Play that sad trombone!

Which lady friend, Marius nearly asked before he realized that it was a trap. It’s too late, Marius! This entire living situation is a trap! Your roommate is a sex fiend and your apartment is a sex den! Worst of all, YOU DON’T HATE IT!! All he knows is that one moment he’s staring out the window brooding, and then the next moment, this... is happening.

From the updates on this blog you would think that Christmas is the only holiday of any importance that I celebrate-- that is of course untrue, but something about the end of the year does put some pep in my step. Anyway, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you! May you devour 2016 with purpose and resplendent fury!

He does it because he cares, Enjolras does.

Hi everybody! It seems like lately I only have the time for hasty sketches the likes of which go up on 16ruedelaverrerie, but since the year's wrapping up, I put in a bit more effort to get this done. I want to recommend that you click through to this post in order to view the comic in full size, but really, that makes it no less incredibly stupid... it is still just as stupid, only larger... but if you are into that, please click through to this post in order to view the comic in full size! At the very least it probably makes the text a bit more legible.

fkl;dhg this comic is so anachronistic that there is hardly any point in their even wearing waistcoats, WAISTCOATS DO NOT CANON-COMPLIANCE MAKE! But at any rate MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS-- this is rather early, isn't it, but it seems like I'll mostly be away until Christmas so I tossed it up u__u

HAPPY ALMOST NEW YEAR!

"I didn't think you of all people would be so squeamish," Jehan tells Combeferre. "Aren't you a man of science? Don't you dissect things all the time?"

"Well but I do not RUB BLOOD ALL OVER MY FACE ON A REGULAR BASIS," says Combeferre. "WAS THAT REAL BLOOD, JEHAN? IT SMELLED LIKE REAL BLOOD. WHERE DID YOU GET A REAL HEART?"

Happy Valentine's Day, guys! Hope your lives are going well and everything is wonderful! Please insert your own morbid final punchline about the lack of festivities on February 14, 1833 here u__u

To everyone peacefully navigating the calm waters of your dashboard, I am sorry for this rude interruption! I just wanted to say that I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox, and also that I now have a catch-all blog over at 16ruedelaverrerie for everything else that doesn't get posted here.

More "polished" (HA HA) art will still be the purview of the Sad Trombone blog, so don't worry about things being hard to keep track of-- that other blog isn't even exclusively for LM fanworks, it is in large part just for unfocused text posts about nothing in particular (and possibly the occasional truly horrendous sketch). And although the Sad Trombone askbox remains closed, LM-related questions like "what is Joly and Bossuet's manzai duo name" or "why must we continue this charade of pretending that you don't have a favorite Ami" or "why WAS Azelma tying Courfeyrac's cravat" or "was Feuilly ever East Asian at any point in time" are welcome at 16ruedelaverrerie. So if you are going through a rough relationship with your own self-esteem and want to punish yourself somehow, head on over!

"But that's just another way of saying mad, bad, and dangerous to know, isn't it?" asks Courfeyrac. "You think I'm Byronesque! You think I'm cool! You want to make me happy! Marius Pontmercy, you like me!"

(Yup.)

Sad Trombone checking in on the holiday season, mistlecock jokes and all! Actually, just with the one mistlecock joke. That's the only thing I brought to the party. I'm sorry. I... please don't send me back home. All I have there are jokes about wrapping Enjolras up in a bedsheet and tying him to the apex of a Christmas tree while he glitters with radiant fury... or jokes about manzai duo Joly and Bossuet on a location shoot at the Gasu Kurobikari Barricades for the 2013-2014 No Laughing 19th Century Student Revolutionary Batsu game SO DON'T SEND ME BACK HOME. NO ONE NEEDS JOKES ABOUT BAHOREL SINGLEHANDEDLY GETTING SANTACON OUTLAWED FOR GOOD.

--but all jokes of questionable taste aside, mistlecock or not, I hope you have a great end of the year and ring in the new one with reckless abandon! Trombone out!

Hi there, Sad Trombone checking in on Barricade Eve with an ABRUPT AND UNWARRANTED NEON GENESIS MISERABLES PUNCHLINE. I hope everyone's been as well as I have been! The hiatus-absence here is still ongoing, but of course I couldn't resist the chance to make a bunch of death jokes ღ(˘⌣˘ღ

Have a hilarious 181st Barricade Day-- and when you feel like the body count and the June gloom are getting you down, you just show Hugo who's boss (no pun intended) by refusing to let him have the last word!

Improbably enough, my friends, today is the 100th day since Sad Trombone first launched. This blog wasn't meant to be anything worth anyone's time; I was adrift between fandoms, tired of writing, curious to see if drawing every day would help me become a little better at art. This house wasn't built to be shown, but somehow, you found it. You found me here. You've made the past 100 days absolutely surreal, and it's all thanks to your generosity that Sad Trombone got this far (100 drawings, 85 ask doodles!).

I wish I could keep at this forever, but-- well, you know how it goes. I'm meandering toward a crowded sort of period in my life right now, and an update a day has become a bit difficult, especially when there's traveling to be done. I'm really very reluctant to walk away -- because I love LM as much as I ever did through all these years, because I won't be here to make AND THEN THEY ALL DIED jokes for Barricade Day, because there are so many prompts I want to fill (The Magic School Bus! Lord of the Rings! Les Amis and the Holy Grail! Sex Pistols Fruits Basket!), and most of all because you make it so fun for me to be here --  but 100 days was a good run, wasn't it? I think it was. And now is perhaps as good a time as any for me to bow out.

I'm not sure if there will be less regular art updates here in the future, but que será será, you know! There's nothing to worry about. The blog itself isn't going anywhere, and I'll still be able to respond privately to any questions or messages you happen to toss my way. Maybe I'll wander back in when things are quieter on my end, or maybe we'll run into one another in some different fandom, or maybe something else, or maybe something else-- but ten years from now, I'll still have LM tucked away in the same old corner of my heart, and I'll still remember how much fun this was, and I still won't understand why Azelma was helping Courfeyrac tie his cravat. It's rather nice, that small assurance of constancy.

Anyway, I hope that you'll all love this fandom for a long time to come. Please be happy, be kind, dry-hump Wilbour's leg, and tell stories if you get sad (it's what keeps the dead alive). Thank you for everything, malcontents. I hope I'll see you around, and until then, it's lights out at 16 Rue de la Verrerie.

Bisous--

Do you recall our innumerable joys?

[full-size]

Hey, says Courfeyrac, later. About the-- I mean, I was just teasing, I didn't-- I didn't hurt your feelings, did I?

No, says Enjolras.

All right, that's good, says Courfeyrac, not entirely satisfied. It's only when he's shrugged on his coat and turned toward the door that he feels something jerk him back; Enjolras' hand, a grip around his sleeve.

But for future reference, says Enjolras, I do have feelings.

...How can you even say that with a straight face, asks Courfeyrac.

It's funny because Bahorel is the least immortal of them all RIGHT? THAT'S WHY IT'S FUNNY? I... THIS IS FUNNY, RIGHT??

WELL SONNETEERING WISDOM HAS IT THAT IMMORTALITY CAN BE ACHIEVED POSTHUMOUSLY, SO THERE, LONG LIVE BAHOREL, LONG LIVE THE RECKLESSLY EPHEMERAL

(The "young Lallemand" debacle is 1822 in Hugo and 1820 everywhere else!)

ALL Y'ALL INSURGENTS IN THE HOUSE GET YOUR POSE ON >:D

Tu peux t'envoler sur quatre L!

By this point I don't know what the hell is happening on this blog anymore (and why there are gif posts three days in a row), except that the "Republic is my mother" joke kind of... kind of really works here, I... really it does, honest to god.

One day I kind of want to do an entire series of Azumanga Amis strips including the one where Marianne-mother peers at the Jacobin flag and says "...IT'S SO RED... BUT JOLY SAYS HE LIKES IT..."

PLEASE DON'T LISTEN TO THESE ASSHOLES

Anon I think what you should really do is take the time to figure out what it is that you want to write about! I'm assuming that you chose the text to work with? What is it that interests you about it? Is there an aspect of the text that you find strange, or problematic, or seemingly inconsistent? Does something seem out of place or disproportionate? Is something working particularly well? What do you love and why do you love it?

It's hard to bounce ideas when I don't know what the subject of your course is or what level of schooling you're at! If you're using the text as a site to play with the themes you dealt with during the semester, then obviously your approach should have something to do with the material. An LM paper written for a course on Althusser is going to look very different from an LM paper written for a course on the Romantic Movement!

Good luck with the paper-- haha, I always hate working with novels just because it takes a shit-ton of time to sift through it and gather textual support for claims, and then I can never get rid of the suspicion that I'm missing something really good or something that shatters my argument to pieces. Some part of me wants to talk about this one paper I wrote about Freudian cathexis because I think it is too pat and needs some complicating through counterargument, but you'll hate writing anything that you're not personally into, and YOU SHOULD DO YOUR OWN DAMN WORK AND ENJOY DOING IT, FRIEND.

♥ !

It's impossible to answer the first question without first attempting to determine how a Pontmercy Pontmercies when a Pontmercied Pontmercy Pontmercies a Pontmercy of Pontmercies, but going by current scientific estimates, I'd say... about seven.

Second anon, have you tried consulting the Scarcely Asked Questions page? Such a large part of this whole Pontmercy thing depends on the Pontmercy that you Pontmercy within yourself, so really a Pontmercy is nothing so much as the Pontmercy that you bring to it! :')

Anyway, Pontmercy Pontmercy Pontmercy Pontmercy Pontmercy semantic satiation Pontmercy.

WHAT?? demands Combeferre. ALL OF THAT WAS JUST A LONGWINDED SET-UP FOR A NEBULA GIF AND A PUN THAT DOESN'T EVEN WORK PHONETICALLY???

Yes, says Courfeyrac. But nebulas!

...That's true, concedes Combeferre. Nebulas.