#'here's king lear'

[incomingalbatross]

No one told me Geoffrey of Monmouth was this entertaining.

[weatherfey]

I think a lot about the way Dorian used to see Cyrus as the perfect older brother, the perfect prince; the way Dorian felt free to go and find himself because Cyrus was capable and dependable and ready to be a leader. That isn’t the Cyrus we see! But I think it’s a lot more interesting, for both Cyrus and Dorian, to take that seriously. They’re princes, and we don’t know what that means because we haven’t seen their home, but socially a court is an elaborately constructed farce. And of course it can be easier to be competent in any familiar environment, but I also think it’s easier to know how you fit within a court environment specifically because there is an overwhelming number of factors to define yourself against and they all have expectations of you, and if they aren’t suffocating you like some kind of spider’s web then it might be perfect, like being a star in a constellation, or just the right puzzle piece. I think it’s reasonable to think that Cyrus was something like who Dorian thought he was, at home; except that Cyrus, like Dorian, wanted to choose the things he’s defining himself against. And I think it’s meaningful that he got swindled in the immediate aftermath of discarding that constellation of puzzle pieces. He was a fool (beloved), but it happened in the first blush of freedom, when he was just starting to figure out who he was or wanted to be without all that defined expectation, which is also - not coincidentally - the state Dorian was in when the spider queen sunk her fingers into his heart and twisted his alignment. The ‘hello world! uh oh’ of it all is something they had in common.

(Something they both had in common with Opal, too.)

I do think it’s interesting to look at Dorian’s sense of responsibility in light of this. I almost think Orym was a kind of north star for Dorian through parts of EXU prime, and I ship them, but it really felt like one of the things that made him able to reject the spider queen is that Orym needed him to. I think he wanted to be someone Orym could rely on, but I think Orym’s regard mattered to him because they genuinely had that protective urge in common - the pathway the spider queen used to skitter in was Dorian’s desire to protect his friends. And that drive to protect added a lot of poignancy to the in-universe reason that Dorian couldn’t return to bell’s hells after Cyrus’s debts were repaid, not just because Cyrus was still getting his legs under him but also because Opal needed help. That’s responsibility, again - he’s finishing what they started. Duty, obligation, but this time he’s chosen who and what he’s beholden to. Like maybe he’s chosen a new version of a puzzle piece that he might have thought he was throwing out entirely when he chose freedom and walked away from home.

I loved that Fearne’s vision also haunted Dorian; he misses her, and it also feels like a solid way to illustrate the spider queen’s effect on Dorian, that the danger of his own corruption has rarely been something he had the luxury to think about. His friends have always needed him. I don’t know if he had time to process his aborted fall during his time in Zephrah, or if there’s still something underneath, but I think it’s telling that this fear doesn’t look like Opal, the one literally bleeding ichor from her forehead; it predates that, it started before Opal was the one to worry about.

And I think he knows he didn’t fail them - Cyrus, Opal, Fy’ra - accidental thunder damage notwithstanding - but, with the way he felt through that suggestion spell and its aftermath, I don’t really know what to make of his abandoning Dariax. It’s a little hard to look at that and not see a drive to isolate. Determined to leave him with a good memory, but most of all, to leave. He started that one-shot interlude having just admitted to himself that he was longing to be Somewhere Else, but I almost wonder if he still would have gone back to bell’s hells if Orym hadn’t asked.

(God, the suggestion spell. The way they processed it was hurtful to me personally. Dariax immediately shifting from ‘won’t leave Opal!’ to ‘let’s go! Opal has a plan’ kind of broke my heart, and I actually think that the spell could have worked on Dorian by just making what was really happening feel reasonable - the last shred of your friend is trying to save you, and you can’t save her from anything except becoming your murderer, so you should do that. But the spell can’t make sense out of abandoning Cyrus’s body, so Dorian just goes numb with grief and rage. Mass suggestion is 24 hours. That is 24 hours of numbness, and rage, and walking, and walking, and walking, and every once in awhile Dariax’s voice, friendly and steady and sure, ‘Opal has a plan.’ And at the end of it the ability to feel returns, but he’s so tired, and he hurts, and everything hurts too much to think about, and poor Dariax probably stops in his tracks, just ‘Dorian? What was Opal’s plan?’)

And he really was so angry. It’s interesting to wonder if that’s still under the surface. He immediately turned to levity - for their sake, and his own - but that moment where the group tells him who killed Will and Derrig, and Robbie instantly wrote down Otohan’s name, didn’t just read like a player taking notes, to me, it read like Dorian putting a name in a ledger. I think it’s easy to let that go because he learns that she’s dead in the very next moment, but I think Dorian felt a weird kind of relief for that half-second, because so much of his anger at what happened to Cyrus and Opal was from being forced to acknowledge that there wasn’t anyone easy to blame, except perhaps a god; and blaming a god is like blaming the universe. What a relief, however short lived, to be faced with a problem you can solve.

[alyssamariag]

Happy birthday month, Pedro Pascal 💜 We love you and all the little things that make you, you

see this on my instagram | download this as a printable coloring page

[werewolf-transgenderism]

sometimes instagram ads can be useful (<- guy who just got a TWENTY-FIVE DOLLAR ticket to see a production of King Lear that looks so fucking good FROM THE SECOND ROW simply because they saw an instagram ad talking about the discount tickets for people under 30)

[rayjenkins]

this bit from the commentary with Leigh's impression of Michael Emerson as Zep always fucking kills me

Dr. Gordon's time is up... and I'm afraid it has to be you that tells him he's failed

[butchhamlet]

what are your favourite things about king lear? also do you know any really good productions that i can watch online for free? asking because i didn’t really like king lear when i read it (except for edmund. i love edmund) and knowing why other people like it might let me look at it from a different angle. because i know it’s objectively a good play, and there’s a 50% chance of me having to study it next year so i want to like it

so i started writing a response to this ask and then paused to plot out my points (as if writing a goddamn essay) and then i looked at my points and i had written

fucked-up families

apocalypse vibes

women are hot

which. yeah, that's it, isn't it

anyway, to elaborate on that: i will admit that some of this is just personal preference, because i love stories about complicated nuclear-waste-toxic family dynamics, and lear is, like, one of the original Nuclear Waste Family Dynamic plays. (so is the oreisteia, incidentally.) what gets me specifically is that this is a play about power, yeah, but also about love: everybody in lear wants love, and nobody is getting enough of it. and the dynamics of the two families here get immediately more interesting if this isn't JUST a who-inherits-the-throne thing. edmund wants political sway, yeah, but maybe he also wants to be seen as more than a bastard. goneril kills her sister out of jealousy, yeah, but also, has she ever had a person care about her like edmund? (does he care about her? how much of the love triangle is about love vs lust vs calculation? these are questions that could be answered a thousand ways.)

i also read this play counter to old white guy traditional scholarship because i think lear (the guy) sucks. sorry. i think he sucks. i think he's terrifying and tyrannical and his daughters can do whatever they want (imo, his main problem is trying to apply his political power to his personal relationships, and that's not something caused by his senility. goneril and regan state at the end of 1.1 that, while he's going off the deep end a little more these days, "the best and soundest of his time hath been but rash." this guy has always sucked). speaking of goneril and regan, they're not evil hags--they're women trying to live with an unpredictable father, as well as trying to retain the little power they have in a male-dominated world. (notably, regan's husband is on her team, while goneril's isn't, and lear seems to have a lot of hatred for goneril specifically. which colors how both of them interact with power, edmund, and each other.)

i could actually talk about lear family dynamics forever (do cordelia's sisters love her, resent her, or both? how does edgar feel about edmund? how does edmund feel about edgar, for that matter? does he feel guilty at all for doing what he does? does edgar feel guilty about killing him? is the relationship between lear and gloucester entirely professional, or are they friends? can lear even have friends when he sees everything as some sort of zero-sum power love game? is kent gay for lear? <- yes) but i won't. because i have another point to make!

which is that it's somewhat comforting to me, in an era of [gestures at the news and broad state of the world], to read a play where people are like "holy fuck the world's going to shit and all the rules of society are inverted!" i read lear for the first time during pandemic quarantine, so. it felt fitting. your mileage may vary here (maybe you prefer escapism), but i think one could draw a lot of parallels between lear and [gestures out the window again]. this play is bleak in a way that few other shakespeare plays are bleak. (maybe timon of athens.) it's set in pre-christian britain, and the gods are invoked, but they're not really present. no one who appeals to higher powers ever seems to get any help or even comfort. and the original story of king leir didn't end Like That. shakespeare decided his play was going to end with the emotional equivalent of getting bricked in the face. cordelia's death doesn't mean anything at all! it didn't have to happen! edmund tried to stop it! she doesn't die in the original myth! and yet we're left with this horrifying apocalyptic last scene, where all the struggles for love and power come to almost nothing. maybe, if one is concerned about current events, this would make one feel worse. but i fucking love tragic catharsis and i feel bleak about the modern world so this horrible upsetting play is quite close to my heart <3

finally: i've already touched on Hot Women, but . i am a simple butch. i think goneril and regan are soooooo sexy. i love when women are mean and ruthless. i love when women kill with swords. i think conflating the two of them/treating them like two halves of the same Evil Daughter Character is a cardinal sin of shakespeare studies; you have to be reading with your eyes shut not to note stuff like regan's desire to outdo goneril, goneril's comparative lack of fulfilling relationships (re: lear fucking hates her and her husband sucks), or the differences in their dynamic with edmund (regan is still mourning cornwall at this point--does she love edmund at all, or is she just playing the political long game?). and cordelia, too, is more than just the Angelic Good Daughter; she's on stage much less frequently, but she shows a stubborn virtue that honestly borders on naivete and maybe an inclination toward martyrdom. how does she feel about her father? does she really forgive him? how does she feel about her sisters, for that matter? i'm not saying this play is, like, the most feminist shakespeare play ever written; i just really love the lear sisters.

other misc stuff: the themes are tasty! look at the authoritarianism! (is it right for one man to have this much power? see that line about the king being a wheel rolling down a hill destroying everything in his path as he destroys himself, or whatever). look at the gender dynamics! (goneril's dominance over albany and edmund in turn; the question of her womb; the mutual violence of regan and cornwall; cordelia leading an army.) look at the debate about fate and predestination! (#redditatheist edmund i love you). ++ the fact that it's set in some kind of nebulous unclear time period and the fool sings about merlin who wasn't even alive yet. i just think it's neat <3

as far as productions, i have a friend who swears by the bob jones university prod, though i haven't seen it in full (hi @lizardrosen :D). i also hav NTLive and RSC lears somewhere, i think, but shhhhh don't tell

i'd apologize for this ask being this long, but when my parents asked me to explain the plot of lear to them in 2020 i talked for 25 minutes so i guess we're all getting off lucky here

[macbooth]

i just realised i should probably make a post for the polls by itself.

whatever. submit your shakespeare sluts.

[edettethegreat]

I need some advice from anyone who makes animatics— in like early 2020 I storyboarded some animatics on FlipaClip and pretty much forgot about them until today— two questions:

is there any way to add audio to them or does that app not allow it (in the free version at least), and is there any way to change the speed it runs at or would I have to put it into some video-making software to actually decide who long it stays on each frame?

and if I have to put it in a video making software, how do I get it from FlipaClip into one of those

[steelycunt]

finished hamlet…okay…i get it…that was good…not as good as macbeth 2 me my one true love macbeth but still. good…

[sunjoys]

ive been making an effort to watch more films (and, obviously keeping track of them) and theres something kinda funny in the selection of films here idk

[strangenewclassrooms]

Genuinely tho, why is my family the way that it is. (The answer, of course, is generational trauma, what else?)

So last week-ish, my eldest (half) sister sent an email to our dad, and cc'd her kid, our sister and brother (both are also my half siblings), and *my* mom (they've been divorced for about 25 years.) In this email, she compared herself to the Cowardly Lion, my sister to the Tinman, and my brother to the Scarecrow--all trying to earn the love of the Wizard (my dad.) Then she went on a lot about Integrated Family Systems therapy and how my dad needs to do it and oh, she paid for three sessions with HER therapist. It ended with a note about "how do you want to be remembered, dad?"

Anyway, no one replied(or replied-all) to that email, so I figured it was just her being crazy (she does that. She's super hippy/crunchy/anto-science etc.)

But then today, she replied to an email our dad sent her (again cc-ing all the recipients from the first email.) In my dad's email. He threatened to sue her for something to do with "gross negligence and breach of contract" regarding his business venture. Sister said "do what you have to do" but then my brother replied all and essentially: "you do it and I won't help you going forward. Also think what Buddha would do?" (I should note, my dad's a Buddhist monk. Also he's 87)

So anyway, everything is imploding and the last time this happened (which was also mostly about money) my dad compared himself to King Lear and me to Cordelia so I'm just waiting for another one of those emails from him.

[kcrabb88]

Me: maybe I'm going too hard on the whump in my current fic

Me, watching King Lear, where a guy gets his eyeballs torn out KIND of for no reason: no I think I'm fine, actually

[shakespearenews]

What is it about the villains that attract you as an actor over the course of your career? Their brokenness. A villain is wounded and acts out of that wound. We’re all wounded and we all have darkness. I think what Shakespeare discovered over the course of these 20 years when he was examining these questions was how much of that darkness he had in himself. How much we share. If we know that about ourselves, then we can work with it. We can be careful that it doesn’t emerge in places that it could be harmful and we can be more empathetic about other people when they’re not living at their highest potential. So I have tremendous empathy for all of these characters, even the ones who have their roots in an animated movie or a comic book. I think of them as people, broken people, people working out some dynamic, some pathology. And I relish that.

You’re coming at this production having just done a massively successful King Lear. Reflecting on that journey, what was that ride like for you? I think it was a peak experience. The analogy that’s frequently used with Lear is the scaling of a mountain. For a classical actor, there are certain peaks that you are challenged to attempt. When you’re a young actor, of course, that’s Hamlet. And when you’re an older actor, that’s King Lear because it encompasses pretty much everything. It will challenge the very limits of what you are capable, just as a marathon would do. It will take everything you have and then ask for more. And the wonderful thing in a case like this is, being able to do it over a series of six weeks or so, eight times a week, you think, “maybe I can get a little closer to the peak.” And I’m hoping that All the Devils Are Here is similar. One of the reasons I wanted to mount it now is that I developed an appetite for that with King Lear and with Simon and, and I wanted to do it again. And indeed, I’d like to do Lear again. I’m hoping to do it in the future in New York.

[daelkyrart]

continuing to render auguste every so often but something about his face is making me nervous

[a-kinda-nerdy-girl]

If I had a nickel for every show Patrick Page appeared on stage in a cloud of smoke, I'd have two nickels, which isn't lot, but it's weird that it happened twice right?