you lost the game

i definitely haven't looked at the odyssey in greek enough to give you an answer but for the bits of the iliad I have studied I do think there is much less room for variatio so to speak as it sort of feels as if it tells things as they are.

There seems to be a shift in style and artistic expression in the Odyssey over the Iliad which is also why it was more or less commonly agreed that the Odyssey was synthesized after the Iliad. What was more people already in antiquity like Aristotle seem to have said that the Odyssey is a piece of work of Homer's maturity, synthesized years after the Iliad (which is also my preferred interpretation)

-I know the theory of different writers is also on the table always just not my favorite theory-

At the end of summer, when Covid numbers were at a lower point, I took the risk to visit her in her new apartment and I quickly realized that, unlike when I’d spent the night at her house before, the couch wasn’t made up like a bed. She explained that since her new couch was so fancy and pink, I couldn’t possibly sleep on it, and so I needed to sleep in the bed with her. You know, out of necessity. I woke up with her snuggled around me in the middle of the night.

We’re dating now, and I genuinely think I’m going to marry her. Just the other day, though, I mentioned that if she hadn’t been weird about her fancy couch, I probably never would have like confessed my feelings. AND THEN she stood up, took the cushions off the fancy couch, UNFOLDED IT INTO A HIDE-A-BED, and said “I KNOW.”

there was only one bed

Most people with active social circles at this age are just coasting by on "legacy infrastructure", they are retaining friends from school, college, old jobs or family networks. If you happen to be unlucky enough to have hit a patch of cruel, "toxic" people during those formative eras, the entire floor drops out from under you and rebuilding a network from scratch under capitalism is a completely different beast

Even without the immense labor of childcare or looking after aging parents, or the understandable priority of finding a significant other in this modern dating landscape...people are structurally burnt out ~ Wage slavery drains every drop of our surplus energy ~ So when people finally get a microscopic sliver of free time, they don't want to invest emotional capital into a stranger, they simply want to rot in peace at home alone...

I’ve met incredible people irl where the mutual desire to connect is absolutely there, but they simply do not have the physical or mental bandwidth to prioritize a brand new person over their pre-existing ecosystem

Liberals truly live in some alternate hyper individualized "live love laugh" ass reality where structural alienation can be solved by just wanting it enough or wanting it right

➡️ Not every medium of fiction and storytelling has or is expected to have content warnings or extensive tagging.

➡️ Print novels do not traditionally warn for content in any way.

➡️ Until AO3 came along, fanfiction did not traditionally warn for content in any significant way.

➡️ An author is only obligated to warn for content to the degree mandated by the format they publish their fiction on.

➡️ Content warnings beyond the minimum are a courtesy, not an obligation.

➡️ 'Creator chose not to warn' is a valid tag that authors are allowed to use on AO3. It means there could be anything in there and you have accepted the risk. 'May contain peanuts!'

➡️ Writers are allowed to use 'Creator chose not to warn' for any reason, including to maintain surprise and avoid spoilers.

➡️ 'Creator chose not to warn' is not the same thing as 'no archive warnings apply'.

➡️ It is your responsibility to protect yourself and close a book, or hit the back button if you find something in fiction that you're reading that upsets you.

My mom owned one of these.

And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:

Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."

The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."

Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.

"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."

And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.

There is already a huge problem with the rise in antisemitism in schools, let alone the entire fucking world. And she is contributing to that.

And its not just her liking a comment saying that we need to free amercia from jews. Its also the language she is using to address it.

She is phrasing it like she is a sweet innocent women, who just has a big heart and wants to help everyone. And those calling her out are big and mean and scary and dehumanize people. She is implying that jews are evil and scary and dehumanize people.

That is white women tears. When a white woman does something bigoted and makes herself the victim.

Because even if we suspend reality for a second and go "sure it was a genuine mistake" its still her responsibility to not repeat that mistake. She could've apologized and said she would donate to jewish orgs fighting antisemitism or to her local synagogue. Instead of using her super elderly age of 43 (😒 thats not that old) to explain away the mistake, she could take a course to help her learn how to use Instagram. It is expected of you when you are an adult to learn the tools relevant to your job. I had no clue how to use the software we keep all our data on at work when i started, but I learnt.

In 1938, Streicher's Stürmer reached its highpoint in terms of circulation; his successful publishing house of the same name (Stürmer-Verlag) produced among other works, a host of antisemitic children's literature, including the infamous Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom).

If you have a massive audience and a huge social media presence and are a children's entertainer, it is incumbent on you to hire some kind of moderation/PR staff and not keep fucking up like this. The fact that she keeps fucking up like this indicates a Rowling-esque spiral of radicalization centered around Jews, where she is buoyed by a bunch of Jew-hating accounts and orgs that like her reach of millions of children and their parents.

It's a shame she's only out now, she could have added her brand to these before they got pulled.

you are a jew (or an outspoken ally of jews) that antisemites are trying to scare into silence or force off the internet, or

you have cultivated a space that is advantageous or comfortable for antisemites to move in, either by allowing antisemitism or posting content that is useful to those who want to hurt jews, either because your posts are themselves libelous towards the jews, or are framed in such a way that they make a good springboard for antisemitism.

And these comments are clearly springboarding off of her posts.

The thing is, it really doesn’t matter if, in her heart of hearts, she feels no angry mean feelings when she thinks of Judaism or Jewish ancestry. Even if you assumed her anti-zionist posts are not antisemitism in-and-of-themselves, or that she is not knowingly intending them to be, they are clearly being received as dogwhistles by both Jews and Jew-haters, and recognized as opportunities for antisemites to funnel her audience further down the pipeline—opportunities that they have been able to take advantage of.

And if the content and creators you post and share and feature are repeatedly getting that kind of response over and over from naked bigots, it is absolutely your responsibility to step back and dissect, “what it is about the content I make/creators I collab with that has created this environment where a) these are my followers & b) my followers feel like this is acceptable?” and change it.

If you don’t like the people your content is appealing to, change the content you’re making so it won’t appeal to them.

Pick a topic you like, and that's what you're going to read about. Set a minimum word count, and read until you get to it. Start small. Smart easy. First try, it might actually be agonizing.

That's it for the day. Just hit the word count.

Next day, read to the word count again. Read something new! It will be easier today.

And easier the next.

"None of these words are in the Bible": fully opposed, there is no written acceptance.

"This, too, is Torah and I must learn": entirely on board, wants more to happen.