rthstewart: (Default)
rthstewart ([personal profile] rthstewart) wrote2011-02-28 08:58 pm

In which I take a deep breath and hit the post button anyway

So, Chapter 8, The Queen Susan in Finchley, is up.

There’s not much research here. The information on the SS Seatrain came from here

I really meant to get this up sooner, but I’ve been tweaking Susan and Peter’s conversation for days. I’ve been concerned about a lot of things there. I don’t want Peter to seem pompous or judgmental for acts undertaken in Narnia. I really wanted to show a good relationship between the two of them because without that, the “not a Friend of Narnia” is meaningless. The ends and means discussion reappears, now with the added gloss of what it means to be a Knight of Narnia. It was [livejournal.com profile] min023  who pointed out once how Susan was the only one not a Knight and I've thought a lot about that over the months.

Of immense concern to [livejournal.com profile] l_a_r_m , Lowrey’s fate remains undecided. This is a step forward, as I did intend to kill him.

And of course, the chapter continues the meditation on families and children and the war’s effects upon them. The Churchill quote is deliberately ironic given what the War did to English family life. I’ve been working on the theme for several chapters now with good parents (Tom Clark, Lin Kun and Kwong Lee), bad parents (Harold and Alberta), absent parents (Richard Russell, John Pevensie, Leszi, Jack’s mother, Yi), parental figures (Ruby, Peter in many different guises), and unconventional families and single parents (Ruby as surrogate mother to Jack, Tom Clark, Dalia and Mrs. Pevensie as single parents, Maureen in an Asian family, Peter in a Cheetah family, Cyrus and the Satyrs) and so forth.

I’ve not addressed head on the issue of whether Edmund was one of those absent fathers and whether Morgan was one of those single mothers for a lot of reasons. Most troubling to me is that it reeks of fandom cliché and it’s not a part of the story that most TSG readers have focused upon too much. I’ve tried to show something of how I see the succession after the departure and it’s not the harsh, brutal, or violent upheaval most often shown in fic. Hence the reason for the introduction of Aidan and his many small relations. 

[livejournal.com profile] snacky , Clio, E, [livejournal.com profile] autumnia , and [livejournal.com profile] min023  have been a huge help with this chapter.  So, thank you!

There’s more to come about Edmund and Morgan.  Like the Valentine's Day story, I will post it here and not on ff.net.

Some chapters come easily. The conversation between Peter and Susan was not one of them.
ext_418583: (Default)

[identity profile] rthstewart.livejournal.com 2011-03-02 07:39 pm (UTC)(link)
ot to the final scene, and my mouth just dropped open. Don't know whether I'm anywhere near the reality, but all of a sudden I saw how the 'no longer a Friend' could play out. I never would have considered the abandonment of a 'blown code/cover story' as part of the scenario, but I can definitely see how that might play - brilliant plot twist, there.

Yep. Between the problem of how to even talk about Narnia when people like Asim might be listening and the Colonel has told her not to do so, the discussion of means and ends, and what it means to be a Knight of Narnia (and thank you for that one), the lipstick, nylons, La, silly children's game and Not a Friend of Narnia are all there.