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I shall live on dreams because reality is too cruel for me. I think I shall be the kind of person that nobody understands,

Anaïs Nin, Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1914-1920

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Imam Al-Ghazali // Tennessee Williams

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AFTG is Well Written: a Masterlist

Many people have said the book series All For The Game by Nora Sakavic is badly written. However, I believe it is not. To prove this, I made a compilation of posts that explain why the books are meticusly crafted and amazingly written.

*disclaimer: I'm not claiming the books are perfect or have no mistakes, it is impossible for any book to be that way, I'm just saying that it's not even half as bad some people claim it to be

Plot

Why The King's Men's plot structure is genius

In defense of AFTG crazy plot

Characters

MCs and trauma responses by @skydaemon

Mirrors of eachother by @sirandking

Riko and Neil parallels by @notlacrosse

Jean: Number, name and the narrative by @owlarchimedes

Metaphors/Symbolisms

Characters and their respective chess metaphor

Number symbolims in AFTG by @darkblueboxs with additions by @whydamnitwhy

Writing style

Conveying feelings by @lochenfreh

Here by @joejhang

The reason for the simplistic language by @afurtivecake

Neil/Nathaniel switch by @obsessing-over-fictionn

General

Here by deactivated account

The reason why people tend to think the book are bad by @thetamingofspike

Here by @the-foxhole-clutter

If I'm forgetting something or you know a post that could fit in this masterlist, share it pls!

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source

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Yannis Ritsos, trans. by Kimon Friar, from a poem featured in "Erotica: Love Poems,"

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This may interest Secret History fans

“We’re all a lot better off.” "Some of us are, you mean.” Henry smiled acidly. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Πελλαιου βους μεγας ειν Αιδη.” This was something to the effect that, in the Underworld, a great ox costs only a penny, but I knew what he meant and in spite of myself I laughed. There was a tradition among the ancients that things were very cheap in Hell.

This morning I googled this line to find the context, and found a number of Secret History readers who were puzzled by it.  Someone correctly placed it in Callimachus, but couldn’t account for the fact that it doesn’t mention pennies.  Here’s a non-literal translation:

“If there’s pleasure in death, and sure I speak true, Pellaeus’ fat ox will be happy as you.”

[Alternately, Πελλαιου might not be a proper name but rather an adjective meaning “darkly-coloured”, in which case it would be “A big black ox will be happy as you.”] 

Well, this is indeed a line in Greek about an ox in Hades, with some appropriate pessimism and dark humour, but it’s the wrong one.  The complete epigram doesn’t mention the expense of the ox; it’s just saying that there’s no real afterlife and both humans and oxen go to the same place in the end and have about the same experience.

The correct line is found in Callimachus, Iamb 1 fr. 191, in which a long-dead poet announces:

“…οὐ γὰρ ἀλλ᾿ ἥχω ἐχ τῶν ὅχου βοῦν χολλύβου πιπρήσχουσιν.”

“…for I have come from the place where an ox costs a penny.”

I don’t think this is a mistake on the part of Tartt or her editors; I think it’s Richard being an unreliable narrator, even about a thing of minor importance. In the context of the book, Henry might be making a dark comment about who is “better off” in Hades which Richard (with his inferior Greek skills and obsession with money) interprets the wrong way.  Richard makes a lot of hasty conclusions and does a lot of sloppy Greek homework, but Henry simply wouldn’t get that reference wrong.

Anyway, since I had to go chasing that reference this morning for unrelated reasons I thought I’d toss it in the Secret History fandom tag.

Edit: I wondered if I’d written about this before and I had, half of the way: an alternate translation for the epigram exists that might make sense of that “Pellaiou” without involving the iamb…but the iamb is a much more straightforward expression of the idea.  

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you guys, what info about the trojans and jeremy did we have before tsc was announced aside from what’s written in the ec and obv in tkm?

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favourite thing in the world is when the pages of a book go all soft and yellowy and the edges are slightly fuzzy and rounded. these books couldn’t give you a papercut if you tried they’ve been loved too much. they love you too much

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I wish I could be the overachiever mentally ill but nooo I had to be the self sabotage mentally ill

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Kate Rooney

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I just re-read The Foxhole Court and for the first time I noticed the parallels between Wymack’s speech about Kevin’s time at the nest and THE Riko roast in book 2:

Wymack: “[Tetsuji] raised Kevin to be a star” // Neil: “Being raised as a superstar must’ve been really, really difficult for you”

Wymack: “Kevin isn’t human to them. He’s a project” // Neil: “Always a commodity, never a human being”

Wymack: “He put a lot of time and money into kevin’s development on the court. As far as Tetsuji is concerned, Kevin is valuable property. Any profit Kevin makes is rightfully the Moriyamas’” // Neil: “Not a single person in your family thinking you’re worth a damn off the court”

Wymack: “Kengo and Ichirou mostly keep to New York and couldn’t give a flying fuck what Tetsuji and Riko do” // Neil: “Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time”

In my opinion, this is significant for two main reasons.

First, as Wymack says, “Kevin doesn’t talk about his time at Evermore,” so Neil didn’t get this information from HIM. This is part of why the “Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless Daddy issues all the time” is so funny, because you know Kevin is sitting at that table losing his MIND at being implicated in this, but this speech means those claims are based on something.

Second, and I think more importantly, Neil is turning everything Wymack told him was true of Kevin onto Riko. On the Kathy Ferdinand show, Neil implies that Kevin is better than Riko, and that Riko knows it and is scared of it—“people are finally going to know which one of you is better. They’re going to know how premature [the facial tattoo] was.” In the Riko Roast (TM), he’s continuing to make that insinuation by basically saying “hey, all those things you think about Kevin? All that dehumanization? It’s true for you, too. Only Kevin got out and you’re still there, and we see that and talk shit because of it.” He’s not just knocking Riko down, he’s building Kevin up while he does it, because in this scenario, Kevin is one of the people on the outside seeing how pitiful Riko is, while Riko is just a guy everyone thinks is annoying, and who should just shut up.

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andrew blur was the unbelievably repressed, disastrously unable to let go, not checking his email, failing school, living in the past, completely confused and unsure, unemployed, letting his relationships rot and decay representation i needed actually

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why cant i read a book and watch a movie and play a game and clean all at the same time

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i’m reading this fic (which was rewritten) but the author hates the fandom with a passion and idk that’s so funny and sad???

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i just heard the phrase “if you wouldn’t trust their advice, don’t trust their criticism” for the first time and i don’t think i’ve ever needed to hear anything more

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Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Diaries

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Like, I know they were… y’know… kinda bad for each other and I love Sam, I really do, and think he’s great for Andrew because he will help him to live without being controlled and manipulated, but I can’t help but think about Eddie. I can’t let him go. The what ifs and the if onlys and the maybes are eating me alive