Narnia (bookverse) fanmix: "Never Die Young" (Susan)

[bedlamsbard]

I have been complaining and complaining about this mix since I started making it, but it's finally done. Susan Pevensie, from the end of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to the very end of her story (or, as Lewis might say, the beginning of her real story). While this can be entirely bookverse, I did have Prince Caspian in mind, but there's not a major disconnection between the book and the movie in this sense.



1. Leap Year // Maria Taylor
2. Enough of Me // Melissa Etheridge
3. February // Joan Baez
4. White Houses // Vanessa Carlton
5. Fifty Years After the Fair // Aimee Mann
6. Nothin' On Me // Shawn Colvin
7. Guided By Wire // Neko Case
8. God // Nerina Pallot
9. It's A War In There // Dar Williams
10. The Things We Never Said // Thea Gilmore
11. Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song) // Iron & Wine
12. Parasol // Tori Amos
13. Never Die Young // Lori McKenna
14. Forgiven // Alanis Morissette
15. If You Want Me To // Ginny Owens
16. Useless Desires // Patty Griffin
17. Solsbury Hill // Peter Gabriel
18. Caledonia // Celtic Woman



1. "Leap Year": Could you make a flower grow to let me know? I will wait for you...but please come soon. Susan after LWW, holding on desperately to what she used to be even as Narnia slips away.

2. "Enough of Me": I turned your dreams into lightning, ain't that enough? I held the world back for you, ain't that enough? I loved you past the point of dying, ain't that enough of me for you? Starting to grow bitter, ruminating on everything that she's done for Aslan and for Narnia as Queen Susan. I'm also wildly thrilled by the opening line we were all wounded in some domestic war, because if that isn't the Pevensies, then what is?

3. "February": First we forgot where we planted those bulbs last year, then we forgot that we'd planted at all, then we forgot what plants are altogether. This one is kind of hard to explain, but it was one of the core songs, and just -- bitterness, and forgetting, and the war that never ends.

4. "White Houses": These silly little wounds will never mend. I feel so far from where I've been, so I go, and I will not be back here again. I'm gone as the day is fading on white houses. Letting go of Narnia and embracing England, accepting that she'll never return. This is one of those songs that kind of makes me want to flap my hands and post all the lyrics and talk about them, but I moved this one around so much because I couldn't figure out if it was post-LWW or post-PC. But it is post-LWW, because PC was sweet, but she'd already said goodbye a long time ago.

5. "Fifty Years After the Fair": Fifty years after the fair I drink from a different cup, but it does no good to compare 'cause nothing ever measures up. I guess just for a second we thought that all good things would rise to the top. PC: the brief fleeting joy of being back in Narnia, but already looking back at the past, the things that are now distant history and barely remembered legend, and setting aside all hopes for the future.

6. "Nothin' On Me": So in case you hadn't noticed, I'm all right, not like it was before. Things used to be so hopeless, but not tonight. Tonight I'm walking out that door. I'm not gonna cry when wavin' goodbye, and I know this time you got nothin' on me. Another of the core songs. I think when Susan left Narnia at the end of PC she was genuinely glad, because here's the last of her obligations gone, and she doesn't have to hold on to the past anymore -- she has her future in England to look forward to.

7. "Guided By Wire": You can never travel by the way you've come. England, trying to discover herself all over again.

8. "God": Once, my friend, I loved you as a child, kissed your face before I slept. Be in my head and with me when I sleep, in the bloodied tears he wept. And it's killing you...and it's killing me too. Bitterness and anger growing again, this time turned against Aslan (and, I think, to a lesser extent, Peter).

9. "It's A War In There": Do peacemakers go to the same place as soldiers? If you want to make peace, then you gotta find the pain, and you bring your words, but you're just like them, you're unprepared because you don't know the terrain.

10. "The Things We Never Said": I lipsticked "fuck you" on the mirror as a sign of my respect. Susan's anger towards Aslan for destroying her life.

11. "Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song)": You will never make me learn to lay beneath the mountain because I'll only lie down by the waterside at night. Furiously angry at Aslan and Peter and everyone else who wants to make her just like them, doing the exact opposite of what the others want. (I think of this as just before The Last Battle.)

12. "Parasol": Then the seated woman with a parasol may be the only one you can't betray; if I'm the seated woman with a parasol I will be safe in my frame. After the deaths of her family in The Last Battle: shock, and horror, and betrayal. Paralyzing horror, because they've been together for two lifetimes now, and they're gone -- and Aslan has let it happen. He's betrayed all of them, and if Susan can just hold still, then he can't do the same thing to her.

13. "Never Die Young": And I am the one who will never die young. I am a martyr and I cannot hide. But I'm not a winner, I am just brilliantly bitter, I'm sealed by my skin but broken inside. This is my Susan in a nutshell -- broken and bitter and hopeless, scared and angry and finally, at the last, defeated. I would quote the whole song here if I could, but that might be overkill. Left behind by everyone and knowing that she has to learn to fight again to go home. (I think she's addressing Peter here, but that's just me.)

14. "Forgiven": We all had our reasons to be there, we all had a thing or two to learn, we all needed something to cling to -- so we did. Confronting her demons and her past.

15. "If You Want Me To": 'Cause I'm not who I was when I took my first step and I'm clinging to the promise you're not done with me yet. A thousand years later, realizing everything she has to do to return to Narnia.

16. "Useless Desires": Every day I take a bitter pill that gets me on my way for the little aches and pains, the ones I have from day to day to help me think a little less about the things I miss, to help me not to wonder how I ended up like this. The long hard slog back and getting ready to say goodbye to her adopted country of England for good.

17. "Solsbury Hill": Today I don't need a replacement; I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant, my heart going boom boom boom. "Hey," I said, "You can keep my things; they've come to take me home."

18. "Caledonia": Let me tell you that I love you, that I think about you all the time. Caledonia, you're calling me, now I'm going home. But if I should become a stranger, know that it would make me more than sad. Caledonia's been everything I ever had. Going home at last. (I think it goes without saying to replaced "Caledonia" with "Narnia.") This whole song -- everything Susan has gone through, and fought for, and saying goodbye at last and going home.



Available as a rar at MegaUpload here. Let me know what you think!

Comments

[sgriobadh.livejournal.com]

Ooh, taking. Awesome! :)

[swift-tales.livejournal.com]

*is stunned*
Definitely wicked

[snacky]

Oooh, this is excellent. I love so many of these songs (Evening on the Ground I've used in my own fanmix :D) and they work so well for this character. Thanks for sharing!

[fubarite.livejournal.com]

This looks very interesting - I don't know many of these artists, so looking forward to trying them out. Thank you for uploading this!

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

Bitterness and anger growing again, this time turned against Aslan (and, I think, to a lesser extent, Peter).
Babble to me about this? And also the other mentions of Peter. Is it because he's being all bossy again and trying to keep her in line?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

In a way, Peter and Susan are in the same boat: they're the eldest siblings, they're the first ones cast out of Narnia, they're the first ones who have tro grow up -- they're so similar, and so different. And Peter, despite everything, is clinging -- I don't think he even realizes he's doing it, but he's clinging, because he's the High King of Narnia so deep and Peter Pevensie a faint second -- and Susan...isn't. And it's breaking Peter, and Susan recognizes that, but she also recognizes that Narnia has broken her, too, in different ways.

And Peter is the golden boy in a lot of respects: Narnia's chosen one, the High King, the one everyone remembers, and he still has so much faith in Aslan despite everything that's happened to them, or so it seems to Susan. And she can't have that faith; she knows insidious betrayal when she sees it. And it is betrayal, and Peter's bad at recognizing betrayal unless it's shoved in his face (See: attempted assassination). And Peter's a pushy bastard; he wants everything to be the way he wants it, whether or not the people around him agree, and he doesn't understand why Susan isn't looking at it the same way he is.

And with "Never Die Young" -- which is the one song I bought for this mix, because oh my god Susan -- it's Peter the golden boy again, Peter the High King, Peter who trusts Aslan absolutely, Peter who Aslan picks up and hauls around willy-nilly, Peter who's never been given the time to find himself in one world or another, because Narnia made him the High King and the King of Summer and he can't be either one in England. And he did that for all of them, but it broke Peter the worst. And Susan...Susan was left behind to pick up the pieces, just as she always was.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

re: recognizing insidious betrayal
And Edmund is a bit better at being rejected out of Narnia, because he himself has been betrayer once, and he himself has broken the hearts of those who loved him because of this betrayal. It's not that he understands why this has happened, because he doesn't, but he remembers what Aslan said to him, the two of them on that hill the day they rescued him from Jadis. He's been sent back to England now and it hurts, but he has learned to wait and to watch and to listen. Aslan was patient and forgiving. Edmund is patient, and if he can't forgive the Lion now, Edmund trusts that he will in the future.
And Lucy, she just has faith.

Re: same boat
Agreed! This is what I wrote about them, once upon a time, post-LWW: "She and Peter are the older siblings, and while Lucy is free to be naïve and Edmund to be elusive, Susan and Peter have always shared the bond and burden of being a Good Example. They may not see eye to eye on all things, but there is at least an understanding. Peter only vexes her nowadays, and his circuitous anger makes her feel terribly lonely." And maybe at first she tries to pick up the pieces, but it's very frustrating sometimes. She never really liked adolescence (who does?), it's such an in-between place, and now she's back, in-between everything, and she eventually becomes the girl who sits alone at lunch with geeky boys hitting on her at magazine stalls.

who's never been given the time to find himself in one world or another
yesssssssssssssssssss. I FLAIL AT YOU.

OH PEVENSIES

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yesyesyes. *nods frantically* And I hate to keep referencing music, but I'm really good at using music as character reference, and Edmund is just so grounded post-Narnia. And some of that is because he's younger and wasn't screwed with as much, but some of it's just -- he's content. He understands. He's done his part, and so be it. (In VotDT, it's Lucy who pitches a fit at being thrown out of Narnia; all Edmund says is, "Oh, Aslan," and that's it; he's made his peace.)