HCGE
Part Eight: Now With 100% Less Incest
This is the story of Apollo and Artemis, a twin brother and sister who do not fuck at any point.
Their mother was Leto, the daughter of two Titans and thus a minor goddess in her own right. She and Zeus had a fling which got her pregnant, and inevitably Hera found out about it. I guess maybe she was on the rag that week or something, because she got particularly pissed off and pretty much vowed to make Leto's life a living hell.
Hera put a curse on Leto, so that she couldn't give birth on any piece of land. This basically stuck her in limbo, at the point of going into labor but not actually able to go into labor. Pretty painful!
As Leto wandered around Greece, bemoaning her inability to levitate or swim, Zeus finally took pity on her and broke off some earth, letting it float out into the sea. Since this piece of earth wasn't attached to the sea's floor, it wasn't a real island and, on a technicality, exempt from Hera's curse. Zeus transported Leto to this spot and it seemed like things could finally get underway.
Except Hera just wouldn't let it go. To further prevent Leto from giving birth, she grounded her daughter Elithynia, so she couldn't go to the expectant mother. As the goddess of childbirth, women couldn't have their children until Elithynia arrived. Sometimes, if she was really busy, labor pains could take many hours or even a whole day (explanation!) Zeus did the only thing he could to let Elithynia sneak away, and that was distract Hera with a shiny object. He got Hephaestus to whip up an amber necklace, which was so beautiful that Hera just had to look at herself wearing it in the mirror, and Elithynia was finally able to let Leto have her kids.
Artemis came first, followed by her brother Apollo. And since Hera couldn't prevent their birth, she decided make their lives suck along with their mother's.
First, she spent four days finding the biggest, most bloodthirsty snake she could, and sent it to bite the fuck out of Leto. However, since gods are precocious little motherfuckers, the four-day-old twins were already capable of defending themselves with bows and arrows, and they killed the snake, called Python.
Hera tried one last plot - she sent a giant to rape Leto and Artemis. Apollo promptly threw him into Tartarus. After that, Hera's period presumably ended and she decided to go be miserable about something else.
The young god and goddess soon grew up, and developed different interests and personalities. Apollo, great at singing and playing the lyre and flute, became a patron of the arts and music. He was also associated with healing and the sun, although he is not to be confused with Helios, the actual personification of the sun.
Artemis, meanwhile, liked to spend her time frolicking about the woods and shooting various types of Gaia's creatures. She therefore became the goddess of animals and hunting. She was also associated with the moon, to compliment her brother. Artemis' Roman name is Diana, while Apollo's is....Apollo.
Artemis wanted to remain virginal. She went to Zeus and asked him to please not marry her to anyone against her will, as he had kind of a habit of doing with other goddesses.
Zeus chuckled. "All right, princess," he told his daughter. "No legalized rape for you!"
Artemis was quite protective of her virginity, and woe betide any man who tried to take it away from her...or, you know, any man who just happened to accidentally see her naked.
Which is what happened to Actaeon. The dude was just out hunting for deer with his dogs, when he stumbled into a clearing and spotted Artemis bathing in a pond. Now, some versions of this myth make Actaeon less sympathetic than others. In some stories, he just sees Artemis bathing, while in others he sees her naked and decides to try and do something about it. Whatever the case, Artemis flipped her shit and changed Actaeon into a stag.
Actaeon's dogs, unfortunately for him, were not man's best friend. They had been trained to kill deer, and Actaeon looked and smelled like a deer. Things did not end well.
Meanwhile, when Apollo wasn't off impressing girls with his musical abilities, he would practice his archery skills. He thought himself so good at it, in fact, that he boasted to Eros, "I could beat you at archery any day of the week. I don't even know why you bother playing around with those arrows of yours."
Eros, being Cupid's Greek predecessor, is well known for shooting arrows at people to make them fall in love. He didn't appreciate Apollo talking shit on him, so he decided to fuck with the young god.
It's true that Eros' golden arrows would make their target fall in love with the next person they saw. However, he also had leaden arrows, which made someone incapable of falling in love at all. Some people asked Eros to shoot them with a leaden arrow if they wished to dedicate their lives to religious or intellectual pursuits. With this in mind, Eros waited for the opportunity to nail Apollo, and soon enough, one came along.
Eros spotted Apollo, skipping through the woods playing his lyre like a little fruit, and he quickly shot him with a golden arrow. A little further into the woods, a nymph called Daphne stood, minding her own business. Eros promptly shot her with a leaden arrow.
The plan quickly fell into place: Apollo saw Daphne first, fell in love with her, and she was totally incapable of returning his feelings. Eros laughed and laughed. "I sure showed Apollo and that innocent bystander!"
Overcome with rapeyness, Apollo chased Daphne through the woods for miles. Finally, exhausted and unable to run any futher, she begged her father, a river god, to save her from getting violated. Since the river god couldn't really do anything to Apollo, he did the best he could and changed his daughter into a laurel tree. Apollo found himself macking on a piece of flora, and was very sad. But he cut off some of the laurel's leaves, and placed them on his head. From then on, all priestesses of Apollo wore laurel wreaths, as did winners of the Olympic games.
As a matter of fact, Apollo struck out with the ladies quite a bit. He fell in love with a beautiful human princess, Cassandra, and gave her the gift of prophecy in an attempt to get her to fuck him. Unfortunately, Cassandra said "Nah, still not interested. Thanks for the psychic powers though!" This pissed Apollo off, so he changed the gift a little - Cassandra was still psychic, but she was cursed so that no one would ever believe her visions.
Maybe because of his lack of success with women, Apollo is unusual among the Olympian gods because he played for both teams. One of his more famous male lovers was Hyacinth, whose name sounds like he should be a 45 year old drag queen. Apollo and Hyacinth liked to play sports together, and presumably do other stuff in the showers afterwards. Sadly, one day Apollo and Hyacinth were out throwing discuses, when Apollo's got blown off course by the wind, fatally bonking Hyacinth in the head. Apollo gave him immortality by turning him into a flower. So remember, every Easter we buy flowers that are a memorial to gay dudes who were good at sports.
Artemis did her fair share of friendzoning guys as time went by. A number of men tried to make nice with her, and she either beat up or killed all of them. Her one male companion was the greatest male hunter in the world, Orion. Yep, THAT Orion. The one constellation that everybody with even a basic introduction to constellations knows. Artemis and Orion spent their days romping through the woods, murdering any unfortunate animal which got in their path. They had a grand time.
Gaia, on the other hand, got pretty sick of this pair destroying all her creations constantly. Artemis, the greatest female hunter, was an immortal goddess and couldn't be stopped. Orion, however, was not immortal. So, Gaia made and sent a huge fucking scorpion to kill him. The creature did its job, and a grieving Artemis memorialized Orion by hanging his portrait in the sky, accompanied by his favorite hunting dog Sirius. She also memorialized her friend's death by putting the scorpion in the sky. This is why Orion is primarily a winter constellation, and sets as Scorpio rises in the spring.
Speaking of constellations...since she was so proud of her viginity, Artemis demanded that all her female attendants be virgins as well. One of them, Callisto, broke the rules and had sex with a man, which conceived a son she named Arcas. Artemis, instead of, you know, asking her to leave the group or something, dealt with the problem like she always did: by flipping her shit and turning someone into an animal. This time, Callisto was changed into a bear, and her son into a cub. The two of them were nearly killed by some hunters, but Zeus took pity on them and put them into the sky. They are, you guessed it, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
Sometimes Apollo and Artemis teamed up to kick ass. Like the time a Greek queen named Niobe insulted their mom. She told everyone she was better than Leto because while Leto only had two kids, she had 14! Her ability to pop out more young'uns clearly made her more awesome.
Unfortunately for her, Apollo and Artemis were super protective of their mother, so they decided the best way to express their displeasure with Niobe's attitude was to kill all her kids. Apollo shot all her sons, and Artemis shot all her daughters.
Niobe was so devestated by the loss of all her children that she cried continuously for 9 days. All that weeping and wailing got annoying for Apollo and Artemis, giving them consequences for their actions and all. Eventually, Artemis tried her old problem solving standard by turning Niobe into a rock to shut her up. This kinda worked, but Niobe's grief was so severe that she kept crying, even in rock form. So much water ran out of the rock that a river eventually flowed from it.
Man, that episode sure had a high body count, didn't it? People dying and getting changed into stuff everywhere! If only cooler heads had prevailed, maybe things could've turned out more cheerily. If only some deity presided over knowledge, and wisdom!
...Oh wait, one does. And she popped out of Zeus' head.
But that's another story.
This is the story of Apollo and Artemis, a twin brother and sister who do not fuck at any point.
Their mother was Leto, the daughter of two Titans and thus a minor goddess in her own right. She and Zeus had a fling which got her pregnant, and inevitably Hera found out about it. I guess maybe she was on the rag that week or something, because she got particularly pissed off and pretty much vowed to make Leto's life a living hell.
Hera put a curse on Leto, so that she couldn't give birth on any piece of land. This basically stuck her in limbo, at the point of going into labor but not actually able to go into labor. Pretty painful!
As Leto wandered around Greece, bemoaning her inability to levitate or swim, Zeus finally took pity on her and broke off some earth, letting it float out into the sea. Since this piece of earth wasn't attached to the sea's floor, it wasn't a real island and, on a technicality, exempt from Hera's curse. Zeus transported Leto to this spot and it seemed like things could finally get underway.
Except Hera just wouldn't let it go. To further prevent Leto from giving birth, she grounded her daughter Elithynia, so she couldn't go to the expectant mother. As the goddess of childbirth, women couldn't have their children until Elithynia arrived. Sometimes, if she was really busy, labor pains could take many hours or even a whole day (explanation!) Zeus did the only thing he could to let Elithynia sneak away, and that was distract Hera with a shiny object. He got Hephaestus to whip up an amber necklace, which was so beautiful that Hera just had to look at herself wearing it in the mirror, and Elithynia was finally able to let Leto have her kids.
Artemis came first, followed by her brother Apollo. And since Hera couldn't prevent their birth, she decided make their lives suck along with their mother's.
First, she spent four days finding the biggest, most bloodthirsty snake she could, and sent it to bite the fuck out of Leto. However, since gods are precocious little motherfuckers, the four-day-old twins were already capable of defending themselves with bows and arrows, and they killed the snake, called Python.
Hera tried one last plot - she sent a giant to rape Leto and Artemis. Apollo promptly threw him into Tartarus. After that, Hera's period presumably ended and she decided to go be miserable about something else.
The young god and goddess soon grew up, and developed different interests and personalities. Apollo, great at singing and playing the lyre and flute, became a patron of the arts and music. He was also associated with healing and the sun, although he is not to be confused with Helios, the actual personification of the sun.
Artemis, meanwhile, liked to spend her time frolicking about the woods and shooting various types of Gaia's creatures. She therefore became the goddess of animals and hunting. She was also associated with the moon, to compliment her brother. Artemis' Roman name is Diana, while Apollo's is....Apollo.
Artemis wanted to remain virginal. She went to Zeus and asked him to please not marry her to anyone against her will, as he had kind of a habit of doing with other goddesses.
Zeus chuckled. "All right, princess," he told his daughter. "No legalized rape for you!"
Artemis was quite protective of her virginity, and woe betide any man who tried to take it away from her...or, you know, any man who just happened to accidentally see her naked.
Which is what happened to Actaeon. The dude was just out hunting for deer with his dogs, when he stumbled into a clearing and spotted Artemis bathing in a pond. Now, some versions of this myth make Actaeon less sympathetic than others. In some stories, he just sees Artemis bathing, while in others he sees her naked and decides to try and do something about it. Whatever the case, Artemis flipped her shit and changed Actaeon into a stag.
Actaeon's dogs, unfortunately for him, were not man's best friend. They had been trained to kill deer, and Actaeon looked and smelled like a deer. Things did not end well.
Meanwhile, when Apollo wasn't off impressing girls with his musical abilities, he would practice his archery skills. He thought himself so good at it, in fact, that he boasted to Eros, "I could beat you at archery any day of the week. I don't even know why you bother playing around with those arrows of yours."
Eros, being Cupid's Greek predecessor, is well known for shooting arrows at people to make them fall in love. He didn't appreciate Apollo talking shit on him, so he decided to fuck with the young god.
It's true that Eros' golden arrows would make their target fall in love with the next person they saw. However, he also had leaden arrows, which made someone incapable of falling in love at all. Some people asked Eros to shoot them with a leaden arrow if they wished to dedicate their lives to religious or intellectual pursuits. With this in mind, Eros waited for the opportunity to nail Apollo, and soon enough, one came along.
Eros spotted Apollo, skipping through the woods playing his lyre like a little fruit, and he quickly shot him with a golden arrow. A little further into the woods, a nymph called Daphne stood, minding her own business. Eros promptly shot her with a leaden arrow.
The plan quickly fell into place: Apollo saw Daphne first, fell in love with her, and she was totally incapable of returning his feelings. Eros laughed and laughed. "I sure showed Apollo and that innocent bystander!"
Overcome with rapeyness, Apollo chased Daphne through the woods for miles. Finally, exhausted and unable to run any futher, she begged her father, a river god, to save her from getting violated. Since the river god couldn't really do anything to Apollo, he did the best he could and changed his daughter into a laurel tree. Apollo found himself macking on a piece of flora, and was very sad. But he cut off some of the laurel's leaves, and placed them on his head. From then on, all priestesses of Apollo wore laurel wreaths, as did winners of the Olympic games.
As a matter of fact, Apollo struck out with the ladies quite a bit. He fell in love with a beautiful human princess, Cassandra, and gave her the gift of prophecy in an attempt to get her to fuck him. Unfortunately, Cassandra said "Nah, still not interested. Thanks for the psychic powers though!" This pissed Apollo off, so he changed the gift a little - Cassandra was still psychic, but she was cursed so that no one would ever believe her visions.
Maybe because of his lack of success with women, Apollo is unusual among the Olympian gods because he played for both teams. One of his more famous male lovers was Hyacinth, whose name sounds like he should be a 45 year old drag queen. Apollo and Hyacinth liked to play sports together, and presumably do other stuff in the showers afterwards. Sadly, one day Apollo and Hyacinth were out throwing discuses, when Apollo's got blown off course by the wind, fatally bonking Hyacinth in the head. Apollo gave him immortality by turning him into a flower. So remember, every Easter we buy flowers that are a memorial to gay dudes who were good at sports.
Artemis did her fair share of friendzoning guys as time went by. A number of men tried to make nice with her, and she either beat up or killed all of them. Her one male companion was the greatest male hunter in the world, Orion. Yep, THAT Orion. The one constellation that everybody with even a basic introduction to constellations knows. Artemis and Orion spent their days romping through the woods, murdering any unfortunate animal which got in their path. They had a grand time.
Gaia, on the other hand, got pretty sick of this pair destroying all her creations constantly. Artemis, the greatest female hunter, was an immortal goddess and couldn't be stopped. Orion, however, was not immortal. So, Gaia made and sent a huge fucking scorpion to kill him. The creature did its job, and a grieving Artemis memorialized Orion by hanging his portrait in the sky, accompanied by his favorite hunting dog Sirius. She also memorialized her friend's death by putting the scorpion in the sky. This is why Orion is primarily a winter constellation, and sets as Scorpio rises in the spring.
Speaking of constellations...since she was so proud of her viginity, Artemis demanded that all her female attendants be virgins as well. One of them, Callisto, broke the rules and had sex with a man, which conceived a son she named Arcas. Artemis, instead of, you know, asking her to leave the group or something, dealt with the problem like she always did: by flipping her shit and turning someone into an animal. This time, Callisto was changed into a bear, and her son into a cub. The two of them were nearly killed by some hunters, but Zeus took pity on them and put them into the sky. They are, you guessed it, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
Sometimes Apollo and Artemis teamed up to kick ass. Like the time a Greek queen named Niobe insulted their mom. She told everyone she was better than Leto because while Leto only had two kids, she had 14! Her ability to pop out more young'uns clearly made her more awesome.
Unfortunately for her, Apollo and Artemis were super protective of their mother, so they decided the best way to express their displeasure with Niobe's attitude was to kill all her kids. Apollo shot all her sons, and Artemis shot all her daughters.
Niobe was so devestated by the loss of all her children that she cried continuously for 9 days. All that weeping and wailing got annoying for Apollo and Artemis, giving them consequences for their actions and all. Eventually, Artemis tried her old problem solving standard by turning Niobe into a rock to shut her up. This kinda worked, but Niobe's grief was so severe that she kept crying, even in rock form. So much water ran out of the rock that a river eventually flowed from it.
Man, that episode sure had a high body count, didn't it? People dying and getting changed into stuff everywhere! If only cooler heads had prevailed, maybe things could've turned out more cheerily. If only some deity presided over knowledge, and wisdom!
...Oh wait, one does. And she popped out of Zeus' head.
But that's another story.