amicablug

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I really love Penelope's portrayal in Epic: The Musical because even though she only has two songs she's such a strong character and parrallels her husband in so many ways. She also suffered for twenty years. She also never gave up on her partner. She's also cunning and a liar. The fact that the Siren's impression of Penelope is cheerful and non-confrontational and teasing but without any genuine love and when he actually meets the real one she lies to test whether it's really him and when it is immediately goes "Shut the fuck up, of course I still love you". I just think she's such a strong character and the musical does a good job making a relatively passive role more active. "I never thought that this would be the lengths we'd go for love, but I wouldn't have it any other way."

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The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.

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Imagine you're Odysseus. You've spent a decade, or two, or practically your whole life (depending on when you start counting) being tossed around between the gods, treated like a toy soldier, a chew toy, a doll. You've been played with for so long that you're ragged, dirty, smell like filth and blood. You don't know what you might've become without their hands on you: guiding your sword and your arrows, striking you, running over your body and groping you. It doesn't matter. You've fought back; you're free. You're safe now.

And then you see your son and feel your war goddess's influence, her sharp eyes and cruel hands. And you know then that you will never be truly free. She broke you. And now she's made your son her shiny new plaything.

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Hngrhrhrrhrhrhhrhrgfgrhdh

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it's meant to look like a mouth :3

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Only resolution for 2025 is MAXIMUM COMMITMENT TO MAXIMUM PLEASURE

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you're a fox caught in a trap and you know how this story ends. still, you cry and scratch at the steel; it doesn't flinch. you give up. you give up. you give up. you start biting, gnawing off your own leg with the desperate need to escape, knowing you have to sacrifice what once made you whole to get any part of you out. you taste blood. but there's no other way out.

home isn't that far away. you start walking. you move slowly. agonizingly. you leave a trail of red everywhere you go. you start limping faster, crying out in pain; you know they're coming for you: there are dangerous things in this woods, more dangerous that you were and far more than you are now, and they're going to hunt you down. you're alone. you're helpless.

suddenly, your legs give out. or you give out. you consider for a moment how nice it is here, with the sun on your face and leaves under your aching hip. you could stay. maybe you should stay. wait for something to find you. it would be quicker than continuing to struggle onward. you think about your leg, still stuck in that trap you led it into. you could join it, recombine yourself again. you could be whole again.

you get up.

you didn't think you were that far from home, but at the pace you're moving, it might take you until nightfall. if you make it back at all. you hit obstacle after obstacle: sharp, unsteady rocks that don't seem like they are in the same spots they were before, roots hidden under dense leaves, even the stream that had once been so manageable with a little cunning. you keep moving. you drag yourself through what you once danced around. it still hurts, but your phantom pains are fading. it feels like learning a new language. it feels like you might finally be okay, like maybe you're not even missing all that much.

you're home, and your son is holding a saw between his small paws. he puts it to his own leg and smiles at you.

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“Would fall in love with me again if you knew all I’ve done?”

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something that makes me soooo insane about telemachus in i can't help but wonder (and also in the wider context of epic the musical) is that telemachus says in i can't help but wonder,

"i can't help but wonder what your world must be / if we're like each other, if i have your strength in me / all this time i've wondered if you'd embrace me as your own"

because — for so much of his life, telemachus has probably been told stories about king odysseus, his father, cunning strategist, favored of athena, etc etc, and wanting to live up to that ("i know life and fate are scary, but i wanna be legendary!", "and i would fight them if i was half as strong as you" from legendary)

he has also spent so much of his life being terrorized, and watching his mother being terrorized, by suitors for her hand — and he probably thought "well, FATHER would be able to drive them off!"

and then odysseus does come. and he kills them all.

and. yes. father has finally returned. finally driven them off. but his father also had to save telemachus from melanthius, the one suitor who threatened to "break the kid's hands" to cow odysseus.

there must have been something in telemachus that thought, "ah. so you are exactly as legendary as everything i've ever heard about you, father. and i am...not."

reminder that, in we'll be fine, telemachus says that his time with athena has been the best day of his life "'cause [he] got in a fight and [he] didn't die" — that was probably his first ever fight.

plus, with the way the suitors mock him and speak about him, he's probably VERY AWARE that he is constantly compared to his father, and found lacking.

so of course he's thinking about how his legendary, cunning, kingly father might ALSO compare them, and might come to the same conclusions as everyone else. he might well decide that telemachus would not be WORTHY of being, to borrow telemachus' own words here, "embrace[d] as [odysseus'] own".

of course, odysseus has never once thought about his son as anything other than HIS — "my boy", "my son", "sweetest joy i've known", a driving force to getting him home in the horse and the infant ("penelope, telemachus, i'm on my way") and in keep your friends close where you can hear telemachus as one of the voices urging odysseus to keep his eyes open — but i wonder how long it would take telemachus to really believe that his father isn't disappointed in him, because he has spent TWENTY YEARS being put and putting himself in the shadow of this man — and it might even make him self conscious, that odysseus spent all that effort coming home to his Ideal Family™ only to be met with the reality of what they really are.

i firmly believe that to ody, the reality of his family will always be better than the "ideals" — and that probably ody's "idealized family" is literally just. whatever penelope and telemachus are like now.

but idk. it's just something i feel like they'd have to work through, now that odysseus IS home, and it is just such a consistent part of telemachus' character that i haven't really seen anyone discuss.

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cannot describe how excited i got when i read that you were doing wyfilwma i am so excited to see your personal interpretations of the characters again i am so excited to see ody look like a fucking ancient scraggly piece of driftwood that washed up on shore AUGHHH

I have simplified him,,, he cannot have too many lines of his face with be cluttered 😔 so now he looks like a kicked puppy it's a little funny

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happy late realisation to me but

in The Horse and The Infant, the tune Zeus gives his prophecy in is the same as the tune the sirens give their prophecy in (in suffering)

he will burn your house and throne // he will chase you high and low

he'll find you wherever you go // so find a place he'll never go

the gods will make him know // the one way you'll get homeeee

this is the will of the gods // it is the lair of Scylla

similar tune, slightly altered

which...

zeus' vocals are leading odysseus to his first sacrifice - the killing of Astyanax/Scamandrius.

and ody's terrified. he's begging. he doesn't want to do this, he's willing to think of so many alternatives - he doesn't want to end life uselessly. not a child. please, don't make me do this.

and that's his first contemplation, on the nature of man vs monster. the first time he even CONSIDERS himself as something other than just, and he's pleading with himself - he's just a man, just a man.

in contrast? suffering happens RIGHT after odysseus has fully embraced being a monster. he's just a man who wants to get home, and to do that, yeah. he'll become the monster.

the six sacrifices are done, if not easily, then willingly. he has truly become the king zeus expected, back then.

he did so much worse than dropping another infant from a wall - and he did it in an instant, so most of them don't die.

it's a PERFECT MIRROR.

oh my GOD.

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And this here is what we in the writing industry call "a display of hubris that may or may not have karmic consequences but is very, very fun".

[ID: a screenshot of white text on a black background reading "All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The sole exception for the ocean, the ocean is The Pacific Ocean from real life. If it is unhappy with its portrayal it can settle the matter personally." /end ID]

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And what if I cried?

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This camera pan was so well done omhggghhhhhh u cooked so hardd <33

Ehe thank you!! These were my favorite frames

Can I just say. Best grapes I've drawn in my life

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TrafficblrJam Interest Check

TrafficblrJam is a concept for a big bang/game jam style event, where you’re able to propose projects based around the Life Series, and match up with one or more people interested in that project. These do not have to be games, fics, or art pieces! A list of creative “categories” will be provided in the form, just as a jumping off point.

NSFW and RPF-based projects are allowed, where NSFW projects will be locked behind a role in the discord, and RPF-based projects must focus on Life Series creators.

If you're interested, please fill out the interest check, and follow this blog for updates!

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so many people hate eurylochus to like. an insane degree. because they think everything he does are acts of self preservation and it’s NOT it’s preservation of the CREW because he’s the voice of the crew RRRASWRRRR

odysseus, polities and eurylochus were such good buddies and worked so well together because odysseus lead them, polities kept high spirits (this makes him sound like a cheerleader. but like idk how else to describe it? he like encourages whimsy. idk.) and eurylochus kept both of them grounded so they wouldn’t do anything stupid. and it was perfect until polities died.

without polities, the crew couldn’t find the positives in odysseus going up to the island to meet with aeolus. it was only eurylochus arguing his opinion, which is, “don’t go, it’s stupid,” literally, physically grounding him. obviously this was going to sway the crew in his favour immensely. eurylochus is like 10x more approachable than odysseus to the crew. eury’s their buddy. ody is the champion of a goddess and their king. so not only does ody then not have that extra polities voice in the argument to help lead ody to a logical conclusion which benefits everyone, he is instead clashing with eurylochus and subsequently the rest of his crew. this pretty much goes the same way for most of the other disagreements they have for the rest of the journey.

eurylochus is also forced to fill in the space that polities left in supporting odysseus as he’s their captain, but he struggles with bridging the gap between seeing him as his captain/king and seeing him as his friend. which is why he switches between calling him, “captain/sir,” to “odysseus,” to “ody,” during mutiny, and then back to “captain.” it’s a verbalisation of his view on odysseus.

so when it comes to opening the windbag, the crew is already on edge about it. he went up alone after fighting with the closest friend he has left in the crew, refuses to open the bag, the winions are all telling them it’s treasure. and there is such a blatant lack of trust between them that likely wasn’t present before; ody would rather stay awake for nine days straight than trust eury not to open the bag. and eurylochus, being naturally mistrusting of gods and mythical creatures in general, would not trust the origins of this bag. he would not trust his friend’s behaviour to be true. he would likely make the connection that the wind bag is making him act like this, so he takes it from him and opens it. not mentioning the insane pressure from the crew he’s likely been put under.

so yeah. people love to paint him as this evil-doer that was trying to usurp odysseus from the beginning but the mutiny only happened because everyone could tell ody was losing himself to this whole “monster” thing, which is what they needed to get home with as many men as possible, but nobody else is likely going to fully realise that unless you sit them down and explain to them the whole process of the journey and explain every little detail in everything that happened. much less eurylochus who is, as established, very stubborn, and very mistrusting of things he does not understand. he didn’t think ody was fit to lead anymore; it wasn’t that he sacrificed six men to scylla, it’s that he just did it and didn’t think of any alternative plan. he didn’t consult anyone else, he just did it. eurylochus could see he was driving himself a little crazy over getting home to his wife. like i’m sure there would’ve been some people who would have volunteered to hold the torches if they all held a big meeting.

and then the cow. how does nobody realise killing helios’s cows is a suicide attempt? eurylochus knew they were going to die, he did not believe they were going to make it home, at least with the cows he can control it and at least his crew won’t die hungry.

anyways. this is a huge wall of text. i know eurylochus haters HATE to see me coming, i’m his no. 1 defender and apologist he does no wrong.

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