okay outside of the retcons and continuity errors in TSATS, I think the main part that bugs me is how much the book seems to infantilize Nico, particularly relating to his relationship with Will. Especially because the book seems to remember and then forget again that Nico is autistic only when it’s convenient to infantilize him further.
Nico is randomly nerfed and basically helpless at literally everything the entire book. There is not a single fight EVER in the book that he actually fights without someone else very directly doing the work for him or actively helping him (usually LITERALLY holding his hand), save for that singular time where he sneak-attack kills the monster that just regenerated, but honestly that doesn’t really count as a fight. Or the aeternae, but they literally weren’t attacking him.
He’s in the underworld! He’s been dating Will for a year! How is he completely incapable of the simplest tasks? He tries to help Will - in the infirmary (is helpless at it), patch up his wounds (Will’s condition only worsens), put batteries in a sun lamp (he drops the batteries) - every time he manages to fuck up like he’s never done a single task in his life before. He runs away from every fight or someone else does the work for him because he’s randomly incapable of it for some random excuse. He completely loses several notable powers of his (only ever using one of his powers the entire book, and the only other reference to his powers is his shadow-travel which we don’t actually see) and acts like he’s physically incapable of them even though they logically should be the best answer for a particular situation (geokinesis! dream powers! influencing fear/nightmares! one-tap kill dissolve-you-to-bones! rip souls out of living people!) Yet Will randomly can do everything he can’t - generates two completely new powers to fight Nyx with (alongside bringing back an old power that got forgotten)! Plus a third (growing flowers/plants) that doesn’t even have anything done with it! Can pick the fruit from Persephone’s garden when Nico can’t (LITERALLY IN NICO’S OWN HOME)! Nico panicking? Soothes him without even trying. Will saves Nico in fights like five different times when he’s supposed to be the one with zero combat experience and explicitly isn’t a fighter (and doesn’t even have a weapon) and Nico’s the one who lived on his own as a rogue for three years! They’re in the Underworld, Nico’s home, and Will - WHILE ON DEATH’S DOORSTEP. LITERALLY. - is more powerful than him! For no reason! Nico is a Big 3 kid! He’s SUPPOSED to be extremely op! We don’t even see Nico speak to any true ghosts the entire book and they even acknowledge that he’s Ghost King!
And then on top of it all, the narrative keeps treating Nico as not knowing what’s best for himself and making Will always correct. Or making it so Will is the only one who is able to comfort Nico ever. And have Nico constantly refer to Will with almost exclusively babyish pet-names - “Night-light,” “Care bear” (when logically Nico shouldn’t even know anything about Care Bear lore?), even “sun therapy lamp” isn’t great. The constant “My little ball of darkness” also isn’t great? Like, if you establish that Nico’s extremely short, then it’s not as bad cause then it’s a height joke, but since the book never establishes that it just reads as more infantilizing.
I get they were trying to hype up Will for this book and let him have some action scenes so it wasn’t just Nico dragging him through the Underworld for 50 chapters while he does nothing but be emotional support. And Nico’s powers usually means he very often acts as an almost literal dues ex machina in a lot of plots. But you can still work with that without nerfing Nico so much, or completely infantilizing him! Just because Nico has trauma doesn’t mean he can’t be capable on his own, and that doesn’t have to negate him having people he leans on for support! These things can coexist!
Basically Rick had a Didn’t realize that I made this character too powerful and now I have to nerf him moment
(which usually happens in shounen mangas when a secondary character is built to be too powerful that they shadow the protagonist so now they must be nerfed lmao) (wait hold on that sounds like nico—-)
I don’t think it’s so much that Rick didn’t realize he made Nico too powerful, it’s just that Nico as a secondary character always served a very particular purpose that makes it very difficult to place him into the position of main/central protagonist. Nico’s character basically since his introduction is random exposition, moving the plot along (usually by being kidnapped, missing, or similar), and solving problems when a dues ex machina is needed but can’t use a literal god.
He knows everything and everyone for no reason other than He’s Nico, So He Does. His powers are Whatever’s Most Useful And/Or Coolest In The Moment (as long as it is even tangentially related to the Underworld/ghosts somehow). Why can he teleport? Because it’s convenient. Whatever the “Death Trance” is? Plot reasons. Why does him using his powers lower the temperature in the surrounding area to the point of frost forming? Because it’s epic, next question. Ghosts literally tell him the future in HoH just so they know where to go next. Oops, need to scale back a bit so that the threat isn’t too threatening, but can’t have Nico just solve all the problems? He’s unconscious/kidnapped/incredibly weak from his latest bout of trauma/generally off who-knows-where like usual.
None of this is a bad thing! Nico’s just a very versatile character, and demigods - particularly Big 3 kids - are supposed to be overpowered. They’re demiGODS! It only becomes a problem when you try to make him the main/central protagonist for an extended period of time. It works in BoO because we have an excuse for him being weak, so his bouts of strength throughout the Team Statue chapters feel impressive but still realistic, given what we know about his usual abilities. And we also don’t spend the entire book in Nico’s shoes, so it breaks up how often we see him being weak. In BoO, he’s also in a situation where he doesn’t really ever need to do any exposition, or the exposition he does is small enough that it’s not disruptive when we’re viewing it from a 3rd person limited POV. We see this in HoO with Annabeth as well, because she’s the main character typically designated the role of Exposition-Giver (particularly in the first series - usually it only falls to Nico if Annabeth isn’t available, or if neither are available usually we get a random new/minor character or immortal popping in for 20 minutes) but we’re far enough into the series that it’s fine to present those exposition characters as POV without it being disruptive. This is also why Annabeth works as a POV in the TKC crossover - she doesn’t know much about Egyptian mythology, so Sadie is able to act as the main source of exposition for their short story. Percy in the first series doesn’t know greek mythology, so he’s the audience stand-in to be expositioned at by other characters. Same with Sadie and Carter and Magnus. By TOA, it’s fine if Apollo knows a ton about Greek mythology because by that point in the series they’re guessing you already read PJO and HoO. But even then, Apollo as a mortal constantly has memory problems, which is the same reason why Jason and Percy had amnesia for the first two books of HoO, because we needed them to not know anything so the audience could have other characters throw exposition at them. It’s why almost all the other POV characters are relatively new to their respective camps (Piper and Leo just joined CHB and know nothing about Greek mythology. Hazel only joined a couple of months ago and Frank is still on probatio, but we’re in the second book now so most of the exposition doesn’t need to be repeated so it’s okay if they’re not new new to being demigods.) You can absolutely have your POV character exposition to the audience, but it’s difficult to do gracefully outside of like, first person or second person where you are directly addressing the audience.
This doesn’t work if you want to do a third-person limited POV of Nico venturing into the Underworld, because you now have to explain the entire Underworld to someone who is unfamiliar with the setting (given we rarely explore it in-depth). But you also have to include surprises, which doesn’t make sense for Nico of all characters when he lives there. Then we’re also simultaneously trying to take Will Solace, who has spent all of like three books being a complete background character and only just in two TOA books got upgraded to minor character, and make him a protagonist on the same level of the guy who is the catch-all back-up for solving problems and getting the narrative from Point A to Point B. So you end up with the narrative being forced to make Nico know nothing about his own house and be randomly weak and helpless in the place he should be strongest, and Will getting buffed out of nowhere. Because they just didn’t plan it out. Literally 90% of those problems could be solved if you just made Will the main POV instead of Nico, because then Nico could continue his usual role of being the designated exposition & problem solver while everything is all new and intimidating to Will.