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Dec. 7th, 2014 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI was supposed to write about my current feelings about Les Mis for melannen on the 6th for the December meme, but instead I was at a bachelorette party in Atlantic City and the hotel didn't have free internet, which means you are spared the prospect of me attempting to answer this question after having drunk several shots of vodka.
)My current feelings about Les Mis are ... complicated! As some of you may remember, when the movie came out two years ago (let's all pause to appreciate that that happened TWO YEARS AGO, good lord) I went to go see it and came out with a raging case of fourteen-year-old feelingsitis! And then I reread the book, and my feelingsitis multiplied upon itself, and for a few months everything was VERY INTENSE and I could not stop myself from doing things like summarizing the funniest scenes in the book at great length to anyone who would listen or going on long screeds about how the fifty pages of road trip difficulties that Valjean overcomes in the process of exonerating Champmatheiu ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NECESSARY AND DEEPLY MEANINGFUL AND IF YOU DON'T THINK SO YOU CAN FIGHT ME.
And then a few things happened.
The first was ... Les Mis fandom? Man, Les Mis fandom. I had NOT EXPECTED Les Mis fandom to rise up out of the ashes like an extremely cranky, serious-minded phoenix. And at first I was DELIGHTED by this -- so many people cared so much about something I also cared about so much! That rarely happens for me! And this was new and exciting and wonderful, and I wrote a couple of fics about the things I had feelings about (and I do legitimately think "on your way up to the light" is one of the better things I have written) and then all of a sudden it was super intimidating, because I was in my last semester of grad school and finishing my thesis and people were writing fantastic novel-length epics and there was no way in heck that I could keep up, I just could not keep up! Especially since the corner of fandom I was connected to was very serious and thoughtful and into very in-depth meta, and while all this would have been great if I was in the right kind of place to dedicate a lot of time and energy to it, at that period of time I definitely did not have time and brainpower at all, not in any way. And I started to feel like inasmuch as Les Mis was concerned, I didn't have much left to contribute that would be valuable; I was quite sure that anything I could possibly say had already been said and discussed in ways more interesting than I could say them -- like, in order to be in the fannish conversation, I would have to SUPER ONE HUNDRED PERCENT COMMIT and basically make Les Mis the focus of all the internet time and energy that I had available to me, and I was not willing or able to do that. So it's not like my feelings went away exactly, but I took a huge step back from them, because it was that or start feeling selfishly resentful about things that weren't anybody's fault, in an 'everyone is having fun without me!' kind of way.
(The moral of the story here is nothing about Les Mis fandom in particular but that I am really not cut out for large fandoms. I'm SO BAD AT IT.)
The second thing that happened is I started drafting up an original novel that was loosely based on Les Mis, which meant that for my own sake I had to take another step back; like, I had to start purposefully forgetting a lot of the things that I think are amazing about the book because otherwise I would have just put them ALL in and then there wouldn't have been any point. And I was working on that for most of the past year, and kind of consciously attempting to channel all of my Les Mis feelings into [Working Title Les Misbians] instead, although that project is now on hold for reasons related to some of the stuff below.
So ... I still care about Les Mis, a lot, a lot, and always will! Though I care the most right now about things that have been less thoroughly picked apart by fandom, stuff about Valjean's stubborn socially awkward painful goodness and Eponine and the other Thenardier kids, that I feel in some kind of weird selfish way still belongs to me more than everything related to the Amis et al. (Not that I don't care about the Amis also, because of course I do, but that conversation and all the accumulated injokes left me so far behind so long ago -- and also, aside from that, I have a lot of really conflicted feelings about the whole "PRIVILEGED STUDENTS IN OVER THEIR HEADS"/"EXPERIENCED REVOLUTIONARIES KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING" debate, which have only gotten more complicated when you throw recent real-life current events in the mix and add in all my own complex personal feelings about how I can and should be engaging in the activism currently ongoing around the country without raising my voice at times and in ways that someone with my level of privilege shouldn't be raising it. BUT THAT'S NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.) But my fourteen-year-old feelingsitis is, at least for the moment, in something of a state of remission. It'll almost certainly come back someday, though; it's the kind of feelingsitis you don't ever really get cured of.
melannen on the 6th for the December meme, but instead I was at a bachelorette party in Atlantic City and the hotel didn't have free internet, which means you are spared the prospect of me attempting to answer this question after having drunk several shots of vodka. )My current feelings about Les Mis are ... complicated! As some of you may remember, when the movie came out two years ago (let's all pause to appreciate that that happened TWO YEARS AGO, good lord) I went to go see it and came out with a raging case of fourteen-year-old feelingsitis! And then I reread the book, and my feelingsitis multiplied upon itself, and for a few months everything was VERY INTENSE and I could not stop myself from doing things like summarizing the funniest scenes in the book at great length to anyone who would listen or going on long screeds about how the fifty pages of road trip difficulties that Valjean overcomes in the process of exonerating Champmatheiu ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NECESSARY AND DEEPLY MEANINGFUL AND IF YOU DON'T THINK SO YOU CAN FIGHT ME.
And then a few things happened.
The first was ... Les Mis fandom? Man, Les Mis fandom. I had NOT EXPECTED Les Mis fandom to rise up out of the ashes like an extremely cranky, serious-minded phoenix. And at first I was DELIGHTED by this -- so many people cared so much about something I also cared about so much! That rarely happens for me! And this was new and exciting and wonderful, and I wrote a couple of fics about the things I had feelings about (and I do legitimately think "on your way up to the light" is one of the better things I have written) and then all of a sudden it was super intimidating, because I was in my last semester of grad school and finishing my thesis and people were writing fantastic novel-length epics and there was no way in heck that I could keep up, I just could not keep up! Especially since the corner of fandom I was connected to was very serious and thoughtful and into very in-depth meta, and while all this would have been great if I was in the right kind of place to dedicate a lot of time and energy to it, at that period of time I definitely did not have time and brainpower at all, not in any way. And I started to feel like inasmuch as Les Mis was concerned, I didn't have much left to contribute that would be valuable; I was quite sure that anything I could possibly say had already been said and discussed in ways more interesting than I could say them -- like, in order to be in the fannish conversation, I would have to SUPER ONE HUNDRED PERCENT COMMIT and basically make Les Mis the focus of all the internet time and energy that I had available to me, and I was not willing or able to do that. So it's not like my feelings went away exactly, but I took a huge step back from them, because it was that or start feeling selfishly resentful about things that weren't anybody's fault, in an 'everyone is having fun without me!' kind of way.
(The moral of the story here is nothing about Les Mis fandom in particular but that I am really not cut out for large fandoms. I'm SO BAD AT IT.)
The second thing that happened is I started drafting up an original novel that was loosely based on Les Mis, which meant that for my own sake I had to take another step back; like, I had to start purposefully forgetting a lot of the things that I think are amazing about the book because otherwise I would have just put them ALL in and then there wouldn't have been any point. And I was working on that for most of the past year, and kind of consciously attempting to channel all of my Les Mis feelings into [Working Title Les Misbians] instead, although that project is now on hold for reasons related to some of the stuff below.
So ... I still care about Les Mis, a lot, a lot, and always will! Though I care the most right now about things that have been less thoroughly picked apart by fandom, stuff about Valjean's stubborn socially awkward painful goodness and Eponine and the other Thenardier kids, that I feel in some kind of weird selfish way still belongs to me more than everything related to the Amis et al. (Not that I don't care about the Amis also, because of course I do, but that conversation and all the accumulated injokes left me so far behind so long ago -- and also, aside from that, I have a lot of really conflicted feelings about the whole "PRIVILEGED STUDENTS IN OVER THEIR HEADS"/"EXPERIENCED REVOLUTIONARIES KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING" debate, which have only gotten more complicated when you throw recent real-life current events in the mix and add in all my own complex personal feelings about how I can and should be engaging in the activism currently ongoing around the country without raising my voice at times and in ways that someone with my level of privilege shouldn't be raising it. BUT THAT'S NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.) But my fourteen-year-old feelingsitis is, at least for the moment, in something of a state of remission. It'll almost certainly come back someday, though; it's the kind of feelingsitis you don't ever really get cured of.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 06:47 am (UTC)I feel like that is the most Becca title to ever Becca
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Date: 2014-12-08 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 05:10 pm (UTC)(It's funny you should mention writing a novel inspired by Les Mis, because I started a play similarily inspired by Les Mis the February after the movie came out. I dropped it awhile ago; I should really get back to that sometime.)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-11 04:29 am (UTC)WOULD TOTALLY READ.
Haha, you and Les Mis are inextricably linked for me, because that's how I found you, following someone's link to your hilarious posts from your reread.
Also I need someone whose feelingsitis related to musicals is as strong as mine NO ONE UNDERSTANDS US.no subject
Date: 2014-12-11 07:18 pm (UTC)(Ooh, yes, you should! I don't want to ask too much because I know I'm often superstitiously wary of talking about my unfinished writing projects, but I'm curious about any info you felt like sharing. :D)
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Date: 2014-12-11 07:20 pm (UTC)(INTO THE WOODS IS SO IMPORTANT!!!)
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Date: 2014-12-17 11:18 pm (UTC). . . looking back now, it all sounds kind of crap. But I had a lot of fun while I was planning it!