I blame Victor Hugo

[elspethdixon]

As if the Rocket/Groot feels of the movie weren’t enough ship feels for one fandom/segment-of-the-marvel-verse, I have now read Thanos Imperative.

People on my dash/flist who have been reading these comics all along, why didn’t you tell me there was an “If you will permit it”/”I’m glad you’re with me, Sam, here at the end of all things”/Bolivian Army Ending pairing I could have been shipping? (okay, with somebody who doesn’t show up in the movie, but still.)

"And then they died holding hands/fighting off enemies back-to-back" is my shipping kryptonite.

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[elspethdixon]

Oooh, ooh, let me explain!

"If you will permit it?"/"Do you permit it?" ("Permets-tu?" in the original French) is from Les Miserables, and is the last thing Grantaire says to Enjolras before they die together.

The scene goes roughly like this:

Enjolras has led an attempt at a revolutionary uprising that's pretty much totally failed, and the National Guard have overrun the revolutionaries' barricades and cornered Enjolras in a tavern. Grantaire, a previously less-than-committed member of the revolutionaries (he's basically called that they're going to fail and are all going to die right from the get-go) who's explicitly only there because of his friendship with the other revolutionaries and all-encompassing crush on Enjolras (there are in-text comparisons made to Achilles and Patroclus and several other super-homoerotic Greek dyads), is passed-out drunk in said tavern, and wakes up just as the guardsmen are standing Enjolras up against the wall to shoot him. He jumps up and informs the guardsmen that "I am one of them," and that they'll have to shoot him as well, and then turns to Enjolras and literally asks for his permission to die next to him. ("Permets-tu?")

Enjolras smiles and reaches out his hand to Grantaire without speaking, Grantaire takes it, and they face the firing squad holding hands and die with smiles on their faces while the guardsmen feel all kinds of guilty for destroying such beautiful thing because it's a Victorian novel.

This is after several lengthy descriptions in previous scenes of how the two of them are "two sides of the same coin" and so forth. It's unsubtle enough that they're not-uncommonly played as a couple in the stage musical, and the actor who played Grantaire in the 2012 movie cheerfully told interviewers that he shipped it.