Les Mis fandom where did Floreal come from like I’m so confused
She’s the woman Grantaire is talking about during one of his (long) rants, during Preliminary Gayeties! As Grantaire says:
I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face. Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by caterpillars are visible. (Hapgood translation)
So we never meet her, exactly, but we hear a lot about her– she’s a working woman who makes a living setting the eyelets in corsets, who’s currently dating a banker. (Grantaire disapproves, and is pretty gross about doing so, but literally no one asked you, Grantaire.)
OKAY GUYS I feel like we don’t acknowledge enough that one line Grantaire says! I mean besides all the other lines that Grantaire says! The one that comes right after “I understand only love and liberty” remember that line (my favorite line)???
Yeah after that is my SECOND favorite line: “Never having had any money, I never got used to it, and therefore I’ve never felt the need of it; but if I’d been rich, there would have been no more poor!” THAT LINE.
He’s drunk here and still thinks of how he would help people if only he’d been in the position.
And it’s so interesting to me because Grantaire is speaking of how if he had the chance he would help, but meanwhile there is an actual barricade there with an actual hopeful revolution occurring. And he is not helping.
Enjolras and the other amis have their method of doing things, which is to demand more from the government. But GRANTAIRE (my beautiful son) doesn’t think that way. He doesn’t think going to the government will get them anywhere. He would go directly to the people suffering from the problem and help them with what he has, personally.
He’s surrounded by a bunch of rich schoolboys who have the money to help the poor directly (and also gain their devotion and to raise spirits) but who instead reject the money and challenge a powerful government. But he speaks of how if he was in their economic position he would do something guaranteed to help.
And this is from someone who says he “never (…) had any money” so he probably knows better than them how it feels to be like the rest of society, hardly making it through.
Idk man, this is my son and I love him.
This was in the tags, so I decided to go ahead a comment on this post. Because I don’t think this way about the situation at all.
Grantaire is a sh*ttalker. That’s his thing (apart from literally 2-3 lines in all of his appearances in the book), and nothing he says should be taken at face value. Sure, Grantaire seem to be favouring the theory of Valjean’s way of helping. And yes, helping the occasional citizen may help that citizen through the day, but what about the rest of their life? They’ll still die poor, powerless, subject to the whims of another King. Never masters of their own life. Grantaire is thinking he is being theoretically kind, but he is but prolonging the status quo. Charity is never the way forward.
But even beyond that, he is not talking about being in the Amis’ economic position, because he is in their economic position – he is a wealthy bourgeois student, who can afford drinking and gambling through the day, and then wake up in his nice furnished apartment, with his nice clothes, to do more of the same on the next day. He knows every day from where his next meal is coming. He’s talking about yet another fantasy, a Rotschilds-like fortune, basically something like ‘If I was King’.
From what we see of Grantaire, it’s all either a swollen-head self-aggrandizement, or meek fake-modesty. I think this is an instance of the latter.
Grantaire is troubled by society, and I am certain, and have always been certain, while reading the brick, that he has a good heart––but he does absolutely nothing, in the course of the brick, that puts him on a moral pedestal above the rest of the amis. Far from it. “Shittalker” sums it up.
***
It is TOTALLY shittalking. Well-meant and hopeful bluster, but bluster all the same.
FWIW it’s worth, I don’t think it’s either false modesty or self-aggrandizement, though. I think it’s fear.
Grantaire’s “if I won the lottery” style lamenting here is like Gillenormand’s complaining that if HE were rich, he’d have SO many young mistresses, totally, you don’t even know. Gillenormand IS rich, incredibly rich! The reason he can’t have young mistresses is totally unrelated to that! But it’s face-saving to blame it on money. Grantaire is, at the least, solidly middle-class– he COULD give to charity, or toss money to beggars in the street. Heck, he probably even does, when he thinks of it. But his conviction that he can’t *really* change anything has nothing to do with money.
Stands up on soapbox, holds up this article like it’s the opening of the Lion King.
Y’all should read this because it is FIRE, but also because a post from the Time Lady Project was linked in this!
Historically, whenever young women are interested in a form of media,
we like to tell them it is bad for them and that they are bad for
liking it — unless the media goes mainstream, in which case it becomes
no longer feminine and hence okay. Novels are dangerous and cause
insanity, until they become classics worthy of being studied in college. Beatlemania is the province of “the dull, the idle, the failures,“ until the Beatles become a band that everyone loves.
Young women are so attacked for loving the media they love that it is
a radical act for a young woman to love something unashamedly. And
transformative fandom is the most radical act of all, because it
reverses that “lady thing to respectable thing” process.
Emphasis added. It’s so good- go read the whole thing.
Le Comte d’Barbarie // Melannen // One-shot // The news from M-sur-M, where all the men are mysterious, all the women are virtuous (especially the ones who aren’t) and all the domesticated rodents have complicated inner lives.
All of the above are canon-era fics, because I couldn’t find other-era fics that were aimed at general audiences and had no romance, as per my requirements.
I think everyone needs this fic list. If not today, then someday, and probably often.
New research, published in October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that despite size discrepancy, there’s no functional difference between men’s and women’s brains. “Male” brains and “female” brains simply don’t exist. In fact, there’s significant overlap.
and the myth of binary biological sex and gender essentialism continues to come crumbling down
Éponine Thénardier can “unravel” time–jump backward a few minutes or hours and let events play out again, sometimes slightly different from before. It’s a secret little thing that she uses occasionally, to get herself out of trouble or avoid minor accidents. She’s never tried to do anything big with it because, on the whole, she’s happy with her life–her family’s inn is successful, they live in a nice neighborhood in Paris, and she’s in love with a kind and beautiful boy named Marius.
But when her lover is killed on the barricades of the June Rebellion, she has to try to fix it–even if it means using her power on a scale she’s never dreamed of. Even if it means throwing away everything else she has.
I can’t emphasise strongly enough how brilliant this fic is – it’s definitely one of those ‘read even if the character isn’t your Thing’ fics, so even if for some weird reason you’re not currently interested in Brick Éponine, go over and read it anyway.
If you’re one of my non-fandom followers and you like reading science fiction in historical settings and/or disorientating radical dissassembly of existing literary narratives and/or psychological exploration of what a sense of self would even mean without linear time, go and read it too.
It’s been such a great project and I promised myself I’d steer clear of the self-deprecation in this post so I’ll just say that I’ve learned so much while doing this, spurred on by the ‘welp this story is good and I need to at least attempt to do it justice’ feeling.
Oh and while you can click on these images to get a nice zoomed-in version – plus the whole picture for that one that didn’t play nice with the others – they’re also embedded in the text over at Ao3 and, well. They look cooler that way.
guys guys GUYS here is our Big Bang project! Link to the fic is above, but even if you don’t read the fic, definitely check out this gorgeous and creative artwork that shellcollector did. I keep finding new details to be amazed by, and I just can’t stop looking at the last one; with the weight of all the others behind it, it is such a powerful image.
Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy – meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
How to apply Writing techniques for action scenes:
– Short sentences. Choppy. One action, then another. When there’s a lull in the fight, take a moment, using longer phrases to analyze the situation–then dive back in. Snap, snap, snap. – Same thing with words – short, simple, and strong in the thick of battle. Save the longer syllables for elsewhere. – Characters do not dwell on things when they are in the heat of the moment. They will get punched in the face. Focus on actions, not thoughts. – Go back and cut out as many adverbs as possible. – No seriously, if there’s ever a time to use the strongest verbs in your vocabulary – Bellow, thrash, heave, shriek, snarl, splinter, bolt, hurtle, crumble, shatter, charge, raze – it’s now. – Don’t forget your other senses. People might not even be sure what they saw during a fight, but they always know how they felt. – Taste: Dry mouth, salt from sweat, copper tang from blood, etc – Smell: OP nailed it – Touch: Headache, sore muscles, tense muscles, exhaustion, blood pounding. Bruised knuckles/bowstring fingers. Injuries that ache and pulse, sting and flare white hot with pain. – Pain will stay with a character. Even if it’s minor. – Sound and sight might blur or sharpen depending on the character and their experience/exhaustion. Colors and quick movements will catch the eye. Loud sounds or noises from behind may serve as a fighter’s only alert before an attack. – If something unexpected happens, shifting the character’s whole attention to that thing will shift the Audience’s attention, too. – Aftermath. This is where the details resurface, the characters pick up things they cast aside during the fight, both literally and metaphorically. Fights are chaotic, fast paced, and self-centered. Characters know only their self, their goals, what’s in their way, and the quickest way around those threats. The aftermath is when people can regain their emotions, their relationships, their rationality/introspection, and anything else they couldn’t afford to think or feel while their lives were on the line.
Do everything you can to keep the fight here and now. Maximize the physical, minimize the theoretical. Keep things immediate – no theories or what ifs.
If writing a strategist, who needs to think ahead, try this: keep strategy to before-and-after fights. Lay out plans in calm periods, try to guess what enemies are thinking or what they will do. During combat, however, the character should think about his options, enemies, and terrain in immediate terms; that is, in shapes and direction. (Large enemy rushing me; dive left, circle around / Scaffolding on fire, pool below me / two foes helping each other, separate them.)
Lastly, after writing, read it aloud. Anyplace your tongue catches up on a fast moving scene, edit. Smooth action scenes rarely come on the first try.
eirenical17 