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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years

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instead of me making a post where i briefly rate btvs characters im gonna do a post im sure ive already made abt how in the first book alone its shown that narnia is an unreasonable twilight zone to deal with and the lore is wild and aslan is sort of a jerk and bad with dealing with children / dealing with the world he created; or: the battle of the reader vs cs lewis

ok first of all. this book completely wrongs edmund. cs lewis is determined to have us believe that he is a Bad Sort but? not so much that when he's "redeemed" we have to doubt for even a moment that he's now Good Forever. and the reasons the reader keeps being given about why we should be disgusted with edmund are incredibly weak and often bemusing

to start with, cs lewis hates boarding schools which is probably because they could be awful and so he throws out the reason that edmund used to be as nice and purehearted as his siblings until boarding school spoilt his immortal soul? were peter and susan taught at home or in public school then? if lewis was making a comment on how terrible boarding school is, why isnt edmund given any sympathy for this by the narrator or his siblings who just seem largely annoyed by him?

and since at the start the kids are being sent off from home in the middle of a world war their dad is off in and have to go to a boring house with an uncle? who for some reason never like, bothers to speak to them or see them ever. tf, dude. and theyre in england in the first place. anyhow, the fact that edmund being in a bad mood over this is supposed to be evidence of his crappiness is a touch unreasonable. he's like what, 8-11? so much of this book hinges on his character needing to be saved from his own badness that its sort of unforgivable that said badness really doesnt exist. hates his terrible school? hates his terrible situation? difficult? fights with siblings? how is this meant to be fit for A Just and Divine Damnation. why is there such a complete lack of sympathy. does lewis understand anything about children.

the answer is that "adults assuming these young as hell children have the same emotional maturity and logical processes and understanding of the world as adults" is a constant theme. these random schoolchildren become the supreme rulers of an entire country in a world theyve never been in after like, a week. the whole series runs on a fair number of other English Brand notions abt classism, racism, divine right to rule, etc. but even if it wasnt "only humans can lead", why would any children be allowed? children who had never been there? for gods sake

moving on to the plot: lucy finds narnia, etc. i guess on account of being Young and A Girl, which here means spiritual purity? and also as a character trope means Innocence. ok. meeting an exposition-providing faun, getting back, nobody believes her because why would they. their great(but not good) uncle bothers showing up upon coincidence. why hasnt he ever even said "hello, im not evil" to the kids staying at his house?for gods sake. he then explains to the kids a version of one of lewis's apologistic things that supposedly logically proves that christianity is valid and here proves that narnia is real, which it actually does neither of. shove it, clive staple lewis. your argument is crap

oh but edmund went to narnia along with lucy before that had happened. this is supposed to be a crucial point where he meets the white witch and is supposed to be like, dont be like edmund kids!! but frankly he behaves perfectly reasonably during that encounter and also when they all get to narnia. coz, ok, he's in an alternate universe alone which is disorienting for anyone. then the witch just happens to stumble across him. was he supposed to have prevented that somehow? lucy just stumbled across mr tumnus and trusted him inherently and it happened to go well. the first person edmund meets is someone else and he talks with her for a minute because she is a grown ass woman, probably gonna kill him otherwise, and also he's in an alternate universe alone with no idea where anyone is or if he can get back? here is a quick tangent:

a moral throughout the series is that you can sense somethings inherent goodness or truthfulness through how much it gives you a nice gut feeling. yet frankly this is not the only way to go about making choices. and not everything bad sets off alarms and not everything that sets off alarms is bad, so i dont know how much of a lesson that is. but for example, here the witch doesnt give edmund the warm fuzzies, and it is supposed to be a mistake or moral weakness on his part to not have.....what? gone running aimlessly through the arctic landscape in his jammies from a self-proclaimed queen with a sledge? he didnt really have any options here. how is he meant to know she's not really the ruler of this crap place that, so far as he knows, he lives in now? and ok, then somehow his big ol mistake is eating some damn candy and having some hot cider or whatever. it is eternal winter, why is this child a sinner for getting up out of the snow and humoring this lady by taking some offered snackaroos. also, everyone says turkish delight isnt even good. ask for some m&m's, ed!!! love yourself!! and even if he is supposed to know never to eat magical food or be bound to the fairy queen, lucy went and had tea with a fuckin faun so again, they basically did the same thing but edmund met the wrong person by sheer luck of it, so he has to die. LEWIS!!!!!!!

another big Edmund Must Die moment is when he and lucy get back from narnia and edmund lies that narnias fake, because he's evil. first of all, the fact that lucy tells him that some stranger she's buddies with says the white witch is evil and a liar. how is her stranger meant to be more reliable than the witch? this is just the word of two randos pitted together. how is edmund meant to understand this as Proof that the queen is evil and an imposter to the throne. frankly, she's functionally the actual queen, so its not even really a lie? narnia is impossible. secondly, it is 10000% understandable that edmund would realize that if he backs up lucy's claims then everyone is going to go looking for narnia, and in the experience he's just had, its a hellhole. and lucy has just told him that he possibly met an evil witch that is interested in also meeting his siblings? wouldnt be too thrilled about going back there then. and thirdly, if as lewis says he just lies because he is evil? does this man again not understand that Impulsive Pettiness is a bit different coming from a 9 yr old than a grown adult. the narrator is just so aghast at edmund constantly when its like dude he's.....not really doing anything, and also theyre all babies. let him be a bit of a little shit without the devil herself coming to claim his spilled blood for it, mayhaps

also, there is a bit of confusion about the fairy food! it is implied to be actually kind of magically binding, like to a degree he has to cooperate with the witch now because he took food he was offered? or at least it is somehow "corrupting." so how is this meant to be a sin if also it is not even his own choices here! how was he meant to have avoided this? dont take candy from strangers, sure. BUT IF YOU DO, YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET!!!

all the pevensies are in narnia, lucy lets it for everyone else remarkably fast, but i guess she is like 6 and having a nice time with her family in a magical land. although you'd think she'd be more concerned about all that witch stuff, and the fact that mr tumnus was about to straight up childnap her and deliver her to childmurder. like, good on you for not doing that. but how many people has he been selling out all this time! its literally been his job for however long. he's had to have had something to show for it. is morally greyness just arbitrarily sorted into black and white Good/Evil characters and these kids are supposed to sniff out which way these things fall? for gods sake. see, my point is that this adult faun who was going to turn a kindergartener in to be killed until he decided nah, and previously definitely probably narced on people in the past, is way crapper than a kid who has been grumpy and ran into the wrong person? what is edmunds Betrayal. was it the food eating

anyways, then peter is a total dick, but in like a noble way. in that he's mad at edmund for ages but like...again, ok, he's like 12-14 or whatever, who knows. the point is that if he can hold a grudge against his siblings for being annoying, why is that trait evil in edmund? it is because narrator lewis says so, damn him. but if peter is the Natural Born Leader of A Country here, you'd think he could at least manage not to keep giving a hard time to the one of their group who is going to be any trouble keeping in line at all, since lucy is Pure and susan gets the literature role of the Mini Mom. theyre not going anywhere. you basically had one job, pete.

fun fact: this is where they find out mr tumnus is taken by the queens evil forces, referred to as the police. this is basically the only book i can think of where the evil enforcement agency is called a police force. Interesting Stuff

even though im not sure what any of them think they can accomplish by wandering around, they end up following a random bird and following some random beavers. they know this is ok because of those warm fuzzies, and the fact edmund isnt feeling those good vibes is because he's evil, but honestly its a shit plan following some random bird and assuming some beavers are gonna be good guys. the only people edmund knows of in this country are an imposing queen and her kidnapper who's totally nice. also if tumnus told lucy that the queen has loads of spies, why are they crashing around inherently trusting the first things they see? lucy trusts a faun who was going to sell her to satan, edmund sort of has to trust an ominous lady who turns out to possibly be evil? why would he not find it a questionable idea to wander into this beaver dam

in further supposed evidence of edmund being all devil-corrupted by d&d, he doesnt get the warm fuzzies when these random beavers start talking abt a magic lion who's great and wandering around somewhere, you should totally go to him. but they have like, actually zero knowledge about this world beyond the differing accounts of those theyve happened to bump into? how would they know some lion who isnt even around ever is the rightful ruler of narnia, vs some lady who is actually around? she's got one up on aslan for that. where've you been, buddy. what took you an entire century. aslan SHOULD TOTALLY sound kind of crap because, uh, HE IS?

edmund goes off somehow without anyone noticing and the beavers are like oh yeah saw that one coming, that'll be the magic food. like??? you couldve said. or at least not let him sidle off out the door half an hour ago? for gods sake. and again: if this is magic food rules, why isnt the magical kit-kats the Great Traitor of All Of Narnia! how is the concept of sin fitting into all of this. again, edmund just ran into the wrong person. and lewis is just like no, see, but he deserves this because he is irritable and childish and mean. CHILDREN LEWIS!!! HAVE YOU HEARD OF THAT!!!

apparently edmund meanders all the way to the white witches place b/c all the time the entirety of narnia seems to be a couple of miles across or a few hundred miles, depending on whats convenient to the story. the moral of narnia's weird lore is that its only as consistent as cs lewis feels like making it, which is sometimes Completely Bewildering when he just sort of throws stuff out there but moves the narration right along. presumably he wasnt expecting this to operate on the rules that any of this would be regarded with any level of analysis, since tolkien was a contemporary and not a predecessor. but still, dude, get your story straight? especially within the same book.

and anyways also, again! the magic food rules come up. because that is meant to be edmunds motivation, besides just being petty. he is magically bound to the fig newtons. which is i guess meant to explain away him literally going the extra mile for this witch shit, but also still letting him be blamed for that, since he is being SUCH a jerk, see kids? dont act less than chipper at your terrible life unless you want to take your soul's rightful place as the devils property, moreso than literally anyone else in all of narnia? alright. this books plot points are just a bit like.......ok

the other kids definitely have no option but to trust their choice in "trust the first people we bump into." luckily its uh...its fine. but wtf

who is narnia santa!!!!! how can there be a dude based on a saint? does narnia have the concept of saints? is he a dead guy???? i can slightly accept that narnia has a christmas in that maybe that comes from the dude who was made king at its birth being a random english cabbie, i suppose maybe this guy was like "fuck it, its christmas and you're going to like it." but do narnians know what xmas is about at all??? canonly aslan is actually just also jesus in the england-world, but did the cabbie king know that? did he explain the concept of jesus? does monotheistic narnia also accept the concept of a separate god existing in another universe, or are they all also assuming aslan=jesus? but this isnt as confusing as the santa guy. is he like how there's wizards running around? this is so weird. what magic shit would edmund have got. wouldnt it have been nice or at least useful for santa to have given the other pevensies whatever he was going to have given edmund. does that boy also not get xmas presents because he is on the naughty list. bad month for edmund

speaking of edmund, he honestly sort of disappears from the book as soon as he has the realization that the witch is mean :( despite the plot of rest of the book being essentially centered around him? and him finally being in a position for the narration to stop talking about what a cruel cruel monster he is? ok

aslan is just a dick not only for leaving narnia on its own for ages but also just personality wise. rude to the children. they are all like "aslan our brother" and aslan is like "shut up about your brother already, i'll do something about it if i want to but if i dont want to he deserves whatever's coming to him." like? have a little patience for the reasonable questions and uncertainties of these kids, ffs

how is this massive climate shift not fucking shit up like, ecologically. does anyone own shorts at this point? how are plants alive. its magic

oh yeah, forgot that there was that bit in the white witches statue garden of death where edmund straight up thought this one lion he saw must be aslan. wasnt he also getting figurative cold feet until he saw that, also? again, in these circumstances, how was he meant to know that WASN'T aslan and that the witch wasnt the one who was right. shrug! but now another total coincidence is whats driving edmund to go say hey to the witch again instead of backing out of her creepy house. see you in hell ed

back to aslan........uhhh when a wolf attacks susan, who is like, dangling precariously from a branch in fear of her life, aslan orders the skilled warriors not to save susan asap, but instead to let this 13 yr old holding a sword for the first time mosey on over and have a one on one fight with this talking wolf. sure, aslan knows the situation is under control. but the people who dont know?? are these kids in mortal peril? aslan is such a dick. he shouldnt be putting these children in these positions of Leader Of My Army Now, Go Into Actual Combat. but thats just how he rolls. trial by fire, dweebs

oh yeah and since the chance happens to arrive he sends some people to go get edmund back. thanks for bothering to rescue a child! gods sake

then he has a nice long talk with edmund about never being annoyed with your siblings or theres literal hell to pay, i guess! whatever. at least he's paying attention to him for a moment instead of just handing him a sword and telling him not to complain. thanks? telling his siblings not to be dicks about it all is also very mature of him. and apparently necessary since again, cough, peter? getting mad at edmund for being petty and immature maybe shouldnt have involved sniping at him a ton and ignoring him to the point he just left for an hour before anyone was like, wasnt there more of you. lord. im just saying, maybe everyone needs to mature a bit before they are monarchs

psych!! these kids are ready for anything now

except for the bit where the witch comes and demand edmund's head, since...........................i guess she was trying to play the long con? by hoping aslan would do the ol switcheroo? or maybe she was just mad and wanting a good ritualistic murder. but despite the whole damn book being about this explanation of the crucifixion of jesus, it.........doesnt really make sense within the god damn Lore. she has claim to edmunds life because he is a Traitor? to whom? the witch straight up lied to him abt what she wanted to do with his siblings, so how was he meant to have betrayed them if he hadnt known what she intended to do? how can he betray someone if it was the fault of the Law Of The Magic Almond Joy? sure, he lied and snuck around and was pissy and all, but how is that on a level above any other number of stunts other narnians are sure to have pulled. she has narnian spies? arent they traitors? does she have to formally make the claim for the "i get to kill the traitor or narnia is destroyed b/c The Lore, Fuck You" for it to come into effect? is edmund just called a traitor for the strategy of it all, since the humans have to be alive to defeat her. but on what grounds

also, who agreed to give her that authority of traitor-killer? why does that role exist. what. whomst. lewis, explain this?

again like.....how are the children on their own for this bit, either. there is no sympathy for being children in lewisverse

ok and uhhhh? aslan leaving on the night before a battle w/o like....telling anyone? they wouldnt even have known he'd died if a dryad hadnt have been like "you'll never guess this shit." i guess omniscience or whatever. but for fucks sake, peter outranks everyone else in the army just because he's human? he doesn't know shit! you made him fight a wolf! whatever. why even put the humans in battle if you need them to live. whatever

susan and lucy of course have to witness this aslancide until they also witness this resurrection. cool. but the thing is that like? sure aslan couldve just flat out let edmund die, but besides the fact that theres the whole prophecy thing to mean that the kids need to live, but also, he was sort of backed into a corner re: having to die himself because of some technicality in narnia's rulebook? i get that this wasnt meant to be completely an allegory so much as just "gateway christianity drug" but wasnt the jesus bit supposed to be done just totally as a favor or whatever. aslan was sort of just strategizing as far as we know. like, is edmund representing The Sins Of All Humanity, or is he out here like "if jesus dying wouldve saved just one person it wouldve happened all the same"? either way, it makes it seem like aslan HAS to do this whole dying thing out of "so the world doesnt end" vs choosing to out of being cool abt it. i mean......not that uh jesus was supposed to have been psyched up abt his death. but you know what im getting at here. whatever, the Lore

again, the battle seems to be happening like, five miles from the witches house? coz everyone from the statues just makes the journey with aslan in one go. what are the scales here, lewis!!

aslan shows up in time to just kill the white witch himself, with his god lion teeth? how gross must that have been. also! he couldve done that at any time!!! but prophecy whatever sighhhhhhhh

its funny that lucy gets impatient with aslan for interrupting her moment of "can i make sure my brother isnt dead" and he gets impatient with her about that? shes in like preschool. also, you have healing powers!!!! so says uhhh.....the next book? or the one after. and anyone can use that magic elixer. and can you stop being so damn testy abt these childrens concerns for each other's lives!!!

theyre monarchs now, and aslan just fucks off. he couldve bothered to say goodbye, if people dont happen to see him meander off, how do they even know if he left or is just hanging around somewhere? seeing as he just snuck off overnight and died without letting anyone know. but more importantly he's again left this country entirely on its own save for these kids who know nothing except that they better be nice to each other or some random magical law might come into effect where someone gets to knock on their door and demand their kidneys or the world ends.

for real though! this is like, a country coming out of a crappy period and now in a wild transitional period and the only leaders are these kids who just showed up who have never been here before in their lives. how are they meant to manage a natl economy? its not mentioned here (is it) but theres an entire other racist-caricature-mashup of a country to the south already? how are they at diplomacy between two countries they know nothing abt. how will they form policies! they are 11! what tf is narnias infrastructure, beyond "sparse." where did the line to the throne go? was there always direct descendants to the first king in archenland, which by the way also exists with people in it b/c fuck you. i guess so...i forget where caspian comes from.

fun fact, when my sister and her friend went to disney world some yrs ago, they took a pic with a dude playing caspian a la the films, whom looked a lot like the actual actor, aka a total babe. its a great photo

anyways ummm. see the entire narnian govt just disappears? which i suppose they figure out when the four of them just leave and never come back. i suppose its lucky the narnians assumed it was magic and not regicide. because, if you live in narnia? fuck you. honestly what did they do in the aftermath. nobody nonhuman is even allowed to be a ruler. do they have like, other elevated positions? was there no regulation. coz thats alright but the series implies that narnia is always supposed to have a king around in order for things to go well. ok

so uh its govtless i guess until what, these people accidentally stumble upon a portal to narnia and become the telmarines who take over narnia? but not rightfully i guess, because even though theyre humans, they were probably insufficiently noble about it. or just not aslan-approved. honestly ok where tf did the calormenes come from? another portal? why did they restrict themselves to a certain region? why did narnia not encompass the entire world? why did you need to be white and english to be christian. i know this is a case of just introducing things that dont make sense but moving the story along before anyone asks questions but uh..........louie

Also How Tf Are These Kids Going From Grown Adult Monarchs To 10 Yr Old Schoolchildren In 1940s England Again over the course of like 10 seconds. before they left this clowns didnt even recognize the damn lantern! how do you forget that ever. ridiculous

where the "put in what you want and dont bother explaining it unles you feel like it" strategy is really fun is with that lantern, imo. on account of he just put it in as a Fuck You Buddy to tolkien, which is funny. good job

but really how are you not even going to devote a single sentence to that fucked up transition these kids? adults in kids bodies? kids with the memories of what it is like to have become and been adults until just a second ago? are going through. like...............ok. do they have to larp being normal children for a while. It's Magic, Fuck You

aslan is just.....kind of a jerk!

this book teaches you nothing

The Lore

the end

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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years

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yallnve realized by now that this is a fulltime 100% narnia blog...and as i havent slept since finding out someone somewhere was set on making "the silver chair" into a movie & the dynamic world of narnalysis is the best i can offer,

first of all im like.........ya rly gonna just jump into the silv chair!! im not really interested w the details on what anyone plans to do with the content b/c i donno, ive never been really interested in the book. not because its like bad or anything, actually it's probably the most cinematic in terms of things actually happening at a steady rate. i just like what i like, maybe because its sort of lower scale? whatever. its not like its hard to make into a movie i dont think, is what im saying. that would be either the horse and his boy or prince caspian, probably the latter b/c like a genuine 1/3 of it is an expository flashback. but all of the books are bit tricky to adapt coz theyre just short, you have to pad basically all of them in some way or another. but sure. silver chair. w/e

the thing is that you Have to assume despite starting afresh that theyre doing this one since the first three books have been recently filmed? and this being the fourth. but How Are You Going To Just Jump Into This One. thats an awful lot of exposition thats being built on, at this point in the game we're neck deep in the Lore. you'd really just have to have read the previous books or at least seen the movies. are they counting on the audience to have done that? but at the same time its really not fair to fully rely on that. in the book you can go "read the other books" and wave it off in a sentence of "and then they explained it all" which does tend to happen in the actual text a fair amt. its a bit awkward in movie form though? its a plot point right off that eustace knows who prince/king caspian is. so then you have to sum up dawn treader. and that has to do with what happened in prince caspian, in which the plot of lww is pretty important. like, alright, possibly you could just explain tvotdt & take it from the perspective of the girl who doesnt know crap about narnia yet? but thats not nearly as good a starting point as lww. on account of that ones meant to be a starting point! i'll see scholastic / any publishings that try to push magician's nephew as the first book In Hell, frankly. strongest narnpinion right there. the published order over the chronological order

anyways i'm sure it can be figured out, its just.......Interesting to think how the silver chair intro might be made into Intro To Narnia v.2.0? will they even try or will it be "ok but seriously just have read the books or whatever before you come in here." mystery unfolds

another thing thats interesting is that lww is clearly abt like, hey kids here's a version of the resurrection for you. whereas silver chair doesnt have anything to do w any Biblical Events at all (tho of course neither does prince caspian, tvotdt, or the horse & his boy). it is instead about how atheists will try to steal your firstborns for.................reasons. (no reason, theyre just evil.) this one is just a major amplified version of another particularly ridiculous CS Lewis Apologism Favorite that runs through the books: that when it comes to having no Faith (in aslan but you know also the abrahamic god) everyone who doubts aslan/god is like, actively lying to themselves, because they have that Gut Feeling telling themself that their faith is not only whats righteous but also whats true. the gut feeling of truth is a big theme in the books, shit hinges on it all the time and makes doubt all Clearly Sinful instead of a reasonable result of aslan effing off for centuries or whatever. and speaking of, god only knows if lewis is really suggesting that real life doubt or nonreligiousness is 100% populated by people who are clenching their fists like "i know in my heart jesus is real but i dont want to believe it so i won't, damnit!" which yknow makes no sense for like....life, and uh? i dont know what its supposed to mean for like....other religions? i dont think he's about putting the nuance that not every concept of religious Faith is the same as in christianity into this book, i dunno abt his thoughts irl. lord knows its a mystery how he thinks that "if jesus wasnt lying and jesus wasnt Insane then christianity is real" argument means anything. nothing in the world fits that argument for finding out if something is true or not........and also it hinges on that concept of "insanity" which......like.......i'm sure is all about nice 1940s ideas of how "insane" people act. its shit, throw it out, i mean. and besides? as though theres a Logic argument to prove christianity as truth? have you just Solved religion, lewis? have you? sometimes, i swear..

anyhow so in the silver chair its just a big ol festival of his "atheists are lying to themselves" and "atheism starts by someone who Knows The Truth (jesus is real) lying to others, likely aka the devil or whatever, and the stand-in for the devil is a witch again." and lewis really seems fond of the allegory of the cave. smh! like, in that allegory "knowing" that your faith is true is impossible! but youre also out here arguing its logically provable? and don't forget the gut feelings thing. but it makes NO sense for him to drop it into this book universe because in this allegory the prince captured by atheists & the protags are people who have hopped into the cave and seen the sun and shit!! they dont need to be the people who have only ever seen shadows who need to be convinced that an outside world can exist!!! bitch!!! get your allegory in order. silver chair just.....lord. the lying babysnatching atheists

a n y w a y s . . . thats a weird conflict to put in your third act, and its also a weird argument to make re christianity, that even though you acknowledge its impossible to know that your faith is in something thats real, you're willing to risk it? its sort of like that idea that you might as well be religious even if you dont "believe" any religion is true, because you lose nothing and potentially gain both comfort in life and reward in an afterlife. but its kind of a big deal in christianity that you're supposed to believe that what you believe in Is Literally Real. maybe apologists are allowed to do that sort of thing in their arguments, i suppose. its like in the last battle where he has a dude who believes in another deity accepted into the christian afterlife b/c despite a lack of belief, his virtuous nature is, from a practical standpoint, accepted to be for all intents and purposes to be equivalent to having believed in the christian god, like if he happened to follow all other rules except the Believing In Jesus one then he's good to go anyhow. interesting in that its also supposed to be pretty vital in christianity that one has to accept jesus as god in order to be Saved all up into heaven! i suppose that guy in the book was meant to have been converted right before death or whatever. at that point its very unclear who is exactly dead or not, but probably everyone. still, aslan clearly makes the argument that "basically you might as well have been believing in me, so you're good to go." fascinating stuff. another one to ask lewis abt

uhhhh another point is that i think theyre intending to make other movies also? but not all four remaining ones!! and if i had to guess which one they'd be leaving out uhh lets say....the horse & his boy....................which conveniently is the other sort of sparsely plotted one. two kids ride horses towards narnia, briefly have to have a shenanigansy undercover sneak through a crowded city, ride towards narnia some more, and then one of them stays at some guys house while the other kid goes into narnian battle where he himself doesnt actually do anything, but that fact is described pretty funnily. its still sort of a fun one, on account of the sneaking around hijinx, and the fact that it happens to give ANY of the details of what tf the pevensies did for like the twenty years they reigned over narnia's golden age which the lww just tells you absolutely n o t h i n g about! the answer is: a lot of battling probably, on account of narnia went from being ruled for a century by someone who could kill you in a second and also why would you have invaded narnia at that time, it wouldve been like trying to invade russia. but then a bunch of kids took the throne and upended the whole system and the snow went away, it seems like a destabilizey time to invade or whatever. imo. but then again they mightve bought themselves a few years on account of aslan having shown up and all. but lbr, they were just put into battle right off and coronated three seconds later, theres no reason on that front that they wouldnt shy away from having more battles. and the books said there were a lot of battles. and in thahb, its like, well we've been battling a lot lately and now we're in shenanigans and we'll just have to battle our way out of it, which they absolutely do. edmund straight up decapitates a guy. how ARE they supposed to just transition immediately into english schoolchildren after a couple decades of that mess??? they even have the fancy courtly speech. its magic i suppose

the point is its kind of a fun book, oh also, aslan is TOP shenanigans in this one. he straight up actually attacks one of the protagonists, for Reasons, but still. not that he doesn't murder the pevensies in the last book. i mean, i guess you could argue that its just like Divine Coincidence where what with the unaligned timelines betwixt england and narnia, aslan couldve just picked the moment everyone was gonna die anyway and just tossed them over to X point in time in narnia. but I Donno.....im kinda with that university student who's stressing about whether aslan cause ww2 for the purpose of sending the pevensies to the wardrobe. like, that train accident that killed everybody killed four people on the platform & five people on the train in different carriages and everything, or maybe the numbers are switched because i dont remember where lucy was. im saying, that was a hell of a crash. but sure. anyhow, even more fun, aslan appears as a cat to the Other protag while he's spending a night on the edge of the wilderness, and scratches him for saying he once threw rocks at a stray cat. like, hard #same, aslan!!! wtf dude why arent YOU being claimed by satan

whats also fun is that it doesn't really take place in narnia, which is also the reason besides pacing that you wouldnt really want to make this one into a film? because uhhhh the whole worldbuilding lewis crapt upon everyone for calormen is clearly racist as fuccck. if you arent already familiar with all the books (namely this one and i suppose the last battle) then its like.....i guess its some sort of vague notion of the ottoman empire? its really just a mashup of any number of white-english-variety racist notions. everyone is brown, is it an inaccurate stab at an amorphous amalgam of middle eastern culture? east asian? are people islamic or hindu? just try and guess what he was going for because its just. not based on anyone needing to know anything about reality. lewis was against seasoning food i guess, because it will mention i guess like, people cooking with onions like the heathens they are. (spoilers: this country just exists in the narniaverse to represent Those Heathens). its not necessarily an Evil place, they are noble savages ok!! with their formal seriousness and cutthroat customs.......b/c they are not as advanced and peaceful as the white northern christians, see. closer to the less developed violence of their inherently backwards ways and Cruel Society reigned by violence DONT CONVERT OR YOU'LL DIE, KIDS. but also.....you wont be white? the reason of calormens existence is really never explained. telmarines came from englandverse on accident thru a magic portal just lying around, possibly thats whats meant to have happened there too? its never attempted to be explained. anyways its basically the intro to the disney aladdin.

lewis is entirely inconsistent and self contradictory all throughout the series for the sake of the authors convenience. this is part of what makes the stories fun and the worldbuilding charming. it is also what allows him to pull stunts that have you pinching the bridge of your nose in exasperation and writing out essays to try to figure out how narnia is supposed to work. it is also what allows him, five books in, to be like, "here is the country to the south where the demon-worshipping gross scary brown uncivilized folk sit around hating narnia and confirming any racist notion you have about any nonwhite nonchristian country or culture." thanks, clive

its of course ludicrous and, of course, the protagonist shasta just so happens to be white despite being raised calormene. spoilers, he is narnian. or really from archenland, which isnt narnia but is still white and pro-narnia so its alright. i mean, technically narnia is allied with calormen at all points in time of the series? calormen just quietly tries an invasion in that book and also in the last book. so thats interesting. i suppose lewis is anti-crusades, which is big of him. the pevs arent out here trying to conquer calormen and convert them to narnianism. so that must not be the Destiny of the true christian? or are we meant to believe calormenes are beyond help? shasta who is of course secretly not "really" calormene is still representing someone undergoing "conversion," yet again, the guy is white. i suppose being brown is whats hopeless?

theres an inadvertently laughable line at the start of the book where a calormene expositorially points out that shasta is white by comparing him to the "accursed but beautiful" narnians. who are all white? is he just talking about the pevensies? the archenlanders (i cant remember where theyre meant to have come from either.) are like, all humanoid narnian natives white?? wtf, aslan. anyways, the dialogue is unnatural and funny enough, but its also like.....ok lewis, we got it, whiteness is the standard for all universes and everyone wishes they were white. stupid, sexy narnians.

what alllllmost suggests that being a poc isnt an automatic fastpass to hell is that im fairly sure the second protagonist aravis is a nonwhite calormene?? i dont remember it ever saying she was "fair" like the narnians the way the book immediately points out that shasta is. she is of course escaping an arranged marriage (the calormene plot to sort of vaguely try to invade narnia is also based on forcing susan to marry a dude she doesnt like yet who she apparently genuinely considered as a suitor when he wasnt acting like a jerk? so not only a dude who isnt white but a dude who isnt aslanian christian. its a whole complicating element to just toss out in this otherwise flat af worldbuilding, dude!! not to mention? despite the battles and shit, susan was out here considering marriage? how absolutely fucked up would it have been if any of them married and then effed off back to england. moving along) but she is from the start portrayed as equally sympathetically as shasta and nothing about her is pointed out as being Bad and Reprehensible, which the narration has no qualms about doing. she even gets to spend some time with her calormene friend, who is not exactly meant to be as sympathetic or noble but certainly isnt portrayed as at all evil. like...theres at least the occasional exception apparently, in which maybe not every person is inherently evil and violent and cruel. who knows

also aravis definitely later marries the white protag?? but apparently interracial marriage isnt entirely Unthinkable here. wait, also, aravis claims to be somehow a direct descendant of the calormene god tash? first of all, is that true, comma, possible? in the last book its confirmed that tash is real, albeit, like, a demon. dunno what c.s. is telling us with that one. is aravis related to a demon. we can only guess on account of the theme of Inconsistency

anyways. i suppose you could make it into a movie if you just threw out the racist shit. but the "calormen is also distinguished from narnia via its religion" element is also a touch janky. can it be thrown out too? if they intend to produce the last battle, will it be thrown out then. it kind of comes up again. if you get rid of those elements though, the stakes get a little blurrier and more political and more "wait well why would they have any beef with each other in the first place" if you cant just easily point out that the calormenes are shaking their fists at the narnians and their demon worship and their jealousy at not being white. again, are all centaurs white or something? wtf

truly calormene is the most racist ass shit in the whole series, but the concept comes up in less painfully direct ways other times, too. why are there native species in narnia that are considered inherently evil?? sure, the white witch as the stand-in for the devil wasn't originally from narnia. was she creating shit too? i dont remember what she was up to on account of i havent read the magicians nephew in a hot minute. i know they had to take a pegasus into a garden of eden type shit to smoke her out of wherever she was lurking for some reason or another. still. whys there whole types of creatures who are universally and unilaterally condemned? i know we're meant to believe that they just have evil intent according to their nature, but uh....theres no point at which any of these creatures are given a chance? maybe they served the white witch because she was nice to them for once. you're not given the chance to know. EXCEPT for the fact that you get shit like: giants are evil save for the occasional exception, like in lww when a "good" giant is described as having like, a long family line, and "traditions." not like Those Sorts. they do talk in like prince caspian and shit, when their numbers are miserable and theyre discussing tactics, whether to get help from the gross hags and harpies and etc and ppl will talk about Those People and Sorts and Rabble and its like...jfc. b/c apparently sommme of them can be decent! if theyre a giant or whatever. and meanwhile the dwarfs are always chaotic neutral or whatever. not believing in aslan but not necessarily being anti-narnia coz they live there. but sometimes being good guys!! but sometimes being bad guys, and jadis was cool to them apparently. like.................theres definitely cases of Types of narnians who fall outside the "born good / born bad" system, and thats pretty fucked. wolves too? theyre the Talking Beasts aslan definitely created, but on the side of the white witch? how was she having trees be on her side, too? whats going on around here. whats the moral meant to be. smh

uhh well anyhow, you could do a nice essay on gender re narnia. on account of sometimes its staleass typical sexist tropes like uhh, say,, the devil stand-ins keep being women? witches, ok. and the idea of "women need to be protected as pure creatures" as a basic sexist notion, and even lewis taking a relatively subdued jab at the idea of calling that sexist. susan being the miniature mom character type, and of course the infamous last battle bit where, in an attempt to describe her lack of spirituality as a self-insert of what lewis considered his own period of fake maturity via rejection of christianity, she's of course not only described as not believing in narnia (which????? what is anyone supposed to make of that. again, in the allegory of the cave shit, she's been outside the cave!!! she lived in narnia for YEARS AND YEARS and then WENT BACK. how are we supposed to believe she just convinced herself it wasnt literally real? its not quite the same as someone losing their faith in christianity.) but as like, wearing makeup, damn her. even if he wasnt trying to make the point that "look at boys and go to hell" which, i suppose he couldnt, as in narnia susan was being courted just fine as queen, yet i suppose also she didnt marry anyone—anyways, of course its still sexist to slight the way she decides to dress as some form of false maturity, even if its meant to be metaphor. just clumsy af & not great when again, devils are always witches around here. and being younger is to be more spiritually pure which like............mmm ok. this is sort of another one of those weirdly sexless fantasy universes, why do those keep happening. i mean sure this is a christian fairy tale for kids. but nobody even gets married save for in the last paragraphs of a couple books. its left a bit ambiguous whether thats even spiritually acceptable in the narnia rules, unless its to Continue the Line a la the telmarine monarchy from caspian the first to tirian the whateverth. hm

but also of course you get the young girl characters being...somewhat almost allowed to fight (archery mainly) but anyways at least being given equal status to the boys who are there also. theres even mention of once apparently narnia being ruled by a queen w no kings around. fantastic. and theres some non-witch lady characters on occasion. the human characters are where the dynamics are most at, i suppose, but anyways this at least has some nuance & at times seems to go just a bit beyond what you might expect from some old dude in the 50s. still not that surprising or innovative, but not completely flat, and seeming to contain at least a little reflection upon the topic

the essay of race re: narnia would be really short though. Its Racist Af. if you threw classism in too, you might get a bit more length out of it. but really its just so flat in this subject, and totally needless. there's the fact that even narnia is ruled by white english people but.....you can really do without juxtaposing this with the heinous nonwhite country somewhere over there. the rest of the books operate just fine w/o this

tolkien mentioned HIS scary brown backwards civilization to the south a lot more fleetingly in lotr but its....v much the same worldbuilding as narnia??? aka middle earth is pretty much an imaginary proto-england where you dont want to go too far east or south or you run into dangerous &/or inherently evil territory!! ok, jrr.....who was the other people in the inklings?? what did they write. could no one rein these guys in. coz lewis is over here with his Alternate Universe england. with uhhhh wilderness to the north and west and the dangerous evilish racismland to the south. and the ocean and dont forget narnia is a flat earth to the east. also? why are the lone islands like that. can aslan take care of some of that shit. for gods sake. anyways. the all-white good guys / evil poc should be thrown out of everything, thats not what makes the worldbuilding in either lotr or chronarnia at all interesting. yet is it is surely a subsection of the inherent Englishness of both examples........it warrants analysis but not "carrying on into films or anything based on either's precedence in the fantasy genre."

god who knows what im talking about at this point. im just saying "if they arent looking to even bother trying to wrangle the horse and his boy into something not ludicrously racist then i wouldnt be at all surprised." still, do you suppose theres like a curse where unless all narnia books are given some sort of film adaptation, the world won't know peace? more likely the world would end, maybe. the curse of clive. i dont really remember but that elder bbc series sure didnt cover the whole saga

well this is long enough but lets all set off in more endless, doomed narnalysis, such as

my thesis on trying to figure out what. the Fuck any reader is supposed to make out of edmund's role in the lww

whats the deal with merpeople?!

where are all these witches coming from, anyways

seriously if the narnians were just less murderous to the Undesirable species would they have been on the pro-aslan side all along

if there was only two humans staying in narnia at its birth, wouldnt their line like, die out immediately with their kid.

where did the archenlanders come from

where did the calormenes come from

oh yeah and like. are we seriously meant to believe that, at the end of the world, when aslan reveals that being goodnatured supercedes having the Wrong Religion, there is only one calormene in all of a) current existence and b) history who fits the bill? really. why even bring it up, then.

how did narnians react to their four monarchs completely disappearing......for real.....and what happened to the line to the throne?? was there just no ruler until the telmarines came in and took things over for the rest of the few centuries or whatevs.

when was that deep magic in lww written? at the start of narnia? coz thats the magicians nephew. again, how tf did the white witch get any leverage in that one. how was that supposed to be a good idea. wtf. see my thesis

whats the white witch supposed to represent as a stand-in for the devil? not helping that i dont remember the details of magicians nephew for shit, but she's definitely in the Multiverse lore of narnia as being from a different world as narnia and england. wtf is like...her nature

how weird is it in narnia that you have a god who drops in confused alien children to both go on personal journeys and save the world? is narnia-aslan/earth-jesus also dropping other children from other worlds into other other worlds? via other forms? hmm

lewis is all but inviting us the readers to be filling in the blanks with narnia fic. he's basically like, outright actually inviting fic with people wanting to speculate what happens with susan, who must inevitably return to narnia as lewis intends her to represent his own departure from (and obvious inevitable return to) christianity

a weird detail that is also never elaborated on: in addition to the narrator freely inserting loads of opinions into the narration, there's a time or two its made clear that like, the narrator has gotten this info from interviewing the characters. how'd you know about that last battle, "they all died and this happened in the afterlife" shit, huh. just another weird element

sussing out other lewispinions, like how he hates all schools apparently

narnia vs middle earth!! both quasi englands, both pre industrialization, both with christ figures running around some more than others, both with the need for rightful kings, totally different roles for humans tho. well, thats the whole comparison

and, inevitably, more.

#just narnblogging #or narbling #stay tuned for......murder

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