friendly reminder that my university uses the taxidermied body of its founder as the chief librarian so every time i swipe my card to sit in the library and study he’s just sat in his glass cabinet following me w his sunken glass eyes like he knows i still have fines overdue
incase anyone thot i was kidding….like i know it was his own dying wish but someone shoulda said no….
he also attends meetings
oh it’s okay; that’s not his real head. it’s wax. you’re not actually seeing any of his body
Oh man, so, this is Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy sodding Bentham, architect of my earliest night frights. This bastard, this walnut-headed corpse, made me afraid to turn my night-light off for months. And I don’t even go here.
Things you need to know about this whole bloody farce:
firstly, as some people have pointed out, he’s not exactly in the library, which is probably for the best, because that honestly just hands students an excuse not to go to the library on a plate. “Sorry I didn’t do the reading, but Jeremy fucking Bentham was staring into my frightened soul again.” Universities rely on students not dropping out because they’re too afraid to study under the watchful eye of an eldritch abomination, so he’s in the cloister, apparently. Not that that’s much better.
secondly, no, that is not his real head. Don’t panic. You aren’t staring into the sunken eyes of a corpse. Instead, you’re staring into the sunken eyes of an eerily lifelike wax head, deliberately coloured so as to give the pallor of death and mummification which, as I’m sure we can all agree, is just fine. Why mummification, you ask?
well, because Jeremy Bentham was a bit weird, all things considered. From the age of 21, Bentham had bequeathed his body to be dissected by a family friend, which honestly is not what I’d personally use my illustrious family connections for, but that’s fine. This pal ultimately died before Bentham did, so Bentham’s dissection was carried out by his philosophical disciple, Thomas Southwood Smith. Bentham also instructed Smith to create an ‘auto icon’ of his body, which is a fancy way of saying ‘put me in a goddamn glass box and make me look as not-dead as possible’. This was to consist of his skeleton, padded out with hay and dressed in his favourite gladrags, and his actual mummified head, which was to be mummified so as to resemble Bentham as he was when he lived. However:
Bentham, although probably not ever in line to become the 6th member of One Direction, did not look like a raisin. His mummified head, though? Oh boy. Oh boy, did Smith fuck that up. He was something of a maverick, and decided to mummify Bentham’s head based on practices perfected by indigenous peoples of New Zealand. Those practitioners had had centuries to perfect their art. Smith did not. The end result is honestly too creepy for me to post here, but needless to say, it did not look like Bentham did in life. Unless Bentham looked like a shrunken prune with wispy white hair, anyway.
for a long time, Bentham’s body was displayed with the skeleton and wax head making up his ‘auto icon’, with his real head in a box by his feet. A side note here: I once saw a photo of this as a kid and it gave me nightmares for about 6 months. Howevs, Bentham is on display at a university, so you know what that means. Yes, it means that students kept stealing the head as a fun prank. Let me repeat that: for a jovial funtime goof, teens stole the disembodied, shrivelled skull of the father of modern utilitarianism. Which is fine.
the only real parts of Bentham in that figure now are his hair, which they took from the skull, and his skeleton. Not that that makes it any less creepy, but this is essentially a headless classroom skeleton in a fancy padded outfit with a wax head. Writing it out, that kind of makes it worse.
the real head is now locked away, ostensibly so that students can’t keep terrifying their flatmates with it by using it as the world’s most haunting Scream mask, but probably in reality just to stop the fucking nightmares.
except it’s about to go on display again, so run for the hills, I guess.
I heard that drunk undergrads used to steal Jeremy’s head and play football with it.
2/? I find myself hiding or lying about my friendships with people who are “impure shippers” the way I used to hide or lie about my friends who were not Christian. A few years ago I was very sex-positive – now, after this place, I find myself associating it with shame and sin again. In my family it was always assumed that it was my job to take care of the kids when there was no one else present even if I didn’t want to,
3/? and now I am forced to have the same job on the internet because there are some kids who happen to share my interests. As a Christian, I was told that whenever I had sexual desire I should talk to God about it to make sure it was what I really felt, and on here whenever I have sexual desire I’m told to “examine it to make sure it’s not for bad reasons.” I was told that
4/4 God would punish me for sinful thoughts. On here I will be punished for Problematic thoughts. It is so unsubtly the exact same thing, and recently it has been making me so blindly angry that I can’t even process it. If I wanted to fester in fear and shame I would never have left the church.
[emphasis mine]
fellow grew-up-in-strict-protestant-home person here and I would like to say:
FUCKING COSIGNED.
(i often think about how obvious, how unsubtle anti purity culture is about lining up with American ‘Christian’ values and get sad. how many antis are young queer/LGBT people who, having violently rejected the anti-LGBT/anti-feminist stance of their puritanical church but never detangled the psychological nastiness behind it, were easily and quickly clapped into the same ball-and-chain of shame and fear with a different paint job?)
Last night’s episode was so amazing. I knew I already loved Steve Yockey, but now he has completely
won me over. He is a great writer and he can stay. I wanted to talk
about that song choice at the end of the episode. (I wonder if it was all his writing, or how much TPTB were involved in choosing it? Either way, it’s just an A+ choice in my book.)
The song is Steppenwolf’s “It’s Never Too Late”. I turned on the subtitles, and got
some crappy screenshots for you guys. It’s about 40% gayer now. Oooh
boy. Here goes:
The song starts playing right after Dean has shared his feelings (what is that character development?! I am LIVING) – “I just need a damn win.” Poor baby 😥
As
the boys drive down the road the lyrics are timed so well. This is not a
mistake. Thirteen seasons in, the writers/editors/directors know
exactly what they are doing.
“You say you’ve only got one life to life. And when you’re dead you’re gone.”
Dean
just died. Again. (Just another Tuesday for him.) The lyrics speak to
that, and also fit the theme of death running throughout this episode
and this season. But that last line also echoes back to the paradox that
a Winchester never really stays dead. And what is Castiel? He is
a Winchester.
He is family.
They boys have said as much in past episodes. So the rules of death don’t apply to him either.
When Dean’s phone rings we don’t get to hear the caller, but we do get this line:
“You left us alone.”
Who left them alone recently? Mom and Cas, as Dean keeps reminding us.
And
then we LITERALLY GET A LIGHT SHINING ON DEAN’S FACE WHEN HE REALIZES
WHO IT IS. THIS SHOW ISN’T EVEN SUBTEXT ANYMORE WHAT EVEN?!
I also wanted to call out this beautiful imagery as the boys drive down
the alley. Further proof of who the call was from.
I love Jerry Wanek
with my entire gay ass.
“Tell me who’s to say after all is done, and you’re finally gone, you won’t be back again.”
I mean…Do I even need to expand on that? What a great line. To me it sounds hopeful. And the lyrics point to someone singing this line to another person – not to or about themselves. (Dean singing praying to Cas? Maybe…)
And then we get this beautiful cut to Castiel:
“It’s never too late to start all over again.”
Castiel is alive. He has escaped death again, like the Winchester he is. He has another chance to be with the ones he loves.
And who does the camera cut to?
Dean. Always Dean. 100% Dean. Forever Dean.
And that line is repeated as we see this shot of Dean. “It’s never too late to start all over again.”
It’s important that the line was repeated for both Cas AND Dean’s reactions. Cas and Dean have both ignored their feelings for each other over the years. Neither one brave enough to make the first move. Both of them afraid to face the pain of possibly being rejected, or facing their own feelings of low self-worth – that they don’t deserve the love they both so desperately want.
But now we are being shown that this is a new opportunity for them to be open and honest with each other about how they feel. They are finally coming together to be on the same page about their relationship, and what it means to both of them. They were both resurrected (within days? hours? idk timeline is hazy) to be with each other again. It’s not too late for them. They are both alive. Their story isn’t over yet.
This is their chance to finally come together! (heh)
The final shot of the episode, the raw emotion on Cas’ face when he sees Dean…
He’s so glad to see Dean again he almost cannot believe it is actually happening.
Wow. Fucking punch me in the face it would hurt less.
Side note: The last shots of the episode do not include Sam. They
could have given us a two-shot of both brothers standing by the Impala
seeing Cas again – but they didn’t. This is a moment just for Cas and
Dean.
Now of course, Castiel considers both brothers to be his family. He
loves both of them. But he loves each of them differently. The Show has
been telling us this since season 4. It has been used as a joke at times,
or it was merely hinted at. But now it is fully out in the open for
even the casual viewer to see. This is how you develop a relationship.
This is how you show that what we’re watching is a true love story.
IF THIS IS WHAT WE CAN EXPECT FROM SEASON 13 THEN HOLY CHUCK WE ARE ALL BLESSED AND I COULDN‘T BE MORE EXCITED
Tagging a few blogs who might enjoy this, under the cut
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