halfbloodallbitch

[halfbloodallbitch]

nico and the cocoa puffs!

[halfbloodallbitch]

" ... I joined Meg on the edge, dangling my feet over the abyss from which we'd escaped .... Had it really been only this morning? I couldn't see the net of strawberry plants below in the shadows, but their smell was powerful and exotic in the desert setting. Strange how a common thing can become uncommon in a new environment. Or in my case, how an uncommonly amazing god can become so very common ..." - The Burning Maze, Chapter 11

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[Image ID: An illustration of Lester Papadopoulos and Meg McCaffrey sitting on the edge of a cistern at Aeithales. The cloudy horizon is cast in an orange glow from the setting sun as stars begin to appear in the night sky through the leaves of a eucalyptus tree. Meg is glancing away with a neutrally guarded expression as Lester eyes her with concern, his ukulele resting forgotten against his back. / .End ID]

[halfbloodallbitch]

i'm having trouble drawing so i... wrote a poem about the burning maze instead. i know it's a little unconventional as far as fanwork goes, but i've never worked harder on anything in my life so i hope you enjoy! the sun trio oooh the sun trio...

(in case you are unfamiliar with this format, this is a contrapuntal poem: you can read it as three separate poems, or as one big poem, left to right as you normally would and ignoring the breaks)

[halfbloodallbitch]

[1/2] For @femmefangirl using the prompt; 'Another god joins Apollo on his mortal quest, preferably not Artemis'.

I [ @aj-artjunkyard ] hope you enjoy this gift as much as I enjoyed making it!!

[halfbloodallbitch]

Reyna doodle

[halfbloodallbitch]

Alrighty let me post some art from the past couple years since I’ve been gone lol, this is from late 2023

[halfbloodallbitch]

itty bitty ghost king 👑💀

[halfbloodallbitch]

oh what id give to be a supernova

[halfbloodallbitch]

[halfbloodallbitch]

having haikus be chapter titles for Trials of Apollo is probably the funniest thing Rick Riordan could've done in this series

[halfbloodallbitch]

percy isnt stupid or unobservant he just assumes the best of people until proven otherwise

[halfbloodallbitch]

Consequences

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Family Characters: Lee, Apollo, Cabin Seven Apollo saved the camp from the Labyrinth invasion. Zeus punished him for it, turning him mortal two years early. That was a mistake. TOApril day 28 - Silent Thunder. Now, "silent thunder" isn't really a thing, because thunder is literally the term for the sound lightning makes. However, that doesn't mean we can't go a little metaphorical with this - after all, you could say that thunder is a consequence of lightning. And some people might recognise this AU from some things I've talked about before...

Lee was furious.

It was an unfamiliar feeling.  He irritated sometimes, and frustrated, and sometimes even angry, but fury?  That wasn’t one of his normal emotions, not something he thought he’d ever actually felt before, but what else could it be?  What else was the feeling of something bubbling up inside him violently, seething through his veins and making his teeth ache as they clenched without his permission, if not for pure, unabated, fury?

But Lee couldn’t show it.

He was an awful liar, and he’d never known if that was a side effect of his truth-sensing, something else from his dad, or just an unrelated part of his personality, but being head counsellor and head healer had taught him how to push feelings down, out of sight until it was safe to show them.  And now?  Now was not safe.

His dad was frustrated, too.  Maybe angry, but if he was, Lee couldn’t tell.  Even if he was, he wasn’t lashing out, either, not in a way that mattered.  Apollo could spout lies about regretting his intervention in the war, in wishing he hadn’t when it had so clearly got him punished, but that was all they were.  Lies.

Lies didn’t hurt Lee anywhere near as much as cherry-picked truths did.  Even if it had forced him to admit his secret to his siblings, promise them that their dad didn’t mean the injured words he was lashing out.  They were all familiar with frustration, with lashing out in anger – gods knew Michael did it enough, even if he’d got a lot better at taking it out at inanimate objects that people than when he was ten.  They just weren’t familiar with it from their dad’s mouth.

Lee wasn’t, either, but that was just more fuel to his ire, to the raging fury bubbling up inside him with every breath he took, and with every word he spoke.

“Apollo,” he said, his voice carefully level – his Head Counsellor voice, for when his siblings were getting a little too rowdy and he needed them to listen, a voice he’d had to use more and more frequently as the war accelerated, from missing campers to poisoned borders to an invasion designed to kill them all.

Might have killed them all, if Apollo hadn’t shown up in as much godly glory as he could in front of mortals and slaughtered everything that even tried to hurt the camp he’d once founded, still protected millennia later – against orders, against the king of Olympus – and then paid a price for.

Lee knew the stories, as he stared down at the messy, injured lump of inelegant teenager in front of him – gods, he was taller than his dad, now.  Taller and older than his physical form, and neither of those had ever been true before.  He knew the stories, and they’d had a meeting about it, the head counsellors, now the war leaders, of the camp.  The choice had been unanimous.

“I, Lee Fletcher, claim your service.”

Eyes looked up at him in betrayal, a deep blue that widened, as though Lee’s words had hurt far worse than any of the multitude of physical injures the mortal body of his father had taken.  Maybe they did.

He could tell his siblings were looking at him in various expressions, too, from the aghast gasps of those that hadn’t put all the clues together yet, to the grumbles of the ones that still hadn’t quite forgiven Apollo his lashing out, to the pained understanding of the most experienced.

Lee hated that he had to do it, too, that he had to trap his own father to his bidding, but the alternatives weren’t worth even considering.  If one of Kronos’ demigods got Apollo’s service…

Well.

Lee couldn’t think like that.  Not when he was angry, at Kronos but also at Zeus, because this was his fault, and the head counsellors had all recoiled in physical horror when the logical solution hit them.  That Apollo had been punished for saving them, that Zeus had decided intervening to save demigods from near-certain destruction was a worse crime than attempting to destroy them in the first place.

That Zeus would have preferred for them to be destroyed.

Apollo was looking up at him in betrayal, choking on protests and his eyes filling with tears that were barely holding on from spilling down his acne-ridden cheeks – Lee needed to get him some treatment for that, it looked like Zeus had inflicted Apollo with the itchy and painful type – but Lee felt the betrayal in his own heart, too.

No-one at camp was naïve enough to think that any god cared about them, except in some cases their own godly parent, but there was a difference between not caring and this.

Apollo was one of the good ones.  He always had been, and after last summer there wasn’t a single camper that didn’t believe it.  Zeus, clearly, was not one of the good ones.

Lee wasn’t naïve enough to think demigods could take revenge, though.  Taking down a god was beyond them, but saving a god?  Saving one of their own, because that was what Apollo – Lester, according to the ID he’d been carrying and that the Stolls had scoffed at as a bad forgery that would have got him caught and in trouble the moment the wrong person looked at it – was, now.  He was scared and mortal, and that made him fit right in with the rest of camp.

Saving a god, they could do, and that meant getting Apollo’s divinity back to him, somehow.

Unfortunately, none of them had a clue how to do that.  Mr D had been singularly unhelpful on the matter, not even caring to linger in their emergency meeting after he’d determined that the topic – Apollo’s current situation – was none of his concern.

Lee disagreed vehemently, but he couldn’t take down a god.  Pollux and Castor had muttered about trying to get him to see reason, but for all that Mr D was known to be good to his own kids, Lee had no hope that they would succeed on this issue.  They were without any godly help, but really, what was new?

Gods, he was starting to sound like Michael.  Or Clarisse.

Speaking of Michael, the eldest of his younger siblings had come up to stand next to him, pinning Apollo with a look that Lee didn’t need to see to know it was there as their father let out protests at Lee’s claim.

There was no mistaking the validity of Lee’s claim, though.  Not when his words had provoked a low grumble from the skies, one that was easier to feel in his bones than hear with his ears.  For whatever reason, Lee’s claim had been sealed, and he was now his father’s master.

If there was a way to make Zeus regret that, make him regret the whole situation, then Lee would hunt it down and make it happen.

But first, his priority had to be his dad, the pathetic younger body in front of him whose tears were now spilling freely down pasty cheeks studded with red and black and yellow spots.  No matter how furious Lee was, he wasn’t mad at his dad, didn’t think he could ever be mad at his dad.

“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching forwards and pulling him into a hug, like he was a touch-starved little brother and not his father.  “I’m sorry, Dad.��

Apollo resisted, wriggling in his grip, but call Lee selfish.  He didn’t let go.  “Why?” he wailed, voice cracking and sounding so far from the melodic voice that sang in his dreams that Lee had to close his eyes and force himself to imagine it was his dad’s usual, beautiful voice.

“There are too many demigods I don’t trust,” Lee murmured, gentle but aware it would still be heard by everyone in the cabin.  “Too many that listened to words from the Pit, and if any of them claimed you…”  Apollo went rigid in his arms, as though the possibility hadn’t occurred to him.  Some of Lee’s siblings gasped, too, putting the same connection together.  “I couldn’t leave you free, Dad.  Not with that risk.”

And he couldn’t have let any of his siblings take the responsibility.  Lee was the eldest, the head counsellor.  It was his job to protect his family, and if that meant taking on this burden, then he would do it.

“I know,” Apollo said, miserably.  “I hate it.”

There was no lie there, but that didn’t make Lee any happier.  None of this did.

He couldn’t take down a god, but if he could ever work out how to make Zeus regret this…

A glance around the cabin, at his gathered siblings, showed nothing but silent agreement.

If they could make Zeus regret this, then they would.

[halfbloodallbitch]

I like the metaphorical symbolism between Meg and Lester; how Lester's leitmotif is the Sun, Meg's leitmotif is plants. You know, the fact that sunlight is deemed important for the healthy growth of a plant, and how Lester was so pivotal to Meg's growth as a character and as person. I'm not sure if Rick intended, but it's a small, interesting detail...

[halfbloodallbitch]

Percy: Are you more of an Elphaba or a Galinda?

Grover: I’m the goat professor. Obviously.

[halfbloodallbitch]

"I took my time in the shower. I needed a good scrubbing, yes. But mostly I needed to stand with my forehead against the tiles, shaking and weeping until I felt like I could face other people again.

What was it about kindness? In my time as Lester Papadopoulos, I had learned to stand up under horrendous verbal abuse and constant life- threatening violence, but the smallest act of generosity could ninja-kick me right in the heart and break me into a blubbering mess of emotions."

Oh I guarantee it's more than just recent trauma that is causing you to have this reaction, Apollo.

Paul is genuinely kind to Apollo and is showing a fatherly concern for him and Apollo has an emotional breakdown cause of it. What the fuck did Zeus do to him?

[halfbloodallbitch]

still remains best riordanverse scene