Tense and moody

Andor stays a committed love letter to the unknown soldier. The rebellion’s lines have been pushed forward by hundreds who will never be recognized, even if their deeds are famous. Cassian has heard people claim to be at Aldhani, they don’t even know he was there. The money that bankrolled the rebellion, and no one knows who did it. Luthen will never get a medal of honor, or see the light of gratitude. Nemik’s manifesto comes back in both finales, reaching people across the galaxy. Whole battalions have enlisted because of him, and he’ll never be remembered. Without the unnamed soldier, we’d be nowhere

I look out of my window and hope you are okay, I wish you well and Im sorry I didn't get to say goodbye.

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

Stuff the European Middle Ages didn’t have and it distracts me when they show up:

Potatoes

Oranges you could peel with your hands and eat

Sparkly diamonds

Musical harmony, eg guitar chords being played under a melody

A colourfast black dye for clothes

WHY DO I HAVE TO KNOW THESE THINGS. NO ONE CARES.

Petition to be able to scrub my brain of overly-detailed knowledge of the past.

Medieval diamonds were cut very simply, so in some lights they would appear clear like glass, but they just as easily appeared black.

This is how diamonds were depicted in artwork:

Here are examples we have of diamonds cut using the table or point cuts available:

It honestly makes me sad how many people think fantasy has to be 100% historically accurate to a specific real world time and place or it’s “incorrect” and you’re not doing it right, when the entire point of fantasy is that it’s not set on Earth. There is no correct or incorrect except for what the author says.

And sure you can ignore that and eat potatoes all day long! But. If your fantasy is set in Europe, or even a heavily European-inspired world, I think it’s worth thinking about some of the common misconceptions we as a society hold about Europe.

I really believe that fantasy authors can play a role in rolling back some of the harmful, racist myths Europeans and their descendants have told about European history. For a long time Europe was seen as the home of ~civilization~ and ~learning~ and ~innovation~, and totally denied that it was also the home of colonization, imperialism, and conquest. Europeans ransacked the rest of the world for treasures, and brought them home and called them theirs. Europe has mythologized itself as a continent full of white people, natural inventors and discoverers, has erased the people of colour within it, and diminished the ones outside it.

So much of what’s considered “European” today was invented by or hugely shaped by other cultures, and our fantasy can reflect that Europe is part of a wider world and white people aren’t the only ones in it. 

Sweet oranges you can peel with your hands and eat originated in Southeast Asia. Europeans got far enough east to start bringing them back in the 15th or 16th century. Or maybe a dragon brought some back from a recent trip to Sri Lanka.

Potatoes developed through ten thousand years of human domestication in the Andes mountains of South America. In our world Europeans didn’t start eating them until the 18th century, but maybe in this world humans have been crossing the Atlantic since antiquity, and ancient Roman merchants trading in the Maya city of Kaminaljuyu saw it presented as a crop from the mountains to the south.

Sparkling diamonds happened once Europeans got in contact with the advanced gemcutting techniques used in Mughal India. Instead of viewing the ~mysterious Orient~ as the origin of goods and luxuries that might as well grow on the trees, your story could acknowledge it as a place of science and learning, as the origin not just of things but of people and ideas.