Roundup of Recent Activites

[melengro]

My friend Colleen gave my friend Michelle some pop rocks a few days ago. This made Michelle very hyper. When she went home and Michelle's mother asked her why she was so hyper, Michelle told her about the pop rocks. Mrs Michelle instantly assumed that pop rocks were some sort of drug and started making frantic phone calls to Colleen's parents, the

Comments

[airie_fairy]

I loved The Magician's Nephew. A couple of the other early Narnia chronicles I also enjoyed. That's about where it ends. I forced myself through the inhumane abuse of all that are different that is The Last Battle due to nothing but committment to finishing the series JUST 'CAUSE. There were a couple of ways in which I saw bits of what he said as possible to be interpreted in ways that lent itself to the human level transcendent of dogmatic absolutism, but I tend to think the interpretations I soothed myself with weren't what he was actually going for. If he wants to recreate the Crusades for me and give me that explanation, we're going to have problems. And if he expects me to look at him with anything but horror after he thrusts two lone children in that position on whatever level of a point he feels that he's making, we're going to have nothing BUT problems. And I fucking HATE THAT LION. With unabashed vigor. I saw nothing but self-important power-complacent egomaniac, which is similar to what I see in many though not all places in

[melengro]

Re: your second point.

The whole thing is maybe 40% serious. Also keep in mind that women, being the targets of a vast majority of violence, ought to be taught defensive skills at the very least. This actually came up again in a conversation that I had to-day, where several of my friends were complaining about the different treatment of men and women during training.

[airie_fairy]

Don't worry, I got it! =D I did mention being behind the overall idea, which would include the defensive training that the list would encompass.

[melengro]

Martha Jones! Now there's somebody one can emulate (except for the whiny unrequited love part, but that's Rusty's fault).

[airie_fairy]

YES! Incredibly, shockingly competent at badassery but a loving, caretaking thing at heart. And unrequited love is not a dealbreaker, because bad writing or not, we all go through that thing sometimes where we like someone who doesn't return it. In fact, she can even teach us all a lesson about how to deal with unrequited feelings, with that whole not letting it take over her life bit. OMG MARTHA, SHE'S GOOD FOR EVERYTHING.

[melengro]

Also keep in mind the way that The Last Battle was written. Lewis churned it out in three months on a wine-and-ham-fuelled bender, rushed it to publication because he really needed to get back to The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces. He didn't really pay very close attention to some of the dodgy subtext (a rare oversight for somebody as heavily into reader-response criticism as CSL) and spent much of the last seven years of his life trying to explain what the fucking thing meant. Some salient points:

1. The Calormenes did not come across the way Lewis wanted them to. Aravis and Emeth were intended to be more representative of the nation than Rabadash and whatever that one Tarkhin's name was. Also, they were supposed to be modelled on the ancient Carthaginians, who really were rather nasty.
2. Susan wasn't left out of The Last Battle because of her sexuality, which is portrayed positively in The Horse and His Boy. She was left out because she no longer believed in Narnia, and her ultimate fate is supposed to be left deliberately

[airie_fairy]

Susan was the least of my problems. And I don't really care who he based what on if he's going to go and churn it into something so prejudicially black and white -- especially problematic if he's basing it on something real which by definition would be beyond the image he created, the nastiness in it notwithstanding -- and then hand me a token saved figure from the dark side on account of what would've been awesome if it actually was saying that it doesn't matter the figure you base it on if you act toward goodness, but seemed like what it actually was saying that all goodness is automatically monopolized by a particular base, whether you know it or not. And the fact that it was rushed makes me all the less apologetic.

[melengro]

Oh, The Last Battle is unquestionably the worst piece of shit Lewis ever wrote. Nobody's debating that. What I AM debating is (what seems to be) your assertion that it sucks because Lewis was a bad person, when in reality it sucks because he wasn't paying close enough attention.