Terra Firma

Question: So what's with Terra? She's the Titan of "the World", but what does that even mean? Living things? The physical planet itself? Animals? Plants? Life? If she's "the World" where does that leave the element of Earth?

We're still working on our Titan project (no, we are, I promise), so we don't have a bunch of firm rewriting finished on Terra yet, but I wanted to address this questions because the Terra of the books is one of my pet peeves. I've never liked it, even though I understand what they're trying to do with it. It's always felt to me like it's doing too much.

Because you're right; Terra, as Titan of the World, is not like other Titans. Other Titans represent one element or concept - fire, darkness, chaos - and Terra represents, like, five or six, because it's the World and the World has a lot of stuff in it. It's animals AND plant life AND health AND procreation AND humanity AND the physical planet itself, which crosses a lot of messy lines.

Not that I think some of those lines won't be crossed with Terra/Gaia; she's that kind of a line-crosser. She's most certainly a Titan, and she doesn't necessarily conform nicely the way folks like Kagutsuchi or Nu do. But putting all those things together with her makes it difficult to have room for other Titans (of things like beasts, plant life, or, as you point out, earth) without horning in on all the territory she's occupying.

I'm not sure what we're going to do with Terra yet. Our preliminary thoughts are leaning toward making the place, probably co-run or fought over by Gaia and Cronus, concerned with fertility and growing things and conceptually all about primogeniture and offspring and the right to do what you like with them (which is something the Dodekatheon have been struggling with for eons). We're still unsure exactly what needs to happen there, so we're working on more clear-cut Titans like Muspelheim first before tackling it.

Also, I hate the place being called "Terra", because that's just the Roman name of its avatar, Gaia, not a place or different creature. And that is all.