I was interested to know whether there had been any noticeable uptick in searches for “the cask of amontillado” since this meme began and while there has, it’s the exact same uptick which has occurred every fall in recent memory as high school teachers have geared up for their spooky october literature units
it looks very similar to a reading of a heartbeat…..a specific heart…..that won’t stop beating……..from under the floorboards………
imagine talking about alexander the great and not mentioning that he died of grief only 8 months after hephaestion died, that he petitioned the oracle to give hephaestion literal divine status so that people could worship him as a god, that he threw himself on hephaestion’s dead body and refused to leave for two days, that he put together the biggest funeral procession known to the world at the time, that he gave hephaestion a lock of his own hair at the funeral in blatant reference to achilles doing the same with patroclus….like heteronormativity is so wild that he could come back from the dead and come out to every historian personally and it still wouldn’t be enough to render him anything but straight
I want to write an alternative version of Romeo and Juliet where instead of being a little ponce and trying to work things out for himself, Romeo asks his smarter friends what to do about the whole thing and Benvolio and Mercutio come up with the world’s greatest plan:
Marriage of convenience between Juliet and Mercutio.
Think about it.
Juliet’s parents want her to marry into the Prince’s family. Mercutio is a good compromise between no marriage and Paris.
Mercutio probably won’t get his inheritance if he keeps being HELLA FUCKING GAY ALL OVER THE PLACE so a beard is only a benefit to him.
They would probably get along great rolling their eyes at how adorably stupid Romeo is.
Romeo and Benvolio could get a “bachelor pad” right next to Juliet and Mercutio’s house. Every night, Romeo and Mercutio high five as they hop the fence to go bang their one true love.
The second half of the play is just all of them trying to keep up the charade and being “THIS CLOSE” to getting caught all the time. But everything ends nicely because true love conquers all.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 