Susan Pevensie Early Bird

I feel you. CS Lewis wrote individual Calormenes (like Aravis and...wossname, the guy at the end of The Last Battle who's like, if Tash is in there then I gotta go, regardless of whether or not it kills me) fine, but the fact that ALL the Archenlanders seem to be nice whereas most of the Calormenes are kind of jerks is...yeah. Rthstewart called one of her 'Pevensies between LWW and PC' fics 'Apostolic Way', as in, you have been sent back into the real world not as punishment but to do Aslan/God's work there, which I thought was a good take on it. (Also her writing is much less stiff.)

Jill Bearup

I did read it, but my basic impression was: - bestiality wtf? - this is sad and emotional - again with the bestiality? I prefer rthstewart's fic when it comes to Narnia's Golden Age and the Pevensies in general.

Jill Bearup

I'd be curious to know your response to Neil Gaiman's short story by this title! It very much took the opposite pov to your thoroughly researched one, and I prefer yours as it's clearly based in the context of the novels (very much enjoyed your tweets, I felt like I had a good defence for loving Narnia when it's often touted as "stale misogynist religious propaganda" in some circles....sadly often creative writing circles :( ). But I thought the short story was also interesting and I think says something about how as a society we have come to focus on different things in what we deem "adult" (eg, "adult themes" doesn't mean taxes, and that's how we jump on Susan now).

I really enjoy your take on Susan because it redeems a problem that's pretty common with a lot of fantasy from that era, which is the subtext that imagination is something adults grow out of. Diana Wynne Jones mentioned this in some lovely essays and used Susan as example A. Her argument is that Lewis (who was her professor at Oxford along with Tolkien) probably instituted the whole getting kicked out of Narnia at puberty thing as a reference to one needing to be as a small child to enter Heaven, but children unfamiliar with the nuances of Christian dogma mostly interpret Narnia as standing for the land of imagination, ergo real adults must grow up and leave their imaginings behind them. I certainly got that impression when I was a kid. Honestly, I didn't much like the Narnia books as a younger and when I tried to reread them as an adult... well, they're pretty stiff aren't they. My main issue with 'The Last Battle' as a youngster was that it felt suspiciously racist to me. I always interpreted the "evil" Calormen as standing in for "colored men" and it didn't help that the boxed set I had as a kid was illustrated in a way to support that idea.

De