#juliet barker

[cto10121]

Waking Romeo (2021)—Review Part 3

[Part 1] [Part 2] In which Romeo reveals himself to be an arrant villain and other totally canon-compliant things, Jules is girlbossed into doing All the Things(tm) as “development” and my ending thoughts. Spoilers as always.

[Jules POV] “I know,” he says, his hand still resting on my knee. “Your mum told my mum, and she told me. It was probably for the best. We were young, Juliet. Young and impulsive. But we’ve got another chance now.” (261)

Of course this Romeo would be perfectly nonchalant about his and Jules’ child dying. Because Canon Romeo is well-known for his callous indifference to anything regarding his love interest.

[Jules POV] And then I remember. This is Romeo.

All at once, my mind is filling with bits and pieces that I had to write a whole make-believe story just to gloss over. How he was busy telling Rosaline that he loved her one night before we got together at that party. How I cried on his shoulder about Tybalt dying and, somehow, he parlayed my grief into a make-out session. How he always played the victim and blamed others for everything. How he was forever talking up how great he was. How he told me that he loved me, over and over, after only a couple of hours. How the whole marriage thing came about after I told him I wanted to wait. How the drugs were his idea.

He didn't force me into anything. They were my choices. I did those things. I was there, in the thick of it, loving every moment—for the most part. But there was a reason the Romeo in my story was so perfectly romantic—I was compensating. (262)

Didn’t Jules come to this realization pages before??? Ugh, this book is a mess. At this point this Romeo is just an red-flag OC in a flesh suit. Also, didn’t Jules say that Rosaline was the one who broke his heart???

Also, also, if Jules wrote R&J the play, then that means she also wrote Tybalt being the aggressor, Romeo killing Tybalt, and her fictional self being angry at him for it. Why would a delusional lovesick teen girl do that?

[Jules POV] I don’t believe it.

She put him in a pod.

She sent my son forward in time.

“William…he’s alive?”

And here is where things really get stupid.

Apparently Jules’ son (William, aka Frogs) not only survived, but was sent forward in time two years by Jules’ mother and aunt. This was done because Jules was 1) too traumatized and obsessed with Romeo to be a mother to William and 2) too young to raise a whole ass kid. Okay. So why didn’t Jules’ mother and/or aunt raise him? Or idk hire an actual nurse for him?

I don’t know. This book has broken me.

[Ellis POV] It takes a moment for the implication of that to sink in. “You want to pass off Jules’ story as a play actually penned by Shakespeare?” […]

He continues, happily nattering away. “I think you’d like her next story, actually. It’s about a prince this time. Starts with a ghost, just like in Wuthering Heights, and opens with the same first line as the myth of Narcissus.” (297).

Die (Reprise, scherzo)

[Jules POV] “I should have brought him back to you,” she says again, almost a whisper. “I really did mean to. But it was so easy to just push the button once more, sending him forward another year. Just one more year, until you were ready.”

Suddenly her constant mantra about me needing to grow up makes sense. She needed me to show that I was responsible. That I wasn't suicidal or reckless anymore. She needed me to prove that I was ready to be a mother.

Mum looks at me with a kind of raw desperation. I still give her nothing. (302)

Yeah, girl, give her nothing. Jesus Christ, even Jules knows it’s all bullshit. OG Lady Capulet would have done away with the child and that would have been in character.

[Jules POV] “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, for I ne'er saw true beauty…”

I give a humorless snort at the sappiness of it. If life really was a story, I'd make this a poignant the-wheel-is-come-full-circle moment. It would be all “the true beauty that I needed to see was in me" and “the love that I journeyed to find had nothing to do with a boy,” et cetera.

Well, corny or not, maybe it's true. Either way; when I look in the mirror, I know—and am even starting to like who’s there…which actually strikes me as a pretty good beginning. (317)

[Ellis POV] When he looks at me, the hatred in his eyes is unmistakable.

“You stole my life," he says bluntly, "My wife, my son. I was meant to be the hero. It was meant to be my story, not yours. Romeo and Juliet—that's what was meant to happen."

“But that's not what happened,” says Frogs. “That's not the life she chose.”

“She wanted me. She was obsessed with me,” insists Romeo. “Without Ellis, I would have stayed at the center of everything. I was meant to be important. I was born to be important. So really, this isn't even my fault. Ellis is to blame. I'm just putting things right.” (326)

This Romeo went from “It’s not you it’s me” and not gaf about his kid or Jules to “We were meant to be!!!” simply because the plot said so. This author clearly couldn’t decide which flavor of Romeo the Death Eater she wanted, so she did all of them.

[Jules POV] I close the cover and see that he's changed the order of our names—Romeo & Juliet instead of Juliet & Romeo. Self-centered jerk. I'm about to change it back, then I decide no—it's better that way. In my story I did put myself second.

But not anymore.

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

I can’t believe I have to explain this as I shouldn’t have to explain this and I resent having to explain this…but the order of the names in a couple has less to do with gender power dynamics and all to do with the literal English language and its peculiar stresses, i.e. how easily the two names roll off the tongue.

Hence Romeo and Juliet >>>> Juliet and Romeo. Bonnie and Clyde >>>>> Clyde and Bonnie. And then there are some couple names that sound good either way, e.g. Bella and Edward ~ Edward and Bella, with the former being a bit more smooth than the latter.

[Jules POV] I lay my notebook back down alongside Ellis's novel. His story and mine, finally united...if only here, on my crummy old desk. For a moment I stare at Wuthering Heights, lauded by history as a tale of epic love. Then I look to my own play, Romeo & Juliet. And I decide, actually, they're both pretty crap examples as far as the women go. I mean, all-consuming love and passion? A focus on nothing but hearts?

No, there’s a much bigger picture. (337)

How dare books about romance be romantic!!!!

Honestly, the hypocrisy of this novel that has focused on tedious UST and stupid time travel shenanigans for over 90% of its page count now suddenly pretending it cares about its cookie-cutter dystopian world is galling. Its attempt to turn Jules into a Mary Sue activist and leader of the Settlement by making her one big grand plan to…plant stuff just adds assault to injury.

[Jules’ POV] “Love isn't everything,” I say again, more forceful.

Ellis says nothing.

On instinct, I gaze down at my son. Then I look back at my friends, my family. They suddenly don't strike me as an audience anymore. Audiences are bad as tourists—watching things go south, but doing nothing. No, they resemble an army. Not soldiers, like in Ellis's “buck up” mantra. Not troops; a “buck up" troupe. Every single person a key player in the new narrative. Everyone big and small—with an important role in the fight to turn the tide. We still have time, and time can mend. I stare at them and decide they really are the seed: the past, the now, and the future. Then I look beyond them…

…and I feel it. (368)

*Aspects of Love voice* Love / Love isn’t everything / But the author / Needs her bag

Conclusion

Ho boy, this reread turned out worse than even my original memories once I got past the actual uniqueness of this book’s premise. I think it’s the fact that this time I was able to follow the time travel narrative more closely and thus I picked up on all the messages the author decided to uncritically impart without considering the misogynistic implications therein.

The whole message of this novel is, basically, don’t be a basic bitch. Romantic love is inherently bad and threatens to subvert the natural order: Obedience and servitude to your community and your hard-working parents. Jules must learn that she had made a grave mistake in committing suicide for love. Fine, except that the novel, realizing the psychological absurdity of a supposedly smart and savvy Jules being so blind to Romeo’s faults, adds the twist that Jules was acting out of unprocessed grief for her cousin Tybalt’s death. Tybalt, who is mentioned no more than half a dozen times in the book and who has no personality or relationship with Jules whatsoever. Awful.

As for Romeo…he is just an OC frat boy turned villain in a Canon Romeo flesh suit. There have been arguably worse instances of his vilification (Juliet Immortal comes to mind) but Barker manages to mix up several different strands of Romeo-is-the-worst-actually into one incoherent muddle. Romeo begins as your typical twink fuckboi and ends up a jealous villainous ex who almost kills Ellis.

But even with Romeo’s vilification and Jules’ girlbossification (which to me feel strangely complementary), the new pairing with Ellis still doesn’t work. Barker does a piss-poor job of creating a believably 18th century time traveler and of course Ellis is not at all turned off by Jules’ tomboy Not Like Other Girls behavior the way he should. The whole part where Jules suddenly warms up to Present Ellis and his jerkishness just because Future Ellis was sweet to her exemplifies the novels’ stupid double standards regarding Romeo. As a result, what little interest their budding relationship stirs up is completely dissolved. As if realizing this, the novel tries to retcon the romance by having Jules deny she was truly in love with him—because of course she couldn’t be, since she only barely knew him—only to then have her be with him in the end after a convenient time jump.

And then there is the fact that Barker really had Romeo and Juliet’s biological kid Frogs be a super time traveling genius. He is raised by Ellis, though, so his biological father doesn’t ~really matter. Of course. And of course he survived his mother’s suicide attempt and a cocktail of drugs with only a cool deformity (mismatched eyes) and the ability to see time. Of course.

Other assaults to reason abound. A sixteen-year-old becoming the leader of a community over adults without any pushback is a fantasy more ludicrous than the time travel. The nice and benign adults lied to Jules and robbed her of her choice to raise her child, possibly endangering him in the process, and Jules’ reaction is that of uncritical acceptance.

In short, it seems to me that somewhere in the middle of writing her draft Barker got some reader/editor feedback/pushback on some key points in her narrative and decided to switch thematic gears hastily from basic-girl-learns-about-toxic-relationships-by-comparing-ex-douchebag-with-new-love-interest to basic-girl-learns-how-to-be-a-girlboss-and-girlbosses-awesomely-because-she-needs-no-man-actually. Either way, R&J and Wuthering Heights are left mangled for no good reason. Oy.

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Bronson 2008

[princesssarisa]

I once read some commentary by the Shakespearean actor Harley Granville-Barker about this very phenomenon in theatre. He wrote that there's no sense of "middle age" in classic theatre: characters are perceived as either "young" or "old," and all the parents and parental figures of "young" characters are perceived as "old" whether they would be or not. This explains why in Romeo and Juliet, for example, Lady Capulet speaks of "my old age" and why the Nurse is usually portrayed as an old woman too. Lady Capulet should be between 28 and 30, since she claims she was close to Juliet's current age (14) when she gave birth to her, while the Nurse should also be in her 30s or early 40s at most, since her dead daughter Susan would also have been 14 if she had lived. But because they're a mother and mother figure, they're automatically viewed as old.

it’s hilarious to me how any time there’s a middle aged character in opera there’s like 262727 productions that make them look like they’re in their 80s. club penguin ass beat

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Ann Smyrner (Reptilicus, Code 7 Victim 5)— A Danish born actress who mostly starred in German and Austrian movies during the 60s, in a few of them alongside Lex Barker. Because of her figure and blonde hair she was sadly often cast in the role of the naive sexbomb and to be a nice sight for the male audience. But she was capable of way more and was a good actress which can be seen in the movies where she does have a bigger role. One of her best movies is a comedic crime movie based on the comics about "Bild Lilli" (inspiration for Barbie) in which she uses her good looks and effect on men to her own advantage to investigate in a murder case. Which is absolutely wonderful because she's not only extremely beautiful but at the same tine extremely confident, cunning and witty. She's definitely one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my whole life. Just look at her!

Susan Strasberg (Stage Struck, The Cobweb)— In Stage Struck (1958) she performs Annabel Lee and the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet and there are no words for how mesmerizing she is while doing it (I wish I could find a clip of it to show you!)

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut]

Ann Smyrner:

[heartofstanding]

I'm four chapters into Dan Jones's new Henry V bio because I make bad life choices (otoh, this is a major new biography of my boy so I feel I have to read it and this is the first Dan Jones history book I've read).

Thoughts thus far below the cut:

Look, I appreciate that it's a generally favourable biography because the predominant pop history biography of Henry V is Ian Mortimer's excretable 1415 and Dan Jones is a bigger name so people will pick him up over Mortimer. Worst person you know just made a great point etc. etc.

This, however, confirms all my worst feelings about pop history and narrative history

I'm trying to be cool with it because obviously pop history has its place and purpose and Jones isn't writing academic history but it's almost painful.

Like. Stop. Tell me how you came to this conclusion. You haven't cited a source for it. Stop. I know this is more complicated. Stop. You cited a source but I don't think it supports your conclusion.

e.g. he talks about prayers being said to John Thwing of Bridlington for protection against the plague at Henry V's baptism, which, like, cool detail man but where are you pulling this from? Oh, you've got no endnote for it...

Constantly fighting the urge to write "citation needed" and "source???" every few sentences.

So far, I'm on the side of "I don't like the mostly present-tense, some-future tense narration."

I really don't need a description of how pretty and delicate the 16 year old girl is while she gives birth or the "she's frightened or she should be" line or the "vessels for dynasties" line.

He still hates Richard II but the one work on the Peasants Revolt he cites is Juliet Barker's and not his own. 💀

There is a legit a paragraph where you can tell he really wanted to write "Richard II had bitch resting face that made him look like he was constantly catching a whiff of poo" ("he typically wears a haughty resting expression intended to convey majesty, yet in truth he looks more like he has caught a faint bad smell".)

in another example of why I hate narrative history: Jones uncritically quotes the bit from Titus Livius's Vita Henrici Quinti where Richard prophetises how great Henry will be as king and it's like, mate, unpack that a bit. Mentally, if not on the page. Read Paul Strohm's England's Empty Throne. Jones also editorialises it by reading as "very flattering" or "terrifyingly passive aggressive" and I'm like. dude. you weren't there and it probably didn't happen.

the book has a red ribbon bookmark attached to the binding, it's very pretty and useful. My favourite part of the book.

[aautiemiller-rockcenter]

NYCDA Nationals Senior Solo Awards

1st-2nd Scored Above 299 3rd-6th Scored Above 298 7th-15th Scored Above 297

Erik Barker - Larkin Dance Studio!

Izzy Howard - Westside Dance Project!

Charlie Head - Downtown Dance Factory

Kendall Moshay - TopFlight Dance

Ava Luna - Dance Academy North Jersey

Koda Nayback - Artflux Dance Lab

Caleb Abea - Larkin Dance Studio

Hannah Elzbet - Performing Dance Arts

Melanie Kalogritsas - Performing Dance Arts

Ayla Rodriguez - Artistic Fusion

Alyssa Carpeneto - Performing Dance Arts

Emerson Rogers - Artistry In Motion WA

Mia Edmonds - The Dallas Conservatory

Ava Crean - Mary Alice's Dance

Nathaniel Chua - NINE Dance Academy, Olivia Gannon - New Dimensions Dance

Raina Wu - Yoko's Dance

Ava Greenwaldt - Golden State Ballet

Zada Britton - Canadian Contemporary Theatre

Noelle Hogan - Brava Dance Center Juliet Judkins - Mid-Atlantic Center

Hayley Wilson - Renner Dance Company

Jaicey Thomas - Renner Dance Company

Luke Barrett - Dance Attack Los Gatos

Malcolm Takumi - CAP The Company

McKenzie Lambert - Renner Dance Company

Jackson Conley - Hoffmans School of Dance

Audrey Zhu - Embody Dance Company

Colin Gross - The Dallas Conservatory

Ella Beatty - Patti Eisenhauer Dance

Gracen? - Artists Revealed Dance

Presli James - North Austin Dance Artists

[unsc-radio]

INCOMING TRANSMISSION ...

This is Corporal Oldridge calling in from FOB Juliet. What do you miss about home, wherever that is? I'm from Luna, Earth's moon, so I'd always see frigates and cruisers passing by. It's what got me to sign up for the Corps and my brother for the Navy. Hopefully with Chief back, maybe I spend all day staring at space traffic again soon.

Hey Corporal,

...

How's FoB Julie treating you, heard you gave some Banished Bastards a good run for their money!

...

I'm from a little backwater system mostly, though I grew up in Europe for a time.

...

Honestly, I miss how simple it was back then, before the wars. We were little more than a small stop point along a minor cargo route. Not that it stopped the Covvies from glassing us.

...

I think I miss my old colleagues mostly. I worked in Traffic Control and for the most part it was peaceful. Couple of ships a day at most. We used to try and guess what they were carrying, being as outlandish as possible every time.

...

Ironically, one of my colleagues guessed correctly once when they said a large transporter was full of Kig-Yar coming to launch a suprise invasion.

...

Keep Safe Oldridge, Barker Out

[une-sanz-pluis]

Are there any biographies for Henry V that you would recommend? :)

Anne Curry's Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King is my go-to rec if you're looking for a good, solid overview of and introduction to Henry V's life and reign. My main issue with it is the length - since this is part of the Penguin Monarchs series, it's only 176 pages long, including index, notes and further reading. I would love Curry to write a full-length biography of Henry one day. If you want a more Agincourt-focused introduction to Henry, it's worth picking up Juliet Barker's Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle - it's pop history but a fairly solid one.

The standard biography of Henry is by Christopher Allmand. It's structured as half-biography, half-thematic analysis of Henry's kingship so it's definitely on the more academic side of things and the coverage of Henry's life is pretty brisk. It's very much worth reading but I don't think it's a good introduction to Henry.

My absolute favourite book on Henry, hands down, is Malcolm Vale's Henry V: The Conscience of a King, which is all about exploring Henry's kingship outside of the warrior king stuff. I would love Vale to write a more complete biography on Henry too.

I hope these recs are helpful. I've answered this question a couple of times so if you want more detail, you can check out the following posts. On this post, I've got a rundown of my favourite books on Henry V and my least favourites, while in this post, I give another rundown with more detail alongside recs for Henry's father and grandfather (Henry IV and John of Gaunt respectively).

[heartofstanding]

Ohhh I love this. Especially given the role masochism played in the depictions (literary and artistic) of martyrs, saints and Christ himself (the work of Robert Mills is very revelatory here) so Hal's suffering with the Shrewsbury wound is very fitting in here. Just cover that boy with blood and make him suffer and Courtenay will worship. Courtenay looking at Hal's wounded, penetrated body like "!!!" and adopting him as his new god. Or at least a martyr-saint.

(Interestingly, the ring found in Courtenay's tomb (the one that sort-of matches the one in Hal's portrait) is hinged for a relic though it was empty when opened which makes me imagine him yanking out Hal's hair to use as a relic.)

@tollers-and-jack has a wonderful Hal/Courtenay fic set in World War I where Hal compares his burial of Courtenay to "Joseph of Arimathea, placing Christ in his own tomb" and later we flashback to Courtenay looking at Hal and "the divinity that cast Courtenay into shadow" and I just... it's them. It's the divinity/god they find in each other. It's not just Courtenay worship of Hal, it's Hal's worship of Courtenay. ❤️‍🔥

#I'n in my Courtenay has a worship kink era this is doing really bad things to me

Meanwhile, I just think that sounds neat and want to hear more. 😈

(Hal's masochism + Courtenay's worship kink are not helping the St. Sebastian vibes grow any less strong.)

For real I saw this post and immediately lost my mind over the Hal and Courtenay vibes. Just the perfect blend of medieval torture device, bdsm, and religion that is so very them.

I blame the 'Courtenay cared more about serving his King than his God' quote because how else is that supposed to be taken if not Courtenay treating Hal like a god; and where does that go except worship kink. Especially in the later days of Henry's reign, where Hal is trying to perfect his King persona and grow accustomed to people treating him with a level of reverence, so he uses Courtenay to microdose on it a little bit. (Courtenay on the other hand is doing that 'using compliments as kinky punishments' meme).

(Plus if it's strictly kink without direct sexual contact then technically no vows of chastity have been broken. Checkmate, Arundel)

[cto10121]

Waking Romeo (2022)—Review Part 2

[Part 1] In which Jules and Ellis bond over mutual trauma while getting followed by a mysterious threat, Jules comes to the most basic of revelations, Shakespeare gets mangled, soap opera-level twists, and the Romeo Hate Dumb train trudges serenely on. Spoilers, of course.

“Why?” he asks again.

“It was love,” I say automatically.

Ellis steps away, running his hands through his hair.

“You wish to be reunited with a boy who would let you do that to yourself?" he says, getting worked up.

“Starting was such sweet sorrow. I mean parting. I mean—”

“That is not what love is,” says Ellis, surprisingly forceful. “That is the opposite of that. It is about protecting this.” He puts his hand firmly over my scar, over my heart. (159)

Romeo let Juliet commit suicide.

Romeo let her.

ROMEO LET—

Okay, put aside the obvious fact that this astounding bit of clownery is not true, not even in this twisted AU. Barker’s Romeo overdosed while getting high and Jules thought he had died. So not even Romeo the Death Eater compelled/persuaded Jules to give her life for him. Let’s put all that aside.

Have not women their own fucking agency??!!! Jules made her own decision to shuffle off this mortal coil. She was acting out of unresolved grief for her dead cousin, which she later realized, and Romeo’s seeming death only just compounded it. So Barker’s warning against girls giving up everything for their boyfriends not only falls flat but is contradicted by the narrative itself.

My eyes are hot, verging on tears. I've cried plenty since what happened. I’ve shed rivers of tears over my husband though they were mostly the civilized kind, like Rosaline musters. Romeo got my pretty tears. But the ugly ones, the ones what make me keen and shake and let out strange noises? They belong in the dark, to my secret, and they can't come out now.

Something has to come out now, though—I can't keep it all down. So in the reflection with me, I imagine Romeo. Only this time I see him as he really was. A world away from the fourteenth-century honor and frills of my story.

“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, for I ne'er saw true beauty…” he whispers in my ear as he kisses my neck, as his hands run the length of my body. But, of course, that’s not quite the line he delivered that night in my bedroom. His language was mostly grunts and moans. The precious few words he used were…less poetic.

“Juliet Capulet tried to kill herself over a boy that she barely even knew,” I say to my reflection. (161)

Shocker.

So. A lot of bullshit to sort out here. 1) I don’t believe for one single second that Jules never ugly cried over Romeo. Not when she saw his dead body? Not when she saw him in a coma? Homegirl was really just 🥺 all along over a traumatic overdose and death attempt?

And 2) Barker’s penchant for recontextualizing lines from OG Romeo’s soliloquies/monologues as pick-up lines said directly to Juliet is truly pissing me off, especially since elsewhere Barker has shown extensive knowledge of Shakespeare, even the more obscure lines.

[Ellis POV] “I am in every word of it. I am in the people and the places and even in the weather. It is full of little jokes and references that only I would understand," I add, without humor. “She even used my Christian name for her character, and my surname as the pseudonym that she published the book under it is all in reference to me. Everything comes back to me. She was—”

I break off, unsure how to finish. I have never spoken of Emily to anyone. Frogs knew. In the first year when I pined for her so keenly, Frogs matter-of-factly announced that she had written a book. Afterward, he found me a copy and taught me to read it. Though we never discussed her. (166)

And then there’s the Wuthering Heights hate dumb. Emily Brontë was apparently such a bigot meanie that after Ellis disappeared from her life she wrote a whole-ass book about him as a sexy if monstrous Byronic anti-hero/antagonist and one-half of a dark star-crossed lover pair as a coping mechanism. And because of this Ellis is perfect for the similarly-wronged Jules.

“What I'm saying is…I don't actually believe that what I wrote is true.” Jules sounds surprised as she speaks, as though she has just worked that part out for herself. “I don’t think that the version of Romeo in these pages is the real boy or that it's what his character is actually like, deep down. The story is simply...an alternative version of events to help me move past the real ones. Maybe it was the same for her. Maybe your girl wrote that story, not because it was true, but because it wasn’t.” (167)

You seemed to be convinced yourself of it before, Jules. Hell, she barely even thought of Tybalt, the supposedly real catalyst for events, just Romeo and her love affair and then Ellis. I’m beginning to think the whole Tybalt’s-death-as-the-real-catalyst-for-Jules is a late retcon on Barker’s part when she realized it didn’t make a lick of sense.

“May I read it?” I nod at the notebook.

“No, it's silly,” says Jules, without missing a beat. “I wrote it in the style of Shakespeare, so the language is tricky. Besides—it’s not finished. I’m having trouble with the ending.” (167)

Again, I have to question the fact that Emily is framed critically for writing a whole-ass book about Ellis while our protagonist is framed favorably for writing a whole-ass book about Romeo. Maybe Romeo should go on a similar time travel adventure after he discovers Jules’ false portrayal of him in Waking Romeo and meets a secondary love interest who actually appreciates him and calls out her weird sexist double standard.

[Ellis POV] And then I think of her words from before: “What if he had gotten my note?” And I cannot help but speculate...what are the chances that the note in question was not the one that Frogs sent me to retrieve from her family crypt all those years go? The one with the two entwined hearts on the front, which smelled of perfume? The odds are not good, I would wager. (168)

So Jules sent a message to Romeo which did not get to him because Ellis had taken it first as part of his time travel missions. This leaves Ellis as directly responsible for R&J’s tragic ending…or at least he would be had not the author retconned this later and had her douchebag Romeo say he did read it and laughed at it. Yeah, that happened.

[Jules POV] “I thought you knew,” she says softly, “that I visit him after you leave.”

I feel sick. “How long? How long have you been coming?”

She smiles sadly.

“Always.”

Rosaline has always come? I think back to all those cheesy tribute assemblies and the rivers of fake tears. Were they real after all? Was it all real? Does she genuinely love him?

“We were together for years before you entered the picture,” Rosaline reminds me. “I care about him too.” (215)

Oh, no, no, you’re not getting away with this, Barker!!!

So Rosaline’s “pretty tears” and clichéd speeches for Romeo turn out actually genuine, one of the most blatant retcons of this piece. I have a feeling halfway through Barker read her editors’ notes, realized the backlash against the Not Like Other Girls trope, and did some hasty backtracking.

And of course, there’s the 483727733th iteration of ‘Rosaline and Romeo were actually a thing after all.’ Kill this with fire.

“I am glad you got your…what was it that you called him? Your pretty piece?” I say, repeating her words from before, perhaps somewhat unkindly.

“Pretty…to imply not manly.” Jules shakes her head. “Yes, I used to do that all the time, even in my head—describe ‘feminine’ traits in men as somehow a weakness. I didn’t do it consciously: But even in my writing, the bias was there.”

Is this a rebuke of herself and of Emily? Wuthering Heights is known for subverting gender stereotypes, yet also for portraying femininity…less favorably. (221)

The author accidentally included her notes in the book, I see. These editors are getting more incompetent by the day.

So as part of the whole “whoops, I just realized my earlier Not Like Other Girls shit is now unpopular” thing (a working theory), our author is now bravely trying to convince us she was making a point about internalized misogyny. Except that OG Juliet does not describe Romeo with femininized imagery. Probably the closest is the little bird metaphor…but even then that just reads as kinky.

[Jules POV] And I was wrong—love isn't everything.

I decide that, if I ever write another play, it won't be a love story. It will be about action—taking action versus not taking action. Because standing on my balcony, looking out at the in-tatters world? It's becoming clear that we have to act. That we have to do it today, or tomorrow won't happen.

With that, my thoughts return to Shakespeare. His plays used to be performed at a theater called “the Globe.” I figured it was just a cool name—I never really thought about the metaphor of it. The idea that all the drama was literally playing out on the world's stage. That each story, however small, was part of a bigger picture. (225)

*sings in Aspects of Love* Love / Love isn’t everything

Yes, because that was what was wrong with the OG Juliet—her just standing in her balcony babbling about love when she should have been out there girlbossing an end to the feud!!! What do you mean, she’s a 13-year-old in a patriarchal society that raised her to be meek and obedient and subservient to men? That’s no excuse for being such a basic bitch!!!!

Also. OG R&J are many things. But passive ain’t one of them. Romeo approaches Juliet, Juliet flirts back, he climbs high-ass garden walls, she tells him to arrange for their marriage and sends her Nurse to him, Juliet comes to the church to get married, they marry, Romeo tries to intervene in the fight, he fights and kills Tybalt, Juliet meets with the Friar and drinks the coma potion, Romeo flies to Mantua, buys poison, and returns when he hears Juliet is dead, kills Paris and then himself, and Juliet wakes up and kills herself. What part of all of that reads passive to you?????

[Jules POV] And then I'm thinking about how it all played out. How everything happened because my cousin had died the week before. Tybalt was dead, so I went to that goddamn party. My heart was all bleeding and raw. I needed something to numb the pain, and there he was—Romeo. I used the attention of a boy as my drug and distraction.

Tybalt's death was the tragedy that sparked all disaster to follow. Without him dying, I would never have been at that party, would never have fallen for Romeo. My story would have been different. Everyone's story would have been different. So why the hell did Tybalt have to die? (243)

Before this moment, Jules has only spoken about Tybalt like maybe TWICE in the whole goddamn book. I read this book from cover to cover and I cannot tell you anything about who Tybalt was, his personality, nor his relationship to Juliet—only that he died. We get absolutely no insight or even inkling into Jules’ past relationship with him beyond one or two vague anecdotes. So yes, I count this whole psychological explanation as a retcon, and a badly done one too.

Anyway, with Ellis’ help Jules finally manages to wake Romeo with the drug, but as a cop-out she leaves before he fully awakens. When she does meet him at his parents’ house, Jules drops this bombshell on him:

“That night when we were together in my room…” I say, my voice trailing off. How pathetic am I that I can't even say it? I didn't even put it in my story—I merely alluded to it as “the love-performing night,” of all the childish cop-outs.

There’s a long, drawn-out silence.

“I got pregnant,” I finally say. “I didn’t know it when I went to the crypt that night. When…” I leave that part unsaid. “The nurses didn’t realize until after the third operation. By that point, they'd already pumped me full of every kind of drug to keep me breathing.” I try to keep my voice clinical. “They said it was a miracle the baby wasn't gone already, but that if it survived, it would be ... different.” At the mention of “different,” Romeo's eyes automatically travel to my arm—the numb one. I try to ignore it.

“Mum, Dad, and Aunt Miranda kept it a secret. I basically stayed in my room for a whole year. People thought I was grieving,” I continue. “Or they thought my parents had locked me up because I was out of control.” (260)

Jules had a secret baby even though by all accounts she should have miscarried it from both her suicide attempt and the drugs they used to save her. We are officially in soap opera territory.

[storiesbreathed]

it’s an emoji based starter call , theater muses edition ! : react with one or multiple to let me know who you want a starter from, specify your muses if you are a multi!

also note : all of these will be put in a queue when i write them and will slowly be dropped onto the dash!

if you cannot send an emoji just toss out who you want :)

🐠~ariel ( the little mermaid | live action & musical )

🎁~belle ( vhs christmas carols / a christmas carol ) 

💜~dea ( the grinning man / the man who laughs )

✂️~della ( vhs christmas carols / the gift of the magi )  

👠~ella ashmore ( cinderella’s castle )

👛~elle woods ( legally blonde ) 

🧹~elphaba thropp ( wicked [ w/ novel influences when i finish it ]  ) 

🥀~eurydice ( hadestown and mythology ) 

👑~fairy queen of sweet dreams ( cinderella’s castle )

🫧~glinda upland ( wicked [ w/ novel influences when i finish it ] ) 

🪻~ilse neumann ( spring awakening ) 

🕊️~johanna barker ( sweeney todd )

🗡️~juliet capulet ( romeo and juliet )

🤠~laurey williams ( oklahoma 2029! )

🪡~martha crachit ( vhs christmas carols / a christmas carol )  

🎆~mimi marquez ( rent ) 

💫~molly aster ( peter & the starcatcher ) 

🎹~natalie goodman ( next to normal ) 

🪗~natasha rostova ( the great comet / war & peace ) 

🌹~orpheus ( hadestown and mythology )

👗~putrice ( cinderella’s castle )

📸~rose red & all incarnations ( ghost quartet ) 

🩸~satine ( moulin rouge ) 

🪴~seymour krelborn ( little shop of horror )

⚔️~tadius ( cinderella’s castle )

🔫~tatiana slozhno ( spies are forever — VERY HEADCANON BASED )

⚫️~wednesday adams ( the adams family musical )

🎀~wendla bergmann ( spring awakening ) 

[ao3feed-jonmartin]

Oh! I am Fortunes Fool!

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/6tDFLiG by violet_teeth the magnus archives cast but they are all theater kids or techies. This year their school is doing Romeo and Juliet. Gay stuff ensues trans-masc/nb jon has been casted as juliet is the school play hitting him with a wave of gender dysphoria, on top of that his hopeless crush, martin has been casted as romeo. jon tries dodging feelings, feels guilty for being dysphoric and tries to not make martin feel bad by dodging practice kisses. Martin is hopelessly in love but doesn’t think jon likes him back. oh the chaos Words: 976, Chapters: 2/?, Language: English Fandoms: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M Characters: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood, Georgie Barker, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Alternate Universe - High School, Romeo and Juliet References, Autistic Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, He/Him and They/Them Pronouns for Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sickfic, Inspired by Romeo and Juliet read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/6tDFLiG

[bookishfarmer]

From the end of June 2023

Went on a day trip to Haworth to see the Brontë parsonage and the moors. Absolutely stunning views!

After reading The Brontës by Juliet Barker I felt that the experience of the museum wasn’t as good as it perhaps might have been if I was learning things on the day. But still would highly recommend visiting!

My favourite book is Jane Eyre so this was an incredible experience.

[wormed-woman]

After the mysterious death of a B-list movie star Juliet Heartwood, people from her past start looking into her case.

After coming back from the death herself, still not having any idea what happened to her, she finds herself in a tangle involving UFO's, psychics and a mining corporation

NOTE: this is kinda rambly, ill answer any asks and stuff that come my way from this ✌

Setting; 1995 Nevada,

Juliet Heartwood, birthname Juliet Barker.

Juliet was a teenage runaway who left home after an altercation with her mom, where she threatened to send her to a private school if she didn't stop doing ''witchcraft'' with Jack. Juliet ended up stealing Jack's car to run away which broke their friendship.

Years later, Juliet was trying to make it as an actress. She found a partner she was happy with, but he died before their son was born. Grief-stricken and broke, barely being able to look after herself and the newborn, she gave custody of her son Lazlo to her ex-SIL.

Juliet ended up reconnecting with her high school friend Aston Morris, and the two began dating seriously.

While Juliet's future seemed to become brighter, with a new partner and getting a role in a rather notable movie, it was cut short due to her getting killed in a strange UFO event.

Jack Gore (he/him trans woman)

Jack is a psychic who was high school friends with Juliet, planning to help her run away from home together, but their plan was scrapped when Juliet outright stole his car.

After cutting ties with Juliet and finding out that his brother Vinny was moving away because he was divorcing, he decided to join him as a supernatural aid, even thought Vinny was a more sceptic type.

Vinny had ended his marriage to the mortician Heather Jason, after in a paranoid state, she had spent the couple's savings on a nuclear bunker after having a vision which Vinny dismissed.

While on his own, Jack met Jo Tamashiro and had a fling with her. While not an official item, he was her partner and a mother to her child, Cabby.

In June 1995, Jack got some of the worst news of his life. Not only was he going to die from liver failure, but that Juliet had died. Despite holding grudges, he wanted to talk to her a one more time.

Before he could even process everything, the Gore PI agency was contacted by Heather, informing them that she had acquired Juliet's body to experiment on a new form of contacting spirits.

While both were hesitant, they agreed to help her with the experiment.

The initial goal of the experiment was just to contact Juliet's spirit by hooking up a modified spirit box to her corpse, but in an unexpected turn, Juliet's spirit attached itself to the body, not quite resurrecting it, but haunting it like a doll.

While Juliet was now back, she had no memory of what happened to her. Just lights.

Before Jack could make it to the house, an alien creature named the Collection attached themselves to Jack. The Collection, a shapeshifting parasitic entity was sent by the mining company MantiCORP heiress, Midge ''Mittens'' Mantis, for unknown purposes why she was so interested in the case.

Despite seeing each other again, the relationship between Juliet and Jack is cold but volatile, both holding resentment and grudges, but being forced to be around each other to solve the case. It doesn't help that there seems to also be other parties after them for unknown reasons.

Aston Morris, despite being cleared of being a suspect in his girlfriend's death, wasn't so cleared with his boss, Mittens.

Years before, Aston had wanted to become an astronaut, but because of some head trauma he gained as a teen, he was kicked from the program. His anger lead him to jail, but he was bailed out by the heiress. She gave him an offer he couldn't refuse; work for me and you can see space.

The job ended up being a corporate spy and a hitman for MantiCORP. He hated every second of actually doing the killing, but he felt like he was in too deep. Back on earth, Aston found success in a sitcom that lead him to be a successful mainstream actor, eventually leading him to stumble into Juliet again.

Mittens is the heiress to the MantiCORP mining company, which she had to fight for due to her family trying to swindle her out of her fortune. She first started with the recruitment of the Collection (experimenting on the assassin behind her father's death) and Becky, who would later become her wife.

Coll was always Mittens' right hand man, but after massive screw up at the job, she demoted them and made Becky their overseer.

After Becky disappeared after a recovery mission, Mittens kept Coll's current position due to the lack of evidence that they had anything to do with it.

While this whole thing is mostly ramble-y, I do plan on elaborating some of this. I am working on the comic version of this, but this is all the lore that hasn't been elaborated on. TY for reading!

[princesssarisa]

As long as it's still the anniversary of Branwell Brontë's death, I thought I'd post a question for fellow Brontë readers.

Do you think Charlotte stopped loving Branwell?

Juliet Barker thinks she did. She wrote just that in her definitive biography of the family. I haven't read the bio in full yet, but I did just read the section on Branwell's death after someone I know shared it on Facebook. And as an AuDHD person who in some ways relates too much to Branwell – even though I'm not an alcoholic or a drug addict – and who struggles with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, the idea that Charlotte completely rejected her brother in the end hits hard.

While I don't own Barker's The Brontës, I do own her later compilation of all the family's letters, The Brontës: A Life in Letters. Obviously, when she wrote in the earlier bio that Branwell's failures and vices killed Charlotte's love for him, she was thinking of the famous letter Charlotte wrote to her publisher William Smith Williams after Branwell's death. In that letter, Charlotte described his death as "a mercy" for the family, and wrote:

"I do not weep from a sense of bereavement – there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost – but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light."

Maybe that letter makes the situation self-evident. Branwell wasn't a "dear companion" to her anymore; she only grieved for his wasted potential, not for him as a person.

But does that really and truly mean she had stopped loving him?

Now, I don't begin to know what it's like to have a family member become an alcoholic and a drug addict, and to have to live with him every day in that state. But from the way Emily and Anne depicted it in their books – clearly drawing on their personal experience – it's obviously brutal. The addictions must have turned Branwell into a different man than the brother they knew and loved. I'd like to think it was that man – the product of the alcohol and opium, not Branwell's true self �� whose death Charlotte called a "mercy" and couldn't mourn, but that at heart, she did still love and mourn for the brother she grew up with, even though she had lost him long ago.

I think her letters on the subject make a good case for that. Here's an excerpt from a later letter, also to Williams, about her feelings as she watched Branwell die:

"All his errors – to speak plainly – all his vices seemed nothing to me in that moment; every wrong he had done, every pain he had caused, vanished; his sufferings only were remembered; the wrench to the natural affections only was felt."

And here are the same sentiments expressed with even more rawness in a letter to her best friend Ellen Nussey:

"The final separation – the spectacle of his pale corpse gave more acute, bitter pain than I could have imagined – Till the last hour comes we never know how much we can forgive, pity, regret a near relation – All his vices were and are nothing now – we remember only his woes."

In both letters she also wrote about her certainty that God had forgiven Branwell and the comfort she took in believing he was in heaven and finally at peace.

She also became seriously ill for a week after he died.

Of course it was complicated. But is it fair and accurate to say that Charlotte stopped loving her brother, or is that a little unfair?

[littlemuoi]

From The Deafening Sound of Silent Tears: The Remarkable Story of Caring for Life by Juliet Barker