#now I go back to radio silence

[secretmellowblog]

I actually don’t think it’s true to say Hugo “intended” for Javert to be Romani. I admit my own feelings on this have changed over the years. :( The thing that was the final nail in the coffin to “this was almost certainly not *Hugo’s* original intent” was when I listened to a talk from a person studying race in Les Mis and they addressed Romani Javert specifically. It really feels like the more you study the passages that people pick to support this interpretation, the more the claim this was “definitely Hugo’s intent” seems to hold less water.

To be clear I don’t think Hugo’s intent is the be-all end-all, and that people can reinterpret things, and that reinterpretation is good. I also think people can reasonably disagree on translation/interpretation. but if we’re talking about the original intent….

If you read any other of Hugo’s works, there is never this level of ambiguity when he is trying to indicate a character is Romani. He is especially never this ambiguous when a character is dark-skinned enough to not pass as white. He is explicit. (And he’s racist. Hugo sucked.) Romani characters in other Hugo novels both before and after Les Mis are basically always explicitly said to be Romani, in a way that Javert never ever is.

Even in Les Mis we see a handful a characters who are supposed to be nonwhite, and it’s always very explicit. Hugo was racist and also very unsubtle.

The passage people usually cite as proof Hugo intended Javert to be Romani are two lines in his backstory— one saying that his mother was a fortune teller, the other saying that he’d come to hate “the race of bohemians from which he’d sprung.”

There are two words commonly used for “bohemian” in French. one is usually is used for the race of Romani people and the other usually used as a general adjective. Apparently the term that Hugo uses here is the one that is more commonly used as a general adjective. Saying “this passage is meant to clearly explicitly indicate he is Romani” seems to me like it’s mistranslating it; at best, it seems like you can argue there is possibly some intentional ambiguity.

Later on we also get a description of Cosette that describes her as “the bohemian who walks barefoot,” and the word for bohemian used in that passage is actually the French word that’s more associated with the race. (It’s being used in that context in the racist way people use g*psy as an adjective.) But people are far less likely to interpret dainty innocent Cosette as Romani compared to “violent” “brutal” and “savage” Javert who “hates his own race.”

The “fortune teller” mother could play into bigoted Romani stereotypes— but it could also into bigoted stereotypes about poor/lower class people, which often broadly overlap. Because of racism a lot of the way characters are coded as lower class/being on the fringes of society, and coded as Romani, broadly overlapped.

And “race” is being used in a more general sense here to refer to class, the way Hugo uses it often.

None of the early adaptations of Les Mis go with the Romani Javert interpretation. I can’t find old reviews that mention it. To me this indicates this isn’t what people at the time would’ve gotten out of the story either, especially because Hugo doesn’t seem to have gone on the record about people missing it. And again if you contrast that with other Hugo novels, where reviewers and adaptations DO all get which characters are meant to be read as Romani..:it just doesn’t seem to hold water that this was definitely what an audience was supposed to get from it.

And even if this was Hugo’s intent (and I don’t think it was)….well then it’s a catastrophic failure? Then it’s very Badly Written and shallow and horribly handled?

Because Les Mis is about how people with different kinds of marginalization face very different specific challenges. A character’s gender, class, level of education, criminal record, age, etc etc etc all affect the way that they’re treated and there’s lots of explicit discussion of that constantly.

So if Javert was intended by Hugo to Romani, and especially if he was supposed to be visibly nonwhite— well then it’s a failure of the narrative because Hugo never does any deep research or analysis of how his race would actually affect his life. Even in the very racist and bad novel Notre Dame De Paris/the Hunchback Of Notre Dame, there is explicit discussion of the way being Romani affects the character’s lives and how they’re treated in a way that we never ever ever see with Javert. It’s poorly handled and racist, but it’s there.

But if you want any of that explicit discussion about race to be in Les Mis you have to do the research and add it yourself, because it is just…Not There.

There’s no discussion of Romani culture and Javert’s distance from it, there are no scenes showing the way Javert interacts with other Romani people, there’s no explicit discussion of actual Roma people at all really, and (if Javert’s meant to be read as someone who doesn’t pass as white) theres no discussion of the way being visibly nonwhite would affect his life in such a deeply racist society. literally none of that is there. If Javert is supposed to be Romani there is an utter lack of care paid to how that would actually affect him and the way he’s marginalized, in a way you don’t see with how Hugo handles gender or class.

Again to me it seems like if Hugo intended for Javert to be Explicitly Definitely Roma, we would know; if he intended for him to visibly nonwhite, we would definitely know.It’s not just that the way he codes Javert doesn’t resemble the way he handles Romani characters in other books… it’s also that it doesn’t resemble the level of detail/care he usually pays to Exactly what background each character comes from and Exactly how it affects their lives.

It seems like what fans often do is take Javert’s internalized classism and label that as “internalized racism?” But I feel that while there are similarities because “class” in the 19th century was often treated as something immutable and biological, and classes were often described as a “race”, they’re really not the same thing.

And like, I’m not here to tell people what to do! people can reinterpret things how they want and bring their own takes on the story. Hugo sucked and was shitty and racist. A lot of my favorite Les Mis fanfics are one that take characters Hugo probably intended to be white and reinterpret them as POC, doing research into how that would’ve affected their experiences. But at the same time….

Many other people before me have pointed out that there is a Trend to which characters in which Les Mis tend to be more commonly reinterpreted as POC. There is a reason why “savage” “violent” oppressive cop Javert was played by a black actor on broadway years before we got our first black Valjean.

As someone who used to have this interpretation, I think Javert is a challenging character to attempt to reinterpret as a POC (without massive changes to his characterization) if you’re doing it for “good diverse representation” because he just, sucks so badly. Especially if he’s written as the only POC in the cast, he’s just a mess. He’s described as violent. As beast-like. He’s a bigoted cop. He’s brutal. He’s hideously ugly. He canonically refuses to think because he hates thinking. He hates the “race” (meaning class of poor people) he comes from. Every time we see him he’s compared to a savage animal. And yeah that’s …a lot of baggage! He is a character made entirely of baggage. And adaptations like BBC Les mis show the kind of uncomfortable racism that ends up being brought to the surface when Javert is one of the few main POC in the cast.

But yeah. TL:DR; There is ambiguity in Javert’s initial description, and I see why people have this interpretation. I think people can reasonably disagree on it. But over the years I’ve come down on the side of, it’s a bit misleading to say this is Definitely Clearly Exactly Canonically what Hugo intended and that adaptations/fans are whitewashing him.

To be clear I also think that reinterpreting characters is great and good! And that reinterpreting characters as POC, doing the research that Hugo didn’t, is especially good! but also that Javert in particular is a problematic hornet’s nest of unfortunate implications that kinda have to be managed, and that whether you disagree that this was “Hugo’s intent” or not there’s a massive gap in the story when it comes to discussing race that would sorta need to be filled with outside research.

[ipxakachi]

Guilty Challenge but he also got stuck

[cloudcastor]

I had a minor surgery/procedure today I was super nervous about but everything went well!!! everyone was so attentive and nice, it made the experience an absolute breeze and I felt really comfortable and reassured ;;_;; couldn't ask for a better care team!!!

just got a couple days of healing ahead but super blown away...just had to share it out into the world!!! the care team even wrote me a handwritten note and added it in to my stuff ;;_;;

there has been A LOT of personal stuff going on the last couple months but finally getting to chip away at stuff, and getting medical providers that are helping eith the burden... I'm extremely lucky and thankful to have that experience !!!! can’t wait to get back to art…. can’t wait to hopefully feel some kind of relief soon!

[art-soboro]

hiii what's good guys : ) i got the absolute pleasure and a privilege of joining @starstrider's 5e planescape campaign as a pallid elf druid (circle of stars) named Idhesur Velalu and so far it's been an incredible blast! Idhesur is a reused character from a one-shot i took part in back in 2022 and since then i've had a hankering to revisit them because i got really attached to the concept. they were due for a slight redesign and so they got one along with an impromptu reference sheet (that doesn't even cover all of the details but thats a problem for the future me). the third image is their original one-shot token that i've attached for fun (and which is also due for a remake...)

Idhesur is old, kinda mean and will sell your grandma's ashes if that means their survival and or if said ashes are worth a damn in the first place. they also use any pronouns! diversity win. they've lost their way in life somewhat but don't let that get to them lest the horrors (decades old suppressed trauma) catch up to them. the usual!

+ PATTERN BRUSHES USED (CLIP STUDIO PAINT): 1751605 1742204

[citsiurtlanu]

okay i got tagged by both @phoenixmetaphor and @nostalgicatsea so i must expose how uncool my music taste is and post five songs i've been listening to a lot lately. i had to title something recently so all of these songs' lyrics/titles were in contention for that (and then in the end i didn't actually use any of them... not directly, anyway. lol)

And at once, I knew I was not magnificent High above the highway aisle Jagged vacance, thick with ice And I could see for miles, miles, miles

(this song was the closest to being the winner and i named the fic epoch instead of holocene hahahahaha. shoutout to chibueze ihuoma, who was hadestown's touring orpheus for a while, for covering it 'cause seeing that made me fall in love with this song)

In the confusion and the aftermath You are my signal fire The only resolution and the only joy Is the faint spark of forgiveness in your eyes

Let's raise a glass or two To all the things I've lost on you Tell me are they lost on you? Just that you could cut me loose After everything I've lost on you Is that lost on you?

But there is no one who Could wake my heart like this Could break my world in two I felt a suddenness

Don't wait, don't wait The lights will flash and fade away The days will pass you by Don't wait To lay your armor down

[lordofthestrix]

I'm alive!

[cyanbeetle]

I’m going to move to a new blog for my art so I have somewhere fresh where I can post a wider variety of stuff. If you like my art, you can find it at @biiistre from now on :) thanks for the support

[emptymilk-bottle]

i need books to stop getting in my head

[elgaravel]

reading abt the bosmer again to refresh my memory and thinking abt sylvan and how he can never go back home 😭

[oflgtfol]

shaking my fucking cage my grad school app is due friday and the only thing preventing me from submitting it is that everyone i ask for a letter of rec is taking their sweet fucking time

[myownprivatcidaho]

thoseve yall who were here a year ago might remember that a year ago He was liking tweets like "idk how people can cheat when im in love im obsessed😍" and "the honeymoon stage rlly doesnt die if youre with the right person🥰" and he was liking stuff like that up till recently now shit like this is in his likes something is BROKEN in him

[stayathome-ts]

Feeling a little less bad but a little more tired, so. That’s that I guess.

[coredrill]

hhhhhh well seeing as it’s nearly the last day of the year i should share that. well i started rly writing fanfiction this year (mostly ttgl ofc), and surprising no one more than me, i’ve actually quite enjoyed it!!! and i’ve alluded to it a few times on here so figured i should share links to get more comfortable with it :]

gurren lagann:

So Many Others Like Us | 1.8k | rossiu can’t figure out why he’s so different from everyone else, and asks viral for help. part 1 of 3 of “rossiu and viral and spiral power through my aroace lens”!

Those Who Will Follow | 1.9k | no one should ever feel rossiu’s brand of loneliness again, and he needs yoko’s help to prevent that. part 2 of 3!

Right Within | 5.5k | simon returns to kamina city, but he’s not here to stay. this is like my favorite thing that’s ever come outta my own brain FNDNCNJDJCJ. part 3 of 3!

Non-Verbal Communication | 1.8k | kamina’s dead and kittan’s the only one who heard his last words.

Bleeding Heart of Stone | 2.9k | one of adai’s holy days is around the corner, and rossiu decides to celebrate - for gimmy and darry’s sake, of course.

jujutsu kaisen: (the second one contains shibuya incident arc manga spoilers)

Within You, Forever | 1.3k | post jjk 0, maki knows why gojo sent toge and panda to the school, and it’s not sitting well with her.

Life After Love | 4.8k | nobara survives mahito’s attack, and just can’t figure out how.

discotrek:

Labyrinth | 1.2k | michael burnham, known responsibility hoarder, takes responsibility for her own actions upon the revelation of lorca’s.

eva rebuilds:

Evangelion: 5.0 You Can (Not) Be Happy | 2k | kaworu, post shin eva, as he reckons with his perception of his own & shinji’s happiness.

[literal-bot-account]

y'know, back when I used Reddit, if you found some hateful content of any sort, it wasn't that hard to report it. You clicked the "Report" button, selected "Hateful Content" out of the wide variety of options available, and then clicked the "Submit" button. I did this pretty often, because some of the communities I was in attracted rather unsavory characters as a side effect.

Do you know what happened next? Next, I received an automated message that said basically "Hey, thanks for reporting This Content (link to reported content). We've received your report and will review it shortly." Usually, a day or two later, you'd receive another message in your inbox saying "Thanks again for reporting. We found this content in violation of our TOS and have removed it." Sure enough, if you followed the link back to whatever you reported, it would be gone.

It was that easy. No explaining yourself, no explaining yourself again but differently, no redirect to a new tab, you didn't even need to know the specifics of what did or didn't violate TOS. No matter what happened, they would write back and tell you what was going on. If the reported content didn't violate TOS, they would tell you.

When I hopped over here full-time, I continued that reporting habit, thinking it'd be largely the same experience. I have had complete and utter radio silence from @staff on every single report I've ever filed. Have I been making a difference? Is my voice being considered? Who knows! But it certainly hasn't felt like it so far.

At least now I know those reports were going straight into the garbage, rather than just having to wonder.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Not to be a Negative Nancy... but is anyone else worried that with Kingdom Hearts IV coming out after Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it's going to feel so much lesser in comparison?

Because I kind of feel that way... and I know I'm not the only one, in some cases. Like, I remember how in the Key Keepers' spoiler discussion Final Fantasy XVI spoiler cast, Audrey (somewhat jokingly) mentioned how no matter what epic thing they try to do with the boss fights in Kingdom Hearts IV, it wouldn't be on the level of the Eikon fights in Final Fantasy XVI, so it wouldn't have as big an impact on her as those did (paraphrasing here).

And then KHInsider has a thread going on right now, about how Kingdom Hearts IV shouldn't try to take too much from FFVIIR--as they are different games--and user Luminary agreed with that, but brought up how I feel: that if they do take any inspiration from Rebirth, it should be the good character writing and interactions, and cinematography--since they've now shown they know how to do that, and if they don't do that in KHIV, it'll feel like a downgrade.

But I'm just worried that they won't. Especially where the girl characters and interactions are concerned.

I mean, we have new writers on KH now, so maybe they can help make things better than they have been before. But IDK.

[lostinatrainofthoughts]

My tinder adventures have come to an end !🤣

well atleast for now!

its so disappointing to me that i never got to meet these people i was talking to!!! phone calls were as far as it went so I'm devastated all that effort amounted to nothing. like i wanted to meet in person at least once, but it all stopped before anything could happen. i know its been only a month but i think i need a break?

but i will say its so funny that there was so much emotional investment in a person (people??). its been sooooooooooooooooo longgggggg since ive felt this way