Latest Posts by snoopylored - Page 7

diversity win!!! the girls who hunted you down and ate you are lesbians!!

that one homoerotic girl friendship that ended horribly is always like, i hate her more than anyone, i will never stop loving her. she made me who i am, i hate the parts of me she helped create. i miss her more than anything, i can't even look her in the eye. i dream about her most nights, i'll cut off my arm before i even consider reaching out to her again. i want us back, i never want to feel that way again.

saw someone point out that in jackie's death dream she imagined shauna the way she's always seen her: kind, gentle and full of nothing but love for jackie, even though that version of shauna never completely existed, whereas shauna hallucinated a version of jackie that was incredibly mean and only made jokes at shauna's expense and acted like she's above shauna in every way, when that version of jackie never completely existed either. but both of those versions were the warped way they perceived each other. day ruined

canonically lesbian ships are like “erm!! I like this girl…. and its so weird >_<!!” and then queerbaited lesbian ships are like Are you quoting beaches at me right now? Im not jealous of you, Jackie. I feel sorry for you. Because you’re weak, and I think that deep down you know it. And i’m sure that everyone back home is so fucking sad to be losing their perfect little princess! But they’ll never know how tragic, and boring, and insecure you really are. Or how high school was the best your life was ever gonna get.

sorry to ppl who are normal about their ships but if I'm not tearing my skin off, literally about to bounce off my walls, eating something inedible and getting close to having an aneurysm cause of them i do not care that much. i need dialogue that sends me into oblivion just seeing it typed out lmao. i need to be insane about them sorry

SHAUNA SHIPMAN and JACKIE TAYLOR YELLOWJACKETS — 2x02: “Edible Complex” (2023)

that ship is toxic to YOU. to me it's a complex, multi-layered, essay-worthy dynamic that'd take numerous hours to dissect (during which i'll spend crying screaming tearing my hair out)

I understand now, after I have loved, why did Orpheus turn around.

After Eurydice died he truly understood that he could not live without her, so he went to the underground to bring her back. And I can see the moment he is walking from the underground and the realisiation hits him suddenly, that there is a chance that Eurydice is not walking behind, that it is all just a trick, and most importantly that maybe he is walking in to a world without Eurydice. That is the moment he turns around.

The love he held for Eurydice was so big that just the chance of walking in to world without her was a torment for him. He turned around because he knew that he would rather face underground than earth without Eurydice. Rather death with his true love than life on his own.

Hadestown is the best take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, because all over the internet I see people say, "You're not supposed to think of how he could have succeeded! That misses the total point of the story. Everyone was doomed and there was no way anything could have worked out alright. If you're imagining a scenario that didn't end in tragedy, you're just an arrogant fool. Just shut up and be sad about it"

But Hadestown says, "please please please think of how it could have been. Orpheus would have never looked back if he just had hope, please have hope, he would have wanted us to have hope. If you don't walk out of this theater thinking of how it could have been, we have failed you. go have hope, go see the world in the way it could be, so help us"

“m/f romances are ALWAYS boring” - tell me you haven’t seen the part in Hadestown where Orpheus and Eurydice are reunited in the underworld and she launches herself into his arms and he lifts her up and spins her around and for one brief moment, no matter how many times you’ve heard the story before, you’re convinced that it will all work out this time

without telling me you haven’t seen it

In the past I've shared other people's musings about the different interpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Namely, why Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, even though he knows it means he'll lose her forever. So many people seem to think they've found the one true explanation of the myth. But to me, the beauty of myths is that they have many possible meanings.

So I thought I would share a list of every interpretation I know, from every serious adaptation of the story and every analysis I've ever heard or read, of why Orpheus looks back.

One interpretation – advocated by Monteverdi's opera, for example – is that the backward glance represents excessive passion and a fatal lack of self-control. Orpheus loves Eurydice to such excess that he tries to defy the laws of nature by bringing her back from the dead, yet that very same passion dooms his quest fo fail, because he can't resist the temptation to look back at her.

He can also be seen as succumbing to that classic "tragic flaw" of hubris, excessive pride. Because his music and his love conquer the Underworld, it might be that he makes the mistake of thinking he's entirely above divine law, and fatally allows himself to break the one rule that Hades and Persephone set for him.

Then there are the versions where his flaw is his lack of faith, because he looks back out of doubt that Eurydice is really there. I think there are three possible interpretations of this scenario, which can each work alone or else co-exist with each other. From what I've read about Hadestown, it sounds as if it combines all three.

In one interpretation, he doubts Hades and Persephone's promise. Will they really give Eurydice back to him, or is it all a cruel trick? In this case, the message seems to be a warning to trust in the gods; if you doubt their blessings, you might lose them.

Another perspective is that he doubts Eurydice. Does she love him enough to follow him? In this case, the warning is that romantic love can't survive unless the lovers trust each other. I'm thinking of Moulin Rouge!, which is ostensibly based on the Orpheus myth, and which uses Christian's jealousy as its equivalent of Orpheus's fatal doubt and explicitly states "Where there is no trust, there is no love."

The third variation is that he doubts himself. Could his music really have the power to sway the Underworld? The message in this version would be that self-doubt can sabotage all our best efforts.

But all of the above interpretations revolve around the concept that Orpheus looks back because of a tragic flaw, which wasn't necessarily the view of Virgil, the earliest known recorder of the myth. Virgil wrote that Orpheus's backward glance was "A pardonable offense, if the spirits knew how to pardon."

In some versions, when the upper world comes into Orpheus's view, he thinks his journey is over. In this moment, he's so ecstatic and so eager to finally see Eurydice that he unthinkingly turns around an instant too soon, either just before he reaches the threshold or when he's already crossed it but Eurydice is still a few steps behind him. In this scenario, it isn't a personal flaw that makes him look back, but just a moment of passion-fueled carelessness, and the fact that it costs him Eurydice shows the pitilessness of the Underworld.

In other versions, concern for Eurydice makes him look back. Sometimes he looks back because the upward path is steep and rocky, and Eurydice is still limping from her snakebite, so he knows she must be struggling, in some versions he even hears her stumble, and he finally can't resist turning around to help her. Or more cruelly, in other versions – for example, in Gluck's opera – Eurydice doesn't know that Orpheus is forbidden to look back at her, and Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her. So she's distraught that her husband seems to be coldly ignoring her and begs him to look at her until he can't bear her anguish anymore.

These versions highlight the harshness of the Underworld's law, and Orpheus's failure to comply with it seems natural and even inevitable. The message here seems to be that death is pitiless and irreversible: a demigod hero might come close to conquering it, but through little or no fault of his own, he's bound to fail in the end.

Another interpretation I've read is that Orpheus's backward glance represents the nature of grief. We can't help but look back on our memories of our dead loved ones, even though it means feeling the pain of loss all over again.

Then there's the interpretation that Orpheus chooses his memory of Eurydice, represented by the backward glance, rather than a future with a living Eurydice. "The poet's choice," as Portrait of a Lady on Fire puts it. In this reading, Orpheus looks back because he realizes he would rather preserve his memory of their youthful, blissful love, just as it was when she died, than face a future of growing older, the difficulties of married life, and the possibility that their love will fade. That's the slightly more sympathetic version. In the version that makes Orpheus more egotistical, he prefers the idealized memory to the real woman because the memory is entirely his possession, in a way that a living wife with her own will could never be, and will never distract him from his music, but can only inspire it.

Then there are the modern feminist interpretations, also alluded to in Portrait of a Lady on Fire but seen in several female-authored adaptations of the myth too, where Eurydice provokes Orpheus into looking back because she wants to stay in the Underworld. The viewpoint kinder to Orpheus is that Eurydice also wants to preserve their love just as it was, youthful, passionate, and blissful, rather than subject it to the ravages of time and the hardships of life. The variation less sympathetic to Orpheus is that Euyridice was at peace in death, in some versions she drank from the river Lethe and doesn't even remember Orpheus, his attempt to take her back is selfish, and she prefers to be her own free woman than be bound to him forever and literally only live for his sake.

With that interpretation in mind, I'm surprised I've never read yet another variation. I can imagine a version where, as Orpheus walks up the path toward the living world, he realizes he's being selfish: Eurydice was happy and at peace in the Elysian Fields, she doesn't even remember him because she drank from Lethe, and she's only following him now because Hades and Persephone have forced her to do so. So he finally looks back out of selfless love, to let her go. Maybe I should write this retelling myself.

Are any of these interpretations – or any others – the "true" or "definitive" reason why Orpheus looks back? I don't think so at all. The fact that they all exist and can all ring true says something valuable about the nature of mythology.

― Ovid, Metamorphoses