#hamlet on the brain

[onconstellationstreetmp3]

who up suffering the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune

[mephistopheles]

the fact that shakespeare wrote hamlet BY HAND

[trek-tracks]

Space, the final frontier.

That is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to explore

The strange new worlds of our outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a five-year mission

And, by opposing, end it. To go—to seek,

Once more; and by “to seek” to say we find

The new life and new civilizations

Where man has gone not: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To go, to seek;

To seek, perchance to find—ay, there's the rub:

For in these voyages what dreams may come,

When we have boldly gone whence we have not,

Must give us pause—there's the respect

That makes a mission of so long a life.

For who would bear the Enterprise of time,

The starship’s wrong, admirals’ contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'unworthy treks,

When he himself might make his voyage on

With a bare warp core? Who would tribbles bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the hope of something to be found,

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

We travel and return, puzzling our will,

And makes us wish to solve those ills we have

And fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience makes explorers of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is glistened o'er with the stars of thought,

And Enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents warp ahead

And seize the name of action.

[moonlarked]

The idea that Horatio’s “why, what a king is this!” is directed at Hamlet instead of Claudius isn’t a new take, I’ve seen many posts on it, but most of those posts see Horatio’s words insinuating that Hamlet is somehow losing his worthiness as king by killing Ros and Guil. That Hamlet has gone too far in his pursuit of vengeance.

And that’s all well and good, but I want to see these words uttered by a Horatio who had long grown disillusioned by the monarchy. A Horatio who had been looked down his whole life by Hamlet’s peers. A Horatio who was originally drawn to Hamlet because he sensed that Hamlet wasn’t just another royal, that Hamlet could genuinely see him as a person.

This Horatio isn’t proclaiming that Hamlet is no longer able to be kingly. This Horatio is telling Hamlet that he’s growing into the kind of person that Horatio despises. The kind of person that would sacrifice two courtiers simply because it was his divine right to be king. Because that’s what Hamlet says beforehand, right? That Ros and Guil should’ve just stayed out of it?

And Hamlet, knowing Horatio’s attitude toward the other royals from their time at school together, would know exactly what Horatio means by this. It’s the worst kind of insult, especially from someone you love. It’s telling him that Horatio doesn’t know him anymore.

[andhumanslovedstories]

The Untamed as a fandom suffers from what many fandoms with only one big pairing and an enormous cast of side characters, which is filtering for small pairings is so fucking hard. Everyone's out here pairing the spares for three paragraphs and tagging that a main ship. But you can't even exclude ships to try to make the results more specific because sometimes it's not a WWX/LWJ fic with two paragraphs of JC/NHS, it's a JC/NHS fic with two paragraphs of WWX/LWJ. I learned so many research and database diving skills in college, and I'm using all of them to find Jiang Cheng slowburn romance that's actually about Jiang Cheng.

[aq2003]

martha jones is kind of like if horatio and ophelia were one person tbh

this post by darkcomedies

s03e08 human nature // hamlet (2009), act 3 scene 2 // hamlet to horatio, act 3 scene 2 // martha about ten, s03e09 the family of blood // s03e03 gridlock // hamlet (2009), act 5 scene 1 // canary in a coal mine by the crane wives

s03e02 the shakespeare code // hamlet (2009), act 3 scene 1 // ophelia about hamlet, act 2 scene 1 // s03e07 42 // hamlet (2009), act 3 scene 2 // s03e05 evolution of the daleks // hoping on another life by madds buckley

hamlet's letter to ophelia, act 2 scene 2 // s03e13 last of the time lords // hamlet (2009), act 5 scene 2 // the shooting script for s03e07 42 // the tags on darkcomedies' post

[justastrugglinghotchocolate]

So like a year ago, I made a post asking why Dorian confessed to murdering Basil in the 1891 edition of the book, but not the 1890. For the last few months, while working on tlg and the comic, I’ve on and off again worked on a small animatic for the ending of TPODG. Because of this I’ve had to reread the ending conversation with Henry again and again. And a thought occurred to me:

Is Dorian’s ‘desire to be good’ actually an attempt to stop being objectified?

Dorian’s ‘desire to be good’ is obviously horseshit, even to himself, but why does he do it? "To feel something new" is a lazy explanation especially when the book literally says that “[h]e felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood”. He doesn’t want something new, he wants what he had before. But it’s not the innocence of his youth, nor something material he desires—it’s the way people treated him before Henry and Basil.

The thing that always stood out to me was this exchange (occuring after Dorian’s confession): 

“There is someone at White’s who wants immensely to know you—young Lord Poole, Bournemouth’s eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you.”

“I hope not,” said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes.”

While many modern adaptations either forget this line or give a charitable reading, to me it reads as though Dorian realizes he’s replaceable. Even though he has a magic portrait and eternal youth, he still is a dying relic of a changing world. He will never be anything more than the innocent, youthful doll society and Henry treated him as.

His confession, to Henry of all people, was a final plea to be seen as more than the dumb youth, as an innocent angel—he is begging Henry to look at him and see that Dorian Gray is a person. That he feels more than youth, or beauty, or idolatry. That he is capable of great violence and even greater crime, like any other man and through that can be capable of evolving with the time like any other. He doesn't want to live as a passing fancy of perverts and naive young people.

But Henry breaks all of that in one simple line:

“You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be.”

But, Lord Henry was never going to see Dorian as a real person. Because Henry himself isn’t real. ‘Lord Henry’ is a role he plays, one that consumed him far before the first chapter. In many ways, his cynical philosophy is his own defective portrait. He hides any semblance of a person in his role of ‘cynical hedonist’ and denies any change. He too is a dying relic of a changing world.

When Henry denies his attempt to change, Dorian seeks Basil’s portrait of him. I think it's quite telling that even after he murder him, Dorian seeks implicit comfort from the man who had idolized his rose-white purity. Basil was the only relationship that was closest to what he had before. But the sad truth is laid bare:

No one ever saw Dorian Gray as a real person. 

He was always a role being played. 

And he dies tragically discarded.

[fallen-angel-adam-frankenstein]

heavy breathing, growling noises

[romanticspeculation]

The Thick of It S4 E7 / Hamlet, William Shakespeare / Succession S4 E10

[literaturezombie]

sometimes it's all about processing your grief and trauma through art it's about borrowing someone else's words when you can't quite reach your words on your own it's about practicing saying goodbye in the safety of the story because the whole play is the death scene it's about. understanding yourself through other peoples situations. using stories to work through things that are too big to be looked directly at. you know? it's one step at a time it's telling your younger self it's not your fault. this is just what happened. it's about getting to say goodbye this time. ya know?

[pencildragons]

WAIT WAIT WAIT TIMETRAVELLING LATE TEENS/EARLY TWENTIES FAROEVERSE FAROE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND RUNS INTO ARTHUR . DO U SEE MY VISION

[justaboutsnapped]

Hamlet (The Beggarstaffs) // Society of Misery and Regrets • Lifetime Member (unknown)

[nodirectionhome-ao3]

The massive Shakespeare nerd in me is currently going feral at the fact that the tropical storm approaching my region is called “Ophelia”

Of ALL the O names they could’ve chosen😂

So now I’m staring at the rain thinking “too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia”

[transsexualcoriolanus]

“to be or not to be…” is the elizabethan equivalent of “i don’t wanna die, i sometimes wish i’d never been born at all”

[kminttea]

persona 5 (royal) but mishima yuuki is the wild card.

extra: everyone else is swapped around too and the phantom thieves consist of confidants, side characters, and one off characters that have zero canon personality.

[dellohii]

reunited, at last.

This is the Emperor's Hamlet au !!

The gist of it is that Fwhip and Gem haven't seen eachother in ~10 years, and the only person Fwhip had left was Gem, so he moved to Emperor's Hamlet. A lot of things have changed about both of them in the time they were apart (mainly Fwhip, because he's trans in the au !!).

Fwhip learns a lot about this town—more of a village, really; a hamlet. No wonder it's named that. But it's a really weird place. There's something in the woods, a man who won't leave his home, and a fisherman who likes cod a lot, apparently.

———

Maybe it can be home, though.

part 1 /

(feel free to send me asks about this au btw !! i need to ramble about this so much lol)