to know how it ends, and to still begin to sing it again

She/her, side blog for my (for some reason many) Greek mythology fandoms Expect EPIC, Hadestown, PJO, and canon mythology! (as well as potentially some other unrelated musicals hehe) SeaSnail_22 on ao3, main @seasnail22

[ahhcloudy]

shoutout the goodman family

[odysseasnail22]

i love them all so very much

[procrastinationaccount]

[alex-sondheimsversion]

“I’m gay” “I’m straight” “I’m trans”

Ok and I’m alive??? I’m alive??? I am so alive??? And I feed on the fear that’s behind your eyes??? And I need you to need me it’s no surprise??? I’m alive??? So alive??? I’m alive???

[wolfythewitch]

​metaphorically undressing myself via truth nuke

[odysseasnail22]

i love these character designssss penelope looks so regal and odysseus so haunted i can't

[aaloosshitposting]

"If I were orpheus I wouldn't look back"

But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.

It was second nature for him too. He looked back, not out of weakness, but love. For what is love, if not to look back?

[odysseasnail22]

*sobs*

no but literally it's such human nature. it's something we all do. heck it's something even the gods do. and it can be detrimental, and that's why orpheus always turns. hadestown is purposely ambiguous in its setting, because we are all orpheus, and we are all eurydice, because fundamentally they are driven by love and doubt. and it's the relationship between love and doubt that drives the musical, the myth, and every relationship out there.

[odysseasnail22]

sooo i'm sure y'all know that orpheus is the son of calliope, and a contender for his father is apollo, right?

ok so with this in mind, think about the end of all i've ever known.

"say that you'll hold me forever/say that the wind won't change on us/say that we'll stay with each other/and it will always be like this"

and orpheus' response:

"i'm gonna hold you forever/the wind will never change on us/LONG AS WE STAY WITH EACH OTHER/then it will always be like this"

THE DARN CHILD OF THE PROPHECY DUDE INTRODUCED A CONDITION (we're also gonna ignore the parallel to hades here (what's this about unrealistic conditions that are impossible due to doubt and human nature? hmm? HMM?) but they're there and i need y'all to recognise that). hadestown is a loop because orpheus was like "nah it'll all be perfect, as long as nothing goes wrong!!" and apollo and the fates saw that and went WANNA FUCKING BET

hence it was all doomed to fail as soon as eurydice left. but the cycle is perpetuated by hope, so the story starts over and over again.

i guess it's also tied into the theme of human nature and the doubt that runs alongside that, since all of the characters are tempted one way or another to do something that impacts the story (eurydice leaves, hades comes early, orpheus turns, etc) and they will always do that because that's what people do (oop ok moriarty idk about the fandom overlap here i pray someone gets that reference)

but yeah thanks for coming to my ted talk, that's why everything goes downhill according to me hehe

[optimistic-autistic]

orphydice dump

[odysseasnail22]

so cute!!!

[a-genderless-frog]

I've only seen Hadestown once. It was in a high school theater, put on by a relatively new youth theater collective. Nothing terribly special, but there's one thing I'll remember forever.

The Fates, in myth, weave threads of life. This performance gave the fates a red string. In Doubt Comes In, the moment Orpheus turned around, they cut the string and used the two halves to pull Eurydice back to Hades and to hold Orpheus back from going to her. And, more than that, Orpheus didn't sing her name. He screamed it.

That moment, that Orpheus screaming and lunging after Eurydice despite being literally held back by fate, is something I'm never going to forget.

[odysseasnail22]

this is INSANE

[thecrowinacrown]

So.

[kindof-amess]

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.

[odysseasnail22]

OMGGGGGGGGG

[river-of-wine]

Hades gives Orpheus a trial he knows he himself could never succeed at, but it isn’t just that Hades knows he would turn around. Hades has been failing this trial every single year. He shows up too early. He turns too soon. He is so full of doubt that even the natural order of the world, that Persephone will return to him, is not something he can trust. Hades would fail the trial he has given Orpheus, and he already has. All alone, his blood runs thin.

[its-me-em28]

[tsukihasnolife]

We raise our cups to them 🌹

[optimistic-autistic]

bugs when you lift up a rock

[narcissa-black-supermacy]

i thought the “this is the face that launched a thousand ships, although now it would maybe be five-hundred.” line was just an internet joke but apparently that's a line Menelaus actually says in Nolan's Odyssey??

Not only that the language itself sounds straight out of a marvel forcibly funny haha moment, but Menelaus? The Menelaus who all thoughout human history, from Homer, to Sappho, to Euripides, to Virgil, to Shakespeare, to Brooke, to Barth; from Classical vases to Medieval poetry to Reinessance art, has been known as the man whose sword fell from his hands at the sight of his wife after 10 years apart?

"What joy for me to hold my wife" Menelaus?

"He flung the sword away, and kissed her feet" Menelaus?

"I believe all. I understand nothing. I love you" Menelaus?

"I have no fault to find; my wife, he daughter of Zeus and Leda, is mine again, she whom her brothers on their snow-white steeds, whilst torches blazed, made my happy bride, but gods removed her from my home." Menelaus?

The Menelaus who was picked out of the suitors by Helen herself? The Menelaus who couldn't kill a begging Trojan so his brother had to do it for him? The Menelaus who rescued Odysseus and got out Patroclus' body? The Menelaus who volounteered to fight Paris one on one so everybody could go home? Who kept expressing his guilt about himself being the cause of war through every assembly he spoke at in the Iliad? Who after 10 years away at Troy, took his wife through a 7-year long journey at sea back home, where he reinstated her as the queen of Sparta? Who wept like a child in front of Telemachus recalling the war and his brother and all the friends he lost and the only consolation being his wife' gentle hand on his?

You want me to believe that man scarred Helen's face and called her only worth half the ships because of it?

I'm actually physically sick just thinking about it.

[agapidraws]

Menelen.

[nicothespy]

oh my god they’re coming home

[odysseasnail22]

my babiesss they look so terrified 😭