lizbee's Literary Character Crush Meme

[rj_anderson]

So here's my list of the literary characters I crushed on, roughly in the order I encountered them:
- Peter, Caspian, and Rilian, from the Narnia books
- Will Stanton and Bran Davies, from Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising
- Ged, from Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea- Mary Stewart's versions of the youthful Merlin and Mordred (and most of the

Comments

[edithmatilda]

But Peter was a complete prick...

[rj_anderson]

How?

[edithmatilda]

So bloody elder-brotherly. Grr.

[rj_anderson]

And this is a bad thing in your opinion, I take it. :)

I liked Peter because he seemed so... centred. Responsible. Mature. But not a jerk about it, not supercilious, just a decent guy trying to do the right thing. Plus, Pauline Baynes's illustrations, particularly of grown-up Peter, didn't hurt either...

[lizbee]

I attributed my crush on Peter to my obvious weakness for priggish Gryffindor types. I wonder if there's a support group?

[rj_anderson]

I'm afraid you'll have to bear the burden of your Albion-love all alone, dear. Nobody else seems to like him, though (largely thanks to your persistence) he's rather starting to grow on me...

[lizbee]

Oh well, at least there's no competition. ::contemplates planting a flag, decides firmly against it::

I'm alone in my love for mctabby's Albus, too. He has an underestimated little brother as well. There's a pattern here...

[rj_anderson]

I have an Albus crush too, but it's for viola_dreamwalk's version... I still need to read mctabby's fic.

Concerning Susan

[dr_c]

It's important to note, I think, that Lewis saw Susan as fallen, but not irredeemably so:

The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end-- in her own way.

-- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children, p. 67However, concerning the "evils of lipstick" in general: I think the relevant factor there is that Lewis did not agree with the underlying assumptions of feminism, nor did he pretend to. Therefore it is natural that someone approaching the books from a feminist point of view would find them a bit distasteful on certain points, and any attempt to make Lewis' books acceptable to feminists seems to me doomed to distort one side or the other, and probably both

Re: Concerning Susan

[rj_anderson]

Thanks for that quote (indeed, those quotes, but particularly the one from Lewis). Yes, I quite agree that it's unreasonable to expect Lewis's work to appeal to everyone; he wasn't attempting to write for everyone in the first place. Anyway, I don't agree with the notion, even in theory, that any negative portrayal of a female character (even one like Susan who possesses stereotypically "feminine" traits and interests), amounts to a slur on women generally.

And I agree with you about frank and open marketing of Lewis's work for what it is and what he intended it to be. The idea of a spiritually expurgated Narnia designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience (which is a concept I've seen bandied about, though I sincerely hope the project has fallen through) is misguided in the extreme, IMO.

I wonder/worry what's going to happen with the proposed Narnia movie(s).

Re: Concerning Susan

[dr_c]

All right, now you've got my mind going here. :) Let me talk myself through the questions: Under what circumstances might one perceive Lewis' portrayal of girls in Narnia as a 'slur on women'? And how, if at all, would I disagree with such a view

Re: Concerning Susan

[rj_anderson]

Jill does have the first stirrings of a crush on Eustace in book 7

Does she? *is delighted* Do tell where you found that. I've always been a Jill/Eustace 'shipper, but I could never exactly pin down why...