#This is based on the song “Monster” from Epic the Musical

[bet-on-me-13]

What if I'm the Monster?

(Based on Monster from Epic the Musical, it's incredible, give it a listen)

So! For the past few years, Danny has done nothing but defend Amity Park from Agressive Ghosts, Lunatic Ghost Hunters, and the GIW, all on his own. But no matter what he does, he is always seen as a Monster by the people of the town, just for being a Ghost.

Over the years he has lost a lot.

His Best Friend. His Mentor. His Mom.

Tucker was caught by the GIW and arrested for helping Phantom, and was never heard from again. His Parents still visit the Mayor's office for any word of him, but no one has any idea what happened.

Danny and Clockwork had a falling out after Danny refused to go down his intended path. He wanted to live his own life, one not predetermined by a Time God. Clockwork had told him that he would regret the decision, and left.

And his Mom had died after discovering his secret. She had surprisingly accepted him, but then the GIW had tried to capture him and she decided to defend him, and she got caught in the crossfire.

Every time Danny tried defending the people of Amity Park, he was vilified and hated even more. He would never be a Hero in their eyes, he was no Justice League. He had lost so much just defending them, but he couldn't bring himself to resent them, they didn't know what they were doing, it was how they were supposed to think. He still needed to defend them.

But he could no longer do so acting as the Hero.

Being a Hero stopped him from raiding the base that he assumed Tucker was being held in. Being a Hero led him to disagreeing with Clockworks advice. Being a Hero led to his Mom's death.

So he would be The Monster, instead.

[wolfythewitch]

Circe saga thoughts?

HMMM

Ranking wise based on favorites I think it would be

1. Wouldn't you like

2. There are other ways

3. Done for

4. Puppeteer

Wouldn't you like and there are other ways are tied for me but WYL is a clearer visual animatic wise haha and I love hermes. Big fan of the line "I can't get you home but I'll get you to the underworld instead"

Big sad though that time isn't as emphasized in the musical. But it wouldn't really fit haha.

Was very surprised that Jorge went down the route of Odysseus flat out saying no but I respect it lmao, the controversy from that storyline alone would be insufferable. It does make me a little bit nervous about how Calypso will be handled (I do Not like the current snippets of her songs)

Puppeteer's flow throws me off a little bit and I'm not a fan but it's funky. I'm personally not a big fan of the rap parts of epic in general (it kind of depends ig. Monster was neat but here it isn't as seamless)

Big fan of Hermes did that I mention that. Especially the end of WYL, I like the vocalization it tickles my brain

Done For is pretty neat, and I like it! They changed the way Circe said "Hermes gave it to you didn't he" and I am sad about that. But still. Can never go wrong with a song about threatening to murder each other. I have an almost complete animatic of that so I could probably just add some stuff to the start and end and have a done for animatic ready lmaoo

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[emberunderscore]

FableSMP EPIC the musical AU

whole thing comes from the perspective of Midas (as Quixis specifically) being Scylla, which means Icarus has to be Odysseus, which is also fitting tbh.

this is only based on the released sagas bc i dont have the vibe of the future characters yet (i dont look at a whole lot of snippets). also dont think about any of the blood family stuff too hard - theres nothing weird dw but it just makes stuff complicated with the gods

Monsters

Scylla - Quixis Midas

The ideas of Scylla being human turned monster, Midas is human turned Quixis, which in this universe could be something of a replacement for monstrous, which also works with 

Spooky bitch Midas propaganda

Look at my edit to be even more convinced

Polyphemus - Leviathan/Vorago

Probably makes most sense with Leviathan

Instead of the parent/child relationship with Poseidon they're siblings (ocie is poseidon)

Humans/Dead people

Odysseus - Icarus

Icarus has to be Ody because of Midas being Scylla

The song Monster

The conflicts within the plot work well with Icarus’ own relationships

Eury and Ody see each other as brothers, even though it isn't’t blood. Maybe they’re not blood related in this AU

Eurylochus: Rae

Brothers!!

Rae is seen as the leader of Lodestar, which works well with Eury’s place as the voice of the crew

Penelope: Centross??

prison duo

but it actually works because Icarus would do anything for him. just look at season 3

he's probably not smart enough to be penelope but the agenda is more important than that

Telemachus: Oscar

Ik Oscar isn't Icarus' kid but he is Centross and theoretically Centross would've been the one to raise him anyway

See Legendary

Polities: Athena

Optimist

Song open arms

"everything's changed since polities"

Perimedes: Caspian

Perimedes is the one who stabs Odysseus in the back to stop him from killing Eurylochus in Mutiny

For Rae? Cas wouldn't hesitate

Tireseas: Haley

Dead prophet

who else

Ody's dead mom: Isla

Isla is Icarus' mom??? In this AU??? /s

Gods

Zeus: Fable

Orignially this was Epros but I was convinced to change it

Massive ego

Yellow

Actual reasons in this post

Athena: Enderian

This could also be fable but I dont think Icarus would defy him like how he does

Goddess of the Mind, need I say more

Aeolus: Aurelius

They have the vibes I think

Aeolus is gender and so is Aurelius

There are a lot of options I think

I like the idea of the Winions(?) being the piglins they had in their bunker

Poseidon: Ocie

Ocean

At the beginning Ocie is so ready to kill people, she does not care for human life. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves

She would do that for Vorago

Canon compliant beef with Icarus 

Circe: Momboo

My first thought was Ven because I'm a fucking dumbass

It makes so much more sense than Ven

Plant lady, plant witch

badass

girlboss

pretty woman

Hermes: Rakai

They have the vibes

One of the very few gods to tolerate Icarus

gender

Apollo: Malitae

Apollo sounds so fruity in god games

Apollo cares most about music in god games which is a form of expression so i think it fits for Malitae to be him

Hephaestus: Nexus

In god games Hephaestus' thing is trust, he's pissed that Ody betrayed his crew

Nexus is the Goddess of Loyalty so it fits really well that she'd be upset about that

Nexus was also a knight so being a god of blacksmithing isn't too far from that

Aphrodite: Soul

Aphrodite cares about Ody's mom's broken heart

If we thing of it in the context of soulbonds it makes sense that Soul would be upset about that

Ares: Netherum

Ares is the only one in god games to match Athena's power, which checks out - major god to major god

Maybe its a bit ooc for Netherum themself

But god of destruction as the god of war. thats something

Would totally step in for Soul

Hera: Perix

In this AU we ignore family dynamics- Perix is not married

Calls Athena "baby" (kinda gay)

Fits the vibe

can you come up with a better idea? no, nor could I (credit to Sardar106 for this casting lol)

Calypso: Ven

They're so "This could never really happen but let us pretend"

"I wish we could've been something"

Look at this post (person who reblogged has better words than me go read that)

thank you for coming to my au talk. please share your own thoughts and opinions (but also remember that i am objectively correct all of the time /j)

Updated after Wisdom Saga

[under-lore]

How much merit did "Star is Chara's theme" have really ?

The music of Undertale is quite renown for a number of things, from its quality to its abundant usage of leitmotifs.

However, there are a few tracks which went under the radar, such as the ones that went unused in the final release of the game.

One of such tracks was "Star".

This particular unused track found itself in an intriguing situation when it became the center of one of Undertale's biggest fully soundtrack-based theories of the early fandom.

The theory suggested that "Star" may have been an unfinished version of what could have been a Chara theme before the idea was eventually scrapped before mounting up to anything concrete.

That theory was based around the way Toby Fox makes his music and the way it correlates to his characters.

For instance, from its rhythm to its instruments and its intensity or even its fairly epic/heroic yet pretty chaotic & impulsive nature, Spear of justice has "Undyne" written all over it it countless ways. It isn't just an Undyne-associated song, the song literally feels like Undyne. It is a musical representation of Undyne and the situation she finds herself in at the moment. And that is how a lot of Toby's music is written.

Even someone who has never heard the song and knows nothing about Undertale, if given a description of each of the main characters and asked of which one was this a theme of, would easily find the right answer.

This particularity comes from a few things, such as the fact that Toby confessed that he actually often makes the music first and then creates the scene around it by taking inspiration from the music.

And so, in the case of character themes, it means that Toby Fox songs end up being filled with hidden details and tones that are relevant to a character's personality, backstory, psyche, etc... And thus makes the songs a lot closer to the characters.

Due to this, a number of fans tried to reverse engineer some of the unused songs using this technique in order to try and figure out what they might have been for, and "Star" was the one that stood out.

The reason why it stood out was because the fans did believe they were able to find such connections between "Star" and the first fallen human.

Some of the ties they proposed between the song and the character were :

The song starts out with a sad/depressing tone similar to grief or regret, seen as possibly alluding to how Chara's plan was a failure (that Flowey came to cruelly regret), and how it caused the kingdom to fall into despair after their death.

In addition, the song has a very strong "echo" effect, which is also often associated with the idea of death as well as that of the consequences of the past coming back to you. Two things that Chara as a character is also associated with.

But it soon begins to obtain an uplifting and hopeful undertone as the song goes on. This can be attributed both to Chara being seen as the future of humans and monsters, but also to their newfound "reincarnation" allowing them a new second chance at existence.

The combinaison of the previous two things makes the song feels somewhat confused before it finds itself a stable path. Which could also be tied to Chara's words at the of genocide. (but that one is a bit more of a stretch)

The song overall just has a very similar vibe to "his theme", Chara's best friend. As Toby likes to have musical similarities between themes of characters that are closely tied together.

The song is just long enough so that it could have fit to play during the chara flashbacks scenes at the end of pacifist if we were to add back the unused few more images that were going to be in there originally. (Side note : this being the case would give point n°3 a very toby-esque double meaning too. With Chara being there both in Asriel's memory and reincarnated)

Some claim that the instruments used in the song can tie it to the Dreemurr family, however my ear is not good enough to tell wether this point is actually valid or just a rumor.

The song starts off weak in intensity, but begins to grow stronger after a click that radically changes the song's overall feeling. (the same one that was proposed to be about their reincarnation.) This was suggested to be a reference to Chara's words about power at the end of the genocide route.

That the name of the song is "Star" in the first place, as there also happens to be a star named "Chara" not all that far from our solar System. On top of that, this particular constellation is known for having a top/northern dog star, and a south/lower dog star. Our Chara star is the lower dog Star, which could be interpreted as a metaphor for being a human yet living in the underground.

...Which isn't that for bad for a track that only lasts like 30 seconds.

So due to these reasons and to the fact that the song clearly seemed unfinished, it quickly became a popular theory that the song was supposed to be related to Chara in some way, with the flashbacks at the end of pacifist being a prime suspect for its intended scrapped use.

However, some time later, this screenshot came along :

The reliability of this screenshot is to be taken with a grain of salt, as there are many rumors that this screenshot may have been fake, and i have not been able to properly identify the source of these rumors. And besides, a private e-mail isn't something that can be easily verfied the existence of.

But all that aside, the e-mail seems to say that before it was scrapped, the usage of 'Star' was actually attempted for the fight against Madjick, a regular enemy from near the end of the game.

Although technically not fully disproving it (as the fact that Toby makes the music first & it not fitting Madjick much or just overall that regular enemies don't usually have such unique themes might let one argue that it was first made for something other than Madjick, then was used for Madjick before being removed.), the way that Toby appears to talk about it seems to imply that there isn't really more to the song than that, and thus that the theory would just be wrong after all.

Since then, the theory was pretty much left as is, slowly fading away in popularity over time.

Was this theory correct ? Whilst we will probably never be sure, the answer is most likely no. I wouldn't bet on it, at least.

However, no matter wether this was all ultimately just a coincidence or not, one thing which remains true is that the music certainly does sound quite close to how one would have expected a Chara version of "his theme" from Toby to sound like.

The same cannot be said for other fanon Chara associated themes, such as "Megalo strike back". While Toby did make this song, this was not the song's intended name and it didn't have anything to do with Undertale.

I find it unfortunate that people went fishing this far on Toby's archives for a song to make fanon Chara content around when Star was right here in the Undertale game files for the taking and would have been a more fitting choice overall.

By default of being an actual Chara song, Star still had everything one would need to build good Toby-like fanon Chara songs around at the very least. But this opportunity went surprisingly under-exploited under Megalo strikes back's shadow.

It doesn't mean there aren't any Chara fanthemes using Star, though.

For instance, Undertale bits & pieces made this Genocide Chara theme using the Star leitmotif among a couple others. I believe it is an example of using Star as an inspiration done well !

[olivsie]

Something I like about epic the musical is that it Gives it's changes to the original text an actual Purpose

( The first couple paragraphs are basically a rant regarding retellings. If you only want to hear about epic Skip to paragraph 4)

1. I am a bit annoyed by the lack of. Understanding as to why RETELLINGS aren't the most historicaly accurate things in the world. Sorry to break this to you, but that's both just how they work and I would guess how they reach success. Ancient Greece is a much different culture than our own, And most of us would be terrified to actually live back then. When you are Trying to create content That is based on ancient Greece And you want it to be successful/ At least reach a wide, and notably, MODERN audience. You're likely going to have to take some creative liberty And change a few things. Don't get me wrong, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIKE RETELLINGS KNOWING THAT FACT ( Me personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Miller's novels Even though I do like epic) BUT IT IS SOMETHING TO BE AWARE OF. And because of that I don't think I would ever expect a retelling to be perfectly accurate And I don't. I had interest in mythology LONG before epic the musical But I didn't actually read the Odyssey until getting into epic. I did not expect it To be just like the musical, I knew Odysseus was going to be much more of an asshole, along with other characters. The odyssey and epic are different pieces of media to me And I am not less of a mythology nerd for liking epic ( Though I will admit that sometimes I take tiny little fun facts of mythology And like to think of them in the context of epic, but that's just for fun.)

2. The Only time being a fan of retellings is wrong as if you genuinely believe they are perfectly accurate And refuse to listen to anything else ( Which has definitely happened, And mythology nerds have the right to be annoyed at that)

3. Some people only like to consume real mythology media, Others like both real mythology and retellings, Others only like to engage with retellings (I would hope they have the self-awareness to know It's not real mythology, From what I've seen some do and some don't, Unfortunately)

4. Ok. now on to what the title of this long ass rant says

I like that epic the musical Retells the story, Not only to both cater to modern audience But Also with its OWN purpose of man versus monster.

Obviously, this is not the point of the original text. Mythos Odysseus does not give a single fuck About the stuff that epic odysseus does. I don't know why the creator Decided to rewrite it this way, (If he's ever said why let me know) But I would assume he wanted to make something about the oddessy And this was simply a very creative way to Translate that for modern audience.

I like this because, yes, holy damn. It does have changes from the original text. But it's not JUST changing it. It's changing it with a purpose

It feels reminiscent of some kind of Dramatic play. the way that epic characterizes.

Polites' kind nature is Representative of the Concept of being merciful Represented in his lines such as " This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms" /"There is so much guilt inside your heart, So why not replace it?"

While in contrast you have eurylochus with more ruthlessness and cautious nature, this is Found in some of his lines such as "You rely on wit, and people die on it" /"we don't know what's ahead" / "I say we strike first. We don't have time to waste so lets raid the place-" /"Let's just cut our losses, You and I and let's run"

And then you have Odysseus, the man/monster. The first act of this Musical is his internal struggle With what He should be On that scale. And the other characters Represent this struggle in the song monster

" Is the cyclops struck with gilt when he kills, is he up in the middle of the night? Or does he end my men to avenge his friend and then Sleep knowing he has done him right?

When the witch turns men to pigs to protect her nymphs, is she going insane? Or did she learn to be colder when she got older and now she saves them the pain?

When a God comes down and makes a Fleet drown Is he scared that he's doing something wrong? Or does he keep us in check So we must respect him and now no one dares to piss him off"

He then Applies this to himself

" Does a soldier use a wooden horse to kill sleeping trojans cause he is vile? Or does he throw away his remorse and save more lives with guile?"

And this marks his turning point of deciding that Ruthlessness It's ultimately worth it if it means Getting home, as aeolus says "The end Always justifies the means"

It's in my opinion, a very creative way to go about retelling a myth. Is it accurate? Absolutely not. For example, circe (From what we know) is not protecting When she turns men into pigs, For all we know, she could just do it because Shits and giggles.

Her character and most others in epic is changed from the original. But it's not ONLY changing for the sake of apeling to the modern Western audience and being successful like Many other retellings. It is also and mainly changing for the sake of influencing the plot that Jorge Rivera herrans crafted For the sake of Retelling epic. It is creative and I enjoy it despite knowing it's not accurate.

[the-au-collector]

Epic: The Musical and Linked Universe

So I’m sure someone else noticed this already but Epic: The Musical gives off Linked Universe vibes. So I’m honor of the Circe Saga releasing next week, I thought I’d put in my 2 cents about what songs I associate with each Link (+some non-canon LU Links). There’s a bit of another LU-Links-reunite AU building up in my head but there’s no real direction yet so have this brain vomit instead:

- The Horse and The Infant - Warriors. So this goes into my headcanon that Warriors is the hero of 10,000 years ago. No I have no foundation for that theory. It just IS. Anyways he’s fighting the Yiga with an army of Gerudo and Hylians. He has to kill the Yiga leader’s son, who’s the new incarnation of Ganondorf. The kid is an infant. I don’t think I need to explain more but yeah.

- Just A Man - Hyrule. This song is the ultimate Hyrule song for me. It explains his character in my Relinked AU too. It’s just… it’s Hyrule’s song. As for the story based off of Epic: The Musical itself, I think he’s running from some sort of war in his Hyrule (either a civil war or a war with Calatia). The details aren’t that clear yet, other than he kills someone and feels bad about it.

- Full Speed Ahead - Wind. Need I say more?

- Warrior of the Mind - our first non-canon Link: First! I Imagine First and Hylia kicking ass together during this song

- Polyphemus - Okay, we’re getting into true AU territory with this one, but this is Twilight’s song. He’s trying to piece together the Mirror of Twilight again and accidentally angers a Hinox or other large monster. With him is Dusk, Rusl (or maybe Colin), and Dusk is stabbed at the end. That’s all I’ve got for this one.

- Survive - Time. And this one has a Story. Ganondorf attacks Time’s castle town with an army of Gerudo and monsters. Time and the Sages fight him off but at the last second he breaks free and slaughters everyone, including Time. However, just as the song ends (the point where Polyphemus falls asleep), Zelda rewinds time and sacrifices herself to seal Ganondorf into the Mirror of Twilight. This is the moment the Downfall Timeline is created too.

- Remember Me - Our second non-canon Link, Shadow! He, Four, Dot, and others are fighting this monster. The Four Sword shatters, Shadow takes charge but in the end wants to do the noble thing. Oh and he gives his name as “Link” and not Shadow (or Shade, as Four’s beginning to call him in my headcanon)

- My Goodbye - Legend and Fable have a falling out. Legend’s sick of feeling used because he’s the hero, so he decides he’s had enough.

- Storm - Our third non-canon Link, Age! Basically a Tears of the Kingdom scenario except Age and his Zelda (Fauna) never went down below the castle. He never loses his arm and Fauna never goes to the past, but they have to evacuate Hyrule to the sky with the help of the Light Dragon who clears the way.

- Luck Runs Out - Sky and Groose. Idk what went down in Sky’s Hyrule but they’re having a disagreement about how Sky’s handling it.

- Keep Your Friends Close - Our last non-canon Link, Spirit! This one also has some story behind it to make the song fit. Idk why, but he and his Zelda (Phantom) have gone to speak to their Wind God, Zephos (the same from Wind Waker) who gives them a challenge. They fail and Spirit gets separated from the group. I imagine it might have something to do with Ganondorf who’s still stuck under the receding Great Sea.

- Ruthlessness - This absolute bop goes to Four. It’s also a follow-up to Remember Me, so that means the monster Shadow refused to kill is Special. Related in some way to Fierce Deity special. So the story here is after the encounter with the monster, Four, Shadow, and others (I’m debating giving Vaati a redemption arc?) decide to try to get help from the god Fierce Deity. Except Deity is pissed because he thinks Four is a weakling when it was actually Shadow who took the blame for what happened to the monster. Fierce slaughters all of Four and Shadow’s men, Four seals himself into the Four Sword to distract/hurt Fierce, and Shadow escapes but feels really guilty.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll add the Circe Saga when it comes out.

[p0patochisps]

What IS Epic The Musical

I WAS WAITING FOR THIS GOD DAMN MOMENT.

OKAY. BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELT ANON, BECAUSE YOU JUST UNLEASHED MY ADVERTISEMENT SIDE /HJ

According to the EPIC website, EPIC is a loose musical adaptation of Homer's Odyssey written by Jorge 'Jay' Rivera-Herrans. Jay also voices Odysseus, the main character of the musical.

It is completely sung through, consisting of 40 songs. The musical has two acts, which are then split into nine 'sagas'. There are five sagas in act one (Troy, Cyclops, Ocean, Circe and Underworld) and four in act two (Thunder, Wisdom, Vengeance, and Ithica).

As the show is still a work in progress, the songs are still being released on platforms in their entirety. As of right now, the Troy, Cyclops, and Ocean sagas have been released with the Circe saga coming sometime soon.

Jay posts consistently on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, showing his working progress with little sneak peaks at the songs and little bits of information about each of them that really enhance the listening experience!

Plot wise, like I said, EPIC is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey. Homer was an ancient Greek poet, and he is credited for both the Odyssey and the Iliad.

The iliad is the first of the two, telling the story of the Trojan War and all that happened. The Odyssey is about the journey Odysseus and the six hundred Ithican soldiers took to return to their homeland post-war (Spoiler alert. It doesn't work out very well)

EPIC follows Odysseus as he tries so very, very hard to return to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. However, every monster, God, and Goddess in the entirety of Greece and Olympus seems to have beef with this man and he struggles to get home.

He's somehow meant to be one of the most intelligent Greeks out there, cunning and clever and a brilliant soldier (so much so that Athena- Goddess of W i s d o m- decides to be his mentor) and yet he has a knack of pissing everyone off.

Anyway, the Trojan War took him away from Ithica and his family for ten years, and then EPIC follows his stupidly long and complicated journey home in the most stunning, heart-wrenching, tear jerking, awe inspiring way it can.

It's greek mythology, what isn't there to love about it.

I doooo heavily recommend it. So, so very much. So much. Jay is so very, very talented, and all of the singers in EPIC are so very talented. I think the songs are on most platforms (I'll link spotify and YouTube below). I also recommend looking at his TikTok or YouTube pages because this man is hilarious, and the process to the creation of this musical is so very interesting.

Okay bye bye :))

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqxvpcFchZLtYj30bSGmm64JibFLaWOAJ&si=fRBt3GoRCwew5_Sd

^this has all thirteen released songs on for YouTube.

https://youtube.com/@JayHerrans?si=7qR098QuuulGBxYg

^This is Jay's YouTube page.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6T7xIAK4W0Fwxp04fSjpE9?si=iccq-vm-SD-i5X0TcXMTBw&pi=e-RZKH3MfvTXmQ

^This is a playlist of released songs on Spotify.

https://www.tiktok.com/@jorgeherrans?_t=8j0ebB8Ka7V&_r=1

^This is Jay's TikTok.

He is also on iTunes but I don't have an account and I can't be bothered to make one (sorry)

IF YOU LISTEN, DROP ME A MESSAGE OR A COMMENT BECAUSE I LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT.

[themythecho]

Suicide Depictions in EPIC: The Musical (An essay I wrote in 30 minutes after the wisdom saga came out because I'm neurodivergent and write essays for fun)

(TRIGGER WARNING/SPOILER WARNING FOR: Self-Ham, Death, Suicide, all the EPIC sagas, but mainly the wisdom saga)

It is no question that in recent years, the media we consume has been covering darker and vulnerable topics. One prime example of this EPIC: The Musical. This musical is loosely based on the Odyssey as it follows Odysseus and his twenty year voyage to return to his wife; Penelope, his son; Telemachus, and his kingdom; Ithaca, after the Trojan War.

The overall recurring value in the musical is “Ruthlessness is Mercy upon ourselves” stated by director and lead vocalist of the show: Jorge (Jay) Rivera-Herrans. When Odysseus is faced with the decision to kill an infant boy that would later raise tyranny in all his path, the audience first hears the lines “When does a man become a monster”, which will return in later songs as well.

Those particular lyrics are letting the listener know of the man verses self conflicts Odysseus faces through the musical. Later on, in the Ocean saga, Odysseus hears this line again when part of his crew is murdered by Poseidon. These lines appear in three more sagas after this of the current sagas released: The Underworld Saga, The Thunder Saga, and The Wisdom Saga. Each of these instances, Odysseus is faced with the knowledge of the soldiers who died, or will die under his command.

The Wisdom Saga is the most notable Occurrence of this fact. Odysseus is standing at the edge of a cliff on Ogygia; Calypso’s island. Calypso calls out to Odysseus to rethink things, telling him she’ll greet him with Open Arms. This triggers Odysseus to remember the wise words of his friend; Polites, who died almost a decade before these events. He hears his voice telling him to “Greet the world with open arms”, but as those words flood his mind, other quotes from various characters in different spots of the musical overwhelm his thoughts.

Odysseus yells out to the empty ocean that “All I hear are screams”, which is a nod to the earlier saga; The Underworld Saga. He continues to yell this out, as a desperate attempt to find some sign, some will to live. This is when Odysseus calls out to his last resort, his old friend: Athena. The song ends here, which leaves the audience with pain and even confusion.

So why is this depiction of suicidal idealation, such a great representation of such thoughts? To start out, Odysseus’s suicidal thoughts are not a surprise to the fans of EPIC at all. Odysseus’s thoughts of self-harm have festered in him from the beginning, starting with killing an infant, as he states “I’d rather bleed for you!” in response to being asked to kill the son of Hector. This example is definite proof, that Odysseus had suicidal idealation for quite some time, and each traumatic event latched onto that fact until his breaking point

The other point of why this is such an interesting take on suicidal thoughts, is the reference to him having screams play back in his mind. As a general quirk to the musical, it uses repetitive lyrics and tones for certain characters, which makes them easily recognizable by these lines. The repetition of melodies is seen all throughout the musical, but Jorge Rivera-Herrans uses this to his advantage while writing these depressing train of thoughts. Having urges, almost like someone is telling you to act upon something is not irregular among Suicidal People, and Jorge is aware of this by the likes of the musical. He uses this trait to relate it to Odysseus, while still staying loyal to the original musical and the overall theme of it.

All in all, Jorge Rivera-Herrans has depicted how and why Odysseus faces such thoughts in a delicate and sensitive manner that can really speak to the listener. These words are able to showcase how Odysseus’s trials and tribulations through his journey did not just leave physical scars, but emotional scars as well. This can leave the audience to infer of Odysseus’s conquering his suicidal thoughts, leading him back to his home. This can also have the audience question if he will be able to defeat his thoughts in the first place, having him succumb to it.

[aaasdgnklm]

hey hye wanna hear my epic rant too bad ur gonna anyways

spoiler warning for epic: the musical, the thunder saga

Ok so the thunder saga. genuinely I’ve been shaking so much every time I’ve heard it. I’m gonna go song by song and this is a rant so theres gonna be a shitton of tangents sorry

1. suffering

this title scared me SO MUCH when I heard it cause like oh fuck my poor little guy(hes a king and has fought multiple wars and killed thousands of people) doesnt need more shit happening to him like leave him alone and then the melody was so upbeat and I was like huh?? and then ‘penelope’ starts talking and I’m like. pardon. what. sorry?? I was confused as shit, mostly at how nonchalant ODYSSEUS was. my first assumption was its gotta be one of the gods fucking w/ him but then why is he so casual? so I thought it was a dream. but then there were little things, penelope’s asking him to get in the water(which. reminds me of. someone HAHSBHADBH), and then he says hes scared of the water and I’m like. my guy I hope youre not afraid of the water youre a captain on a ship. but then I realized theres no way odys afraid of the water unless its bcuz of posideon, and penelope WOULDNT KNOW ABOUT THAT so he wouldnt say “you know I’m afraid of the water”. and then ofc shes like “daughter” and I’m like nope. this aint penelope and its not a dream cause then it would be odysseus’ mind making her up and hed never think daughter. And then odysseus asks how to get home and at this point I’m like hm. ok. so this is some kind of water based monster trying to pretend to be penelope to lure him in, right? (ALSO the fact that the only time in the song odysseus drops the act is when he says “but scylla has a cost” is so mmmmmm)and then. and then.

2. different beast

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT THIS IS WHERE THINGS GOT GOOD. like I love suffering but different beast scratches my brain SO GOOD and the rest of the saga was uphill from there I ahhhhhhhh. initial reaction: odysseus’ explanation that he knew what had been happening the whole time was SO GOOD and had my mouth hanging open the whole time. and then when he says “cut their tails off, we’re ending this now. throw their bodies back in the water. let them drown.” ohhhhhhhhhh my god holy fuck this was when it kinda hit for me- odysseus was not fucking around in monster hes actually BRUTAL in the thunder saga and I honestly hope it continues cause fuck yeah character development. also there were SO MANY lines in this that are just SO GOOD. “youve been tryna take my life this whole time” “I know exactly what you are, youre a siren.” “my real wife knows I’m not scared of the water, and my real wife knows I dont have a daughter.” “we found a ship with no crew” “sirens know about every route and horizon now I know how to get back to my island!” “so you can kill the next group of sailors in this part of the sea? nah, you wouldnt have spared me. I made a mistake like this once it almost cost my life, I cant take more risks of not seeing my wife. cut off their tails!” “kill them all!” and then the “odysseus” at the end I’m like why does that sound familiar? MFER ITS CAUSE ITS IN THE “You dont think I know my own palace? I built it.” SOUND CLIP IM

3. scylla

silly little sounds. silly little men. silly little deaths. ok so I watched the livestream so I saw the anamatic and holy SHIT the moment that eurylochus realized why odysseus had him light six torches was BRUTAL. also eurylochus’ confession that he opened the wind bag? ohhhhhhh ok MOTHER FUCKING SON OF A BITCH also when odysseus said “not much to say” god he sounds so tortured I cant with this. and scyllas voice in general is so ahhhhhh ESPECIALLY the “Hello.” and DROWN IN YOUR SORROW AND FEARS. CHOKE ON YOUR BLOOD AND YOUR TEARS. BLEED TILL YOU RUN OUT OF YEARS. WE MUST DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE. GIVE UP YOUR HONOR AND FAITH. LIVE UP YOUR LIFE AS A WRAITH. DIE IN THE BLOOD WHERE YOU BATHE. WE MUST DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE. with the fucking crunching and screaming in the background lik e ok. I needed this in my life.

4. mutiny

THIS IS MY FAVORITE. eurolychus’ confrontation with begging odysseus to tell him hes misinterpreted the situation, comparing odysseus’ past actions and fights to how he dealt with scylla, finally ending with him yelling at odysseus to “SAY SOMETHING!”, odysseus’ “I CANT.” and the looong pause before the boss battle starts. odysseus and eurolychus’ fight, both of them clearly not wanting to but knowing they have to. the chanting their name in the background. and then when odysseus says “I am not letting you get in my way!” and the sound of a stab- I was so scared hed actually killed eurolychus(yes I knew he dies I watched the overly sarcastic productions video on the odyssey too) and then ODYSSEYUS’ labored breathing and asking “why?” like I’m sorry jorge DID THEY STAB YOU TO GET THIS LYRIC WHY DOES HIS PHYSICAL PAIN SOUND SO GENUINE and then the. the fucking. the fucking luck runs out reprise. the MOMENT I realized it was the melody from luck runs out this is when I started crying.(dw past me it gets worse) the way that the crew is basically like “yeah remember when we asked what would happen if you fucked up? well you fucked up. and now youre finding out.” plus the fact that they are so clearly driving home we dont trust you. you failed to keep us safe. basically telling him ‘youre a bad leader’. that must have HURT. and then the fact that eurolychus bandaged him up and was waiting for him to wake up ough my heart. but also the fact that hes tied to helios’ statue? like. um. buddy. looking an awful lot like a sacrafice there. hahahahahah I’m loosing it. anyways, the luck runs out reprise hitting hard once again. like HARD. holy shit, odysseus’ “please don’t tell me you’re about to do what i think you’ll do” when that was what eurylochus said to him and then EURYLOCHUS CALLED HIM “ODY” I CANT and the eurylochus clearly being fed up(but not fed) while odysseus is actually begging him to please please think about this you can HEAR the desperation the need to get home and knowing if eurylochus kills the cow they probably wont? and then odysseus’ scream of “euRYLOCHUS NO!” cut short by the sound of eurylochus killing the cattle. and then the instant ‘oh no.’ like just INSTANTLY knowing they’re fucked and eurylochus STILL LOOKING TOWARD ODYSSEUS FOR GUIDENCE EVEN THO HE LITERALLY MUTINIED AGAINST HIM LIKE A DAY AGO AND HAS ODYSSEUS TIED UP AND AT HIS MIRCY AND HE STILL DEFAULTS TOWARDS ODYSSEUS FOR LEADERSHIP CAUSE HE STILL TRUSTS HIM and odysseus IMMEDIATELY taking charge and trying to get them out. the rushed full speed ahead melody, the boom of thunder and odysseus’ dread-filled “we’re too late.”

5. thunder bringer

IT LIVED UP TO THE HYPE GUYS!! sure enough the teasers we’ve seen are FUCKING AMAZING in the context of the song, zeus having an inflated as shit ego and taking up SO MUCH space, just like constantly talking about himself even tho IT AINT ABT HIM its so in character for what a massive dick he usually is in the greek mythos. and zeus deadass saying “if i were to make you choose, the lives of your men and crew or your own why do I think theyd loose?” right before MAKING ODYSSEUS CHOOSE. I’m. also odysseus sounds so.. small in this song. I dont know if its the fact hes literally having a mental breakdown or that zeus needs to be the biggest cock in any room he walks into but odysseus’ little “choose?” and him asking “please dont make me do this” JUST LIKE WHEN HIM AND ZEUS FIRST MET, the when does a man become a monster melody playing as odysseus tries to decide with penelopes voice asking him to come home pushing him over the edge wow. just wow. and the the conversation between odysseus and eurylochus? “captain?” “I have to see her.” “…but we’ll die.” “i know” I’m SORRY I CANT FUCKING DO THIS WHY DOES HE SOUND SO BROKEN AND REGRETFUL AND SAD AND OH MY GOD. AND THEN THE FUCKING ANIMATIC SHOWN IN THE TRAILER THE WAY HE JUST POINTS TOWARDS HIS CREW AND THEY ALL LOOK SO BETRAYED AND LOST BEFORE THEY START ATTACKING HIM AND THE LAST SHOT OF HIM CLOSING HIS EYES AS THEY PIN HIM TO THE MAST BY THE NECK WITH THEIR SWORDS AND THEN LIGHTNING STRIKES THE SHIP HOLY. also if you think about it this choice was kind of the final stress test for odysseus, because this is the ultimate decision: should he be a good king, captain, and friend or should he take the small chance to see his wife again? cause its not just about who lives and dies, its about who gets to keep going, who gets to see home, who gets a chance and who looses right now. and how could he choose the people who just stabbed him in the back and have doomed them multiple times over seeing his wife whom he loves and would do anything for? honestly, with what I know about how odysseus is, I wouldnt be very surprised if he was weighing the choice both from the emotional (seeing his wife or saving his crew) and factual (hes probably the strongest and most fit leader among them, they might not do too well on their own, ithaca needs a king and he doesnt know if telemachus can be that, one person has a higher chance of surviving than a large group in a journey(ingreekmythologyanyway), and they did just make a really dumb mistake that odysseus wouldnt have made himself and yeah ok maybe hes a little salty but still.)

genuinly the whole saga is so amazing and I’m so looking forward to the wisdom, vengence, and ESPECIALLY ithaca saga. by the way I could actually do this for every song in the musical/every saga tbh

thanks for coming to my tedtalk, I fucking love epic: the musical

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale’s Top 5: Best Songs in Epic the musical (first Act)

Rules:

1. I will be focusing on only the first act of the Epic . (So from the Troy saga to the Underworld saga)

2. I will be listing one song PER saga. So I will be picking my personal favorites from each saga and ranking them accordingly.

3. The way I Decided to rank them was on the following: how well it portrays the story, the music, the epic lines, and overall willingness to listen on repeat.

4. This is based on my opinion. And you are free to share your opinion in replies.

5. If I did include the Thunder Saga. Thunder bringer would be the arc rep and arguably in first.

____________________________________________

5. Done for

Now when I first thought about doing this list. I was surprised how low I had this overall saga. If I was ranking it without limits this song barely cracks the top 10. BUT it is a great song. It embodies the clash of wills between Circe and Odysseus. Both have people they want to protect and are both willing to do what they need to in order to win.

Circe has the upper hand with her magic, but thanks to Hermes, Ody is not out of the running. And you can feel his struggle. He is doing what he can to stay in the front seat in this battle. So when he thinks he won, Circe threw him a curve ball and that ending leads to the next song.

In truth, it has the most emotional variety in this saga, and I love the musical progression. It really feels like a duel to the death. And for that it’s great.

____________________________________________

4. My Goodbye (both versions)

This is the parts definitive Athena part in my mind.

This song is where I actually think both the original release and re-release have merit.

The original being more solemn and appearing as both feeling like they have to seperate in order to go forward. Athena seems to be lamenting this more. It felt more heart breaking, like they tried and failed to fix a friendship but nothing could be done as they were set in their ways.

While the re-release feels more like a falling out. Both sides are angry at the other. And the scathing remarks REALLY hit in this one. Athena is more offended, Odysseus is resentful of Athena. In eachother’s view, the other failed them. They are both too prideful.

3. Just a man (re-release)

I originally had Warrior of the mind as this slot, but after listening to the re-release. It sold me on Just a man. The only thing really shocking is that I have this at number 3.

This is the start to Odysseus arc. He had been tired from war, and thought he could end it with just killing the villains and leaving. But now told by Zeus he must kill an infant. He is torn. He sees an innocent infant, much like the son he left so long ago. You hear Odysseus heart break as he is talking to this baby. It’s arguably his most cruel action, and he feels so much guilt over it. He is singing to the infant as much as he is to himself. And we even get faint previews of Other songs in the re-release which was enough to sell it for me.

This song really makes the man.

____________________________________________

2. Monster

The song that fully describes Odysseus’s transformation. He laments all his pain through his journey. The underworld was a constant smack in the face of all his failures. And while I do believe Underworld is a more emotionally intense song. Monster is the song with the payoff of all Odysseus went through to get to this point. He would become the monster that WILL get home. That is what he decides, and nothing will stop him. Even if he must be heartless.

This song does a great job showing Odysseus’ doubts and realizations and then the moment he accepts it, the crescendo is simply transcendent. And honestly would be my favorite song on this list… if it wasn’t for one more.

____________________________________________

1. Ruthlessness

The big man of the sea had to be number one.

Poseidon steals the show with this one. His song matching his tone and building up like a crashing wave. He is reprimanding Odysseus, and mocking him.

The god of the sea even gives the captain a sense of false hope, just before he kills most of his crew.

Then after leaving only 43 men left. He tells him the words he said to the cyclops

“I am your darkest moment.”

F***ing vicious and vindictive.

Every action Poseidon did, every word said was just to MOCK him. It even adds to the hypocrisy of it. Or it would be if Poseidon wasn’t a force of nature.

The gods are often portrayed earlier in this as these beings that have reasons beyond understanding. But Poseidon’s appearance is surprisingly simple. They hurt his son who cried out to him and now they gotta pay.

And Just when Poseidon was going in for the kill, Odysseus pulls a trick that helps him escape for now. But the last line stays

“Remember me.”

As another line Odysseus yelled at Polyphemus.

Poseidon isn’t done. And he WILL be back

[moreespressoformydepresso]

EPIC: The Musical has me in a chokehold so I made a TBOSAS AU where the tributes are all eldritch creatures whose true might was dormant. Maybe reaping them at the same time was a rebel plot, maybe it was divine intervention, but it happens. It happens and the stress of the situation causes one of them to snap. The others soon follow.

All have eldritch forms tied to an element. Ones that aren’t the traditional four count (so metal, void, light etc). They have minor control over that element aside from the eldritch form and can spawn whole realms where their inner creature thrives which only they can access. So a creature tied to the element fire can be resting in their own personal badass volcano lair and then spawn in the ‘real’ world via a portal in the form of a flame. They can create the flame too, but they can’t travel very far and there are ways to mess with the teleportation. Also, the kids retain a version of their human form even when they’re ‘transformed’ because their eldritch form isn’t an alternate form, it’s more an extension of them that’s hidden until they reveal them. I’m using the word transformation because it’s easier. I’ve got many ideas but I’ll start with what inspired this AU: Treech as Scylla in the song Scylla.

I’m going with snakes over the dogs sometimes used in mythology because I think it’s more terrifying (and also I’ve seen one animatic with adorable serpents and fell in love with the big eyes and boopable snouts and massive razor sharp teeth dripping with blood). Treech’s eldritch form is a base with six ginormous serpents sticking out of it. If his human form’s attached to it, he’s a part of the base, usually with only his upper body visible. He has scales with a gradient of forest green, indigo, and Persian blue. When fully transformed, all of his eyes are a glowing icy blue or maya blue (I want to make them fully black but with all the dark shades that’s less terrifying imo) and his human form has lines of scales going in spirals down his body and creeping up on the edges of his face. When Treech starts his transformation, his pupils turn into predator slits and his irises turn light blue. The blue spreads out until it takes up the whole eye. When he gets mad, it might bleed into the veins around his eyes. The serpents themselves start out as glowing outlines all over his skin like tattoos that start to peel off and slowly grow to the terrifying size of his full eldritch form.

The part in the song after Scylla says “hello :)” is the part where he transforms, his voice slowly sounding more and more inhuman (he can sound like a human but like- go big or go home right?) and instead of just killing six people he massacres whole squads of peacekeepers (though he spares innocents like kids because he’s determined to rub it in the Capitol’s face that a literal man-eating serpent monster is more compassionate than they could ever hope to be) in his quest for both vengeance and freedom. It’s not even the biggest slaughter in the big revenge spree the tributes go on together, but still. I’m giving Treech vague siren-like aspects (his singing voice can cause a loss of focus and amply emotions like fear) instead of the telepathy Scylla has in EPIC. A little nod to the song that started this AU.

I might continue this and I’m working on some art for this AU (might post, might not, I’m not sure yet).

[summaryscar]

Ask game: Hero of Warriors?!?!!?! 👀

🤗

🍿

Oh, dang, this was from forever ago I didn’t think I’d see an ask for this game ever again. However, this was one that I wasn’t asked about that I really wanted to talk about, so thank you for asking about it!

I’ll talk about it for a bit first, then share a snippet of what I’ve got done, if that’s alright with you.

So, this is a fic I haven’t worked on in months because I kinda got distracted with other ones and haven’t yet had the time to go back to it. For those who have heard of Epic: The Musical (which I’ve come to realize is a lot of people in the LU fandom), the fic is based off of the songs Survive and Remember Them. I haven’t quite gotten to the part where these two songs actually come into play, but I’m extremely close to getting started on where Survive will happen, if that makes sense.

Besides the fact that I got distracted, another reason as to why the fic has been untouched for so long is because I’m unsure as to how much of the song lyrics and such to include in the fic. There are certain lines I know for certain that I will be including, because how could I not?, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to have the dialogue be the lyrics word for word, or if it’s better to skip over certain things.

This fic has also somehow managed to branch off into ideas for other fics titled similarly and revolving around the same idea for each Lu character. These ones are still completely unwritten, and I’m not planning on starting them until I get the one for Wars done.

(Okay, that’s a lie. I have, like, a sentence for two written for Legend and one of the others that I can’t remember which one it is, nor do I want to search all my docs at the moment)

Now for the snippet I promised:

“Well, I suppose we can lend a hand or two, what do you guys say?” Warriors turned around, addressing the rest of the Chain who had managed to cut down the surrounding monsters enough for them all to talk.

Wild’s immediate reaction was to run off and charge some nearby Bokoblins that had gotten too close to some of the soldiers. He was soon followed by Wind and Four, the two of them yelling some sort of battle cry as they slashed through any enemy that crossed their path. The rest of them were quick to join the battle, assisting soldiers who appeared to be in need of reinforcements.

After some time, the monster forces seemed to be dwindling, and while it took longer to kill these ones off, — Legend learned the hard way that they had infected blood — they were making more progress than the troops had been making without the Heroes of Courage.

“I think we’ve almost got them all,” said Twilight from across the battlefield. It was hard to hear him properly due to the sound of clashing shields and weapons, but the Rancher was loud enough that it sparked some hope in everyone present, giving them all the more reason to continue fighting until they no longer could.

“Well, that’s good,” breathed Hyrule from somewhere off to the side, treating Legend’s injured arm while still keeping an eye out for any threats coming their way.

Warriors looked around, scanning the area for the rest of his fellow heroes. He caught a glimpse of Wild running through a crowd of ChuChus, slicing them apart with ease, before he lost sight of the Champion. Sky wasn’t too far away from him, using the Master Sword to fight some Moblins from Wild’s world. He didn’t have time to worry about the fact that they were not only battling black-blooded enemies, but also ones from Wild’s era, some of the strongest they’d ever encountered even when not infected. From behind him, he heard Wind’s battle cries once more and came across the sight of his little brother caught in combat with an Aeralfos, the winged creature swooping down on him. That, however, didn’t appear to be a problem for the Sailor seeing how he just jumped out of the way before stabbing it with his sword

That brought the total up to six, seven counting himself. Only two others were left.

I (surprisingly) have a lot more than this written, it just might take a while to get out, but I promise it’ll come eventually

[rocksibblingsau]

I already did a bit of a rant about this on my page but I thought you might appreciate it.

Backstory: I've been following Epic: The Musical (a musical based on The Odyssey and the concept albums are slowly being released over time) and the most recent one (The Thunder Saga) just came out. One of the songs, 'Different Beast', is about Odysseus starting his villain arch.

Anyways, here's some of the lyrics. I think they would really fit trolls fighting back against the Bergens.

“No more of us deceased, 'cause we won't take more suffering from you!”

“We are the man-made monsters”

“We are the ones who conquer”

“You are a threat no longer”

“We won't take more suffering from you!”

I like to imagine Viva, Clay, and the Putt-Putt Trolls but that's more cause I got a fic about them.

(You don't gotta sell me on Epic: The Music you are looking at someone who has been binging Storm, The Underworld and Full Speed Ahead)

That'd be a very fitting song. Honestly kind of would have liked the putt putt trolls to have a song when they attacked Bridget and Gristle but I don't know how it would have worked in the context of the movie.

[mrultra100]

I know this is a bit sudden, buuuuuuuuut...

I've been thinking a fair bit about the canned MSM tv show recently. For those not aware, Big Blue Bubble was originally planning to turn My Singing Monsters into an animated series. However, they've since canned it for... reasons? I dunno, I’ll never understand how BBB came to can this idea, but from the looks of it, this series looked like it would be very good. I even have a few thoughts dedicated to how this could work, if it ever get brought back from the dead. And that includes things like the personalities of the main characters, along with some juicy ideas for things like worldbuilding based on the games' surprisingly deep lore.

Pom Pom- A cheerful soul motivated by endless creativity. Her main goal in life is to create various musical masterpieces as a sort of maestro. A bit like Charlie from Hazbin Hotel, if you can see it.

Mammott- The lovable doofus of the trio. Loyal to his friends, Mammott isn’t the brightest bulb in the shed, but his heart is much larger. Can get into sticky situations due to his state of mind.

Furcorn- The straight-Mon of the trio. While he’s more than happy to support his friends, he serves as the voice of reason within the group, especially with things like Pom-Pom going in over her head, and Mammott’s child-like curiosity getting the better of him. Is also both sassy and blunt.

While the general tone of this show would be similar to the laidback and wacky tone of the original games, Those Singing Monsters could have its own sense of worldbuilding, and that could be reflected in the tones of its seasons. The plot of at least the first season revolves around Pom Pom and co going on all sorts of wacky adventures across the Monster World, singing songs and getting into all sorts of mischief along the way. An idea for an overarching plot could go into in a couple of ideas.

Idea A- The rediscovery of the lost element of Fire, and the attempts made to bring it and the Monsters belonging to that element back into The Monster World. Could also expand on and and show off an animated iteration of the events of the Dawn of Fire, the events that led to its end and the Fire monsters being forced into hiding, and how it’s affected The Monster World since.

Idea B- Admittingly, this could work more as the plot of a Season 2, but the story of the Celestials could work. How they came into existence, their history with the Colossals, the formation of Starhenge, and how the end of the Dawn of Fire led them to being dormant. Due to some sort of problem, Pom Pom and co. would go on some sort of grand, season-spanning adventure to find the Celestials, reawaken them, and bring all of them back together.

It's not entirely perfect, but an attempt was made. Heck, you could even throw in more aspects of the franchise's world into this show for more plots; Things like the Magicals, the Shugafam (Probably have Shugabush be voiced by Kristian Bush himself), the Ethereals and the Pocket Dimension, the Rare and Epic monsters, the Wubbox and the Wublins, The Colossingum, Mythical Island, and more would all help with the stories of this show.

And as much as it sucks that it's currently canceled, maybe, in some sort of strange sense, there's hope for TSM. The franchise has been getting more and more popular in recent years, so Big Blue Bubble could be made to realize the potential of a MSM show, and roll with it. And besides, Fandemonium wasn't the best way to go around with the concept of a My Singing Monsters show. As much as I can get behind it, they should've thought about it more.

[connorsnothereeither]

Okay I’ve said that Ulysses is Epic the Musical coded from the very beginning (which admittedly is hard not to be because they’re both based on the Odyssey, even if one is way more loosely based).

BUT it’s not like, all of the songs, ya know? I have specific songs which are ingrained in my brain and I can finally tell y’all most of the reasons…

(Also minor spoilers for the canon Ulysses fic “Cycles”)

The Horse and the Infant - [spoilers] but also I like to think the beginning of this song reflects Ulysses in his days as a soldier with Vess, and the final pushes on the front lines which led to Vesperae’s death.

Just a Man - This song sort of inspired what Ulysses was as a character in the very beginning. The idea of what pushes a man to do the things the Telchin did. The desperation, and the loss of innocence, and loss of the self in becoming a monster. I tend to think of this current Fable Ulysses, looking back and trying to find the point he went over the edge as he begs for forgiveness from his friends. Looking into the eyes of the people around him and only being reminded of the things he’s lost and the people he’s hurt.

Open Arms - This only recently occurred to me, and wasn’t something I was going for when I wrote Oenone, but she’s really Polites coded? They were initially conceptualized as sort of loosely what Garden Duo is to Rae, he was to Ulysses, but looking back this attempt at pulling Ulysses back towards kindness… I dunno Open Arms is super Oenone coded. There’s also some flavour of their final interaction before Oenone’s death in the conversation with Eurylochus in Puppeteer, when they’re both older, but like… This one.

Remember Them - In my mind this is Ulysses during the Levithan incident, trying to lead the team of scientists to survival as they run from Leviathan. There’s shades of upcoming lore in this too, but the culmination of himself standing up, throwing his identity on the line to distract Leviathan as the others escape, moving directly into him taunting Lenarius in the prayers in the aftermath.

My Goodbye - LENARIUS👏AND👏ULYSSES👏 a god who viewed a mortal as an acolyte, rejecting them entirely as the mortal becomes disenfranchised with religion as they witness the horrors brought upon them by the gods??? Mr Jorge how did you pull this so directly out of my brain??? The final emotions in Odysseus’ last “You’re alone!” is so much the same energy as Ulysses breaking down in his final confrontation with Len in his attic in the episode “28 - What is Best”.

Ruthlessness - I NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW HOW MUCH I CARE ABOUT RUTHLESSNESS BEING A ULYSSES AND C!OCIE SONG- Ocie giving Ulysses so many chances. Giving him so much kindness, despite knowing what he did, only to finally snap when he tries to help on Oscar, and she learns about what he did to Vorago. God fuck if I could animate THIS would be the song. Ocie chasing Ulysses down in an attempt to finally kill him after he went after her son. Ulysses genuinely trying to be merciful, to help, and it didn’t work. It works in the context of Oscar and of Leviathan, pleading his case that he was only trying to do what’s best, and it’s just… god it’s so perfect to me I have so many feelings- Ocie and Ulysses are such an embodiment of “the line between naivety and hopefulness is almost invisible”, especially in “Ep.28 - What is Best” and “Ep.29 - Spear Fishing”

The Underworld - Just given the many canonical nightmares Ulysses has about those he hurt in the projects, and those he lost in the war… yeah. Yeah this one too.

Monster - In my mind, this is Ulysses immediately after Oeone’s death. Not a brutal snapping point, but a gradual accepting of everything around him. Of all he’s done and has to do. His kindness is a danger and has only left him alone, and caused the only person he cared about to die, and worse, be forgotten. For the first time he truly learns to push away guilt and kindness and humanity, and do whatever it takes to save the telchin, no matter who or what he had to hurt.

Get in the Water - Absolutely current Ulysses and Leviathan. Without a doubt. Like, particularly I’m thinking of them meeting in the telchin temple in “Ep. 12 - Cydonia” and Ulysses not even knowing how to react. His first time seeing the consequences of his action, as Levithan just… finishes what he already started. Not angry. Not malicious. Just… there to kill him. There to do what he has to.