Prince Caspian. And a fic rec.
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,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
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This is exactly my problem with the movie. Prince Caspian is my favorite of the books, and one of the things I've always liked best about it is the incongruity of the Pevensies as competent, experienced leaders in adolescent bodies. They're constantly being underestimated and then freaking people out by turning out to be more than they seem; even Miraz's troops eventually recognize that Peter is more kingly than their own king. I felt that the movie really sabotaged Peter's dignity and authority by portraying him as an angry, arrogant kid with something to prove.
There was a lot about the movie that I liked, but Peter's attitude and rivalry with Caspian really ruined it for me. (I also think Caspian was cast too old, which probably contributed to the problem.)
On a more positive note, Carpetbaggers is definitely on my to-read list. :)
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