#mi talk

[aaronstveit]

today i am thinking about the eight bullets that kill enjolras, and how i always see people saying they represent his eight friends to die at the barricade, but when i first read his death what came to my mind was the eight men to escape the barricade alive: valjean, marius, javert, and the five men who are given the national guard uniforms. i think of those eight bullets being meant for those eight men, and enjolras taking them all. he did not change the world in the way he meant, but he changed the world for eight men, and that has to be enough.

[tinyplanetss]

extremely funny btw. gavroche is like wait this adult is telling me i CAN smash streetlamps??? and valjean is like go wild kid. here's five dollars

[uncharted-constellations]

The entire ALBW team

Links about to become Lorules #1 hytopian fabric exporter

[kenchann]

missing him hours

[hater-era]

the quality is 2 pixels but red coat is enj and the other guy is grantaire. t hey kis s

[lesbianmariuspontmercy]

life lately

[lesbianralzarek]

approaching the creche and was reminded that wyll and shadowheart have the best interactions in the goddamn game. the way that wyll talks about his superhero alter ego in 3rd person is the cringiest and most earnest shit. been off on his own for so long hes gotta be his own hype man and by god does he take that job seriously

[secretmellowblog]

Another reason I dislike Les Mis adaptations that make Jean Valjean constantly openly angry/violent is because they miss that Jean Valjean is not allowed to be angry. The fact he is forbidden from expressing anger is, I argue, actually a very important part of his character in the novel!

One of the subtler political messages of the story is that some people are given freedom to express anger, while others are forced to be excessively meek and conciliatory in order to survive.

Wealthy conservatives like Monsieur Gillenormand can “fly into rages” every five minutes and have it treated as an endearing quirk. Poor characters like Fantine or Jean Valjean must be constantly polite and ingratiating to “their superiors” at all times, even in the face of mockery and violence, or else they will be subjected to punishment. If Gillenormand beats his child with a stick, it’s a silly quirk; if Fantine beats a man harassing her, she is sentenced to months in prison.

(Thenardier and Javert are interesting examples of this too. Thenardier acts superficially polite and ingratiating to his wealthy “superiors” while insulting them behind their backs. Javert, meanwhile, is completely earnest in his mindless bootlicking. But I could write an entire other post on this.)

The point is that….Jean Valjean has to be submissive and self-effacing, or he puts himself in danger. He can’t afford to be angry and make scenes, or he will be punished. The only barrier between himself and prison is his ability to be so “courteous” that no one bothers to pry into his past.

Jean Valjean is excessively polite to people, in the way that you’re excessively polite to an armed cop who pulls you over for speeding when you secretly have a few illegal grams of marijuana in the your car trunk. XD It’s politeness built on fear, is what I mean. It’s politeness built on a desperation to make a powerful person avoid looking too closely at you.

It’s politeness at gunpoint.

Jean Valjean has also spent nineteen years living in an environment where any expression of anger could be punished with severe violence. That trauma is reflected in the overly cautious reserved way he often speaks with people (even people who are kind and would never actually hurt him.)

So adaptations that have Jean Valjean boldly having shouting matches with people in public and beating cops half to death without worrying about the repercussions just make go like “???”

Because that’s part of what’s fascinating about Jean Valjean to me? On one hand, he is a genuinely kind compassionate person, who cares deeply about other people and behaves kindly out of altruism. But on the other hand, he was also “beaten into submission” by prison, and forced into adopting conciliatory bootlicking behaviors in order to survive. And it can sometimes be hard to tell when he is being kind vs. when he is being “polite” — when he is speaking and acting out of earnest compassion vs. when he is speaking and acting out of fear.

The TL;DR is that I think it’s important that even though Jean Valjean is very (justifiably) angry about the injustice that was inflicted on him, his anger is harshly policed at all times— by other people, and by himself. He has been told his anger is wrong/selfish so often that he believes it. His anger takes weirder more unhealthy forms because he has no safe outlet for it. His rage at society becomes a possessiveness towards Cosette and silent hatred of Marius, but primarily it becomes useless self-destructive constant hatred of himself. And while I might be phrasing this wrong, I think that’s what’s interesting about Jean Valjean’s relationship with anger— the way his justified fury at his own mistreatment gets warped into more and more unhealthy forms by the way he’s forced to constantly repress it.

[yourangle-yuordevil]

Sooo I made Crowley's and Aziraphale's South Downs cottage in The Sims 4. Also made our two supernatual boys.

Here is Aziraphale Fell: bookworm, foodie and good. He wants to read ALL the books. Also Michael Sheen's face is so fucking hard to replicate

And here is Crowley, with and without glasses. I even found a mod for the tattoo! He is loyal, lazy and hot-headed. His aspiration is "soulmate" because he's a pathetic son of a bitch

And then their cottage! With a Bentley that's not really a Bentley but let's pretend it is.

Inside: ground floor floorplan and the entrance room.

Crowley has a greenhouse, obviously. There's a bench so Aziraphale can read there while Crowely takes care of the plants (*cough* shouts at them *cough*)

Their downstairs bathroom only has a bathtub because they don't use anything else.

And here is the living room! I tried to mix their styles a bit. It's mostly in the old fashioned, cozy vibe Aziraphale likes, but with a sprinkle of modern stuff more aligned with Crowley's taste. Lots of alcohol everywhere ofc

The kitchen has more of a modern vibe because I headcanon that it's Crowley that cooks most of the time. He says that it's because Aziraphale can't cook but it's because he likes to watch him eat the food he makes

Then we go upstairs! The bathroom here is the saddest and blandest bathroom because Crowley miracled it into existence when Maggie and Nina came over and were like "there's no toilet in your bathroom...?"

And the bedroom, more in a modern style because Crowley loves to sleep. There's also a vanity where Aziraphale puts on his creams and his things so he can be soft and pretty

And finally the last floor: Aziraphale's library!

Bonus picture of the ducks pond and the bench in the back garden

[lonelyoleander]

CHOOSE YOUR CHAMPION

[24601orwhatever]

my favorite insignificant scene in Les mis is the scene where grantaire and javert spend a very brief 2 minutes together and grantaire IMMEDIATELY clocks the homo energy between Valvert . And proceeds to use that newfound knowledge to tease jav

📷: medium-observation

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Another Les Mis musical connection that's making me feral: Jean Valjean uses the same melody with which he sings to Cosette, "Believe me, / Were it within my power, / I'd fill each passing hour-- / How quiet it must be, I can see, / With only me for company"...

When he sings "You are free, / And there are no conditions. / No bargains or petitions! / There's nothing that I blame you for. / You've done your duty--nothing more" to Javert.

In my journey to map out the various leitmotifs in the show, this one really flung me for a loop because what does it meannnn?? This is the only time we hear the melody in the show, and it's applied in two very different circumstances, where the relationship Valjean has to the characters involved could not be more opposite. What connects them?? But I think I have it.

It's a reluctant release. Not of the people, but of his own desires regarding them. Let me explain.

Valjean very distinctly wants things from both Cosette and Javert, which he sings about on the rising part of the melody. With Cosette, he wants to be the center of her life: "Were it within my power, I'd fill each passing hour;" on the other hand, he desperately wants Javert to leave him alone. When he has Javert at his mercy, he absolutely does want to trade lives, which is why he sings it on the rising part: "And there are no conditions, no bargains or petitions." He does want these things--but he's letting them go.

And that's where the falling part of the melody comes in. In both situations, Valjean knows he can't have what he wants. So he gives up that desire. He accepts that Cosette wants someone else, and doesn't blame her for it ("How quiet it must be, I can see, with only me for company,"), the same way he accepts the situation between him and Javert ("There's nothing that I blame you for. You've done your duty, nothing more."). That's why immediately afterwards, he tells Javert his address, and why shortly after that, he prays that Marius be brought home to Cosette.

Cosette is his biggest security, and Javert is the biggest threat to his security. But in this little melody, he sets them free (Cosette metaphorically, and Javert literally). He acknowledges what he wants, and accepts that he can't have it, even though it hurts.

And if that ain't the most Jean Valjean thing, I don't know what is.

[shamedumpster]

Utterly obssessed and in love with goth cosette in your drawing 😭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️. May we have more goth cosette please

I have been sitting on this ask because @eposetteweek was coming up! Ask and ye shall recieve! >:)

[twin-yards]

it is completely one hundred percent baffling to me that any of the foxes would come away from witnessing neil and andrew's reunion in baltimore with the opinion that their relationship was just hate fucking . like my brother in christ are you blind

[fluentisonus]

rip javert if you'd survived you would have found incredible new ways to be abnormal abt that old man

[syrupsyche]

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this many times all across tumblr and discord, but my heart aches at how in the two lines afforded to describing the rest of the Amis’s deaths, Combeferre is the one to get a line all to himself:

Combeferre transfixed by three blows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired. (5.1.21)

Not only does he go out doing what he always wanted to do (helping, rather than directly harming others), he dies with a final glance up towards the sky, which reminds me of:

[H]e said: "Revolution, but civilization"; and around the mountain peak he opened out a vast view of the blue sky. (3.4.1)

Much of his 3.4.1 description talks about how much he dislikes bloodshed, that he prefers the peace of the future, and the purity that it will bring once their fight is over; moreover, he believed that:

A conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. Possibly, Combeferre preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to the blaze of the sublime. (3.4.1)

And so here in his final moments, Hugo gives Combeferre one last comfort: to have the brightness of heaven be his final sight, even in the midst of a bloody, painful death.