siriuslyobsessedwithfiction

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

Not that anybody asked but I recently made a post about Henry which was mostly meant as a shitpost but an interesting discussion ensued so I'd like to expand on my point.

I genuinely believe Henry is straight. First of all the fact that he had a sexual relationship with Camilla is beyond dispute. ('If he isn't [sleeping with her], he's certainly done everything he possibly can to convince Charles that he is.' -Francis) There's still of course the possibility that he's bi, but no real evidence to support that.

About Henry and Julian's relationship, we know next to nothing about it. We know they shared a 'quick, businesslike kiss on the cheek', which, when Richard contemplates the possibility of Henry being gay, is described as 'very different' (i.e. it didn't seem sexual to him). Still, when was the last time you kissed a teacher you had a Totally Not Inappropriate relationship with? I think it's very likely that they did have a sexual relationship, if 'relationship' is the right word.

For those who don't know, Julian and Henry (and Bunny, but that's not important here) are both based on real people Donna Tartt knew in college. Julian's real life counterpart was a Classics professor at Bennington College who a) was gay and b) had a reputation for sleeping with his students. There's an article where several Bennington College (Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis's alma mater) alumni get interviewed, including the people Henry and Bunny were based on. I highly recommend reading it if you're interested and want to know more about the place where TSH was conceived. Did you know they used to have a party called 'Fling into Spring'? But I digress.

Besides that, their relationship is hardly appropriate even if it wasn't sexual at all. Private lunches, private tutorials upon private tutorials, driving around buying fountain pens together, Henry was the only one Julian allowed to come into his house and he'd apparently been there several times, even before he showed up on his doorstep for inexplicable reasons in the middle of the night after he came back from Rome. It's a very small step from that to flat-out grooming, which was probably what was happening under the guise of 'the love that dare not speak its name' or some other romantic idea Julian used to justify it to himself and to Henry. Let's not forget this type of relationship wasn't uncommon in Ancient Greece. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece)

You may have noticed I started this post with 'Henry is straight' and it progressed into 'Henry was definitely sleeping with his male teacher'. This is because, though their relationship is very important to the book (and here I acknowledge there's plenty of room for debate) I don't think Henry was actually sexually attracted to Julian. He saw his teacher as a father figure and a mentor and Julian took advantage of that. I think it's pretty clear Henry has a bad relationship with his own father, and found someone he could trust and look up to and saw him as sort of a substitute, and would do anything for his approval. ('I loved him more than my own father.' I s s u e s.) As someone pointed out (paraphrasing): 'One can have a father figure and be sexually attracted to said father figure' which is fair, but still not evidence enough to prove that he actually was.

Even Richard, who sees gay men everywhere he looks, lived with him for months and said: 'Geiger counters dead'. (Which is a criminally underrated line btw. Also missed opportunity to say gay-ger counter.)

So I'm not excluding the possibility that Henry is bisexual, but I don't think it's fair to exclude the possibility that he's not, either. It all remains a subjective question of headcanons when you get down to it. I just wanted to add my two cents to the discussion.

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

"go to hell." basic. weaksauce shit. "i hope that character you really like gets an uber-popular yaoi ship and you have to watch in real time as they get sanded down into a toothless, barely-recognizable version of themself that's become little more than a vessel for bland tropes and OOC fluff, and that's just the permanent fandom consensus view of that character now." now THAT'S a threat. that cuts right to the bone. that's real. that's happening to me as we speak.

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The dRaGon will lose her/his/their mind once Juris starts to get antsy because of war. He's famous for egging Zoya's pride on instead of telling her to reign her ego in. Zoya will "liberate" people by burning them alive and recklessly launching herself to Fjerda once again. Except by that time, Fjerdans - famous for developing new war technology - will nuke her ass or something else. Except no one will even blame Fjerdans for that because famously bad-tempered and ill-mannered Queen Zoya would've become worse by then because of conflicts from all sides, and for Fjerda, killing her would be avoiding their own genocide. (If RoW was even slightest bit realistic, that would happen the first time she went to fight Fjerdans as a dragon too. Prejudeced bigoted Fjerdans, disgusted by how unnatural Grisha are, got swayed by cheap propaganda and knelt for a dragon instead of it solidifying their beliefs how Grisha are just weird vermin? Okay, sure, Leigh.)

What would Zoya's rule look like:

1) The initial days would be a bit peaceful, of course.

2) The Little Palace would hold a decent strength as the Grisha would still be afraid to move out and venture by themselves.

3) A couple of years down the lane, the older Grisha would leave the LP, and settle down by themselves.

4) In 5-10 years, the Grisha would have migrated and settled down throughout the country.

5) Meanwhile in Shu Han, Makhi would have slowly started rebuilding her supporters once again.

6) Instead of using the army, she would use slavers and barrel thugs to inflirate and capture Grisha.

7) Once Leyti dies, Makhi will seize the throne again, disposing off Ehri. The experimentation would start again in secret, this time the focus would be suppress the grisha powers, rather than enhancing it.

8) In Fjerda, the 'prince' would be usurped. Their new idealogies would go against the Fjerdan political beliefs. Conflicts will arise and a new reign would be established.

9) Grisha capture/experimentation would resume again in Fjerda but in secret.

10) Border skirmishes would resume. Nothing drastic, just testing waters at first.

11) The attacks would grow bolder as the countries grow confident and/or succeed in their experimentation.

12) Things in Ravka would not good either. Zoya's temper and her non-noble butt sitting on the throne will create clashes in the court. People will grew tired of Nikolai's 'charm' and stop cutting deals as he is not very important right now.

13) They will not be able to abolish feudal system and serfdom, making people more and more unhappy.

14) Strong noble families will start reaching out to Shu-Han and Fjerda for a possible support in the coup.

15) West Ravka would hate the strain of East Ravka's development and the wealth gap and frictions between the two parts would increase.

16) Churches hold on the people would have increased a lot with the Age of Saints nonsense- pushing people away from education and science.

17) The continued poverty however, would radicalize a sect of people against the monarchy and the church, adding more chaos.

18) Both countries would declare war on Ravka after 10-15 years, taking advantage of the internal conflicts and this time fully equipped with supressors to deal with an overgrown lizard.

19) Zoya would call for all the Grisha to assemble only to find that the slavers had been quietly sneaking inside the country and kidnapping them. Since they didnt have any protective laws, no one would have noticed the disappearances and chalked it up as normal Grisha migration like the old times.

20) The few new ones that came to join the army would have no idea how to summon or fight because with the mandate removed, there was no testers to find and teach Grisha children. Many would have died of wasting sickness too, cause no one would have noticed what it really was. Cause the otkazats'ya have no clue.

Finally the war occurs. All would be lost.

The end.❤️

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

For the "He's just a traumatized teenage boy, who gave up everything for Alina." crowd. Neither his drinking nor his treatment of Alina are justified by any of that.

#louder for the people in the back #they seem to love mal and call us the people with issues #there are no dark broody shadow summoners in real life #but mal is the boy next door who would trap you forever

May I add that he also had gambling and anger issues and a ton of insecurities.

Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that everyone and everything except them is responsible for their actions. When they aren’t blaming their partners, they blame stress, alcohol, their childhood, their children, their bosses, or their insecurities. More important, they feel entitled to make these excuses; when I point out that other men under the same pressures choose not to be abusive, they tend to become irate or contemptuous.

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men- Chapter 3: The Abusive Mentality (Lundy Bancroft)

For the "He's just a traumatized teenage boy, who gave up everything for Alina." crowd. Neither his drinking nor his treatment of Alina are justified by any of that.

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Reblogging this because I saw a post defending Mal from someone who, surprise surprise, joyfully admits they barely even remember the books but still insist Mal is a great choice for Alina.

Ruin and Rising- After

Either Malyen doesn't see the way strangers and their own servants alike treat Alina, which hardly makes him the attentive hubby LB's trying to present, or he does see, but doesn't care enough to stand up for her, which... *slow clap* that's exactly Malyen from the beginning of the story.

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I just love tumblr -

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your daughter is a pleasure to have on the dashboard

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

custody of a fictional character should get transferred to you once you spend more hours thinking about them than their creator ever did

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I did not just see a full-rounded idiot like Bunny Corcoran from Secret History being compared to a mastermind queen like Alison DiLaurentis from Pretty Little Liars. I died laughing.

Bunny wrote to Julian that he was going to get killed. Imagine writing to a professor who doesn't give a fuck about you when your life is in mortal danger instead of gathering incriminating evidence and taking every measure to protect yourself from your potential attackers. Alison would pretend to be dead, then frame Charles or Richard or Julian, steer away Henry from Camilla, take all of Henry's money, and saunter away to blackmail someone else. She'd also manipulate the whole group and actually have them under her control, unlike Henry did. Bunny is the first character to die in every YA show ever.

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

"Bunny was killed because he didn't fit the aesthetic of the Greek class and was tethered to reality" - Bunny was killed because he was blackmailing Henry and wouldn't shut up about knowing about the farmer's death but wouldn't actually do anything about it either. He was no less pretentious than the other Greek class members. He just did it in a typical rich white American way so you're normalizing it. He was also more elitist than the Macaulay twins who weren't even that wealthy. Charles actually spoke against elitism. You can't call a guy who was broke af but still went on lavish vacations out of someone else's pocket "down to Earth". What he did wasn't okay either but no one screamed to his face about it. His version of "aesthetic", which was basically being a deadbeat and a scammer/felon while maintaining the illusion of being rich, was harmful to others too, especially to his girlfriend he planned to marry. Hope this helps.

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

"Bunny was tethered to reality" - and other hilarious jokes you can tell people who can't analyze the book on their own and they'll believe you like it's profound divine text.

Nothing is more down to Earth than having no money and plans and still throwing away the money you leeched off your friend.

I see posts like these and the ones with "Bunny wasn't actually that bad, he's villainized to be the bad guy of the book" and I'm just flabbergasted. Are we talking about the same Secret History? When did anyone in the book say Bunny was the bad guy? We know from the start he was murdered because he never knew when to shut up.

"We see Bunny's flaws more while others' are hidden." Once again, did you read the book? Just because Richard was making excuses for some of the stuff others did, doesn't mean we were not shown. We're shown and told about everybody's flaws and misdeeds.

love it when people make posts about how Bunny was the only member of the greek class to hold them to reality because he was so much less pretentious and elitist than the others. Those posters are so, so right!

I mean, who could forget this classic Bunny Corcoran quote?

“It’s a horrible thing to tell your kids that money’s the only thing in the world, but it’s a disgrace to work for it."

oh shit, wait. Sorry, that wasn't Bunny, it was Charles. You know how easy it is to mix up these blond guys. One sec, I know I have a Bunny Corcoran quote where he calls out his wealthy friends on their privilege, it's right here-

“He doesn’t have to go to school. He can do whatever he fucking pleases. He can fail every single fucking class and his dad’ll still send him that fat allowance check every month—”

fuck, sorry. Sorry! That's not Bunny either, it's Charles again.

Okay, okay, I'm sure the next quote is Bunny! He's going to tell us all about how salt-of-the-earth he is, just watch-

“Naw. This is the East Coast, boy. I know they’re pretty laissez-faire about dress in your neck of the woods, but back here they don’t let you run around in your bathing suit all year long. Blacks and blues, that’s the ticket, blacks and blues.…"

Okay, wait, sorry, so embarrassing, that's not the quote I meant to choose. It doesn't really represent Bunny anyway- it's probably just one of those times Richard made shit up to make him look worse. My unpretentious comrade Bunny Corcoran wouldn't shame a classmate for not following his closely prescribed dress code.

Okay, okay, here! In this scene Henry is going to tell us about how proletariat Bunny is, I'm so sure of it.

"He sulked for days, feigning asthma attacks, moping around and honking at his inhaler and nagging me constantly—accusing me of being cheap, and so forth, and when he traveled he liked to do it right—"

oh, god damn it.

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the darkling opens alina’s letters to mal expecting fluffy bullshit and instead it’s just the most judgmental cursed opinions he’s ever seen in his life. like the kind of pissed off rants and gossip that someone would literally only share with their best friend.

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What happens when you want to write a romance novel but you can't because you made the mistake of adding genocide as a backdrop

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Leigh Bardugo has such an american/liberal view of Russia’s history.

The Majority of people in russian empire wanted to get rid of the monarchy whenever liberal or bolshevik

The Russian Empire had the highest infant mortality rate, and people were mostly likely to die from infectious diseases

Serfdom, the enslavement of peasants even after it was abolished in 1861 it didn’t really change much for people cause feudalism (serfdom is still a thing in Ravka)

Wars, all wars under Nicholas II’s resulted in revolutions, and the country had major internal problems and ww1 was the final nail in the coffin and the slow/lack of industrialization, no moral to keep fighting, scourge earth policy

The Russian Empire was one of the most antisemitic countries to exist, especially some of the Romanov emperors were known for their rabid antisemitism, Nicholas II had his involvement in the Protocols of Zions (illegal to possess in the USSR and inspired n4z1 germany) which led to the death of thousands of Jewish people in programs

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Moral and patriotic responsibility means nothing when you're just a girl uwu. As if girls her age weren't in the army and didn't have to fight for the right to exist as a Grisha.

the darkling really said I’m gonna save our people from oppression and genocide and Alina said not on my watch

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Alina's potential died. Alina's self-confidence died. Alina's power and the wish to travel the world died. And the Darkling died too. So now I guess Mal has full authority to treat Alina like a lobotomized patient.

Met an absolutely wild take that Mal's role was to "remind Alina what it means to be human and that mass murder and power hunger are the wrong way to live"

First of all, a woman from an oppressed minority needs a man from an oppressive class to remind her how to be human. Fascinating. Sounds like misogyny and colonialism in one.

Then again, why do we assume Alina is in any way inferior to him and unable to figure those things out for herself? Is it because she's a woman? Because she's a Grisha? Why would a 17-year-old alcoholic fuckboy counsel anyone on morality? Who died and made him a moral authority? A guy who beats up people from the same minority he hates to assert dominance over them should be the last to open his mouth about dangers of violence and power hunger.

And finally, why does he, an otkazats'ya bigot, teach Grisha how to survive? Have you ever heard of staying in your fucking lane?

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i’m sorry but why no one talks about Henry’s and Francis’ friendship? now obviously Richard was fan girling so hard I didn’t even notice the first time I read the book but post Bunny’s death we see them plotting together, Henry organising the escape plan to Argentina and only including Francis, after the bacchanal Henry let’s Francis sleep in his bed—in his bed people. Now obviously I believe Francis did have a small crush on Henry (which same girl) and their friendship was codependent (from Francis side) but Bunny did say Francis was just as smart as Henry but he was lazy which is huge.