Hi there! This is the anon who sent the (most recent) "I started tgh because of you" ask and Oh man I feel a little bad barraging you with all of this but I just finished, and... yeah, it's like that. (I hope that's ok, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this but please don't feel obligated to reply) The support group is a good idea DBSJKDB though it's going to be hard to go into your fic and not treat your fic as a balm to it all (By the way, I rechecked and yes - on the amazon listing of tgh, it is indeed advertised as "reading age - 8-12 years" but I'm just gonna agree with you and say Hey That's not Right, and whoever's responsible needs to take both that & the HP comparisons back, they kinda HURT)
"so interested to see if/how your top 5 shifts by the end" Omg 😭 For some reason, from halfway right until when I closed the book, I thought "Wow, Red is pretty consistently pathetic..." Then the next day (today) I snorted thinking about him being the father of a commune, and. I think he's my favourite now. Oh my god. I need to marinate on this, on him. I mean I think I need to marinate on a lot of things, that's an understatement 😭 I think I can understand what you meant about tgh's thesis! Sphinx feels like the House's Golden Boy (so… Blind's golden boy) and it makes the Other Side feel so tender despite it all. I really like that he's resented by many, even before - because of Elk. Smoker feels like "us" in the same way Richard from the Secret History feels like "us" and I think it's so funny whenever he gets berated for not knowing things and feeling that indignation firsthand. I think Sphinx is a very intriguing character I would Love to eat more (though at the moment for me, there is still a bit of a disconnect between Grasshopper and Sphinx and I'm still digesting his loss of - innocence? Time? BUT I'm excited for the eventual connect, if that makes sense, because if I had to pick out the most memorable or heartrending scene for me right now, it's when Red first took off his glasses for him)
So now my top five is - Red. In danger of being usurped by Sphinx. Noble. Black. Wolf. Honorary mention Vulture, not because I'm wholly endeared (YET) but because I love his style. The more I think about it, the more I'm so charmed by his cat scene - the same way I was with Sphinx's first (intimidating) appearance. It's still a little hard to rectify/connect these impressions with their "present", as in... legitimately scratching my head about it now. I don't /think/ they're a "little different" in a different loop way but they do almost feel like different characters. OR is thinking about it in such a linear way counterproductive because (points at book). I feel as paranoid as Sphinx. I feel like Smoker. I feel like Ralph. LOL. Like you said, everything is very implicit, so I'll have to comb more thoroughly through their journeys, I think. I'm excited to, and also for more eventual changes for this ranking again, if there will be. It's only my first loop! What I find so fascinating and exciting are these feelings between characters that seem undecipherable or just out of reach at the moment, like Wolf's stigma, Sphinx's disgust for Smoker, Black's dislike of Vulture, the part where Tabaqui likened himself to a cheese between graters (Blind and Sphinx), etc etc. I would love to ask your top five now!!! And why, too! (Though yes, absolutely, I knew who your blorbo was even before I started. I like how he is very L-shaped, that probably didn't help? :") You must really like your creatures)
There are so many things in this book that I feel I'm not cultured enough to appreciate on the first read, like all those book quotes before Tabaqui's chapters, and why the recurrent Egyptian theme in nicks, among countless other things. There's regrettably also a lot of things I glossed over because I was frowning too hard, and then went "eh, I'll figure it out on the next read/eventually", I'm sure is a popular sentiment lmao. Where and why characters end up the way they are in the Other Side is double the puzzle. I also wonder what determines strength in Strider capabilities (since Sphinx is apparently a very strong one), and what a Jumper would need to graduate to one, because it kind of also feels like an individual's capacity rather than The House's choosing? I imagine it's the ability to be "more" one with The House, but using comparison as a metric feels like falling into a trap when it's characters like Blind and Red and Tabaqui and Alexander and.... (guy with hands on his knees squinting.jpg)..... I'm excited to look into all the theories and discussions now that I'm finished, but it'd be so nice to hear your thoughts while I'm still here!! Have you ever wondered what nick you would receive? More marination is deeply in order. Sorry for the word vomit bfsjkfds. Thank you once again for showing me the light <33
hello anon, i am so happy to hear from you! (sorry for the late response, i was at a writing conference all week and busy all day every day.) pls don’t apologize for the long message because reading & responding to this is fueling my soul. i have so much to say to you it’s hard to know where to begin, and at this point i’m seriously considering putting a pinned post on my blog that has some of this info just so i don’t have to keep repeating it, but here goes:
in russian, there is a special extended edition of the book that contains extra scenes + alternate scenes + artwork. while there is no official english translation of this edition, here is a link to a comprehensive fan translation of all the extras, with links to all the artwork. (the whole thing is worth reading, but the most relevant to my *cough* interests is the last scene in the doc, which is an alternate version of sphinx & blind’s final confrontation before graduation and gives a much deeper insight into their relationship than the canon scene imo)
the reddit (r/thegrayhouse) is no longer particularly active but contains a long backlog of discussion of the book in english, including very active participation from the english translator, yuri machkasov, who was often on there answering people’s questions. i don’t think i would understand this book half as well as i do without yuri’s contributions or all the discussion on there (this reddit post, while years old, is a helpful allocation of links and resources)
i myself have a (still very much wip) doc in which i try to explain various confusing aspects of the book to the best of my ability. however i'm not really sure about linking it publicly since it's not done & kind of a mess atm but if you do ever want it & feel comfortable dming please feel free (and that goes for anybody else too)
ok!!!!!!! now that grayhouse studies 101 info is out of the way, time to actually answer your message. i love your “it’s only my first loop!” attitude. this is how i can tell you are truly One of Us.
RED!!!! that is genuinely funny to me, not because i don’t think red is deserving of your love, but because i personally came around on him last of basically everybody. it took me 3 reads of this book to go from being like “ugh red you nasty bitch” to “awww red! you nasty bitch <3” i just had a very gut-level yuck reaction to him, which is obviously the reaction he is supposed to induce and is intentionally going for himself. rest assured, at this point i am able to appreciate the many levels to red that exist under the clown pants and backpack full of infinite condoms, and i especially like grown up red in the epilogue. in it & his pov chapter, he shows himself to be so much more insightful than he appears on the surface. i also really love his scene with rat, it’s so much fun.
& i’m not at all surprised to see that smoker went from the front of your top 5 to not even in it anymore. poor smoker! not only is he an audience-insert (richard papen shout out!), but he doesn’t at any point come to understand the plot of the story he is in. if anything, he only comes to understand how much he doesn’t understand about it. i do love him and his red sneakers, but i admit i also really enjoy the narrative switcheroo of going from agreeing with him that all of these guys are weirdo asshole freaks to, by the middle of book 3, being like, ugh smoker you don’t even get it you fuckin snitch!!!
my personal theory as to why sphinx has such intense dislike for him is that smoker forces him to confront things about himself that he would rather not. first of all, i think smoker reminds him of what it was like to be grasshopper, when he was just as open and innocent and unblemished by suffering as smoker is - and clearly, by the time we reach him in the present timeline, he’s no longer that way at all. i also think smoker’s questioning of the house mirrors sphinx’s own doubts, and smoker’s fear and dislike of blind (following pompey’s murder) mirror sphinx’s own increasing distrust of him. really, i think they’re excellent foils for each other and i find their dynamic to be so interesting, bc sphinx spends the whole book defending the house against smoker’s criticisms, only to reveal in the end that he sort of shares those feelings. & imo their “i’m normal” / “and i’m not” scene right after pompey’s death is one of the most powerful exchanges in the book.
i find myself wanting to discuss sphinx here so maybe this is a good time to go into my top 5 (& why!!!!) but fair warning when asked to talk about this book i can go on tabaqui-esque breathless tirades, so if you’re looking for brevity look elsewhere.
blind
how do i even begin to explain regina george blind grayhouse? (his favorite food is plaster and mice. i hear his hair is insured for $0. one time he slashed my throat with a knife… it was awesome.) ok yes, by now we all know that i am disgustingly sweaty about this guy, but……. why? is it the sores around the mouth? the sickly pale and malnourished body? the oversized sweater stained with vomit and blood slipping off the shoulder to reveal… is this what they call.....… cleavage? on one level, i just am who i am and if you show me a tiny, filthy, bloodstained & flea-ridden animal of a man who behaves more like a dog than a human, whose narrative is at its core about his daddy issues & who is the most powerful person in the entire book while at the same time implied to be a masochist with some frankly slutty tendencies…. i will sweat.
but my lil dog-boy fetish aside (& yes this is the basis of my fic so Sorry!!!! if it is not for you) what really gets to me about blind is that although he is a terrifying creature of the night who has sovereign-like absolute power over everyone in the house and can kill a man without batting an eye, he is also just a genuinely helpful, mild-mannered and unobtrusively sweet person with a good sense of humor and a lot of investment in the wellbeing of others. pretty much everything he does, no matter how violent or manipulative, he does with the intention to protect and care for his people. he's basically service topping the house?? i think he's very selfless, but in an animal way where it’s not out of intentional goodness so much as an innate lack of ego or investment in his own selfhood (which you can easily interpret as being caused by trauma) and this makes his borders porous, hence the way he blurs into the house, blurs into the forest, blurs into everybody else. (and imo this general selflessness is one of the reasons his desperate selfish clinging to sphinx in the end hits so hard.) blind is also just a really interesting exploration of the "disabled person as monster" trope bc he is both the object of so much toxic dehumanization and projection (from sphinx, ralph, humpback, etc.), yet he's also literally a dangerous and scary monster, yet he's also extremely tender & good hearted. ugh. i just love him so much it's gross
(& yes i would like to hear your thoughts on him even tho he's not a fave)
2. sphinx
speaking of toxic!!!!!!!! i love that sphinx is such a fucking asshole so much of the time. i love him because he's not just an asshole, he can also be very kind and loving, he's bitingly funny, he's intelligent and interesting and cruel and humble and anxious and fucked up and self-deprecating and self-important and sweet and bitter. there's so much dichotomy in him and his narrative voice is so specific and so fun! ("am i really as stupid as i often appear to myself to be?") i find him really hard to write in a way that feels in-character but i'm kind of enamored with the challenge of it. the contrast between grasshopper and sphinx is so compelling to me, and the most likely reason for it (hinted by the book) is that he suffered really severe trauma when he was stuck on the underside for six years. i actually think sphinx is, of all of the characters, perhaps the most broken.
admittedly, i also just find him really hot? which is SO FUNNY to me bc my initial reaction to him was like. ew bald not hot at all. but i just love that, despite the fact that he's bald and has no arms, multiple characters take note of how attractive and charming he is, how confident and self-possessed. there's something so tragic about grasshopper, the most beautiful and good child, being battered down into this physically and spiritually damaged and embittered man that just really gets to me. i also think the interplay of authority and autonomy inherent in his character is fascinating (what he lacks in physical autonomy he makes up for in social and psychological power.) another way of saying that is yes i have indeed developed a problematic amputee fetish bc of him. sorry!!!!!!!!!!
3. tabqui the jackal
jackal was my favorite the first time i read the book (sphinx was my fave on the second read, blind on the third) and idk man, i think the reasons for loving him are numerous and obvious. he is the most fun, the most funny and to me he is the book, like he is the embodiment of the expansiveness and accrual and time and madness and irreverence and love that permeates the whole book. jackal gives me the urge to live and to celebrate life, the same way that tgh as a work of art gives me that urge. and, besides being very amusing, his voice and his dialogue are the most formally interesting. the opening monologue of his first pov chapter is maybe my fave writing in the whole book? "i don't like stories, i like moments." etc & the scene where he talks about pompey and his bats in one super long sentence, which comes fairly early on in the book, i remember distinctly as the moment when i really understood that this book was not fucking around one single bit.
4. mermaid
yes, a girl!!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm not just trying to have a token girl on here either, i really do love mermaid that much. (i mean, to be fair, 4/5 of these characters are the mains in my fic and the characters i've done the most deep thinking about, so that's prob a factor. who can say who my top 5 were been previous to that. i think alexander might have made it up here and maybe,,,, even black?)
first of all, i love mermaid's character design more than anyone else's. all that hair! but i also love how funny and gentle and compassionate and engaged she is, her hints of rebelliousness and assertiveness, and all the magic and wonder that simply drips from her. i think it's really hard to write a female character who is soft and self-conscious and deeply empathetic, who has all these very stereotypically feminine qualities, and still make her really interesting and flawed and realistic. mermaid is literally a woman (a fish-woman!) made (well, hatched) by a man for another man, and her artificial and idealized nature is integrated so beautifully and believably into her character with a deftness that still sort of astonishes me. i also think her dynamic with sphinx is great. it's clear how much they both like each other, they're very sweet and funny together, but i also think it's realistic in the sense that she's kind of starstruck by him and he's kind of condescending towards her. and it's just really interesting to see that power dynamic between a man in a woman where the narrative doesn't feel the need to rectify it for the sake of feminism, but rather does something way more interesting, which is call into question how consensual the relationship even is for sphinx (bc of the love spell) and then later for mermaid (bc, ostensibly she was hatched to love him?)
5. wolf
my problematic fave!!!!! you mentioned in your message not fully understanding wolf's "stigma" so i just want to be clear (bc it's hard to know what info ppl come out of this book understanding & what they don't - it's different for everyone) that alexander kills wolf bc wolf threatens him to try get him to get rid of blind, and the strong implication (which is made more explicit in the special extended edition) is that wolf wants blind gone so that he can be the leader instead. what really interests me most about wolf is the juxtaposition between kindness and cruelty in him. we see this in a lot of other characters, but in wolf the disconnect between the inner and outer self is most pronounced, as evidenced by alexander's "he was horrible inside," whereas he earlier refers to him as being the friendliest and least threatening. and we do see him, in the interlude timeline, being so generous, so funny, so sympathetic, such a hero! that sense of brutal nostalgia that we spoke about previously comes to me most strongly in relation to wolf, but the grief about him is not simple bc of how dark he turns out to be on the inside. but also, we know he suffers from chronic pain, and you have to wonder what effect that has on his psyche? i definitely think wolf was a strider and one of the questions that haunts me is how graduation would have turned out had he lived to see it
~
ok ok i've definitely already written way too much but i will just say one last thing re: blind/sphinx as the thesis of tgh. what i specifically mean is that i think the book (while also being about a million other characters and things) is at its core about their relationship, but it's really hard to see just how much until you reach the end. this is partly bc, although they are the focus of the interlude timeline and are obviously really close as children, in the present timeline it's impossible to understand just how much blind cares about sphinx until their final coffeepot scene and how devastated he is afterwards. and i think it's equally impossible to understand just how much sphinx cares about blind until... the epilogue? when he literally steals a child version of him from another universe to raise up??? and care for? after 15+ years of missing him? (um??? i'm still not okay btw)
but more than any other reason it's because, whereas the previous generation killed each other in a heinous bloodbath on graduation night, and the entire book is leading up to a similar catastrophe that everyone expects to happen during the current generation's graduation (the last graduation bc the house will be torn down after it), blind has worked so hard to make sure that there are no factions, no feuds, no loose ends, etc. and this terrible event that everyone is bracing for actually ends up being this peaceful, touching, celebratory party..... and all of the violence and trauma and heartbreak of separation is compressed down into one single scene between two people sitting at a table drinking coffee, a scene during which no one even raises their voice, and this is the great tragedy of the graduation: the fact that sphinx & blind have to leave each other. (nope!!! i'm still not okay!!!!!!!!!!)
alright i really must stop now but pls feel free to send more messages on or off & anon <3 i'm interested in why you love the characters you love & any other specific thoughts & questions you have <3
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Blind (itching): Well, in general, as a Leader, I have a lot to do.
- ominously staring
- decorate the interior with yourself
- play music (sound: slap-slap Sphinx: "go away")
- walk
- exterminate parasites
- clean up
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yes, please, write something about the Girls. I love your fic and i know this would be just as amazing if not more. Also, Rat is so gender, She's a boyfriend/girlfriend while mermaid is a Girlfriend/creature
thanks for being a fan!!!!!!! <3
i definitely have to finish my Extremely Long Fic before i allow myself to write anything else, but i hope i can write so girl shit at some point for you, anon
ok????! so woke up to an email from a publisher at penguin random house asking me to do an event "in conversation with" this author on a book tour for their poetry collection at the big famous bookstore downtown (where most serious big literary events are hosted) ????! he offered to send me a copy of the book to consider??? i get that this is all normal lit industry stuff but i'm literally????? nobody?? how tf did he find me......
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i'm so sorry but that one scene where sphinx fantasizes about shattering blind's ankles and blind immediately takes his ankles out of reach makes me insane. imagine having a relationship so codependent and psychically linked and toxic that you can read the other person's specific violent fantasies about you in their tone of voice when they are complaining about a girl you fucked
I am floating along on the joy ride having the time of my life and I don't understand what the fuck's going on!! I read a few chapters on my phone, decided I really really love the writing and the direction enough to buy the physical copy (and then got whiplash because the reading level listed online was 8-12 years old 😭 I have to assume Russians are built different) It doesn't feel like I'm half way, I feel like I've uncovered like.. 20% because of how teasing everything is. Even though I'm trying to avoid spoilers, I feel like the second half is going to smack me in the face and wipe my slate clean and then pummel it. I'm actually not sure about faves yet, I kinda like all of them?!?!? If I had to pick a top 5 atm, it's Smoker, Black, Noble, Alexander, Wolf...? I feel confident Sphinx and Vulture will find their way up there though. I want to ask Your top 5 but aw man, spoilers 😭 once I finish I'm just going to go through your whole tag (and then read your beautiful writing for a non-dn fandom for once)
Unfortunately I'm head empty spinning like a ballerina brain switched Off while I'm reading so I do not have Any theories, but I'm very excited to learn who of the old gang still remain and who they are now... the setting, the school yard grotesque cult stuff, the innocence and cruelty - this kind of thing, I truly adore. It makes me think of - I won't type the name out just in case - a horror manga that involves lychees. I love it a lot and TGH calls out to me in the same way (so far) dbjkfsd sorry for leaving this all here I'm too shy to get off anon BUT thank you for spreading the good word 🙏
omg yay!!!!! i’m so glad you’re loving it. it brings me so much joy to see people discovering this book and getting taken in by that special gray house magic the same way i did. i love your description of it as “school yard grotesque cult stuff, innocence and cruelty.” of all the many things i love about TGH, that brutal feeling of childhood nostalgia that it has is prob my fave. & i’m so curious about the manga you mentioned? i have no guesses so you’ll have to tell me at some point!
20% at halfway kinda feels right! i don’t want to spoil anything, so i’ll be vague, but i think most people finish the book the first time feeling like they have uncovered maybe 50-75% of it. all of it does fit together and make sense as this perfect and complex mechanism, but the story is revealed implicitly rather than explicitly and many important clues are given out of chronological order. so imo the second read of the book is even more enjoyable than the first, because that’s when a lot of things fully click and when many of the aha! moments come. that said, i feel confident that you will have your mind and heart throttled by the second half. like, i need to start a support group or smth for ppl who finish TGH the first time and don’t know how to process it, bc it’s truly such a mind-fuck. so please don’t be afraid to reach out to me & ask questions, talk it out, etc! it's truly impossible to handle the ending of this book alone.
as far as characters, i can’t wait to talk to you about this, but no spoilers for now! but i’m glad to see that you like wolf bc i love wolf sfm and he’s def underrated. and black!! also underrated. i have a secret soft spot in my heart for black bc he is a beefcake bro who constantly reads novels. <3 so interested to see if/how your top 5 shifts by the end!
i will say that, while i too love every single character deeply, my absolute #1 fave is not any of those that you mentioned but definitely someone you have already seen a lot of. and also i’d be surprised if you can follow this blog w/o noticing bc i have a very bad case of The Character syndrome. i haven’t been obsessed w a character this way since i was a teen? it’s honestly so embarrassing!?!! but also this character was not my fave on my first read or even my second. it was only on my third read that i really began to understand this character’s motivations and then i was so fucking cooked…..
& ok, as far as my fic!!!!! it’s really out of pocket and is genuinely just me doing My Weird Little Thing so if you don’t end up being into the pairing(s) or my highly specific interests (kinks lmao) or whatever, don’t feel any pressure to read it! much more important to me than ppl reading my TGH fanfic is ppl reading TGH itself. my fic is just there as a large & sloppy gift for those unfortunate english speakers who get struck with an incurable obsession with the ship which is, imo, secretly the thesis of TGH. (but you have to read all the way to the end to begin to understand that thesis!!!!)
anyway, pls feel free to continue to send messages on anon, but if you want to come off & pm me i promise i am actually nice & can produce testimonials to that effect if needed. (the first person who ever anon messaged saying they started TGH bc of me a few months ago has by now become such a good friend that we literally exchange super long weekly emails?) anyway the english fandom is so sparse that i promise you, we need each other! and also please know that every single individual person who gets into this book qualifies as an Event for me!!!
anyway thanks so much reaching out & happy reading!!!! <3
I started The Gray House because of you! Now I'm almost half way through!
hell yeah!!!!!! so happy to know that my public weeping over this book is having some small ripple effect!!!
but anon you can't just tell me a thing like that and not tell me how you feel about it. are you halfway through and gnashing your teeth bc you don't understand what the fuck's going on? are you floating along on the joy ride having the time of you life? do you have faves? opinions? theories? you gotta tell me this stuff, i live for it!!!!!!!!!!
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