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@barricadeday 2025: The barricades rise - A red flag

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Permets-tu? LES MISÉRABLES (2012) dir. Tom Hooper

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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. 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.

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happy barricade day to george blagden specifically

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Eponine defending the Rue Plumet, for @barricadeday's June 4th prompt (the evening before the barricades.)

“As you like, but you shall not enter here. I’m not the daughter of a dog, since I’m the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I’m a woman. You don’t frighten me. If you approach, I’ll bark."

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this year can we all please make sure to remember that revolutionary action is not: a) fictional, b) a thing of the past, or c) doomed to fail.

thank you. have a good few days and remember to always stand beside and act in solidarity with all oppressed people across the world. our society can must and will be radically changed.

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Happy barricade day!

I finished this illustration in early march and im queuing it (because I'll be deep in exams by the time barricade actually happens) so hopefully tumblr does not mess the timing up

I love love love science fiction, and the fact that stories about the future also reflect stories about the present and the past. "so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like [Les Miserables] cannot be useless". The fighting at the barricades is hopeful albeit it's tragedy because the fighting has not stopped. Today, we are still fighting for the same ideals as Les Amis were. I hope you enjoy how I've chosen to commemorate Barricade Day.

Here are some of my more artistic notes.

Enjolras has fire hair because it is at once dangerous yet hopeful. He is the leader and a guiding light, which is why both Combeferre and Courfeyrac are looking at him. I did my best to adapt his iconic vest and flag combo, even if the tricolour is not as visible with the warm lighting.

I remember it being a widespread fandom thing that Combeferre is into bugs (is this still a thing?), so I took inspiration from that and gave him antennae and 4 eyes for his alien form. The tail of his doctors jacket is also inspired from the shapes of butterfly wings. He is at once a fighter and a healer to me, so I copied Medic tf2's banger outfit.

I decided to make courfeyrac a cyborg for multiple reasons. One: since he comes from a rich family, he would be able to afford those augments. Two: his decision to cut the "de" of his name off is interesting to me, because he is now stuck in a both/neither grey area of whether he is still part of the upper class that he wanted to detach himself from. Granted, I am not very familiar with the actual politics of les mis, but it does remind me of how cyborgs in scifi struggle to fit in with either human or machine.

I worked so hard on the composition and colour scheme for this piece, and I'm so happy with how it turned out! Only regret is making it in a square canvas, I would have chosen a3 if I had known how much I'd like the final product teehee

That's it! feel free to ask questions if anyone is curious :3

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Listen Everybody

Lamarque is dead!

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would enjolras be half as impressive if he never felt doubt?

anyways, happy (or not so happy given the source material) (start of) barricade week!! not super on theme but ,,, the brain desired enjolras against a blue sky

cheeky @barricadeday tag hehe hopefully i’ll have smt on-theme by the end of the week 👀👀

+ bonus process vid

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Hello everyone! I'm excited to announce the official dates and prompts for #Barricade Week! We have an Ao3 Collection here. Feel free to join in however you're able-- creating fanworks or sharing/ commenting on other people's work are both equally important! You can also repost old art/fanfic that you have previously shared, especially art/fanfic people might have missed the first time around! And while we've been talking a lot about art and fanfic, ALL fanworks are fair game for this event-- song playlists, literary analysis, video essays, high-effort shitposts, Tiktoks, cosplay, etc! Follow the prompts if you need ideas, or do whatever you want! Make as many or as few pieces as you would like! For each day, the prompt is to do something relevant to what happens on that day--and (optionally) follow the bonus prompts related to important symbols from that chapter.

June 4th: “The Day Before the Barricades” (Eponine defends Marius) Extra prompts: “One day More,” Animal souls (Eponine referring to herself as "The daughter of wolves")

June 5th: “The Barricades Rise” Prompts: A red flag, “Love, the future is thine” June 6th: “The Barricades Fall”  Prompts: “Shooting a flower" (this is how the National Guard describes Enjolras); “Do you permit it?” June 7th: “The Aftermath” (the rescue of Marius/death of Javert) Prompts: The river, ”the derailment of a soul”

Thank you all, and happy creating! And remember to tag this blog in your posts!! #barricade week

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I feel like a lot of English les mis fans are missing out on some devastating detail. Did you know Turning’s title and chorus is actually a reference to a french nursery rhyme « tourne tourne petit moulin ». They are singing one last song to their dead children.

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George Blagden's Grantaire in charcoal from last year

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Dudddde what if we were foils and you were beautiful and i was ugly and you have revolution in your eyes and i believe in nothing and you chastely drop your eyes at all things that were not the republic and i stare fixedly at all women and you were absolute in your ideas and i was shapeless and you pitied me and i venerated you and you scorned me and i admired you and you disdained me and i loved you. What if in the presence of you i became someone once more, what if i was charmed by your chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature without me being clearly aware of it and without the idea of explaining it to myself occurring, what if i had need of you, what if i were your unaccepted pylades what if bro can you hear me

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I do find it interesting how so many section of Les Mis’s convent digression are essentially Callout Posts for Jean Valjean.

There are times when I wonder how much Hugo wants us to see Jean Valjean’s self-isolating/self-harm behaviors as self-harm, and how much he wants us to see them as Noble Self-Martyrdom. (Ex: sleeping in a cold hut in the backyard while Cosette has the house, eating bad food while Cosette eats well, excising himself from Cosette’s life planning to die alone, exiling himself from humanity to live alone.) He recreates the patterns of the convent long after he’s left.

But these chapters make it clear that Hugo is criticizing that kind of behavior— obsessively doing penance via self-harm, while isolating yourself from the world. It’s a real stark criticism of Jean Valjean’s constant self-exile.

If you replace “convent” with “Jean Valjean,” a lot of this feels like a very pointed descriptions of Valjean’s self-destructive behavior at the end of the novel:

When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence, of aberration but of good-will, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no.

A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto, sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme abnegation.

(…)

In the cloister, one suffers in order to enjoy. One draws a bill of exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light. In the cloister, hell is accepted in advance as a post obit on paradise.

(…)

Sacrifice that is misdirected is still sacrifice. There is something grand about making a serious mistake a duty.

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Modern au Jean Valjean would send stuff like this to Cosette daily at 6am on the dot

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Victor Hugo writing Les Miserables is

"[insert name here], who isn't even a character we are following in this story but rather a character who a more important character will interact with in passing, sat next to a tree. Now, reader, I understand that you might be curious about the entire history of this specific tree and how one of its apples was once bitten into by a man who spoke to Napoleon three times in his life before being shot to death by an obscure historical figure I will namedrop exactly once. It is my obligation and honor as narrator to tell you exactly that history, and all of this will culminate in me making a throwaway remark about modern townspeople that feels like the world's cruelest punchline."

And every single time I'm like hell fucking yes tell me the history of this tree!!!!!!! L