aria | not a tame lion

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not a tame lion

Re: delicious shutting down, I am mildly heartbroken because it warms my fuzzy organizational heart, and massively heartbroken because [a] it's such a lovely convenient way to find fic by specifics like pairing! and [b] I'll be honest, one of my favorite features was the ability to plug in the URL for one of my fics and see the notes people had made on it. However, all is not lost! I've seen these links around, but I figured I'd signal-boost: go here to export your own delicious bookmarks so at least you won't lose years' accumulation of favorite fics, and go here for some encouraging brainstorming on the subject of a possible fan-friendly delicious clone.

Re: other things I am doing to cheer myself up, at the moment I am eating chocolate, as you do, and watching Narnia films, ostensibly in preparation for seeing Dawn Treader sometime in the next few days. The funny thing is that I have to be sure to really make time to watch the Narnia movies, because I am so FEELINGS FEELINGS FEELINGS about them. Seriously, I cry all the way through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Why? I'm not even sure! I sort of waffle between whether Lewis or Tolkien is responsible for my first really fannish whatever, because I made my mum endlessly reread The Hobbit to me when I was four and I had a hilarious Elven Mary Sue when I was ten (alas, she never made it to paper, but she was BFFs with Frodo and had a romance with Faramir and Eowyn's son, it was awesome); on the other hand, I actually remember having ~theories~ about the Narnia books when they were first being read to me, and I still vividly recall the sheer joyful anticipation of a week in first grade when my family had ordered the BBC Narnia series and I could watch them ALL THE TIME, and I believed in Aslan so, so much. Basically what this means is that when I watch these new films and they are all pure and earnest and Aslan resurrects triumphantly as the dawn breaks behind him, I am damn well going to happily cry all over everything.

Do -- do any of you get all FEELINGS FEELINGS FEELINGS about Narnia? Surely this is at least somewhat a shared experience.

Re: Yuletide: AHAHAHA WHAT YULETIDE, WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE TALKING ABOUT, FUCK OFF, I AM WATCHING NARNIA FILMS.

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Oh, I TOTALLY get all FEELINGS FEELINGS FEELINGS about Narnia. It is weird; I came to Narnia a lot later than most people, I think, because the first time I tried (in grade...4, I think? Although maybe I'm totally wrong and it was quite a few years earlier. My memories are being distinctly unhelpful in getting pieces of timeline to agree with each other) I got massively freaked out and couldn't enjoy it. But I tried again later and despite being older than the usual, I fell wholeheartedly in love, and reread them about a billion times each (though call it only a million for Magician's Nephew and Last Battle, which I simply couldn't love as much as the others), and cared desperately about all of the characters, and ASLAN, yes, and -- BASICALLY I LOVE THEM IS WHAT I'M SAYING.

Also now I need to rewatch LW&W, goddamn.

Oh, huh! What freaked you out when you first tried to read them, do you remember? I mean, that's not too surprising; there are plenty of things in those stories that are potentially terrifying to a child! I am glad you enjoyed them later, though, because NARNIA.

Oh, I know EXACTLY what freaked me out: the golden pool that I harped on so much in my reaction post to the movie. Because -- it looked so INNOCENT! ANY POOL OR LAKE OR STREAM OR WHATEVER COULD SECRETLY BE ABLE TO TURN ME INTO GOLD, AND I WOULD NEVER KNOW UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE AND I WAS DEAD! Yeah. I never believed in Aslan, but BY GUM I believed in the golden pool.

I &hearts &hearts &hearts Narnia. When I saw this most recent "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe", I was spell-bound. It was like the casting director reached into my 8-year old mind and cast my mental images of the characters. And Aslan - *sob*. I love him so very much.

It was like the casting director reached into my 8-year old mind and cast my mental images of the characters.

YES THIS. Amazing and magical and delightful. :D

I have SO MANY FEELINGS about Narnia. It causes my CAPSLOCK key to TOGGLE on and OFF, as you may have noticed from a recent post of mine...

This comes to me as such a SURPRISE, I never would have KNOWN.

PS, I am totally writing that Susan-is-the-Witch fic. I'm not done with it already only because [a] Yuletide guilt and [b] I want to actually have Magician's Nephew and LWatW on hand as reference, but I am exploding with ideas! It made rewatching the film kind of ... odd. Do you know there are parallel shots of Susan stepping into the wardrobe, looking around Narnia, and saying, "Impossible!" whilst in profile, and then of the Witch looking up to see Aslan returned on the battlefield and saying "Impossible!" whilst in the exact same damn profile shot? It is suddenly a MUCH WEIRDER FILMING CHOICE.

YAY!!!

And wow, that is really fascinating. Now I need to re-watch!

Narnia gives me a lot of FEELINGS too, though rather more conflicted. I've never gone back to reread, as I suspect I would be rather disillusioned with the whole allegory aspect. Also, I will never ever get over Susan being left behind and losing everything. There's just no consolation for that.

I also hate the whole train crash thing, because I've never been entirely satisfied with the sense that only Narnia is Real and Important while England and everything the Pevensies do there is inconsequential. While I have problems with Pullman's His Dark Materials series, I did much prefer Pullman's alternative of humans building a Republic of Heaven in the here and now.

Oh, I hear you on that; even my uncritical small child FEELINGS are marred by the fact that I loathe the Last Battle with burning passion -- I hated it when I first read it, because I was heartbroken for Susan and freaked out at the idea that EVERYONE DYING was supposed to be a HAPPY ENDING, and I hated it later when I worked out it was an even more heavy-handed allegory than usual, because it is deeply uncool to sacrifice narrative for allegorical whatever.

I still go back and reread everything but the Last Battle all the time anyway, but I don't necessarily recommend it. There's a lot that's wrong and uncomfortable with those books as well as a lot that's delightful.

yes, Narnia gives me loads of feelings and the new movies often cause me to cry inexplicably. I love Edmund's journey in Wardrobe, and then Lucy's in Caspian, and Susan's unwritten one after the series is over. Just thinking about The Last Battle can bring me to the verge of tears, actually.

Which is funny, because almost everything about Narnia can bring me to the verge of tears of happiness, but the Last Battle just makes me ANGRY. Happily it does not cancel out all the good stuff for me.

and I still vividly recall the sheer joyful anticipation of a week in first grade when my family had ordered the BBC Narnia series and I could watch them ALL THE TIME

we (there are four of us and we ALL love them) freaking WORE THOSE TAPES OUT. they're so good/amusingly bad, Aria, they're so awesome. SO GOOD. I can quote them still. (DID YOU KNOW Tom Baker played Puddleglum?! Also, Warwick Davis played Reepicheep and Glimfeather in the BBC versions, and he played Nikabrik in the new Caspian? ISN'T IT ODD THAT I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.) I have read the books a few times, but I think a good bit of my attachment does come from the BBC because those serials were awesome.

also they didn't feel the need to put extra plot in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I'm really stressed out about this bonust plot, Aria. also why do they keep having the White Witch, I know Tilda Swinton is cool and everything, but it's going to be really confusing in the Silver Chair when suddenly the Green Witch is the problem.

I totally feel your feelings about LOTR/The Hobbit vs Narnia, too. The Hobbit was the first chapter book I remember reading and it was like, my favourite book for years and years and years, I read the cover off it and still know the riddle scene and then the movies were a crystallising fannish experience for me and a big part of my teen years. I FEEL YOU ARIA. I FEEL YOU. (also I feel you re: yuletide. aaaah.)

OH I CAN'T DECIDE WHETHER TO USE MY CRAPPY ROLEMODELS ICON OR MY CRAPPY FANTASY PRIDE ICON SO TORN.

OH WEIRDEST NARNIA FEELING: you know at the end of Prince Caspian (new version) where they played that Regina Spektor song? EVEN THOUGH that moment was a) weird, Susan/Caspian, what's with that and b) just kinda awkward!, THAT SONG NOW MAKES ME CRY AND FEEL NARNIA FEELINGS. and think about peter and susan and edmund and lucy. and how they're heroes. and how they would feel if they met harry potter (my inner soul is FULL of hideous crossovers.) and how Dairine would feel if she met them (SEE) which she could do because the YW multiverse is totally the everything-exists-somewhere kind.

THAT SONG REGULARLY REDUCES ME TO TEARS.

Re: hideous crossovers, omg, seriously sometime ... last week, I don't even know why, I started writing bewildering YW/Narnia fusion fic in which Lucy finds the manual at the professor's house, takes the Oath, and accidentally worldgates into Narnia for her Ordeal. Then I got totally stuck on the issues of [a] whether her siblings also conveniently get wizardry, and more importantly when, and [b] the complicated inherent mythology, oh my god -- I mean, clearly baby Digory was a wizard way back when, and he and Polly were involved in Narnia's original Choice, but he's also the one who brought the freaking Lone One into Narnia in the first place. So then I got a headache and stopped. But I would love to keep going, because DD's mythology delights me much more than Lewis' does, and I am all for things that make Narnia a little less Christian allegory.

THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE ABOUT DIGORY AND POLLY AND NARNIA'S CHOICE. I actually don't think Digory bringing in Jadis makes it all that bad, he's sort of like whatsisface in Holiday. With the Unfortunate Relationship with Hot Hot Evil. (IDK about Peter and Susan but Edmund MUST be a wizard and he gets OVERSHADOWED and then! Oh man Lewis' obsession with Sexy Seductress Evil becomes much better when you read it through a YW lens!) You could in a way construct pre-LWW Narnia as being in the opposite state to the one the Alaalids are in in WH - stuck in this kind of overshadowed space because of an unfortunate problem with their original choice that let in Jadis only instead of lounging around in a meadow somewhere, it's ice palaces and turning people into stone. (Like all the Alaalids in the cavern! I'm starting to think there are significant influences there. Esemeli's so often described as having an icy beauty!)

AHHH THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. :DDD I mean, I think I have to reread Wizard's Holiday before I can write it, but -- yes, I love that! Also, clearly Edmund is also a wizard and gets overshadowed. Oh Edmund. *_*

DO IT ARIA, DO IT.

&edmund;

Haha, the number of Narnia fics I am suddenly writing: UNREAL. (I mean, technically only two. The other one is an alarming one about Susan. Still, this is two more than usual!)

I want to see this fic so much, no lie.

THOSE BBC TAPES, SO GREAT. I have this sudden urge to rewatch them now! Everyone was so earnest! The White Witch sort of hilariously overacted! which, who knows, maybe that was the director's fault. I love it anyway, because she had such dramatic line readings, so now when I'm watching the new film and Tilda Swinton pleasantly asks Edmund how he came to be in her dominion, I have the BBC Witch in the back of my head going, "And HOW did you come to enter MY DOMINION?!?" Sometimes people would go, "But Aria, those movies are awful, you do know that Aslan's a freaking puppet, right?" and I was always like "Yes, but I don't CARE, you're MISSING THE POINT."

Re: Tom Baker being Puddleglum, yes! Actually it's a bit of a problem, because there's this notion that Tom Baker is the Quintessential (Old School) Doctor, and ... no, he's not, guys, he's Puddleglum in SPACE, because I imprinted on Puddleglum HARD. I have this elaborate vision, actually, of Four and Adric and Nyssa and Tegan AND JILL AND EUSTACE all having space adventures. Jill and Tegan get on well. Adric and Eustace are really awkward around each other, and Eustace has a crush on Nyssa. It's great.

Re: using the White Witch over and over and OVER, I ... find it difficult to mind because I love ~Edmund's issues~, but I hear you. Assuming they make Silver Chair, I'm a little worried about what they'll do with it.

I read the cover off it and still know the riddle scene

AHA, RIDDLES IN THE DARK WAS YOUR FAVORITE THING TOO. *HIGH FIVE*

Wow, I just got my childhood fannish glee all over you. I hope you do not mind!

I have this elaborate vision, actually, of Four and Adric and Nyssa and Tegan AND JILL AND EUSTACE all having space adventures. Jill and Tegan get on well. Adric and Eustace are really awkward around each other, and Eustace has a crush on Nyssa. It's great.

<3333333 Write this, please? =D

""But Aria, those movies are awful"

Uh, no!

IA completely in the way the oldschool delivery threatens to overshadow the new versions' in the head. Things like - you know that bit when Peter kills Maugrim in LWW? And in the BBC movie they've, like, put a red gel over the camera lens? I WANTED IT TO BE RED IN THE NEW MOVIE. I was like, where is the melodramatic music. (SPEAKING OF MUSIC !!!!!)

JILL AND EUSTACE need space adventures SO BAD. They'd actually be awesome at them, look at how well they do in (the only good bits of) The Last Battle.

Also I completely know what you mean about Edmund's issues. It's just! Eustace has issues too you know!

*CHILDHOOD FANNISH GLEE HIGH FIVE BACK*

OKAY THE EMBED DIDN'T WORK HERE TRY THIS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-gxEk51OQs&feature=related

OMG THAT VID. *___* I just. Their little FACES! Mr. Tumnus! The Dawn Treader! THAT MUSIC. I grinned so hard.

YES WHERE WAS THE RED GEL DURING THE PETER-FIGHTS-MAUGRIM SCENE. I seriously wonder that every single time. Oh, and the whole killing-Aslan-on-the-Stone-Table scene is also especially disconcerting re: the difference between the new and old White Witch deliveries. On the other hand, I love that it means I can see which direct book quotes they kept in! I was delighted in the Caspian movie when this happened during the scene where they try to call up the Witch again, and the werewolf has that terrifying speech about how he is hunger and thirst and can lie on ice and drink blood &c &c, I CAN PROBABLY RECITE IT. Hilariously in the new film the werewolf has a much more dramatic delivery than in the BBC version. XD

YES, JILL AND EUSTACE HAVING SPACE ADVENTURES. :D I refuse to write that one, though.

Everyone's issues are great! And I hope they do make the Silver Chair so we can have more time with Eustace's. Honestly after that I will stop crossing my fingers for more movies, because although I'd adore a Magician's Nephew one, it is not IMPERATIVE, and I doubt they could pull off Horse and His Boy without massive skeevy issues, and I actively don't want a Last Battle movie. So.

I have so many FEELINGS about Narnia. I had the first three at home (the chronological order - The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Horse and His Boy) in one big volume and I was forever borrowing the rest of them from my friends in second and third grade. I don't know why my parents didn't get the other books for me - maybe it was one of those things you couldn't get in Moscow in the early 1990s. I had a pretty huge library but I don't think I had any books that didn't originally belong to my parents.

I don't have FEELINGS about the movies, though. The first one was pretty good but they just didn't do as good as job with them as Peter Jackson did with LotR.

Yay for FEELINGS. :D

I don't have FEELINGS about the movies, though. The first one was pretty good but they just didn't do as good as job with them as Peter Jackson did with LotR.

Huh! Whereas I thought the LotR movies were excellent but the books are still my go-to if I want LotR FEELINGS, whereas the Narnia movies took what I loved in my childhood and made them still delightful now in a way that's much stronger than what the books can still do.

I saw Fellowship of the Rings before I read the books, so that may have something to do with it. It'll be interesting to see how I feel about the Hobbit movie, since I read that book around age 8, same as Narnia, and loved it desperately. The Narnia movies are pretty, but I'd had a relationship with the books for fifteen years, and it's hard to rival that.

I have FEELINGS FEELINGS FEELINGS about Narnia. I cry at the stone table scene and at irregular other intervals and even though the latest movie was not quite so much my favourite I still couldn't stop grinning and, in fact, teared up when they first found themselves on the ship because, NARNIA! We're back in NARNIA and it's NARNIA and and and NARNIA!

They were also definitely my first fannish obsession. I belived in Aslan so much it was kind of hilarious, only it worried my parents rather a lot and they had to have several Very Serious Discussions with me about how We Know Narnia Isn't Real, Don't We? and I developed a primitive theory of Pascal's wager with which to rebut them (Yes, Probably, But Do We Want To Risk Missing Our Chance To Go There?) and basically I'm probably lucky I didn't end up in therapy, and also they still like to make fun of me about it. *laughs* Even when I stopped believing that Narnia had any kind of objective reality, those books still shaped my theology a startling amount right up until the day I realised I was an athiest... even BEFORE I realised it was All an Allegory For the Bible. (And didn't I feel foolish when someone finally pointed that out to me, all those years later.)

I am hoping that I will have these FEELINGS also about Dawn Treader! On the one hand, it's possibly my favorite of the books, it sounds like they messed about with it a lot, and it can't live up to what's in my head; but on the other, I've now psyched myself up for disappointment, so I may be pleasantly surprised! WE SHALL SEE.

Yes, Probably, But Do We Want To Risk Missing Our Chance To Go There?

I TOTALLY DID THIS TOO. /o\ I relate so hard to everything you say there, actually, except that I don't think my parents ever knew that I was constantly looking for Narnia and believed in Aslan really hard. I think I knew they would have laughed at me or told me it wasn't real, but I knew better, so there.

Re: realizing it's All an Allegory For the Bible, I actually had a blast playing Spot the Allegory in ... hm, seventh or eighth grade, after I'd been going to Catholic school for a year and knew any Bible stories at all. (Jewish dad, new age-y mum, maybe they once read me a children's bible as part of my education in the Western canon but I think they basically just did Old Testament stuff anyway.) But I just basically laughed at Lewis, because I'd already beaten him at his own game! I believed in Aslan but that didn't mean I had to care one way or another about Jesus, so there. XD

Dawn Treader is by far my favourite of the books, unless I have read the Last Battle more recently, in which case the Last Battle is my favourite. (I am given to understand that I am pretty much the only person in the world who feels this way about Last Battle, mind.)

THE POINT IS, I love the Dawn Treader book, and I did enjoy the movie! So you might too! Although. I am actually slightly less fond of it in hindsight, mind, thanks to Sophia pointing out how they took Lucy's sole moment of agency. The fuckers. *sigh* BUT while I was watching it, aside from a few excessivly cheesy moments that totally made me sporfle (SEVEN SWORDS, guys! SO IMPORTANT!) I was mostly just sucked into the PRETTY and the NARNIA and the REEPICHEEP OMG. (There is nothing at all not to love about Reepicheep in the movie, which is good because he is my favourite non-Pevensie character an all seven books.) It's not as good as, er, either of the other movies, but it's still a good romp. And. The pretty. My god, I could waste hours of squee on the costumes alone, never mind the wonderfull special effects. *happy sigh*

I told my parents pretty much everything, but I think in this specific case they found out because I told my friend Steph all about my grand plans to get into Narnia, and she told her Mum, and our Mums were best friends at the time, and... yup.

I was raised in an ostensibly Christian family (although now that I'm older I realise that Mum's an Easter-and-Christmas Christian, and Dad's just generally religious in a I-can't-concieve-of-the-universe-without-God sense but likes the Christian church because it's what he's used to). I... seem to remember my Dad trying to explain the whole stone table = cross thing to me? But I don't recall, you know, caring. Becaue. Aslan! *laughs* Poor Lewis - he'd be so appaled with us.

D'you mind me asking how you ended up in a catholic school, with parents like that?

(Because I am paranoid, I feel to need to clarify that "d'you mind" was an actual question, and the answer can be, "yes, actually, I do" and I will not care.)

I have met a couple of other people who also like the Last Battle! I am in fact always curious to hear why people like it. I just, I can't, because when I was five it was the most horrifying ending possible and it still kind of is. Which is entirely personal preference! Them all dying creeps me out a bit, and of course the problem of Susan is the problem of Susan, but really what alarmed me is the idea that frolicking Narnia adventures forever and ever without adversity was supposed to be happy. It always struck me as static and therefore terrifying.

I think I am willing to be excited about the Dawn Treader movie! I mean, I am especially excited because I just watched Prince Caspian again and I want MORE, so. :D

Ahh, that explains it! I never ever told anyone about the getting-into-Narnia thing; it was too ... sacred, maybe? Something like that.

Heh. Poor Lewis would be appalled with us all! This pleases me slightly, because I am contrary.

I... seem to remember my Dad trying to explain the whole stone table = cross thing to me?

My dad did the same! And even before I really got what that meant, I did have this one quite Catholic friend when I was little; she always wore a cross necklace, so that's what I associated it with, and when my dad told me about the stone table = cross thing, I immediately went, "Well, it's a good thing that in Narnia they don't wear stone table necklaces! That would be awkward." XD

I do not mind! It was actually just a process-of-elimination thing where it was the best school in the district; I actually totally loved my Catholic school, which did indeed have the uniforms (plaid skirts! but I usually wore khakis, so) but didn't have any nuns. The only lasting effects I took from it besides a good education are a lot of geeky facts about the Gospels and the accidental memorization of the Lord's Prayer. :D

Delicious is shutting down? Nooo! You're right, it is a totally convient way to find fic by pairing. One of the things I like about delicious is it tells you how many people have tagged a link. I used that both to find the really good fic, and as a bit of a ego boost when I needed it (as in, "x number of people have tagged my fic! :D!")

YES THIS. :( I am hoping that the fannish alternative comes to fruition.

I have FEELINGS indeed! Fewer FEELINGS than some friends I know, and I certainly had issues with the allegory once I got old enough to recognize what it was, and there are still some parts I don't like for philosophical reasons and some parts I find just boring (hi, Silver Chair) and some parts I like to write revisionist fic about, but I totally have nostalgic affectionate FEELINGS, and I expect to go see every movie (and judge parts that bug me -- I'm all for adaptations being different from the original as befits the changed medium, but I'm still allowed to get cranky over the changes I dislike). This is one of those canons where if you say "Give me a fic on this, GO!" or "Ramble about your opinion on this thing, GO!" I will always be able to come up with something without any need for canon review or waffling. There's just so much that's appealing in the books.

YES. Yes to all of this! (Except for finding the Silver Chair boring. I think it hardwired me to like Quests. XD)

Silver Chair is interesting, because there seems to be a big split between people who find it annoying, and people who love and adore it. I think it's just that the aspects many people love aren't big narrative kinks of mine, so I get more annoyed by the bits that I find tedious.

However, that's not to say I don't love lots of aspects of it. The Earthlings, that apocalyptic (euapocalyptic?) ending with the dancing salamanders and living gems, the gut-punch shock of Caspian the old man, the different reactions to eating the Talking Stag, PUDDLEGLUM WHOM I LOVE FOREVER. Puddleglum's speech about living as a Narnian that I hear quoted over and over in the unlikeliest of places, and it totally deserves it.

I mostly just a) got fed up as a child with Eustace and Jill's distractability, although I have more sympathy now, and b) never was convinced enough of Rilian's worth as a king to want to go to all this bother for him except for Caspian's sake. I'm sure he's very lovely and competent when he's not being enchanted to bubbly complacency every day, but we never saw enough of that other side for me to really feel emotionally invested in it.

...So yeah, about that ability to ramble about these books at a moment's notice. *laughing* I COULD TOTALLY GO ON.

I had FEELINGS FEELINGS FEELINGS, and then I found out about the Christian allegory, and then I had FEELINGS OF BETRAYAL and haven't been able to read them since :-/.

Aw, I am sorry! See, my FEELINGS sort of trumped any BETRAYAL, in that I figured out the Christian allegory and my response was basically, "Ha ha, CS Lewis, I have beat you at your own game! You tried to make me believe in Jesus, but instead I believe in a talking lion, so there!" I know it didn't work that way for a lot of people, though. :/

Narnia! =D I don't know how much I've told you about my love for Narnia already, but yes. I read them over and over again (my set was in the published order, not the chronological order, and I used to maintain that the latter was WRONG. Now I am more open-minded.) And I used to pretend to be different characters (mostly Lucy and the girl in 'The Horse and his Boy') and act out scenes. And I don't know how much I believed in Aslan, but I loved the idea of him. I think I heard about the whole Christian allegory bit and thought, 'pfft, people always try to complicate fun things', and then I got a bit older and realized that it's rather blindingly obvious.

I am also super-excited to watch 'Dawn Treader', although I hadn't heard about there being additional plot before. It's good to be forewarned, though I will probably still be upset. Dawn Treader might possibly be my favorite of the books, besides 'Wardrobe', because it has Narnia and a SHIP! And the ending is so gorgeous, and I have such a ridiculous amount of love for Reepicheep. Aaand I should go back to my finals now. =(

AHHH WHY HAVE WE NOT BONDED OVER THIS A LOT. I was totally Lucy as a tiny child! And Aravis was one of my favorite characters too. :D

Yeah, apparently they switched a lot of the plot around and messed with the locations and gave it a rather silly through-thread? But I also hear that a lot of the gorgeous things are still gorgeous, and that Eustace and Reepicheep are excellent. So it is not a total loss!

Good luck with finals, sweetie! <333

I DON'T KNOW BUT WE SHOULD. Yes, Aravis! And her Calormene girlfriend! I really liked that part of the book. =)

Hmm, I'm not sure I can actually remember the order that things happen in at this point anyway. But still. Why?

Thank you! I'm completely done with one class, and then I have two self-scheduled exams and a paper that's due on Tuesday. But I would be happy for distraction any time you're online! <3

This comment is late because, though I was longing to tell you all about my FEEEELINGS about Narnia, I had to keep my head down and finish my DSSS fic. (And now I should really be keeping my head down and finishing my Yuletide fic, but fuck it, NARNIA OMG.)

I don't remember a world before I knew Narnia. My brother and I were totally fannish about that series long before we had any concept of what being a fan was: he had a painting of a blue-eyed lion above his bed, and we argued about favorite scenes and had A Companion to Narnia and made a map which we rolled into a tube shape. (Because clearly, if you can go off one edge of the world and land on the other side in Aslan's Country, well, that means the world is not flat but tubular.)

One of the advantages of having a sibling five and a half years older to analyze stuff with was that I didn't have that, "Wait, Aslan is Jesus?!" moment of disillusionment. I think he did, a bit: he was given to rolling his eyes at the Lamb at the end of Dawn Treader, and I've talked to so many people for whom it kind of ruined the world of the books, but I pretty much took that as a given, and was quite keen for several years on a Christianity wherein you got to have Talking Animals with souls and character backstory for the femme!Devil, and Bacchus and his maenads randomly showing up, and etc. So much more colorful than the vaguely agnostic hippie Christianity I was brought up with!

I tend to like the non-Pevensie-centric books best, which I realize is unusual: I think the character work gets a lot stronger as the books go on (Eustace as the turning point, and then Aravis! Puddleglum! Polly, who sits in the attic drinking ginger beer and writing a novel! And even the Witch is a lot more developed and, IMHO, interesting in Magician's Nephew than in the first book), and the world gets broader. I even have a fondness for lots of bits of The Last Battle, though it's very upsetting to reread. I don't think Lewis hit the mark he was trying for, for all kinds of reasons, but I do kind of admire his ballsiness in presenting the friggin' APOCALYPSE in a kid's book, and doing so with some gusto. (I won't get into the Problem of Susan and my feelings there, because I can go on for hours.) Also I love Puzzle the Donkey - poor woobie antichrist!

I don't think any film adaptation will ever quite work for me - the breaking point for me is always Aslan, who is just never my Aslan - but I do love the look of these movies, and will be going to see the latest as soon as I've got the time and a little cash. I often wish I could vid just so I could vid Narnia. :D

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