they said you were well nigh dead for me

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) was my first introduction to the play and I remember how jarring the wedding scene was, how frightening Claudio's rage, how heartbreaking Hero's fear and despair, how I kept waiting for someone to intervene, for Leonato to defend his daughter, only for him to abuse her himself. And later, when you expect Hero to be given full apologies, she receives pittance, and it makes me ache, it is dissatisfying, and that is the point.

The play is not meant to be a cute romcom between Hero and Claudio. It is about men of power abusing and ruining the reputation of an innocent woman because of a perceived slight, about how powerless women are in a world run by men, how they are not believed.

We are not meant to root for Claudio and Hero. As far as the text goes, Hero has no feelings for Claudio before their engagement. It is the Prince who woos her and then she is handed to Claudio like a trophy. He makes no effort to earn her love, because he does not need to, the Prince and her father give her to him. She sets herself to loving him because that is what is expected of her, but she has no choice, and no amount of heart eyes can change that. Her father would have given her to the Prince if he wanted her.

Let us portray Claudio for what he is... emphasise his interest in Hero being Leonato's sole heir, how he mocks Antonio and Leonato as two old men without teeth after learning of Hero's death. At the wedding follow the 1993 example and show him for the true violent villain he is. He brought her to the aisle before everyone and denounced her as a wanton, called her rotten. It is no accident that the real "villain", Don John says very little in this scene. It should not be dismissed that Claudio is set on publicly shaming Hero before he has seen proof of Don John's claims.

Yes, it is Don John's scheme, he is a villain too, but the point is how quick Claudio and Don Pedro are to turn, that they are not as good as they present themselves to be. I don't condone Don John's actions at all, but the point is he is exploiting those social inequalities, bringing to light what is already there. Imagine if there had been no plot, if Claudio and Don Pedro had witnessed Borachio and Margaret's weird roleplaying fantasy and jumped to conclusions. Would we still feel sympathetic to Claudio's "Sinned I not but in mistaking"?

I know it has been pointed out had Hero truly cheated on Claudio as he saw it then we would be rooting for him to shame her. It is a fair point, but public shaming is still cringe especially at a time when a woman's wellbeing hinged on a good reputation. Claudio acts like a man denied something, he ensured Hero's reputation would never recover. Hero had no choice in her marriage to Claudio, if she did love another then why would we not root for her as much as Romeo and Juliet against Paris, as Lysander and Hermia against Demetrius?

This emphasis on virginity is important at the time, but outdated now. So why not point at it and go "isn't this ridiculous". In fact, the ridiculousness placed on girls being virgins does prevail in today's society. Slut shaming is still a huge issue with fatal consequences. Leonato threatens to kill, maim his daughter should the accusations against her prove true. Honour killing still happens today. So make the audience uncomfortable, make them think "this is not right", because it's not.

As for Claudio's supposed repentance, how about a version of the play where like in the First Folio and Quarto (as cited by Cedric Watts: https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=1486), Claudio does not even do the bare minimum of reading the plaque at Hero's funeral, but assigns this duty to an unnamed Lord. As he woos in proxy, so does he mourn in proxy.

How unjust it feels that after "murdering" Hero, he should be given "another" of her kinswomen, supposedly Leonato and Antonio's surviving heir (how fortune for Claudio). Do not show Hero happy to be reunited with Claudio, show her resigned. She must now marry this man who wronged her to save her reputation. It is not that I want Hero to suffer, but I think it is an insult to what she does suffer to dismiss it in an attempt to save Claudio's face.

Hey there!Let me see what I can do for you! I’ll do some of the other big main roles. Natashas1) Shoba (My personal Favorite) - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6eYpqwa-hdJLTZwOVlqZmVmY002) Lauren - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1HdmngZrHHieEJ6Y0xIb2UtVDQ?sort=13&direction=aSonyasThe one for Lauren also has Ingrid in it as Sonya and Courtney Bassett on for Mary. 3) Ashley (my favorite) - https://mega.nz/#!M8pSFYLa!O95RNNMw3ZwXrPGOkcvQoC8CNrTorI7deNmRseAjxLQAnatole 4) The only one I can gift is of Josh Canfield on in the role. I can’t gift any audios that are connected to a master unless they allow gifting upon request or allow audios to be gifted. I don’t wanna piss anyone off.  - https://mega.nz/#!VXZ2FB4I!gHeZH361LAsYQD3okMCVyk35AblKRmjTVBpp0cNYzJMHelene

got on computer, looked at document, was like “fuck this shit” and got off

wrote like 150 words that consist of bloating the existing useless conversation or scene even more

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to escape the Bad Part

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to get closer to the Good Part

got on your document, ran into research issue, spent like an hour on Wikipedia, ah shit

the somewhat satisfying “fixing everything I hated about the scene I wrote the day before” session

decent amount of progress that took like 3x longer than it should have because you were repeatedly distracted

In The Zone and completely absorbed, just BLAZING through a few thousand words, probably close to the ending, probably listening to playlist

Not actually a writing session, just listening to playlist

the session where you write like a paragraph, suddenly realize the unfixability of your current plot predicament, and cry

that weird session where you don’t have much time and you’re super tired and you write like a page but you reread it the next morning and holy shit these words came from the fingers of god why is it so good

that session that is purely just navigating the boring shit of getting from one scene to the next and it sucks but you leave off on the cusp of something interesting and it feels good

the satisfyingly exhausting session where you write the Good Part and you’re confident it came out pretty well and you’re full of thoughts and stuff about where things are going next but you need to let them rest

aang, katara, zuko: violence isn’t the answer <3

Katara and Zuko: I immediately want to Violence but I Must Not because it is Bad To Hurt People.

Sokka and Suki: I Have No Natural Instinct Towards Violent Responses But I Also Have No Qualms About Beating The Shit Out Of You

katara and zuko are both guided primarily by their emotions & sensitivity. this is both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. since they need to find a way to channel their anger without actually hurting people, maybe they could start a punk band together?

suki’s entire mode of fighting is about using her opponent’s strength against them. she’s an incredibly skilled warrior, but her fighting is primarily rooted in the defensive. she wants to protect people.

sokka sees violence as a means to an end. he has no aversion to it, but no propensity for it either. unlike katara, toph, or zuko, he never goes looking for trouble without good reason. even when he provoked zuko in the first episode, it was because he made the logical assumption that zuko was going to attack his village. like suki, he sees violence as a necessary defense and mode of protection.

aang sees violence as being uniformly destructive, and he often feels intense shame whenever he lets his anger get the better of him and he enters the avatar state. he refuses to firebend unti he realizes that firebending is just as life-affirming as it is life-destroying. aang does not think murder is ever justified. he believes that there is always another way, and he is ultimately proven right.

toph straight-up loves violence. to her, violence is a mode of self-expression. she loves being able to exert her incredible power over others. she has spent so long being repressed by her family & the cultural expectations placed upon her that violence is a form of freedom. she loves earthbending and the craft of it, but she also just really loves fighting people.

like toph, jet loves violence and associates violence with freedom. unlike toph, jet is a fucking idiot.

to azula—to the fire nation—violence is a currency. azula is all about precision over sheer power, but she will showboat to prove herself and get what she wants. when she refuses to fight zuko this is just as important as when she exerts her physical power over someone because she is taunting him by claiming that he is not even worth it. azula values a combination of physical and emotional violence to achieve her ends.

mai likes violence for the sole reason that it’s more fun than non-violence. mai craves constant (generally destructive) stimulation because she is looking to fill a void. that said, this doesn’t mean her violence is mindless. her knife-throwing is so precise she never even grazes skin. mai likes action, but she does not ever actually want to hurt someone, for she easily could have, but never did.

ty lee is an incredibly skilled fighter, and a very prominent threat, and this is because she takes suki’s technique one step further and subdues her opponents entirely. ty lee does not like resolving conflicts with violence, but develops chi-blocking as a skill because she fundamentally feels unsafe in her environment and needs a way to defend herself. she could easily find a way to hurt people if she wanted to, but she considers violence a last resort.

It’s led to some fun moments in the palace where Zuko is relaxing by the turtleduck pond and some ambassador finds him and exclaims “What’s Lee from the Tea Shop Doing Here?!” then Zuko puts his hair up real quick and the ambassador goes “Firelord Zuko?!”

Zuko will be visiting Uncle Iroh at the shop and helping out with his hair in a topknot and customers are like “Firelord Zuko! What are you doing working in a tea shop?” then he lets his hair down and they go “Oh, it’s Lee! How’s it going?! Where have you been these past months?”