*blocks your path*

*blocks your path*

p-please doge, I'll pay my debt off next year, I swear..

I don't even have any debt, in fact I'll give you 20 bucks to fuck off you Venetian shit.

Well, I do have a certain way you can pay off your debts, my fine crusading friend.
*unzips dock*

Okay, I give.

Mr. Dandalo, I give. I've only just realized that this whole Byzaboo thing I've been nursing since those glorious summers as a 14-17 year old playing CrusaderKangzToo has spiraled out of control. What began as simply a reflexive glee spurred by feeling myself possessor of some esoteric knowledge ("Well, most people don't actually know that the Roman Embire dint even fall until 1453 [or was it 1204???]...), is now a gross sublimation of something all the more sinister. Now, now this reflexive cringe and whinge -- dare I admit, trigger -- whenever anyone as much mentions Manzikert or Mehmed or even your very own Fourth, Mr. Dandalo, now I know that it is merely a stand-in, a convenient formula of metaphor and synapse by which I can subconsciously give shape to a number of ills and self-loaths I never even knew were there.

Don't you see Mr. Dandalo? I want to thank you! Thank you and all your blessed four-score and teen years of existence for collecting one final debt. That which I owe to myself. For you see, I was never reaally in love with the Byzantines. Few are, at least, not those of us who attach so much emotion to something of the past. Instead, I used that faded codicil of the good ol' Imperium as a cypher for regret, to sublimate all my own past mistakes, regrets, and poor decisions. The idea of the wrecked empire, Mr. Dandalo, was nothing ever more than my finally peering down from the mouse -- or even, up at a mirror -- and not being able to help but notice the degradation of flesh, that waste that the silent hours have long since stolen from me. Oh don't get me wrong Mr. Dandalo, this isn't a bitter realization, no! This is a jubilant one, for you see, we all feel regret, we can't help it. I'm sure you carried your own all those years after personally witnessing the fruits of your labor wrecked by Byzantine agency.

Yes, we all carry regret, path not taken and all that. I'm just glad that now, I can do something about it. Now that its out in the open, and no longer being subsumed as 'utterly' futile butthurt, NOW I can go out and seize hold of what years I have left (that I may have have of yours total more). Thank you Mr. Dandalo. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I bet that holy cross splintered up did wonders for all those Italian and French churches, and I'm sure that French whore sung wonderfully on the Patriarch's throne, and if it weren't for you, I bet the Quadriga would have long since been a Turkish cannon, killing many a Hungarian or Armenian. Thank you, THANK YOU Mr. Dandalo. What's that? You want to see if that little Ancona under your manskirt can still feel a tickle? Well Mr. Dandalo, if you insist! Please me to please you! Haha! Yes! [gargling down your spire of St. Mark]. Oh Mr. Dandal-OH!

saved

REEEEEEEEE that's not enrico dandolo

Please don't tell anyone I used Gritti's portrait.

...