Local Longsword Lug Reporting For Duty

2015 -> 2018

it’s not fantine week anymore but that doesn’t mean i’m not eternally thinking about fantine so *fingerguns* here we go.

“i only understand love and liberty” is something that grantaire says but it might as well be fantine’s motto too because let’s be real here, these people come at it from different directions but they come to the same conclusion.

big old ramble under the cut.

grantaire is a student, or a former student by the time 1832 rolls around; he’s bossuet’s age, which i think comes to 4 years older than enjolras, which puts him at a solid age 30 at the barricade, 26 when marius meets the ensemble at the musain. in his debut, which is to say his introduction in a scene versus a description by hugo, he gives a grand declamation which takes up over five pages. i tried reading the whole thing in french and my eyes glazed over; in english it’s little better, if more decipherable since it’s my native language. friends, grantaire is verbose. but we can gather a few things from his long-ass rant:

that he apprenticed under gros, a painter of the time, and stole the apples he was supposed to have been drawing from still life (presumably ate them too). what we can take from this is that he is from a wealthy enough family to devote his time to learning how to paint, rather than a trade, e.g. feuilly.

that he believes virtue can easily turn into vice, saying almost the same thing in dialogue as a throwaway line that hugo said in description about javert when he got his terrible st michael on while arresting valjean in m-sur-m. (he also, in a single throwaway line -- the hapgood translation is “a bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra” -- sums up fantine’s entire awful fate.)

that he is probably not an atheist, but definitely isn’t on board with the idea of an all-knowing all-powerful all-merciful god.

that a big part of why he believes this is because he sees how the world suffers. he has studied history and sees the way it repeats itself; he gives several classical examples and compares them to the contemporary history of his day. he also gives a statistic (how accurate it is i couldn’t tell you) about the number of deaths from hunger in a single neighborhood of london. he uses this as a reason to condemn all of england.

in short: grantaire is a skeptic, yes, but as the saying goes: a skeptic is only a bitterly disappointed optimist.

grantaire does not believe in the revolution because he does not think humankind has the ability to rise from its present miserable condition, and he does not think it has the will to rise from that condition either.

(at this point in time, he’s wrong about the first part, but tragically right about the second. and it’s the second one that’s the kicker.)

fantine was a gamine and a grisette. she was as musichetta is; the difference is that joly probably would actually marry musichetta, and we all know how tholomyès worked out for fantine. (poorly.) fantine was a gutter kid, who worked for her living. given an alt canon where she survives 1823 and makes it to paris with valjean and cosette (age 36 at the barricade), we can assume the following:

that while she has a comfortable place in the fauchelevent household, she will probably still be doing much of the sewing and upkeep; louison would likely take a much smaller role. she can teach cosette about coquetry and fashion, she can show cosette a little about upper society, but she cannot be part of that society any longer. she is masquerading as the shy retiring wife to a shy retiring man. theater, the arts, et cetera, these are all faded memories carefully preserved in her mind. any indulgences the fauchelevents take are pretty much relegated to walks in the luxembourg gardens.

that she has been through hell and back, and knows intrinsically both the good and the evil that every man is capable of. jean valjean in particular encapsulates this: when she knew him as mayor madeleine, he was both an angel and the very devil. so the inherent goodness of man is a complicated thing for her. perhaps some people are simply born wicked, but certainly some have wickedness thrust upon them. (yes, i know that’s from wicked, yes, i know the original shakespeare quote is a dick joke, yes, i got it, yes, grantaire would laugh his ass off at this, yes. however. still kinda true.)

that even after going through the worst hell a human can imagine, she still believes not only that there is a god but that he is good. we know this in particular because there is a bit of dialogue when she is in the hospital where she is planning what sort of confirmation dress little cosette is going to wear.

that seeing students on the street talking of barricades and rebellion would make her hackles rise like those of a cornered wolf. fantine was born in 1796, just two years after the reign of terror ended. she grew up watching napoleon’s rise to power, she grew up watching the wars, she was a young woman for the bourbon restoration. she knows what revolutions do: she is a product of one. we can reasonably extrapolate from hugo’s introduction of her character that the revolution is why she has no family and why she grew up as a gutter kid, but again: she grew up watching everything.

so fantine knows, has known from birth, how unfair the world is.

does she want the world to be better? well, sure. but while she knows that individuals can change for the better, she also knows from experience that The People generally don’t.

grantaire and fantine having a conversation about belief and revolution would be an interesting one, i think.

... and now i want to write a fic about it. damn it.

send a number and a prompt you know the drill

|| for heraldofmelkor in Edain palette #6.

you weren’t “born gay” lol you studied hamlet in english lit class in high school and that’s why you are the way you are

rereading the resurgam trilogy and I still can’t get over the fact that my undead ot3 is actually canon

i say this every year but tumblr didn’t start doing april fools’ gimmicks until 2014. one year previous, April 1st, 2013, was a certain Incident that i am CONVINCED caused @staff to think “we have to make an april fools’ theme ourselves, because if left to their own devices, they’ll do… That”

god i just lose my mind over sansa sometimes. she was just 11 — isolated in a strange place, neglected by her father and her septa, her precious direwolf unfairly executed, given confusing signals about who she is to marry, then after a failed coup her father lead, despite pleading for his life on her knees in front of  the entire court, was witness to his beheading. most 11 year olds are brats under the best of circumstances, let alone under those circumstances. but sansa rises above. she’s a kind little girl that survives constant terror and abuse through her cleverness, perceptiveness, and deep reserve of inner strength and compassion. though she may use another name, she knows deep down know she is, using that name – STARK – like a lodestone in her heart. where no one can see. for a lady’s armor is her courtesy

idk i love the way grmm has flipped the princess under captivity trope. sansa is not a passive subject, she spends her time in kings’ landing calculating risks (who is safe to trust, who is one of cersei’s/varys’/littlefinger’s spies), and creating alibis (constant prayers in the godswood). she muses that love is the best way to a people’s loyalty, and this thought persists despite the ‘wisdom’ of her teachers. when she becomes the lady of winterfell, it’s straight to work preparing for the winter – she’s learned from her unscrupulous mentors about the logistics, but the heart of that is that these are the smallfolk of the north, and they must be fed, they must be clothed, they must be armed for the coming struggle and she will see to it herself. though she has become wary and shrewd, constantly gaging men’s intentions, she has lost none of what made her such a precious character* – her heart. her kindness is now tempered by all that she’s suffered, she wears it like a cloak  – not the pain, but the victory. i’ve come this far, she must think. and i have far to go. 

*for people like me. i’m a big mushball crybaby and spend 90% of my time on this earth reading, i love to play music, and honestly if i lived in some quasi medieval world i would be all over those awesome dresses. not gonna lie)

“you mocked me once, never do it again!” she cried, furious. “i died that day! and you can die too, for all i care!” she shoved him, and he tumbled down the steep slope.

“as you wish!” he called after her.

“westley?” she said -- and stared at the masked man, hurtling downwards. his voice had been familiar, yes, but it was only with the familiar words that she recognized him.

how could her westley have said such horrible things to her?

“why did you say those things?” she shouted down to him, after he had landed.

“what?”

“why did you say all those awful, cruel things to me?”

he stared up at her, a little black figure, and buttercup felt sad for the first time since humperdinck had proposed to her. the blankness of loss was one thing. the cruelty of a loved one was different, and somehow sharper.

“why did you agree to marry humperdinck?” he called. “i told you i would come back!”

“you were dead!”

“death cannot stop true love! it can only delay it for a while.”

“oh! that is easy for you to say!” she cried. “what if you thought i was dead? what would you have done?”

“not gone off and married some princess, that’s for certain!”

“i already told you, i don’t love humperdinck -- and anyway, he would have had me killed if i hadn’t agreed to marry him! would you have rather i died?”

“buttercup --”

“would you have rather i died?”

he paused, and shook his head.

“you knew the sicilian and his gang had kidnapped me. you could have found out why i married humperdinck, couldn’t you?”

“i heard rumors.”

“rumors of what?”

“well, how cruel he is, how his friend count tyrone has a torture chamber ...”

“how could you have thought that i loved him, then?”

“well, i --”

“how,” she continued, even more angry and even more sad, “could you have thought i would love a scheming tyrant like him? do you really think so badly of me?”

“buttercup, i --”

“at least humperdinck has the decency of telling me how horrible he is! but you -- you tell me that you love me, and at the first doubt you turn on me, you call me faithless, you threaten to strike me!”

“humperdinck threatened to chop your head off!” he yelled, indignant. “how can hitting you be even close to as bad?”

“be quiet!” buttercup exploded, and, surprised by such a vehement command, westley obeyed. “i am sick of you telling me what’s good and what’s bad, what’s right and what’s wrong! you have all these pretty words that you use, but none of them means anything! death can’t stop true love -- well, it mustn’t have been very true, if preventing my own death made you stop loving me. or did you ever actually love me at all?”

and for once, westley had no witty, ready-made answer.

“is joly holding the bouquet?” yes

I told you I was shipper trash