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100 days of enemy recs: 2. Much Ado
Despite being basically the extended embodiment of the "Oh. Oh no," scene, Much Ado About Nothing was never one of my favorite Shakespeare comedies - baby ace!me was strongly in favor of stories where the people who have spent their whole lives saying they are happy to be single and never wish for anything more get to be right about their own lives - but the Tennant/Tate version did a lot to sell me on it. The fandom headcanon that Beatrice and Benedick are both gay-leaning disaster bisexuals who are extremely mad about the discovery that their one true love is not same gender!!! sold me on it a lot harder - if you read their protestations as "I am perfectly happy fucking around with girls/boys and see no need to change so I will sublimate my attraction into bickering!" it hurts my ace heart less. And stories about bi people dealing with their sexuality are nearly as rare as ace ones.
Also the Tate/Tennant version did a lot for that interpretation. A lot. It is a gift. I have seen Much Ado in several community theater productions as well as the filmed version from the West End, and like a lot of Shakespeare comedies, how well it works depends entirely on how (not-)straight the leads play the lines they're given, and Tennant/Tate do nothing straight in that play. And, look, the bickering is very good. (Though I am still dreaming of a version that takes it all the way and puts in plenty of stage business to make it clear that Beatrice and Benedick know exactly what their friends are trying to pull and they fake ham it up on purpose.) (I would also be there for a version where Beatrice and Benedick are both coughing flowers the entire first half of the play but it never comes up in dialogue because they glare daggers at anyone who even looks like they are thinking about commenting.)
I sometimes wonder why the Much Ado trope isn't used more in fandom though. There are so many fandoms where "our friends got tired of waiting for us to get our shit together, so they lied to both of us separately that the other had confessed to pining, and then I decided that if you were going to pine I could damn well pine harder than you" would work really well. Like! Nie Huaisang, sweetheart, all it would take was wandering into a Sunshot camp and letting Lan Zhan guilt you into admitting that Wei Ying had said the reason he was so ill-looking is that he was pining for Lan Zhan, and letting Wei Ying badger you into admitting that the reason Lan Zhan has been so cranky is that he was pining for Wei Ying, and Bob's your uncle. And basically anyone at Hogwarts could have done that to Harry and Draco at basically any point after about Book 4 and I'm pretty sure it would have worked...(Does anyone have recs for these? I feel like I have read at least a few. The key bit being the friends are lying about having been confessed to. I can think of plenty where the friends are telling the truth.)
OK actual recs: This is one of those tiny fandoms where general fic quality is very high, but Shakespeare fic is always very tricky because you have to decide between keeping the character voices just like canon, keeping the language they are speaking Early Modern but going for a more novelistic cadence, or going full out modern; and then you have to decide if you're going to match the description to the dialogue or not; and if you're working from a version that updated the staging but not the dialogue you've got another layer on top of that. And any of those options are actually really hard to pull off? So the caveat here for the canon setting ones in particular is that if you're really sensitive to that kind of thing you may have trouble in this fandom.
Also the Tate/Tennant version did a lot for that interpretation. A lot. It is a gift. I have seen Much Ado in several community theater productions as well as the filmed version from the West End, and like a lot of Shakespeare comedies, how well it works depends entirely on how (not-)straight the leads play the lines they're given, and Tennant/Tate do nothing straight in that play. And, look, the bickering is very good. (Though I am still dreaming of a version that takes it all the way and puts in plenty of stage business to make it clear that Beatrice and Benedick know exactly what their friends are trying to pull and they fake ham it up on purpose.) (I would also be there for a version where Beatrice and Benedick are both coughing flowers the entire first half of the play but it never comes up in dialogue because they glare daggers at anyone who even looks like they are thinking about commenting.)
I sometimes wonder why the Much Ado trope isn't used more in fandom though. There are so many fandoms where "our friends got tired of waiting for us to get our shit together, so they lied to both of us separately that the other had confessed to pining, and then I decided that if you were going to pine I could damn well pine harder than you" would work really well. Like! Nie Huaisang, sweetheart, all it would take was wandering into a Sunshot camp and letting Lan Zhan guilt you into admitting that Wei Ying had said the reason he was so ill-looking is that he was pining for Lan Zhan, and letting Wei Ying badger you into admitting that the reason Lan Zhan has been so cranky is that he was pining for Wei Ying, and Bob's your uncle. And basically anyone at Hogwarts could have done that to Harry and Draco at basically any point after about Book 4 and I'm pretty sure it would have worked...(Does anyone have recs for these? I feel like I have read at least a few. The key bit being the friends are lying about having been confessed to. I can think of plenty where the friends are telling the truth.)
OK actual recs: This is one of those tiny fandoms where general fic quality is very high, but Shakespeare fic is always very tricky because you have to decide between keeping the character voices just like canon, keeping the language they are speaking Early Modern but going for a more novelistic cadence, or going full out modern; and then you have to decide if you're going to match the description to the dialogue or not; and if you're working from a version that updated the staging but not the dialogue you've got another layer on top of that. And any of those options are actually really hard to pull off? So the caveat here for the canon setting ones in particular is that if you're really sensitive to that kind of thing you may have trouble in this fandom.
- No more than reason (7420 words) by jamjar
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beatrice/Benedick, Claudio/Hero
Additional Tags: newlyweds, Married Life, Wordplay is foreplay
Summary:Newly-wedded bliss, Beatrice and Benedick style.
This is Benedick and Beatrice bickering their way into their unexepected happy-ever-after - along with their first real solid disagreement, and some good news to share. It is very good and the language choices are pitch-perfect, the banter gives me life and the things it says about canon are settled deep down in me as true ever since I read it. - One Foot on Sea, One on Shore, OR; Where the Bachelors Sit (3752 words) by Cottia
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (2011)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beatrice/Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing)
Additional Tags: heteronormativity is a prison, Cousin Incest, Genderfuck, Dick Jokes, Run-On Sentences, Bad Sex, Shakespeare-concordant wilful ignorance of Italian geography, Cunnilingus, Femdom, Queer Themes, Bisexual Character, what is gender??? we just don't know, if you're wondering if something's a dirty pun the answer is yes, greco-roman mythology in lieu of using one's words because you're a dramatic gay bitch, Anal Play, Anal Fingering, Comeplay, Come Swallowing, Come Shot, as in Shakespeare-style kissing cousins but tagging just in case, Blank Verse, Oxfordians don't interacy
This one leans real hard into the Tate/Tennant dynamic and I love it a lot: Beatrice and Benedick have some trouble with the wedding night, until Beatrice suggests she top and gets and very enthusiastic response. It's mostly just filthy porn but it's filthy porn all in Shakespearean language and elegance and I can see the characters from the play still perfectly in voice. - Ad Astra Per Nihil (18005 words) by Talls
Fandom: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare, Star Trek
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beatrice/Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing), Claudio/Hero (Much Ado About Nothing)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, try it it's good, Doesn’t require knowledge of either fandom to be understood
Star Trek AU? Star Trek AU! Does the really good fusion AU thing where it uses some of the silliness of the Star Trek canon to make some of the silliness in the original storyline better.
(I am adding a new rule: 6. You are permitted to re-read no more than two of the recs before posting, for your own sake.)
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sold, giv pls
I don't think the Much Ado trope will work in my current main fandom full stop. or anyway not with the juggernaut. Chat Noir has confessed his love of Ladybug to Ladybug's face; Marinette has not confessed her love of Adrien to Adrien's face, but not for lack of trying, and while literally everyone else in their vicinity seems to know about it, everyone is either sworn to secrecy until she tells him herself or would prefer he never learned this; Marinette thinks she was lying when she told Chat Noir she loved him, but he doesn't know she was lying, and neither of them know it wasn't a lie. so that's three of the six dynamics down right off the bat, and post-secret-identities-reveal is out for the same reasons. which leaves us with (1) Ladybug/Adrien (2) the one where they both know who's under the other superhero mask, but neither is wearing their usual superhero mask, and they both think the other one has no idea who they are, and are half right because their secret identities as Ladybug and Chat Noir are in fact still secret. which is to say, the two dynamics in which it's hardest to get the characters in the same place to begin with, never mind both often enough and with enough witnesses that anyone gets the bright idea of pulling the Much Ado strategy.
it could probably work with either of those dynamics if the setup were cooperative, though. or with a number of other pairings.
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I am really enjoying this project of yours, and am reminded that I really should watch the Tennant/Tate production.
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Eh, I don't object to paying for the rental, I'm just rubbish at scheduling time to watch things at home, which is a me-problem.
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That is actually quite brilliant, and now I'm wondering why I haven't read that set up before. It would work so well!
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I do love the 'friends push them together' idea, but I've never really liked the notion of actual enemies being Secretly In Lurve—instead, I prefer the idea that these two were together at one time ("he lent it me awhile"), broke up, and are extra prickly now but have not got over it. My version of the story is an AU of another fandom, but in case it's of interest: <https://www.pensnest.co.uk/pop%202015/nomansfort.html">No Man's Fort.
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(I do wonder about all the faceblindness, so many old stories depend on people not recognizing each others' faces in situations where that seems unlikely. And I'm not great with faces myself, but even so! On one hand it was probably just a literary trope you suspended belief for, but on the other hand, it starts to become less common around the time that glasses start to become more common...)
If you don't like the notion of actual enemies being Secretly in Lurve this recs series is probably going to annoy you after awhile. :P But I would class "were together, had a bad breakup and can't be in a room together, not actually over it" as a totally valid subset of Enemies to Lovers, just the Lovers to Enemies to Lovers subset.
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I suppose Shakespeare had a set of twins in the company at least part of the time - one of them in a dress, one in breeches, fair enough.
I do love Pining, so bad breakup -> not over it -> polish their claws on each other definitely works for me!
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So thank you for the info and the recs!
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This is my first time hearing of this interpretation and it's a gift - they are nailing that vibe in that production whether they know it or not.
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