#After much ado

[its-to-the-death]

Fictional Weapon War Round 1

Now that our preliminaries are over, we're ready to fight!

Here is our bracket:

It is kind of ugly and I used the names instead of pictures because I did not want to figure out the logistics of fitting all those pictures (that are probably a bunch of different weird sizes) on here together.

I still need to get all the pictures together for the matchups but I am planning for round 1 to start on Tuesday, July 25. All polls last a week.

Propaganda is always welcome as long as you are being nice. Have fun!

Matchups below the cut. I'll link them to the polls once they start.

Bridget's yo-yo (Guilty Gear) vs Sasha (Team Fortress 2)

Myrtenaster (RWBY) vs Funkfreed (One Piece)

The Wabbajack (The Elder Scrolls) vs Frostmourne (World of Warcraft)

Portal gun (Portal) vs Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)

The Punisher (Trigun) vs Orb (Pondering My Orb meme)

The Spear of the Non-Believer (SCP Wiki) vs R.Y.N.O. (Ratchet and Clank 2002)

Bat'leth (Star Trek) vs Nightblood (Warbreaker/The Starlight Archive)

Ness' bat (Earthbound) vs Kendal (Aurora webcomic)

The Throngler (Twitter) vs Shardblades (The Stormlight Archive)

Kurapika's chains (Hunter x Hunter) vs Kenji Kon's butter knife (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous)

Jack/Sumarbrander (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard) vs Xena's chakram (Xena Warrior Princess)

Soul Evan's scythe form (Soul Eater) vs Lightsaber (Star Wars)

The Master Sword (The Legend of Zelda) vs Ryuko's scissor blade (Kill la Kill)

Riptide (Percy Jackson) vs Rapunzel's frying pan (Tangled)

Riz Gukgak's Arquebus (Dimension 20 Fantasy High) vs Ichaival (Symphogear)

Meta Knight's Galaxia (Kirby) vs Aang's staff (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Piecemaker (Discworld) vs The List (Critical Role/The Legend of Vox Machina)

Sailor Moon's tiara (Sailor Moon) vs Batarangs (Batman)

Bit Stave (Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury) vs Oathkeeper (Kingdom Hearts)

Meowmere (Terraria) vs The Sword of the Creator (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Splattershot (Splatoon) vs Amy's Piko Piko Hammer (Sonic)

Pit's Sacred Bow of Palutena (Kid Icarus) vs Sokka's space sword (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

King Dedede's Hammer (Kirby) vs Shingou-Ax (Kamen Rider Drive)

Gideon Nav's two handed sword (The Locked Tomb) vs Needle Whip (Fear and Hunger 2)

Crescent Rose (RWBY) vs Sting (Lord of the Rings)

Kingdom Key (Kingdom Hearts) vs Ghirahim (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword)

E.G.O. Weapon Mimicry (Project Moon) vs Dangeresque's Nunchuck Gun (Homestar Runner)

Tissue Compression Eliminator (Doctor Who) vs Spider-ham's mallet (Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse)

Sokka's boomerang (Avatar: The Last Airbender) vs Knife (knife crow)

Gungnir (Symphogear) vs Baby 5 (One Piece)

Oblivion (Kingdom Hearts) vs Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle)

Martin the Warrior's sword (Redwall) vs Morgoth's mace, Grand (Lord of the Rings)

[littorinaobtusata]

the friar from much ado about nothing after his faking a death scheme actually works: wow, I can't wait to tell my friend in verona about this one weird trick!

[henley-reeves]

The idiots-to-lovers masterpiece

[iamnmbr3]

So you know the scene at the end of The Taming of The Shrew where they have that stupid competition to see whose wife is most obedient? Can you imagine if other Shakespeare characters were there?

Ophelia: You called, My Lord?

Hamlet: No I didn’t. Why are you here when nobody likes you? Go away!

Petruchio: Even I think that’s mean.

Romeo: Go find Juliet and ask her if she would come here and tell her she has the most beautiful eyes, that make the very sun seem dull, and the loveliest hair and a face that puts to shame Aphrodite herself...oh and bring her this sonnet I wrote her...and actually I’ll go find her myself for I can’t bear to be apart from her another moment!

Petruchio: …

Petruchio: … Yeah he’s not coming back. Next!

Coriolanus: Go find my wife and ask her to come here and also ask her if she's seen Aufidius. Actually, have you seen Aufidius...or heard any news of him?

Servant: No I haven't… Is there a name or a description I could use to find your wife?

Coriolanus: Hold on. I know this one.

Petruchio: Wow... We’ll come back to you. Next!

Orlando: I refuse to participate in this farce. It’s demeaning to women.

“Ganymede”: Nonsense! Any real man (which I totally am) wants women to obey him without question!

Orlando: That’s wrong! That’s not being a “real man”; that’s just being a bully. I would never treat Rosalind that way and I hope no one else would either!

“Ganymede”: … You pass the test.

Orlando: What?

"Ganymede": What?

Benedick: HEY BEATRICE!

Beatrice from 3 rooms away: WHAT?

Benedick: CAN YOU COME HERE A SECOND?

Beatrice: WHY?

Benedick: SOME MAN HERE WANTS TO SEE IF YOU’RE OBEDIENT.

Beatrice: WHY ARE YOU PERPETUATING THE OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN INSTEAD OF PUNCHING HIM IN THE FACE?

Benedick: YOU MEAN YOU DON’T WANT TO COME HERE AND SHOW OFF YOUR OBEDIENCE? I AM SHOCKED AND HEARTBROKEN!

Beatrice: HA. HA. SO HILARIOUS.

Beatrice: … HE STILL DOESN’T SOUND VERY PUNCHED IN THE FACE. I SUGGEST YOU FIX THAT UNLESS YOU WANT TO SLEEP ON THE COUCH FOREVER!

Benedick: ON IT!

Benedick *rolling up his sleeves*: Isn’t she great?

[aq2003]

omfg . radio play version of much ado with david as benedick from 2001

[guinevereslancelot]

obsessed with the concept of duels. for many many years there was a 100% legal way for two consenting adults to settle a dispute by trying to kill eachother. there was a fully legal way to just kill someone. also you were humiliated and called a pussy if someone challenged you to a duel and you said no

[love-in-the-time]

“the funny thing is, i fought all those battles all those years, and now I know what for: this. i’ve never been so happy in my life.”

"AND THIS IS MY CONCLUSION."

[atopvisenyashill]

hey! i’ve been sort of lurking on your blog for a while, lol, but seeing you answer one of your recent asks abt some of your main theories got me curious enough to finally start a convo. so for the record, i was kind of ambivalent about sansa before reading some of your metas, and i’m still not really a jonsa believer, but a lot of things you’ve catalogued on ur blog did a lot to solidify sansa being lady of winterfell as a new member of my ASOIAF Endgame PredictionsTM, and seeing u answer that recent ask w all your separate bits of evidence collected together really sold it for me! quick question, though: i tend to skim-read long posts, so maybe i missed something, but did you say anything about why sansa would specifically end up as QiTN, rather than just lady of winterfell (still under whoever the next major ruler of westeros is)? i mean, especially if we do go ahead and assume that bran will end up as king in harrenhal, i don’t quite get why sansa would want to establish the north as a separate kingdom by seceding from her own brother? i suppose there’s the angle of wanting to honor what robb fought for, which certainly isn’t a bad motivator… but i think the remaining starklings, of all people, would be more likely to recognize (and focus on the fact) that robb’s main motivation in participating in the Wot5K was mostly just to avenge ned and secure the safety of the rest of his family. and even if the idea of finishing what robb started is a motivating factor, considering that asoiaf’s endgame is almost certainly going to be post-apocalyptic in some senses, i feel like whoever’s making these big decisions (even if that group does include some of the starklings, though it definitely will) would be more likely to prioritize trying to kind of return the world of westeros to something most resembling the previous status quo, which committing to splitting the kingdoms would maybe not really help with?

interested to hear your thoughts on all of this, thanks for reading :D <3

First - thank you for the compliment!!! I love to spread the gospel of Sansa As Ruling Lady In Winterfell lol, and it's nice to know I've convinced some people about some aspects of it! I have got to get better about adding a tldr at the ending though bc I too will sometimes just skim a post and queue it alsdjfla. (also validating each other on "the ending is going to be post apocalyptic" - YES that's what I've BEEN saying omg I do sometimes feel like some of the endgame predictions leave out that imo the last half of ados is going to feel very much like a post-apocalyptic type rebuilding!). Also sorry if this is kind of meandering, I wanted to organize it a bit more but that didn't work out lol.

But honestly okay - I go back and forth a LOT on whether Sansa is ruling lady of Winterfell or straight up Queen on the North. I’m still very undecided on it! I think it makes sense, narratively and just like logically that if Rickon is found he’s Bran’s heir in the South (both as a parallel to the Aegon/Viserys ending of the Dance and as a kind of neat bow tie on their story as brothers - they start the series being left behind in Winterfell and end the series choosing to stay behind but together in Harrenhal), then the girls are in the North as the Starks in Winterfell. Again, I think this is a parallel to Sansa/Serena & a play on the she-wolves of winterfell, but also, being the two oldest Starks, makes sense that Sansa is ruling lady and Arya is a sort of Hand (and like Rickon, potentially the one their line descends from but again - call me Sokka because I love to waffle!) But Queen in the North specifically? I think that's less clear than Sansa being ruling lady of Winterfell (which imo isn't just clear, it's the obvious answer for her story arc) though I still think there's a high probability of it.

First, let me get into the more conjecture side of it. Basically, I think part of the reason the kingdoms are going to split is because there will be some population and geographic changes after the Long Night/second war for the throne - I think I've mentioned it before I believe the Neck is going to "break" ie become flooded the same way the arm of dorne was "broken" and flooded and became the stepstones. This would make the North a lot harder to get to, geographically, which could further isolate them and want them to have their own monarch who is In The North and can make more snap decisions as they rebuild than Bran could all the way passed the Neck in Harrenhal.

I also think the Iron Islands are going to get fucked and Asha will lead a lot of her people to the mainland to settle, probably in the North due to them needing more population because they also got fucked - and two groups of people who are notoriously kind of isolationist coming together might prefer to stay partially disconnected from the main kingdoms. Which isn't to say they won't have contact with each other - I guess I was picturing like....idk a sort of EU thing lmao, or maybe a Narnia thing of like, open borders between the 2-3 kingdoms who are all allies and work together due to being on the same continent.

Of course, the breaking of the Neck (which is something I'm a lot more confident on - I think it's a guarantee tbh) could also drive the North back into the arms of the other kingdoms, as they need more help recovering from the Long Night and can perhaps offer help to the South as the South recovers from their wars. But anyways that's my geographic/logistical reason why I think the North might stay separated from the rest of the Kingdoms, even with a Stark King on the throne.

Now, in the previous ask, I mentioned her parallels to other Queens and some of the Queen imagery surrounding her - there's the abundant Naerys/Sansa parallels, and the Cersei/Sansa antiparallels. There's a bit of talk about how ~Sansa is good at queenly things~ and ~Joffrey was foolish to set her aside that feels (to me) like setup for her being a ruling Queen - no one can set her aside or disrespect her then, like Naerys and Cersei go through. Of course just paralleling a few Queens doesn't inherently mean she'll be Queen but I do think the emphasis on comparing her to queens is pointed - then again, imo there's also a lot of parallels between her and Princess Rhaena Targaryen of Dragon Twins fame, and Rhaena does not wind up a queen!

(there is also some parallels to historical queens there, most notably to Elizabeth of York, Queen of England and wife to Henry VII. Notably their marriage ended the War of the Roses, but I don't claim to be an expert there but I have reblogged some meta on that here and I'm sure there's others floating around).

There's also these two little bits here-

Ahead he glimpsed a pale white trunk that could only be a weirwood, crowned with a head of dark red leaves.

In their midst was a pale stranger; a slender young weirwood with a trunk as white as a cloistered maid. Dark red leaves sprouted from its reaching branches.

The first is from a Jon chapter and I think it could point to Bran or Sansa - dark red hair, pale skin, and a crown. The second one is what makes me think it points to either just sansa or both of them - that comes in a Brienne chapter. Again you have the pale skin (white as a cloistered maid) and dark red leaves acting as hair almost. To be honest, there's a lot with the Tully-Starklings having the coloring of a weirwood that's sort of fascinating in what it implies - perhaps that their roots are leading them back North, perhaps something more sinister re: Bran being eaten by a tree. I digress lol.

There's a few comments from Ned as well that feel like they might be foreshadowing-

“Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King’s Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me.”

"Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms. Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?" “You,” Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, “will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon.” Arya screwed up her face. "No," she said, "that's Sansa."

There's a lot made of that last one, about how Ned potentially lays out his kids endgames right there to Arya -

Lord of a Great Holdfast and sit on a King's Council - Jon Snow

Raise Castles Like Brandon the Builder - Bran

Sail a Ship Across the Sunset Sea - Arya

Enter the Faith and Become High Septon - Rickon

Marry a King, Rule His Castle, Sons will be {etc} - no, that's Sansa

Those comments stick out to me because imo Sansa & Arya's endgames will be a sort of mirror to Ned & Lyanna so it seems natural to me that some of Sansa's endgame would be foreshadowed in the chapters of her father the same as Arya's endgame is sort of anti-foreshadowed (idk how you would phrase that one lol) in Lyanna.

tldr i am much more confident in the idea that Sansa will rule Winterfell than I am in what title she will have while ruling. I do think there is some Sansa-as-Queen foreshadowing, in her comparisons to other Queens like Naerys, Cersei, and Elizabeth of York, and the way characters like Ned & Tyrion talk about how ~queenly~ she acts and how naturally leading under stress comes to her.

[jichanxo]

kuwagami sunday! 🌼

tags: @four-white-trees @passthroughtime @overdevelopedglasses

i worked on senseific! thank god. yagami is forced to consider asking kitakata for help. and then thinks about why he really, really doesn't want to.

He would hardly call Kitakata discreet. He wasn’t flexible, and he argued and asked questions. But if asked, he would help. He would. And Yagami knew how to handle his problem areas, at least. If Yagami asked anybody else, he’d have more difficulty gauging how he should respond to avoid his investigation being compromised. Kitakata, he knew. Kitakata, he understood. He could handle him. And Kitakata would be persistent enough to track down the right key, even if it took him a little extra effort.

Kitakata was the only candidate. It was Kitakata, or nothing.

It was Kitakata – fingers in his hair, rolled eyes, the overpowering scent of candy watermelon on his breath, his casual (unwelcome) touch, the annoying raise of his voice, the even worse lowering of it, right in his ear—

—the things I want to do to you—

Or nothing.

[chevril-glove]

Watched Catherine Tate and David Tennant's Much Ado About Nothing and obv they were great but

can we talk about "come away death"

They took this song out of Twelfth Night, leaned into all the lyrics that could possibly be sexual, and played it over a rave.

I've only ever heard "Come away death" as a sad mournful song before. Best "let's modernize the beat of this Elizabethan song" I've ever heard, bc it's not just a modernization gimmick; there's a genuinely clever and aestheticly pleasing reinterpretation of the words.

Also the first time I heard a "let's modernize the beat of this Elizabethan sonnet" (in a different play) I absolutely despised it, so I really mean this.

[orangepeelshortbreadcookies]

Watched Anyone But You and was forced to reaffirm my undying, undisciplined attraction to men named Ben, a condition that I blame Shakespeare for.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Might be a hot take but a major character’s death is really only as good as the weight and the treatment that the narrative gives it. Sure, any author has the ability to write death as they see fit. But whether the consumer (of any given form of media) is actually able to emotionally connect and resonate with the departure of someone who has occupied a good chunk of narrative space very heavily depends on how it’s treated within the story. If it’s a major character, the narrative needs enough built-in breathing space. As in, the consumer doesn’t have to fill in the blanks as to how the death impacted the plot or the remaining characters. Let the narrative do that for them, and that would actually allow the consumer to better react and relate to that major death (sadness, anger, joy, etc). Allow the rest of the characters (who were impacted by the deceased) to react to their parting. Let them engage with the death in a manner that helps justify the character’s inclusion in the narrative to begin with. Make it clear how the character’s life and (especially) their death relate to the larger themes of the story. Because most consumers aren’t stupid. We don’t want our hands held at every waking moment, but we also don’t want our investment in a story to be insulted just for the sake of a cheap shock. Give us time to breathe and grieve. And respect that we have put in a lot of emotional investment in a story and its characters, and we deserve to have that acknowledged.

[reyturnofbensolo]

Sydney!🤣

[circumstantialsimultaneity]

saw my friend in a production of much ado about nothing last night. feeling like its always sunny Oh My God ... I Get It gif

[dumbass---tm]

god the gender envy for shakespearean characters is real

[aq2003]

--> your eat his heart on the marketplace note. Totally, it's so good and poignant in the Josie Rourke production and with DT's CT's acting choices! And to think that majority of the reviews for it, which I googled before watching for the first time, gave this production its due for entertainment factor but called it too slight and frothy

trulyyyyy. i think my favorite version of the "eat his heart in the marketplace" scene as a whole is actually the 2019 version w/ danielle brooks (it's more tonally consistent and serious and danielle's line delivery is so everything), but catherine's was the first version of it i watched and i was SO blown away by it like i rly fell in love w catherine as an actress right there <333 and god i could go on and on and on about how well the 2011 version portrays benedick in that scene too, like i really love how it's made crystal clear that he recognizes what's wrong and is willing to stand up for hero even without beatrice's urging - he already knows to defend her, but she needs to push him to actively stand up to don pedro and claudio (not my observation, but benedick starts to move to interrupt claudio's outburst at the wedding multiple times and is stopped by don pedro and UGHHH. it makes his challenge to claudio and resignation from don pedro's service hit so fucking hardddd) . like this is why i love the 2011 much ado so much it's not just that it's so accessible and easy to understand and funny, it's that there is so much thought being put into the details and the characterization and you will notice small things like that upon multiple rewatches