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the-ghost-king · 3 years

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Do you think Nico is still Catholic? I mean, do you think he still believes in God?

CW // religious trauma, ww2, queerphobia, brainwashing, child “armies”, and other discussions of negative historical aspects of Mussolini’s Italy. With the exception of religious trauma all of it is only vaguely mentioned or referenced (and is mostly kept to the first few paragraphs).

I’d also like to say I’m not Catholic or Christian but I’ve had a fair few conversations about religion so I do think I can answer this somewhat accurately and with insight. I also want to acknowledge that many people headcanon Nico as Jewish, and with the release of ToN I don’t think canonically speaking Nico would be Jewish but the concept of Jewish Nico is no less valid.

I also want to say I ship Solangelo and I know some people don’t, Solangelo isn’t really relevant except for in like 2 paragraphs where I’m talking about my own personal thoughts and headcanons, you could always replace Will’s name with whatever character you think Nico ends up with, or reflect your own thoughts on him connecting to a different religion in that area (there’s an opportunity for him to be Jewish or Islamic or really any religion)

I’d also like to mention that when I use the word “Christianity” I’m also referencing all of the religions born out from underneath Christianity (I’m using it as an umbrella term for Baptist, Evangelist, Presbyterian, etc).

Everything where I discuss in detail is below the cut since this got kind of long!

I think Nico and his relationship towards religion is something extremely complicated and personal to himself. I’ve debated the idea of him remaining catholic, I’ve thought about him adopting various pagan religions, I’ve thought about him converting to some subsect of Christianity as well.

I feel he'd have a complex relationship with Catholicism because it definitely wasn't as progressive then and even when he gets involved in progressive churches it's still just a strange feeling he personally can't shake.

The Catholic Church was an extreme essential part of Mussolini’s indoctrination of youth when formulating ONB (Opera Nazionale Balilla), to the point where within a few years church was a mandated thing Italian children had to attend.

I prescribe to the idea that the Lethe didn’t fully erase Nico’s memories. For example if you asked him what ambrosia tasted like he would say Marzipan but he wouldn’t know why it tasted like that. He could probably recite the Venetian anthem without knowing how he knew the words to it, and so on. So with the way I think the Lethe worked on Nico, I don’t think him believing that homosexuality is bad is a stretch; he doesn’t know when or why he learned what but he remembers the opinions he was taught to go with.

I also prescribe to the idea that with time Nico’s memories do begin to return. In his mid teen years 14-16 (so house of hades through toa) the memories he’s remembering are small quick flashes of things beyond his mother and Bianca; the glint of someone’s blue eyes, tying the laces on a pair of new brown boots, his mother in a glittering dress, his hand picking a flower and handing it off to a faceless figure, etc. I think when he’s about 17-25, so after toa, (and even occasionally after that) he starts gaining full memories back; the glint of blue eyes and the person he handed the flower to he now knows to be the same person who was his childhood best friend, etc.

With the good mementoes, Nico would also have to sort through the bad, the complex, the grey areas, and the horrid. It would be a very hard and “angsty” thing for him to do and I’m sure some less pleasant stuff would turn up and make him feel awful, but Nico to some extent is a victim of the circumstances he was raised in- such things like religion.

I hold onto the belief that Maria was far more progressive than the place she lived in, and she knew there was something queer about Nico and she tried to keep him from the worst of things. So although he likely wouldn’t have ever seen the physical abuse and harm brought to queer people during the time, there were probably some ideas that were unavoidably heard and internalized.

I think Nico’s interpretation of God (and Maria’s too) is that if his father and all the other gods of various polytheistic religions can exist, why can’t God? Or something similar, I think Bianca would have believed something similar to Samirah in the sense that God created all the polytheistic versions of gods as well.

I think in regards to specifically Nico he needed to remove himself from religion as a whole during that period of time after Bianca died until about when he returns to camp in Blood of Olympus. I don’t think his brain was really entirely able to process the complexities of his religious beliefs at any point during that, and I do however think those few years were essential and extremely formative to Nico’s perception of religion and himself within that space.

It’s been widely accepted in fanon for a long time that Nico knows at least one god from every religion or so, and he has especially close relations to the gods of the dead within those religions. This was also basically made canon in the Italian Christmas oneshot Rick wrote. We know Nico spent a lot of time in a lot of different countries all alone, I don’t think it’s the slightest stretch to assume during that time he visited churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples since all are known for having some level of openness and provision depending on the particular sect of religion they operate under.

It’s also important to note that people in times of crisis either turn into full atheists or major religious figures in order to find strength and cope. Well I don’t think full atheism is possible when you dad is literally a Greek god, so this leaves Nico turning to a religious figure.

I think to Nico churches (in particular) were a sanctuary, a place to relax and think, but in a weird way to him religion was sort of like coming home. He could sleep in a church for a night or two and he didn’t have to worry about his safety or taking care of himself, as well as that if he did have some level of memory in flashes or even just feelings he could remember, then him finding some sort of meaning in the actual buildings themself makes sense.

I can guarantee he likely had memories of Sunday school and praying before bed, and even though his church was often preaching religion using gods name in vain, I do think there would be some good memories Nico would have. Whether or not those memories were actually about religion I can’t be sure, but maybe he found comfort in the steady meter of prayers, or the sound of songs being sung, or maybe he just liked sitting in the pews next to his mom.

Because of the almost meditative effect people describe religion as having, I think Catholic Churches to Nico are a pause in some ways, and I think he still remembers childhood psalms and prayers and those could help respark memories and provide connections to childhood in some manner or another.

So my idea of Nico reconnecting to Catholicism is a journey of him learning how to overcome the past, move on from the religious trauma he was likely given, and attempt to move forward in a way that allows him to mold the space he inhabits for his own needs. This lines up well with the general character arc we’re starting to see from Nico in ToA and this would be another way for him to continue that journey. The two Catholic people I’ve talked to about Nico and religion both seem to agree that this is the arc Nico is most likely to take, I’m not Catholic so I don’t know, but I think this idea falls apart when you get into the concept of how bad Nico’s religious trauma might be. And that is entirely dependent on each persons idea and interpretation of Nico so I can’t provide a full answer.

The idea of Nico connecting himself to a pagan religion I touched on lightly above as well, “It’s also important to note that people in times of crisis either turn into full atheists or major religious figures in order to find strength and cope. Well I don’t think full atheism is possible when you dad is literally a Greek god, so this leaves Nico turning to a religious figure”. I think the problem with Nico worshiping pagan gods is that he’s quite literally met them and he knows how ridiculous they can be sometimes, so his idea of worship in regards to pagan gods wouldn’t actually be worship, but more him stopping to give them respect sometimes. However I think Nico would fight this idea because how can you be more respectful to gods than literally going on quests for them? And then the reason I like this idea is because it allows Nico to kind of ditch monotheism in a way and is like "my dad is a Greek god and I'll worship him but if the Greek and Roman and Egyptian and Norse gods all exist then all gods must exist" and so he just kind of worships everyone all the time in this like weird mixture or religion he's decided works for him and it's like this whole spiritual thing and it's just very like "yeah all gods are real idk how it works". I think this idea is possible, but it falls apart when the question of how religion works is brought up, and I don’t personally think it’s possible to worship someone if you know them personally.

Now my personal favorite idea, which doesn’t have too much canon information to back it up, is that Nico converts to Christianity.

I feel this way because I feel Will would have been raised underneath some sort of Christian belief system (I headcanon his grandfather as like a priest/pastor/etc), and I feel that down south in some places I still holds heavily onto the idea that people attend church on Sunday unless they’re ill (I headcanon Will from a small city not Austin, Texas). So when down South for something one day (probably meeting Will’s family for the first time) it's either a Sunday or a religious holiday so Will’s family is like "church time!" and Nico agrees because he's polite, Will's grandfather is leading and he'd befriended him some in the days leading up to service, and he doesn't think it will be too bad with Will there. So he goes out of social politeness, it’s not an obligation and he could have refused if he really wanted to but he has started working at this point on his feelings about religion and feels comfortable enough to attend a service for politeness sake. With time I could see Nico growing comfortable with Will’s family, and Will’s grandfathers idea of religion; I think Will’a childhood church would be a lot more progressive than Nico’s, and in addition to that Will’s grandfather teaches religion more as a moral compass rather than a distinct set of rules that can’t be broken.

There’s the potential here for religious healing and reacceptance of the traumas that Catholicism provided him with, as he heals through connections and friendships he’s made, and uses Christianity also as a method of “coming home” but sort of in a way that provides a new him, so more change than acceptance would occur in his arc. (If Nico stuck with Catholicism the arc would be more acceptance than change as a personal journey).

I also want to bring up the possibility of Will converting to Catholicism rather than Nico converting to Christianity. I think who converts to which religion will depend on which one of them has a closer relationship to which religion, if religion is more important to Nico then Will might convert and the opposite is true. There’s also the possibility of course that neither of them would convert and they would be marrried in a more non-denominational ceremony rather than one of a particular religion (I could see them doing this whether or not one of them converts). The point I’m trying to make with this little one of paragraph is essentially there’s so many ways to interpret Nico’s relationship to religion and where his journey will lead him.

Personally I find my myself going back and forth between Nico remaining Catholic, and Nico converting to Christianity. I haven’t reached a full conclusion yet, but I think whatever I decide will be really dependent on whether or not I think Nico is someone who will change more than he accepts the past, or if he will accept the past more than he changes; and so far relying on ToA to analyze Nico, he’s the type of person who undergoes change in order to accept the past, so perhaps the best answer for him is a storyline I’ll come up with somewhere between him fully accepting Catholicism and him converting to some sort of Christianity.

The only reason I like the more pagan, polytheistic sort of Nico is because I think eventually he’ll be the type of person who doesn’t go to church each Sunday but if he needs a space to take a break and relax and reflect on things he’ll go into any accepting church/synagogue/mosque/temple that will allow him to worship for some time in that space. Pagan Nico as an idea (to me) isn’t necessarily about worshiping a specific polytheistic religion, but instead him acknowledging that all of the gods are interconnected and deserve respect.

I think within writing this I came to a conclusion about my own thoughts on Nico and religion, in the beginning of his journey towards reconnecting with religion Nico would get swept up by Will’s family a little. He wouldn’t convert at this point but that opening ceremony would make him start thinking about religion again which wasn’t something he’d done since he was a kid. He’s spend a lot of time thinking, and talking to Will about his thoughts on the matter. At some point he would decide to try to reconnect with Catholicism, he would do so affectively and learn how to accept that past and try to move forward. Although Catholicism to him would feel like coming home, personally he would feel like he’s turning his back on his past in some way. This would launch Nico into another period of self questioning and reflection on his religious beliefs, and although he traveled the world as a kid and knew a lot about many different religions he would learn as much as he could all over again. After that period, he would arrive the the conclusion that all gods were interconnected in some way and he would take a moment often to pay respects to all of them as needed.

But of course, all of this is just personal thoughts, and so much of what I’ve discussed here will depend largely on each individuals perception of Nico and how they see his future panning out, and with who and where they see him ending up as the years go on. My belief on his relationship to religion is just one of what I am sure is many, and that’s completely fine and understandable.

#Nico di Angelo #pjo #hoo #analysis #catholic nico di angelo #nico and catholicism

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stop-brunotime · 6 years

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CW: I'm ranting about personal stuff, using bad language, feeling shit about myself and being a bad example, complaining about my emotionally abusive mother, etc. Proceed with caution. This is further to my post on Thursday. Thank you to everyone who reached out. It meant the world, and I'll reply individually when I'm done with this post. I'm going to list the questions that have been bugging me to the point of suicidal ideation, and if you know the answers, please help a sibling out!

Christmas

Am I the only one bothered by Christmas trees? Like, everyone knows Jesus was probably born in August/September, because that's when Judaism's 'go visit the family' holidays are and there's no way shepherds would've been hanging out in the pastures in midwinter. Christmas trees are a blind appropriation of European Paganism's customs (and, while we're at it, holiday, since it's not even Jesus's real birthday). We're all claiming to celebrate Jesus, when in reality we're just marking our homes as places the tree spirits can overwinter. How can we claim to live lives of peace and love and do ignorant, appropriative shit like that?

Santa. FFS, this one grates my carrot to the quick. Named for St Nicholas (who was an African bishop and very definitely Black, despite what the white supremacists will tell you on Twitter), Santa seems to be a combination of Scandinavian Pagan myths. Either he's a Christian appropriation of Odinn, who gave kids gifts at midwinter, or he's an erasure of Sami (native Scandinavians, traditionally marginalised) shamans (who were typically women) who apparently gave the grown-ups entheogenic mushrooms. So, we're erasing POC and Native women and getting toxic about it on socials. Nice. I totally want gifts from that guy! (I'm aware that in Spain and Germany [and probably other countries too] it's the Baby Jesus who brings the gifts. I'm not resident in one of those countries, so have to deal with all the Santa bullshit) Again, we claim to be all about the peace and love how?!

Bringing me to Christians. Now, I identify as one, so am spraying friendly fire here. Why are my choices of places to worship either the kind who preach heterosexism from the pulpit, regularly using 'the homosexuals' as our go-to example of unrepentant sinners bound for eternity in Hell, or the kind who just don't mention it, which feels like ominous silence? The church who don't actively hate on queers have asked me to play in their music group. I gave guy some bullshit reason about being too busy to do something I would actually like to do as a person of faith, because I was scared that, if I started doing it and they found out I occasionally fall for women and NBs/GNCs, they'd throw me out and publicly shame me and maybe sell me out to the cops (who are wildly heterosexist, backed up by the law, and allegedly not above a bit of corrective gang rape of queer prisoners).

And onto Trump. The man reminds me of my mother. And that makes me a terrible human, because he does so many worse things than triggering memories of her being consistently passive-aggressive and theologically inaccurate about "Christian values". He makes such rapey comments all the fucking time, and just dismisses anyone who tries to call him on it. He is the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the world, and yet I meet so many people who love him. We live in fucking Africa...what exactly are we doing supporting the guy who's defunding all the USAID healthcare programs that keep us in contraceptives? Like, sure, I've never had an abortion, and, barring medical necessity or a pregnancy from being raped again, am probably going to keep any pregnancy I achieve before menopause (which is only ten years away, and I don't exactly have the most active sex life from which to achieve a pregnancy)...but I've been the emergency contact on enough hospital admission forms to know that it's a necessary medical procedure and people need access to quick, cheap, and as-painless-as-possible abortions. We got that from USAID. Now Trump has fucked that up and we need to go private, which is a D&C under full anaesthesia, with associated risks. Sure, Trump blustered a bit about Mugabe, but didn't do anything real in the eleven months between him taking office and us having our coup-that's-not-a-coup. Tweeting doesn't count. How exactly is that asshole going to be 'the next Mordecai of Israel' and 'the one to rid the world of dictatorship'?

Speaking of pathological Machiavellian narcissists, does anyone have resources for recovering from a parent who used you to meet her needs from when you were really small? She never raped me or anything, but the long-term emotional neglect, belittling, passive-aggression, criticism, gaslighting, parental alienation (yes, for almost twenty years she had me convinced that my dad, whom I love and who I'm most like, was the angry abuser in their relationship and she was the victim) have taken their toll. My therapist says I need to adjust my expectations of her and my problems will go away. I see her point, but my mother is still mean as fuck. For example, she sent me a room diffuser that smelled like it came from a pound shop for Christmas. (It was called 'african spice'. It smelled of cinnamon. There are no African spices. Cinnamon is from Asia. She's heard me rant several times about people mis-labelling plant origins, so it's not like she doesn't know how much it bugs me.) This is after a quarter century of me saying variations on, 'Books or nothing, but please no cash or girly shit,' every Christmas and birthday. This is after coming out to her as genderqueer. She said she immediately thought of me when she saw it. Surely there's a more direct way to tell me that I or my house smell/s bad? Perhaps a way that doesn't subtly signal that she still frames me as the gender-perfect imaginary daughter she has in her head? She went to the effort of having it brought to Zimbabwe in a suitcase (what comes in suitcases isn't charged import tax). She could have spent that fiver on a second-hand book from Amazon, sent it out in a way that bypassed ZIMRA's human rights violation of a book tax, and given me the gift of freedom of information. But she chose to force her gender ideals on me in a way that says, yet again, that I need to be just a little bit better to be worthy of her love

I'm legit concerned that she's made me a horrible person. She gave me so many of her issues that I'm pretty sure everyone feels about me the way they do about her. I'm sure everyone looks at me and sees the lack of tangible results that come from being terrified of being publicly shamed as crazy and weird. I'm horribly awkward and say the wrong thing often. I've had dates end because I got awkward and up in my head and told him that wood cockroaches eat their parents' shit to replenish their gut flora after molting. I take days, sometimes months, to reply to messages. I hold opinions that are shared by a tiny minority of scientists and theologians, and everyone disagrees. And my writing output bears this out. The only time people say nice stuff about my writing is when I've written porn under a fake name that doesn't really have socials. The rest of the time, it's people calling me out or trolling me. Am I wrong? Is the internet just a toxic shit hole? Is everyone talking smack about me in DM, and I have no idea how many people are laughing at me? Should I just delete all my accounts, move to the Andes, change my name, and raise llamas for yarn and bees for mead?

What even is the right thing to do? I was raised with so much certainty, and have since found out things like the universe wasn't made in six days five thousand years ago, and nobody really knows where Mount Sinai is. It doesn't feel right to just pick the most convenient set of rules. I should be able to tell what the right choice is. Who died and bequeathed me the right to decide right from wrong? How am I supposed to help others when I don't even know the answers myself (and neither do any of the scholars, who are simply putting forward a best guess model) and will probably be wrestling with existential questions on my death bed? Put your own mask on first, sure, but how do I fit all these masks on one face?

#personal #rant #questions

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