oh, god, history. *headdesk*

[bedlamsbard]

Post-LWW fic: Peter is sullen, Susan is still in that state of, "This can't possibly be happening," Edmund is playing his mother and creeping her the hell out, and Lucy is traumatized. Helen Pevensie is also kind of a wreck, because dude, talk about having many things do a number on your psyche all at once.

My state of mind: Wait, so, okay, the Pevensies were evacuated from London somewhere around September of 1940. (The Blitz started on September 7, movie canon shows us that, uh, the Blitz is going on.) And they probably would have returned in 1941? But canon (PC, this time) also tells us they were at school during the course of that year. Book canon (PC, again) tells us that this is supposed to be Lucy's first year at boarding school. So -- Peter, Susan, and Edmund left the professor's house to go to school, and Lucy was left at the professor's house? Or would they have already been back in Finchley at that point in time?

Meanwhile, if I have Peter going running, what would he be wearing and would it be regarded as normal or not? (This is in Finchley.)

...this is why I try and stick to writing about Narnia, not England. I can make stuff up.

ETA: And Helen Pevensie would probably be working, yes? Must check if Papa Pevensie would have returned from his deployment or not.

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Right, which confuses the hell out of me. Except that, well, maybe the Pevensies didn't evacuate in '39 (as the Internet kindly tells me that not everyone did), but they did in '40 when they were actually being bombed -- movie dates do give us that (although, to be fair, it's the soundtrack that gives the dates, but hi, it's not '39, the Blitz wasn't going on then).

*stares at fic* Okay, so they...must be home on a visit, then? Or something of the sort.

Maybe Papa Pevensie was an army liaison or something of the sort, and that's why they went to the U.S.? It not being strictly leisure travel, I mean.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

he could've been working for the war office in London, but that would mean he'd be home every night.

:muses: it's very possible he was stationed in the UK. Anything from manning one of the bases on the coast (various castles/forts built as coastal lookouts and defences were re-manned during the war as first line of defence - see Pendennis or St.Mawes in Cornwall) to being a guard somewhere - have you considered Bletchley? (in which case he couldn't breathe word one of what he was doing or where he was)

I tend to stick my fingers in my ears during the point they mention the family going to the US and go LALALALALA. Because, well, improbable to the point of staring and going 'are you bloody kidding me?'. Work, yes (film stars and journalists and whatnot). War effort work, yes. soldiers being shipped over. sailors and merchant marine. The sea-vacuees at the beginning of the war, yes. FAMILIES? FOR A HOLIDAY? Cross-Atlantic trips, you had the danger of being torpedoed. Getting passage would be effort enough.

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, the father gets a job lecturing in the US for a couple months? ::checks::

Father had got a job lecturing in America for sixteen weeks that summer, and Mother was to go with him because she hadn't had a real holiday for ten years. And Susan goes because she is pretty.

I...don't know if that really helps. Oh, Lewis. (Also, the politics in the Pevensie family must have been fucked up as all hell.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

The politics in the Pevensie family must have been a mess. (And the least of it is probably the dinner table conversation post-America where Mama Pevensie says, "Have you thought about where you're going, Peter?" and Peter says, "I'm joining the RAF. I'm leaving next week.)

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

Oh, Peter.

I read a really interesting fic once where Susan pulls away because she is like "Dad is fighting and might die and we never talk to Mum anymore! WE SHOULD ASK HER FOR ADVICE AND STUFF." And then her siblings are like "Omg stop being so stupid and come talk to us about Narnia."

And the parents probably don't see them for a few years--I can't imagine they'd be allowed back in London so soon. (Also, I find it interesting that the movie uses Mum/Dad instead of Mother/Father, like the books--and the books have, like, no parents mentioned ever. I find it really hard to believe book!Pevensies have a healthy family life even before LWW.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Considering the fact that in VotDT Mama and Papa Pevensie are pretty much, "Susan, you're pretty, you're coming to America with us. The rest of you can...do something. Else. That is not in America."

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

"Here, Peter, why don't you go make something of yourself with that Professor person? We'll take our attractive daughter overseas! The rest of you aren't mature enough, why don't you go hang out with our freaky relatives."

Um, okay, Pevensie parents.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Let us not even get into the fact that somehow the professor lost his house.

...does Professor Kirke have a gambling problem? Because that's the only thing I can think of why he might have lost the manor.

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

I...think maybe it was bombed? (Which sort of defeats the purpose of evacuating them out there, but whatever.) Or...something?

And why couldn't they have stayed with Polly anyway? They're calling her "Aunt Polly" by LB!

...Um, and *why* do the Scrubbs have a picture of a Narnian boat on the wall anyway? Who the hell painted it?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

IT IS THE MAGICAL PLOT FAIRY. LET US NOT THINK OF IT.

According to VotDT, Professor Kirke had "somehow become poor since the old days and was living in a small cottage with only one bedroom to spare."

Well, the Scrubbs got the painting as a wedding present "from someone she [Alberta Scrubb] did not want to offend."

Right, Kirke totally has a gambling problem. I'm giving him one, if nothing else; I can't think of another explanation.

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

"Why," exclaimed Peter. "It's England. And that's the house itself - Professor Kirk's old home in the country where all our adventures began!"
"I thought that house had been destroyed," said Edmund.
"So it was," said the Faun. (LB)

But I don't know when that would have happened.

I bet he DOES have a gambling problem. "Either she is mad, or she is lying, or there is a magic land in my wardrobe! My money is on the last one." ...And that explains why the house is gone.

...Where on earth did they get it from? I refuse to believe that some random person painted the Dawn Treader just for fun. ARGH, LEWIS.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

So...whoever he lost the house to knocked it down? England's clearly screwed up, man.

Kirke has a gambling problem. Totally canon now!

I bet Polly painted it. Or, I don't know, I kind of like the implication that other Earth people get through to the lands around Narnia sometimes and then go back again.

Or one of the Telmarines that got sent to war-stricken, being bombed by the Japanese AND the Americans South Seas painted it, since I suppose it would have been modeled after a Telmarine ship in the days before the Telmarines were terrified of the sea.

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Give Kirke a mad wife in the attic. Give him a mad Narnian wife locked in the attic, who burns the house down.

Yes, I am on the good crack.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And Peter says "If Dad was here, that would mean the war was over and we wouldn't have to leave." *grits teeth* I think I want him in a combat zone just because -- I mean, we aren't going to see him in this fic, probably (as soon as I figure out when this is set, sometime before PC but after LWW), but then, I don't know, I want him seeing soldiers in his children and being freaked out. God. This is why most of my stuff is set in Narnia, I don't have to deal with this sort of thing.

LEWIS. YOU WERE THERE. YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS STUFF.

Maybe he...works at the embassy? (Now I'm just grasping at straws. Must. Get. Mama Pevensie and Susan. TO AMERICA.)