#mememes

aflamethatneverdies said:

If you want something specific then, uh, star for, Enjolras survives and talks with Valjean fic or star for your latest Cosette and Valjean fic.

well i'm talking your ear off about Cosette and Valjean anyway, so I guess I can talk a bit about Enjolras and Valjean too xD

(The fic in questions is The Earth Will Beam With Radiance aka the one where post-barricades Enjolras drops in on Valjean to talk him out of ghosting his family.)

There are many (many many) fascinating patterns to Valjean's interactions with the other characters and perhaps obviously, one of the themes that stands out the most is Judgement: this dynamic where he encounters a character who represents a certain facet of the Society; he's laid bare, put in their mercy in some way; they pass judgement upon him, for good or bad, and it has a huge impact on his life, but even so he remains distanced from the act of judgement itself. It's one-way process: they judge, he accepts.

It happens over and over: with the courts and tribunals, obviously, and with the bishop, and also with the other priest archetype characters: Simplice, Mother Superior, Javert. But it also happens with Fantine. It happens with Fauvent and with Marius, and in a twisted way it happens with Thénardier. On a very low-key way, it sorta happens with the Amis ("He is a man who saves others")

(Is Cosette the only one who doesn't judge Valjean? Remind me to come back to this thought)

Anyway, this is fascinating for multitude of reasons, but something that really interests me is Valjean's passivity in these situations. He doesn't consider the opposite impacts of the judgements rendered upon him any more than he recalls the people he saves. He knows the effect the bishop had upon him, but it would never occur to him to consider that he could have had an effect upon the bishop.  He certainly doesn't think about what it means for Marius to condemn him as he does, let alone what it does to Cosette – and that's the one challenge the narrative never really confronts him with.

And then there's Enjolras. You know, our one last priest archetype character, who just barely interacts with Valjean in canon. Who's very much engaged in illegal activities, and is certainly a more dangerous association for our respectably bourgeois couple (which in itself is a challenge to Valjean’s self-perception). Who at this point of his suddenly extended timeline (poor dude) would really not be holding back from raising all these questions and generally... resisting the role of arbiter of fate to someone who's really, really determined to  externalise the condemnation he thinks he deserves to the nearest convenient proxy. In that was a lot of the appeal for writing this particular story for me: in a way it's about challenging Valjean's own narrative about the agency he does and doesn't have in determining his own fate, the impact he has upon others, and through that, his sense of being a person who belongs into the world.

(via Unsettled Tom)