#shakespeare I guess

[msgrammarella]

Really need to blame @ryannorth for all my parenting successes. My six-year-old grabbed To Be or Not to Be off my bookshelf at random. She likes to show me all the murders. She asks me if things in daily life are "super rad." She wants a sword for Christmas so she can drop her old one and say "it sucks now." She made me do math in the car to find an alternate timeline. I have explained words like "debris" and "badass" to her. Yesterday we spent an hour fighting pirates together in choose-your -own-adventure format.

It's been two months since this started. Don't send help. It's awesome. Like totally awesome. Though the book is getting worn out.

[spooky-somewhere]

make thick my blood

cw: blood

[anghraine]

Speaking of my polite undergrads, one of my nicest students came up after class just to tell me how excited they were that we've started Twelfth Night and how much they love the play.

<3333

[acediaedeus]

I just know coming off of the battle high after a spar with Ichigo makes Grimmjow a little bit dumb, and he’s suddenly all loose, and relaxed. a cat readying for a nap after eating a mouse it caught for lunch.

so obviously this state of his leads to some interesting revelations. because the first time Ichigo witnesses this abrupt relaxation he immediately goes into panic mode, and hurries over to check on Grimmjow. but all Ichigo gets when he grasps his forearm to pull the fucker up and get him into the healing spring, is a half-lidded look full of reverence and satisfaction, which hits him like a freight train, and makes him go dumb too. because, sure, he’s witnessed his fair share of Grimmjow’s satisfied looks. but all of them were marred by blood splattered across Grimmjow’s everything, coating his sword, his hands, a lot of the times his teeth (asshole loves taking a bite out of him), they were pure battle and blood thirstiness. this? this is wholly uncharted territory. it’s soft, and contented, and all around nothing like what Grimmjow is. and then it hits Ichigo that maybe he doesn’t know what Grimmjow is like at all. and then, for the first time in his life, he finds himself jealous, of all things. because there definitely someone that does know this side of his favourite Arrancar (there isn’t).

also, let it not be forgotten, that Ichigo’s kind of an idiot, at least when it comes to things that aren’t beating up thugs and gods, or Shakespearean tragedies and dramas. so it should be no surprise that this also happens to him. that just like Grimmjow, he too, becomes just a tiny but dumber. but instead of a cat that got the mouse, he’s more akin to a lizard basking on a sun-warmed rock.

revelations come from this too. and although at the start of their arrangement Grimmjow isn’t even close to being so nice as to help the asshole up, and make sure he’s fine, that doesn’t stop Ichigo from propping himself up on his elbows and beaming an absolutely blinding smile at Grimmjow, before passing the fuck out. and because Grimmjow is still unsure of what’s to happen now, and also not at all accustomed or prepared for human interaction, he thinks the bastard’s good will ran out already, and this is some pathetic last resort attack on his senses. but Kurosaki’s not moving, very obviously sleeping (and isn’t that an insane power move? “hey look, I’m so sure you’re not anywhere near my level, that I’m going to sleep right in front of you, my enemy.” downright mocking, how dare he). he opens a Garganta, and ditches as fast as his sonído will allow, before his brain even starts trying to find any other explanations as to what THAT was. he tries not to think about it, and swears to, from now on, leave before Kurosaki attempts any bullshit.

but the next time it happens some stupid curiosity wins out, and he stays, and he watches as the Shinigami does the whole routine all over again, and… Grimmjow suddenly can’t breathe, can’t take his wide (surely from fear) eyes off of Kurosaki’s prone figure, his face bursts into flames, his mouth runs dry, and that useless dead heart in his chest beats out of rhythm. whatever he’s doing, whatever that attack is, it’s working, and Grimmjow better get away fast.

later, much later, Grimmjow will realise that the reaction he, at first, classified as a symptom of poisoning, was him falling in love with the way Kurosaki’s permanently scowling face stretches out in an expression of pure joy just for him to see.

[soren-apologist]

“sold to the greil mercenaries”

a fanfiction by shroud (me)

as the sun shines through the window i blink my long dark lashes open. i sweep my messy dark green long black hair up into a messy bun and swipe mascara across my thick lashes that bring out my shining red blood colored orbs before putting on a tight black choker and throwing on a large oversized sweatshirt with the sleeves covering my hands along with tight shredded black skinny jeans and my black converse. i look at myself in the mirror, seeing my pale slim face with the dark red angular birthmark on my forehead with my long bangs hanging down the sides and sigh, thinking about how much i hate my life. as i grab my mp3 player and earbuds about to listen to linkin park and set sh*t on fire in the backyard with my elfire tome i hear my b*tch dad yell from the floor below.

“soren!” my dad yells “get your stupid worthless *ss down here!!!!” “what do you want?” i yell back, he was such a bitxh. i flounce down the stairs, stompijg my feet in frustration. as i turn to face him, i cross my arms and scowl at the d*mn jerk i called my dad. a creepy smile crosses his big ugly face. “i have some good news. pack your things, your new owners are about to arrive.” “what?? my— owners?!?!?” i stammer out, my blood red orbs wide and my thin pink lips open in shock. “there’s no way you can just sell me, that’s illegal!!!” my dad’s stupid ugly grin widens. “oh, but i did anyway. how else did you think i was going to afford the war against crimea and my lehran’s medallion addiction? now go pack before they get here or you won’t bave any of your stuff when you leave.” i run away, stomping my feet as i run up the stairs and slam the door of my room.

glistening tears run down my face as i paxk up my meager belongings, my punk band t-shirts and ripped jeans along with my wind sage robes and spell tomes and healing staves and knives into my backpaxk covered in my chemical romance pins and punk patches. as i trudge down the stairs, i hear the doorbell ring, my hesrt leaping out of my chest. i open the door and then i see them, the greil mercenaries. “hi there” says the stupid green one. “its good to finally meet you” says the woman with a long red braid and poleaxe. i back away, terrified. i turn to my dad and scream “you can’t f*cking do this to me!!!!!” but all i hear behind me is the dound of his insane cackling. d*mn b*stard. i turn back around and my eyes meet with the hot beefy indigo haired one with long dark lashes framing deep ocean blue orbs like the sky, my breath catching in my chest. he walks inside, moving to where my dad is still laughing his *ss off. he draws a claymore then stabs my dad through the chest, killing him. he turns back around to me. “hey there,” he said in a deep gravelly voice. “grab your things, we’re killing god.”

[hekateinhell]

Anne Rice's Notes for TVA: Some Context Behind Armand & Daniel's Breakup...

... that she didn't end up using!

Great for fic fodder though — if you're like me and like angst:

But the parting from Daniel had been the worst. Daniel had no eyes for him. Daniel stared only powerful ancient Khayman whom he had taken as a wandering partner, and how he Armand realized that he was glad Daniel was going, that he felt no love for him, no love since the moment that he'd given him the dark gift. "And this my only child, where is he now? I can not call to him. I will not call to anyone."

At one point, Anne Rice really sat down and had Daniel leave Armand... not for Marius... not even for Lestat... but for Khayman!

ANNE.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

To elaborate more on the Pesterquest stuff -

Alternia is a hell world. It's shitty to live in, even if you're a highblood, unless you fit a very specific mold of person AND are lucky enough to be born of a high caste. Every troll character we care about is, in some way, fucked over by their relationship to their society; Eridan and Vriska get it the worst, having been forced to participate in the murdering side of things since they were young, but every lowblood is screwed and every highblood is made worse even just by their passive participation. Kanaya becomes less sympathetic because she seems completely at peace with the society she grew up in, and Feferi wants to enforce casteism, even if it's of a different flavor. Gamzee and Equius both hold genuinely casteist beliefs and attitudes, which slip out and alienate them from the people they care about.

Putting a friendship simulator into the middle of all this is... a choice, I guess. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for wanting that or liking that, but it's going to be inherently at odds with what Alternia is and is meant to represent, and thus, fundamentally at odds with many of the characters' arcs and even basic personality traits, so heavily are they influenced by the shit society they grew up in.

For a non-Eridan example, Karkat loathes himself in massive part because his society loathes him. He's kill-on-sight and lives in daily terror of death. He wears a symbol at all because not having one marks him as even more of a freak, even though he knows that that symbol is connected to the empire's biggest rebel, whose footsteps he is expected to follow. The reason he's so obsessed with being leader-y and earning his teammates' reapect, or the respect of anybody, is because he's so deeply insecure about whether or not he even deserves to exist.

If you soften Alternia to the point you can write a lighthearted friendship simulator in it, then that characterization... goes away. Karkat is no longer motivated by deep, overwhelming insecurities, which drive him to idolize the society that deems him unworthy, mistakenly believing that if he can find validation in that society, he'll feel less bad about himself. Instead, Karkat is just kind of an asshole!

It's the same way with Eridan. He and Karkat are equal and opposite in this way - while Karkat is marked for death by his society, Eridan belongs to the extremely privileged caste of sea dweller royalty - even moreso than Feferi, as Feferi is slated to be murdered by the Condesce as soon as she comes of age (and her ridiculous optimism is likely something she cultivated in outright defiance of this fate). But it turns out that being a sea dweller sucks shit, too, if you aren't the extremely niche type of person that society deems "correct."

Eridan is not actually casteist and genuinely likes his land dweller friends - and this is unacceptible. Not only that, but smaller "unacceptible" offenses are wrapped up in big ones - despite not liking murder and feeling guilty about it, murder is objectively the correct thing for Eridan to be doing, constantly, to the point of it being "all [he's] ever done practically," because if he doesn't fulfil the duty of his bloodline to be murdering lusii (and by extension, their charges, who are culled when their lusii die), EVERYBODY dies. The constant push-pull of trauma, societal expectations and obligations, the fate of the species, and the fact that he is inherently not the "right" kind of person for his society, are pretty much his entire character. He's basically a walking ball of anxiety and emotional turmoil.

So, again, if you soften Alternia to the point where you can write a story about Eridan wanting to see Shrek in a public theater (something he would not actually be able to peacefully do in canon Alternia - at least not without taking off his cape, hiding his fins, and going anonblood - as sea dwellers are considered ridiculously hostile to the point even Gamzee's nervous about being on the beach for too long), Eridan ends up being just kind of an asshole!

Pesterquest!Eridan is, and I cannot stress this enough, fundamentally not the same guy as canon Eridan. They have practically nothing in common, from the fact that PQ!Eridan is willing to do something for leisure, to the fact that he isn't widely feared and the movie theater doesn't empty out in a panic when he turns up, even down to the fact that he likes femme fashion (canon Eridan goes to Lengths to lean into masc fashion) and Shrek (canon Eridan is a hipster). Hell, even the fact that PQ!Eridan SMILES is a massive deviation from canon!Eridan, who has never once been depicted smiling, and probably hasn't for many sweeps.

Also that he has that much beef with Sollux when, canonically, the two had a lukewarm mutual dislike and didn't even bother interacting until Feferi was added to the mix and Eridan became mad that Sollux was dating her. He wasn't even casteist about him until then, and after, even Sollux and Feferi don't think he's casteist, they just think he's ashenflirting so he can get into a quad with Feferi. Like come on, if you're going to feature another troll in Eridan's route, 1) make it be Karkat, and 2) have Eridan cheat on you the whole time with Karkat like he does to Feferi.

Eridan is just overall a wild choice in a friendship sim - I can't even blame them for just writing an OC and putting an Eridan skin on top - because societally, Eridan isn't even supposed to have non-sea dweller friends. The sea dweller/land dweller race war is something the Condesce deliberately put into place in order to keep land dwelling nobility in line, and Equius cites it as one of the reasons he never got along with Eridan. Like, the very fact that Eridan talks to two land dwellers on friendly terms (Kanaya and Karkat) is a MASSIVE deviation from what he's "supposed" to be like, and a huge hint that he's not as casteist as he'd like to appear. You are genuinely hundreds, if not thousands, of times likelier to end an encounter with Eridan either orphaned or dead than as his friend. He's an unstable maniac, and there's a reason so many members of his team don't like him even though he's legitimately not casteist and they mostly seem aware of it (nobody really complains about or even notices Eridan's casteism by the time they're on the meteor - his contradictions are really obvious, and it's likely that they've more or less realized that he's full of shit).

Again, I don't begrudge anybody for wanting or liking PQ. Who cares, really. I'm just saying that as a canon discussion blog, there's not really any place for PQ because it's so far removed from canon that, like, there's not really anything meaningful to discuss about it. The setting and characters in PQ are fundamentally divested from canon, and not even in an AU way. And it's totally fine if that's what you like, but, yeah, like.

Was Eridan written well (where "well" = accurate to canon): no. Maybe he's fine as an OC with an Eridan Minecraft skin slapped on, but that's not my beautiful son, that's not my baby boy.

What did they get wrong about Eridan (where "wrong" = inaccurate to canon): all.

What route would I have written for Eridan: he shoots you with a gun and you die. And then maybe cheats on you with Karkat

[potatoattorney]

[youvejustbeen-quattroed]

ART DUMP !! 🪲´ , - [2/4]

can you tell i really enjoyed drawing george for a period 😭😭 PLUS!!!!!!!! my day three for that drawtober i never finished

these were all in late september-mid october i think??

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I am exhausted, good heavens.

[aq2003]

stares at you

[totallyboatless]

It is time, friends, for another Pip's Weed Essay game. The rules: I'm about to take an edible and start writing a mini-essay in one sitting. I edit a tiny bit as I go, but for the most part this is on the fly. I've thought about this topic a lot, but haven't outlined it. I'll let you know when the edible hits, but there's a chance you'll realize it before I do. (PIRATE FRIENDS STICK AROUND - this is Pip from the future, I get pretty high in this, but anyway I'm here to tell you that this goes in a very unintended OFMD direction that i'm still reeling from. Anyway back to Past Pip)

Edible ingestion commencing, time: 7:37pm Mountain Time

I polled my followers for the topic, so today we're going to talk about:

Fixing the Puck Problem

I've read and seen A Midsummer Night's Dream more than any other Shakespeare play. At this point I don't know if I've seen it so much because it's my favorite, or enough opportunities for me to see it have lined up that it's become my favorite by default. It's easily the Shakespeare play I know best. I haven't seen a staging that I fully disliked, but there are two elements of this show that I feel like are rarely handled the way I want them to be.

Problem one:

Puck will never be as funny as Bottom

It's common to consider Puck to be the main character of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He's at the very least the most famous character in the play. Puck is a dream role, and obviously with his being a fairy, he's usually directed to be weird and whimsical--and a lot of the time, playing for laughs. It makes sense, he's a trickster, it's built into his nature.

But in modern day, his lines and actions don't translate as well as Bottom's. In all of the times that I've seen A Midsummer Night's Dream, I've *never* seen a production where Bottom fails to steal the entire show away from Puck. I've had multiple experiences where I could feel the director wanting me to laugh at Puck; I could see the reasons for the direction, but it just wouldn't hit. In those same productions, I've laughed so hard at the Bottom scenes that I cried.

I'm thinking particularly of the 2010 production with Judy Dench reprising Titania (honestly still in shock over seeing that lolol) and the 2019 Bridge Theatre production (which you can find streaming, it's *incredible*).

In the 2010 show, the Puck actor kept doing what honestly felt like a Woody the Woodpecker impression lol. He would pause for laughs and they just...wouldn't happen. Meanwhile, Bottom was set up with the kind of success that let him steal at least one scene from fucking Judy Dench.

In the 2019 Bridge Theatre production, I genuinely like the direction they gave Puck--he's a weird little twitchy Irish punk doing fucking aerial silk shit. But even with a unique vibe and a fun performance, it's still not enough to outshine Bottom.

Basically my thing is that I want to get to the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream and feel more connected to Puck. I *want* him to be my favorite. And there's just absolutely no way to make him my favorite if his core purpose is to be funny. Puck is supposed to be a larger-than-life being--the audience is never going to buy that when he's not even the largest character on the stage.

The second problem is smaller, and in fixing it there's also a fun chance to fix the Puck problem:

Problem two:

The audience usually doesn't understand why Titania and Oberon are fighting.

If you've gotten this far you're probably already a nerd who knows this, but gonna pose the question like I've done for other people I've seen the show with: Why are Titania and Oberon fighting? What's the core reason?

Bc you're a fucking nerd you probably yelled CHANGELING! Which yes, good for you, if I had become the Shakespeare professor I wanted to be but didn't have the money to become, you would be in my class and I would throw a snickers at you for a reward.

But the thing is, a *lot* of people who only know the play casually don't know. And most productions don't assist them in knowing.

Elaboration for non-nerds: Titania had a "and they were roommates" totally not at all lesbian relationship with a human women who was pregnant. The women dies in childbirth and Titania takes the child to raise, and she cherishes him more than anything, which is an extremely straight thing to do. In the play, the character is only referred to as the changeling. Oberon gets super jealous of this kid and wants to steal him away and make him join the Wild Hunt so that he can have Titania's full attention back, because he's got that issue creepy men get when they have kids and then are like "I'm jealous of my son because he's making it less likely for me to fuck my wife" and it's like "dude calm down with this projection of an Oedipal complex."

If you're not a coward and read Titania as in love with the changeling's mom, then Oberon's issues are maybe slightly less creepy, but like not really

So that's it really. Titania loves this kid of her sapphic lover that died. Oberon is jealous about it. He decides to play a trick on Titania both as a way to get revenge, and also as a distraction so he can steal the kid.

But the issue is that 1.) all of this is communicated in a long and kind of boring speech, and 2.) the changeling literally never has a line and also no stage directions

The 2010 production had a hot dude chained up and writhing on stage in a kind of hot dance snake movement thing when Titania talks about him, but most productions never even have an actor cast as the changeling. I was really shocked they didn't have anyone for the 2019 production, given how much I love most of the rest of their choices.

OKAY SO. We now have the two problems: Puck isn't the fan favorite even though he should be; and most people in the audience have no fucking idea about the changeling.

(THIS IS HIGH PIP FROM THE FUTURE I FORGOT SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO THIS PROBLEM: If you do know about the changeling/follow along with that plot, it's *very* hard to root for Titania and Oberon when they reconcile. Which can be fun and cool and a little hot even maybe if you're going all dark, but thIS IS A PLAY ABOUT HORNY FAERIES HAVING A GOOD TIME so I won't be having that. I want this play to make me like that Titania forgives Oberon so easily. Okay Past Pip, take it away)

lol okay yeah weed friend has landed, I just wandered away for a minute with a desperate need to put taquitos in the air fryer. Time stamp: 8:16.

OKAY FOR REAL NOW LET'S GET INTO:

Pip's Most Ideal Staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream Which Fixes the Problems in Theory

The Staging:

First off I want the production to be in the middle of the literal woods where there's pretty lights in all the trees and people are sitting on blankets and have snacks and drinks and drugs and whatever they want, and the whole staging has the actors weaving through the audience. Not just theatre in the round, full immersion

I also want people to not fully know where the production is, just that it's on the outskirts of the forest, and then the actors emerge from the woods at a designated time and bring the audience to the secret stage section. And ideally this would be like a park on the outskirts of woods so that there would also be people there who wouldn't know what the fuck was going on. And ideally some of the fairy actors convince them to come along and the people go having no idea what they're about to get into. That's how A Midsummer Night's Dream is meant to be experienced in its purest form: with actors dressed as fairies trying to seduce unsuspecting strangers to follow them into the woods to an unknown location where they'll probably be offered drugs.

TAQUITO TIME

Taquitos acquired.

Puck's direction and motivation:

When Puck is first introduced, it's by a fairy called Peasblossom who's otherwise not a big part. Peasblossom lets the audience know who Puck/Robin Goodfellow is by basically going stan-mode and being like "holy shit you're famous." PB literally starts listing his greatest hits.

So picture with me: instead of an extremely fairy-like whimsical Puck, I want a Puck that wanders on-stage like a burnt-out rockstar. Cigarette in one hand, beer in another. Probably on a cocktail for faerie super magic mushrooms. Just fully numbed out. In this moment, Puck feels way more human than faerie--and I want the performance to be in a way where that feels off. To have it be communicated in manner and clothing, and the juxtaposition of PB recounting Puck's glory days, that Puck hasn't always been like this. This isn't a faerie trickster in his prime. This is a man who's lost all sense of fun and is going through the motions.

That's what happens, right, when you become just a little too famous?

Puck is the only one of the main characters who gets to the end of the show and is entirely alone.

(my favorite thing about being high is how *good* it makes food taste, these taquitos are not fancy but with the power of the devil's lettuce it's so good--oh my god I have Dr. Pepper)

(I'm back with the Dr. Pepper. I'm having fun, are you guys having fun? If you've made it this far i kiss u)

So Puck is alone at the end of the play while everyone else of import is either with their lover or with their theatre-kid-found-family. And it's largely because Puck lives between worlds. He's not powerful enough to be fey royalty; he's Oberon's right-hand man, but he's not Oberon's peer. But the lower fey court are also not his peers -- they treat him like a celebrity, he can't actually connect with them. He's not allowed to frolic and play with them anymore, not really.

With this interpretation and direction, we now have a Puck whose action in the plot can lead to a happy ending (keep with me), and whose existence isn't just to be quirky and whimsical for the audience. Instead it's a Puck with a motivation: he's lost all joy in his job, he's disconnected from him community, and Oberon only treats him like a fuckbuddy so he's sexually frustrated. (Oh right yeah I was supposed to write about how Puck is in love with Oberon. He is.) That's all fucking sad, bro! And you know from the Pip that traveled into the past that this play is fun and should be fun!

Now for the final part, where we put in the special ingredient to tie this particular Puck direction into the happy ending:

LET'S 👏 GET 👏 GAY 👏

Do you guys (gn) remember the changeling? It was like possibly an hour ago, the time-warp this particular edible always sets me on has fully set in. It's possible this essay is like 5k words long. It's also possible it's only 500 words long. I wish I was lying when I told you I don't know.

Anyway, the changeling. Let's make him a fuller character and let's give him to Puck wrapped up in a sexy, charming bow.

Picture this: The Changeling, from now on capitalized as a character, shown on stage in Titania's court. Locked up like a princess in a tower because Titania is desperate to protect him. And the Changeling is all *sigh and flutter big beautiful princess man eyes* because he wants to explore what's out there. Because he's a man who's grown up and been forced to live between two worlds. He's not fey royalty, he's not Titania's actual kid and she kind of honestly treats him more like a momento of her lesbian lover than an actual adopted kid. He can't be one of the fey court, because he's not fey, and also he's not allowed to frolic and play with them.

That should sound familiar to you if I did it right.

Puck and the Changeling, both feeling the same sort of empty spot. So let's smush them together.

Give the Changeling all of Peasblossom's lines. It makes more sense for a detail I left out before, too--Peasblossom doesn't recognize Puck they see him for the first few lines. Once they do they're all like "omg you're the dude that makes people horny for each other and also some other trickster things." They know all of Puck's stunts, but they don't know what he looks like? It's clearly an exposition device, but it's a weak one (sorry, Shakesy). He's the rockstar of the fey world. You'd have to be living under a rock or, I dunno, locked away like a beautiful man-princess --

(Okay you know where I'm going and I have to stop there because I'm cry laughing, I swear to you -- I swear to fucking god, guys, I wish I was joking -- I thought I was being cute and clever saying "man-princess". Not because of irony. IT'S BECAUSE I FORGOT THERE IS A WORD FOR A PRINCESS WHO IS A MAN AND THAT IS A PRINCE. Okay i should clearly wrap this up lol)

In this staging, the Changeling clearly doesn't want to be locked up. So...he finally finds a way to sneak out. He goes on a romp through the forest and that's when he runs into Puck (this is the scene where we first meet Puck). The Changeling wouldn't recognize Puck, though he's have heard of him. He probably loves stories because what the fuck else does he have to do, so he's asked the fairies to tell him about Puck's adventures over and over. Meanwhile, Puck wouldn't recognize the Changeling because Titania has been keeping him so under lock and key. It allows an opportunity for them to connect on more of a peer basis as they--

Holy fuck. Wait. Hold on. Is the Changeling Stede. Is Puck Ed. What the fuck. Did I write an AU on accident. I don't even like AUs very much (sorry AU writers it's not personal it's just not my thing).n ANYWAY sorry for the pirate aside. God this is properly off the rails now.

They like each other, you get it. And now Puck has someone he wants to impress. There's not a lot of opportunities to give the Changeling more lines, but that doesn't mean he can't appear on stage. He can stay with Puck (hiding from Oberon whenever he's there, leading to some good chances for physical comedy) and go on the nighttime adventure of his dreams.

This leads to a fun, unique choice: having Puck fuck up the love flower juice plan on purpose. So that he can show this hot dude following him around with wide enthusiastic eyes the kind of things he's capable of OH MY GOD THIS IS ED AND STEDE I SWEAR THIS IS NOT ON PURPOSE I AM JUST NOW SEEING THE PARALLEL

Okay we're nearly at the end I promise. We just have one more problem to solve: How are we supposed to root for Titania and Oberon to get together when Oberon literally publicly humiliates her and then steals her adopted son and forces him to join the Wild Hunt even tho Titania REALLY doesn't want him to? Well, the first one is easy, Titania and Oberon are so fucking kinky, and Oberon likes getting cucked (remember he's only jealous of the Changeling, never the lesbian).

The second one is also easy. Make it the Changeling's choice. Leaving Titania and joining Oberon's court means two things: He gets to be with Puck, and joining the Wild Hunt allows him to go on exciting adventures. If Titania saw that the Changeling wanted this with the staging that both Titania and Oberon look over and see Puck and the Changeling making out right after Titania's spell is broken. Then Oberon can jokingly delivers the line about having stolen the Changeling, realizing that the plan worked but in the most ridiculous way possible. And how could Titania not find joy in all of that?

It makes me so much more glad to see them get back together.

Puck's closing soliloquy is his most famous, but I like his last big monologue right before it better. There's a very important line he says that communicates an important shift within the context of his particular staging:

And we fairies, that do run

We.

Puck isn't a lonely, washed-up rockstar anymore. He's part of a "we." Not just the Changeling, but the other fairies, too. Puck and the Changeling act as bridges for each other, to be part of each other's worlds in a way that feels like a whole -- OH MY GOD IT IS ED AND STEDE

Puck being alone on stage isn't so sad anymore, after all that. Because Puck, who starts off the play with so little sense of belonging, now has so much to go back to.

And that's it, that's my ideal staging of this play. Honestly, I really, really want to direct it. I have no experience directing but I have the audacity to think I could do it lol. No resources, tho

OH ONE LAST THING HELENA NEEDS TO BE INTO PUP PLAY

also the lovers are all in a polycule, that's just a given, any other staging is cowardly

alright bbye

[exit]

final time stamp: 9:25 PM, not rereading, just hitting post. We die like Mercutio.

[withasideofshakespeare]

My Shakespeare play tier list!

(Slightly terrifying to see how many I still have to read, seeing as I've read 25 already...)

Here's the tier maker if you'd like to make your own:

[bethanydelleman]

Shakespeare 🤝 Jane Austen

Believing genuine love and happiness produce silence, not eloquence.

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.

- Claudio, Much Ado About Nothing

“I cannot make speeches, Emma:” he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.—“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

- Mr. Knightley, Emma

Had she ever given way to bursts of delight, it must have been then, for she was delighted, but her happiness was of a quiet, deep, heart-swelling sort; and though never a great talker, she was always more inclined to silence when feeling most strongly... but still there were emotions of tenderness that could not be clothed in words.

-Fanny Price, Mansfield Park

[tybaltism]

what exactly was the purpose of this move

day 19: my thought process is unknown even to me

probably for a good reason at the time

[rogersandclarke]

a collection of photos of katharine hepburn as beatrice in much ado about nothing, 1957-58. stratford festival production that later toured.

sources: (x), (y)