It's Pride Month, so have some Solangelo.

I'll admit, I don't always like how the Percy Jackson fandom treats Nico being gay. I understand, as a queer fan, being happy that a series you love has that kind of representation and seeing that part of yourself in Nico (for what it's worth, as an asexual person, I was excited when I heard that Rick Riordan had written Reyna with her being ace in mind, and as an autistic person, I was excited when I heard that one of his other books, Daughter of the Deep, has an autistic character).

What I don't like is people straight-up romanticizing Nico being gay and making it his entire personality. If you ask me, romanticizing gay people is not much better than and just as dehumanizing as demonizing them. Outside of dealing with struggles gay people face, why not portray them as just people? What's more, there's much more to Nico's character than just being gay. In fact, I'd argue it's a major positive that as a gay character, especially in a mainstream book series written by a straight author from an older generation, Nico is a three-dimensional character who happens to be gay, as opposed to a one-dimensional "token gay" whose character begins and ends with, "I'm gay! Heeeey!". Last, but not least, Nico initially suffered from internalized homophobia, even now that he's learned to accept himself, he's still only comfortable sharing it with people he trusts, and he doesn't like being the center of attention.

By far, though, the worst is people having Nico play victim and call out homophobia where there isn't any, like an LGBTQ+ strawman character from a bad right-wing comedy outlet like FreedomToons or StoneToss comics. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but still. I've seen incorrect quotes of him claiming the war on Gaea is homophobic because he's gay and it's inconveniencing him, and complaining that he was kicked out of IKEA for being gay, when he was actually kicked out for summoning Swedish skeletons to read the tags for him. They're kind of funny, but they also make me think, "NICO WOULD NOT F**KING SAY THAT!!!"

Now, to be fair, I think it's just as bad to pretend Nico isn't gay. It's fine to write a fanfiction about him where him being gay doesn't come up, but if you ship him with a girl despite knowing full well he's canonically gay, well, that's a little bit yikes-ey.

Anyway, this comic is based on a Pinterest post I've seen that, in my opinion, plays with that part of his character well. It presents a scenario where Nico gets into battle with an empousa who tries to seduce him, only for him to say, "I'm gay", and stab her. Aside from being hilarious, it doesn't romanticize Nico being gay, but rather plays with the idea that, as a demigod, being gay would make him immune to female monsters who seduce and prey on men. I've wanted to do my own take on that for a while and finally motivated myself to do it.

You might notice that the mouse empousa's fur color changes from orange to red. That was a mistake on my part; I didn't realize I was using the wrong marker until it was too late. Let's just say she turned red from frustration or blood deprivation or whatever.

I had to have Will, Nico's boyfriend, appear at the end. Will is a healer, not a fighter, plus he's bisexual, so he's not even immune to the empousai.

Hope you enjoy, and have a happy Pride Month.

Percy Jackson characters belong to Rick Riordan and Disney: Hyperion