#particularly I'd say feste & malvolio

[fluentisonus]

thinking about how fucked up it is how isolated olivia is in twelfth night. like she has all these people in her household around her all the time & none of them are actually very interested in her or her wellbeing outside of their own self interest at all. sir toby's abusing her hospitality, sir andrew's trying to marry her, maria's perfectly happy to use their connection to play a prank that ruins the functionality of the household, malvolio's deluding himself into thinking that she loves him & fantasizing what he'd do with her status, feste's inherently unreliable, and all of this is happening while she's trying to mourn her brother's death. like she has absolutely no emotional intimacy with anyone & no one to turn to & it's crushing

#hh. obviously all of these characters are complex in their own right & have their own things going on but the way they are to her it so. h #particularly I'd say feste & malvolio #like malvolio has not really done anything wrong here but I think it must be so so crushing for her to realize that this person she's felt #like she could rely on even when she couldn't anybody else is like. into her in the same way all these guys (orsino sir andrew etc) are #like even tho he hasn't done anything wrong can you really feel normally w him again y'know? esp if he's like I tend to read him an older #guy who she sees as almost sort of familial in his reliability. idk idk #thoughts #twelfth night