writingrobinsblog

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If this is not too much asking, maybe you can do some artwork of Dionysus and Ariadne as Ariadne's in labour and its birth of their first child with Dionysus maybe being reminded of his past when chaos is happening but is overjoyed when the baby is born. Maybe put Eileithyia in or maenads as midwifes if you want to. Only if you OK with this 👍

Oh these two 🥺

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I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot

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"oh homeless people are just gonna use your money to buy drugs" and? and?? the government uses my tax money to buy bombs and cops, you think I care if someone in a shitty situation uses money I gave them to feel marginally less shitty? fuck off!

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Time may pass but my love for you remains the same ❤️‍🩹✨️

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Wait I'm not done actually, re: this post goes hand in hand with the fact that what Epic is ultimately trying to say is that there is no clear line between the man and the monster.

In “Just a Man,” Odysseus sings: “When does a ripple become a tidal wave? / When does a comet become a meteor? / When does a candle become a blaze?”

These are intentional metaphors. A ripple and a tidal wave are not two different things. A tidal wave is a ripple, magnified beyond control. A comet becomes a meteor when it hits the atmosphere; a matter of proximity, of timing, not essence. A candle becomes a blaze when it spreads. These transformations are not about becoming something else, but about what happens when something grows unchecked. The danger isn’t that Odysseus will become something new — it’s that he already contains what he fears. That all it takes is the right circumstances.

It’s fear for Penelope and his home that finally forces him to confront that truth. Throughout the musical, he lies to himself — about their journey, about what he’s done, about who he is — just to keep moving forward. But when her life is at stake, he stops trying to be the man he was. He’s willing to become whatever he must to get back to her, even if that means embracing the part of himself he’s tried so hard to deny. Even if it means she won’t love him anymore at the end of it.

But she does. She sees all of him, man and monster, and says, you are still my husband.

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While I'm here I want to talk about how Epic characterises Odysseus, and why criticisms that Jay “gives him a conscience” misunderstand both the Odyssey and what Epic is actually doing.

First: the claim that Homer’s Odysseus didn’t feel guilt or grief just isn’t true. He does express regret, sorrow, even shame, just rarely in the moment, and rarely in overt ways. But the man weeps constantly. He breaks down when hearing songs of Troy. He mourns his fallen men. He carries the weight of what he’s done, even if he couches it in calculation and cleverness.

And when people say Jay’s version of Odysseus is somehow "softer" or overly moralized, they’re not only flattening Homer’s character — they’re missing the thematic project of the musical entirely.

Jay isn't writing a story where Odysseus learns "to be ruthless and let go of mercy." That’s one thread. But if we take it as the core arc, then yes, you might reasonably ask: why does he hesitate to kill now, when the Iliad Odysseus did far worse without flinching?

The answer lies in "Just a Man," the linchpin of the musical and a crucial catalyst for Odysseus’ internal arc. In it, he’s asked to kill an innocent child, and he does. But not before hesitating, asking: "Will these actions haunt my days? / Every man I've slain / Is the price I pay endless pain?"

The killing of the infant, possibly the darkest moment in the musical, comes as he says, “I’m just a man,” right after asking, “When does a man become a monster?” He drops the baby as he says it. We’re not meant to believe he’s not a monster. We’re meant to see that he doesn’t want to believe it.

That moment haunts the rest of the show. He didn't become ruthless when he dropped the baby, he already was; war changed him so completely that at the end of it, he was able to kill a baby that looked just like the son he left 10 years prior, and that terrifies him.

And the fear doesn’t go away. In "Open Arms," Polites is essentially telling him that war has changed him, and he carries it with him even now, after it's over. That truth unsettles Odysseus so deeply (who in the song prior is literally running "full speed ahead" away from his actions, away from war, convinced he can just get home and leave it all behind) that a goddess has to intervene to steady him.

When he faces the Cyclops, he tries to justify the violence: "It's just one life to take / And when we kill him, then our journey’s over." But the tone is clear: this is self-reassurance.

And Odysseus does this a lot in Epic! There’s a pattern of him trying to reassure himself and his crew that they’re almost there, that if they can just get through this trial, they’ll be home. He insists that their journey is nearly over again and again, that their families are still waiting, that everything will be fine, that they can still make it home.

But these aren’t promises, they’re hopes dressed as certainty. He has no real reason to believe any of it. It doesn’t matter. He says it anyway. Because if he stops believing it, even for a moment, the weight of what he's done, and what he's become, might crush him (we see this play out explicitly in both "The Underworld" and "Love in Paradise"). These aren’t just reassurances. They’re quiet, desperate lies. Mostly to himself.

Even delirious with exhaustion, he clings to this idea: "So much has changed / But I'm the same, yes, I’m the same."

But he isn’t. And he knows it. Odysseus is afraid the war will never end, not because of geography or gods, but because he’s afraid the war has already changed him beyond return. And that is one of the major ideas we can take from the Odyssey. As Emily Wilson observed, the long journey home is not just physical, it’s existential. The question isn’t just can he return, but who will return if he does.

So when Odysseus later embraces brutality, when he says, "Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves / And deep down I know this well," it’s not a turning point. It’s a confession. He’s admitting that this capacity for violence has always been there. And it’s Penelope’s danger that makes him stop pretending otherwise.

That’s the true arc: not from man to monster, but from denial to acknowledgment. Not the loss of conscience, but the unbearable weight of it.

And that’s why it matters that it’s Penelope who is in danger when he finally stops clinging to who he used to be. It’s for her sake that he embraces what he’s become. And in that moment, he knows she might not love him anymore. He chooses the path that will lead him home no matter what anyway.

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My darling my love ❤

Quick odypen sketch because I'm procrastinating study 😅

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one of the most enlightening realizations ive had was finding out that non-24 hour circadian rhythm people were a pretty large group and most of us have oddly similar cycles of usually around 28hr internal "days" and this masquerades as "insomnia" but if allowed to sleep and wake naturally we will just advance forward through time an extra 2-4 hours a day at a relatively stable pace. we can't go to school or jobs or even run errands on normal schedules without massive pharmacological and behavioral intervention. most of the people who have been diagnosed or figured it out themselves will report horrific, life-ruining disruption in their professional lives and terrible health from accrued lack of sleep. this disorder is most common in vision-impaired people which seems to suggest it's related to light cues. anyway just thinking about this as extremely loud yard work woke me up at 8am for the second day in a row

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>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

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When I was little my mom’s meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didn’t like anyone else’s, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay

Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe

4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger

1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix

1 TBs ketchup

1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,

1 Tbs bbq sauce

1 Tbs steak sauce

1 egg

mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)

You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if it’s just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf

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Rose Bulbasaur repaint after almost 9 years 🌹

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Lava lamp bulbasaur?

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Discoballbasaur 🪩

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MORE EPIC THE MUSICAL

The casting is small so I might do them all hahaha

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A little bonus to my previous post 🤞