#epic the musical neg

[ace-attorney-go-brrrrr]

Alas God Games is mid 😭

[ellilyre]

Do you think that Odysseus has become a kind of running joke among the gods, like when we joke about cockroachs' survivability?

For example some mortal is surviving stuff that rly should've killed him, and someone on Olympus says "is he pulling an Odysseus on us?" and everyone laughs

[lyculuscaelus]

So lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts asking people to stop trying to make Odysseus look nice in their works cuz he’s a “messed-up person in the mythology”. Your opinion is valid however I have but one thing to point out:

You want to know who started all this? Who started to “make Odysseus look nice” in the first place?

It’s Homer. It’s nobody else but Homer himself.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would try to murder people out of his own interests. He’d murder Palamedes without remorse (and we’d be cheering over this but it’s a murder after all), he’d attempt to murder Diomedes just to get the Palladium himself, he’d volunteer to kill Astyanax…meanwhile you wouldn’t find any mention of either Palamedes or Nauplius in Homer’s poems, neither did he mention anything abt the Palladium heist (and Diomedes necessity did not happen until Conon’s version), the death of Astyanax, the distribution of war prizes, etc. And all the details in the Odyssey seemed to deny the existence of Nauplius’s vengeance at all, so Odysseus would not take any of the blame.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would be depicted as “cruel, treacherous”, meanwhile in book 10 of the Iliad Odysseus was not mentioned to have killed anyone during the marauding, neither did he promise Dolan anything at all. The negative interpretations are denied by these details subtly put by Homer.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would be widely known as a “coward” for only shooting arrows from afar. But Homer gave him a spear and had him absolutely slaying in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. That part of Ajax’s speech was invalid already.

Most importantly—a non-Homeric Odysseus would be having kids everywhere else, and the loyalty to his own wife as seen in the Odyssey is no where to be found. Meanwhile his lineage was a single-son line made by Zeus in the Odyssey, and his love for Penelope was one of his main drives, especially seen in book 5 of the Odyssey. He loved his family as a loving parent—something you don’t get to see in most of the non-Homeric writings—for most of the time they followed a different tradition indeed, in which Odysseus wasn’t half as nice as in the Odyssey.

TL;DR: in case you haven’t noticed, the characterization of the Homeric Odysseus was quite different from a non-Homeric version of Odysseus. It’s not that Homer didn’t know of the existence of other versions—he knew them too well, which is why in his version of the story, you don’t get to see any mention of them.

[helpami-flaffy]

EPIC THE MUSICAL OPINIONS, VERY OPINIONS, VERY MINE.

IF YOU DON'T WANT SOME NEGATIVITY DON'T READ. THIS IS NOT PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE I SWEAR.

MOSTLY COMPILED AT NIGHT, SOME REVISION.

PLEASE DO NOT COME AT ME.

.....................

After this saga I'm left kind of perplexed about epic.

What is epic trying to say here? What's the musical's stance on ruthlessness?

Because it isn't very clear to me anymore.

Is it bad? Is it good and just? Is it a necessary evil? Is it worth becoming something monstrous just to achieve your goals?

The thing I'm trying to say is:

Is epic a tragedy or a triumph?

Until the vengeance saga I thought it was the former, but now I'm not so sure.

Throughout the story Odysseus takes desicions that either side with what I'll call the 'open arm mentality' or the 'ruthless' mentality.

He gets punished for both a number of times.

He kills Astianax so he doesn't have to fear his future vengeance.

He spares Polyphemus and that leads to 558 men dying.

He appeals to Circe's humanity and that leads her to freeing his men and helping him get to the underworld.

He sacrificed 6 men to Scylla and that leads to 'mutiny' and 'thunder bringer' where the rest of his crew dies and he ends up in calypso's island where she imprisoned him for 7 years.

First act of ruthlessness= good outcome

First act of open arms= bad outcome

Second act of open arms= good outcome

Second act of ruthlessness= bad outcome

(I forgot to add the sirens, that encounter is kinda strange tho.  Ody kills all of them but I wouldn't call that ruthlessness. Ruthlessness is doing whatever needs doing to get what you want. He needed to know how to get home, and killing the sirens after doesn't matter in that context. I guess it's good for future sailors? I'll count this as an altruistic positive I guess)

This breakdown isn't perfect, lots of other things happen and some things Ody does can't really be neatly categorized by this simple metric imo, but I'll continue anyway as it feels to me the story breaks down his actions in a sort of similar dichotomy.

All in all the 'good to bad' ratio seems pretty balanced, right? It's not always ruthlessness that wins the day, and 'open arms' solutions don't always work out.

So why does it feel like we're supposed to root for ruthless Odysseus? Why does it feel like the story wants us to believe that being the monster is a good if 'somewhat sad' outcome?

Why am I saying this? Well, it's 600 strikes.

Actually just- all the vengeance saga.

Why is what Ody does here supposed to be cool and awesome? Because, like, that is absolutely the angle here.

Complete with a, honestly absurd, anime power up and fighting-god-one-on-one moment.

Why does the story break down it's logic,  breaks suspension of disbelief (at least for me), to get Odysseus into a position were he can torture Poseidon into letting him go?

Wich?? Btw should not work??

Why is this how he wins?

Why are the ghosts of his friends and family no longer spectres of regrets for but terrifying promises of death?

What does this say? Was Odysseus wrong about their sacrifice? Was regret ever only a noose around his neck? I'm looking too deeply into this one lol.

In 'get in the water' we even get the obligatory appeal to Poseidon's mercy just to hammer down once again that 'open arms' doesn't work, even tho it's Athena's appeal to her father's mercy that set Odysseus free in the first place.

The saga ends with Poseidon asking Odysseus how he'll sleep at night after all of this and Ody, in admittedly the coldest line ever written on paper, says:

"Next to my wife"

...

This is cool.

Extremely cool even.

But that's kind of the problem I have with it.

The song ends in a badass way. This is meant to be the final zing to seal Odysseus' cool ass victory.

And in all of this, not once, does the story seem to recognize that...well...

Poseidon won.

Hell not even Poseidon recognized it!

I'm not even saying "OoOh if it was realistic Poseidon would have have won!" (Tho yeah, ask me about that, lol)

In the great ideological battle that's at the center of Epic: the musical, Poseidon was the ultimate victor.

Ruthless is what wins at the end, it's what gets Odysseus home. Odysseus might be a monster but he's a victorious one.

I feel people and the musical both don't really acknowledge that.

That even if Poseidon lost the battle he ultimately won the war.

Were is the irony? Where's the bitterness and sorrow? We're Poseidon's bloodied, mocking smirk revelling in his victory?

Is Epic a tragedy or a power fantasy?

[p0patochisps]

I have listened to God Games on loop for the past four days, the song is now imprinted on my brain and I hear the voices of the gods in silence.

[art-o-gant]

blorbos from my cut epic the musical songs

[laevanders]

Don't know how to make an animatic but damn me if I'm not tempted to make one just to give justice to my very specific vision of Suffering

[thylionheart]

The Illiad-Odyssey is so anti-war and a critique on the tragedy of chasing Kleos and I will die on that hill

[teamfortresstwo]

Begging people in the epic fandom to properly tag discourse,,,

[rapidhighway]

ive been shaking for two days straigh now with it varying between like very tiny little tremors in my fingers to i cant put the key in the keyhole on scratch my face because i keep missing the spot so. ouough? hasn't really affected my ability to draw i think but im concerned

[zenmom]

@jestierabbit’s day 19 of Ostober, Adventure! With my day of music.

“Hey! This isn’t our music! We know what ours sound like, but at least this music feels like we’re going on a legendary adventure! Right Zen? Zen?” *me: flashback of the not so good past*

Sorry, couldn’t find a way to slap the audio onto the photo.💀 You’ll have no idea what music I was talking about since I just want the audio to play without you finding out the name. God this process is complicated!

[tempestclerics]

[ID: close up of the shoulder and neck of golden plate armor with intricate designs. End ID]

neryn: oath of the wreath / rising star of house alecyth / the party’s billowing beating heart

i made a playlist for my friend who plays neryn alecyth, the paladin of the idtsan party whom i love (they/she) <3 link and annotations under the cut!

spotify link

murmurations / reading the augury - alecyth manor. it’s good to be home. the next step for me will always further our family. (1)

protector - death on temple hill. back to work, soldier. (2)

soldier of love - hail, empress haxampe. ambition and loyalty, for their troops and for their empress. (3)

denarius - oath of the wreath. afthi, pyndha, and thadtslym (4)

talk - silvertongue, magnate maneuvering. thank you for your hospitality.

plain and sane and simple melody - gambling with soldiers and sailors. come now, i’m off duty. (5)

glitter and gold - glass cannon with a sword in hand. cut down by cultists, raised again and again to fight on. (6)

sicilian crest - betrayal at the citadel, your ex cousin seeping shadow. come to save the empire? come to save my house, bitch. 

change on the rise - the loyalties of house alecyth have been restored. what good's a man / who’s lost his soul? / can’t take a stand / when his flame’s gone cold

applause - left hand of the empress, glittering peacock armor and a billowing cape on temple hill (7)

ladder to the sun - alecyth bluster and bravado in the face of nhaka’s ruthlessness. captain and commander, and you don’t look away. 

king (live) - a little heroism made the difference between us being here and in the dirt. i should hope that you put me in the right place, at the right time. (8) 

the poet - inspiring leader stories along the road. shaping the party into her pillar. 

so it goes - a feast. i wish you good fortune on your mission. (9) 

[spacedykez]

hold him down is stuck in my head now :(

[helpami-flaffy]

Man, i was so hyped for Get in the water and now that it's here and i don't like it because of the story I'm really bummed out.

I always thought:

" Ooooh an impossible challenge, an impossible choice! If Ody doesn't accept death his wife, child and Kingdom will die! How will he get out of this one I wonder? What will it cost him?"

And the answer is just...beating the shit out of Poseidon?

That's so anticlimactic!

It also doesn't solve the fucking problem!!

So now you've beaten the shit out of Poseidon (okay?I guess??)

What's stopping him from going through with his threats and pulling an Atlantis on Ithaca?

Where you even thinking about that Odysseus?

Hello?

And if Poseidon doesn't... like, why not?

He hasn't learned shit from this experience! And him and Ody have not made peace of any kind!

If he wanted he would totally drown all of them! He's an immortal threat!

And if it's revealed that he actually can't drown a fucking island and that's how the conflict resolves, what kind of wet paperbag sort of god is this??

[pipiezexal]

Oops you were mean to other people in my YouTube comment section so now you get no comment

[vernalloy]

Anyway that was the most misogynistic feminist musical I’ve ever read