title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu eliminated many of her real, potential, or perceived rivals to power by means of death (including execution, suicide by command, and more or less directly killing people), demotion, and exile. Mostly this was carried out by her secret police, led by people like Wao Ganjun and Lai Junchen, who were known to have written the "Manual of Accusation", a document detailing steps for interrogation and obtaining confessions by torture. One of these methods, the "Dying Swine's Melancholy" (), which merely indicated a level of pain inflicted by a torture device, seems to have been conflated in the years following Wu's death with the story of the "human swine" torture conducted by Empress Lü Zhi, in which the victim had limbs and tongue amputated, was force-fed, and left to wallow in his own excrement.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu targeted various people, including many in her own family. In reaction to an attempt to remove her from power, in 684, she massacred 12 entire collateral branches of the imperial family. Besides this, she also altered the ancient balance of power in China dating to the Qin dynasty. The old area of the Qin state was later called Guanzhong—literally, the area "within the fortified mountain passes". From this area of northwest China, the Ying family of Qin arose, unifying China into its first historical empire. During the Han dynasty, Sima Qian records in his "Shiji" that Guanzhong had three-tenths of China's population but six-tenths of its wealth. Additionally, at the beginning of Wu's ascendency, Guanzhong was still the stronghold of the most nationally powerful aristocratic families, even though economic development in other parts of China had improved the lot of families in other regions. The Guangzhong aristocracy was not willing to relinquish its hold on the reins of government, but some of the more newly wealthy families in other areas, such as the North China Plain or Hubei, were eager for a larger share of national power. Most of the opposition to Wu was from the Guangzhong families of northwest China. Accordingly, she repressed them, instead favoring less privileged families, thus raising to the ranks of power many talented but less aristocratic families, often recruited through the official examination system. Many of those so favored originated from the North China plain. Through a process of eliminating or diminishing the power of the established aristocracy, whom she perceived as disloyal to her, and establishing a reformed upper class in China loyal to her, Wu made major social changes that historians are still evaluating.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Many of Wu's measures were of popular and helped her to gain support for her rule. Wu came to power during a time in China in which the people were fairly contented, the administration was run well, and the economy was characterized by rising living standards. For the most part, as far as the masses were concerned, Wu continued in this manner. She was determined that free, self-sufficient farmers continue to work their own land, so she periodically used the "juntian", equal-field system, together with updated census figures to ensure fair land allocations, reallocating as necessary. Much of her success was due to her various edicts (including those known as her "Acts of Grace"), which helped satisfy the needs of the lower classes through various acts of relief, her widening recruitment to government service to include previously excluded gentry and commoners, and her generous promotions and pay raises for the lower ranks.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu used her military and diplomatic skills to enhance her position. The "fubing" system of self-supportive soldier-farmer colonies, which provided local militia and labor services for her government, allowed her to maintain her armed forces at reduced expense. She also pursued a policy of military action to expand the empire to its furthest extent ever up to that point in Central Asia. Expansion efforts against Tibet and to the northwest were less successful. Allying with the Korean kingdom of Silla against Goguryeo with the promise of ceding Goguryeo's territory to Silla, Chinese forces occupied Goguryeo after its defeat, and even began to occupy Silla territory. Silla resisted the imposition of Chinese rule, and by allying with Goguryeo and Baekche, was able to expel its former ally from the peninsula. Hong argues that Silla's success was in part due to a shift in Wu's focus to Tibet and inadequate support for the forces in the Korean peninsula. In 694, Wu's forces decisively defeated the Tibetan–Western Turk alliance and retook the Four Garrisons of Anxi, lost in 668.


title: Wu Zetian

text: One apparatus of government that fell into Wu's power was the imperial examination system, the basic theory and practice of which was to recruit into government service those men who were the best educated, most talented, and had the best potential to perform their duties, and to do so by testing a pool of candidates to determine this. This pool was male only, and the qualified pool of candidates and resulting placements into official positions was on a relatively small scale at the time Wu took control of government. The official tests examined things considered important for functionaries of the highly developed, bureaucratic government structure of the imperial government, such as level of literacy in terms of reading and writing and possession of the specific knowledge considered necessary and desirable for a governmental official, such as Confucian precepts on the nature of virtue and theory on the proper ordering of and relationships within society. Wu continued to use the imperial examination system to recruit civil servants, and introduced major changes to the system she inherited, including increasing the pool of candidates permitted to take the test by allowing commoners and gentry, previously disqualified by their background, to take it. In 693, she expanded the governmental examination system and greatly increased the importance of this method of recruiting government officials. Wu provided increased opportunity for the representation within government to people of the North China Plain versus people of the northwestern aristocratic families (whom she decimated, anyway); and the successful candidates recruited through the examination system became an elite group within her government. The historical details of the consequences of Wu's promoting a new group of people from previously disenfranchised backgrounds into prominence as powerful governmental officials, and the examination system's role, remain debated by scholars of this subject.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu Zetian used her political powers to harness from Buddhist practices a strategy to build sovereignty and legitimacy to her throne while decisively establishing the Zhou dynasty in a society under Confucian and patriarchal ideals. One of the first steps she took to legitimize her ascension to the throne was to proclaim herself as the reincarnation of the Devi of Pure Radiance ("Jingguang tiannü)" through a series of prophecies. In 690, Wu sought out the support of the monk Xue Huaiyi, her reputed lover, and other nine orthodox Buddhist monks, to compose the apocryphal "Commentary on the Meanings of the Prophecies About the Divine Sovereign in the Great Cloud Sutra" ("Dayunjing Shenhuang Shouji Yishu").


title: Wu Zetian

text: Translated from a late fourth-century version in Sanskrit to Chinese, the original "Great Cloud Sutra" ("Dayunjing") accentuated in Wu's "Commentary" had fascicles describing a conversation between the Buddha and the Devi of Pure Radiance. In the sutra, the Buddha foretells to "Jingguang" that he would be a bodhisattva reincarnated in a woman's body in order to convert beings and rule over the territory of a country. Wu's Buddhist supporters meticulously propagated the "Commentary" "on the eve of her accession to the dragon throne" while seeking to justify the various events that led Wu to occupy the position of "Huangdi" as a female ruler and bodhisattva. Since gender in the Buddhist Devi worlds have no standard form, Wu later took a further step to transcend her gender limitations by identifying herself as the incarnation of two important male Buddhist divinities, Maitreya and Vairocana. Her narrative was intentionally crafted to persuade the Confucian establishment, circumvent the Five Impediments that restricted women from holding political and religious power, and gain public support.


title: Wu Zetian

text: In relation to Daoism, there are records that point to Wu's participation in important religious rituals, such as the "tou long on" Mount Song, and "feng" and "shan" on Mount Tai. One of the most important rituals was performed in 666. When Emperor Gaozong offered sacrifices to the deities of heaven and earth, Wu, in an unprecedented action, offered sacrifices after him, with Princess Dowager Yan, mother of Gaozong's brother Li Zhen, Prince of Yue, offering sacrifices after her. Wu's procession of ladies up Mount Tai conspicuously linked Wu with the Chinese empire's most sacred traditional rites. Another important performance was made in 700, when Wu conducted the "tou long" Daoist expiatory rite. Her participation in the rituals had political as well as religious motives. Such ceremonies served to consolidate Wu's life in politics and show she possessed the Mandate of Heaven.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Toward the end of Gaozong's life, Wu began engaging a number of mid-level officials who had literary talent, including Yuan Wanqing (), Liu Yizhi, Fan Lübing, Miao Chuke (), Zhou Simao (), and Han Chubin (), to write a number of works on her behalf, including the "Biographies of Notable Women" (), "Guidelines for Imperial Subjects" (), and "New Teachings for Official Staff Members" (). Collectively, they became known as the "North Gate Scholars" (), because they served inside the palace, which was north of the imperial government buildings, and Wu sought advice from them to divert the powers of the chancellors.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Around the new year 675, Wu submitted 12 suggestions. One was that the work of Laozi (whose family name was Li and to whom the Tang imperial clan traced its ancestry), Tao Te Ching, should be added to imperial university students' required reading. Another was that a three-year mourning period should be observed for a mother's death in all cases, not just in cases when the father was no longer alive. Emperor Gaozong praised her suggestions and adopted them.


title: Wu Zetian

text: In 690, Wu's cousin's son Zong Qinke submitted a number of modified Chinese characters intended to showcase Wu's greatness. She adopted them, and took one of the modified characters, Zhao (), to be her formal name (i.e., the name by which the people would exercise naming taboo on). was made from two other characters: Ming () on top, meaning "light" or "clarity", and Kong () on the bottom, meaning "sky". The implication appeared to be that she would be like the light shining from the sky. (Zhao (), meaning "shine", from which was derived, might have been her original name, but evidence of that is inconclusive.) Later that year, after successive petition drives started by the low-level official Fu Youyi began to occur in waves, asking her to take the throne, Emperor Ruizong offered to take the name of Wu as well. On 18 August 690, she approved the requests. She changed the state's name to Zhou, claiming ancestry from the Zhou dynasty, and took the throne as Empress Regnant (with the title Empress Regnant Shengshen (), literally "Divine and Sacred Emperor or Empress Regnant"). Ruizong was deposed and made crown prince with the atypical title "Huangsi" (). This thus interrupted the Tang dynasty, and Wu became the first (and only) woman to reign over China as empress regnant.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu's court was a focus of literary creativity. Forty-six of Wu's poems are collected in the "Quan Tangshi" ("Collected Tang Poems") and 61 essays under her name are recorded in the "Quan Tangwen" ("Collected Tang Essays"). Many of those writings serve political ends, but there is one poem in which she laments her mother after she died and expresses her despair at not being able to see her again.


title: Wu Zetian

text: During Wu's reign, the imperial court produced various works of which she was a sponsor, such as the anthology of her court's poetry known as the "Zhuying ji" ("Collection of Precious Glories"), which contained poems by Cui Rong, Li Jiao, Zhang Yue, and others, arranged according to the poets' rank at court. Among the literary developments that took place during Wu's time (and partly at her court) was the final stylistic development of the "new style" poetry of the regulated verse ("jintishi"), by the poetic pair Song Zhiwen and Shen Quanqi.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu also patronized scholars by founding an institute to produce the "Collection of Biographies of Famous Women". The development of what is considered characteristic Tang poetry is traditionally ascribed to Chen Zi'ang, one of Wu's ministers.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Literary allusions to Wu may carry several connotations: a woman who has inappropriately overstepped her bounds, the hypocrisy of preaching compassion while simultaneously engaging in a pattern of political corruption and vicious behavior. For many centuries, the establishment used Wu as an example of what can go wrong when a woman is in charge.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Such sexist opposition to her was lifted only during the late 1960s, when Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing rehabilitated Wu as part of a propaganda campaign to suggest she be considered as a successor to her ailing husband.


title: Wu Zetian

text: In his biography "Wu", Jonathan Clements writes that these wildly differing uses of a historical figure often led to contradictory and even hysterical characterizations. Many alleged poisonings and other incidents, such as her daughter's premature death, may have rational explanations that have been twisted by later opponents.


title: Wu Zetian

text: The traditional Chinese historical view of Wu Zetian generally was mixed—admiring her for her abilities in governing the state, but vilifying her for her actions in seizing imperial power. Luo Binwang even wrote along these lines in a declaration during her lifetime, in support of Li Jingye's rebellion. Typical was a commentary by the Later Jin dynasty historian Liu Xu, the lead editor of the "Old Book of Tang":


title: Wu Zetian

text: Some of the diversity in terms of points of agreement and even outright divergences in modern evaluations of Wu can be seen in the following quotes by modern non-Chinese authors:


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu Zetian's rise and reign was criticized harshly by Confucian historians, but has been viewed more favorably since the 1950s.


title: Wu Zetian

text: In the early period of the Tang dynasty, because all the emperors were her direct descendants, Wu was evaluated favorably. Commentary in subsequent periods, however, especially the book "Zizhi Tongjian" compiled by Sima Guang, harshly criticized her. By the period of Southern Song dynasty, when Neo-Confucianism was firmly established as the mainstream political ideology of China, their ideology determined the evaluation of Wu.


title: Wu Zetian

text: Wu Zetian had many chancellors during her reign as monarch of her self-proclaimed Zhou dynasty, many of them notable in their own right. (For full list see List of chancellors of Wu Zetian).


title: Ryan Bingham

text: George Ryan Bingham (born March 31, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor whose music spans multiple genres. He is currently based in Los Angeles. As of 2019, Bingham has released six studio albums and one live album, the last four of which were released under his own label, Axster Bingham Records.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Originally from Hobbs, New Mexico, Bingham grew up across the Southwestern United States. He joined the rodeo circuit as a bull rider in his teens. Bingham learned music on a guitar gifted to him by his mother at age 16, initially playing after rodeos for his friends. Eventually, he began playing in small bars and honky tonks across the West, landing him in Los Angeles. Bingham signed his first record deal with Lost Highway Records (UMG) in 2007.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: After receiving critical acclaim for his first two studio releases on Lost Highway Records, 2007's "Mescalito" and 2009's "Roadhouse Sun", Bingham went on to collaborate with Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett on the soundtrack for the 2009 acclaimed film "Crazy Heart", including notably cowriting and performing the film's award-winning theme song, "The Weary Kind". The title track earned Bingham an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Critics' Choice Award for "Best Song" in 2010, as well as a Grammy Award for "Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" in 2011. The Americana Music Association also honored Bingham with the organization's top award in 2010 as "Artist of the Year".


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham's most recent album, "American Love Song", was released on February 15, 2019. A ballad from that album, "Wolves", was inspired in part by the March For Our Lives students who were dealing with grown men and women questioning their integrity on social media. The song was also featured on the TV series "Yellowstone". Bingham sang "Wolves" as the series' character, Walker, whom he plays on the show.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In April 2019 Bingham partnered with Live Nation to launch his own music festival, The Western. The inaugural event took place over two days in Luckenbach, Texas.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham was born in Hobbs, New Mexico. His family relocated to the Midland–Odessa area of West Texas, before eventually moving to Houston. He attended high school primarily in Houston at Westfield High School.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham's mother purchased his first guitar when he was 16 years old. Although he was fascinated by music, he left his guitar dormant in his closet. Roughly a year later, Bingham hitchhiked back west to Laredo, Texas, in hopes of landing a job with his father, carrying the guitar with him on the trip. Bingham's father enjoyed having neighbors over on their porch to drink beer, and one of them taught him a classical Mariachi song called "La Malaguena" in segments. Though he loved playing the song, it was the only one he would learn during his time in Laredo.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: He relocated to Stephenville, Texas. There, he began learning more music while also riding on the rodeo team at Tarleton State University. It was in Stephenville that he would write arguably his most well-known hit "Southside Of Heaven" in a trailer house. He also began to play local gigs there, namely a local golf course and a few small bars.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: While in Stephenville, Bingham had a friend who caught wind of a job in Paris, France, with the Wild West Show at the Disney Resort. He bought a one-way ticket with $100 in his pocket. Upon arrival, he was informed that the manager with whom he had a mutual friend was no longer with the company, and he found himself stranded with his guitar and old rigging bag from his rodeo days. Luckily, he found some friends-of-friends within the Disney programs and began playing music in local parks for tips.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Eventually, he saved enough money to get back to Texas and moved in with a rodeo buddy near Fort Worth. His friend had a brother (Matthew "Papa" Smith) that cut hair during the day and played drums as a hobby. After an introduction and impromptu gig at an empty bar in Fort Worth, he and Papa would go on to be the founding members of Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses. Marc Ford of the Black Crowes was one of the few people in the bar that night. He approached Bingham after the gig with an offer to record an album.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: After issuing self-released "Wishbone Saloon" and "Dead Horses", the latter distributed by Lone Star Music, Bingham was signed to Lost Highway Records, which issued his first major label debut with "Mescalito" on October 2, 2007, produced by former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford. "Texas Music Magazine" has opined that Bingham "talks and sings with a whiskey-and-cigarette throat that screams hard living. Hard in a way that can make a 29-year-old sound like a 50-year-old Tom Waits." Bingham spent several years on the rodeo circuit. He began bull riding in his late teens.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham's former band, The Dead Horses, was composed of Matthew "Papa" Smith (drums), Corby Schaub (guitar and mandolin) and Marc Ford's son Elijah (bass). The bass player on "Mescalito" was Jeb Venable (a.k.a. Jeb Stuart), with Joe Allen credited as well, plus a contribution from John Bazz on upright bass. Bingham appeared with the Drive-by Truckers on "Austin City Limits" in October 2007. The first single from "Mescalito", titled "Southside of Heaven", was released on November 30, 2007. The second single was entitled "Bread and Water".


title: Ryan Bingham

text: On June 2, 2009, Ryan Bingham and The Dead Horses released their second studio album titled "Roadhouse Sun" via Lost Highway Records. It was once again produced by Marc Ford.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham performed two songs for the soundtrack of the movie "Crazy Heart", including "I Don't Know" and the theme song, "The Weary Kind". The song was co-written by Bingham and producer, T Bone Burnett. Bingham also played a small role in the film. On January 17, 2010, Bingham was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for "The Weary Kind". The song also won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Original Song, the 2010 Grammy award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as Song of the Year at the 9th Annual Americana Music Association awards.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham rejoined with his band the Dead Horses to release their third studio album, "Junky Star", on August 31, 2010. The album debuted in the Top 20 on the "Billboard" 200 Chart & in the Top 10 on the Billboard Rock Album Chart, making "Junky Star" Bingham's highest charting and most successful release to date.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In 2012, Bingham parted ways with the Dead Horses and record label Lost Highway Records to release his fourth studio album, "Tomorrowland", on his own Axster Bingham Records label. Bingham co-produced the album with musician/producer Justin Stanley. The first single released from "Tomorrowland" was "Heart of Rhythm". Both the single and the official lyric video debuted on Americansongwriter.com on July 30, 2012. Bingham's second "Tomorrowland" single "Guess Who's Knockin" debuted on rollingstone.com on September 6, 2012. The official music video for "Guess Who's Knocking" premiered on pastmagazine.com October 4, 2012.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In 2013, Bingham's song "For Anyone's Sake" appeared in the closing credits of the feature film "Joe", starring Nicolas Cage. Bingham wrote the song for the film, and it was released as part of the film's original soundtrack in April 2014. In the same year, Bingham also wrote and recorded "Until I'm One With You", the theme song for FX TV drama series "The Bridge". The song is Bingham's first screen track since his Academy Award win for best theme song in 2010. "Until I'm One With You" was released as a digital single on Bingham's own Axster Bingham Records label on June 25, 2013.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In 2014 Bingham starred opposite Imogen Poots in the independent film "A Country Called Home", directed and co-written by his wife, Anna Axster. Bingham also wrote and recorded the film's title track "A Country Called Home". The song was released digitally through Bingham's own label, Axster Bingham Records, on May 6, 2016.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham's fifth studio album "Fear and Saturday Night" was recorded mostly live at Plyrz Studio outside of Los Angeles, California. The album was co-produced by Jim Scott and released through Axster Bingham Records on January 20, 2015. The album's first single "Radio" was released on December 9, 2014. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone magazine Bingham shared, "'Radio' is a song I wrote about the thoughts, memories, and emotions that roll through my mind. The radio that's constantly playing in your head, night and day."


title: Ryan Bingham

text: On August 6, 2016, Bingham recorded his first live album, "Ryan Bingham Live", at Whitewater Amphitheater in New Braunfels, Texas. The album was released on October 21, 2016. The entire Whitewater Amphitheater show was also filmed and streamed live by Amazon Music.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham released a song titled "Back By the River" on "The Musical Mojo of Dr. John: A Celebration of Mac and his Music", in 2016.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In 2018–2020, Bingham has a guest role in the contemporary Western television show, "Yellowstone", as Walker, an itinerant ranch hand.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In December 2018, Bingham announced that he would be releasing his sixth studio album "American Love Song" in February 2019.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: In March 2020, Bingham began posting various covers and released songs on his Youtube channel in a series known as the Cantina Sessions throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, he continued such until the end of 2020.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Bingham has appeared as a guest on Bob Harris's Country Show on the BBC's Radio 2. Daryl Easlea, writing for the BBC's folk and country review, said: "Bingham will be one of the names to drop in 2008, with an album that sounds as if it's been unearthed from 1972."


title: Ryan Bingham

text: "Rolling Stone" magazine gave "Mescalito" three out of five stars and wrote that Bingham "earns his sepia-toned album cover with a dusty wood-and-steel sound, and despite being twenty-five, sings like Steve Earle's dad."


title: Ryan Bingham

text: "PopMatters" review of "Tomorrowland" awarded the album with 8 out of 10 stars. Greg M. Scwartz, writing for PopMatters wrote, that "The one-time pro rodeo rider turned Texas troubadour has blues, country, and Americana influences that are certainly still there. But at his core, Bingham has always been a rock 'n' roller and "Tomorrowland" features him rocking at his best."


title: Ryan Bingham

text: "Tomorrowland" was also reviewed by Nico Isaac from Paste (magazine). Isaac wrote: "Tomorrowland is like a good, ol' fashioned rock anthem of kiss-my-asschaps autonomy... One thing's for sure Tomorrowland- the album and the red-blooded, rattlesnake-eating rebellious attitude—is no place for the weary kind."


title: Ryan Bingham

text: Ryan's mother drank herself to death and his father committed suicide. Bingham's "Never Far Behind" from his "Tomorrowland" album is about his parents.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: He announced at his performance in Austin, Texas, on March 5, 2015, that he and his wife were expecting their first child in the summer of 2015. Bingham's song "Broken Heart Tattoo" from "Fear and Saturday Night" is a reflection about what he would like to say to his unborn child.


title: Ryan Bingham

text: On June 29, 2021, Bingham filed for divorce from his wife, Anna Axster, after 12 years of marriage. In September 2021 it was revealed that the couple's former Topanga Canyon home was sold for $2.45 million. The home was originally purchased by the couple in 2013 for $1.36 million. Bingham and Axster have three children together.


The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes is a 2021 interactive drama and survival horror video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It is the third installment in "The Dark Pictures Anthology", after "" (2019) and "" (2020). Like earlier games in the series, "House of Ashes" features a cast of five playable protagonists and a multilinear narrative influenced by player choice. The game's decision-making scenes, of which there are several, can significantly alter the trajectory of the plot and change the relationships between the main characters. Due to these choices, any of the five protagonists can die permanently.


title: The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes

text: Ashley Tisdale stars as the game's leading actress, portraying a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) field officer named Rachel King. Set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the story focuses on five characters—four Americans working for the US Armed Forces and one Iraqi working for the Iraq Republican Guard—who fall into a subterranean Akkadian temple after the two parties clash during an ambush countering a US military raid. The protagonists must find a way out of the ancient structure and cooperate, together with their adversaries, to outmatch the vampiric entities that infest the area. The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" serves as the game's central theme.


text: Many gameplay mechanics from the series' earlier games, such as quick time events (QTEs) and collectable "pictures" that allow players to see visions of possible future events, return in "House of Ashes". The title introduces features, such as a more interactive camera system and three difficulty levels to manage QTEs. With a soundtrack created by the series' composer and Supermassive Games's long-time collaborator Jason Graves, the game contains major influences from various media texts. The developers looked at several works, including the book "At the Mountains of Madness" and the films "Predator" and "The Descent", to draw inspiration for their story.


text: "House of Ashes" was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 22 October 2021. "House of Ashes" garnered mixed reviews from critics, being compared with Supermassive Games' previous work, including the 2015 video game "Until Dawn", and was dubbed a "step in the right direction" for "The Dark Pictures Anthology". The multiplayer modes, and choice-and-consequence system were praised and critics said the story and characters improved in quality compared to earlier games in the series. Technical problems with the gameplay and the visual design of the monsters, such as bugs and glitches with textures and animation, frequently drew criticism. Its sequel, "", serves as the final title in the series' first season.


text: "House of Ashes" is an interactive drama and survival horror game that is presented from a third-person perspective and is set during the Iraq War (2003-2011). Players take control of five protagonists who are enlisted in the armed forces of their respective countries; the characters fall and become trapped in an underground Mesopotamian temple. Bat-like monsters awaken to hunt the characters. A core element of the gameplay involves the management of relationships between the characters, and their allies and enemies. Players can choose to be courageous and ensure the creatures do not kill anybody, or to continue alone and be concerned with their own personal safety. Facing a common foe, the Iraqi and American characters must decide whether they should ignore their differences and become allies to survive the attacks. Characters often quote the proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which is one of the story's recurring themes.


text: "House of Ashes" introduces two gameplay features that are a departure from those of "Man of Medan" and "", previous entries in "The Dark Pictures Anthology". The camera is no longer fully fixed and has been replaced with a controllable, 360-degree one. "House of Ashes" is the first game in the series to feature difficulty levels, such as "forgiving", "challenging" and "lethal", which affect the game's quick time events (QTEs). To further adjust difficulty, players can choose which buttons to press for specific types of QTEs, and can customise the speed at which these prompts appear. The remainder of the features are consistent with those of the other two instalments. The game's developers at Supermassive Games said players will immediately understand "House of Ashes" mechanics if they have played either "Man of Medan" or "Little Hope".


text: Players must make several choices that can have long-term consequences on the narrative's progression and the characters perceptions of each other. In these scenarios, there is a limited amount of time in which one can choose an action or a line of dialogue with which to respond. Protagonists may choose to say or do nothing when they are prompted to make a decision. An anatomical drawing of the brain and heart accompanies every choice in "House of Ashes", indicating the player character may choose actions based on either rationality or emotion. To track the narrative branches in one's playthrough, the game's menu has a "butterfly effect" system called "bearings", which lists all consequential courses of action associated with each branch and their eventual outcomes. The story is interspersed with cutscenes featuring a character called the Curator (Pip Torrens/Tony Pankhurst), who converses with players about the choices they have made and provides clues about what will happen next in the plot. The survival of all five protagonists depends on these critical decisions, and the game continues without the deceased characters. As a result, "House of Ashes" has multiple endings and includes over 60 death scenes.


text: Several scenes in the game, including ones that are combat-heavy, make use of QTEs that can lead to penalties like a protagonist's death in case of failure to provide a precisely timed input. Many types of QTE involve pressing specific buttons—either once or repeatedly—to trigger actions from the player character, such as dodging an obstacle or keeping calm when hiding from a threat. Another type is the moving of a crosshair onto an on-screen target to shoot it. The game displays a notice whenever players are about to perform a QTE, illustrating the type of action the QTE is intended to perform.


text: "House of Ashes" includes elements of exploration and allows players to pick up collectables while searching and moving through locations. A new light source mechanic aids players in underground navigation and inspection by illuminating dark paths that lay ahead. The eponymous "pictures" mechanic of earlier titles in the series is used. Pictures, which are either "black", "white" or "gold", trigger a vision of possible future story branches to help players make decisions. Pictures work in a similar fashion to the totems in "Until Dawn", a 2015 game that was also developed by Supermassive Games. As in earlier games in the series, 50 "secrets"—items that are scattered throughout "House of Ashes", provide background information and context to events that happened in the temple and preceded the main plot. Secrets partly consist of journal entries written during the 1940s that, when picked up, activate a cutscene in which the author's voice recounts a contemporaneous archaeology mission that occurred in the temple.


text: As in "Man of Medan" and "Little Hope", players can enter "House of Ashes" in four modes; the "Theatrical" and "Curator's Cuts" modes are single-player, and "Movie Night" and "Shared Story" are multiplayer. Customers who pre-ordered "House of Ashes" gained access to the "Curator's Cut", a version of the story that shows mostly the same scenes that are viewed from the perspective and control of another protagonist, as well as the default "Theatrical Cut" mode. "Shared Story" and "Movie Night" offer the option to control the characters with another person; "Shared Story" actis as a two-player version of the game and "Movie Night" accommodates up to three more players. The multiplayer concept was inspired by live streamers' collaborative manner of playing "Until Dawn", which prompted the developers at Supermassive Games to incorporate such a feature in their next releases.


text: "House of Ashes" has an ensemble cast that includes Ashley Tisdale as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Rachel King. Her husband is Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eric King (Alex Gravenstein/Dawid Kocieda). The pair have been apart from one another for one year. Their distant relationship at the beginning of the story serves as a plot point, of which players control the progression. As Eric finishes work on a military tracking system, Rachel begins an affair with another main character, traumatised Marine Corps Sergeant Nick Kay (Moe Jeudy-Lamour/Tom Weston). Players's decisions control the development of her relationship with Nick.


text: The other two protagonists are US Marine First Lieutenant Jason Kolchek (Paul Zinno/Jack Green) and Iraqi Republican Guard soldier Lieutenant Salim Othman (Nick E. Tarabay/Luis Augusto). Salim is a father who wishes to reunite with his son after escaping the temple. Jason is trying to find his purpose in life, having enlisted in the military after the September 11 attacks in an attempt to do so. Like Nick, Jason regrets his actions in the Iraq War, during which the pair shot an innocent civilian at a checkpoint. Once vampires begin attacking the characters, Jason and Salim may turn their initial mutual animosity into friendship as part of the story's core theme; "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".


text: "House of Ashes" plot is set predominantly during the Iraq War and in the former territory of the ancient Akkadian Empire that existed in Mesopotamia around 4,000 years ago. A small portion of the game takes place in the fictional Massachusetts town Little Hope as a nod to . In the game's timeline, the Akkadian Empire is the site of the crash-landing of a spaceship that carried thousands of large, bat-like aliens from the Cetus constellation that flew near Earth's atmosphere. A parasitic infection that gestates within the host's body took over the craft's crew, resulting in ship-wide disruption that led to the crash. The disease caused the aliens to mutate into vampires that are vulnerable to ultraviolet light and controlled through the nervous system by the parasites. The aliens have been hibernating underground for millennia, occasionally venturing to the surface to feed on the adrenaline of animals, including humans. A temple, which was built at the behest of the Akkadian god-king Naram-Sin to appease the Mesopotamian gods, stands above the crash site.


text: The prologue takes place in 2231 BC in the temple, which is located in Akkad. The Akkadians are dealing with a curse of famine and plague after Naram-Sin has angered the wind god Enlil. As a Gutian army prepares to invade the city, Naram-Sin orders the mass sacrifice of Gutian prisoners in the city's temple to "nourish the sands" and help the Akkadians win the battle. During the assault, a solar eclipse allows the vampiric creatures from the spaceship beneath the temple to begin slaughtering both armies. Two survivors, Akkadian general Balathu (Zaydun Khalaf/Winston Thomas) and Gutian soldier Kurum (Waleed Hammad/Michael Addo), ignore their differences and work together as they flee into the temple catacombs to escape the creatures. Balathu and Kurum are quickly overwhelmed and presumably killed.


text: Following the prologue, the game cuts to a scene of a library owned by the Curator, an omnipresent observer of the player's decisions. The Curator introduces himself to the player and provides information about parts of "House of Ashes" gameplay, including the decision-making system and the pictures system.


text: During the invasion of Iraq in May 2003, USAF Lt. Col. Eric King arrives at Camp Slayer in Baghdad to debrief a team of Force Recon Marines, who are led by CIA officer and Eric's distant wife Rachel King, about a mission to raid a village in the Arabian Desert. Eric believes he has found a facility underneath the village that stores Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons. The team includes Rachel's lover Sgt. Nick Kay and Nick's squad leader 1st Lt. Jason Kolchek. Other minor characters on the team are Cpl. Nathan Merwin (Alex Mallari Jr./Jozef Aoki), LCpl. José "Joey" Gomez (Sammy Azero/Jonathan Burteaux), and Eric's assistant Dr. Clarice Stokes (Clare McConnell/Eleni Miariti). Meanwhile, Iraqi Republican Guard soldier Lt. Salim Othman returns home and searches for his son Zain, carrying a birthday gift for him, but his commanding officer Cpt. Dar Basri (Nabeel El Khafif/Sukesh Khosla) forces Salim to intercept the raid led by Eric. Salim's squad ambushes the US troops when they arrive but several sinkholes plunge everybody into the ancient Akkadian temple, which is now buried beneath the sand.


text: The five protagonists are separated during the fall; inside the temple, both Iraqi and American forces are frequently attacked by the vampiric creatures, which include reanimated humans who succumbed to the parasite—the "Ancient One" is either Balathu or Kurum depending on player choices in the prologue. A similar fate befalls Joey, who was mortally wounded in the ambush. Clarice and Rachel can also catch the infection. Throughout the game, the protagonists learn about the temple's history and about the remains of a failed British 1940s archaeological expedition. Led by Randolph Hodgson and antiquarian Lady Bradshaw in a supposed search for Alexander the Great's tomb, the entire expedition team was wiped out after encountering and studying the monsters. Hodgson subsequently tried but failed to destroy the temple with dynamite.


text: As the surviving marines regroup, Salim explores the temple alone. He encounters a vampire and retrieves a metal bar from a fallen truck to use as a weapon against them. Rachel is separated from Eric after a stand-off with Dar, and falls into a blood-soaked pit. While the US forces search for ways to signal for help, Rachel comes across an ill Clarice, who was earlier abducted by the vampires. Rachel and Clarice climb out of the pit but due to Clarice's worsening health, Rachel must choose whether to abandon Clarice or continue accompanying her to medicate the illness. Rachel reunites with her allies in the temple and the group are violently assaulted by the vampires. As they escape from the vampires towards the catacombs below them, the Americans again encounter Dar, who is now joined by Salim. Salim suggests they unite to fight the monsters chasing them, to which the others reluctantly agree. The vampires continue attacking the protagonists in the catacombs, killing Dar and separating everyone once more.


text: After the assault, Salim comes across Jason and decides to team up with him. At this point, Salim and Jason can choose whether to be cooperative-but-distrusting to one another or become close friends. Salim and Jason explore the temple, fighting creatures, and go deeper into the remains of the alien spaceship, where they find the partially preserved remains of either Balathu or Kurum. Nick, and possibly Rachel and Eric, follow afterward. Once the survivors flee from another close encounter with the creatures, they further explore the spaceship and learn about the vampires' origin.


text: The survivors talk about a gigantic nest of hibernating vampires they earlier found in the spaceship and agree to incinerate it with explosives. As the cocoons burn, the characters escape to the surface to await extraction by a rescue team. They escape the temple but a total solar eclipse allows the vampires to again attack the group until the eclipse ends and the dispatched team arrives. The player's choices and performances in QTEs determine how many of the protagonists survive. During a post-credits epilogue, at Camp Slayer, the located protagonists are transported—and interviewed if found alive—inside the base. The US military, planning to cover up the entire incident, begins analysis of the vampires.


text: "House of Ashes" is the third game in a series of eight planned for "The Dark Pictures Anthology". The films "Aliens", "Predator", and "The Descent"; the book "At the Mountains of Madness"; and the myth of the Curse of Akkad serving as inspiration for the team. The game's plot also shares similarities to the 2005 horror movie: "The Cave". "House of Ashes" is the first title in the series to be available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, making use of the next-generation graphics and resolution the new platforms provide. Game director Will Doyle described "House of Ashes" as a creature feature and an exploration horror game about an ensemble cast of "trained experts" who are "beyond safety" and unable to get backup for a "critical" mission in a secluded location, where they encounter threats Doyle described as "horrible" and "inhumane". Like the other instalments, "House of Ashes" was designed to be a standalone story but Supermassive Games included Easter eggs and callbacks to previous and future instalments to create a kind of shared universe within the anthology. Character models from "House of Ashes" predecessors were used in this game. Sara Rechena from the Portuguese edition of "IGN" said the design choice is reminiscent of "American Horror Story".


text: Supermassive Games spent an extensive amount of time designing the monsters, the most complicated of their kind the team had made as of the game's release. To make the creatures lifelike, developers used both motion capture and hand animation. Executive producer Dan McDonald, in an interview with "PCGamesN", said Supermassive focused on determining the monsters' physiology to achieve an "otherworldly" effect, which they did using "a bunch of props, stilts, and other things". Doyle also said the monsters' designs were created to be faceless so they would appear incomprehensible and unempathetic, and inhumane enough to "bring out the humanity" in the protagonists.


text: The developers implemented two new gameplay features for "House of Ashes" as a result of fan feedback on prior instalments in the anthology. The team created a difficulty level system for the game and overhauled the camera to make it freely movable. Because many scenes in "House of Ashes" involve "spookier" and more spacious areas, Supermassive found it appropriate to give players total control over the camera, which would aid in exploration and allow players to appreciate the cavernous locations. Doyle said after the release of "Man of Medan" and "Little Hope", he noticed fans were divided about the difficulty of the QTE mechanics; many found the prompts "too easy" but others found them "too hard". In "House of Ashes", players are able to toggle the speed at which QTEs appear and remain on screen. After "Little Hope" limited number of endings due to its use of hallucinations as a plot twist provoked a backlash, the developers incorporated a wider variety of narrative branches into "House of Ashes" story.


text: McDonald said while the game is set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they did not intend war and politics to be its primary focus. The developers tried to treat the setting with respect. According to Tom Phillips, Doyle thought movies depicting conflicts like the Iraq War tend to dehumanise people from opposing nations. With that observation in mind, he and his team wanted to include an Iraqi protagonist in the main cast so they could represent people from both sides of the war in a nuanced light. To add further complexity, Supermassive also tied several aspects of the characters' backstories, such as Salim's desire to leave the war and go back to his son, to the invasion. During the game's production, the team consulted military specialists and Arabic speakers to ensure their depiction of 2003 Iraq was "grounded in reality" and the plot's script was of good quality.


text: Supermassive attributed the decision to set the game in Iraq to the country's abundance in myths and folklore the team could incorporate into the story. The developers believed the 2003–2011 Iraq War would make an "interesting" departure point for the development of the five protagonists, allowing them the opportunity for character motivations, relationships and dynamics the developers found compelling, sympathetic and complex.


text: Supermassive Games approached actor Ashley Tisdale, who is known for her appearances in the "High School Musical" series, during the game's development and asked if she could portray protagonist Rachel King. The developers wanted to cast someone who could exhibit a "tough" personality but was simultaneously capable of showing a "soft side". Tisdale agreed to provide Rachel's voice and likeness because she felt the project would expand her career experiences outside of her usual roles in comedy. She became the installment's female lead actor, making her debut in the video games industry.


text: During the filming process, Supermassive recorded the Tisdale's physical movements and those of the game's other actors to create animations for the character models. To comply with social distancing protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, actors had to avoid bodily contact with one another while enacting their scenes; their movements were digitally edited in post-production to give the impression of contact. In an interview with the developers, Tisdale recounted her experiences while acting for "House of Ashes" and expressed her excitement in her role as a CIA operative in the game:


text: According to Kimberley Wallace from "Game Informer", every game in "The Dark Pictures Anthology" series includes one high-profile actor as the game's lead. Apart from "House of Ashes" Tisdale, she said "Man of Medan" Shawn Ashmore and "Little Hope" Will Poulter had also starred in the series.


text: The soundtrack for "House of Ashes" was composed by Supermassive Games's long-time collaborator Jason Graves, who had previously worked with them on music for other games in "The Dark Pictures Anthology". Before the series' inception, he composed music for "Until Dawn", another survival-horror game the company developed. During the early stages of "House of Ashes" development, Graves composed the game's the score during the UK's COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The score makes use of string and percussion instruments, including hand drums and distorted guitars, as well as flutes and synthesisers.


text: The game's sound director Barney Pratt used a combination of film- and game-music editing techniques to create a cinematic, immersive atmosphere for "House of Ashes". Pratt's team wanted the score's style to be shaped by the plot and gameplay. A percussive, Sumerian-style composition was used for the prologue; it progresses to a horror-themed orchestration of other instruments, adding the synthesisers after the game's twist to evoke the image of highly advanced technology. In these scores, Pratt made use of the game's "signature sound" that could convey a wide variety of emotions, ranging from "unnerving" to "dramatic". He also planned the signature sound to be subtle and encompass a vast range of "time zones, cultures, and locations", in line with the story's "consistent element[s]". Graves started working on this sound using a sample of a dove's coo, which he used as the basis for the other arrangements.


text: In an interview with music magazine "Spin", Graves said working with Supermassive Games is "a treat" and that he enjoyed coming up with unique compositions for each game in the anthology.


text: "House of Ashes" was first revealed in a hidden post-credits teaser trailer at the end of "", which was released on 30 October 2020. Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco Entertainment published another teaser trailer on 19 May 2021 then officially revealed the gameplay next week, on 27 May. Two story trailers provided glimpses on the game's plot; one trailer premiered at E3 2021's Summer Game Fest on 10 June and another at Gamescom 2021 on 25 August. The Gamescom trailer contains an advertisement for the game's "Pazuzu Edition" and a link to a fictional US military website that gave further details about "House of Ashes" lore. The "Pazuzu Edition", which is the name for the game's collector's edition, included the Curator's Cut, a collector's box, an art print, a set of stickers, a figurine of one of the vampiric creatures and an eclipse-shaped button.


text: In early September 2021, Supermassive and Bandai Namco made a playable demo of the game available to the public. On 7 October, the companies released a character trailer introducing the main cast. "House of Ashes" was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 22 October 2021. Its release was accompanied by a trailer that includes live-action scenes of the Curator.


text: Compared with the previous title "Little Hope", "House of Ashes" sold 27% fewer physical copies in the United Kingdom upon its debut. The game entered the UK boxed charts at number six, with 48% of boxed sales coming from PS5 users. The PS4 and Xbox versions made up 36% and 16% of physical sales at the time, respectively. "House of Ashes" dropped to number 21 on the week of 30 October, denoting a 52% decrease in sales. Factoring is both download and physical purchases, "House of Ashes" reached the GSD Top 20 Games monthly chart for October, where it was placed at number 11.


text: According to Metacritic, a review aggregator, "The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes" received "mixed or average" reviews from critics. Upon its release, it was widely regarded as the anthology's best game to date and as an improvement over the two previous games, with a few reviews calling it a "step in the right direction" for "The Dark Pictures".


text: The characters of "House of Ashes" were the subject of commentary in several reviews. Many critics praised Salim, one of the game's five protagonists, attributing his likability to his empathetic persona and friendly interactions with the other characters. Rachel Weber, a writer for "GamesRadar+", appreciated the way he comes across as a "good impression" of a human being, a trait that made her invested in his survival. Richard Wakeling from "GameSpot" expressed admiration for Salim for the same reason, and he commended Supermassive Games for doing an "excellent job" at making the character sympathetic and humane. Reviewing "House of Ashes" for the website "VG247", Tom Orry said Salim had the saddest backstory among the game's characters and believed he was a standout among the game's cast. Similarly, "Polygon" Cass Marshall described Salim as a noteworthy character with a "heartwarming" motivation to return home to his son. Marshall enjoyed many of Salim's actions and feats, such as accumulating an "enormous vampire kill count" and being willing to help the American characters despite their hostility, during "House of Ashes" story. As a result, Marshall called him "an absolute legend" and the game's "most valuable player".


text: "GameSpot" Wakeling said Salim's relationships with the game's other characters are "House of Ashes" "best and most poignant moments". He admired the developers for choosing not to portray Salim in a villainous way because of the US-led war in Iraq. In a review for the news website "Destructoid", writer Jordan Devore praised Salim for his pragmatism, which is demonstrated by his prioritisation of escape from the underground temple and his insistence he and his adversaries must stop fighting if they all wish to get out alive. As a result, Devore considered Salim the most likeable and relatable of the protagonists. Two reviews on the game mention Salim's relationship with Jason. "Polygon" Marshall was critical of the game's tendency to focus on the Americans' mistreatment of Salim but felt satisfied by the potential "buddy cop" dynamic that could develop between Salim and Jason, calling the relationship "bittersweet". According to "Game Informer" Marcus Stewart, Jason's interactions with Salim appear "cheesy". He lauded the portrayal of Jason's character, and called his war trauma and character development "endearing" moments that drew Stewart close to the protagonist.


text: The series' next title has been announced as "The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me", which will be the final game in "The Dark Pictures" first season. The first trailer for "The Devil in Me", which was shown at the end of "House of Ashes"; depicts an automated human-like mechanism created from a rotting corpse. The trailer is about a minute long and features a voiceover monologue about the "art" of serial killing. A gold picture found in a chapter of "House of Ashes" previews a scene from "The Devil in Me", showing a man being incinerated by an explosion caused by a mannequin.


text: After Bandai Namco and Supermassive announced the trailer for the upcoming game, they gave an overview of the plot. "The Devil in Me" is planned for release in 2022, and will follow a five-person crew of documentary filmmakers (including Irish actress Jessie Buckley) who tour a replica of H. H. Holmes Murder Castle and are subsequently stalked by a malevolent force.


title: Peach

text: The peach ("Prunus persica") is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, non-fuzzy varieties), nectarines.


title: Peach

text: The specific name "persica" refers to its widespread cultivation in Persia (modern-day Iran), from where it was transplanted to Europe. It belongs to the genus "Prunus", which includes the cherry, apricot, almond, and plum, in the rose family. The peach is classified with the almond in the subgenus "Amygdalus", distinguished from the other subgenera by the corrugated seed shell (endocarp). Due to their close relatedness, the kernel of a peach stone tastes remarkably similar to almond, and peach stones are often used to make a cheap version of marzipan, known as persipan.


title: Peach

text: Peaches and nectarines are the same species, though they are regarded commercially as different fruits. The skin of nectarines lacks the fuzz (fruit-skin trichomes) that peach skin has; a mutation in a single gene ("MYB25") is thought to be responsible for the difference between the two.


title: Peach

text: "Prunus persica" grows up to tall and wide, but when pruned properly, trees are usually tall and wide. The leaves are lanceolate, long, broad, and pinnately veined. The flowers are produced in early spring before the leaves; they are solitary or paired, 2.5–3 cm diameter, pink, with five petals. The fruit has yellow or whitish flesh, a delicate aroma, and a skin that is either velvety (peaches) or smooth (nectarines) in different cultivars. The flesh is very delicate and easily bruised in some cultivars, but is fairly firm in some commercial varieties, especially when green. The single, large seed is red-brown, oval shaped, around 1.3–2 cm long, and surrounded by a wood-like husk. Peaches, along with cherries, plums, and apricots, are stone fruits (drupes). The various heirloom varieties including the 'Indian Peach', or 'Indian Blood Peach', which ripens in the latter part of the summer, and can have color ranging from red and white, to purple.


title: Peach

text: Cultivated peaches are divided into clingstones and freestones, depending on whether the flesh sticks to the stone or not; both can have either white or yellow flesh. Peaches with white flesh typically are very sweet with little acidity, while yellow-fleshed peaches typically have an acidic tang coupled with sweetness, though this also varies greatly. Both colors often have some red on their skins. Low-acid, white-fleshed peaches are the most popular kinds in China, Japan, and neighbouring Asian countries, while Europeans and North Americans have historically favoured the acidic, yellow-fleshed cultivars.


title: Peach

text: Peach trees are relatively short-lived as compared with some other fruit trees. In some regions orchards are replanted after 8 to 10 years, while in others trees may produce satisfactorily for 20 to 25 years or more, depending upon their resistance to diseases, pests, and winter damage.


title: Peach

text: The scientific name "persica", along with the word "peach" itself – and its cognates in many European languages – derives from an early European belief that peaches were native to Persia (modern-day Iran). The Ancient Romans referred to the peach as ("Persian apple"), later becoming French , whence the English "peach". The scientific name, "Prunus persica", literally means "Persian plum", as it is closely related to the plum.


title: Peach

text: Fossil endocarps with characteristics indistinguishable from those of modern peaches have been recovered from late Pliocene deposits in Kunming, dating to 2.6 million years ago. In the absence of evidence that the plants were in other ways identical to the modern peach, the name "Prunus kunmingensis" has been assigned to these fossils.


title: Peach

text: Although its botanical name "Prunus persica" refers to Persia, genetic studies suggest peaches originated in China, where they have been cultivated since the Neolithic period. Until recently, cultivation was believed to have started around 2000 BC. More recent evidence indicates that domestication occurred as early as 6000 BC in Zhejiang Province of China. The oldest archaeological peach stones are from the Kuahuqiao site near Hangzhou. Archaeologists point to the Yangtze River Valley as the place where the early selection for favorable peach varieties probably took place. Peaches were mentioned in Chinese writings and literature beginning from the early first millennium BC.


title: Peach

text: A domesticated peach appeared very early in Japan, in 4700–4400 BC, during the Jōmon period. It was already similar to modern cultivated forms, where the peach stones are significantly larger and more compressed than earlier stones. This domesticated type of peach was brought into Japan from China. Nevertheless, in China itself, this variety is currently attested only at a later date around 3300 to 2300 BC.


title: Peach

text: It is also found elsewhere in Western Asia in ancient times. Peach cultivation reached Greece by 300 BC. Alexander the Great is sometimes said to have introduced them into Greece after conquering Persia, but no historical evidence for this claim has been found. Peaches were, however, well known to the Romans in the first century AD; the oldest known artistic representations of the fruit are in two fragments of wall paintings, dated to the first century AD, in Herculaneum, preserved due to the Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD, and now held in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. Archaeological finds show that peaches were cultivated widely in Roman northwestern Continental Europe, but production collapsed around the sixth century; some revival of production followed with the Carolingian Renaissance of the ninth century.


title: Peach

text: An article on peach tree cultivation in Spain is brought down in Ibn al-'Awwam's 12th-century agricultural work, "Book on Agriculture". The peach was brought to the Americas by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, and eventually made it to England and France in the 17th century, where it was a prized and expensive treat. Horticulturist George Minifie supposedly brought the first peaches from England to its North American colonies in the early 17th century, planting them at his estate of Buckland in Virginia. Although Thomas Jefferson had peach trees at Monticello, American farmers did not begin commercial production until the 19th century in Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, South Carolina, and finally Virginia.


title: Peach

text: The Shanghai honey nectar peach was a key component of both the food culture and agrarian economy the area where the modern megacity of Shanghai stands. Peaches were the cornerstone of early Shanghai's garden culture. As modernization and westernization swept through the city the Shanghai honey nectar peach nearly disappeared completely. Much of modern Shanghai is built over these gardens and peach orchards.


title: Peach

text: In April 2010, an international consortium, the International Peach Genome Initiative, which includes researchers from the United States, Italy, Chile, Spain, and France, announced they had sequenced the peach tree genome (doubled haploid Lovell). Recently, it published the peach genome sequence and related analyses. The sequence is composed of 227 million nucleotides arranged in eight pseudomolecules representing the eight peach chromosomes (2n = 16). In addition, 27,852 protein-coding genes and 28,689 protein-coding transcripts were predicted.


title: Peach

text: Particular emphasis in this study is reserved for the analysis of the genetic diversity in peach germplasm and how it was shaped by human activities such as domestication and breeding. Major historical bottlenecks were found, one related to the putative original domestication that is supposed to have taken place in China about 4,000–5,000 years ago, the second is related to the western germplasm and is due to the early dissemination of the peach in Europe from China and the more recent breeding activities in the United States and Europe. These bottlenecks highlighted the substantial reduction of genetic diversity associated with domestication and breeding activities.


title: Peach

text: Peaches grow in a fairly limited range in dry, continental or temperate climates, since the trees have a chilling requirement that tropical or subtropical areas generally do not satisfy except at high altitudes (for example in certain areas of Ecuador, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, and Nepal). Most cultivars require 500 hours of chilling around . During the chilling period, key chemical reactions occur, but the plant appears dormant. Once the chilling period is fulfilled, the plant enters a second type of dormancy, the quiescence period. During quiescence, buds break and grow when sufficient warm weather favorable to growth is accumulated.


title: Peach

text: The trees themselves can usually tolerate temperatures to around , although the following season's flower buds are usually killed at these temperatures, preventing a crop that summer. Flower bud death begins to occur between , depending on the cultivar and on the timing of the cold, with the buds becoming less cold tolerant in late winter.


title: Peach

text: Another climate constraint is spring frost. The trees flower fairly early (in March in Western Europe), and the blossom is damaged or killed if temperatures drop below about . If the flowers are not fully open, though, they can tolerate a few degrees colder.


title: Peach

text: Climates with significant winter rainfall at temperatures below are also unsuitable for peach cultivation, as the rain promotes peach leaf curl, which is the most serious fungal disease for peaches. In practice, fungicides are extensively used for peach cultivation in such climates, with more than 1% of European peaches exceeding legal pesticide limits in 2013.


title: Peach

text: Finally, summer heat is required to mature the crop, with mean temperatures of the hottest month between .


title: Peach

text: Typical peach cultivars begin bearing fruit in their third year. Their lifespan in the U.S. varies by region; the University of California at Davis gives a lifespan of about 15 years while the University of Maine gives a lifespan of 7 years there.


title: Peach

text: Hundreds of peach and nectarine cultivars are known. These are classified into two categories—freestones and clingstones. Freestones are those whose flesh separates readily from the pit. Clingstones are those whose flesh clings tightly to the pit. Some cultivars are partially freestone and clingstone, so are called semifree. Freestone types are preferred for eating fresh, while clingstone types are for canning. The fruit flesh may be creamy white to deep yellow, to dark red; the hue and shade of the color depend on the cultivar.


title: Peach

text: Peach breeding has favored cultivars with more firmness, more red color, and shorter fuzz on the fruit surface. These characteristics ease shipping and supermarket sales by improving eye appeal. This selection process has not necessarily led to increased flavor, though. Peaches have a short shelf life, so commercial growers typically plant a mix of different cultivars to have fruit to ship all season long.


title: Peach

text: Different countries have different cultivars. In the United Kingdom, for example, these cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:


title: Peach

text: The variety "P. persica" var. "nucipersica" (or var. "nectarina") – these are commonly called "nectarines" – has a smooth skin. It is on occasion referred to as a "shaved peach" or "fuzzless peach", due to its lack of fuzz or short hairs. Though fuzzy peaches and nectarines are regarded commercially as different fruits, with nectarines often erroneously believed to be a crossbreed between peaches and plums, or a "peach with a plum skin", nectarines belong to the same species as peaches. Several genetic studies have concluded nectarines are produced due to a recessive allele, whereas a fuzzy peach skin is dominant. Nectarines have arisen many times from peach trees, often as bud sports.


title: Peach

text: As with peaches, nectarines can be white or yellow, and clingstone or freestone. On average, nectarines are slightly smaller and sweeter than peaches, but with much overlap. The lack of skin fuzz can make nectarine skins appear more reddish than those of peaches, contributing to the fruit's plum-like appearance. The lack of down on nectarines' skin also means their skin is more easily bruised than peaches.


title: Peach

text: The history of the nectarine is unclear; the first recorded mention in English is from 1616, but they had probably been grown much earlier within the native range of the peach in central and eastern Asia. Although one source states that nectarines were introduced into the United States by David Fairchild of the Department of Agriculture in 1906, a number of colonial-era newspaper articles make reference to nectarines being grown in the United States prior to the Revolutionary War. The 28 March 1768 edition of the "New York Gazette" (p. 3), for example, mentions a farm in Jamaica, Long Island, New York, where nectarines were grown.


title: Peach

text: Peacherines are claimed to be a cross between a peach and a nectarine, but as they are the same species cannot be a true cross (hybrid); they are marketed in Australia and New Zealand. The fruit is intermediate in appearance, though, between a peach and a nectarine, large and brightly colored like a red peach. The flesh of the fruit is usually yellow, but white varieties also exist. The Koanga Institute lists varieties that ripen in the Southern Hemisphere in February and March.


title: Peach

text: In 1909, "Pacific Monthly" mentioned peacherines in a news bulletin for California. Louise Pound, in 1920, claimed the term peacherine is an example of language stunt.


title: Peach

text: Most peach trees sold by nurseries are cultivars budded or grafted onto a suitable rootstock. Common rootstocks are 'Lovell Peach', 'Nemaguard Peach', "Prunus besseyi", and 'Citation'. The rootstock provides hardiness and budding is done to improve predictability of the fruit quality.


title: Peach

text: Peach trees need full sun, and a layout that allows good natural air flow to assist the thermal environment for the tree. Peaches are planted in early winter. During the growth season, they need a regular and reliable supply of water, with higher amounts just before harvest.


title: Peach

text: Peaches need nitrogen-rich fertilizers more than other fruit trees. Without regular fertilizer supply, peach tree leaves start turning yellow or exhibit stunted growth. Blood meal, bone meal, and calcium ammonium nitrate are suitable fertilizers.


title: Peach

text: The flowers on a peach tree are typically thinned out because if the full number of peaches mature on a branch, they are undersized and lack flavor. Fruits are thinned midway in the season by commercial growers. Fresh peaches are easily bruised, so do not store well. They are most flavorful when they ripen on the tree and are eaten the day of harvest.


title: Peach

text: The peach tree can be grown in an espalier shape. The Baldassari palmette is a design created around 1950 used primarily for training peaches. In walled gardens constructed from stone or brick, which absorb and retain solar heat and then slowly release it, raising the temperature against the wall, peaches can be grown as espaliers against south-facing walls as far north as southeast Great Britain and southern Ireland.


title: Peach

text: The first pest to attack the tree early in the year when other food is scarce is the earwig ("Forficula auricularia") which feeds on blossoms and young leaves at night, preventing fruiting and weakening newly planted trees. The pattern of damage is distinct from that of caterpillars later in the year, as earwigs characteristically remove semicircles of petal and leaf tissue from the tips, rather than internally. Greasebands applied just before blossom are effective.


title: Peach

text: The larvae of such moth species as the peachtree borer ("Synanthedon exitiosa"), the yellow peach moth ("Conogethes punctiferalis"), the well-marked cutworm ("Abagrotis orbis"), "Lyonetia prunifoliella", "Phyllonorycter hostis", the fruit tree borer ("Maroga melanostigma"), "Parornix anguliferella", "Parornix finitimella", "Caloptilia zachrysa", "Phyllonorycter crataegella", "Trifurcula sinica", Suzuki's promolactis moth ("Promalactis suzukiella"), the white-spotted tussock moth ("Orgyia thyellina"), the apple leafroller ("Archips termias"), the catapult moth ("Serrodes partita"), the wood groundling ("Parachronistis albiceps") or the omnivorous leafroller ("Platynota stultana") are reported to feed on "P. persica". The flatid planthopper ("Metcalfa pruinosa") causes damage to fruit trees.


title: Peach

text: The tree is also a host plant for such species as the Japanese beetle ("Popillia japonica"), the unmonsuzume ("Callambulyx tatarinovii"), the promethea silkmoth ("Callosamia promethea"), the orange oakleaf ("Kallima inachus"), "Langia zenzeroides", the speckled emperor ("Gynanisa maja") or the brown playboy ("Deudorix antalus"). The European red mite ("Panonychus ulmi") or the yellow mite ("Lorryia formosa") are also found on the peach tree.


title: Peach

text: Peach trees are prone to a disease called leaf curl, which usually does not directly affect the fruit, but does reduce the crop yield by partially defoliating the tree. Several fungicides can be used to combat the disease, including Bordeaux mixture and other copper-based products (the University of California considers these organic treatments), ziram, chlorothalonil, and dodine. The fruit is susceptible to brown rot or a dark reddish spot.


title: Peach

text: Peaches and nectarines are best stored at temperatures of 0 °C (32 °F) and in high humidity. They are highly perishable, so are typically consumed or canned within two weeks of harvest.


title: Peach

text: In 2020, world production of peaches (combined with nectarines for reporting) was 24.6 million tonnes, led by China with 61% of the world total (table).


title: Peach

text: The U.S. state of Georgia is known as the "Peach State" due to its significant production of peaches as early as 1571, with exports to other states occurring around 1858. In 2014, Georgia was third in US peach production behind California and South Carolina.


title: Peach

text: Peaches are not only a popular fruit, but also are symbolic in many cultural traditions, such as in art, paintings, and folk tales such as the Peaches of Immortality.


title: Peach

text: Peach blossoms are highly prized in Chinese culture. The ancient Chinese believed the peach to possess more vitality than any other tree because their blossoms appear before leaves sprout. When early rulers of China visited their territories, they were preceded by sorcerers armed with peach rods to protect them from spectral evils. On New Year's Eve, local magistrates would cut peach wood branches and place them over their doors to protect against evil influences. Peach wood was also used for the earliest known door gods during the Han. Another author writes:


title: Peach

text: Peachwood seals or figurines guarded gates and doors, and, as one Han account recites, "the buildings in the capital are made tranquil and pure; everywhere a good state of affairs prevails". Writes the author, further:


title: Peach

text: In an orchard of flowering peach trees, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei took an oath of brotherhood in the opening chapter of the classic Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". Another peach orchard, in "The Peach Blossom Spring" by poet Tao Yuanming, is the setting of the favourite Chinese fable and a metaphor for utopias. A peach tree growing on a precipice was where the Taoist master Zhang Daoling tested his disciples.


title: Peach

text: The Old Man of the South Pole, one of the deities of the Chinese folk religion "fulu shou", is sometimes seen holding a large peach, representing long life and health.


title: Peach

text: The term "bitten peach", first used by Legalist philosopher Han Fei in his work "Han Feizi", became a byword for homosexuality. The book records the incident when courtier Mizi Xia bit into an especially delicious peach and gave the remainder to his lover, Duke Ling of Wei, as a gift so that he could taste it, as well.


title: Peach

text: In Korea, peaches have been cultivated from ancient times. According to "Samguk Sagi", peach trees were planted during the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, and "Sallim gyeongje" also mentions cultivation skills of peach trees. The peach is seen as the fruit of happiness, riches, honours, and longevity. The rare peach with double seeds is seen as a favorable omen of a mild winter. It is one of the 10 immortal plants and animals, so peaches appear in many "minhwa" (folk paintings). Peaches and peach trees are believed to chase away spirits, so peaches are not placed on tables for "jesa" (ancestor veneration), unlike other fruits.


title: Peach

text: The world's sweetest peach is grown in Fukushima, Japan. The Guinness world record for the sweetest peach is currently held by a peach grown in Kanechika, Japan, with a sugar content of 22.2%. However, a fruit farm in rural Fukushima, Koji grew a much sweeter peach, with a Brix score of 32°. Degrees Brix measures the sugar content of the fruit, and is usually between 11 and 15 for a typical peach from a supermarket.


title: Peach

text: Two traditional Japanese words for the color pink correspond to blossoming trees: one for peach blossoms (), and one for cherry blossoms ().


title: Peach

text: A Vietnamese mythic history states that in the spring of 1789, after marching to Ngọc Hồi and then winning a great victory against invaders from the Qing dynasty of China, Emperor Quang Trung ordered a messenger to gallop to Phú Xuân citadel (now Huế) and deliver a flowering peach branch to the Empress Ngọc Hân. This took place on the fifth day of the first lunar month, two days before the predicted end of the battle. The branch of peach flowers that was sent from the north to the centre of Vietnam was not only a message of victory from the Emperor to his consort, but also the start of a new spring of peace and happiness for all the Vietnamese people. In addition, since the land of Nhật Tân had freely given that very branch of peach flowers to the Emperor, it became the loyal garden of his dynasty.


title: Peach

text: The protagonists of "The Tale of Kieu" fell in love by a peach tree, and in Vietnam, the blossoming peach flower is the signal of spring. Finally, peach bonsai trees are used as decoration during Vietnamese New Year (Tết) in northern Vietnam.


title: Peach

text: Many famous artists have painted with peach fruits placed in prominence. Caravaggio, Vicenzo Campi, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Severin Roesen, Peter Paul Rubens, and Van Gogh are among the many influential artists who painted peaches and peach trees in various settings. Scholars suggest that many compositions are symbolic, some an effort to introduce realism. For example, Tresidder claims the artists of Renaissance symbolically used peach to represent heart, and a leaf attached to the fruit as the symbol for tongue, thereby implying speaking truth from one's heart; a ripe peach was also a symbol to imply a ripe state of good health. Caravaggio's paintings introduce realism by painting peach leaves that are molted, discolored, or in some cases have wormholes – conditions common in modern peach cultivation.


title: Peach

text: In literature, Roald Dahl named his children's fantasy novel "James and the Giant Peach" because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry."


title: Peach

text: South Carolina named the peach its official fruit in 1984. The peach became the state fruit of Georgia, nicknamed the "Peach State", in 1995. The peach went from feral trees utilized opportunistically to a tended commercial crop in the Southern United States in the 1850s, as the boll weevil attacked regional cotton crops. When Georgia reached peak production in the 1920s, elaborate festivals celebrated the fruit. By 2017, Georgia's production represented 3–5% of the U.S. total. Alabama named it the "state tree fruit" in 2006. Delaware's state flower has been the peach blossom since 1995, and peach pie became its official dessert in 2009.


title: Peach

text: Raw peach flesh is 89% water, 10% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat. A medium-sized raw peach, weighing , supplies 39 calories, and contains small amounts of essential nutrients, but none is a significant proportion of the Daily Value (DV, right table). A raw nectarine has similar low content of nutrients. The glycemic load of an average peach (120 grams) is 5, similar to other low-sugar fruits.


title: Peach

text: One medium peach also contains 2% or more daily value of vitamins E and K, niacin, folate, iron, choline, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, zinc and copper. Fresh peaches are a moderate source of antioxidants and vitamin C which is required for the building of connective tissue inside the human body.


title: Peach

text: Total polyphenols in mg per 100 g of fresh weight were 14–102 in white-flesh nectarines, 18–54 in yellow-flesh nectarines, 28–111 in white-flesh peaches, and 21–61 mg per 100 g in yellow-flesh peaches. The major phenolic compounds identified in peach are chlorogenic acid, catechins and epicatechins, with other compounds, identified by HPLC, including gallic acid and ellagic acid. Rutin and isoquercetin are the primary flavonols found in clingstone peaches.


title: Peach

text: Red-fleshed peaches are rich in anthocyanins, particularly cyanidin glucosides in six peach and six nectarine cultivars and malvin glycosides in clingstone peaches.


title: Peach

text: As with many other members of the rose family, peach seeds contain cyanogenic glycosides, including amygdalin (note the subgenus designation: "Amygdalus"). These substances are capable of decomposing into a sugar molecule and hydrogen cyanide gas. Cyanogenic glycosides are toxic if consumed in large doses. While peach seeds are not the most toxic within the rose family (see bitter almond), large consumption of these chemicals from any source is potentially hazardous to animal and human health.


title: Peach

text: Peach allergy or intolerance is a relatively common form of hypersensitivity to proteins contained in peaches and related fruits (such as almonds). Symptoms range from local effects (e.g. oral allergy syndrome, contact urticaria) to more severe systemic reactions, including anaphylaxis (e.g. urticaria, angioedema, gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms). Adverse reactions are related to the "freshness" of the fruit: peeled or canned fruit may be tolerated.


title: Peach

text: Some 110 chemical compounds contribute to peach aroma, including alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, esters, polyphenols and terpenoids.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Suzanne Marie Somers (née Mahoney; born October 16, 1946) is an American actress, author, singer, businesswoman, and health spokesperson. She appeared in the television role of Chrissy Snow on "Three's Company" and as Carol Foster Lambert on "Step by Step".


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers later became the author of a series of self-help books, including "Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones" (2006), about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. She has released two autobiographies, four diet books, and a book of poetry.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers has been criticized for her views on some medical subjects and her advocacy of the Wiley Protocol, which has been labelled as "scientifically unproven and dangerous". Her promotion of alternative cancer treatments has received criticism from the American Cancer Society.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Born Suzanne Marie Mahoney in the San Francisco suburb of San Bruno, California, Somers is the third of four children in an Irish-American Catholic family. Her mother, Marion Elizabeth (née Turner), was a medical secretary, and her father, Francis Mahoney, was a laborer and gardener. When Suzanne was six years old her father became an alcoholic. Somers' father would call her names and embarrass her.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers attended Capuchino High School She also said she was a cheerleader at Mercy High School in Burlingame, California, and was accepted at San Francisco College for Women, a college run by the Catholic Society of the Sacred Heart order. Somers married Bruce Somers in 1965, when she was 19, and they had a son, Bruce Jr., in November 1965. That marriage ended in 1968.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers became a prize model on "Anniversary Game" (1969–70), where she met host Alan Hamel. They married in 1977.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer in April 2000, and had a lumpectomy to remove the cancer followed by radiation therapy, but decided to forgo chemotherapy in favor of a fermented mistletoe extract called Iscador.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: On January 9, 2007, the Associated Press reported that a wildfire in Southern California had destroyed Somers' Malibu home.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers began acting in small roles during the late 1960s and early 1970s (including on various talk shows promoting her book of poetry, and bit parts in movies, such as the "Blonde in the white Thunderbird" in "American Graffiti", and an episode of the American version of the sitcom "Lotsa Luck" (as the femme fatale) in the early 1970s. She also appeared in "The Rockford Files" in 1974 and had an uncredited role as a topless "pool girl" in "Magnum Force" in 1973. She also had a guest-starring role on "The Six Million Dollar Man", in the 1977 episode "Cheshire Project,” she played a passenger on the first episode of "The Love Boat" as well as a guest appearance in a 1976 episode of "One Day at a Time". She later landed her most famous role of the ditzy blonde "Chrissy Snow" on the ABC sitcom "Three's Company" in 1977. Also that year, she was a celebrity panelist on "Match Game", and appeared with husband Alan Hamel on "Tattletales".


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers was cast in the ABC sitcom "Three's Company" in January 1977. After actresses Suzanne Zenor and Susan Lanier did not impress producers during the first two pilots, Somers was suggested by ABC president Fred Silverman, who had seen her on the "Tonight Show" and she was auditioned and hired the day before the taping of the third and final pilot officially commenced. She portrayed Chrissy Snow, a stereotypical dumb blonde, who was employed as an office secretary.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: The series co-starred John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt in a comedy of errors about two single women living with a single man who pretends to be gay in order to bypass the landlord's policy prohibiting single men sharing an apartment with single women. The program was an instant success in the ratings, eventually spawning a short-lived spin-off series (starring Norman Fell and Audra Lindley).


title: Suzanne Somers

text: When "Three's Company" began its fifth season in late 1980, Somers demanded a hefty salary increase from $30,000 to $150,000 an episode and 10 percent ownership of the show's profits. Those close to the situation suggested that Somers' rebellion was largely due to husband Hamel's influences.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: After ABC denied her a raise in salary, Somers refused to appear in the second and fourth episodes of the season, due to excuses such as a broken rib. She finished the remaining season on her contract, but her role was decreased to just 60 seconds per episode, her character only appearing in the episode's closing tag in which Chrissy calls the trio's apartment from her parents' home. After ABC fired her from the program and terminated her contract, Somers sued the network for $2 million, saying her credibility in show business had been damaged. The lawsuit was settled by an arbitrator who decided Somers was owed $30,000, due to a single missed episode for which she had not been paid. Future rulings also favored the network and producers. Somers says she was fired for asking to be paid as much as popular male television stars of the day such as Alan Alda and Carroll O'Connor.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In 1983, Suzanne Somers through her Hamel/Somers Productions had signed a deal with Columbia Pictures Television.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers and her "Three's Company" co-star John Ritter reconciled their friendship after 20 years of not speaking to each other, shortly before Ritter's death in 2003.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers appeared in two "Playboy" cover-feature nude pictorials, in 1980 and 1984. Her first set of nude photos was taken by Stan Malinowski in February 1970 when Somers was a struggling model and actress and did a test photoshoot for the magazine. She was accepted as a Playmate candidate in 1971, but declined to pose nude before the actual shoot. During an appearance on "The Tonight Show", she denied ever posing nude (except for a "High Society" topless photo), which prompted Playboy to publish photos from the 1970 Malinowski shoot a decade later, in 1980. Somers' original motivation for posing nude was to be able to pay medical bills related to injuries her son Bruce Jr. suffered in a car accident. By the time the photos were published, her son was 14 and Somers feared seeing his mother posing nude would be difficult for him. Somers sued Playboy and settled for $50,000—which was donated to charity, at least $10,000 of it going to the Easter Seals. The second nude pictorial by Richard Fegley appeared in December 1984 in an attempt by Somers to regain her diminished popularity after the "Three's Company" debacle in 1981. Despite her anger and the earlier lawsuit, Playboy approached her earlier that year to pose nude a second time. Initially she was angered again, but eventually agreed after discussing it with her family. She felt she would have a better chance to control the quality of the photos the second time, and having such control was an important condition that Somers attached to posing. Despite Somers' earlier belief that her son would not want to see his mother nude, her then 18-year-old son did view the second pictorial.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: During the 1980s, Somers became a Las Vegas entertainer. In the early 1990s, she was the spokeswoman in a series of infomercials for the Thighmaster, a piece of exercise equipment that is squeezed between one's thighs. During this period of her career, she also performed for U.S. servicemen overseas. Calling her a legend in the industry, on May 2, 2014, Direct Marketing Response inducted Somers into the infomercial Hall of Fame.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: At the height of her exposure as official spokesperson for Thighmaster infomercials, Somers made her first return to a series, although not on network television. In 1987, she starred in the sitcom "She's the Sheriff", which ran in first-run syndication. Somers portrayed a widow with two young kids who decided to fill the shoes of her late husband, a sheriff of a Nevada town. The show ran for two seasons.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In 1990, Somers returned to network TV, appearing in numerous guest roles and made-for-TV movies, mostly for ABC. Her roles in these, including the movie "Rich Men, Single Women", attracted the attention of Lorimar Television and Miller-Boyett Productions, who were developing a new sitcom. Somers had starred in the film with Heather Locklear, who inadvertently directed the focus of both production companies to Somers due to Locklear's starring role on "Going Places" (from Lorimar and Miller/Boyett). For Lorimar, this was asking Somers back, since they alone had produced "She's the Sheriff".


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In September 1991, Somers returned to series TV in the sitcom "Step By Step" (with Patrick Duffy), which became a success on ABC's youth-oriented "TGIF" lineup. A week after the premiere of "Step By Step", a two-hour biopic of Somers starring the actress herself, entitled "Keeping Secrets" (based on her first autobiography of the same title), was broadcast on ABC. The movie chronicled Somers' troubled family life and upbringing, along with her subsequent rise to fame. Playing off her rejuvenated career, Somers also launched a daytime talk show in 1994, aptly titled "Suzanne Somers", which lasted one season. "Step By Step" continued on ABC until the end of its sixth season in 1997, whereupon the series moved to CBS that fall for what turned out to be its final season. With her sitcom now airing on CBS, Somers was chosen to co-host the network's revival of "Candid Camera" with Peter Funt, which began airing later that season.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: From 1997–99, Somers cohosted the revised "Candid Camera" show, when CBS chose to bring it back with Peter Funt. Somers stayed for two years before PAX TV renewed the series without her.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In summer 2005, Somers made her Broadway debut in a one-woman show, "The Blonde in the Thunderbird", a collection of stories about her life and career. The show was supposed to run until September, but was cancelled in less than a week after poor reviews and disappointing ticket sales. She blamed the harsh reviews ("The New York Times" referred to it as ""...a drab and embarrassing display of emotional exhibitionism masquerading as entertainment"") and told the "New York Post": ""These men [New York critics] are curmudgeons, and maybe I went too close to the bone for them. I was lying there naked, and they decided to kick me and step on me, just like these visions you see in Iraq.""


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Three of the episodes featured a reunion and reconciliation with former "Three's Company" co-star Joyce DeWitt; the two had not seen nor spoken to each other in 31 years. Somers and Dewitt briefly discussed John Ritter and how glad they were that they both had spoken to him shortly before Ritter died.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In the fall of 2012, "The Suzanne Show", hosted by Somers, aired for a 13-episode season on the Lifetime Network. Somers welcomed various guests covering a wide range of topics related to health and fitness.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: On February 24, 2015, Somers was announced as one of the stars participating on the 20th season of "Dancing with the Stars". Her partner was professional dancer Tony Dovolani. Somers and Dovolani were eliminated on the fifth week of competition and finished in 9th place.


title: Suzanne Somers

text: Somers supports bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Her book, "Ageless", includes interviews with 16 practitioners of bioidentical hormone therapy, but gives extra discussion to one specific approach, the "Wiley Protocol". Somers and T. S. Wiley, the originator of the Wiley Protocol, have been criticized for their advocacy of the Wiley Protocol. A group of seven doctors, all of whom utilize bioidentical hormone therapies to address health issues in women, issued a public letter to Somers and her publisher, Crown, in which they state that the protocol is "scientifically unproven and dangerous" and cite Wiley's lack of medical and clinical qualifications. The use of bioidentical hormone therapies is a very controversial area of medicine; its efficacy has never been tested and numerous groups have expressed concern over its safety and the misleading claims made by practitioners, which was the subject of an Associated Press article:


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In 2001, Somers was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy, and radiation, but declined to undergo chemotherapy. In November 2008, Somers announced she was diagnosed with inoperable cancer by six doctors, but she learned a week later that she was misdiagnosed. During this time, she interviewed doctors about cancer treatments and these interviews became the basis of her book, "Knockout", about alternative treatments to chemotherapy. In her book "Knockout", Somers promotes alternative cancer treatments, for which she was criticized by the American Cancer Society:


title: Suzanne Somers

text: In January 2013, she suggested that Adam Lanza went on his shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School due to the level of toxins in his diet and the household cleaners he was exposed to. She stated that all these chemicals may "overelectrify the brain".


title: Heaven Official's Blessing

text: Heaven Official's Blessing (Chinese: 天官赐福, pinyin: "Tiān Guān Cì Fú") is a Chinese novel series written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Chinese: 墨香铜臭). A donghua series adaptation was first released on Bilibili and Funimation on 31 October 2020 and received a positive review and recommendation by CBR. The novel was first published in 2017 on , a popular Chinese website for publishing and serializing online fiction. It consists of 244 chapters and an additional five stories in eight chapters that take place post-canon. The last novel number 6, was published on 7 March 2022. There also exists a manhua based on the novel, illustrated by STARember and published by Bilibili, with 83 chapters as of 13 October 2022. It has been collected into 2 published volumes as of 18 July 2022.


title: Heaven Official's Blessing

text: Eight hundred years ago, Xie Lian was the Crown Prince of the Xian Le kingdom. He was loved by his citizens and was considered the darling of the world. He ascended to the Heavens at a young age; however, due to unfortunate circumstances, was quickly banished back to the mortal realm. Years later, he ascends again–only to be banished again a few minutes after his ascension.