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faeriescorpio · 2 years

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10

what song makes you feel better?

Song that makes me feel better. I think Touch Tone Telephone by Lemon Demon is up there. I can't drive without blasting this song because I have a lot of fear about driving and blasting this song makes me happy. When I'm not listening to melodramatic and emo alternative songs I'm blasting (checks spotify wrapped with tears in my eyes) ...bubblegum pop. I mocked that genre last year but apparently that's what I listen to. Like. Um. Classic by MKTO. look its very bouncy and also it kinda sounds like Wilbur Soot's Your New Boyfriend and I will not elaborate

2. what’s your feel-good movie?

Ooh I've got a few comfort movies. I constantly talk about how I love bad movies, and it really shows. I usually watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, National Treasure, Star Trek: Into Darkness, or Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation when I wants a comfort movie, whether im in an adventure mood, or action mood, or gentle angst mood

3. what’s your favorite candle scent?

I have this cinnamon scent that I adore, but I've been informed that it smells like soap. I think they're lying but whatever. i don't actually know what else is in there besides cinnamon, because I bought it at a witch store and the label just says "Scorpio" and it doesn't list ingredients or anything

4. what flower would you like to be given?

I said roses but I'm always ready to go into detail. I have these kind of pink-red roses in my backyard and I adore them, and I have some white roses but those are more susceptible to the mildew/mold so I never get to show them off. I give my friends yellow roses sometimes because those are supposed to mean friendship. supposedly they also mean jealousy but what my friends dont know about flower symbolism cant hurt them so if I'm giving my crush's boyfriend a yellow rose because "youre part of the friend group now" who's to say anything? who's gonna know. whos gonna know. i love to dick around with flower meanings and not explain anything to my friends

5. who do you feel most you around?

my best friend, easily. we've known each other for 11 years, and younger me had no filter so by the time the concept of Keeping Things To Yourself got into my brain my bestie already knew more about me than I did myself because I forget a lot of stuff, an excellent example of my bestie knowing more about me than me is this fic

alternatively i guess bestie's gf I feel pretty me around too. all those posts about aggressively third-wheeling are no joke. they recently did a two year anniversary thing and they posted photos of themselves and literally over half the photos were either MY house or I was in them but was cropped out for anniversary purposes. I was rolling on the floor cackling over this. like yeah, thats exactly where youre supposed to be >:3 my house

6. say three nice things about yourself (three physical and three non-physical).

I have nice hair, I have nice eyes, I like how tall I am. I like my creativity, my determination, and my loyalty.

7. what color brings you peace?

lavender and blue-greys calm me. also the sea-green color

9. what calms you down?

im not great at calming myself down but if im unhappy about something then I usually watch youtube videos to distract myself. Honestly I try to hype myself up more than calm myself, like make myself giddy with excitement. a great way to do this for me is to watch videos where people react Avengers Endgame in theatres because Thor's hammer will start lifting into the air and the whole movie theatre will scream and for some reason listening to a punch of people cheer hypes me up. i am using my dumb little sensitive empathy as a weapon against myself

10. what’s something you’re excited for?

part two of in space with markiplier! also mission impossible 7 and 8, theyre being filmed back to back. they just finished filming MI 7 and its in post-production and theyve started MI 8. MI 7 was supposed to come out like this summer but its coming out next summer because 1) quarantine and 2) Tom Cruise is delaying production over an argument over how long Mission Impossible 7 should be in theatres before it goes on a streaming service. I've heard rumors that either a character I dont like, or a character who is the fan favorite and my special scrungly may die in MI 7 which is like. are you kidding. not to be rude but i hope the fan favorite survives and its the character i dont care for who dies, and since my character is one of 4 people confirmed for MI 8 I'm in high hopes. (grips Tom Cruise by the shoulders) you wouldnt kill the comedic relief, the fan favorite, right? if you wanna read about me talking about mission impossible for half an hour the i did make a post a few days ago

#using links so i dont ramble too much on my main #look listen to Classic then listen to your new Boyfriend. i promise theres something there

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plunder-heaven-and-devour-god · 5 years

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im gonna go full english lit under the cut

I saw measure for measure??? with my local Shakespeare in the Park about month and a half ago and im mcfucking obsessed with it. So much so that ive tried to find every clip of every film, every show, rehearsal, production, that i can to compare how scenes played out. I even listened to a harvard lecture about it, i’m that far gone. I BOUGHT. A SHIRT. I bought the book with additional notes and discussions because this play is fascinating.

WHY AM I OBSESSED?!

All readings through different lenses are there in full force, fully supported, living side beside with one another. And professors, actors, directors, scholars etc, all seem to congregate on the fact that not one reading is more valid than the other. Theyre so well balanced without ever really given moral answers but merely presented, almost like the Jacobean meaning of the “glass” both a mirror to predict the future and reflect on oneself. And in a post elizabethan age where puritans were outlawing plays and putting stricter holds on licentiousess this play is so close to upsetting the dominant religious force.

And the READINGS! ARE ALL! SO GOOD! There is historicist reading (king James I), Folkloric, Religious, SadoMasochist, Psychosexual, Moral, Feminist, and Capitalistic readings. THEY ALL EXIST SIDE BY SIDE.

And the staging of the play determines how many of these a production can pull together. I think that is why I wanted to see as many scenes are possible.

I think just the way Angelo and Isabella are played will determine which main reading the play tackles.

I’ve seen some versions of the interview scenes that are truly horrific acts of sexual violence that made me watch between my fingers. In this the feminist reading can come into full force, the full underline of Angelo as a sexual predator is made prevalent. And the line “and with an outstretched throat i will tell the world what man thou art, Angelo” being present that strong feminist reading IS ALWAYS THERE. (DID I MENTION I LOVE ISABELLA FLAWS AND ALL). The idea that Isabellas voice is the most crucial device in the play is FLOORING.

The Duke being a nearly godly figure who knows all and manipulates all, Angelo as his emissary becomes like an angel in the process of self corruption, from the inhumane ice he is so dubbed to warmed by the sins he so condemns. And Isabella defending the thing she so hates because it is her brother who commits the sin is the defense of someone who does not truly believe her brother is just. Mercy as justice. To wield power and to use it for mercy is so profound, and she is the only one who carries her ethos through like this to the end ofthe play. I’m not a theologist but so far this is the reading of theologists into the matter.

The version I saw in person he practically throws himself at her feet and it becomes an interplay of the psychosexual and moral. His knees buckle under her touch, it becomes the interaction of repressed sexuality channeled into both law and religion. In the Stratford production Isabella wipes her brow with water out of disgust or heat, no one is sure. it’s left ambivalent. In the one I saw Angelo was made almost comedic and sympathetic, which made ISabellas mercy still feel like an axe coming down upon his head.

And then characters like Barnadine just using comedy, the genre of the gods as the greeks called it, to dimish law, to put it to shame. To put the godly/playwright Duke in his place.

The folkloric bed switch (which is folklore yes but Im not totally comfortable calling it consensual even tho Angelo is a sexual predator you can bring modern sensibilities to the reading), is indicative of oral traditions that predate shakespeare. The idea that every character must do in this play the thing they most loathe to do.

Claudio fears death so he must die, Isabella must have sex to save a life when she has sworn herself to chastity. Then they both sort of hurt each other, Claudio by asking her to yield herself up to this non consensual sexual coercion of upmost grossness, and isabella by telling him to be happy he will die because there is nothing so painful as being alive (ISABELLA HES AN EXPECTING FATHER). He asks her to do the thing she loathes most in a fit of desperation because the man who loves life must die. And Isabella the woman who “would wear these keen whips as rubies” would have have done anything but sex, tells her brother that living isnt worth it. ITS INTENSE. LIKE WOW.

It’s absolutely no surprise that Isabella and Angelo are my favourite characters in the play. This awful sexual coercion (the degree of violence is dependant on staging which is like holy shit WTF), lives side by side with the fact that they are the two only people whose language, diction, beats, and intelligence matches each other. They both have the same fervor for their moral divisions and hierarchies. The idea of strict testing of morals and faith is in the text. Isabella wishes for harsher, more challenging, and harrowing tests of faith. You can argue as to why, I personally think its for the strengthening of faith and connection to the divine. Meanwhile Angelo is the one setting restrictions for hundreds of thousands of vienna, setting those on other people to strengthen the connection to a higher moral fibre, and I think in some respects faith as well but thats my interpretation.

Where others live their vices without restrictions, these two set limits for either themselves and/or others to be something more. They are in the way that motif of the “glass” The mirror. In that sense they reflect each other, but they also become each others foil. Which is why I do think a case can be made for the parallels with the psycho sexual and the SadoMasochist readings. Restraints for rewards, the repression on both their parts is there.

I’m not saying that negates the strong feminist reading or in anyway shape or form validates the absolute horror of the coerced sex/rape. I just say that they exist side by side with each other. They are equals in text/language/fervour AND YET they are not because he holds every power over her and her brother. He wants to restrict others where he cannot restrict himself, and Isabella restricts herself in part because she lives in a Vienna full of vice. She has a control over her own self that he proves not to have. And HE has a control over the world of the play that she cant.

AND YET. SHE IS MARRIED TO THE DUKE. SHE MARRIES INTO PROMINENCE. I don’t love the idea that she does not become a nun, her original want, and is instead coopted by the shitty duke (i am not pro duke sorry). The only upside at the end of the play is that Isabella can, in some measure, have political sway over the masses. Meanwhile Angelos fall and forgiveness put him into a marriage where his vice of coercive sex becomes consummation of a sleeping marriage. IT FEELS LIKE they sort of mirror each other the whole way through the play. ITS WEIRD BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH SEXUAL AND POLITICAL INEQUALITY TO THEM. ITs a play full of contradictions which I LOVE BECAUSE IT IS NOT SIMPLE NOT BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT. I do think there is a case to be made that Isabella unwillingly comes face to face with sexuality, his and hers, and its not on terms she wants, but it happens. And you see her struggling to maintain the authority over her own autonomy. But then she has to contemplate sex for herself, “to give up her boy into saucy sweetness, licentiousness, the filthy vices”. What does ISabella do when she comes face to face with her own sexual needs, whatever she may be? We have productions in the Stratford archives from 50 years ago that make an ambiguous case that the meeting of morality and sex might actually do something for her? I DON’T KNOW. The readings keep coming. There is a possiblity for a strong Ace reading for her which no one really touches on.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

This play has my favourite sexual innuendo. When theyre like “WHAT DID CLAUDIO DO?”

“Her?”

“no! What did he do to get taken away by the provost”

“HIS GIRLFRIEND.”

(god and isnt it nuts that the first man on the scaffold for unlawful fornication IS IN A CONSENSUAL LOVING RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND, A BOND AND CRIME THAT THE LAW (ANGELO) HAVE DEEMED IMMORAL. YET THE LAW (ANGELO) WOULD HAVE IT PARDONNED BY A NON CONSENSUAL SEX FOR EXECUTION PARDON. THE MASK OF MORALITY OF ANGELO. JFC HES SO FUCKED, like hes AWFUL, because he ends up sending claudio to death after he thinks hes had sex with isabella. LIKE WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT ND YET STILL WEARS THE LAW AS HIS MASK AFTER THE ANGEL HAS FALLEN. ITS COMPLEX AND I LOVE IT)

God and just…the sex jokes, the black comedy of barnadine right next to the high shooting morals of angelo, isabella, and mariana (another complex af character. The 1976 version certainly makes a psychosexual explanation out of that, which im not sure i enjoy. Again the psychosexual has its limits in a play about sexual coercion and rape)

AND THE FACT THAT MERCY IS WHAT SETS YOU FREE, LIKE PROSPERO FORGIVING HIS ENEMIES, ISABELLA FORGIVING ANGELO IS A HERCULEAN FEAT, IT FEELS CLOSE TO GODLINESS IDK MAN. AND I UNDERSTAND WHY SHE TELLS HER BROTHER NO I WONT SLEEP WITH HIM FOR YOUR LIFE BECAUSE ITS RAPE, BUT THEN IS LIKE BE GLAD BEING ALIVE IS SHITTY ANYWAYS. Im like? ISABELLA? WHAT?! ISabella does not know about herself that she can be desired because GOD DOES IT TAKE HER A WHILE TO UNDERSTAND ANGELOS MEANING, and yet shes got such a force for words. I find it hard to think being married to the duke that she wont have some power.

And the exchange of Angelo and Isabella in the second interview.

-His moral stance on unlawful fornication starts with abortive language, the harsh restrictions but DEVOLVES INTO THE SEXUAL WITH THE INTELLECTUAL DICTION, It becomes a mirror of himself until he is explicit of what he wants from her. (OH GOD TRULY HE GIVES ME NAUSEOUS AND YET THE ONE IN THE PLAY I SAW HE WAS ENTHRALLING I HATE THE RANGE OF THINGS ANGELO CAN MAKE ME FEEL). His mask of morality is slowly removed

-ISABELLA must argue on behalf of her brother, believing in restrictions of the kid angelo speaks of, they believe in restraining oneself to achieve a higher form of being, and yet has to straight up defend something she hates because she loves her brother. And ANGELO CAN SEE IT. I WISH THERE WAS AN AFTERMATH WHERE WE SEE HER USING HER INTELLECT AND WORDS FOR HER ENDS.

I truly think the second interview scene is one of the best exchanges Billy Shakes wrote. Because it ENDS LIKE THAT. GOD the david tennant one is chilling, the oregon shakespeare festival one is fucked. The 1976 which is the most psychosexual was so intensely disturbing that the Angelo got applause for it. IDK What that means and im too scared to ask. Idk how the RSC managed because youtbe doesnt show me that. The Repurcussion theatre was the most varied array of contradictions for angelo instead of just corrupt judge. It literally is all the shakespeare villains that do the most heinous things that Im like THATS MY FAVE. Iago was just RACISM/Sociopath and fifteen year old me was like YES HIM. I mean Richard III is bad but hes fun. ANGELO AT THE BEST IS A SEXUAL PREDATOR AND YET IM STILL LIKE WOW HOW COMPLEX ALSO THE ACTOR WAS SO GOOD LOOKING AND PLAYING UP THE BDSM BOTTOM ANGLE I WAS GONE.

And the Isabellas go from wilting lily, to some sort of quiet and reserved girl, and the one i saw was literally “she is tiny but fierce” like her voice was really forceful and i thought it was amazing.

THIS PLAY IS FUCKED WHEN IT COMES TO THESE READINGS LIVING SIDE BY SIDE BUT BOY IS THIS INTERESTING.

if you made it this far wow holy shit. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#in which i have a mental breakdown about shakespeare #measure for measure #this is my shame and pride #its a really great play and i wish i was in school to study it academically #but im not so i gotta settle for seeing what harvard english lit says

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