Despard the Oblivious

[coloneldespard]

It occurs to me that my last entry was rather oafish, suggesting that the majority of everything published lately at FFNet was rubbish. Nothing like a sweeping generalisation to have people wondering "does that include me

Comments

[coloneldespard]

Well, too bad - you're brilliant :)

I think the objection to the E/E idea is that so much of it is written on the basis of "I saw the musical, like these two characters, and therefore they belong together" - which, I admit, occured to me the first time I saw it. There's virtually no thought given to how these two characters might develop a relationship or what the nature of that relationship might be in the vast majority of fanfic - the current one is an example. Enjolras runs into Eponine, decides he fancies her, and has found "someone to fight for". Eponine, in turn, decides to forget Marius because Enjolras is hot and heroic. 24 hours later, and they're talking about marriage.

If there's any basis given, it's usually some variation of "Eponine is poor, Enjolras fights for the poor, therefore they belong together!"

My objections to the pairing are pretty much what they would be to any pairing with Enjolras...put him with someone, and you need to explain why and how, given he has virtually no personal life distinct from his cause (which is why it's so much easier to twist canon and have him in a relationship with one of his comrades, as they're a part of that cause). If all that's skated over, then you have generic revolutionary hero falling for generic spunky girl.

I'd love to see you tackle it as I know you wouldn't take that route, and I'd like to see what you come up with. Virtually anything can be justfied in fanfic if you're ingenious enough and set it up the right way - we all know it's tweaking canon, and if you can get us to suspend disbelief it could work.

[abelarda]

Ah, now I understand. So it is not the pairing itself that seems to be at fault here, it's more like the matter of not having the proper psychological background or character development. I haven't read many Enjolras/Eponine fics (to tell you the truth, I'm not sure if I ever read any E/E that was longer than a miniature), but I think I get what you mean: in my previous fandoms there were also some popular pairings that seemed almost impossible to write. Sadly, many authors tended to deal with them in the manner of 'let's get them together because they look hot in bed', therefore they often ended up ruining the potential of said pairings. Even though, if thoroughly explored, they could make sense despite their initial impossibility.

I don't know if my way of writing Enjolras fits the fandom (and I don't know how many people will be able to accept him the way I'm trying to imagine him), as I'm generally basing him on Polish Romantic characters, but even though he is a bit different from what the greatest writers in the fandom consider him to be, he surely won't fall in love at first sight. Actually, I don't think that he'll fall in love at all. Perhaps my vision of Enjolras is more Machiavellian, darker and less statue-like than many people in the fandom imagine him to be, but I tend to see him more like a human than like an ideal - I hope I'm not disappointing you! He's one of my favourite characters, too, and I know I have to be careful and not to get into extremes while writing him. And my Eponine is basically an obsessive, vengeful teenager driven by her hormones. So, as you can see, no happy ending here. :-) Now when I think about it, I get the feeling that one of my subconscious inspirations for the fic was Manuel Puig's Kiss of a Spider Woman (a book which, in my opinion, holds a 20th century incarnations of both Enjolras and Grantaire); I have nearly all the plot planned and established, I just have to combine all my sketches into a full story. And now I'm wondering if I can make it...