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"Well, don't let's talk about that now," said Peter. "Look! Here are lovely fruit-trees. Let us taste them."
WHAT?!?!! EXCUSE ME?? I knew it was going to be bad but I had no idea it was going to be this bad. "Here are lovely fruit trees."?!?!! "LET US TASTE THEM."????!!!
Fuck you, Lewis.
On another note, if I were going to refuse to read the Narnia books to my children, it would be less for the Christian pedagogy, and more for the blatant racism. Lewis may be a child of his time, but I am a child of mine: I will not read my kids stories where people who are Middle Eastern in characteristics (the Calormenes) are called "darkies". And that's just the first of it. The grape-vine says Hollywood's going to turn all 7 books into movies, and if so, I would be very interested in how they adapt The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle. I like to think we've at least progressed since Disney's Aladdin.
This just underlines that the fandoms in which I tend to enjoy ficcing aren't necessarily of movies/books/TV shows that are on my 'Top 5 of the Century!' lists, but are movies/books/TV shows that are enjoyably visceral, with characters that are not necessarily deep but have potential for depth (or are at least dashingly good-looking). These are the canons with the most flexibility and open space in which to contemplate and play around, and I don't mean offense by these comments, for these are meritorious things in their own right.
On a lighter note, there was an article on the first Narnia movie in the National Review (surprise). It is located here if you're curious, though you can't read the whole thing if you're not subscribed. (I fetched the article through my university's journals subscription. Yes, I use academic sources to search for geekery, fuck off.) The amazing quote below is from the part you can't read:
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Alright, I've been gorging myself on Narnia fics in the past couple of days, so here are recs. Gen unless otherwise indicated.
untitled by chipping. Peter/Susan. Behold the fic that sold the ship to me. GUH. This![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
1sentence community is on to something here, I really like the idea. Makes for beautiful tight writing. The last sentence feels contrived to me, but that's made up by the quiet beauty of the rest of the fic.
"when the morning comes into their room, the light looks odd and familiar, like it belongs to a different life, a different world; he opens the blinds and she asks him to close them while she gets dressed."
"Between Sunset and Sunrise" by K.M. Petravich. Because I have hard-on for drinkstoomuch!Pevensieboys.
"And it’s one of the few times she’s heard him swear, but he’s having one of Those Nights, that he’s always had—had even before they came back—that Susan doesn’t know about and Peter doesn’t know how to handle."
"Knock On All Doors and Enter Nowhere" by Signe. Post-LWW, pre-Caspian.
"Sometimes he can only separate the Narnia memories from the England memories by logic. If there were bears, and they weren't in a zoo, then it must be a Narnia memory. If there were bombs and planes, it must be an England memory."
"Delight" by Sloane. The Edmund-centric part of a 4-part series. Peripheral Peter/Susan. The winter is still a little too long, but Edmund does not mind.
"The Wastelands" by fire and a rose. Mostly for the Edmund bit, because unbeknownst to me before I read this fic and this fic, I also have a hard-on for NarniaCIA!Edmund.
"The Made-Up Things" by Mirkat. HP/Narnia crossover.
"Petunia didn’t understand why her mother cried. It was just a story. Mother even said so. Mother said that a lot."
WHAT?!?!! EXCUSE ME?? I knew it was going to be bad but I had no idea it was going to be this bad. "Here are lovely fruit trees."?!?!! "LET US TASTE THEM."????!!!
Fuck you, Lewis.
On another note, if I were going to refuse to read the Narnia books to my children, it would be less for the Christian pedagogy, and more for the blatant racism. Lewis may be a child of his time, but I am a child of mine: I will not read my kids stories where people who are Middle Eastern in characteristics (the Calormenes) are called "darkies". And that's just the first of it. The grape-vine says Hollywood's going to turn all 7 books into movies, and if so, I would be very interested in how they adapt The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle. I like to think we've at least progressed since Disney's Aladdin.
This just underlines that the fandoms in which I tend to enjoy ficcing aren't necessarily of movies/books/TV shows that are on my 'Top 5 of the Century!' lists, but are movies/books/TV shows that are enjoyably visceral, with characters that are not necessarily deep but have potential for depth (or are at least dashingly good-looking). These are the canons with the most flexibility and open space in which to contemplate and play around, and I don't mean offense by these comments, for these are meritorious things in their own right.
On a lighter note, there was an article on the first Narnia movie in the National Review (surprise). It is located here if you're curious, though you can't read the whole thing if you're not subscribed. (I fetched the article through my university's journals subscription. Yes, I use academic sources to search for geekery, fuck off.) The amazing quote below is from the part you can't read:
The miracle of the forthcoming movie may be that its producers didn't try to distort Narnia beyond recognition. There have been attempts to do this in the past. During the 1990s, for instance, Paramount owned the film rights to The Chronicles of Narnia and began to develop a script for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Moving the book's setting from wartime Britain to modern Los Angeles (and replacing air raids with earthquakes) was the least of its flaws: The Pevensie children apparently entered Narnia not through a wardrobe but through a swimming pool, and the White Witch tempted Edmund not with Turkish delight but with cheeseburgers and hot dogs.I have no words.
+
Alright, I've been gorging myself on Narnia fics in the past couple of days, so here are recs. Gen unless otherwise indicated.
untitled by chipping. Peter/Susan. Behold the fic that sold the ship to me. GUH. This
1sentence community is on to something here, I really like the idea. Makes for beautiful tight writing. The last sentence feels contrived to me, but that's made up by the quiet beauty of the rest of the fic."when the morning comes into their room, the light looks odd and familiar, like it belongs to a different life, a different world; he opens the blinds and she asks him to close them while she gets dressed."
"Between Sunset and Sunrise" by K.M. Petravich. Because I have hard-on for drinkstoomuch!Pevensieboys.
"And it’s one of the few times she’s heard him swear, but he’s having one of Those Nights, that he’s always had—had even before they came back—that Susan doesn’t know about and Peter doesn’t know how to handle."
"Knock On All Doors and Enter Nowhere" by Signe. Post-LWW, pre-Caspian.
"Sometimes he can only separate the Narnia memories from the England memories by logic. If there were bears, and they weren't in a zoo, then it must be a Narnia memory. If there were bombs and planes, it must be an England memory."
"Delight" by Sloane. The Edmund-centric part of a 4-part series. Peripheral Peter/Susan. The winter is still a little too long, but Edmund does not mind.
"The Wastelands" by fire and a rose. Mostly for the Edmund bit, because unbeknownst to me before I read this fic and this fic, I also have a hard-on for NarniaCIA!Edmund.
"The Made-Up Things" by Mirkat. HP/Narnia crossover.
"Petunia didn’t understand why her mother cried. It was just a story. Mother even said so. Mother said that a lot."