#gavroche
randomly thinking about when i re-read les mis last year and occasionally posted screencaps of sections that I found moving, interesting, or inspirational. Predictably, the closer I got to the barricade scene, the less I enjoyed reading, and I included this in my annotations.
I posted some passages of Gavroche gathering bullets (“gamin fairy… thumbing his nose at death”)– which is just extraordinary prose characterization– and lots of people must have agreed because they reblogged it with comments, but actually a lot of those comments were about my kneecaps, and, more specifically, how they were coming for those kneecaps and what I could expect when they found me. (I say this with no small amount of affection; I was kind of honored, actually).
Anyway, it evoked a lot of emotions for many people, and I thought “well I guess this is why we tag for major character death” but that hadn’t even occurred to me, well, that’s kind of it’s thing. *Les Miserables*, the Wretched, is famous because almost all the characters toil hopelessly and then die at the end.
It’s 150+ years old, has been adapted across multiple mediums and spawned countless satires, so you think that tagging for major character death would be moot at this point. Is it even possible to spoil something that’s roughly as widely read at the Bible (or so I heard somewhere probably the forward from the Norman Denny translation and conveniently now cannot seem to cite)
But it’s really not about that, actually. It’s been like twenty years, I still can’t listen to the epilogue with dry eyes, and, come to think of it, I don’t know if I’ll ever really recover from Gavroche’s death either. You’d expect to be de-sensitized the more you’re exposed to a work, but really the opposite happens: each time, the characters get more real to me.
I read the Brick the summer before I started eighth grade, and so Les Mis was one of my first fandoms. I left for like twenty years (!!!) and came back in 2020 and seeing how it’s the same but different, that ill-fated and star crossed though these characters may be, they are very much alive to very many people, and yes, we’re always going to cry at this part andno,there’s nothing wrong perennial waterworks, we just love them all that much and we’ll keep imagining them again and again and bringing them to life in different ways through our fanwork and I just think there’s something so beautiful about that
Day 17 of @themiserablesmonth | Run (ft Azelma running away from her folks’ inn to live with her siblings)
I FORGOT TO POST THIS YESTERDAY HAHAHEHEH
OK SO
Jehan and parnasse as team rocket (bc montparnasse is a simp for jehan and caved in, Bahorel as ladybug and Feuilly as chat noir, Marius and Cosette as Mario and peach, Musichetta as katara and Bossuet as aang
Eponine as Marceline, R as Finn, Gavroche as jake, courfeyrac as bubble, Enj as blossom, Combeferre as buttercup (yes, Courf was in charge of outfits), and Joly as toph
Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.
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To the barricades!
I need to draw illustration for la brique. I drew a lot of stories, so now it’s hard to find new ones. Suggest scenes and quotes from the BOOK. I would be grateful.
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IFFC found something interesting (And it is in the canon!):
<…> He has his fabulous monster, which has scales under its belly, but is not a lizard, which has pustules on its back, but is not a toad, which inhabits the nooks of old lime-kilns and wells that have run dry, which is black, hairy, sticky, which crawls sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, which has no cry, but which has a look, and is so terrible that no one has ever beheld it; <…>
Les Miserables, BOOK FIRST—PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
CHAPTER II—SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS
The gamin—the street Arab—of Paris is the dwarf of the giant.
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Obligatory Les Amis lineup
