oh, I can totally blame my theatre arts class for this one

[bedlamsbard]

Oh my God, you know what I want to write, except I totally wouldn't, because oh my God so much work? The Telmarine age of theatre. Like, there's the fifty-eight cycle morality play about the rise and fall of the High King Peter, which is heavily criticized for outright stating an incestuous relationship between Peter and Queen Susan (and remember, one of the big debates of Narnian history is whether or not Susan is Peter's wife or his sister) and implying an equally incestuous relationship between Peter and Prince Edmund. Then there are the Shakespearean style plays, the Tragedy of the Prince of Shadows (a.k.a. Edmund), the one about his lover, the, uh, married woman he got pregnant, and a bunch of swashbuckling stories about Peter killing things, and also a well-known comedy about his seven fiancees, except by this time they've turned into his seven wives, and then there's some tragedy about Queen Susan, and one minor play about Princess-Consort Lucy. And the historians gripe bitterly about the plays, because they're not at all accurate, and some things are seriously messed up, because Caspian the Conqueror and Peter the High King certainly did not live in the same era. And then someone gets the bright idea to put on these plays in front of the Pevensies during PC, when they're at the Telmarine castle...

Like MacBeth showing up at the Globe. "I did what? And my wife did what? God, you fucking English."

*snickers*

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Said WIP being "The Bone's Prayer", "Old Timber to New Fires", or "Be Like Water"? Oh, and "Till Human Voices Wake Us" is still on my harddrive, too. *grin*

The most I think I would do would be to write bits of the plays, and then the critiques surrounding them. Not the whole plays. (Fifty-eight cycle morality play. ARGH.)

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Bone's Prayer, what the hell? You've got ANOTHER one?! *laughs*


No, I don't think you'd want to write the whole 58-nor would I want to read them, heh. That's a life's work for someone who's getting *paid* for it! Besides, "morality play", meh. I'm sure there's more fun stuff that could be done. :)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

"The Bone's Prayer" is the one with Edmund and Caspian going to the ruins of Cair Paravel.

The morality play's a real concept from the middle ages! See, I learned things in that class...

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, ok. You go from musing about a plot to writing it very fast. I can't keep up! *laughs*


I know the morality plays were real, as were the passion plays, etc. I'm not saying I'd want to *see* one, however. Certainly not 58, just to get the point across!


Imagine kid's stories, a la the Telmarine version of King Arthur. How would they tame down the blood and thunder (not to mention incest, heh) into "safe history lessons for kids". *snickers*

NO WONDER Caspian's confused! *rotfl*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was writing and musing at the same time. I went, "If I have to look at Timber one more time I'm going to chuck my computer out the window, and the window doesn't open, that could get messy," and "Bone" and "Timber" are supposed to have about the same "feel" anyway.

Probably the same way they do in King Arthur. "Incest? What incest? There is no incest! Mordred hatched from an egg!" Although I rather think they wouldn't; medieval societies didn't really have the political correctness/but it must be safe for the children! mores that we have today.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Even safer! THE HOLLYWOOD VERSION!

(where Patrocles is totally Achilles' cousin. Yes. Cousin. In conclusion: Cousin.)

With complete mis-casting! Details fdged for the sake of bigger set-pieces! Pissing off Archenland by implying that Cor and Corin weren't even twins!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

This is where we get the, "Oh, Queen Susan wasn't related to King Peter! They were married!" school of thought. *grin*

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

And everyone uses a weird fake accent, to indicate their foreigness, despite the fact that they've lived in the country a long time and aren't actually speaking a different language at all.


Not only were Cor and Corin not twins-they were GIRLS! Cora and Corinna. Played by twinky young boys mincing about in drag, of course. One must do these things properly, right, and the Telmarines are not mocking Archenland virility AT ALL. *coughs*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just a regional difference? I mean, I can totally buy the Telmarines having a different accent -- everyone (generally speaking, you know what I mean, don't beat down on me) in America speaks English, but there are Southern accents, New York accents, New England accents, Midwestern accents -- hell, at one point, you could tell what county people came from by their accent, although this is fading a bit because of modern media. In the British Isles, you've got regional accents and class accents. In PC, I'd be more surprised to hear Caspian speak exactly the same way as, say, Trufflehunter than I am to hear him speak with a Telmarine accent, and there are probably different levels of cultural and linguistic difference.

Er. Now, back to Telmarine theatre...

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

In the real world, yeah, that's how it works-have you ever read The Story of English? Excellent book. They made a tv documentary from it, but I haven't seen it yet, though I hope to get my hands on it some day (when my freakin' speakers are working).

But in the Telmarine version of "Hollywood"?...because Hollywood aint' known for its versimiltude, for one thing. That's not why they do it.

Actually, I meant...if they *did* speak a different language, originally (and let's call it Spanish, since that's what they're going for); then they'd either need to *speak* Spanish,with subtitles, to indicate they're using their native tongue; or speak English without such marked accents you could barely understand some of them, as a device to indicate "we're Telmarines, yo!"

Given that the Telmarine people have no memories of their former island home and it's doubtful that they achieved much of a culture there, since, again, isolated island (no matter what your verse says! *pokes you*), there'd be more of a tendency to adopt local things, I'd think. *shrugs*

You know, if I was Latina or Hispanic, I'd be a tad offended. The Telmarines were described as descendants of "brigands"...I don't recall anything about them being "Spanish brigands". I'm not going to dig out the book and look, but I'm sure that was made such a point of in order to justify the accents, which were used to indicate their foreigness...it's kind of circular! *rolls eyes*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yes, but one notes that my entire goal in life is apparently to make the film make sense.

Here's Warsverse logic: The Telmarines were originally Spanish pirates or just Spanish seamen. However, they ended up in Telmar, which was sort of populated (bookverse it wasn't, I don't remember if Aslan says so in movieverse or not), but it was definitely bordered by countries that spoke various dialects of the westron tongue, Eschmoun. (Spoken in Natare, Belgarion, Lasci, some parts of Shoushan, not Narnia.) What came out of that was a pidgin (or is it creole? I think it might be creole) tongue of Spanish and Eschmoun that eventually turned in Telmarine (this is over the course of hundreds of years, mind). By the time the Golden Age rolls around, it's Telmarine. Then Shoushan invades Telmar, there are more linguistic issues, Telmarine gets a lot of words from Shoushani and modern Eschmoun, about half of Telmar flees for the hills into Narnia. But, at this point, Narnia's been conquered and reconquered several times, which gives us, uh, let's call it middle Narnian, or Eschmoun Narnian. The Narnians and Telmarines for a while live in peace, so again with the pidgin languages in order to understand each other, loan words back and forth, and then Caspian the Conqueror goes on his slaughtering spree, but at this point we've got Narnian Telmarine and Telmarine Narnian, or modern Narnian. As for why the Pevensies understand them? Magic.

*cough* Or something like that.

No, but the proto-Telmarines weren't on the island for a long time! They shipwrecked there, they raped the local women, they got drunk and fled up into the hills, they fell into Telmar. It was still the same shipwrecked sailors who founded Telmar; it wasn't their children or their grandchildren.

(On an interesting religious note, I think it's Sepaspian who swears, "Christ amour" in PC. I'm still trying to figure out how to rationalize this into my constructed Telmarine religion. I'm getting there, slowly.)

book canon vs film vs bedlam making sense of it all?

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!!!