Not titling this with song lyrics; you're welcome.

[melannen]

According to my ~highly scientific~ poll in my last post, approx. 30-40% of all Dreamwidth users have had songs from Les Miserables stuck in their heads ever since the movie came out.

I don't suppose those of you who are getting more active in the fandom would consider, as a kindness, "earworm warnings" for any quotes from the lyrics (including song titles)?

//just kidding

//mostly

//although it would be nice to be able to go more than 24 hours without hearing the people sing in the background of all I do. I've kind of forgotten what that's like.

Although I have gotten quite a lot of cleaning done while unable to concentrate on anything but listening to the soundtrack on repeat, so there's that.

(I tried putting on "Once More With Feeling" instead today; it only took about half an hour before One More Day was back.

I haven't tried Cabaret yet; that's the nuclear option.)

ETA: Warning: lyrics in comments.

Comments

[melannen]

BAD NO TEMPTRESS GO AWAY.

Unfortunately I seriously doubt I can read just bits of the Brick, since my only experience with it is picking it up on an idle Saturday and getting sucked in for about three hours. (So, hey, I already know all about the Bishop! Luckily after three hours the main plot hadn't started yet, so I could still get away.)

I'm going to need about twenty hours of audiobook later this week; I may try to figure out if the librivox recordings are reasonably listenable....

[ellen_fremedon]

Wow, twenty hours might get you all the way through the first fifteen minutes of the musical :).

[melannen]

:P Apparently in twenty hours I could get through Book Three and most of Book Four, which sounds like it would leave out most of the depressing-ist bits.

Also someone needs to write Les Mis fic for Lupercalia. I want somebody dumping a box of wolf puppies on one of the tables at the cafe because if they are going to be soldiers they need wolves, and everything is made of fluffy and puppies after that. (Also I want Javert's grizzled old wolfbrother who is the only one who understands him. That too.)

[ellen_fremedon]

But... but then you have PUPPIES DYING AT THE BARRICADE! Which is just about the only way the barricade could be more depressing!

On the other hand, I would kind of love Marius to inherit his father's wolf.

And agree re: Javert's wolfbrother.

[melannen]

See, puppies dying at the barricade is a thing that cannot be permitted to happen. Therefore, if there are puppies, clearly nobody dies at the barricade! PROBLEM SOLVED. All of my fanfic desires for Les Mis involve people not dying. Another reason why I should not be permitted to start writing it. :P

(Although looking at the history, surprisingly few people actually died as a result of the insurrection - if all of Marius's friends died, that's like 10% of all the deaths on the barricades. So really it makes more sense for them to not all die! and to have puppies. Maybe they were all just wounded but the puppies licked them better!)

Also yes, Marius with his dad's wolf! (I guess the Waterloo story would be very different with wolves, wouldn't it. ETA: Actually that gets really interesting, because my vague understanding is that by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, basically all men in France had been soldiers one way or another. So (at least if you use wolfbrothers as a metaphor for war experience as I like doing) there would be this whole cohort of men who all had wolves and there would be all sorts of new social meaning around them.)

[ellen_fremedon]

I am running into the problem of casualty numbers right now, in trying to generate OCs for the crop of time agent recruits. I think I either need a much, much smaller cast, or for many more of them to be recruits like Javert, who died during the emeute but not of violence.

[melannen]

TIME AGENTS? Wait, there are time agents? Suddenly I want to read this story even more.

...and this is the second fandom I've played with in two days where I've run into the problem of "not enough people died in the real history to make the secret project plausible!" I guess there are worse problems.

[ellen_fremedon]

There are! It is the epic story of how the Time Agency revives Javert and Valjean and various Amis de la'ABC and recruits them into deep-cover temporal ops! And gives them the therapy and/or meds that many of them so desperately need! And there are ontological paradoxes and long-game ideological warfare and barricade warfare in the corridors of the subterranean timebase! And ivory-billed woodpeckers! And also kissing!

[melannen]

IT IS EXACTLY THE SORT OF FIC I AM WANTING, IS WHAT YOU ARE SAYING HERE.

Do Javert and Valjean get de-aged into the prime of youth so they match the others and it is all very hormonal and confusing? :D :D :D

[ellen_fremedon]

More like the prime of middle age. But, you know, vigorous middle age.

It is very hormonal and confusing, but less in the teenage hormones way than in the way that forty years of repression is not forty years of sublimation, and their failure modes are wildly incompatible.

[melannen]

Vigorous middle age is even better!

...annnd yes, I imagine that is going to be very hormonal and confusing for them regardless.

[sophia_sol]

alkjdflsdsdflkjdsfljksd!!! This fic sounds amazing.