Chronicles of Narnia - POLL

any good deed performed in tash's name is aslans and any evil deed in aslans is tash's is how i prepare for job interviews

nah I just shout "Beware, the bolt of Tash falls from above!" when students ask for assignment extensions

Searched for a virgin Aslan/chad Tash meme but no joy

However!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYao6AQX0AAFmjC?format=jpg&name=large

lol

I always assumed that they'd been kings and queens in Narnia for like fifty years, I mean when they are hunting the white stag and come across the lamppost in the woods none of them even remember what it is at first!

It's an entirely different sense of narrative that we seem to be kinda incapable of dealing with today. Yeah, if you think about it of course as a king or queen of Narnia you're going to repeatedly go see if you can still get back to Earth through the wardrobe (like... you would probably want to check in with your parents?) but Lewis clearly shows that once they got crowned, they didn't even think about their life in Earth ever again.

it isn't like they don't have anyone to talk about their old lives with either. the "returning as a child having lived an adult life" thing seems like a rich seam, left entirely untouched.

I don't mind that it doesn't make "rational" sense, because it follows its own fairy tale/dream logic.

Yeah, and I think part of the Narnia thing is that it’s more “real” than the “real world” bcuz, y’know, it’s God’s country, quite literally. So when you’re a kid there and you’re a king or queen, makes sense that you’re living in that moment an not in this one.

I think there’s some indication that they mostly forget what happened while they were reigning — like as though it had been a dream — and so they don’t end up as adults in kids’ bodies.

did none of ye ever go to yere cousins for summer holidays at that age

by mid october its as well never to have happened

i this lewis captures the dreamy immediacy of it all well enough for nolanesque forensic questioning of the timelines to be handily enough dismissed tbh

Yeah but I like the between the two worlds thing, as both a Gemini and a person with bad opinions in general.

Wet Hot Narnian Summer

Not even visiting your cousins -- it's like remembering a summer trip to Disney World in the middle of taking finals.

xps

as a midlander

xp look some of us have cousins in nicer places than others i dont mean to brag

Wet Hot Narnian Summer

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel),

i.e. Eustace + Jill visiting Puddleglum.

The Perks of Being a Marsh-wiggle

Lev Grossman “The Magicians” is pretty much the Narnia for adults

i just read all of these again. while he spotted the many obvious ones, i appreciated pointing out to my son the less obvious biblical allusions, because whatever their value, that aspect does allow an early lesson in a certain style of reading, which i didn't get until much later, and which is rewarding and mind expanding. the horse and his boy is the worst one. the last battle is a letdown.

not otm

i was pretty disappointed with the “experiment house” shade, and its “headmaster, who was a woman” and jill just kind of standing by and trying not to cry while rilian and eustace and puddle-glum use their swords

last battle is next and my son is psyched “because all the OGs will be there”

Susan's pretty deadly with her bow and arrow tho

tash tash inexorable tash

^^the most og of all

Started these for bedtime reading to the kids and finished Nephew last night. As a lapsed Catholic whose sick mother did die, I found this story uncomfortable.

also, fuck this inheritance ending. These people are always finding old bank stock notes in the attic or inheriting some great uncle's fortune.

tbf I'd probably be all Catholic mystic, too, if that shit happened to me

Former Catholic, same, though Aslan was never gentler than in this book. Lewis at his best writing those Aslan speeches about Jadis, the tree/fruit, and suffering.

also, fuck this inheritance ending. These people are always finding old bank stock notes in the attic or inheriting some great uncle's fortune.

― Enumerated funks of Walsh, Joe. (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 10 June 2023 17:33 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes but this was prob p true for the likes of c s lewis et al tbf

we recently finished The Horse and His Boy, yes it is still my favourite, have to say my son didn't care for it at all though. I think there are maybe too many passages of dialogue, and using impenetrable old-fashioned language too, though I still enjoyed those. think the runaway kid adventure is a genre I generally love, and Tashbaan reminded me of Mont St Michel (I went there when I was 10 and read the book later the same year) - it just seems to have more possibilities outside the text than the other books in the series, a world barely glimpsed.

I did remember fondly the last paragraph - "..years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently..." - but if I'm going to be honest there wasn't a lot of quarrelling and making up in the book, so maybe CS could have spent a bit more time on that and a little less on the heavy-handed parable stuff, idk.

yeah it is a bit racist too.

it just seems to have more possibilities outside the text than the other books in the series, a world barely glimpsed.

otm -- and why I love ....The Dawn Treader too.

Interesting: https://www.tor.com/2021/05/12/the-problems-of-susan/

Not totally sure about the fanfic, but I do appreciate the wider delve.

all critical activity is fanfic

Where is your Middle-earth novel

it's behind you

*ducks*

I just

Lol

Just finished Prince Caspian. It was interesting in that for 60% of the book it was just the four kids (& one dwarf) walking for ages and getting lost. By interesting I mean dull. Why didn't they trust Lucy when she saw she said Aslan? I mean people being irrational and wasting time doing nothing is at least realistic, so let's credit Jack for that at least. The action sequences are quite harsh, lots of death, but all seem to be crammed into a few chapters. And after getting to know Prince Caspian we basically just abandon him until he puts in a couple of cameos at the end. Easily the worst so far I'm afraid.

Why didn't they trust Lucy when she saw she said Aslan?

Why would they? They're out of practice, only one visit.

The next book is much better.

I do kind of appreciate that, despite all of their experiences, Peter and Susan are already growing up to be pompous English prigs, because of course they are. Typical British colonialists.

lucy is very tiresome! she is a suck-up and i hate her!

(she does have a good extended scene in the next book -- if it's dawn treader -- but it's the scene that's good not her)

aslan is being such a dick in the lost-in-the-woods section

isn't Scrubb the suck-up?

scrubb constantly says they're all mad idiots who are trying to kill him!

he is not aslan-pilled

I’m at the beginning stages of a fiction thing and have already introduced a character named “Aslan”.

Also, still don't know why anyone is supposed to give a fuck about the Bulgy Bears, or what they are doing in this book.

lol you're cranky

One of the Bulgy Bears sticks his paw in his mouth in the lists, greatly offending Peter. That's the only purpose they serve.