#why are trains in poland so weird

[roach-in-a-box]

a demoman doodle i coloured while on the train (reference under cut)

[woso-dreamzzz]

Leaving VII

Alexia Putellas x Teen!Reader

Summary: Olympic chaos with your sister

Y/NPutellas.S has started a live video. Click to join!

"-Got two backpacks," You're saying as Alexia clicks on your video," I think one of them might become my racket bag because the one I'm using right now is falling apart."

You shove the bags away, glancing around the space as you drag more towards you.

"There's a toiletry bag as well which is full of stuff I probably won't even use."

You pause as you scroll through the comments.

"What sport am I competing in? Oh, I'm doing tennis...Who will be the hardest to play against? Iga, always. I train with her most of the time and I think I've only beaten her a few matches this year. She's scary. Coco always gives me a good competition too. I think she text me a few hours ago but I haven't answered just yet."

You go back to showing off your haul.

You're very complimentary of all of the shoes but you seem confused as to why you've been given so many socks.

Alexia takes a screenshot of a weird face you make while trying on the bucket hat and hastily makes it her profile picture.

"I'm not a fan of the opening skirt," You tell your followers," It's not really my style. I'll wear it because I have to but...What's that? My sister's here?"

You crowd a bit closer to your phone, brows furrowed as you scroll up looking for Alexia's comments.

She feels triumphant at the look of horror on your face when you see her profile picture.

"Alexia!" You shriek," Change it back! My eyes aren't even open! Ale, please!"

Alexia does not change it back and you swear under your breath at her.

"I'm telling Mama!"

Alexia Putellas: Go ahead, you little snitch

"I'm not a snitch!"

Alexia Putellas: Yes, you are

"Don't listen to her guys! She's such a liar!"

You've always been more active on social media than Alexia and fans eat up any content you post on your TikTok. Most of your fans are just people that watch tennis but you've gone viral overnight when you posted a video of you and Iga reuniting at the Olympic Village.

Suddenly, everyone wants content from you and you're posting more than you ever have before.

A lot of it still centres around your tennis, out on the practice courts with the rest of team Spain but there's more domestic things like you retaping your racket grip and showing off everything in the Olympic Village.

Something in Alexia snaps when you make a video complaining about how uncomfortable your cardboard bed is. Suddenly, she's stitching your video.

Her camera pans across her normal hotel bed and ends with her giving a thumbs up to the camera with a smug grin on her face.

Her own fans go crazy over her posting something outside of sponsorships and it's strange to see that some people don't even know who you are.

woso.alexia.engen: Who was the first person in the video???? -> captainklittle: Alexia's little sister! She's representing Spain for tennis!

A second stitch appears hours later, piggybacking off a video of you complaining about your lack of AC. There's no sound apart from the very deliberate flick of Alexia's own AC switch.

It seems every complaint you post, Alexia finds a way to show off how much better she has it in a hotel outside of Paris.

You decide, perhaps a little pettily, to show off what she's missing.

"Hi, guys!" You say," I know a lot of people were wondering about pin trading so I thought I would bring you along for the ride! I've already got a Poland one from Iga and a US one from Coco but I've been wanting a Team GB one and I'm also meeting up with Paolini so she can give me an Italy one."

It's another live video and thank god there's a break in training, so Alexia can jump onto it again.

Jenni and Misa crowd around her at the same time, curious as to what's going on with you.

"I was talking to Carlos at breakfast and he was telling me that the coaches have ordered us all mattress toppers because the beds have started to affect how we're performing."

Alexia Putellas: Sucks to be you, doesn't it?

"Alexia, I swear to god if you keep bullying me then I'm telling Mama and she'll fly out to whoop your ass!"

Alexia Putellas: 🤪

"And Jenni I knew that it's you that just sent that because Alexia doesn't understand emojis."

"Fuck," Jenni mutters.

"Wait, give me the phone. I'll fix it," Misa says.

Alexia Putellas: Who's Jenni?

"Misa, I know that's you as well. Stop trying to cover for each other and I'll tell Mama and she'll whoop all of you."

Alexia doesn't get her phone back for the rest of your live but she does get a strongly worded text from Eli after it's over to grow up and not let her friends bully you.

Alexia calls you a snitch.

You remind her that she should stop bullying you.

"Look who it is!" Jenni cajoles as you come running out of the village to crash into Alexia," Baby Putellas!"

But you're not really listening to her as Alexia presses her forehead against yours, whispering fast Catalan to you as you giggle.

"Aw..." Misa continues where Jenni left off," Look at them! Two sisters! Reunited!"

You and Alexia push each other away, turning your back and pretending that you weren't hugging just a few moments ago.

You turn back to her quickly, hand out. "Can I have your pins?"

"What? No! They're mine!"

"You're not even in the Village! You can't use them!"

"Yes I can!" Alexia splutters out," I've been trading them!"

"Yeah? With who?"

"Jenni!"

"Liar! You've got the same pins! Come on, Ale. Give them over!"

"I will...for a price."

As Alexia lays out her terms, you bring everyone up to your room.

Jenni and Misa split off briefly to check out the dining hall but Alexia comes straight up with you.

"It's actually cardboard," She says, poking at your bed frame.

"Yeah? Do you think we were all lying about that? It's proper cardboard. You can draw on it if you want."

A smile splits your sister's face open.

"Never mind. I don't want you drawing on my bed."

Alexia pokes it. "Do you think it's true? That two people can't get on it at the same time?"

You shrug, rummaging through your bedside table. "I don't know. Why?"

You never get your answer though.

Arms are around your waist suddenly and you're being hauled backwards as Alexia slams herself onto your bed, dragging you back with her.

You may not get an answer but Alexia certainly does because the moment the two of you land, there's an almighty ripping noise and your bed goes to ground very quickly.

"Oops," You sister says.

"Alexia!"

"Sorry?"

"You don't sound very sorry at all."

"Yeah...You're right. I'm not sorry in the slightest. Hey! Stop hitting me!"

"You're lucky I'm not beating you with my rackets!"

"Hey. Hey! It's fine! You can get a new bed."

"Jenni and Misa are going to take the piss out of me! How could you do this, Ale?"

As annoying as your sister is, she at least has the decency to push the blame off onto her friends as you both hastily raise your bed up again and wait for Jenni and Misa to arrive.

They seem to have the same idea as Alexia, jumping onto your bed without so much of a greeting.

But, as planned, the bed collapses under them and the shock of their faces is enough for Alexia breaking your bed to be worth it. Their faces are even funnier as they head downstairs to ask for a new one for you.

Behind your back, Alexia passes you a handful of pins.

JenniHermoso10 has started a live video. Click to join!

"Forward! Forward!"

"I am going forward!"

"More forward! When I say forward, it doesn't mean shuffle! It means walk forward! You're a person not a pigeon!"

"And here we have Olympic football player Alexia Putellas and Olympic tennis player y/n Putellas, attempting to climb onto the rings," Jenni narrates from behind the camera.

"It's not going well," Misa says, as Alexia nearly throws you from your spot on her shoulders," Alexia is clearly struggling."

"I'm not struggling!" Alexia insists, yelping as you twist her hair in your hands.

"Forward!

"This is as forward as I can get!"

"That's such bullshit! Move closer!"

"I can't!"

"You can!"

"I don't think they're ever going to make it," Jenni says," It's like they can't-"

"Stop! Ale, stop! Left a bit. No! Too left. Right again. Left! Right! Left!"

"Left, right, forward, back," Alexia mutters," Make up your mind."

"Left and...got it...Wait! Don't let go!"

You haul yourself from your sister's shoulders onto the centre ring, positioning yourself perched on the sliver of the yellow ring that enters the black one.

"Alright," Alexia says," Give me a hand."

"What? No! You'll pull me off!"

"Give me your hand!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

She braces herself on the lower rings and grabs your hand, pulling herself into the centre ring before you can even shove her off.

"Oh," She says," That was pretty easy." Alexia grins at you but the smile drops from her face when she notices the pensive look you're wearing. "What is it?"

"I've just realised," You laugh in disbelief," When Mama said she wanted a picture of us and the rings. I think she meant in front of them. Not in them."

"Oh."

[pedripics]

Pedri via Residency - August 8, 2024

Pedri had a double training session today 

How is your knee doing? - “Much better. Looking forward to getting started with the team soon”

How are you after starting your workouts? - “Tired, as it is normal in preseason, but happy with the recovery”

Does it feel weird without having your hair? - “A little 😜 but it's not the first time and I had to keep the promise. My mustache didn't last that long 😝”

What are your expectations for the season? - “The maximum. At Barça there can be no others, and on an individual level I hope everything is going very well”

How is your mum? - “Veryyyy well. Thank you ❤️”

How many sessions did you do to recover? - “I've been training practically every day on vacation”

Who is your best friend in the locker room? - “I say it a lot of times, I get along well with everyone but if I have to say one, well Ferran”

Nice vacation? - “Quiet, in Tenerife”

How was training with Gavi after long time? - “Very good! I am happy to see him do better”

“Barcelona is a great city without a doubt”

How many football games did you play growing up until you were 16? - “Well, I couldn't say... one a day, or more, if they count the games on the court and with friends hehe”

Did you watch the Olympics? - “Yup… a lot”

He really wanted to see USA-Serbia in a bit 

How do you deal with hate from others? - “I try to stay away from bad comments, as well as from high praise. The best thing is to be calm and listen to the advice and comments of the people close to you”

Would you like to retire at Barça? - “Do you want me to retire already? you already know that I have been a culer since I was a little kid”

When are you returning? - “There is little left. Let's see how the next training sessions are going”

Do you recommend me to visit your familys restaurant? - “l always do... and I always will. Delicious and homemade food”

I hope to see you next year at the new Camp Nou - “Have no doubt, my friend!!”

How did your friends/family react to your haircut? - “A little bit of everything. Jokes but also people who told me it looked really good on me 🙃”

Pedri are you going to let your hair grow? (Say yes please) - “Yesss. It's not the time to go bald yet”

Do your think a lot about the climate change? - “Well, it worries me. Like all young people. It is important to think about the future of the planet and that’s why i am ambassador with Kick Out Plastic”

A lot of people give their opinion about your beard, either to let it grow, or to cut it, but what do you prefer? With or without? - “I liked seeing myself with a beard, but without it l'm very comfortable. Maybe in the future I'll let it grow again”

Best part of football? - “Enjoy doing what I like doing the most”

Do you want Quevedo to return to music? - “Quevedo is a phenomenon... and above all canarian 🇮🇨” (admin agrees)

One of his friends named his dog Pedri 😂

Do you recommend visiting the Canary Islands? - “I am obliged to do so! My land is incredible”

How many kids do you want in the future? - “Well, more than one... but it's too early for that”

Pedri do you want in the future come to Poland? - “Why not? Let's see when Lewy invites me 😁”

Are you excited for your birthday??? - “Well... there's still a lot of time left”

Do you have pets? - “No. Maybe in a few years, a dog”

How is learning English going for you??? and what other languages would you like to learn? - “Let's see if I improve my level in September”

Do you go on TikTok a lot? - “Quite a lot, yes. I laugh a lot at some videos and I also find out a lot of things out  on there”

How do you feel about the new Barça kit? - “I love it”

Prove that you’re not AI - “In the previous chat they already told me something similar. Pedri 1-0 AI”

Who can cook best in your family? - “My mother… without a doubt”

Can you cook? - “It’s better if i don’t… It’s a good thing that my mother and brother are cooks”

People confuse him and his brother sometimes

Thiago? - “We barely met, because he was on tour and I was in Barcelona… I am looking forward to meeting him”

Do you like Olmo’s hair? - “😂😂😂 That question would be for my hairdresser. I like that he came to Barça, because we get along very well and I am sure he brings a lot of things to the team. We’ve already seen it at the Euros” (personally I think Pedri should announce all new signings)

Will Barça win a sixtuple again? - “Hopefully soon… Although it’s very difficult…”

Did you celebrate Gavi’s bday with him? - “Well I congratulated him and not much more because he had a day off in his recovery”

What did your day look like? - “training in the morning, eat, rest and train in the afternoon”

What do you think of Fermin at the Olympics? - “I am following the Olympic Games because I like to watch almost all sports… Fermin is being the key and I hope he will come back with gold”

How do you go shopping? Is it difficult because of all the people? - “It is very complicated, yes. Sometimes with my parents and brother, or with my teammates… but I also shop online”

If you could choose a football legend to play with, who would you choose? - “Iniesta obviously, because he is my idol. But for a little change, for example Pele”

How did you feel to reach the Olympics final? - “It was a great joy… Although I am envious of these Games because there couldn’t be fans there in Tokyo because of the pandemic”

Hidden talents? - “Not that I know…”

Are you playing on Monday? - “No, not yet”

If you weren't a footballer, what would you probably be? - “Firefighter... or waiter in my parents' tavern. Although one day I helped them and I realized that it wasn't my thing”

He hasn’t trained under Flick yet (duh)

Movie/ series recommendation? - “I'm finishing Game of Thrones. This is nothing new, but the truth is that it is very good!”

What do you like to do in your spare time? - “Being at home, mainly” (same)

How was your childhood? “Very happy! In Tegueste, with my family and friends, like any other normal boy”

Do you ever go biking? - “No. We are not allowed to either”

What do you think of Duplantis, have you watched it? - “What he did was crazy”

Your mum is the best she is such a cutie  - “Siii”

Tomorrow will you watch the men's olympic final ??? - “Yes, of course... and if I can, the women's match for Spain too”

Would you like to be the captain in the future? - “Of course I would like to”

What do you think about Asia? - “I know that they support me a lot from there and I would like to visit  in the future... now it's not easy, because the seasons don't give a break and on vacation I prefer to rest close to home”

It's not too complicated to be famous I mean do people always have to stop you for photos? - “It's not easy, but it's not something that bothers me. I try to give photograph and sign autographs, because I remember when I was little and I asked for it”

Is your favorite food bananas? - “My favorite fruit. I love food a lot, although some of them I can't eat now because of my diet. For example, I really like sushi”

Does your brother annoy you sometimes?? - We get angry, like all brothers... But he's a very important person in my life”

Favourite sport other than football? - “Basketball or padel, for example”

Do you look forward to the next World Cup? - “Of course... Although there is still a lot of time left. Now we have to fight to win the maximum with Barça”

[hedghost]

A Comprehensive Rating of all The New Nike Kits that Literally No One Asked Me For:

starting off strong with England:

listen when i first saw this i was like hmm okay 😐, then i saw it on the players and i was like hmmm okayyyyy 💅💅

home is clean, classic - i like it. collar is a choice but i think it works, sleeves are nice, retro kits slay always - 8/10

controversial but purple as a colour in general sucks. however, i would barely call this away kit purple, the charcoal vibe is actually fucking sexy. it’s almost a grey kit, and a grey kit is almost a black kit, and i love black kits. love the pattern down the side, love the gold, my only reservation is that it looks like a training kit (specifically that ugly purple kit the lionesses had a few years ago) - 7.5/10

special shout-out to that eyesore of a goalie kit, i absolutely fucking love it

——

now Portugal is a serving us a game of two halves:

the home is… a kit. it’s nice, it’s clean, but it literally could not be less forgettable. it’s fine - 5/10

the away on the other hand - masterpiece. that pattern is actually gorgeous, colours are so cute, and it’s actually unique! love when kits have nods to culture/history- 10/10, stunning

——

United States - yea girl give us nothing!

listen the home is fine. but one word springs to mind and that word is boring. where’s the flavour? the flag collar saves it - 6/10

the away is absolutely vile i fucking hate that- 1/10

—-

France said how big can we possibly make our badge:

again home is fine. it’s nothing special, it’s clean, it’s whatever, it’s a home kit. i’m bored. however both kits suffer from the ailment of that absolute fucking monster chicken. why is it so huge - 5/10

the away is nicer. pinstripe is nothing to write home about, but at least there’s a little something something going on. again, the chicken is hard to get past - 6.5/10

—-

Canada gave us the classics

these are both nice kits. the home is proof that nike do know how to make plain kits that don’t look like they just stuck a badge on a primark t-shirt. simple done well - 8/10

again, the away is simple but effective. does look a bit like an exercise book, but that’s fine. sleek, classy, it’s a decent kit - 7/10

—-

Brazil proves once again that they know the meaning of cool:

listen, when the colour scheme of your team is yellow and green, you just have to commit to garish. this kit is an eyesore in a good way. this is not a great picture of the pattern but let me tell you it’s gorgeous. i’m not sure about this weird collar though, it looks fine on some of these other kits but idk it’s just not doing it for me here - 8/10

again, this away pattern is hurting my eyes just looking at it, but i like it a lot. makes me wanna go to the beach. brazil knows who they are, and you will know about it. nice colour, bit of fun! more fun kits please! - 7.5/10

—-

just like it’s football team, Poland’s kits are pretty forgettable:

yeah sorry poland i really don’t know what to tell you here, it’s just really fucking dull. the collar does look nice here, but other than that it’s really not saying much - 4/10

again, not much to say. this does have a bit of a cross stitch pattern which i quite like, but other than that it’s average. normally i like a centred badge but here it just looks like weird. think it’s too big. sorry poland - 5.5/10

—-

sorry Turkey, the only thing worse than boring, is being boring and ugly:

this away shirt makes polands kit look like the sistine chapel. i can’t even comment because there is absolutely nothing going on - 3/10

and yet somehow… the home kit is worse. i will never be a fan of a block stripe across the chest. the centred badge might have worked if it didn’t have a circle around it. boring and ugly - 2/10

—-

meanwhile, South Korea blew it out the fucking water!

now this is how you make a kit! take notes turkey! this home kit is literally beautiful. colour is stunning, pattern is gorgeous! 11/10 no notes

and it doesn’t stop there! black kits are stunning anyway, but this?! i adore it. so fun, so sleek. - 10/10

—-

The Netherlands just couldn’t really be arsed:

i fucking hate this. orange kits done well are beautiful, and this is neither one of those things. at least the players will be up to code if they visit a construction site. the colour is quite literally named ‘safety orange’ - 2/10

the away kit is alright. i quite like it, the patterns decent. the colours are nice. it does look a bit like a bus seat though. - 5.5/10

—-

China took the stripped back approach :

these aren’t my favourites, but they are nice. the home is classic, nothing fancy, but it’s smooth, it’s sleek, it’s smart. the sleeves are a nice touch - 6.5/10

the same goes for the away. not as nice as the red, but it’s cool. i like it. - 6/10

—-

Norway forgot which continent they’re from:

now i’m aware the home kit is unpopular, but i actually like it. idk it’s something different, it’s a smart little pattern, centred badge looks good - i’m a fan. i like when countries incorporate their flags into their shirt. it is, however, the flag of thailand. - 7/10

this is a nice away kit. it’s giving fjords, it’s giving glaciers, it’s giving norway. reminds me of the adidas wwc kits, and we all know how nice those were. - 9/10

—-

Nigeria only knows how to serve cunt!

this is nice. it’s giving me like early noughties vibes, with the font and the tick, and i’m a fan. i’ve never seen a bad green and white kit. well played nigeria, well played. - 8/10

i love black kits. i love green kits. i love patterned kits. and i love this kit. it’s a sick pattern, and it’s just gorgeous. good job - 10/10

—-

Croatia is… also here:

yeah croatia what the fuck is this? this home kit is absolutely atrocious. boring and ugly - 3/10

i honestly don’t know if the away is better or worse. just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. i don’t know, it’s alright. weird - 4/10

[fantomette22]

The Dogs in Bloodborne!

So @bobbyzombiegg you wanted some headcanons on the dogs right? Following this post. Alright I will, but first i’m gonna recap all the dogs we can see in Bloodborne!

No I'm not talking about the weird beasts. Even the ones we're not sure if they have animal or human origins, I will stay focused on dogs only.

Rabid dog (Yharnam and found in most of the locations of the game)

They seems to be cream coloured but I saw people said it could be brown. It's the dog ennemies we encounter the most often. The chimera in the Nightmare of Mensis are made with them too.

Grey Rabid dog (grey/silver version found in Yaha'rgul & chalice dungeons)

Same breed as the light coloured ones but they have darker fur (grey/silver)

Some might already know but for the ones who don't know this dog highly ressemble the Irish Wolfhound Breed

It's one of the biggest dog in the world. Typically used to hunt wolves (that's how all the wolf in Ireland disappear), deers and big animals.

The breed almost disappear in the 19th century but it was restored into the one we know today with mixing the last ones with the Great Dane, Scottish deerhound, borzoi and even Tibetan dog.

It also highly ressemble the Scottish deerhound, the too breed being very similar and link.

I personally call the ones in Bloodborne just wolfhound because there's no guarantee it's a real breed and again Bloodborne, like dark souls is not our world so I don't think Irish and England exist XD there's equivalent maybe. (And Yharnam would be closer to this universe version or Poland or Czech).

If you are attentive they aren't presented in the hunter's nightmare (see below the old hunter's hound) With the scourge of the beasts becoming worst and huge beasts appearing more frequently the hunters and citizens turn themself to bigger dogs to hunt bigger prey.

Hunting dog (Hemwick Charnel lane & chalice dungeons)

Don't ask me what breed it is I have 0 idea. Greyhound? A mixt breed? Idk. They are principally found in Hemwick too. They have been equip of weapons to hurt beast better I supposed. A hardcore version of the collar of some shepherd dog 😅 The ones left almost in completely autonomy with a herd and half collars with spike to not get hurt by wolves.

Keeper's hunting dogs

Found in the chalice dungeons and are weird mutated fire dogs. They follow their master, the keepers. I suppose they were normal dogs before.

Watchdog of the Old Lords

Idk if that was a dog before. Could be a keeper who transformed or something for all we know. But well it's literally called a "watchdog" so-

The corpses of dead dogs in the chalice dungeons

(I know it looks great but please imagined it's a dog 💀 it's the only screenshot I found)

Sometimes you can see corpses in the chalice dungeons and sometimes there's dogs ones as well. They seem rather "normal". And not really the breeds we already see.

Old hunter hound /rabid dog (Hunter's Nightmare-Yharnam/ The Old Hunters dlc)

So those are probably Dobermann. Used as guard dogs and for protections. During old hunter's era, most beasts were beast patients / human size not huge scourge beasts. So this type of dogs was ideal. With the beast growing bigger having more scourge beasts around the poor dogs become too insufficient. And that's why Yharnam adopt bigger bred like the wolfhounds.

Dobermanns are born with long falling ears and a tail. The tails was cut so they don't got hurt into fight or hunting and the ears because they often got affections. Many countries have forbidden it because with modern standard of life it donees't have any real use now. Contrary to what people think "attack dogs" are not born agressive. It's just that if they aren't trained well and develop comportement issues and agression it's going to be a bit more of a problem than a chihuahua who would have the same issues.

Fish dogs (Hunter's nightmare-Fishing hamlet/ The Old hunters dlc)

Don't ask me please. there's no idea of knowing what they were before. But their fish's head apparently ressemble a viperfish's head, also called a chauliodus, deep sea fish from the Stomiidae family. Not putting pictures here for people who are sensible, I put a link above. Their body as slimed and long (30cm), they lived between 200 and 4000m of depth (3300-13000ft). Those types of fishes (their genus) were discovered in the very early XIX/19th century.

Now my headcanons on why most of wolfhounds in Yharnam have light fur and why the one in Yahar’gul have dark colored ones.

Objectively the most possible answer is simply that the dog’s population of this two area weren’t mixted together. When you have a small portions of individual who don’t mixt with more exterior individuals they tend to end up with similar traits because of dominant & rececive genes (and if it last a LONG time, that’s how new species appears. But it take thousands if not millions of years and generations).

Well my headcanons is much simpler than that and basically for fic purposes. I just thought it would make sense that Yahar’gul hunters kept the darker ones because they need to stay discreet (they themselves have black clothes) etc. And the other would have kept the lighter ones because they are easier to see and recognize at night.

At the beginning of the introduction of the wolfhound races in Yharnam it was probably mixed individuals of different fur coats. With a bit with time, selection and breeding they would end up with most of the dogs being light light colored for the hunters/citizens and church. And Yahar’gul doing the same would ended up with the darker ones.

And bonus headcanons:

I imagined a younger Paarl possibly taking care of the first generation of wolfhound in Yharnam (they were introduced to replace the dobermanns because beasts grew bigger). And i like imagining Gehrman to had help with training and had one of his own :3 a white one (yes I draw it I should do that again) (because you see, to have survived that long and have will to live after Maria passed away and the old hunters dying one by one i imagined it would have been nice for him to have a companion for a time).

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #252

I got a lot done today, but I still don't think I'm going to be able to do as much as I had hoped.

…I didn't really get enough sleep last night. After getting ready to go to bed and all that, I decided to shower so that I wouldn't have to do it in the morning. I have maybe 6-ish hours. I woke at 9, got ready and went out the door by 9:30, and went to both therapy and physical therapy.

I had K at physical therapy today. He tried to give me exercises that are supposed to work the serratus muscles, but… they didn't work because apparently, my lats and my rotator cuff on my right side are being weird. Naturally, this meant that he had to go digging his thumbs all up in there, near the bottom of my shoulder blade, to try to get things to loosen up. For whatever reason, the area is incredibly tender, so that whole process was very painful. But it was necessary, so the only thing for it is to sit through it until it's over. I guess that particular area will need to be investigated further next week. This was at noon. It's almost 5PM, and my pinky finger and ring finger on my right hand are still kinda tingly and ouchy, and it'll probably stay like that for the next day or so, at least. Lame.

But it is what it is. I went to the bank to get a new card, since our washing machine most likely ate my old one. I guess my bank has a fancy new card printing machine, and so when I visited, I got a new card pretty much right away! Normally, you have to wait a couple weeks for it to arrive in the mail. I'm really glad that I was able to skip that whole step. I went to the grocery immediately after that.

I wasn't able to eat until I got home at around 3PM; J made burgers, and by then, I was so hungry that I kiiiinda… scarfed them down with reckless abandon. I thought I had more time between therapy and physical therapy (guess who thought physical therapy was at 12:30 again until I checked it?), but I didn't. So I kinda just powered through today's tasks on an empty stomach, not a whole lot of water, and definitely not enough sleep. I thought I'd have enough energy leftover to cook something by the time I got back, but… I don't. So I'm not gonna.

…I dropped the ball on the self-care stuff. I'm sorry about that. I know I keep asking you to take better care of yourself. I'm gonna try a little harder in the coming days. I struggle, but… I gotta take care of my soft animal. It holds my weird-ass spirit despite all its limitations; I have to try to be nicer to it…

In any case, yesterday, a delightful person from Poland watched me play Dead Cells. They seemed pretty excited about talking to me and watching my play style. Apparently, they regularly run around with 5 whole Boss Cells! That seems unfathomable to me at this time. But they gave me some excellent advice about how to allocate my stat points; up until this point, I had been prioritizing whatever gives me the greatest boost in HP, but I guess that's not really the way to go. I learned about how important it is to put my stat points into the ones that my weapons use whenever I can.

My gameplay improved significantly as a result, and I made it all the way to a new biome called The Caverns. From there, I tried to defeat The Giant, but his movements were unfamiliar to me, and so I panicked and got my ass handed to me. That's all right though; I went to the training room and fought him until he stopped kicking my ass. Next time I see him in a real run, he's gonna be in big trouble, lemme tell ya!!

Oh, that reminds me; this person added me on Instagram!! They sent me all kinds of cool videos about their own exploits from their own runs!! I gotta get on watching those!!

…I'm not sure I have it in me to do a run today, though. My brain feels kinda soupy, and J is playing Brave Fencer Musashi, and I think I'd much rather watch him do that. It's one of my favorite games, despite its problems (the controls aren't exactly the easiest…), and I'm really glad that he's getting to experience the story for himself. The townspeople in Grillin' Village are delightful with their little stories and bits of dialogue. It really is a lovable and delightful game, despite its age and not-so-hot graphics (though they were pretty rad at the time…).

Hey, Sephiroth? If someday you find yourself in my neighborhood, let's chill out and just play some video games, all right? I think you'd like them. And I think you'd be really good at them, too.

…There are so many stories from games and books and TV and movies that I really wish I could show you; maybe in them, you'd find something relatable, and then the burdens you carry might seem a bit less heavy. Will you stay safe by the end of whatever it is you're trying to do, so that someday, I can show these things to you?

I love you. I'm gonna go rest now. But I'll write again tomorrow.

Your friend, Lumine

[rewiredthethirdblog]

Comment by zuza_blu on Reddit

To me Charlie Brandt is the weirdest one. Seems like he really had no reason to do what he did and what happened later in his life is a dark, dark continuation of that tragedy. [Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brandt) describes the incident.

Also what Jasmine Richardson did is just so horrendous. Unlike some young people who were abused she thought she was (but wasnt)... I cant get over the fact what she did to her brother. She wanted to be "free" so thought she had to kill her parents. But little brother couldnt stop her, so why kill him... and now she is free...

There is also an old story about polish teenage girl who killed her mother in a rage. She later tried to hide the body so she cut of the head which she put in a pot and threw into the lake. Rest of the body she divided in two parts and put in two big suitcases and just left in train station closets until they were found. It later turned out that mother was extremly psychologicaly abusive. This story is haunting because of what this girl did to the body (police initially thought it was a serial killer). Also she later said that she threw the head in the pot into the lake because it was her mother favourite place. She also put flowers on the suitcases with body parts. Its a really weird mix of emotions when you think about it...

There was also more recent [murder](http://archiwum.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/231596) of parents in Poland. Here the reason seems to be lack of acceptance of the relationship and greed (teens wanted the house for themselves).

[merulast]

It's all about the routing baby!

(Weird Al - It's all about the pentiums -- Great song ^^)

When I first started to plan this "road trip" I had various options and decided to go the straight way be following the E40 (european lane 40) to almost the borders and China. Of course by then I had no Idea that this would never be possible later on. Why? Lets have a short dive:

Source: Wikipedia E40

We don't need to talk about the fact that this road is crossing the Ukraine. The whole situation is simply terrible.

Had you ever wonder why tools like google maps route planer and others don't offer routes crossing the Chinese border? It's simple - You are not allowed to cross it by car. Not even the international driver license is valid in china. Except for some special areas. And except for you to hire some 'people' that make it 'possible'. The Overland travelers do this aaalot this days but be warned: That's NOT official! You will be stuck to the 'guides' and this is NOT legal. It is simply not. For you driving there will be illegal. The police just let you pass for 'reasons'.

You might get an full chinese driving license and import and re-register your vehincle on the borders. Anyway.

So Obviously this whole route is out of scope by now. Let's come to the public transport routes. If you want to plan routes, have a look at www.rome2rio.com - More on them later.

(yes, this picture again)

With the Ukraine as something you don't want to cross there is no alternative but to avoid it. But besides of war there is also an second thing that you would like to avoid. Visas. They may come in very difficult to get. Thats why, for example, I decided to also avoid Belarus.

The red Line

Germany -> Poland -> Lietuva -> Latvija -> Estonia -> Russia -> Kazakhstan

With avoiding of Belarus there is no big hassle on the first parts of this route. All EU Members share the same Visa rules, mostly the same money and the same ATM zone. So if you have a western credit or debit cards you wont even notice any issues at all. The only negative point is, that it's expensive to travel and stay there. At least compared to the other route.

With the Russian border this will change. Now you need a Visa. You can most likely get an E-Visa that is valid for 2 weeks and cost 50€ if you fill out the form by yourself. But because of certain 'things' you might get in trouble obtaining money. As least in most parts of the EU its not possible to obtain the Russian currency. Booking is not listing Russian Hotels anymore. And you never know if any credit card will still work in the urban areas. Henche. I would not even expect anyone to take electronic cash on the countryside anyway. With other words. This is, political stuff aside, a pretty red Flag.

Im not sure about Kazakhstan at the Moment. I also was not able to obtain Tenge anywhere in central europe at the moment. But I think that there will be no issue with visa and mastercards....

The blue Line

The original plan was to drive up to the Black Sea just by Flixbus. For me no Visa or money-changing issues ha been visible. You can relay on the Credit Card system and most of the time even on the european debit card systems.

I for myself decided to travel by

Germany -> Bavaria -> Austria -> Hungaria -> Romania -> Bulgaria -> Georgia

I wanted to also have a stop on Serbia .. But Flixbus had changed its traveling times to be as much overnight as possible. And this brings us to another thing: Never Travel more than 8 hours a day! We will spend an entire Month on transports. DO NOT exhaust yourself too much! Thats why I will take an sleeper train from Budapest to Bukarest.

Another negative point comes into count if we speak about the black Sea. I would love to cross it by ferry! More space to walk, to sleep and to watch dolphins. How could you not love to travel by Ship? But be aware: Black Sea Ferry Companys are .. special.

I would not need any Visas for the entire blue route. Thats a big plus, of course.

Anyway!

This post already had been MUCH longer then planed. Time to End it. The blue route it is. Next time we talk about preparing stuff that need to be done in before-hand.

Bye!

[nonasuch]

Miss Nigeria is wearing a moderately blinged-out version of actual cultural dress, which is a completely respectable choice but insofar as anything with a six-foot feather train can be called 'safe,' is kind of a safe choice.

It's actually been a while since anyone has turned up to Miss Universe in a national costume they could have plausibly borrowed from their grandmother, so Miss North Macedonia's got me feeling a little nostalgic.

Miss Norway, that is a prom dress. Go home and change into something with at least an eight-foot radius.

Miss Pakistan looks lovely, but I do feel like she and Miss Lebanon and a few others are in a completely different competition from, like, Miss Japan and Miss Italy and everyone else in Team Camp.

okay we're all just doing gold armor this year huh? I want to see Miss Paraguay get together with the rest of them and fight it out.

Huh. Okay. I was not aware that Miss Persia was a thing? Like obviously Miss Universe is not operating in Iran, so I guess this is like a Persian diaspora thing? Good for them I guess but also I haaaaate her skirt. If you don't have enough layers to hide the hoopskirt ridges you are Doing It Wrong!

Miss Peru, in... more gold! This thing was blinding in motion.

Miss Philippines has an entire model boat on her head and I am so so sad that she and Miss Eritrea can't time-travel to the Catholic Met Gala.

You might assume that Miss Poland is doing a Snow Queen thing. Wrong! Sexy Salt Mine.

If I had a nickel for every 2024 Miss Universe National Costume contestant who dressed as a sexy pope, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

Miss Puerto Rico is wearing a relatively restrained (for Miss Universe) version of actual cultural dress, BUT the whole skirt lights up to display their flag. This is a fun new innovation in Miss Universe national costume technology, and I approve.

Miss Romania's dress would almost fall into "borrowed from grandma" except it's apparently made of leather, which means it still looks basic and it's horrifically sweaty. The peacock feathers are such an afterthough that they're not even attached securely. Yikes.

Miss Russia's doing a pretty good Snow Queen, but this is probably getting bonus points because I'm so relieved it's not imperialism-themed this year.

Miss Saint Lucia is wearing a Tribute To The Olympics, possibly because she wanted an excuse to wear comfy pants.

According to the flavor text Miss Samoa is literally wearing Moana cosplay, so I guess she's not scared of the Disney lawyers. Also she looks like she could bench-press any of the other contestants, which: love that for her.

Miss Senegal chose to be comfy, and while 99% of the time I support that, this is the other 1% of the time and you should have gone bigger.

Miss Serbia's shoulder eagles have eyes that light up. I like to think that one of them can only tell the truth, and the other can only tell lies. This whole look is so silly and that's why I like it.

Maybe it just photographs badly, but Miss Singapore's costume looks poorly fitted and cheap, which is surprising because in past years they've done a lot better than this.

Oh no, the airline lost the bottom half of Miss Slovakia's costume! She's going to have to make do with the skirt from a spare evening gown. Her grandma is going to be so mad at her for losing half of a family heirloom.

Yes, Miss Somalia is wearing gold armor. But she is also wearing leopard print and she brought a sword, and she looks badass, so I don't care.

Miss Universe National Costume 2024, Part 2!

Splitting this off into a new post so I'm not clogging up everyone's dash quite as much.

Miss Malta is some sort of environmental protection Sailor Scout. I think the giant bow would look better on the back of the skirt but otherwise this is solid.

It has just come to my attention that I skipped over Miss Albania and several other A/B countries, back at the beginning. I sincerely apologize! She went to all this trouble putting together a Fifth Element cruise ship passenger costume, and I nearly missed it.

Miss Armenia, in what even I have to admit would be a legit Princess Leia fit.

Miss Bahrain, adding some green to her Gold And Vaguely Historical look, along with what is either a comically large prop chalice or an upside-down lamp.

Miss Bangladesh appears to believe that adding two plush tigers from the toy store around the corner from the pageant venue will conceal the fact that she is just wearing a tiger-print evening dress. Miss Bangladesh is incorrect.

Miss Belgium. Girl. No.

Miss Belize let the seventh-grade art class do her whole costume, which was a bold choice.

Okay, I think that's everyone I missed! Back to alphabetical order. And I should have to rely less on shitty screenshots, now. Some countries were benefiting from the low resolution, tbh.

Kind of feel like Miss Maldives had a luggage mishap and she's just wearing the outfit she packed for a slightly dressy dinner.

Miss Martinique's costume would honestly have looked better in the shitty screencap version. The construction is... bad. It's bad.

Feel like we're in a little bit of slump here. Miss Mauritius did not stick enough butterfly appliqués to her gown to conceal that it is, in fact, just a regular evening gown.

Slump officially over! We are so back. Everyone say thank you, Miss Mexico.

I would like this better if it had just committed to the giant skirt and not felt the need to make it a Sexy Miniskirt look. Sorry, Miss Moldova.

Miss Mongolia wanted to stand out from all the other gold armor on stage, so she decided to a) wear cooler armor and b) bring a bow and arrow instead of a sword. Great work, Miss Mongolia.

Starting to feel like I'm picking on the smaller countries that probably don't have a huge pageant culture or the budget for really elaborate costumes, but on the other hand Miss Montenegro's costume is super low-effort AND the fabrics look cheap, so what am I supposed to do?

Okay, this looks like a pretty standard Miss Universe Sexy Bird, yes? Well, THIS is how Miss Myanmar entered the stage:

She had to fight her way out of that thing! God only knows what the visibility was like in there.

I think the hat is doing most of the heavy lifting to keep Miss Namibia's costume from being Just An Evening Dress, sadly.

Oh, yikes. It's more obvious in motion but Miss Nepal's bodice looks like it's made of craft foam and it fits real weird. The rest of it looks a little like she got together with Miss Cyprus and a pile of tablecloths for a sewing bee last night, I'm sorry to say.

Miss Netherlands has chosen a Tribute to Delft. I think if I were in charge of this costume I would do a much fuller skirt that falls from the waist, instead of the weird trumpet-skirt-with-hoop we've got here. And, obviously, I would make the windmill on the bodice actually spin.

It looks like she's having some issues keeping the wings and peplum in place, but I really like Miss New Zealand's costume from a design perspective. It at least slightly resembles the bird it's supposed to be (New Zealand fantail) and I think the feather pattern is meant to be in a Maori art style.

Miss Nicaragua is a Sexy Cathedral, which I think might be a Miss Universe first and is definitely a big old step closer to drag.

Okay, pausing here to get the next batch ready.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler? 

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’.  The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

[wearevillaneve]

Killing Eve’s Endgame:  A Murder or a Mercy Killing?

So now it’s official.  Killing Eve’s next season will be it’s last season.  I don’t know whether to be upset or relived.  If I were to say I was surprised, I'd be lying and if I were to say I am disappointed, that would be another lie.    I was kind of expecting this and I’m sad for the fandom, but hey, it’s not like some of us didn’t try to tell you that light in the tunnel wasn’t daylight but an onrushing train.

There’s an obvious reason why Killing Eve ran out of gas.  Season 3 was deadly.  It underwhelmed and underperformed.   Suzanne Heathcote shit the bed, kids.  Argue with me if you like, but you don’t have to take my word for it.  The proof is in how Killing Eve all but vanished from all the awards shows with few nominations and no wins. Compare how Season 3 did on that score in comparison to the first two and it’s an embarrassing rebuke to Heathcote’s reign of error.  Awards are not the determining factor of whether a show lives or dies, but the absence of them is a sure sign that it's trending in the wrong direction.  Killing Eve got stale and lost its buzz and once that’s gone it became easy for AMC to give up on it.

Before it got stale, Killing Eve was a breath of fresh air.   Here was a show that was womancentric in all aspects in front and behind the camera with lead characters vividly brought to life by Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer and Fiona Shaw.  How fortunate we were that Sally Woodward-Gentle tabbed Phoebe Waller-Bridge to breathe life into Luke Jennings’ somewhat stock spy tropes. 

Then Season 3 happened and the bottom dropped out. Out goes the style and in comes dung-throwing.   They were literally throwing shit in Season 3.  That’s about as apt a way to sum up what happened to this once great show.  Everything I liked about Villanelle was jettisoned: the clothes, the wit and even the kills. In it’s place was an influx of new supporting characters, unresolved storylines, sloppy writing and show-off directing and a wholly unnecessary solo episode for Villanelle that stopped whatever little momentum the season had dead in its tracks. Jodie Comer was left with little more than mugging and making weird faces to the camera, but at least she was given something to even if most of it was uninteresting. Sandra Oh’s messy MI6 agent, Eve Polastri, was reduced to nothing but reaction shots and exposition dumps as she disappeared in the swamps of head writer Heathcote’s domestic dramas with secondary characters. Killing Eve had never been less about Eve than it was last year. The show has been in freefall ever since Phoebe Waller-Bridge took her Fleabag awards and split to punch up James Bond scripts. It’s probably better that it burn out than hang on and rust away. I'd rather see Jodie make the transition to the big screen than to see another season of Mopey Sad Face Villanelle.   I'd rather see Sandra move on to other television and indie film projects than another season of her as the titular character shoved out of camera view for a side character to be spotlighted.   Most of all Season 3 was just no fun. 

Now that Killing Eve has an expiration date the writers can--or SHOULD--focus on wrapping up and tying up loose ends.  That means no Geraldine, Jamie, Bear, Irina, Dasha to go along with already dusted Mo, Paul, Rhian and Kenny. I can take Carolyn and Konstantin in small doses, but back as supporting characters while Niko can fuck off back to Poland. Here’s what I want in Season Four:  Eve + Villanelle=VILLANEVE.   That’s it. That's the show.   Now go make it. I have no idea for a Killing Eve spin-off without Sandra or Jodie in it would look like and I'm really not curious.  The Adventures of Young Carolyn and Konstantin?  Nah.  We good. Hard pass. In Laura We Trust to deliver a strong final season and a killer finale.   But make no mistake:  Whether or not the show was murdered by a shitty season or put down as a mercy killing,  Killing Eve did not have to go out this way. 

[lesbian-elrond]

@bamidbar in Ireland! In like super tiny rural schools (think like >60 students in the primary school) so other places were probably different. We did have mandatory geography in primary school like some people have mentioned but it was mostly physical geography and geographical features (like how rivers and mountains are formed) or Irish geography specifically (and even that we didn't focus on long). There's two reasons why I would never have really thought to question this/why it doesn't really seem that weird to me even now after this realisation

The first one is that I'm from a very rural agricultural area, the physical geography and understanding of the land/nature was definitely more important in that respect culturally, but also just on a practical level, the vast majority of the kids I was going to school with had never and will never leave the county, let alone leave Ireland. We are a relatively traditional area, and you gotta remember Ireland is a post-colonial country, so people are very attached to their land and their homes and their traditions. It's pretty rare for people to leave and go live elsewhere (although it's becoming more common now), and most people don't have the economic means to travel internationally. This was also true of the teachers in the school. And Ireland is an island, Europe is tiny so this probably sounds weird, but here it feels like Germany and France and whateverthefuck are just as far away as America or other mythical places you'd see on the TV, it just doesn't feel relevant. I imagine this is quite different if you are at school in say, Dublin.

The second reason is that the perception one has of how countries relate to each other geographically is very different coming from a small island nation. Like until I was probably 15ish it was inconceivable to me that you could get to another country without taking a plane. I learned that intellectually probably at like, 10, but it did not click for me until I actually had to do it (to do this from Ireland requires taking a boat, unlike I guess in a lot of countries where you could theoretically drive from one country to another, in the absence of any man made obstacles like border checkpoints and whatnot. Technically we have a land border with the UK but that really doesn't count because that's just a border to a part of Ireland that is occupied by the UK). Even when I did end up doing it for the first time it really didn't feel real, as a kid/young adult it definitely felt like PlaneTM was the magical gateway between countries. So learning like, that Germany borders Poland or whatever was just not something that happened at all. We learned about other countries culturally (and there was a huge amount of cultural osmosis from the UK and US) but geographically not at all. Even now I struggle with that because it feels like a new concept to me - I've done a lot of train travel in Europe for work, mostly UK - France - Switzerland - Germany - Czechia, and it took me like two years of doing that for it to fully click in my head how they related to each other. Last summer I had to travel from Germany to Kyiv (long story) with a colleague and I was just fully like Jesus take the wheel, I could not have told you what countries were between Germany and Ukraine. These are things that I have either absorbed through experience (We went from Hamburg to Vienna, and then an overnight train from Vienna to Przemysl in Poland, and then a direct overnight train from there to Kyiv, but I probably couldn't figure out a different route without a lot of googling), or have actively tried to teach myself now as a 21 year old living in another country (I spent a lot of time on JetPunk.com lol)

I've been saying I'm terrible at geography for years, because other people seem to have this innate knowledge of where things are that I do not have/have been trying to teach myself from scratch as an adult. It's only occurring to me now that we were never shown a world map (or even a map of europe) when I was at school....is that normal? Did yous get that? Anyway now I'm curious

Pls reblog and put your country in the tags!!

[percysmarguerite]

ANASTASIA THE MUSICAL DRAMATURGICAL INFORMATION

I had to research all of this information as part of an assignment for one of my classes this past year at university.  Enjoy!

disclaimer: I am not Russian, and do not have a super big in-depth background in Russian history, culture, or geography.  The following information is accurate to the best of my knowledge, but parts of this post involve heavy amounts of conjecture about travel times, and it’s also possible that there may be some errors, of which if you spot any, of course, please correct me.

content warnings: This post discusses at length the historical/canonical death of the Romanov family, along with brief implication/discussion of animal death

Anya and her Fitbit

when Anya says she walked Russia, girl ain’t kidding

If she walked from city to city without ever hitching a ride, girl got her steps in

from the jobs that she mentions she has worked in the show, she has chronologically worked in the following places

Perm - hospital worker

Odessa (located in modern-day Ukraine) - dishwasher

St. Petersburg/Leningrad - street sweeper

prior to Perm, she was living with her family in the Ipatiev House (also known as the House of Special Purpose) in Yekaterinberg, but following the death of the Romanovs, the bodies were transported first approximately half an hour north to the Koptyaki forest, then once again south to Ganina Yama, which is about half an hour west of Yekaterinberg (these distances considered for vehicles not for walking)

Anya mentions being found on the side of the road, with fresh vehicular tracks in the snow (it was July when this happened, and I attempted to figure out how likely snow would have been to occur, but didn’t really come up with anything conclusive, but it leads more towards being unlikely but not entirely outside the realm of possibility), and recounts the events that happened in the basement, which means that she likely escaped from the truck afterwards somewhere between Yekaterinburg and the Koptyaki forest

So the following distances are according to Google Maps with the walking option turned on, so obviously take this with a grain of salt, but here is the approximate time it would take to walk between those areas without stopping:

Yekaterinberg to Perm/Koptyaki Forest to Perm (see note below) ~ 3.04/3.2 days (73/77 hours)

Perm to Odessa ~ 21.125 days  (507 hours)

Odessa to St. Petersburg ~ 14.0833 days (338 hours)

as mentioned before, Anya said that she was found on the side of the road by fresh tracks, so it’s likely that she didn’t make it all the way to Perm, or even that she walked very far from where she escaped the truck transporting the bodies

Patronymics, diminutives, and historical inaccuracy, oh my!

the musical has a surprising lack of Russian patronymics, as the only named character to really have one is Anastasia, given that she actually has a historical patronymic, but the fact that no one else has one is just like...kinda weird

common fanon is that Dmitry’s full name is Dmitri Sudayev, as that was the name of a real servant of the Romanov family.  Sources very on what his full name is, Dimitri Floydorovich Sudayev or Dimitry Nikolayevich Antonov, but the historical record lists his father’s name as Nikolai Aleksevich Sudayev, which means that in all likelihood his name would be Dmitry Nikolayevich Sudayev

however, given that Dmitry’s backstory was changed for the musical and is no longer a former servant of the Romanovs but instead the son of an anarchist that died in a labor camp, his patronymic and family name are technically kind of a free-for-all

as mentioned in the musical, his diminuative is Dima

One of the men involved in the killing of the Romanovs was named Stephan Vaganov, which is presumably where Gleb’s surname comes from, which makes Gleb’s patronymic Stephanovich

ergo, his full name is Gleb Stephanovich Vaganov

the diminutive for Anastasia is NOT Anya, it is Nastya

Anya is a diminutive of Anna, which itself derives from the name Hannah

this itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because Anya had amnesia, and wouldn’t know her name and the correct diminutive

Lily’s surname (Malevsky-Malevitch) is an example of a double surname, which is an indication her priviledge and higher social class, as they were adopted to distinguish from different branches of the same family, and to differentiate between different members of the same family as well

now onto my favorite controversial name from the show: Toby.  Anya mentions having a dog that she holds to her during the moment where the Romanovs are killed, which is true to historical record, except her dog wasn’t named Toby.  His name was Jimmy.  I have literally no idea why they felt that it was necessary to change the dog’s name.  It’s not even hard to find this information out, it’s in practically every account on the Romanovs, and even can easily be found on the Wikipedia page.

Jumping off a moving train (not clickbait!)  and the return of the fitbit

Anya mentions that they will take the train at midnight from the Finland station, which is obstensibly the St. Petersburg-Finlyandsky Station, which handles westward travel towards Helsinki and Vyborg

if they had remained on the train, they probably would have taken the route that Anya, Dmitry, and Vlad take in the movie, which is the train to Finland, then a ship across the Baltic Sea to Denmark, then traveled across Germany/Brussels/etc. until they reached Paris

However, the musical trio are forced to leave the train once Cheka officers arrive looking for them

so they just, you know.  no big deal.  jump off of a moving train.

they then turn around and head south and west back towards Poland, likely to avoid being caught at the Russian/Finland border, which is mentioned by Gleb in the musical

and then they walked across a third of Europe

in total, to walk from St. Petersburg-Finlyandsky Station (in St. Petersburg) to Paris, France it would have taken ~ 21.3 days (512 hours) without stopping (not counting the time it would have taken for them to walk back to the train station)

from the train station to ~10km northeast of the Polish border (mentioned by Dmitry), it would taken ~ 7.625 days (183 hours) without stopping

it’s also good to note that at some point, they managed to pick up a driver who took them through France to just outside of Paris, and we can assume that they possibly were able to hitch rides for other stretches of the journey, but that the stretch from the train station to Poland is implied to have been walked in entirety by the musical

which means that for the journey from north of St. Petersburg to Paris took anywhere from one to four weeks or so

I hope all of this information was interesting to any fans of the show out there!  I had lots of fun researching it, and glad that I can share all of it with you all. <3

[ryttu3k]

Running order is out! Here's a graph of the running order versus where I scored them in the semis! (Blank spots are for Big Fives, and since I tend to score higher in finals, I'll fill those in afterwards for a comparison.)

Right, so I'll be scheduling my loo break for 15-18, haha.

Beneath, thoughts on all songs in the semis/previews, in finals order:

Czech Republic: Hey she has the same hair stylist as the female host! Oh I’m digging this one, it’s energetic and fun! 8/12

Romania: Oh we going glam glam. I have no idea why Romania seems to be into Spain so much but there’s usually a nice little mutual 12-points going on so this feels pretty fitting. Energetic and fun! 8/12

Portugal: Whew that contrast. It's nice it's sincere it's just. Boring. 4/12

Finland: Starting off with the Rasmus! Oh this is fun. Starting off with some good energy! 8/12

Switzerland: Coma/12 (no it’s like... a 3)

France: Oh neat, this is the Breton song, that’s got a pretty cool vibe.

Norway: Well they definitely have the best title! ………fascinating. 8/12

Armenia: Energy in the second half is definitely better than the first! The staging is pretty fun too. 7/12

Italy: Some of the favourites, it’ll be interesting seeing if they can go two years in a row! Not my thing, alas, bit slow.

Spain: Oh this looks like it could be fun! Lots of energy.

Netherlands: Okay I’m… I like the idea of focusing on mental health! That’s fine! That’s good! But is Eurovision really the best platform for it? 4/12

Ukraine: The favourites, although is it because they’re genuinely good or because of the situation? Ahh. The latter it is, then. I do like the flute, the folk elements, and the swamp witch costume! 6/12

Germany: Aaand the award for lowest-effort outfit goes to...

Lithuania: Very torch song but it feels weirdly... atonal? Nice and sparkly but wow I just felt my energy drop. Sorry, this ain’t it! 6/12

Azerbaijan: “Shit, the audience is having too much fun. Bring in a ballad!” Oh, picks up a bit towards the end! 5/12

Belgium: This has some serious late 90s, early 00s boy band vibes, and not in the way my 10-year-old self would have enjoyed. 4/12

Greece: Coma/12, part two. I see we’re going for a repeat of last year’s second semi, which hopefully means this year’s second semi will be better? 3/12

Iceland: The Vibes™ are pretty cool (and I dig that costume with the floofy white sleeves and black vest), I just wish it had some actual energy. 5/12

Moldova: A jaunty folk/weird song about a train ride between Chisinau and Bucuresti. This is terrible in such an endearing way :D 7/12

Sweden: Very torch song, I like her voice but it’s not my thing. I imagine this will do the numbers. 7/12

Australia: lmao we have to have slightly awkward host banter because Sheldon’s costume is so extra it needs extra time. Full disclosure, not my favourite song! Good on him he seems like a sweet kid and it’s very emotional just… yeah, not my thing. 6/12

United Kingdom: I’m digging the outfit! Song I’ll have to see in full but so far fun.

Poland: Ballad, picks up a bit as it goes on. Oh this “in the river” bit sounds like it belongs to a different song? Interesting. Wow, that last note just kinda… died. 4/12

Serbia: I’m… not 100% sure how I feel about it as a song, probably wouldn’t download it, but goodness it’s an interesting performance! Very neat visuals. 8/12

Estonia: The poor neglected guitar. Very beige! The song is kinda fun. 7/12

[sweetjames]

When I 1st joined social media (almost like 10 years ago) we were here for fun, to escape "real life" and share our love for certain things and people. But for the past 2-3 years the social platform got soooooo toxic !!

Twitter is by far the worst, they hate on EVERYTHING, "cancel" people for little things that happened 10 years ago, because people apparently can't make mistakes when they are young and can’t change. They get offended over everything, if you have a different opinion than the the rest, you're immediately hated on.

I found ski jumping family on tumblr and there was no hate. Fans just shared their love for sport and jumpers. No matter who won, there were happy posts, there was no hate for jumpers. Of course everyone has a different taste and opinion, it's normal that everyone posted about their fav jumpers - but there was no hate. What I love about this fandom is that people don't just support their national team, but many others, it's an international love. 

It was so refreshing to come from twitter to this lovely family on tumblr. But like all the other socials, this one started to get toxic too. I've seen so many posts talking about "taking a break from the fandom"... Yes you can write your own opinion! Yes the competitions are usually not fair for everyone, because of the wind conditions! The judges give better points to jumpers that jump better in the season than to the ones that are not so good that season. But all these things have nothing to do with jumpers!! They don't make the rules! They don't bribe judges or the FIS!! I don't know how much money do you think ski jumping teams have, but trust me it's not a lot!! The only ones I think that actually have the most money are Norway and Germany (because of all the wins in competitions and ski jumping schools at home...). But even they probably don't "throw money away". The rest don't have so much money. They need to pay for equipment, trainings, travels...for the whole year, not just winter season!! They don't have the money to bribe judges/FIS!! This isn't football, basketball, hockey or a big sport where A LOT of money is being transferred around - too much money if you ask me. The jumpers have a 2nd job next to jumping or they still go to school.

I get it you're mad when your fav doesn't win and of course you can share your opinion about it. But don't hate on the jumper that won. Don't make other fans bad about themselves for being happy that their fav has won or is on the podium. Or write about it and just don't tag jumping and jumpers under it.

My example: I don't like Kraft (I won't go into details, everyone has a different opinion on people) and I just don't care about the Austrian team in general - I'm in love with Gregor and I miss Fettner, I'm happy when certain jumpers do well, but that's where it ends, I just don't care about them, like I do for other teams. That's why I simply don't post about them or reblog stuff about them. When Kraft was winning I wasn't happy about it, because I wanted my faves to win. But did I post hate for him? No. Did I blame him my favs were losing? No. Was I saying how the competitions were unfair or that he didn't deserve the win? No. I just simply ignored posts about him and focused on my fav jumpers! The thing is: if the jumper wins that means he was good that day. He won for a reason. I could never say that he won just because he is Kraft and judges love him. He won because he's a great jumper. You just can't deny someone is good.

This season germans, Halvor and polish jumpers are on top. and lately Anže !! :) That's just how it is this season. They are in a good form, they usually have the best jumps and they deserve the win/podium. Germany, Norway, Poland and Austria are usually on top, they simply have the best jumpers and the majority of fans support these team. But look at Mackenzie this season !!! He's not the 31st anymore, he's actually in 2nd round!! :) Slovenia is getting their shit together. Japan was great for 2 seasons, this year they are not so good. Certain countries actually qualified this season for the 1st time!! This sport is so unpredictable. At the beginning of the season you honestly can't predict who will win the overall or even be in top 3 or top 10 at the end of the season.

Yeah I know...everytime I post something on tumblr lately, it's just these big rants about the fandom....But it's so tiring coming here on the tag and seeing "drama" instead of pictures and gifs and happines.

And please don't look at this as a hate post for austrinas/Kraft, I just wanted to show an example and this is the one I relate to. I know a lot of people don't like Germans, Poles and Slovenes here on tumblr and I don't judge them for it. You can't forse people to like something/someone. Just don't talk about people you dislike maybe?? Idk...I still don't understand how someone can spend their free time hating on someone online...I get it when 12 year old fangirls do it, but when you're over 16 or even 20+ and you still hate on people instead of just focusing on things you like...that's just weird...you need to get a life or start focusing on things that actually matter in life. It's a goddamn sport!! Your life doesn't depend on it. Yeah it relaxes you and makes you happy, but your life won't end if your fav won't win!!!

Anyway...if you've read my whole essay...I'm so sorry 😂 😂

[feetoffire]

third rotation:

noticing a red mare trend in this field and i am Here For It.

Venezuela: Luis Fernando Larrazabal on Condara. mare! lovely liver chestnut. came in Ready to Go, and used all of the prep time to get a look at the brighter jumps. girl’s got hops but she doesn’t particularly want to use them - not that i blame her, it’s hot. three rails, one foot in the water. drop noseband. 

Spain: Sergio Alvarez Moya on Puma HS. also looking at the bright jumps. all but stopped for the plank wall but they cleared it! three rails down, one time penalty. the commentators were calling this a training round/experience by the end and i’m inclined to agree. 

France: Julien Epaillard on Dubai du Cedre. mare! here’s the other mare in a hackamore. came in fast to the double combination but handled it beautifully. Epaillard is really having to work to keep her steady. double clear - six seconds under. spicy mares with plans are kind of my favorites. 

Portugal: Duarte Seabra on Dourados 2. another one eyeballing the plank and slanted walls. gape and froth. nice round, two rails. two sets of reins. 

Saudi Arabia: Ramzy al Duhami on Untouchable 32. mare! blinkers? she’s fresh and raring to go. froth and gape. double clear. She’s amazing - made it over every jump handily. 

Syria: Amre Hamcho on Vagabond des Forets. withdrew

Austria: Max Kuehner on Elektric Blue P. lots of gape between fences. drop noseband. neat round, only one rail. 

Japan: Taizo Sugitani on Quincy 194. combined noseband, blinkers. nice wide turn to the plank wall; gave them one of the best approaches i’ve seen so far. two rails down, one time penalty. 

Greece: Ioli Mytilineou on L’Artiste de Toxandra. lighter bay with a cool blaze. two sets of reins. not terribly pleased about being asked to collect. three rails down. 

USA: McLain Ward on Ilex. nice walk-canter transition. throws a buck in after the second fence. completely unconcerned about the humidity - the one benefit of being based in florida. nice clean round, knocked the last fence. 

Argentina: Jose Maria (jr) Larocca on Finn Lente. getting a look at the plank and slanted wall before they start. quick ride, one rail down. 

Netherlands: Harrie Smolders on Uricas V/D Kattevennen. micklem adjacent bridle. lovely jump on this guy. storming around the course like no one’s business. double clear. 

Belgium: Gregory Wathelet on Bond Jamesbond de Hay. alright yeah i laughed at the name. hackamore? hackamore! he’s fun to watch. double clear (seven or eight seconds under). threw some bucks/crowhops in after the round. 

Switzerland: Martin Fuchs on Leone Jei. drop noseband. weird, half-stumbled? step in the triple combination but they made it through. double clear. 

UK: Ben Maher on Dallas Vegas Batilly. mare! nose net. hyperflexed before the round starts. gape and froth. completely misjudges the last wall - her hind legs drag right through it. no other penalties. there’s almost ten people putting the wall back together - speed is of the essence, clearly.

Australia: Edwina Tops-Alexander on Fellow Castlefield. red ribbon. rattles both fences in the double combination but doesn’t drop them. nice ride, if a little slow. two rails down. 

Ireland: Cian O’Connor on Maurice. oh my god why do you have him cranked back so far (before the round). double clear. throws a buck in after the round. 

Poland: Maksymilian Wechta on Chepettano. red ribbon. another wide turn to the plank wall and a nice approach. arguing about speed into the triple combination. under time, but three rails down. 

Thailand: Janakabhorn Karunayadhaj on Kinmar Agalux. mare! hell yeah SEAsians. red mare, and she’s spooking at something. blinkers? froth, champing. shadow roll. ducks the double on the first go. racks up a ton of rail penalties, eliminated. for how wild and spooked Kinmar Agalux was, the fact that they kept trying is pretty impressive. 

Germany: Phillipp Weishaupt on Zineday. tight slice on fence 3. drop noseband. one rail down, under time. 

Estonia: My Relander on Expert. fantastic course up until the first water. Something about it wigs Expert out, and she lets him have a look before electing to retire on course. 

Chile: Agustin Covarrusbias on Nelson du Petit Vivier. gape and froth. a little sticky feeling in the first few fences. not the smoothest ride - knocked six poles, racked up a few time penalties. 

Brazil: Stephan Barcha on Primavera. mare! love her tiny stripe. She’s looky - the last several have been. maybe the shadows? two sets of reins. girl’s got scope. double clear. 

UAE: Omar Abdul Aziz al Marzooqi on Enjoy de la Mure. buck! lots and lots of scope. went clear, just barely (literally half a second) over time.

showjumping individual qualifiers here we go:

Israel: Isabella Russekoff on C Vier 2. Micklem (or adjacent) bridle. pretty lighter bay. he spooks (or ‘spooks’) shortly after the final fence. 

Canada: Mario Deslauriers on Emerson. that turn to the ‘bonjour paris’ wall is Tight. in time, only one rail down. Deslauriers has been doing this forever so that really doesn’t surprise me. double reins on an elevator or pelham bit. 

Lithuania: Andrius Petrovas on Linkolns. Linkolns decided something about that jump or the course was not worth it and Petrovas retired. good for him!

Mexico: Andres Azcarraga on Contrendros 2. dropped a stride before the water and still cleared it - horses like that are the best. first double clear round! and an extra little buck. 

Sweden: Henrik von Eckermann on King Edward. Oh that’s right he goes in a nose fly net thing. King Edward is Going today - “jumping out of his skin” yeah you’re right. definitely saw Eckermann grab mane. 

Spain: Ismael Garcia Roque on Tirano. drop noseband. lots and lots of air on Tirano’s part. only one rail down. 

France: Olivier Perreau on Dorai d’Aiguilly. mare! some froth i think. this girl is here to Get It Done. knocked a rail on the last fence. elevator-type bit with converter reins. 

Saudi Arabia: Abdulrahman Alrajhi on Ventago. ah a kicker. tapped a rail but went clear and in time. froth. 

Austria: Gerfried Puck on Naxcel V. okay i’m sure those fly mask things are blinkers but i can’t get a close enough look to confirm. drop noseband. much discussion from this pair - Naxcel has his own plans it seems. elevator-type bit with two sets of reins. 

Japan: Eiken Sato on Conthargo-Blue. red ribbon. Disagreements after the water and over the red vertical. drop noseband, elevator-type bit with double reins. retires on course. 

USA: Karl Cook on Caracole de la Roque. mare! one of the two mares going in a hackamore. her topline still bothers me. double clear. every time i’ve seen this mare she gets shit done. 

Netherlands: Maikel van der Vleuten on Beauville Z. came in a little wiggly to that second jump (we’ve all been there). only one rail down and a 70 second course. 

Ireland: Shane Sweetnam on James Kann Cruz. would like a better look at that bridle. they are tearing through the course in style - no rails in 73.35 seconds. 

Belgium: Jerome Guery on Quel Homme de Hus. converter reins. one rail down, four seconds under time. 

Switzerland: Edouard Schmitz on Gamin Van’t Naastveldhof. quick buck as they get going. two rails down, four seconds under. 

UK: Harry Charles on Romeo 88. always interesting to see which horse’s manes get braided for showjumping and which don't (Romeo 88 doesn’t). the double noseband situation bothers me, and also it seems like you could just use a flash. blinkers. double clear. some bucks just for funsies. 

Norway: Victoria Gulliksen on Mistral van de Vogelzang. Mistral has things to say about the rein contact - tons of head shaking between fences. froth. double clear. 

Australia: Hilary Scott on Milky Way. mare! pretty gray. i don’t think she has a throatlatch. knocked two rails - one in the double combination and one in the triple combination. 

Poland: Dawid Kubiak on Flash Blue B. shadow roll and hackmore. blinkers maybe? two rails down. 

Denmark: Andreas Schou on Napoli VH Nederassenthof. Schou’s shoulders look a little slumped as they come in - kinda odd, for how much we worry about our posture. maybe i'm seeing things. knocks a rail on the last fence. 

Germany: Christian Kukuk on Checker 47. buck. pretty dapples. two rails, i think. 

Brazil: Rodrigo Pessoa on Major Tom. i’m not going to make a built-in sponsor joke. or a Space Oddity joke. i’m not. lovely jump. double clear. i think Major Tom is the third? horse i’ve seen with his fly bonnet tied to the noseband so it won’t flap. 

UAE: Salim Ahmed al Suwaidi on Foncetti VD Heffinck. froth. Micklem adjacent bridle. lots of praise after the round. four rails down. 

Israel: Robin Muhr on Galaxy HM. two rails down. interesting how there are so many dark bays/blacks in dressage but considerably fewer in jumping. 

Canada: Erynn Ballard on Nikka VD Bisschop. mare! big bold blaze. entered the ring fairly quietly. extra little kick over the jumps. i like this pair.