COTD cover shows something swirling around that's probably just smoke or the Mist but it reminded me that Will with a lasso/whip made out of light for a weapon would perfectly suit him- he definitely has training with a bow and arrow but. He's a medic constantly in the thick of things. He needs to be quick and maneuver easily and not get weighed down, especially while carrying medical equipment or patients. A bow is for distance anyway, he'd never be able to properly utilize it with how close he always is to the fighting; Apollo's signature weapon just wouldn't be practical here.
But something weightless that's equally fast and versatile, that he can summon and dismiss as needed, would be ideal for Will. And Apollo may not use whips, but Helios does (did?)- those and solar rays are both common symbols of his. There's an established precedent.
Actually, Will using a whip/lasso made of light is an old fanon thing! It was coined by Cherryandsisters, alongside their old photokinesis!Will headcanons that became popular fanon (and were eventually incorporated into canon).
You can find some of it on their old askblog, Askwill-solace. (They also popularized trans!Will back in the day.) Their light bending!Will tag on their main blog also has a lot of the old photokinesis hc stuff and some light lasso stuff. A couple of highlights though that feature his whip specifically: [x] [x]
For a lot of folks the appeal of Will using a whip/lasso weapon was a.) Most people did not remember that he canonically uses a bow, since at the time back in like 2014 people were kind of in a scramble to remember anything about Will at all as he very suddenly shot from a background character to being part of a canon protagonist ship. People still don't really remember that fact (including canon, but I digress), since most people don't remember or pay much attention to Will pre-BoO - in large part due to that fanon boom following BoO where people were just kind of throwing everything at the wall for him and seeing what stuck (especially since we didn't originally know TOA was going to happen, so we didn't expect solangelo to actually be canonized and folks were just doing whatever with fanon and hcs for him/solangelo in general - so keeping it based in canon was not any kind of priority). But in general it was some attempt to give him a unique weapon, and b.) people did, and still do, LOOOOOVE cowboy!Will. People LOVE exaggerating the fact that he's from Texas and the old fanon was that he was a little country boy who had a little lasso/whip weapon, because cowboy. Ever since his mom was canonized to be a country singer in TOA that got emphasized even more enthusiastically. That is also part of why he gets depicted with a flannel very frequently.
