I LOVE THESE TWO SO MUCH!!!! They're so toxic and so everything to me <3 I love it. Honestly this audio could have fit either way but I decided to do it like this because I enjoy when Apollo is randomly terrifying (as he should)
(Fun fact, I made this the day after I made my last animatic :3 Wayyyy too silly about TOA right now.)
Audio: JuiceeSaft
Characters: Commodus and Apollo from The Trials of Apollo
Animatic: Me of course!
P.S.: My comms are open! Check the link in my description if you're interested!
It's time to decide who will be saved
Who do you trust, who do you betray?
Will I live to see tomorrow or die another day?
^Apollo over killing Commodus you can't change my mind
One step ahead, that's how it's always been
No matter what you do
You'll always lose
And I will always win
One step ahead, I'm sorry my old friend
But I'm still here
After all those years when you thought I was dead
I was one step ahead
^Commodus being alive and no doubt relishing it
Honestly a lot of Curt's lines are very Apollo-coded for the Roman era, up until the line he and Owen say together; Feelin' a lot of deja vu again, which imo, could be crossing paths once again in The Dark Prophecy.
AFTER that line, both of their lines read very ToA. Because like. Curt and Owen are just bickering back and forth lmao
and then we got I liked you better when you were dead, which is 100% an Apollo line at Commodus lol
honestly give this song a listen it's sooooo Copollo coded <3
Fandom: Trials of Apollo
Rating: Teen
Genre: Tragedy, Romance, Friendship
Characters: Venus, Apollo, Commodus, Reyna, Frank
Venus watched her plan come to fruition, and then enjoyed the bonus content that followed.
@toapril-official TOApril day 8 - Echoes of Battle Cries. This was supposed to be Aphrodite. Venus wanted in instead.
Venus loved people-watching. Mortals, immortals, gods… it was all the same to her, wrapped up in the glorious bundle that was entertainment, some dancing to her whims and some dancing all of their own accord, falling in love, falling out of love, breaking hearts…
No-one could ever accuse love of being boring.
It wasn’t just romantic love she presided over, of course. Love was nothing so narrow-minded, and the making and breaking of friendships, familial and platonic bonds was no less entertaining and fun to play with.
Right then, Apollo was giving her bountiful entertainment on all fronts. His uncertainty with Reyna – a particularly clever set-up of hers, Venus thought with no small amount of smugness – had reached its conclusion, resulting in an embarrassed Apollo and a Reyna who had finally recognised who she was and what she did and didn’t need to exist as herself. Venus hadn’t been the only observing god to delight in Apollo’s predicament, there, although she had been rightfully the most delighted, seeing as it was her own handiwork coming to fruition.
Now, she was watching something she had had no hand in, but was enjoying the results regardless. The emotional torment of the loss of a loved one – platonic perhaps, but Apollo had almost viewed Frank as a son for all that he belonged to her beloved – was delicious. Venus hadn’t involved herself in Juno’s lifewood scheme, wasn’t particularly interested in what the other goddess got up to most of the time, given her prudish and limiting attitude towards things like monogamy, but that certainly didn’t stop her appreciating the way it had ended in such a blaze of glory.
Apollo’s anguish and pain, his heartbreak at Frank’s sacrifice, came very close to toppling her own Reyna scheme for the most entertaining moment since Apollo and Margaret had arrived at Camp Jupiter, and Venus was also eager to see young Hazel’s reaction to the news. She was a strong young woman, and that only meant her reaction would be all the more exquisite.
Despite that, Apollo wasn’t done providing her with entertainment she would remember and cherish for centuries, because to finish it off, the third emotional torment of the trio he was experiencing, was a mess of his own making, and that…
Well, Venus loved orchestrating her romances and love-based relationships, loved interfering to gain the maximum entertainment, but she also loved it when people were messy enough that she didn’t even need to give them a nudge to bring out the best and worst in them.
Apollo and Commodus were one such pair. They had been a disaster from the start, hurtling together like two out of control chariots and crashing together in a tangle of reins that couldn’t be separated and instead drew them even closer together, despite how terribly suited they were for each other – or how perfectly suited they were, depending on the perspective.
Venus had watched them the first time, the power imbalance between them and the way Apollo tried to ignore it and Commodus clawed his way up to try and even it out but always falling short because he wasn’t a god back then, and barely counted now, and thrived on it. It was always messy, always take and take and take, no side ever giving to the other no matter what pretty words they dressed it up in, and was always destined to end in the most beautifully ugly fashion.
There was something darkly romantic about lovers killing lovers, the possessiveness of it all when they loved and hated themselves and each other, but despite it all, claimed each other’s life and death. No-one else could have them, not a single aspect of them. Not their love, not their life, not their death.
Venus had watched Apollo straddle the young emperor in his bathtub, outwardly so calm despite his essence being a wreck, and pin him down in a way that was sensual and brutal all at once. Ending the life of the mortal he had fallen in love with, a stark parallel to the number of times he had desperately tried to save doomed mortals.
There was nothing healthy about the relationship Apollo and Commodus shared. Not back then, and not now, either. Commodus had died, but Commodus had survived, and the hate-love-hate between them had only tangled further, both of them still in love with the other while they hated them with every fibre of their being.
It was poetic that it ended like this.
Apollo’s hands were around Commodus’ throat again, straddling him in the same sensual manner he had millennia before, except they were accompanied by fire instead of water. Perhaps Apollo himself, one day, would be able to craft something out of the parallels there, if he would bring himself to sing of this. Venus hoped he would; his songs crafted of heartbreak always excited her essence the way nothing else he wrote quite managed. A broken god beneath a mortal god, the end of the tale of two doomed lovers, doomed from the start and both always aware of it, but too obsessed to let go regardless.
It didn’t matter that Commodus had lost his beauty in the fire, that he was hardly a husk of the beautiful man he had once been. Apollo’s anguish was still the same, bolstered even further by Frank’s sacrifice mere seconds before. It was a tangible thing, the grief.
And then Apollo screamed.
Mortal he might have been, but it was not a mortal cry. It was the cry of a god, a cry that reached deep inside the fabric of the world and tore at it, shaking the essence of watching gods.
It was thrilling, a song of heartbreak and rage and complicated emotions that all stemmed back to his love for his friends, for those he would see as his children if only he could, for the doomed love story he’d reprised against his will.
Apollo was aghast at what he’d just done, what he’d been able to do, and Venus suspected there were other gods watching and drawing their own opinions, but none of that mattered to her. Let them think what they want, let Apollo struggle with his emotions and what love could do when he unleashed the darker side of it.
something something Commodus is blinded by Apollo (& truly sees him for what he is) and is obliterated by Apollo (& truly hears him and feels what he feels) something something he knew him he knew a lot about him something something -
ok you know what i talk about commodus so much bc it’s funny but at the same time if i don’t make fun i’ll start talking about the actual heartbreaking subplot and parallels of apollo and commodus’ relationship
apollo meeting commodus again after centuries, commodus’ entire motivator through the years being to take down apollo, apollo’s immediate return to the memories of this man and that feeling of love returning only to be snuffed out because the absence of his godhood shows how evil and vindictive commodus truly is, just the running theme of apollo’s lovers falling to tragedy, apollo being the one to bless commodus in the first place when at the beginning of it all commodus himself was nervous about his destiny, apollo having to take his life the first time because no other could kill him and he couldn’t bare to see someone he loved continue to be so cruel, the fact that commodus knew him so well he saw through the disguise, the power of betrayal and revenge being enough to carry commodus through the centuries, the LITERAL parallel of apollo killing commodus the exact same way but, compared to the first time, he is doing so through eyes that see clearly, that fully understand, through mortal eyes. but at the exact same time, he had the thought “i can’t believe i used to love him” moment before the final battle. the concept of killing what you love
In that scene from TDP where Apollo reveals his true form and gives Commodus ultra mega turbo sun damage there's probably supposed to be some sort of meaningful pause in between Commodus' angry rant and Apollo telling everyone to close their eyes but I find the possibility that he didn't react simply because he didn't listen to a word Commodus said so funny. He really doesn't give af about him anymore he just stands there like
you can love someone and still murder them in cold blood without remorse btw!!! the two are not mutually exclusive and to suggest otherwise is a very heteronormative point of view!!!!
you can love someone and still murder them in cold blood without remorse btw!!! the two are not mutually exclusive and to suggest otherwise is a very heteronormative point of view!!!!
Omg I love Scott Pilgrim vs the world! I love how he goes and has to fight the evil exes who want him dead becaus of this girl and started this whole company just to make his life difficult and he really sucks at fighting but hey at least he has his talking arrow-- what do you mean that's a different media?
guys, i cannot believe i have to say this but. if ur an ancient roman prince/emperor, do NOT date any suspiciously cute twinks with stupidly long blonde hair. HE WILL RUIN UR LIFE.
