If Much Ado About Nothing premiered today and had a thriving tumblr fandom (don’t think about it too hard), it would be made up of the following groups:
Beadick stans who genuinely don’t understand why anyone else is here but are the majority, so they can filter a lot of this out and just make parallel posts. This is the stuff that gets cross-posted to Instagram.
Subset of the above who call it Benetrice because it’s less embarrassing but who have lost the war
Claudihero shippers who think everyone else is literally missing the point of the play
Claudihero ENJOYERS who think the above are literally missing the point of the play but enjoy exploring the dynamic and writing divorce fic
Members of both of the previous two groups that start regular flame wars with Beadick shippers even though their ships don’t intersect in any way
Benedick/Claudio slash shippers, most of whom make angst content about the dual that never happens
A somehow even larger contingent of Borachio/Conrad slash shippers
A somehow even LARGER contingent of Dogberry/Verges slash shippers
Hero/Beatrice femslash shippers, most of whom end up in flame wars over whether the ship is problematic because they’re cousins
Hero/Ursula shippers, all of whom promote their ship as the Ethical Alternative to the above
Margaret/Benedick shippers that are mostly just doing their own thing although Beatrice stans do screenshot and mock them
The extremely small group of Margaret/Beatrice rarepair shippers that are just *chef’s kiss* the most valid group on this list
People who are only here to write like 50k word Margaret/Borachio fix-it fics
People who are only here to write Don Pedro x Reader fic
Don Pedro stans who write whump fic about Beatrice turning down his proposal
Don John stans who write meta about how his villainy and deceit is fine because he’s sad that he’s a bastard :( (“Don John apologists”)
People who create blocklists of the above
Weird class of Benedick stans who are NOT Beadick shippers and instead write screeds about how Beatrice is abusive because she’s less outwardly affectionate
Weird class of Claudio stans who are NOT Claudihero shippers and instead come just shy of actually calling Hero gendered slurs (“Claudio apologists”)
People who create blocklists of the above
“Beadick is clearly compulsory heterosexuality” truthers
People who are only here to call Leonato a DILF
People who create blocklists of the above
All of the above groups are participating in the site-wide #anti maan #maan critical discourse “Is tricking your friends into falling in love abusive.” Greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,000 pages of heated debate.
jbbartram-illu
dededos
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