B1C23
I've recently become obsessed with EPIC, a musical inspired by the Odyssey and written by a TikToker. I listen to it while commuting nearly every day. I love it so much that I want to edit it (complimentary, not derogatory).
Editing someone else's work without solicitation sounds aggressive, but trust me, this is coming from a place of deep love for the work. And since this chapter was the grand reveal of my book, I'm letting you all know that I'll happily accept similar edits for my book if the reveal disappointed you.
Lyric changes
Warrior of the Mind
Let's start off with my most controversial change. WotM is one of the foundational songs of EPIC, in which Athena takes Odysseus under her wing and they both sing about how they are warriors of the mind. The only thing is... he's not that smart?
Maybe Ody was smarter than his peers, but he unfortunately doesn't seem all that smart when compared to contemporary smart fictional characters. His smartest moment in the story is coming up with the Trojan Horse, which he does in the first song, and then he spends the rest of the musical barely surviving while Athena deus-ex-machina's his ass home.
I think this song should change
If there's a problem, we'll have the answer
We are the warriors of the mind
To
Our minds on fire; our spears fly high
We are two warriors of a kind
Basically, deemphasize the "mind" bit.
My Goodbye
This is a good-enough breakup song, but I think it should stop trying to be a breakup song and lean into becoming the world's best "disappointing your mentor" song.
The best lines of this song are:
You're not looking for a mentor
I'm not looking for a friend
I mistook you for a general
What a waste of effort spent
The whole song should lean into this vibe. This means changing breakup-y lines like:
This way, you'll know what your place is
This way, you can't cross the line
This way, when all is over
You'll keep yours and I'll keep mine
to
This way, you'll never be known
This way, you will show no spine
This way, when all is over
You'll watch your entire crew die
and
This way, you're out of my head now
This way, you won't plague my life
This way, when all is done
You're out of sight and out of mind
This way, you get what you wanted
to
This way, you don't control me
This way, you won't run my life
This way, when all is done
You free me of your cruel divine
This way, you will find some other
and
This day, you cut the line
to
This day, you forfeit your life
Wouldn't You Like
This is the song where Hermes gives Ody a magic herb to help him defeat Circe. While extolling the virtues of the herb, he says
Wouldn't you like to havе some of the magic?
Wouldn't you like your outcomе preferred?
Deep in the night, the fight can be tragic
I'll help you conquer her
I think this song is such a bop, but that second line is so clunky. "Like your outcome preferred" grates on my ear, I'm sorry. I think this line is also fairly low-cost to change, because to rhyme with "her" it just needs to end in "-er" and there are a lot of words that do that. How about
Wouldn't you like to havе some of the magic?
Wouldn't you like your wants to be heard?
Deep in the night, the fight can be tragic
I'll help you conquer her
Other rejected alternatives:
- Wouldn't you like to fight undeterred? – This runs into the same clunky feel as "outcome preferred"
- Wouldn't you like so much luck it's absurd? – Too many syllables.
Another clunky line here is
She can turn you to an animal
That'll end up on her plate
She can all but make you fall in love
Like you're on your hundredth date
No one falls in love on their 100th date! By that time, you know whether you're in love or not. All we need here is a word to rhyme with "plate," and "soulmate" is right there.
She can turn you to an animal
That'll end up on her plate
She can all but make you fall in love
Like she's your one true soulmate
No Longer You
In this song, a prophet foretells Ody's future, Ody doesn't clock that the prophet is talking about him, and then the prophet repeats his speech but angrier. I think that, in addition to the tone change, it would be cool if the words changed too. This isn't technically an improvement; it's more in the genre of a creative exercise.
The original prophecy goes:
I see a song of past romance
I see the sacrifice of man
I see portrayals of betrayal
And a brother's final stand
I see you on the brink of death
I see you draw your final breath
I see a man who gets to make it home alive
But it's no longer you
And the second time, instead of repeating the same words, he could sing:
I see a son with grave dark doubts
I see the sack of ancient Troy
I see a cradle that turns fatal
And a crew forever damned
I see you almost reach your home
I see the ocean fume and foam
I see a man whose peace lies in shattered pieces
But it's no longer you
Thunder Bringer
This is such a good bad-guy song, sung by Zeus. My problem with it is that it focuses on pride, and I'm not sure why. At this point, Ody has been tied up by his mutinous crew, so he's not feeling particularly prideful.
Pride is a damsel in distress
Hiding away where only I can undress her
Try all she can not to confess
In the end, it's all the same once I apply all the pressure
I think it would be better if the song focused on hope, which is what Ody, our main character, is rapidly losing. This is the song in which he loses all his men and finally is left all alone with no hope of getting home.
Hope is a damsel in distress
Hiding away where only I can undress her
Praying on her knees for success
In the end, it's all the same once I apply all the pressure
God Games
In this song, defending Ody from charge of killing the sirens, Athena sings
They were trying to do him worse
All he did was reimburse them
Now they'll tread with caution first
To live another day and sing another verse
I think "reimburse" is such a great word, and rhyming it with a common word like "worse" seems like a missed opportunity. How about
They were trying to eat his corpse
All he did was reimburse them
Now they'll tread with caution first
To live another day and sing another verse
This is also fun because it implies Ody and his men ate the siren's tails, which is headcanon for some portion of the fanbase.
Plot changes
Ody's main character journey is something like:
- Nice guy at first
- Lots of monsters hurt him
- Now he's ruthless
Athena's secondary character journey is less satisfying:
- Ruthless warrior at first
- [something? unclear what]
- Suddenly wants the world to "[hold] each other with a bit more empathy"???
I think Athena should become a second main character with much more screen time. This will give her time to have a more complete character journey, and will also fix the issue that right now any stage adaptation will require Ody's actor to be singing 95% of the time which is really taxing.
Making her the second main character immediately has the following benefits:
- Ody and Athena can have opposing journeys that play off each other
- The audience can spend much more time on Mt. Olympus with the gods, who are all fun characters
- Athena can develop empathy as a result of watching Ody struggle
- Athena can be the one who beats Poseidon at the end (it seems kinda weird that Ody is able to do this after nearly drowning?)
- We can have a more upbeat ending (read on)
Right now, the happy ending to the story is that Ody meets his family again. I think this should be changed to a 90%-bitter-10%-sweet ending where Ody and his family are horrified by what it took to get him home. Add in some random villagers saying "where's my husband who was part of your crew?" to really drive the point home.
Then Athena can swoop in and have her moment:
- First, she's sad at what Ody's been through. She acknowledges this is because of how she trained him to be a perfect warrior. She wanted him to be ruthless, and now he is, but this has clearly taken a huge toll.
- She has a conscience attack, and decides she doesn't want to be known for spreading ruthlessness. She's going to pick a different path.
- She could say something like "I'm no longer mentoring warriors of my kind, I'm becoming a protector of the kind."
- The current language about "[holding] each other with a bit more empathy" can go in here too.
- Echo "Open Arms" language from earlier too (a song in which Ody's friend tells him to be more trusting).
- The big grand happy ending where Athena lays out her plans for the future.
- Draw a line from Athena -> Athens -> the idea of democracy -> America
- 🦅🇺🇸🦅 Add in lots of rah-rah-Americana 🦅🇺🇸🦅
- All the other Greek Gods have faded away but she's made her name forever famous by being nice and inclusive
Speaking of edits, one thing I've noticed while editing this book is how many of my edits end up in the same place. For example, initially the Daniel section looked like this (Road is speaking, relevant pieces are bolded).
"Daniel. Daniel uprooted his entire life and his family to pursue the American Dream. Unfortunately, that dream requires rather more paperwork than it used to. To stay in the country, Daniel needs a visa. To get a visa, he needs a job. To get a job, he needs a recommendation. To get a recommendation, he needed Paul to agree to let him leave the lab. Paul refused. Maybe out of spite, maybe because he genuinely needed Daniel to keep working on this project, maybe because Daniel was easy to bully. After all, a man halfway across the world from almost everything and everyone he knows can’t do much harm in return. But he forgot that lone men pushed into corners tend to lash out."
“Daniel lashed out. He authored an anonymous note to Roman Teal, did you not?” Road asked, looking at Daniel. Daniel looked stricken, and nodded. He mouthed a “yes” but no one heard the whisper leave his lips.
And below is the revision, which I wrote basically from scratch.
"Daniel wanted to live the American Dream, and wasn’t sure he would be able to. His presence in this country is tied to having a job. He thought his work on this project was coming to an end, and wanted to look for new jobs, but Paul refused to help him. In Paul’s eyes, his project would be better served by keeping Daniel on for as long as possible, and then letting him go at a moment’s notice when he was no longer useful."
Daniel realized this, and in desperation, wrote anonymously to Roman Teal informing him that Paul was a bad leader.
Daniel looked stricken, but didn’t deny it.
A year and two months after the initial draft, when I rewrote this section (without looking at the original), I landed at some of the same words and phrases. Stuff like this keeps happening, and every time it does, I feel like an LLM.