The Brick - Tumblr Posts
Grantaire: Well, well, well…If it isn’t my old friend: the dawning realization that I fucked up bad.
my baby boy Gavroche SINGING AS HE'S SHOT AT. RAISING HIS ARMS LIKE "LOOK AT ME; I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU"
the brick is destroying me; i will never be ok again
I always thought the "You annoy me. Kill me, rather" line was delivered right after Valjean cuts the ropes and frees Javert (thanks Les Mis '78 brainrot I guess), but I just reread this bit and realised Javert walks away up the street for several MINUTES before turning around and shouting it to Valjean at the top of his lungs.
why is he like this
Jean Valjean saving Marius in the musical: "he's like the son I might have known"
Jean Valjean in the brick: 'he gazed at him in that half-light with an inexpressible hatred'
ugh i hate it when i occasionally meet a person who also ”somewhat enjoys les mis” and i can’t tell if they have just like, seen the musical or read the brick and are like so normal about it OR if they are like me and have also read every single fanfic every published and have a tattoo for their fave lyrics and just act like they are so normal about it and also if they are just casual enjoyers i don’t want to scare them away by asking if they have maybe read world ain’t ready so help me out here
The way she is blackmailing him to take care of himself
Just had sort of a Les Mis half-thought. Like I feel like I’m going somewhere with this, but I’m not sure where.
I was thinking about how Stars as a soliloquy is strange because Javert isn’t really talking to himself. There’s no real internal conflict. He’s just stating what he believes. Then who is he singing to? At first I thought it was the audience, but this song doesn’t break the fourth wall, so that couldn’t be entirely it. I think, to some extent, Stars is a prayer. For the most part, Javert is simply explaining, but then we get the line “Lord let me find him” near the end. He is asking for something. So that’s what the song seems like to me.
But then this comparison of Stars to a prayer reminded me of a scene in the book; the chapter How Jean Can Become Champ. It’s a somewhat similar situation in which Javert explains his belief system, but at the end of the day, is asking for something. In the case of Stars, he asks for G-d’s support/assistance. In the book, he asks to be fired so that he will not become a hypocrite.
Once again, I’m not really sure where this train of thought was going. I just thought it was interesting.
They are allergic to healthy communucation
Psychic: *reads my mind*
My mind: Valjean is not the Ultimate Symbol of Perfect goodness, he’s a disaster! He is a good person while ALSO being a walking pile of self-loathing who has an insanely self-destructive obsession with his own “unworthiness.” He believes he’s unworthy of friendship— so the only personal relationships Valjean allows himself to have are the ones he can pretend are Just Selfless Acts of Duty™. Valjean can also be patronizing towards the people he saves— like “I know what you need better than you, you NEED to let me save you, you NEED to let me horribly unnecessarily sacrifice myself for you, because I am your Protector.” You really see that in the way Valjean treats Marius and especially Cosette— he deliberately misleads them about his past/cuts himself off from them and destroys himself in order “”””Protect”””” them…….even though doing this caused Cosette and Marius FAR MORE pain than being honest with them would’ve done. And tbh Valjean can also be a Hypocrite about accepting help— he encourages everyone to accept his help even at the cost of their “dignity,” but he refuses to accept Marius’s offers of help and pity after he tells Marius about his past. It’s like, Valjean encourages people to let him save them….and then stubbornly refuses to let anyone save *him.* He shrinks away from being pitied. I argue that Valjean is weirdly like Javert in how STUBBORNLY he refuses to accept pity and—
Psychic: what the fuck
I am intrigued by Javert sitting with "the resignation of a martyr" (would love to know if that tracks with the original French). He has thus far not tried to do anything about his predicament, or even been especially saucy. Not like him! I was going to make a joke post along the lines of "dying in the course of duty is probably a dream come true, no wonder he's excited for his photo-finish stabbing" but is it a joke? Just a few chapters ago we learned he's 52-- not so old, but just how many years of chasing down urchins does he have in him? I don't know very much about France in this time period but what I can glean from the text of this very book makes me think the retirement prospects for wage-earners, even ones employed by the state, are pretty grim. And we did just see a different old man commit suicide-by-cop... Here we have a group of people united not by political ideals but the feeling that their lives are at an insurmountable deadlock-- because all other avenues of political change are closed, because the love of his life has left the country, because the love of her life is thoroughly uninterested, because he couldn't afford to eat or pay his housekeeper, etc. "The situation is untenable, its better if it ends here" in the minds of this grab-bag of citizens, and all the strings of fate that connect them and brought them to this one place.
Now THAT'S a novel.
A fun pun from yesterday's Les Mis chapter:
Gavroche says: “And make haste, Monsieur What’s-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette is waiting.”
This line in French is: “Et dépêchez-vous, monsieur Chose, puisque mamselle Chosette attend.”
"Chose" means "thing" so Gavroche is kind of calling Jean Valjean "monsieur thingamajig" since he doesn't know Valjean's name. The funny part is that this can be made into a pun when he refers to Cosette as "Chosette" instead, which is just the word "chose" with a feminine "ette" tacked on, making them Monsieur Chose and Mamselle Chosette.
Rose attempts the translation of this pun more than Hapgood does, but neither express how well this works because of Cosette's name.
It's "your friends have just shot you" day :((
This is just so adorable
One of my favorite moments in the book
This is probably the funniest illustration we’ve gotten so far. This lady is about to smash his fuckin skull in and he’s just standing there like „nuh uh“
“when the man reached the staircase, a ray of light from without made it stand out like a silhouette, and Jean Valjean had a complete view of his back. The man was of lofty stature, clad in a long frock-coat, with a cudgel under his arm. The formidable neck and shoulders belonged to Javert.”
It’s so funny that Jean Valjean and Javert can mutually recognize each other by musculature/their body shapes, but only Valjean can recognize Javert’s face
The tale of a buff playwright: Chekhov's Guns
Is this anything?