#sysyphus

Call me Sysyphus, love.

Yeh, I move the Rock...

I just don't want to talk about moving the Rock...

get pictures taken of me while moving the Rock.

Anything that distracts... me... from moving the Rock...

The Sisyphean Insurrection

Throwing the boulder back to the heavens that doomed us to this meaningless existence.

I've been playing Ultrakill again after leaving it for a while, since now there's a harder difficulty. And it reminded me how much I love this game, especially P-2, so I made this!  Also, I got sick and have been extra busy lately; I wish I could have painted more in this time, but I couldn't. Hopefully I can compensate that in what's left of the year.

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.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE ...