yeah, it sounds like Apollo more or less curses her with no eternal youth here.

(Daily disclaimer that mythology Apollo's love life is actually very good and you should read up on it :3)

Back to the transactional thing-

"You cannot refuse payment." “Payment?” She balled her hands into fists. “You dare think of me as a transaction?” “I didn’t mean—Obviously, I wasn’t—”

Now, do I think Apollo sees all relationships as transactional? No. But let's consider the Olympian influence for a moment here.

Olympus in the RRverse is rather fucked, no doubt about it. The gods do not help without first being given something, and that permeates through their whole lifestyles.

Apollo's not being transactional because ✨misogyny✨. He's being transactional because that's what he's been raised to believe. If he gives something, he gets something back. That goes for all the gods, male and female and everything in between.

Bacchus helps the demigods in Mark of Athena because they paid tribute to him. Whenever a god extends aid, burnt offerings are made in thanks- which is probably part of the reason why Hera got angry with Annabeth when she refused to give her burnt offerings in The Battle of the Labyrinth after she helped her on her quest.

Apollo doesn't seem to be as picky as some (ie, The Titan's Curse, where he helps out to help out. You can argue he got his sister back in exchange but that's not really typical godly exchange lol), but it's clear that mindset has somewhat transferred over into relationships.

Now, I also want to talk about how Hyacinthus affected him- because let's be real, he was the one that affected him the most without outside interference (looking at you, Eros).

Apollo has told us time and again that Hyacinthus was one of, if not his greatest, love. His death really left a mark on him, and I am of the firm belief that it's that mark that made him wary of forming too close of a relationship with others- even when he tries to convince them and himself they are his One True Love™️, it falls flat inside his own head.

Because let's face it- that spot is occupied by Hyacinthus, and the hole he left in Apollo's heart.

This isn't to say Apollo loves his other lovers less- heck no! Love is one of his defining qualities. He has much love in him!

It's just that Hyacinthus had a particular impact on him, and how he views relationships.

*vibrates in Hyapollo multific* I have...my own personal ideas...on what that entails...

And we see how touch-and-go Apollo is with other lovers! As soon as Commodus becomes emperor, he's gone. And only comes back in disguise, never revealing himself until he kills him.

Naomi, Darren, and Latricia are all obviously loving relationships from what we can gather, but it's clear it was never long-term.

Cyrene, really, is where I'd argue he got the closest to a long-term relationship with a mortal-ish person, but even so, they aren't in a permanent long-term relationship either.

Hyacinthus, however? I can see he and Apollo maintaining an everlasting romance.

...Also because that is exactly what happens according to the Spartans and who are we to deny what the Spartans declared about their national hero?

The only other exceptions to this I can see are his relationships with the Muses and (hello, fellow Apricity shippers) Boreas.

But even so...the Muses give off like, 'married co-workers' vibes, if that makes sense, and Boreas is more or less a winter fling (fandom forgive me, you know I am a shipper🫡)

Anyway. Hope this rambling makes sense or at least provides a platform for someone to put coherent thoughts together lmao

In conclusion: sometimes Apollo is transactional in relationships because of the culture he was raised in, and he has commit issues because of just how hard Hyacinthus's death hit him :)

have fun pondering :3

[hyacynta]

ToA, a series mostly about platonic love, actually handled the few romances the protagonist did have really well (unlike certain other rrverse series). Yeah, Apollo was single by the end and didn't have any active romantic relationships throughout the books, but the way his exes were written with him?? The drama, the angst, the intimacy?? The way he whispered their names. The way they haunted him all his life. The way he pretended not to care about them, but could always remember their time together and how bad he was to them. The way they forced him to reflect on himself and grow as a person. How he realised it was wrong to treat Daphne like a trophy when she didn't want him in the first place. How there was always sadness and love in his voice when he remembered Hyacinthus. How he could recall Will, Kayla, and Austin's parents despite acting like he couldn't. The Cumean Sibyl's final talk with him and the way she never forgave him but let go of her hatred of him for her own sake. Don't even get me started on Commodus' impact - he and Apollo only had a few pages of flashbacks yet Rick completely sold me on their romance and you could feel all, and I mean all, of their pain.

Immaculate.

[literallyjusttoa]

In today’s news, local ToA fan horrified by the implications of fan fiction tags. More at 12.

[tsarisfanfiction]

Song of Apollo

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Romance Characters: Apollo

Everything had its own song.  Apollo couldn’t hear his, so he improvised.

Day twenty-five of TOApril organised by @ferodactyl, “Songs That Never Go Away”.  I don’t have a clue what this is but also my brain’s been in a slightly weird place all day so that probably contributed to this.

There’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one!  If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

Music and life were closely intertwined.  Everything had its own song, and as the god of music Apollo knew them all.  He knew the sounds of nature, every ditty and warble the birds made, every cry of an animal, every hum of the plants.  He knew the rhythm of heartbeats, the way no two humans’ sounded exactly the same even though humanity had the measure of pulses and what they meant.

He knew that all those heartbeats had a finite length, that one day, too soon, they’d fall silent, never to be repeated again.

Apollo didn’t remember making the conscious decision to memorise the unique sounds of human heartbeats. Not all of them, he’d seen billions of humans across the millennia after all, but the special ones. His lovers, his children, the mortals he intertwined with deliberately and personally, who flickered through his existence for such painfully short yet bright times, those he memorised. He could recite them all, one after the other, from the first to the latest.  Sometimes he did, weaving them into a single, continuous melody made up of parts that didn’t last long by themselves but as part of a whole had yet to end.

As a god, he didn’t really have a heartbeat.  Not in the same way as a mortal, not a countdown to his demise.  Gods had their own songs, too, their essences singing out to him in their own way, but it wasn’t the same thing.  Not at all.

The only song Apollo couldn’t hear was his own, the same way mortals couldn’t hear their own voices the same way everyone else did.  Not even the best recording was truly accurate to the inflections that made every voice unique, and not even the sharpest ear for music in existence could hear his own song.  He created his own instead, to fill the silence.

It was that same song of the mortals, a storyline to music the way the best songs were, emotions and experiences spinning together into something unique, reflecting the way they shaped him, because they did.  Apollo was not so naïve he didn’t know that the mortals he loved didn’t have an impact on him, one way or another.

Most were subtle, barely there and only a few bars of the song, too quick to be identified if Apollo didn’t concentrate on them.  Others were far more important, major events in his timeline even if they were still the tragically short existences of mortals.  Certain lovers who had left their mark, for good or for ill.  Admetus, Hyacinthus, Daphne, Commodus, to name but a few.  Each of their heartbeat songs spanned several lines, accentuated with a vast array of emotions as Apollo recalled with perfect clarity how each of them had made him feel.

Some of his children also took up large parts of the song.  Asclepius was one, the mortal heartbeat before he joined the ranks of the gods and his song shifted to one of an essence drenched in regret, sorrow and a deep pride.  Will was another, on the far more recent end of the spectrum with a heartbeat that sang of compassion and kindness.

Then there were other, rare additions of mortals who were neither lovers nor children.  Meg was the most recent example, somehow a sister in all but blood whose heartbeat sang of stubbornness, of blooming flowers and fond insults.

Apollo sang the song to himself, over and over again in the sanctity of his palace.  He never had a reason to, yet always had a reason to. His memory was flawless – he was the god of truth, god of knowledge, how could it not be – but he sang it to remember them all regardless.  He sang it to grieve for the too-short mortal existences he had no choice but to let pass to Thanatos and Hades one by one, he sang it to celebrate their memories.

He sang because he wanted to, because music was important and the mortals that had been and gone were important even when he was the only one left to remember them (who cared to remember them), or perhaps because he was so often the only one left to remember them as time continued its ever-progressive trudge and the mortals whose lives they’d touched passed away themselves, leaving nothing but whispered stories and legends of those who had made a loud mark on history, and nothing at all for those who had ghosted under the radar.

He sang and he saw them all in his minds’ eye, from the first time he’d laid eyes on them, to the moments he’d spent (snatched, more often than not, especially in the case of his children) with them, to the instant Thanatos summoned them and he rarely got the chance to say goodbye.

He sang so he wouldn’t cry every time he thought of them.  It didn’t stop the tears at other times, when he remembered their varying fates (so many far, far too cruel, mortal lives didn’t have to end so abruptly but so few of them made to old age and a peaceful death in their sleep; not even the most recent ones, the ones where he’d interfered more than he’d dared for a millennia, had been afforded such a luxury), it didn’t always stop the tears anyway, but it was a way to remember their lives, and not their deaths.

The little things. The colours in their eyes, the music in their voices, the way their faces lit up when something went their way, when they were happy.  The things that made them them, as unique as their heartbeats.  Their parts weren’t even in length because his time with them wasn’t equal in length, for a variety of reasons that sometimes weren’t even Apollo’s fault, but they were the best reflections he could show.

It wasn’t enough.  It could never be enough; for such short lives they all shone so bright.  It was all Apollo had, as millennia passed and everyone else forgot but he remembered.

And it never stopped growing, new heartbeats threading in where the previous had fallen silent, because they were mortal but Apollo wasn’t and the world, his existence within it, wasn’t over yet.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

that moment when I realize I made Hyapollo into an acespec metaphor and Daphpollo into an arospec one :0

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

Okay I checked the dates and this can be completely possible even though the timeline is already a little wack pop-culture-wise

Some months after his return, Apollo starts channeling what he’s accepted about past lovers, more specifically about Daphne, into a brand-new song. I like to think whenever he thought of her, he would be humming a specific melody- the one that eventually became the sound of “Let Her Go” by The Passenger

It becomes his way of really working through the love for her that was forced upon him, and coming to terms with the fact that even though he’s been cursed to love her, he has to let her go \:’)

Because by letting go, he’ll be finally letting himself move on.