cool new blog title

She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.

But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.

To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.

San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.

Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.

Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.

Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.

Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.

When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.

He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.

It was a mistake that would change American history.

Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.

She saw "her kids."

She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.

Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.

She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.

So, she made a choice.

She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.

Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.

The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.

She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.

She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.

"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."

And it did.

Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.

Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."

For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.

She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.

She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."

By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.

In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.

This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.

One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."

They underestimated who they were dealing with.

They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.

When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.

It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.

Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.

She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.

Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.

"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."

The quote ran in newspapers across the country.

The court didn't stand a chance.

Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.

The charges were dropped.

Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.

She needed to change the law.

August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.

She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.

But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.

She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.

She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.

In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.

It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.

She never got rich.

She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.

She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.

Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.

Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.

Most of them have never heard of Mary.

They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.

They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.

They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.

Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."

She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.

She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.

She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.

Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.

It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.

It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.

Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.

Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.

The map is printed into a textile, not paper! you can see the weave in the close-up shot, it's almost a similar texture as the wrap around the charcoal pencil. the print also has a slight chromatic aberration to it, so the gray coloring isn't plain black ink (the K in CMYK), but colored ink at equal quantities to create black.

you can further see the chromatic aberration here. there are the cleaar squares points of interest, but also height mapping (dashed lines) and smaller dots that could be, a number of things.

close-up of Simon's Eden brand and the burn scar over it (original screenshot but edited for clarity)

guess they ran out of duct tape and are resorting to bandages for quick fixes. that or Jack couldn't be bothered for a weld?

i'm still deeply puzzled by this One Page. this is not a photo, this is a drawing, but i'm not sure if it's a traditional or digital drawing. both have some really complex implications!

if traditional: this was either traced from a manual or blueprint, maybe even the original ones. the outline is faint and there's the weird smudge on the top left corner of the drawing, which could be an ink smudge, or a xerox artefact. something about the concept of a xerox printer in space tickles me a lot. but if it's done BY HAND, then someone spent a lot of time on this! and that arrow and calligraphy is so neatly done, it must have been by someone with technical drawing expertise, like an architect or industrial artist.

if digital: why is the lining so faint in comparison to the other pages? it's not the kind of faintness you find in a printer running out of ink. it was not printed by the same people who printed the manuals. also the page itself is in fairly good condition if you compare it to the manual. so it's a newer thing so why is the outline so faint? very puzzling. also do they have like, scifi AutoCAD for this kind of stuff?

weird ass tubes

i love this scene, framing the pictures he's taken in the unlit O2 marker. i've got all the image sequences over here!

we can see the condensation drops are clear so far, so Ava wasn't lying about that.

"Hello? I don't know, what am I suppsoed to say? I'm losing track of things. I..."

This section hurts to watch. Not only because the audio is incredibly visceral, but Simon's face when he hears Ellie's voice and recognizes it breaks my heart. Not only that, but she echoes - mirrors - the same words Simon used when talking to her as well. He's just watching someone go through exactly what he did.

"We told you to stop fucking drinking it!"

There's a lot of "us" and "we" going on here, even when just one person is speaking and it's clear they are only talking about themselves because at times they switch back to "me" and "I". The hivemind is affecting the researchers, they are well past the point of no return.

It's mostly framed by close-up of the blood dripping into the sub, the rusty sores and condensations. More information given to us that this blood is not some inert element anymore. It's not just a threat of drowning, it's a more insidious danger.

"It shouldn't be possible but, it's human. The blood - it's us!"

We pan to the pendant as SImon leans into the console, bracing at the new information. The pendant now being stained with blood means that it has been fed by humans now. A call back to Eden's philosophy about a body becoming the soil in death.

As they continue about the Light and the blood, we see the depth meter be taken over by blood. The depth meter is a metaphorical connection both to how down or hopeless Simon feels, as well as his closeness to actual human connection via the towship and the radio signal. The blood overtaking it is already a sign that he's being claimed by the ocean, it's already too late.

Likewise, the radio continues to spill blood from its speaker.

"The Light... A fragment of what caused the Quiet Rapture! This could actually be an answer!"

Just as the researchers argue over their findings and they say "the answer", the O2 marker goes up. We've already known it was impossible for Simon to have had oxygen for this long, yet we see something even more impossible happen while SImon is too distracted to notice. It's also notable that the lighting of the walls and pipes reflected on the porthole glass vagely resemble the shafts of Light during the encounter with it earlier.

The more they go on, the more we see the sub be taken over by the fleshy tendrils (veins? nerves? roots??) and dripping blood. Then the researchers speak about it being meant for them" and they "need to see it", and Simon is rightfully distraught.

He's heard this before too, but from the Eel, not himself.

Finally Simon pays attention and notices the camera going off without his input. Boom, you got your taped down button, mate.

It's odd that we only now start hearing the proximity clicks again, but it's been there for a while now, signaling the SM-8. I know it's just audio design, you don't want the clicks to take away from the tension of the scene before, but still odd.

Simon finally takes a moment to pay attention tot eh state of the sub, and hooboy. They visually remind me of a type of bone cancer, osteosarcoma. It creates a similar growth pattern. It could just be meant to be more visually striking too, given that looking at the overall state of the sub, the blisters and pockmarks are less jagged.

We also see the blood flooding in into a proper flow rather than a mere trickle from before.

I do wanna point out the vague stigmata (the term for Jesus' injuries during the crucification) visuals here with the blood dripping on his palm. It mirrors back when we got that first drip way earlier in the movie, which landed on the black of his hand.

If you thought the blisters were only some sort of caustic response to the blood, then we see teeth grow from the worst of the blisters. Definitely not just a chemical reaction here!

We then get the peeling off scene, and I've already made a few pointers regarding it here and here, so I won't repeat myself about that. It is notable however, that we see some yellowing around his forearms bandages which aren't present in his hands. That could be plasma ageing and coagulating, the blood diffusing into the cloth, or mutation juices. Your pick!

Simon's little noises could mean he's in too much of a shock to feel the pain of it. It could also be that those have fried the nerves so there's no pain receptors to sense the inuries. Given how many injuries he suffers throughout the movie, if could also be that these are no comparison to those, so he can just tank it.

OH, one thing I do wanna point out are these huge ass veins on his arm. Like dayum, are those the mutations growing into him?? Gnarly!!

Then we hear Ava on the radio. Shit's going down, and just look at how much the sub has deteriorated in just 30 minutes.

"You can't be serious, Ava, I just went through hell to get this." "What did you do, Simon?"

The way his fine crumples from sheer fear to dread when he recognizes Ellie's voice and her and Ava begin to fight for his attention is genuinely so good.

The dynamic shifts once again, and Simon is no longer in the left-center, but far right. The light casts him in a harsh darkness, not obscuring but isolating him even as the radio sways in agitation.

We are so cooked, chat. Do notice the Eel's injured face, too.

Yes, I know, Jungian psychology is a horse beaten into a pulp, but it lingers still in creative writing and narrative tropes, so I will continue to bring it up when appropriate. It is at the very least relevant for this given the overall story structure of the movie. Just wait until I bring in metamodernism into the discussion plate--

I'm gonna skip on a lot of background to keep this short, but I'm sure you're familiar with the idea of an Ego, an Id and a Superego, right? Freud stuff. Well, Carl Jung expanded on the concept a bit and called them Archetypes.

There is the Self, the ego, the conscious mind, which is you in the intimacy of your own mind and self-perception. There is the Anima or Animus, which is your unconscious mind, the missing halves of yourself; for example if you're a man, then the Anima is your feminine side (yes it is an extremely binary system, this was made in the 1910s what did we expect?). They often appear to you in dreams and assist in individuation. There's the Persona, the masks we wear in day-to-day life to navigate society. Some are closer to your Self, but none of them are genuine, there is always a rift between the perception of the others of you and you as you truly are.

Aaand there's the Shadow. That is the part of your unconscious mind where all that is repressed, rejected and disavowed by your Self goes. It's the Other within yourself. Things that society tell you is inappropriate, wrong, things you internalize as negative and thus keep separate even in the privacy of your own mind.

According to Jung, it's in the Shadow that several complexes live, because the denial of the Shadow's existence and the projection of it onto others cause conflict. To cure certain psychological ills, you must face your Shadow, be aware of where it lies and attempt to either integrate or transmutate it.

To integrate the Shadow is to face all those things you deny about yourself and accept them as a part of yourself in a conscious manner. If your Shadow houses your anger because anger was not a safe emotion to have, then you must embrace it so you can learn to manage them in a healthy way rather than be haunted by it. To transmute the Shadow, you must deconstruct your own view of your Self and how you formed it, break it apart and incorporate that which forms your Shadow into it, so you may become a Whole person. This process is tied with alchemical visuals and terms for him, because there are a lot of overlap in the concepts.

So back to Iron Lung: Simon is haunted by this Shadow of himself, twisted and mutated almost beyond recognition. A creature is about to burst forth from his throat, a second mouth that isn't his. Choking him out, stealing both his voice and his mouth. As a reminder, the mouth is one of our first connections to the sensory, the physical world, our teeth are our first weapons and the way we eat, consume, sustain ourselves. There's a reason dreams about teeth falling off are extremely common and often tied with anxieties and feelings helplessness, lack of agency. It has no eyes, he's blind, another layer of helplessness.

Also, is that another skull budding out from his torn left arm?? The fangs are undeniably there, and all over his chest too.

We know already that the Shadowman is what Simon could have become if the blood had it's way with him. Actually for all we know, that is what his remains look like, regardless if the Blood Tree claimed him or not. But let's look at it from a Jungian perspective.

If the Shadow represents what is repressed and denied from the Self, then I can see two main paths we can take our analysis.

One: Simon's projected fears regarding himself, either past, present, or future. We can't discard time bullshit here after all!

Simon fears death, and it manifests as this rotten, macabre corpse. He's seen the skeleton by the time he's first seen the Shadowman, and it's not unfair he associates hollow eyesockets, odd tubes and sharp fangs with the bottom of the ocean;

It's also not unfair to assume he knows what a half-decayed human body looks like either, which only adds to the projection;

Simon also fears a stale existence, a fate worse than death. He's not content in accepting the world after the Quiet Rapture, whether it be accepting extinction or scraping for survival in the ruins of the universe. This creature is alive or dead or something in between, and he refuses to figure out;

Simon fears and abhorrs his own helplessness in his situation, a man muzzled and trapped by the powers that be. It manifests as a version of himself that is voiceless and blind, obedient in its helplessness;

Simon dislikes his own violent side, the 'butcher' in him, something he has rejected. It manifests as this creature of vicious teeth and drenched in blood. Rage is also often associated with blindness;

Two: The blood is projecting at him, for him, retroactively. As I said, we can't discard the time bullshit.

We know that the Pinhole God sees him as 'the butcher' and names him as such. While its assessment may not be complete, it's not entirely unwarranted. Simon did do all that murderin'!

The voice of TGWTYCW accuses him as such too. Whether it's the blood ghost of a dead man that was assimilated into the ocean, or Simon's own guilty conscience attakcing him, or a mix of both, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that Simon feels guilty, he bears that weight regardless of how much of it was his fault, his agency, his choice.

That's a part of him which the Pinhole God sees, recognizes, and will bring to the surface, Simon's opinion on the matter be damned. No matter how much you push it down, the Shadow will never leave you because it is you.

Which is why Simon's "Fine, you want the Butcher? Come on!" in the ending matters so damn much. That's not regression, that's progress! It's facing this shameful, repressed side of himself and using it again. Whether he's doing it selflessly or as a final "fuck you" just for his own gratification isn't the point. It's about a thing that he constantly pushes down, lashes out against, rejects, but now is embracing again one last time. Not because anyone told him to, not even because he needs to -it's already game over for him regardless if he fights back or not.