For posterity this is how urban dictionary defines a “roman empire”
Slang expression for something that someone constantly thinks about (used especially by girls on TikTok), inspired and popularized by the belief that most men often think about the actual Roman Empire and its legacy
To start with the spirit of the original usage: I think about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand a lot. The event itself was chaotic and bizarre, the circumstances of the state of the world before were completely different to today, and the ramifications changed the entire world. Modern passports and global emigration/movement were obviously limited during the great war and those limitations just, stuck around!
EDIT: OKAY, I know that’s not in the spirit of the question so I’ll say language.
In another world where I have enough money to go to college without working a full time job I’m a some sort of linguistics major.
Took three years of german in high school and it was the only class i liked.
Currently finally forcing myself to have the time to study japanese and I just wish I could study all (most) of the time.
England had just gone through a long period of relative political stability. Even the Black Death in the 1340s did not seriously challenge the power of the monarchy. Three men named Edward were successively king! Finally, in the last part of the 1300s, we start to see a wellspring of English literature, from John Gower to William Langland, from the Pearl Poet to Geoffrey Chaucer.
Richard II sees some instability, notably the Peasants’ Rebellion in 1381. Then in the last years of the 1300s, Richard gets revenge on political opponents, then John of Gaunt (really powerful man and Richard’s uncle) dies, then Richard disinherits John’s son Henry, and Henry invades and deposes Richard. Lots of instability. But that’s not my empire.
We lose Chaucer. Chaucer was alive before 1400. We don’t know what happens to Chaucer after that. We know he had served the crown in a number of capacities, including as diplomat, comptroller, and foreman. We know he was a friend of John of Gaunt as well; Chaucer’s sister-in-law married John. But we don’t know if he died from natural causes (possible when you’re 57), whether he got caught up in something political (quite plausible for the time), or was otherwise a casualty post-overthrow.
I think all the time about what sort of cool late medieval literature we would have if Chaucer had stayed alive longer. It’s possible we would have gotten nothing else - Chaucer’s retraction (where he takes back a lot of what he wrote) is, uh, weird. But I’d take some more tales or even another translation or two.
Somehow I’m convinced there’s a way to algebraically factor a semiprime easily and it just hasn’t been discovered. This stemmed from an honors thesis I did in college involving Lehmer’s totient problem.
Final Fantasy XIII itself, as well as the disconnect between its critical and commercial success and the strength of the backlash against it, its legacy with respect to all Final Fantasy that follows it, and the ways in which common criticisms of the game don’t seem to be leveled against other similar games, both within and without the series
It has, on occasion, kept me up at night, and I ruminate on it at least a little bit most days
Before FFXIII, it was probably the nostoi (“homecomings”) a collection of epics tracing the homeward journeys of several heroes of the Trojan War. We’ve only got one (The Odyssey, naturally), and I would love to be able to read the rest
they really just seemed to be a bit ahead of the times to me as a ‘lifestyle brand’ outside of only gaming. i did not ‘experience’ nintendo outside of the the narrow console world.
in contrast :
dream passport/seganet/ was literally the email provider i used for my online and offline life in Tokyo. I bought event tickets on my dreamcast in the US to pick up at Lawson’s on landing. i made meetup plans. i brought my friend’s vmu from the us to a japanese arcade in hopes of doing /something/ with power stone.
club sega was a ‘3rd’ space open late. i still have casual friends in made in those spaces playing card games (wccf) in the mid 00s
there’s probably a lot more and I don’t want to turn this into the SEGA thread. in the end they were just a company.
but to me, (along with sony) they embodied a very familiar, yet alien vision to how we would interact with technology and make it a part of our lives. in some ways that future came true, but not in the utopian blue sky sense that we were hoping for.
I never used to understand how anyone could be a superfan of anything because I’ve always been interested in a lot of different things - which is probably why I landed on this forum! - but I think without noticing I have slowly become that way about fighting games . . . and skateboarding . . . and art punk
Pandemics. Much more concretely, the Black death and specially the Spanish flu (to the point of trying to make a movie in that period).
Also, the Lisbon earthquake.
(To sum up, catastrophes and pandemics, their effects and how people got over it)
It’s partially my job but everywhere I go I’m looking at bricks and masonry and seeing what they did different or if it’s an unusual color. There’s a huge amount of variety just on your block
