je suis farouche

Do you hear the people sing

Lost in the valley of the night?

It is the music of a people

Who are climbing to the light.

and I feel even MORE strongly about the synths being memory holed

In the novel Les Misérables there is an actual canon scene where one of the main characters rides a roller coaster. I'm not joking. there's a scene in where Fantine-- the tragic dead mother from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables-- zips down one of the world's first roller coasters. And okay, I have some questions.

How did a roller coaster end up in Paris in 1817, a century before the time we're usually told that roller coasters were "invented"?

What was this defunct roller coaster even like?? How did it work???

Why did this ride make a cameo in Les Mis? What does it mean??? Victor Hugo, why? There was only one way a person could find out information about this obscure long-forgotten defunct roller coaster: exhaustive research through scholarly articles, primary sources, 19th century newspapers, contemporary illustrations, and museum archives.

This video essay is “Les Mis Meets Defunctland.”

Originally created for the @barricadescon event, the essay explores the earliest origins of the Russian Mountains roller coasters, the fascinating history behind how they came to France, their many connections to the political turmoil of the time period, what they felt like to ride, why they were shut down, how they fell into obscurity, and why Victor Hugo included them in Les Mis-- as well their secret author-intended relevance to the overall themes of the novel.

This lowly sand which you trample beneath your feet, if you cast it into the furnace, and let it melt and seethe, shall become resplendent crystal, and by means of such as it a Galileo and a Newton shall discover stars.

Happy Barricade Day 2023!

When’s it gonna end? When we gonna live? Something’s gotta happen now, something’s gotta give It’ll come, it’ll come, it’ll come, it’ll come, it’ll come