Prince Caspian. And a fic rec.

[starlady]

So the other night (like two weeks ago) Prince Caspian was on the TV and I actually sat down and watched all of it. And I liked it, much better than I was expecting to--my sister tells me I turned down the chance to see it with her & our mother twice, which I actually really regret, but I don't remember that at all. 

Prince Caspian was never one of my particular favorites of the books when I was rereading them obsessively in elementary school and thereabouts (I like them all for different reasons, with the possible glaring exception nowadays of the 7th (and I go by internal chronology)), but I started to like it better in 8th grade after my reading partner (she was a 2nd grader) said that it was her favorite and we read it out loud: it's the last time the Pevensies are all together in Narnia, which is saying something. The movie of course is quite different from the book, in ways that I liked: Warrior Queen!Susan, Caspian generally being awesome, the extended battles and strategies in the war, even the Witch showing up again momentarily. I thought it was a better movie than TLWW, too, though I liked TLWW fine. (Obviously the changes made are the sort to bother some people a lot, which is not something anyone needs my approval about, and which I can understand, if not agree with.)

I actually sort of find it difficult to talk about Narnia in any intelligible fashion: obviously, there are parts of the books that are awesome, and parts that are full of fail, but I loved them so much as a child, and I still do, but I literally never understood the Christianity until I got my best friend to explain to me in freshman year of high school that Aslan = Jesus and the Emperor = God and I was like, Oh, that's disappointingly allegorical (yeah, as you can see, Tolkien is the Inkling I came to first). And my belief in a higher power has completely fallen away from me now (Quaker, yes; theist, no), and I really found Philip Pullman's critique of Narnia pretty persuasive (and I've talked already about how much of an influence HDM have been on me), and The Problem of Susan just bothers me more and more as time goes on (WAY TO BETRAY YOUR OWN FREAKING PREMISE, CLIVE, THE CURSE OF NARNIA CLEARLY DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU JOSS IT), and…I still love the books, and there's still something about them that speaks to me deeply. Someone who may or may not want to be identified said to me recently that she doesn't believe in God, but she still believes in Aslan, and I pretty much agree (you should see the explanations and justifications that I will spout when I talk about Hogfather and the Christmas spirit). And in a way I feel like PC, the movie, came close to giving me a glimpse of what I love most about Narnia now, the going there and the being there and the coming back. And Susan being so badass with her archery, OMG. I don't even care that they were clearly ripping off Legolas, SHE KICKED ASS. YES. MORE PLEASE. (Also, I find the joint holding of the throne, well, fascinating: that moment when Edward delivers the terms to the Evil Guy, I forget his name, and he's like, "Prince Edmund," and Edmund's like, "It's King actually," YES. And then when the four of them meet Aslan and he addresses them as "Kings and Queen of Narnia," YES. I really want to write something exploring that myself. As you can see, I'm still working on de-monarchicizing my imagination.)

But when the movie finished I decided to finally check out Carpetbaggers, cofax7's massive, and massively awesome, Narnia WIP: It's the story of how the Pevensies make themselves the rulers of Narnia in fact as well as in name, and it's just amazing. Cofax is awesome at plotting, and at teasing out how to go about nation-building, and at not flinching from the implications of 100 years of winter and never Christmas in all their deeply troubling reality, and she gets the Pevensies so right, and it's just so, so brilliant (also totally gen), I can't recommend it enough. 

And all this went down just in time for TVDT, which was my favorite of the books for a good long while. YES. 

Comments

[recessional]

Actually, almost all the things you liked were things I liked, as well, which made the bits that were wrong itch more. (I can't like the war/battle stuff, because it's all stupid from a tactical and strategic point of view, given the weaponry and force-sizes in question.)

I will rewatch it, as much as it bugs me, for Edmund. Who is unabashedly my darling, in all incarnations.

[starlady]

I'm trying to think how old I was when I first read the Narnia books: third or fourth grade? I can't remember whether I actually read them or finished LotR first (because, okay, and this says a lot about the kid I was, one of my good friends in 2nd grade got the MMPB box set of The Hobbit & LotR in 2nd grade for her half-birthday (yeah), and read them in class during our breaks or whatever, and I thought to myself, I can read books that thick too! and asked for them for Christmas, but I got stuck in TTT and didn't finish RotK until 3rd or 4th grade). And at the time I rather remember thinking Edmund was an idiot, but now I am like, yes, Edmund, it's so easy to make your mistake! And you are so lucky to have had a second chance and not screwed it up. And I do think the movies have done right and deftly by Edmund; he could have been horribly overplayed in a number of directions.

One of my roommates gnashes her teeth helplessly at the end of PotC: AWE because the ships do things that ships physically can't do in the final battle sequence, despite the fact that she enjoys the movies fine otherwise.

And thinking about it, yeah, especially the middle bit in the castle is just WRONG. But I enjoyed the whole malarkey with the torch (and the Eagles! every fantasy epic needs Eagles, apparently), and Edmund, and Susan being awesome, and Evil King's wife having a crossbow in bed, and Peter and Caspian getting out of hand.

I think I was actually going to say something else, too, but I can't remember what.

[recessional]

I have that problem with AWE, but for some reason it bothers me less than PEOPLE making decisions they would never, ever, ever (ever ever ever) make w/r/t tactics. I think because the incongruity of bad physics is less of a problem for me than the incongruity of a character I am supposed to think has X skill behaving in a way which someone with X skill/background would never, ever do.

Also with AWE I can say "Callisto has a sense of the dramatic". >.>

[starlady]

Yes she does. (My roommate has a sailing background, I think.)

Oh yeah: when I finally had Turkish delight in college or thereabouts, my first thought was, I can see why Edmund was so tempted by this, coming from wartime Britain…