seeing somebody’s domesticated wizard: wow, I love how well maintained and sleek his beard is! what product do you bathe him with? and what a lovely, clean, and silky robe… does he know any spells?
seeing a feral wizard in the wild: absolute running for life because it smells the raw ground beef in my knapsack
me thinking about shakespeare normally: mercutio was gay
me thinking about shakespeare at 3 am: romeo and juliet is underrated as a story. why? because everyone treats it as a love story when they should be treating it as a commentary on how children are too afraid to come to their parents with a problem or even voice their opinions on things without fear of facing repercussions. juliet didn’t want to marry paris, some old guy she didn’t know. so OF COURSE she was going to choose romeo, some hot young thing that talked nice and looked nicer and probably made her feel special. she had had at least a conversation with the guy. but no. she can’t tell her father that she doesn’t want to marry and would rather try to get to know that nice montague boy that was chatting her up while crashing her party. but of course she can’t. both of because societal expectations and because of the whole blood feud. and then there’s romeo. we all call him an emo fuck but the fact remains that it is highly hinted that he had depression and while finding someone “to love” doesn’t automatically fix that in a person, him “loving” juliet definitely did seem to improve his mood while his parents just brushed him off. and in the end of the story, they’d both rather kill themselves then tell their parents that they’re going to be disappointing them by telling them who they “love” and that’s just fucked up. these were teenagers. and while this may have not been old billy shakes’ original message, it stands that this interpretation could benefit being taught to a lot of students and even some parents.
me thinking about shakespeare at 3:30 am: also know what was fucked up? mercutio and tybalt died without even knowing what they were dying for. they literally say in the beginning of the play that no one remembers why the blood feud started. and mercutio wasn’t even an capulet or montague. this wasn’t his fight. but he died anyways, under romeo’s arm, by tybalt’s hand. sure, they were fighting because tybalt was pissed about romeo seeing juliet and shit, but mercutio didn’t know that. he thought tybalt was just starting shit just to start shit. he didn’t know what he was dying for. “a plague on both your houses” indeed. and then tybalt. fucking firey tybalt. like i said before, no one knows why the blood feud started. he essentially just died because his family hates another guy’s family probably over something like the 13th century equivalent of a sports rivalry. that’s so fucked up. while i don’t remember what their exact ages were, i’m pretty sure they were teenagers too. what the fuck.
me thinking about shakespeare at 3:35 am: and then benevolio. oh god benevolio. what even happened to him??? first, he watches this guy who was always a jackass to him but he’s probably known all his life get killed, then his (boy)friend dies all because of something his cousin does, and then his cousin is exiled/flees before he’s exiled. he’s then all alone for like the rest of the play, until he assuredly walks into the mausoleum at the end of the play and sees his cousin dead on the ground with some girl he’s maybe seen twice in his life dead on top of him. what the fuck. what the actual fuck. poor benevolio just lost his two best friends and now he’s all alone. and you know they never even say if he’s in the play for the rest of the thing. you just assume he is. for all we know he could’ve skipped town, or killed himself as well, or died in a duel, or anything. i always headcanoned him as the youngest of the group. and like, that just makes it worse. poor benevolio, the guy that was left all alone at the end of the play with all his friends and acquaintances dead. “for never was a story of more woe / than that of juliet and her romeo”???? bullshit. for never was a story of more woe than that of our poor fucking benevolio.
me thinking about shakespeare at 3:50 am: mercutio was gay
ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
