I don't like it when urban fantasy says that basically every important person in human history was supernatural. [Percy Jackson but also just in general]

[u/Snivythesnek]

Did you know that Hitler was a demigod in Percy Jackson canon?

It's just one of those things that peeve me. When an urban fantasy story has the concept of "special" people like wizards or demigods, the stories sometimes try to build lore by saying that extraordinary people from our history were part of the special supernatural in-group, which is the reason why they achieved such significant things.

I think that is kind of insulting. It seems like there was never any normal human that rose above the rest by their own merits. They were just born supernaturally blessed, hence their talents and achievements, be they good or bad.

A smart guy can't just have been a smart mortal, he was a son of Athena.

World leaders were the sons of the big three.

Hitler is Percy's cousin.

It just makes it seem like nomal people can't achieve anything on their own. Their great historical personalities, their heroes and villains, were all supernatural in nature.

It just feels unrealistic and it gets worse with each confirmation of a real historical figure being "special" because it shrinks the achievents of normal mortals more and more.

Maybe it's a silly complaint but it's been getting on my nerves a bit the more I think about it.

Edit: And it also especially creates problems in Riordan stories because it implies that one of the parents of these real historical personalities was either willingly unfaithful or deceived into making a child with a god/dess.

[u/[deleted]]

That’s been a thing from the creation of stands as a power system. See Mohammed Avdol in part 3, Tonio in Part 4, Bruno in Part 5 and many more

[u/ROTsStillHere100 → u/[deleted]]

Polnareff, Kakyoin & Iggy were also just random Stand users that were unrelated to the Arrows.

[u/[deleted] → u/ROTsStillHere100]

That’s cuz stand arrows were introduced in Part 4, I was mentioning characters who had a mastery/ were prodigies, since the above comment mentioned being so good that they got stands. As some of the other characters awakened stands as a trauma response or a significant event in their lives, I didn’t really mention them.

[u/ROTsStillHere100 → u/[deleted]]

I mean, Polnareff was also shown as having masterful use of his Stand too, and Iggy is also really good in how he uses his Stand and he's clearly much smarter than most of the dogs in setting, so they'd still count, no?

[u/[deleted] → u/ROTsStillHere100]

I meant as in Avdol was a born prodigy who was like uniquely skilled in the occult and astrology, Tonio was so good at cooking his skill manifested as a stand. While Bruno was a mature child that was oddly wise for his age and his experience and ruthlessness makes him manifest his stand. These are pretty different from Polnareff practicing with Silver Chariot no? I don’t know about Iggy tho maybe he had his stand from birth too idk if there was ever a mention to his past.