Narnia Meta

[rthstewart]

There's an interesting article on Buzz Feed I spotted today -- maybe you've already seen it, but I hadn't until this AM.  I find, in particular, this paragraph illuminating:

But this is the Chronicles’ greatest, redeeming strength: that sowed within are the seeds of their own dogma’s destruction. The machinery, the logic, of Narnia itself resists

Comments

[l_a_r_m]

whoooooaaaa i love this!! and it is so true it makes my heart sing *_____*

[rthstewart]

OMG YOU ARE HERE AND YOU LIVE AND IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY. Seriously, I've been worried that maybe Narnia had ended up being a bad place for you and I miss you so much. I know that France sucks but at least wine? I guess? And I so wish you were here to help my spawn through his French exams.

And this piece so wonderfully captures that awe of Narnia, you know? Did you ever think it maybe, just might be real? I remember very distinctly wearing appropriate shoes when walking to school in 1st and 2nd grade, JUST IN CASE ASLAN CALLED ME TO SAVE NARNIA!!! Because if one is walking across Ettinsmoor or traveling from the Lantern Wastes to the Sea, one must have sensible shoes.

[adaese]

Interesting link - thanks!

[rthstewart]

you are welcome!

[harmony_lover]

This is so perfect and true! I think this is why, despite its faults, I return to Narnia again and again and again, and am still compelled by its goodness, above everything else.

[rthstewart]

It's the flaws that are part of what make it such an interesting place to explore. Great fiction is so like that -- you can love and admire the source material but as an adult come back to it with a mature eye to explore it. Hence how TSG spiraled from a conversation with my landscaper about how sexually prolific male holly bushes are. "I have three female bushes," I queried. "Will one male bush be enough to pollinate three females and when they are on the other side of the house?"

"Trust me," the landscaper snorted. "He'll pollinate the whole street. They're like that you know."

so then you read the drunk giggling hollies in PC and can wild dryad tree sex be far behind?

[harmony_lover]

LOL. I love the drunk giggling hollies, and your wild dryad tree sex as well. The first time I got to the wild dryad tree sex in your stories, I laughed so much I was almost in tears. :D

[recessivejean]

Love that. Just, very much, love it. Thank you for sharing!

[rthstewart]

Aww, it's so nice of you to come by here. As I said up above, what I liked about the piece was that it captured both the wonders of the Chronicles and yet didn't gloss over the problematic bits. I didn't know about the whole Aslan is Jesus thing when I read them at age 8 and really the more I spend time there, the less I like Aslan as Jesus. I just can't' match the two up very well, anymore. I love writing the benevolent lion deity but sometimes he's a jerk. I admit I might love them less seeing how they've been weaponized and the attacks and such over the years. But I do still cling to that very fond memory -- that combination of imagination and hope and folly, that the Chronicles imbued me with and made me think, that maybe, just maybe, I might get to Narnia too, one day while walking to school. So I wore sensible shoes for months and always kept extra snacks in my lunch box -- because I wasn't going to leave my sandwich in the little bag on the train platform.

[recessivejean]

I am very glad I stopped by. You're right, it pokes at both ends of the stories, and I like that because more often than not the past few years I felt like the thorniest parts of the stories were poking back, and it was getting to be too much.

But I loved them so much when I was little. Just . . . stupidly much, because they offered not only a kind of escape, but a kind of kinship with other children who had to be grown up too soon and I got that. My own favourite was HHB, so our back parlour was all over desert tents made of bedsheets and tarnished silver platters of crackers and grapes, because I wanted to be Aravis so badly, even though I knew I was Susan.

And I do miss the beautiful simplicity of enjoying the stories just as they were, of wanting to escape to a place where not fitting was practically one of the entry criteria, and . . . I guess I like the article especially well because it makes me think that maybe again someday it will be possible to feel that way about them again

[rthstewart]

And I do miss the beautiful simplicity of enjoying the stories just as they were, of wanting to escape to a place where not fitting was practically one of the entry criteria...

Oh gosh, yes, now I remember, that was one reason why I started writing in Narnia, you know? I felt that Lewis' messages about the importance of tolerance and inclusion were SO strong and so very much at odds with what I had seen in ugly pockets of the fandom. I know I pushed it further than you went -- that you wanted to hold on to that perfect ideal of desert tents and silver platters and I wanted to create a vision where all were very slow to a judgment that belonged to Aslan alone. I wanted to hold that mirror up to the fandom and say, see, this is what I think Lewis is saying, isn't it wonderful? This tent is big enough for everyone, we all can belong and play here in fellowship. Gawd I was so stupidly naive. I am such a moron. How have I managed to screw myself so badly, again? Gah.

[min023]

Ooh, I hadn't seen this one - thanks. Fascinating read, I hadn't really articulated much of what's there, but there's an odd kind of sense to a lot of what the writer says,