Shadow Travel - Tumblr Posts
Headcanon that isn't much of a headcanon
Nico gets way better at shadow travel after boo and can do it almost effortlessly, he obviously still gets tired after a few jumps but it's much less draining
He does it instead of walking now if he feels particularly lazy
I had this mental picture of Nico summoning ink-like shadows and disappearing into them, so I made this really short animation to give it a try !
The shadows were created from this free footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71NVwY1J2ws&feature=c4-overview&list=UULxBCkZTCrdxw4qh1iz6F5Q . The video is web compressed so the quality isn’t so good, sorry about that.
I guess one could say I’m slightly Nico-obssessed at the moment ;P
it’s not the weight of the world,
it’s just the way that i am
nico shadow traveling. LOOK ITS ON INSTAGRAM –> HERE
SO DONT REPOST IT
Shadow Traveling Theories
Alright, so there are several scenes where Nico collapses word gets extremely tired from shadow travel use. More exact he starts to blend into the Shadows, whenever he Shadow travels to much. My theory is it's not the shadow traveling itself that makes him extremely tired but it is the distance that matters.
I have the idea that it's like he is running with all of the stuff / people he is Shadow traveling with. Because of this he can shadow travel short distances by himself without there being very much of a blow back, probably just him taking a second to breathe. He can also travel to the room next to him without there being any problem and if he shadow travels to the spot directly next to him he doesn't even need to catch his breath. Whenever he shadow travels longer distances he needs more time and needs brakes to breathe and eventually if he Shadow travels far enough then he will collapse from exhaustion because unlike running he doesn’t feel himself getting tired as he goes so he has a tendency to accidentally go a little bit too far. Whenever he Shadow traveled the statue he was carrying not only a huge weight but two people. The weight means less whenever they're in the shadow area in between jumps so it's more along the lines of him sprinting with a grip on all three of them and having to pick them up and put them down whenever he gets to his target. One of the main differences is whenever he's going on an angle instead of straight he gets way more tired much quicker because he's pulling stuff uphill as well as running at the same time, because of this he can accidentally land in the air.
When shadow traveling through objects it feels like a weight pushes against him, the more that he’s traveling through the more weight it feels like is pushing against him.
Whenever he's alone while he's Shadow traveling he normally goes in small bursts anywhere that is secluded but because of the fact he's carrying a lot more weight in the statue situation it was better to do long distances instead of shorter ones.
As long as he is not doing other things as well it doesn't take much out of him to shadow travel around his house instead of going from room to room normally he often does it as a stamina test to see how long he can go before walking. Once he gets good enough at Shadow traveling he's able to tell whenever he needs to take a break, anywhere between a few minutes and a long time depending on the situation, by how much shadow is in his lungs and other things like that since he is able to sense Shadows he was able to find an effective way not to harm himself while moving as fast as possible while he was on his own for those few years.
The texture of a shadow
Whenever he first figured out that he can pick up Shadows he was treating it like a solid item instead of as an idea. For the longest time he wasn't able to pick it up , he was simply able to manipulate it. Once he figured out how to see Shadows he was able to manipulate them as he wanted. He started to be able to scoop up Shadows Whenever there is a lot of them in one spot and he was able to mold them into to whatever he wanted once he figured out how to do this it was easy to turn it into anything that he wanted, literally. With a single wave of his hand he was able to take all of the Shadows from a room and put them in one spot it then change it from a liquid to a solid, making an unbreakable wall.
He was able to make Shadows do anything that he wanted without a second thought, even to the point where he wouldn't notice he was manipulating them until someone brings it to his attention. He was able to start teaching people how to pick up shadow but no one could manipulate it like he could. There were a few kids who could turn it into basic shapes but they had to treat it as a steam of sorts and if they left it for more than a few seconds it would dissipate and act like it had never been there. As well as the majority of kids whose powers were simply to different to be effective at this.
Soon enough he was using shadows as a form of storage, kind of like in the Kane Chronicles, he was recreating weapons that we're lost in battle and he would never be without a weapon because he could make one sooner than a person could disarm him. The only reason the jar was capable of keeping him contained is because the jar itself was emitting light, losing any shadows.
in the last olympian nico mentions his practice of shadow traveling and says that there were a “few accidental trips to china.” and knowing what I do now—post HOO— like how hard did that hit nico? he says he like passed out for a week when he shadow travelled for the very first time but going to China when he first started out???
cray cray