#currently watching: the les mis 10th anniversary concert on youtube lol

[missyourflight]

some stuff i read and watched in october:

midnight mass: october innit, did a doctor sleep rewatch too (director's cut obvs) - hill house probably fucks me up more emotionally but riley's speech about what happens when you die (synapses version) is like the closest anything's come to expressing my feelings about it so. also did fall of the house of usher which was fun enough but i feel like i'd have got more out of it if i knew more poe whoops

bodies: netflix time travel time loop nonsense i got weirdly sucked into, kyle soller forever etc. stephen graham reminded me i need to watch boiling point

troy: i'm still wallowing in the emily wilson iliad, therefore, troy rewatch. god it's so stupid but i am weirdly fond of it. in 2004 i just thought eric bana was so so handsome. every old man in this is killing it and brad pitt and orlando bloom are unspeakably bad lol. still bananas to me that that one quote gets circulated and attributed to homer when in fact it is by one of the game of thrones dudes

a quiet passion: god terence davies is such a loss. there's a scene in this where emily dickinson is talking about loneliness and she's so Angry about it and i cried so much

the heiress: watched partly for terence and partly for marty and partly for william wyler. i Don't understand how zooms work but there's a shot where olivia de havilland turns back to the house and it's like everything looms and narrows. need to watch more montgomery clift pictures

i know where i'm going!: i can't get to any of the powell and pressburger bfi screenings so i rewatched the red shoes and i watched this for the first time. very romantic imo to get stuck on a scottish island and fall in love with someone who is not your fiance and want them so much you try and sail away from them in the middle of a perilous storm because they keep standing so close to you!!

killers of the flower moon: give lily gladstone everything my god. literally i can't rewatch that one scene in certain women bc it's So much she's SO good

the quick and the dead: we used to make Films you know. 107 minutes. bunch of cowboys in a shootout competition and that's the whole plot. sam raimi inventing new types of zooms. mid-90s russell crowe and absolute baby leo. no notes!

all that jazz: bob fosse you absolute nightmare. i had to go and rewatch the on broadway opening rn just thinking about it. five stars

possession: something fucked up to watch on halloween! very strange and harrowing, loved the tentacle monster obvs

emma donoghue, learned by heart: i do have a soft spot for famed west yorkshire lesbian gentleman jack for reasons of like ancestral queerness, did Not know that anne lister went to boarding school in york and lived in the same building i met my tutor every term. i love york and i love lesbians and i liked this a lot, what a good and ultimately wrenching way into the story. time for a slammerkin reread and also when will sarah waters return to us etc

[christinealtomare]

☕️ derek klena

Honestly, I could write sonnets about how much I love Derek as a performer and adore him as a person. Jokes about his biceps and my big fat crush aside lol, he is truly the performer whose work has had the most impact on me and I can safely say that without him, I likely would never have gotten into theatre.

I first discovered Derek when I was either 12/13 or 14 and just getting into theatre. It was maybe halfway? through ninth grade and my French teacher had us do a module on Les Miserables that ended with us watching the 10th Anniversary Concert. After that, I totally went fishing on Youtube for a bootleg of the stage production itself and instead I discovered Act I of Dogfight. It was my first bootleg and first taste of real theatre in the sense that it was not a concert, a movie adaptation, or school show (prior to that my one and only stage credit was Broadway Santa in fourth grade and my mom made me do it lol). Unfortunately, Act II of Dogfight was taken down due to a copyright strike so I never did finish the show at the time and instead watched everything else in that person’s bootleg playlist haha. However, the show had made me fall in love with Derek’s voice and theatre. You know how everybody has that one performer that made them completely fall in love with live theatre? Well, Derek was that performer for me lol. I believe I had high school tours right after that and the first thing I asked to see at my former high school was the theatre and subsequently, drama was the first elective I signed up for.

It wasn’t until the next summer that I saw a picture of Derek and Lindsay in Wicked on my Tumblr dashboard at the time and realized that Bieber-haired guy was also buzzcut guy lol. As you can probably imagine, I actually googled him this time and practically inhaled every Youtube video of him singing. I also discovered how young he actually was, though, which I hadn’t realized before and honestly? It was magical seeing somebody not much older than me already doing something that I loved, and wanted to do for life, on Broadway of all places. The fact that his career was basically a result of him looking for a bootleg of Catch Me If You Can and doing a very illegal performance of Goodbye was honestly just the icing on the cake lol. This was also around the time that the first Anastasia workshop was announced and while everybody else was on the Aaron Tveit-high because of the Les Mis movie and were begging him to be Dmitry when the show inevitably hit Broadway, I was one of the maybe two people going “Derek Klena for Dmitry!!” and was told by everybody else that he was too young and twinky for the role LOL.

I did keep following his career after that, however, and I cannot tell you how loud I literally screamed when he was actually announced as the Dmitry. Literally, how often does dream casting actually come true like that?? Anastasia had always been a special story for me because it sparked my love for history so I was excited about it anyway, but Derek being Dmitry was really the factor that pulled me back into theatre after falling out of it for a bit and pushed me as deep in love with this show as I currently am. Having followed him from his buzzcut and Biebyero days, I can honestly say that he is the best performer I have ever heard or seen (through bootlegs lol) and the fact that I never saw him as Dmitry literally breaks my heart to this day. He has the most incredible voice, is such a versatile actor, and so good in every single role he plays. On top of that, he truly does seem like the nicest and most humble person too. I’ve never heard a coworker or anybody I personally know, who has met him, ever say a bad word about him. He’s probably the one celebrity I could say with certainty has never done anything problematic (that we publicly know of lol) and honestly? I feel very, very fortunate that I discovered such a talented performer, who literally stays in his own lane lol, so early on and I am so grateful to have been able to follow his work for as long as I have.

Send me a ☕️ and a topic and I’ll talk about how I feel about it lol

[crisisoninfintefandoms]

This is so interesting, and bless you for sharing this story omg. 

For no good reason, I guess I’ll say how I first got into Les Mis too, on the slim chance that might be helpful to anyone trying to lol. 

I was a musical theater nerd, through and through, and a pretty common thing for me to do with my allowance or birthday money or whatever was to go to a music store and pick up a soundtrack of a musical I hadn’t seen or heard before. So when I was about 10, I snatched up the CD soundtrack of the 10th Anniversary Concert version of the Les Mis Musical, which I’d probably heard of before that but hadn’t really been exposed to. I was immediately enamored, and eventually got the full filmed recording of that performance as well (I believe that’s actually available in its entirety on youtube, if that sounds like something you might be into. It is a concert, not a full performance, but clearly that wasn’t a deterrent for me, so just throwing it out there as an option lol.) After that, I checked out an original cast recording, then had the opportunity to see it live in London, and was by that point clearly firmly in the Musical Les Mis bandwagon. 

In highschool, I managed to find a little group of friend who were also musical theater nerds, also into Les Mis the Musical, and also also shared some of my obsessive, hyper-fixation tendencies. We, together, decided to check out the copy of Les Mis that was in the school library and read it together. It was, as many can attest to, an experience, but one we all thoroughly enjoyed, tho that might have partially been cause we were doing it as a “teen friend group thing” and just having a lot of fun with it all. We poked fun, did dramatic readings of descriptions of sewers, and generally had a blast. As light as we made of the book in a lot of ways, and even tho we’d definitely come to it through our love of the musical, I think we all also genuinely enjoyed it, and appreciated it on its own merits. There are a lot of aspects I genuinely like better in the book more than the musical--or any adaptation I’ve seen, tbh --even though I still adore the musical, and of course that was how I got into it to begin with.

So, that was my trajectory. I’ve also watched the old miniseries (which was...fine), the 2012 film version of the musical (which I didn’t really like at all, personally, but I know others feel differently), as well as couple other adaptations here and there, and I’m currently slowly making my way through Shoujo Cosette (which I’m actually really liking???), but my initial exposure was definitely the musical, and specifically the 10th anniversary concert (which I can’t help recommending--like ugh, it’s still one of my favorite renditions of the musical, even if its somewhat incomplete and “only” a concert and all), and I would also say reading the book is what truly solidified my place as a fan of the story. As much as I love the musical, I just don’t think I’d be digging through as much fanfic (or making up my own plot bunnies I’m too scared to write lol) or squeeing over fanart or otherwise engaging in the fandom if I hadn’t delved into the book. 

Anyway, whoof, that got long, so sorry about that. But I hope that helps at all in figuring out what would work best for you and how you might want to do that. My best “advice” would probably be to try not to be too intimidated and just dive in--and remember of course to have fun with it. Cheers! 

Truth be told I have not seen Les Mis in it's entirety - but you have me curious! Eventually I'll see if I can find a live performance somewhere near me! That aside, how did you get introduced to Les Mis?

aSdfsfsdf cool thanks!! 

I’ve actually never seen a live performance of Les Mis (I’ve just seen bootlegs!)

My introduction to Les Mis was reading the entire unabridged book when I was like 13. I went in blind, no spoilers.

However I do NOT recommend doing that, lol. Like, there is a reason the fandom has nicknamed the book “the Brick.” The book isdifficult to get into and features a billion characters and a billion digressions that have very little to do with the main “plot,” so unless you’re already familiar with the story it can be very difficult to follow or get invested in.......I say that I first “read” the book when I was 13 but I honestly did not understand/appreciate 90 percent of it. :/

I remember I was borrowing the book from a friend and when i gave it back, I told them word-for-word: “this book almost broke me.”

HOWEVER

I did still enjoy the book!

Like I remember I literally gasped out loud when Javert let Valjean go........literally............I went in blind, no one had ever spoiled the book for me, and I honestly didn’t expect that to happen. ;_;. And I still have never gotten over that moment tbh!!!!  I can’t believe Javert just let him go, even though Valjean himself believed that no one who knew his past would think he was worth saving, and I could go ON about this forever and

But I honestly don’t think I appreciated the book until I watched the 2012 movie and then started listening to the stage musical/watching bootlegs of the stage musical! Listening to the musical is what got me invested enough to reread the book later. The book is my favorite version of the story, but the stage musical is why I was able to get invested in the book. 

Also like. If you get into the Les Mis fandom on tumblr...a ton of the content is based on stuff that isn’t actually in the book or the musical or any adaptation???  It’s hard to explain to someone who’s not in the fandom!! 

But basically: in the book there’s a group of Student Revolutionaries called Les Amis. The most famous guy is Enjolras, because he has a big role in the musical

And at least half of the content in the Les Mis fandom centers on the minor characters of Les Amis falling in love or being friends, usually in a modern setting, often in ways that play very fast and loose with “canon.”

So yeah it’s a running joke in the fandom that “Enjolras is the real main character of les mis” because so many people find the story of Les Amis far more interesting than the story of Jean Valjean.....and it’s very valid, but I’ve personally always been way more invested in Valjean. Anyway but now I’m digressing!

I guess the point is that there’s no “wrong’ way to be in the Les Mis fandom, lol....ya just gotta get into whatever you want to get into

So TL;DR:

i wish I could give advice on “how to get into Les Mis,” but I can’t really? I read the book first, and the book is my favorite version of les mis, but I do think the 2012 movie and the stage musical are better places to start! 

I could also dm you a link to a bootleg of the stage show if you want  :)

I don’t really know how to get into Les Mis.......all I know is that I can’t get out lol