#I also get a /meh/ reaction seeing 'dumb blond always horny' Apollo bs but that's just meeee I spent too much time reading on him.

[heliomanteia]

Kind of ironic but Will goes through the same mischaracterization within the fandom as Apollo goes through within myth communities.

"Sunshine boy" gets slapped on Will and successfully erases every other personality trait he could potentially have in the already scarce and poorly put together canon. Will, in the majority of Will-containing content, is either a function aimed at making other characters feel better, "Nico's boyfriend", or someone who exists entirely as an antithesis to a well-written character ("sunshine to his gloom" kinda rhetoric where the "gloomy guy" defines Will through opposition).

Apollo gets the "dumb blond man" treatment despite, like, nothing within Mediterranean mythology implying he's so much carefree. I am convinced that RR does at most bare minimum "research" into cultural topics he writes on but making Apollo the dumb and chill guy who only cares about poetics of love is, like, genuinely going against his entire myth narrative. Already ranted about this before but even Apoline aspect of being a "patron of music" is a deeply class-tied sociopolitical phenomenon. I'm aware TOA attempts at going from carefree to more aware and serious but that just feels artificial, like myth retellings that take away characters' agency to then show their "growth".

Like father like son I guess.