#I GOT FUCKING RICKROLLED

[owwi]

MOTHER FUCKER-

[smilerri]

many thoughts about epic: the musical...

i am once again in the middle of essay writing but plautus is boring and my friend introduced me to this album so u already know I binged the entire thing

(quick warning for spoilers of homer's odyssey? if that's necessary?? man idk whatever)

first thoughts naturally concerned odysseus. i have hated this man with a burning passion ever since I started studying classics - i think he is irredeemably selfish, a liar masquerading as a 'resourceful hero,' and basically just a twat all around. that being said, i respect that epic is not an exact replica. in fact, i like that about it!

readings of odysseus as a loving husband and father, and a man who cares deeply for his crew and fellow warriors is one i would love to see reflected in the source text (though i admit i have only read two different translations so far, so this is subject to change depending on translators choice!), if only because it would be so so refreshing. and epic does that extremely well! i find epic's odysseus to be far more likeable, insofar as he is fueled not by greed for glory (kleos for the nerds out there) but rather the desire to return to his wife and son. (I personally would argue that, while homer's odysseus is indeed fueled by a desire for homecoming (nostos), it is not for the sake of penelope and telemachus, but rather concern over the security of his status and position within the household (oikos))

i also very much enjoy that the love he holds for his family is not an inherently positive trait. in the aeneid, and often in myth, it is achilles' son, neoptolemus/pyrrhus who kills the son of hector and andromache, astyanax by throwing him from the walls of troy - less common, it is odysseus (which i did not know until i googled it just now oops). homer's odysseus does not reject the gods. he is beloved by some, hated by others - he receives their boons and curses as they come. he revels in the attention of the divine, no matter positive or negative, for it is proof of his kleos. epic's odysseus is so much more... human. he doesn't vie for glory that reaches the skies. if anything, he rues it. in the horse and the infant he supplicates himself to (who i assume is) zeus - which is such a loaded act i am genuinely struggling to think of how to articulate it, but boy am I gonna try my darndest.

the act of supplication and guest-friendship (xenia) is a very key theme within the odyssey, and to a point in the iliad also - essentially, if a traveller were to arrive at your doorstep, you were obliged to let them in and provide food, drink, and lodgings to that traveller, no questions asked. in return (because reciprocity is VERY important in homer especially), the guest would provide entertainment, tales of their travels, etc, and would be respectful of their host. the patron of these travellers was zeus. any violation of these terms, on part of the guest or host, would be met with divine scorn. for odysseus to supplicate himself to zeus is therefore meta as hell, but I would instead bring attention to the echoing lyric "hes bringing you down to your knees." 'he,' assumedly, is astyanax. his father, hector, is dead; as is his grandfather, priam, and all of priam's other sons. at this point, one could assume that it is astyanax who is ruling troy, who is now the host of the city that odysseus, a traveller from another land, has entered and ransacked. zeus' 'prophecy' of astyanax growing old and seeking revenge (reciprocity! homeric greece had a 'revenge culture' - essentially 'an eye for an eye' as well as 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours,' though not always so clear-cut), therefore, would be odysseus' punishment for violating the terms of xenia.

supplication, however, is not limited to guest-friendship alone. for example, in odyssey 22, when odysseus slaughters the suitors occupying his home (is that spoilers?), their priest leodes supplicates himself at odysseus' feet, begging to be spared. odysseus takes his head from his neck in an instant. odysseus' kneeling before astyanax, therefore, is no simple act between a guest and his host - perhaps he is begging the infant for mercy, for forgiveness, or perhaps he is positioning himself for punishment; in killing astyanax, odysseus accepts his own death. perhaps this means his fate (which, in case of homeric epic, refers to the time and manner of one's death), or perhaps it is a part of him that has died. in just a man, odysseus asks "when does a man become a monster?" his killing astyanax prevents the boy from ever becoming a man, and spares him from a life fueled only by revenge and the need to regain his glorious birthright, and it turns him into a monster. just as he says he would, he trades in the world where he is 'just a man' for a world where he is a cruel beast, all for sake of his family.

(quick detour but i really like how odysseus' focus is primarily on penelope rather than telemachus. [insert deadbeat dad joke here], but in reality, he doesn't even know the boy. penelope he chose to marry and fall in love with - it's no question that he loves telemachus, but after ten years, it is only natural that he would miss his beautiful, tricky wife with more fervour than the child he never had the chance to love. it shows he is imperfect, even illogical - the son is the father's entire legacy. just as odysseus is 'son of laertes', so will telemachus be 'son of odysseus', the protector of his immortal heroic legacy. yet it is penelope whom odysseus yearns for.)

(another detour but "i'm just a man" is such a juicy lyric, because the entire message of homer's odyssey is that odysseus is not any man - he is a man that the muses deem worthy to inspire great poets to compose epic poems that persist through thousands of years and a million different voices - a hero. but epic's odysseus is not that hero. he is a man, trying to go home, craving comfort and the warmth of the hearth. these 'flaws' humanise him more than homer's odysseus could ever imagine.)

skipping over to polyphemus, odysseus violates xenia once again by killing polyphemus' sheep, albeit unwittingly. homer makes this violation very obvious - odysseus and crew eat polyphemus' cheese and wine while polyphemus tends to his sheep, knowing that the cave is obviously inhabited, and they even wait for polyphemus to return to ask for more. it is worth noting as well that, at this point, odysseus and crew are still jubilant about their victory, and unlike in epic, these 'detours' are purposeful, specifically so that odysseus can scope out the islands for anything of interest he can snatch and add to his spoils of war, adding to his kleos by means of physical wealth (timē) - which makes odysseus' offer of treasure to appease polyphemus all the more baffling in epic. this odysseus is a leader who prioritises the lives of his men over his own kleos, which makes the final lines - "you shall be the final man to die" // "what?" // "watch out!" - all the more heartbreaking. he wants to protect his men, so that they too may return to their families back on ithaca; the prospect of watching them die before his eyes after he already witnessed so many lose their lives in battle must be so utterly terrifying.

polyphemus is so excellently creepy as well! i loved him in the odyssey - this was where I really started to dislike odysseus, actually. he's a cyclops, obviously inhuman, yet he rears sheep and makes cheese and wine and weaves wicker baskets to keep them in, trying to play at humanity. i really did sympathise with him from the first time I read it. epic's polyphemus is similar, so very calm in his anger yet ruthless all the same, and demonstrates great restraint in comparison to his counterpart in the odyssey, who gets filthy drunk after mashing six men dead and allows odysseus+co. to fashion a stake with which to blind him. much of the violence against polyphemus, as well as the violation of xenia in homer's odyssey is 'excused' by the fact that polyphemus is a 'barbarian', to whom concepts of civilised people do not belong.

(very quick detour but polyphemus' first admonishment of odysseus - "you killed my sheep" up to "take from you like you took from me" - makes such heartbreaking parallels to astyanax's murder and the sack of troy. it almost provides a visualisation of the guilt that odysseus must still be battling. i would have loved to have been in his brain when he heard polyphemus say that.)

the mercy odysseus shows polyphemus is particularly interesting - homer's odysseus leaves him alive and tells him his name purely so that his name will spread and his kleos will grow. but epic's odysseus, despite his conviction to kill in survive and to avenge is fallen comrades in remember them, spares him. in part, this is to assure them an escape, so that the cyclops' giant body does not block their exit - but athena's interruption makes clear that this is not all. she criticises him, remarks "he is still a threat until he's dead." no doubt this calls back to zeus' warnings about astyanax, hence his refusal (or inability?) to commit to slaughter. for a homeric greek hero to allow a foe to live on after his allies had been slaughtered is a grave failure of reciprocity, casting shame on both the hero and their enemy. homer's odysseus escapes this with his reputation intact, since as a result polyphemus curses him to face poseidon's wrath - as I mentioned, for a hero, even negative attention from the gods is a good thing as it proves that their reputation/glory is known all over, even in olympus. but, as we have established, epic's odysseus cares not for kleos. the decision to tell polyphemus his name is entirely impulsive and irrational, grieving his comrades, hence athena's outrage.

the relationship between athena and odysseus is founded entirely on the principles they share, described in warrior of the mind (if anyone can lmk whereabouts this song fits in the timeline I will be so grateful, I'm stupid unfortunately :/). they value wisdom, reason, and rationality over brute strength and bloodlust. epic's athena becomes odysseus' patron goddess with the goal to "make a greater tomorrow" and "change the world" - aspirations that are entirely foreign to any homeric god. gods in homer do not care about the wellbeing of humans unless they are directly related to them, and they certainly don't care about the wellness of humanity as a whole. humans are toys and tools of the gods. the amount that athena cares for odysseus, even in the odyssey, is unusual, demonstrative of how much she cares for him, yet epic makes their comradery more obvious, even going as far as to (tentatively) call them friends. my goodbye frames athena's anger as disappointment at an experiment failed - calling back to warrior of the mind, where she claims to have "designed" him - but odysseus' replies to her makes clear that it is far more personal. perhaps, to her, odysseus acting so irrationally is even a betrayal; odysseus is abandoning the principles of reason they both once held and thus is forsaking all that they once shared and that she, as the goddess of wisdom, stands for.

ive always considered athena to be a very interesting goddess. she is a patron of both war, which in homer is only carried out by men, and weaving, the traditional work of women within the household - her very nature is a contradiction of masculine and feminine. although it is ares who is considered the 'black sheep' of the olympians for his brutality in war, epic's portrayal of athena through odysseus' lens paints her as lonely and ostracised - "since you claim you're so much wiser // why's your life spent all alone? // you're alone." It is clear that odysseus here does not view her as his patron at all, rather as a friend - and to that she takes offence, because she is a goddess, eternal and all-powerful. she does not need friendship or comradery; those are mortal concerns alone. personally, I see epic's athena as incredibly insecure. she cuts odysseus off because she cannot bare that a mortal has been able to read her so clearly, to see all the ugly parts of herself that she keeps hidden to retain the facade of the perfect goddess. she knows the paradox within herself - warrior and woman, immortal and alone - and rues that odysseus was able to see it as well. the cruellest part, the most ironic, is that his being able to figure out the true, imperfect nature of a god shows that he has not abandoned the path of the warrior of the mind. in fact, his wisdom extends beyond mortality into the realm of the divine. but athena is blinded by her anger and insecurity, and she says her goodbyes. she disappears from there, only to appear again to try to warn odysseus of his crew opening the bag of winds given to him by aeolus in keep your friends close, once again demonstrating her care for him, despite her anger.

the amount that odysseus cares for his crew is demonstrated time and again throughout the album, yet in the end, he still slowly loses their trust. aeolus' winds are the first sign. his crew betrays his orders upon the first whisper on the wind that he might be keeping treasure from them. the next sign, in puppeteer, is eurylochus' confession upon arrival to aeaea (circe's island), which odysseus brushes off, much as he brushed off eurylochus' concerns in luck runs out. then, in a matter of moments, 600 men are reduced to forty by the wrath of poseidon - which in itself is a significant change. while odysseus in epic is explicitly blamed for failing to kill polyphemus, homer's odysseus takes no responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of his men. it happens when they arrive at telepylos, which, unbeknownst to them, is home to the laestrygonians, a race of cannibalistic giants. odysseus, apparently sensing something off (who tf does he think he is, spiderman?), allows his entire fleet to enter the bay of telepylos while his ship alone remains outside - and when those ships are attacked and trapped, he alone takes his single ship and escapes, allowing twelve ships of men to be ripped apart and eaten by cannibals. an act which he shows no remorse for.

in my interpretation of homer's odyssey, it is this slowly slipping trust that eventually leads to his men ignoring his warnings and feasting on the cows of helios which leads to the deaths of all his remaining crew, including eurylochus and polites (spoilers? idk). so, once epic: the musical catches up to book 12 of the odyssey you WILL be seeing me again I hope ur excited.

there is definitely more i could say here, especially about the circe saga bcs ohhh my god I love circe and I love this circe especially (a female character with actual motive other than being a victim? homer could never) but unfortunately I'm running out of steam and I do in fact have 3 essays due this month (help) so I will probably return to this later !! hopefully its readable bcs I'm not going back to edit any of this ;)

[condraws]

red markets moved into the first few games of our communist train enclave getting on it's tracks! gnomies has a new look and a new crew, and the same old stinky attitude

[small-world-au]

Never gonna give you up.

AY MIERDA!!!!!! WTF!!!?????

ENSERIO WEY!!!???!!!

[void-tiger]

…wonder if being silly and trying to coax someone else to be silly is what makes me attractive? (Even when it’s honestly a defense mechanism on my part… thumbing my nose. Being belligerent to norms. Norms have always made itchy and depressed and anxious so I Ain’t Doin’ That Anymore, Deal With It.)

[cyclonicflame]

Huh.

Well played.

[trollmaniac]

youtu.be/6plVf2T6AOo

WHAT IS THAT MELODY??!?!???!!! 🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🗣️

[deep-hearts-core]

just got rickrolled by the fucking barbershop harmony society

[fenrhi]

MY FAMILY-IN-LAW IS PLAYING NEVER GIVE YOU UP

[radicalfantasydwarfs]

there is no way this is real.

Your gender is now the first randomized wikipedia article you get. No rerolls.

[inkystaar]

OH MY GOD YOUR BLOG IS SO CUTE THE HEADER IMAGE AND THE BASE COLOR BEING THE SAME IS SO COOL AHDGSGAJDGDH

OH OH HI HI HI HI THANJ YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH ANON

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[canonically47]

the misinformation on stranger things twitter when season 4 was just coming out was INSANE. fake scripts and interviews left and right, people claiming actors said this and that, and some idiots were even saying stancy is better than jancy 💀 crazy stuff 😭🙏🏼

[gusujay]

Mother of god how could you do this

can you guys take my uquiz

[theamazingannie]

My least favorite part of April Fool’s Day (aside from jump scares) is when people say something dumb af online and when people call them out on it they’re like “check the date idiot” as if people aren’t legitimately interested asking like that every other day of the year. Idk you personally how tf am I supposed to know you’re doing a bit???