Which is better?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Eurydice, belatedly realizing Orpheus isn't coming*, finds her own way out of Hades.


As above but rather than not coming at all, Orpheus shows up late (added later) by which time Eurydice has found her own escape. This may explain why the god of the dead was not willing to let Orpheus look at the face of the woman he was leading out of Hades.

*He is a poet so it is not like he has to actually do the romantic quest thing to get credit for doing the romantic quest thing, as long as he has an explanation for why Eurydice is not with him.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Option 1 allows Eurydice more agency. And who among us has not sat around, like Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for someone we hope to be reliable, to appear?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

How does option 1 give her more agency? She's escaped on her own in both cases.

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

You mean, waiting for Godot? (Ducks)

[andrewducker]

Orpheus showing up late shows him to be a bit rubbish at organisation, or held up due to factors that may or may not be out of his control. Fine in a comedy, but not necessarily great for drama.

Orpheus not showing up at all because he's a lying scumbag sends a definite message.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

Not thrilled with either option, since the whole point originally was to put a fine point on the idea that Dead is Dead, you're not coming back. I always suspected that the real reason Orpheus was told not to look back was because Hades knew that humans in general have a habit of doing exactly what they're told NOT to do, so there was unlikely to ever be a danger that he'd have to relinquish Eurydice to the living world again once Hades told Orpheus not to look back--he knew that Orpheus would screw up and that would be that. If there were any change to the story at all, it seems that the obvious one would be for Orpheus to also get stuck in Hades because he couldn't follow simple instructions, and have to endure an eternity of Eurydice telling him not to do things and then laughing at him when he did them anyway and horrible things happened as a result.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

As long as I'm linking Oglaf, this one is also appropriate (mildly NSFW for nudity): http://www.oglaf.com/bitterfruit/

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Orpheus shows up late, by which time Eurydice is almost out of Hades and is quite bitter about the whole thing. He finds himself stuck in her place, and she has to go back for him. Only by working together can they both escape. Add a cute animal sidekick and you've got a Disney movie. Hmm, make it a squirrel, say, and represent Hades-the-ruler-of-the-Underworld with the "traditional" cloaked skeleton with a scythe, and give Hades a "Death of Rats" sidekick who gradually comes to the realization that Orpheus and Eurydice should be let go, and in turn helps to persuade Hades, and then there can be the tragic romance between the two rodents. Yeah, that would work.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Sadly - I would pay money to see this.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

But it's gotta be animated. Can't stand this stuff as live action.

[timill]

Closing with a can-can of disembodied spirits?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I thought we already established that Hades was James Woods with his hair on fire.

[seawasp]

I like the second one, which ends with Orpheus discovering the trick afterwards and then going back to Hades and singing every soul in Hades and Elysium into bloody revolt, overthrowing Hades...

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

From an old New York Magazine competition: "Eurydice stared at her watch and fumed as Orpheus descended towards her. "I've been waiting here for an hour" she exclaimed. "Where in Hades have you been?"

[invunche.livejournal.com]

If you're letting either of them cheat death, you may be taking your puppy dogs and sunshine Canadian optimism thing a little too far.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, only Scottish and Australian SF authors are allowed to be that optimistic.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

If you're letting either of them cheat death

Say, does the original story say exiting Hades actually restores life or are we just talking roaming shades in the lands of the living?

[invunche.livejournal.com]

I have no idea who this guy is (http://blog.garycorby.com/2010/06/ghosts-of-ancient-greece.html) but he writes mysteries that might be up your alley.

He doesn't think the ancient Greeks had ghosts.

The Greeks were one of the very few people throughout history to not have a strong belief in ghosts. In fact I'd be willing to bet there are more people in the western world per capita today who believe in ghosts, than there were in Athens in 460BC.

I put this down to the Greek belief that the world was fundamentally explainable by rational means. That very modern viewpoint was totally at odds with their own religion, and the deeper thinkers of the time were painfully aware of the paradox. Yet nevertheless, give a Classical Greek a problem, and he would instinctively look for a rational solution. This rather suits me as a mystery writer.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

more people in the western world per capita

I hope his word choices are better in his novels.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

How can you cheat someone who is going to get both of you, and everyone else, pretty soon anyway? And why would Hades invite Orpheus to 'cheat' him?

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I think this may be the same Orpheus you're talking about there: http://www.oglaf.com/netherworld/

[kai ashante wilson (from livejournal.com)]

China explored this question, too:
http://chinamieville.net/post/20675897361/4-final-orpheuses

[(Anonymous)]

Euridice has obtained a good job with excellent promotion prospects at HadesCo and is uninterested in returning to the massively sexist Greek society upstairs?

Bruce

[xinheritorx.livejournal.com]

I have had three real life versions of this scenario occur, as close as a modern, non Greek, non pagan human can come to as such. Here's my two cents on the whole thing.

1: I was a sophomore in high school. At the time I was a skate punk and the girl in question a spoiled daughter of a judge who...did things with an entire wrestling team. She was good looking, motivating me to overlook that. One day, she told me she was in love with me...but to ask her out, I needed the permission of a football player twice my size on steroids with an alchohol problem who everyone else liked more than me. He, of course, said no. This lead to me throwing my lot in with...these folks: http://www.deviate.4mg.com/pictures.htm and waging a low level guerilla campaign for two years over the girl against the football team. Every day, I battled the football players, being shoved into lockers and such. But I persisted. In the end, I had a final confrontation with the football player at 4th of July fireworks. By this point, I had become very frustrated with the girl herself going along with all of this and exhibiting no agency of her own, we expecting modern women to actually do something, and called her a whore, then got in a fist fight with the athlete in question until the punk people in the picture came to my aid.

2: I was in college. I had gone native with the people in the pictures, was in a punk band and lived in punk house squats doing anarchist protesting. I was dating a Macedonian girl with a septum ring (its right next to Greece!).

The vegan punk movement was feeling in a very Soviet mood and decided to form a hierarchical power structure with a certain number of people as leaders. One of these was a man named Lewer who sort of resembled a cross between Lavrentii Beria and Quagmire on Family Guy with a bit of that admiral in the CJ Cherryh novel Downbelow Station who runs the Union clone armies, Azov. He wanted the Macedonian.

He had the other "leaders" threaten me into moving to California. Not that California is bad, its climate is delightful, but they did it so they could have my girlfriend. Once in California, my parents drove to California and stole my car. I had a childhood friend who was on Who's The Boss for a season in the late 1980s, seen here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0357185/ who had a girlfriend I did not see eye to eye with that lived in Los Angeles, which some people equate with Hell, or if you're an ancient Greek, Hades.

I was in Eureka, Ca when I learned the Macedonian had been basically abducted and given to this Lewer character. I slept on the child actor's couch for three days and got in an argument with his girlfriend. I left. She threatened me on AIM. I found that the Macedonian had exhibited the agency you others speak of, and escaped, to LA. But...she decided I was not worth it as a boyfriend and was now dating local men, and threatened to sue me when I contacted her.

3: I went to NJ again to try to retrieve my car. I added a girl named Ariel Tuzzeo I had known as a child, and we had had a mutual crush on each other. I expected a vapid sort, but she had become punk like me, or at least a goth. The problem was...since I moved as a third grader, she felt abandoned by me and had become vengefully obsessed with me in the intervening two decades. She went to great pains to hide this. She invited me to play paintball as a date.

She meets me, asks in a sinister voice "are you waiting for someone?" then reveals a bald Morrocan man she has brought for the express purpose of making me jealous. She then lectures me at length about how when I moved I gave up any right to date her, we play paintball, I get diabetes and have to sit in a shed, she abandons me on the snow covered paintball course in Schuykill, PA, and I am forced to hitch hike home with some Mexicans. So in that one, the Eurydice analogue basically enacted a bunny boiler style revenge scheme against me, the Orpheus stand in.

I hope these provide examples of how Eurydice could have acted differently.