FIC: Les Mis: Hypochondria (Isn't Fun)
Feb. 23rd, 2008 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
backupmemoriesHuh, I don't usually post twice so quickly, particularly not when I really want a response to my previous post. (Which I do, really! It's a serious question which needs to be resolved soon! -_-;;)
But I was poking around the Les Mis fandom again, and I kept running up against what I mentally refer to as "the Joly problem".
He seems like a perfectly nice character in most respects (keeping in mind that the majority of my interaction with him is via fandom, as I'm still trudging my slow way through the book...) but there's one sticking point that I can't get over.
In short: Joly is a hypochondriac.
I have nothing against hypochondriacs, of course! The problem is precisely the opposite: I am a hypochondriac. Seriously, not humorously. And therein lies the problem. In fic, if not in canon itself, it is generally customary to play Joly's hyphochondria off as a joke. I don't mind this when done in moderation; I find it absolutely hilarious!
He has a terribly cute personality to go with it, too, which makes it even more amusing. But I haven't seen any really good fics that treat it seriously, even the ones that supposedly deal with him as a main character.
I usually say that I will not write Joly fic at all, more because I don't like writing fic until I've read the source work than any other reason but also because it would simply be too depressing for me, but I was feeling combative today.
Also, the alternative is studying, so tada! We have fic. Very short fic from Joly's POV about his hypochondria. I might be completely off on this, of course, and Joly might be completely out of character - I really hate writing characters that I haven't read the whole thing, damnit! - but I felt like posting it anyway. It's more my way of venting than anything else. ^___^ Yay for catharsis!
Apologies to all. Keeping in mind that I wrote this in about 5 minutes and am putting it up without editing or more thought than that, any thoughts?
Title: Hypochondria (Isn't Fun)
Characters: Joly
Rating: G
Summary: Joly thinks about illness.
Joly woke up, and his throat felt scratchy and dry. He crawled, slowly, out of bed and went to get a glass of water, which didn’t help that much. It’s just sleeping with my mouth open, he assured himself, feeling his heartbeat start to race. Nothing serious…
But it was too late already, his mind was slowly but surely flipping through the pages of his memory, finding every disease he knew, listing it beside its symptoms: scarlet fever, perhaps – he needed to check for spots in his mouth, that was the next symptom – and his friends would come and find him dead from the fever and the pain...or perhaps pneumonia, that came with a sore throat sometimes, and he’d slowly cough himself to death...oh, god, he knew some of the people on the street had been ill, probably with consumption – did his chest hurt? Maybe, he couldn’t tell, he was frozen in place.
The horrible panic sped through his body, faster than any disease, paralyzing him and making him start to shake. Making him unable to diagnose himself properly. It was a hundred times worse than the actual disease – he was always so happy to discover what was wrong, so happy! It meant that it could be fixed, surely, that there was so remedy he could prescribe himself. It meant that it wasn’t something worse. Something that couldn’t be fixed; something that would painfully cut him down while he lay there, helpless. He sometimes wished he did have some fatal disease – think of how freeing that would be! A death sentence, already imposed, so he didn’t have to worry any more.
Sometimes he thought that it was the worrying that would send him to an early grave – he felt his heart beating, too fast, too fast, check your pulse, Joly; maybe this time it would burst? He’d seen it happen with rabbits – and that made him worry all the more. Was he killing himself with worry? But if he didn’t worry, he might miss something important. How could he know? He knew that he worried unnecessarily, of course, but what if the one time he decided not to worry – the one time he decided not to check up on himself – what if that was the time? That was the preventable death, the illness that can only be cured in its early stages, the little sign or spot that led to his death.
He knew, rationally, that the chances of that were low. He could probably not worry about one or two little things; he’d be fine. But he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t stop his brain from thinking about it. God, why couldn’t he make himself stop?
“Joly?” a sleepy voice said from behind him, and he turned anxiously to behold his friend.
“Check my throat.” He demanded, turning. “I think I might have scarlet fever – see if I have any spots – I woke up with a sore throat this morning...”
His complaint was met with laughter, fond but completely without understanding, and urges to come back to bed, where it was warm. Sometimes Joly hated them, all of them. Joly the hypochondriac, he knew it; Joly who always thinks that he’s sick and never is. Joly, why don’t you stop worrying about your non-existent symptoms and come help us with the Revolution? Well, he couldn’t stop it, no matter what Enjolras or Combeferre sometimes tried to tell him. It wasn’t in his power. He tried to, often!
Did they think he liked the worry, the feeling of impending panic? The feeling of bile rising up in his throat whenever he even contemplated what something could mean? The feeling of his heart pounding painfully in his chest, very palpitation hurting as if he’d been running for hours? The shortness of breath, the way he would sink into his panic until black spots appeared at the edges of his vision and he realized that he was hyperventilating? Having to face his own death every single day?
What would happen if he got sick, really sick, and they just stood there and laughed at him, telling him that it was non-existent? That he was just dreaming again? And worse, what if he believed them, and didn’t treat himself, and did get sick? He knew that he’d blame them. He didn’t want to blame them. Joly liked his friends, he really did. But he knew that he could very easily hate them, too.
He’d decided from a young age to become a doctor. He wanted to know all the possibilities and all the cures, so whenever he felt sick he could just fix himself. Finding out, in medical school, that doctors couldn’t cure anything, only made everything worse. Now he knew what was wrong with him, knew a billion more symptoms and exactly how sinister they could be. Every spot, every lump, every illness, he knew them all. He knew what they could mean. He knew what he could treat, and he knew the mantra of every physician: catch it early, or it will be beyond your power to cure. We could have helped, but it’s too far advanced. We can do nothing more to help you.
He’d thought, when he was younger, that he could fix himself. Protect himself from the evils of the worlds through the wonders of modern medicine. Somewhere along the line, it had turned from the ideal of being healthy to being, if not healthy, then at least the lesser of the two evils – sick, yes, but not deathly ill. But that sent him into yet another spiral: if he was sick, then he was more susceptible to something worse...
At least if he was fixing himself, he wasn’t getting any worse. Being cured was the best of all situations, because he knew he was Doing Something About It. He had Caught It In Time.
He didn’t like being sick, not really. But the freedom, the relief from the worry – it felt so good. It was like running a race he could never win, because death always won in the end, everyone knew that. But every time he was being cured of something or another, he was winning the right to run a little bit more. He was granted a small time to stop and breath and be relaxed before it all started up again.
It went on and on and on, in a useless, pointless, never-ending cycle.
Sometimes Joly hoped that he would die in the Revolution.
But I was poking around the Les Mis fandom again, and I kept running up against what I mentally refer to as "the Joly problem".
He seems like a perfectly nice character in most respects (keeping in mind that the majority of my interaction with him is via fandom, as I'm still trudging my slow way through the book...) but there's one sticking point that I can't get over.
In short: Joly is a hypochondriac.
I have nothing against hypochondriacs, of course! The problem is precisely the opposite: I am a hypochondriac. Seriously, not humorously. And therein lies the problem. In fic, if not in canon itself, it is generally customary to play Joly's hyphochondria off as a joke. I don't mind this when done in moderation; I find it absolutely hilarious!
He has a terribly cute personality to go with it, too, which makes it even more amusing. But I haven't seen any really good fics that treat it seriously, even the ones that supposedly deal with him as a main character.
I usually say that I will not write Joly fic at all, more because I don't like writing fic until I've read the source work than any other reason but also because it would simply be too depressing for me, but I was feeling combative today.
Also, the alternative is studying, so tada! We have fic. Very short fic from Joly's POV about his hypochondria. I might be completely off on this, of course, and Joly might be completely out of character - I really hate writing characters that I haven't read the whole thing, damnit! - but I felt like posting it anyway. It's more my way of venting than anything else. ^___^ Yay for catharsis!
Apologies to all. Keeping in mind that I wrote this in about 5 minutes and am putting it up without editing or more thought than that, any thoughts?
Title: Hypochondria (Isn't Fun)
Characters: Joly
Rating: G
Summary: Joly thinks about illness.
Joly woke up, and his throat felt scratchy and dry. He crawled, slowly, out of bed and went to get a glass of water, which didn’t help that much. It’s just sleeping with my mouth open, he assured himself, feeling his heartbeat start to race. Nothing serious…
But it was too late already, his mind was slowly but surely flipping through the pages of his memory, finding every disease he knew, listing it beside its symptoms: scarlet fever, perhaps – he needed to check for spots in his mouth, that was the next symptom – and his friends would come and find him dead from the fever and the pain...or perhaps pneumonia, that came with a sore throat sometimes, and he’d slowly cough himself to death...oh, god, he knew some of the people on the street had been ill, probably with consumption – did his chest hurt? Maybe, he couldn’t tell, he was frozen in place.
The horrible panic sped through his body, faster than any disease, paralyzing him and making him start to shake. Making him unable to diagnose himself properly. It was a hundred times worse than the actual disease – he was always so happy to discover what was wrong, so happy! It meant that it could be fixed, surely, that there was so remedy he could prescribe himself. It meant that it wasn’t something worse. Something that couldn’t be fixed; something that would painfully cut him down while he lay there, helpless. He sometimes wished he did have some fatal disease – think of how freeing that would be! A death sentence, already imposed, so he didn’t have to worry any more.
Sometimes he thought that it was the worrying that would send him to an early grave – he felt his heart beating, too fast, too fast, check your pulse, Joly; maybe this time it would burst? He’d seen it happen with rabbits – and that made him worry all the more. Was he killing himself with worry? But if he didn’t worry, he might miss something important. How could he know? He knew that he worried unnecessarily, of course, but what if the one time he decided not to worry – the one time he decided not to check up on himself – what if that was the time? That was the preventable death, the illness that can only be cured in its early stages, the little sign or spot that led to his death.
He knew, rationally, that the chances of that were low. He could probably not worry about one or two little things; he’d be fine. But he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t stop his brain from thinking about it. God, why couldn’t he make himself stop?
“Joly?” a sleepy voice said from behind him, and he turned anxiously to behold his friend.
“Check my throat.” He demanded, turning. “I think I might have scarlet fever – see if I have any spots – I woke up with a sore throat this morning...”
His complaint was met with laughter, fond but completely without understanding, and urges to come back to bed, where it was warm. Sometimes Joly hated them, all of them. Joly the hypochondriac, he knew it; Joly who always thinks that he’s sick and never is. Joly, why don’t you stop worrying about your non-existent symptoms and come help us with the Revolution? Well, he couldn’t stop it, no matter what Enjolras or Combeferre sometimes tried to tell him. It wasn’t in his power. He tried to, often!
Did they think he liked the worry, the feeling of impending panic? The feeling of bile rising up in his throat whenever he even contemplated what something could mean? The feeling of his heart pounding painfully in his chest, very palpitation hurting as if he’d been running for hours? The shortness of breath, the way he would sink into his panic until black spots appeared at the edges of his vision and he realized that he was hyperventilating? Having to face his own death every single day?
What would happen if he got sick, really sick, and they just stood there and laughed at him, telling him that it was non-existent? That he was just dreaming again? And worse, what if he believed them, and didn’t treat himself, and did get sick? He knew that he’d blame them. He didn’t want to blame them. Joly liked his friends, he really did. But he knew that he could very easily hate them, too.
He’d decided from a young age to become a doctor. He wanted to know all the possibilities and all the cures, so whenever he felt sick he could just fix himself. Finding out, in medical school, that doctors couldn’t cure anything, only made everything worse. Now he knew what was wrong with him, knew a billion more symptoms and exactly how sinister they could be. Every spot, every lump, every illness, he knew them all. He knew what they could mean. He knew what he could treat, and he knew the mantra of every physician: catch it early, or it will be beyond your power to cure. We could have helped, but it’s too far advanced. We can do nothing more to help you.
He’d thought, when he was younger, that he could fix himself. Protect himself from the evils of the worlds through the wonders of modern medicine. Somewhere along the line, it had turned from the ideal of being healthy to being, if not healthy, then at least the lesser of the two evils – sick, yes, but not deathly ill. But that sent him into yet another spiral: if he was sick, then he was more susceptible to something worse...
At least if he was fixing himself, he wasn’t getting any worse. Being cured was the best of all situations, because he knew he was Doing Something About It. He had Caught It In Time.
He didn’t like being sick, not really. But the freedom, the relief from the worry – it felt so good. It was like running a race he could never win, because death always won in the end, everyone knew that. But every time he was being cured of something or another, he was winning the right to run a little bit more. He was granted a small time to stop and breath and be relaxed before it all started up again.
It went on and on and on, in a useless, pointless, never-ending cycle.
Sometimes Joly hoped that he would die in the Revolution.
