#three theban tragedies | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fdelopera · 1 year

Text

The Oedipus Project (or, How Oedipus’ Historical Context Reveals the Play’s Meaning)

Sooo back in Spring 2020, Oscar Isaac starred in a Zoom production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus — The Oedipus Project. I highly recommend watching the production. Oscar gives a uniquely genuine performance of Oedipus. Thankfully, @hupperts linked to the full livestream in a post (it’s a Google Drive link you can watch here).

But I would be remiss in talking about Ancient Greek theatre if I didn’t also share a few historical facets of the play (and of Greek Theatre in general) that are often overlooked in modern productions. (For context, my college major was Classical Theatre — with an emphasis on Ancient Greek theatre and Shakespeare. So Ancient Greek Tragedy is still a big special interest.)

The Original Actors:

In Sophocles' and Euripides' tragedies, there were only three actors (all adult men), plus a Chorus of fifteen young men, led by a Chorus Leader. (Aeschylus before them had two actors, plus a chorus of twelve young men.)

Since there are more than three characters in these plays, it was standard for several (if not all) of the three actors to play multiple roles. The roles that these actors played often relate to each other, creating many subtextual layers of connection and meaning between the characters.

Read more below the cut:

The Three Actors and the Chorus:

In Ancient Greek theatre, the lead actor was called the Protagonist. This was often the most senior actor and the one deemed most skilled.

The second actor was called the Deuteragonist. This actor often had less seniority than the Protagonist, though they were often deemed to be of equal skill level.

The third actor was called the Tritagonist. This actor was often the youngest and least experienced of the three, and they would often play Messenger roles.

The Chorus comprised a Chorus Leader, leading a Chorus of 15 young men. They chanted and danced in unison, with certain lines spoken/sung solo by the Chorus Leader.

Singing, Dances, and Masks in Ancient Greek Theatre:

Ancient Greek theatre was first and foremost a religious ceremony, dedicated to the god, Dionysos. The plays were written in meter, and the actors would have alternated between speaking their lines and singing the text. The Chorus performed circular dances, and they also sang and chanted their lines. The actors were accompanied by a musician playing a double-piped reed instrument called the aulos (the sound would have been similar to a modern-day oboe).

The three actors and the Chorus all wore masks and costumes. These masks were religious in nature — they permitted the actors and Chorus to interact with the divine nature of Dionysos (which was believed to be present on the theatre stage) without being overcome by the god. In Ancient Greek theatre, masks do not conceal; instead, they reveal the truth. The masks also served a practical purpose, allowing the actors to switch between their characters with relative ease.

The Roles Played by the Three Actors and Chorus in Oedipus Tyrannus:

Here is the original cast list from Oedipus Tyrannus (this is my reconstruction, based on exits and entrances).

1st Actor (Protagonist):

Oedipus (King of Thebes, who unknowingly murdered his father, King Laius, and who married his mother, Queen Jocasta; he became the new King upon defeating the Sphinx at Thebes by solving her riddle)

2nd Actor (Deuteragonist):

Priest (Priest of Apollo)

Tiresias (blind prophet and servant of Apollo)

Queen Jocasta (Queen of Thebes, unknowing wife of her son Oedipus, and former wife of King Laius, Oedipus' father)

Theban Shepherd (who saved the infant Oedipus from death and gave him to the Shepherd and Messenger from Corinth)

3rd Actor (Tritagonist):

Creon (Brother of Jocasta, Queen of Thebes, and unknowing uncle of Oedipus)

Corinthian Messenger (the Shepherd who brought Oedipus to his adoptive parents in Corinth)

Theban Messenger (the Messenger who delivered the news of Jocasta's death and Oedipus' blinding)

Chorus Leader, leading a Chorus of 15 young men:

The Elder Citizens of Thebes (the Chorus serve as the point-of-view character through which the audience is meant to intellectually and emotionally understand the play)

The Connections Between the Three Actors and Their Roles:

The Protagonist in Oedipus played one role: Oedipus. In Greek Tragedy, the lead role was deemed to be of such importance that the Protagonist was often given no other roles to play.

The Deuteragonist had to shoulder some of the most important moments in the play. They opened the play as the Priest of Apollo. They played Tiresias and then Jocasta, both wrestling emotionally with Oedipus. And finally, they played the Theban Shepherd, who is tortured into his confession of saving the baby Oedipus from certain death. The fact that the Deuteragonist portrays all of these roles provides a common thread between them, linking together characters who unknowingly lead Oedipus to his downfall.

The Tritagonist played Creon as well as the two Messenger roles. As the Theban Messenger, they would have been expected to deliver a dramatic and scene-stealing monologue about the death of Jocasta and the blinding of Oedipus, which would have given the younger actor some scenery to chew.

The Historical Context of Oedipus Tyrannus:

Something to note about Oedipus Tyrannus in the context in which it was written: the original meaning of the play is different from the Freudian themes that we normally associate with it. Freud took Oedipus and used it as an exploration of unconscious desires, but that wasn’t really Sophocles’ intent.

When Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannus, Athens was beginning the second half of the great war with Sparta (the Peloponnesian War), which would ultimately lead to Athens’ downfall, as well as Sparta’s downfall not long after.

About 50 years prior, Athens and Sparta had fought together in the Persian Wars to prevent the Persians from conquering Greece (if you’ve ever seen the movie 300, that’s what it is about). But in the intervening decades, Sparta and Athens had become rivals for resources and land within Greece, and between 460 – 445 BCE, and 431 – 404 BCE, they fought two bloody wars that ultimately led to the defeat of Athens, and the end of the Athenian Democracy.

Many Athenians, including the playwrights Sophocles and Euripides, were incredibly nervous about this conflict, and foresaw that it would lead to prolonged bloodshed and even the city’s downfall.

For example, around the same time that Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannus, Euripides wrote Medea, about a woman who murders her children to spite her husband — Euripides was effectively saying, “If these two powers of Sparta and Athens, mother and father, go to war with each other, all that we will succeed in doing is murdering our children (the young soldiers who will die in battle).”

Oedipus Tyrannus is about a king who wants to be a great ruler for his city, Thebes. And yet, he cannot know how to lead his city, for he does not even know himself.

Many years before the start of the play, he had defeated the Sphinx who had camped out outside Thebes’ city walls and was consuming the city’s inhabitants. She demanded that everyone who passed by her must answer her riddle. If they could not figure it out, she would eat them.

She asked them, “What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

No one in Thebes could answer her riddle, and so one by one, she devoured them, simultaneously consuming the city’s soldiers and starving out the city’s inhabitants.

Around the time that the Sphinx was laying waste to Thebes, Oedipus was running from himself. Oedipus had received a prophecy that he would “kill his father and marry his mother,” so he left his city of Corinth and ran far away from his (adoptive) parents (though he didn’t know that he was adopted).

Along the way, Oedipus encountered an old man who attacked him at a crossroads. In anger, Oedipus killed the man, and kept going (unbeknownst to him, this was his father, Laius, the King of Thebes).

He soon happened upon the city of Thebes, and encountered the Sphinx. Like she had done countless times before, she asked Oedipus her riddle. But unlike the others before him, Oedipus used his intelligence and cunning to defeat her.

Oedipus understood what the Sphinx was asking, and he answered her riddle correctly. The answer is “man.” Man walks on four legs in the morning (crawling as a baby), on two legs at noon (walking upright in the prime of his youth), and on three legs in the evening (using a cane to walk in old age).

Oedipus knew “man,” but he did not know himself.

Still, the Sphinx was defeated, and Oedipus was welcomed into the city of Thebes as a hero. The old king had just died, and the city was in turmoil. They were looking for a new king. The old king’s brother-in-law, Creon, did not want the throne, and so the city decided to adopt Oedipus as their new king and leader. The Queen, Jocasta, willingly married this young man who had saved her and her city. They wed and had four children together: two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene.

(Of course, these children would continue the twisted generational trauma of their family, as brother would turn against brother, sister against sister, and uncle against niece and nephew, until the family had consumed itself from the inside out.)

Oedipus’ Hubris:

Oedipus learns several important lessons from this incident. However, these lessons ultimately lead to his downfall:

1) He can defeat any enemy through argument, both in terms of aggression and cunning. He defeated the old man who attacked him (his own father) through aggression, and he defeated the Sphinx through cunning.

2) His intellect and reason are more powerful than even a superhuman force (the Sphinx), and he can threaten to banish or execute anyone who tries to challenge his understanding of things. He creates an echochamber from which he cannot escape.

3) He must continue to run away from his past, and never look at himself too deeply. He must never “know himself” or engage in any deep self-analysis because he believes that he is still running from the prophecy. He doesn’t realize that he already fulfilled the prophecy years before, and soon his punishment will come due.

In his Oedipus Project performance, Oscar did a masterful job at making Oedipus' guilt clear, and at laying out his hubris. Oedipus’ anger and insistence in his own righteousness ultimately bring him down.

Oedipus' haughtiness is a protection against the fear and inadequacy he feels in his life. He has felt like an outsider for much of his life, and he is overcompensating for that. He feels that he must prove himself right in all arguments, because deep down, he knows that he’s not who he thinks he is.

Oedipus is terrified to look at the “truth,” because he suspects that he'll be looking in a mirror.

The downfall of Oedipus is that he resists the truth of himself that is staring him in the face. He won't see until he literally blinds himself, and then when he is blinded, he can finally see, but by then it is too late.

Athens’ Hubris:

Like Oedipus, Athens believed it could defeat any enemy through cunning and aggression. Years before, it had decisively routed the Persians in the Battle of Salamis, driving the Persian forces away from Greece and ending the war. In the same way, it believed that it could use cunning and aggression to defeat Sparta. Sparta and Athens were like mirror selves. They were the two parts of the whole that made up what it was to be Greek.

Like Oedipus, Athens’ rulers were hubristic, and believed that they could know what was best for all of Greece, and yet they didn’t even know what was best for their own city.

Thebes, Oedipus’ city, had sided with Persia during the Persian Wars. During the Peloponnesian War, it sided with Sparta. To the Athenians, Thebes was the Anti-Athens. But by basing this critique of Athens in a city that was seen as an enemy, Sophocles was effectively looking at Athens “through the mirror,” and recognizing that self and reflection of self are two parts of the same whole.

So, unlike the modern Freudian characterization of Oedipus, Sophocles’ intention was to explore the way that a political entity can become entirely corrupted by its leaders. These leaders argue themselves in circles, round and round, until they eventually come face to face with themselves. In that moment, it is shown that they have not been fighting against any external enemy, they have been destroying their own city from within, and in their own immolation, they burn the city as well.

Oedipus Tyrannus is a great exploration of generational trauma — it shows in microcosm the way that toxic dynamics are passed down over and over to create an inheritance of destruction. If Jocasta and Laius had loved their son despite Apollo’s prophecy, if they had sought to wrestle with the god instead of blindly following him, if they had treated their son with care instead of piercing his ankles and leaving him on a hillside to die, their downfall and his would never have occurred. Their compulsion towards the very predeterminism they feared sealed their fate.

In the same way, Athens' and Sparta's fear and enmity towards each other ultimately led to Athens' downfall and Sparta's decline not long after. In trying to destroy one another, Athens and Sparta learned far too late that they were only destroying themselves.

The Anti-War Message of Ancient Greek Tragedy:

Ancient Greek Tragedy dealt with deeply human themes, such as psychology, philosophy, religion, politics, and art. Above all, it dealt with what it is to be a nation at war.

The Athenian Democracy was bookended by two great wars: the Persian Wars, which culminated around 480 BCE, and the Peloponnesian War, which concluded in 404 BCE when Sparta defeated Athens.

Within that span of roughly 80 years, the Greek playwrights engaged in a complex discourse, addressing their existential feelings of being a society defined by both internal and external conflict. They warned about the horrors of war, and they strove to use their art to steer the ship that was Athenian Democracy.

When we understand Ancient Greek Tragedy within its historical context, we can see that it is just as relevant today as it was when it was written over 2400 years ago.

#oscar isaac #the oedipus project #oedipus rex #ancient greek tragedy #ancient greek theater #oedipus tyrannus

110 notes · View notes

most-tragic-character-tournament · 6 months

Note

It is very funny that Antigone and Lloyd have created so much discourse and that I was mentally ill about them at around the same time I in my childhood; but I digress. I feel that Antigone is a very tragic character and while I don’t know how long she’ll last against others, I would definitely say that she is a more tragic character than Lloyd Garmadon due to the nature of the medium she is conceived in. Antigone is imprisoned for keeping the burial rites for her brother, knowing this is just yet not lawful, and gets punished by her uncle, Creon, losing her chance for a happy future for a doomed family. Antigone mourns this fact, saying: “I am going — alive — to the scraped hollow of the dead/Ehat have I ever done against divine justice? (Sophocles Third Stasimon line 920-1). As a Greek tragic character, Antigone is punished by fate for things that long came before her and that she could not control. Lloyd Garmadon however, could be compared more readily with Odysseus in terms of tragedy, as while tragic events happen to them, by the end, they still have their family and friends, and while flaws within the world and the character influence them, they ultimately learn and grow from their mistakes and come through them as better people. Ultimately, while both medias are valid forms of enjoyment, I think that it would be wrong to say that tragic events to a character makes a tragic character; conflict is needed in a story! It’s why Albert Camus says Sisyphus is actually chilling!! It sucks to go through it, but we all do in a way, and I think the happiest thing of all is waking up every day saying Ninja never quit, because they don’t! I posit, instead, that what makes a tragic character is the tragedy of their end (be it in the story or their literal, well, death). Lloyd has many tragic events happen to him, but being the Green Ninja who fights evil a lot is a much better deal than being the product of mother-son incest maligned by your own extended family, even when the people and the gods call for your release. Ultimately, though, this is tumblr, and while I think Antigone is narratively the epitome of a tragic character, I think the funniest and most tragic thing of all would be her losing, because even in death she truly cannot win and would be very consistent with her life💀 but also I hope people read the Three Theban Plays out of this! We don’t need to think of things a “too intellectual to enjoy,” or that people “just wouldn’t get it.” Plays are for everyone, and I think gatekeeping is awful and leads to people not wanting to engage with works of art. All art is meaningful. Whether you like Ninjago or Antigone or both! :)

[Propaganda]

#propaganda #antigone #tw abuse #tw incest

19 notes · View notes

grandhotelabyss · 9 months

Note

Favorite plays? Best plays? Do many overlap?

I've pretty much confined myself to the classics, so yes, they overlap, almost comically so.

Ancients: I need to reread the Oresteia—I haven't actually read it since a one-sitting rapture by Vellacott's old Penguin Classic translation on a Sunday night in my teens—but as a founding myth of civilization, it doesn't get any better. Then Sophocles's Theban plays, then Medea and Bacchae for Euripides. Never quite got Aristophanes and have yet even to read his most famous comedy. The Romans, the medievals: pretty much a blank, despite what Shakespeare took from Terence and Seneca. The East: pretty much a blank, though Kalidasa and a volume of Noh plays sit somewhere on my shelves.

Shakespeare: Hamlet is best—as in the best play ever written and the big bang of literary modernity—then Lear. Among the less-discussed, my favorite is The Winter's Tale. My current novel is obsessed with The Tempest. I have a less intimate relationship with the comedies and histories than with the tragedies and romances, but do admire Much Ado and Twelfth Night and the Henriad. Among non-Shakespearean early modern English plays, I've adored The Duchess of Malfi.

Modern European: Is Goethe's Faust a play, exactly? It's not not a play. It rivals Hamlet on the one side, Ulysses on the other. Then Ibsen, for the differently Faustian Peer Gynt and Brand, and for The Wild Duck—the greatest bourgeois tragedy, Arthur Miller be damned—the play that marks the transition from the smug naturalism of A Doll's House and Ghosts and An Enemy of the People to the chastened symbolism of The Master Builder and Hedda Gabbler and When We Dead Awaken. Shamefully, there are plays in the realist cycle I haven't read, though, and I still need to get to Emperor and Galilean. As for other dramatists, Chekhov's fine—I like The Cherry Orchard but somehow missed Three Sisters—and Strindberg still awaits my attention.

Modern British: Wilde and Shaw, Shaw and Wilde! Anarchist aestheticism vs. socialist realism in perhaps their best and purest forms, a double-helixed locus classicus. Salomé, The Importance of Being Earnest; Man and Superman, Major Barbara. After them, who? More Irish: Yeats's symbolic ritual drama, Synge's vernacular pageant (The Playboy of the Western World—so good), and, among our contemporaries, By the Bog of Cats. Beckett is fine, Endgame more interesting than Godot. Among the modern English, I never quite got Pinter; Stoppard, Shaw's heir, interests me more, Arcadia being the best I've read or seen. And then, if we can stand in her blast radius, Sarah Kane, more for 4.48 Psychosis than for Blasted.

Modern American: We owe it all to O'Neill even if he's uneven, like Dreiser among the novelists. I like Strange Interlude, if only for the novelty, and of course Long Day's Journey into Night. Still need to read The Iceman Cometh. Tennessee Williams is best—A Streetcar Named Desire is the great American play to go with Moby-Dick as the great American novel and Leaves of Grass as the great American poem for a star-spangled gay-male trifecta—and then August Wilson, more for Joe Turner than for Fences, though I still need to read the whole Century Cycle. Arthur Miller: overrated, as I've implied.

I'll leave you to compile the shadow-list of my obvious omissions; it's terrifying when you start thinking about how much you haven't read.

#drama #plays #literature

6 notes · View notes

thefiresontheheight · 2 years

Text

the entire tragedy of Sophocles Three Theban Plays could have been avoided if people had just not been into milfs. In this way it was truly destined to happen cause, like, have you seen milfs? No way people were not gonna go for that.

#Sophocles #oedipus the king #oedipus at colonus #antigone

34 notes · View notes

ptolomeas · 4 months

Text

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎BUNNY ﹕ an excerpt from donna tartt's the secret history, "the snow in the mountains was melting and bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. he'd been dead for ten days before they found him." / a discipline of being dead since the beginning, starring in a tragedy of one's own making, reaped from the deep troubles that linger beneath the brewings of early girlhood — daughter of dionysus, deified by sera.

TRIGGER WARNING(s) ﹕ mentions of parental death, mentions of alcohol, brief mentions of death during childbirth, lots of mentions of divine madness ( and obsession )

PART ONE [ DOSSIER ] ﹕

﹡ FULL NAME . isabel millicent hopewell - ward ﹡ NICKNAME(S) / ALIAS(ES) / TITLE(S) . bunny, millie, bella / belly, is, ward ( specifically to annoyances and foes ) ﹡ PREFERRED NAME . bunny, an inescapable childhood nickname ﹡ AGE + DOB . twenty - three + nov. 7 ﹡ GENDER + PRONOUNS . cis woman, she + her ﹡ ORIENTATION . bisexual ﹡ BIRTHPLACE . potomac, maryland ﹡ CURRENT LOCATION . camp half - blood

﹡ CABIN . twelve, dionysus ﹡ ABILITIES . vinokesis ( water into wine, baby! or gatorade into wine, or soda, or beer— ), madness induction ﹡ LABEL . the obsédant, to mean﹕ girl turned god before she turned woman, a cigarette burning between white, lissom fingers that shake while the mind turns and turns and turns — obsession is a vile thing, so noisome that it's the most godly, beautiful thing about her. ﹡ TROPES . earn your bad ending, ambiguous situation, beauty is bad, consummate liar, foreshadowing, the beautiful elite, divine parentage, bilingual bonus, black - and - gray morality, fatal flaw, unreliable narrator ﹡ INFLUENCES . henry winter ( the secret history ), amy dunne ( gone girl ), iphigenia ( iphigenia in aulis ), meredith dardenne ( if we were villains ), anna karenina ( anna karenina ), mal cobb ( inception ), heloise ( portrait of a lady on fire )

﹡ EYES . wide, large, dark brown in color, often sleepy in demeanor. ﹡ HAIR . sways between dark brown to ash brown depending on the season, kept long and well maintained ( thank you aphrodite cabin for the shampoo & conditioner ), rarely styled but falls straight and is fine that way. ﹡ HEIGHT . five feet, six inches ( 168cm ) ﹡ MARKS / SCARS . one smooth, clean cut on the flesh above her inner collarbone that drags to the top of her shoulder — a monster's blade that went through the neck and out the shoulder; numerous scrapes along her torso, all small in size, nothing important; the mark of a dagger being driven through her right palm ( new, acquired by another demigod — on accident, of course ).

﹡ LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN . english ( fluent ), latin ( fluent ), french ( fluent ), ancient greek ( fluent ) ﹡ ACCENT . east coast money, standard american, though trained theatre performer and excels at accents ( particularly talented in most uk accents ). ﹡ DOMINANT HAND . right, but strikes with her left ﹡ JUNG TYPE . intp — the thinker ( analytical, objective, and logical ) ﹡ ENNEAGRAM . type eight — the protector ( powerful, self - assured, and assertive ) ﹡ MORAL ALIGNMENT . lawful evil — true neutral

PART TWO [ HISTORY ] ﹕

DIONYSUS SAYS, when he prays, he chooses to ignore me. for this neglect, i will demonstrate to him, to all [ in thebes ], that i was born a god. but if they [ the thebans ] in this city, in their anger, try to make these bacchic women leave, then i, commander of these maenads, will fight them.¹

it starts like this, the madness﹕ one day, she is a girl, the next day she is a god. is twenty still a girl, she asks, or has she graduated? what is the age of womanhood? when is the before and when is the after? here is the answer﹕ you are a god, half of one, and the before is human and the after is god.

dionysus isn't a horrible father, but he is a horrifying god. bunny studies theatre ( see﹕ studied*, attended a small conservatory in the northeastern wilderness, was always drawn to ancient greek and their tragedies — it's ironic, or it's fate, something or the other ) and she once read for the bacchae, performed as agave and tore her son limb from limb in bacchic frenzy. when asked how it felt, she said it was invigorating. when her father asks her how it felt, she tells him that that's when she knew she was a god. he corrects her, calls her a demigod while he sips cola out of a silver can ( his eye twitches when she turns cola to wine and they both pretend to not notice ), and she agrees, but, really, they both know she is as much god as he is.

dionysus is her father, but tony is her dad. he married mom when she got pregnant, even though he knew the child wasn't his. he loved her — he still loves her, and he loves bunny too ( see﹕ someone had to start calling her bunny, who was it? ( select all that apply ) — a. anthony hopewell b. tony c. dad ), even though mom isn't around anymore. bunny, when she's claimed, hungover and overwhelmed with the last remnants of bacchic fervor, asks dionysus if he knows that mom died and his answer doesn't satisfy her ( it was a private conversation, i will not be the one to repeat what was said — but she only survived so long out there because of him. he tells her that he was more involved than she thinks. she only got so far because he ... love is a strong word, because he cares about her. she is his child ).

DAD, sorry to waste all your tuition money — but i will not be returning to school for my last year. please tell mom thanks for everything. this isn't a goodbye, but i can't put you in danger. oh, also, there are a few bottles of good wine underneath my bed. they're in water bottles because they used to be water. you should take them.²

summer, 1975, summer session at the conservatory, bunny is reading as helen ( from the play by euripides, a personal favorite ). tony's eyeglasses hang in the front of her shirt during rehearsal, big and over-sized and stolen ( "stolen", like tony's old shirts and sweaters ). someone in the back is dressed in an old costume, a trojan warrior, and it's distracting from the stage. he leaves in the middle of rehearsal and slams the door shut behind him. it's rude — ask anyone in the department and they'll agree, but they'll also admit, quietly and behind bunny's back, that bunny is taking the offense a little too far. she takes it all too seriously, the theatre, the trojan warrior, the entire concept of life. she's intense, too much so, but she's fucking good at what she does; quiet off - stage and stiff to her peers, but so magnetic on stage that, oh, obviously, this is what she is born to do, what she's made for — everyone says so.

but that trojan warrior. he returns. five days straight and then he disappears. and everyone can see that it effects bunny. she's colder than usual, snaps more. she takes it upon herself to find him and there is a voice in her head telling her to leave it alone, but there is something more that is consuming her from within; a suspicion, a paranoia, a knowing. she has known all her life about [ it ]. [ it ] is something that has nestled deep in her gut from the very moment of her birth ( godhood tears some women apart — see the classics and count how many women died or went mad ). she turned water to wine when she was nine. her algebra teacher lost his mind when he gave her detention. she won prom queen simply by turning everyone else against each other. bacchic madness, it felt invigorating, it felt like home.

the trojan warrior is a thread she should not have pulled. she is at camp before the summer ends. for the entire month of september, crying is heard from the dionysus cabin.

AGAVE SAYS, how i grieve for you, my father / lord dionysus has inflicted such brutal terror on your house / farewell, father.³

the dionysus cabin is quiet. bunny is no longer allowed to start bacchanals, so she sits inside and reads. they have copies of the classic greek plays here in their original, dead language, so she keeps them collected beneath her bed. twenty copies of one play that she can mark over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over—

bunny is quiet. she does not participate in theatre. she reads and keeps to herself — doesn't keep many friends, is actually a bit arrogant about it; to be considered her friend, one must﹕ instructions unclear, do not pass go, return paper to bunny and never ask for it again. brilliant, cold, stiff, magnetic ( but only on a stage, only when she wants to play god ), quiet, completely forgettable — not seen until she wants to be seen, nurses a glass bottle of water - wine, breaks the spine of every play she takes from camp, sits with mr. d on the porch of the big house and pretends to not know how to play pinochle.

¹from THE BACCHAE, by euripides, lines 60 - 70 summarized ²from A LETTER HOME, by BUNNY HOPEWELL - WARD in 1975 ³from THE BACCHAE, by euripides, lines 1755 - 1763

PART THREE [ SUMMARY ] ﹕

sorry ! for the whole lot of nothing ( it's all a metaphor ), here's a tl;dr

her mom gets pregnant and marries anthony "tony" hopewell, who marries her ( to save her reputation, but also ) because he loves her. unfortunately, she passes while giving birth to bunny but tony raises her anyway — and is a great dad! ∗ somewhere along the way, tony remarries, this is the "mom" that is mentioned in the letter home.

has an unremarkable childhood, save for bunny knowing that she's a demigod ( or at least, not fully human ) from a very young age. she turns water to wine as a child and curses her teacher as a pre - teen and — by the gods, she shines on stage, she can manipulate a student body like no other. it all makes sense, but she ignores it otherwise. not much happens.

until she is twenty, attending a conservatory for the performing arts somewhere in the northeast. bunny is one of the best, she was born to do this — she excels especially in classics, all things greek ( which she has always been drawn to ) but she's, a bit of an acquired taste. she's cold and stiff and not that great with her peers, but it all balances out because she is made to be on stage. her classmates, however, will admit that she's ... intense. obsessive. takes things way too seriously, is just — too much.

( secret context section, not included in history section ) luckily for her peers, an eidolon appears on campus and, well, it doesn't do much but bunny is bunny and because it interrupts her rehearsals, she gets intense about it; follows it, discovers it, nearly dies, is likely rescued by her own abilities - slash - a surprise satyr. she's then taken to camp where once she's claimed, spends an entire month crying about it.

dionysus, i imagine, is far from a terrible father but i don't think bunny is thrilled about this divine parentage. she asks if he knew her mother died ( answer up to you, even if i know the real answer ), but all she ( we ) knows is that dionysus, at a distance, did what he could to keep her alive, to give her a chance at a normal life. but, not even godhood is omnipotent. she ends up at camp, anyway.

nowadays, she mostly keeps to herself. keeps a small, minuscule group of friends ( ... tsh inspo maybe, without all the ... you know ), interacts with nearly nobody else. she's still kind of ... you know, like that ( intense, way too serious, kind of obsessive ), but she's BANNED from starting bacchanals ( the 'demigods ( and some dryads ) against forest fires in camp half - blood' campaign really worked! ). she spends most of her time now with her little clique, by herself, or with her dad at the big house.

PART FOUR [ TRIVIA & SURPLUS ] ﹕

the ONE play that she's truly obsessed with is euripides' bacchae. duh, it stars her dad and her favorite thing ( bacchic madness ). she literally has a few dozen copies of it ( all in ancient greek, of course, duh ) and they're all beneath her bed in the dionysus cabin, marked up and annotated and highlighted. true madness, tbh.

is a year - round camper because she's PARANOID !! scared that she'll get her parents killed, especially because she loves them and she knows herself, knows that she would both lead a monster home or go find one out of mad obsession. stays within the safe confines of camp half - blood for both their safety and hers ( and therefore is sick to her stomach about the mist thing... )

does spend a lot of time with dionysus. there's a bit of resentment here and there and she's not like, jumping with joy at being a demigod, but she knows he loves her. she's read enough classic mythology to understand that he's kinder ( to humans ) than the divine twelve. she knows that he did what he could ( nothing omnipotent, but maybe he knows a nymph who knows a nymph ) to keep her safe even from his post, and there's a part of her that could ( and maybe does ) love him, but they don't show it much. bunny plays pinochle with him ( is "bad" at it and "doesn't know how to play" ) and he always wins.

often indulges in wine and spirits, smokes way too much to be healthy, is most likely to drink wine in front of dionysus just because she can ( keeps the dionysus table supplied with wine turned from water, pretends not to see when her siblings sneak sips from the glasses ).

was a strange child and is a stranger adult. i like to think the madness in genetic, but likely, it was an accidental misfire ( or backfire ) of madness induction that was never corrected and it seeped into her very being. or, she's just built different, we will never know, the lore is inconsistent. ( but if i have another hc that dionysus knows and spends time w her to keep an eye on her then what )

carries and wields a garrote wire because it's funny and requires a good amount of strength and i think it's silly for bunny, who's quite good with it ( scarily? good? like, maybe too into it good ), but probably tries very little, tbh. i imagine during capture the flag she like, fights, but also takes it way too seriously ( especially if fighting against, a particular person or cabin,,, ) so she probably isn't utilized much.

is generally not an easy person to get along with. she's pretentious and stiff and a bit judgmental and she has her friends ( the handful of them ), so she believes that she doesn't need anymore. bunny isn't rude or mean by any means, but she's definitely not trying to make friends. i think of her as probably just . quiet, succinct, pithy.

if it wasn't insinuated clearly enough, bunny is very, deeply troubled. she's obsessive ( particularly with divine and bacchic madness ) and intense and she knows this facet about her and how dangerous it can be for both herself and those around her, but she can't break herself out of it !!! she's been dead since the beginning or something, she's convinced of it !!! she can't break it !!! it's her fate !!

PART FIVE [ TIES & RELATIONSHIPS ] ﹕

hello friends, i have a bunch of wanted connections listed here, but we can always brainstorm in the dms ! very excited to have a gut wrenching, super sexy plot with ALL OF YOU, this is a threat and a promise.

do you think it's funny that i named her bunny when she's modeled after henry from tsh? if there's only one giggle, it's me! anywho, thank you for reading, i'm so so excited for this and i can't wait to write with you all! xx

#mist.intro #sry abt the length i have chronic overwriterism #there IS a tl;dr okay love u

5 notes · View notes