idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????
So I've been checking out comics occasionally tbese days (by which I mean I read a random series of panels with little to no context). And Ive noticed two things.
One, they're really pushing the "we're just like a conventional family" vibes.
Two, the batboys say and do things that is typically reserved for romantic couples even more than before.
I really thought they'd tone down the double meanings now that they're putting more of their eggs in the happy-family basket. But er, no. No they did not. 😅
i think that we as percico shippers don’t exploit that one underworld scene in which percy wants to kill nico enough; it’s one of the major reasons why i like their dynamic so much
I remember being very sad that we never got any actual 'Percy attempts to kill Nico' scene in HoO. He thought about it in SoN, so I was hopeful, but sadly never got a chance to follow through 😔
The more I re-read Blood of Olympus, the more I feel like the whole "I've been here the whole time" romantic troupe would have worked way better with Clovis than with Will.
I think the most hilarious thing about the HoO giving Nico a boyfriend that is essentially the male equivalent of Annabeth (blonde, snarky, doesn't accept his pessimistic BS) is that Jason was literally right there. XD
So I was trawling through the Percico tag in search of new fanart and I got the sudden urge to deeply analyse how Will Solace is (was?) fundamentally a plot device character which is why his personality constantly changes.
5 people clicked "like". Tis a sign. No I'm not just looking for any excuse, shush you.
I grabbed Will Solace from the Apollo cabin and told the rest of his siblings to keep searching for Michael Yew. We borrowed a Yamaha FZI from a sleeping biker and [...] swerved to a stop at the fountain outside the hotel. Will and I hopped off [...] Pompona cursed in Latin and threw more fruit as Will and I ran toward the hotel.
This is the very first scene ever that Will is named. Prior to this he is, presumably, one of the various nameless Apollo kids that regularly shows up in Percy's dialogue (and honestly, it amuses me when they get named because it's like "oh, so Percy is actually friends with them lol").
I've condensed the whole scene because he's pretty much nothing but a background accessory to Percy's little speeding adventure and argument with a Roman goddess. But this is really does put precedence to Will being a plot device character.
{As an aside, I will be doing my best to ignore narrative choices that is obviously for the author's convenience as much as I can.}
So what do we know about Will from this very tiny tidbit of being mentioned?
Firstly, he is a fighter. He was fighting with the rest of the Apollo cabin to defend the bridge they were assigned. All the Apollo kids were described to be using bow and arrows. So from this scene (and the one prior to this), we know he not only knows how to fight, he is an archer like the rest of his siblings.
In other words, he is a standard son of Apollo stereotype.
The fact that Percy singles him out to heal Annabeth is where it gets interesting because this implies that he's the best medic in the group. Percy doesn't really differentiate between the other campers all that much in the series. The only ones he pays special attention to are Annabeth, Grover, Nico and Clarisse. Everyone else might as well be "Camper #5". {This is partially author's convenience and partially linked to his role in the narrative but I'm not going to get into that because this post is about Will Solace.}
So we know from this scene is that Will is probably the best medic they have at camp. With the possible exception of Michael Yew who is missing. So either the best medic or the second best after Michael.
The other piece of information we know from this is that Will is either not the type to complain, doesn't have much personality {because he's a plot device}, is too tired to say all that much from the fighting, or enjoys highspeed bike rides.
Or he has a crush on Percy but that's possible for every character at every given time so I'll ignore that for now.
He's not the type to complain, he's not the type to quip. He doesn't tell Percy that he's wasting time arguing with a statue when Annabeth is in danger. He seems to just silently follow instructions which implies practicality. Or he's concerned about Annabeth. We don't really get much (or any) information here as mentioned because he's not really allowed a personality at this stage.
He is there as a plot-specific medic for the sake of Percy and Annabeth's love story.
Which leads me onto the next scene.
Will Solace exhaled with relief. "It's not so bad, Annabeth. A few more minutes and we would've been in trouble, but the venom hasn't gotten past the shoulder yet. Just lie still. Somebody hand me some nectar."
So immediately we see that he's the type to be reassuring. Although this can also be interpreted as him being very quick at medical analysis and a realist. It also adds to his previously implied practical personality.
His words are concise, he gets to the point very quickly and he had no qualms about ordering people around.
This suggest he's done this before, and considering Battle of Labyrinth was only a year ago and the plot claims the Camp had been carrying out regular sting operations on Luke's army throughout the year, it's very likely that he's does indeed have a lot of experience.
I want to point out that, at this point in the series, Apollo kids are stated to be pretty monolith. They're all good at archery, they're all good at music. They're all good medics. Very little differentiates them and while it can be argued that this is the first time we get any implications that some of them might have specialism, it is just as strong an argument that their abilities is entirely related to skills and experience as opposed to personal specialisms.
If we take the specialism interpretation, then Will is the Head Medic, which implies seniority. If we take the skills interpretation, then he's got the most experience after Michael, which implies that he's the second-in-command, and also implies seniority.
We don't actually know when he joins the Camp, but skills are entirely correlated to three things in the first PJO series:
Age - the older you are, the better you are at everything
Time at Camp - the longer you're at camp, the better you are at everything
Godly parent - this is really only ever used to differentiate how the children of the Big Three are absolute powerhouses (which interestingly gets lost in HoO).
Most campers with skills are on the older side. This is extremely consistent in PJO, with Annabeth being a Head Counsellor despite her youth in the Lightning Thief purposely noted as an exception (and offset by point 2 above).
Will is depicted as skilled in medical arts and because everyone in the Apollo cabin can do everything Apollo can in PJO, it can be argued that he is roughly the same age as Annabeth and Percy. Just because that's the pattern that is depicted at this point in the series (it all gets upended in HoO but I'll get to that).
Similarly, the younger someone is, the less experienced they are. Which is generally true but is very strongly shone upon in PJO. At first to point out how Percy is an outlier because he's a son of Poseidon. And then it's used again for Nico, to highlight that traumatic loss of youth and its contrast with having extreme power.
So Will, at this point, is implied to be a senior camper, with experience of taking care of the medical parts of war. It's likely he's the second in command and he's used to giving orders.
{Interestingly, he apparently doesn't carry nectar on him, or decides to not use his own stash or perhaps he has used it all already because he's the go-to medic.}
This is all obviously just vague implications and there's no actual concrete evidence that Percy didn't just grab the first Apollo kid he saw and left.
But I'm going to keep pulling scraps of personality from the core text because that's the only thing we got here.
Anyway, since this is getting kind of long, I'm just going to conclude that, at this point, Will appears to be either an easy-going or very practical dude who generally minds his own business.
The plot he's serving so far is to be the background doctor dude while the main couple is having a heart-to-heart over a life-and-death scenario. He's specifically there to lighten the mood and reassure that Annabeth is not going to die even though she was very close to it.
Will's role here is also to highlight how Percy's speedy response to his love interest is the reason she's going to be fine. His love for her is saving her life, much like her love for him saved his life in the previous scene.
And thus we conclude part 1. Mostly because I'm tired.
So I was trawling through the Percico tag in search of new fanart and I got the sudden urge to deeply analyse how Will Solace is (was?) fundamentally a plot device character which is why his personality constantly changes.
Not me getting the random urge to write a platonic Tim & Damian fic with a suspiciously wife coded behaviour to see if anyone notices the shippy nature of the story.
I was losing sleep trying to do ryou's and yugi's magical girl's design, amongst trying to fix other characters designs before I stopped and was like. Wait a minute I don't have to do ANY of that
So here are the finished unfinished designs, bone apple tea my dears
Okay, I'll admit I thought these were meant to be magical girl antagonists because everyone is very intense and kind of evil/crazy looking. But either way, wow they're incredible.
Screaming, ok I took a break from horses cause one of my moots on TikTok has been drawing a bunch of mha stuff recently and I wanted to draw them as kids 😭😭
