#villa diodati gang

[terryboot]

My bullet journal for November. Did something a little different this time.

If youve been following me for a while then you'll know i love Mary Shelley and her contemporaries, especially those who were with her at Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816. But in the last week or so i've been particularly drawn to them. I read The Villa by Rachel Hawkins which is partly inspired by the Villa Diodati gang and havent stopped thinking about them since.

Doing a Romantic Era poets theme has been in the back of my head for a while but this is the first time i've actually thought of a way to do it and i'm pretty happy with how its turned out! Each week will feature a different member of the group but of course Shelley herself had to be first!

[socialistexan]

After my full series watch through, I've put together a list of guilty pleasure Doctor Who stories.

These are stories that are either 1) rated poorly by the Doctor Who fandom but I really enjoy, 2) stories that I ranted poorly but really enjoyed, or 3) have aspects that are widely mocked but I love. I'll try not to count stories that are rated above a 7 by the fandom that I am even higher on (like Warriors' Gate, Kinda, The Haunting Of Villa Diodati) with one notable exception.

(formated as Story (my score / fan score): reason why)

The Chase (7.9 / 6.6):

I adore the campy and just flat out wacky vibe of this serial. From the companions dancing to the Beatles on the Time-Space television to the Daleks fighting Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and a Banshee and LOSING. Just so much fun. Pure 60's nonsense.

Monster of Peladon (6.6 / 5.3):

Anyone noticing a pattern? I love camp. I love wacky designs. I love off the wall ideas and bizarre design. I love Alpha Centari. Is this story good, oh g-d no. Did I have fun? You bet.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs (8.0 / 7.5):

Only because people love to hate the rubber Dinosaurs in this episode, but I absolutely adore them. I'm a sucker for kinda crappy practical effects, like, that's why I'm watching this show. I ordered the lemonade!

More under the cut since this is a long post

Image of the Fendahl (8.1 / 5.8(!)):

How is the story not more embraced as a near-classic by the fandom? I'll never know. It has fantastic direction, acting (even from the guest cast which was a rarity in classic Who at times), tone, atmosphere, and vibes. The story is a little derivative of, say, The Daemons, and it has a slightly slower pace with more quiet scenes (though that's a positive for me), but that's really it.

Black Orchid (7.8 / 6.5):

I tended to be higher on shorter serials that felt right for their length and didn't overstay their welcome, and this is that kind of story. Was it amazing? No. Did we get a few fun moments in a non-scifi story? Yeah.

Timelash (4.0 / 4.2)

This is one of the worst episodes the show has ever done, but at least it's the fun kind of bad. It's just so out there and takes so many chances, I kind of commend it for that. It's in that So Bad It's Good territory for me.

Paradise Towers (7.4 / 6.4):

This was camp from the lens of the late-80's. The aesthetics and tone are like a surrealist dream. I think Happiness Patrol is a better version of this story, but you really can't top the neon crab eyes, the roving girl gangs in bright colors, the Monty Python style farsical parody of fascism, or the evil lesbian cannibal grandmas.

New Earth (7.3 / 6.1)

This might be nostalgia talking, but I love this episode. Tennant and Piper are delightful. The cat nurses are so much fun. AND CASSANDRA MY BELOVED. I know 10's first season was rough, but man I loved this.

The Halloween Apocalypse (8.0 / 6.6)

I can could put A LOT of 13's episodes on here, because I was higher on a lot of her episodes (Eve of the Daleks is another I could have chosen here), but I'll pick this one because I was just delighted the whole way through. Big ouppy! Dan's house shrinking! A Nitro-9 reference! And it's set on the best day of the year, Halloween!

[doctorhuh]

Perhaps the real monster is Cyberman after all...this week we're talking about S12EP8, "The Haunting of Villa Diodati", in which Team TARDIS/The Squad/The Fam/The Gang helps Mary Shelley come up with Frankenstein because there's no way she could do it herself apparently. Vibe check!

[readingoals]

I wasn't expecting to get a fourth book read this month, what with only having 4 days to go. So I decided to pick up The Villa since it was the shortest from my possible TBR I posted at the start of the month, and I figured I'd have a reasonable shot of getting through it.

Well folks, I raced through it in 2 days. I found it unbelievably readable. Hawkins' writing really pulls you through and the dual timelines - one set in the present day, one in the 70s - as well as some short extracts from other in universe works, make you feel like you can get through just one more chapter.

The present day storyline was interesting enough, the suspicious best friend, the scummy ex husband. It was all very intriguing. I was so curious where it was leading and how it would all shake out. But for me, where it really shone was the 70s storyline.

Now, thats because I'm a huge nerd about Mary Shelley and her contemporaries, and the 70s sections are all heavily inspired by the summer Mary and Percy Shelley spent with Byron, Polidori and Claire Clairmont. It's no secret that the Romantic poets, and especially the Villa Diodati gang, are of particular interest to me. Mary Shelley has long been one of my fave historical figures (hence why shes my icon here). I've read numerous books about that summer and those people. So I found the 70s chapters so enthralling and emotional. The tragedy of that group of people - both the fictional 70s musician versions, and the 19th century poets - was so beautifully written, the characters so tangible. Gotta admit I teared up more than once, and now all I feel is an insane urge to find something to read or watch about the real historic people.

[legends-of-time]

Thorn Bush (Doctor Who Story) - Materlist

Warnings:

Major Character Death, Minor Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Period Typical Attitudes, Cannon-Typical Violence

Physical description:

Kathy has light brown hair and blue eyes

Summary:

Blimey, where does she begin?

Well her name is Katherine but most call her Kathy and her age, well that's the real question, a complicated one.

——

Kathy is someone who is reborn into the world of Doctor Who from ours. Kathy meets the Doctor and their companions in multiple different places in their time streams throughout the Whoniverse. Not the usual companion or love interest.

Doctors 9-14

Chapters:

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter 2: Tooth and Claw

Chapter 3: The Girl Who Died

Chapter 4: Robot of Sherwood

Chapter 5: The Bells of Saint John

Chapter 6: The Pandorica Opens

Chapter 7: The Big Bang

Chapter 8: The Death of the Doctor

Chapter 9: The Day of the Doctor Part One

Chapter 10: The Day of the Doctor Part Two

Chapter 11: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith

Chapter 12: The End of Time Part One

Chapter 13: The End of Time Part Two

Chapter 14: The Eleventh Hour Part One

Chapter 15: The Eleventh Hour Part Two

Chapter 16: The Shakespeare Code

Chapter 17: The Witchfinders Part One

Chapter 18: The Witchfinders Part Two

Chapter 19: The Woman Who Lived

Chapter 20: Legend of the Sea Devils

Chapter 21: Thin Ice

Chapter 22: The Haunting of Villa Diodati

Chapter 23: The Next Doctor

Chapter 24: War of the Sontarans

Chapter 25: The Unquiet Dead

Chapter 26: The Paternoster Gang

Chapter 27: The Snowmen Part One

Chapter 28: The Snowmen Part Two

Chapter 29: The Crimson Horror

Chapter 30: The Name of the Doctor

Chapter 31: Deep Breath Part One

Chapter 32: Deep Breath Part Two

Chapter 33: Survivors of the Flux

Chapter 34: The Vanquishers

Chapter 35: Family Time and Tying Up Loose Ends

Chapter 36: The Unicorn and the Wasp Part One

Chapter 37: The Unicorn and the Wasp Part Two

Chapter 38: Daleks in Manhattan

Chapter 39: Evolution of the Daleks

Chapter 40: Across the Pond

Chapter 41: Captain Jack Harkness

Chapter 42: Demons of the Punjab Part One

Chapter 43: Demons of the Punjab Part Two

Chapter 44: Idiot's Lantern

Chapter 45: Village of Angels

Chapter 46: Blink

Wattpad access

fanfiction.net access

Ao3 access

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Gotham Without Summer

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/HE0Ftcv by RobberBaroness Reports from Lord Byron's personal physician are a bit...unfocused... Words: 121, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M Characters: Bruce Wayne, Jonathan Crane, The Villa Diodati Gang Relationships: Jonathan Crane/Mary Shelley Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Historical, Scarecrow as Polidori, Ficlet read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/HE0Ftcv

[illfoandillfie]

back to keeping you up to date with my woman in white watching experience: i'll be honest i find laura kind of annoying and feel like marian and walter would actually make a great couple BUT laura is also incredibly relatable bc i too would be willing to risk it all for victorian era painter ben hardy

omg i love these updates

i love marian so much! the way she dresses is enough to make me swoon a little tbh and every time i watch it im like walter ya moron shes not engaged and youd be cute as shit together but alas he does not listen. 

lowkey wanna read the book now, see how close the adaptation is and all that.

but yeah you are absolutely correct, laura knows whats up and i can’t hold anything against her cause lord knows id wanna break off the engagement my father made for me to a baronet on his deathbed just to run off with victorian era painter ben hardy

[loganslowdown4]

{edit note: I’m going to compile a list of every single Doctor Who episode, short, mini, special & spin-off in one place that I started back in 2019. These posts are going to be by season, I’ll be working on getting caught up and then go back and transfer my posts here…}

Doctor Who Season 12 (13th)

DW 1201-Spyfall Pt 1

Oh. My. God. I won’t spoil it, but the ending of this episode is BONKERS. 😭 I am SO PROUD of Chibnall for actually writing a decent episode with STAKES AGAIN!😭 I warms my 2 hearts so much! Decent build up too. Still wish the gang all had more downtime but 🤷🏼‍♀️

DW 1202-Spyfall Pt 2

Sacha Dhawan as the Master is my kind of energy. I ❤️ his chemistry with the Doctor. I definitely appreciated the female representation of history, but the story itself was a bit clunky. Still, fun! Who is this timeless child anyway? I’ve heard of it before but 🤷🏼‍♀️

DW 1203-Orphan 55

Come for the twist, stay for the guilt!

To be fair, Jodie has gathered a whole young fanbase that probably needs a tiny lesson shoehorned in for their own good. Probably. It’ll be better if they tied this ep to a future one, so we’ll see I guess. Bonus: Sassy Doctor is back!

DW 1204-Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

This one is just ok, but this usually happens midseason. I kept thinking the scorpion aliens were the Racnoss & got excited; they aren’t.😒 OMG, scorpion queen? Our own Anj Mohindra back in the Whoniverse! She rocked it! I miss Rani & SJA 😢

DW 1205-Fugitive of the Judoon

Still, as shocking as the climax was, it still felt a bit...done before? I dunno. We had the war doctor. We had the chameleon circuit. I’m glad for the call backs. I guess I’m happy they didn’t already replace the Master!

DW 1206-Praxeus

So...um ok? We just aren’t going to address the last ep? We’re gonna get another shoehorned environmental message? Cool, cool. Except this ep was balls. The story was so sloppy, I hated it. It really should have been Autons, that would have been so much better.

DW 1207-Can You Hear Me?

This was a better ep for sure. We got a little more backstory on each of our mains (why is it so hard to write for them? Why do the writers insist on keeping them dull and one dimensional?) and the villain was very good. But still no answers? Cmon!

DW 1208 - The Haunting of Villa Diodati

I did like this one. I think after my 2 year hiatus of watching Doctor Who, I have a bit different perspective. Still not a massive fan of Jodie’s Doctor, but that’s mostly because she doesn’t ever give this serious air when things in the story get grim. It never feels like there are any stakes. This one was good though. Not a fan of the cyberman plot at all, but liked the Mary Shelley/Lord Byron plot. To see them as just flippant rich people (which they were irl) is really funny to me. Creative and brilliant yes, but also a tad shallow at times. Nobody’s perfect haha.

DW 1209 - Ascension of the Cybermen

[intuitive-revelations]

Ok, so it looks like episode 8 is going to contradict Mary’s Story, which is fine, if a bit of a shame...

“Nobody mention Frankenstein. Nobody interfere. Nobody snog Byron.” Should be easy right?

The Doctor and gang arrive at the Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, in 1816 – on a night that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The plan is to spend the evening soaking up the atmos in the presence of some literary greats – but the ghosts are all too real. And the Doctor is forced into a decision of earth-shattering proportions…

...but man, now I’m just imagining how wild it would be if Eight just suddenly showed up halfway through the episode.

[isagrimorie]

[initial reactions] Doctor Who and the Haunting of Villa Diodati - 12x08

I really liked this episode, it had the proper creepiness of a ghost story and good mystery in the center.

And of course, the Cyberman appearing to find the Cyberium, the very epicenter of the Cybermen army.

But before this happens the Doctor and the gang are off to jaunt in Villa Diodati to witness the writing of Frankenstein and ended up more than they could have bargained for.

Also apparently the house really does have ghosts played with a brilliant trick that’s very reminiscent of The Haunting of Hill House… which I just now got must be a reference to the Netflix adpatation.

And a subtextual confirmation that Yaz really is into the Doctor: “Or… you could try asking him.” Yaz suggested to Claire Claremont, who she found trying to break and enter into Byron’s room.

“I have. His answers only increase the enigma.”

And then the most revealing of all, “I know someone like that.”

Yaz tries to tell Claire that Mary Shelley might be right and should just move on but Claire counters with: “This enigmatic person of yours would you trade them for reliable and dull?”

“My person’s a bit different.”

So yeah, I think we can put down as confirmation about Yaz and her feelings towards the Doctor.

Also Byron is such a douchebag, pursuing the Doctor while being (semi)attached to Claire, but the Doctor was all: LOL. No.

“She is from somewhere much, much stranger.” “The North.”

And then it’s revealed that something has arrived in Villa Diodati and that something is the Cyberium and with it the Lone Cyberman that Jack warned the Doctor about. As soon as the Doctor realizes it’s about the Cybermen Thirteen determines to work this alone.

“One Cyberman but then thousands, Humans like all of you changed into empty soulless shells. No feeling, no control, no way back. I will not lose anyone else to that!” Thirteen might not have said Bill’s name but its clear she’s thinking of Bill Potts. Because Bill could feel but there was no way the Doctor could turn her back into a Human.

It had to be by deus ex puddle that Bill lived again and even then I don’t think the Doctor believed the Bill they met in Twice Upon a Time survived.

And boy do I love Thirteen confronting the Cyberman, Ashad, the way she was just sitting as Ashad the Cyberman looked for the Cyberium.

It all culminates in the Doctor making a decision when she realizes that Percy Byshe Shelley’s life is on the line and then she does her most flawed Doctor thing. The thing all Doctor’s fall prey to, the burden they feel protecting the Web of Time and the singularity that provides: “Yeah. ‘Cause sometimes this team structure isn’t flat. It’s mountainous, with me at the summit, in the stratosphere. Alone. Left to choose. Save the poet. Save the universe. People burn now or tomorrow. Sometimes even I can’t win.”

It’s a choice between stopping the revival of the Cybermen again or the destruction of the universe by destroying history. This is Thirteen’s speech about time and fixed time.

Mary steps up and tries to appeal to Ashad and we think she gets to him and the Doctor seems hopeful that she will be successful but it doesn’t work. Ashad has bought into the superiority of the Cybermen, Thirteen uses a Time Lord trick, making Percy believe his death so the Cyberium is released.

After a brief struggle Thirteen gets the Cyberium, which has adapted to her Time Lord body (which to be honest I feel is terrifying, who knows what could have happened to the Doctor if it remained longer with her?).

Ashad threatens Earth again, and maybe Thirteen could have thought more clearly but Ashad threatened Earth, and the thing is it’s not only the web of time that’s going to be damaged but Earth as well. The Doctor’s adopted planet. Also: LOL, at the Thanos reference.

Thirteen tells the gang that they have to talk and then tells them she will drop them off in 2020 but Yaz, fired up, wants to help and gives Thirteen the coordinates. They want to stay and they throw the choice back at Thirteen, who as Byron finishes reading his poem:

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before; The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

And Thirteen looks disturbed that these brilliant Humans she’s with wants to join her.

LET’S KEEP MAXINE ALDERTON.

[softly-speaking-valkyrie]

More Doctor Who Ideas...

Right so I love the episodes where the Doctor and gang go back in time and end up meeting either a historical figure or a celebrity, call it misguided or weird, but I think those tend to be some of my more liked episodes set in the past. 

The Unquiet Dead? Awesome! Rosa? Really fucking good episode. The Haunting of Villa Diodati? Probably one of the best episodes. The Unicorn and the Wasp? Thrilling but we don’t talk about the writer. 

So here’s some more ideas...

The Doctor and the gang aim for early 1910s Britain but land in the rear lines of the French trenches before the Battle of the Somme. Something is causing all the men to become sick and decrepit, even disfigured. The Brits are saying its the Kaiser and a new gas weapon, but The Doctor and J.R.R. Tolkein believe something more mysterious is at play.

When a real alien spaceship crash lands in Tel Aviv during the 1970s, The Doctor meets something of a controversial hero of theirs as concept art for one of the most famous science-fiction franchises in history begin to come to life, and beings of immense power drafted by Ralph McQuarrie and George Lucas threaten to destroy the entire human race.

An alien nobleman seems to be taking numerous human brides in the English countryside, only after a few weeks they are never seen again and screams can be heard in the night. When the Doctor lands with the fam, they have to team up with a family of historically important women - the Bronte’s to uncover the truth and assert female power over a powerful alien.

Just basically another adventure with Ada Lovelace. The Doc needs to be with her again, I’m not asking much there, just more Ada pretty please.

[lucyreviewcy]

Doctor Who - Series 12: The Haunting of Villa Diodati

The gang visit Mary Shelley and pals on the night that she started writing Frankenstein, but something wicked is afoot. And a hand. And a skull. 

This was actually cracking. I really enjoyed this episode of Doctor Who. Whittaker’s Doctor guided us through a spooky Gothic adventure with all kinds of telly-science nonsense and ghostly chills. The companions were also there, neither adding a tonne to the plot nor detracting from it which put them in my good books. There was a fun bit where the Doctor put on a fancy helmet and I felt like there was something to her character beyond “90s children’s TV presenter.” Refreshing. 

Ironically, given half the characters in this episode were actual writers, the plot was probably the weakest part. By the last scene I was about as lost for answers as the characters were for a route out of the house. Nevertheless, there were fun twists and turns and Graham got to eat a snack, which I appreciated. Companions rarely get to eat, unless they’re Rose and they’re eating chips, I was glad to see the basic human function of “consuming food” demonstrated. What are companions for if not to appear human? Graham also spent a long time looking for a toilet, a nice reminder that hanging out in the past isn’t all fun and games.

I really enjoy spooky Doctor Who. Some of my favourite episodes from the reboot include Midnight, Listen and Hide. I love it when simple yet elegant plot devices are used to induce a bit of a shiver, without giving me actual nightmares as a result. This episode had the exact kind of spooky quality I want from a chilling Doctor Who tale. 10/10 for mood, 6/10 for plot. Maximum rain, maximum spook. Don’t get me wrong, there were some nice character sub-plot resolutions going on, and this episode also didn’t seem to have very much of a moral to it, which was a relief. It got a little bit tangled and confusing towards the end, which perhaps better than the resolution being shouted directly into the camera by the Doctor. 

[watchpartycentral]

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 12 WATCH PARTY

Wednesday 02/19/20 @ 7pm CST - Watch Party Presents: Doctor Who Series 12 Watch Party

“Come on then, you lot. Places to go.”

Happy New Year Whovians! The new season is finally upon us and Watch Party Central is celebrating with Whitaker Wednesdays. So whether you’ll be watching for the first time or just want to watch again in a group setting with fellow fans, get a shift on and come sign up today.

12x08 “The Haunting of Villa Diodati ”

The Doctor and her gang arrive at the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva in 1816 on the night that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The plan is to spend the evening soaking up the atmos in the presence of some literary greats, but the ghosts are all too real, and the Doctor is forced into a decision of earth-shattering proportions.

Runtime: 1hr.          

                                      ____________________

Here’s How It Works: Just send me an IM or an ask to let me know you’re interested between now and 7pm cst Wednesday, 02/19/20 and I’ll send you the link to kast 30 minutes prior to the viewing.

Likes and reblogs are appreciated but they do not count as subscribing. You will need to send an IM or ask and make sure you can receive IMs to receive the link.

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

Lord Byron and Mazeppa for the Villa Diodati asks? :)

omg i love you thank you lyra!! sorry this is SO long but i have stories because essentially my friends and i are idiots 🖤💫

Lord Byron: what's the boldest thing you've ever done?

hmmm well this isn't necessarily bold so much as it is stupid, but one summer me and my friends started taking our friend's mom's car out for joy rides at 1am whenever we would have sleepovers. and when i say "taking" i really mean stealing, because we didn't have her permission and also we were all 14yo dumbasses who thought because we'd driven our parents' car once in a parking lot, we had all the skills needed to drive on an actual road. it was all highly illegal. do not recommend or condone.

anyway, the trick was, we'd sneak out my friend's window (stupid), climb across her roof onto the overhang of the garage (stupid), and hop down to the roof of the car to the ground (stupid). we'd get to work taping paper towels over the headlights (just plain dumb), and put the car in neutral, letting it roll down the drive without turning on the engine so as not to wake the parents (even more dumb). then we'd go pick up The Gang at their respective homes and head to ihop.

sometimes, if pancakes didn't fill our mischief making voids, we'd fuck around and film stupid videos in walmart (like idiots). then, at around 4am i.e. before the sun rose, we'd drive everyone home and tuck ourselves into bed with the chirping of the birds like we'd been there all night nonethewiser.

that summer must've been a summer for stupid decisions because it was also the summer we made a habit of sleeping in sleeping bags on my friend's roof, which was flat on top but still incredibly stupid of us. we'd watch scary movies on my friend's i-touch and eat pizza (like fools because it would invariably attract mosquitos/other critters) and play truth or dare games which would almost always end in someone being dared to jump off the roof into my friend's pool naked for a skinny dip.

like i said, we were such dumbasses. i do not condone any of this, and looking back, i'm actually quite shocked we're alive and well today. darwinism definitely should have scorched us into oblivion like the little skid marks we were. but alas.

i haven't done anything all that reckless or bold since. except perhaps up and move to london after i graduated high school because why the hell not get my degree in a foreign country? that was definitely more bold than stupid (actually one of the best decisions of my life, and i highly recommend studying abroad if you're able), so perhaps that should've been my original answer. but now you get a novel-length story AND an answer. lucky you.

Mazeppa: how did you recover from your last bout of suffering?

this will be a surprisingly short answer because books. that's it. that's the whole answer.

okay nvm. specifically these books:

six of crows duology by leigh bardugo

a court of thorns and roses series by sarah j maas******

the folk of the air trilogy by holly black

books are always the answer. unless they are the question, which they often times are. for instance, what book shall i read next?

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Gotham Without Summer

by RobberBaroness Reports from Lord Byron's personal physician are a bit...unfocused... Words: 121, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M Characters: Bruce Wayne, Jonathan Crane, The Villa Diodati Gang Relationships: Jonathan Crane/Mary Shelley Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Historical, Scarecrow as Polidori, Ficlet via https://ift.tt/HE0Ftcv

[illfoandillfie]

@brian-maybe-not you’re gonna regret getting me started on this but here’s some facts (some fun, some less so) about the teh romantics. i know comparatively little about byron and keats than the shelleys but i tried to put in a mix of stuff.

when he was at school percy was known for having a bit of a temper and one time stabbed another boy's hand with a fork. 

he and his friend Thomas Hogg (who he later encouraged mary to sleep with) got in BIG trouble at Eton for writing and printing pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. 

percy was a big john keats stan and got super excited when they met but keats thought he was knob.

speaking of shelley loving keats, when keats died shelley wrote a 495 line poem as a tribute and when shelley drowned he was basically only identified because of volume of keats' poems he carried on him. 

after his death they burned shelley’s body (because they weren’t allowed to carry it home) but his heart (or maybe his liver or something but they thought it was his heart) was calcified and didn’t burn. One of their friends wanted to keep it but byron convinced him to give it to mary. Mary kept it with locks of hair from her deceased children wrapped up in a page of the poem he wrote for keats. 

the reason mary and percy got married, despite both of them being opposed to the whole concept, was that percy’s first wife committed suicide and he wanted custody of their kids. His lawyer told him it’d make a better case if he could show he was in a traditional sort of relationship (to combat the stories of his free love atheistic ideals). it didn’t work and the kids ended up elsewhere.

(he’d actually eloped with his first wife when he was 19 and she was 16... similar to what he did with mary)

one time while they were travelling, percy and mary stayed overnight in a hotel. They had to sign in and shelley listed their destination as “Hell” and his occupation as “ I am a lover of humanity, a democrat and an atheist.”

 Byron signed into a hotel and put down his age as 100 years old (he was actually in his early 20s)

i have previously mentioned that byron was a bitch to polidori but occasionally polidori would get the last word. One day when the whole group was out on the lake polidori accidentally struck byron in the knee with his oar. as mary tells it: Byron “without speaking, turned his face away to hide the pain. After a moment he said, ‘Be so kind, Polidori, another time, to take more care, for you hurt me very much.‘—'I am glad of it,’ answered the other; ‘I am glad to see you can suffer pain.’”

There were so many rumours about what the gang were getting up to at Villa Diodati that a hotel nearby set up a telescope and let people pay to watch them for a while.

frankenstein wasn’t the only book mary wrote. She published quite a few novels and short stories. one novel was called The Last Man and is sometimes credited as being the first apocalypse novel

The Last Man is really interesting - it was written after byron died. byron and mary were fairly close, especially after shelley’s death. mary helped byron transcribe his poems and she stayed with him for a while. So in The Last Man theres three key characters. One is clearly inspired by percy, one by byron and the main one could be read as a stand in for mary. The mary-esque character is the titular last man, surviving the apocalypse alone and god it’s so clearly about how alone mary felt after her best friends had all gone off and died stupidly young. 

There’s a quote from her diary. “At the age of twenty-six, I am in the condition of an aged person. All my old friends are gone. I have no wish to form new.” which is so fucking heartbreaking.

Frankenstein was dedicated to mary’s father and he was a big influence on her writing - Frankenstein is all about creatures created by man/an absence of mothers which was obviously something mary thought a lot about growing up since her mother died just after giving birth to mary (an infection because doctors didn’t know they had to was their hands) also one of her other books, Mathilda, is all about a father/daughter relationship although it also deals with incest stuff 

mary and percy shared journals while they were together, both writing accounts of their travels and day to day lives in the same book, all of which mary kept right up until she died when she was around 60.

mary is actually teh reason percy is so well known today. He didn’t have much success as a poet while he was alive. after his death mary wanted to publish a biography about him but his father, who disagreed with his whole life essentially, wouldn’t let her. Instead she got permission to publish an anthology of his work. She put it together herself, every poem he’d written, and then added such extensive footnotes explaining when and where and why he’d been inspired to write what he wrote that it was essentially a biography anyway. 

one time byron practically disappeared, neither shelley nor keats nor anyone else had heard from him i ages so shelley was worried and set out to look for him. he found him in paris having so much sex he was nearly dead from dehydration

byron also had a daughter! Ada Lovelace who was incredibly smart and into mathematics (her mother hated poets for some reason lmao and wouldn’t let her get into writing). Ada is known for her work with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine and often cited as being one of the first computer programmers 

after percy left his wife, harriet, for mary he sent her a letter that was basically like “we’re still friends tho yeah?” and invited her to join his utopian society that he was trying to create. Harriet did not reply.

claire went on to live in russia, working as a governess

OH! and just so this doesn’t seem completely off this blog’s topic: lord byron was described by Lady Caroline Lamb as “mad bad and dangerous to know” which is also the titled of The Cross’ second album.

(actually, it’s funny that i love queen and the romantics so much because both groups are tied to the same area around Lake Geneva - queen in  montreux, and the romantics to villa diodati in cologny which is a little further round the lake. man i’d love to go there.)