Tag: Les Misérables

character meme: Jean ValJean

Kind of a tough one there. It’s been years since I’ve read Les Mis or been involved in the fandom.

What is your opinion of this character? If you like, explain why you like him/her.

Mostly neutral honestly, I understand from a literary perspective why his character arc is compelling but it’s not one that grabs my sympathy personally. I feel like I was a (small) part of the group at the forefront of the Tumblr fandom circa the 2012 movie that got everyone looking more at Les Amis than at the actual protagonist, and although that would develop in some pretty weird directions over time I don’t feel ashamed of it or anything.

Is he/she important to the general plot?

For narrative and thematic reasons he’s the central protagonist, though interestingly he’s neither the author’s self-insert nor probably one we’re meant to find the most relatable.

Can you relate to this character at all? Does he/she grip you emotionally?

A little bit? He’s French and thoroughly screwed over by society, though not in any way similar to me. His various internal debates over morality can be quite compelling though.

Do you ship this character with any other character? Or, are you particularly intrigued by his/her relationship with any other character(s)? (romance-wise or platonic)

Valvert is a big deal in the fandom, but I’m not emotionally invested in it because I don’t care for rival ships in general. I like how his encounter with the bishop at the beginning of the story informs his choices in everything he goes through later.

Is there anything about the character you would change?

The name origins of early modern French peasantry cannot possibly have been as silly as his is. Eh, it’s memorable I suppose.

If you were in the fandom with this character or knew this character in real life, how would you see yourself interacting with him/her?

This really depends on which era of Valjean we’re talking about. Convict Valjean would get a hard pass from me, but M. Madeleine or M. Fauchelevent are respected enough to where they might be one of my pursuits (although Valjean seems fairly uninterested in sex of any kind so games of seduction are likely beyond him).

Does this character make the cut as one of your all time favorites (if you like) or least favorites?

Neither. Like I said I have essentially no strong opinions involving him.

Would you hype up this character (if you like) or warn about this character (if you dislike) to someone new to fandom?

People reading the Brick for the first time will get the full impression of all that Valjean has to offer, but if they’re coming to it after some exposure to the current fandom they probably deserve a bit of a heads-up that Valjean is a pretty big deal.

Is this character popular with the fanbase?

Not really, a common criticism of the state of the Les Mis fandom today. Of course, from what I saw of the fandom prior to the 2012 movie it’s not like things were much different then. Everyone just loves the Barricade Boys more.

Do you have any good Enjolras fan casts? Your Les Mis essays are gr8 btw

Ah, thanks. I haven’t been in the fandom for a very long time, so it’s interesting to hear that my stuff is still getting attention.

I never did fancasts in large part because my knowledge of actors isn’t particularly vast. With how I conceptualize Enjolras it’d be even harder than usual, as it would have to be someone who could both look like an angelic blond twink and command a stern and charismatic presence whom people would follow into battle for loftier reasons than a chance at his fantastic ass (sorry, Grantaire). That’s quite a contrast, and I can understand why adaptations usually drop his feminine characteristics just because it would be hard to pull off. My mental image of Enjolras is probably closer to his apperance in Shoujo Cosette than any live-action version, because by strange coincidence the bishonen aesthetic suits him perfectly.

Thomas Barrow and/or Marius Pontmercy :)

I haven’t thought about either of these guys in a while, so this should be quite a trip.

Thomas

How I feel about this character

The most consistently enjoyable element of Downton Abbey, so much so that I stopped watching around the time I figured out that the story was only ever going to dump on him as much as possible for being “evil.” I may be in the minority here, but snarky one-liners just don’t land as well when they come from old women.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Jimmy or the Duke of Crowborough. I didn’t watch the last two seasons so I have no opinion on Andy, and Edward left too little of an impression on me to really consider.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

O’Brien, for paired snark and treachery. Again, not watching the last two seasons means I have little to say about Baxter or his relationships with the kids, though small children have never particularly tugged my heartstrings anyway.

My unpopular opinion about this character

In every conflict between him and Bates I’ve taken his side, but that’s par for the course for his side of fandom. Erm…I don’t find him all that attractive perhaps?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

An ending happier than a pathetic attempted suicide and the prospect of becoming the next Carson, of course.

Marius

How I feel about this character

Derpy and I hate his Buonaparte fanboying, but why he does so is understandable (more so than why everyone in France seems to ignore that the Corsican bastard sold off Louisiana to Anglos and so doomed a population of Frenchmen to generations of subsisting under their rule, but I digress). He gets better by the end, mostly. His ideas of flirtation are as amusing as they are tasteless and creepy.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Cosette, and that’s pretty much it as I couldn’t give a damn about his love triangle. Courfeyrac may have convinced him to fool around some when they were rooming together, but it’s clearly not something that stuck in Marius’s mind post-barricades.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Joly. Not Enjolras or Éponine, despite how the musical plays those up – am glad fanon mostly drops them. His relationship with Éponine is just sad (and intentionally so), and I have no idea what he and Enjolras would even talk about.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t find the plot thread where he rejects his grandfather’s assistance to go slumming particularly reasonable or sympathetic. It fits with his derpiness at least.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Since he’s the PoV character for most of the latter half of the book more hanging out with the Amis would have been nice. They would have gotten more development then.

To Follow – estelraca – Les Misérables – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables – All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

edwarddespard:

I think of all the E/R fics – or fics featuring Enjolras and Grantaire as individual characters – Estelraca’s “To Follow” is one of the most underrated. Possibly because it’s canon era and was originally published pre-movie? At the time a much smaller fandom recognised its extraordinarily power, but for some reason it never seems to show up on fic rec lists, in spite of its well-crafted, pitch-perfect characterisation.

This is one of the most exquisitely written pieces in fandom, and is one of the most (possibly the most) superlative barricade survival fics ever written. It does justice not only to Enjolras and Grantaire in the characterisations, but also to each of the Amis who are written with beautiful nuance.

Almost unbearably and painfully poignant, is ultimately hopeful, and embodies not only the sense of looking to the future and the unquenchable, enduring faith Enjolras embodies, but also Grantaire’s devotion, warmth and love. Unlike so many survival fics, this has no self-doubting Enjolras (and, thankfully, it’s free of the “Grantaire restores Enjolras’ faith” or “Enjolras eschews his former beliefs as naïve in the aftermath of the barricades”). Enjolras is the adamantine figure of belief Hugo created, even as he has to face a future without his beloved friends. And that is what I love most about this story – it acknowledges loss, and sorrow, and abiding grief, but it is also written with a profound respect for what the Amis fought for and what they believed.

If you haven’t read it, please do so – it’s beautiful, it’s haunting, it’s powerful.

Oh, this takes me back.  I remember reccing this fic on Tumbr when it first came out, and it’s still just as great to read as it was back then.  It’s a shame to hear that it hasn’t received much recognition.

To Follow – estelraca – Les Misérables – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables – All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

edwarddespard:

pilferingapples:

So this excellent post got me thinking about some things re: canon era and Grantaire’s place in the Amis that I think is easy to miss either through the musical or just through the fog of history?

First: that the Amis are in fact working in a violently repressive dictatorship. There’s sometimes an attitude that them being students means they enjoy a level of social privilege equal to modern students in democratic countries and that’s…really not true. Any. At all. Pretty much no one has that level of privilege in their society. They are living with strict, government-enforced limits on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of religion (Charles X, the king in 1828,  brought back laws making sacrilege punishable by death),on and on. They sure can’t vote; that was for people who weren’t just wealthy but fantastically wealthy, we’re talking 1 percenters all the way. If Enjolras or Prouvaire were THAT rich we’d know about it; they’re not (and if they were they’d still be too young until at least 25!) . 

Hugo doesn’t have to get more specific about this social reality in Les Mis because his immediate audience–France under Napoleon III– was STILL living with that reality. Les Mis was banned and had to be smuggled in, while Hugo himself was in exile, having left Paris literally to save his life as an elected official in opposition to the new dictator. The new dictator had been murdering elected officials as he left; that’s the background Hugo’s assuming the reader has.

Keep reading

All of this. There’s a lot to be said about how contemporary American identity politics don’t map specifically onto the world of the Amis – even less so when, for example, Enjolras is left male/white/cis/wealthy while every other Ami is changed. The worst examples are when Grantaire – who in canon enjoys an extremely privileged life – is translated into an economically or racially oppressed figure, and from that position starts to call out Enjolras’ privilege…and Enjolras reacts angrily or defensively. It fundamentally alters the dynamics of the characters, and in doing so, butchers Enjolras’ character, his ideals and his relationship with Grantaire. 

A bit of a tangent, but what I wonder about is why fanon Enjolras is almost always left as he is in canon (aside from being more explicitly not straight, of course) when the rest of the Amis and sometimes Éponine, Cosette, etc. as well are treated with what I can’t help but think of as a Tumblr-updated version of the late 80s/early 90s approach to diversity in media (Five-Token Band on TVTropes), to the point that it can strain disbelief that a group of that nature would have organically formed to do…whatever vaguely activist things they happen to be doing.  And yet Enjolras remains the token rich cis white guy.  Is it because he’s the only one in canon with an extensive physical description?  By contrast, someone like Grantaire who’s merely “laid démesurément” usually gets rendered as “George Blagden, with scruff and a beanie” (except when he’s chubby and/or not white and/or a serious alcoholic/drug abuser instead of a social drinker and/or…).  It’s not that I’m exactly critical of such developments in fandom, but I do find the consistent trends of such fluid fanon rather fascinating.  

Huh…

raul-eduardo-esparza:

youbuiltpalacesoutofparagraphs:

raul-eduardo-esparza:

lyledebeast:

only-a-lemon:

Am I the only one who noticed this…?

Both are figures of authority.
They’re both chasing after someone whose gone missing and has a petty ‘criminal’ record.
They care little for the poor class.
And they’re both overlooking the building of Notre Dame while singing about how they’re working in the name of God and justice whilst their opponent is working in the name of sin and evil.
Not to mention that Les Mis and Huncback were both written by Victor Hugo.

The comparison is uncanny. And it freaks me out…but I love it.

gascon-en-exil?

The problem is that Frollo is downright evil and tries to mask his corruption saying that everything he does is in the name of God, while Javert (and I’m talking about the book here) is not a religious man AT ALL. He is righteous, incorruptible and not religious. Javert’s religion and supreme God is the law.

Also, in my opinion, Frollo was doing what he did for power. To get more power, even if he was doing bad things to get it. Where as Javert was convinced that he was doing what was right and getting justice.

Exactly! Javert didn’t care about going up the ranks, he just cared about the law, it’s justice and what is right. So much so that, when faced with something that was right but not lawful, he chose death instead of living eith the knowledge that the law is not always right. Ugh, there’s so much I can say about Javert! I love him so much!

@Lyledebeast and re: who’s being compared here,

The problem is that people are (correctly) pointing out that Javert’s relationship to religion differs considerably between the book and the musical while neglecting that the same is true of Frollo.  It’s been years since I read Notre-Dame de Paris, but I can definitely recall that book!Frollo is an archdeacon rather than a lay public official (and his lust for Esmeralda is therefore framed as a violation of his vow of chastity) and that he’s more conflicted and sympathetic in general.

If one were to ignore all the many and varied adaptations of both novels, I’d say that Frollo and Javert share a similar narrative status (morally complex antagonists who die when more overtly evil characters – Phoebus and Thénardier – survive and apparently thrive) but not much else.

Taking inspiration from a post by Edwarddespard a few days ago, I was going to go on a little Les Mis ramble about setting in modern AUs and where other than France one could conceivably plop down a large assembly of characters with French names without straining suspension of disbelief.  I’d already known there were a few fics that relocate them to Québec and one or two that go the extra mile and get them embroiled in Québécois political concerns, but just now I discovered on AO3 a single fic – “Amis avec des avantages” by satb31 – that makes them New Orleanians.  I’m still only a little way in and so far the story seems to be centered around UST rather than anything political, but kudos all the same.

darthfar:

seagreeneyes:

lurkersown:

Les Mis Fandom World Map!

(insp. by this post)

So, Les Mis fandom is a pretty diverse bunch, with folks blogging, drawing and writing from all corners of the world – as evidenced by how Speak Your Language Day turns my dash into a beautiful kaleidoscope of languages for one glorious day a year. (thanks, seagreeneyes!)

Then why not get it on a map? LET’S DO THIS GUYS

Instructions:

  • go to this link
  • add a marker! Go to Additions > Add Marker
  • the only info it needs is City + Country, all other fields are optional (including username, if you want to remain anonymous!)
  • DONE! Now enjoy finding out how many people in the fandom share your homeland
  • (if you feel like more than one location applies to you – if you’re an emigrant/expat – feel free to put more than one marker!)

The more markers are put, the wider the Map View gets – let’s get the whole world covered!

This is so cool!!

Eh, why not. 😉

I used to be active in the fandom, so why not….

lyledebeast:

gascon-en-exil said: I haven’t seen it, but the anime Shoujo Cosette has Javert, Gavroche, and several other characters live, *and* it sort of individually characterizes most of the Amis and some of the Patron Minette. Also there’s a dog, for some reason.

Well of course there’s a dog; how can it be happy otherwise? (Of course Hugo casts Javert himself in that role, and that doesn’t bring about much happiness). I need to see Shoujo Cosette; do you know if it’s available online? I do think the the 78 is the best film version I’ve seen, not that I’ve seen all of them.

I’ve seen various clips of it on YouTube, but I don’t know if the whole series is available anywhere.  Maybe someone in the tags knows?