#circe shit

[thatisratbehavior]

in a conversation with a friend, we came upon the topic of all our fandoms and how funny it is to see our ranges of enjoyed media

like why am i going from arcane to only murders in the building to andor to the nevermore webcomic to fucking lotf. why

how its going:

[henrys-eulogy-aflame]

ough pin-eye by jhariah is such a henry song </33333 save my boy

[thatisratbehavior]

y’all can’t comprehend how much those top two affect me 🙏🙏🙏

Nevermore tier list go brrr

(There is no character order within the tiers, just about. The only row where the characters are in order of favourite is the S tier. Everywhere else I just slapped the characters into their respective rows)

Here's the link, pls reblog with yours :)

[stanleynopines]

Fr

[dootznbootz]

"The text is all up to interpretation."

The Text:

[cowboys-tshot]

Circe and Odysseus in Epic: The Musical

EDIT: DO NOT TAKE MY WORD AS THE 100% TRUTH!!

I took some classes and wrote a paper about ancient Greek culture, but I am in NO WAY an expert. Please read through the reblogs to see some good criticisms and discussion about this topic further. My point overall stands that you can't apply modern rules and standards to ancient stories, but my evidence is undoubtedly flawed! This post has been edited to try and better reflect this.

I'm seeing everyone pointing out the possible issues with Epic the Musical's deviation from the original story of Circe and Odysseus, and as someone who's studied Ancient Greece/ancient Greek myths a bit, I wanted to say some stuff about it. This will be a bit of a long one, so apologies for my rambling!

Note that I'm not trying to shit on SA survivor's perspectives and (completely valid) arguments. I'm just trying to offer some context surrounding the original myth and how it fits (or rather, doesn't fit) with a modern audience. If I'm wrong with any of this, feel free to call me out! Criticize the shit out of me! I like learning about Greek culture and myths and would 100% love to hear other perspectives on this.

So, a few points about Ancient Greek myths to kind of explain the context around Circe and Odysseus:

Greek myths often did not have good views/depictions of women. Women were very often depicted as conniving, selfish, sexually insatiable creatures. There are a few deviations from this trope, the most prominent of which being Penelope herself—she's basically the ideal Greek wife, staying loyal to her husband for 20 years and all that.

Adultery often only applied to women. Husbands cheating on their wives wasn't merely tolerated, but kind of expected. Men often cheated on their wives with various kinds of prostitutes, concubines, mistresses, etc. Although, sleeping with unmarried women (that weren't specifically prostitutes) or married women was still looked down upon. Women didn't have this same standard. They could only sleep with their husbands—hell, their husbands (and family) were pretty much the only men they could even interact with once some really sexist Asiatic practices were brought to Athens.

The original myth has Hermes very plainly lay out how Odysseus' confrontation with Circe will go: Odysseus will eat the moly, draw his sword at her, she'll proposition him, and Hermes directly tells Odysseus to accept. Basically a "sleep with her if you want your men to live" situation. (See this post for more specifics on this).

So, let's apply this to Epic: The Musical. Here's some reasons I think may explain the Circe myth being changed:

The Greek "women being evil" stereotype is... problematic. While I 100% understand that it's important to acknowledge male victims of SA, I don't think the original myth was focusing on Odysseus being a victim—I saw it more of an emphasis on Circe being a sexually selfish woman, as women were often believed to be. Changing Circe to be less conniving and evil deviates from the concerning Greek stereotype.

The SA in the myth is not actually very clearly SA. Yes, with a modern perspective, it absolutely is sexual coercion, but for ancient Greeks, not so much. It made sense to them that sex could be transactional, especially when gods were involved. It's already been established that Epic, while still generally accurate to the original myth, does change things relating to morality/themes in order to better align with modern Western ideas (i.e. OG Odysseus not being as remorseful and merciful, as that was expected of a Greek hero, but Epic Odysseus having more empathy because that's more modernly heroic). If something from the original myth doesn't translate well into modern culture, then it's understandable to want to change or omit it.

In the case that the original Circe myth wasn't SA (I'm not saying one is more right than the other, I'm just covering all the bases), then it wouldn't even constitute as cheating. Like I described earlier, men often slept with women that weren't their wives. Plus, being a goddess, she's already kinda exempt from being blamed if Odysseus slept with her—only women are ever really blamed for sleeping with (or being SAed by) gods, and even then, their husbands sometimes don't even give a shit. But modernly, we would not see it that way. To us, it's not societally acceptable for a married man to sleep with another woman (without his wife's consent, at least). While Ancient Greeks viewed Odysseus as a good (or at least okay) husband, a modern audience wouldn't. Making Odysseus loyal to Penelope and not sleeping with other women (assuming this wasn't SA, but again that's one interpretation) makes him the good, loyal, empathic, modernly heroic man that Epic is clearly aiming for. Repeating my last point: If something from the original myth doesn't translate well into modern culture, then it's understandable to want to change or omit it.

Applying modern perspectives on Ancient Greek society and mythology isn't worth it. Like, we all joke about Greek mythology/Ancient Greece being super gay, but it was often just what we consider pedophilia (it's called pederasty if you'd like to know more). Y'know the Hades and Persephone story? Like, the original one with the kidnapping? Yeah, that was kinda normal in some areas. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is tragic, yes, but it was so normal that a lot of wedding ceremonies included references/recreations of it! Girls got married off ASAP after their first menstruation to men of at least 30 years old. We don't tolerate that shit today (for the most part, at least)! But it was normal in Ancient Greece. Applying modern rules and standards to ancient culture just does not work.

Anyways, I'll shut up now! I'm gonna go keep listening to The Circe Saga lmao

[thatisratbehavior]

BEAUTIFUL THIS IS PERFECT ❤️🙏🩵 (i say as if you didn’t show me ur entire creative process) ISHANSSNNSN HIS LIKENESS IS WONDERFUL IM CRYING

🤫🧏‍♂️

Rushed little comic :3

[soapcan18]

Epic’s Hermes def fits the certain archetype of characters I go insane for. The characters that are charismatic, silly, and mischievous and you instantly gravitate toward them but under the surface they’re actually really powerful and you do NOT wanna fuck around and find out what happens if you piss them off. It’s the BEST kind of character imo and I’ve realized that way too many of my favorite characters fit this mold… It also helps that his songs and the animatics people make to them are absolute masterpieces.

[fisksaturday]

this started as a doodle but then i was having a bunch of fun designing and drawing the outfits. basically the idea here is like, if in "leader of the pack" instead of white being like "you're too dangerous to send in to see what van kleiss is up to" if he was like "you were invited so you're going to figure out what he's up to"

and then of course he needs to make providence look good so he cant go in a hand me down suit that doesnt fit or casual wear, he needs a suit that's representative of providence. and holiday is his plus-one

[waytooobsessedwithmcyt]

An au I've been thinking about the lore for for a while but still have no plot so instead of a story you get my ramblings:

(Not mentioned in this post but this au does deal with self harm)

There's two different types of gods, gods confined to one dimension and multidimensional gods. One dimensional gods aren't really important to this, but they involve ESMP s2 Joel, s1 Lizzie and Jimmy, Aeor and Exor, Santa Perla, etc.

The only really important ones in this au are the multi dimensional ones, which there are three types of. Watchers and Listeners like normal, but also a third type that's based on Gem's ESMP s2 character called Walkers. As the name suggests, Walkers can move between worlds to carry out the Watchers will.

There's three gods on the traffic smp, Grian is a rebel Watcher, Martyn is a Listener, and Gem is an escaped Walker. All Walkers are wolf hybrids because they're kind of seen as guard dogs to the Watchers, it's basically a cult to be honest.

Gem and Grian didn't grow up together, but after he ran away, Gem was assigned to keep an eye on him, and that's how she got on Hermitcraft. Grian pretty much took one look at her and said "is anyone going to get her therapy?" When Grian heard she was being put into the life series and that the theme of the series was basically the Watchers giving orders, he saw a chance to help her escape their grasp. The Boogeyman task was specifically made for her so see how evil they were, he didn't count on how good she was at following directions.

Martyn is a Listener, unlike Walkers, Listeners are completely separate from the Watchers. Martyn was sent to keep the life series chaotic for the purposes of making sure it ends and the people aren't stuck in the Watcher's world forever.

I'm honestly obsessed with the whole "existing just to serve other people" thing right now. For her entire immortal life, Gem was taught to completely disregard her own emotions, the idea of even considering herself, much less prioritizing herself is such a foreign concept to her.

I kinda want to rant about how Grian and Gem grew up more because they're so traumatized so if someone could conveniently send me an ask about that I would be forever in your debt /j (I'm going to make the post either way because this is my blog and I get to talk to myself on here)

[thatisratbehavior]

some carry on art hehehe

first drawing i’ve done in months haha actually proud of how this came out :)

(tumblr is probably going to mess with the quality, forgive me)

[backpackingspace]

I am once again thinking about how odysseus who witnessed the horrors that the captured women went through (one of his main duties in the iliad was taking the women back home and making sure they were as comfortable as possible and safe because he was the only one trusted not to violate them further due to his devotion to penelope. And in the odyssey part of the reason circe sent him to the underworld was so that he'd have to listen to all these women's stories (before he could talk to the prophet) ). Who was one of the few that saw women as people and respected their space and opinions. And was then put in those exact same situations. I don't have the motivation right now to do a full literary analysis of this (I'll site the sources too) but oh man one day I'm going to write a full essay on this.

[stanleynopines]

This really happened

[dootznbootz]

Hi. I'm cyberbullying a long dead poet because of his shitty fanfic. Enjoy. I'd love it if you joined me.

(Before you get mad at me, yes, I know Eugammon of Cyrene is an important figure and all that. I'm sick with some sort of flu. Let me cyberbully an ancient dead fanfic writer in peace.)

[spitsonyou1]

hes in my brain

hhhhh

hhhheemes

[cowboys-tshot]

Is anyone else thinking about how Odysseus will have to explain the death of Eurylochus to his sister? (For those who don't know, Eurylochus married Odysseus's sister, Ctimene).

Will he lie and say Eurylochus died in battle? Or that he was killed by Polyphemus? Or maybe that he starved?

Do you think Odysseus would be honest? Do you think he would tell his sister that he is the reason her husband is dead?

I dunno. I'm just thinking about it.