#telegony hate

[just-an-enby-lemon]

The worst thing the Telegony did is not killing Odysseus away pratically just after he can finally be with his family. It's also not giving Odysseus a bunch of kids with Circe and Calypso. Is not even my boy Telemachus marrying Circe.

Is Telegonus marrying Penelope. Who the fuck decided Penelope marrying her late husband murderer/bastard was a good idea? Not to mention that by chrnology Telegonus has to be 11 years younger than Telemachus. So they have a massive weird age gap wich is the least concerning part. I honestly don't know if is worse if she had no agency when not re marrying was her actually having agency and controlling her narrative in the Odyssey or if she had and in the most fanfic OOC characther way choose to marry Telegonus because it just makes no sense that she would. I hate it so much.

[mot-hesbian]

Me just trying to find good Epic the musical and/or Epic Cycle fanfiction and as a result an filtering out A LOT of ship tags: 😊

Me being jumpscared by the Penelope/Telegonus tag with the Epic the musical tag attached to it: 😰

[minlicious]

things i’m not falling for:

menelaus didn’t love helen and treated her badly

patroclus was a twink

the telegony

odysseus and calypso slept with each other consensually

telemachus was a nice person (idk how to word it differently)

tall odysseus

diomedes erasure

penelope could’ve killed the suitors herself because she was spartan

[theodysseyofhomer]

writers after homer are divided on what should have happened post-odyssey in almost every way but not one of them looked at odysseus and believed he actually went on that damn oar quest

[danger-with-proximity]

"Circe marries Tel-" Do not finish that sentence. Don't you dare.

[venomspecs]

Can I say something? I think the Telegony hate is a bit much. Sure, the synopsis is very much not satisfying and outright contradicts the Odyssey at times, but that's the thing, it was not meant as a continuation of the Odyssey, and by Odyssey I mean the text that has survived until nowadays. It's most likely derived from other traditions than the one written down by Homer, like how Hesiod's account differs. And it's also a lost poem, we barely know the barebones plot, maybe it was worth a read despite it all. I understand since the Odyssey is huge and has been ever since its creation, every other narrative we have will be judged in relation to the Odyssey, but there's more to Odysseus than the Odyssey, it's not "shitty fanfiction" because it's different from one of the pillars of Greek literature

[generouskittentidalwave]

Introducing, the Telegony's lesser known annoying little brother

[dootznbootz]

I think some folks MAY have gotten the wrong idea about how I feel about Circe with some of my posts. So, to clear the air...

Homies, I love that fucked up sorceress.

I love how we're never given a reason why she turns people into animals. That's so funny and so awful. And another potion-making magic gal?!?! I love that she's just basically vibing on an island doing whatever she wants. I even love the fact that she scares Odysseus shitless! She's morally gray and that's why she's FUN.

I just sincerely hate when people try to girlboss her or have her be a victim of SA when she never was Looking at you, Miller. Especially when she was actually the one who coerced Odysseus in exchange for his men being transformed back into humans. And even then, while he was clearly afraid of her, (it's in the language of the Odyssey) she likely meant him no harm after a certain point. He just didn't know that.

Why does she need a reason to do awful things? Why can't she just be a goddess who does whatever she wants? That's the reason why I love her!!! She's fucked up!!! :D

I hate what the Telegony did to her as well! >:( You're telling me, this sorceress goddess, who makes potions (!!!) wouldn't have magic contraceptives??? Would WANT CHILDREN?!?! WITH THE PATHETIC WIFEMAN?! No. Fuck no. Eugammon of Cyrene, I have beef with you 🤬

Anyways!!! Understand all the "#anti circe" I have is simply Anti "Girlboss Circe" or the book. I genuinely think she's neat af as her morally gray, fucked up sorceress self and just get frustrated with...everything :'D

[jewishdainix]

"The telegony is an lost ancient Greek epic poem" not lost enough

[fleurbleedinghearts]

If I had a penny for every time a grandson of Autolycus got his life destroyed by a grandchild of Helios

I'd have two pennies, which isn't a lot but still weird it happened twice

[mot-hesbian]

One thing I don't think a lot of people want to acknowledge is that there's no one canon in Greek mythos and that means not every story featuring the same figures are all from the same canon.

The Telegony does not fit the canon of the Homeric Epics (it completely contradicts multiple plot points of them), it fits other variations of the events of the Trojan war and Odysseus' journey but not Homer's poems.

The Telegony is a sequel to a variation of Odysseus' story, not a sequel to the Odyssey. There are a lot of versions of Odysseus' journey, not all of them fit the same canon.

Stop using the Telegony to dunk on Odysseus in conversations about the Iliad and Odyssey or depictions of him based on those works.

[the-bright-one-with-black-eyes]

Taking detours from my current project for another one by trying to make this ancient fanfic work

Ideas:

-Rather than very dubious-consenual sex, it's a dubious-consensual blood ritual that Circe uses to get pregnant (whether that's better or not is up to the individual but I suppose it would generally be more palatable. Circe wanted an heir to pass her knowledge to and Odysseus in this is basically a donor dad)

-At 15 Telegone learns she has another half of family she doesn't know of and fucks off in the middle of the night to Ithaca without her mom knowing and then has to learn to integrate herself into human culture

-Somewhere along the line she gets taken in as one of Penelope's slaves and the other slave girls are worried for her because she's young and pretty and there are a lot of fucking men currently in the house, but also because she's wreckless and has no qualms about using violence

-Resembles her grandmother

[spineless-lobster]

Cinaethon of sparta and eugammon of cyrene when I FUCKING CATCH YOU-

[bluedesertbruja]

begging people to stop recommending madeline miller's circe to ppl who like the odyssey. like at this point, it sounds like ur tricking them.

[only-slightly-confused]

Not to go on a rant but fuck the Telegony actually

Like we have so many lost and incomplete works mentioned in passing in other texts where we can only dream of knowing what was written in the complete text, but the story of the Telegony survives of all things?

I want my complete Little Iliad, not whatever Eugammon of Cyrene had to say about a story he clearly did not understand or read/hear correctly actually.

The Telegony is basically the equivalent of what would happen if a thousand years from now, the best book series you can think of is missing half its books and all thats left to tell whoever is studying that series is a bunch of summaries of a a wattpad fanfic written by a twelve year old of the same vein as My Immortal.

Don’t get me wrong, I love people learning about the classics and stuff, but I was scrolling through the Epic subreddit (a mistake, I know), and the amount of people bringing up Telegonus and the absolute dumpstershit, wattpad-ass, character-murdering, proof-that-media-literacy-has-always-been-dead, Homer-is-rolling-in-his-grave, piece of shit fanfic that is the Telegony as even close to canon to Homer’s epics is frankly concerning.

There’s a reason classicists don’t consider it a part of the mythological greek canon and this is reason number one and probably the only reason needed:

“Zeus made our line a line of only sons. Arcesius had only one son, Laertes, and Laertes had only one son, Odysseus, and I am Odysseus’ only son”

- The Odyssey 16.131-134. (Fagles translation)

[jorgeofithaca]

”I can’t feel.. I feel paralyzed.”

“Hello?”

TELEMACHUS OF ITHACA…

“W-what!?”

“Who are you?”

Telegonus.