#books nico hates

[somewhereincairparavel]

i have ALWAYS promptly looked forward to jason grace's povs in the hoo books to the point where'd I'd flip the pages till I find the words "JASON" and would count the amount of povs he has in the whole book before I even finished reading, so I feel excited knowing that I'll get to his povs soon. there, I said it.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Nico and Percy's dynamic through the series is eternally funny to me, because it's just. like.

Percy's having a constant mental struggle between his fatal flaw of loyalty with a promise he made to Bianca to protect Nico, versus his Big 3 kid desire to maim other Big 3 kids / Poseidon descendant urge to totally maim Nico specifically. He hates Nico so so much. He thinks Nico's annoying and weird at best, and creepy/sketchy when he's older. The only positive thoughts Percy has towards Nico are "He's Bianca's brother and Bianca was my friend and I owe her/He's Hazel's brother and Hazel is my friend and would kill me if I was mean to him," "He's a powerful asset and useful ally (if questionable)," and "He's kinda pathetic and I feel maybe a little bad about it." Percy has multiple occasions throughout the series where he strongly considers - and on one occasionally actually goes through with - throttling Nico.

Meanwhile, Nico is following around Percy like a lost puppy. He explicitly can never bring himself to even dislike anything about Percy no matter how hard he tries. He has a whole bit in BoO where he's mentally going "UGH he's so stupid BUT IT'S ENDEARING HOW DARE HE." He's totally smitten. He's making deals with his dad for Percy. He's making convoluted plans to help Percy stand a chance against Kronos. During the entirety of BoTL it's like he's playing tsundere - "I'm helping NOT PERCY SPECIFICALLY with this quest! Me helping Percy would be SILLY because I DEFINITELY HATE HIM." Then he proceeds to show up to Percy's birthday party to basically ask him on a weird date and spend the entire next book scrambling around trying to help him or protect him or impress him. And Percy could not give less of a shit.

Just. That dynamic is so funny to me. Percy is the founder of the Nico Protection Club in that he's the one they're all protecting Nico from and meanwhile Nico is throwing himself at Percy to the point where the literal god of gay love calls him out on it.

[highasthesea]

Hazel has the earth and gems, Nico has the dark and dead, so what does Bianca get from her fathers cold blood and hands?

[thedevilandhisgrandmother]

Just finished reading house of Hades

Emotional trauma galore

[thaliasthunder]

the boy everyone ran scared from turned out to be the inspiration of many i am breaking down on the floor

[bright-eyes-strawberry-lies]

Btw if you want more solangelo content that doesn't make you want to commit crimes against Rick and Mark you can just ignore whatever they write and read fanfiction. There's over 10,000 solangelo fics on AO3 alone. You don't HAVE to read the cash grab book.

[thebaronsilver]

First of the bat, let me say this as a disclaimer. I love the og Percy Jackson series. Secondly, my fav character is Nico and then the Percy from the og series.

Do you know why I make this distinction? Because, Heroes of Olympus ruined Percy's basic characteristics.

Just think, this is the percy who was bullied in almost every school he attended (except, maybe, Goode). Even, camp half blood,till he came back from the first quest. This is the guy with so strong a sense of loyalty that he was willing to get into trouble with the teachers for Grover when they studied together, was willingly an outcast because he would rather be friends with the one guy everyone picked on and thus be bullied himself. He was pretty excited to have a brother once he got over the whole Cyclops thing, too. This is the same guy who spent all his free time looking for a runaway kid who said he hated him. Maybe it was out of misplaced guilt. Maybe it was due to the fact this guy big brothered everyone he could get away with. (Atleast, I felt like that.)

While we're on that issue. Was Nico right to blame Percy for Bianca's death? Absolutely, not. But he was also a grieving ten year old who just lost his only family (even though she had, in a way, already left him behind. But that's an entirely different rant on the Hunters as an institutions. Bianca was also a child, remember.). And considering that Nico changed his tune once he found the truth out and even helped Percy and the camp willingly afterwards, I like to think he more than made up for that mistake.

There's even a part where Percy refuses to burden Nico with the prophesy and claims it for himself. Considering that till then he was trying not to even think about it, I believe we can easily claim that Nico was in some ways important to Percy. Maybe not in the same way his Mom, Annabeth Or Grover was to him, but still an important person.

Then we have in the last Olympian, Percy using Nico as an example why Children of Hades shouldn't be treated as Pariahs. Because if not for him and the reinforcements his powers brought (not even counting the three whole deities he brought along) the casualties would have been higher. (It was Hades who locked Percy up. He even confirms that Nico hadn't had a clue. Nico in turn broke him out and got himself in trouble. Then in a turn of events, Percy starts to blame Nico for something that wasn't in his control. A reversal of roles so to speak. I had thought that it had been momentary anger on Percy's part, but apparently considering all the references to how Nico betrayed him in the HoO, it wasn't. He'd pushed it aside momentarily, it seems.)

Percy was not to blame for what happened to Nico in the original series. Life isn't fair and it just happened to be extra unfair to Nico. Even then Percy went out of his way to look after the kid, to make sure he had a safe space.

This is the Percy who I liked. The Son of Neptune only emphasised this. Even without his memories, he took Hazel and to a lesser extent Frank under his wings. He actually recognised Nico in a vague way. Not just Annabeth (which is something else I have beef with. What about his mother? Why didn't he remember Sally till a lot later and even then he didn't let her know he was safe till a lot later?)

Then comes the Mark of Athena. He apparently told so many horror stories to the 7 that there was a debate on whether or not they should save a 13 year old demigod, the brother to one of them, from a preventable death. This wasn't like the Titan war were demigods could be the enemy. Then why was there even a debate? It's like all that loyalty disappeared. This is the guy that was once bullied at every school he's attended. Doesn't he know the impact of telling tales when people aren't there to defend themselves? To tell the whole story? Then House of Hades. Every single person in that ship thought that Nico was spooky, creepy whatever and all that poor kid was doing was exist. He made himself scarce, barely spoke unless necessary and even then they were like ew, creepy. It's like Percy's personal loyalty became loyalty to just Annabeth. Fuck whatever happens to anyone else. It upsets me.

The later books ruined Percy as a character. And I will stand by this.

[greenconverses]

this fucking guy lmao

[multi-fandom-lunatic]

guys..... i KNOW that tsats wasn't perfect but please please please im begging yall to calm down with the hate of a book that hasn't been released!!! let us desperate solangelo fans EAT THIS SHIT UP

[liberty-barnes]

me looking at everyone hating on tsats like yikes

sorry you couldn't see that this book was literally about nico learning to accept that his trauma is part of him but doesn't control him and he can live alongside it without shoving it down or letting it take the lead

sorry you didn't realise that the underworld was literally killing will and just overall being a physical manifestation of everything he was taught to fear, hate, and fight against but he still managed to do a complete 180 and accept his own darkness as well as nico's because he wants to be better

sorry you didn't realise how the mere fact that this book, part of an extremely popular franchise read by children everywhere, will help literally thousands of kids accept themselves and their identity by constantly showing us non cishet people and couples and talking about the struggles of being queer but showing that it's very much possible to achieve happiness

sorry you can't see how amazing this book is

couldn't be me

[bayetea]

I'm gonna froth at the mouth over this in the tags so bear with me but reason #1278038 why the way rick went about breaking up jiper was bad: rereading her povs in hoo where she gushes over jason feels like even more of an unreliable narrator queer girl comphet psychological horror story

[punkeropercyjackson]

'We need more darkskin black girl mcs who have strong platonic relathionships with the male protagonist instead of romances and their own likable fleshed out personalities and don't get defanged!!!'You guys couldn't even handle Hazel Levesque

[aroaceleovaldez]

it was a thing for awhile in the fandom (and still is) to focus on one demographic a character is a part of while ignoring others like they can only exist one at a time (primarily being erasing disability traits or experiences the characters describe, usually by taking a trait meant to indicate one thing and claiming it can only indicate a separate thing and never anything else)

but the absolute biggest offender will always be when Rick and Mark Oshiro just fully did that in The Sun And The Star. like. oh okay. this is what we're doing now. and fully said it too. "Nico only likes Mythomagic to look at the hot men on the cards" ah yes of course it's definitely not because. he has adhd (and autism coding) and Mythomagic is his hyperfixation/special interest. nah that couldn't be it. Because of course Nico's only trait is "Gay" and that's the only thing that can inform his character Ever. How could i be so silly as to think otherwise? (sarcasm sarcasm)

anyways the fandom could really stand to learn about intersectionality that'd be great. rick too probably. also just remember disability exists in general and is kind of very central to the series and nearly every character. thanks.

[someonecomegettheirchild]

I do think that it’s hilarious that fanon regulus black is LITERALLY just nico di angelo. When the mauraders girlies discover heros of olympus ITS OVER!

[nightshade-anura]

ah, yes, the three people needed for a quest: will solace, nico di angelo and his skeleton cat small bob

[purpleshadow-star]

I absolutely LOVE the fact that they're going more into depth about Percy's messed up version of friendship with Nico (and Bob). I've always thought Percy treated Nico kind of badly, especially during the HOO series, and I'm SO glad they're exploring that.

I really hope they explore it more. Almost everyone in the riordanverse sees Percy as this perfect hero, but I hope his flaws and the dismissive way he acts towards his more distant friends is explored more in Nico's and especially Will's povs. I promise I like Percy, but he's done Nico dirty multiple times, and I just can't forgive that. I'm sure Percy's back and forth friendship with Nico didn't help Nico's self-worth issues and his feelings of not belonging at Camp Half-Blood.