head of the bus seat fan club

One day, there was a wedding in King Charles VI's court

The bride was marrying for the second time, after the death of her first husband

Whenever a widow remarried, it was custom to organize "charivari", basically a sort of mock parade meant to ridicule/make fun of someone who acted in defiance of social norms (like a widow who refused to stay single)

Musicians were invited to the royal mansion of Saint-Pol, and everyone - including very high ranking members of French nobility - started dancing at the sound of trumpets and flutes (pretty normal so far)

Hugonin de Guisay, a friend of the King, convinced the King and five other companions to bring life to the party by dressing themselves as "savages"

Costumes of linen are directly sewned to their clothes (why)

The costumes are covered in pitch, feathers and pieces of rope, to make them appear "hairy and hirsute from head to toe" (classic savage look)

Masks are placed on their faces, also covered in pitch feathers and rope.

Here's a recreation of what the costume could have looked like ! Sexy 😎

The King forbids anyone from using torches in the room where everybody dances. Good call, considering what they're wearing is like, probably the most inflammable piece of clothing imaginable

The duke of Orléans, brother of King Charles VI, and the duke of Berry arrive with four knights, bearing six torches, not knowing about the royal order

All of them are already quite drunk, as they spent the first part of the night in a tavern

Suddenly, the six "savages" burst into the room

They start howling like wolves and hurling obscenities at the crowd

The duke of Orléans, intrigued and drunk, goes to inspect the dancing savages with a torch in hand

His torch accidentally lights the linen costumes on fire

The dancers have a lot of trouble avoiding the fire, because evereybody except the King had the amazing idea to all tie themselves with a metal chain (I have zero explanation for the chain)

When everybody realizes the King is among the savages, the Queen understandably faints

Jeanne de Boulogne, duchess of Berry, then 14 years-old, immediately envelops the King in her dress and skirt

The King narrowly escapes death thanks to Jeanne

One of the burning lord, Ogier de Natouillet, manages to break out of the metal chain and throw himself in a water tank used to wash drinking cups (where he belongs)

Yvain de Foix attempts to reach the door, where two servants wait for him with a wet cloth, but burns to death before that

One chronicler, a monk of Sait-Denis, writes that "four men are burned to death, while their genitals fall to the ground, creating a great outpouring of blood" (???)

Only two dancers survive: the King and Ogier de Nantouillet

Hugonin de Guisay, who convinced the King and his companions to dress up, died from his injuries three days later, "cursing and insulting his comrades, both dead ones and living ones, until his last breath"

The consequences of this were absolutely devasting.

The public image of the King's Court was severely impacted. It was seen as a place of extravagant entertainment and moral decline.

The King and his brother had to do penance in front of the people of Paris

The King's mental health significantly worsened. Charles VI was already said to have had an episode a few years before, in which he murdered a few of his companions thinking them to be enemies. The Ball of Burning Men seems to have shocked him deeply.

The episode was used to decry the "Armagnac", a political faction lead by the duke of Orléans and his family.

This fandom has SO much internal lore, and also external critique and social commentary, (Academics have written SO many papers- we've been accused of being a religious cult!).

Once the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were in full swing, the United States had a huge army in Iraq and a smaller but still significant one in Afghanistan, and it could not recruit or retain enough troops to staff both. Rather than reinstate the draft as in Vietnam, they looked for another solution.

There was serious discussion in 2005 and 2006 about bringing back conscription. A “Reinstate the Draft” bill went into Congress because there was broad recognition that the military was breaking and needed more bodies. Rumsfeld dismissed that option. George W. Bush said he would have vetoed it if it passed, and in the end it didn’t. They were haunted by the memory of Vietnam and the role the draft played in turning the US public against that war and forcing withdrawal in 1973.

With the Iraq war already unpopular, they feared a draft would be the final straw. So, rather than conscription, they dismantled regulations built up since Vietnam. Some of this was public. They raised the enlistment age from thirty-five to forty-two. They loosened rules on body weight so heavier people could sign up.

What I wanted to investigate was the groups they were not advertising, the ones being quietly enfranchised by this new free-for-all that the Pentagon was embarrassed about and trying to hide. The first and most obvious were neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Over three decades, the military had put in place specific rules to keep such people out. The reasons were straightforward. Sending neo-Nazis and white supremacists into a country of mostly brown people with automatic weapons is not going to end well. Those same people then come back to the United States or serve on domestic bases. They are often highly violent, with an accelerationist, sometimes openly terroristic outlook, and they can turn US-funded training into a resource for what they call a “racial holy war” at home.

Those protective regulations were effectively switched off. When I started talking to neo-Nazis and their organizations, they all told me the same thing: “We have never had it this good in the US military. We can get in with swastikas, we can get in with SS bolts.” That was the starting point for a yearslong investigation.

I found they were not just being tolerated; some were promoted. One of the central figures in the book is Forrest Fogarty, who served in Iraq in 2004–5. He is an American History X–style neo-Nazi, completely open about his politics. When I met him, he told me that his commanders all knew he was a Nazi and liked it. They sent him on the hardest missions because they thought he was “hardcore.”

We’re making a big change to how account deletion works on Tumblr, and we’re really excited about it, because this is something that some of you have been requesting for… well… a literal decade.

Before today, when you deleted your Tumblr account, it was immediate and permanent. Occasionally, this resulted in Very Sad Times. Even though we’ve tried to make it super difficult to accidentally delete your account, this is something that still happens a lot. Like, a lot. There’s also plenty of folks who delete their account on purpose, but then regret it shortly afterward. Worst of all, if your account was hacked, and then deleted by the hacker, there was no way to get it back. 

All of these problems are *poof* no more. As of today, when you delete your account, we will keep your data for 30 days. Your account will remain recoverable during that time, and you can contact us within that 30 day window if you’d like us to restore your account.

Eventually, we hope to make this process a bit easier, and allow you to restore your account with a single click of a button. For right now, though, you’ll need to contact us via tumblr.com/support and choose the category “Account Access” > “I have deleted my account or blog by accident”. 

FAQs

How do I delete my account? Does that process look different now?

You can follow the steps here to delete your account on the web or through the mobile app, which works pretty much the same way as before. You’ll notice we’ve updated the confirmation screen to reflect the new process, though.

Does a deleted account still appear on Tumblr during this 30 day window?

Nope. As soon as you submit the request to delete your account, all of your blogs will no longer be accessible (they’ll 404), no one will be able to message you, your posts will no longer appear in search results, and you won’t be able to log in anymore. This happens right away, not 30 days later. Deleted accounts still behave exactly as they always have.

What about my email address and username? Will those become available again immediately after account deletion, like they did before?

Notably, no, they will not. In order to make it possible for the account to be restored during the 30 day window, the username and email address must remain associated with the account during that time. So they won’t be available to register again until 30 days after you’ve deleted your account.

If you’re deleting your account, and you already know that you’d like to use the same username or email address on a new account immediately afterward, we recommend that you change your username and email address before deleting the account. That way, they will become available right away, instead of being on hold for 30 days. 

What if I’ve accidentally deleted one of my sideblogs, but not my entire account?

If you delete a sideblog, it will be deleted right away, and cannot be restored. We can only restore an entire account (which will restore all of its blogs along with it). 

Is this feature retroactive? Can you restore the account I deleted two years ago?

As much as we would like this to be possible, the answer is no. We still haven’t perfected the art of time travel, so all accounts deleted before today are still deleted for good. This new change will only apply to accounts which are deleted after this announcement is posted.

Where can I learn more about the account deletion process?

After the excitement of feeding time, the lion cubs settle down with round, full bellies and sleepy eyes.

Absolute Silence.

Nothing for miles,except what he had brought with him. This must have been how the prophets felt, when they went into the desert to find…whatever it was they found, and talk to…whoever they talked to.

He heard Om, slightly peevish, say: “People’ve got to believe in something. Might as well be gods. What else is there?”

Damar is reading these fuckass romance novels and the odd enigma tale but hes not actually reading any sincere literature since he got out of officer school and stopped having assigned reading. He loves thr cheap pop novel because cardassian tours of duty are so goddamn long and boring he can get through like 6 of them in a week. Weyoun does also think this is a disgusting habit. Hes read all of the ones damar has.

Both Tain and Mila have read every book that crosses their desk, either out of a passionate love for cardassian escapism or redlining it for censorship, sometimes crossing wires about it. Enabrian tain absolutely let shoggoth get away with a little more critique of the state then the order typically does before he disappears him bc he does love a little logical puzzle especially wrapped up in a backwards version of patriotism. Mila does unfortunately think the spy romances are hot and also funny, bc the ideas they have about how the order functions is just so charmingly stupid.