![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"Things", said Montparnasse
Les Amis de l'DC
I am back from the fangirl meetup to see the Charles Marville's Paris exhibit at the National Gallery of Art.
There ended up being nine of us, with a tenth turning up later. It says something of this group that we *all* immediately understood the significance of there being nine of us, with a tenth turning up later. As a result, I am afraid I still don't know any of the group by anything other than the Amis name we assigned them for the night. Luckily, I made a cheat sheet:
- tenlittlebullets - Enjolras (obviously)
- kinkyenjolras - Grantaire (my modern Grantaire headcanon now requires a red knit stocking cap, fingerless net gloves, and a Greenday hoodie. Thanks?)
- eccecorinna -
Marius-er, wait, Eponine! because she was the tenth who turned up late but was kind enough not to rant about Napoleon - melannen - Bossuet (because I was wearing my old coat with the patched elbows, and am too old to still be this impecunious. Also, pratfalls. :P)
- noyades - Joly
- mumblingsage - Courfeyrac (they had their reasons)
- wizard-girl-in-a-muggle-world - Jehan (because flower crown in her flowing hair)
- sinnaonthebarricade - Combeferre (because Combeferre)
- treblemirinlens - Feuilly (because of wearing a 1789 workers' cap)
- kcrabb88 - Bahorel (because smashing.)
...sadly it was much, much easier to keep people straight once we'd worked that out, we will be using amis' names from here on because I still have no idea who any of you are without the Amis cheatsheet, sorry.
Anyway, we looked at the Marville exhibit, which was fascinating; I was especially taken by the ways the street scenes from 1860s Paris of much older neighborhoods could, absent carriages and costumes, almost be streets I'd walked on in Chicago and Boston and Baltimore, right down to the trickle of mystery fluid running alongside the sidewalk. Also: at street level, inner-city construction sites pretty much look like inner-city construction sites regardless of century or continent. And I'm intrigued by the enclosed shopping "passages" that were all the rage around 1830 that I have somehow not encountered in this fandom yet - we need canon-era fic where various Amis just spend all day hanging out at the mall girl-watching.
We went through the gallery of post-Hausmannization photos saying "Gavroche does not approve" and miming throwing rocks at lamp-posts. Good times.
Then we figured since we were there, we might as well go through the 19th Century French Painting galleries. Sadly, there was surprisingly little Les-Mis relevant stuff - just the one boring David portrait of Napoleon and a bunch of Corots*. So instead we wandered around and mocked the Fragonards and the Impressionists, which after all is probably what the Amis would have done in that situation.
We decided to pass on ogling marble statues of naked Greek dudes despite the temptation (they don't have any Antinouses there anyway) and went out and sat on the steps of the museum and actually did introductions finally, and then walked down to Chinatown and had dinner at a Thai place, and continued to feel very amis-like as we attempted to figure out the check (Enjolras and Grantaire shared an appetizer, btw, it was cute. :P) and then our Marius pointed out that one must have dessert, so we wended our way through the dark, rainy city, to a gelato place, and then stood in the gelato place passing around subversive literature , um, I mean, bad puns, I mean, the show-and-tell Les Mis shinies that people had brought, and then the gelato people started giving us odd looks, so we decided that if we were larping modern-au-genderswap-Amis we might as well go all out, and went to the nearest coffee shop and planted ourselves till last call. It started to feel worryingly like we were going to stay out all night and end up getting oysters and brie for breakfast, which just could not possibly end well, so we finally called in a night there.
SO MUCH talking about Les Mis and fannish matters was done, it was excellent, and I am also slightly more sanguine now about saying Amis' names out loud - I'm sure I still butcher them but most of the shame is gone. And then Grantaire and Jehan and Combeferre and I all took the green line back to Greenbelt together, and ended up having to pay way less than full fare because of construction farther down the line, which was nice, and we sang Do You Hear The People Sing (because the acoustics in DC subway stations are brilliant, there should always be singing). And then we decided that we definitely need to do this again, only with more people. And it should involve a DYHTPS flashmob in front of the Capitol Building, because that would be amazing and there should always be DYHTPS flashmobs.
Also we decided that somebody needs to write an Avengers/LM crossover where Grantaire and Pepper Potts have an ill-advised hook-up and then become art snarking buddies, and Tony Stark Does Not Approve. So hopefully somebody will write that. :P
*the National Gallery owns four Gros artworks but none of them are on display. INJUSTICE.
2. I know there are some of you who would find this relevant who wouldn't have seen it on tumblr, so I just thought you ought to know that Diane Duane wrote about marriage in the Five Kingdoms, including a tiny ficbit of Herewiss/Wyn that is ADORABLE.
(...I still want to write fic someday that covers all the sub-relationships in that marriage. Series of 128 drabbles?)
3. I got a new computer mike! It's ... much better than the inbuilt one, though not exactly a paragon of quality. Anyway, if I'm really doing this podcast thing, I should practice sound editing, so the first five people who give me a comment selecting 500 words or so of fanfic by either them or me will get a beginner's podcast of it. :D
no subject
because I have no idea how to pronounce Quentulus Quazgar.
no subject
I guess I can dig up an audiobook or something.
no subject
You don't have to do it if you don't want to, and certainly don't work on it. It's a weird story I wrote in two hours that is frustrating in how close it comes to actually working as a story.
no subject
And I'll totally do it, as long as you don't mind that I'm inevitably going to unforgivably mispronounce the Hebrew and Yiddish!
no subject
no subject
no subject
(also your fangirl meet-up sounds awesome)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Lovers and primary partners, for so long as the Goddess wills
Herewiss/Freelorn
Segnbora/Hasai (well, for values of "lover" that include whatever humans and semi-undead dragons do together, I got very confused)
Eftgan/Wyn
Secondary partners / Lovers who come and go and enjoy their occasional trysts within this marriage
Herewiss/Sunspark (Actually, I'm not sure, they might be in the first list)
Segnbora/Eftgan (please, give me all the fic)
Freelorn/Segnbora
Wyn/Herewiss, apparently, thank you, Diane Duane
The Goddess/EVERYONE
And two not-yet-canonical secondary pairings I like to imagine: Hasai/Sunspark (That one's just in my head, I guess. Sunspark could be a dragon for Hasai!) and Herewiss/Eftgan.
Brothers and sisters, forever
Herewiss and Segnbora
Freelorn and Eftgan
If not in the previous group: Herewiss and Eftgan
I'd love to know more about how Wyn, Hasai and Sunspark deal with all their husbands and wives.
Incidentally, if the series is the Tale of the Five but the marriage includes seven, are Eftgan and Wyn the two left out of the count?
no subject
And, yeah, I think I'd definitely put Herewiss/Sunspark as primary, I think. They worked out pretty clearly that Sunspark and Freelorn were both going to be his primaries.
(I also feel like as the marriage evolves some of the relationships are gonig to move back and forth among those categories all the time - like, I bet Freelorn and Eftgan had a post-Lion/Eagle phase where their relationship was all over the place, and I bet Eftgan and Segnbora get more serious with each other after they're married (especially if Segnbora ends up being the one of the Five who spends the most time in Darthis, which I bet she is.) And I read Herewiss as not-particularly-attracted-to-women-but-not-unwilling, so I bet he and Segnbora at least tried each other out....
My favorite not-yet-canonical romantic pairing to imagine is Freelorn/Sunspark. So much tension and total relationship fail, but also so much spark and fire, and not just from the fire elemental...
And yes, I've assumed the Five are Hasai, Spark, Segnbora, Freelorn, and Herewiss. Although I think it's been being called the Middle Kingdoms Books more recently, so maybe she's trying to get away from Five?
no subject
I wrote a Hasai-POV fic for Yuletide last year, and I really wanted to work in Wyn and more talk of how on earth the various dynamics in this marriage shook out, but I didn't manage it. Definitely relevant to my interests, though. Wyn and Hasai are both ones who are approaching this marriage primarily through their relationship with one participant in it, which is quite different than how, say, Herewiss and Freelorn and Eftgan do. There's a lot of space to imagine relationships growing and shifting -- although of course there's scope for that in the more established relationships too, because people.
no subject