If We Were Villains

by M.L. Rio

Bardolators,

had to look this one up: it's a noun used humorously to label those who excessively admire Shakespeare. huh.

He turned, the light from the stage turning his face a sickly malarial yellow.

me no likie the use of "turn" twice in one sentence

Tomorrow, if he tries anything, instead of assassination we give him a righteous ass-kicking.”

oh dang, here it comes. this will not be happy. but honestly? Richard got to go.

“Here is my hand,” James said, after a split second’s hesitation. “The deed is worthy doing.” I hesitated also, a split second longer. “And so say I.” Alexander squeezed my arm. “And I and now we three have spoke it, let the stupid bastard do his worst.”

oh yes, I absolutely love this sworn oath to stick together and get it done! bravo!

How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding? An attempt to forge that tenuous link between speaker and listener and communicate something, anything, of substance.

yes, I see why this is an oft- highlighted passage.

“We’ve had a long week. I plan to make a long night of it, and if you two aren’t royally fucked by midnight I will take it upon myself to see that you are fucked, royally or otherwise, by morning. Understand?” Me: “You make it sound a lot like date rape.”

ugh no thank you. I know guys so tend to speak this way because they are generally very icky, but I wish I hadn't read it.

“Got a wicked bruise but not where anyone will see.” “You look good to me,” I said, lamely. She wore a short blue something that showed off her long legs. Mercifully, she wasn’t too made-up and still looked human. “It happens every now and then,” she said,

wait what??? why do you periodically get bruises??? did I miss something, or is this a thing I'm meant to breeze past without noticing, or is this something entirely unrelated to the story which makes no sense?

The lamp on the nightstand leaked watery orange light across the bed. I

love this description!

Richard floated on his back, neck twisted unnaturally, mouth gaping, face frozen in a Greek mask of agony. Blood crawled dark and sticky across his face from the crush of tissue and bone that used to be an eye socket, a cheekbone—now cracked and broken open like an eggshell.

this is such well- written grotesquery.

One thing I’m sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.

It me.

Like Aphrodite, she demanded exaltation and idolatry. But what was her weakness for me, tame and inconsequential as I was? A thing of mystery.

so good

Her cousin lay convulsing in the water, blood bubbling vivid red on his lips as one hand groped toward us.

I bet Richard is totally faking. we've seen the fake blood, and we know he's a fabulous actor.

as if he were playing dead.

mmm-hmmm

There is no comfort like complicity.

But the difference between us was that she assumed people just knew those sorts of things, while I was always worried that they didn’t.

how am I such a rotten mix of both?

“It’s like the lake’s turned on us. Like there’s some naiad down there that we’ve pissed off. Maybe Meredith was right and we should have gone skinny-dipping at the start of term.” I didn’t realize how stupid it sounded until it was out of my mouth. “Like some kind of pagan ritual?” James asked,

solid writing, this. definitely in keeping with the dark academia vibe. love it!

James and I filed down the center aisle through a thicket of whispers that parted reluctantly to let us through.

love this wording!!!

Richard’s death felt less like a dénouement than a second-act peripeteia, the catalytic event that set everything else in motion.

that makes sense given we're only halfway thru the book. I had to look up peripeteia... it means a reversal of fortune, which is what happens at the midpoint

My own room was less overtly deficient—over the years I’d insulated myself from the rest of the house (the rest of the neighborhood, the rest of Ohio) with layers of ink and paper and poetry, like a squirrel lining a nest.

it meeeee

Me: “What are you?” Alexander: “Sexually amphibious.” Me: “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.” Alexander: “You should try it.”

haha, Alexander knowing that Oliver is bi when Oliver doesn't even know

“Oh,” he said. “Not sure I can see him as a sparrow. Too … delicate.” “So what sort of bird would he be?” “Dunno. The sort that smacked into a window trying to have a go at its own reflection.”

lmfao yeah that tracks

That strange possessive pride washed over me again. Everyone in the room was watching James—how could they not?—but I was the only one who really knew him, every inch.

people are not objects to be possessed, Oliver. stop being weird.

I leaned heavily on the balustrade, trembling under the weight of parallel truths that I had, until then, been able to ignore: James was in love with Wren, and I was blindly, savagely jealous.

why are you saying you didn't know? you literally speculated on this possibility when James was curling wren's hair around his finger. you totally knew, jackass.

“Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?” The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it,” I say.

We felt all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But a character’s emotions don’t cancel out the actor’s—instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

“The thing about Shakespeare is, he’s so eloquent … He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.” I stop. Shrug. “You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”

‘When you enter the theatre, there are three things you must leave at the door: dignity, modesty, and personal space.’” Filippa: “I thought it was dignity, modesty, and personal pride.” Me: “She told me dignity, modesty, and self-doubt.” All three of us were silent for a moment before Filippa said, “Well, this explains a lot.”

LOLOL

I wasn’t even sure it was blood, but my own paranoia dragged me back to the day of Richard’s memorial service, when I’d found Filippa alone by the fireplace.

oh dang, I forgot about that!

I bent down and stuffed it into the mug. If anyone else found it there, they’d just think it a rag—stained with paint or dye or some other innocuous thing. For all I knew, it was.

hey doofus, why not just throw it away, or finish burning it? I literally don't understand hiding it, which just begs for it to be found.

“Get of the way. Colin, prop him up, can you?”

oops,I think you're missing a word here: "Get OUT of the way"

The door opens silently when I push—it hasn’t rusted the way I have.