*head to side*

[bedlamsbard]

You know what I just realized? (And I, uh, think I figured this out a while ago -- no, really, a while ago; it just took till now to hit me.) It's now impossible for me to look at Narnia as anything but a tragedy. It's like, hey, cute boys, ass-kicking, magic, rock on, but it's now essentially a tragedy.

And nothing but.

And that's kind of a shame.

This realization brought to you by the "read to your children! which we will illustrate by showing clips from prince caspian! THE MOVIE!" advertisements on Hulu. Because it's all, "books open doors!" (that is the Pevensies realizing that their castle is now in ruins), "make new friends!" (that is the Pevensies meeting the tattered remains of the Narnians and going, "OH MY GOD THIS IS WHAT WE ARE LEFT WITH?"), "travel to new lands!" (that is the Pevensies going, "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE YOU PEOPLE DONE TO OUR COUNTRY AND WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?") and that, you know, kind of puts a damper on things. Sure, it's shiny and awesome if you don't know what's going on, but if you do (or if you're, uh, me), then it just kind of kills you.

Damn.

I mean, it's not like there was happy shiny killing things now-ishness that brought me into the fandom -- it was the tragedy -- but damn.

My entire concept of Narnia is founded around tragedy. Hell, my goddamn rewrite of LB is a tragedy. I have to go sulk now.

Comments

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

That ad would have worked so much better with LWW, considering that book has all those things without so much "our whole world of happiness is gone and conquered and will never be the same!"

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Although LWW probably loses points for having so much of it actually take place in winter, which is not as happy and shiny as the late summer of PC. (Well. PC is late summer in my head. I explained my theory about the seasons in Narnia somewhere.)

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

There's plenty of springish stuff in the film, but oh well. You are right about it not being as shiny. Late summer sounds right for PC; the weather seemed to fit.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*coughs* LWW is winter and spring; it ends in late summer/early fall, HHB is mid-summer, PC is mid-to-late summer, VotDT is late summer, SC is late fall/early winter, LB is fall.

Dust, for the record, is late winter-early spring-spring-early summer.

I have thought about this a lot.

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

So thematic!

For some reason in my memory LB is so late fall it's basically winter. God, that was a depressing book.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

CS LEWIS WRITES THE WORST ENDINGS EVER

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

THIS IS TRUE.

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

Have you read Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising? That ending broke my heart and let me down a million times over :(

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

i have not! i have often seen it on classroom shelves when i was wee.

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

it's my favorite fantasy series... ever. it's so beautifully written. I still read it at least annually. if you find yourself with a yen for children's lit, go for that one!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I have got to reread The Dark Is Rising. That will have to wait till I get home, though. *wistful*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Fun fact! The one major thing I changed in Dust after I posted the first chapter, besides a few typos, was the season. Because I'd originally set it in fall, and then I went, "No, that's when LB is set. Dust is set in spring for a reason," and changed it. And then went out of my way to mention the fact that it's spring in, like, every chapter.

[dikela.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't want to rain on your parade, but in book PC Lewis states that children were going to school at the beginning of the summer term, and Edmund had his birthday a week before.

So when does summer term in English boarding school started in the 40s?

IMHO, it would be the beginning of summer.

P.S. I am sending you Narnian folklore #2.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think we can safely say that Narnian seasons run differently than English ones, using LWW for a basis if nothing else.

Re: P.S. I got it, thanks!

[dikela.livejournal.com]

Yes, let us say it and live happily ever after. ;D

You are right, it doesn't really matter.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

omg i knoooooow. have i ever written a happy narnia fic? well, maybe that one peter&lucy. but i suspect i am biologically unable to write narnia fluff. even in writing my cuddles-in-aslan's-country fic EVERYONE FIRST HAD TO DIE.

I WAS THINKING ABOUT THIS TOO as i was writing my merlin/arthur, which is actually happy and like, is pretty much about arthur being a smug bastard. i was like, "woah, i am still able to write not-angst? really?" because i've been under the cloud and cover of the lion for so long, you see. OH MERLINSHOW: your crack will mend the ones narnia has left in my heart. well, until i write pendragon king angst, that is. it's only a matter of time.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

The closest I have come to writing happy Narnia -- "The Last Golden Days of Summer", which was an outsider POV and also "LAST", and then...huh, "In a Dry Month" is probably happy-ish. If you ignore Peter freaking out and all the people dying, but that's all background.

...even my crack tends to be a little sad. Petaverse is supposed to be happy! Then I brought Peter in.

Wait. That explains a lot.

Hi, I know conflict is important in a story, but not this much conflict ALL THE TIME. This bothers me...kind of a lot, actually? But I'm in a weird mood.

If I think about Merlin too long it depresses me too, because you just know. What has to happen. God, the shadow of the future. *beats head into desk* Why! Why am I a crazy person!

Seriously. Tragedy. Plain and simple. Even the golden days of the Golden Days is to build up a height so that they have something to fall from.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

i will not be surprised that at some point i will be heartbroken over the fate of my favorite camelot orgy. probably when i am saturated with tragic futurefic. this is probably also a matter of time. but right now, god, i'm just reveling in the cracktasticness and slashtasticness of it all.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think I have a switch broken in my brain. It is the "happiness in the here and now" switch. Because I can't get the future angst out of my brain.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

You are right. Of course.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And it depresses hell out of me.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

It depresses me because it wasn't *supposed* to be. Clive seriously thought he was setting up a happy situation.

Twit.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

That? Also depressing. The other thing that depresses me is that it's made it virtually impossible for me to write a happy ending in the mainstream Narnia 'verse (read: Warsverse. Peta gets off lucky). The closest I get is bittersweet, because the notions of Narnia and tragedy are so closely intertwined in my head.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

yanno what's weird? I had a couple of very fraught discussions (ok, fine, ridiculous arguments) with my best friend over the various merits of Lewis and Tolkien. She hates Tolkien for sending Frodo over the sea, and hates me for suggesting that Lewis denied his characters the right to grow up.

I suspect this is because said friend hates adulthood and wants to be five again. There doesn't seem anything *strange* to her about the ending of LWW. And she gets really, really fucking angry when I suggest otherwise. She hated the movies for giving the kids halfway decent characterisation.

It makes me wonder if Lewis was maybe like that? Rumour has it he had a very strange childhood, and quite an unhappy personal life as an adult... which might explain the completely unreal fantasy of childhood he's built.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I had a couple of discussions with one of my friends (who hasn't seen the movies and hates bookverse!Susan and love Edmund) about why LB Doesn't Work, and why the religious metaphor doesn't work if you're not religious, because otherwise the point comes across as something completely different.

(Dude. You want to find God? Somehow I think ruling a country for fifteen years isn't going to help.)

The funny thing is that I can trace back my "meaning of life" beliefs to one very specific fic: synecdochic's SGA fic Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose (http://www.kekkai.org/synecdochic/sga/freedoms_just_another_word.html). The meaning of life is do the next thing.

And Lewis didn't do that. Tolkien did. (To an extent, but I kind of love the fact that Frodo was really fuccked up by his experience, because, man, that sort of thing leaves marks.)

[lyamainu.livejournal.com]

Take this as an order to write Happy Ending Narnia fic.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I...can't.

I have tried. I swear to god I have tried. The only way I can do it is, I think, to completely uproot the Pevensies and AU them immensely -- wild west, werewolves, pirates.

Actually, the Petaverse has a happy ending, sort of. No, the Petaverse has a happy ending, except for the semi-destruction of the country, the missing kid, and the deaths. And the fact that the Warsverse Pevensies are drenched in angst.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

On his horse, Edmund runs the length of the prairies from the very edge of Narnia to the foothills of Ettinsmoor, and he is free. It is nothing like back east; here, the sky is bigger, the people truer for their roughness, and when he and Peter, dirty with the dust of days, return to the farmhouse in the evening Susan kisses their cheeks and Lucy hands them both a bottle of beer.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

WHOO.

[lyamainu.livejournal.com]

O.o

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

B-but tragedy is good, right?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yes, but after a while it starts to wear on you. I need to write something Golden Age and happy before the late-Golden Age/PC/post-PC/LB angst starts driving me crazy.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

:cough: also see why I'm writing'what if they stayed'. Which if you think about it, it's not necessarily a happy ending, becasue it's going to be difficult and probably bloody at some point, but it's life. They go on living and making a life. Which tends to be my concept of 'happy ending'. I rather like Terry Pratchett's line about 'the secret to having a happy ending is knowing where to cut the story off for the readers.'

And this is why you need to write more werewolf!pevensies.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*nods* My "if they stayed" story is Be Like Water, and that one still has a lot of tragedy in it -- but for some reason, my brain is unable to take mainstream Pevensies and give them a happy ending. Bittersweet, yes, happy...not really.