#i think a lot about solangelo between HoO and TOA and their dynamic in that time

[aroaceleovaldez]

I really like the idea that for the first few months of them hanging out post-HoO, Will had no idea Nico had stayed at CHB before. He was under the impression that Nico was more or less new to camp, since he had been a rogue demigod, and that he had just been an ally of CHB up until that point who had been to the camp but had never been a camper. The entire time Will just assumed he was the senior camper between the two of them, not knowing Nico had actually joined camp almost a whole two years prior to him and was instead returning.

Nico eventually realizes Will’s misconception and tries to explain it, but Will thinks Nico is messing with him until Nico explains the crack in the dining pavilion (which no one at camp besides Percy knows the origins of, save for maybe Annabeth, Grover, and Chiron) was from him the night he ran away (and maybe also shows Will his camp beads to further prove he’s not making it up, depending on if you believe he has one from BoTL or not). Will then gets to have the fun little journey of recontextualizing everything he knows about Nico.

#pjo #riordanverse #will solace #nico di angleo #solangelo #headcanons #headcanon #i think a lot about solangelo between HoO and TOA and their dynamic in that time #and how despite not thinking negatively of Nico Will still has plenty of misconceptions and assumptions about him #and they have some minor conflict surrounding that while they slowly build up to truly knowing each other #it's largely inconsequential conflict and it doesn't hinder them being friends at all #but the minute they clear it up Will realizes that Nico is a *very* different person than he initially realized #not in a bad way. just that he's seen a Lot More Shit than Will expected #bonus points if this coincides with Will learning Nico's from the 30s #so it goes from Will going ''oh you're just a really powerful son of the Big 3 who idk got trained by your father probably?'' #''and then became an ally of Percy's and helped out in the wars and stuff and now you're finally joining camp a year later than most would'' #to Will learning ''oh. OH. you've seen some shit. oh you've been in this business way longer than most. are you good?'' #''you're 13. most demigods learn they're demigods when they're 12. what do you MEAN you've seen all this shit & been doing this since 10'' #''*ARE YOU GOOD???*''

[tsarinatorment]

Hi! This is totally random & meant in good faith but i see a lot of people say "Riordan made Nico gay out of nowhere/for diversity attention points only!!1!1" I'm wondering if you have any theories on this- when in the writing process do you think riordan decided to make nico gay and why him? also why will solace be the love interest?

Quite frankly, anon, I don't have a clue when he added that detail to Nico's characterisation. Unfortunately I'm not inside Rick's head, so there's only so much I can guess from the outside anyway, and even from that - when I first read PJO, I was a sheltered good little Christian girl at a Catholic school who didn't even know people could be anything other than straight, and while I took a big gap in keeping up with Riordanverse (I stopped reading after MOA for about a decade), when I did pick it up again, I'd already been spoiled on Nico's sexuality and Solangelo, so I honestly never had a chance to spot where Rick might have started trying to sneak hints in.

That being said, as someone who does work on original stuff as well as fanfiction, and therefore has a whole cast of original characters lurking in the back of my brain, it would not overly surprise me if it just felt right to make Nico gay (heck knows some of my own ocs like to surprise me with little factoids about them I was not intending in the first place). That being said, given the massive push for diverse representation in HOO (regardless of how well or poorly executed parts of it are), especially compared to the far less diverse PJO, I would also not be overly surprised if Rick had thought "I should include a gay character", looked at the interactions he'd already written between Nico and Percy, and went "that works, I don't even need to bring in a new character" (especially given how a lot of Rick's worldbuilding is full of glossed-over holes that he can conveniently fill later without contradicting himself too much; it's certainly not a world-building tactic I could follow - I get way too bogged down in the minute details which is why my original novel has existed for seventeen years but has never got past chapter four - but it's one he's mostly managed to make work for him).

It also works to pulverise/ostracise Nico even more, as though he's not been bullied by the narrative enough already... Rick, bullying Nico is now a very, very dead horse, it's time to let him have his happy ending and not throw him back into Tartarus, just saying...

As for why Will; honestly, I suspect there's at least one of two factors coming into play here. Firstly, Will is an already-existing character of similar age who has no narratively important links to the main cast. (Malcolm could also have fit, except for the fact that he's Annabeth's half-brother and given the whole Nico vs Percabeth thing, a child of Athena was likely out of the question). Rick did not need to pluck a brand new character out of the air, but Will was minor enough that he had a lot of space to expand and explore (which he has still mostly not done, I would add, and the scenes in BOO are painfully obviously setting up the ship - a little too blatant and sudden, if you ask me). Secondly, people love the opposites attract trope, and a son of Apollo is pretty opposite to a son of Hades, especially if the life/sun aspects are emphasised compared to the death/shadows ones.

I don't think he picked Will because Will could be Nico's personal healer, however - for starters, as I keep saying and will continue to keep saying, that's an incredibly unhealthy/toxic relationship dynamic, and throwing your one canon gay character into a toxic relationship... that's a really, really bad move. Also, we clearly see that not being the case in TOA - they have a very good, well-balanced relationship where Nico supports Will at least as much as Will supports Nico (if not moreso), and Nico is going to Dionysus for help, not dumping everything on Will and expecting him to fix it.

#Anonymous #solangelo #nico di angelo #will solace #riordanverse #rrverse #blood of olympus #boo #trials of apollo #toa #tsari analyses things

[i-can-summon-yams]

My theory about Relationships in TOA

In TOA so far, we’ve caught up with one “main couple” per book, and everytime the dynamic had changed a lot since HOO

In book one we had Solangelo, who had gotten together officially between books and were very cute and happy

In book two we had Caleo who were had also started dating between books, but were a lot less close then they were on Ogygia and were starting to argue more

In book three we had Jasiper who broke up between books and things were tense between

And I’m going to assume that book five will give us Percabeth who was already together and still staying strong

Which leaves book four with Frank and Hazel. Fitting with the pattern, I think they will have already broken up but will still be good friends and still like hanging out with each other. That would keep it different from the other books, and it feels pretty likely based on how Hazel and Frank have acted.

#trials of apollo #toa #the tyrants tomb #ttt #percy jackson #rick riordan #riordanverse #hazel levesque #frank zhang #i dont think this counts as hate but im not going to tag the ship just to be safe