benvoliio reblogged
"And if all we have is tonight, I've got a bag of coke in my jacket."
"And I've got poppers in mine."
benvoliio reblogged
shakespeare characters having weird reactions to deaths: macbeth / hamlet / julius caesar
sorry to be pedantic outside of the tags but i love these as exhibits a b and c of why the “shakespeare is meant to be performed” cliche is real; on the page they look wild but actors know how to read the embedded stage directions
two of these examples can’t be shared lines of iambic pentameter (both gertrude’s line and brutus’ are already rushed and irregular at eleven syllables, so laertes and cassius both get their full ten beats for two or three words) and one of them doesn’t have to be (macduff and malcolm’s lines add up to ten beats indicating that it’s shared but no one will call the scansion cops on you if you split it into two and divvy up the extra ten syllables between them, which imo is the more playable option)
remember that verse is symphonic and that those extra syllables are notes in the orchestration of the scene— they have to go somewhere, either into beats of rest or sound. there’s a lot of ways to score any of these moments but one possibile notation for the first is
MACD: your royal father’s murdered.
(rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/)
MAL: oh.
(rest / rest / rest/ rest/ rest/) ...
by whom?
all that silence affords the director a moment to let a lightning-fast scene (the entire cast pouring onstage in ones and twos, yelling over each other at varying levels of authenticity) come to a screeching halt, and the severity of the situation set in. for the actor it’s playable as all hell, and ultimately very human: the kind of raw shock that makes you ask stupid questions. you get the same thing with laertes. tbh i’ve always found “drowned? (rest / rest /) oh. (rest / rest / rest / rest/ rest /) .....where?” to be utterly goddamn devastating in how realistic it is, bc what else can you say to that? if someone told you with no warning that your sister drowned, what else would come out of your mouth in the moment but something stupid and mundane? oh. ..........where did it happen?
the other notable similarity in these three moments is the use of un-words: two ‘o’s and a ‘ha’ (they aren’t meant to be pronounced exactly like “Oh” or “Ha”; traditionally shakespearean un-words are performed as unarticulated sounds, sighs, groans, exhalations etc). un-words leap out to the actor because it is a character rendered speechless. i made a post a few weeks ago about how big of a deal it is when people written by william shakespeare dont have words for what they’re experiencing/when the pain is so big that even in a metanarrative universe where you are only the words you speak you are forced to admit that something is unspeakable, and every “o” or “ha” or “ah” etc is a moment of this horror, this defeat at the hands of your own medium
it’s a rich moment for actors because in classical text it’s frowned upon to act “outside” of the line (to waste vocal qualities on things that aren’t words, ie to take a pause from speaking your richly layered monologue to let out a pained exhale. “act on the line” says your director, smacking you on the knuckles with a copy of freeing shakespeare’s voice), it’s diva-y and amateurish to take more syllables than you’re given. but when you’re given the space of ten beats for “ha portia”, who will dare call you a scene hog for stretching that “ha” into five notes of agonized, wordless noise?
in the same way that lear’s “howl howl howl” is very much not just the word ‘howl’ said three times these moments demand full, shattering vulnerability from the actor, a dive into the place in the body where pain lives. maybe laertes and malcolm really do say “oh.”, quiet and childlike, or maybe that ‘o’ is a stand-in for the all-air sound that shakes out of you when you get punched in the lungs and try to talk through it, or for that deep animal groan you heard that made you think what was that before you realized it was coming out of your own throat
anyway you get what i mean. you wouldn’t look at a blueprint and say you saw the house, you wouldn’t read the sheet music and say you heard the symphony, etc
benvoliio reblogged
time passes, people move… like a river’s flow, it never ends
WAIT I DREW THIS IN 2018 before we knew anything about totk I predicted falling zelda
benvoliio reblogged
sighs but in the way that dogs do sometime
thebiclub-deactivated20231228
this reddit post is so good.
a trans guy who is also a butch who dates both men and women-- I aspire to be like this. oh, to play 5d chess with gender.
Hey guys! So my thesis this semester is a series of illustrations, + some little design elements, loosely depicting four Shakespeare plays in different settings: so first up, we have Romeo and Juliet in what I can only call The Space Renaissance! Science fiction isn’t my forte, so this was a fun challenge. It ended up being more Renaissance than Space, but that’s kind of what I was going for.
benvoliio reblogged
casual wear (splattered with blood) vs. evening wear (drenched in blood)
benvoliio reblogged
Fucking love fantasy novels they really throw you in zero context bombarding you with fantasy names for races, cities, religions, nations like fuck you!!!! You WILL get confused by the names of the native dishes of Palgocya and the authorities of the city state Zinkolny's Tribunal du Monstre!!! Was the Emperor of Xernull's name Zolga Nendurann or Q'uenn Khulna?!?!?
benvoliio reblogged
mf-dooom
that is the face of a man worried he will be next
Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man's boss and having to sit him down like. Listen. Brian. We need you to fuck the bird. You have to act like you're excited about it.
crane husband.....
this is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it.
(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights:
- Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s. The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.
- As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.
- It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.
- Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.
- The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.
- They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.
- Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris--and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.
- Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.
- Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent. (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)
- It worked!
- Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility--sometimes the biological dad and his mate--both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.
- However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them. (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)
- Chris accepts that he is pretty much married to this bird. White-naped cranes live to be about 60, and they mate for life, so he knows he can’t retire while Walnut is alive. (At the time of the article, Walnut was 36, and Chris 42.)
Legit cannot pick the funniest part of this
she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)
His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)
the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)
"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")
chris sits any potential human partners down, like "my love, you must understand before we wed,,, i am already... Attached" (camera drifts wistfully to the above photo) "Lady Walnut and I have an,, Understanding... the relationship is open, but very committed"
just had to explain this post to my father bc he thought my stifled laughter was a signal of illness.
well done, everyone, good game. hit the showers.
Not only is he 'married' to walnut, this has apparently happened SEVERAL times, so he has MULTIPLE crane wives, none of which know about any of his other crane wives. This man is, for some unknown reason, irresistible to cranes
the “this content has been removed for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines” notice really adds a lot of flavor to this post and somehow makes it MORE obscene than whatever that actually was
benvoliio reblogged
Largest self portrait in the world
benvoliio reblogged
benvoliio reblogged
Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love (in conversation with Nicolas Truong) trans. Peter Bush [transcript in ALT]
thank you for all the reblogs of my old r&j posts lol some of them still hit :’^*
motherfucking Fairy Midwife JESUS Christ fuck dude mother fucking tiny fairy bullshit JESUS can you fucking believe this shit God damn agate stone then fucking forefinger and shit right fucking alderman God damn team of little atomies God damn this shit I can’t even fucking believe this shit have you seen this shit fuck I just said this shit fuck fairies’ midwife man motherfucking chariot is an empty hazelnut she gallops night by night fuck night by night motherfucking through lovers brains with plagues with blisters fucking sweetmeats shit fairies’ midwife I’m very tired no man I’ll just talk about the fairies’ midwife all day shit man you must be so interested in the shit I have to say about the fairies’ midwife fuck dude I just saw the year and a half ago fuck Fairy Midwife man man she fucked over a soldier’s neck and crazy dreams of cutting foriegn throats or did the drums in his ear fuck this is she who’s the fairies’ midwife I don’t like dying I can’t think of who the fuck is the fairies’ midwife all I can think is the hag who bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs who the fuck is the fairies’ midwife
QUEEN MAB
“It is terrifying. And yet, you knew what you were getting into. You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close.”
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, from Open Water. (via xshayarsha)
benvoliio reblogged
saw a boat today that looked so soft and so lonely, if I was stronger maybe I would write a poem about her