I’m not into men so maybe my opinion doesn’t count here, going by visual appeal, I’d take Geralt over Pike any day. OTOH Pike is definitely who I’d want helping me out of a jam.
Historians of the medieval era hate the term “dark ages”, even in relation to Europe. The whole notion that the Roman Empire went poof one day and then everything sucked for 1000 years is just cartoonishly wrong.
Realistically speaking, any of the major changes that happen near the end of a star’s life will make their planets uninhabitable on a time scale that seems pretty long from a human perspective. Imagine the last 100 years of climate change, but it just keeps getting worse at the same pace for a million years. By the time a star swells into a giant or explodes in a supernova, there won’t be anyone around to notice.
IMHO the bigger gotcha on the “states’ rights” lie is that the Confederate constitution gave states no more rights than the US constitution, while specifically denying one: the right to abolish slavery within their borders.
Wealth inequality trends to increase over time. Without some system that actively redistributes wealth, eventually a few people own everything of value, and ordinary people are obligated to do whatever the lords want in order to gain access to the material resources they need to survive. That’s feudalism.