#tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Hey I was totally randomly wondering what you thought about Will and Apollo’s relationship? :D

This took me a while to get around to, so sorry about the delay! I just love this relationship so much so I needed to make sure I had the time to delve into it properly and give it the acknowledgement it deserves!

Why? Because Apollo and Will's relationship is simultaneously so wholesome and beautiful, and also so sad, because they both love each other so much - but they don't often get the chance to show it, and indeed when they do get the chance, they get a little bit awkward and shy.

We might as well start chronologically here, with the first massive sign that this is a positive relationship, and not a neutral or negative one, and that's BOO. BOO is actually a goldmine for getting Will's unfettered and unbiased thoughts on Apollo, because once we hit TOA we're seeing it all through Apollo's unreliable narration, where he can't possibily believe that his kids might not actually hate him, and also the aforementioned awkwardness.

Will actively worries about Apollo. Before the idea of him being mortal enters the equation, back when he's a fully fledged god and surely there shouldn't be anything that could hurt him - Will is worried about him.

‘We don’t know what’s going on at Delphi,’ Will continued. ‘My dad hasn’t answered any prayers, or appeared in any dreams ... I mean, all the gods have been silent, but this isn’t like Apollo. Something’s wrong.’

"Something's wrong", Will says, after acknowledging that for most gods this degree of silence isn't weird at all - but that it is, for Apollo. That Apollo not dropping in on his kids' dreams is a massive red flag that something is wrong.

I'm just gonna dip into a secondary thing here because it's also occurred to me that there's an obvious fear running through Will here - "we don't know what's going on at Delphi". Delphi, the home of the oracle (hence this conversation coming up in the first place), but also the place of Apollo's greatest mythological battle. At this point it doesn't seem like the campers know that Python is definitely back, but they know something is wrong, that somehow the prophecies are blocked which means something's happened to one of Apollo's core seats of power, and with no signs that Apollo is trying to fix it - there's a high chance that at this point Will is terrified that his father has actually been defeated. And it's a logical jump to make - after all, gods are not exactly known for just letting control of their domains disappear, and with the double-whammy of him also going silent as one of his sacred places stops working...

I really, really, would not want to be in the shoes of an Apollo kid right then.

But anyway, back to the main point of this, which is their relationship. This section also gives us some great little pieces of insight into Apollo's relationship not just with Will, but also with the rest of his kids. Firstly, Will calls him dad, which is not super unusual amongst campers when referring to their godly parents, but also not overly common - they tend to call them by name. Small detail but a cute one.

Secondly, if Apollo not appearing in dreams or answering prayers in unusual, then that means that Apollo almost always (if not straight-up always) answers his kids when they call on him. Definitely, he must answer them when they're upset/panicked - which they would be at this point, and getting more and more upset and panicked as he doesn't answer, etc. And it's not just answering prayers, which could be done in any variety of nebulous forms, it's also actually dropping in on their dreams.

Apollo kids probably see their dad frequently, certainly compared to the other kids, most of whom seem to never, ever see their godly parent, or once in a blue moon (when their parent wants something from them). Is it likely that these dream visits are probably just Apollo dropping by and being his pre-TOA daft self with lots of posturing and probably many, many recitals of bad haikus? Probably - in fact, given how they treat him in THO, I'd say it's likely that they only see Apollo in goofy mode. Does that mean these visits aren't something to be cherished? Absolutely not. Will isn't pleased or relieved that Apollo's stopped bothering his dreams, he's worried.

He's also furious.

"I wish I was a better archer ... I wouldn’t mind shooting my Roman relative off his high horse[...]"

Octavian is claiming Apollo is supporting what he's doing. According to Octavian, Apollo wants this war. Will explicitly wants to kill him for this. He's not even subtle about it; he straight up says "I wouldn't mind shooting the guy" - and that's before we actually get the face to face confrontation with Octavian:

"[...]The god Apollo has shown me the future –’ ‘No!’ Will Solace shoved Nico out of the way and got in Octavian’s face. ‘I am a son of Apollo, you anaemic loser. My father hasn’t shown anyone the future, because the power of prophecy isn’t working. But this –’ He waved loosely at the assembled legion, the hordes of monstrous armies spread across the hillside. ‘This is not what Apollo would want!’ Octavian’s lip curled. ‘You lie. The god told me personally that I would be remembered as the saviour of Rome. I will lead the legion to victory, and I will start by –’

I love Will for this moment so, so much. He is furious with Octavian for even daring to suggest he has Apollo's support. He knows Apollo well enough to be able to confidently tell not just Octavian, not just Nico and Lou Ellen and Cecil, but also everyone in earshot, that Octavian is wrong. That Apollo would not want this, that he's so, so wrong and how dare he desecrate Apollo's name like that.

And the kicker is - Will is right. Will doesn't know it (yet - we'll come to that later) beyond simply his pure, unadulterated faith in his father, but we, the readers, already do, because Apollo has already bemoaned this whole mess to Leo. Will's absolute and utter faith in Apollo here is right and that sort of faith isn't blind, can't be blind. The only other time we see kids so adamant in their belief is the Athena kids - and by now we've had the absolute whopper of a confession that the Athena kids are like this because they're indoctrinated, because they're scared not to, because "Mum's always right".

The Apollo kids aren't indoctrinated. Maybe in BOO we don't know that for certain, but the moment TOA hits and we get his kids ribbing him and treating him like a person rather than someone to be afraid of, it's clear as day. This faith comes from Apollo earning it - we know he's gifted his kids stuff before. Percy tells us that Michael's sonic arrows are straight from Apollo in TLO. It's just a logical progression from there that his kids at the least have enough faith in their father to know that he wouldn't throw them into another war. And that's what Will gives us here, in BOO.

And then we reach TOA.

Will (tragically) only appears in the first and last books of the series, although Apollo does think about him occasionally, but even just from THO and TON we get so much depth to their relationship.

And it starts the very first time we see Will.

“You’re Will Solace,” I said. “My, ah...erm—” “Yeah,” Will agreed. “It’s awkward.” My frontal lobe did a one-eighty inside my skull. I listed sideways. “Whoa, there.” Will steadied me. “I tried to heal you, but honestly, I don’t understand what’s wrong. You’ve got blood, not ichor. You’re recovering quickly from your injuries, but your vital signs are completely human.” “Don’t remind me.” “Yeah, well...” He put his hand on my forehead and frowned in concentration. His fingers trembled slightly. “I didn’t know any of that until I tried to give you nectar. Your lips started steaming. I almost killed you.”

There are some major things in here that really stand out to me. Firstly, and I've mentioned this before in a meta about names and nicknames - Apollo calls him Will. He goes from explicitly not recalling his name (which is a whole other kettle of fish I have an entire theory on), to not just getting it right first try with no hesitation, he also calls him Will. Will, not William.

And that's not because Will's full name isn't William - we get that canon titbit in TON when Nico fullnames him. Apollo would have been correct to call him William, and given the pattern of most gods to call demigods by their full names rather than their preferred nicknames, the fact that Apollo not only gets his name right straight after his mental blank, he also defaults straight to Will's preferred name rather than his full name, is telling. It proves that Apollo has at the very least been paying close enough attention to Will during his life to know this - and combined with Will's own words in BOO, it's a straight up smoking gun that Apollo has interacted with Will often enough before this to instinctively get his name right.

Then we have the confession. Not just one confession, either - we've actually got two. The first one is a confession of I don't know what's wrong, from the kid whose primary inherited ability (that we know of at this point) is healing, which by itself is pretty impressive. Hi dad, I know I got all this healing stuff from you but sorry I still don't understand things is not something I'd be willing to say to a god I didn't know for certain wouldn't get mad at me - even if said god was temporarily mortal. And of course, there's the big one, the "I almost killed you" confession. That's definitely not something you admit to someone you're scared of.

But there's more to it than that, too - the trembling of his fingers, the way he goes back to check Apollo's vitals again (the way he's concentrating then, he's definitely using his vitakinesis). That's all fear, a need to reassure himself that actually no, he didn't kill his dad, that Apollo is awake and on the mend - as much as he can mend from the issue that is being mortal.

This is all the interactions of someone who cares - who cares so much.

And then the scene continues...

“Gee, thanks....” I got the feeling that he almost said Dad but managed to stop himself. It was difficult to think of this young man as my son. He was so poised, so unassuming, so free of acne. He also didn’t appear to be awestruck in my presence. In fact, the corner of his mouth had started twitching. “Are—are you amused?” I demanded. Will shrugged. “Well, it’s either find this funny or freak out. My dad, the god Apollo, is a fifteen-year-old—” “Sixteen,” I corrected. “Let’s go with sixteen.” “A sixteen-year-old mortal, lying in a cot in my cabin, and with all my healing arts—which I got from you—I still can’t figure out how to fix you.”

Most of this just affirms what I said already - the acknowledgement that it's abilities Will got from Apollo that he's failing to use to help Apollo completely, the way Will is completely at ease talking with Apollo (for the most part), the way Will opens up to Apollo about being worried - but also we get to see Will from Apollo's perspective, here.

We got the physical description earlier, which I didn't bother to include, but there's more here - Will's "poise", the respectful words he uses ("young man"), and also the fact that Will isn't at all scared or awestruck by him. That's not just a background detail, it's something Apollo specifically mentions. Will's scared, he's upset, he's trying very hard not to visibly panic - but he's still not on edge around Apollo. And when he calls Will out on this, Will shrugs him off.

I also mentioned earlier that one of the sad things about their relationship is the awkwardness between them, and that's something that this scene also manages to show, somewhat paradoxically given Will's general openness with Apollo about what's going on.

It's a very clever detail in THO, which is then mirrored in TON - there is only one occasion in THO that Will calls Apollo "Dad", and that's during a conversation where they're talking about other stuff and it just slips out. The rest of the time, we get scenes like this, where Will pauses, where he's gonna call Apollo "Dad" but then doesn't, because he doesn't know if he should, because this is his dad but it's also not, Apollo's a scared teenage boy himself right now and is it right to call him Dad? Skip ahead to TON and Will never, ever, calls Apollo by name when addressing him - it's 100% Dad, after he's got used to this new status quo.

And Will is the only one with this issue - Austin and Kayla call Apollo "Dad" right from the start. It's a very clever little piece of narration to show how Will's not quite confident in what's going on, how he's worrying about things that the other two maybe haven't fully registered yet. The way he wants to call him Dad but he doesn't actually know if he should, because things are different now. The way he almost slips here because calling Apollo Dad is natural, the way he does slip later on, at dinner.

The word smacked me in the face like Ares’s body odor. I turned to Austin. “The Labyrinth? As in Daedalus’s Labyrinth?” [...] “During the war with Gaea,” Austin said, “the maze reopened. We’ve been trying to map it ever since.” “That’s impossible,” I said. “Also insane. The Labyrinth is a malevolent sentient creation! It can’t be mapped or trusted.” [...] “It’s different now,” Austin told me. “Since Daedalus died...I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Doesn’t feel so evil. Not quite as deadly.” “Oh, that’s hugely reassuring. So of course you decided to do three-legged races through it.” Will coughed. “The other thing, Dad...Nobody wants to disappoint Harley.”

I love this little scene (Apollo's extra descriptions removed from the quote for ease of length because they don't add anything to the Will&Apollo focus here) because it's Apollo being an actual dispairing father with the oozing sarcasm of "well of course it's safe so you can do dangerous things in there", and this is where Will has his one, single slip re: "Dad" in THO - a reaction to Apollo's super-parental vibe here. Where Apollo really just fell into worried dad mode and Will instinctively responded to it.

But despite this, for a lot of THO, Will is the one almost taking the parental role - he tells Apollo off when he's being an idiot (we'll get to that in a bit), but he also fills the softer sections, like here:

A blanket was draped over me. Will said, “Sleep well, Apollo.”

It shouldn't be the child tucking the parent in, it should be the parent tucking the child in, and it's heartbreaking that this happens but also the fact that Will does it, steps up to be what Apollo doesn't even realise he needs right then, is so precious in its own way. As for telling Apollo off...

I would have ignored Chiron’s warning and run into the forest except for Will’s panicked shout, “Apollo, I need you!” At the far end of the field, he had set up an impromptu hospital where half a dozen campers lay injured on stretchers. He was frantically tending to Paolo Montes while Nico held down the screaming patient. I ran to Will’s side and winced at what I saw. Paolo had managed to get one of his legs sawed off. “I got it reattached,” Will told me, his voice shaky with exhaustion. His scrubs were speckled with blood. “I need somebody to keep him stable.” I pointed to the woods. “But—” “I know!” Will snapped. “Don’t you think I want to be out there searching too? We’re shorthanded for healers. There’s some salve and nectar in that pack. Go!” I was stunned by his tone. I realized he was just as concerned about Kayla and Austin as I was. The only difference: Will knew his duty. He had to heal the injured first. And he needed my help. “Y-yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.” I grabbed the supply pack and took charge of Paolo, who had conveniently passed out from the pain. Will changed his surgical gloves and glared at the woods. “We will find them. We have to.” Nico di Angelo gave him a canteen. “Drink. Right now, this is where you need to be.” I could tell the son of Hades was angry too. Around his feet, the grass steamed and withered. Will sighed. “You’re right. But that doesn’t make me feel better. I have to set Valentina’s broken arm now. You want to assist?” “Sounds gruesome,” Nico said. “Let’s go.”

A long quote here but a necessary one because this scene is so, so good. @fearlessinger has already written about this in depth, but there's something so powerful here about the way Will snaps at Apollo in front of the entire camp, and Apollo backs down, admits he was wrong, and meekly does what he's told.

We see Will's own fear for his siblings here as well, of course - that glare he gives the woods is fierce, the defiance that the woods will not steal his (remaining) siblings from him is such a powerful image - but also it's just the way he channels it into doing what he's trained to do, how he's a battlefield medic first and foremost and the trauma that comes with it - and that Apollo respects this. Apollo understands what Will's saying, what Will needs from him. He understands that they're actually on the same page, re: Austin and Kayla, but that Will knows no-one would forgive them if they abandoned the injured to go after them - least of all themselves, or the missing kids.

Apollo's sheer respect for Will shines through here, the first time it's so blatantly explicit as respect as well as just love; it's also one of the first times we properly see Apollo respect someone else so openly (when you dig into his narration, you see it everywhere, because despite the unreliable narration he throws in our faces, Apollo is very much a god who loves and respects humans), and then he even takes it one step further, because then we get this:

I found my mortal healing skills were passable. Will Solace far outshone me, but that didn’t bother me as much as my failures with archery and music had. I suppose I was used to being second in healing. My son Asclepius had become the god of medicine by the time he was fifteen, and I couldn’t have been happier for him. It left me time for my other interests. Besides, it’s every god’s dream to have a child who grows up to be a doctor.

This is deliberate. This is so, so deliberate on Apollo's behalf. Here we have Will, confirmed earlier in the book to be fifteen, in direct comparison to Asclepius, at the same age, and in the same position - a better healer than Apollo. Of course, there's the fact that we are comparing Will to mortal!Apollo at this point, but the overall message is still the same: Apollo loves and greatly respects Asclepius, and is proud of him for surpassing him - and he's praising Will in the same breath, with this comparison right there. This is Apollo telling us "so you know that famous healer son of mine? Well here's another one, look at him, isn't he amazing?" No holds barred, pure and simple praise.

The painful thing is that Will doesn't realise this. Because Apollo also makes an absolutely massive mistake in THO when it comes to Will - and that's that he abandons him when he needed him the most.

“That’s an order,” she said. “No going into the woods until I say so.” The command sent a shudder from the base of my skull to my heels. I dug my fingernails into my palms. “Meg McCaffrey, if my children die because you wouldn’t let me—” “Like Chiron said, you’d just get yourself killed. We’ll wait for daylight.” [...] I scowled at Meg. “I’m staying out here tonight, in case Kayla and Austin come back. Unless you want to forbid me from doing that, too.” She only shrugged. Even her shrugs were annoying. I stormed off to the Me cabin and grabbed a few supplies: a flashlight, two blankets, a canteen of water. As an afterthought, I took a few books from Will Solace’s bookshelf. No surprise, he kept reference materials about me to share with new campers. I thought perhaps the books might help jog my memories. Failing that, they’d make good tinder for a fire. When I returned to the edge of the woods, Meg was still there.

It's never explicitly mentioned in the books - it's hardly even referenced - but Apollo doesn't even think about Will here, except as an owner of storybooks (that Apollo threatens to burn, although I highly doubt he ever would've done, not when they belong to Will) and a good head counsellor. He's so frantic for his missing kids, and so angry with Meg for (rightfully) banning him from going straight after them, that he storms off and doesn't pay Will any attention. He even uses the word "afterthought" here which technically references the action of taking the books, but also tells us what Will was here.

And it was wrong of Apollo. It no doubt hurt Will, although being Will he also probably brushed it off, understanding why Apollo was more desperate for news of his missing kids - after all, Will, too was desperate to go into the woods, and I wonder if Nico had to stop him from the same vigil, too.

I rested my hand on Will’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back by dawn.” His mouth trembled ever so slightly. “How can you be sure?” “I’m the sun god,” I said, trying to muster more confidence than I felt. “I always return at dawn.”

Apollo does, however, remember to reassure Will before he leaves - this isn't prompted by anything Will does, the presentation of the ukulele (which Will wholly attributes to Harley but given that Will is the one presenting it, heavily implies that Will was highly involved during its creation - I like to think that Will's the one that tuned it!) is several lines earlier, and several other non-Will interactions take place before Apollo does this. We see Will's fear come back again, in that little tremble that indicates he's not all that far short of crying, which Apollo notices (but doesn't call out directly, not even to the readers) and does his best to mitigate, even though he knows there's only so much he can do.

And Nico confirms for us that it didn't really help:

Nico rested his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Apollo, we were worried. Will was especially.”

(This is also one of my favourite THO Solangelo moments but that's a rabbit hole for a different post, this one is getting quite long enough I think, and we haven't even got near TON yet...) This is a sad moment, because while Will has spoken in this scene, it's all been purely medical, telling Apollo about his injuries, what they know - but not opening up even for a moment about how he's feeling. So Nico does it for him, letting Apollo - and us, the reader - know just how worried Will has been, that Will can't even admit it himself despite all the admittances he's made to Apollo about worries and mistakes and fears earlier in the book - and Apollo's delighted for Will, in that moment, that he has someone there to support him so whole-heartedly, even though his narration spends more time talking about his own woes than addressing his son's clear distress over him - likely because we're still at the point in the series where Apollo can't actually bring himself to realise that other people do, genuinely, care about and like him. He still thinks he's unworthy of his own children's affection, especially right now, when two of them are missing and not only did he just fail to bring them back, but he lost another child (not his, but bound to him nonetheless) in the process.

This is the moment where we realise that, despite how much both of them love each other, something that has been made abundantly clear on both sides by BOO and THO up to this point, there's still an emotional gap there, an uncertainty that when things get serious they can actually turn to each other and accept help from each other - expect help from each other. Despite the fact that we've already been seeing that happen all book.

In my humble, Apollo&his kids loving, opinion, there is nowhere near enough Will in THO, so the next time we actually see him is near the end, when we get this little moment:

“Hey!” called Nico di Angelo. He and Will scrambled over the dunes, still dripping from their swim in the canoe lake. “What’s the plan?” Will seemed calm, but I knew him well enough by now to tell that inside he was as charged as a bare electrical wire.

Apollo misleading us nicely here "I knew him well enough by now" - the way this is written, it makes it sound like he's talking about just since being Lester, but that doesn't fit. For starters, we've not actually seen Will pull this calm exterior frantic interior display - whenever he's been frantic on the interior, it's come across in his body language, whether it was biting his lip, fighting a smile or even being outright snappy. Or rather, Apollo's always taken the time to pick up on Will's tells even from the start. This isn't a sudden realisation of "oh now I can tell Will's not calm" when he's been doing the same thing subtly all book, this is Apollo pretending he's only just realised, holding up his self-inflicted narrative of "I'm a bad father", but given that he's been picking Will's tells apart all book already... this is actually more evidence that Apollo knows Will well and has done for a long time - definitely longer than the span of the couple of days Lester is in camp.

Apollo, please stop trying to convince us and yourself you're a terrible father. It's not working on us and you need to stop doing yourself that disservice.

And to wrap up THO, we have Apollo once again being a proud dad:

Will Solace and I spent the evening caring for the wounded. Will took the lead, which was fine with me; I was exhausted. Mostly I splinted arms, distributed cold medicine and tissues, and tried to keep Harley from stealing the infirmary’s entire supply of smiley-face stickers, which he plastered all over his flamethrower. [...] Thanks to Will’s healing and a hot dinner, the demigods I had rescued from the woods quickly got back to full strength.

Apollo and Will work on healing everyone together - Apollo even lists all the things he did - but when it comes to everyone getting better, he only credits Will. Gotta love some proud dad moments!

Now we're onto TON, which gives me so many feels about Apollo&Will. Yes, I know this is long already. No, I am definitely not done I just love these two so much okay.

Compared to the camp’s Greek temples and amphitheatres, the four-storey sky-blue Victorian known as the Big House looked quaint and homey. Its white trim gleamed like cake frosting. Its bronze eagle weathervane drifted lazily in the breeze. On its wraparound front porch, enjoying lemonade at the card table, sat Nico di Angelo and Will Solace. ‘Dad!’ Will shot to his feet. He ran down the steps and tackled me in a hug. That’s when I lost it. I wept openly. My beautiful son, with his kind eyes, his healer’s hands, his sun-warm demeanour. Somehow, he had inherited all my best qualities and none of the worst. He guided me up the steps and insisted I take his seat. He pressed a cold glass of lemonade into my hands, then started fussing over my wounded head. ‘I’m fine,’ I murmured, though clearly I wasn’t.

Look at this greeting. Look at how delighted Will is to see Apollo, that Dad! and the tackle hug and the open fussing and just all of it, especially compared to six months earlier, in THO where Will's always just a little reticent, a little shy to fully let himself be Apollo's son. Even here he's still falling a little into healer mode, but only after he gets to be the delighted, relieved son, and it makes you wonder just how much worse his worry got while they were separated, that he's managed to lose all those inhibitions and just be so openly, frantically, delighted, to see Apollo.

And of course, Apollo reciprocates in his narration. He's likewise so happy to see Will, can't not let this moment pass without letting us know that this is his son and he's so, so proud of him, look how amazing Will is. He's half delirious and about to pass out (much to Will's horror), but he's still got to find the time to tell us all about just how beautiful and talented and amazing Will is.

Then we get a beautiful, amazing little character detail, which makes me keysmash just thinking about it.

‘Oh, you’re awake!’ My son Will emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam, his blond hair dripping wet and a towel around his waist. On his left pectoral was a stylized sun tattoo, which seemed unnecessary to me – as if he could be mistaken for anything but a child of the sun god.

The sun tattoo. The tattoo that is so clearly a sun that Apollo can't even pretend to mistake it for anything other than not only a sun, but also an acknowledgement of him, that he is Will's father and that Will is proud enough of that fact to have it tattooed over his heart (at fifteen and who the hell was willing to tattoo a fifteen year old boy but I'm glad they did). Is this tattoo just an homage? Was it a potential memorial in case something went wrong and Apollo died? So many questions, so many potential answers, and all of them are so, so pro-Apollo. We only see one other demigod with something so permanent representing their parent and that's Butch's rainbow tattoo in TLH. Whatever the exact reason, Will loves Apollo enough to permanently etch that into his skin and I think that's absolutely beautiful.

And Apollo makes a small enough deal out of it that it's clear even he can't escape the implications, although he hurriedly moves on in his narration rather than focus on this visual representation that he can't be a bad father, in Will's eyes, otherwise Will would never have got that tattoo.

Here’s all you need to know about Will Solace: he had clothes waiting for me. On his last trip into town, he’d gone shopping specifically for things that might fit me. ‘I figured you’d come back to camp eventually,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would, anyway. I wanted you to feel at home.’

Will Solace you beautiful child. And the way Apollo bursts into tears at this kindness, too, trying to attribute it to Naomi when we've just had four and a bit books of Apollo being kind to a world he thinks hates him. Maybe Will learned kindness from Naomi as well, but he definitely inherited at least some of it from Apollo. By this point in the series it's impossible to claim otherwise.

Also Will being so desperate to help Apollo feel at home, the little implication there that he doesn't want him to leave again, or at least doesn't want to be left behind again - and he isn't. Not until the end, when Apollo has to leave everyone, including Meg, behind. Apollo lets him come with them to the trogs, lets him join in and help, this time, for all that they get separated too soon, because Apollo doesn't want to be separated again, either. He definitely doesn't want his son (or any of the demigods) in danger, but he's learned to accept help, and the help of the two demigods who have been trying from the start (Will and Nico) is the help he accepts first.

I wanted to tell them that they were all so young. Their lifespans were a blink of an eye compared to my four millennia. I should be wrapping them all in warm blankets and giving them cookies rather than expecting them to be heroes, slay monsters and buy me clothes.

Some yearning to be a proper dad, too, just in case anyone missed how much Apollo doesn't want to put them in danger.

I won't dump the whole passage here, but I also just wanna mention how much Will trusts Apollo, that he's willing to give an overview of Nico's problems to him (no doubt with permission from Nico as well - we saw Nico speak for Will in THO, so this is a neat reversal here). He also confides in his own worries about Nico here, too, because while he's definitely not shy about telling Nico he does not want him going back to Tartarus, he also doesn't load Nico up with all his panics about the situation - so he offloads on Apollo, instead, once again showing us just how much he loves and trusts his dad.

Will developed a sudden interest in his bran muffin’s wrapper. Nico seemed to realize, at the same time I did, that Will hadn’t shared all the lines of the prophecy with him. ‘William Andrew Solace,’ Nico said, ‘do you have something to confess?’ ‘I was going to mention it.’ Will looked at me pleadingly, as if he couldn’t make himself say the lines. ‘The son of Hades, cavern-runners ’ friend ,’ I recited. ‘Must show the secret way unto the throne .’ Nico scowled with such intensity I feared he might make Will wither like the apple. ‘You think that might have been good to mention sooner?’ ‘Hold on,’ I said, partly to spare Will from Nico’s wrath, and partly because I had been racking my brain, trying to think who these ‘cavern-runners’ might be, and I still had no clue.

In fact, we get a lot of this in this scene, with Will actually treating Apollo like his dad, looking to him for reassurance and help and even to handle the difficult conversations (he's a fifteen year old boy he's allowed to want to hide behind an adult occasionally. If he was a normal mortal child he would absolutely be doing so most of the time at his age). It's a great evolution from THO, where he's almost still too in shock to actually treat Lester like his dad - to now, where he's completely and utterly embraced the fact that this is still Apollo, and that he can treat him like Apollo.

TON gives us many small moments of Will appreciation, because Apollo spends a lot of time with him and loves his son so very much, so I'll skip over all of those because they don't actually add anything new to this answer. But I'm not going to skip over the big ones.

Will Solace, healer, The hero we don’t deserve, He has Kit Kat bars.

Firstly: Will gets his own haiku. By name. Absolutely no misinterpretating who this could possibly be about - it's right there in the first three syllables of the first line. It also highlights his healing (at this point, Will's biggest point of pride), and calls him a hero. Massive honours right there (and reasons why I, personally, am gonna be voting this haiku all the way to top haiku in TOA in @ferodactyl's haiku tournament).

Then... anyone who has heard me talk about Apollo&Will has no doubt been waiting for me to bring this up, because oh boy do I think this was some beautiful, subtle, writing that showcases just how much Apollo's word means to Will.

The glowing.

Firstly, I love that Will can glow, anyway. It fits his character so well.

Secondly, the way it's used to showcase his and Apollo's relationship is masterful.

‘You guys stay behind me,’ Nico said. ‘Will, can you do your thing? The barest minimum, please.’ ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What is Will’s “thing”?’ Will kept his focus on Nico. ‘Do I have to?’ ‘We can’t use our weapons for light,’ Nico reminded him. ‘And we’ll need a little bit more, because the trogs don’t need any. I’d rather be able to see them.’ Will wrinkled his nose. ‘Fine.’ He set down his pack and stripped off his linen overshirt, leaving just his tank top. I still had no idea what he was doing, though the girls didn’t seem to mind letting him do his thing . Did Will keep a concealed flashlight in his undershirt? Was he going to provide light by rubbing lichen on himself and smiling brilliantly? [...] Will took a deep breath. When he exhaled ... I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. We’d been in near-total darkness so long, I wasn’t sure why Will’s outline suddenly seemed clearer. I could see the texture of his jeans, the individual tufts of his hair, the blue of his eyes. His skin was glowing with a soft, warm golden light as if he’d ingested sunshine. ‘Whoa,’ Meg said. Rachel’s eyebrows floated towards her hairline. Nico smirked. ‘Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.’ ‘Could you not make a big deal about it?’ Will asked. I was speechless. How could anyone not make a big deal about this? As far as demigod powers went, glowing in the dark was perhaps not as showy as skeleton-summoning or tomato-vine mastery, but it was still impressive. And, like Will’s skill at healing, it was gentle, useful and exactly what we needed in a pinch. ‘I’m so proud,’ I said. Will’s face turned the colour of sunlight shining through a glass of cranberry juice. ‘Dad, I’m just glowing . I’m not graduating at the top of my class.’ ‘I’ll be proud when you do that, too,’ I assured him.

Contrast Will in this scene, with Will here:

On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light.

and here:

Will, still glowing like an overachieving night light, had propped Nico against the wall and was now tending to his wounds.

(I will get to the rest of this scene later)

I love, love, love, love, love this. The first time we're introduced to Will's new ability, he's hesitant about it. He's embarrassed. Nico has to talk him into using it even though they need light and it's the best way to give it without offending the trogs. He dismisses the banter and the praise because he thinks it's a pretty boring ability - after all, it's just glowing, Dad, it's not like it's anything special, right?

Except it is, and Apollo makes sure he knows it is. Apollo, god of poetry, goes speechless he's so proud, and then methodically dismisses all of Will's attempts to downplay his ability because Apollo is so, so impressed that Will can do it - in fact, he later directly contrasts it against actual godly divinity:

His glow was getting brighter as he approached the fasces – like Will, like me in my own godly moments of rage...

because Apollo thinks it is that impressive.

And here we have the second glowing scene - in a brightly lit building, with floor to ceiling windows and plenty of light, certainly no need for more light, we have Will glowing brightly, of his own accord. No hesitation, no embarrassment, just a sheer status symbol, almost: I am the son of Apollo, and I will oppose you with everything I am.

This seems at such odds to his original feelings, where he keeps it as minimal as possible and dismisses any attempts to make it seem good - and the only reason that could possibly exist for this u-turn, is Apollo's praise.

Apollo told him, unreservedly and completely honestly (late enough into his mortality that Will understands that Apollo is sincere, and also that this isn't Apollo loving something completely cringe, like we know Apollo can do) that his power is impressive, that Apollo is proud of him for it. And just those words from his dad are enough to completely change Will's opinion on this power.

That's absolutely beautiful writing, and such a fantastic way to show without ever telling us, just how much weight Apollo's words have for Will. Just how much Apollo's praise means to Will.

Jumping back to an attempt at chronology, remember how I said (way back at the start of this, when I was talking about Will's faith in BOO, probably a couple of hours' of reading ago at this point whoops) that Will had faith that Apollo didn't want to put them in danger but that he didn't actually know for certain outside of that faith? And the yet I tacked on to that?

Well, this next scene I'm gonna mention notably has zero Will interaction in it. Absolutely none, despite the fact we know he's there, in earshot. And that's very interesting to me, because it's a scene entirely about validating Will's belief, especially when we reach this little interaction between Apollo and Rachel:

‘Rachel, I’m scared,’ I admitted. ‘It was one thing thinking about putting myself in danger. But the entire camp? Everyone?’ Strangely, this comment seemed to please her. She took my hand. ‘I know, Apollo. And the fact that you’re worried about other people? That’s beautiful. But you’ll have to trust me. That secret path to the throne ... the thing I am supposed to show you? I’m pretty sure this is it. This is how we make things right.’

An entire pentalogy later, we get it straight from the horse's mouth, without all the airs and posturing and blaming Octavian we got accompanying it in BOO: Apollo does not like putting demigods in danger. At all. Rachel has to convince him it's the only way - and it's interesting, because she views this as progress, on Apollo's part, that he's learned to worry about the others.

But Will and Meg, who are both in earshot but say nothing this entire conversation, already know better. Meg's been with him for (most of) his time as a mortal, at this point she knows him better than arguably anyone else, including Artemis, because she's seen him at his lowest, most vulnerable points. Meg knows he'll do anything to keep others safe - she's seen it, over and over and over again, been the one he's tried to protect more than once. It's not a surprise in the slightest that she's completely silent during this scene - she has nothing to add.

Will, on the other hand - this validates the faith he showed ten months earlier, on the battlefield between two armies loudly declaring that this war is not what Apollo wanted, that Apollo would never put them into the firing line like that. It's not a validation he needed - if he did, we wouldn't call it faith, anyway - but it's one he gets, and in a way it's a shame Apollo didn't look at him, didn't tell us how Will reacted to this, because I bet he was absolutely delighted (and also feeling very smug about being right, take that Octavian!).

Sadly we once again lose Will for a while, but then we get this glorious scene which easily competes for #1 Most Badass Will Solace Moment (and honestly, imo competes for simply the Most Badass Moment in Riordanverse, but I acknowledge my pro-Will bias here)

Behind me, a familiar voice roared, ‘STOP!’ The tone was so commanding even Nero’s guards and family members turned towards the broken blast doors. On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light. At his left was Luguselwa, alive and well, her stumps now outfitted with daggers instead of silverware. At Will’s right was Rachel Elizabeth Dare, holding a large axe wrapped in a golden bundle of rods: the fasces of Nero. ‘No one hits my boyfriend,’ Will thundered. ‘And no one kills my dad!’

Again, the wording here is so perfectly chosen. Will radiating light, the way the whole passage, despite also introducing Luguselwa and Rachel and even Nero's fasces into the scene - still frames and focuses on Will in particular. Beautiful.

But what I so, so love about this moment is Apollo's very careful use of the word thundered. We know that Apollo hates Zeus' lightning bolts - we know he's terrified of them. The sound of thunder is, to Apollo, the sound of pain, the sound of loss, the sound of abuse.

And he chooses to use that description here, when Will comes to his defence. When Will barges into the scene, unapologetic and determined, and manages to take over everything, scare the germani (I wish I could also include Nero in this but Nero is obviously actually too worried about Rachel and his fasces), Apollo calls his voice thunder. Coincidence? I think not.

Now, this doesn't mean I think Apollo is scared of Will - Will is his son, Will literally just saved his life. I think this was Apollo's way of driving home to all the readers just how much of a force of nature Will Solace can be when he wants to be. I think this was actually a mark of respect, a comparison literally to the king of the gods, but also how Zeus should be, not the abusive asshole he is.

It's such a powerful description. And that's also what Apollo keeps reminding us Will is - powerful.

And I love it.

The last bit I really wanna talk about here is the scene before Apollo goes to fight Python, when he gets a few minutes with frantic demigods whilst getting patched up just enough to hopefully not die immediately the moment he reaches Delphi, starting with this bit:

‘I have no choice,’ I said. ‘Nectar, please? And supplies. More arrows. My bow.’ [...] Will pressed a vial of nectar into my hands. ‘Drink this. And this.’ He passed me a Mountain Dew. ‘And here’s some salve for those wounds.’

Remember Will almost killing Apollo with nectar back in THO? You'd think he, out of everyone, would be most reluctant to let Apollo near nectar again, even on Apollo's own request, and yet he doesn't even hesitate here. I don't think it's just blind trust in Apollo - Apollo's also proven he's not great at the self-preservation thing, and Will is used to dealing with idiots with no self-preservation (see exhibit A: his boyfriend) - but I think it's faith, again. Faith, and hope, because he just saw Apollo revoke Nero's divinity, he just saw his father do something gods do. Apollo's getting his own divinity back at this point, clawing it back all by himself, and this little moment proves that Will saw this. He might not understand the nuances behind it, he might not realise that this is literally Apollo remaking himself as a god rather than being part of Zeus' own machinations, but he sees that Apollo is returning to godhood - and yet he still doesn't actually change how he treats Apollo. Apollo is still one of his patients here, he will take his medicine exactly as prescribed and treat those wounds before he bleeds to death.

And Will still frets a little, at the end:

Will did some last-minute bandaging.

This is the last moment we see with Will before Apollo reascends to godhood, and really it's too little to encompass everything that this means to the two of them - but also it leaves it open, tells us that this was never a goodbye for Apollo, no matter how scared Will had been, that despite never promising any of his children that he would come back from this, he didn't feel the need to detail out whatever words of farewell/comfort/etc. were uttered in this moment, when Apollo let Will fuss over him for just that last moment before he went down to face Python.

It tells us that while their time together as Lester and Will has come to an end, because one way or another Lester was never coming back, their time as Apollo and Will, as father and son, isn't over. There's no closure here, no final moment.

Because, actually, while they learnt a lot about each other while Apollo was mortal - especially Will learning about his father - this was only ever a single chapter in their relationship. Apollo has been Will's father since birth, he's been checking up on him, however goofily he may have dressed up those visits, at least since Will arrived at camp and probably since long before that, and he's not going to stop now. In fact, given the character arc Apollo went through during TOA, Will's probably in for even more parental interaction than he already had.

We get a little of this in the epilogue, of course, where Apollo returns to camp to open the next chapter of his life - and his relationship with his children - as a god once more. We know Apollo isn't planning on fading out of their lives again. And why should he?

So yeah, I have a lot of feelings about Apollo&Will; I love their relationship so much. I haven't even touched on further extrapolation like how Will will always react better to Apollo-Apollo than Lester-Apollo, because Lester-Apollo needed help and healing, and for Will to step up, while Apollo-Apollo is simply his father, and the version Will's known at least his whole demigod life, if not longer because this is already so long, whoops.

If you've made it to the end of this... congrats! And sorry again that it took me so long to answer.

#sunsketcher #will solace #pjo apollo #trials of apollo #heroes of olympus #toa #hoo #pjo #riordanverse #rrverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Michael Yew's Fatal Flaw

This meta is the fault of @apollosgiftofprophecy who made the questionable decision of asking about Michael's fatal flaw in my vicinity the other day.

People who have been following me for a while may recall I once answered an ask about Apollo kid fatal flaws, and mentioned Michael there. Please ignore what I said back then because I'd barely even started picking him apart to see what made him tick, and my conclusions there have since been deemed rather surface-level!

The first question, of course, is what is a fatal flaw? What makes it different from a regular character flaw? The clue's in the name, I think - fatal flaw is one that's most likely to one day result in the hero's death, as Annabeth also suggests in Sea of Monsters:

“I don’t know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don’t find it and learn to control it … well, they don’t call it ‘fatal’ for nothing.”

Athena gives us a little more to go on in The Titan's Curse:

"In each case, your loved ones have been used to lure you into Kronos's traps. Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world. In a hero of the prophecy, that is very, very dangerous." I balled my fists. "That's not a flaw. Just because I want to help my friends—" "The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation," she said. "Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed."

Of course, she's talking specifically to Percy about his flaw here, but there are certainly broader points to be inferred from this. When you break down all her warnings, it boils down near enough to "your fatal flaw is one you either cannot fight, or do not want to fight, because you think it is right/justified", which is interesting. It's a flaw that you don't, necessarily, recognise as a flaw, which makes it difficult to do anything about because how can something that's right be wrong?

As Athena says, the most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation - flaws that, in most situations, actually help, or are perceived to do so. These are the flaws most likely to kill the hero - and maybe others, as well.

With that out of the way, let's start picking apart Michael properly.

Generally, I see anger, pride or stubbornness put forwards as suggestions for his fatal flaw, so I'll look at each of those and see how well they actually fit. On top of that, I'm also going to explore two other contenders that I've come to notice from the hundreds of times I've re-read his scenes - protectiveness, and love.

First up, let's talk about Anger.

Anger is the one that seems to spring to mind most readily for some people (myself included), and it's hardly surprising given his introductory scene:

She was in the midst of yelling at Michael Yew, the new head counselor for Apollo, which looked kind of funny since Clarisse was a foot taller. Michael had taken over the Apollo cabin after Lee Fletcher died in battle last summer. Michael stood four feet six, with another two feet of attitude. He reminded me of a ferret, with a pointy nose and scrunched-up features—either because he scowled so much or because he spent too much time looking down the shaft of an arrow. "It's our loot!" he yelled, standing on his tiptoes so he could get in Clarisse's face. "If you don't like it, you can kiss my quiver!" [...] I couldn't believe Clarisse and Michael standing over her, arguing about something as stupid as loot, when she'd just lost Beckendorf. "STOP IT!" I yelled. "What are you guys doing?" Clarisse glowered at me. "Tell Michael not to be a selfish jerk." "Oh, that's perfect, coming from you," Michael said.

(As an aside, I love Michael's "kiss my quiver" line because hip quivers are very much a thing and if you think of his quiver as on his hip instead of his back... he's basically saying "kiss my ass" but in a kid-book-friendly way)

Michael's introduction is full of aggression - he's standing on tiptoes, getting "in Clarisse's face", and yelling at her. To make matters worse, it's in front of a grieving Silena which makes him (and Clarisse, but we've already had four books on how much Clarisse can be a bitch in Percy's opinion) look incredibly callous and uncaring. Percy's rather unflattering description about "two feet of attitude" and "because he scowled so much" adds to the overall impression that Michael's a right piece of work as well. Thanks, Percy.

It's a good introduction, though. This is memorable, as far as character introductions go (far more memorable than the first time we're introduced to Beckendorf, or Silena, etc.), and it's full of personality - personality that says Michael is not afraid to throw hands and will do it anywhere, anytime. It directly opposes him with Clarisse, but in such a way that makes them seem like similar characters, and we know anger/rage is one of Clarisse's traits as well.

This scene isn't a one-off, either. We get the full feud against the Ares cabin, which Michael spearheads:

We ducked as Michael Yew's chariot dive-bombed an Ares camper. The Ares camper tried to stab him and cuss him out in rhyming couplets. He was pretty creative about rhyming those cuss words. "We're fighting for our lives," I said, "and they're bickering about some stupid chariot." "They'll get over it," Annabeth said. "Clarisse will come to her senses."

The fact that it's Clarisse, not Michael, that Annabeth thinks is going to stand down also says a lot about how she sees the pair of them, and she must know Michael reasonably well, so this adds another note to the impression that Michael can be even more unreasonable than Clarisse (although it should also be noted that in this feud Michael is the one in the right, and Chiron has said as much to the campers, or at least the head counsellors - and of course from a narrative point of view, Clarisse is a far more familiar character for readers).

Michael himself also admits later on that he lost his temper with Clarisse again off-screen:

Michael shrugged. "Yeah, well, I called her some names when she said she still wouldn't fight. I doubt that helped. Here come the uglies!"

Those names certainly weren't ones for polite company - or a children's book. I think we can confidently say that Michael certainly has a temper, much like his father is legendary for.

But is it a fatal flaw? Well, sadly we have a scene that's implied to be Michael's death scene (I say implied because we never saw a body and a lot of things don't quite add up, so I prefer to think of him as not-dead, but for the purposes of this meta we'll consider it his death scene), so let's go look at that.

He struck the bridge with the butt of his scythe, and a wave of pure force blasted me backward. Cars went careening. Demigods—even Luke's own men—were blown off the edge of the bridge. Suspension cords whipped around, and I skidded halfway back to Manhattan. I got unsteadily to my feet. The remaining Apollo campers had almost made it to the end of the bridge, except for Michael Yew, who was perched on one of the suspension cables a few yards away from me, His last arrow was notched in his bow.

Michael's final stand happens immediately after several demigods - including his own siblings - are just blown clean off the bridge by Kronos. Is it a decision spurred by anger after things going wrong after they were finally going right? It would make sense.

However, there is one big issue with anger as his fatal flaw. Obviously, Michael does have this temper, and it does get out of hand, but we only ever see it get out of hand in the (relative) safety of camp. The Michael we see in Manhattan actually seems very calm and in control the entire time. He's observant and quick-witted, and is the only head counsellor to spot (or at least verbalise) a potential flaws in Percy and Annabeth's plan.

"He's right," Annabeth said. "The gods of the wind should keep Kronos's forces away from Olympus by air, so he'll try a ground assault. We have to cut off the entrances to the island." "They have boats," Michael Yew pointed out. An electric tingle went down my back. Suddenly I understood Athena's advice: Remember the rivers. "I'll take care of the boats," I said. Michael frowned. "How?" "Just leave it to me," I said.

Of course, Percy being the son of Poseidon can plug that massive gap, but it took Michael asking the question for him to make the important connection that he needed to.

This calmness continues into the battle itself, as well.

Michael Yew ran up to us. He was definitely the shortest commando I'd ever seen. He had a bandaged cut on his arm. His ferrety face was smeared with soot and his quiver was almost empty, but he was smiling like he was having a great time. "Glad you could join us," he said. "Where are the other reinforcements?" "For now, we're it," I said. "Then we're dead," he said. [...] "We have to fall back," Michael said. "I've got Kayla and Austin setting traps farther down the bridge." "No," I said. "Bring your campers forward to this position and wait for my signal. We're going to drive the enemy back to Brooklyn." Michael laughed. "How do you plan to do that?" I drew my sword. "Percy," Annabeth said, "let me come with you." "Too dangerous," I said. "Besides, I need you to help Michael coordinate the defensive line. I'll distract the monsters. You group up here. Move the sleeping mortals out of the way. Then you can start picking off monsters while I keep them focused on me. If anybody can do all that, you can." Michael snorted. "Thanks a lot."

No temper tantrums, no yelling like he did with Clarisse earlier - he's matter of fact when he realises they don't really have reinforcements (not knowing, of course, about Percy's little Styx bath), he doesn't argue with Percy when Percy starts taking command. He continues to say his piece and get his point across, but at no point do we ever get the sense that Michael is anything other than perfectly in control at any point during the battle - which is not what you would expect from a rage-based fatal flaw.

For example, contrast Michael's scenes with Clarisse later in the battle:

The real Clarisse looked up at the drakon, her face filled with absolute hate. I'd seen a look that intense only once before. Her father, Ares, had worn the same expression when I'd fought him in single combat. "YOU WANT DEATH?" Clarisse screamed at the drakon. "WELL, COME ON!" She grabbed her spear from the fallen girl. With no armor or shield, she charged the drakon.

and

"I AM CLARISSE, DRAKON-SLAYER!" she yelled. "I will kill you ALL! Where is Kronos? Bring him out! Is he a coward?" "Clarisse!" I yelled. "Stop it. Withdraw!" "What's the matter, Titan lord?" she yelled. "BRING IT ON!" There was no answer from the enemy. Slowly, they began to fall back behind a dracaenae shield wall, while Clarisse drove in circles around Fifth Avenue, daring anyone to cross her path. The two- hundred-foot-long drakon carcass made a hollow scraping noise against the pavement, like a thousand knives. Meanwhile, we tended our wounded, bringing them inside the lobby. Long after the enemy had retreated from sight, Clarisse kept riding up and down the avenue with her horrible trophy, demanding that Kronos meet her battle.

Calm and collected whomst? Not to say that Clarisse's temper isn't understandable here, but this fits much more in line with Athena's description of a fatal flaw - one that seems justified, right, even (and later on, Clarisse gets frozen by a Hyperborean Giant, so this does come back to bite her!), as opposed to the way Michael seems to stay in control of his temper even when his siblings are being killed around him.

With all that in mind, while I willa gree that anger is a flaw of Michael's, it certainly doesn't seem to check the boxes to be a fatal flaw, so let's move onto the next one: Pride.

Pride has its roots in the same parts of the narration as anger, so this section is going to be rather shorter because I don't need to rehash all the quotes again. The main thing that stands out on the pride side of the feud, specifically, is that it's completely needless for Michael to keep agitating Clarisse and the Ares cabin.

Clarisse turned to Chiron. "You're in charge, right? Does my cabin get what we want or not?" Chiron shuffled his hooves. "My dear, as I've already explained, Michael is correct. Apollo's cabin has the best claim. Besides, we have more important matters—" [...] "I see," Clarisse said. "And the senior counselors? Are any of you going to side with me?" Nobody was smiling now. None of them met Clarisse's eyes.

Chiron's put his hooves down on the matter - the Apollo cabin has the best claim to the chariot, Clarisse is the aggressor here. The other head counsellors all agree with that, too. Michael could, and given the upcoming war, should, ignore her and put his and his siblings' focus towards the war and not an argument he's already won.

But he doesn't. His chariot is attacking the campers - the Apollo kids aren't just defending themselves from the upset Ares kids, they're on the offensive themselves, arguably more so than the Ares campers.

As we crossed the commons area, a fight broke out between the Ares and Apollo cabins. Some Apollo campers armed with firebombs flew over the Ares cabin in a chariot pulled by two pegasi. I'd never seen the chariot before, but it looked like a pretty sweet ride. Soon, the roof of the Ares cabin was burning, and naiads from the canoe lake rushed over to blow water on it. Then the Ares campers called down a curse, and all the Apollo kids' arrows turned to rubber. The Apollo kids kept shooting at the Ares kids, but the arrows bounced off. Two archers ran by, chased by an angry Ares kid who was yelling in poetry: "Curse me, eh? I'll make you pay! / I don't want to rhyme all day!"

This feels a lot like he's trying to validate that yes, the chariot really is his cabin's, and the fact that Clarisse keeps insisting otherwise despite every non-Ares member of the camp being on Michael's side is insulting/undermining the Apollo cabin's claim.

It also sounds like he made sure to have the final word against Clarisse when she still refused to come and fight, which is a very prideful action.

"Nah," Michael said. "Left it at camp. I told Clarisse she could have it. Whatever, you know? Not worth fighting about anymore. But she said it was too late. We'd insulted her honor for the last time or some stupid thing." "Least you tried," I said. Michael shrugged. "Yeah, well, I called her some names when she said she still wouldn't fight. I doubt that helped. Here come the uglies!"

The thing is, though, that we hit a snag with the pride theory at this point for a similar reason to the anger one - as soon as there's something bigger and more immediate to focus on, Michael sets it aside.

He gives up the chariot they were fighting over - the chariot that, rightfully, is the Apollo cabin's - for no reason other than because he knew that they needed the Ares cabin to come and fight and it was the only thing he could think of that he could do to try and change Clarisse's mind - made even more stark when compared with Michael's original, in-camp, reaction to Clarisse's declaration.

Clarisse threw her knife on the Ping-Pong table. "All of you can fight this war without Ares. Until I get satisfaction, no one in my cabin is lifting a finger to help. Have fun dying." The counselors were all too stunned to say anything as Clarisse stormed out of the room. Finally Michael Yew said, "Good riddance."

It's true that Michael does get upset when Clarisse ignores his sacrifice of the chariot and still refuses to fight, but I think that's understandable given the situation (and he is, still, a teenage boy with a temper). It doesn't change the fact that he does it, however, nor the fact that Michael doesn't rescind the sacrifice and bring the chariot with him regardless, despite its potential stragetic uses in the war. Pride certainly doesn't seem to have much if any weight in his final stand, either, so I'd say that like anger, this doesn't actually fit as his fatal flaw, even if it might be somewhat of a personal trait/flaw.

At this point, it seems a little bit like a moot point to poke at Stubbornness because most of the counter-arguments for anger and pride also address this, but I'll quickly go over it anyway because this is the first one that properly shows itself all the way through Michael's appearances.

I've already mentioned the way he doesn't back down in the chariot feud, which is pride, yes, but also stubbornness - he won't leave it alone, won't let Clarisse stake her own claim on it, keeps fighting past the point of necessity over it.

But then we have his final scene, where he stands his ground. There's no indication that Michael even tried to run when the bridge crumbled.

I got unsteadily to my feet. The remaining Apollo campers had almost made it to the end of the bridge, except for Michael Yew, who was perched on one of the suspension cables a few yards away from me, His last arrow was notched in his bow. "Michael, go!" I screamed. "Percy, the bridge!" he called. "It's already weak!" At first I didn't understand. Then I looked down and saw fissures in the pavement. Patches of the road were half melted from Greek fire. The bridge had taken a beating from Kronos's blast and the exploding arrows. "Break it!" Michael yelled. "Use your powers!" [...] I turned to thank Michael Yew, but the words died in my throat. Twenty feet away, a bow lay in the street. Its owner was nowhere to be seen. "No!" I searched the wreckage on my side of the bridge. I stared down at the river. Nothing.

Michael completely ignores Percy telling him to run, tells him to break the bridge that he's currently on and clearly has no intentions of leaving, not with that notched arrow that he then seems to have fired, given that there's no arrow later on. This seems the closest we've got so far to a flaw that goes beyond a simple character flaw and into the fatal category.

Except.

He's a stubborn character, but just like with anger, like with pride, Michael keeps putting it aside when it might otherwise cause issues during the battle - he questions Percy's plans more than once, but despite that, he cedes command to Percy on Williamsburg Bridge, follows his orders instead of continuing with his own strategies, and generally shows that he's exactly the sort of person you want by your side/at your back when you're fighting. Michael's flexible and prepared to change and adapt as the situation does - which is pretty much the opposite of stubbornness, so while at first glance it seemed like a strong candidate it's once again contradicted by the scenes on Williamsburg Bridge.

So, that's the three usual suspects that arise from the chariot feud all falling apart once we rearch the battlefield. Michael is certainly passionate about the fight - more than once, Percy implies that he seems to actually be having a good time on the battlefield and there's no other explanation other than eagerness for this moment:

I sliced through armor like it was made of paper. Snake women exploded. Hellhounds melted to shadow. I slashed and stabbed and whirled, and I might have even laughed once or twice—a crazy laugh that scared me as much as it did my enemies. I was aware of the Apollo campers behind me shooting arrows, disrupting every attempt by the enemy to rally. Finally, the monsters turned and fled—about twenty left alive out of two hundred. I followed with the Apollo campers at my heels. "Yes!" yelled Michael Yew. "That's what I'm talking about!"

But despite all of this, that passion doesn't seem to be based in anger, pride, or stubbornness, despite those being the first things people seem to think of when they think about Michael - and that's why I have two more options added to the list to explore.

Moving on, then, I'll start with Protectiveness.

So, just now I said that stubbornness is what caused Michael's final moments, but is it really? It was certainly part of it, but also - as I mentioned earlier, when talking about anger, Michael's final stand is immediately after some of his siblings have been thrown off the bridge - having already seen at least one other sibling killed earlier:

Hellhounds leaped ahead of the line from time to time. Most were destroyed with arrows, but one got hold of an Apollo camper and dragged him away. I didn't see what happened to him next. I didn't want to know.

Siblings, of course, that as their head counsellor he is the one in charge of and responsible for - it's likely that he's the oldest in the cabin as well (although not guaranteed), and that these are all his younger siblings that are getting killed/seriously injured/status unknown. We're told that the "remaining" Apollo campers are running for the end of the bridge and retreating as far as possible - all of them except for Michael, who was with them to start with but stopped and turned to face the enemy.

Michael and his archers tried to retreat, but Annabeth stayed right beside me, fighting with her knife and mirrored shield as we slowly backed up the bridge.

Followed by

The remaining Apollo campers had almost made it to the end of the bridge, except for Michael Yew, who was perched on one of the suspension cables a few yards away from me. His last arrow was notched in his bow.

This is the point when Michael makes the decision that the bridge has to be destroyed, figures out how to destroy it, and basically orders Percy to do it. I've got a whole other argument about how Michael is the reason Olympus didn't fall that first night of the siege, but at this point I think it's blatantly obvious that the only thing Michael is thinking about is protecting his siblings. Why else would he put himself (tiny archer who should never, ever, be on the front lines - which is hinted at by the fact he still seeks out as high a ground as he can get aka the cables) as the rear guard, the barrier between an entire army and his fleeing siblings?

He's protecting his siblings - he's guarding their backs as they flee to safety and he's finding a way to stop them from being pursued, even if it kills him in the process. It's clearly the right decision to him, the only decision he thinks he can take - and it's textbook fatal flaw.

But before I settle on that, there's one more I want to talk about, which is really an extension of protectiveness, and that's Love.

I'll admit that love always feels like a bit of a cheat to me as a fatal flaw - it's a bit of a catch-all, in that if you argue hard enough you can pull back almost any character to love in some way (which is why Aphrodite is such an underrated yet powerful goddess), and it's nowhere near as obvious for Michael as it is for Apollo and Nico (yes I know what Bianca said, but consider: she didn't know what she was talking about. Nico's fatal flaw is a whole other meta, though), but I think it fills in a few gaps that protectiveness leaves a little open.

There's something that gets overlooked a lot when Michael gets discussed, especially the chariot feud, despite the fact that Percy outright states it.

Michael had taken over the Apollo cabin after Lee Fletcher died in battle last summer.

No sugar-coating, no forgetting about a background character that got all of two pre-death appearances - Lee was killed in battle, and Michael was the one that took over the cabin from him.

We never get any canon information on Michael and Lee's relationship, but obviously they knew each other well, given that Michael's the next most senior kid - and isn't that the kicker. Because this line tells us one very important thing: Michael had to step into his big brother's suddenly-vacated shoes in the immediate aftermath of a battle, with no time to grieve.

We even have a comparison to make right in that same scene:

Even Jake Mason, the hastily appointed new counselor from Hephaestus, managed a faint smile.

Jake's also been shoved into the same role, a role we later find out he never wanted and never recovered from - big brother's dead, your turn to step up and lead the cabin in war. Most of the counsellors are laughing but all Jake can do is a faint smile. He's not okay, and you wouldn't expect him to be - and in The Lost Hero he's even more blatant about the fact that he's not okay (same as Will, in fact) - so, clearly, Michael is not okay, either.

The chariot feud is a whole mess of emotions - anger, pride and stubbornness are ones I've already covered - but I never see anyone talk about grief, and how Michael's been forced to lead a cabin in the wake of the death of his older sibling (the first wartime promotion, really - the Stolls situation isn't quite the same), and how he has to be at least somewhat off-balance, because grief is a tricky little thing and there's no way it hasn't got its nasty little claws in Michael, and that only a few scant months - a year at most - after Lee's death, it's still very, very raw.

And there's a strong correlation between love and grief. "What is grief but love perservering?" "Grief is the price we pay for love" - there's a neverending list of sayings about grief and love.

Then there's the bridge. There's Michael putting Austin and Kayla right at the back, setting traps but a long way back from the front line. There's the way he knew that without the Ares cabin they weren't going to win so he surrendered the chariot in the hopes of getting the front line fighters to join in - the ones that will stand between the archers and the enemy, between his siblings and the enemy. There's, again, the way he stood his ground as a barrier between Kronos and his army and his siblings, even though if Percy hadn't destroyed the bridge he would've been overrun and killed (and he was in such a precarious position that breaking the bridge... well, we know what happened or do we).

But also there's the fact that Michael was fighting at all. The fact that Michael wanted to fight - when Percy gives him the opportunity to take the fight to Kronos, to fight back rather than just numbly defending the bridge/Manhattan/Olympus, Michael seizes it.

His ferrety face was smeared with soot and his quiver was almost empty, but he was smiling like he was having a great time.

"That was my last sonic arrow," Michael said. "A gift from your dad?" I asked. "God of music?" Michael grinned wickedly.

I followed with the Apollo campers at my heels. "Yes!" yelled Michael Yew. "That's what I'm talking about!"

He's right there on the front line, it's so obvious that he's there because he wants to be, because he believes in their cause. Because he loves Apollo.

It's never said in so many words (although we know Apollo has interacted with Michael because he's given him those sonic arrows), but it's there in Michael's actions, in how he never falters in the pro-god side of the war despite losing sibling after sibling after sibling to it - Michael has to love Apollo for anything else to make sense.

It's his siblings he sacrifices himself for, but it's his father he chose to fight for. And it's both that he died for.

If that's not a fatal flaw in action, what is?

#michael yew #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo meta #tsari analyses things #i have so many feelings about Michael okay #he didn't deserve to die #and i sincerely hope he didn't

[tsarinatorment]

Riordanverse: Gods and Mortals and Nicknames

So I wrote this in response to another post but it was kinda tangential so I’m gonna just slap it down as its own thing, too.  Very rough and ready because I’m tired and have no free time at the moment, but if people are interested (and I can find time), I can absolutely try and tidy this up at some point!  I believe it was @fearlessinger I originally breached this topic with some time back in the toa discord but there were probably a few others lurking as well...

But anyway: Gods and Mortals and Nicknames!

Specifically, the way that the gods never canonically shorten each other’s names, or use anything less than a full name (barring Dionysus’ chronic inability to say most demigods’ names correctly) to refer to each other and the demigods (with one glaring exception which I’ll get onto in a sec).

It almost reads as though there’s an etiquette there, that using their full name is a mark of respect - that you acknowledge their power and you’re not belittling it by bestowing some sort of pet name/nickname - and it’s interesting to me that they keep that up with the demigods (who we know they envy, thanks to Apollo dropping that little truth in his narration, and are of course the major source of their own worship and therefore power in the modern day).  A key example here, and the one that contradicts fanon the most, is the fact that Apollo never, ever, calls Artemis anything other than “Artemis” or some variant of “sister” (titles being the alternative to using a full name, eg. “father” when they’re not trying to get Zeus’ attention!).  There is no Arty or any other typical shortening one might expect from a twin.

That’s completely different to how a lot of (Western, I’m British and that’s the culture I can speak for; I won’t make assumptions on others) mortals view names; nicknames/pet names are very common when you’re close with someone and like someone. And we see it with several of the main characters:

Percy, of course, is the prime example.  We all know it’s short for Perseus and we all know that Percy never, ever, goes by Perseus.  He doesn’t like it when people call him that (and maybe that’s because it sounds a bit pretentious, or because Perseus is too much the shadow of his predecessor rather than him), and the only time people call him that is gods or monsters, or when he’s in trouble/people are intentionally trying to rile him.

Nico is another one, and one I didn’t realise about at all until THO, when Apollo refers to him as Nicholas.  Honestly, I thought Nico was his full name until then, but I’ve been informed by someone with a far greater understanding of Italian names than I that Nicholas makes more sense as his full name than Nico, so there we have it.

Meg, leaning into TOA because that’s where this is going to go, is a third; she refuses to be called Margaret under any circumstances and if she got her way, no-one would even know Meg wasn’t her full name.

Will isn’t a main character (much to my ongoing disappointment), but we got canon confirmation that his full name is William, and yet it’s never used except when people close to him do that good old Full Naming Thing when they’re fake-mad.

Which leads me off to my point about names and etiquette and Apollo, our god who loves humanity and quite frankly, understands and respects humanity better than the rest of the gods (and yes, even pre-TOA but I’m not getting into that rn) so it makes sense that he might be willing to switch which etiquette he’s using depending on if he’s talking with/about mortals rather than gods.

Because Apollo calls Percy “Perseus”… but only sometimes, when he’s being a bit of a little shit because especially at the start of TOA, Apollo was really laying that facade on thick, lbr.  Otherwise, unlike literally every other god, he calls him Percy - Percy’s preferred name.  With Nico, Nico told him “it’s Nico”, and Apollo immediately switched to that, his preferred name, without hesitation.  Meg, when asked, did give her full name but also made it clear that she hates it, and Apollo never used it.

And of course, there’s Will, Apollo’s beloved son, who he calls Will right from the start of THO, completely bucking the trend of full names unless requested otherwise, and being a lovely beacon of “Apollo and Will had enough interactions pre-BOO for Apollo to know Will’s preferred form of address and default to it when he’s mortal and half-conscious and very groggy to the point he barely recognises his own son - yet still uses his preferred name and not his full name”.

Dionysus, as mentioned earlier, can also buck the trend, but it seems to be much rarer, and with good reason - unlike Apollo, who gladly gets attached to mortals over and over and over again, he doesn’t want to get attached, so he distances himself with fake names most of the time (but uses full names when he does use them… except with Nico and Will, who are the only two demigods I can think of off the top of my head that Dionysus refers to by name (and nickname, no less) in every appearance he has with them.  With Nico, I assume this is because of the therapy sessions and the way that he’s chosen to get close to him for some reason.  Slightly less clear with Will, but considering it was from Apollo’s pov and therefore Apollo was there, I am fond of (and amused by) the idea that Dionysus knows better than to mess up Apollo’s kids names when his brother is there and will go all papa bear on him for getting it wrong.  Maybe he calls him other names when Apollo isn’t in earshot, who knows…

#riordanverse meta #riordanverse #rrverse #rrverse meta #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #trials of apollo #pjo #hoo #toa #pjo apollo #pjo dionysus #percy jackson #nico di angelo #meg mccaffrey #will solace #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

*Props elbows on table* Do continue the Apollo's children are Greek AND Roman meta, please!

Okay, so this took a while because the blog got shadowbanned and rl got a bit mad and just. Stuff in general. But I am still very much on this hill and yelling out about this (as two of my friends can attest to because they got trapped in a vc with me nattering on and on about this last night, oops), so let's get back to talking about this in depth.

This is the original post I made on the subject; it's very short and overview-y but several people asked for an expansion and as it's been a while I'm gonna ping the people in question: @rosesandlove44 @adequate-problematic @linds997

I'm actually upgrading this from a headcanon to a theory because the more I poke around and chat with others about it, the more it seems to fit with the narrative. So: Apollo's children are both Greek and Roman.

Now, before we can properly get into the children, we need to look at Apollo himself. If Apollo, like the rest of the gods, flits between Greek and Roman, then his kids would do the same and we'd have a split between them just like the rest - but he doesn't, and we don't.

Apollo never changes between the two. Not only that, but he's never shown to have any problems reconciling the two at all.

Starting chronologically, in Blood of Olympus, we meet the twins for the first time since the schism starts. Interestingly, however, it's Artemis who places more emphasis on the schism when they talk about it - Artemis, of course, becomes Diana for the Romans, and we know that the schism does affect her.

‘Delos is our birthplace,’ said the goddess. ‘Here, we are unaffected by the Greek–Roman schism. Believe me, Leo Valdez, if I could, I would be with my Hunters, facing our old enemy Orion. Unfortunately, if I stepped off this island, I would become incapacitated with pain. All I can do is watch helplessly while Orion slaughters my followers. Many gave their lives to protect your friends and that accursed Athena statue.’

If I, she says. While the implication is there with her use of "we" to describe them being safe from the schism on Delos, when it comes down to details she only talks about herself - specifically, that she would be incapacitated with pain. Apollo, when the same topic comes up, is nowhere near as specific:

‘To shoot my bow, I would have to step off Delos,’ Apollo cried. ‘Then I would be incapacitated, or Zeus would strike me down. Father never liked me. He hasn’t trusted me for millennia!’

Yes, he says he would be incapacitated, but his focus is immediately on Zeus and the punishment waiting for him. Admittedly, this and when he talks about Delphi do make it sound rather like there's something to do with the schism that's affecting him, but when we look at the scene more closely, there remains this curious lack of specifics or focus on that. Rather, what he says could very easily be misleading (and considering how much of an act he's putting on during this scene, what with the death threats to Leo that there's no feasible way he could ever have meant for so many reasons, what's a little more of an act?).

Apollo’s bow turned back into a ukulele. He plucked a dramatic chord. ‘When the schism began between Greek and Roman, while I struggled with confusion, Gaia took advantage! She raised my old enemy Python, the great serpent, to repossess the Delphic Oracle. That horrible creature is now coiled in the ancient caverns, blocking the magic of prophecy. I am stuck here, so I can’t even fight him.’

He says he struggled with confusion, but it never specifies what that confusion was by. In fact, as the other gods, as Artemis helpfully points out earlier in this same scene, are pained by the schism, Apollo seems rather odd to just be confused - actually, confusion would track more with him trying to work out why this is happening all of a sudden, especially as his own twin is affected, rather than it impacting him, personally.

Of course, there could be some inconsistency in the worldbuilding here. Rick has admitted several times to fudging things, and these two passages are the only ones that potentially contradict the theory, but I'm not entirely convinced on that because of the rest of the scene.

As we're facing Artemis, not Diana, and the twins are on Delos, the Greek island, it's heavily implied that we ought to be seeing Greek Apollo here. But if it's Greek Apollo, then why does he talk so familiarly with Frank, and about Octavian? We see from Mars and Bacchus with Percy that the Roman gods have no overlap with the Greeks in terms of knowledge and awareness of what their counterparts are up to, but Apollo is perfectly aware and comfortable talking about the Roman camp while in the Greek territory and setting.

‘You wrong me!’ Apollo wailed. ‘I was misled by Gaia and that horrible Roman child!’ Frank cleared his throat. ‘Uh, Lord Apollo, you mean Octavian?’ ‘Do not speak his name!’ Apollo strummed a minor chord. ‘Oh, Frank Zhang, if only you were my child. I heard your prayers, you know, all those weeks you wanted to be claimed. But alas! Mars gets all the good ones. I get … that creature as my descendant. He filled my head with compliments. He told me of the great temples he would build in my honour.’ Artemis snorted. ‘You are easily flattered, brother.’ ‘Because I have so many amazing qualities to praise! Octavian said he wanted to make the Romans strong again. I said fine! I gave him my blessing.’

Here, he refers to Frank's father being Mars (not Ares) with no issues at all. He also refers to his dealings with Octavian in the first person - there's no suggestion that he separates himself into Greek and Roman; he could have said "the Roman me" instead of "I", but even that requires him to be aware of what his counterpart was up to, which, again, is something that tends not to happen from what we're shown in the books. As it is, the implication is blatant that it is this Apollo who was dealing directly with the Romans... even though he's Greek.

That doesn't quite track with everything else, so even in BOO we can see signs that Apollo isn't affected the same as the others.

Then, of course, we have Trials of Apollo. Again, we're explicitly with the Greek Apollo, here; he usually refers to Artemis over Diana, he goes to Camp Half-Blood, where Chiron, the demigods, and later Dionysus all treat him with the familiarity that comes from being their side of things.

And yet, Apollo continues to have no problems at all with the Greek-Roman thing. We get little snippets like this, which show Apollo being casually familiar with Mars without any mental pause at all:

Below us stretched a landscape only slightly more hospitable than Mars. (I mean the planet, not the god, though I suppose neither is much of a host.)

That's definitely some good old brotherly/Olympian shade being thrown right there, without any pause at all.

“That’s a very Mars thing to say,” I noted. “Despite my many disagreements with Mars, I mean that as a compliment.”

Many disagreements - Apollo's used to talking with Mars as well as Ares, clearly.

And I just wanna backtrack a little bit to Frank and Apollo again, because as I was grabbing this passage as some more evidence, I noticed something else:

I almost didn’t recognize Frank Zhang. The first time I’d seen him, back when I was a god and he was a legion newbie, Frank had been a baby-faced, heavyset boy with dark flattop hair and an adorable fixation on archery. He’d had this idea that I might be his father. He prayed to me all the time. Honestly, he was so cute I would’ve been happy to adopt him, but alas, he was one of Mars’s. The second time I saw Frank, during his voyage on the Argo II, he’d had a growth spurt or a magical testosterone injection or something. He’d grown taller, stronger, more imposing—though still in an adorable, cuddly, grizzly-bear sort of way.

The first time, Apollo says, and then goes on to describe something that is never shown in HOO: Apollo seeing Frank pre-Son of Neptune, as a legion newbie and before he became part of the Seven. This may well have been one of the times when Apollo visited Octavian (although Frank clearly never knew about this, because their meeting on Delos is treated very much like their first meeting, and he wouldn't have held on hope of being Apollo's son right up until his claiming in SON if he'd met Apollo before that, because I can't see Apollo letting him continue to hope after meeting in person), but it's more evidence that this Apollo is the one that interacted with Octavian, visited Camp Jupiter... and yet he's definitely still the same Apollo that's got all the Greek familiarities, too.

Yes, my examples all seem to tend towards Mars, but that's because Apollo talks about Mars the most. One more little snippet:

I considered that. When my followers called, had I ever shown up and granted them three wishes? LOL, nope. Maybe one wish, if that wish was something I wanted to happen anyway. And if this ritual only allowed me to call one god, who would it be—assuming I could even choose? Perhaps my son Asclepius would be able to heal me, but he couldn’t very well fight the Roman emperors’ forces and the hordes of undead. Mars might grant us success on the battlefield, but he’d look at my wound and say something like Yeah, rough break. Die bravely!

Not only, when Apollo's considering which god would work best, does he have a solid prediction for what Mars' reaction would be to his wound, he also has faith that Mars would likely help Camp Jupiter.

Delving into Camp Jupiter proper, Apollo is openly familiar with the place. At the start of The Tyrant's Tomb, he tells Meg about visiting it:

“You know how to get to Camp Jupiter?” she asked. “Of course.” “ ’Cause you said that about Camp Half-Blood.” “We got there! Eventually.” “Frozen and half-dead.” “Look, the entrance to camp is right over there.” I waved vaguely at the Oakland Hills. “There’s a secret passage in the Caldecott Tunnel or something.” “Or something?” “Well, I haven’t actually ever driven to Camp Jupiter,” I admitted. “Usually I descend from the heavens in my glorious sun chariot. But I know the Caldecott Tunnel is the main entrance. There’s probably a sign. Perhaps a demigods only lane.”

Specifically, how he used to arrive, and the way he phrased it - usually - implies that it was more than a one-off visit, although we also know that the Roman gods tend to be even more absent than the Greek ones, considering how much of a big deal it was for first Juno and then Mars to appear in quick succession during SON. Greek god visiting a Roman camp? Why?

He mentions more familiarity with the camp a few times, but I'm picking this one out because it has not only some titbit about Jupiter but also actually directly addresses the ways mortals influence gods:

The lake’s south shore was the site of Temple Hill, with its chaotic assortment of shrines and monuments. On the summit, overshadowing everything else, was my father’s impressively ego-tastic Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. If possible, his Roman incarnation, Jupiter, was even more insufferable than his original Greek personality of Zeus. (And, yes, we gods have multiple personalities, because you mortals keep changing your minds about what we’re like. It’s exasperating.) In the past, I’d always hated looking at Temple Hill, because my shrine wasn’t the largest.

He says "we gods" despite clearly being the same between Greek and Roman (at this point, the implication is so blatant it wouldn't make sense for it to be anything but the case, in my opinion), but on a tiny segue into real life mythology for a moment, Apollo - like the other gods - was viewed differently even within different areas of Ancient Greece, so he would still be affected by this in general, even if it's clearly not the case during modern PJO-era.

I'm not going to go into great detail on it here, because it's an essay in its own right, but of course there is another, huge, part of TOA that directly points to Apollo being the same: the Triumvirate.

All three of them are familiar with Apollo, and Apollo is equally familiar with all of them. The Roman emperor-god Caligula wants to replace this Apollo. Nero fully expects Apollo to recognise him (and, once he dredges it out of his mortal-teacup memory, Apollo does). And then, of course, there's Commodus.

Of course, when I visited Roman camps, I usually spent all my time in the commander’s tent, lounging and eating grapes like I used to do with Commodus…. Oh, gods, why was I torturing myself with such thoughts?

I grabbed this one because it also continues the theme of Apollo's familiarity with Camp Jupiter, and Romans in general, but it does also add in the pointer that it's this Apollo, our Apollo who's definitely not pure Roman, that remembers the romance with Commodus in so much depth. This Apollo is the one that had that romance.

Why would the Romans be so much of a threat, care about Apollo so much, if he wasn't their, Roman, god? Python, meanwhile, is very much from the Greek side of things - Greek and Roman enemies, both targeting the same facet of the same god.

Apollo being both Greek and Roman, at the same time, is the best-fit explanation for this that I can see, and I could continue to draw out more quotes and discussion on this, but I still want to get into how this affects his children, so I'm going to leave this section here.

Let's move onto his children.

The major point here the distribution of Apollo's descendants between the two camps: most of Apollo's children are in Camp Half-Blood.

In fact, if it were not for the known existence of Apollo Legacies (Octavian), and Frank's desperate hope to be a child of Apollo, it would seem that Camp Jupiter doesn't have any children of Apollo at all. As it is, the implication is that there are very few.

Why? Let's start with Octavian, and the augur position.

Octavian is a legacy of Apollo. He is not a son of Apollo; there are a few generations (at least) between them, and yet he is the one in the position of camp augur, which implies that there's no-one better for the job (or that has the money to bully their way in, but I don't think that's really the case here, which I'll get to in a minute). Octavian has prophecy powers (which actually throws a lot of other implications about Apollo's kids and which domains they inherit, let alone whether legacies actually have any demigod abilities, for a bit of a spin), although we heard from Apollo himself in BOO that he blessed Octavian, which is where I suspect his prophecy powers come from (but again a talk on legacies and power inheritance is for another time). How is a many-generation legacy the best person for the job?

Apollo has a lot of kids. It's inferable that he has more kids than any other god (bear in mind that the overly-populated cabin eleven also contained unclaimeds and minor gods' kids - take them away and the number of Hermes kids is almost certainly lower than the number of Apollo kids, but that's yet another topic for another time). It seems unrealistic that a legacy is a better fit for the job than one of his own kids when there should be so many of them running around.

But not only is Octavian the best fit for the position, he's also the only fit for the position:

No. Of course. The legion had no high priest, no pontifex maximus. Their former augur, my descendant Octavian, had died in the battle against Gaia. (Which I had a hard time feeling sad about, but that’s another story.) Jason would’ve been the logical next choice to officiate, but he was our guest of honor. That meant that I, as a former god, was the ranking spiritual authority. I would be expected to lead the funeral rites.

Over half a year after Octavian's death, Camp Jupiter still has no augur. Octavian has not been replaced, despite an augur being an incredibly important role. Yes, emphasis is put on Octavian throwing money and influence around to get his own way in HOO, but the fact that his position hasn't been filled after this long suggests that Camp Jupiter has no-one else who can.

We're also looking at the healers: Pranjal is a son of Asclepius, not Apollo.

“My name’s Pranjal,” said the young man. “Head healer for the legion. I worked on you when you first got here, but we didn’t really meet then, since, well, you were unconscious. I’m a son of Asclepius. I guess that makes you my grandpa.”

He's Will's counterpart for Camp Jupiter; it just seems really bizarre that there's no child of Apollo floating around and checking in on their dad.

In fact, we're not introduced to a single child of Apollo throughout the entirety of TTT, despite him interacting with a lot of the legion, and the fact that Apollo always seeks out his own children in the books. In Camp Jupiter, he spends time with not just Pranjal, but also Lavinia, the daughter of Terpsichore, one of the nine Muses - if his own children were around, why did he not interact with them? The only logical explanation is that there aren't any children of Apollo in the camp at this point (and, potentially, no other legacies, either, therefore leaving the augur position open because there's no-one around with any prophetic potential).

The conclusion here is that all of Apollo's kids, near enough, end up at Camp Half-Blood. It neatly explains why there's so many of them there (at least during PJO, before they get annihilated during the wars), while Camp Jupiter has so few. Why Camp Half-Blood? I made a separate essay on this, but in brief: Apollo is implied to be the patron god of Camp Half-Blood. It makes sense that he'd want to bring his children into the camp he founded, rather than let them go through Lupa's rough initiation and then to a camp named for his father and under the patronage of Mars.

And as Apollo is clearly both at the same time, that means his kids are also not going to be one or the other, and could therefore fit in easily wherever they end up.

There's one other little side-effect that would come into play here, though: languages.

Greek demigods are fluent in Ancient Greek. Roman demigods are fluent in Latin. Following this logic, Apollo kids would therefore be fluent in both.

This actually explains why Chiron teaches the Greek demigods Latin; it always seemed a bit weird to me that he'd spend the time to teach them Latin when they already have an old language they're fluent in, and Latin doesn't really fit with the otherwise very Greek theming. And yet, he's explicitly stated to have taught Annabeth, and of course Percy, and it's likely that he's taught the whole camp.

“He heard them talking in Latin.” “Latin? Were they campers?”

While Apollo's a little confused that people in the woods surrounding Camp Half-Blood were speaking Latin, he still doesn't discount that they could be campers based on that. It's only a small piece of evidence, but it's still there.

And on the Roman side... I am still no expert on Octavian, but the way he knows Greeks exist early on with a certainty that most of the legion dismiss suggests that he has some degree of proof. Yes, his conversations with Apollo may have brought that to the fore, but there's also the potential that Octavian knows because his family, and perhaps he himself, can speak in Ancient Greek despite never studying it. Octavian is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

Overall, the way Apollo is unaffected by the Greek-Roman schism, has no pause identifying as both the Greek Apollo and the Roman Apollo, and the fact that all of his known children are concentrated in one camp (particularly the one that he founded and remains connected to), heavily implies that there is no division between Greek and Roman for either him or his children.

#Anonymous #riordanverse #trials of apollo #heroes of olympus #rrverse #toa #hoo #pjo apollo #pjo artemis #apollo cabin #toa pranjal #pjo octavian #will solace #kayla knowles #austin lake #meta #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Hiiii, could I convince you to poke at the Nico and Apollo relationship? You mentioned it in the Apollo and Solangelo analysis (which was great and very well put together btw) and now I am intrigued to know what you think of it

Of course you can convince me to poke at Nico&Apollo's relationship because it's interesting and completely underrated so it deserves it's own post rather than being crammed into the footnotes of a Solangelo post!

The first thing to note about these two, which I don't see discussed anywhere near enough, is that Apollo is the first person to be nice to Nico in canon.

Yup. The first. When Nico's introduced, we've got the whirlwind of Thalia and Percy bickering and posturing like the terrible big three kids they are, we've got a manticore trying to kidnap Bianca (and Nico as collateral), we've got the Hunters who are all pretty heavily dismissive of anything male, we've got Annabeth being taken hostage and Percy then losing any hope of rationality he possibly had before that, and we've got Artemis snatching his sister away for what Nico clearly feels is for good. Grover's the only one who isn't outright hostile to him, and we don't know exactly how he treated the di Angelos at school but Nico doesn't seem particularly attached to him so while Grover might have been nice enough, Nico clearly doesn't see him as a potential support after Bianca's abandonment of him.

Now, I'm gonna briefly segue into Bianca and Artemis because this will have relevance to Apollo and Nico as well. I firmly believe that Artemis and Apollo know the di Angelo siblings' parentage right from the start. Reading between the lines, you also even get the implication that the entire reason the Hunters are in the area is because they're looking to grab Bianca, and that doesn't make sense under normal circumstances - the Hunters are all girls who don't have any meaningful attachments, and Bianca has Nico. Yes, Bianca willingly leaves him for the Hunt when it's offered to her (specifically phrased as being a freedom from responsibility, which was incredibly manipulative, thank you, Zoe), but the only other character we know the Hunters actively pursued and tried to recruit despite having an attachment is Thalia.

What do Bianca and Thalia have in common? They're daughters of the big three - they're potential prophecy kids, but they have a way out because, as proven, if they join the Hunt they're no longer eligible to fulfil the prophecy, so I think Artemis was intentionally trying to get both of them to protect them (which fits in with her role of protector of maidens, etc.). The big three sons are tough out of luck, but the daughters have an option and they take it (Bianca is manipulated into it, Thalia openly takes it as a "this is me dodging the prophecy, sorry, Percy" sort of way - which is far too self-serving to ordinarily be something I think Artemis would allow into the Hunt). I'll talk more about the di Angelo kids and the Hunt and the Twins later, if there's interest.

But anyway, back to Nico and Apollo.

Nico is not a happy kid when Apollo turns up. He's been attacked, abandoned by his sister (I will note that I do not personally disagree with Bianca joining the Hunt, but regardless of her reasoning/the reasoning behind Artemis and Zoe of press-ganging her into it, to Nico's eyes it's a straight-up abandonment and he's not actually wrong), and the glamour of his card game suddenly being real life is wearing off really damn fast.

And yet - he bounces back later. By the time he's seen the orientation video, he's back to the bubbly kid we first met, and all the naivity seems to be back in full force by the capture the flag game. So what happened?

Apollo happened.

There's only really two interactions between Apollo and Nico here, but they're both pretty important, to me.

Firstly:

"Cool car," Nico said. "Thanks, kid," Apollo said. "But how will we all fit?" "Oh." Apollo seemed to notice the problem for the first time. "Well, yeah. I hate to change out of sports-car mode, but I suppose…" He took out his car keys and beeped the security alarm button. Chirp, chirp. For a moment, the car glowed brightly again. When the glare died, the Maserati had been replaced by one of those Turtle Top shuttle buses like we used for school basketball games.

Was Apollo being actually dumb and not noticing the problem until Nico pointed it out, or was he waiting for someone to point it out? Quite frankly, it doesn't actually matter (although personally I think it's the latter, because almost all Apollo's appearances seem to be carefully crafted to make him seem like an idiot, but also it doesn't make sense for him to actually be that dumb, but that's another rabbit hole entirely). What matters about this scene is that Nico's being listened to and validated for the first time in the book - Nico points out a problem, a literal god confirms that yes, there is a problem, and immediately acts on it. For a ten(ish) year old kid who's so far been very neglected/ignored/abandoned, that's actually a big deal (and also that was pretty brave of him to even try and speak up when so far he's been shut down or ignored at every turn). He's been taken seriously.

And then Apollo continues to take him seriously! Unlike Percy, who's really quite short with him, Grover and Thalia, who are both intent on the Hunters, albeit for very different reasons, and the Hunters themselves (including Artemis), he doesn't give any indication of being irritated by Nico's innate questioning and lets him back out of the grumpy little shell we were starting to see:

The Hunters piled into the van. They all crammed into the back so they'd be as far away as possible from Apollo and the rest of us highly infectious males, Bianca sat with them, leaving her little brother to hang in the front with us, which seemed cold to me, but Nico didn't seem to mind. "This is so cool!" Nico said, jumping up and down in the driver's seat. "Is this really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it's them and sometimes it's you and Artemis?" "Downsizing," Apollo said. "The Romans started it. They couldn't afford all those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car." "But how does it work?" Nico asked. "I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of gas!" Apollo chuckled and ruffled Nico's hair. "That rumor probably got started because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas. Seriously, kid, it depends on whether you're talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think about the sun? Ah, now that's more interesting. They've got a lot riding on the sun… er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows their crops, powers engines, makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams about the sun, kid. It's as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The chariot is a manifestation of the sun's power, the way mortals perceive it. Make sense?" Nico shook his head. "No." "Well then, just think of it as a really powerful, really dangerous solar car." "Can I drive?" "No. Too young." "Oo! Oo!" Grover raised his hand. "Mm, no," Apollo said. "Too furry."

Not only does Apollo answer all of Nico's questions with no indication of being irritated by them, he goes above and beyond answering the basic question and actually puts a lot of detail into his answer - so much detail, in fact, that it's actually a little confusing for Nico (and me, the first time I read it...). There's no brushing off, there's no feeling that Apollo doesn't want to be answering those questions - he even checks Nico was still following and only dumbs down the explanation after Nico admits he doesn't get it.

And yes, he shuts Nico down pretty quick about the driving thing (which actually makes even more sense when you view it through the lens of Apollo knowing exactly who Nico's father is - and let's be honest, Nico is described as looking a lot like Hades, it's honestly more unbelievable that Apollo wouldn't have put two and two together even if he doesn't know/remember the di Angelos from the 1930s but again this is another rabbit hole to poke at another time if there's interest - because a child of Hades driving the sun chariot is gonna summon lightning super quick), but then he shuts Grover down with an even more stupid reason - even Nico's gonna see "too furry" as a dumber reason than "too young", so it negates any slight that might have started to take root.

So - Apollo and Nico's first interaction, Apollo is the first person to be nice to Nico, to take him seriously and treat him like an actual person with feelings rather than an irritating kid, and that's really important. And yes, while Nico is very good at grudge-holding (hello, fatal flaw), I can't see him forgetting this very clear, stand-out bit of kindness in his otherwise pretty rotten introduction (or potential re-introduction) to the demigod world.

Then we really hop, skip and jump to TOA because Nico flits around quite a lot in PJO and HOO but he doesn't really interact again with Apollo.

“Hey, I’m just stating the obvious. If this is Apollo, and he dies, we’re all in trouble.” Will turned to me. “I apologize for my boyfriend.” Nico rolled his eyes. “Could you not—”

Nico's not at all worried about interacting with Apollo here, and he doesn't seem particularly happy about the prospect of Apollo dying, which isn't that surprising, but one thing about this particular exchange that I do like is how Nico doesn't mind that Will told him about their relationship - considering how in the closet he was in BOO, this is a pretty big thing. I know Will starts teasing about "would you prefer significant other" but I think it's pretty obvious that Nico's actual protest is about Will apologising for him, not that he referred to him as his boyfriend. The rest of the exchange is just Solangelo being comfy Solangelo in front of Apollo, which is completely precious.

“Nico,” I said at last, “shouldn’t you be sitting at the Hades table?” He shrugged. “Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It’s a mood disorder. I can’t control it. That’s what I told Chiron.” “And is it true?” I asked. Nico smiled thinly. “I have a note from my doctor.”

And then again, Nico's completely at ease even when some people might find Apollo asking that question to be kinda scary - after all, it could be construed to sound like Apollo doesn't want him at his table, but Nico is perfectly comfy bantering back at him. (He's also not afraid to drop Will in it, which shows a level of trust that Apollo isn't gonna get mad at his son, either.)

There's a lot of little moments like that, and I know Nico isn't generally shown to be particularly reverent to gods in general, but he seems more than just irreverent - he feels comfortable with Apollo. And he genuinely wants to help him:

Will hovered nearby. “Look, Apollo, I don’t think you’re back to a hundred percent.” “I’ll be fine.” I pulled on my jeans. “I have to save Meg.” “Let us help you,” Nico said. “Tell us where she is and I can shadow-travel—”

Again, yes, there's the argument that Solangelo and doing it for Will, but Nico's still being nice to Apollo, in his own way. We know how Nico acts when he doesn't like someone and the whole of TOA's interactions with Apollo is not it.

The want, or even need to help even extends later into TON - even before Nico finds out about the prophecy, he’s worrying about what he can do to help:

‘And if she can break you out,’ Nico added, ‘and if you can destroy the fasces before Nero burns down the city … That’s a lot of ifs. I don’t like scenarios with more than one if .’ ‘Like I might take you out for pizza this weekend,’ Will offered, ‘if you’re not too annoying.’ ‘Exactly.’ Nico’s smile was a bit of winter sun breaking between snow flurries. ‘So, assuming you guys go through with this crazy plan, what are we supposed to do?’

It’s admittedly very difficult to separate out Nico and Solangelo in TOA because we almost never see Nico without Will, but even so, a lot of the time the Solangelo lines are there more as a tension-breaker in the narrative than anything else - here, certainly, Will’s contribution adds nothing of his own concern, so we’re still looking purely at Nico’s worries here.

And this isn't just from Nico's end. Apollo worries about Nico as well:

Will picked at the wrapper of his bran muffin. ‘It’s complicated. Nico sensed Jason’s death weeks ago. It sent him into a rage.’ ‘I’m so sorry …’ ‘It’s not your fault,’ Will assured me. ‘When you got here, you just confirmed what Nico already knew. The thing is … Nico lost his sister Bianca a few years back. He spent a long time raging about that. He wanted to go into the Underworld to retrieve her, which … I guess, as a son of Hades, he’s really not supposed to do. Anyway, he was finally starting to come to terms with her death. Then he learned about Jason, the first person he really considered a friend. It triggered a lot of stuff for him. Nico has travelled to the deepest parts of the Underworld, even down in Tartarus. The fact that he came through it in one piece is a miracle.’ ‘With his sanity intact,’ I agreed. Then I looked again at Dionysus, god of madness, who seemed to be giving Nico advice. ‘Oh …’

(And can we appreciate Nico being canonically in therapy because I love this little detail).

It’s also interesting to note that at no point in any of the TOA books is Nico ever rude, abrasive, or otherwise harsh/disrespectful to Apollo.  He worries about him, he works with him (and saves him a couple of times), he teases him, but there’s a very clear baseline of respect between Nico and Apollo that clearly has nothing to do with Will/Solangelo and everything to do with just these two characters mutually getting on really quite well.  Honestly, it’s incredibly likely that Apollo is Nico’s favourite god (with the possible competition of Dionysus), and this itself likely stems from Apollo being the first person to take him seriously, and never not taking him seriously, which should not be as hard a bar to reach as it is but Nico spends most of PJO and HOO being ignored or shunned, either for being a naive kid or for being a son of Hades, and the number of characters who are never shown to treat Nico badly, either to his face or behind his back... are really very, very, low.

Apollo is one of them.  Is it any wonder that they have a good relationship?  (Which I’m sure Will appreciates!)

#burning-moths #pjo apollo #nico di angelo #percy jackson and the olympians #trials of apollo #riordanverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

oo now im interested in that apollo is chb'd patron thing would you care to elaborate on that??

@stereden also asked this! There's not so much canon for this as some of the other things I've talked about but there's still a few things to say on the topic, and not only am I going to talk about him being the patron, I'm going to talk about how that works with the things that happen with CHB during the PJO series, and of course because we're talking about Apollo, there's the odd little titbit from TOA that makes its way into this, too.

A lot of this will be extrapolation, but I've done my best to keep more floating headcanons out of it, so this should at least all stem convincingly from canon.

I'm going to address two things under this umbrella, because I think they're related and also because I find them fascinating: Apollo as the patron god of CHB, and Apollo's loss of jurisdiction over CHB by the events of canon.

So, Apollo and the patronage of CHB. While Camp Half-Blood Confidential is pretty goofy and daft in tone, it gives us a few important little nuggets of information regarding the founding of the camp, namely that it was Apollo's idea - or at the very least, Apollo foresaw that it would happen/needed to happen.

As it turned out, giving Apollo a centaur-back ride was the smartest thing I ever did. Unlike others of my kind, I didn’t belong to a specific tribe. I was a loner…and, sometimes, lonely. We bonded during that ride. I found that Apollo could be quite charming one-on-one, when he wasn’t trying to impress his adoring throngs of fans. When we got back to the cave, he said something that changed my life. “Uncle Chiron, I’ve decided to teach you some stuff.” Perhaps he found the idea amusing: a nephew teaching his uncle. Or maybe, being the god of prophecy, he suspected I had an important role to play in the future of Olympus. Whatever the reason, he chose to share his knowledge with me. At first, he showed me simple things, like how to nock an arrow—“Aim the pointy end away from your body”—and how to bandage a gushing battle wound. He taught me to make a lyre, play a number of hits like “Stairway to Olympus” and “Burnt-Offering Smoke on the Water,” and even compose my own lyrics. Once, in an effort to refine my poetry skills, he sent me on a quest to find a rhyme for arugula so that he could finish an ode to a mixed-green salad. The best I could do was pergola. Apollo called my effort an “ode fail”—the ancient precursor to today’s “epic fail”—but he continued to work with me. The lessons went on for a year. Then one day, Apollo showed up at the doorway of my cave with a half-dozen young demigods. “You know all that stuff I taught you?” he asked me. “It’s time to pay it forward! I’d like you to meet Achilles, Aeneas, Jason, Atalanta, Asclepius, and Percy—” “It’s Perseus, sir,” said one of the young men. “Whatever!” Apollo grinned with delight. “Chiron, teach them everything I showed you. Y’all have fun!” Then he vanished.

I have high doubts that this is exactly how it went down - I don't think those six demigods were all direct contemporaries of each other, mythologically, for starters - but they were all trained by Chiron and it makes sense for Apollo to be the one to introduce them, especially as he's the one that trained Chiron in the first place, and paying things forward is not a new or novel idea, especially when it comes to knowledge (after all, that's how teaching works even now - kids learn things, grow up, the next generation of kids start learning from them. That's just how humanity works).

From here, of course CHB continues to expand until it's the camp we know and love today. Chiron details this out for us (again, I don't believe the actual way he tells it, but the basic facts if not the very fictionised retelling seem solid). I won't copy out all of that, but I will make note of Apollo's direct involvement within the expansion, that that's the addition of the satyrs:

The satyrs arrived en masse with this note from Apollo: I predict that in the future, demigods won’t be able to find Camp Half-Blood on their own. The world will simply be too large, too populous, and too dangerous. When that time comes, send satyrs to track down your prospective students. Satyrs can find anything. They recently located a herd of cattle Hermes stole from me that even I couldn’t find. Trust me: you need seekers, and they’re the goats for the job.

Apollo is the one that's actively looking out for future demigods and their safety here. It's understandable that he's the one that knew it would be needed, because of his foresight and prophecy powers, but the fact that he acts on it so early, making sure the Camp is fully equipped to handle it with the satyrs long before they'll be needed, shows that side of him that he tends to not advertise in modern times - the side that wants to look after and protect the demigods.

That's two of the most important parts of CHB - its existence, and the satyr protector-guides - both directly attributed to Apollo himself, tying him more firmly than any other god to the camp. With this in mind, who else could possibly be the patron of the camp, if not for the god of knowledge whose own teachings are being passed down, and who actively worked to ensure the safety of future demigods?

The third thing is not explicitly Apollo, but considering the pattern it seems most likely, and that's the defences around CHB, back pre-Thalia's tree.

You see, I knew that so many demigods living in one place was like an all-you-can-kill buffet for monsters. Yet I had convinced myself that our campers needed no other protection than the skills we taught them. My pride had nearly been our destruction, but I learned my lesson. I immediately sent an Iris-message to Olympus asking for help. The gods heard our plea. The next day, a magical border settled over and around the grounds—a barrier that would both conceal the camp from unfriendly eyes and repel future attacks.

It's just the general "the gods" mentioned here, but considering that Apollo is the most involved god so far in the camp, if he isn't the one that did this himself (unlikely), he's certainly one of the gods that was involved in making sure this protection happened.

Another minor little detail to note is in the symbolism of the battle that occurs which prompts Chiron to request for aid here. To summarise for those who haven't read this story, the campers are nearly defeated, and it's only last-minute reinforcements from past campers that saves the day:

Then, just as rosy-fingered dawn peeked over the horizon, a new battle cry sounded in the distance. Former campers who had learned of our desperate plight now came charging to our aid.

The reinforcements came at dawn. Yes, I know that's a favourite trope in media (see the very memorable Battle for Helm's Deep in The Two Towers), but that doesn't make it any less fitting here - the camp was saved at dawn, which is the time when Apollo takes to the sky (and yes, by this time chronologically, Helios has already faded and Apollo is the god of the sun, according to Chiron's description of their first meeting:

“Ah…yes, Lord Apollo.” I tried to control the twitching in my withers. “Very weird indeed.” I noticed the sky was darkening even though it was only noon. “Not to be critical, O Great One, but shouldn’t you be driving the sun chariot right now?” He shrugged. “Actually, I put it in park for a few minutes because Artemis is up there doing her lunar-eclipse thing.” He scratched his fashionably stubbled chin. “Or is it solar? I can never keep them straight.”

It's likely that this isn't long after Apollo took on the role, although of course he could have just been goofing around with the lunar-solar mix-up, but he is still, in this narrative, the god of the sun by this point).

The implication here is very much that Apollo's the one who called the older demigods to help (presumably the Ancient Laws are in effect at this point - in fact, that may even be why Apollo had to pass on the responsibility of teaching to Chiron in the first place, with the advent of the no interference Laws) which again adds some credence to the idea that he's also one of the gods, if not the god, who supplied the original defensive barrier for CHB.

So, that's Apollo's involvement in the original CHB, way back when, and I don't think it can really be argued any other way than that at this point, at least, he was the patron god of the camp.

But what about modern times?

Modern times gets more confusing. I still believe that Apollo is, on a technicality, the patron of the camp, but in practicality he no longer seems to have any jurisdiction over it.

He still keeps an eye on the camp - no matter how he tries to throw us off the scent in TOA, there are some slip-ups in his narration that give us a glimpse of the god who is not at all distant from camp emotionally, even if he's physically forced to be.

Over the centuries, I’d had many conversations with demigods who wanted to know more about their absentee godly parents. Those talks rarely went well.

From this it's clear that he does spend time with the demigods at camp, historically (although not recently, which I suspect has a lot to do with Dionysus' forced presence, either because Apollo fears being reported to Zeus, or because there's a rule about only one Olympian god near the camp at a time). He cares about them and goes out of his way to reassure them - all of them, not just his own children.

He also remembers names. There are twenty two campers present during THO, including Meg, and during Apollo's narration we are given the names of every single one. The facts he gives us are precise, and the fact that he is able to perfectly recall every name after being introduced once (especially when we contrast this with Dionysus' refusal to get most demigod names right even if he's known them for a decade) implies a strong level of care. And no, this is not just because it's in winter and therefore Rick had a small enough cast number that he could afford to name them all - in TTC there is a similar number of demigods in the camp, yet Percy, who lives with these people for several months of the year, never gives us names. In fact, we learn in BOTL that Percy doesn't bother to learn some of the camper names at all. This is Apollo caring about these children.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Connor and Travis Stoll are the pranksters?” From a nearby basket, Chiron grabbed a flannel blanket and spread it over his fake legs, though the ruby shoes still peeked out at the bottom. “Actually, Travis went off to college last autumn, which has mellowed Connor quite a bit.”

Not only does he know their names, he also knows their habits and personalities. That's not just a basic level of reading names off a roll list, that's Apollo being actively aware of the children at camp as individuals.

It's also shown less implicitly through his conversations with Chiron in THO. Chiron knows that Apollo cares about the campers - he opens their first conversation with this:

My old friend smiled, though his eyes were stormy and distracted. “Apollo, it’s good you are here. We need to talk about the disappearances.”

Literally Chiron's first thing is to bring up missing campers, because he knows Apollo will care about this - and Apollo does! It isn't Chiron who continues this topic of conversation, it's actually Apollo who keeps trying to bring the topic back around while Chiron talks about Python and Delphi and prophecies:

“Chiron,” I said, “this is Meg McCaffrey, my new master and wellspring of aggravation. You were saying something about disappearances?”

“Disappearances,” I prompted. “What has disappeared?”

“The disappearances, yes.” I wiped drops of tea from my pants and tried to ignore Meg’s snickering. “Tell me about those.”

He asks about it three times before Chiron finally gives him the information he's after - it's actually the thing he's most insistent about focusing on in the whole conversation (he keeps trying to dodge the discussion of Python and Delphi) - and even after that it's the one he keeps asking more questions on, trying to get more and more information. Apollo never says so in as many words, but it's clear that he's very worried about the missing campers (a façade he more or less manages to cling to until his own children are added to the number, at which point the façade collapses entirely and we see Apollo in full worry mode over the children).

So the question is, if Apollo is the patron god of Camp Half-Blood (and let's not forget his domain of protector of the young, here!), why did we never see him in this capacity during PJO?

Quite frankly, it's obvious that he can't. It's impossible that, if Apollo had any say over the matter at all, he would have allowed the sacking of Chiron in SOM. He also sends no visible aid during BOTL, but the Daedalus thing is interesting... But let's start from the top.

Apollo has lost jurisdiction over CHB by the time PJO begins. I would argue that this is a relatively recent development - there are conflicting canon statements regarding how long Dionysus has been at CHB (in TON, Apollo says he's been there for half a century but then later we get confirmation that Dionysus' punishment is far from over, yet in PJO his sentence was cut in half down to fifty years - my personal guess is that Dionysus has been there for around 15 years or so as of TLT, long enough that all the current campers have known him, but as his only known children are fifteen or older in TLT (Castor and Pollux are seventeen in BOTL, two years later, Dakota is a similar age to them) the implication is that he hasn't had any children since his punishment began, otherwise why the lack - considering his far from PG domains, Dionysus is a god I'd ordinarily expect to have a lot of children). However, Dionysus' tenure as Director of CHB likely prevents Apollo from getting too close to the camp for any length of time, as I mentioned earlier.

The biggest thing, though, and what I think was the final nail in the waning coffin of his jurisdiction, was Thalia's death. This is when Zeus put a very large, aggressive stamp on CHB - his daughter is the one guarding the camp now, through Zeus' own actions. By doing this, Zeus has completely muscled Apollo out, and we know that Apollo can't (and is too afraid to try to) challenge Zeus.

So, why would Zeus be so determined to claim CHB as his, and kick Apollo out? There's a few reasons. One is his ever-present paranoia. CHB is a major part of modern day demigod society - barring CJ, which is Mars' and the Roman equivalent, it is the most major part. The amount of power and influence it gives Apollo to have it under his control is huge, and we know Zeus fears Apollo overthrowing him (this is also why cabin eleven is the cabin for the unclaimed demigods - while the logic that Hermes is the god of travellers does hold water, as the camp patron and protector of the young, it would actually make far more sense for them to go to cabin seven. The only reason I can see why it wouldn't, in-universe (meta-wise it's clearly to build the Percy-Luke rapport in TLT to give the betrayal the oomph it needed), is if the other gods refused to let that happen. Considering they all seem fine with leaving their kids languishing in Hermes' cabin, they probably don't really care which cabin it is, as long as it's not their own - Zeus is the only one who has reason to protest against it being Apollo, and he has the clout to make sure he's obeyed on this).

Well, I say one reason is his paranoia; really, a lot of this is based on Zeus' paranoia, because all his interactions with Apollo are steeped in this throughout the series. Another aspect of his paranoia is the Great Prophecy - he wants his own child to be the Hero, but when Thalia dies, he's left in the horrid realisation that it might not be his child; Jason is still very young (and also a son of Jupiter and therefore Roman, and the Romans don't even have this prophecy), and if he's broken the Oath, there's a high chance at least one of his brothers has (whether or not he knows about Percy's existence this early is debatable, but from the way the accusations at theft were immediately levelled at Poseidon before Percy even knew he was a demigod, it's likely that the Olympians were aware of Percy's existence at least a little before the events of TLT). A child of Hades would be a problem, but Hades' kids aren't popular so he might see them as less of a concern/easier to get rid of (Hades also doesn't seem to like sending his children to camp - he explicitly refused to send Bianca and Nico to CHB). A child of Poseidon, however?

Remember that Poseidon and Apollo have historically worked together to oppose Zeus. A child of Poseidon central to a great prophecy in a camp that's under Apollo's jurisdiction is, to Zeus, a terrifying combination and one he won't want at all, so he uses Thalia to wrest the control of camp away from Apollo. Now Zeus is the one in control, and we know Zeus doesn't like giving control back. (And remember that in TLT the Apollo cabin back Poseidon... against Zeus; that can't have pleased him in the slightest!)

Of course, there's also the same power basis in his favour - he doesn't want Apollo to have that power, but he does want it for himself. The gods have all been waning compared to their original selves, and their powers are far weaker. During PJO, all of the gods are, if not pathetic, clearly weakened. It's only at the end that we see Poseidon and Hades regain their strength (the same way we see Apollo regain his in TON), while Zeus continues to wane.

So, what does Apollo do about this? He can't fight back against Zeus - TOA is a spectacular example of what happens if Zeus even thinks he's rebelling - but while the functionality has been stripped, he is still the patron of the camp, and also the protector of the young. Apollo doesn't sit back and do nothing.

First of all are the dreams - we know Percy gets a lot of demigod dreams, we know Zoe gets a dream while in CHB, we know Apollo kids get dreams, we can infer that Chiron probably also gets dreams (I'll get to this in a sec), and also that he knows about the dreams (once again, see @fearlessinger's discussion of our theory on Apollo and the Demigod Dreams).

Secondly, there's Octavian.

Now, it took me a while to try and rationalise Apollo's apparent desire to work with Octavian, especially considering the way it ends up with Octavian trying to kill the Greeks (who are under Apollo's patronage - this, at least, must have been a misunderstanding because there's no way Apollo ever approved that), but when I sat back and looked at how powerless Apollo is in PJO, it makes sense.

Firstly, there's his inability to help Artemis directly during TTC. As this is a gods and titans problem, primarily, the Ancient Laws shouldn't actually prevent him from doing this - the only thing that could be clouding Apollo's sight and keeping him out are the Fates themselves - but Apollo is still unable to do more than effectively send children to their deaths (Zoe is admittedly not a child, but Bianca is, and Apollo is the one who got them most of the way to the desert in TTC, although he isn't the one to actually drop them there).

Secondly, there's the mess that is CHB. Chiron is sacked and Tantalus (someone who kills children) is hired in his place (do I like the idea of Tantalus' punishment extending outside of the Fields of Punishment being Apollo's doing as a way to make sure the kids stay protected? Yes, I do - but there's no actual canon for this although Tantalus finally getting his hands on food right at the end, when Thalia is restored and the power in the tree is now purely Zeus', is a very stretchy potential link to the last vestiges of Apollo's influence in any capacity being broken off). This is all around Bad News for CHB and nothing Apollo could possibly have approved of. Then in BOTL the camp is literally attacked and children die (including one of his own).

Daedalus is suspicious as heck the whole time, and Chiron is clearly very suspicious of him - and yet, he does nothing (even though Daedalus was posing as a Roman adult demigod and it highly amuses me to think of the panic Chiron must have been in about one of the smarter kids asking the right/wrong questions). I was discussing this with fsinger the other day and the conclusion we came to is that Apollo may have been the one to assure Chiron that Daedalus had not - yet - joined with Kronos and was therefore safe to have around the kids. After the mess of Tantalus, Apollo would no doubt be keeping a very close eye on who was being allowed near the kids, after all (and as he can't directly interfere, the most likely method of imparting this information would be via dreams).

The fact that Apollo has been dragged off monster hunting by Artemis on Zeus' orders, thereby keeping him away from camp at the time when they need godly protection the most also plays a significant role here (Dionysus, too, was elsewhere on Zeus' orders, which makes one side-eye Zeus very heavily at this point).

Overall, Apollo has lost a lot of power in recent years, and he's desperate to regain at least enough to be able to protect Artemis and CHB again - power which he would get if the Romans started worshiping him higher, because the gods are clearly fuelled by belief (notably, at the end of TON, Apollo has regained his belief in himself, which is even more powerful than belief from others, and makes me wonder if he could now regain his jurisdiction over CHB back from Zeus). This neatly ties in the Octavian side of things in HOO.

So, in conclusion: Apollo is the reason CHB exists, he's been consistently shown to care about the demigods right from its inception to the modern day and protects them as much as he is able to, which makes him the clear choice for patron of the camp. However, Zeus' paranoia has prompted him to muscle Apollo out of any practical patronage (although he is, technically, still the patron even if he can no longer act on it), leaving Apollo desperate to regain the patronage and protect the demigods however he can without directly defying Zeus.

#Anonymous #stereden #pjo apollo #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo #heroes of olympus #hoo #trials of apollo #toa #riordanverse #rrverse #pjo chiron #pjo zeus #pjo octavian #chb #camp half-blood #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

If you really think about it both Nico and Will have a very high chance of achieving godhood cause they are both their dad’s favorite child or one of their dads favorite children. Both are very accomplished demigods that have little to no life experience in the mortal world. I think if they both got offered godhood when they were a little older and confident that they were going to be a forever couple neither would be particularly opposed to becoming gods. Will would probably be the god of surgery or something cause he’s a healer like his godly brother but he’s more of a trauma surgeon then a medicine maker. And Nico could be a stellar god of skeletons or shadows or something. Cause Summoning Skeletons is like his main attack thing.

There are two different points here, anon. Point one is could they be gods, and point two is would they want to be.

The answer to point one is certainly a resounding yes - but not because of favouritism on behalf of their parents (despite the fandom's apparent insistence to the contrary, Apollo doesn't have a favourite child; he very clearly loves them all equally if you actually pay attention to how he acts with them all. Will gets spotlighted more because he's in the books more, but the ratio of appearance to Apollo's gushing is about the same for all three kids we get to know in TOA). They are, however, both easily powerful enough to ascend - Apollo directly compares Will with Asclepius, and I don't think I need to talk about Nico any further on this topic.

The answer to point two is where I disagree with you wholeheartedly, anon. I don't think either of them would ever choose to be a god. Neither of them are actually interested in gaining more power, unlike the famous examples of Dionysus and Hercules*, and also being a god really isn't all it's cracked up to be.

For starters, these are two kids who have spent most of their preteen/teen years in the middle of various wars, in positions of responsibility that would be tough for adults to handle and should never, ever have landed on the shoulders of kids. We see this with Percy as well - he was so tired of it all by the end of the series that he's literally done his best to turn his back on all of it. Being a god is, first and foremost, a responsibility. It's a full time job with no time off, no holidays, no nothing, for the rest of eternity. Why would two people who have been trapped in nothing but that for their mortal lives willingly choose that when they could die and spend eternity together in Elysium, doing only things they find fun with no overarching responsibilities hanging over them? At this point I'd say it's a no brainer that both of them will get Elysium when they die, whatever happens from now on, and also with Nico being the son of Hades... the rules will get bent in his favour even if that wasn't the case, let's be honest.

Also, if they did ascend, they'd be mostly separated - Nico would clearly become Chthonic and remain based in the Underworld, while Will would be one of the Olympic gods on Olympus/the Overworld. They would be able to interact occasionally, I'm sure, but for the most part they'd actually be separated from each other. Again, not really what they'd be going for, I don't think.

So no, while I agree both of them could ascend to godhood, I disagree that either of them would ever choose to.

You do make a good point about their general lack of mortal world awareness/skills, but with the existence of New Rome there are clearly options for adult demigods that don't involve returning to the mortal world - personally I headcanon that Will will go to New Rome University, get his doctor qualifications, and then return to Camp Half-Blood as an adult head of infirmary to take the pressure off of his younger mortal siblings, while Nico will continue with general Ambassador of Hades/Pluto things - so responsibilities while they're still alive, but ones they can shed once they die!

*No, I have not forgotten Asclepius' existence, but Asclepius was never given the choice. He was killed and then ascended all on Zeus' whims - we have no idea if he would have wanted to ascend if given the option.

#Anonymous #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo #riordanverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

I keep thinking about Percabeth's scene in Tartarus where Percy uses the dark side of his powers on Akhlys and Annabeth is terrified and pleads with him to stop. And I keep thinking about how that scene would not work with Solangelo. Will lets Octavian die because Nico tells him to in BOO and by TON Nico is turning people into skeletons. I love how completely unafraid Will is of Nico and I love how that unflappable-ness extends to Nico's demigod abilities. He seems to care more about Nico being okay than about whoever's on the other end of Nico's powers. I really hope we get his POV in the book because Nico could tell us all about him, but there's never really been a character in Will's position before. I'm invested in how differently he thinks from the traditional heroes, the people who are used to questing and fighting, but also I desperately want to see "creepy and gloomy" Nico and his "terrifying" powers described in Will's eyes.

Ah, yes, Akhlys, who we're almost certainly going to encounter because she's been set up as having some sort of interaction with Nico already in BOO. I've been thinking a bit about this scene as well, and you're right.

Personally, what I want to see of Tartarus this time is something completely different to Percabeth's journey. Solangelo is not Percabeth 2.0 and I don't want the narrative to mirror it, so if it was up to me, I don't want to see them encountering the same things at all. However, realistically we're going to get at least some overlap (although I'm hoping not too much) and Akhlys is top of the suspect list.

But yes, Will won't be afraid of Nico, no matter what Nico does. He will be afraid for Nico, for the consequences of Nico's powers on him, but he won't be afraid of him. And also, from the power arc standpoint, Nico has had this moment of dark, when he literally reduced Bryce to a ghost in BOO. It serves no narrative purpose to repeat this revelation that Nico can go incredibly dark even for this reason, never mind the fact that it's already expected and implied due to his parentage, and if Will doesn't by now know about what Nico did to Bryce (or at least heavily suspect) I will be incredibly surprised. For all we know, Hedge may even have told him in BOO when he told him about everything else, so, no. Something like that would not add any depth to Nico, Will, their relationship or the plot, and I'll be incredibly disappointed if it occurs.

(That being said, I, too, really want Will's pov on Nico and the powers that Nico wields, because he's clearly unafraid but that doesn't mean he's unaware of how terrifying his boyfriend is to other people.)

What would make this encounter interesting is if it was Will, not Nico, who snaps. I am on the fence about plague!Will and in almost every situation it is a headcanon I cannot get on with, but there is exactly one scenario whereby I would find it an interesting premise, and that is this one.

Where Will is the one whose powers go out of control, where Will is the one who unlocks something dangerous, deadly, and arguably should never be unlocked. Where Will is terrified of what he can do, because he's a healer, not a killer, but Tartarus has broken something inside him and now he can't turn it off, now he's inflicting plagues on everything around him and he can't stop it.

Where Nico is the one terrified - not of Will, no, Nico would never be terrified of Will the same way Will would never be terrified of Nico - but of what it's doing to Will. How he's watching his boyfriend break under the strain of what Tartarus has done to him, how it's changed him in a way that's irreversible and Will can never be who he was before, but a compromise has to be reached or this will kill everything Will's ever been. Kill his spirit, crush his soul, watch his powers spiral out of control and know he's directly responsible for everything he tries to stop in the world.

Where Will tries to push Nico away because he can't be the reason Nico dies, but Nico will never leave Will, no matter what, and maybe this is something that can't be fixed, but it's something they can grow into together, something they can face together, help Will control (and lock away, because he doesn't want this, he's a healer not a killer and this power should never have been unlocked, but he can't lock it away until it's controlled, and he has to live with the knowledge that it's there, now, the same way Percy has to live with the knowledge of what he did - only with Percy the fear was never his power, it was the way it made the person who loves him recoil in terror, but Nico will only hold onto Will tighter and it's the power Will will fear).

If we're going to get Plague!Will, that's the only way I'll be happy with it, and from a character development standpoint it will force the narrative to really dig deep into who Will is and show us everything - his loves, his fears, the innermost workings of his mind - which is something that, honestly, we really need in canon for Will. I love him, and there's a lot of extrapolation that's possible from what we have, but in terms of blatant canon we still don't have much.

Meanwhile, Nico's had his big story arc already. He's gone from the naive young child to a traumatised war veteran, and learnt to accept who he is, who he loves, and be confident in himself. We've seen Nico at his lowest, most broken points and now he's working so hard on putting himself maybe not back together, but he's rebuilding a whole out of his shattered parts again, and honestly I think it'd cheapen his arc over the past three series if the point of this book is to tear him apart again. Will, on the other hand, is a near-blank slate with so many hints (he, too, is a traumatised war veteran, but so far we haven't been shown this) and getting his pov in the Solangelo book would be a perfect way to finally learn what's really going on under that laid-back and gentle yet steadfast and stubborn presentation he's had so far.

So yes, Will pov for this book please, and treat him like a main character and not a trophy boyfriend with no other narrative purpose.

#Anonymous #will solace #nico di angelo #solangelo #pjo akhlys #riordanverse #rrverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

i've been keeping up with eclipse and I love it but I do wonder: if you were chained to a desk and told to write a nico & will book- presumably like rick was- what would that be like? their ending in tower of nero always felt different from the others to me; like everyone else is moving on with their lives and finding their place, but nico and will are still at camp half-blood, and they're both year rounders.

Hi, anon! I'm glad you're loving Eclipse :D I had a lot of fun writing it and the reception it's got so far has been amazing - almost overwhelmingly so, at times, given the amount of people so far who have told me they prefer it to TSATS...

As for what would I write if I was told to write a Solangelo book... I'm actually not going to go into any real detail here because I'm actually working on a new longfic right now which is exactly that - taking the epilogue of TON as it is and drawing that out into a Solangelo-focused quest rather than the detour I took with Eclipse, so hopefully you'll see that appearing in a few months' time :D

I will give a few little hints, though:

More Will-centric plotlines and story. I love Nico, but one of my main issues with the overall TSATS concept long before it was published was that Nico's story arc seemed to be over (he's found his place, he's in therapy etc.) so I wasn't sure what exactly Rick thought he could do with him that didn't ruin what he'd already achieved... Will, on the other hand, has a lot of untapped potential to unlock still, so I want to highlight him a bit more here

Supportive, healthy, Solangelo. I don't believe that you need to put a rift or relationship drama in a story just for the sake of it. We see so much of this healthy support in TOA that I'd love to keep going with that, expanding upon it. That's not to say that they're each other's yes-men, of course, but small disagreements that they resolve with respect for each other's points of view? Always good

Apollo and Hades ares still present and involved. I've actually described working on this plot so far as feeling like I'm having to bat Apollo away with a cardboard tube, because he still doesn't want them to go on a dangerous quest, but also this time I'm not letting him lock them up and go in their place, otherwise that would defeat the whole object of doing a different fic on a similar premise

Plot twists. I'm not saying what they are, but I will say that this quest is probably not going to go the way people think it is - not even Nico and Will!

Regarding your comment about how it feels like all the others are getting on with their lives while Will and Nico are still at camp - Jason's death broke Piper, and Leo's found a family that works better for him than camp did. The likes of Percy and Annabeth are off to university.

But Nico and Will are younger than them. It's difficult to remember at times, especially with Nico because he's been floating in and around the main story since TTC, but as of the end of TOA they're both fifteen, to Percy's nearly eighteen. There's two and a half to three years between them and the original PJO (human) cast, there's about two years between them and the HOO cast - it makes sense that they still have years left at camp. Percy's story as the camp's Big Three Kid has come to an end, and good for him - Nico is now the one stepping up into that role. In many ways, Nico's story, or at least this new, better, chapter of his life, is just beginning. Let him have fun at camp, let him be the child he's suppressed and get up to mischief! Let Will take time to be less responsible, less in charge of not just a full cabin of siblings but also the entire camp's health, and be a child himself. It's true that neither of them will be fully free of their responsibilities, or their trauma, but they've still got so much time to adapt in CHB's understanding environment.

Really, they shouldn't be forced into another Big Thing at all, but we're also looking at the Olympic Revolution looming threateningly in the background, the natural progression that the overarching story Rick's been telling is heading towards, and of course we have this quest teased in TON - which, again, I think should be far more geared towards focusing on Will and his trauma rather than rehashing what we already know and have seen resolved, as much as trauma can ever be resolved, with Nico.

#Anonymous #will solace #nico di angelo #solangelo #riordanverse #trials of apollo #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Thought on apollo and octavian's relationship, and how their bargain affects the plot in hoo🤔

Okay, this is a bit of a tricky topic to poke at for a few reasons but I do have some thoughts so I'll blab a bit about that.

Some things before we start: I am not an Octavian expert. I find his character interesting but I have not yet spent much time trying to take him apart and see how he ticks, so the conclusions drawn in this post will be based on what I know about Apollo, and some assumptions of Octavian based on the fact that I don't believe he's a malicious asshole.

On that note, if there's one thing that's similar between Apollo and Octavian in the books, it's how they're narrated - namely, we only see them through seriously unreliable narration. In Apollo's case, it's all his own doing, he wants us to hate him in TOA so he lies to us, the reader, and when he appears in the other books he's always acting so it's hard to pin him down (and I owe a lot of my analysis of Apollo to conversations with @fearlessinger and @flightfoot, who have spent far longer picking him apart than I). In Octavian's case, we are only ever shown him through the narration of people who, to varying degrees, all view him negatively, so it's important to remember our view of him is through the lens of several teenagers who, more or less, hate him. Just because their narration turns him into a two-dimensional villain doesn't mean he is one - and I will do my best to depict him as a more well-rounded character, but unlike Apollo I have not spent much time trying to pick him apart so my knowledge on his character is far more basic.

I'm also currently on holiday and don't have any rrverse books with me so this is more or less all me running from memory here, so the usual canon quotes will be entirely absent.

With those factors mentioned, on to the topic in question: Apollo&Octavian's relationship and what happened in HOO because of it.

I've tried to make sense of Apollo's reasoning for his interactions with Octavian before, because clearly he did interact - he tells us this himself in TOA - but the idea of Apollo approving of the camps clashing just isn't feasible with everything we know about Apollo's character.

In fact, there are a few options that aren't feasible when we take into consideration Apollo's personality and how he treats demigods, so I'll just run through those first:

- Encouraging Camp Jupiter to go to war against Camp Half-Blood. No only is Apollo the de facto patron of CHB so why would he want that anyway, he's also protector of the youth etc. and never puts demigods in harms' way in the series, so why do it here?

- Encouraging Camp Jupiter to go to war at all - again, Apollo is all about protecting demigods, this goes directly against that and makes no sense.

- Grooming or otherwise manipulating Octavian because he knew he was going to die. Again - why would Apollo do this? This doesn't fit in with his motives at all throughout the series, or his core personality. When prophecies say demigods are going to die, Apollo tries to find loopholes to protect them, he doesn't manipulate them until they're in the position to die. Apollo does not, and has never wanted, dead demigods.

- Genuinely wanting to dethrone Zeus. TOA's entire plotline is about Apollo learning to accept what he already knew re: Zeus' A+ Parenting and the bad treatment of demigods. It makes no sense if he's less poised to rebel at the end of TOA than at the start.

- Octavian manipulating Apollo in any capacity. Just. No. First of all, this suggests that Octavian is an irredeemable Bad Apple rather than a complex young man (if Luke can have his redemption at the end of TLO despite being older than Octavian, then don't tell me Octavian is set in his Evil, Evil Ways), and secondly - Apollo is smart. Apollo is incredibly smart, and Octavian is barely an adult. There is no way, no matter how sneaky Octavian might have the potential to be, that he could manipulate Apollo.

The only reasoning I've been able to reconcile with what we know of Apollo that would have him striking any sort of deal with Octavian that even remotely resembles what Octavian (and Apollo) claims in canon is that Apollo knows his power base is weakening, leaving him unable to protect those he loves (Artemis in TTC, the entire camp in BOTL and TLO), and Octavian saying he'll promote Apollo to even above Jupiter in the camp worship (when Apollo is currently very low overall, being too Greek to ever be fully Romanised), would give Apollo enough of a power boost that he might be able to finally protect his loved ones again.

In order to get the events of HOO, the only thing I can see happening is a misunderstanding between the two of them, which in turn is orchestrated by our good old nemesis, Gaia. (Now, the Triumvirate are also a possibility, and may be involved on a more physical scale as they both provided a lot of resources for Octavian, and also we know they're gunning for Apollo in particular, but I think Gaia has to have been involved as well for this to have happened the way it did).

An important thing to note is that Apollo does blame Octavian to at least some extent regarding what went down, and considering this is the same guy who spends almost all of TOA taking every single blame that's possible to assign onto his own shoulders whether it's deserved or not, that's interesting. It means that Apollo does feel betrayed by Octavian's actions, which I can see for reasons I'll come into later, but that still doesn't negate the possibility of other interference. In fact, I think it makes it more likely.

Whatever the deal was between Apollo and Octavian - whatever Octavian actually wanted in return for boosting Apollo's standing amongst the Romans and therefore giving him this much-needed power boost (which Apollo eventually gets though TOA anyway) - it went wrong. Octavian's anti-Greek prejudice (which is, again, interesting, considering his favourite god is clearly Apollo, the most Greek of the Roman pantheon) collided with something, the Eidolons made everything worse, and then we had a war that Gaia wanted and Apollo did not.

It's in Gaia's favour to incite the two camps into war, and Octavian is the most powerful senator, barring Reyna who isn't the orator he is, so using him as the instrument makes sense - and it's convenient, really, that he's already in contact with Apollo so there's a ready-made scapegoat that even Octavian himself will fall for.

Did Gaia cause misunderstandings in Octavian's perception of what Apollo wanted? Possibly, but that would have been quite difficult to pull off without Apollo twigging what was really going on, so I'm a little doubtful that she would have done it much.

What makes me think someone did interfere (and Gaia makes the most sense here), is Octavian losing his powers. Those prophetic powers of his (regardless how powerful they actually are and I have doubts about that but that's not relevant here) is his communication channel with Apollo. Having those suddenly cut off is bad. I don't recall if we're told when he loses them, but it's definitely by BOO and likely a lot earlier, otherwise I'm sure Apollo would have been far more pro-Greek at him and tried to do something about the prejudice or at least had some success in stopping the clash (worst case scenario, Octavian may have gone ahead but he would have known he didn’t have Apollo’s blessing and may have lost all faith in Apollo entirely). He may have lost them by the time SON rolls around but is just going through the motions to keep the legion's faith in him - off the top of my head, I can't think of any canon that disproves that, mostly because we rarely see him using his powers and quite frankly, cutting open a stuffed toy and then saying stuff is very easy to fake.

So. Octavian loses his powers, he's provoked certainly by the start of MOA into believing that the Greeks need to be defeated (and only much, much later acknowledges the true threat that is Gaia), and he's hearing nothing from Apollo.

In the meantime, we have Apollo trapped on Delos, certainly trying to get Octavian to stop this nonsense, and being ignored (he dodges the demigods' questions over whether or not he's tried to stop Octavian, which in Apollo-speak is as good as "yes but it's not working"). In the end, Apollo comes to the harsh conclusion that the only way to stop Octavian is to kill him, which is not something he would have reached lightly. At this point - and even up until the end of TOA itself - I don't think Apollo realises there's other interference. He's had enough worries on his plate that he doesn't really have the time to sit down and think it through either during or after the fact, and that's time he won't have until post-TOA, which would be why Octavian's rare mentions in TOA are still tinged with betrayal.

Whether Octavian continues to launch his attack on CHB because he's taking nothing from Apollo as "no news is good news" and therefore explicit approval, or whether he's doing it because he's desperate about Apollo's silence and is acting out as best he can think of to try and get his attention, I don't know. Both have interesting connotations, but regardless, they end the same way - Octavian is claiming that he has Apollo's blessing to do this, effectively taking Apollo's name in vain, and that, Apollo must have seen as a betrayal of his trust.

Will deliberately calls this out as nonsense when Octavian tries it in his earshot, and that's something I'll talk about, too, because that, to me, seems to be the turning point in Octavian.

Will is a son of Apollo, the son of the god Octavian exalts so highly, rather than a mere legacy like Octavian himself. When he tells Octavian, to his face, "this is not what Apollo would want", he is full of (correct!) conviction, and this seems to be the final straw for Octavian.

I don't think Octavian is stupid. I'm here talking about how he's been manipulated by Gaia into starting a war thinking he's got Apollo's approval, I know, but that doesn't mean I don't think Octavian had doubts - the fact that he admitted to anyone that his powers are gone meant that he felt like something was wrong. He builds himself up and up and up which makes it feel more and more hollow underneath, as though there were doubts but he felt like he was too committed to change anything (and he was, he had Gaia's forces as part of his own, he had villains back in the legion, he had marched them all across the country to CHB - Octavian could not have backed down without depriving CJ of their last major point of leadership, with no praetors around).

He also doesn’t change his tune immediately, which makes sense - he couldn’t suddenly bow to what a Greek was saying after everything else - but I think it shook his confidence.  “You lie,” he says, curling his lip in what I have always taken to be some sort of defensive snarl.  He doesn’t want what Will’s saying to be true, that he’s been going so steadfastly against what Apollo wants, but he knows, then, that Will isn’t lying.  All those niggling feelings suddenly make sense and he hates it, he doesn’t want to believe it, but it’s true, and Octavian realises that.

Then Gaia rises, and the pieces fall into place.  Who, exactly, gained from Octavian’s behaviour, who he was really working for without knowing it.  Octavian gets desperate - his actions have lost all rationality by the time he’s at the catapult; he’s not listening to reason (or doesn’t care, but I don’t think if he was in his right mind he would kill himself, not when the legion would be left without a leader at all - bear in mind that Reyna should, by rights, have been exiled for her actions so her return does not automatically put her back in charge).  He’s frantic, he, too, just like Apollo, is betrayed, and he lashes out at the betrayer - Gaia.

It’s a tragic ending, really.  He dies alone and hated, manipulated by the real enemy and deceived into betraying the god he worshipped, his own ancestor.  (And quite frankly, if Luke can get into Elysium for stabbing Kronos after being the major player in helping him rise, then Octavian can get into Elysium for helping blow up Gaia after being manipulated to work in her favour, just saying.)

I know there’s probably several holes in this - like I said, I haven’t looked too closely into Octavian yet (the scene I am most familiar with is the one with Will, purely because I keep doing Will research and analyses), and I’m not currently somewhere where I can check the books to see what might be running counter to my theory here - but with the facts I do remember, it’s the only theory I can put together that makes sense without turning one or both of them into an irredeemable villain - of which Apollo canonically is not, and I find it very difficult to accept that Octavian is, either.

#neeks-bomberjacket #pjo apollo #pjo octavian #pjo gaia #will solace #heroes of olympus #hoo #riordanverse #rrverse #tsari analyses things #this is a pretty poor showing compared to my usual essays and i apologise for that

[tsarinatorment]

Bonjour ;) so you mentioned in your analysis of Nico & Apollo’s relationship that there’s reason to believe Apollo and Artemis knew about Nico and Bianca being Hades’ children right from the start and… I was wondering if you’d be willing to elaborate 👀

"I was wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate" says the person who listens to me talk their ear off about this and various other theories in the toa discord all the time ahaha. Of course I'm willing to elaborate, I just gotta get my thoughts into some sort of conceivable order here because there is. A Lot. This is, as always with my theory essays, quite long.

So, I'm just gonna broadly title this the Twin Archers and the di Angelos, because that's as narrowed down as this is gonna get, and we will be having some side appearances from Thalia as well because she's not unrelated to this whole thing, either.

So, what is my theory? In a nutshell, it is that Apollo and Artemis know who Bianca and Nico's father is right from the start, but there's a lot of nuance to this. There's a few places I could start this, but I'll begin with the emergence of the di Angelos from the Lotus Casino (we'll go back in time a little later, because the 1930s will be relevant!).

But first, before we even get as far as the di Angelos on the scene at all, I want to talk about the Great Prophecy and Big Three Kids - specifically Big Three Daughters. I did briefly go over this in the Nico&Apollo post I made a while back, but this time I'll go more in depth. The great prophecy explicitly states a half-blood of the eldest gods, shall reach sixteen against all odds. Now, while this could literally mean about half the pantheon (Aphrodite is stated in HOO to be older than the Big Three, Hestia, Demeter and Hera are also the same generation as their brothers - and Demeter has demigod children), for presumably reasons only Apollo has any hope of understanding, this is known to be specifically referencing a Big Three Kid. This means Big Three Kids basically have a lovely prophecy about death hanging over their heads, and we know Apollo and Artemis don't like demigods dying (their domains are literally about protecting children, it goes against who they are to let kids die no matter what lies Apollo tried to get us to believe at the start of TOA).

Obviously, the Oath is in place to stop this happening, but firstly I don't think anyone believed the rather promiscuous Zeus or Poseidon was ever going to be able to keep that for eternity, even if Hades might, and secondly, it's a Great Prophecy. At some point, it's coming true, whether they like it or not, which means at some point there will be some more Big Three Kids around.

Quite frankly, the sons of the Big Three are straight out of luck. They're either going to die young, or they're going to turn sixteen and, according to the prophecy, die then. There's very little that Apollo or Artemis can do to help the sons (although Apollo clearly tries - see fsinger's own essay on how Apollo is responsible for demigod dreams, especially Percy's). Artemis even says this:

"Bianca, this is crazy," I said. "What about your brother? Nico can't be a Hunter." "Certainly not," Artemis agreed. "He will go to camp. Unfortunately, that's the best boys can do."

It's phrased as being derogatory (not helped by Percy taking it that way), but taking away the anti-boy bias and reading it as a statement of fact - the safest place for boys is Camp Half-Blood, while girls have the option of functional immortality, if they want to take it.

The daughters, however... that's another kettle of fish entirely. Daughters have an opt-out clause, and it's called joining the Hunters of Artemis. As we see with Thalia, this stops their aging process for the purposes of the prophecy, neatly keeping them alive and also skipping the prophecy.

Looking at it this way, suddenly the Hunt's attempts to recruit Thalia back before she reached CHB, despite her having the sorts of attachments that frankly make her unsuitable to be a Hunter (her close relationship with Luke) and would normally mean she was never on their radar, makes sense - if Thalia joins the Hunt, she escapes the prophecy (which she eventually does).

"The Hunters tried to recruit you," I guessed. Her eyes got dangerously bright. I thought she was going to zap me out of the Mercedes, but she just sighed. I almost joined them," she admitted. "Luke, Annabeth, and I ran into them once, and Zoe tried to convince me. She almost did, but…" "But?" Thalia's fingers gripped the wheel. "I would've had to leave Luke."

Note that Artemis specifically says about her Hunters being before they 'go astray' aka get boy-obsessed.

"I could appear as a grown woman, or a blazing fire, or anything else I want, but this is what I prefer. This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray." "Go astray?" I asked. "Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. Forget themselves."

This being Artemis' reasoning behind her recruitment drive of Thalia also explains why she's so happy to accept Thalia into the Hunt at the end of TTC, despite Thalia's reasoning being very clearly the selfish need to escape the prophecy. Yes, there's the Luke backdrop to it, too, but Thalia is not subtle about her reasoning, and this is the sort of self-centredness that ordinarily would not fly with Artemis, because Thalia is using the Hunt for her own gain.

"Father," she said. "I will not turn sixteen tomorrow. I will never turn sixteen. I won't let this prophecy be mine. I stand with my sister Artemis. Kronos will never tempt me again."

She explicitly says she refuses to be the child of prophecy and wants to stop aging, and yet Artemis still welcomes her in with open arms.

So, with one Big Three Daughter out of the way, let's talk about the other one. Bianca di Angelo, who is on Artemis' radar for at least a while before she introduces herself.

How do we know this? Firstly, the Hunters have been hanging around the general vicinity for a while - they make gentle advances towards Annabeth (I say gentle because Annabeth only had a pamphlet and clearly hadn't either been snapped up instantly or pressured so much she was turned off the idea like Thalia was) - and they are very quick to show up once Dr Thorn makes his move. Fast enough, actually, that there's some confusion from the characters about how they happened to be there in time (Grover ends up suggesting it was because they were trailing Annabeth, but that doesn't feel like a solid reason for them to be in the area when Annabeth clearly isn't a priority of theirs).

Secondly, there's this little exchange between Artemis and Nico:

Artemis considered the boy. "Perhaps you can show Grover how to play that card game you enjoy. I'm sure Grover would be happy to entertain you for a while… as a favor to me?"

If she's literally just met Nico, how does she know it's a card game? Yes, he's been gushing at her about it, but he never mentions cards (in fact, from the way he describes it with movement and stuff, it sounds more like a board game than anything else), yet Artemis knows exactly what it is. Mythomagic doesn't seem like the sort of thing that'd really be on her radar, though.

Other, less explicit hints include the implication that they haven't been attacked all year, but were attacked on the streets before that, "last summer".

Bianca di Angelo shivered. "That explains… Nico, you remember last summer, those guys who tried to attack us in the alley in DC?" "And that bus driver," Nico said. "The one with the ram's horns. I told you that was real."

Even Dr Thorn couldn't pick them out until the other demigods appeared and started showing interest in them, despite being powerful (and them also having a powerful scent), but before they were in the school, things were hunting them down pretty easily (although failing to do any actual damage, it seems). There's an implication there that they were being somehow shielded while at the school, and while Hades would be the obvious answer... if that was the case, why wasn't he shielding them on the streets?

(Remember that Artemis is the protector of young maidens and Apollo is the protector of the young.)

Even the fact that Artemis instructs the Hunters to get Nico's stuff as well as Bianca's, despite the Hunters under Zoe being very anti-boy and wanting nothing to do with any of them, implies that she, at least, is remembering Nico's existence.

Then we have the recruitment drive from Artemis and Zoe, which is really very heavy-handed. Artemis intentionally and immediately separates Bianca from the others before they can start extolling Camp Half-Blood to her and manipulates a confused and upset Bianca into joining the Hunt. It's harsh, not at all fair on any of the characters (Bianca was in no mental position to make that sort of decision, Nico didn't deserve to have his sister torn away from him like that), but the one thing it does for certain is takes Bianca out of the running for the Great Prophecy before any of the rest of the characters realised she was in the running for it at all.

So, that's Artemis' actions making a lot more sense all of a sudden. Now for Apollo.

I went into Apollo's interactions with Nico in great depth in a previous essay so I won't rehash that here. The only part of that that's directly relevant is Apollo's refusal to let Nico drive the chariot, despite Nico being very eager to do so, and yes, the fact that he is a ten year old child is a factor in that, but also Zeus would be super-mad if a son of Hades started controlling the sun chariot (even though the sun chariot is technically Apollo's domain and not Zeus', although we know Zeus doesn't care about that - look at the way he's muscled Apollo completely out of any jurisdiction over CHB, despite Apollo being its patron god, something else I will gladly talk about at some point if there's interest!).

But. Let's look at the whole sun chariot thing, shall we, because Apollo's sheer insistence that Thalia drive also makes a lot more sense under this theory. Yes, on the surface it looks like Apollo being obnoxious and not taking no for an answer the way gods tend to do, but when we look a little deeper (especially with TOA under our belts, where we have a much better understanding of how Apollo works), there's a couple of things that stand out.

Firstly, there are four Big Three Kids in that sun chariot. Four of them, and Zeus wants all of them dead aside from his own daughter (and even Thalia is not safe from Zeus if he decides otherwise... see him throwing the lightning bolt at them later in TTC, presumably as a warning for her to not turn against him in Zeus' typical rule-through-fear method). Quite frankly, Apollo was no doubt absolutely terrified at that many Big Three Kids in the chariot - Zeus has proven in the past that he can and will blast it from the sky if he wants.

"Don't sweat it! Maine to Long Island is a really short trip, and don't worry about what happened to the last kid I trained. You're Zeus's daughter. He's not going to blast you out of the sky."

Apollo even makes a point of this, so we know it was on his mind.

Second, the implication here is that Apollo himself isn't certain the chariot won't be struck if he's the one driving, despite it being his own domain - and considering Zeus' paranoia surrounding Apollo and the fact he's clearly watching for Apollo to do something that makes him seem like he's rebelling (proven by how quickly he slams the blame for the events of HOO straight onto Apollo even though everything he punishes Apollo for, with the exception of talking to Octavian, wasn't Apollo's doing at all), Apollo probably isn't wrong about that. Gathering so many powerful kids into his chariot would have Zeus' paranoia sky-high, so to speak.

So, his solution? Put Thalia in the driving seat. Thalia is a daughter of Zeus, and Zeus always treats his daughters better (see Artemis and Athena vs Apollo), and it also forces Zeus to choose, because if he does blast the sun chariot while Thalia is driving, it clearly looks like it's Thalia he's punishing, not Apollo (or even the other Big Three Kids). It's a clever little bit of manipulation by Apollo, albeit with the downside of Thalia's height phobia (and did Apollo know about that? Honestly, he might have done, and while it does feel unusually cruel of rr!Apollo to do that, when his option is make Thalia face her fear or all the mortals (plus Artemis' Hunters) get killed by Zeus... it's very much the lesser evil).

The Twins' actions during the start of the book are heavily geared towards the protection of the di Angelos - Artemis takes Bianca into her Hunt, while Apollo personally escorts Nico straight to Camp, which is something it's implied very few demigods get (by which I mean any actual godly escort; this is the only known case where they're not just escorted by a satyr). Could this all have been Artemis' planning without Apollo involved? Theoretically I suppose that could be argued, but my personal view is no, no it could not. Firstly, the Twins seem to be in each other's radar a lot, to the point where Artemis striking out alone seems to necessitate her telling Apollo she's going alone:

Artemis grit her teeth. "I need a favor. I have some hunting to do, alone. I need you to take my companions to Camp Half-Blood."

Yes, Apollo says just before this: "What's up? You never call. You never write. I was getting worried!", and seems to roll with it just fine, but this is where some of the TOA characterisation comes into play. Apollo is a pathological liar when the situation calls for it, and as already stated, Zeus is paranoid and has his eye on Apollo - which Apollo knows. He can't admit out loud anywhere that he might actually be planning things with Artemis - also, note that he never says that he hasn't seen her recently. It's implied, but that's how Apollo constructs his best lies, by dancing around the truth (it's not like Artemis needs to call or write if she's seeing him regularly, anyway!). It's more likely that he's talking about the fact that he knows she's planning something but she hasn't shared what - that is what is likely actually worrying him, if the declaration of worry is genuine underneath the façade (add in Artemis' next words that she's going hunting alone and it makes it sound like her not working with Apollo is a rarity).

Secondly, we're never shown her actually calling Apollo; the whole encounter feels less spur-of-the-moment and more planned in advance. Yes, she claims she's summoning a ride from him, but all we're shown is her looking east expectantly, complaining about Apollo being lazy in winter, and knowing that dawn (and therefore her brother) is on the way. No, she hasn't told Apollo what she's up to next, which Apollo makes a point to complain about, but the "get the demigods to camp" part of this seems pre-arranged.

Once Nico is at CHB, he's as safe as he can be, and most importantly, he's on the radar of Chiron, Dionysus, and several demigods. Zeus might have been able to zap him if he was alone and unknown without being caught, but now he's been drawn fully into the demigod world, Nico has been protected from Zeus finishing what he started way back when. (This protection extends even after TTC, when Nico runs off, because Nico spends most of his time either in the Underworld or the Labyrinth, which are both areas outside of Zeus' direct influence, and also because he's getting on the radar of more and more gods. Zeus' window of opportunity to quietly finish off the di Angelos without inciting any major backlash has been slammed shut by the Twins' actions, leaving them in the same tentative security that Percy has.)

So, there's the why of this theory, based on canon. But what about the how?

There are two hows in question here. How #1 is how did Apollo and Artemis know they were Hades' children, and How #2 is how did they know before the rest of the gods (which they must have done in able to get them to safety before Zeus intervened).

I'll start with How #1: How did the Twins know they were Hades' kids?

There are a couple of answers to this question. The first, and most obvious one, is that they recognised them as such on sight. Nico is known to look similar to Hades, and while the likes of Percy can be forgiven for not putting two and two together because he's only met Hades the once, other characters, like the gods, would see the resemblance.

Alternatively, they remembered them from the 1930s/40s. The timeline is somewhat inconsistent on exactly when the di Angelos ended up in the Lotus Casino, and the only concrete information we have is that it was contemporary with WWII, but that's still less than a century and to gods, that's no time at all. Apollo himself tells us in TOA that he has perfect recall, which makes sense being the god of knowledge, so the Twins recognising these children as the same children of Hades who disappeared (at the same time the pythia of Delphi was cursed, no less) is more likely than not. In fact, I'd go as far as to argue that it would make no sense for them not to recognise them.

But, why would they know the di Angelo kids in the first place? It's not like the gods pay attention to demigods prior to their arrival at CHB (and even then, it's only barely), and them being known seems unlikely as a general rule, but there are some key points to recall. First is that they are Big Three Kids. They're more powerful than regular demigods (Grover helpfully tells us this when they're first introduced, even though they still didn't twig until the end of the book about their parentage), and more likely to be on the other gods' radar. Second is the time period - we know that WWII, in Riordanverse, was a war between Big Three Kids, so the gods would be actively looking out for other Big Three Kids, especially children of Hades, as his son (presumably Hitler and other high-ranking associates, although I don't recall him ever being explicitly named, just that a few of Hades' children were leaders of the bad guys) is the antagonist. From the way Hades talks in TLO, it seems like the di Angelo siblings are his only children younger than sixteen at the time:

"When you and your sister were young, it was a bad time to be children of Hades. World War II was brewing. A few of my, ah, other children were leading the losing side. I thought it best to put you two out of harm's way."

They were certainly on Zeus' radar (after all, Zeus is the one who tried to kill them, and did kill Maria), but there's also another god who had to know, and that's Apollo.

"I warned you," a new voice said. Hades turned. A girl in a multicolored dress stood by the smoldering remains of the sofa. She had short black hair and sad eyes. She was no more than twelve. I didn't know her, but she looked strangely familiar. "You dare come here?" Hades growled. "I should blast you to dust!" "You cannot," the girl said. "The power of Delphi protects me." With a chill, I realized I was looking at the Oracle of Delphi, back when she was alive and young. Somehow, seeing her like this was even spookier than seeing her as a mummy. "You've killed the woman I loved!" Hades roared. "Your prophecy brought us to this.'" He loomed over the girl, but she didn't flinch. "Zeus ordained the explosion to destroy the children," she said, "because you defied his will. I had nothing to do with it. And I did warn you to hide them sooner."

While Apollo himself is never mentioned by name in relation to this scene, the pythia of Delphi - his Oracle - makes an appearance, not for the first time, apparently. She went out off her way to warn Hades specifically about protecting Bianca and Nico earlier; there is no feasible way that she could have known about the di Angelos if Apollo didn't (in fact, it wouldn't be out of the question to consider that Apollo saw the danger to the di Angelos and sent her himself, after all we know Apollo doesn't like demigod deaths), which means that Apollo had to know of their existence.

And if Apollo knew, Artemis probably did, too.

So, that's how they knew who the di Angelos were. Now, onto How #2: how did they know before the rest of the gods (or at least, Zeus), when they emerged from the Lotus Casino?

There are two possibilities for this. One is that Apollo happened to see Alecto retrieving them from the sun chariot - in fact, I'd argue that this would have been the case regardless of whether or not option two is also true, because Apollo can see everything from there, and that would give him the exact timing.

Two is that Apollo foresaw their re-emergence. We don't know the exact limits of Apollo's foresight. He doesn't give us any straight answers on that during TOA at all; the closest we get is this, which is also so early on in the narration that the truthfulness of it is somewhat up in the air (I am inclined to believe him because of his knowledge and prophecy domains, but the potential for a lie or exaggeration is certainly there):

Had I been my usual omniscient self, I could have gleaned Meg’s destiny. I could have looked into her soul and seen all I needed to know about her godly parentage, her powers, her motives and secrets.

There's also a lot of hints towards this in TTC, around the sun chariot ride:

Apollo studied me, but he didn't say anything, which I found a little creepy. "Well!" he said at last.

and

He winked at me. "Watch out for those prophecies, Percy. I'll see you soon." "What do you mean?" Instead of answering, he hopped back in the bus. "Later, Thalia," he called. "And, uh, be good!" He gave her a wicked smile, as if he knew something she didn't.

as well as later on in the book:

Apollo chuckled. "Fast enough. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. It's almost sunset. But I imagine we'll get you across a good chunk of America, at least." "But where is Artemis?" His face darkened. "I know a lot, and I see a lot. But even I don't know that. She's… clouded from me. I don't like it."

The implications are there that Apollo really does see a lot, more than I think we could actually properly comprehend as mere mortals who only see the here and now (I know my mind breaks when I try and conceptualise how much Apollo might actually know but hasn't happened yet, or might happen, or might have happened but didn't because there's a degree of fluidity and change in the future because nothing is set in stone until it happens), which means it is well within all likelihood that he saw the di Angelos leaving the Lotus Casino with enough warning to come up with a plan to protect them once they did. Add in the fact that Nico, at least, is intrinsically tied to the Great Prophecy, and it would make a lot of sense for Apollo to see a major point in his life like this one.

And Nico is intrinsically tied. Right from the end of TTC, it's blatant. Percy claimed the prophecy for his own because he refused to pass it on to Nico, in a parallel to Thalia, who blatantly dodged it and tossed the baton straight at Percy.

"I don't need forever," I said. "Just two years. Until I'm sixteen." Annabeth paled. "But, Percy, this means the prophecy might not be about you. It might be about Nico. We have to—" "No," I said. "I choose the prophecy. It will be about me." "Why are you saying that?" she cried. "You want to be responsible for the whole world?" It was the last thing I wanted, but I didn't say that. I knew I had to step up and claim it. "I can't let Nico be in any more danger," I said. "I owe that much to his sister. I… let them both down. I'm not going to let that poor kid suffer any more."

Then, of course, we have the Curse of Achilles, which is what kept Percy alive long enough to make the choice - that was Nico's idea and Nico's doing - and Nico being the one to convince Hades to join the fight to save Olympus. Nico was not the prophecy child, although Annabeth (and Hades, in TLO) is right to say that he could have been, but he still made major decisions and influenced Percy dramatically, which had a direct knock-on effect to the resolution of the prophecy when it happened.

With this in mind, it seems that if there's any character that Apollo would have a front-row seat to the possible destiny (or destinies) of, it's Nico di Angelo.

So, there you have it. That's why I think the Twins knew about the di Angelos' parentage right from the start, and also the logistics behind them knowing in the first place. It puts their canon actions in a whole new, and frankly far more realistic, light when we look at it this way - or at least, I think so.

#fearlessinger #nico di angelo #bianca di angelo #pjo apollo #pjo artemis #thalia grace #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo #riordanverse #rrverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Pspsppspspspss tsari can you give us the essay :tm: as to why Apollo is instrumental in solangelo :)?

Oh boy, here we go. So, anyone who speaks to me regularly about TOA/RRverse knows that I have opinions on all things Will (and a few on Solangelo, and Apollo) and you've just invited me to dive into a real rabbit hole here.  (Warning, this is long.  Approx. 3k words long.)  I’ve done my best to stick with canon facts rather than go too far down the spiral of headcanons and extrapolations (otherwise this would be at least twice as long again), but as always I can’t claim complete unbias in my interpretations of the canon material.

For general context, to me this subject is relevant and important because of the upcoming Solangelo book, and there are fears in the TOA discord about how badly Apollo's characterisation is going to be butchered and his entire character development retconned in order to actually make the Tartarus Quest a feasible plotline for the boys. The epilogue of TON in particular has some glaring red flags for this, where Apollo talks Will (and Nico) about their upcoming quest.

I frowned. I still didn't like the idea of my sunshiny son skipping off into the land of monster nightmares. My recent tumble to the edge of Chaos had reminded me what a terrible travel destination it was. Then again, it wasn't my place to tell demigods what to do, especially those I loved the most. I didn't want to be that kind of god any more.

"I wish I could offer you help," I said, "but I'm afraid Tartarus is outside my jurisdiction."

Now, that sounds... vaguely reasonable, I suppose, although even this bit I don't like because it sounds a lot like Apollo's already falling back on making excuses for not being able to interfere considering he spent the last couple of books, no, not telling demigods what to do, but definitely not sitting back and letting them throw themselves headfirst into danger, either. But then, right at the very end, we get this:

"Did you hear it?" Nico asked me. "The prophecy she whispered?"

"I - I didn't," I admitted. "Probably better if... if I let you two figure this one out."

This? This, from the perspective of someone who loves both Apollo's character development throughout the series, and his relationship with his children (especially Will, because yes, I admit my bias), is terrifying. This isn't him reluctantly admitting that there's limits to the help he can offer like he was pre-prophecy, this is him willingly stepping back and washing his hands of the whole situation. This line goes directly against the last five books' worth of character development (and even his baseline self during PJO/HOO, to say nothing of THO where Meg has to physically Order him not to throw away his life trying to blindly save Austin and Kayla).

Anyway, I'm going to get seriously off-track if I continue diving down that line because that's not actually what's being asked here, so I'll leave it there for general context of where this is coming from and get started on answering the question proper now.

Why is Apollo so important to Solangelo’s relationship?

The answer is, mostly but not exclusively, his relationship with Will. He also has an interesting, although far more minor, relationship with Nico which does not entirely revolve around their mutual love of Will, but it is predominantly Will, yes, and that’s what I’ll talk about here (I can poke more at Nico’s relationship with Apollo later, if there’s interest). And this brings me to my first point, which underlines my entire opinion on this thing:

Relationships do not exist in a vacuum.  They just don’t.  People are shaped by their relationships with various people, both good and bad, and the situations that arise from each of these situations - Nico is very shaped by his relationship with Bianca, her (in his eyes, not that I don’t agree) abandonment of him, and her death, to name the obvious example.  It wasn’t being a son of Hades that made him stop being the bubbly kid we saw and loved in TTC, it was Bianca’s death and then Minos’ manipulation that jaded him.  Likewise, Will is certainly influenced by other people in his life.  Apollo makes specific mention of his mother, Naomi, in TON:

Will hadn’t inherited his thoughtfulness from me. That was all his mother, Naomi, bless her kind heart.

(I personally think that Apollo is selling himself very short here, considering how he’s been acting in the entire series himself, but regardless, if Apollo says Naomi was thoughtful, then we can probably trust him on that.  I have a lot to say about how I think Will&Naomi’s relationship is, too, but that’s an essay for another time if anyone’s interested.)

However, Apollo is a god, and we’ve spent the first ten books looking at how much gods fail at being parents, especially the first five books where that was basically Luke’s entire original motivation (albeit later hijacked and twisted by Kronos), as well as the reason so many demigods defected to follow Luke, so how does this fit in with Apollo&Will?

Primarily, we’re looking at the fact that Apollo is, canonically, one of the best godly parents.  It’s a very low bar, I admit, but we get a hint of this during Clovis’ recounting of the war council in BOO:

‘We don’t know what’s going on at Delphi,’ Will continued. ‘My dad hasn’t answered any prayers, or appeared in any dreams ... I mean, all the gods have been silent, but this isn’t like Apollo. Something’s wrong.’

This isn’t like Apollo, Will says, making specific mention of the fact that, yeah, the gods are all silent and that’s pretty normal overall, but that’s not like Apollo.  Apollo is, usually, present in Will’s life to some extent.  He answers prayers, he pops into their dreams.  Admittedly we don’t know exactly what he does in those dreams (and yes, it’s a high chance he’s just reciting new poems at them that they may or may not actually want to hear), but it’s confirmed, repeated, canonical interaction with his kids.  That’s a lot more than we hear about or see from most of the Olympians.

This passage, to me, also reads like he’s worried about Apollo to at least some degree.  Nothing like the levels we see later on, in TOA, no, but there’s some concern going on there and it’s not purely at their general situation.

Will also has an unwavering faith in Apollo, as evidenced very plainly in his well-known interaction with Octavian:

‘No!’ Will Solace shoved Nico out of the way and got in Octavian’s face. ‘I am a son of Apollo, you anaemic loser. My father hasn’t shown anyone the future, because the power of prophecy isn’t working. But this –’ He waved loosely at the assembled legion, the hordes of monstrous armies spread across the hillside. ‘This is not what Apollo would want!’

He has no doubt at all that Octavian is at the very least mistaken, if not outright lying using his dad’s name, and that Apollo would not, ever, want the Romans to wipe out CHB - wipe out several of his own children, not to mention the camp he prodded Chiron into starting up in the first place (Apollo is, effectively, the patron god of CHB, after all, and there are a few tell-tale lines in TOA that let slip more than I think Apollo meant to on the subject).  He doesn’t hesitate, he gets properly angry (and we don’t see Will angry much, usually just stubborn and refusing to roll over as he sticks to his beliefs and morals) at the insinuation that anyone could believe Apollo would do that.  He’s not just protesting to Octavian here, he’s also proclaiming his faith in his father to his peers - to Nico, Lou Ellen, and Cecil, who are also his audience there.

Will truly believes in Apollo, and he’s never shown to be ashamed of that fact, not even - or rather, especially - when Apollo is being held up as the reason for the Greco-Roman war.  That level of faith is incredibly solid and deep for a demigod, especially in the aftermath of the PJO books, where there’s shown to be very little faith in the gods’ morality or actions.  Even Apollo projects himself as being self-centred (even though, when you read between the lines and look past his words to his actual actions, he’s never done anything but help the demigods).

“Tsari, this has nothing to do with Solangelo,” but it does, not just because, again, relationships don’t exist in a vacuum and Will is undeniably shaped by his relationship with his father anyway, but because of the timing of their relationship.

We don’t know, exactly, when Will and Nico became friends, let alone when they became boyfriends.  It’s somewhere in the timeskip between BOO (early August) and THO (mid-January), but we have no exact timeline for it.  I’d say from how they interact that they do seem settled enough in the relationship that’s it’s likely to have been at least a month from the ease of the banter that they share, and the way Nico is clearly not at all threatened by Paolo:

“You’re staring,” Nico noted.

“I am not,” Will said. “I am merely assessing how well Paolo’s arms are functioning after surgery.”

“Hmph.”

(He points this out as a statement of fact, not an accusation; we know what Nico’s like when he gets defensive or worried and “hmph” is not it.)

But we don’t know for sure exactly when they first became friends, rather than a doctor-patient dynamic (it’s heavily implied canon that they didn’t meet until at least BOTL, judging by the fact that there are no Apollo kids in camp during TTC and while I acknowledge the potential is there for Will to have been unclaimed at the time, that doesn’t fit with what we know of Apollo’s personality - he likes showing things off, he likes showing his kids off (look at how much he waxes poetic about Will, Kayla and Austin in THO, even before we start with the character development, look at how much he likes bragging about what previous kids have gone on to do).  If he had any unclaimed kids in camp while he was dropping by in TTC, it would be very out of character for him to not claim them and show them off, but he doesn’t, so Will was almost certainly not in camp then).

What we do know is that the entirety of the canonical Solangelo relationship, from the ambiguous “when exactly did they get together after BOO” to the events of TOA, has one, consistent backdrop to it.

Apollo.

Or, more specifically, Apollo in trouble.

We’re not told if Jason or anyone else from the Seven ever recounts to the rest of the camp about Zeus blaming Apollo for the rise of Gaia and threatening punishment, although considering Jason’s clear sense of duty, I feel like he would have at last sought out Will, as the head counsellor of cabin seven, to tell him what’s going on with his dad, but even if Will doesn’t know that Apollo is actively in trouble, he does know two things.

Thing one - prophecy is still down, Python alone of the Gaia-era resurgence enemies has not been defeated.

Thing two - Apollo is still not answering prayers, dropping in on dreams, or doing any of those other things we’re told he did pre-HOO.

That adds up pretty conclusively to something is still wrong, even though the general air is that the war is over, everything can go back to normal now.

Now, I’m not saying that Will has spent the entire time he’s been in a relationship thinking solely about Apollo and worrying about what’s going on with him, but I am saying that it will have been something in the back of his mind, resurfacing at times, even during the time gap before he gets confirmation of what’s going on with Apollo.  That’s approximately four months, at most, of Will navigating a new relationship with Nico (both platonic and romantic) with the lurking knowledge that something’s not right with his father.

Nico has only known the Will who’s always worrying in the background about a literal god.  He knows Will trusts Apollo - he was there for the Octavian speech - and that Will seems to have at least a decent view of his father (which is more than most campers can say), and he knows that Will is worrying (maybe not to start with, but certainly by the time THO rolls around, Nico knows Will well enough to recognise it).

So even during the timeskip when they’re getting together, Apollo has a degree of relevance.  This only increases once we reach TOA and Will is reunited with his father for the first time in a year.

TOA spans six months.  Will (and Nico) are only actively present in THO and TON, but that’s enough to show us that Will isn’t at all reassured by his father’s presence in his life again.  On the one hand, at least the uncertainty of not knowing is lessened (not gone entirely, because most of the time, Will isn’t with Apollo and doesn’t know exactly what he’s going through, but he knows it’s a dangerous quest), but on the other, his father is very, very, mortal and very, very fragile.

Will learns this the hard way, we’re told.

“Whoa, there.” Will steadied me. “I tried to heal you, but honestly, I don’t understand what’s wrong. You’ve got blood, not ichor. You’re recovering quickly from your injuries, but your vital signs are completely human.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Yeah, well...” He put his hand on my forehead and frowned in concentration. His fingers trembled slightly. “I didn’t know any of that until I tried to give you nectar. Your lips started steaming. I almost killed you.”

And, honestly, things don’t get any better.  Apollo’s a mess, Nico himself is the one to point out later on in THO that Will, especially, is worried:

Nico rested his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Apollo, we were worried. Will was especially.”

Seeing them together, supporting each other, made my heart feel even heavier.

(I also love this scene because Apollo explicitly points out that Nico is supporting Will just as much as Will is supporting Nico - this relationship is not one-sided, or uneven.  It’s not an unhealthy doctor-patient dynamic disguised as romance; Nico is aware that Will is struggling, and he’s being there for him.  In fact, it reminds Apollo of his best romantic relationship.)

And while we don’t see Will in person for the next three books (although he crops up in Apollo’s thoughts from time to time), when we do meet him again in TON, this is his first encounter:

‘Dad!’ Will shot to his feet. He ran down the steps and tackled me in a hug.

That’s when I lost it. I wept openly.

My beautiful son, with his kind eyes, his healer’s hands, his sun-warm demeanour. Somehow, he had inherited all my best qualities and none of the worst. He guided me up the steps and insisted I take his seat. He pressed a cold glass of lemonade into my hands, then started fussing over my wounded head. ‘I’m fine,’ I murmured, though clearly I wasn’t.

His boyfriend, Nico di Angelo, hovered at the edge of our reunion – observing, keeping to the shadows, as children of Hades tend to do.

Now, I have thoughts on why Will was hanging around the Big House, sipping lemonade and apparently being taught pinochle rather than helping new campers settle in as is both his duty as the head of cabin seven, and very much his personality (remember how he happily and thoroughly introduced Leo to CHB back in TLH even though he wasn’t Leo’s head counsellor?), and they mostly boil down to Will being overwhelmed with worry, but there isn’t any real explicit canon evidence for that so I’ll skip over that for now.  However, Will is clearly absolutely ecstatic to see Apollo again, and Nico steps back and lets Will have that without any sort of interference (in fact, he specifically turns to help Meg, leaving Will to handle Apollo by himself without needing to also slip into Camp Healer Mode and treat Meg as well, which again shows his keen awareness, even under the weight of Jason’s death, of what Will needs right then - and Will needs his father, not his boyfriend).

This scene ends rather abruptly with Apollo passing out, much to Will’s distress, and then we’re back in the throes of obviously worried Will again:

I tipped sideways in my chair as Will’s voice receded down a long dark tunnel. ‘Dad! Guys, help me!’

(Note that throughout this scene, he explicitly calls Apollo Dad, despite generally tossing up between the two throughout the story.)

And if we want canon proof that Will was actively thinking about Apollo during the time between THO and TON, it’s right here, in one of my favourite little exchanges because they’re both so adorable (and yet, both so insecure in each others’ feelings):

Here’s all you need to know about Will Solace: he had clothes waiting for me. On his last trip into town, he’d gone shopping specifically for things that might fit me.

‘I figured you’d come back to camp eventually,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would, anyway. I wanted you to feel at home.’

It’s not even a passive, back-of-the-mind, worry.  Will actively did something for Apollo, in the hopes that he’d come back - and feel welcome when he did - while he was away.  The specification that it was his “last” trip into town, not his first, also shows that this wasn’t Will wandering down into NY a few days after the events of THO, picking up some clothes, and then forgetting about them until Apollo popped back up again six months later - this was Will mulling over what he could do to help Apollo for some time, before finally making a decision and acting upon it.

So, to answer the question of why Apollo cannot be ignored or dismissed in regards to Solangelo:

For the entire time Will and Nico have been friends (let alone boyfriends), the uncertainty of Apollo’s condition has been hanging over Will.  Will is worried about Apollo in BOO (and likely HOO as a whole, but BOO is where the canon evidence begins), he is worried about him in TOA.  He’s arguably more worried in TOA, which spans six months and is the majority of the time Solangelo have been together in canon so far, to the point where he’s actively acting on this worry even when Apollo isn’t around.  Apollo’s disappearance and subsequent trials are a key influence on Will’s life, and have impacted his relationship and dynamic with Nico, purely because that’s how relationships work.  One relationship causes ripples that then affect another, and so on.

It’s also important because it gives a clear view into how their relationship is healthy and balanced.  Nico is spending a lot of time being Will’s support, just as Will is also supporting Nico, and the main reason we’re being shown that Will needs support at this point in his life is, yes, Apollo.

So yes, Apollo is an integral part of how their relationship has developed so far, both platonically and romantically, and I really wish more people were talking about this.

I’ll stop waffling for now, but as always if people want my takes on things, my askbox is always open!

#ferodactyl #solangelo #will solace #pjo apollo #nico di angelo #trials of apollo #toa #riordanverse #rrverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

That was a brilliant analysis and I would love to hear your thoughts on powerful!will and its canon implications

Hello again! Glad you enjoyed the last bout of rambling and decided to come back for more! This time you've come for something I really love a lot so I have no idea how long this is gonna get, but I'm gonna enjoy writing this a lot so I hope you enjoy reading it, too!

So: Powerful!Will and the canon evidence for it.

Let's start with Will's first named appearance in the series - just after Michael's death (following Rick's methodology of not bothering to name the next most senior Apollo kid until the previous one is dead, thanks Rick).

I grabbed Will Solace from the Apollo cabin and told the rest of his siblings to keep searching for Michael Yew.

Well, that's one way to get introduced, for sure (and interesting that Percy grabs the guy who was suddenly in charge - Will himself implies in TLH that he became counsellor before the end of the battle, so it was likely this moment that he became most senior Apollo counsellor: "Jake - he became head counsellor in the middle of the war. Same as I did, really."). Whether Percy literally grabbed the nearest Apollo kid, or deliberately went for the strongest Apollo healer isn't made clear through his narration, although it wouldn't be strange considering it's Annabeth who needs healing and is thought to be on the edge of death that he did go for the strongest healer. It's not exactly a secret that Will is the best healer - even Nico knew that he was, and Nico likely didn't even know of Will's existence until the battle (he may have briefly crossed paths with him at the end of BOTL and got some idea that Will was a skilled healer even during that brief interaction, but there would have been no in-depth meeting prior to the end of the battle).

During the Battle of Manhattan, Nico had seen him in action – the camp’s best combat medic, risking his life to save wounded campers.

So Nico says, calling Will the camp's best combat medic despite barely knowing him at this point, so clearly Will has a reputation as such.

But going back to TLO itself for the time being, we get a strong indication of Will's healing ability when he heals Annabeth:

Will and I pushed through a crowd of Athena kids. Will unwrapped Annabeth's bandages to examine the wound, and I wanted to faint. The bleeding had stopped but the gash looked deep. The skin around the cut was a horrible shade of green. "Annabeth . . ." I choked up. She'd taken that knife for me. How could I have let that happen? "Poison on the dagger," she mumbled. "Pretty stupid of me, huh?" Will Solace exhaled with relief. "It's not so bad, Annabeth. A few more minutes and we would've been in trouble, but the venom hasn't gotten past the shoulder yet. Just lie still. Somebody hand me some nectar." I grabbed a canteen. Will cleaned out the wound with the godly drink while I held Annabeth's hand. "Ow," she said. "Ow, ow!" She gripped my fingers so tight they turned purple, but she stayed still, like Will asked. Silena muttered words of encouragement. Will put some silver paste over the wound and hummed words in Ancient Greek—a hymn to Apollo. Then he applied fresh bandages and stood up shakily. The healing must've taken a lot of his energy. He looked almost as pale as Annabeth. "That should do it," he said. "But we're going to need some mortal supplies."

Now, at the time, this doesn't seem like anything special, because this is the first time we're actually shown an Apollo kid doing any healing. But the thing is, this is also the only time across the three series we're shown an Apollo kid doing active healing rather than just treating wounds like a regular person, albeit a regular person who instinctively knows the best treatment to use, or triaging (triaging comes up quite a lot in TOA; all five non-Will Apollo kids are shown to do it, but Will's the only one we see actually using a healing ability rather than skill - remember this ability vs skill thing because I'm gonna be bringing that up again later!). Pranjal, the son of Asclepius in TTT, is also only ever shown to be using salves and medicines rather than any active healing ability.

It doesn't take Will very long to heal that injury, either, despite it being poisoned. Annabeth still has to rest (and arguably so does Will, although he fades away into the narrative background again so we don't actually see what happens with him after this), but her life was taken out of danger incredibly quickly.

It's obviously not on par with what we see Apollo do later on, because Will is not a god, no matter how powerful a healer he is, but the similarity in method is there:

"She needs help!" I yelled. "I've got this." Apollo stepped forward. His fiery armor was so bright it was hard to look at, and his matching Ray-Bans and perfect smile made him look like a male model for battle gear. "God of medicine, at your service." He passed his hand over Annabeth's face and spoke an incantation. Immediately the bruises faded. Her cuts and scars disappeared. Her arm straightened, and she sighed in her sleep.

Similar technique with the incantation, just faster and no backlash onto Apollo because Apollo is a literal god who isn't going to tire from something as simple as a couple of broken bones. Apollo and Will are the only two characters we see capable of this style of healing, however.

We get odd reminders about Will's healing ability through BOO and then TOA, most notably when in Apollo's point of view.

And of course his boyfriend, my son Will Solace, was an excellent healer.

He says in TTT. Now, Apollo is never shy about praising Will (or Austin or Kayla) in his internal narration and is clearly incredibly proud of his son, and in this particular instance he does go on to say that he doesn't think even Will would actually be able to heal him because he specifically needs a level of godly healing, but it's clear from this that he has a great deal of respect for Will's healing abilities, and honestly, if there's anyone who's opinion on who classifies as an 'excellent' healer, it's the god of healing himself.

This also is far from the only time we see him praising Will's healing (in fact, Will gets an entire haiku in TON dedicated to him with a focus on the fact that he's a healer, and yes it's daft in the way all Apollo's haikus are a little daft, but it's still sweet that he makes Will the subject of one - this is also the chapter where we see another powerful ability of Will's but I'll get onto that in a bit.

Will Solace, healer, The hero we don’t deserve, He has Kit Kat bars.)

In THO, Apollo even directly compares himself (as a mortal) to Will, and indirectly makes a comparison between Will and Asclepius:

I found my mortal healing skills were passable. Will Solace far outshone me, but that didn’t bother me as much as my failures with archery and music had. I suppose I was used to being second in healing. My son Asclepius had become the god of medicine by the time he was fifteen, and I couldn’t have been happier for him. It left me time for my other interests. Besides, it’s every god’s dream to have a child who grows up to be a doctor.

It's a marked contrast from his attitude with his other domains - while he never resents Austin or Kayla for being better than him, he doesn't praise them with a comparison to himself the way he does Will. Bear in mind that Will is also fifteen at this point - the same age as Asclepius when he ascended to godhood, which Apollo makes sure to mention. Narrative parallels are fun!

There's also one very interesting little moment in TON that keeps catching my attention because it implies something about Will that might be a combination of latent prophecy (I don't believe Will has active prophetic powers, but that doesn't mean latent is out of the question) with his healing, and it's this little recounting we get from Nico when Apollo asks after Will:

‘Where – where’s Will?’ I asked. ‘Not sure.’ Nico pulled my arm tighter around his shoulders. ‘He suddenly said, “I am needed,” and darted off in another direction. We’ll find him.’

It's never stated why, exactly, Will is 'needed' - the next time we see him is with Lu, having clearly re-bandaged her wrists, but as Apollo had already healed her, it's unlikely that that was something serious enough to outright summon him - but there a couple of things we can take from this.

First, Will has some sort of sixth sense for injuries that need his attention. Secondly, this is neither new nor surprising to Nico so it's obviously happened before. Thirdly, there must be some built-in protection for Will so it can't be summoning him to someone that'll gut him the moment they get the chance, otherwise Nico would never have let Will leave his sight. I really wish we saw more about this - the closest thing we get is in BOO when Will and Nico meet on the hill and Will tricks Nico into letting him check his vitals by grabbing his hands under false pretences:

‘I had to get some fresh air. That’s why I volunteered for this mission. Gods of Olympus, my hands are still shaking. See?’ He took Nico’s hand, which sent an electric current down Nico’s spine. He quickly withdrew. ‘Whatever,’ he snapped. ‘We don’t have time for chitchat. The Romans are attacking at dawn and I’ve got to –’ ‘We know,’ Will said. ‘But, if you’re planning to shadow-travel to that command tent, forget it.’ Nico glared at him. ‘Excuse me?’ He expected Will to flinch or look away. Most people did. But Will’s blue eyes stayed fixed on his – annoyingly determined. ‘Coach Hedge told me all about your shadow-travel. You can’t try that again.’ ‘I just did try it again, Solace. I’m fine.’ ‘No, you’re not. I’m a healer. I could feel the darkness in your hand as soon as I touched it. Even if you made it to that tent, you’d be in no shape to fight. But you wouldn’t make it. One more slip, and you won’t come back. You are not shadow-travelling. Doctor’s orders.’

It could be that the whole reason they met was because Will had another of these flashes of "I'm needed" and that was what drew him to the hill where Nico had just arrived (and honestly, that would make a lot of sense to me), but this is the one apparent ability of Will's that is frustratingly elusive in the canon - most of what he can do, we have multiple confirmed instances of him doing it, but it's only explicitly mentioned once, and never explained so trying to work out exactly what it is and how it functions takes a lot of creative thinking and extrapolation.

But that's enough on Will's healing abilities for the moment. Despite Will's own derogatory remarks about himself in BOO (that make me want to gently shake him and wrap him in a tight hug while I tell him he's being way too harsh on himself), healing is not Will's only inherited ability from Apollo. There are two other major abilities we're shown in canon, and both of them are far more impressive and powerful than first glance might suggest.

Firstly, we have his ultrasonic whistle. Will himself makes it out to be something not so impressive, but if there's a narrator we do not want to believe when it comes to Will's abilities, it's Will, because he seems incapable of giving himself any credit even when it's very due.

We see it twice in BOO, both times used to very devastating effect:

As the dog-headed men barrelled forward, Nico raised his sword. He doubted he had the strength left to win, but, before he could attack them, Will let out a piercing taxicab whistle.

All six dog-men dropped their weapons, grabbed their ears and fell down in agony.

‘Dude.’ Cecil opened his mouth to pop his ears. ‘What the actual Hades? A little warning next time.’

‘It’s even worse for the dogs.’ Will shrugged. ‘One of my few musical talents. I do a really awful ultrasonic whistle.’

Nico didn’t complain. He waded through the dog-men, jabbing them with his sword. They dissolved into shadows.

Octavian and the other Romans seemed too stunned to react.

‘My – my elite guard!’ Octavian looked around for sympathy. ‘Did you see what he did to my elite guard?’

And

Will Solace saved the day. He put his fingers in his mouth and did a taxicab whistle even more horrible than the last. Several Greeks dropped their swords. A ripple went through the Roman line like the entire First Cohort was shuddering. ‘DON’T BE STUPID!’ Will yelled. ‘LOOK!’

Will downplays this massively, because first of all, the fact that he managed to stop two armies clashing with just a whistle is downright terrifying, and secondly, we've seen sound used as a weapon before, back in TLO:

He drew an arrow and launched it toward the enemy. The arrow made a screaming sound as it flew. When it landed, it unleashed a blast like a power chord on an electric guitar magnified through the world's largest speakers. The nearest cars exploded. Monsters dropped their weapons and clasped their ears in pain. Some ran. Others disintegrated on the spot.

What Will can do with his whistle is not very far short at all of the effect of Michael's sonic arrows - which are heavily implied to be created by Apollo himself. As Will's two whistles are of differing levels of affect, it's not out of the question that he could cause this much damage if he wanted to - in both scenes in BOO, causing that much damage would've been counter-intuitive so it makes sense that he wouldn't have done it regardless.

The fact that Michael was reliant on these arrows to create this sort of effect in the first place also implies that it's not a common power to inherit, either. I know Will also doesn't use it back then, but that could easily be explained as either Will not yet knowing he could, or Will being focused entirely on healing while Michael took the lead on the offense (the former seems more likely, although from a writing perspective it's almost certain that Rick just hadn't come up with the idea yet).

Considering how far Will's voice carries in both that scene in BOO, and in TON (the quote below), it's also not outside the realms of probability that the ultrasonic ability isn't just limited to a whistle, but that he could do it with other vocal cues, such as shouting.

Behind me, a familiar voice roared, ‘STOP!’

The tone was so commanding even Nero’s guards and family members turned towards the broken blast doors.

I'll be back with this scene a little later for another couple of reasons, but Will's voice? There's a hidden weapon in there.

Now, for the third, final, but by no means least, of Will's inherited abilities: his ability to glow.

This is incredibly powerful, and rare enough that Apollo is genuinely speechless when he realises Will inherited it.

Will took a deep breath. When he exhaled …

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. We’d been in near-total darkness so long, I wasn’t sure why Will’s outline suddenly seemed clearer. I could see the texture of his jeans, the individual tufts of his hair, the blue of his eyes. His skin was glowing with a soft, warm golden light as if he’d ingested sunshine.

‘Whoa,’ Meg said.

Rachel’s eyebrows floated towards her hairline.

Nico smirked. ‘Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.’

‘Could you not make a big deal about it?’ Will asked.

I was speechless. How could anyone not make a big deal about this? As far as demigod powers went, glowing in the dark was perhaps not as showy as skeleton-summoning or tomato-vine mastery, but it was still impressive. And, like Will’s skill at healing, it was gentle, useful and exactly what we needed in a pinch.

I would disagree with Apollo's opinion that it's "not as showy" because glowing in the dark is literally showy, you don't get more showy than a literal lightshow, but he still goes out of his way to call it impressive in his internal narration, and then goes on to praise Will for it, much to Will's embarrassment. The fact that Apollo didn't even realise what he was doing to start with goes to show how unexpected it was - and it's not like glowing in the dark itself is a strange concept to Apollo, who we know can do it himself (obviously!), he's just blindsided, almost literally, at the realisation that one of his children has the ability.

Now, why do I say this ability is incredibly powerful? It's just glowing in the dark, right?

Wrong.

The first important little detail here is what Nico says when he asks Will to do it in the first place:

‘You guys stay behind me,’ Nico said. ‘Will, can you do your thing? The barest minimum, please.’

Will's glow is enough to light up the entirety of the trogs' cavern, but we're explicitly told that this is Will at minimal brightness. He isn't shown to tire at all using this ability, either, which begs the question - how bright can Will glow? If this is minimum, what's standard? At what point does this ability actually start to tax Will to use?

The second important little detail comes a lot later, when we're in the tower and Will, Apollo and Nero are all in the throne room:

Nero might’ve been the most minor of minor gods, but he still had divine strength. His glow was getting brighter as he approached the fasces – like Will, like me in my own godly moments of rage …

Apollo's first point of comparison to Nero's own, godly, glow, is Will, who he then immediately compares to his own. While Will's own glow is likely not literal divinity in the same way as Apollo's or Nero's (although Will's glow is very much explicitly stated to come from within him, rather than just being skin-deep, so it's clearly something more than basic light generation), the fact that Apollo still makes the direct comparison between a god's own divinity and his son's ability to glow - that's no accident, and that's hugely telling when it comes to what Will's ability represents in terms of power.

The last thing about this final scene I want to talk about before I move on to the other thing I've noticed about Will vs other Apollo kids is this:

Will Solace strode confidently across the room, barking ‘Out of my way!’ to the Germani. He marched straight to Nico and helped the son of Hades to his feet. Then he dragged Nico back to the entrance. No one tried to stop them.

Now, yes, Nero is panicking about Rachel and his Fasces right now, but the Germani are aggressive, scary warriors and the implication here with Will ordering them around is that they were obeying him without any question or complaint. Will, this glowing but otherwise really unremarkable, non-combatant kid who I don't believe is even shown to be armed at all, is passing completely unchallenged and even obeyed in this scene. It's always given me the impression that the Germani are getting some sort of sense of Danger from Will - and Will is certainly very, very mad in this scene (the fact that Apollo specifically uses the word thundered to describe Will in this scene when thunder is directly connected to Zeus and is therefore one of the most terrifying things in Apollo's eyes fascinates me endlessly, especially with the contrast it brings against the multiple times he's described Will as gentle in the narrative before this moment) so I can't exactly blame them even if there's no real indication of what the Danger is.

That's it for taking direct passages and using them as proof, but that's not it for me talking about how Will is different to other Apollo kids, because I noticed something a while back when I was thinking about this and I want to include it here because it's very relevant.

Earlier, I specified that there's a difference between abilities and skills. Let me explain that a bit.

Apollo has a lot of domains, and a lot of kids with a reasonable spread across those domains (notably the domains with negative or potentially dangerous backlash e.g. plague and prophecy are largely absent, with no known plague kids and the only known prophecy kid being Halcyon Green which is his own entire essay). Of those domains, most of them are based not in any particular magic-type ability like we see with Percy's control of water, Thalia's lightning, Nico's skeletons etc., but rather skills that, with enough hard work and dedication, regular mortals could probably have a good go at with enough practice.

Archery, poetry, and music all fall under the skills category, for the most part. So does the triage subsection of healing.

These are the domains we mostly see represented - Archery in Michael and Kayla, Music with Austin (Lee is also a known archer although whether that was his primary skill is unknown; I personally headcanon him as primarily a musician). Yes, there are instances of smaller, pettier abilities tied to things like poetry (cursing the Ares cabin to speak in rhymes in TLO, for example), and Austin has been shown to be able to do emotional manipulation using music, but the vast majority of what we see in Apollo's kids are all skills. There's nothing inherently magical about them, or even really unattainable by regular mortals if they put enough work and effort in.

Everything we see Will do is something a mortal could never do, no matter how hard or long they practice. His healing is an ability, his ultrasonic whistle is an ability, his glowing is an ability. Mortals can't heal by singing, mortals can't generate ultrasonic noises, mortals can't glow in the dark. Mortals just can't do those things, end of story.

Compared to literally every other Apollo kid, who is shown to have at most one (1) godly-inherited ability rather than skill, Will has three abilities. Three of them. In his own words, he doesn't have any skills (although I personally suspect he's not as terrible an archer as he claims; as I pointed out earlier, the last person that should be believed regarding how skilled Will is is Will himself, because he's constantly underplaying everything he can do, even when the narrative evidence is glaringly obvious to the contrary), but as he's the only known Apollo kid with so many abilities... it really stands out when you stop to think about it.

So... yeah. All the canon evidence I've seen for Will implies that actually, he's a very powerful demigod - he's just underestimated because he's not a fighter, and actually I love the fact that we have a powerful demigod whose strength isn't in combat because it shows that there's a lot more scope and variation for what counts as powerful than we've been mostly led to believe. Obviously, he isn't on par with Big Three Kids, who are their own category entirely (although I'd say some of them really did get shafted in their own narratives, especially in HOO where we were told they were powerful but never shown), but in terms of regular demigods... when you actually check the canon, Will's right up there with the most powerful of them.

#fiftyshadesofdumbassery #will solace #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #trials of apollo #riordanverse #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Hello, I love your pjo analysis posts and how much you try to keep it within its canon material.

The books let us know that Percy’s fatal flaw is loyalty and we see that often, while Bianca’s ghost kinda implies that Nico’s fatal flaw is holding grudges. My question is, what would you think is Will’s fatal flaw? Or a fatal flaw within the Apollo cabin in general?

Aww, thanks, anon! I always like keeping things within canon universe where possible because that's how my brain works, so I'm glad people like that I do that :D

Still on holiday with no books access, so this'll likely be a short answer at least for now, but a fatal flaw is definitely something I've thought about for Will, and could easily conclude for a couple of other of the cabin seven kids, too, so I'll give a brief rundown of my thoughts here and maybe revisit this later in more depth if that's something that people would want.

So, let's start with Will Solace's Fatal Flaw.

I'm certainly not original in this one, that's for sure, but my thought is that Will's fatal flaw is Responsibility or Self-Blame (specifically regarding patients under his care). I actually wrote a fic based on this premise, Fatal Flaw, a couple of months back. We see flashes of Will's stubbornness and sense of obligation when it comes to healing throughout canon - first with Annabeth, where he doesn't stop until she's out of danger even though it drains him to the point he looks "as pale as" she was, then again at the end of HOO where he's been working non-stop in the infirmary for I think it was two days solid, with the implication that he hadn't been taking a break at all during that time. We also see this in THO where he not only pushes himself to heal Paolo and the other wounded campers despite being worried about his siblings, he also yells at Apollo until Apollo gets his priorities straight, too.

At the very least, Will feels responsible for the well-being of his patients to the point he doesn't step back until they're out of danger, so it's natural to extend the idea into his fatal flaw being that he can't stop until they're out of danger, and that he himself runs the risk of burning himself out (perhaps even literally) trying to save someone who's past saving. As healing is shown to sap Will's energy in TLO (although not so much later on, perhaps because he's been forced to heal so much he's grown more powerful to compensate for that), the risk of it draining him and killing him is there, which would fill the condition for it to be a fatal flaw.

There are two other Apollo kids whose fatal flaws I have an idea about. I don't subscribe to the idea that the whole cabin would have the same fatal flaw, after all they're all unique people even if they have the same godly parent, but it does make sense that demigods might inherit one of their godly parents' potential flaws (for Poseidon, we see a loyalty to his children regardless if they end up good or evil, so loyalty is certainly a factor; for Hades, we see him holding grudges against Olympus; Athena also shows an inability to admit to being wrong at any point; Apollo we got an entire pentalogy focusing on his character and the need to put responsibility solely on his shoulders is one such flaw, but also arrogance and anger, amongst other things, which is where I'm going with these next two kids).

The next kid I'm gonna briefly talk about probably won't surprise anyone who regularly talks to me because he's arguably my second-favourite Apollo kid and one that takes up a lot of my headspace at the moment, and that's Michael Yew. While his appearances are limited and only within one book, we do actually get a reasonably feel for his character. I'm tossing up between two potential fatal flaws for Michael - Anger and Pride (both of which are known Apollo traits). On the one hand, he's written as a character with a short fuse who gets into arguments and apparently scowls a lot, so it's logical to assume that his anger is going to get him into a lot of situations that he would be better off avoiding, but on the other hand, pride is what stops him from bending the knee, from apologising for his angry outbursts and making amends (we see this with Clarisse and the flying chariot - yes, there is a lot of anger involved in there, but there's also pride on both their sides; neither is truly willing to concede to the other, and they continue to clash). Anger gets him into messes, but his pride is what keeps him there, so they're arguably both strong candidates.

The other one I have an idea for, mostly because Apollo also expresses some concern about it in the book, is Austin Lake. Kayla, despite having equal amount of page time, more or less, I don't have pinned down well enough to theorise rather than headcanon, but with Austin I think we can make an educated guess that his might be Arrogance or Over-Confidence. He's a popular internet (or at least youtube) sensation, apparently, which could feasibly get to the head of a thirteen or fourteen year old boy, and in TON he tells Apollo that he can handle clearing the way for him, giving him a grin that Apollo himself says reminds him of his own, reckless and arrogant, approach to some things (I don't remember the exact quote but it's along those lines). From that, I'd say it's pretty inferable that Austin's fatal flaw is somewhere in that area.

#Anonymous #will solace #michael yew #austin lake #apollo cabin #pjo apollo #riordanverse #rrverse #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo #heroes of olympus #hoo #trials of apollo #toa #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

TSATS was just. Bad. But there are parts I'm carefully picking out that I did like, for instance that Will is working on developing his photokinesis! Thought it was stupid until Apollo gushed over it, now he's not only taking pride in it but actively starting to test his limits. And... he can make (what are implied to be) Curses of Delos magically start to grow when he sings? That's such a dumb and useless power that Apollo would be completely thrilled over. I love that.

Hello, anon! "TSATS was just. Bad." is a very accurate summary. You didn't need to add the extra sentences and I was worried when the preview showed me that "But-"

But then I read the rest of the ask and [throws aside a large rock] actually I'm not mad at you, because I am actually doing a similar thing. There are some very small details that can be lifted out from this otherwise rubbish tip and repurposed for better use, and Will's photokinesis powerup is certainly one of those!

The "Care Bear" thing is a bit cringey - initially I appreciated the description, because I have fond memories of watching a Care Bears VHS in my childhood and could visualise what Mark was trying to describe there (unlike some younger friends who I had to find old gifs for to show them), but then I did some digging and realised that Care Bears has now been swallowed up by the behemoth that is Disney+ and therefore that this was actually some badly shoved-in marketing, which, urgh. Don't do that. However, I do like that Will has now, effectively, weaponised it (or is in the process of trying to).

You're right that it's a great continuation on from what started in TON - where Will has gone from embarrassment over it, to being proud of it, to actively working on it to see what he can actually do with it, which could well have been inspired by Apollo in TON himself, when he strips Nero's divinity and shatters his fasces. That concept is absolutely fantastic (although we could have done with a better, less cheesy, application; the implication of it being his heart's light is neat but it shooting out of his chest with no real direction like he's got a random inbuilt laser beam there is certainly not where I'd have taken that, personally...) and best of all - it's conceivably tied in to TON already so it's a detail that makes sense even without TSATS and can therefore be utilised without actually having to acknowledge TSATS as canon (win-win!)

On the flip side, the Curse of Delos thing is a little much, imo. I love powerful!Will but he's still got to stay within the constraints of being a demigod, for me (yes, I do believe that if he chose it, Will could ascend to godhood and would deserve it; I also believe he would never choose that). Curse of Delos is explicitly stated to only grow on Delos and around Cabin Seven - Apollo's two most sacred places. There's no way Will, a mere demigod, could literally consecrate ground in his father's name like that. At a stretch, we could say that this scene is actually Apollo hearing Will's hymn (given that it's stated to be one of his healing hymns) and... idk, growing him some flowers as some sort of message? But then that begs the question of where the fuck is Apollo in this story and why is all he's doing, growing flowers when Will sings? It also just doesn't fit Will's general theme, because while in theory yes, music could make flowers grow (especially if sung by a child of Apollo or Demeter), Will is also not a musician. He's very explicit about that back in BOO, so he, of all Apollo kids, being the one to summon flowers when he sings? Doesn't actually track. Give that power to Austin when he's playing the sax or something.

Yes, there are some very small details in TSATS that are worth not discarding (although almost all of them still need reworking, so really I should say concepts that are worth not discarding), but there's not many of them...

#Anonymous #tsats #tsats spoilers #will solace #pjo apollo #tsari analyses things

[tsarinatorment]

Worth noting that in THO Will performs some definitely godly feats by reattaching multiple limbs for Paolo, and this is played off by him as no big deal while Apollo outright says Will's healing powers rival Asclepius himself. Asclepius who ascends to godhood for literally curing death. And I've seen arguing on the Riordan Wiki over Will's glow qualifying as heliokinesis: TON seems to imply a connection to the sun with both his tattoo and Apollo noting how Will gravitates toward sunlight coming through windows when indoors. His glow in the tower, also comparatively godly, reminds me of how Percy describes Helios. Blazing and bright, with pupils like "pilot lights for an industrial oven." Not just in terms of brilliance but in that Helios' light ALSO came from internally, as opposed to the other gods' divine auras like Nero and Apollo. I'd personally assumed up until TON that Apollo's kids wouldn't have solar based powers because Apollo as a sun god isn't quite the same as Helios; the distinction tends to be that Apollo is the GOD OF the sun whereas Helios was the sun itself. So thank you, Will, for clearing that up.

I'd bet anything he has natural skill in music though. He has to have inherited some degree of talent from Naomi. I also disagree with general fandom consensus that he's BAD at archery? He has no inherent talent in that area but he's been at camp long enough to work at developing some offensive skills, even if it's definitely not his strong suit.

Right then, finally got around to tackling this one. Sorry about the wait, anon!

Will's healing is definitely godly to an extent - he downplays what he can do, or perhaps in the case of healing doesn't realise the implications of what he can do, because he never seems to consider his healing ability sub-par, just the fact that healing is "all" he can do (even though that's definitively not true).

Right then, Will's glow. I forget whether I've talked about this on tumblr or just in the toa discord, but when we look at the comparisons made between Will and the gods, it could easily be that what Will is actually doing is channelling/revealing his own divinity (he's half a god, he has divinity, like all demigods do). I stay away from the wiki (aside from occasionally correcting some pieces of canon info, but that's rare) so I don't know exactly what discussions go on behind the scene there, but I personally don't mind calling it either. My initial reaction is photokinesis, but heliokinesis also fits - I'd disagree that general godly glows are external, though. Apollo's descriptions of at least his own heavily imply that Apollo, too, glows from within, and I think the other occasional descriptions we get (Hera and Artemis spring to mind) also seem to be an internal glow.

Will's other inherited domains, however... I'll start with archery, because I agree with you on that one. I believe Will is decent at archery - compared to the rest of the campers, he is probably one of the better archers, however, compared to his siblings, he is the worst, and it's his siblings that Will automatically compares himself against, because he considers that they're the base line. They're all children of the god of archery, after all, so surely they're all starting at the same place?

But that's not how Apollo's kids work - because Apollo has so many domains (seriously, it's like he hoards them or something), there's no way all of his children inherit all of them to the same degree, or even at all. Will has clearly inherited healing as his dominant ability (although the glowing is also neat and rare), unlike the rest of his siblings we're introduced to, none of whom are shown to be his peer, while archery is something he has only inherited a latent skill in, by which I mean yes, he can pick up a bow (any bow) and shoot it and probably hit the target just fine, but he can't do all the super-accurate almost trick shots the likes of Kayla and Michael can do.

Music, on the other hand, I am going to disagree with you with. We know Will does have musical abilities because he says so himself in BOO when talking about his ultrasonic whistle ("one of my few musical talents"), but I don't think his musical talents can be along the lines of the traditional ones, like we see with Austin. If he could sing/play an instrument, etc., he would probably admit it because Naomi would (hopefully) have given him some affirmation. Even if not Naomi, at camp the thing we see the Apollo kids do the most is perform - I don't know if the campfire is every night, but it certainly seems to be most nights, and I don't think any musical talent would be missed.

What I think Will's musical talents are are more along the lines of sound manipulation - we know he can go ultrasonic with his whistle, perhaps he can vary that to different types of sonic. Perhaps it's not just when he whistles, but he can do it with his voice, too - being able to yell really loud is the sort of ability that I could absolutely see Will having and also fitting in with his personality. He's yelled a few times in the books, and he's confident enough in his beliefs and morals to stand his ground, so having an extra layer to his voice that he could tap into if he wants to would be both really neat and different from the bog-standard music abilities we otherwise know about.

I just can't see him having any sort of standard musical abilities otherwise he wouldn't be so derogatory about them, especially as it would be a link to his mother (unless, of course, Naomi Solace was a horrible mother that Will wants nothing to do with, but from the canon descriptions of her, even though I think she might have been a little emotionally distant at times and struggled with motherhood, I can't see her being that bad).

#Anonymous #will solace #riordanverse #trials of apollo #toa #tsari analyses things