So I'm playing a game, Mount & Blade: Bannerlord, where my character is of a group of tribal forest-clans who unified and "civilized" in order to resist a big scary (extremely Roman) empire. Doing the longbow/smithing thing, working as a merchant-mercenary for my people, presumably more than a little xenophobic in the valid *resisting imperialists* sense.
So I come across this one wanderer, of my culture, who's bragging about his collection of trophy heads. Which is a part of Battanian culture which has been referenced before, nostalgically, but like... maybe isn't so much a thing anymore? And he's very cringe because he supposedly had to bury them all and even in his lie his victims had puny names.
My character probably respects the tradition of taking trophies, sure. In theory and legend. But this guy trying to grift on nostalgia for the old ways is really embarrassing. And maybe my character would get much better deals with a larger market, and maybe indoor plumbing and some more books to read?
This led to me thinking about bidets again which is why I posted it here. I still don't understand how they're supposed to work, but maybe finely pulped paper isn't the optimal path towards self-hygiene. I don't know, it's been on my mind for a while. oh and I guess I replaced the bolts on my dad's toilet a couple days ago. So I could literally handle a bidet conversion personally, and an influencer I know has one, and it'd trigger all the trads.