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

[rthstewart]

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 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 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. 

snacky , Clio, E, autumnia , and 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.

Comments

Re: anti-colonial king

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Hellen. I had wondered if you were from that part of the world. As mentioned somewhere in here, I lived in Romania in the early 90s as a volunteer. We had to be very careful in describing what "volunteer" meant, as the assumption in Romania at that time was "slave labor." I understood what you meant about the term "Soviet" versus "Russian" though I certainly do not understand the nuances of when it is appropriate and when it is not. I will do the best I can and where I err, do let me know! From what I saw in my source material, the English and Americans did refer to their "ally" as Soviet and its people as "Soviets" thereby enforcing the fiction. However, most of my source material is written by Americans rather than by English writers. I do find it interesting that Europeans continued to use the term "Russian."

thank you for continuing to read!

Re: anti-colonial king

[(Anonymous)]

The whole problem has in fact strong connections with linguistics. English term "Soviet" can be used both as noun and adjective. In Slavic languages these are two different words. There is a Russian adjective meaning "Soviet", which was widely used (as in examples I've showed above), but a noun has never been created (hence: Soviet man, also Soviet nation etc.). As an English language allows for that, you can use term "Soviet" as noun, but only when it corresponds with intentions of person speaking.