[carys-the-ninth]

KEY UPDATES FROM THE QUEER FANTASY PANEL WITH TAMSYN MUIR AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY

We will find out in Alecto the Ninth whether Kiriona's chest has teeth or ribs.

She cites Final Fantasy and Animorphs as intros to SFF. On Animorphs: "Nobody's safe in that book. Everyone's dead by the end. It was an influence."

The 1.5 page outline of the Locked Tomb was written in the back of a notebook which Tamsyn was using to teach herself Latin. She has (except for the detail of Gideon being a fireman) followed this guide throughout.

She is still writing Alecto the Ninth. She feels tremendous pressure, primarily from herself, to produce a satisfactory ending.

On Tasha Suri saying she still doesn't know what Homestuck is after watching a 2 hour video about it: "Neither do I."

She says she is working through creating the balance between a Catholic worldview and the critique of imperialism. She hopes that the balance will be struck correctly. "I'm kinda worried about being excommunicated. For one scene in particular."

Edit: transcript still in progress but indefinitely delayed until I get my computer fixed.

[kiaraalazulu]

old harryanthe art i never posted here 🌿

(id in alt text)

[pumpkinspice-prouvaire]

how we all feeling about the end of waterloo?

[niekiddo]

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me That I live and you are gone

My take on Marius and Cosette form Les Mis 

[menacebibliotheque]

"The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other than Jean Valjean."

We, the reader:

[ueinra]

The biggest liars you've ever seen <333

[pumpkinspice-prouvaire]

idk about everyone else but for me this is THE chapter. The blueprint. This is the chapter where everything changes and where the rest of the story is born. No one does it like 1.2.12

[dragonretirement]

ALT

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Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (trans. Isabel Hapgood) | Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

[windmillcrusader]

#the cavaliers and their names as metaphysically secondary to their necromancers is good on its own#but the obfuscation of harrow’s cavalier in such a way that we understand what must fill that place#that gideon is the logical shape that harrow + absence makes#to me ​implies that harrow is her obverse instead#that htn is literally a sequel to an existence not hers constructed around the empty place where someone else is supposed to be (via @corpsesoldier)

[thelawsofdaylight]

Can’t sleep too busy thinking about the implication that Bishop Myriel is the only one who would be willing to help Valjean and how it’s both a testament to his good nature and a reminder of his shortcomings. Valjean travelled for miles and only encountered ONE person who might be willing to give him a place to stay for the night? Bishop Myriel is compassionate enough that his compassion is well known; the woman instructing Valjean to knock on his door shows that he can be counted on to help people no matter their situation. But that almost feels like an indictment in itself as it means there’s a distinct lack of compassion elsewhere. It really hammers home everything Hugo was trying to say about the limitations of the Bishop in the first book; his way of helping individuals is important but it is not addressing the structural issues and therefore can never rid the world of the social ills that plague it, only alleviate them. Valjean’s intro chapter proves this by first introducing a character who clearly needs help and then showing people deny him that help time and time again because of prejudices. It’s great that we have a character who has overcome those prejudices- but he currently exists in isolation; the Bishop has not managed to pass his attitudes on to the population of Digne at large, despite having influence there for almost ten years at this point.

I also think it’s important that Valjean finds the Bishop and not the other way round. It was largely luck that he met someone who pointed him towards the Bishop in the first place. There are many other Valjeans who wouldn’t have had circumstances play out in the same way, who don’t have any kind Bishops to go to, and that’s the entire point. If you rely on compassionate individuals instead of a compassionate system there will always be people who need help that they never receive.

[secretmellowblog]

Before writing Les Mis, Hugo’s beloved 19-year-old daughter Leopoldine tragically drowned. As a result Les Mis is full of drowning imagery— drowning as a a symbol of impossible grief and loss, drowning as a symbol of being left behind by a society that doesn’t care about protecting your life, drowning as a method of suicide.

The les mis letters chapter today is the first chapter where Hugo highlights the drowning imagery that becomes central to the rest of the novel. The horrible symbolic death Valjean suffers as a result of being entirely isolated and forgotten by a society that doesn’t value his life is also foreshadowing of Javert’s eventual death.

Throughout the novel, Eponine also frequently talks about her desire to drown herself in the Seine; Thenardier monologues about how “the river is the true grave” and when bodies fall in it “justice makes no inquiries;” later Valjean escapes prison by faking his death by drowning, and so on and so on. There’s this emphasis that drowning doesn’t just mean death, it means erasing yourself from existence. It means you’re forgotten.

One of the saddest references to the death of Leopoldine is the way Valjean and Javert learn about the other’s death (or “death.”)

Hugo learned about his daughter’s death not from a family member/friend, but by reading about it in a newspaper. He was on vacation away from his family at the time. He was reading the news in a cafe and happened to stumble on an article about Leopoldine’s horrible tragic drowning, which was how he first learned that she was dead.

When Javert learns about Valjean’s “death” in prison (when Valjean pretends to drown in order to escape), he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper. When Valjean learns about Javert’s death by drowning, he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper.

So…yeah :(. Les Mis is full of all these agonized metaphors around drowning (as a metaphor for death/grief/being entirely forgotten by the people around you) and part of that comes from Hugo’s own deep personal trauma around the death of death of his daughter.

[eldritchblep]

Detail crop of a WIP where I’m painting details no one will be able to see in the final piece because my brain does not want to paint clothing today apparently. But it’s fine painting stitching and filigree and even enjoying the detailing.

[tropiyas]

bro doesn’t even have a certain je ne sais quoi

[may12324]

Nona the Ninth

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

[ueinra]

“ At one’s feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky. ”

— Les Misérables, Bishop Myriel In His Garden (Illustration From Le Rayon D'Or Collection, 1977)

[herwold]

🛐🛐🛐

[scavengeren]