#ALSO Sydney Carton is who people want Grantaire to be. he’s fanon Grantaire

[secretmellowblog]

You know how Nick/Gatsby and Holmes/Watson and Enjolras/Grantaire are super popular gay classic lit ships? I’m genuinely surprised there’s not a slash-shipping community around Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay from a Tale of Two Cities…like. I get the reason Darnay/Carton isn’t popular is because no one cares about A Tale of Two Cities but their relationship is so bizarrely homoerotic for literally no reason! It’s like Built to be some Dark Academia tumblr ship! I think Carton/Darnay should be in the tumblr gay classic lit canon, repping Dickens and the way Dickens’ misogynistic inability to write convincing heterosexual relationships results in his characters seeming extremely gay.

I could write an entire essay on why A Tale of Two Cities makes more sense if you ignore Dickens’ intent and read Carton as gay (with quotes supporting my point) but like. Carton insists he’s in love with Darnay’s wife Lucie but spends much more of his page-time talking to/flirting with Darnay (to the point where he’s never had an on page conversation with Lucie until he “confesses his love” to her in a scene where he also immediately rejects himself for her, and insists that their relationship would be Impossible for Reasons and that his heart isn’t Capable of feeling things the way it should, as if he’s chosen to convince himself he’s in love with her because she’s unattainable and he will never have to be in a relationship with her.) Darnay and Carton have all these tense charged snarky interactions that feel like fanfic. Darnay’s thing with Lucie is pretty bland but there’s this huge emphasis on the fact that he and Carton are “counterparts.” Whenever Dickens tries to write Carton as being sad that Lucie loves another man it generally comes across as Carton being jealous of Lucie, because he’s almost never had a full conversation with Lucie and spends most of his time instead having these very sad clingy desperate pathetic conversations with the men who love her. Carton has a weird homoerotic thing going on with his jock law partner Stryver, who he sacrifices everything for and spends all his time with and lets invade his personal space/walk all over him for reasons he refuses to explain (all while Stryver repeatedly mocks Carton for being incapable of falling in love with women). Carton ultimately sacrifices his life for Darnay by forcibly taking off Darnay’s clothes and disguising himself as him….like?

One of their first interactions is Carton heroically saving Darnay’s life, then drunkenly calling himself Darnay’s “counterpart” and asking him on a date.

Like.

Hm.

This feels like the banter you’d find in an Enjolras/Grantaire fanfic:

Fellas is it gay to

But yeah! The main thing people remember about A Tale of Two Cities are the cool peasant women revolutionaries, who Dickens is trying to portray as villains but who are actually the best characters in the book. And if I’m going to be mean to my high school self (who was obsessed with ATOTC for some reason) I’d say that the central melodrama between Carton/Darnay/Lucie is a weakness of the novel because Carton’s arc has nothing to do with the political French Revolution stuff, so his sacrifice feels thematically disconnected from all the book’s attempts at political commentary. HOWEVER. I think it works better if it’s gay.Also the Vengeance and Madame Defarge are gay, but people aren’t ready for that conversation!

So yee!! people on tumblr love ships that are like “hot goody-two-shoes classic lit boy in a suit x hot snarky classic lit sadboi in a suit”, but so few ppl remember Carton and Darnay, who were repping that all the way back in the 1790s 😔😔😔😔😔

#posts made for a max audience of 2 people #ALSO Sydney Carton is who people want Grantaire to be. he’s fanon Grantaire #but that’s another post #A Tale of two cities #Sydney carton #Charles Darnay #carton x Darnay #I was talking on discord about this the other day but. YEE #anyway carton was my first poor little meow meow #he did nothing wrong #if high school me was on tumblr I would’ve written so many posts about him being my poor blorbo #he’s just a very sad wet pathetic creature

[secretmellowblog]

Sydney Carton IS who the fandom wants Grantaire to be and you should say it!! Wisest words I have heard all week! (ready or not the fandom should hear this)

AJJSJDD thank you; thank you. 😂 I think the only reason no one else has pointed this out is because so few people care about a Tale of Two Cities anymore. : P

One day I Will write an overlong meta post about Sydney and Grantaire. For now I’ll just say….there are so many times when I read Les mis fanfic and am like “well this isn’t book Grantaire at all, but it is an absolutely perfect characterization of Sydney Carton.” XD ( I love the Les Mis fandom’s collective fanon universe though, it’s fun.)

I think it’s just. If you take Grantaire, and then sand away all his rough edges until he’s a handsome young scruffy clever competent kindhearted lonely friendless snarky witty ambiguously-fruity whumpy hurt/comfort alcoholic classic lit sadboi in unrequited love, you get Sydney Carton. He’s great. This is why I was obsessed with him in high school.

While this is another tangent, there are so many super interesting parallels between A Tale of Two Cities and Les Mis! I’m hoping to write a post on that eventually too so that my high school a tale of two cities obsession has meaning. The parallels are fascinating because it shows that Dickens and Hugo were attempting to comment on the same social issues (ex: Valjean and Manette are their attempts to comment on France’s harsh long prison sentences.)

The main difference between Les Mis and A Tale of Two Cities is that Les Mis is good.

OK I’m joking, I’m joking. As someone who can recite passages from ATOTC by heart— I dislike how it has become The iconic piece of classic lit about the French Rev when it really should not be, at all. XD it’s not a very deep political commentary, in the scattered moments when it’s trying to be— and for a great deal of the time it isn’t even trying to be. But that’s another tangent.

To me the thing about Dickens (having read nearly all his books) is that he’s great at doing character studies/writing weird memorable quirky characters! But his overarching plots are often pretty weak. His stories were like serialized soap operas, essentially, and the “plot” is rarely the point so it’s also rarely good. Like I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dickens’ most well-loved popular work, a Christmas Carol, is literally just a character study. Because it’s what he’s best at! And his brand of social commentary also works a lot better when it’s just “show us the life of a character who’s been affected by these issues and let us draw our own conclusions” ahsjdjjdjd)

This is all a long winded way of saying….A Tale of Two cities may not be as “good” as Les mis BUT it does have some fun characters, including ultimate whump fanfic sadboi Sydney Carton. (Not to mention Madame “tell the wind and fire where to stop” Defarge.) and clearly people think Sydney Carton should be in Les mis too, given how the Fanon Grantaire we collectively came up with accidentally ended up being Sydney Carton 2. But eyy! One day I WILL write the fanfic idea that’s been kicking around in my head where an elderly Sydney Carton (who was miraculously rescued from the guillotine) meets Les Amis and helps give Grantaire some handy life advice…..one day 😔

#sorry for the long answer I was POSSESSED by the ghost of my a tale of two cities obsessed high school self #a tale of two cities #Les mis #I rag on a tale of cities . out of love #I have passages memorized. but also it’s not That Deep #dickens hurt/comfort idfic about how he wants to cheat on his wife but he’s being so brave about it #: P