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.

[ravenholdt]

LOve this post.

(A Horse and His Boy was always my tippety-top Narnia favorite as a child.) :)
Shamanistic upbringing defintely had something to do with that, Im sure.
(And then somehow or other I ended up in Valdemar...which is a whole other story...yes, sentient otherlife is grand!)

*trying to pretend Im not running over to read Carpetbaggers, [personal profile] cofax7's *

Ah, the hell with it.

*Sprint*

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I quite liked the film of PC, because it resolves for me a lot of the issues I have with the book.

Some of those issues are structural: dude, virtually the entirety of that novel consists of Trumpkin telling the Pevensies what has already happened. Shuffling around the temporal framework improved it a lot, to my narrative eye. Some of them are philosophical, and those mostly revolve around Susan: I loved the line the filmmakers gave her about how she's happy to be back in Narnia but knows she'll have to go home again, and I approved of the change at the end, when Aslan says she and Peter have learned what Narnia can teach them, and now it's time to take those lessons home. It undercuts one of the central issues in The Problem of Susan, but I vastly prefer it to the book answer, which is "oh well, you're too old now, bye!"

Haven't seen Dawn Treader yet, and I'm a little worried because it is indeed my favorite book (though The Silver Chair has grown on me since childhood), but I'm looking forward to it.

[cofax7]

I just stumbled across this post on my network, so I hope you don't mind if I drop in.

I have mostly adjusted to PC, except for I cannot forgive the writers for Peter's stupid territoriality causing the death of dozens of Narnians. Because if he is to be High King, he has to do it properly, and he has to be better than Caspian, that's the whole point of being High King over all Kings in Narnia. But the writers wedged his head far too firmly up his ass, and it made me Very Unhappy.

Some of that would have worked, because yeah, gotta be shitty to go from being High King to being just That Kid in Maths Class mouthing off. And a movie needs conflict. But Peter had 15 years of learning how to manage people and run an army, and the writers made him forget ALL of it as soon as he got back to England, and not remember it when he returned, either.

Which, everything else they did in the movie mostly made sense to me, as an adaptation, and it's fun to watch. But I felt they served Peter poorly in a way that undercut his position in the canon as High King.

But, all that aside, THANK YOU for the lovely words about Carpetbaggers. You are most kind, and I'm so glad to hear people are reading and enjoying it. It's been a ton of fun to write and think about.

Onward to Chapter V! Oy.

[amaresu]

I haven't re-read the Narnia books in over a decade, but I kinda want to now. Only I'm doing a complete re-read of Discworld right now...bugger. I didn't get that far into the PC movie because Peter just annoyed me that much, but your post makes me want to make another go of it. I do remember adoring TVDT when I was a kid and I really rather want to go see that.

And this comment was rather pointless, but I made it anyways.

[juniperphoenix]

Thanks for the rec; that sounds like great winter break reading!

If you like Narnian world-building, bedlamsbard is another author I highly recommend. Her Warsverse stories are largely about the Pevensies' reign and contain a wealth of historical and cultural detail.

[aria]

she doesn't believe in God, but she still believes in Aslan

Wow, that resonated really hard with me. When I finally twigged that Aslan = Jesus, I'd already spent a good five years or so believing in Aslan, and my response was less annoyance at the allegorical obviousness or at being tricked than it was just "...No he's not."

I adore the Prince Caspian movie, probably because I had no particular attachment to the book, and not only did they make me like the story, but they made a genuinely good and enjoyable film in the process.

I'm actually quite anxious about Dawn Treader, because I know they made a lot of structural and narrative changes, and while I can see why they did given the episodic nature of the book, Dawn Treader is my favorite. It's already perfect as is! I am afraid I will be bitter at the movie. :(