So Accurate

So accurate

Overthinking bros

*INTP and INTJ, standing outside in the rain*

INTJ : Maybe we should move inside...

INTP : Yes, I was actually thinking about it !

*nothing happens, they’re still standing*

INTP : But on the other hand... wouldn't it be a too big energy drain ? I mean... maybe it’s easier to keep standing here, until the rain ends...

INTJ : Hmm... interesting theory, let me think about it...

*both enter into deep meditation, while it’s still raining*

INTP : ...however, maybe you were right : the best solution would be to move inside...

INTJ : Yes... I reached the same conclusion.

*silence. they’re staring absentmindedly at their wet clothes and shoes*

INTJ : So... when do we move ?

INTP : Let me think about it for a moment !

INTJ : Of course, let’s not make hasty decisions.

INTP : Above all, no precipitation, we have all the time !

*it’s now hard for them not to shiver with cold*

INTJ : Maybe... we should really go inside, now ?

INTP : I fully agree, let’s go !

*at the moment they’re starting to move on, the rain stops*

INTP : Ah ? What did I say ? We've almost made an unnecessary movement !

INTJ : Yes. Luckily, we’ve taken the time to think carefully... but now, we’re completely wet.

INTP : It’s very secondary.

Omg omg omg. It all makes so much more sense when you realise it's not social anxiety but a fear of being perceived.

Why do you feel more comfortable with a long coat and a mask as opposed to summer clothes?

Why do you DESPISE taking pictures? Especially if it's someone else and not you taking them.

Why do you feel like you have to stop doing whatever it was you were doing when someone passes by?

Why don't you want to tell anyone how leisurely you go about your day, taking a nap, going for a snack, sitting on your phone playing games etc. because you know they will comment on it and even though it's not negative or mockery it's still feels like you've been perceived?

Why can't you make eye contact? Why can you do it only if the other person is looking away but the second when they look at you you stop listening and when you're the one speaking you can't bear to look at them because you know their eyes are on you and they are perceiving you?

Why don't you want to dress excessively or wear nicer clothes? Because you will stand out

People mistake you for shy because you don't speak often, but it's really the fear of drawing attention to yourself more than it is the things you actually say, isn't it?

Why do you hate overpopulated areas even when no one is speaking? BUT you still feel more comfortable when more than one person is in the room (but not too many!) so that the burden of being perceived is directed on someone else and you can safely lay back just observing the scene.

It's all a defence mechanism

Just don't be a dick to people that like it

If I see one more person say "sirens aren't like that in the Greek mythology" I'm going to explode.

POLITES DIDN'T DIE IN THE CYCLOPS CAVE

ZEUS DIDN'T GAVE ODYSSEUS A CHOICE AS TO WHETHER HE OR HIS CREW DIED.

ODYSSEUS DID NOT LEAVE CIRCE'S ISLAND ALIVE BY CRYING ABOUT HIS WIFE AND HOW MUCH HE MISSES HER.

POSEIDON WAS NOT AFRAID OF SCYLLA.

AND ODYSSEUS DID NOT READ THE LIPS OF THE SIREN.

Epic is not 100% faithful to The Odyssey, there are events that even happen out of order and Jay has said so. So don't come to me with "that's not how it is in the book" for a detail, it's like they heard that piece of information somewhere and didn't release it

(I'm angry with those who criticize the animators)

EPIC has a character arc dynamic I can't explain in a succinct way, but it's one of my favorites and I want more media to do it. It's like...every character is simultaneously absolutely at fault and completely innocent. like, okay.... Odysseus sacrificed his own crew BUT he wouldn't have had to do that if Eurylochus had listened to him and left the cows along BUT Eurylochus wouldn't have disobeyed him if Odysseus hadn't betrayed the crew BUT Odysseus wouldn't have betrayed the crew if Circe hadn't sent him on a crazy mission to the underworld where he realized he needed to be hashtag Ruthless BUT Circe wouldn't have sent them there if Hermes never given Odysseus the power to stop her leading to him gaining her trust BUT Hermes wouldn't have needed to do that if Odysseus had just listened to Eurylochus and ran away instead of helping their friends BUT they wouldn't have needed to abandon their friends if Eurylochus had done better at keeping them out of trouble BUT they wouldn't even be on Circe's island if Poseidon hadn't attacked them, BUT Poseidon wouldn't have attacked them if Odysseus had just killed Polyphemus BUT Polyphemus wouldn't be blind if he hadn't attacked the crew BUT he wouldn't have attacked the crew if they hadn't killed his sheep BUT the crew wouldn't even be in Polyphemus' cave if the lotus eaters hadn't sent him there BUT they wouldn't have gotten the idea to go there if Polites hadn't been so insistent on being kind and asking for help BUT can you really fault a man who just got out of a ten year war for not wanting to see anymore bloodshed? But the most interesting part about it is that I don't think there's an alternate path. In any other story, you can say "what if x just hadn't done y?" One simple mistake in any other story could turn the tide. But the thing about greek mythology is that there's a heavy belief in fate. No matter what you do, you will always end up in the same place that was written in the stars. The inbetween doesn't matter. Odysseus doesn't have some sort of lesson to learn. In fact, none of this would have happened if Polites hadn't put the idea into Ody's head that he needed to be merciful. Now, again, I am NOT blaming Polites. I could write a whole essay on how every important member of the crew seems to have a different coping mechanism for how they dealt with the horrors of war but we don't have time for that right now. The point is; this was not preventable. Odysseus' journey involves getting from Troy to Ithica. Everything else is just a pit stop as someone ELSE's journey concludes. Polites is fated to die on the journey home. Elpenor is fated to die while drunk. Eurylochus is fated to be betrayed by a close friend. I suppose that's why The Odyssey is a tragedy

EDIT: DO NOT TAKE MY WORD AS THE 100% TRUTH!!

I took some classes and wrote a paper about ancient Greek culture, but I am in NO WAY an expert. Please read through the reblogs to see some good criticisms and discussion about this topic further. My point overall stands that you can't apply modern rules and standards to ancient stories, but my evidence is undoubtedly flawed!

I'm seeing everyone pointing out the possible issues with Epic the Musical's deviation from the original story of Circe and Odysseus, and as someone who's studied Ancient Greece/ancient Greek myths a bit, I wanted to say some stuff about it. This will be a bit of a long one, so apologies for my rambling!

Note that I'm not trying to shit on SA survivor's perspectives and (completely valid) arguments. I'm just trying to offer some context surrounding the original myth and how it fits (or rather, doesn't fit) with a modern audience. If I'm wrong with any of this, feel free to call me out! Criticize the shit out of me! I like learning about Greek culture and myths and would 100% love to hear other perspectives on this.

So, a few points about Ancient Greek myths to kind of explain the context around Circe and Odysseus:

Greek myths generally did not have good views/depictions of women. Women were almost always depicted as conniving, selfish, sexually insatiable creatures. To largely summarize the process within actual Greek society, women had three/four stages in their life: child, dangerous/wild virgin (after first menstruation), married woman (whose wildness was tamed by her husband), and then a "real" woman (a mother). There are a few deviations from the "evil" trope, the most prominent of which being Penelope herself—she's basically the ideal Greek wife, staying loyal to her husband for 20 years and all that.

Adultery only applied to women. Husbands cheating on their wives wasn't merely tolerated, but expected. Marital sex wasn't seen as enjoyable, rather something that had to be done for the sake of reproduction and continuing the bloodline/securing inheritance. Men cheated on their wives with various kinds of prostitutes, concubines, mistresses, etc, but sleeping with unmarried women (that weren't specifically prostitutes) or married women was looked down upon. Women didn't have this same standard. They could only sleep with their husbands, hell, their husbands were pretty much the only men they could even interact with (excluding family, obviously).

The original myth has Hermes very plainly lay out how Odysseus' confrontation with Circe will go: Odysseus will eat the moly, draw his sword at her, she'll proposition him, and Hermes directly tells Odysseus to accept. Basically a "sleep with her if you want your men to live" situation. (See this post for more specifics on this).

So, let's apply this to Epic: The Musical. Here's some reasons I think may explain the Circe myth being changed:

The Greek "women being evil" stereotype is... problematic. While I 100% understand that it's important to acknowledge male victims of SA, I don't think the original myth was focusing on Odysseus being a victim—I saw it more of an emphasis on Circe being a sexually selfish woman, as all Greek women were believed to be. Changing Circe to be less conniving and evil deviates from the concerning Greek stereotype.

The SA in the myth is not actually very clearly SA. Yes, with a modern perspective, it absolutely is sexual coercion, but for Greeks, not so much. It made sense to them that sex could be transactional. It's already been established that Epic, while still generally accurate to the original myth, does change things relating to morality/themes in order to better align with modern Western ideas (i.e. OG Odysseus not being as remorseful and merciful, as that was expected of a Greek hero, but Epic Odysseus having more empathy because that's more modernly heroic). If something from the original myth doesn't translate well into modern culture, then it's understandable to want to change or omit it.

In the case that the original Circe myth wasn't SA (I'm not saying one is more right than the other, I'm just covering all the bases), then it wouldn't even constitute as cheating. Like I described earlier, it was perfectly acceptable and expected for men to sleep with women that weren't their wives. Plus, being a goddess, she's already kinda exempt from being blamed if Odysseus slept with her—only women are ever really blamed for sleeping with (or being SAed by) gods, and even then, their husbands sometimes don't even give a shit. But modernly, we would not see it that way. To us, it's not societally acceptable for a married man to sleep with another woman (without his wife's consent, at least). While Ancient Greeks viewed Odysseus as a good (or at least okay) husband, a modern audience wouldn't. Making Odysseus loyal to Penelope and not sleeping with other women (assuming this wasn't SA, but again that's one interpretation) makes him the good, loyal, empathic, modernly heroic man that Epic is clearly aiming for. Repeating my last point: If something from the original myth doesn't translate well into modern culture, then it's understandable to want to change or omit it.

Applying modern perspectives on Ancient Greek society and mythology isn't worth it. Like, we all joke about Ancient Greece being super gay, but they didn't actually like gay men. Homosexuality was literally only acceptable when it was between a young man and a prepubescent boy (it was called pederasty if you want to know more) or between women (they only considered penetrative sex to be 'real' sex so they didn't really care what women did with other women). Y'know the Hades and Persephone story? Like, the original one with the kidnapping? Yeah, that was normal. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is tragic, yes, but it was so normal that wedding ceremonies often included references/recreations of it! Girls got married off ASAP after their first menstruation to men of at least 30 years old. We don't tolerate that shit today (for the most part, at least)! But it was normal in Ancient Greece. Applying modern rules and standards to ancient culture just does not work.

Anyways, I'll shut up now! I'm gonna go keep listening to The Circe Saga lmao

The fact that nations are, in essence, spirits that can take huge amounts of physical and mental punishment and still spring back into shape like humanoid slinkies. The fact that being in their presence screws with time and that the longer they are around an individual, the more that person's ageing and sense of time becomes distorted. The fact that humans can not mentally cope with such things and - if spending long enough with a nation - they can and will be driven to madness. The fact that nations choose spirits or animals as their companions instead, as animals do not have the mental faculties to worry about the implications of a slowed growth and immortality. The fact that nations have their own language that they are born knowing but them learning another nation's language is a genuine act of friendship.

The fact that nationhood is inherently alienating from the very people of their land. They are made of humans, but by design cannot be around them. The fact that all they really have is each other, and yet one of their primary functions is to be an arm of the military. The fact that we see over and over and over again nations bemoaning what a lonely life they lead, and how many of them turn to increasingly desperate or extreme measures to have some form of companionship. The fact that titles of siblings or children are entirely artificial, but they accept those titles for the feeling of belonging to the point where even acts of war can not separate some of those ties.

...Nationhood sucks. Is what I am saying.