#incredibly epic

[words-writ-in-starlight]

honestly my mother was a huge champ about her eight-year-old asking to be bought an unabridged edition of the Odyssey for a birthday present, and then she was an equally huge champ about reading her eight-year-old the unabridged Odyssey as a bedtime story and pausing every four lines to define something for me, and let me just say that I have fucking TREASURED the opportunity to reverse that old tradition by more or less forcing her to sit on my couch and listen to Epic and pause it every four lines for my dissertation

[gravewilt]

half assed odypen sketch after i finished epic the musical

[thhouseofblack]

iliad adaptation that follows the actual book to a tee EXCEPT it has odysseus in the background commentating like one of those sports commentators on every single scene, like:

"Achilles - yes, the Achilles - has just received word that Patroclus, his dearest companion, his partner in the camps and possibly in other activities (depending on who you ask), has fallen in battle! This is a moment in history, folks! Achilles is on his knees, howling at the sky like a man who just lost his entire world, ever the theatre kid!"

"Now, forget about Achilles, let’s talk about the real losers here: the entire Achaean betting pool. That’s right! If you had money on ‘Patroclus survives the war,’ you might as well start handing over your gold and spoils!"

"Hector is on the run, folks! I repeat, Hector is on the run! This is NOT a drill! The Trojan prince is circling the walls of Troy, and Achilles is right behind him, faster than Grandpa Hermes on cattle stealing duty! That’s one… two… three laps around the city! My, my, my, this reminds me of my sister's unfulfilled weight loss plans."

"AND Agamemnon fires back! Says Achilles is just a whiny soldier who doesn’t respect the chain of command! Achilles’ jaw just dropped, I don’t think I’ve seen him this offended since someone suggested Patroclus should wear his armour. And now - oh, oh, folks, he’s reaching for his sword! HE IS ACTUALLY GOING FOR HIS SWORD! ARE WE ABOUT TO WITNESS A MURDER LIVE?! IS ACHILLES FINALLY FULFILLING EVERYONE'S DREAMS TO KILL AGAMEMNON?!"

"AND HERE COMES THE SLAUGHTER! Diomedes is absolutely dominating the battlefield - twelve men down, zero resistance! Look at that form! That precision! Just a drool worthy performance of a true warrior! Meanwhile, I’m executing a perfect steal - warhorses? Mine now! That’s right, folks, I am officially expanding my contingent of stolen goods!”

“So there you have it, folks! Another flawless Odysseus-Diomedes Special™ - efficient, deadly, and absolutely not romantic in any way, despite what the Myrmidons are snickering about behind our backs. Yes, we can hear you!"

[manichewitz]

sinners is like the perfect horror movie to me because it’s simultaneously an unironically good, well crafted film, but also just a little camp. it’s a beautiful homage to blues music and it’s importance in black culture, it’s a metaphor for the long-term impacts of colonialism, it’s a challenge to the idea that hoodoo & other forms of black spirituality are dangerous, it’s a story about love and grief and human connection through music—and also a racist vampire does irish step dancing threateningly into the camera

[kazz-brekker]

dune part 2 really is one of those films where everyone is like "this is the best thing ever" and you're like "it can't possibly be" and then you watch it and spend 2 hours and 46 minutes understanding why paul atreides has a cult the size of a planet

[dreamsy990]

drew some of my fav ody designs! wasnt originally meant to be also replicating the styles but thats sort of just how my brain works. except i didnt copy the lineart styles of anyone here so its DEFINITELY a bit uncanny for a couple of these (LOOKING AT YOU QINNY IM SO SORRY) but whatever

the designs featured here (from left to right) belong to: me, @gigizetz, @neal-illustrator, @irunaki, @bigidiotenergytm, @qinnyanimation, and @foopsie-daisy

[rakiah]

Circe!Jamil and Vil tagteaming Leona has been in my brain all day

I know what you’re doing.

And I approve.

…But now I want to do that alternative ending (T⌓T) Surely the return to Ithaca would be far different xD

[ruthlessness69]

*runs in* - *drops this because I could live on your Odyseidon drawings for a year, your honor, they are so damn lovely*

*runs back to ao3 to finally read the new chapters* *flailing*

oooooHH my 🥺🥺🥺

Thank you so much for your BEAUTIFUL art 💕 And also I should thank you a lot for helping me with ao3 registration 🩵🩵🩵🙏 It's all thanks to you that I'm posting there 🐴

((btw you've captured the very core of OdySeidon in this drawing, aaaaAAA incredible 😭😭🥺🥺🩵🩵🩵🩵 I love it so much....))

I have a little sketchy doodle with a tiny-tiny spoiler for future events in "The man and the sea" for ya ✨

🩵🩵🩵

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Sento gets a page too.

[lyraofthestarsss]

WE GOT OPEN ARM’D AGAIN GODDAMN JAY WHY DO YOU HURT US LIKE THIS

[wheatwhip]

Eurylochus is a very interesting character to me especially as both a parallel and foil to Odysseus. I could talk a lot about the different between Euryolochus in the Circe Saga and Odysseus in the Thunder Saga in regards to "sacrificing" the crew, but right now i want to talk about the brown cow and why neither he or the crew heeded Odysseus's warning because i see too many people interpreting it as an arrogant mistake.

Starvation has been a very big driving motif in the story. A very human need and the original catalyst that leads them to the cyclops in the first place. However many of the cyclops's sheep they were able to take, they have long since run out by Mutiny no doubt. They are starving.

Eurylochus's line "Ody, we're never gonna get to make it home You know it's true" communicates to me that at this point he doesn't plan to. Him and the crew no longer really intend to survive because of how stacked the odds have been and how tired they are. They're not doing this to sabotage Odysseus or because they don't understand the risk or see what he sees. "How much longer must i go about my life like this when people die like this?" They know they're going to die but it won't be from starving. They're tired. Odysseus has to beg them to go faster to try and escape because he's the only one who cares to.

"But we'll die" isn't him asking Odysseus how he could do this to them, it's not spoken in shock, it's making him say it and accept it and understand the choice he's going to make because no matter how much Eurylochus "deserves it", it's not a light decision no matter how sure he makes it. Zeus knew it from the start and the entire crew knew it too. It's not a request, not full of spite, it's spoken by a man who has already long begun to grieve his own death. There's reason to say Odysseus would be the exact same if he wasn't so connected to the idea Penelope presents as stability and peace.

[jenniferpendragon]

Listening to "Would You Fall in Love with Me Again?" and I wondered why on earth I connected so deeply with Odysseus here when I've been connecting with Penelope so much, and then it clicked.

Massive spoilers below the cut, and also mentions of sexual assault and image issues.

Odysseus has become the monster, that's what "Odysseus" is about, his final culmination. He is everything he's fought and hated and killed. He has murdered a *baby* at the command of a god who told him if he didn't, the gods would have the child destroy his family. His best friend died because Odysseus, out of extreme guilt, indulged his ways too much. His own desire for a better world and to give mercy, fueled by guilt, caused his mentor to leave him and left an opening for future pain. His pride turned his cunning into dust. He watched men he had fought for ten years to save from dying in war be drowned in a storm because of his damn pride (and his brother-in-law and second-in-command's greed and mistrust). He then nearly lost all of his remaining men at the hands of an enchantress. He is forced to hear the screams of his dead comrades and come face to face with his dead mother in the Underworld who died waiting for him.

Odysseus then murders gods know how many sirens (rightfully so, but still), and then sacrifices six men to a sea monster for safe passage. His remaining men mutiny against him (understandably on the crew's side, not so much for Eurylochus) and then decide to eat the sacred cattle of Apollo, which gets the wrath of Zeus down upon them.

Odysseus then decides that his wife and son are more important than his remaining men and lets them be killed for their misdeeds. He is then trapped for years (and possibly sexually assaulted, reading between the lines) by a woman who wants to replace his wife while the demons of his past and his guilt and trauma cause him to nearly commit suicide. Once freed from the island and Calypso, he fights another sea monster with just his wits and then nearly dies by a god before torturing Poseidon until he gives Odysseus the safe passage he wants. After all that, he (rightfully) slays the suitors who were planning to rape his wife and attempting to kill his son. They beg for mercy, but the Odysseus that gave mercy to the cyclops that murdered his best friend is dead. Only a monster remains. A man who tortured gods stands before them and judges them for their crimes.

And his son is ecstatic to have him home, is wondering if Odysseus would accept him as "weak" as he is, as if Telemachus isn't the perfect "warrior of the mind" Odysseus always wanted to be, a combination of Athena and his younger self's viewpoints. Odysseus, the monster, sees one of the two things he still loves in the world and exercises those open arms because this is his son. His love for him is unconditional and unchanging.

Athena, beaten and recovering and full of empathy for the first time in the ten years since she left him, sees the Odysseus before her, the monster and cunning warrior she was attempting to turn him into, and accepts what he is, what he's become because of her. And while she loves him, she doesn't show him love. Just acceptance and quiet friendship (which is more than fine, but it does nothing to his heart about his monstrosity).

And then he comes to Penelope. The woman he has turned into someone unrecognizable for. Someone even the goddess of wisdom regrets. His son loves him, but it's because of the monster he has become. His son never knew him, never knew who Odysseus was at his core. Athena did, and she regrets what happened to him, what he became. But Athena wasn't who he was fighting for. He wasn't the one thing that kept Odysseus alive for twenty years of hell.

And he comes to Penelope, heart on his sleeve and says "I'm not the man you knew. I have done terrible things. I have become a monster inside and out. Would you fall in love with me again?"

He doesn't ask "do you still love me?". He doesn't think it's possible. He is a monster. He not only signed the death warrant of his sister's husband but threw a child, a baby, off of the walls of Troy. Odysseus doesn't believe himself worthy of the love he is asking for. He needs it with every fiber of his being because that is what he has craved for two decades, but he is a monster. He is not the kind and gentle husband who carved a wedding bed into an olive tree so it would be a living reminder of their everlasting love. He is a man who sold the souls of his men to a monster to get home.

Odysseus is amazingly, beautifully human, but by many metrics, he is a bad man. His actions can be justified and rationalized, but he has committed atrocities or allowed them to be committed (Achilles' desecration of Hector's corpse, opening the gates of Troy for the people to be slaughtered in their sleep, sentenced men to death so he could go home, throwing a baby off the walls of Troy) and he can't be called a good man (his actions in "Odysseus" aren't monstrous but they reveal his mindset) in a measurable way.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him evil like I would Antinuous, but would Odysseus? Yes. He believes he is a monster. Monsters are something to kill, not worthy of love.

But he asks. He asks Penelope if she would fall in love with him again. Not if she still does, he doesn't ask for that. He has loved no one else in these last twenty years, but he doesn't ask for that from Penelope. He's asking for a chance. Would she be willing to love the monster that has come home in her husband's place? Would she be willing to look upon him, with the blood of an infant on his hands, with the blood of an entire people on his hands (they would never have sacked Troy and committed genocide without him), and choose to fall in love with him anyways? That is what he is asking. Could you love me, as evil and monstrous as I am?

And what does Penelope do? She asks him to move their marriage bed. He's not her husband? He's a monster? Fine, a monster wouldn't care about destroying their wedding bed, the symbol of their marriage, to get what he wants, a new start from her. A monster wouldn't care that he would have to tear out the roots of their eternal love to have her now. A monster wouldn't have second thoughts.

But Odysseus is hurt and angry at her essentially asking for a divorce from the man she married, revealing the secret of their marriage bed in his shock and rage. A monster wouldn't give it a second thought, but the man she married could never move that bed for anything.

And she tells him that only her HUSBAND knew that, so that makes this monster he claims to be her husband. Penelope doesn't just agree to fall in love again, but that she doesn't care how, where, or when, because he is HERS. He isn't a monster that has replaced her husband, he IS her husband.

She does not look at him and see his sins. She looks at him and sees someone she has loved and waited for for twenty years. Someone she was ready to die a violent death rather than live without.

Odysseus believes himself to be a monster, to be evil. And Penelope says he is her husband. He is hers. He is not some evil monster, he is her husband who would never even think about moving their marriage bed. He thinks he is evil, too much, too monstrous, and she says no, you are MINE.

I've always felt like I'm a horrible person and worthy of the pain and punishment I get. But hearing someone love someone else unconditionally, looking upon them and saying "I don't see your sins; I only see you" is incredibly healing to me. Penelope hears his list of his sins and straight up IGNORES them. It's almost as if she has forgotten them. She loves Odysseus, period. She does not see the vile monster that Athena sees and accepts and regrets. She sees her husband.

Love is the greatest power in the world.

[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.

[sowearecleariamhere]

Penelope could easily be painted as the damsel yearning for her lover, the woman without much agency waiting for her husband to come home (which of course we all know she isn't, she is a literal and metaphorical queen), and in a lesser story*) she might have been cast into that stereotype. I think that is why I love her almost yelling "You're mine" at Odysseus in WYFILWMA.

It is so possessive and decisive, ruling out any "buts". It perfectly underlines her steadfastness, her loyalty, her agency. She claims Odysseus as hers without question once she knows it is really him, that he is finally back home. She is seemingly offended that Odysseus even suggests that she might not accept him after how much he has changed. (She will make her own mind up about that, thank you very much, and said mind has been made up for 20 years btw)

It is not only that Odysseus has come home and now she chooses him. No, she has been choosing him over and over and over for the past 20 years with every action she took. It is not him coming back that now puts her in the position to choose him - it only reveals that choice, that there never was another choice other than Odysseus. Which leads me to my honorable mention:

Ody: "[...] You’ve been waiting for love."

Pen: "I've been waiting for you."

Penelope definitely had a surplus of suitors (108) and even if their motives might have been questionable, she could have easily found a new husband if that was what she wanted, maybe even one that genuinely loved her. But Penelope's love is Odysseus. Love for her is synonymous with him. No one else is even worth considering, she would rather be alone or even die before she gives any other man the time of day.

tldr; I love love LOVE the wording in WYFILWMA, how it shows how Penelope is just not taking this shit from her husband. She knows what she wants and that is Odysseus, even if it is not the original model but the slightly banged up version, the heavily traumatized, now with grey hairs probably, war criminal, ruthless god torturer version of her husband.

Because he is still her husband, goddamn it.

This might very well not make much sense bc I am insane over them currently

*) "lesser story" is not referring to the odyssey or saying epic is better than the odyssey, I mean to compare them both to any completely different work (or franchise if you will) that does not give characters agency where they should have it

[heilos]

My found family/reunited family enjoying ass sobbing at the Ithica Saga holy fuck I love you Epic the Musical so so much. ;_;

[dootznbootz]

"Oasis"

Gotta visit the Water Wife at the river <3

My OdyPen from my dear friend @thehelplessmortals Thank you again so much🩵🥹 They're so lovely and so silly.