Ten Little Chances to be Free

Title: A Star in the Jaws of the Clouds
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Les Misérables
Characters: Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and various OCs
Word count: 8937
Summary: Trials and tribulations of a teenage Enjolras discovering how ideals are put into practice.
Notes: Christmas present for coloneldespard, which I'm belatedly reposting from santafrenchboys.

( Read more... )

Title: To Hide the Sword
Author: Marianne (10littlebullets)
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Combeferre
Rating: PG
Summary: Combeferre discovers that Enjolras has a secret that changes everything and nothing. Originally written for a genderswitch prompt on the kink meme.
[Chapter 1 | Chapter 2]

( Chapter 3 )

Title: To Hide the Sword
Author: Marianne (10littlebullets)
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Combeferre
Rating: PG for now
Summary: Combeferre discovers that Enjolras has a secret that changes everything and nothing. Originally written for a genderswitch prompt on the kink meme.
[Chapter 1]

( Chapter 2 )

Title: To Hide the Sword
Author: Marianne (10littlebullets)
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Combeferre
Rating: PG this chapter, might go up later
Summary: Combeferre discovers that Enjolras has a secret that changes everything and nothing. Originally written for a genderswitch prompt on the kink meme.

( For him, as for Harmodius, flowers were good only to hide the sword... )

Title: Superare Divos
Author: Marianne (10littlebullets)
Fandom: Les Misérables
Summary: Enjolras and Combeferre are more than friends and less than lovers, until Combeferre discovers there are some things that should not be touched.
Notes: Owning up to the bad porn I posted on the kink meme. Minor edits from the original anon version.
Warnings: Fairly explicit sex

( Non fas est )

*facepalm* So I was going to write a deep meta post about the evolution of the Les Mis musical from 1980 to the current version, the weirdness of the official OFC recording, the symbolic role of the chorus, and other Srs Bsns things.

Instead, I created an anonymous kink meme for Les Mis.

Go post. You don't have to be a member of the comm to participate. Even if you just make a request or respond with a drabble or something, please help keep this silly thing alive. XD

Visa interview did not go well due to an incident of "Um you have the wrong document, you were supposed to print the other confirmation message," and then the site containing the message was having some sort of server trouble and wouldn't load. So I have to wait for it to go back up again and make another appointment. I could recite the details of the three hours of utter frustration and fury, but honestly after everything that's gone pear-shaped in the past two weeks I just don't have the energy.

Anyway. I went back and read all my old fanfiction this evening. I kind of want to shake my eighteen-year-old self now, because even then I was annoyed with the trend of vague, aimless fic that won't come right out and say what it's about, and makes the reader work far too hard to figure it out instead of leaving clear textual cues. And yet somehow I still wrote a bunch of fic where the point was buried somewhere in all the hinting and beating around the bush, and so I ended up with a bunch of reviews either accusing me of writing stereotypical Enjolras/Grantaire fic or squealing about how adorable E/R is.

So, because my eighteen-year-old self apparently couldn't get the point across, I am going to come back three years later and do it for her. Warning: self-indulgent rambling about my own fic ahead.

Stains: Reads like a stereotypical E/R fic, but even then I was trying to riff off the usual tropes. In this case, Enjolras is repressed and disgusted and wary of Grantaire because he has some unspecified incident of sexual abuse in his past and thinks R is trying to pull the same shit on him, not because he's a prude who needs to get the stick out of his arse.

Geständnis: Pretty direct for the most part, but I wish I'd found some way to get across that not only is it about human justice vs. divine justice, it's about how the entire reason I find Gestapo!Javert such a fascinating idea is because the law/justice rift we see in 1830 isn't so much a rift now as it is a HUGE GAPING CHASM.

Bedfellows: I have nothing to say except "LOL, even in 2005 I was playing with the 'Enjolras: top or bottom?' debate."

Fulfilment: I... think it should speak for itself, but apparently it doesn't, because it has a load of E/R squee in the reviews. Grantaire admires Enjolras for being everything he isn't. Enjolras has a hackneyed-fanfic-trope moment of weakness and samples all of Grantaire's vices. Grantaire no longer admires Enjolras. How could anyone mistake this for happy fun "yay R gets to kiss Enjy!" shippy fic?

Sons of Earth: "All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers." The dream imagery isn't actually random rambling, it's cooked up from a horrid brain stew of Antaeus, Jacob wrestling the angel, and Luke Skywalker in the cave on Dagobah. I would've been happy if one person had picked out one of these elements, but apparently not.

Since I haven't finished any fic in ages and ages, I figure that for Barricade Day I'll dump a couple of the less-sucky partially-written fics up here. Neither of them is more than a couple of pages.

( Enjolras/Combeferre, written circa May 2007 )


( Combeferre and Courfeyrac are plotting, written July 2008 )

Annoyance of the day: having a really good song stuck in your head to the point where you start hating it.

Also, I am indeed cranky tonight, as well as slightly inebriated and in need of a Frenchboy to snuggle. (Porny drabbles might also do in a pinch.)

Maybe I should just go to bed.

Edit: Or maybe I should ( lead by example on the porny drabble front? )

It occurred to me in a comment thread to a post I recently made in fanficrants, that unlike the rest of the internet, the Les Mis fandom does not follow the "95% of everything is crap" rule. In fact, it's more of a bell curve--lots and lots of mediocre fic, with plenty that tends toward "not amazing but pretty good" or "I must be really damn bored to bother reading this," a limited amount of engaging and enjoyable fic and fic that makes you want to bonk the author over the head with a 1500-page hardcover... and then the outliers, the rare fic that makes you squee out loud and the (surprisingly) equally rare fic that just makes you stare at your computer screen in horror. The latter I tend to spork mercilessly on fanficrants, but the former just gets IM'd to a friend or two or maybe a nice review if I can be arsed. And the lack of attention is a shame, really, which is the reason for this post.

This is a completely random list of fics that have tickled my fancy--it's not exhaustive or anything, and I'm sure there are worthy fics that I've missed. And I'm not even going to bother posting anything from Frenchboys.net, because I know most of the people who give a damn about this post have already been over that site with a fine-tooth comb. ;) In fact, this is heavily slanted towards fanfiction.net, both because there's a higher volume of fic and because I know most of you don't bother trawling through the Pit of Voles. (It's not that bad, honestly--even if it's not that good either; see bell curve explanation above.) Feel free to comment with suggested reading, too.

• Pretty much everything by TheHighestPie, who writes gleefully nerdy stories that tend to center on Combeferre. Particularly:
  - Playing Pygmalion: In which Combeferre tries to give Eponine an education--and you just have to love a fic where they almost get arrested for flying a hot-air balloon in the Luxembourg.
  - Chrestien at Chanvrerie: A one-shot crossover with Lost Illusions, familiarity with Balzac not required.
  - The Saint-Simonian: Summary says it all, really: "Contains multiple Saint-Simons, Chenier, Charles Jeanne, Louis-Philippe, Hugo, and a 'Saint-Simonian' poet that may or may not've existed."
  - An Education: Delicious Ami banter with a nice sharp conclusion.



• By Juxtaposition by Kim Who Knows: A multi-chapter exploration of the various Amis' relationships with Enjolras, centered around Grantaire. Wonderfully written, well thought out, fanon-free, non-slash, and lamentably unfinished.



• Residuals by Petit Parapluie: "Offbeat" doesn't even begin to describe it. Javert's ghost haunts a batty widow who picks up his greatcoat, and together they fight crime do battle with ghostly revolutionaries. The author's cheerful and lunatic enthusiasm in slinging around historical details more than makes up for the occasional mild anachronism--this fic is on the good crack.



• The Seamstress of Montreuil-sur-Mer by mmebahorel: A cute--and sad--little Christmas fairy tale about Fantine. I swear there is no bias here! ;)



• Invitation by lady_iphigeneia (Part Two; Part Three): Okay, maybe there's a little bit of bias. But the sheer epicness of 13,000 words of pure Enjolras/Courfeyrac porn just cannot be disputed. Seriously, the fandom needs more porn like this.



• Idyll in the Parking Lot & Epic in the Food Court by LLQM: A modern rewrite that works because it's perfectly aware of the silliness of the premise. Or at least, it made me LOL.



• Through a Wall by LLQM: Three chance encounters between Marius and Cosette before they even thought about falling in love.



• Lymantria dispar by Margit: Only Combeferre would be more interested in sketching the moth that landed on Courfeyrac's naked body than in Courfeyrac's naked body itself. Slash, of course, and I want this Combeferre in my bed now.



• Two Hearts in Love by Mongie: A lovely series of Marius/Cosette drabbles that captures the utter adorableness of the pairing really well, with enough detours into angst and other genres to keep it from getting monotonous.



• Epic in the Alley by lesmisloony: Montparnasse jumps Enjolras in a dark alley: who will win? (Get your minds out of the gutter--it's humor, not smut.)



• I Am Rose by GizmoBunny: Cosette runs away from the Thénardiers' inn and falls in with some young Amis. Could stand to be a bit more tightly written, but it's cute and definitely gets points for originality.



• The Miserable Diaries by Framboise: Because it's a fucking classic. Do not attempt to eat or drink anything while reading this, or it will get sprayed all over your monitor from the fits of hysterical laughter.



• Reinvention by K. Telfer: All right, I'm a filthy liar and posted something from frenchboys.net, but only because it's one of my favorite slash fics in this fandom--specifically because it's almost un-slashy in the way it turns audience expectation on its head. Enjolras/Combeferre.