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im so lucky i get to live in a time post the publication of the play much ado about nothing. Worst thing about if I was to have been born in like. 1350 would be that I would never see a production of much ado about nothing in my whole miserable life. Second worst part would be the plague

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So I made notes when I read Pride and Prejudice because I had so many spoilers for this book thanks mostly to tumblr, and yet here are some things that took me quite off guard:

The narration just dips into anybody’s head whenever it feels like to give us a summary of who they are as a person and what they care about. Very straightforward. Very effective. Very much not the modern approach.

This extends to telling us straight out, like half a chapter after the iconic Darcy-snubbing-Elizabeth scene, that he had now developed a massive crush. This comes as a great shock to Elizabeth quite a bit later, but the audience spends much of the book enjoying the layers and/or dramatic irony. Who knew!

Elizabeth on the other hand had a crush on Wickham.

Wickham is genuinely good at being likeable not an obvious sleaze and the fact that he’s a bad guy was an actual plot twist, though I’m sure plenty of people saw it coming even when the book was new.

As much as the book attends to women’s concerns, being as it is a book very much about a woman, the greatest explicit thematic force of the novel is the question of class.

Specifically, that great and renowned engine of Anglophone egalitarianism, the conviction of the upper middle class that they are every bit as good as the true upper class, or that if they aren’t it’s only a question of opportunity.

Seriously, the fact that the ultimate symbol of emotional resolution the story closes out on is that the new Darcy family has over for Christmas Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle the Gardiners, who are in trade and don’t even live in the nice part of London but are nice and sensible and not at all people it is mortifying to be related to, even though Darcy assumed as much without having met them, while avoiding both her tawdry shallow mother and his awful smug aunt, who are very similar people for all one is a wretched social climber and the other a minor aristocrat obsessed with her own consequence…that’s it, that’s the book.

Additionally the fact that this novel is from the end of the 18th century , when in England the Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum but no one knew what it meant yet, including I’m pretty darn certain Jane Austen.

(Though since she waited 16 years to publish it she may have had a better sense by then, and even made amendments to that effect.)

So everyone’s sense of what is real wealth and security and thus valid social status is still vested in land ownership and income specifically from agricultural rent, and yet you can feel the change coming, because the desire to write this book in this way arises from the cultural forces that were at that time in play, particularly the question of upward mobility.

Elizabeth’s grandsons will have to get into trade in some sort of way, or their children in turn may not be able to keep Pemberly in adequate repair.

 By loosening the stubborn Darcy/Fitzwilliam pride in this particular regard Elizabeth may in fact have saved the house from dissolution.

Btw the thematic import of Mr. Darcy having his mother’s maiden name as his first name, in part because she actually ranked his father, as wealthy and respectable as the Darcys may be. His family legacy is literally his whole identity and part of what Elizabeth brings to the marriage is having helped him understand that it doesn’t have to be.

Seriously how did I not hear about any of this.

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Why The Genderswap Is The Best Thing About Warriors

Here's another post on The Warriors genderswap because I’m still not over how good it was!!!

You've got to understand that changing the Warriors to women was a sacrifice. No matter how good a choice it was, it alienated a lot of the people who would otherwise be obsessed with it.

Warriors is already a cult 70s movie - it doesn't have a huge fanbase. Making the main characters women basically alienated that entire fanbase. Because Warriors is very much a movie about masculinity.

The fans liked it because it was about masculinity, and masculine themes (courage, honour) done masculine-y.

You can find megafans of the movie on reddit or tumblr, who are very much annoyed that the story is no longer about men being men. The story isn't the same anymore, and they aren't interested.

But the change wasn't made without reason.

Lin Manuel Miranda previously thought it was impossible to turn the Warriors into a musical, despite it being one of his favourite movies. The thing that changed his mind? The genderswap.

The Warriors album was made because of the genderswap. Lin thought it was the only interesting way to tell the story in the modern age - and you know what? He was right.

Everything just hits harder when they're women.

Orphan Town and We Got You are hilarious because they're women.

Turning a male/female seductions on their head. Male seduction is a k-pop Ballad about being a nice guy? Genius.

Moments like Call Me Mercy and Park At Night are empowering and emotionally charged because they're women.

Mercy looks at the Warriors and for the first time in her life sees women that have empowered themselves, and drops everything in her life to join them, because she wants to feel like that too.

Ajax sees a catcaller sexually harassing all of her friends and thinks "I need to teach this guy a lesson, because no one else in the world will ever do that"

The story feels more intense - it feels scarier.

On some level, every women is afraid to walk home at night, and Warriors is just that feeling elevated to a musical. The threat doesn't just feel more real - it feels intimately relatable.

The genderswap was heavily inspired by gamergate. Warriors is now a story about women not being believed, being falsely accused and taken advantage of.

But the story's moral still ends up being that these women need to keep their pride, need to keep pushing on. Through everything they still hold their heads high.

God it just works so well.

Re-intepreting Luther into an incel-type villian who wants the women out of his "space"? Brilliant. Turning the controversial Swan/Mercy romance into a lesbian love story? Fantastic! Shifting the story from being about courage, to being about the courage to hold your head high even after being attacked with gender-charged abuse? Life-changing.

The emotions just... work better when they're women. Reversing the genderswap now would be taking the story's teeth away.

You can't reverse time now guys!

Much like Warriors evolved the book - the musical evolved the movie. The dudebros are scratching their heads - angry they can't relate to the musical, without realising that they aren't supposed to.

Warriors is no longer a story about masculinity. It's about femininity now and I couldn't be happier.

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Mercy after seeing the Warriors blow shit up:

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when taylor swift wrote "please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh i could recognize anywhere" that was a better adaptation of persuasion than Persuasion (2022)

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In Beartown, the teacher keeps finding Benji in all sorts of philosophers. And I guess it is my turn... I found this quote by Camus and I can't stop thinking about him

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And maybe remembering it will hurt more some days. His laugh, his smile. A couple small glimpses of peace before everything. But on other days, it might hurt just a little less, to know that he was happy

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Again thinking about how none of Benji’s lovers had a name. It was always, the guitar player this, the school teacher that. The moment Big City got his name we knew there was no possibility of them. The only name that is revealed throughout all those books is Kevin and how, “Benji traveled right across the world but never found a single place where he could stop hating himself for still loving Kevin.”

Backman did him and us so dirty.

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[writes about Jesus but it’s actually about being trans] [writes about being trans but it’s actually about Jesus]

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The point about getting used to Shakespeare's way of talking is something important to keep in mind for any older texts! As you get more comfortable with their style, you can pick up more humor and subtler aspects that make them so much more enjoyable

Hey so like many of you, I saw that article about how people are going into college having read no classic books. And believe it or not, I've been pissed about this for years. Like the article revealed, a good chunk of American Schools don't require students to actually read books, rather they just give them an excerpt and tell them how to feel about it. Which is bullshit.

So like. As a positivity post, let's use this time to recommend actually good classic books that you've actually enjoyed reading! I know that Dracula Daily and Epic the Musical have wonderfully tricked y'all into reading Dracula and The Odyssey, and I've seen a resurgence of Picture of Dorian Gray readership out of spite for N-tflix, so let's keep the ball rolling!

My absolute favorite books of all time are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Classic psychological horror books about unhinged women.

I adore The Bad Seed by William March. It's widely considered to be the first "creepy child" book in American literature, so reading it now you're like "wow that's kinda cliche- oh my god this is what started it. This was ground zero."

I remember the feelings of validation I got when people realized Dracula wasn't actually a love story. For further feelings of validation, please read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. There's a lot the more popular adaptations missed out on.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is an absolute gem of a book. It's a slow-build psychological study so it may not be for everyone, but damn do the plot twists hit. It's a really good book to go into blind, but I will say that its handling of abuse victims is actually insanely good for the time period it was written in.

Moving on from horror, you know people who say "I loved this book so much I couldn't put it down"? That was me as a kid reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Picked it up while bored at the library and was glued to it until I finished it.

Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie was also a childhood favorite of mine. Next time someone bitches about Woke Casting, tell them that the original 1911 Peter Pan novel had canon nonbinary fairies.

Watership Down by Richard Adams is my sister Cori's favorite book period. If you were a Warrior Cats, Guardians of Ga'Hoole or Wings of Fire kid, you owe a metric fuckton to Watership Down and its "little animals on a big adventure" setup.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was a play and not a book first, but damn if it isn't a good fucking read. It was also named after a Langston Hughes poem, who's also an absolutely incredible author.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book I absolutely adore and will defend until the day I die. It's so friggin good, y'all, I love it more than anything. You like people breaking out of fascist brainwashing? You like reading and value knowledge? You wanna see a guy basically predict the future of television back in 1953? Read Fahrenheit.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are considered required reading for a reason: they're both really good books about young white children unlearning the racial biases of their time. Huck Finn specifically has the main character being told that he will go to hell if he frees a slave, and deciding eternal damnation would be worth it.

As a sidenote, another Mark Twain book I was obsessed with as a kid was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Exactly what it says on the tin, incredibly insane read.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a heartbreaking but powerful book and a look at the racism of the time while still centering the love the two black protagonists feel for each other. Giovanni's Room by the same author is one that focuses on a MLM man struggling with his sexuality, and it's really important to see from the perspective of a queer man living in the 50s– as well as Baldwin's autobiographical novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain.

Agatha Christie mysteries are all still absolutely iconic, but Murder on the Orient Express is such a good read whether or not you know the end twist.

Maybe-controversial-maybe-not take: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a good book if you have reading comprehension. No, you're not supposed to like the main character. He pretty much spells that out for you at the end ffs.

Animal Farm by George Orwell was another favorite of mine; it was written as an obvious metaphor for the rise of fascism in Russia at the time and boy does it hit even now.

And finally, please read Shakespeare plays. As soon as you get used to their way of talking, they're not as hard to understand as people will lead you to believe. My absolute favorite is Twelfth Night- crossdressing, bisexual love triangles, yellow stockings... it's all a joy.

and those are just the ones i thought of off the top of my head! What're your guys' favorite classic books? Let's make everyone a reading list!

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america's sweetheart olympian 🥇

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congratulations to the lightning thief musical for being the undefeated best percy jackson adaption

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Katara >///<

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I'm bored so here are some much ado characters and if I could take them in a fight

Beatrice: god no absolutely not that woman could step on me and I'd thank her

Benedick: yeah. I'd mention Beatrice's name and he'd be so distracted ranting about her that I'd win easily. Also I love him but he does need someone to smack him at least once

Hero: Probably not if she actually tried. Girl should have decked Claudio when she had the chance though.

Claudio: yes. Please let me fight this man. Please.

Don John: this one is 50/50. I feel like he'd fight dirty but also I'd have the anger advantage so who knows

Don Pedro: again with the anger advantage thing. I mean there's his extensive military experience. But this man probably has more of an honour code or something so I could exploit that.

Leonato: I'd drop kick that old man. Tf you mean you wish Hero had never been born?? Square tf up

Antonio: I wouldn't want to but I probably could. He's old and not particularly bright either. Respect him for taking Hero's side though

Margaret: absolutely not. I'd perish. She could genuinely kill me.

Dogberry+Verges: Separately? Yeah. Together? No, their combined clown power would overwhelm me

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Thinking about Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, who I think it's safe to say is nobody's favorite character. This is not a defense of him, he's an easily tricked dick who doesn't even have Othello's excuse of being fucked with for the duration of an entire play before he breaks. He gets a pretty intense punishment which he totally deserves. But I think it's interesting that the thing he does- reveal that his fiance has been framed for cheating cheated right there in front of the whole wedding- is something that keeps popping up in pop culture, especially in supposedly-true but almost-certainly-fake social media stories.

Somehow, Much Ado About Nothing anticipates this half a millennium before social media. Okay, it says, do that big speech, and now think about what happens next. Everyone is screaming. The woman you supposedly love has a complete breakdown. Families are being torn apart fighting. Your own best friend ends your friendship because he thinks what you did was so shitty.

And on top of all that, you were wrong.