rthstewart (
rthstewart) wrote2011-09-02 10:11 am
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Nobody Dies, Everybody Lives
Given the enthusiam for something other than everyone dies in TLB, I thought we could use one place to play where everything everyone was creating could be collected in one spot. So, I went ahead and just created a community. The Last Battle AU Community.
last_battle_au
If you want to play, create, or muse on alternatives to death by fiery train crash in 1949, you can post, link and cross link over there!!! I think I set it up so it is nice and wide and open. LJ is again be screwing so I'll tinker with the profile in a bit. You should be able to join and post without approval and do so anonymously if you want.
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If you want to play, create, or muse on alternatives to death by fiery train crash in 1949, you can post, link and cross link over there!!! I think I set it up so it is nice and wide and open. LJ is again be screwing so I'll tinker with the profile in a bit. You should be able to join and post without approval and do so anonymously if you want.
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LOLLLLLLLLL omg ILU.
Yeah at first I just decided that TLB made no sense thematically, and yes I get that Lewis was all mopey over his wife and decided to kill off all his characters over it, but w/e, Lewis. If he's going to disregard his own characters I'm going to disregard his whole damn book. SO THERE.
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BUT the message that's getting conveyed with these sorts of AUs is also beautiful and valid and one, I think, of which Lewis himself would have approved, and that is that the task continues, and that there is great valor in staying the course to the end (kind of what he was showing through the Space Trilogy, and also to a certain degree in Till We Have Faces). So I LOVE this, where we get to look at two sides of the same coin - we know what happens when they die young, because Lewis showed us that, and now we get to see what it would have been like if they hadn't, and both are truly awesome stuff.
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I still need to read the Space Trilogy. I never read them when I was younger for some reason, and was sufficiently turned off by Lewis' religious overtones for many years as to not be interested in his other work. These days I see it as just another philosophy that adds a particular context and depth without me needing to agree or disagree with it (and as versions of Christianity go, I rather like Lewis's anyway).
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That makes *perfect* sense. I think figuring out the difference is what allowed me to enjoy Lewis again without feeling odd about the specifics.
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But I love the story there, about Tirian fighting off a very underhanded Calormene invasion, abetted by treacherous Narnians playing on religious belief. Unfortunately, although that's the story I wanted to read, it was not the story Lewis wanted to tell.
And, frankly, it goes back to Narnia being not even a secondary world, but in some ways a tertiary creation--it didn't deserve the chance to live out its own history. To me, it feels like Lewis didn't consider the Narnian characters to be as real or important as the English characters, so when the Pevensies et al. had learned all they could from Narnia, then woops! let's shut the box and put it in the closet. No more pocket world for adventures. And I think that short-changes the world and the characters who inhabited it.
But then, I'm far more invested in story and world-building than I am in Lewis' messaging.
... I appear to have ranted. My apologies.
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One of my friends loves TLB for the sense of hopelessness in it (he was always very into futile last stands when we were kids, also inevitably picked the losing side to cheer for, not because he liked an underdog but because he liked the idea of fighting against hopeless odds and still losing, but never giving up the fight), but for me, it is the hope that triumphs at the end that I love - that no matter how bad things are, there is Something Better on the other side, even if that other side is post-death.
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It just didn't seem fair, 'cause sure, maybe the Pevensies learned all they could from Narnia (OK, maybe a good 3/4 of them... that's good enough, innit?), but that was enough to end it all? What gets me the most is the ridiculous short time between PC and TLB. Narnia was barely saved a second time, and the benefits are reaped for just a blip of time in comparison to MN-->LWW and LWW-->PC.
Perhaps Lewis meant that as a reflection of human progress on Earth, how we've achieved more in the past 100 years than several centuries prior combined. But still, it just doesn't sit well. And it really didn't sit well as a young kid.
Especially since the whole point was that the Pevensies were to learn of Aslan in their own world... which, we never even see in the books. But apparently, we're left to believe that Peter, Edmund and Lucy achieve spiritual wholeness their late teens, early twenties. And Susan was not a friend of Narnia because she hadn't at the ripe old age of 21.
And there's MY rant. Nyeah!
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