A remembrance post for Persephone’s verse in Chant II throughout the productions, because it was unfairly CUT and deserves all the appreciation. #rip

Lyrics for each version under the cut:

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I have 8 invitations!

I have 9 invitations! also uh should I be locking down my stuff because of AI concerns is that actually a thing, alas

this is still charming and if you haven't read it before, you should

I DON'T KNOW WHY THE LINK WASN'T THERE MY APOLOGIES

i don’t care how small the room is i cast fireball

New idea: instead of writing the fic, you come over to my house and I tell you the entire plot while I pace my tiny kitchen. There’s a cup of tea, warm in your hands. The words don’t stop and the affection never leaves your expression.

hadestown + lines that should’ve been in the show

shadow bracket: skullduggery final

This is the final round of the Shadow Bracket. Choose your High Chancellor wisely. The evil of the realm depends upon her.

gosh DIGGITY DANG IT

Even just reordering the songs in bway hadestown so that Eurydice is on stage during Why We Build The Wall and Our Lady of the Underground would improve things so much….you have the “step into my office” bit, you have Persephone react to that, then you have the song where Eurydice meets the other workers and sees what’s actually going on, then Why We Build the Wall is her having apparently given up and lost her identity like the others…..THEN at the end of Why We Build the Wall, Hades leaves the stage and the other workers turn to Eurydice and take her by the hands and smile, and they bring her to Persephone’s bar and they’re all in the chorus for Our Lady and Eurydice realizes that the people here ARE still people and they do have somewhere to talk where Hades isn’t listening (and all the lyrics to Our Lady actually make sense again lmao, ESPECIALLY “there’s a crack in the wall”)

Also I just really want to see Persephone and Eurydice interact on stage in this context….like Eurydice is a little wary bc she’s pretty sure Persephone is jealous of her, but Persephone knows what’s up and sees the new girl that Hades tricked and discarded and picks her out of the crowd during the musical interlude, and twirls her around while the rest of the cast cheers, and gives her a drink and sends her back to her seat…Eurydice stares at her like she’s entranced…idk. Just a little something that sets up how close they are in “I Raise My Cup to Him” as well as Persephone’s sympathy for Orpheus and Eurydice specifically

# hadestown # yeah i like this idea a lot. # i think they wanted the underworld to be more bleak and grim than that. and i see why # but i personally would have done the opposite of the bway # put a little more hope into our lady and more tragedy into the ending.

Wonder if Persephone’s need to have the workers say her name in Our Lady of the Underground has anything to do with the fact that Hades doesn’t say her name once in the whole show

Cut lyrics from a Dartmouth workshop version of Chant II had Hades say her name, but in a very creepy context:

More cut stuff can be found here! https://anais-mitchell.tumblr.com/post/632136834895544320/a-comprehensive-list-of-every-never-before-seen

shadow bracket: skullduggery, plots, and schemes

Jessica Walter preens on the throne of broken dreams that sits at the heart of the shadow realm. She needs allies to secure her power; a voice of wisdom whispering at her right hand, to guide her to a triumph of tyranny. Far below in the dungeons, Fredric March pines away from love. It is time to elect a High Chancellor.

The shadow bracket accepts no propaganda, plays by no known rules, and is entirely unjust.There will be four polls with twelve contestants. Only the top two hotties from each poll will continue to the next level of the shadow bracket. Godspeed, losers.

Ahh yes.

Way Down Hadestown II by Anaïs Mitchell

look at me go, it hasn't even been a month! we're back with (i think) the penultimate part of the spy au !! thanks to @perseannabeth who helped me figure out some plot points literally irl for the final stretch. there's always been a vague plan for the end, hopefully it lives up! also again available on ao3 if tumblr formatting screws up.

-

Annabeth hasn’t seen Percy for four and a half weeks. She’s been off the Jupiter Industries case for just as long, what with Luke Castellan’s involvement; they’re currently restructuring the plan forward. She’s not used to boredom, but she’s not sure she could consider it full boredom when her brain will not stop churning. She’s aware it’s usually a stomach churning, but no, in this case, her mind is on the go in a thousand different directions. She doesn’t feel nauseous or sick - just overwhelmed mentally, which as far as she’s concerned is one of the worst kinds. She’d rather be vomiting.

She’s back at her apartment - her real one. It’s nearly as empty as the fake one. She doesn’t keep a lot of things around, not wanting too many distractions on top of the fact that she feels like she spends very little time actually in it. The most personalization is an owl throw pillow with a matching blanket on the couch and a few architectural prints across her walls. It feels emptier than it ever has, and she cruelly imagines what it might be like if Percy came here. She really, really needs to stop thinking about him, but it feels impossible, because if she’s not thinking about him, she starts to think about Luke. And that’s worse.

She faceplants directly into the owl blanket with a groan and lays there, ignoring the wafting smell of her Korean BBQ takeout sitting on the countertop. This has been her life each day for the last week: different dishes but a very familiar static and face full of fluff, followed by dejectedly eating lukewarm food. And then she just gets mad at herself for being such a sad sack. She’s Annabeth fucking Chase. What the hell did Percy Jackson do to her?

Reyna checks in periodically. She sends minute updates, but not enough for Annabeth to start doing her own poking and prodding. Frank stops by a few times to make sure she’s eating, and she does welcome his company in an absent way. He brings some of the best takeout, but he knows all her favorites. He carries the conversation in directions that serve the best distractions.

“You should use this time to get out,” he says one day, dragging some naan through the rest of his curry. When Annabeth stares at him, he clarifies. “I mean, maybe think of it like a vacation? You never take a vacation. Do things you’ve always wanted to.”

She grumpily shoves her own naan into her mouth to avoid answering him. But maybe he has a point. Maybe she does need to leave the house more often, if only to refresh herself. To get back on her feet. It’s only a matter of time before they give her a new assignment, and she refuses to fall into distractions again next time.

She takes herself out. She ventures further than a ten block radius and tries a new Pho place she’s been wanting to check out. She looks up a current run of temporary exhibitions around the city, buys tickets for three of them. She makes a reservation for herself at one of the museum restaurants, uncaring that it’s definitely overpriced and she can get a burger down the block for half the cost. She is utterly determined to give herself a good, clean, solid break from her time with Percy, so she’s prepared for the next chapter. Whatever it brings.

Naturally, it’s at one of the exhibitions that she runs into Sally Jackson.

this was my reward to myself for cleaning up the broken bowl and it did NOT disappoint, brb my HEART

things i wasn't prepared for when seeing Hadestown: Hermes putting a hand on Eurydice's shoulder before the first song had even started, looking Eurydice in the eye as if asking permission to tell her story again, and Eurydice smiling, yes, it's alright, it should be told again

a bowl has fallen off my tv-tray and shattered rip the bowl, rip me, rip my floor, rip the clothing it fell atop, just rip

update: I did not slice myself on anything which is good, but I sure did stab the tip of my pointer finger on one of those tiny shards and ow ow ow ow ow ow

ok i guess i am having Feelings on musicals now, so here’s one of them:

the fact that hadestown has the staging it has is a masterpiece. It, at least in the versions i have seen, is on a circular rotating stage. And thats just so tragic, because the nature of ancient greek tragedy is that it’s cyclical: it‘s a story we’ve heard over and over, we know the answer, but every time, we hope, and every time the characters fail, and the story is told over again. And that’s clear in hadestown: they literally say it‘s a song they will sing over and over, but every time we still hope. and every time, orpheus and eurydice fail to make it out. and the seasons will eventually change, and the story will start over again. and in every iteration of the story, they fail because of love - orpheus hears eurydice cry out and turns to check on her, orpheus hears her call him and turns to see her, orpheus loves her but does not hear her behind him and worries Hades has gone back on the deal and she cannot follow., orpheus cannot hear her and worries he is leaving her behind. and the saddest one of all, because in this one they were so close, they were almost there and we knew that they wouldn’t make it out but we still thought, for just a second, maybe, maybe - in this version, orpheus makes it out of the underworld, and he realises he’s out and he is so happy and he turns to share in that joy with eurydice but he has forgotten that she was behind him. and it turns out that when he turned although he had made it out she hadn’t yet, and she is now doomed.

And that, that cyclical, inevitable nature of tragedy is what makes the circular stage of Hadestown so fucking sad: in that final scene when they are walking out of the underworld, the stage rotates beneath them so they can walk - but it is a circular stage. They are going nowhere, they can never make it out, they were always doomed by the very nature of the story, by the very stage they are on. They could never have escaped.