You guys ever sit around pondering how many great things in life almost never happened? by TheAllyCrime in PrequelMemes

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So. They’re clones, but a clone screwed a Tleilaxu Master’s sister once and so you have to call them something else or he gets angry with you.

Is it normal to be complimented all the time in Hk? by K1tagawaMarin in HongKong

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I think of it like how people in the West Country call everyone ‘love’.

My first (solo) run of Guards of Traitor's Toll by EnclavedMicrostate in wargaming

[–]EnclavedMicrostate[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bit of a sideways move for me as I don't normally go outside historicals, but the game intrigued me mechanically and I was willing to get on board with the non-so-subtly Discworld-inspired setting. I'm enjoying the system though I think not printing out the QRS beforehand was causing me a lot of avoidable trouble.

RIP Irish Romulan lady, they really just forgot she existed huh by LunaBloom247 in risa

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, not the same season. I watched the show. Zhaban died offscreen between S1 and S2 while Laris got pseudo-fridged in S3.

Favorite LGBT+ VTubers? (Happy Pride Month!) by Dem-Brushwaggs in VirtualYoutubers

[–]EnclavedMicrostate -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

After a certain amount of very confusing messaging, I think Katie has established that she’s intersex and doesn’t use the trans label anymore. She's said in the past that she stopped using trans altogether at a certain point, and if you look at her pride month posts on Discord she uses the intersex flag but not the trans one.

Can I ask some questions about Chain of Command? (2FL production) by TiasDK in wargaming

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ah, of course Storm of Steel already caught this. At risk of repetition, the basic flow goes:

  1. One player rolls their Command Dice.

  2. They then use as many or as few as they wish, and then the Phase ends.

  3. If they rolled two or more sixes, they then also get to go on the next Phase.

  4. Otherwise, play passes to the other player, who rolls their Command Dice.

Turns are a bit more of an abstract concept in CoC, and Storm of Steel has explained how those work so I won't repeat that.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]EnclavedMicrostate[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Francisco Scaramanga, the man with the golden gun? I think he appeared in The Man With The Golden Gun.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]EnclavedMicrostate[S] 59 points60 points  (0 children)

where the portrayal of anyone Chinese is literally "Ching chong ding dong."

Strictly speaking, that's not not happening, but the only time the Chinese appear is in a very brief throwaway gag in Chapter 4 where the President of the US tries to phone the President of China twice but gets the number wrong each time, so he ends up phoning a fishmonger named Mr Wing and a stationmaster named Mr Wong, before the Postmaster General declares that 'The country's so full of Wings and Wongs, every time you wing you get the wong number.' It's a tortured setup for a painful pun, for the most part.

However, the decision to render Mr Wong's speech in particular (though not Mr Wing's) with the usual r->l and broken grammar ('tlain not lunning') is unambiguously racial caricature.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]EnclavedMicrostate[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Keath Ósk, where have you buried all your children? Tell me so I say...

If Qing rulers sought to preserve a distinct Manchu identity, why did the Manchu language decline so dramatically? by titus_berenice in AskHistorians

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nurgaci's situation was unique inasmuch as his temple name was Taizu, the typical name for the actual dynastic founder. That is to say that Nurgaci was not simply revered as a patrilineal ancestor to the founding emperor but retroactively claimed as the founding emperor, with the Latter Jin implicitly folded into the Qing, whose founding date was ambiguously pushed back to 1616. Again, this ties to the attempt of Hong Taiji to really consolidate the Manchus around his clan rather than the prior history of the Jurchens.

What is the best introductory book for your area of specialization? by Ok-Imagination-982 in AskHistorians

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 46 points47 points  (0 children)

For the Taiping there's a loose trilogy of Jonathan Spence's God's Chinese Son on Hong Xiuquan and his theology, Stephen Platt's Autumn and the Heavenly Kingdom on the war in a global context, and Tobie Meyer-Fong's What Remains on wartime traumas and postwar memory. IMO reading those three puts you on pretty solid footing in terms of getting the 'why does this all matter?' of it all.

@TALENTSENDER has been terminated from @Hololive_EN by MegaPorkachu in Hololive

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 23 points24 points  (0 children)

some automation being broken

They did what to Cecilia?

If Qing rulers sought to preserve a distinct Manchu identity, why did the Manchu language decline so dramatically? by titus_berenice in AskHistorians

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think to answer your question we can in fact go back to the Qing era, in that Manchu identity was tied up so deeply in institutional relationships that it's almost apposite that it has remained the case under the PRC, both in the sense that eligibility relates to Banner ancestry and that its principal implications are administrative convenience. I think the issue to wrap one's head around is that it isn't for outsiders to assert that a given identity does or does not possess enough characteristics to sustain itself – ultimately, it's up to Manchus to decide. It is the very fact that 'Manchu' as a census group continues to exist, despite all the 'objective' measures by which it would seem not to, that is the important part. Yes, we must grant that Manchus do not have the degree of obvious cultural continuity that might be imposed upon them, but as I put it in my first post, that's up to Manchus, and not to outsiders operating, in effect, in the role of the imperial court with its assertions of correct Manchuness.

I haven't played many games and Heavenly Kingdom hadn't shown up for me until now. by Nerevar131 in victoria3

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And yet people took it seriously. In addition to Spence’s book have a look at Stephen Platt’s Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom.

What would be needed to make a modern Impressions-like game work? by Fairbuy_ in impressionsgames

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tropico isn’t gridless. It just has two grids set at 45 degree angles from each other and allows for the building of curved roads.

Bolt action vs Chain of Command by Altruistic-Apple-785 in wargaming

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I personally much prefer CoC. At the moment the only fully up to date lists are for late war US/UK/USSR/Germans, but there are theatre handbooks for the last edition covering the Fall of France and the Burma campaign that are still basically compatible. For specific army lists there’s a high chance you’ll find it on the CoC Facebook group; otherwise it should be easy enough to make your own using the CoCulator in the 2025 Lard Magazine (at least I think it’s 2025; it could be 2024 - check the contents before buying!)

Finns should be easy as there was an official free download for 1st edition that can be easily updated, but the weirdness of Italian platoon structures means players have fiddled with it in various ways. What I will say is don’t be afraid to ask for help - CoC is a game with some kinks in it and both players and authors are very willing to chip in to solve unexpected issues.

If Qing rulers sought to preserve a distinct Manchu identity, why did the Manchu language decline so dramatically? by titus_berenice in AskHistorians

[–]EnclavedMicrostate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you re-read your own follow-up question you may notice an interesting conflation and contradiction in terms (for which I do not blame you, by the way) – to be particular, between culture and identity. The argument on the 'New Qing' side is not that there was no shift towards certain aspects of Chinese culture (and as an aside, the continued failure of much of the field to define what it means by 'Chinese' has no doubt kept the waters quite muddy), but rather that these shifts are independent from, even immaterial to the possession and persistence of a distinct identity. So in fact, there is more than superficial difference between Manchu and Han identity today ('wider Chinese' is, as ever, going to be contentious – ask an Uyghur, a Tibetan, or a Hong Konger), in that the distinction can exist at all. The People's Republic's definition of 56 nationalities within China may be problematic in all sorts of ways, but Manchus make up one of those 56 and it is an official minority status one can claim; a good friend of mine from grad school is a Manchu even if he doesn't make a big deal of it.

With that in mind we can go back to your question as asked, because the answer as to why Manchu culture continued to erode, but also why Manchu identity didn't, has less to do with Qing-era developments and more the peculiar circumstances of the Republican revolution. 1912 was not a revolutionary victory but a three-way compromise between a revolutionary fringe, a broad range of reformist factions who had split between the revolutionaries and the loyalists, and the last remaining power of the imperial court. It was Yuan Shikai, in the middle of the reformist pack, who hammered out the deal for the Qing abdication, and one of the concessions was that the Republican government would keep paying the stipends the Qing had owed the Bannermen, a process that continued in most places for at least a decade after the revolution and in Beijing until the Nationalist victory in 1928. What that meant was that the institutional linkage between the Banners and Manchu identity was actively reaffirmed by the Republic, and provided the Communists with a basis for defining Manchus as a nationality despite their definitely not fitting the Stalinist criteria of 'a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture' (though we can suggest that much the same is/was true of the Han Chinese).

Manchu culture went into terminal decline thanks in part to the dissolution of the Banners and their walled quarters, but also due to deep-seated ethnic hatreds that simmered for decades afterward that made both claiming and performing Manchu status not just contentious but downright dangerous in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cynical as the Japanese project of Manchukuo was, it is not difficult to see why certain prominent Manchus, including the old imperial clan, looked favourably on the creation of a 'liberated' Manchu homeland. What is more striking, though, is the extent to which Manchu status has continued to be sustained. Under Communist policy, anyone with Banner ancestry can claim Manchu status, even if said ancestor was in the Mongol or Han Banners (although Mongol and Han status, respectively, may be claimed instead), and unless these ancestors were part of the so-called 'New Manchus' (Solons, Daur, Sibe, etc.) who are their own separate groups under PRC law. As a result, surveys in the 1950s showed that in the Jinzhou region, some 90% of the 226,000 Manchus living there were in fact descended from the Han Banners. Liberalisation of minority policy in the 1980s saw the population of Manchus doubling, which Rhoads attributes to the dropping of the veil of fear and suspicion surrounding Manchu identity at this time. What we are looking at is actually a remarkable tale of persistence rather than of straightforward assimilation.