hello! I hope your having a good day! If you don't mind me asking, what is your opinion on the Cupid Scene in Hoo? And if you could how would you change it?
my opinion on the cupid sceneâŚwell, i don't think a traumatic coming out scene is automatically bad. the problem i have w it is that rick capitalized on shock value instead of good writing. rick retconned a bunch of things to make nico alone and miserable so that he could have this scene, and it was completely unnecessary. ppl can have friends without coming out. and, as iâve repeatedly said, the way hoo is written is literally a repeat of his arc in pjo but worse, because weâre acting like important events in pjo didnât happen in a series thatâs supposed to be a sequel to pjo and rick is inconsistent so the payoff is questionable.
the solution isâŚgood writing. creating a cohesive and intriguing plotline where this scene is either necessary or scrapped if it isnât.
thus begins an unnecessarily deep dive into all the retcons, inconsistencies, and general what-the-fuckery of nicoâs arc in hoo bc iâm the verbose king and we've accidentally stumbled into something i have a lot to say abt.
first retcon. in son, frank explicitly says that nico does not make him nervous and describes nico as mysterious. not weird, creepy, off-putting, or anything similar. and nico is! he is clearly hiding things and shows up infrequently. this is a neutral description, and frank goes on to say that plutoâs powers, and specifically the underworld, isnât enough to make him dislike pluto or nico.
also this, showing nico is comfortable enough around frank:
but then in hoh, frank thinks going somewhere with nico, alone, is terrifying.
at worst, frank wouldâve felt awkward. theyâve never had to talk alone bc nico is at camp jupiter for hazel and doesnât have any reason to talk to frank by himself. if frank didnât want to be alone w nico bc of that, itâd make sense. but thatâs not whatâs said or implied! and nothing has happened! nico got kidnapped, they saved him, and since then heâs been chilling on the boat, exactly as weird as before, if a little more understandably distressed. like, nothing happened to change frankâs opinion this drastically. even the difference between pluto and hades (wealth vs death) doesnât matter bc nico uses his powers in son. also frank literally summons a skeleton guy in son and hazel is a zombie, likeâŚ
(the source isnât important but i've been quoting these five seconds for years)
oh! and thatâs not all, it gets worse!
these scenes from hoh are incredibly infantilizing. why are we treating nico like a feral dog that needs to be domesticated??? yikes. and once again, itâs not true! nico was fine talking w ppl in pjo (if a bit over-enthusiastic). and then in son he was perfectly civil and was fine having the conversation abt the quest. his issue w ppl was that his powers/parentage put ppl off, and, even in son, that he had to keep a secret.
nico is perfectly capable of speaking like a normal person and working as part of a team (see: final botl battle, final tlo battle, the sword of hades). like, nicoâs struggle in hoh should be 1) that ppl are calling him creepy behind his back (and therefore has nothing to do w his social skills) and/or 2) that he just survived an incredibly traumatic experience and is understandably withdrawn. neither of these are properly addressed and instead the implication is that nico is hiding himself bc heâs gay and everything will be solved if he accepts himself.
edit: i never actually explicitly stated this, but nico's queer coding and disability coding overlap, which is why this infantilization/ableism is important enough to highlight despite the conversation specifically being abt the queer aspect of it.
second retcon. percyâŚas iâve said many times before, percy explicitly calls nico his friend in tlo.
this immediately makes hoo trying to act like they donât know each other and were never close a retcon. they were friends, they saw each other frequently, nico made silly jokes w percyâŚand weâre ignoring all of this in hoo.
i've talked abt this previously (in response to tsats), but nico is the one putting distance between him and percy. percy reached out to nico repeatedly thru pjo.
when percy notices that nico excludes himself, percy finds a private place to talk to nico and assures him that percy wants him around and offers solutions to his discomfort (this is not percyâs responsibility. percy is a child). when nico insists that he wonât stay, percy sees it from nicoâs perspective and, instead of forcing nico to do something against his will that may totally backfire, says âi hope we donât have to be enemies,â leaving room for nico to decide whether heâs willing to be friends.
bc percy understands the root of nicoâs issue (that no matter the accommodations made at camp, thereâs always going to be the implicit message that he doesnât belong there), he addresses it and uses his wish to make sure that nico has a home at camp.
and when nico tries to prove heâs useful, percy proves he wouldâve invited him in whether nico was or not. bc he thinks nico deserves to be a kid.
âi wonder if [nico] had ever had a birthday party,â percy thinks at his own birthday party where he didnât invite his friends bc he felt it was too much of an inconvenience, in a story where he never had friends prior to these ppl he didnât invite, and the only person he had for twelve years of his life was his own mother. and percy uses his own loneliness to empathize w how lonely nico is.
percy is not some distant figure nico is idolizing. he's a kid trying his best to care for another kid at a time where no one else did, while experiencing his own trauma. all of their hang-ups exist bc of that.
going back to their relationship in hoo, even trying to make percy uncomfortable w nicoâs powers (and therefore not wanting to associate w nico) doesnât work bc percy has gone on record and said he thinks some of nicoâs powers are cool and has neutral responses to others, not to mention percy is also a big three kid who makes other ppl wary (i could write a whole meta on how what percy finds disturbing w nicoâs powers is directly tied to what percy finds disturbing w his own powers, but iâll restrain myself. please clap).
and if that wasnât enough, the entire reason percy stood up to hera in botl is bc she was willing to let nico die specifically bc he doesn't fit in bc of those powers.
this plotline was tired before it even began.
you could argue that all of this changed w nicoâs betrayal in tlo. but then why didnât percy tell anybody when it happened in tlo (annabeth wouldâve reacted to it if he had)? why did percy trust nico to come when he called? why didnât any of percyâs animosity come out afterwards at camp? and in the throne room, percy didnât have to single nico out w his wish. he didnât have to watch nico to make sure he was settling in. but he did. and because he did, any writing that suggests percy doesn't trust or care abt nico bc of that is bad writing. maybe rick forgot this, but u can be angry w and hurt by the ppl you love and still love them.
even the justification that nico lied in son isnât good enough to completely change their relationship, bc itâs pretty clear why nico lied and percy says he canât stay angry at nico when they rescue him, and let me remind u, anger is a core part of percy's character. while nico lying might be enough for characters like leo and jason, who have no rapport w him, to doubt him, itâs not enough for percy. and why are we so obsessed w dismantling percy and nicoâs friendship anyway? why is that necessary to the story? like i said before, ppl can have friends without coming out. isolating the only queer character (at the time) isnât necessary.
this conflict doesnât even work in hoo bc their distance is still one-sidedâŚ
when did percy not give nico a second chance in hoo? the only times theyâve interacted prior to this was when percy remembered nico in son and tried to talk to him and then when they saved his life. and then nico brushes off percy's gratitude and tells him to back off. this is not nico idolizing percy who doesn't care abt him. this is percy reaching out and yet again nico putting distance between them.
and, obviously, this doesnât work at all w pjo when the entirety of botl exists, you know, where percy chose to trust and protect nico and then went out of his way to make sure nico knew percy held none of nicoâs anger against him. itâd be one thing if nico was supposed to be wrong, but considering how thereâs an entire arc in hoo abt jason being the first person to trust nico, and tsats seriously acts like percy only ever talked to nico when he needed something, itâs safe to say this comes from a place of stupidity.
ok. this sections getting long, so i moved the it was stupid to have percy give jason a reason to doubt nico section to a new post. but know that i'm aware and i think it's stupid.
back to the point of all these retcons w percy. there's nothing in hoo that necessitates changing percy and nico's relationship from pjo. while percy in hoo is never cruel to nico, they act like strangers for some reason. so, it's changed for no reason and it's written poorly.
sigh. and then all of chb is retconned (or recycled if youâre feeling generous).
the ppl at camp accept him while his cabin gets built. pretty nice. then in boo nico reveals they got tired of him after a weekâwhich is still summerâdespite there being an influx of kids from all descents, some of whom would be weird or uncomfortable or whatever this justification is. thatâs not even mentioning how percyâs own experiences (remember how he was ostracizedâŚmultiple timesâŚ) should have made them more accepting of nico.
whyâŚwas this necessary at allâŚ? especially when u have an entirely different camp that treats nico as weird bc they didnât have that good experience w him? this is really what gets me. if rick wanted to be lazy and repeat nicoâs arc, he couldâve done so without retconning things.
for example, with the seven, leo, piper, jason, and maybe annabeth (she doesnât have much to say abt nico in pjo), i could understand having animosity towards nico, as well as camp jupiter, but retconning established relationships to make ur only (at the time) queer character isolated and miserable only to then have his coming out be violent and traumatic is. well. bad! especially when the person who is w him for that experience is not someone he has built any sort of camaraderie w. nico isnât choosing to trust jason, heâs being forced to.
and the whole nico-needs-to-learn-to-trust-ppl plot doesnât work anyway bc of rickâs inconsistencies.
jason has a moment much like frank where he doesnât want to go anywhere w nico bc nico is so weird and scary. nico has every right to pull himself away from ppl who treat him like heâs got something contagious. and thereâs more:
âsince when does jason defend nico,â as in they have shit on nico before and jason has not, in the past, defended nico. as in nico had every reason to not trust jason prior to this bc everyone, including jason, were talking shit behind his back. why are we acting like nico is being unreasonable? oh no, yâall are talking behind my backâŚclearly itâs my fault bc i push everyone away and that has nothing to do w ur behavior or anythingâŚyes this is good writing.
and weâre supposed to believe that jason (and reyna and hedge and will) is the first person to be kind/reach out to nico, but we have this scene from botl where percy comforted nico and gave him a piece of his childhood back:
and this is after percy cleared the air to make sure nico knew he didnât hate him and offered to make accommodations for nico at camp and then respected and understood why nico wouldnât want to. like,
woah, youâre telling me that a character reaches out to nico after a traumatic experience in an act of kindness and this helps nico grow as a person? and it happens multiple times?! yeah, apparently rick and fandom have completely forgotten abt this (also hazel exists???). theyâre even phrased similarly! âmaybe itâs time to take a risk and embrace something youâve pushed away.â furthermore, they both support their point by helping nico, percy by inviting nico into his home to enjoy cake and ice cream, jason by drinking from the chalice. once more w feeling: nico has been loved the entire goddamn time!
i get what rick was trying to accomplish w the whole cupid scene concept. which is that itâs okay to be gay and that it can feel very âotheringâ to be gay. nico has to accept himself in order to make friends. thatâs what this
and this
are trying to say, right, but this doesnât work when youâve blatantly retconned established relationships to have characters push nico away for his powers/parentage/whatever. nicoâs struggle is not an internal issue that can be solved by accepting himself, itâs an external issue caused by how other ppl treat him for his powers/parentage (which he has never been shown to reject btw).
the thing is, the powers-as-queerness metaphor only works when you donât have, you know, characters who arenât queer going through similar ostracization. not only was percy ostracized at chb in tlt for his powers/parentage (very similar to nico!), percy has a moment in this same book where his powers terrify annabeth, and then piper in the next book, in which he, you know, lets himself almost die to poison bc he feels like he âdeserved itâ for using those powers. again, this is not queer-coding for percy (unlessâŚ?). moreover, like i said, nico doesnât reject his powers, so the whole queer-coding w powers and needing to accept himself is already iffy (...rejecting powers...hold the fuck upâŚpercy isnâtâŚunlessâŚ). even the out-of-time metaphor doesnât work bc itâs something he shares w hazel, who is not canonically queer (unlessâŚ?!). so, already, weâre on shaky metaphorical ground. all of this could work, theoretically, if combined w strong writing, but combined w the retconning and inconsistencies, this plotline makes no cohesive sense.
weâre supposed to believe that nico is the one pushing everyone away while they are secretly super supportive while simultaneously being shown that everyone talks and thinks shit that affirms nicoâs thoughts abt them that makes him want to pull away. and then in boo we completely ignore that these ppl have been pushing nico away and suddenly everyone (reyna, hedge, will, etc) is supportive.
pick a struggle!
also nicoâs coming out scene in boo sucked (yeah this is the segue).
this is the culmination of nicoâs arc in hoo. heâs finally accepted himself enough to speak the truth without pressure. we ruined percy and nicoâs established relationship for this. and they donât even have a conversation. then nico walks over to will bc percy, âregular guyâ percy, is ânot [his] type.â donât look too deep into that.
so, how would i fix the cupid scene? well.
there were a million different ways to write a better arc for nico and earn that cupid scene. for example, rick couldâve stuck to a plotline.
the trust plotline couldâve been good. bc this exact thing is what causes the accidental kidnapping situation in tlo. nico doesnât trust percy enough to tell him the truth and chooses to manipulate and lie to percy instead. this choice is what sets up their conflict bc percy views this as betrayal (something thatâs important to a guy whoâs fatal flaw is loyalty).
itâs also interesting bc nico does choose to trust ppl in hoo; he eats the pomegranate seeds despite not knowing that someone is coming for him, he just trusts that someone will (weâre ignoring what boo says abt nicoâs tartarus experience bc fun fact! that is also retconned). and it pays off, bc not only does he get saved, we see hazel and percy even willing to challenge the other members of the seven to make sure he gets saved. so, itâs not a lesson heâs already learned, itâs a lesson heâs learning. but, going back to the main question here, would the cupid scene still be necessary? was being dragged into tartarus and almost dying not enough spectacle?
regardless, my biggest problem w the cupid scene in all of this is that it gives the impression that u have to come out in order to have ppl love u and trust u. a much better message to send is that the ppl who love u will love u before and after u come out. no isolation necessary.
