It's a magical world

Yes, you read that right.

Title: Last Will, and Testament
Author: starlady
Fandom: The Chronicles of Narnia
Wordcount: 5000
Rating: Gen
Characters: Susan Pevensie, Will Stanton, Bran Davies, Jane Drew
Warning(s): Character death
Notes: Thanks to aria for the beta! Also, nota bene, there is only one Oxford in my mind.
Summary: Will already knew what Susan's will said, at least in outline; after all, he'd helped her to draft it, and agreed years ago to be her executor.

Read on the AO3

I was saying to oliviacirce and epershand that I wanted to read epic Narnia fan poetry, and hadn't really found any…but then I took a stab at writing it myself, though in length at least it falls far short of the epic. So! This is 3W4DW content for the time being, but also a poem for National Poetry Month, written by yours truly. As some readers may realize immediately, it was inspired by and ties in with bedlamsbard's Warsverse timeline, and as such it relies on BB's seasonal associations and popular titles for the Pevensies.

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From The Collected Works of Solwing, ed. Calpurnia Bright, published at Cair Paravel in the first year of the reign of King Tirian, first of that name.

Editor's Introduction

Although the Owls of Narnia have been noted more for their contributions as philosophers and, occasionally, historians, the eldest chick of the court historian Glimfeather, Solwing, was something of a renegade from the start, ( choosing poetry over philosophy… )

Lewis, C.S. The Last Battle. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. [1956]

I can't believe this book won the Carnegie Medal. There, I said it.

I said in my post on The Silver Chair that Caspian and Rilian seem spoiled to me, and on rereading this book, I have to say that some of the same feeling lingers about Tirian (whose best friend is a unicorn, for maximum symbolic significance), too. He's not quite spoiled, but he's definitely rather impractical. I keep comparing his reaction to the news of the felling of Lantern Waste with Peter's matter-of-factly taking charge of Caspian's war against Miraz and finding Tirian greatly wanting. If nothing else, I think we can all agree that Tirian is fatally unprepared to confront the challenge that Shift presents; he's a good man, but he lacks truly effective leadership and has an entirely mistaken notion of honor and justice and truth, with fatal consequences. He doesn't quite lack all conviction, but he does lack all sense of politicking, and--are you listening, Suzanne Collins?--I've said before that I don't think that the answer to the wrong side getting political is for the right side to withdraw from politics altogether.

( Further up and further in )

Which is also why, in the end, I've undertaken this reread. Narnia was central to my reading experience as a kid, as it was for many other people, and I've been concerned here to investigate both what Narnia was and is and what it absolutely wasn't. Lewis falls short by many of the rubrics I now use to judge the stories I read, but his influence on all of us is undeniable--I think everyone in the room raised their hands at FOGcon when, in the Rhetorical Argument in SFF panel, someone asked who'd read the Narnia books. If you try to imagine how your reading and the possibilities it opened up might have been different if the Narnia books had been different, you'll get a sense of the potential and the necessity, I think, of doing better, and of not giving Lewis a pass just because most of us read him in childhood. For all my criticism of the Narnia books on multiple levels in these posts, I haven't managed to diminish their own appeal to myself or to anyone who's read them, I'll wager. And as much as I still love Narnia--in some ways, I love Narnia all the more for having done this reread; the books really are fiercely good overall, but when Lewis falls down, he falls hard--and I would unhesitatingly recommend the Chronicles to just about anyone from age eight to one hundred and eight, we owe it to future readers to see if we can't do Lewis one better.

Prior posts:
TMN | LWW | HHB | PC | TVDT | TSC

Lewis, C.S. The Silver Chair. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. [1953]

This travel poster is pretty awesome. Also, TSC is not the next Narnia movie; that honor goes to TMN! Color me surprised, though I still think TMN is one of my favorite books, so yay. But onward, to the book itself.

( to breathe again the air of Narnia )

Unhappy postscript: Perry Moore, who wrote the book Hero and who secured the rights to the Narnia movies before working as an executive producer on them, died recently at the age of 39.

Lewis, C.S. Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. [1951]

Though my copy of this book is also well-read, I recall clearly not liking it very much until eighth grade, when my second grade reading partner insisted we read it because it was her favorite, and I came to see its good points--namely, Pevensies in Narnia! But despite some things about it that I like very much, I have real problems with it on multiple levels.

( The Return to Narnia )

Also, if you haven't seen the two Narnia festivids, Never the Same and The Greatest Day, you should, because they're both pretty damn awesome.

As well as being Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in the States, today is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected president of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. I recommend Adam Hochschild's piece in the Times to everyone.

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Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. [1950]

I can remember this book not being my particular favorite when I first read the books in fourth grade, and I can see why; it's one of the shortest of the books, and on reread it's surprising to me how much of it doesn't actually take place in Narnia--not until the beginning of chapter 6 do Peter and Susan get into Narnia--and how quickly it feels like things wrap up once they do. ( Not know the Queen of Narnia? You shall know us better hereafter. )

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Dir. Michael Apted, 2010.

I dragged my sister to see this, and we liked it, with several important reservations.

( This and TMN were my favorite of the books )

So, yeah. The movie doesn't have the marvelous, slightly meditative or mystic quality of exploration and questing that I recall loving about the book, but I liked it all the same; I like this vision of Narnia, warts and all, and I'll definitely go see The Silver Chair when it comes out. Has anyone heard anything about whether they're planning to make the other three books into movies? It occurs to me that they could totally make HHB after SC, since the Pevensie actors would be the right general age for it then.  

I have to say, though, that Caspian was not as pretty in this movie. But that's okay; Skandar Keynes is pretty freaking hot, IJS.

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And as has become traditional (!), after I came back from the movie I sat down and I looked through the comments I'd gotten and I started reading all of bedlamsbard's amazing Narnia fiction--thank you, people who recommended her work to me! Her writing basically falls into three rough divisions, the Warsverse stories, which concern the Pevensies' reign in Narnia, her Royal House of Pevensie stories, which are an AU expanding the reign of the Pevensies before the White Stag, and getting into the reigns of their children and descendants (don't miss Jump in the Fire, a very AU retelling of Prince Caspian);, and Dust in the Air, a very welcome AU of The Last Battle in which the Pevensies are summoned back to Narnia five years after the Calormene conquest and which uses the Warsverse as background.

Most of these stories carry a warning for (same-generation, consensual) incest, and many earn their warning for violence, and I should mention too that her view of Aslan is not particularly charitable, even if like me you don't or can't believe that Aslan = Jesus. But they are brilliant, not shying away from what the real consequences of everything that Narnia and leaving it entails, and deeply engaged with the Deep Magic and the politics and society of that world, and I really like her interpretations of the characters, particularly the Pevensies, and the OCs are wonderful, as is the plotting. Um, yeah. If like me you saw LWW and thought, "Dude, there should be so much blood right now!" after the White Witch stabbed Peter, or if you didn't want the world to end in TLB (she totally ducks the Problem of Susan, which is so great), or you wondered what the Pevensies' reign was like, these are the stories for you.

I don't even remember where some of these came from, it's been so long.

Via my sister, Janelle Monáe fanart, a lot of it!

And the trailer for the (Japanese!) movie version of Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami!

And a story that takes 1000 years to read.

And a post on evacuating a children's camp in the Russian wilderness in the face of wildfires; The New Yorker says the fires ought to be Putin & Medvedev's Katrina, but they aren't because of lack of media freedom.

Also from The New Yorker, George Packer covered the Senate like it was a foreign country, and his conclusions are vital & depressing.

Also from the "vital & depressing" department, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about the high probability of Israel bombing Iran by this time next year in The Atlantic.

The SEC accused New Jersey of securities fraud. I agree that they should have named names.

Run (or walk) for Congo women. A lot of the events have yet to take place; I know beatonna was thinking of fundraising for the NYC run.

Espresso map of northern North America. I guess I'm going to Mullica Hill when I'm next in Jersey.

How I'd hack your weak passwords and how to delete internet usage tracks. (I think these three are from cofax7.)

Interview about Dreamwidth with denise!

lian rec'd Captive Prince on her journal recently. Sounds interesting, for sure.

aria, rec list of Narnia crossovers

All the books you'll be lusting for this fall at io9. I've read Mockingjay, and it's awesome.

Hungover Owls via raanve on Twitter.

Fall 2010 anime schedule (untranslated). Hmm...looks like slim pickings, but we'll see.

wistfuljane, vividcon & race & representation

And via yifu, last but not least, Team Aang responds to M. Night's treachery. You have to watch this, seriously.