opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Generally, they don’t end well. 

The good people of Andorra and both of its Co-Princes take offense at your gross stereotyping, sir.

Their data point is noted, as is San Marino and Swaziland.

On the other hand, so are Sparta, Rome, Carthage, and all those legendary Scandinavians who kept killing their brothers.

Generally, they don’t end well. 

WOIAF explains this explicitly: 

“We speak of Nine Free Cities, though across the width of Essos one may find many other Valyrian towns, settlements, and outposts, some larger and more populous than Gulltown, White Harbor, or even Lannisport. The distinction that sets the Nine apart is not their size but their origins. At their height before the Doom, other cities, such as Mantarys, Volon Therys, Oros, Tyria, Draconys, Elyria, Mhysa Faer, Rhyos, and Aquos Dhaen were grand and glorious and rich, yet for all their pride and power, none ever ruled itself. They were governed by men and women sent out from Valyria to govern in the name of the Freehold.”

“Such was never true of Volantis and the rest of the Nine. Though born of Valyria, each was independent of its mother from birth. All but Braavos were dutiful daughters, neither making war upon Valyria nor defying the dragon lords in any matter of significance; they remained willing allies and trading partners of their mother and looked to the Lands of the Long Summer for leadership in times of crisis. In lesser matters, however, the Nine Free Cities went their own ways, under the rule of their own priests and princes and archons and triarchs.”

I’d also add here Pratchett’s masterly prologue to said novel:

poorquentyn:

Sure! They’re an exaggerated omnicidal version of the Unseelie Court, aka the Bad Faeries, to the Children’s Seelie (or Summer) Court.

The faeries of the Seelie Court are rarely presented as an unambiguous good from the perspective of their human neighbors, and neither are the Children. The Unseelie Court and its various inhabitants, however, bring the true nightmares. They require no offense from humanity before attacking (check), they regularly abduct humans into their Horde (check), they enjoy toying with mortals and occasionally taking a particular one as pet (check), and they’ve been known to transform mortals into faeries (possible check). 

Of course, the Others are considerably more destabilizing to the overall cycles of nature than your traditional Bad Faeries, so one must also reckon with the enormous influence of Terry Pratchett, felt all over ASOIAF but especially in the echoes of Pratchett’s Elves in GRRM’s Others:

A land of ice…

Not winter, because that presumes an autumn and perhaps one day a spring. This is
a land of ice, not just a time of ice. 

And three figures on horseback, looking down the snow covered slope to a ring of
eight stones. From this side they look much bigger. 

You might watch the figures for some time before you realised what it was about
them that was strange-stranger, that is, than their clothing. The hot breath of their
horses hung in the freezing air. But the breath of the riders did not. 

“And this time,” said the figure in the centre, a woman in red, “there will be no
defeat. The land will welcome us. It must hate humans now.” 

“But there were witches,” said one of the other riders. “I remember the witches.”

“Once, yes,” said the woman. “But now…poor things, poor things. Scarce any
power in them at all. And suggestible. Pliant minds. I have crept about, my deary. I
have crept about o’nights. I know the witches they have now. Leave the witches to
me.“ 

"I remember the witches,” said the third rider insistently. “Minds like…like
metal." 

"Not anymore. I tell you, leave them to me.” The Queen smiled benevolently at the
stone circle.
“And then you can have them,” she said. “For me, I rather fancy a mortal husband.
A special mortal. A union of the worlds. To show them that this time we mean to
stay." 

"The King will not like that." 

"And when has that ever mattered?" 

"Never, lady." 

"The time is right, Lankin. The circles are opening. Soon we can return." 

The second rider leaned on the saddlehorn.
"And I can hunt again,” it said. “When? When?" 

"Soon,” said the Queen. “Soon." 

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”

Which I remember hitting me like a sledgehammer in the way it elegantly showed how so many of these accolades suggesting beauty, fame, and art have their roots in magical thinking and an instinctive terror of the nobility. 

See here.

skipinouterspace:

racefortheironthrone:

Well, I think you either lean into the rich 70s melange of aliens, cosmic forces, secret societies in fetish-wear copied from The Avengers (UK), allegories about the danger of repressing women’s sexuality and power, crash-landing space shuttles, the Blue Side of the Moon, or you don’t. 

But in so far as it’s related to the social commentary…well, it’s there in places but it’s not in the foreground:

• Jean becomes Phoenix only because the U.S national security state bankrolls Steven Lang’s genocidal Sentinel program, which sets up the aforementioned space shuttle, at a time of intensified “anti-mutant hysteria,” includeding the firebombing of Judge Chalmers’ house. 
• The Hellfire Club as a metaphor for social class and the failure of intersectionality – they’re mutants who are basically pushing the Sentinel program, because they’re so rich and powerful they think they’re above oppression. 
• The cold war between Xavier’s and the Hellfire Club over the soul of Kitty Pryde as a metaphor for whether the Youth of the 70s would follow the idealism of the 60s social movements or selfish Yuppieism/proto-Reaganism.
• Dazzler the Movie and those shenanigans are bang in the middle there. 
• And of course, Days of Future Past lands right after it ends…

Here’s how it fits into the larger thing: if all the X-Men are allegories, if they’re just “representatives of the oppressed” and nothing else they don’t work. You have to start with character – are these heroes people we care about and identify with? – otherwise they’ll come off as cardboard cutouts rather than real people and no one will care about their fictionalized oppression. So the hook, to me, is that the X-Men are super-heroes that, unlike the Avengers or the Fantastic Four, face oppression – but you need both parts: yes, the Sentinels and the Hellfire Club and Genosha and everything else, but also the Shiar and the Juggernaut and giant dragons over Tokyo and the Asgardian Wars, and the Dark Phoenix Saga.

So to me, what makes Dark Phoenix Saga important to the X-Men is that it gives Jean Grey and Scott Summers a emotional arc with weight and depth – it makes them real people. 

omg are the hellfire club neoliberalism 

Yeah, pretty much:

1. With the exception of Donald Pierce, who really should never have been given a membership, they’re all mutants with passing privilege who are willing to promote the Sentinels – up until Nimrod shows up and scares the crap out of them – because it promotes their personal interests; they have no connection to the broader mutant community, let alone the Morlocks.
2. They’ve got that 70s thing of cashing in on the sexual revolution but not the feminist movement or the gay rights movement – the women all get to dress as fetish maids and dommes, but the men are all in their anachronistic-faux-regency-suits which keeps everything safely hetero. (There was a reason why even Warren Worthington III called them “stuffy, yet risqué.”)…although I’ll bet Sebastian Shaw was into some weird-topping-from-below-Samson stuff, given how often he liked to take off his shirt and get punched by big strong guys. 
3. They’re definitely in the 1%. A Club House on Central Park, Shaw Industries, Frost International, Harry Leland’s a corporate lawyer, etc. As Neil Shyminsky put it: “The Hellfire Club isn’t planning to take over the world. One gets the impression that they don’t need to because they already control it.”