Are You Looking at Her?

Question: While I think Artemis isn't necessarily a man, I wonder how does she feel about men? More importantly, what should male Scions expect from her, how would she react to one of her adopted daughters getting married, & finally does she treat her adopted sons differently?

Well, Artemis definitely is not a man, so you're totally on top of the first part of that question!

The question of Artemis' exact feelings toward men is one that a lot of Scion games answer in different ways. There's no explicit mythological evidence to necessarily paint her as a bitter misander who can't stand anyone in possession of a penis, but she does seem to avoid them in various arenas: her attendants are all women, she begged Zeus to promise that she could always keep her virginity, and she had that one guy torn to itty bitty pieces when he happened to see her in the altogether. Some games run with the idea that Artemis just doesn't like men, period, for reasons of her own; that might translate to simply avoiding or looking down on them, or to ferociously punishing or belittling them when she sees them. Some games paint her as a lesbian (which the Scion book also suggests), which allows a little more wiggle room - she doesn't necessarily hate men, but she doesn't swing that way. Still other games portray her as the eternally youthful girl she was often shown as in art, a mere fourteen and uninterested in lame things like "romance" and "boys" when she could be out on the hunt.

For us, we assume that Artemis is not necessarily a raging misanthrope waiting to murder all men, but she probably doesn't think too highly of them and is likely to ignore, look down upon or punish them for insolence if they press the issue. Her Vengeance virtue makes bothering her a bad idea if there's any chance she might decide to make a man's life hell (but then again, her Vengeance virtue could just as easily be turned on women, as when she murdered all of Niobe's daughters for their mother's suggestion that she was superior to Leto). Like most Dodekatheon gods, she's probably got a quick temper and is not particularly interested in listening to someone else's clashing point of view. I would generally caution male Scions to stay out of her way, and to be polite and inoffensive if they have to interact with her; everything might go fine, but heaven help you if you piss her off.

We've only ever had one Scion of Artemis, an unfortunate young boy named Arthur Eclipse (Art for short) who ended up getting killed when he got mixed up in the wrong crowd. His player always described his relationship with his mother as distant and desperate; he tried very hard to please her, but the fact that he was male meant that he could never measure up to her standards no matter what he did, always looking for affection she didn't show him. You could also take the approach that she just doesn't have male adoptees, or that she picked one up as a favor to someone else but doesn't like him much, or else that she's trying to finally create the perfect man that she'll actually like (perhaps Hippolytus come again?) and dotes on the boy to that end. There are a lot of ways you can go with a kid who is starting at a disadvantage when it comes to his mother and can choose how he wants to go about trying to help, please or rebel against her.

I imagine that Artemis probably is not the biggest fan of marriage, having avoided it like the plague herself, but whether or not she'd be okay with one of her daughters getting married is something I'd more likely base on the specific situation. If the girl really wants to, and she tells Artemis so, and she seems happy, she might have to swallow her pride and admit that what's best for her isn't always best for her children. If, on the other hand, she has any suspicion that the daughter doesn't really want to get married or that the potential husband might be controlling, dangerous or abusive to her, she might get involved in a big way.

It takes a brave man to try to marry a woman whose mother is pointing enchanted arrows at his face. Good luck, young sirs.