Board Thread:The Trials of Apollo/@comment-25155763-20170503162614/@comment-30566621-20170503204813

Okay so here's the thing. . . in Dark Prophecy, what Hemetheia actually says is that romance of any kind is banned among the Huntresses. Rick still hasn't made any statements about sexual activity (beyond "no men"). Maybe he'll continue to explain, but at the moment we only know that they're not allowed to engage in romantic attachments with anyone and sexual attrachments with men.

Furthermore, just because Callisto was decieved by Zeus taking Artemis' form doesn't mean that Artemis was sexually active with her followers. Most likely Callisto did have a hard crush on Artemis and mistakenly believed that perhaps Artemis was making an exception to the rule. Furthermore, Artemis' rule is not a filter for finding new Huntresses but instead of keeping them. She doesn't look for aromantic and asexual followers. And from the stories it sounds like she allows followers to leave if they are honest with her about developing attachments. The reason Callisto got punished so severely is because she tries to hide it from Artemis until she could no longer hide her pregnancy.

I admit that, yes, reading about Hemetheia and Josephine's loss of immortality was a bit of a surprise for me. But it's made clear throughout that it was a choice on their part, and that they parted from Artemis on much more positive terms than Callisto did. We don't know for sure that Huntresses don't spend some of their down time messing around with each other, but what we do know is that they don't start romantic relationships.