Responses
spoilers:
if by puppy-like guy you mean hugh... he was in on it the whole time. not as an accomplice, but as a very active participant in the bullying. he and simon pretended they were clueless about jerome and his abuse, but it was the opposite. in the first rape scene. raymond tried to escape, but was caught by hugh who proceeded to rape jerome with jerome. simon didn't participate, but he has a kink for dolls and....rapes raymond when he's asleep. all of them, including George are monsters, but throughout the whole arc, ill say hugh is the worst one out of the four.
so... i started reading the novel, and i am shook. they legit nonchalantly gang-raped him and then after the deed, they discarded him on the ground like trash and proceeded to talk leisurely with one other about dinner while ignoring him. like, wow... it's way worse than non-zero sum. these people are psychopaths. throw away any notion that they could have an iota of good. they are not morally grey- they are straight-up black. i heard jerome is the ml, but considering the brutal nature of the story, i can't imagine there would be any cathartic redemption from him. but if i have to say one thing so far that makes him better than the others, it's that he never hid his violent despicable crazy self from the beginning, while the other two did