#comic 1095

[asoftershipwrecked]

five of cups

[asscrasher]

Every time I see a valley, I think of the Moon, and there he was on the very next page lol. The Moon is a card of illusions and deception; things are not as they appear…

[alexthegamingboy]

Toonami Weekly Recap 06/24/2023

Dr. Stone: New World (Age of Exploration Arc) EP#39 (04) - Eyes of Science: The existence of Why-Man is heavily debated as he may be a new enemy. Senku immediately crafts Scientific Eyes, using glass coated in Sphalerite and the electricity channeling power of crystals he creates a rudimentary Cathode-ray tube television screen, which when connected to the radio tower becomes a radar/sonar to accurately pinpoint targets over vast distances, even underwater. Testing the sonar Chrome is astounded it can even find fish, a welcome bonus for the upcoming voyage. The next issue arises; an engine big enough for a ship will requires tonnes of iron. Surprisingly it is Chrome who solves the issue; using what he learned from Senku he connects an electromagnet to the radar and spontaneously reinvents the Metal detector. Locating an iron deposit in a cave mile from the village they begin mining with Senku declaring they have reached the Industrial Revolution. Senku uses a petrol by-product plus gravel to make Asphalt concrete, allowing iron to be driven from the mine to the river by a paved road where Ryusui then sails it to the village. Under Senku and Kaseki's expertise the Minecarts are designed to make mining the iron even easier.

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal EP#09 - A Love's Last Light: The Evil takes over the cosmic realm and traps the heroes within it as well, where they learn that the Evil intends to destroy time itself.

Slightly Damned Page 1095: https://www.sdamned.com/comic/1095

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Beautifully Wrong

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/eb6dzJL by Silicon_Tiger Late at night in Wayne Manor the new Robin stumbles on a sight that he finds both beautiful and wrong. Words: 1095, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 2 of Alphabet Titles Inspired Fics Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M Characters: Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne Relationships: Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: inspired by title, Accidental Voyeurism, character stumbling on other two being intimate late at night, character disturbed by relationship, Introspection, references to the rumors about Batman and Robin, Fear read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/eb6dzJL

[sketchesmick]

on hold 1095, 1096, &1097

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[goldheartart19]

Great Book of Context: Ch 1

Wattpad Link: https://www.wattpad.com/1233668890-great-book-of-context-1st-edition-chapter-1-brief

The Great Book of Context is a long story I’m making on Wattpad to explain some basics about the world my comic takes place on.

Here is Chapter 1: Brief History of the World.

Text Bellow:

Since the beginning of time magical creatures had lived together in relative peace. However in the year 1095 the Christian Church decided to crack down on the spread of fae or magical creatures and what the church considered the “infestation” of them in human society.

This kicked off a series of events and battles that was later called the Crusades. Finally after years of bloody war in 1290 most of the magical creatures in Europe, some in Asia, and those in the most northern part of Africa came together and made their own realm to live without the threat of death. The most powerful known wizards came together to create the barrier to separate their new home from the human’s realm.

In order to keep the spell up they chose to tie it to the moon since it was the one object they could trust to always be there. Soon after all the magical creatures in the human realm disappeared and over time what was originally history moved into being legend and fairy tales. For about 800 years this seemed to work for everyone and the magical creatures were able to make their own society and various cultures.

During the night of New Years Eve 1999 everyone was out celebrating the coming year of 2000. Right as the clock struck midnight the moon started to glow blue and a large crack appeared on the surface. Soon the crack got bigger and bigger until the moon began breaking apart. As pieces of the moon began falling to the Earth the spell keeping the two realms apart began breaking down, refusing them  back into one.

The fusion only caused more destruction and death from the moon coming apart. About 80% of the life on Earth was destroyed and there was little to rebuild with. What remained of the magic council quickly took over and made an organized effort to reform society.

Over time countries and new continents were formed and things started to settle down. New societies and cultures started to form from the remains of what was before, and while nothing was ever the same people made it work. For the next two thousand years the world progressed and was made anew.

[coolkatana-store]

Hand Forged Walking Dead Sword Michonne Katana Zombie Killer 1095 Carbon Steel Clay Tempered Brown Leather

Michonne Katana Sword

The Walking Dead is a popular television series based on a comic book series of the same name. The series which started airing in 2010, features a post-zombie apocalypse world where humans struggle to survive against zombie attacks and aggression from other humans.

Michonne is a character in the series, well known for her katana which she uses to defend herself and her companions from zombies and other aggressors.

SL897 is a functional replica of the katana in the series. The blade is made of 1095 high carbon steel and clay tempered. Beautiful hamon is clearly visible on shiny blade. The saya is made of hardwood wrapped in brown, real leather and fitted with an adjustable leather sling. The tsuka and the upper half of the saya is wrapped with white, synthetic leather. The tsuba, fuchi and kashira are made of brass.

 Features:

1095 high carbon steel. Full Tang. Clay tempered.

Battle ready, not just a collectible.

Traditional craftsmanship, hand forged, hand polished.

Perfect balance, comfortable grip.

Gives away a free sword bag and spare Mekugi (Peg).

Free engraving available.

 Michonne Katana Sword Specifications:

Overall Length:

103cm / 40.6"

Nagasa(Blade):

71cm / 27.9"

Tsuka(Handle):

27cm / 10.6"

Motohaba(width near habaki):

3.15cm

Sakihaba(width near yokote):

2.3cm

Sori(curve):

1.9cm

Kasane(thickness at habaki):

7.5mm

Sakikasane(thickness at yokote):

3mm

Blade:

Maru, 1095 High Carbon Steel

Saya Material:

Hardwood+Leather

Handle Material:

Hardwood+Genuine Rayskin

Tsuba:

Copper

 Notes for Michonne Katana Sword:

The display stand and packing box aren't included.

Our products are 100% handmade, so specification varies slightly from sword to sword. We appreciate your understanding.

All our katana swords are hand forged by swordsmiths,  the forging time about 7-15 days. For some high-performance swords may require longer hand forged processing time, depending on the difficulty of the craft.

https://www.coolkatana.com/products/walking-dead-sword-michonnes-katana-zombie-killer-1095-carbon-steel-clay-tempered-sl897

[serendipityrogers]

do you mind? || b. banner

summary: late nights in the lab with bruce

word count: 1095 (short & sweet)

pairing: bruce banner x female!reader

warning: none! just a little kissing

an: i saw a tiktok that inspired me and this is what i came up with :) sorry it’s short, something to hold you guys over.

@belouva tagging you because you replied to my post about writing for bruce <3

You were sick of crying.

The only sound that could be heard on your level of the Avengers Compound, was the occasional thunder rumble and your sniffling. You could feel the tears staining your cheeks, dripping onto the fabric of your pillow. Without even seeing it, you could tell your eyes were puffy, red, and irritated. You felt like you had been crying for a week straight, but it was realistically only a few hours.

Steve had knocked on your door a couple hours ago, asking if you wanted anything for dinner. You were able to create a facade for a few moments, but he wasn’t stupid, and he had ears so, he knew. And when you rejected, he set a bowl of warm soup outside your door anyway. After taking a few bites, you discarded it on your desk. You were just in a funk, unable to place what was making you so sad. It felt like a multitude of things, so you couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, which became overwhelming, so here you were.

Crying into your pillow, at midnight, desperately trying to find something that would distract you. And almost like the universe was listening, a familiar name popped up on your phone, it was Bruce. You smiled at the small green heart you put next to his name. It was a simple text, but instantly lifted your spirits. “Need some company in my lab. Do you mind joining me?” Your body ached for sleep, but you could never turn down an offer from Bruce.

Wrapping your weak frame in a jacket, you began your trek down to the laboratories on the ground floor. The floors creaked, rain pounded against the large widows, and the walls shook from the thunder. The socks on your feet allowed any of your footsteps to be silenced, as you scooted past your other housemate’s rooms. The elevator's dinging sounded louder this deep into the night. When the walls turned from a deep grey to a blinding white, you knew you had reached your final destination.

“Hello?” You asked, peeking your head into the only lab with the lights still flicked on. “Oh, hey, you got my message.” Bruce glanced up at you, over his glasses, which sat comically low on the bridge of his nose. “I did.” You nodded, walking further into the room. “How did you know I was awake?” You asked, taking a seat in one of the stools. “Just a hunch.” He shrugged, looking back at the screen in front of him. And you proceeded to just watch him.

The button-up shirt you noticed him wearing earlier this morning, was undone about three buttons down. A five o’clock shadow decorated his tired features. His hair was more disheveled than normal, pushed mostly to his left. “Do you ever sleep?” You asked, breaking the silence. You propped your head up on your knees, which were pulled against your chest. “I’ve learned to function pretty with a small amount of it.” He confessed. “Everyone needs sleep.” You chuckled, noticing the growing bags under his eyes.

Whatever he was looking at on the screen disappeared, and popped up in the air closer towards the middle of the room. “I do all the bare necessities. I sleep, I eat, and I breathe.” He insisted, following the floating pictures. Bruce was a mystery man. He never talked much, only to Tony really. He kept to himself and only talked when spoken too. “Why did you ask me to come down here?” You asked, standing now, leaning against the cold lab table. “I was sick of being down here by myself, plus, I assume this would be better than crying up in your room, alone.”

You hadn’t been hiding your crying very well, you admit, but you hadn’t even considered that Bruce may have noticed. He didn’t seem like the observational type, but you had been wrong before. “Much better than crying alone in my room.” You muttered, walking to stand beside Bruce, trying to take in what he was looking at. When he noticed your look of confusion, he began to do what he did best, and began explaining. “I’m looking for a way to create an even better Super Soldier Serum…” He began, pulling the thin frames off his nose, and using them as his pointer.

“I’m going through the periodic table, seeing how the different elements affect vital organs, see which ones are usable and which ones are not.” A diagram of a human body filled your vision, and you watched as different areas began to blink red. “Right now, I’m looking at Selenium.” The arms of his glasses pointed towards the body, pointing towards the liver, kidneys, and heart. “So, what this shows me is that when the human body has too much Selenium, it can affect these vital organs…”

Another silence fell over the room. “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” He asked, and this caught you off guard. It was just so weird to hear Bruce be so personable, not that you didn’t like it, you loved it in fact. You stared at him, the edges of your lips turning upwards into a smile. Bruce’s face couldn’t help but do the same. And you weren’t sure if it was the lack of sleep or from your brain being fuzzy from crying, but you spoke before thinking.

“You could distract me.” Tension filled the room almost immediately. You finally noticed your closeness, you had turned to face him, and his arms were crossed over his chest, leaving little to no room between your bodies. His face seemed to turn a very soft shade of red, when your eyes flickered down to his lips. He hesitated for a moment, but other than that, he didn’t give it a second thought.

His lips were soft, especially compared to your chapped ones. God damn crying. Your hands landed on either side of face, desperate to pull his lips closer to yours. The stubble on his face was rough against your palms. Slowly, his hands snaked down to your hips, the calluses on his thumbs contrasted against the smooth skin exposed by the gap between your t-shirt and sleep shorts.

Reluctantly you pulled away. His forehead rested against yours, both of you using the moment to catch your breaths. When you met his gaze, all you could do was giggle a bit. “Please tell me you didn’t do that cause you were tired.” He chuckled, one of his calloused hands fluttering across the small of your back.

“As long as you tell me you didn’t just do that because you were sad.”

[neomedievalistbr]

I posted 20.938 times in 2021

2664 posts created (13%)

18274 posts reblogged (87%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 6.9 posts.

I added 8.049 tags in 2021

#tf - 1643 posts

#tier 1 post - 1459 posts

#yumuda.txt - 1095 posts

#jjk - 806 posts

#idw - 644 posts

#rwby - 640 posts

#bayverse liveblog - 510 posts

#yu watching stuff - 450 posts

#kh - 415 posts

#... - 387 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#me going from 'yeah‚ im liking theses comics‚ but they are not really that good' to 'these comics suck ass and im going to mail pipe bombs

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

[ID: Swoop from Transformers: Cyberverse, edited over the trans flag. End ID]

cant believe swoop transgeners is canonically trans. very happy for her ❤️

129 notes • Posted 2021-11-10 01:06:45 GMT

#4

just wait till we get canon satosugu in the spanish dub

178 notes • Posted 2021-09-04 18:50:04 GMT

#3

fUCK I CRACKED THE CODE

CONNECTICUT JIN AND KENJAKU

242 notes • Posted 2021-09-26 16:39:27 GMT

#2

[ID: a fake tweet by First Aid saying, "inst it like 100 degrees on swearth why was he dressed like this" with a photo of Rodimus' holomatter avatar under it.

The second image are 5 replies to the above tweet. The first one is from Whirl and reads, "trans". The second one is from Swerve and reads, "trans". The third one is from Chromedome and reads, "my dysphoria fit". The fourth one is from Brainstorm and reads, "he's so transmasc coded". The fifth one is fron Rung and reads, "so he doesn't get sunburned!". End ID]

350 notes • Posted 2021-11-02 05:25:43 GMT

#1

they should make tf2 for cis people

[ID: a picture of the Overwatch characters with the game's title above them. End ID]

5778 notes • Posted 2021-10-07 02:21:33 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[shirpowbra]

I was browsing through youtube and low and behold, I saw the teaser gameplay. 

After 3 years, 36 months, 1095 days...Finally

Hopefully it does get released this month, if not then 2020′s just crossed another line he shouldn’t have crossed.

Anyways, I saw it and saw an opportunity to redraw this old piece I made, I was planning on redoing it for a long time so the timing was perfect. 

Also, these aren’t their official god tiers, this is just based on theories I saw on the internet...and yes, I kinda made this a sequel on my other shoosh pap comic.

[charlottan]

 The Beatles  89  15462740  british invasion;classic rock;merseybeat;psychedelic rock;rock  524  605  612  613  0  3  Portugal. The Man  73  1057982  indie pop;indie rock;indietronica;modern rock;rock  598  605  622  622  0  15  The Platters  62  374743  adult standards;brill building pop;doo-wop;easy listening;lounge;rock-and-roll;rockabilly  658  658  659  660  0  0  Kevin Ayers  43  32559  art rock;british folk;canterbury scene;classic uk pop;country rock;experimental;folk rock;psychedelic rock;pub rock;space rock;symphonic rock  653  676  680  687  0  7  Pink Floyd  84  14088934  album rock;art rock;classic rock;progressive rock;psychedelic rock;rock;symphonic rock  577  605  612  701  0  2  George Harrison  71  1416503  album rock;classic rock;folk rock;mellow gold;psychedelic rock;rock;roots rock;singer-songwriter;soft rock  673  678  704  723  0  3  The Idle Race  26  7280  classic garage rock;freakbeat;psychedelic rock  685  699  721  726  0  7  Klaatu  40  23799  album rock;art rock;beatlesque;canadian psychedelic;classic rock;glam rock;progressive rock;symphonic rock  678  717  742  749  0  2  Styx  68  1183680  album rock;art rock;classic rock;folk rock;hard rock;mellow gold;progressive rock;rock;soft rock;symphonic rock  719  751  774  803  0  4  Jethro Tull  63  1009395  album rock;art rock;blues rock;classic rock;folk rock;hard rock;progressive rock;psychedelic rock;rock;symphonic rock  733  846  859  862  0  2  The Bonzo Dog Band  35  15266  comic;zolo  838  909  933  974  0  7  Electric Light Orchestra  76  2628250  album rock;art rock;beatlesque;bow pop;classic rock;folk rock;glam rock;mellow gold;rock;soft rock;symphonic rock  885  952  959  1006  0  3  The Incredible String Band  38  39021  american folk revival;british folk;experimental;folk;folk rock;psychedelic folk;psychedelic rock;traditional folk  999  1016  1021  1021  0  7  King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard  67  459550  australian indie;australian psych;neo-psychedelic  132  841  986  1043  0  9  Genesis  73  2234970  album rock;art rock;classic rock;mellow gold;progressive rock;rock;soft rock;symphonic rock  1016  1032  1034  1076  0  2  Pearls Before Swine  25  8375  psychedelic folk;psychedelic rock  1073  1076  1095  1095  0  7  The Kinks  71  1438117  album rock;art rock;british invasion;classic rock;dance rock;folk rock;glam rock;mellow gold;protopunk;psychedelic rock;rock;roots rock;singer-songwriter  1144  1183  1243  1267  0  3  The Moody Blues  63  611742  album rock;art rock;british invasion;classic rock;classic uk pop;country rock;folk;folk rock;hard rock;mellow gold;progressive rock;psychedelic rock;rock;singer-songwriter;soft rock;symphonic rock  1235  1243  1334  1350  0  2  David Bowie  82  5170324  album rock;art rock;classic rock;dance rock;glam rock;permanent wave;protopunk;rock  1383  1411  1417  1426  0  6  Frank Zappa  63  624179  album rock;art rock;experimental;instrumental rock;jazz fusion;jazz rock;progressive rock;psychedelic rock;rock;symphonic rock;zolo  1310  1362  1397  1435  0  2  Procol Harum  56  219521  album rock;art rock;blues rock;british invasion;classic rock;classic uk pop;folk rock;progressive rock;psychedelic rock;symphonic rock  1529  1632  1689  1715  0  2  Family  33  8239  classic uk pop;psychedelic rock;symphonic rock  2121  2171  2191  2193  0  2  Harry Nilsson  64  293924  art rock;brill building pop;classic rock;classic uk pop;country rock;folk;folk rock;mellow gold;rock;roots rock;singer-songwriter;soft rock;traditional folk  2225  2246  2262  2263  0  3

[avelera]

Father Nicolò di Genova?

So I’ve been thinking, it’s not entirely impossible that Nicky trained as a priest (as per the movie dossier) before going to the Crusades and, pivoting to comic canon, also was wealthy enough to have a horse, chainmail, and a sword. 

For reference:

(Ah, the romance of that first meeting...)

The thing is, Nicky just can’t still be a priest by the time of the First Crusade because at this time, priests weren’t allowed to fight (yet). 

The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were warrior monk orders that fit the visuals of how Nicky appears in the comic, unfortunately, they weren’t going to be founded until decades after 1099, the year of the Fall of Jerusalem to the invading Frankish army and the year we know Joe and Nicky both died in combat against each other. (For that matter, the Crusader Cross he’s shown wearing wouldn’t become a common symbol until decades later either, so for now, let’s just pretend it’s the flag of Genoa, since those are very similar :P)

There’s a debated theory in academia that those who went to the Crusades were “second sons” - the debate being over whether it was just cast-offs and extra noblemen who were being conveniently redirected at the Holy Land instead of fighting each other, or if the Crusader motivation truly was a matter of devout faith, with contemporary accounts actually favoring the latter interpretation. 

So, going back to “trained as a priest!Nicky” I may be telescoping Medieval history a bit here, but I think in the 1000s it was not unheard of to keep one son to inherit and send a second son to the Church. If Nicky is from a wealthier family, which that armor and sword and horse tell me he was, it’s not inconceivable that as a second or third son he may have been sent to join the Church. 

Then, Medieval mortality being what it was, before he could be ordained it would be entirely possible that he’d be recalled to his family if, for example, his elder brother (or brothers) died prematurely (also not uncommon). As long as he wasn’t ordained (or even if he was, the nobility and Church have worked these things out before) he could go back to his life as a nobleman now that his family needs him there to inherit. 

If he was back with his family by 1095, when he was 29 years old which again seems reasonable, it could be the very faith he practiced while training as a priest that moved him to enlist in Pope Urban II’s call to arms. Noblemen who went on the Crusades were guaranteed protection for their families and estates back home while they were away, in addition to the hefty prize of perpetual forgiveness for their sins if they made the journey. A family that sent their son to be a priest wouldn’t necessarily balk at him going to fight in the Crusade, assuming Nicky hadn’t inherited by then (and even if he had, it would just be a tougher decision if he were the head of the household and he’d probably be married too then, so I more easily imagine his father was still alive, too old to go on Crusade but not too old to still run the family). 

All of these possibilities still show Nicky as a person of faith, it would have been extremely atypical for him (or anyone of the time) not to be. He could, of course, have drawn new conclusions in the 1000s years since then. 

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Beautifully Wrong

by Silicon_Tiger Late at night in Wayne Manor the new Robin stumbles on a sight that he finds both beautiful and wrong. Words: 1095, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 2 of Alphabet Titles Inspired Fics Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M Characters: Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne Relationships: Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: inspired by title, Accidental Voyeurism, character stumbling on other two being intimate late at night, character disturbed by relationship, Introspection, references to the rumors about Batman and Robin, Fear via https://ift.tt/eb6dzJL

[nugicus]

Proactive Instead of Reactive: The Flawed Concept of the First Crusade as a Defensive War

It goes without saying but its undeniable how the Crusades have firmly implanted themselves into modern culture, despite the numerous other conflicts that have occurred in the nearly one thousand year-long Middle Ages. Our persistent fascination with them can be seen whenever they are constantly represented in popular media in the past few decades, whether it be Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, History Channel’s Knightfall, DC Comic’s Batman, and video games, such as Ubisolft’s Assassins Creed and Paradox Interactive’s Crusader Kings II. The concept has become so ingrained in our collective understanding that the very terminology of the word “crusade” has evolved to the point that it had begun to lose it’s religious origins and is now included to mean striving for a cause that is commonly considered as just even when such a cause isn’t religious in nature.

There is a completely apprehensible reason for such a profound resonance among today’s collective imagination: the very idea of the Crusades have become extremely fascinating due to the incredible amount of devotion exhibited by the Frankish knights who answered the call. This extreme level of enthusiasm that imbued itself in these holy wars led to thousands of Latin Christians in taking up arms and undertaking a horrendously perilous journey across thousands of miles when traveling just fifty was considered a highly rare occurrence at the time. The existence of a astoundingly high level of religious fervor that characterized the First Crusade allowed its participants to accomplish unimaginable feats of bravery, fortitude, and resilience, including traversing though hundreds of miles of exceedingly arid terrain and brutally carving through the territory of at least three hostile Muslim states in order to reach their much-anticipated goals. Those goals being, of course, the retaking of Jerusalem, which had been conquered by Muslim forces centuries earlier, and the complete salvation of their very souls.

- Frankish knights and men-at-arms. - Osprey Publishing

However, significant historical events that have occurred centuries in the past and have such a momentous effect in the current zeitgeist have the tendency to become subjected to frequent instances of oversimplification, misrepresentation, misappropriation, and even manipulation by individuals through either intentional or ignorant means. The Crusades are no different. In this case, the reason for such a shrewd reshaping of the memory of the holy wars is usually for the purpose of fueling certain ideologically driven agendas that are commonly spread by the repetition of numerous misconceptions about the campaigns for the holy land during the 11th and 12th centuries. One of the most prevailing misconceptions that has a habit of popping up in discourse, especially on the internet, is the claim that the First Crusade (1096-1099) was primarily a defensive war, in which Latin Christianity initiated the conflict by leading armies of rigidly honor-bound, chivalric knights as a response against wanton Muslim aggression that took the form of a “jihad” or a recent catastrophic lose of Christian territory. The claim is used time and again on far right blogs and YouTube videos that display disingenuous maps and poorly researched lectures, like those of Bill Warner, that fail to consider important political and religious divisions between Muslim powers during the medieval period. It is an extremely gross oversimplification of a conflict whose origins, which were highly determined by political, theological, cultural, and historical developments that were occurring internally in both Christian Europe, as well as in the Muslim world, largely dispels the culturally idealistic narrative that the First Crusade was a justifiable reaction to the provocation of Muslim jihad.

In the late 11th century, the political sphere in western medieval Europe existed as a highly fragmented state of affairs. Land was severely divided among a landed, warrior elite descended from the same Germanic “barbarians” who had conquered sections of the former Western Roman Empire centuries prior and who constantly came into conflict with one another over territory due to a myriad of petty feuds, dynastic rivalries, and succession disputes. In order to accomplish their aims, these feudal lords relied on a class of mounted, professional soldiers known as “knights,” who, unlike their modern depictions as a noble class of warriors with a rigid code of honor based on protecting the weak from persecution, constantly pillaged and burned nearby peasant communities in the countryside, especially those that were under the lordship of rival warlords. Further facilitating these incessantly high levels of warfare at the time was the lack of central authority monarchies had over their vassals who were only bound to their kings due to fragile oaths of fealty and could pursue their own territorial ambitions with impunity. This lack of any central control over the power of the warrior nobility coupled with the nearly unending warfare between the feudal lords caused violence and lawlessness to become endemic to the continent. The last time western Europe saw a significant degree of territorial unity was in 800 CE when the king of the Franks, Charlemagne, was crowned Emperor after successfully capturing large swaths of terrain of what is now France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Northern Italy. However, by the late 11th century, Charlemagne’s reign was seen by the European populace as nothing more than a fading memory of a bygone age of momentous political security.

- Medieval Europe at the time the First Crusade was announced. - Crusader Kings II from Paradox Interactive

Similar to the near-powerless feudal monarchs of Europe, the head of the Latin Christian church, the Pope, was having difficulty exerting papal authority over the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Europe. The Pope at this time was nothing more than a religious figurehead who could exert little-to-no authority over the rest of the church hierarchy, including the bishops who, at this time, had stronger ties with local secular rulers, such as the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France, than they did with the papacy. A number of these monarchs had the ability to appoint high church officials to oversee cities and monasteries and sold church offices to members of the royal nobility, in a practice known as “simony,” who sought highly privileged careers in the church. This is despite the fact that, theoretically speaking, the appointment of ecclesiastical offices was the church’s undertaking. Many members of the church also held a seething contempt for the majority of knights who regarded them as overly vain, violence-prone rogues due to their savage treatment of the peasant population which became so entrenched in European life that religious clerics, such as Bernard de Clairvaux, went so far as to accuse them of “fighting for the devil.”

By the reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85), however, the papacy, who saw themselves as having the God-given role to protect Christendom from the corrupting influences of the secular world, had started to attempt reforming the church and knighthood by reasserting their supreme authority over religious affairs through the use of excommunication and by advocating the need of sacral military sponsorships, known as “holy wars.” By calling on Christian rulers to help defend the church, popes that had focused on reform had hoped to redirect the violence caused by the martial enthusiasm of the feudal warlords to be used towards combating the papacy’s and Christendom’s supposed enemies, mainly the Holy Roman Emperor and Muslim forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. These initial proactive measures of forming an military wing of the church under Pope Gregory fell flat on account of his confrontational methods, but one of his reformist-minded successors, Pope Urban II (1088-99), succeeded is calling for a crusade for the Holy Land at the Council of Clermont (1095) after Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenos requested military aid against the Seljuk Turks. This was achieved mainly due to the religious atmosphere of Latin Europe, the gradual acceptance of religiously ordained violence, and the strategy the papacy used to market the crusade.

- Pope Gregory VII was the first leader of the papacy to experiment in the implementation of an armed wing of the church. - Wikipedia

Unlike the fragmentation that characterized the political sphere of western Europe in the late 11th century, the same region was undergoing a period of an unprecedented level of spiritual unity. By 1095, the pagan peoples who once raided, pillaged, and settled all across the interior and coastline of the continent, such as the Tengri Magyars and Norse Vikings, had become largely Christianized, which led to Christianity becoming the most widely established religion in the West and to European society in becoming highly centered around the notion regarding the importance of religious devotion:

“This was a setting in which Christian doctrine impinged upon virtually every facet of human life–from birth and death, to sleeping and eating, marriage and health–and the signs of God’s omnipotence were clear for all to see, made manifest through acts of ‘miraculous’ healing, divine revelation and earthly and celestial portents.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011) 

While this religious doctrine stressed the importance of love, charity, and tradition, it also led to the formation of a perilous anxiety, especially in the mindsets of the warrior nobility, which was brought on by the constantly reminded belief that one was destined to either eternal salvation or eternal damnation in accordance of an individuals acts in life:

“The Latin Church of the eleventh century taught that every human would face a moment of judgement–the so-called ‘weighing of souls’. Purity would bring the everlasting reward of heavenly salvation, but sin would result in damnation and an eternity of hellish torment. For the faithful of the day, the visceral reality of the dangers involved was driven home by graphic images in religious art and sculpture of the punishments to be suffered by those deemed impure: wretched sinners strangled by demons; the damned herded into the fires of the underworld by hideous devils.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

It is not surprising, then, that the feudal nobility became intensely obsessed with the idea of repentance of ones sins and purity of ones soul, as the inherent contradiction of having both blood on ones hands and being a committed Christian was not lost on them. For feudal lords and their knights who believed they were destined for hellfire due to their rapacious brutality, there were multiple gestures they could make in their path to atone for their sins. These acts included devoting ones life to a impoverished existence in the form of monasticism, giving alms to the poor and donating to religious houses, and taking part in a pilgrimage to one of the many holy sites of Christendom, namely Jerusalem or Rome. The last being especially compelling due to the journey to sacred locations normally being fraught with danger.

- Medieval depictions of hell, like those found in Giotto's The Last Judgment from 1307, filled the hearts and minds of the faithful with the fear of losing their souls to eternal torment. - Web Gallery of Art

In the 11th century, there was also a growing theological development that was accepted by a greater following as time went on: religiously sanctioned warfare. Christianity may seem like a pacifistic faith, at first, due to one of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament clearly stating “Thou shall not kill,” but many Germanic European Christians had understood the notion that some acts of violence were justifiable, specifically on defensive grounds, and an inescapable part of life if still sinful. There were also many who believed that the papacy may even sanction violence, since in the past bishops of the church would commonly bless weapons and armor and, at least during the time of Charlemagne, direct military campaigns with the express purpose of converting pagans. The concept of papal sponsorship of warfare was found potentially attractive to secular lords and knights who were suffering from “damnation anxiety” for being too well-accustomed to violence on account of Pope Gregory VII, who heavily promoted the idea, claiming that those participating in a holy struggle to defend Christendom would receive the same spiritual rewards as those who participating in a religious pilgrimage.

Despite such a powerful religious atmosphere in Europe at the time, Pope Gregory was mainly unsuccessful in sponsoring an armed pilgrimage to the East, since the idea of the Pope leading an army in person was considered too radical for its time. It did, however, establish an important precedent that would relied upon in a more indirect and refined manner by later popes, namely Pope Urban II, who waited for an opportunity to present itself to make the notion of an armed pilgrimage to the east, now called a “crusade,” into a reality and to spread the papacy’s sphere of influence. As already mentioned, Pope Urban II was offered a chance to expand Rome’s authority outside the confines of central Italy and to redirect the widespread violence spawned from the many petty feuds between noble houses against a common foreign foe by calling for a holy war when, while presiding over an ecclesiastical council in the Italian city of Piacenza during the spring of 1095, ambassadors representing the Greek Christian Byzantine Emperor arrived requesting military aid against Muslim forces. By 1095, the Byzantine Empire lost roughly half of its size, including almost all of Anatolia, when it suffered a catastrophic loss at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 against the Muslim Seljuk Turks and was seeking to regain its lost territory. Using the defense of eastern Christendom as a pretext, Pope Urban called for a crusade by autumn during a special sermon at the Council of Clermont in southern France in a room full of hundreds of spectators, including archbishops, bishops, and abbots. According to accounts, Pope Urban not only sent a call to aid the Greek Christians from the impending threat of Islam. He had also included a secondary aim: sending a military expedition to the holy city of Jerusalem. A site considered the most sanctified in all Christendom, its inclusion as one of the grand objectives for the First Crusade, as well as the admittance of the guarantee of heavenly salvation for those who participated, resonated deeply among the hearts and minds of God-fearing knights all across western Europe.

However, the inclusion of these two spiritually profound goals still presented a serious problem to Pope Urban II. There was no recent horrible atrocity or urgent threat of Muslim invasion towards Latin Christendom in which to draw upon in order to produce a greater sense of legitimate justification and raging hunger for vengeance to encourage knights to cross thousands of miles to retake the holy city of Jerusalem:

“Recent history offered no obvious event that might serve to focus and inspire a vengeful tide of enthusiasm. Yes, Jerusalem was ruled by Muslims, but this had been the case since the seventh century. And, while Byzantium may have been facing a deepening threat of Turkish aggression, western Christendom was not on the brink of invasion or annihilation at the hands of Near Eastern Islam.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011) 

It’s also important to note that the hostility between Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Seljuk Turks wasn’t religious in nature and the former was also involved in frequent clashes with its Christian Slavic neighbors:

“The reality is that, when Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade at Clermont, Islam and Christianity had largely coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity. There may have been little love lost between Christian and Muslim neighbors, but there was, in truth, little to distinguish this enmity from the endemic political and military struggles of the age.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Firt Crusade: A New History (2005)

So how did Pope Urban II rectify the problem with the lack of a recent nearby tragedy to exploit in order to boost enthusiasm for his militarized religious pilgrimage? He did this by demonizing Muslims in the Near East to absolutely morbid degrees and exaggerating any sort of negative treatment of Christians may have endured under the rule of Islam:

“Muslims therefore were portrayed as subhuman savages, bent upon the barbaric abuse of Christendom. Urban described how Turks ‘were slaughtering and capturing many [Greeks], destroying churches and laying waste to the kingdom of God’. He also asserted that Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being abused and exploited by Muslims, with the rich being stripped of their wealth by illegal taxes, and the poor subjected to torture.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

He further dehumanized Muslims by describing them as bloodthirsty abominations who took sadistic glee in enslaving and violating Christian women and disemboweling Christian pilgrims who headed for the holy land. It is unsure whether or not Pope Urban II truly believed in his own propaganda, but his incendiary rhetoric and his promise of the remission of sins for those who took part in the holy venture certainly captivated his audience and succeeded in persuading many atonement-seeking knights that fighting Islam was preferable to fighting fellow Christians. He was so successful in his proclamation of a crusade that when news spread of it throughout Europe by word of preachers he managed to recruit both a sanctioned and unsanctioned army in the tens of thousands strong. By 1099, the former led by Bishop Adhemar de la Puy and Count Raymond of Toulouse and numbering around 50,000 footmen and knights miraculously managed to retake Jerusalem after months of fighting, the dwindling of resources, and threats of desertion.

- The Council of Clermont started a deadly dehumanization campaign against Muslims in the Near East. - Wikipedia

Interestingly, this vast, primarily Frankish army wasn’t even what Emperor Alexius had hoped for when he had asked the papacy for military aid against the Turks. He was expecting, at most, a few thousand freelance knights he could comfortably incorporate into his own forces to safeguard his remaining territory and retake parts of Anatolia. When the massive crusader force finally make it to Constantinople, Emperor Alexius tried to demand its leaders, with varying degrees of success, to swear an oath of vassalage to him and return to the Byzantine Empire any territory they took from the Turks.

Evidently, nothing about this dehumanizing speech about Muslims viciously terrorizing Christians inhabiting the Near East could be farther from the truth. First of all, while Islamic society may have far from an ideal progressive paradise by modern standards, one of the reasons it was so successful in it’s growth after the caliphs (the successors of the religion’s founder, the Prophet Muhammed, and leaders of all of Islam’s religious and political affairs) began conquering large swathes of territory outside the Arabian peninsula during the 630s was the relatively tolerant approach it took to treating non-Muslims that resided in territory it had subjugated. Rather than leading mass conversions of the people the caliphs had surmounted, non-Muslims, specifically those with common monotheistic religious roots to Islam, such as Jews and Christians, were labeled as “Peoples of the Book” and where allowed to practice their faiths in exchange for the payment of a poll tax. In all honestly, it was an era of unmatched religious tolerance for its time:

“Most significantly, throughout this period indigenous Christians actually living under Islamic law, whether it be in Iberia or the Holy Land, were generally treated with remarkable clemency. The Muslim faith acknowledged and respected Judaism and Christianity creeds in which it enjoyed a common devotional tradition and a mutual reliance upon authoritative scripture. Christian subjects may not have been able to share power with their Muslim masters, but thy ere given freedom to worship. All around the Mediterranean basin, Christian faith survived and even thrived under the watchful but tolerant eye of Islam. Eastern Christendom may have been subject to Islamic rule, but it was not on the brink of annihilation, nor prey to any form of systemic abuse.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Firt Crusade: A New History (2005)

It’s also far from accurate to suggest that Islam in the late 11th century existed as a singular religious-political, monolithic realm that constantly waged its own holy war on non-Muslim neighbors in the form of a “jihad.” Not unlike western Europe, by the late 11th century the Near East was a fragmented assortment of political and religious holdings and the tensions between them had increased in intensity ever since the fall of the expansive Umayyad caliphate during a bloody coup in 750. After the Abbasid dynasty took over and moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, the caliphs authority gradually began to devolve over time to the point they became nothing much more than nominal figureheads who held power only in theory. When the First Crusade was announced in 1095, the Near East was politically and religiously divided between two rivaled forces: the Sunni Seljuk Turks and the Shia Fatimid caliphate. Descended from nomadic tribesmen known for their armies of mounted archers, the Seljuks conquered much of what is now Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia, declared themselves sultan and effectively became the overlords of Sunni Islam and the defenders of the Abbasid Caliphate. However, during the time the crusaders reached the Near East, the Seljuk’s territory was itself in disarray over the succession of the title sultan which led their empire to fracture. Their primary adversaries, the Shia Fatamids, were a rival dynasty who claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammed’s daughter, Fatima, who had conquered large portions of territory that used to be part of the domain of the Abbasids including North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and Egypt.

-  The Seljuk Empire and the Fatamids were the mst powerful Muslim states in the Near East during the late 11th century. - istanbulclues.com

The schism that resulted in the Sunni-Shia split is traced back to a dispute regarding the legitimacy of Muhammed’s successors. Adherents of the Sunni sect subscribe to the belief that Muhammed’s legitimate successor was his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and that all rightful caliphs are those elected by members of the Muslim elite. Shia Islam, on the other hand, contends that only descendants of Muhammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and his daughter, Fatima, can be proclaimed caliph. Both sects regarded the other as believers in a dangerous heresy and constantly squabbled for territory in the Levant, which fostered a high degree of religious and political disunity in the Near East that aided the crusaders in their taking of Jerusalem.

As time moved ever farther from the era of rapid Muslim conquest and expansion that characterized the 7th and 8th centuries, enthusiasm for Islam’s own version for a holy war, a jihad, gradually began to wane to the point that by the near end of the 11th century it entered a period of relative inactivity. In the classical sense, a jihad, which literally means “struggle” or “striving,” was interpreted by Sunni Muslim jurists during the early period of Islam’s history as an endless holy war to be waged on non-Muslims and endorsed by the caliphs until all accepted the rule of Islam. Similar to the Christian crusades, it was considered a holy obligation that all Muslims should take part and those who contributed to a jihad rewarded with entry into heavenly Paradise. However, as Muslim Arabs began to trade with Christian communities and largely abandoned their nomadic roots, calls of jihad against Christendom started to lose substantial momentum and instead were turned against rival Muslim sects that Sunnis considered heretical: 

“As the centuries passed, the driving impulse towards expansion encoded in this classical theory of jihad was gradually eroded. Arab tribesmen began to settle into more sedentary lifestyles and to trade with non-Muslims, such as the Byzantines. Holy wars against the likes of Christians continued, but they became far more sporadic and often were promoted and prosecuted by Muslim emirs, without caliphal endorsement. By the eleventh century, the rulers of Sunni Baghdad were far more interested in using jihad to promote Islamic orthodoxy by battling ‘heretic’ Shi‘ites than they were in launching holy wars against Christendom. The suggestion that Islam should engage in an unending struggle to enlarge its borders and subjugate non-Muslims held little currency; so too did the idea of unifying in defence of the Islamic faith and its territories. When the Christian crusades began, the ideological impulse of devotional warfare thus lay dormant within the body of Islam, but the essential framework remained in place.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

In review, the belief that the First Crusade was a purely righteous backlash against a supposed existential threat posed by Islam is shown to be largely insufficient in evidence after explaining the politically divided state of both western Europe and the Muslim of the 11th century, the unbalanced power dynamic between the Latin Church and secular monarchies, the proactive efforts the papacy attempted in directing holy war, and the generally tolerant treatment towards Christians living under Muslim rule. The purpose of revealing the multiple religious and political complexities that expedite momentous instances of historical conflict is to expose the faultiness of oversimplifying the origins of the crusades which only leads to the manufacturing and reinforcing of historical misconceptions that have the tendency to glorify or mythologize historical events. This construction of an imaginative view of the crusades can be quite dangerous since those that perpetuate it have the penchant of selecting certain elements that fits more comfortably with a groups ideological agenda while glossing over some of the worst cases of religious violence, some of which would be considered examples of genocide by today's international human rights laws. These include the bloody Rhineland massacres, when member’s of the unsanctioned People’s Crusade slaughtered Jewish communities along the Rhine, and the massacre of Jews and Muslims that occurred when the crusaders had taken the city of Jerusalem.

This semi-mythological and overglorified view of the Crusades, however, was not always thus. After the Reformation and during the European Enlightenment, the Crusades became largely re-appraised by scholars and theologians, which led the holy wars to lose their fanciful descriptions and become considered as a significantly dark and exceedingly violent period in European history. It was seen by Enlightenment scholars as a prime example of the vile barbarity and terrible oppressiveness unrestrained religious devotion can ultimately produce if left unchecked. By the 1800s, this hostile attitude towards the Crusades had begun to change during the rise of European imperialism and nationalism. Scholars during the 19th century, such as French historian Joseph Francois Michaud, started a trend that became exceedingly difficult to dislodge from European perspectives. They romanticized the crusaders as daring adventurers who were given the noble task of “civilizing” Asia and interpreted the crusades  as admirable cases of “proto-colonization.” This misrepresentation that overlionizes the Crusades was the beginning of the subject falling sway to the phenomena known as “historical parallelism.”

Historical parallelism is “the desire to see the modern world reflected in the past.” (Asbrigde 2011) Today the concept is being used in a manner to draw a false comparison between the medieval and modern worlds through the utilization of historical inaccuracies surrounding the separate time periods and the misappropriation of crusader imagery as a tool for propaganda purposes. These efforts have increased strikingly in the past few years due to the growing influence of ultra-nationalism in the West that has been increasing since the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Neofascist protestors in Charlottesville, for example, wore shields that were unsubtly emblazoned with the Templar Cross while others have been chanting the infamous medieval crusader phrase “Deus Vult!,” which means “God wills it!” in Latin. Interestingly, the process of appropriating the crusader period isn’t just monopolized by the hard right in the West. Radical Islamic organizations and leaders for decades, such as Sayyid Qutb and Osama bin Laden, have frequently referenced the Crusades as a means of condemning the West and portraying Western military forces, especially those that have intervened in the Levant, as modern-day crusaders that are hell bent on invading Islamic territory and that the only response to such a Christian invasion is violent “jihad.”

While the crude and shameless “borrowing” of crusader symbolism is far from a recent development among alt-right groups and Islamic propagandists, its urgent now more than ever to confront such mistruths that these organizations have the habit of spreading, especially on video sharing sites such as YouTube. In the case of the Crusades, the proliferation of historical falsehoods results in the formation of a false, fatalistic “us vs them” narrative between European and Muslim civilization that characterizes both cultures as if they are locked in never-ending antagonism with each other since medieval times. This agenda-driven endeavor to revise the Crusades as a war fought along ethnic lines is a barely disguised attempt to justify prejudice against Muslim immigrants, including recent Muslim refugees who are desperate to escape from the civil wars that have been plaguing parts of the Middle East. Thankfully scholars, such as historian Christopher Tyerman with his new book The World of the Crusades, have been diligently fighting back against this tide of virulent misinformation with imperative efforts to clarify and correct our understanding of the Crusades through the use of Twitter threads, Op-Eds, blog posts, and books. Their push to reverse this negative transformative effect the internet has had on historiography is undoubtedly an uphill battle but their struggle will hopefully prove how important history as field of study is in this post-9/11 world.

Sources:

Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land. 2011.

Asbridge, Thomas. The First Crusade: A New History. 2005.

Phillips, Jonathan. Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades. 2010. 

[ao3feed-jaytim]

The Rebirth of Timothy Jackson Drake

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3a6Egf1

by saphiradrake

Tim makes a dangerous deal to save the bats and to learn more about the mother he thought he knew. He's never been a Wayne, not really, it's time to learn what it means to be a Drake. There's a new world order and Tim's on top, Jason and Dick are about to learn just how wicked and enticing their baby-bird can be.

This story will update every Sunday barring disaster, at least through the pre-written stuff.

Words: 1095, Chapters: 2/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M, Multi

Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Duke Thomas, Stephanie Brown, Slade Wilson, Original Female Character(s), Janet Drake, Background & Cameo Characters, Ra's al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, Diana (Wonder Woman), Kon-El | Conner Kent, Clark Kent

Relationships: Tim Drake/Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Jason Todd/Original Female Character(s), Tim Drake/Original Female Character(s), Tim Drake/Slade Wilson, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Dick Grayson

Additional Tags: Batfamily (DCU), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Magic, Blood Magic, Brothels, Prostitution, Seduction, Seduction to the Dark Side, Tim Drake-centric, Dark Tim Drake, Eventual Smut, Kind of a slow burn

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3a6Egf1

[twincitiesgeek]

Every year since 2015, we at Twin Cities Geek have organized our Holiday Toy & Book Drive to support the families served by the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center and the individuals served by the Women’s Prison Book Project.

The Twin Cities geek community came together once again to make the holidays brighter for so many Twin Cities families. The 2019 Twin Cities Geek Holiday Toy & Book Drive drive collected 1,497 toys and gifts and 2,805 books, graphic novels, manga, and comics for a combined grand total of:

4,302 donations!

All of these items were supplemented by generous cash donations of $500 from Nelson Cosplay’s Holiday Market and $135 through community donations on Facebook for a total of $635!

This effort was made possible by a team of over 20 volunteers who made deliveries, sorted donations, and helped with content creation over a period of almost two months. This massive project would not be possible without geeks in our community going the extra mile.

Each and every one of you who volunteered, donated, or helped spread the word about this year’s Holiday Toy & Book Drive helped make a difference in someone’s life this holiday season. You all are amazing!

Donated books await new readers

Just one pile of donated toys

Alisha poses in front of donations while volunteering

Mary shows off a donated toy

Donations for Families in Need

The donated toys, gifts, and children’s and young-adult books were distributed to children and their families in the Summit-University neighborhood in St. Paul through Hallie Q. Brown Community Center. As in past years, we especially asked you to donate items that would make good gifts for teens, and you came through again, giving all manner of tabletop games, video games, graphic novels, collectibles, YA books, DVDs, and more. This is important, as toy-drive initiatives like Toys for Tots so often focus on gifts for younger children—tots—but we geeks are well aware how much it can mean as a teenager to receive a great gift that reflects our interests, and the income level of our family does not change that simple fact.

So, on behalf of all the young adults whose lives you have touched, Twin Cities Geek would like to extend another extra thank-you for being awesome!

Books for the Women’s Prison Book Project

Of the total donations, we also collected 483 paperback books to donate to the Women’s Prison Book Project in Minneapolis! We delivered these to Boneshaker Books, who will distribute them to women and gender-diverse people currently serving time in prison.

Donations delivered to the Women’s Prison Book Project.

Again, thank you to everyone who donated paperbacks. You have helped people you will probably never meet but for whom something as simple as a book can mean so much. And that is a feeling a lot of us geeks can relate to, regardless of our circumstances.

Special Thanks to Local Business and Organizations

Of course, the 2019 Twin Cities Geek Holiday Toy & Book Drive would not have been possible without the generous support of local geek-friendly businesses and organizations throughout the metro who agreed to host donation boxes for us. Many of them have been participating for multiple years, and we were so happy to have them back again—and we were also thrilled to have even more new locations joining us this year for the first time! Many stores also donated to the drive themselves in addition to hosting boxes.

This is a special thank-you to all of them, and we would like to encourage the community to check out these wonderful businesses and organizations throughout the year.

Minneapolis

All Systems Go Games and Movies 158 13th Ave. NE Minneapolis, MN 55413 (612) 331-0028 Map Link

Bingley’s Teas 118 E. 26th St., Suite 208 Minneapolis, MN 55404 (612) 845-1707 Map Link

Brickmania 1618 Central Ave., Suite 110 Minneapolis, MN 55413 (612) 584-3627 Map Link

Comic Book College 4632 Nicollet Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55419 (612) 822-2309 Map Link

Dreamers Vault Games 4701 Hiawatha Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55406 (612) 724-4543 Map Link

Electric Fetus 2000 4th Ave. S Minneapolis, MN 55404 (612) 870-9300 Map Link

Fifth Element 2411 Hennepin Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55405 (612) 377-0044 Map Link

Geek Partnership Society 1121 NE Jackson St. #106 Minneapolis, MN 55413 (612) 424-2477 Map Link

GLITCH 1829 Riverside Ave. #200 Minneapolis, MN 55454 (320) 321-9361 Map Link

Heroic Goods and Games 3456 Minnehaha Ave. Minneapolis MN 55406 (612) 200-9354 Map Link

Knit & Bolt 2833 Johnson St. NE Minneapolis, MN 55418 (612) 788-1180 Map Link

Level Up Games (Mead Hall) 1425 LaSalle Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55403 (612) 315-3945 Map Link

Moon Palace Books and Geek Love Cafe 3032 Minnehaha Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55406 (612) 454-0455 Map Link

Steamship Coffee & Games 711 W Lake St. Minneapolis, MN 55408 (612) 844-1011 Map Link

Tower Games 3920 Nicollet Ave. #150 Minneapolis, MN 55409 (612) 823-4477 Map Link

St. Paul

The Gaming Goat 1326 Grand Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105 (651) 690-4628 Map Link

Mischief Toy Store 818 Grand Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105 (651) 493-3307 Map Link

Source Comics and Games 2057 Snelling Ave. N Roseville, MN 55113 (651) 645-0386 Map Link

Wet Paint 1684 Grand Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105 (651) 698-6431 Map Link

North Metro

Blue Sun Soda Shop 1625 County Hwy. 10, Suite D Spring Lake Park, MN 55432 (763) 432-0704 Map Link

Dreamers Vault Games 11591 Theatre Dr. N Champlin, MN 55316 (763) 506-0303 Map Link

Fantasy Flight Games Center 1975 County Rd. B2 W Roseville, MN 55113 (651) 379-3801 Map Link

The Gamers Den 140 Buchanan St. N #142 Cambridge, MN 55008 (763) 689-5370 Map Link

Games by James 327 Rosedale Center #652 Roseville, MN 55113 (651) 636-0701 Map Link

Games N Go 1595 Hwy. 36 W #190 Roseville, MN 55113 (651) 636-6099 Map Link

Hub Hobby 82 Minnesota Ave. Little Canada, MN 55117 (651) 490-1675 Map Link

Punch-Out Gaming 828 Lake St. S Forest Lake, MN 55025 (651) 464-9820 Map Link

South Metro

Dreamers Vault Games 14332 Burnhaven Dr. Burnsville, MN 55306 (952) 895-1989 Map Link

Gamerheadz 10 Southdale Center Edina, MN 55435 (952) 926-3155 Map Link

Games by James 1032 Burnsville Center Burnsville, MN 55306 (952) 892-1004 Map Link

Games by James Mall of America 358 East Broadway Bloomington, MN 55425 (952) 854-4747 Map Link

Games by James 2510 Southdale Center Edina, MN 55435 (952) 925-9656 Map Link

The Gaming Goat 1095 Diffley Rd., Suite F Eagan, MN 55123 (651) 797-2670 Map Link

Hot Comics & Collectibles 224 Broadway St. S Jordan, MN 55352 (952) 492-7870 Map Link

Hot Comics & Collectibles 26 West 66th St. Richfield, MN 55423 (612) 798-3936 Map Link

Hub Hobby 6410 Penn Ave. S Richfield, MN 55423 (612) 866-9575 Map Link

Issues Needed Comics 15465 Cedar Ave. S #160 Apple Valley, MN 55124 (952) 683-9339 Map Link

Mind’s Eye Comics 200 E Travelers Trail, Suite 105 Burnsville, MN 55337 (952) 492-9350 Map Link

Tomodachi Mall of America 384 North Garden Bloomington, MN 55425 (952) 582-1739 Map Link

East Metro

Level Up Games 120 2nd St. E Hastings, MN 55033 (651) 346-1631 Map Link

West Metro

Dreamers Vault Games 3015 Utah Ave. S St. Louis Park, MN 55426 (952) 938-8163 Map Link

Games by James Ridgedale Center 12529 Wayzata Blvd. Minnetonka, MN 55305 (952) 545-6616 Map Link

Hot Comics & Collectibles 3524 Winnetka Ave. N New Hope, MN 55427 (763) 593-1223 Map Link

Lodestone Coffee and Games 10982 Cedar Lake Rd. Minnetonka, MN 55305 (952) 657-5226 Map Link

Finally, we would also like to acknowledge RFA Engineering in Eden Prairie, which organized an impressive employee donation effort this year, and Wild Rumpus Books in Minneapolis, which donated several boxes of children’s and YA books.

In closing, one more enormous thank-you to our toy-drive volunteers and everyone in the Twin Cities geek community who participated in the drive this holiday season!

Our fifth annual #GiveTCG Twin Cities Geek Holiday Toy & Book Drive closed out 2019 with geeks helping those in need once again! Every year since 2015, we at Twin Cities Geek have organized our Holiday Toy & Book Drive to support the families served by the…