#Odysseus and Penelope

[anyanary]

I will fall in love with you over and over again

[cheesemushrooms]

Hellooo I'm back from holidays have a sketch

I haven't drawn in a month so I gotta practice heh

[restlesskeychains]

Doodles from my fic operation penelope 👀

[tired0artist]

Once a year, Penelope orders for a painter to come and make a painting of Telemachus.

So when Odysseus finally returns, there’s a gallery of 20 paintings, showing how year after year, Telemachus grew into the young man he was now.

In some of them, Telemachus is dressed properly as a prince of Ithaca. In others, he is doing some of his daily activities (reading, playing with Argos, writing, playing the lyre), as the painter came around so often that the prince stopped caring to pose for an entire day in an uncomfortable attire.

There is one, that Odysseus finds himself staring at the longest.

It’s the twelfth painting. Where Telemachus is accompanied by his mother.

The young boy sits at her side, as she carefully teaches him to weave. It was painted in their room, as a part of the olive tree that is their bed, is also captured in the back.

Odysseus sobs, and thanks his wife for bringing the lost years in such a beautiful form to him.

Even years after his return, the King often is found in the small gallery, watching his son slowly grow with each step.

(I love this family your honour)

[apollognese]

In honor of the Ithaca Saga and Epic the Musical in general🫡🫡

Ody and Penelope have my heart🖤🖤

[cescalovestowrite]

I seriously need people to understand that Penelope didn't wait for Odysseus for twenty years because social expectations dictated it, or because she was expected to be a faithful wife even untill she died.

Actually it was exactly the opposite: her father wanted her to remarry, some of the women wanted her to remarry, her son made her understand that if she took another husband and left home he wouldn't stop her. And at a certain point she recounts that before leaving for war Odysseus had told her that if he were to die, she could remarry whoever she liked (making sure first that Telemachus would take the throne without problems).

I need people to understand that Penelope's choice was entirely personal. She didn't remarry because her love for Odysseus had never abandoned her, because she knew that with no one else could she find that complete identity of thought and mind, that homophrosyne that she had with him.

It was not the choice of a woman who was modest and trapped by the expectations of her time. It was the choice of a woman who was freer and more independent than others, who preferred to remain without the protection of a man rather than resign herself to not having HER man.

[college-cryptids]

thinking about telemachus recently and how odysseus was gone for like. his entire life. strictly speaking, telemachus wasn't the child of a single parent but he may as well have been. do you think that showed through, when odysseus did finally return home?

certainly, he was always a mama's boy. no one doubted that. he had no one else, after all. there was laertes, and the men around the palace (who harbored a disgust for the horde of suitors that almost rivalled penelope's) and he loved them all dearly, but it was not the same. telemachus grew up loving his mother with all of his heart, and defending her with all his strength.

and then this man comes home, and he has telemachus' smile and he knows things that only telemachus' father would know, but he is a stranger. odysseus arrives home as a creature of myth, the misty stuff of fables that you could almost touch if you reached, but never quite grasp. telemachus does not know this man, but seeing him that day in the throne room is the first time in twenty years that penelope has shed tears of joy instead of pain, so he decides there must be something to him. he smiles at this man's jokes and listens raptly to his stories (and he does have so many stories!) but there is always that distance there. a gap in the planks of the bridge, a crevasse that's just too wide to jump across. he tries to know him, but it is not as easy as either of them would like it to be.

it is penelope that finally bridges the gap. telemachus finds her in tears again one day, tucked away somewhere odysseus would not see, and he rushes to his mother's side, but when he reaches her she cups his face the way she did when he was a boy. her hands are thinner now than they were then, and there are lines on her face that had not been there before, but behind the glimmer of tears is that spark. that strong, intelligent spark that first drew odysseus to her; that spark that convinced young telemachus that his mother could rival athena in wisdom if she wished to be so bold.

but these tears, he finds, are not the ones he expected. as penelope takes her son into her arms she whispers, you're just like him. you're so much like your father, and i am so proud.

and that sticks.

telemachus meets the stranger with his father's face and thinks, he's just like me. he watches him laugh the way he himself does, he compares his face and odysseus' in a mirror and the similarities make him smile this time. he hears others in the palace tell of the king's courage and his wit and he thinks, perhaps i can be like him. perhaps he is like me.

telemachus greets odysseus that night and calls him father, and for the first time, the word does not feel strange on his tongue.

it feels right.

[caramelmiacchiato]

polites: look! a half-full glass!

eurylochus: its not a half-full glass. its just a glass with water inside.

odysseus: penelope used to drink water...

[justsmth2]

quick odypen sketch from the ithaca saga

[dantistmarty]

[cheesemushrooms]

can we get odypen!!!!

Ofc!! 💞

[toxinoire]

Odysseus: What?! I can't move the wedding bed!

Penelope: Oh reeeaaaallllyyy why?

Odysseus: I made that as a symbol of our love! It's carved in a tree, it literally can't be moved!

Penelope: And why would you know? Oh wait, it's cause you're my fucking husband!

Odysseus: I-

Penelope: Like, no shit you've killed people. You went to a war, Odysseus. What do you think happens in wars?! Dance parties?!

Odysseus:

Penelope: War is literally the shortened version of the word manslaughter and trauma! No shit that's what happened!

Odysseus:

Penelope: "cLeVeReSt mAn iN gReEcE" BE CLEVER THEN oh my gods. I didn't wait twenty years just for you to ask me the stupidest question in existence.

Odysseus:

Odysseus: Damn I love you.

[tired0artist]

| 20 years apart - royal paintings |

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THEM! no more waiting… <3

[poetryofapollo]

Another stolen edit from my TikTok

She was not waiting for the boy who made excuses just to see her in Sparta, she was not waiting for her kind and gentle husband, she was not waiting for the love she knew before, — she was waiting for him, he who fought gods, monsters, and men just to see her once more.

(Art by Gigi, Wolfy, and Ximena!!)

[ishouldsleepbut]

this came to me about 0.2 seconds after the stream ended

[dootznbootz]

POV: You're Anticlea and Laertes of Ithaca and your son came back from Sparta after swearing he was just going for politics