History Headscratchers / IncarnationsOfImmortality

* Some, not all, of the concerns above can be addressed by the fact that while the "God" who is the Incarnation of Good is a Christian Deity, the others are not: Mars, Chronos, Thanatos, the three Fate aspects, and Gaea, for example, are from ancient religions that no one has sincerely practiced in over a thousand years. They represent the ''concepts'' of War, Time, Death, Fate, and Nature, which exist everywhere, regardless of whether you believe in the specific deity. There is no place that is outside of their jurisdiction. Now, obviously, that explanation does not apply to the clearly Christian God, but I'll leave someone else to ponder that.

* So, I'm currently re-reading And Eternity, and I have a huge issue with the Evolutionist/Creationist debate scene. Jolie, who is arguing Creationism, states that dinosaurs didn't exist and the bones the scientists found were just put there by God for laughs. Orlene, who is serving as the juror between the two sides, seems to have no problem with this statement. This was really aggravating when you realize that Gawain, her host husband was killed by AN ALLOSAURUS, A DINOSAUR!

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**** Even taking into account that what Satan does, and certain Incarnations, affects the whole world, it doesn't seem either fair or sensible for people who don't even believe in the Christian God to be voting on whether He should be replaced. For one thing there's the LogicBomb of how you can vote about someone you don't even believe exists, and then there's the whole issue of religious rivalry, past atrocities leading to resentment and grudges, those who think religion itself is wrong/stupid/dangerous, all of whom would have plenty of good reason to sabotage the Incarnations' efforts so as to make their deities supreme, get revenge, save the world from the "opiate of the masses", and so on. Far better to leave it up to those whom it actually matters to. If those not voting don't even believe God and Satan exist, then they would think the whole vote be a ridiculous charade, and if they do but choose not to acknowledge/worship them, then God's followers wouldn't accept the non-Christians' votes anyway--it's an internal matter. Those who follow other deities would likely believe they would save them anyway (or they'd just get reincarnated and the world doesn't matter anyway), and those who don't believe at all would probably consider the amount of evil and destruction in the world to be no worse whether there's a Satan/derelict God in charge or not.

* Heck, if that's the only thing annoying you... So the Senate of the USA impeached god in "...And Eternity". Fine, I'll roll with that. But what about every other country with Christians living there? And every faith has it's own set of incarnations. Fine too... Except both Gaia, Satan and Mym are shown to have powers that would affect everyone on the planet (Some of Satan's ploys don't exactly leave the Buddhist safe do they? The black plague didn't check you religion when it infected people).

* [[WeCouldHaveAvoidedAllThis Most of the events of the second half of ''Wielding a Red Sword'' would never have happened]] if one of the other Incarnations had just ''told'' poor Mym that he ''couldn't'' conceive a child with Rapture because the magic of the Incarnation offices prevents ''all'' one's cells from aging, including the reproductive ones. You'd think ''someone'' (particularly Zane, who has a similar girlfriend situation) would have been neighborly enough to tell him.

*** This is explicitly Fate's modus operandi, though; the Fates' most important role in the ThirtyGambitPileup is to arrange love and marriages so that everyone will be hooked together at the right moment for God to get tossed out and Orlene to seize the throne. Zane [[WhatTheHellHero calls them out on it]], but [[OmniscientMoralityLicense sadly, they just brush him off.]]

** i think Chronos was trying not to freak out the new guy with the whole "i live backwards" thing on his first day.

** Nobody tells anyone anything in this series. The most experienced Incarnations (Fate and Gaea) are [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative bitches]] who are willing to let their colleagues ''die'' if that's what it takes to stop Satan. Fate isn't going to tell Mym something if he can mature more by learning it on his own.

*** This is typical of Anthony in general, actually -- cf. Blue Adept and many Xanth novels (Ogre Ogre and GitG especially). Some outside force decides that A and B are "made for each other" and sticks them together to make it happen.

*** This is explicitly Fate's modus operandi, though; the Fates' most important role in the ThirtyXanatosPileup is to arrange love and marriages so that everyone will be hooked together at the right moment for God to get tossed out and Orlene to seize the throne. Zane [[WhatTheHellHero calls them out on it]], but [[OmniscientMoralityLicense sadly, they just brush him off.]]

** In ''For Love Of Evil'', Satan is revealed to be generally good, despite being the Incarnation Of Evil. Perhaps he wants to fight fair. As for re-arranging Heaven by pretending to be God, he would have two problems with that: 1) His issue isn't with Heaven, it's with the CelestialBureaucracy as a whole. He wants to change how good and evil are defined and influencing the angels isn't enough to make that happen. (In "...And Eternity", he says that a joint meeting between himself and God is necessary to change those definitions.) Thus, in order to accomplish anything, he would need to either be God or have a new God to deal with. 2) Although he holds the title of the Father Of Lies, Satan believes in keeping his word when [[IGaveMyWord it is given.]] He made an agreement with the Angel Gabriel that he would abide by the terms of the wager, which states that he must influence the members of Niobe's bloodline. Attempting to influence Heaven would be cheating. (And in any event, Gabriel knows that God is tuned out, so he would most likely see through the charade.)

** No. The wager doesn't just involve him damning the person. The deal was that he had to corrupt or otherwise influence Niobe, or her child, or her grandchild in a way that would enable him to take power from God. Having the Magician's soul in Hell didn't give him any leverage over God, so he didn't win the wager. Furthermore, I'm not sure if "grudge" is the right choice of words. Satan didn't have anything personal against Niobe or her family, he just saw them as means to a larger end.

** No. The wager doesn't just involve him damning the person. The deal was that he had to corrupt or otherwise influence Niobe, or her child, or her grandchild in a way that would enable him to take power from God. Having the Magician's soul in Hell didn't give him any leverage over God, so he didn't win the wager.

* Heck, if that's the only thing annoying you... So the Senate of the USA impeached god in "...And Eternity". Fine, I'll roll with that. But what about every other country with Christians living there? And every faith has it's own set of incarnations. Fine too... Except both Gaia, Satan and Mym are shown to have powers that would affect everyone on the planet (Some of Satan's ploy don't exactly leave the Buddhist safe do they? The black plague didn't check you religion when it infected people).