(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

Looking up old, discarded chapter beginnings of Dust nets me some weird things -- I'd forgotten about this 3.5K of sheer religious meta I'd written! And the 3K of cattle-rustling! Oh, look, more meta. 2x4 to the head, seriously. I hope I'm a little more subtle than that now -- maybe I'll reuse some of this, I don't know, but it's really the opposite of subtle.

For example, this gem (Tirian to Lucy):

“Here you are,” Tirian echoes. “But here is no Aslan; here are the Kings and Queens of Summer, come to answer the prayers of ten thousand Narnians. Whether or not Aslan sent you is irrelevant, because you are the ones who are here and not he. When Narnia is saved, it will be your names that are celebrated, not his. Narnia has no reason to love Aslan, because it is not Aslan whose name has been heralded in Narnia for almost two thousand years. Aslan has no love for Narnia or ordinary Narnians; his interest is piqued only by heroes and humans and his care is capricious and willful, to be withdrawn at any opportunity.”

This was written -- oh, Christ, July of 2009. So, yeah, I hope I'm a little more subtle than that now. SHOW NOT TELL BEDLAM.

Comments

[scy]

*pats your shoulder*

I was reading one of my wips today, and yeah. It's a good thing to remember. *WINCES*

[bedlamsbard]

It is not terrible, but really: two-by-four to the head. If I ever get a tattoo, I am getting "show, don't tell" tattooed on the inside of my wrist. Or possibly "show" and "tell" across my knuckles, although that seems a bit like overkill and may send the wrong message. (Of course, this was written when Dust was constructed to be a two-by-four to the head as a Message. Because I was angry, and that made my characters angry. I am just now figuring that out.)

[autumnia]

You know, reading this, it sounds nothing like Tirian's character in Dust so far (though I could kind of see him saying this post-meeting with the Long Table). In this excerpt, he seems more bitter or hardened, not the wide-eyed, Pevensie-worshipping King he's been.

[bedlamsbard]

The chapter is -- very odd. I mean, it makes sense, sort of; I'm not sure the characterization holds up considering more recent events (I have this chapter titled as "dust 18 a.k.a. springtime is here again"), but it's got some really nice world-building alongside the blatant religious cynicism/meta. I mean, the first line of the chapter is "Are you religious, Tirian?" from Lucy. Here's a paragraph from a bit earlier in the chapter:

“It was not Aslan,” Tirian says. “It was an ass dressed in an old lion’s skin, paraded about by a talking ape who sought nothing but his own fortune. He colluded with the Calormenes in the hope that the Tisroc would reward him by treating him like a man, bedecking him with gold and jewels and titles. The Calormenes understood that the ass was not Aslan; they played along with the ape until they had Narnia in their palm of their hand, and then they revealed the truth to all of Narnia – that Aslan, our Aslan, was nothing more than an ass in lion’s clothing and that we had allowed ourselves to be manipulated by an old fool of an animal. And then Prince Bahadur gave the ape his reward: he murdered him in front of all of Narnia. The ass had been dead for weeks by then; even no one knows how. Perhaps by a Calormene hand, perhaps by a Narnian one, perhaps from nothing more than shock. And what did Aslan do through all of this?”

[autumnia]

You've just made me realize something interesting about all of this, with these excerpts and that last chapter of Dust with Susan...

Here we have in HHB, Aslan punishing Rabadash by turning him into an ass. And now, with this Tirian scene... it's like Tash and the Calormenes finally reaping their revenge on the Narnians. Here we have yet again, another ass getting involved in foreign politics only this time, it works out in favor of the Calormenes.

[bedlamsbard]

Oh, huh. I never thought of it that way! I wonder if Lewis did?