help, help, the zombies are coming! and a few Narnia thoughts

[bedlamsbard]

Snagged from, um, everyone. I lurk in like five different fandoms and I've seen it everywhere.

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon

2. one song blasting on the speakers

3. one famous person to fight alongside you

* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1. Lightsaber, please. Working, preferably, and blue. Knowing me, I probably wouldn't be able to figure out how to use flamethrower, and lightsabers are nice and trusty.

2. "Won't Back Down", Fuel.

3. Just one? I'm going to have to go with High King Peter Pevensie himself at the moment, because he can kill things and call in backup (air support via griffins and dwarves!) and eventually Aslan will show up to even things out. If he's not available, Obi-Wan Kenobi will do just as well.


You know, one of these days I'm really going to have to stop writing fic just so I can make up character backstory that has no canon support, even if it just makes sense. Brought to you by the Narnia story I'm writing, "Long Forgotten Wars", which is just Peter and Caspian talking and me expanding on made-up Narnian history. Oh, please, implicit canon, movie and book, says that Peter was totally a warlord and nobody really remembers what happened a thousand years later.

I was thinking about how I had the same reaction to Prince Caspian that a lot of SGA fen had to Written by the Victors -- the urge to create more, that sense of a living history and how history is mutated and distorted over time. Because Prince Caspian shows us that -- the cave art in Aslan's How, the books and papers in Doctor Cornelius' study, the way that the characters speak about Peter and his siblings. There is that sense of things forgotten, of things changed, and we see that literally as well: Aslan's How, the way the cliffs have grown up at the River Rush. There's this huge sense of lost truth, and that's what I've been tapping into this past week. Besides "Long Forgotten Wars", which deals with what Caspian thinks he knows and what really happened, and the drabble Unredeemable, there are also the two Narnian songs that I'll post after "Long Forgotten Wars." Both of them are an extension of that feeling, that "this is not what really happened, but this is what everybody remembers."

I've also got a thought on how SGA and Narnia are similar, but now isn't the time.

Comments

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

I think there was an expectation that the Kings and Queens, especially Peter, be these perfect legendary figures, not actual human beings who are struggling with some very difficult and disorienting changes in both their own lives and in the land around them.

I would have loved to have seen some interaction with Caspian and Edmund, who would surely have given him a thing or two to think about, as observant and dry as he is. I don't think Caspian even spoke to Lucy or Edmund!

It was interesting to watch the power shifting back and forth, as various people supported Peter or Caspian.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it doesn't help that they hardly look like the figures that they're expected to be. Peter and Susan may, just barely may, pass muster as adults, but...no, not really. So Caspian's treating them the same way he would any other children, or people younger than him -- and what's curious is that Peter's treating Caspian that way too. It really is a fascinating dichotomy. And Lucy and Edmund seem too young for Caspian to really get a handle on as kings and queens, even when the evidence is right in front of his eyes; it's easier for him to ignore it.

If Peter hadn't figured out that Aslan didn't mean him to stay (and I think he did figure it out before Aslan told him, at least subconsciously about halfway to two-thirds of the way through the movie), I think they would have defeated Miraz and gone straight into a second civil war between Peter and Caspian. Which would have been interesting.

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

I think many viewers had a hard time coping with Peter because they went into the movie expecting Caspian to be the good guy, to be "right", and for them all to be automatically friends. I never though it realistic that there wouldn't be *some* friction between factions, no matter how willing everyone was to help each other; the Pevensies have the moral authority because they were appointed by Aslan but Caspian has the troops...for now. Very interesting situation.

Also, in the movie Caspian's goal was more to kill Miraz for personal revenge and oh yeah, take the *Telmarine* throne, as he says. Only then would it be in his power to do anything about the native Narnians...taking the Telmarine throne doesn't mean he's *their* king, just that he has the ability to stop the killing. At the end, it was the whole 'blessed by Aslan' thing that made him the King of Narnia, entire.

I was amused by the river scene when the guys and Susan all knelt down and Aslan said, 'Rise, Kings and Queens of Narnia". I wanted to say something about "who's the other queen?" but I was too busy stifling my laughter. Well, it was the cumulative effct of seeing it so many times-I kept cracking up during the "Inigo Montoya" scene, too. *snorts*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And people were expecting there not to be any remaining issues from Narnia (like in book canon! But I digress). I wouldn't agree that Caspian has the troops; I think that if it came down to a choice between Caspian and Peter, most of the Narnians would go with Peter just because Peter is a Narnian. More or less. Sort of. It depends on the circumstances, I suppose.

I'm guessing there was another prophecy, because it was Glenstorm the Centaur's brilliant idea to put him in charge rather than just not kill him (which I think was what was going on; kill him or let him live? Wait, no, I know! We'll put him in charge of everything!), and so there were a lot of different things going on at the time the Pevensies showed up. Retake Narnia, keep the Narnia they have, kill Caspian, don't kill Caspian, kill all the Telmarines, drive the Telmarines out of Narnia, let the Telmarines live...