collecting dust

I now have this utter vision in my head and I wish it existed. Basically, a close-third or first-person pov with a character who has undiagnosed tritanopia who always describes the curtains as a light blue/etc.

Also, apparently, tritanopia is something you can develop over a lifetime.

So, the first time the character sees the curtains in, let's say, his childhood home, he notes the yellow curtains of his memory have been replaced with light blue ones. And this is taken as a sign of how nothing, even one's past and home, remain the same. Everything is lost.

But! Have the story very subtly hint at the possibility that the curtains are, in fact, still yellow. Let it be subtle enough that the general consensus is that the curtains are blue, but just enough hints that someone can argue that the character has blue-yellow color blindness and the curtains are actually still yellow and how this shows that it isn't that everything changes, but that our perspective does. Or something similar.

Is the character actually color-blind? Who knows! Doesn't matter. The possibility and the argument are what make the analysis fun.

...this has nothing to do with the original post, but I was struck by the idea and had zero desire to summarize context when I could just reblog...

This also applies to temporary residences, such as a hotel, airbnb, dormitories, ect.

Seeing to it that they fully make it inside safely isn't just about fear of something as drastic as an assault or a mugging. It would also be awfully annoying and stressful for them if they lost their key, and before realizing they're locked out their ride or walking companion has already sped off, so now they're stuck outside alone with nowhere else to go, and possibly a dead phone (when it rains it pours). Or maybe there's dangerous fauna in the area. Or maybe the neighbor's poorly trained dog with aggression issues is loose. Or maybe they slip and hurt themselves while walking to the door.

It's not exactly that I judge my friends who drop me and go, but I do always notice which cars stay until my front door is actually open. And on my end, it means sometimes I will get out my keys and clearly jingle them as I'm walking up the steps, as my own signal to the driver that I'm good.

"Miss" means an unmarried woman. "Mrs." means a married woman. (both of these have origins in the word "mistress" as in "mistress of the house".)

I've had people (usually children) ask me at work if I'm a missus or a miss. I have replied that I am a miz, full stop. And when they pressed for which one I was REALLY, I have replied, "Why? Are you going to treat me differently depending on whether there's a ring somewhere?"

That's what Ms. is for. That is its linguistic function. It says, "This is an adult woman," and nothing else. Nothing else is necessary, and in my case, nothing else is desired.

I also use miz for other women unless and until they express a preference for something else because I don't magically know everyone else's marital status when I meet them. That's a courtesy—I'm declining to assume marital status and allowing them to decide whether they wish to declare it.

The Monday Period: Part 1 of 6

Part 1: you are here

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

So like the line ~kill Claudio~ is a bit of meme. I have made memes about it. But like, I love it. I love Much Ado, it’s 100% in my top 5 favorite plays (not that I could ever actually decide on my top five), and it has so many killer lines. “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.” “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.” “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.” “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes—and, moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.” But if I really, really think about it Kill Claudio has to be my favorite line in the play because it does so much. It is fucking hilarious line and it’s also so serious and filled with so much meaning.

So, we’re in this scene and Benedick says “Come, bid me do anything for thee.” He’s just told Beatrice he loves her and she said it back! They’re full of this giddy, lovey energy. “Come, bid me do anything for thee.” What she should say is marry me. What Benedick is expecting her to say is marry me. What an audience is expecting her to say is marry me. But what she says is, I want you to kill your best friend. “Kill Claudio.”

The anatomy of the most basic joke can be broken down into two parts: setup and punchline. The setup is usually something innocuous something you would hear and think ah yes I know how this is supposed to end (Two men walk into a bar; Bid me do anything for thee). The punchline, the part that makes it a joke, is the surprise. The story doesn’t end where the audience thinks it’s going to (the third one ducks; kill Claudio). Half of what makes something funny is the surprise. Kill Claudio is definitely a surprise to everyone and can 100% be played for laughs.

But here’s where Kill Claudio becomes more than a joke.

Beatrice knows what she is. She spends the whole play doing whatever she wants, saying whatever she wants, because she doesn’t have any skin in the game. Her life isn’t over if she doesn’t get married. She’s a well-off woman who doesn’t have any parents or anything to inherit, so she doesn’t have anything to lose and really doesn’t have anything to gain either. Beatrice is as free as woman can be in her situation. She doesn’t have any power, but she does have her freedom. Why would she ever do anything that requires her to give that freedom up?

So if we back this scene up from Kill Claudio to Hero’s wedding. We watch the most important person in Beatrice’s life get ruined in just one moment. Claudio breaks his promise to marry Hero, a promise that in Elizabethan England would have been near unbreakable, and humiliates her in the most public way imaginable, almost guaranteeing that Hero will never again find an eligible suitor, which means she will never get married and when her father dies, her entire life and the lives of everyone she loves will be ruined.

Then we come to Beatrice and Benedick. Alone for the first time since they realized how they felt, and they confess their love.

“Come, bid me do anything for thee.”

Beatrice can change her life right here. Hero’s life is ruined and Beatrice can no longer rely on her family to provide for her. But she can marry Benedick, her uncle can make her the heir, and she can save her family. But the person she cares for most would still be ruined.

“Come, bid me do anything for thee.”

The only way to restore a smidgen of Hero’s reputation is for someone to challenge Claudio.

“Come, bid me do anything for thee.”

Beatrice acknowledges something important. Her freedom doesn’t give her power. She can’t issue any challenge. She can’t save her cousin. The only person who would have that power is a man. She says, “Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her!” and “Oh, that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake!”

Beatrice is entirely self-aware. She knows her limits. So when Benedick offers to do anything for her she asks him to do the one thing that might save her cousin.

One of the things I dislike about adaptations of MAAN is when they choose to play this line as though Beatrice is being completely out of left field. In my high school teaching of this play we were told “she just told him to kill his best friend, isn’t that insane?’

No one put into context what Claudio did for us. So he left her at the altar, so what? No, not so what. In my university Shakespeare course we decided that the modern equivalent would have been something like revenge porn, sharing Hero’s nudes with everyone in town. You see a guy who’s been your sworn brother for about a month do something this drastic, out of the blue, citing evidence that seems circumstantial at best (and do the reasons matter, really in this case), is he still your friend? 

Benedick’s “Is Claudio thine enemy?” Is not the logical man trying to reason with his crazy girlfriend. It’s a dramatic turn that gives Beatrice an opening to remind the audience that yes, we liked Claudio in the beginning, but what he has done here is atrocious. He has decided that rather than quietly dealing with the matter, as could have been done with less disgrace to Hero, he is going to destroy any chance she has for life and for a future. 

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know.