MEME: Original Flavour Reverse Questions

[solarhippie]

We've done the "... With A Twist" version a few times since we last did this in July, so it felt about time. And the directions are as follows:

Tag in with your characters and then people will comment asking the MUNS anything about the GAME or THEIR CHARACTERS, because we all know the muns will answer when the characters won't. They can be specific questions ("How does he feel about her?") or general questions ("Why did you choose this character?", "How do you channel them?", etc).

As always, check back periodically for more people to tag because WE WANT ALL THE QUESTIONS!!!

Comments

Re: Éponine Thénardier

[whenshewasnice]

Why Éponine? 25 WORDS OR LESS.

Or maybe just ramble at me, I'm not picky. :D

Re: Éponine Thénardier

[filleauloup]

Why Éponine? There is no way this is going to be a short answer. YOU ASKED FOR IT.

She's actually a character I've contemplated on and off for years, because hi, one of my favorite fictional characters ever since I was 12. I actually got into the musical first and really loved the character there, but because I am that kind of nerd who absolutely has to read the original book or any written material related to whatever canon I get into I pretty much went off and read the book immediately. And then I was really thrown off by how different she is in the book: where musical!Éponine is 90% pitiable-lovesick-puppy and 10% feisty-waif, Brickverse!Éponine is about 95% emotionally-dysfunctional, devious, do-anything-to-survive with a dash of "just happens to have a thing for Marius, even though she's totally banging Montparnasse on the side."

12-year-old me found this very jarring, because 12-year-old me did not quite know how to reconcile the idea of "favorite character" with "morally-sketchy grey-area type." 21 years and multiple rereadings/viewings have made my perspective a tad more sophisticated, I like to think.

So anyway, she was somewhere on my potential character list, but I never could decide how to play her: more sympathetic but simplified musical version, or more interesting but intimidatingly complex and less sympathetic Brickverse? I always knew I'd have more to work with if I went the Brickverse route, but I wasn't sure how well I could pull it off or how well she'd be received in that incarnation -- then playing GLaDOS made me think "hey, maybe I can do this."

Aaaaand then the movie musical came along and I watched it 30 times and Samantha Barks, who did things with her facial expressions that completely changed "On My Own" for me (this is a whole other long ramble that contains a lot of "OH MY GOD YOUR EYES THOUGH"), managed to absolutely knock it out of the park playing the role as a blend of both versions, and I thought maybe it wouldn't be so intimidating after all. Plus it totally reignited my full-on fangirl love of the character, because I swear she was everything I have always, always wanted in a film adaptation version of Éponine and then some.

Then all the post-movie fic started popping up and I kept swearing at my screen because most of it, to me, got her character completely wrong, and that drove me so thoroughly up the wall that I wanted to do something. And I knew I wanted to do something that focused on all the aspects of her character that didn't have much of anything to do with Marius Pontmercy; I love the musical but wish they hadn't relegated her to third-wheel unrequited love interest because I think everything else about her is so much more interesting: this is a girl who went from having a fairly comfortable life with parents who treated her decently to being completely penniless and desperate with parents who'd turned abusive after things went badly. She's come to the point where she genuinely believes she's a terrible, unredeemable person at heart. She didn't go to the barricades just because Marius was going and she wanted to be with him: she deliberately manipulated him into going there, because if she couldn't have him, then no one should.

[TBC]

Re: Éponine Thénardier

[filleauloup]

Especially Cosette. Victor Hugo never actually addresses her thought process or anything, but to me the thing about Éponine's reaction to Marius falling in love with Cosette is this: Cosette is (to all appearances) her polar opposite. Cosette, who was once the mistreated little waif in rags to Éponine's well-dressed, comfortable younger self, has become the one who has a happy, loving home and is provided for while Éponine has lost everything. She's somehow rationalized this by convincing herself that she's a terrible person who must not have deserved all those things anyway. Then she meets Marius, and he makes her want to try and be better, maybe gives her a little hope that she might not be that irredeemable after all, so she starts to try. And what does he do? Fall in love with Cosette, and not only that, ask Éponine to find out where she lives so he can find her. (That's sketchy, Pontmercy. You already know her family's a bunch of crooks. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE, MARIUS. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES.) That's got to be the ultimate condemnation for her: not only is there some other girl taking away the single bright spot left in her life, it's the same one she treated horribly when they were little, which has to remind her of everything she's lost, and it's a whole vicious cycle of "remember how things used to be a lot nicer? This is your punishment for being a horrible person." And holy shit, that's heartbreaking to me: I think the Eponine-Cosette dichotomy is about a million times more interesting than her relationship (such as it is) with Marius.

I mean, that's kind of fucked up. And a little bit awesome.

For all that he will go on for chapters about the Battle of Waterloo or the difference between different Parisian uprisings of the 1800s or the backstory of a goddamn mattress that gets stuck into the barricade, Victor Hugo . . . doesn't really give a whole lot of insight into who Éponine is as a person, or how she came to the conclusion that she was a horrible person (which I feel is patently unfair because Valjean got chapters about how he decided that he blamed society at large for his situation, yeah, yeah, I know he's the main protagonist, details). Well, I mean, it's there, but just in hints and allusions that you have to think about -- I found it completely fascinating, and had all these questions about the backstory we never got from Hugo, and decided I wanted to come up with my own answers for them.

Next thing I knew, despite having decided I probably wasn't going to app anyone new for at least a good while, I was sitting in a coffee shop (killing time before going to see the movie for about the 22nd time, I think) writing up an app.

So here she is.

Re: Éponine Thénardier

[solarhippie]

This was a good ramble!

A+