#notable lines are. Mary about John:

[batcavescolony]

S4 E3 Supernatural

Now THIS is a good episode. Castiel took Dean back in time to 1973! We find out Sam and Dean's maternal grandparents, Samuel and Deanna Campbell, and Mary are hunters. On top of that, Azazel is playing match maker so he can have his little psychic children be the best of the best, and he made a deal with Mary to revive John after he killed him. Also as if Azazel hasn't killed enough of Sam & Dean's family they killed Samuel and Deanna too. Oh this is so interesting, then Castiel taking Dean back, saying destiny can't be changed but Sam is going down a dark path and either Dean stops him or angels do.

[brujahinaskirt]

Okay, I obviously made the above post as a leetle joke, but since it's getting not insignificant traction, I do want to offer a more serious note.

I love this about Arthur. It's probably my favorite thing about him, but let me use this fresh new RDR2 meta post to clarify exactly what I mean. Despite the aspects of his personality & appearance that are traditionally hypermasculine, and despite how often he is annoyed with people (especially incompetents or people who meddle with his plans), Arthur is decidedly NOT annoyed by the social performance of femininity or by traits that are/were frequently stereotyped as feminine. Ever. Regardless of subject. I might go so far as to say he seems to canonically prefer hanging out with women and with "feminine" men.

Your long-winded, bullet-pointed analysis is below!

The Girls. Most noticeably, Arthur actually sits down to talk with and actively confides in the camp Girls (Tilly, Mary-Beth, Karen) more than anyone else around. These three are the most traditionally "girly" (single, 20s, active, pretty, unattached, highly social, feminine, chatty) members of the gang, though of course they are still criminals and don't perfectly adhere to all period-typical standards of feminine comportment. He doesn't mock the girls** like he sometimes does with other auxiliary members of the gang (like Uncle and Pearson, playful or not). Notably, he doesn't even gently tease Mary-Beth for writing her "silly" romance novels, a highly feminized hobby which she speaks about in a self-depreciating manner, much like Arthur speaks about his own artistic hobbies. Rather, he talks to her about writing like a peer and encourages her to write more by going out of his way to get her a nice pen. Crucially, there is no canon romantic or sexual interest in any of the girls on Arthur's behalf. He just feels the most comfortable in their company and seems to value their advice/opinions on life the most. To me, this is much stronger proof than his forever-burning torch for the cultured & ladylike Mary, which is (or was once) rooted in romantic desire. ** Unless the player persists in Antagonizing them, and these lines (while sometimes shockingly cruel and offhandedly sexual in nature; see Arthur teasing Tilly about pursuing Javier) are largely about goading them for laziness or, in Karen's case, her alcoholism. That said, many of the Antagonize lines strike me as clumsily tacked-on & poorly rooted in canon, which could indicate: (1) an Arthur who is deliberately trying to be disruptive (a generous interpretation), or (2) writers instructed to add throwaway content that will make a certain type of childishly misanthropic gamer (think 13 y.o. boys) squeal in glee with relatively low impact on the overall story.

Campmates. Following the above point... who doesn't Arthur hang out with much? The manly men of the gang; the very people social mores suggest he ought to be hanging out with. Bill, Micah, Joe, Cleet, and even Dutch. (To some extent, this includes John and Sean, but I'd say John sort of lives at the edges of gang life anyway, and Sean is, well, Sean.) Conversely, which male gang members does Arthur hang out with a lot? Sweet little bookish Lenny, a wordy, positive-energy, breezy intellectual who has just barely become an adult. Introspective, soft-voiced, long-haired Charles, who is traditionally masculine by some standards (strong, usually calm, can be standoffish) but decidedly NOT so when his appearance/demeanor is judged by the white Christian American male standards that began to dominate masculinity concepts in the later decades of the 1800s.

Algernon. Oh, my, Algernon. Arthur clearly dislikes Algernon's fancy, loud, outrageous clothing. But weirdly, he seems to like Algernon, not just tolerate him. Arthur in fact goes through significant personal discomfort to avoid hurting Algernon's feelings (the awful hat, the POST.MAN. sobbing), and he immediately says yes to having tea with him without any awareness of a coming business proposition, though half the time Arthur clearly has no fucking clue what Algernon is talking about. I am left to conclude that on some level, he just enjoys hearing Algernon talk, which is word-for-word what he says while listening to the Girls argue about romance novels ("I just like listening to you [all] talk." Hello????). I mean, for God's sake, he meets the man while he's choking to death on a nut at a fancy party, and the second thing Algernon does is tell him he looks like a guy who wears a corset. If anything was going to set off the boiling defensiveness of a dude who worships masculinity, thirty seconds with Algie would have done it.

Margaret, Mistress of Fucking Danger. It's pretty clear Arthur doesn't like Margaret. But that has little to do with Margaret's femininity & cross-dressing (this doesn't faze him at all when Charles Châtenay does it; more on that below) and everything to do with Margaret's deceptiveness and highly selective memory. It's not until the bullshittery unveils itself that Arthur starts getting visibly pissed off at Margaret. Conversely, Arthur does seem more positively disposed toward Sally Nash. (That said, this quest has a lot of problems and poorly aged lines that are depressingly easy for a politically motivated jerkoff to soundbite and miscast as Rockstar being pro-bigot. Cue 800 heterobnoxious gamerbro ARTHUR MORGAN ULTIMATE ANTI SNOWFLAKE SIGMA MALE OF THE WEST YouTube videos.)

Albert, my beloved. Rather than goading him to man up, Arthur tries to persuade Albert (whom he very obviously likes) to pick safer animal photography subjects, e.g. horses, and doesn't insult him for his lack of wilderness knowledge (an aspect of traditional manliness that is highly relevant to Arthur's lifestyle). You'd think he would tear into him for this shortcoming, given that they share so many of the same interests and passions, and IMO his genuine eagerness to serve as Albert's protector and facilitate his art is highly convincing evidence that Arthur does not necessarily view masculinity as a net positive.

Arthur is a basic goddamn boyfriend-hater. He pretty much harshly disapproves of every husband, boyfriend, male partner, etc. in the game and is very, very vocal about it... except one extremely unlikely candidate: Beau Gray. Weak, dandy artist Beau Gray, whom Arthur takes one look at and promptly hands the only gun to Penelope. Arthur is curt and impish to Beau at times, but helps him in his relationship troubles willingly (without collecting repayment), and seemingly for no other reason than the fact he can see that soft, fearful Beau is genuinely head-over-heels in love with Penelope. Is he projecting his own young love for Mary onto them? Maybe/probably, but Beau could not possibly be more different from young Arthur, and Arthur seems to believe this difference will make him a good husband for Penelope. A good husband, in Arthur's view, seems to simply be a man who ardently loves his beloved, regardless of his ability to provide for/protect her, and whose only goal in life is to live that life at her side. This is completely antithetical to mainstream late-1800s views on what constitutes a good husband and what it means to be a man.

Châtenay. Arthur shows us some of the most obvious delight and mirth he experiences in the game when he's hanging out with Charles "Allo Boys" Châtenay, who is straight up in drag a third of that time. This baffles Arthur a little, but doesn't disgust or repel him. I've written about this mission elsewhere at greater length because it is one of my favorite disasters, but it's worth mentioning here too.

Trelawny. Arthur clearly enjoys Trelawny despite his grumbly claims to the contrary. Most of these "claims" are just Arthur's established way of affectionate teasing (he does much the same with Uncle and Pearson, both of whom he genuinely likes). His authentic gripes about Trelawny are all about a perceived flightiness/lack of loyalty to the gang, not about his flamboyance. And even these gripes are half-assed, in Arthur's usual way.

Bluegills & Daisy Chains. One of the most genuine moments of softness we have with Arthur in RDR2 is when he takes Little Jack out of the camp to go fishing. Arthur's usually a much truer version of himself when he doesn't have to play the Big Bad Gang Lieutenant role, but this moment of escape is especially important, and not just because Arthur reveals his fondness for children and his natural understanding of how to talk to them. I notice this: Arthur tries to gently teach Jack about fishing, and Jack is completely fucking uninterested. Jack prefers to make flower chains for his mommy. Arthur doesn't scold him for his drifting attention or his lack of attraction to masculine past-times; on the contrary, Arthur goes out of his way to encourage and protect Jack's natural sweetness and innocence. That's a wild stance for a murdering outlaw to have re: the "next generation" of his family. Hell, I've encountered far too many 21st century dads in my own family who flip their shit when their tiny sons prefer hanging out with women & partaking in "womanly" hobbies like art, cooking, and flowers rather than hunting and fishing.

"...and be a god damn man." This seems like classic masculine bluster on the surface, but what does this keynote line mean in the context in which Arthur says it? Well, it's complicated. This statement serves as (a) Arthur's goodbye to John, (b) Arthur's final call to action for John, and (c) Arthur's last wish for his brother's life. But it certainly does not mean standing and fighting or being tough; i.e., "dying like a man." In that moment, it means abandoning all masculine bluster and revenge fantasy, and running away: leaving violence and fighting and brotherhood and all that crap behind to simply be there (alive, present) for your wife and son.

The Best Women People. Who are the best people Arthur knows, by his own crystal-clear declaration? Abigail and Sadie. Sadie's a rough-and-tumble, super-violent gunslinger and Abigail's a stubborn thief & a former sex worker (in the time Arthur has known her), but they are also, critically, two wives: the most traditional feminine role for a woman of the time period (and indeed perhaps most of human history once the concept of "wife" subsumed that of "mother"). It's also important to note that Arthur doesn't truly give up on Dutch until Dutch abandons Abigail, which serves as Arthur's point of no return. The other men left in the gang at this point specifically note that she's "just a woman" and not worth going back for. Arthur is straight-up shocked by all of this; he obviously considers her among the most worthwhile and value-having members of the gang, and certainly one of the most core members of the gang. Without any hesitation or doubt, the instant it's clear Dutch is cutting Abigail loose, Arthur declares: "That's that, then."

tl;dr: Arthur unironically prefers hanging out with women and queens and I love that for them.

[burningvelvet]

Let me tell you about John “Foul-Weather Jack” Byron, Captain James Cook, a doctor named James Lind, and also a different doctor named James Lind, and how they all knew each other, helped to cure scurvy, and inadvertently helped to inspire Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) -- a long-winded history ramble

John Byron next to a first edition copy of Frankenstein.

John joined the Royal Navy at 14 and by the ripe old age of 17 had proved himself by surviving a deadly shipwreck off the coast of Chile. The voyage was part of George Anson's famous circumnavigation of the globe done to seize Spanish ships. Only 188 men of the original 1,854 crew members survived; several, including Byron, were taken as prisoners by the Spanish. Recollections of the voyage were sensationalized and it was depicted in stories like William Cowper’s poem The Castaway. John Byron published his own successful memoir, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (1768).

The novel's full title deserves attention for it's 18th century pre-Byronic melodrama: "The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (Commodore in a Late Expedition Around the World) Containing an Account of the Great Distresses suffered by Himself and his Companions on the Coast of Patagonia from the Year 1740, till their Arrival in England, 1746. With a Description of St. Jago de Chili, and the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants. Also a Relation of the Loss of the Wager Man of War, one of Admiral Anson's Squadron." I can only imagine that had his grandson Lord Byron's memoirs been published instead of burned, their title would have borrowed from his grandfather's by including something similar to "Containing an Account of the Great Distresses suffered by Himself . . ." but I digress.

I do not digress. The beginning of his preface opens with this gem (I've swapped the 18th-century "long s" for a regular one):

"But here I must say, I have been dubious of the partiality of my friends; and, as I think, justly fearful lest the world in general, who may perhaps find compassion and indulgence for a protracted tale of distress, may not give the same allowance to a luxurious imagination triumphing in a change of fortune, and sudden transition from the most dismal to the gayest scenes in the universe, and thereby indulging an egotism equally offensive to the envious and censorious."

Which brings to mind Francis Cohen's criticism of Lord Byron's Don Juan: “Lord B. should have been grave & gay by turns; grave in one page & gay in the next; grave in one line, & gay in the next. And not grave & gay in the same page, or in the same stanza, or in the same line… we are never drenched & scorched at the same instant whilst standing in one spot" (letter to John Murray, 16 July, 1819). And (not the most entertaining part, but to keep things brief) part of Byron's retort: "I will answer [Cohen] who objects to the quick succession of fun and gravity — as if in that case the gravity did not (in intention at least) heighten the fun. His metaphor is that ‘we are never scorched and drenched at the same time!' Blessings on his experience!" (letter to John Murray, 12 August, 1819).

John went on to be considered one of the greatest naval commanders of his era, commanding several ships as captain during the Seven Years’ War and beating the French as leader in the Battle of Restigouche. He later set the record for fastest global circumnavigation at the time while commodore, became a notable explorer, became a commander at multiple Royal Navy stations, and was appointed Governor of Newfoundland in Canada for three years. According to Wikipedia, “his actions nearly caused a war between Great Britain and Spain.”

It seems like he basically just did whatever the hell he wanted. We can see that the apple really doesn't fall too far from the tree. Everyone in the Byron family was kind of crazy. See: psychologist Kay Jamison's Touched By Fire, a novel on the mental illness of famous writers, half of which is focused on Lord Byron (as it should be) and includes an extensive psychological analysis of his whole family tree, which in a short summary brings me back to my previous point: everyone in the Byron family was kind of crazy.

John's health declined after sustaining storm-induced injuries and an unsuccessful attack against the French at the Battle of Grenada. He died at 62 with six living children. His grandson, the poet Lord Byron, borrowed inspiration from John's life and the shipwreck descriptions in his memoir while he was writing the shipwreck sequence in his magnum opus Don Juan.

In an epistle to his half-sister (Epistle to Augusta) Byron mentions their grandfather thus:

"A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past / Recalling, as it lies beyond redress; / Revers'd for him our grandsire's fate of yore— / He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. / If my inheritance of storms hath been / In other elements, and on the rocks / Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen, / I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks, / The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen / My errors with defensive paradox; / I have been cunning in mine overthrow, / The careful pilot of my proper woe."

On to the Scottish doctor James Lind! He's important because he developed the theory that citrus fruits treated scurvy, and in attempting to prove so he conducted the world's first ever official clinical trial. In his tests, he used the survivors from this famous shipwreck. This likely included Byron himself, being one of the few survivors and having reported the healing effects of citrus in restoring men who were on the verge of death. Needless to say, the discoveries and implications of Lind's clinical trial had an unprecedented impact on the fields of nutrition and medicine, and all of history, particularly in the Caribbean. In 1753 he published his Treatise on Scurvy.

Lind's theories on scurvy influenced the famous Captain James Cook, who implemented these ideas and proved their efficiency by how few men he lost to scurvy compared with every other Captain at the time. When Cook circumnavigated the world on his first voyage, no one died of scurvy. This didn't help with malaria and dysentery, which nearly wiped out his whole crew at one point on a journey to Indonesia. Aside from Anson's shipwreck, Cook's voyages were the other major instance of what I would call "social experiments at sea, or, fuck around and find out: scurvy edition" which led to the development of scurvy research.

As an aside, there is a famous town in Australia named Byron Bay. That town was named by Captain Cook in 1770 as a tribute to John Byron. Cook was sailing around on the HMS Endeavour doing even crazier colonial shit, and he likewise died as the result of his sea travels. He was killed in a scuffle on Hawaiʻi Island which transpired after he had casually tried to kidnap King Kalaniʻōpuʻu-a-Kaiamamao in broad daylight, planning to ransom him out of revenge for the theft of one of his boats, although Cook himself had stolen their sacred wood first after they had been so nice to him. This is what I've gathered from reading a bit about the confusing affair, but the main point is that Cook got what was coming to him. The Journals of Captain Cook were published to major success, contributing to the history of English travel narratives. But Cook is a pretty well-known historical figure so I can't go into his chaotic life any more than this, lest I be writing forever.

Lord Byron in an Albanian oufit he bought while traveling for 2 years, & Captain Cook thinking about navigation. The backgrounds make them look part of the same painting, no?

Back to the Linds: interestingly enough, the scurvy-studying physician James Lind had a younger cousin who was also a physician named James Lind, as well as a scientist/philosopher/teacher. While teaching at Eton, this Lind became a tutor and mentor of a young Percy Bysshe Shelley, and had such an impact on him that Shelley refers to Lind in several of his works. Shelley especially enjoyed Lind’s experiments regarding galvanism - the study of bringing things to life with electricity. It is widely believed by scholars that Shelley’s conversations and rememberances about Lind at Lord Byron's Villa Diodati were some of the primary inspiration for Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818).

For further reading on Shelley's Lind: The real Doctor Frankenstein? by Christopher Goulding via Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Lind's Wikipedia page has a section devoted to Frankenstein.

Percy Shelley described his Lind:

". . . exactly what an old man ought to be. Free, calm-spirited, full of benevolence, and even of youthful ardor: his eye seemed to burn with supernatural spirit beneath his brow, shaded by his venerable white locks, he was tall, vigorous, and healthy in his body; tempered, as it had ever been, by his amiable mind. I owe to that man far, ah! far more than I owe to my father: he loved me, and I shall never forget our long talks, where he breathed the spirit of the kindest tolerance and the purest wisdom . . ."

A tie-in to vampire literature: Lind is also thought to be an influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which was influenced by (Lord Byron’s doctor) John Polidori’s novel The Vampyre, the first ever vampire novel, which was inspired by Lord Byron’s short vampire story Augustus Darvell, which was written at the same time as Frankenstein during their infamous ghost story competition at Villa Diodati. Augustus Darvell was inspired by Byron's travels through Eastern Europe, and was likely in part inspired by (another famous Romantic poet) Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s gothic poem Christabel, which Byron terrified Percy Shelley with after reading it aloud at the Villa Diodati, and which Byron loved so much that he helped Coleridge publish it through his own publisher. Christabel began in 1797 but wasn't published until 1816 for this reason.

To continue on vampires: Byron's enemy, the famous poet Robert Southey (who Byron roasted in Don Juan, among other works, and basically cancelled him as a result) also wrote a poem called Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) which is sometimes considered to be the first true depiction of a vampire in English literature. He also wrote it while traveling. Shelley (and Keats) both loved this poem, and so it also *could have* inspired some of the conversation at the Villa Diodati if Shelley had related the vampire theme to Christabel or Darvell. Southey is also the first English writer to write on Haitian zombi folklore, which would later become the zombie of modern horror. Southey was also reportedly in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the mother of Mary Shelley and philosopher who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the most influential proto-feminist texts.

I relate these connections to demonstrate how small the literary world was at the time; so small that all the writers pretty much knew each other. In 1801, the English population was about 11 million, and in 1899 had grown to around 37 million due to industrialization (source: Black, Joseph, et al. "British Literature: A Historical Overview." The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Broadview Press, vol. B, 2010, p. 70).

That's nearly the current population of London alone, but around 75% of that 11 million English population in 1801 was rural, whereas at the end of the century the national population was about 75% urban (source: same as prior), again due to industrialization. London in the early 19c was much less populated than today, and the amount of people who were educated or even merely literate was also much smaller than today. So really, it makes sense that all of the artists/writers/scientists/aristocrats knew each other. But it's still insane to see examples of how small the world really is and always has been.

The front-facing portrait is of Scurvy Lind, the shadow portrait is of Galvanism Lind.

The Shelleys: the King and Queen of Romanticism.

Southey, Coleridge, Polidori, Stoker: some early Kings of Vampirism (as represented in popular British literature).

[blackhistorychatgpt]

Black inventors

From Perplexity:

Famous black inventors have significantly contributed to various fields, from everyday household items to groundbreaking technological advancements. Here are some notable figures:

George Crum (1824-1914): A chef who is credited with inventing the potato chip in 1853[1].

Frederick McKinley Jones (1893-1961): Developed refrigeration equipment for trucks, trains, ships, and planes, receiving over 40 patents. His invention, the Thermo King, revolutionized the food and medical transport industries[1].

Granville T. Woods (1856-1910): Accumulated almost 60 patents, improving railroad functioning. Notably, he invented the induction telegraph system for train communication[1].

George Washington Carver (1864-1943): An agricultural chemist who developed 518 products from peanuts and sweet potatoes, including ink, dye, soap, and synthetic rubber[1].

Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919): Became the first African American woman self-made millionaire by creating a line of hair products for African American women[1].

Garrett Morgan (1877-1963): Invented the traffic signal and a safety hood that served as a prototype for the gas mask[1].

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner: Patented the sanitary belt in 1957, a significant advancement in women's health and hygiene[1].

Thomas L. Jennings (1791–1859): The first African American to receive a U.S. patent, for a dry-cleaning process[4].

Patricia Bath (1942-2019): Invented a laser cataract treatment, becoming the first African American female doctor to receive a medical patent[4].

Mark Dean (1957-present): Holds over 20 patents, including contributions to the creation of the color PC monitor and the first gigahertz chip[4].

Elijah McCoy (1844-1929): Known for his invention of the automatic lubricator for oiling steam engines, leading to the phrase "the real McCoy" to denote something authentic[4].

These inventors have left a lasting impact on society, demonstrating ingenuity and perseverance in the face of challenges.

Citations: [1] https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/work-money/g30877473/african-american-inventors/ [2] https://www.parents.com/kids/education/world-changing-black-inventors-that-every-kid-should-know-about/ [3] https://www.black-inventor.com [4] https://www.biography.com/inventors/g46697619/famous-black-inventors [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_inventors_and_scientists

From Gemini (formerly Bard):

20 Famous Black Investors with Short Descriptions:

Dr. Shirley Jackson: First Black woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear physics, invested in research and development for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Robert F. Smith: Founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm with over $85 billion in assets under management. Known for his philanthropic endeavors.

Oprah Winfrey: Media mogul and investor, known for her investments in cable channels, production companies, and Weight Watchers.

Udayan I. Lekhraj: Founded CMG Partners, a private equity firm specializing in healthcare investments. Advocate for diversity and inclusion in venture capital.

Catherine Hughes: Founded Urban One, a media company serving the African American community. First Black woman to chair a publicly traded company in the U.S.

Rodney Bryant: Co-founded JUST Capital, a firm that measures and incentivizes corporations to prioritize stakeholder capitalism.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Former President of Liberia, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Focused on economic development and investment in her country.

Ronald Lauder: CEO of Estee Lauder Companies, known for his investments in the beauty industry and philanthropic work.

Charles R. Bronfman: Chairman of The Seagram Company Ltd., invested in various industries including entertainment, real estate, and philanthropy.

John Rogers Jr.: Founded Ariel Investments, a mutual fund company with over $28 billion in assets under management. Advocate for responsible investing.

Marc Morial: Former mayor of New Orleans, currently president of the National Urban League. Focused on economic empowerment of Black communities.

Ronald Watkins: Founding CEO of Watkins Investing Group, invests in real estate and businesses within the Black community.

Melody Hobson: President and CEO of Ariel Investments, known for her work on financial literacy and diversity in boardrooms.

Aisha Evans: Founded BE Capital, a venture capital firm focused on Black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs.

Kevin Hart: Comedian and investor, known for his investments in production companies, streaming platforms, and sports teams.

Jay-Z: Rapper and entrepreneur, known for his investments in music streaming, sports teams, and venture capital funds.

Will Smith: Actor and investor, known for his investments in production companies, media platforms, and venture capital funds.

Serena Williams: Tennis champion and investor, known for her investments in venture capital funds focused on women and diverse founders.

Rihanna: Singer and entrepreneur, known for her investments in beauty brands, fashion lines, and technology startups.

LeBron James: Basketball player and investor, known for his investments in media companies, production companies, and technology startups.

Please note: This list is not exhaustive and can be debated in terms of individual importance and impact.

Reading List on Black Inventors:

Black Inventors: Lives That Mattered by Darlene R. Medford

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Lifting the Veil: Celebrating the Unsung Heroes of Black History by Michael Hill

Lost Genius: The Forgotten Black Inventors Who Changed the World by Dennis Freeman

Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: From Agnes Scott to Emmy Noether by Pamela Prochazka

Black Inventors in Science and Technology by Shirley J. Smith

A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James M. Whitfield: With Recollections of the Early Struggles of Colored Men in Boston by Wilbur H. Siebert

Inventing the Future: Black Inventors in Science and Technology by Geneva Gay

African Americans in Science, Math, and Invention by Darlene R. Medford

Black Inventors in the United States by Darlene R. Medford

This list offers a variety of books covering different periods and areas of innovation by Black inventors. Consider exploring further based on your specific interests.

I hope this information is helpful!

[justforbooks]

With his shrewd eyes and his forks of corn-yellow hair, Julian Sands was a natural choice to play the valiant, romantic George Emerson, who snatches a kiss from Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) in a Tuscan poppy field in A Room With a View (1985). “I wanted him to be real, not a two-dimensional minor screen god,” he said. “I liked him in his lighter, sexier moments, less so when he was brooding.”

Sands, who has died aged 65 while hiking in mountains in California, was dashing in that film, but he could also project a dandyish, effete or sinister quality. He was blessed with a mellifluous voice and a lean, youthful, fine-boned face, even if, as a child, his brothers insisted he resembled a horse. (He agreed.) In James Ivory’s film of EM Forster’s novel, he was pure heart-throb material. His participation in the notorious nude bathing scene was no impediment to the picture’s success.

Prior to that, he had played the journalist Jon Swain in The Killing Fields (1984), Roland Joffé’s drama about the bloody rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The picture marked the beginning of his friendship with his co-star John Malkovich. “I’d been cautioned by Roland to keep my distance from John because he was an unstable character,” Sands recalled. “And John had been told by Roland to stay away from me, because I was a refined, sensible person who didn’t want to be distracted. In fact, we bonded instantly.”

Malkovich directed Sands in a one-man show in which he read Harold Pinter’s poetry. First staged in 2011, the production had its origins in an occasion six years earlier when Pinter, suffering from oesophageal cancer, had asked Sands to read in his stead at a benefit event in St Stephen Walbrook church in the City of London. The writer “sat in the front row with his stone basilisk stare”, Sands recalled.

Not all his work was so highfalutin, and a good deal of it fell into the category of boisterous, campy fun. In Ken Russell’s Gothic (1986), he played the poet Shelley, who indulges in sex, drugs and séances with Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) and the future Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson), and is prone to recite verse naked in thunderstorms.

In a similar vein but far less deranged was Impromptu (1991), which brought together other notable 19th-century figures including George Sand (Judy Davis) and Frederic Chopin (Hugh Grant). Sands, who played Franz Liszt, described it as “Carry On Composer”.

Born in Otley, West Yorkshire, he was raised in Leeds and Gargrave, near Skipton; he later described his childhood as “part conservative and part Huckleberry Finn”. His mother, Brenda, was a Tory councillor and leading light of the local amateur dramatic society, while his father, William, who left when Julian was three, was a soil analyst. Julian made his acting debut in a local pantomime at the age of eight.

At 13, he won a scholarship to Lord Wandsworth college, Hampshire. He moved to London to study at Central School of Speech and Drama, and while there became friends with Derek Jarman. He played the Devil in an extended promotional video that Jarman directed in 1979 for Marianne Faithfull’s album Broken English. The role had been intended for David Bowie, who dropped out at the eleventh hour. “You’re devilish,” Jarman told Sands. “You can play it.”

The actor’s first film appearance came in an adaptation of Peter Nichols’s stage comedy Privates on Parade (1983), starring John Cleese and Denis Quilley, from which his one line of dialogue was cut. There was more rotten luck when he won the lead in a new Tarzan movie, only for the financing to fall through. It was eventually filmed as Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), with Christopher Lambert donning the hallowed loin-cloth.

On television, he starred with Anthony Hopkins in the miniseries A Married Man (1983). In Oxford Blues (1984), he was a rower butting heads with a Las Vegas parking attendant (Rob Lowe) who has tricked his way into a place at Oriel College. He was in The Doctor and the Devils (1985), inspired by the Burke and Hare case. “I had a roll in the hay with Twiggy which took about 15 takes,” he said.

Following A Room With a View, he agreed to play the lead in Ivory’s next Forster adaptation, Maurice (1987), before abruptly dropping out and fleeing to the US. In the process, he left behind his wife, the journalist Sarah Sands (nee Harvey), who described him as “restless” and “dramatic”, and their son, Henry. “I’m not the first person to create stability and security and then dismantle it even more effectively than I created it,” the actor said.

Once in America he took on an array of film parts. In Warlock (1989), he played the son of Satan, wreaking havoc in modern-day Los Angeles. Investing this pantomime villain with lip-smacking brio, he was likened by the Washington Post to a “hell-bent Peter Pan” and nominated for best actor in the Fangoria Chainsaw awards. He reprised the role in Warlock: The Armageddon (1993).

As an entomologist in Arachnophobia (1990), he was called upon to have as many as a hundred spiders crawling all over his face. Alternating these mainstream projects with arthouse ones, he played a diplomat in pre-war Poland in Krzysztof Zanussi’s Wherever You Are … (1988) and a monk in Night Sun (1990), the Taviani brothers’ adaptation of Tolstoy’s short story Father Sergius.

For the Canadian horror director David Cronenberg, he starred in the warped and witty Naked Lunch (1991), which disproved those who had declared William S Burroughs’s original novel unfilmable. Just as outré but less accomplished was Boxing Helena (1993), directed by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David. Sands played a surgeon who keeps a woman captive by making her a quadruple amputee.

After starring as a young classics teacher in his friend Mike Figgis’s film of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version (1994), Sands worked a further six times with that director, appearing in his movies even when he was an unorthodox choice for the job in hand. One example was the part of a menacing Latvian pimp in Leaving Las Vegas (1996).

Later roles include a mysteriously unblemished Phantom in Dario Argento’s version of The Phantom of the Opera (1998), Louis XIV (whom Sands described as “the first supermodel”) in Joffé’s Vatel (2000), a crime kingpin named Snakehead in the Jackie Chan vehicle The Medallion (2003), a computer security wizard in the comic caper Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), a younger version of the businessman played by Christopher Plummer in David Fincher’s take on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and a sadistic paedophile in the gruelling wartime odyssey The Painted Bird (2019).

On television, he was a Russian entrepreneur in the fifth season of 24 (2006) and the hero’s father, Jor-El, in two episodes of the Superman spin-off Smallville (2009). For the BBC, he played two very different actors in factually based one-off specials: first Laurence Olivier in Kenneth Tynan: In Praise of Hardcore (2005), then John Le Mesurier in We’re Doomed! The Dad’s Army Story (2015).

His recent work includes Benediction, Terence Davies’s haunting study of Siegfried Sassoon, and the thriller The Survivalist (both 2021), which found him back in the company of Malkovich. One of several titles still awaiting release is the drama Double Soul (2023) starring F Murray Abraham and Paz Vega.

Sands never stopped wandering, walking, running and climbing. “I am on a perpetual Grand Tour,” he said in 2000. Asked in 2018 about his eclectic career, he explained: “I was looking for something exotic, things that took me out of myself. I think I found myself a little boring.”

He was reported missing while out in the San Gabriel mountains, north of Los Angeles, in mid-January 2023. His remains were found in June.

In 1990 he married Evgenia Citkowitz. She survives him, along with their two daughters, Imogen and Natalya, and his son.

🔔 Julian Richard Morley Sands, actor, born 4 January 1958; died circa 13 January 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

They never let him live that one down

By Jonathan Monfiletto

During his lifetime, it was said of Harry C. Morse that he “has certainly been a martyr in a good cause” of promoting Keuka Lake around the world “for he does not like notoriety.” After his death, it was said he “seldom wanted to talk about the unusual fishing exploit of his youth.”

And yet, more than 150 years after the aforementioned exploit and nearly 90 years after his death, the enduring image – figuratively in people’s minds and literally in photographs – of Harry Morse is of a seven-year-old boy who got bit on the nose by a trout while on a fishing adventure on Keuka Lake. But, this boy – who apparently carried a scar from the fish bite on his nose the rest of his life – became a man, and in fact a distinguished man who worked as a steamboat captain and managed two of Penn Yan’s most notable theaters.

Nevertheless, it seems a photograph of Harry C. Morse (the C stood for Corey, his mother’s maiden name, and there are newspaper references to him in his adulthood named with his middle initial) as an adult does not exist anywhere. Neither the Yates County History Center nor the Yates County Historian’s Office has such a photograph in their collections. According to historian Rich MacAlpine, who wrote about Morse in “Keuka Lake’s Biggest Fish Story” and “More Than Just a Fish Story” for YCHC’s Yates Past newsletter, even a descendant of Morse (whose daughter married the son of Admiral Frank H. Schofield) hasn’t been able to locate a photograph of her ancestor as an adult.

The closest that MacAlpine has come is a photo of the Penn Yan Cornet Band from the 1890s, with Morse identified as being in the group but not specifically identified as an individual. And the closest I can come to photographic evidence that Morse had a life beyond his escapade with the trout is a photograph from the YCHC collection of his daughter, Rosemary Morse Schofield.

It seems Harry didn’t like telling the story about his encounter with the fish, so he probably wouldn’t like me telling it here either. Just for context, though, in a nutshell: On August 27, 1873, seven-year-old Harry and his mother, Ione – widow of Civil War veteran Myron Morse – went fishing in a small boat near the shore of Brandy Bay on Keuka Lake. Ione had cast her line from one side of the boat, while Harry was fishing from the other side. Suddenly, she heard her son scream and saw a trout flopping on the bottom of the boat and then saw her son’s bloodied, frightened face. Apparently, Harry had leaned over the side of the boat at the same time the fish – weighing about 8 pounds – sprang out of the water and latched onto the boy’s nose. As Harry jumped up, the force threw the fish into the boat and left Harry with a gash on his nose.

While the story of Harry and the trout became a legend along Keuka Lake, across America, and around the world, Harry went on to live his life. He married Janet Wimbles, of Buffalo, and they produced one child, their daughter Rosemary. At age 26, Harry became a steamboat captain aboard the Mary Bell, considered a state-of-the-art craft for its time with a steel hull and twin propellers. It was also the fastest steamboat on the lake for the era and was described as the finest boat anywhere in New York State, with an interior of polished woodwork, fine upholstery, and brass fittings.

Harry once again gained notoriety on the lake during his tenure on the Mary Bell. On a cruise in 1893, a storm brewed as the boat neared The Point by Gibson’s Landing – the deepest and most treacherous spot on Keuka Lake, according to an article by John Robortella – and water began to slosh over the sides. When someone aboard shouted, “Don’t worry! Harry is at the wheel!” Booth Lowry, a poet from Mississippi visiting Yates County at the time, took the opportunity to capture the moment in verse. By the time Harry soundly docked the boat with all 500 passengers safe, Lowry had finished writing “Harry at the Wheel” as an ode the Harry’s skill as a steamboat captain.

Whether escaping local notoriety or seeking further adventure, Harry moved to Montana later in the 1890s and became a sheep rancher there. He returned to his hometown eight years later with an interest in moving picture shows. For five years, he leased and managed the Sampson Theater on Jacob Street (now East Elm, where the building still stands), and later he bought the Shearman House, a hotel on Elm Street, and opened it as the Elmwood Theater in 1921. Harry showed the first talking picture in Penn Yan at the Elmwood in 1929. He also eventually convinced village leaders to allow theater showings on Sundays.

A typewritten statement from our family files states Harry brought the first bicycle to Penn Yan in the 1880s or 1890s (the statement reads “1889’s,” either a likely typo or curious dating), and if that statement is true it only adds to the legend of Harry Morse. In his obituary, Harry is listed as living at 215 Chapel St., presumably at the intersection with Keuka Street, though that address doesn’t seem to exist anymore. He lived there with his mother and grandmother as well as his wife and daughter. He was part of the local Rotary Club and made a trip to Mexico City with the organization. Harry died at age 69 on January 14, 1936, a day after suffering what is described in his obituary as a cerebral hemorrhage. Janet and Rosemary survived him.

There is a profound and poignant part of Harry’s fishing exploit that endears me and perhaps gets lost in the excitement and unusualness. Myron Morse – Harry’s father, Ione’s husband, and a Civil War veteran – died August 25, 1872, almost exactly a year before Harry and Ione’s fishing adventure. “Mr. Morse was one of the soldiers of the Union Army against the great Rebellion, and it was while in the service of his country that he contracted the illness which settled upon him the fatal disease, consumption, of which he has been gradually wasting away,” Myron’s obituary states.

A year later, perhaps to celebrate her husband’s life and sooth her son’s grief, Ione took her son fishing on Keuka Lake for the day. Maybe she truly did enjoy fishing, or maybe she just went along with it because Harry liked fishing. Either way, a single, widowed mother was trying to raise her only child and fill a void in his life.

[scripted-downfall]

how sam is paralled with john and dean is paralled with mary...

Oh, that's an interesting topic; thank you for the ask! I know a lot of people point to the opposite parallels (Dean to John, Sam to Mary), and I'm not trying to say that they're not present, but I think noticing the parallels you mentioned is also really important. I'll try to go a decent length and not get too verbose, but a lot of the parallels in this show are really cool, so I might not succeed :)

So, for Sam and John: perhaps most obviously, you've got the overtly paralleled narrative as regards their love interests. The way Mary and Jess died in the same manner; the way both immediately became obsessed with the revenge; the way they jumped both-feet-in towards revenge. (For an example of an overt canon conversation about this, I can refer you to s01e21 "Salvation", where Sam is nonplussed when Dean states that "it's not worth dying over" killing the demon.) We didn't really get to see how John would react if a family-member-but-not-love-interest were killed, but we know that Sam reacts obsessively when Dean dies and throws himself into hunting again, most notably in "Mystery Spot" and between seasons 3 and 4. And we do have a clear cinematic parallel for how they react when Dean's in a slowly oncoming danger and a demon-deal is on the table; I've included screenshots of when John was summoning Azazel compared to when Sam was summoning Ruby; the similarities in camerawork/layout are pretty clear.

It also bears mentioning that Sam shows a lot of the same almost... clinical? way of looking at hunting. He's a little less pragmatic at the beginning, but that disappears before long; he's the one who wants to bring Adam into hunting instead of letting him keep his normal life (s04e19 again); he was willing to let and/or encourage Lester to sell his soul to find Dean when he was a demon (s10e04 "Paper Moon"); his willingness/active desire to remove the Mark from Dean's arm despite them all knowing it could harm countless innocent people (s10e23 "Brother's Keeper"); and, though I haven't gotten here in canon yet, there's the line about "I know you think that you can use him as some sort of an interdimensional can opener, and that's fine. But don't act like you care about him, because you only care about what he can do for you." (s13e03 "Patience") I admit that I don't know for sure if this is an accurate assessment of the situation, but the fact that I would believe that it's true says something.

Sam and John also both have a tendency toward similar personalities. Both place responsibility for Sam at Dean's feet... which is oddly at cross-purposes with a lot of Sam's personality (by which I refer to previous points about how Sam has a lot of his motivation rooted in moving out from Dean's overprotective tendencies, proving he's not a child, showing he can handle himself, etc.). They leave Dean with a lot of the burden of curtailing Sam's self-control (see: s02e01 "In My Time of Dying" --- John's famous save-him-or-kill-him order --- compared with s02e11 "Playthings" ---when Sam, while drunk, demands that Dean kill him if he's out of control). Also, they have a tendency to lash out to vent anger (whereas, say what you will about Dean, but he usually hides pretty much every emotion until cornered).

As for Dean and Mary... They were both raised into the life from the very beginning (whereas John --- leaving aside the as-of-yet-unknown events of The Winchesters --- only came into it after Mary died, and Sam a) came into it slightly later than Dean --- we know he didn't know about it until he was about 11, which is still too young, but is older than Dean was --- and b) only truly embraced it after Jess). Both tended to be more the home-maker types; Mary wanted the normal life away from hunting to start a family, and Dean is repeatedly shown to be "nesting" (s08e14 "Trial and Error"), as well as having parental instincts (settling down with Lisa after "Swan Song", taking care of Bobby-John in s06e02 "Two and a Half Men", pretty much any time he's protective of Sam, etc.) and there's his adorable reaction to getting a room at the bunker.

Additionally, when they lose family members, they have very different coping mechanisms from the other two; the main parallel being, of course, making their deal (Mary dealing with Azazel in s04e03 "In the Beginning" and Dean selling his soul in the s2 finale). We don't really know how Mary grieves over an extended period of time, but Dean very clearly grieves in a different manner from John/Sam. If he can't do anything to bring someone back, he usually just shuts everything down until Sam tries to talk to him about it and then lashes out.

Also, this is probably going to seem false at first glance, but I'm saying it anyway; Dean is more empathetic. Sam wants to deal with emotion more, but he doesn't really understand it in other people; most of the time he's emotionally connected to someone --- e.g. insisting that a non-human background doesn't necessarily make someone evil, latching onto the Sam parallel in any given narrative (like Alicia Barns instead of Max) --- it's because he's got a personal parallel to them. Ironically, it's Dean who makes the suggestion that Lucifer and Chuck talk things out, "I-feel"-therapy-style, in season 11, and there are other, more subtle examples (e.g. connecting with Lucas in s01e03 "Dead in the Water", etc.)

And it also bears mentioning that the interactions between both pairs are handled similarly in-show. Season 1 has Sam and John at each others throats, and Dean mediating. Dean even points this out in s04e19 "Jump the Shark" (You know, I finally get why you and Dad butted heads so much. You two were practically the same person.) Thus, it's notable that season 12 has Dean and Mary struggling to get along, with Sam more in the middle.

I don't know that these are all the parallels, but a) I said I'd try to keep the post vaguely short and b) I've been going in circles adding/deleting stuff, and my brain is a touch scrambled... feel free to add stuff on if you have it! Or to (politely) correct stuff I said! Thanks to anon for the ask; I hope the answer was enjoyable enough!

[fairysteve]

so I'm working on something that combines this and this

and while i'm writing for myself i'm wondering if anyone else is interested so this is what I've written so far:

Steve lives in a house of horrors.

In 1976, John Harrington moved with his wife and two children to their newly built house in Hawkins, Indiana so that his eldest could follow in his footsteps by attending Hawkins High. The house isn’t built on a notable graveyard, or any ley line, or by a forest known for being haunted. It is simply a house.

For the first months, the house appears normal. John Harrington drives in to Indianapolis three days a week, to the relocated headquarters of his business. Mary Harrington becomes an active member of the PTA. Veronica Harrington starts her freshman year. Steve Harrington starts fourth grade.

Then slowly, things start to grow strange. A lot of the blame falls on Steve, being an easily distracted child with a vivid imagination.

He hasn’t been able to make friends in his grade, but Eddie Munson in the grade above him sometimes lets him ramble on about his favourite books - the Frog and Toad series and Where the Sidewalk Ends - and whatever book he’s reading at the moment. Steve have been trying to read The Ghost Belonged to Me for the last week but sometimes the words all swim together like alphabet soup. He complained about it once after the frustration got to him, so now Eddie reads it out loud to him when there isn’t anything else to do.

A lot of Steve’s time is spent alone or following after Eddie like a duckling. He wants to spend time with his big sister, but Veronica is always studying or yelling at him. The house doesn’t like yelling, so Steve tries to keep out of her way.

No-one else seems to notice that the house has likes and dislikes. They always say that it must be the wind, or the house settling, or Steve did something and forgot. He doesn’t like the last one.

The worst example is when he wants to help mum cook dinner and the house moves things around, because it always gets him yelled at and banished from the kitchen. Steve wishes the house would be nicer, since his parents never listen when he tries to explain.

And as time passes, the house gets worse.

Steve starts fifth grade, but Eddie started middle school so he’s alone again. But it’s been a year, and Harrington is once more a name people knows in Hawkins, so he gets approached by Tommy and Carol after the first few weeks. They don’t want to listen to him ramble about his favourite books or read to him when the words all swim together, but Carol lets him borrow her dolls and Tommy teaches him how to play soccer.

Veronica still doesn’t have time for him, and mum doesn’t let him help in the kitchen any longer. Dad is away five days instead of three. The house makes it more noticeable when it’s upset.

Steve gets his first scar when the house drops the hallway mirror in front of him. His parents are arguing over something in the kitchen, and the house wanted them to stop. It only succeeds in having him accidentally step on glass, and his dad bruising his arm as punishment for something he didn’t do before his mum gets to remove the shards from his feet.

The house apoogises by making his room extra toasty that winter, but it doesn’t do anything to change the disappointment in his parents eyes when they look at him.

Steve starts middle school and he wants to talk to Eddie again but there’s always something in the way.

[spockandawe]

@curlicuecal tagged me into the post meme about ten songs! I'll go ahead and post ten songs by ten artists that I've been particularly fixated on lately, it's all personal bias all the way down, babey

Colm McGuinness: Sleeping In The Cold Below - Let's start off with a representative sample, my head is filled with folk and filk and irish and shanties, just check out this artist for a clear breakdown of my tastes, because I could fill out the whole list with just this man's work. Musically speaking, if I could grow up to be anyone, it would be HIM. I yearn so hard for his instrument collection and vocal range, even if I'm operating in different octaves.

Malinda: Dúlamán - Feels slightly like cheating, because I'm fairly sure I found her through Colm McGuinness (the Hoist The Colors collab), but god, her voice is DIVINE, and she's got a fantastic balance of trad covers and newer music. Songs in gaelic can be tricky to rec, even if I'm about to do it again, but some of them just have so much bewitching LIFE that I can't resist.

Celtic Woman: Téir Abhaile Riú - I have to tell you, it was both disorienting and delightful when this started getting used as a sound in tiktoks. The short excerpt is good, but the whole song is so much fun! I know it's kind of redundant to talk up Irish songs as being catchy as hell, but this is really such a good one.

The Longest Johns: On The Railroad - Speaking of catchy... I'm a basic binch, give me a train song that sounds like a train, and I'm all over that to an embarrassing degree. Skimbleshanks isn't going to be on here, but only because it'd be cheating, I wasn't thinking about it until I started thinking about why I like this. And you get a train song that's ALSO a work song? Hell yes, gimme

Great Big Sea: Process Man - I agonized over what Great Big Sea song to include (old black rum? donkey riding? excursion around the bay?) but this is truly such a classic, it's so catchy and memorable. And it's great if you're feeling like an exploited #resource at your day job!

The High Kings: McAlpine's Fusiliers - Speaking of being an exploited, expendable resource, ONE LAST IRISH SONG. But I can't leave this out! The High Kings are so good, but McAlpine's Fusiliers is the CATCHIEST melody line by any artist. I am typing slowly because I have no choice to sing along since I opened the video to get the url, send help

Hozier: The Humours Of Whiskey - You know I really intended to have other flavors of music on here too, but. Again, the song is too catchy for me to resist. This is only a partial cover of the full song, because he's just doing it offhand. But his voice is so perfect and the delivery so flawless, I live for this 52 second clip, haha

Delta Rae: Bottom Of The River - Technically I am showing a little more range than previous entries have done, but uh, I know that's only barely/technically true. But there's so much good stuff in this weird corner! And my mainest criteria for how much I like music is how fun it is to sing along, and this is seriously peak singalong content.

The Merry Wives Of Windsor: Siuil A Run: Oh no, another gaelic title. But it's also partly in english, and this is another song I'll listen to by anyone who covers it, and another group where I'll listen to any music they produce! I recommend their entire back catalog, very strongly. Fair warning they have a notable bawdy portion of their catalog, but I'm being good and not linking something like 'come roll me away,' or 'the cockerel song,' so you can listen without fear. But they are SUCH a fun group, I love them to bits.

Mary Black: Colcannon - Ah, screw it, I have a brand. Let's wrap it up with a song that's literally about potatoes! Also an impossibly catchy melody. This song has been stuck in my head since it absolutely Ruined me with homesickness back in grad school. And you know what, I'm also linking this bonus version with worse audio, but it's a 1986 recording of the black family on tv. There's just something about watching irish singing that makes me LIVE.

--

oh no, tagging people. I'm chickening out, sorry. If you want to do it and point your finger at me, go for it! but it's been a long week and I contracted a bad case of the Shy it looks like

[sprachgitter]

studies in form: long poems

You’ve made a mistake, you’d say mysteriously, pointing at lines written by a child. Think of another word with the same root. As if words can have roots. As if words didn’t come from darkness, cat-in-the-bag words, as if our human roots were already known to us.

— Valzhyna Mort, "An Attempt at Genealogy"

My dad makes jokes about the calf dying in his sauna. Premature, storm son, mid-May freezing. My dad left him in the field first, birthed on a stone early from the stress of a storm. Dad left it—comatose—came home, then turned back for it. My dad makes jokes about the calf dying in his sauna. He goes in the bedroom and he jokes. He opens the wood sauna door and he coos: “Poor critter.” Breath: occasional. Blinkless.

— John Elizabeth Stintzi, "Cold Dying Black Wet Cold Early Thing"

Kasper did not recognize her until her scarf slipped to the floor, and then, not only did he recognize Mary as the stars had told (Venus in the ascendant or Venus in conjunction with Jupiter, or whatever he called these wandering fires), but when he saw the light on her hair like moonlight on a lost river, Kaspar remembered.

— H.D., "The Flowering of the Rod"

I balanced between destiny and dread And saw it coming, clouds bloodshot with the red Of victory fires, the raw wound of that dawn Igniting and erupting, bearing down Like lava on a fleeing population… Up on my elbows, head back, shutting out The agony of Clytemnestra’s love-shout That rose through the palace like the yell of troops Hurled by King Agamemnon from the ships.

— Seamus Heaney, "Mycenae Lookout"

from The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism: The ‘long poem’ refers to any extended poetic work, from the long lyric to the epic. Within the context of modernism, the long poem emerged as a significant genre, channeling the authority and scope of the epic yet rejecting many traditional epic devices. Most notably, many modernist long poems abandoned narrative, replacing it with other organizational principles, ranging from symbolism to collage.

[lediz-watches]

The tears of a clown

-Long, slow stare at the camera-

It had me in the first half, not gonna lie.

This show has such great MOMENTS. -frustrated screaming-

I’m liveblogging The Winchesters as a Supernatural!virgin. Please keep my lack of knowledge in mind if you continue...

In episode thoughts:

Yes, welcome back to the two-sentence horror stories! I love it!

Aww, Boy doesn’t want to Feel.

Also, adult Goosebumps again. Yessss.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh, that clown is not okay.

This is doing a wonderful job of creeping me the hell out.

Also I cannot imagine the photography skill happening right now.

Oh, that was… d’yaghh. I'm so creeped out.

Mary, please just realise you’re dating an aggressive bastard. This is your life. This is what your life is gonna be like.

Ada’s back. Oh, I kind of wasn’t expecting that.

I love this bar. Can I go to this bar?

Wow, Carlos, what’s the attitude?

I am intrigued by how witches work in this series. I want to know more about this world, where they call themselves dark force users but consider growth to be a powerful magic. Trapping a demon in a plant is considered notable, but not powerful, and they’re staying outside of wars. I'm so intrigued.

Rowena seems like another Known Character. Is she known?

This circus is obsessed with jugglers. I've counted three so far.

Oh, come on, Carlos, you’re better at comforting people than this. But then, we haven’t actually seen enough of your relationship with Mary. Maybe this is really weird for you two, and I’ve just been making assumptions based on how you treat Latika.

Yeah, can we have more Mary and Carlos interactions? This is too late in the series for me to be asking for this, but can I have that please?

Ooh, an interesting story, of men who aren’t dealing with their emotions falling victim to a travelling troupe. I like it a lot.

Oh god damn it, John, you’re not entirely wrong about Mary, but you are being such a prat. Show, do not prove him right, I do not have the emotional time for this.

Oh god damn you show.

I want you to appreciate how immediately checked out I am with this turn of events.

I’d also like to see more of Carlos and Jonathan, actually. We occasionally get the tension from Carlos being lowkey protective of Mary and him knowing full well that John is bad for her, but it’s NEVER explored.

Ooh, witch fight!

…immediately disrupted by the story I AM CHECKED OUT OF.

…That’s not Mary. John is so bad at falling for these pretend people.

John, that is not your line. I do not for a second believe you give a single damn about the world.

So that was Mary. Show. Please show. This was such a great premise. Carlos is doing so good. Live up to your moments, show.

That is SUCH A GOOD concept, such a good discussion on depression and dealing with it, and how ‘cheer up, kid’ is NOT the solution, and goddamn it show, you have such good moments.

I like Rowena. I want more Rowena and Ada and this whole situation.

Show, you better bloody well make Mary go into why it was good.

Okay, this make up scene is good, but I do not approve of these two and you will never convince me this is a good relationship.

Yeah, okay, Mary runs away from her problems too, and this episode would have been fine for her to address that if it hadn’t been such a better theme to make it about John dealing with his emotions instead and I am so annoyed that they turned it on its heel after THAT argument specifically.

This show has a habit of introducing concepts, characters, and worlds that I am so invested in, and so curious about, and want to see more of, and then shoving them off to the side as unimportant. It’s honestly like this whole series is a pilot episode promising ideas and plans and concepts that it will go into if the show gets greenlit.

(or back to chapter one if you care.)

So basically, Mr Ackles, YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE. Okay. Last episode, friends, let’s go.

[crispyblonde]

Jess said no to the reaper because she was in a panic as she watched Sam nearly get himself burned up with her. She didn't know what’s going to happen but all she was thinking about was how hard Sam’s going to feel the guilt over her death and that he had no idea that it was Brady that had killed her. While she had seen firsthand that Dean would be there to protect Sam, but she didn't know him, so she couldn't fully trust him, especially after Sam was so secretive about his family. A part of her worried about them becoming alienated from each other with the fallout of her death because Dean had taken Sam out of town after all.

Sam and Jess's apartment building was almost completely burned up. With almost none of her possessions surviving the fire, her spirit attached instead to a necklace that Sam had gotten her for her birthday that year. She had accidentally left it at her parent's home last time she had visited them. Her father had meant to drive it out to her, but he hadn't gotten around to it. This left the ghost of Jess to silently watch her family learn of her death and start grieving as they planned her funeral in San Francisco.

The boys spent a week in Palo Alto after Jessica’s death. Her father went to Stanford in search of some of her artwork and if anything had been salvageable from the fire. He gave the necklace to Sam, with a tearful speech about how Jess would have wanted him to have it. He also let Sam know that he was there for him and offered him a place to stay if he needed it. Many of the people that had known Jess on campus had made the drive to San Francisco to attend her funeral.

After that, Jess realized that she was chained to the necklace, silently on the road alongside Sam and Dean. She tried to talk to Sam, move objects... anything to get him to notice her but she continued to fall short. Her frustration ebbed and flowed, but she never quite reached the point where her rage was enough for her presence to finally be seen. Desperately, she wished that she had simply went along with the reaper. There was no way for her to soothe Sam's guilt. She instead got to stay silently beside him firsthand, watching him grieve and feel guilt about her.

She was not always there to see the horrors of all of the monsters the brothers are initially chasing down as it is all dependent on whether Sam has the necklace on him or not. Notably, she was there for the Bloody Mary case, watching as Sam's guilt manifested in the mirror. She was not present for anything in the house in Lawrence, but she did hear Sam's confession that he had seen her death before it happened. Jess received some ghostly advice from some of the ghosts in the asylum in Rockford. This started her on the path of hopefully soon being able to get Sam to set her soul free before she toes the line of becoming vengeful in any capacity. 

It still was a long while before she could get herself to move anything or be seen by Sam. She was with Sam for the case with Cassie and the haunted painting. Horrified, she was left in the impala when the crash that eventually led to John's death happened. She was pretty upset to hear what John had said about Sam and tried like hell to make her presence known to comfort him, but again this was to no avail. She remained, watching some of the cases they worked until they met Madison.

Jessica did feel for the woman, but it was hard to be there watching Sam finally let himself move on past a little bit of a kiss. Luckily, she was able to move freely around the apartment and did not see their intimacy, but she did hear it. In the motel room after he killed Madison, Jessica was finally able to make her ghost visible... terrible timing. The pain that she was stuck watching and had been unable to help him with anything while he moved on from her had finally pushed her over the edge. Her first sentence to him was a tearful plea.

"Sam... I need your help."

sidebar about her reaction to watching Sam & certain characters:

Lori Sorenson - she’s jealous as hell, primarily because seeing Sam kiss someone else for the first time, no matter how brief really got her stomach churning especially because she’s right there with him and he has no idea. she’s also a bit more of a simple, reserved girl and jess wonders if that’s what he would have preferred in her.

Meg 1.0 first encounter - boy how do you not see that she’s weirdly attaching to you so early?? i don’t trust her?? how did she end up at the bus station with you and why was she so insistent on ‘come to california with me uwu’ like girl back up. at least he got his head on straight to stick to his guns about finding dean, despite her insistence. 

John - she doesn't know what to think. she's upset that he didn't show up when Dean was dying. Happy to see that he and Sam worked out some of their issues over John's mistakes. Angry as hell to hear that he told Dean to kill Sam if he became evil. He should know that Sam is not capable of that. If John had still been alive she might have become vengeful in that moment.

Sarah Blake - no dean she’s so hot and badass wtf and i’m right here. no, i’m not okay with it 

Ellen, Jo, & Ash - heart eyes, HEART EYES

Gordon Walker - come on boys just kill this motherfucker. seems like a monster to me.

[tga-ines-soares]

Penny Dreadfuls The Accidental Murderess by Missus E. Mooney

"Accidental Murderess" is a short story by Missus E. Mooney that revolves around a woman who finds herself in a precarious situation after unintentionally causing someone's death. The narrative likely explores themes of guilt, responsibility, and the moral dilemmas faced by the protagonist in dealing with the aftermath of such an even

The Gift Of The Sailor, aka The String of Pearls, aka Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

"The String of Pearls," also known as "The Gift of the Sailor," is the serialized story that introduced the infamous character Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, to the public. It was initially published in 1846-1847 as a penny dreadful, a type of sensational fiction popular in Victorian England.

The story revolves around Sweeney Todd, a barber in London who murders his customers by pulling a lever that sends them tumbling down a chute to their deaths. With the assistance of Mrs. Lovett, who runs a pie shop below his barber shop, Todd disposes of the bodies by turning them into meat pies.

The tale is known for its macabre and dark themes, depicting the horrors of urban life and the criminal underworld in Victorian London. Over time, it has been adapted into various stage productions, movies, and other forms of media, becoming a classic part of horror literature.

Varney The Vampyre or The Feast of Blood by Thomas Preskett Prest

"Varney the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood" is a serialized gothic horror story published in the mid-19th century. It was written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, though Rymer is often considered the primary author.

The story follows the adventures of Sir Francis Varney, a vampire who preys on the living for sustenance. Varney is portrayed as a tragic figure, struggling with his vampiric nature while trying to find a cure for his condition. The narrative includes elements of romance, mystery, and the supernatural, with Varney encountering various challenges and adversaries throughout the tale.

"Varney the Vampyre" is considered one of the early works that contributed to popularizing vampire fiction in English literature. It was initially published as a series of pamphlets known as "penny dreadfuls," catering to the Victorian-era audience's taste for sensational and thrilling stories. The character of Varney has since become a notable figure in vampire lore and influenced later vampire fiction, including Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

I Am – John Clare

"I Am" is a famous poem by John Clare, an English poet from the 19th century. In this poem, Clare expresses his connection to nature and his sense of identity within it. He explores themes of self-awareness, existence, and the interconnectedness between himself and the natural world.

The poem reflects Clare's deep appreciation for the countryside and his understanding of his place within it. It speaks to his personal experiences and his profound connection to nature, emphasizing how his very being is intertwined with the landscape, animals, and elements surrounding him.

The opening lines of the poem "I Am" are:

"I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host,"

These lines set the tone for the introspective nature of the poem, delving into the poet's inner thoughts and feelings about his existence. Throughout the verses, Clare contemplates his identity, his place in society, and his relationship with the natural world.

Overall, "I Am" is a reflective piece that captures John Clare's deep introspection and his profound connection to nature as an integral part of his being.

Getting Away With Murder by Mary-Ann Verkuyl

"Getting Away With Murder" is a book by Mary-Ann Verkuyl that explores the psychology and behavior of killers who have successfully evaded capture or conviction for their crimes. It delves into various case studies and examines the tactics and strategies these individuals employed to avoid being caught.

The book likely delves into the intricacies of criminal investigations, the mistakes made by law enforcement, and the psychological aspects of criminal behavior that contributed to these killers escaping justice. It might also discuss the impact on the victims' families and the challenges faced by authorities in solving such cases.

A Better Life by Mary-Ann Verkuyl

"A Better Life" by Mary-Ann Verkuyl is a self-help book that delves into personal development and growth. It explores various strategies and techniques aimed at helping individuals improve their lives, achieve their goals, and find fulfillment. Verkuyl likely discusses topics such as setting meaningful goals, overcoming obstacles, cultivating positive habits, managing time effectively, and enhancing overall well-being. The book might offer practical advice, actionable steps, and insights to empower readers to make positive changes in their lives and create a better future for themselves.

How Sweet The Spirit of Those Departed by Connie Spears.

"Sweet the Spirit of Those Departed" by Connie Spears is a novel set in the Victorian era, centered around Penny Dreadfuls, which were cheap sensationalist fiction publications. The story likely delves into the world of Penny Dreadfuls, exploring themes of mystery, suspense, and possibly the supernatural, typical of the genre. The title itself suggests a focus on departed spirits or the afterlife, implying a potential exploration of spiritual or ghostly elements within the narrative.

Stage Door Secrets by Connie-Spears

"Stage Door Secrets" by Connie Spears is a romance novel that follows the story of a theater actress named Jenna Matthews. Jenna is determined to make a name for herself in the competitive world of Broadway. However, her plans take an unexpected turn when she crosses paths with the charming and enigmatic actor, Alex Fisher.

As Jenna navigates the challenges of her career and tries to balance her personal life, she finds herself drawn to Alex despite his mysterious past. The book delves into their budding relationship, the intricacies of the theater world, and the secrets that both Jenna and Alex are hiding. It's a tale of love, ambition, and the complexities of following one's dreams in the spotlight of Broadway.

The Curse of Persephone Templar by Patricia-Miskimins

"Curse of Persephone Templar" by Patricia Miskimins is a historical mystery novel that intertwines elements of the supernatural and suspense. The story revolves around Persephone Templar, a young woman whose life becomes entangled with an ancient curse that has haunted her family for generations.

As Persephone delves deeper into her family's history, she uncovers dark secrets and hidden truths that date back centuries. The curse seems to hold a mysterious power that affects the women in her lineage, and Persephone is determined to break free from its grasp.

Throughout the book, readers are taken on a journey through different time periods, exploring the lives of Persephone's ancestors and the origins of the curse. The novel combines elements of mystery, history, and the supernatural as Persephone races against time to unravel the curse's mysteries and save herself and her family from its ominous influence.

[medievalproject]

What's up with that? Ecclesia and Synagoga

Close up of Ecclesia and Synagoga flanking the Fürstenportal or Princely Portal of Bamberg Cathedral, July 2022

My first trip to Germany, my first encounter with Ecclesia and Synagoga. I had never seen these statues before and once I learned their names it was clear which one was which. But why are these female figures personifying the Church and the Jewish Synagogue on a Church? That led me to this post.

Ecclesia and Synagoga, the ones that survive today anyway, are most often represented by young and attractive females. Ecclesia, the Church, stands strong and confident wearing a crown and carries a chalice and staff with a cross. Synagoga is blindfolded and/or looking down and carrying a broken spear and torah scrolls.

The original Ecclesia and Synagoga from the portal of Strasbourg Cathedral now in Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame

My Ecclesia at Bamberg did not have the telltale signs of the staff with a cross or the chalice. But even with that, not knowing this symbolism, I wouldn't have put together the opposing woman as the Synagogue. It seemed to me to just depict someone blind to the faith of Christianity, not everything must be about Jews..right?

According to her book on the subject The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century, Nina Rowe explains that Ecclesia and Synagoga are generally found on the cathedrals of larger cities in northern Europe that had significant Jewish communities, especially in Germany(!) It was meant to remind Jews of their place (as if they needed the reminder) in a Christian dominated society. She notes most portal figures are from the 13th century.

So when did the Ecclesia and Synagoga depictions start?

Wikipedia says around 830, in a Crucifixion from the Drogo Sacramentary. Pic is in the public domain.

How and Why?

Ecclesia's characteristics on Christ's right hand side are already defined, the chalice collecting his blood but the Synagoga is an old gray haired man looking up. Synagoga stayed in this form, while rare, until 12th century when she became blindfolded with a broken lance. At this later time, the emphasis of Synagoga being defeated by the Church is the main objective of its symbolism and becomes a woman.

Rowe notes this timing coincides with the increasing Jewish populations in Germany and other place in Europe. There were increasing interactions between Christian and Jewish scholars and notably their different interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. The figures became a tool to reinforce the power dynamic of the Church.

Before Ecclesia met Synagoga

For centuries before her "coupling with Synagoga," Ecclesia had her own things going on. She had long been represented as the Bride of Christ taking the form of a queen. The Book of Revelation mentions "the Bride" many times and the Gospel of John talks of Christ as a "bridegroom."

Judith Glatzer Weshler expounds in A Change in the Iconography of the Song of Songs in 12th and 13th century Latin Bible, that Ecclesia imagery was sometimes conflated with the Virgin Mary, where Mary herself was depicted as the Church.

This timing is in line with the shift Nina Rowe talks about, when the portal figures appear on cathedrals. In general the 13th century was a particularly shitty time for Jews. But that's a whole other post.

Ecclesia enthroned, Prüfening Abbey, Bavaria, 12th century

There is a precedence in the Old Testament for the symbolism between God and people, via the Song of Songs, a poem that celebrates sexual love between a man and a woman.

Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel, the Jewish people. 

Christianity interprets it as an allegory of Christ and his bride, the Church.

In her incredible book, "Mother of God, A History of the Virgin Mary," Miri Rubin writes about a Christian theologian, Origen (c 185- c 254) who advised early Christian followers to market and substantiate their new religion to potential Jewish converts. He thought by focusing on the Jewish Bible, the one they already knew, they could position "Christianity truth" as the revealing of new, necessary, inescapable reinterpretation of the text they thought they knew.

Origen engrossed himself particularly in the Jewish commentary of the Songs of Songs where he found messaging to fit a Christian paradigm, and replaced the Church as the bride of Christ.

Links for more:

Ecclesia and Synagoga

Wikipedia - Song of Songs

[austinvintagetoys]

Amazing Spider-Man #42 1966 Marvel CGC 2.5 1st Mary Jane Watson's Face Revealed

Amazing Spider-Man #42 is a significant issue in the original run of "The Amazing Spider-Man" comic book series by Marvel Comics. It was written by Stan Lee and illustrated by John Romita Sr. In this issue, titled "The Birth of a Super-Hero!" Spider-Man encounters a new villain named the Rhino. The Rhino is a Russian immigrant named Aleksei Sytsevich who underwent an experimental procedure that granted him superhuman strength and a nearly indestructible suit. Spider-Man finds himself facing a formidable opponent in the Rhino, as his new adversary possesses incredible power and is seemingly unstoppable. Throughout the issue, Spider-Man must use his wits and agility to find a way to defeat the Rhino and protect the city. Amazing Spider-Man #42 is notable for introducing the Rhino as a recurring villain in Spider-Man's rogues' gallery. The character has since become a staple adversary in Spider-Man's comic book stories and adaptations. It is also where we FINALLY GET TO SEE MARY JANE'S FACE!!   Since she is such a key character in the Amazing Spider-man, it is an important issue.  

Amazing Spider-Man #42 CGC 2.5 1st Mary Jane Watson's Face Revealed - Available NOW on eBay   Some Key Issues with Mary Jane Watson Mary Jane Watson, a significant character in Spider-Man's supporting cast, has appeared in numerous comic book issues throughout Spider-Man's history. Here are some significant issues featuring Mary Jane Watson: - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #42 (1966): This issue marks the first full appearance of Mary Jane Watson, where she famously utters the line, "Face it, tiger... you just hit the jackpot!" - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #122 (1973): In this tragic issue known as "The Night Gwen Stacy Died," Mary Jane provides emotional support to Peter Parker after Gwen Stacy's death. - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #143 (1975): Mary Jane reveals her troubled home life and opens up to Peter Parker, offering a deeper look into her character. - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #259 (1984): This issue features a crucial moment in the relationship between Peter Parker and Mary Jane, where Peter proposes to her. - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #290 (1987): Mary Jane and Peter Parker get married in this issue, marking a major milestone in their relationship. - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #600 (2009): Mary Jane and Peter Parker share a heartfelt reunion and reminiscence about their past in this special anniversary issue. - "The Amazing Spider-Man" #801 (2018): Mary Jane and Peter have a touching conversation about their relationship and the impact they've had on each other's lives.   Read the full article

[wednesdaytonight]

Children of God (2025) focuses on a team of paranormal investigators. Jane Caballero; the face of the show,  Robin Miller; techie, Oz Reeve; the show’s editor who is driving the team’s van, Peter Cook; a self-professed medium and Thomas Gower; their research buff, have permission to film in the Immaculate Conception Rehabilitation Sanctuary, abandoned after Quince Creeker Killer’s rampage. The group gets separated, drifting apart without seeming to realize it, each discovering a cache of bizarre findings. Robin finds a hand-written confessional, asking “God” to forgive them for burying the asylum filled with still living “lunatics” to make way for the more lucrative modern rehabilitation center, Oz finds strange documents depicting some new age esoteric ritual about the power of blood and photos of the patients, who are bestial and malformed, being experimented on, Jane and Peter find each other just as the Jane is undoing the chain lock on the water therapy area. The pool is dry. The pair unearth the covered steps, making the journey into the old asylum, Thomas has not been seen since the separation. The two talk aloud, that this must be some older part of the building as it looks neglected but spared from the fire that had done so much damage to the above building. Peter gradually stops replying, his body swaying strangely as he opens one of the doors from the many doors in the space, lit only by their small flashlights. It is a room seemingly untouched by time. Crayon drawings, depicting monstrous forms engaging in every day life at the asylum, line the wall along with more refined drawings of spaces; buildings, rooms, architectural features. Jane wonders about this all out loud while Peter talks about the quince being a fruit that is unpleasant when eaten raw. Jane asks him in an urgent way to help her gather the papers up, which snaps Peter out of it. As they bring the papers into a more open lobby area, Robin is sorting through papers,  between two sheets a picture falls. She picks it up. The picture depicts a family, the Quince Creek Killer among them, though unknown to her; it is the photograph of them that Detective John had in Child of God: Final Revelations (1993). She flips the photo to look at the back, it reads ‘Architect and his family, 1997′. Back in the buried asylum Jane and Peter have placed all the pieces of interior drawings together, strange narrow tube like lines connect them, and at the center of the whole thing: a circle. As Jane and Thomas share mutual looks of confusion, they look up from their work and find that they are in the heart of a decrypt blood-stained church. Stain glass is shown intact, with sediment of the Earth behind it. They are deeper into the ground than should be possible. Notably, a moment that is frequently cut from broadcasts of this movie, is Thomas standing in front of a stain glass depicting Mary in coitus with a serpent. The medium is absent from the rest of the movie. Jane stands in front of the circular opening of the floor, millipedes and centipedes crawl suddenly out from the darkness of the pit, causing her to step back in alarm and disgust; as she does so her arms are caught, pulled back behind her by an unknown attacker, whose identity is quickly revealed to be that of Thomas Gower. He handles her roughly, mocking touches of affection. He monologues that he had been waiting for this moment, to get back at her for breaking up with him and humiliating him in front of the team and in front of their audience. She manages to struggle out of his grasp and a chase ensues around the altar, coming to an end when he loses his footing; smashing his head against the fountain, the impact echoes off the walls. Thomas bleeds into the dry fountain and it begins to gurgle, spewing thick old blood down on to the dying man. Horrified, she starts to run, becoming more and more lost within the old asylum. She stumbles, falling to the ground, exhausted. In the dim candle light of the room, a small hand extends, the shadow seen against the opposing wall. The shadow of Jane’s hand reaches up to take the other’s hand. Jane is then seen standing up by herself, there is no one else there. Her hand is now drenched in blood, she turns directions, making her way back through the old asylum to the stairs that lead to the pool. As Jane travels through the above area, she passes by the empty rooms where Robin and Oz were making their discoveries, she becomes progressively more bloody. By the time she reaches the front door her form is caked in drying blood. Jane pushes the front doors open, into the light of day, which overtakes the visuals in a blinding light. Credits.