I'm absolutely falling with style

ZUTARA + PARALLELS PART TWO:

and better

Protect what holds you in its jaw

- Alternative Version -

I'm still in awe of how these two films perfectly harmonize with each other. I've matched a few frames, and just look at how similar it looks! (I created a complete version and individual ones, if someone needs separate pictures)

Good Luck!

two lovers, forbidden from one another,

Damn it all to hell. Guess what I found upon opening the paper this morning? An obituary for Sinclair Fogg.

It's nonsense of course. I'll admit, my heart stopped briefly when I saw those words, but it isn't anything I haven't read before: a generational talent, gone too soon. Just as he did the first time he "died", John has managed to get himself quite the tribute. It's good. It's what he deserves. And I'm glad he's being cautious, I suppose, but I curse my own luck. This will make it that much harder to find him.

At least I have a photo of him now. A truly excellent one too —he's standing on a sound stage, laughing at something someone has said just out of frame. I would have thought the paper would have run one of his portraits, but he must have requested this particular picture somehow. The obituary states that a Mrs. Virginia Bowman will be taking over Sinclair Studios, so perhaps he left specific instructions in some sort of will. Leave it to John to give audiences one last shock by giving his studio over to a woman. It delights me, even if have no idea who this woman is. There's something vaguely familiar about the name, but I can't quite place it.

There's something familiar about the photograph too. I think I was there, that day. I remember that suit of his and there's a bit of the film set in the corner of the photo. I'd visited so many of his sets, and I'm sure I visited that one. Am I the one just out of frame? Am I the one making him laugh like that? I hope so. 

It’s frustrating, not knowing what gaps are due to my injury or the usual ravages of time. I remember the sound of John’s laugh with perfect clarity, but I know that, even before the war, I wouldn’t be able to recall every single time I drew it out of him. I don’t remember what I had for breakfast three Tuesdays ago, and I don’t believe that’s any cause for concern. But even with what feels like my full memory restored, I’ll never know what I’m missing. 

At least I can tell the difference between dreams and memories now. Seeing the sound stage in the photo had me reflecting on a dream I had a few months after getting out of the hospital. I was on one such stage in the dream, visiting John after everyone had gone home for the day. He was so proud, giving me a tour, delighting in all the various visual effects that give him the same sense of wonder illusion once did. I’m fairly certain that was real— the memory I have of him showing me the false snow they would use for their films. But the dream ended quite…affectionately and I realize now that those memories are not memories at all, but the after images of long held fantasies. I do remember the precise shape and location of all his scars, but when I realized I couldn’t recall the feel of them under my hands, I knew for certain that we’d never walked down that path together. 

There I go again, wasting ink in daydreams when I have serious concerns to attend to. It’s an awful turn of fortune that I should finally have arrived back in America just the moment John is abroad. Though maybe that’s a misdirection—claiming he died abroad so that no one will notice he’s still walking around Los Angeles. Then again, I don’t think he’s fool enough to stay in his house. I’m sure he’s already set up somewhere else. I know I can count on Mr. Weston to have the information. Finding Mr. Weston will take some doing—I cannot for the life of me remember if he resided in New York or Washington D.C.—but at least I have my feet on US soil again. 

I’m terrified. I’ve only been back three days, and I don’t think it was until seeing his photo that it all became real. I’m going to see him again. I’m going to hold him again. Even if it’s just in the kind of friendly embrace we parted with, it will be more happiness than I thought was possible to claim when I woke up in Italy. 

I have no idea how he’ll react. I have some time still, to determine what exactly I want to say to him, but I know that—no matter how I prepare—I’ll be terribly nervous when the time comes. Especially since I’m certain he’s not received any of my letters. He must have already moved, in fact, and perhaps isn’t taking mail at the studio lot anymore. I’m so certain that if he’d gotten just a single one of my notes, he would have come to Europe right away to meet me. 

One of the last things I remember before waking up is writing him a letter that revealed the true nature of my feelings. I wonder if he received that one. I wonder what he thought of it. I wonder if he read it and was so repelled, that he’s decided he wants nothing to do with me. I shouldn’t think that he would be so callous and cavalier, not after the decades of friendship that we’ve accumulated, but the fear still lingers. 

I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. 

[from the personal diary of C.X. Chambers]

(the it's all good man at the end is supposed to be Simon RIP)

Ryland Grace gets his glasses 🫪

only you and no other

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.