i found jay’s black jacket (an ID guide)
This black jacket is worn by Jay about 9 times throughout Marble Hornets, including his final appearance. And after some weeks of on-and-off research, I think I know the exact make and model.
This post will detail exactly how I found it, and serve as a guide for anyone that wants to find the jacket, whether that's for cosplay purposes, or if you're just keen on collecting items related to MH.
Main post under the cut
Intro
The first step to identifying the jacket was to gather as many references as possible.
I went back to the web series and took screenshots from any entries the jacket makes an appearance. (shoutout to mg549′s very comprehensive MH wardrobe guide, without it this would’ve been much more of a pain)
Jay's jacket is, for the most part, very plain. It's a solid color, full-zip jacket, without any particularly eye-catching logos or other details. I had to look for moments where even the slightest distinction appeared clear on camera, at least as distinct as it can be. Even if it was just close-ups to get the shape of a zipper, or how many buttons are on a sleeve, it was the best I got.
While I did manage to find a decent amount of these, there was just one crucial detail that would've made finding it near-impossible; the brand is never shown. Thankfully, I had another resource.
In 2018 Troy Sold a Lot of Stuff
In early 2018, Troy officially announced that MH would be continued in a comic series. To fund the first issue, he held a number of auctions for production items used during the web series on Ebay.
These included items such as Jay’s camera, Brian’s hoodie, A Masky mask, and Jay’s black jacket.
Lo and behold, the jacket listing includes a picture with the brand in clear view. It's from Gap.
Ebay does not archive sold listings older than 90 days. However, Worthpoint, a website for valuing and pricing collectibles, does. Using Worthpoint I was able to find all of these items, (and a lot more, which can be found in this doc I submitted to Archive Hornets)
Identification
With the picture from the listing and the series screencaps, I had a complete ID list.
(Top image is from the Ebay listing, with the contrast adjusted a little for easier viewing. The bottom two images are from Entry #79)
The Gap logo (This specific logo dates the jacket being made anywhere between 1986 and 2009, when it first appears).
Front Zipper (Note the shape)
The two front pockets
The two buttons and pointed cuffs on each sleeve (Second one is a little hard to see but it's jusstt peeping out at the side)
The blue piping in the inner lining
The zipper in the right side inner lining
The gray mesh inner lining
With these in mind, I could now go to the next and longest step-
Finding the Jacket
I combed three resell sites; Ebay, Depop, and Poshmark. My main goal wasn't to actually purchase the jacket, (although, I would like to at some point) but to find a jacket listing that had every identifier, and have a more definite baseline for finding others. I needed to be sure what I had was enough to properly ID the jacket. The references I had stitched together were decent enough, but I wanted to see if there was something better out there.
After tons of page scrolling and tab-switching and comparing and contrasting, I finally got lucky.
(first two images are from crashthecloset's listing on poshmark, last six are from shannfo-76 on ebay)
I haven't bought one myself as of posting, but I feel pretty confident this is it. The jackets were already sold, but every marker seemed to be accounted for. It also revealed new ones, like the reflective pattern and pockets on the inner lining, (zipper on the right side pocket, button on the left pocket) and the materials tag.
With that, here's some final notes that may be helpful if you try looking for the jacket yourself:
Online sellers often describe it as a light jacket, a windbreaker, a 2-in-1, or 3-in-1.
"Gap Mens Black Jacket" is the search phrase I used the most since it yielded a (very) broad result pool.
Most of the jackets I found came from Poshmark or Ebay.
The exact size of Jay’s jacket is unclear. My best guesses are either a US Men’s S or M, since Jay was pretty skinny and of average height. I’ve only been able to find maybe 2 jackets that are a size M, one of which is the first pic in the photoset above.
Gap has sold other black jackets that look remarkably similar to Jay’s, and they do pop up on resell sites. One of these was so similar, the only discernible difference was the style of the logo. I highly recommend making sure it matches the exact one Jay had before purchasing. (It's also more than fine to ask/msg me if you have any doubts!) As long as you know what to look for, you shouldn’t have a problem finding at least one.
One detail that confounded me was this sleeve poking out of Jay's jacket. At first I thought he was wearing a long sleeve underneath, making this shot a continuity error since he appeared to Only be wearing the green short sleeve under the jacket.
@hivemite pointed out that this might be a two-in-one jacket, which has multiple layers for different types of weather. While I have not been able to see the sleeve outside of two shots in entry #79 and #80, one listing I found did describe it as a 3-in-1.
that's about it! hope this helps :)
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How many holes does a straw have?
@i-send-you-random-asks
(asking you specifically cause i think you'd have an interesting answer)
Ohhh, yes, this is my question! Thank you, dear!
Short answer:
That depends on your definition of 'hole'. Topology says 1.
Long answer:
Since this depends on your definition of hole, I can think of 5 answers that can be rationalised and make some flavour of sense:
(@marvellouspinecone helped me with some of these a while back and might have additional info, so I am going to credit her here.)
0 holes
You can define a hole as something that makes an object broken, or at least as something you have to put into a finished object AFTER construction. This could be something like a tear in the fabric or a hole you have drilled into the 'wall' of the straw. Ergo, a functioning straw does not have any holes. It looks exactly as it was designed to be.
1 hole
This is the math answer. As said in the infamous post, a straw is 'topologically equivalent' to a torus. To be precise, it is homotopic to a torus.
First question: What is a torus?
Answer: Basically a donut. It looks like this:
[ID: image of a torus. It looks like a donut with a checkered surface. end ID]
Second question: What does 'homotopic' mean?
Answer: This is where it gets math-y technical, but in a way it means that we can continuously transform either of the objects into the other - in a nice way.
Imagine, our straw was made of super-clay: we can't rip it or glue it together at any point, but we can pull and push it together however we like, even changing its density. So we could stretch some parts to become very big and shrink others a lot. We can also bend and twist it a little.
So, we take our straw and we push it together in the direction of its length until the very long straw becomes short like a ring. And then we pull on the 'walls' to make them nice and fat and round. Tada! We have made a donut!
(We can do this in the other direction, too, pull the torus (donut) out long and then make the walls thin - then we get a straw.)
The thing about such homotopies is, they preserve the number of holes an object has. Hence, the straw has exactly as many holes as the torus (donut)!
Third question: How many holes does a torus have?
Answer: In topology, we have something called the Euler characteristic. It is a number that gets assigned to surfaces based on their properties (you can calculate it via triangulation but let's not go there.) A sphere (ball) has Euler characteristic 2. Each hole in a surface lowers the Euler characteristic by 2. The torus (is an orientable surface and) has Euler characteristic 0, so it has one hole.
(If you'd like to have the more exact explanation, it is attaching handles to a surface that reduce the Euler characteristic by 2 and add a hole. And a torus is homotopic to a sphere with one handle attached.)
Thus, a straw has one hole.
2 holes
If we define a hole as an indentation in an object that allows us (or something else) to enter a certain distance into the object, a straw has two holes. One on the top and one on the bottom.
This definition actually makes sense, since we call holes we dig into the Earth 'holes'. In the mathematic sense, they aren't, they're indentations that can (with the super clay idea) be flattened out. But with these holes we don't care about whether it will lead somewhere or just have a floor somewhere at the bottom, you can go in, so it's a hole.
If we forget about the fact that the straw leads 'one hole into the other', so like, if we were very small (or the straw very big) and we would merely walk across the outside and look into the holes, we would find two holes on the straw, one on the bottom, one on the top. If we don't enter, we wouldn't even know they were connected.
With this definition you have to be a little bit careful about when you start calling something a hole. I would reckon there needs to be a certain percentage-relation between depth of hole vs circumference of entrance to hole before you call it such. And maybe also something about size and shape and sharpness of edge - like, you wouldn't call a valley a hole, probably? But like, the straw fulfils the requirements of this hole easily, and twice.
3 holes
Okay, this one is merely for fun and play, don't get mad at me. But, say we define a hole kinda like above, as an entrance to the inside of an object. And we further define hole as any way through an object. Then we end up with something I like to call a 'hole-interval' through the straw.
So, we have one hole (rim at the top) to get into the straw, one hole (the straw, basically) to get through the straw and a third whole (rim at the bottom) to get out of the straw.
This is nonsense, obviously, but I like it, because there is a very nice mathematical feeling to it, resembling a closed interval. A closed interval [a, b] is just one object, but it has three parts that are often regarded independently of the others: the open interval (a, b) in the middle and the edge points {a} and {b}. For example, if you were to test the continuity of a function, you would often regard these three cases separately. So, in a way, there is beauty in regarding the 'three holes' of the straw as separate as well.
Infinitely many holes
This one is kinda nonsense as well, but I like the implications. If we define a hole as any instance of an object that is part of a tunnel through the object - I am using the word 'tunnel' here because actually, that tunnel would be the one hole in this case but for the sake of the definition, it can't be - then a straw is an infinite number of holes, stacked on top of each other. It is important to notice here that a hole cannot possibly have any depth in this case, just like the top and bottom holes in the last case.
This leads to two likely interpretations:
A) We have a hole at any real number (if we consider the straw as an interval along its length again). Then the straw would be made from uncountably infinitely many holes - which I think is an awesome concept.
B) We have a hole at any rational number. This would only give us a countably infinite number of holes in the straw and since Q is dense in R (don't worry about what that means), it would LOOK like the whole straw is made of holes, when in reality most of the straw would actually NOT HAVE ANY holes in it. Now isn't that the best thing you have heard all day?
And the best part : By this definition, not only would any straw be made of infinitely many holes, but any object with a hole in it would have infinitely many holes in it. Remember, for this to make sense, we needed to have holes with 0 depth. But any hole in reality has some depth. Punch a hole into a piece of paper: BAM infinitely many holes stacked on top of each other! :D
What have we learnt?
The most likely answers are 1 hole or 2 holes, depending on whether you take a more mathematical or more language-oriented approach. I think those were the two opinions most vocal in the original post as well.
But if you want to have fun, you can come up with very nice concepts and definitions to count holes by that give you a range of correct answers. Just make sure to think of the implications :)
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