Twelfth Grade Night

Twelfth Grade Night is a graphic novel that basically takes the plot of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and adds in elements of other plays, too. 

I've never read Twelfth Night but from the summary I skimmed, it seems like a love triangle and a twin thing, which is exactly what this is. 

Vi(ola) is new at school and prefers to be called Vi, thus making me annoyed with anyone who calls her Viola. She's toured around by an upper class fairy...yes, fairy. There are fairies and satyrs and maybe ghosts in this school. (Not sure what else the entirely light blue people are.) With zero context aside from there's a fairy woods behind the school. Puck is in this. (Obe)Ron is one of the two popular fairies, as is Tanya (Titania). You just have to roll with it. 

So Vi is a twin, as she is in Twelfth Night. Her brother Sebastian decided to stay at the boarding school Vi used to also attend. She got tired of the uniforms and didn't want to be forced to wear a skirt anymore. She prefers more full-coverage, comfortable clothes. She does feel abandoned because Sebastian split off from her and she's never been on her own before. But she still lives at home, so at least she's got Mom. Their dad passed away a couple years before. 

Vi meets Orsino, the cute emo boy on the cover there, and they bond over both being writers. Vi is also a musician, so they're collaborating on a song. 

Vi naturally falls for Orsino, but he's got his eye on Olivia, the cute blonde up there. She's the most wanted girl in the school. Olivia seems 100% into girls though and she ends up crushing on Vi. 

Orsino asks Vi for help in wooing Olivia. Vi painfully goes along with it, but Olivia says she likes Vi. There's a whole mistaken identity thing when Olivia asks Vi to the dance, but actually DMs Sebastian, as he and Vi have Instagram names that are a single letter off. Feeling bad for neglecting Vi, Sebastian goes to the dance with Olivia, who doesn't realize he's not Vi. Orsino also thinks Sebastian is Vi and is furious. 

But all's well that ends well. Vi confesses she likes Orsino. Orsino realizes that he also likes Vi. What was holding him back was that he assumed she liked girls. (He admits he was wrong to assume that.) 

There's a whole subplot with secondary characters. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this. Some snob in the Amazon reviews bitched about it being a Shakespeare mashup that ended up confusing. Well, I've never read Twelfth Night OR Midsummer Night's Dream and it didn't affect the story for me at all. I enjoyed it without giving a single fuck what it was based on. I swear, anyone who refers to Shakespeare as "the bard" is automatically pretentious and their opinions aren't worth anything. 

The characters are in your face with their queerness. Everyone seems pretty comfortable. I'm sure I've said this before, but it's so nice to read things like this and have queerness just be treated like it's an everyday thing. We've come a long way. And this cute story with lovely art is another example of that. 

Next up in this series: King Cheer. Yep, it's King Lear with cheerleaders.