#Odysseus gives up

[sera8273]

*Odysseus is still on the raft which is slowly sailing towards…somewhere as Ody is seen laying down in a spread eagle position.*

Hermes:*Tight smile* Hey Buddy! I just wanted to check up on you, see how you’re doing.

Ody:*Blinks, his breathing normal*

Hermes:*Uncomfy* Well, uhm, I see that you’re not following the North Star like I asked.

Ody:*Blinks*

Hermes:*Tilts head in concern*

Ody:*Monotone* wanna hear somthing absolutely insane?

Hermes:*Sighs in defeat* Sure buddy.

Ody:….

Hermes:….

Ody:*Monotone mumble* Sumting absotely inane.

Hermes:*Pats his broken grandson shoulder* Ok bud.

———-LATER————-

Athena:Yeah no we broke him,

Hermes:You made him into another you! An emotionally constipated sleep deprived mess!

Athena:Hey- ya know what I deserve that…

Hermes:But you two!

Poseidon/Zeus:Uhm…

Hermes:*Growls* Oh don’t get me started on you two did to him…

Poseidon/Zeus:Shitshitshitshtishtisthri-

Hermes:ĞĚŤ BÃČĶ ĦÈŘË!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Five foot something and he's royalty.

[somereaderinblue]

Odysseus: We're ignoring most of our problems.

Ares: I know.

Odysseus: We also know it's an unhealthy coping mechanism?

Ares: We're ignoring that fact as well.

[artiquar]

my dear penelope, we've twenty lost years of love to make up for.

[nikoisme]

If The Iliad and/or The Odyssey ever became a 2d animated cartoon, Odysseus should look like this

[zarnzarn]

Odysseus' wife owns a gold chain.

The first week they were together after he returned, she'd slithered it out of its box when he was distracted, holding it up in the dim lamplight.

"You left my sight today," She snarls, beautiful in her fury. Insane and flawed and real and his.

"For ten minutes," he reminds her fondly. "To help bring in a sack of grain."

"Too long," She declares, voice choking up with tears. He reaches up to wipe at her waterline, heart aching. "Leave such things to other people."

"My darling wife, so strong," Odysseus coos. "You know that you ask the impossible. But I can see you have an idea?"

Penelope grins again, almost cruel, and lays the chain across his chest, heavy and glinting. "It is designed to be inescapable. Unbreakable. It will not let you walk even past the sands of our shoreline, let alone the docks."

His stomach swoops in excitement and some stirring form of arousal.

"I was going to clamp it on your wrists when you were sleeping," She says casually. "But now I find I want you to look as I shut it upon you."

Another man would have started shouting. Pushed her off, threatened her with a sword; a sane one would go running for the hills.

Odysseus smiles. Cocks a brow. "Wrists?"

-

The King of Ithaka, they say, has chains around his feet like a common slave.

It echoes in the palace like a dancer's anklets, tinkling and rustling when he walks around his home laughing with his son, when he makes official trips to the markets and to the goat festivals, when he comes to eat.

It is on him when he teaches the children of Ithaka to spar, somehow never an impediment for the crafty king, only a tool to be used against them. He can run faster than his own son even with them on, although Prince Telemachus is growing into his own terrifying capabilities at an astounding rate with every passing day, and many already fear his beauty and his wit.

("Huh. Mom get you those?" Telemachus says on the first day. Odysseus idly wonders if he should be worried about the utter lack of surprise on his son's face, and what it implied about Penelope's parenting and ruling skills.

"Yes," He says, pulling him into a side-embrace and kissing him on the forehead. Telemachus relaxes into his arms like a kitten and he smiles warmly. "I don't think she quite plans to let me out of them."

"Yeah, sounds like mom," His son yawns. "You should get someone to make sure it doesn't chafe, though.")

The King wears them even when nobles and dignitaries come to visit, of which there are many. Never bats an eye at their cries of astonishment and outrage, like he has accepted already that he will be in them forever.

"My wife doesn't want me to leave the island," He says jokingly, when someone whispers concerns and questions to him. "Hence, the chains!"

For a week, perhaps, an outsider to the island could consider it stress, a story to laugh at later once the fear had passed. But the Queen of Ithaka shows no signs of telling her husband to take them off, and everyone in Greece who was left to her tender mercies for twenty years knows better than to trust her placid, warm smile enough to confront her about the madness. They rule together now, and the chains remain on in some horrific perversion of royalty, even as they lean into each other and whisper and giggle like infatuated youngsters.

His comrades from Troy, when they come, shout in outrage, drawing their swords, but are quickly reassured by the people of Ithaka themselves, who point out the way the King never complains about them, visibly melts whenever his wife possessively tangles one of her own feet in the chains to pull it shorter at their stares, looking at her with nothing but adoration.

("Are you truly fine with it?" Hermes is the only one to ask, and get a true answer. His ankle-wings flutter in uncomfortable nervousness whenever the chain clinks- if it can hold one of his blood, it can most likely hold Hermes himself, too- and Odysseus knocks his head into the other's shoulder reassuringly.

"I am," He says truthfully. "It keeps her calm, and it keeps me happy- to belong. To choose being tied up, rather than being forced."

"It sounds horrific and I do not understand it or you in the slightest," Hermes replies cheerfully, ruffling his hair. "But to each their own, I suppose.")

The only time the King of Ithaka is let out of his chains is in the early morning, when the sun is still down and no one can see them.

Penelope and Odysseus both enjoy their baths, and he lies back on their bed after, still dripping with water, and lifts his feet in the air seductively. Penelope strokes his legs lovingly, pressing a kiss to his calloused ankles before unmercifully clamping the chains shut once more.

(Athena comes in once during this moment, swooping in silently through the window. Odysseus meets her eyes over Penelope's shoulder, and for a moment the mad thrill of it all recedes at her knowing gaze.

She raises a judgemental eyebrow, questioning. He gives her a small smile and shrugs the best he can without tipping Penelope off.

She shakes her head, a fond smile on her lips, and makes her way closer. Penelope's breath catches as Athena places a hand on her shoulder and she looks up sharply at their patron, some vestige of scared guilt passing over her face. Vulnerable.

Odysseus knows that it is only Athena and Athena alone who Penelope will listen to, if the goddess tells her to take the chains off. His wife braces herself, as if preparing for an argument, but he knows Athena can see just as well as he how deeply their separation hurt Penelope, why he agrees day after day to let her put them on, indulges in her possessive madness- although his agreement doesn't really factor in here much, he knows.

Athena studies the both of them once more, and then smirks. "You should get him the full set.")

Odysseus' wife owns a gold chain.

Years have passed, and he still thinks her smile is at its most beautiful when she tightens it around his feet.

[chengchengj]

''Odysseus cheated on his wife'' My first reaction is: you don't know how to differentiate sex from rape and it's disgusting.

[the-storyteller78]

I've seen a lot of people here debating over whether Athena heard Odysseus' pleas for help all throughout those ten years and ignored him until she finally admitted they were friends OR legitimately did not hear him calling for her.

Thus, I'm here to offer my totally unsolicited opinion (as usual lol) and suggest that maybe Athena did the mythological deity equivalent of putting her notifications from Odysseus on do-not-disturb and then promptly forgot about it for a while until she came to terms with the fact that, yes, she and her sad, sopping little rag of a mentee were indeed friends and wow isn't that odd, I haven't heard from him in a while, only to then realize that he's been trying to contact her nonstop for seven years and she just never heard him because of a petty fluff-you decision she made way back when.

[gingermintpepper]

Okay, let's finally talk about EPIC's Apollo

I feel very compelled to say, first of all, that I do not dislike Epic. In fact, I am very fond of Epic and have been following its production and status very eagerly! I attend all the launch streams, I watch all of Herrans' update videos; I am, at the end of the day, a fan and I want it to be known that my words are spoken out of love and passion as much as they are spoken from a place of critique.

So really, what my problem with Epic's Apollo?

In the briefest possible terms; the choice to have Apollo be defined by his musical aspect in God Games is thematically strange. And not in the 'oh well in the Odyssey, Apollo was important to Odysseus and his family so it's weird that that wasn't kept in Epic' strange, strange in the sense that Odysseus' character arc since My Goodbye has been getting more and more obviously Apollonian and so it is positively bizarre that when we get to meet Apollo, the god seems entirely disinterested in him and his affairs. So much so that he is not even defined by any station that would indicate that he has been watching over and protecting Odysseus and his family.

What do I mean by 'Odysseus has been following an Apollonian arc'? I'm so glad you asked!

Remember Them is the last song in which Odysseus explicitly uses his sword until Mutiny where he must use it to defend himself against Eurylochus' blade. He uses it to help enact the plan to conquer Polyphemus and, due to Polites dying in that battle, Polites who wished for Odysseus to put the blade down entirely and embrace a post-war life, Odysseus also retires his sword. This is an action that symbolically separates him from Athena - and the image of Odysseus as a traditional warrior set for him in Horse and Infant - as much as My Goodbye physically separates him from the goddess and her war-ways - from this point onwards, Odysseus will no longer be leaning on Athena's wisdom or methods to solve his problems. Likewise, he will no longer be able to rely on her protection.

Odysseus thusly solves most of his upcoming problems through diplomacy and avoidance. He approaches Aeolus - a strange and ambiguous god (both in gender and in motivation) and appeals to them for help. Circe too, he approaches not with wishes to conquer or for revenge, but for the safe returning of his men and an alternate way forward. In all of these scenarios, there is some Apollonian element which is subtly interweaved alongside the influence of other gods; it is with a bow and arrows that Polyphemus' sheep is slain (and thus it is this Apollonian element which is at the root of Odysseus' spat with Poseidon), it is a vision of Penelope that warns Odysseus that his men are about to open Aeolus' wind-bag, Circe's peace offering to Odysseus is to refer him to a prophet of Apollo who has since died.

In this way, Apollo is walking alongside Odysseus for all of his journey after Athena departs - even in the Underworld, he is guiding him. It is Tiresias' proclamation that is the last straw for Odysseus, it is by the power of a mouthpiece of Apollo that Odysseus decides to embrace his ruthlessness. It is with the bow and arrow that Odysseus subdues the siren who sought to trick him, likewise, Odysseus does not attempt to undermine or escape the fate of paying Scylla's passage price - he knows of the doom about to befall the six men and quite unlike the rest of the journey until this point, he does not fight against it. This all comes to a head on Thrinacia where it is a blade which sacrifices the sun god's cow and brings destruction upon the crew once more.

My point with all of this is that when I heard the teasers for God Games years ago, it made perfect sense to me that Apollo would be Round One - he is not Odysseus' adversary and has no reason to oppose Athena's wish to free him. From other teasers about what will happen in the climax of Epic, Apollo will still be walking alongside Odysseus - it is Apollo's bow that Penelope will give the suitors to string. Likewise, it is Apollo's bow that will prove Odysseus' legitimacy and identity. That bow will be the power by which Odysseus hunts his adversaries and cleans out his palace - it is Apollo who is the avatar of Odysseus' ruthlessness, not Athena.

So tell me, truly, what was the point of having Apollo raise a non-argument in God Games? Why have him appear unconcerned, aloof and slightly oblivious? Why have him appear in his capacity as the Lord of Music at all?? And if the intention was never to make Apollo an active player in Odysseus' life like he was in the Odyssey, why keep Odysseus as a primary archer?

The answer of course is that Apollo is inextricable from the fabric of the Odyssey - his influence and favour exudes from Odysseus just as much as Athena's. In Athena's ten year sulk, it would have been Apollo who kept Telemachus and Penelope safe. It would have been Apollo protecting Odysseus from Poseidon's gaze as he travelled the seas (according to the Odyssey anyway)

Forgive me for not being excited about something that I thought was being purposefully set up. I was extremely ecstatic about all of the little Apollonian details that litter the sagas because I know where this story ends up (loosely) but all God Games did was reveal that maybe those Apollonian details were not intentional at all, but merely the ghost of the Apollo who persistently haunts those he favours, even if he cannot explicitly come to their aide in an adaptation.

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

I actually cannot wait for Love in Paradise. Odysseus is going to be the saddest most traumatised soaking wet cat of a man

[happypeachsludgeflower]

When I first listened to ‘Not Sorry For Loving You’ (the unfinished version on YouTube a few weeks ago), I saw people commenting that Calypso was dumb (and other such rude things) because Odysseus told her he was married and wouldn’t love her. She was told up front and still didn’t understand why he wouldn’t love her.

And yea, he did tell her. It’s not his fault she didn’t believe him. She really should have listened.

But I don’t think she was necessarily dumb, or that it was all her fault either.

From what she says in the song, she was abandoned on that island when she was a young child (I know that’s not exactly accurate to Greek myths, but it’s her backstory here so it’s what I’m going with). And no one can arrive at, or leave her island unless a god intervenes. She’s been alone on that island for a hundred years since she was a kid.

Can you imagine growing up in insolation for a hundred years without a single person to speak to or touch? She probably doesn’t even have solid memories of other people by this point. It makes sense that the first human she’s seen in a century, the first person she’s talked to, the first person that’s broken the cursed solitude that was driving her insane—of course she loved him. Why wouldn’t she?

I for one, cannot blame her for having terrible social skills, no comprehension of boundaries, or a full concept of what no means. I’m frankly surprised she even knows what love is (if she even does at all?? It’s debatable if she loves him romantically or not). Of course she wouldn’t understand when he said no.

Anyway, all I’m saying is, it wasn’t either of their faults.

If you want to blame someone blame Zues for sticking both of them there and being the world’s largest ass.

[sera8273]

Odysseus:*Rocking back and forth in a somewhat fetal position*

Hermes:Uhm, Ody? You good?

Ody: *Whispering* You wanna hear something crazy?

Hermes:Uhm-

Ody:Something Crazy!! *giggling like a fucking madman.*

Hermes:……

Ody:*Still giggling while holding back tears*

—————————LATER————————

Hermes:YOU FUCKING BROKE MY DAMN GRANDSON!

Calypso:*cowering in absolute fear from the raging foaming Messenger* well- I- Uhm- I-….Im—-

Poseidon, Zeus, Athena: *Looking anywhere else but the raging Messenger*

Hermes:OH DO NOT THINK THAT YOU THREE GET TO RUN SCOTT FREE!

Poseidon, Zeus, Athena:Fuck-

[daily-xisuma]

[141] Hermitcraft x Odyssey crossover au where for no good reason this interaction happens

[autumnoakes]

okay but going back to zagreus and melinoë for a second... i think when they meet they're going to have a LOT to work on with each other if they're going to get along. zagreus likes to push boundaries and he doesn't like leaving things unresolved if there's something he can do about it and melinoë is a LOT like hades in so many ways (temperment and sometimes her tone in particular). they're going to get on each others' nerves. they're going to drive each other up the wall. they're going to need time to get to know each other and understand each other and they might not get the chance to during hades 2 (what with mel's task seeming pretty nonstop. i know she's a goddess but girl don't you get tired???).

[cosmicourple]

hnnnn,,,, Wetthunderthighs hot spring sex. Hnhhhh,,-

[dootznbootz]

Odysseus is the type of guy who oozes rizz and can and will say the sweetest shit to Penelope and revels in her being happy with it ("You're beautiful in red" when she blushes. THAT type of cheesy bullshit. Have you READ the shit he says to her in the Odyssey?) but if she gives it back, he just freezes and Odysseus.exe stops working. Especially since he was the one doing all the flirting in the beginning until she finally chills out and "allows" herself to have a crush.

Penelope: ...You know, I don't really know if your name fits you. Odysseus: Oh? You don't think "Pain in the ass" is a good fit? Penelope: It definitely is...But...I don't know. Maybe it's because when I think of you, I don't think of pain, I think of joy... Yeah, instead of "pain giver", you're a giver of joy."Joy Giver" perhaps? Odysseus:

Penelope: ...Are you okay? Odysseus: *completely red and continues to make a high-pitched squeaking sound like air being let out of a balloon*

He gets more used to it as they get further along in their marriage but in the beginning, this guy was screaming into his pillows and kicking his feet and twirling his hair and being stupid :D