#and people have always been agonizing over fanon uwuifying Nico

[aroaceleovaldez]

TSATS really does honestly feel like someone took all the solangelo/Will Solace from early post-HoO in the fandom, shoved it in a blender, cranked that shit on high, and then dumped it into a book without any care for consistency or anything. The book keeps stumbling into reading like somebody who just found out what being gay was, or exactly like a 2014/2015 pjo fanfic or forum rp with Ye Olde Fanon Will back when nobody knew what to do with him and half the fandom decided his major character trait was “Asshole.” Like, back then photokinesis!Will was at its peak. Saberghatz’s Solangelo quest AU, before the plot of was TOA announced, was absolutely booming (and between Saber’s au and Cherryandsisters’ Will askblog, they were probably the leading sources for Will fanon at the time). Nico was being UwU’d to hell and back. The fanon, being fanon, never was actually required to comply with canon, so headcanons about Will having known Nico since TTC were plentiful because nobody cared - it was headcanons - and nobody could remember anything about Will Solace anyways.

But TSATS seems to be taking all of that and going “No, it’s canon now.” Which doesn’t work. Fanon can exist as fanon because it’s all headcanons, and it’s just making stuff up in a little playground of picking and choosing what canon to stay and go. If you’re actually writing canon, then you’ve already decided what canon stays and goes because you put it in the book, and now that’s what’s established and you need to follow it. Or else you’re making a retcon or a continuity error. Fanon can have Will impossibly exist in The Titan’s Curse, but canon absolutely can’t (and it definitely can’t say Nico somehow spent more than one week at CHB when the entirety of TTC is contained within one week). And it feels incredibly bizarre to see all this in a canon book anyways, because again - basically all of it feels ripped from fanon with zero consideration whatsoever.