#post-Shakespearian

[izzyhandsyouaglassofwine]

seen a couple people running to that "is it bad writing or do you not understand genre" post in regards to the ofmd upset. and let me remind people that this show was marketed as a romantic comedy, ESPECIALLY this season!

In that regard, I found an article/blog post that directly addresses the question "can you have character death in a romantic comedy?" And it really hits the nail on the head.

Even if you were to make the argument "well it's a dark comedy!" or "its a pirate show!" there's still a balance that needs to be met if you don't want to alienate your audience.

People are going to argue that the death was earned because they spent the entire season building up his character and "completing his arc". Well, I'll argue that they DIDN'T complete his arc. In fact they took about twelve steps back in his death scene by seemingly ret conning his progress and having him center Ed's feelings on his literal deathbed. So it really feels a lot like fridging, because that's exactly what it was. Izzy's death was for Ed's arc, not his own. And they spent so much time focusing on Izzy all season, focusing on his growth and giving him such a specific arc about queerness and recovery, that yeah, his death feels like a slap to the face and not a tragic story beat that makes the story all the richer.

[silverskye13]

The King is gone. In his place, the Crowned Prince, Welsknight, rules in his lofty court. By his side, his Knight Champion, there to keep him safe until the King returns. But more dangerous than the Court is the Prince's boredom, and though Helsknight tries to do right by his Prince, what sort of knight fears laying down his life for his charge? And what resentment will build when it's demanded?

Finally finished my piece for @mcytblraufest! It is posted in it's entirety and ready to be read in all its 21k word glory!

Also, shout-out to my amazing artists for this project, @winterbyn and @thatapolloguy! Please do check them out!

You can find the compiled work they made for the fic here!

Also, if you're enjoying the fic vibes, I also made a small playlist for it! You can listen to it here!

[jonismitchell]

much ado about nothing, william shakespeare // riding in town cars with boys, gossip girl // yes, then zero, gossip girl // cross rhodes, gossip girl

[dredgesnails]

get rendog and brennan lee mulligan in the same room and let them monologue at each other for a while. i’d like to see what happens

[atticollateral]

"this way of speaking is obsolete"

Methinks thou art a yellow nave! Praytell, hath wisdom caught thou yet?

[fortjester]

i like the idea of Alecto speaking Like That in the NtN epilogue bc that's. that's just how she speaks. I like the idea that whatever conversation they had going in the John chapters was filtered thru Harrow into a language we as modern readers could understand, and the way that Alecto and John actually spoke to each other was like. just feeling each other's feelings via soul sharing and parsing out meaning from that - apart from John like naming the schools he went to and contellations and all that. I like the idea of John teaching Alecto how to speak with her mouth and use human languages by reading Shakespeare plays n stuff to her, and that's why he knows so many quotes just off the top of his head. Alecto speaks like the Bard's Cleopatra and Beatrice and Lady Macbeth, Elizabethan English style iambic pentameter, the odd rhyming couplet, and so on. the idea of it. i dunno. just delights me, i guess.

[centricider]

both authunity and leftist unity are real 2 me there i said it

[e-the-village-cryptid]

every time. every time when I get a bunch of followers at once and am wondering what’s going on. every time I look into it. it’s the fucking milk post

[reicartwright]

Day 8

Are there any superstitions you believe in or follow?

It’s been some time since I believed in luck, Though privilege and good timing I receive As truths. I like the tales of old construct; I follow superstitions — don’t believe. I won’t walk under ladders (that’s good sense). A penny on the sidewalk makes me smile. A shooting star or dandelion presents A moment with the wonder of a child. On Friday the Thirteenth I celebrate The saving of my little brother’s life. Black cats are just too cute for me to hate. ‘Bad luck’ is an excuse to cop off strife. There are some old beliefs that I will follow, For without them, my life would become hollow.

[cagesings]

the  kiss  me  scene  :’):

it  starts  out  with  this  long  monologue  from  johanna  as  she  waits  for  anthony  to  come  and  it  ends  up  making  a  lot  of  my  headcanons  literally  canon?: 

the  fact  that  she  doesn’t  eat?  or  sleep?  and  calling  herself  a  wretched  girl  and  the  obvious  self  hatred  that  comes  with  that?

turpin  still  being  a  creep  about  lucy:

anthony  being  a  hopeless  romantic  and  romeo  and  juliet-ing  the  situation: 

the  way  that  turpin  phrases  marrying  him  is  very  hmm  (  saying  “share  his  bed”  instead  of  ...  literally  anything  else  ): 

johanna  gives  anthony  her  mother’s  ring  and  i  am  literally  sobbing  right  now:

giving  him  something  that  belonged  to  her  mother  is  just  so  precious  because  she  obviously  doesn’t  know  much  about  her  but  she  keeps  that  ring  scared.  may  be  adding  that  to  my  portrayal  because  i  am  obsessed. 

[murdercene]

the absolute funniest part of doing much ado about nothing is seeing my friends tag funny textposts as their characters

[aridadne]

i love u the secret history i love u long books

[variousqueerthings]

i do think that specifically david tennant being very openly supportive of the trans community has had an interesting effect -- because usually im kinda like "it is nice to know that people whose work i enjoy don't want me dead" and that's kinda my level of (at this point) quite cynical engagement with what a celebrity or artist does or does not think about transness, because these days it feels like it's almost fashionable for well-known (or post-well-known) people to come out of the wordwork and say what they think about trans people, which can get very stressful in its own way (the amount of headlines that try to be misleading or just plain don't say and so you're just like "ok i guess this week i have to find out if [spins wheel] thinks i deserve rights")

but david tennant has a different feeling to it. and to be fair, there are plenty of people with skin in the game, who absolutely deserve to and ought to speak out on behalf of their children/partners/community/friends/family/etc. and im always happy to see these people speak, and dt is included in that list as well

but david tennant is veeery specific in this here country of terf island, in which the labour party will openly state that it will allow certain book writers to affect their policies on trans people, and that's partly because of the effect above in which "having opinions on trans rights seems to be a celebrity game that keeps you relevant, which includes ex prime minister tony blair making his opinion known (hint, it wasn't a good one)" but also because david tennant is known as a national icon to rival that of whatsherface

he was the main actor on doctor who, in the top three, if not very top of british broadcasting iconography that exists. he's one of this generation's most famous shakespearian actors, the other thing that this country-as-culture is most proud of. he's a mainstay in children's film and tv, a standout in modern british crime drama (broadchurch, des), and that's not mentioning things like jessica jones, good omens, and star wars

this guy has no social media, and some of the biggest cultural capital in the uk today -- labour i believe it was made a twitter joke about him ousting the current prime minister as the doctor ahead of this week's election, because that's an iconic scene from doctor who

which means that when he openly calls transphobes whingy and asks them to shut up, there's a bit of a ripple... i mean what are you gonna do, get angry with the doctor? from doctor who??? the man who played a definitive hamlet????? the man who's just done rave reviewed performances of macbeth???? scrooge mcduck????????? this man who occasionally guests on cbeebies???????????

said prime minister and his party and hosts of transphobes go absolutely crazy every time he makes an appearance wearing new trans ally apparel, as if a. he sees any of that and b. it's a dignified response to a man saying, in essence, "i would like my kid to be safe and happy"

david tennant constantly making these statements, again and again, is a powerful voice in the modern fight for trans rights in the UK, in some ways unfortunately, because you wish trans people could have been heard before it got to this state and that it wasn't about being famous, but to be fair, he's also making that point again and again

it kind of feels like the first time in a long time that there's been proper pushback against transphobia in this country from a perspective that the transphobes can't dismiss so easily -- they can try but like. again, one side is a bunch of raving nonsense-spouters on a joke website who mostly belong to a party that's about to get decidedly ousted from the political scene, the other is beloved national icon and star of stage and screen, mr david tennant

of course, it doesn't hurt that the three main actors of harry potter and everyone else who's majorly involved in doctor who, past and present, is also supportive of trans rights, which maybe there's a separate point to be made about the strangeness of a mainstream tv show becoming a cultural battleground for peoples opinions on equal rights, especially now with ncuti gatwa at the helm, because i think some of what ive seen in relation to dw is more extreme than any piece of cultural media ive been alive to witness bigoted reactions to (including star trek), and ncuti gatwa as a black queer man is taking a hell of a lot of flack that is racist and homophobic

but labour... if you're inviting random artists to give you opinions on trans rights, david tennant is right there, and you know he'd make sure to bring along trans rights activists and professionals to get the space in the room they ought to have had all along

[feminariden]

There aren't enough romances that end in tragedy

[ishtea]

reading fauxcest siscon posts on tumblr dot com genuinely makes my heart sing and thoughts turn to a world more romantic than ours in the same way Shakespearian plays probably felt to downtrodden peasants in 1500s britain

[beware-of-pity]

I need people who would die on the hill of "Fire and Blood is completely unreliable, therefore we cannot trust anything that's written in it" to open their eyes and read a book that is similar to the structure that Fire and Blood uses to realize how wrong of a statement that is. I know that this will probably be received as a very hot take but I do not believe that everything needs to be analyzed or has to have a deeper meaning behind it. The curtain can be blue and there doesn't have to be a reason for the curtain to be blue other than the fact that it's just blue (hope someone gets the reference). Ryan Condall obviously disagrees with that, because in his quest to recreate his own 'magnum opus' of a 'Shakespearian tragedy', as he always likes to refer to it as, he has instead created the equivalent of a dumpster on fire next to the other bigger dumpster on fire that was Game of thrones.

Bland, whitewashed characters with little to no turmoil or agency going on are revered as complex and nuantical on Twitter. And if you even dare to disagree, you're immediately sentenced to the stake. Characters like Alicent and Rhaenyra could literally not even be in the episode and nothing would change. Rhaenyra was in episode 4 for not even 5 minutes and with everything going on in it you wouldn't even have noticed that. She should have been there, leading the council as Cole marched on rook's rest, her only available connection to the mainland in the crownlands, apart from Claw Isle, after duskendale fell to the greens and instead her only scene in such climactic episode is her walk of shame returning home and her, rightfully, getting scolded by her son for thinking that she could still sue for peace with Alicent, the mother of her son's murderer. The show makes the decision to have Rhaenys volunteer instead of having Rhaenyra send her there so that later when Rhaenys dies Rhaenyra cannot be blamed for it. The fundamental changes of characters like Alicent don't work because the writers are not able to sustain such changes from the source material they are deriving the story from. Going from leading the council that would place Aegon on the throne, to never even being in on the plan to usurp Rhaenyra, that her father created, is such a letdown for such a political savy character like book Alicent.

Aging her down, to Rhaenyra's age, and making these two childhood best friends, was a mistake.

What is very evident is that the showrunners have no clue, so far, what to do with a character like show Alicent. If she's not going to lead the council when Aegon is bedridden and Aemond is off to fight in the Riverlands, why doesn't she just leave?

Going from an active participant in a usurpation from somebody who needs to miss-hear or misunderstand her dying husband for her to get in on the plan, only so there is an excuse to get her on the war council is bad writing.

Making people believe that Rhaenyra was usurped because of a misunderstanding, and not only because she was a woman, is bad writing. And going to the extremes, of having these two 'betray' each other in order to have a reason to make Rhaenyra look bad in the eyes of her rivals is bad writing. Rhaenyra could have been the perfect heir, and even only because she was a woman, Otto and Alicent would have usurped her either way.

Going back to the point of this post; Timelines, ages, events, who got married to who, how many kids they had, things that you can quantify are not something that can be made up, used as rumors or form of propaganda in a history book. What you make up as a rumor is sexual escapades and a young girl seducing her sworn shield who has watched over her since she was seven. Things that can make a person look bad to glorify or uphold the good of someone else alongside all the other stuff that happens behind closed doors and makes you question where the information is coming from.

I find it so odd that the aggressive marketing team for the second season was all about choosing your side. Lol, what is there to even choose? Choose between the overly sanctified Rhaenyra, who god forbid is still searching for the peace that has already been thrown over the cliff long ago, and is not allowed yet to make a mistake. Or, Alicent, the pathetic hypocrite who made her bed and is not willing to admit it. Anything interesting about these two women is completely being cut so that Ryan Condall and Co. can continue to spread the "men are bad and violent, women are the gentle peacemakers that don't want war." which is leaning a little too heavy for my taste into gender essentialism which would make every choice they have ever made about these two characters more misogynistic than any of the action of the actual misogynistic characters in this story. Taking away the very little agency these characters had and constantly making them the perpetual victims of the patriarchy and completely sidelining any sort of character traits that they may actually develop through their actions had they actually been taking any, doesn't work for me.

This show was a mistake.