Senior English major on a Shakespeare final. (via minininny)
WELL THEY’RE NOT WRONG
——
How about this, though?
[Editorial Note: This “theory” depends on believing the Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet take place contemporaneously. So, for the sake of argument, let’s all agree that the events of both plays occur in the Spring of 1517 (chosen because of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, and the Reformational threads that run through Hamlet).]
See, in the Second Quarto and First Folio versions of Romeo and Juliet, a[n extremely minor] character appears with Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio at the Capulet’s Party (where, if you recall, Romeo meets Juliet for the first time).
Like Hamlet’s Horatio, this Horatio is full of well-worded philosophical advice. He tells Romeo “And to sink in it should you burden love, too great oppression for a tender thing.”
Let’s imagine that Horatio has travelled down from Wittenberg (about 540 miles) to Verona for his Spring Break. He hears about some guys who like to party (because, let’s be honest, besides getting stabbed, partying is Mercutio’s main thing). So, he ends up crashing the Capulet’s ball with them.
He is then on the sidelines as Romeo and Juliet fall in love, Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, Romeo gets banished, and both lovers are found dead in Juliet’s tomb.
This tragedy fresh in his mind, he returns to Wittenberg at the end of what has turned out to be a decidedly un-radical Spring Break and discovers that his bestie Prince Hamlet is leaving for Elsinore Castle because he’s just gotten news that his father, the King, is dead.
On the trip up (another ~375 miles), Horatio recounts the tragic romance he just witnessed in Verona. He advises (as he is wont to do) Hamlet not to mix love and revenge.
Hamlet takes Horatio’s advice to heart, breaking up with Ophelia so that he can focus is energy on discovering and punishing his father’s killer:
HAMLET Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.
Ophelia – burdened by the perceived loss of Hamlet’s love and his murder of her father – goes mad and drowns herself.
You see, if Romeo had waited literally a minute and thirty seconds longer (31 iambic pentametrical lines) – he, Juliet, Ophelia (and possibly the rest of the Hamlet characters) would have made it.
so evidently normal guns exist in star wars (called “slugthrowers” because of course) and they’re apparently super broken and extremely useful because they go right through shields designed to deflect energy weapons and if a jedi tries to deflect them with a lightsaber the bullet just melts and turns in to an equally lethal spray of molten metal
imagine you’re the most badass sith in the universe and Some Dude With A Handgun challenges you and you’re just like “heh… primitive weapons… bring it on” and he shoots you and you suddenly get splattered with a shower of molten metal and you fucking Die
1. Jumping on the grenade. Steve diving on the grenade is the moment where you see that he doesn’t even need the serum to be Captain America – this guy is 100% hero, pint-sized or not. He doesn’t want to be a soldier for glory, or out of bloodthirst. He genuinely believes he has a duty to lay down his own life to save others, and reacts accordingly without any hesitation. This is honestly the moment I fell in love with this goober.
2. On va voir. Not only does this moment tell us Steve speaks French – and I love to headcanon that he picked up a whole smattering of European languages while fighting, but the spiky sex hair and the glower and everything just…. unf. (Look, I had to have at least one gratuitous sexy!Steve item in here.)
3. The Triskelion Speech. This is such a poignant and quintessentially Steve scene. He believes every word, and genuinely believes people will step up, but he is also fully aware of what he’s asking them for and the cost. He doesn’t do it lightly. And it’s Cap’s strength that in believing the best of people, he’s able to inspire people to bravery and courage, and bring it out in others – even when situations are at their most dire.
4. The elevator scene. The flipside of Steve believing in people so much, is that sometimes, they let him down. The moments leading up to this fight, when we see Steve assessing and realizing something isn’t right are great. We see how quick Steve is to detect the signs, put the pieces together, and realize what’s going on. His awareness and his ability to size up a situation are on display here – and then, it isn’t shock or rage on his face. It’s disappointment. But he grits his teeth and he deals with it and kicks ass – not because he enjoys it, but because that’s what he’s gotta do.
5. “I can do this all day.” The way it reiterates, over and over, kills me. Because if there’s one thing Steve does, it’s endure. Even when he’s getting his ass kicked, even when he’s down and out, even when his heart is breaking, Steve gets back up and keeps fighting. He always keeps fighting.
Honorary mention #1: Steve’s ridiculously extra fighting style, featuing, THROWING A FUCKING MOTORCYCLE, dropkicking the shield with a 6 foot high horizontal plank, pirouetting for days, JUMPING FROM GREAT HEIGHTS WITH NO PARACHUTE, STEVE, and generally doing shit that would give Evel Knievel a heart attack. Steve is so reserved and serious so often, that the sheer absurd extra-ness of his fighting style is absolutely hilarious to me.
Honorary mention #2: The friggin’ flagpole scene. STEVE IS A SMART LIL’ COOKIE. He thinks outside the box, problem solves, and isn’t dependent on his strength. Steve might have brawn, but he didn’t always, and he got by for most of his life on his wits alone.
And now, Comics!Steve:
1. You Always Stand Up. This might be a Sarah Rogers line, but it’s Steve’s ethos through and through, and such a heartbreaking moment that tells us everything we need to know about how Steve became the man he is.
2. “No, you move.” It’s iconic for a reason. This speech gives me chills and always will. Steve is accused of being stubborn, and he is, but not without reason. Steve isn’t stubborn for petulance or ego; Steve digs in his heels and squares off when it’s the important things – like the soul of a nation – on the line.
3. Those pages from Loose Nuke. Specifically, the exchange Steve has, where he talks about how his own parents were immigrants. They are particularly relevant in today’s climate. Steve isn’t here for discrimination, and he isn’t here for warmongering. “Isn’t that why we became soldiers? To fight for a peaceful world?”
4. That time Steve found an entire family squatting in his apartment and was totally chill about it and not only didn’t call the cops – he let them stay and helped them out. (Please read this whole post! It’s magical.)
5. That time Steve punched Nationalism right the fuck out. I hate when people assume, because of the name and the colors, that Cap is some hyper-patriotic jingoistic blowhard. Because nothing could be further from who he actually is. Steve will put America’s people and ideals ahead of her government and iconography every time.
Honorary mention: The newest issue of the Waid & Samnee run, because this is my Cap and he’s back:
I know this went way beyond one favorite, but… I just REALLY LOVE STEVE, YOU GUYS.
What a great question! Thanks for asking me; I’ve been thinking about it for some days, and I also asked some of my fan friends from way back to get their memories on the subject.
When I returned to fandom after 25 years and started reading modern fan fic on AO3, I noticed how much the Tarsus tragedy is infused into Jim’s being, his character. It’s my memory, and my friends concur, that this came up in an occasional story back in the 70s, but it was not much written about nor did it shape Jim’s character the way it often does now.
I’ve been puzzling over this difference in how fandom, 40 years apart, views this incident so differently. The best I can come up with is that society’s attitudes and understanding have changed dramatically in the intervening years.
In the 70s we, as a society, were so much less informed and aware of how trauma can affect a person’s psyche. That shows in how badly Vietnam veterans were treated: they were generally considered to be “malingering” when they came home with PTSD (which was not a term we had in our vocabulary yet). They were criticized and marginalized, because society then thought it unmanly to be so affected by trauma. A sad and shameful part of our history.
I find it very interesting to read the newer fiction and see how a younger generation allows Jim to be human, not just some outdated ideal of a “real man.” I like how he is treated with more tenderness. I know it does not appeal to everyone of my generation, but I like it. And I love that younger people still care enough about Jim and his cohorts to want to write new fan fic, giving a new understanding of these characters, one that is true to their (your?) own worldview and experience.
why does anyone in Gotham even bother doing crime like you KNOW the second you leave the bank with the money you just stole Bruce Wayne is gonna be chilling on a bench on the other side of the street in his bat fursuit like “hey bitch u better not be breaking the law”
because batman never bothered attacking the roots of social problems
you know what… you’re right call him out!!
Wayne Enterprises has a jobs program for those who are fresh out of prison.
He routinely takes major villains with mental health issues to an asylum where professionals are there to help.
Or do you just read the fight scenes?
Because
Batman
Never
Bothered
Attacking
The
Roots
Of
Social
Problems
WHAT THE HELL KIND OF BATMAN HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING?
Fake geeks, I swear to god…
The best part is that most of the lore, especially Batman: The Animated Series, gets to a point in Batman’s career when everyone asks the question of why someone would rob a bank in Gotham when they know that if they approached Batman, and coincidentally Bruce Wayne, they could get the help they needed.
That’s the whole point of Batman. Granted there have been modernized adaptations that paint him out to be nothing more than a growling, punching, antihero. But nobody ever said those adaptations were canon or even good. The original Batman comics, most of the newer comics, the Animated Series, the animated spinoffs, even the Arkham video games all operate under the lore that Batman does everything within his power to help as many villains as he can, even if it means going against cops, politicians, etc. That’s what originally made him the vigilante. He went against the social norms. He did everything that a hero shouldn’t do, not in a murderous way, but in a taking-sides way. Every other hero swoops in to save the corrupt politician from the criminal. Batman swoops in to save the criminal from the corrupt politician.
At San Diego Comic Con, we learned that Sonequa Martin-Green’s character, Michael
Burnham, is Sarek’s adoptive daughter. The second I heard the news, all I could
think was, “Let the hate begin.” And boy, did it ever.
I understand the disappointment,
particularly with fan fic writers who invested a lot of time and effort into
crafting stories that fit neatly into canon. Amazing how one sound bite can
bulldoze right through decades of widely accepted fanon, huh?
Let’s be real, those little behind the
scenes moments are almost the entire point of fan fiction: some of us like
something so much, we like to imagine all the things the writers didn’t tell us, but now Michael
Burnham has come along like a square peg in a round hole, rendering countless
stories AU that previously adhered perfectly to canon. Some of mine included.
But fanon isn’t canon. One might say,
“How come we’re just hearing about this now?”
Surely Spock would have mentioned having an adoptive sister? But would he? Would he though?
No one had any idea he was engaged to
T’Pring until the Enterprise showed
up to Vulcan on Spock’s impromptu wedding day in the TOS episode, “Amok Time.” What was it he said when Lieutenant Uhura
asked who the lovely woman on the viewscreen was?
If you watch closely enough and get
creative with your interpretation, I swear Christine Chapel mouths the word,
“bullshit.”
And no one knew that Spock had a
strained relationship with his father until that time dear old Sarek hopped on Enterprise for the Coridan admission
debate in the TOS episode, “Journey
to Babel.” Kirk urged Spock to go down to the planet and visit his family
before they left orbit, and what was Spock’s reply?
I can’t think of a better example of
where Spock made Kirk look like a total asshole.
And then there’s the fact that Kirk had
known Spock for decades before
finding out he had a half-brother named Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
You would think Kirk would be used to Spock family bombshells by now.
So if anything, the idea that Spock had
a secret adoptive sister actually feels more
in keeping with canon than going against it. Given the weight of the evidence,
I wouldn’t be all that shocked to discover he had three step mothers and a whole nest of secret love
children drifting around out there.
The other thing is, as viewers, we tend
to get into the habit of thinking that if a character doesn’t specifically
address something on screen in front of other characters, other characters are
in the dark along with the viewers. Like if a character didn’t explicitly announce some detail about their personal life to the world, not only did it never happen, it never could have happened. And that’s just silly. Think about this: Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew spent
five years together on that mission, and we only got to view a little less than
66 hours of it. So imagine all the conversations in the mess hall we as viewers
missed out on. Not only that, many of those details would be fairly trivial anyway.
Going back and adding to canon is not the same thing as destroying
canon. Star Trek, particularly The Original Series, was always more
focused on exploring the galaxy and meeting new civilizations – its primary purpose wasn’t to flesh out complicated life stories for each of the main
characters. When you think about it, there’s so much we don’t know about Sarek, Amanda, or Spock’s upbringing.
Almost everything we do know about
this family comes from two episodes – “Journey to Babel” in The Original Series and “Yesteryear” in The Animated Series.
I think because we spent more than five
decades without any concrete ideas of how Sarek and Amanda met, what Spock’s
formative years were really like, or how their family dynamics worked, we just
filled in the blanks for ourselves. But fifty years is a long time for the lines between canon and fanon to start getting blurred.
So I’m actually tickled pink at the
thought that Spock had an adoptive sister, not furious that they’re corrupting
more than fifty years of canon. It would be tampering with canon to claim that Starship
Troopers is actually some kind of prequel to Kirk and the starship Enterprise. That would be destroying canon, but writing in a sister for Spock where one previously didn’t exist isn’t quite the same thing.
Would you like to know more?
The writers of the show are just doing
what we as fan fic writers do all the time – filling in the gaps. You’re
definitely allowed to feel however you want to feel about it. And I do understand a lot of the dismay and shock. It really sucks to pour your
heart and soul into something, polishing it for months or even years until it’s
perfect, and then have Michael Burnham thrown into the mix and it almost feels like a bad Photoshop
job over your favorite family portrait, ruining your origins fics for Sarek/Amanda or Spuhura or
Spirk or Spones or Spotty? (Is that actually what the Spock/Scotty ship is
called?). It’s perfectly acceptable to say
that Michael Burnham’s existence has ruined your perception of canon, but I don’t think it should be confused with
ruining actual canon.
During the Comic Con panel, producer Alex Kurtzman insisted they have a good canon explanation for why Spock never mentions Michael. He was quoted as saying, “We’re aware [of the situation]. You’ll see where it’s going, but we are staying consistent with canon.” So I’m inclined to keep an open mind and see where they take it before dismissing it outright for being “too ludicrous.” Weirder things have actually happened within the Trek universe, so try not to let this revelation get you down.
Considering the fact that Spock’s family has to be literally in the same room as him before he even mentions they existent, having adopted sibs he just never talked about is the most canon compliant thing they could have possibly added.
The thing about Persuasion that just kills me is that the central premise— “I hope the person who broke my heart has a miserable life and I get to watch them be humiliated while I get everything I ever wanted” is so universal.
But Wentworth is only able to fully enjoy it for like A DAY before he starts realizing how terrible it is. He watches Anne suffer in silence and he hates it. He watches her being treated like an inconvenience and a joke and a piece of furniture and he hates it. He hears sneering comments at her expense and he hates it. He spends evening after evening in her company, where he is celebrated as a handsome, dashing hero while she is shoved to the side and ignored and he hates it.
He probably spent a lot of heartbroken hours out on the sea wishing revenge on her (like ten years’ worth), but then he gets to see it happening and revenge turns out not to be that sweet after all. He probably thought “I hope she never gets married to anyone else and she has to spend the rest of her miserable life with her miserable family, listening to them talk about nothing and regretting ever letting me go.” But then he has to watch her live through it, and it is just excruciating. Watching her bite her tongue. Watching her keep her eyes down on her clasped hands. Watching her silently accept everything as if she deserves it.
He’s like, “YES, it’s all HAPPENING! She’s all ALONE and PALE and OLD and…sad. And her family treats her terribly, and she’s— no one is talking to her. No one even knows that she’s funny and smart, they just— they just make her sit in the corner. She’s hardly eating anything. And she really isn’t that old, but they are acting like she’s dead? Her family is even worse than they used to be, how is that even possible? Why isn’t anyone helping her? Why is she the only person taking care of anyone? Why isn’t anyone taking care of her?”
And his nasty “she’s so altered I should not have known her again” comment that he KNOWS got back to her starts ringing in his ears. And his cocky “yeah I’m just here to find a YOUNG, HOT girl to marry now that I’m SUCH A CATCH, whatevs” approach starts to make him feel queasy, because she’s HELPING, she’s trying to stay out of his way and help him pick a young wife, and she hardly ever smiles anymore, not really. He watches her slip out of rooms when he enters them and he hears her laughing with her nephew sometimes but then go quiet when anyone else approaches, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Anyway, every fandom has a bunch of Pride and Prejudice AUs, but I WANT PERSUASION AUS. I NEED THEM. I NEED THEM.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am
too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself
to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke
it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner
than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but
you.
As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.“ He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot–although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF–and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)
I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship–barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real–and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work–to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well).
What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.
I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not–and I know how snobbish this sounds–particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”–there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome–it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago.
But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)
Steel Phoenix Studios 