Observation

[moon_custafer]

Often fics are tonally-opposite to canon, because they’re written to compensate—if the original story is a comedy, sometimes people want to explore the more dramatic possibilities of the characters and setting; if the original is a high-stakes drama where a lot of the cast die, then fandom writes a lot of fix-its and sweet, fluffy AUs where nobody's life is in danger in the first place.

All of which is to say, there's a lot of fluffy fics for Les Miserables.

Comments

[sabotabby]

So many.

[sovay]

All of which is to say, there's a lot of fluffy fics for Les Miserables.

Were you looking for a particular kind of fic for Les Mis instead or was this preponderance just unavoidable?

[moon_custafer]

Oh I don't mind; it just amuses me that there are so many Valjean/Javert enemies-to-Colette-has-2-dads fics.


There's also a pretty good time-travel/AU fix-it for Les Amis which is rather sweet and hopeful without at all shying away from the fact that time-traveller Enjolras has *colossal* PTSD

[sovay]

Oh I don't mind; it just amuses me that there are so many Valjean/Javert enemies-to-Colette-has-2-dads fics.

Fair. I periodically have the experience of being completely confused by the direction of the extant fic in a fandom and wasn't sure if this was a similar kind of thing.

There's also a pretty good time-travel/AU fix-it for Les Amis which is rather sweet and hopeful without at all shying away from the fact that time-traveller Enjolras has *colossal* PTSD

That's ambitious and I'm impressed.

[nineveh_uk]

And the first pro published Chalet School sequel was. if not grimdark, very much "the non-shiny perfect version of how life might go on" (causing massive ruptures in the fandom, apparently).

[moon_custafer]

I actually found it via the Christmas follow-up (Enjolras is upset about something-- it eventually turns out that he's completely unaware that 21st-cenury people might stay in the city for Christmas, so he's assumed, since Grantaire hasn't mentioned any travel plans, that he's just not included in them).

[full_metal_ox]

And, of course, media for children will inspire a floodgate of gore, sacrilege, smut, and general grimdarkness; the more bland, evasive, and sanitized the canon, the nastier the backlash.

(And once the source material hits public domain, cue the deluge.)

[moon_custafer]

Oh absolutely. Often it's the kids themselves who do so.

[full_metal_ox]

However! Children of troubled and grimdark households have been known to find innocent sunshiny stories aspirational; those sentimental Aesops and moralizing epilogues were the only moral guidance some kids ever got—a point that came up in the documentary series The Toys That Made Us.

See also why Lynda Barry, whose troubled upbringing informs her writing and comics, adores The Family Circus: https://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/161259110639/dear-students-i-was-a-kid-growing-up-in-a