Hello this is Neil Cicierega aka Lemon Demon

red<3

when he says he went for a "more domestic, more intimate" tone and language in the odyssey than in the iliad except for a few key moments of great heroic action that harkened back to the iliad, i'm like yesss i felt that! the moment odysseus notched that arrow and killed the first suitor i was instantly transported back to the war of troy, and that made me think how odysseus probably felt that way too as he did it (how could he not! unlike nestor and menelaus he hasn't had ten years of peace and domesticity to process the war)

and what also strikes me about that moment is that up until then the violence in the odyssey has been so... clean and indirect. the actual deaths have been mostly stuff like... men swallowed by monsters in one big gulp or "and then they drowned" (or the one dolt who got drunk and fell of a roof). but when odysseus' anger and humiliation finally comes to a head, i mean -- christ:

[...] Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat and the point went stabbing clean through the soft neck and out [...] The shaft sank home, and the man's life-blood came spurting from his nostrils -- thick red jets -- a sudden thrust of his foot --

more of this beast