#also again olivia constant dialogue is just so much more fun to write

[arolesbianism]

If I ever do get properly into dst character modding I like have to make an oni character mod at some point, but the issue is Id want it to be an Olivia mod so bad but also Nails is as far as I'm aware the only legal character name wise and as such it feels like it has to be them, y'know for the bit. But also I have already written too much Olivia dst dialogue and I need an excuse to use it damnit

[internetmisfitsworld]

Ok but it just dawn on me how, in a way, everyone has something to win, but at the cost of losing something else.

Let's start with Diana.

Gain: She managed to dismantle Providence from the inside. Providence, who is the true controller of Blue Seed, the company who caused the death of her brother (illness from the chemical leak) and later, her parents (assassins were sent to kill them). So in a sense, a sweet revenge for her.

Loss: Had to lose ICA, her longtime employer.

47,

Gain: Get revenge on Providence, the company who had been using him and his brother Lucas as tools for their dirty works. Not to mention the amount of abuse and other shitty things they had to endure by Ort Meyer.

Loss: Lucas died.

Providence/Arthur Edwards,

Gain: Lucas, the man who had caused many damages, from killing their operatives to destroying their assets, has died.

Loss: Arthur Edwards, the current controller of Providence, was killed/neutralized by 47, and then Providence was dissolved completely with the help of Diana, who has the power, as the new Constant, to tear them apart from the inside.

Lucas Grey,

Gain: Although he died, his death was not in vain. He was avenged by his brother, 47 along with Diana and Olivia. (yes I know she calls it quit by the end of Berlin, and completely do so after Mendoza, but I'm still gonna include her anyway yeah fight me)

Loss: He died and doesn't get to see the day Providence lost, and also doesn't get to live the future he wanted.

You know who doesn't win anything at all and instead, lose everything?

Olivia Hall.

Why? Well. Let's look into her motives for joining Lucas. As far as I'm concerned, IO doesn't gives any intels or pieces of dialogues regarding her motives for joining this shitshow (IO why you did my girl like this?), I did a list of the possibilities of her motives and its logicalness. Here it is:

1. "Money?"

2. "She's a hacktivist. So, maybe she joined simply because she's anti-corpo?"

3. "Maybe she too, like Lucas, had past issues with Providence?"

4. "Forced?"

5. "They have a long standing friendship. She joined because she cares about him and wants to help".

The answers:

1. There are other ways of making money that doesn't involve joining a war against some shady highly dangerous secret society lmao damn. Not to mention that she used to be a child in a warzone (Sierra Leone Civil War). With the amount of trauma that I could only imagine, I doubt she wanna go through that again especially over petty shit like money. Money. For money that I'm sure she could easily get that by hacking some rando corpo bank account anyway. Plus, Idk man. She just doesn't seem the type imo.

2. This is true. She is indeed, anti-corpo. However, again, it's stupid. We're not talking about some basic ass corpo group, nah, this is literally the organization that have controls over almost half the globe and half of the government, for god knows how long. This is not some fun shit, this is serious shit. Sooo many things that could go wrong, resulting with either her being dead or targeted for the rest of her life.

3. This is good but bruhh there's just so many potential theories, and I do not have the energy to write all of them (maybe another day). Not to mention that there's no reason for them to not include this intels in the game. Hell, there's no reason at all for them to not let us know about her motive.

4. *logic has left the chat*

5. Out of all theories, this is the one imo that's the most logical. Period. There's so many versions based on this but I'm gonna stick with the simple one. Maybe I'll elaborate the others on another post.

So, it has been concluded that her motives for joining Lucas, is because she cares for him. Whether you see them as father-daughter or simply friends. Both works fine, though imo, the former works best.

It makes sense as to why she chose to call it quit by the end of Berlin. Because what's there to fight for? He's dead. She already lost him. She lost. Sure, she could stay and continue his fight. Avenge him. But that's the thing. It's HIS fight. She did this only because she wanted to help him survive this shitshow. She wants him to survive, and gets to live the future that he (definitely) had mentioned to her before. Plus, she's tired. Tired from the pain she felt from both, losing Lucas and her leg injury.

This woman suffered physical AND emotional pain at the same time.

Not to mention she has been in this fight for almost 2-3 years now. All of that is enough for her to walk away. Find peace for herself from this mess.

She and Lucas probably has talk about this before. Maybe he made her promise him, that if anything happens to him and 47, he wants her to run. Run like hell. Forget about all this. There's no bodyguards, no task force. He's not there to protect her anymore.

If he's the only one who didn't make it, he would've appreciate it if she choose to stay with 47 and continue fighting alongside his brother. But he also understands if she choose to leave.

Olivia finds that, for the sake of her sanity, it's best to walk away.

I'm willing to bet one of the main reasons she helps 47 one last time (Mendoza), is because she felt a tinge of guilt for abandoning him just like that. If she could not see herself continue fighting, the least she could do, is offers her help one last time, even if it probably wasn't much.

After all, old habits amirite?

So there you go. Our girl was fighting hard to help the man that she had known since she was 7 years old.

More sad: if this man save her life during the war.

Even more sad: if this man also got her out of there, away from all the pain, towards a new life.

Peak depression: if this man was the one who raised her himself.

(Oh and uh if I got it wrong or missed something, let me know okay!)

[supershylockfandom-blog]

The Whirligig of Gender Will Have Its Revenges

Over the course of our trip, I was very vocal (perhaps too vocal) about two things in particular: 

1) Twelfth Night is my favorite Shakespearean play (save for the possible exception of Hamlet, but lately the odds have tipped from his favor to Viola’s).

2) I absolutely loathed the Globe production that we attended. 

By the end of the play, I was deeply incensed (not to mention a few drinks in)-- so much so that I couldn’t stand to stay for the triumphant finale jig and left early. After that, I called home and ranted to my younger sister until I felt calm again and went back to my flat. To be clear, I have never been so emotional about disliking a theatrical (or cinematic) production of anything to this day. I’ve even seen Twelfth Nights I’ve liked less than the one we saw as a class without being half as disturbed or upset by them. “Why then, did this particular version have such an effect on you?” You are not asking yourself this question, because my opinion is neither here nor there to anyone but myself; I wondered this while half-drunk, actually, and later, once sober again, came upon the answer:

As a preface, I would like to point out that, in the 21st Century, there is no wrong way to interpret Shakespeare, so long as you have a particular vision in mind and follow through on your plans. There are, of course, inadequate methods of performing and staging (for the record, I thought that the blacking and acting we saw was effective and skilled), and some Shakespeareans-- particularly those at The Globe-- are especially staunch about leaning into “original practices,” but theater has evolved so much in the last 400 years that even productions that call themselves traditional Elizabethan stagings are not that (consider the Tim Carroll Twelfth Night: where are the prepubescent boys meant to be playing the Viola, Olivia, and Maria? Why is the blocking so modern?) All that is left is the text and its sparse stage directions. I am aware that my disdain for the Emma Rice production is based mainly upon personal preference. However, I like to believe that my opinions hold enough water to be worth the attention and respect of others.

(Under the cut for length.)

My two favorite things about Twelfth Night are, in order, its inherent queerness and bitterness. Make no mistake, being an Elizabethan comedy, it can just as easily be light, frothy, and straight (as evidenced by what we witnessed last week) and even the darkest versions thereof must make room for fun potty humor and slapstick and heterosexual, cisgendered couplings (as those too, are in the text). Those things, as much as any present queerness or anger, are part of the fun of Twelfth Night, and the former is where most of the comedy comes from. But the genderqueer, non-straight, and angry undercurrents that can be detected in this play (whether placed there by its author knowingly or not) go oft ignored. I am disappointed by this, naturally, but never before have I had it thrown in my face this way by a company so prestigious as the Globe. 

I think my central problem with the Rice staging was her Feste.

Yes, I did notice that Feste was portrayed by a very talented and engaging drag queen. No, that did not help. But did it make my experience worse? Absolutely, 100%, yes. Feste is perhaps the pettiest, most resentful character in the text. He cares not for the emotions of others, particularly not that of his Lady Olivia, who’s grief he mocks and belittles (granted, this is his job, and at his kindest, he has been portrayed as genuinely fond of her, but more often than not, he is a punch-clock entertainer, who cares only for the emotions of others as long as they will pay him for what he elicits) in his first appearance, after being absent from her court for an extended period of time. 

Feste. Good madonna, why mournest thou? Olivia. Good fool, for my brother's death. Feste. I think his soul is in hell, madonna. Olivia. I know his soul is in heaven, fool. Feste. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen (5.1. 357-362).

His only real interests throughout the play appeared to be song, logical wordplay (”simple syllogism[s]”), crude jokes (”many a good hanging prevented a bad marriage”), weaseling pocket change away from the rich, and enacting petty revenge. At his best, he’s a puckish partygoer and delightful busker, at his worst, he is apart from all other social groups in the play and cruel to at least the same degree as the bear-baiting merrymakers. 

“Earlier, Malvolio had mocked Feste for his dependence on others... But [Feste] also mirrors Malvolio specifically as a dependent in a court and as one the play most clearly shows as a solitary character. He is the one who echoes Malvolio’s words about dependency on approval in shortened form, ‘An you smile not, he’s gagged’ (5.1.363-4), back to him at the end. And after he exults ‘Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges’ (364), Malvolio in turn mirrors him, promising his own revenge” (66 Novy). 

Feste is at his most useful when existing as a mirror for other characters-- he contextualizes his lady’s grief with cruel mockery, challenges Viola’s wits and disguise, and most importantly, shows Malvolio the cruelty that he callously doles out. When his dialogue is chopped up into saintly wisdom from a loving goddess in the Heavens, his status as a dynamic character and device is stripped from him. When Feste is robbed of his archetypal trickster-status, it weakens the core themes of the play which are written into the very title (as Twelfth Night and the Feast of Fools were, of course, traditionally a day of opposites, much as Feste the wise fool is a natural mirror and walking contradiction). When he is robbed of his anger towards his social betters (Olivia and Malvolio), this is further weakened. 

My qualms with making Feste a benevolent Goddess are based entirely upon the text; my problems with casting said benevolent goddess as a drag queen are two fold. My first is in the broader scope of media representation of drag queens, trans women, and feminine genderqueer persons. Most often, the cinematic and theatrical tradition is to demonize such individuals as lascivious perverts, which is obviously dehumanizing. As well-intended backlash, many younger content creators have thus spun around done the patent opposite by deifying them (this is also, notably, a dichotomy experienced by black women/femmes, be they cisgender, trans, or otherwise gender nonconforming). Deification is in its own way a subtler form of dehumanization. Much like the treatment of so-called virtuous women in the Victorian era, the representation of any group as somehow morally superior or “above” the rest of the rest is restricting. An anti-Semite might do well to wonder: “Hath a Jew not eyes?... If you prick us, do we not bleed?” but any white, cisgendered woman who routinely refers to black women and femme queers as “black goddesses” (which is absolutely a thing, as those of you who frequent tumblr, twitter, pintrest, or instagram most likely know) should be reminded that, just like all people, black queer femmes fart and defecate regularly, and they, like all other members of the human race, run on a sliding scale of morality, wisdom, and grace, depending on the individual. The archetypal example of this “heavenly body” trope is Angel of Rent, being a Latina trans-woman (or gender-fluid person, or drag queen, depending on the interpretation) who is always given the moral high ground, dies a tragically noble death, always has resources to bestow upon the less fortunate, and is literally called “Angel.” Much like Feste, she is the only gender non-conforming femme poc in her cannon, and that, paired with the erasure and demonization of this particular group that has been so common in Western art and media, leaves them as the sole representation of said group to be found in fiction. Each time a character of a group so mishandled as that is brought into play, that character becomes a mouthpiece for the entire population of such individuals that exist in reality. The trope of the black, femme goddess is much kinder than the demonization and willful ignorance of old, but in 2017, we should be beyond this refusal to portray those who exist outside of the white, straight, cis hegemony as anything other than individuals as complex as everyone else in their canon. Anyone who is tempted to bring up the “Sister Topas” scene as a counter-argument is welcome to it, but this derives from a halfhearted attempt to recast Feste as a personification of fate after four acts of being nothing but sage and understanding. It is not deeper characterization, as it is not played as either vengeance or cruelty-- at best, it is a twist of fate personified, at worst, it is whoever doctored the script backing themselves into a character-writing corner by striping Feste of his humanity.

My second challenge to the choice of La Gateau Chocolat as Feste is that her place in the cast is by its very nature misleading. Twelfth Night is well known among Shakespeare fans as one of the (if not the) queerest Shakespearean plays. It is well-known for featuring one of several Shakespearean Antonios, all of whom are noted for their non-explicit homosexual passion (Twelfth Night’s Antonio’s love for Sebastian is second only to the Antonio of Merchant of Venice and his suicidal devotion to Bessanio, and the villainous Antonio of The Tempest finds his match and constant companion in an equally rotten Sebastian.) Also present is the wooing that takes place between two women, and the Duke Orsino’s apparent attraction to one who is “both man and maid,” whom he never ceases to refer to as “boy” or “Cesario,” even after learning “his” true name and gender. Moreover, of all of Shakespeare’s cross-dressing Paige Boys, Viola spends the most time as her male counterpart, who’s name, as we discussed in class, translates roughly to “rebirth” by way of “cesarean section.” I bring these up because each of these characters have been stripped of their queerness systematically. Cesario/Viola is often played as not just a cross-dresser for strategy’s sake but a genderqueer individual in earnest; Olivia’s realization that Sebastian is not his sister has been played as a horrible, sinking realization; Antonio is often left on stage alone to highlight his loss of Sebastian to heterosexual tradition. I am by no means saying that stagings must be this way or that they must reflect this queer undercurrent, and I have liked versions of the play that exemplify few or none of these choices. My problem with Rice’s Twelfth Night is that, not only does it ignore the inherent discomfort that Feste and each of these queer characters experiences when played as such, but she has dressed her staging up as a celebration of queerness and diversity when that diversity only runs skin-deep (at least, in terms of the aforementioned and belabored queerness.)

 I have already explained my problems with Rice’s Feste, so I will now move on to two new subjects: Malvolio and Sir Andrew. These characters are blatantly coded as queer in that Malvolio is played by a cross-dressing woman and Andrew is played as camp gay. However, that is as deep as the queer vein in this staging runs. Malvolio is not traditionally a queer character (although he is often the subject of “genderbending” to varying degrees of success), nor is he played as queer on stage. He is only branded as such due to being played by a woman, despite being played as a man. Andrew’s status is particularly egregious, as-- in being both comically stupid and violently mean-- he is the most difficult to sympathize with of any character; he has no compelling emotional core written into the text, nor is any planted into Marc Antolin’s portrayal of him. He is also a wooer of Olivia’s and, as far as the text and blocking is concerned, more “metrosexual” than homosexual in earnest. What this does is play all stereotypically gay mannerisms (those that he possesses which Antonio, Sebastian, and even the preening Duke evade whether they are played as queer men or not) for laughs and nothing else. “It’s funny,” the audience says, “because he’s in a pink sweater and he’s got a funny lisp.” Meanwhile, Olivia never notices her very real attraction towards another woman, the Duke Orsino’s sexual identity crisis is just barely hinted at, and most questionable of all, Antonio is played as a father figure to Sebastian. Lawman’s Antonio’s body language is neutral and distant, not half as wracked with passions as his lines:“If you will not murder me for my love//Let me be your servant” (1.2.642-3) and “ I could not stay behind you: my desire//More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth” (3.3.1492-3). 

In conclusion: Rice’s staging of Twelfth Night may be good for a laugh, but it robs the text of its philosophical weight, its bitterness, and its genuine queer discomfort, thus replacing these things with a light gloss of queer acceptance by playing “We Are Family” at the beginning and giving Sir Andrew a pencil mustache. I am not upset that Rice’s staging was not queer or angry enough for my liking; I am upset because her staging insisted (whether she wanted it to or not) that a wave of sequins and a disco chorus should be queer enough for me, and I ought to stop being so angry all the time and accept what I’ve been given. 

SOURCES:

Novy, Marianne. “Outsiders and the Festive Community in Twelfth Night.” Shakespeare & Outsiders. Oxford University Press, 2013. 

Shakespeare, William. "Twelfth Night, or What You Will." Open Source Shakespeare. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 June 2017.