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#including about a few shakespeare plays
bookwyrminspiration · 10 months
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hi it’s me again here to annoy you about hamlet - you’re on act 2 right? That’s the beginning of the “fuck around” stage of the play as I would call it. A lot of it is setup for what happens in act 3, which really gets the ball rolling imo. But! Since you’ve started, you’ve met my favorite character (horatio) who I can’t really talk about in full perspective until you’re finished but… he really is an important character even if he doesn’t seem important at certain points. Do you have a favorite yet? (sorry I don’t want to pester im just really excited to hear what you think about it)
Hi again! It's not annoying, don't worry; you're allowed to express your interest and excitement :)
I just finished act 2 and am now at the beginning of act 3! And I think I can see what you mean--I'm not far, but it seems like things are about to Start Happening. We've got the ghosts, we've got the foul players, we've got the background. Now it's time to Do It.
I don't think I know any of the characters well enough yet to have favorites, though I am intrigued by Ophelia. And of course having more info about Hamlet makes him more appealing by default for the time being. But! I have seen you talk about Horatio quite frequently, though in all honesty I didn't read the posts in full because I hadn't read Hamlet. I'll keep my eye on him though :)
And of course, Polonius and Claudius's schemes and what each of them are doing intrigue me, even though I may not like them!
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fromevertonow · 6 months
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Suzanne Collins is one of the few contemporary writers who realizes the importance of names in her stories and the significance they bear. They add so many layers to the story, additional meanings that otherwise would not have existed.
The original trilogy:
Katniss: named after a plant of which you can eat the roots. Her father taught her where to find it and told her that “as long as you can find yourself, you’ll survive” (quote may be a little bit off, but it’s from one of the early chapters in THG). Additionally, the leaves are in the shape of an arrowhead, referencing her skills with the bow which her father also taught her how to use.
Peeta: literally bread lmao. But bread is one of the basic nutritions humans need, a little bit goes a long way to keep you alive. Peeta’s presence in Katniss’s life also kept her alive, literally and figuratively—the burned bread he threw her in the flashback and their complicated relationship.
Primrose: a plant with medicinal purposes, even more significant in light of her work as a medic in Mockingjay.
Gale: literally means “strong wind” and considering that in every encounter with Katniss he’s caused some reaction, he pulls her into directions she maybe initially doesn’t want to go in. Additionally, his name also represents his determination and steadfastness in his beliefs.
TBOSAS
Lucy Gray: named after William Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy Gray” which is about the titular character of the poem who got lost during a blizzard. She literally got lost in snow. Rachel Zegler sang this poem in two parts on the original soundtrack of the movie. When Snow asked who the girl in the song is, Lucy answers that she’s a mystery, just like her.
Snow: aside from the obvious snow references, I think his name is most significant in relation to Lucy and the poem. The only one who knows what caused her disappearance is Snow. He is the reason that Lucy is gone. But her traces in the snow are still visible. He will always remember her because the memory of Lucy has manifested itself in every part of his life.
Coriolanus: named after the Roman general (and also the titular character of Shakespeare’s play), Coriolanus wanted to attack Rome and become its ruler. He was scorned and celebrated by the people, only to be later exiled from the city by them. In TBOSAS, Coriolanus is the star pupil at the Capitol’s academy but sent into exile to the districts after he won the Games with Lucy through cheating.
Volumnia: Coriolanus mother who played a part in his ascent to power. In TBOSAS, she almost serves like a mentor to Coriolanus, teaching him how to think in terms of power.
(Edit) Sejanus: a roman soldier who was betrayed by the roman emperor Tiberius, just like the future president betrayed him.
(Edit) Plinth: got this info from here, but it was too good not to include here. A plinth is a base for a statue or vase to stand on. After Sejanus’s death, all of the Plinth fortune was given to Snow for being such a good to friend him. It was this money that skyrocketed the Snow family from poverty to filthy rich. The Plinth money was the foundation upon which Snow built his power.
There are so many other names that have historical (mostly Roman and Greek) connotations—Plutarch, Seneca, Cinna—but also regular names like Trinket and Beetee bear meanings that represent the character beautifully.
Names are important. For any lover of literature or (aspiring) writers, please look closely at them. They can shape your story into something unique.
Feel free to correct me if I’ve said something wrong. I know there are many names missing, but I can only add so many examples ✊🏻😔
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mediumgayitalian · 2 months
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What are some of your Will headcanons?
Any angsty ones?
hair style:
will's hair has a Mind Of Its Own. it is impossible. brushing it? keep dreaming. styling it? dude just give up
he can, however, wrangle it into two french braid pigtails. those are fun.
in the august after the giant war, the aphrodite cabin take it upon themselves to 'style' nico, including giving him these little elastics with a skull charm (like this but with skulls), but he doesn't like tying his hair back very much (too tight) so he gives them to will as a joke.
will LOVES them.
he literally wears them almost every day. the next time they go out on a supply run, nico sees these little elastic charms and buys them for will. he can't summon the courage to give them to him face to face but he leaves them on his bed. will adores them, too, and it starts something of a tradition of people giving will charm elastics as a small thank-you.
he has a collection of them and wears them whenever he wears his hair in braids.
his favourites are the skull charms, though.
artistic ability:
will really doesn't have many musical talents. he's hard of hearing and while hephaestus-made hearing aids definitely work better than mortal ones, it's not really something that can be cured, so he has a lot of trouble staying on key/making music himself.
however! apollo is the god of poetry and art in general -- that is more than just visual!!
will is a really good writer, poetry especially. he's very articulate and verbose and writes with startling clarity. he's written a lot of songs and a lot of poems, although he hasn't shown anybody in years.
he used to share them with his older brothers and sisters and sibling, but...well. obviously that's no longer an option.
he's never stopped writing, though. he may keep it to himself, but it's kind of an open secret. he's scribbling in his notebooks all the time -- it's impossible not to notice.
his friends and siblings, however, are the only ones who know that he writes creatively. they've peeked over his shoulder here and there (and also kayla is a huge huge snoop, like, badly, and austin is easily convinced to be complacent in her crimes), and sometimes he says things that are just kind of poetic.
no one else knows, though. he's deliberately obnoxious about it -- every once in a while, at campfire open mics, he'll clear his throat loudly and grin as people groan and recite something so bad apollo might have written it. most people think will's quite bad at writing, actually.
another thing he's really good at is drama, which is a surprise to absolutely no one. although beyond his regular histrionics, chiron had shakespeare as part of his curriculum, and will could play puck like nobody's business. he recited a mercutio so good once lee actually cried with laughter (so did everyone else). on a hauntingly beautiful february in 2004, he played ophelia by the creek so beautifully that it was silent for a good four minutes after he finished.
there are very, very few people at camp who remember that. will hasn't recited anything in a while.
an unexpected bonus of his medical knowledge, actually, is a really good understanding of depth, space, and anatomy.
he's a surprisingly good artist.
it started pretty normal -- he was having trouble articulating a question to michael one time, and in a fit of frustration drew a diagram to try and explain himself. it was really good, even as rushed as it was, so michael used to give him 'homework' that was hand-drawing posters of various body systems to hang in the infirmary.
it was kind of spooky how will could do it without looking it up. just close his eyes and start sketching an accurate nervous system. cool though.
his older sister, cass, encouraged him to branch out of anatomy diagrams and create whatever he liked. she made the unfortunate mistake of giving him several cans of paint and free reigns on blank infirmary walls (they're freaky and boring) to a nerdy eight-year-old -- that's why r2d2 and c3po are chilling on the wall by the mortal medicine cabinet.
he doesn't paint a lot now, 'cause he doesn't have the damn time, but when rachel finds out who painted the infirmary walls she hounds him until he takes a morning to paint with her. they have a lot of fun. they end up with more paint on each other and their clothes than their canvases, predictably.
siblings:
when will was a kid, he had twelve older siblings.
apollo tends to have kids in brackets. he is, as everyone knows, a hoe, so he'll be busy on olympus or with artemis and go a while without having any kids, and then he'll be on earth for like three years and have a litter. so a lot of his kids end up the same age.
before the war, in the same cabin, there was: cass, the oldest, 18, somewhat year-long; diana, 18, year-long; lee, 16, somewhat year-long; michael, 16, somewhat year-long; gabriel, 15, summer-only; leanna, 15, summer-only; mercury, 15, summer-only; kate & phoebe, 14, summer-only; laurel, 13, summer-only; amir, 13, summer-only; melody, 12, summer-only; and will, 8, year-long (for now).
their abilites were pretty vast and well-rounded, and they came from all over the continent.
there was a time when the infirmary wasn't understaffed at all.
will doesn't like to think about it.
style:
on their birthdays, apollo leaves them all a gift on their bunks (or their beds at home, if their birthdays aren't in the summer).
each of them gets a piece of blessed gold jewelry when they're ten. will got a pair of threader earrings with thin blue sapphires that he loves. he can't wear them often because they're a genuine hazard in the infirmary (yes, more than flip-flops) and he doesn't want them ruined. but he wears them on the rare days he has off.
he actually has quite a lot of jewelry! because he is a sappy nerd, he has two watches: a hephaestus-made one, totally waterproof, weatherproof, and monsterproof, because it helps quell the anxiety when so many people are counting on him (he has to know when people will be better and how long he can be away from his patients, also used to tell people to fuck off when he's on break lol); and his mother's much nicer watch that she gave to him when she dropped him off at camp for the first time -- it's not changed for the time zone. he knows what time it is for her, and it makes him feel better about being so far away from her.
he wears both watches on the same wrist, ala chad danforth.
he has a third watch. it was lee's. it's got r2d2 on the face. will got it for him with his own money when he was nine years old, for his birthday. it lives in a box under his bunk. it's cracked and broken and never tells the right time except on 1:52 p.m. on june 30th, although the year gets farther and farther off every time will checks it.
contrary to popular belief, will does not actually wear the same pair of cargo shorts every day.
...because he has seven pairs of the same shorts.
he does have other shorts through. namely swim trunks and a pair of tighter shorts he wears specifically to kick ass in volleyball. he didn't try for this or anything, he got the shorts at the thrift store, but he's pretty sure they might be designer. he gets a lot of compliments from the aphrodite cabin when he wears them.
he also has a collection of nerdy t-shirts (his anakin sand-rant t-shirt is worn to threads), novelty pajama pants, hoodies, and flannel.
he has more than one tattoo. he has several, actually; constellations, lines from freckle to freckle so faint you can barely see them: the seer, the drummer, the archer, the tiny lion, the archangel, the maiden, the lyre, the twins, the boat stern, the hearth, and the singer.
just plain will:
he's slightly red-green colourblind.
when he gets mad, his cheeks puff up and he gets all red in the face before erupting. his older siblings used to call him tinkerbell.
he gets teased for being so dramatic that he was named for the most dramatic apollo kid who ever lived -- shakespeare. but his actual, legal name is just plain will solace. when pregnant, his mom used to mutter 'it's you, me, and sheer fucking force of will, baby' to herself a lot, as a kind of mantra, and then will was born and she thought it would be kind of funny to name him will (she was right). lee invented william andrew solace so he'd have something to yell when will got in trouble lol.
he has the climbing wall record. this is because he climbs a lot of trees. he has no explanation and no one is going to stop him.
when he was a kid, and the whole mythology thing was explained to him, he misnderstood michael's explanation of food sacrifice as one to be done to all theoi/mythical beings. he worked his way to praying through the entire pantheon, a horde of minor gods, hestia, chiron, argus, and half the nymphs before someone caught wind and explained to him properly. it is the main reason all the nymphs and dryads are so endeared by him. he used to go around asking their names and very seriously writing it down in his little notebook to pray to them properly.
he carries around notebooks constantly. at first, diana gave them to him because he was driving everyone bonkers with his endless questions and she needed Five Minutes, Will, Gods, Please of silence, but he really took to it and wrote everything in there. he keeps them all as a sort of diary. kayla reads them any time he has his back turned.
it is really, really hard for him to talk about his siblings. but he knows kayla and austin feel kind of left out and hurt about it, since they didn't get the chance to know them like will did (the kids never met them), so sometimes, late at night, he calls them softly over to his bunk and they curl up, one under each arm, and he tells them stories until his voice goes hoarse and they're long asleep.
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thebibliosphere · 3 months
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hello miss!
i was introduced to you by your photoshoot post for your interview about accessibility and being creative! im a high school student and the stage manager for our play this year but also need some accommodations for my eyes. Do you have any advice on how to include general accessibility stuff in our play?
thank you for your time!
Thanks for reaching out and asking!
One major thing I would recommend is being careful about the type of lighting effects you're using. It's become more and more common for lots of places, including high schools, to use strobe lighting or rapidly flickering lights to create a certain mood, and while I understand it can be a valuable and cheap tool to help create a certain ambiance, it's very unsafe for a lot of people with seizure disorders and other neurological disorders.
I was at a wedding last year that randomly had strobe lighting that started the moment after the first dance, and it gave me such a bad migraine I almost vomited in the room and was left ill for several days afterward.
The same thing happened a few years ago when I went to see a Shakespeare play (Henry 2) at a local amateur group, and they used strobe lighting for battle sequences. I'm sure it was very effective at conveying a sense of fast-paced horror, but I couldn't enjoy it because it made me almost faint.
Had the strobe lighting been advertized, I wouldn't have attended. So even if your group does use it, make sure you warn people it'll be used!
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coolseabird · 5 months
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Every Literary Reference Gale Makes When Selected in BG3 (That I Could Find)
"Oh, what a tangled Weave we web!" -
A play on words referencing the famous quote, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive," from Sir Walter Scott's poem "Marmion."
"What fools these mortals be." -
A quote from William Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," spoken by the character Puck.
"All the world's my stage and you're just a player in it." -
A reference to the famous Shakespearean line, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," from "As You Like It."
"No rest for the wicked" -
A phrase that originates from the Bible Isaiah 48:22 There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.
"To hold the world in the palm of one's hand" -
I believe this is a reference to this part of the poem Auguries of Innocence by William Blake: To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
"'Doth thy mirror crack?' Apparently not." -
I was so sure this was a quote from some Shakespearean play but nope lol. This is a Waterdhavian phrase that was mentioned in a DnD companion book at some point.
"Seek and you shall find me." -
From the bible. Specifically Matthew 7:7–8 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
The path less travelled. -
A reference to Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken," which includes the line, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by."
"Creator. Destroyer." -
This is a reference to the Lord Krishna's words in the Bhagavad Gita. O Arjuna, I am the creator, maintainer and destroyer of all created objects, such as the sky. Of all knowledge I am knowledge of the self, and in logical debate I am vāda, the philosophical principle that asserts the conclusive truth.
"A rough tempest I will raise" -
I found the explanation behind this quote from a reddit post: "Shakespeare - Tempest, - this is a mash-up of two quotes: In Act V, Scene 1, Prospero uses the phrasing "when first I raised the Tempest". In the same scene, he recites a soliloquy about the great works of magic he has accomplished, before finally renouncing magic altogether: " … But this rough magic I here abjure" https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/17uher2/literary_references_in_gales_selection_remarks/ (this person came to the same conclusions as me for many of the prior quotes but I only used their post for this one haha)
I almost certainly missed a few! If there are any others please feel free to reblog and add them!
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I realise you're HE, but any thoughts on how high school level education should be run/changed/etc? I'd love to know your views!
Oh sure, plenty, but they're not particularly informed lol
Well; Wales is actually massively and fundamentally changing secondary education atm, but we won't be getting students from it until the year after next, I think, so no real comment on effectiveness yet - but it's very interesting. They're getting rid of isolated subjects in favour of broad umbrella areas, as I understand it? So there's now Science and Technology (Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computing, and all the various DT subjects like Woodwork, Electronics, Cookery, etc), Maths and Numeracy, Humanities (History, Geography, Ethics, Religion), Languages Literacy and Communication, and Health and Wellbeing (actually maybe Cookery comes under this one now? Dunno.) And there's a sixth to do with arts but I can't remember what it's called. But it includes Art, Drama, Media Studies, etc.
And then the idea is that a class will learn about a given topic at a time (I don't know for how long, so let's say six weeks), and this will be taught in each of those six umbrellas but via their own methods. So like... I dunno, let's say the Tudors:
That's fairly straightforward for Humanities, but in addition to giving you the historical facts you'd also explore historic trade routes and natural resources of the time and how they related to the politics (geography), the religious make up of the country and how THAT related to the politics (religion), etc.
Maths and Numeracy might explore how to use statistics to analyse Tudor era population or trade data.
Science and Tech could look at disease outbreaks and virology, or technological advancements and how they worked and get students to build one, or get students to construct a Tudor-era town using computer software
Languages can study plays from the era (Shakespeare), look at linguistic development, or use historical events as talking points to practice using vocab in conversations
Health and Wellbeing can explore stressors and challenges of the average Medieval peasant and how they overcame them, or play some popular Tudor sport or game, or make food to Tudor recipes, etc
The Arts one (god I cannot remember the name) can look at art history of the period, fashions, perform plays, etc
So everyone is still teaching the skills and knowledge of their subject areas, they're just united by one big case study. It apparently allows for far more integrated teaching, too, where two previously discrete subjects can join forces on a project.
All of which seems pretty good, on the whole, but also rife with issues if everyone isn't careful, so we'll see how it shakes out over the next few years.
From my own experiences of school though. Jesus. Something definitely needed to happen, fuck me.
What I should have learned in Textiles:
How to use a sewing machine
How to sew by hand to mend a tear
How to darn a hole
How to hem, dart, take in, and let out clothes
How to sew from a pattern
What I actually learned in Textiles:
How to use a sewing machine on its most basic setting
How to phone in creating a hand puppet out of felt because gluing was easier than sewing
How to badly sew an extremely makeshift and shit bag out of scrap fabric that you in no way want to then use
How to lose all interest in Textiles because it was useless and uninteresting
Like that is a VITAL skillset-imparting subject, and they fucked it, lads, they completely fucked it. Why did they never set us the task of buying a cheap shirt from a charity shop that we then amended in class? That would have been so useful.
Games and PE! Fucking hell! Here's what I should have learned:
How to stretch my body safely to target specific muscle groups, and in particular, how to cultivate a daily stretching routine I enjoyed and wanted to do
How to find a physical activity active enough to get me out of breath that I genuinely enjoyed, so that I wanted to continue it, e.g. salsa dancing or rope climbing or ice skating or hill climbing or assault courses or fucking anything at all
How to build my body up to doing particular activities safely and sustainably
How to find a physical activity to do on wet, cold, rainy days that would still be fun and I would still enjoy
Here's what I actually learned:
Physical activity is always uncomfortable and miserable and sometimes even painful
If you aren't enjoying running around in the wind and rain instead of the indoor gym The Problem Is You. Start Enjoying It.
Wanting to stay warm and dry and comfortable is a punishable choice.
You are only permitted to do physical activity in clothes that make you feel profoundly exposed and uncomfortable (a gym skirt and gym knickers in my school. Cycling shorts got you detention. Don't get me started on jogging bottoms.) Again, if you do not enjoy this, The Problem Is You. Start Enjoying It.
There are only three activity options. If you don't enjoy any of them, physical activity is not for you.
You should be able to Just Do physical exercise, without any training to build you up to it. If you can't and it hurts, this is because you're Bad At PE.
You will only be shown Once
Physical activity is only ever a team sport that you aren't good enough to be willingly picked for
LIKE WHAT THE FUCK
And you know what, LET'S round off with Food Technology/Cookery. Because I remember the things I was asked to make in FT. As a little baby Year 7, I still vividly remember two of the things we made.
Angel Delight. Easy, you might say! A simple treat, you might think! Easing the children into food prep, I hear you cry! But no, because the theme of the year was healthy eating, and so we were to add fruit to our Angel Delight. Any flavour Angel Delight, any fruit. Off you go. I don't know if any of you have encountered fruit, Tumblrs, but it famously has faintly acidic juice. This will prevent the Angel Delight from setting within the one hour lesson, no matter how well you mixed the pudding, or how quickly you got it into the fridge. It will result in soggy gross lumps of oxidising fruit in sloppy liquid pudding. Lesson learned: fruit makes food worse.
Cake. Easyish, you might say! A little harder than the Angel Delight but good training, you might think! A fairly straightforward process with a child-friendly food at the end, I hear you cry! But no, because the theme of the year was still healthy eating, so the teachers made it into an experiment; make four small cakes. One with sugar, one with sweetener, one with apple, and one with carrot. Then taste them and rank them in order. Off you go. I don't know if any of you have ever tried eating sugarless carrot cake, Tumblrs, but I have, and I can tell you categorically that it really puts the "Did you know" into the phrase "Did you know that fructose and sucrose are not actually equivalents of each other in a culinary setting?" It was rancid. It was disgusting. It was vile. It made me hate carrot cake for the next 12 years, in case my mouth had to go through that ordeal again. I'm still highly suspicious of the stuff even now. To (I assume) the surprise of fuck-damned no one, we unanimously put them in the order of sugar, sweetener, apple, carrot. Lesson learned: FRUIT MAKES FOOD WORSE AND CARROTS ARE ACTIVELY DISGUSTING
What possessed them?! No idea. Fucking hell.
Anyway this is getting long and I am still ill-informed. Peace out.
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consanguinitatum · 5 months
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David as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (the first time he did it, that is!)
David Tennant fans are aware of 2011's brilliant Much Ado About Nothing, in which DT starred as Benedick, alongside Catherine Tate as Beatrice. Filmed at the Wyndham's Theatre in London and directed by Josie Rourke, the production was recorded and offered on Digital Theatre.
But did you know David had played Benedick before?
Yep - he sure has!
It was in 2001, a full decade before his production with Catherine.
Beginning in 1999, BBC Radio 3 launched Shakespeare For The Millennium, an ambitious project to dramatize seventeen Shakespeare productions in four years.
The project was done in collaboration with BBC Worldwide, which emphasized it wanted to take a contemporary, innovative approach to the Bard. It launched on 12 September 1999 with a Shakespeare discussion panel, and a new production of Hamlet -- starring none other than Michael Sheen as the Dane!
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On 23 September 2001, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new production of Much Ado About Nothing as the Sunday Play, with David in the lead role as Benedick and Samantha Spiro as Beatrice. Adapted by Sally Avens, it featured an introduction (as had all the previous productions in the Shakespeare For The Millennium series) by Richard Eyre, the former Director of the Royal National Theatre.
The production also starred a few other recognizable names. There was Chiwetel Ejiofor as Claudio, Emilia Fox as Hero, David Swift as Leonato, Julian Rhind-Tutt as Don John, and David Haig as Dogberry.
All original music was composed and performed by Simon Oakes and Adam Wolters.
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Radio listings and announcements, and promo photos of David and Samantha Spiro
Here's a review of the prodcuction!
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Much Ado About Nothing was commercially released by BBC Worldwide as part of the BBC Radio collection series in 2001.
The sleeve notes of cassettes and CDs of the production include a scene-by-scene synopsis, a full character analysis, and an essay on interpretation from the director Sally Avens.
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Almost four years later, in November 2005, BBC One broadcast a television series called ShakespeaRe-Told, a set of four adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. Each play was adapted by a different writer, and all were relocated to the present day.
The first to be broadcast - on 7 November 2005 - was a modern-day version of Much Ado About Nothing starring Sarah Parrish and Damien Lewis...and Billie Piper and Nina Sosanya and Olivia Colman!
You can watch it here:
youtube
Six days after this television broadcast - on 13 November 2005 at 7:15 pm - BBC Radio 3 re-broadcast the audio version starring David and Samantha in its 'Drama On 3' slot.
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Fast forward to August 2020.
The BBC released a set of four BBC Radio Shakespeare collections: Histories, Comedies, Tragedies, and Roman Plays. Much Ado About Nothing was included in the collection of Comedies, and became available as an Audible digital download.
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If you want to listen, you can find this collection a lot of places. It might be at your local library or on Overdrive, on Google Play, or as an Amazon Audible book.
Or, ya know, just go here:
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lingthusiasm · 5 months
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Lingthusiasm Episode 87: If I were an irrealis episode
Language lets us talk about things that aren't, strictly speaking, entirely real. Sometimes that's an imaginative object (is a toy sword a real sword? how about Excalibur?). Other times, it's a hypothetical situation (such as "if it rains, we'll cancel the picnic" - but neither the picnic nor the rain have happened yet. And they might never happen. But also they might!). Languages have lots of different ways of talking about different kinds of speculative events, and together they're called the irrealis.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about some of our favourite examples under the irrealis umbrella. We talk about various things that we can mean by "reality", such as how existing fictional concepts, like goblins playing Macbeth, differ from newly-constructed fictions, like our new creature the Frenumblinger. We also talk about hypothetical statements using "if" (including the delightfully-named "biscuit conditionals), and using the "if I were a rich man" (Fiddler on the Roof) to "if I was a rich girl" (Gwen Stefani) continuum to track the evolution of the English subjunctive. Finally, a few of our favourite additional types of irrealis categories: the hortative, used to urge or exhort (let's go!), the optative, to express wishes and hopes (if only...), the dubitative, for when you doubt something, and the desiderative (I wish...).
Read the transcript here.
Announcements:
Thank you to everyone who shared Lingthusiasm with a friend or on social media for our seventh anniversary! It was great to see what you love about Lingthusiasm and which episodes you chose to share. We hope you enjoyed the warm fuzzies!
In this month’s bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about swearing (including rude gestures) in fiction with science fiction and fantasy authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, authors of the Thessaly books and Terra Ignota series, both super interesting series we've ling-nerded out about before on the show. We talk about invented swear words like "frak" and "frell", sweary lexical gaps (why don't we swear with "toe jam!"), and interpreting the nuances of regional swear words like "bloody" in fiction.
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Here are the links mentioned in the episode:
'Irrealis' entry on Wikipedia
'How do you get someone to care about Shakespeare? Two words: Goblin Macbeth' on CBC
xkcd comic 'Conditionals'
'Pedantic about biscuit conditionals' post on Language Log
'The pragmatics of biscuit conditionals' by Michael Franke
Lingthusiasm episode 'This time it gets tense - The grammar of time'
'Realis and Irrealis: Forms and concepts of the grammaticalisation of reality' by Jennifer R. Elliott
'If all the raindrops' on YouTube
'If I Were a Rich Man (song)' entry on Wikipedia
'Rich Girl (Gwen Stefani song)' entry on Wikipedia
'Louchie Lou & Michie One' entry on Wikipedia
'Louchie Lou & Michie One - Rich Girl' on YouTube
'Semi-Toned - Rich Girl (acapella)' on YouTube
'Subjunctive mood' entry on Wikipedia
'Céline Dion - Pour que tu m'aimes encore' on YouTube
WALS entry for 'Feature 73A: The Optative'
Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts - Interview with Sarah Dopierala'
Lingthusiasm episode 'Listen to the imperatives episode'
'Dubitative' entry on Wikipedia
'A grammatical overview of Yolmo (Tibeto-Burman)' entry on WikiJournal of Humanities
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johaerys-writes · 2 months
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Hi! I’m pretty new to the world of Achilles and Patroclus (I read The Song Of Achilles last month) and I just saw your post about your love for them. When you said “there's just so much stuff out there about them (tsoa, hades game, the iliad, a bunch of other myths and adaptations, non fiction books, academic papers etc)” I was wondering if you could touch on the other myths and adaptations part maybe? I’m not exactly sure where to begin there but I would appreciate any guidance you could give!
Oh boy I don't know where to start either because there's a LOT. I don't want to overwhelm you so I'll just list a few key myths and adaptations off the top of my head:
Adaptations
So as far as adaptations go, I will include works where both Achilles and Patroclus show up and that are inspired by the Iliad.
Hades Game: I'm pretty sure you're already familiar with this, just mentioning it just in case!
Aristos the musical: it's a musical as the name suggests, and it revolves around Achilles and Patroclus' lives from Pelion all the way to Troy. It's really lovely and has made me emotional on numerous occasions and I love revisiting it every so often! It also has a Tumblr account: @aristosmusical
Troilus and Cressida: this is Shakespeare's take on the Trojan War and it's quite interesting, not really faithful to the Iliad but offers a sort of different perspective on the characters and the events that led to Hector's death.
Achilles (1995) by Barry JC Purves: it's a short stop motion film using clay puppets, it's on Youtube and it's only 11 mins and I think it's worth a watch! I find it very compelling visually and any adaptation where Achilles and Patroclus are lovers is a plus in my book 🫶
Holding Achilles: this is an Australian stage production by the Dead Puppet Society, I really enjoyed it and I found it an interesting blend of TSOA and Iliad Patrochilles, which also featured some cool new elements that I hadn't really seen before. It used to be free to watch for a while but now I think you have to pay to watch it, there's more info on their website.
The Silence of the Girls: a novel by Pat Barker, it's a take on the events of the Iliad mostly through Briseis' eyes, I personally didn't really like the book or the characterisations but hey both Achilles and Patroclus are in it so it might be worth a read.
There are some other novels I've heard of where Achilles and Patroclus appear (A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane) and also a TV show called Troy: Fall of a City but I haven't read/watched them so I can't really rec them
Myths
Most myths revolve around Achilles, there aren't that many with Patroclus I'm afraid, but here are some of my favourites:
Achilleid by Publius Papinius Statius: this is an epic poem about Achilles' stay on Skyros disguised as a girl and his involvement with Deidameia. It's interesting but I'd personally take the characterisations and events in it with a grain of salt because Romans were notorious for their unsympathetic portrayal of Greek Homeric heroes but it's still a cool thing that's out there and free to read online.
Iphigenia at Aulis: a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides, it's basically the dramatised version of the myth of Iphigenia's sacrifice in Aulis which predates the Iliad, there are many obscure versions of this myth but Euripides' sort of updated version is my favourite, I will never shut up about this play!! Lots of a nuance and very interesting portrayals of Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia and pretty much everyone in there, well worth a read.
Lost plays: there are several plays in which Achilles appears but that have been lost or survive only in fragments, but two of my favourites are Euripides' Telephus and Aeschylus' Myrmidons. Telephus takes place before the Trojan War, while the Greeks are on their way to Troy. I really like Achilles' characterisation in the fragments that remain and also the fact that he was already renowned for his knowledge of medicine and healing despite how young he was. The fragments that survive from Aeschylus' Myrmidons I think are fewer but the play was extremely popular at the time it was presented to the public and it sparked a lot of controversy re: Achilles and Patroclus' relationship and who tops/bottoms so I think that's kind of funny lol.
There are lots of other obscure little myths about Achilles that I've picked up by reading various books, papers and wiki posts on the matter and that are just too numerous to list here, but what I will mention and that I think concludes the myths section of this post pretty neatly is that the Iliad and the Odyssey are not the only works about the Trojan War that were written, merely the only works that survived. The rest of the books in the Epic Cycle have been preserved either in fragmentary form or in descriptions in other works, and I think the Epic Cycle wiki page is a good place to start if you want to get an idea of what each of those books contained.
I hope this helped! 💙
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hamletthedane · 2 months
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I’m a big Hamlet fan and I am curious as to what your favorite movie/for screen rendition is? I’ve been working my way through a lot of them, gone through about 7, so far Hamlet at Elsinore with Christopher Plummer is my favorite. I was just curious what yours is !
What a great question!!
Hamlet at Elsinore is definitely my favorite filmed version of the play. I feel that Christopher Plummer does a fantastic - and frankly critically underappreciated - job of portraying the more nuanced and complicated aspects of Hamlet's character while still giving a straightforward performance that's highly accessible to any audience. Notably, he doesn't treat the performance as his ~*~epic, defining role of a lifetime~*~ or ~high artistic theater~ (*cough* Branagh and Jacobi), but instead focuses on telling a deeply compelling, very moving story about the complex nature of grief and revenge. I also like that this version embraces the more "postmodern" elements that exist in the written text of Hamlet: the complicity of the audience, the inevitability of the outcome, Hamlet's genre-awareness and genre-defiance, etc.
[Not to keep hating on Branagh, but in contrast: Branagh's Hamlet in particular seems to go out of its way to avoid including the more interesting proto-postmodern thematic elements of the play - at times not seeming to recognize that they're even there. He instead focuses his time and energy on inserting new cinematography-based visual themes that go nowhere and at times stand in OPPOSITION to the actual tone and themes of the original text. Because apparently Hamlet the play is too boring and instead of lame elements like "themes" and "compelling characterization," we need a swinging chandelier sword fight scenes and Freudian weirdness. Truly the Joel Schumacher Phantom of the Opera adaptation of Shakespeare films. But I DIGRESS-)
Plus it doesn't hurt that everybody aside from Plummer in Hamlet at Elsinore is also fabulous. Obviously, Michael Caine's Horatio is the single best and most definitive version of the character in film, but I also love Robert Shaw's Claudius and Muller's Ophelia.
If we're talking favorite filmed versions of the STORY of Hamlet though, that's Asta Nielsen's silent film from 1921. It's so beautifully filmed and wonderfully told. She's what I picture when I picture Hamlet.
Other than that....I like Tennant and Stewarts' RSC filmed version well enough. It has a number of very strange choices and I don't love the re-ordering of the scenes, but Tennant does a great job with the character and I think it's a very approachable performance. A few other filmed stage versions are also excellent, though with a few similarly weird elements - I'd put Maxine Peake's version on the same tier as the RSC version. I do NOT like Branagh's version at all (if you couldn't already tell...). Jacobi's and Gibson's are slightly better, but they're still too focused on the prestige of the performance rather than the actual story being told imo. I think they fall under the same criticism as Holden Caulfield's scathing review of Laurence Olivier: "more like a general than a sad, screwed-up type guy." (Yes I know this line is an in-text authorial critique of Holden himself but also: he's right and he should say it.)
If you haven't already, I do highly recommend listening to the BBC Radio 4 audiodrama version of Hamlet, starring Jamie Parker. Despite being a audio version of a stage play, it somehow blows every filmed version of Hamlet (except maybe HAE) out of the water. I listen to it at least once a year.
Finally, my actual favorite versions of Hamlet have ALWAYS been those I've seen live (or seen bootleg filmed stage performances of lmao). If it's ever playing live near you, definitely go and see it. The play was meant to be seen on a live stage in front of you, and many of the jokes and themes only make sense in that context. In my opinion, the medium of live theater elevates the play so far beyond what a movie could ever achieve.
...sorry this answer is so long 😅 Really, it doesn't matter what my opinions on Hamlet films are. If any version of the play really speaks to you - even if it's the accursed Branagh version - that is so awesome and makes me really happy people are engaging with the play in that way! (But since you're saying that HAE is your favorite so far, I will add that you have excellent, discerning taste ;))
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In light of recent discoveries, I will be changing the name of this blog to honor the true author of these 37/8 plays we all know and love: Christopher Marlowe.
It has been unequivocally proven as of this week that Marlowe did not in fact meet his judgment in 1593, but rather lived on to continue his career as a great poet and playwright.
Previously, it was believed that his works left unfinished and the body identified as his were solid proof that the plays he wrote under the name of “William Shakespeare” could not have been written by the same hand as the great Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and Hero and Leander.
But as of this week, it has been proven that this evidence has long been misinterpreted. It is true that he left behind unfinished poems and that there was a body identified as his. In fact, it is even true that the body identified that day was his.
Where generations of scholars went awry, however, was in their lack of consideration for the spirit of the man whose body died that day. Using modern technology including EMWA (electromagnetic writing analysis), it was discovered that William Shakespeare did physically write the plays, but it was the spirit of the great Christopher Marlowe who was behind them via the ancient art of human consciousness possession (HCP).
Yes, you heard that right: it has been scientifically proven “Shakespeare’s” posthumously published folio which brought us some of our most beloved plays is simply radiating with electromagnetic particles that suggest the mind behind the text was not Shakespeare’s but Marlowe’s, in possession the former’s body.
I study English rather than paranormal writing analysis, so I can only explain what little I know about the subject, but from what I understand, analysis of an original printing of the first folio produced these results. Modern paranormal expert Sam Winchester says of the discovery: “It reshapes the fields of both English literature and paranormology. Most cases of PoP [Possession of Poets] are fairly low-profile. It’s rare to see a case like this. We studied the folio by analyzing the IPs [inspiration particles] and comparing them against a text authentically written by Marlowe and then one we could expect Shakespeare’s possession by Kit wouldn’t have influenced—his will. The IPs analyzed from over six hundred lines of the folio were similar in shape, color, and potency to those detected from lines of Marlowe’s Faustus, Tamburlaine, Edward II, and Hero and Leander but markedly different from those of Shakespeare’s will. The variations in the hue of the particles between Marlowe’s writings while living and those produced after his death via his possession of William Shakespeare showed that “Shakespeare’s” plays were consistent with the particles we see in other cases of PoP, proving that they were in fact written posthumously by the mind of Marlowe and the hand of Shakespeare.”
Anne Hathaway, actress and immortal wife of the late William Shakespeare said that she was “not surprised” by the new development. “Will sure seemed odd after ‘93—sorry, that’s 1593 for you all. He became suddenly obsessed with writing plays and sonnets. I was pretty excited about the sonnets initially until I realized most of them were written to some twink and not me. I suppose that’s how these things go. I still think Will would be proud of his legacy even if it wasn’t entirely his.”
Winchester recommends that “Shakespeare” scholars worldwide “acknowledge Marlowe as the true author of the plays, sonnets, and poems both out of respect for the mind behind the verse and to avoid being possessed [them]selves.” He says that paranormologists have “no reason to believe that Marlowe isn’t still out there waiting to add a few more plays to his repertoire.” In fact, he and his team are currently analyzing Tom Stoppard’s plays to rule out the possibility of another case of possession by Marlowe.
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Twenty Songs Challenge, written after being so lovingly inducted by the powerhouse that is sweet Mey, @the-ugly-swan . Challenge being to choose twenty favorited songs and write one shots based off of them with any pairing or fandom of my choosing. Being a weirdo and a little burned out in my own created universes beyond the fics already in works, I chose what currently inspired me most, obscure as it is.
Pairing: Henry “Hotspur” Percy and Lady “Kate” Mortimer Percy -early 15th century
Fandom: RPF, Shakespeare? Tom Glynn-Carney’s 5 magnificent minutes of a performance as Hotspur in <The King 2019> the armor alone was amply inspiring. The Hollow Crown fans feel free to imagine whoever, as you like. I love this historical pairing in about any iteration and the plot is drawn from both Shakespeare’s play and real history, the timeline, plot and politics being pretty self explanatory through the incorporated dialogue. NOTE- wordplay ahead with “cur” and “Kerr”, the latter being a Scottish clan holding great enmity with the Percy Family and charged with holding the Scottish side of the border. Also I kept Lady Percy’s name as “Kate” even though it was technically Elizabeth in the records.
Dynamic: a rough northern lord and his too good for him lady -a lady who has, through years of an arranged marriage gone horribly well, come to find his homespun gallantry and blunt ways more than a little intoxicating when knelt before her in amused deference. She could almost find it in herself to be gentle with him -if he hadn’t just started a rebellion whilst away from her at the Capitol.
Dedicated to my wifey @prompted-wordsmith who I did proselytize into the Percy cult one fevered evening with inestimable results, including her contribution of a few choice lines herein.
🕯As it Was ~ Hozier
“There is a roadway, muddy and foxgloved
Never I'd had life enough
My heart is screaming out
And in a few days I would be there, love
Whatever here that's left of me is yours just as it was”
Warnings: 18+ to be safe. a small amount of sexual content, flirtations, a husband and wife touching in public, verbal sparring and talk of making children and use of the word “bred”, swearing, use of the words “cock” and “cunt.”
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The sound of hooves in the courtyard rouses Kate from her anxious stupor by the hearth, toilsome grain list forgotten on her lap. The scroll swishes to the floor at her abrupt standing, wafting out of her path as she rushes to the window.
First the clatter of a single, foremost, over-eager rider, followed at a lag by his retinue, skilled riders all and armored as befits the guard of a nobleman. They make such a clatter in the yard when they come in after him. Some petty part of her briefly considers the tactic of staying here in their chambers in protest, a quiet sign of disapproval with his errand, of discontent with his brusque leave taking two weeks agone.
Her Harry would find her anyway, and like it better that she were in their chambers. He would like it well she were so near the bed and like it ill she slighted him in her dutiful welcome -but he would not speak of that. Not one for speaking much, her husband, not on matters that plague her these days, weeks, months. Kate might have it out with him in the old way and slap him about and toss cold quips and get from him little more than the same benign aggravation and good humored laughs between, a couple dozen kisses to her neck and a grapple in the sheets.
That is what talk they would undertake were she to stay up here.
It is that lone, eager, forerunning clatter of his horse that speaks to her, speaks for him. Just as his sword and his reputation and his gruff graciousness has spoken well of him across these northern lands, his eagerness to return to her, to outstrip his men in haste to be back from his fool’s errand and into her embrace -it is all the declaration of devotion she may expect from him. It is the truest form, without jape lacing his tone or tonic of lust clouding his confessions.
Harry Hotspur, as fast to return to his wife as he is to meet a fight.
It is love, of the sort she has grown to be grateful for, and it is that and fear of losing it besides, that rushes her out from their chambers and down the polished steps, out to the great hall and past the giant outer doors, cursing a lousy servant or five and ordering a bath and commissioning supper and refreshments as she goes. The torch flames bend from her flight, a whoosh and a shadow stalking Alnwick Castle’s stone passageways until the gray light of evening pours into her sight from the opened great doors. Squires and stable boys clutter her path but they part as she dashes, nay, only a dignified hasten now, out into the courtyard where nearly all of this fool’s troup have dismounted.
There are doffed helms to the Lady Percy, the jangle of chain mail crinkling with bows and scraps of deference all around them, but she sees only him, with mist dripping on his nose and a face too boyish for the insolence he has returned from discharging.
“Kate.” he utters.
Will ever he say her name lazily? She hopes not, for that alone she will endure the unwarranted cheerfulness with which he greets her on this dire occasion. She has heard it said in anger, in jest and in passion, vows and quips, praise and warning. And now in cheerful pleasure as evening mist soaks her gown and the heavy clunk of her husband's footsteps clang ever near her on the paving stones.
“Lord husband.” she greets, hands folded over her freshly healed womb.
His stride falters and he rocks back on his spurred heels, an arms length away, an embrace so tangible she can see his jaw tick from the watering of his mouth. “Lord husband is it?” he repeats thoughtfully, eyes drifting down to the paving stones for a brief moment as if to recollect some forgotten crime, they flick up soon and in them is jesting scrutiny, “My lady wife rushed all this way, down five corridors and a furlong of Keep only to greet me thus?”
Did her rising breath betray her eagerness? Could he see her in the hall despite his business dismounting?
“Your cheeks are red.” he shows her mercy, some form of it. His form. “But -Lord husband, it is, nevertheless?”
“Unless you would prefer ought else?” she inquires, he had once thought this smile quite chilling, he had admitted after their first babe, now he finds it rousing, he has admitted after their third.
“If it please you.” his shifting stance is noisy, his tabard and sword and still clutched helm a racket of accouterments in the pattering rain.
“I have any number to offer,” she concedes, stepping nearer, a lady’s step, covering one third of the ground between them that he might vanquish in a single stride. Still, he waits. “Knucklehead.” she whispers, her breath a fog and her insult as lost as vapor in the ears of his watching men, her bearing alone must satisfy their curiosity, as must his growing smirk and rising color, “Jackenape.” Another step until each little scar on his face is visible and the little canyons each raindrop make of them. She saw his finger twitching where it grasped his visor “Cur.”
There was the slightest flinch between his brows at that, a furrow that smoothed as his mirthful lips flattened out. “Careful now, lady wife, with words like Kerr* thrown about, my men might think you presumptuous, their lady gone and married to some other, a Scottish laird at that. So sure of my death already, sweet Kate, that you must speak of Kerrs in mine own yard? Ha, ‘pon my word you are qu-“
“Hush!” Her hand, fresh warmed as it was by recent hearthside and rich velvets pressed frimly to his lips, a tingle shooting straight to her toes at touching him at last. He was silent then, only the puff of breath against her fast chilling fingertips. “Tease me not so,” she begged, her own mirth gone out in her eyes, her arch look turned to grief, “not when you are just returned from an errand all but ensuring such an end. It is too cruel, even of you. Handle me kindly, Percy, as you always have, in words this time, if not in embrace.”
He seemed to ponder this before raising that hand not occupied with his helm, clumsy and clad in gauntlet as it was, to her wrist, wrapping the chilled and layered steel round her pale flesh and gently tugging her hand from his lips, only so far as to press it to his cheek instead, their audience of men at arms unheeded. “I betook myself to London,” he enunciated, as if it were their first night all over again and his thick borderland drawl too strong for her courtly ears to decipher, “to remind a king of his debts.”
“And tell me!” she cried fiercely, a choked, barely quieted protest as her hands dug into the wet leather of his jerkin, wrist twisted from the steel grasp, “What errand is that but a fool’s? Have you no fear at all left in this bruised carcass? Do I patch up an animated corpse time and again from your wars only for it never to have soul and feeling and wisdom in it? Do I, Harry? Gone to remind a king? How do you dare such?”
“It is he who has dared too much!” he cried back, loudly where her’s had been choked, a ringing and rebauld defense, worthy of a man who would chastise his monarch in full view of council. “First his debts, and now my son’s land! We did not make children so as to watch like blithe cowards as their birthright is bequeathed out from under our feet -piecemeal!- to a courtly cunt whose only recommendation is his alacrity to pucker and bow.”
Kate glanced about her at the men making show of industry, piddling at harnesses and armaments, walking horses in circles. Her husband's words could be no worse than what he had said to the King’s own face, anyone without stomach to become a rebel would have stayed behind in the Capitol, sensing dissension brewing. Lady Percy could perceive none missing from his number. So, a war it was to be, then.
“So, a new generation of Percys is to play at kingmaking.” she summarized.
“We make no boast of it.” Harry protested in turn.
“No,” said she, “why would you with how poorly your last choice has served you?”
That caused a start from him, a step forward that was neither gallant nor eager but angry as man to man. Kate, still with hands fisted in the crooks of his armor, stepped with him, backwards to his hall. “It is your brother with the better claim.” he showed his plan at last, a slow and conniving admission, one not common for his brash ways and straightforward mind.
Kate gasped at the implication. “Edmund?”
“He was proper heir, all along.”
“Your father-“ she chose her wording carefully, “-did not agree.”
“My father’s preference is not law.”
“It is mistaken for such, often.” Kate smirked in reply. “And Edmund is not suited-“
“-Edmund is not the turd now stealing from his vassals!” her Harry rejoined, his helmet pressed to her chest, “Edmund will do.” he reiterated once more.
Kate stared at his temper, the signs of it in his flaring nose and his wild eyes, the cure was between her thighs but watching mist drops fall from unblinking lashes was sweet prelude indeed. “Edmund,” she replied quietly and in a manner to be heeded, “is not willing or suited, he prefers instead to listen to welsh bards and lay upon the lap of his savage wife.”
Her Harry rolled his eyes at her truth, an admission, or the closest to one, she would ever receive. As if battling some great inner turmoil she watched him purse his lips and heave out a sigh before in a sudden movement the helm was tossed to the ground -much to the scramble and reaction of a half a dozen squires who ran to pick it up from its puddle- and suddenly steel hands were upon her hips, tugging her near to him even as she shied away, her face turned in a pantomime of demureness. “Strange,” he said and his tone suggested he still pondered her report of her brother's amorous preoccupations, “-and her lap so less Devine than mine own wife’s.”
“Then why do you haste from it so often?” she whined, delivering a smack against his belted tabard, right where the lions paraded across his right breast.
“Only a man dying of thirst appreciates that water has a flavor.” he reasoned and Kate allowed the open mouthed kisses that crept down her neck, her face turned stubbornly still to the south wall. The blacksmith's roof will be in need of new thatching soon, before spring. Before war.
She feels stubble against her tender skin, bracketing those pretty lips she once derided him for. No warrior ought to have lips like that, it was not seemly, not when maidens were denied such richness, such fullness, such rosy hue. But there is roughness about his lips and on his jaw as it tucks into the juncture at her shoulder, that show of clavicle her dress allows drawing him in like a siren’s song. He must’ve rode hard the entire way, no inns or refreshment, no shaving or baths, straight to her as from a battlefield. The King’s city is just as loathsome as any field of carnage, but he went to free her brother, to get a ransom, to reclaim their stolen land, to remind a king.
He did it for her, and the babes she gave him.
Kate turns her face from the blacksmith's thatch and raises her hand to his face, tenderly stroking the three days' beard that's grown as he's been on the road, riding hard to get to her. They have backed nearly to the hall’s mouth, the drip of rain off the gutter patters behind her on the threshold, Kate knows he can smell supper and hear the clatter of their children racing to meet him on still chubby legs. How different is the love of home, man to woman, Harry would sooner fight for it and she would cower within. Her thumb swipes at the raindrops making farce of tears upon his cheek.
"Princess," he breathes against her palm as he crushes her into his chest, still half armored and agonized for it as he cannot feel her softness with the cuirass, the leather, the chainmail. There are curves and bosoms and soft flesh he knows too well just on the other side of this awful barrier.
Princess will be her title if his treason succeeds, if her brother wears that cursed crown. “Princess”. It sours her mouth, but it is kind of him to wish it for her.
"You will come back, Harry.” she commands of him, she declares the outcome of this brewing war, “Soaked in the blood of feckless scum, you will come back and put another babe in me. A little prince or princess," she hisses in his ear, and she can tell he freezes at that, her concession to his treason, still as stone in his metal casings.
His eyes are ever so blue as they search hers.
"So I forbid any recklessness, my Lord Husband. Because I want this - " and her hand slips beneath his jerkin and the hem of mail to squeeze his cockstand most assuredly, as assuredly as she was that he would be sporting one for her, gripping it as one might grasp a chalice of wine during a toast "- and the rest of you, in one piece." Harry slumps against her shoulder, panting into the chilled hair and too heavy for her little frame. "Or so help me God." she intones, sharper than any steel he wields. "Swear it, Harry." She gives him another punishing squeeze, and he groans, agonized, as his mouth meets with the softness of her bound bosom, his knees the hardness of the stone cobbles. If she hadn't promised a use for his cock, he'd think she was liable to geld him herself at his presumption to seat and unseat a king, but now that he is out of her grip, for a moment, and looks up at her with such longing he fears his soul has left his chest for hers.
"So help me God." he agrees, it is in providence’s hands, after all, and in Kate’s clasped one’s atop his head.
“Fool.” she says once more as she bends over him, gently pressing a hand to the back of his head, pressing his face to her belly and her chilled fingers to his sopping hair, “It is not my brother these men fight for, nor for me. Not when it is you that calls them to it.”
“For what then?” He mumbles into her womb, hands heavy on her hips, the courtyard’s occupants dispersed into the shadows of the eaves, but a couple dozen peering eyes twinkle towards them in the twilight’s gloom.
“How often have I heard it said here, in this very courtyard.” Kate scoffs, observing the strength knelt so adoringly before her, “Have I dreamed each cry of ‘no prince save he be a Percy?’ Ha, to think they fight for a Mortimer, indeed. Ha!”
Harry staggers to his feet at this poke, it is, as are so many of his Kate’s wounds, half torment, half praise. His blood pounds with the elixir of her acknowledgment of his capability. “It is well then, Kate Mortimer,” he recites, daring now to put his lips very near her own, to nuzzle his strong nose with her hawkish one, to tip a chin and bat an eyelash against her wet cheek, “it is well that you are Percy now yourself, through and through, wed-“ his lips meet hers in a brush she chases after, “-and bred.”
🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯
Hope all five of you who read that enjoyed it. 😆 I know it’s a fragment but as I’m nothing but hyper fixated when some interests resurrects in me, I’ll probably be back with more of them. Drop a note below if you’d like to be on a taglist for such developments.
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respectthepetty · 2 years
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Tattoos in BLs
Dean [Until We Meet Again & Between Us] - I do not remember seeing this, but I have the picture, so it must've happened. It’s a compass on his hip because he was lost without Phram and always looking for direction.
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Win [Until We Meet Again & Between Us] – We will hopefully find out something next month when the series begins, but even if we don’t, we can still appreciate that these are henna including those angel wings.
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Jang JaeYoung [Semantic Error] - Does it have meaning? As he stated in the series, “Not really. I just liked it” but I'm seeing an eclipse thanks to Ayan's hoodie.
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Chu SangWoo [Semantic Error] – Hand drawn by JaeYoung, and it is the first image JaeYoung ever drew for him when they first met in the episode one.  
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Black/White [Not Me] – White had to get it because Black had it, and Black had it because..no idea, but it could symbolize death or strength.
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Yok [Not Me] – Mandarin on the flank means mom, but the birds and the forearm one, no idea.
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Tonhon [Tonhon Chonlatee] – “An anchor is what a navigator or sailor uses to hold his vessel to the ocean. Tonhon means a navigator. That’s why I had this anchor tattooed on my left chest to remind me that my heart will not drift away. It will be with the ocean and that is your name, Chonlatee, forever. Every time I look at it, it reminds me that I have you in my heart all the time.”
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Kamol [Unforgotten Night] – I didn’t watch this, so I’m guessing that it was because he had pet tigers, and I'm fine believing that.
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Mangkorn [Big Dragon] – Mangkorn means dragon, and he is the dragon (Yang) to Yai’s tiger (Yin).
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Porsche [KinnPorsche] – A phoenix because that was his underground fighting alias, fire is his friend (he gets the fire started in the woods, he starts a fire in his first week on the job, he smokes), his mom used to tell him stories about the phoenix rising from the ashes, his color in the series is yellow, and he is the phoenix/fire (Yang) to Kinn’s tortoise/water personality (Yin - he's like his mom).
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Pete [KinnPorsche] – “No legacy is so rich as honesty” is from Shakespeare’s comedy All’s Well That Ends Well, which is about a woman of lower rank trying to marry the man she loves who is of a higher rank. The quote shows not only to live an honest life (in a play full of dishonesty), but to be honest with oneself, something that Pete does in the end when…you know.
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Ram [My Engineer] – Has a dream catcher on his neck to chase away bad dreams, a wolf on his arm, a tribal turtle on his shoulder, and a few others.
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Forth [2 Moons 2] – Actor’s actual tattoo. Might be a Sak Yant tattoo for good fortune.
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Sarawat [2gether] – Actor’s actual tattoo. I think it was something about remembering who you are.
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Gene [Lovely Writer] - Actor's actual tattoo. A family portrait. Thanks @calipigio
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Phupha [A Tale of Thousand Stars] - Actor's actual tattoo. It now has a quote above it. He also has two thigh tattoos ("Be somebody nobody thought you could be" and "Every sunset is an opportunity to reset"), "PEACE" on his bicep, and an upper back tattoo. *whispers "I love him"* Thanks @veemark
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Ai [Ai Long Nhai] – Actor's actual tattoo. A crescent moon. Thanks @mushiemadarame for letting me know it's his.
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Ayan [The Eclipse] – Actor’s actual tattoos. The thigh one is a G-Dragon lyric telling his mother not to worry about him. Hip tattoo is "beautiful" (seen in Only Friends) *A little salty about the hip one*
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pemberlyprose · 5 months
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How Greif Devours Identity in Hamlet: An Informal Short Essay
Inspired by If We Were Villians, I took it upon myself to freshen up on my Shakespeare. So, last night I finished reading Hamlet for the first time since my freshman year of college! It was a trip to relive all of my old annotations and notes on the play, and to dive back into Shakespeare after such a long time. Thank Folger Shakespeare Library for footnotes!
A few things caught my attention, especially the theme of identity and grief being so intertwined. So let's talk about it for a moment~~
As somone who has experianced a little too much grief in my lifetime, it was cathartic to read Hamlet and appreciate others processing loss. Shakespeare, the master of words and human emotion that he is, has painted the transformative... if not transfiguring... powers of grief on the human mind. This is not exclusive to the character of Hamlet himself, though his madness is the center of the play, but includes all the characters.
Since I have made myself promise this will be a short essay, i'll localize my thoughts on a specific passage:
"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only empoeror for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service-- two dishes but to one table. That's the end" (Act 4, Scene 3).
So, here's the thing... I took this a little differently than Shakespeare may have intended in this scene. The talk of the "worms" which feast on us when we are dead made me think of The Corpse Bride by Tim Burton.
In Emily's ear is a maggot that acts as her concience. He eats at her mind and replaces her thoughts with his own. I couldn't help but feel that is exactly what grief has done to these characters. Like worms, fattening upon each character, sorrow, revenge, fear, and guilt all crawl into the ears of the court and feast until there is nothing left.
For example, take Hamlet at the end of this play. Hamlet is "not where he eats," which would be an action of taking the King's life and digesting what has happened to his father, but ends "where he is eaten" by the guilt of not being able to override his character and seek revenge on Claudius until the last moment. Try as he might to change the course of fate (hah, get it course lol), the ending remains the same. Which leads to the line "two dishes but to one table."
We see this all throughout the novel as different sets of characters come to the table: Claudius x King Hamlet, Hamlet x Claudius, Hamlet x Mother, Opheilia x Hamlet, Laertes x Hamlet... etc. Even the lesser characters die in pairs like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Two lives devoured together at the same table.
I think this is an interesting way of looking at volitile emotions and understanding how people struggle to cope. Grief can eat at you, literally, and it not only leads to a physical deterioration but to a death of self. No matter how clever and careful you are going about it, no matter what reasons you have, acting against one's character will always eat at one's concience. Especially when you look around and see the other people in your life feasting on the same meal at the same table.
So while grief can feel like a worm in our minds, it's also more common among our companions than we see. Too blinded by our own struggles, we let emotions devour our sense of self, and can't see how our behavior reflects and is reflected back to us. We are what we eat, in all senses.
Which is why I think that Hamelt is an exceptional play on how emotions can play (or prey) on us!
Updated edition of the Folger Shakespeare Library edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine used in this essay :)
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sl-vega · 3 months
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✧Sticking to the Script✧-07
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⋆。°✩ 07-rebound already?
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"Sorry about that, those were just my friends." you sighed as you put your phone into your pocket. You looked at Xingqiu again. "Thanks for agreeing to help me study by the way, I really appreciate it."
"No problem, anything for you." he replied as the two of you walked into the library. You chuckled and playfully hit his arm "Anything for me huh? Look at you being smooth."
The two of you settled at a table, and Xingqiu pulled out your chair for you. You got your textbook out of your bag, and Xingqiu took out his notes, and two pens, one for him and one for you.
"You need help with your English paper right?" Xingqiu asked as he sorted through his binder, looking for notes that you would find useful. You nodded, giving him your thanks as he handed you some lined sheets.
"You're doing a unit on Shakespeare?" he asked, underlining a few things on his paper. You nodded "Yeah, we're doing a joint unit with the drama department, we're analyzing Romeo and Juliet. And my essay is due tommorow!" you wailed, slamming your head on the table.
Ms. Lisa, the librarian, shushed you from her desk. You whispered an apology to her as you picked up some of the papers Xingqiu set aside for you. "Are you analyzing anything in particular?" he asked, still sorting through more notes, he got out a highlighter.
"Mainly the famous quotes and stuff. Our teacher also wants us to talk about the use of opposites in the play. We're supposed to cover at least one scene from each act." you explained as you watched him take more notes. His handwriting was so neat and pretty, even when it looked like he was just scribbling down words.
He handed several sheets of paper to you, some papers included scenes from the play handwritten by him, word for word. He also highlighted certain bits of the text, and made sure to include modern English translations for you at the back of the pages.
"These are my notes from last year. We did a unit similar to this. Sorry if it's a little messy."
You stared at the page, the blue ink had zero smudges and the sheet had little to no crinkles in it. "If you think that this is messy, just wait till you see my notes." you chuckled. "I know I already said this, but I really appreciate this."
The two of you continued talking, Xingqiu continuing to take notes for you, highlighting important parts of the text and explaining their meanings for you. Once again he had made an hour seem like a few minutes.
"And that's what Mercutio meant when he said 'Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man." Xingqiu explained, finishing off his analysis to you.
"That also foreshadows his death doesn't it?"
"Exactly! See, you're picking up on this so quickly." XIngqiu praised you as he started to pack up his stuff, placing his papers into his folders and his pencil cases into his back pack.
You glanced at your phone to check the time. "You have to go already?" you asked, feeling slightly disappointed that he had to leave.
"Yeah, sorry about that. I'll see you this weekend though, I promise." He gave your hand a quick squeeze. You felt your stomach drop as you saw him exit the room.
Promises can be hard to keep Xingqiu
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Xingqiu put his phone down and rubbed his temples. "You okay?" whispered Kazuha.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Xingqiu replied.
Archons he was in deep
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additional notes:
-FINALLY GOT ANOTHER CHAPTER OUT
-so sorry for all the slow updates y'all
-i'm trying
-i was writing for another smau i have coming up
-my commitment issues will be the end of me
-holy hell this chapter got a tad deep
-KAZUHA CAMEO
-they're both in their english class during the xingqiu + kazuha scene btw
-lol not y/n being a drama queen cuz she's upset that she has to wait three whole days before seeing xingqiu again
-you guys don't have any classes together btw
-that blue flower gif means that i'm switching povs mid chapter btw
-i went thru sm different versions for this chapter
-ty to @EggosForBreakfast on wattpad for proofreading this for me
-you should go follow them
-also ty to all my readers: @washa, @kasasim, @wisteriabl00m, @rebeccavsabrina, @nmriki0, @rainycafereader, @slu7, @melatoninsblog, @anticlarckwise, @esmetrees, @sn1perz, @littleheartbigbrain, @aldertree-g, @thebiggesthutaofanever, @lilac-sks, @amir8623, @freyao7, @mystic-alex, @myaaaajoy, @tartagliascummdumpp, @green-ginkgo, @lillyinfandoms, @charles-braindump, @samsamsam7, @leynita, @uuyuomi/@mwahkazu, @pwrson, @practicoi, @thatoneswordgirl
-names in bold mean i couldn't tag them
-dw that's just a one time acknowledgment to everyone who liked the original master post, you won't constantly be tagged like that, but if you want to be removed just tell me
-i'll totally understand <3
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masterlist
<prev ll next>
✧Sticking to the Script✧
Pairing: Xingqiu x FEM! Reader
Genre: fake dating, strangers to lovers, slow burn, fluff, angst (?), high school smau, modern smau
⋆。°✩-Synopsis: Xingqiu just got entered into a special writing contest, the type that's invite only, the theme this year is love, the only problem is that he has zero romantic experience. but he really wants to prove himself as a writer. meanwhile, you just found out that your boyfriend cheated on you, and you need to show him that you're 100% over him, the only problem is that there's no way you can get an actual boyfriend that quickly. clearly, the solution to both of your issues is to fake date each other. it shouldn't be hard for an actor such as yourself, all you need to do is stick to the script.
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(OPEN) Taglist: @freyao7, @thatoneswordgirl, @sn1perz, @latay7, @esmetrees, @nmriki0, @help-whatdoimakemyusername, @httpsrenren, @cupid-spams, @aixaingela, @kaitfae, @luvkvni, @danhenglovebot
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gottagobackintime · 1 year
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Music (and movies) and queerness in Ted Lasso. Particularly in relation to Ted (and Trent)
I want to start with a line from the show that contains the word music.
“If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it.” Said by Mae to Ted in a scene where a few moments later Trent walks up to him after leaving his date to go talk to him. It’s a quote from the VERY queer Shakespeare play “Twelfth Night”. The line implies that the speaker wants to be fed more, to the point of it making them sick so that they won’t desire, love in this case, anymore. Because he’s unhappily in love with someone who he can’t have (Michelle?). BUT he falls in love with someone else later. And in the context of Ted Lasso, this line just so happens to be said right before they show us that Trent is there. Ted also answers Mae, not by asking if she’s asking him if he wants more but “If that’s your fancy way of asking if I want another one, you guessed right”.Another love?And according to James Lance, it was when he was on his way to film this scene that he found out that Trent is gay and that he is “with that guy” as he himself puts it. A man who has a moustache very similar to Ted’s and wears similar clothes.
(Also, this happens in season 2 episode 7. In season 3, episode 7 Ted talks about the red string/thread of fate myth while Trent wears a red bracelet and they are connected by red several times and season 3, episodes 7 and 11 are connected via “You’ve got Mail”, the opening scene in episode 7 being a “tribute” to the movie, and there are other smaller references. And the team, and Trent, watching the movie in episode 11. AndTrent also wears the bracelet in episode 11, an episode I’ll bring up later in this post).
Now, let us get to the music.
Bruce Springsteen If you google “Bruce Springsteen queer” you get a lot of results discussing queerness in his songs and so on, so to put him in this post is a must.
Bruce Springsteen is brought up by Dottie in season 3 episode 11. She tells Trent about the time Ted got onstage and danced with Bruce Springsteen (which turns out to be a lie) but the connection to Springsteen is still there, because Ted did get onstage with a Bruce Springsteen cover band and sang with them. So, we’ve established a connection between Ted (and Trent) and Bruce Springsteen.
Let’s connect it to something else that happened in the episode. They watch “You’ve Got Mail” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (I’ll come back to “You’ve Got Mail” later, the important part here is Tom Hanks). Ted states that the superior Nora Ephron/Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movie is “Sleepless in Seattle”,a movie about a reporter falling for a single dad simply because of the way he talks about things and what he talks about. He brings the movie up twice, once to say that it’s superior and once telling someone to watch it. Now what does “Sleepless in Seattle” have to do with Bruce Springsteen? “Sleepless in Seattle” came out in 1993, as did “Philadelphia” a movie about a gay man played by Tom Hanks. Springsteen made a song called “Streets of Philadelphia”, specifically for this movie. A bit farfetched? Eh, perhaps, but I’m including it anyway.
So, in this episode Trent, a gay man, is told by Ted’s mum that Ted once went onstage with Bruce Springsteen and that’s the story he needs to confirm straight away. He practically skips towards Ted’s office to ask about it. Why that story? Surely she told him about other things too. And he heard the stories she told the team. But this was the story he was excited to get confirmed. A story about Ted’s connection to an artist that has several queer connections and who can also be connected to something else that is brought up in the episode.
Queen Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Their lead singer was queer.
And I talked about Fat Bottomed Girls and Queen/Freddie/Brian in THIS post. And I talk a little bit about the connection between Ted and Freddie Mercury in THIS post.
Queen has been used a lot throughout “Ted Lasso”, a lot more than I remembered. When I went back to look at the soundtrack for season 1 and 2, I found quite a few Queen songs. I also discovered that two of the trailers for season 2 had Queen songs in the background. “Under Pressure” (which also features David Bowie, another queer artist) and “We Will Rock You”.
Ted talks about having watched Queen at Live Aid on TV when he was younger, in season 2, episode 8 (that episode is called “Man City”, Ted mentions both Queen and Freddie Mercury. Season 3 episode 11 is called “Mom City” and Freddie Mercury is brought up again and a Queen song plays.) “Tear It Up” plays in season 2, episode 2 “We Are the Champions” plays in season 2, episode 9 “Fat Bottomed Girls” are both mentioned and played in season 3, episode 11 And, while not a Queen song, “Fought & Lost” by Sam Ryder featuring Brian May is also played in season 3, episode 11.
But let’s focus on “Fat Bottomed Girls”. Now, I’ve already talked about it in THIS post, that I also linked above. So, I won’t go over all that again. But a little recap, “Fat Bottomed Girls” is linked to “Bicycle Race” which is sometimes seen as a metaphor for being bi. They were both on the same single and they reference each other. The song is brought up by Higgins when he tells Keeley and Rebecca that Freddie, when he briefly owned Richmond in 1980, tried to make that song Richmond’s song but that it didn’t work. Rebecca then brings up that her dad went to art school with Freddie and that according to him if you would have asked Freddie what his greatest talent was, he would have said “flipping straights”.
We’ve already established Ted’s connection to Queen. And we’ve heard Ted refer to himself as straight just a few episodes ago (episode 7, and I’ve already pointed out the connection between episodes 7 and 11, this is another connection) now we get to hear Rebecca say that Freddie Mercury’s biggest talent was “flipping straights”. Ted is, as far as I know, and I’ve checked, the only person who refers to himself as straight, in the whole show. Not a single other character does that. Once in the Christmas special, once in season 3, episode 7, that’s two times. Will the rule of three apply here? Will he say that he’s straight a third time or will he subvert expectations or if you will, flip the script and say that he’s something else?
Dolly Parton Trent has worn a Dolly Parton shirt twice. Dolly Parton is a queer icon. In season 3, episode 11 Beard feels the need to call dibs on Dolly’s part in “Islands in the Stream” at karaoke. Implying that Ted perhaps snags that part for himself a lot of the time. Ted then walks away singing “Islands in the Stream”. Yet another queer connection between Trent and Ted via music.
Harry Nilsson/ (Judy Garland) Back to “You’ve got Mail”. The last scene of “You’ve got mail” ends with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meeting up and they kiss while Harry Nilsson’s cover of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” plays in the background. We’re shown that scene, not just by witnessing the characters watching it, but by it filling our own screen for a while. “Somewhere over the Rainbow” is of course from “The Wizard of Oz” originally, sung by Judy Garland. A queer icon. The connection to “The Wizard of Oz” and Ted Lasso has been brought up before. But in this episode, it’s very front and centre. Ted is standing at “The Wizard of Oz” pinball machine, staring at the spinning house. And of course, Ted’s connection to Kansas is always there. And it’s brought up in a very important way this episode, with his mother more or less telling him he should go home to Kansas.
So, we have a well-established connection between Ted and Kansas and “The Wizard of Oz”. Let’s talk more about Judy Garland, Dorothy, the original singer of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. As I mentioned above, Judy Garland was and is a queer icon. And “The Wizard of Oz” was and is a big part of the queer community. Then we have the “Friend of Dorothy” euphemism, a way to recognise other queer people, and it’s strongly associated with Judy Garland’s Dorothy. In episode 11 we are introduced to Ted’s mother, Dottie, which is a nickname/shortening of Dorothy. Another very clear queer connection to Ted.
And let us also look at James Lance who has said that there is a story arc for Trent’s shirts. And he wore a t-shirt with Dorothy’s ruby slippers to an event that is connected to Ted Lasso. And when asked why he was wearing that shirt, why he chose to honour Dorothy. It feels like he’s deflecting when he says “Well, every good character’s got to have a good pair of shoes, right. And these are surely, surely,the best pair of shoes in showbiz. So, you know, they get their own t-shirt. There aren’t many shoes to do that.” That’s suspicious. And we now know that James has had a lot of input into Trent’s costume, with him suggesting things and getting a thumbs up a lot of the time. He clearly thinks that clothes are important and can send a message. And he chose to wear a Dorothy shirt to a red carpet. When we now know that the eleventh episode of season three had several heavy references to “The Wizard of Oz”.
And to go back to Harry Nilsson. A song sung by him was on the soundtrack for Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, a queer movie. (And let’s remember that Trent himself said that Dustin Hoffman would probably play him in a movie).
Honourable mention
Mumford & Sons/Marcus Mumford
Why would I add Mumford & Sons and Marcus Mumford? Because Marcus Mumford made the theme song to Ted Lasso and the instrumental songs for the soundtrack, they’ve also used both Mumford & Sons and Marcus Mumford songs in the show. And the band have a connection to Jason Sudeikis. He was in the official music video for Mumford & Sons’ song “Hopeless Wanderer”, inthat video he clearly plays a version of Marcus, and he kisses another man in it. I think that deserves an honourable mention.
So, to sum it all up, there is queer subtext in the music and the artists that they mention and play in Ted Lasso, and these are just the ones that I personally can connect to Ted (and Ted/Trent). I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but I feel like there is way too much to just be a coincidence. To borrow part of Trent’s line “Through thousands of imperceptible moments, all leading to their inevitable conclusion.” Number four, that doesn’t even matter (but it actually does), LOVE. Queer love.
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