The Original Character Court

[Hi guys! It's Laurel. Kara's sick right now because she's been working herself to death. Anyway, yay! Review!]
Basics
Name: Artemis Murdock
[Reminds me of Artemis Fowl. Well, just be careful with this name since I'm not sure if Artemis the goddess would appreciate having a male named after her.]
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Birthday: January 13
Ethnicity: Irish/English
Hair color: Black
Eye color: Brown
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 135
[please put units. I'm assuming this is pounds.]
Other physical descriptions: Thin, but athletic from running around the back alleys of Boston, pick-pocketing people. More of a "endurance runner" fit than a bodybuilder. [Oh, I can picture this. He's pretty lean, right?] Has a scar on the skin of his right forearm, near the elbow. This is from when he was younger, and wasn't as good at stealing wallets. The kids he would pick-pocket at school would fight him. They often brought knives or other weapons, so Art learned how to fight when the odds weren't in his favor, but one time, the varsity wide receiver managed to cut his arm, slicing off some of the skin and leaving the scar a pale splotch. [Well, given how American kids generally are, I'm not surprised that they'd have knives.] They fought him because he was a "bookworm nerd" in a school of jocks, and because his accent was too English for the born-and-bred Americans at his school. Normal clothing is any long-sleeve shirt that's dark enough for him to blend into an alley, and usually a pair of faded jeans. Often wears sunglasses to disguise where he's looking.
Sexual orientation: Straight
[Kara and I prefer that you say "heterosexual" but okay!]

Personality
Positive traits: Artemis always appears to be cool and calculating, moving through life as if it is a chess board. If he needs to fight, he will, but he generally prefers to slink quietly behind the scenes instead of facing open confrontation. However, Artemis has been beaten down (and has beaten back his aggressors) enough times to instill a quiet aura of self-confidence about him. He knows his abilities and prefers to do things himself, rather than leave others to do them. He is quite responsible, seeing as his mother abandoned him when he was 14, leaving Art to live with his friend Silas Morris in her old apartment (will explain). He is above all rational and logical. He doesn't like seeing romanticized things like fighting for a lost cause because they seem like a waste of time.
[Um... Why does this personality remind me of Artemis Fowl?]

Negative traits: However, Artemis can be quite arrogant, too confident in his own abilities to realize when he is about to lose. He can be quite judgmental, especially because he believes his specific code of rationalism and logic is superior, leading to Art being dismissive to any other opposing school of thought. I guess the word I'm trying to find is cynical, especially because he hates believing in lost causes and unselfish motives. While Artemis is highly organized, he loathes any structured organization that does not fit into his idea of how it should be structured. Art hates following rules blindly without understanding their intent. Art can also be manipulative; he is cunning and will do anything to achieve his goals. This leads to him being dictatorial at some points, a trait which is hated by the jocks at his school who can no longer beat him up because he is older, wiser and faster than they are. He is stubborn and reluctant to agree with others, a trait which is slowly being mediated by Silas.
[Interesting.]

Other Personality traits: Artemis is highly organized. Everything is in its place, and he hates when things are out of place. He sees the world as very black and white, right and wrong. There is no grey area.
[Aaahhh. I can see how he would clash with a lot of people.]

Fears/Phobias: Artemis has a fear of any addictive substance because of his mother. His mother met Mercury, his father, on a trip to American from London. She broke her shoulder during the trip, and Mercury mistakenly gave her some Ambrosia and Nectar to heal her. She became heavily addicted to them, and reverted to blowing her salary on painkillers. However, when they stopped having the same effect, she became irritable. In desperate need for cash to feed her addiction, she left Artemis and the apartment they had.

Artemis also has an intense fear of abandonment, caused by his father never being around, as well as his mother leaving him during adolescence. For this reason, he has become the person he is today: cold, reserved, but fiercely loyal to people like Silas, one of his few friends. He desperately does not want Silas to leave him alone in the apartment.

Artemis also fears instability and movement. While Mercury is the god of travelers, Artemis does not want to leave Boston, even though he is being told great stories of Camp Jupiter by Eva, a daughter of Ceres who is Silas' girlfriend at Camp Jupiter. Silas is often torn between going to Camp Jupiter full time or staying in Boston, in the mortal world, with Artemis. Artemis has his own structure and view of the world, and any change in that will destroy everything he has carefully set up and protected for 3 years.
[Everything's well-explained. I like it! I also love how it's so interesting and unique.]

Fatal Flaw: Artemis is over-ambitious and greedy, which leads to Hubris (hubris in the sense of insolence, which is different than Annabeth's fatal pride). He believes that he can bring his mother back, and that they can live a happy life, with or without Mercury. This fatal flaw leads him to making impulsive decisions as he gets closer to his goal of reuniting/finding his mother.
[Yeah. That can be fatal. Cool! I mean, not cool because it's fatal but cool because it's a well-thought of and different from the usual.]

Family and Background
Godly Parent: Mercury
[Yay Roman! I'm more of a Greek gal but Roman is pretty refreshing. Kara loves Roman culture.]
Mortal Parent: Emma Murdock, a worker for the World Bank.
Other relationships: Friends: Silas Morris, son of the Roman Apollo
Silas, usually against his will, is forced to balance out some of Artemis' more oppressive traits. He challenges Artemis to see the world in a more altruistic way, often encouraging him to get out of the apartment more. Since Silas has occasional glimpses of the future courtesy of his father, Artemis tries to use him as a resource, and Silas agrees to share information with him in exchange for letting Silas live with him. This relationship gets kind of confusing when Artemis begins to become a lot more irritable when Silas isn't around the apartment.
[Internally debating about whether this is a healthy friendship or not.]

Eva Green, daughter of Ceres
Eva is Silas' girlfriend and a secret protege of Artemis, as she desperately wants to do things that are "on the wild side" as she calls it. This dynamic between Eva and Artemis forces Silas to stay involved with him in Boston, as he tries to inhibit Eva from getting into an accident which could get her killed. However, Eva and Silas both agree that giving Artemis a job like teaching Eva the basics of pick-pocketing will make him a little bit more of a "people-person" and less of an "emotional black hole." Eva loves to joke with Artemis, and while he is teaching her how to be a thief, she, (like John Connor in Terminator 2) is pushing his introversion to its limits, trying to make him less of a machine. She often flirts with Artemis' rage, something that doesn't get exposed often.

Backstory:
[hoping the name gets explained.]
Artemis was born to Emma Murdock when she was 30, after a fling she had with Mercury. She was the youngest ever commerce agent for Ireland in the World Bank, straight out of college, and had never really been in any romantic relationships. She broke her shoulder getting hit by a cab while walking to a meeting in Boston, and Mercury in disguise had brought her to the hospital. He healed her quicker than she was supposed to recover by feeding her small doses of Ambrosia and Nectar, and, because he is not very skilled in the art of medicine, got her fully and brutally addicted to the stuff. [What? No no no! Ambrosia and nectar will make mortals explode! Demigods can take it to an extent but it's an absolute no for mortals! Please double check this. Also, Mercury wouldn't need to use ambrosia and nectar. His powers can deal with the injuries.] So, she began to spiral out of control, feening for painkillers, by the time Artemis was 10. They moved to a cheap apartment in Southie, even though Art went to a prestigious school in Cambridge. Artemis started becoming more independent, getting all the way across town to school every day. He was determined to show that he was better, smarter, more able than his druggie mother made him look out to be. However, he starts stealing. Probably because it is cathartic to him, but also because his mom never had enough money to give him presents. So, he stole the Rolexs he wanted. He didn't hate Mercury for leaving, as he thought the god left in shame of messing up his mom Emma that badly. He met Silas his sophomore year of high-school, and when Silas got drunk one night and was forced to crash at Artemis' place, he discovered Art's situation. Art had been living alone since he was 14, before his freshman year. Art had stolen his mother's credit cards, and was living off of those, and stolen wallets, to get by. Silas quickly found a way to coexist with Art, as he Iris-Messaged his girlfriend for help, and harnessed his little power over sunlight via his father to grow a rooftop garden that sold herbs and fresh spices to the best restaurants in Cambridge. They had a system going: Artemis would bring in a gold watch or wallet every week, and Silas would bring in enough to pay for his half of the apartment in seeing his harvest. The story would begin in the middle of Artemis' senior year, when he is making plans for how he is going to find and reconnect with his mother after so many years alone. He realizes that he needs enough money to survive after school, and starts becoming even more prolific in his illegal ventures, stealing huge sums of money from websites. This scares Silas, because Eva is starting to get in on the act, and Silas realizes that the mother Artemis wants to find might not be out there.
[No name explanation?]

Combat-related questions
Camp: N/A
Weapon of choice: Artemis' weapon of choice is stealth and non-confrontation. If he can slip a watch from a distracted business man and not get caught, he has succeeded.
[non-confrontation isn't a weapon. I wouldn't but this under weapons. I'd put it under abilities. He's stealthy. That's an ability.]
Other weapons: If he has to fight, he is proficient enough in hand-to-hand combat that he can best almost any foe. He also has a pocketknife that his father gave him (his one parental heirloom besides a faded picture of his mom with Mercury) that he can use if he is "outgunned".
[Okay.]
Powers and Abilities: Artemis is stealthy, a skill picked up from countless hours walking around filching and stealing. He knows how to blend in with his surroundings and disappear.

He has a gift for thievery from his father, and while it may be un-Roman to steal, Artemis doesn't care. He doesn't care because he is indifferent towards his father. His opinion on his father is the only grey area in his life: he doesn't hate Mercury, but he certainly doesn't love him.

However, when he is caught in the act of stealing or seen stealing and shouted at, Artemis has the weakness of getting paralyzed with fear. He loses a lot of his composure and bolts, becoming known to his targets.

Artemis can speak Latin fluently. He is a bookworm, and Latin came quite naturally to him. He isn't as dyslexic as the other demigods. However, since no one in Boston can understand Latin, Artemis doesn't feel like this powers particularly useful.
[it's not a power. It's an inherent thing. Oh well. Technicalities!]

Artemis is also above-average, athletically. He has been running from bullies in Boston his entire life and so is quite fit, a quality helped out by his godly heritage. However, just like his mother, he heals slowly, which means he often takes lost of time to recover his fitness after getting injured.
[Oh yikes.]

Comments: Everything is well thought of. Actually, he's an interesting demigod. Though there are a few details that can be a little "eeehhhh?!" like the mom thing and the name thing so I can't really put this guy in the Isles just yet.

Final judgement: Elysium

Notes