#ive started converting them but in order to do that i need to not be a hater so let me have this

[10868letsgo]

BBC Bloody Queens Elizabeth I and Mary of Scots

Drama reveals the intimate and ultimately deadly relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, using the words of the two queens and their courtiers.

In the beginning, they never met one another in real life for Mary was in France at the time and widowed to returning Scotland. In fact, the only evidence they had was letters. At first, they happily greeted each other and friendship started out. Even friendly called each other sisters. Their childhood and life couldn't be more opposites than ever. However, after many faults, their once friendly letters became hints of jealousy, betrayal, and mystery between the two women began to grow animosity. And question is was Mary innocent? Or did Elizabeth fall for a trap that made her decision to execute her cousin?

Mary was her father's only daughter and became for six days. She grew up with love and luxuries in life. Her days were full of happiness. She went to France to marry Dauphin of France name Francis I son of Henri II and Catherine De Medici. She was the happy yet spoiled princess who grew up believing that she was the heir to England. Sadly she was a widow and was ordered by her mother-in-law to leave France and return to Scotland. Her suffering and test of faith were not over. Scotland became a Protestant country and Mary a well-known Catholic is their queen. It makes the Protestant lords uneasy. Outspokers like John Knox were highly against Mary being queen. For not only being a catholic but she was a woman. Worse, to Scots, she was a foreign woman. A French woman who ruled the hard blood land Scotland. However, Mary had this attitude that she was queen because it was given right from her birth which made her ruler of Scotland. She started to order people around and was a stubborn woman who would say, "No I am the queen and you are my servant." Or "You will have to do as I say goes." As if she was stomping her feet. But Mary wasn't in court without friends. David Rizzio her secretary and Italian courtier also a musician was her favorite and close friend to Mary. Her half-brother was born from her father's mistress, James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray whom the nobles that converted to protestant even Moray respected him. But Mary's trouble continues the downfall of her quest. Marriage. First, her hand was appointed by Elizabeth I in a deal that she would recognize Mary as her heir if she married a protestant Lord Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.

However, Mary was not only insulted but felt anger that Elizabeth would back on their deal. So, Mary decides she needs a catholic, better position to help her claim better for England.

Henry Stuart Lord Darnley, her cousin born from He was the second but eldest surviving son of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, by his wife Lady Margaret Douglas, which supported his claim to the English succession. Darnley's maternal grandparents were Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and Queen Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England and widow of King James IV of Scotland. Mary fell instantly in love with his good looks and flattery attitude. But noooo. Not him. Anyone but Darnely. For he is not only the grandson of King Henry the Seventh as Mary's blood. But that was Elizabeth's only concern for that. The Scottish lords did not like Darnely because he was the male version of Mary per se. Plus, he was a drinker, vain, spoilt, womanizer, violent temper, and homosexual as well. Mary was in love with Darnely and ignored such "rumors" as she calls them. That is until after marriage with him. he revealed his true colors as Mary was pregnant at the time, but sent letters to Elizabeth to help her. Sadly Elizabeth was advised not to involve a queen's marriage troubles as this was a personal matter. Mary's trouble did not end there. After killing Rizzio for believing that he is the father of her child since she hasn't allowed Darnely near her. Probably fear the risk of miscarriage. That was when Mary took back power and locked Darnely away in his castle where he died in mysterious circumstances. The house exploded, but he survived before being strangled to death. And guess who was the suspect.

James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.

Mary is not only widowed the second time, but she marries the possible murder of her husband. Now the lords had no love for Darnley, but his death seemed a bit off as Mary quickly married to Bothwell. Even drew pictures of Mary as a mermaid. Not a compliment mind you. In Scotland, it means whore or seductress. And Mary's reputation went from bad to worse. She rebelled again and this time both Catholics and Protestant lords wanted Mary out of the throne and placed her son James to be king of Scotland and they wanted Moray to be his regent.

Moray had imprisoned Mary and she was separated from both her son and Bothwell who escaped. But the worst is yet to come, Mary had suffered a miscarriage and it was Bothwell's twins. It was horrifying for Mary. They forced her to abdicate either by her vulnerability of losing her miscarriage or threat. Either way, Mary has lost her crown. Mary had strength and a chance to escape. Elizabeth was her thought of helping her get her crown. Wrong again Mary.

Elizabeth was born to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. However, her birth was met with scorn by both Catholics and hatred for the Boleyns. However, it was mostly because of the actions her father, mostly her mother had done. he divorced his first wife and married Anne Boleyn to gain a son. Instead, he had a daughter.

She was beloved by her parents, but Anne Boleyn was beheaded under the guise of treason and saw Jane Seymour as his new replacement queen.

Since then her life suffered as now declared bastard or illegitimate as her older sister Mary daughter of Catherine of Aragon the first wife of Henry VIII.

Elizabeth suffered at the hands of her enemies and was accused of treason which included prison during both her siblings' reigns. But she survived it all even treason plots that brought up her name. And never know who to trust.

She never knew peace nor rest for she knows her enemies are lurking to destroy her. She had to play a game that had two chances life and death.

Her greatest enemy is Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. When Mary had escaped from Scotland and abdication her crown in favor of her son, James. Elizabeth refused to see her cousin as instructed that she must be sent away and be locked up in comfort as her presence endangered Elizabeth's life. Mary was struck with another heat felt like a betrayal again. For Elizabeth hearing about Mary's reputation back in Scotland that gave Elizabeth the decision to never marry seemed like a good idea compared to Mary. Despite Mary's insistent that she is innocent. Mary claimed that she was kidnapped and was raped by Bothwell. That is why she had to marry him to protect her honor.

William Cecil was very loyal to Elizabeth and a firm protestant reformer. He wants Mary dead, but Elizabeth cannot do it. No one would know why. But it could be a reminder of how she lost her mother Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard who were queens yet executed by the king's pleasure? Or fear of possible invaders who would use Mary's death to dethrone? Either way, Elizabeth would have to be forced as Willaim Cecil found evidence and proof that Mary was part of a coup to take Elizabeth's life and the crown. This angers Elizabeth as she will never go back to the time when she had to suffer at the hands of her enemies and the injustice was ignored. So, two versions said that Elizabeth was pressured by Willaim Cecil and her spymaster Francis Walsingham that there were new plots that were going to break Mary out and have a secret army waiting for her in France or other countries.

Another version said that she did sign it, but changed her mind as she wanted to spare Mary. Though, time was against Elizabeth. It's either her life or Mary's. She cannot have both ways. Mary was tried and found guilty. Then ordered her to be beheaded for treason. Though stories show she made one final defiant as a queen. She wore a red dress a symbol of martyrism. And three times it take to chop her thick neck. The executioner took her head, but her hair was a wig and her head flew off to the side. Finally, her pet dog was hiding under her dress yapping and covered in her blood.

Well, there you go folks the background and queens who were opposite to each other lives. However, tied by fate as they would someday play the role of life and death. The grand prize for the winner was the crown of England which remained with Elizabeth I for the next 44 years after she triumphed over the Spaniard armada and the final enemy who came close to Elizabeth but she remained undefeated.

After her death, the crown did not go to Mary as planned, but it went to her son James Stuart who became the first monarchy to Scotland and England finally united the two kingdoms into the great nation that is today.

[hinamie]

hi hina! i hope you've been well 🩵 for the art asks: 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23 🎨🖌️🖼️

Mariam !!! It's so good to hear from you I hope you've been well also <3 <3 <3 this will get long

5. Anything you haven’t drawn yet but want to?

oooooh I've had an idea in my head for an s/e piece inspired by visuals from the blood sweat and tears mv for like 5 years but no matter how hard I throw myself at it I can never get it to look right so i've just been waiting until i manage to catch lightning in a bottle i guess :< (((I also found a few notes in an old "to draw" folder from like 2 years ago that include but are not limited to: jjk band au with guitarist brothers yuuji+sukuna/bassist megu/drummer nobara; gojo in crocs. ))))

6. Which artists inspire you right now?

HHHHH its the same crowd as usual i am so hides face in hands bc they intimidate me /pos :'))))) vacuumchan, ohprcr, gloomyhome, trickywagon, meru90 to name a few ANYWAY RUNNING HIDING

15. Biggest artist pet peeve?

this is a tough one im such a hater and everything inconveniences me ,,, when the perfect csp brush costs money >:C,, when u cant find reference from this One Specific Angle >:C,, when u dont realize youve merged the wrong layer until you've been working for hours and all of a sudden your folders are out of order and its a mess >:C SPEAKING OF MERGING LAYERS hot take i think that they should invent a way to let u merge layer modes without converting them all to the same type. let me put my multiply with my glow dodge !!! cowards.

16. What’s the most daunting part of your process?

rendering :') so much of it is trusting the process and there are so many ugly phases that make u wonder if u were ever good at art to begin with

17. What inspires you?

hdsj i mean im a fanartist so i think it goes without saying that I'm mainly inspired by the content I like ,, but i also am very inspired by fashion !!!! saw a guy walking the other day with a hoodie that said CASH FOR SOULS | COLD HARD CASH | CA$H4SOULZ.com and i had to take a picture of it like a creep bc tht + Sukuna ??? hello??? anyway yea ive got a pinterest board dedicated to insp-y clothes and a notes folder dedicated to jotting down cute outfits I see in public

18. Do you have any larger projects you’d like to pursue?

I've always wanted to do speedpaints ! but even more than that I want to do something aNYTHING with my ocverse but alas...time.....planning....plot.. so in the meantime they simply live in my head bouncing around like globs of wax in a lava lamp

19. Favourite character(s) to draw?

megumi jjk gojo jjk sukuna/yuuji jjk kotori love live rina love live ichigo tokyo mew mew + shiro n eden from My Brain ,,, im crying the duality of my fav chars is either feral shounen twink or idol/magical girl and eden is both simultaneously actually

22. When is your prime time to work on your art?

usually mid to late afternoon but it depends on the season because it gets so HOT in my room in the warm months which I dread >:( How it works is if I start in mid-late afternoon then I'm able to hit my stride and draw basically through the entire evening (also because of the aforementioned Heat I vastly prefer drawing in fall/winter because that means I don't have to evacuate my room at 4pm sdfhdgshd)

23. Do you listen to music or watch shows while you work? If so, what’s your favourite?

I have to have music or something on while I'm drawing or the fans in my cintiq will drive me insane . Sometimes i listen to music that matches/drastically contrasts the piece I'm working on but most of the time I can't be bothered and just throw on my youtube mix which consists embarassingly of mainly vocaloid and utau ,, though sometimes if a piece is kicking my ass and I need to just hunker down and get shit done then I'll put the entire discography of an artist I like on shuffle (some favs include 1D/waterparks/former vandal/harumaki gohan) and for some reason the Predictability activates intense productivity mode?? I cant explain it gdsj its like I have music on that I like but it's not jumping around between artists so I don't get too distracted or excited whenever the song changes

[everydaydg]

It is my eternal goal to be the best Fantasy Zone 2 16c player or at least be comparable to a good player by achieving a 4+ loop (or at least beating the game on max diff.)

A bit of an explanation of what makes this special and a bit of my planing behind how I play the game

To start my main release of the game is the 3DS due its implementation of analog control and widescreen

I have done some runs on the arcade version before and its def doable but I simply prefer the wider view and analog (it actually brings and incredibly useful technique).

Ive made it to a third loop a few times on arcade but sadly kept dying on it (two clears is not half bad).

So

Loop = 1 Clear

The game lets you clear the game as many times as you can as it resets after beating evil Opa-Opa

The game takes all your lives and it converts them into score and the game increases the difficulty by 1 (max of 5, usually I start out at 3), the increase in difficulty brings faster bullets and more enemy spawns (which means more bullets)

Its also worth keeping in mind that the price inflation between runs stays, if you bought the laser beam twice it will increase in price slight. the game will keep the increased price for the second run.

so those are the main things to keep in mind. now onto my usual loadouts for each stage

Base Build = Jet Engine/Turbo Engine, Twin Shot, Double Big Bombs

When possible/necesary: Laser, 3 Way, Wide, Twin Big Shot

to tank one hit and have a higher damage output... mostly the former. they are all relatively cheap options too.

Loadout/Changes to loadout per stage:

Stage 1 = Jet Engine + Double Bombs (not enought gold for engine, big bombs not selectable on stage 1)

Stage 2 = Heavy Bomb

Stage 3 = Fire Bomb/Heavy Bomb (I usually replace heavy bomb with fire bomb in advance to prepare for stage 4)

Stage 4, 5 and 6= Same set up as stage 3 (stage 5 prefferable with 7 way shot... theres no real advantage from using it lol, I just like using it when I can. You can save your cash on that)

Stage 7 = Laser + Fire Bomb

If you can tell, fire bomb is the best bomb in the entire game.

it does HUGE damage, can be used as many times as you want, its useful for nearly all bosses.

Even on the boss rush the quick kill on the round 2 boss can be neglected in order to just stay with fire bombs

The boss rush is kinda just keeping fire bomb and sometimes equiping laser.

Super important note if you are shooting for constant bright endings... dont buy drop tears when the boss rush starts. Kill yourself with a nenon on the prelude to the final boss and THEN buy it... do buy a laser shot there too, it helps with the nenons and if you are fast enought it can do big damage to evil opa.

So yeah thats the usual idea. I do tend to buy guns for the sake of it at times... I never need fire shot but its always fun to use hehe.

Regarding the price increasing per purchase

There are some things that are always affordadble (which is why loops in this game are even possible- I genuinelly refuse to believe someone can casualy beat the game with small wings)

Stuff like the jet engine always staying at a comfy 1000g is a huge help.

Wide Beam is always an affordable choise. Due to me never buying triple bombs (unless I die on a late stage), I often find them a great tool for second-third loops.

Oh yeah real quick, regarding that technique I mentioned that was introduced on the 3DS ver. you can move backwards while shooting foward. If you move your circle pad slightly back you can just move backwards without changing directions, this makes the stage 1 and 3 bosses a complete breeze with bomb and shot spam.

I could go on and on in more detail about certain things about the game but at a certain point you just have to figure things out yourself... and im a bit tired of typing, its kinda late.

Good luck.

[nykloss]

oh! ive actually stumbled across your old xanadu pdf when looking for ways to run code lyoko as a ttrpg!

i never actually ran it cause i was trying to figure out how to run the earth lyoko split, and i also wanted to give my players powers unique to them like super sprint or creativity but i couldnt think of how to do it balance wise and what to choose for them

Oh that's actually super cool! I think I was sharing it around a lot back when I was initially running it, mostly on Reddit and stuff, so it makes me happy to see that people remember it.

The split between the virtual world and earth is something I'm trying hard to address in Warriors of Xanadu because it was actually something I struggled with personally in the dnd hack, especially when the party gets split! Code Lyoko as a show relies a lot on a split party, with some characters on Earth and some in Lyoko, and while this can be mitigated somewhat when converting it to a game, Dnd is a very "don't split the party" system. PBTA games are inherently more friendly to the concept, though–no battle maps to juggle or complex turn orders, and combat is usually briefer and easier to scale, so it's a lot easier to jump focus from player to player. (In the dnd 5e hack there's really not a great way to go about it, other than trying to make sure the party sticks together or looking up a lot of "splitting the party" YouTube videos lmao.)

Signature moves is something I'm actually still toying around with. In Xanadu, heroes will have a pool of varied predetermined moves tied to their class sheet that they either have inherently or that they can take. My intention is for these moves to be flavored as needed. (Textbook example is a move that allows flight–the player could flavor this as the Hero being able to defy gravity, actually having wings, or having cool tech to fly with, and so on. If you take a look at moves in Apocalypse World or Monster of the Week playbooks it's a similar idea.) At the end of the day, there should be few duplicate moves between players, so everything should feel fresh and unique, but this is something I'm still actively working on–I actually very recently overhauled how Xanadu works entirely so I don't actually have any concrete moves for it yet. My original intention was to allow players to craft their own "Signature Move," but I'm worried about it being either too limiting or too inaccessible, and I think the game will work fine without this, so it might be a variant rule I add later.

If you're running the dnd 5e hack, I think the best way to give players unique signature abilities (on top of class/race abilities) would be to look at some magic items all around the same rarity, and just steal their effects and apply them to player characters. (Ideally create a list of effects and have players choose their own lol) Or, give each player character a starting feat! Feats are great, they're just normally more passive.

[bellamyblakru]

a very beginner’s guide to gif making (ashley’s version)

(ill be using one of my favorite merthur smiles in this example from 4x01 when they are alone together with the dorocha)

for @its-hyperfixation​ and @mykingdomcomeundone !! sorry its taken me so long to do this sigh this was my first free night lately 😭😭

download free ad blocker (i use uBlock Origin). pls dont skip this step, it protects you and your computer from the bad ads!!

go to a completely “free website” aka illegal lol. i use yes.movies because that is what im used to, but you can use whatever one you prefer. 

go to merlin bbc, click the episode you want, and record. on my “not as cool HP computer”, i have to click the windows flag button and the key “g” to record my screen, but your computer might have a button for it already to just go right to recording. if you are not sure, google your computer type and how to screen record (its fast to learn!!)

THE SHORTER THE SCENE THE BETTER! tumblr only takes up to 10mb gifs, so normally thats up to 3.5 second scenes if you color them too. however, if you are doing black and white, you can get away with longer scenes (this is what i did for my very first gifset actually LOL they were eight seconds long dude)

go to this website to convert to gif: https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif

chose the file of the video where asked, upload, then where it says: Frame rate (FPS) select 33 (max 10 seconds) for a better quality gif, and convert

WOO your first gif!! this process isnt done, but im proud you got this far!! 🥰

now, go to resize. this is important since tumblr gifs are usually up to 540 width and 330 height (these are my normal go-to proportions). lately, ive been liking the more square looks, so 540:340 or 540:440 works too! if your gif has too many movements, a square look might not be the best choice. (if you are doing two side by side gifs i recommend 268:230, and if you are doing three side by side 177:177 works best (learned from maria my beloved)). you dont need to change anything else here. (if your gif is over 10mb for some reason, you can optimize -> lossy gif and go in small units to not ruin the quality too much). 

now, i like to make my gifs a bit slower to make it more like a slow moment in time. press speed if you wanna do this and explore different settings!! i like to do 80% usually, but here i did 70%. here is what we have so far:

not too bad!! but as you can see, this scene is rather dark and gloomy and their smiles deserves something better in my opinion, so OFF TO PHOTOPEA WE GO (free photoshop my beloved)

10.  now we are at https://www.photopea.com/ and click file and open up our bad boy. DONT BE INTIMIDATED!! there are so, so many choices, but it is solely up to your preference and desired look. i like my gifs bright and saturated, but you might not, and thats okay!! you can fuck with all of these things over time (i do still LOL)

11. THE BASICS: go to layer -> new adjustment layer -> color balance. you do this layer first if you are going to use it at all. you’ll soon find that merlin has a very yellow early seasons and an extremely blue later seasons (it drives me crazy), so here is where you just mess with them til you get a baseline look you like. i start with shadows and go up from there (i dont change too intense ever. i go up or down like 6/7 the most on blue or red at any gif tbh). for this gif im working on, i want it to look less blue, so ill focus on the blue mostly.

i also put selective color as one of the first layers, and here you can fuck with all the colors if you wanna make one a different shade or hue or make something pop or darken. it is a beloved layer im ngl

12. now, remember all of these steps are optional and this is just the order i go, but that is not the only way. do what you feel makes the gif to your liking!! i then go to selective color (i like doing the contrast with the black coloring option here more than the choice later, but it up to you). i mostly make most of the colors darker here so the lightening later looks a bit cleaner.

13. next for me is the hue/saturation layer. i normally try to avoid using this, but it may be needed if you want to make the gif a bit less red or smth like that. if i want one particular to be really saturated, ill do that here at this level. its good to put this third tho if you are gonna use it.

14. vibrance layer time!! i love this bitch. i go ham with it fnesfljesfk i like my stuff really saturated (like “i went up 45″ hard). i dont usually use the actually vibrance option on top since i read in a post by the incredible maria that it makes gifs more grainy (btw @arthurpendragonns taught me like so much. her gifs are TOP TIER and literally take my breath away every time. so fucking talented man. the goddess of gifmaking, if you will).

15. then i click brightness/contrast and THROW THAT BRIGHTNESS UPPPP. here i just went up to 126 LOL. (this is where my comment about the selective color comes up. you can do contrast here, but i think it looks better if you increase the black in the black selective color option. again, up to you)

16. CURVES LAYER MY BELOVED. i literally just fuck with the curve on RGB until i like it lolol

17. im going back to the hue/saturation to make the blue pop more since it is so much in the background!! and then just fuck with them all to get something you like!! this gif is making me upset so i redid it rn lnrelkjfrmf 

18. ADD TEXT IF YOU WANT!! we can do blending two gifs together and fun text stuff next time if you want in another list (lmk!! ill do anything if u want it).

19. woo! she done now. onto the next gif to start this over, or one and done! ive never done this kind of tutorial before, in the past ive just went live on my discord and some people have sat in to watch the process, so let me know if you wanna join my server to do this, too, if you are more of a watch learner than reading!!

20: the final product (not my best work frdiusnr im sorry ive been writing this up for like three hours LOL)

[qqueenofhades]

Hi, I’ve been tasked with researching Richard Plantagenet for a paper and thus far found extremely negative accounts of the king, his religious bigotry being a reoccurring theme (his treatment of Jewish dignitaries attending his coronation and his reasoning to join the third crusade etc)

I stumbled across your wonderful tag for Richard at the weekend and wondered if you wouldn’t mind sharing your informed opinion of Richard and his views on religions ? Your writing seems very well balanced regarding his attributes and flaws. Thanks :)

Oof. Okay. So, a short and simple question, then?

Quick note: when I was first reading your ask and saw "Richard Plantagenet," I briefly assumed that you meant Richard Plantagenet, father of Edward IV, or perhaps Richard III, both from the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century, before seeing from context that you meant Richard I. While "Plantagenet" was first used as an informal appellation by Richard I's grandfather, Geoffrey of Anjou, it wasn't until several centuries later that the English royal house started to use it consistently as a surname. So it's not something that Richard I would have been really called or known by, even if historians tend to use it as a convenient labeling conceit. (See: the one thousand popular histories on "The Plantagenets" that have been published recently.)

As for Richard I, he is obviously an extremely complex and controversial figure for many reasons, though one of the first things that you have to understand is that he has been mythologized and reinvented and reinterpreted down the centuries for many reasons, especially his crusade participation and involvement in the Robin Hood legends. When you're researching about Richard, you're often reading reactions/interpretations of that material more than anything specifically rooted in the primary sources. And while I am glad that you asked me about this and want to encourage you to do so, I will gently enquire to start off: when you say "research," what kind of materials are you looking at, exactly? Are these actual published books/papers/academic material, or unsourced stuff on the internet written from various amateur/ideological perspectives and by people who have particular agendas for depicting Richard as the best (or as is more often the case, worst) ever? Because history, to nobody's surprise, is complicated. Richard did good things and he also did quite bad things, and it's difficult to reduce him to one or the other.

Briefly (ha): I'll say just that if a student handed me a paper stating that Richard was a religious bigot because a) there were anti-Jewish riots during his coronation and b) he signed up for the Third Crusade, I would seriously question it. Medieval violence against the Jews was an unfortunately endemic part of crusade preparations, and all we know about Richard's own reaction is that he fined the perpetrators harshly (repeated after a similar March 1190 incident in York) and ordered for them to be punished. Therefore, while there famously was significant anti-Semitic violence at his coronation, Richard himself was not the one who instigated it, and he ordered for the Londoners who did take part in it to be punished for breaking the king's peace.

This, however, also doesn't mean that Richard was a great person or that he was personally religiously tolerant. We don't know that and we often can't know that, whether for him or anyone else. This is the difficulty of inferring private thoughts or beliefs from formal records. This is why historians, at least good historians, mostly refrain from speculating on how a premodern private individual actually thought or felt or identified. We do know that Richard likewise also made a law in 1194 to protect the Jews residing in his domains, known as Capitula Judaeis. This followed in the realpolitik tradition of Pope Calixtus II, who had issued Sicut Judaeis in c. 1120 ordering European Christians not to harass Jews or forcibly convert them. This doesn't mean that either Calixtus or Richard thought Jews were great, but they did choose a different and more pragmatic/economic way of dealing with them than their peers. This does not prove "religious bigotry" and would need a lot more attention as an analytical concept.

As for saying that the crusades were motivated sheerly by medieval religious bigotry, I'm gonna have to say, hmm, no. Speaking as someone with a PhD in medieval history who specialised in crusade studies, there is an enormous literature around the question of why the crusades happened and why they continue to hold such troubling attraction as a pattern of behavior for the modern world. Yes, Richard went on crusade (as did the entire Western Latin world, pretty much, since 1187 and the fall of Jerusalem was the twelfth century's 9/11). But there also exists material around him that doesn't exist around any other crusade leader, including his extensive diplomatic relations with the Muslims, their personal admiration for him, his friendship with Saladin and Saladin's brother Saif al-Din, the fact that Arabic and Islamic sources can be more complimentary about Richard than the Christian records of his supposed allies, and so forth. I think Frederick II of Sicily, also famous for his friendly relationships with Muslims, is the only other crusade leader who has this kind of material. So however he did act on crusade, and for whatever reasons he went, Richard likewise chose the pragmatic path in his interactions with Muslims, or at least the Muslim military elite, than just considering them all as religious barbarians unworthy of his time or attention.

The question of how the crusades functioned as a pattern of expected behavior for the European Christian male aristocrat, sometimes entirely divorced from any notion of his private religious beliefs, is much longer and technical than we can possibly get into. (As again, I am roughly summarising a vast and contentious field of academic work for you here, so... yes.) Saying that the crusades happened only because medieval people were all religious zealots is a wild oversimplification of the type that my colleague @oldshrewsburyian and I have to deal with in our classrooms, and likewise obscures the dangerous ways in which the modern world is, in some ways, more devoted to replicating this pattern than ever. It puts it beyond the remit of analysis and into the foggy "Dark Ages hurr durr bad" stereotype that drives me batty.

Weighted against this is the fact that Richard obviously killed many Muslims while on crusade, and that this was motivated by religious and ideological convictions that were fairly standard for his day but less admirable in ours. The question of how that violence has been glorified by the alt-right people who think there was nothing wrong with it at all and he should have done more must also be taken into account. Richard's rise to prominence as a quintessentially English chivalrous hero in the nineteenth century, right when Britain was building its empire and needed to present the crusades as humane and civilizing missions abroad rather than violent and generally failed attempts at forced conversion and conquest, also problematized this. As noted, Richard was many things, but... not that, and when the crusades fell out of fashion again in the twentieth century, he was accordingly drastically villainized. Neither the superhero or the supervillain images of him are accurate, even if they're cheap and easy.

The English nationalists have a complicated relationship with Richard: he represents the ideal they aspire to, aesthetically speaking, and the kind of anti-immigrant sentiment they like to put in his mouth, which is far more than the historical Richard actually displayed toward his Muslim counterparts. (At least, again, so far as we can know anything about his private beliefs, but this is what we can infer from his actions in regard to Saladin, who he deeply respected, and Saladin's brother.) But he was also thoroughly a French knight raised and trained in the twelfth-century martial tradition, his concern for England was only as a minor part of the sprawling 'Angevin empire' he inherited from his father Henry II (which is heresy for the Brexit types who think England should always be the center of the world), and his likely inability to speak English became painted as a huge character flaw. (Notwithstanding that after the Norman Conquest in 1066, England did not have a king who spoke English natively until Henry IV in 1399, but somehow all those others don't get blamed as much as Richard.)

Anyway. I feel as if it's best to stop here. Hopefully this points you toward the complexity of the subject and gives you some guidelines in doing your own research from here. :)

[greatworldwar2]

• Bofors 40 mm gun

The Bofors 40 mm gun, often referred to simply as the Bofors gun, is an anti-aircraft autocannon designed in the 1930s by the Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors. It was one of the most popular medium-weight anti-aircraft systems during World War II, used by most of the western Allies.

The Swedish Navy purchased a number of 2-pounder Pom-Poms from Vickers as anti-aircraft guns in 1922. The Navy approached Bofors about the development of a more capable replacement. Bofors signed a contract in late 1928. Bofors produced a gun that was a smaller version of a 57 mm (6-pounder) semi-automatic gun developed as an anti-torpedo boat weapon in the late 19th century by Finspång. Their first test gun was a re-barreled Nordenfelt version of the Finspång gun, to which was added a semi-automatic loading mechanism. Testing of this gun in 1929 demonstrated that a problem existed feeding the weapon in order to maintain a reasonable rate of fire. A mechanism that was strong enough to handle the stresses of moving the large round was too heavy to move quickly enough to fire rapidly. One attempt to solve this problem used zinc shell cases that burned up when fired. This proved to leave heavy zinc deposits in the barrel, and had to be abandoned. In the summer of 1930 experiments were made with a new test gun that did away with controlled feed and instead flicked the spent casing out the rear whereafter a second mechanism reloaded the gun by "throwing" a fresh round from the magazine into the open breech. This seemed to be the solution they needed, improving firing rates to an acceptable level, and the work on a prototype commenced soon after.

During this period Krupp purchased a one-third share of Bofors. Krupp engineers started the process of updating the Bofors factories to use modern equipment and metallurgy, but the 40 mm project was kept secret. The prototype was completed and fired in November 1931, and by the middle of the month it was firing strings of two and three rounds. Changes to the feed mechanism were all that remained, and by the end of the year it was operating at 130 rounds per minute. Continued development was needed to turn it into a weapon suitable for production, which was completed in October 1933. Since acceptance trials had been passed the year before, this became known as the "40 mm akan M/32". Most forces referred to it as the "Bofors 40 mm L/60", although the barrel was actually 56.25 calibres in length, not the 60 calibres. The gun fired a 900 g (2.0 lb) high explosive 40 × 311R (rimmed) shell at 2,960 ft/s (900 m/s). The rate of fire was normally about 120 rounds per minute (2.0 rounds per second), which improved slightly when the barrels were closer to the horizon as gravity assisted the feeding from the top-mounted magazine. In practice firing rates were closer to 80–100 rpm (1.3–1.7 rounds per second), as the rounds were fed into the breech from four round clips which had to be replaced by hand. The maximum attainable ceiling was 7,200 m (23,600 ft), but the practical maximum was about 3,800 m (12,500 ft).

The gun was provided with an advanced sighting system. The trainer and layer were both provided with reflector sights for aiming, while a third crew-member standing behind them "adjusted" for lead using a simple mechanical computer. Power for the sights was supplied from a 6V battery. The first version of the 40 mm the Navy ordered was intended for use on submarines, where the larger calibre allowed the gun to be used for both AA and against smaller ships. The barrel was shorter at 42 calibers long, with the effect of reducing the muzzle velocity to about 700 m/s (2,300 ft/s). When not in use, the gun was pointed directly up and retracted into a watertight cylinder. The only known submarines that used this arrangement was the Sjölejonet-class boats. The guns were later removed. The first order for the "real" L/60 was made by the Dutch Navy, who ordered five twin-gun mounts for the cruiser De Ruyter in August 1934. These guns were stabilized using the Hazemeyer mount, in which one set of layers aimed the gun, while a second manually stabilized the platform the gun sat on. Bofors also developed a towable carriage which they displayed in April 1935 at a show in Belgium. This mount allowed the gun to be fired from the carriage with no setup required, although with limited accuracy. Orders for the land based versions were immediate, starting with an order for eight weapons from Belgium in August 1935, and followed by a flood of orders from other forces including Poland, Norway, and Finland. The Swedish Navy adopted the weapon as the m/36 in hand-worked single air-cooled, and power operated twin water-cooled version. A twin air-cooled mounting, probably hand-worked was also used by the navies of Sweden and Argentina and a twin air-cooled wet mounting was developed for Polish submarines.

The British Army had first examined the weapon when they received a number of Polish-built examples in 1937 for testing, known as the "QF 40 mm Mark I" (QF standing for "quick firing"), or "Mark I/2" after a minor change to the flash hider. A licence was acquired and the gun was converted from metric to imperial measurements. They also made numerous changes to the design to make it more suitable for mass production, as the original Bofors design was intended to be hand-assembled, and many parts were labeled "file to fit on assembly", requiring many man-hours of work to complete. Testing showed that aiming the guns against high-speed aircraft was a serious problem. Although the gun could be trained quickly, aiming accurately while doing so proved difficult. In order to address this, the British introduced a complex mechanical analogue computer, the Kerrison Director, which drove the laying electrically. A three-man team operated the director simply by pointing it at the target whilst dialing in estimates for speed, range, and various atmospheric conditions. The director then aimed the guns directly through powered mounts, as the gunners loaded the clips. This eliminated the need for the lead-correcting reflector sights, which were replaced with a backup system consisting of a simple ring-and-post sight known as a "pancake". In this form, the "QF 40 mm Mark III" (Mk II was a designation used for a Vickers "pom-pom"), became the Army's standard light AA (anti-aircraft) weapon, operating alongside their 3-inch and 3.7-inch heavy weapons. The gun was considered so important to the defence of Britain after the fall of France in 1940 that a movie, The Gun, was produced to encourage machinists to work harder and complete more of them. British production started slowly: by September 1939 only 233 equipments had been produced; but by the end of the war total production from British, Canadian and Australian factories was over 19,000. Peak production year was 1942 when British factories produced 5,025 and Canadian factories produced 1,311.

In combat it was found that the Kerrison was difficult to set up to use in many situations, as well as making logistics more complex due to the need to keep its electrical generator supplied with fuel. In most engagements only the pancake sights were used, without any form of correction, making the British versions less capable than those used by other forces. Eventually an anti-aircraft gunnery school on the range at Stiffkey on the Norfolk coast delivered a workable solution, a trapeze-like arrangement that moved the pancake sights to offer lead correction, operated by a new crew-member standing behind the left-hand layer. The "Stiffkey Sight" was sent out to units in 1943, arriving in Canadian units in the midst of the Battle of the Aleutian Islands. A final wartime change to the elevation mechanism resulted in the "QF 40 mm Mark XII". They also designed a much lighter two-wheeled carriage for airborne use. The Army also experimented with various self-propelled anti-aircraft systems based on various tank chassis. Changes to the breech for this role created the "QF 40 mm Mark VI", which was used on the Crusader to produce the Crusader III AA Mark I. The main self-propelled version of the Bofors used the gun set on the chassis of a Morris Commercial four-wheel drive lorry, this was known as the "Carrier, SP, 4x4 40mm, AA (Bofors) 30cwt". Such guns were used in support of Army divisions to provide swift protection against air attack without the need to unlimber. They saw service in North West Europe, where six SP Bofors of 92nd (Loyals) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, landed with the British 3rd Infantry Division on Sword Beach on D-Day to protect the vital bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River (Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge), shooting down 17 German planes. Later in the campaign, SP Bofors were used extensively for ground shoots as well as in an anti-aircraft role. In British army service the Bofors found a highly specialised role: during the North Africa Campaign at the Second Battle of El Alamein, they were used to fire tracer horizontally to mark safe paths for units through the German minefields. This practice was further developed during operations in North-West Europe, where bursts of colour-coded tracer were used to define the axis of advance of the different formations in large-scale night attacks.

The Royal Navy also made extensive use of the Bofors. Their first examples were air-cooled versions quickly adapted to ships during the withdrawal from Norway. Locally produced examples started arriving in 1942, known as the "QF 40 mm Mark IV" for use in twin-mounts, or the "QF 40 mm Mark V" for single mounts. The Navy ran through a variety of versions of the basic Bofors gun over the war, including the Mark VII to Mark XI. The Royal Navy's home-grown light anti-aircraft weapon, the QF 2-pounder gun, also had a caliber of 40 mm, but was referred to as the QF 2-pdr. The final British Bofors mounting that saw service was the "stabilized tachymetric anti-aircraft gun" (STAAG) which was twin-barrelled, stabilised, and carried its own tachymetric (i.e. predictive) fire control system, based around the centimeter Radar Type 262, capable of "locking on" to a target. This mounting was heavy (17.5 tons) and the high-vibration environment of the gun mounting was poor location for sensitive valve electronics and mechanical computers. STAAG Mark I carried the radar dish over the gun barrels where it was subject to damage during firing, therefore STAAG Mark II shifted the set to the roof of the control cabin. STAAG was ultimately too difficult to maintain in the harsh environment of a warship and was later replaced by the Mounting Mark V with the fire control equipment located remotely.

In order to supply both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy with much greater numbers of the guns, Chrysler built 60,000 of the guns and 120,000 barrels through the war, at half the original projected cost, and filling the Army's needs by 1943. Over the lifetime of the production, their engineers introduced numerous additional changes to improve mass production, eventually reducing the overall time needed to build a gun by half; most of these changes were in production methods rather than the design of the gun itself. There were many difficulties in producing the guns within the United States, beyond their complexity (illustrated by the use of 2,000 subcontractors in 330 cities and 12 Chrysler factories to make and assemble the parts). The drawings were metric, in Swedish and read from the first angle of projection. Chrysler had to translate to English, fix absolute dimensions, and switch to the third angle of projection. Chrysler engineers also tried to simplify the gun, unsuccessfully, and to take high speed movies to find possible improvements, but this was not possible until near the end of the war. The United States Navy's Bureau of Ordnance purchased a twin-mount air-cooled example, spare parts and 3,000 rounds of ammunition directly from Bofors, which arrived in New York on August 28th, 1940 aboard the Army transport USAT American Legion, which had evacuated 897 people, including members of the Norwegian royal family, through the Finnish port of Petsamo. The gun was quickly chosen as the Navy's standard anti-aircraft weapon over the British 40mm calibre, 2-pounder pom-pom; however, negotiations with Bofors for licensed production stalled when the Swedes requested airplane export and manufacturing licenses in return. Reportedly, the Navy secretly imported a set of imperial designs from Britain and started production illegally. A formal contract with Bofors was reached in June 1941. The resulting Mark 1 and Mark 2 weapons were intended for the left and right side of a twin mount, respectively, and were adapted by Chrysler for water cooling.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, the existing 1.1" (28 mm) quad mount and .50 caliber machine guns were determined to be inadequate against modern aircraft, and their replacement by 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm Oerlikon weapons was accelerated. The water-cooled version was used almost exclusively by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. In 1938 the United States Army introduced a 37 mm gun of their own design, but found it to be of limited performance. In early World War II, six British Bofors were imported for testing, along with Kerrison Predictor directors, and they proved to be superior in all areas. By the middle part of the war, most of the 37 mm guns had been replaced by the 40 mm. In U.S. Army and Marine Corps service, the single mount Bofors was known as the 40 mm Automatic Gun M1. The U.S. version of the gun fired three variants of the British Mk. II high-explosive shell as well as the M81A1 armor-piercing round, which was capable of penetrating some 50 mm of homogeneous armor plate at a range of 500 yards. In the Army, each Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) auto-weapons battalion was authorized a total of thirty-two 40 mm guns in its four firing batteries. During World War II, the twin mount version of the gun was mounted on an M24 Chaffee tank chassis as the M19 Gun Motor Carriage. In the 1950s, the M41 Walker Bulldog tank was heavily modified into the M42 Duster with the same twin 40 mm mounting. After being largely withdrawn from service in the early 1960s, the M42 was re-introduced beginning in 1966 for the Vietnam War, where it was mostly used for ground fire support. The U.S Airforce created the Bofors 40 mm gun § AC-130 Gunship.

In World War II Germany, the Wehrmacht used a number of Bofors guns which had been captured in Poland and France. The Kriegsmarine also operated some guns obtained from Norway. In German naval use, the gun was designated the "4 cm Flak 28", and was used aboard the cruisers Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen toward the end of the war. Germany also purchased a large number (200+) of Hungarian made Bofors guns. In return, Hungary received 75 mm PAK guns for every 4-5 Bofors. Then Wehrmacht used Hungarian guns after German occupation of Hungary from late 1944. Most of them lost during the fights in Budapest and Trandanubia. Japan captured a number of Bofors guns in Singapore and put them into production as the Type 5. Both Japan and West Germany continued to use the Bofors gun throughout the Cold War. The Federal German navy used it in destroyers, frigates, and fast patrol boats until 1984, and in minesweepers to the present day.

The Bofors 40mm post-war service has endured through the cold war and into the modern era. In the post-war era, the original design was not suitable for action against jet-powered aircraft, so Bofors introduced a new model of significantly more power, the 40 mm L/70. In spite of sharing almost nothing with the original design other than the calibre and the distinctive conical flash hider, this weapon is also widely known simply as "the Bofors". Although not as popular as the original L/60 model, the L/70 remains in service, especially as a multi-purpose weapon for light armoured vehicles, as on the CV 90. Bofors has been part of BAE Systems AB since March 2005.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

5 ENGAGING 'WOMEN OF THEIR TIME' CHARACTERS

@princesssarisa @sunlit-music @lieutenant-hel-odinsdottir @gravedangerahead @mademoiselle-princesse @amalthea9 @parxsisburnixg

A popular type of character is 'the woman ahead of her time': a lady who lives in a past time period that wasn't the most enlightened, but has the mentality of a modern woman, rebelling against the norms.

I love those type of characters: Disney's Belle, Queen Fantaghiro, Juliet Capulet, Beatrice, just to mention a few.

But there are also some female characters whom absorved both the good, the bad and the ugly of the time periods where they lived in, and whom, while i not agreed with everything they did or spoked (hell, with some of them i would probably get in verbal fights with), had engangingly writen personalities.

And i think they are just as important to be talked about as the 'ahead of their time' ladies. So, whitout order of preference, here are five engaging female characters who were 'women of their time'.

Penelope (The Odissey)

Penelope is the Consort Queen of Odysseus, fullfiling the role of bearing and caring for his heir Prince Telemacus, waiting for him to return back home from war, keep herself faithful to her husband while he doesn't give any guarantee to keep himself faithful to her, and keep an eye on their slaves (yeah, if i met her in real life, we would fight because of that part, i don't care if you say that 'you aren't violent to then and treat then like family', owning slaves i don't forgive). That sayed, i care and can simpathize with the fact that she loves her husband, and chooses to wait for him while a band of entitled drunkards keep invading her house trying to force her into choosing one of then to marry, imagining creative schemes like starting to weave a tapestry that at night she undoes, to give time for Odysseus return. Resilience and underestimated ingenuity, your name is Penelope.

Sheherazade (One Thousand and One Nights)

When i think of a great example of character who believes on changing the system from within (at least some aspects of it, because again, she learned that slavery is natural), i first think of Sheherazade. She lives in a time when a sultan believes that the fact that his first wife had an affair justifies marrying every woman of his kingdom, only to kill then in the morning after the wedding night. What does Sheherazade do? Gives her hand in marriage to sayed sultan. And begins to tell several long stories to entertain him every night, that thankfully delay her execution, as well of the other women in the kingdom. When the stories are over, she begs that if at least not for the love of her, that at least her husband let her live to take care of the three children she conceived with him.

Sheherazade only wanted to live and raise a happy family. She only had her good memory and her good speak. She told fantasy stories, a thing that most people consider a futile thing. And in the proccess, she saved several lives.

Porcia (The Merchant of Venice)

Oh Porcia: an aristocratic lady who obeys her death father's orders of aplying a complicated test to potential suitors that want her hand in marriage, makes racist and xenofobic jokes about moors and spanish, and is an active participant in the perpetration of antissemitism. Cunning and witty amateur lawyer. I am so fascinated by you.

Lady Grey/Queen Elizabeth Woodville of York (The Rose Tetralogy)

Elizabeth may have married King Edward IV out of passion at first sight, coming on the way of an arranged marriage he promissed to Lady Bona the Princess of France. But she is not above promissing an arranged marriage between her daughter and Henry Tudor of Richmond, if it means taking down the man who murdered her two sons and is sinking England into yet another chaotic war state. At least it is a happily arranged marriage. And Richmond probably would win anyway, so in a tetralogy of plays about nobles that constantly change sides if it means surviving and staying in power, Elizabeth learned to be another player in the political game. And a very good one.

Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre)

A woman who went to a boarding school, becamed a teacher and a governess, valued being a quiet and humble christian who dressed in dark colors and viewed missionaries converting natives outside Europe as a good thing because she was teached that Christianity is the "right religion", liked to read and paint fairy stories, forgived an abusive aunt in her death bed because she learned "that was the right christian thing to do", inherited a fortune from a distant uncle and went on to become a happy wife and mother. Some elements of that story are common in the lives of many woman, and usually dismissed as worthless. But Jane saw that her story was worthy, and needed to be told. And for that, i will be forever thankfull.

[huearmy]

The Smell of Truth - V

Summary: After years being forced to fight in clandestine hybrid ring, Jungkook is now living in shelter, but life remains bad, the place is abusive, and nobody seems to want adopt him. Until one night a pro-hybrid activist group invades the shelter, and a woman in black smelling like truth promises that things will get better, and he decides to follow her wherever she goes.

Pairing: pitbull!Jungkook x human!Reader

Genre: fluff, angst, future smut maybe.

Words: 6971

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: None.

Chapter I  Chapter II  Chapter III  Chapter IV - Chapter VI ChapterVII

The four of you walked a few blocks to a restaurant on the same street. Despite the cold air, the sun was warm and pleasant, so Jimin really wanted to sit at one of the outdoor tables, and nobody objected. You and the cat were still talking about work, Taehyung making comments here and there, but Jungkook only walked in silence beside you, holding your hand, happy he was finally having some contact with you. He wasn't even paying attention to the conversation until he sitted down at the table but you didn't.

"We're gonna order and pay. It won't take long." You told him. "Do you want anything specific?"

"Cake?" He softly smiled.

"I'll buy you a big slice. I'll be back." You said already going.

"Ok!"

Only then he noticed that he didn't stay alone. Jimin was sitting by his side, eyeing him sharply, vertical pupils almost disappearing, he was analyzing Jungkook. It is not the first time that another hybrid looks at him like that, and whenever that happened in the past, uncomfortable things happened next. Jungkook sat back in his chair trying to create space between them.

"So..." Jimin purred, dropping his chin in the palm of his hand. "How did you end up as Y/N's roommate?"

"I asked!" Jungkook spitted out. "I told her I want to be with her... I-I don't know why she wanted me neither... I..."

Jungkook kind of choked on his own saliva. So far Jimin seemed to be just cute, but of course away from you, he was going to try to establish some dominance over the new hybrid. Jungkook should have imagined this was going to happen. Even so, the cold tone that came from the other caught him off guard.

"Y/N have always liked hybrids... But not that much." In the absence of an answer, Jimin continued. Clear jealousy in his voice. "What did you do to make her let you in?"

Jimin gave an unbelieving laugh, tapping Jungkook's shoulder.

"It's okay! No need to be so nervous. I'm sorry I scared you." He said not in full cute mode yet. "I just really care about Y/N... She is my favorite human besides Taehyung. So until I get to know you for real, I'll keep an eye on you. For Y/N sake."

Jungkook gave Jimin his doe eyes and nervous bite bottom lip, and the cat had to work hard not to drop hard stare away and end up losing the threatening effect.

"Ok." Jungkook said with conviction "I will do my best to have you trust me."

Jungkook got bright red again, for real. One thing is you calling him cute, another completely different thing is a strange calling him cute. He formulated something to say to change the focus a little bit.

Jimin couldn't help himself any longer and smiled brightly, his eyes fading into two moons again.

"Awn you cute!"

"How did you meet her?"

Jimin is an egocentric cat, talking about his story with you made him happy, he was actually hoping Jungkook would ask.

"Ah... She and Taehyung are childhood friends. His father worked for her mother. I'm Tae's family cat. We have known each other since we were ten and she was eight I guess. In the beginning Y/N  treated me better than everyone, even him. I was never a pet to her, and she taught Tae to see me as a brother. Now I live with just him and my life is almost perfect."

If Jungkook was feeling like an intruder before, now it was definitely worse. From their table he could see you and Taehyung on the line, and the two of you really looked like he thinks what childhood friends must look like. You were arm in arm, and he couldn't tell what he was saying to you, but you were laughing with such pleasure that your whole body seemed to smile with you. You slapped Taehyung's shoulder, looking around with a red face, and then leaned your head on him in embarrassment. In the short time that Jungkook has known you, this is the moment when he saw you more relaxed. He could see how safe you feel with these guys.

He was left out, wasn't he?   

Jungkook raised his hands to cover his ears reflexively.

"Y/N said you are a pitbull, that's right?" Jimin continued the conversation, as if he hadn't noticed where Jungkook was looking, and the sad face the boy made.

Jungkook doesn't like this question. In fact, he doesn't like to touch the subject of breed, because it involves a lot of prejudice. People usually change the way they act with him after they learn what his animal half is.

When Jungkook just nodded in response, Jimin continued.

"You really look like one, you are a muscle tower with a cute face." Jimin laughed. "But your ears aren't clipped, which is nice."

"I didn't let them..." His voice escaped quietly.

Jimin's eyes got round as he realized that he touched on a sensitive subject. It was his turn to trying to change the focus to lighting up the conversation.

"I'm a lynx!" Jimin pointed to his own extra pointed ears. "That's why I have a short tail, and the color of my fur changes with the seasons. But there are people who don't notice right away, because we usually have big hands and feet, but I have baby hands."

 A long second went by, the four of you - uncomfortably - looking at each other.

Jungkook let out a cute laugh looking at Jimin's cute hands extended to him. Both of them gave up on trying to continue a conversation.

Yours and Taehyung's voices got closer as you passed through the glass doors, leaving the restaurant's internal lounge. You found Jungkook and Jimin in awkward silence, so dense it made you and Tae shut up, exchanging confused looks.

"What happened?" Taehyung mouthed to you behind his hand.

You shrugged, eyebrows high.

"The food will be here in a few minutes!" Tae cheered, pulling the chair for you to sit before doing the same for himself. Since no one responded in the same excitement, he cleared his throat and continued the conversation he was having with you before. "Anyway, Y/N... You should see the doctor."

Jungkook and Jimin's eyes widened.

"You said it was ok. I thought you already went to the hospital..." He whined, crossing his arms, feeling betrayed

"Why do you need to see the doctor?" Jimin went faster to the point.

"She hurted her wrist and didn't get it examined." Taehyung exposed you with a pout as you showed your bandaged hand to the cat.

Jimin was pouting at you too... Angry pouting.

The two of them kept raining down arguments that an injury if left untreated can have complications, that they love you too much to see you suffer in the future, and that you should simply listen because they are older than you, and therefore, you owe respect and gratitude when they try to take care of you. They don't even let you talk. 

"If I go to the hospital they'll tell me to make a cold compress, take pain medication, use athlete's ointment, immobilize and don't use my hand in excess. I'm already doing these things." You calmly said, as what they are saying wasn't a big deal, and in your head it really wasn't.

"And what if it is a serious injury?" Jimin took your hand in his as if he could heal you himself. Your indifferent expression melted a little when he planted a kiss on the knots of your hand.

"I already said it to her, but she don't listen!" Tae was outraged.

"Guuuuuys" You were the one whining this time.

"Don't 'guuuuuys' me Y/N" Jimin rolled his eyes. "After we have lunch, Tae will drive you to the hospital."

"I think they are right, Y/N." Jungkook timidly interrupted the staring contest you and Jimin were having. "You should see the doctor."

"What now? Besides being forced to go to the doctor, can I not even drive there?" You ask, with your own piece of drama.

"Exactly." Jimin said firmly.

You were ready to fight your right to just stay home with your work and deadlines, treating your injury the way you know it is best without having to waste time with professional help. After all, you know all the best strategies to beat your best friends in an argument, which work eight out of ten times you try it.

Jungkook was still feeling guilty for hurting you, and the idea of the injury not healing right just terrified him. Also, now he knew your friends he felt the heaviest guilt on his shoulders, if they found out that it was he who hurt you, even if by accident, would they forgive him like you did? Would they still be so nice? Jungkook was sure they wouldn't. And looking at him across the table, you could read all these things on his forehead.

"You said it would heal faster if you treat it right. So please do it." Jungkook said, biting his bottom lip.

"Ok." You sighed, more worried with him than your wrist at all. "Happy?"

"Yes!" Jimin hugged you, and then Jungkook, taking him by surprise.

"Get in loser, we're going to the hospital." He said to you with a mischievous smile.

The waitress brought the food, and the conversation changed course.

___________________________________________________________________________________

With full bellies you got back to your building. Jimin said bye and went to the office to get back to work. You and Jungkook followed Taehyung to his red convertible, which was parked across the busy street. With the roof off - as almost always, Tae likes the wind in his hair - he jumped in without opening the door, and put his glasses on.   

"Loser?" Jungkook looked at him, confused. Clearly he is not used to playful bittering.

You sighed.

"Don't mind him, JK." You opened the door to him, and also entered shortly thereafter. "Don't Regina George me, Tae. I'm being forced to go, so I'm in a bad mood."

Tae smiled, turning on some music and starting the motor. And of course he took the longer way to the hospital to just enjoy the view. After all, what is the fun of going for a ride with friends in a convertible, if it's time for light traffic, and it will only last a few minutes. Going around the city, passing through the park and the historic area is pretty nicer - and the city is small anyway.

Besides the ride clearly affected your mood for the better - you are not a difficult person to please - and Taehyung found it amusing to watch Jungkook through the rearview mirror. The dog was having the time of his life, with the interesting view and the wind in his face. If you hadn't told him to put on the safety seat, you would expect him to be standing on the back seat.

As you passed by the side of the municipal park, with the lake shining in the middle, people running, walking their dogs, having picnics, playing with children, Jungkook's eyes shone with curiosity. It was so beautiful.

"It has plenty of space to run..."

"What is here?" He asked, tapping your shoulder and pointing.

"The park. We can come here sometime if you want."

"Do you like to run?" Tae asked, looking over his shoulder, his glasses on the tip of his nose.

"So we'll come next Sunday. Jimin can try to cook something and we have a picnic. You also need to sunbathe, Y/N." Taehyung determined without wanting to know your opinion, knowing that you'll just accept and prepare something else delicious for them to eat on sunday.

Jungkook nodded with his smile so wide.

"Mostly outdoors." He said dreamily.

Few minutes after you left, Taehyung suddenly stood up.

"Shut up and tell me what you want me to cook." You laughed, and looked to Jungkook. "Excited?"

"Yes."

_____________________________________________________________________________________

At the hospital you got an appointment with an orthopedist - Taehyung made you to, and Jungkook just agreed - even if you knew it wasn't needed, that a general practitioner would solve the problem, and would also release you earlier to go back to work.

After ten minutes of waiting in silence, your name was called by the doctor, you quietly got up leaving the two boys alone in the empty waiting room. The woman at the desk didn't look at them once, the sound of computer keys coming from her direction. One of the walls of the room was made of glass, with a view of an internal garden, and in the corner of the room there was a small water source beside the magazine holder. Apart from the sound of the water and the woman's typing, no sound gave any sign of life in the place, all very quiet, so quiet that Jungkook was afraid to make any noise. He was getting sleepy. 

"I need to pee." He said, already heading towards the corridor.

"Are we going home now?" Jungkook asked too eagerly.   

"Will you leave me here alone?" Jungkook loudly whispered, still afraid of breaking the silence.

Tae looked at him, confused.

"Do you want to come along? Need to pee too?"

"No..."

"I asked him to not let you alone... Well I guess he won't take too long. Wait here, ok?" You said this last part in a kind tone. He just nodded. "I swear that going with me is even more boring than waiting here."

"No, I have to do an x-ray. Where's Taehyung?"

"I know. I've had x-rays a few times before." He relaxed in the chair, your presence being enough for him to feel safe and free from paranoia.   

You tried not to think too much about the idea that Jungkook had to undergo medical procedures in the past, to not have to think about the causes of it, so you smiled and walked down the same corridor as Taehyung, looking for the elevator.

Before Jungkook could feel sad for being alone again, you got back in fast steps.

"Here..." You held out some money to him. "There's a snack machine in that direction, soda and coffee. If you want something, just go get it... Just wait for Tae to come back. Ok?"

And then you ran to take the elevator that finally opened with a 'ding'. 

Jungkook couldn't help himself but think you are cute being so attentious like this, taking care of him the way he always dreamed someone would do. Less paranoid than before, he released all the air from his lungs and got up to change of chair, to sit closer to the glass wall, where the sun was shining. Since he had to wait, at least wait absorbing some vitamin D. 

He was looking at the garden, trying to remember the name of one of the plants, he had seen one exactly the same at home among yours, when two people entered the garden from the other side. One was a woman in a wheelchair, and must have been a hospital patient, the other who was pushing the wheelchair, dressed in a baby pink nurse uniform, was a hybrid. Jungkook frowned and looked more closely, curious. The girl with dog ears stopped the chair beside a tree, and crouched in front of the woman, the two seemed to be nice talking, because even with a tired and pale face, the woman was smiling, and the girl waved the golden fur tail, gesturing her hands as if she were telling a story.

"What are you looking at?" A deep voice spoke behind him.

Tae was back. He held out a can of soda for Jungkook.

"Thanks. I was just..." He tried to form a sentence to explain why exactly he was so curious about the two women, but the only thing he managed to say was. "I just found that strange."

Taehyung looked at the two too, now both of them were doing crochet and laughing.

"What is strange? Is just a patient and hybrid therapist." Tae put his hands in his pocket, finding the scene very cute.

"Hybrid therapist?" If Jungkook was confused before, now he was much more.

"Exactly like a job. They are very well trained from an early age to work with this. " Tae smiled, remembering that depending on what Jungkook's life was like before he met you he really had no way of knowing basic things in the normal world. Not every hybrid owner lets them know about the few rights they have. And well, Taehyung had no idea that Jungkook was a fight dog, if he knew he would have understood the doubt right away.

"Yeah... Like animal therapy with dogs, but with hybrids. They help the recovery of patients. Basically they serve to make patients who are hospitalized happier and healthier." Tae got a seat beside Jungkook, opening his soda and taking a sip.

"Wow. I didn't know hybrids can have jobs." A whole new world opened up in Jungkook's eyes with this information.

"Well... Hybrids cannot formally study yet, so the jobs they can have are still very limited. It is usually manual labor, waiter, janitor, store attendant, things like that. All Y/N stores have at least one hybrid among employees, for example. She believes that this is a way for them to have some independence, and takes great care to make sure the hybrid really wants to work, and is not being obliged by the owner." Tae explained.

"Independence, so that when the hybrids are free they have the means to go on with their lives. Is that right?" Jungkook concluded, putting together things you said and your uncle's speech on TV, and ideas that an old friend of him used to have.

"That's right! You're smart, man!" Taehyung cheered. "Are you interested in having a job?"

"I don't know. As I didn't know I could, I didn't even think about it." He opened his soda too.

Tae smiled in a way that his mouth formed a box.

"And that's totally ok. We have time to think about the future."

Jungkook's mouth formed a bunny smile.

"Yeah."

He was a little scared of your friends, but because they are so close to you, they are as cool as you are. Taehyung only has an evil face, because most of the time he is frowning, but in fact he is also a cinnamon roll as you said.

"Hyung..."  Jungkook got another doubt.

Taehyung gave a choked laugh, looking around to see if they were really alone. The woman at the counter still didn't give a shit about them. When he finally answered, it was in a much lower, secretive tone.

"Humm?"

"Jimin is a special case. You see, my dad wanted me to go to accounting school like him, and I did. But I'm dumb for math, and I'm definitely not an office man." He raised his eyebrow suggestively. "Basically all of my college tests and exams were made by Jimin, which is fraud and against law, but it gets worse... On the payroll, his name is as an assistant in Y/N’s  floriculture, and mine as an accountant. But he is the one who does the work, because he is the genius who likes numbers. That way Jimin does what he likes and is happy, my dad thinks I do what he wants and is happy, and I have time to do what I like and I'm happy."

"And what do you do?" Jungkook asked.

Taehyung was expecting Jungkook to deal less naturally with the revelation he made, but the dog didn't seem impressed at all. He just seemed to think it was cool. Usually he, Jimin and you keep this secret between you, but since you trust Jungkook so much to bring him to live with you, Tae didn't think it would be a problem, and that quiet response proved that thought right.

"Hey, both of you, you can't use flashes here." The woman at the counter finally paid attention to them.

"I like that you asked..." Said Taehyung, he is not a cat, but he is as egocentric as Jimin. He reached into his bag that he hasn't taken off his shoulder since he left the office and took something out. Before Jungkook could see what it was, a light temporarily blinded him. Flash. "I'mma photographer."

"Sorry...ah... Nicolle." Tae read her badge. When turning back to Jungkook he was rolling his eyes. "I was going to stop using the flash myself. With this sun I don't need to."

And he kept taking pictures of a Jungkook who didn't know what to do other than avoid eye contact. The photos were beautiful at the end.

"Not at all. I have a lot of work to do, and I'm kind of wasting time here." You tried to hint to get her to liberate you soon.

"Thank you, doctor. I knew it wasn't a big deal." You eagerly smiled.

"Why did you come, then?" She didn't get the hint at all, still not looking at you.

You held a sigh of frustration and responded in a joke tone.

"I know a handprint when I see one, and your bruise is one. Honey, if someone hurt you, you're in the right place to ask for help. I can call the police and make sure it's safe for you."

"My friends forced me."

You finally understood what she was thinking. And even if it wasn't your situation, with every word she said a shiver went down your spine, and you really felt safe. You almost wanted to cry at the thought of working normally and suddenly realizing that someone needs your help, but don't know how to ask. Well, your job is similar to that in a way.

"Thank you. Seriously, you... are amazing." Your voice was small. "But that is not the case. I do not suffer domestic violence."

She raised an eyebrow at you, still not believing one hundred percent.

"It was actually my hybrid." You felt pressured to say.

"This is pretty serious, too, you should call hybrid control." She dropped your hand on your lap and walked over to her table.

"No!" You almost yelled. Almost. "It's not his fault. He's been suffering from night terror and nightmares. I was careless when I woke him up."

She started to write on her computer.

For a moment she just nodded. She printed two sheets of paper for you.

"Then you should take him to a hybrid psychologist." She stated.

"Here. The prescription of your medicine and the guide for you to get a decent splint to immobilize that hand." She reclined in her chair. "And recommendations of good hybrid psychologists, there are three names on the list. And that's it."

"Thank you!" You were really grateful for that. You took your coat and headed for the exit, stopping with your hand on the handle. "And mainly thanks for your attitude, I didn't need any help but I know there are a lot of women out there who need it, so thanks for being available."

Back to the white corridor you sighed checking the hours, you only have a gigantic legal report to deliver before midnight, okay, no need to freak out. Ready to get your medicine and go back home put your slippers on. You hate hospitals to be honest, your quota has been hit for an entire month.

In what you came up at the corner of the hall, Jungkook's head snapped in your direction.

"I need to go to a pharmacy on the way."

"Yep. It wasn't anything serious, like I said." You answered with your hands inside your jacket pockets.

Tae whined.

"Ah, Y/N... I thought you were going to say something more fun. Like, I need to stop by an amusement park on the way..."

"As if Jimin wouldn't kill us if we did such a thing without him." You started walking to the exit, both males following you.

"So we pick him in the office and then we go." He tried to negotiate.

Jungkook looked from you to Taehyung with a little line of doubt forming between his eyebrows.

"No Taehyung. I need to work."

"You are no fun, Y/N!" Tae passed an arm by your shoulder. "Your job shouldn't be that important... You don't even like being a lawyer..."

You rolled your eyes.

"But it is! I'm new to the company and I want to be part of a specific case, and for that I have to be soooo efficient for them to trust me for this. It's not fair for you to be tempting me like that Tae." You pouted. "Besides, I wanted to be able to finish everything early, to have a free night today, and it won't happen anymore because of this silly visit to the doctor."

"Why did you want a free night?" Apparently this was the only part that Taehyung heard.

Before you could answer very grudgingly, Jungkook asked the question that was bothering his little cute head.

"What is an amusement park?"   

Both you and Tae looked at him, forgetting the former argument.

"That's where we go on Saturday. Right, Y/n?" A smile spread on Taehyung's face.

"Damn." You whined, watching the water go down the drain. You always liked your freedom. One of the reasons you never considered adopting a hybrid - apart from everything else - or having a roommate at all is that you like being alone, you value privacy. One of your favorite things to do is walking around the house all naked and free, and now you were realizing that you could probably never do that again with a man living with you now . As you closed your eyes, resting your forehead on the cold tiles on the wall, the happy face of Jungkook appeared in your thoughts. "Shit ... it's worth it."

To avoid the noise and be able to focus on work, you found a good lo-fi playlist and put earphones on. The streetlights started to light up and the sun was going away when you decided to take a break to eat something and take a shower, feeling pain in your back and your butt square of sitting for so long. From the sound of a third voice downstairs, you assumed that Jimin finished the day's tasks and closed the office at normal hours, and joined the other two.

Entering the living room you were taken by surprise by kicking high in the air and jumping boys, the couch out of place, and a mix of music and laughter.

Feeling fifty percent renewed, you dried yourself with a fluffy towel and applied a moisturizer to each corner of your skin before dressing up, and then brushed your wet hair.

"You are playing Just Dance now?" You laughed.

Jungkook, who was sitting in the corner watching Jimin and Taehyung dancing, reached to your hand pulling you to sit with him.

"Jimin hyung wanted to dance..." He said, holding you by the shoulders. He looked like he was having a good time.

Jimin and Taehyung burst into screams and laughter when the song ended and the score appeared in the center of the TV screen.

"Noooooooo! How is this even possible!" Jimin threw himself on the floor at the same time Tae made a winning dance.

"It's because you stop to laugh a lot, hyung!" Jungkook mocked.

He looked so, so happy.   

"Totally worth it." You let it slip, looking at him.

"What?" He looked back at you.

"Nothing." Your face heated up. "Play you now, I want to see you dance."

He made a happy squick getting up so fast he almost passed over you like a steamroller.

"Ok."

"Jackson!" Jimin greeted.

"I want to dance a hard one!"

You and the man named Jackson let go from each other, but instead of getting apart from him, you enlaced your hand with his, pulling him inside the apartment. He kissed your temple, making you blush, and Jungkook's jaw dropped.

"Hi guys." Jackson said, lifting some cardboard bags with his free hand. "I brought food, but I didn't know you were here so there's not much..."

"It's okay, let's put it in the kitchen." You said already turning around there.

"I message you telling the boys are here." You said to him.

"Did you hurt your hand?"

"This is nothing. You know me, I'm reckless." You laughed to yourself.

You two disappeared into the kitchen.

"Did you know he would be back today?" Jimin whispered to Tae.

"Don't know. She didn't kick us off." Tae was thoughtful.

The two exchanged a weird look. Jimin made a face.

"Nice, because I don't want to go home just yet." Jimin returned to the choice of songs.

You were happy having a glass of mocha latte Jackson brought to you when you said.

"But we should...!"

"I have to introduce you. Jackson, this is Jungkook... JK, this is Jackson."

"Hi." Said Jungkook.

"Did you adopt him, Taehyung?" Jackson asked cordially.   

"Hi. Nice to meet you." Jackson reached a hand to Jungkook, wearing a genuine smile. "I'm Y/N boyfriend."

"Is that what you wanted to tell me?"Jackson looked surprised, and maybe a little uncomfortable.

"No." You answered, kind of nervous. "I did."

"Yes. You said we could talk about it when you got back, I didn't want to disturb you. You were working." You talked faster than you intended.

"But this is important, it wouldn't disturb me at all." Jackson looked from you to Jungkook and back to you and smiled. "It's just too sudden... Mostly coming from you."

"It was not planned at all, it is that Jungkook is special. It was destiny." You tried to explain, regretting the last part as soon as the words came out your mouth. It was a bit too much. You took a sip of your coffee.

"Got it..." Jackson shrugged.

Before things could get any more weird, Taehyung talked in his cheer tone.

"Since there's no food for everyone, we are going out to get hamburgers. Right, JK?"

Something clicked on Jungkook's mind and he came back to planet earth a little.

Jimin started pushing the taller boy for the door.

"Right?" Jungkook looked at him without understanding.

"Yeah, put on your shoes and let's go."

Over the shoulder you mouthed a grateful "thanks" to Taehyung, both by saving the conversation, both for letting you have alone time with your boyfriend and taking care of Jungkook at the same time. The three of them left the apartment as if you had thrown them out - as fast as they could. You sighed when the door closed behind them.

That said, you grabbed the jacket and ran out the door, not paying attention if he said something to you, skipping steps down the stairs to go faster, before the boys got in the car.

"Did you finish work?"Jackson released your hand so he could hold you.

"Jungkook!" You arrived in the courtyard behind the building, where Tae's convertible was parked next to your SUV. Jungkook was getting into the car, but stopped in mid-motion when he heard you calling. "Your jacket!"

"I forgot it!" His ears went up.

He came to you, and instead of giving it to him, you threw the jacket over his shoulders, making him wear it, and then zipped it up to the top. Something occurred to you, something important that you should have already said to Jungkook, and that now, more than before, needs to be clear.

"Jungkook, maybe you have already figured this out, because you are smart. But my work with that organization is a secret. All my hybrid rescue work with them is secret. So you can't talk to anyone about it, that includes telling how and where we met. It doesn't matter if you know that I trust the person... In fact, even if you know that the person knows the secret, avoid talking about... Got it?"

Jungkook's gaze became serious, in a way you haven't seen yet, a strong look. He was always good at keeping secrets, his, of the owners he had, of the other hybrids he was locked up in in the dark basement ... Keeping a secret of yours, who is a person he cares about so much, wouldn't be so difficult. "Yes. Does that include, Taehyung, Jimin ... and Jackson?" You looked away, biting your lip. "Everyone, JK. But mostly Jackson. Please?"

His gaze went from one eye of yours to the other, trying to understand what you meant by that. You are a person full of secrets, he already realized, and he has no problem with that, because he believes that you have your reasons just as he has his. "You can count on me." He smiled, holding out a little finger for you. You let a laugh take over you all. "A pinky promise?" "These are the best contracts." He shrugged. You hooked your little finger in his, sealing the secret of how your lives intertwined only between the two of you. Jungkook ran back to the car, where your childhood friends were waiting for him, wishing him fun and you returned to the warmth of the apartment where your boyfriend was waiting for you.

_______________________________________________________________

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sorry not sorry

[enbies-and-felonies]

Hi! Infodump? Infodump

alsoooo this is what I remember from hours of documentaries and wikipedia that may not necessarily be remembered correctly and w/ minimal wikipedia fact checking lol

The old Prussians were a bunch of baltic people who lived around where Kaliningrad is today. after the crusades in the Middle East, European christian leaders wanted to get rid of the last pagans in Europe 😬 and promised the same rewards for driving out the pagans in the area as the crusades in the Middle East, incentivizing crusading orders to begin the northern crusades in the area (which also included Lithuania.)

the Teutonic Knights, who were from germany (hence "teutonic") converted or killed/drove out the pagans from the area, and started a huge migration of German people to the area. they also tried to convert Lithuanians, but they failed. the Lithuanians later converted to christianity anyway when they joined with Poland to create the polish-lithuanian commonwealth.

after setting up a government there, there was not much left to do, as far as crusading went, and they chafed a lot with the christian neighboring countries as well. at the battle of grunwald (1410) they were defeated by the polish-lithuanian commonwealth and reduced to the duchy of prussia, under polish rule.

then, Albert, the elector of Brandenburg, (1490-1568) an electorate in the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806, could be called the predecessor of Germany, a precarious collection of >1000 germanic countries that was more of an alliance than an actual country, "the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire" -voltaire) also became ruler/grand master of prussia/the teutonic order (though prussia itself was not a part of the hre, and a fiefdom of Poland).

he passed down the title to Frederick William the Great Elector (1620-1688), who seized a chance in the 30 years war to ally with Sweden against Poland and force Poland to let prussia go. voila, the kingdom of prussia-brandenburg. however, he was not allowed to call himself king because a) Poland kept a small chunk of prussia for themselves, so the king of Poland also had the right to call himself king of prussia, and b) Brandenburg was still a part of the hre, which already had an emperor, and they didn't like having another guy in the hre call himself king.

(also these guys were all hohenzollerns)

okay! so his son Frederick I inherited Brandenburg- prussia, then his son Frederick I (not a typo, they were both Frederick I), then Frederick William I, also called the "soldier king." he put a great focus on military, but funnily enough, while his son Frederick II is known as the promoter of the arts who turned prussia from a backwater country into a European superpower, Frederick II entered a lot more wars than his "soldier king" father ever did. Frederick William I was also known for 'the Potsdam giants," his army of carefully selected soldiers who were all over 6 ft. also, Frederick William I was a terrible, strict father who was so bad that Frederick II tried to escape with his gay lover. Frederick William I was... not happy.

Frederick II was also known for being short, making his coffee with champagne and mustard, playing the flute, being even more misogynistic than other European rulers at the time, and tricking germans into liking potatoes (which grew well in German soil) so that they wouldn't have to rely on other countries for crops.

okay so Frederick II is also called Frederick the great (or große, which sounds like "gross" lol) completely reformed prussia, and also engaged with a lot of wars (that he won) with his military genius (cough cough using the fantastic military he inherited from his father cough). notable wars include the war of Austrian succession, in which he contested the legitimacy of Maria Theresa's succession to her father's throne (which was sort of an excuse to stole the fertile land of Silesia from Austria), and the 7 years war, the world war before the world wars, which was started again over Silesia.

prussia really rocketed to the European stage during the 7 years war, when it was surrounded by extremely powerful enemies (the French, Austrians, and Russians) on all sides, and was forced to do most land fighting by her own because her ally Britain was a) focusing on fighting France on the American stage, b) focusing on naval battle, and c) did not have the resources for huge land army. Britain mostly helped financially (on the European front, at least). prussia was losing terribly, but after a series of miracles, including russia withdrawing because the queen died and her nephew (I think?) who succeeded her loved prussia ("I'd rather be a Prussian soldier than a Russian czar," or something like that) and the Austrian generals being too careful and not seizing chances like prussia did. the fact that prussia managed to come out on top (even though they failed miserably in the beginning) was huge, and would continue to put them at odds with austria in the years following.

prussia also participated in the first partition of Poland w/ russia & austria. Poland should have dissolved prussia when they had the chance when they defeated the Teutonic Knights back in the battle of grunwald. :/

because Frederick II never had children with his wife (I wonder why) his nephew Frederick William II succeeded him, followed by Frederick William III, Frederick William IV, followed by William I.

(if you ever need to guess a Prussian monarch's name, guess frederick, William, or Frederick William)

William I bullied other northern German states like Saxony and Hesse into the northern German confederation, which was set up very soon after the seven weeks war with austria, in which prussia and austria fought to be the dominant power in the German confederation, a group of German countries that followed the dissolution of the fragile hre after the napoleonic wars.

(fun fact about the napzoelanic wars- Frederick William III, who was king of prussia during the Napoleonic wars and got his ass kicked, was incredibly indecisive and rather useless. his wife, queen Louise, became involved in politics and was very well-liked by the people.)

prussia won the seven weeks war, and thus was created the northern German confederation. in 1870, after the franco-prussian war broke out (in which Otto von Bismark, who knew the power of media, cleverly made it seem that France had been the aggressor), the southern German states joined the northern German confederation against France, laying siege to Paris. this sort of set up the stage for ww1 Franco-german aggression, in which France tried to take back the alsace-lorraine region prussia had stolen.

so! the southern German states joined the northern German confederation and officially became the German empire, and William I became Kaiser William I. prussia was the dominant force within the German government.

however, following Germany's defeat in ww1 and kaiser William II's (kaiser William I's grandson) abdication, prussia was reduced to the free state of prussia. while it still existed, all its power was sucked out. however, prussia was, compared to the rest of germany, much more economically stable during the disaster that was the Weimar Republic.

during n*zi germany, h*tler looked up to Frederick the great (who had nothing to do with nazism, and brandenburg-prussia had been known for receiving religious refugees), and the legacy of Prussian militarism, tarnishing the legacy of both. after ww2, the allies officially dissolved prussia because they wanted to remake germany during occupation, and they believed prussia would be an enduring symbol of aggression and militarism. (which, to be is fair, is its legacy- Bismarck himself described prussia as "not a nation with an army, but an army with a nation). Prussia was split into different German states, and east prussia became Kaliningrad, which was given to russia, and exists as an exclave today. while other germanic countries that existed alongside prussia like Bavaria and Saxony still exist as current-day states in germany, prussia does not.

Prussia's flag is also very cool- white, with black horizontal stripes at the top and bottom and a black eagle.

uh yeah! also look up the prussia meander kokoshnik- it's really cool. it was a wedding gift for duchess Cecile when she married kaiser William II.

bro,,,,,,,,,,, this was so fucking cool and when i asked for infodumps you DELIVERED /positive!!!!!

thank you!! this was really interesting and i loved it!!!! /gen

[trickstarbrave]

big hot topic on tiktok that has been talked abt often that i wanna throw my two cents in abt the discussion but will do so here bc its going to be way easier than condensing it in 60 seconds and ppl will get even more mad abt it on there. under a cut so you can just not look if you don’t want to as it’s probably long and no one likes this discussion 

disclaimer: im not jewish. culturally or religiously at all. so i do not have the best of insight of jewish folklore and i will mainly be repeating what i have heard jewish ppl say on it but you listening to jewish ppl on it will invariably be way more helpful. ultimately i am not talking to make an argument for or against lilith worship bc i can’t make that call, mainly just that arguments for it i see tend to be deeply flawed. ive seen jewish people who say they don’t care if people worship her and ive seen jewish people who are very much against it and frankly no one needs my non jewish ass giving them permission on it, i just don’t like some of the harmful arguments and at times BLATANT anti-Semitism i see in the discussions

“lilith isn’t a closed practice!!! she cant be closed!!! she’s a being/deity we can all recognize!!!”

this i feel starts with a misunderstanding of what “closed practice” means. a closed practice is a very broad term to describe any practices, typically spiritually in nature that are not freely shared 100% openly, usually due to trying to preserve cultural or religious practices. you can learn about most of them--if you go to a primary source. many people of closed practices are open about talking about it and teaching it to people who are interested, and some cannot due to years of oppression and theft of those said practices. some require initiation, and a lot of them are passed down with heavy cultural ties. and most importantly “closed practice” is a relatively new understanding of cultural preservation after colonization. 

judaism isn’t a ‘fully closed’ religion, but it does have a set conversion order in place, and typically while converting you will learn under a rabbi or teacher. a lot of jewish mysticism, magic, and folklore are passed down culturally, so even converts may take a very long time to learn all the ins and outs of it. and a lot of times jewish practices, beliefs, texts, and folklore has been wholesale stolen by western new-age spiritualists, occultists throughout the ages, and demonized by people who seek to harm jewish people as a whole. 

the pure fact of the matter is that unless you are learning from jewish people theres going to be a lot of things about lilith you don’t know. your understanding outside of the cultural jewish understanding of her is very different, yet you are the one who also constantly equates them as the same being with the same stories, with some modifications. yet time and time again whenever a jewish person would express anxiety over it (as she can be viewed as a very HARMFUL spirit to jewish people and not a deity for them) you talk over them and call them sexist, and when they try to correct you over misunderstandings of her stories you tell them you know more than them. 

with closed practices what doesn’t matter is your bloodline or your skin, it is about the information you have access culturally, and that information may be kept from people like you so that the faith in question can be preserved because it has been threatened. and yes, jewish people have had their cultural, spiritual, and religious practices threatened. it isn’t about keeping you out because they don’t like you, its about the fact that you don’t know everything and the way you are going to learn it will be difficult and very different. ive seen white voodou workers who are actual recognized practioners (sorry for the lack of proper terminology on this i know they have proper words/titles but i dont know them), and they didn’t just look up whatever they could find online, they had to seek out a priest to learn from, and it took a lot of time and training. 

there is a way to approach closed religious/spiritual practices, and someone saying ‘this is closed’ is not them saying ‘go away you cant even look at or be interested in this thing it is not for and never will be for people like YOU’. and ultimately HOW you go about approaching it will be decided by someone in that culture, and not however you feel would be the best way to do it as an outsider.

“how could so many people, if they aren’t actually contacting the “real lilith” be wrong? if shes from a closed practice she couldn’t reach out to so many people right? so they aren’t doing anything disrespectful” 

spirits, deities, and other entities from closed practices do reach out to outsiders on occasion and the correct course for dealing with that is to immediately find a person of religious/spiritual authority and trying to work with that person to better understand why. again the point above: you do not have the cultural knowledge to work with them, you do not understand how to identify them, what practices best suit them, the multitudes of stories around them, and history of them working with humans. if you actually value them as an entity it is imperative you understand from a PRIMARY source all of this information, not just second and third hand accounts of outsiders. 

and also a lot of colonizers have claimed to be personally connected or contacted by entities from a closed practice and use that as an excuse to not only not learn, but speak as an authority figure about them. there are people who claim to work with shinto spirits with absolutely 0 actual knowledge on shintoism yet feel like they have an authority to speak on it. there are people who claim to have been contacted by voodou, hoodou, and vodun spirits/entities and know nothing about it yet speak as authority figures on it. i’ve seen someone do it for a polynesian god. they did not care about actual learning, they cared about their own beliefs, validating those said already existing beliefs, and getting validation online. am i saying everyone is doing this with lilith? no. but saying “people wouldnt just lie/be wrong right?” yeah. yeah it happens all the time. 

“they don’t even like her, they fear her, she’s a demon to them and is actually from babylonia, we are NOT worshipping the same version as her and they don’t even want anything to do with her so why does it matter” 

in terms of actual cultural study a lot of jewish and christian stories are born from the cultures their people have had contact with. historically yes, jewish people have been in babylonia, assyria, and that area, and have made cultural exchanges with those people. a lot of cultural sharing has occured throughout history, but the jewish tellings of the stories have particularly jewish cultural knowledge and heritage in them. also we frankly do not have a lot of concrete surviving stories of lili, lilu, and lilitu, so i know you are not basing the meat and bones of your practice on those unless you have access to that cultural knowledge that not even archaeologists and anthropologists even know exists. most of it is on middle ages mysticism that developed her further based on jewish folklore and religious stories. 

also just because a culture doesn’t worship and revere a spirit doesn’t mean it is yours for the adopting and taking. we see this with the cannibalistic spirit i will not name from algonquin tribes and shapeshifting spirits/witches i also will not name from navajo. these are not spirits you’re supposed to mention or talk about, and even more so because their culture has such intense, negative stories around them means you should probably give it a little more thought. 

the last point i am going to make is the general, overt anti-semitism i see. stop comparing judaism to christianity. stop saying they are evil and misrepresent her because judaism is inherently sexist. stop saying they are oppressing your culturally christian raised ass. stop saying jewish people have no culture of their own and its “all stolen from pagan traditions” (which are somehow all equally open for you to take from too i suppose, as though middle eastern practices are exactly the same cultural weight as all white european ones)

again im not for the forceful closing of practices and i cannot give you fucking permission as i sure as shit do not know but i don’t think any of you even understand what “closed practice” means and why jewish people might have even the slightest misgivings about you working with or worshipping her and it really shows. if you have been heavily studying the occult, jewish traditions, and are doing so respectfully then i sure as hell am not here to argue with you about it so don’t come at me for it. what i am saying is a lot of people who do not have that and are absolutely disrespectful towards judaism and jewish people as a whole really keep making an ass of themselves on witchtok and are absolutely insufferable towards any jewish person who voices their thoughts and feelings on it, and i have a problem with that. 

[buildingadrian]

My atrophy is pretty bad and my ob initially prescribed yuvafem (local estrogen) the thought of taking it made me so dysphoric and angry i just wanted to break it and hurt myself so i didnt use it. There was one time i did because the burning had me up until after 5 am and i was desperate. That led to major dysphoria the next few days so i never took it again. Now she has prescribed intrarosa which is prasterone. It starts as prasterone and my body converts it to estrogen which that thought makes me dysphoric. I just want progesterone but thats still in studies for it's effectiveness. I feel so fucking stuck all of the medications available cause discharge and bleeding, both cause a lot of dysphoria for me. I feel like i have no choice but to take these awful things in order to be physically comfortable but even the thought of taking them really hurts my mental health which already isnt great and i just need help. Idk what to do im stuck in a shitty situation. Ive discussed it on reddit and they all say its not that bad but i think that all depends on dysphoria and how your body reacts. Without these meds im already dealing with bleeding despite being on t and the depo shot so idk

[jackiietaylor]

Hi! Can I ask how you make your gifsets? (program, process)? Hope you have an amazing day, your Daisy gifs are gorgeous btw ❤️💔

hello!! hope you also have a great day, and thank you!! and sorry this took a little longer to put together than i thought it would!!

i'll try to explain my process as best i can, and hopefully it makes sense.

program(s)

first, i use photoshop 2021 to make gifs, and i use mplayer osx extended for screencaps. also, i try to avoid using clips from YouTube because the quality usually isn't as good, but if I do have to use that I use 4k video downloader

process

first, first thing you need is the clip that you want to make gif from. the easiest way to find this (in my opinion) is just to search "[...] scene pack" or "[...] mega link." I usually try to make sure the clips i use are 1080p because anything less than that is lower in quality and the gifs aren't as sharp.

second, i open the clip in mplayer to get the screencaps ill use to make the gif. i do this by pausing the video right before the part i want to gif, then pressing and holding command+shift+s (for mac) until ive got the full scene. if you want, you can create a folder on your desktop for screencaps, but I usually just leave them there and delete them once im done.

the next step is when i actually open photoshop. to start, go to file>script>load files into stack

this is where you're going to load in the screencaps you just took. go to browse, then select the first screencap and hold down shift until you select the last screencap, then hit ok

after that i usually crop my gifs. in general, i use 540px x 400px, but that changes based on what exactly im giffing. the way i crop gifs is by clicking the crop icon on the left side, then, above the workspace, selecting W x H x Resolution > 540 px x 400 px > px/in

the next parts so the most complicated part to explain so im gonna use a picture for reference

click create frame animation

next, go to the three horizontal lines across from the word “timeline” at the bottom. once that menu opens, click “make frames from layers” at this point the gif is backwards, so you’ll want to go back to that same menu and click “reverse frames.” 

now that your gif’s frames in the correct order, you can set frame delay. select all the frames in the timeline, then right click so get a box that looks like this:

i almost always set frame delay to .05, but if i have less than ~20 frames ill set it to 0.06    

next, click the symbol in the bottom left corner (you can see it in the photo above) to convert the frames to a video timeline

after this, on the bottom right side, select each layer of the gif under the “layers” tab. right click, then select “convert to smart object.” this will allow you to sharpen your gifs. to do that, at the top of the screen go to filter>sharpen>smart sharpen. the settings i use are 500% at 0.4px, then i sharpen again 10% at 10px  

here's the gif before sharpening:

sharpened 500% at 0.4px:

sharpened 500% at 0.4px then 10% at 10px

coloring

once this parts done you can start coloring your gifs/adding adjustment layers. the main ones I typically use, in order, are curves, brightness, levels, selective color, and vibrance. the first three adjust the lighting of the gif and the last two adjust the color. other layers i use are saturation, color balance, and photo filter, which all adjust color.  

to add adjustment layers, you can either  1. go to layer>add adjustment layer>select the layer type 2. pick a layer type from the icons on the right side (above the layer list)

honestly, the easiest way to do this part is to just select “auto” and photoshop will automatically adjust curves, brightness, and levels, but i usually slightly tweak it from here until im happy with it. 

curves: use the white dropper to select the lightest part of the gif and the black dropper to select the darkest part. you can manually adjust the curve within the little graph too, but typically you don't need to (i only do when the actual scene the gifs from has a tint i don't like, ex. if its really green ill go to the dropbar, go to green, then adjust it until ive mostly neutralized it)

brightness/contrast: brightening too much will sometimes decrease the quality, where increasing the contrast will sometimes help increase the quality

levels: honestly you can almost always get away with not using this unless the lighting in a scene is really bad/weird. use auto then adjust as needed 

this is what the gif looks like after adding adjustment layers: curves: input 85, output 92 brightness: brightness 19, contrast-32 levels: 0,1.11,255

now you can get to actually playing around with colors! 

the first thing i do is add a layer of selective color, go to black, then increase black. this is one of the last ways to increase quality slightly, as it can make the gifs look a little sharper.

next i add vibrance. typically, unless the scene itself is already pretty colorful, ill increase vibrance almost fully, and slightly increase saturation. the issue with increasing saturation too much, especially when your giffing people, is the colors start to look really unnatural 

for this particular gif, i added a hue/saturation layer, then decreased red and increase blue and cyan, because there was a lot of both of those colors in the background and i wanted it to stand out more. i then added another selective color layer and increased cyan for both blue and cyan.

these are the specific adjustments i made: selective color: black>black +9% vibrance: vibrance +76, saturation +10 hue/saturation: red -15 selective color: blue>cyan +75%, cyan>cyan 49% hue/saturation: blue +4, cyan +5

saving

 once you're done coloring, you can save your gif. to do this, go to file>export>save for web (legacy)

these are the save settings i use:

also, the gif size limit for tumblr is 10M, so make sure your gifs are all under that size. if they're too big, you can either adjust the image size on the save page (or while making the gif) or shorten the gif 

and here's the final product!

i hope this was helpful :) 

[qqueenofhades]

Hi, I hope this isnt annoying to ask but w the old guard ive seen a lot of people mixing up catholic and christian when it comes to nicky. when by todays standards theyre not interchangeable as catholic is a specific strain of christianity. i was kinda under the impression the crusades were a purely catholic thing since the pope. is that right or were other christians involved??

Hmm. Just to be clear what you’re asking, are you wondering whether it’s a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when talking about this time period or describing Nicky’s faith? And/or asking for a basic religious primer on medieval Europe and the crusades more generally?

First, it’s not a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” as synonyms during the crusades, especially since a) Catholics are Christians, no matter what the militant Protestant reformers would like you to think, and b) until said Protestant reformation, they were the dominant and almost (but not quite) singular Christian denomination in Western Europe. Our source material for the period doesn’t describe the crusaders as “Catholics,” even if they were; they call them Christians or Franks. (Likewise, the word “Frank,” i.e. “French” was often used to describe Western European crusaders no matter which country they were from, since so many crusaders came from France and that was where the crusades were originally launched, at the council of Clermont in 1095.) To call them “Christians” points us to the fact that the crusades were viewed as a great pan-Christian enterprise, even if the reality was more complicated, and nobody would need to specify “Catholic,” because that was implicit.

In short, medieval Europe had two major strands of Christianity, which developed out of the centuries of arguments over heresy, the contents of the biblical canon, the nature and/or divinity of Christ, their relationship to Judaism, paganism, and other religions of late antiquity, and so forth. Eventually these two competing branches took on geographical, cultural, and linguistic associations: Western (Latin) Catholic Christianity, and Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Christianity. The Great Schism in 1054 split these two rites formally apart, though both of them had at least some thought that the internal divisions in Christianity should be healed and dialogue has continued intermittently even up to the present day (though they’re still not actually reconciled and this seems highly unlikely to ever happen.)

The head of Western Catholic Christianity was (and is) the Pope of Rome, and the head of Eastern Orthodox Christianity was (and is) the Patriarch of Constantinople. Both of these branches of Christianity were involved in launching the crusades. To make a long story short, the Byzantine (Greek) Emperor, Alexios Komnenos, appealed to the Catholic (Latin) pope, Urban II, for help in defending the rights of eastern Christians, territorial incursions against Greek possessions by the Muslims of the Holy Land and North Africa, and the city of Constantinople (and Jerusalem) itself. So although the actual French and Western European participants in the crusades were Catholic, they (originally, at least) joined up with the intention of helping out their Orthodox brethren in the East and “liberating” Jerusalem from the so-called tyranny of Islam. To this end, the accounts of the council of Clermont focused heavily on the brotherhood of western and eastern Christians and the alleged terrible treatment of these Christians by the ruling Islamic caliphate in Jerusalem. At that time, that was the Isma’ili Shia Muslim Fatimids (who had replaced the Sunni Muslim Abbasids in the early 10th century -- there are many names and many dynasties, but yes.)

However, despite this ecumenical start, relations between Western and Eastern Christians started to go bad very quickly over the course of the crusades, indeed within a few short years of Clermont. Alexios Komnenos wanted the crusade leaders to swear loyalty to him and pledge to return formerly Byzantine lands that might be recaptured from the Muslims, and the crusade leaders did not want to do this. There were deep cultural, linguistic, religious, social, and political differences between Greek and Latin Christians, even if they were both technically Christians, and these caused the obvious problems. The Greeks were obviously located in a different part of the world and had a different relationship with their Islamic neighbors (they fought them often, but also traded with them and established diplomatic ties) and this caused constant friction during the crusades, since the Westerners always suspected (not entirely wrongly) that the Greeks were secretly in league with the Turks. Albert of Aachen, writing his Historia Ierosolimitana in the early 12th century, referred to “wicked Christians, that is to say Greeks,” and our primary source for the Second Crusade (1145--49) is Odo of Deuil and his De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem (Journey of Louis VII to the East.) He spent the entire time grousing about “treacherous Greeks” and blaming them for the crusade’s struggles (though the Second Crusade pretty much sabotaged itself and didn’t need any outside force to blame for its failure). There was some truth to this accusation, since Byzantium was then engaged in a war against Sicily (Louis VII’s ally, though it had its own connections to Muslim culture and indeed had been Muslim before the Normans conquered it in 1061). The Greeks had thus been working with the Muslims to undercut the invasion of Western Europeans into this contested territory, and this was not forgotten or forgiven.

The best-known example of Western-Eastern relations during the crusades going catastrophically awry is in 1204, at the sack of Constantinople as the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Basically: the crusaders were deeply in debt to the Venetians and had already attacked the Catholic city of Zara (Zadar in Croatia) in hopes of getting some money back, then got involved in the messy politics of the Byzantine succession, went to Constantinople, and eventually outright attacked it, sacked and destroyed the city, and raped and slaughtered its inhabitants. This obviously poisoned the well all but permanently between Latin and Greek Christians (frankly, in my opinion, it’s one of the worst tragedies of history) and Constantinople never regained its former wealth and pre-eminence. It declined until it was captured in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II, and has been an Islamic city ever since. (It was renamed Istanbul in 1923, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the “founding father” of modern Turkey.) Obviously, Latin and Greek Christianity still had to work with each other somehow, but the crusades were actually the single biggest factor in driving the two branches further apart, rather than reconciling them.

The words “catholic” and “orthodox” both have connotations of universality, overall correctness, and all-encompassing truth claims. Therefore, in some sense, to a Catholic Christian or an Orthodox Christian, defining themselves as such, with both words, is repetitious; they are Catholic/Orthodox and therefore the correct sort of Christian (even if their theological opponents would disagree). However, historians obviously do use that convention to distinguish them, since the identity is important, and makes a big difference as to what religious landscape an individual is living in. As for heresy, it was an equally complicated subject. Numerous “heretical” (i.e. not mainstream Catholic Christianity) Christian sects existed in Europe for this entire period, most notably the Cathars. (They got their own crusade launched against them, the Albigensian Crusade of 1209--29 in southern France.) The lines between heresy and orthodoxy (small-o orthodoxy meaning in this case, confusingly, Catholic Christianity) could often be blurred, and religious practices were syncretic and constantly influenced each other. A big problem in the Albigensian Crusade was identifying who the heretics actually were; they looked like their Catholic neighbors, they lived in community with them, their friends and family members were Cathar and Catholic alike, both rites were practiced, and plenty of towns were just fine with this hybrid arrangement. Hence it was not as simple as just pointing and going “get those guys,” and indeed, one of the leaders of the Albigensian Crusade, when asked by a knight how to tell them apart, advocated to just kill them all and God would know who the good Catholics were. Welp.

Northern and eastern Europe also remained pagan relatively late into the medieval era (into the 10th and 11th centuries) and the Northern and Baltic Crusades were launched with the aim of converting them to Catholic Christianity. (You will notice that the crusades have a complicated history as both a vehicle of religious warfare and as an attempted theater of conversion.) Heresy was a constant preoccupation of the Catholic popes, especially Innocent III (the progenitor of the Fourth, Albigensian, and Fifth Crusades). Especially in the thirteenth century, splinter religious groups and localized sects of “heresy” were popping up like crazy, and it was a constant point of contention as to how to deal with them, i.e. by force, persuasion, reconciliation, dialogue, etc. No, the medieval Catholic church was not the stereotyped instrument of fear, oppression, and tyranny, and could never enforce its views universally on all of western Europe. Church attendance on the parish level could be so low that in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent issued an order requiring Christians to take communion at least once a year. So yes. The standard was very far from “everyone believed Catholicism fervently at all times and if they didn’t, they were immediately punished/burned alive.” The idea of burning heretics at the stake wasn’t even introduced until the early fifteenth century, and even then, it required an often-months-long formal church trial and wasn’t just something that the local village priest could hand out on a whim.

There were also monastic orders, and these (at least in Western Europe) were therefore Catholic, but they had different ways of practicing it and what their orders emphasized. The most common order were Benedictines (founded in the 6th century by Saint Benedict), who adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which is still the basis for the following monastic orders. There were also the Cluniacs (founded in 10th-century France at Cluny Abbey) and the Cistercians (founded as rivals to the Cluniacs at the end of the 11th century, also in France). In terms of the crusades, the Cistercians were by far the most involved with/zealously supportive of them (Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian) and took part in directly financing, preaching, and launching the Second, Fourth, and Albigensian Crusades alike. The better-known monastic orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, weren’t founded until the thirteenth century, on the tail end of the crusades, and didn’t take much direct part in them. The Dominican inquisition, however, took over the business of dealing with the Cathars after the Albigensian Crusade petered out, and their concern was often with heresy thereafter.

Anyway. This has gotten long, as per usual. But I hope this gives you some introductory sense of the religious landscape of medieval Europe, the divisions within Christianity, and the fact that it’s entirely accurate to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when discussing Nicky’s crusades-era faith and counterparts. The crusaders themselves did not specify themselves as being Catholic, and the crusades were (at least initially) viewed as a pan-Christian movement, even if eventually fatal tensions with Orthodox Christians left a permanent scar. The idea of identifying the precise denomination of Christianity is also another Protestant Reformation-era innovation, and wasn’t, at least in this case, necessary to do.

[agencystudio-official]

Agency Studio {Karthik Ramani} Reviews | Scam Or Does It Really Works?

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Agency Studio is a cloud-based software that helps you to convert visitors into paying customers with a simple ‘trick’ & offer any agency service to Local businesses. This is absolutely the perfect tool for landing clients and providing them with highly captivating, profit pulling videos that work in any business or niche.

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1. Create/ Customize Buyer Journeys for Unlimited Services

Be it any service that you want to sell you can customize a buyer journey that will land you clients without you having to do any selling! All it takes is a few simple clicks to have this up & running.

2. Offer Variations & Variable Pricing

Offer multiple options to choose from and even provide variable pricing. Offer accurate estimates on-page based on precise customer requirements. If your client’s video is 8 minutes then give them the precise pricing for 8 minutes. Not a minute less or more!

3. Add-ons to increase your cart Value

Easy way to increase your revenue by offering Add-ons and bumps that people will love to pick at the checkout.

4. Display your Media / Style / Colour Themes / Video

Help your potential clients choose the right style of videos or any pattern you want them to choose from. Easy way to understand your client’s requirements and deliver accordingly.

5. Collect Detailed Buyer Requirements

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1  Digital Marketers

2  Business owners

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Agency Studio Review– PROS AND CONS

PROS:

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ii. Sell any service effortlessly

iii. No need to have any sales skills

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Let me recap what you will get inside Agency Studio

Agency Studio – Client management portal

Create Project

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Client Order Management Dashboard (Live, Completed and Cancelled )

Embed code provision for created service/ Product

Widget code provision for service and product

Agency Website for video service

Hosted URL for the created service/product

Ability to add FAQ for the created service/Product

Ability to add branding logo for the project

Ability to add retargeting codes

Customer Management Dashboard

Export Customer as csv file

Ability to add buyer email notification.

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name Mapping Provision for Own Branding

Payment Integrations – Paypal, Stripe, Razorpay

Autoresponder Integrations

SMTP Integrations

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 Let me recap what you will get inside

i.   Convert your video in multiple layouts in 1 click

  ii.   Unlimited custom font uploads

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  xiii.   Captions from Videos with million of Views

  xiv.   Priority RenderingDirectly Share on Social Media

  xv.   10 DFY Social Media Ads to sell your Services

  xvi.   DFY Fiverr Gigs

  xvii.   High-converting Email Swipes

  xviii.   Cold-calling Script

  xix   Client Presentation

  xx.   Contract Document

OTO 2: AGENCY STUDIO – TEMPLATE CLUB ($27 – $47)>>More Details<<

Let me recap what you will get inside

  i.   25 Facebook Ad Video Templates

  ii.   25 Instagram

  iii.   Facebook Story video Templates

  iv.   25 E-commerce Video Templates

  v.   25 Meme Video Templates

  vi.   25 YouTube Video Templates

  vii.   25 Facebook Post Video Templates

  viii.   100 Local Business Video Templates

  ix.   20 New Templates Every month for 12 months

  x.  5 Custom Template Request

  xi.   Share Template Feature to sell your Templates to other Agency Studio Users

  xii.   Exclusive Facebook Group for Template Club Members

  xiii.   Access to list your Templates in Template Marketplace for selling to other users

OTO 3: AGENCY STUDIO – RESELLER>>More Details<<

Let me recap what you will get inside

  i.   Sell 100 Agency Studio (FE + Pro) access ($147)

  ii.   Sell 250 Agency Studio (FE + Pro) access ($247)

Agency Studio Review-Conclusion

Hopefully, with my honest thoughts about Agency Studio,I really hope it did help you with your buying decision. I understand the decision of taking out $34 one time price is not simply made but this investment is profitable and for a sustainable business.

Note:

After purchasing Agency Studio through our website, just contact us here & we will send your bonuses, thanks:)

OR

You can also check bonuses inside your JVzoo purchase section, we have already added them here. 

[sparklyandchic]

🦋 MINI MIND MAKEOVER 🦋

okay i started the idea for this mini little mind makeover when i broke up with my boyfriend in like january. instead of being sad or angry, i wanted to be grateful for this time and take it as an opportunity to make life better for myself. then quarantine happened, so some of these are related to things i’ve learned since that started. either way, these aren’t all concrete things to do for your mind; some of them are just ways of thinking or pep talks. but if you can find one little piece of information or thought that makes you a little bit happier for a moment, that’s all i can hope for!

5-htp: okay first off- please ALWAYS consult your psychiatrist or medical professional before taking a supplement! taking 5-htp with, for example, serotonin-increasing medications can lead to a fatal illness called serotonin syndrome. personally, i started taking it because i had been on 10 mg prozac for a few months. it definitely dulled a lot of my anxiety and had a lot of positive aspects to it, but it dulled them almost too much to the point where i felt apathetic and detached from myself and the situations i was in. i was in a very unhealthy relationship and felt like i needed my mental clarity and “overthinking” processes back in order to identify what i was feeling and how to deal with it. i felt a lot more “sensitive” after coming off it, which was actually really welcome for me at first, but then it sort of dropped off into withdrawals. i was having constant panic attacks and crying very often. after a while, i was debating going back on prozac, but remembered i had taken 5-htp before. 5-htp is an amino acid that is a direct precursor to serotonin being produced in the brain. when u eat turkey, tryptophan is converted into 5-htp which leads to your brain producing serotonin, thus why you feel calm and happy afterwards. after taking 5-htp for just a few days, ranging between 200-300 mg per day (again, do your research, ask your doctor, and start small) i stopped crying constantly and really felt this sense of calmness and wellbeing but without the detachment and apathy i felt with prozac. i could still think clearly but didn’t feel overly sensitive to every emotion which arose. personally, it is really a lifesaver and really does make a noticeable difference.

cognitive behavioral therapy: ive tried therapy a million times. well okay, like 5 or 6 different therapists. at its worst, therapists told me i needed to use my sexual power as a woman in order to get what i wanted from men, told me i’m bad at socializing and should do group therapy, said my mom shouldn’t have encouraged me to “be myself” when i was younger because it made me less likeable than if i had conformed to normal societal standards of dressing. i had gone to “therapists” who claimed to be trained in CBT, but when i told them about my experiences with dissociation, the only feedback i got was to “take more baths.” while going through a few unpleasant experiences in my personal life, i decided i should try CBT once more, but like the real kind. i found an ivy-league educated licensed psychologist (NOT a “licensed clinical social worker” who doesn’t even have a psychology degree!!) who SPECIALIZED specifically in cognitive behavioral therapy. just after the first session, i was so elated with my experience. as opposed to just telling me that i needed to be more normal or more kind or a better person, she tried to identify WHAT was making me feel that way about myself in the first place. she pointed out the positive things i do and reassured me i was kind, good, and deserving of good things. she pointed out many aspects of my situation that would have taken me days or weeks to come to on my own. i’ve realized my hubris isn’t that i’m not socially acceptable or not perfect enough, but its just that i tend to THINK that i am these things despite having no evidence of it. so, over time with therapy, my positive self image about who i am as a person has grown and strengthened and i dont just randomly feel like a bad human being anymore lol. moral of the story, if you wanna do therapy but it keeps sucking, dont give up. go to a legit psychologist, find someone who specializes in the type of therapy you’re seeking, and also be vocal during your sessions. stand up to your psychologist when they continually push a narrative onto you, and explain why you don’t agree with it. sometimes it’s their job to try different narratives to see what fits, and if you just passively let them say what they want to, you’ll never find the truth of your experience! it’s a communal effort! therapy isn’t usually a magic cure-all where one session fixes everything that goes awry in your brain. but if you find someone who knows what they’re doing they can in fact really help your thought processes become less twisted up and more clear and healthy.

meditation and mindfulness: a few weeks ago i felt anxious and overly driven to get things done to the point where i spiraled into a space of guilt or a panic attack over not getting enough things done. meditation can be so so helpful here. it’s better to spend an hour sitting and doing nothing, but doing it peacefully and then calmly moving on to doing something else, than to spend 5 hours stressing yourself over every single thing you need to get done and how much time you’re wasting. the things that need to get done will get done. another thing that i’ve realized and say to myself a lot is: “focus not on doing all things perfectly, but on doing the small things well.” by this i mean, stop thinking about the 20 things you need to get done and how it all needs to be perfect, but instead take your time with the task that presents itself as most beneficial right now and focus on enjoying it and giving your whole self to the process. for example, stop thinking about how you need to clean your room, your closet, donate clothes, take a shower, take out the trash, read, workout, etc. think to yourself; “which task would bring me the most joy right now?” if the answer is taking a shower, then take that damn shower. bring your speaker into the bathroom, scrub every inch of your scalp with shampoo, scrub your feet and behind your ears and your neck with body wash, brush the conditioner through your hair fully. you may end your shower with 19 other things to do, but god damn if you can’t enjoy a single one of them and be present for it, what’s the fucking point! go light a candle and bask in its glow, go make your bed and huddle up in your neatly arranged covers, go take a long bath or a thorough shower, and be proud of and content with that today. 

relationships, with others and yourself: okay, if you missed the memo, my ex-boyfriend sucked. like genuinely was a bad person. he was a drug dealer, so that’s red flag number 1 (which i ignored of course), he hadn’t graduated high school (he was 18, i was 20, he was supposed to graduate the last semester but refused to do the work and ignored me and his mother when encouraged to do it, which is uhh definitely red flag number 2 which i also ignored), he habitually did not show up for dates on time or lied about what he was going to do or what he did (literally everything he did was a red flag and i rlly ignored all of it). the worst part was how he responded when i worked up the courage to speak to him about it. if we had agreed upon a time for our date but he showed up literally 8 hours late, he would blame it on me because i “could have called” him, or that i was “demanding too much of” him, or that i “should have said something earlier so now [i was] just dragging it out because it already happened.” basically, whatever narrative he pushed at me, i eventually gave into. i’ve dealt with gaslighting in a relationship before and a part of me knew what was happening to me, but a part of me also kept having hope for him, kept empathizing with him, kept wanting to believe in him. after a bit too much time, i finally realized you have to trust yourself, empathize with yourself, and believing in yourself over anyone else. at first i felt bad for him not being able to graduate because i had my own struggles with high school and getting work done. i thought he may have issues but he deserves someone to be there for him because i wanted someone to be there for me. despite the pain and stress he was causing me, i sat around crying over him because i cared about him and tend to over-empathize with people close to me, whether they deserve it or not. my therapist told me something that at first i did not understand, but over time came to grasp in its entirety: “some people do not deserve your love or kindness.” after our first session, my homework was to “consider when you are being kind and when you are being taken advantage of.” this made me realize that what feels like your instinctual nature to be nice to others, can in fact be a self-sabotaging unfair action, depending on the other person’s response. i might be dishing out a lot right now, but bear with me. think of it this way: you regard an action as a “kind action”. you might think “kind actions” include: forgiving someone for large mistakes, putting someone’s needs over yours, sparing them some change when they ask for it, listening to the problems they are dealing with every day. BUT when their actions include not forgiving you for minor mistakes, not giving a sh*t about your needs or considering them, not caring how much money they take from you and how much money you need to have around, or habitually glossing over your problems because it doesn’t benefit them to care, THEN those actions you performed are NOT “KIND ACTIONS” anymore. the act of continuing to give them leeway is now the act of being taken advantage of. the act of giving them money is now the act of being taken advantage of. the act of buying into their story at the expense of your sanity, is now the act of being taken advantage. basically, all i’m saying is START PUTTING YOURSELF FIRST AND TRUSTING YOURSELF WHEN YOU FEEL SOMEONE DOESN’T HAVE YOUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND. 

ending thoughts: i know quarantine is difficult right now. the desire to grow contrasted with the inability to move. maybe try and follow that old 2008~ quote; “bloom where you are planted”. you might not be able to reach the goals you thought you would during this time. you might not be able to run a marathon or make a bunch of new friends or wake up at 6 AM to workout or redo your bedroom or get a rhinoplasty or join a gym or get an internship. working towards productivity might be unrealistic right now. but you can work everyday towards becoming the woman you want to be, mentally. you can work on learning to be content, learning to make the best with what you have, learning to appreciate the little things, learning to slow down. these are all qualities that i for one want to have just as much as i want to be attractive or successful. if you can’t enjoy success, what’s the fucking point! life is on pause right now, take this moment as a gift and consider your internal world and what parts of your mind need a makeover. there are horrible things happening in the world right now, do what you can to help, but if you’re safe and healthy then be grateful for the things you can learn from this difficult time. take it slow, but keep moving forward!