It has been an exceedingly long time since I was on this website.

It may have been exponentially longer than that since I wrote anything for this fic.

I got a really sweet message about this one earlier today. Thought that I should at least try and give this some resolution. But first, I'm going to try and justify why I won't be continuing this fic in long form.

It's been almost five years. That's really it. I was either thirteen or fourteen when I wrote this, and I was a little tiny baby writer. I'd never posted anything on the internets, and had no idea what I was doing. This isn't the worst thing I've ever written by a long shot, but it's not the best, and it's deeply flawed in retrospect.

I tried to do a lot with characters who I didn't fully understand. Just after a cursory glance at the first chapter, I'd point out to my younger self that each of the characters has only one or two traits (I'd argue that Angeline Fowl is the worst for this, which makes sense, as she has all of two traits in the books), and the cast is way too large for a Hurt/Comfort fic on the scale I was capable of handling at that time. I also didn't have a definite direction for almost anyone, except that the personalities all wanted to be returned to Artemis, which wasn't really an inciting event. If I'm 16k into a fic and still introducing characters, it's going to be a long haul to reach the end, and I wouldn't say I'm ready for that sort of commitment now, much less five years ago.

I also left the Artemis Fowl fandom a long time ago. I'd even say I wasn't ever really in it, since I didn't have access to any of the usual avenues into fandom while I was posting this (no Tumblr, no livejournal, etc.). Just a month after the 'latest' chapter of this was posted, I read The Last Guardian, and was severely underwhelmed. There are a lot of reasons for that that I won't enumerate here. I'm not up to date on any fanon, don't have any conception of Eoin Colfer's voice in my head, and I wouldn't be able to do any of the characters justice at this point.

Finally, I just hadn't done my reading for this. One of the first things I saw online after reading Atlantis Complex was to the effect of "multiple personality doesn't exist" and that affected the way that I portrayed the characters. I didn't think I needed to do any research, because I thought I was writing about something wholly fictional. Now that I'm more aware of DID, I really wish I could write some more for this—especially in the wake of Split—but between university classes, part-time work, and other writing projects, I don't have the time to do it justice.

So, yeah. I don't see this ever getting continued, unless there's a miracle and I get a bunch of personality ideas while writing the rest of this. If I do continue this, it'll be a lot more episodic in structure, with less of a drive toward an actual conclusion. If I were to do that, there wouldn't be a concrete resolution, more of a fade out as I lose the will to continue writing.

If you're here for my writing and not specifically for this fic, I extend an invitation to join me at my Tumblr at . I don't post much of my own writing, but I did one recently for the Young Wizards books, and I'm working on a few other projects. Just check the "my writing" tag if you want to see what I've posted.

Now, with that housekeeping out of the way, I present the Bullet-Point Fanfic That Could Have Been:

· First of all, I gotta say, 13-year-old me was remarkably sensitive about mental illness for a neurotypical who didn't do any research. Go figure

· Also, was planning to reveal that Orion is asexual, Noland is aggressively pansexual and Diana's genderqueer (though I didn't know those words back then)

· To acknowledge all of the shipping right off the bat, as much as I didn't plan any of it as endgame for anyone, I had Orion/Holly, Noland/Juliet (guess which one's my favourite), Leon/Minerva, and Diana with an Unachievable Gay Crush on Butler (like my Unachievable Gay Crush on Chris Hemsworth—not like I'd want to actually be in a relationship with him, just an acknowledgement that wow)

· It's entirely possible I realised that I was getting better at character writing since I realised that Noland was getting more interesting and then made it canon

· Kind of unfortunate that I gave all art to Diana, so I can't make up a tortured composer personality now

· Oh no they're a hipster

· I think the original plan was for Orion to revert to start-of-Atlantis-Complex Orion at the start of the next day, lose the rationality I'd given him, and go Holly Hunting

· Let's be real, Orion is creepy in the book

· Followed by an abrupt return to the facility because Holly knows the Artemises too well

· And then Artemis being really salty next time he wakes up

· Just in general, there was going to be more Artemis, because I realised that him being outside was the only way to progress the plot

· Each of the personalities would have had their own plot line, where each of them slowly became more like Artemis (and Artemis became more like them) until they stopped existing:

o Orion would have required Artemis to fully acknowledge his romantic side, even if he's never really going to act on it. I mean, everyone has an Inner Disney Prince just waiting to burst free and inconvenience a princess of any gender. Just me? Okay…

o Noland was going to require Artemis to realise that he is able to be a child prodigy and a 'normal person' (let's be real, that's a lesson I hadn't learnt yet when I wrote this). There's a good reason I liked him so much: I wanted to be him, and I'm pretty sure that, on some level, Artemis did, too, even if he wouldn't acknowledge it. Also, being liked takes effort. It takes an investment of brainpower that Noland has put in, and Artemis needs to learn that there's a price for being seen as 'normal', too. Life's not always harder if you're a unique special snowflake

o Aris's plot was already started. The only adjustment I'd make is that he and Artemis need to have a good long talk about pushing down the feeling that what you're doing is wrong, because it caused a whole lot of problems. Hey. Hey, Artemis! There are consequences to your mental health when you do things you know are wrong! Like kissing Holly! *shudders*

o I didn't like Leon very much. But Artemis really did want to return to that, at least a little bit. Life was a lot simpler when he didn't have morals getting in the way. I think that Leon needs more therapy than Artemis, honestly, and he was going to be Angeline's plotline. Artemis became so aggressively independent pre-first book because Angeline wasn't able to ask for outside help when she started to fall apart. They need to have a heartfelt conversation about that

o As for Diana… they didn't really have a direction yet, but I think that what I was going to do was discuss how Artemis always does things with a concrete goal in mind. He doesn't ever do anything just for the sake of something beautiful. And there's a place for that utilitarian drive. But things like music and art also deserve time and attention, and, you know, identity. Shoving all of it down doesn't help anyone

· I'm not sure what I was doing with all that fake tension around the Council and the Fowl family. It would have been fun to write Artemis Sr. and the twins, I guess, but getting them down was getting to be a chore. Artemis wasn't going to leave that facility, no matter how bored I got of writing a single setting. It's Hurt/Comfort! We don't need action to drive the plot!

· I would, however, like to note that I would very likely change the direction of the fic if I were to write it now. I probably wouldn't focus on reuniting all the personalities under Artemis, and more try to bring all of them into a balance with each other. As much as I am not someone with DID, I would do my best to have sympathy for people with the disorder

· Also, Artemis is totally medicating for a significant period of time. Disorders like OCD and what read a whole lot like BPD in the book don't just go away with a few months of therapy. I imagine Artemis wouldn't be very happy about being medicated indefinitely, since he probably sees it as 'weakness' (I can tell you for sure right now that Leon does, and Noland is also a bit iffy about it), but he'd come around after realising that the purpose of the treatment is to help him be able to function, not to return him to normal

· I might even run into the plot of The Last Guardian (with edits to get rid of the serious power seep problems that the series had—Opal blew herself up and then CAME BACK) with Artemis continuing to struggle with Atlantis Complex. That… actually sounds really interesting… I know part of why I was grumpy about The Last Guardian now: mental illnesses don't just go away, and you can't shout "Four!" to check if they're gone

· So, yeah, indefinite fic. Not sure how or where it might end at the moment. Maybe never?

· While I'm here, have a few more random personalities

o Mature!Artemis, think the guy from Time Paradox. Might actually call him Domovoi or Senior—Artemis wants to be someone he looks up to, after all. Basically, if Artemis were 20 or so and stuck in 16-year-old Artemis's body. Or rather, what Artemis would want himself to be at 20: stoic, but empathetic, and smarter than Artemis by a ludicrous margin. By smarter, I mean that he'd probably not match Artemis in pure academic feats or the sciences that Artemis already has PhD's in, but a much better strategic thinker, who doesn't just sort of throw his mental energy at things until they do what he wants. Probably aro-ace, since I don't think Artemis much likes that he has the capacity to be romantic/sexual

o Hufflepuff!Artemis: I found a cool thing on Tumblr the other day called sortinghatchats that described Hufflepuffs as people who are loyal more generally than Slytherins are (Artemis is the perfect Slytherin fite me). Rather than care about his limited chosen family (the Fowls, the Butlers, Holly, Foaly, a few other fairies, Minerva), this Artemis—let's call him Cedric for convenience—is more concerned with the well-being of people in general. Basically, what I'm saying is Cedric is the guy who's going to join the UN and lobby for aid in third world countries and excision of corruption in the first world. Other people/groups come before Cedric, and even before his close community. If the Council decides Cedric needs to be mind-wiped, he's not going to protest or bargain, but accept it for the good of the fairies. His underlying personality—likes/dislikes, sexuality, hobbies—don't really exist, because he is totally subsumed by the public servant part of himself

o Performer!Artemis: Artemis already loves having an audience when he does something cool, but Diana is the creative mind, not the performer. Let's reference something less mainstream in the west and call him Anatole, a very self-absorbed and melodramatic character from War and Peace. Everything about Anatole is public, from his flagrant polyamorous omnisexuality to his annoyingly perfect singing voice. If it's something that can be performed, Anatole can do it, and do it better than you. He can smize, dance, and play the piano. He can act, sing, and dress himself fabulously. Artemis doesn't like him very much

So, yeah, that's that. Fanfic summarised in bullet-point form. That was fun! Now back to researching Chang'e and writing Hamilton fanfiction.

I hope that everyone who reads this has a great 2017! The 5-year-old monster has been conquered, it's peaks scaled, and its plunnies… raised from the dead.