Not Gonna Lie, The Luke And Percy Parallels In This Very Strange AU I’m Cooking Is Going Crazy And

Demigods and Domains

I'm pretty sure this is like pure fanfic stuff but I like the idea of it a lot. The idea that the reason Percy can control things like blood and poison is because while he was in Tartarus his domains evolved and expanded out of the ones his father gave him.

And basically its one of the reasons demigods are so powerful, because they can cross and seep into another God's domain (not easily of course) but they aren't restricted by being a god because they have mortal blood within them.

So that had me thinking a little bit. If Percy (and by extension other characters but it would be a little bit tricker to apply it to) falling into Tartarus where he is pushed to such extremes that the capabilities of his domains shift, then what the hell could he be capable of?

Not to mention possible blessings from the gods and Primordials. (Yeah this is lowkey apart of my Tartarus AU because I think I want to write that one first. Maybe I'll just switch and swap until I finish one lol).

Because I'm not gonna lie I could lowkey see Percy being offered blessings from multiple and I have a few ideas.

But just as a normal demigod what could he domains expand to? Would it be a stretch for fire to become apart of his domain due to the exposure and use of the phlegethon?

I've already thought about the basic things people usually do, pulling magma from the earth, ice manipulation, poison, blood, pulling water from thin air, etc etc.

But I want to do something different because I do want to incorporate "dark!percy" into it somehow.

But not like super op, edgy. dark Percy because realistically he wouldn't be like that. I just see him as more of "falling for you" type if you've ever read that.

So like if you have any ideas PLEASE comment I have none. I really just want to explore his powers out of the basics. (Maybe to can tap into different epithets from Poseidon and from other pantheons because syncretism??

SOHAE2: Safety Pins and Broken Hearts

END. first  ||  prev | authors note Strung Out Heart, Angel Eyes (Book 1)

At first I wasn't going to involve any Mycenaean or Minoan related things in my kinda sorta superhero demigod au but I'm actually reconsidering.

I'm currently writing this scene were Percy ends up going on a mission but he sort of loses his shit after injecting something and I think I want the trigger to be because he has such origins.

So I started doing a little research and found out that there was (supposedly? idk how true it is) was a Minoan god known as Potidas who was essentially ruled over everything and like natural things, so he ruled over the earth, the sky, storms, etc.

And so I also found out that Poseidon (atleast maybe his name?) actually came from this god.

And of course you may or may not know about Mycenaean Poseidon who was a chthonic deity.

So I plan on having Percy be of such descent probably.

But I don't want to do this with just Percy. I want to do this with other demigods too, especially ones like Zeus who was associated with a Minoan God known as Velchanos and was associated with like vegetation but I don't know if I should do this with preexisting characters or make some new ones up to do it.

So I decided im just gonna, make a poll lol and the first one is gonna be for Zeus's kids. Jason isn't going to be on this list because he's Jupiter's kid and I want to have the distinction in this be pretty clear.

Zeus!Percy (and possible siblings)

So I was thinking about Zeus!Percy and I was thinking about his possible childhood. I actually feel like it would relatively the same since he’s a big three child. He’d probably still have to deal with Gabe and all that but I do feel like his anger issues may be a bit intensified which may lead him to be put in more military schools when he was a child and possibly more fights.

His sense to protect would be greater I feel like which wouldn’t change much, at least not in his childhood.

One thing I do actually want to change is Percy possibly killing Gabe here. Zeus is a god of justice and especially after finding out Gabe hit his mom I feel like Percy might’ve killed Gabe (albeit possibly an accident).

His powers would mostly be control of storm related activities with his two main abilities being heliokinesis (control of the sun) and Atmo/Electrokinesis.

Other aspects and epithets of his powers would be unlocked throughout his quests, with him discovering the chthonic side of Zeus in the BoTL.

So basically Perseus is like a mini Zeus lol.

I think, especially because in the AU I’m considering Thalia to be a child of Apollo (still thinking on this). People would be very afraid of Percy at first, just like in canon and would slowly open up to him, but after his abnormal powers people would sort of stay away from him in fear because it’s like “wtf a child of Zeus isn’t supposed to have these types of powers are they??”

Especially when he shows off less than heroic traits people will stay away from him in this au, although after TLO he’s officially respected, especially after he stood up to his father on the treatment of demigods.

Now as for siblings one I definitely want to do for sure is Ethan as a child of Zeus. I feel like Ethan would be the opposite of Percy. While Percy got all the cool powers and domains, Ethan got nothing besides Zeus’s sense of justice and his war like attributes. He’d feel resentful towards Percy, especially because he wasn’t claimed and he feels like because he was born without powers, Zeus didn’t deem him worthy of being claimed.

Other things I thought of:

- Blue food would most definitely still be a thing.

- Percy controlling Poison is most definitely not going to be a thing, but I am cooking up some ideas, at least for the “dark” side of his powers.

- Being as I’m making him a legacy of Apollo, he still gets the weirdly prophetic dreams which definitely I intend to go a little deeper into. With the potential of alternate futures and Percy seeing it through his dreams (there are three fates after-all)

- Percy isn’t really close with Zeus or most of his siblings, but Poseidon like absolutely loves him. He’s like “woah can I claim this guy??” Just because of how unhinged and unrestrained Percy is going to be lol (even though Poseidon has children of his own).

- Nyx has a weird obsession with him. I thought it was as sort of uninteresting Nyx was interested in Nico. I feel like it would’ve been more interesting if Nyx was interesting in Percy or like someone else, especially because of the growing darkness of Percy in Tartarus. It would also be weirdly uncharacteristic of children of Zeus and I feel like Percy is legit all about breaking the Zeus child stereotypes.

- Percy is so like Zeus in certain ways, like when he’s commanding in battle or when he gets angry he looks so much like Zeus especially in his eyes it’s uncanny.

This is just a random yapping cuz I’m at school rn but tell me what you think in the comments please 🙏

The first chapter of my Spiderman au has FINALLY dropped lol.

I was really excited to finally drop this today.

P.S. If you look in the tags, you may see some original characters. For example Maverick Barr is simply one of the original characters in this AU (which you may connect to Mav from my other series (https://archiveofourown.org/series/4431706) specifically this story here (https://archiveofourown.org/works/60093658) As Mav is supposed to be a main character going forward in that AU so I decided to bring him over to this AU in future chapters)

So yeah, uh hope yall enjoy

Inspired by this post by @ruegarding

The adults of New Rome are so lucky that Rick didn’t write Percy, Reyna, and Jason in Heroes of Olympus with the same care and effort he previously put into his PJO characterizations, because otherwise the combination of Reyna Avila-My-childhood-got-ruined-because-of-the-effects-war -PTSD-can-have-on-a-person- Ramirez-Arellano, Jason-I-have-been-part-of-the-military-since-my-early-childhood-Grace and Percy-pay-your-child-support- Jackson, would have immediately caused a revolution and shamed every grown ass adult, who hides behind a child army to death.

What do you think Ares/Mars was talking about in SoN when he told frank to stop percy from acting on his fatal flaw??

anon, i love talking abt loyalty as a flaw

so, disclaimer: the “percy needs to learn to step back/let other ppl be the hero” narrative sucks. this was rick’s intention, but it sucks. the way rick set up the initial conflict is his main problem and why this foreshadowing fell flat.

here’s what mars said:

cool story, but…this isn’t a flaw percy has. at least, not the way it’s used. rick doesn’t establish any character of the seven to be willing to ignore one of their friends if they’re in danger, so there’s no way to make that a unique conflict (altho this would be a viable option if the other characters were rewritten). that leaves what rick wrote, which is percy not wanting to let the lost trio fight gaea alone, and that…doesn’t work without bastardizing pjo.

we’ll get back to that.

here's the big scene:

which. lmao. lmfao even.

and here’s the scene in boo where rick tries to spell out what the problem is for ~foreshadowing~ :

this doesn't work. rick tries to conflate “i don’t run when my friends need me” w “being unable to step away” or allow someone else to be the hero. those are not the same thing! percy’s whole thing in the previous series is that he isn’t the hero! he knows this. it's one of the most obvious themes in the previous series. which is part of what i mean by bastardizing pjo, but it's not all. again, we'll get back to that.

percy doesn’t ignore cries for help, but that’s not the same as being unable to step back.

and, going back to what i first said, name one character who would be like yeah! i’ll pack it all up w my gf! the closest any character gets to this is piper, but that’s a tangent i won’t go on bc it’s not done well enough for it to be worth adding tension. the point is this isn't a trait any character is established to have, including frank, who is the one chastising percy! it doesn’t make sense for percy’s character anyway bc he’s loyal to more than just annabeth (shocking, i know), so this wouldn’t be a good ending for him regardless. he’s not actually being offered something he wants.

the scene percy references w juno actually does a better job of highlighting the conflict w percy’s loyalty: either percy can run to the sea—where “no monster would bother [him]. [he] could begin a new life, live to a ripe old age, and escape a great deal of pain and misery”—or he could go to camp jupiter where pain and misery awaits him. and percy genuinely considers his options. if percy can't give his friends up for anything, what does that mean for him?

bc it’s percy’s freedom that’s at odds w his loyalty. his loyalty is not controlling or possessive of other ppl. which brings me back to bastardizing pjo.

an important, but more subtle, theme throughout all of pjo is autonomy (it goes hand-in-hand w the constant theme of yielding, which again i talk abt here). this theme is especially important bc pjo is abt disability (that’s why all of the demigods are disabled). one of the first things ppl try to take away from u when ur disabled is ur autonomy. the fact that percy vehemently defends it not just for himself but for others is essential to the narrative. it's why he's the leader, it's why he's the protagonist, it's why there is a callback to it in every pjo book. trying to act like he wouldn't respect someone's autonomy and would try to shoehorn his way into their fight and need to be chastised into respecting their autonomy in a heavily foreshadowed moment that is supposed to be the penultimate conflict of percy's character is a bastardization of this entire theme.

this conflict doesn’t work.

(percy art cred)

anyway. let’s keep the concept but make it actually work for percy’s character. i already talked abt percy's freedom vs loyalty, but another good place to start is w how percy becomes loyal to someone. there’s two main ways.

the first is empathy. if percy empathizes w someone, he’s loyal to them. percy can empathize w almost anyone, including but not limited to clarisse, the girl who bullied him, polyphemus, a cyclops that tried to kill him and his friends, and luke, someone who betrayed him.

this loyalty means that percy will defend them (even if it means fighting w someone else he’s loyal to eg tyson and annabeth), have a difficult time fighting them (especially in regards to harming them eg polyphemus), and consider their feelings in his plans (which is why he’s a good mediator, but it also causes indecision and infighting eg point one). this is already good set up for conflict for self-explanatory reasons, but i’ll give some elaboration later.

the second is kindness. if someone is kind to him, percy is loyal to them. there’s many examples of this, but i think the best is quintus.

percy feels bad abt being suspicious—despite having plenty of reasons to be (the similarities to luke as he says here, the fact that juniper says quintus was poking around the labyrinth, etc)—bc quintus was being kind to him. and if that wasn’t enough, percy says that he won’t use the whistle quintus gives him, but later makes an entire escape plan revolving around it.

percy tries to override his loyalty w reason and it literally doesn’t work (it goes hand-in-hand w percy being unable to see betrayal, even when it’s spelled out). if quintus had ulterior motives, percy would’ve been fucked.

side note, something i find interesting abt this is that percy is aware enough that he doesn't tell other ppl abt the whistle. it's like suspecting/trusting quintus is something shameful percy is trying to hide, which is interesting to think abt for potential conflict bc nobody can help percy if he doesn't tell them anything.

another pertinent example is percy’s first interactions w frank. percy takes frank helping him against the gorgons as an act of kindness and, bc of that, percy assumes the best of frank:

the thing is, percy is wrong abt frank.

frank wasn’t thinking of percy when he pocketed those vials. and if percy hadn’t seen frank pocket the vials, would frank have even told percy they existed?

this is a great example of how to use different povs to build tension,—hoo does not use this well or often despite having nine povs—but it could also be used as a red herring for percy’s loyalty. in this case, percy’s optimistic perspective inspired frank. percy’s loyalty doesn’t come off as a threat, so when the reverse happens, ie percy’s optimism fucks him over, it comes as a surprise despite being foreshadowed.

essentially, there’s a lot of room for conflict. percy’s loyalty includes a wide breadth of ppl and can grow very quickly, which leaves a lot of room for contradicting needs. the person percy chooses isn’t a given. the answer is not annabeth (like hoo keeps insisting it is). even in tlt, when percy has to leave his mother behind, it’s a difficult choice for him. he described his heart as “being ripped in two” bc everyone in the situation had his loyalty, his mother, grover, annabeth, even his father. ultimately, the deciding factor was what he thought his mother would want him to do (which is interesting bc it’s not what sally would do given her reaction to percy in tlo, but bc sally is kind and selfless towards percy, he thinks she’s universally kind and selfless. *points to the section on kindness* another side effect of this). and it’s also bolstered by the fact that percy knows he can get sally back. he’s not losing her forever, he’s losing her for right now.

so what happens when the stakes are higher? what happens when percy isn’t sure which side he’s on? nico says percy is dangerous to his enemies. what makes someone percy’s enemy? let’s use this, let’s make this conflict bigger, let’s encase the narrative in it.

really easy ways to do this include grover and/or calypso. the series is based on fighting gaea, mother earth, and grover is a satyr who is named lord of the wild by pan right before pan fades. furthermore, percy and grover have a soul bond that’s in part bc of percy’s own connection to nature. and even more than that, nature spirits were among the highest casualties in the previous war. that’s a series of wild connections to have unexplored in the series.

also, gaea has a vested interest in percy. she kills one of her own men to save percy's life, she tries to kidnap him twice, juno says part of the reason she puts percy in a coma is bc it would've been too difficult to hide him from gaea's forces otherwise, and the reason is...so that percy can have a bloody nose? ok.

w calypso, rick writes this entire plotline where she’s still trapped on her island (for some reason), but this is only relevant so that leo can get a gf. how abt gaea gets her off the island and she fights for gaea? what then? what does percy do? how do calypso’s motivations change how percy sees the other side?

these are sacrifices percy wouldn’t want to make. he doesn’t want to kill either of these ppl, so what would he do instead? what does that mean for everyone else?

another option is a cry for help. while percy’s loyalty has never manifested as is refusing to let someone make decisions for themselves—even if that includes self sacrifice—percy does stick up for the underdogs.

a perfect example of foreshadowing using this flaw could’ve been the creatures in phorcy’s aquarium. instead, some random fish-centaurs solve the problem. boo! lame! where is percy’s inner torment as he tries to juggle his responsibilities w his feelings! where is percy tearing the group apart as he tries to fix a problem no one else cares abt! there is a ship full of ppl who are supposed to believe in the greater good, where is the conflict as percy fights for the common man!!

like,

what an interesting thing to say in a story that has a prophecy w the line "an oath to keep w a final breath." too bad this means nothing.

(also these quotes, for good measure

percy swearing to protect hazel and frank from the gods and percy swearing on his life bc he has that much faith in annabeth, someone he's loyal to, despite knowing almost nothing abt the other ppl on the quest or how they're arriving. interesting. good thing rick doesn't explore this. <- sarcasm btw)

this would be a perfect way to introduce a sacrifice percy wouldn’t be able to make. just like w percy jeopardizing his mission in tlo by warning the kids on the boat and making it harder on himself by trying to incapacitate but not kill other demigods. he almost dies to ethan bc he doesn’t kill ethan at any of the opportunities he’s given! despite ethan chastising him for it! this is already an established flaw percy has, and the only reason it hasn’t bit him in the ass is bc it’s a red herring in pjo.

and again (bc i have personal beef w this scene), the whole nico-in-a-jar thing. while percy vows to save nico, he doesn't say anything when leo and jason argue against it. percy ripped hera a new one for excluding nico, and nico wasn’t even in danger at the time. why is percy so calm abt jason and leo talking abt leaving nico to die?! this is exactly the sort of situation percy loses his cool abt and starts yelling and getting himself in trouble. why is he calm??? where is his anger????? it really should’ve come down to “we’re saving nico with or without y’all” in a true showing of tearing the group apart.

how many traps is percy willing to walk into bc someone needs help? how much can he jeopardize the quest before someone else has to intervene? when does loyalty cross the line from something admirable into a flaw?

ofc all of these potential conflicts would hold more weight if percy was in character and written as the glue of the argo ii. these moments happen at the beginning of their quest, when they’re supposed to be bonding and building trust. what happens when ur mediator loses their cool? nothing good!

similarly, there should’ve been way more internal fighting on the argo ii, especially after percy fell into tartarus. i want the blame game, the instability over nico (and what having 8 people for a 7 person quest means), the greek vs roman, lack of sleep, stress, guilt, all of it to come to a head and jeopardize the entire quest. if the greeks and romans had to be separated bc it was too dangerous for them to be together, i want to see why. i want to know why juno thought it was so important that percy be the glue. i want to foreshadow why percy making the wrong choice can tear the world apart. it also helps frank and hazel’s plotlines, as well, bc their stepping up feels more important and has a bigger pay off.

as it's written, there's barely any conflict, frank feels comfortable confiding in annabeth for no reason, the girls are all friends bc #girl power, there's random love triangles everywhere, annabeth and jason are said to have a rivalry but never actually shown to have one, and the biggest fight is when percy and jason are possessed.

this complete lack of foreshadowing amalgamates in boo’s failure. rick failed to use percy’s actual flaws to establish the threat of this choice but still needed the conflict, so percy has to be out of character and the conflict has to be contrived.

this is how I envisioned Annabeth when my fic will end. she'll have shorter hair and a more pale/goshtly complexion after Tartarus

Thinking about Percy’s time at CJ and CHB in my AU and ever since I learned this fact I can’t stop thinking about it.

So essentially in the Iliad Achilles throwing around (for lack of better term) Hectors body after his death essentially meant in Ancient Greece customs that he wouldn’t be given a proper burial and so his soul would never reach the underworld which is why they were so adverse to the sea because it was seen as a something that would swallow them whole, that would take their bodies so they would never be found. And essentially it means you’re in a way “forgotten”.

So I’m just thinking about on top of how CHB treats big three kids how this could make his experience even worse.

Because in CJ he doesn’t really feel like he belongs. He doesn’t really fit into the society he has and he tends to break a lot of rules by just being him and eventually just sort of conforms to their society, especially in the face of the psychological abuse of his mentors (Luke and the Praetor before him which I swore I gave a name).

Not to mention he’s also sort of the mediator between the Roman gods and CJ as they typically don’t come directly. He also becomes the champion for Jupiter and is able to use and channel his domain through his weapons but he doesn’t ever really feel loved by any of the gods as if they were family. Sure they favor him (most of them, Jupiter likes him but his brothers and sisters don’t, not really) but it’s not really familial love.

At CJ he’s reluctantly respected and more so feared than anything. They just know power and bow in the face of it.

Then he goes to CHB. Everyone there is so different, they’re more free. They sit at a campfire and roast marshmellows. They get to be a kid, which Percy has a hard time adjusting to. He tries to let his walls down, to act like the Greeks because he doesn’t hate them, not really.

But besides people such as Annabeth or Grover or Clarisse (just to name a few) they don’t seem to like him either, and instead they punish him. He learns about Thalia and thinks that he just has to be like Thalia right? He’s been conforming his entire life so he just has to do it again and then they’ll like him, right?

No matter what Percy does, the camp is still unnerved by him. Because he isn’t a child of Zeus, sure he’s a champion of Jupiter, but a title like that isn’t respected or acknowledged, not to the Greeks and Jupiter can only help so much when he isn’t in Roman territory.

By the end he loses Jupiter’s favor and he’s given a lot for the camp, and they try to like him, but he’s still a Roman. He’s still going to do things that seem to Roman and militaristic for their liking because that’s how he was raised since he was oh so young, he can’t help it, not really.

So by the time the war with Kronos ends, he’s sort of like a rolling stone. He doesn’t fit here nor there. But he has his friends and for now, it’s enough. He has his amazing girlfriend Annabeth, his best friends Grover, Jason, & Clarisse. He has Nico who he made amends with and is getting treated way better than he ever did (because he’s Greek through and through?) and he’s happy. Sure Gaea is still out there scheming but for now he just gets to rest.

And then one day he wakes up in chains trying to figure out where he is.

Thinking lol

And like, my Percy Jackson AU has actually evolved a lot with my concepts of it from the first post and I’m sort of thinking. What if I made it sort of like the Absolute DC thing?

Like most of the characters would be the same as how I’ve been writing them but it just seems like a fun idea.

For like the type of universe it would be? I’m not sure. Like the basics of the universe would be the same, with CHB and CJ but I want to find a way to make society different. (Still playing around with the Mist Idea HEAVILY). Also thinking about toying with messing with new myths and even taking some inspiration from DC (maybe? Idk)

Mostly I’ve been thinking about this cuz I want to write a high school au and the sorta Roman!percy au and looking for a way to combine them both lol.

But yeah. Thats it pretty much. Now as for a name for this AU which has changed a billion times? I have no idea lol. Any suggestions would be appreciated? At this point I have no idea what I’m doing ngl. Just a tired teen trying to write an AU but being wayyy too indecisive along the way.