Climbing the Family Tree

For the past several years my aunt and I have been researching our genealogy. Or, researching it as well as we can while managing school and work and being thousands of miles away from each other. It's a strange mixture of exhilaration and exasperation, and I can only spend so much time on it before I start to question reality and have to stop in order to preserve my sanity and sense of self.

The problem is that so much of the work is based on assumptions and faith. You have to follow the line of documents like you climb a ladder, hand-over-hand one rung at a time, trusting the steps you've already climbed to support you. But the ladder is endless. And the higher you get the more you wobble in the wind, and you keep hitting tree branches and, I don't know, power lines. 

Say you have a name, the name of your great-grandfather. You know when and where he was born and when and where he died and where he and your great-grandmother lived while they were married. You find a census record for a man that fits with the information you already have, and contains the name of your grandparent during the proper time frame, so you know the man on the record is probably the man you're investigating. (Ah, probably. What a hateful word.) You use the census to find out that your great-great-grandparents were born in a different state--though you don't know their names--and you search for the censuses from the time your great-grandfather was born, looking for him as a child to establish who his parents are. You find one that looks promising--the dates are close enough, the places are right--and so you have new names, new leads. 

Wash, rinse, repeat. Apply other records as necessary. 

Never mind that there are about fifty bazillion "John Smith"s in that state's census for that year, or that everything is handwritten in cramped, casual cursive--"Is that a c or an a," you ask yourself, nose pressed against the computer screen. "Does that say Olive or Oline?"--and you'd be foolish to expect to find something which exactly matches the information you have. Never mind maiden names, and the ordeal of immigration records, complete with name changes and spelling discrepancies and the promise of records in foreign languages. 

There is no confirmation email, no seal of approval, nothing to guarantee the accuracy of the family tree you're constructing. You just have to trust in probability, in the strength of your matches, in the fact that whether or not it's applicable the information on the documents is true. And, at least in my experience, the more documents you handle the more muddled you get. The result is that before long a sense of paranoia sets in, and I have to stop because I honestly feel like I'm going to go crazy if I continue. Wait, why am I searching naturalization records for Gladys? Oh, right, to confirm Gladys's immigration. Which I know happened because the 1890 census said Myron's parents were born in Poland. Remind me again why I care about Myron? Oh, right, Bertha's birth certificate said Myron was her dad. Remind me again why I care about Bertha? Who ARE all these people? Why do I care about any of them? Where did these names COME from? How do I know this is really who I think it is?! HOW DO I KNOW THAT'S REALLY MY MOTHER, HMMMM?! ...The house of cards will fall very, very quickly if you poke it too much. 

I was at a genealogy center the other day getting help (because seriously, immigration records are a pain in the ass), and the person helping me discovered that I'd gotten someone's maiden name wrong, and so the people I had been looking for records for, Conrad and Wilhelmina, were in no way related to me. With one click of a button they were deleted from my tree, gone, and I was left with a new last name and the vast, enticing openness of possibility. I had been thinking for months that I was connected to these people. It's unsettling to think how easily familial ties, a core foundation of our society (and of most others), lauded throughout literature and media and history and common culture as A Bond Above Others, can be discredited.   

And it's unsettling to realize how connected we are to people we've never even met. My grandparents on my mother's side each had seven siblings, and my great-grandma had fifteen. My aunt and I stopped putting the siblings on our tree because it was just getting ridiculous, and we weren't really interested in the siblings, we were interested in the parents. But those siblings all had families of their own, husbands and wives and children and grandchildren and sons-and-daughters-in-law who all have parents and siblings of their own, who...you get the idea. It sounds obvious, but I've never really thought about it before, about its implications, about these people as more than names. A lot of the information we've added has been based on information from other people's family trees, who had been interested in the same people we were and had already done the research on them. Because they're related to them too. My great-great-great-grandfather is also someone else's great-great-great-grandfather, some distant cousin I've never even heard of or given a thought to but who, from Simon backwards, has the exact same family tree as I do. And on their trees, they treat my great-grandma as I treat their relatives, disregarding her as an obscure aunt they don't care about, another name on the census, whereas to me she is of the Utmost Importance, because she's mine. It's even stranger when people have posted pictures of your shared relatives' graves; it really hits me that there are other people out there, strangers, who have the same eager interest in and reverence towards these predecessors, that they have the same claim to them as you do.  

I recently discovered that my great-great-great-great-grandfather had the same birthday as me. He was born in 1830 in Norway. The way we attach ourselves to the dead, create links and loyalties, really is very odd, when you think about it. Yet when the genealogist helped me trace one line of my mother's family to 16th century Denmark and another line to 16th century Germany I was as proud and possessive as if I'd known these people personally. At what point do these connections become irrelevant, meaningless? Because with all of the marriages and births that would have occurred (and did occur) in five hundred years, then everyone is connected, however obscurely, to everyone else. And people certainly don't act like it sometimes. 

--Flannery      

Untold Contest

Anticipating the September release of Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan, we took pictures of each other reading Unspoken, the first book in the trilogy. The setting is Sully, a historic plantation pretty close to where we live. (Our drive there was a saga in itself, as was the drive back. We did see a dude indulging in some zen jogging though, so that was quite fitting.) It was built in 1794 and owned by one of Virginia's most prominent families. We debated a few different costume ideas, but we decided to go with a cute, quirky style like Kami's. It was crazy hot outside and we got a few strange looks from a curator and some guys doing lawn work, but we had a great time.

--Flannery & Bridget

Horror at the Dentist

Spoiler alert: the horror has nothing to do with my teeth.
 
I came home Friday before last and went to the dentist on Monday. All the little rooms in the dentist’s office have screens, and in dentist visits past those screens have shown the exploits of various aquatic creatures. This time I was presented not with ocean adventures but Seasonal Forests.
 
I read the title on the screen and expected some relatively dull panoramic and overhead shots of rocks and trees. There would be peace and tranquility in the wonderful land of nature, and I would be utterly bored without the usual funny-looking fishies.
 
OH, HOW WRONG I WAS.
 
The video started with a snowy forest and a small dark furry thing trudging across the landscape. I’m pretty zoologically savvy, but I couldn’t quite identify it. (I’ve since done a little research and believe it to have been a wolverine.) It made its way up to a lighter-colored furry thing and began pawing at it until I could see that it was bloody and dead. Then the dark furry thing quite simply made off with a limb.
 
I did not sign up for this, I thought to myself, staring at the screen with a wide-open mouth while the hygienist picked at my teeth.
 
It is a truth acknowledged by most anyone over the age of maybe four or so that fish eat other fish. But for some reason, there’s nothing unsettling about watching a bloodless gulp. There’s a fish, just minding his own—whoops, there he goes—wrong place at the wrong time, bro. Not so in the Seasonal Forest with the carrion-eating wolverine!
 
Next were large turkey-like birds with large bodies close to the ground and magnificent plumage blooming from their behinds. Again I wished for narration to tell me what they were. I expected a slow peacock strut, but these guys ran like ninjas. I remember a moose whose solitary journey was captured by a stunning helicopter shot, which was awesome.
 
My favorite featured creatures were the baby ducks because only soulless people are immune to the charm of baby ducks. At first I was mildly surprised to see a mama duck in a tree. To my delight, the camera showed several ducklings also inside the tree. To my alarm, the ducklings waddled out to the edge of the hole and literally fell out of the tree and onto the ground after their mother. A camera on the forest floor showed how they bounced when they hit bottom.
 
There were only four ducklings wandering off after their mama in the end, but I probably watched each of them fall twice if not three times. The crash landings had been shown from different angles at different speeds, reminding me of a bizarre video game. Catch the baby ducks! Guide the baby ducks to a target on the ground! See how high you can make the baby ducks bounce!
 
There were of course blossoming flowers to accompany the baby animal segment. I watched way too many time-lapsed explosions of pistils and stamens. Not going to lie, it was a little unsettling. Weirder still was the fact that I was subjected to the whole thing in reverse as well. At one point, the camera focused on a plot of pansy-like flowers in yellow and violet. The video moved faster and slower, faster and slower, and the development of the flowers progressed and regressed, progressed and regressed.
 
Is this what being on drugs is like? I wondered, lying sedately in the chair, waiting for the x-ray results.
 
Not long after came some…lovely…insect footage. With additional research I’ve determined that these were the seventeen-year cicadas that swarmed the East Coast when I was in fourth grade. They’re supposed to be coming back this year, which is distressing. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with them until I was twenty-five, but apparently there are different broods with cycles set a few years apart. The video was only slightly short of terrifying. Brought back some enchanting memories. Can’t wait for the return of the devil spawn!
 
I was at the dentist for a pretty long time. The doctor had been out at a meeting and came a little late, and there was a problem with my x-ray results showing up on the computer screen. All this meant that I was still in the chair when the video ended. The screen went black and the credits rolled.
 
Narration by Sigourney Weaver? Music by the BBC Concert Orchestra? What is this? I thought.
 
I had started off thinking that the video was supposed to be the visual equivalent of elevator music. Turned out to be the tenth episode of Planet Earth. The horrors of the food chain, the careening ducklings, the psychedelic plant remix, and the horde of demon bugs all suddenly made sense.

This is a documentary television series meant to show nature in all of its cruel and disturbing glory, I said to myself wisely. Not meant for the serenity of bored or anxious dental patients. But then why on earth were they playing it at the dentist? I would have loved the educational aspect of it if there had been some way of knowing what the heck was going on, but I’m not sure how universal that feeling is.

 
I guess I feel the same way about nature as some people feel about the dentist. I’m not afraid of the dentist. It’s a bit unpleasant, but nothing about it scares me. Nature, on the other hand… nature is frightening! Nature is weird and gross and will surprise you just when you think you’ve got it figured out.

With nature and dentistry both, you think that everything is reasonable and then you discover something horrifying.

 
Brush your teeth and never go to Australia.

--Bridget

The Adventures of Merlin (Warning: Here There Be Spoilers)

Remember when I said I was going to blog my way through Merlin? Yeah, well, I finished the series about a month ago.

...I promise I had a life away from my computer screen. I promise.

Anyways. I find myself in an odd position--I liked the show, a lot, but remain as unimpressed with it as I did when I started out. Okay, I'm a little more impressed by it--but it really is a pretty bad show.

When I first started watching, I would make a tally every time "destiny" was mentioned. There got to be so many tallies that I had to stop. The episodes are repetitive and get boring very quickly: There is some magical problem, either a creature or a sorcerer, which is trying to kill either Uther or Arthur, and Merlin is The Only One who can save them, because of his Awesome And Unsurpassed Power. A friend pointed out that a lot of TV shows are formulaic in that way, and I suppose that's true--but other shows have some kind of side plot that advances with each episode, or the characters grow or change, perceptibly, and I didn't feel like Merlin had that. It was just monotonous; and I don't think I'd have minded, except for a few things that I couldn't get over.

One was the way in which Merlin kept running off to the Dragon (of Destiny) for help--sometimes I could see when it was necessary but other times I thought he could have handled the problem on his own, or didn't think the Dragon's input was relevant. Merlin let himself be influenced too much by the Dragon. Another was that in the very first episode Uther was talking about how Camelot had been free from magic for years and years, how he had eradicated it. And yet the show was based around all of the magical problems that plague the kingdom, all of the sorcerers and creatures that are clearly not eradicated. The show's most fundamental concept is hypocritical. It wouldn't have been that hard to have a subplot about how the Old Religion was rising again (that might have been really interesting!), or even just have someone--anyone! It doesn't matter who!--say a line along the lines of "Gee, this is strange, isn't it?"

Another problem, along the same lines, was that not only was the show formulaic, it was formulaic to the point of using almost the exact same lines episode after episode, particularly when it came to Uther. "Magic is evil, magic is evil"--it gets boring, and then annoying, and the force of Uther's hatred loses any impact it might have had. The characters never change--not Uther; not Arthur: caught between his father's will and his own, but always falling back into compliance; every episode it seems like they're going through the same motions.

I was disappointed by how they handled Morgana's becoming evil. She was such a great character before--passionate, funny, smart--and after she started attempting to ruin Camelot, she lost all of that. She became flat and one-dimensional; there wasn't even any internal conflict or regret or second thoughts--she was pure evil, defined by her desire for revenge. And no one is pure evil. Conflicted villains are the best, both because they're realistic and because when they're done well, they're interesting; and it was like she had never been the person we came to know in the beginning seasons, like she never even remembered seasons 1 and 2. I loved her relationship with Morgause--even that would have been great, seeing a villainous sister duo! But that didn't happen.

The show's family-friendliness also got on my nerves. I have nothing against family-friendly shows; I think it's great that they're getting kids interested in history and mythology and that there's a show that parents and kids can both watch and enjoy together. But the fact that there would be scenes in which people would stab each other, and there would never be any blood on the weapon, ever, irked me. I'm not saying everything should be bloody and violent! I think the media and entertainment industries have made people too desensitized to violence, and don't appreciate violence for violence's sake--but not having any blood at all is just unrealistic and not only takes away from the show by drawing the viewer out of the world that's been created, but takes away the impact that showing realistic wounds would have had--violence has consequences, and showing the results of those consequences makes it real for the character and the audience in a way that passing over it doesn't.

So, with all these complaints, I was surprised to find myself enjoying the show. I really started to like it after Uther dies and Arthur becomes king. I've said that the characters don't grow, but that's not strictly true--they  grow, they just grow very slowly and mostly after Uther dies, and it's a long time to wait. We see Arthur grow so much more as a character after he's free from the constraints of Uther's mindless bigotry. I liked seeing how the show interpreted the myths; as a history nerd it was fun to see how things were portrayed. And the cast remained super hot, which just made everything better. I mean really, Knights of the Round Table. I think I know the kind of criteria Arthur had in mind when he was selecting y'all, and I very much approve.

It's very enjoyable to watch all of the characters interact with each other; they have great friendships, great relationships, that are interesting and heartwarming and make you care about them all. You can see the love between them, and you feel included in that love. That, I think, is why I kept watching--I came to care about the characters, and wanted to stick with them till the end. Arthur and Gwen's relationship was sweet if a little sappy. (And I was wrong about Gwen, she turned out to be a very strong character. Though I'm not sure I approve of her returning to Arthur after he banished her. From a storyteller's perspective, I think it would've been cool if the two of them went their separate ways, Gwen married that bandit-lord and Arthur married Mithian, and then later they had to reconnect as respective rulers and deal with their history and any lingering feelings. From a person-perspective, I think it was crappy of Arthur to treat her like that and I'm not sure I like the underlying message being sent when Gwen goes back to him--she doesn't have to take that from him, and it felt like throughout that story arc, until she and Arthur were reconciled, her character was defined by her love and pining for Arthur. To some extent it was like that even after they reconciled.) Arthur and Merlin's relationship was the real treat of the show. The bromance episodes were few and far between during the first seasons, and I got annoyed by Arthur's awful treatment of Merlin. But then the bromance scenes came more frequently, and the two of them were just so funny and cute and touching and the last episode was heartbreaking. Really heartbreaking. (They should have kissed. Just saying.)

I know there's a lot of controversy over the very end of the show, but I actually liked it. Once I got over my initial surprise that that was how it was ending--no scenes of Gwen's grief, no aftermath--just a clean break with Gwen's coronation, and then the quick connection to the modern day--I thought it was a clever way to do it. It really adds a sense of finality but also continuity, and puts the series firmly in the context of a story, and in the past. We don't get to see Gwen's reign, we don't get to see what happens to the knights or Camelot or Gaius, or even the rest of Merlin's life--we're not supposed to know that. That's not part of the story we've been experiencing. And the sudden contrast between the mise-en-scene of Camelot and the mise-en-scene of the present day reminds us that it's a legend that we've been witnessing--the Arthurian legends that we know on paper have been given substance and depth, given life; and now they are dead. It's not sad. It's the closing of a book.

Now that Merlin is over, I must find other TV to watch. I'm really enjoying Orphan Black on BBC America, though it's not normally the kind of thing I go for; don't talk to me about the current season of Doctor Who unless you want a long conversation about the problems with the recent episodes; Smash is being cancelled, unfortunately (I kind of saw it coming, and I don't blame them, but still!). I've spent the last week re-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix Instant Watch, a most beloved show that I'm really enjoying watching straight through, and I may or may not have almost finished it. But it's summer, and I'm sure I'll find other things to do with my time. Like reading Le Morte D'Arthur, and re-watching this fan trailer over and over again. Long Live Arthur Merthur ;)

--Flannery

Elegy for a Pool

I brought my swimsuit and goggles at the beginning of the year, stuffed them into the outside pocket of my suitcase the day before we drove up for first-year move-in. But for one reason or another, I never felt like swimming. I had dance classes, I had rehearsals, I had books to read and papers to write.

With a sense that time really has run out, I borrow my roommate’s swim cap (oh, the glamor) and head to the basement of our central building. I find the locker room, leave my stuff unattended, sign in, and wade into an empty lane. There are two guards and one other swimmer, and it is very quiet.

As I paddle myself across and back, I’m very glad I learned to swim as a kid. Thanks, I think in the general direction of my mother. I’ve never had a passion for swimming—it wears me out, and getting water in your nose hurts­—but I’m comfortable in the water. I put my head under, my legs give me a good start off the wall, and there I go. I’m determined to stay in the lane for at least a half-hour.

As in dance and music and writing, I find the peace of concentration in my slow breaststroke. I have upcoming exams and a paper to revise, but it’s hard to think about Integrated Pest Management and the Crittenden Compromise and To the Lighthouse when you’re swimming. It’s hard to think about anything but swimming when you’re swimming. Your head bobs up and down, up and down, and you experience the mental equivalent of… not of white noise, but ambient music. Not waiting-room-elevator-your-call-is-very-important-to-us music either. This music is softer and gentler.

How funny that you can move through water in ways you can't move through air…

You’re going to cut your hair short when you get home, it will probably look fantastic…

A boy you had a crush on an age ago, why are you thinking about him…

Caught in a wild ocean, waiting for rescue, a giant whale sails past…

The muscles in your back, the muscles in your legs, the synchronicity of the body…

You’re going to cut your hair short when you get home, it will probably be a disaster…

A little girl comes for her swimming lesson. She is too cute. It makes me sad that she’ll never have another lesson in this pool, which is closed as of today.

It isn’t going to reopen in the fall, either. They’re filling it with concrete and using it as storage space while they renovate the library, or so I hear. Not that they’ll have the money to renovate anything for a few years, so that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Also if they wanted storage space, why fill the pool? You could totally store stuff in an empty pool, right?

It’s not like I know anything about development, but it seems a great shame. What about all the little kids who need their swimming lessons? What about the student lifeguards who are out of a job? What about students who will have to trek across the street to the big university pool and trudge back all wet and gross?

Goodbye, fair pool. I hardly knew you. I’m not sure your loss will have too much of an impact on me personally. But when the urge to swim strikes again, I will regret the time we did not spend together and denounce the administration that decided you were unworthy of a place on campus.

--Bridget

Sit Up Straight and Take Up Space

My college used to teach posture classes. I’ve seen a few excellent photographs from 1954 that show the young ladies of the school wearing silly-looking pinafores and executing various silly-looking exercises. It is an antiquated thing, a snippet of a fifties culture that emphasized propriety. Surely the students at men’s or coeducational institutions were not required to take posture classes! The situation seems to reveal a focus on appearances that is not particularly progressive.

So why do I think we should bring them back?

I want to take this class, maybe instead of my Social Analysis requirement.

I’m a dancer, so I spend a ton of time thinking about bodies and space. I guess it’s pretty weird, actually, the way I process my own motion. (It served me well in a final project I wrote for a class last semester, describing the choreography of my daily life. I may publish this later.) Only recently have I begun really thinking about why I take the stances I do: in the classroom, on the subway, at the store counter. The more I think about posture, the more I think it is absolutely vital to a culture of equality.

“Whoa, Bridget,” you are undoubtedly saying. “Hold on and back up. Did you remember to take your meds this morning? The ones that prevent your overdramatic, baseless philosophizing?”

I’ll start with what I mean by posture. I am not referring only to the curvature of the lower spine (where you might think of “slouching”). That’s very important, but you can think about the concept in a much more complex, holistic way.

POSTURE INCLUDES:

1.      the alignment of the spine (straightness and curvature)

2.      the placement of the shoulders (toward or away from the collarbone or ears)

3.      the position of the head (lifted, tilted, bowed)

4.      the orientation of the knees (bent, straight, together, apart)

5.      the relationship of the feet (wide or narrow)

6.      the configuration of the arms (too many to list)

7.      probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of right now

We are evaluated by our posture, categorized by our posture, treated how our posture indicates we ought to be treated. I think it is very likely that we are socialized to stand differently on the basis of our sex. Males are taught to command space and attention with their bodies; females are taught to deflect space and attention with theirs. (Of course, I’ve known women who commanded space and attention, and I’ve known men who deflected it. What I mean is that there is a gender-coding that manifests itself in daily life and associates certain poses with masculinity and femininity.)

Inspired by the documentary Killing Us Softly 4, I have been observing how female models in advertisements are posed. Oftentimes their shoulders are raised and bowled, their knees are knocked and crossed, their torsos shortened with curved or twisted spines. There is a two-part philosophy espoused by such images: (1) women should not assume stances of authority and power, and (2) women should take up as little space as possible.

Maybe this works in advertising, when the model’s [Photoshop-created] beauty and the zoom of the lens demand the consideration of the viewer. But it sure as heck doesn’t work in real life. If you make yourself small, you make yourself unimportant. Trying to remove yourself from the space you could very well be possessing is equivalent to trying to remove yourself from the awareness of other people.

This is why we need posture class. We need to learn how to sit up straight and take up space.

Fierceness may vary.

Women and men alike need to know how to sit and stand in order to be successful, to communicate knowledge and ability. For girls who are led to believe that they are more attractive when they take up less space (hello, eating disorders), this is especially important. Good posture combats insidious notions about the comparative value of male and female minds.

Try it at the seminar table, try it on the subway car, try it when you talk to your professor or your boss or your mom. Plant your feet wider than your hips, pull your shoulder-blades down and together, relax your arms, keep your chin level. It isn’t about aggression or intimidation or even really about size. It’s about that fact that you deserve the attention of the world and that you deserve the same space any other individual. You just need to claim it with your body.

--Bridget

“This isn’t going to cause me any future trauma, right?”: A Les Mis Movie Parody

BACKGROUND MUSIC: *distant drums*
AUDIENCE: Say, do you hear the… never mind. Does Les Mis begin underwater? I don’t remember this from the stage production.
 
VALJEAN: Behold, I am a dirty and sad-looking man among dirty and sad-looking men.
CHAIN GANG: We are a dirty and sad-looking choir of sorrow.
JAVERT: I’m standing in a high place. You’ll see me doing this often. It has nothing to do with authority issues or a troubled childhood among the scum of the earth. Nope.
 
FRENCH FLAG: *is lying meaningfully in the mud*
AUDIENCE: I guess this is going to be one of those symbolic movies.
 
JAVERT: Hey, you. Pick up the flag on that heavy mast over there for no reason whatsoever!
VALJEAN: Okay. *picks up flag on heavy mast for no reason whatsoever*
JAVERT: After that irrelevant task, you are free to go—
VALJEAN: J
JAVERT: —with identification papers that prevent you from living even a halfway decent life.
VALJEAN: L
 
BISHOP: I am kindly, elderly, and magically appearing! You know what that means!
VALJEAN: It means...you’re my Catholic fairy godmother?
BISHOP: We can work with that.
HOUSEKEEPING LADIES: Feel the burn of our judgment, hobo.
 
VALJEAN: I must experience a dramatic rebirth before the opening credits, and so I need a suitably dramatic setting in which to shred these identification papers. I think this graveyard will do.
AUDIENCE: Yup, definitely one of those symbolic movies.
 
SUBSTANTIAL PIECE OF TORN PAPER: *drifts into 1823*
 
PEOPLE OF PARIS: And the plague is coming on fast, ready to kill~
AUDIENCE: Wait, doesn’t the line go, “And the winter is coming on fast, ready to kill”?
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Well, winter is coming was kind of already taken.
 
FACTORY WOMEN: Look at Fantine in her modest pink dress, the skank! We should read her mail.
FANTINE: No, you should not!
FACTORY WOMEN: Ooh, would you look at that! She’s got a secret child!
FANTINE: Your mom has a secret child.
FACTORY WOMEN: ?
FANTINE: It was one of those comebacks that sounded better in my head.
 
VALJEAN: *swoops in, now with better hair*
VALJEAN: What’s going on here?
JAVERT: *appears in high window*
VALJEAN: Oh crap, it’s that cop with authority issues.
VALJEAN: Foreman, just…deal.
 
FOREMAN: Okay, what’s actually going on here?
FACTORY WOMEN: The girl in the modest pink dress is a total skank!
FOREMAN: I knew it! Women with boundaries are always secretly awful. OUT!
FANTINE: That escalated quickly.
 
JAVERT: It seems to me we may have met~
VALJEAN: Your face is not a face I would forget~
JAVERT: …what do you mean by that?
 
FANTINE: There is nothing about my situation that could be manipulated into anything remotely humorous.
 
JAVERT: You remind me of a man.
VALJEAN: What man?
JAVERT: The man with the power.
VALJEAN: What power?
JAVERT: The power to lift heavy objects.
VALJEAN: Lots of people have that power.
JAVERT: Yeah I guess.
 
JAVERT: What’s going on here?
SLEAZY GUY: I accidentally wandered into prostitute territory, and they are vicious. Women without boundaries, am I right?
JAVERT: It’ll be off to jail for you, dying woman.
FANTINE: BUT I HAVE A CHILD.
JAVERT: That’s what they all say. Oh, hey. What are you doing here?
VALJEAN: Being a badass.
FANTINE: You! You ran off when I needed you most!
VALJEAN: I will see to it that you can die in peace.
FANTINE: There aren’t very many other options for me at this point!
 
JAVERT: MONSIEUR I AM A TERRIBLE COP. I BASICALLY DESERVE UTTER SHAME.
VALJEAN: Nope. No authority issues at all.
JAVERT: I mistook you for a runaway who broke his parole.
VALJEAN: Is that…so?
JAVERT: But we caught him!
VALJEAN: Is that…so?
JAVERT: Yup. He couldn’t outrun the law forever!
VALJEAN: Hm. Yeah. We’ll see, won’t we?
JAVERT: What was that?
VALJEAN: Nothing, nothing! Just…go about your business!
 
VALJEAN: Once more to the throes of torturous moral conundrums!
AUDIENCE: How many crises of conscience is this man going to have during this movie? He’s already had two, and it’s hardly been half an hour.
 
VALJEAN: I am 24601!
DERPY VALJEAN LOOKALIKE: Whoa I thought this kind of crap only happened on TV!
COURT: By “24601” do you mean “high”? Or perhaps “mentally unstable”?
 
FANTINE: It is fairly obvious that I am dying now.
MINI COSETTE: *appears*
FANTINE: My Cosette!
VALJEAN: Um, I hate to break it to you, but Cosette isn’t going to be here for aw—
MINI COSETTE: *disappears*
FANTINE: *dies*
VALJEAN: This is all a bit sad, isn’t it?
JAVERT: Fancy seeing you here.

VALJEAN: Can this wait? I promised my Catholic fairy godmother that I’d do my best to mitigate human suffering. Or something to that effect.

JAVERT: …I’m not even going to ask. Fencing?
VALJEAN: I don’t see why not.
JAVERT & VALJEAN: *musical fencing*
VALJEAN: *leaps into unidentified body of water *
AUDIENCE: ?
JAVERT: I draw the line at swimming!

MINI COSETTE: I am a beautiful child and my situation is very sad. Maybe I am secretly a princess? Wait, no, that’s not a good thing in this historical era. Never mind.
MADAME THENARDIER: On your way, Cosette! No one likes you!

MINI EPONINE: Seriously though. Everyone who sees this musical hates you. All teenage girls think that they’re me. And in this movie, I turn out way hotter than you.

MINI COSETTE: My life is so unfair.
 
VALJEAN: I have come to save Cosette from your evil clutches.
THENARDIERS: …what evil clutches?
VALJEAN: Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m taking Cosette away.
THENARDIERS: Oh no, we can’t have that!
MINI COSETTE: Somehow I was expecting something a little more along the lines of “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
 
JAVERT: Did you know that I have exactly one hobby? It’s walking precariously along high ledges. I am 100%sure that nothing terrible will ever come of this.
                                                                                                        
VALJEAN: Cosette, wake up!  You must be very quiet. We have to sneak around the gates of Paris.
MINI COSETTE: This isn’t going to cause me any future trauma, right?
VALJEAN: *flourishes rope *
AUDIENCE: ?
VALJEAN: *ascends/descends walls*
MINI COSETTE: I seem to have been adopted by a ninja master.
CARRIAGE DRIVER: How long have I been driving this empty carriage?
 
SOME YEARS: *pass very quickly*
 
GAVROCHE: I’m here to give you a political summary and some rudimentary philosophical discourse while looking cute as a button…that is, a button that’s been rolling around in the dirt for a bit.  You’ll fall for me big time, and when I die later you’ll be emotionally scarred.
 
ENJOLRAS & MARIUS: Preaching revolution to the masses! All eyes on us!
ENJOLRAS & MARIUS: Also, we are pretty fine.
ENJOLRAS & MARIUS: Do you think these things are at all related?
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Sorry, what were you saying?
 
JAVERT: I manage to be everywhere despite not having a first name.
 
EPONINE: Hey Marius. Are you at all interested in this foxiness?
MARIUS: Hey Eponine. Gotta run. Catch you later! J
AUDIENCE: WHERE ARE YOUR EYES, MAN?
 
MARIUS: Just walking on this street, very casual.
COSETTE: I am super cute and blond and wearing a hat!
MARIUS: HOLY CRAP IT’S A GIRL.
AUDIENCE: I guess he found his eyes.
 
MARIUS: Listen, Eponine. I need you to find this girl for me. I am instantaneously, madly in love with her.
EPONINE: WTF.
MARIUS: I knew I could count on you to help me out!
EPONINE: This is, like, beyond the friend zone. This is, like, the GPS zone.
 
MARIUS: There was this girl…
ENJOLRAS: Are you kidding me?
MARIUS: If you had only seen her, you would understand!
ENJOLRAS: Not into girls, remember?
MARIUS: You’re not? Wait, does that mean...do you have a crush on me, man?
ENJOLRAS: No, dumbass. I’m into France.
MARIUS: That kind of explains your irrational actions later in this movie.
 
COSETTE: Gosh, that slightly creepy guy who was staring at me on the street was pretty fine, but being in love is a bit challenging when you are the loneliest girl in the entire country of France.
VALJEAN: Cosette, I worry about you. I feel like you might be the loneliest girl in the entire country of France.
COSETTE: Papa, why don’t you tell me about your mysterious past in order to shed some light on why I am the loneliest girl in the entire country of France?
VALJEAN: Nope.
COSETTE: Well, then. Off to the garden to meet with my newfound love in spite of your commands!
 
MARIUS: We are madly in love!
COSETTE: We are perfect together!
EPONINE: You only love her because she sings a higher voice part! Nobody ever pays any attention to the voyeur mezzo!
 
VALJEAN: Cosette, I am completely overreacting to a scream I heard on the street outside! That’s it, we are moving to England!
COSETTE: My life is so unfair.
 
EPONINE: In the rain, the pavement shines like silver~
AUDIENCE: Would you look at that? It totally does.
EPONINE: All the lights are misty in the river~
AUDIENCE: And…wait. What river?
EPONINE: In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight~
AUDIENCE: Okay, I don’t think we’ve seen a tree since Mini Cosette was lost in the forest.
EPONINE: I’m just going to sit down here while I finish my song about walking.
AUDIENCE: …
EPONINE: The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers~
SHADOWY STRANGER: *walks past*
AUDIENCE: I guess now we can’t complain about the total absence of anyone else on the streets?
 
ENJOLRAS: Watch me stop an entire parade with my magnificent good looks!
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Gladly.
MARIUS: Mine, too!
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Even better.
 
ENJOLRAS: People of Paris! We need all your furniture!
LES AMIS: Why? We already have enough empty chairs and empty tables.
ENJOLRAS: We need them to build our barricade.
LES AMIS: Seems structurally unsound. Can we use this cow?
COW: ‘sup.
ENJOLRAS: Exactly how drunk have you been for the entire time I’ve known you guys?
 
BARRICADE: *appears to have two coffins displayed front and center*
AUDIENCE: You know, there’s a difference between foreshadowing and taking a brick to the face.
 
GAVROCHE: A letter from the barricade!
VALJEAN: You stay away from that barricade, okay?
GAVROCHE: …what barricade?
 
ENJOLRAS: Okay, everyone! Time to fight!
MARIUS: YES!
EPONINE: *is shot*
MARIUS: NO!
EPONINE: Marius, here’s a letter from Cosette. Also I love you.
MARIUS: Oh dear.
EPONINE: *dies*
MARIUS: SHE’S DEAD.
AUDIENCE: AND WHAT DID YOU THINK THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF GUNS WAS?
 
MARIUS: Can’t…stop…stacking…chairs…
ENJOLRAS: Marius, you need to take a chill pill.
VALJEAN: Oh, so that’s Marius. Huh. I sure hope he doesn’t die.
 
SOLDIER DUDE: If you’d allow me to make a suggestion—now would be an excellent time to surrender.
ENJOLRAS: I regret nothing!
LES AMIS: We do not feel the same way.
 
GAVROCHE: *dies*
AUDIENCE: Remind us why we are even watching this movie anymore.
AUDIENCE: No, seriously, remind us.
AUDIENCE: Because it’s starting to feel like a long time.
 
ENJOLRAS: I’ve just been shot dead, but even though I’m hanging upside-down out of a window I’m still sexy as hell. People of Paris, you are lucky that it is my fine self on display here rather than, like, Courfeyrac or someone.
 
VALJEAN: Let’s take this show on the road. And by “on the road” I mean “into the sewers.”
JAVERT: Where are those funny sounds coming from?
VALJEAN: AUUUGHUHGGUHAAAUGH.
JAVERT: That’s weird.
VALJEAN & MARIUS: *slide into sewer*
THENARDIERS: Oh, hey. What are you doing here?
VALJEAN: Being a badass. Which way to the exit?
THENARDIERS: That way.
VALJEAN: *hoists Marius over shoulder, wades through incredible filth*
AUDIENCE: Excuse us while we physically recoil from the screen.
 
VALJEAN & MARIUS: *emerge from sewer*
JAVERT: *has never seemed cleaner*
VALJEAN: Can this wait? Catholic fairy godmother, human suffering, you know how it is.
JAVERT: Despite my rabid enthusiasm for hunting you across France, I think we had better end this here. Don’t take another step.
VALJEAN: *takes step*
VALJEAN: *keeps going*
JAVERT: Huh. That usually works.
 
JAVERT: So remember that “high places” motif that has nothing to do with power and authority issues?
 
PEOPLE OF PARIS: We eagerly await the invention of the garden hose.
 
MARIUS: I am a portrait of a broken man.
AUDIENCE: At least you aren’t shot dead and hanging upside-down out of a window.
MARIUS: Small consolation when you are surrounded by what are presumably the last remaining pieces of furniture within a quarter-mile radius.
 
COSETTE: Yay! Everything is going to be perfect!
MARIUS: You will never understand my trauma.
COSETTE: Have I ever told you about the time I was adopted by a ninja master?
 
VALJEAN: I have something very important to tell you, Marius.
MARIUS: Hooray! Man-to-man confidentiality!
VALJEAN: Long ago there was a prisoner who broke his parole and began living a lie to save himself and continued living a lie to save those whom he loved.
MARIUS: I might be way off base here, but I’m sensing a connection between you and this mysterious character you are describing.
VALJEAN: Don’t tell Cosette, okay? She’ll be devastated by my life of lies, even though I have been nothing but good to her for years and years.
MARIUS: That makes sense.
MARIUS: No, actually, it doesn’t.
VALJEAN: Tell her I’ve gone on a journey!
MARIUS: I expect a more convincing alibi from someone who evaded the law for 20+ years.
 
MARIUS: He said to tell you that he’s gone on a journey.
COSETTE: ?
MARIUS: That’s what I said!
 
THENARDIERS: Hey, how’s it going? We want to tell you about Cosette’s adoptive father and the corpse he was carrying through the sewers. We took the dead man’s ring.
MARIUS: Hey, that’s mine…
THENARDIERS: Oh.
MARIUS: And you know what? I’m not dead. WHICH MEANS I CAN PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE.
COSETTE: I may be missing something here.
MARIUS: Cosette, we are going to see your father!
COSETTE: Yup. Definitely missing something.
 
VALJEAN: I think I’ve led quite a fulfilling life.
COSETTE & MARIUS: WAIT NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
VALJEAN: I was just about to die in peace.
COSETTE & MARIUS: NO YOU CAN’T DO THAT.
VALJEAN: Well, no one really asked you...
MARIUS: Cosette, your father saved my life!
COSETTE: Nice of you to let me know now, I guess?
FANTINE: Hey there. Thanks for everything.
VALJEAN: Fantine…
FANTINE: Let’s go.
GHOST VALJEAN: *stands up and walks off all casual*
GHOST VALJEAN: So, Catholic fairy godmother… how’d I do?
BISHOP: You did great, son. You did great.
 
GHOST ENJOLRAS: Attention, people of Paris. My beautiful face has returned for your enjoyment..
LES GHOST AMIS: Best. Barricade. Ever. We know good engineering when we see it.
GHOST GAVROCHE: Hi.
AUDIENCE: AUUUGHUHGGUHAAAUGH.
AUDIENCE: Okay so there were some weird things about this movie BUT I FORGIVE THEM BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY AMAZING AND TERRIFYING FEELINGS RIGHT NOW.