![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
More mulling than writing
Dec. 4th, 2013 10:24 amToday I really want to make a serious push to get a good first draft of the story I'm writing for fandomaid. So far it's proving to be a fascinating business, and taking me right out of my comfort zone, since I gave up Doctor Who at the end of Season Six, and the request calls for Clara - intense research has been happening. :D
And then as soon as that's done, the fandomaid story, I'll be into the next chapter of 'Ivory'. (I posted Chapter Eleven, by the way, last weekend. It's here.)
But this morning, so far, I haven't been writing, I have been mulling more about Shakespeare - still thinking through the Joss Whedon version of Much Ado About Nothing. I'm now thinking he didn't go far enough in the sleaziness of the Messina world. There's very light touches of it (the concealed guns, the private guards, the strange semi-military structure of things, the non-stop lies and manipulation - by everyone except Beatrice and Benedick? I must think that through. Oh, and not the Dogberry gang, either, of course) but it's all still the bright comedy, where we're meant to see the ending as happy.
But if this were played as a real view of the underworld, with a gangster family all in the know about what horrible trade their party-money comes from, it would make "Kill Claudio" absolutely straight, grim and believable - i.e. Beatrice as the child of a gang hanger-on calling on another hanger-on to cut down a member of the gang - which would be a huge thing to ask, probably fatal for Benedick as well as Claudio. And Hero's "happy-ever-after" gaining of the man she's obsessive about (but a gangland leader's daughter gets to have the man she wants, to meet the gang-leader's "honour") would at least acknowledge how really ambivalent and edgy the ending is,with Hero and Claudio affirming their membership of an ultimately destructive organisation. And Beatrice and Benedick as the two who at least try at the end to get right out of that world - whether they can succeed left undetermined.
But these are thoughts I need to set right aside, and get down to Doctor Who!
And then as soon as that's done, the fandomaid story, I'll be into the next chapter of 'Ivory'. (I posted Chapter Eleven, by the way, last weekend. It's here.)
But this morning, so far, I haven't been writing, I have been mulling more about Shakespeare - still thinking through the Joss Whedon version of Much Ado About Nothing. I'm now thinking he didn't go far enough in the sleaziness of the Messina world. There's very light touches of it (the concealed guns, the private guards, the strange semi-military structure of things, the non-stop lies and manipulation - by everyone except Beatrice and Benedick? I must think that through. Oh, and not the Dogberry gang, either, of course) but it's all still the bright comedy, where we're meant to see the ending as happy.
But if this were played as a real view of the underworld, with a gangster family all in the know about what horrible trade their party-money comes from, it would make "Kill Claudio" absolutely straight, grim and believable - i.e. Beatrice as the child of a gang hanger-on calling on another hanger-on to cut down a member of the gang - which would be a huge thing to ask, probably fatal for Benedick as well as Claudio. And Hero's "happy-ever-after" gaining of the man she's obsessive about (but a gangland leader's daughter gets to have the man she wants, to meet the gang-leader's "honour") would at least acknowledge how really ambivalent and edgy the ending is,with Hero and Claudio affirming their membership of an ultimately destructive organisation. And Beatrice and Benedick as the two who at least try at the end to get right out of that world - whether they can succeed left undetermined.
But these are thoughts I need to set right aside, and get down to Doctor Who!
