Actually, I would say it’s the authority he possesses that has enabled Harald V to do the good he’s done, that less honorable kings had no desire to do even though they very easily could.
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Well, very possibly. My point is that a constitutional monarch can do good things without necessarily having to be involved in the bad things that every government does to some extent. A monarch who actually governs doesn’t have the option to abdicate responsibility that way.
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On the subject of stale monarchy depictions, I’d like to see other styles and periods other than feudal and absolute monarchies. Give me a Spartan diarchy, a celtic tanist, an ancient priest-king, or an elected emperor once in a while.
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I sorta-kinda have something like that going in a private story concept of mine.
Short version, because the long version is EXTREMELY detail-heavy (also spoilered in case people aren’t terribly interested in reading all this):
• Empress is legit the champion of the gods (a nod to historical monarchies claiming to be the will of heaven incarnate), possess godly powers on loan from the heavens with the gods’ intent that they be used to forge a land of peace and prosperity
• Empress became the ruler of the empire by leading a war of salvation against bloodthirsty monsters threatening to ravage the entire country, then building the empire from the ground up with her own hands and the assistance of the six companions she started her journey with (later known, fittingly, as the Heroes of History)
• Empress’ initial intent was to turn her empire into a safe haven of peace, prosperity, equality and other such nice words, but due to power corrupting her mind, political scumbaggery, and one of her six allies stabbing her in the back, she gradually becomes a warmongering tyrant
• Empress’ illegitimate daughter secretly works to overthrow her own mother, eventually succeeds and becomes new empress, and sets to work actually doing what her mother intended to do from the start, inheriting the godly powers that were revoked from her mother by the gods
That’s all that’s set in stone so far, but I’m liking where it’s going. I have no intention of ever posting it online, because I write more for my own enjoyment than to necessarily show it off at all, but I’m proud enough of it to talk about it, even if the draft notes are all anybody’s ever going to see.
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Something that I don’t necessarily mind early on or as background info, but don’t want after making a bunch of choices: The player being forced into a situation where their character is doing something illegal. A lot of the time, the game is designed in such a way that you can be a criminal if you want, or not. But then suddenly it stops giving you the option, and you just are a criminal, for… some reason. Occasionally the character is the one being forced, and then it’s easier to immerse myself in the situation (even if I still don’t really like it). But all too often, you’re railroaded into the character wanting to do something illegal, even if you’ve chosen to play as a law-abiding citizen the entire way through. To be fair, in most of these games the default assumption is that you’re playing the bad guy, but it’s because you’re seen by society that way – you can still choose not to be, mostly.
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Which games are you referring to, exactly? This is true of very few in my experience, and those that do make that assumption are very up-front about it.
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One I just recently tried to play is Villain: The Catalyst. Yes, they are very up front about you being a villain, so the first time didn’t bother me. It’s also pretty clear that you’ve been forced into that situation. The second time, I didn’t understand how I got roped into the situation, but I figured there was probably a reason. But the third time? It doesn’t have to be against your will, but it definitely can be, and there are plenty of options to choose to be an obedient law-abiding citizen. But it doesn’t matter. Even if you take that route every single time it’s presented, you still follow orders from a criminal boss, blatantly ignore orders from authority, and become an anti-govt spy, without any choice. I’d like the game better if I never had an option to follow laws. It would at least be more immersive. The way the story progresses, it almost feels like the law-abiding options are just thrown in for a gag and you’re not expected to actually select them.
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Hey, sometimes you just want to leave work at work, you know?
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This isn’t one I hate so much as I’m wondering where it even came from. It seems like games with a super serious narrative always have an extremely cheerful, bubbly RO. I can’t imagine it’s just supposed to be comic relief, because that would probably be better suited as a side character, not an RO. (It’s also not one I’d ever pick, but that’s just me.) Of course, lots of games have a bubbly RO option; maybe it’s just more noticeable when the plotline is such a sharp contrast.
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I think you hit the nail on the head here - there’s a bubbly RO in serious-toned narratives so there’s a bubbly RO for people who favour bubbly ROs.
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Something I’ve started noticing and kind of getting tired of lately is that a lot of fantasy stories seem hell-bent on portraying humanity as the worst possible people out of all other races in the given world. Oh sure, other races will have their shitty moments as well, maybe they’ll be discovered to be responsible for horrible things, but this will almost always be seen as shocking and unthinkable.
Humanity, on the other hand, will just be constantly doing awful crap and constantly be acting like bastards day in and day out, to the point where a human who doesn’t act that way catches people’s attention for how much of a rarity they are.
For example: in Dragon Age, the Dalish elves are portrayed as these poor picked on nomads, even after it’s revealed that they ultimately threw the first punch that put them in that position (the Battle of Red Crossing, specifically). Dwarves are an isolationist people mired in their own backwards politics, on top of having to deal with the Darkspawn right literally on their doorstep all the time. The Qunari are seen as a terrifying race, but when you finally get one to open up about their society (they have a frustrating habit of being all, “it’s not my job to teach you not to be narrow-minded”, which is fair, but it makes it hard to learn anything about their society), they paint themselves as sorely misunderstood, even though Iron Bull in Inquisition clarifies that, no, actually, everybody is right to be concerned, Qunari society is extremely restrictive towards certain groups.
Meanwhile, humanity? The Tevinter Imperium thinks nothing of blood magic and slave-having, Orlais is up its own ass at all times and loves political backbiting to death, Ferelden is just utterly screwed as a kingdom, half by their own people and half by the world around them being out for their blood, really, it’s a wonder they’re even still standing after three games…
That’s just one example, but trust me, I know of a few more. I just don’t want to spend an hour typing it all out, is all.
Like, come on, I get that humanity sucks in real life, I’m kinda reading these stories to, you know, NOT have to be reminded of that constantly? It’s a fantasy story, you have the power to make humans the good guys for once. Or if not the good guys, necessarily, at least make them neutral, make them just, “these people exist, and that’s okay.” But damn, why does humanity’s defining trait in fantasy always have to be that they’re horrible bastards?
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I’ve always found it funny when humans are supposedly the oppressors in any given fantasy world where elves and dwarves all have unfair advantages. Doesn’t really apply to Dragon Age, but in general, I get a chuckle out of the immortal, magical, experienced, and skilled elves complaining that humans are oppressing them. If they’re somehow pulling that off, you’re doing something wrong.
But to piggyback off your post, that was my problem with that show The Dragon Prince. The elves exiled humanity because one shmuck discovered dark magic, put a giant lightning-breathing dragon on the border to indiscriminately slaughter any human who tries to pass, have tons of powerful magic, and are currently encroaching on human territories (something they’d kill humans for doing), with military operations and fire breathing dragons… And yet humans are the ones portrayed as intolerant, cruel, and warmongering. In part because they killed the dragon that killed who knows how many of them.
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The crossdressing serial killer with hairy legs, a bad wig and badly applied lipstick. A disgusting, overused trope that promotes transphobia.
“bUt he’S noT aCkshuaLly suPposEd tO Be tra-”
STFU -
Not a trope, but a pet peeve (this isn’t meant to be taken too seriously, but yeah, it’s a bit annoying):
Dear Writers,
my MC always has red hair. Not “red” as in ginger, but as red as it gets. The reddest red to ever have redded. I know you love pointing out the red hair of other characters, especially in place of their name or pronouns, to avoid repetition. I know you love using the term “redhead”, because you think it’s a distinct feature of this one other character. Except it’s not. If it’s just the narrator doing this - okay. But it gets really immersion breaking, if characters actually start emphasizing and pointing out the redness of another person’s hair. While my MC - with even redder hair (trust me, it really is the reddest) - is standing right next to them. It pulls me out of the moment and makes me realize I’m not actually in the story universe and they can’t really see my MC.
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Funny story, I have a habit of always, always, ALWAYS portraying red-haired people as the heroes of their given story. Hell, I even have a protagonist whose hair is white, but it’s supposed to be red (a wack-ass anomaly of space and time messed up her DNA and wound up turning her hair white, among other things - she can now shrug off everything from being hit by a truck to being blown the hell up with only minor scratches that heal nigh-instantly, for example, and has been forced to live something like a thousand lives within the span of mere minutes, which has given her quite the combat repertoire).
For me, my peeve about hair is primarily that the expectation is on the reader to know what the listed hairstyles are - no description for them whatsoever, just the name of the hairdo and you’re on your own to figure out what that looks like if you’ve never seen it before in your life. I didn’t realize it bugged me so bad until I read that Sherlock Holmes WIP on here, and the author took the time to throw in some general descriptors about how hair looks that made me suddenly go, “oh, wow, I never knew how badly I hated not having proper hair descriptions until this exact moment.”
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That’s because this is forever humanity’s advantage. Elves live forever and have super-duper magic, dwarves are long lived and are super-duper fighters. Orcs breed like rabbits and are super-duper fighters. Humans are mean as fuck as a survival trait, and heavens help you if you get in their way.
As I said, it’s not “how come humans are the bastards if it’s everyone else that has got the super-duper powers”, it’s “humans are bastards EXACTLY because everyone else has got super-duper powers.”
If you want to check out a (non-CoG) game called Solasta, the elves are nazis and humans are refugees.
JK R+wling has entered the chat
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Hmm, I gotta disagree on that one. While there’s too damn many stories about humans being the bad guys forever and always, there’s a number of stories where that’s not true, and humanity gets by just fine without that cruelty. In fact, a lot of times, humanity’s big trait is that they’re adaptable and quick learners.
The most obvious example is Tolkien: humans in Middle-Earth lack the long lifespans, master archery, and magical prowess of the elves. They’re not as hardy as dwarves. A well-trained orc can completely ruin them. And yet, it’s the human kingdom of Gondor who keeps vigil over Mordor’s borders in order to stop them from trying anything funny. Additionally, human rangers are demonstrated, time and again, as a force to be reckoned with. The Lord of the Rings video game War in the North features a three-man team consisting of an elven mage, a dwarven warrior, and a human ranger, and they’re all evenly matched across the board with one another. Hell, if we count the Shadow games to be canon, then one human ranger with two brain cells to knock around (and, okay, yeah, his elven ghost buddy is there too) can cause utter havoc in the orcs’ ranks.
And to jump back to Dragon Age for a sec, in Inquisition, the available races usually have a perk or two - dwarves can’t be mages, but gain a boost in magic defense because of this. Elves have better ranged defense. Qunari have better physical defense on account of being literal giants (well, compared to everybody else, I mean. Literal giants are even bigger than them).
Humans get an extra skill point right off the bat, which means that a human learns new abilities faster than any other playable race.
And one more example, which one could argue is technically more sci-fi, but I choose to see it as science-fantasy, myself:
Destiny features three playable races - humans, who are humans, big surprise; Awoken, who used to be humans, but then they got hit by ~ S P A C E M A G I C ~; and Exo, who are humans that became robot people. Sure, you can make the argument that they’re all technically humans, but there’s enough of a difference between the three that they may as well be their own races. Gameplay-wise, there is zero gap in skill or ability between any of them, and considering the enemies that humans, Awoken and Exo all have to deal with, humanity is actually pretty damn buff in the scheme of things.
And humanity is played up as neither the good guy, nor the bad guy - they’re just humans, trying to survive after their civilization got ruined by the Darkness. That’s all.
So, yeah, I’m not sold on the claim that humans have to be assholes in order to keep up with everybody else, the math doesn’t quite add up for me.
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Unfortunately, Tolkien works against you. Humans are constantly falling under the sway of the enemy, they constantly betray each other for personal gain, and they are specifically stated as being easily corruptible (except Aragorn’s lineage, because Tolkien never met a monarch whose ass he didn’t want to kiss). The Elves could continuously kick humanity’s ass, except that they can’t EXACTLY because they were so skilled and powerful that they became the target of Melkor’s plans.
And it, you’ll notice, fails miserably. Sauron, who isn’t even Tolkien’s big bad (that’d be Melkor), runs several circles around them.
Human rangers are literally dudes who were trained by elves, because Tolkien elves are just better than everyone by design. Like, I’m not even kidding: Tolkien elves are just BETTER than everyone else, explicitly, at everything. Everything good of note that humans accomplish is due to being tutored by the elves to do it. And the elves STILL do it better than they did.
And this all runs into the problem that Tolkien was creating a deterministic universe, meaning that things happen because Eru Iluvatar wants them to happen, and not for any other reason like “ability” or “facts” (example: why elves start out first even though dwarves were created earlier).
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Well, shit. Evidently, I haven’t read as much Tolkien as I should have.
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TBF, “the universe is deterministic and fuck free will” only comes up in The Silmarillion, which is an absolutely terrible read, like the part where Tolkien spends about half a page describing the dresses of the god-wives, only three of whom ever actually show up, and only two of those three ever do anything other than “exist”, or the part where he stops the narrative for an entire chapter to tell you where each elven kingdom is located.
Seriously, never read The Silmarillion - if you want info on the Before Times of Middle-Earth, read the wiki instead, or the other books like The Children of Hurin or The Fall of Gondolin. In fact, I recommend The Fall of Gondolin regardless, as it features the kick-assest of elves and pretty much the only one whose name you won’t confuse with anyone else’s - Ecthelion of the Fountain.
Orcs and goblins are faster breeders, and “numbers” isn’t as important in most fantasy writings where stuff like “fireball” is an option in any case. The existence of mass-killing abilities severely depreciates the value of a numerical advantage.
That’s not what I’m referring to, though. Eru at one point literally says that everything happens because he wills it to happen that way.
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I’ve loved the Silmarillion since I was a kid. 
It’s an absolutely foundational text for the whole idea of fantasy “worldbuilding”… and like a lot of foundation texts, it’s a weird and often frustrating read for people who’ve grown up on the conventions of the genre built on that foundation.
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