alley_skywalker | Entries tagged with fandom: romeo and juliet

So, we’re all doing coronavirus/quarantine AUs now right? Welp. Here’s my brainchild virus AU headcanons with @team-mom-wannabe xD

The Montacrew boys are def all going into quarantine together. It works out well because they’re already renting an apartment together, so nbd.
Except That Mercutio goes stir crazy in like 3.5 minutes.
Mercutio is that person who plans weird flash mobs to do from the balcony.
- Really inappropriate ones.
- He does them every night with increasingly lewd song.
- At some point he probably tries to do one where he ends up almost setting the house on fire.
- Probably because he does the one where people turn of their lights and point/wave around torches/lighters but with candles. (Because dramatic and he’s been listening to Phantom of the Opera again.)
Mercutio decides it would be Safe and Appropriate to set fireworks off from the balcony.
- And he talks Romeo into thinking it’s a good idea while Benvolio is sleeping.
- Ben wakes up thinking a war has finally started.
  - Because Ben is definitely anticipating the zombie apocalypse.
Ben’s the only reason they have groceries for 2-3 weeks ahead.
- Mercutio’s idea of going grocery shopping is buying poptarts at the convenience store.
- Mercutio and Romeo are like, “Why do we need all of this RIGHT NOW?”
  - And Ben is like, “we will never get this later. The stores are being cleared out.” The boys just kinda stare at him in shock and Ben is like, “What was the last time either of you was in a grocery store?”
  - “…ah…”
  - “Well. This explains a lot about our relationship.”
Mercutio swears that if he gets coronavirus he will immediately find a way to break into the Capulet house so he can infect Tybalt.
One day he gets like a headache and wakes up with an itchy throat and is like “whelp lads. Time for my final stand.”
- And then he’s actually kinda disappointment when its nothing because he had ~such a good plan~
- Ben is like This Close to murdering him.
There is definitely violence in this house. Mostly pillow fights.
Romeo makes cookies as stress relief and Mercutio eats half of them.
- “That’s MY stress relief.”
Ben is a little put off because he’s the only one in that house who knows how to actually cook real food from scratch
- “if I get sick, we’re all gonna starve huh?”
- Merc and Romeo just look at each other and are like “yup, sorry.”
- (But Romeo secretly reads online about how to make soup and other such things in case someone DOES get sick…)
Romeo falls for all the fake news about how nothing will open until July. Mostly on the days when Benvolio’s anxiety manages to rub off on him.
- He does ok most of the time because he and Mercutio are so on the same wavelength and Romeo lets Mercutio drag him into dealing with things with gallows humor.
- Whereas Ben is oversensitive to everything at that level of anxiety.
- Romeo loves the gallows humor and Ben goes into screaming lecture mode every time at this point.
- Sometimes Romeo has to take Ben for a time out and just like hold him and be like “you’re acting like you just met this guy. You know this is the ONLY way he copes.”
Mercutio and Romeo usually only fight about external things - if they’re united in their concerns they mind-meld. Which drives Benvolio crazy because he doesn’t know how to degrade to the age of 5 like that anymore.
But sometimes Ben riles Romeo up and then they gang up on Mercutio who spends like 2 hours sulking.
They probably attempt board games marathons but they’re too competitive for that and end in screaming matches.
- Merc and Romeo are really intense about them. And then Merc and Ben play a shitton of video games.
- Mercutio keeps trying to make board games into drinking games.
- “If we spend the time drunk it will go faster.”
- At one-point, Mercutio suggests strip poker. But they don’t have poker cards and do strip uno.
At the start of the whole thing Mercutio tries to set up a betting pool among all their friends/acquaintances about who will be the one/first to get the virus.
- At that point Ben still has the energy to be really annoyed by this.
- Romeo bets on Mercutio just to be a little shit.
- So, of course Mercutio bets on Romeo because “he probably got into the personal space of 10 diff girls in the past week.”
- (Secretly Romeo worries that if someone does get sick, with corona or otherwise, it will be Benvolio because he’s clearly lowering his immune system with all that worrying about everything.
But the Montacrew have it better than the Capulet household. Their quarantine is a lot more depressing.
A lot of screaming.
Lady C makes those memes that are like “why are y'all hoarding toilet paper and not alcohol you know you’ll be quarantined with your kids right?”
Tybalt has no outlet. He has nothing to do and no one to take his anger issues out on.
- The thought of this makes Mercutio gleeful across town.
Tybalt probably DMs Mercutio like “are you infected yet?”
- They have a whole conversation that’s just passive aggressiveness because they’re too tired for quality insults.
- Not that they EVER have quality insults, but now it’s even worse.

"L'affronte" from Giulietta e Romeo: Serious business with accusations of unreasonableness and violence.

Any version of RetJ's "Le Duel": Only childish insults allowed; we die like kindergartners.

Yes, there is. It was originally a French musical that came out in 2001 called Romeo et Juliette. It’s been translated into a bunch of different languages and different countries have put on their own productions. It was also revived in France in 2010. There’s a bunch of different productions. For example, the Hungarian is quite different (in costuming/staging/design) from the others but absolutely excellent. (And we are blessed with both a proshot and subtitles.) The most recent is the Italian (proshot; boot - missing some of the dialogues and obv. video quality concerns but the Romeo casting is much better and it makes a lot of other things better tbh.) The Italian has canon gay :D The Russian is really fun (though, bootleg quality video and no subs) and the Austrian is super cute. (BN: version with no subs but also without text that takes up half the screen xD) Mexican version (I think a few of the songs are missing…) There are def other ones but finding video/audio for them can be really hard. Like there’s only an audio boot of the London one. (And good luck with any cast recordings that aren’t the French or Russian ones lol.)

The characterizations (and some plot points) vary between the musical(s) and Shakespeare canon as well as between the various musical productions themselves. Like, musical!Romeo is kind of a party boy who’s been with girls before, apparently, but just has never found the one to really go crazy about (until Juliet, supposedly). In contrast to Shakes!Romeo who is a quiet, moody dork who falls in love hard every time but just can’t seem to get a girl to like him back (until Juliet). Mercutio in the various productions runs the spectrum from spunky, flouncy gay (Hungarian) to lovable little shit (Russian) to really fucking Extra (French revival) to wtf this guy def has issues (Italian). Tybalt also spans the range from goon to Kylo Ren-eque woobie (Hungarian).

And while no one asked, my favorite production is the Hungarian. But it’s also quite unique in its feel and approach to the other ones. The original French is, well, the original, but oddly enough, it’s probably one of my least favorite ones.

Anyway, yea, it’s a lot. But it can be fun too. The fandom is its own story.

I don’t know why I chose to spend my evening watching West Side Story (instead of Zoli in Elizabeth as was my initial plan lol) but I did. I knew/was expecting it to be a pretty close parallel to Romeo and Juliet. (Although in some ways it really fails in that – mainly the main conceit and shift in themes to address racial tensions changes the tone of some things. Like, in R&J both families were equally being dumbasses about their feud but in WSS the Jets inevitably gain racist overtones which makes them less sympathetic and make the Sharks look more like victims who are just defending themselves from the racist white kids. Especially since we never really see the gangs do anything…gang-y outside of fighting each other.) But, anyway, what I actually wanted to say was that there was one part that was parallel to R&J but done a little differently and it made a lot of emotional difference to me (in favor of WSS).

In R&J I’m always kinda annoyed at Juliet for basically immediately forgiving Romeo for killing Tybalt and taking his side before she even has a chance to see him. Like, it always felt…fake to me. I mean, I’m not big on the romance in that play anyway, but even if we take it super seriously and all, it’s still really hard to disregard the fact that THEY JUST MET. So, when Juliet’s initial reaction to the news is to go “omg! Turns out this person I just met is an asshole!” it feels kinda rewarding in the sense that yea hello. You just met him, you know almost nothing about him, unpleasant surprises may very well abound – it’s almost a criticism of the whole idea that you’re just going to know that someone is right for you the second you meet. Of course, we know Romeo’s a good guy, so we want her to forgive him. But Juliet doesn’t know. She’s just been shown exactly how much she might not know. And yet she immediately assumes, with no evidence, that it was Tybalt’s fault and that Romeo couldn’t be to blame and he was prob just defending himself. (Her evidence being that he’s too good looking which OMG STOP.)

And, yea, Maria also forgives Tony in like five seconds. But at least it’s played differently. She sees him and her first reaction is rage, but he’s there and she doesn’t just assume things. What she does is gives him a minute to explain, in which he rambles off how he tried to stop the fight, how he never meant for it to happen, about Riff. And only then does she forgive him, because she’s heard his side of the story and since she loves him she believes him. It’s a subtle difference but it’s a pretty big one to me. Juliet takes Romeo’s side because she can’t fathom that someone she’s in love with can be to blame. Maria forgives Tony because she’s heard and can see his side of the situation (her feelings making it easier for her to empathize with him).

I remember always thinking - like back in HS and whatnot - how overdramatic Romeo and Juliette were for killing themselves. Like, ok, the person you’re in love with dying is obviously a terrible thing but killing yourself on the spot is indeed pretty overdramatic. But thinking about it now…even though the focus in both pop culture and lit class is always on their “iconic” love story and how they couldn’t live without each other (and their speeches in the death scene support this)…it’s really not just that.

Like, no wonder Romeo kills himself, honestly. In a span of a few days: his best friend dies; he has to go into exiled and is separated from his home, family and friends; the girl he’s in love with dies; AND he’ll probably have go back into/stay in exile still. Like. That is an incredible amount of grief and isolation for anyone, not to mention a 16-17 year old to handle.

And Juliette… has the dead boyfriend and dead cousin, who, IIRC she did love, and while she doesn’t have the exile part, they’re marrying her off to a dude she doesn’t like, i.e. she’s living in anticipation of being raped repeatedly aka “marital duties.” And she’s like, what, 13?

So yea. Makes sense.

Was going through some of the old files on my computer and found a fanfic outline for a Romeo and Juliet fic that a friend of mine and I were going to co-write and never did. It goes like this:

-Romeo and Juliet are together. Juliet loves Romeo but Romeo loves Mercutio.
-Mercutio loves Romeo but thinks Romeo is straight (lots of angst to be relished).
-Tibolt develops dark lustful feelings for Romeo but doesn't dare to go after him in fear of the wrath of his cousin Juliet who could expose him to the world out of revenge.
-Romeo realizes that he loves Mercutio too much and can't stay with Juliet anymore. He leaves her but doesn't explain why.
-Juliet runs crying to Tibolt about how Romeo left her "for another woman"
-Romeo and Mercutio admit to each other that they love each other. (Fluff alert!)
-Tibolt finds out about Romeo's affair with Mercutio. He tells Juliet.
-Juliet wants to have revenge on Romeo and Mercutio and expose them to the public but Tibolt doesn't want anything to happen to Romeo until he (Tibolt) has had what is his. He promises Juliet that he will get Mercutio out of the way.

It's truly scandalous isn't it? :p I remember it was supposed to be a dark!fic with rape involved but a relatively happy hurt/comfort mush/fluff ending. Knowing my friend, he probably would have talked me into smut as well *rolls eyes*