#all things europe

[spun-sugar-dreams]

Patras, Greece (by Miltiadis)

[inkycherie]

Paris, France (November 2022)

[heartinhyacinth]

I think one of the funniest tgcf fanfic tropes is the different reunion type where Hua Cheng painstakingly searches every corner of the earth for hundreds of years, exhausting every resource imaginable, following every fraction of lead, but always inevitably comes up empty, only for Xie Lian to randomly walk right through the front door of paradise manor or fall from the sky or smth on a casual Sunday afternoon.

Then Hua Cheng turns or looks up, ready to disperse whoever just had the audacity, and comes face to face with the love of his life who was just dragged there by a magical bracelet or a gifted to him by cowardly gods or used as collateral in the gambling den or whatever other wild thing that would only happen to Xie Lian.

And the best part is when Xie Lian is getting ready to explain himself to the All Powerful Infamous Ghost King, but has to pause and wait as he notes the full-system malfunction that is clearly going on inside Hua Cheng’s head at the moment, judging by the look of pure shock/disbelief on his face lmao

[doberbutts]

Thank you for defending Nazis. They're just little guys. Just misunderstood, with genuine grievances. I noticed you accidentally forgot to defend child rapists. Dumb commies like you are all the same 🙄

Piss on the poor! Also I'm not a commie and never claimed to be one.

[zarla-s]

I saw this post about how Engie was probably born into generational wealth and I can't stop thinking about it.

[patreon]

[elbiotipo]

I also believe that in a "tech level" approach, though of course I dislike that term, trying to get blood out of the stone of pseudo-medieval settings just constrains you. There are plenty of very, very well researched guides to medieval life and technology, mostly about Europe but you will find them about the Islamic world, Eastern Asia, and so on...

but the thing is, even with well researched settings, even with very welcome switches to other historical inspirations, it's just done and tired. We are talking about fantasy, a genre that can encompass the entirety of human imagination, and people always go back to the same time period of 476-1453 like stuck in a time loop, it's maddening.

There is a lot to talk about this but let's focus on tech for a little. Do you know how ingenious bronze age technology was? Did you read about pre-columbian cities and engineering? What about something beyond the Middle Ages, the inventions of the Renaissance or Early Modernity? I think there has been quite a lot on fantasy with industrial technology but it often feels (especially in things like popular RPGs) that it's a couple of steampunk things stacked upon a medieval-inspired world. How about a world that just skips the medieval aesthetics and goes to an industrial revolution?

And since this is fantasy, you can mix and match technology and inventions. What's more, you can explore art styles and philosophies, that's more complex to reflect but very well worth it. There is simply no need to return again and again to the tired aesthetics, true, but you can also learn how technology shaped history and do something more creative about it that researching just the same time period over and over and over.

I think we're just done with castles and plate armor.

[ghelullu]

Half the fandom: "The Ministry is in the USA!"

The Band:

[justbackgroundnoise]

The NWSL’s new CBA finally did what I’ve wanted this league to do for years and it’s about damn time. No draft, no expansion draft, no trades without consent, AND free agency when a contract is up regardless of tenure in the league. A lot of these new things are standard in most other elite women’s professional leagues and it’s sad that it’s taken the NWSL so long to get to this point but amazing to see some of these standard practices finally being put in place! Proud of the athletes for working so hard to make this happen because it’s what they deserve.

It’s worth it to read a bit more about it if you’re interested!

[clinicshamartia]

Why are they spending all this time, energy and money into making a new social media app when they can just bring back MySpace

[hyunpic]

2023 year in review with hyunjin [it’s a wrap] 🎉

[notbecauseofvictories]

I think a lot these days about how much bigger the U.S. is than Europe. I mean, part of this is just working for a European company---I talk to our legal counsel based in Paris, and they forget that California (about 75% the size of all of France) has a new law we have to care about, because---well, that's just a state! who cares about a state! My colleagues regularly refuse to travel to a country that's essentially 3 hours of train travel away, because that's so far! ignoring the fact that I have traveled 4 hours to our sister company within the U.S. and regularly drive 1+ hours to the office. (While that's annoying and I don't advocate for it, it's not necessarily unthinkable, that's my point.)

On my way home, I was listening to an NPR story about the Portugal model of drug diversion. It was a great story, thoughtfully reported and contextualized in the recent backlash against decriminalization in the U.S.---but their point of comparison with Portugal was New Jersey. Because they're about the same size, the Republic of Portugal and one of the smallest states in my nation. I just think that when we ask ourselves why things work differently in different countries, "literally, physically different" should occasionally feature in the conversation.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

George Harrison - My Sweet Lord

[inkycherie]

A little village in France.

[inkpotsprite]

Just thinking about that trial in Paris. Louis and Claudia vs Lestat. They really never had a chance. Not just because the whole thing was rigged and everyone made sure their punishment was inevitable; but because it was two black people against a white man in the 1940s. They never would have won. Which just adds another layer of tragedy to the whole thing.

[shortnotsweet]

HEAD HEART HANDS: “TURNING A NEW PAGE”

Charlotte is hardwired for realism. It’s a hefty task, given the present company and the dubious physics that have kept them all alive for the past few years, but if a resume could receive an A+, her feats in risk assessment and time-sensitive innovation deserved it. Charlotte would know; she installed the updates herself. Still, with the leader of their trio absent and Jasper dealing with impossibilities on the side, the biggest challenge these days is seeing eye-to-eye.

[ Jasper and Charlotte discuss Henry’s leave of absence, as well as his radio silence. ]

The mythology of Greek craftsman, inventor, and architect Daedalus has been cited by a variety of sources, including Homer, Pliny the Elder (Pliny’s Natural History, AD 77-79), and Plato, the latter of which interpreted his inventory and intellect as a parallel for the pursuit of truth. Pliny credited him with the invention of carpentry, as well as ship sails and masts, in addition to sculptures so lifelike they may as well have been animated; his genius was so evident that life was born into the wood. The most famous of his feats, however, was the tale of wings constructed out of wax, and the fall of his son, Icarus, into the sea.

It’s one thing to live in pursuit of knowledge. It’s not like that’s a bad thing, per se. Plenty of people do, and are perfectly content people with no lingering emotional or psychological hangups. That being said, the itch of knowing and the object of doing are not the same. For doctors who treat the sick in the morning and the engineers who study maths to reach the moon, knowledge alone is poor sustenance. For years—too early—invention has been a means of civic duty. She is too clever to fall into the sea unplanned, but she’s not heartless. She’ll make them wings, and a parachute. She left Harvard and the future she’d made for herself to follow the people she loved. Love—to the point of modification. To the point of invention.

[markantonys]

some people are sooooo annoying. thinking that fantasy characters in a pre-industrial society can only dress in one certain way and getting mad when a show actually attempts something a little more unique & visually distinctive is a you problem, not a WOT costuming problem.

as for lanfear specifically, her costumes are SUPPOSED to feel strangely modern, that's literally the point seeing as she is from an entirely different and super high-tech society. but the aes sedai too, like...........it's a FANTASY world, why on earth should they adhere to our ideas of what people dressed like in medieval europe? who the hell are you to say if something is "too modern" for a COMPLETELY MADE UP world? shut up

(also, if we are being technical, wotworld is post-apocalyptic, not medieval, which the first person should know even if the second person has no idea what wot is and is just passing judgments based on their own assumptions of what All Fantasy Shows should look like)