#l.e.a.r.

[princess-of-france]

HELLO i don't know if you can tell from my uh. going through your tag liking all your posts but i am completely in love with L.E.A.R. and would LOVE to hear more about it at any time ahsdfkhwfbwjbfwf??? your writing is so gorgeous it makes me scream i genuinely wish i could emulate your skill for dialogue!!!

Hi friend! Thank you so much for this message! It completely made my day. :)

Luck, Education, and Roses is a play I’ve been developing for a couple years. Boiled down, it’s a prequel to Shakespeare’s King Lear, but set in twenty-first century Manhattan. You can read more about it here!  

The writing excerpts I share on Tumblr are mostly experimental. I like to practice getting inside my characters’ heads, but only about 4% of the dialogue on my blog appears in the play. (As you may have noticed, I have a bit of an obsession with Edmund and Cordelia, whose toxic romance is the narrative through-line of L.E.A.R.)

If you’d like to follow the project, my tags include: 

#L.E.A.R.

otp: send in time

jewel flame flower

[harry-leroy]

Edgar!

Thank you so much for the ask, Macy! I always love to talk about my son hehehe. I’m going to tag @princess-of-france too if she’s interested! (I know it’s been a while since we’ve done King Lear stuff on here…) 

do I like them:

My darling angel boy I love him to the moon and back 

5 good qualities:

independent, artistic, empathetic, gentle (but absolutely feral when he needs to be), honest 

3 bad qualities:

paranoid, superiority/inferiority complex, misanthropic 

favourite episode/etc:

I adore him in King Lear, and in L.E.A.R. I’m having to do some fixing with TEP, (which is why I haven’t been posting about it, but I haven’t forgotten it!) 

otp:

Edgar x Albany (otp: where have you hid yourself? - these two absolutely need one another, especially post-play, and there is so much that they can learn from one another. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop crying about these two). 

Edgar x Cordelia (otp: thou dearest best of men - [get ready for my TEP headcanons:] I like to think of them as England’s hope. They were going to pull the country out of the mess that Lear inherited, the mess that he made worse, they were going to make it better. That’s what they wanted, but God knows it would’ve never worked. These two take notes from one another in their actions, and it’s what ends up destroying them. Cordelia takes a stand against Lear after Edgar tried it all those years ago. Edgar sees Cordelia in armor and decides it’s time to take justice on the wrongdoings of his brother. And back in King Lear land [from the actual play] - I’d argue that Edgar’s first step into civilization after running away is joining Cordelia’s army. He comes back to the world for her, and guess who’s on the other side? Albany - the man he thought he could trust, and you can bet that drives an immovable wedge between them.) 

brotp:

Edgar x Edmund (do they destroy each other? Absolutely, but your Gloucester family sitcom idea has restored my faith in humanity and I’m going to write it one of these days watch me >-<) 

ot3:

Edgar x King Lear x The Fool (aka: your favorite pals to spend time with while braving out a storm - no but really, at this point in the play, everything is getting displaced, and Edgar (of all people) replaces the fool in this filial relationship and it’s just one more odd pairing that makes the night even more chaotic.) 

notp:

Edgar x Goneril (lol we were talking about this a whillleee back - it’s been 5ever since I’ve written for this play - but these two definitely have some things in common, and Edgar totally drives a wedge between her already struggling marriage with Albany - and he drives a wedge between her affair with Edmund. I could see her taking agency to hurt him in some way after she’s been so hurt all her life. She knows he’d never blame her, and I don’t know if she would be able to bring herself to do it.) 

best quote(s):

“He sent me to Princeton to find myself. But it was a waste of time and a colossal waste of money because you can’t find what doesn’t exist. I was hollow. I was air. I was nothing, so I found nothing.” - Edgar; L.E.A.R. (Act I) - (by the lovely @princess-of-france - the word ‘nothing’ is so powerful in King Lear and Claire has done such a wonderful job with Edgar’s character, pairing him with Albany was perhaps one of the most heartbreaking and yet most perfect ideas I’ve ever had the privilege of coming across. Hope you don’t mind me using your quote, Claire, but it’s so perfect for our darling Edgar.) 

“Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits.” - Edgar; King Lear (4.1.) - (I believe that this is the one time in the play that the word ‘scared’ is said, and to hear it now, from Edgar, looking at his blinded father, who has no idea who he is, that is powerful. It’s such a raw moment, because it’s not really Tom talking in the moment, it’s Edgar. Edgar is scared out of his good wits. He’s absolutely terrified. What on earth has happened to his father? Who did this? Why did they do this? He can do nothing but stare and hope for an answer. He’s absolutely powerless.) 

head canon:

Get ready for angst, kids. 

Edmund’s (especially before he joined the army) was prone to fainting when exposed to too much physical or even emotional pain. It was  delicate constitution he got from his mother, and he hated it. He got picked on by the other boys at school. He got called weak, and Edmund is anything but weak. Edgar, on the other hand, has never fainted before in his life. He’s incredibly strong, given the sometimes fragile state of his mind. His breaking point is wayyy past the normal person’s breaking point, and sometimes Edgar wishes that he could just drop out and have his body tell him to let go. 

[princess-of-france]

First Line Meme                                                        

Rules: Post the first line of one of your WIPs and tag as many people as there are words.

Tagged by the wonderful @captainofthegreenpeas. Thanks, friend!

“Are you going to jump?”

I tag: @harry-leroy @skeleton-richard @themummersfolly @nuingiliath @themalhambird

[harry-leroy]

L.E.A.R. / The Edgar Project ships 4 / ?

OTP: Where Have You Hid Yourself? 

@suits-of-woe @princess-of-france

[harry-leroy]

L.E.A.R. / The Edgar Project ships 3/? 

OTP: She Herself is a Dowry 

@princess-of-france @suits-of-woe

[harry-leroy]

L.E.A.R. / The Edgar Project ships 1/? 

OTP: Send In Time 

@princess-of-france @suits-of-woe

[harry-leroy]

multiples of 5 + Cordelia?

Hello! Thank you so much for the ask:) I really appreciate it, and I appreciate your patience in the time it took to get these back to you. So, these’ll be quite a bit shorter than the Edgar ones I did, probably due to the fact that Cordelia is a) a side character in my play and b) a character that I definitely need to develop more. But, I will still leave most of them under a cut. 

And - I’ll tag our lovely Lear squad who might want to have a look at these: @suits-of-woe, @witty-fool, and @princess-of-france. 

5. Guilty Pleasures

I think she relishes the fact that she’s the favorite child. She totally knows it. Her older sisters, especially Goneril, have had to deal with so much misogyny and just terrible words/actions from the other men in their lives, but Cordelia’s been spared most of the terribleness. She also knows her father’s mind, like Edgar knows his father’s mind, and there’s a certain amount of manipulation that happens between the two of them, limiting their fathers from becoming total fools. They’re allowed redemption because of what their “good” children expose them for. (I put “good” in quotes because it’s terribly difficult in this play to discern who is “good” and who is “bad” - which is why I struggle with calling either Cordelia or Edgar the “good” children - side note for your reference). And I think Cordelia would be aware of just how much her sisters are marginalized (especially Goneril) but perhaps not to the full extent that the sisters themselves are aware (again like how Edgar is aware that his brother is being treated poorly, but he’ll never know exactly how it feels - until he does).

10. Fears / Phobias

Leaving her father alone, knowing the kind of condition his mind is slipping into. And also leaving Edgar, considering what has already happened to him. She knows that Edgar is far more self-sufficient than her aging father, though she can’t bear to know that his heart of gold has been shattered twice over. It’s not fair. Edgar feels the same way about Cordelia’s end - the beautiful violets have been crushed, the petals a lavender dust that will wither like all of them. There’s a whole scene in The Edgar Project where Cordelia and Edgar meet in a sort of dream-like interlude, which is where he learns of the wars that she is about to wage. She likes being in control (as does Edgar), because she believes that she can guide everything towards a happy and peaceful ending, although her necessity for the truth gets in the way. She’s left with no choice but to take this control by force, going up against the two women she hoped she’d never have to face. The sisters she’d thought she’d beaten from birth. 

15. What it takes to make them cry

It probably takes a lot to make her cry. She remains straight-faced even when she is banished from her father’s love (though she’s certainly confused). I could definitely see her shedding a tear when she gains it back, however, in 4.7. when Lear says “you are a spirit I know; where did you die?” (those lines just break me) because of just how much both Lear and Cordelia have had to go through to get to that reunion. She also cries when she is reunited with Edgar in the interlude, because she’s seeing this physical manifestation of what’s been boiling in his mind for years, and for a moment, she believes that he has lost it (something she could not bear to think about). (Also, he just looks terrible in general in that scene, like a tortured soul - something I hope to capture well in this scene). Though, both of their goals are to restore justice, and that’s what they’re about to do (to the best of their ability - Edgar succeeds in this more than Cordelia because of a certain someone…).

20. What-Ifs / Alternate Timelines

I’m still toying around with Cordelia’s character in The Edgar Project, and I’m not sure how much of Edgar’s backstory I’m going to go into, because it’ll probably come out as bits of dialog here and there, rather than a whole scene. So far she’s only in two of the scenes that I’ve sketched out so far, “Dead March and the Gored State: Part I” and “Spirits”, though now that I’ve got more of this backstory developed, I’ll be on the lookout for more places where she can exist. Given the fact that these two don’t have a single interaction in the original play, it might be difficult to find these spots. (That’s why I love looking at Nahum Tate’s version- because I absolutely love any interactions that these two have with one another, in any production or spin-off. Their parallels are so interesting). However, I am really interested in exploring just how close Cordelia and Edgar were before his breakdown, and even during and after his breakdown. They’re probably the people who said ‘if we’re not married by 30, we’ll just marry each other”- they were probably that close. They probably know a lot about one another, but they’ve never been sexually interested in one another - and I don’t think Edgar’s really sexually interested in anyone. Cordelia might be. I’m still trying to nail their relationship down, because I definitely think there is one, I’m just having to pick up on very small textual clues to give me the foundation I need for it. Cordelia’s definitely not a central character in my play, but if you want an awesome Cordelia - @princess-of-france‘s L.E.A.R. is absolutely incredible.

[harry-leroy]

Hehe more thoughts on the Edgar/Edmund atheism thing (didn’t want to bother the op- and also I’m just thinking out loud so here goes)

I’ll tag @princess-of-france and @suits-of-woe if they’ve got thoughts (not the happiest of subjects but this entire play is a disaster).

- (first off - Macy being an Edgy Atheist™️ and me being an atheist full of existential dread just basically sums up the cause of our love for those characters- Edmund and Edgar respectively. I just thought that was lovely and great, so here I am pointing it out).

- I totally get the draw for Edmund’s atheism. This is all we’ve got, so let’s bring it to the ground. There’s no star getting in the way of ruling this whole burning world. Sure we might be a bastard, but that says nothing about my abilities. I’m just as good as Edgar, even more politically capable. I feel like Edmund learned this atheistic thing from his brother at a young age. It was their little secret they kept from their father, who’d willingly put his faith in any star in the heavens. (Thing that happened in the Edgar Project: Gloucester had his fortune read when his two boys were young. He needed some closure. He was told that he needed to keep an eye on Edmund at all times, or else he’ll be blinded. He was then told that Edgar would break his heart many times but that he had to be patient in order for their relationship to work out. Of course, after Edgar’s breakdown and those nine grueling years of trying to get Edgar to see things his way, Gloucester lost his patience at the news of his son’s ‘betrayal’. His eyes were on Edgar, and that’s when Edmund was blinded him). Of course, Edgar and Edmund rebelled from their father’s ideology in two totally different ways. Edmund decided on his philosophy as soon as he linked the problems with his bastardy with this arbitrary issue of inheritance. It worked for him, and that’s all that matters. It’s right in accordance with the violence with this world: conquer or be conquered.

Edgar, on the other hand, was terrified by the things that he considered to be true. He’d rather suffer through fifty eternities in Hell than not exist. Everything could just come crashing down at one moment- the world, life, reality, everything. The fact that they’re alone is something he cannot reconcile for a long time- it takes him at least nine years, with several harrowing traumas on the way that repeat themselves over and over and over. There is no point, so why the bloodshed? Why can’t we all play nice? Why must we make this space we live in so terrible? (Edmund says there’s no point, so let’s shoot off some cannons and play gods ourselves). Edgar’s absurdist (in my play at least - but I’m going back and reading Lear and finding where I make the arguments that this whole play is absurdist), that’s what he believes to be true, but it bothers him so, so much. It takes going through a whole cycle of traumatic memories to realize that we must both conquer and eventually be conquered- that’s what makes us human. We have to fight even though we’re going to lose. It’s the only way we can be dignified.

Anyway, I could write pages on this, but I’ve got places to be and things to do. :) I love these boys a lot.