#Fantasy Guide to absolute monarchy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kaile-hultner · 6 years ago

Text

Dialogues With A Dreg, Part Four

Spoilers for Destiny and Destiny 2 ahead.

Hello, Guardian.

Let’s drop the allegory for a while. I don’t think it was working to begin with, and I prefer to speak plainly instead of in prose.

I love the game you serve as the protagonist in, at least mechanically. Part of the reason I’ve put nearly a thousand hours in piloting you around and clicking on enemy heads is because I’m chasing that satisfying “pop” when something’s brain explodes after I get them with a linear fusion rifle. I guess it’s better than being addicted to drugs or alcohol or video games with gambling mechan- oh shit god dammit wait, fuck, there’s Eververse here, I forgot.

Anyway, Destiny 2 has my full buy-in when it comes to gameplay, as I think it’s grabbed many folks in its three-year lifespan. I’m not as big a fan of the many modes to choose from in the game, and I think the story – when looked at holistically – is more-or-less a wash. But one aspect I can’t ignore is one I’ve tried to reason out in these Dialogues: Bungie, the game’s developer, wants me to live at least part-time in this world, and there are certain ramifications that come with that.

I first noticed these ramifications during the Faction Rallies in D2Y1, when it asked me to pick a faction and fuck shit up across the solar system. I picked what I thought was the coolest-looking faction, a group of (it turned out) thanatonautic, neoliberal warmongers calling themselves Future War Cult. They basically killed themselves over and over to see the future, and as a result they want Guardians everywhere to become absolute war machines. But as far as I could see, they were a “better” option than the other two factions: Dead Orbit, who just wanted to get the fuck out of the solar system and away from the Traveler, our slumbering charge, and New Monarchy.

New Monarchy is the MAGA hat gang of Destiny 2. They want to keep humanity safe by locking them inside the Last City, forming an eternal Guardian-led kingdom, and ruling with an iron fist. Yeesh.

In my first Faction Rally, I fought hard for FWC. I liked the gear they were giving me, not to mention the guns I could earn from them. They had an aesthetic I liked, and the story of thanatonautics is interesting enough for me to want to know more about how all that worked. But I didn’t like the insistence that we “reclaim” the far-flung reaches of the solar system, as if they belonged to us inherently. I didn’t like the ramping-up, constant drumbeat for war they were throwing out. Even if Lakshmi-2, FWC’s leader, seemed like the eye of a hurricane – calm, yet clearly still dangerous – the hurricane she was the center of was starting to irk me.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t drop FWC in subsequent Rallies, even if I wasn’t as enthusiastic about them as I was initially. If I could pick again, though, I know now I’d pick Dead Orbit. They had it the most right, plus Peter Stormare plays Arach Jalaal, the faction’s leader, which is just cool.

But the winner of pretty much every rally was New Monarchy. I couldn’t see the appeal, even if you stripped the clear trump-ass bullshit away. But a LOT of other Destiny 2 players fought for them, and they were the victors constantly. Bungie took the Faction Rally away in D2Y2, but it basically put me on an inexorable thought track to where we are today.

Simply put, I think the world that Destiny 2 is advocating for is at best a fascist one. At worst, we’re talking about reinstating the divine right of kings. Not only does mortal humanity lose in this bargain, but every other living creature inhabiting our solar system suffers for it as well.

Now, Guardian, I can see that this is an unwelcome statement to hear. I get it. After spending the entire five years of your existence thanklessly putting around the solar system and killing gargantuan, god-level threats to humanity and life itself, watching some nerdy, doughy writer cast aspersions on everything you do probably extends past irritation and into wishing you could shoulder-charge me into Glimmer particles. But I want to be clear: yours isn’t the only video game world – or even the only sci-fi world in general – that does this. As Nic Reuben (the original Destiny 2 fascism warner) put it in his 2017 post on the subject, Bungie writers are “blindly following a set of culturally encoded science-fantasy tropes”:

“‘True leaders are born. It’s genetic. The right to rule is inherited.’ Any time you play as a really, really ridiculously good looking person killing mobs of ugly things for a vaguely defined reason, you’re witnessing this kind of ideology first hand.”

One thing I would like to point out, though, before we continue: Guardian, I know you personally. I’ve fought as you across the stars. I know you don’t inherently want to rule over anything. You are intentionally a blank slate, you never voice your own desires except for that one time when a possessed Awoken prince killed your best ramen bud, and I want to believe that the only thing you want — which is the only thing I want — is to race Sparrows on Mars. But the version of you I play as is not the only version of you that exists. There are over a million of you. And aside from that million iterations of you that exist in this game world, there are others who absolutely want to rule. It’s high time to interrogate this world.

Fantasy Space Fascism: The Game

In his book Against the Fascist Creep, freelance journalist and Portland State Ph.D candidate Alexander Reid Ross defines fascism as “an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the ‘new man.'” He continues:

“Fascism is also mythopoetic insofar as its ideological system does not only seek to create new myths but also to create a kind of mythical reality (ed. emphasis mine), or an everyday life that stems from myth rather than fact. Fascists hope to produce a new kind of rationale envisioning a common destiny that can replace modern civilization. The person with authority is the one who can interpret these myths into real-world strategy through a sacralized process that defines and delimits the seen and the unseen, the thinkable and the unthinkable.

“That which is most commonly encouraged through fascism is producerism, which augments working-class militancy against the ‘owner class’ by focusing instead on the difference between ‘parasites’ (typically Jews, speculators, technocrats, and immigrants) and the productive workers and elites of the nation. In this way, fascism can be both functionally cross class and ideologically anticlass, desiring a classless society based on a ‘natural hierarchy’ of deserving elites and disciplined workers. By destroying parasites and deploying some variant of racial, national, or ethnocentric socialism, fascists promise to create an ideal state or suprastate – a spiritual entity more than a modern nation-state, closer to the unitary sovereignty of the empire than political systems of messy compromises and divisions of power.”

Ross, A. R. (2017). Against the Fascist Creep. AK Press.

The Destiny franchise begins with you, a freshly-reborn Guardian, shooting and punching your way through a hive of vaguely-arachnid aliens your Ghost companion calls “Fallen.” You find a decrepit jumpship deep in the heart of the Old Russia Cosmodrome, which your Ghost fires up and uses to take you to the “last safe city on Earth,” a walled metropolis underneath the Traveler. You first meet with the Vanguard triumvirate, Titan Commander Zavala, Warlock Ikora, and Hunter Cayde-6, and then, after completing some tasks for them, you are granted an audience with the Speaker (voiced by Bill Nighy):

“THE SPEAKER: There was a time when we were much more powerful. But that was long ago. Until it wakes and finds its voice, I am the one who speaks for The Traveler.

“You must have no end of questions, Guardian. In its dying breath, The Traveler created the Ghosts to seek out those who can wield its Light as a weapon—Guardians—to protect us and do what the Traveler itself no longer can.

“GUARDIAN: What happened to it?

“THE SPEAKER: I could tell you of the great battle centuries ago, how the Traveler was crippled. I could tell you of the power of The Darkness, its ancient enemy. There are many tales told throughout the City to frighten children. Lately, those tales have stopped. Now… the children are frightened anyway. The Darkness is coming back. We will not survive it this time.

“GHOST: Its armies surround us. The Fallen are just the beginning.

“GUARDIAN: What can I do?

“THE SPEAKER: You must push back the Darkness. Guardians are fighting on Earth and beyond. Join them. Your Ghost will guide you. I only hope he chose wisely.”

Bungie. Destiny. Activision Entertainment, 2015.

This introduction to the world of Destiny is… shockingly reductive. Even playing the campaign when this happens, my first thoughts were, “wait so we’re not even smart or good enough to hear the children’s scary stories about the history of this world? what the fuck?” But over the course of years, we find out more and more about the so-called Golden Age of Humanity, the tools humans built with implied assistance from the Traveler, the various rich families and corporate megaliths that consolidated power over people across the solar system in the years and decades leading to the arrival of the Darkness and the ensuing Collapse.

Not only that, we start to get a pretty clear image of what life was like immediately following the Collapse. Humanity was almost driven to extinction, and the people left alive after this apocalypse soon wished they were dead. The Traveler “defeated” the Darkness but in the process put itself into something similar to an emergency reboot mode. It deployed the Ghosts, who resurrected people who could, as the Speaker put it, “wield its Light as a weapon,” but the first of these “Risen” were nothing short of horrific. They used their Ghosts’ regeneration and resurrection powers to become regional warlords, subjugating what few mortal people remained, draining the desolate wastes of what few resources they had, and basically sealing the deal on the “Dark Age” brought on by the Collapse. It wasn’t until the advent of the Iron Lords that these warlords were defeated and the “age of Guardians” could begin, but even the Iron Lords did some pretty heinous shit – like use a whole town of mortals as bait to lure in a band of warlords on the run.

But when it comes to creating a mythical reality, the Speaker has his formula down pat. Don’t get too bogged down with details, paint the conflict in stark good vs. evil, literal “Light vs. Darkness” broad strokes, and mythologize the actions of Guardians (but most importantly, our Guardian). And oh, what fodder for mythology we are.

By the end of the first campaign, we’re the hero who severed the connection between the Hive, the Vex and the Traveler and tore out the heart of the Black Garden. By the end of The Taken King, we’ve slain a god-king. In the Rise of Iron expansion, we stop the spread of a virulent nanoparticle with murderous intent called SIVA in its tracks, using nothing but our fists. In Destiny 2, we become the Hero of the Red War, the one who put an end to a Vex plot to sterilize all worlds, and who killed a Hive Worm God. We avenge our fallen Hunter Vanguard, we kill a Taken Ahamkara. We are the hub on which the spokes of history are turning.

In terms of video game power fantasies, I really truly can’t imagine a better-feeling one. It’s basically pure uncut dopamine being transmitted directly to the pleasure centers of the brain, one Herculean feat at a time. And if we were the only Guardian, if we were not part of a larger world, if everything around us was in a vacuum, I don’t know if I would be writing this article. But Bungie has been very clear about wanting to make a world where our actions do materially affect our surroundings. As such, we are essentially a walking propaganda tool for the Consensus, a pseudo-democratic government over the Last City, consisting of faction leaders, the Vanguard and the (now-presumed-dead, hasn’t been replaced) Speaker.

The Consensus wants badly to declare the advent of the New Golden Age, a time in which Humanity can finally emerge from under the shadow of the Traveler to pick up where it left off prior to the Collapse. The problem we supposedly face is the never-ending onslaught of Enemies. Four alien species showed up on our doorstep after the Collapse, all seeking to finish us off (according to the Speaker): the Fallen, the Cabal, the Hive/Taken, and the Vex.

Of the four-ish races of enemy, only one can said to be truly, deeply “evil” in the sense the Speaker intends: the Hive and Taken, led by Taken King Oryx and his sisters Sivu Arath and Savathun, the only force in the galaxy more fascist than the Guardians. The Vex are a race of machines whose only focus is on making more of themselves, a threat similar to SIVA. The other two alien forces, the Fallen and the Cabal, are certainly antagonistic toward Guardians but our initial reasons for fighting them are, frankly, butt-ass stupid. Basically, we fight them because they’re there. They have the audacity to land on planets that “belong to us” and scavenge resources from them. Until the Red Legion showed up on Earth, we basically only ever fought Cabal on Mars, and there’s really no reason as to why.

The Fallen, or Eliksni, on the other hand, end up coming off more as the tragic victims of our flippantly rampant genocidaire practices than actual “enemies.” They’re probably the weakest alien species we come up against. Their backstory involves them living in peace under the Traveler before their entire society was caught up in a Collapse-like “Whirlwind” and destroyed. Rather than give them Guardians, like it did with us, the Traveler instead just up and peaced out, leaving the Eliksni for dead against the maelstrom of the Darkness. The surviving “Fallen” got in their skiffs and desperately chased the Traveler across the heavens, stratifying the remnants of their society into “houses” and developing religious devotion to machines like Servitors in the process.

They tried to take the Traveler back at the Battle of the Five Fronts and Twilight Gap, and lost. Their armies were shattered, and we’ve been nonchalantly killing them en masse ever since. They are the “parasites” our Guardian must exterminate, along with the Hive, Cabal, and Vex. When we make friends with, or even simply allies with, a Fallen (like Variks the Loyal, Mithrax the Forsaken, or the Spider), it is made clear almost immediately that this 100 percent doesn’t change the relationship we have with the Fallen as a group. Variks is absolutely subservient to Mara Sov and the Awoken. Mithrax wants to create an Eliksni House that bows down to Guardians and Humanity for being “better stewards” of the Traveler than the Eliksni was. The Spider makes it clear that he only wants to grow his crime syndicate, but that we can help him out if we want. Never once does the Vanguard or the Consensus reach out to these allies and try to broker peace. And in-game, we simply don’t have an option but to fire on and kill Eliksni in droves. Kill or be “killed,” right?

When it comes to Humanity itself, while we never get a chance to actually leave the Tower and walk through the streets of the Last City, there are at least hints as to the deep class stratification at work here. You can’t get much more on-the-nose than an ivory tower of immortal beings overlooking an enclosed human race. Guardians atop humanity, the Speaker above the Vanguard over the Consensus over the people, and you, the very fulcrum on which history pivots, functionally over everything else. But in the mythical reality of this game, it’s really the Traveler über Alles, and humanity underneath the Traveler has become a wonderful, diverse melting pot without class, without fear. An ideal state where the walls keep Darkness at bay and humanity can discover the joys of tonkotsu ramen yet again.

A Light Story Vs. Lore Steeped in Darkness

Destiny has a reputation, unfairly earned, for being an okay game with a bad story, or at best a nonexistent one. The story isn’t really all that bad, it’s just poorly implemented up front, and I think my willingness to engage with the game’s world to the extent that I have is a testament to how powerful and evocative some of the beats in Destiny’s writing truly are. If we dissect the game we can separate the writing of the “story” from the writing of the “lore,” and in watching the plot develop over the past few years, we can see a gradual unification of these two areas start to occur.

This is helped greatly by third-party resources like Ishtar Collective, and by mechanical decisions Bungie made in D2Y2. Adding the lore back into the game with Forsaken was a good idea; choosing to fully integrate the lore into the world starting with Season of the Forge was a great one.

A side-effect of this lore-plot unification is a dismantling-in-real-time of some of the game’s most beloved and widely-spread legends, like the legend of Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor. Even our personal legend is challenged in this way, and it’s a really neat way that Bungie writers new and old are critically engaging with their work. But it also really throws into stark relief some of the issues I’ve laid out in this article so far.

Take, for example, the lore book “Stolen Intelligence.”

Presented to us as intercepted secret Vanguard transmissions, “Stolen Intelligence” shows us exactly what the Vanguard really thinks of our actions, and what their goals really are. It was part of Season of the Drifter, which overall had a “trust no one” vibe to it, but some of the entries here are BLEAK, y’all.

Here’s an excerpt from the first entry, titled “Outliers.”

“Fallen armed forces continue to fall back from active fronts across Terra. Factions of House Dusk remain active in the European Dead Zone. Throughout the rest of the globe, refugee attack incidents have dropped by more than 70 percent since the conclusion of the Red War – largely attributable to depressed Fallen and human populations rather than any significant change in interspecies relations.

[…]

“The recent trending emergence of so-called “crime syndicates” (cf. report #004-FALLEN-SIV) is emblematic of the continuing destructuralization of Fallen society. Likely an artifact of multi-generational colonization of human strongholds, this agent believes that because these syndicates have no relation to indigenous Fallen culture, young Fallen are appropriating and imitating human mythology in absence of a strong cultural heritage of their own.

[…]

“VIP #3987, another former confederate of the Awoken, is a lesser-known personality known as Mithrax. Scattered field reports suggest that like #1121, #3987 styles himself a Kell of the so-called “House Light,” an otherwise unknown House apparently founded by #3987 himself. We have secondhand accounts that Mithrax has engaged in allied operations with Guardians in the field, though we have not as yet been able to corroborate these accounts with any degree of veracity. This agent is inclined to treat these reports with a healthy degree of skepticism until otherwise confirmed, as they may be propaganda from Fallen sympathizers in the Old Russian and Red War Guardian cohorts. We have requested intelligence records from the Awoken which may further clarify the matter.

“In addition, whatever the findings of said intelligence records may be, it should be stressed that one or two sympathetic outliers cannot be relied upon to erase the wrongs of past centuries, nor should their good-faith efforts to correct the sins of their forbears be taken as sufficient symbolic reparation.

[…]

“We have come too far to pull our punches now.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Outliers. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Here’s another piece of “Stolen Intelligence,” about our relationship with Cabal Emperor Calus:

“Related to the above, #3801’s aggressive propaganda campaign appears to have been successful. Despite #3801’s recent inactivity, sentiment polls captured in the Tower at regular intervals over the last several months indicate that he has successfully swayed a significant percentage of the Red War cohort to believe that he may be a potential ally. Given our history with the Cabal as well as the events of the Red War itself, this is shocking and perhaps attributable to a case of mass traumatic bonding.

“It is my strong recommendation that the Vanguard pursue a reeducation curriculum before #3801 invites any Guardians of the City to defect to his service, a possibility which we have documented in multiple previous reports.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Passivity. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Other entries detail the efforts of the Vanguard from keeping ostensible “conspiracy theories” from being published in the Cryptarchy’s journals; show the apparent oddity of mortal-Guardian “integrated neighborhoods;” and discuss the ongoing surveillance of the Drifter, a rogue Lightbearer who has survived since the early Dark Ages and who uses Darkness-aligned technology to run a PVEVP game called “Gambit”.

There are many other stories like these, scattered throughout the lore. Stories of Cryptarchy students being banished for making fun of New Monarchy’s leaders, of Guardians messing with Hive technology being burned alive and killed fully by the Praxic Order for their crimes of experimentation. Stories like these wouldn’t happen – couldn’t happen! – to our Guardian, because they’re too important, but are seemingly everyday occurrences to less consequential members of this society. In the real world, we’d call that an increasingly oppressive police state. In Destiny 2, it’s just flavor text.

There was a degree of narrative complexity added to Season of the Drifter that hadn’t been in the game prior. The entire season was essentially boiled down to “which side are you on, the Drifter’s or the Vanguard’s,” and in our path to make a choice, we heard from various bit players in our world. The Drifter told us his story in greater detail than perhaps we needed (and how much of it is true is debatable), but his story is also the story of a less morally-pure Guardian class. Everyone from the warlords to the Iron Lords did heinous shit to humanity while the Drifter watched, and it hardened him. The Praxic Warlock Aunor goes all in on her adherence to the City’s propaganda and ideology, trying to show us how untrustworthy the Drifter is. She ends up revealing more of her order’s goals than perhaps was wise.

This narrative complexity is nice, but it still betrays the game in a fundamental way. We now have the documents. We know what Guardians are actually about, and how they’re not exactly shining beacons of unwavering good like the Speaker would have had us believe. Regardless of declining Fallen activity, of a shift in Fallen culture, of actual living Fallen who want to ally with Guardians, the Vanguard is still adamantly pursuing “extirpation,” which is a fancy way of saying genocide (I’m not kidding, it literally means “root out and destroy completely”). We know the Vanguard and the Praxic Order have a hard-on for exile, reeducation and information suppression.

On top of everything, the narrative complexity was not met with any kind of mechanical complexity. Even with proof that the Vanguard wants to kill every Eliksni in the system, conscientious objectors don’t get to opt out. The narrative path that forks between the Drifter and Aunor converges again by the end of the quest. The “conspiracy theorist” that has been trying to publish paper after paper detailing exactly how the Nine worked with Dominus Ghaul to sneak his fleet into City airspace undetected was proven right by lore WE FIND IN THE GAME, but that doesn’t change our combat relationship with the Cabal remnants anywhere in the system, and homeboy still gets his papers rejected.

Ikora and Zavala, our remaining Vanguard members, insist repeatedly that Guardians are not a warfighting force, that the Vanguard and the Consensus is not an authoritarian organization. But everything we do says otherwise.

“A peace born from violence is no peace at all.”

Guardians do not get to choose their paths in the world of Destiny 2. The paths laid out before them lead to a life of warfare, of pain, of endless murder. Ostensibly, they are agents of good, trying to beat back the forces of evil, but if you look too close you see that really they’re just a bunch of indiscriminate killers with a mandate from the Orb God. Desperate to get out from under the heels of warlords, the Guardians created a fascist society, and adding insult to injury they pretend it’s a democratic, free one. Killing the Fallen is genocide, but you can literally never stop killing them because the game won’t let you. The only right way to play at that point is to turn off your console and go outside.

Destiny 2 isn’t the only video game to fall into this trap. As Nic Reuben said in the follow-up piece to his first story on how Destiny 2 is fascist, “I’m not saying Destiny is propaganda, just reliant on some of the same narrative tricks that make propaganda so powerful. At the same time, I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that games like Call of Duty make certain assumptions about what is justifiable, righteous slaughter and what is terrorism. Replace modern military hardware with future tech, replace terrorists with alien races that have traits synonymous with cartoon portrayals of traditionally marginalized social groups, and you’re effectively playing through the worst aspects of Call of Duty with a new coat of a paint.”

There is one glimmer of hope in the game. One sliver of lore that gives us pause and helps make the game bearable in its current state. It comes in the form of Lady Efrideet, former Iron Banner handler, youngest member of the Iron Lords, and a Guardian in self-exile from the City, the Vanguard, and its fascist dogma.

Lady Efrideet is one of the most fearsome Hunters in the Destiny universe. She is known as one of the best marksmen, if not the best one. She is impossibly strong, having once thrown Lord Saladin bodily off a mountain into a Fallen Spider Walker, destroying it. And she is also one of the only named pacifist Guardians who isn’t a member of the Cryptarchy. Her story is the story of the fall of the Iron Lords, as well as the beginning of the SIVA crisis, many years before our Guardian’s rise is documented.

But it isn’t SIVA or the Iron Lords that we’re interested in. Instead, we know that after SIVA was sealed away, Efrideet snuck away from Earth. She saw the deaths of everyone she knew and her will to fight was shattered. If this was the result of fighting for the Traveler, she didn’t want any part in it. So she took to the stars. In doing so, she ended up in the far reaches of the solar system, beyond even where we currently roam. It turns out, a small enclave of other Lightbearers, hesitant or unwilling to use their powers to kill, had also fled to this part of the system and had established a colony. It’s there that Efrideet resides, and it’s there I’d like to go.

Unfortunately, our Guardian is too “important” to the vast tidal forces at work in the Destiny universe for us to be able to leave for the outer reaches whenever we want. Because we are the hub on which the wheel of history turns, and there is no escaping that now, if ever we could. We are death, the flattening of a complex and intricate universe into one of simple shapes, the sword logic in a human/Awoken/Exo body. We are needed for the plans of the Nine/Mara Sov/Hive Queen Savathun to come to fruition. When or if the Darkness ever does come back, we will be the force that faces it and, win or lose, shape our future afterward.

Sometimes it’s nice having a video game place your character on a linear track. Games like Half-Life or Titanfall present to us simple choices in otherwise-complex story environments: progress, or die. Our characters are not immortal, but they have help from the technologies around us, are tenacious, are resourceful, are quick to adapt to changing situations. In Destiny, we simply exist. We can’t truly die. Even when it comes to the rules of the game, our immense “paracausality” causes us to shrug Darkness Zones off as mere inconveniences where other Guardians have died their final deaths. Because we are necessary. The Vanguard and Consensus need us to justify their horrific fascist policies. The great forces at work in the background need us to work as a pawn. Even Bungie itself needs us, powerful, trapped beings with a sense of right and wrong but no agency to actually act on those ethics, to continue its game.

I haven’t preordered Shadowkeep yet. For once I’m glad we’re not focusing on the Fallen or the Cabal. Going to the Moon means we’ll pretty much just be dealing with Hive, to say nothing of the unreal Nightmares we’re supposed to face. But I’m still undecided as to whether I even want to order Shadowkeep in the first place. If Lady Efrideet can go to the edge of known space and live peacefully with other pacifist Guardians, maybe I can put my controller down and step away, once and for all. It would be nice to have the extra space on my Xbox One’s hard drive. Other games exist to be played, and having the time and energy to do so would help me here, with No Escape.

But even then. I’m not expressing agency as a Guardian, but rather as the person who controls you, Guardian. While I go off to play other games, you sit and wait in stasis. Even if I don’t play, there are a million iterations of you willing to commit genocide daily for cheap rewards (shoutouts to the sixtieth Edge Transit drop in my inventory this month alone). Sure, it’s just a game. But this is what having a dynamic world means in practice. There are consequences to your actions. There always have been.

There is no reason why Humanity couldn’t share the Traveler’s gifts with, at the very least, the Eliksni. There is no reason why we couldn’t just ignore the Cabal in a state of mutually assured destruction, given how small a faction the Red Legion was relative to the Cabal army’s full size. Of the two remaining enemies, the Vex are less evil than they are simply a thing that wants the universe to be like it, and that’s threatening to diverse life throughout the universe, not just Humanity. The Hive/Taken are the true enemies in the game, but even they are directed, pawn-like, by their Worm Gods.

There is, likewise, no reason why the Risen had to organize in the fascist context they did. They could have created a society in which everyone could come and go freely, where ideas and actions could be given and received absent interference, where a true “golden age” could have sprung up naturally simply by living together harmoniously and using the Light the Traveler gave them to create, rather than destroy.

But that’s not how this story shakes out.

#destiny #destiny 2 #video games #antifascism

15 notes · View notes

hyenabutter · 6 years ago

Photo

Guess I'm gonna be one of those assholes. Again.

There was of course no way this was going to satisfy everyone, and for at least two reasons: based on all the complaining I've seen, the fans of the show seem to want Game of Thrones to be this wildly chaotic, gritty, anything-can-happen, no-one-is-safe style "realistic" drama, while at the same time getting upset when a character or plot doesn't have a neatly-resolved "arc" that ties everything up in the most pedestrian sort of way; secondly, it feels like the people in charge of the show, adrift without George RR Martin's books to guide them, just sort of wrote themselves into a corner, and had little or no choice but to try to resolve things as well as they could.

This writing-from-the-corner situation was most evident in the way they handled what were the show's two big plot points: the political struggle for the Iron Throne and what to do about the White Walkers. I always hated the whole White Walker plot, because having a generically evil Dark Lord character completely contradicts the show's central themes of "gray" characters with conflicting motivations and actions, and also because zombies are the laziest of lazy plot points. Having said that, they were a good metaphor for a looming existential threat, a big picture issue that we have to put our petty squabbles aside to address if we are to continue to exist in the world etc. The second story point, about who would eventually win the human battle to rule the seven kingdoms, was far more interesting, and done better, but the creative team behind the show couldn't seem to find a satisfactory way to address both issues in the time allotted, and so they abruptly abandoned the White Walker fork of the story in a hilariously cursory way in order to concentrate on the Who Will Rule portion of the series.

It was that perfunctoriness that attributed to the generally lower quality of the show as it went along, and the last season in particular: where before the show would take an entire ten episode season to wrap up a story, the shorter last few seasons felt incredibly rushed: after spending 60-plus hours building up the threat of the White Walkers, they are defeated with relative ease in a single 90-minute episode. This isn't an issue of subverting expectations, which is something I love in fiction, especially moldy old genres like fantasy, but rather just an example of not knowing what to do and so doing the most obvious thing possible.

Similarly, Daenerys giving in to her worst impulses and destroying the inhabitants of King's Landing even after the Lannister army had surrendered, finishing the job her father was prevented from doing, is not at face value, bad storytelling, but having it happen and then having it resolved in the very next episode is. The White Walker plot and the Daeneyrs Goes Crazy plot could have easily been an entire season each. But there was no more time. The show was ending, and so things had to be wrapped up. In terms of resolving the two big plot points of the show, Game of Thrones ended about as well as it could considering how hamstrung it was by the time constraints the creators behind the show had inflicted upon themselves.

Where it truly fucked up, I feel, is the tone of the ending. After Daenerys is killed, the ruling nobles meet amid the ruins of King's Landing and discuss what should be done in the wake of all the bloodshed and misery they've endured. And they choose to return things to normal. A new king is chosen--Bran, for some reason--and the same system of government that caused that bloodshed and misery is quickly reestablished.

Which is fine. The idea that these people would all just suddenly decide that democracy is the way to go would make zero sense in the world they inhabit. Everyone laughing at the idea is completely in line with what seems to be the vision of the books, and totally in line with the tone of the earlier seasons. Nothing is resolved, and nothing is accomplished, which is very in line with what Martin--and by extension the show--seems to suggest about history and human nature.

But the last episode runs completely counter to what the show had spent a decade telling us about power and its failings: rather than showing what a non-solution to the problems of monarchy the characters reached, and why it's at its core an untenable system, the last episode seemed to be perfectly okay with the return of the status quo, and we as viewers are presumably also supposed to be okay with it because this time the Good Guys are in charge. There's nothing to suggest that just because this particular handful of lords and nobles decided to be civil to one another that in 50 years when Bran dies--if not sooner--the exact same scenario from season one won't repeat itself. The show ending this way is perfectly acceptable but for the fact that this is presented as a good if not ideal answer as to how to govern. The show did nothing to even suggest the fallacy of the solution reached by the characters.

Further, this ending suggests that Daenerys's basic assertion that the system is fundamentally flawed, that the wheel needed to be broken, was incorrect, and like any centrists will attest, that incremental change is the way to go. The dragon melting the Throne was a nice image, sure, but it's still just a physical symbol. In the end the wheel didn't get broken. It just became a slightly less-bad wheel. They replaced the Iron Throne with a Wooden one, and we're supposed to be cool with that because the person sitting in it isn't a dangerous lunatic appointed to a position of absolute power by a handful of wealthy elites who have no allegiance to anything but their own interests. This time.

#game of thrones #hbo #tv #a song of ice and fire #george rr martin #it's not tv #break the wheel #joe biden

6 notes · View notes

choicesfanatic86 · 7 years ago

Text

If Only: Chapter 8 (Liam x MC)

TAGS: @kawairinrin @jamielea81 @gracechoices @hopefulmoonobject @madaraism @blackcatkita @bobasheebaby @kaitycole @drakelover78 @starstruckzonkoperatorbat @theroyalweisme @mfackenthal @zilch3 @herladyshipxx @mspaigemoore @trianiasti @choiceswreckedme @jayjay879 @umccall71 @queencatherynerhys @asprankle @hdcathcart @ranishajay @viktoriapetit @boneandfur @flyawayblue56 @jlouise88 @pbchoicesobsessed @xxrainbowprincessxx @decisso @liamxsworld @flowerpowell @crookedslimecreatorpasta @debramcg1106 @ladynonsense

CHAPTER 8

“You told him no?” Riley asked incredulously. “As in like your chief of staff or something?”

He chuckled lowly. “As in my father,” he said simply. “He demanded that I annul our marriage and return to Cordonia at once before the press caught wind that anything was amiss,” he mused. “I told him that when he was ready to accept that I very much wanted to remain married to you, he could call me and we could talk then,” he sighed.

“Wow,” she murmured. “Is that the first time you’ve ever told him no?”

He nodded, taking another sip. “It was rather liberating,” he said. “I imagine that’s how my brother Leo must have felt when he abdicated,” he said thoughtfully.

“Liam, not to burst your bubble, but why would you do that? Things with us . . . you know very well that we could still be walking out of here today toward an annulment, and then all you would have done is create strife with your family back in Cordonia,” she tried to reason with him.

“I know that,” he said sadly. “Annulments are a dime a dozen, we could probably find an attorney’s office on the corner and get this all taken care of as if nothing happened. But I don’t want to do that, and I hope that you’ll remember enough that you’ll realize that you don’t want that either,” he murmured. “I’m not much of a gambler, but us . . . us I want to gamble on, Riley. Even if it means upsetting my father. The monarchy will survive and have to adjust,” he said simply.

“What did you say?” She asked, the words sounding so familiar. It was a feeling of déjà vu.

“That the monarchy will survive and adjust?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowing in bewilderment.

“No, before that,” she shook her head, closing her eyes, trying to focus on where she had heard those same words before.

“That I’m not much of a gambler,” he asked.

She nodded. “You said that to me before, right?”

His forehead wrinkled, nodding in agreement. “I did . . . last night. Are you remembering something?”

She nodded slowly, allowing her mind to drift off again. This time, tough, the images were clearer and there was much more detail. She could picture exactly what had happened between them.

“Walk with me,” he murmured, clasping her hand in his as he had them both get off of the bench. She was still stunned by his beautiful words. She tentatively accepted his hand, following after him.

“So, what do you say? Give me a shot? One hour?” he pressed, waiting on her answer.

Her hands began to tremble. No one had said anything so romantic to her before. Even in her limited relationship experience, she knew his words were pretty damn special. This man was something else. She gnawed at her lip nervously, uncertain if she should end the night and chalk all of this up as one of those things that happen in Vegas or if she should take a risk and go with him. She wasn’t much of a risk taker. Every decision, every step in her life had been carefully calculated. She was a planner, and this man had not been a part of her plan for Vegas. She looked at his waiting eyes, her heart thumping erratically in her chest. He was only asking for an hour . . . it was just a little after midnight . . . and if she were being honest with herself, she didn’t want to end things just yet. She was almost certain that her friends wouldn’t be missing her. After all, they hadn’t even called yet.

“You have one hour,” she whispered, trying to sounds a bit disinterested. Her voice failed her, cracking toward the end. She couldn’t possibly tell him that she’d gladly let that hour meld into two then into the whole night if he’d let her.

He led her from the imitation Brooklyn Bridge, pulling her out once again through the bustling streets of Las Vegas. It reminded her so much of New York. The crowds, the towering buildings, the bright lights . . . but Vegas was a lot wilder. It was loud and crass. Scantily clad women wandered the strip, even at this hour. Instead of being a little after midnight, it seemed like it was just after seven o’clock. So many people were so wired; that it hardly seemed like the night would be winding down anytime soon. It was crazy. There were so many people around, she felt like she could easily just get lost in the masses. Not that Liam would let that happen. He had such a firm grasp on her hand, that she doubted he’d let her go.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as they passed another large hotel. Her eyes darted every which way for some indication about where they were headed.

“Venice,” he chuckled, as the grip of his hand tightened. “I suppose you could say we’re doing the whole world tour tonight,” he gazed at her. “We need to get those long sought after stamps in your passport somehow,” he joked lightly.

She giggled, a little surprised that he had actually been paying attention to what she was saying at the Paris Hotel. Butterflies once again flitted around in her stomach. What was this man doing to her? She blushed. “Well, thank you for helping some of my European dreams come true,” she laughed.

He nodded briefly. “My friend Maxwell brought us here yesterday, and it is absolutely amazing. I’d love to show you around, take a look at some of the designs. There’s a little bar in the corner of the lobby. We can get another drink and talk,” he suggested.

She looked at him, “That’s your big plan to sweep me off my feet? A few drinks and some talking?”

“Well, maybe I have a few tricks up my sleeves,” he murmured, guiding her off the strip and out toward the towering complex of the Venetian. As they entered the hotel, it was like nothing she’d ever seen before. Even though they were definitely not in Europe, it was as if they had walked into a European fantasy, because just as The Paris Hotel and The New York, New York hotels had been, the Venetian was an exact replica of what she would imagine the real Venice to be like. The architectural design was intricate, and the details were stunning. The hotel’s ceilings were high vaulted, with beautiful panels of hand-painted images throughout. She had to admit, everything in Vegas was done bigger and louder.

“This is very romantic,” she whispered, her heart beating furiously inside of her chest. “You think you’re pretty smooth, huh?” She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Well, I do only have one hour to convince you that this can turn into something real,” he shrugged, leading her over to the water way. “You can’t go to Venice without having a gondola ride,” he said surely. “Care to join me?”

The butterflies that had been growing in her stomach started to do flips. Of course she wanted to join him. She nodded excitedly as he helped her stand on the loading area. “Careful now, we don’t want our evening spoiled by you falling in,” he laughed. “I’m sure the hour would be up before it really even began,” he chuckled.

She looked up at him, a smile plastered on her face. “Okay, funny guy, help me in, then.”

Once they settled into the gondola, he sat closely next to her. Their gondolier pushed off from the dock, allowing the gondola to glide smoothly along the water. His hands remained in hers since they left the Brooklyn Bridge, and that sort of intimacy absolutely thrilled her. It was amazing how a simple thing like holding His hands never leaving hers. It was almost as if they were an actual couple on an true date. He was attentive and kind, and nothing like any of the men . . . well boys . . . she had dated previously. They were all so immature and uncommitted. Liam was a true gentleman. She was glad he’d been honest with her about everything . . . it showed his true character.

“I have a question,” she hesitated, not wanting to ruin the moment, but her curiosity getting the better of her. “Say this . . . this thing between us is real, what happens then?”

He looked at her, shrugging. “Then I guess I’ll have some serious thinking about if I’ll be going back to Cordonia, won’t I?”

She sat there mouth agape, in utter confusion. “Wh-what?”

“If this connection between us is real, I’m going to have to rethink my entire life plan, Riley. I’m not letting this go,” he said firmly.

She sucked in a deep breath, the butterflies in her stomach were now gigantic moths. “But your father . . . your country . . .” she trailed off. The last thing she wanted to do was be the cause of the breakdown of hundreds of years of a political monarchy.

“I’m aware of the stakes, Riley. I’ve never been a gambler, but something tells me that I should bet on you. Bet on us.” “Are you sure you aren’t trying to get in my pants?” She asked skeptically. “Because this sort of thing doesn’t happen to normal people, Liam.”

He only smiled, shaking his head. “Who said anything about us being normal? Nothing about meeting one another has been normal, Riley,” he gave her a small smirk.

God, he knew exactly what to say to make her heart sing. As the gondola drifted back toward the dock, Riley couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Had their hour been up already? It barely felt like they had spent any time together at all. Regardless, he’d proven to her that there was something between them. There was definitely a connection, and she definitely wanted to explore it. She just didn’t want him to throw his whole life away for it. She wasn’t going to change her life plan. Why should he? They’d figure things out. Long distance relationships were all the rage nowadays with video chatting right? They could spend some time getting to know one another while he straightened things out back home.

“So I have twenty minutes left in my one hour . . . I’d like to buy you that drink now,” he murmured into her ear.

“I think I’d quite like that,” she smiled.

The bar was small, and although the hour was late, it was bustling. They were lucky enough to find a small table near the entrance. She sat reserving it for them while he went to order their drinks at the bar. He came back with water and a gin and tonic for her and a glass of scotch for himself. “Hydrate,” he murmured. “Don’t want you swaying again,” he laughed.

She shook her head. “I didn’t realize you had such a teasing side of you,” she said honestly. “You seemed so respectful and polite. I would have thought you to be more on the serious side,” she explained.

“I am . . . typically, but maybe you bring out a different side of me,” he smirked.

She blushed. “Maybe . . .” she trailed off.

There was a lingering silence that lay between them as they sipped their drinks. They’d sneak little glances at one another, and then share curious smiles. They were silently flirting. She liked it. It was kind of adorable. She wondered for a moment if she had been all wrong about the whole love at first sight thing, because there was a feeling swelling in her chest that made her feel happier and more excited than she had ever felt before.

“Riley, whose idea was it for you to go to medical school?” he asked suddenly, breaking her from her thoughts.

She looked up at him, confused. That was an odd question.

“Was it because you wanted to be a doctor or was it because of your dad? And remember, we’re still doing the whole honesty thing,” he murmured.

“I-I don’t know,” she licked her lips nervously. “I mean, I guess it was always a part of the plan,” she shrugged.

“Yes, but did you want to do it?” he asked.

“Why are you asking me this, Liam?” Her guards towered back up. She started to feel a bit offended by his accusatory tone.

“Because I’m trying to figure you out. Earlier tonight, you didn’t seem too interested in becoming a doctor,” he took a small sip from his scotch. “I figured that maybe it’s not how you picture spending the rest of your life.”

She paused, clearly caught off guard by the sudden change in subject. “I was drunk, I said a lot of things that I didn’t mean,” she defended herself, but she couldn’t help but feel that maybe he was right. She considered his words carefully. Could she spend the rest of her life in the medical field? It wasn’t as excited as she originally thought it would be, and the workload was getting to her. She found herself obsessively studying every spare moment she had. Could she spend the next seven years like this? Her father did it, and he survived. But did she just want to survive? She didn’t know anymore. It had been what she had worked so hard for, for so long she started to forget why she was doing it in the first place.

“I wanted to help people,” she said vaguely.

“Yes, but you’re not answering my question. Is being a doctor what you wanted to do? You said you wanted to be a social worker . . . why didn’t you pursue a degree in that?”

“I-I don’t know,” she said as her eyes turned downward. “I guess I just wanted to make my Dad happy.”

“And there it is,” he stated as a matter of fact.

“There what is?” She looked at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t want to be a doctor,” he murmured.

Her lips formed into a thin line. Who did he think he was talking to her like that? He knew nothing about her. She had spent years to get to this point. So what if she was a bit overwhelmed with the program now. She had to see it through. She had the scholarship to think about and all the work she had put in. She wasn’t going to let him confuse her. “Liam, where is this coming from?”

“I want you to be happy,” he said.

“I am happy. You don’t even know me,” she snapped.

“Really? Then if you were so happy, why were you sitting alone at that bar tonight while your friends had the time of their lives.”

“Okay, Dr. Phil, I can ask the same question to you,” she countered. “I wasn’t the only one sitting alone at that bar while their friends had a grand old time.”

“I was miserable,” he said simply. “There’s no denying that. I was consumed by the thought that I was going to spend the rest of my life married to someone I didn’t love. Olivia is nice enough. We get along relatively well, but is that all I could look forward to for the rest of my life? That my wife and I got along relatively well?”

“Liam,” Riley began to say, but he just continued with his monologue.

“So I went through the motions, did all the right things. I allowed my friends to plan this weekend getaway as a sort of last week of freedom. Then I see this beautiful woman sitting by herself at the bar, and I think ‘wow, if only I had the opportunity to go up and talk to her.’ And if I were in Cordonia . . . maybe I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe I would have let it just continue to be a “what if” thought inside of my head, but because we were in Vegas and because I figured I’d probably never get another chance like that again, I went for it. And I went up to you. And I’m so glad that I did.”

She looked at him, her face softening. “Liam . . . what is it that you are trying to say here?”

“Come back to Cordonia with me,” he said firmly.

“What?” she squawked. “Are you insane?”

“You keep asking me that, and I keep telling you that I’m not,” he smirked.

“Be serious, Liam. I’m not even from here. My life is in New York. I can’t just hop on a plane and go to Europe,” she exclaimed.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because . . . because that’s being reckless,” she said. “What about my classes? My father?”

“We can figure it out. You don’t want to be in medical school, Riley. Come on an adventure with me. Come to Cordonia, we can go to all the places on that list of your’s.”

He’d surprised her again. He remembered her bucket list – all the places she had wanted to visit in Europe. He listened to everything that she had been saying all night. He actually cared about what she was saying. “You remembered that?” she murmured.

“It was important to you, of course I remembered,” he shrugged.

Her heart started to beat rapidly in her chest. She was falling for him. She was falling for a man that she had no business falling for in the first place. This was insane. He was insane. No matter how much he tried to deny it, all of this, everything that happened tonight was just utterly crazy. This sort of thing doesn’t just happen.

She glanced at a nearby clock, shaking her head. “Your hour is up,” she said sadly. “This was never going to work between us, Liam. You should go back, marry your fiancé, and just forget about this. Pretend it never happened, alright?”

She tore her hand out of his grasp, turning away from him. She was struggling to fight back the tears that were threatening to fall. She didn’t want the night to end. She wanted to spend as much time as she possibly could, but she couldn’t get caught up in the craziness of a whirlwind romance. Those never ended well.

“Riley,” he grabbed her on the shoulder. He moved toward her, turning her to face him. He locked his eyes onto hers intensely, but she shied away, unable to meet his gaze. “Liam, I’m done with this game,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if this is how you get your kicks, but whatever it is, I’m done.”

“Who said I’m playing?” He whispered, his lips brushing over her ear.

She swallowed hard. His hand caressed her cheeks, and for a moment, she thought about bolting. Pulling herself from his grasp and running out of this beautiful hotel back out onto the craziness of the Vegas Strip, but she couldn’t. It was as if her body was frozen in front of him. She was drawn to him. Something about him , as crazy as it all was, she just couldn’t let this pull between them go.

His mouth closed the small distance between them, his lips pressing onto hers. She knew it was coming, she saw his face inch closer and closer to hers and she knew that inevitably they’d kiss. Still though, when his warm lips pressed against hers, he took her breath away. It wasn’t a soft kiss, or a kiss that was just testing the waters. He kissed her fiercely and forcefully; his intent was clear, he wasn’t going to let her walk away. She’d been fighting the connection all night. Fighting the desire to know him, to touch him, and here he was fighting for her to stay. His tongue slid over her lips, and his hands moved from her shoulders into her hair,. His tongue rubbed at hers, encouraging her to join in the dance. She moaned into his mouth, her body bucking under his touch. This was more than just a first kiss. This was the start of something. Something magical. Something she’d never be able to keep her mind off of.

Her arms moved on their own accord, encircling his neck. She needed him closer. Her fingers played with the ends of his hair. All the while their lips remained molded together, their tongues dancing slowly with one another. It was the most sensual kiss she’d ever experienced in her entire life. She could feel her body light on fire as he pulled her closer into her body. Her hand started to grab at the hem of his shirt, completely forgetting that they were in the middle of a very classy Vegas hotel. Nothing else mattered though. She needed his kisses, his touches. Reluctantly, he pulled away, gazing into her eyes. “My hour still up?” he murmured softly.

“I think I want to do that all the time,” she said in reply.

“Yeah? Since we’re still being honest . . . I might be rethinking that whole getting into your pants thing,” he chuckled, kissing her lips softly.

“Get a room!” a drunk patron yelled from the bar they just walked out of.

“We’re going to,” he yelled back, smiling down at her. “Let’s get out of here . . .” he trailed off.

“You’re a bit crazy, you know that?”

“You’ve told me that several times tonight,” he smirked.

“Because it’s true,” she laughed, still holding onto him.

“Well, can I say one more thing that’s a little crazy?”

“Liam, you’ve been telling me crazy things all night, I don’t think there’s anything more to tell me that would surprise me.”

“I’m falling in love with you,” he smiled brightly at her. “I’m ruined for other women,” he laughed. “It’s you I want day in, day out for the rest of my life.”

“Liam . . .” she trailed off.

“Marry me,” he said with great certainty.

#choices: stories you play #choices #playchoices #the royal romance #choices the royal romance #the royal romance fan fic #trr fanfic #trr #trr fic #liam x mc

103 notes · View notes

freshbouquettaleworld-blog · 7 years ago

Text

‘Game Of Thrones' Season 5, Event 1 Recap

Video game of Thrones fans erupted in a chorus of Shame!” previously this month when it was validated that the series' eighth and last season will certainly not air flow until 2019 But HBO chief executive Casey Bloys is certainly safeguarding his decision to hesitate the Emmy being successful dragon drama's return. Clearly, withdrawing from Video game of Thrones Period 6 was certainly not a simple decision for Martin, since, as an publisher, there can be certainly a desire to at least help guide the training of the tv set manifestations of his book projects. http://gameofthroneswatchonline.com Game of Thrones wiki written in JSON. Thrones' story would not talk to its celebrities to break bad or good, and viewers stay tuned in large portion as a result of the characters' moral mutability. Here's your total instruction to season eight of Video game of Thrones, integrating spoilers, fan ideas, tv show recaps, Easter eggs, on-set chat, company interviews, and more. Dubrovnik was the main filming area in Croatia for King's Getting, a fictional metropolis in Video game of Thrones, the popular tv set series founded on the series of imagination fiction A Music of Ice-cubes and Flame” and given away by HBO. During this time the Game of Thrones television series actually moved ahead of the books. I was not simply enraptured by the wide-ranging cast of characters-from the infuriating Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) to the vastly amusing Tyrion (Philip Dinklage)-but I was absolutely used by the globe of Video game of Thrones. In the history, HBO has unveiled a Game of Thrones weather night out a few a few months before the different time opened. Game of Thrones” seems to get about the development from a bloody, top-down monarchy-by-force to a more democratic way onward as humanity artists collectively to threaten the White wine Walker threat, located in for catastrophic weather conditions change or some other Global Turmoil to Come to be Named After. The let go particular date offers not but been declared; Harington shall get started shooting after he wraps the final scenes for season seven of Thrones. SPOILER Signal: Amid all the action and uncertainty of Game of Thrones' many dramatic instance however, one gaping plot of land gap stood out like a sore thumb. HBO knew that it was heading to contain to premiere Video game of Thrones after than normal because of storyline advancements. Rob Cameron, Deborah Riley and Paul Ghirardani accept the merit for spectacular artwork route for a modern day or fantasy series for Video game of Thrones. While you might feel that Netflix or Amazon Video would have an advantage, it's an HBO show - Game of Thrones” - that's at the forefront of this phenomenon. It is usually certainly not related with, provided or recommended by HBO, nor anyone linked with Video game of Thrones®. The first of all three a matter of minutes of this week's time ending of Video game of Thrones set a somber mood-and with not really a sole word uttered, just the ominous tolling of a bell. Mackevision gained an Emmy for its visible result do the job on Game of Thrones. She's certainly not playing the game of thrones like her sis, Sansa; she's simply a small wreaking havoc on the plank. Yes, George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones, the written book that formed the basis of the blockbuster HBO television set series, this Aug emerged out 20 years before. As the "previously on Video game of Thrones" at the start of the instance so helpfully reminded us, the Chase possesses found that homely home before. Centered on George Third. L. Martin's series of catalogs, Video game of Thrones is an legendary (bad, that really desires to come to be World famous) tv theatre, about the battle for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. Jim and consider A Person Without Tribute”, the most up-to-date time two instance on our re-watch of HBO's Game of Thrones. I would prefer to boost some of my content material by adding your photos on my Game of Thrones Catalogs webpage. Of lessons, Martin is certainly roundly accepted for his job on Game Of Thrones still. The sixth time of year of Game of Thrones debuted more than a calendar year before. And if Thrones offers educated us anything, it's that every leadership features to end sometimes. ONE OF DAENERYS' DRAGONS THAT Was first Murdered AND THEN REVIVED BY THE Night time Full, Making IT INTO WHAT Is normally DESCRIBED AS AN ICE DRAGON.” God damn, Game of Thrones. He pointed out Video game of Thrones, Hristo of them got been a larger hit, they could possess cannibalized the level of popularity of Thrones '” or actually taken its crown. For many people, certainly for a reasonable chunk of a complete era of illusion writers, George RR Martin's A good Game of Thrones was a step transformation in the genre. While Video game of Thrones period 7 proved to become the most significant 12 months however for HBO's flagship, at least in conditions of reviews, it's reasonable to claim that it was as well one of the extra aggravating entries. Bend the knee… and knowledge Video game OF THRONES: The Touring Convention. A Video game of Thrones kindled a flame within me that erupted into a love of catalogs. Unlike Twitter, the joke should go, Thrones doesn't possess a 140-figure limit. Rob and Josh shall also answer your Game of Thrones questions to provide more info on the Starks, Targaryens and lannisters in our Reviews Podcast.

0 notes

inky-duchess · 2 years ago

Note

If a kingdom has an absolute monarchy, what government positions would other people hold to support the monarch?

https://www.tumblr.com/inky-duchess/628010097996677120/fantasy-guide-to-a-monarchs-council?source=share

#ask answered

12 notes · View notes

writingquestionsanswered · 5 years ago

Note

Hi, can you explain to me about king/queen, regnant, regency, and lines of succession? If my queen character dies does her husband, the king, keep ruling or does their child son really become king? TIA

“King” Doesn’t Mean “Husband of the Queen...”

I’m so glad you asked, Anon, because this is something that drives me crazy in a lot of YA fantasy.

Monarchy vs Coregency

Kings and queens (and the various alternative titles in other languages and cultures) are functions of monarchy, “mono” (or “one”) being the operative word there. In other words, most monarchs do not share power with their spouses. There are certainly examples of co-ruling (or coregent) kings and queens in history, but they’re very rare.

Kings Regnant & Queens Consort

Kings are almost always regnant, meaning that they are the one with the power. The wife of a king regnant is almost always considered a “queen consort” meaning that she does not have any power. She does not co-rule with her husband and would not inherit the throne if he dies.

Queens Regnant & Princes Consort

Queens can also be regnant, usually because they inherited the throne. The husband of a queen regnant is almost never called a “king consort” (though there are a few exceptions and almost exceptions.)

The word “king” carries too much weight, so giving it to the husband of a regnant queen implies that he has equal or more power than she does, and in a monarchy without coregency, you obviously want to avoid that. For this reason, the husband of a regnant queen is usually called a “prince consort.” That’s why Queen Elizabeth II’s husband is “Prince Phillip” and not “King Phillip.” Queen Victoria actually wanted Prince Albert to have the title “king consort,” but her council wouldn’t hear of it since he was a foreign prince, and it felt too much like ceding partial power of Great Britain to Germany.

Line of Succession

The “line of succession” refers to the order in which the throne is passed down in the event of the monarch’s death. Most monarchies subscribe to something known as “primogeniture” which is a rule dictating that the throne is passed to the monarch’s oldest legitimate child. If the monarch has no living legitimate children, the line of succession usually passes through the children of the monarch’s oldest sibling. If the monarch has no siblings, you would start to get into cousins and the children of cousins, etc.

Primogeniture can be male-preference, female-preference, or absolute (which means gender doesn’t matter.)

In any case, the monarch’s spouse is almost never in the line of succession. In the rare event their rule was coregent, however, then presumably the queen would continue to rule after her husband’s death, or she may choose to abdicate and pass the throne to their eldest child if they’re old enough to rule.

Regency for a Monarch in Minority

When a monarch is unable to rule due to illness, absence, or minority of age, someone can be named “regent,” meaning that they will rule on behalf of the young monarch until they are old enough to rule on their own. Depending on the age of the young monarch, the regent may have total power or they may simply assist and guide them in their duties. The spouse of the deceased monarch is a common choice for regent, but the monarch’s oldest or most capable sibling or royal cousin are other possibilities. It would typically be someone who is already close to the throne. And, the moment the young monarch comes of age--or in the case of a sick or absent monarch, the moment they’re able to resume their duties--the regent’s powers revert back to the monarch.

So... in the case of your story... your king would only keep ruling if your queen and king were coregent. If not, his title probably wouldn’t be “king” but prince consort. If they were ruling jointly, yes, he’d continue to rule. If they weren’t ruling jointly, then he would probably be named regent until the child is old enough to rule on their own. You could also see a situation where the council is concerned about giving that kind of power to a king consort/prince consort, and so they give it instead to a sibling or cousin of the regnant queen’s. You can do whatever makes the most sense in your story. Would this consort be trusted with the regency?

I hope that helps!

————————————————————————————————-

Have a question? My inbox is always open, but make sure to check my FAQ and post master lists first to see if I’ve already answered a similar question. :)

#writing #writing tips #writeblr #writing community #fantasy #writing advice #wqaadvice

692 notes · View notes

atrayo · 8 years ago

Text

Jewels of Truth Statements and Favorite Quotes of the Month

Hello All, Some of you will be scratching their heads saying that I've done this segment already for this month of October? Well yes, you're right however this repeat segment has two motivations behind it currently. First, it is a makeup post for missing this favorite segment of mine for the past two months of August and September. That was the time I was baptized by fire as a newly minted full blown caregiver for my mother having Parkinson Dementia. The second reason is moreso do to as a Leap of Faith as guided by my Angels and God himself. Now I may have lost some of you when stating I channel God as well. For many years I presumed that was a feat for a select historical few only. I guess not, gladly. For many years I had assumed by my decade's long channeling of the Angels that Moses the Great Patriarch when speaking to the Burning Bush. Was actually talking to his Guardian Angel instead versus God Almighty, not the case. In our contemporary times when author "Neale Donald Walsch" in his "Conversations with God" series of books states he talks and does automatic writing with God. I again said to myself he must be confused he's probably channeling his Guardian Angels. Chalk that error on my part to my innocence in these ancient metaphysical soulful practices. For the past year, I have been experimenting with precautions in the Holy Heavenly Light by channeling the Ascended Masters of several global faith traditions. Making sure I'm safe and graced in faith when doing so. This is around the time guess who showed up out of the blue and I started to channel telepathically and now in clairvoyant automatic writing the Big Cheese a.k.a. the Creator. This must be par for the course and not an obscure mediumship gift of those in a righteous faith tradition. Please bear with me since I do not take this lightly or flippant so this will be a longer Introduction preamble message than I'm used to in practice. The Leap in Faith again is to share these most recent "Jewels of Truth" statements I've channeled from God. The topics are of Divine Inheritance, Morpheus Principle, and on Abrahamic Mysticism. I'm very skittish in sharing that last topic of Abrahamic Mysticism expecting a firestorm to erupt since it involves the Arch Angel Azazel. Although it is in the context that there wasn't ever a Battle or Rebellion in Heaven itself a place of celestial perfection. The Morpheus Principle channeled statement almost gets overshadowed by what I've just stated above. However, it basically gets into what humanity deems as authored fiction from elsewhere for our entertainment purposes. Has a metaphysical meaning behind it as the Soul Recall Memory Dynamic in play. Reincarnated souls even as fantasy to ourselves are remembering a saga from elsewhere metaphysically. In another time and place of the Universe and certainly a Parallel Earth Reality.

Lastly, on the topic of Divine Inheritance where many of us in humanity assume it only happens in our afterlife especially in religious circles. Well, God points out that was an innocent mistake made at best. Our raw talents and our greatest unconditional loves in life are part of the holy package as the Will of God in our individual lives. Including those Children of God that have been blessed with the psychic-mediumship pool of holy graces often taking a lifetime to explore fully. What religions are fearing being it Christians and Muslims as haram has divorced themselves from their Heavenly Gifts as their combined Divine Inheritance. Nonetheless, as always even in this case if you vehemently disagree with these statements. Please consider it as expanding your inventory of metaphysical possibilities in the eternity of now and the infinity of here we all occupy together. At the good righteous pleasure of God Almighty. Peace to all. Amen. Divine Inheritance:

2549) With every age of humanity there comes a realization of pre-destined divine inheritance from God. In America, it has been the version of the Shining City on a Hill of Washington D.C. as its seat of power through the exceptionalism doctrine. The British Empire has had its global Common Wealth as Imperial territorial expansionistic glory shaping the great roots of our modernity. As had once the mightiest Navy centuries ago by the Spanish Armada laying claim to the world for the Monarchy. Nationalism is often cited as a Blessing from God himself on societies of various scales of value. This is not to say these do not have some truth to them in such assertions. However, like all good things that are abused as power by nation-states throughout history. They dwindle and are withdrawn by God for having served their Grand and Great Mysterious Purpose. All people, creatures, and entire swaths of eco-systems as the plants and minerals as Mother Nature herself is also a daughter of God. All part of the celestial family in Heaven of the Children of God plural resting comfortably beyond the ego-centric egos of humanity. We all collectively receive the Instantaneous Glory of God as an inexhaustible premium known as Grace. Christians often call it as their Divine Inheritance of God. Although they deem it akin as a delayed gratification upon their earthly demise upon entering the paradise of the afterlife. They like countless others across eternity have misconstrued the Glory of God once more often very innocently. Ones glorious gifts in life as talents and great nearly magical loves with purity in the heart. Is God's purpose in your collective lives importantly as directly the micro version of his Will of God in you. All magic is otherwise known as divinity is the Essence of God supremely realized is also a gift to all meta-life forms inherently so in sublime truth. Moreover, this divinity in action known as magic can also equally be experienced as multi-disciplinary specializations of grace developed metaphysically as soulful muscles. Known simply as everyone's deeply entrenched Omnipresence and Omnipotent nature of God in you. As your special particular selection of unique angelic properties for this lifetime as your psychic-mediumship abilities.

To fear the Omnipresence of God in the soulful gifts of another spiritual being. Is to Immediately discount the blessed sacred presence of God in you equally like an echo boomerang effect. Do not cheat yourselves of God's Glory in your combined spirits and souls in the Oneness of and by the Creator. Only by paying lip service to God and by your next set of breath's and actions deny the heavenly truth reborn in you and all other macro lifeforms upon Creation. Amen. ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. Morpheus Principle: 2550) Every parallel dimensional reality from our native point of origin is only slivers away from this our united continuum with God Almighty. To this, we say collectively as God and his Angelic Image and Likeness upon Paradise is that all fiction of our Earth. Is a Soul Recall Memory Dynamic in exquisite motion. Being neatly couched like a bowl from a sisterly parallel universal Earth reality elsewhere upon Infinity. All macro human fiction to date upon the world and of our shared sentient species in this cosmos is such a marvelous "Morpheus Principle" at play. All is a soul recall dynamic to one infinite relative degree to another upon Creations. For this totality by means of reincarnation as one out of countless modus operandi metaphysically. Such is the Omnipresence of God(dess) existing Supremely everywhere constantly at once. All the endless sagas and stories of the Creator are regurgitated endlessly as wishes to remember and not to forget what has been, is, and will be again. This is the Everlasting Life of God lived through his Infinite children as his Omnipresence reborn beautifully and tragically by errors committed through free will. All of it retold as fiction by means of the selective history of the victors, religious pruned theologies globally, and tall tales. The Absolute Truth and Absolute Fantasy is a living paradox. Both of which rely upon objective facts and subjective elements to remain neatly credible conveying their memory.

Somewhere and somehow the Great Mystery as God Inspires authors to remember the Saga of outstretched realities from our native realm through fiction. Be it as potential futures, probable presents, and forgotten distant pasts all have a basis upon God for the Creator stands apart from puny facts forever! We are collectively the stewards and the heirs to these memories of Infinity remembered in our totality by means of fiction and truths for all times. No matter the technological medium at hand that may be used to be conveyed be it the ancient cuneiform tablets well past into movies and digitized realities to come. The Testament has been laid soundly down by the Will of God inspiring co-creators the world and universe over for an eternity upon Creation. The truth of Accounts by the Absolute Love of us all is anointed as it has been encoded upon our reincarnated souls. We only remember through our souls with God and his scribes as the authors and co-authors of endless generations to come. All share in the Glory of God beautifully and deeply for they have had reincarnations in the ancient past, present era, and impossible futures. Happening right here and now metaphysically in all unified parallel realities. This is God's way of saying "I Love You" with totality as itself beyond judging outcomes in all of his playground through all Creations plural. Amen. ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. Abrahamic Mysticism:

2538) Every once in a while a soul realizes that pre-existing religious theologies have errors in it. To one form of a mischaracterization to another let alone mistranslations due to differences of a language. Not to pick apart sacred faiths in the world as wholly evolved methodologies of worshipping the divine dearly. One can easily conclude humanity is error-prone by design as a mere observation. Even when it comes to sacred religious doctrines of theologies the world over. We say this from the eons of misinformation that is taught and retaught when fusion between two or more spiritual traditions collide over the centuries. There is much sampling and in some ways, it is enchanted and encouraged in the guise of cross-pollination of cultures upon the Earth. However, errors that are costly as fallacies are introduced regularly by re-edits. Whether by Institutional favoritism by power brokers as hubs of religiosity seeking to dominate worshipping versus letting them be by God's good graces alone. The perfection of the Holy Father God is without reproach and unequal even by all the Angelic Choirs combined. Upon All Creations as the trinity of the afterlife of Heaven, Limbo, and Hell Itself. For example in the Abrahamic faiths theologically speaking to have a battle in Heaven an Absolute realm of pure perfection is ludicrous! A battle fought in heaven would denote a corruption or clash of Angelic souls in the perfect realm of Absolute Peace where God resides deeply as Heaven Itself. That is purely human approximations as inadequate and plainly oxymoronic in the holy pure divine nature of God's Being. A projection from known human norms of antiquity where battles were fought in ancient bygone kingdoms. This may be true for the Earth itself with primitive creatures however metaphysically it doesn't jive or make sense in Paradise. For the Singular Spirit of God, a battle in heaven is an untruth at best or a salacious morality tale gone horribly wrong adopted as theology long gone for the Abrahamic faith traditions. What God gives in his Almighty Supreme Perfection is Never Withdrawn or Diluted into bastardizations! When God gives it is Absolutely Perfect and Pure multi-dimensionally without unparalleled equality! No Angels have ever been cast out of heaven a perfect reality metaphysically, to begin with in all paramount holy truth. For Azazel and his loyal guardian flock remain in one of the many plateaux's of the endless heavens permanently perched as adjudicators of the eternal Holy Light of God by free will and choice of selected duties.

All Arch Angels are Enlightened Forever by the Blessed Will of God by decree of the Creator. That can never be stripped away nor trampled underfoot by any misdeed as God gives perfectly without ever making mistakes! For as God is Absolute Love the Creator is always also Absolute Forgiveness constantly forever. Arch Angel Azazel never sinned or committed a crime against God for God forgives absolutely in his Greatness alone and without end. That leaves the question of Lucifers role in the bowels of hell as a governor devil chieftain. As each person in the world is capable of doing good, being neutral, and committing evil. The originator of all totalities of God is no different albeit he does so with Pure Enlightenment reconciled in every which way possible and impossible. As God is the Alpha of all our souls and all things without end it goes without saying that God is the Original Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer of all Creations and Realities therein as the Omega. All Arch Angels constantly observe these tenets by means of enlightened edicts reconciled with all pure good, pure neutrality, and pure evil as One phenomenon known simply as God's Essence. What this means is that all angels including the beloved Arch Angels such as esteemed Ariel have total dominion of all metaphysical Creations including the entirety of the afterlife. (ie Heaven, Limbo, and Hell) Every Angel sourced from the simplest in duties and to the mightiest Arch Angels have numerous privileges as titles and honorary functional roles to act upon. Which means the Arch Angels, not unlike the Seraphim and the Principalities and Powers as angelic choirs have triple personifications of the aforementioned totality of God(dess). Meaning they the angels all have triple duty roles in heaven, limbo, and hell as keepers of God's Pure Essence be it as correctional officers here on Earth. The Abrahamic faiths have recognized Azazel as both Arch Angel and his alter ego as Lucifer the devil. Much like Arch Angel Ariel is a keeper of all beasts and creatures as Holy Mother Nature of the earth and of the underworld simultaneously. This isn't an isolated event and act of God for all Arch Angels in Heaven as Enlightened Divine minor gods and goddesses have triple duty roles in Limbo and Hell as well. Performing by voluntary free will at the behest of the sincere Will of God as adjudicators of God's Great Mystery.

Every soul is equally capable to have dispositions by their thoughts, intents, words, and actions whether based on pure truth or false assertions. As God decreed Azazel is Forgiven Absolutely and Loved Equally as you and I are as the Infinite Children of God. Amen. ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. ==================================== Peace, like most beautiful things, begins small. ---Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find. ---Ann Patchett. What you seek is seeking you. ---Rumi. For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. ---Proverbs 2:10 When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. ---Helen Keller. We know truth not only by reason, but also by the heart. ---Blaise Pascal. The soul of the soul of the universe is Love. ---Rumi. Ivan "Atrayo" Pozo-Illas, has devoted 22 years of his life to the pursuit of clairvoyant automatic writing channeling the Angelic host. Ivan is the author of the spiritual wisdom series of "Jewels of Truth" consisting of 3 volumes published to date. He also channels inspired conceptual designs that are multifaceted for the next society to come that are solutions based as a form of dharmic service. Numerous examples of his work are available at "Atrayo's Oracle" blog site of 12 years plus online. Your welcome to visit his website "Jewelsoftruth.us" for further information or to contact Atrayo directly.

#Jewels of Truth #Atrayo's Oracle #Ivan Pozo-Illas #Spiritual Wisdom #Clairvoyance #Automatic Writing #Angelic Host #arch angels #Ariel #Azazel #God #Divine Inheritance #Morpheus Principle #Abrahamic Mysticism

0 notes