Epic The Musical Headcanon:
Okay so, in Epic, Odysseus fights Poseidon to a stalemate and stabs him with his own trident a whole bunch, right? To make a point.
As we know, this is a deviation from The Odyssey, where there's no final confrontation with Poseidon at all and instead Odysseus washes up in (I think) Phaecia, tells his story to the royal court there, and they simply drop him off on Ithaca with much less incident.
Well, what if, in the universe of Epic, the latter version of events (or something like it, at least) is just… the version that Ody allows to spread?
Because like. IMAGINE the alternative for a minute. Imagine the consequences of letting it become public knowledge that Odysseus of Ithaca made Poseidon his bitch.
It doesn't matter if Odysseus is the only person in the world who could actually SUCCEED at such a thing-- and that even then, he only did so with some degree of supernatural aid-- you know someone would still be tempted to TRY. Probably more than a few someones. And regardless, certainly awe and reverence toward the god of the seas would take a bit of a hit if people knew that he can be wounded by his own trident, should a sufficiently-determined mortal manage to get it away from him.
Which would obviously piss Poseidon off MAJORLY, and pretty quickly wreck whatever uneasy truce he and Odysseus reached by the end of 600 Strike.
So yeah, it is truly in Ody's (and his family's!) best interest not to let that shit get out. And I think he'd know that. So while Penelope would almost certainly be told the truth, and Telemachus might, too, they would both be sworn to absolute secrecy and anyone else who's told the story afterwards gets the boring version. Because Ody is DONE pissing off the gods, thank you very much.
