i am so blaming finals week

[bedlamsbard]

You know what I've been thinking of? Werewolf Pevensies in Narnia!

Specifically, in LWW and VotDT. In LWW when Peter gets turned by Maugrim, and Aslan's reaction is something along the general lines of, "Well, you're a Dark Creature now, I wash my paws of you," so when the White Witch shows up to get Edmund back, her eyes light on Peter, who's standing with his sword in one hand, his other arm in a sling and bandaged, and she laughs delightedly and says something along the lines of, "Oh, this is just too perfect. Your golden High King, one of mine -- why, Aslan, if you're so desperate to keep the traitor, I'll take the werewolf in his place. After all, you have no claim on him now." And before Aslan can say anything, Peter shouts, "Done!" and his siblings start yelling at him as the White Witch smiles and then comes over and hits him around the head. And the only ones who protest when she carries him off are the rest of the Pevensies; Aslan just turns away and goes back into his tent, and the Narnian army stirs uneasily, because they're not sure.

And Peter wakes up caged, just before nightfall, and in Narnia the change is only forced at the first few full moons, and the White Witch taunts him and tries to turn him to her, and Peter is terrified. And then the moon rises, and he changes, and somehow he manages to break out and get back to the Narnian camp, but the guards aren't letting him through and the White Witch's people are right on his tail and one or the other of the two is going to kill him -- and then his siblings charge, because they are not letting the White Witch have any of them.

Which makes the Peter/White Witch fight in the battle that much more awesome.

Meanwhile, in VotDT, when they first end up in the Great Eastern Ocean, Edmund and Lucy switching to wolf form to paddle along as Caspian hauls Eustace out of the water, and then shaking themselves dry on the deck of the Dawn Treader before switching back to human, and the Narnians going, "!" and Eustace going, "OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK I THOUGHT THEY WERE CRAZY BEFORE."

Ha, I'd like to see them get taken into slavery then. That'll end badly. But mostly Eustace's reaction to finding out his cousins are werewolves, because seriously, his reaction to that has got to be good.

Comments

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Loco, señorita! LOCO!

But I think I like it.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, but there's just something about them...

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

your aslan is SUCH A BASTARD.

peter/jadis is delicious. hmm, though i guess he's still a wee kid in this one.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

my aslan is such a bastard. i have...issues, apparently?

he'd be fourteen, or thereabouts. i don't know, something about the white witch scene in pc tells me that peter and the white witch have more experience with each other than what we see in lww.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

she probably pops up during the golden age sometime. in another color. perhaps mauve.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*sedately* there is a reason she possesses my peter.

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Summer King, Winter Queen, samhain, beltane, korochun- I'm going to stop before I start pulling out the heavy-duty anthropology.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Which are all things I wasn't thinking of, just the interpersonal reactions.

Do tell.

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Well now that I think about it, it's kind of blazingly obvious (to me, anyways). Um, basically, you know how folklore and mythology all over the world has stories about how winter (personified) kills or banishes summer (personified) for half the year, until summer rises up, does epic battle etc etc and kills winter again? And they go 'round and 'round doing this every year?

Yeah, that, basically. Though usually it looks like winter is a man and spring/summer is a young woman (I scanned the section in The Golden Bough in like two minutes, so I'm not 100% here), and people all over the world have festivals (had, at least in Europe) where they'd make effigies of spring or winter and honor/destroy them accordingly, or people would dress up as the seasons and act out the destruction of winter, etc. and so on.

(Aside: what did people live on during the White Witch's reign? I mean, half the point of a harvest festival is that you gather and store food for the winter, and, uh, I'm pretty sure Narnians didn't do that. :/)

The first story that comes to mind is the Welsh story of Hagfan and Arawn. Arawn was the King of the Underworld (Death), and every year he did battle with Hagfan (a beautiful young man), and every year he lost. Basically he nabs a passing king (Pwyll) and gets Pwyll to kill Hagfan because Arawn cannot kill Hagfan; it just doesn't stick. Pwyll kills Hagfan and there is much rejoicing, etc etc.

Some scholars think that Arawn vs Hagfan = Winter/Death vs Spring/Life, or at least it was inspired by a much, much older story.

So. Peter is the Summer King, who defeats the Winter Queen (twice, it must be noted!). In the movie, anyways, it's always summer during his reign (which would be just as problematic as eternal winter, no?).

*hands* SORRY. THAT WAS DISORGANIZED.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. *fascinated* Yeah, I'd never thought of that, which, hello, I should have.

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Oh, and obviously, Hades and Persephone and Demeter. Them too. *nods*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, yes. OH NARNIA WHY SO ACCIDENTALLY COMPLEX?

[lyamainu.livejournal.com]

Because the gods want us to procrastinate homework?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

PROBABLY SO.

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

OMG THE VODT WEREWOLF-NESS OF EDMUND AND LUCY. I totally want to see Eustace WTF-ing at that.

He would demand they be fed that nutritious food of his, so it would fix them, or something. XD /crack

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And for once in his life with the Pevensies, Caspian will be able to go, "Yes! Yes, I understand this! GO ME."

Ha, dragon island when Eustace goes missing, Edmund and Lucy changing to wolf form to try and track him down via their noses.

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

LULZ, I can TOTALLY see Caspian doing a celebratory dance on the deck of the Dawn Treader, and his crew going, "WTF?!"

Hahaha, nose tracking.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Although really they wouldn't be all that much more useful as werewolves in VotDT. *sigh*

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

That's true. There's only so much you can do on a boat in the first place. D:

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And there's not all that much combat that happens in VotDT anyway.

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

It is a rather dull book. D:

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Can they transform their clothes, too? Because one major drawback in any werewolf fic is the fact that the poor person ends up buck nekkid somewhere, face down in a puddle of drool, blood, or whatever. Might be a bit of a shock for the sailors on the DT if Edmund & Lucy can't!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Clothes, weapons, armor -- anything they're carrying. Makes them very effective in battle.

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Makes them effective in other ways, too. On an urgent errand, lost your horse/got swept overboard/whatever? Transform to wolf, and you can not only run a lot faster and farther than your human shape could, and climb more readily, you'd then be able to transform back and be all ready to conduct business, with the treaty/message/etc in hand, undamaged. Good way to lose trackers off your trail, too-it would probably confuse the dogs (or anyone) like hell if your scent waned and got replaced by something *almost* like you, *almost* like a wolf and *totally* dangerous...:)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it was never all that good for politics, because werewolves are dark creatures, and there were some mixed reactions in Narnia, but so damn useful.

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

What I wonder is:


Are there *born* werewolves, as well as *made* ones? How do they feel about the made ones, if so?

If all are "made", then how-the bite, yes...but originally was it a curse, a gift from somebody that went awry, learned magic, a virus...?

Is there a cure, however dangerous? Can non-humans become werewolves?

And how do the werewolves themselves deal with the differences in the people who become werewolves? Because they weren't all evil or dark before being turned, and the person's nature will affect the kind of werewolf they become-witness the Pevensies, who may be dangerous, but aren't evil (at least YET).


It strikes me that you could get someone turned were, who was originally widely acknowledged to be a good person or people/special to Aslan-Narnia, to act as a liason between the dark creatures and the various mixed tribes of others. Neither side would be totally happy about them, but they'd probably listen to them more than they'd listen to the opposite camp.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. The fact that Peter was the first one turned -- Peter, the kid who was supposed to be the High King! and who later does become the High King -- is a pretty big point, and Narnia has a little more cooperation with the dark Narnians than they do in the regular Warsverse.