#Honestly as a Son of Hades you should have been the one to show sympathy in that moment even if no one else did

[thatonefandomjumper]

Nico's reaction to Leo's death was so fucking unreasonable?!?!?

He's so mad at him, to the point of not being able to think straight when finding out he's alive. To the point he needs so scream into the wild and physically harm him immediately upon his return.

And... for what? Because Leo didn't discuss it with him beforehand? Well, he couldn't have. He developed the plan when Nico was on his quest to deliver the statue. Because Nico had to feel Leo die? Well, newsflash, Leo had to actually die and feel every bit of that!

It's all about him. All about how upset Nico was that Leo committed suicide so the world wouldn't be destroyed. He shows' no sympathy whatsoever.

Not that anyone else did.

[crossdressingdeath]

#i think abt this all the time#nico’s idea of the self is SO fucked and i can feel that it’s not just because of tartarus or bianca or anything that HAPPENED to him.#it’s HIM he feels at his his core that it’s his very BEING that doesn’t belong#pjo#i’m tipsy sorry i’ll take myself elsewhere (tags via @pinkerpick)

No, no, you're right and you should say it. It's a combination of being a gay kid from the '30s and being a son of Hades (while knowing that children of Hades... are not popular). Nico's perception is that people just know there's something wrong with him, whether it's his sexuality or his parentage or just his personality. Which... I think to some extent is a feeling he shares with Hazel, who understandably worries about people Just Knowing that she doesn't belong in the world of the living, but Hazel has the benefit of being well-loved by the people around her, which Nico... is not. I love the Seven, they're so good, but their response to Nico's presence (and reminder, this is after Nico's been through Tartarus alone and then spent a week slowly suffocating to death in a jar, so he's not gonna be in the best mental state to begin with) is not going to be helping with his preexisting feelings of alienation and lack of welcome, although Hazel and later Jason defending him to the others and offering him their support definitely would've made that better. ...Actually, even the fact that he's not one of the Seven probably didn't help; he's not technically part of the team, he's just... there. And while him being a gay kid from the '30s and a son of Hades (and notably a son of Hades from that period where Zeus and Poseidon were going around killing all the children of Hades, which... would probably impact Nico's outlook on the other gods and their children just a little) would've been issues no matter what, the whole situation was made so much worse by the huge doses of near-constant trauma that have been his life since he first met Percy, Annabeth, Thalia and Grover at Westover Hall. Which is so incredibly tragic when you consider that Nico is basically the only young half-blood we see who is delighted to learn about the world he's just been thrust into! Sure, Annabeth's little tumble off the cliff made the danger clear, but he's still so excited to become a big-shot hero (which thinking about it might be influenced by the fact that as a child of Hades he might have known she wasn't dead...)! And then over the course of the books we see that joy get crushed out of him as he's forced to go through more and more misery, basically entirely on his own and without even sympathy from most of the people around him. Is it really any surprise that he feels like he doesn't belong after all that?

And side note, I really don't like how Nico's insistence that no one wants him around kind of gets completely dismissed in BoO with the whole "You pushed yourself away" thing, and I'm hoping that part of TSatS's inevitable flashbacks prove that Will's perspective was massively skewed by his huge crush on the guy, because his claim doesn't fit Nico's memories of people being pretty blatantly unwelcoming once the shine of him showing up to Mount Olympus with an undead army and three gods wore off (which itself matches up with the way the gods don't even acknowledge Nico's presence after the battle, honestly) or the way the Seven respond to him on the Argo II. Like, I don't really blame Will for that complete dismissal of Nico's interpretation of events, necessarily? It doesn't match up with his worry for and protectiveness of Nico in ToA for one; either something happened between BoO and the start of ToA that proved him wrong, or this is Rick speaking through him like some sort of possessing ghost. Feels a bit like Percy insisting that the Chases are actually pretty great and maybe Annabeth was being unfair to them when information throughout PJO and HoO proves that... they are not and she was not; this feels like Rick wanting to tell us something more than it being a logical belief for the characters to hold (or at least not without them having to learn better). But it's very much Not Great that Nico's view of the situation as one where he was not welcome in either camp and was generally seen as weird and creepy by campers in both (a view that's borne out by the other POV characters' thoughts about him) is just completely dismissed, and I feel like Will realizing that maybe the star medic son of Apollo's experience doesn't quite match up with the "weird" son of quite possibly the most hated god in the pantheon's is... kind of important in terms of their relationship.

Not to rub my angsty little hands over more media, but does anyone else ever think about how Nico likely figured the main reason he wasn't welcome anywhere was just that he's a child of the Underworld, only for HoO to come around and everyone on the Argo II to adore Hazel but still think Nico's creepy and weird (until Jason befriends him at least)? Like, it's good he has a sister again and Hazel is the best, but it can't have helped with Nico's self-worth issues to learn that apparently the issue is not being a child of the Underworld and it's just him that no one likes.