Snowflake Challenge No.3

[dasmims]

I'm back to doing those two at a time

Challenge #6 favourite piece of original canon
Since I'm a multifandom whore fanatic this is really difficult, I scrolled through the comments on the post for some inspiration and people brought up very powerful scenes and characters etc. The Death's speech about believe at the end of The Hogfather, scenes from Star Trek and others brought back some very powerful memories.
Two things come to my mind:

1. The scene in DS9 when Dr. Bashir meets Garak for the first time. It is less about the scene itself and more about how it came to be and what this first meeting in canon will lead to. From Andrew Robinson apparently deciding on the fly to play Garak as absolutely horny for the dear Doctor and Alexander Siddig picking it up and playing along to A Stitch in Time, which if you don't know reads like an overly complicated love letter from Garak to Dr. Bashir.

2. Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing. I could end it right there, cause she's awesome. But there is a little detail that stuck out to me: Beatrice is probably an heiress.

It's not in the text I know, but bare with me. Beatrice is Leonato's niece. Leonato's brother Antonio barely interacts with Beatrice it's never made clear that they are father and daughter, if anyone acts parental towards Beatrice it's Leonato. She's listed as his niece not someone's daughter in the dramatis personae, everything points to her being a ward of her uncle - none of this would make sense if she's Antonio's daughter. So let's assume she's not, that would make her the daughter of a sibling of Innogen, Leonato's wife and a ghost character, who is only mentioned in the dramatis personae in early edition, but doesn't get a single line of dialogue. Innogen and Beatrice might be the only two people remaining from this family, which would make Beatrice a potential heiress.

In addition Beatrice has no real pressure - yeah, people assume she will marry one day, cause everyone does, and they tease her about it, but no one tells her that she needs a man to secure her future, which realistically would be the case unless she makes money or has inherited money.

So I think Beatrice is an heiress and I love her to bits.

Edit: Hit enter too early and it posted only half the post. I'm trying to fix it.

Comments

[gingicat]

I would happily listen to more thoughts on it.

[dasmims]

There are two lovely podcasts (This Shakespeare is Gay and Shakespeare Anyone? I listened to a while back, who had a lot to say about Much Ado. And especially This Shakespeare is Gay, the point of this podcast is to find queer topics in Shakespeare plays, makes a very good point I've been obsessing over ever since:

One of the big things in Much Ado is that there are essentially "male" and "female" scenes, where all characters in the scene are of one gender and the rarely mix, the important exceptions to this are 1. whenever the family is together 2. the soldier's meeting the ladies for the first time 3. the ball 4. the church scenes. So basically all scenes that are about family or lead up to founding a family. And even those mixed scenes are dominated by the men in the room. Well, and Beatrice too.

Beatrice is able to cross those (social/dramatic) boundaries, when she get's Benedict for dinner or when she interrupts her Uncle's decision making regarding her cousin's marriage. The one point where she wants to do that - enter a male (dominated) space - but can't, is when she wants to kill Claudio for Hero's honour. I'd argue that's because demanding a duel and wielding a weapon is either unimaginable for a woman from a Shakespearian pov (which makes me think of Caesario but that's another story) or that fighting a duel depends on the other party agreeing to it, and I don't think Claudio and Don Pedro would react much better to Beatrice demanding a duel than to Leonato. Maybe it's both.

One way or another, I love Beatrice for transgressing gender norms, knowing where she is limited and getting angry about it (look at Michelle Terry's rage).

This of course raises the question: What about Benedict? What about the man that wants no woman unless she is perfect in his eyes, but then takes the woman that acts out of the boundaries society places on her where ever she can and therefore it the opposite to perfect for everyone else?

I think Benedict is an early example of disaster bi, who found the love of his life in a woman that could be one of the boys (or military officers) if given the chance.