#kinda rhymes with horace

[anosewithlegs]

the universe thought "alright, that's enough struggles for them"

and made me aroace.

and i could not be more thankful.

[arbitreneart]

THE HISTORY OF TISSUE/TOILET PAPER

Put you seat-belts on & grab you popcorn.... this is going to be a wild ride!

So let’s begin....

MEDIEVAL CHINA

the first documented use of toilet paper in human history dates back to the 6th century AD, in early medieval China.

From the records of the Imperial Bureau of Supplies of that same year, it was also recorded that for the Hongwu Emperor's imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and each sheet of toilet paper was perfumed.[5]

Perfumed paper, yeeeee!

Going ahead:

Elsewhere, wealthy people wiped themselves with wool, lace or hemp....

less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stones, sand, moss, water, snow, ferns, plant husks, fruit skins, seashells, or corncobs, depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs.

Class divide- even in tissue paper, Jesus Christ!

SPONGE STICK IN ANCIENT ROME

^ A sponge on a stick, known as tersorium or xylospongium.

D. Herdemerten/CC BY 3.0

In Ancient Rome, a sponge on a stick as commonly used, and, after use, placed back in a pail of vinegar.

A 1792 French Revolutionary caricature, depicting the French population using the Monarchist Brunswick Manifesto as toilet paper.^ BAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

POOP MENTION WARNING GUYS, kindly skip it & go to the next heading if you think you’ll be disturbed

It’s kinda funny though ngl....

Gargantua dismisses the use of paper as ineffective, rhyming that: "Who his foul tail with paper wipes, Shall at his ballocks leave some chips." (Sir Thomas Urquhart's 1653 English translation). He concludes that "the neck of a goose, that is well downed" provides an optimum cleansing medium.

Did he, did he mean a legit goose-

Yes, yes he did- the beaked bird- may god bless it’s poor soul....

THE ERA OF PUBLISHING

The rise of publishing by the eighteenth century led to the use of newspapers and cheap editions of popular books for cleansing. Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son in 1747, told of a man who purchased

a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina; thus was so much time fairly gained ....

At least, at least he gained some knowledge before hand?

A MODERN COMMODITY

Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with being the inventor of modern commercially available toilet paper in the United States. Gayetty's paper, first introduced in 1857, was available as late as the 1920s. Gayetty's Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor's name. Original advertisements for the product used the  tagline-

"The greatest necessity of the age! Gayetty's medicated paper for the water-closet."

as late as the 1930s, a selling point of the Northern Tissue company was that their toilet paper was "splinter free".

Moist toilet paper, called wet wipes, was first introduced in the United Kingdom by Andrex in the 1990s.....

Well here it is folks.... let’s collectively thank Wikipedia & a bunch of other sites....

[asiryn]

so hey.......y’all remember when i said that sometimes, just for fun and the hell of it, i make lists of “endgame” ships in my fandoms? bc yeah, that’s a thing that i do sometimes. XD

having now finished kh3, i’ve finally finished my endgame ship list for kh, and i figured that it might be a fun thing to share!

the actual list i’m gonna put behind a cut, bc it’ll be hella long (bc seriously.....i put about 95% of the characters into ships, and this includes all of the humanoid-ish disney characters too (barring most of the villains, bc....well, those characters are dead)), but before that, i’ll give you some....idk, context behind this list. 

keep in mind, this entire affair is just like........gonna involve a fuck-ton of indulgence on my part. and most of this is fairly light-hearted. most importantly of all, this is pretty much a self-challenge: i paired up the majority of the characters just to see if i could, with the additional challenge that i could only pair them with characters that actually, canonically, have appeared in kh (this means that i couldn’t substitute in other final fantasy or disney characters); i did this to see how creative i could get with my ships, really. 

idk if i’ll ever actually get around to writing fanfic for this verse (tho i do have a lot of headcanons, and i’ve actually put (probably far too much) thought into how i think these ships would work/come about, and my long-suffering friend Ip, bless her, has been an incredibly good sport about being a sounding board for all this), but i tend to refer to it as my “Healing Vision”, and it’s basically a post-kh3 AU, that presumes that everyone but xehanort (and also eraqus) got to live happily ever after. and this verse is so named bc, apart from everyone being able to heal and be happy after the traumatic canon, i also wanted to do my absolute best to put them in.....idk, healthy ships, and not ones that i think would be more toxic. everyone had redemption arcs, is what i’m saying (even if they never did or would have gotten them in canon).

y’all don’t understand, at this point i probably have over a hundred pages in various word docs of notes about this verse, so please feel free to ask if you want to hear more about it, i need validation of my madness---

anyway, here we go!

just so that there isn’t just a massive wall of text, i’m gonna break this up into roughly 2 sections: square/original kh characters, and then the rest of the disney characters.

Square/original KH characters:

Olette/Xion/Namine/Sora/Riku [OXN, SoNami, & SoRiku], Shiki/Kairi/Selphie, Axel/Saix, Hayner/Roxas, Terra/Cinderella, Aqua/Larxene/Yuffie, Repliku/Vanitas, Ven/Beat [more friends w/ benefits], Xigbar/Luxord, Aeleus/Even, Ienzo/Demyx, Sora’s Mom/Dilan, (Cinderella’s) Prince Charming/Marluxia, Geppetto/Ansem, Tidus/Wakka, Zack/Cloud/Leon, Aerith/Tifa, Cid/Auron, Fuu/Tinker Bell, Seifer/Rai, Jack Sparrow/Setzer, Boo/Vivi [platonic], Rikku/Paine, Yuna/Elsa, Neku/Joshua, Rhyme/Snow White, Hiro/Pence, & Eraqus/Xehanort [together in death]

i have no idea what’s going on with the khux characters going forward, and atm they don’t really have anything to do this AU, but assuming they’re alive and they’re all their own characters, at least for the time being, those ships would be: Skuld/Strelitzia, Ava/Ephemer, Invi/Ira/Aced, Gula/Brain, and Sephiroth/Master of Masters (but again, these are more tentative, and i don’t actually care about these characters, really)

Disney characters:

(again, keep in mind that these are only the humanoid or really anthropomorphic characters; ones that are straight up animals, like simba for example, were not included)

Mickey/Minnie/Daisy/Donald/Goofy [M/M, D/D, MinDaisy, & qpt Donald/Goofy], Horace Horsecollar/Pete, Clarabelle Cow/Clara Cluck, Hercules/Meg, Tarzan/Jane, Aladdin/Jasmine, Ariel/Eric, Belle/Beast, Lumiere/Cogsworth, Will/Elizabeth, Quasimodo/Phoebus/Esmeralda, Kristoff/Anna/Rapunzel/Eugene, Maleficent/Aurora/Mulan/Shang/Phillip [Malora, Philora, Mulora, Mulan/Shang, Phillip/Shang], Alice/Wendy, Peter/Wendy [qpt], Peter/Tinker Bell [qpt], (BatB) Chip/Pinocchio, Anastasia/Chien Po, Yao/Prince (from Snow White), Ling/Drizella, Merlin/Yen Sid, Hades/Genie, Mrs. Potts/Flora, Merryweather/Triton, Hook/Smee, Doc/Grumpy, Blue Fairy/Dopey, Fairy Godmother/Happy, Fauna/Bashful, Slightly/Cubby [platonic], Calypso/Barbossa, Sam Flynn/Quorra, Queen of Hearts/Agrabah Merchant, (BatB) Wardrobe/Gibbs, Emperor/Sleepy [his cuddle-cubine, if you will], Grand Duke/Sneezy, Mike/Sulley, Woody/Buzz, Honey Lemon/Go Go, Wasabi/Fred, Baymax/Tron/Baymax, & Phil/Zeus

Assorted Notes:

- should probably mention that all the worlds are just vaguely All Connected Now

- ven and hercules dated in bbs (then the Plot happened, ven pretty much vanished, and eventually herc moved on. they’re a bit awkward with each other now, but they agreed it’d be too weird to even attempt to date now, bc herc outgrew ven while he was in a magic coma)

- zack’s alive bc they forced hades to resurrect him like he did with auron (my hc is that the deal he made with cloud in kh1 was to bring zack back to life, but hades reneged on this; when cloud finally shared this info with sora, a Quest was undertaken to get hades to honor the deal)

- repliku’s name in this verse is Kiru (he decided to go along with the Theme, minus the sigil); sora’s mom is named Hikari; and i’m going with henry and florian for the real names of prince charming and snow’s prince, respectively (marluxia will probably still call henry “charming” as a sort of affectionate and kind of joking nickname (bc in this verse, henry is the definition of a Disaster Gay))

- goofy and pete dated in the past, but broke up with goofy came out as aroace; pete’s still kinda bitter about it

- aqua/larxene/yuffie is 100% a thing bc i feel that aqua deserves to be able to have fun and not be the responsible mom friend for once; aqua and cinderella also have some playful flirting, but it’s never really serious

- terra’s getting a staycation with his girlfriend, and aqua’s getting a vacation with her girlfriends 

- olette/xion/namine/sora/riku is Peak indulgence for me; i love namixiolette, sonami, and soriku too much to want to choose between them? fuck it, they’re all smushed together in a poly pile now. this is my indulgence fic, i can do what i want, and none of you can stop me XP (the other sub-ship combos, riku with any of the girls, and sora with the other two girls, are more queerplatonic, ftr)

- there’s like a whole soap opera behind mickey/minnie/daisy/donald/goofy coming to their current arrangement, mostly bc the idea of giving all the Drama to these characters in particular amuses me; same with past goofy/pete

- a recurring Theme in this verse is that compulsory heterosexuality is the true darkness, and pretty much no one is straight (and so, light = gay) (this is how the final confrontation in kh3 truly went down: sora: kingdom hearts, is gay! / xehanort: shit...u right, bro. kk, lemme just fade into the light of gay with my bf then)

- sephiroth in this verse is mostly just a vehicle for me to be able to mildly punish terrible lightside mentors, so this ship with the MoM is kinda a cracky spite ship (before kh3 went all in on xehaqus, this was eraqus’s original fate XD)

- i will admit, gula/brain is mostly just me going, “you both really annoy me, and i don’t care to find you better ships, so you two can deserve each other”; to be fair to myself, this attitude was on the rarer side during this process

- hiro totally builds a robot body for tron to use to visit the outside world, tho he still chooses to live in the computer most of the time; tron’s besties with baymax 1 & 2

- i’ll be honest: scrooge, huey, dewey, louie, chip, dale, and possibly jiminy, by my rules, should have been put into ships. they’re not bc i couldn’t find any that worked for me *shrugs*

- phil is more like zeus’s on and off again boyfriend; he’s really fucking annoyed that he keeps having to train a lot of zeus’s offspring, and that he kinda, in a way, ends up doing more parenting for them than zeus does; currently phil is kinda claiming herc away from zeus (”i’m his dad now, so there”) (so at this point, their relationship is more of a hatemance than anything else) (i guess in my hc, zeus skews more towards being like his myth self than the disney version)

- the total number of ships, if you’re curious, is 75

- i’ve actually got queer headcanons for the square characters (excluding the khux squad), and some of the disney characters, figured out (as an example, namine is a demiromantic asexual)

okay, i think i’ll stop here for now, tho of course i might tweak or add things later XD

[kakarmasobessioncorner]

Rambling time! More on the ancients and their caretakers, or to be more precise about each one individually. A few are OCs I have ideas of, and ideas for a story with. They will be obvious. The name in brackets is their Ghost name, and the other is their chosen ‘human’ names. Taken for when they need to go to the human realm and blend in. Gotta love how helpful baby naming sites are, ones that can be looked though by meanings.

A lot of this has to do with a thing I’m writing. So I’d love to hear what you think of the base ideas!

They will be done in order of their Caretaker’s ages. 

The elements and their caretakers in general

A caretaker can communicate with their own element, but not the others. However the elements can translate each other to their caretakers if they need to.

They aren’t controlled by their caretakers, they are their own beings and thus do occasionally mess with their caretakers. Just because they are ancient and incredibly powerful doesn’t mean they have to act it.

They never had to disclose their caretakers, and for the longest time no one knew about Pandora since hope kept rather quite about finding and choosing the young human woman until she died.

They grown and change as time passes to remain attuned to what they must do. Such as Creation becoming more fit to be called Dreams. Since with the world mostly formed and now in a state of maintenance, it needed to create things from scratch less and began creating goals, wants and potentials  for the creatures instead. Making their dreams.

The elements can’t be destroyed. Only changed.  However their caretakers can be ‘destroyed’ in the sense that who they were is mostly gone though so much damage they have to reform from scratch with no memories. This has only happened once before.

Not all the caretakers are known to the Spirit Realm. It’s common knowledge that Prophet, Vito, Lady Muerte, and Clockwork are caretakers, however they don’t know the others are. Notcturne is reclusive and little is known about him around the zone, Pandora is known to be powerful but no one knows a Ghost could be a caretaker, and GW and SD are thought to be ghosts when they are spirits and thus no one suspects them either.

Fate and it’s keeper, Cecil Tiresias. (Prophet)

Cecil is blind, but can see beyond normal sight to do his job.

Has no patience for people who won’t accept the obvious. 

Is otherwise very calm and kind. 

Reclusive. 

Fate’s direct mutation core type is Crystal. and this is where the use of crystal for seeing important events in the future came from.

Weak Point is his eyes made of foggy crystal balls. If attacked they can be cracked and it takes him out until they mend. 

Cecil is a name that means Blind, and Tiresias comes from greek mythology where Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes. 

Human form looks like a young boy, blind and pale like he never seen sunlight before. 

 Life and it’s keeper, Chayan Thanasis. (Vito)

Chayan is a slightly sadistic person. He says this is because he believes life can only truly be enjoyed with a little suffering to make the joy stronger. 

Vito means life, as does Chayan. While Thanasis is a commonly shortened form of ‘Athanasios’ which is a Greek name that means immortal.

Life is slightly bitter over the fact it only got domain over one of the three halfas. Since being half alive and half dead they had a 50/50 chance over whether they’d be under it or Death’s domains. It got Vlad.

Healthy young animals, pregnant creatures, and children find life, it’s keeper, and the one halfa under it’s domain very comforting. Calm in their presence and very agreeable. 

Dying creatures find them almost sickening.

Weakness is poisons, they won’t kill life or it’s caretaker, but the strong ones will weaken them a lot. 

 Death and it’s keeper, Morrigan Menahem. (Lady Muerte)

Morrigan is a very forgiving woman. 

Her name Morrigan is ‘derived from Irish Mór Ríoghain meaning "great queen". In Irish myth she was a goddess of war and death who often took the form of a crow.’ and Menahem apparently comes from a hebrew word meaning "the consoler" or "comforter".  Chosen for how she is a calm spirit whom does what she can to comfort newly departed souls how she can. 

She got domain over two of the three halfas. Danny and Danni. 

Healthy living creatures find her presence very unnerving and always flee her if able. Even humans feel the need to avoid her unless they are mediums, dying, or just accustomed to her. Dying creatures find her, and the two halfas in her domain, very comforting to be around.

Weakness is the antidotes to strong poisons that act much like poisons do to Life.  

Inspiration and it’s keepers, Andrew Riter (Ghost Writer) and Dumi Ellyda (Spirit Dancer) 

GW’s name was inspired by ibelieveinahappilyeverafter’s stories on fanfiction.net. I’m not a shipper of Iambic Prose really, but I enjoy their writing of it. I absolutely recommend going and checking them out. A lot of the ancient energy ideas I had were really undeveloped and nothing I felt I could write,but some of their writing helped encourage and even build these ideas up.

Dumi means 'the inspirer’ and Ellyda means ‘Small winged one’ and I chose Ellyda for it’s energetic sounding nature and how her being the performance muse it seems fitting since she’s light on her feet.

They caretakers are not siblings. they were just both chosen by Inspiration for different reasons. 

GW has a brother who is not a caretaker but very powerful in his own right named Randy seriously go read @Ibelieverinahappilyeverafter ‘s writing.

SD changes appearance a lot for parties, blending in, performing, and just plain having fun.

Her natural form looks kinda like a cross of Olivia from Fire Emblem Awakening and the muse with the long down hair from the cartoon Hercules movie. Y’know the muses that sung Gospel Truth. Tho I recommend this one the RL models are great.

SD is weak to places that muffle sounds, and GW has problems with things that don’t rhyme. 

SD can make her ecto-signature invisible to even the strongest sensors as long as she doesn’t use powers other than cloaking. 

Creation and it’s keeper, Morpheus Dremurr (Nocturne)

His lair is not a physical one like other spirits and ghosts. Rather the physical entrance leads to a bedroom with several bunk beds (for guests) and one king’s size poster bed. You fall asleep in there and enter the dream Realm.

Was asked by Clockwork to mess with Danny and really meant no harm by it. Clock work never gave a clear reason as to why it was needed but he trusts his judgement. 

Had fun acting the villain though. Something really fun about playing a bad guy. 

Only gets energy from good dreams and before going dormant for a long time after Pyrah Dark was sealed, he’d go out and travel the human realm to banish kid’s nightmares when he could and harvest energy. 

He helped make the coffin of sleep, but it took a lot out of him.

Often ends up having to go to the Clock Tower to make Clockwork at least take a nap. 

Pandora gave him a stuffed ram as a joke one year when it was well known that they were ‘mandatory for a goods night rest’ and he actually came to love it. Though if anyone questions it he tells a story about stuffed animals

Still has the ability to create land and spaces out of nothing, but doesn’t do much anymore.

Weakness is dream catchers, that weakens his powers. 

Time and it’s keeper, Horace Hidiyah. (Clockwork)

Here it comes I have a lot of ideas for him.

Horace means Timekeeper, and Hidiyah means ‘guide to righteousness’.

Is the only caretaker who wasn’t picked like the others. He was made for the job.

Time is a picky, chaotic, and (to those with a closed mind like the Observants) dangerously unpredictable.

In reality Time can always be trusted to try and aim for the path of the greater good even if it looks like the worse path at the time. 

Clockwork doesn’t hate the observants, just is more annoyed with them for not trusting that he, the one able to see far more than they could, didn’t know what he was doing.  The reason they don’t he doesn’t know. However time does know it’s because they worry he’d let his emotions effect his choices, since he has far stronger emotions than he was supposed to when he was made. They didn’t want care or love to get in the way of doing what had to be done... they pushed almost all those emotions away long ago to do their job.

Can hold one age for a while, but shifting is something he got used to and finds being so in touch with time that he moves with it so much to be comforting.

Time does like to play tricks or mischief on it’s keeper, and one way is to send his powers out of wack, sticking him in one age form and with limited powers to be babysat by one of the others. It’s for Clockwork’s own good, but it has fun with his frustration and embarrassment too. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s almost always his child form he’s stuck in.

Has a slight lisp (well that’t cannon but needs reminding) 

Had a lot of fun playing the bad guy when he and Danny first met.

Picked up baking from Pandora and kept it up seeing that it would be useful. 

Puts off resting as long as possible to keep working. Nocturne has taken it upon himself to visit and make sure he doesn’t pass out. It leads to bad situations for time.

Feels he has basically adopted the Phantoms and takes the responsibility very seriously. Especially after Danny’s future was made to be his responsibility. 

Asked Nocturne to pick a fight with Danny knowing that he wouldn’t actually hurt him, and that Danny needed to stay on his toes because something big was coming.

Also as revenge for how often Nocturne shows up to pester him into sleeping. He knew the chances of him standing even the slightest chance against Danny was almost nil even with all the dream powers. 

Hope and it’s keeper, Pandora Anesidora.

Pandora is the only ghost caretaker.

It was her idea for the others to pick out names that would fit in better with humans, rather than the names they used in the Spirit Realm. 

As such she is the only one without a ‘ghost name’ since she just uses her birth name.

I got her last name from her myth, since it’s apparently an alternate name for her. 

tried to keep up with the knowledge of the Human realm, but in order to keep guard of her box doesn’t get to go out much. 

Only one that has a hard time taking a human appearance without the help of some artifact due to once being human herself.

Sees Nocturne and Clockwork as younger siblings ever since she watched on in amusement as they bickered like children over something silly and she needed to step in to break them apart... the first time.

[travel-study]

hey friends! this is the first post of a new series of masterposts i am going to do on shakespeare’s major works. i have a degree in history & english literature from one of the top unis in the uk and i’ve covered a hell of a lot of shakespeare in my time, so hopefully i can offer some help to you guys. please let me know if there’s anything you want different in future posts, feedback would be great. hope i can help, and happy new years!

themes

sex, if love be blind, it best agrees with night

romeo & juliet is absolutely chocked full of sexual overtones, it’s basically about two kids getting a bit carried away trying to get into each others pants

3.2.13-16 highlights this link between juliet’s sexual inexperience and her sexual eagerness. she is ‘unmann’d’ in that she has yet to take a husband, as well as in that an unmanned falcon would fly free if taken outdoors were a hood not pulled over its head

3.2.21-23 stresses the heartbeat rhythm, ‘come night, come romeo, come thou day in night’. it’s a fast rhythm, stressing her desire for him to come to her. her boldness is born in her desire and her separation from innocence, which could also form the base for a point about femininity and docility being tied to innocence and virginity if you fancied taking that route

mercutio has been described as ‘sex-obsessed’, but i’d say he’s a pretty archetypal teenage boy in this respect. he makes lewd references to rosaline’s ‘quivering thigh’, and mocks romeo’s ‘love’ 2.1.9-24 generally, setting up the argument that romeo can’t distinguish between love and lust. romeo also makes reference to juliet’s thighs on their wedding night, although saying that they’re ‘like jewels, the work of a master hand’ is rather nice compared to his remarks about rosaline and how she refused to ‘ope the gap’. i would say this repeated mention of thighs distinguishes the difference between the laddish chat between the boys and the conversations between a man and wife, another break from innocence and youth.

mercutio also reduces love to merely sex in 2.1.36-41, and his fruit based metaphor could easily be linked to the fruit of eden and sex being a product of the birth of sin if you wanted to go down that route

there is of course the famous pun on ‘maidenhead’, equating sword fighting with raping women, at the opening of the play, establishing and linking the consistent themes of sex and violence 

 essentially these two are horny teenagers and sex is a huge theme in the play. it is easy to tie to love, innocence, femininity etc. 

useful articles on sex in r&j: 1. 2.(ctl+f sex for ease) 3.(partic. interesting commentary on rape in r&j) 4.

masculinity, thy beauty hath made me effeminate  

this is, i think, one of the more interesting topics covered in r&j, and as a result there’s a shitload of useful sources for it

in romeo’s hypermasculine society he is expected to either violently defend his family and his name or master his own self-control and autonomy and love. he attempts to do both simultaneously and it doesn’t pan out so well for him. 

all the deaths of the young men in the play stem from them trying to fulfil these expectations of them. 

unlike benvolio, mercutio and tybalt, who maintain their masculinity in death, romeo’s suicide is seen as weak, even effeminate. 

appelbaum’s article in shakespeare quarterly is particularly important, i think, in critically addressing this conflict of gender, and i would strongly recommend it if you’re hoping to cover this theme

1. 2. (this one covers the coming of age process in r&j, but i think it’s useful to tie this in with the development of masculine ideals and expectations)

love & death, thus with a kiss i die

one cannot write about one without writing about the other when covering romeo & juliet, i think 

along with fate and society, love and death are pinpointed as key themes in the prologue, setting the audience up to tie the two ideas together

the paradoxical notion of love in death fuels these characters motives, and could potentially link to a religious theme if you wanted to take that angle (as a protip if you wanna study english or history just learn as much as you can about religion and it’ll cover you for 90% of your essays)

this article extensively covers the times in which death is mentioned in the context of love, or vice versa. it’s interesting if a bit oddly formatted 

this article talks about the context of joint burial, a physical manifestation of these tied themes, in a sense

chapter 21 on shakespeare’s early tragedies in this book is useful, and there’s a whole subsection for romeo and juliet that’s a handy read

fate, i fear... some consequence yet hanging in the stars

the elizabethan world view was shaped by a common belief in fortune, fate and the power of the stars, astrology being considered a science amongst the nobility at the time

bertrand evans noted that in r&j ‘fate is the controlling practiser, and the entire action of the play represents her at work’ in shakespeare’s tragic practice, essentially arguing that every choice made by the plays characters is just chipping away their path to their predestined ends

this article is generally great, and the third angle focuses on r&j as a tragedy of fortune. i’d recommend reading the whole thing but i’ve linked straight to the third point so that it’s focused on the theme of fate and fortune. 

i would also recommend this book, you can search for specific references to romeo and juliet, but there’s some good stuff about fate and predestination around p.55 and for the next 20 or so pages i think? i didn’t count oops

form

all of shakespeare’s plays are written in iambic pentameter. an iamb is a foot that consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. pent means 5, so there’s 5 iambs in each line

as is pretty typical for shakespeare, he uses blank verse to indicate that a person of a lower social class is speaking, or to show informality. for instance, the nurse speaks in blank verse, and mercutio does when in the informal setting of hanging around with his friends. stricter rhyme tends to come into play with characters of a higher social standing, like capulet

the play is an early example of shakespearean tragic structure. this generally fits within the 5 act structure that’s been a playwrights favourite since horace built on aristotle’s 3 segment structure. 

this is an interesting article that i’d recommend if you were hoping to look at tragic form in romeo and juliet 

more on tragic form: 1. 2. 3. 4.

language

i’m not gonna go through quotes or sections one by one here because that basically makes the process of doing your own essay redundant, but i am gonna give some tips on analysing language

the first time you read the play, enjoy it, don’t overthink it. the second time you read it pick out the sections or the lines you think are most pertinent to what you want to write about. if you have 9 books to read this week and don’t have time for this i feel you man i really do, you can just pick key phrases the first time but it kinda fucks with the flow of your understanding if you get me

worst case scenario, sparknotes will have key quotes. i only started using them when i was half way through uni because i thought i was too good to rely on sparknotes. no one is too good for sparknotes trust

anyway, compile your chosen segments according to theme and then start working out how you’ll shape your paragraph on that theme. carefully select which quotes you’ll use to back up your points, as textual evidence is crucial to building your case

close analysis of language is kind of something you need to improvise, i find. i generally don’t think there’s actually anything there and then just make something up. e.g. ‘my bounty is as boundless as the sea,/ my love as deep; the more i give to thee/ the more i have, for both are infinite’ 

so ignoring whatever else and focusing purely on language, i’d highly here rhythm and rhyme, and the obvious effort that romeo is making to use poetic language. the alliterative ‘b’ and the ‘ea, ‘ee’, ‘ee’ sounds both create a bounding rhythm reminiscent of that of juliet i mentioned earlier, building on both the sexual energy with the whole heartbeat feel and the anticipation and excitement, cos you can’t deny that boys rhythm sounds eager. ‘more’, ‘more’ again reiterates this point. ‘my’ ‘my’ ‘both’ i would say signifies romeo transitioning from being an individual to being a pair cos joining with juliet in marriage and physically etc. etc. you can just chat any old shit you fancy as long as there’s some plausible way to link it to the text

long story short, success in english is as limited as your own creativity. which isn’t limited, go crazy with it, trust yourself and your argument skills

this is such an unhelpful section i’m sorry i don’t even have any good secondary sources other than the general companions which i will now do

general reading

these are some books i would recommend you read that don’t very precisely pertain to the stuff i’ve already said. remember, though, that it’s super important to read as much of the secondary material as possible, and to grow your own opinions alongside everything that you’ve learnt reading other ideas. they aren’t designed to tell you what to think about the play/book/poem/whatever, but rather to expand your understanding of it

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

i really hope this has helped any of you, and please feel free to ask me any questions about romeo and juliet or anything else english related that you’re struggling with! best of luck, and remember to enjoy it as much as you can!