Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2006-07-28 03:00 am
tenlittlebullets) wrote2006-07-28 03:00 am
Entry tags:
Fanon Grantaire must die.
I can't sleep and I have too much time on my hands, so you get another fandom rant.
I'm sure you're all perfectly sick of my little soapbox about how the Amis de l'ABC weren't pre-doomed to failure, the revolution could have succeeded if they hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their deaths weren't caused by a weakness in their ideals but by fate kicking them in the balls*. So I won't rehash it. Instead, I present you with a stereotypical fanon!Grantaire: thinks ideals are bullshit, thinks revolution is a death wish, has eerily prescient notions that they're all gonna die, thinks Enjolras is crazy and misguided, but sticks around anyway because he's madly in love with the man. And, were he not (a) passed out, and (b) madly in love with Enjolras, he would do a little "ha ha ha I told you so" victory dance on the morning of June the 6th. Fanon likes the irony of the only one without ideals being the only one who was right.
Except he, um, wasn't. Right, that is.
Because if the Amis weren't pre-doomed, the revolution could have succeeded, their ideals were sound, and their luck was just really awful... then Grantaire has been talking fatalistic bullshit the whole time. This is the first problem with fanon!Grantaire: he doesn't stand up to any logic besides the musical's irritating deluge of "they're all dead! everyone cry now!" The second problem is that he's not canon-tight.
canon!Grantaire admires Enjolras. He looks up at him, not down on him. Grantaire's inability to entertain a solid idea or believe in anything is a vice, not a virtue, an intellectual weakness corresponding to the emotional weakness that leads him to drink himself half to death. I think he realizes this, whether or not he wants to admit it, and admires Enjolras for the extremely simple reason that he wishes he had the same integrity. Ideas may be so many empty words to him by now, but he sees the strength he lacks and latches on to it. This is why fanon!Grantaires who mock Enjolrati for their beliefs trouble me. Grantaire isn't a cynic through and through; he wishes he could believe, but he's too lazy or too afraid he might believe wrongly. That's why he likes Enjolras in the first place. He doesn't care what the hell E! believes in, as long as he believes in it, and I twitch whenever he mocks E! for his "damn fool belief" in fic. I don't care whether jaded skepticism is chic in this generation, in R it's a character flaw. Not a virtue.
Fic tends to simplify this greatly and present a Grantaire who sneers at all convictions, and who sticks around Enjolras not because he admires him, but because he's utterly infatuated. I feel like this distorts something central in R's character as well as cheapening their relationship. Admiration verging into non-platonic love is deliciously complicated for reasons to be listed below, but a mindset that basically boils down to "fuck the ideals, I'm in it for the pretty" is downright insulting. Grantaire stuck around because he was in love with Enjolras, fine, as long as he's in love with Enjolras because he looks up to him. Not because he has a schoolboy crush and thinks E!'s idealism is foolish.
One other aspect of R's relationship with Enjolras that never gets explored: he loves E! for being everything he's not. Namely, firm, idealistic, sober, and chaste. If Grantaire's unrequited love has a sexual aspect to it, in his mind that will fall under the same heading as skepticism and drunkenness--he might outwardly flaunt them, but secretly knows they're vices. If R feels guilty for lusting after E!, it's not just because he thinks boylove is icky, not just because he feels E! is too pure to be stained like that, but also because R considers himself too weak to keep his desires in check. Just like his drinking. He's the inverse of Enjolras in this aspect as in all others, and yet secretly aspires to be like him.
And furthermore, if Enjolras were ever to hop into bed with Grantaire, R would probably not be a happy puppy. He looks up to Enjolras because he's sober and chaste and idealistic, so if E! gets sloshed one night, confesses a moment of doubt to R, and makes out with him, the whole thing would be so un-Enjolraic that Grantaire would lose an immense amount of respect for him. Once he was done ascertaining that the real Enjolras wasn't locked up in a closet somewhere.
I'm aware that not all of this rant can be backed up 100% with the book, but it's not inconsistent with it and I think such a characterization of Grantaire is a reasonable extrapolation from canon. Certainly more reasonable than absurd fanon R's.
* One could argue that they were, indeed, pre-doomed as a plot device, due to ol' Vic wanting to make a statement about the effectiveness of violent means... but I doubt Grantaire was arguing that point. If anyone would say something like that, it'd be Combeferre, but before you write a hardcore-pacifist!'Ferre, bear in mind that hardcore pacifists don't tend to run around in street riots with rifles nicked off of National Guards. Just because the man preferred peaceful progress didn't mean he would've run out to join Amnesty Int'l the first chance he got.
I'm sure you're all perfectly sick of my little soapbox about how the Amis de l'ABC weren't pre-doomed to failure, the revolution could have succeeded if they hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their deaths weren't caused by a weakness in their ideals but by fate kicking them in the balls*. So I won't rehash it. Instead, I present you with a stereotypical fanon!Grantaire: thinks ideals are bullshit, thinks revolution is a death wish, has eerily prescient notions that they're all gonna die, thinks Enjolras is crazy and misguided, but sticks around anyway because he's madly in love with the man. And, were he not (a) passed out, and (b) madly in love with Enjolras, he would do a little "ha ha ha I told you so" victory dance on the morning of June the 6th. Fanon likes the irony of the only one without ideals being the only one who was right.
Except he, um, wasn't. Right, that is.
Because if the Amis weren't pre-doomed, the revolution could have succeeded, their ideals were sound, and their luck was just really awful... then Grantaire has been talking fatalistic bullshit the whole time. This is the first problem with fanon!Grantaire: he doesn't stand up to any logic besides the musical's irritating deluge of "they're all dead! everyone cry now!" The second problem is that he's not canon-tight.
canon!Grantaire admires Enjolras. He looks up at him, not down on him. Grantaire's inability to entertain a solid idea or believe in anything is a vice, not a virtue, an intellectual weakness corresponding to the emotional weakness that leads him to drink himself half to death. I think he realizes this, whether or not he wants to admit it, and admires Enjolras for the extremely simple reason that he wishes he had the same integrity. Ideas may be so many empty words to him by now, but he sees the strength he lacks and latches on to it. This is why fanon!Grantaires who mock Enjolrati for their beliefs trouble me. Grantaire isn't a cynic through and through; he wishes he could believe, but he's too lazy or too afraid he might believe wrongly. That's why he likes Enjolras in the first place. He doesn't care what the hell E! believes in, as long as he believes in it, and I twitch whenever he mocks E! for his "damn fool belief" in fic. I don't care whether jaded skepticism is chic in this generation, in R it's a character flaw. Not a virtue.
Fic tends to simplify this greatly and present a Grantaire who sneers at all convictions, and who sticks around Enjolras not because he admires him, but because he's utterly infatuated. I feel like this distorts something central in R's character as well as cheapening their relationship. Admiration verging into non-platonic love is deliciously complicated for reasons to be listed below, but a mindset that basically boils down to "fuck the ideals, I'm in it for the pretty" is downright insulting. Grantaire stuck around because he was in love with Enjolras, fine, as long as he's in love with Enjolras because he looks up to him. Not because he has a schoolboy crush and thinks E!'s idealism is foolish.
One other aspect of R's relationship with Enjolras that never gets explored: he loves E! for being everything he's not. Namely, firm, idealistic, sober, and chaste. If Grantaire's unrequited love has a sexual aspect to it, in his mind that will fall under the same heading as skepticism and drunkenness--he might outwardly flaunt them, but secretly knows they're vices. If R feels guilty for lusting after E!, it's not just because he thinks boylove is icky, not just because he feels E! is too pure to be stained like that, but also because R considers himself too weak to keep his desires in check. Just like his drinking. He's the inverse of Enjolras in this aspect as in all others, and yet secretly aspires to be like him.
And furthermore, if Enjolras were ever to hop into bed with Grantaire, R would probably not be a happy puppy. He looks up to Enjolras because he's sober and chaste and idealistic, so if E! gets sloshed one night, confesses a moment of doubt to R, and makes out with him, the whole thing would be so un-Enjolraic that Grantaire would lose an immense amount of respect for him. Once he was done ascertaining that the real Enjolras wasn't locked up in a closet somewhere.
I'm aware that not all of this rant can be backed up 100% with the book, but it's not inconsistent with it and I think such a characterization of Grantaire is a reasonable extrapolation from canon. Certainly more reasonable than absurd fanon R's.
* One could argue that they were, indeed, pre-doomed as a plot device, due to ol' Vic wanting to make a statement about the effectiveness of violent means... but I doubt Grantaire was arguing that point. If anyone would say something like that, it'd be Combeferre, but before you write a hardcore-pacifist!'Ferre, bear in mind that hardcore pacifists don't tend to run around in street riots with rifles nicked off of National Guards. Just because the man preferred peaceful progress didn't mean he would've run out to join Amnesty Int'l the first chance he got.