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Elli ~ 32 - quotes, book photography, cozy aesthetic, cats ~ there's like, a lot of Lord of the Rings on this blog ~ follows back from @batmantaking-hobbits2gallifrey

[trans-pickles]

you don't need to write a dark deconstruction of Peter Pan where he's willing to kill people and his state of eternal childhood makes him morally ambiguous, JM Barrie already wrote one and it's called Peter Pan

[trans-pickles]

To clarify, this post isn't about the misconception thrown around by clickbait online listicles that "Peter kills the Lost Boys when they get too old"*. Any real horror that comes from the story, IMO, is about Peter as a VICTIM. His very existence is a tragedy.

Peter, like a lot of mythological fairies and fae folk on which he's based, is stuck in a sort of eternal childhood not just of body, but of mind. While to another child this would obviously be a dream come true it becomes VERY clear over the course of the story that he's deeply suffering under the surface. Peter Pan was written partially as a critique on Victorian and Edwardian ideas about childhood innocence. JM Barrie, when describing some of the fundamental traits of children, calls them gay, innocent, and heartless. Peter being morally grey is text, not subtext.

I'm not saying a more adult-oriented retelling shouldn't exist, I'm a grown-ass man who still loves this very story. But shouldn't it touch on a topic less shallow?

You exist in a state of eternal play. No parents to tell you what to do - or take care of you. You have all the friends you want, until they start to grow up, and you stay the same, no matter what you do, and you don't know why. Finally one day you bring home a "mother" who isn't a grown up, and it's so much fun! It's amazing! But she starts getting scared because she's forgetting things, forgetting the way her own mother looked (her real, grown-up mother, the thing you never had, the thing you hate and want most of all), so she leaves you, and you let her go, because you have to. And maybe she comes back, but every year she's more and more different until suddenly, you don't know her anymore. But that doesn't matter, because she has another little girl, so you can have another mother, so why not start again?

And you do. And thus it will go on. As long as children are gay, and innocent, and heartless.

* That's basically a throwaway line that he tells Wendy as a sort of brag, and imo I think we're supposed to take it with a grain of salt, since Peter is established to be a habitual liar and mis-rememberer of events, especially when he thinks it might make him look cool. The Lost Boys we meet in the original 1911 novel go home with the Darling children and are adopted into the family, something which you might not know if you only saw the Disney movie, so we know they aren't "actually dead and Neverland is heaven" and Peter didn't kill them after the Darlings left. In the official sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet (yes there is a canon sequel, it was written in 2006 by Geraldine McCaughrean after she won a contest put forward by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the owners of the Peter Pan IP, it's amazing and everyone should read it right now) we actually meet some of the OTHER Lost Boys who were banished by peter for "growing up" and are still stuck in Neverland, and they still know Wendy (she comes back every year for the spring cleaning until Peter just... forgets about her). So there's no real evidence that Peter really did kill any of the Lost Boys, and in fact more evidence to the contrary - the closest we see him come to that is when he believes Tootles has accidentally shot and killed Wendy. When it's revealed that Wendy is fine, Tootles is forgiven entirely.

[ellynneversweet]

Darcy, describing his childhood: “…Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child)…”

Unfortunately an only son.

Unfortunately an only son.

UNFORTUNATELY AN ONLY SON.

Darcy, for eleven years: I would like a sibling.

Darcy, for seventeen years: I love my baby sister but I would also like a baby brother…not you, Wickham. Ew.

Eton: this small and ridiculously biddable bit of fresh meat is yours, personally, to take care of. His name’s Bingley.

Darcy:

[lenbryant]

Women in Shakespeare

[orangebitters]

Also like to point out that when her mother says “I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid,” (translation: I had you when I was your age) you have to remember her father’s words: “earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she,” (translation: all the other children died.)  The whole plot point of Juliet being an only child is explained by her mother being a Margaret Beaufort type who had her first child too young and it damaged her past the point of being able to bear more children.

[beatrice-otter]

Margaret Beaufort died in 1509. She was a major player in the Wars of the Roses, the swirling on-again-off-again civil wars that consumed England from 1455-1487. Romeo and Juliet was written and first performed in the early 1590s. Your average English person of Shakespeare’s day would probably have had at least a vague understanding of who she was and what happened to her, because she was a key figure in recent history and was still getting passed around as a cautionary tale.

There are two great problems with what happened to Margaret (and that her parents are trying to do to Juliet). One is easy for modern people to spot (but was also a common response back in her own day). And that’s the moral implications of what was done to her. She was too young to be married, and it was horrifying that she was forced into it so young. Every one of the adults around her either acted immorally or failed to protect her. They were wrong. This is what modern people see, and it’s important to remember that people back in her day mostly agreed with it. You’re supposed to think it’s fucked up! When girls were married that young (and it didn’t happen often!) it was a formality 99% of the time. It was for dynastic or financial reasons (the girl has lots of money and/or land and/or a title that her husband wants), but the “couple” don’t consummate their marriage for years. And it’s not just that they would have separate bedrooms. They might not even live in the same country until the girl was in her late teens and physically and mentally mature enough to bear and raise kids. Hell, a lot of times they didn’t even meet until the girl was older! They had this thing called “proxy marriage” where you would have two separate ceremonies, in two separate places, with each party saying their vows separately, one in one city and the other in a different one. So, yeah, sure, the girl was technically married at 12, but she didn’t actually meet her “husband” in person until she was 17 and they didn’t start sleeping together until she was 20. That was a thing they did.

The other problem, the one that modern people don’t notice, is dynastic. See, marriage wasn’t generally because you loved someone. It was because you had the resources to support a family, and you or your family wanted to pool those resources with someone. It’s about “our family has these resources, and we want that to continue.” It’s about continuity across generations. It’s about making sure that your children and grandchildren have the best possible resources to survive and thrive, whether those resources are land or a trade or a title or money or whatever. In order for this to work, you have to have kids! The family and the family’s resources depend on the married couple having children. If the couple doesn’t have children, the marriage is a failure. And that failure affects not only the couple, but both families. This is a really big problem. And you can’t have just one kid to pass on the family name, because half of all kids die in early childhood. If you want to be safe, you need several kids, to be sure at least one will survive to adulthood (when they can marry and pass on the family name and resources.

You know what happens when a girl has her first pregnancy too young? She is very likely to either die in childbirth, or have complications that destroy her future fertility. Just like Margaret Beaufort. Just like Juliet’s mother. In other words, the marriage is a failure, not just for her, but also for her family, and her husband (who can’t divorce her, it’s not allowed except in extremely rare circumstances), and her husband’s family. So even the people who didn’t have a moral problem with adult men having sex with pubescent girls had a practical problem with girls married too young because you are very likely to destroy the entire purpose of the marriage by doing it. As Shakespeare reminds us in the play through Juliet’s mother having been married too young and only having one child.

Shakespeare is telling us “yeah, this is fucked up. but even if you’re the kind of awful person who doesn’t think girls marrying too young is morally wrong, it’s also a problem for practical and dynastic reasons, don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”

[stalker-among-the-stars]

Interesting

[i-fear-neither-death-nor-pain]

It bears repeating:

don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”

[sarahthecoat]

yes, excellent discussion!

another thing i noticed, the year my local community shakespeare theater did r&j, and i made the costumes so i got to watch the show every night: part of why capulet is telling paris, take your time, get to know each other, no rush, is that he still has his nephew tybalt as his heir. as long as tybalt is in the picture, there is no pressure on juliet to go further with paris, than get acquainted. once tybalt is killed, then suddenly capulet needs an heir, he needs a husband for juliet, now, this week. (the role of capulet is best given to the actor in the company that can do over the top apoplexy, you need to believe his urgency comes at least in part by how clearly he could drop dead any moment from giving himself a stroke)

i feel like this play is often taught in middle schools as if it was somehow relevant to, or about, teen hormone storms. really it's got more to do with the social structures around family and inheritance. leaving that context out makes it confusing, why is capulet suddenly flipping from nice dad to evil dad?

art history matters.

[chesh-cat-rus]

Today I understood why Mr Bingley is important for 'Pride and Prejudice.' Of course I've heard that he's Mr Darcy's foil and he helps us see that Mr Darcy lacks manners. And probably we need him to see a man whose character trait is quickly deciding to leave a place and who might never come back, and who also - I don't know - can easily get under the influence of his friends.

And I have always seen him as a very insignificant side character, and I never understood why there was even a need for him; like why Jane Austen of all people would write such a lacking(?) side character. He is not really a commentary on something. He's just fickle.

And was there even a need for Mr Bingley & Jane's love story? They're basically 'love at first sight, destined for each other' and they look quite out of place among the other three couples -- Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, Lydia and Mr Wickham, Charlotte and Mr Collins -- that are all a commentary on love and society.

Today I understood that had there been no Mr Bingley Jane would've married Mr Collins out of obligation as the eldest sister and that would have been a very different book that didn't feel like such a happy story by the end of it (my Mom calls it a fairy tale), had only one of the sisters (Elizabeth) landed herself a love match.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is an undercurrent to Jane's story that is about her being an angel and that their love with Mr Bingley is a dream that rarely comes true, I don't know. But still, apparently Mr Bingley is not as inconsequential a character as he has always seemed to be.

[taradactyls]

Sorry to highjack your post with an essay, but there's actually a common misconception here that I really want to breakdown.

One of the things that it isn't easy to notice these days is that Jane and Bingley actually are a commentary on love and society in exactly the same way the other couples are. It just isn't as obvious because the expectations and discussion over how people are meant to behave when in love has vastly changed in two-hundred years.

Jane exemplifies a common standard for young gentlewomen of that era: be demure (but never cold), friendly (but not too friendly), reserved about your true emotions (but always pleasing to everyone), appear grateful for every civil interaction a gentleman offers you (but never seeking or desperate for them), etc. She's beautiful, yes, and unfailingly kind, but her 'perfection' for contemporary readers would've gone far beyond that.

Because in many ways, Jane is the perfect gentlewoman. All those impossible virtues of good sense and perfect goodness and eternal gratitude and elegant grace are united in her. And in the Jane and Bingley love story Austen asks the question of how that behaviour, however generally admirable, can function in reality and then explores some of the drawbacks.

We actually see Charlotte allude to this directly in chapter 6. When Lizzy is happy that "Jane united, with great strength of feeling, a composure of temper and a uniform cheerfulness of manner which would guard her from the suspicions of the impertinent," Charlotte famously rebuts:

"It may perhaps be pleasant," replied Charlotte, "to be able to impose on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten a women had better show more affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on."

This exchange isn't just iconic (and, in my opinion, a mark of Austen's genius for all it conveyed), it's a debate about society and its ideals vs the reality in practice. Since society has changed readers tend to see it purely as a commentary on Jane/ justification for why Darcy interpreted her the way he did/ foreshadowing for Charlotte's own choice, but it wasn't only that. It was calling out some downsides to women being perfectly composed at all times when the man they're in love with is a decent guy who cares about things like 'whether his affections are welcomed' and isn't so self-centred as to not have doubts over how someone who doesn't reveal much might actually feel. It's actually a testament to Bingley's character and general concern for others that he doesn't just assume that 'of course she likes me, she's polite and friendly to me,' when doubts are raised. You know who wouldn't have doubts? Arrogant and self-centred people whose priorities aren't others and think only about what they want. Though not directly said in the text, the Jane and Bingley temporary break-up does call into question whether behaving in this admirable way might actually push away the most considerate and thoughtful suitors.

And though I know modern readers are very prone to judging Bingley harshly for not returning quickly to Jane, keep in mind we live over two centuries later in a far more individual-focused society with different values. In the text Lizzy, who we all know has no qualms about being angry at others, ceases to be mad at Bingley almost as soon as she receives Darcy's explanation. He's not condemned by either her or the text for being persuaded that Jane was indifferent to him, and Lizzy actually comes to believe it's understandable.

I think another thing we've lost with the passage of time is just how bad the Bennets could be seen as. While Mr Bennet lives they're rich, top 0.2% rich for England in that era, and yet the daughters will have next to nothing for their class/upbringing and weren't taught many of the housekeeping/economic skills they'd need for a realistic future. I've talked more in depth about what they should have been saving according to contemporary accounts and done some maths here and here but the gist is they should've easily been six times as rich as they are. Let's not forget the lack of education too. I said it in one of those posts, and I'll say it again, if you knew a top 1% family who were constantly flirting with bankruptcy and 2/5 of their children were barely educated you wouldn't be wrong for thinking there were some serious problems in that family. Then there's the social vulgarity/silliness, but that translates much better to modern audiences so I won't go into that anymore than to say that decorum was a BIG DEAL back then and who you were 'connected with' could very literally affect your standing in society. Darcy and Bingley's sister's were snobbier about it than they should've been, but the core reasons for concern were actually valid. Even Lizzy very quickly saw the justice in Darcy's logic once presented with the facts so bluntly.

Bingley noticed these things, as everyone sensible did, but he's just too generous a person for that to matter enough to stop him from wanting to marry Jane. It was only being persuaded that she genuinely was indifferent to him that made him put aside his hopes.

We should also keep in mind that it wasn't just randoms who were doing the persuading, it was Bingley's best friend (who is used to believing himself an authority on others - a flaw he has to overcome in the course of the novel) and his sisters (whom everyone considered close friends of Jane and who would've seen her more than Bingley). Their motives were jaded by prejudice but for many contemporary readers these would've been the most reliable advisors anyone could have in matters like this.

Given the delicacy of the subject it's not like he could directly ask Jane herself until the actual proposal, or even begin acting more markedly and hope she responds in kind (the impropriety of which is similar to what we see with Marianna and Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility). Even when Lizzy knows Bingley liked Jane, knows that Jane still feels the same and suspecting that he does too, she doesn't so much as think about giving him a hint when she sees him again in Derbyshire. It simply wouldn't be proper, it's up to his intimates to speak with him about it. So, if Bingley wanted an outside opinion Darcy and his sisters were it; and, on paper, they're very good advisors on the topic of whether Jane liked him.

In most situations it would be a massive character flaw to think 'I don't care what all my closest family/friends/her friends say, I'm going to persist in thinking this girl likes me against their advice.' Keep in mind they knew each other for six weeks and he's never even been alone with Jane. His sisters have though. There's also a commentary in there on the moral pitfalls of influencing someone at all (which is explored in far more depth in Persuasion) but Bingley is never called wrong by the text or characters for not jumping to the assumption that his friend's being an arrogant snob and his sisters are bitchy snobs. A rich man who recognises he can be wrong is a good quality even today, and if we think in contemporary terms (and remember he's only 22) I don't think it's at all unreasonable that he was persuaded.

Which brings us to his whole personality: Bingley is in many ways a perfect gentleman socially. Charming and civil to everyone, uniformly good-tempered, and other than offending one or two young ladies by not asking them to dance, commits no social sins. He's also praised for being friendly and obliging - the latter being another trait which, as Jane Austen does with Jane's praised traits, gets explored via its weaknesses. Arguably the novel is one long exploration of the weaknesses of various traits, most notably those in its title, but this is already too long for that tangent.

Bingley's also very new money. Outright called the first gentleman (remembering that that word meant something very specific about education, dress, behaviour, poise, etc in that era compared to today) of his family, and his father was in trade. In a time where the middle merchant class was still establishing itself as worthy of being treated with respect by their 'betters' (and the mere fact of Darcy's close friendship with Bingley is the first clue that he's not as arrogant and snobby as Lizzy believes) his perfect upholding of an amiable ideal is a commentary in itself. Especially when we see Lady Catherine and Darcy, with their impeccable bloodlines, commit social faults arguably equal/worse to Mrs Bennet (herself not born into the gentry class and a negative example of social mobility to contrast Bingley's positive example) and Mr Collins. The highborn character who does embody appropriate social graces, Colonel Fitzwilliam, is interestingly not landed himself and needs an occupation.

Modern readers, without such a class based society which focused on social graces, are also less understanding of that 'obliging' aspect of Bingley's personality. But this was a time when, generally speaking, the richer and more important you are the more likely you are to get what you want and everyone else fell into line. It was so common that it wasn't even really critiqued heavily by Austen, some people were rich and had the means to do as they wished through money or social credit, and others followed if they wanted to be involved at all. We see this casually mentioned when Colonel Fitzwilliam says "I am at [Darcy's] disposal. He arranges the business just as he pleases;" which also helps us understand that the Colonel probably didn't have the income to own his own carriage or easily rent one to travel (which was EXPENSIVE). That context, of rich men not only ruling the world but also getting to decide what other people (in the Darcy/Colonel Fitzwilliam case, even older and higher-born people - and Bingley was younger and new to the gentry) do in their leisure time through virtue of their wealth, is the context we need to view Bingley in. Though Darcy was undoubtedly more important Bingley was still 2-2.5x richer than Mr Bennet and thus everyone else in the neighbourhood excepting his friend - and yet far from being the standard rich man who began dictating the social scene and choosing what to do without consideration for others, he was obliging. He matched what others were doing, had consideration for them, participated as though grateful to be invited instead of entitled to it. His obliging nature is part of what sets him up as a true gentleman and far more worthy than others who only adopt some of the social graces and miss how it's meant to apply to their whole character.

His personality is actually a very interesting study in what makes a gentleman a gentleman, and argues that the real qualities which matter have nothing at all to do with connections or family history. It's also an analysis of what obliging personalities can fall victim to, even when they're sensible, as Bingley is said to be. His whole character ties in directly (as does Wickham's more overtly) with Darcy and Lizzy's own journeys with true gentlemanlike behaviour and character. It's just not in a way which is at all easily noticeable to modern eyes without a background understanding of the society he functioned in, nor is it something directly depicted in the adaptions.

Anyway, sorry for the hastily typed essay and I hope I've convinced you that Bingley and Jane are an exploration of love and society just as the other couples are, and also a rather pointed social commentary on behavioural standards and changing class lines through social mobility. For all that Jane Austen's writing feels comforting and sometimes quite verbose, she actually fit an immense amount of commentary and meaning into every aspect of her books. Jane and Bingley are absolutely no different.

[redwooding]

I love a good hijacking of a post, especially when it's as thoughtful and grounded in historical knowledge as this one is.

[muppetebbtide]

the goblin emperor dashboard simulator

✉️ couriersdaily

✉️ couriersdaily

tags roundup:

#diversity win??? #woahhh I forgot about him #this is how I found out. I hate it here #this is the end of the ethuveraz and a disgrace to his late serenity's memory #woaw #ENJOY BEING A BARIZHAN COLONY THOU ELVISH BASTARDS #prev: well no bc it's not like the great avar gaf about him either #who the fuck is archduke maia??? #aww he's only 18 :( #is he the one everyone says is crazy.....? #this is like a wonder tale talk about a comeback #this is a disaster #COOL #ok I guess #EMPRESS CHENELO AVENGED‼️ #dost thou think we can pray in the bariheise style now #I have never heard of this man before in my life

101,432 notes

😎 aveyyyyio

Edrehasivar better than me coz if I'd been in relegation my whole life in genteel poverty with some random and my whole family hated me or didn't gaf about me and I never got formally presented at court and everyone said I was mad or inbred I would have ascended to the throne and started killing everyone responsible

❤️ silmaroperas

op I see thine point but most of the people responsible are very much now dead. like that literally is how we got here

342 notes

Anonymous said:

Prince Idra is the rightful Emperor

⚰️ witnessforthedeadfandoms answered:

Oh so thou'rt massive on child cruelty and the death of child emperors??? that's what thou'rt saying?? thou wants Prince Idra to be a child emperor and then be murdered by a power hungry regent?? wowwwwwwww #problematic

903 notes

Anonymous said:

suspicious that the Emperor and his other sons ALL got taken out at once, leaving the throne clear for Archduke Maia, no?? Like it's.... Convenient. Wouldn't you say

⚰️ witnessforthedeadfandoms answered:

Not really no

#thou didst all jump like fleas to the next conspiracy I see 🙄

342 notes

⚔️ valmatasreturn reblogged courtpollsandbrackets follow

who should be chosen as edrehasivar vii's empress

paru tethimin

csethiro ceredin

loran duchenin

Voting ended onJan 9, 2025

(propaganda under the cut)

Read More

#so is this how the corazhas make decisions now or??? #anyway. CSETHIRO SWEEP

5439 notes

🤲🏻 honourofcsethio follow

tbh we think everyone saying that edrehasivar is going to be a disaster of an emperor is being really fatalistic... like YEAH he looks like a panic attack had a wish granted to be a real boy but we think he can do some real good :(

🕰️ likeclockwork

lol sorry but that skinny kid would have to bridge the istandaärtha to win my confidence

🕰️ likeclockwork

BY ANMURA

2109 notes

❗imperialcourtnews

🚨| As agreed by the Corazhas this morning, Dach'osmin Csethiro Ceredin is engaged to the Emperor Edrehasivar VII and will become Empress Csethiro, Ethuverazid Zhasan

#edit: please stop tagging this 'can Edrehasivar fight' someone's gonna construe it as a threat on the Emperor's life and things have been tense enough lately #second edit: WE GET IT, A LOT OF THEE HAD A CRUSH ON HER AT LEAST THOU DOST GET TO SEE HER ALL THE TIME NOW

10,546 notes

🎶 operasdaily follow

Opera of the Day: The Autumn Archduke is an old warhorse by Ebrezhanar. It concerns the sudden ascension to the throne of the Archduke Aizhevea (later Edrethelema III) after the tragic deaths of his father, older brother, and his sister's son in a fire at the imperial palace. It maps the early years of his reign, including how the incident partially inspired his designs for the new structure of the Untheileneise Court. It was popularly performed in Lohaiso ten years ago, but has not been significantly revived since this period.

👁️ akhalarnaseyeball

this happened to my buddy Edrehasivar Zhas

296 notes

🪻lazinessoftanvero

scream apparently in the flop coup they tried to send the emperor to be a votary of csethio??? this just in, 'get thee to a nunnery' is NOT just for noblewomen #equality

🪻lazinessoftanvero

reading through the whole report on the attempt now and losing my shit... skill issue of the highest level imagine thy coup fails because thy 14 year old prince and 18 year old emperor unionise against thee and thou cannot do shit because teenager 1 and teenager 2 are the two most powerful men in the court... biggest cringefail coup of all time

#say the prayer of compassion for the dead for chavar and sheveän's egos because they won't survive this

431 notes

😎 aveyyyyio

anyone else think the couriersdaily account is kinda being really excessively hype about eshevis tethimar getting killed in that assassination attempt. like... real, but also. diva... the attempt on the emperor's life......

#though I presume if they're shitposting the emperor is probably fine #given couriersdaily is almost certainly run by... Thou Knowest... #maybe it's like a diary for them #all the shit you can't say on the day job mer ai-- I mean couriersdaily?

389 notes

😎 aveyyyio reblogged couriersdaily

⚜️ odris84-blog follow

this is so fucking disrespectful... we don't know what we expected from baseborn couriers like thee but eshevis tethimar was a respected member of the tethimada whatever he ALLEGEDLY tried to do to the emperor. now he's in ulis's hands so thou shouldst really at least TRY to have some dignity and compassion

✉️ couriersdaily

#see???? #btw don't open the notes it's the archipelagar wars in there

10,431 notes

🫀 zhelsu-no34

Othala Celehar: h-

Me:

#prelate of ulis... a good one... looks good in the coat of office...

52 notes

🗣️ untheileneisecourtconfessions

went on a date with some random osmer and he admitted to having some tiny part in the tethimadeise conspiracy to try and impress me and idk if he was lying or not but he was pissing me off so I called the untheileneise guard on him and ate his dessert once they hauled him off lol

#plus I go to salons with the zhasan sometimes #and I think she would have snapped my head off my neck if she'd found out he said that and I did nothing

785 notes

🌽 orshansmazei reblogged amalomemes

#he comes into the sanctuary I work at and walks around in circles sometimes #he looks haggard too. poor thing 😭 #I know someone at the laundresses who is convinced he only has one coat

344 notes

[onlycosmere]

[peachdoxie]

By the way this book is over 1000 pages long

[nudityandnerdery]

It is also the first of five books and two novellas published, so far.

[parsleysagerosemarytimemachine]

Reading comprehension...

But also, this is why reading comprehension is a skill. Because what Sanderson is doing with his epic fantasy is expecting that the reader is coming in knowing that the book is going to be laying out an expansive and mysterious world, which will be gradually explored and explicated over the course of the story. 'Way of Kings' is especially egregious in this because (as noted by the original questions) it doesn't even start by introducing you to the humble (farmboy, traditionally) protagonist whose situation you might understand a bit before it unfolds; it starts by introducing a dozen different mysteries and proper nouns, and asking you to keep them in mind as you read to discover what they are.

This isn't a bad approach, but it is a specific one, and if a reader has asked 'what's a good fantasy series to start reading?' it's entirely possible they don't _know_ that this is a mode of reading/writing. If what they've read before has been books that start off introducing one character for them to relate to, and here's the interesting quirk of their situation, it's perfectly reasonable to wonder why, after three pages of reading, they don't know what's happening.

This is not to say that other ways are dumb or bad, either. 'Hunger Games', eg, starts off with 'here's a poor girl trying to keep her family fed in a bad situation' before it gets into more of the complexities and layers of the story. On the flip side, I've meet Sanderson fans who struggle with other fantasy novels because they get so wrapped up searching for the 'system' of magic that they don't appreciate anything else that, eg, Le Guin is doing.

Luckily, the way to get reading comprehension is to read - a lot, and a lot of different things - and to talk with other people about what you read, and that's all things the internet facilitates greatly. I hope the original asker pressed on and eventually enjoyed the rest of the book!

[ariaste]

Genres are usually defined by their tropes—mysteries have murders and clues, romances have two people finding each other, etc. Science ficti

If you want to read more about the particular ways that scifi/fantasy expects readers to be reading, this essay by Jo Walton is really good.

Because SF can’t take the world for granted, it’s had to develop techniques for doing it. There’s the simple infodump, which Neal Stephenson has raised to an artform in its own right. There are lots of forms of what I call incluing, scattering pieces of information seamlessly through the text to add up to a big picture. The reader has to remember them and connect them together. This is one of the things some people complain about as “too much hard work” and which I think is a high form of fun. SF is like a mystery where the world and the history of the world is what’s mysterious, and putting that all together in your mind is as interesting as the characters and the plot, if not more interesting.

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

the narrative implies more than once that if not for the madness of Denethor, Gandalf may have saved Theoden

“For a moment, the thought flitted through Merry’s mind: ‘Where is Gandalf? Is he not here? Could he have not saved the king and Eowyn?”

and later-

Pippin comes to Gandalf and tells him he’s afraid Denethor might kill himself and Faramir with him and Gandalf says at first “I must go…the Black Rider is abroad, and he will yet bring ruin on us. I have no time”

Pippin explains further and pleads, “Can’t you save Faramir?” And Gandalf’s response is- “Maybe I can…but if I do, others will die, I fear.” 

And after the Dark Rider has died and he brings Faramir to the Hall of Healing and sees Eowyn, Gandalf says:

“… Things of great sorrow and renown have come to pass. Shall we weep or be glad? Beyond hope the Captain of our foes has been destroyed, and you have learned the echo of his last despair. But he has not gone without woe and bitter lost. And that I might have averted but for the madness of Denethor!” 

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

just gonna add real quick that - Theoden is out doing his duty and fighting on the battlefield– here he falls

Denethor not only is not doing his duty, he is preventing others from being where they are most needed

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

#Could have gone differently but possibly not better #Theoden was intent on dying #going out in a blaze of glory #so honestly saving Theoden would not have improved Theoden’s circumstances #but other people less prominent in the narrative could have been saved who maybe were intent on getting to Theoden’s age before dying #Denethor definitely wasted everyone’s time #if only he hadn’t dragged faramir into his death in the first place #but that would have to have involved Faramir disregarding orders earlier on so already you’re getting quite a different story (via @thinkinginquenya) 

I hope you don’t mind me lifting your tags because I’m going to disagree with them and my disagreement I think is fundamental to understanding Theoden vs Denethor -

Theoden is not chasing death in a blaze of glory. He is going to war and accepts that he may die. Eomer suggests he stay behind until the war is over, and Theoden likens him to Wormtongue – not because Eomer’s motives are the same but because the temptation to be old and hideaway is– instead, Theoden responds– “If I the war is lost, what good will be my hiding in the hills? And if it is won, what grief will it be, even if I fall, spending my last strength.” and later “For say to Denethor that in this hour the King of the Mark himself will come down to the land of Gondor, though he may not come back.”  

Emphasis mine. He also speaks frequently of hearing Merry’s tales if he returns and smoking pipe together.  These are not the words of a man seeking death or glory. He is going to War and he knows he cannot control what happens from there– “Doom hung over them, but they faced it silently.” 

Contrast to Eowyn, who is said to have eyes of “one with no hope who goes to seek death” . Later, even, when they arrive at the battle, it seems things are too late, and there is this line– “Pheraps Theoden would quail, bow his old head, turn, slink away to hide in the hills” – that’s the temptation Theoden battles– but it is here he is revived and he gives his rousing cry that is famous.

Theoden’s ride to Battle brings heart and strength to his people. He does his duty and he faces his death with dignity. The reason this matters is because it’s so different from Denethor– 

Denethor has slunk away– he refuses to leave his son’s sickbed (his son who needs help not a deathbed– and as a sidenote, I think Faramir did not need to change his earlier course for Denethor to change his own here– it matters very much that Denethor had a Choice many times over) and gives no “heed to any defence”– when his men call upon him, he turns them away. When men tell him the city is burning, he tells them to go back and burn with it. Denethor despairs. Gandalf admonishes him to do his Duty, to fight for Gondor as Theoden even then is fighting for Rohan and against Evil, but Denethor says “Battle is vain”– if he is going to die why can he not die with his son. And as Gandalf adjures him, “Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your own death” – and Denethor does not submit– “But in this at least thou shalt not defy my will: to rule my own end”  

His own death was selfish– it served only the Enemy– and it’s even more striking in contrast to Theoden’s Noble death. 

The fact is, all men must die. We only have a choice in how we will face it. Denethor dies in pride and despair– of his death comes no good. Theoden dies in glory, not because he sought it, but because he did what was asked of him and faced it when the time came. 

[inky-duchess]

Fantasy Guide to Employment: Household of a Castle

The castle does not run itself. The castle would remain a pile of stones without servants to keep it running. The guide below focuses on the private household of the lord himself, anybody who worked inside the main keep of the castle. I will be expanding outside the walls in a future post.

The Steward/Seneschal

This person was the head of the household staff. They would have the task of running things on the Lord’s estate. They are the managers, so it is up to them to keep the staff in line. The steward would keep the castle accounts and keep the lord informed of all of the goings on of the lands and tenants. They would have to be educated needing to do accounts and write letters. Though the castle’s Lady would be expected to do all these things, the steward served as a backup and assistant in all the tasks even representing the lord and lady when they were unavailable.

The Chamberlain

The chamberlain is the servant employed to look after the Lord’s bedchamber. He would look after the Lord’s clothes as well and keep track of the other servants’ liveries, the official uniforms of the guards, pages and squires. This was not always the case, some larger households had a separate office but most medium seized manors and castles lumped them together. The chamberlain’s main task was ensuring the lord was kept happy. He would even be the last servant a lord would see at night before he went to bed at night. They would be educated.

The Marshal

A Marshal was in charge of the stables as well as the military presence in the castle. They would oversee the household’s horses, carts, wagons, and containers. He oversaw blacksmiths, horse grooms and stableboys. He also oversaw the transporting of goods. The Marshal was sometimes in charge of disciplining servants. They would likely come from a middle class background as well as having military experience and education.

The Page

A page was a young noble boy about seven years old who would be sent to serve a Lord. He would be in charge of tidying up after the lord, carrying messages to other servants and occupants of the castle and serving him at meals. Unlike others on the list, the page would not be paid. His experience was his payment as he would learn the running of a castle and manners of a lord.

The Lady’s Maid

The lady’s maid is be the female body attendant of the castle’s noble women. She would be in charge of caring for the lady’s chamber and her things. She would dress the lady and attend her wherever she would. (The lady’s maid would basically do all the work a chamberlain would but you know the wage gap…)

Maidservant

A housemaid/maidservant works to clean the castle. She would be among the first to awaken every morning. Her first task would be sweeping the floors. The thing with mediaeval floors a that they were often covered with a thin layer of rushes, a kind of grass. Weekly if not daily, a maidservant would be expected to change out the rushes and scatter new ones. If it really needed it, she would scrub the stone floors which would be done with a soap called lye, made from ashes and lard. The maidservant would also be expected to go into the bedchambers when the occupants awoke. She would empty the chamberpots if need be. She would get rid of the ashes from the fire and ready the fire for later. She would make up the bed or strip it for the laundresses. She would wash anything that needed washing including furniture and ornaments.

Laundress

The laundress was responsible for the cleaning of anything made of fabric in the household. The laundress would have to fetch their own water either from the castle well or from a nearby river. They would heat the water in large vats and add lye soap (the most popular of the cleaning agents). The constant exposure to soap and hot water was physically tough on the hands of the laundresses and their backs. When the detergents were added to the water, the laundress would dump them into the vat and stir that shit like soup. To dry it they would pin it out on lines or beat the water from it. The laundress might make money by selling secrets. Since they are handling unmentionables, they knew what happened behind closed bedchamber doors or what didn’t.

Nursemaid

The nursemaid was in charge of the castle’s children. They would ensure the child was fed, washed and generally kept alive while the parents would either be away at court or busy with the lands. The nursemaid would be a common woman from the surrounding lands who would come in to care for a noble child in the stead of the mother who would be expected to get on with other jobs. The nursemaid would be an underlying of the noble governess, a sort of hands-off nanny.

Cook

The cook was one of the most important servants in the castle. They would have the task of overseeing the running of the kitchens and keeping supplies in order. They would likely be on call at all times. Henry VIII’s cook was often woken in the night because his royal master wanted a midnight snack. The cook was a valued member of the household and would have been highly sought after if they were a very skilled cook. Cooks would have been paid a handsome wage.

Scullion

The scullion was the lowest member of staff. They would be responsible for scrubbing and cleaning the servants quarters and the kitchens. They would scrub floors with lye, scour pots with sand, sweep put the fireplace and clean up after the other servants. They were the first to rise in a castle and tasked to light all the fires in the kitchens.

Payment & Lifestyle

Within the mediaeval household, payment came from the hand of the steward. As the Lord’s manager of accounts, he was in charge of paying staff.

The grander jobs in the castle such as the marshal, the chamberlain, nursemaid and lady’s maid would pay better. They would have certain privileges including better bedchambers.

A nursemaid who was breastfeeding the Lord’s children would be a valued member of staff. She would be fed better than the other servants.

The page would sleep in a chamber off the lord’s bedchamber or sometimes at the foot of the bed. A page would wear the Lord’s livery so he would be dressed on the Lord’s coin.

The chamberlain would have rooms close to the lord and lady, just in case they were needed by the master in any kind of emergency.

The cook would sleep near the kitchens so they were close enough just in case they are needed in the night.

The other household servants would all sleep in chambers together. The women would sleep in one and the men would sleep in another. Nightly dalliances were frowned upon massively.

Most servants came from the surrounding lands of the castle. When the lord and his family were away at court or somewhere else, there would be a drop in employment. Everything would be cut down ex. Instead of three laundry maids, only one might stay on after the lord goes. The steward, the marshal, the chamberlain, the page, the cook, the nursemaid and the lady’s maid were all important staff so their job would be permanent.

[petermorwood]

Not listed but worth noting: squire or esquire - the stage between page and knight; castellan - the governor of a castle and its domain; a chatelaine is a female castellan (one is the Norman word, the other is the Old French word, I don’t know why; maybe for clarity).

A chatelaine was also a piece of functional jewellery popular from the 1700s through to the turn of the 20th century: it was an ornamental belt / waistband-clasp with keys, a knife, a needle-and-thread case, scissors etc. hung from it.

The medieval version looked like this; those keys would have included the stillroom (where tinctures and liqueurs were made) and the spice-cupboard whose contents might match gold in value. Beside the lady of the manor, the most senior and trusted female servants would have worn one as well.

The drawstring purse is obvious; the dark stick-thing less so - it’s actually a personal eating-knife. There might also be an eating-pick sheathed behind it, the medieval equivalent of a fork, because table manners in the Middle Ages were a lot better and more elaborate than “grab meat with the hands, chuck bones over the shoulder.” (An image for which we must again thank Victorian pop history…) 

Here’s a set in period art, and as a reproduction.

[post--grad]

know your englishes

i was just talking to a friend about how we have to have this conversation every single quarter that we teach, so i pass it on to you. shakespeare is not old english! chaucer is not old english!! 

old english

also called anglo-saxon

in use from around 400 to around 1066 (the norman conquest) in england and parts of scotland during the early middle ages.

most popular example: beowulf (see it written)

looks the least like modern english:

“Hwaet, we gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!”

if it looks like it could be the name of a field or military group in Rohan, it’s probably OE

middle english

in use from 1066 to the early 1500s (along with french & latin) during the late middle ages. 

most popular example: chaucer’s canterbury tales (see it written)

A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme that he first bigan To riden out, he loved chivalrie, Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie…”

will have recognizable words. read it out loud if you’re struggling.

still no standardized spelling. or dictionaries. soz. we’re getting there.

just straight-up regular english

in use from the 1500s until now.

that means shakespeare and james joyce and jk rowling are all grouped under the same language umbrella

reread that. shakespeare is tough and uses english differently than we’re used to, but he is not old english! he is, for the purposes of labelling, modern english. 

if you are feeling super picky you can label his work as “early modern english” (”early modern” being the period between 1500 and 1700ish) but tbh that’s a fairly arbitrary distinction.

[backpacksandblazers]

Identifying texts from around 1500-1700 as early modern is fairly standard within academic circles. This is because, despite Shakespeare’s English more closely resembling our own, there was still a great deal of variety in the ways in which words were spelled. Shakespeare, of course, is so popular, that his works are widely available in modern English and with modern punctuation (though it’s worth noting that punctuating Shakespeare is still an ongoing critical debate.) For example, in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, the famous couplet from Claudius—"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. / Words without thoughts never to heaven go.“—appears as, “My wordes fly vp, my sinnes remaine below. / No King on earth is safe, if Gods his foe.” This example highlights the spelling and editorial revisions which have since gone into making Shakespeare sensible to “modern” audiences. Moreover, early modern texts are also contemporaneous with what is commonly referred to as the “great vowel shift"—the period in which the pronunciation of English vowels changed drastically. What this means is that, whereas you might recognise Shakespeare’s English more easily than, say, Chaucer’s, you wouldn’t understand Shakespeare’s English if you were to hear it out loud. The Globe Theatre periodically does OP (original pronunciation) productions and they’re worth checking out if you’re curious.

[post--grad]

yes!! this is such a great addition, thank you! yall, reading in the original is so, so important - and it’s easier with early modern texts than with medieval ones. if you have database access most things are centrally available on EEBO, and both the folger and the bodelian have digitized versions of shakespeare’s first folio that are worth checking out. don’t settle for reading the results of late editorial decisions you didn’t make!  

[aelfscinu-deactivated20161008]

also on the distinction between old and middle english– there are, of course, gradations, as one would expect when trying to periodize a thousand years into two neat linguistic partitions. as time passes, our notion of middleness shifts inevitably to the right, for better or for worse. with old and middle english the distinction is almost neat, as the norman conquest created some very deep and abiding changes in the language (the change from “cyning” to “king,” as evinced in the later sections of the anglo-saxon chronicle, is a notable example), but there are still marked shifts over time– though old english is the form of english that least resembles our modern language, there are sections of the a-s chronicle that can be read much like modern English thanks to case collapse and syntax shift. old english comes with a different alphabet which includes ð, þ, and æ; different syntax; a case system; vastly different vocabulary– as well as so many words that are just a letter or two away from their modern derivatives–; dialects and variation; and pronunciations that feel simultaneously foreign and so familiar. and all this nuance is of course lost with the words “old english? what, like shakespeare?”

[post--grad]

100%, all of the above. also i edited the original post (a few minutes after it took off, unfortunately) to add that middle english looks & sounds very different depending on where it’s written/spoken – gawain and the green knight, for example, looks very different from the canterbury tales, in large part because the gawain author is from the north and chaucer wrote from london. 

ALSO a Very Important Medieval Fact is that “ye,” as in “Ye Olde Shoppe,” is NOT A THING. not a thing, folks!! the letter thorn (þ) was pronounced “th” and often looked very similar to the letter “y” - some scribes didn’t even distinguish between them. when the press happened, “the” was mostly written with a “th,” but sometimes rendered as “þ” with a superscript “e”; eventually thorn phased out and got replaced by “y” (probably because that was one less piece of type for printers to deal with). so “ye olde shoppe” is actually just “the olde shoppe.” now you know~~

[dukeofbookingham-deactivated202]

Just adding to the early modern English thing: let me introduce you to a wonderful little thing called secretary hand. Basically it’s an early form of what we all know as ‘cursive’ or ‘joined up’ writing–it was used to write efficiently and legibly. But there was still a load of variation and some of the letter forms are absolutely unrecognizable today, so it can be really confusing to read. In our first secretary hand workshop this year we had to basically re-learn the alphabet and it took us literally two hours to decipher a marmalade recipe. Here’s why:

Here’s the trickiest part: minims. Minims are little teeny dashes used to indicate small letters like m, n, u, v, w, etc. Problem is, when you get a bunch in a row it can be really hard to work out how many letters are actually there and what they are. The word “minimum,” for example, would b a nightmare. Here’s another example of the secretary hand alphabet from the Folger Shakespeare library. If you look in the middle of the fourth row you’ll see the minims, in between the big fancy Ls and Ms: 

So that’s an extra little tidbit about early modern English.

[petermorwood]

Here’s a citation from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1871  H. Sweet “King Alfred’s Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care” pref. p.v   I use ‘Old English’ throughout this work to denote the unmixed, inflectional stage of the English language, commonly known by the barbarous and unmeaning title of ‘Anglo-Saxon’.

He couldn’t have known how “Old English” would come to represent the peculiar version of Early Modern English that passes for Renfair-Speak (speke?), nor how “Old English” as a font name would become associated with spiky Blackletter Gothic or Fraktur letters that have nothing to do with the “Old English” he was defending. (More in this post.)

This is @dduane‘s copy of a book I used at Uni; though “Old English” was in common use (that’s what my course was called) the writers clearly preferred to go their own way.

The three Old English letters ð, æ and þ are called eth (not “oak”, which is a shame) ash and thorn; in Modern English, eth has transformed to d (Odin was originally Othin), ash has dropped out except in older print (hemophilia was once hæmophilia, etc. - one letter - though remains as two letters - haemophilia etc. - in UK/Irish usage) while thorn changed as described by @post–grad.

An extra “e” appeared at the end of many Middle English words and was voiced - “shoppe”, which appears in Chaucer’s “The Cook’s Tale”, would sound like “shop-puh” - but even when Middle English became Early Modern English and the final e fell silent, printers (Hi, Caxton!) would still add them as an accepted way to justify the right margin of a book. Spelling was still free-form enough that nobody minded.

Same with “the”, “ye” and “yͤ”, where the way space was saved or filled by using one or the other is obvious. But it wasn’t pronounced as yee, any more than etc. is pronounced as etick.

Nowadays, something called Ye Olde Worlde Shoppe is just a twee faux-antique affectation, and as for calling it “yee oldee worldee shopee”…

“When you say that, smile…”

:->

[surlifen]

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

[some-stars]

This is perfect and the only thing missing is that when “thy” comes before a vowel it’s replaced by “thine”, i.e. “thy nose” but “thine eyes.” English used to do this with my and mine too (and still does with a and an).

[fremedon]

The second person singular verb ending is -(e)st. In the present tense, it works more or less like the third person singular ending, -s: 

I sleep in the attic. Thou sleepest in the attic. He sleeps in the attic.

I love pickles. Thou lovest pickles. He loves pickles.

I go to school. Thou goest to school. He goes to school.

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

I will believe it when I see it. Thou wilt believe it when thou seest it. He will believe it when he sees it.

NOT

*thou willst believest it! NOPE! This is wrong

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

*He will believes it when he sees it. ALSO NOPE! 

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

I could eat a horse. Thou couldst eat a horse. He could eat a horse.

I should go. Thou shouldst go. He should go.

I would have gone. Thou wouldst have gone. He wouldst have gone. 

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

thou sleepst, thou lov'st.

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

I can swim. Thou canst swim. He can swim.

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He has a cow. 

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

I must believe her. Thou must believe her. He must believe her.

I shall not kill. Thou shalt not kill. He shall not kill.

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

I gave her the horse. Thou gavest her the horse. He gave her the horse.

I made a pie. Thou mad’st a pie. He made a pie.

I wanted to go. Thou wantedst to go. He wanted to go.

This is different from the third person!

*He gaves her the horse. He mades a pie. He wanteds to go. SO MUCH NOPE!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

I delivered the letter. (Great!)

Thou deliveredst the letter. (Not wrong, but weird)

He delivered the letter. (Great!)

I did deliver the letter. (Normal if emphatic, or an answer to a question; otherwise, a little weird.)

Thou didst deliver the letter. (Great!) 

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He hath a cow.

I love her. Thou lovest her. He loveth her.

I do not understand. Thou dost not understand. He doth not understand.

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

I gave her the cow. Thou gavest her the cow. He gaveth her the cow.

This never happens with weak verbs:

*He lovedeth her. NOPE NOPE NOPE!

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

Will I die? I will die. 

Has she eaten? She has eaten.

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

Do you hear the people sing? You (do) hear the people sing.

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Hear ye the people sing? (Or singen, if we’re early enough to still be inflecting infinitives.)

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

I don’t like him. I like him not.

Thou dost not care. Thou carest not.

She does not love thee. She loves thee not.

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

Hear ye, hear ye!

Go thou and do likewise!

Give me thy hand. Take thou this sword. 

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

people of higher social status than the speaker

or of equivalent status, if both speakers are high-status

strangers

anyone the speaker wants to flatter

‘Thou’ is used for

people of lower social status than the speaker

family and intimate friends

children

anyone the speaker wants to insult

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

I  → thou → he/she/it  → we → ye → they

Me → thee → him/her/it → us → you → them

My → thy → his/her/its → our → your → their

Mine → thine → his/hers/its → ours → yours → theirs

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

ye:  Ye are all a bunch of weirdos.

you: And I love you very much.

your: This has been your grammar lesson.

yours: This grammar lesson is yours. 

[aspirerandetvetull]

“Let’s face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.”

— (via be-killed)

[xshiromorix]

But, but, but!

But, no, because there are reasons for all of those seemingly weird English bits.

Like “eggplant” is called “eggplant” because the white-skinned variety (to which the name originally applied) looks very egg-like.

The “hamburger” is named after the city of Hamburg.

The name “pineapple” originally (in Middle English) applied to pine cones (ie. the fruit of pines - the word “apple” at the time often being used more generically than it is now), and because the tropical pineapple bears a strong resemblance to pine cones, the name transferred.

The “English” muffin was not invented in England, no, but it was invented by an Englishman, Samuel Bath Thomas, in New York in 1894. The name differentiates the “English-style” savoury muffin from “American” muffins which are commonly sweet.

“French fries” are not named for their country of origin (Belgium or Spain, depending who you ask), but for their preparation. They are French-cut fried potatoes - ie. French fries.

“Sweetmeats” originally referred to candied fruits or nuts, and given that we still use the term “nutmeat” to describe the edible part of a nut and “flesh” to describe the edible part of a fruit, that makes sense.

“Sweetbread” has nothing whatsoever to do with bread, but comes from the Middle English “brede”, meaning “roasted meat”. “Sweet” refers not to being sugary, but to being rich in flavour.

Similarly, “quicksand” means not “fast sand”, but “living sand” (from the Old English “cwicu” - “alive”).

The term boxing “ring” is a holdover from the time when the “ring” would have been just that - a circle marked on the ground. The first square boxing ring did not appear until 1838. In the rules of the sport itself, there is also a ring - real or imagined - drawn within the now square arena in which the boxers meet at the beginning of each round.

The etymology of “guinea pig” is disputed, but one suggestion has been that the sounds the animals make are similar to the grunting of a pig. Also, as with the “apple” that caused confusion in “pineapple”, “Guinea” used to be the catch-all name for any unspecified far away place. Another suggestion is that the animal was named after the sailors - the “Guinea-men” - who first brought it to England from its native South America.

As for the discrepancies between verb and noun forms, between plurals, and conjugations, these are always the result of differing word derivation.

Writers write because the meaning of the word “writer” is “one who writes”, but fingers never fing because “finger” is not a noun derived from a verb. Hammers don’t ham because the noun “hammer”, derived from the Old Norse “hamarr”, meaning “stone” and/or “tool with a stone head”, is how we derive the verb “to hammer” - ie. to use such a tool. But grocers, in a certain sense, DO “groce”, given that the word “grocer” means “one who buys and sells in gross” (from the Latin “grossarius”, meaning “wholesaler”).

“Tooth” and “teeth” is the legacy of the Old English “toð” and “teð”, whereas “booth” comes from the Old Danish “boþ”. “Goose” and “geese”, from the Old English “gōs” and “gēs”, follow the same pattern, but “moose” is an Algonquian word (Abenaki: “moz”, Ojibwe: “mooz”, Delaware: “mo:s”). “Index” is a Latin loanword, and forms its plural quite predictably by the Latin model (ex: matrix -> matrices, vertex -> vertices, helix -> helices).

One can “make amends” - which is to say, to amend what needs amending - and, case by case, can “amend” or “make an amendment”. No conflict there.

“Odds and ends” is not a word, but a phrase. It is, necessarily, by its very meaning, plural, given that it refers to a collection of miscellany. A single object can’t be described in the same terms as a group.

“Teach” and “taught” go back to Old English “tæcan” and “tæhte”, but “preach” comes from Latin “predician” (“præ” + “dicare” - “to proclaim”).

“Vegetarian” comes of “vegetable” and “agrarian” - put into common use in 1847 by the Vegetarian Society in Britain.

“Humanitarian”, on the other hand, is a portmanteau of “humanity” and “Unitarian”, coined in 1794 to described a Christian philosophical position - “One who affirms the humanity of Christ but denies his pre-existence and divinity”. It didn’t take on its current meaning of “ethical benevolence” until 1838. The meaning of “philanthropist” or “one who advocates or practices human action to solve social problems” didn’t come into use until 1842.

We recite a play because the word comes from the Latin “recitare” - “to read aloud, to repeat from memory”. “Recital” is “the act of reciting”. Even this usage makes sense if you consider that the Latin “cite” comes from the Greek “cieo” - “to move, to stir, to rouse , to excite, to call upon, to summon”. Music “rouses” an emotional response. One plays at a recital for an audience one has “called upon” to listen.

The verb “to ship” is obviously a holdover from when the primary means of moving goods was by ship, but “cargo” comes from the Spanish “cargar”, meaning “to load, to burden, to impose taxes”, via the Latin “carricare” - “to load on a cart”.

“Run” (moving fast) and “run” (flowing) are homonyms with different roots in Old English: “ærnan” - “to ride, to reach, to run to, to gain by running”, and “rinnan” - “to flow, to run together”. Noses flow in the second sense, while feet run in the first. Simillarly, “to smell” has both the meaning “to emit” or “to perceive” odor. Feet, naturally, may do the former, but not the latter.

“Fat chance” is an intentionally sarcastic expression of the sentiment “slim chance” in the same way that “Yeah, right” expresses doubt - by saying the opposite.

“Wise guy” vs. “wise man” is a result of two different uses of the word “wise”. Originally, from Old English “wis”, it meant “to know, to see”. It is closely related to Old English “wit” - “knowledge, understanding, intelligence, mind”. From German, we get “Witz”, meaning “joke, witticism”. So, a wise man knows, sees, and understands. A wise guy cracks jokes.

The seemingly contradictory “burn up” and “burn down” aren’t really contradictory at all, but relative. A thing which burns up is consumed by fire. A house burns down because, as it burns, it collapses.

“Fill in” and “fill out” are phrasal verbs with a difference of meaning so slight as to be largely interchangeable, but there is a difference of meaning. To use the example in the post, you fill OUT a form by filling it IN, not the other way around. That is because “fill in” means “to supply what is missing” - in the example, that would be information, but by the same token, one can “fill in” an outline to make a solid shape, and one can “fill in” for a missing person by taking his/her place. “Fill out”, on the other hand, means “to complete by supplying what is missing”, so that form we mentioned will not be filled OUT into we fill IN all the missing information.

An alarm may “go off” and it may be turned on (ie. armed), but it does not “go on”. That is because the verb “to go off” means “to become active suddenly, to trigger” (which is why bombs and guns also go off, but do not go on).

[exhaled-spirals]

« In [an Agatha Christie novel], violent murder might happen at any moment—and yet the meals and tea still arrive on time, the beds are duly turned down, and the gardens properly managed. […F]ew authors have managed to assemble a body of work at once so comforting and so emotionless, so quaint and orderly and yet so saturated with cruelty. […]

Christie’s fictional universe (like that of her many emulators) provides the safest possible space for readers to inhabit. […] For a body of work so vastly populated with dead bodies, the Christie oeuvre may ironically be the most peaceful, predictable, comforting space in twentieth-century literature. The stories rarely (if ever) refer to our ugly political world; the simplistic psychology of the characters is easily dissolved by either love or money; and each novel takes place in a timeless space lacking any actual historical or cultural landmarks, such as market crashes, wars, death camps, crime families, corrupt politicians, or pandemics.

Unlike American thrillers, Christie’s stories don’t devolve into escalating mayhem and violence […]; rather, they present stories in which individual acts of violence can be resolved and contained. […T]he act of murder is an opportunity for the social order to reestablish itself by evicting (or eliminating) the culprit. “Out of confusion comes order,” Poirot tells Hastings. Every crime in the Christie canon is an opportunity to make the world safe once again.

— Scott Bradfield, “Agatha Christie Suspected Everyone”

[janeaustentextposts]

If none of them married, how desperate would the Bennett girls actually have been?

Well the only dowry they have is £50 apiece from their mother’s small inheritance, per year; so that’s a total of £250 generated by Mrs. Bennet’s inherited investments per annum.

The Dashwoods (four women) are living on £500 a year when they are forced to live in Barton Cottage (with good-will making the rent presumably ridiculously low thanks to Sir John Middleton’s good nature, to say nothing of all the dinners and outings he invites the ladies to, which will help them economize on housekeeping costs for heavier meals.)

So there would be six Bennet women left to live on half as much as the Dashwoods are barely scraping by on. £250 is roughly considered enough to keep ONE gentleman at a barely-genteel level of leisure (presuming he does not keep a horse or estate or have any major expenses beyond securing his own lodgings/clothes/meals at a level becoming of a gentleman.)

None of the Bennet girls have been educated well enough for them to be governesses to support themselves, so…yes, their situation would heavily rely on mega-charity from others to just help them survive, much less maintain them in the lifestyle they’ve been accustomed to. The Dashwood women have NO social life beyond the outings provided by Sir John and the offer of Mrs. Jennings to host the older girls in London–otherwise they’d be stuck in their cottage, meeting absolutely no eligible men, creating a cycle of being poor and unmarried and too poor to meet anyone with money they could marry.

If the Bennet girls don’t at least have ONE of them marry well enough to help the rest before their father dies, they are really, truly, deeply fucked.

They may joke about beautiful Jane being the saviour of the family, but…it’s true. Mr. Bennet failed his daughters several times over in A) presuming he’d have a son, B) not saving money independently from his income to support his family after his death when it became clear he wasn’t going to have a son, C) not educating them well enough to enable them to support themselves in even in the disagreeable way of being a governess, D) not making any effort to escort his daughters to London or even local assemblies to help their matrimonial chances because he just doesn’t feel like it, E) throwing up his hands and shrugging when faced with the crises of Mr. Collins and Wickham.

Much as we are relieved on a romantic level that Mr. Bennet’s support of Elizabeth saves her from parental pressure to accept Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet is NOT A DICK for pushing for the match, because on a material level it very much means they get to KEEP THEIR HOUSE and gain a connection to the powerful patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh, which could be VERY advantageous for the other unmarried girls.

And the scandal of Wickham very nearly scuppers the chances of ANY of the other girls, and Wickham is a further DRAIN on the family finances, not a man who is going to substantially be able to support them. It is SUCH a disaster, and of course there’s not much Mr. Bennet can do until they are found, but he’s away in London and doing…what, exactly? Mr. Gardiner takes over and manages everything and Mr. Bennet seems happy to just let him.

Mr. Bennet does the ABSOLUTE LEAST, and actively damages his children’s futures by his inaction AND by his one action to support Lizzie’s individual needs being prioritized over the collective gain, which…I mean, Lizzie is going to be JUST as homeless and destitute as her sisters when he dies, so much good being Dad’s Favourite is going to do her. :/

[hillnerd]

£50 is around £4200 now, so about £21,000 for 6 women to live on today for the Bennets.

The Dashwoods at £500/year are at about £42,000 for 4 women to live on today.

Mr bennet definitely messed up, and mrs b deserves way more respect for the immense amount of pressure she’s under

[mythologicalmango]

I wrote an entire essay about this my last year of school, and my teacher thought I had lost the plot. He was my most hated teacher for other reasons, and this did not help his case.

[randomsquirrel42]

I am Here for the Mrs. Bennet Defense Squad. Yes, she can be unsubtle in a major way, but she is also terrified of the alternative outcome. However, for all her lack of tact, she is also hella strategic, as demonstrated by setting up an “oh no I’m stuck in your house” romance trope situation for Jane and Bingley. She’s a clever lady, and she sees exactly what kind of shitty situation they’re in, and she can’t get her husband to do anything.

It’s really easy to read Mrs. Bennet’s inability to be subtle about anything as a sign of stupidity or inability to understand “society” (and the Bingley sisters are inclined to do this and link it to her very middle-class family because of classism) but she is literally panicking at all times about a very real concern, and everyone is just rolling their eyes. No compassion for her poor nerves indeed!

[fairy-anon-godmother]

Ok so I started to scroll by. But the problem with the Mrs. Bennet discourse is that it can too quickly swing too far in the wrong direction. Yes, everything about this is (mostly) true. The Bennet women are in a really delicate position. Their safety and continued financial security hangs on Mr. Bennet’s faintest breath. It is in fact a conversation point several times that the girls are not educated enough to serve as governesses, but are of too high a social status to expect marriage to a tradesman. 

The problem is that while Mrs. Bennet is certainly the only one in the Bennet household taking this issue seriously, she’s also gone too far in the opposite direction. The point of the Bennet marriage is that it’s bad for both of them. Mr. Bennet married a beautiful, foolish woman and then didn’t live according to the economy he would have had to in order to leave her a tidy sum once he died. Mrs. Bennet held herself safe under the happy expectation that she would produce a son, who would inherit the estate and provide for her in her own age.

Once it became clear that wouldn’t happen (and remember Lydia is only fifteen when the book opens, so Mrs. Bennet might only have given up the idea that she would have a son possibly a decade before, when Jane was about twelve) Mrs. Bennet had to focus on her daughters’ marriages in order to ensure the family’s well-being. The problem is that she overcompensated beyond what the society she lives in found good form. 

Mrs. Bennet is a foolish, vain, nervous woman who is often called out in the narrative as an older woman with Lydia’s naturally foolish and selfish character. Her husband long ago realized he’d someone for looks who he was incompatible with personality-wise. The readers (especially modern readers) see his neglect of family affairs readily, and his gentle (and at times less than gentle) mockery of his family (particularly his wife and his three youngest daughters). But importantly, Mrs. Bennet also is meant to come across as a lesson to the reader. A silly woman who married above her station (it’s mentioned several times she secured the better marriage compared to her own sister) Mrs. Bennet doesn’t have the social graces she should have been expected to, as her husband’s wife.

This is an important plot point. Raising Mrs. Bennet up as the only Bennet aware of their impending doom as Mr. Bennet ages is important and adds depth to her matrimonial scheming on her daughters’ behalves. But vitally the way she goes about her work causes Mr. Darcy to hold the greatest of disdain for her and her family. It’s that disdain that helps induce him to persuade Mr. Bingley to leave Netherfield Park. This isn’t truly questioned by Elizabeth, who understands that her mother’s over-eager grasping immediately raised Mr. Darcy’s concerns. Remember, at this time there was an abundance of women who were deliberately setting out to marry men of good fortune, and desperate to make themselves amiable enough to secure that marriage, regardless of their true feelings. Mr. Darcy (and honestly Mr. Bingley too should have known better) would have spent his entire later youth and then adulthood on the alert for women whose intentions were only for his wealth, and not for his happiness. That’s important, especially after we see the great care Mr. Darcy takes with Pemberly and his dependents. 

Mrs. Bennet’s desperation is understandable. Her character (grasping, foolish, too needy and nervous to understand the social graces she must display to appear acceptable to men of the station she wants her daughters to marry) isn’t virtuous. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are intended by the narrative to stand as examples for what happens when people who are not of similar or compatible characters marry. Mr. Bennet grew so disillusioned with his wife that his reaction to his family’s financial insecurity is to make jokes and wave his wife’s concerns away as foolishness. He’s not really concerned with the future of his female family members. Mrs. Bennet on the other hand, doted on for her beauty then ignored and trivialized after that beauty lost it’s attraction, is left to indulge her worst impulses as she tries to snap up eligible young men for her daughters. Importantly, Mr. Wickham easily fools her as to his true character, even after he runs off with her daughter. 

While we look at Mrs. Bennet’s desperation and find it both pitiable and understandable, that doesn’t mean that she’s the better person in the marriage.  These two people could have been better than who they became as they aged. The problem is that in their youth they found a spouse who wasn’t compatible with them, and their own character deficiencies were magnified in the marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are intended as a warning to the reader over marrying for shallow reasons (beauty for him, money for her). Character matters in a marriage, as does mutual compatibility. 

[beatrice-otter]

None of this is wrong, but there are a couple of nuances to add:

1) In looking at their respective financial positions, this analysis leaves out the support that they can expect from Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Philips (Mrs Bennet’s brothers.) If Mr. Bennet dies and his heir throws them out, they have relatives who can and almost certainly will take them in. This is something the Dashwood ladies do not have, by the way, or at least not to the same degree; Sir John Middleton may have let them take Barton Cottage on very easy terms, but they are still renting it from them, and they do still have all the rest of the household expenses to bear.

Mr. and Mrs. Philips don’t seem to have any kids (no cousins are mentioned) and we know Mrs. Philips loves Mrs. Bennet and the Miss Bennets. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner do have kids, but also, Mr. Gardiner’s business is apparently quite successful: he has the time and money to take long vacations, and he and his wife dress in such a style that people who don’t know them (i.e. Mr. Darcy when they meet at Netherfield) take them for “people of fashion” i.e. members of the gentry class who have wealth but not land and hang around going to lots of parties. Between the Gardiners and the Philipses, they can afford to support the Bennet women. Most likely, Mrs. Bennet and Lydia (and maybe Kitty) would stay in Meryton with the Philipses, and the Gardiners would take the rest of the girls. (Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Philips are close, and Lydia is a favorite of both Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Philips.) In London, the older girls would help out around the Gardiner house and attend social events with them; they would be exposed to a lot of men ‘in trade’ and would have a better chance of marrying than in Meryton (where there are only four-and-twenty families they have social contact with, and if there were any young men in that group they were willing to marry who were willing to marry them, we would have met them in the book.

The Miss Bennets would probably marry either professional men or men ‘in trade’ and sink back into the middle classes their mother came from; they would not be poor. They would be dependent relatives until that point, but they have good family who love them who will allow them to be dependent and not treat them badly for it. It’s not ideal, but it’s pretty far from the “starving in the hedgerows” that Mrs. Bennet wails about. So when evaluating “is Mrs. Bennet right or not” that is something we need to keep in mind.

2) One of Austen’s main concerns is not just for her heroines to marry but to marry men who will treat them well. There’s always a jerk/rake who looks awesome on the surface but is actually awful. In P&P it’s Wickham; in S&S it’s Willoughby. Austen didn’t think love necessary for a good marriage (consider Charlotte and Mr. Collins, and Charlotte being quite content). But she did think that “knowing his character and knowing he’s a decent human being” was critical. That’s why the ‘boring/stodgy’ guy you’ve known all your life is a better catch than the handsome charmer you’ve only just met. That’s why Elizabeth begins to fall in love with Darcy when she sees Pemberly–not how wealthy he is, but how well he treats the people in his power, his servants and his sister. Austen never dwells on this, which is why so many people miss it, but it’s a constant undercurrent. Then, even more than now, there were a lot of women who were deeply unhappy–and often suffering–because their husbands treated them badly and they have no escape. Austen expects her readers to know this, when they’re evaluating the potential love interests in her books.

Mrs. Bennet, crucially, does not know this. Mrs. Bennet wants her daughters married, and she doesn’t care to whom. She does not care about the character of any prospective son-in-law. She does not care about whether it is possible for her daughter to live with him without hating him. She doesn’t even really care about whether or not he can afford to support a wife, or she wouldn’t be so thrilled with Wickham (who has no money and no prospect of getting any–army officers, whether in the militia or in the regulars, were deliberately not paid enough to support the lifestyle of the gentlemen they were supposed to be, because it would keep people who weren’t independently wealthy out of the officer corps).

Marriage to a rich man would save the family financially, but it’s not worth it if the woman so married is miserable for the rest of her life. And, given the family support that they can expect, this is extremely short-sighted of Mrs. Bennet.

[william-shakespeare-official]

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston

Hamlet: The Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. THe 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. And the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation. Have the 2018 Almeida version here.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here.

Macbeth: here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery. Here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. Here's the 1948 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZrf_0_CcQ">here. The 1988 BBC onee with portugese subtitles and here the 2001 one). The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here and the 1966 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version.

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier, and here's the 1995 one with Ian McKellen. (the 1995 one is in english subtitled in spanish. the 1955 one has no subtitles and might have ads since it's on youtube)

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version.

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1988 BBC version here, the 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, herefor the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

[littlecityghost]

Oh, I have additions!

A Misdummer Night Dream: Here’s the 2013 globe production (the one with The Kiss, you know it)

Romeo and Juliet: Here’s the one that was going to be a stage show and then lockdown happened so they filmed it! Stars Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley

[nerdsandthelike]

Okay, I'm collating everything from the comments because I love this so much!

From vivienlacroix:

Much Ado about Nothing: Here is the Free Shakespeare in the Park version with Danielle Brooks as Beatrice (From 2019)

Hamlet: Here is the 1921 silent film in which Hamlet is a woman (don’t get your hopes up though it’s extremely sexist and heteronormative)

A Midsummer Night‘s Dream: here is the 2019 National Theatre version (With Gwendoline Christie)

From partywithponies:

Here is the Shakespeare's Globe/Roger Allam/Colin Morgan version of The Tempest! (From 2013)

From ryfkah

"Двенадцатая ночь" (Twelfth Night), a Russian film from 1955 (with subtitles)

Twelfth Night (1986), a filmed version of an Australian stage production with baby Geoffrey Rush as Andrew Aguecheek

From chekovsphaser:

This drive has 4 Globe productions Midsummer 2013 and Tempest 2013 (Both above), and then As You Like It 2009, and Love's Labour's Lost 2010

From maa-pix:

Twelfth Night: the 1998 version, "Live From Lincoln Center" on PBS, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with Helen Hunt, Paul Rudd, and Kyra Sedgwick. Part One, Intermission interview with Nicholas Hytner, and Part Two. Also here. (Absolutely fantastic version, best I've ever seen.)

From everybody-dies-at-least-once:

Andrew Scott's Hamlet: Almeida (2018)

King Lear at Shakespeare Festival NYC (1974) w/ James Earl Jones, Paul Sorvino, and a young (very sexy) Raul Julia here

Then I made a Google Drive for the ones that I have that I haven't seen elsewhere on the list:

They are also all Globe productions: MacBeth 2020, Romeo and Juliet 2009, Romeo and Juliet 2019, The Merry Wives of Windsor 2019, and The Winter's Tale 2018.

And then finally MIT has this super cool repository of performances from around the world and some of them have videos https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/

In my (unsuccessful) quest to find The Hollow Crown, I also found a few other of the histories, so here's Richard II with Sean Connery, Richard II with Ian McKellan, and a stage play of Richard III

Also, if anyone has a version of the lockdown Romeo and Juliet mentioned above or the Olivier or McKellan Richard IIIs, the current links are broken and the productions sound very cool!

[william-shakespeare-official]

I might kiss you my friend for that work. I awoke from my slumber to find that the post had become popular again and there was way too much notes attached to it for me to read them all.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Everyone's so upset about what's going on on my normal and functional space ship.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Excellent you can join ranks with that one doctor who this story made late for surgery

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#same#started reading suddenly it was 5 fucking am

Read about my normal and functional spaceship to absolutely destroy your sleep schedule

[secondimpact]

This happened to me with their (now finished) serial novel Curse Words, and then their (currently unfinished) story Charlie MacNamara, Galactic Ace when I caught up to Curse Words while it was still in progress.

Simply put, it’s just a thing that happens when it comes to reading Derin’s stories.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I've been reliably informed by many, many readers that these stories are specifically crack for ADHD people who usually have difficulty reading and I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. That's such a random demographic.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Look it happens

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#cannot start reading it is already Late

Do you have to do surgery tomorrow? No? Then how bad could it be to start reading.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#me watching horror movies: noooo why would you open the door covered in warnings not to do that!#me reading thos blog post: I should start reading time to orbit

You should do it, nothing will go wrong. You are the master of your sleep schedule and will get plenty of rest. It'll be fine.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#I am one sentence in and my suspected adhd brain started to fucking. VIBRATE#what the FUCK#I am so happy and am going to get a normal amount of sleep tonight

Ahaha yes another one

Join the ADHD Reader Army

[powersandplanetaries]

Congratulations, you did invent time travel after all! Unfortunately, instead of the Soviet moon conspiracy thing, all it’s good for is warping your readers several hours into the future.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

... I'll take it.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#why is it always 3:30 when I spot this post

Because that's the ideal time to start reading the story

[corviiids]

meditations on the odyssey

[tlbodine]

Writing Advice: At the Heart of Your Plot Lies a Question

I’ve been thinking a lot about story structure lately. It’s the thing I struggle with the most, as an author, and judging from a lot of stories I’ve read (and blurbs I’ve helped to write), it’s a big issue for others, too. A lot of times, people don’t realize that there are fundamental structural issues with their stories until they get to the marketing phase, when they go to write a blurb or query letter and realize they cannot condense their story. 

I have some bad news for you: If you can’t elevator pitch your book, there’s a good chance that the problem is the book’s plot, not your innate blurbing skills. 

I know. That’s a hard thing to swallow. And maybe I’m wrong - maybe you just need to work on your blurbing a little bit and it’ll all be just fine. 

But maybe I’m not wrong. In which case, just humor me for a second. Your story will thank you for it. 

Thing #1: Your world-building is not your story. 

It doesn’t matter how much careful thought and planning you’ve put into figuring out the logistics of your world’s science, economy, government, etc. The intricate backstories and family histories might be totally important, but they’re probably not the plot. Until you have characters who want things and obstacles in their path, you don’t have a story. 

Thing #2: Your character arc is not your plot 

Characters should change. Your character should be transformed by the events of the story. This is, ultimately, where the story lies. It’s not, however, the plot. Why, you ask? Because plots are actually pretty generic. A plot is a framework, a set of expectations and structural beats that hold up the story. The story is the character’s development between Point A and Point B. 

Thing #3: Plots are tied to genre 

In the sense that I’m using plot here - expectations and structural beats - I would argue that “plot” is the essential defining characteristic of genre. Which is to say, the thing that unites books within a genre is that they all have essentially the same plot. But how can that be, you ask? Because…

Thing #4: “Plot” = The Story Your Reader Asks (and you have to answer)

What is it that keeps a reader turning the page? What compels a reader to finish a story? Compelling characters, cool settings, sure, ok maybe. But I would argue that at its heart, the thing that makes any reader keep reading (as opposed to, say, watching TV or playing soccer or giving their cat a bath) is curiosity. 

Humans are naturally curious. We love gossip. We find it irresistible. There’s something in our genetic makeup that craves answers to questions, to gathering insider knowledge. 

Which means that if you ask a question, and it seems like a fairly interesting question, the person hearing it won’t be satisfied until they know the answer. 

So based on that assumption, I would argue that readers keep reading stories in order to find the answer to a question. I would also argue that, for the most part, the nature of that question is the same or pretty similar for all stories of a particular genre. 

Some story questions: 

Who did it? How did they do it? Why did they do it? (mystery) 

Will they succeed in time/before bad thing happens? (fantasy)

Who will come out on top? (epic fantasy) 

How could these two unlikely people possibly fall in love? (romance)

What actually happened? (thriller) 

How will they get out of this? (adventure) 

Are they going to survive? (horror)

Etc. etc. 

Different stories will have different flavors of these questions, but at its core, every story should have a central question that drives the narrative onward - everything else eventually feeds in to answering that question. 

You’ll note, too, that sometimes the question asked by the narrative itself is not really the question asked by the reader. For example: Ostensibly, the mystery in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is “What happened to Harriet?” But I think the real question is “How is the PI connected to the reporter? What’s actually going on here?” (which, you will note from our handy-dandy chart, makes this book a thriller and not a mystery). 

“What actually happened the night of the murders?” <- Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. Definitely another thriller. (See also: “What actually happened to Amy?” at the heart of Gone Girl.) 

“How is Katniss going to survive the Hunger Games?” (adventure! For all that it bills itself as a dystopia, Hunger Games is at its heart a survival story that calls back to Jack London). 

There are more questions than the ones I detailed above, but those are some starters to whet the appetite.. 

The important thing to remember is that if your story doesn’t have a central driving question, it doesn’t actually have a plot. It may have a character arc! Lots of things might happen! It may have a story. But it will have no plot. And your readers might not know that’s what’s wrong with it, but they’ll notice it. They’ll pick up on it. 

And when they do, what they’ll tell you is: The book is boring. 

So the next time you’re struggling to write the elevator pitch for your story, or the story just isn’t coming together for you, stop and ask: What is the main question? What is the question that’s going to keep the reader turning the page?