Okay so I have propaganda for an F/F ship that I feel has not received the attention it deserves due to fandom misogyny. This is sort of tangentially related to the issue of women, especially women of color, being headcanoned as queer to get them out of the way of m/m ships. I say tangentially related, because Eposette is not technically an example of that but I feel like it is in spirit. This is in part because both characters are white women in the book, although that's not really true of the musical.
Ever since Lea Salonga played her, a lot of productions of Les Mis cast women of color as Eponine. Annoyingly, Cosette is almost always played by a white woman still, and I say annoyingly because it feels very racialized. Like Cosette is the "pure" romantic female lead who's love is requited by the romantic male lead, so she's played by white women, whereas Eponine's love for Marius is unrequited and she's a sex worker so she's seen as "impure" and therefore non-white. It's very frustrating and pretty racist. Let đ women đ of đ color đ play đ Cosette đ! (are people still doing the clap emoji thing? idc the sentence felt naked without them). Musical theatre directors of the world, I know this may come as a shock to you, but there are sopranos out there who aren't white women, I promise you. And while we're on the topic of casting Les Mis, why is Jean Valjean almost always white? It's a story about the evils of the criminal justice system for Christ's sake, but for some reason almost no productions think to cast a black man to play the book's primary victim of the criminal justice system. It's such an obvious choice!!! I have no directing credentials or skills whatsoever but they should let me direct Les Mis!!!
Anyway, I am getting off topic. The point is, while Eposette are technically both white, because Eponine is often played by women of color, the fandom rarely depicts her as white (which I'm happy about to be clear, I'm not complaining that Eponine is a woman of color, I'm complaining about the weird racialized dichotomy of consistently casting her as non-white and Cosette as white. It would be fun if they were both non-white imo). Also, they're not really getting in the way of m/m because no one actually cares that much about Marius (as they shouldn't). But even though they're central characters in both the book and the musical, certainly more central than Enjolras and Grantaire are, they are often pushed to the background of fics that center m/m. And one way people kind of get around their conflicts in canon is to just put them in a totally healthy, normal, conflict free romantic relationship in the background of a fic. That way the writer can claim that women were present, but still focus their attention on Enjoltaire or whatever other m/m les amis combo they're writing fic for.
And this is really annoying to me, because Eposette is objectively the most interesting ship the Les Mis fandom has ever come up with.
In case you're not familiar with the story: when Cosette and Eponine were little kids, Cosette was basically the Cinderella to Eponine's evil stepsister. By which I mean, Cosette was living with Eponine's godawful parents, the Thenardiers, and they basically treated this literal toddler as a servant and made her do a ton of child labor and also like beat the shit out of her a bunch. Just a lot of child abuse going on. And you know, Eponine was also a little kid at the time, it would be insane to blame her, also a literal toddler, for going along with the parents' mistreatment of Cosette, but you can see how that might cause conflict when they meet again as adults, right? Like yes reasonably, they should both recognize that it's not Eponine's fault, but feelings aren't always reasonable, you know?
And in that same vein, Cosette is eventually saved from the Thenardiers and adopted by Jean Valjean, whereas Eponine is left behind with her godawful parents who of course then proceed to just be really abusive to her and her siblings instead. And also they lose all their money and Eponine has to become a teenage sex worker to survive, whereas Valjean is rich now and Cosette lives a(n albeit quite isolated) life of luxury. And then they grow up, and they both just so happen to fall in love with the most boring man alive for some reason, but he's only interested in Cosette. So it's kind of a switch up of what their dynamic was like when they were kids, in that logically, it would be unreasonable for Eponine to blame Cosette for any of this, but you can see how, with this complete reversal of fortune, resentments might build up anyway.
The point being, Eponine and Cosette have this absolutely fascinating dynamic and backstory and there's so much there to explore. Unfortunately, Victor Hugo did not see fit to do all that much exploring between them, probably also because of misogyny. Like, they're obviously narrative foils for each other, but for some reason they almost never interact as adults. Which is why I was so happy to find out that people ship them because it's such a juicy relationship and there's so much you could do with it. So imagine my disappointment when I realized that most Les Mis fic that features Eposette just makes them a happy conflict free background ship in their m/m stories.
Like, I'm sorry, what Eponine and Cosette have going on is way more interesting and complicated and fucked up than anything your gay communist college twinks could ever come up with. There is no universe where Eposette would just be calmly chilling in the background. They should be having an extremely messy 300k slow burn featuring soap opera level drama. They should be screaming, crying, throwing up, bleeding out (which Eponine does canonically do actually. RIP girl, you deserve better than dying for the most boring man in the history of fiction! I think you should have toxic, or at least really messy, yuri instead!), and generally just doing the absolute most.
And don't get me wrong, there is good Eposette fic and art out there that does center them and explore the messiness of their relationship. I'm not saying nobody cares about them (I obviously do!) and I'm kissing every real Eposette warrior on the lips for their commitment to the cause. But it's such a bummer to have to wade through so much m/m bullshit and like uwu wholesome background Eposette to find anything interesting about them. Especially because I just know that if they were both men this would be the most popular ship in the fandom.
