#Multiple Paragraphs

[argo-naught]

what an annoying response

you’re annoying

maybe the laziest hate I've ever received, made all the more intriguing by the fact that the asker didn't bother to go on anon. they wanted me to know this incredibly boring insult was Theirs, not just some rando's.

Feedback: Next time tell me something I didn't hear thrice a week for the first eleven years of my life, buddy

[vamp-bites]

Wrote a wolfwood-centric fic recently and doodled this before i even finished writing the chapter its from

I just think they’re silly. And that they should’ve talked more at the end of volume 8, for my entertainment personally

[userarmand]

gonna need lestat to recount in great detail the MUTUAL attraction/psychosexual obsession that existed between himself and armand just to piss these people off btw

[agardenintheshire]

tolkien (a studied linguist) and me (has taken their fair share of linguistic classes) staring at each other after the narrator casually drops that the hobbits just 'forgot' their languages and simply adopted the common speech as if that is a normal thing that happens out of the blue and isn't connected to at best cultural assimilation and at worst colonialism, imperialism, and oppression

[tempestmothstorm]

crazy how the sanshee plush is one of the few actual direct confirmations on what a non-act 2 Natsuki’s home life is like because of how cagey she is on literally everything. Like this isn’t anything surprising or something you wouldn’t be able to extrapolate from the games but unlike everything else we know about her the implications are right there on the tin.

They literally did the character bio trope where where all the likes are normal but the dislikes are about their very specific trauma it’s just so funny they did that on the plushie card

[herbgerblin]

happy birthday, but also i am BEGGING you to elaborate on 'TLT TAZ AU' because me and my friend have been bouncing back and forth ideas on what that could possibly mean and there are a million different directions you could take it. where's your brain at

apologies for this reply being several months old. i am blaming the vitamin d deficiency (this is not a bit, i was super deficient and in depressy mode for a few months.) I'll admit I haven't marinated on this more than a few surface thoughts because trying to determine who was what got very complicated. But I have provided the amalgam of scribbles i have made as is a continuation of this post.

ID: On the left of the first image is a drawing of Barry and Lup standing and talking to each other. An arrow pointing to Barry is captioned "guys with no pulse" and an arrow pointing to Lup is captioned "girl whose whole thing is blood circulation". Between them is a shared thought bubble that reads, "I want to study you under a microscope." They're both wearing black, nondescript clothes. Lup is wearing a belt containing various vials of blood. She also has a cardiovascular tattoo on her chest and arms.

On the right of the image is a doodle of Lup and Taako. Taako is wearing a wizard hat of bones. Lup stares off in the distance, muttering, "I'm gonna take that guy." Taako asks, "In a fight, right?" Lup blushes beside a thought bubble that reads, "NSFW" Taako reiterates in all caps, "In a fight right?"

The second image is sketches of Magnus, Davenport, and Merle. Magnus is a tall man with messy hair and a beard. He wears a long military jacket, open with no shirt, breeches, and knee-high boots. He is beaming and leaning on his leg, one foot resting on top of a skull. Davenport is a short man with a neat little mustache. He wears a tailored military outfit with a cape. He is standing on a platform of bones. Merle is a short, portly man with a hair bun and a beard. He wears a surcoat with a skull and bones insignia over military clothes with epaulets. He is smiling with his hands on his hips.

The third image is three drawings of Lucretia as a necromancer. She has short, curly hair, and a slim build. She wears a black, sleeveless turtleneck dress with double slits and platform sandals. On the left, she is pointing a quill pen towards a skull perched to her hand. Int he middle, she is wearing a dark veil and looking forlornly, an open book resting on her lap. On the right, she is standing and holding her book close to her chest, looking uneasy.

[20dollarlolita]

Something that I've used to judge my health, in more ways than one, is what I call the need-to-pee test.

When I'm sitting, wasting time, and I need to pee, healthy me will just get up and go to the bathroom. That's normal behavior.

Sometimes, however, elements of my health will make that very basic task difficult. When you recognize that you need to pee, but you have to have an internal conversation with The Vampire of Despair about if you needing to pee is a failure and a judgement on your worth as a human being, you need to reach out to someone about your mental health. Being too depressed to get up and go pee is a sign that something in your mental health is very wrong. It's a sign that it's "bad enough" to really need some help.

When you recognize that you need to pee, but you don't want to get up because your body will be in pain, that's a sign that your pain is "bad enough" where you should do something about it. If you've been sitting around your house telling yourself that shit's fine, but you also procrastinate on the basic duty of going to take a pee because doing that simple task is going to cause you so much pain that it's not worth the comfort you get from not needing to pee, your body is fucked, and shit's not fine.

Getting up and going to pee is a thing that should not take effort or be unpleasant. Having difficult getting up and going to the bathroom often means that your problem is actually pretty bad. If you've been ignoring the problem, it's a very good sign that you should stop ignoring the problem.

Needing to pee but not being able to get up and go pee because the cat is sitting on you, however, is normal operating procedure. How dare you move the cat for something as selfish as your basic bodily functions. You metabolized and you didn't even get permission? The cat does not approve.

[st4rbwrry]

i’m so tired of seeing these 1 second fics on my feed. please give me 20k word fics 😤 i want ART. i want DIALOGUE. i want SCENERY.

[introspectivememories]

tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.

(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)

and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.

tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.

(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)

and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.

(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)

and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly

and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves

(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)

but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.

[to-be-a-dreamer]

I talked about this in the tags of a reblog but I need to expand on this because my brain is vibrating and it's all Hank Freaking Green's fault. This will not be coherent at all just roll with it.

I don't know if it was on purpose or not but the scene where The Fix and Pasha were flirting by exchanging fun facts did so so much for the Fix's character in my mind because like. Pasha is the only character we've seen who had a positive response to the Fix's fun facts right off the bat. (Presumably the orphans at the Home for Wayward Interests had positive responses but I'm specifically talking about on-screen reactions.)

The targets that the Fix talks to are so terrified by his facts that they just disintegrate on the spot. The DA is mildly annoyed at best by them. Even the other Prefrontal PIs are freaked out or confused by them at first. It takes a couple episodes for them to come around to his fun facts, especially after "half the bones in your body" one. It takes them some time to realize that that's just how The Fix communicates his thoughts and ideas. He uses his fun facts as a way to connect and bond with friends just as much as he uses them to intimidate his targets.

But Pasha is the first person we see and, presumably, one of the only people in The Fix's life to hear one of his facts and not only immediately accept and understand it to be a method of conversation, but to also respond with a fact of their own and have an entire conversation with The Fix in the way he feels most comfortable.

We've seen so many times that The Fix goes out of his way to try and appear less threatening or even avoid people altogether because he knows most people are scared of him because of his appearance. It takes him so long to convince the other Prefontal PIs that he's really not going to hurt Conrad (compare how quickly Dan is a part of the group and how his motives are never questioned despite how vocal he is about hating Conrad and being all too eager to turn him over to the police and/or have him murdered to how long it takes The Fix) and he doesn't even seem hurt by the idea that all these people think he would murder a child when he's clearly a very kind and loving person, especially to children.

He's just. Come to terms with the fact that everyone's first impression of him will be this big intimidating presence who enjoys hurting people. But he's not. He's just passionate about his job, like everyone else in the city. It just happens to be that his job is to keep Elias focused, which means letting go of the butterfly tails. When he's tasked with eliminating someone who doesn't seem like they need to be eliminated, he immediately stops and questions the case. As far as I can tell, he doesn't like to kill people, he doesn't do it for fun. He does it because that's his job, literally the only thing he was made to do. But he's come to accept that most people will always be afraid of him because of that job.

And then he meets Pasha, who immediately accepts his form of communication without question or confusion. Who isn't afraid or intimidated by him. Who isn't just entertaining his fun facts but is actively engaging and returning with her own. She is the first person (who isn't a child, who is the Fix's peer) that The Fix could talk to without having to explain himself. The first person who wasn't afraid or confused or annoyed by the way he expresses himself.

Like. I dunno I imagine it would almost be like moving to a foreign country as a child and not being able to speak in your native language because every time you do people are suspicious of you or annoyed that you aren't speaking the local language or just plain don't understand you, even if they're trying to be kind about it. And it's harder to explain yourself and express your thoughts in this new language but you learn and you adapt because it's the only way to survive. Then you meet someone who speaks your language. Someone who allows you to speak freely and for the first time you can actually express yourself fully and easily. And they're speaking back to you in the language you think in and for once you don't have to translate everything before you say it out loud and after you hear it. I think that would feel so freeing.

So yeah, I'm guessing that scene was supposed to be a silly goofy one-off gag that's just funny and cute but it genuinely means so much to me. Truly I don't get people who say The Fix isn't as deep or interesting as the other characters he is FACINATING to me and this isn't even touching on his relationship with Conrad or what he might be feeling after learning Ichabod was Pasha's brother. (If it gets revealed that Ichabod was one of The Fix's first hits I will lose it.)

Thank you for coming to my late-night nonsense ramblings I hope I was mildly entertaining

[spectrumgarden]

I keep thinking about how no one seems to think about nuance when it comes to like, the concept of "autistic traits / symptoms" and discussing them, and how that is intertwined with the push to not consider it a disability. And its complex to discuss, but here's my convoluted thoughts. I know it's long but I hope people will take the time to read it.

There are in fact people who do fit some commonly associated with autism traits that are not impaired by them. Let's make up a guy, for a second:

They like routine and repetition a lot but easily handle change in them. For example they wear the same set of clothes for years with no desire to ever branch out, but if you made them wear something else they wouldnt really be bothered by it as long as they dont think it's super ugly, etc. They like to watch the same movies over and over but happily agree to watch other things with their friends when spending time together, and are engaged and interested in those movies. Etc. They speak very formally or choose "complicated" words for things that could be expressed easier. They however do not face problems with communication beyond annoyance of others because they're able to rephrase things easily to be understood, and they also have a normal back and forth in conversations and initiate conversations normally. They sometimes engage in subtle self stimulating behaviors and recognize the desire to do so during boring or stress inducing times (which pretty much everyone does, btw). They dislike loud environments but do not respond with melt- or shutdowns or any other "severe" reactions, and while for example preferring to go to a museum over a club, they easily go through their daily life in busy areas like city centers, shops or cultural events like parades without issues beyond like, mild annoyance and no desire to stay for longer than necessary. They have strong interests in seemingly random topics and spend quite some time researching or engaging with those, but they do not view the world through the lense of said interest, they do not neglect caring for themselves or fulfilling academic or professional responsibilities because they are so engrossed in their interests, they are easily able to hold conversations about other topics. I could go on.

This person would not be diagnosed with autism by any doctor who pays attention to the impairment clause of the diagnosis. They would probably be told "you're subclinical / you do not meet enough criteria / ..." While his person would probably relate quite a bit to (parts of) descriptions of (level 1 and / or low support needs and / or high masking) autism. And this is an imaginary person I made up, but these people obviously exist (and as a side note, are probably what people refer to when they talk about "everyone being a little autistic" etc)

And this person being told they're not autistic might be upset. Because clearly, they have so many autistic traits. They relate to so many videos! But the thing is! There is no impairment! The one thing that connects all of the symptoms related to autism to the actual diagnosis. This does not mean they do not in fact relate to the autistic experience. This does not mean these parts of their life or personality are fake / non existent / not important to who they are and how they experience things. But it is important to differentiate. If they consider themselves autistic, if the world considers them autistic, it waters down the definition to a point of being categorically useless from a medical standpoint, from a standpoint of figuring out who needs support and in what ways. Who needs (early) intervention, who needs extra support in school or at work or at home or in public.

And like. Humanity at large will probably always want to shove themselves into random categories. "Which character are you like?" "What is your personality style?" "What is your star sign?" or "which sports team do you support", and countless more come to mind. I dont think this imaginary person is wrong or silly for wanting to find a category of people they are like, or recognizing this similarity with some autistic people. I wouldnt even mind if they made up a non-clinical category / group of people who relate to autistic experiences without the impairment. It would get the point across that it is a group of people with shared experiences, but it is not the same as autism.

However autism is increasingly treated like something thats just a personality type without impairment, by people online and offline. And when they go "this is an autism symptom" without nuance, without looking at the need for impairment, or even differential diagnosis, it spreads that attitude. "Liking to eat the same foods is an autistic trait"... or is it normal to have food preferences to a degree if it does not cause you stress to eat new foods, if you are capable of eating other food if hungry and presented with them and not the food you prefer? Or is this person anorexic and their mind has created categories of "allowed to eat" and "not allowed to eat" based on arbitrary categories relating to their fear of weight gain? "Only eating with small spoons at home is a common autistic trait"... or is it a harmless preference as long as you are still able to eat food outside a strict routine set up with zero possible deviations? Or is it a person with OCD and eating with small spoons is a compulsive behavior for some sort of intrusive thoughts?

I could go on forever. But in the end, these short sentences are all the same. They are, at the same time: autistic experiences and allistic experiences, because they are so non specific. They are watered down and any additional information is removed.

autism is about a specific combination of experiences that impair you. That's literally all it is. It does not automatically turn us into a category of "other" that is fully not possible to relate to, because we are human too. And some of it will be relatable to people that are not autistic!

And there is value in discussions of experiences of autistic people that go beyond the impairment, as long as we do not forget about it, or treat it as secondary instead of the defining factor. I dont mind if autistic people bond over something they're not impaired by, that they see as a common experience, for example not easily going along with authority. Being creative. Preferring the small spoon (without being impaired by it while having other impairments), whatever, and call those common autistic experiences. But those are not the pillars of what make up autism and solely relating to them should not be your reason for calling yourself autistic. Neither should relating to commonly impairing symptoms without being impaired by your version of them. The impairments resulting from abnormal development are what makes someone autistic.

There needs to be more nuance, detail, when discussing autism symptoms. And the push to, at the very least, expand autism into an area of experiences that do not cause impairment of any kind, or worse claim it never caused impairment, need to stop. It does not help anyone.

I genuinely think part of the whole "everyone is autistic these days" crowd who likes to go after people and invalidate them has picked up on some of this, but they lack the skills to criticize it for what it actually is and / or they want there to be a simple solution, which is that everyone who calls themselves autistic online who does not fit their very stereotypical view is faking. They are wrong of course. But I dont think this comes out of nowhere. There is something to criticize about how autism is treated in many circles, especially among younger people.

I'm really not sure how to end this post because I like to come to some conclusions on my long posts but just. Uhm. The way some people treat "autistic traits" as completely unrelated to the impairment they cause while staying exclusively autistic traits is wrong. The way people try to redefine autism is harmful and in the end not needed because they could simply invent other words for that experience.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[rengineer]

Sending my condolences

" Thanks, Mister. " Dell’s voice held a note of surprise, his eyes studying his dad's old colleague. He hadn’t expected the man to track him down in the workshop, let alone to send his condolences for his late father — a subject he had barely touched on since he got the news.

He hesitated a moment before asking, " So, er— what was workin’ with my dad like? " The question felt odd on his tongue. Growing up, his dad was often a distant figure, always busy with mercenary work, rarely home for more than a few days at a time. Yet, Dell had been happy every time he returned, excited as any kid to see his father walk through the door, even if the moments were brief. They'd have spent time tinkering with junk they found by the side and went camping together. He'd considered himself luckier than a lot of kids, he'd considered himself lucky for having a 'father figure'. He looked up to him, and wanted to be like him.

Yet as the years passed, his dad’s absences became longer, and their once-easy closeness turned to a comfortable silence, then to something else — distance, he supposed, though he’d never labeled it. But it felt comfortable. Mr. Conagher had been a presence Dell didn’t question, the kind of man who stepped in and out of his life but who left a big enough shadow for Dell to feel like he still had a father. But thinking back now, Dell realized just how little he’d known about him. That was something he’d never thought too deeply about. It had been easier not to.

Their time together had been enough.

" Ahem, wanna come inside and have a drink? "

[thickness-protection-program]

As someone who is pretty indifferent towards the institution of marriage the way some people talk about it kinda gets under my skin. Talking about it like it's this magical process that can fix you. I just saw someone say if they aren't proposed to within 1-2 years they don't want it and I'm like??? Yeah everyone's different but some of y'all really set yourselves up for failure the way y'all view marriage

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

what are your honest opinions on Les Mis 2000

Before receiving this ask, I had only seen a little under half of Les Mis 2000 (French version). In order to provide a fair and complete response to this question, I started over and watched the entire show from beginning to end over the course of 5/6 weeks.

I will provide more details below the cut, but my completely honest opinion on Les Mis 2000?

Looking at the show as a whole, without considering adaptational value, it's scattered and confusing. A lot of storylines get picked up or dropped with little to no explanation, the characters and their motivations make little sense, and the time skips are inconsistent at best (Félix abandons Fantine when she is still pregnant, JVJ is released after Cosette is already 4yo and just being left at the Waterloo Inn/Fantine is already on her way to Montrieul-sur-Mer, Immortal Gav is 12 for ten years, meanwhile Javert undergoes a dramatic appearance change many scenes into the time skip, Cosette ages up when I assume the time skip takes place, and Depardieu [I refuse to call him Valjean] never ages until after the wedding). If you look at the context, it makes sense: they decided to (rather than dubbing after the fact) shoot everything in French and then again in English, so of course performances are going to flag, editing is going to be a mess, and the storyline is going to get lost in the changes they've made while shooting two shows at once.

Which takes me to my next point: as an adaptation, it's also incredibly weak. I don't know if I should be blaming the writer, director, or a terrible combination, but so many elements are not only not accurate to the book (fair enough, if you want book accuracy watch '25 Les Mis or '64 I Mis, or '72 Les Mis for accurate barricades specifically) but seem to totally miss the messages of the book altogether! Fantine was always in trouble before she gets fired (undermines Hugo's message that even doing everything "right" Fantine was still put in an unwinnable position), Javert gets his usual "obsessed with JVJ specifically and also treated as unusually cruel by everyone else" treatment, Gillenormand looks out for this fellow old man who was a gardener and has now been joined into his family by marriage, and Depardieu's character is going to get an entire section below. The Thénardier sex scenes are a lot but ultimately harmless compared to, say, the part where Javert cuts his hair (?) and attends law school with Marius and Enjolras as himself (?), and then later arrests the entire class for treasonous speech. This kind of belongs in the previous editing section, but a lot of the reveals (Marius knowing his neighbors are the Thénardiers, the Thénardiers recognizing the old man in the sewers, Cosette knowing her dad saved Marius, Gillenormand and Marius knowing Cosette's dad's background, Depardieu's character knowing about Javert's death) happen WILDLY out of sequence, and since they are plot-driving sequences, the motivations become confused, the choices make no sense, and you get scenes like Éponine trying to coerce Marius into having sex with her. I kind of liked the switch from jet beads to stinging nettle fabric except again, it didn't matter because Fantine's downfall was so badly done (forget that she turns to sex work immediately, only later selling TEN TEETH and her hair to make ends meet — Javert threatens to [and later does] arrest her for the completely legal profession of sex work before showing her where she can sell her teeth???) and Madeleine was so opposite from everything his character is supposed to be and show.

Which brings us to our next point: yes, in both the English and French versions, Depardieu's performance falls flat, but more importantly, there is an inherent misunderstanding of who and what Jean Valjean is at each phase of his life. I'll be honest, there was a lot going on when he was in prison with Javert tormenting JVJ for fun and the fire that Cochepaille needed saving from and Myriel announcing that he was buying JVJ the same way Judas sold Jesus and Cosette already being with the Thénardiers, so I don't have much feedback about JVJ's characterization or the paper that was yellow like sunshine at that point, but (ignoring the fact that Fantine apparently shows up in Montrieul-sur-Mer with no established factory in sight) then he becomes the most corporate businessman possible, with no regard for the wellbeing of his employees or town who spends all of his time running numbers? The hospital is underfunded, he only rubs elbows with other government officials/bankers, he is painfully out-of-touch with the people of his town, and apparently he doesn't even pay enough for Fantine to be making ends meet even before she is fired. A big part of what JVJ goes through in the book is that he feels like he cannot safely express his feelings about the system to anyone, leading him to act like a scared animal after Petit-Gervais, living in constant fear of being kicked ( @secretmellowblog has a great post about this here), but this Madeleine is CONSTANTLY venting and complaining to anyone who will listen. Not only that, but after he leaves M-sur-M, the police admit to Javert that they knew who he was and just decided to ... leave him be? This isn't a man who's living in fear, and this isn't a man who has to make hard choices in order to do good and help his fellow man. For some reason, Sister Simplice seems to be like 85% of his morality? (and we are very much skimming over the romance subplot that was going on there) So it doesn't even feel like he helps Fantine altruistically, it feels like Sister said "Please help" and Depardieu sighed and went, "Fine, I'll see if I can't pull some strings." When he gets Cosette and begins taking care of her, it feels ENTIRELY self-serving and creepy, and he later confirms with his own words from his own mouth that his feelings for her are not fatherly. He cares about prison reform because he experienced it, not from any sense of altrustic human kindness, and Toussaint ends up robbing him for having taken a chance hiring an ex-convict? (because ofc this Toussaint is a mute manservant, not a maid who can actually help Cosette, because all of Depardieu-Dad's choices are to serve himself, not to keep Cosette safe or happy). By the time Marius is sending Depardieu's character away, it's the only only adaptation that you're cheering on Marius, because this man calling himself Cosette's father who bought her for 1500 francs and still sometimes shares a bed with her and locks her in various rooms and has just admitted his love is not fatherly needs to LEAVE.

Finally — and I will freely admit that this is the pettiest section — the historical accuracy is in shambles. Electricity in the 1820s? 1840s fashions in the 1830s? The hair and makeup are given as errors, but how do you have accurate men's shirts and repeatedly let them wander around without cravats? And no one, not a single person, thought to check 1800s French currency? Sending Cosette off to buy bread with FIVE FRANCS (~$100USD)? Leaving one hundred thousand francs for the funeral of someone who canonically doesn't even have a marked grave? Even the part where Fantine sells her teeth: these were simple numbers they could have checked (two teeth, one napoléon aka twenty francs each — not ten for four each). All of the prices and amounts were in the book. It is not that hard to call the imaginary coin being passed between two characters a sous instead of a franc: we couldn't even see it.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would respond to this ask before finally answering, but ultimately, I was asked for my honest opinion, and this is it: it missed the mark for me in every way. I'm sure there are some people who enjoy it, and I am happy for them, but it is not an adaptation that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good Les Mis adaptation or a well-executed show.

[lupeloto]

fiona and lip have genuinley one of the most interesting, complex, and realistic relationships i’ve ever seen portrayed in television and they loved each other so much but could never see where the other was coming from, leading them to always butt heads as they had the weight of their family’s livelihood on their shoulders and in this essay i will��.