Has Anyone Else Made This Joke Yet

we’re on a mission from God. we’ve got a full timeline of the beauxbatons au valvertine fic mapped out from january 1971 through to halloween 1981, got fourteen chapters already out, three chapters fully outlined, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

hit it.

grantaire is in love with enjolras and enjolras is just wondering what this gremlin man is doing hanging around the friends of the abc so dang much and this upsets me greatly but not because i want them to kiss: an essay.

part six: “orestes fasting and pylades drunk.”

one | two | three | four | five || read the whole series on ao3

and so we’ve come to the end.

basing our analysis off hapgood as always; and since it’s so short, we’re doing the whole chapter, found here.

At length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs, aiding themselves with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing up the walls, clinging to the ceiling, slashing away at the very brink of the trap-door, the last one who offered resistance, a score of assailants, soldiers, National Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen, in utter confusion, the majority disfigured by wounds in the face during that redoubtable ascent, blinded by blood, furious, rendered savage, made an irruption into the apartment on the first floor. There they found only one man still on his feet, Enjolras.

i’m going to try to distract myself for a second and delay the inevitable by pointing out an interesting translation. the phrase “in utter confusion” in hapgood’s translation, is originally “pêle-mêle” in french.

it’s pretty much the frenchified version of pell-mell. helter-skelter. it’s an informal term that, for me at least, makes me think of being a child, running down a hill and slipping about halfway, and then tumbling down to the end, bruised and battered and out of breath but still intact.

hugo used this term in the chapter prior, “foot to foot,” which can also be translated as “inch by inch,” in which the national guard and soldiers finally break into the corinthe itself. it’s a really jarring word, standing out in the middle of the slaughter, like a relic of happier times in the middle of an apocalypse.

it feels like maybe the word enjolras’ mind scrambles to use to describe what he sees. the battle before this was something he could understand; his friends were still alive; they still had hope. but this is beyond chaos. maybe pell-mell is the only way to describe it.

especially when the chapter just before that one, “the heroes,” is the one where all his friends whom he loved have perished before his eyes.

enjolras alone is bruised and battered and out of breath but still intact.

Without cartridges, without sword, he had nothing in his hand now but the barrel of his gun whose stock he had broken over the head of those who were entering. He had placed the billiard table between his assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner of the room, and there, with haughty eye, and head borne high, with this stump of a weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to speedily create an empty space around him.

my ferocious golden son. here he is reminding me of the poem “invictus” by william ernest henley.

In the fell clutch of circumstance        I have not winced nor cried aloud.  Under the bludgeonings of chance        My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears        Looms but the Horror of the shade,  And yet the menace of the years        Finds and shall find me unafraid.

he has only a stump of a pistol in his hand. no ammunition. no blade. nothing but the broken barrel of a carbine and his own two hands, and his dignity. yet these men somehow are still afraid of him.

with good reason. after all the brutality of the last two chapters alone, never mind everything that happened beforehand, enjolras is still standing, still unblemished by the fight. it seems like nothing on earth can break him.

(at least externally.)

A cry arose:

“He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot.”

“Shoot me,” said Enjolras.

And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms, he offered his breast.

“shoot me,” he says. and he throws away his last weapon, and folds his arms, and stands there waiting for the end.

he has broken, even if he doesn’t look like it. he knows -- he has to know -- that the events of june fifth and sixth will be etched in history the same way that the three glorious days in 1830 were, at best.

fire and smoke in the air, blood in the streets. young men die, and nothing much changes.

(it will change. it will. but oh, golden boy, that’s decades in the future, and the twentieth century will not be happy. i don’t know that any century on this flawed earth will ever be happy.)

(it’s been over 150 years since its publication, and this book is still needed.)

enjolras, the angel, has had his wings violently ripped from him, and now he has crashed to the earth. 

The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: “There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo.” A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: “It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower.”

apollo?

no.

enjolras is icarus.

Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Enjolras, and silently made ready their guns.

Then a sergeant shouted:

“Take aim!”

An officer intervened.

“Wait.”

And addressing Enjolras:

“Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?”

“No.”

“Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?”

“Yes.”

no blindfold. he faces his death with his eyes open.

i’m so sad. it’s a tired, gentle, proud sort of sad. but i’m so sad for my golden boy.

he is only twenty-six years old. i’m younger than him as i write this, but only by a year and a handful of months. and i’m sure that once i turn twenty-seven -- twenty-eight -- twenty nine, and so on every year for the rest of my life, i’ll just be sadder.

look at this. he has an entire life ahead of him, or he did. if he did survive the barricade now through some miracle, what would be left for him? all the rest of his friends have died. and should he fight in 1848, they will succeed, but the aftermath will be even messier -- and it’ll fall apart before his eyes.

i draw attention back to “a group which barely missed becoming historic,” or rather, the wording there.

before he has even begun to introduce us to these bright young men, hugo has told us that they are going to die, and die in obscurity.

the friends of the abc are not the main characters of les misérables. but their trajectory follows that of romeo and juliet, at least in terms of narrative construction.

here are these bright young souls. they are doomed to die, because the world around them is unjust and unkind. now: watch how they live, and watch how they die, and mourn, and learn.

Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.

Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table.

He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of “dead drunk.” The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession of it.

oh no. oh God.

i’ve been trying to wrap myself in coherent pedantry, but ... i can’t. not anymore.

this whole time -- this entire friggin’ time -- grantaire has been seated at his small table by the open window. and someone, or multiple someones, during the construction of the barricade thought two things: that table is too small to use, and, let him sleep.

also, hugo pointedly using the term “dead drunk” is just a personal fuck you, to me, from across 150 years in the time-space continuum. yeah, i see you, buddy. and i am gonna knock your teeth out. just you wait.

He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore.

NO. NOOO. NOOOOOOOO.

mabeuf’s awe-inspiring, terrible death. nothing. the first firefight in which bahorel died. nothing. the end of jean prouvaire’s rhyme. nothing. the flash and bang of éponine saving marius’ life and ending her own. nothing. the report of the rifle which fired over javert’s head as he walked away, bewildered at not having died when he so thoroughly expected to. nothing. the last bloody assault where the rest of them died, one after the other, barely a breath between them. nothing.

grantaire slept the sleep of rip van winkle.

He seemed to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking.

STOP THIS.

Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers of death.

I DON’T WANT THIS.

Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him. The fall of everything around him only augmented Grantaire's prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby.

GOD, NO, STOP.

The sort of halt which the tumult underwent in the presence of Enjolras was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect of a carriage going at full speed, which suddenly comes to a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.

God, i can’t imagine what he’s thinking right now. looking around, seeing the utter destruction of this wine shop -- which he discovered, which he loved, he’s the one who first introduced his friends to the corinthe -- which was, this time only yesterday, empty except for the goings-on of matelote and gibelotte, and the cheerfulness of his friends.

all destroyed.

national guards, soldiers, twelve total in the company, wounded, bloodied, savage, armed.

and enjolras, unarmed, his arms folded across his chest, severe dignity on his beautiful face.

grantaire woke, he stood, he stretched out his arms, he rubbed his eyes, he stared at the wreckage before him, he yawned, and he knew that the rebels had lost.

A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance and as a whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself to the memory; and the drunkard who has known nothing of what has been taking place during the last twenty-four hours, has no sooner opened his eyes than he is perfectly informed. Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined importunity of realities.

STOP. NOOO.

I’M SO SAD.

WE HAVE GONE BEYOND MOM-FRIEND-SAD. WE ARE RAPIDLY REACHING ANGRY-SAD. YELLING-AT-THE-COMPUTER SAD.

( “you know, the titanic sinks at the end.” SHUT UP. SHUT UP!!! I’M HAVING EMOTIONS!!! )

Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: “Take aim!” when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:

“Long live the Republic! I'm one of them.”

NOOOOOOOOOO. OH, MY DARLING BOY, NOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!

he is behind the same billiard table that enjolras is currently standing near, but i suppose on the opposite side of it. take that with all the symbolism you like. oh, man.

but -- look -- “i am one of them.”

zip back to “night begins to descend upon grantaire” for a hot second. during his blather while harassing matelote, grantaire says “comrades, we shall overthrow the government,” and despite his awful retort to courfeyrac’s attempt to get him to be quiet, he genuinely seems fired up. maybe he would have helped with the barricade. maybe if someone had woken him earlier, he could have helped. (or he could have died in the last assault like the rest of them.)

but it wasn’t until enjolras told him to go sleep off his drunkenness that grantaire even started to entertain the idea of sleeping rather than participating in the émeute. and then it was only when enjolras harshly batted him down the second time, that grantaire actually did fall asleep.

now. would a drunk-off-his-gourd grantaire have been useful on the barricade? no. definitely not. but even after a five hour binge, it was two o’clock when the barricade started to be built. the death of mabeuf didn’t come until after night had actually fallen, and that would have been a whole five hours after the barricade’s construction. before the first assault came, someone could have woken him.

and he might just have helped. because as we have seen over and over and over, from his very first appearance, grantaire may not believe in causes but he does believe in his friends. and he loves his friends. i have no difficulty in hypothesizing that he would have more than willingly died for his friends.

Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.

TRANSFIGURED. JUST. JAB ME IN THE EYE WITH A SHARPENED STICK. THAT WOULD HURT LESS.

from “the solution of some questions connected with the municipal police” :

(clio are you seriously gonna --? YES I AM, WATCH ME, AND ONCE AGAIN, IT WILL MAKE PERFECT SENSE.)

She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears, her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry, short cough, stammering softly with a voice of agony. Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy. At that moment Fantine had become beautiful once more.

emphasis mine.

h o oo o ooo ly God.

his friends are dead, and his beacon of light and faith is about to die. the wretched misery that seized fantine when she thought cosette would die is the exact same wretched misery that seizes grantaire now.

back to “orestes fasting and pylades drunk.”

He repeated: “Long live the Republic!” crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras.

“Finish both of us at one blow,” said he.

noooOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if cosette dies: fantine has nothing to live for.

if his friends die: grantaire has nothing to live for.

i’m so upset.

And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:

“Do you permit it?”

Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.

This smile was not ended when the report resounded.

“et, se tournant vers enjolras avec douceur, il lui dit : -- permets-tu?”

douceur again. gentleness, softness, sweetness.

grantaire isn’t described as physically reaching out to enjolras, but in spirit that is exactly what he is doing. just as he did when volunteering for the barrière du maine, though he failed in that attempt. only this time, there is nothing left to do; there is nowhere for them to go. how can he fail in death?

“enjolras lui serra la main en souriant.”

serrer la main means to shake hands. but in every other context, serrer is to to squeeze, to clamp, to tighten. to hold tightly and not let go.

after the barrière du maine, enjolras did not ever again try reaching out to grantaire; he did not consider him worthy of a second chance. he stood at a height, and saw the abyss, and turned away.

now he has been brought crashing down to earth in the worst possible way. and this time, when grantaire reaches up for him, he takes his hand.

after over four years of approach and harsh rebuttal -- after over four years of he is high above me and what on earth is he doing here -- they have just begun to understand each other.

maybe they even have something in common. maybe, together, they can learn that opposite doesn’t mean enemy. maybe, together, they can learn that skepticism and idealism can balance each other out.

but the only way that they can come to this meeting, that they begin to understand their equality -- the only way that they can even become friends, let alone more than that -- is the circumstance in which they die.

and before enjolras can even finish his smile, they are dead.

their beginning is, and can only be, their ending.

Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his head was bowed.

Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt.

OH FUCK THIS AND FUCK YOU PERSONALLY.

^ that was my initial reaction to this bit, and i am sticking with it.

because even in death, even though not a second earlier they had just come to the inklings of an understanding, grantaire is below enjolras.

oh, sure, they’re both martyrs of the revolution. but enjolras is st sebastian, pierced with bullets and still radiant and desperately beautiful; grantaire is an unrealized st paul.

... HA. you know, i made that comparison off the top of my head, but at least regarding grantaire it does work on a literary level.

paul and peter died at nero’s hands. and lactantius writes that nero “crucified peter, and slew paul”.

they both die by firing squad, but enjolras is still elevated, still standing upright for cripes’ sake, and grantaire is literally at his feet.

and the creme de la creme à la edgar, the reason i started this whole damn series:

grantaire dies by a lightning bolt.

a sudden realization of love.

enjolras begins to smile, and grantaire begins to realize his love, and they die. and that is the inevitable conclusion: death.

and i SCREAM BLUE BLOODY MURDER.

A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last remaining insurgents, who had taken refuge at the top of the house. They fired into the attic through a wooden lattice. They fought under the very roof. They flung bodies, some of them still alive, out through the windows.

this is where enjo’s defenestration in lm 2012 comes from! neat!

by which i mean, NOT NEAT AT ALL.

Two light-infantrymen, who tried to lift the shattered omnibus, were slain by two shots fired from the attic. A man in a blouse was flung down from it, with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and breathed his last on the ground. A soldier and an insurgent slipped together on the sloping slates of the roof, and, as they would not release each other, they fell, clasped in a ferocious embrace. A similar conflict went on in the cellar. Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. Then silence. The barricade was captured.

The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and to pursue the fugitives.

... and curtain.

orestes’ revenge rebounds upon him; he dies, and pylades exits the play, accepted at last.

Many thanks to @perplexingly for giving us permission to use her gorgeous piece of art of Mithrellas and Nimrodel in our banner. ♥

Femslash February is coming, and Silmladylove is playing Fanworks Drabbletag! 

We’re playing what now?

Fanworks Drabbletag! It’s easy and a lot of fun - all you need to do pick a prompt from the list we’ll be compiling, and answer it, earning the right to send prompts of your own for others to fill. Drabbletag usually is a writing challenge, but we’ve decided to expand it to other types of fanworks - edits, fanmixes, art, fic or meta, and anything else, provided it won’t take too much time and effort (unless you want it to, of course). 

Are there any rules that I should keep in mind?

Not a lot of them! You don’t have to sign up anywhere, we’re keeping things informal and voluntary. For starters, you’re allowed to send in a “free” prompt to get the challenge moving (and sending prompts, either starters or earned ones, does not require you to create any fills), and once you’ve got around to filling, you can earn the right to send in more prompts depending on the length of your fill: 

Up to 250 words/5 songs/a 3-picture edit/a sketch: one prompt. Up to 500 words/10 songs/a 5-picture edit/a clean sketch: two prompts. Up to and above 1000 words/15 songs/a 9-picture edit/a finished piece of art: three prompts.

Of course all prompts and fills should be Tolkien femslash from any point of the Legendarium, featuring female canon characters (rather than Rule 63′d male characters), OFCs, and/or characters of indeterminate gender like Elemmírë or Malbeth who are sometimes read as female by fandom. Please tag your fills as #sll drabbletag so we can find and reblog them for everyone to see - and most of all, have fun! The challenge will be open for prompts for all of February, and if there are fills you only finish after Femslash February ends, please send them in regardless.

We’ll open for starter prompts on January 27th and you can begin sending in fills on February 1st. If you have any questions, please send us an ask and we’ll try our best to help!

Saying Fantine 'got out of the gutter' is a bit of a stretch, no? She's a factory worker paying a couple to house her child, and is forced by circumstance to become a prostitute the moment she's fired. She dies of a venereal disease at twenty-some and is buried in an unmarked grave. That's hardly out of the gutter. Javert makes what is a deeply unlikely ascent, but an ascent nontheless: he's born in prison and becomes a police officer with a steady income. He definately rises higher than Fantine ever did, even if he started a bit below. Of the three, Valjean rises the highest, out of a combination of sheer luck and trickery.

ok, i haven't posted on this blog in ages, but here we go. i agree that she definitely died in the gutter, and didn't have all that far to fall back in. it was a very tenuous situation! that's part of the whole point of her story, how thin the breaking point is. ditto javert and valjean. if you think javert lived in anything but poverty even while licking the boot, well. to say nothing of valjean and his whole Deal (tm). they're three faces of the same problem! in this valvertine essay i will

but i have difficulty with the idea that she didn't make it out even a little. there's a bit in the brick where her neighbor marguerite has to teach fantine how to live off nothing, like making her petticoat into a coverlet and so forth -- which is to say, as a kid fantine knew how to live on nothing, but at some point in her paris life, she forgot, because she wasn't living on nothing. she had a job as a piecemaker, which didn't make her Not Poor but it did give her enough to like, you know. have a little left over to buy millet to feed birds at her windowsill, and spend the time it takes to care for her appearance (which when you have hair that falls to your knees is nothing to sneeze at). she could afford the kind of personal maintenance that would accent her natural beauty and catch a law student's eye. and even after tholomyes dumps her, even though she has to give cosette up, at the factory she is still making a living! not law-student-allowance living, but still! one of her lines at her arrest, that sticks with me a lot, is 'i used to have linens, so many linens.' you know? a fall hits harder if you make it off the ground first.

also people should keep in mind that sometimes when an artist says “doodle" what they mean is "stress-free art”. that doesn’t necessarily mean that the “doodle” they made is something that they didn’t work hard at or didn’t spend a long time on. some people get really out of control when they see impressive works and the artist write “just a doodle” and they think, this is it, this is the end, im no longer going to be an artist, how can i possibly compare myself.

sometimes “just a doodle” means “not working on commissions or something work-based”, so don’t fret yourselves. plus not everyone who posts art plans on a bunch of people seeing it. you don’t really expect your stupid poorly written artist caption to be seen by a lot of people via reblogs,

I just used the line “that’s not an asshole move, it’s a whole asshole ballet” and I’m kinda proud of it so it’s going here where it will get the recognition it deserves.

@fantineweek 2018 - day three: family | friendship.

this is gonna be one part angsty canon meta, and one part angsty headcanon. because, uhhh, because i have a lot of feelings about this.

(extra long post too, whoops.)

friendship first.

okay. as much as i really, really do want fantine to have a whole bunch of friends who love and support her, and as much as i would love for favourite / dahlia / zéphine to belong to that category --

she really doesn’t have any friends at all. especially not the rest of the paris quartet.

believe me, i want favourite to be fantine’s best friend. i want dahlia to be the one who taught her which particular type of maroon made her blonde hair glow best. i want zéphine to have sat up with fantine during those restless nights when cosette was an infant and helped her with all the small important things involved with caring for a child of that age.

but while canon gives us not very much interaction between these ladies at all, it does give us just enough to say “uh-uh. the only reason these people spend any time together at all is because their boyfriends are best friends.”

from “tholomyes [sic] is so merry that he sings a spanish ditty” :

all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. “You always have a queer look about you,” said Favourite to her.

okay, but just because hapgood has this translation, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what hugo originally wrote. (i parsed a little of this with the quartet last year here on my fantine blog.)

“tholomyès est si joyeux qu’il chante une chanson espagnole” :

toute recevaient un peu çà et là les baisers de tous, excepté Fantine, en fermée dans sa vague résistance rêveuse et farouche, et qui aimait. -- Toi, lui disait Favourite, tu as toujours l’air chose.

“avoir l’air chose” can be read as “you’re always daydreaming” or “there’s something peculiar about you” -- or any other number of ways to tell someone that they’re the odd one out.

fantine is the only one vouvoied by the entire party, except for tholomyès who of course tutoies her. we see why in this section -- because even though this is only one afternoon, and only one of the three ladies talking to her, we can reasonably extrapolate that this is how the dynamic has been between all of them for at least the past two years.

fantine is the only one who doesn’t want to play their game of exchanging kisses indiscriminately. the only one she’s in love with is tholomyès, so the only person she wants to be kissing her is tholomyès. meanwhile, the other ladies aren’t actually in love with their gentlemen: they see them as hobbies to drop when one or both parties get bored: of course they don’t care who kisses who.

the oldest, favourite, is twenty-three; the youngest, fantine, is twenty-one. that’s the same age gap between me and my sister. hugo treats this like an insurmountable distance. but it isn’t the age gap which isolates fantine from the other three ladies. it’s simply that she sees the world so differently than they do.

how could such different people be real friends?

in fact, the only person who extends a hand of friendship -- and i mean that in the sense of providing warmth and kindness in her life, out of no sense of obligation (*cough* valjean *cough*) -- is marguerite, her elderly neighbor.

from “madame victurnien’s success” :

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she began to pay the Thenardiers [sic] irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing's worth of millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat, and a petticoat of one's coverlet; how to save one's candle, by taking one's meals by the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being a talent.

[...]

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

this is where the angsty headcanon about family comes in.

hugo does nothing by accident. except for his math, which he does badly on purpose, because he hates math.

in one of the earlier drafts of les misérables, he gives fantine the name of marguerite louet. he scratched this out later, of course; he gave her a diminutive instead of a proper name, to show better how much of a street urchin she was.

but he kept the name marguerite, and he gave it to the elderly spinster neighbor who helped fantine.

marguerite is a type of daisy. it is also the french version of the name margaret, which ultimately derives from the greek word margaron, meaning pearl.

y’all know where i’m heading with this.

it would be too much of a stretch to headcanon that marguerite is fantine’s mother. marguerite is probably too old to be her mother -- and she takes a grandmotherly sort of role, anyway.

more likely that marguerite is the older aunt to a niece she did not even know existed.

maybe fantine is the spit and image of marguerite’s youngest sister. maybe fantine has the same nose that their dad had, the same high forehead as her brother, the same smile as the one she sees in the mirror (the same pearls).

or maybe it’s cosette who embodies those things, and if marguerite saw that little girl, she would be struck with a living image of the past.

@lecomtedelafere God tho, them wasting no time at all in establishing valjean’s possible sexual interest in fantine at the factory, wasting no time at all in implying that the reason he fired her is because he was furious that she denied him access that he believed she was giving others. fantine’s scenes in the factory are just “at the end of the day” but with valjean in the place of the foreman and with no one in the place of valjean. only a handful of people care about fantine as a person in bbc and all of them are women and only one or two of them seem to actually try to help, and even then it’s in scenes that are each only a handful of seconds long. bbc treated the women of les mis far, far worse than the book did and i can only imagine how it treats constance and queen anne and milady de winter. cripes.

So I’m still going through most of this blog, archiving the old rp stuff offline and deleting the posts themselves. If anybody who I used to rp with here (when this blog was still called ask-the-hypochondriac) wants any of those screenshots, you are more than welcome to contact me and I’ll send copies of them to you.

But yeah, if anybody’s been paying attention to the change in url, this is now gonna be my fic and sketch blog. So I’m going to be rebageling drabbles and fics from my other rp blogs here, dumping original stuff here, posting sketches, that kind of thing. Probably mostly going to be centered on LOTR and the Silmarillion since that’s mostly the fandom I’m in right now.