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"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