#Bohemia Interactive

[gebo4482]

Someday You'll Return: Director's Cut - Launch Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games

Website / Steam

[gamingamigos]

Bohemia Interactive Reports 34% Revenue Growth in 2024

Bohemia Interactive, the largest game studio in the Czech Republic and renowned for the Arma series, announced a 34% revenue increase, reaching $60.8 million for the financial year 2024. This growth was driven by key game expansions and new releases across multiple platforms. Co-founder and CFO Slavomír Pavlíček expressed his satisfaction with the year’s performance, saying it “exceeded all…

[savingcontent]

Bohemia Interactive announces the "Make Arma Not War 2025" contest for Arma Reforger and shares record player numbers

Continue reading Bohemia Interactive announces the “Make Arma Not War 2025” contest for Arma Reforger and shares record player numbers

[twohitgames]

SkyVerse continúa en desarrollo y revela nuevos detalles

Bohemia Interactive anuncia su colaboración con Enjoy Studio a través de su sello editorial Bohemia Incubator, y desvela el desarrollo de su esperado proyecto SkyVerse. Este innovador título brindará un nuevo enfoque a los géneros de los juegos de rol y sandbox de supervivencia. SkyVerse ofrecerá a los jugadores perspectiva en primera persona y la oportunidad de embarcarse en una aventura única.…

[miketendo-64]

[EXPlay] YLands: Nintendo Switch Edition | Nintendo Switch

The popular survival crafting game YLands has come to the #NintendoSwitch. Jonathan puts his survival and reviewing skills to the test in his latest Explain & Play review.

Welcome to EXPlay, (Explain & Play) the review series where we care not for scores but tell it how it is when it comes to every game we get our hands on, whilst also taking the time to include some lengthy gameplay, to give you the reader, the chance to shape your own impressions and views whilst watching and reading. In this explanatory review, we’re covering YLands: Nintendo Switch Edition by…

[heronetworkgg]

Bohemia Interactive sorprende con la actualización 1.1 de Arma Reforger: Nuevos desafíos, armamento y mejoras en la IA

Bohemia Interactive, el renombrado desarrollador de videojuegos, ha lanzado la actualización 1.1 de Arma Reforger, llevando a los jugadores a nuevas experiencias en el campo de batalla. Esta actualización presenta emocionantes novedades, incluyendo un nuevo modo PvE, mejoras en la IA y un amplio arsenal de armas y equipamiento. La actualización 1.1 introduce “Combat Ops: […]

Ir a la noticia completa

[videogamescreenshotsdaily]

November 19, 2023

Arma Reforger (2022)

[anneangel]

The way Watson in Victorian-era canon says "oh, god, yes! Take me to one of your dangerous cases!" goes like this:

“Well, I don’t like it, but I suppose it must be,” said I. “When do we start?”

“You are not coming.” (Said Sherlock).

“Then you are not going,” said I. “I give you my word of honour, and I never broke it in my life, that I will take a cab straight to the police-station and give you away, unless you let me share this adventure with you".

The way Sherlock in Victorian era canon says "I need a partner!" and like this:

"I think that I had better go, Holmes." Said Watson.

"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it."

"But your client --"

"Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention." (...)

"If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone." Said the client.

I rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me back into my chair. "It is both, or none," said he. "You may say before this gentleman anything which you may say to me."

And other:

With an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when Holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door behind me.

"You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear Watson," he said cordially.

"I was afraid that you were busy."

"So I am. Very much so."

"Then I can wait in the next room."

"Not at all. This gentleman has been my partner and helper in many of my most successful cases, and I have no doubt that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also." [explains Holmes to the client].

The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of greeting, with a quick little questioning glance from his eyes.

"Try the settee," said Holmes to Watson, relapsing into his armchair and putting his fingertips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. "I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle, and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so many of my own little adventures."

[thebiballerina]

She is not a con artist. She is an opponent of Holmes because he investigated her for the wrong reasons. She doesn't use Holmes admiration for her to manipulate him; she uses her intellect to outsmart him. When she does so, he isn't even present, and their main interactions have already concluded. He also doesn't even express this admiration until after she defeats him and is long gone.

Hello, Sherlock Holmes adaptation writer. I have trapped you in this room. It is fully furnished and comfortable. On the table, you will notice a copy of A Scandal in Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of which redistribution is perfectly legal, as the work is in the public domain. You will notice it is rather thin. You have 24 hours to read the approximately 8,550 words in this story. To exit this room, all you must do is summarize the plot of the story without referring to Irene Adler as a seductress or implying she is attracted to Sherlock Holmes. Good luck.

[bra1nw0rmz]

> be me, a Bremen soldier

> spend years of infiltrating the breman army to get revenge for my home town kaiser massacred

> war abruptly stops, Bremen and Bohemia are no longer fighting

> on a train to Prehevil to kill kaiser

> while on the train notice a Bohemian soldier, we’re no longer enemies, no reason to interact

> sit next to him anyway

> m a n s p r e a d

(Just a silly lil warm up sketch)

[uss-edsall]

In a previous post, I spoke of my adoration for ArmA III’s primary campaigns.

The game is ten years old and feature complete, except for “Community DLCs”, that is, third-party expansions given official sponsorship. As such it is unlikely the game will get any further official content. The game’s lore is scattered across every aspect of it - tutorials, challenge scenarios, single-player scenarios (there’s one memorable scene in particular snuck into a free charity event mission), and of course, the campaigns.

Each official DLC added their own singleplayer scenarios, mini-campaigns, etc - aside from the Karts DLC, which started as an April fool’s joke. Some of these campaigns are in and of themselves very neat, if much shorter than the main campaign. I might someday go into detail about them, but for now, I will focus on my favourite, and perhaps, the most important of them all.

Spoilers below.

Preamble

The Laws of War DLC from 2017, four years after the game released and today nearly six years old, came out of a very strange event. The following information comes from this article.

In 2010, the International Committee of the Red Cross began a research project where one man, a Swiss ex-artillery officer, spent two months looking into videogames, and depiction of virtual war crimes. It was not a very important project, not one with priority. Certainly nobody, at the ICRC expected what came next. After he presented his findings at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, news organisations started shitflinging. In attempting to call some small amount of attention on war crimes being portrayed in games (and all too often without the casual player being aware the action in question would be a real life crime), the media took ‘hey, we should be more aware of what we’re depicting’ and went “the Red Cross wants to prosecute six hundred million gamers for war crimes!”

Albeit having to backpedal and go, "no, that's not at all what we meant," the ICRC realised they’d struck a nerve. For the first time, thousands of people were talking about International Humanitarian Law who would otherwise have never touched it. So they sent out letters to major game developers (particularly of shooters) asking if they would like to meet, to talk, to collaborate. Most ignored them. Those that didn’t chose not to reveal they happened; “they think their gamers or their fans will get scared that their games will turn into training courses or that morality, as they say, will take over everything and games will not be about shooting anything anymore.”

One studio didn’t.

One studio was quite interested in collaborating and creating with the Red Cross publicly.

On 3 September 2017, Bohemia Interactive released as a DLC for the military simulator ArmA III…

Laws of War

War does have rules. . . In a firefight, things aren’t easy. . . We just ask you to remember. Actions have consequences.

ArmA III’s Laws of War DLC is the result of that collaboration between the Red Cross and Bohemia Interactive. It adds a fictional Non-Governmental Organisation, International Development & Aid Project (IDAP). Equipment includes a van, a utility drone, press gear, new bags and helmets, and most curiously of all… In order to depict war crimes, they had to add munitions for committing war crimes, in the form of an APERS mine dispenser and cluster bomb munitions for aircraft. ArmA previously hadn't had it, being one of few games to try to avoid including banned weaponry.

“Everyone on the forums says, ‘Yes! Thank you! Give us civilians and humanitarian workers and cluster munitions and we will use these new guns to eradicate as many of the first group as possible . . . But by saying that, it means that they will have consciously been saying, ‘We are going to break the law.’ It means that, even if it's at a very low level, they now have an understanding that there was a law in the first place.”

Those are the bones of the DLC. The meat of it is in the Remnants of War mini-campaign.

Remnants of War

The trailer for the DLC linked at the start telegraphs the intent of the campaign's story. Every side is depicted in the trailer. NATO forces, AAF troops, FIA guerrillas, CSAT spec-ops - they’re all there. All of them are depicted in the midst of conflict, at the cusp of committing a war crime.

The DLC takes place after the end of the primary ArmA campaign. “All’s over but the crying,” right? Not quite, not so. Even now, the actions taken back then have consequences. People are still dying. Questions remain unanswered.

The Brother - 15 August, 2035

The first mission begins with you in the shoes of Markos Kouris, the man on the left above. Five days ago, 10 August, 2035, the short but fierce war 'Altis Incident' that saw Akhanteros overthrown and the nation devastated once more, came to an explosive end. Peace returned to the country, shaky, unstable, but peace all the same. But the memories of the fighting in the fallen rebel stronghold of Oreokastro a year ago remain. The knowledge that your brother Alexis was killed in the fighting only days ago weighs heavily - now that the war is over, perhaps you can enter the obliterated town, find his remains, and bring him home for the last time.

When you step close to the ruined church, a hidden landmine triggers, detonating, and killing you - killing Markos Kouris, one more victim of the destruction of Oreokastro.

The EOD Expert - Several Days Later

You next take the role of a man named Nathan MacDade. A middle-aged American, he is a former marine who fought in Chernarus in 2009 (ArmA II), and after leaving the military, joined IDAP as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician. His job is to find unexploded ordnance (UXO) and safely disarm it, or failing that, detonate it safely without harm to human life. He’s good at his job, and has been at it for over twenty years. He’s on a voice call with Katherine Bishop, a journalist pursuing the story of Oreokastro.

As Nathan explores the town, he’ll find mines to defuse, unexploded ordnance to disarm, tripwires and hidden explosives… and several flashbacks. During these flashbacks to earlier events, Nathan MacDade narrates, speaking to Katherine Bishop asking questions, together depicting the various actions you can choose to do. If you take up arms as a civilian he’ll comment on it; if you choose to execute wounded combatants he’ll condemn it; so on and so forth. She'll share a draft of her article at the end of the campaign, which changes depending on the actions you take within it.

From here on out the DLC can be taken in non-chronological order. The flashbacks can be done in whichever order you find them. For the purposes of this post I will write of them in order of events.

The Peacekeeper - 28th May, 2034

Nathan’s been to Oreokastro before. Prior to the ‘Altis Incident’, IDAP had an aid camp within the town. As unrest in the nation grew stronger and bullets began to fly between the dictatorship’s troops and FIA guerrillas once more trying to fight for freedom, it became clear that aid supplies would not get to Oreokastro by land. They’d be ambushed or stolen, by both guerrilla forces and government troops. Thus, you put on the combat boots of an American peacekeeper of Task Force Aegis, Staff Sergeant Adams. The peacekeepers are unable to prevent the conflict, but they do arrange for aid supplies, IDAP priority, to be airdropped in. You drive around to collect aid supplies dropped by parachute, and defending some against a guerrilla attack. This is a short and simple mission.

ArmA is no stranger to the dangers of the remnants of war. Staff Sergeant Adams’ role is swift but deadly in the main campaign; he is your commander in the first mission, leading you to safety when TF Aegis is attacked… until he steps on a landmine, injuring you (Corporal Kerry), and killing him, leaving a terrified logistics driver to make his way alone out of the minefield and find allies in the CTRG.

The Guerrilla - 30th September, 2034

After NATO was pressured to begin withdrawal from the Republic of Altis & Stratis by Colonel Akhanteros (on the orders of his new CSAT puppet masters), the civil war began to truly heat up. Kostas Stavrou, a charismatic leader, took the reins of the FIA guerrillas. He encouraged the citizens of Oreokastro to rise up and take control of the town, with its high ground and natural terrain advantage, and turn it into a fortress.

As the Altis Armed Forces (AAF) lay siege to the town, the guerrillas prepare. One such guerrilla is Alexis Kouris, the brother Markos was searching for. In his flashback he lays mines on the road to Oreokastro - mines that you as Nathan MacDade just disarmed - and search the town for vehicles to use as roadblocks (one of which can be an IDAP van, which is a crime to do in and of itself, using humanitarian aid and stealing from humanitarian organisations for war purposes).

The roadblocks work. The mines work. The AAF’s offensive is frustrated…

… and so Akhanteros orders a brutal measure to gain victory.

The Redacted - 13 October 2034

You take the shoes of a CSAT special forces team - supposedly. Paradropped behind the guerrilla lines into the castle ruins overlooking Oreokastro, the three-man team silently eliminate the guerrilla sentries and set up an overwatch position on the town. They observe - and use a laser designator to call in a cluster bomb airstrike. It matters little who lives or dies, as long as you don’t directly hit the IDAP camp - though there’s an optional objective to try to avoid hitting an IDAP doctor in the town. Akhanteros wants the town obliterated for rising up against him so successfully.

The airstrike comes in and destroys everything. Roadblocks go up in smoke and flame; buildings collapse; men are eviscerated; and the AAF offensive begins.

This mission is the most blatant crime. Over a hundred countries banned the use of cluster munitions in 2008. Dozens die at minimum due to your actions as the faceless CSAT soldier who designated the target.

Faceless… CSAT… or are you so faceless? Are you so explicitly the Designated Enemy Faction?

“Idunno…” goes Nathan. “There were shell casings, found at the castle.” Strange. CSAT weaponry are explicitly caseless, and don’t leave behind brass. “NATO mil-spec.” Albeit you are depicted using a CSAT camouflaged laser designator in-mission, outside of it, the flashback trigger is a NATO sandy brown.

As the flashback ends, the three CSAT troops turn into the forms of Captain Miller and two other members of NATO’s CTRG.

The Survivor - 13 October, 2034

Heavily injured by the cluster bomb munitions, you take control of Markos Kouris from the beginning. The town is rubble; smoke, fire, and fog alike covers everything; the overcast skies fully block the sun. AAF forces and guerrillas fight a vicious and horrendously chaotic gunfight through the streets. Your objective is simply to survive, to escape to the IDAP camp. You are an unarmed civilian and a non-combatant… though you can choose to take up arms from the dead and join the fight. this flashback ends with getting to the IDAP camp for medical aid.

Oreokastro is ruined, depopulated. The rebellion here is over. As soon as it is safe to do so, IDAP too abandons the town, forced to vacate by the AAF.

There is nothing more they can do for the dead, after all.

The Major - 8 August, 2035

Ten months later, the Altis Incident is coming to a brutal end. The U.S. 111th Infantry Division heads NATO’s vengeance, supported by the FIA guerrillas. Two AAF soldiers, Major Gavras and his assistant Kostas Dimitriou, head into Oreokastro. AAF forces across the island are being overwhelmed. Gavras hopes making a stand in Oreokastro will buy time for other forces, drawing NATO units away from Kavala and other AAF strongholds. With NATO owning the skies there is little to no way to get reinforcements; Gavras’ forces are decimated, and the extraction helicopter is shot down. Gavras elects, then, to make a final stand in the church where the IDAP camp used to be.

You are Kostas, and you are faithful to your leader. If this is where you die, so be it - but you’re not going quietly. Knowing it is a cruel thing to do you deploy three APERS mine dispensers as a seperate act. There seems no other way to inflict as many casualties as possible on the attackers. They succeed. Somehow they survive the battle - through a storm of shot and shell, you kill or incapacitate all the guerrillas and American soldiers who attack the church. Surprisingly, the AAF manages to send a rescue helicopter that extracts the two of you.

Major Gavras is the reason the AAF held out for three days against the full might of a vengeful American and NATO force, not just one. He survived the war. He even was part of the peace process. He also gave IDAP the location of the mines he had his assistant plant in that near-final stand at the church.

Gavras and Kostas killed Alexis Kouris in that stand in Oreokastro. So, too, did they indirectly kill Markos Kouris, who stepped on one of Kostas’ mines searching for his dead brother. Their actions had consequences.

Who’s To Blame?

This ends the flashbacks, and little remains of the campaign. Katherine Bishop has one more question for Nathan MacDade.

“Now, there's just one last question I'd like to ask you. It's subjective, so, take your time. In your opinion, who's most to blame for all the suffering in Oreokastro? NATO? The guerrillas? CSAT? The Altis Armed Forces? Or, I don't know, something else?”

Who is responsible for Oreokastro? Who killed this town? Who’s to blame? Who is, if any one can be? Can anyone even be blamed at all?

You choose.

Every option leads to different thoughts from Nathan’s part. Perhaps one faction of them is higher than the rest in terms of blame. Perhaps together they form some sort of collective blame that, in the end, leaves everyone with no clear answer as to who to point a finger at, all dissatisfied, ashamed of themselves and angry at others.

NATO is to blame - “They had the capacity to make a difference, y'know? The airdrops were helpful, but it was never enough. And, ultimately? Their invasion caused more bloodshed. If they'd just had the guts to stay in the first place? A lotta killing could have been avoided…” The peacekeepers of Task Force Aegis failed to accomplish their mission. They didn’t have the influence to peacefully keep the peace without shots fired; they didn’t have the strength to keep peace by force of arms; their leaders didn’t have the guts to stay when demanded to leave. The NATO invasion led to even more deaths, once more devastating the FIA guerrillas (in a friendly fire incident, Kostas Stavrou was killed by a NATO air attack, too). Not to mention the suspicions of NATO spec-ops being responsible for the cluster bomb attack… Oreokastro is a monument to NATO’s sins.

CSAT is to blame - “That cluster strike? It took the whole thing to the brink - and with so little to gain from such a terrifying show of force. The whole thing's felt like a power-play from the get-go. One big pissing contest. It always is…” There was a shaky peace after the original Altis civil war ended in 2030. It held for four years. It only devolved back into civil war after Akhanteros got cozy with CSAT. They looked the other way when the AAF committed atrocities; they were the ones who supposedly carried out the airstrike. Unknown to Nathan, the entire struggle that eventually led to Alexis and Markos Kouris’ deaths are due to CSAT’s testing of the Eastwind Device, and the CTRG’s attempts to capture it.

The Altis Armed Forces are to blame - “It's one thing fighting against a resistance - it's another to make the civilian population pay for it. As they clung on to power, they wound up scarring the very country they'd pledged to protect…” Perhaps the most direct perpetrators of all the violence. Ceasefire agreements violated; their leader being the ultimate authority who called for the cluster bombing; they punished the weak and innocent along with those who chose armed resistance, cruelly harming the populace for the actions of a few. An army of thugs acting on the orders of a thug, caring not about the atrocities committed in the moment, the unexploded ordnance and mines left for generations of Altians to suffer from.

The FIA guerrillas are to blame - “They hid themselves among the population. These guys didn't give a damn about what it cost. They wanted power, and would do anything to get it…” The guerrillas incited the armed conflict. Though they seemingly had a moral high ground, the guerrillas resorted to underhanded tactics that violated the laws of war, even targeting humanitarian aid and taking from relief efforts for their own ends..

All sides played a part - Oreokastro’s destruction was not solely one side, one group, one man to blame. “No one side can be held accountable for the bloodshed here. No one action got us where we are now. And the folks here in Oreokastro? They're the ones that've suffered. This is the reality. This is war.” The citizens of Oreokastro paid that ultimate price, whether they wanted to or not, just more victims of a great power proxy struggle and more local regional conflicts alike.

Choose.

You’ve seen every side, parts of it at least. All throughout, no matter which side you thought was most responsible, the primary theme of the DLC remains consistent: Actions have consequences.

No matter what you think, the dead are dead and will never return.

Nathan MacDade says farewell to Katherine Bishop. The mines and UXOs in Oreokastro have been defused, and it’s time to move on. Oreokastro has become a silent mausoleum, as the IDAP vehicles drive away. A ruined city on a hill for all to behold and contemplate - or to forget, as all things are doomed to be.

There are other Oreokastros in this devastated country. There are more mines to disarm, more UXOs defuse, more potential casualties to prevent from a war long ended - more atrocities left behind in the sands of time.

Just as in Oreokastro, there may never truly be a definitive answer as to what happened in those places.

Real Life Consequences

The Laws of War DLC was made in collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and thus half the initial sales were donated to the ICRC. That came up to $176,667 USD; pretty respectable for a $10 DLC.

The community has a high number of people who, as was mentioned in a quote early in this post, reacted to the addition of a humanitarian aid NGO and medical vehicles with, "great, more things to commit war crimes on." The comments on the trailer are rife with them. But as a Bohemia Interactive employee put it:

"We knew this DLC's theme might seem a bit unusual, but we also felt that it has a rightful place in a game like Arma 3 . . . what has made it even more amazing to see the immense level of player support for the Laws of War DLC, which really shows again how both games and the gaming audience have matured. If you also consider that some of our players are in the military or might pursue a military career in the future, then we're glad this DLC has been able to increase awareness for this important topic. And being able to also make a financial contribution to the ICRC's efforts is a great bonus."

[sarnie-for-varney]

Holmes interacts with flowers twice in The Naval Treaty. One of which he admires, and the other he gives to Mrs. Hudson as a sign of gratitude.

I find it fascinating how he can pretend to be so unfeeling and purely logical, yet he allows himself to see the beauty in things as romantic and simple as music or flowers. Holmes handles the rose (in the left picture) so tenderly. In this scene, he is confronted for becoming distracted and even seems to have forgotten about the case entirely. Holmes finds comfort in nature (even if he pretends he hates it), as we see later in the episode:

Both interactions with flowers are in the presence of other people. It's as though Holmes can justify affection, but only if it is directed towards an object and not a person. Perhaps because he knows said object cannot reciprocate those feelings. When he gives Mrs. Hudson a flower, he's showing his affection for her through it instead of to her directly.

In a way, I feel as though Holmes expresses his love through acts of service as we see him give others gifts, like when he gives Watson his favourite type of cigars in A Scandal in Bohemia. I feel he prefers this method as there is less attention on him and his feelings, and more on the gift itself.

[nimwallace]

I think some people might mistake A Scandal in Bohemia as being sexist in overall theme when really, it’s quite the opposite.

Sure, there’s a bit of period appropriate sexism there, nothing too bad, but let’s talk about the feminist elements of the story.

Holmes sees Irene Adler as “The Woman.” The most common (and boring) take is that this is because she is the only female Holmes has ever felt affection/attraction towards.

In reality, Watson makes it very clear why Holmes is so taken with Adler, why they remain friends and why she is the woman to Holmes. It’s because she represents femininity to him, and that femininity is defined by her cleverness, her quiet cunning, her intelligence. Holmes nerds over this woman because he sees her as an equal intellectually—which is not something you could say of most of the men he interacts with. To Holmes, that’s what womanhood should be, what it is at it’s pinnacle. I believe he even makes a comment somewhere in either The Dancing Men or The Five Orange Pips (if anyone remembers this or if I’m misremembering please let me know) about women generally being smarter, especially for knowing when to be quiet and observe. And it isn’t really in a “women should shut up way”. Holmes knows how valuable silence is in the gathering of information, how much of a virtue it can be, how smart it actually is. Remember, this is a man who spends hours upon hours completely still and silent himself.

I just think this dynamic with Holmes and his perception of women and femininity and what it means is so interesting. When Irene Adler becomes the woman, it doesn’t mean she’s the only woman Holmes has ever liked, it means she is the embodiment of a woman. And their subsequent friendship shows a clear mutual respect.

[savingcontent]

Bohemia releases Season 21 "Vigor Bloodline" for their free-to-play extraction shooter Vigor, available now

Continue reading Bohemia releases Season 21 “Vigor Bloodline” for their free-to-play extraction shooter Vigor, available now

[dathen]

The Sherlock Holmes adaptions that insist on Irene Adler being in love with him could not be missing the point harder. In fact, they’re treating Holmes EXACTLY as the King of Bohemia sees himself—of course she would be in love with him! He’s soooo cool and smart and she has no choice but to be smitten! …When her entire interaction with Holmes in this story is him stalking her and breaking into her home. He does absolutely nothing that should endear himself to her, let alone impress her! She is SO much more respectful and polite than he deserves in her letter.

The King’s “oh but she can’t be in love with her husband?? I’m right here??” is meant to be absurd, yet it is EXACTLY what the adaptors do when they insist Irene has to be in love with Holmes instead of Godfrey.

[fafayayarhen]

Yap more about Austria

why am i being enabled

this is a dangerous thing

because allow me to open the subject that it is criminally underwhelming how in the source material little is explored about Austria's relations to the low countries (Netherlands - Luxembourg - Belgium), Portugal, Liechtenstein, Bohemia (later Czechia) and Slovakia, Slovenia, given the extensive reach of the Habsburg reign when they became the running contenders for the imperial throne of Holy Roman emperor

in fact Austria in the series had so much potential to be fleshed out as a dominating force with a lot of connections if Himaruya had delved a little further into the significant role the duchy had been elevated to given how the Habsburg instrumentalised the duchy into their empirical domain, with Vienna as the capital the bigger they expanded

- The low countries before it became Spanish possessions had been another fief in the HRE. The Habsburgs managed to attain it by way of marriage through Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy, the Burgundian monarchs having held the fief beforehand. The succession of the inheritance was through his heir, Philip, who married into the Spanish monarchy. When the thrones were unified under Charles V's ascension as emperor, son of Philip, grandson of Maximilian, that's how Spain got to enjoy the chunk of Habsburg domains similarly to Austria also having access to Spain's New Worlds posessions.

- Bohemia was prominent in claiming the Austrian duchy to better their chances at aiming for the throne. Not only was Ottokar already with a nomination, he was on good terms with the Austrian nobility. In turn, Austria would've been pretty good friends with lil Bohemia at the time before being forcefully ripped apart because a certain SOMEONE wanted to fuck Ottokar over. Bohemia was later another domain grouped into Habsburg possessions later into their long reign.

- Can I mention that as opposed to how the series depicted Liechtenstein to be by herself up till Switzerland found her, the kingdom was another fief in HRE. And of course when our favourite greedy schemers became the powerhouse ruling the empire, the little kingdom was another of their property and Liechtenstein and Austria maintained a fair, amicable relationship all the way to world war one. The only reason the territory was conceded included financial instability where they literally had no money left to help Liechtenstein out, so this battered single parent Austria had no other choice to send his (step) daughter away for Switzerland to take her in.

- Portugal. Was. An. Ally. During the war of the Spanish succession. Portugal and the Dutch, whilst their aim was to weaken the Spanish empire and chip away at their new world possessions, it was a mutual agreement between their coalition and the Austrian Habsburg. Not to mention during the joint-empire situation, Austrian monarchs married into Portuegese line to, some semblance of interaction would've made sense to portray these elements of how ridiculously LARGE the circle of network the Habsburg created.

- Don't get me started on Belgium.

- Did you know she spent some period of time in Habsburg Austria household before gaining independence? Part of the concessions following the war of the Spanish succession; prior to this, the Dutch already rebelled and became their own sovereign after detaching from the low countries. It left Belgium and Luxembourg, and they became Austrian-Netherlands when they reaffirmed their hold over this territory in the bunch of treaties that were signed following the war. So to see not a lick of interaction. Even acknowledgement. Not even EITHER of them ever having a moment with each other is so. Speaking of.

- The Belgian king tried to steal imperial treasure from Austria after WWI. Roderich would've given her and the king hell because they tried taking the order of the golden fleece amongst the other things. Have you any idea how hilarious that would be if Himaruya could depict that in the series? Austria would be so composed about it while taking jabs at her like oh remember the little kingdom who thought herself big daring to loot my treasury? Hmm?

- There is. So much. SO many potentially interesting, diverse elements to explore and grow aph Austria with. This is such a unique character considering this wealthy source of historical significance that played a huge part of reigning the longest and shifting the power balance throughout the continent not once, not twice, but three times because it all started with the over-eager Habsburg family that originated from Switzerland.

- Austria would've been the greatest conman to ever exist because that's how Habsburgs entered the bloody battle for the throne; convenient forgery and embellishment to legitimise their claim and marriage connections that solidified their backing. This prospect of grand ambitions single handedly shaped the way Roderich is as a person that he was empire first before reuniting with his personhood to the original roots of his Austrian self.