#and it makes me both sad and angry

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

thought to myself "the ted lasso team can't be tHAt white???" as i was watching sheffield vs man city and then i went to google the team.

the amount of black players on the team vs the screentime black players get............... they have a black coach ?! i'm not paying loads of attention but like ???

[secretmellowblog]

The thing is, Jean Valjean’s “nineteen year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread” from Les Mis isn’t actually unusual….not even today! I see people talking about it as if it’s strange or unimaginable when it happens every day.

In modern America — often as a result of pointlessly cruel (and racist) habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws— people are routinely sentenced to life in prison for minor crimes like shoplifting or possession of drugs.

The ACLU did a report in 2013 detailing the lives of various people who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for nonviolent property crimes like:

•attempting to cash a stolen check

•a junk-dealer’s possession of stolen junk

metal (10 valves and one elbow pipe)

•possession of stolen wrenches

•siphoning gasoline from a truck

•stealing tools from a tool shed and a welding machine from a yard

•shoplifting three belts from a department store

•shoplifting several digital cameras

•shoplifting two jerseys from an athletic store

• taking a television, circular saw, and a power converter from a vacant house

• breaking into a closed liquor store in the middle of the night

And of course, so so so many people sentenced to life without parole for the possession of a few grams of drugs.

And we could go on and on!

Gregory Taylor was a homeless man in Los Angeles who, in 1997, was sentenced to “25 years to life” for attempting to steal food from a food kitchen. He was released after 13 years. The lawyers helping to release him even cited Les Miserables in their appeal, comparing Taylor’s sentence to Jean Valjean’s.

And there’s another specific bit of social commentary Hugo was making about Valjean’s trial that’s still depressingly relevant. He writes that Valjean was sentenced for the theft of loaf of bread, but also that the court managed to make that sentence stick by bringing up some of his past misdemeanors. For example, Valjean owned a gun and was known to occasionally poach wildlife (presumably for his starving family to eat.) . So the court exaggerates how harmful the bread theft was—he had to smash a windowpane to get the bread, which is basically Violence— then insist the fact that he owns a gun and occasionally poaches is proof that he is habitually and innately violent. Then when Valjean obviously becomes distressed traumatized and furious as a result of his nakedly unjust sentence and begins making desperate (and very unsuccessful/impulsive/ poorly thought through) attempts to escape…. the government indifferently tacks more years onto his sentence, labels him a “dangerous” felon, and insists that its initial read of him as an innately violent person was correct.

And it’s sad how a lot of the real life stories linked earlier are similar to the commentary Hugo wrote in 1863? Someone will commit a nonviolent property crime, and then the court insists that a bunch of other miscellaneous things they’ve done in the past (whether it’s other minor thefts or being addicted to drugs or w/e) are Proof they’re inherently violent and incapable of being around other people.

A small very petty fandom side note: This is also why I dislike all those common jokes you see everywhere along the lines of “lol it’s so unrealistic for the police to want to arrest Valjean over a loaf of bread, there must have been some other reason the police were pursuing him. Because the state would never punish someone that harshly and irrationally for no reason. so maybe javert was just gay haha”. (Ex: this tiktok— please don’t harass the creator or poster though, I don’t think they were intending to mean anything like that and its just a silly common type of joke you see made about Les mis all the time so it’s not unique in any way.) because like.

As much as I don’t think Les Mis is a flawless book or that its political messaging is perfect….the only way that insanely long unjust sentences for minor crimes is “unrealistic” is if you’re operating on the assumption that prisons are here to Keep You Safe by always only punishing bad criminals who do serious crimes. And that’s just, not true at all. Like I get that these are just goofy silly shallow jokes, and I’m not angry or going to harass anyone who makes them. but it feels like there’s an assumption underlying all those goofy jokes that “this is just not how prison works!” “Prisons don’t routinely sentence people to absurd laughably unjust pointless sentences!” “Prisons give people fair sentences for logical reasons!” When like…no

Valjean being relentlessly hounded and tortured for a minor crime in a way that is utterly ridiculous and arbitrary in its cruelty is not actually a plot hole in Les mis. It’s a plot hole in …..society ajsjkdkdkf. And the only way to fix that is to fight for prison abolition or at least reform, and (in America) stand up against the vicious naked cruelty of habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws.

But yeah :(. I hate how Les Mis opens with a prologue saying the novel will be obsolete the moment the social issues it describes have been resolved— but two hundred years later, the book is still more relevant than ever because we’re dealing with so many of the exact same injustices.

[rogueddie]

Once again thinking about the fact that Caleb McLaughlin is easily the best actor on Stranger Things and Priah Ferguson is slept on, despite being hilarious on the show. Thinking, thinking...

[andauril]

"Wyll is boring bc he is good and not edgy enough bla bla" Well Alistair Theirin is also good and sweet and romantic and whimsy etc. and y'all love him and his romance and his character. He's not boring in your eyes, isn't he? Only one of these two gets stamped off as boring. I'm sure race has nothing to do with that ...

[nympippi]

angsty vance

that is all 👍

“Why haven’t the adults helped me”

[ow1et]

always will love people showing kindness / love to athene at tumultuous moments because she gets so ridiculously frustrated about it.

[camgoloud]

you ever just. become overwhelmed by a sudden out-of-nowhere wave of tenderness and affection and longing for reconnection directed towards someone to whom you no longer speak for Very Good Reasons

[jankwritten]

i think one of my biggest gripes with TSATS is the sentence structure and the way that things are phrased.

Sentence structure: the book is CONSTANTLY using ", and", or "then", or "but" instead of splitting up a phrase into two separate sentences. Once I noticed it, I couldn't stop noticing it. In some places it works fine, but right out the gate, as the first line of chapter one, it 1) caught my attention in a negative way and 2) felt immediately clunky and awkward.

The way that the book demonstrates action also feels unnatural and doesn't flow as well as it could. Things are described as happening "now", such as when Kayla takes her lolipop out of her mouth and holds it at her side, the book narrates it as "now holding the lolipop at her side". We didn't SEE that action occur, we're just being described the RESULT of the action, does that make sense? As a reader, you want to SEE the action, you want to SEE her tug the lolipop out of her mouth, see her hand hang by her side as her expression pinches with anxiety over the discussion. We don't want to just be told that "now" her lolipop is out of her mouth, y'know?

There are also sentences that just feel flat out unedited, phrases that have too many words for what they want to accomplish, or with a structure that doesn't make sense - like on page 56, the sentence "They raced up the steps to the platform, Nico easily outrunning his boyfriend, though that was mostly due to Will having to get his land legs again."

First of all - why are they running up the platform? In the previous line, where we're told their cab driver got them to the station with 6 minutes to spare, the specific choice of saying "to spare" makes it sound like there is plenty of time to make it to their train. In the sentences after, we even learn that Nico and Will wound up waiting for their train anyway, so, the fact that they're running when Will feels sick reads...weird, to me. If I was car sick, and then somebody forced me to run for no reason, I would not be a happy camper.

Second of all - The addition of the final third of the sentence, after the second comma, should be it's own phrase. It should be given it's own space, like "(though that was mostly because Will didn't have his land legs back yet)." because it's not important information, just an offhanded comment Nico is making.

Third of all - "though that was mostly due to" and "having to get his" are clunky and wordy. It could've just been "Nico easily outrunning his boyfriend, who didn't have his land legs back yet." It's a smoother sentence that doesn't get bogged down by the extra words.

And that's just one instance. This book is LOADED with moments like this, where action will get lost in a sentence's wordiness. The book tries to be quick and snappy, in Riordan's style, but it fails because it can't quite nail down the phrasing.

There are also moments where the only thing the characters are interacting with is each other, only grinning, grimacing, sighing, glancing at one another, etc etc, instead of doing actions while they speak. Fidgeting with their hands, shifting from side to side, looking away at their surroundings, that kind of stuff is how you convey a MOOD. Body language is important when writing character conversations!! Is somebody relaxed, or are their shoulders tensed up, arms folded across their chest with their muscles flexed, leaning back on one leg with their body halfway tilted away, as if they were ready to flee at a moment's notice? These are the kind of details that I'm missing in TSATS, the kind of things that feel like they're missing.

I also have a lot of gripes with the dialogue itself.

People don't talk like they do in TSATS. The content of what they're saying is realistic enough, sure, yeah, but the specific way that a lot of the dialogue is phrased? It doesn't feel natural. Try reading some of the sentences out loud without editing any of the words. It doesn't sound the way a human being SPEAKS.

THAT'S what I mean when I say these characters are OOC. The way that they're speaking is uncomfortable and feels as if they're being used as a puppet, or a mouthpiece for what somebody ELSE wants them to say.

[ayamos]

Nope nope nope, another 5/6months I can't believe this😭😭,

It'll be two years after season 2 like wtf

And netflix backtracking is hilarious. They should have just owned it.

Whoever you are intern, I'm grateful. Atleast now we know

[hybryda]

You know... it makes me sad sometimes to know that there are stories I know my mom or dad would enjoy to read or watch and love them, but they would never see them bc it's manga or anime and I hardly convinced them to watch some k-dramas

[starrytalking]

Honestly realising it is completely fine to not want a romantic relationship not only because I just don’t want to but also because I don’t want the commitment and want to freely make decisions for my life just how I want to live it felt really nice :)

[b0nelessdoodles]

How am I supposed to work when I just wanna go home and be deranged about Narinder and Shamura and make a whole ass video about it fuck you capitalism

[fellsilver]

It does suck that you can never think about the Seven — or any of Mys.tra's Chosen — in relation to parenthood without also considering why Mys.tra wanted those children to exist and what effect that has on everything

[ohemaa-warrior]

.

[hella1975]

choked up in my room rn bc i was sat in the car with my mum completely lost in thought and she out of nowhere went 'are you okay?' and i was like 'yeah? why?' bc i was totally fine i was literally just thinking and she let it go and then five entire minutes later she goes 'are you sure? have i done something?' and she sounded so genuinely anxious and i could tell she'd been thinking about it the entire 5 minutes while id been completely oblivious and i spent so many years as a child letting everything bottle up until it all burst out in a messy and ugly breakdown that took her down with me and despite that she never hated me she only ever blamed herself for not seeing the signs and she's never been able to see my signs because i keep everything to myself and it terrifies her that she might miss something and she handles things poorly when she's scared and she gets too angry but fundamentally she's trying her absolute hardest to be a good mother and it wasn't always enough and i know i have to hold her at least partially accountable but also she's my mum and im her daughter and she always just wants to know if im okay and most of the time im not and somehow that feels like ive betrayed her

[randomnameless]

Teaspoon translation released their latest update and it looks like Mercie's teardown of Lorenz in the B support was something the localization more or less made; in the JP version it was more teasing and poking fun at him and she even apologizes to him for it.

I joked about it earlier,

But that's what you get by removing the "~ara ara" part of Mercedes's... character through the VA, I know a non jp VA won't say "~ara ara", but it conveys a lot about a character's personality, just like the "b-baka it's not like I care about you" tsundere isn't just a way of speaking, but it's supposed to make you understand the person talking has, uh, difficulties opening up (insert all traits of a tsudere archetype).

Mercie is sometimes aloof and sees herself as the big sister of the group in general, but, as a "big sister archetype", while she can be motherly she can also tease and make fun of people - all in good faith, since she apologises afterwards.

I won't say it's like Rhage, where getting an incorrect reading on the character will give, well, discrepencies in the text and a different character all together, but eluding the "Mercie teases people as an affectionate big sister type" to have her uncharacteristically put down Lorenz is, imo, not an accurate reading of Mercedes's character (but again, maybe I'm wrong!).