No, it's so true. Like, I'm not saying you have to like Solangelo, or even that you have to like Will.
(Incoming rant, sorry 😂 I've just been thinking about this for a VERY long time now)
You can ship what you want and hate whatever characters you want. But what I would urge is self-reflection on the reasons you use to justify that hatred of the Solangelo ship or of Will, because so many of the arguments against them are rooted heavily in biphobic narratives.
Will comments in TSATS how he finds Persephone pretty, and he comments in TCOTD how he finds Arielle pretty. Both of those instances have been used as evidence of Will's "disloyalty" to Nico, and while I think there is likely something to be critiqued about how Will's bisexuality is written, I urge people to reflect on what made them assume Will was being disloyal in those instances. Was he actually flirting with these women and considering them as potential romantic partners, or do you assume that because on some level, you have some unchecked biphobia and assume that's what must be happening? There have certainly been times where Nico has admitted to finding a god attractive to Will, so what makes that different than when Will does it?
I've spoken about this before as well, but while I agree that Rick and Mark don't always handle Will's bisexuality in the best way possible, I can't help but ask why Will seemingly always the one to blame in these situations. I've talked about how it makes me a bit uncomfortable that whenever Will mentions an attraction to women, Nico gets irritated and calls him a "bisexual disaster." I say this because though I'm not bisexual, I've seen how gay people in queer spaces use "jokes" like that to police bisexual people into behaving the way that they want to. Again, I am not trying to hate on Nico here, and I don't think that Nico the character is biphobic. Just that it bothers me that Nico, a gay character, is "allowed" to talk about Will's bisexuality in a way that seems almost degrading, and he doesn't get any backlash for it because he's gay.
You are allowed to like and dislike what you want, but keep in mind that at all times, we have unconscious biases that affect the way in which we engage with things. Think about how much more hate Annabeth started getting after Leah, a black girl, was cast as her. Think about how women characters are held to entirely different standards than male characters in fandoms; Annabeth gets a lot of hate for judo-flipping Percy in Mark of Athena, but I almost never see any critique of how Percy grabs Nico by the throat and pins him down while yelling at him in The Last Olympian. Racism, sexism, transphobia, biphobia, any other bigotry; being a part of a marginalized community doesn't make you immune to these things. We have to get better about reflecting on ourselves
