general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life| I feel personally targeted and attacked by this character’s existence hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang | Hugo doesn’t specify but metacanonically what a hottie | also so much my personal type that I am Offended hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff DEFY SYSTEMS , WHO ARE A BUNCH OF OLD WIZARDS TO DECIDE WHAT HIS ASSOCIATIONS SHOULD BE best quality:the capacity to Care a Whole Awful Lot about, apparently, every topic always constantly?? Like, the kind of caring that actually results in doing things?In face to face confrontations??? it is entirely possible that I would just let my own house burn down rather than Make A Phone Call, so I am duly impressed.worst quality: Impulse Control, Willful Lack Thereof. It’s of course terribly Romantic, which is the point, but is not something made to ensure that life is Easy. ship them with: lowkey nearly anyone, because it’s funny, highkey Fantine and in Romantic complicated way Prouvairebrotp them with: Gavroche especially, and pretty much all the Amis, and I mean lbr, Bahorel is everyone’s Terrible Influence older brother at the drop of a hatneeds to stay away from: GUARDS WITH BAYONETS?? I feel like this is an obvious one but we’re here today because SOME people *glares* couldn’t stay alivemisc. thoughts: while I think Bahorel, like the Amis in general, is archetypal enough to translate broadly to a variety of scenarios, I think a WHOLE lot of the specific context surrounding him is lost to most modern readers (not because modern readers are notably ignorant in a general sense, or anything, but because The World Moves On and context that could be Assumed Knowledge when the book came out is now a matter of dedicated research) . Both the Romantic aspect and the relevance of his peasant background are really easy to lose, and it’s too bad (and not something that can really be repaired, I think–you gotta research and it’s fair that most people won’t be doing that!) . Mostly I am sad about this because it means a lot of people are reading this without really fun and/or politically radicalizing context, and these are things which haunt my nerdy soul. AND, I am really really glad that current fandom trends seem to have swung away from the “dumb jock” perception, given that the text isn’t even counting on context for that, but comes right out and SAYS he’s smart and a thinker, wtf with people reading the book and going on to think “oh well but he’s not Refined and an Academic, clearly that means he’s a meathead” . He’s a WEIRDO is what he is, almost professionally, but he’s not anti-thought or anti-learning. He just doesn’t trust or defer to the official institutions of learning, which, you know, neither does Combeferre, because they’re messed up.
general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bangI mean scale up as needed depending on your own attraction to distracted poets and all but he was not one of the famous beauties of the movement. Seems like he had hilariously pretty eyes though. hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff excuse you, he is French and Romantic, he will be having nothing to do with your British dictatorial house sorting best quality:according to pretty much everyone, a genuine delight in being able to Do Things For Friends; also super funny in a snarky vein worst quality: …directional sense. ME TOO, BUDDY. ME TOO. ship them with: I mean his idea of a torrid romance seems to be “I will write poetry about them and rearrange furniture about them and NEVER TALK TO THEM” so ????brotp them with: the Jeunes France/Rue de Doyenne gangneeds to stay away from: bill collectors, censors, constables with poetic inclinationsmisc. thoughts: the dominant dialogue about Nerval, at least through the 20thC, overwhelmingly ignores or minimizes how socially aware and involved he was. Sometimes it’s done in a blatantly ableist way (”he was too Crazy And Unstable to Really Understand the world”) sometimes it’s done in a quiet underhandedly ableist way (”he was too…let’s say eccentric and unworldly…to really…let’s say focus on…material concerns, there, that sounds nice”) but it’s always ableist at the core, and overlooks his known and often mentioned political involvement and a lot of his actual writing AND the fact that he actually was an organizer in the Romantic movement?? like, he clearly had enough involvement with the world to Get Shit Done when the chance to do things was available. It ties into what I was saying earlier, about the French Romantic movement being depoliticized by later commenters at the cost of further silencing the marginalized people who were the most outspoken, but in Nerval’s case it is really obvious that his agency is being dismissed for bullshit reasons. I Rage.