Moonshadows

((At the end of season two, Artie tells Claudia that he's still a lousy shot with a real gun. I'm assuming that James knew this and would interpret it as a reassurance that Artie didn't intend to kill him when his old partner showed up at the airport with a gun rather than a tesla or some other artifact. Also, watching season four and trying to guess when it's Artie and when it's the evil is entertaining. My guess is the astrolabe used a sort of 'dream logic' filter to keep Artie from figuring things out. Brother Adrian hands Artie a spur, and Artie is able to read the artifact instantly, knowing who created it and what it does, but then it turns out not to be an artifact? After a huge book of documentation is provided out of nowhere? Yeah, no, Artie knew he was being fooled somehow and acting out of character in order to tip the others off because dire warnings aside, he couldn't be certain that he could tell them what was going on.))

 

((Tell me you're not disappointed that we never got to see Artie reconcile with Vanessa after the Rapid City and Chinese Orchid incidents, and I'll call you a fucking liar.))

 

((This takes place less than a year before Claire crosses paths with a very angry music box. That's right, I just implied that Claire was the first choice for next Caretaker. Well, Irene wasn't first choice either, now was she? Just do yourself a favor and don't think too hard about when Claire was born and when Artie would have started working at the Warehouse. The Regents, by the way, refused to bend on 'fire current staff' but did decide that out of respect for Artie's service, they would delay any future move until such time as he was unwilling or unable to perform his duties.))

 

((Some explanation is required for this one. First, the Regents. I don't believe for a second that Artie had never seen the Regents before Valda tried to tear him a new one in the diner, not when his partner got 5 consecutive life sentences for using the Phoenix. There had to have been a hearing and Artie had to have been questioned. At the very least, for how James got his hands on the Phoenix in the first place. What makes sense, therefore, is if the Regents in the past had done a more impressive facade...and, likely, been far more restrictive in terms of allowing artifact use. The official line is 'we do not use artifacts', but honestly, how many times does Artie use artifacts without repercussion? So imagine that when this takes place, some twenty-five years before series start, the Regents were complete dicks.))

((Second, when a child is referenced, it was a toddler who was found inside Schrödinger's Box, an artifact that presented one of two possible outcomes to whoever looked through the viewing window in the lid and whoever opened the box made the choice. One of the toddler's parents saw the boy dead, the other saw him alive. Artie made the choice to embrace his gift because if he didn't, he could very well be murdering a baby through inaction if someone without the ability to consciously choose one of the outcomes opened the box.))

((Third, I have a headcanon that Artie doesn't drink. At all. Two pieces of evidence support this: in the pilot, when he offers Pete milk or juice for cookies, Pete implies he'd like something harder by asking, 'You know what I'd really like?' and Artie answers, 'I do indeed, but falling off the wagon...may not be the best option at this point.' This sounds to me like he knows all too well what it's like to not be able to drink. Then, in 'Implosion' when he meets Carol at the bar, he's got a glass of clear liquid with a slice of lime in it in front of him. There's no ice and no bubbles, which makes it unlikely that it's anything but simple water. So I extrapolated a brush with an artifact that would turn him off of drinking for a quarter of a century. In his first year, he carelessly grabbed the Rod of Dionysus - without gloves - while attempting to snag it. The Rod made him perpetually drunk and also attractive to women, but it was also a bifurcated artifact. The Regents ordered James to abandon his compromised partner. It took James a few months to track down the other half of the artifact, a goblet, and get Regent permission to both snag the Rod and save his partner. Artie woke up in detox, so close to having died that James didn't even say 'I told you so', and probably hasn't touched a drop since.))

((Oh, and warnings for descriptions of injury to sensitive bits.))