"Close your eyes; / maybe you can imagine / that love is enough, / that you never knew the / sweet taste of doubt / in the throat, / that she is not slowly / forgetting your name / after you failed her, / after you watched / as hell’s fingers / gripped her waist / and yanked her back / into the darkness, / all the while she was / reaching out for your / cursed hand.” — Emily Palermo, excerpt of Orpheus Is Still Singing Sad Songs
MARCO PAGANI, 24, ORPHEUS —
VIBES, desperately looking for a purpose in life; Jimmy Hailler (Saving Francesca); the determinator; chronic hero syndrome; Knox Overstreet (Dead Poets Society); allergic to routine; stepford smiler; aimless man seeks happiness or something like it; the charmer; Romeo Montague (Romeo and Juliet); in love with love.
THEN, “[...] I seek one who came to you too soon. / The bud was plucked before the flower bloomed, / I tried to bear my loss. I could not bear it. / Love was too strong a god” (Edith Hamilton, Mythology). Orpheus the lover, Orpheus the poet — which role, then, incited his folly? We ask, of course, the question posed since the story’s inception: Why did Orpheus look back? He had been warned, had he not? Had it been the mad act of a lover still uncertain of his victory, desperate to ensure his success? Did he instead choose the pain, the poetry buried beneath the tragedy? Or, had it not been his choice at all? “She spoke a last farewell that scarcely reached his ears and fell back into the abyss. Perhaps she was the one who said, Turn around” (Portrait of a Lady on Fire). Orpheus leaves the underworld as he’d come into it — alone, half gone.
NOW, in a word: lost. A born wanderer whose loneliness conceals itself beneath stepford smiles and a pile of bullshit he’s quite content to shove down your throat. [cw death of a (grand)parent, parental abandonment] His father died when he was young and his mother ran off, leaving him to be raised by his grandfather and learn to despise the taut silences that always seem to fall upon his ears. Even seeing his cousin, Littleton, at least serves to eliminate the need for it, abating the loneliness until he, like everyone, leaves him behind. Became adopted into a co-dependent found family of misfits and outcasts during high school who made a ~somewhat honest man of him — at least in their presence. It’s them, too, who brought Areum de Witte into his life, who — even after they slept together and he ran away following the death of his grandfather — agreed to marry him, inciting a curse upon them both. He’s stirring in the darkness, his dreams of a wedding darkening to nightmares, ending with Areum’s death. Those who begin to witness the trepidation, the uncertainty might believe his feet to be growing ever colder, the groom on the brink of running. And, what can he tell them to still those rumors? That he dreams of the death of his bride, swept away with the spring? Fear becomes a noose around his throat, restricting any attempt to diffuse the disaster in the making. After all, the show must go on.
NEEDS, he works as a pianist at some bar/restaurant/anything ??? so if anyone has anything I can throw him into please lmk !!!!! / looking for a Saving Francesca inspired wedding party for his and Areum’s upcoming wedding !!! just thinking vibes, will definitely put up a request but if anyone knows what I’m talking about and wants join before I have to do that, then please ??? do ??? Jimmy and Rosie are all that’s taken. The group all came together in high school, and then whoever went to college (lol not Marco) brought Areum (the Rosie) in / I just get the “would accidentally get into some shady sh*t” vibe from him so if someone wants to drag him into something Dark, please do? SPECIFICALLY abi’s idea about “learn[ing] to navigate the labyrinth as a way to sneak into places to steal things” PLEASE LET HIM BE INVOLVED IN THIS / my brain cell stopped working but PLEASE I would love to plot!