Aiun @Linael@awoo.space

@Gaypow So overall it's kinda like reading a French royal chronicle and thinking every other child in France was named Louis. Understandable but not quite there yk.

It gets more awful with the transliteration too. Bodastart/abd'Ashtart (a king of Sidon) somehow, in the mouths of the Greeks, turns into fucking "Strato." It's a cartoon. But everyone does that to everyone else, it's really mainly just the prominent families thing + lots of theophoric names (names-of-gods as elements).

@Gaypow Ahh, this made me dig. :)

If you look at a regnal list, prominent generals and all that it's true, it's pretty much like five names and they're kinda samey (H- things and short -o like Mago, Hanno.)

But one, that's just prominent names in a couple families, and two, the Greek transliteration leaches a lot of the personality out of the names. Looking at inscriptions it took me way too long to realize Abdmelqart was just the familiar Hamilcar!

a couple days ago twitter showed me someone saying "isn't backlash against open plan offices just coded misogyny and racism"

that's such a spectacular take, but somehow I think I would have been just as happy not knowing it

anyway, fuck birdsite, and glad I'm gonna be gone from there for a while. awoooooo

@Gaypow Have a soft spot for these folks too, from when a historian of like mind assigned them to me in undergrad Byzantium class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Turkic_Khaganate

Had to sit there reading Latin to figure out even who they were supposed to be really, at the time this article was like literally one paragraph.

@Gaypow But I think some of it as well is a sort of subversive impulse to boost cultures we mostly hear about through outside, hostile sources. If you go back earlier than CK2 I devour stuff about Carthage for the same reasons.

And if only we had enough information about the sea peoples to write a history from *their* perspective, dang would that be cool. Though that's probably not a singular culture, modern writers went further lumping them together than Egypt itself

@Gaypow I really just like the wild way people romanize old Persian, all the words are just wildly fun to write, haha. It's shallow but especially for someone into onomastics it's fun

@Gaypow it's really refreshing to see a CK2 person talking about Zoroastrianism and it's not goddamn xwedodah memes. It was the first really dualistic religion I was familiar with, and though I'm not *really* a religious dualist I think there's definitely some value in it. (I think sometimes people mix it up with mind-body dualism and heard that was Bad, and then just dismiss the whole thing.)

Definitely they kept some ideas alive that give everything a different flavor.

@Gaypow Makes sense. I've seen more CK2 without shattered retreat than with at this point, I do know it's controversial.

I'm gonna watch a bit of After the End before I turn in tonight, thanks for mentioning it ^^

@Gaypow But yeah raiding looks like a really cool mechanic for sure. One of my favorite things about Arumba's Building Tall series was the flood of comments about how weird it was to see the Norse raiding Constantinople, isn't CK2 wild, before someone inevitably points out that it happened in 860.

But yeah it's interesting to see the maps analyzing potential plunder, and managing your raiders to escape oncoming armies in time.

@Gaypow Awesome. The Eastern Mediterranean is fantastically interesting; when I did my undergrad history degree I took every opportunity to write about the Byzantines and various iterations of Persia, and lately I'm getting into Islamic history as well. I still remember where I was the first time I read Saladin's life story -- what a fascinating dude.

@Oneironott also btw I did do a bit of writing tonight, you were the spark, thank you c:

@Gaypow ahhh I have so many questions though! you don't have to answer them ofc but i'm curious -- who do you most like to play as, what start date, do you use any non-paradox mods, do you have sunset invasion opinions??

I am entirely too good at creating memetic hazards for myself lol

@Oneironott Sometimes I find it hard to get started, but yeah.
I'm glad when people post about it, though. Friends writing makes me likely to do it more often. ^_^

I'm kinda learning CK2 from youtube videos, still don't feel ready to actually play it though rofl

I just kinda want to impose my will on it if I play it, I guess

I might read four futures but just skip the depressing one that got screenshotted to hell in that thread. I don't need that