Literature / Titan Empire

The Titan Empire series is a series of webnovels originally created by author Johnny Scribe, along with co-writers Open High Hat, Dann, and D.X. Machina. The series follows a number of humans who were abducted from Earth by giant Insectoid Aliens. The good news is that most of them were rescued by more friendly, more humanoid aliens. The bad news is that those aliens consider humans to be good pets, but not that bright; they can't take the humans back to Earth because of their Alien Non-Interference Clause; oh, and the humanoids average around 140 feet tall.

Initially intended to be a story that appealed to the baser instincts of people who are into that sort of thing (aka very tall women), the series now is a sprawling epic that covers Space Opera, the politics of The Empire, and the long battle of humans — both those from Earth and those native to the Empire — to gain a measure of equality. And what happens after said equality is made the law, but not everybody agrees with it.

Tropes brought to you by the Tarsuss Corporation:

• Abdicate the Throne: Emperor Tiernan threatens to do so if the humans are not recognized as citizens.
• Absolute Xenophobe: Many, many Titans. The grand prize, however, has to go to the citizens of the Federation province, as many of them believe that all non-Titans must be stripped of all rights and treated as second-and-third class citizens.
  • Also, a significant portion of Jotnars: despite being Titans anatomically, they have many cultural differences with mainstream Titan culture and despise Archavia's multicultural world.
• Absurdly Huge Population: The Insectoids' population is estimated somewhere in the trillions.
• Accidental Discovery: How the humans find Titan Station.
• Ace Pilot: Ryan Carey and Ted Martinez.
• Action Girl: Mainly Rixie, although Sorcha qualifies as well.
• Adopted into Royalty: Pierce after he enters a relationship with Princess Rhionne and Daz.
• Aerith and Bob: The first human-Titan couple in the series are Rixie and...Alex.
• Affectionate Nickname: Darren Xanthopoulous has one for every weird name he encounters.
• A God I Am Not: Pryvani Tarsuss says so to the Avalonians at the end of Titan.
• Alcubierre Drive: Invoked by name.
• Alien Abduction: Many protagonists of the series were abducted by the Insectoids, while others were picked up by accident or for study.
• Alien Invasion: The Insectoids launch one on the colony at Tau Ceti, and have plans to continue on to Earth, which would have succeeded if not for the sacrifice of Niall Freeman and Aerti Bass.
• Aliens Steal Cable: At one point, the Empire logs into the internet and downloads all media from it.
• Aliens Speaking English: Both averted and played straight, thanks to Translator Microbes. Of course, the English are really speaking Alien; the primary languages of the Titans in the Empire are related to proto-Indo-European and Sami.
• Amazonian Beauty: Rixie is this, even to a Titan.
• Ambiguous Criminal History: Pryvani Tarsuss openly admits that she is not a saint and that she has done several questionable things in the past, but these are never revealed.
• Ancient Astronauts: The Titan Empire regularly visited Earth during prehistory. They stopped when they realized they were having an impact on Earth's culture.
• All Planets Are Earthlike: Averted. Many habitable planets have surprisingly low gravity.
• Area 51: In Titan: Exile, it's revealed that Area 51 is there to hold a Titan woman who grew up on Earth.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Alex and Rixie promised to each other that they would be the first couple to marry after human citizenship was made law.
• Animal Wrongs Group: Titans for the Ethical Treatment of Humans (shortened to TETH) is officially for human emancipation...but they have a tendency not to ask the humans what that means.
• A Pet into the Wild: How the whole saga begins.
• Arch-Enemy: Forna Qorni, the Conservative Floor Leader, who opposses the classification of humans as Class One Sentient Beings throughout several novels.
  • On the earlier novels it was probably Trell, who was Rixie's sister and a human-eating psychopath. Until she met her end at the hands of Zhan Tarsuss (née Ilios)
• Artificial Gravity: Used for many purposes, including to allow giant creatures to live on high-gravity worlds like Earth.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Emperor Tiernan does this to Syon Fand when he paralyzes her exactly as she paralyzed humans she wanted to eat/give to the Insectoids, and then threatens to feed her to them as well.
• Atomic F-Bomb: The Archavian equivalent is frak.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Trell on Titan: Pandemic.
• Augmented Reality: The humans of 2155 have smartphones embedded in their corneas.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Zhan killing Trell by bombing her insides while at her stomach.
• Awesome Underwater World: Great Ocean, the homeworld of the Dunnermac.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: Avalonians believe that Pryvani is a goddess, along with every other Titan they have ever seen.
• Being Human Sucks: You're the size of the dominant species' thumbs, and most of them think you're an adorable pet, if not a pest or a delicacy.
• Berserk Button: Mentioning that humans aren't people in front of Sorcha never ends well.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The Battle of Tau Ceti is an all-out battle between Gama Fleet, a handful of fighters, and an Insectoid assault fleet with as many as half a billion soldiers.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Niall casually mentions to Naskia that she is the size of an aircarrier.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Pryvani Tarsuss has a better informant network than the Emperor.
• Bigger Is Better: Well, the title really gives it away, doesn't it?
• Birdcaged: Where Lyroo puts Darren.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Titans have a number of unusual adaptations that allow them to exist as giants.
• Bizarre Alien Psychology: The Insectoids are a Hive Mind, and various levels of sentience can be ascribed to different groups of them.
  • The Dunnermac's are amphibious aliens that can live for more than a day outside of the water with no effects — they won't die immediately after, but they experience symptoms similar to intoxication.
    • Maybe that's whyGreat Ocean, the Dunnermac's home planet, is >80% underwater,
• Blackmail: Syon threatens Pryvani that if she doesn't give her the majority of the Tarsuss Corp., she will publically release pictures where her romantic involvement with a human is shown.
• Black Market: The first batch of humans we see in the novels enters the Empire via this route.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: When Myrell enters the colonys' cafeteria.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Insectoids do not appear to have a concept of morality at all.
• Boldly Coming: The Titans look basically human, if gigantic; the humans look basically Titan, if tiny. Needless to say, some of them find themselves in relationships of shorter or longer durations.
• Boy Meets Girl: In spades.
• Braids of Action: Rixie has her hair done in over 100 braids.
• Broken Pedestal: How Zhan feels about Pryvani after the latter confesses that she is not a deity.
• Bug War: The Battle of Tau Ceti touches off the Fourth Insectoid War.
  • The other one we know about is the first one, where the Insectoids left their home world for the first time, and proceeded to gather humans for food.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Shaars are very cat-like creatures, and tupps are mouse-like.
• Canadian Equals Hockey Fan: Alex jokingly calls Pierce a “hockey loving maple syrup sucker” at the former's wedding.
• The Captain: Aerti Bass, and later, Lauryna Gwenn.
• Captured by Cannibals: Since some Titans see humans as a mere delicacy, it is invoked more than once.
  • Ditto for the Insectoids, although they tend to gather them as supplies for the Hive.
• Casual Kink: How the series started.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Ryan has idolized Thyllia since he was a little kid - several years after, they become an item and later marry.
• Child of Two Worlds: Sorcha openly struggles with the Titan side of her.
• Civil War: After it's revealed that the Tarsuss family's God Guise is false, Avalon descends into a brutal one.
  • A smaller one (in both scale and time) happens between the Empire and the Federation, whose leaders collaborated with the Insectoids so they can secede from the Empire.
• Class and Level System: For the majority of the series, humans are Class Two sentient beings - essentially pets.
• CloudCuckoolander: Pryvani's public persona.
• Cool Starship: The Gyfjon, the fastest ship in the Imperial fleet. Also, the Stanislaw Lem, Earth's ship that travels to Saturn.
• Colossus Climb: Several.
• Cool Big Sis: Pryvani to Thyllia.
• Cryonics Failure: When Eyrn's Titan parents are stranded on Earth, they put themselves and her in stasis. Only one of them survives.
• Cultural Translation: Several human concepts are alien to Titans.
  • This is even more true with the Insectoids, whose immense secrecy and apparent incapability of understanding some of the most basic concepts of Titan/Human culture, create a huge barrier between them and the rest of the known species.
• Cunning Linguist: Lauryna Gwenn starts her career as a junior xenolinguist, who understands a couple Insectoid languages and later becomes an expert on Drazari and fluent in English. While this puts her in Omniglot territory, it bears mention that by the time she reaches Captain she's about 200 years old.
• Cute Giant: Many.
• David Versus Goliath: Anytime a human squares off with a Titan.
• Deadly Gas: How Commander Zolis wants to exterminate the humans aboard Titan Station.
• Deathbed Confession: Rixie writes the word "Love" to Alex with her blood while seriously wounded.
• Death Is Dramatic: The end of Titan: Hybrid since Aerti and Niall were two of the most important characters.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Sorcha, as she is Titan in size but human in nature.
• Dominant Species Genes: All hybrids that have a Titan mother take her size.
• Doorstopper: According to OHH, the series word count by the end of Titan: Hybrid was larger than 750.000. Since there have been three more novels and several short stories afterwards, the total word count nowadays is most likely at a seven-digit number.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Yamanu Neutha died while comforting 29 humans that were euthanized together with him by Dr. Praxa, despite being given the chance to have someone else take his place due to his popularity in the wider Empire.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Averted. Earth is a small planet near the Imperial border; it's interesting primarly because the Titans find humans adorable.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first two novels and some other sidestories were published at a popular macrophilia site, but then were transferred to the current, series-centric one. As a result, people not into that particular fetish might find that steamy scenes were...quite frequent on the earlier material, in stark contrast to the rest of the series. Yes, giant women are still plentiful, but the explicit scenes are few and far between nowadays.
• Eaten Alive: Trell to Zhan.
• Eat the Evidence: Well, seeing as humans are quite small to a Titan...
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Alex's middle name at birth was Elizabeth. Played for Laughs, obviously.
• The Empire: Averted. Certainly, from the standpoint of humans, the Empire is not a friendly place. But for the Titans, it's portrayed as a flawed, but generally decent place to live, with an elected government, freedom of speech, a robust social welfare state, and generally tolerant morality.
• Enemy Civil War: When the Insectoids manage to understand the concept of "not-taking", they fracture into five clans and slaughter each other.
• Energy Weapon: The Acolytes, who use a technology pioneered by Niall Freeman.
• Evil Matriarch: Syon Fand.
• Exposed Extraterrestrials: Mostly on the earlier work.
• Fantastic Ship Prefix: ISS (Imperial Space Ship) and ISC (Imperial Space Carrier) for the Empire, TSS (Terran Space Ship) for Earth.
• Fantastic Racism: Arguably the point of the series. Titans look down (literally and figuratively) on humans; many Titans also disdain the Ler, Dunnermac, and Avartle, who are all member species of the Empire. The struggle to overcome this forms the central narrative of the series.
  • This takes another form after some time: while almost all Titans do agree that the humans are as every bit as smart as them, they believe that their rapid progression presents a threat to their species.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: It would be a short series without it.
• Fiction 500: Pryvani Tarsuss owns a moon, the only woman alive to do so.
• First Contact: In Titan: Contact, Earth finally meets the Empire officially.
• First Contact Team: The crew of Stanislaw Lem.
• A Father to His Men: Aerti Bass, Lauryna Gwenn, and Xu Mulan all subscribe to this philosophy.
• Feed It a Bomb: Quite literally how Zhan killed Trell.
• Fictional Sport: By far the most popular is Tol-Bot, which is essentially a strategy game on a grand scale where the two opponents are masked.
• Fighting Irish: Both Niall and his daughter Sorcha are stubborn, fiery, and extremely proud of their Irish heritage.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: How Earth feels after the battle of Tau Ceti, considering that while the Empire saved them, its people were seen as pets on it for centuries.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Titan ambassador uses a hologram to introduce herself at human size.
  • After his torture at the hands of Vasha Zakrov, Alex got PTSD everytime a Titan was near, and thus this is how all Titans presented themselves to him for a while.
• For Your Own Good: How Lyroo Prenn (president of Human Owners Society) sees humans: they are cute and good, but dumb, thus not able to be citizens.
  • In her defence, the average intelligence of a common Empire human was...quite low (since they were born to be pets), and there was at the time widespread disbelief/ignorance about Earth's progression.
• Free-Love Future: There are many forms of marriage in Titan society: Floor Leader Rodney Zeramblin has eight consorts, and the Archer-Kramer family consists of five partners, two human and three Titan.
• Friendly Enemy: Loona Armac and Rodney Zeramblin: despite being leaders of the liberal and conservative caucuses respectively, they are willing to hash out their differences and find common ground, especially on the issue of human emancipation.
• Galactic Superpower: The Titan Empire, the Hive, the Drazari, and to some extent, the K'Gapti.
• Genocide Dilemma: Floor Leader Loona Armac heavily struggles with this, as she realizes that she needs to exterminate more than half a trillion Insectoids in order to eliminate the threat they pose.
• Genre Mashup: Take equal doses of Space Opera, novelisation and (at the beginning) size-fetish porn, and this happens.
• Genre Shift: The focus was on plot from the very beginning, but with some doses of...other stuff. After the second novel, however, the series is exclusively plot-driven.
• Gentle Giant: Several.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Due to Titan biology, their digestion is much slower, and thus a human can stay alive on their stomach for days.
• Giant Woman: How the whole thing started.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Well, since several of the main characters are 150 feet tall...
• Girl's Night Out Episode: In an earlier (and since deleted) short and non-canon story, Eyrn and Naskia visited the Vegas strip on their original sizes. That went about as well as you'd expect.
• Global Warming: Earth suffered through a series of "Water Wars" over natural resources, until a near-apocalypse experience scared them straight.
• God Guise: Until Pryvani admits to the deception, the Tarsuss family uses a "goddess" to keep order on Avalon. The charade is helped by the fact that Titans are titanic.
• Good Is Not Soft: Pryvani Tarsuss is willing to cover up killings and use her vast fortune to destroy her enemies — and she has stated that she's done far worse.
• Government Procedural: Surprisingly so, for a story with giants set in space.
• Half-Human Hybrid: A Titan experiment to extend human lifespans makes human and Titan DNA "compatible." The first of many hybrids is born shortly thereafter.
  • However, at the end of Titan: Hybrid it was revealed that the Insectoids had made their own Titan-human hybrid before the Empire did.
• Happiness in Slavery: The attitude of many humans on the Empire, since they were born to be pets and have little understanding of the outside world - or need of independence.
  • This would play a major role on the very messy situation after the enactment of the Zeramblin Act: many humans did not want to leave their owners and/or they didn't have the mental capacity to do so.
• Harmless Freezing: Laruyna has to freeze Izzy after the later contacts a lethal disease with no cure found Unfortunately, when the cure is found, 7 Titan years (half a Human century) have passed.
• Hates Their Parent: Both Pryvani and Thyllia despise Syon Fand and want nothing to do with her.
• Heel–Face Turn: In an earlier short story, Floor Leader Zeramblin says that the very idea of smart humans is absurd. About ten Titan years later, the human emancipation act is named after him.
  • Ditto for Lyroo Prenn and Forna Qorni, who both eventually understand that they were "at the wrong side of history" on that issue.
• Height Angst: Many humans, especially those from Earth.
• The Heist: The Heist short story, when four crooks try to kidnap thousands of humans from Avalon. It goes badly.
• Hell Is War: The Battle of Tau Ceti is extremely brutal, both on the ground and in space.
• The Hero: Averted, since there are more than a dozen people that have been the main characters on a certain novel, and are all quite fleshed out to boot.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Niall and Aerti, in spades.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Luke and Aisell.
• Hidden Depths: Most people think that Pryvani Tarsuss is an aloof, air-headed heiress. Only her closest friends (and biggest enemies) know that she is insanely smart and calculative.
• Hive Caste System: How the Insectoids are organized.
• Hive Mind: The Insectoids, who call themselves "The Hive."
• Hologram: Niall Freeman, a human, works to develop holograms to help convince Titans that he's as important as anyone, despite his size.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Vanser and Charlotte are the only notable example.
• Human Popsicle: Humans are frozen in stasis by the insectoids for ease of transport; later, humans use their own cryosleep technology on the way to Saturn.
• Humanity Is Young: Very.
• Humanoid Aliens: Other than being 140 feet tall, the Titans look very human.
• Humans Advance Swiftly: Justified in-story in that humans tend to be both more curious and more reckless than other species.
  • In the later novels, this is invoked heavily by the opposition: they admit that humans are every bit as smart as Titans, but they also fear that their comparably short lifespan and higher population will eventually allow them to surpass them technologically.
• Humans Are Morons: The initial premise.
• Humans Are White: Strongly averted.
• Humans Are Special: Those who favor human emancipation think that humans' curiosity could propel the Empire to a new golden era.
• Humans Need Aliens: If not for the Empire protecting the Sol System, the Insectoids would have captured Earth long ago.
• Hybrid Power: Sorcha Freeman is quite tall and insanely strong for her build (in a non superhero way), due to her Titan and human genes respectively.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Hurting one of Pryvani's friends is the easiest way to have the wrath of the richest person on the galaxy fall upon you.
• In Case of X, Break Glass: The Acolytes were made by Avalon in order to have a failsafe if the Empire turned against them. To be exact, Darren said in one of his briefings that its weapons were focused on hitting armor and not shields, thus hinting that they were designed to ward off the Insectoids (whose ships don't have shields), rather than the Empire. Plus, the two leaders of the squadron (Ted and Ryan) were married to Titans and would under no circumstance attack the Empire.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: All humans seem 3 inches tall to Titans.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Moments after agreeing on a coalition government, both Loona and Qorni openly admit that they will be plotting against the other.
• Inheritance Murder: It's heavily implied that Syon Fand killed her husband in order to take the Tarsuss Corporation.
• Insectoid Aliens: The Insectoids.
• Inexplicable Cultural Ties: The Empire has some similarities to Earth culture; partly justified in that Titans and humans are similar other than size, and that Titans influenced Earth culture in the past.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Earth isn't viewed as insignificant, exactly, but it's hardly the center of the universe.
• Insufferable Genius: Niall Freeman is this, especially to Titans.
• Insult of Endearment: Darren always calls Eyrn "Twat".
• Interquel: Outside of the titular novel that started the series, all the other novels and shorter stories are not neccesarily published in chronological order.
• Interspecies Romance: Early and often. And not just between Titans and Humans — it's stated outright that it's considered culturally acceptable for any of the sentient creatures to date each other.
• In the Local Tongue: Most humans that have lived for decades on Archavia have learned the language.
• Intrigued by Humanity: After First Contact has been made, most Titans were surprised to see that humanity on Earth was way ahead of their supposed technological level.
• Iron Maiden: Rixie's name and persona when playing Tol-Bot.
• I Should Have Been Better: Forna Qorni said this almost verbatim (referring on her stance against humans) on her introductory speech as a member of the Senate.
• Isle of Giant Horrors: This is how many humans see the Empire, especially at the beginning.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: Most of the main human characters were randomly kidnapped from Earth in order to be sold on the Black Market.
• It Has Been an Honor: Niall and Aerti to eachother, moments before their Heroic Sacrifice.
• It Runs in the Family: How Sorcha's very short fuse is usually explained.
• It's All My Fault: Even after successfully passing human emancipation, Pryvani still feels guilty about the Civil War on Avalon.
• I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: The usual reaction to Niall Freeman, who was the first popular human whose intelligence was on par with a Titan.
• Karmic Death: Keeran Leffen dies when the human she's trying to eat stabs her esophagus, severing an artery.
• Kayfabe: A requirement for all Tol-Bot players.
• Kill All Humans: The end goal of the Insectoids.
• Kissing Under the Influence: Aisell and Luke did that - and a little bit more...
• Knee-High Perspective: More like ankle-high.
• Knighted: Several main characters have gotten titles in accordance with their accomplishments. Notable mentions go to Niall Freeman and Yamanu Neutha, who both were posthumously awarded with the Order Of The Emperor, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a citizen of the Empire.
• Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy: Pryvani's informant network is so vast that she regularly invokes this trope.
• La Résistance: There is an organized resistance on Federation grounds, after the latter refused to apply the Zeramblin Act and seceded from the Empire.
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: Alex Carey is very fond of this trope.
• Leave No Survivors: It is known that the Insectoids apply this trope on their attacks, to the point where the human settlement at Sperikos literally burned itself to the ground rather than become food.
• Leaving You to Find Myself: Izzy leaves for Avalon when she is awaken from her cryostasis and finds out that 50 human years have passed. Ultimately, she decides to return to Lauryna.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Her wedding is the first instance where anyone has seen Rixie without her braids.
• Like a God to Me: Zhan often calls Pryvani "Goddess", obviously playing with the fact that he was raised actually believing that.

• Living a Double Life: Most Tol-Bot players, due to the Kayfabe that is an integral part of the sport.
• The Leader: Mostly averted, but in the grander scheme of things, Pryvani Tarsuss fits the bill. As a antagonist said, "Everyone on the humans' side is two degrees of seperation from her, at most."
• Lilliputians: In this case, the humans.
• Longevity Treatment: Genetic therapy can slow human aging, allowing them to live three or four centuries, but even the humans back on Earth are living to 150 by the 22nd century.
• Long-Lost Relative: Rixie found out who her parents were at the age of 51.
• Long Last Look: Eyrn Bass gives one to her husband Aerti before leaving the Gyfjon , maybe understanding what would happen.
• Lost Colony: Earth is that to most humans on the Empire, to the point where they usually dismiss it as a myth.
• Lost Tribe: The Tribe, a colony of humans living in underdeveloped land on the Maris Farms.
• Love at First Sight: Ted and Tig met during First Contact and were basically an item before the day ended.
• Love Confession: Rixie confessed her love to Alex while deathly injured.
• Lovely Assistant: Ammer has Inna as his assistant when Loona becomes a Representative - they later become an item.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Trell.
• MegaCorp: The Tarsuss Corporation, which appears to have interests in pretty much every industry.
• Microts: The Imperial second, minute, and hour are all very close to the familiar Earth variety. Of course, that's because our seconds are based on Titan time units.
• Mile-Long Ship: For obvious reasons, all the Imperial ships are this.
• Mission from God: On much of Titan Avalon is divided between cults who idolize certain Titans as Gods and fight for supremacy.
• Mistakes Are Not the End of the World: Pryvani initially continues to play God on Avalon, but once things go bad, she unveils the truth - and has beaten herself up for the former ever since.
• Modular Epilogue: Titan: Hybrid has nine of them.
• Money Is Not Power: Averted. While Pryvani is certainly not above using her trillions for advancing the causes she believes in, she knows that there are certain limits to what she can do.
• Monstrous Mandibles: The Insectoids.
• Monumental Battle: The Battle of Tau Ceti occupies the entire latter part of Titan: Hybrid.
• Morality-Guided Attack: On the latter half of the series, many Titas attack humans not on the grounds of their intelligence (which has been well-established by this point), but because they view Human-Titan hybrids as abominations and disgraces on the basis of "purity".
• Multicultural Alien Planet: The Empire is definitely not a planet of the hats.
• Munchkin: Humans are the smallest sentient species on the known universe.

• Mysterious Past: Rixie has no knowledge of her childhood before she was adopted by the Hoplites.
• Nanomachines: Humans came very close to wiping themselves out with these during the Short War, but they are used by almost all species as Translator Microbes.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The mere mention of Pryvani's name is enough to put the fear of God to most people.
• Near-Death Experience: Hercules has by far the nearest one in the series.
• Near-Villain Victory: When the Insectoids seem all but certain to overpower the Empire forces on the Battle of Tau Ceti but Niall gets an idea...
• Neo-Africa: Africa went through their bad period, just like the rest of Earth, but by the 22nd century, it has become a significant power.
• No Adequate Punishment: Before the passing of the Zeramblin Act, killing humans was illegal - but the vast majority of offenders got away with it.

• No Focus on Humans: Humans are seen as pets by the vast majority of the population.

• Patrick Stewart Speech: Xu Mulan gives a ringing defense of imperfect humans to a bigot who wants to trigger a war with them.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Any Titan entering a human city.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Several times this trope is incited almost verbatim.
• Porn with Plot: The initial premise of the series, but after a while it became Plot With Porn - and very little porn at that.
• Perfect Pacifist People: The Dunnermac are generally (though not exclusively) pacifists. They chose to fight repression in the Empire by going on a species-wide hunger strike, rather than by attacking. That said, there are Dunnermacs who serve in the military, and Dunnermacs who are not personally pacifistic.
• Puny Earthlings: Quite literally.
• The Purge: When Jota Cecil successfully takes control of the Federation, one of his first commands is the on-sight extermination of any humans.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Trell does this when she manages to enter Avalon at her natural size.
  • Inverted by the Insectoids attack on Tau Ceti, since their Hive mindset is solely focused on efficiency: their only goal is to capture humans for food.
• Really 700 Years Old: The Titans age roughly 6.5 times slower than a non-life-extended human, and about half as fast as an extended human. But they also mature commensurately slowly, and study things more in depth, rather than racing on to the next subject like those crazy humans do.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Rixie Tam, who was raised as an orphan by the Hoplites, turns out to be the daughter of the Empress's brother, and through a series of maneuvers, heir to the Jotnar throne.
• The Reveal: Happens at the last chapters of The Debate, when Pryvani Tarsuss shed her air headed public persona and announced she was married to a human all along.
• The Right of a Superior Species: How Titans see humans.
• Romance Arc: Both Titan and Titan: Physics have it as the main plot point, since in both novels the Titan's (Rixie/Naskia) relationship with its human (Alex/Niall) evolves from mere curiosity to love.
• Rooftop Confrontation: The fight between Sorcha and Myrell at the end of Titan: Hybrid.
• Schizo Tech: Avalon transitions from a roughly medieval level of tech to turn-of-the-20th-century tech over the course of about 100 years — with some borrowed futuristic tech thrown in. At one point during the transition, some of the refugees from Earth come to the conclusion that the technology level is at 1900s levels, only Steampunk.
• To Serve Man: Some Titans (and all Insectoids) see humans as a great delicacy.
• Shocking Defeat Legacy: The shock of losing during the Battle of Tau Ceti is so disruptive that it literally splits the hive into five daughter hives, which touches off an immediate civil war among the Insectoids.
• The Short War: Directly invoked. A looming war in the South China Sea is abruptly aborted when the nanomachines of both sides begin working together, setting the stage for a potential Grey Goo apocalypse. When the soldiers on the ground defeat the nanobots, they immediately declare an end to hostilities, and all sides are so terrified by what almost happened that they immediately begin work to wind down their disputes.
• Slice of Life: The Tales of Avalon short story contains scenes from the everyday life of Avalonians after the events of Titan.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: The Imperial Fleet is very much the model of a modern standard fleet.
• Stay with the Aliens: Not that most of the humans had a choice.
• Square-Cube Law: As with all stories involving giants, it gets rather badly bent.
• Subspace Ansible: Invoked by name.
• Suicide Mission: Prince Antero leads a charge of a dozen officers against an overwhelming Insectoid force because it's the only chance to save over 100,000 humans.
  • Niall Freeman and Aertimus Bass decide to blow up the Gyfion near the Hive Ship only after making sure there is only them and nobody else onboard, saving the Freeman Colony, Earth and a good chunk of the Empire on the process.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Loona and Qorni openly despise each other, but agree to form a coalition goverment to enact the Zeramblin Act.

• To Serve Man: Insectoids think humans are delicious. They also think Titans are delicious, but you have to butcher them. Humans are snack-sized....
• Tracking Chip: Most human pets have them, though to be fair, it comes in handy from time to time. Also, most Earth humans have cell phones embedded in their bodies.
• Translator Microbes: Basic universal translators will alter your perception so that it sounds like others are speaking your language. The top-of-the-line ones will alter your neural commands so that you speak theirs.
• Transplanted Humans: Humans were brought to the Empire to be pets, and to Avalon and Sperikos, where "wild human" preserves were set up. Granted, Sperikos got blown up, and Avalon had a rich family playing God, so YMMV on how it worked out.
• United Nations Is a Superpower: Things were trending in this direction, but First Contact has made the UN a de facto government of Earth, albeit an underpowered one.
• Unstoppable Rage: After seeing her friend Lessy treated as a pet, Sorcha absolutely loses it and beats up half a dozen officers and her own uncle.
• Unwanted False Faith: Pryvani tells the citizens of Avalon that she is not a god, but some Avalonians believe she's testing them, and worship anyhow.
• Wham Line: "The truth, citizens of Avalon, is that my name is Pryvani Tarsuss, and I am not a goddess."
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The energy core that Niall Freeman secretly developed with Avalon and Earth.

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