The Greek Class Texting:

The Greek Class texting:

Richard: all lowercase, but apart from that he uses proper punctuation and grammar, and makes sure to always correct his accidental mistakes because he's insecure. also does that thing of ending his every message with a fullstop, so he always looks mad for no reason and the others have a hard time understanding when he's joking or not. doesn't laugh or use emojis ever, but he will throw an occasional "lol" in there from time to time.

Henry: Perfect grammar, perfect punctuation, always respects his uppercases. S l o w texter. Rarely even mispells anything, and when he does, he'd rather delete his whole message and write it anew than leave it as it is. Cannot and will not laugh in text, barely even knows how to correctly use emojis — and they're not aesthetic enough for him anyways. (Bunny swears he's seen him accidentally send a "😂" once, but there's no evidence to support his claims.) Always corrects the others' mistakes to the point of being insufferable, and often leaves them on read for prolonged amounts of time.

Bunny: very sikmilar to His regular Writing style. random Uppercaswes here adn there. HE TYPES SO FAST so his Messaaages are full of Mispells. one of those People that write like 3 words per Text. so he Ends Up swnding 10000 messages to say like Two things. hes Always on the lookout for any mistake cominf from henry to correct him as Soon as He can. Uses emojis quite often ‼️‼️ but would rather Die tahn send a heart 💥 laughs in "AHSJAHSKS"

Francis: all lowercase, but generally respects grammar and punctuation. doesn't end his messages with fullstops usually, so when he does he IS being passive-aggressive. and he uses so many exclamation marks!! they give henry the creeps so he uses some more!!! he's the one who uses the biggest amount of emojis out of them — most of them are hearts! 💕 mostly sends them to the twins just to mess with charles 💖 he's simultaneously a "lol", "HAHAHA" and "askhszksk" type of guy

Charles: cant be bothered types very fast doesnt care about either grammar spelling or punctuation and just. does whatever. manages to write pretty much correctly most of the time but he purposefully mispells thigns just to piss henry off and it works. he does use exclamation marks when hes excited sometimes! laughs in "HAHAHAH" and like camilla he only ever uses ":)". when hes drunk his texts become absolutely incomprehensible

Camilla: She's the middle ground, less rigid than Henry but more attentive than Charles but she also types fast and sometimes misses her uppercases or mispells words because of it and even though it bothers her she doesn't care enough to correct herself — but she WILL correct Richard just to see him panic. Doesn't use emojis apart from things like ":)" or sparingly even a heart if she feels like it ❤️ Always laughs in all lowercase haha

nine copies of the secret history

time in the secret history as a key to the text... hard to define in a tumblr post sort of way, but at first you have the fact that the book from beginning to end is a recollection, where the passage of time affects how the narrator tells the tale (with awareness of where it ends), and richard moves from receiving information asynchronously (the murder of the farmer) to synchronously (assisting in bunny's murder himself). you can (if you so desire) count how many days it takes from the funeral to henry's suicide (eleven). henry fights time one last time by surviving with a bullet wound to the head.

but even at the simplest levels, isn't the study of the classics, itself, the romanticization of the past?

what did richard learn in greek class with julian more, that beauty is terror, or that it is worth looking back towards the greeks for guidance on life?

when richard asks camilla to tell him a tale, she takes him to a time before she was an orphan, in a winter, where her father for reasons known only to himself and irrelevant to the story throws snowballs at the wall. neither do we or richard care about mr macaulay throwing snowballs at the wall, we only care that camilla loved him then and loves him now, enough to tell the tale after he's gone at least.

and richard does the same, in his own way, tell the tale of something inexplicable but through the lens of "i loved them", because love exists in the past and trying to apply any sort of questions arising in the present to it is meaningless, love is to the person and the memory, not on if we should look now why the dead man was throwing snowballs at a wall.

sir that's my emotional support toxic character from a book about an elitist academic cult

YES

tags: @scarareg

I think we should talk more about the fact that Henry is basically the personification of the "beauty is terror" quote – hence, the concept of the Sublime. Richard found him to be the most beautiful out of the whole group – not in the in the literal sense, obviously, but in the sense that Henry was the one he looked up to, admired and eventually idolized the most out of them. Even after the murder and all that happened afterwards because of him, after finding out how terrifying he could actually be, Richard still couldn't let go of his initial impression of him, and kept on thinking fondly of him despite everything he'd done – and so did all the others. Henry kept them all together, then wronged them so many times, and in the end he still left them all with that lingering ghost of him they were never able to get rid of.

Richard Papen, while freezing in a fucking mandolin boutique during the rigid winter of Vermont: California dreamin'... (California... dreamin'...) on such a winter's day...