Urgent

Urgent

oh god are you one of those people who reads romeo and juliet as a romance rather than a tragedy

I thought I was gonna go to bed early tonight but I guess not

hey friend you just unleashed my nerdy wrath buckle up

short answer: no, I know r&j is a tragedy and I read it as such. Shakespeare didn’t write “romances”, at least not in the sense you mean (some people call his later stuff that’s harder to put into a genre ‘romances’, such as the winter’s tale and the tempest)

so no I’m not a moron thanks

here’s the long answer:

I presume you’re “one of those people” who likes to count themselves as the Specialest Snowflake In All The Land because they don’t buy into the fake cheesy idea of //romance// that everyone else so blindly believes

maybe you like to talk about how romeo and juliet were “just horny teenagers”, how they knew each other for three days, how romeo so loved rosaline thirty seconds before spotting juliet, so clearly he’s fickle and silly. they weren’t actually in love, they were just teenage idiots. because only stupid girls buy that stuff. you’re more mature than that. am I right?

well, here’s the thing, sunshine- you aren’t special. I hear this same damn argument right down to the last word every time I mention my love of this play and it ENRAGES me every time because 99% of the time this is coming from /other teenagers/. other young people talking about how this isn’t a story to be taken SERIOUSLY. it’s silly and frivolous and unrealistic. they don’t realize that this play is dedicated to them.

and it’s criticizing people just like you.

while I do believe that these two young people were soul mates (I’ll get to that later), I don’t really think this is a story about love. it’s a story about /passion/- how love and hate are only a hair’s breadth apart and their overwhelming capacity for healing or for destroying. the emotion that drives mercutio to defend romeo from tybalt. what drives mercutio to be killed at his hand. what pushes formerly docile, dreamy romeo to slay his cousin in law: it all begins to seem like the same continuous passion, enflaming the same group of people on the hottest day of the year.

as a result, love isn’t a pretty thing in this play. it’s linked inextricably to death, to murder, to chaos. love is presented as the most dangerous force in the universe. it leaves five bodies in its wake, and then at the end (people forget this) it’s what finally brings the ancient feud to an end. it’s not silly. it’s not frivolous. o brawling love, o loving hate.

and who are the conductors of this unstoppable force? who sets verona burning and then rebuilds it better in under a week?

kids.

people with a shitty understanding of this play who love to dismiss it and downplay it like to call it a “cautionary tale”- why you shouldn’t think with your dick, why you should grow up and not be so rash, be sensible.

I agree with part of this. it is a cautionary tale. but it’s directed at YOU.

you, who devalue youth. you, who underestimate teenagers and what they’re capable of, who wave off their every thought or feeling with “just a kid”. who think that love is a pretty little silly thing and that no one under the age of 25 is capable of really experiencing it. that the kids don’t MATTER.

capulet thought it- he dismissed tybalt’s rage during the party as dumb kids throwing a hissy fit. he wrote juliet off as a child who should be seen and not heard, shuffled from her father to her husband, guided by the wisdom of those older and wiser than her.

in the world presented in the play, age has NOTHING to do with wisdom. the adults range from careless (montague) to helpless (lady capulet) to blithering (the nurse). the wisest character, the most eloquent and intelligent one with the most beautiful poetry, is fourteen year old juliet. (go back and read it. whose speeches are the most beautiful, sophisticated, complex? Juliet’s.)

okay, fine, you say. but they didn’t love each other, they just saw each other and got hot and bothered and wanted to jump the other’s bones! anyway, what about rosaline?!

I’ll address rosaline first:

shakespeare likes making fun of the poets of old (take for instance his “my mistress’ eyes” sonnet, a deliberate parody of the Petrarchan model of frilly love poetry). heres another example in romeo. when we first meet romeo he’s mooning over a girl in the frilliest, stalest, most formulaic verse imaginable. we get the feeling he’s enjoying himself, basking in his misery.

notice, though, that we never see rosaline on stage. she represents romeo’s vague infatuation with the //idea// of love, the pretty image he made up in his head from reading old poems. this not only creates an incredible arc in his character, but makes his love for juliet obviously the real deal by comparison. he meets juliet and his world goes into free fall; he’s rash and violent and impulsive, and the verse that was so stale and ingenuine before shifts into some of the most famous passionate poetry in the english language. in his first scene, he asks “is love a tender thing?” he falls in love with juliet- REAL love, not the kind in poems- and comes to answer his own question: no. no it fucking isn’t.

but, you say. but they CANT have loved each other! you don’t fall in love just by LOOKING at someone!

yeah, I know you don’t.

but here’s the thing. if you aren’t willing to suspend some modicum of disbelief, you won’t get anything from shakespeare. period.

we’re already assuming that these people just happen to walk around speaking in blank verse and rhyming couplet. the plot of hamlet relies on the existence of a ghost, a midsummer night’s dream on fairies, macbeth on witches, the tempest on magic, measure for measure on the friggin /bed trick/- is it SUCH A HORRIBLE STRETCH FOR YOUR CYNICAL POSTMODERN MIND TO MAKE that characters can identify their soulmates with a look? have we reached that level of lazy cynicism as a society that magical love flowers and vengeful ghosts are believable, where a woman can turn into a boy by shoving a hat over her hair and statues spring to life as deceased loved ones, but love at first sight (a very very common Elizabethan plot device; it’s /everywhere/ in shakespeare) is just too much of a stretch?

no one rolls their eyes at hamlet because “ghosts aren’t real. are you one of those people who believe in ghosts?” no- they take it for the plot device that it is in order to get to the message of the play as a whole, and the truths of the human conditions it reveals, with the help of some purely theatrical elements.

but kids in love. that’s far too silly.

it’s really fucking sad.

and questions like yours, anon? those make me really, really fucking sad.

Just finished watching Hack-san (without translations). DAMN it was good.

 Marinette waiting until the last minute to tell Alya about needing her to makes sense - she wasn’t planning on going on the trip, she tried to fake being sick, so it really wasn’t something she could’ve planned in advance. Also explains why she didn’t tell Chat beforehand - she couldn’t.

I loved seeing Alya panicking a little too, trying to keep anyone from getting akumatized even while no one seemed likely to be. Reminds me of Marinette’s anxiety. With having to be the major hero that Paris relies on to fix everything, as well as subbing for the Guardian, she’s under a lot of pressure very suddenly.

Chat attacking her made sense. A new superhero comes out of nowhere, using LADYBUG’S miraculous, of all things? Yeah, he’s gonna assume that she either stole his Lady’s Miraculous, is an akuma, or is a sentimonster. 

I really want to know what their conversation on opposite sides of the chimney was about. Adrien was clearly not happy about the situation and didn’t trust this new superhero, but he at least was wiling to work with her. And by the end he’d warmed up to her a lot.

Oooh, and Alya’s plan near the end to take down Robostus… I don’t know the exact details, but it seemed to rely on manipulation and understanding how people work, using that to her advantage. Combining that with Sentibubbler, and Alya seems to be really good at understanding people and using them in her plans to achieve her goals, while Marinette’s really good at manipulating objects to achieve her goals. 

And OH MY GOD MARINETTE TAKING OUT AN AKUMA WITH A FRYING PAN IS PERFECT. And trapping the butterfly under a bucket afterwards! All the fanfics that have civilians taking out akumas like that and trapping them to dispose of later suddenly got a big canonical boost!

Looks like Alya noticed something was wrong with Chat too and urged Ladybug to talk to him! YES. Makes perfect sense, considering that her big strength is understanding people. Plus, he’s more willing to show negative emotions to her than he is to Ladybug nowadays, so it’s more obvious.

At this point why do you think bakugou still wants to be number 1? It serves no real purpose and if the series is saying the rankings are bad, then there’s no reason for anyone to take this seriously sense it’ll either not be be a thing or not actually matter anymore. Is it simply something to motivate him to be stronger despite the title meaning nothing? Or is this going to be the final lesson Bakugou is going to have to learn as a character since that desire to be number 1 is the only thing he still has from where he was at the start

I think No 1 does not necessarily mean the hero rankings, but also it’s not a bad thing to strive for in itself. 

The narrative clearly established that one of the worst things of the All Might era was the passivity it perpetuated among the heroes, who felt like they were not competing in the same field so they stopped trying as hard. And even in the case of Endeavor who was the only exception, the problem was never that he wanted to be No. 1. (that was actually a positive thing), but rather that he gave up very fast and tried to achieve his goal in unethical ways and pushing his related psychological issues onto his family.

In Bakugou’s arc, similarly, his ambition is not a bad thing in itself. The question is the “why” and the “how”. As a middle-schooler, he wants to be No. 1 because he feels entitled to it on account of his exceptional quirk. After DvK, it is about his wounded pride, it’s all about seeking external validation. 

Already at the time of the Sport Festival, his public declaration is a way to push himself, a motivator. What is problematic is his attitude towards the others, seeing them as mere stepping stones, people to look down on. 

We also learn during the Sport Festival together with Bakugou that someone giving their best is a sign of respect, and all the external validation in the world doesn’t mean anything if there is no internal validation to match it. The world can’t tell Bakugou that he’s the best, unless he himself FEELS it. So he does know quite early on that an external No. 1. ranking is not the same as truly being the No. 1. 

Post DvK2, the immediate thing Bakugou does (in response to All Might saying again it’s not his fault) is to recognize Deku as a rival. Kacchan’s going to keep pushing himself, because remember, it’s a sign of respect - but what changes is that he doesn’t view Deku as a stepping stone anymore, but someone to “lift” up in the process. He starts to see and use rivalry as a tool for growth for both of them - take the fear of inferiority and turn into a positive motivator. 

So as Bakugou gets himself into his rivalry thing with Deku and tries to figure out his own weaknesses and Deku’s strengths,  it becomes clear to him that what No 1. means is more than just a strong quirk. There are ways the weak can be strong and there are weaknesses even the strongest quirks can’t spare a person from. 

So yes, saying that he wants to be No 1. is in a way the same as his original character motivation, it has a very different meaning, just as Kacchan is a very different person than he was a year ago. 

- I think he views No 1 as something that can’t be just an external trophy, but something he earns for himself by doing his best

- Still aiming for No. 1. is a sign of respect - Deku may be as strong or stronger than All Might eventually, but Bakugou went up against All Might, experienced the power gap and smiled. It did not make him despair, it made him feel fired up. 

- He understood that strongest is much more than just a question of the strongest quirk. There are many ways to be strong, and by recognizing the strength Izuku had back as a quirkless child gave him new understanding and more ways to grow than just making bigger booms. 

- Regardless of strength of quirk, they are all on the same field, because heroism in the end at its core is recognizing what the right thing to do is and acting on it. It’s not a question of power only. So this evolved Bakugou recognizes everyone as his rivals, because where he once saw everyone as stepping stones, now he sees the potential in everyone and wants to motivate and lift them up through the rivalry. 

So I feel like this scene wasn’t meant to show that Bakugou was stuck in the past, but that even if his goal seems to be the same, it has taken on new layers and meaning in light of his growth. Wanting to be No 1 was never a bad thing  - but the way he changed, now Kacchan wants to do it for the right reasons (to save people) and the right way (keep rising and lifting everyone with him)/ 

(The narrative did a similar thing with Todoroki in the same chapter, who was also tied back to his starting point of not wanting to be like Endeavor, but again, doing it the right way, for the right reasons.)

they really had no shame in doing chat noir dirty during that one-on-one fight with alya… no fucking shame…

So according to some people woman can't have their own ideals and would just do a right thing only because her boytoy would do the same thing!!

This is so pathetic, lame, shallow and downright disrespectful to women that suggests that their existence only has to rely on men which is again so wrong, shallow and disrespectful.