Eva Stratt's double-parked coffee

Kaidariel/KJ. professional lurker. "Let us go and do these things we can't do." Pictured: the blogger's recreation of Chihuly floats, Franklin Park Conservatory, 2014

[holymagdalenes]

"There's no hope for the future." And that's how they felt during the Atomic Age, during the World Wars, during the Enlightenment Revolutions, during thr plagues, during the Viking raids, during the fall of Rome.

Yet, we persisted.

[ave-immaculata]

[letmetakeastabatit]

CS Lewis had something to say about this

[omegastation]

just because i want to, inspired by tim collins' video

Which duo in Mass Effect can assemble flat pack furniture together without screaming at each other once?

Steve and James

Samantha and EDI

Shepard and Anderson

Miranda and Samara

Jack and Kasumi

Ashley and Kaidan

Jacob and Thane

Liara and Javik

Garrus and Wrex

Tali and Legion

Joker and Zaeed

Mordin and Urdnot Bakara

Voting ended onJul 19

[woahits-transformers]

:)

[k-she-rambles]

@abigailspinach I can't find the post but I can give you some bits! I might get some of the locations wrong. (Spoilers for the whole series)

• It's mentioned that Eddisian winter hobbies are fighting, fibercraft, and seducing each other's spouses.

• Eddisian priests keep track of bloodlines

• Helen and Eugenides look strongly alike

The Thief:

• Gen says his mother was called the Queen Thief because she stole people's hearts away.

• Gen and Helen share a Grandfather who was Eddis

• it was on the strength of Gen's father's arm (who would be the prince!) that Helen succeded her father as Eddis.

• Helen visits Gen while he's delirious and offers him Hamiathes' Gift. Being given the Gift grants you the right to rule Eddis. He says no.

• reveal at the end that the plot was kicked off by the MoW giving Gen the idea to steal Hamiathes' Gift (and money!) & telling him that if something doesn't happen to reinforce Helen's right to rule the council will vote to force her to marry Old Sounis.

QoA:

• Helen says she and Gen are "too close to marry"

• the other option besides Old Sounis was some Attolian baron with royal blood (Erondites 😬)

• The Thief of Eddis is not allowed title or property by tradition

ACoK:

• Helen and the MoW are in Attolia for a reason I don't remember Sophos being privy to. Seems to be more of a family visit than a state visit.

• Sophos calls Eugenides a bastard. Helen does not go 'lol we all say that sometimes.' Instead something about Helen's expression makes Sophos go ohshit and apologize immediately.

• Eugenides makes a snide comment that "Sophos isn't the one who's illegitamate" apropos of nothing

• for Reasons, Helen can't offer fealty to Attolis directly, she'd be betraying her country. It has to happen through her marriage to a vassal king, Sophos.

RoTT:

• the Eddisians demand Eugenides go through an ancient ritual (letting them beat him up) before they'll accept him as high king

• Helen's mother had a thing for the MoW before Helen's father the crown prince asked her hand (and who says no to being queen?)

• revenge seduction? So says the Eddisian rumor mill.

• Queen Thief who steals hearts..

• the MoW and his brother the king did pay the priests to basically seal Gen's and Helen's baby brother's birth records

• the Eddisian council voted to have Eugenides killed right before The Thief to avoid civil war

We're never actually told whether the rumors are true, but...

[pvrrhadve]

happy valentine's day to these freaks 💖💖💖

[whyenn-reader]

firm believer you can't be a ''good person''. too much niuance to life.

[whyenn-reader]

you can be good (adjective) but you cannot be good (identity)

[whyenn-reader]

if you think you are good (identity) you are more likely to cause harm as you don't consider yourself to be capable of it

[misti-step]

project hail mary is a movie about circles.

watch on youtube

[beatrice-otter]

Queen Amidala: Headcanon About Naboo "Royalty"

The Naboo royalty is one of the most fascinating bits of the worldbuilding the Prequel Trilogy gives us, because it's so weird. And people don't really ... grapple with that very much, even in fic, but tend to take it for granted. We have an elected monarch (and why give an elected official a hereditary title?!?) who wears elaborate ceremonial robes and elaborate ceremonial makeup that literally nobody else in their society wears. This person has a reign name that is not the name they grew up with, and which they will keep as their primary professional name even after they are no longer monarch. And even their personal name seems to have changed. (There are two choices--either all the handmaiden's names were changed to match Padmé, or all of them including Padmé changed their names.)

This elected monarch is surrounded by body doubles/bodyguards who are not only good at fighting and can pass for the monarch in a pinch but who can also be the one making decisions and treated as the monarch in important diplomatic situations. Yes, sure, the reveal of the Real Padmé when dealing with the Gungans is cool, but why the fuck is the decoy the one leading the negotiations. Like. If Sabé-wearing-Padmé's-clothes-and-makeup had negotiated a treaty and signed it, would that treaty still be legally binding even though Sabé isn't Padmé? It sure seems so! Why didn't they swap Padmé back into the lead for the negotiations, and then back out for safety when the negotiations conclude?

This group of body doubles/bodyguards have personal names that are changed to match the monarch's personal name (and there's a good chance that the monarch's personal name is also changed to match theirs--to the best of my knowledge, Padmé and her handmaidens are the only Nabooians we see with names that end in "é". This group continues on for the rest of the monarch's life, including recruiting new members who change their names to match when they join. This group is separate from the regular security.

All of this does not smell political to me, especially when you see the difference with every other Nabooian political role. It smells religious.

Which is why my headcanon is that until fairly recently the monarch of Naboo was not, actually, the political ruler ... but rather the religious ruler. Consider Japan, where the "emperors" have beenmostly religious leaders (head of Shintoism, descendant of the god Amaterasu) and had very little political power for most of history.

Sometime in the not-too-distant-past, the monarchs of Naboo had a role that was mostly religious and ceremonial. It was probably at least sort of a group role--not just one person, but a cadre of a leader and their attendants, who all had ceremonial parts to play that were to some degree interchangeable. Being part of this cadre was prestigious, and probably meant agreeing/vowing to serve the priorities of the leader for life, so that it shouldn't matter which person is actually wearing the ceremonial makeup at any given time. There was no age limit on this role, but it does require giving up parts of your identity or subsuming them into the role; this is often easier for young people who are still forming their identity, so you get a stronger cadre if you elect them relatively young and then they grow up together.

What, exactly, the religious duties of this "monarch" are I haven't thought up, and depending on the needs of the story you could go a lot of different ways. Are they an arbiter of theology, in the Christian vein? Are they a representative of the god(s)? Do they give oracles? Is it mostly about seeing that the proper ceremonies and rites are observed, and running the priesthood?

At any rate, while this was going on, there was originally some other sort of political leadership on Naboo. There were religious leaders, and there were political leaders, and the monarch was the religious leader not the political. You could have the secular leaders be a sort of shogun, or a President, or something.

And then, somewhere along the line, the secular/political structure collapsed, and the only leadership still in place was the monarch, who sort of ... appropriated the powers of the political leadership and joined them into the existing role. (This is basically what happened in Europe with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, btw; in most places the local bishops and the local churches were the only bit of the Roman bureaucracy left standing, so they sort of found themselves holding the bag.)

By the time Padmé was elected, the political/secular aspects of the role were the primary ones; certainly, we never see any sign of any religious duties except possibly that white makeup that nobody else wears.

And that would explain just about all the weird stuff quite nicely.

[fictionadventurer]

Hallmark should make more period drama adaptations. No one expects anything out of Hallmark, so instead of all the discourse being about how it butchers the book, history, or costumes, people can be surprised and delighted by the things it gets right.

[k-she-rambles]

what's the equivalent of "hobbyless behavior" but "unimaginative excuses" instead

[k-she-rambles]

The frogs down in the bottoms by the river sound like a giant, snoring. Just now a morning bird started his song...and stopped halfway through as if someone had shushed him and said "It's still dark!"

[chlorial-ofthelibrary]

This bookmark seemed fitting for the book!

[doriangraysrockcollection]

i must say, i am a huge fan of when a book is in the middle of a very exciting plot containing many interesting problems when out of nowhere for a few pages it's like, "hey by the way, real quick, here's a detailed explanation of the city's water filtration system! i'm telling you this for a reason and you should worry about it. anyway! haha okay back to the plot" and you just get to be Scared for a while

[doriangraysrockcollection]

i am kissing you on the mouth right now

you are the only person who understands me. you and the person who tagged a series of unfortunate events

[elgreytea]

What are you reading rn, why are you reading it, and what format are you reading it in (physical book, ereader, on your phone etc)

[homunculus-argument]

Has either of your parents ever accidentally called you/your siblings the wrong name? (someone else's name, like other sibling, pet, etc)

Yes, at least once

No, but I've seen it happen to someone else

No, never

I don't have pets/siblings/parents/hair

Voting ended onJul 9

[homunculus-argument]

I forgot to clarify that this excludes deanaming you if you've changed your name. I specifically meant the "brain offers the wrong word" kind of accidental name mix-up.

This was prompted by me and my boyfriend discussing handedness and being able to tell apart left and right. And me, being ambidextrous, was baffled by how do people with an obligate dominant hand mix up which side is the one with their Writing Hand and which one isn't?? And my boyfriend pointed out that I go "turn left - no I mean right" so much when giving directions that I have lost my navigator privileges.

I argued that mixing up the words isn't the same thing as mixing up the directions. Like if your mom accidentally called you the dog's name doesn't mean that she literally can't tell you apart from the dog. And he looked at me like this

Because evidently not only has this never happened to him, he has never heard of this being a thing. And he was so confident in this that I had to double-check that I'm not the only person this has ever happened to.

[maryellencarter]

My grandmother had four boys, and of course they all had friends, so her house was always full of small boys. So she took to calling them all Sam, because none of them were named Sam, and otherwise it would absolutely be the "John—Dave—Mark—" running down the list problem.

[lilaccatholic]

It’s Fourth of July Eve so make sure to leave some milk and cookies out for Captain America

[lilaccatholic]

Guess who finally turned off notifications for this post 😌💕✌️

[apricops]

The year is 1492. You are the Catholic Monarchs - both of them. Isabel and Fernando, tanto monta, monta tanto. You have just finished kicking all of the Muslim powers out of Iberia, and you’re feeling so pleased with yourselves that you expel the Jews about it. You have a problem, though - there’s this annoying Genoese moron named Christopher Columbus who keeps waving some bad math at you, insisting that the world is actually smaller than everyone thinks it is and he could totally sail to India by going west. He gets on your nerves so much that you just give him a couple of ships and send him off. He definitely won’t make it to India, but maybe he’ll find some little island and give all of your newly-unemployed hidalgos something to keep them busy. He’ll probably just starve to death in the middle of the ocean, and then he’s no longer your problem.

The year is 1519, and you are Hernán Cortés. You and all of your compatriots are stuck in the most effective way to make someone a bad person: put them in a situation where they must become incredibly wealthy and powerful incredibly fast or else they will die horribly. Transatlantic voyages are absurdly expensive. Anyone in the ‘New World’ who isn’t rich enough to afford their own army is deeply in debt, with no collateral but their own sword-arm. It is an environment that does not reward half-measures. It does not even reward full measures. It only rewards putting a brick on the gas pedal and crossing your fingers - if you kill one person then you’re a murderer, but if you kill hundreds of thousands of people then you're a paragon of glory and the Spanish crown will make statues of you.

The year is still 1519 and you are Moctezuma II, Huēyi Tlahtoāni (great ruler) of the ‘Aztec Empire,’ also known as the Triple Alliance, or the Mexica. You know a thing or two about half-measures not being rewarded, because you are in a process of rapidly expanding and consolidating a nascent Mesoamerican empire. You are quite good at your job - even before you ascended to the throne, you cultivated a reputation as a skilled warrior, a dedicated student, and a devout worshiper. Your name means something like ‘lord who frowns in anger.’ It’s a fitting name, because the process of ‘imperial expansion and consolidation’ generally involves killing lots of people. To make matters worse, some weird hairy white guys showed up out of nowhere and they keep demanding an audience with you. You try every trick in the diplomatic handbook - deferment, threats, flattery, bribes - but everything you do just seems to make them more single-mindedly focused on your destruction. Later, after you are dead, they will claim that you thought they were gods.

The year is 1545, and this whole ‘colonialism’ thing is starting to peter out. Trans-Atlantic voyages are still ruinously expensive, and the pickings are getting slimmer every day - it’s not like you can go loot Tenochtitlan a second time. You’re starting to wonder if it’s time for everyone to pack up, go home, and forget about… holy shit is that a mountain of silver? Is that an honest-to-god mountain with more silver in it than every other existing silver mine on the face of the earth combined? Yes. Some call it Potosí. Many will call it “the mountain that eats men.” In a single moment, colonialism goes from a plundering campaign for recently-unemployed soldiers to a permanent institution. The alchemists back in Prague and Vienna never learned how to turn lead into gold, but the mercenaries and taskmasters in Potosí found a much simpler equation to turn blood into silver.

The year is 1571, and the economy of the Ming dynasty doesn’t feel so good. Their experiment with paper money was a failure, to put it gently. The experiment with paper money failed horribly. It turns out when you try to have paper currency but you don’t have sophisticated counterfeit protections and there’s also a booming cottage industry of people making paper in their cottages, well, you can guess how that ends. So you’re trying to shift to a silver economy. But then you run into an even bigger problem: you don’t have enough silver. So if you start demanding taxes in silver, the price of silver will skyrocket, which means taxes will skyrocket when the economy is already ailing from the whole ‘paper money’ thing. Some hapless scholar-official in Guangdong is nervously watching a peasant sharpen his pitchfork when he gets word from a messenger: some gweilo just showed up at the part with literal shipfuls of silver and they want to buy silk, tea, spices, and porcelain at outrageous markups.

Within living memory, the world was still ‘medieval’ in many ways - slow, parochial, zero-sum, carefully arbitrated by tradition and precedent. Legible. And now Spanish sailors take Bolivian silver on ships guarded by West African mercenaries and Japanese ronin, sailing to their colony in the Philippines to rub shoulders with Chinese officials, Indian sultans, and Malay merchants. All because some dipshit from Genoa got his math wrong and wouldn’t shut up about it.

The moral of this story is that I’m going insane.

[o-craven-canto]

#Ironically Columbus made the world small