Insert Incoherent Screaming

After episode 7 …. I still support my toxic cannibal gfs who definitely have unhealthy power dynamics shoot me (Lottie would not understand that joke and immediately kill me for the wilderness)

the inescapable structure of tragedy, the lines of causality

matthew stover, star wars episode III: revenge of the sith novelization / prophetic perfect tense / louise glück, the triumph of achilles / hadestown, “road to hell” / sunnyscenegenerator / joanna newsom, “waltz of the 101st lightborne”

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.

Generation Z is “TOO YOUNG”

you say i am too young

too young to be a feminist

too young to know my own sexuality

too young to be depressed

too young to hate

too young to protest

too young to be an activist

too young

too stupid

too naive

and you are right

i am too young

too young to be scared of bullets ricocheting through my school, embedding themselves into my fellow classmates and having to watch as the life from my best friends once bright and hopeful eyes flickers out, knowing i will never be able to apologies for that stupid fight we were having, knowing i will never be able to laugh, smile, or talk with her again, knowing i will never be able to hug her again, knowing i will never be able to tell her i love her one last time

too young to be scared of being raped by a man while i walk down the street in my school uniform because i can feel his eyes watching me and i should have waited for someone to walk with me, i should have waited for jacky to have finished her test so we could walk together because now if something happens to me it’s my fault but i just wanted to go home to get ahead on schoolwork

too young to be scared of finding my friend dead in a sticky pool of her own crimson blood because slitting her wrists and watching the blood flow was better than living or finding her body cold and lifeless on the bathroom floor with candy colored pills scattered around her and stuffed down her throat because she’d rather go out in a loopy daze than try to withstand and fight the torment and i couldn’t make it in time to stop her

too young to be scared of seeing a familiar face on the news because jordan was black and looked older than his actual age and the white middle aged cop shot in “self defense” even though jordan was unarmed and innocent or because elias was muslim and was carrying a “suspiscous” bag and was shot and later died because the police officers thought he was a “terrorist” when elias just wanted to get home to his mom and little sister with a jewelry box to give them, which now sits in peices on the concrete floor

too young to be scared of finding my lgbt friends killled, abandoned, or sent off to a conversion camp because all they wanted was love and acceptance but instead they found hate and rejection because they were “disgusting sinners” who were just “confused” and katy is finally back from camp but she doesn’t even remember my damn name

too young to be sobbing with such lose and grief over people so dear to me who were killed and died too young because no one would help them because all of their cries were “fake” because they were too young to know “real” pain

too young to be scarred, bruised, bloody and beaten by a war i did not start or choose to fight in

you say i am too young

and you are not wrong

i am too young

too young for

H O M O P H O B I A

R A C I S M

S E X I S M

R A P E

S E L F   H A R M

S U I C I D E

G U N   V I O L E N C E

and

S C H O O L   S H O O T I N G S

to be normal to me

i should not be so desensitized by this violent reality

so yes, i am too young

but you cannot blame me

for my hyper awareness of our reality

my generation was born with information at our fingertips

and we have been told to sit still and be quiet

because the adults were talking

but you had your chance

it is now our turn to speak

and our turn to fight

because our rage is pure fire

and with every ragged breath we take

our lungs get more shredded by all of the hate and misery

that is ingrained so deeply in our society

you say we are “too sensitive”

because we are “hormonal teenagers who cannot control our emotions”

and therefore we “cannot have opinions”

but you can no longer invalidate our claims as we yell for change

because the DEATH of our classmates

and the BLOOD of our friends

has paved the path for this revolution

your generation may have won battles

but my generation will be the one to win the war

my generation will be the one to instill change and bring peace

because we grew up in a hating world spiraling into darkness and death

and dying was never our biggest fear

watching the world burn around us was expected

but we fully intend to repair the damage you all have so carelessly done

>>we are generation z and we will be the ones to rise from the ashes<<

3/31/18

started: 2:31 a.m.

finished: 3:49 a.m.

Exert from The Strangers' Picnic

Let us be kindhearted! Take me to the sea at dusk.

Let me hear what the sea tells you when it returns to itself at peace.

I won't change. I will embrace a wave and say:

Take me to the sea again.

This is what the fearful do:

when a burning star torments them, they go to the sea.

Mahmoud Darwish,

me when - “I exist to love you”

me when - “I’m not lost anymore, I found the light.”

me when - “I believed in the gods after three decades of non-faith, so that when death comes for me, and it will, I will remain. I will be there, in the next ending, and I will wait for you.”

me when - “You made me hope, did you know that? Did you know you gave me my hope back?”

me when I create two oc’s who are helplessly in love with each other knowing I’m gonna traumatize the shit out of them

Irulan is such a petty bitch but I'm pettier. She was like "I'm playing the long game," well I'm not. Paul won't fuck me because he's with Chani exclusively? Fine, well I'll fuck Chani. You and I are sister-wives now Paul!

Hold on to each other.

headcannon - Tyler totally kisses Kate’s scar.

Okay, so this is a few years down the line, they’re an established couple and marriage is this distant but not far thing, the important thing is they’re happy and content and okay and that’s a rare thing for people like them. Over the years everyone’s slowly healed, Kate got therapy, Javi got therapy, they actually talked and slowly dealt with everything. So, she eventually starts wearing shorts more and more often. The scar is still this big reminder of everything that happened, but she’s slowly learning to accept it. Then, Tyler starts doing this thing where when the two of them are together, (Kate’s watching the news or reading and his head is in her lap, just cuddling her because that man’s love language is gifts and touch) he presses a kiss to her scar. At first she doesn’t even notice because it’s a quick barely there thing, like it’s a subconscious movement almost.

And then Kate notices, and she notices it happens so damn often. Like Tyler’s barely aware and at the same time it’s almost worshiping, like it’s second hand nature to love the thing that for years she hated with a passion. And he just keeps don’t it, and brushing his fingers against the scar, and staring at it with this barely concealed awe and she doesn’t get it.

So Kate finally snaps and asks him why? And she’s really asking, why do you love the worst part of me, because the scar to her represents her failure and how it lead to her friend’s deaths. Tyler just stares at her, because to him it is so simple and easy he stopped questioning it years ago, because it means you survived. And he’s really saying, because it means you’re here and alive and I got to love you, I got to be loved by you.

And he’s really saying, your survival is beautiful and I love you for it.

(Somebody steal my computer and phone, I have so many thoughts about these idiots.)

me and that one hunger games fic I’ll never write

“I think - it would have been nice to love you in a kinder life.” (He says this to her right before she helps him slit his wrists in blood thinning water so he can die in the ocean, like he was always meant to.) (he doesn’t want to live in the world after the games, he isn’t strong enough.) (neither is she.)