Spiral Of Happiness

And I'm just so tired of the "well they werent REALLY IN LOVE they were just dumb teenagers with hormones" take.

What do you mean "not really" in love? They werent real people. They are fictional characters. The story says they are in love. The omniscient chorus says they are in love. The themes of the entire play are built on the fact that they are in love.

So what does it add to undermine that except as an excuse to not engage authentically with the story? To suggest that actually it's the two teenagers fault that they died because they were being stupid and hormonal, rather than society and their families for the senseless hate that forced them to extreme measures? Does that seem like Shakespeare's intent? Does that seem like an interesting or useful reading, or as a cop out reason to role your eyes and refuse to engage with the play at all?

it’s about the way their parents and families failed to love them enough, or failed to demonstrate that love adequately.  it’s about how putting pride and honor and revenge above things like “love” and “the safety and happiness of your children” is a shitty way to parent.

But I do want to push back on the idea that Romeo and Juliet are "dumbass teenagers."

The things people generally point to as them being dumb tends to be fast/impulsive decisions, but there are reasons in the narrative for why they are forced to make those decisions quickly. The violence and Juliets impending arranged marriage put them on a timer that they didn't choose. If they had waited, not gotten married, not been together on their wedding night- they might have lived, but they also wouldn't have had even those few fleeting hours together.

Juliets feigned suicide with the sleeping potion is supposed to allow her to sneak away with Romeo without escalating the bloodshed by getting Romeo accused of kidnapping, and without her being forced into the *deadly sin* of adultery if she were forced to marry while already being married. She BEGS her parents for more time, to delay the marriage to Paris so she can think of something better, and is told no.

And the plan WOULD have worked if the messenger had successfully reached Romeo- but didn't because of plague slowing travel.

To see kids go from ‘I don’t want to read Shakespeare, love is gross, school is dumb’ to boldly debating who’s more at fault for what happened to Romeo and Juliet, and also other characters like tybalt ! oooh the kids always love tybalt. and they blame Romeo a little for his death, but they also blame the adults, and the culture, and the messaging that both Romeo and tybalt are given as young men.

One student, a struggling reader I was working with, who is also one of our EL students, was completing an assignment this year where for part of a class, students take a character, write a paragraph about how that character would translate to the modern day, and then draw the modern day version of the character. He didn’t know where to start with the writing, so I told him to start with the drawing first, then we would work on the writing together. At first he didn’t know which character to even start with, so I read some of the shorter lines from some of the characters in the most recently assigned section, and I forget exactly what it was but it was something about Tybalt being described by another character, he stopped me. He said he wanted to do Tybalt. I asked him why and how he wanted to make Tybalt modern.

He started the drawing and while he worked, he told me about his older brother who taught him to play soccer, a fast and skilled athlete, who hasn’t been able to play much recently because he took a part time job to help out the family. Who laughs loudly and takes every opportunity to be active, but who also cares deeply for his loved ones and would defend them. He sketched out a (very rough sketch, he’s an athlete at an arts school, he’s doing his best) drawing of a tall boy in a soccer jersey, shin guards, cleats, and wrote in pencil at the bottom, ‘[his brother’s first name] prince of cats’ all lowercase. Then we worked on talking through his paragraph. At the end of class, when students could pick up their phones from the phone holder, he wanted to show me a picture of his brother, mostly joking with me, to try to convince me that he did actually put effort into his very quick very rough sketch. But also probably because I let him tell me about his older brother, who he clearly idolizes, as younger brothers sometimes do.

When the class got to the death scene and were reading and discussing it, this student spoke up and said he didn’t blame Romeo. He wanted to know how were the characters supposed to know that they are defending the same family (since Romeo had married in to the family secretly right before this fight scene) and wanted to know why no one taught them to talk things over first before fighting. He referred to Romeo and Tybalt as family a few times in that discussion, getting so specific about reminding other students that they’re related to each other now, and didn’t get the chance to figure that out because they always have to be fighting.

I think after this year, every time I read or teach R + J, I will always picture this student’s older brother playing the role of Tybalt.

It is a legitimate tactic for defusing a situation that could otherwise escalate to become quite nasty.

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

Repede’s a dog, Raven’s just No, Rita’s got a bit too much prickliness and could be tempted with knowledge…

Flynn’s up there, but he’s got an Ideal he wants to use to shape the world, and that’s the sort of thing that lets the Ring turn you into Alexei. Yuri I’m less sure about, but his “i’ll go fix this whether or not anyone thinks I’m right” tendencies still seem like a danger.

On the other hand, Estelle never shows interest in the power becoming Empress would give her - even though it would give her the ability to change the sorts of things that she and Yuri find wrong during their journey - and has experience enduring magically sourced suffering. While nobody could make the choice to throw away the ring at the end, I think she’s got the humility and lack of interest in power to resist it for the longest.

I think Yuri and Flynn are both out. Flynn with the ring would be reminiscent of Galadriel: "not dark, but beautiful as the dawn. Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!"

I think Yuri would get farther than Flynn, because like Estelle he doesn't want power, where Flynn does want it. Yuri, though, does position himself as someone who has the right to judge and condemn those he determines are a danger to the world. That's a form of power, and the ring could harden him to critique, convince him he's fully in the right to decide at all times who deserves to live or die, and give him the power to enforce that.

Raven has already proven he can be used for evil, and Rita is too certain that of course she's smarter than a piece of jewellery, there's no way it could corrupt her! Since she's obviously stronger than it, she'll just tap into it's power a liiiittle bit....

Maybe end-game Karol who has gotten over his desire to prove himself and make himself look impressive, and I also think Judith is a strong second choice, but like you said, too driven. She would use the ring out of a desire to do good, but through her... the Gandalf quote, etc.