i’m going to go lie flat on some train tracks
Isn’t this how Victor Vale died???
A lot of tcomc adaptations I've seen have ended the story by having Edmond get his revenge and then happily reunite with Mercédés and leave the story like that, and here's why that does NOT fly with me.
The Count of Monte Cristo is NOT a love story about Edmond and Mercédés, though it starts that way. A lot of adaptations tend to do this, as in zero in on the romance (and leave Haydée out if the plot, wtf???) But the romance, although an accessory of the tragedy, is NOT central to the tragedy! Mondego, Danglars, Caderousse, and Villefort didn't JUST steal Edmond away from Mercédés, they also a) left his father to starve to death, b) took advantage of Mercédés' misery to marry her when she had no one left, c) abandoned Edmond to suffer in prison presumably for the rest of his life, and d) did all of that other insane shit that didn't affect Edmond personally.
But the point of the original ending is that there is too much time lost between Edmond and Mercédés, too much loneliness between them, and they have changed too much apart from each other for things to go back to how they were. Although Mercédés can see past the Counts callousness to find his old humanity, Edmond HAS changed, he's not the same bright-eyed young man who had so much in life to do. Mercédés isn't the same untroubled, poor woman Edmond fell for, and that's okay! They still love each other, though they have different paths in life and different responsibilities! It just seems, maybe cheap is the right word, to give Edmond the traditional "happy ending" by having him "get the girl back" in the end, as if that were the point of his efforts. They've earned their peace!
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random but i've been thinking about tcomc again and how i find it sort of disappointing that adpatations, when picking which conspirator to build up as edmond's ultimate adversary (which i sort of dislike in the first place tbh), always choose fernand, when if there is one that fits that role better it's villefort. usually mondego ends up as the more prominent of the enemies because he's the one with the most personal motivation, and ends up as mercédès' husband and albert's father. he's the one "closer" to edmond, being the one who somewhat "takes his place" in life, becoming the husband of his fiancée and the father of a son that mercédès says "should have been ours". plus, focusing on the love triangle is easy. but in the text of the novel, the conspirator who gets more space and is, in my opinion, a more definite foil to edmond, is villefort. edmond is arrested at his engagement/wedding party, villefort is picked up from his own engagement party to go interrogate him. both edmond and villefort are strongly motivated in life by their bonds with their respective fathers, though for wildly different reasons - and villefort keeps his disabled father in his home, while still resenting him, when edmond will never see his father again because villefort condemned him to protect his. both of them lose their first love, though in different ways. it's villefort's daughter edmond has to save from the mechanism he set in motion himself because his own surrogate son, maximilien, is in love with her. benedetto is villefort's son but spends some time believing his father is actually monte cristo. villefort's defeat is the only one that edmond (and the reader) doesn't enjoy, because inadvertently by destroying him he also causes the death of his innocent child, and that is what leads him to realise he may have gone too far. villefort ends up mad, when he'd hoped edmond would go insane in the chauteau d'if. and both of them of course have an intense and complex relationship with the concept of justice. and i could go on
my favorite form of love is being loved without feeling like i was begging for it
I met these two guys at a bar and their names were also Mercutio isn’t that funny
Day 11: If you’re Mercutio and I’m Mercutio, who is driving the plane
I never really have a character I completely dislike because I'll defend anyone at the drop of a hat lmao. If they're being mischaracterized in an argument, suddenly I am now their lawyer. free my man your honor he didn't do any of that
Clarissa | she/her | 18 • Musicals, classic literature, etc.• Current focus: Love Never Dies (for fun, not serious) + Phantom of the Opera
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