#le dernier jour

[hayaomiyazaki]

Gaspard Ulliel and Thibault Vinçon LE DERNIER JOUR — 2004 dir. Rodolphe Marconi

[locura-azul]

Le Dernier Jour (2004)

[unchataparis]

Thoughts on Le Dernier Jour (The Final Day)

I haven’t watched any episode of Season 5 past Exaltation last year, because according to Thomas Astruc, waiting will really make it worth it.

I do want to watch all of Season 5 before the Miraculous movie comes out, however, as the film will heavily spoil the ending of Season 5 according to Julian Zag, which means I am really looking forward to bingeing Season 5 in a couple of days when it's eventually released on Disney Plus.

But, I was scrolling through my YouTube recommendations today, and saw the trailer for the double-episode finale Le Jour Dernier, and thought: why not? How badly can I be spoiled if it's just a trailer? And – boy, I did not need to be worried about getting spoiled because I have absolutely no idea what is going on. Some incidents has gone down in the preceding episodes, that has wildly derailed Miraculous from the storyline I know it as.

Most prominently:

Did this man put his own son in psych ward? With Kagami? What on Earth is going on? I certainly hope this isn’t proving the theory that both Adrien and Kagami are Sentibeings, because I do not have the energy to explore that narrative. But Adrien isn’t wearing his Miraculous anymore – was he found out? And what is Gabriel hoping to achieve by pushing one of his Alliance rings at him?

Is it now a brain-washing device? A tracking device?

Gabriel is monitoring both Adrien and Kagami’s vitals, are they ill? Or is he expecting the result of some experiment? Neither of them look very well as an off-mention.

The trailer does show Marinette wearing what appears to be both the Black Cat and Ladybug Miraculous, transformed and battling Monarch to boot, so was Adrien’s Miraculous removed from him and is in Marinette’s custody? I’m glad Monarch doesn’t have it at least.

It’s a cool idea, but I’m not particularly fond of it; I know that Marinette wearing both the Black Cat and Ladybug Miraculous, thus elevating to some divine, higher being, has been a popular trope in the fandom since Season 1, but it honestly seems like giving Marinette far too much agency, and, even in the scopes of a cartoon, unrealistic power. Like in Season 3, Chasseuse de Kwamis, where Marinette wore all the Miraculous minus the Peafowl and the Butterfly, and Master Fu remarks that she is the first hero in the history of the Miraculous to do so.

Really? That doesn’t seem like it’s true. Is it just Master Fu’s favouritism influencing his memory? Because previous Miraculous holders were adults and soldiers, battling wars, supernatural beings, and superhuman enemies, surely a fourteen-year-old girl from Paris couldn’t have triumphed five thousand years of remarkable individuals all by herself? 

I do also fear that Marinette having both Miraculous means that she will save the day single-handedly again, which – kudos to her, I can’t blame the writers for having a favourite, but it really does not look good for Adrien at this point.

Marinette is aware that Adrien has gone missing, locked up in Gabriel's multi-use mansion which can function as everything from a house, a jail, an underground villain lair, and a party venue. If this dream sequence of Marinette charging to rescue her damsel-in-distress (linguistically the right term) is any indication, I assume she doesn’t know it’s Gabriel’s fault otherwise she would’ve knocked down his front door. 

From all these screen-captures of the Parisian Miraculous Team in various states of despair, I assume there’s going to be once again a city-wide event which impacts and drains everyone. It seems significant how every one of their locations is a place of personal significance: Nino seems to be at the same street where he realised, in Larme Ultime, that Rena Rouge may be cheating on him with Chat Noir, Kim at the swimming pool, Max the brainiac in their homeroom, and Sabrina in Chloé’s closet (lmao).

Does this hint at another possibility of an all-out battle royale like in Penalteam? I hope so, Penalteam was so cool. And if the writers could up the fight scenes and choreography even a bit from that episode, they could cinch Miraculous’ place in 3D animation history.

Judging by the half-broken moon, a Chat Blanc reference :)?

I love Chat Blanc, he’s the best Akumatized victim thus far, and if he takes a step onto the battlefield against Monarch, even for a man with fourteen Miraculous on his side, that’s going to be a challenge. Just as how Marinette awakens from a dream of saving Adrien, Adrien seems to be rousing from this rust-sky, broken moon nightmare, is he remembering his alternate self from another universe? If Adrien and Chat Blanc manages to have a conversation together (hopefully one that doesn't involves Marinette/Ladybug) that'll be a bingo-stamp for the Unrealistic Miraculous Expectations card.

Plagg carrying Adrien's Ring away, yep: seems like he's delivering it to Marinette.

Marinette seems to lose an initial battle against Monarch with this ominous flickering scene –

– Adrien and Kagami are announced at large, and –

Who is this??

I thought it was Socqueline at first, judging by the hair and the glasses, but that is very much Lila's face and eyes and lips. Has she disguised herself as Socqueline? If so, for what purpose? (Nice leather jacket by the way, very femme fatale.) Or, is it – building on the rumours I've gandered about Lila in Season 5 so far – did Socqueline never exist and was only an instrument of Lila's conniving? That doesn't sound too farfetched for Miraculous actually.

But Miss Cerise does appear in the trailer, looking smug as she always does. Lila has much more of a presence in this season compared to the previous, happily, I look forward to seeing her more than anything else when I finally watch Season 5 :). That, and seeing Adrien in action again.

Final thoughts: It's a little concerning that Chloé didn't show up once in the trailer. Neither did Félix for that matter, for two people that are deeply important to the plot. I know it's difficult for the writers to include everyone in an integral manner with a forty-minute plot, but considering Chloé and Félix's characters and contribution to the series, I hope their non-appearance is because they didn't have the space to fit them in, and not because they're completely absent.

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

LE DERNIER JOUR DE HPL

Art by Jakub Rebelka

[empirearchives]

Napoleon hallucinates Josephine a week before his death in 1821

From the timeline based on the St Helena notebooks of General Henri Gatien Bertrand, Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène. Les 500 derniers jours (1820-1821)

28 April 1821:

Napoleon was no longer himself, was becoming anaemic because of internal bleeding, was becoming less and less lucid, indeed occasionally delirious. During the night he said that he had seen Josephine and spoken to her, he thought he had been walking in the garden at Longwood, he kept requesting oranges. The doctors began to fear the worst. The Grand Marshal Bertrand exclaimed: “I kept thinking about how great the change was! Tears kept coming to my eyes as I looked at that man, so awe-inspiring, who had commanded so proudly, so absolutely, beg for a coffee spoon, asking permission, obedient like a child… “Voilà le grand Napoléon”: to be pitied, brought low!”

(Fondation Napoléon)

[terresdebrume]

Charles: It's like. It's like they're stuck on repeat.

Edwin: That's exactly what it is. If I'm right, it's a loop. And they've been stuck in it since 1994.

Crystal: He's been killing his family over and over again since 1994?!

Ce dialogue est présenté 100% sans ironie.

[dolphin1812]

I've been reading Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man, and the edition that I have comes with a preface from 1832.

It's from before the June Rebellion (March), but it still feels quite ironic!

And Hugo's love of Louis-Philippe feels different here, too. The close relation may have played a role, just as it did in his other work, but when he writes this:

"Yet we admit that if ever a revolution appeared capable and worthy of abolishing the death penalty, it was the July Revolution. It really seemed to fall to the most humane popular movement of modern times to do away with the barbaric punishment of Louis XI, Richelieu and Robespierre, to stamp the inviolability of human life into the law's brow. 1830 deserved to break the blade of '93."

I actually don't view this purely cynically? He may have genuinely thought this at the time (especially since he was more conservative then than later in life, as is reflected in his greater skepticism of the French Revolution; he may have remained against the death penalty, but I feel like his portrayal of it here rings much more negatively than it does in Les Mis). I just think it's interesting to reflect on the difference between a Hugo who admired Louis-Philippe as a patron and who was watching his policies in the moment than a Hugo reflecting on the consequences of those policies, rejecting the institution that the man represented, and still praising the man himself.

At the same time, the expectation of greater conservatism made me forget that this is still a predecessor to Les Misérables in many ways, and his condemnation of "gentlemen" (Hugo's word) who only wanted to abolish the death penalty when it affects them -- not when it affects ordinary people, who suffer the most from it -- was a striking reminder of that. Hugo's class-related issues are present, too (he makes some strange comments about slang that I can see that digression growing out of, and while the narrator's education is important in establishing the possibility that he could have written all of this, he also links it to being "civilized"), but I think I expected it to be worse than it is? He also describes the suffering of families left behind after the death penalty takes the person they depend on, which reminded me a lot of Valjean's sister and her children. Interestingly, he also stresses the suffering of those executed who have no families, arguing that their status as orphans of society is equally tragic. It made me think of Gavroche and his lack of options if he had grown up because of his marginalization, but it was also just moving to read on its own, particularly since it argued for caring for people beyond merely the strictures of the family.

It's fascinating to see how the narrator is and isn't like Valjean as well. On the one hand, he's extremely different in that he's our first-person narrator; we rarely get insight into Valjean's thoughts, instead seeing him through the eyes of others, but here, everything comes from this one man. At the same time, I do feel like Hugo's trying to find a way towards the "everyman?" I haven't finished, but so far, we don't know what the specific crime that brought this man to the scaffold is. We do know that he's leaving behind a mother, a wife, and a daughter, and that his daughter is his chief concern. With Valjean, we knew the details of his crime, but we also had time to delve into the different facets of his life that led to such a harsh sentence, and empathy for him on the basis of his "crime" was important in critiquing poverty. Here, we need to empathize with our narrator in spite of his crime, so keeping it vague is powerful. Whether he killed or robbed to support his family like Valjean did, it doesn't matter; what matters is his life.

(And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there's a bread thief in the novel).

Justice is also terrifyingly routine. The judges who sentenced him care less that he will die and more that they stayed up late deliberating his case. As he's being transferred, the usher drops his snuff, and when the prisoner says that he's losing more than him (as he will die), the usher complains that he'll not have any snuff on the trip to Paris, not processing that the man he's speaking to is going to lose his life. It's insensitive, of course, but it also illustrates how desensitized everyone involved in this process is.

[briselegeredansletemps]

Le dernier jour a Hanoï je me suis arrêté au bord du "lac de l'épée restituée" où se trouve, je crois, "la tour de la tortue". Je me fie à internet.

J'ai dessiné deux heures.

En fait, j'étais la depuis peut-être 15 minutes, une petite fille s'est assis à côté. Jennie, 7 ans, s'est présenté à moi et elle a tapé la discute pendant le reste du temps en dessinant avec moi. "T'es un artiste? Quel âge tu as? Moi ma maman m'a dit d'aller te parler et de dessiner parce que comme ça je parle anglais. "

Sa maman est venue dire bonjour. Puis elle a disparu un bon moment.

Jennie m’a fait dessiner des trucs en mode "et ça tu peux le faire?". A chaque fois elle prenait des feutres et en 5 traits elle traçait les lignes que je m'étais 25 minutes à faire apparaître.

C'était peut-être le meilleur moment de ses deux semaines.

[hayaomiyazaki]

LE DERNIER JOUR (2004) dir. Rodolphe Marconi

[apodicticdotnet]

"The Last Days of Disco" grande size movie poster (1998).

[adrastee-rpg]

juste..c'est trop.

respect

nom masculin 1. Sentiment qui porte à accorder à qqn de la considération en raison de la valeur qu'on lui reconnaît. Inspirer le respect. 2. Ce que certains rpgistes ne connaissent pas ou plus.

Foutage de gueule

1. Expression familière, voire grossière, qui fait référence à l'expression se foutre de la gueule de quelqu'un et qui s'emploie pour désigner une moquerie ou du dédain vis-à-vis d'autrui.  2. Ce que de trop nombreux rpgistes devraient arrêter de faire et appliquer un peu plus le nom masculin défini juste au dessus.

[cinecois]

On fait face à l'apocalypse avec *TERMINATOR 2 : LE JUGEMENT DERNIER Aujourd'hui, on s'entraîne pour éviter une guerre nucléaire initiée par l'intelligence artificielle avec le film TERMINATOR 2 : LE JUGEMENT DERNIER. Un québécois regarde le doublage français du film américain TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991). ≡ Passes au Niveau Supérieur sur mon Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinecois

[logogreffe]

Paroles : Il fait toujours beau au-dessus des nuages It's always sunny above the clouds Mais moi si j’étais un oiseau j’irais danser sous l’orage But if I were a bird I'd dance under the storm Je traverserais les nuages comme le fait la lumière I'd fly through the clouds as the light does J’écouterais sous la pluie la symphonie des éclairs I'd listen to the symphony of lightning under the rain Dès sa plus tendre enfance, elle ne savait pas From her earliest childhood, she didn't know how to Parler autrement qu’en criant tout bas Speak except by shouting softly Pas faute d’essayer de les retenir Not for lack of trying to hold them back Ces cris et ces larmes qui les faisaient tant... Those screams and those tears that made them so… Il fait toujours beau au-dessus des nuages Mais moi si j’étais un oiseau j’irais danser sous l’orage Je traverserais les nuages comme le fait la lumière J’écouterais sous la pluie la symphonie des éclairs En grandissant rien ne s’est calmé As she grew up, nothing calmed down Petite tempête s’est trouvée Little storm found for herself Des raisons de pleuvoir autant Reasons to rain so much Qui pourrait l’aimer franchement ? Who could love her honestly ? Personne n’aimerait se retrouver No one would like to find themselves Au cœur d’une tempête avouez In the heart of a storm, admit it Il y a des raisons de pleurer There are reasons to cry Elle a ses raisons mais She has her reasons but Il fait toujours beau au-dessus des nuages Mais moi si j’étais un oiseau j’irais danser sous l’orage Je traverserais les nuages comme le fait la lumière J’écouterais sous la pluie la symphonie des éclairs Quand la tempête a su When the storm found out Que des mélodies That melodies Pouvaient s’échapper du vent Could escape the wind Et se retrouver And find their way Dans le cœur des gens Into people's hearts Celle-ci s’est dit This one said to herself Nulle raison d’envier le soleil There's no reason to envy the sun Je ferai danser les gens I'll make people dance Au rythme de mes pleurs To the rhythm of my cries La tourmente de mes chants The torment of my songs Viendra réchauffer les cœurs Will warm hearts Réchauffer mon cœur Warm my heart Il fait toujours beau au-dessus des nuages Mais moi je suis de ces oiseaux qui nous font danser sous l’orage Je traverserai tous les nuages pour trouver la lumière En chantant sous la pluie la symphonie des éclairs

[shakeskp]

Cette jouissance totale quand l'écriture se débloque enfin après une période de blah et qu'on écrit une scène ultra satisfaisante <3

[ficuscircus]

Presque - une fanvidéo HPI

C'est presque toi, presque moi, ces amoureux… Vidéo répertoriée sur AO3 et Vimeo

[gentrychild]

On m'a dit que je devrais venir t'importuner en français, aloooors merci merci d'écrire autant de fics fabuleuses qui m'inspirent et illuminent mes soirées ! (Et m'aident à procrastiner)

Bonsoir! Ecoute, si tu souhaites m'importuner d'une aussi charmante façon, ne te gêne pas! Merci pour tes compliments, qui me vont droit au coeur, et crois-moi, c'est un plaisir de t'aider à procrastiner (une noble activité que j'ai moi-même élevé au rang d'art).