Thank you, Yuletide.
Dec. 28th, 2007 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rymenhildAs at least half of my friendslist knows, the stories for the Yuletide annual fanfiction challenge appeared this week. Of the 2042 stories in seven-hundred-plus fandoms, I can't claim to have read more than eighty or so*, but there are some mind-bogglingly good stories among those eighty. Go ye and browse the archive. For now, since I'm short on time, I'll only recommend one story which had me staring in jaw-dropped awe for quite a while:
Yule Morning, or Malvolio's Revenge (Shakespeare's Twelfth Night).
This, right here, is the best of the fanfiction world. In five acts of note-perfect Elizabethan verse and prose, Yule Morning explores what comes after Twelfth Night. Toby Belch is still drunk, Malvolio is still furious, and Olivia and Orsino are beginning to realize that neither Sebastian nor Viola adequately substitutes for Cesario. Feste, that irrepressible fount of double entendres, has every opportunity to deliver lines like these (which may be more comprehensible if you know that 'nothing' is Shakespearean slang for 'vagina'):
Feste:
My lady, my lady Olivia sends her warm regards to my lady, and sisterly affection to your ladyship Orsino, my lady.
Orsino:
What mean you, sirrah?
Feste:
Why, it is the fashion for lords to change their coats and be ladyships, and I would not have it noised about that your ladyship is behind the fashion. My lady knows how ladies are about such things, my lady.
Orsino:
Enough! As you see, nothing is changed in my coat, or any part of my clothing.
Feste:
Why, nothing in your clothes would be a change indeed, and nothing in them require a change of clothes, for surely nothing but nothing would make me hide such a leg as yours in a maid's skirts.
*No, actually, I haven't been getting much dissertation work done this week. How did you guess?
Yule Morning, or Malvolio's Revenge (Shakespeare's Twelfth Night).
This, right here, is the best of the fanfiction world. In five acts of note-perfect Elizabethan verse and prose, Yule Morning explores what comes after Twelfth Night. Toby Belch is still drunk, Malvolio is still furious, and Olivia and Orsino are beginning to realize that neither Sebastian nor Viola adequately substitutes for Cesario. Feste, that irrepressible fount of double entendres, has every opportunity to deliver lines like these (which may be more comprehensible if you know that 'nothing' is Shakespearean slang for 'vagina'):
Feste:
My lady, my lady Olivia sends her warm regards to my lady, and sisterly affection to your ladyship Orsino, my lady.
Orsino:
What mean you, sirrah?
Feste:
Why, it is the fashion for lords to change their coats and be ladyships, and I would not have it noised about that your ladyship is behind the fashion. My lady knows how ladies are about such things, my lady.
Orsino:
Enough! As you see, nothing is changed in my coat, or any part of my clothing.
Feste:
Why, nothing in your clothes would be a change indeed, and nothing in them require a change of clothes, for surely nothing but nothing would make me hide such a leg as yours in a maid's skirts.
*No, actually, I haven't been getting much dissertation work done this week. How did you guess?
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Date: 2007-12-28 08:55 pm (UTC)I'm sorry, that fic ate my ability to even pretend academic about its greatness. I had it bookmarked because it was Shakespeare when I went through the achieve, and I worked through it over two days.
Who ever wrote it needs to be worshipped. Or put up for real. It's beautiful.
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Date: 2007-12-28 11:33 pm (UTC)Thank you for the clarification on "nothing" - I'd forgotten that and now that part makes a good deal more sense. =P
no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 11:43 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 2007-12-30 05:28 am (UTC)