#cevenini responde

[tagthescullion]

I saw that one post you had a little while ago about Nico not being treated nearly as badly by Camp Half-Blood as the narration makes it out to be, and you know what's the biggest proof of that? The curse on the Oracle was broken!

Hades' curse on the Oracle would last "as long as [his] children remain outcasts." Since the Oracle was able to go to Rachel Dare, quite obviously Nico was no longer an outcast. I don't think the curse on the Oracle would have been broken if everyone only temporarily liked him for bringing a zombie army to help but changed their minds and decided they hated him a few days later.

Also, Nico also notes, in BOO, that after a week or so people began getting nervous from him and whispering about him and so on....but the thing is, every Big Three kid goes through a period like that.

Percy went through something similar right after he got claimed. There was a period of time when he was treated like an outcast with everyone whispering about him. Everyone warmed up to him soon enough. And I'd bet anything that the reaction to Thalia resurrecting was twice as worse (maybe there's a reason she left camp to go to school with Annabeth?).

There haven't been any Big Three kids in generations; of course the couple that show up are going to be treated like outsiders for the first few days until the camp gets used to them. If Nico had stayed for a bit longer they'd have warmed up to him and started treating him normally. But I'm pretty sure that was around the time Hades told him about Camp Jupiter....

yeah no, rick forgetting his lore is the fandom’s joke

buuuut you’re right, I’d never thought about the oracle’s curse and how it wouldn’t have been broken if nico was actually an outcast

I know a big chunk of the fandom thinks it’s self perception and that nico felt weird but let’s be very honest here, if it’s the gay thing, he shouldn’t feel bad in a camp following ancient greek deities, and if it’s how they treated him, you’re telling me percy —who at the time liked the kid despite what HoO wants to sell us— wouldn’t have told him ‘hey chill, thalia and I went through the same shit, they’ll get used to you in four days’?????

[tagthescullion]

Hi! I saw that post you had about Artemis praising Nico. Do you think Artemis was paying attention to Nico because he was the brother of one of her Hunters, or because she was watching all of the children of the Big Three?

tbf I think artemis could've been one hell of a character if rick didn't think "feminism = women hate men"; she could've been the goddess more attuned to mortals bc, let's face it, she spends literally all her time with them

that being said, if she was treated as an asset to the narrative, I'd imagine she paid attention to any child of the big three for the sake of the danger they pose to olympus

she tries to recruit thalia as a kid, manages with her as a teen;

she recruits bianca asap;

she goes as far as to praise percy and nico despite generally being cold if not lowkey miserable towards men;

she seems to know keeping big three children happy or contained works better than to allow them to grow resentful

TL;DR: she probably cares more about (good) family of her hunters, but you bet your arse she was keeping a close eye on the big three children

[tagthescullion]

I like your interpretation of Nico that he's bad at outright lying but good at carefully wording things to give the appearance of the truth.

It fits with what we know of him. For example, I don't think he actually lies to Percy in SON and tells him he doesn't know him; he just doesn't say that he does know him. Then when Hazel calls him out on it he pretty much admits it to her.

Even Hades himself calls Nico honest (along with dense, ouch) in TLO, which makes him deciding to send Nico to New Rome chronologically like a month later even funnier. Like, he thinks his son is fundamentally honest, and proceeds to send him to bluff his way in as a Roman anyway.

Nico: "All I did was show up at the gates and tell them my father the Lord of the Dead sent me! It's not my fault they assumed I meant Pluto and not Hades!"

it’s funny that when he’s faced with the need to lie proper he’s shite..

TLO

he opts for manipulation or straight up walking away rather than lying to percy’s face

hades isn’t too impressed but his opinion’s biased bc he implies he thinks nico to be “dense” while nico’s not stupid by a long shot (he is only like 12 tho)

SoN

throws back the question (finge demencia), changes the subject again, and finally he just confesses and tells hazel “can’t tell sorry”

and yet he convinces everybody of what he wants: percy falls for it twice, CJ accepts his story, hades fights for his family, despite that last not having nico lie, it means he can clearly manipulate people well enough 🤔🤔

[tagthescullion]

I think that the funniest part of Hades giving Nico Jules Albert as a present is that we have no idea of any other circumstances. Just that Nico got a zombie chauffeur as a gift. That's it.

Like, was it a birthday gift? A "congratulations on surviving this long" gift? A "my condolences on not being able to bring your sister back to life" gift? A "congrats on bringing your other sister back to life" gift? A "congratulations on not being killed on sight by the Romans/here's a way to get back and forth between the two coasts of the United States without permanently fading into shadow" gift? A "I need you around to run errands up in the Overworld for me so here's a way to get around without collapsing of exhaustion" gift? Some combination of the above?

And was the gift just Jules-Albert? Like, did Hades give Nico a car along with the driver (loved your fic about that btw) or did he just give him a zombie chauffeur and figure Nico could just steal whichever nearby car happened to be convenient?

Meanwhile, Hazel is in the background going "So where is my chauffeur?"

so like, it's funny that hazel got colour pencils and a warning, and nico got a manservant and, perhaps, a car --aristocratic bastard just can't have a normal gift, can he?--

[tagthescullion]

I think that Nico and Grover could've had such a great relationship.

Grover went to school at Westover with them for what, four or five months? - long enough to realize that they were demigods. Did he befriend them? He knew them - that line when Bianca turns to Grover and asks him "Grover, are you a demigod?" jumps out at me - she's confused, she's overwhelmed, she and her brother narrowly escaped getting kidnapped, monsters are real, gods exist, some girl just went off a cliff, and she's turning to the only other person familiar here to her besides her brother.

Did he feel guilty when Bianca was killed? Did he grieve? While it wouldn't exactly have been the same as when Thalia died, since unlike Thalia both Nico and Bianca made it safely inside camp borders, it probably reminded him a lot of it because it was a similar situation, a twelve-year-old girl dying to save her friends...Did he blame himself at all?

Could Nico have blamed Grover for Bianca's death? While he no longer blames Percy, he still blames the Hunters...did he blame Grover too? Was he like "I thought satyrs are supposed to protect demigods why didn't you do your job?"

There's also so much we don't know about his time at Westover with the di Angelos. How long did it take him to suspect they were demigods? Did he try befriending them? Did he ask about their parents in an attempt to figure out which one was the god, and backed off when they said they had no memory of either of them and only remembered growing up in hotels and boarding schools? Did he encourage Nico's playing Mythomagic in the hope it would prepare him for the mythological world that would soon be all too real to the two? Did he wonder why neither sibling mentioned any memories prior to the previous year?

Do Nico and Grover have any sort of relationship at all post-canon, even if it's just "Hi nice to see you bye" if they happen to bump into each other at camp and then going on with whatever they were doing?

I just feel like any dynamic between them has so much potential.

you bet your arse grover felt bad about bianca, hell, he knew her longer than thalia! I don't think he liked her --or idolised her-- as much, but he must've cared about the kid!

I honestly think nico was at a stage in which children blame the "authority figure" and by all means he blamed percy, and --to an extent-- thalia too, since, in his eyes, those were The Powerful OnesTM (poor percy and thalia, they can't escape that role).. after a while though, I do imagine nico would've been resentful, but not too much tbh? like does nico ever even mention grover?

I hc that nico eventually moves in with sally and paul, and by living with percy, that'd put grover in his life a lot more, so there's potential for any kind of acquaintance to develop

[tagthescullion]

I think it's intriguing how I'm pretty sure we never see Nico actually directly lie in SON. He tells Hazel she's a child of Pluto, and that she's his sister, but he never actually says *he's* a child of Pluto. He doesn't actually tell Percy he doesn't know him, he just says "Do you?" in response to Percy's "I know you" and doesn't actually say that he *does* (and in fact he admits it to Hazel). (Of course there might have been some lying in the 9 months Nico was visiting CJ, but we don't see it)

my take is that nico is an amazing bullshitter but a rubbish liar. he can gaslight anybody --mortal, demigod, god, let kronos try if he wants too-- but god forbid he has to straight up lie to your face

here's an ask about it (he can't lie)

and here's my fic version of this

[tagthescullion]

Recently I just fixated on the chaos potential of Percy-Thalia-Jason team, like imagine they got teamed together and each of them felt like an outsider of the team. Percy felt like an estranged cousin between sibling, Jason felt like a distant Roman between the Greek, and Thalia felt like the only girl between two boys that has weeks of missions together. Each of them feels like the other two can hit off as duo while in truth all of them are equally awkward with each other

Also they all are children resulted from breaking the pact so like imagine if the mission related to the consequenses of the Styx oath-breaking (that SHOULD EXIST RICK) and they share the same 'I shouldn't be born' feeling hmm... 🥺😋

there’s also the percy thinking he’s the odd one out between siblings but also jason feeling that too bc thalia and percy behave a LOT like siblings

also thalia feels off with the boys but she had a quest with percy in which both had the same side-objective of saving annabeth meaning jason could feel like an outsider on that sense too

they’re all leaders of different groups with different strategies, meaning they’d be throwing hands about how to solve any and every type of situation

about the styx curse though, did the romans also have it? jason never mentions it (probably bc rick forgot) but it’s still a thing that I can’t remember being solved ever

((thalia and percy having beef with hades meanwhile jason’s like ‘nico and hazel are two angels idk what you’re taking about’))

[tagthescullion]

The way we never see characters catching each other up on events or meeting each other after the first series is almost funny. Thalia and Hazel have never met. Camp Half-Blood has no clue that Nico has been hanging out at Camp Jupiter for months. Despite Grover's empathy link, Nico sensing it, and Rachel dreaming it, Percy and Annabeth somehow had no clue of Jason's death until they arrived at New Rome. We never see Thalia and Percy reunite.

I'm a firm believer that rick shouldn't pop out rubbish sequels, he should do a compilation of one-shots of "behind the scenes" moments we all want to read