#and this isn’t a respectful tribute to those who lost their lives because of homophobia | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bright-eyes-strawberry-lies · 3 years ago

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I still can’t believe that people accepted Rick writing that Nico’s touch was poison. Nico. The only queer kid in the entire fucking series. Has a touch that makes living things wither and die. He was violently outed, almost no one and nothing likes him, he hates himself as much as everyone else hates him if not more so, and his touch is poison. Just being around him is “dangerous” because he “just can’t help himself.”

I know I’ve written about this before but everything about Nico di Angelo was written to be incredibly homophobic. Nothing that Rick writes is good representation or normalization. Do not give Rick credit because you desperately want a canon queer character. This is bottom of the barrel homophobic shit that he gets away with because people have loved Nico from the beginning and desperately want canon queers.

And don’t get me fucking started on Will Solace and Dionysus.

No. Nope. Gonna say it.

Nico was paired up with Will because Rick didn’t like how popular percico was and realized that it was becoming more profitable to include the queers and people of color instead of making everyone cishet and white. That’s the beginning and end of it. Full stop. Will was in one scene in the very last PJO book. He’s barely a background character. Rick literally took all of the fandom’s head canons of this unimportant nobody character and shoved them onto Will in a lazy attempt to make him into something profitable. He’s not even pretending to hide it. That’s how we got glow-in-the-dark Will Solace and everyone who’s been around the fandom knows it.

And even if you can forgive those things, how could you possibly forgive Rick for giving Nico PTSD? Rick has been asked about PTSD in demigods before and he literally said that demigods just don’t get PTSD. Oh, but the queer one does. Huh. How strange. Wonder why he chose Nico out of all of the demigods who went through horrific shit to be the one with severe, noticeable, deadly PTSD (/s).

PTSD so fucking severe, noticeable, and deadly that the renowned healer who brings people back from the brink of death, Will Solace, cannot heal him. Not with his incredible healing powers, not with assistance from his almighty father (the great god of healing, Apollo), and not with the power of his love. In fact, Will is the only love interest who can’t “fix” their partner. Surely that’s a coincidence and has absolutely nothing to do with them being queer (/s).

Speaking of powerful people who can’t heal Nico’s severe, noticeable, deadly PTSD, apparently it’s simply too much for the god of madness, Dionysus, to fix. You know, the god who eliminated Chris Rodriguez’s ghost-induced insanity with a snap of his fingers on a whim. He’s simply not powerful enough to make all of Nico’s pain and suffering go away. Now I can’t imagine why one boy tortured into insanity could be magically healed but the other boy tortured into insanity simply cannot be. I wonder if it has anything to do with Chris being paired with a girl…and Nico being paired with a boy. You know, we might never find out (/s).

#rr crit #the thing that kills me is that #rick could have chosen anyone #to be his queer rep but he chose the demigod of the dead #tortured him for his entire life #made him completely unfixable and referrs to him as a poison #rick needs to do better but he can’t and he knows it and everyone else knows it #so they hired mark to write the solangelo book #because every person who lived through the 80s and 90s and read those books #knows exactly what nico is and exactly what rick views him as #‘well he’s a son of hades’#‘so of course his powers are out of control and he kills things’#do you think that was a fucking accident #trying to stamp out percico aside #do you think its a coincidence that the queer boy is of the dead #that he spends all of his time with the dead #and this isn’t a respectful tribute to those who lost their lives because of homophobia #this is rick’s biases and prejudices coming out in his writing #like i kind of get the 2010 violently forced out of the closet scene because the homophobia was rampant #people literally used to say ‘you can’t ship that because it’s gay’#in the time period this book was released #BUT and here’s the important part #TON came out in 2020 and rick is still using the fandom to give will a personality #and he’s writing about how nico kills things just by being around them #still #and he’s really sinking his teeth into that ‘nico doesn’t remember his mother but he remembers the catholic church’ nonsense #fingers crossed that mark does better but he was given absolute garbage to work with #also that’s not a typo when i say the ‘only’ queer kid #as of MOA nico is the only queer #ironically Will and Piper don’t come out until TOA and TON when they’re already in relationships

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