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.

flippyspoon:

dreamhusband-thewarlock:

if thomas is honestly glad to be alive, i think it’s fine that he’s thanking them for ‘rescuing’ him

what else can you possibly say, really

at least he’s not apologizing for ‘putting them thru all that trouble’ or something equally offensive

fair point.

but why on earth was that apology offensive?

Probably because it assumes the same patronizing attitude toward people who attempt suicide that I find so obnoxious, or else because it makes suicide out to be something that primarily inconveniences other parties rather than the one committing it.

In context of this particular example, there’s also the point that some of the people who are now nice to Thomas are the same ones who drove him to try to kill himself in the first place.

So I hear that Thomas may be trying to off himself in the next episode.

*shakes head* I hate suicide attempt plotlines, for they are invariably stupid. All the “you have so much to live for!” and “you should feel grateful to [insert name(s)] for ‘saving’ your life!” and such…ick.

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leelajoy716:

Further to Tara’s post of that page in the DA calendar that talks about coded speech and accessories used by gay men in Thomas’ time….

THAT MEANS GAY MEN MANAGED TO FIND ONE ANOTHER, FELLOOOWES

I don’t know if anyone else has ever read George Chauncey’s Gay New York, but his whole thesis is that gay men in the first half of the twentieth century were for the most part very social in a thriving gay community and that this internalized homophobia stuff was the exception, not the norm. And more than that, the working classes were much more accepting at that time than the upper classes – pretty much the opposite of what we see in Downton, which just goes to show how classist Fellowes is.

To be fair, most information on gay subcultures before the 1960s or so relates to large cities. I could add Paris and New Orleans to the list of urban centers with recognizable and often quite visible gay communities before that time. If I’m not mistaken DA is set in a rather rural part of England, so Thomas’s ability to make contact with other gay men would likely be limited accordingly.

I’ve been seeing a few concerns about Parkbarrow on my dash today, citing the age difference.

I imagine that my own sexual exploits – in which I allow myself to be bedded by men 20-40 years older than me – would really be unsettling for these people, but aside from that I just want to point out to everyone that this is the same fandom where Banna is canon (15-20 years’ difference, at least) and Andith (definitely 20+) was almost canon.

I remain rather indifferent on the potential for Thomas/Andy, though a bit perplexed at people who were turned off the ship just because of the “Uncle Thomas” quote. Easily over half a dozen men have expected me to call them daddy while they were busy prodding my rectum with some part of their anatomy, so even if I didn’t personally have an incest kink I’d consider it par for the course for older/younger relationships between men.

Per usual, I’m not watching the episode of Downton airing right now, but I feel it timely to remind everyone that Thomas has avoided hitting on sufficiently ugly footmen before: Alfred and Molesley. Also William, though I’m not sure if he’d be called ugly ~~because of course all Anglos are hideous to me.~~

If there’s no chemistry or such I wouldn’t get too worried about it. And, conversely, it’s not as though gay/bi men are required to be attractive. I can provide examples in the form of around 70% of my sexual partners.

flippyspoon:

eeyorotics:

flippyspoon:

Also on second watch when Clarkson says “Harsh reality is better than false hope” all I hear him saying is, “No one will ever love you, Thomas. No one will ever love you.”

That may not be exactly what Clarkson says, but it’s exactly what he means, isn’t it?

Also, it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but doesn’t the psychiatrist in Maurice at least have the decency to say people in England are disgusted by human nature? Or something? Something to the effect of: the problem is other people, not you.

I mean the reason I hear it that way is because of the way Fellowes talks in interviews like Thomas could never possibly ever find love NOT EVER IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

I don’t think he was saying Thomas was the problem though, even though he called it burden, obviously it’s a burden because society etc.

Not only does the therapist in Maurice say that the English are disinclined to accept human nature (ha!), he also points out that Maurice could relocate to France or Italy where such draconian anti-sodomy laws had been abolished – all the way back in 1791 in the case of France, because we’re fashionable like that.

~~Not that I can envision any self-respecting Frenchman being willing to sleep with Thomas gratis, of course; I assuredly could not.~~

If anyone is wondering why I’ve not mentioned a thing about S5E6 yet, suffice it to say that I’m with the part of the fandom that is quite underwhelmed with this apparent resolution to Thomas’s plotline.

It is, however, hilarious that he was scammed into injecting himself with the contents of a typical home enema, though that almost certainly didn’t occur to Fellowes.

Ugh, each new episode of S5 is more disheartening than the last. I find some of the other storylines at least somewhat interesting, and I’m sure I’ll comment upon them at length if I decide to watch them myself in a few months, but Thomas having his painful and drama-laden plot sidelined and dragged out just feels like poor writing. It’s like murder prison, except it’s stuck in the background and (some) fans actually care about it.