sold my soul to donna tartt

tony, 26, he/they. as long as i am acting out of love, i feel i am doing the best i know how

[caffeinatedrottersblog]

When the snow in the mountains is low-key melting and bunny has been dead for several weeks so now we have to understand the gravity of our situation.

[greelin]

[DRENCHED IN BLOOD] we really should all do this again next week, yes

[deerlizzies]

Judy Poovey I want you bad.

[corneliaavenue-ao3]

Reblog to give prev the power to write their fanfiction

[thesmuttylibrarian]

riding that shit like free and accessible public transit

[love-the-aftertaste]

re-reading The Secret History (as you do) and I forgot how much Richard is like “nah me, i’m so totally straight straight, the straightest straight, i was so completely in love with Camilla, who looked so much like her brother, with her masculine air” (paraphrasing)

[thenightwifeoftheladybird]

One of the details that moves me the most about The Secret History is Richard’s concern for Henry’s eternal rest.

“And someplace, if there is a place where lists are kept, and credit given, I am sure there is a gold star by his name.”

In that strange liminal space that Richard described as a kind of museum, he could have asked him anything (Do you miss us? Did you really intend to frame me? Would you mind if Camilla rebuilt her life with me?), but he chose “Are you happy here?” In other words: were you punished for what we did? I suppose at one time he might have had many questions, but now there is no other. This is the only question he will ever be able to ask him. But Henry’s fatal flaw was that he always took all the answers with him.

[smalltownshrimp]

rip henry winter you would’ve hated the percy jackson series

[queermasculine]

the passenger 2023 after i hit them with the "brown butch with acne" ray

[ants-personal]

expanding a bit more but like everyone def assumed benson was more than a friend to randy cause what else could it mean when a man randys probably never mentioned to anyone shows up and is leading him around grabbing at him and being just possessive and standoffish

especially lisa randy didnt show any interest in dating her they probably did little more than pecks and then he shows up asking where he went wrong with a man who is giving you the look that he is his but its the early 2000s and that is taboo especially in a small southern town so you dont ask randy just make a small comment and randy is clearly hiding something and doesnt wanna bring that much attention to him and then drags him out of the store when he gets angry you guys are actually fixing things

you have the secretary at the school I mean benson is again all over him is charming and talking about them moving away together when its clear randy is def younger than him is nervous and this man is helping right wrongs before they are gone sounding like forever like they are running from a disapproving family but it makes sense no that randy boy somethings always been off about him ontop of the eye thing

and miss beard who picks up on something going on between them but doesnt push it simply asking if benson is usually quiet which randy says no so to her it sounds like randy is around and knows this man well enough to know how he is but maybe they had a fight so she stays out of it doesnt ask how they meet or anything else because shes been around kids has her own can tell randy is already stressed and upset about the eye thing as they talk so she ignores the elephant in the room that is the strange man randy has around him cause its only when shes being held at gunpoint does she think she read the entire situation wrong but staying with them it's clear there is something .... especially at the diner.

[alltoowille]

Yuna and David having watched their autistic son be so isolated all of his adult life and never having a happy relationship or close friends who understand his anxiety and then finding out that the man they’ve spent a decade hating on his behalf can casually talk him down from a panic attack in less than a minute

[droptheguillotineplease]

Doodles of the characters from Donna Tartt's The Secret History

[shaipouf]

forgive me if this has been talked abt before but i have to post abt it since it relates to hashtag my niche interest !!

i think its mentioned in chapter 2, where richard helps bunny pack his bags before winter break. bunny is a dick to him and he apologizes by gifting richard a book of poems by rupert brooke.

knowing bunny, this is such an apt little character moment! rupert brooke was a wwi-era poet that was a blonde, famous, rich, athletic young man with “boyish charms,” that wrote really patriotic and idealistic poems. just give him dumb little glasses and he could easily be a stand in for how bunny’s appearance is described, lol.

brooke’s most famous poem is called “the solider,” where he writes about the glory of dying young for his country. his legacy isn’t really colored by how good his poetry was, but rather the ironic circumstances of it.

it’s worth noting that rupert brooke signed up to fight for the british army and glamorized the great war- he’s largely responsible for the wave of eager conscripts and his poems were effective british propaganda- but he never got to see active service himself. he died at age 27 of an infected mosquito bite before he ever got to participate himself.

i think he’s exactly the caliber of a person that bunny would idealize but who is now mostly thought of as… well… kind of mediocre. a rich boy, a wasted talent that was blatantly ignorant to the reality of violence and loss.

in this way, he’s a parallel to bunny. rupert brooke committed himself to (and egged others on to join) a war that he never saw and paid the price for it. bunny was excluded from the violence of the bacchanal and ended up losing his life over it. both of their deaths symbolized an end of innocence in their time periods and the cruel pointlessness of their occurrences.

this is all to say: bunny’s connotation with death and his youthful naïveté in the face of his impending fate is so wonderfully foreshadowed in a single reference. i loooove you donna tartt

[smalltownshrimp]

the five love languages as told by henry and richard:

bailing you out of a $300 lunch scam (acts of service)

carrying you to the hospital after you collapse in his arms from hypothermia (physical touch)

coming to your dorm room after midnight to talk through the logistics of murder via poisonous mushrooms (quality time)

stealing narcotics from the dead kid's parents at the wake because you have a bad migraine (gift giving)

"i wanted to invite you to our greek ritual orgy but the others wouldn't let me" (words of affirmation)

[panulyx]

"I asked Chat GPT" Okay well I asked Richard Papen and he just made something up on the spot and looked at me like he thought I couldn't tell.

[prmcafwh]

I love how Richard's so relieved he escaped California in the first chapter. Like phew thank god you didn't stay on the West Coast and become a vegan. Thankfully you moved east and became a murderer instead. Things looked dire there for a while.

[dramaticwriter]

richard after his third psychotic episode of the month trying to help francis through a panic attack: you're not insane. and neither am i. i don't believe in psychiatry