reposting some thoughts from twt and expanding on them bc i feel like going a little bit insane about the new legendary costume set for sugar and shadow.
Shadow Milk's An Ad-lib Ending is very clearly based on Macbeth (the rise and fall of a tragic king, hell it even says "Macbeth" on the poster that appears when you pick him up), while Eternal Sugar takes on the role of the big man, Shakespeare himself.
and if Eternal Sugar is Shakespeare in this, lets call it an AU, does that mean she wrote the Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy as well, aka, the story of Moonflower Faerie and Viridescent Daydream? if so, it raises a LOT of interesting contrasting points between what she's written vs the original real-world text her works are inspired by. there's a lot of comparisons, but there's also a lot of contrast, and i, for one, think those contrasts tell a very interesting implicit story.
I think it can be summarily explained by this simple detail: shakespeare's original Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play. the costume story for Pure Vanilla and White Lily, Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy, is a tragicomedy. Finally, Macbeth, in both its original and rewritten form for Shadow Milk, remains a tragedy play.
um. big compare/contrast analysis essay below in which i go into the differences between the plays and the costume stories in detail and propose questions i think could yield a lot of fun answers :3
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let's start with Midsummer Night's Dream.
in the original Shakespearean text, the B plot of the play follows the fairies - Queen Titania of the fairies refuses to give her husband, King Oberon, one of her changeling servants. in retaliation, Oberon has his own fairy servant, a mischievous sprite (also called a jester) named Puck, help him create a love potion from a flower. He has the fairies lull Titania to sleep, then gives her the potion while she's sleeping to make her fall in love with the first thing she sees when she awakens. when she awakens, she falls in love with a man from the C plot, who's had his head turned into that of a donkey by Puck - (In the words of the play, "Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.")
in the costume story, Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy, the plot of the story follows the King of the Faeries, Pure Vanilla/Viridescent Daydream. He asks a gaggle of fairies where he might find White Lily/Moonflower Queen, aka, "the Moonflower Queen". The fairies tell him that the moonflower is a flower that gives off an alluring/enthralling scent AND is able to lull people to sleep. Viri goes to find Moonflower Faerie, who politely rejects his confession of love for her but indulges him anyways and allows him to dance with her until dawnbreak.
Lots of similarities, but a LOT of glaring differences. The most prominent one is that Pure Vanilla, who is named King of the Faeries and purportedly represents King Oberon, is the one who's actually under the effects of the love potion. Meanwhile, White Lily, the Moonflower Queen, is the one who blooms the flower that causes both love and deep sleep, which are roles that Oberon takes in the original play. This implies that the roles are flipped - Pure Vanilla isn't Oberon. He's actually Titania.
The next glaring difference is the subject of the afflicted's love-potion induced affections. In the original Shakespeare, Titania falls in love with a donkey-headed man, cursed to be that way by the jester Puck. In the costume story, the one who represents Titania, Pure Vanilla/Viridescent Daydream, falls in love with the one who represents Oberon, White Lily/Moonflower Faerie. This creates an interesting dynamic - a love potion implies a level of non-consensual force. Pure Vanilla is forced to be in love with White Lily due to the effects of her moonflower's scent. If we were to transpose this 1:1 into the original Shakespeare, Titania is forced to be in love with Oberon due to the effects of the love potion he created.
That's a MAJOR difference from the text of the original Shakespeare! It implies our Titania and Oberon figures aren't actually meant to be in love, implicating instead that Moonflower Faerie, our Oberon figure, is also supposed to represent the donkey-headed man, aka, an ass. Now comes the question: if Pure Vanilla had to be put under the effects of a love potion to fall in love with White Lily, who is he supposed to be in love with? Another question: why is White Lily, our Oberon figure, also taking on the role of the animal that Pure Vanilla, our Titania figure, is meant to fall in love with?
Returning to the new costumes with Shadow Milk and Eternal Sugar - A Script Writ in Fated Discord. Let's focus on Eternal Sugar, who proclaims herself a playwright and seems to represent Shakespeare himself rather than any of the characters from his plays.
If Eternal Sugar is meant to represent Shakespeare himself, then it could be assumed that she is the one who wrote the costume story, Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy. This is further supported by her costume's name, "Ink for a Tragicomedy". If she is the one who wrote the costume story, then Pure Vanilla being put under the effects of a love potion to explicitly fall in love with White Lily is a choice that Eternal Sugar intentionally made, and it aligns strangely with the original play. So why did she do that?
I think the answer can be found in the final difference between Midsummer Night's Dream and Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy. The final difference between the original text and the costume story is that there is no jester in the costume story - the character of Puck has been removed from the narrative entirely. If Eternal Sugar is the one who wrote the costume story, then I believe that the removal of Puck, who is a major driving character in the original text, was an intentional choice.
So our question count reaches three:
Without the effects of the love potion, who is Pure Vanilla supposed to be in love with?
Why does Eternal Sugar portray White Lily as the ass for literally minding her own business?
Why did Eternal Sugar remove the jester figure from the costume story containing Pure Vanilla and White Lily?
Now. We finally turn our heads to look at Shadow Milk, our most beloved/unbeloved jester.
Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy play. It is also arguably the one with the most superstition around it - actors of the time (and even still today!) believed that saying the name of the play inside the theater would bring bad luck. Their fears weren't unfounded, because there are actually records of accidents and real deaths happening during running productions of Macbeth. Yet despite this superstition, Macbeth is still one of Shakespeare's most popular and well-known plays today! Given the superstitions surrounding it, as well as the tragic nature of the play itself, it makes sense why Eternal Sugar chose this play in particular to base Shadow Milk's fate on.
"In the play, a brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by his latent ambition and spurred to violence by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. Then, racked with guilt and paranoia, he commits further murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, becoming a tyrannical ruler in the process. The violence perpetrated by the power-hungry couple leads to their insanity and finally to their deaths." (x)
In the costume story A Script Writ in Fated Discord, we only touch on the comparisons to Macbeth a little bit. Rather than being the rewrite of Macbeth itself, A Script Writ in Fated Discord glances beyond the stage, using Macbeth as a tool to tell its story instead.
The allusions to Macbeth in this costume story are straightforward - "A protagonist, told by prophecy that he would become a king, seizes the throne by any means necessary. Then another prophecy emerges, foretelling the new king's tragic downfall". However, what's interesting is what comes before it, when Shadow Milk first picks up the script containing the rewrite of Macbeth from Eternal Sugar - "The lines, penned in elegant calligraphy, laid bare secrets only the actor himself knew. And now, it wasn't just his past being unearthed--the script dared to dictate his future".
This implies that Eternal Sugar isn't just writing plays, but that she has full control over the fate of others by simply writing about them. This also implies that she has written Shadow Milk's past to be similar that of Macbeth's - he has "seized the throne by any means necessary" and become a king in his own right. What Shadow Milk seems to be upset about in this script is that his future will also be like that of Macbeth - a "tragic downfall".
However, like with Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy, there's a very prominent difference between the original Macbeth and the script Eternal Sugar has written for Shadow Milk. In the original Macbeth, the character of Lady Macbeth is a huge driving force of the play. It could be successfully argued that without her influence, Macbeth never would have been spurred to violence in the first place. Yet despite the absence of a Lady Macbeth figure in Shadow Milk's life, he seems to have laid claim to his throne just fine on his own!
So, since Eternal Sugar has written for Shadow Milk to be the titular character of her Macbeth rewrite, this means she intentionally left out a Lady Macbeth figure in his life - the difference follows thus: In the original play, Macbeth would have never been driven to take the throne without Lady Macbeth's vicious influence. In Eternal Sugar's rewrite, Shadow Milk, our Macbeth figure, is still driven to take the throne despite the absence of a Lady Macbeth figure.
Since we don't have any direct quotes from Eternal Sugar's rewrite of Macbeth, which details Shadow Milk's past and future in this particular AU, there aren't a lot of questions we can ask about it. However, the questions we can ask end up looking rather suspicious when placed next to the questions we have regarding her Midsummer Night's Tragicomedy.
Without the effects of the love potion, who is Pure Vanilla supposed to be in love with?
Why does Eternal Sugar portray White Lily as the ass for literally minding her own business?
Why did Eternal Sugar remove the jester figure from the costume story containing Pure Vanilla and White Lily?
While she's wearing this costume, why doesn't Eternal Sugar mention Hollyberry at all at any point, when she explicitly mentions Pavlova and Sugarfly?
Why did Eternal Sugar remove the Lady Macbeth character from the Macbeth-like script detailing Shadow Milk's life?
Unlike the original play, taking away the Lady Macbeth character seems to have had the opposite effect on King Shadow Milk, causing him to take the throne where the original character likely would not have. Would adding a Lady Macbeth character into his life achieve another opposite effect and thus have the potential to derail his fated tragic downfall?