Unhinged Soapbox

the thing that you HAVE to understand about much ado about nothing is that beatrice and benedick are NOT COOL. they are HUGE DORKS and also major softies. they make everything loud and obnoxious and about themselves because they are SO hurt about what happened in the past between them and SO sensitive about it. Beatrice says this more explicitly but it’s also true about benedick. he gets legitimately so upset and angry when he thinks beatrice doesn’t know who he is at the party and she calls him a dumbass. he storms off stage when he sees her next. because he’s hurt!!! because it really really matters to him what she thinks!!!! and right after that Beatrice literally talks about how Benedick “lent [her his heart] awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice” HE BETRAYED HER and she’s STILL UPSET. “thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt” she is not railing against marriage because she’s principled against it or because she’s Strong Female Character (tm). she’s sunburnt!!! she loved benedick more than he loved her and she’s still torn up about it!!!! she would rather never deal with that again!!! which is what you have to understand here. they are putting up fronts that they don’t care all the time. they are putting of fronts of Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl and Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude but this is not who they are in ANY way and they are both so sensitive and get hurt so easily!!!!!! and this is why they almost don’t get together this is why they almost take it all back in the last scene!!! they can’t be vulnerable! they can’t risk it! it’s easier to be Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl than just Beatrice who got her heart broken and now can’t trust anymore. it’s easier to be Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude when you blew it with the girl you’re obsessed with and you survived war just to go back to her after you broke her heart and she calls you a dumbass to your face. the vulnerability necessary to their relationship only happens through their friends but otherwise they are actually hopeless. it is so so important to me that these two are both incredibly sappy losers

i can’t get over how crazy much ado is sometimes. it feels like a deconstruction of shakespeare’s other comedies when you look at how quick and lovesick and beautiful hero and claudio are and how well they fit the script of just classic young lovers, things like how hero is one of the only characters to speak in verse, the way claudio praises her to all his friends etc. and then how in the middle of the play the script is completely flipped. now hero is in danger because of what claudio believes and no one can help her. and suddenly the love story shatters because the same willingness claudio has to fall in love with her at first sight is the same willingness he has to believe a baseless accusation and the love story starts to descend into horror because there’s no legal course of action hero can appeal to her and her own father insults and disowns her at her wedding and she’s quite literally left for dead fainting on the ground with her father saying let her die, what is it to me? it’s insane because like 30 minutes before it’s just a happy comedy love story but shakespeare shows a real darkness to the genre because claudio may think he loves her but when it comes down to it he will never trust her. her word isn’t good enough. no one is going to listen to the woman

I don't think dr who is getting cancelled but you have to admit generating hype for an announcement only to say "we're pulling the plug" would be kind of hilarious

it sucks that the overwhelming majority of medical messaging around salt/sodium is "evil poisonous substance that you're definitely already eating way too much of," because like. you do still need it. (trust me, as a POTS-haver, I've had to completely rewire my own brain about salt.) and you need more salt when the entire northern hemisphere is hot enough to fry an egg on. ever tried sucking down the recommended 64oz of hydration per day entirely as water, only to find you're peeing constantly without any of the purported benefits of being "hydrated"? assuming you don't have another medical condition that causes frequent urination, your body probably needed more salt/electrolytes to be able to hold onto that water and make use of it. if there was ever a time to keep a sports drink/pedialyte/etc within constant reach, it's when the heat index is 110°F/43°C.

My mama once called me by the dog's name and I *responded*

Cars regency au. It's called Carriages and goes about as well as you might imagine.

When I was a Wee Lassie (probably like 12) I had just read many books about children in the woods. So I put on my jacket and hauled my ass into the backyard to play Child Surviving in the Woods. At some point it started raining (and it was March so it was a COLD rain) and did that stop me? No! I parked under the play set to wait it out. From under here I looked at the garden bed and noticed carrot tops. This was unusual as we were still a few weeks out from doing the planting. IT WAS MIRACULOUS PROVISIONS (carrot sprouts that had survived the winter and were now growing in the spring melt). I dug my ice cold carrots out of the dirt and washed them in the rain before enjoying my wonderful meal under the play set. And I think this story says a lot about my parents who presumably were watching their strange daughter sit in the cold rain and dig up their dormant garden and just thought "Eh, she seems to be content and the backyard is fenced and safe. Let's leave her be."

Another anecdote from when I was a Wee Lassie (also probably about 12) is that I would often gather items from the yard and throw them into one of our window wells while pretending to be a Macbeth witch. This included pebbles, grass clippings, weeds, dandelions and clover flowers, mushrooms, and other odds and ends that blew into the backyard. This one my parents did put a stop to because they (understandably) didn't want to clean junk out of the window wells because that was a pain.

I just love the idea of Dracula thinking he’s outsmarted everyone by impersonating Jonathan. As if the locals are going to be fooled by the creepy-looking ghoul with the giant Fu Manchu mustache, wearing clothes clearly not made for him, who just crawled out a window and slithered down the side of a ravine, assuring everyone he is the recently kidnapped lawyer who is doing just peachy, thank you. Like this is WORSE than three kids on each other’s shoulders in a trench coat. If anything it’s like the Wayside School bunch of dead rats in a trench coat

I know I already made a post to this effect but it's so baffling to me when someone defends the fact that headphone jacks are slowly but surely getting phased out by smartphone manufacturers with some variations of "wireless headphones are more convenient anyway" bc like. If we're talking about convenience what I like about wired headphones is that they conveniently have a single plug that makes the same damn pair of headphones universally compatible with every single audio-output-capable device I own, from my phone and my computer to my fucking gameboy and my casette player, it doesn't get any more convenient than that.