I'm back probably

May 20th 2025

Another small animation for that months VGen Challenge! May's theme was "Emerald" Surprisingly, I drew this before I heard there was going to be a Lars spin off ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

he fought in a war—he killed people. “open arms” does not mean he’s an eternal pushover. he was fully willing to try and kill that cyclops like everyone else. he has his own body count; he just wants to lead with kindness first. when odysseus stops leading with kindness or reason, he would be on the side of the crew.

mutiny is a collective crew decision because no one wants to kill more than they have to of people they care about, and polites is part of the crew.

the fact that he’s got a kalimba playing in his music and comes off as very sunshine-y and young does not mean that he is stupid or blindly trusting, and “mutiny” happens after odysseus has been steadily losing all of their trust for three years. it’s not some spur of a moment thing they suddenly decided. it was a bona fide discussion that they had to have because you need crew consensus (or, at the very least, the majority) in order to mutiny.

no, polites would not have sided with odysseus.

“open arms” means polites would’ve been the last one still believing in odysseus and in his capacity to change for the better, just like eurylochus, but not that he wouldn’t rebel or find injustice in the choices odysseus makes. he would reach out until the end, but he would still side with the crew. what odysseus chooses to do is not okay, and it is selfish, and that’s the point. and polites isn’t going to be okay with that when he didn’t even want odysseus attacking the lotus eaters without just cause. (now, imagine when it’s his friends and crew mates.)

everyone likes to forget that the first one to point out that what odysseus chooses to do is wrong and cruel is polites. he’s the first voice of reason trying to confront odysseus and make him change because he knows it’s unsustainable for both the crew and odysseus himself. epic is relying on you to have some knowledge of the trojan war, or war, in general, to understand odysseus’ mental state here, but odysseus is a monster during the war. he is awful, and his first expression of guilt or remorse at any of it in the epic canon is when he’s forced to be the monster by the gods’ hand to kill astyanax. that’s when he becomes “just a man”. until then, he is the monster, through and through.

(remember: epic was jorge wanting to see odysseus actually struggle with the decisions he makes because he, canonically in the odyssey, doesn’t with a great deal of them. so we pick up right when he starts actually struggling with what he’s doing and what he’s become.)

“open arms” is polites attributing all of that to the trauma of war, but the origin of it doesn’t matter because the crux of it is that odysseus, operating as he is right now, is hurting crew morale. odysseus’ distancing from the crew starts in the troy saga, and polites is the first one to notice it, so he’s the first one to reach out. eurylochus does it next in “luck runs out”. this becomes a recurring event of the two closest to him reaching out (obviously cut down to just eurylochus, post-polites’ death, but we’re talking about if polites had lived here) and being constantly rejected and shut down.

and then we hit “scylla”.

and polites would not have sided with odysseus with that.

it’s been three years of trying to reach out to him and nothing. polites is not siding with odysseus—i desperately need you all to stop misunderstanding “open arms”. it’s a song about polites approach to life, but it’s also a song about a friend reaching out to a friend that they think needs help desperately, and then the narrative shifts to odysseus constantly rejecting it (he rejects it from the get-go with polyphemus since the lotus wine is premeditated). nowhere in “open arms” is blind faith a part of polites’ philosophy of life, nowhere in “open arms” is it ever indicated that someone needing help excuses their terrible actions, and nowhere in “open arms” is polites shown to be willing to be walked all over—it shows the opposite, in fact.

he would’ve mutinied, and he would’ve been just as angry and just as hurt as the other forty-something men that were still on that ship (and he would’ve wanted to keep odysseus alive, just like eurylochus, because they don’t want him dead—they want him human).

put some respect on his name.