Jorge Rivera Herrans - Blog Posts

An imagining I did of "Penelope's Axe"

(the weapon I picture her wielding)

*a few months after The Ithaca Saga*

Odysseus: *wakes up at the dead of night drenched in cold sweat*

Penelope: Love? What's wrong?

Odysseus: That prophet son of a bitch- IT WAS ME!

Penelope: What??

Odysseus: I WAS THE MAN WHO WAS HAUNTING ALL ALONG!!

Penelope: *pulling him down and hugging him* ok dear just go back to sleep.

*meanwhile in the Underworld*

Tiresias: Fucking finally that dumbass

epic the musical is the definition of theater kid who had a percy jackson hyperfixation when they were 12

EPIC: The Musical is a fucking bomb. Seriously, it’s good

but also, listening to it all the way through is not helpful in trying to remember the songs, especially when the brain switches up the lyrics

My brain went: “Let’s see where you’ve been! When does a man become a meteor?” And I’m like “No, it doesn’t work that way.” And the visual in my head is Mr. Jalapeño shoving MICO then the cast rowing during the livestream of the cast listening to it

i am in shambles, i've listened to the Ithaca Saga more times than i can count and i will never be the same

Whilst Eurylochus isn't as faultless as my baby Polites, doesn't mean everything was his fault. Did he open the wind bag? Yes, yes, he did. Did that directly lead to poseidon killing of the crew? No, it didn't. Poseidon would have taken revenge on Odysseus and his crew either way, not just because they were pushed further away from Ithaca. As observed in the snippet of 'get in the water', we've seen that poseidon is more than capable of appearing anywhere in the ocean. Ergo, he was going to kill them all anyway, Eurylochus just spiced things up by changing the location they died. Furthermore, he wasn't wrong to mutiny against Odysseus, and realistically, he wasn't the one fully at fault for zeus and 'thunder bringer'. Now, I'm not saying he's faultless because most of the blame definitely falls onto him. What I am saying is that he was tired and hungry, and he'd given up. Think about it, he'd probably not eaten in days if he stopped off at the first island he came across and killed the sun God's cows. He'd just mutinied against his captain, his friend. Suddenly, the lives of all the crew rest souly on his shoulders. And he's just so tired. Tired of Odysseus ignoring his concerns, tired of seeing his friends and comrades die, tired of seeing Odysseus change for the worst and tired of being hungry. He wasn't in the right state of mind, he'd completely given up by the second half of 'mutiny'. During 'thunder bringer' he doesn't sound angry or even very betrayed. He just sounds apathetic, he's entirely given up at this point. He wants it all to end, and I can't say I blame him. What I'm saying is that, in this situation, would anyone have done anything different? With several gods already looming over you, wishing for your destruction, being so tired and so hungry, and having seen so many of your friends die would anyone really have left those cows?

Tldr; Eurylochus isn't entirely at fault, nobody is entirely at fault. All the actions taken are understandable. They are just humans and they make mistakes.

Bout to start writing a time travel fix it fic for epic where some random crew member gets sent back in time after being murked by zeus. His name is Steven-dave and I love him already.

What do you mean I clearly have a favourite Epic character? I love polites and all the non polites equally.

Okay, after listening to thunder bringer on repeat for the past couple of days I can officially say that I now understand all those people that willingly slept with zeus in Greek mythology.

Also, suffering and different beast are fucking awesome. I listened to the whole musical so far during a lesson today and those two stood out to me bc I liked them so much.

Current top 5 epic songs in no particular order:

Thunder bringer

Wouldn't you like

No longer you

Remember them

Open arms

When writing this, I did not consider that the Odyssey takes 10 years. For most of the story Odysseus has a toddler and a first grader.

Odyssey AU where Odysseus takes Astyanax with him instead of killing him.

Plotwise everything stays the same, Odysseus just has a baby permanently strapped to his chest for the entirety of the story.

Odyssey AU where Odysseus takes Astyanax with him instead of killing him.

Plotwise everything stays the same, Odysseus just has a baby permanently strapped to his chest for the entirety of the story.

THE VENGEANCE SAGA IS HERE!!!

Kicking and screaming for the ithaca saga

can't wait to be Fucking Insane TODAY

cant wait to be Fucking Insane tomorrow

Anybody else amiright

Does it ever occur to anyone randomly that the guy who murdered 108 men in cold blood and the guy who starts every video with “hello ma frens” have the same voice. Like dang Mr Jalapeño, go off with the voice acting, I almost forgot it was you.

Anyway have a doodle:))

So not only is the song named ‘Odysseus’, like how every other monster song is named after the monster in it (See: Polyphemus, Scylla, and Charybdis), but the background vocals also chant ‘Odysseus’ like how ‘Polyphemus’ is chanted in the Cyclops saga, the beats of Odysseus’ arrows hitting the suitors are the same timing as the club hitting Ody’s men, and Ody aims for the suitors’s torches similarly to Scylla.

I could probably write a term paper about the similarities between Ody and the monsters, but these are the most obvious ones.

OK I'm probably not the only one who noticed this, but I was watching the epic livestream, and in My Goodbye, Athena goes "one day you'll understand, but not today for after all you're just a man." And you know what? One day, he does understand. When he's no longer a man, but a monster. Only then, when he (believes) he's lost his humanity, only then does he understand what Athena was telling him. But he can't, not while he was a man.

And of course then there's the whole cruel irony of Athena becoming more empathetic but that's a different post.

Anyway, I think Epic is pretty neat

Just curious

like if you want Jorge to pay for your therapy bills

ATTENTION ALL

DANNY MOTTA IS GOING TO REACT TO EPIC THE MUSICAL THIS IS THE SECOND BEST DAY EVER (THE BEST DAY WILL BE THE DAY OF THE REACTION)

Listening to the Thunder Saga, as well as the new and improved Troy and Cyclops Saga, and. . . JAY NEEDS TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL VOICE ACTOR WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS???? FUNIMATION NEEDS TO HIRE THIS MAN I MEAN REALLY-

EPIC THE THUNDER SAGA IS COMING OUT ON JULY FOURTH!!!

Also, I love the Troy Saga came out on xmas 2022, Ocean Saga xmas 2023, Circe Saga on Valentines, and now the Thunder Saga on July fourth.

Meanwhile, the Cyclops and Underworld Saga be released on the randomest dates to ever date, Jan 27th and April 26th:

ArE wE NoT sPeCiAL

But like actually though.

Drawings are credit @gigizetz from her Monster animatics on yt! Go check them out!! Song is Monster from Epic the Musical.

You're so fucking insane for that and I love it

A (not) so small philosophical interpretation of Odysseus in epic

Disclaimer: I'm doing this analysis for fun, please don't take everything I write as truth, because this text is based on my interpretation and, even though it took some academic research to do it. It's worth remembering that I don't have a degree in philosophy yet, so I can still make mistakes on some points. Another point I want to highlight is that I wrote this text in a language other than English, and there may be some translation errors by Google, so I apologize if anything is confusing or if you have any questions about something, feel free to comment or send an ask, I'll do my best to explain.

(Notice that's basically me as far as you decide to read this blog)

EPIC:the musical is a work that is very present in my life and in the lives of many other people who are reading this little fan outburst; And if you've just stumbled upon this craze and are hearing about it for the first time, a brief summary is that it's a musical, more addictive than drugs, that tells the story of Odysseus, that guy from Greek mythology who spent 20 years trying to get home after the Trojan War, also known as Simp by his wife Penelope. We have moments of joy, sadness, introspection and many fan outbursts caused by the owner of it all, Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who is not only the creator but also the lead singer of this masterpiece, playing Odysseus and a few others.

But let's get back to the analysis here because I could talk about this for hours without stopping.

A few months ago, when the Underworld saga was released, I remembered the phrase:

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

This phrase was written by Nietzsche in the book Beyond Good and Evil, and it reminds me a lot of the Odysseus we see in EPIC, although the phrase is incomplete in the previous quote, even though it is the most common one we see being spread around. The original is:

“Whoever fights monsters should take care that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

And I also remember thinking about that phrase by Heraclitus, which I think everyone has heard, probably incompletely, at some point in school:

“No one can step into the same river twice, for when he steps into it again, the waters are not the same, and the being itself has already changed. Thus, everything is governed by dialectics, the tension and the alternation of opposites. Therefore, reality is always the result of change, that is, of the struggle between opposites.”

In my opinion, I think that both phrases fit well with the version of the character that we see starring in the entire musical, since most ancient myths and poems have different versions and translations and of course Jorge took some artistic liberties; Odysseus is a Greek hero who fights against many monsters, both mythical and internal, taking into account his ethics as a person while trying to survive and return home.

I think it's interesting to point out that from here on I'll use some different terms, but I'll do my best to explain them.

We can see that throughout all the sagas Odysseus is describing the line of what it is to be human and how one can easily slip off it; this line is located between the definition of gods and monsters/animals and is known as Metron, which gave rise to the word measure, and here we will use it as a synonym for limit for something. It's also good to say that metron has nothing to do with a person's morals/character, because it's a question of ethics.

Morals are the set of rules that concern good and evil, right and wrong. These standards refer to values ​​that are passed down from generation to generation and guide the conduct of individuals in their daily lives. (personal)

Ethics is a field of philosophy whose object of study is the principles that guide morality. In this sense, ethics is a philosophical reflection on morality, approaching the universal principles that govern the common good and coexistence between human beings in general. (common sense)

In my opinion about the musical, the issue of gods and monsters is not so different. For me, in that context, monsters and gods are the same thing, since they are outside the ideal of humanity, but this point may be mentioned later.

Metron is not a knowledge, it is, above all, the limit between impossibility and weakness.

We can see in several Greek myths that human beings like to cross this line, most stories end in tragedy because of this, human beings can also be called “Hybris” which is an excess, it is being hybrid, having two natures, acting in two ways, it is being in the Metron and trying to be something that one is not, because thinking that we can be more than men is arrogance, and arrogance is a human emotion, another story that exemplifies this well is the myth of Oedipus who tries to overcome his destiny given by the gods and ends up fulfilling it anyway.

Hybris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond the measure; "immoderation" and which currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.

It is worth noting that hybris would in no way be a sin, in the concept of the word and the ideal current translation for it would be "Hamartia", which by chance is also no longer used in its original meaning because of the Catholic Church.

Now going to the interesting part because I was just giving context of terms.

In The Horse and the Infant, we 'meet' our beloved version of Odysseus, where during the Trojan War he states that everything he is doing is for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, using this as a way to inspire his men to carry out the massacre that he himself did not want to participate in, I think because of his moral nature, the proof is so much that in Homer's original Odyssey, he pretends to be crazy so as not to show up when called, unfortunately he is unmasked and forced to go.

We also see here that up until now Odysseus is still a very moral character, he has his reasons for being there, he, like the other warriors, has a family and his deepest desire is to return to them. So with this we can conclude that he is still just a man, he is human.

In the same song we see how far his morality goes, as he receives the divine mission to kill the young Trojan prince, Astyanax, who is just a baby, due to the threat that one day he will want revenge on him and his kingdom.

All of this creates doubts in Odysseus, about the morality of gods and men. Here we see him crossing the line and this whole text begins to be about ethics, as it is common sense that killing a child is a monstrous act, but for him not to kill means that his family will die in a more horrendous way later and he cannot let that happen.

Then we have the monologue in Just a Man, the best song, where we can really see the doubts mentioned earlier. And one detail that I find very interesting and that will be important for this text is that in Gigi's animatic, we can see Odysseus' "monster" being 'born' and its source is the baby and his doubts about whether he would really be a monster just for that, even though at that moment the baby is still just a human, the mission to kill him little by little makes him a monster due to the possibility that one day he himself will commit several atrocities.

It's fun for me to think that representing 'the monster' as a tree could be an allusion to the fact that trees take as long to grow as a monster takes to be formed by man.

I think you now understand part of Nietzsche's quote. Odysseus looking at his own reflection and not recognizing himself, seeing the monster he will become if he crosses the metronome is very well treated in several animatics, but the most visible is in Gigi's where he is not only referenced but shown as a completely different being both in attitudes and thoughts.

I'll just pause to say that I love how Gigi did the work of showing the tree growing in the shape of a skull, which could be the deaths that the monster will bring or that it is a macabre thing to do, I don't know, I just love this detail for some reason.

And also how I think that makes a point of showing that the real problem is not the baby but rather Odysseus' unethical thoughts developing because of his doubts.

Ok, end of the pause and start of a mini explanation.

I didn't think this analysis would be so long and in my original thought I was only going to end up mentioning a few songs and focusing more on "No Longer You" and "Monster" but it ended up getting out of control and listening to the musical again it seems like I can make a lot of connections that I hadn't thought of before but now I can't express them properly, so from now on there will be a gigantic gap in content that I might fill later in another post or by editing this one, but at the moment thinking too much about it is giving me a headache and I really wanted to be able to post this now along with the Wisdom Saga because it's something I did for fun from fan to fan and I know that now the fandom is busier. One day I swear I'll do a complete analysis relating song by song, but not today for the sake of my mental health.

End of explanation, subject change.

Going through his entire journey, Ody goes to the underworld after Tiresias who reveals that he will never return home, which makes him indignant, I think any human would be, how much he suffered to get there for nothing. Here we can see how Heraclitus fits into the prophet, and as much as I hate cutting philosophical phrases in half, I don't think I need to use the whole thing to make sense of it here, because the most well-known part of it is enough to get to the point discussed here, since it really won't be him who returns to Ithaca, but rather another man, a man haunted by his own past and by the ethics of his people.

There is no way a man who spent 20 years away from home, suffering for the divine and for his own mind, can be the same, because this is a human characteristic, humans are hybrid beings, which implies that we can change our own nature while gods and monsters will always follow the same line of thought, since they are perfect they do not need drastic changes to live as they are.

That's it. So finally we have the mental breakdown where Ody begins to accept that it doesn't matter if he is a monster to everyone, he did what was necessary. He looked into the abyss and was looked back. He becomes the monster, even if he compares himself to the other divine creatures, which I think he never really learned to differentiate from humans, because Ody my friend there is no way you can really reach the level of a cyclops or a god with a wounded ego, or a traumatized nymph, time makes things very trivial for them and let's face it you will not live even half as long as they do because you are just a mortal.

And I don't know how to make gifs so here are some prints to illustrate the last paragraph. But before that I wanted to thank you if you read this far, I know the ending was kind of bad but I'm emotionally tired, I hope I at least conveyed the idea that was in my head. Thank you and stream the new saga!!!!

(All arts belong to gigi!! go check out this amazing work!!!)

POSEIDON (and Jay) part 2

It is from my AU where Jay is the reincarnation of Odysseus and Poseidon is still afraid of him XD

Also inspire by Steven's video and a Jay reel. No me termina de convencer los colores de mi Poseidón, puede que lo cambie.

am I the only one who imagined it as

“No<3”

or is that just me

Let's have open arms instead!

*stab*

No..

Odysseus and Telemachus: a summary

help this frame is killing me awubfawu

Plus delayed flights and a broken down bus

kudos to jorge for continually making the release of the ithaca saga an immersive experience by going to ithaca itself, missing the ferry, getting caught in a storm, and having the livestream delayed. can’t wait to see everyone in ten years for the final album!

okay so if i'm being honest i had never heard of epic until a few months ago. i genuinely thought there was a 1.5 million person fandom for the odyssey. by homer. from 675 bce. and i just accepted it.