gays × ghosts × guns

>look inside

if we gotta do replica hadestown productions can we at least replicate older versions

is that not even pride & prejudice thinks that behaviour of hers is entirely a good thing?

Like?? half of lizzy’s entire character arc is realizing that her judgy wit that she always congratulated herself on was based on really shaky foundations?? because she’s not nearly as good a judge of character as she believed, and that it’s actually kind of a character flaw motivated by the TITULAR combination of faults??? that she has as much pride & prejudice as she accuses others of having? & that she needs to let go of that a bit, in order to have better relationships with the people around her???

because Lizzy over-developed those traits as part of deliberately being his daughter as much as possible and dissociating herself from her mother. but stepping outside the narrow context of their family where those are The Two Options reveals him as also embarrassingly flawed, and the terrible limitations of this approach to cultivating one's own character.

exactlyyyyyyy @dancerswhirl you get it!!! while i won't say i liked this decision or the obc better, i think this choice here is so so so so compelling.

i love to think about like. the intentionality of it. had she already purchased this gown? or did she pick it up on the way? regardless, this anya took the time to change out of big red™ and choose an outfit without anyone else's influence. she even redid her hair. maybe even thought about what dmitry would like. but, mostly, i think she did it for herself. they made a point to show how uncomfortable anya was as anastasia at this point in her life (flinching at the flashing cameras, etc), how this wasn't what she wanted. she takes the time to literally shed that part of herself once and for all. this was just as important to her as finding dmitry again.

there's been stuff written about how big red is a sort of timeless silhouette, how anastasia herself has become a timeless figure, and by ending the show in the broadway production in this dress shows that she will live on as such. 'she will rise again' etc etc. but i think this choice in this production says anya and anastasia, ultimately, are different people, and that's okay. anya reconciles the person she is now with who she used to be by letting her go.

you bring up a good point that she hasn't gotten much choice in her clothes throughout the show-- first out of necessity and practicality, then out of trying to appeal to the nobility class in paris. (i do think dmitry picked out the blue dress for her, and i believe she picked out the pink hartford dress if we go by that canon, but it's still within a specific realm of class that is very far outside of how anya has spent her last ten years)

I have written on here many times how much I LOVE that Pride and Prejudice is an adaptation of Much Ado in a kind of stretchy, fanfic-AU sort of way. Austen definitely used the same characters and their dynamics with one another, but she actively adapted the story by giving them all interesting, English Regency versions of their Renaissance Tuscany/London challenges.

My favorite thing is that you see similarities in a) the scandal of an affair with the heroine’s unwed family member, and b) the willingness of the heroine’s “bitter rival” (Benedick/Darcy) to go far beyond what’s expected of him to save her family’s reputation, even when it might hurt his own

In her adaptation, Austen proposes that even if Beatrice/Elizabeth’s family member DID have an extramarital affair, Benedick/Darcy would still be morally obliged to help the family. This differs from Shakespeare, where Benedick believes that Hero is innocent. Sex scandals are therefore key elements in both plots, but Austen really pushes the original narrative to explore what the characters would do if the family member wasn’t innocent and the sex scandal was real. Would Benedick still have the same sense of duty to remedy the situation at great inconvenience/loss to himself? Would that duty be based in his love for Beatrice, or in his sense of ethics? Would Beatrice and Benedick have even fallen in love without their family’s interference?

So like, not only is P&P a wonderful (and very funny) adaptation of Much Ado, it’s also a refreshing, explicit exploration of the themes and issues Shakespeare clearly wanted to introduce to his 16th century audience. P&P doesn’t get to the violent, verbal extremes of “eat his heart in a marketplace” and “kill Claudio,” but it does push the character of Benedick to much more agency and responsibility as a privileged person in relation to Beatrice’s own (lack of) power. And to me, that makes it an exceptionally challenging and effective Regency adaptation of Much Ado.

Jane and Bingley represent the Hero/Claudio "love at first sight" and "separated by machinations" sections, but come to a much more satisfying conclusion because Bingley's folly is based on modesty. He never turns on Jane, as Claudio does, instead he leaves her, but out of a belief that she doesn't love him and therefore wouldn't be harmed by it. Their happy ending is happy to (most) of the audience.

The defence of honour plot, Claudio doing wrong by Hero leading to her social doom and her being defended by Benedick, is all transferred to the trickster, Wickham (Don John?) and his victim Lydia (the other half of Hero). The solution still is marriage, but we are not left with this ambiguous nagging wonder if it's ever possible for Hero/Claudio to be happy, we know Wickham/Lydia is a bad marriage, but that Elizabeth & Jane will help their sister and she'll be okay.

Dracula was not really expected to be a huge sensation and no special fanfare was made with its first edition, and the aesthetics we associate with it weren’t part of its branding at the time. The first edition actually looked like this.