Hope Springs Eternal (fanfic)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A Disney's Hercules fan-sequel in which Hades' kingdom is in danger, an immortal witch wants control, the Fates predict a miracle & Hades falls flaming-head-over-smoking-heels in love. The usual stuff of myth.

A brilliant take on the classic myth of Hades and Persephone by the very talented Quantum Witch. Persephone is chafing under her mother's control, evil no longer excites Hades, and Cupid's got it in his head to set these two up. Throw in some bumbling minions, a witch queen determined to get revenge on Hades, and Hades' dead first wife and you've got one hell of a tale.

Also illustrated by Quantum Witch, which you can read here.

Tropes used in Hope Springs Eternal (fanfic) include:
  • Abhorrent Admirer: Apollo for Persephone
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: One of the things that draws Persephone to Hades is how "dangerous" he is.
  • Anachronism Stew
  • Babies Ever After: The end of the story has a reveal that Persephone is pregnant.
  • Batman Gambit: Hecate's plan after Hades falls for Persephone is to convince the other gods that he kidnapped and raped her, so they'll be so angry they'll kill Hades, thus allowing her to take up his position.
    • Hades later pulls one of his own in the climax... realizing his influence over fire, he allows Hecate's demon-hounds to rip him apart and eat him, so he can regenerate first into fire and then to his normal form, thus killing them.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Twice.
    • Hades does this for Persephone when she's about to drink a potion that will make her mortal and free her from her mother's and the other gods' influences.
    • Rhea, mother of the six main gods, does this a chapter later, convincing Zeus and the others to let Hades and Persephone be happy and to reveal they're related more than they thought.
  • Body Language: Rhodope, Persephone's water-nymph best friend, can only communicate with squeaks and squeals, but Persephone can understand her by reading her body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice.
  • Brain Bleach: Hermes needs some after walking in on Hades and Persephone being intimate.
  • The Chessmaster: Hades has still got it, but so does Hecate.
  • Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: Subverted in that when Hades finally steeples his fingers, he's doing this before his revelation that he and Persephone are legally married, not because he's lying.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Aphrodite's thought on Hades and Persephone's relationship.

"Okay, so it's kind of a May/December-Romance-thing," she announced, (thinking silently it really looked more like a Lolita Complex, though that was centuries ahead of their time)...