Epic-The-Musical-Timeline/PRODUCT.md

Product

What it is

An interactive, unofficial fan website for EPIC: The Musical by Jorge Rivera-Herrans. Its core is one long timeline of the songs. Recurring musical motifs and character themes are drawn as threads between the songs where they appear, and the gaps between songs show how much in-story time passes.

Opening a song shows: its place in Homer's Odyssey (with a link to a public-domain translation), its in-story time, its lyrics split into the song's parts with the singer of each part, the motifs in each part, fun facts, related YouTube videos, and an audio player for a direct MP3 when one exists.

Who it is for

TODO(maintainer): confirm. Working assumption from the spec: fans of EPIC who want to explore how motifs recur across the songs and how the story maps onto the Odyssey. Desktop first (about 1440×900).

Non-negotiables

• Fan notice and credit on every page: the site is unofficial, not affiliated with or endorsed by the creator, and thanks Jorge Rivera-Herrans as the creator of EPIC. One shared snippet (src/shared/credits.ts), never retyped.
• Accuracy is visible: content that isn't verified is marked as such (// TODO(verify) in data) and never presented as fact-checked.
• Lyrics and audio: real recordings, lyrics and cover art come only from a content folder mounted at runtime (spec 003); they are never committed or baked into the image. The broader copyright question is deferred by the maintainer.
• Media: videos are YouTube link cards (no embedded player). The app works without the content folder and offline apart from following those links.

Tone

Polished and smooth; may use 3D (three.js). It should feel like a crafted piece made by a fan, not a generic template — see DESIGN.md.

Current stage

v1 of the app (spec docs/specs/002-voyage-app.md): the whole album, 9 sagas and 40 songs, as a stylised 3D sea voyage with the frieze as a curtain between scenes, three landings, a side panel and a bottom timeline of motif threads. The design rounds that led here (mockups 01–17) are recorded in docs/design/002-direction-round-notes.md.