alicedrawslesmis

[alicedrawslesmis]

How dare you pilf this iis a Theodule/Montparnasse household

tbh it's just rude that so many people in this fandom talk about Les Amis as Shippable Twinks etc etc when Theodule Gillenormand is RIGHT HERE Head Empty Waist Snatched Itinerary: Beauty Sleep Sword dragging suggestively

does it mean nothing to you. do you have no respect for an icon. Take a look in the mirror, acknowledge the inferiority of your moustaches, and apologize to him

[alicedrawslesmis]

Theodule is having his once every two years dinner at the Pontmercys and he's like "Personally Cosette, I don't care that your father was a convict but he did make us toe the line. It was the most boring town I was ever stationed in. Very neat. Pour me some wine, will you cousin" and everyone is like. Since when...?

Theodule lives the garrison life... Montreuil-Sur-Mer is a garrison town... I'm connecting the two dots

[alicedrawslesmis]

this guy is banger after banger

“It is not possible!” “Mathematically!”

“Bosh!” said Théodule

“Marius! what an ugly name! what possessed them to name him Marius? While you, at least, are called Théodule.” “I would rather be called Alfred,” said the officer.

“Listen, Théodule.” “I am listening, aunt.” “Pay attention.” “I am paying attention.” “You understand?” “Yes.” “Well, Marius absents himself!” “Eh! eh!” “He travels.” “Ah! ah!” “He spends the night out.” “Oh! oh!” “We should like to know what there is behind all this.” “Some petticoat or other.”

Marius, on the evening following this dialogue, mounted the diligence without suspecting that he was watched. As for the watcher, the first thing he did was to fall asleep. His slumber was complete and conscientious. Argus snored all night long.

At that moment a pair of black trousers descending from the imperial, made its appearance at the window of the coupé. “Can that be Marius?” said the lieutenant. It was Marius.

He was a great-grand-nephew of M. Gillenormand, on the paternal side, who led a garrison life, outside the family and far from the domestic hearth. Lieutenant Théodule Gillenormand fulfilled all the conditions required to make what is called a fine officer. He had “a lady’s waist,” a victorious manner of trailing his sword and of twirling his moustache in a hook. He visited Paris very rarely, and so rarely that Marius had never seen him. The cousins knew each other only by name. We think we have said that Théodule was the favorite of Aunt Gillenormand, who preferred him because she did not see him.

He's perfect.....

[alicedrawslesmis]

by that I mean one day like 30 years later Theodule reveals he has encyclopedic knowledge of Jean Valjean's time as mayor and who Fantine is and everyone is very confused by this

Theodule lives the garrison life... Montreuil-Sur-Mer is a garrison town... I'm connecting the two dots

[alicedrawslesmis]

Theodule lives the garrison life... Montreuil-Sur-Mer is a garrison town... I'm connecting the two dots

[alicedrawslesmis]

He was a great-grand-nephew of M. Gillenormand, on the paternal side, who led a garrison life, outside the family and far from the domestic hearth. Lieutenant Théodule Gillenormand fulfilled all the conditions required to make what is called a fine officer. He had “a lady’s waist,” a victorious manner of trailing his sword and of twirling his moustache in a hook. He visited Paris very rarely, and so rarely that Marius had never seen him. The cousins knew each other only by name. We think we have said that Théodule was the favorite of Aunt Gillenormand, who preferred him because she did not see him.

He's perfect.....

[alicedrawslesmis]

the problem with making a poll with made up les mis characters from different adaptations (I've done that. quarantine was a weird time) is that no one votes for Valjean's canon husband Robert from les mis 1952 because people get star struck by judi dench and/or a magic dog. Robert should win by a landslide

[alicedrawslesmis]

@bardicbliss

i would love to know more about judi dench's barricade character

I don't know where to find the post again, I'm sure someone here knows

basically Judi Dench was in a play nearby in the West End and she decided it would be fun to be in Les Mis for one performance so they let her participate in the barricade. She even had a name and was announced beforehand. It's in my blog somewhere, there's a photo and everything

[alicedrawslesmis]

thank you (and @pilferingapples ) both lol you guys were quick

there's one quote in les mis, it's for sure during Waterloo, that's about Napoleon. It's something like "the light of history is pitiless, woe to him who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form"

does anybody know the chapter this is from asdfghjkl

[alicedrawslesmis]

there's one quote in les mis, it's for sure during Waterloo, that's about Napoleon. It's something like "the light of history is pitiless, woe to him who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form"

does anybody know the chapter this is from asdfghjkl

[alicedrawslesmis]

i would love to know more about judi dench's barricade character

I don't know where to find the post again, I'm sure someone here knows

basically Judi Dench was in a play nearby in the West End and she decided it would be fun to be in Les Mis for one performance so they let her participate in the barricade. She even had a name and was announced beforehand. It's in my blog somewhere, there's a photo and everything

[alicedrawslesmis]

from the musical we have the Lesbian Poet, and Judy Dench's barricade character that one time

From BBC Les Mis we have Javert's perpetual second in command making heart eyes at him the whole time, Rivette

1952 obviously has Robert (♥️) and I'm pretty sure Valjean has a named prison boyfriend

someone should make a poll for favorite les mis adaptation ocs. like alain and chou chou from shoujo cosette and the bunny from arm joe

actually. please reply with your favorite or as many as you know. this would be so fun

[alicedrawslesmis]

"no man has the right to build up mountains of wheat beside his fellow man dying of hunger. What is the first object of society? It is to maintain the inalienable rights of man. What is the first of those rights? That of existence.

The first law of society therefore is that which guarantees all members of society the means of existence; all the rest are subordinate to that one..."

—Maximilien Robespierre, December 2, 1792, Robespierre: a Revolutionary Life by Peter McPhee

[alicedrawslesmis]

i do agree with the ask abt fanfic and LM though and i think it should be considered. While fanfic is often dismissed, that’s where the culture of the fandom can be most seen. If many are apolitical, they don’t really understand Trump or the current moment. That makes sense abt why they don’t care. It’s ultimately a prop and doesn’t address a real-life rebellion in which people die and was crushed. I’d reply to this in the post but they’re turned off btw

I don't disagree necessarily with that. Fandom culture has a particular lexicon and we're in it, so it's hard to pull back. But like, you have to understand that fandom is not a closed system.

There is no such thing as Fandom Culture divorced from reality. People aren't apolitical cause fanfic is, fanfic is apolitical because people who write it are in the vast vast majority conservative. No two ways about it, I wish this wasn't true but that's the world we live in.

If you are part of a group benefiting from a violent genocide and currently disappearing activists your Real Life views are the thing that maters the most, not whether you want to engage with real world politics in your fic. In fact, hypothetically speaking, it's DANGEROUS to do so. It makes you a target. You can be clocked. I don't write about the shit I do Irl because I'm not stupid. I didn't give my DNA to a company who's now selling its data to other private companies because I'm not fucking stupid. I'm not incriminating myself

Even the word aesthetic has been stripped of the ethical component from the original definition. Aesthetics is not just a visual, it's a system of interlocking signals. If you use the visual component of a socialist rebellion for the benefit of shallow displays of anti-establishment that benefit a dictator what you're using is not socialist aesthetics. It's not fandom culture. There's a name for this. It's Kitsch.

.

(replies are off for people who don't follow me for less than a week because I kept getting Gaza bots that I didn't have the bandwidth to vett. So they've been mostly reaching out via DMs now and I can pay more attention to each. Speaking of, Maram still needs funds now more than ever because she's been supporting another campaign that hasn't been able to set up a link)

[alicedrawslesmis]

fucking scabs

[alicedrawslesmis]

This isn’t fully 100% related, but just on the subject of how most of the Les Mis fanbase (both broadly/irl/outside of tumblr and fandom, AS WELL as the actual fandom) is super apolitical. But I was recently having a conversation with my friends about “how can supposedly liberal and gay people be so into Call of Duty as a fandom just because they decided the two guys are gay??” And while the two are actually opposite subjects, I explained it in comparison to the LM fanbase and how they write fanfiction.

In both fandom tellings, the writers/fans blatantly ignore the actual activities and meanings of what their characters jobs/roles entail, mostly for the sake of focusing on completely unrelated plot/shipping, but part of it, conscious or not, is definitely willful ignorance about the actual meaningfulness of what they are ignoring.

In CoD, the fanfics will always randomly mention “going on missions” and “field work” and “debriefing” etc where they kinda mention the buzzwords of what military guys might do, but with zero implications of what that actually means or entails. Their role is Military Guys and what they do is Military Activity. My friends were still a little confused how one would not be understanding, or at least be able to ignore seemingly obvious words like that, until I described how LM fanfic is written. Obviously the main blorbos of the fandom are the barricade boys (for reasons I could complain in an essay about but isn’t relevant), and here their role is Activist (second to Student oftentimes), and they do Activism Activities. If expanded at all, it’s usually just an offhand mention of “making posters” or “doing a rally” (love when they say this and not even protest) and sometimes they even say that it is “for The Cause.” Like fr they won’t even name any issue it’s just The Cause. If they do specify what subject they are “activists for,” it’s usually like gay rights or something. Not that that isn’t important, but it’s another way of showing they don’t know about anything else, and that’s a very tame non controversial/universally accepted good cause (within this fandom space obv!).

Anyways, while ignoring the canon context of military war crimes and bombing civilians is much much much worse than ignoring what it actually means to be an activist and actively fight for change, both still show a level of disconnect from the meaningfulness of the original subject matter. And to some extent (especially with LM), it’s fine to do that and just have fun writing fanfic, and you don’t need to go into detail about everything especially when it’s not relevant to your romance plot. But overall, it alludes to a greater misunderstanding of the original media, or even disregard of the meaning/theme because it is less important than their gay blorbos.

All that is to say, I have never ever considered the broader LM fanbase to be political at all, or if they are, in the safest, tamest way possible, where they never have to do any work, think about anything too deeply, or examine their beliefs about more complicated subjects. Hopefully that all makes sense why I thought this was relevant lol

basically I agree to all of this, although I don't even engage in fanfiction as a whole

But there's like. Another layer to what I mean. You can engage in fandom however you like. Fanfic is usually written as a form of play with the characters you like, doing fun things. Sometimes its for getting your rocks off, sometimes it's just fun. There are different purposes to different media. I don't fault people for writing apolitical fanfic.

BUT NOBODY IS HANDWRITING APOLITICAL LES MIS FANFIC AND PRESENTING IN ON A LOVELY SCENTED PARCEL AND SENDING IT DIRECTLY TO THE OVAL OFFICE FOR DONALD TRUMP TO READ AND ENJOY. NO ONE SHOULD BE PUTTING ON CUTE PLAYS ABOUT BEING COOL REBELS AGAINST A TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT AND SHOWING IT TO A TYRANT WHO'S CLAPPING AND SMILING AND FEELING GOOD ABOUT IT.

[alicedrawslesmis]

Anyway guys. Maram still needs some support. If you could help her out