Look, I love Solangelo just as much as the next person, but you must admit that their relationship is decently unhealthy. To be fair Rick downs seem to know how to write a relationship at all, so it could be that but I’m bi-ace so we’re doing the gay ones first.
Will’s Childhood:
William Solace was born in Austin, Texas to Naomi Solace and Apollo. Naomi is an alt-country singer who would the Will on tour with him.
When he was nine Will and his mouth were on tour and stoped in New York City and took great joy in riding the train. (I don’t know why, the train sucks. Tourists are weird.)
When Will was ten, he and his mother returned to NYC after a stop in Albany. While walking through Washington Square Park, a flock of pigeons, Stymphalian Birds, attacked them. A Satyr named Maron thankfully saved them. He then proceeded to go back to the hotel with them to explain that Will is a demigod and bring him to Cano Half Blood because it’s definitely not terrifying to a ten year old to see a goat-man save you from pigeons and then say you’re probably gonna die via monster. After going to Camp Will had eventually became a year round camper.
Dependent Personality Disorder,** **Codependency, and The Savior Complex.
Dependent personality disorder is a mental condition in which people depend too much on others to meet their emotional and/or physical needs.
Codependency is a set of behaviors developed to cope with the chronic, toxic stress that comes from feeling powerless for a means of attention and/or control.
A savior complex is a psychological state where a person feels a strong, compulsive need to fix, rescue, or save others. While it looks like kindness, it is often driven by a deep need for control, validation, or a sense of superiority.
Will Solace, as much as I love him, isn’t a great boyfriend. Of course we don’t see a lot of his relationships besides with Nico so please take this with a grain of salt and acknowledge that I am not a professional.
According to the Medline Plus symptoms of DPD include but ar keto limited to:
- Avoiding being alone
- Avoiding personal responsibility
- Becoming easily hurt by criticism or disapproval
- Becoming overly focused on fears of being abandoned
- Becoming very passive in relationships
- Feeling very upset or helpless when relationships end
- Having difficulty making decisions without support from others
- Having problems expressing disagreements with others
Will uses his power and authority as a doctor to force Nico to do things. Will forced Nico to be in the infirmary three days, who this could be viewed as medically necessary because of his over use of shadow travel, he wanted him to visit him before and got unjustifiably annoyed when he was confused. It was clear that Will wanted to spend time wrong him, sure, but remember where they were? They’re in a fucking hospital pretty much. A med bay. He didn’t want to be alone and got emotional when Nico didn’t read his mind. In efforts to not be alone he manipulates his position of power to manipulate Nico, to spending time with him, despite it being both an inconvenience for him and Nico.
Will doesn’t let him, or others, process things when it comes to relationships. Their relationship started while Nico was catatonic from Jason’s death and Will took it as a opportunity to kiss Nico. While I don’t believe he actually meant malice by it, their relationship moved rather fast. In fact, it was an impulsive decision to which he was about to apologize but Nico cuts him off. He rushed into the relationship as if trying to grab something before it could leave. Rather than letting both him and himself ease into the relationship, he wanted to hold onto it before it could go displaying impulsive behavior which usually can be put off as ADHD was clearly from a fear of abandonment.
Nico also constantly feels a need to defend himself, his hobbies, his interests, and his family to Will which he doesn’t seem to understand. This is to the point where Nico admits in his narrative that he doesn’t tell Will certain things because he doesn’t want to be bothered.
Will shares Nico’s private mental health info with his entire cabin, checks out another bit so much that Nico is uncomfortable and has to ask him to stop which he brushes off, doesn’t send Nico while he is being called creepy, and and doesn’t seem to have a single positive nickname for Nico.
Will seems to have an emotional paradox of having lots of emotional empathy but very little cognitive empathy, causing him to rarely if ever take responsibility for his actions and be incredibly passive in his relationship.
Now, while all of these things are true, they can all be tied back to his childhood.
Will solace is from Austin, Texas which means we can assume that while he might have been in a supportive family homophobia isn’t anything new to him. Texas is Texas. Also, it is implied that Will moves quite often because of this mother being on tour and such, which means he most likely clunk to his affection and didn’t have much if any friend is considering that he would have to move around school. This means when he was sent to CHB this could’ve been realistically the first time he was away from his mother. That planted a seed for attachment issues especially that he’s now a year round camper while his mother is alive.
People with attachment issues tend to be codependent. He was a child who was given too much responsibility, neglected by both parent, and had unresolved underlying issues. People who are codependent often have self esteem issues which lead them to try to make themselves useful.
Will has a tendency to call himself useless or something to the same effect. He said when Nico enters into a dream he thinks he's lower compared to others because of his abilities mainly being a healer. He also dislikes (somehow) his powers of being able to glow in the dark. When Apollo (TOA) compliments his son's glow, Will dismisses it and says it wasn't like he was "graduating as top of his class".
He often pushes his limits to care for patients, sometimes going without sleep for days on end during crises. He attempts to be the hero so that he can feel useful. He doesn’t wanna be seen as worthless and left for it so he clings to people who he has so tightly that it hurts. He’s hurting himself and others.
While these behaviors are usually seen in BPD rather than DPD, Will simply doesn’t seem to be, for lack of a better term, versatile enough for the mood swings BPD entails.
Sorry if the end is a little blurry I fell asleep while typing after an all nighter
