Day 4: Favorite dude character
NICO DI ANGELO NICO NICO NICO OH MAN this is gonna be a LONG post
there are so many more Nico scenes i wanted to draw for today but my hand hurts from drawing and i wanna save the house of hades ones for their own separate post
but enough about that let’s talk about this gloriously creepy little shit ok
i have such a soft spot for tragic jerkass characters and that’s pretty much Nico in a nutshell. like he’s a sassy little kid with a dark sense of humor and zero social graces and he’s secretly a nerd (or at least he used to be a nerd, but he totally still remembers all his mythomagic facts yo)
but THEN HE ALSO LOST HIS SISTER WHEN HE WAS TEN AND HER GHOST TOLD HIM TO GIVE UP ON HER AND HE’S BEEN MANIPULATED BY HIS DAD AND MINOS AND HIS DAD AGAIN LIKE EVERY THIRD TUESDAY BASICALLY AND CAPTURED AND STUCK IN A JAR AND HE WATCHED PERCY FALL INTO TARTARUS, KNOWING EXACTLY HOW HORRIBLE IT IS DOWN THERE AND THEN CUPID WAS A DICK TO HIM AND
yo i’m gonna basically go over the whole Nico v. Cupid psychological cagematch on a different day of this challenge but the long and short of it is that the scene was fan fuckin tastic and Jason has a line in the end of it like “I’ve seen a lot of brave stuff but that was by far the bravest” and i literally cried because he has no fuckin idea how right he is ok Nico is from the forties ok and he’s not just from any forties he’s from start-of-WWII fascist catholic italy where the attitude to queers is kinda like the present global attitude to deadly disease ok braver shit has never been done in the entire series than Nico facing himself like that
(i got some words to say about Cupid, god of love, shoulda having known better than to out people against their will, but yo. i said i’m gonna take like a whole day of this challenge to talk about this scene alone)
but Nico di Angelo is such an interesting character ok like if we examine his motivations it’s like
he believes he’s unlovable for like five or six different reasons, about half of which are pessimistic and internalized, and the other half are his family
like he is literally the son of death and that makes him kinda the odd man out by default because it’s not exactly comforting to be sitting next to this kid at meals and having him tell you how your steak dinner bit the dust or something and he pretty much doesn’t notice that the reason people are totally freaked out by the son of hades is because he brings up in casual conversation that he’s probably chatted it up with their dead relatives and friends in the underworld while they’re waiting in the EZ Death line
but around that, even if he acts like a little shit to pretty much everyone, Nico cares. so. much. Like he doesn’t even know Hazel and he brings her back to life to give her a second chance just because she’s his sister
like dude this chick coulda destroyed the world and Nico’s just like “but we’re family” and bRIGNS HER BACK TO LIFE LIKE THAT’S SOME WINCHESTER KINDA FAMILY ATTITUDE HE HAS
and despite how much he says he hates Percy he totally cares about him like even before the big reveal in House of Hades you can tell he cares
he literally makes the boy physically invincible to prevent him from dying fighting Kronos. like that was Nico’s idea, to dip Percy in the Styx. and then when he comes back out looking like he’s had a fight with a hot teakettle Nico’s worried he’s hurt like i don’t think we’ve ever heard him express worry
and he doesn’t hate Jason and I think he and Frank had a weird bonding moment over Mythomagic and yO THIS KID IS AN AMAZINGLY MULTIFACETED CHARACTER I CANNOT GET OVER MY LOVE FOR NICO DI ANGELO