Alright, before I start I would like to preface this. I have not read the Odyssey. I don't plan to read the Odyssey. This post will be based on someone who has no connection to the Odyssey. I will say that I have heard somethings about it from people posting about it so I know about what Book!Calypso did to book!Oddeysus and I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the epic version so please keep that in mind when reading please and thank you. Now, onto the post
My Thoughts On Calypso And How She's Being Treated By The Fandom
TW: Mentions of 🍇, I'll warn you when it appears
Firstly, I love Calypso. I love her story and how tragic it is and how she handles it and how it has affected her. Her voice actor Barbara Wangui has an absolutely lovely voice. I love how light and airy it is while still conveying emotions and I love the way she makes Calypso sound in the songs. I also love Calypso herself, GiGi's design is very pretty and the animatics they did show her emotions very well. Love the frame in Love In Paradise where Calypso ask about Penelope and Odysseus saying she's his wife and Calypso just surprise Pikachu face before crying and moving on. Love it, hilarious. However her character is really compelling. She's someone that never had anyone and was left to her punishment of solitude and when she finally has another person around she has to watch as he chooses to leave and she's left all alone again. She spends the time trying to show Oddeysus the place and how it has all they could want or need and show him that he can stay here forever with her. We as the audience know that Oddeysus is a wife guy and wants to get home to her and his son but Calypso doesn't know that and probably doesn't fully get that someone would want to leave this perfect paradise and return to their original home. She spends the next 7 years trying to get him to stay and convince him this place is good, that she's good to stay with but we see how that affects him to the point he's willing to end himself if he can't go home. Then when he's given the opportunity he doesn't hesitate to leave to go home and leave Calypso on this island. I'm sure everyone can already see things from Oddeysus point of view but I'd like to frame it all in Calypso's to see where she's coming from and why she acts this way.
From Calypso's POV she's been stuck in this island alone for 100 years, no friends, no family, no visitors. No one can come or go, this island stays unknown. That includes her, she can't leave the island, if she wanted to I feel she would've at this point but she's been casted away so this is more than likely a punishment for her. She spends her life in this place, talking to herself and the critters on the island, accepting a long time ago that this will be her life forever when all of a sudden she sees it. A person. A real person for the first time in a century. Sure he's beaten, bruised, scared and barely breathing but he's alive and he's here. In Calypso's eyes this must be an answer to her prayers. Sure he's not receptive to her affection but that's fine, he's been through a lot so it's gonna take time to feel comfortable again. Sure he sits on the beach upset but that's fine, she more than likely did the same in her early days here. Sure he wants to go home but this is his home now, he can't leave the island (she's tried) but he'll learn to love it just like she had learn to. Sure he tried to jump off a cliff but who hasn't? She's sure she can help, she's sure her love will be enough for him. The years go by and nothing seems to work but she's not one to just give up like that. She'll get him to see that he loves it here, the island is perfect and with the 2 of them they won't be lonely. Then a god comes and takes him away. She goes to say goodbye to him and ends up letting out all her emotions and feelings out, of not understanding why nothing worked, of why the moments she believed they had weren't enough, of why he can't just love her like she loves him. And he's gone. And she's alone again. Heartbroken and alone.
Calypso has been on this island all her life, alone and isolated. Told from a young age just how much she wasn't wanted and left to spend the rest of eternity on her own. No one to talk to, help her, guide her, teach her anything she should know, the only people who can come and go are the gods and it seems they don't care to visit her. The one person that managed to get here, her paradise, doesn't choose to stay. Her trying her best unintentionally caused her to over step his boundaries and not listen when he spoke and hurt him. She didn't mean to hurt him but she did and because she never had anyone to teach or guid her she doesn't understand that and understand that thoes can drive a person away. It's sad and painful and I love her and I want her to get free and learn to respect boundaries and hear when people talk because she truly does not deserve the hell she's been put in. So it makes me all the more upset that the fandom has decided she's just an evil character and deserves what she's got happening to her
This next part is gonna be ranty but it is a rant so oh well
And TW: I'm gonna talk about the 🍇 ist stuff people are pushing onto her because I'm aware that the book version is different from the Epic version but some of y'all seem to think it's the same thing in Epic and I have issues for that and I will be using the actual word so I'm sorry in advance for anyone that upset.
The way the fandom treats Calypso is honestly disgusting. I've seen people talk about her book counter part and then attribute that one's actions to the Epic version. I've seen people take the singe line of "Soon Into Bed We'll Climb And Spend Our Time" as a way to say it implies that she rapes Oddeysus when it's never expanded upon or brought up again in the songs. I've seen people call her a pick me, selfish, manipulative, self centered, a bitch all for the crime of wanting to love Oddeysus and for him to love her back and not possessing the proper social skills and words to do get that she can't have that. I've seen people straight up say she's just a rapist because of her book counter part. I've seen so many post that are just about Calypso and so many comments talking shit about her, saying they could never make them like her, blaming her for her situation. So many people are so okay with just saying she's bad and no one wants to look at things from her POV. About what living the life she had does to a person, how it affects them, how it stunts their growth as a person, how it causes them to lack certain social skills you and I have, how once you finally meet people again you get clingy because holy shit people are here! You can say that you'd act differently but I guarantee you that if you spent your entire life from young age and into the 100s never interacting with individuals and isolated on an island just for some ramdo wash up on the shores of the beach still alive you'd fucking cling to to him to and do your best to get him to stay because that loneliness will absolutely be devastating again. Remind you, Calypso can't leave. She said it herself "No one can come or go, my island stays unknown", if no one can leave once there that means she's stuck there too. She can get Oddeysus off the island but that would leave her alone again. Alone after finally having someone not herself and not an animal. Who knows when the next washed up sailor will be if at all and the gods clearly don't care enough to go see her. If they care at all. Even in I'm Not Sorry For Loving You she expresses how upset she is. Angry, tired, restless and sad because she doesn't get what she did wrong and we can see things from her perspective but it's like the actions of her book self she can't escape them. And I know, I know that book Calypso is a rapist she literally has this man's kids but y'all are using the one line from Love In Paradise to claim she did the same here. But that one line is never expanded upon or brought up again. Jorge already warned us that there will be implications of rape in a song and we know which one, Hold Em Down, the one with Antinous. In the demon there are specific lyrics there that are "Hold her down while the gate is open. Hold her down while I get a taste. Hold her down while we share her spoils I will not let anything go to waste"
These are actually lyrics for the demon that we are warned about being implications of sexual assault. We were warned and these were intentional. It doesn't stop at the one line, it keeps going and it's brought up. One line out of a song that has a time skip does not equal rape and I would like it if those who have read the book and know of book!Calypso's behavior stop pushing it into Epic!Calypso. I would also like it if everyone stopped viewing her behavior on a surface level of what it appears when there's a mountain of reasons for it. I'm not saying Oddeysus has to know or care, the man's been through a lot and just wants to go home, but the US as the audience can benefit from looking past it all and seeing the reason why. Not just immediately jumping to a manipulative, gaslighty, selfish, entitled bitch just because her actions aren't favorable. I feel like people are either projecting or just don't look past Oddeysus POV to really care to see things from Calypso's
I also feel like there's another reason as reason people don't care to look at things from Calypso's POV and, y'all gonna be mad but I don't care, it's racism and misogyny. I know the knee jerk reaction is "I'm not racist/misogynist", "no one is being racist/misogynist", "you're reading to much into stuff ans seeing things where it isn't", hush please. You can still be either or both and not be aware of it and as a black female presenting person this is unfortunately something I notice. It's not surprising when people jump down the throat of female characters for one reason or another because they did something people don't like. Whether it be them being in the way of a gay ship, them being overly friendly and bubbly and people calling her fake bitch, blaming her for the actions of the male character, getting mad because she's a complex female character that doesn't fit perfectly into one box, I've seen it all before. Y'all did it with Demencia from Villainous until there was a female character to ship her with, y'all did it with Grace I from Infinity Train when Simon went off the deep end and got his ass killed, y'all did it with Mimzy when ahe showed up and stopped Hell's Greatest Dad from just being 2 old guys arguing, y'all are doing it with Calypso because she's not perfectly good and is flawed and is an optical to Oddeysus despite not being a bad person. Every time a female character is shown to be anything that isn't bland and unintrusive y'all hate on her. And when she is bland and unintrusive y'all still hate on her because now she isn't interesting. God forbid it's a black woman or black girl character y'all will loose your minds. My best example for black girl character is April O'Neil. Literally any depiction that doesn't show her as white but especially in the Mutant Mayhem version. There was no shortage of people calling her ugly because she was black and fat and saying she wasn't the true April O'Neil when the original April O'Neil was a biracial woman but because this one is black when there's been depictions of her that have made her white suddenly she's ugly and awful and all these racist slurs. With Black female voice actor it's worse. When MLP was getting it's new reboot after Gen 5 and rumors started going around that Apple Jack could be voiced by a black lady there was no shortage of people claiming that she was ruining a character and that she'd make Apple Jack sound ghetto as if she'd be doing a stereotypical black voice and, ya know, not voice acting which was literally her job. Y'all did the same when that anime with the tanned girl(idk the name I don't watch anime) came out in dubbed and was shown that voice actor for the main character was a black lady and the same shit that happened with Apple Jack happened here. Y'all aren't doing the same song and dance here but it sure is telling that Calypso, who is voiced by a black women, is getting shit and having her book counter part's actions shoved to her while everyone else gets a pass. Especially the other, fair skinned, voice actresses. Y'all may not know it or want to admit it but the way y'all treat Calypso is high key racist and misogynist.
Look, if you don't like Calypso, that's fine, I don't care. Hate all the characters you want, no one is gonna like em all. But for fuck sake I would just like to go down the Calypso tags and not see just a wall of hate for her to the point it's like mining for diamonds to find even one positive post about her. I hope I get to see more positive post and more people showing her love instead of all this hate. If we wanna hate someone, hate Zeus him and Poseidon caused all the problems here. Thank you and have a good whatever time of day it is for you.
