#hamlet horatio

[amissy-art]

Horatio to the camera: hi everyone, now I will prove that the gadgets are watching us. I created my friend’s family and myself in The Sims and left them to live their lives. After 10 minutes they killed each other and only my character remained alive...like in real life *the camera turns to the graves*

Horatio: I have fucking trauma

[queershippingpolls]

Do you ship them?

Horatio/Hamlet (Hamlet)

I ship them

Neutral

I don't ship them

See results/I don't know them

Voting ended onAug 16, 2024

left painting: "Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard" by Eugène Delacroix

right painting: "Hamlet and Horatio in the Churchyard" by Victor Müller

[alwri-tes]

Okay so I read "Greetings From Sunny L.A." by Courtney Summers for the first time yesterday, and I'm having a lot of haunted thoughts about it, but the one realization I had (that I can't get over) is the fact that West McCray is now the Horatio of the Sadie extended universe

Explanation/summary/context under the cut for all 3 people who might care about this. Enjoy me connecting Hamlet parallels to a random thriller book I was obsessed with in 2018 (spoilers for Sadie and "Greetings from Sunny L.A.")

Okay, so, Sadie is a realistic fiction thriller novel released in 2018. It follows the titular Sadie, a 19 year old who has fled her home to go on a quest to hunt down the man who murdered her younger sister. The book also follows West McCray, a journalist who was hired to try and find Sadie after her surviving family reported her missing. West starts a podcast to document his search for Sadie, and it goes viral.

In 2022, the author of Sadie, Courtney Summers, published another book, I'm The Girl.

I'm The Girl is considered to be a "spiritual successor" to Sadie, and details of the plot confirm that the book takes place in the same universe- a character mentions that the podcast based off of the search for Sadie was made into a feature film. It's a fun little Easter egg for returning readers, but otherwise has no real bearing on the plot. Both books can be easily read as standalones.

Anyway, Courtney Summers later released "Greetings from Sunny L.A" a bonus short story/epilogue that bridges the gap between Sadie and I'm the Girl. It's from West McCray's perspective, and details what his life (and the lives of Sadie's family members) were like in the years after the events of Sadie. It also explains why West made the decision to allow his podcast to be made into a movie.

West never found Sadie. In fact, no one ever did. In the years after she went missing and a viral podcast was made about her, there had been a few alleged sightings, but none were ever conclusive. Not even a body showed up.

As West chafed under the guilt of never having found Sadie, he also struggled with the way his podcast about her went viral. West and Sadie's surviving family members were approached about a movie deal, but her family always refused them. West struggled to manage the stress of it all, and his marriage and reputation started to struggle.

Then, Sadie's mother and grandmother passed away. West, alone and tired, was left the sole heir to Sadie's story. He was the only survivor of the events of Sadie (as far as we know). So, he allowed her story to be made into a movie, because he believed that the director could do her story justice, and he hoped that the film would keep her memory alive. And maybe, just maybe, it could help find her, after all these years.

Once I finished reading this (and got over my initial sadness) my Shakespeare-obsessed dumbass was like "wait this is just like Horatio from Hamlet."

Really, it's very sad. You get the sense that West was by no means eager to surrender the film rights, and he did it more out of desperation than anything else. I don't think what he did was right, but I understand why he finally caved.

[wisteria-lodge]

HAMLET: Has this fellow no feeling of his business that he a sings at grave-making? 

HORATIO: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. 

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act V, Scene I

Everything about the divide between these two is right here. Hamlet feels everything, is affected by everything, and he projects it all out. And he’s the prince, he’s indulged, he’s allowed.

Not Horatio. Horatio is a nobody who locks it all away to keep himself safe. And then he keeps it there because it’s easy. He knows exactly why the gravedigger is able to sing. This isn’t Horatio, this is “a piece of him.” 

It takes a lot to break though the mask. We know Horatio’s got this insanely intense internal life because we see it when he stares down the old king’s ghost without blinking. But we don’t see it again until Hamlet is dying, and Hamlet is shocked by the ferocious emotion directed at him. He thought that because he didn’t see it all the time, it wasn’t there. 

And then Horatio stares down Fortinbras, and his entire invading army. And doesn’t blink then either.

[hamletstagingideas]

The soliloquies are staged like talking head interviews.

[thy-bedchamber]

I’m amazed by the extent of skill hamlet/Horatio fanfic writers have.

[the-mad-prince-of-denmark]

[Pre-play, at Wittenberg]

Hamlet: Uh oh.

Guildenstern: What?

Rosencrantz: Somebody’s in love~.

Hamlet: Yeah right. I just think Horatio’s cool, okay? It’s not like I lie awake at night thinking about him.

~~~

Hamlet: *lying awake at night* …Oh shit.

[doodlelupin]

Doodled some modern day Hamlet on the back of my English notebook