The Corinthe

Ten minutes of your time for my thesis?

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:12:20 GMT

Dear fanfic authors,

first of all I’m sorry if OT posting isn’t allowed in this community, but there’s no other way for me to do this; just delete this if it isn’t appropriate.

I’m a fanfic reader and occasional fanfic writer myself, so what did I pick for my thesis in communication sciences? Fan Fiction, of course. I designed a survey to find out more about our writing habits and media use; it takes about 10 minutes to complete.

If you could go here and fill it out, I’d be forever grateful. Of course I’ll publish some of the results at my journal in about a month or two, so you’ll know what happened with your answers.
The survey is completely anonymous; I have no way of finding out who gave which answers.

Please, please help a fellow fan out. It’s only ten minutes for you; it’s a very important part of my work for me.

This has been cross-posted like crazy, and I'm sorry for spamming you guys, I'm just a little desperate, too.

Dead site help.

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:26:29 GMT

I don't know if anyone but me remembers the "Nomenclature des voies de la ville de Paris" database, but it seems to have gone kersplat and this makes me sad. It had statistics on every street in Paris, including when they were created and which streets they replaced, so obviously it was useful for LM research. It seems pretty dead, but I figure if anyone knows where I could find a backup or a mirror, it'd be someone around here.

(Most of it still exists on archive.org, if you want to take a look, but there's no searching or index so you have to link-surf from each street's entry through the surrounding streets to get where you want. So, not very efficient, and a few of the pages weren't indexed at all.)

Victor Hugo's Views on the Death Penalty

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:17:30 GMT

I'm looking for a website that talks about Victor Hugo and his opinions on the death penalty. There was a particular one with his artwork of the gullotine or scaffolds and there's a tiny quote by Hugo but I can't remember the website. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:06:37 GMT

Is this community dead?

Ah well. If anyone remembers Rabs' "Courfey-isms" page, I have the same edition of Les Misérables, the one with variant text, Hugo's notes, snippets that never made it to the final draft, etc. I've typed up the most interesting bits, translated a few anecdotes, and stuck it all on a webpage, which is to be found here.

I know, I know, I already posted it to lesmiz, but a little extra promotion never hurt, and I thought it might be of interest to the people here.

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:04:43 GMT

Ended up with a 1st French edition of Le Rhin.... (yes, wow :D) and am wondering wheres the best place to find out its value. I am considering possibly selling it to help with my drama school funds, but dont know the best place to find out what to expect to get for it or even if its worth while, and if I would actually rather keep it...

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 11:48:38 GMT

Hey. My name's Mysta. I don't know much about the book Les Miserables, although I've read it 3 times; I know a heck of a lot more about the musical itself.

But anyway, My history teacher said something in class these past two days.

"You all know Hugo's most famous work was the play Les Miserables," and I think to myself, "that's not right, is it? He wrote the book, not the play?"

You see, I thought and still think that Hugo wrote only the book, and that Boublil and Schonberg organized and whatever'd the Original french play in 1980; and that Herbert Kretzmer and another team wrote up the modern english musical for 1985 or whenever. I could be very very VERY mistaken about this, and I apologize if I sound extremely naive and misinformed. Had Hugo written a play or some drama-type thing for his novel before the 20th century?

Another question: was Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) originally a novel or a drama, or something else all-together? Because my teacher also said that he wrote the play The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I'm just terribly confused. And I'm really asking now, because I haven't even seen Disney's Hunchback (which is probably butchered somewhat anyway), let alone read it, and I wanted to have that cleared up for me.

I'm so sorry for sounding so ... um ... stupid, shall we say, about these things, but I really hope someone can clear this all up for me. I promise you I'm not this way when talking about the musical.

Please and thank you!

Medical Education in 1830 Paris

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 02:11:37 GMT

Medical education has changed significantly since 1830, but less so in France than in the English-speaking countries. The institution of the “intern”, for example, a practitioner who continues to maintain student status, was instituted in Paris after the revolution. The following is a brief look, taken from Thomas Neville Bonner’s excellent volume Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750-1945.

Through the nineteenth century France and the German states had the best medical schools in the world. Foreign students flocked to these medical schools up to the middle of the century because English and American medical schools were founded on a different model. In France and Germany, clinicians had carried the day in the 1780s and 1790s and thus one received practical experience alongside the daily regime of lectures and dissection. The German model was stronger than the French model, but more foreign students came to French medical schools than to German medical schools. Compared to American and English schools, the French and German schools had a stronger role of natural science, a sharper distinction between physicians and practitioners (more on that later), a higher value on the institution of the teaching clinic, and a combination of surgery and medicine.

In 1830, there were three degree-granting medical schools in France: Montpellier, Strasbourg, and Paris. Paris was the premier school because it had the largest and most diverse hospital system. Foreigners would come to Paris simply to observe the variety of cases in the Parisian hospitals. A medical degree guaranteed a man the right to practice medicine – no additional licensing was required. The requirements for a degree, however, were not simple. First, one had to have a diploma from a humanistic secondary school (this means one needed to be fluent in Latin and not just in an ecclesiastical sense). Second, one had to complete the four year course of study at a degree-granting medical school. After 1836, so beyond our time but interesting nonetheless, one had to have a bachelor of arts in the natural sciences before one could be accepted to medical school – medical education had already found a nearly modern form.

The curriculum of the four year medical degree programme was very tightly controlled. One took sixteen required courses, and one could add additional private courses that would not count toward the degree. Each term, a student had to register for no fewer than four courses, including daily lectures, clinics, and hospital visits. In the first year, one attended lectures in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, botany, hygiene, and surgical pathology. In the second year, one continued in the same seven subjects but also added clinical and operative surgery. At the end of second year, one took a series of five exams, some of which were in Latin, all of which included practical exercises. If one did not pass these exams, then one could not progress to third year. In the third year, it was assumed that one had enough of the basic theory of how the body works, so the previous subjects ended and one attended lectures in pathological anatomy and materia medica, plus medical and surgical clinics. In the fourth year, one attended additional clinics, including midwifery, and was required to write a thesis. The thesis could be in either French or Latin, but its successful completion determined if one was granted a degree, and after defending the thesis, one had to pay for the publication of a required 140 copies of it. Starting in the first year, the mornings were ideally spent at the hospital, observing doctors and patients, while the afternoons were spent in lecture and the evenings were reserved for studying.

The draw for foreign (mostly American) students was the clinical side, the mornings in the hospital and the organised thematic clinics of the third and fourth years. Unlike in the German states, where there were more doctors willing to supervise students and thus students were able to have a hands-on education, the French medical hospitals were terribly overcrowded and understaffed. One watched the doctor, if one was lucky enough to get within three rows crammed around a hospital bed. Otherwise, one stood there and hoped to get close enough to see what was going on at the next bed. The organised clinics were often just amphitheatre lectures with a patient on stage, and a student in the back of the hall would have to rely on diagrams and the professor’s instructions in order to know what was going on and how to replicate the procedure. This kind of experience, however, was absent from American and English medical schools of the period: one learned the theory, then one was apprenticed to a doctor and expected to participate without having watched. French students would often go to smaller hospitals, usually specialist hospitals, at odd times of day and night and pay the staff for what amounted to a private tour of patients, still without the questioning and advising that occurred in the German system and is a part of modern medical student rotations in hospitals.

An elect few, however, might become interns. One had to be exceptionally dedicated and an absolute glutton for punishment. Approximately one in seven of those who took the examinations were selected to become interns – only the absolute cream of the crop. The exams lasted for two months and required at least a year of study. One never knew what would be on the exam: one had to stand before the examination board and answer completely random questions on medical and surgical theory. The exams were public, oral, and usually well-attended. Students had nervous breakdowns in the middle of the exam. The vast majority failed. One was selected not only based on knowledge but also on the rhetorical fluency of the answers given. The few who passed (a typical year saw 120 young men sit the exam and 18 of them passed) became interns. The institution of the internat (internship) allowed the best students to have real bedside experience with patients. Though they maintained student status, they, like modern interns, had responsibility for treating patients while under the supervision of a doctor. To become an intern was nearly a guarantee that one day, one would become a professor of medicine, and a professor of medicine was nearly as good as having a noble title.

Medical students everywhere had the reputation in the nineteenth century of being rowdy, drunken, womanisers. In Paris, we can add seditious to that list, especially after the riots over proposed curriculum changes in 1822. It’s no surprise that medical students were a little high-strung: an average schedule would have hospital visits at 8 in the morning, followed by six hours of lecture and dissection, and a giant pile of reading and general studying to do in the evening. For four years, they only got sleep on weekends and were consistently in a state of high stress. Of course they went a little nuts at the weekend. Money was also an issue for many students. While tuition in the French schools was regulated by law and even in Paris only cost 1100 francs for all four years, renting a room in the Quartier Latin would run at least 40 francs a month, and meals would be about the same. Meanwhile, for the petty bourgeois who sought medicine as a way to get ahead, one could spend only three years and 700 francs, live in a much smaller provincial centre like Cannes or Rouen, and receive a limited degree as a practitioner.

What I have described above relates only to the physician, the doctor to the upper classes. The French government also trained, licensed, and paid practitioners for the poor rural districts. A practitioner had the same entrance requirements, but only had three years of medical education and far less clinical work. The practitioner existed solely to provide medical care to poor rural areas. Charles Bovary, in Flaubert’s novel, is a practitioner, and is fairly typical. He has some clue what he is doing, but compared to a physician, he is poorly educated. He can’t keep up with all the new medical writings because he doesn’t have a wide enough background to follow it all properly. His purpose is only to soothe the sick, bind broken bones, and assist in difficult deliveries. If a patient has a real illness as opposed to an infection, he is clueless. He doesn’t have the training to diagnose cancers or perform complicated surgery. In Strasbourg, practitioners and physicians sat in the same lectures throughout. In Paris, the practitioners were separated out after the first year. The average practitioner was the son of an artisan or small shopkeeper, while the average physician was the son of a government official, an important shopkeeper, or a merchant. In addition, as the century progressed, the average age of a medical student increased. Many men came back to medicine after following another path, especially at the practitioner level.

How does all this relate to Les Mis, however? Let’s start with Joly, since he’s the most obvious. Joly is twenty-three when we meet him. One would generally finish secondary school at the age of 18. He could then go directly into medical school. Since he is not allowed to take fewer than four courses at a time, he should complete his sixteen courses in four years, making him twenty-three. Except he’s not finished. Most students failed at least one of the major exams after second year, requiring them to take those courses again and re-sit the exam the next year. Joly, quite probably, is not a great student. Moreover, he really shouldn’t have time to be gallivanting about, fomenting revolution. Hugo say’s he’s quite gay, despite being a hypochondriac. Really, the boy has to be going out of his head. He’s been on a hellish schedule for more than four years now. He has failed exams. He has to write a thesis. Maybe he failed to defend his thesis and has to do it all over. Plus the country is going to hell in a handbasket and he’s busy trying to overthrow the government. The most important thing here is that he has no choice in the number of courses he takes. Either he is enrolled in four classes, or he is no longer a medical student. He doesn’t get to spread this out like other students. Very stressed out boy, here.

Or perhaps he did something else in between secondary school and medical school. Perhaps he studied the natural sciences, or even the humanities, before deciding he wanted to be a doctor. Perhaps he is twenty-three but only in his first year of medical studies. And perhaps he doesn’t fail so many exams after all. This is something a writer of Joly has to decide. Is he a serious student? How much failure is he willing to accept? How much public failure is he willing to accept? Hugo doesn’t tell us, in part I think because he pulled numbers from a hat to pick the ages of these guys and in part because he had no clue about medical education.

We have others, unassigned in what they actually study, or a bit old for what they do study (again, Victor, with the pulling numbers out of a hat). Have any of your characters dabbled in medicine? Why did they quit? Do they admire Joly for sticking it out or think him a fool for taking it up?

Hugo gave us something to work with for each of these students. And anyone who is a student knows that as a student, much of your identity, much of your thought, relates to the material in which you are immersed and the company you keep as a result. Joly may be a happy hypochondriac, but he’s also in the most demanding educational institution in Paris. And perhaps others are, too. A little consideration of the differences between French higher education of the nineteenth century and American higher education of the twenty-first century will go a long way.

Seriously, I was making notes for myself and I figured this is one of those necessary things that fandom is missing, like an analysis of Jean Prouvaire's really violent reading material. Which I will do after NaNo. This research was part of NaNo for me.

Toilers of the Sea

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:46:48 GMT

There may be some Toilers of the Sea fans in this community, so here is a pretty interesting stamp I found. It depicts the octopus attack. You can also see Hugo's face in the sea foam.

And if you're into Kraken (sea monster) stamps, you might like this site: http://www.pibburns.com/cryptost/kraken.htm

(also posted in prouvaire )

Plug

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 18:33:47 GMT

Are you interested in political events of the July Monarchy (1830-1848)? Ever see the musical Les Miserables? Or one of the many movies based on Victor Hugo's epic novel? Or even read the novel yourself?

The insurrection from which Jean Valjean rescued Cosette's beloved Marius was based on a true event in French history. Additional to his own fictional barricade, Hugo wrote briefly of a larger one at the Cloistre Saint-Merry. This barricade was led by a man named Charles Jeanne. This man, who was decorated as a hero for his actions during the revolution that put Louis Phillipe on the French throne in 1830, was tried and condemned for similar actions following the funeral of General Lamarque in June 1832. Jeanne was sent to prison on Mont-Saint-Michel, which broke his health and sent him to an untimely death in 1837.

Come share in the discovery of the facts about Jeanne's life, what actions made him heroic in one instance and treasonous in another, what scandals plagued his imprisonment, and what connections he may have had to secret societies in Paris.

Francophiles and historians welcome. It's getting lonely having only myself to talk to about Jeanne in the middle of the night.

saint_merry

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 06:53:02 GMT

Hi there!

Just joined the community, yet have never read any of Hugo's books or seen any of the musicals before :O. Haha, well I am about to embark on reading Les Miserables for the first for a long term English project, but my mom LOVED it when she read it for school a long time ago, so I'm quite excited on getting started. The problem is that there are so many versions of Les Miz around, I have no idea which one I should buy. I generally despises abridged versions of books, for I don't agree and trust the way they chop up books, but I've heard about the chucks of boring and tedious pages in Les Miz that don't add to the plot whatsoever. I'm thinking about buying the unabridged Lee Fahnestock/Norman MacAfee translation (I hear it is the best one out of the three translation available of C.E Wilbur, Norman Denny, and this one) and marking the pages that I can skip (and probably read if I have time). Thoughts?

And if I do that, I hear that there is a website that tells you what is best to skip and if anyone has that, I would be grateful. Or if someone is willing to tell me what parts to skip exactly, that would be so great as well.

Anyways, thank you so much and hopefully Les Miz will live up to its reputation!

Early 19th Century French property and inheritance law

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:39:24 GMT

Because many of us have to deal with the death of a character, some knowledge of inheritance law under the Code Napoléon is necessary. Any state where the law is based on English Common Law has complete freedom for a testator to dispose of his goods. This is not the case under the Code napoléon.

Most importantly, a will is unnecessary. One cannot be disowned or disinherited by his/her family. All children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, must inherit equal portions of the estate.

The order of precedence for inheritance is as follows:
- children (or, if they are deceased, their children)
- parents and privileged collateral heirs (siblings or, if deceased, nephews and nieces)
- grandparents
- surviving spouse
- other collateral heirs (uncles, aunts, cousins etc).

Most importantly, all children must receive an equal portion of the estate. Parents may receive up to one quarter of the estate, each, unless there are no other heirs, then they receive the whole estate. If there are no children and no spouse, the parents would receive half the estate and the rest would be divided among the siblings of the deceased. Grandparents inherit if the parents are deceased and there are no siblings. The surviving spouse takes a share only if there is no other family to assist her (a widower would have his own estate and thus would not be in need of a share of his wife's property, thus the affected person was invariably a woman). Only if there are no closer relatives do other family members take a share, all in equal proportion.

The "widow's portion" of one quarter of the estate was codified only in 1891. It has no bearing on our time period.

Adult, unmarried women have full rights under the law - they will inherit in the same manner as men. If a girl child loses her father, say, before she is adult or married, she will still inherit but the property will pass to her husband when she does marry.

Most property at this time was still real estate. To avoid the division of a property (sometimes an impossible task, should the property be a house, for example), one inheritor may be given life use of that property but all proceeds must be divided between the other inheritors. If the person with the life interest wishes to sell the property, he/she can only do so with the consent of all other inheritors - think of a piece of land as an investment, and all the inheritors as shareholders. There must be unanimous consent among them to sell the property and the proceeds must be divided among them. For purposes of inheritance, shares in the Banque de France were considered real estate rather than movable goods.

In 1819, the droit d'aubaine was abolished. This meant that foreigners residing in France were subject to the same laws as native-born Frenchmen. This is a step forward, however, because previously, all property belonging to a foreigner returned to the state at his death. After 1819, a foreigner's family could inherit his estate at his death.

Entailments, a common form of estate-protection in England, were not allowed under the Code Napoléon. In 1808, this stricture was modified to allow certain members of the nobility to entail the title and a certain amount of property on the eldest son. The rest of the estate had to be divided among the remaining children, however. This law applied, in our time period, only to those nobles created by Napoléon or Louis XVIII.

To protect against division of the estate, most measures proved ineffective. However, inter vivos transfers always remained perfectly legal. And inter vivos transfer is a transfer of property "between the living". One could single out favoured children by making gifts of various pieces of property or amounts of money during one's lifetime. In the latter half of the century (it seems to have taken a couple generations to figure out what would and would not be allowed, and various small changes were made in the mid-nineteenth century to the inheritance laws), businesses were largely protected by registered partnerships, a milder form of incorporation that still gave the business legal standing on its own.

A small amount of property could be disposed of as the testator wished. The Résèrve légale must be left intact, regardless of intervivos gifts. This proportion is determined by the number of children. If one child, then half the estate must devolve to that child; if two children, two thirds of the estate so that each inherits one third; if three or more children, then three quarters of the estate must be reserved for inheritance by the children. The remainder, the quotit disponible, may be left to whomever the testator wishes, be it spouse, friend, or charity. All are treated equally. This portion may also be given over to preference one child over another. If there are no children, then the other members of the family will qualify to inherit the résèrve légale.

One must write a will if one wishes to dispose of the quotit disponible in a manner other than division amongst heirs. A will must be signed by witnesses, but it does not have to be notarised in order to be valid. A notarised will, however, is a stronger legal bond if there is a fear of contestation.

French property law still works in this manner. There are various other ways to get around it, but it is a major cause of declining birthrate among the propertied classes in the 19th century. The generation about which we write is really the first generation to be strongly affected. Their parents were born just prior to the revolution, and the first inheritance laws to force equality of inheritance came in 1790. That generation was the first who could plan how to deal with the law, since their parents were presented with it after their childbearing years had commenced. Our generation will witness the division of estates created by the death of grandparents and perhaps even by the deaths of parents. Since implications were still not entirely known at the time the parents were growing up, our generation is likely the first in their families to be impacted at an impressionable age and to be encouraged to plan their families based on inheritance law. They are more likely to marry later than their parents and worry more about illegitimate children.

Somewhat related, and I'm tacking it on here because I've been talking about law, French family law had a few changes in the lifetime of our boys. Most notably, civil divorce was allowed under the Code Napoléon until the restoration abolished it in 1816. This was a mutual consent divorce system, and France did not return to such a system until 20th century. Divorce at all was not legal until 1884, and then on the common Western terms of female adultery, mental illness, or other incapacity of the woman to fulfill her marriage obligations.

Female adultery could be punished by up to 2 years in prison througout the nineteenth century. Male adultery, on the other hand, was punishable only by a fine and then only if proved that the man maintained his concubine in the family home. Thus a man could do whatever he liked outside the house, but he could be public humiliated for getting caught shagging the maid.

If there are any questions, please post them and I'll see if I can answer them.

Plug

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 17:50:24 GMT

Shiny and new: mizfic, a community especially for sharing all of your miserable fanfiction.

(crossposted: corinthe, lesmiz, mizzies)

Fanfic -- Grantaire

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 04:00:56 GMT

Title: Rien
Fandom: Les Misérables
Summary: How ironic that Grantaire himself fought a revolution.
Author's Note: Rien is french for nothing.

And on his own he was battling a revolution...

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:39:31 GMT

hi y'all, i just made this community

thejavertclub, it's for, what else, lovers of javert.

it isn't quite off the ground yet, but once we have enough members, it'll be AWESOME!

so everybody please join and be patient until we have uh i dunno at least 30 members and then we can start the madness. i was thinking the first thing to do would be a layout contest.

and also if you would like to join, promote us please!!! thank you!

(p.s. sorry if this isn't allowed, please delete if it's against the rules)

posted to:
corinthe
geoffrey_rush
gleamswhichpass
lesmiz
literarycrushes
mannfanns
munsland
philipquast
theater_icons
theatregeeks
thebarricade

Hullo all.

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 23:40:13 GMT

I've just joined this community. Victor Hugo is my absolute favourite author, and I'm currently reading The Toilers of the Sea. I've previously read Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I think Toilers is turning out to be my favourite...mayhap it's the setting. Each of the books seems to have a sort of theme, more or less. With Les Mis it was somewhat the social classes; in Hunchback, the architecture; and in Toilers, the Channel Islands. That may be just me. I'm odd like that. I'm also obsessed with the places mentioned in the books-Rolande's Tower, the Chair of Gild-Holm-Ur, Saint Malo, etc. Anyhoo, I am here. Indeed.

~-eagil-~

Victor Hugo drawings

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:00:04 GMT

I posted these images in prouvaire , but I thought since this is Hugo community also and there are more of you here you might enjoy these. The first is a modern cartoon and the second is a painting by Pit Wagner for an exhibition. The translations are my own, which should explain any faults.

Basically (for non-francophiles) he says "I've disapeared from the money, they forgot me in the colleges... it's worse than exile at Guernsey!"

"This morning I found a large spider in my wash basin. She was very afraid of me. I did her no harm."
At least that's what I think it says, the print is so small. Pit Wagner drew this for an exhibition and is an interpretion of Hugo's notebook comments during his stay in Vianden.

A bit of a silly question, but it's important to me.

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 02:18:29 GMT

Hi there. I joined just to ask this, but I am an avid Hugo fan, so maybe I can contribute in other ways, too.

I'm sure many of you know the story of how Hugo was inspired to write Notre-Dame du Paris by an actual carving of the Greek word "FATE" he came across while wandering the cloisters of the cathedral. It is one of my favorite literary legends, and I would really like to get a tattoo of it sometime soon. My problem is that I have a low-quality edition, and the word looks like this in my tranlation:

ANaRKh.

...which I know well enough is far from the actual Greek. Can anyone give me a source where I can see what the word actually looks like in Ancient Greek so that my artist can stylize it appropriately for me?

Thanks in advance.

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 05:13:46 GMT

Hello everyone!

My name is Laura and I live in Canada. I'm twenty years old and a university English major.

I've read both "Les Miserables" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and look forward to meeting more fans of these novels and Victor Hugo's other works.

Fanon: Jehan, Feuilly, and Combeferre

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 04:04:33 GMT

Okay, so I have been thinking about some things in fanon. Now, in the "Patria" conversation, it is said by Bossuet that except for Enjolras, all the boys have their mistresses, more or less. True, there is a "more or less" in there, but it would suggest that Enjolras' passion for nothing but his country is the exception rather than the rule. In fic., it seems to be more like fifty-fifty, excepting the slash. Probably this is out of lack of interest in focusing on OC's, or fear of writing Mary Sues, but I would think that there might be at least a passing mention to the effect that the straight figments aren't completely celibate.

We'll set aside Grantaire, since Hugo established that he's "impossible." That leaves Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jehan, Bahorel, Joly, Feuilly, and Bossuet. Now, Joly and Bossuet share Musichetta in canon, and that is often if not always acknowledged in fic. Courfeyrac's collection is mentioned in canon and acknowledged in fic., usually whether or not we are talking about slash. Bahorel also discusses a mistress in canon, and in every case I can remember is generally considered to have some sort of love life in fic.

That leaves Jehan, Combeferre, and Feuilly. The weirdest one first: when was the last time somebody saw het. fic about Jehan, the one who is supposed to fall in love on a fairly regular basis? Actually, I think I remember one where he wound up with Cosette, but that's the only specific time I remember somebody even mentioning the poet falling in love with a woman. And Combeferre and Feuilly seem to be monks in fanon unless they are being slashed. With Combeferre, is it "The good must be innocent"? Is it a need to see him in a relationship with somebody who is equally intellectual, which is easiest to do as slash in a setting where only men would be students? But I could see plenty of Combeferre in Theophile in George Sand's Horace, and he has Eugenie. I've heard Stephen Maturin compared to Combeferre on a regular basis. If he doesn't have to be either slashed or practically asexual, then why does it seem like 'Ferre is?

I'm guessing it's simple fear of Mary Sues, in all three cases, though there could still be passing references made as there are with those Amis in the first category. So I am puzzled. Also I know I spent a lot more time obsessing over Combeferre than I did over what might actually be a more obvious focus out of those three, Jehan, and I won't even pretend that it isn't because I fancy the boy.

Just finished reading!

Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:32:09 GMT

I JUST finished the Hunchback of Notre Dame and i LOVED it. I like how the book starts kind of loud with the mob and ends loud with a mob, but both times are in completely different moods and situations. I was getting really nervous for Esmeralda and could NOT put the book down. I was just wondering who your favorite characters were? I think mine would have to be Frollo. He was just so creepy. All he wanted was to be loved, but he definately did not go about it the right way. I knew he was kind of wierd, but when he stabbed Pheobus, I knew he was crazy. Amazing what jealously could do to someone, huh? and lust. He obvious didn't really love her. It was also confusing whether or not he was a man of science or religion...

Can someone explain the Nicholas Flamel thing?

Les Mis and Moi

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 02:53:11 GMT

This is my story. That's all. I look for communities for discussing my loving the production, but of course all there is is all this weird role playing stuff.

I've liked Les. Mis since I was a little girl. I always watched it on PBS and they'd have it on there and the number at the bottom to donate money to keep it on tv or whatever. I only watched it for one reason. On My Own. This was the most important, amazing reason for me to watch the production as a child. When I would go over to a friend's house, their dad would play the piano and they'd sing, they invited me to sing a song with them. Later when I got more into Les Mis I realized it was Castle On A Cloud. I loved that sng as well as On My Own. When I turned 12, my mom got me and her tickets to go see it at Shea's in some major city in New York. We went and it was amazing. The music and the acting. Thats all I cared for. I went to the bathroom during intermission and got back a little late but still got to see On My Own performed, my all-time favorite. For my 13th birthday, I got a t-shirt with the logo of the girl and the flag on the front and a CD. I must say, it's very difficult to find the same exact CD, I admit that if they aren't the same, I can tell the difference in the singer's voices. I'm still in partial search of this CD, some day I will find the identicals and purchase it. Another memory of it was I had my best friend and I tried it (broadway music isn't that appealing when BSB and N*Sync is what's new and cool) and she liked it. I'd always bring it with me and we'd dress up in her nightgowns and put loads of makeup on and sing along to Lovely Ladies.
It wasn't until I was 16 that I saw it again. It had stopped showing on PBS and I just hadn't seen it for a long time. This time however it had a very different meaning to me. It wasn't until this age that I actually understood the story line of what happened. I was even more amazed and oddly, the music didn't mean that much although those few favorite songs still gave me goosebumps when you're so into it and staring right at the singer and listening to every key and every word. This is basically my experience with the whole Les Miserables production. It's not much at all. I'm 18 now and I hope to see it again soon. I don't wanna let go of it and forget its amazing-ness.... That's all. The end. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the story.

In shock - xposted

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 21:53:12 GMT

Les Mis went even more fantastically tonight, and after when we went round to the Theatre Royal bar for a quick boozie, the critics all came up to ME raving about how well i played the revolutionary Adele. I was just in total shock, and having to sign 5 autographs. Even tho its a smaller part they said they were amazed by how in chracter and how authentic i looked.... The article is out tomorow night in the paper...

Photos

Our director Jill.
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/1296/DSCF20.JPG

Me -
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/9509/DSCF104.JPG

and me just about to go on for the barricade(i nearly forgot me shoes)http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3302/DSCF105.JPG

Eponine (my mate Josephine, costume provided by me tho)
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4484/DSCF106.JPG

The poster for Les Mis in the Theatre Royal front window
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3251/DSCF107.JPG

Me by the display IN the Theatre Royal
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/9876/DSCF108.JPG

Annie (factory girl and aristo in varied scenes)
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/5420/DSCF109.JPG

les mis opening night Plymouth theatre royal

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 21:24:49 GMT

(for anyone wanting to come to the show full ticketing info is on http://www.theatreroyal.com) the opening night went well.. almost full house, come the revolution scenes i was relaxed and enjoying it (i spent act 1 as an extra absolutly petrified)yay. now back to digs and feeling ill. update jornals, check friends pages and to bed..

xposted as feel lazy

Les mis xposted

Fri, 28 May 2004 11:01:25 GMT

For anyone in Plymouth (Devon UK) tomorrow, see three escapees from the revolution scenes of Les Miserables in the city centre from 2pm with a huge French flag handing out leaflets for the show (moi included)..
For those interested the show is on http://www.theatreroyal.com/index.php