Anonymous asked: MORAN I WATCHED WONDER WOMAN TODAY AND IT MADE ME CRY IN THEATERS! I said "fuck me up diana" so many times. And Charlie was one of my favorite characters out of their little outfit. (Besides Steve) Which story do you think is the most tragic out of theirs?
MY DUDE I’M A HARD BITCH, HEART OF STONE, THE WHOLE NINE YARDS, AND I CRIED LIKE MULTIPLE TIMES. I COULD WATCH DIANA JUST FUCKING WRECK PEOPLE ALL DAY EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR.
And….mmmm, that’s a good question. On like a strictly impulsive level, I’m going to say Diana, actually, just because…the loss of that innocence, the loss of that belief that humanity has the potential to be intrisically, truthfully Good, is a tragedy on a fairly legendary level. Like, the world is lesser.
That being said…I’m going to say Sameer. The Chief, as he points out so articulately, has lost a great deal on a cultural level (I was so pleased that they actually addressed that), but he knows everyone. I loved the shot of him wrapping his arm around the German kid at the end, treating the Germans with the same familiar affection that he gives to the Allies. Charlie, we don’t learn a whole lot about, but clearly he starts the movie with very few people to his name–he actually comes out of this whole thing with two new friends and a goddess buddy and also Etta who I think would be highly entertaining and very good for him.
But Sameer…Sameer is clearly close to Steve far more than the others, and more to the point he’s not going to be…super well accepted by the Allied forces. As he says, he’s the wrong color–the Allies just fought against the Ottoman Empire, and Sammy would be easily mistaken for an old enemy. He doesn’t have people outside this weird motley little gang, and Steve was his friend, Sameer is always the first one to shout for Steve, to start running after him, to WORRY. So anyway. Give me all the fic of Sameer and Steve being old friends and Sameer and Diana sitting quietly together as Sammy drinks and Diana listens to all his old stories about Steve that no one else is really in a place to hear. But Diana craves that knowledge, needs to know more about Steve in a way that scares her, and Sammy needs to talk, about his friend who died a hero and who no one will ever remember except for this woman, this goddess who’s sitting on the floor with him with tears clinging to her eyelashes, and if he tells her everything, every detail, and Diana lives on with Steve’s memory in her heart then maybe he won’t quite be dead.
(Original game started by the puckurt comm mods here)
OMG THIS SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF FUN
hey, anybody want to play this game? I would say anything goes, but….I have an inbox full of star wars asks from the last time I did a meme, and, like, science fiction has waned in my heart* while historical fiction is waxing, so: black sails, borgias, pirates of the caribbean, or any other historical drama you’ve seen me mention and want to toss my way for the sake of surprise?
Anonymous asked: Have you read Robin Mckinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood? And if so what where your thoughts?
MY BUDDY.
I HAVE.
Right so I think I’ve mentioned my overwhelming obsession with Robin McKinley’s writing once or twice. And I love Outlaws of Sherwood! This is a Good Ask!
All right, so for those of you who haven’t read the Outlaws of Sherwood and don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s Robin Hood. The basic premise is that Robin accidentally kills someone of a higher status than him and, in the process of hiding him from the Sheriff’s men, his best friends Much (the son of a miller) and Marian (the daughter of a Saxon nobleman) convince him that someone has to take a stand against the regime. As such, people who are being taxed to death or who have had their homes taken leave with him and hide out in Sherwood Forest. As the plot progresses, their gang grows, and the standard robbing-of-rich-feeding-of-poor proceeds, Guy of Gisborne shows up, and so it goes.
The major difference between this and most Robin Hood interpretations is that (*gasp*) Maid Marian has a real personality! She’s a fucking firecracker! She’s an expert markswoman–Marian is the legendary archer of the Outlaws, and goes to contests in a green hood under Robin’s name. Marian is a tactician and a fighter and a woodsman AND she teaches all the men how to sew a goddamn shirt. MARIAN IS THE TOTAL PACKAGE. She and Robin bicker all the time and she nips it right in the bud when he gets stupid and overprotective and there’s this stunning scene where Marian and Robin are sitting together under a tree and Marian falls asleep on him and Robin just like “my arm is going numb and there’s a tree root digging into my hip but if I sat here for the rest of my life I would be happy, I want to marry this woman under any circumstances if she’d take me.” And honestly same. Anyway. I digress.
All right, so here’s My Thoughts about Outlaws of Sherwood, and they can basically be summed up as “what a good” but also as “this is such a good way to balance the realistic and the hopeful in this story.” Because like, okay, Robin Hood is a popular story to retell, but, especially in more recent versions, they get really…determined to be ‘realistic,’ which turns into some pretty profoundly grim stuff. BBC did a Robin Hood show a while back and I passionately hated it–Robin was a womanizing nobleman who treated his manservant Much very poorly, Marian had a REAL WEIRD love triangle with Robin, who was kind of a dick, and Guy of Gisborne, who was a presumptuous pushy pseudo-rapist, and the Merry Men were a nominal saving grace until Marian was murdered at the end of the first season. At that point, I just fucking bailed and googled how it ended–spoiler, it ends with Robin, after a fuckbuddies relationship with a villain, being poisoned and dying while Nottingham burns. And here’s why I had an issue with that: Robin Hood, most basically, is the product of a society that was just dead exhausted by the Crusades and the class division between the Normans and the Saxons and the general state of the world that they went “What if someone had the option to not be us” and it was a thing of HOPE. The idea of Robin as a chivalrous outlaw and Much as a loyal friend and Marian as a charming maiden just rebellious enough to ally herself with someone outside the law started as a story about hope. A story about the potential to do something to save the people being crushed under the weight of a nobility that didn’t give a good goddamn about them. A story about the idea that someone might care about them.
BBC’s asshole Robin and indecisive (and fridged) Marian and browbeaten Merry Men aren’t loyal to that idea. Nottingham being burned to the ground as Robin dies just says “rebellion is pointless and the little people will always be victims of the system no matter what anyone does.”
B U T. You know what is loyal to that idea, that core of hope? OUTLAWS OF SHERWOOD. Robin is the cynic, here, the pragmatic influence to Much’s ready optimism and Marian’s fire-bright idealism, but even Robin…he loves his people, even if he doesn’t love the dream. He would rather live to fight tomorrow than die a martyr, but when a young man in ridiculous red clothes shows up lost and alone in Sherwood Forest, Robin can’t help but care about him. Much is a devoted friend, not just to Robin but to all the Outlaws, and the one whose idealism bears up under the worst the world has to throw at it. Marian is proud and fierce and the one who turns dreams and love into real action.
You wanna know why Outlaws is my favorite Robin Hood retelling? Because it walks the line between honesty (life as an outlaw sucks! they’re hungry and cold and they’re horribly wounded in the last battle against Gisborne! Robin is scared and/or exasperated 99% of the time and the other 1% is pretty much that one scene with Marian!) and joy. Outlaws loves its characters and its story and its hopes and its dreams, genuinely enjoys the hell out of itself, and that means that it feels like Robin Hood. I don’t like stories tangled up in their own shadows and darknesses, I like stories that can balance the darkness with some light. And that’s what Outlaws of Sherwood feels like. It feels like a forest–the shadows are deep and green and frightening, and the sunlight is so, so bright.
Listen, us tiny folks are only small because our spectacular-ness is condensed and distilled down into its purest essence. Compliment your boyf on the purity of his awesomeness.
my favorite part of hamlet is at the beginning when they see the ghost of hamlet sr for the first time
and the guards are like “Horatio, you go talk to it! You went to college!”
and Horatio is like “Yeah! I did go to college! I will go talk to the ghost!”
like. where did horatio go to college. did he go to ghost college
YES, ACTUALLYYES HE FUCKING DIDBC
(a) EVERY COLLEGE THEN WAS GHOST COLLEGE bc ghosts were widely believed to be Real™ n thus scholars learnt abt them. moreover, as everybody knows, ghosts only communicate in Latin; Latin is the scholastic language. Horatio is a scholar, thus both knows abt ghosts and knows Latin, so it is very reasonable to assume he will b able to ask this one what up (as obviously sth must b up 4 it 2b wandering around, why else wld it b here, gawd, this is like. the most basic of basic-level shit)
(B) WITTENBERG WHERE HORATIO STUDIES WAS LIKE. T H E MOST SPOOPYOF GHOST COLLEGES bc they were alllllll about theology n the supernatural n shit so SUPPOSING HORATIO WILL KNO HIS SHIT ABT GHOSTS IS IN FACT A THOROUGHLY SENSIBLE ASSUMPTION
this has been said before but i am fucking adding it again bc it HACKS ME TF OFF when ppl reblog the post w/o commentary as if OP jsut fucking checkmated Shakespeare when in fact all they managed to do was fail at the most basic historical contextualisation of this scene n make a fcuking fool of emselves lmao
this feels less like a “checkmate, Shakespeare” moment than a “fuck was this dude on, this shit’s surreal” moment
personally I kinda love the complete effect of “thing that made sense when originally written appears hilarious/fascinating/weird as balls to people who don’t have that context, and then context is made known to them and it’s like a whole new level of supercool”
it’s like the circle of life for shakespeare plays. “lol have the college guy talk to the ghost because as a college guy he has the necessary experience” transmutes into “every college was ghost college in shakespeare’s time” and the whole effect is awesome.
just gonna add a bunch of things here bc i love this moment in the play actually and it’s really interesting! because shakespeare was p smart.
marcellus and bernardo have seen the ghost before but they go to horatio with this information before they go to, say, anyone who actually fucking lives there
given hamlet’s reaction to horatio showing up in the next scene we can be pretty sure that no one knew horatio was even coming to elsinore (unless maybe claudius and gertrude invited him without telling hamlet and the soldiers got to him before they could work on him like ros&guil, but a) that’s a stretch and b) horatio’s relationship with the family outside of hamlet is seriously up for debate and a big question to answer for that role)
so like… how did m&b even find horatio to tell him about the ghost and why was it him they told? clearly they want to get validation before going to someone Important but the circumstances of this arrangement are RULL WEIRD
(the ‘you went to ghost college’ line isn’t just about horatio being able to speak to the ghost bc he’s been to ghost college, it’s about having a SCHOLAR validate what they saw, so when they go to someone with power to do something about it they can push horatio to the front and say ‘the learned rich guy thinks there’s a ghost too please actually listen to us’)
when they DO go to tell hamlet it’s basically just a bff reunion + btw ghost so clearly they did some strategizing after this scene as to how best to broach that topic (it’s horatio that says ‘it’ll probably speak to hamlet’ but if it had been someone different would they have thought ‘it’ll probably speak to gertrude’? that they go to hamlet with it is BECAUSE horatio is there so like… again i come back to how did they find him)
PEOPLE P MUCH ALWAYS CUT THESE LINES BUT BOTH THE SOLDIERS AND HORATIO ASSUME THE GHOST IS THERE BECAUSE OF THE WAR WITH NORWAY, NOT BECAUSE OF ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIS DEATH– it would’ve been a HELLA PLOT TWIST when he started talking about murder in 1.5
wittenberg was also famously associated with dr. faustus and martin luther, which the audience at the time would have known, which is part of why it was the most spoopy
we don’t know horatio went to wittenberg at this point. like we the reader know, we the people putting on this play know, but we the audience don’t know. it’s actually a cool ‘aha’ moment in the next scene when claudius brings up wittenberg and you’re like AH YES, GHOST COLLEGE
we also have no idea what horatio and hamlet’s relationship is like so when horatio shows up in the next scene and hamlet goes from ‘i hate everyone’ to ‘OMG UR HEEEEEEEEEERE’ with this dude we only know as ‘new in town’ and ‘intellectual’ we know that hamlet will believe him about the ghost and that (because we’ve already been over how he’s level headed and smart) he’ll be there to help us out with our lead who’s not quite all there which is a p cool setup by billy
why is the ghost just like wandering the battlements? it’s pretty heavily implied he won’t speak to anyone but hamlet so why doesn’t he just go to him? the haunting rules for the ghost are all over the place and again that’s like a serious conversation you have to have with the actor, what the heck is he doing here
TBH THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THIS SCENE, THAT A LOT OF LIKE SUPER ESTABLISHED SCHOLARS AND DIRECTORS STRAIGHT UP FORGET: this scene is here at least partially to establish that the ghost is objectively there. there is some sort of fragment of spirit wandering the battlements that looks like the dead king and it wants something. it only TALKS to hamlet, and when it shows up later gertrude can’t see it, but the first thing we learn in this play is THERE IS A GHOST. shakespeare takes great care to make sure we know we can trust our eyes with it. our ears perhaps not, but the play is not from hamlet’s pov. we start with marcellus and bernardo, and grounded loyal horatio, saying ‘what the fuck what is this ghost doing here’. the mystical bit isn’t what’s up for debate
also ‘thou’rt a scholar, speak to it horatio’ is fucking hilarious and no one ever plays it as a joke
like why isn’t this ALWAYS staged as marcellus and bernardo hiding behind horatio and pushing him at the ghost and him going ?!!!?!?!?!?!? i just got here and you have swords what the fuck is wrong with you
