Source: reddit.com
i left for few days and this is what i’m coming back to???
can someone who knows about you/thou divide in shakespeare help me out bc I just skimmed through all of horatio and hamlet’s interactions to find that hamlet consistently refers to horatio as “you” in act one, but starting with his very heartfelt speech in act 3 scene 2 praising horatio, he consistently uses “thou” until the end of the play (which does, sadly, imply that “o, I could tell you— but let it be.” is not actually directed at horatio…) more interesting to me is that horatio only ever uses “you” to refer to hamlet until after hamlet has died, when we get “goodnight sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” does this have to do hamlet with hamlet being dead? or?? what are the general connotations of you/thou at this time (bc I know it has changed over time). why did the changes happen as they did or does literally none of this matter ?
OMG this is actually such a fun literary quirk of Early Modern English, and it adds a LOT of subtext to those interactions!
So, in Early Modern English (the dialect of the time period— it is NOT “old English”, that’s an earlier form of language so different from our current way of speaking you would not be able to interpret it) “you” is a FORMAL address, “thou” is INFORMAL.
Using the “formal you” is a sign of respect and deference, but also an indication of distance. It’s a way of being polite. So when Hamlet is is using the formal “you” in act one it is a politeness, but as the plot goes on he switches to thou to illustrate the depth of that relationship, as “thou” (the “informal you”) is the form of address used between people who are CLOSE with each other— family, good friends, lovers. It is clear that they are close enough for hamelt to address him that way, and the switch can also be viewed as an appeal to their closeness as Hortaio becomes further and further involved in hamlet’s plot.
Now Horatio’s side of this is actually the more interesting one.
You are absolutely right, hortaio uses the formal “you” the entire time hamlet is alive on stage. This is appropriate, given their differing statuses, hamelt is a prince, and using “you” formally is basically like calling someone “sir”. “You” is how you address your boss, people with high social standing than you, and just people you don’t know very well. It’s slightly at odds with hamlet’s very easy way of addressing Horatio, but as hamelt is the one with higher social standing it makes more sense for him to be the one pushing the informal address while horatio continues to speak semi formally.
The part that makes it so much more interesting though is the switch after hamlet’s death, because that really adds to a heartbreaking moment. Basically what that’s meant to tell the audience is that hortaio is mourning hamlet as a friend, and a person he was close with, not as a prince. It’s kinda a break in the more distant, appropriate way of speaking we’ve seen from this cautious scholarly character so far, he’s breaking down, and he’s lost his FRIEND, he’s just watched someone very important to him die, and the switch in formality emphasizes that. It’s no longer about hamlet’s social standing, it’s about what hamlet meant to him
Hold the fuck up you’re telling me the only time Horatio uses thou for Hamlet is the goodnight sweet prince line and I NEVER NOTICED?
that Brian Eno quote about how whatever you find most repulsive about a medium (film grain, record scratches/fuzz, CDs skipping) will be the first thing you try and emulate once that medium is obsolete because it's "the sign of a moment too powerful for the medium assigned to contain it".... man.......
funkylilpunk
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” -Brian Eno
dichotomy of “nothing in the digital age is permanent, we are losing physicality and thus part of ourselves” vs. “everything in the digital age is permanent, everything you do is recorded and stored for later use against you or to exploit you”
got told i looked like a tiktoker by a stranger today because i was wearing ripped jeans with fishnets and bat wing eyeliner and almost let the rage and fury overcome me. does ebony dark'ness dementia raven way mean nothing to you prepz.
“until you can’t tell a prop knife from a real one” and “I want to be remembered in the same breath as the mona lisa” are the same levels of gut punch that truly elevate the knives out series btw
this is actually true! there have been multiple studies that show that millennials are better at identifying fraudulent links than other generations, and one theory is that rickrolling taught us to be cautious about what links we click!
it’s fascinating to see how much memes have shaped our lives over the years!
I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains. Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does. Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be. Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does. This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.
indehiscent
as someone who is partially a classicist, this is a better analysis of Greek mythology as a whole than 99.95% of the takes I’ve seen on here (and a substantial number of the takes I’ve seen in ~academia~)
joey batey really is the atlas holding up the world on his back of the witcher netflix show not only is he indisputably the best actor/character in the series but he wrote a genuinely iconic breakup song and practically canonized his character's bisexuality in the process
i will never get sick of hearing "i hear you're alive... how disappointing" til the day i die that opening line is the musical equivalent of putting your foot on the gas and flooring it into the back of your ex's car
at least tumblr hot takes are written by an overwhelming majority of just weird nerds and teens who don’t hang out with other gays... on twitter you can stumble upon any unbelievably bad opinion and discover it was written by an nbc showrunner who married the ceo of a startup that converts rental properties into oil wells. like at least nobody here has money or influence
I think this view of tumblr is a little rosy. It can be like Watership Down, because some of you are committing rabbit war crimes.
so i have a mildly popular “reblog and put in in the tags” post going around and its. very clear how many people don’t know how to interact with a tumblr post
so, first of all, tumblr’s culture has changed a lot in the past couple years. there’s a genuine community effort to not start any drama, and ironically a lot of the current hostility is an effort to keep things calm. there’s also a change in how people interact with posts, so if you haven’t been here in a while please skip down to the tags/replies/reblog with text section.
for newcomers: you should be reblogging posts about as liberally as you would like something on twitter. if you only like stuff, people will think you are rude/a bot. you’ve probably heard people talk about “cultivating your dash,” and thats because this platform is 100% centered around your dashboard. trending matters less, unfollowing and blocking in order to shape your dash into it’s best form is widely accepted, the majority of the content you’ll find and interact with will be because of your dash, and the only way to put things on your dash is to reblog them. tumblr users are deeply distrustful of algorithms and have largely turned off the “see posts your friends have liked” function (i recommend you also turn of the various algorithms in settings → general settings → dashboard preferences).
so, once you’ve reblogged a post, there’s three ways to add content to it. the tags, replies, and reblogging with text. all of them have different connotations
the tags: an inside voice. originally they were meant for organizing your blog (and they’re still used for this), but they’ve also morphed into a way to share thoughts that aren’t funny/insightful enough for non-followers to be interested in. when in doubt, put your comment in the tags
replies: basically talking to your friends in class. your followers have no way of finding your replies (they don’t pop up on the dash, nobody gets notified except for the original poster) so chances are, only the person who made the post is gonna see your comment. it’s for quick one-offs that you’re okay with other people overhearing, but really is only made for one person. they’re like a public dm
reblog with text: an outside voice. you’re getting up on a stage in town square and entertaining people. make sure it’s funny or insightful— bottom line, add something new to the conversation. you should use this the least
general rules of thumb:
- when in doubt, reblog. people will judge you if your blog is only personal posts and you only interact with other content by liking it.
- the only things people will judge you for reblogging are personal vent posts. leave a like to give a little virtual hug
- if a post is asking about your personality/opinions (i.e: tell me what’s the last tv show you watched, that kind of thing) put it in the tags
- also if you see a nice edit, gifset, or art, reblog and say something nice in the tags! it’s that nice sweet spot of common enough that no one will notice but uncommon enough to make the artist’s day
This may seem like an exaggeration, the idea that one can learn how to properly think like a criminal by learning how crime stories work. On a personal note, let me tell a story from the Leverage writer’s room.
Apollo Robbins (http://www.istealstuff.com/) runs a crew of professional thieves who consult for law enforcement. He was also our criminal consultant on Leverage. Every few weeks he would visit the writer’s room to advise on the scripts and keep us up to date about new cons and the latest in criminal technology.
One day during the third season he sat in with the writers while we broke a story. We posted the details of a real-life white collar criminal up on the room’s whiteboard, using him as the basis for our Mark. We looked at his weaknesses, how he moved his money, what his hobbies were. Once we were happy with that element of the story we added a Vault to the mix, one that used an interesting new alarm technology we’d researched. We then spent about an hour figuring out how to circumvent that alarm. We even sketched out a map of the imaginary building so we could keep track of our Crew’s movements during the Job.
“Well, I’m done here,” Apollo muttered. Noting our confusion, he pointed at the board and index cards cluttering the wall. “This is exactly how real Crews plan these things. This writer’s room is now a fully functioning criminal gang. You could be thieves.”
Of course writing television pays better than crime (usually), with far less chance of being arrested (usually), so we all managed to resist the temptation. But aside from the day a US Attorney asked us to change a plot because we’d created a scam that was a little too foolproof, or when a Homeland Security Agent admitted they were spooked by a security hole we’d exploited in our season finale, it was certainly one of the proudest moments I had on the show.
Source: "CrimeWorld" by John Rogers in Fate Worlds Volume Two: Worlds in Shadow. Evil Hat Productions, 2013: 20.
wish english could make switching from formal to informal "you" a plot point but noooo. like yes i'm aware it's easier for me to not have to worry about conjugating or anything but have you considered it's boring
It's so funny how kids who were only given the "girl" toys seemed to frequently develop the most maniacal imaginations. When I was little and I visited friends or family who were little girls they'd have their Barbies involved in ritual sacrifice or human trafficking. They'd have barbie's evil twin drive ken to suicide by poisoning his horse or some shit.
Action figures set up only the simplest kinds of violence, heroes and villains punching or shooting each other over doomsday plots. When you crave high stakes drama as all children do but your characters are all rich suburban women you kinda have no choice but to get pitch dark I think. The only kinds of villains that logically exist in that setting are just so much sicker and nastier than just doctor octopus or something.
We all love the "becoming the very thing you sought to destroy," trope. but I have a growing fondness for "destroying the very thing you sought to become"