>>84920347No, it's not. Colfer was pretty obviously screwing with the readers from Book 6 on. Even before that, it was a mix of "it's hard to see two complementary action heroes of the opposite sex who are constantly thrown together and go from distrust and disrespect to actual admiration and friendship as anything but into each other" and "Colfer was probably fucking with us again."
Book 6 has them actually kiss in a moment of adrenaline infused passion (and when Holly has been reduced to a hormonal teenager and Artemis aged up a bit due to time shenanigans). I seem to recall Holly is even briefly toying in her narration with actual feelings for Artemis before guilt makes him reveal he totally manipulated and guilt tripped her into cleaning up one of his messes and closes that particular door quite soundly.
Book 7 had the whole Orion thing, though I can't recall the specifics of anything more than that. It also turned out the Fairy villain had a human wife he was trying to help, somehow, I think.
I don't remember much about Book 8, but they'd pretty much progressed beyond any real doubt about their closeness and importance to one another, though not much overt shipping stuff ever really happened.
The crux of it all is that if this were a series that started with "Artemis Fowl, 16 year old genius" who progressed into legal adulthood by the end of it, it's hard not to think they would've just gotten together. The series toys a bit with Artemis having possibly a crush on Juliette, the origin of an odd orphaned line at the end of this page
>>84914608, before introducing, and promptly dropping, Minerva as an obvious romantic foil. Leaving only Holly, with whom he's had a substantially developed relationship over 8 entire books. But he's still pretty young by the end and Holly was already an adult by the first book.
It's just one of those classic missteps, like the whole Ben/Gwen thing. Colfer just toyed with it a bit more than in that, for obvious reasons.
