sometimes i think about gay people who lived centuries ago who thought they were all alone who imagined a world where they could live openly as themselves who met in secret spoke in code defied everything and everyone just to exist and i’m like..i gotta sit down. whew i gotta sit down
If this little book should see the light after its 100 years of entombment, I would like its readers to know that the author was a lover of her own sex and devoted the best years of her life in striving for the political equality and social and moral elevation of women.
“The Great Geysers of California” by Laura De Force Gordon, 1879, unearthed from a 100-year-old time capsule in San Francisco, 1979.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”
Game companies hate emulation, but none of them seem to understand that a lot of us would just buy ROMs from them directly if we could. I don't want a fifth remake of Final Fantasy IV, I want to pay five bucks for the 3MB file you already made bank with thirty years ago. Nobody who wants to play something for the purpose of retro gaming is going to consider a $40 remake as the alternative option, and we're certainly not going to let the original dissappear. They're crying about opportunity cost for a product they're not even selling.
op i know you're probably talking about like, video games, etc, but this is also critical for research science - my lab has so much abandonware, either because the company's out of business, or the company decided to not maintain it, and it's a fucking nightmare. we have two windows 95 computers that are CRITICAL for performing experiments/data analysis because the software needed is abandonware. one of the main roles for a guy in my lab is to maintain these little dinosaurs because if they go out, we lose access to ~20 years of raw data for research. part of why is that these companies also make their own file types, and make it difficult-to-impossible to convert those file types without their specific software. by habit, i convert all research files to more generic versions (txt, pdf, tif, etc) so that i minimize risk of losing my shit, but some stuff can't be converted.
for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.
so like, i know a lot of people look at the original post here and go "well op just wants old video games to play" (which is valid! games companies should not be able to push shit to abandonware and then close it off) but also this is critical for like. biomedical research. if y'all had any idea how much basic infrastructure built on science relies on shit that is technically abandonware, you would probably be horrified.
"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:
The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:
"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power.
I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large.
But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read.
The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact…
The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return.
Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story.
But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive.
We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies.
But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you).
The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take.
So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it.
That’s not why children read it.
We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson…
The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY."
- Joey deVilla, 2021
https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/
Kids don't want to be Batman because he's rich, they want to be him because he's got tons of cool gadgets he invented himself, is a badass martial artist, is a genius on par with Lex Luthor, and uses all this to be on the same level as Superman despite having zero actual superpowers. They see the little boy who lost both his parents, decided nobody else should ever have to live through that, and want to be like that.
Kids don't want to be Superman because he's superior to humans(he isn't, that's always been a core part of his character that he rejects that outlook and it's always just Lex projecting his view of Superman onto Superman himself), they wanna be able to deflect bullets and shoot lasers from their eyes because Superman uses all that to show the best side of humanity, to show how humanity isn't even tied to actually being human but to how you act towards other people.
You're not really supposed to say it this way, because its considered crass, but here in the US children are culturally and legally considered essentially the property of their parents.
Note that its considered more crass to point this out than it is to treat children as property in the first place.
okay sure. psychosis? scarier to have than to know someone who has it. DID? im more a threat to myself than people around me. wheelchairs and psych meds? are tools that help people live more functional and flexible lives and are not judgments of the persons character and for sure are not scary things. and for real, intellectually disabled people are not threats, but movies love to make them villains because they act different and understand the world differently. and people with notable physical differences? people who’s bodies look different? people with scars, growths, amputations, etc? are literally just people. and seeing themselves painted like monsters on the big screen is absolutely sickening and damaging to how society will see them.
its not only bad writing but its extremely harmful to people who actually live with conditions that are misrepresented in media. when i found out i had DID, my mom freaked out because her only point of reference was Sybil. when i was younger and first went on psych meds, i thought it meant i was set on a track to be a bad person, because in so many movies and video games you find out the bad guy has medication in his bed side table for some sort of psych disorder. the worst thing a hallucination has ever made me do was wake my mom up at 3 AM to check my bathroom to see if the bugs i saw everywhere were real and the worst thing an “episode” of any sort has made me do is hurt myself. my ptsd doesnt make me kill people, my alters dont kidnap people, my autism doesnt make me so morally unaware that ill murder for senselessly, my ocd doesnt make me hurt people etc etc etc
literally the only “horror” is the ableism. and the only way you can write good horror about disability and mental illness is if the focus is on how society and the medical field treat us rather than focusing on how we are apparently so scary, threatening, and bad.
Horror is and has historically been an incredibly ableist genre, and it is still largely unrecognized as such. This has genuine severe and real-life consequences for disabled and neurodivergent people in real life. Please keep this in mind if you are abled and/or neurotypical.
“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”
Not to keep PJO posting but I always found the whole "Sally married Gabe because he smelled so bad that it covered up Percy's scent" thing to be an extremely weak excuse to put her and Percy in an abusive household.
Like ignoring the facts that she could've just sprayed him with perfume or Axe and gotten the same result AND that if it was that simple then every parent of a demigod would've figured it out ages ago, it also. . . didn't work? Like it objectively did not work in canon. Percy was already being hunted relentlessly by monsters so obviously the smell of his abusive stepdad didn't offer any sort of protection.
It just feels like a really a weird way to justify Sally being with an abusive partner while also essentially saying that she is CHOOSING for her and her son to be abused. It would've made way more sense to just let it be a normal abusive relationship that she got trapped in because she was a very young single mother on top of being an orphan and a high school drop out with no support system. Women in those circumstances get trapped with abusive partners all the time. Why did Rick feel the need to sya that she instead chose to marry a violent alcoholic to "protect" her son, essentially telling the audience that she actively chose to let Percy be abused? Uggggghhhhhhh.
Well for starters it’s a book for middle schoolers who don’t all understand the nuances of domestic abuse and the financial and emotional struggles that entails.
Secondary it’s very much implied that it also was a major reason why Sally put up with the abuse because of financial reasons.
It also works as a metaphor because often in relationships or homes like that parents do have to choose the lesser of two terrible options. Sally had to choose to put up with the abuse of Gabe to protect Percy, because the other options was inviting death from monsters, or on a more real level, homelessness, or retaliation from Gabe.
On a story level the Demigod smell is not a physical but metaphysical, and Gabe’s smell is not just physical but metaphysical due to his putrid soul and mortality.
The emphasis on Sally’s choice is important because it makes it clear this was her making major sacrifices for Percy, staying in a abusive relationship for the sake of her son, so he can go to the Schools he needs and to keep him safe from monsters.
It’s also why her killing Gabe at the end is so important because it’s a choice she’s making for herself to take back autonomy of her own life, because Percy outright states that he will be okay and she doesn’t have to keep sacrificing for him.
It’s a very deep a complex situation but because it’s paired up with the super natural aspects it’s easier for kids to understand, who may not be aware of all the context and complexity yet.
This isn't very hard when you know some of the most genius strategies in human history were incredibly stupid, circumstantial events that led to victory by sheer luck of that strategy working.
Case in point: Tsun Zu's rival defended a city with 10 men against Tsun's army of hundreds by disarming his own soldiers, dressing them in plain clothes, INVITING Tsun's army to come in, and it only worked because Tsun knew the guy was an ambush master and thought "if we attack the city he's inviting us into, we will die." and left without even trying ON THE BASIS OF HIS RIVAL'S REPUTATION AND NOTHING MORE
Another example: Tsun Zu, on being told his soliders were out of arrows during a battle against a city across a river from them, had his men craft scarecrows, put them on a boat, send it out on a line, leave it there for half an hour, then pull it back in and used the arrows the enemy had fired at the boat to restock their own ammunition. It only worked because it was foggy and the enemy couldn't tell the difference between the scarecrows and actual soldiers.
Stupid things like that work INCREDIBLY WELL if the circumstances favor them, so you really don't need to come up with some multi-layered, Shikamaru-esque strategy. You just need to come up with a strategy you like for the characters involved, then write the circumstances (weather, environment, individuals involved) to favor it enough that it works.
I was today years old when I learned that when you type “otp: true” in AO3 search results it filters out fics with additional ships, leaving only the fics where your otp is the main ship
What is so compelling about Percy and Annabeth's conflict over Luke is that they're both right and they're both wrong.
Percy thinks Luke has committed atrocities that make him worthy of death. And he's not wrong. Annabeth thinks Luke has been manipulated by Kronos and still has good in him, and she's not wrong.
I think it is easier to oversimplify Percy's perspective than it is Annabeth's - Luke betrays Percy and tries to kill him repeatedly and so Percy hates his guts out of spite. He therefore can't see why Annabeth keeps defending him. But Percy's rage and hatred towards Luke are justified and logical and continually reinforced by the narrative.
What Luke does to Percy in the Lightning Thief is deeply personal and it allows Percy to experience firsthand just how manipulative and astoundingly cruel he can be. This is a perspective which I don't think Annabeth could ever share, because his relationship with her was authentic, while Luke's relationship with Percy was a sham. When Percy gets to camp, he is confused and desperate for straight answers, he has just lost his mother, Chiron and Grover and Annabeth are essentially hopeless at explaining what's really going on in his life and truly, while they're not trying to be cruel and it's just old hat for them, it still comes across like they have very little sympathy for Percy and how badly his whole world has just been upended. From Percy's perspective, Luke is the only one who has the presence of mind to think "hm, this 12 year old kid who just lost everything he has in the world probably needs a sleeping bag and a toothbrush. I'll go get them for him." Percy explicitly says that this is "the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day." Luke is the only one who sincerely answers Percy's questions and doesn't make him feel stupid for asking them - again, I know Chiron & co. are not doing that on purpose, but for the entire beginning of TLT, Percy asks a perfectly logical question and gets a weird look and a half answer that assumes he's supposed to know more than he can reasonably be expected to know (considering he was actively being lied to for his entire life!) Luke is also the only person who Percy thinks "seemed to understand how lost I felt." And of course we know how moved he is by Luke's gift of the shoes, to the point that he even feels guilty for lying to Luke about not using them.
And the whole time, the entire reason Percy is in this situation is because of Luke. Had Luke not stolen Master Bolt and the Helm, Percy might have been able to continue in the mortal world for a few more years. Or at least his introduction to the mythic world would have been less traumatic - both the Fury and the Minotaur (his worst attacks to date) are sent from Hades, looking for the Helm. Zeus blasts Percy and Sally off the road on their way to camp out of spite for the Master Bolt - otherwise, they would have all three made it to safety and Percy never would have needed to fight the Minotaur (and again, the Minotaur would have never been chasing him in the first place). Sally is kidnapped by Hades as a bargaining chip. All this, because Percy was framed for Luke's crime.
And worse - Luke knows that the entire time. He summons a hellhound to attack Percy inside of Camp, to make Chiron think it's not safe for him to stay there. The hellhound attack is before Percy is claimed, meaning Luke has already committed to framing Percy before he's revealed as Poseidon's son (publicly, at least. It seems Kronos and Hades and Zeus already have figured it out. It’s not like it’s rocket science lol). And then after ruining Percy's life and forcing his hand to go on this insanely dangerous quest, Luke gives him shoes that are designed to drag him into Tartarus. Percy is twelve! Twelve! And he is a completely blank slate in the myth world - for all Luke knows, Percy would have wanted to join Kronos! But he never gets that opportunity - Kronos just wants to use him and Luke is seemingly completely fine with this. And Percy knows that Luke had no qualms about it because he does a supervillain-style monologue about it at the end of the book. He shows Percy his sword that can specifically kill mortals. And then he lures Percy into the woods (again, Luke, age 19, using friendship to manipulate Percy, age 12) and tries to kill him. His parting words are "There is a new Golden Age coming. You won't be part of it." That is cold. Imagine if Percy actually had just died in the woods like he was supposed to - how dark is this?
It is no wonder that Percy never got over this moment - being left in the woods for dead by someone who shows absolutely zero remorse. After you put your trust in them. After they acted so kind to you that you never doubted their sincerity. This is the side of Luke that successfully recruited so many other campers - Silena being another example of someone who was taken in by his manipulation. It’s Silena’s plight that makes even Annabeth, his most faithful defender, question just how evil Luke has really become - so it makes complete sense that Percy, after being personally victimized by it, cannot see Luke as anything other than completely morally bankrupt.
Especially when Luke displays this level of cruelty with total lack of remorse again and again. Luke puts a bounty on the heads of demigods in Battle of the Labyrinth, and taunts Percy while he traps him in the battle arena. In SOM Luke is almost comically evil (to the point that it’s like, really too much - maybe it was written before Rick had hammered out his redemption arc): he pilots a cruise ship full of drugged mortal families, presumably kept there as prisoner. He (age 20) taunts Percy (age 13) about being “out of practice” while he’s beating him up in a duel to the death, then tells him that he wants Percy to watch his bear-monster eat Grover and Annabeth before he dies. He fights Thalia to the death at the end of TTC - and loses, but he was indeed the one that made it into a fight to the death. When it becomes clear that Thalia does not share Luke’s worldview anymore and doesn’t want to destroy Olympus, he tries two different tactics at manipulating her. First, to beg her to join so Kronos doesn’t have to “use the other way” that puts Luke’s life in danger - and again Percy, who has been burned by Luke before, sees through it: “I believed that Luke was in danger. His life depended on Thalia’s joining his cause. And I was afraid Thalia might believe it too.” But this doesn’t work on Thalia, so then Luke turns to, “don’t make me… don’t make him destroy you.” Think of how this frames Thalia’s choice! “Join my cause because if you don’t then I’ll be in danger. But if you don’t then you’re the one who is making me destroy you.” I get it, all of this is nuanced because Luke really is in danger and he’s scared of his own master - he got in too deep and couldn’t find a way out. Defensible, no, but understandable and sympathetic - yes. Sad. Tragic. I feel bad for him. I think Percy does too! But it still puts Thalia in a completely unfair position. Luke is in this spot (and everyone else is also in dire straits at this exact moment) because of his own actions, so he has no business passing this off as if it’s now Thalia’s responsibility. And this comes on the heels of one of Luke’s absolute nastiest moments: preying on his old relationship with Annabeth and using her compassion for him against her, manipulating her into holding the sky, walking away while she screams and pleads for help and telling her to “try not to die.” Stone cold. Percy is watching this exchange between Luke and Annabeth wanting to scream at her to “let him die, let him die!” And it’s no wonder - he sees through the act now. Annabeth doesn’t. It very nearly kills her. Even though I do believe Luke would not have allowed Annabeth to actually die, there is absolutely nothing about his behavior that indicates he cares about seeing Annabeth in that much pain. Why would Percy ever believe that Luke actually cares about Annabeth, after witnessing that? It makes complete sense that Percy thinks Annabeth is delusional for not seeing how evil Luke really is. It makes complete sense that Percy tells Rachel Elizabeth Dare that Luke will use “mortals, demigods, monsters, whatever. And he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.”
I know Percy is vengeful, I know he is 100% down for murder of abusers—but what I’m getting at is that Luke fully earned Percy’s boiling hatred and he deserved it. It’s justified, narratively. With this context, it is actually remarkable that Percy manages to overcome his inherent suspicion of Luke enough to actually hand him the knife. This is a known, and witnessed manipulation tactic that Luke has used against both Thalia and Annabeth - pretending that he’s in imminent danger. It’s no small thing that Percy has to actually believe that Luke is not lying, this time.
Percy is not so jaded by Luke that his suspicion is irrational—on the contrary, it is not only rational, but smart! And Percy, because he is fundamentally a compassionate person, is able to genuinely sympathize with Luke despite this when he witnesses Luke’s upbringing. This is unprompted by Annabeth or even Hestia—when Percy meets May he reflects, of his own accord, on how her green-eyed-fits could have seriously scared a nine-year-old and judges Hermes for abandoning them.
Still, Percy thinks Annabeth is naive about how evil Luke is, and in BOTL, it seems like he has grown so weary of her defenses that he deliberately antagonizes her about it:
“Something was wrong with Luke,” Annabeth muttered, poking at the fire with her knife. “Did you notice the way he was acting?”
“He looked pretty pleased to me,” I said. “Like he’d spent a nice day torturing heroes.”
“That’s not true! There was something wrong with him. He looked…nervous. He told his monsters to spare me. He wanted to tell me something.”
“Probably, ‘Hi, Annabeth! Sit here with me and watch while I tear your friends apart. It’ll be fun!’”
“You’re impossible,” Annabeth grumbled.
And again, they're both right and they're both wrong. Luke did want to spare Annabeth and he is nervous because he's about to be sacrificed to Kronos. And he also wanted Percy torn to pieces by monsters and absolutely did not give a crap about Rachel's life. There is no question in the narrative that Luke 100% wants Percy dead and would not lose sleep over it. It is, understandably, hurtful to Percy that Annabeth seems not to care about this, or at least not consider it significant enough to verbally acknowledge and condemn. And I think because his feelings are hurt, he doesn't want to listen to her (correct) assessment of Luke's mental state. Rachel provides a very interesting foil to Annabeth in this scene, where she is so disturbed by finally encountering firsthand the danger that is routine to Percy - she tells him that she thought he was going to die, and she sounds close to tears over it. Obviously the reader knows that Annabeth would be emotionally destroyed by Percy's death (and yes, Percy ought to know that too, and ultimately he does - he's even witnessed her grieving for him at this point) - but I don't think Percy feels that from Annabeth in this moment. It feels like Annabeth is more worried about Luke than she is outraged over what he just forced Percy to do. So he lashes out at her. This will happen again, when Percy loses Beckendorf on the Princess Andromeda and nearly dies himself, and the first thing Annabeth asks him about is whether or not Luke survived. And it will happen again, when Percy admits that he jumped in the Styx and Annabeth will begin to express concern for Percy, before her thoughts immediately divert worry back to Luke.
And yes, his resentment and jealousy about Luke prevent Percy from being able to seriously hear Annabeth:
“He gave himself over to Kronos,” I said. “I’m sorry, Annabeth. But Luke is gone.”
“No!” she insisted. “You saw when Rachel hit him.”
I nodded, looking at Rachel with respect. “You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.”
Rachel looked embarrassed. “It was the only thing I had.”
“But you saw,” Annabeth insisted. “When it hit him, just for a second, he was dazed. He came back to his senses.”
“So maybe Kronos wasn’t completely settled in the body, or whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t mean Luke was in control.”
“You want him to be evil, is that it?” Annabeth yelled. “You didn’t know him before, Percy. I did!”
“What is it with you?” I snapped. “Why do you keep defending him?”
In this exchange, ultimately, Annabeth is completely correct, and she even is able to get to the heart of Percy's jealousy towards Luke. But the sadism Luke displays that she has ignored (or at least failed to openly condemn), has been wrong. So Percy can't hear it from her. He needs to witness it himself, through his visions of Luke's backstory in TLO. And Annabeth is naive about how evil Luke is - again, you'll see that perception be shattered when she comes to grips with how Luke used Silena. And she'll tell Percy: "You were right about Luke."
In the end, Percy, too, will tell Annabeth that she was “right about Luke.” And she was. He was being manipulated by Kronos, but there was still good left in him. But that doesn’t mean that Percy was wrong about all of the sadism that Luke displays to countless people over a period of years. And it doesn't make it somehow okay that Percy has witnessed the deaths of brave people and friends as a direct consequence of Luke's actions. I don't think Annabeth would disagree with that - I just think she doesn't TRULY come to terms with how bad some of Luke's actions truly were until nearly the end of TLO, and it's frustrating for Percy that she's so slow to process what he has been seeing all along.
And still years later readers are grappling with which one of these takes is the ultimate "correct" take because both of these perspectives were represented so well in the text and neither one of them are wholesale condemned. It's left open. In the end I think the text favors the interpretation that Luke redeemed himself and for that he is a hero - but in that very same resolution, he also dies as a result of his crimes.
percy and reyna i feel like emote the same amount. like percy is just naturally more inexpressive while reyna's is more a trained habit but i feel like both constantly have rbf and it intimidates people so bad. that's why they were goated in their co-praetor era
something i think would make a lot of historical romance more accurate & interesting is the realization that people are less likely to totally disparage the ethical & social values of their time than they are to use those values to defend whatever it is they want to do
a woman is less likely to go "it's stupid that women are expected to be modest" than she is to go "there is nothing immodest about a woman going out without a chaperone" or even "i can go out without a chaperone because i am so modest"
people also seem less likely to see someone's shitty behavior as reflecting a shitty society than they are to view that behavior as being out of accordance with that society - e.g. a father who's excessively controlling of his daughters' marriage prospects isn't, in her mind, acting that way because he lives in a repressive patriarchal culture, but is actually outdated in his values - his cruelty is unmodern, ungentlemanly, stuck in the past, barbaric. we might think he's upholding the values of his culture perfectly, but the people around him who took issue with his behavior probably wouldn't see it that way
sometimes people experiencing psychosis and/or mania will come up to you on the street and talk in confusing or upsetting ways. your job is to either have a regular human-to-human conversation with that person or politely leave. your job is not to call 911. do not call 911. you might kill that person if you call 911.
I don't even have the energy to screenshot and respond to your tags- what the actual fuck is wrong with you? "the cops are scared and rightfully so" "mental health calls are the scariest for cops" OH so this isn't about the safety of psychotic & manic people this is about piggy feelings?
and no, actually, this is not USA specific and no, actually, people from other countries should not ignore this post. police violence and sanism weren't invented in the US and they are certainly not unique to here. if you (or anyone) thinks that this bullshit doesn't happen elsewhere then you are not listening.
More nonsense of my fic idea, @justaz once again thanks for kicking my brain into gear.
Okay so Titanmax doesn’t have anything to do with the actual Olympians but they commit to the theme. Major members of the conglomerate are given titles based on the Olympian.
Zeus, Obviously is who is CEO at the moment, the big man who makes the decisions but actually does the least.
Demeter is in charge of their food production, and supermarkets, the bread and butter of the company, she turns in 25% of the conglomerate’s annual profit but never gets the credit or respect because capitalism rewards constant exponential Growth.
Hera is in charge of banking and stocks, she’s is perhaps the most bloody and cruel member but all through the death machine of the stock market.
Hestia is in charge of monitoring and profiling young heroes for the company to mold manipulate and control. Her methods are usually hands off and from a distance.
Ares is their hand in politics, a congressman, and a republican, are Veterans he’s Titanomax’s hand on the right wing of America.
Artemis is their counterpart, a senator of the Democratic Party her politics are liberal but just enough to sabotage any real progressive actions. Titanomax’s other hand of the left wing politics of America.
Apollo, in charge of record labels, and patent management. Lot of heroes get involved in the music industry, and Apollo makes certain their Titanomax approved songs hit the charts.
Hermes, in charge of merchandising, marketing, and the Titanomax Warehouses. He also runs the side business of Titanomax black market.
Dionysus is in charge the Titanomax Studios where the heroes can becomes stars and show the world “Heroism” they don’t usually see. He also is a major developer of many of Hollywood’s cutting edge party favors.
Athena, strict task master and trainer of the official Titanomax heroes, brutal, perfectionist, heroes literally live or die at her command. She is constantly pushing for more practical military use of the heroes, seeking power in ways beyond capital.
Aphrodite, the social media and PR managing master. Hero relationship are her domain, as well as turning scandals into popularity boost. She can ruin or make a heroes career with a midday tweet. She’s also the one behind the supposed “golden couple.” Annabeth and Jason’s relationship.
Hephaestus, hero gear maker and military contractor, the worst version of a war profiteer. What’s worse is that in order to generate a need his product sometime goes “missing” and ends up in the hands of criminals.
Poseidon, in charge of transportation and shipping and concealing the company’s more under the table dealings. His control of supply lines are the bones of the company, without exaggeration would collapse without him.
Hades, the death dealer, in charge of Titanomax’s private squad of hero assassin’s taking out targets that could potential cause problems for Titanomax. On the record, he and his team don’t exist.
While these character are no the real gods they take on some of the traits of their counterparts from the books. While the actual gods line up more with the Legends if they ever appear.
But yeah, these are essentially our legion of doom, though how long before our protagonist find out or admit that’s what they are might take longer.
Next up I’ll go over the heroes, Percy, Annabeth, Thalia, etc and how they’re different in this AU.
