#thoughts percolating

[noxshade]

Citizen Sleeper 2 fic thoughts below

I want to do a time loop story. Peggy sue, new game+ nonsense. Spoilers below

Any story that ends how it began always makes me want to literally have it start over. Like, Serafin's coin guides you back, but to the wrong reboot. After reclaiming Darkside, the Sleeper is sent back to the beginning of the game.

Like, imagine the Sleeper quietly trying to find where the drone is in Hexport before it detonates, not knowing what to do, not sure if their memories are real, not knowing who to trust with foreknowledge of events.

I love Peggy Sue fics, love when knowing what will happen is not quite enough to change it. It's so interesting and tragic. I want to write this, but I need to spend more time with CS2, find everything.

[handsomeyoungscapegrace]

dunst and union

[nbstevonnie]

folks. i may be breaking and getting a n*tfl*x subscription

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about Buck getting to be the big brother he never had to Ravi…

[blackjackkent]

Jaheira is Not a Deadbeat

I am, as always, deeply in love with the kids' ambient dialogue while waiting for Jaheira to come inside. And it's time for me to have Opinions.

FIG: I saw her! I swear! RION: Are you sure? Maybe it was just a laborer holding a shaggy grey mop! FIG: Be serious, Rion! Who puts braids on a mop?

FIG: She'll be here any second. Maybe she's sneaking! RION: Doubtful. We'd hear her knees cracking.

And of course my favorite:

RION: Enough, Fig. There's no point getting your hopes up. She'll be back when she's back. FIG: You don't think she will! RION: I know she will. But we'll wait a little longer, if you like.

😭😭😭😭

Rion absolutely knew perfectly well what she was supposed to do from Jaheira's instructions. She just didn't want to. She's been hanging on to the desperate belief that Jaheira was going to walk through the door and make it unnecessary - and, as it turned out, she was right.

OK, fuck it, I'm doing a post about this now. :P

Despite what the Tumblr BG3 fandom would have you believe, Jaheira is not a "deadbeat mom." Is she a parent with emotional constipation issues and way too much time at work? Sure. But so are plenty of other parents on both Toril and Earth. It's SUPER clear from the way all the kids (including Rion) talk to and about her that they LOVE her and she has been an enduring presence in their lives, and that her recent disappearance was both unusual and devastating. 

There are books she reads the kids up in the bedroom! Fig is so excited to announce she's back, indicating that the absence is not a normal occurrence! Jhessem has convinced herself they share a bloodline! Jord got to go to the market with her as a boy! These are not the circumstances of children who do not give a shit about their parent or vice versa!

The devnotes about Jord’s conversation in particular do not show a picture of a man with ill-will towards a mother who felt it customary to abandon him:

JORD: I tended to it. I just let it... thrive in its own independence. You know, same way you raised us. (Devnote: Well meant potshot at his mother, no malice in it) JAHEIRA: I raised you to be a sweet and kind boy. What happened? JORD: I watched what you did instead of listening to what you said. (Devnote: Amused, gently mocking his mother) JORD: This house has taken in a lot of children over the years. Mother dear was sometimes more commander than, well... mother dear. (Devnote: Smiling, explaining why he and Jaheira trade barbs. No criticism, just understated affection)

It is, perhaps, worth noting at this point as well that Jord - and Rion, and Fig, and even Jhessem - speak with that teasing, mocking tone towards Jaheira… but so does she - towards the people she cares most about, including you as the player. The kids are acting as they have learned, and words like this can and should easily be read as gestures of affection. And they clearly trust Jaheira enough to bring this playful rudeness to the fore without fear of it being misconstrued or turning into hostility.

And if they are like Jaheira in this way, they’re also not going to be comfortable showing the real depth of their feelings in front of you, the player character - who is fundamentally a stranger who has just walked into their house. Why would they? Jaheira clearly doesn’t; indeed, even her more serious conversation with Rion only takes place outside where even the other children aren’t listening. 

Perhaps most significantly, I truly don’t understand how anyone can interact with Tate for even a moment and think that Jaheira does not have a deep, if often unspoken, bond with the kids she raises:

JAHEIRA: I hope you were hibernating, little cub, I can’t think of another reason you wouldn’t come down to say hello. TATE: Jaheira! I d-didn’t… didn’t w-want to see if you were r-really dead. They said… JAHEIRA: Who said? TATE: Jord and Rion. They didn’t think I c-could hear… JAHEIRA: You little sneak-thief. Well, they were wrong. Look! Not dead! I just… had a few adventures.

She is so soft and gentle with him in a way that she is with no one else, a way that indicates that she knows him and how his personality is different from the others. And he in turn has clearly been utterly devastated by the idea that she might be gone.

Take, as well, the evidence provided by Minsc when he is present in these conversations! There’s plenty of evidence to indicate the degree to which Minsc is guided by Jaheira’s behavior - to the degree that a doppelganger wearing her face was the key ingredient to binding him temporarily into the Cult of the Absolute. And Minsc - far more comfortable with emotion than Jaheira, at least in some ways - is clearly very affectionate with the kids as well:

FIG: STAND ON YOUR LIVER! MINSC: It is stand and *deliver*, little Fig. Though I think I like yours better. You bellow like a true berserker!

JHESSEM: A fine day to you, saer. Are you known to this court PLAYER: Eh? JHESSEM: Ugh - play along, would you? MINSC: Lord Boo is most pleased to make your acquaintance, my lady! Word of your grace has spread far and wide among the hamster houses. (Devnote: Swooping in to preserve the child's make-believe after the player ruined it.) JHESSEM: Enchanted!

MINSC: Boo is also very well! And happy to see *you*, Rion. RION: And I him. Enough that I’ll let him keep his lumbering, sweaty steed inside.

Would Minsc have taken it upon himself to have such a comfortable relationship with these children if Jaheira did not? I doubt it. He’d be friendly, certainly, but this familiarity goes a great deal beyond that.

And as for Rion herself - it's definitely reasonable to assume that she's had a strained relationship with Jaheira as she's grown older. (I have a lot of headcanons about this for my specific worldstate canon, but even just sticking to the game canon, it definitely seems like that's the case.) But leaving aside that - can you blame her for being upset at this particular moment?

As far as Rion knows, her mom was recently emotionally devastated for an indeterminate reason. (Minsc's apparent death. None of the kids are surprised to see him arrive, so clearly none of them knew he was supposed to be dead - but also there's no way that Jaheira didn't look afterwards like someone hollowed her out from the inside.) Then, without further explanation, she disappeared for what appears to have been several months (again, clearly not standard procedure), and after weeks of no contact, sends a seven-word message indicating she is about to die.

How exactly is Rion supposed to feel at this moment? This is an incredibly emotionally fraught circumstance, and if it's precisely representative of her overall relationship with Jaheira I will eat my hat.

Also - much is made by the game, by Rion, and by the fandom about that seven-word message, but if you try to chastise Jaheira about it, she gives further context:

PLAYER: Only seven? That’s cold, Jaheira. JAHEIRA: The cleric who cast the Sending was wounded. Should I have sobbed on her shoulder?

Jaheira was caught in a no-win situation. Trapped in the Shadowlands, a terrifying ordeal all by itself, with a gaggle of Harpers she had to protect, many of whom had apparently been injured by their encounter with Ketheric Thorm. If the only cleric she had access to was wounded, this was before they reached Last Light and met Isobel. 

Jaheira had ZERO reason to hope at this point - but she also still felt her own inescapable responsibility towards the people under her command. To send a longer and more emotional message would have been to put strain on her injured comrade and also risk making it very clear that she felt the situation was hopeless. The Harpers very well might have broken and scattered, condemning themselves - and, frankly, many others, given their crucial contributions to the final Act 2 fight - to death.

And then she lives, against all her own expectations, and returns to the city. And her dialogue reflects her conflict over this fact as well: 

JAHEIRA: I have given you much reason to think that Harpers hoard secrets like precious stones. But I promise you, this was not some intrigue. Just, ah… plain and simple foolishness. As if by keeping clear of my family, I might keep them clear of the cult in turn. And if this fight were to go against us, well… they had already done their mourning. Why visit it on them twice?

She then goes on to discuss the city and her place in it - and relates it directly back to her kids as well.

JAHEIRA: I was wrong to think I could keep my children from this fight. They’re Baldurian born and bred - the only damned reason I root myself in this place. This city is a cesspit. An open sewer of the soul, that taints us with its filth and churns us out when all that is good has been stripped away. It also happens to be their home - and so it is mine. Ugh. That might be the first time I have said that out loud.

If Jaheira wanted to disappear and leave her kids to handle themselves, she would have done it a long time ago. It wouldn’t be hard; she is fully capable of vanishing into the wilderness never to be seen again - and in truth, there’s every reason to believe she would be considerably happier to do so… except that it would mean leaving her children behind. They “root” her in Baldur’s Gate despite all of her previous inclinations and everything that comes naturally to her, and everything she does is guided ultimately by the need to protect the city because it is their home.

And that, my friends, is love, a love that she shows even if she does not know how to voice it.

TLDR: Jaheira's absence in the Shadowlands was definitely not a normal occurrence, and her kids clearly love her deeply and were devastated by her apparent disappearance. That she is a woman who keeps herself far too busy with work and has no idea how to express her own strong feelings does not, has not, and never will make her a "deadbeat."

[cupofwater6]

dylan's background compared to the other 3 is important, the rest don't have family members who heavily depend on their income and health insurance, nor do they seem to live check to check. this struggle relates to dylan's innie being incentive-driven and lumon cultivates this, dangling the prospect of getting to see his wife with the caveat that if he disobeys them it will be taken from him. this fear works better to control him than the other 3 since they don't come from this same background, innie dylan is the one with mountains of prizes for being a good cog in the machine in his desk, when you're severed you don't become a blank slate and he's clearly carried down this mindset down there, where to work for a company means you're doing good even if you don't know what the fuck the company is doing because the alternative is letting your family down and losing access to healthcare and the life you traded your autonomy for. hence his distaste at hearing that his outie struggles to stay employed, instantly blaming him and not the society that made it that way. and there's another layer added with the fact that dylan choosing to be severed, most likely for monetary reasons, makes it even harder for him to be employed by a non-lumon company. he has the most to lose out of the MDR floor, to me

[ozymandiasdirge]

most tragic homosexual storylines in moby dick

starbuck spending three years desperately wishing he was in some gay ass ships of wood and men of iron yearning period piece where internalized religious homophobia is his biggest issue; meanwhile meanwhile ahab is in the 1840s most frantic mashup of nietzchian philosophical treatise and lovecraftian horror to be found in massachusetts.

ishmael's widowhood.

[stellarspecter]

EDDIE MUNSON

Marina & the Diamonds - Oh No!

I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy Oh, oh no, oh no, oh no!

[linka-from-captain-planet]

"[Celene accepting Duke Remache's proposal of marriage, which would likely eliminate Gaspard's challenge to her rule] is worth considering," Briala said, interrupting Celene's thoughts. Celene glanced over to see that Briala was refilling her teacup, her eyes still downcast. "It is not." Celene took the elven woman by the shoulder and gently tilted up Briala's chin until those beautiful eyes met hers. "If I tie myself to some lord, it will be for more than good hunting grounds in the Deauvin Flats." Perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps it was a mistake in the Game, even. But Celene had lost enough of her own life to the Empire of Orlais already... as had Briala. Briala's gaze softened. "Majesty."

A favorite moment from The Masked Empire, encapsulating a lot of what I find so compelling about them, particularly the drive-by interruption by Celene's guilty conscience and how much of a colossal understatement "perhaps it was a mistake in the Game" turns out to be

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

if Crozier had a nickel for every time someone close to him kept a mortal wound secret from him he'd have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's definitely enough to give him some very specific trauma for the rest of his life

[foggyinphx]

"Sometimes, peace needs to be broken, and chaos must reign, just for a moment to build a stronger order." -Wilson Fisk

After rewatching DDBA season 1 again I'm back in the Fisk has Foggy camp.

Vanessa and Foggy were caught up in their own little Red Hook world, each keeping their partner uninvolved, aware of the season 3 truce. Each justifying it to themselves as what their partners don't know can't hurt them.

In good mafioso fashion, Vanessa doesn't do or say outloud the dirty work. Notice she never said the word "kill", Dex did. So Vanessa asked Buck to arrange everything Dex needed. But Buck, playing good soldier to both sides of the Fisk marriage, gave Wilson the heads up about the "kill Foggy Nelson" plan.

Wilson made a pact with Matt that he isn't going to break, because he would never break his word that way. He has some honor and pride after all. He also wants to save his estranged wife from herself. This is the second disloyal thing she has done in his absence. He's just recently returned home after his injury/recovery and he wants to be with her again. He can't just call off the hit though. His plans for his future mayorship have everything to do with Red Hook. Foggy is still a problem. So he has Buck give a different plan to Dex: Injure/incapacitate Foggy in a way that's recoverable, make sure there's a witness, Dex will be protected from the consequences. With his lawyer gone Dumb Benny will go to jail, illustrating to the public that crime in Red Hook punishable by law, nothing fishy going on here!

So a critically injured Foggy is whisked away by Fisk's people and Matt Murdock thinks Foggy is dead. Wilson is anticipating Matt's freak out. He wants the freakout, to turn Matt's world to chaos if even for a moment. He wants Matt to mourn the lost time like Wilson had to suffer every time Vanessa was ripped away from him. See how painful this is Murdock? How empty life can be? Well good news, Wilson Fisk didn't break the truce and will give you back your Foggy for the low low price of letting Fisk rule the city unimpeded.

But Matt throws a curveball. He gives up Daredevil and goes straight. Unexpected, but it makes Wilson's bid for mayorship easier! And should Daredevil ever come knocking, Fisk has the ultimate leverage: a living Foggy Nelson.

Wilson Fisk is the master of longterm planning, anticipating problems, and acting without anyone realizing. Before DD season 1 he amassed his power completely under the radar. In season 2 he took over an entire prison by networking with the right people and knowing where to move money. And in season 3 he manipulated an entire government agency to do exactly what he wanted by killing family members, canceling health insurance, and getting a waitress a new job. In DDBA season 1 he already had Adam. He already knew about Vanessa and her plan against Foggy.

"He's always a part of this." -Benjamin Poindexter

[queenlucythevaliant]

Just to clarify my thoughts (since I've had a number of people ask me about it) re: Job and cursing God. There's a big difference between cursing God as used in Scripture and how we generally would think of cursing at God today.

Cursing someone, in the Bible, has a lot of depth to it. It's not just saying "screw you " in anger, it's got a sense of forsakenness to it. It's the opposite of a blessing, a removal of blessing. If the blessing is presence, your face shining on the person you're blessing, then a curse is absence. In some translations, Job's wife tells him to "renounce God and die," which I honestly think makes a lot more sense to modern ears.

Job says a lot of unpleasant things to and about God in his anger and grief. So do the Psalmists. A number of the Prophets. So can we. God can take it if we come to him with honest expressions of our emotion, including those not-so-nice ones directed at him. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting mad at God and saying, "How dare you, you bastard" when you suffer unjustly. You can say much worse, I think, without sinning, though I don't feel particularly inclined to give examples. But as long as it's an honest expression of your heart, I think you're doing exactly what prayer is for. You're presenting him your heart with an open hand. He can use that. Opposite of love is not hate but indifference, etc.

Job doesn't renounce God. Neither should we. But I think when you're truly suffering, you're gonna have those feelings toward God either way. He'd rather you address them with him directly than try to avoid them. Cursing at God in the modern sense is actually a great way to keep the relationship strong and not end up cursing/renouncing him in the Biblical sense.

[library-windows]

Stuck home today on account of my agonies and decided to throw in my two cents on the Pentiment soundtrack album cover art with its many references, 'cause like . . . why the hell not

These are my own interpretations, take them with a grain of salt.

There are SPOILERS for Pentiment through Act III behind the cut.

☞ Andreas

Andreas is holding gentian (blue) and edelweiss (white), both Alpine flowers. One of the symbolic meanings for gentian is "justice"; and one meaning for edelweiss is "dedication" (another is "sacrifice").

In his other hand, Andreas is holding a blank scrap of parchment -- symbolizing the player's ability to make choices and help define the story.

☞ On the table

The bound codex is pretty self-explanatory with the game's motif of books, both manuscripts/codices and printed books.

The snail on the book is possibly emblematic of the much slower, more labor-intensive process of making manuscripts over printing, but I suspect it's actually a joke about the number of giant snails that pop up in medieval marginalia. (Inkulinati also invokes the giant snails and Andreas.)

The broken hammer symbolizes the murder of Otto, the town carpenter.

The ornate clock ties into the clock that's been built in Act III, replacing the liturgical hours as a measure of time with a 24-hour clock; and on a larger scale, symbolizing the shift from late medieval to early modern. The beetle appears to be standing on a miniature sundial and climbing from it onto the clock, reinforcing the emphasis on a shift in how time is measured and conceived.

The beetle itself looks like a direct reference to Albrecht Dürer's "Stag Beetle". Rather than treating the insect as a memento mori based on the association of insects with decay and death, Dürer painted a study of a beetle with careful attention to its appearance, as an observation of the actual critter rather than making the beetle into a symbol of anything. As far as the Pentiment art goes, this inclusion along with the clock shows some of the shift in mindset from medieval to early modern/renaissance vis-à-vis its relationship to nature, as well as Andreas' (possible) interest in the natural world. -> Dürer was also from Nuremberg, and he sure has a certain physical resemblance to Andreas (check his "Self-Portrait at 26" in the wiki link); he also gets name-dropped early in the game, if you have the Craftsman background and ask the baron who the artist was that he saw painting the emperor's portrait.

There's a pen, a stylus, and a pen knife on the table, along with the spilled red ink that recalls blood.

The gold coins could have multiple symbolic meanings -- they could indicate that Andreas is a professional/master artist and, by this point in the story, a man of wealth (especially given their position between some of the tools of his trade). They could also symbolize the competing financial demands of Kiersau Abbey (since again, these were the tools of its major source of income) and the people of Tassing. Either way they represent a link between art and money.

☞ The wall/window

Beatrice, St. Grobian, Socrates, and Prester John can be seen in the carving behind Andreas' shoulder.

The notes sent to the murder suspects in Act I and II are hanging from the curtains. Ferenc's is the top one that is partially burned; Ottilia's and Lucky's are also visible, along with the one that Andreas receives at the end of Act I warning him not to return and, I think, the one that Claus receives in Act III. (The exception is the note that Matilda received, which is under the clock on the table; assuming she's not accused of the murder, Matilda is the only one of the Act I suspects who's still living in Tassing in Act III when the Rathaus clock is built.) The notes are tied together with a red cord/thread that also leads to a key; this references the mastermind behind the murders, the Thread-Puller.

Moths represent transformation, and the three stages of their life (larva, pupa, adult) could line up with the three acts of the game and Andreas therein (youth, withdrawn and depressed, and ultimately breaking out of that chrysalis to be free); but I think another form of moth symbolism that lines up with Andreas himself is the proverbial "moth to a flame", where a moth will find itself compelled to fly toward a light (or a fire) even when that means destroying itself. [Addendum] The moth has two pairs of eyespots, and is placed with the notes/key/thread; it could also represent Father Thomas, an unassuming and seemingly harmless person, who is nevertheless positioned to observe the secrets of both Tassing and Kiersau.

The winged bull, a symbol of St. Luke (patron of artists, as you can learn from the in-game glossary) is confirmed by the artist to be an actual pentiment -- it's painted over a tauroctony, a motif in the Roman cult of Mithras that shows Mithras killing a bull. Obviously this ties directly into the events of the final act of the game where Andreas and Magdalene discover the Mithraeum and how the Roman ruins were reinterpreted as Christian relics. If you were to 'erase' the pentiment to reveal the original drawing, it would show Mithras (central figure of an Imperial Roman cult) killing the bull that had been remade into an image of the Christian figure St. Luke -- mirroring Father Thomas' fear that revealing the historical truth would "kill" the faith of Tassing. -> It's possibly worth pointing out here that Mithras, as worshipped by the Romans, was himself syncretized from an ancient Iranian god; to quote Wikipedia, "The Romans attributed their Mithraic mysteries to Zoroastrian Persian sources relating to Mithra. Since the early 1970s, the dominant scholarship has noted dissimilarities between the Persian and Roman traditions, making it, at most, the result of Roman perceptions of Zoroastrian ideas." [bolding mine] So there's that.

Roses had already had a long association with love and beauty in both medieval and renaissance art, and in particular they often symbolized divine love when paired with devotional images.

The arched windows recall the shape of the aqueduct and the other Roman ruins in Tassing.

Mausfänger (or possibly Son of Mausfänger) is sitting on the windowsill.

The dead bird symbolizes the murdered Baron Rothvogel, whose name literally means "red bird"; outside of it being a repeated phrase in the notes themselves, Andreas can mention this euphemism if you find Ferenc's note and ask him about it. The bird itself is a robin, and at least via Shakespeare, the robin was sometimes associated with constantly singing to woo females.

Part of the Totentanz / Dance of Death from the abbey chapterhouse is reproduced on the lower wall panel behind Andreas.

The lute and pipe represent Alkemie, who did the music for Pentiment (this is the soundtrack album art, after all).

☞ The background

The waterfall in the mountains recalls the mystical spring that's venerated in Tassing's various histories as the point of its founding/salvation.

Kiersau Abbey is visible in the background.

A labyrinth is also visible through through the window, between Andreas and the abbey. This represents Andreas' own mental labyrinth, with the crowned symbol for mercury at the center. Mercury represented the mind in medieval alchemy. It also could represent the local church of Tassing (distinct from the abbey), Our Lady of the Labyrinth, which venerates an icon of the Virgin Mary holding a labyrinth that in turn is derived from the Mithraic labyrinth symbols in the Roman ruins. The church lies physically between Tassing and Kiersau, as the labyrinth here sits between Andreas in the foreground and Kiersau in the background. -> While the story Father Thomas tells Magdalene about the church's labyrinth is made up for the game, labyrinths do exist in Christian tradition as a form of meditation, where a person follows a single path to the center while meditating or praying (either physically along an actual path or by following the path in an image); though Pentiment is also referencing the labyrinthine abbey library in The Name of the Rose, which is similarly at the center of multiple murders committed in order to hide forbidden knowledge.

In medieval art, the owl was most often a symbol of misfortune, as it appeared only at night; that it seemed to prefer darkness over light also made it a symbol of non-believers. The tree the owl is perched in is a gigantic oak, which is likely the same tree where the shrine to St. Satia is; if you talk to Marie and Bert in the forest in Act I, Marie can tell Andreas more about the shrine's oak tree and how it's venerated. [Addendum] Subjectively, the owl's physical shape also recalls the shape of Sister Amalie's habit, with its rounded head and bulky body; Amalie also emerges only at night to 'hunt', i.e. to deliver messages. She is also metaphorically 'in darkness' through Father Thomas' manipulation.

The skull in the moon is a memento mori; the sky outside is between night and dawn, which would more or less match the time at which Rothvogel, Otto, and Claus were all attacked. Also: moon's haunted

[firelxdykatara]

sorry not sorry but i'm actually completely fine with getting a version of katara where she wasn't parentified at eight years old (something that was lampshaded but never actually unpacked or presented as something she shouldn't have gone through, it was in fact not part of her arc to work through this in the original show and the proof of that is in the fact that she was shoved into an endgame 'romance' with someone for whom she'd expressed no romantic interest, even when prompted, and whom she spent a large portion of the show mothering). a katara who still had to deal with the trauma of her mother's death, but without having to become her own mother and her brother's mother on top of it in her place. katara whose struggle with waterbending is rooted in trauma, because her power is what her mother was killed for, her mother who died protecting her. katara who struggles to be taken seriously not because she's a silly girl with magic water but because her brother still sees her as his baby sister who needs him to be strong and she desperately wants him to lean on and trust her because that's what she needs to be able to grow.

and i like getting to see sokka actually behaving like a big brother! sokka whose responsibilities to his people and to his sister are treated seriously, rather than as fodder for jokes. sokka who is still a dork and a goofball and a pragmatist but underneath it all is that fear that he isn't actually good enough--that his family and his village don't actually need him, and who is he if his own sister is grown and doesn't need him anymore either? (sokka who is terrified of katara learning to bend not because he doesn't take her power seriously but because that's exactly what got their mother killed, and it's so, so obvious they've had that fight many times before.)

are they the exact same characters we got in the original cartoon? no, but i never expected them to be and frankly i didn't want them to be. something that every fanfic writer doing an AU or canon divergence has to grapple with is how would having these different experiences change the way this character behaves and interacts with and perceives the world. do i think the live action did it perfectly? no, but then the original show was far from perfect to begin with and i never expected perfection in this adaptation.

what i do think, though, is that i can see where certain creative decisions were made and the resulting ripple effect, i can understand the logic behind them--and i can enjoy the end result, because a lot of it is stuff i've rolled around in my brain in the past anyway. and what i really want to see is where things are headed in the future.

[gnomeniche]

i am a eurylochus (from epic the musical) defender forever.

yes, he made deadly mistakes, but get this: so did odysseus. eurylochus is literally Just A Man, even moreso than odysseus. he doesn’t have the benefits of being a king with a capital-h Heroic fate and connections to the divine. he is trying his best to ensure the crew sees their home again while mediating their dissatisfaction and fear (getting into more interpretive territory but that could be a motive for opening the wind bag: to assuage the crew’s suspicion). eurylochus had all the reason in the world to be suspicious of odysseus’s decisions (many of them have unintended consequences!), and as a second-in-command, it is his Job to ask questions to ensure the leader knows what he is doing before the orders are executed.

and i think a lot of people miss that he has his own character arc implied in the background. he is just as affected by all the tragedy as odysseus. his changes of heart aren’t a sign of him being a hypocrite. he’s changing from everything the crew has been through, trying to learn from his horrible mistake with opening the wind bag by putting more trust in his captain. and the trust gets shattered when the king and captain decides to use his power to destroy his own people. he, odysseus, and rest of the crew ALL saw people die. they all went to the underworld. they all have people waiting at home for them. if you went into ANY of their heads, you would hear the “all i hear are screams / any time i dare to close my eyes” refrain. you need to remember this.

one thing about me is that i will always love a character who is a companion of a very powerful/significant Hero who is a) just an ordinary person caught up in the affairs of Gods and Kings and Monsters and Heroes, b) aware and wary of how much more power the Hero has compared to their less powerful comrades, and c) someone who chooses to put their trust in the Hero regardless but has their faith tested, possibly leading to a myriad of painful outcomes and betrayals depending on how careful/not the Hero is with their regard for their companions. it is an excellent character type. it reminds us that, as much as we put ourselves in the shoes of Mythic Heroes like odysseus, we would more likely be one of the ordinary people helping them and caught in the crossfire.

so, i adore how much epic the musical humanizes the crew and emphasizes their pain and desperation. i’ve read adaptations of the odyssey that make the crew out to be a bunch of idiots who ruined everything because they couldn’t just listen to their ruler. and i feel that type of adaptational decision buys too much into narratives of A King’s Rightful Power and Staying In One’s Place. odysseus can call the crew friends and brothers, and i believe epic’s version of him does see them as that, but he is the king and the captain. there is a power differential no matter what. so i love that i never get the feeling of “ugh what idiots these stupid underlings are” from epic. there are valid reasons why people lose trust in their leader, especially after a horrific war and on a difficult journey where people are dropping like flies. odysseus is still sympathetic, of course, but so are the rest of the men. i feel for all of them, and i think the musical is great for giving odysseus and the crew such a compelling relationship. and i love eurylochus because he embodies that relationship.

[murderbot-moodboard]

Oh yeah, I'm really loving 'Murderbot.' 😎