I started as a fandom blog and now I can’t leave :) I live a TSwift appreciation life! Someday I’d love to go to a concert of hers 🌴🌴🌴 Certified Makeup Artist- graduated 2018 Ontario - 24- Michelle
Imagine Zuko calling you out for hiding an injury…
Zuko stood opposite the campfire with arms folded. His face fixed into a scowl aimed at you. You, who happened to be quietly sipping the soup Aang had made.
“I need to talk to you.” He said.
You didn’t meet his eyes despite feeling the heat of his gaze. “I think I’m comfortable here.” You took another spoonful and swallowed.
Zuko lowered his head, his voice growing more stern. “I’m not asking.”
Most of the group began to look between you and Zuko wondering what the hesitancy was. Toph had her palms pressed to the ground, head turned up to the ceiling. “I’m sensing aversion and… frustration?”
Sokka stood up and decided to help ease the tension. Grabbing his sword, the young water tribe boy dramatically approached Zuko.
“Lighten up, Zuko!” He declared and began to prod the prince against his hip and head with the aim to bring a smile.
Unfortunately, Zuko couldn’t be swayed. He stepped forward, away from the sword pokes and continued to stare at you.
“The others might have missed it but I know what it is you’re hiding.”
“I’m not hiding anything.” You replied calmly.
Toph frowned immediately. “You’re lying.”
Once again, all eyes fell onto you. With Toph present, you couldn’t deny or fool her senses. Lowering your bowl to sit in your lap, you exhaled to keep your annoyance in check.
“Even if you know, what does it matter?” You asked Zuko, raising your eyes to finally meet his.
You shouldn’t have. Zuko’s stare, his face - everything - had a way of making you feel exposed and vulnerable.
“Because you’re in pain and I can’t help you.” Zuko’s confession was a borderline plea that struck your heart.
Katara lowered her own bowl of soup and turned to you. “What does he mean by that?”
Words were failing you now that the team were aware. The dull ache in your side was becoming more noticeable and when Zuko saw your hesitation to speak, he did it for you.
“During our tangle with those bandits, Y/n was clipped in the side with a blade.” Zuko explained, observing the surprise in everyone’s face. “I only caught a glimpse. When I asked about it, I was dismissed over and over again.”
Aang shook his head. “Why would you hide something so important?” His voice carrying a sad confusion.
Taking in a breath, you addressed your friends. “We’ve been through so many difficulties - big ones. For the first time in a long time, we were actually experiencing happiness. I didn’t want my mistake to be the reason it stopped.”
The chamber fell quiet with only the fire crackling. You moved the bowl to the floor and stood up, well-practiced to hide the sharp pain.
“I think I’m done for the night.” You said and began to move in the direction of your room. The first few steps came normally until your body caught up with the consequences of your injury. The sharp pain returned in such blinding force that you clutched your stomach and audibly gasped. Your legs turned to jelly, sending you stumbling ahead.
A sudden gust of air pushed you forward and into Zuko’s outstretched arms. His warm embrace was all it took for you to curl against him and let out a choked sob as everything intensified.
“It hurts…”
Katara was on her feet, water coating her hands to activate her healing abilities. The rest of the group surrounded Zuko and you on the ground with equal speed.
“I need a place to start healing.” Katara said.
Zuko kept his eyes locked on you, stroking light circles against your back to help distract you from the pain, “Use my room. It’s quiet and warm.” He sensed a hesitation from the water bender and looked up at her. “I couldn’t help before. Let me help now, please.”
A few beats passed before Katara nodded. Everything moved quickly as Zuko carried you to the small space of his room and laid you on the bed. He took a seat beside you, keeping his hand in yours as Katara began her work, soothing you to sleep in the process.
Zuko never meant to reveal your secret so publicly, he only wanted to ensure that you were cared for. After all, that’s what people do for the person they love.
~ More imagines here ~
A/n: I swear this was meant to be a funny short. I don’t know why it turned into angst but it flowed out of my brain so easily.
i didn't have an agent when I signed my first book deal in 2003 and I remember reading the contract and getting to the bit about foreign rights and being like, "I get part of the money if they sell the rights to DENMARK? Well, not worth negotiating that. I'll never be published in Denmark."
Flash forward: Gåden om Alaska comes out in 2006 (and has been in print ever since).
Now, international deals are slightly less surprising, but still I'm delighted to know that HOLLYWOOD, ENDING will be published in Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, AND Swedish! (...so far)
Hermes *literally two minutes into the play*: ok this is a tragedy, it's an old song and we're gonna sing it exactly like it's been sung before and it's tragic because that's how the song goes!
We Raise Our Cups really fucks with me. It’s brutally hopeful. It’s a farewell to Orpheus. Sure. everyone knows that. but. its also a call to action.
Hadestown is not subtle in how it shows the power of revolutionaries, of love and hope and human compassion over that of the capitalist cycle of abuse. WRoC is talking about Orpheus. But it is also talking about every person with that revolutionary spirit.
Orpheus is all of us, and every person who stands against exploitation, is Orpheus. The theme is there, but it’s especially strong in Is It True, where he stands against the Fates themselves to challenge the world, only bolstered by the normal people that stood up and heard his words and showed him the power of words.
When Persephone asks where Orpheus is now, it is not entirely that she wonders where the man himself is, but also that she is pouring a drop to every person who holds his legacy and fights for the cause.
Then they praise the birds who sing in the night and the flowers that bloom in snow. A metaphor for those people who fight to make beauty in inhospitable places, who strive for good in darkness.
“To Orpheus, and all of us”
To Orpheus, to those who hold his spirit, to those who lead revolutions, and to those who follow him. The cycle of Orpheus and Eurydice is a love song. It is a tragedy. And yet we all know that one day. one time. they will make it out together. It is on that day, when an Orpheus finally manages to bring their Eurydice back, that the revolution succeeds, and the Shades get to follow their path out of Hades. And the mortals get to live free from the poverty and despair of their oppression.
We sing the song even though it is sad, because we know that spring will come and the world will go back in tune once they make it out together. And Hades can take the seasons, the food from our mouths, the fire from our stoves, every ounce of gold from the rivers, but what he cannot take, nor any other like him, is our songs and the cries of an impassioned heart. And may those songs inspire a thousand Orpheus’ to journey to defeat Hades. Because eventually one will win. It only takes one.
So let the song reach the next Orpheus, wherever they are wandering. Alone on this Earth. And let the song comfort them as they start the cycle again.
hi can we talk about the candle i want to talk about the candle.
the fact that it is wrapped carefully so it does not shatter. the fact that it is decorated with a guardian angel. the fact that it is lit with someone else's match, with hermes' match. the fact that the fates blow it out in any way the wind blows. the fact that eurydice's candle is out of her hands for most of the show. the fact that when she dies, hermes is the one who blows it out.
that candle is her life, and it is in the hands of the fates and the gods of whether it stays lit or not.
of all the things that made the hadestown proshot worth watching, i was most impacted by the performance of Flowers. OBCR Flowers is beautiful and emotional, yes, but the proshot version is fucking raw. eurydice screaming and crying. desperately pleading: "IS ANYBODY LISTENING?" tears streaming down her face: "I OPEN MY MOUTH AND NOTHING COMES OUT!" and you believe it, somehow, even though you're sitting there hearing her, because you can feel the dead air as nobody answers. they can hear, but they don't care. what does it matter that we all hear her? no one says anything. how can she know anyone is listening if no one acknowledges her at all? you feel that song like being punched in the stomach over and over, like you're clawing through dirt but you can't quite dig yourself out of a grave. and that's just the power of eva noblezada man.
The thing about Hadestown is the line “To know how it ends. And still begin to sing it again. As if it might turn out this time” is an incredible way to describe most of life. We try because we have to believe that even when the ending is set in stone, it’s still worth trying. It’s still better to be a person who tried.
imagine going to your first rehearsal for a musical and the first words your characters say to each other are “come home with me” “who are you” “the man who’s gonna marry you” and your first duet is a song about a wedding and you get to fall in love doing a show about The Tragic Greek Lovers Ever and then years later you get married to each other and you become the version of the lovers who get a happy ending and get to go home together and you get to do the show again together and now the characters have a different meaning
people always talk about the doomed love timeloop when they talk about hadestown. look i love that shit as much as the next homosexual but can we please talk about the revolutionary politics. genuinely one of the best anticapitalist pieces of art of the 21st century. can we watch act 2 with our brains please
something i adore about hadestown is that it still meant something, y'know what i mean? like okay, no orpheus's song did not convince hades to give up his empire. hades' love for persephone isn't enough to deconstruct the machine he's built and has convinced himself that he needs in order to protect what he has. but he let them go. he saw the love eurydice and orpheus had for one another and it convinced him to let them try. orpheus may have turned around but they still walked, they almost made it. doubt set it but they were right there. that's further than anyone else can say. nobody else had made it that far. who's to say someone else can't make it a few steps further? persephone is able to leave the underworld and go home again when she needs to. spring has come again, if we're lucky autumn just might too. will this change be permanent? we don't know. but it's something. it doesn't knock down the wall but it's one brick out of it. and that means something. it wasn't all for nothing. it's a crack in the wall. there's a reason we keep singing this old song.
also this hadestown proshot is what made me realize that hades literally built all that stuff in hadestown FOR PERSEPHONE SO SHE'D WANT TO STAY like SHE'S the reason he made it artificially hot and bright!! he's trying to mimic summer so she doesn't leave!! how did I not realize this before????
ALSO i knew the reason orpheus could finish the song was because he finally understood the fear and doubt hades has every time persephone leaves BUT I DIDNT REALIZE THAT THE TRIAL HADES GIVES WAS ALSO BECAUSE HE UNDERSTOOD ORPHEUS AS WELL!! like hades knew he'd fail because HE'D fail!!
also also I know there's a Thing between hades and eurydice but I didn't realize that there was also one between persephone and orpheus until now, and I think it's intended to show that they're foils of one another, that pre-seasons hades was more like orpheus and pre-seasons persephone was more like eurydice and that their focus on orpheus and eurydice is because they remind them of what they had (and think they lost) - the love o+e have for each other reminds them of themselves, and so hades wants to take eurydice away/lock her away and persephone wants to protect orpheus/let him escape because they're trying to prevent them repeating their own mistakes in their own ways
like the slime tutorial did not give me these revelations, all musicals need professional recordings for this reason!!
Thinking about the Hadestown proshot and Orpheus being introduced wiping down a table with his back to the audience. Hermes has to call out to him again to get him to take his opening bow, and for the show to start, Orpheus has to turn around.
I see a lot of people online saying that Orpheus (Hadestown specifically) looks back because he loves Eurydice so much, that there isn't a world in which he doesn't look back, because the kind of man who wouldn't look back is not the kind of man who would go after her in the first place, etc. It's inevitable because of the strength of his love. But I don't see that as being the whole picture. Textually, it is explicitly his doubt in himself, and in the narrative of his life, that makes him look back: "Doubt Comes In", and he wonders, who is he that Hades would let him win? Who is he that Eurydice would follow him through the dark? Orpheus used to have a very simple, naive view of the world and his place in it. He was single-minded. At the beginning he tells Eurydice he's the man who is going to marry her because...well, that's how the story should go, and he is a poet first and foremost. Then, when he meets Hades, he is confronted by what Eurydice did and what the world is really like. He is shattered by the realisation that Eurydice wasn't just a simple, "pure" victim, but that she signed her life away. He is beaten down and loses faith, he goes into "Is this how it is?" after he's literally already done the impossible by reaching Hadestown on foot. He should have proven his abilities to himself by this point, but things aren't going the way they are supposed to and he doesn't know who he is anymore. He isn't just a boy in love with a girl who sings a song to bring back spring: he's a boy who didn't look back when he should have the first time when she called his name; she's a girl who chose her immediate needs over his grand ideals. His faith in a world where they make it back together is broken. He looks back because he doesn't trust himself or the narrative that he's found himself in. It's even more heartbreaking to me, because the Orpheus he was at the beginning of the musical might not have looked back, but that version of Orpheus doesn't make it out of the Underworld.
And to top it all off, the version of Eurydice from the beginning of the musical, before love softened her hard edges and made her trust him, probably wouldn't have followed Orpheus out of Hadestown. Eurydice really does trust him to get her out, because she's looking for the Orpheus she used to know and she's seen the power of his song and worldview.
Am I rambling into the void or does this make sense to anyone else?
I've seen quite a lot of people criticizing Nolan's decision to cut the Nobody part from the Cyclops encounter, but few trying to understand why he would do so (aside from "wealthy director doesn't read" kinda stuff). To be honest I am, on a good day, ambivalent about Christopher Nolan. But it does show a lack of curiosity to not at least try to understand the cut in context of the whole movie.
Now, the scene. Odysseus tricks the Cyclops by telling him his name is Nobody. Everyone has heard the tale, it's the first thing one thinks when trying to imagine how clever Odysseus is, and how he tends to solve his problems during the Odyssey. So why cut that fundamental show of his character? Well, that's easy. Nolan's Odysseus is not clever.
I don't mean he is not intelligent, but in this adaptation, his cleverness is not a virtue. He starts the story doing a very clever thing, and that very clever thing ruins the world on such a fundamental level he chooses to spend seven years high off his ass with Charlize Theron just to avoid the world. Nolan's Odysseus is not traveling the seas, outwitting gods and monsters. He is having a 3 year long PTSD induced panic attack, barely surviving the consequences of his cleverness. It is almost a running joke that most of the island adventures we watch end with Odysseus and his crew desperately sprinting to the boats screaming.
This is not a man that would outwit the Cyclops with words, but fire an arrow in a moment of emotion and panic. And definitely, this is not a man who would yell "I am Odysseus, King of Ithaca" with any amount of pride.
'theatre is dying' okay but everyone is flocking to see a beautiful hit musical now that it's been released in the cinema, something more affordable and accessible to most people, and ticket sales in the west end in particular have spiked
'cinema is dying' okay but everyone is flocking to their local cinema to see a beautiful hit musical, and so many have shown up this weekend that licensers decided to extend its theatrical release for another week, a massive rarity in the current climate
maybe the answer to saving art is... seeing art?? and making art accessible??
