#3.8.16

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 3.8.16, 3.8.17

The opposing teams set up their respective sides of the board.

Marius isn’t afraid but he’s saddled with chronic existential anxiety. It’s quite a potent combination of moral outrage and self doubt he’s working with. He works like he’s been waiting for a situation like this all his life, the whole time wracked with the uncertainty of the aftermath.

“The mouse-trap is open. The cats are ready.” The amusing thing here is that Thenardier is still expecting it to be a mouse walking into his trap. We’ve been tearing through animal comparisons at quite a pace these last couple of chapters, birds of prey, dogs, wolves, rats, cats, mice. Thenardier is certainly the predator he claims he is, but he’s never met his match before.

Marius peers into the mouse trap. “All this would have made one, who had known nothing of what was going forward, waver between a very sinister idea and a very simple idea.” Either someone is setting up an amateur smithy in their wooden room or there’s an extortion plot in the works. We’ll have to keep an eye on the lighting design in this scene. The demon in the red light of the hearth and the moonlight just barely peeking in through the window.

We learn that none of the Thenardier woman can see even five feet in front of them. This really is unbelievable. Marius has stolen all of Bossuet’s good fortune from him for this night alone. He’s crouched on his dresser like—

“There was in the room a calm which was inexpressibly hideous and threatening. The approach of something appalling could be felt.”

[umeed-e-sehr]

3.8.15

Bossuet talks about the snowflakes in such a poetic way, he’s definitely not meant to be a lawyer. Wait…is that meant to be a pun and I am just not picking it up because it is Bossuet, it has to be a pun, right? Donougher has nothing, but I know one thing after reading Hugo, everything can be a pun.

Courfeyrac and Bossuet hanging out is great as is Courfeyrac stating the obvious, ‘He’s following a man.’ but I’m not sure if Courfeyrac knows Thenardier already, if so, wouldn’t he have warned Marius about him somehow instead of telling Bossuet not to disturb him. Courfeyrac’s ‘follow a man who is following a man’, is played for laughs yes sure, but…does Courfeyrac think Marius is following the 'poet’ because he is in love, which is why he is giving him privacy? It really feels that way, I don’t know if we’re meant to think that.

I don’t know, maybe it would be sensible for them to follow Marius since we know Marius is following Thenardier and things could get sour pretty fast but Marius stops before then and returns home.

The red moon is pretty foreboding and gives a very sinister foreshadowing of the things to come.

3.8.16

The darkness and the red moon continue with the very unsubtle symbolism of things to come. Also, no one speaks in Thenardier’s presence, they are all so much afraid of him, it is so heartbreaking of the girls living in constant fear and trauma. 

Eponine on the other hand, she takes centre stage again this chapter. In the moment when she is sent to do the job of checking if Marius is not there, she stops in front of a mirror and looks at herself. A little vanity that makes us feel for her, she really does not get a chance to live her life on her own terms, and to feel pretty or to sing and be a child, so she snatches these moments whenever she can. It’s also a little white lie, a little act of defiance against her father’s orders of searching the room, maybe a sign that she is changing and does not want to be so complicit anymore in the burglaries and other schemes. 

And, instead of going back directly, she sings another song, both of which are real songs from the time, and both are sad love songs. The child in Eponine gets a chance to come out if only for a little while and you can see glimpses of what she might have been all the time had she had a chance to live a better life and I am very sad for her. I like the further parallels between Eponine and Cosette. Eponine is traumatised, also from always being afraid of her father and Cosette was afraid of the Thenardiers, except Eponine sings these sad songs whereas Cosette chooses to stay quiet and as @coelenterata mentioned, they are so far removed from her entire situation. The first song is from a vaudeville and the second song is something that Josephine wrote about Napoleon going on his expeditions, so it really feels like she is not really thinking of the songs themselves.  And then she has to go out barefoot in the snow and stand guard, no wonder she thinks of Paris being covered in snow as being ugly and white. She has to bear so much cold when she shouldn’t have to. 

Elsewhere she is a dog or a ghoul but she gets to be the dove that she was meant to be here, if only for a little while. 

[garbagecann24601]

In Which Will Be Found the Words to an English Air Which Was In Fashion In 1832

Marius waits quietly in his apartment. He hears Jondrette return. Marius overhears the family make final arrangements, and then Jondrette tells his daughter to check to be sure that Marius isn’t in his apartment. Marius hides under his bed, and she comes into his room and sings a little song to herself in his mirror. Then Jondrette sends her and her sister out into the snow to keep watch.

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub Les Mis 3.8.16

In which Marius hides under his bed, while the “Jondrettes” prepare the ambush.

So long as I don’t reflect on the implications vis-a-vis stereotypes of women’s vanity, I sort of love Éponine here: twirling before the mirror, enjoying herself for a moment while straight-up lying to her father. I also derive amusement from the circularity: Éponine’s lie that she’s looking under the furniture, which she isn’t, but which is exactly where Marius is hiding, which he would only do if he was trying to make his neighbors think he’d gone out as usual, which he would only need to do if he knew that they were up to something and that they’re presently looking for him in the aforementioned room.

Basically, everything they’re doing makes sense for the information they have, but not for what the characters’ expect of other characters’ level of knowledge. And good on Marius for the foresight of hiding his boots under his bed. I wonder if he expected someone to barge in, or was just being ready in case, or worried about Éponine stealing this pair* as well.

The Thénardiers still use ‘tu’ individually.

*I like the headcanon that the man’s boots Éponine hates wearing are the old pair that was stolen from Marius’s unlocked room.

[rzcracks-blog]

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[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub 3.8.16

The moon glows as the snow falls less thickly.

A bloodlike reddish (totally evil and foreboding) non-candle light gleams in the Jondrette's hovel-like garret.

Marius is literally and figuratively in the dark.

We wait the final half-hour before the wicked plot commences.

[Favorite part: Eponine playing with her hair in the mirror while pretending to search for Marius hiding under furniture. While Marius is, in fact, hiding under the furniture. Kudos for him thinking to take off his boots and stash them under the bed in advance...though Ep stealing his other pair of boots would have been hilarious.]

[newscoldplay]

Another photo of Jonny with a fan in London - March 6 

[tilthelight]

i just need my best friend