#marius being the only person other than enjolras himself who doesn’t know about grantaire’s massive embarrassing crush lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

coolrobotsupremacist · 4 years

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Modern Les Mis AU this. Modern Les Mis AU that. Star Wars Les Mis AU when

!!!!!!!!! Not soon enough

The scales have fallen from my eyes, my whole world changed in just one flash of light, Star Wars is the logical place to go for a les mis AU and I can't believe I didn't see it before now. The existence of destiny, the importance and possibility of redemption, heroic doomed rebels, DEmOCraCy.

Weird mix of headcanons and plot? Below.

Jean Valjean as a kind young Jedi trying to keep order in the galaxy even as the Clone Wars escalate. He works himself to the home because he knows that in addition to defending the republic he is also keeping the galaxy safe for his family though he hasn't seen them since he was a child. Order 66 happens and he flees back to his family but is devastated to find them missing, presumed dead. The trauma of war was for nothing and he flees, falling to the darkside and living as an outlaw from both the newly formed Empire. A massive bounty on his head because he's one of the last Jedi known to be alive. Valjean gives into his worst impulses and lives from day to day doing whatever he needs to do to survive and evade the Empire. He stops thinking about the innocent people who might get hurt along the way until one day he comes across a Jedi temple and out pops Myriel.

Big redemption time.

Myriel fixes him up with a new identity and valjean sets out again a slightly less broken man.

Javert is a Bounty Hunter who, unlike most other bounty hunters, refuses to deal with criminals and only chases bounties put out by the Empire. He wears what looks suspiciously like a reclaimed Stormtrooper armour and everyone is too afraid to ask( isn't the point of this job that we DON'T have to wear uniforms)

Fantine meets Tholomyès on Coruscant and when he abandons her she decides to go off world to find work and a new, safe home for her and Cosette.

Cosette is kidnapped by the Thenardiers who are at the height of their power and influence as a family that controls a fleet of pirate spaceships and are on the lookout for force sensitive children to mould into a private army of force users. Fantine, desperate to get her back, turns to the most dangerous and lucrative profession she can find and becomes a bounty hunter in order to raise enough money to hire a team of mercenaries to save Cosette. She ends up teaming up for a bounty with Javert, who wants her help infiltrating a mining station because he suspects something fishy is going on as it's not turning the profit it should be, this just turns out to be its workers being paid a fair wage but Javert is vindicated because, gasp, guess who owns the station?

Hijinks ensue but Valjean eventually agrees to be taken in because he hears why Fantine needs the money and as he's already been exposed as an outlaw he knows he can't do any more good at the station. Fantine shoves Javert down a rubbish shoot and brings in Valjean herself, taking all of the bounty. Then she immediately breaks him out again and they go and rescue Cosette.

Cool battle ensues pew pew pew smash SMASH BOOM. They rescue most of the children and find them good homes all over the galaxy then flee with Cosette to one of the few Jedi temples left. Knowing Star Wars that temple is probably on a desert planet. Thenardiers pirate empire is essentially crippled and he is left with only a few of his child soldiers. He swears vengeance.

Years later Marius is a Prince of a planet with a suitably keysmashy name Snarfan-5? Snarfan-5. With his grandfather as regent Marius trusts that the right thing to do is agree to the demands of the Empire, until he finds out that his Father was a Mandalorian who didn't abandon him but was killed when the Empire attempted genocide in all the Mandalorians. Marius buys a helmet which he vows to never take off until he restores Madalore to its former glory, and starts to reclaim his roots which he's fairly sure have something to do with being good at fighting? He'll figure it out as he goes. Hopefully he can find this Thenardier guy who once saved his father's life.

Then he runs away to join the rebellion.

Enjolras was a Padawan before the republic fell who escaped Order 66, he never got to finish his training and accepts that the Jedi Order had a lot wrong with it but that didnt stop him from internalising all that stuff about the only acceptable love being vague love for people as a whole. He only used his force abilities when absolutely necessary: he considers it an unfair advantage.

Combeferre is fascinated by the force as it's both a proven scientific phenomena and a religion? Wild. When he was a child he wanted to work as a diplomat travelling from planet to planet, solving problems peacefully. Part of him hopes that if enough systems band together, they can force the Empire to yield peacefully.

Coufeyrac doesn't need the force to let you feel the love hes primarily a pilot and picks up Marius on a supply run. Not in the least bit force sensitive, cheerfully so.

Feuilly used to work in a workshop that made cybernetic limbs. He taught himself how to use the force without really understanding until later how unheard of it was. His long-term goal is to rebuild the Jedi without all the toxic feeling repression. He's most fluent in droid because he grew up around them and he really hates how people often treat droids as expendable machinery.

Prouvaire knows about force ghosts, we all know what he's doing with his time.

Joly has taken 345 vaccines for diseases which aren't transmissible to humans but better to be safe than sorry, right? He's always excited to go to a new planet because it means he can research local diseases/medicine.

Bossuet has been accidentally shoved out of 345 airlocks.

Grantaire is technically a darksider. He was a Padawan at the same time as Enjolras but struggles to live by the Jedi code, and was pretty easily seduced to the dark side as a result but he made an even worse Sith than he did a Jedi because he couldn't jam with the cruelty and sadism. Upon realising that the Sith were actually philosophically evil instead of just really liking the aesthetic he sort of sheepishly slips out the back door. The lesson he took from this is that there is no right way to wield power: you either become ineffectual monks or megalomaniac sadists so the only option is to give up. He eventually nominally joins the resistance and he keeps having horrible force visions about all his friends dying which he trys to drown out with copious amounts of alcohol(it never works).

Bahorel is a Wookie. I don't think that requires further explanation.

Marius settles in with them although he learns to keep his mouth shut about the glorious old days of the Mandalorian empire.

Thenardier tried to train his few remaining child soldiers by throwing sharp objects at them. Long story short Eponine still can't use the force and only has one ear but she is very good at dodging things. Gavroche escaped on his own and is basically a 13 year old Han Solo. He stole a novelty yacht in the shape of an elephant, despite this hugely distinctive ship he has never been gotten close to bring caught. Has close ties with the resistance.

Cosette is taught at Fantines insistence how to use the force and blast people to hell and back, she learns these skills pretty well but more importantly Cosette is given more love that any one person needs so she grows up to be exactly as kind and loving as she is in canon. Valjean is secretly delighted to have a Padawan but also scared that he's going to pass his icky Sith germs onto Cosette. Blasters are Fantines speciality; she teaches Cosette to shoot first. They are eventually honest about their pasts with Cosette, mostly because it would be dangerous not to be. Cosette makes the decision to leave dispute the danger not wanting to live in hiding for the rest of her life.

There's a prophesy about a chosen one and everyone keeps mistakenly assigning it to Enjolras but it's very very clearly about Cosette

#Les Miserables #les mis #Fantine #hell yeah she lived #cosette fauchelevent #Marius Pontmercy #Jean Valjean #javert #enjolras #les amis #grantaire

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pilferingapples · 7 years

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Grantaire for the meme?

Grantaire:

First impression: …dude you are kind of a downer?? this thing you’re doing is the opposite of Helping Morale, buddy, what is your problem. There is a whole historically massive Revolution going on! In some way! According to the teacher who can’t explain how this plot works exactly!

Impression now: this is a trainwreck disaster human, a failure at math and a slacker at art, probably looks like a squashed shoe #relatable

Favorite moment:“Marius is STUPID and love is DUMB and I bet he’s like WhOOOOO and then she’s like OOOOOOH and then THEY LOVE EACH OTHER FOREVER, LOVE IS THE ONLY TRANSCENDENT THING, REALLY OUR BODIES ARE IRRELEVANT WHEN TWO SOULS MEET, THAT IS THE GREAT DREAM OF LIFE AND ITS ULTIMATE PURPOSE uh I mean Your Mom, Legle, pssht, feelings? I don’t have those, feelings are dumb” honestly all of Preliminary Various Spelled Party Times is pretty greatcut because shockingly, a post about Grantaire got Wordy

Idea for a story: I am always wanting more stories where Grantaire and Enjolras actually work together like friends who know each other but In An Awkward Way in the Greater Cause of helping out their other friends . More stories where that doesn’t end in them being a couple, I should say, because it’s the tension of them being Super Awkward Weirdo Friends with a lot in common on a Personal Life level but who STILL never manage to actually sync with each other that interests me in their relationship. Unpopular opinion:are there any unpopular opinions about Grantaire ahhhhoh I know I don’t think he represents Paris at all; if anything he’s the bourgeoisie, tired of all the Revolutioning and Changing Governments and just wanting to sit down for a while and Not Care because caring is Dangerous and Can Kill You.

..and I am going to stop myself there because there is a minor essay to be written down that road, and I am already super late with those, but yeah, that’s probably my Unpopular Opinion with Grantaire.

Favorite relationship: I care about Bossuet and Grantaire’s Pro Snarker comradeship more than is probably healthy

Favorite headcanon:

At first he was super jealous and freaked out (and so, Grantaire-ly, acted really weird and touchy and refused to say what he was acting weird or touchy about, or even admit it to himself) by Bossuet becoming Intimate Friends with Joly, because hey, Bossuet is HIS best friend! Who’s this Joly guy cutting in, what even is a Joly, he’s not upset he’s just saying it sounds like a name a FRIEND STEALING JERK would have (this lasted for .5 seconds after he finally caved in and actually MET Joly, who he knew was his New Also Best Friend, but he valiantly managed to continue acting like an emotionally tangled weirdo for…ever, honestly, but at least not a weirdly jealous one).

#Hey Nonny Nonny #firing the headcanons #thank you!

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kjack89 · 7 years

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Drinking Games (2500 Follower Giveaway Fic #21)

For @ahn-juhl-ras, who requested a fic based on this prompt: Imagine that your OTP are enemies of some sort and are fighting furiously and Person A is trying to scream “fuck you” and “fight me” at the same time and ends up screaming “fuck me” really loud at Person B in front of all their friends and it gets really quiet until Person B goes ‘why not’ and kisses A. Turns out they liked each other all along and fluff ensues and their friends just go “FINALLY”.”

And, well, kind of, if you use “based on” loosely.

E/R, Modern AU, developing relationship, all of the shenanigans.

Courfeyrac propped himself up on his elbows and fluttered his eyelashes at Enjolras, who pulled his laptop closer and did his best to ignore him. “Enjy,” Courfeyrac said in a sing-song voice, sticking his bottom lip out in a pout. “You can’t spend all night on your laptop. Come play with us.”

“Firstly, I can in fact spend all night on my laptop if I want,” Enjolras said. “And secondly, I’m not playing King’s Cup with Combeferre ever again. You know that Rule Master goes to his head.”

As if to reinforce Enjolras’s point, across the room, Combeferre pointed at Grantaire and exclaimed triumphantly, “You didn’t say it! You have to drink!”

Grantaire gave Combeferre the finger but willing drained his red Solo cup, and Courfeyrac shrugged as he gave Enjolras his most winning smile. “Yeah, but we’re done with King’s Cup now, and Combeferre is only enforcing one specific rule for the rest of the evening, and only because Grantaire told him that he didn’t give a flying fuck if he was Rule Master so he’s being punished.”

Enjolras considered that for a moment. “Fair.” He frowned at Courfeyrac. “So if you’re not playing King’s Cup anymore, what exactly are you trying to convince me to play?”

“Just a little game I like to call…Spin the bottle.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes and looked back at his laptop. “Pass,” he said dismissively.

“But Enjolras,” Courfeyrac whined. “You wouldn’t play truth or dare, you wouldn’t play King’s Cup, and I get it, I really do. We are horrible people and we make up some truly terrible things to do to each other, the way that only friends can. But – and this is a big but—” He broke off, grinning. “Heh. Big butt.” He shook his head and went back to his argument. “But with spin the bottle, there is only a, like, 7-ish percent chance that you’ll be forced to do something you don’t want to do. But a 100 percent chance that you’ll have fun.”

“You and I have very different definitions of fun,” Enjolras grumbled, but he sighed and closed his laptop. “But, fine. I will play. On one condition – you let me get back to work after this stupid game is done. Deal?”

Courfeyrac beamed at him. “Deal!” He shook Enjolras’s hand enthusiastically, threw an arm around his shoulders and tugged him towards the group. “Everyone, guess who has agreed to play spin the bottle with us!”

Éponine made a face, taking a swig of beer. “When did we agree to play spin the bottle? What are we, in eighth grade?”

“Better spin the bottle than seven minutes in heaven,” Musichetta said wisely, before tipping a massive wink at Enjolras, who had settled next to her. “Not that I’d ever say no to seven minutes in heaven with you.”

Enjolras went beet red and Bossuet rolled his eyes. “Sadly, he’ll have to settle for spin the bottle. Now, Grantaire, an empty bottle if you please.”

Grantaire handed over an empty beer bottle and told Bossuet, “Fuck you.”

“Is Grantaire having some kind of fight with Bossuet?” Enjolras asked, mildly curious.

Musichetta shook her head. “No, it’s the rule that Combeferre is making Grantaire follow for the rest of the night – he can only say either ‘fuck you’ or ‘fight me’. And if he doesn’t, he has to drink.”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow as Grantaire slammed half a beer in a single gulp. “That really seems like more of a win-win for Grantaire than anything.”

“Yeah, I’m not entirely sure that Combeferre really thought this rule through, but you know how stubborn he gets.” Musichetta took a sip of her own beer before asking, “So who starts this little shindig?”

“Youngest,” Joly and Feuilly said in unison, grinning and high-fiving. “So I believe that means Prouvaire starts us off,” Joly added.

Prouvaire sighed dramatically and shifted from where he was draped like a cat across Cosette and Bahorel’s laps. “Age before beauty, I understand,” he said solemnly, reaching into the center of the circle and spinning the bottle, which teetered slightly as it spun before landing on Grantaire. “Well, at least it’s someone I’ve kissed before,” Jehan sighed.

Grantaire smirked. “Fight me,” he said.

“Absolutely,” Jehan said, nodding, and leaned across the way to peck Grantaire lightly on the lips. He flopped back against Bahorel and pressed a hand to his forehead. “And thus, with a kiss, I die.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes and looked mutely at Joly for confirmation that it was his turn. When Joly nodded, Grantaire spun the bottle, which took its sweet time before landing on Cosette. Marius went purple in the face and Grantaire offered him an apologetic smile. “Fuck you?” he said, before nodding at Cosette and lifting her hand to press a kiss to her knuckles.

Cosette giggled. “I think that’s cheating to not actually kiss me, but for the sake of Marius’s blood pressure, I’m willing to let it slide.” She spun the bottle and to absolutely no one’s surprise, it managed to land on Marius, who beamed at her.

“Wait, wait, wait, isn’t there a rule that if you land on your partner, you have to spin again?” Bahorel asked.

Cosette fixed him with a death glare. “House rules have to be established before the game begins,” she said frostily, and tossed her hair before planting a big, messy kiss on Marius, who was bright red when he finally resurfaced.

“So, um, my turn, right?” Marius asked dazedly, putting very little effort into spinning the bottle, which is why it wasn’t all that surprising that it barely spun around the circle and landed on Courfeyrac, who batted his eyelashes at him before scooching over and laying one on him.

If anything, Marius was even redder when he finally reemerged and Courfeyrac was smiling with the same satisfaction of a cat that had gotten the cream, and it was with this same self-satisfaction that he spun the bottle, preening when the bottle landed squarely on Grantaire. “Fuck you,” Grantaire sighed, rolling his eyes even as he accepted the kiss with a smirk.

This time, Grantaire’s subsequent spin landed on Combeferre, and both looked at each other for a moment before shrugging and kissing. “Fuck you,” Grantaire said appreciatively as he pulled away, and Combeferre grinned in response.

“Alright, my turn,” he said, turning businesslike as he spun the bottle. There was a collective, “Ooo,” from the group when the bottle landed on Enjolras.

Enjolras raised an eyebrow at the group. “What, do you think that Combeferre and I haven’t kissed before?” He smiled sweetly. “God, if only you knew the truth.”

He leaned in and kissed Combeferre, a swift peck that nonetheless left the collective group speechless. “Fight me,” Grantaire grumbled sourly under his breath, but everyone else applauded politely.

“I’m sorry that we doubted you,” Bahorel called. “But like, you want to get a move on? Because some of us haven’t had a chance to kiss anyone, and honestly, it’s beginning to feel a little personal.”

“Dude, the bottle hasn’t landed on you,” Feuilly said scornfully. “There’s nothing personal about your shitty luck.”

“You’re telling me,” Bossuet said darkly.

Both Feuilly and Bahorel ignored him. “So you’re saying that there’s no reason why anyone wouldn’t want to kiss me?” Bahorel asked. “Because if memory serves, not even an hour ago, this asshole said that he hoped the bottle wouldn’t land on me. Maybe you cast a weird Polish spell on the bottle.”

“Weird Polish spell?” Feuilly repeated. “What the fuck are you even talking about?”

Bahorel crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You heard me.”

Feuilly sighed heavily. “Bahorel, there’s no reason why anyone wouldn’t want to kiss you,” he said patiently. “In fact, anyone here should be honored to kiss you.”

“Including you?”

“Fucking Christ, asshole, is this about you trying to get me to kiss you?” Feuilly demanded.

Bahorel shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Fuck you,” Feuilly said, swiveling around to glare at Enjolras, who, like the rest of the Amis, was gaping openly at him and Bahorel. “It’s your turn to spin.”

Enjolras shook his head. “Right,” he said, leaning forward and spinning the bottle. The entire group held their breath and let it out in a unanimous gasp when the bottle landed squarely on Grantaire.

Grantaire looked from the bottle to Enjolras, clearly flustered, his eyes wide as he gulped and managed, “Fuck me?”

Combeferre opened his mouth to clearly point out that combining the two phrases was still breaking the rule, but Enjolras beat him to speaking as he shrugged and said, “Why not,” before closing the space between them, cupping Grantaire’s cheek and kissing him deeply.

For a moment, everyone gaped silently as Enjolras and Grantaire made out, then Bahorel let out a whoop. “Fucking finally!” he crowed before pointing at Feuilly. “You owe me twenty bucks!”

That started the requisite flurry of money exchanges as everyone settled their various bets over when Enjolras and Grantaire would finally get together, and after everyone had been squared away (Marius seemed to be the overall winner, raking in well over $200), Combeferre cleared his throat. “You guys can stop now,” he said, watching with amusement as Enjolras and Grantaire finally broke apart.

“Oh,” Grantaire said, blinking as if he was just then remembering that they were in the middle of a party. “Um.” He glanced at Combeferre. “Fight me?”

Combeferre waved a dismissive hand. “Rule over,” he said with a sigh. “Only because I imagine that you and Enjolras need to talk, and not even I would sabotage that by making you respond to everything Enjolras says with either ‘fight me’ or ‘fuck you’.”

“Who said we need to talk?” Enjolras asked, raising an eyebrow at Combeferre. “I like Grantaire, he likes me, we just made out…what is there to talk about?”

Grantaire choked on air. “Maybe the part where you like me?” he managed after he regained the ability to breathe.

Enjolras looked at him, surprised. “What, you didn’t know that?” he asked. “I, uh, I thought I was pretty obvious about it, actually. Like when we went to the movies as a group the other day, and I made sure I sat next to you?”

Grantaire blinked. “That might have been obvious if we were in junior high, but you probably still would’ve needed to pass a note to Joly to give to me in study hall for me to catch on to that.”

“Well, I’m sure I was obvious in other ways,” Enjolras said, looking around the room for support and finding none. “I mean, you guys all knew that I liked Grantaire, right?”

“Dude, most of us weren’t even sure you liked anyone, let alone Grantaire,” Feuilly told him.

Courfeyrac nodded. “I mean, one time during freshman year at university, you got drunk and told me that you were in love with Lady Liberty. And then you repeated it when you were sober, so I was never sure, you know, what was going on with that.”

Enjolras looked at Combeferre. “You knew that I liked Grantaire, though, right?”

“Of course,” Combeferre said simply. “I’m your best friend.” He took a sip of beer. “Of course, you also denied it, vehemently, at every single point when I asked you about it. So if I hadn’t known, it would be your fault, not mine.”

Grantaire cleared his throat. “Listen, I don’t care who knew or didn’t know, because I think what’s important here is that I didn’t know. And in this conversation, believe it or not, I’m the one who really matters.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bossuet grumbled. “If I had known, I’d’ve changed my bet over when Enjolras was going to confess that he liked you.” He glared at Enjolras. “You couldn’t hold out for two more weeks, could you?”

“So anyway,” Grantaire continued as if Bossuet had never interrupted him, “yeah, I think there are some things that we probably need to talk about, so we don’t we go, uh, talk about it.”

He gestured toward the front door with his head, but Enjolras grinned and shook his head. “I have a better idea,” he said, grabbing Grantaire’s hand and pulling him to his feet. “Seven minutes in heaven.”

“Seven minutes in…” Grantaire trailed off, his eyes widening. “Yeah, ok. Talking’s overrated.” He let Enjolras tug him towards the closet, a grin slowly growing across his face.

“Are you guys serious?” Courfeyrac called, and Grantaire gave him the finger before following Enjolras into the closet and shutting the door. “Dude, it was your turn to spin!” He turned back to the group, scowling. “Well that kind of took all of the fun out of the game.”

Bossuet nodded, leaning his head against Joly’s shoulder. “Yeah, it was only fun when there was the potential of Enjolras and Grantaire kissing. Who cares if the rest of us kiss?”

Joly patted him on the knee. “I care,” he said supportively, and Bossuet smiled and kissed him lightly.

“So,” Feuilly said as they all sat staring at each other. “What are we gonna do now?”

“Truth or dare?” Jehan offered.

Bahorel waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, we do that all the time.”

“We could have meaningful conversations about social justice and the issues plaguing our society,” Cosette suggested.

This suggestion was met with obvious derision. “Who do you think we are?” Courfeyrac asked, shuddering. “Anyone who does that is a bunch of boring assholes.”

They all once again fell silent until Combeferre sighed heavily, as if he didn’t want to ask what he was about to. “Do you want to listen to Enjolras and Grantaire make out?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely!” Bahorel said, and all of them simultaneously scrambled to the closet door to press their ears against it and listen to two of their closest friends make out.

“Are we bad people?” Courfeyrac asked conversationally.

“Of course we are,” Joly said reassuringly. “And shh. We’re trying to listen here.”

Inside the closet, Grantaire surfaced for air long enough to ask Enjolras, “Do you think they’re all out there listening to us?”

Enjolras considered it for a moment. “Probably,” he said. “Honestly, I’d be surprised if they weren’t.”

Grantaire grinned. “So what do you say we give them something to listen to?”

Enjolras grinned as well. “What did you have in mind?”

“We-ell,” Grantaire said, drawing the word out, his smile turning dirty. “As I accidentally suggested earlier – fuck me.”

A few moments later, Marius pulled his head away from the closet door so quickly that he almost gave himself whiplash. “Are…are they…?” he spluttered, and the rest of the Amis followed suit, looking equal parts horrified and amused.

“I do believe they are,” Courfeyrac said, thoroughly impressed. “Goddamn. You have to have respect for how quickly they moved from making out to, well, making love.”

A loud, animalistic groan emanated from the closet, and Joly wrinkled his nose. “There’s nothing ‘making love’ about that sound.”

“I feel a little dirty,” Feuilly admitted. “Like we probably shouldn’t be here listening to this.”

“Definitely not,” Musichetta confirmed. “So we’re not going anywhere, right?”

“Are you kidding me?” Courfeyrac asked. “When Enjolras emerges from that closet without his virginity, I am going to give him the highest of fives.”

Inside the closet, where Enjolras and Grantaire were sitting on the floor, fully clothed, occasionally pounding on the ground or walls and letting out filthy moans, Grantaire asked, “So are we actually going to talk about this at some point?”

“Oh, sure,” Enjolras said, suddenly turning a little shy. “Do, uh, do you want to go out, sometime?”

Grantaire grinned wider than he ever had before. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think that’d be awesome.” He leaned in and kissed Enjolras, tentatively at first, and then a little harder, before finally pulling away. “I really do like you.”

“And I really do like you,” Enjolras said, ducking his head and blushing. “But now we really need to go back to making our friends think we’re banging.”

“Oh, of course,” Grantaire said with an easy grin. “Thank god for spin the bottle, huh?”

Enjolras laughed. “Yeah. Thank god for spin the bottle.”

#ExR #Enjolras x Grantaire #Enjoltaire #Enjolras #Grantaire #Les Amis #Not tagging them all because wow I'm lazy #modern AU #fanfiction #developing relationship #shenanigans #drinking games #spin the bottle #swearing #terrible friends

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everyonewasabird · 4 years

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I would love to see your Thoughts on the Hugolian Internal Magic System sometime:D It's something I like talking about but def. some Deep Nerding that is not an overcommon discussion!

Ah!! Thank you!! I’ve been wanting to talk about this!

But also, it’s so Big? So instead of overwhelming myself trying to cover it coherently, I’m going to get the ball rolling by scattering undeveloped ideas everywhere.

To start, my feeling is that the brick operates on something that isn’t real-world logic but a coherent system of magic logic, heavily symbolic, and with power over the events in the story. It’s not fantasy-world magic--it’s closer to magical realism, though it never quite reaches what I’d consider that.

There are a lot of magical elements in the brick. Some I want to acknowledge but have little to say about:

The animal thing. The dog-man versus lion-man, mice and cats and all that. The visual use of it in Arai’s manga was how the penny first dropped for me about the brick having magic. Many other people have more coherent thoughts about this than I do.

The fatefulness of spiders and the doom that hangs over anything connected to the numbers four or eight.

Enjolras and Grantaire in OFPD as the apotheosis of the ideal and the grotesque uniting in the sublime--I’ve read meta from you and others about this! It’s fascinating, and I feel like I only half understand it! I have nothing to add to it but it’s wonderful.

A whole lot of characters symbolize different things, and the way that functions has a magic logic to it, and Oh God This Topic Is So Big, I Can’t.

Related to the symbolism, there’s the, um--economy of casting? There’s a coherent logic behind a lot of the coincidences: If someone goes for a police officer, they’re probably going to find one--where brick logic differs from real world logic is, that policeman will always be Javert. All the misfortunes of poor and friendless young women befall Fantine. All people at the cusp between abject poverty and marginal respectability live in the Gorbeau house. I’m not sure I’d quite call this magic, but it’s related.

The place where I first really noticed the magic system myself was with the four-and-a-half characters who have power of will over when they die.

The first is the Conventionist, G——, and it’s with him we get a description of the trait I’m talking about:

Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed it so.

This isn’t a magic that can be used for arbitrary purposes--you can’t game the system with will-powered immortality. I think it’s more that the characters who have this are so in tune with the magic they become immune to petty injury until they reach the moment of their death--which will be an appropriately symbolic one.

The second of the four is the Bishop, though his death is a little different: instead of culminating in a moment of transcendent will, he’s granted Hugo’s ideal of the perfect death. (Now--I have Massive issues with what Hugo thinks the perfect death is: blind, and beloved woman is taking care of you. It’s gross, sexist, ableist bullshit with wild disregard for boundaries, and Hugo is being The Worst. But anyway.)

In the text it’s the ideal death, and Myriel is granted it. This feels to me like not an exception to the system but its culmination--the other four are granted sublime and transcendent suffering, and Myriel was granted something past that: transcendence without the suffering.

Following the Bishop and the Conventionist are their direct successors, slightly more tarnished, but only slightly: Jean Valjean and Enjolras.

Like the Conventionist, neither can be killed until they choose to die. Until that time, bullets don’t touch them. Both deaths are sublime and transcendent, but Enjolras seems to come closer to perfection--there’s something strangely self-defeating in Valjean that doesn’t exist for the other three. Nevertheless, both of them clearly have near-superhuman power of will over their deaths.

Discussions of what Enjolras would have done if he’d survived after condemning himself for Le Cabuc feel slightly misaimed to me because of this--my feeling is that once he condemned himself, there was no other ending. He belonged to the magic, and he had willed it so--he Knew.

(And... okay, side note, I personally am writing an AU where he lived. But I had to fracture some of the magic system to do it. It felt right to me that in a story about Combeferre the magic would be fractured--I don’t know, I feel like that’s a thing.)

Aside from those four, many characters have different magic at different times. Eponine gains a preternatural ability to get things done, Gavroche is made of magic and Paris, there’s a lot of magic in Cosette, and so on. The Amis are also magic, and a few of them seem remarkably able to perceive it--Combeferre understood Valjean at a glance and described Fantine exactly. (Side note: my favorite headcanon about Combeferre is that he has a nearly unparalleled ability to perceive the magic system but is too at odds with himself to use it.)

But I feel like there’s a character with a half-realized version of the transcendent will like the other four above, and it’s Javert.

There’s something really interesting going on with Javert and magic.

Like Valjean and Enjolras, he’s immune to bullets, (”You’ll misfire”/The pistol misfired.) And Valjean almost gave to Javert the transformation Myriel had granted him, but something went wrong. Instead of becoming the fifth of these supernormal characters, Javert reaches half a revelation and backs away. He wills his own death, but prosaically and with despair, in a bastardized version of what the others achieve.

I can’t prove this, but I put real significance in that moment when Javert’s tied-up body makes a cross with Mabeuf’s body laid out, and instead of bearing his suffering he asks Enjolras to re-tie him lying down. Javert does a LOT of things wrong morally, but magically and symbolically that might be where he got off the path of the Absolute. (Does it matter symbolically that there end up being four of them (a fateful number) rather than five? Does the feeling of transcendence in Enjolras’s death and incompleteness in Valjean’s have anything to do with the fact that Enjolras convinced Grantaire, but Valjean did not convince Javert? ...I’m not convinced of any of that, but it occurs to me.)

And the barricade.

The barricade is made of magic and fate and the Absolute. It magically draws everyone to it and intensifies the magic potential in anyone near it. Enjolras and Jean Valjean become godlike, and everyone else becomes more transcendent as they get nearer.

I swear I can hear the first sparks of the magic of the barricade forming in Grantaire’s dialogue in the Corinth. He’s in the middle of a misogynistic and racist harangue and then he bursts out with:

“And it appears that they are going to fight, all these idiots, to get their heads broken, to massacre one another, in midsummer, in the month of June, when they might go off with some creature under their arm, to scent in the fields the huge cup of tea of the new mown hay!”

(Wilbour. Hapgood massacres this line.)

...then he goes back to rambling, until he wanders into an entirely perceptive (if wryly mocking) description of Marius’s love for Cosette and his own for Enjolras: “They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.”

Which, for once, is exactly correct.

And I think these sparks happen because the barricade is beginning, and the barricade is magic, and it’s what finally pulls from Grantaire what he was capable of.

There is SO MUCH MORE I’m sure, but this post is becoming novel-length, so I’ll stop for now. Anyone who wants, please argue or expand!

#long post #the longest post #hugolian magic system #meta #long meta #asks #javert #enjolras #jean valjean #the conventionist #myriel #pilferingapples

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everyonewasabird · 4 years

Text

@fremedon I’m going to move the conversation about Grantaire’s revolution rant to it’s own post! Hope that’s okay.

(beware, this got LONG, oh my god)

@fremedon said:

Coming back to Grantaire and “Preliminary Gaieties,” I’m thinking about that speech again in light of this post.

All the metaphors about God throwing a revolution to cover his bankruptcy are in service of a point that Grantaire also states in (for him) remarkably plain language–that as much as he would like for progress to occur smoothly and automatically, it doesn’t:

“What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for event, nor for men: among men geniuses are required, among events, revolutions.”

He spends three pages circling back to the idea of revolution, and every time he lands on the same point–that it’s not only inevitable, but necessary; that the universe is badly made and God is unable to set it right without human action, which means revolution.

And then there’s this passage, which is kind of key to the whole thing (switching from Hapgood to FMA):

“Oh! By all saints of Olympus and all the gods of Paradise, I was not made to be a Parisian, that is to say, to richochet forever, like a shuttlecock between two rackets, from the company of loafers to the company of rioters!”

He introduces a list of loafers–the group he says he was born to be part of–ending with “a petty Germanic prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier.” This list balances Floreal’s banker, from the start of the speech–another idler in this vein, whose conquest of the grisette is explicitly equated with Brennus’s sack of Rome.

Grantaire wants to be idle; he wants to enjoy the appearances that God is trying so hard to keep up, but he’s seen through them; he understands that even the illusion of smooth social functioning that revolution and riot disrupts is still violent at every level, from the sack of cities to the defense of micro-states to Floreal’s poverty. He gets it, he sees the violence inherent in the system and he understands that any action to change will, under the circumstances, necessarily also be violent.

Philosophically and politically, he pretty much agrees with the Amis about how the world is and what it would take to change it.

And then he finally says the thing it’s taken him three pages and a bottle of wine to say, and that no one in the book has really said outright yet:

“And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows!”

They all know that just their political association, let alone the kind of organizing they’re doing, could on its own get themselves killed. They’ve been part of a network amassing weapons with the full intention of taking to the streets with them. They all know that if–when–it does come to insurrection, their lives will all be on the line.

No one talks about it. No one, before this point, ever acknowledges it out loud.

And when Grantaire finally does–in front of Joly and Bossuet! Who watched the funeral cortege go by and decided to have brunch instead! Who are very much on the side of Yes Do Notice the Flowers and the Spring!–what’s the response?

“Speaking of revolution,” said Joly, “it appears that Marius is decidedly amorous.”

“Does anyone know who it is?”

“No.”

THEY ARE SO DESPERATE TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT. THAT THEY RESORT TO GOSSIP. ABOUT MARIUS.

They don’t even HAVE any gossip about Marius! “SPEAKING OF REVOLUTION… … … OH HEY COURFEYRAC’S ROOMMATE HAS A CRUSH. On someone. Allegedly.” This is not even the “How about that local sports team” of subject changes. This is just flat refusal to engage with anything Grantaire has said.

In my headcanon, about 80% of Grantaire’s position as Resident Skeptic* comes down to this: that he sees as clearly as any of them do that their ideals, if taken to their logical conclusion lead to violent revolution, and that the chances of that revolution accomplishing anything significant are slim compared to the chances of their all getting killed. And that aside from Enjolras, most of them deal with this through flat-out denial.

Grantaire’s a depressive. He is Very Bad at denying unpleasant truths. He is self-medicating very hard just to be able to ignore enough of the world’s unpleasantness to get up in the morning. He works really, really, hard to see the flowers and the spring and enough of a bright side to go on with this life that they are all so willing to throw away on such a slim hope.

He really can’t get on board with just…hoping that the suicidally rash inevitable endgame will work out for the best. But the only one of them who appears to have any other coping mechanism is Enjolras, who conceives of himself as an instrument of war trying to make himself obsolete–whose metric of success is self-annihilation. Which I think Grantaire understands very well and wishes he didn’t.

*The other 20% is tied up with his objectification of Enjolras. In the very literal, “what a fine statue,” “Je crois à toi” sense. Enjolras is an abstract concept? Grantaire’s a skeptic; Enjolras is a god? Grantaire’s an atheist; Enjolras is a statue? Grantaire’s an art school dropout. If he can make Enjolras something other than a person, then he doesn’t have to take him seriously; he doesn’t have to worry about letting him down.

everyonewasabird:

Ooh, you and I are reading a LOT of things differently! Interesting!

So I don’t think I disagree about what Grantaire is saying but about how it lands: he’s wrong. He sees the problems of the world--and in his bitterness invents extra problems, like women marrying bankers, which is not an actual problem, Grantaire--and despair makes him think nothing can be changed. And Joly and Bossuet know he’s wrong.

On the “new mown hay” line--firstly, oh my god, Hapgood’s translatation of that is a travesty. That passage is gorgeous.

Here’s Wilbour:

...God, it’s so beautiful. Anyway.

It’s worth noting that this passage is not like the rest of the speech. Grantaire was being racist and sexist and gross like a sentence ago, and he undercuts his own eloquence with “Really they are too silly” a sentence after. I think the magic in his spark of sincerely expressed fear and regret here is real! And I think Hugo and the brick feel that regret and that loss. But I don’t think Hugo and the brick agree that therefore it would be better to just not have the revolution.

About Grantaire you said:

He works really, really, hard to see the flowers and the spring and enough of a bright side to go on with this life

I don’t agree. I think Grantaire is trudging on with a life that fills him with horror and which he barely tolerates, and the one good thing he has are the people he surrounds himself with who actually do pay attention to flowers and spring and the bright side--like Joly and Bossuet, who keep making jokes for exactly this purpose. Like the joke about Marius and revolution!

It’s not that Bossuet and Joly value their lives less or are paying less attention to the cost of the fight than Grantaire is--it’s that they value the world more. They love their lives--hence their last, joyous brunch instead of the boring, rainy parade--and they love the world, and they believe enough in hope for the world that they will willingly and joyfully give those lives to fix it. That’s not the same thing!

I don’t read “speaking of a revolution, Marius is amorous” as avoidance at all--handling catastrophe with good humor is Joly and Bossuet’s whole thing. Grantaire is spiraling into despair that Bossuet and Joly don’t share, since they’ve committed to this fight and made their peace with it. So they redirect Grantaire’s collapsing despair spiral with the joke that Marius--whom they must think of as a massive prude, given, well, them--suddenly caring about romance constitutes a revolution on par with the one they’re planning. Honestly, I thought it was pretty funny!

I don’t think anyone is facing the revolution with denial--I’m not following where that idea comes from. It seems to me the Amis are brave and selfless and committed and good, and they see revolution as worth doing, and if they die in the effort, they see that as worth it. I think everyone but Grantaire is fully on board with that.

A LOT of my feeling that the text of the brick is adamantly pro-revolution comes from this post from pilferingapples, ostensibly about the Waterloo digression. This post seriously upended how I think of the revolution plot of the brick versus its weird bourgeois ending--honestly, it completely changed how I think about this book and just...books in general. I can’t overstate what that bit of meta did to me.

On Enjolras... oh wow, we’re seeing very different characters!

You say:

Enjolras, who conceives of himself as an instrument of war trying to make himself obsolete–whose metric of success is self-annihilation.

I definitely see the instrument of war thing! And I think he always saw the (possibility? probability? certainty?) that the world he fought for would not include him. But I don’t think his metric of success is self-annihilation. That might be Valjean’s, but I don’t think it’s his. I think Enjolras’s metric of success is the world being saved.

I think of Enjolras as the great moral victor of the story. Inasmuch as he has flaws, they’re about being too absolute and sublime, to the exclusion of all else. That’s not a damning flaw, and in embracing Grantaire he transcends it. Far from tending towards self-annihilation, he seems to me a character of nigh-superhuman resilience, too full of love for his friends and humanity and faith in a better world ever to break, under any circumstances. I don’t think his willingness to die is abnegation--I think it’s genuine love for the world and faith that even in defeat, he and his friends have moved humanity closer to a better future.

(I hope that wasn’t too combative! I’m happy to argue further! :D)

#meta #long meta #enjolras #grantaire #joly #bossuet #oysters #feel like a weird choice to me if you're picking your last brunch on earth but sure #'huge cup of tea of the new-mown hay' hapgood how could you

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