#EPIC Polyphemus

[fl0ral-ghost]

And ita done...(i think) all the drawings have been put together, now i just need to ink them and decorate the background page (my new years is gonna be fun) i wanna get a printed photo of all the saga covers together though and say this was like a work up towards the ithica saga maybe?

Im so tired but hers a video of all the characters on the page, sorry for the shaky hand, bad quality, if you can hear me breathing or if you can hear the bqckseat lovers playing in the background 😭 (please dont listen with sound i have asthma and im so sorey for the awkwardness of my breathing 😭😭)

[lazy-indigo]

Shepherd/Stayed back Polites

Okay so immediately, I feel the need to explain my Polyphemus design- I was gonna make him more like the depictions other Epic artists do, but after looking up a bundle of references for cyclops’ this general design kept appearing. After a while I finally thought it’d be interesting to lean in this direction since I never see it. Okie! General story time:

So in this version, Ody still shot the sheep, but before Polyphemus could drink the wine Polites interrupts and shows he aided the sheep. Therefore, it was still alive. Polyphemus is conflicted cause now his reason to kill the crew has vanished, but he still wants payback of some sort. So he settles on keeping Polites and letting the other men go. A few months into living there, Poseidon does eventually show up and is confused why this random man is here. But the two end up becoming friends and perchance even romantic >w> You will suffer my PosePoli propaganda whether ya like it or not. Ody and Eury do occasionally show up just to visit Polites, but it’s kinda rare.

Here are my most recent doodles of them:

And then doodles from whenever I first made the au:

[bestiainfinita]

EPIC: The Musical; List of Actors and Characters:

Odysseus = Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans

Zeus = Luke Holt

Eurylochus = Armando Julián

Polites = Steven Dookie

- Crew = Cast of EPIC: The Musical / EPIC Ensemble ;

Elpenor = Luke Holt

Perimides = Ayron Alexander

Soldier 1 = Troy Doherty

Soldier 2 = Earl Greshman Jr.

* Soldier 3 = Armando Julián

* Soldier 4 = Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans

- Winions = Cast Of EPIC: The Musical / EPIC Ensemble ;

Princess Winion = Diana Rivera-Herrans

Winion 1 = Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans

Athena = TE/MO / Teagan Earley

Polyphemus = Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans

- Cyclops = Cast of EPIC: The Musical ;

Cyclops 1 = Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans

Aeolus = Kira Beth Stone

Penelope = Anna Lea Casey

Telemachus = MICO / José Miguel Veloso

Poseidon = Steven Rodriguez

- Laestrygonians = Cast of EPIC: The Musical

Circe = Talya Sindel

Hermes = Troy Doherty

Anticlea = Wanda Herrans

Tiresias = Mason Olshavsky

- Sirens = Cast of EPIC: The Musical

Siren-elope = Anna Lea Casey

Scylla = KJ Burkhauser

Calypso = Barbara Wangui

Antinous = Ayron Alexander

- Suitors = Cast of Epic: The Musical ;

Eurymachus = {Unknown}

Amphinomus = {Unknown}

Melanthius = {Unknown}

Apollo = Brandon McInnis

Hephaestus = Mike Rivera

Aphrodite = Janani Krishnan-Jha

Ares = Earl Gresham Jr.

Hera = POESY / Sarah Botelho

- Ensemble = Cast of Epic: The Musical / EPIC Ensemble

[bambiilooza]

he was doing a silly voice too

[shinedoitsulikeabright]

Manwhore AU headcanon

I like to believe Manwhore Ody got home shortly after the war ended because he didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit that canon Ody has to deal with.

Like imagine: if only he seduced his way out of the whole Polyphemus situation, he wouldn't have pissed off Poseidon, meaning he would've got home pretty much immediately.

I'm not even saying he had to fuck Poly (he'd die), but he could've used his babygirl looks or something. Be like "I'm sorry about your sheep, pookie *bats eyelashes*", but no. He just had to abandon all reason and blind the cyclops before telling him his full legal name and address.

[the-mori-arty]

Epictober Day 6: Polyphemus

“You killed my sheep… my favorite sheep…”

HOW IRONIC I FINISHED THIS JUST AS JORGE RELEASED THE VENGEANCE SAGA TRAILER

If anyone is curious, I wanted to make sure my epic monsters actually looked… well… monstruous. I didnt want to do the tradicional cyclop: big man with one eye. I wanted something animalistic, and being Polyphemus a son of Poseidon I thought “why not a marine animal?”

And then it hit me: SEA TURTLES. Big sea turtle with cyclopy (common in turtles actually). Hell yeah.

[l-bubee-l]

•|Papaseidon|•

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Bro the type of dad to treat your wounds and accidentally place the sticky part of the band-aid directly over it instead of the padded part.

—

[rinkudonuts]

Odysseus please stop saying these jokes to his children I beg 😭

[bugbear55]

“mercy saga” au

Back on my bullshit,

CYCLOPS SAGA

the cyclops saga begins with the song Polyphemus.

Odysseus and his men enter the cave that the lotus eaters directed them to. Odysseus shoots one of the sheep within the cave, and a cyclops enters and blocks the exit with a boulder. The cyclops, Polyphemus, is furious that they entered his home and killed his friend. Odysseus offers him wine (that is heavily drugged with lotus fruit) in return for their exit. Polyphemus agrees, but is enraged when he tastes the lotus.

Then, Survive and Remember Them.

The cyclops attacks. He swings his club and kills several of the men, including Perimedes, who is too slow and still under the effects of the Lotus. Odysseus, believing the bloodied mess to be Polites, is stunned by the loss of his friend.

Polyphemus eventually passes out from the drugged wine, and they blind him by sharpening his club into a spear.

Athena tells Odysseus to kill Polyphemus after they’ve escaped with his sheep, and Odysseus complies. Before Polyphemus’ death, he reveals his name and title. Using his last breath, Polyphemus calls out for his father to avenge him.

The cyclops saga ends with My Goodbye.

Athena urges Odysseus to make a sacrifice to Poseidon, since they will be sailing home on his waves and they failed to sacrifice before leaving Troy. Odysseus, grief stricken and spiteful, refuses, claiming the god of the sea has not helped them. Athena is disgruntled by his ignorant and prideful refusal, and leaves.

Next up…

The Ocean Saga

feel free to send in asks about the au by the way! :)

[s0lar5ystems]

Polyphemus when they killed his sheep (his favourite sheep):

(what gives them the right to deal a pain so deep)

[calciumyum]

Comifuro 19 Day 2 goers, if you see me in my Polites cosplay don't forget to say hi!! I'm gonna give out these stickers for people who recognize my cosplay :D

[rin-solo]

Let's talk about "Monster" ... and one of Odysseus' criminally underrated traits: his lack of judgment.

I was re-listening to "Monster" the other day and it kind of just hit me... Overall, that song isn't my favorite (it's somewhere in B tier; the lyricism is great, and the part after "So if we must sail through dangerous oceans..." absolutely slaps, it's just not one that I go back to frequently.) But there are some things I genuinely adore about it because I adore the way it progresses Odysseus' character arc as clearly not a "corruption" and how this is conveyed through the way the song is set up and presented.

First of all, I simply have to yap about how Odysseus isn't justifying his foes' actions the way that I have seen some people falsely assume. He's describing what they did or do and essentially saying, "They aren't letting themselves be stopped by guilt from doing what they think they have to do, so why should I?"

Polyphemus doesn't overthink whether it's right or wrong to kill some people because they harmed him or his sheep.

Circe may deep down feel guilt but isn't letting that stop her from turning men into pigs to prevent any more harm from befalling her nymphs at their hands.

Poseidon isn't losing sleep over drowning a fleet because that is what gods do to retain their infamy and status.

Odysseus and the rest of his soldiers didn't use the Trojan horse tactic out of malice or bloodlust, but out of pragmatism. It was the most efficient way to win a war that would have only cost more lives on both sides if they hadn't ended it then and there.

You look at that and you may think, "That's all very fair, but that doesn't mean any of those actions are justified" ... and you'd be right. None of the actions above are actually right or justified.

But the thing about "Monster" that I love so much is that it's specifically NOT something like, "These people I've encountered are all evil and ruthless and they are right and justified in being that way; I'll be the same." It's actually, "These people I've encountered act with ruthlessness; it clearly aids them in achieving their goal, and they seem to have figured out how to not feel guilt over their actions. I want to reap those benefits too. So far, I've been acting with mercy, which seems to have disadvantaged me. If they can do it, I can and should do the same to level the playing field."

Odysseus isn't saying that their actions are right, wrong, or justified. He's simply exploring why these people act the way they do. And he does so entirely without judgment.

I'm not surprised about him not judging Circe; while she was still wrong since she went overboard and struck preemptively against people who were not guaranteed to ever cause harm, she was pretty much redeemed in the end and her point is the easiest out of these to understand.

But the rest? Polyphemus killed his best friend. Poseidon drowned his whole fleet. The Trojan horse? It never comes up anywhere else but since he mentions it here, I think it's safe to assume that Odysseus feels guilty for using a tactic such as this. And still... Odysseus talks about his foes' actions with understanding and an open mind. He acknowledges their points of view—all of them, even if none besides Circe ever acknowledged or understood his.

The only time we genuinely see Odysseus act out of resentment is when he tells Polyphemus his name... After that, he never shows anything of the sort ever again. If he ever held any resentment toward any of his foes, I feel like this is where he lets it go for good.

Hell, even Poseidon, whom he would have by far the most reasons to resent, Odysseus doesn't actually judge or resent. I wrote a whole mini-essay on why the Vengeance saga proves that Odysseus doesn't actually seek or want vengeance on Poseidon. One might argue that he sounded like he was avenging his crew in "Six Hundred Strike" but it's important to remember that he offered Poseidon forgiveness one song earlier. He didn't lead with vengeance or resentment, but he rekindled his anger when Poseidon rejected his mercy.

My point is that Odysseus doesn't judge or resent any of the people who attempt to stand between him and his home... which shows incredible character strength in and of itself. This occurs later, but he acts similarly toward Calypso in "Not Sorry for Loving You" as well.

This is such an underrated trait of his, especially considering it fits perfectly with EPIC's themes, which revolve around seeing every perspective and balancing between ruthlessness and mercy. Honestly, I don't think those themes would even work with a protagonist who isn't so open-minded.

Coming back to "Monster," as we've established, Odysseus doesn't pass judgment on his foes. Similarly, he isn't saying that his decision to embrace ruthlessness and "become" a Monster (read more to find out why I put that in quotation marks) or any of his future actions as this Monster are justified.

I genuinely despise it when people call his arc a "villain arc" or "corruption" because that's pretty much missing the entire point. He isn't actually becoming a monster, corrupting, or genuinely changing his personality—hence why I put those quotation marks earlier. He is deliberately choosing to embrace a certain ruthless way of acting, fully knowing that it is not actually right or justified. "So what if I'm the Monster?" is self-gaslighting. He knows it's not "so what?" But he's doing it anyway because he has seen this way of acting aiding his foes. He literally says, "I must become the Monster / And then we'll make it home." He is convinced that this is what he must become because he keeps being told this by everyone.

From the top, his values or person isn't actually being corrupted. He's not really internally changing. He's merely adapting a way of behaving because he thinks it's the only way he'll still get home, and only because of that. It's really f*cking sad actually. Especially because he is wrong; his not being ruthless is not actually the problem, as we find out later.

Genuinely, his monster act lasted exactly 3,5 songs; in the second half of "Mutiny" it's already all gone because he is so afraid for his crew and what they're about to do to themselves that he instinctively goes back to wanting to save them despite how they just led a mutiny, despite how they don't listen to him regarding the cows.

Odysseus' entire arc can be described as, "He tries out mercy, and it doesn't get him home. He tries out ruthlessness, and it doesn't get him home either. In order to get home, he needs to learn balance, in Hermes' words "Every trick in his domain"." And that is also, as I believe, the main theme of EPIC: Neither ruthlessness nor mercy by itself is the solution. Both have their place; one needs balance. Or: treat people as they ask to be treated.

Only by the time of the Vengeance saga does Odysseus seem to have finally figured this out, and that's where he genuinely starts succeeding.

So no, Odysseus is no longer "The Monster" by the time of the Vengeance saga, no matter how much the visuals in "Six Hundred Strike" try to convince us otherwise. But he isn't "Just a Man" either. Did anyone besides me notice how he stopped calling himself this or justifying his weak moments like that in "Monster" and how he doesn't go back to it even after dropping the monster act?

And here we have the perfect segway into an essay I haven't written yet that might answer the question, "If now he's not a man and not a monster, what is he then?"

Well, technically Odysseus told us himself that one time he acted out of resentment... "Neither man nor mythical." But that's an essay yet to be written... I'll get to it soon, and there we might answer what actually happened in "Six Hundred Strike" and why the line "If you dance with fate I know you'll enhance your state", that I see is mostly overlooked, matters so much more than we probably all think.

Until then, know that I am not actually the first one to address the "Neither man nor mythical" significance. Credit goes to @glisten-inthedark; coming across her post on this matter genuinely enhanced my understanding of what happened so much and I need all of you to read it because it's a truly brilliant conclusion. I'll write my own essay on this topic soon, I promise. But without that post, I would've probably not come to this realization for a long while.

Either way, we end this essay with words that I will never tire of repeating: Stop villainizing Odysseus, y'all. It's not cool, not only because it's undeserved but also because it pretty much shows that you have successfully missed the point and core theme of this musical.

... See you when we inspiration for another essay strikes me. In the meantime, have a brief introduction to what that essay will cover in meme form because I can.

[thenerdperson]

So I was listening with my partner to Epic: The Musical and was thinking about Poseidon defending Polyphemus in Ruthlessness, and how in Epic and in most media in general Polyphemus is the bad guy, but still Poseidon still defends and gets revenge for his son.

So I was thinking in Percy Jackson, I know there are multiple moments throughout the book series Percy questions if he's meant to become a monster because 9/10 of Poseidon's kids if they don't literally look like monsters they become monsters internally. I mean there is Antaeus (Battle of the Labyrinth), Charybdis a literal monster, Procrustes (AKA Crusty from Lightning Thief), Chrysaor (Mark of Athena), Sciron (House of Hades), and Theseus, are all examples from just the Percy Jackson series of examples of Poseidon's children being monstrous and Percy wrestling with that.

I wonder if Percy ever receives an odd sort of comfort, knowing that even if he should become monstrous, give into his darker thoughts, or even rejected by the rest of the godly/half-blood community, that his father, no matter the argument if Poseidon is a good father or not, will side with his son. It doesn't matter that Polyphemus was in the wrong or not, Poseidon ensured Odysseus payed for his actions against his son tenfold. Would Poseidon not do much worse for Percy?

Just, Poseidon defending his son, and if he cannot defend, then revenge.

[2r4d1k4l]

"take from you like you took from me"

POLYPHEMUS IN FACT DID TAKE FROM ODYSSEUS IN THE EXACT SAME WAY.

THEY KILLED POLYPHEMUS' FAVORITE SHEEP, SO POLYPHEMUS KILLED ODYSSEUS' FAVORITE SHEEP (POLITES)

IM GONNA THROW MYSELF DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS OMG.

[yinmndragon]

I came to yap about EPIC: the Musical

In Survive while fighting Polyphemus Odysseus sings "600 lives at stake, it's just one life to take" saying that no matter who dies the more lives that are saved the better

However in Thunder bringer he choses his own life instead of 42 lives of his crew which shows that he has in fact become someone else who's completely different from who he used to be

And I think that's just so smart and so poetic

[ratshully]

MORE GOOBERS AAAA I LOVE THEMM ignore how badly they’re out of scale 💀💀

also i started storyboarding (in word form) for a scylla and mutiny animatic ‼️‼️