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Submitted: February 4
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Les Amis Cluster NGC 61832by *DarthFar

Digital Art / Drawings & Paintings / Space Art

The Les Amis Cluster (NGC 61832) is a group of stars found in the constellation of Patria. It was reportedly discovered by an E. Raca in 1848, and lies approximately 24,601 light years from Earth. The nine brightest stars in the cluster were once believed to be the celestial manifestations of nine friends who died together at the barricades, and are generally considered to represent the tripartite motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

God, I wasn't even sure where to stick this because -

Anyway, this was inspired by the segment in EstelRaca’s beautiful AU story, To Follow, in which Enjolras and Combeferre are looking at the stars. I didn’t want to make this the Pleiades for obvious reasons, so I came up with their own cluster, LOL.

Thanks to Despard (as always) who let me pick her brain, and who named the cluster; and apologies to Marguerite, whom I confronted (from out of the blue) with what was probably one of the most bizarre question ever put to her in the name of LM fanart.

I refuse to take responsibility for the weird things my brain tells me to do.

Les Miserables written by Victor Hugo.

love 2 2

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~~mad 0 0~~

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~~neutral 0 0~~

~Dragonfly22 Feb 11, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Wow! This is breathtaking! And it looks so real, too. I love all the colors and the details you put into it. Especially the purpl-ish couple that appear to be a binary star system.

Have you ever felt tempted to paint an existing nebula/cluster or space scape? If this one looks so gorgeous, I can't imagine how a real one would look.

Anyway, I hope you're okay, I've not had that much time for art lately and feel so out of touch with all my deviant friends!

*DarthFar Feb 15, 2013

Thanks very much, Romy! Incidentally, I *have* been tempted to paint the Eagle Nebula more than once (along with several others), but then decided that nature was a far better painter of astronomical wonders than I could ever be, and left it at that.

I'm good; I haven't been posting much because I've been spending the past two months slowly chewing away at that sketch giveaway list and obsessively drawing pages and pages and pages of hand studies. How's your course going so far?

~Dragonfly22 Feb 16, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

M16 is gorgeous, but yeah I feel the same about you regarding space scapes, and especially now that I'm trying to turn away a little bit from realism and creating my own ideas.

And hey hand studies sounds fun! : ))

I'm doing ok, although I've been better. I'm going through a really stressful time with all the physics courses and it's all so time consuming, I hardly have time for art or chess anymore. But I'll live... I'm really excited cuz I'm taking a course in scientific programming and it's a lot of fun. I'm learning Python now and it's really easy & useful.

I have a handful of incomplete art projects that I'v been meaning to finish (including a WIP that I recently posted on DA) but I never find the time. Ah, some day! lol

~TheRandomPhangirl Feb 8, 2013

Reading the first passage had me choked up on feels, I kid you not. I think if this were an actual cluster, I don't think my telescope would be pointing at Io and Europa, let's just say that

*DarthFar Feb 15, 2013

If that's how you feel about just that first passage, you need to read EstelRaca's excellent fic (which I've linked to) - it'll probably have you in tears.

~TheRandomPhangirl Feb 15, 2013

I read it already. You don't get many fics like that.

I totally wasn't tearing up, I was....er....washing my eyelashes.

(my excuses get lamer every time)

~FlammableWolf Feb 8, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

This is gorgeous!

*DarthFar Feb 15, 2013

Thanks!

~estelraca Feb 6, 2013

This is absolutely gorgeous! Thank you so much for making this. I'm deeply honored that my story moved you enough to inspire this. The description you created for the cluster is absolutely perfect--a group of stars in the constellation Patria indeed, and of course they would represent Liberte, egalite, fraternite. I need to find synonyms for perfect, because that's the only word that's coming to mind.

If there's anything I can do in return for this, I'd be very happy to! Pretty much the only thing I'm halfway decent at is writing, but if there's any prompt you'd like to throw my way I'd be very happy to see what I can do for you. I'm going to be leaving in about twelve hours for a funeral in another state and will be incommunicado for a little while, but I'll get back to you ASAP. Despard has my contact info if you'd like to talk to me on a less public forum, too.

Again, thank you so much! This has made a rough week infinitely better.

*DarthFar Feb 6, 2013

I'm very happy that you like it.

I actually wrote you a note on ffnet but the PM system wouldn't let me insert a link, and I ragequit after several failed preview attempts. Your story is sitting way high up on my list of favourite LM stories, both for the beauty of its flow alone and for the way you managed to extrapolate each character's personality in each afterlife sequence and what they each talk to Enjolras about. I actually did an about turn, reading that bit about E looking up to see a nine-starred Pleiades (that was pretty damn, sneakily, brilliant); the notion of them being represented in the stars kept nibbling at me until I decided I had to do something about it.

And I'm content to leave you to brew your own ideas in your own time, because you seem to come up with pretty darn fantastic ones.

(I've been slowly making my way through your modern AU one, stretching each read out). Thank you for helping to enrich the fandom!

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