The thing I loved about the Opal Deception climax was when they were all “Her ship is completely undetectable, we’ll never find it.” And Artemis goes “Oh cool, just look for the place where the scanner can’t find anything, not even air.”
Oh I remember that it was so cool. And the best part is that after reading that bit and re -reading the book some time after again, There are subtle hints Eoin even gives us to form a plan to find the location of Opal's Stealth Craft! - First of all, When Opal kidnaps Fowl she casually drops the fact that her ship's air is very clean, which led Fowl to conclude that it does not have a normal air composition, but thtis fact isn't that significant UNTIL..... -Diggums hijacks a standard police fairy craft and picks up Short and Fowl. During the hijacking, the features of the craft are casually listed by the author, and one of the features, guess what? A simple fairy scanner, a general tool for all shuttles used to check climatic conditions for flying! So we had every chance to figure out a plan to pin point Opal's location without her realizing that she has been pinged, Just like Master Fowl.
The moment when butler revealed his whole name was v interesting to me as a child because “Domovoi” is a kind of household spirit/deity in Russian folklore - he attaches himself to your family, lives in your house, and protects you from harm as long as you stay on his good side. Definite butler parallels though I’m not sure how obvious this would be to children reading the book for the first time
The german translation called them ZUP. That's also pretty bad. And of course the LEPrecon get's lost that way too... reading that sentence in english was a large relevation.
In the brazilian portuguese translation they didn't change the name, it still was LEP, but I never realized the joke until this video, because I never thought of it in English
On the spanish version one they named it "PES" missing out the joke entirely, and didn't bother to explain it either with a "Footnote from Translator" TL;DR: I got the joke by the third book, which I read in english.
"Try one last method, but ultimately fail." That's a light way of saying they try to MAGICALLY NUKE HIM and he only escapes by ALMOST OVERDOSING ON SLEEPING PILLS.
The logic of that maneuver was absolutely breathtaking on so many levels. I don't remember most of the series because I read it so long ago, but that? "He said 'over my dead body', which means that he's giving us permission if we murder him. Use the bomb." "Alright, so I informed our foes that they can come in if they kill us, so they're going to try that and then attempt entry. However, (I think he noticed his mother was unaffected by the time field while asleep? The deduction here's very vague to me, but that feels right), so we need to knock ourselves out to exit this temporal stasis(I think all the inanimate objects were unchangeable... Or something?) to become immune. And once their murder attempt fails, they'll have no choice but to abandon their efforts." That, and the whole scene with Butler throwing grenades in a gridlike pattern, which utterly revolutionized the way I thought about certain board games, so that they could replace Opal's truffles with explosives. Which they proceeded to taunt her with. Some good shit.
Najawin that’s pretty no brainer logic Edit: you’re all the dumbest people on the planet. You’re so fucking stupid that you actually thought this pan wasn’t simple enough for an intoxicated baby to solve
@@znightowlz6585 The big brain play was trying it out on his mother in the first place. Most people would take the "You can't fall asleep." rule at face value. Artemis took the chance that human tech (Pharmaceuticals in this case.) would interact with the magic in an unprecedented way. Then after observing his hypothesis working out he carried through on the plan. Him doing all this was while he was sleepfucked after essentially days of forced conciousness. It's easy to say somethings a "No-Brainer" after it's done, but you need to look at the steps it takes to get there. Heck, look at the amount of people who still believe the earth is flat despite the copious amounts of evidence and experiments you can perform to disprove that assertion.
T. Estable LOOK UP WHAT NO BRAINER MEANS. The logic is really fucking simple and the earlier comment saying how damn mind blowing the logic was is exaggerated bc it’s something I could think up when I was 7. It’s not that smart it’s a no brainer. You ever heard the saying “put two and two together” yeh it’s literally that
The thing about Butler's name: While his first name is Domvoi, meaning household spirit, or god in russian, fitting given his profession, the surname Butler is an actual surname in Ireland. Its Norman in origin, which makes Butler's Family, like Artemis Fowl's, Old English (Meaning they were Norman aristocrats who became Gaelicized and celtic after the conquest of Ireland through intermarriage and cultural assimilation). Meaning wherever Butler was raised originally, he's basically guarding 'home turf' in Ireland on top of being a Guardian for young master Fowl as well as being a play on the job of being a 'Butler'. Its a neat play on the names and fits well with his first name's meaning.
@@theredtechnician If you know your family crest and it looks like the one at this link, then you're family name is almost certainly Norman in Origin. www.houseofnames.com/butler-family-crest
Are you really not going to talk about how Artemis watched Holly get casually cut down by Abbot and BEG FOR HIM TO HELP HER AS SHE DIED while he was forced to ignore her and keep count of the time pattern in The Lost Colony? The book even goes into detail about how the sword sounds as it leaves her body and follows it up by killing two more characters in the span of a couple seconds while they're all immobilized by the spell they're willingly focusing on. Yeah, obviously the deaths gets changed almost instantly due to Artemis being Artemis and shooting the villain in the past in order to change the future, but still. Holly is a really likable and strong character by that point in the books and having her killed that casually and then proceed to pitifully beg for someone to help her as she bleeds out AND THEN FOR ARTEMIS TO IGNORE IT was absolutely brutal to my child self. I distinctly remember going back to re-read that passage multiple times as a kid because I quite literally couldn't believe my eyes. That scene definitely affected me as a kid and it's probably the only reason I even remember this series to this day. Considering how much attention you gave to Butler vs the troll and Commander Root's death, I would have at least thought it deserved a mention.
Agreed. That entire final scene in book five cemented it as my favorite in the whole series. The description of the setting collapsing around them and the complexity of the timing and the patterns, the things that were at stake-to say nothing of that moment where Artemis was forced to ignore Holly to save their lives-it blew my mind. It was such a moment, it kind of swept you away. It could have finished off the series, frankly.
SERIOUSLY. Lost colony is actually my favorite artemis fowl book (despite the minerva stuff), maybe tied with eternity code. All the stuff about the time fluxes and how artemis could predict when time would reverse for a few seconds so he could do something and then change it in the past, so cool!
And yet I KNOW I read these, but I remember nothing except a specific stab. (I can't remember if there was more than one.) Because I physically felt that.
I would say he’s more lawful evil, he is willing to do what he needs to to get what he wants but still binds himself with a code of ethics. He is certainly not chaotic since his methods are always so calculated.
"Time for me to judge another children's series through the eyes of an adult. That seems fair." I think it is very fair, actually. The stuff we give to our children should be good quality. I mean, people keep telling me how important kids are, how they're our future. So it baffles me how people can say that, but also think that it's acceptable for children's media to be shit, justified with "well it's for kids". If it's for kids, it should be held to an even higher standard. Children's media should be enjoyable for any audience, because good writing transcends age demographics. Rocko's Modern Life was fun for me as a 10 year old, and it's still fun for me as a 28 year old. "For kids" is not an excuse for writers to not put in the effort and work required to turn out fun, interesting and well-written books. It just isn't. So judge away, James Tullos!
When I was Artemis's age, I was (or considered myself) a lot smarter than the other kids, so Artemis was the ultimate power fantasy for me, he was the character I identified the most in all books and media I consumed. Even now, in my mid-20s, long after coming to the much bitter realization that I am not as smart as I thought I was, the books kinda inspire me, even though I see them for what they are. I picked up The Fowl Twins a couple months ago, curious to know what do people think about that book.
It's one of a number of book series that whilst I enjoyed, I recognise now it probably inflated my ego to an unhealthy degree, and massively undercut opportunities I squandered (others include the Tim Ferris books and a kids book I can't even remember the name of)
The Fowl Twins I found so off-putting and unamusing that I gave up on those books. The major problem is Myles and Beckett just aren't compelling protagonists. Simultaneously boring and unfunny, the two lack the engaging dynamic that Artemis and Butler brought to the table.
I stopped reading after book four or five or so. The first few books were truly amazing and felt really clever and entertaining when I was younger. that first book remains legendeary though.
I read up to the Opal incident like a kid on crack, eager for more. Going through entire books in just one night. But at that point the series kind of tapered off and I was unable to find the newer books in my local used book shop. I wasn't about to pay 24.99 or what ever they wanted for a book... so I passed. Came back to them years later from Ebooks and wasn't impressed. I can see why I couldn't find used copies, nobody bought them to sell used.
@@lennonfreed5729 Pretty much just became a normal kid detective book after a while. The fantasy/sci fi elements were almost forgotten as the fairies and their technology started to become old hat. Artemis and the readers both started to stop being surprised by anything that turned up.
I feel you. The Eternity Code and the Opal Deception were excellent, I consider them the best in the series and they easily became my favorites. Opal was a fun antagonist, although I wished Colfer had developed her more. I wish every book that came after had half the quality.
Domovoi is literally in slavic culture a sort of spirit who inhabits homes and can be good (meaning can clean up or help to find lost things by leaving them where people can see) or bad and people almost never see him. Poor man is literally called house "maid" two times
WaterResistance Cool. Sort of like the swedish Tomte, a guardian of the house/lot (in swedish called tomt) that can be good or bad to the people living there, depending on how they treat the house, animals and flora.
A lot of Russian superstitions that we don't have in the west originate in ancient beliefs about keeping the domovoi happy. Stuff like not whistling inside, sitting in silence for a few minutes before you leave for a trip, and looking in the mirror if you have to come back to grab something after you start to leave the house for a trip.
I never read the last two books because they were so late, came out a long time after I read the things before. What I didn't like was that they kept bringing back Opal Koboi. It feels pointless when she just keeps coming back in forced ways. Sounds to me like they should've built more on what they did in earlier books, though. You could still have books that stand on their own with finished stories without forcing everything back to status quo. It could have been really interesting if they kept evolving it instead.
Honestly, Colfer should have killed off her in the Arctic Incident and have Cudgeon be the recurring villain throughout the series instead. Unlike her, Cudgeon does have a semi-sympathetic history with some of the heroes and this villainous presence that Koboi sorely lacks. She is just too emotional to be a legitimately intimidating threat: all the heroes need to do upon confronting her is to appeal to her ego to trick her into doing something stupid. I already thought she was getting tiresome in Book IV, especially with "muh revenge" being her sole motivation, and to this day I can't for the life of me remember what the hell she even did in Time Paradox. Hearing that she would come back yet _again_ in the subsequent books was one of the reasons I never bothered to pick them up.
Agreed. For reason Colfer really wanted her to be a reoccurring villain and it just ended up dragging down the series creatively. She also wasn't nearly as charismatic as he wanted her to be. The Eternity Code and Atlantis Complex are still among my favourites from the series exactly because their arcs are relatively self-contained and their villains are one-offs that could just go out and do their own thing instead of feeding back into the Opal plot over and over again.
@@yarpen26 I don't think she should've died right after the Arctic Incident, but she should've come back once more at most and then died or be relegated to a permanent background character/cameo. And the whole time paradox magic fusion goddess bullshit from the last was just tired.
@@PhileasLiebmann I think that one of the main issues in this series is that while Colfer seemingly wanted it to be Xena-like "Monster of the Week" episodic, he couldn't really dedicate himself to this concept fully. Throughout the whole thing it feels like there _should_ be some overarching narrative there but just isn't. You can't have it both ways, really.
I think The Time Paradox is really underrated. Young Artemis is a perfect antagonist because he's just as smart as present-day Artemis but with none of the morals, he's still willing to use any means necessary to achieve his goals. Great foil to show how much Artemis has grown.
I watched the whole thing and really enjoyed it. Two things I do really wish you touched on were the following. Firstly the lack of mentioning of Foaly as a character as every single time one of his chapters came on it was an utter delight. Secondly your statement surrounding Butler “not being willing to take a bullet for him just for his job” yes he does grow emotionally attached and loves him like a son but Butler literally comes from an organization that trains the most elite and hardcore bodyguards which is a really unique and interesting world building system. Other than those two things great video man!
Foaly was simultaneously the most hilarious yet competent character for so much of the series in most bafflingly fun ways that i'm astounded that he wasn't mentioned more. I loved how he was ordered to hack something, but since he didn't have his equipment he just texted his sister an ice cream bribe to do it for him and it worked. Him constantly doing weird stuff like that and having it work made him a joy to read.
A lot of characters in the series actually got either erased, dropped off or killed due to the fact that Eoin thought two characters might be alike and thought “clones” running around the series together felt slightly uninteresting. I managed to ask him why Minerva didn’t return by the end of the AF series (hopefully might be back in the second installment to the Fowl Twins), and he said it was because Minerva resembled much of Artemis in many ways. Same reason why he killed of Root, because he thought Butler was slowly becoming a sort of father-like figure like Root or the other way around (forgot that bit). Vinyaya was sort of like Holly as well.
Ironically, after Root's death, Trouble Kelp would become Root 2.0 once promoted to commander. He litteraly was reduced to a book 2 Root, the pissed off commander who really trust Holly, but definitivelly not Artemis. And his brother, Grub simply vanished, alongside Chix Verbil. I always found that aspect quite frustrating. Trouble, Grub and other minor LEP character were quite interesting bit that helped give more depth to the LEP. After book 5, the LEP was basically reduced to Holy doing grunt work, Trouble bossing her around and Foaly providing the logistical support. Before book 5, the LEP were trully a true character. We had a large collection of LEP officer, filling various roles, offering various perspectives. There also was a true organisation and not everyone seemed to entirely rely on Holly. In that whole thing, Vinyaya have a very strange position. Partly because of Holly being the first female LEPrecon when she was the first female LEPretriaval, partly because of her very strange place in the overall LEP hierarchy... first she was a random member of the council, then and former training officer kinda still fit for field duty, then section 8 commander, then kinda the second in command to Trouble... she seemed to be litteraly everywhere while not actually having any role...
One of the things I always liked about the earlier Artemis Fowl books, is that making your main character a 10 year old genius could very easily turn the books into a self-insert Gary Stu wankfest, and yet Eoin Colfer managed to make Artemis a flawed enough person that he never came off that way. Sure, he's extremely smart, but he's also an arrogant and greedy little prick most of the time, and suffers from stunted psychological growth in a lot of ways due to his father's absence and his mother's insanity. Not to mention, he had moments where his ego got put in check, like when Holly punched him in the face. I think part of the reason why I didn't like the later books as much was because Artemis' character growth was starting to turn him into a Gary Stu. He was interesting because he was socially and morally stunted, but he started to become a little too perfect as he became a genuinely good person, on top of being incredibly intelligent. I feel like Eoin Colfer realised this would happen, which is why he had the fairies wipe his memory at the end of one of the books, to make sure he remained the smart, but incredibly flawed person he was during the first book. The thing is, he eventually lost these flaws again in subsequent books, once again becoming too perfect. Him learning magic was the final straw for me, that's when his character lost what made him so compelling originally.
I actually read the memory wipe as a narrative tool to highlight just how much character development Artemis went through by contrasting his current personality with his earlier one.
I honestly did not mind the later books at all. Some of them were genuinely my favorite entries. To me it makes sense that he would develop more as he series progressed, and that’s why later Eoin turned from a more Artemis driven story to branching out to other characters. Not that I don’t agree that they could get a bit stagnant at some areas, but everything he does ends up with some kind of consequence. He steals a magic from the circle, he develops the Atlantis Complex. He goes back in time to save his mom, and he unintentionally gives the Opal exactly what she needs to ruin everything. I always found it incredible as a kid and now how well the books played off of each other, and how the series had this very clear sense of progression.
What bothered me is how much is undone and reset as things go on. Memory wipe, the entering house rule, the exposure of all fairy kind. The world gets LESS interesting as these get undone.
That bugged me as well. I loved all the clever ways people rolled with the human dwellings rule - Spiro's sarcastic invitation being the highlight - so when N°1 got rid of the rule, I just thought... sure, it makes sense, but it's not exciting.
The one that really bugged me, was Artemis gaining magic, only to instantly lose it. It was frustrating that they first introduced such a provocative change to the status quo, with so much potential fun narrative use, just to toss it in the reticon trash been. 😡
@@TheNinjaDC How about Artemis Fowl derping hard against younger himself? That was quite... idiotic aswell. Not to mention the whole lemur plot that ties so strongly with faeries... That's an overkill of a "how convinient".
@@MrDeothor Fairies: "We care about animal lives so much, arguably more than we care about humans who are actually sapient." Also fairies: "We have done nothing to stop the Extinctionists even though they are an organization devoted to rendering animals extinct." Oh and, hey, Eoin? A species is effectively extinct long before there's only 1 member left. Even if there's a breeding pair, the species will still die out because that's not a big enough gene pool. The necessary incest that will come from that will cause the species to die out anyway. So it kind of makes the Extinctionists lose all their edge; killing the last 1-2 members of a species isn't really doing anything since it's already doomed and living on borrowed time. But I guess we just gotta have your political views shoved in our faces and feel bad about a wolfskin sofa. The wolf is already DEAD, Artemis, just sit on the fucking sofa, standing won't bring them back. I swear, it's like veganism but somehow even more stupid...
@@Shenaldrac I sort of agree, but... wolfskin sofa? Wtf? That just seems absurdly expensive and unreasonable. I'd still sit, but probably just to figure out what's so great about it.
Fowl, in my opinion, got absolutely killed by comparisons to other kids media that it didn’t really aspire to compare to. Also, some of the plot points (the mind wipe, Butler aging, Root dying) really took out the gas even when the writing was still of quality.
@@andrewwesleyhudson5983 Holly didnt have enough magic energy to fully bring back Butler so she (unintentionally) borrowed a few years off of him and a bit of kevlar to bring him back by any means
@@andrewwesleyhudson5983 I mean the initial point before the series just kept on going was that it nerfed this unstoppable avatar of destruction that was Butler early on.
Personally, I think it went downhill after the Lost Colony. It wasn't super well built up, but it still felt satisfying and earned. Also, No.1 was fun as hell.
@@RaidsEpicly I read it when I was like 12 and even if I have fond memories of it, most of them are just about how it confused the hell out of me. EDIT to clarify, I'm adressing The Lost Colony.
Yeah, I concur. Lost Colony was a satisfying end, tying into the rest of the world-building while still being self-contained enough that you could re-read it as a standalone. I disliked The Time Paradox so much I never bothered with the rest. Didn’t wanna ruin ‘em for me. In general when time travel is introduced it becomes a world-breaking device. There are no high stakes anymore. And I also loved No1, my sweet imp child.
For some reason I never got disinterested with the series, thoroughly enjoyed it all the way to the end. Maybe I lacked taste 8 years ago, but I remember the series fondly for the most part
I remember reading the first book and being blown away that the protagonist was the main villain of the story. You don't really see this trope too often in media, especially in kids books.
The heist scene at the end of book three absolutely ruled. Having to cut off the dude's thumb to pass security was pure writing genius my 12-year-old brain
I was so frustrated at Minerva. "Ok now we'll have a GIRL genius to rival Artemis" yep no. just appeared in one book then bye. Also Holly/Artemis is kind of weird, I've always thought their dynamics worked better as big sister/little brother
I still remember the final pages of The Lost Colony. Butler telling Artemis how during the 3 years he's been gone, Minerva has visited Butler pretty much every school break to talk and learn about Artemis. That she's been waiting for him. But no, she disappears from the franchise. Instead of Artemis with a girl who's two years younger than him, let's try and push a Holly/Artemis pairing! I'm not even mad because it's super weird given that Holly's 80, Artemis is a super genius, he's mentally an adult, he can consent as far as I'm concerned. No, I mad because it's completely against character. Holly has grudging respect for Artemis, even growing into genuine friendship later in the series. But she just straight up is not the kind of person to get into a relationship, not with someone like him. There's no romantic chemistry their, their personalities just don't work together for that kind of relationship. Holly has always been shown to be incredibly independent and someone who loves her freedom, her ability to do pretty much what she wants when she wants. And being in a relationship *does* restrict that, when you're with someone you can't have that same level, that same degree of independence because it's no longer just you anymore. And I don't think Holly would be settling down, not as she is in the books. Maybe in a couple centuries, but not now. /rant
It was literal pedophilia, she was an adult and he was a child, she just looked young. Also, Artemis X Minerva actually made sense, the book she was introduced, Artemis wanted to have a normal life, give up crime etc, which led to him wanting a girlfriend, and oh wow, here comes a girl at just the right time who's also insanely smart, and they even HINT AT IT! I don't know why they didn't develop it further, and honestly the whole Holy X Artemis was just disgusting.
@@bye1551 Yeah it was weird the author literally had to use time travel screwing with their ages, making Artemis older and Holly younger, so it would make any sense.
@@WarKeineAbsicht He comes across as far more mentally mature than most people his age throughout all the books. He displays not just book smarts, but genuine maturity above his age. Yes, sometimes he also displays immaturity, but people in their 20s act childishly sometimes as well. And why do you need life experience to be able to have sex? The concern with statutory rape is that a child is more easy to mislead and take advantage of emotionally, to coerce them into sex. This is very clearly not something that would be an issue for Artemis, who regularly throughout the books outwits and emotionally manipulates others, including adults, *including Holly herself on multiple occasions.* If anything, their relationship is unethical in the other direction!
I personally liked all of the books. Yes even the later ones. Number 1 (No. 1) was a great character and I loved his chapters. I do feel that Minerva was underutilized though. I gave up on Maximum ride but this one I finished and enjoyed a lot. Opinions are opinions, but I just didn't see the rot that you did. (Maximum Ride was dead after 3 though, 100% agree there.)
Tbh when I was reading the books I always imagined him as like a more human-like lemur, very tiny with bulbous eyes, large ears and large front teeths. I was flabbergasted when I peeked at the comic book
No, he's Neutral evil. He clearly doesn't give a shit about law or order as a concept. Everyone seems to think that lawful evil has to do with holding a code, when in reality the source material it's pulled from, mostly Moorcock, it is a commitment to the metaphysical concept of Order. Communist China is lawful evil. It is inarguably ordered, and has a structure of laws in place, tyrranical as they may be. The Mafia is largely neutral or chaotic evil, they have a disdain for law and they don't care that much about order either. They aren't interested in either of those things on a basic level, and would exist whether there was anarchy or there was law.
@@GonnaDieNever i get what you mean in general but i dont think the example is well thought out or possibly just explained poorly but from what is here it sounds like there is a disconnect between a code and the concept of order? correct me if i am wrong but how is a laid out and reasoned set of codified rules not a form of order? just because they disdain one set of codes and prefer another means that they do not have an order of their own? am i understanding your argument right because it seems pretty counter-intuitive on its face.
@@hi14993 Order fundamentally extends beyond the individual level, which is why the idea of "Lawful" characters who only respect a code to which they personally act is fundamentally at odds with the concept of Order. Order at it's core is about being part of a wider system which operates over a large number of individuals. A man in a Hippie Commune can hold to his own code, but that does not make him Lawful. Lawfullness is about obedience to and execution of a code which explicitly extends beyond oneself, and which you would apply to all of society. People don't play characters that way in tabletop games because being lawful inherently means that you think you know better than the other people in your adventuring party, and since the other players dislike that it's considered the wrong way to play lawful. In short, Batman is never Lawful, because he doesn't actually act in the service of a system. He is typically a Neutral good bringer of Justice.
Tancread of Galilee If you’re talking about D&D alignment then technically he would probably be LE. “Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Many monks and some wizards are lawful neutral.” Note where it says “or personal codes” it’s a bit strange but that’s the definition. (I used the neutral definition because it was quick to find.)
@@lordtoraxeus7663 That's from fourth or fifth edition most likely, but one only needs to look beyond that page to realize how wrong it is. The Lawful Neutral Plane of Mechanus is not a bunch of robots following their personal codes, in fact, there is no one on the entire plane that follows a personal code. It is instead a plane of perfect order wherein a limitless number of machines interact to preserve and extend that order over the multiverse. The "Personal Codes" clause is a new out for people who feel like they want to play Lawful characters in a way that doesn't piss off the rest of the party, but in reality, it has nothing at all to do with "Law" or "Order" as both of those things extend inherently to other people.
In German he's called "Nr. 1" so I never questioned that he indeed was just called Number One (Nummer Eins) and the Translator also assumed such, I guess.
I saw the title of the video and my first thought was "Frick you, this series is wonderful." You make good points, though, and I have to realize that not everybody has the same opinions as me. Still, frick you. This series is wonderful.
i remember as a kid i loved the atlantis complex because i thought orion was super cool....and now that im older, i hate that they even tried holly x artemis. holly was an adult through the whole series. just because she's an elf which makes her look young and small, doesnt mean she should be shipped with a human tween/teenager.
Even as a kid I thought it was weird and creepy. AS A KID!!! Orion being a wannabe-knight womanizer was weird, and the magic disease was weird af. The Atlantis complex is a weird mix of stereotypes of DID and OCD that makes such little sense, which makes sense because M A G I C. Since there was a time-skip with the lost colony, why didn't we have Minerva, now roughly ATs age, working with Artemis on his Ice-cap saving goo, and Orion would be hitting on her instead, if we really needed that.
@@leeoswald5643 just because a tween is horny and going through pubety, doesnt make it okay anyways. idk what you're even talking about. holly is an adult who looks young because she's an elf. it's that simple. adults and kids do not mix.
I always felt that Artemis should've hooked up with Opal - like, yes she's also a grown ass adult women, but at least she wasn't a weird mother figure like Holly, and she was petty and immature enough that her and Artemis always felt more like peers. Plus, it would've been a much needed break from her being continually recycled every second book without any development, and their was just a lot of sexual tension there imho.
25:03 I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a joke or not so I’m going to write this and hide in the corner. “No.1” is pronounced Number 1. It’s a commonly used written convention in the UK and Ireland.
Depending on where you live, his name can be some what hard to read, since the degree symbol isn't commonly used that way everywhere, but fairly easy to pronounce.
I thought it was pronounced No one, since in the begining he's a nobody, and the o is common among fantasy alphabets to just mean a highly pronounced O.
My friends and I were so obsessed with this series. We still fondly talk about it - but none of us are looking forward to the movie. The comic books were ugly as hell too.
Eh, the art in the graphic novels was definitely a lot grungy than I'd pictured from reading the books, but I quite like that they had the guts to go for such a stylised approach. I still definitely don't subscribe to them as to what the characters should canonically look like though. Especially Butler - that man was definitely taking more than one form of 'supplement' in the graphic novels XD
I think that opal was a good villan (in the beginning) because she was like the evil version of artemis if he had never learned from the first book and continued to be selfish
I'd say read The Lost Colony and The Last Guardian. They're still rather decent books and the last book I think wraps up things quite well. The rest though...kind of meh
Lost colony in my opinion was good and everything after was a let down. After lost colony their should have been maybe one more book tops. The Atlantis complex and time paradox add nothing more to the story in my opinion. Edit: Is anyone else pissed off at how they are dealing with the Artemis fowl movie?
I do like Lost Colony but there were some big issues with it like how Under-utilized Minerva was. I think every book in the series is really good compared to your average kids/teens fantasy books but they never got back to the heights of the first four books.
agree. the lost colony seemed to have completed artemis' character arc, he's a good guy seriously now. anything after that would just be a rehash of his character development before
Agree, and kinda mad that the video pretends that it was a nothing book with no consequences. I mean, our heroes become displaced in time, how is that "back to o normal"?!? Minerva to me a book one Artemis in book five, not evil Artemis. Artemis was already evil, but he grew up as a character. She could have been an adversary to Artemis but here's the problem... She couldn't be "Evil and smart" because that's Koboi's spot. She couldn't be an Artemis, because we already have one. So the only available spot is Fem Artemis, with emphasis on the Fem, and that's not a good way to build a character. She could be a background character that gets mentioned but not involved in the story. She could be shipped with Artemis in the background (I mean, they do like each other, and since romance is not the focus here it'd have been fine to do so), but there was no reason to force her into the story again... Much like Koboi...
Man I forgot how much I love Artemis Fowl ! You motivated me to read them all again ! All the characters are so weird and unique it's a delight ! Aaaah this series makes me happy (even though I do think the quality decreased after lost colony) ! (EDIT : the Opal Deception is my fav book of the series by the way ! Root's death scene traumatized me as a kid !)
I read about the first 3 or 4 books and you're right, after that I stopped because I felt that Arty's story had been told already. The continuation of the series was to me the incarnation of "beating a dead horse" before I knew that saying existed.
While I agree with his story pretty much being over please read the 5th book. It’s so good especially the ending. Honestly it’s my 2nd favorite book after the 1st
these books will always have a special place in my heart because i just genuinely enjoyed them so much as a child. they were so different from so much other stuff that i read at the time, and i enjoyed and loved every minute of reading them.
Humans are much bigger and outnumber them by billions, even back in prehistory we could have 10+ kids while fairies can only have one every 20 years. The biggest fairy city in the modern day only has around 10,000 people living in it.
@@commander31able60 @James Tullos "The faeries may possess foul science or wicked sorcery beyond humanity's ken, but such deviance comes to naught in the face of honest Human intolerance, backed by a sufficient number of guns." Yes, they have lasers and cloaking, but the books point out that even their high technology can be partially overcome with human machines, and a bullet will kill a fairy in 1 hit, armoured or not (outside maybe a couple hundred LEPRecon Retrieval battle suits). with only a couple million of them at the highest, even a single country possesses enough manpower to simply drown them under by weight of numbers- not including human reverse engineering, logistical advantages and combined-arms warfare that the fairies have forgotten due to their small population and distaste for combat. The best they could do is delay the inevitable.
Very, very strange. But I absolutely love it, when James was talking about the death sequence in the fourth book I got flashbacks to when I first read it it’s such an iconic moment
One of the things I remember best from the Eternity Code (assuming I'm remembering correctly), when Butler's sister pretends to be a hippie to distract the Dumb and Dumber bodyguards, who then remark that they thought sushi was pretty good when they deep fried it. When she's done beating them up she mocks them for doing that... And now 15 years later one of my favorites is a deep fried Sunday morning roll...
Yup, I disliked how overused Opal was and how that degraded her character and by the end mulch was just used as a plot device which made him extremely irritating.
Eoin: "Hmmm, how do I get my characters out of this situation I've written them into? Oh! I'll just give dwarves some weird new biological superpower that lets them escape!"
@@Shenaldrac That just reminds me of the other plot device character Foaly. At first there were limits to his technology then he was just a convince factory and he never even got enough character development to get over his hypocritical racism.
@@emeraldpichu1 Oh gosh yes. You've stumbled upon the thing of the series that annoys me the most, even more than the over the top environmentalism: The anti-human bigotry. The fairies all act like humans intentionally are trying to destroy the environment. That we use fossil fuels because we want to, we want to create oil spills. Well news flash, Fairies/Eoin, humanity is not a Captain Planet villain. Most people don't like how we have ignored the environment. Most people don't have any hand in what energy systems we use. It's almost like the issue is the responsibility of a wealthy and powerful few instead of every individual! But do the fairies try to help? Do they leak plans for truly green nuclear power, which we know they have and use to the point that it is ubiquitous? Do they give a bit of mesmer to the people in charge of and profiting from oil who use scare tactics, bribes and lobbying to prevent the widespread adoption of nuclear power, playing on the ill-informed public's fears of nuclear meltdown to become less greedy? No. Instead they stay in their little cave, their "haven" which is home to only around 10,000 fairies (which is only the size of a town for us humans, fairy numbers are truly small) and whine bitch moan about how horrible humanity is, while not lifting a finger to help despite regularly engaging in clandestine covert operations among humans, which is pretty much the entire point of the LEP recon. It's the smug elf/alien trope you see a lot in fantasy and sci fi and it never ceases to piss me off. Either help us get better, help us find a better way, or forfeit your superior attitude and supposed moral high ground. /rant
AAAAAAAAAAAAAH WHY IS ROOT A WOMAN; IT DOESN'T MAKE ZERO SENSE IN ANY WAY I wanted to comment after the video but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH Holly's most important story arc is that she is the first woman in the LEP ffs When I saw the trailer for the movie the first time I was like, nopenopenope, let's ignore that this exists and just read the first five books over and over again. (btw I didn't know about the LEPrecon joke for a long time cuz I read the series in German and the LEP is called the ZUP there, Zentrale Untergrundpolizei, central underground police. Not important, I just actually found it funny when I first read it in English because the joke didn't exist before xD)
one thing I will say is that the original Artemis Fowl book came out in 2001. That was 20 years ago. It makes sense to make some updates when working with 20-year-old source material, and the whole "first woman on the force" plot point I don't think would work quite as well nowadays. Gender discrimination in the workplace certainly hasn't gone away in that time, but the whole "woman breaking ground for the first time in 'man's work'" thing isn't anywhere near as prevalent. I'm not going to say that the movie will be good, and it's unlikely that they'll replace that conflict with something as compelling, but in an absolute sense it's a perfectly acceptable change.
@@android19willpwn The fact that the world progressed doesn't mean anything. The story is set. And it's not modern. Changing it to fit modern cryteria is kinda like rape on the base material, don't expect fans to like it, progressive or not. But agreed on one thing-the movie will suck and nobody cares all that much :D
@@kukurydza007 Adaptation is adaptation, not translation. But I've been down this particular rabbit hole enough times to know that it ends in an axiomatic difference in perspective, so that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
@@android19willpwn id say far more concerning than the change to her character arc as the first female officer is the fact that in the trailer she not only appears to be a child, but also that she is apparently friends with artemis from the start, i believe she says "we're your allies" or something. this totally breaks the character development of the original books, how can they continue to naturally build artemis and holly's friendship over the course of the series if they're friends in the first movie? and again, why is she a child?
The Lost Colony was always my favorite. A great point in that book was the relationship between Butler and Juliet. It feels genuine. And N°1 was an entertaining character for me.
How have you people not seen this symbol before, it’s just a different way of writing No. or Num. or # or whatever abbreviation your country uses for “Number”. It’s common in Europe and maybe older texts.
Artemis Fowl was amazing to me. I ate those books up. I was disappointed with how many loose ends there are though. (Such as fairy souls, Artemis and Holly Romance, ect.)
That "unpronounceable name" is just the standard shorthand for Number 1. The big N, little raised O is a pretty universal sign for "Number". Nº1 = "Number 1".
As an American, i can confirm that neither myself nor anyone else i know has ever seen/been taught such a thing. To us, º is the symbol for Degrees and degrees alone.
There are basically two good stopping points for this series, book 3 and book 5. Book 3 is the natural conclusion if you want a complete story, because that's where everything gets tied up neatly with bow, while book 5 is the last book that's good. Everything after that feels tacked on at best, and a complete mess of the setting at worst.
this is the first comment that ive found that agrees with my holy trinity take. i honestly found the first three books to be spectacular and felt the momentum slowed as it went on.
Being honest, I remember all the books apart from the time paradox with fond memories. If what I remember from a kid is right, they all did some really interesting things and explored cool stuff
13 y.o. me didn't even know that the series went on after “the lost colony“ and i never bothered to check. Guess i unintentionaly quit while it still was good
I remember having a heart attack watching the second trailer. My friend who was sitting next to me was so confused by the faces I was making that she get tapping me to get me to stop. It was quite an experience. This movie is going to be the worst thing ever. (also great video)
If I recall correctly, the first book was still mostly told from Artemis's perspective, so he'd still be the protagonist. That said, he was also the villain, while Holly was the hero and antagonist, which is a somewhat unusual twist.
@@happyjohn354 But the antagonist is the character that is in opposition to the protagonist--so unless it's a battle of Man VS. Himself (usually internal), the protagonist cannot also be the antagonist. This would then make Artemis a Villain Protagonist and Holly either a Hero Antagonist or a major character that can be argued to be a Deuteragonist.
I read the first book when I was 10 and it was fascinating. Because quarantine i'm continuing with the other books and after finishing one, I Make a little Summary and there is a interesting pattern in each book: An initial "simple" plan of Fowl , an unexcpected obstacle, an better plan for repair this and Mantillo Mandibulas's help (this is midget's name in spanish, I i dont know his english name). At least until the sixth book that is where I am. Now I am 22 and I wish Artemis adventures don't end. Sorry by my english, I hope it is understable
Oh man this just hit me with a whole wave of nostalgia. I think I fell off of this series because of the long periods of waiting in between books, which I guess is as good of a sign as any that some of the ones after the 3rd installment were meant to wrap up the series before another book was released to cash in its popularity. That being said I'm surprised how much of the weirder aspects of the series you glossed over also! Time Paradox, I think, ends with an Artemis being inexplicably aged Up and Holly aged down for whatever reason. Which even kid me thought was a weird detail. 😂
I listened to this while at work to catch up on what happened after opal deception. (high point in my eyes as well) then at the end you said if you havent liked and subbed go ahead and suddenly I realized why people remind viewers to do so, so yea gonna check out ur stuff and look forward to the new vids. Good content bro
When you said "he's never given magic deduction powers or the ability to know information before it's presented to the audience" I knew you were immediately talking about Sherlock before you even finished your sentence
I stopped reading after the opal deception, but that’s just because my school library didn’t have the other books and I was too lazy to google if there were more I guess
It was my favourite series (even though I didn't finish it)! I might be biased though since the second one was the first book I read in English (I was like 12 and we only had the 1st and 3rd in my language idk why) I loved the first 3, thought 4 and 5 were okay almost gave up and fell back in love reading the Time Paradox. Then my friend hyped me up for Atlantis, she thought it was the best part and that Orion was the most amazing character. Let's just say I got through a few chapters and never picked up that book again (that also taught me to stop listening to her recommendations). Years ago I was excited to hear about movie adaptation, but after seeing the "trailer" that hype definitely died.
Honestly as a kid I think the biggest let down was the lack of holly and artemis relationship because I felt like they kinda fit. I'm now realizing that my type has been shaped to a painfully large degree by holly
I haven't read the last 3 books but I treat this series as a trilogy with one sequel. It's fascinating to me that I'm not the only one who REALLY loved these books as a kid yet never finished the series. I guess it's very easy to grow out of
One thing I loved about the books was the hidden codes. The fairy language and the eternity code both had a key somewhere in the books and you could find a coded message through the whole book.
I remember my impression as a kid reading this book was that the series collapsed at the Atlantis Complex. For some reason I attributed this to Disney having bought and influenced the series at that point. Did anyone else feel that way, or am I misremembering things?
For me it is the Lost Colony that is the ending before it fell apart. Artemis fully gives back to the people and performs a selfless act. Arc completed.
I hope I wasn’t the only one that looked at the cover image for this video and immediately heard Mr. Crocker from the Fairly Oddparents yell “Fairies!” to Artemis.
I remember the scene where his butler got a shot of something magical to cure some poison or wound (I really don't remember what), and flailed around like a maniac and ended up looking a decade older as a consequence. Pre-teen me thought that was awesome.
Just stumbled upon your channel watching reviews of the Disney movie. Your channel seems really interesting and cool and this video is well done. Going to stick around!
I love this series dearly. I think this might've been the thing that initially sold me on the idea of hidden magical worlds, something I always found problematic in stuff like Harry Potter where it's either basically handwaved or just kind of glossed over. Also science fantasy. The first time when I started having problems with the series, though I didn't understand why at the time, was near the end of Lost Colony when it began breaking its own unspoken rule of keeping magic on the downlow, as something subtle, subdued, something nebulous and ill-defined that the characters could use and rely on for healing etc, but that could never solve the real problems for them. With the concept of demon warlocks and the prospects of transdimensional travel, petrifying touch and illusions on the table, the sky was the limit, but in the worst way possible, where the reader didn't know what the stakes were anymore so long as N°1 was in the picture. (And that is before it literally, canonically breaks the established rules of the magic system.) Time Paradox realised this issue and fixed it by removing N°1 from the plot for 80% of the book, but it achieved this by introducing the trope I hate more than anything: Time Travel. And not only that, it doubled down and dived headlong into my most hated subtrope of Time Travel, the Time Paradox, as the gimmick of the story (and, no, it was not significant enough to be called a plot point, the fact that a Time Paradox is happening is not actually relevant except to justify Artemis being able to interact with himself). On top of that it kept parading around Opal from the Baby's First Villain Starter Kit like she was the most fascinating character of all time, meanwhile ma bois Briar and Turnball get shafted after one book (I know Cudgeon was in the first, but he wasn't an actual villain yet and short stories don't count). And that's on top of constantly dropping seriously important plot points, like Butler's advanced biological age and the Kevlar layer in his chest from the resurrection, the rule of dwelling when it was overwritten by N°1 for some reason, Minerva, the limitations of time stops (which happens for basically no reason in what is effectively a side chapter), eventually even Artemis' death is handwaved with "Foaly cloned him in his basement and they captured his spirit with magic"! That is the actual explanation given in the canon of the story! Fucking what?! PS: turnballrootisthegreatestyafantasyvillainofalltimedon't@me!
I can't believe I haven't subscribed to your channel yet. I loved your videos, but forgot to subscribe and just now finding your channel again. I'm gonna fix that now. Thanks for the cool videos dude.
Back in 2007-09 I was hired by its publisher in China to translate/localizethe books starting from book 3, but the whole project was dropped until 2015 when it was picked up by another publisher.
This is an amazing video as always; however, I do have one slight quibble. I don't think you gave The Time Paradox enough credit. It dealt with the concept of time travel in a pretty interesting way, and the conclusion of the story was, in my opinion, a better stopping point for the series than The Last Guardian provided (I'm a little biased: Time Paradox was the last book in the series that my library stocked and I honestly thought it was the conclusion for several years), ending the story pretty much where it started but in a very interesting and circular way, where the ending to the book led nicely into the start of the first book. Otherwise, amazing video, I agree with a lot of the points made here!
One part of the world building I liked but on further inspection is weird as hell, is that the butler family are considered servants to the fowl family. They say that every fowl since the middle ages has been a bodyguard to the current fowls. But thinking about it it just falls apart. How do they have kids when they are meant to serve the fowls non stop, artemis says that butler will leave if he doesn't pay him in one of the first books but how does that happen if it's an ancient deal, what happens when their aren't enough butlers to serve the current fowls (we see some of this in the fowl twins by they're not old enough to be as big a deal) and what if a butler has a kid with a fowl? Do they get trained as a butler or live like a fowl?
The only book I didn't like was the final one. It felt like the pacing was weird. Like too much was happening too fast, but it was also a very short series of events stretched to fill a novel. I guess too many things happening in those short events? I don't even remember it aside from the premise and a fragment of one scene. I also didn't really like the ending of the book before that, but I guess that's because it left some loose threads to be tied up in the last book, which is the one I didn't like. Also there is no Artemis Fowl movie as far as I am concerned. They metaphorically put nooses around all the characters' necks and threw them over a cliff, then dragged their bodies back up over the edge with the nooses, to then puppet their corpses around saying "I'm Artemis Fowl, see? I am, I really am."
i haven't read artemis fowl for a very long time, i think i read opal deception the day after it came out and after that i stopped keeping up with it. you saying names and describing what happened in the books feels like someone is sticking needles into my brain making me remember all the feelings i had while reading the series. this really took me back in a way i didn't expect. like usually you can expect nostalgia, but apparently these fucking books apparently meant more to me than i realised. thanks for the mental ride.
I loved WARP as a kid tbh, even had a crush on Riley. The second book honestly felt kind of lacking to me but thats probably because Garrick or however you spell it was my favorite character but he was pretty much never mentioned.
Artemis DESTROYS faeries, humans, himself with FACTS and LOGIC
Artemis shapiro
@@ratbat1072 Okay, this is EPIC
Facts don’t care about your Faeries
Honestly I think he runs out of facts and logic in the sixth book. After that his plans arent really super clever.
Please don't do this to Artemis.
The thing I loved about the Opal Deception climax was when they were all “Her ship is completely undetectable, we’ll never find it.” And Artemis goes “Oh cool, just look for the place where the scanner can’t find anything, not even air.”
Yeah, pretty sure that's not how actual radars work.
@@yarpen26 well, no, but thats how fairy radars work ;)
@@yarpen26 i dont think it was ever stated that it was actual RADAR it could have been some other sensor array...
The best Truly Undetectable method is to give any detection method WHAT IS EXPECTED TO BE FOUND THAT IS NOT YOU
Oh I remember that it was so cool. And the best part is that after reading that bit and re -reading the book some time after again, There are subtle hints Eoin even gives us to form a plan to find the location of Opal's Stealth Craft!
- First of all, When Opal kidnaps Fowl she casually drops the fact that her ship's air is very clean, which led Fowl to conclude that it does not have a normal air composition, but thtis fact isn't that significant UNTIL.....
-Diggums hijacks a standard police fairy craft and picks up Short and Fowl. During the hijacking, the features of the craft are casually listed by the author, and one of the features, guess what? A simple fairy scanner, a general tool for all shuttles used to check climatic conditions for flying!
So we had every chance to figure out a plan to pin point Opal's location without her realizing that she has been pinged, Just like Master Fowl.
Artemis Fowl books exist.
Disney: "Nah, let's just rip-off Harry Potter and Men in Black with the most generic plot we can think of!"
Disney: "Wait, there's a book???"
Disney is the movie version of EA.. they ruin everything they touch now
That's not exactly ea or Disney.
@@afellowhuman8944 "Wait and we're meant to adapt it faithfully and make a passable movie?"
@@TheOther19 they really are, but this novel is quite bad to begin with so they just covered shit with piss.
The moment when butler revealed his whole name was v interesting to me as a child because “Domovoi” is a kind of household spirit/deity in Russian folklore - he attaches himself to your family, lives in your house, and protects you from harm as long as you stay on his good side. Definite butler parallels though I’m not sure how obvious this would be to children reading the book for the first time
Sure as fuck wasn't to me I'll say that. All I got was that his nickname would be Dom and then I started thinking about Gears of War.
a secret easter egg for children who speak both english and russian? very niche, I'll agree!
It is explicitly said in the book so I would think it is pretty fucking clear my dude
@@KillerOrca it's literally mentioned in the book, dude
@@shrimp562 What the name means? Nah, they just have him say his name. They don't outright spell that it means "house fairy"
Slight correction of terminology: Holly isn't the first female officer in the LEP, she's the first in LEP-Recon specifically.
Another issue is Mulch wasn’t promised freedom in the first book, he was promised a sentence reduction and solitary confinement
I also wouldn't say that LEPR was a pun, it was more a wrld building component that a leprechaun is a work title.
I thought LEP-recon was pretty clever honestly.
@@MajorAfro It is a bit silly.
Still funny though. 😄
Which is kind of like being the first female swat officer.
I'll do you worse than the LEP - in the Dutch translation, they're called the 'ElfBI'.
The german translation called them ZUP. That's also pretty bad. And of course the LEPrecon get's lost that way too... reading that sentence in english was a large relevation.
That's amazing and I love it. 10/10, would pun again.
In the brazilian portuguese translation they didn't change the name, it still was LEP, but I never realized the joke until this video, because I never thought of it in English
@@xfel5913 aaah thanks, I was mad at myself for not remembering how it was called and if it was a bad pun too
On the spanish version one they named it "PES" missing out the joke entirely, and didn't bother to explain it either with a "Footnote from Translator"
TL;DR: I got the joke by the third book, which I read in english.
"Try one last method, but ultimately fail." That's a light way of saying they try to MAGICALLY NUKE HIM and he only escapes by ALMOST OVERDOSING ON SLEEPING PILLS.
The logic of that maneuver was absolutely breathtaking on so many levels.
I don't remember most of the series because I read it so long ago, but that?
"He said 'over my dead body', which means that he's giving us permission if we murder him. Use the bomb."
"Alright, so I informed our foes that they can come in if they kill us, so they're going to try that and then attempt entry. However, (I think he noticed his mother was unaffected by the time field while asleep? The deduction here's very vague to me, but that feels right), so we need to knock ourselves out to exit this temporal stasis(I think all the inanimate objects were unchangeable... Or something?) to become immune. And once their murder attempt fails, they'll have no choice but to abandon their efforts."
That, and the whole scene with Butler throwing grenades in a gridlike pattern, which utterly revolutionized the way I thought about certain board games, so that they could replace Opal's truffles with explosives.
Which they proceeded to taunt her with.
Some good shit.
Najawin that’s pretty no brainer logic
Edit: you’re all the dumbest people on the planet. You’re so fucking stupid that you actually thought this pan wasn’t simple enough for an intoxicated baby to solve
Najawin Uhm I don’t care it’s still no brainer logic. Anyone with a brain would come to that conclusion so it wasn’t very smart
@@znightowlz6585 The big brain play was trying it out on his mother in the first place. Most people would take the "You can't fall asleep." rule at face value. Artemis took the chance that human tech (Pharmaceuticals in this case.) would interact with the magic in an unprecedented way. Then after observing his hypothesis working out he carried through on the plan. Him doing all this was while he was sleepfucked after essentially days of forced conciousness. It's easy to say somethings a "No-Brainer" after it's done, but you need to look at the steps it takes to get there. Heck, look at the amount of people who still believe the earth is flat despite the copious amounts of evidence and experiments you can perform to disprove that assertion.
T. Estable LOOK UP WHAT NO BRAINER MEANS.
The logic is really fucking simple and the earlier comment saying how damn mind blowing the logic was is exaggerated bc it’s something I could think up when I was 7.
It’s not that smart it’s a no brainer.
You ever heard the saying “put two and two together” yeh it’s literally that
The thing about Butler's name: While his first name is Domvoi, meaning household spirit, or god in russian, fitting given his profession, the surname Butler is an actual surname in Ireland. Its Norman in origin, which makes Butler's Family, like Artemis Fowl's, Old English (Meaning they were Norman aristocrats who became Gaelicized and celtic after the conquest of Ireland through intermarriage and cultural assimilation). Meaning wherever Butler was raised originally, he's basically guarding 'home turf' in Ireland on top of being a Guardian for young master Fowl as well as being a play on the job of being a 'Butler'. Its a neat play on the names and fits well with his first name's meaning.
My last name is Butler, didn't realise it was Norman
@@theredtechnician If you know your family crest and it looks like the one at this link, then you're family name is almost certainly Norman in Origin. www.houseofnames.com/butler-family-crest
@@thisisanalt Didn't know my fathers crest, only my mothers with the surname Mortimer. Thanks
Are you really not going to talk about how Artemis watched Holly get casually cut down by Abbot and BEG FOR HIM TO HELP HER AS SHE DIED while he was forced to ignore her and keep count of the time pattern in The Lost Colony? The book even goes into detail about how the sword sounds as it leaves her body and follows it up by killing two more characters in the span of a couple seconds while they're all immobilized by the spell they're willingly focusing on. Yeah, obviously the deaths gets changed almost instantly due to Artemis being Artemis and shooting the villain in the past in order to change the future, but still. Holly is a really likable and strong character by that point in the books and having her killed that casually and then proceed to pitifully beg for someone to help her as she bleeds out AND THEN FOR ARTEMIS TO IGNORE IT was absolutely brutal to my child self. I distinctly remember going back to re-read that passage multiple times as a kid because I quite literally couldn't believe my eyes. That scene definitely affected me as a kid and it's probably the only reason I even remember this series to this day. Considering how much attention you gave to Butler vs the troll and Commander Root's death, I would have at least thought it deserved a mention.
Agreed. That entire final scene in book five cemented it as my favorite in the whole series. The description of the setting collapsing around them and the complexity of the timing and the patterns, the things that were at stake-to say nothing of that moment where Artemis was forced to ignore Holly to save their lives-it blew my mind. It was such a moment, it kind of swept you away. It could have finished off the series, frankly.
SERIOUSLY. Lost colony is actually my favorite artemis fowl book (despite the minerva stuff), maybe tied with eternity code. All the stuff about the time fluxes and how artemis could predict when time would reverse for a few seconds so he could do something and then change it in the past, so cool!
The Lost Colony is still my favorite hands down. fkin savage
Man, that was the first time I'd ever cried at a character's death scene in a book. I still remember crying after I read it as a kid.
That seen made me love the character of Artemis fowl.
Artemis fowl, I definitely read to the end I definitely enjoyed the ride
Canaan_Crystal wing man it was such a good series. I have the books on my shelf.
My school library didn't have them all
Same. But mostly because the first book I read was the last accidentally, and I have to know how it happened. Oops
@@lordbaphie didn't see that 8 on the cover aye? Lol
@@silvertongue.242_99
Perhaps he didn't read it in english so maybe it didn't include the volume number on the cover
That scene with the spring water is just so absurdly memorable.
I haven't read any of the books in at least half a decade and I didn't even realize I remembered it.
It barely caught my eye, but I still remember the mention of it. Strange.
And yet I KNOW I read these, but I remember nothing except a specific stab. (I can't remember if there was more than one.) Because I physically felt that.
Not as memorable as when he says the children's menu probably tastes better than the dishes, but it's a close second.
@@NotoriousLightning I remember being 6 years old and saying that phrase word for word to a waitress at IHOP
I would say he’s more lawful evil, he is willing to do what he needs to to get what he wants but still binds himself with a code of ethics. He is certainly not chaotic since his methods are always so calculated.
Chaotic doesn't mean irrational. It just means he doesn't adhere to a specific code.
Isnt that lawful neutral
"Time for me to judge another children's series through the eyes of an adult. That seems fair." I think it is very fair, actually. The stuff we give to our children should be good quality. I mean, people keep telling me how important kids are, how they're our future. So it baffles me how people can say that, but also think that it's acceptable for children's media to be shit, justified with "well it's for kids". If it's for kids, it should be held to an even higher standard. Children's media should be enjoyable for any audience, because good writing transcends age demographics. Rocko's Modern Life was fun for me as a 10 year old, and it's still fun for me as a 28 year old.
"For kids" is not an excuse for writers to not put in the effort and work required to turn out fun, interesting and well-written books. It just isn't. So judge away, James Tullos!
agreed!
Exactly. the things we use to grow when we're kids shouldn't feel invalid when we grow up, or it would mean we'd be invalid.
The Little Prince is a great example of that. A book that can be enjoyed whether you are a kid or an adult.
Losing interest in a series doesn’t mean their bad quality
@@decy8494 Uh... what does that have to do with anything I said?
When I was Artemis's age, I was (or considered myself) a lot smarter than the other kids, so Artemis was the ultimate power fantasy for me, he was the character I identified the most in all books and media I consumed. Even now, in my mid-20s, long after coming to the much bitter realization that I am not as smart as I thought I was, the books kinda inspire me, even though I see them for what they are. I picked up The Fowl Twins a couple months ago, curious to know what do people think about that book.
i have not read the fowl twins. how was it for you?
It's one of a number of book series that whilst I enjoyed, I recognise now it probably inflated my ego to an unhealthy degree, and massively undercut opportunities I squandered (others include the Tim Ferris books and a kids book I can't even remember the name of)
The Fowl Twins I found so off-putting and unamusing that I gave up on those books. The major problem is Myles and Beckett just aren't compelling protagonists. Simultaneously boring and unfunny, the two lack the engaging dynamic that Artemis and Butler brought to the table.
I stopped reading after book four or five or so. The first few books were truly amazing and felt really clever and entertaining when I was younger. that first book remains legendeary though.
The bit where Butler takes down the troll in single combat was the hypest thing I had ever read up to that point.
I read up to the Opal incident like a kid on crack, eager for more. Going through entire books in just one night. But at that point the series kind of tapered off and I was unable to find the newer books in my local used book shop. I wasn't about to pay 24.99 or what ever they wanted for a book... so I passed.
Came back to them years later from Ebooks and wasn't impressed. I can see why I couldn't find used copies, nobody bought them to sell used.
same! af had incredible worldbuilding and characters, but it just got.... mundane after a while.
@@lennonfreed5729 Pretty much just became a normal kid detective book after a while. The fantasy/sci fi elements were almost forgotten as the fairies and their technology started to become old hat. Artemis and the readers both started to stop being surprised by anything that turned up.
I feel you. The Eternity Code and the Opal Deception were excellent, I consider them the best in the series and they easily became my favorites. Opal was a fun antagonist, although I wished Colfer had developed her more. I wish every book that came after had half the quality.
Domovoi is literally in slavic culture a sort of spirit who inhabits homes and can be good (meaning can clean up or help to find lost things by leaving them where people can see) or bad and people almost never see him. Poor man is literally called house "maid" two times
Needs to squat more tho.
WaterResistance Cool. Sort of like the swedish Tomte, a guardian of the house/lot (in swedish called tomt) that can be good or bad to the people living there, depending on how they treat the house, animals and flora.
fits his lore tho
Lol his name is helpful fairy, British manservant
A lot of Russian superstitions that we don't have in the west originate in ancient beliefs about keeping the domovoi happy. Stuff like not whistling inside, sitting in silence for a few minutes before you leave for a trip, and looking in the mirror if you have to come back to grab something after you start to leave the house for a trip.
I never read the last two books because they were so late, came out a long time after I read the things before.
What I didn't like was that they kept bringing back Opal Koboi. It feels pointless when she just keeps coming back in forced ways.
Sounds to me like they should've built more on what they did in earlier books, though. You could still have books that stand on their own with finished stories without forcing everything back to status quo. It could have been really interesting if they kept evolving it instead.
Honestly, Colfer should have killed off her in the Arctic Incident and have Cudgeon be the recurring villain throughout the series instead. Unlike her, Cudgeon does have a semi-sympathetic history with some of the heroes and this villainous presence that Koboi sorely lacks. She is just too emotional to be a legitimately intimidating threat: all the heroes need to do upon confronting her is to appeal to her ego to trick her into doing something stupid. I already thought she was getting tiresome in Book IV, especially with "muh revenge" being her sole motivation, and to this day I can't for the life of me remember what the hell she even did in Time Paradox. Hearing that she would come back yet _again_ in the subsequent books was one of the reasons I never bothered to pick them up.
The last book took half the book to get TO the final battle
Agreed. For reason Colfer really wanted her to be a reoccurring villain and it just ended up dragging down the series creatively. She also wasn't nearly as charismatic as he wanted her to be.
The Eternity Code and Atlantis Complex are still among my favourites from the series exactly because their arcs are relatively self-contained and their villains are one-offs that could just go out and do their own thing instead of feeding back into the Opal plot over and over again.
@@yarpen26 I don't think she should've died right after the Arctic Incident, but she should've come back once more at most and then died or be relegated to a permanent background character/cameo.
And the whole time paradox magic fusion goddess bullshit from the last was just tired.
@@PhileasLiebmann I think that one of the main issues in this series is that while Colfer seemingly wanted it to be Xena-like "Monster of the Week" episodic, he couldn't really dedicate himself to this concept fully. Throughout the whole thing it feels like there _should_ be some overarching narrative there but just isn't. You can't have it both ways, really.
I think The Time Paradox is really underrated. Young Artemis is a perfect antagonist because he's just as smart as present-day Artemis but with none of the morals, he's still willing to use any means necessary to achieve his goals. Great foil to show how much Artemis has grown.
Today I found out what species Wario is
this is possibly the most cursed comment i have read in years. thank you.
r/TIHI
@@Omnicide101 is it cause their a fairy/orc?
@@morgankasper5227 Dwarf.
This implies Wario has rocket diarrhoea
@@Omnicide101 or gas
I watched the whole thing and really enjoyed it. Two things I do really wish you touched on were the following. Firstly the lack of mentioning of Foaly as a character as every single time one of his chapters came on it was an utter delight. Secondly your statement surrounding Butler “not being willing to take a bullet for him just for his job” yes he does grow emotionally attached and loves him like a son but Butler literally comes from an organization that trains the most elite and hardcore bodyguards which is a really unique and interesting world building system. Other than those two things great video man!
Yeah, butlers job is to take the bullet, had Artemis died he'd be shunned by his entire family. The sign of butler caring was saying his real name.
Foaly was simultaneously the most hilarious yet competent character for so much of the series in most bafflingly fun ways that i'm astounded that he wasn't mentioned more. I loved how he was ordered to hack something, but since he didn't have his equipment he just texted his sister an ice cream bribe to do it for him and it worked. Him constantly doing weird stuff like that and having it work made him a joy to read.
As Foaly is the 'unsung hero', no one mentions him. Not even James Tullos.
A lot of characters in the series actually got either erased, dropped off or killed due to the fact that Eoin thought two characters might be alike and thought “clones” running around the series together felt slightly uninteresting. I managed to ask him why Minerva didn’t return by the end of the AF series (hopefully might be back in the second installment to the Fowl Twins), and he said it was because Minerva resembled much of Artemis in many ways. Same reason why he killed of Root, because he thought Butler was slowly becoming a sort of father-like figure like Root or the other way around (forgot that bit). Vinyaya was sort of like Holly as well.
This is curious, since Minerva being Artemis clone was sorta point of the character. He could have built something out of her.
I remember he said on twitter that she ways "skiing in the alps with a french lover" or something like that lol
She comes back in the 3rd Fowl Twins book. The audiobook gives her a Texas accent for some weird reason even though she was like French/Brazilian.
Ironically, after Root's death, Trouble Kelp would become Root 2.0 once promoted to commander. He litteraly was reduced to a book 2 Root, the pissed off commander who really trust Holly, but definitivelly not Artemis.
And his brother, Grub simply vanished, alongside Chix Verbil. I always found that aspect quite frustrating. Trouble, Grub and other minor LEP character were quite interesting bit that helped give more depth to the LEP. After book 5, the LEP was basically reduced to Holy doing grunt work, Trouble bossing her around and Foaly providing the logistical support.
Before book 5, the LEP were trully a true character. We had a large collection of LEP officer, filling various roles, offering various perspectives. There also was a true organisation and not everyone seemed to entirely rely on Holly.
In that whole thing, Vinyaya have a very strange position. Partly because of Holly being the first female LEPrecon when she was the first female LEPretriaval, partly because of her very strange place in the overall LEP hierarchy... first she was a random member of the council, then and former training officer kinda still fit for field duty, then section 8 commander, then kinda the second in command to Trouble... she seemed to be litteraly everywhere while not actually having any role...
"Things that are never addressed include"... "Root's evil brother"...
**proceeds to skip the book where Turnball comes back**
One of the things I always liked about the earlier Artemis Fowl books, is that making your main character a 10 year old genius could very easily turn the books into a self-insert Gary Stu wankfest, and yet Eoin Colfer managed to make Artemis a flawed enough person that he never came off that way.
Sure, he's extremely smart, but he's also an arrogant and greedy little prick most of the time, and suffers from stunted psychological growth in a lot of ways due to his father's absence and his mother's insanity. Not to mention, he had moments where his ego got put in check, like when Holly punched him in the face.
I think part of the reason why I didn't like the later books as much was because Artemis' character growth was starting to turn him into a Gary Stu. He was interesting because he was socially and morally stunted, but he started to become a little too perfect as he became a genuinely good person, on top of being incredibly intelligent.
I feel like Eoin Colfer realised this would happen, which is why he had the fairies wipe his memory at the end of one of the books, to make sure he remained the smart, but incredibly flawed person he was during the first book. The thing is, he eventually lost these flaws again in subsequent books, once again becoming too perfect. Him learning magic was the final straw for me, that's when his character lost what made him so compelling originally.
As an Irishman and an Eoin myself, I feel obliged to remind you that the name is Eoin (pronounced the same as Owen), not Eion.
I actually read the memory wipe as a narrative tool to highlight just how much character development Artemis went through by contrasting his current personality with his earlier one.
I honestly did not mind the later books at all. Some of them were genuinely my favorite entries. To me it makes sense that he would develop more as he series progressed, and that’s why later Eoin turned from a more Artemis driven story to branching out to other characters. Not that I don’t agree that they could get a bit stagnant at some areas, but everything he does ends up with some kind of consequence. He steals a magic from the circle, he develops the Atlantis Complex. He goes back in time to save his mom, and he unintentionally gives the Opal exactly what she needs to ruin everything. I always found it incredible as a kid and now how well the books played off of each other, and how the series had this very clear sense of progression.
Boundary Same here
Ikr I see so many people saying how much they loved the later books but for me the series got boring after book 5
What bothered me is how much is undone and reset as things go on. Memory wipe, the entering house rule, the exposure of all fairy kind. The world gets LESS interesting as these get undone.
That bugged me as well. I loved all the clever ways people rolled with the human dwellings rule - Spiro's sarcastic invitation being the highlight - so when N°1 got rid of the rule, I just thought... sure, it makes sense, but it's not exciting.
The one that really bugged me, was Artemis gaining magic, only to instantly lose it. It was frustrating that they first introduced such a provocative change to the status quo, with so much potential fun narrative use, just to toss it in the reticon trash been. 😡
@@TheNinjaDC How about Artemis Fowl derping hard against younger himself? That was quite... idiotic aswell. Not to mention the whole lemur plot that ties so strongly with faeries... That's an overkill of a "how convinient".
@@MrDeothor Fairies: "We care about animal lives so much, arguably more than we care about humans who are actually sapient."
Also fairies: "We have done nothing to stop the Extinctionists even though they are an organization devoted to rendering animals extinct."
Oh and, hey, Eoin? A species is effectively extinct long before there's only 1 member left. Even if there's a breeding pair, the species will still die out because that's not a big enough gene pool. The necessary incest that will come from that will cause the species to die out anyway. So it kind of makes the Extinctionists lose all their edge; killing the last 1-2 members of a species isn't really doing anything since it's already doomed and living on borrowed time. But I guess we just gotta have your political views shoved in our faces and feel bad about a wolfskin sofa. The wolf is already DEAD, Artemis, just sit on the fucking sofa, standing won't bring them back. I swear, it's like veganism but somehow even more stupid...
@@Shenaldrac I sort of agree, but... wolfskin sofa? Wtf? That just seems absurdly expensive and unreasonable. I'd still sit, but probably just to figure out what's so great about it.
Fowl, in my opinion, got absolutely killed by comparisons to other kids media that it didn’t really aspire to compare to. Also, some of the plot points (the mind wipe, Butler aging, Root dying) really took out the gas even when the writing was still of quality.
What was even the point of butler aging?
@@andrewwesleyhudson5983 That's basically this series' main issue in a nutshell: "What was the point of [insert interesting plot device]?".
@@andrewwesleyhudson5983 Holly didnt have enough magic energy to fully bring back Butler so she (unintentionally) borrowed a few years off of him and a bit of kevlar to bring him back by any means
@@andrewwesleyhudson5983 I mean the initial point before the series just kept on going was that it nerfed this unstoppable avatar of destruction that was Butler early on.
Personally, I think it went downhill after the Lost Colony. It wasn't super well built up, but it still felt satisfying and earned.
Also, No.1 was fun as hell.
He was a fun character yeah, shame he only had brief appearances in the later books
Agreed
lost colony has got to be the low point of the series for sure.
edit: oops I meant atlantis complex (7). Lost colony is actually one of my favorites
@@RaidsEpicly I read it when I was like 12 and even if I have fond memories of it, most of them are just about how it confused the hell out of me.
EDIT to clarify, I'm adressing The Lost Colony.
Yeah, I concur. Lost Colony was a satisfying end, tying into the rest of the world-building while still being self-contained enough that you could re-read it as a standalone. I disliked The Time Paradox so much I never bothered with the rest. Didn’t wanna ruin ‘em for me. In general when time travel is introduced it becomes a world-breaking device. There are no high stakes anymore.
And I also loved No1, my sweet imp child.
"God, she looks like an anime villain"
Good
For some reason I never got disinterested with the series, thoroughly enjoyed it all the way to the end. Maybe I lacked taste 8 years ago, but I remember the series fondly for the most part
MY MAN GOT A SPONSOR CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He's had sponsors for a while now...
@@totallynotjeff7748 That's FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy for him
What can we say? He makes great content! :)
I remember reading the first book and being blown away that the protagonist was the main villain of the story. You don't really see this trope too often in media, especially in kids books.
The heist scene at the end of book three absolutely ruled. Having to cut off the dude's thumb to pass security was pure writing genius my 12-year-old brain
I was so frustrated at Minerva. "Ok now we'll have a GIRL genius to rival Artemis" yep no. just appeared in one book then bye. Also Holly/Artemis is kind of weird, I've always thought their dynamics worked better as big sister/little brother
I still remember the final pages of The Lost Colony. Butler telling Artemis how during the 3 years he's been gone, Minerva has visited Butler pretty much every school break to talk and learn about Artemis. That she's been waiting for him.
But no, she disappears from the franchise. Instead of Artemis with a girl who's two years younger than him, let's try and push a Holly/Artemis pairing! I'm not even mad because it's super weird given that Holly's 80, Artemis is a super genius, he's mentally an adult, he can consent as far as I'm concerned. No, I mad because it's completely against character. Holly has grudging respect for Artemis, even growing into genuine friendship later in the series. But she just straight up is not the kind of person to get into a relationship, not with someone like him. There's no romantic chemistry their, their personalities just don't work together for that kind of relationship. Holly has always been shown to be incredibly independent and someone who loves her freedom, her ability to do pretty much what she wants when she wants. And being in a relationship *does* restrict that, when you're with someone you can't have that same level, that same degree of independence because it's no longer just you anymore. And I don't think Holly would be settling down, not as she is in the books. Maybe in a couple centuries, but not now. /rant
It was literal pedophilia, she was an adult and he was a child, she just looked young. Also, Artemis X Minerva actually made sense, the book she was introduced, Artemis wanted to have a normal life, give up crime etc, which led to him wanting a girlfriend, and oh wow, here comes a girl at just the right time who's also insanely smart, and they even HINT AT IT! I don't know why they didn't develop it further, and honestly the whole Holy X Artemis was just disgusting.
@@bye1551 Yeah it was weird the author literally had to use time travel screwing with their ages, making Artemis older and Holly younger, so it would make any sense.
@@Shenaldrac How does being intelligent make you mentally an adult? Being smart doesn't give you more life experience
@@WarKeineAbsicht He comes across as far more mentally mature than most people his age throughout all the books. He displays not just book smarts, but genuine maturity above his age. Yes, sometimes he also displays immaturity, but people in their 20s act childishly sometimes as well. And why do you need life experience to be able to have sex? The concern with statutory rape is that a child is more easy to mislead and take advantage of emotionally, to coerce them into sex. This is very clearly not something that would be an issue for Artemis, who regularly throughout the books outwits and emotionally manipulates others, including adults, *including Holly herself on multiple occasions.* If anything, their relationship is unethical in the other direction!
I personally liked all of the books. Yes even the later ones. Number 1 (No. 1) was a great character and I loved his chapters. I do feel that Minerva was underutilized though.
I gave up on Maximum ride but this one I finished and enjoyed a lot. Opinions are opinions, but I just didn't see the rot that you did. (Maximum Ride was dead after 3 though, 100% agree there.)
Anyone else pictured Mulch as something of a Wario when reading the series?
I have never thought of it before.
But I doubt, I will be able not to in the future.
I imagined him as wario but with grey hair, a grey beard and really scrappy looking clothes, but apart from that the same character.
I literally thought of him as green, hairy AF Wario with tech gear.
Tbh when I was reading the books I always imagined him as like a more human-like lemur, very tiny with bulbous eyes, large ears and large front teeths. I was flabbergasted when I peeked at the comic book
In Digimon Frontier there is a earth villain who is dwarf like. I always imagined him looking similar to that
One point - Artemis is absolutely Lawful Evil to begin with
No, he's Neutral evil. He clearly doesn't give a shit about law or order as a concept.
Everyone seems to think that lawful evil has to do with holding a code, when in reality the source material it's pulled from, mostly Moorcock, it is a commitment to the metaphysical concept of Order.
Communist China is lawful evil. It is inarguably ordered, and has a structure of laws in place, tyrranical as they may be.
The Mafia is largely neutral or chaotic evil, they have a disdain for law and they don't care that much about order either. They aren't interested in either of those things on a basic level, and would exist whether there was anarchy or there was law.
@@GonnaDieNever i get what you mean in general but i dont think the example is well thought out or possibly just explained poorly but from what is here it sounds like there is a disconnect between a code and the concept of order? correct me if i am wrong but how is a laid out and reasoned set of codified rules not a form of order? just because they disdain one set of codes and prefer another means that they do not have an order of their own? am i understanding your argument right because it seems pretty counter-intuitive on its face.
@@hi14993 Order fundamentally extends beyond the individual level, which is why the idea of "Lawful" characters who only respect a code to which they personally act is fundamentally at odds with the concept of Order.
Order at it's core is about being part of a wider system which operates over a large number of individuals.
A man in a Hippie Commune can hold to his own code, but that does not make him Lawful. Lawfullness is about obedience to and execution of a code which explicitly extends beyond oneself, and which you would apply to all of society.
People don't play characters that way in tabletop games because being lawful inherently means that you think you know better than the other people in your adventuring party, and since the other players dislike that it's considered the wrong way to play lawful.
In short, Batman is never Lawful, because he doesn't actually act in the service of a system. He is typically a Neutral good bringer of Justice.
Tancread of Galilee If you’re talking about D&D alignment then technically he would probably be LE. “Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Many monks and some wizards are lawful neutral.” Note where it says “or personal codes” it’s a bit strange but that’s the definition. (I used the neutral definition because it was quick to find.)
@@lordtoraxeus7663 That's from fourth or fifth edition most likely, but one only needs to look beyond that page to realize how wrong it is.
The Lawful Neutral Plane of Mechanus is not a bunch of robots following their personal codes, in fact, there is no one on the entire plane that follows a personal code. It is instead a plane of perfect order wherein a limitless number of machines interact to preserve and extend that order over the multiverse.
The "Personal Codes" clause is a new out for people who feel like they want to play Lawful characters in a way that doesn't piss off the rest of the party, but in reality, it has nothing at all to do with "Law" or "Order" as both of those things extend inherently to other people.
was the name of the imp being unpronouncable a joke? Because if not, No.1 just means "number one"
I think it was pronounced "No one", or "En-oh One"
I’ve been calling him ‘Number One’ throughput my readings too. I think the ‘No one’ thing is just a little written joke
The audiobooks called him Number One
@@firetarrasque4667 he does refer to himself as Number 1 in book 5 and 6, and if I remember correctly the audiobook does too
In German he's called "Nr. 1" so I never questioned that he indeed was just called Number One (Nummer Eins) and the Translator also assumed such, I guess.
I saw the title of the video and my first thought was "Frick you, this series is wonderful." You make good points, though, and I have to realize that not everybody has the same opinions as me. Still, frick you. This series is wonderful.
Kind on the same boat, but I think I would change my mind if I re-read the series.
@@joaomrtins Re read the series not long ago, certain parts are kind of cheesy, but overall, it is still good experience
@@Elmithian Same, I re-read the entire series around 2-3 years ago and aside from the usual YA cheese they're solid.
I always thought it would make a cool animated series after reading the graphic novels
It would definitely be better than live action.
Ditto. I can definitely picture a show like those early-2000s action cartoons.
Bruh i really hope someone will make this as an animated series
i remember as a kid i loved the atlantis complex because i thought orion was super cool....and now that im older, i hate that they even tried holly x artemis. holly was an adult through the whole series. just because she's an elf which makes her look young and small, doesnt mean she should be shipped with a human tween/teenager.
Even as a kid I thought it was weird and creepy. AS A KID!!! Orion being a wannabe-knight womanizer was weird, and the magic disease was weird af. The Atlantis complex is a weird mix of stereotypes of DID and OCD that makes such little sense, which makes sense because M A G I C. Since there was a time-skip with the lost colony, why didn't we have Minerva, now roughly ATs age, working with Artemis on his Ice-cap saving goo, and Orion would be hitting on her instead, if we really needed that.
@@settheshallow8913 i would have loved that tbh. i have always liked and preferred minerva...she feels like wasted potential.
Idk chief tween me would defo smash a hot af elf girl.
@@leeoswald5643 just because a tween is horny and going through pubety, doesnt make it okay anyways. idk what you're even talking about. holly is an adult who looks young because she's an elf. it's that simple. adults and kids do not mix.
I always felt that Artemis should've hooked up with Opal - like, yes she's also a grown ass adult women, but at least she wasn't a weird mother figure like Holly, and she was petty and immature enough that her and Artemis always felt more like peers. Plus, it would've been a much needed break from her being continually recycled every second book without any development, and their was just a lot of sexual tension there imho.
25:03 I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a joke or not so I’m going to write this and hide in the corner. “No.1” is pronounced Number 1. It’s a commonly used written convention in the UK and Ireland.
America, too, but not when the little "o" is at the top like a "degree" symbol.
Depending on where you live, his name can be some what hard to read, since the degree symbol isn't commonly used that way everywhere, but fairly easy to pronounce.
I thought it was pronounced No one, since in the begining he's a nobody, and the o is common among fantasy alphabets to just mean a highly pronounced O.
Same in France. (N°1)
My friends and I were so obsessed with this series. We still fondly talk about it - but none of us are looking forward to the movie.
The comic books were ugly as hell too.
Eh, the art in the graphic novels was definitely a lot grungy than I'd pictured from reading the books, but I quite like that they had the guts to go for such a stylised approach.
I still definitely don't subscribe to them as to what the characters should canonically look like though. Especially Butler - that man was definitely taking more than one form of 'supplement' in the graphic novels XD
I liked Holly's depiction, hated Artemis's and... Tolerated butler's.
I think that opal was a good villan (in the beginning) because she was like the evil version of artemis if he had never learned from the first book and continued to be selfish
I never knew there were books after the Opal Deception. Perhaps that was for the best.
Yeah I didn’t know either
You didn't really miss out, I'll tell you that.
I'd say read The Lost Colony and The Last Guardian. They're still rather decent books and the last book I think wraps up things quite well. The rest though...kind of meh
Lost colony in my opinion was good and everything after was a let down. After lost colony their should have been maybe one more book tops. The Atlantis complex and time paradox add nothing more to the story in my opinion.
Edit: Is anyone else pissed off at how they are dealing with the Artemis fowl movie?
I totally agree with you !
I do like Lost Colony but there were some big issues with it like how Under-utilized Minerva was. I think every book in the series is really good compared to your average kids/teens fantasy books but they never got back to the heights of the first four books.
Pyrocumulus25 I totally agree Minerva definitely should have come back as a character instead of never being mentioned again.
agree. the lost colony seemed to have completed artemis' character arc, he's a good guy seriously now. anything after that would just be a rehash of his character development before
Agree, and kinda mad that the video pretends that it was a nothing book with no consequences. I mean, our heroes become displaced in time, how is that "back to o normal"?!?
Minerva to me a book one Artemis in book five, not evil Artemis. Artemis was already evil, but he grew up as a character. She could have been an adversary to Artemis but here's the problem...
She couldn't be "Evil and smart" because that's Koboi's spot. She couldn't be an Artemis, because we already have one. So the only available spot is Fem Artemis, with emphasis on the Fem, and that's not a good way to build a character.
She could be a background character that gets mentioned but not involved in the story. She could be shipped with Artemis in the background (I mean, they do like each other, and since romance is not the focus here it'd have been fine to do so), but there was no reason to force her into the story again... Much like Koboi...
I tried to pick this up when i was in school and boy you are 100% correct its very hard to make yourself read more than the first few books
Speaking of hidden world stories, would love to see you review the Gregor the Overlander Series.
Man I forgot how much I love Artemis Fowl ! You motivated me to read them all again !
All the characters are so weird and unique it's a delight ! Aaaah this series makes me happy (even though I do think the quality decreased after lost colony) !
(EDIT : the Opal Deception is my fav book of the series by the way ! Root's death scene traumatized me as a kid !)
"You know how I said that if you shot the device in the right place, you could have saved Root? I lied."
I read about the first 3 or 4 books and you're right, after that I stopped because I felt that Arty's story had been told already. The continuation of the series was to me the incarnation of "beating a dead horse" before I knew that saying existed.
While I agree with his story pretty much being over please read the 5th book. It’s so good especially the ending. Honestly it’s my 2nd favorite book after the 1st
Nostalgia just hit me like a slap in the face.
these books will always have a special place in my heart because i just genuinely enjoyed them so much as a child. they were so different from so much other stuff that i read at the time, and i enjoyed and loved every minute of reading them.
4:10 I didn't find it funny either, just intriguing (and cool) how fairy lingo leaks into the human realm and influences their myths
so the fairies have this insane technological advantage *and* have magic, yet were forced to live underground by humanity?
Humans are much bigger and outnumber them by billions, even back in prehistory we could have 10+ kids while fairies can only have one every 20 years. The biggest fairy city in the modern day only has around 10,000 people living in it.
@@JamesTullos but they have lasers, cloning, cloaking and magic?
@@commander31able60 @James Tullos
"The faeries may possess foul science or wicked sorcery beyond humanity's ken, but such deviance comes to naught in the face of honest Human intolerance, backed by a sufficient number of guns."
Yes, they have lasers and cloaking, but the books point out that even their high technology can be partially overcome with human machines, and a bullet will kill a fairy in 1 hit, armoured or not (outside maybe a couple hundred LEPRecon Retrieval battle suits). with only a couple million of them at the highest, even a single country possesses enough manpower to simply drown them under by weight of numbers- not including human reverse engineering, logistical advantages and combined-arms warfare that the fairies have forgotten due to their small population and distaste for combat. The best they could do is delay the inevitable.
@@commander31able60 and we have atomic bombs
Fabián Alonso Leyva León What use would atomic bombs be? Our own cities would get destroyed in the cross fire
This seems like a strange series.
Very, very strange. But I absolutely love it, when James was talking about the death sequence in the fourth book I got flashbacks to when I first read it it’s such an iconic moment
It had an ingenious premise for a YA franchise, I'll give it that.
It's great
One of the things I remember best from the Eternity Code (assuming I'm remembering correctly), when Butler's sister pretends to be a hippie to distract the Dumb and Dumber bodyguards, who then remark that they thought sushi was pretty good when they deep fried it. When she's done beating them up she mocks them for doing that... And now 15 years later one of my favorites is a deep fried Sunday morning roll...
Yup, I disliked how overused Opal was and how that degraded her character and by the end mulch was just used as a plot device which made him extremely irritating.
Eoin: "Hmmm, how do I get my characters out of this situation I've written them into? Oh! I'll just give dwarves some weird new biological superpower that lets them escape!"
@@Shenaldrac Eoin: Remember when Dwarves had weaknesses, because I don't.
@@emeraldpichu1 Eoin: Remember when there were antagonists other than Opal Koboi?
@@Shenaldrac That just reminds me of the other plot device character Foaly. At first there were limits to his technology then he was just a convince factory and he never even got enough character development to get over his hypocritical racism.
@@emeraldpichu1 Oh gosh yes. You've stumbled upon the thing of the series that annoys me the most, even more than the over the top environmentalism: The anti-human bigotry. The fairies all act like humans intentionally are trying to destroy the environment. That we use fossil fuels because we want to, we want to create oil spills.
Well news flash, Fairies/Eoin, humanity is not a Captain Planet villain. Most people don't like how we have ignored the environment. Most people don't have any hand in what energy systems we use. It's almost like the issue is the responsibility of a wealthy and powerful few instead of every individual!
But do the fairies try to help? Do they leak plans for truly green nuclear power, which we know they have and use to the point that it is ubiquitous? Do they give a bit of mesmer to the people in charge of and profiting from oil who use scare tactics, bribes and lobbying to prevent the widespread adoption of nuclear power, playing on the ill-informed public's fears of nuclear meltdown to become less greedy?
No. Instead they stay in their little cave, their "haven" which is home to only around 10,000 fairies (which is only the size of a town for us humans, fairy numbers are truly small) and whine bitch moan about how horrible humanity is, while not lifting a finger to help despite regularly engaging in clandestine covert operations among humans, which is pretty much the entire point of the LEP recon.
It's the smug elf/alien trope you see a lot in fantasy and sci fi and it never ceases to piss me off. Either help us get better, help us find a better way, or forfeit your superior attitude and supposed moral high ground. /rant
AAAAAAAAAAAAAH WHY IS ROOT A WOMAN; IT DOESN'T MAKE ZERO SENSE IN ANY WAY
I wanted to comment after the video but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH Holly's most important story arc is that she is the first woman in the LEP ffs When I saw the trailer for the movie the first time I was like, nopenopenope, let's ignore that this exists and just read the first five books over and over again.
(btw I didn't know about the LEPrecon joke for a long time cuz I read the series in German and the LEP is called the ZUP there, Zentrale Untergrundpolizei, central underground police. Not important, I just actually found it funny when I first read it in English because the joke didn't exist before xD)
one thing I will say is that the original Artemis Fowl book came out in 2001. That was 20 years ago. It makes sense to make some updates when working with 20-year-old source material, and the whole "first woman on the force" plot point I don't think would work quite as well nowadays. Gender discrimination in the workplace certainly hasn't gone away in that time, but the whole "woman breaking ground for the first time in 'man's work'" thing isn't anywhere near as prevalent.
I'm not going to say that the movie will be good, and it's unlikely that they'll replace that conflict with something as compelling, but in an absolute sense it's a perfectly acceptable change.
@@android19willpwn The fact that the world progressed doesn't mean anything. The story is set. And it's not modern. Changing it to fit modern cryteria is kinda like rape on the base material, don't expect fans to like it, progressive or not. But agreed on one thing-the movie will suck and nobody cares all that much :D
@@kukurydza007 Adaptation is adaptation, not translation. But I've been down this particular rabbit hole enough times to know that it ends in an axiomatic difference in perspective, so that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
@@android19willpwn Aight, stay safe out there :)
@@android19willpwn id say far more concerning than the change to her character arc as the first female officer is the fact that in the trailer she not only appears to be a child, but also that she is apparently friends with artemis from the start, i believe she says "we're your allies" or something. this totally breaks the character development of the original books, how can they continue to naturally build artemis and holly's friendship over the course of the series if they're friends in the first movie? and again, why is she a child?
The Lost Colony was always my favorite. A great point in that book was the relationship between Butler and Juliet. It feels genuine. And N°1 was an entertaining character for me.
N°1's name is probably meant to be said as "no one", since he's a literal nobody at the start of the book.
Its number one
@@murkyhydra6351 it's a degrees sign you imbecile, not the letter o
@@settheshallow8913 The audio book refers to him as number one, boomer
@@settheshallow8913 it's an 'o' in superscript, not a degree sign
How have you people not seen this symbol before, it’s just a different way of writing No. or Num. or # or whatever abbreviation your country uses for “Number”. It’s common in Europe and maybe older texts.
Idk who this Perry Hotter guy is. Seems like someone should write a book series about him.
"Yer a lizard Perry."
* Licks eyes.*
Someone did write about him
Her name is hatsune miku
You say Artemis is more chaotic neutral, I say he's more lawful evil
I always saw No1 being pronounced like no one. Helping to show how he is seen as worthless and "no one" by his fellow demons.
Artemis Fowl was amazing to me. I ate those books up. I was disappointed with how many loose ends there are though. (Such as fairy souls, Artemis and Holly Romance, ect.)
That "unpronounceable name" is just the standard shorthand for Number 1. The big N, little raised O is a pretty universal sign for "Number". Nº1 = "Number 1".
As an American, i can confirm that neither myself nor anyone else i know has ever seen/been taught such a thing. To us, º is the symbol for Degrees and degrees alone.
@@lykillcorreli6740 I'm Spanish, here we use n°1, but as far as I know, "number 1" is represented by Americans as #1
oh you mean the best character
@@lykillcorreli6740 Now you know how the rest of the world does it.
There are basically two good stopping points for this series, book 3 and book 5. Book 3 is the natural conclusion if you want a complete story, because that's where everything gets tied up neatly with bow, while book 5 is the last book that's good. Everything after that feels tacked on at best, and a complete mess of the setting at worst.
this is the first comment that ive found that agrees with my holy trinity take. i honestly found the first three books to be spectacular and felt the momentum slowed as it went on.
I've wanted this video all along without even realizing it
Being honest, I remember all the books apart from the time paradox with fond memories. If what I remember from a kid is right, they all did some really interesting things and explored cool stuff
That’s so weird, I remember time paradox was my favorite book. I loved the idea of time travel as a kid, and to this day I love the idea of a paradox
What I learned from Artemis Fowl: Dwarves fart a lot
13 y.o. me didn't even know that the series went on after “the lost colony“ and i never bothered to check.
Guess i unintentionaly quit while it still was good
Same
I remember having a heart attack watching the second trailer. My friend who was sitting next to me was so confused by the faces I was making that she get tapping me to get me to stop. It was quite an experience. This movie is going to be the worst thing ever. (also great video)
I have been planning to check out this series. Thanks for the in-depth analysis.
I thought AF was the antagonist and Holly was the protagonist.
That's how it was in the first book, which is why that one is my favourite.
@@megashark1013 Yeah honestly that made it pretty cool the first time
If I recall correctly, the first book was still mostly told from Artemis's perspective, so he'd still be the protagonist. That said, he was also the villain, while Holly was the hero and antagonist, which is a somewhat unusual twist.
the protagonist can be an antagonist at the same time... protagonist just means leading character...
@@happyjohn354 But the antagonist is the character that is in opposition to the protagonist--so unless it's a battle of Man VS. Himself (usually internal), the protagonist cannot also be the antagonist. This would then make Artemis a Villain Protagonist and Holly either a Hero Antagonist or a major character that can be argued to be a Deuteragonist.
I read the first book when I was 10 and it was fascinating. Because quarantine i'm continuing with the other books and after finishing one, I Make a little Summary and there is a interesting pattern in each book: An initial "simple" plan of Fowl , an unexcpected obstacle, an better plan for repair this and Mantillo Mandibulas's help (this is midget's name in spanish, I i dont know his english name). At least until the sixth book that is where I am. Now I am 22 and I wish Artemis adventures don't end.
Sorry by my english, I hope it is understable
Juan Diego Mantillo Mandibula - fuckin love it! Is that the Castellano Spanish version, or a Latin American one?
Awesome video I was excited when you announced it
Oh man this just hit me with a whole wave of nostalgia. I think I fell off of this series because of the long periods of waiting in between books, which I guess is as good of a sign as any that some of the ones after the 3rd installment were meant to wrap up the series before another book was released to cash in its popularity.
That being said I'm surprised how much of the weirder aspects of the series you glossed over also! Time Paradox, I think, ends with an Artemis being inexplicably aged Up and Holly aged down for whatever reason. Which even kid me thought was a weird detail. 😂
I listened to this while at work to catch up on what happened after opal deception. (high point in my eyes as well) then at the end you said if you havent liked and subbed go ahead and suddenly I realized why people remind viewers to do so, so yea gonna check out ur stuff and look forward to the new vids. Good content bro
When you said "he's never given magic deduction powers or the ability to know information before it's presented to the audience" I knew you were immediately talking about Sherlock before you even finished your sentence
Same as that
Love the video! This whole thing really reflected my personal thoughts. You put it all into words splendidly!
I stopped reading after the opal deception, but that’s just because my school library didn’t have the other books and I was too lazy to google if there were more I guess
It was my favourite series (even though I didn't finish it)! I might be biased though since the second one was the first book I read in English (I was like 12 and we only had the 1st and 3rd in my language idk why)
I loved the first 3, thought 4 and 5 were okay almost gave up and fell back in love reading the Time Paradox. Then my friend hyped me up for Atlantis, she thought it was the best part and that Orion was the most amazing character. Let's just say I got through a few chapters and never picked up that book again (that also taught me to stop listening to her recommendations).
Years ago I was excited to hear about movie adaptation, but after seeing the "trailer" that hype definitely died.
Honestly as a kid I think the biggest let down was the lack of holly and artemis relationship because I felt like they kinda fit. I'm now realizing that my type has been shaped to a painfully large degree by holly
I haven't read the last 3 books but I treat this series as a trilogy with one sequel. It's fascinating to me that I'm not the only one who REALLY loved these books as a kid yet never finished the series. I guess it's very easy to grow out of
My favorite was book 2. It just felt "cool" the whole time...
no, no, no puns please.
One thing I loved about the books was the hidden codes. The fairy language and the eternity code both had a key somewhere in the books and you could find a coded message through the whole book.
I remember my impression as a kid reading this book was that the series collapsed at the Atlantis Complex. For some reason I attributed this to Disney having bought and influenced the series at that point. Did anyone else feel that way, or am I misremembering things?
Milo Carteret it seems like either a huge coincidence, or what you described. But yeah, it all kinda fell apart
For me it is the Lost Colony that is the ending before it fell apart. Artemis fully gives back to the people and performs a selfless act. Arc completed.
I hope I wasn’t the only one that looked at the cover image for this video and immediately heard Mr. Crocker from the Fairly Oddparents yell “Fairies!” to Artemis.
I remember the scene where his butler got a shot of something magical to cure some poison or wound (I really don't remember what), and flailed around like a maniac and ended up looking a decade older as a consequence. Pre-teen me thought that was awesome.
In my heart of hearts, Artemis Fowl was a trilogy.
I loved the series when I was younger!
Just stumbled upon your channel watching reviews of the Disney movie. Your channel seems really interesting and cool and this video is well done. Going to stick around!
I love this series dearly. I think this might've been the thing that initially sold me on the idea of hidden magical worlds, something I always found problematic in stuff like Harry Potter where it's either basically handwaved or just kind of glossed over. Also science fantasy.
The first time when I started having problems with the series, though I didn't understand why at the time, was near the end of Lost Colony when it began breaking its own unspoken rule of keeping magic on the downlow, as something subtle, subdued, something nebulous and ill-defined that the characters could use and rely on for healing etc, but that could never solve the real problems for them.
With the concept of demon warlocks and the prospects of transdimensional travel, petrifying touch and illusions on the table, the sky was the limit, but in the worst way possible, where the reader didn't know what the stakes were anymore so long as N°1 was in the picture. (And that is before it literally, canonically breaks the established rules of the magic system.)
Time Paradox realised this issue and fixed it by removing N°1 from the plot for 80% of the book, but it achieved this by introducing the trope I hate more than anything: Time Travel. And not only that, it doubled down and dived headlong into my most hated subtrope of Time Travel, the Time Paradox, as the gimmick of the story (and, no, it was not significant enough to be called a plot point, the fact that a Time Paradox is happening is not actually relevant except to justify Artemis being able to interact with himself).
On top of that it kept parading around Opal from the Baby's First Villain Starter Kit like she was the most fascinating character of all time, meanwhile ma bois Briar and Turnball get shafted after one book (I know Cudgeon was in the first, but he wasn't an actual villain yet and short stories don't count).
And that's on top of constantly dropping seriously important plot points, like Butler's advanced biological age and the Kevlar layer in his chest from the resurrection, the rule of dwelling when it was overwritten by N°1 for some reason, Minerva, the limitations of time stops (which happens for basically no reason in what is effectively a side chapter), eventually even Artemis' death is handwaved with "Foaly cloned him in his basement and they captured his spirit with magic"! That is the actual explanation given in the canon of the story! Fucking what?!
PS: turnballrootisthegreatestyafantasyvillainofalltimedon't@me!
turnball aint to bad
vishby is better
and dont you dis No.1
Hey man, fantastic video. I dig your channel.
Keep up the good work!
I was so into these books as a kid but totally stopped reading them at some point, never thought about them again
I can't believe I haven't subscribed to your channel yet. I loved your videos, but forgot to subscribe and just now finding your channel again. I'm gonna fix that now. Thanks for the cool videos dude.
Am I the only one who thinks of that teacher from Jimmy Neutron, whenever I hear the name of this book series?
No you're not.
Was her name really Mrs. Foul?
@@cedartheyeah.justyeah.3967 Yep, spelt Ms.Fowl. She even crowed like a bird, too.
Back in 2007-09 I was hired by its publisher in China to translate/localizethe books starting from book 3, but the whole project was dropped until 2015 when it was picked up by another publisher.
This is an amazing video as always; however, I do have one slight quibble. I don't think you gave The Time Paradox enough credit. It dealt with the concept of time travel in a pretty interesting way, and the conclusion of the story was, in my opinion, a better stopping point for the series than The Last Guardian provided (I'm a little biased: Time Paradox was the last book in the series that my library stocked and I honestly thought it was the conclusion for several years), ending the story pretty much where it started but in a very interesting and circular way, where the ending to the book led nicely into the start of the first book. Otherwise, amazing video, I agree with a lot of the points made here!
One part of the world building I liked but on further inspection is weird as hell, is that the butler family are considered servants to the fowl family. They say that every fowl since the middle ages has been a bodyguard to the current fowls. But thinking about it it just falls apart. How do they have kids when they are meant to serve the fowls non stop, artemis says that butler will leave if he doesn't pay him in one of the first books but how does that happen if it's an ancient deal, what happens when their aren't enough butlers to serve the current fowls (we see some of this in the fowl twins by they're not old enough to be as big a deal) and what if a butler has a kid with a fowl? Do they get trained as a butler or live like a fowl?
The only book I didn't like was the final one. It felt like the pacing was weird. Like too much was happening too fast, but it was also a very short series of events stretched to fill a novel. I guess too many things happening in those short events? I don't even remember it aside from the premise and a fragment of one scene.
I also didn't really like the ending of the book before that, but I guess that's because it left some loose threads to be tied up in the last book, which is the one I didn't like.
Also there is no Artemis Fowl movie as far as I am concerned.
They metaphorically put nooses around all the characters' necks and threw them over a cliff, then dragged their bodies back up over the edge with the nooses, to then puppet their corpses around saying "I'm Artemis Fowl, see? I am, I really am."
i haven't read artemis fowl for a very long time, i think i read opal deception the day after it came out and after that i stopped keeping up with it. you saying names and describing what happened in the books feels like someone is sticking needles into my brain making me remember all the feelings i had while reading the series. this really took me back in a way i didn't expect. like usually you can expect nostalgia, but apparently these fucking books apparently meant more to me than i realised. thanks for the mental ride.
I would love to hear your take on W.A.R.P. by Colfer now, the whole series revolves around time travel.
There's more than one? I always thought it was a one off novel.
I loved WARP as a kid tbh, even had a crush on Riley. The second book honestly felt kind of lacking to me but thats probably because Garrick or however you spell it was my favorite character but he was pretty much never mentioned.