#anticleia

[blue-lotus333]

Odysseus and his mother by Howard Pyle.

[that-greek-mythology-girl]

Okay, but everyone agrees the Ithaca royal family colour is blue, right? (Dark Blue, baby blue, light blue, dirty blue, ANY BLUE.) And it's mostly because (Epic!Athena) wears a blue cape. My thoughts would be: Dark blue for Penelope That Light blue for Telemachus A blue green-ish dirty sea colour for Odysseus (very specific, I know) Teal for Ctimene A brown-ish blue, like petrol blue for Laertes VERY light blue or purple-ish blue for Anticleia, nearly white I get this because much of fanart I've seen has the royal family wearing blue of some shade, and I think it'd be very canon considering they are an island, very connected to the sea, and because of Epic!Athena's design.

[blueberry-tiles]

Thinking about Ctimene.

Thinking about how she never gets a written reunion with her brother in the Odyssey. Thinking about how Laertes never mentions her in the Odyssey. Thinking about how she must have felt watching her father lose his mind, her mother die, and her brother's family splinter as the suitors harassed them.

Thinking about how I never see any fan works that characterize her individually. Only as a wife or sister. Not even as a daughter or an aunt.

Thinking about how every bit of pain each character suffers in the Odyssey is suffered by her too. But how the text never rewards her or eases her suffering at the end of it all. She's stuck there, sort of. Suspended.

Thinking about Ctimene seeing her nephew laugh like her brother, or don his smile, or adopt his little quirks, all while she loses faith that he'll return, and her father fades away.

[chaoticdumbassrogue]

WAIT

Callimachus, Hymn 3 to Artemis 184 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) : "What heroines hast thou [Artemis] taken for thy companions? . . . Fair Antikleia [mother of Odysseus], they say, thou dist love even as thine own eyes. . . These [Antikleia and others] were the first who wore the gallant bow and arrow-holding quivers on their shoulders; their right shoulders bore the quiver strap, and always the right breast showed bare."

just imagine Anticleia teaching Odysseus how to use a bow

Anticleia, who (hopefully) left the Hunters of Artemis for love, passing her love of archery onto her son

now imagine in God Games, Athena is having to petition the gods to release Odysseus.

Apollo is first and he remembers his sister was fond of a Hunter who left to marry, who still kept up to date on her old Hunter, who mourned her when she passed.

Of course Apollo is going to say 'Release him"

[tchai-castor]

So because of my tablet being difficult I had a lot of time to sketch, I'm not sure if I'm going to post everything or not (because it's a lot, like I'm trying to collect everything in a binder, but it's going to take forever to take pictures of all of that). What I am going to post however are a few of my sketches for the designs of some side characters in Athena's Champions. They are sketches so they're a bit messy. On paper I also always draw with a ballpoint pen, so forgive the eyes sometimes not completely matching or one pupil looking another way.

"Aagje" is what my friends and I call Agamemnon, adding "je", "tje" or "ke" after a name in mylanguage is making it cuter and often used to speak of smaller things, so it basically means "little Ag"

These were the sketches for Odysseus' parents, I wasn't happy with them especially the mother, but I can't find the improved versions, they're somewhere in that binder haha

[asagisnobody]

Odysseus' family tree

Everyone is in their twenties

So, almost a year ago i posted the headcanons about the Ithacan royal family and finally i did a family tree!!

Original drawing i did a year ago and none wants to see bc it's terrible: here

[vint-knight]

Happy Mother's Day! 😀

Anyways quickly did this because I was busy with life stuff, also this is slightly inspired by a scene in the 1960s movie

[quill-beetlewing]

Here are some completely random fun facts about Odysseus' family from various myths:

His grandfather, Autolycus (meaning "the wolf itself", pretty badass) , was a shape-shifting trickster, also known as "the king of all thiefs", with the ability to change the shape of random objects he stole and was also the direct son of Hermes (originally he was just some dude Hermes liked, post-Odyssey he was changed to be his son. I'd say both versions are equally accepted though the son thing wasn't there from the beginning).

Autolycus was also the sworn rival of King Sysyphus, who you might know as that one guy who escaped death and whose punishment for it was pushing a rock for eternity, or that very nice guy from Tartarus in Hades. Autolycus used to steal Sysyphus' cattle and when the latter finally managed to find tangible proof of his guilt he did the only sensible thing he could think of.

He fucked his daughter.

As one does.

As I'm saying this I really want you guys to imagine the Sysyphus from Hades doing all this. Because I find it fucking hilarious.

Also btw, said daughter is named Anticleia and in her youth she was apparantly a companion to Artemis. Absolutely pop off queen.

So Yada Yada time skip and Anticleia promptly moves on from Sysyphus to Laertes of Ithaca, they get married and soon after a baby boy is born. And by soon I mean, pretty soon after. Suspiciously soon after...I think you know where I'm going with this.

YEP, there are some myths where instead of being the son of Laertes, Odysseus is the son of Sysyphus, yet the absolute gigachad that is Laertes still raised the baby as his own.

Now, myths are everything but consistent, and much like Autolycus beings Hermes' son, this connection with Sysyphus was likely added post-Odyssey, meaning that even if this variation of the myth exists, Odysseus was still widely seen as Laertes' biological son and it's pretty safe to say that he's exactly that in both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Why did I tell you all this then?

Because it's fanfiction material and I want people to use it.

Sooooo, the baby is born and it's time to give him a name, and the one to do just that is Autolycus, for whatever reason. I mean from what I've read Anticleia actually insisted he named him, so yeah, not super important but I still felt like it was worth mentioning.

So Autolycus cradles his new infant grandson, he looks him in his small baby eyes and says: "You know, I pissed off a fuck ton of people during my life, like really a lot of peeps, so I think I'm gonna name him Hateful."

You think I'm joking but this is kinda how it actually went.

The name Odysseus actually means "To Hate", and yeah, Autolycus specifically chooses it because he himself pissed off a lot of people.

And yeah, that's pretty much it really.

I mean I guess there's the fact that Odysseus got his famous leg scar while hunting with his grandpa, but that's stuff you can read directly on the Odyssey anyway. I just wanted to shine a light on the sheer badassery of this family.

So yeah.

Oh also there are certain myths that say that Homer was Telemachus' son through Nestor's youngest daughter and I think that's kinda neat honestly.

(The girl in question SHOULD be Polycaste, thought some people said it was a different daughter that was apparantly not among the original roster of Nestor's kids which probably means she was written in many years later. Telemachus' love life is actually a bit of a mess really, even putting whatever the hell the Telegony is aside, he's still got at least 3 other possible wives, them being Polycaste, Nausicaa and even Calypso. There is also this one line from the Odyssey where Polycaste bathes him and some people apparantly interpreted it as them banging and it's said she eventually gave birth to a boy named Perseptolis. But yeah, the boy's a womanizer.)

Aaaaand yeah, that's pretty much it.

So what did we learn today? Well, in Odysseus' family the badassery is hereditary it seems.