Are You Okay They Ask I Respond As Quickly As I Can So They Will Not Notice The Earthquakes In My Voice

rediscovering randnom facts about the Greek Class that I had forgotten about:

Henry is a reckless driver

Francis (not Charles!) and Camilla kiss on the mouth as a form of greeting

Richard has a one-night-stand with a random girl his first week at Hampden

the Greek Class have a pet dog (and it dies)

Charles gets along well with Marion

Henry accidentally shoots and kills a duck

Richard regularly drunk-drives Francis home from the doctor

Bunny is severely dyslexic

you're loved despite your flaws

TSH spoilers:

I feel like we as a fandom do not talk about Henry’s symbolism in TSH enough. Like, that dude is the literal embodiment of death, and I just think it’s so damn cool. I mean, his whole obsession with language and literature stemmed from the fact that he almost died in a car accident. And then every death we see in the book (the farmer’s, Bunny’s, and his very own) is directly at his hands. The others were accomplices, sure, but Henry’s the one who takes action every time. And in Francis’s failed suicide and Richard’s near death in the epilogue, they both see Henry, not Bunny or Charles or what have you.

Henry is not only obsessed with death, he IS death. He’s the reaper who’s friends toy with their mortality all the time through drugs and booze. The reason they all admire him is not only because of his size and stature and brilliance; it’s because he’s dangerous. If beauty is indeed terror, than he’s the most beautiful of them all. They all have the life preservation skills of a fly, so of course they love Henry. And of course his actions constantly bring them closer to danger and death.

Я чувствую себя так хуево

they're matching ^^

someone probably already made a million post about the thematic relevance of julian’s lecture to the greek clique in chapter 1 in the overall narrative, how so much of what he is saying gets mirrored at various points as the story progresses. after all, this is the lecture that made the greek clique want to perform a bacchanal.

but i just noticed this one little parallel that is making me lose my mind a bit, to be honest.

I always found it peculiar that it was bunny who answered julian here – you’d think he wouldn’t remember the latin name for the erinyes, or that someone else might have said something. yet he is very engaged right now, “his eyes dazzled”.

i think there are two main reasons why bunny is the one who mentions the furies.

the first reason relates to julian’s words before his question. from a narrative point of view, by answering, bunny gets linked to these paragraphs.

“It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.”

bunny, the one often compared to a child, already before and especially after finding out about the murder starts hurting, worrying, and quickly realizes he is the only one to feel this way. the others are not sharing in his worries. they excluded him from the successful bacchanal, henry mocked him in his diary, and no one confided in him. they hid the fact that they murdered someone from him with apparent ease. after italy, suddenly henry is all chummy with richard, and the group includes him even more – and bunny feels like no one understands him, no one is willing to. they treat him like a dumb child, and try to keep him quiet.

the second reason why I find it peculiar that bunny is the one to answer julian is to be found in julian’s segue to bunny’s answer.

the book often mentions dante, who was led through hell and purgatory by virgil. while the number of erinyes/furies is ambiguous in greek mythology, virgil, in the aeneid, mentions three: alecto (endless anger), megaera (jealous rage), and tisophone (vengeful destruction). and isn’t this the core of bunny’s behaviour prior his murder? his anger towards the rest of the group, and especially henry, at excluding him, mocking him. his jealous rage towards richard. his vengeful destruction – almost revealing what the group has done, exploding at henry, mocking charles’s drinking, deriding and belittling camilla and her relationship with charles, being cruel to francis bc of his sexuality, alienating even richard, who didn’t have much to do with any of this, by trying to expose his lies about his past and how much money he has.

in chapter 5, richard wonders how come bunny was losing his mind and turning against his friends post-murder reveal (pls ignore richard being a pretentious baby btw) and we get this amazing insight from camilla.

in julian’s own words, the erinyes/furies drove people mad by turning “up the volume of the inner monologue, magnif[ying] qualities already present to great excess, ma[king] people so much themselves that they couldn't stand it.”

and isn’t that what camilla is alluding at here? as if possessed by the furies, bunny becomes so much himself, or what he thinks the others see him as – stupid, simple, annoying, less sophisticated than the others – that he cannot bear it, no one can. it all magnifies, all that he thinks the others dislike about him, belittle him for, laugh behind his back about.

there’s also something to be said about julian asking about the erinyes/furies by their greek name and bunny answering with the roman one. when it was in rome with henry that it all started to fall apart. but yeah

Как же хорошо чувствуется когда у тебя хорошо получается математика емае

god i love it when gay people are in evil toxic codependent love with each other

I ruined my friends’ day. Bunny would be proud of me

Дайте мне немного счастья и я никогда не буду тонуть