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5 times Dan and Phil click baited us

Nico is closer to the dead.

Will is closer to death.

The dead and death are TWO. DIFFERENT. THINGS.

Nico is the son of the DEAD. He interacts with souls, and talks to the ghosts of people are already DEAD.

Will is a healer. A war medic. Death is basically where he WORKS IN. Anyone in the medical fields knows you will be experiencing death. Seeing the process of death.

The moment where people leave the living world. And experiencing the grief that follows after seeing someone die.

That is death.

Nico represents the beauty of death. The aftermath. Knowing the soul/ideas and ambitions of the person's life. The person that roamed this world. The voice of someone's life. The memories. What is left of that person.

Will represents the uglier side. The reality of it. The moment someone's string of life goes silent. The moment life leaves, all is left is the corpse. The shell of someone you used to know.

Hence why solangelo's view of the underworld is SO contrasting.

It's black and white. Because both represent different sides. SEEN different sides. They're so similar yet so different at the same time.

Solangelo is the start AND finish of DEATH. Will represents the START of it. Nico represents the END of it.

Two sides of the same coin.

The literal bridge between life and death.

One starting point and one end.

But I think it was a miss opportunity to delve into the aftermath of at least Lee and Micheal. Technically I want the entire aftermath of the death of the Apollo cabin. We don’t get an exact number, but you cannot tell me that 1) Apollo’s slutty ass (pos) doesn’t compete with Hermes in terms of number of kids, 2) that Will was the eldest and cabin councilor at 13 without him loosing a large about of older siblings, and 3) that that loss didn’t fundamentally fuck with him and contribute to his unhealthy sense of responsibility. But I’m willing to ignore that part only because we don’t get the names of the other Apollo kids (but we could have changed that in that book if they let Will stand his own character but whatever). Not addressing Lee and Michael though? Nope not buying it. This is worse when you remember Michael was never found as far as I know and therefore never got a proper funeral? Wouldn’t that at least imply that his spirit is just out there? And given that we’ve seen he can hold a grudge it would have been interesting to see him become a mania and have them come across him in Tartarus instead of the satyr the do see.

I think ignoring the loss of Will’s siblings not only undercuts what Will has gone through, but his burden as the Healer. Unlike every other demigod, Will isn’t allowed to die. If he’s gone there’s no hope anymore. No healer means no fighters which means losing the war before it starts. He, more than anyone, has to deal with the consequences of war and combat. He either heals deadly injuries only to send them back out to fight again or (like touched on in the book) is the last thing those demigods see before going to the underworld. And then he has to just move on to the next person because war waits for no one. He doesn’t even get to celebrate the end of war because while the fighting stopped there are countless injuries that need to be dealt with for however long it takes to get them better with 4 people (if you’re generous enough to add Kayla and Austin and Chiron).

hey gang how do we feel about solangelo

What I think about most (and why his defanging by the fandom irks me so bad) is the fact that I think he’s the only character we see kill someone on screen. Like, a person. A demigod. Dead. Directly by Nico’s actions. Percy is hyped up for his monster body count and sometimes people talk about the collateral deaths he’s contributed to (I.e. Michael Yew), but Nico’s canonical kill count is largely ignored. Which is so crazy to me because he straight up murdered Bryce Lawrence in BoO. Turned him into a ghost and sent him to the underworld. And after he woke back up his main concern was not the moral implications of what he did but whether or not Reyna and Hedge would judge him.

And that’s not even the last time he did that in the book. Before Octavian accidentally shot himself in the sky, Nico was straight up planning to shadow travel into his tent and assissinate him. It happens right before running into Will and the others so it’s often overlooked and then Octavian killer himself so you all forgot but EYEEE did NAWT! Also, with that last part he was team letting Octavian end himself and was the one to convince Will to let it go.

Even in ToN, he’s metal as hell. When he saved Lester from the Germani (who are human or at least human-adjacent if I remember right), he did so by turning the guy into a skeleton. Like he straight up had that skin and flesh crumble away and started ordering around the skeleton left behind, spooking the SHIT out of the mortals that were also there. When facing Nero he was going straight for kill trying to cut him in half with his soul-sucking sword.

None of this is to say I think he’s like, a cold blooded murderer. He isn’t happy to do those things and does wish that things hadn’t gotten to that point, but he also didn’t angst over it. That alone sets him apart from so many other demigods and I wonder if it’s attached to the way he sees death and the underworld as the Next Step rather than the End like other non-underworld kids do. TSATS tries to touch on this but I think it’s kinda cheap relationship drama rather than a real analysis of Nico’s moral code — especially because they use Octavian to make a point rather than the person Nico actually killed. And they don’t even talk about the attempt assassination just the quasi-assisted suicide which is more about inaction rather than deliberate choice and Octavian was past listening at that point.