One breaks one's neck in living.

general
-mindfulofmuses: Once more. AU in which Enjolras survived the barricades, only to be sentenced to death. Grantaire, who slept through the revolution, manages to visit his cell.
-sheakespeare: A could-be-pretty face. First encounter with an odd pile of rags called Eponine.
-dear_mun: Here we are again. With Enjolras.
-bakerstreet: Never mix gin with lovelorn speeches. TFLN with Eponine.
-bakerstreet: Who cares about your sex-obsessed soul? TFLN, au-tilted with Enjolras.
-bakerstreet: The bearded princess. TFLN with 'Chetta.
-dear_mun: Aren't you a darling? Meeting Raoul de Chagny.
-memeboxy: Questions. Includes a threat with the loveliest bee to ever hum about her business.
-bakerstreet: These wild, willful moods. At the emotions potions meme. With Enjolras and Francis. Continued with Enjolras here.
-dear_mun: And I ache with it. On the mun pulling Grantaire out of Siren's Pull and away from Enjolras.
-dear_mun: If it weren't for Poland...
-dear_mun: Familiarity. Grantaire briefly encounters an older, AU version of himself in a somewhat OOCish way.
-dear_mun: Further reunions. Encountering Combeferre and... what's this? Another Enjolras?!
-dear_mun: The Darling Cherub. Jesting a bit with Enjolras. Who clearly loves a good jest.
-bakerstreet: Vampiric Sire. Vampire!Grantaire has created a new fledgling. Time to teach him the ropes.
-bakerstreet: Best to be inside. With Musichetta in the snow fall meme.


Mad Men au
-Saturday at the office.


psl with Irma Boissy
-Clear skies. Irma and R take a trip to the countryside.
-Dandelions and windows. Encounter the second.
-Another day goes. Grantaire is stricken (more or less) by the sight of beauty. First encounter with Irma Boissy, the loveliest of boot embroiderers.


Siren's Pull
-Shatters in the night. Grantaire, having secured an apartment at the House of Awesome, confronts a nightmare-shaken Enjolras.
-Always the best answer. Drinking with Daedalus, whoo!
-Visiting Lady 'Ponine. Grantaire visits Eponine in the hospital after she has returned to the Port injured.
-Thwarted. When the Newcomers of Siren's Port are thrown back to 1918, Enjolras rescues Grantaire from the barracks, only to be dragged away before he can get himself captured. Drama (oh no, punched in the jaw, oh no) and some happier times ensue.
-Time-traveled to a squash patch? Grantaire finds himself transported to a squash field, along with the other Newcomers of the Port. Meets Vesper.
-A very French invasion. Grantaire and Eponine visit the House of Awesome. Grantaire seeks and finds Enjolras. Awkwardness is overcome, and Grantaire is pleasantly surprised.
-Hello? Grantaire's video introduction and first attempt at using an NV. Introduced to Howl, Daedalus, Vincent, and Franz. Also includes a meeting with Eponine.
-Arrival. Just falling onto a ball diamond in the middle of the night; no big deal.

“I tell you there is much to tear the heart.”
— Aeschylus, Agamemnon [trans. Robert Fagles]

“Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don’t understand, it dies, or it’s me, I don’t understand, that either. I ask the words that remain—sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say.”
— Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“I always know. Or part of me does. That’s the trouble.”
— Eugene O’Neill, A Moon for the Misbegotten

“How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! ah fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.”
— Shakespeare, Hamlet

“But they persisted right to the end, those nagging, tormenting, maddening questions that rotted my life. When I refused to confront them, they ambushed me.”
— Brian Friel, Faith Healer

"There’s nothing of so infinite vexation
As man’s own thoughts.”
— John Webster, The White Devil

“There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.”
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“[I]ntelligence has got the upper hand to such an extent that it transforms the real task into an unreal trick and reality into a play.”
— Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age

“Men do not understand what a mountain of guilt
Rises from that small word: Life.”
— Henrik Ibsen, Brand [trans. Michael Meyer]

“My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle the plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all.”
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Why is the wreck still singing?”
— Geoffrey Hill

“Thou shalt fear
Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;
And say at night ‘Would God the day were here,’
And say at dawn, ‘Would God the day were dead.’”
— Algernon Swinburne, ‘A Ballad of Burdens’

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.”
— The Big Sleep

“No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we.”
— Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“I was born condemned to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you’re damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it’s all question and no answer.”
-Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh

“I make the movements of infinity, whereas faith does the opposite; after having made the movements of infinity, it makes those of finitude. anyone who can make these movements is fortunate; he performs the miraculous, and I shall never be tired of admiring him.”
— Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling [trans. Sylvia Walsh]

Character Information

General

Canon Source: Les Misérables

Canon Format: Hugo’s novel mixed with the musical.

Character's Name: Aleron Grantaire // alias ‘R’ (Grand R, Capital R, or however you might phrase it)
((note that Hugo only gives his surname; I’ve decided on the first))

Character's Age: 27

What form will your character's NV take? A small (think pocket-sized), tattered book. Its cover is worn, its text largely illegible. Any page may be used for writing, while the inside of the front cover may be used for audio or video, and the inside of the back cover for holograms. The inside covers function as simple touch screens; tap once to activate, then tap to select video or audio (with the back cover, tap to be taken directly to the hologram options); a few further options, easily navigable, are available for each.


Abilities

Character's Canon Abilities: Aside from the ability to expound for pages upon pages and a propensity for holding his liquor… Nothing, really.

If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Amplifying or muting the powers of others, dependent on his mood and how strongly he believes in or against the other individual. The exact impact of this ability (and whether it has any discernible impact at all) will of course be determined by the other player. It isn’t anything that he can control (not yet, anyway), and could reveal more about his feelings than he would like. At the beginning, the ability will be weak in most if not all cases; Grantaire will sense something that feels out of place, but likely will not be able to identify the strangeness.

Around many people, the ability will typically only impact the individual about whom Grantaire holds the stronger belief, positive or negative (with training and strengthening, he may be able to impact many; this remains to be seen). If Grantaire does cultivate this ability, he is likely to be more in control of it when not drinking. To some extent, though, it will probably always be beyond his control.

If Grantaire is left alone for too long and the ability has no source for attachment, it will turn inward and begin to create a sharp pressure, leaving Grantaire with an enhanced sense of doubt and a severe headache. The first individual to near him in such a state may very likely feel a strong initial burst in or ebbing of his/her own ability.

In terms of a "why," this ability suits the sense that alone, Grantaire tends to be pulled downward and inward by his constant questions and disbelief. It is only around others that he begins to find solidity and something like expression, and because he is outspoken and bears a strong presence, he has a tendency to impact the mood of those around (this being simply a part of his strength of personality).

Weapons: Biting wit? All right, all right… No weapons to speak of.


History/Personality/Plans/etc.

Character History: Hugo offers little backstory. We know that Grantaire is a student from the south of France. We can also presume that he came from a family of some money, given the fact that he is a student. Otherwise, his history stands a blank (when time allows, I will be working on some sort of background for him; I’m fairly certain that he has a sister somewhere). For Hugo’s introduction to Grantaire, please take a glance at this post and excerpt.

Through the course of the novel, Grantaire is primarily found drinking with the Friends of the ABC. Although he holds to none of their fervor for or beliefs in revolution and progress, he bears a deep admiration for Enjolras, their leader and a man of astonishingly strong belief. Grantaire discourses at length, but does nothing in particular to aid the cause of his fellow students; the only time he volunteers for and is set off on a task, he ends up playing dominos.

On June 5th, the day of the uprising, Grantaire drank himself into a stupor and—slumped over a table in the wine-shop at which the students established their barricade—slept through the fighting. He awakened to find a group of soldiers surrounding and readying to execute Enjolras, interrupted and asked to be shot as well, and thus died.

Point in Canon: The moment just after the gunshots and just before the death that would have been.

Character Personality: Cynical, barbed, outspoken, irreverent, tumultuous. Fast on his way to becoming a wreck, and might seem to be in ruins, already. If Grantaire holds any belief, it is in the ultimate presence of nothingness. At least, he would maintain as much. Somewhere, Grantaire wishes to find some foundation for meaning, to be able to actually believe in something. He knows not how to cultivate this capability, but he can spot it in others (consciously or not), and is attracted to those who hold a particular strength of belief.

Grantaire perceives himself and the world around with a painful keenness, and drinks in part to mute this awareness. Graced with an active mind that even alcohol cannot still, he has no particular ambition to make use of his intelligence, or of anything at all. Indeed, his utter lack of belief has worked to turn his thoughts against themselves, and to grind logic into absence. This is both a gain and a loss; while it shields Grantaire from some of the world’s edges, it also deepens the sense of emptiness and lack of meaning that seems to invade all.

When alone for extended periods of time, Grantaire becomes increasingly aware of this perceived emptiness and the negative convictions of his own mind. It is thus that he seeks steady company. Among others, he may give voice to all that unsettles him, speaking as if the thoughts are of no great consequence; and indeed, once the words have been spoken, they feel more distant. Around others, Grantaire almost feels grounded, as if he has a place in the world. And once others are around, Grantaire becomes less immediately aware of the sting of knowing; he also becomes a more pleasant companion. He wishes above all else to linger among the tolerable company of others, drinking wine and enjoying the sense of closeness (necessary for a man who so often feels distant). He can and will talk almost with end, relishing debate and launching into extensive discourse on most any topic.

While he tends to carry on in good humor around others, his speech is not without bite. He often works in lashes of cajolery and sarcasm, at times tends toward vitriolic, and because he is so perceptive, he can hit fairly hard. Still, he would generally rather get on with others than deal with the mess of contention, and he holds fond feelings for those with whom he has formed even a loose bond. There is somewhere a loyalty, even a muted nobility to Grantaire, though he would fiercely deny such an allegation.

He has no love for most who would feign to issue orders, nor any inclination to follow. The exceptions come with those few whom he honestly admires; for these individuals, he would gladly do most anything… Or at least attempt to. Often, Grantaire’s attempts at actions don’t quite meet up with his intent. He quickly loses conviction in the necessity to complete a task, and ends up doing whatever most grabs his interest or allows him to distract himself.

And to this, I add a remark from Victor Hugo (as translated by Isabel Hapgood): "[Grantaire] was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship." What with this self-discrepancy and his unending questions, Grantaire finds himself almost constantly torn from within, though he doesn't necessarily show it, and it is a rare individual who observes far enough to catch on.

Character Plans: Look for something to drink. Look for somewhere to stay. Try to grasp some sense of where he is, or find more wine to drown the questions. Mostly, as soon as he discovers that Enjolras is around, Grantaire is going to find him. Beyond that… It depends. Grantaire tends to hang back from becoming involved with anything that requires commitment, as he honestly doesn’t have enough shits to give. However, once he has a sense of the workings of this world, he might not be able to sink away entirely; I’d like to find a way to keep him at least somewhat active, if reluctantly.

Appearance/PB: Seems permanently disheveled, though he tends to be quite well-dressed. Not particularly pleasant on the eyes; at any rate, does not appear conventionally attractive. A flare in his eyes that no amount of alcohol can extinguish. PB is Hadley Fraser (see picture here).


( And the rest... )