#yes i'm tagging this like an ao3 fic

[jackdaw-writes]

Hannah can't breathe. He's sitting in the school bathroom, on top of the lid of a toilet lucky enough to actually still have a lid.

There are red scratch-lines down his arms and blood under his nails from where he picked at a scab on his face. Blood is still running down his face ever so slowly. He doesn't bother wiping it away.

With each breath, Hannah has to fight to get air into his body. His lungs ache, seeming to rattle with each breath. He can't tell if the taste of blood on his tongue is real or imaginary.

His abdomen cramps painfully. He'll get his period soon. As Hannah struggles to take another breath, he moves, quickly opening his sportsbra and stuffing it into his school-bag. It makes breathing easier, but now there is a familiar, uncomfortable pull at the skin on his chest.

He curls forward, pulling his legs up on top of the toilet as well and wrapping his arms around them, trying to put sone of the weight off his chest. His next breath rattles painfully and he is forced to put some space between his chest and his knees again.

Hannah only notices that he's crying when he tastes salt. He hates having to choose between breathing and existing with a weight that isn't supposed to be there. He hates the pain in his stomach that he knows will make it impossible to stand straight, even if he wore a binder.

Not that he can really move right now. Hannah focuses on breathing, unsure if he wants to move. It would cost so much energy to even move his fingers. It doesn't seem worth it.

Hannah blinks and there are loud voices outside of the bathroom stall. Other people pushing into the bathroom, chattering in front of the mirror or moving to the other stalls. Someone rattles at the door to his stall. Hannah can only stare until they stop.

It feels like he is moving through honey, even his mind caught in it, but Hannah still forces himself to look at his phone. No messages. He didn't expect anything else. Then he looks at the time.

Hannah missed the entire lesson. He went to the bathroom before the lesson even started, and now it's over. Hannah has been sitting there for over an hour.

He only notices that he started scratching again when his arms sting. He knows, if his nails weren't bitten as short as they are, he would have already broken skin.

Hannah sighs without a sound, instead clamping his right hand around his left wrist, massaging the skin there. He focuses on the pressure, tries to pull himself back into his body with it.

Moving will get easier the more he does it. Still, it's hard for him to uncurl, if only as much as his pain will allow. He forces his legs onto the ground, sits for a while. Then he stands up, only ro pause, a hand on the doorhandle. He just breathes, for a while.

Hannah doesn't put his bra back on. He doesn't think he could handle it, not right now. When he leaves the stall, the bathroom is empty again. Break must be over, then. He doesn't remember the other students leaving, but that's typical.

Hannah stops in front of the bathroom mirror, careful to look at nothing but his face. There are circles under his eyes. They look worse than normal. Surprisingly, his eyes themselves don't look bloodshot. Just kind of empty.

There are tearstreaks down his cheeks and dried blood where he picked off a scab on his forehead, reaching down till his chin. This time, when Hannah sighs, it makes a sound. He flinches.

Hannah can't tell if he's careful while using a paper-towel and water to clean his face, but it's not too red by the end of it, which must mean he has been. Really, nothing better could be expected with the quality of the papertowels the school gives them.

Hannah almost doubles over when the pain in his abdomen spikes, forcing his muscles to tense. He does his best to breathe, leaning on the bathroom sink. His knuckles have tirned white with how tight he's clutching it.

When the wave goes over, Hannah straightens up again. He's still slouched, hiding his chest and trying to take strain off of his lower back, but doing more sounds like a bad idea.

Hannah runs his tongue over his lips. They're dry. He should drink something. He knows he still has water in his school-bag, but taking it off right now and putting it back on afterwards sounds like an impossible task.

He blinks slowly, trying his best to grasp a clear thought. He won't be returning to class like this, that's for sure. A destination in mind, Hannah quickly moves. He'll drink when he's there.

Hannah walks quickly but silently, something he is thankful for. He doesn't think he could deal with a teacher questioning him right now. Doesn't think he could get the words needed to answer out of his mouth. They would only get stuck in his throat, with pointy edges that always make him gag.

Hannah makes it to the only open window at this part of the school easily enough, squeezing through and pushing it closed behind him. He all but collapses as soon as he's out of view, leaning against a wall. He doesn't know what's on the other side.

His hands shake from the strain as Hannah pulls out his bottle and drinks water. Je stares at the sky, watching the clouds. Instinctively, he curls back up, his knees pulled to his chest.

He barely manages to take another drink and put down the waterbottle before Hannah feels a familiar weight fall back iver his limbs. He won't be moving for a while. So Hannah stares at the sky and allows his thoughts to drift.

[soybean-official]

Listen i love the Dadgil fluff as much as the next guy but let's be real here neither Dante nor Vergil are even remotely suitable to take care of a small child

[sparky-is-spiders]

Ok I do actually need to work on assignments, but here's a short little thing I wrote about aro Jon. Hopefully later I can come back to it and add a few more scenes and give it a good polish (it's a tad rough lol) but for now enjoy. Fic under the cut.

Warnings for: descriptions of burning (about on par with what happens in episode 67 in terms of severity (w/ Jack and Agnes))

“Oh are you working on- er, is that the statement with Agnes?”

Jon leveled a cold, flat stare at Martin. The kind which, in a better world, would be capable of wiping people from existence. Martin failed to dematerialize. Jon rubbed their forehead.

“Case #0071803, yes. What about it.” It should’ve been more of a question, really, but they just couldn’t be bothered with the inflection. They were too exhausted, and quite frankly Martin wasn’t worth the effort.

“Nothing! Nothing! Just…” Martin trailed off for a moment. Jon briefly entertained fantasies of him turning around and leaving. As per usual, Martin failed to meet expectations. “It seems sort of romantic, doesn’t it?”

What? “What?”

“Well… you know… I mean it was horrible, obviously. But… at the same time it was sort of- was sort of sweet? I mean, he must’ve really loved her.”

Jon took a brief moment to compose themselves, “Martin, that’s-” then another one, for good measure. “She-” The memory of scalding heat, of liquid flesh flowing between their teeth, a searing agony they had never experienced and yet knew intimately-

A deep breath. “Forgive me if I don’t see what’s so ‘romantic’ about receiving third degree burns just for a kiss.”

Martin looks hurt, maybe. Or somehow upset. And like maybe his hurt or upset or whatever else is somehow Jon’s fault.

“But… haven’t you ever-”

And wherever Martin was going with that particular line of inquiry, Jon didn’t need to hear it.

“No, I have not. Now if you are quite finished, I need to get back to work.”

They stared him down with as much ice as they could muster, and at least this time, it had the desired effect of encouraging Martin to remove himself from their office.

***

Somewhere in Jon’s flat, tucked away in some crevasse or fallen behind the sofa, there is a flag. On it, there is purple, fading to white, fading to green. A reckless purchase made upon the news of their promotion, when they thought it might just be them and Sasha and Tim, and perhaps it would be alright, if a few other people knew.

It had arrived in a small package on the first day of their new position, when Jon had learned that it would be Sasha and Tim and Martin. They had considered putting it there anyway, in the little clay pencil-holder shaped like a cat (apparently it had been Gertrude’s, and it was quite possibly the only useful thing she had left behind).

They thought about unknown eyes measuring it. Measuring them. They thought about questions, and unwanted comments, and all the opinions people liked to have about love and sex and abstention from either.

The flag never made it out of their flat.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

RRVerse Fandom, Please Hear Me Out...

Message to the wider Riordanverse fandom:

Please correctly tag your fanfics with the correct fandom tags.

I am getting tired of seeing non-Apollo fics cluttering up the Trials of Apollo tag (such as Percy/Annabeth. like. what. they're barely in ToA. why are they there.). If your fanfic does not deal with Apollo, Meg McCaffrey, or the story of ToA or the consequences of it, please do not tag it as such.

I have seen fics tagged as ToA and not even have the MC, Apollo, tagged as part of the cast. So please. I am begging you. Please stop. You have the Percy Jackson & the Olympians - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, AND The Heroes of Olympus tags.

Solangelo writers, you now have the Sun and the Star tag, as well as the All Media Types one. Unless it happens during or alongside something to do with Apollo & his story, please refrain from tagging it as ToA.

And no. I do not think just being Solangelo should qualify all Solangelo fics to be tagged as ToA. If anything, they should be The Sun and The Star tag or even The Heroes of Olympus tag because that's when it all began! However, if, say, it's during The Hidden Oracle or takes place in the ToA timeframe then sure! ToA tag it!

But if it's just like an AU or something that only focuses on Solangelo? Then please don't. It's not ToA then.

This is what the ToA tag looks like btw:

I know, Nico, Will, and Percy are all popular characters, but COME ON. This is Apollo's tag, please give him this! It's so hard to find fics I want to read because it's so cluttered! Apollo's not even in the top three most-tagged characters in his own fandom tag.😒

And look at the gap between the number of fics Apollo's in compared to Percy! A 354 gap! And there's 1,616 gap between Apollo and Nico! And I can say with certainty that not all of those fics Percy - and even Nico and Will - are in are related to ToA.

Meg McCaffrey, the second MC of the series, is not even on the board. And she's a very close second MC.

And trust me. I know a bunch of these fics have nothing to do with ToA. I have scoured the tag many times and have figured that out.

So please, please, please leave The Trials of Apollo tag be unless you are writing for The Trials of Apollo. We are our own fandom and frankly, it's getting annoying having to shuffle through a bunch of fics that have nothing to do with ToA just to find ones we want to read.

Fic authors, it would be such a big help if you could remove the ToA tag from your fic if it doesn't have anything to do with ToA. I know you want your fic to be seen, and use a bunch of tags to do so, but this really inconveniences the ToA fans who just want to read about our favorite loser god and his gremlin adopted sister. ☹️

Sincerely,

A ToA fan who just wants to read fics about her favorite character but can hardly wade through the fics even with the filtering system.

Thank you. It needed to be said.

[thatonegaybrit]

; a new chapter !! from my fav fic !! I'm now going to be on my phone for a considerable amount of unspecified time doing no one knows what even though I was supposed to be doing smth else !!

[averlym]

"oh my soul, is it here? or is it rotting somewhere with my head?"

[isat-script-project]

(whats your main)

@felikatze yo! i believe i also linked my main in the bio of this blog. you might know me for like, 3 isat essays. and also divorce.

[aeoris4lovers]

Angstpril 2023 Day One: Liar

There were very few things in life that Eadwulf insisted upon without any chance of compromise. Choosing battles was a matter of survival under the tutelage of Master Ikithon; incurring punishment was easy enough to do even without the added risk that stubbornness presented. To resist bending only made it inevitable that one would eventually have to break, and as far as Eadwulf was concerned, the world offered little of great enough importance to justify tempting that fate.

It was not an oath made lightly, then, when he promised that he would return every day that he was able to one particular cell in the depths of Vergesson Sanatorium.

Astrid refused to speak to him for weeks after the incident, after what he did that night to save her from a fate far worse than a scar. So, with no one there to swear it to, he made his promise to the gods themselves.

He knelt on the floor of his bedroom, hands clasped together in his lap. Outside the small window above his bed, the cool light of the nearly-full moon fanned out across the skies, setting the shadowed room aglow with the night’s ghostly haze. His gaze settled on the nearest mountain peaks; ancient and immense and unmoving, he thought they must be the closest things to gods he would ever lay his eyes on. When thoughts of his past, of his people, of his own actions that night threatened to creep to the front of his mind, he pressed them back into the darkness of memory. They were gone now; there was nothing more to be done for them. Instead, he turned his thoughts again to Bren, to bright red hair and wild eyes and roaring flames and the crack of rock against bone. 

“If I condemned him to this fate,” he whispered, so quiet it was more thought than speech, “let me be the one to see him through it.”

Only a moment later, the soft moonlight was eclipsed by the silhouettes of two ravens coming to rest on the windowsill, and he knew somewhere deep within him that his oath had been sealed.

The next morning, he rose earlier than usual and ate his breakfast as quickly as he could manage to hold it down. The sun still hadn’t even begun to show itself in the young day’s sky when he slipped past the guards at the sanatorium, giving each of them a look which told them not to stand in his way if they valued their lives. They had no way of knowing that, in truth, he wasn’t sure if he would have the courage to make good on that threat; they only saw the determination in his eyes and stepped aside. 

As he pushed through hall after hall, he wasted no time looking at anything other than the faces in each cell, searching for blue eyes and red hair. Any strange looks that may have been aimed his way were lost in the blur of stone and bars and wrong faces. 

When he finally turned a corner and saw a short-cropped burst of orange in the nearest cell, he was just in time to stop the guard who was preparing to enter with whatever sad excuse for a breakfast they had prepared for the day. He caught the guard by the arm, stooping down to look her in the eye, and pressed a few coins into her hand.

All he said was, “Let me.”

She stared at him for a long few seconds, head tilted to one side, before shrugging.

“If you insist.”

Handing him the tray of oatmeal and water, she unlocked the door of Bren’s cell and started off toward the next one down, leaving Eadwulf there alone. He slipped through the door, closed it behind him, and crouched down next to Bren, truly taking in his current state for the first time. 

Perhaps the most noticeable thing should have been how beat up he was – the dark bruises, the blood that no one had bothered to wash from his skin. But instead, all Eadwulf could see was how empty he looked. There was always such a fire behind his eyes, a kind of passion and life there, like his mind was working so feverishly to puzzle the world together that you could watch it happening from the outside, and now? That fire had been all but doused. His eyes were glazed over, wandering helplessly around the space, looking through it all and not truly seeing any of it. There was a slight strain on his face, a clench to his brow that Eadwulf knew his resting face didn’t possess, which betrayed some process of thought, no doubt an unpleasant one. It was distant, though, and passive, as though the thoughts had taken on a life of their own within his mind and he, in this clouded state, was helpless to resist or engage them at all. When his gaze finally fell on Eadwulf, there was a soft spark of recognition that sent Eadwulf’s heart into his throat.

Eadwulf returned every morning after that, and again every night, so long as he wasn’t off on a mission or locked away for the sake of some punishment. Each morning, he fed Bren whatever breakfast the guards had prepared, careful to make it a far more gentle process than the other meals likely involved. As Bren’s hair grew longer with time, Eadwulf took to brushing it, and trimming it when the ends began to fray. A few times, he considered cutting it short again; surely, it would be more comfortable for Bren to have less of it. But there was no ignoring how his eyes fluttered closed at the feeling of it being brushed, or how he hummed in a way that almost seemed to approach contentment — better to keep it long, Eadwulf always ultimately decided. 

At night, Eadwulf would clean him — easy enough to do with a simple spell, but most nights Eadwulf wiped his face and hands the mundane way first, probably more for his own sake than for Bren’s — and tended to whatever wounds may have been sustained since the last visit. Then, he would take out whatever books he had been able to find that day, sit by Bren’s side, and read. Bren’s favorite of the books, judging by the way his eyes brightened ever so slightly at the sight of its cover, was an old children's story about a young boy and a cat prince, so they always started and finished with that one. In between, they cycled through as many of the other books as Eadwulf thought they safely had time for, and by the time he closed the fairytale for the final time, Bren was almost always slumped against his side, asleep. 

Eventually, once the rifts between them had been repaired, Astrid joined him for some of his visits, though she was quickly given more responsibilities than him and often found it more difficult to get away. On those days, Astrid would braid Bren’s hair once he had brushed it in the mornings, and alternated reading with him at night.

And after every nighttime visit, he would sit in his bed and write a few lines in a journal: how the day’s visits had gone, what had gone on in the outside world that day or over the past few days, what he and Astrid were doing in their own lives. Someday, he told himself, Bren would have his mind back. Someday, he would hand over the journal, a meticulous record of the days Bren was locked away. Someday, Bren would be able to read it, and it would be as if he hadn’t missed a thing at all.

In all that time spent in Bren’s cell, Eadwulf never feared being discovered by Master Ikithon — not out of carelessness or apathy toward the consequences he would inevitably incur, but because he knew it was foolish to assume he hadn’t already been discovered at the very start. The archmage’s gaze took immense care to avoid, and nowhere was it more omnipresent than in the halls of the sanatorium. The chances that he had gone unnoticed were laughably slim — it was better to assume Master Ikithon was well aware, that a confrontation would come soon enough.

And come it did.

One morning, nearly two years into his visits, Eadwulf arrived at Bren’s cell to see his teacher standing there, calmly watching him approach. Inside the cell, he could see Bren’s eyes wide and his face held more tensely than usual. He was shifting slightly where he sat, as though his own body were the walls of a prison preventing him from running away.

All at once, Eadwulf was overcome with the urge to run forward, to lunge at Ikithon, to scream, because how dare he come here and strike that kind of fear into someone so helpless, hasn’t Bren been through enough? But he pushed the urge down and kept calm as he walked in spite of it. It was him that the archmage was angry with, it was him who would face the consequences of his actions; Bren had no reason to be afraid.

As it turned out, neither did he. Master Ikithon wasn’t angry, not at Eadwulf nor Bren; he never said or even suggested that Eadwulf would be punished, and the calm smile never fell from his face. He seemed entirely unfazed — pleased, even — by Eadwulf’s actions. 

“You are welcome to visit our dear Bren whenever you wish, Eadwulf,” he said in a tone that could almost be mistaken for good-natured, “as is Miss Becke. In fact, I think it’s wonderful that you three have grown to care so much for each other, even after all this time. By all means, do continue to come visit him if it pleases you.” Moving closer, he added in a lower tone, “I would only urge you to remember that it is for you, yes? As much as it pains me to say this, Bren is — how shall I put this? — absent, by all accounts. You are a smart boy, I have no doubt you’ve noticed. Each time you leave this place, it is to him as if you were never here at all; he won’t remember. The sharp young man we knew is, I’m afraid, no longer with us.”

And every night since then, as silence fell over the sanatorium’s halls, Eadwulf would look down at Bren, tucked against his side the same way they had once grown used to laying in their beds, and ask himself: how could that possibly be true?

How, when he still squirmed at the mere sight of his old teacher standing nearby, when his eyes still sparked at the sight of his favorite fairytale’s cover, when he still remembered how to fall asleep next to Eadwulf like it was as simple as breathing, could Bren be gone? How could it be possible that such a sharp mind, so full of passion and of life, simply slipped away? Even if he remembered none of it, even if each day felt to him like the first time, Bren seemed in his own way to welcome their company far more than any other’s, to relax in some small way at their presence; did that not count for something?

It would take him many more years to truly make sense of it, to fully understand the weight of what it meant, but the simple fact remained: that Bren was gone was the first of Trent Ikithon’s lies that Eadwulf ever saw through.

[evil-ontheinside]

When ppl misinterpret what type of relationship two characters have 🙃

[littlespoonevan]

.

[fluffypotatey]

author's note: ok y'all, fair warning, there will be pain. just letting you know.

author's note: pain is coming

author's note: you will get hurt

me, someone fair of heart: psh! yeah, okay, whatever you say

me, post-reading said chapter of fic that was guaranteed to be painful:

[ratcandy]

being a zote liker is so HARD majority of the fandom hates him and the rest find the weirdest ways to mischaracterize him or similarly never talk about him because the majority exists and will EAT you for it

[warrior-of-storms]

SCREECHING IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!

I have been working on this on and off since April it has been such a pain but I am absolutely delighted that I get to finally share it.

[cryingatships]

If ao3 stays down for another 24 hours then I may just start writing a 5 Pisaeng x 1 Kawi BMF smut fic that was I was inspired to write by THAT ONE GIF set but never actually did cos 1) I had too much stuff to read n watch 2) I don't think ppl in the bl drama fandom would appreciate such debauchery

But with queerphobes ddos-ing my beloved emotional support website I MUST start writing the nastiest smuttiest shit to protest it's like my moral duty and obligation

[that-was-anticlimactic]

*sigh* fine, if none of you will care about kenji, i will 😌

[burinazar]

when i mention that i have the most individual MiA fics out of any author on AO3 i am not bragging. mostly i am sad about this. fic scene is very small, total of ~200 works in all languages

i am also always noting that the characters i'm likely to read/write about aren't the same ones as the characters most of the rest of the already-small fic reader and writer scene for The Hole Show is likely to read/write about. so the following results aren't news to me

but i hadn't thought to actually compare character tags for the whole fandom to character tags for my work, and the sheer disparity between 'tags of the fandom' and 'tags of the author who wrote the most individual fics in that fandom' is...funny lol. (left: MiA tag as a whole's most tagged characters; right: ebilfic's most tagged characters