and another thing. orpheus makes it to the underworld literally singing Wait For Me. in Doubt Comes In he is alone yes but also nobody is fucking waiting for him. everyone he loves is behind him in the underworld.

who else watched reeve brush an eyelash off of eva’s nose and immediately started bawling

greyson tolliver arc of a scythe you will NEVER know how good you had it… the omniscient supercomputer AND the genderqueer character fell for your ass

particularly fond of the hadestown time loop because for all its thematic resonance it doesn’t exist to teach orpheus (or, for that matter, the audience) anything. it’s not a lesson. it doesn’t exist to hurt him, it’s not something he earned or deserves, it’s not to save him, it just is the very literal representation of the quantum superposition that is his tragedy. this is how it goes again and again and again. this is how it’s going to go again. and of course we’re gonna sing it again.

i love stories about bad people but beyond that i love stories about bad people who are in bad situations who have bad circumstances who have to do bad things. stories about bad people who care in spite of it or maybe because of it and it doesn’t matter but it should matter, because if anything was fair it would matter. stories about bad people who try to be good and it doesn’t work and it might even make everything worse off and it accomplishes nothing in the end, and it doesn’t matter, but of course it matters, how could it not matter? anyway this post is about iron lung and how doomed the convict is from the beginning and how the game outright says none of the data could be recovered and the movie shows simon getting the black box to the surface but doesn’t show anyone finding it and how this is a story about people who do nothing of value, really, but they exist and they try and there’s value in that. the entire story is that. how the convict is a criminal who did bad things and hurt a lot of people and how the captain is willing to throw away lives with no warning or explanation for a goal she can’t even articulate because they don’t know whats down there and theyre both bad people and they both try and if this were fair it would matter. if things were right it would matter. it would manifest itself into some outward success some miraculous achievement some saving of the entire universe. and it doesn’t, it can’t, but they tried—simon tried to complete his mission, ava tried to save him, and it didn’t work, but does that mean it didn’t matter?

really interesting thing about iron lung is how the convict agreed to go in the submarine in the first place and wasn’t (textbook) forced into it, which is something probably 99% of people were at least a little aghast by—because i would never agree to do something like that, for anything! and then you sit and think about it for a while. whats the difference between a sub and a cell? at least the porthole is covered. you can’t see the space between the bars, you can’t look freedom in the eye. what’s the difference between an ocean and outer space? it’s not like you can breathe. it’s not like you can leave. you can say no but your alternative is to sit in that cell and rot, presumably, and nobody is going to listen to what you have to say when you’re in there, either. your oxygen meter is ticking down, but it’s not like they’re not running out of air on the space stations that are left. it’s just not quite as obvious. you’ll either be free or you’ll die trying, and at least you’ll have tried. desperation makes a beast out of you.

obviously shauna can’t get better. she can’t fucking heal, grow, change. obviously she’s going to have an inferiority complex for the rest of her life. shes going to be jealous and petty and angry and she’s going to give snark to everyone instead of attempting to talk it out. because these things, this inability to communicate, the way she felt about jackie, how she refused to be rational about it, all of that fucking killed her. jackie is DEAD because of it. if shauna ever gets better, it’s just proof that she always could have. that she could have done something, said something, changed anything and jackie would still be alive. these traits have to be innate, they have to be fixed and unchangeable and determined, because if they’re not then jackie’s death wasn’t either. shauna can never stop hating jackie because if she does then she always could have, then she could have let it go so much sooner, then jackie would have stayed inside. their whole stupid argument was life and death out there and now shauna is going to make it life and death everywhere else, too, because if she doesn’t then it didn’t have to be.

small hadestown detail i absolutely adore is when hermes is explaining the stipulations of getting to leave in wait for me reprise (“and if you turn around to make sure she’s coming too / then she goes back to hadestown, and ain’t nothing you can do”) and orpheus, who has been asking questions and wondering out loud the entire time, falls silent. eurydice is the one who says, “but why?” orpheus doesn’t say anything. because he knows why.