Here are my thoughts on The Vengeance Saga.

(Spoilers ahead)

• I enjoyed it, I don’t think it’s my favorite, but I still really like it.
• I think it’s because this is the first saga to come out after I started listening, but the transitions to each song seems a bit abrupt.
• Cause when I think about it, the cut from Just A Man to Full Speed Ahead, Open Arms to Warrior Of The Mind, and The Underworld to No Longer You are all pretty abrupt as well.
• Pretty sure this is an unpopular opinion, but Calypso is… fine? She’s not good by any means, but people act like she’s evil incarnate.
• I don’t know if I’m missing something here, but why are people making her out to be most evil character in all of EPIC?
• Polyphemus thinks it’s fair to kill 600 people over the life of one sheep (That he would have killed and eaten anyway?)
• Poseidon kills over 500 men all for his own pride (I really don’t think he actually cared that much about Polyphemus given how crass he sounded about killing him)
• Circe turns men into pigs (And eats them?) without giving them a chance at proving that they mean no harm
• Odysseus sacrifices the lives of his men who he is captain to, and I might be talking nonsense, but I feel like that means that he has a responsibility to them and their safety, he is their captain, they are saying “I trust you with my life and to take me home” and he betrayed that trust
• All of them do these awful things, but you can understand why they do. But for some reason the same is not given to Calypso, she literally says he is all she’s ever known. It’s not fair for her to keep Odysseus on the island, but can you blame her when letting him go means she’ll be alone again? Would you be able to let the one and only person you have ever met go? Knowing you’d likely be alone again forever?
• Anyway what I don’t see nearly enough is hatred for Antinous, I hate that man, he’s literally a child abuser (I know Telemachus isn’t a child, but he was at one point and Antinous was there [Telemachus literally doesn’t even know how to fight] do you really think he didn’t abuse that child?) That man is (assumedly) already nobility, but that’s not good enough for him, he needs to be king and will force himself onto Penelope and kill her son.
• Okay rant over, anyways Dangerous is a bop.
• I really do adore Troy’s voice, and really like his music (I’m actually listening to his music as I write this)
• Dangerous is probably my favorite song this saga, but only in terms of “I will listen to this outside of a full listen of the musical” I probably wouldn’t listen to the others without context of the rest of the musical.
• How do you pronounce Charybdis?
• I do feel like he got past Charybdis really easily, but I get that Poseidon was the focus for the saga, so I don’t mind it.
• Steven Rodriguez’s voice is so good.
• I was kinda hoping for one more verse from Poseidon before Odysseus’s line but that’s alright
• At this point I shouldn’t even be surprised if there’s a Polites cameo
• Also I feel like this is a given, But Jorge’s voice is also amazing, and he really gave his all for the screams and yells this saga.
• Okay, time for another tangent, I’ll admit the wind bag jetpack is kinda goofy, but it’s really not that bad to me. Ancient Greece also didn’t have high fives (I’m pretty sure anyways) but people don’t say anything about that, also the slang “sick” probably wasn’t invented in ancient Greece. (I will say, I did like one idea I saw that someone say [I’m sorry, I don’t remember who] that the wind bag split the ocean and they were fighting on the ocean floor)
• I’ve seen a lot of people be mad that Odysseus beat Poseidon, but I feel like it would have been unsatisfying if he just lost. Like say he didn’t beat him, and was getting beaten up until Zeus or someone was like “Yo, chill bro that dude is like fine or whatever, let him go” I feel like that would have been an underwhelming conclusion to the Vengeance Saga.
• Like sure, should Poseidon been able to kill Odysseus? Yes. But don’t humans beat the Gods in some stories? (I‘ll be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about Greek mythology and most of what I do know is from PJO which I haven’t read in a while.) Like Arachne was a better weaver than Athena, or Diomedes wounded Ares (?) so I feel like it’s not that unreasonable.
• I’m not saying you have to like it, I just feel like people are saying it’s bad without giving an alternative that would be narratively satisfying. Like, it’s satisfying to get to see Odysseus knock Poseidon down a peg, it’s compelling to see how much Odysseus has become a monster, and wonder how much more he will fall to monstrosity before he returns home.
• To me, the story is a tragedy about a man who wanted something so much he gave everything he had, his morals, his companions, his compassion, he gave everything for it, and in the end he became someone else entirely.
• Ody beating up Poseidon shows how much he has changed, if he had lost and just pleaded with him, how is he any different from the Odysseus that got on his knees and begged a god to spare a life in the very first song? He’s not that man anymore, he has changed so much that it’s, at least in this moment, a god kneeling and begging.