not a tame lion

[aria]

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.

Comments

[genarti]

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.

[aria]

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

[genarti]

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.