#father madeleine

[thatisntverycombefair]

what ive gleaned from 'how jean can become champ'

[dolphin1812]

This chapter!

Fantine’s behavior here is really similar to how Valjean acts around the bishop. In the same way that he was extremely polite and deferential when he entered the bishop’s house, Fantine tries her utmost to appease Javert, complimenting him and admitting her “fault” so that he might treat her more mercifully (which, of course, Javert would never do). Then, when Madeleine helps her, she can’t believe it. She rambles more than before, clearly in shock. It’s also interesting how she initially ascribes all of this kindness to Javert. While it is specified that she’s blamed Madeleine for her suffering this whole time, and it therefore makes sense that she wouldn’t automatically switch to thanking him, it also resembles Valjean’s conflicted feelings over the bishop. When he heard that he was part of the religious establishment, his first instinct was to mention the bishop he remembered from prison and how distant he was. He was still polite in the way he said it, but it’s clear that he couldn’t reconcile that man with the compassion of the bishop in front of him. He doesn’t even realize his high status until he’s almost sent to prison again. Moreover, although his experience with kindness is less complicated than Fantine’s in some way (his hatred of Myriel wasn’t specific in the way Fantine’s hatred of Madeleine is; he blamed society as a whole for his state, not the bishop), that image of a divine struggle is something they both share. This passage is long,  but it’s important:

“Nevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confusion. She had just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers. She had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men was drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants; the one spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which made her shudder from head to foot was the fact that this angel, this liberator, was the very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had insulted him in so hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not know; she trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within her, and something warm and ineffable, indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in her heart.”

Here, we have all the parallels between what Fantine feels in this moment and Valjean’s redemption: the dark vs light imagery; the references to the divine; the idea of changing one’s soul; and Fantine losing her hatred and rage as she’s filled with kindness now that someone else has shown her compassion.

On another note, I like how we see Javert’s emotional investment in the law in this chapter. I feel like his very literal obedience to it makes it easy to imagine him as an emotionless vessel for its dictates (he himself would probably like that image), but his identity is so bound up in this system that any challenges to it hurt him. He’s already in shock because of Fantine’s “crime;” someone outside of society insulting a citizen is unimaginable to him. And an authority figure intervening on the side of the poor? Especially an authority figure who’s suspicious (which is already provocative)? He fears that he’s going “mad” as he experiences “the most violent emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life,” underscoring just how much these rules impact him emotionally. He even trembles and turns blue and pale upon hearing Madeleine repeat himself; his reaction is so strong that it’s outwardly visible.

[mellomadness]

everyone’s already talked about how welly boots by the amazing devil was definitely written while joey was reading the witcher books and working on the show, and how geralt and ciri’s relationship are definitely influential in the song’s creation but like. has anyone talked about the song as is?

it’s from the perspective of a too-soon dead father, telling a story to—presumably—his living daughter whose ears can no longer hear his words and yet he continues to tell the tale. and as she grow up he continues to speak to her, always in her corner, even and especially when she breaks down and screams her hatred toward him in her grief—“I’ve been so scared, you left me here behind, do you not care? how the fuck am I supposed to carry on… without you here?”—he is still there, willing with everything he has left that she will still feel his love, feel the comfort in the ghostly hand on her back, feel his strength and take solace in him, even though they are worlds apart now.

and as she stands in the grass outside her childhood home she feels the wind whip at her, enveloping her as the storm rolls in. she turns to go back inside and freezes.

a brand new pair of scarlet welly boots sits on the front porch. just like the last pair her father bought her before he died. and she finally knows.

he never left

[brian-kinney-apologist]

"oh i forgot, love makes you stupid", says claudia as she continues to stay in the same city, on the same continent full of vicious vampires while once again breaking the great laws the same vampires made up and repeatedly told her anyone should and would be prosecuted for

[lestatbaby]

[the-silliest-lad]

Claudia’s true crime wasn’t that she tried to kill Lestat, or any of the other nonsense crimes the coven used against her, it was the fact that she was a reflection of the vampires in her life. And because they hate themselves, they hated her for it, projecting their rage onto her.

Throughout the show, we are reminded time and time again of how similar Lestat and Claudia truly are. They are violent and insatiable and cunning. But they are also lonely and desperate for connection. But because of their similarities they hate each other. Lestat can see so much of himself in her, in her ruthlessness, her manipulations. But his own self hatred led him to despise her for it.

Even if Lestat made Claudia what she is, even if he might love her, the love is bitter and cold because of his own self hatred that he can’t recon with. Their loneliness and want to have connection is what ruins their bond, with both battling for Louis’s affections. Claudia had no one besides Louis and Lestat had no one besides Louis.

Armand and Claudia’s similarities don’t necessarily come from their personalities but instead their experiences. Both were turned young (in the book Armand is turned at 17), and they were robbed of their childhoods - even though both of their childhoods had ended long before that. The people who were supposed to protect them failed, often becoming the abusers or the enablers to the abuse. Both were left abandoned.

Armand warns both Louis and Madeline that Claudia will one day go mad as her body remains trapped at 14 and her mind grows old, something he knows all too well. Claudia is another version of Armand, and he can’t stand it.

But unlike Lestat and Armand - whose only experiences with love have always been fleeting and costly - Claudia finds someone. Someone who saw her violence, her flaws, and loved her for it, even taking on vampirism in order to be with her. Claudia found Madeline and would not be abandoned again. Even if that meant following Claudia to her death.

[cronchy-dumbass]

2x04:

1x06:

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

ok this is a controversial opinion but like….. to me, henry spencer was actually not a shit father….. hear me out.

i understand that there’s a lot of subtleties that go into emotionally abusive parents, and i’m not trying to dismiss that, but honestly i just don’t see all the negativity that gets associated with him so often. also, between henry and madeleine, one parent actually seemed to be there when shawn was growing up, and it wasn’t his mother.

let’s look at shawn’s childhood. in all the flashbacks, henry was the one who volunteered at shawn’s school, who took him to movies and was around for all of his new hobbies and interests. he was the one making sure shawn did his homework and hung out with his friends and learned life lessons. granted, some of his teaching methods were not appropriate for a kid shawn’s age, so yes i can see where the criticisms come in and i agree with them. but he was so much more than his mistakes, he was the parent who cared.

when shawn grows up, yes there’s animosity between him and his father but to be quite honest, i’ve never met one person who doesn’t have unresolved daddy issues so that in itself doesn’t condemn henry in my mind. we see how much henry saved from shawn’s childhood and how much he remembers, and to me he actually does quite a bit to help shawn when he needs it. this is particularly telling in comparison to madeleine, who isn’t there to begin with and eventually we find out she really did leave her kid behind, and to me that does a lot more damage than any one thing henry did.

shawn and henry have issues, i won’t argue with that. but i really don’t think henry gets enough credit for the good he did and the way he tried when shawn got older. above all else, he was there and he was there for shawn, and that’s important. god knows it’s not everything, but it’s something.

[croutoncretin]

La pietà

[sapphicides]

what if i said fast car by tracy chapman is THE claudeleine song

[biilodyfangs]

EPISODE 8 SPOILERS

thinking...parellels

[thatisntverycombefair]

me finally getting back to the valjean parts after the bastard man tholomyes parts: 🥺🥳💃🎉🎊

[dolphin1812]

Personally, I’m too sad about the Thénardiers doing all they can to scam Madeleine and Fantine as Fantine herself weakens by the day, so instead, I’m going to talk about Javert’s letter:

“That same night, Javert wrote a letter. The next morning he posted it himself at the office of M. sur M. It was addressed to Paris, and the superscription ran: To Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary of Monsieur le Préfet of Police. As the affair in the station-house had been bruited about, the post-mistress and some other persons who saw the letter before it was sent off, and who recognized Javert’s handwriting on the cover, thought that he was sending in his resignation.”

Letters seem to serve two functions in this novel: 1) as documentary evidence (Baptistine’s letter, for instance; Hugo quotes the piece in its entirety) and 2) as cause for gossip. Javert’s letter falls into the latter. It’s interesting to compare this obsession with his letter to Fantine’s own messages. Both of them are the subject of conversation because of their sending of letters, but while the contents of Fantine’s mail could be discovered by finding the person who wrote them (since she couldn’t write them herself), Javert’s literacy gives him privacy. As he wrote it himself, no one can directly discuss the contents of his message, only what was “thought” to be in it. 

The details of what they recognize also add to the small-town feeling of Montreuil-sur-Mer. The curiosity over the letter begins when Javert’s handwriting is recognized. While Javert (as an inspector) is a prominent figure in the town and it thus isn’t surprising that people can identify him so readily, it still suggests that there aren’t so many policemen that it would be difficult to know all of their writing styles. 

However, the detail that he’s sending this to the Prefect of Police in Paris highlights how the French government was more centralized than we’ve previously been given reason to believe. For the most part, Montreuil-sur-Mer has seemed pretty independent. M. Madeleine has received messages from outside of the town (awards and the like), but he refused many of them, and it seems like most of the day-to-day administration discussed so far is ultimately connected to him: his factory, his schools, his hospital, etc. We know he devolves a lot of his powers from how Fantine got fired, but we don’t really see the influence of the central government in Paris on the town. We just see the mayor and the people under him. Here, however, we have a reference to Javert’s tie to the central government (through the police as a nation-wide institution). It’s especially interesting in light of his crisis in the last chapter, where his faith in the mayor’s authority was deeply shaken and he even went as far as to say that he wanted to question an order for the first time in his life. While we, too, don’t know the content of the letter, for now it’s clear that Javert’s issue with this local authority has pushed him to consult a higher authority - the central government - to try to deal with the issue somehow.

[femmecelworld]

need Claudia and Lestat beefing on twitter like I need air to breathe

[impressionism]

What’s wild and sad is just Claudia finding someone who gets her and is there for her (they cute and shit and I care) and like the universe that provides the karma, the “Tower” moment, I’m a tarot girlie, her daddy’s back!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY 🤣

[crowleysfall]

“claudia joined the coven what was louis supposed to do” idk defended her against the people making fun of her?? believed her when she told him his new boyfriend had just threatened her instead of dismissing her?? i love louis as much as the next person but that man has been failing claudia like CRAZY