#ulyssesefthimiadis

[operationero]

Graphics for an ask about songs :) just for fun

[operationero]

Please give us an Ulysses bio he's like my favorite I need to know what the hell his deal is

Heres a Truncated overview of his Deal. I have to decide how “side character" bios will look but I hope this is satisfying in the meantime!

Ulysses Efthimiadis (Often just referred to as his first name or Docky (Dr. E)) is an Australian volcanologist who was initially contracted by the USAEC to live on-site at Amchitka to monitor tectonic fallout from their various testing programs. His research has consistently been forwarded to Greenpeace, in order to soothe their concerns about Amchitka being located atop a fault line. He is Greek and mixed-race aboriginal Orthodox Catholic and is frequently travelling across the pacific ring of fire (Honestly, he spends most of his time in Hawaii). He is admittedly in the pocket of climate action groups as most of his education has been paid for via scholarships and grants, but he is a responsible person who doesn't WANT to lie. Amchitka authority has consistently bullied him into fudging data about their tests, and he doesn't particularly like anyone on the island. Ulysses is a chronic insomniac who cannot sleep well or often at all without sedatives, he is a naturally anxious person. He is rendered temporarily deaf during one of the explosions following the detonation of March Hare and notes fairly early that there is a supernatural element at play (He's also relatively superstitious) once he recovers he is a fairly loud advocate for going fully and immediately public with information about the accident before being threatened into silence again. His paranoia levels out at a constant high and he is generally avoidant of all other authority that enters the base, refuses to be seen with diplomats out of fear he could be accused of snitching, and is constantly sending in requests to be transferred out (which are denied). Once the greenpeace protesters are assassinated, Ulysses is tipped off that he is no longer too much of a liability to get rid of and flees the base. He can't be found!

When he resurfaces later, he is unshakably psychotic from prolonged sleep deprivation and actively self harming but otherwise pretty calm and lucid. He has acquired some interesting friends!

OTHO MACGREGOR: who is little more than an intermittently animated piece of meat, Ulysses mostly ignores him, or treats him like a prop. He is pretty convinced he knows what's best for him. He holds zero resentment for Otho, actually he has no idea who he was before he washed up on the shore. He doesn't intend to cause him pain.

"SLUSH PUPPIE": a mostly catatonic young foreign man with global amnesia from an actively bleeding head injury. Occasionally he responds to something Ulysses has relayed to him (in greek) but even when translated it rarely makes sense. He believes whatever he is told for approximately five minutes, and then needs to be told it again. Ulysses positions him as the actual second coming of christ and in an effort to make everyone else believe that too, does all sorts of christlike things with him. S.P. is also a prop. He has a real name i just don't know if i should tell you it. He's just called slush puppie because of his shirt, and he has very little agency. Ulysses is very kind to him and is his doting caretaker because slush puppie is unable to take care of himself beyond the most basic of capacities, but makes a big show of questioning his judgement sometimes to indicate the savior is not infallible. ignore the image above where he's ostensibly driven nail pegs through his hands, that was a necessary evil. the side wound too, was a necessary evil.

(ISNT HE SO CUTE? my little orange)

His main concern is salvation, offering salvation (slightly spitefully) to people who hurt him and getting to go to heaven at the end of this. He tries not to do anything damnable but… it is what it is.

[operationero]

ok pls pls pls tell me more about what this is all about I need to know (breakdown)

Believe it or not this is actually an extremely literal image yes this all happens to him and oh yes it hurts! Read more for actual narrative context, which is naturally tentative and a little vague.

There are a ridiculous number of totally divergent plot threads happening in OPNERO. We can call this the “blood of the martyrs -> beast of the earth -> antichrist -> miracles” thread.

These three guys (Otho, Ulysses, Slush puppie) are the primary agents, but Rajiva, Danny, and Colonel Masters are tangentially involved.

None of them have bios atm because i need to finish ainsley’s first. They’re also side characters technically and wont have as detailed ones. Maybe. Idk.

Ulysses’s bio on toyhouse reads:

Ulysses is an Australian volcanologist who was initially contracted by the USAEC to live on-site at Amchitka to monitor tectonic fallout from their various testing programs. His research has consistently been forwarded to Greenpeace, in order to soothe their concerns about Amchitka being located atop a fault line. Ulysses has been consistently ignored, dismissed, harassed and pressured into fudging data. He is not allowed to leave the island, but he isn't supposed to know that.

He has a pretty fragile and hostile relationship with the USAEC hogs, who have never liked having him there because he is a “meddling hippy fuck” and nonwhite foreign national (shock, horror.)

He is already reaching his absolute limit when March Hare kicks off Armageddon (which he honestly didn’t expect but still feels vindicated by) and every single event after just chips at his mental state further. It doesn’t help that he has the actual readings that indicate something was probably wrong prior to MH and could hypothetically leak them to global press, or the UN or some stupid humanitarian group like Greenpeace, the people he has been forwarding his work to and are currently monitoring the island from Otho’s boat “Virtue”.

Ulysses gets consistently harassed by Rajiva (who wants him to shut up) and Colonel Masters (who wants to shut him up) and has become increasingly paranoid that he is going to be assassinated and disappeared. He gathers enough information from Jan to understand the biblical context of MH and latches onto the vague idea of a second coming and ultimate salvation. He is on the verge of (or he does, idk) trying to communicate with Greenpeace in an attempt to get a higher authority than the USGOV involved in unraveling Amchitka when the protesters are sold out by Otho Macgregor, then kidnapped and extrajudicially executed by the Amchitka Security Forces.

He doesn’t know this happens until Danny tips him off to where they’re storing their corpses, either as paranoid confession or an attempt to intimidate him. This sends him towards full mental breakdown, combined with his tendency towards insomnia (he stops taking his meds because he doesn’t want to sleep too hard) eventually just puts him into psychosis.

OLD ASF PAINTING I KNOW THATS RIGHT!!!

Ulysses develops some genuine protestant religious psychosis and fosters a sincere belief that he has a greater purpose on this island, partially as a power fantasy.

Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died.

Revelation 16:3

When that ^ happens, “Slush Puppie” a nearly catatonic greek man with zero foreign language skills and global amnesia (from the massive head wound) hits the beach and is discovered by our special friend. Being one of two people on Amchitka who can speak greek, albeit badly. (Red is the other one, fun fact.) he of course takes this as a sign he was fated to meet this boy and therefore he holds some significance as well. This culminates in Ulysses propping up slush puppie as a second coming of christ (making him the antichrist as described in revelation, the beast of the sea) and asserts himself as a sort of disciple, or prophet (the false prophet, or beast of the earth). I won’t get too biblical here, just know that this creates a whole host of other funny issues.

Otho returns to the image when he is thrown from his boat which is destroyed during the bowls, scraped across the sea floor and washed ashore alive and intact but horrifically injured. This is the perfect opportunity for a Miracle according to Ulysses, who starts caring for him just as he’s started caring for SP, and finds various ways to fold him into his saviors miracles in an effort to prove his divinity. Otho is paralyzed from the waist down, extremely anemic, sick and maimed. He is barely mentally present and in constant, blinding pain. He’s also partially blind. This is how Ulysses ends up treating him when he refuses to be healed, wrapping him up in burial shrouding and putting him in a tomb (dark room). He’s essentially reduced to a prop for his propensity towards cruelty. As he knowingly sent those protesters to their deaths (ok maybe nit deaths but he lowkey wouldn’t care if he did know.)

Anyways, Ulysses does this to him and its nasty, but he’s trying to be compassionate. I think.

OH MY GOD EDIT, BECAUSE I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE ACTUAL SYMBOLISM. Its pretty straightforward. Referencing Lazarus of Bethany, Christ’s friend whom he raises from the dead.

He and slush puppie aren’t really friends. SP is very scared and confused by him and doesn’t like being made to touch him and hang out with him. But we’re working with what we got. Lazarus is a canonized saint :) congrats to Otho. He’s still going to hell.

Thank you!

[operationero]

this may sound silly

whats with the salmon (?) fish looking thing

could've sworn there was another drawing with ulysses and a fish but i went insane trying to find it so yeah

YOU KNOW I WAS WONDERING WHERE THAT PHANTOM IMAGE WAS TOO.

anyways, fish elaboration. Surprise! its a bible beast again!

Medieval French Apocalypse Tapestry depicting satan granting power to the Beast Of The Sea.

Mine looks a lot different because I don't like drawing cats. sorry.

13 The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”

5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

The beast of the sea is essentially what people are referring to when the reference The Antichrist wrt revelation. It is a powerful leader that those who are not "saved" are compelled to worship like christ. It's a false second coming and often used to reference a tumultuous and godless political leader. But when you think about such a thing in context, it seems less obvious. A powerful leader that people worship? of course they do. (i like the language of "who can wage war against it?" and the correlation of military power to divinity.) The beast of the sea is a figure of salvation in a time of great need, it just happens to be a fake one set up by satan to trick people who are already apparently so evil theyre damned inevitably into believing they have some power still left.

The correlation of the beast of the sea to Ulysses is.... SLUSH PUPPIE! who came from the ocean, who has had many fatal wounds and healed from them (note that this reference is meant to call up imagery of christ at the crucifixion and resurrection) and is ostensibly godless (catholic or maybe an atheist?) the beast is a false savior. which is what Ulysses is propping S.P. up as. He has his own association to a seperate figure The Beast of the Earth (false prophet) but the more beasts show up the more it starts to look like theyre all kinda the same thing huh.

THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS! THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU!

[operationero]

hi! i an enthralled by how you capture your character’s interactions and symbolism in your pieces, and i wanted to ask about ulysses! did you have themes from the odyssey in mind when creating illustrations with him? with how he can’t leave the island and is doing research and eventually becomes Like That it’s like his own little weird and twisted personal odyssey that ends in a less than ideal way. also, another kind of dumb question: in his toyhouse description, his religion is listed as greek orthodox catholic. has he converted to catholic or does he somehow identify with both congregations?

Haiii haii hehe thank you, your kind words are so appreciated and make me smile full of great joy.

In all honesty, he’s mostly named Ulysses because hes greek diaspora. It’s also a charming reference to the joyce novel (that i never finished) more than the greek epic. Tho I think its hard NOT to mirror the odyssey if your character is a guy who is wandering around, right?

If i had to assign a “figure” to him, probably st John the Baptist. A central figure in the ascension of jesus christ to prophet status. Baptism is a really strange practice conceptually to me, it’s a seemingly inconsequential ritual that has accrued a lot of importance for how much christians push it on people as a symbol of initiation. Ulysses, who has an interest in salvation, would probably be drawn to the role of the baptist.

I also like the imagery of the temptation of st anthony, but even John baptista martyrdom and persecution tracks well with Ulysses’s narrative.

(Eastern orthodox catholic is just a slightly redundant way of saying hes Greek Orthodox. He’s not orthodox and catholic, orthodoxy can be called catholic. I think we should repair the great schism and bring the catholic church and the orthodox church back into communion with eachother so i can hang with the greeks #greekfreek.)

(Ulysses technically lowkey converts to protestantism unrelatedly. It’s kind of a vibe shift more than a conscious change.)

(something to be said about assimilation via religious conversion with his character, considering he is matrilineally indigenous australian)

(parentheses)

[operationero]

so how do others react to ulysses positioning otho and sp on a sliding scale of christlikeness contingent on essentially autonomy when he resurfaces and is exhausted/psychotic. like there's just such a clear disparity in his props so surely others react. or are they all just going through way too much shit to see

also i didn't know he was a volcanologist i smiled so so so big as a geohead

also smiling so big at madonna raj limp cig in hand

well, if you approach it from the angle of "most people actually don't fully understand what's happening at all" like real life, you wouldn't be primed to make antichrists out of molehills.

People on the island at this point are desperate, if not also driven to psychosis or generalized nonspecific delusion. They are looking for a way out through the storm and Ulysses is offering a CHANCE at salvation to people who believe they are condemned. He's also not asking much of them (at least at first) so.... why not!

It helps that he can be perceived as mystical, but has to go through a personality shift to be an effective cult leader. He's not even all that convincing, and hes drunk his own kool-aid, he's just the only real spiritual authority. Raj isn't likely to believe him, neither is Jan who finds his menagerie horrifying and sad. Ainsley is conflicted and scared, Danny has accepted hell as long as he can really earn his place there, and Red, well, uh. He has other things to worry about.

Yesss he has actually always been a volcanologist if you can believe it. he is not un-influenced by the rhythms of the earth. and yes. mommy needs a cigarette.