A Fan's Playground

How long has it been since I last made a podfic? let's not think about that right now.

Instead please enjoy a blast from the past, a delightful fic from the heyday of les mis fandom, lovingly read to you by me today.

Title: on your way up to the light
Author: ryfkah
Podficcer: sophia_sol
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Characters: Jean Valjean & Éponine Thénardier
Length: 41:45
Content notes: suicidal thoughts
Summary: Eponine throws a note at an old man. She doesn't anticipate the consequences.

you should (hopefully!) be able to access the podfic here on my google drive, but I am out of practice at posting podfics to the internet so let me know if there's any issues with this!

I've also posted this to ao3 here, where you can stream it if you want!

Sooooo turns out I never actually did an announcement post for the fic I wrote ages ago for a Les Miserables exchange!

HERE YOU GO.

some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky (730 words) by sophia_sol
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent & Père Fauchelevent
Characters: Cosette Fauchelevent, Père Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean
Additional Tags: Fix-It, Families of Choice, platonic Convent Husbands a little
Summary:

Cosette worried about Fauchelevent too, and during her free hour would often hover over him to anxiously tell him that he was surely feeling better today; and Fauchelevent would always agree.

Also! I was given an absolutely delightful fic written for me by Melannen!

Le Comte d'Barbarie (1845 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Baptistine Myriel & Sister Simplice
Characters: Baptistine Myriel, Sister Simplice, Sister Perpetue, Père Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, Valjean's Guinea Pig
Additional Tags: Madeleine Era, Christianity, Epistolary, Convent Husbands, guinea pigs
Summary:

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.

On this reread of Les Miserables I’m paying a lot more attention to the money than last time because it is INTERESTING. Also I happen to be in the middle of Hugo glorifying Marius’ voluntary poverty and I am annoyed so I am writing this instead of continuing to read.

Here are some of the things I have noticed. Probably I’m not saying anything surprising here. I’m just documenting for myself my observations:

Marius makes about 2 francs a day. Feuilly, on the other hand, who fandom often thinks of as “the poor one,” makes 3 francs a day - so that’s actually a very livable wage Feuilly is making. Bahorel’s allowance comes to a little over 8 francs a day.

One cannon shot costs 6 francs to fire. (Hugo mentions this when discussing the waste of the formal shots that are a sign of respect within the navy, and the amount of money wasted.) This is really interesting to me, because a recurring theme within the Aubrey-Maturin novels is the importance of captains having to supplement their stores of powder because the allowance from the government is not enough to get your crews really practiced at firing accurately. So all of a sudden I have a bit more of a sense of HOW MUCH MONEY it costs to do all of that practicing.

Fantine, after she is fired from the factory, makes 12 sous a day, which is then reduced to 9 sous a day - which is around a quarter of what Marius makes when Marius is poor. (20 sous per franc is the conversion.) Of course, there’s a decade or so (I think) between those two time periods, and the value of money may well have changed in that time; and also there’s the difference in cost of living in Paris versus the small town of M-sur-M. But it gives one an idea of how little Fantine was living on - especially considering she had to send 10 sous of that 12 to the Thenardiers for Cosette, so she was living on 2 sous a day, which is ONE TWENTIETH of what Marius lives on.

wow okay apparently my headlong fall into love for the Amis was kind of inevitable once I learned about them and their cause and all that?

see, today I got reminded of a comment I left more than a year ago on a fic in my previous fandom (one of my very favourite fics in the entire fandom). Check out the following excerpt from my comment:

but anyway my POINT IS, it's tragic to think of them dying in the course of their attempts to change the world, make the world a better place, right, and for a moment when I finished this fic I was devastated to think that was what was going to happen next, but then -- somehow this fic also makes it all okay, because even if they die, even if they die the fight doesn't die with them. They were a part of something larger than themselves, a whole world of people saying fuck you to the people in charge's idea of what life should be, and they will make it, even if the they aren't around to see it. And that's beautiful.

all I did to that excerpt was edit out the names of the protagonists and of the group of people in charge, and all of a sudden BAM it's like I'm writing about Les Miserables

Soooo I accidentally meta'd on tumblr about Courfeyrac and Tholomyes in response to someone else's reblog of someone else's gif, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS ON TUMBLR.

So I thought I'd best repost here.


I've seen a lot of people complain about the "For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes" thing, so when I finally got to that part of the brick I was PAYING ATTENTION. Because Hugo clearly thought he was saying something here, and you KNOW Hugo wasn't down with Tholomyes' behaviour and was down with Courfeyrac's.

And you know what? I actually really like what Hugo's doing here! Because there are some superficial similarities between the two: cheerful, charming, into the ladies, etc.

"That Tholomyes is astounding!" said the others, with veneration. "What trousers! What energy!"

That's the sort of thing you could totally imagine being said about Courfeyrac, amiright?

BUT. Although Hugo says, "For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes," he follows that up with this:

"any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honorable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin."

So what Hugo's saying ISN'T that Courfeyrac is a terrible person like Tholomyes, he's saying that ALTHOUGH Courfeyrac is a lot like Tholomyes in a lot of ways, he's different in one VERY IMPORTANT way: he's honourable! So Hugo's saying that it's not inevitable that young men of that nature are thoughtless and terrible human beings! It's not inevitable that Tholomyes behave in such an awful way to Fantine, because Courfeyrac is proof that a Tholomyesish person can be a GOOD HUMAN BEING.

So my read is that Hugo is using the comparison to DISS THOLOMYES EVEN FURTHER through the comparison with the awesomeness of Courfeyrac; he's not trying to drag Courfeyrac's name through the muck but let him shine the brighter through the comparison with the reprehensible behaviour of Tholomyes.

And I think that's pretty awesome!

OKAY, THERE

There are my thoughts on Courfeyrac and Tholomyes that I have been meaning to write up for -- oh gosh, SIX WEEKS? REALLY? *headdesk*


(all brick quotes in the above are from the Hapgood translation because yay for ctrl-f on webpages and yay for project gutenberg!)

This weekend I was internetless! (see my post on tumblr for more? LOOK, IT'S EASY TO UPLOAD PHOTOS ON TUMBLR......)

So I READ STUFF.

First of all, I finished rereading North & South, by Elizabeth Gaskell! AN EXCELLENT BOOK. I, um, don't appear to have anything else to say about it. Except that now I also want to rewatch the miniseries.

Then I finished reading Sarah Rees Brennan's Unspoken, which I started reading, um, MONTHS ago, I think? It's a very good book, but it's...idk, it's not for me? I enjoyed SRB's Demon Lexicon trilogy because the bits of her id she was writing for in that series spoke to me super hard, but the bits of her id she's writing for in this book do not. I am not into the Hot Blond Aristocratic Death thing, or Intrepid Lady Reporters. I loved Rusty the most out of anybody, and Holly and Angela second. But.... the stuff the book was actually ABOUT didn't speak to me. Which, I want to make it clear, does not mean anything except that it's not what I'm personally into!

Then I started reading All Men of Genius, by Lev A.C. Rosen, which on the surface sounds AMAZING: Importance of Being Earnest crossed with Twelfth Night, starring a lady who is into science? Sign me up! But it turns out it is extremely super much part of the steampunk genre, and while I can live with that it is not a particular draw, and the first fifty pages just read like Oh Look This Is Certainly A Steampunk Novel and I was just.... I have preferable ways to occupy my time. So I closed it and put it away. I am very proud of myself! I have this terrible tendency to be like "but I heard this book was good! So I need to KEEP SLOGGING THROUGH IT to make sure I don't miss out on its amazingness!" But not every book is for everyone and it is OKAY to give up on books that are not for me! AND I DID THIS TIME.

Then I read The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman, which is mostly a very good book, but it made me uncomfortable. ( Cut for spoilers. The non-spoiler version: I am uncomfortable with how racism was handled. )

Then I began to read The Count Of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (père) because apparently I am into 19th century french novels now. Okay then! I am a quarter of the way in and it is thus far VERY different from Les Miserables in feel. ( Cut for spoilers for the first quarter of Monte Cristo and a wee bit for Les Miserables )

okay, you know what, proper reviews of vol. iv and v of Les Mis are probably not coming, because that's too intimidating a prospect. Instead you will just get thoughts of mine about the book as a whole AS I HAVE THEM. Or, like, AS I REMEMBER TO SHARE THEM, more accurately. :P Here's a few of them!

( Spoilers! )

Today -- well, technically yesterday -- the Madrid Cast! Yes, I listened to it yesterday but then got sidetracked and never typed up my notes into a proper post.

HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS.

It was different listening to this than the Japanese version, because in Japanese the only bits I could recognize were the names and the occasional preserved English word. In Spanish, well, I don't speak Spanish but I have just enough vague knowledge of the Romance languages via my compulsory Canadian French education and via English's half-Romance background that I can pick out wee bits and pieces. So where in the Japanese I could ignore the words to focus on the voices and the emotions and all that stuff, in this one I kept on being distracted by the feeling like there is sense hiding in the words and I could grasp it if I only paid more attention, but of course I can't because unlike my sister I do not know Spanish. It'll be even worse listening to the French casts, because I'll constantly be like "I RECOGNIZE THAT WORD BUT FORGET WHAT IT MEANS" and stuff. Sighhhh.

The Madrid Cast Valjean continues the tradition of being good in all versions. Javert, though, I'm not a big fan. I just wasn't feeling him. I was pretty impressed with Fantine, as Fantines who are not Anne Hathaway go. bb!Cosette sounded too old for the role. Eponine is pretty good. For Marius and Cosette, I'm starting to feel like I've lost any ability to judge my opinion of them, through having listened to too many versions without as much range of interpretation between them as there is for other characters.

And I didn't note down any opinions for any of the other characters. Many of the more minor characters I didn't have any strong opinion on, and some I just couldn't pick out. Enjolras, for example, was very hard for me to locate, because I've discovered it's a lot harder to follow a foreign-language Les Mis when it's such a highlights version -- it's only one cd's worth of music, not two or three like many others. So it jumped from place to place without giving me the cues I need to figure out which Ami was Enjolras.

Something I did note down, though, was something I've been meaning to mention for a while and kept forgetting to talk about, which is that I have an unfortunate inherent bias against sopranos. I'm just not as into higher voices! I think they're great as counterpoint to other stuff, as part of a beautiful harmony, but when listening to a soprano alone I am just...not a fan. Which means Cosette as the musical portrays her has an extra thing to overcome to get me to like her. I AM SORRY COSETTE! You are part of a love triangle and you are a soprano and the musical doesn't give you anything to do but be an object of love, and so I JUST CAN'T CARE ABOUT YOU LIKE I WANT TO. (I'm not hugely into the musical's Eponine either, because of aforementioned boring love triangle, but she at least is an alto so I enjoy her more. IT'S AMAZING HOW VOICE PART INFLUENCES HOW YOU THINK OF SOMEONE! Which I think is why basically all female romantic leads in musicals are all sopranos, because most people who are not me find it appealing in a lady. Or something.)

(I remember reading once, actually, an interesting meta post about traditional voice parts of dude villains versus dude heroes and how Jesus is like The Only Exception to the rule that The Hero Is A Tenor. It was really interesting! Here's the post: Heroism and the Tenor Anyways this is wayyyyy off topic. I LIKE MY PARENTHETICAL ASIDES THOUGH.)

GOING BACK TO LES MIS, I've discovered that the downside of listening to foreign casts for Les Mis is that I get little snippets of the language-I-don't-speak lyrics stuck in my head, only since I don't speak the language, I'm quite sure I'm mentally mangling the lyrics into some sort of awful stereotype of the language and then I feel bad. On the other hand, I've been intrigued to discover that even while I am busy listening to a different cast every day, which results in me having Les Mis stuck in my head ALL THE TIME, it's always in my head the CSR version. Always. No matter what version I was most recently listening to.

So today I decided to relisten to the CSR instead of moving on to the OFC, and it was actually kind of a weird experience. It felt so much more real to me than any of the other versions I've been listening to, no matter how good those other versions are. It's like, in my head THESE ARE THE CHARACTERS and everyone else is just playacting. Playacting very well, and in some cases doing a better job than the people on the CSR, but the CSR people are still THE REAL THEM in my head and I can't convince my subconscious otherwise.

ALSO ALSO, moving on from the musical, I appear to be stalled out in the book. Not because I'm not enjoying it, but because I have TOO MANY FEELS. THE REVOLUTION IS STARTING, aka the beginning of the inevitable deaths of everyone, and I just cannot handle it. HOPEFULLY I WILL SUCCESSFULLY TALK MYSELF INTO CONTINUING SOON, because I really really want to read more of it! I love the book! BUT CURRENTLY TOO MANY FEELS. :((((

(also also also I know I haven't responded to any comments in a while. I'LL GET BACK TO THAT. I just am determined to not let my comment!fail stop me from making posts the way it too often does.)

NEXT UP: the 2012 movie soundtrack! WHAT IT TOTALLY COUNTS, it is a different experience listening to it as a soundtrack in the context of other soundtracks rather than as part of a movie.

For one thing, this soundtrack goes for less "pretty music", which works in the context of a movie but is a little disconcerting when listening to it as music qua music. Valjean's "Who Am I", for example, is not particularly pretty, but it is successfully very emotional.

Although something I found interesting is that this is the soundtrack I've heard thus far that is the least interested in being pretty, and yet it also has the only Grantaire who actually sings in an aesthetically appealing way. Apparently most people take the "Grantaire was ugly and a drunkard" and decide that he ought to sing unmusically. This movie disagrees. WHICH I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH, as George Blagden is great, but it is an interesting comparison with EVERYONE ELSE EVER.

Anyways! It was cool to now hear Colm Wilkinson as the Bishop now that I am familiar with him as Valjean. By his voice he's clearly the same actor, though older! He does well as the Bishop, and I think I actually like him better in that role than as Valjean.

Something that confused me when I watched the movie and which continues to confuse me is why Thenardier puts on a French accent for part of Master of the House. It is a WEIRD DECISION. I do not get it.

Enjolras is good stuff here. Different from Anthony Warlow but just as good. I AM SORRY MICHAEL MAGUIRE, YOU JUST DO NOT MEASURE UP.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I am a fan of Eddie Redmayne as Marius. He is a fantastic Marius! A+ casting. I'm a little confused why so much of tumblr seems to be in love with his face (I like his Marius and he looks and sings and acts well for the role, but his face would not be my personal choice for Most Attractive Face in that movie. He probably wouldn't be in the top five, even.), but that's okay. To each their own.

OH AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED ANNE HATHAWAY AS FANTINE YET. Because if it isn't BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS TO YOU SHE IS THE BEST FANTINE EVER then I just don't know if I can handle how wrong you are. :P

CONTINUING, with Javert. I very much like this Javert, though I know he's not up everyone's alley. He is very different Philip Quast -- much gentler -- and even more so than Terence Mann. But even though he's clearly a DIFFERENT Javert, he's also still clearly a Javert.

Valjean I have no opinion on, as apparently I'm just like "yep, it's a Valjean" with every Valjean I've heard thus far. Either it's hard to go wrong with Valjean or everyone works very hard at casting the right people for Valjean, and I haven't decided which yet. :P

I found it an interesting (in a good way!) choice to make Gavroche sing the descant ladies' part in Drink With Me. I've always been a little confused by where the ladies come from in that song in the stage musical, as I've never actually seen the stage show. Were there ladies fighting on the barricade with Les Amis? Or were they just magically there as backup singers?

So they decided, on this one-cd-long highlights album, to put on the instrumental track of the final battle, when there's all sorts of actual singing bits they chose not to include. INTERESTING CHOICE, PTB. I mean, I like that instrumental bit! But you chose to include that and to NOT include Grantaire's verse of Drink With Me! I DISAGREE WITH YOUR LIFE CHOICES. Also I could do without "Suddenly." Like, whatever, I like it better in the context of book!Valjean's relationship with book!Cosette, but it's still not a song that appeals to me very much and I don't anticipate listening to it much at all (if ever). MY OPINIONS OF THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE DIFFERENT THAN YOURS, PTB.

Anyways, then I got all choked up during the ending bit, which I didn't do for the TAC or the OBC and have never done for the CSR, which is interesting. I'm trying to decide whether it's because this recording does a good job of conveying emotion (which, I mean, it DOES), or whether I'm just in a more emotional mood today. Both are possibilities!

I HAVE ACQUIRED OTHER CAST RECORDINGS OF LES MIS. This is the first in a projected series of posts with my Opinions. Because of course I have opinions!

A note: my baseline is the Complete Symphonic Recording, as the cast I grew up with and didn't even realize there were other casts out there. In fact I didn't even think to consider the possibility that some of the actors on the CSR weren't the best for their role; because to me, they were that character. I DISAGREE WITH MY PAST SELF.

So. Today! The Tenth Anniversary Concert cast!

First off, I am happy to discover I'm more openminded than I thought I'd be about the possibility of other casts. There were a few characters where I was like LOLNO but mostly I was like, "yep, this is different but also valid!"

So the very first real reaction I had to the TAC was to think: "gosh this Javert sounds an awful lot like the one I'm familiar with. I bet it's the same dude!" And lo, upon googling, it is indeed the same dude! Philip Quast!

It was actually really disconcerting to me, because so much else about this recording was Different and then it kept on falling over into familiar whenever Javert had a piece and it THREW ME OFF.

Valjean, on the other hand, was pretty different. But I was down with this dude's interpretation too. (and a good thing, because upon googling, it is Colm Wilkinson, aka the dude that everyone apparently loves)

I really disliked the casting for the Bishop. He sounded... very cold and polished and distant. Not welcoming like he's supposed to be. HE'S MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU, being welcoming is WHAT HE DOES. Not cool, TAC.

I liked Fantine well enough, or at least better than the Fantine of the CSR, but I have realized that Anne Hathaway has quite possibly ruined me for all other Fantines. ANNE IS JUST SO GOOD IN THE ROLE.

Enjolras....I AM SORRY FOR EVERYTHING I SAID ABOUT ANTHONY WARLOW IN MY POST ABOUT THE CSR. ANTHONY WARLOW IS AWESOME. I could not take this Enjolras seriously at all; I kept on giggling during his most dramatic bits.

The Thenardiers were eh. I have decided that I am weirded out by the musical's decision to write the Thenardiers as the comic relief, when the things they do are really not actually funny.

The Marius I also listened to ONE SINGLE LINE of his and was like "....I bet he's ALSO the same dude as the CSR", and lo I was correct again. Apparently I am AWESOME at recognizing voices, even though I'm utter shit at recognizing faces. I think I like Michael Ball's confident-sounding Marius better when paired with the TAC Cosette, because the TAC Cosette also sounds confident and sure of herself and stuff, so they make a better matched pair. Whereas my impression of the two of them in the CSR has always been of Cosette as a pretty waifish thing looking adoringly at Marius and having no strength of her own. I LIKE IT BETTER WHEN THEY SOUND LIKE EQUALS.

I quite enjoyed this Gavroche.

Eponine was perfectly decent but not my Eponine.

I didn't really have thoughts one way or another about most of the other characters.

So it was interesting to discover what actors I'd imprinted on rather more than I'd realized, and which ones I was easygoing on! Looking over this, the only ones where I was like NO THANK YOU were the Bishop and Enjolras. And I never would have expected that about Enjolras.

Some other thoughts: The orchestration was subtly different in places, and I almost found that more disconcerting than the different actors, because it's all subtle and background and stuff but it put me off kilter every time. I found the Attack on Rue Plumet way more exciting than I usually do in the CSR; idk how they did it but it was successfully really tense and stuff! There were a few small bits that were missing in this version, like the bit with the townspeople singing about M Fauchelevent being caught under the cart, and it also disconcerted me.

OVERALL I VERY MUCH LIKED THE TAC! Except for how it was DIFFERENT WAHHHHHHHHH so I could never quite settle into it because my brain kept on EXPECTING DIFFERENT THINGS. :P But that's just that I've trained myself too much by overlistening to the CSR :P

Next up: idk, one of the other ones in my new collection. STAY TUNED!