My most non-canon tsh headcanon is that richard and his mother have the Most Complicated Relationship Ever, his father's physical abuse just takes up more space in his memories but it's his mother's Everything that sits heavy in his subconscious (though he doesn't have the self awareness to recognize this).
there's no proof to this, his mother literally has like one line in the whole book, i know i know. but in my heart of hearts, i believe that boy should have some mommy issues.
heavy agree i believe he resents her tremendously for never standing up for him, i believe she pretends to be interested in his life but doesn’t actually listen and he hates talking on the phone with her, hates that she knows nothing about him. that she joins in when his father makes fun of him or says awful shit. that she makes her own nasty commentary, just to get a bite of her husband’s approval
at the same time though they have little inside jokes and he always remembers her gentle hands and her nasally but bright kind of voice, his accent sounds so much more like hers, and he sees her every time he looks in the mirror
henry would highkey hate it because the lessons aren’t well structured, and he’d especially hate it after the company’s replacement of its language specialists with ai. he’d look down on people who claim to be fluent on duolingo. he’d ask them if they can have a conversation with natives and if they say no he says they’re not fluent
bunny would use it religiously and irritate henry with inane animal related sentences. he has tried to claim fluency on duolingo when meeting henry and henry, unknowing of what a duolingo is, switched to the language happily and was deeply disappointed to learn bunny knew very little
richard would verbally talk down abt it but he always starts learning languages with it before switching to proper lessons bcs he wants to impress the instructor. so he’ll lie and say he’s never taken lessons before so it looks like he’s picking it up very quickly
francis would try it to see the hype and he’d test it with french bcs he knows the language, and he’d get something marked wrong that he KNOWS is proper grammar and get so angry he deletes it. to this day if you ask him he’ll tell you how awful it is because it personally slighted him
the twins are ambivalent to it honestly. camilla prefers the active nature of physical books and translation. if she did use it she’d augment it with actual books to fill the gaps it leaves, and would very diligently instruct people on the fact that it does have educational gaps and sometimes misinformation and shouldn’t be used on its own.
charles enjoys the intimacy of having an actual professor and the steady progress of being able to have more and more complex conversations. he likes using it to hear how the words would sound in their proper accent when he doesn’t have someone to help, so he doesn’t have to guess
Everyone always wanna start reading classical literature after finishing Tsh but no one wants to start lifting. No one wants to do some calisthenics. No ur not Henrymaxxing dork, ur Francismaxxing. Lazy ahh
I would love to read your thoughts on Camilla and Richard’s relationship and the similarities between the two of them!
This is such a sweet ask thank you so much for giving me an excuse to rant about my favourite dynamic in the novel !! To preface the topics I'm about to delve into I want to give a warning for mentions of Rape, Violence, Domestic & Child abuse and Incest.
Also, I have a Richmilla dorm room deep dive currently in my drafts and despite that being the most important passage regarding their relationship, I don't want to repeat myself too much, so I'm going to mostly focus on other scenes involving them / smaller interactions I don't see mentioned very often.
To start, I don't believe their relationship is nearly as antagonistic or malicious as people paint it. Nor is it as one sided in the platonic sense as people usually agree it was. Some of my favourite lines about them are one liners that showcase a more friendly side of them.
And I think it’s quite understated how often Camila does attempt to involve him and befriend him, it’s just he usually accidentally rebuffs her. When he’s invited to dinner at the twins he doesn’t actually accept Camilla’s request until Charles says it again. But this also goes the other way. When Richard is making his care for her apparent, saying he’s glad she’s not in Argentina and such, she ignores his remarks. To be clear, I don’t believe this is them being purposefully cruel, or even attempting to rebuff each other, it’s just an unfortunate showcase of their lack of chemistry. They don’t entirely understand each other, even with my opinion that they’re quite similar.
Despite all of these indications that they do enjoy each others company, the idea that Richard's violent thoughts about her in the aforementioned dorm room scene come out of nowhere also isn't something I particularly agree with.
Though he doesn't delve into this, the idea of having fantasies about her through a gothic lense, knowing he then admits in the scene about the twins with Francis, he had enjoyed picturing Charles and Camilla sexually involved, I don't believe it was surprising his 'vulgar' urges extended to thoughts of rape, especially knowing how consistently his thoughts of violence come into play towards Henry and Bunny. He has quite a few instances where he wishes to victimise people, most likely due to his own identity as a victim and relationship with it.
So, when it comes to how I interpret their relationship it's a mix of believing they did want to be friends (especially on Camilla's side, her attempts at involving him are abundant at the beginning of the novel) yet, the darker aspects where also always present.
They both have examples of attempting to seek out the other person for comfort:
And of making the other feel discomforted:
All while seeing each other in an idealised view. (Just to clear, I recognise that since we do not have a Camilla narration it's quite difficult to fully analyse her feelings for Richard without quite heavy speculation, so warning for that.)
My reasoning for why Richard has a tainted image of her is obvious, but I'll hyper focus on the scene where he asks Camilla to go home with him so she doesn't hear about the murder plans and be present during Bunny's death.
While for Camilla's view on him, I'll pick out her belief that Henry hasn't made them do the ritual involving pig's blood because she believes Henry believes it will upset Richard, despite we as the reader knowing Richard has a history of animal death - rest in peace the easter chicken he squeezed to death.
So, I don't think it's a stretch to say they both assume the other to be quite a bit more innocent than they actually are, especially in comparison to the other people in the greek class. While for Richard I think this is due to Camilla’s gender and seeing women as less cruel (or at least violent) than men, I think Camilla’s reasoning is more tied to him not being present at the Bacchanal and therefore being less ‘tainted’ than the rest of them.
Just before I get onto their similarities, I do understand why people instead would interpret Camilla as not liking him very much. She has a habit of ignoring what he says and even in their first interaction Richard remarks that she looked at him distantly as if he was a waiter. The impersonal aspect of their dynamic has always been present and is definitely important to their friendship, so picking that out makes sense.
Onto their similarities I also want to focus on something I rarely see discussed - they both view Henry in a similar light and are viewed by Charles in, again, a similar light.
With Henry, the 'savior' role he takes on with both of them is perhaps the most obvious. Henry saves Richard's life - he would quite literally be dead without him, as Richard says. He gives Richard housing, his clothes to wear and even cooks for him.
Henry is the person Camilla trusts most and wants to stay with when Charles's abuse gets bad enough that she leaves, though I'm hesitant to label this as 'saving' since Camilla is the one who made the choice to leave, her trust in Henry is clear and she admits a big part of her reasoning is because she knows Charles can't hurt her if she's with Henry.
Even with all of this, they both have moments where they are afraid of Henry in scenes where he isn't at all trying to hurt them.
And of course, the infamous example of this, they both admit their love for him in their final scene together.
Them both being victims of abuse and finding solace in the same man during near death experiences (Camilla admits herself Charles had tried to kill her before she left) is just such an obvious way to showcase how their feelings for Henry are nearly the same. They were both in love with him, despite knowing how dangerous he was. Whether or not Henry’s feelings for them are similar is a post for another time.
When it comes to how Charles treats them, this is more so speculation on how Charles's mind works and since we don't have his narration is obviously going to be completely subjective. Also, all of this will be written through the lens of believing Charles has borderline personality disorder and that his favourite person switches from Camilla to Richard nearing the end of the novel.
Charles deterioration throughout the narrative makes him increasingly reliant on the others, yet due to his complicated feelings regarding Francis and Henry, this naturally falls into being Camilla and Richard's problem. We don't get many in depth looks into the codependency of the twins due to the novel being from the point of view of Richard, But the knowledge we have of their childhood and Camilla's feelings regarding Charles even after the abuse gets bad enough for her to leave, it's clear they have relied on each other solely for practically their whole lives.
I'm not sure how much of Francis's opinion of them I actually agree with since he's clearly battling some jealously due to his feelings for Charles and directly contradicts Camilla saying she loves Charles and knows him better than anyone in the world, but I do think there's some merit to his depictions of their selfishness.
Which is why I find Charles's quite genuine attempts to consistently include Richard in the future quite surprising.
Yes, Charles is introduced as the 'nicest' member of the Greek class, at least to strangers, but even as this facade drops and he begins being outwardly cruel, Richard is almost completely exempt from this. And this is so obvious that even the other character's pick up on it.
(Some more quotes I think showcase Charles's reliance and soft spot for Richard)
The fact that this becomes most apparent when Charles becomes enraged by Camilla leaving and quite outwardly cruel regarding what he wants to say to her, is what leads me to believe his favourite person switches from Camila to Richard.
Even this line when Henry calls and Charles's hears him talking to Richard at the country house is eerily reminiscent of Camilla's insistence that the code she and Henry had meant nothing.
During the final scene before the epilogue, Charles believes Richard has 'betrayed' him and chosen Henry over him, and goes as far as pointing a gun at him. Then, accidentally shoots Richard through the stomach. The only two characters in the novel Charles leaves (to our knowledge at least) physical scarring on are Camilla and Richard and both reasoning's seemingly include jealousy over Henry.
There are definitely differences in how he treats them, don't get me wrong, but the way Camilla leaving has Charles begin relying on Richard and both of them ending on such a similar note is one of the things I think ties Richard and Camilla together the most.
And for my final opinion on Richard and Camilla, I don’t think either of them are in love with each other. It’s a good thing she turned down his proposal, they would have made each other miserable.
I've just finished watching an interview with Donna for the milionth time and oh lord, how i love her. Her voice, her mannerism, her mind and she's just so beautifull.
richard’s dad once shattered his wrist during a particularly violent argument they had when he was fourteen/fifteen and so now when he writes there’s occasionally an audible click when he rolls his wrist
I have this headcanon that in the scene where Richard thinks about hurting Camilla he’s imaging things that were done to him back home, and it’s his way of taking control over the situation by imagining himself in the shoes of his father(his abuser) even though he ends up taking on the role of his mother(negligent enabler).
