some_stars: (no subject)

fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (

some_stars) wrote,
@ 2013-02-05 10:28 pm UTC

Crossposts:

http://some-stars.livejournal.com/2253177.html

(no subject)

I am almost done with Les Mis! I got to "Javert Derailed" and it's so magnificent and blew my mind so hard I may have to stop for a bit and just...bask in it. There's just so much THERE. I need to reread it and then possibly vomit some incoherent blither, I have so many feelings.

Accordingly I have also got to the parts where all the Amis get killed, and it was very affecting and I was very sad and then I paused my reading for the rest of the night to read fanfic where they have sex with each other, since I now had all the relevant canon (I'm assuming the book doesn't have the part at the end where all the dead people sing a happy song).

(4 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only)

	no subject ellen_fremedon 2013-02-06 04:37 am UTC (link)
	I will read all the blither you want to vomit about Javert. I have FEELINGS FOREVER about him and his angry soul-searching and his concrit suicide note. (Reply to this) (Thread) (Hide 3 comments) (Show 3 comments)

no subject

some_stars
2013-02-06 04:52 am UTC (link)

The note! The note! If I can ever get my thoughts together enough to write in sentences (unlikely), it will focus greatly on his suicide memo. The other aspect that's commanding my obsessive reflections is how parallel his situation is to Valjean's at the beginning of the book, but that's the kind of thing that I think has been so extensively and thoroughly covered by everyone else in the last 150 years that there is no need for me to contribute. Actually I feel that way about most of my Les Mis thoughts, like I'm pretty sure whatever I say everyone else will respond with "...yes, and?" I can't help being late and enthusiastic and not very original :(

Anyway. Javert, omg, most amazing character of ever, and that NOTE. The note tells me that he's been noticing all these flaws in the system, from simple matters of efficiency to prisoner mistreatment (which: wow), even though he's never allowed himself to think about it. And now that he's accepted that authority can be flawed, he can't live in that world anymore but before he kills himself he writes down his complaints, which have to stand in for all the greater complaints against all the greater authorities that he's suppressed all his life. It's the addition of that small fierce act of assertion and vindication to the suicidality that is currently blowing my mind too hard to deal with.

(Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 2 comments) (Show 2 comments)

no subject

ellen_fremedon
2013-02-06 05:07 am UTC (link)

YES YES THIS.

And his complaints are all about things he's been complicit in. He can get as far as recognizing that these are injustices that he has perpetrated, and that he's responsible for doing something about them before he hands in his resignation.

He doesn't even consider whether he has any complaints to make about how society has treated him. He can't get that far. Authority falls, and he's suddenly able to understand injustice, as it applies to him personally, but only to the extent that he's the guilty party.

(Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	no subject some_stars 2013-02-06 05:17 am UTC (link)
	my turn: YES YES THIS. Oh man, Javert. My heart can't take him. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

(4 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only)

Account name:	Log in with OpenID?
Password:	Forget your password?
	Remember me