hello! so I'm doing a revamp of a character and I'm switching over their god parent to Apollo. One of the prominent traits of said character is that they are cursed - do you have any thoughts on how I could use maybe the plague aspects of Apollo or if there are any nasty curses I could pull from mythology?
i actually have a perfect hc for this! One of my ongoing hcs for CHB (brainstormed with the help of my group chat) is that each of the main 12 cabins has a "bad omen" power that crops up once in a blue moon and is considered a curse or bad luck - basically every other cabin's equivalent of the Hephaestus cabin fire powers. Big 3 kids are just kind of omens in themselves and for Hermes cabin i usually go it's just the chthonic kids and they're less "bad" omens and more just omens in general + being more common than the "cursed" powers other cabins have. For the other cabins, I usually have their "bad omen" powers be: Demeter = Geokinesis, Ares = iron skin, Athena = vision/inflicting blindness (literal or metaphorical), Apollo = plague, Hephaestus = pyrokinesis (canon), Aphrodite = "Whispers" (similar to charmspeak but functioning slightly different and more malignant), Dionysus = insanity.
I imagine all of these powers would be extremely rare (same level as what's described with Hephaestus fire powers - like once every hundred years or so) (except for maybe chthonic Hermes kids or Big 3 kids - again they're kind of a technical inclusion to the Bad Omen Powers Club). They're generally the black sheep of their respective cabins. In my personal hcs I like to have Will be a plague child of Apollo (he considers his "bad luck" effect to be why most of his cabin died soon after he arrived at CHB and blames himself for it) and also have healer children of Apollo be often born at the same time as plague children of Apollo to keep them in check (Will is both!) - though healer children are less rare and can crop up all on their own, no associated omens required.
With Apollo and plague powers, you could also tie in his associations with insects (specifically midges and locusts, though he also has some association with bees if you wanna throw that in there too) and rodents (rats/mice). He's also the god of mold and mildew! Lots of fun room to play around with plague-leaning powers for Apollo kids. In canon, Apollo kids with prophecy powers are also implied to be somewhat cursed (such as Halcyon Green) so you could potentially play with that as well. Particularly that + Apollo's association with snakes as one of his animals, since snakes in greek mythos are heavily associated with prophecy.
One "curse" I'm always amused by associating with Apollo kids and their potential snake and prophecy stuff is Tiresias, who was "cursed" (in some versions by Apollo) for killing a snake or two to be turned into a woman (or man, or mouse, again depending on version - it varies which they started as) (curse in quotations cause if it's the sex-change options Tiresias sure did not care one single bit so "curse" not effective i guess), sometimes repeatedly. Depending on version Tiresias is either born blind or gets blinded by either witnessing a virgin goddess bathing (yknow, the standard) or for siding with Zeus in an argument against Hera. Depending on version as compensation for being blinded in either situation they are gifted prophetic abilities (sometimes by snakes - cause "snakes licked their ears and gave them the gift of prophecy" is a surprisingly specific recurring thing in Greek mythos) or they're just born with it. In some versions of Tiresias' myths they're also killed by Apollo. So just in general with all the snake and prophecy and mouse and Apollo associations there, plus the genderfuckery, I just think that's ripe for an Apollo kid getting up to shenanigans.
Another famous Apollo-associated curses include of course Midas' ass ears or. gestures to Trojan war. inflicting plague. Or just straight up killing a designated hubristic individual's children (usually Apollo killing the sons while Artemis kills the daughters).
Hope this gives you some ideas!
