#inhuman/dark fantasy narnia

[valquiria3000]

A hurricane was hitting my country and there was a lot of rain so I was watching Narnia when I remember this amazing AU, so @lord-of-christmas-lights here I give you my rendition of Prince Caspian as I see him in your Inhuman Narnia AU, (is it only me or does he also kind of give Jesus vibes?), I’ll be remaking my Edmund and Lucy drawings of this AU, as well as draw the other two Pevensies and Eustace, hope you like it!

(and please send me a discord invite or whatever so I can read or listen to more of this AU of yours that has me enchanted pls)

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

Slowly getting more obsessed with Narnia and my brain with the Pevensies is literally just:

Version 1: Wholesome, adorable, Peter is nonbinary, in the Golden Age Susan had lost a leg in battle and the dwarves made her a beautiful prosthetic, Lucy married multiple nature spirits, Edmund adopted a son, they were all sad and depressed when they had to return to england but yay Aslan let Peter and Susan stay at the end of Prince Caspian and then Edmund and Lucy had their VOTDT arc and stayed and all was good!

Version 2: Narnia is an earth deity with a soul and turned them into inhuman cryptids vaguely reminiscent of the fae who were so insanely connected to the land that they just kinda terrified everyone when they returned in PC because "narnia may be a more savage place than you remember" is a JOKE and when Aslan tries to send them back to England they're all just kinda like, "no I don't think we will thanks" and he's too scared to challenge them. We love terrifying God.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

It looks amazing!! I love the golden veins, they look so good. And the hair is a really neat idea, I like that. He is Caspian the Seafarer after all, it's a cool little symbolic thing that totally fits everything I was going for in this AU.

Awesome drawing, I love it so much!!

The photo quality isn’t great but i attemped to draw my Fae!Caspian idea i came up with last night inspired by @lord-of-christmas-lights post

i also drew the golden heart aha.

Im not great at drawing and i feel i couldve done his hair a bit better, i was going for an attempt of making it look curly and slightly wet, as i feel his hair would always look this way but if you ever touched it it would be completely dry (it also glows slightly gold like the rest of him, hence the outline)

I hope y’all like it!!

[mask131]

Cold winter: The White Witch

THE WHITE WITCH

Category: Fantasy youth literature / The Chronicles of Narnia

She is one of the most famous characters of the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, to the point she is even part of the title of the book that started it all, and she is one of the darkest reinterpretations of Andersen’s Snow Queen you can find around. She is Jadis, the White Witch, and one of the great female villains of fantasy.

The White Witch (Jadis, of her personal name) only appears in two of the seven Narnia books, and yet her enormous impact on the fictional country of Narnia can be felt throughout almost all of the book.

I) The Witch from the Wardrobe

The White Witch was conceived as the main and major antagonist of the original Narnia book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. If you do not know the basic plot of the Narnia books, they are about young English children of the early 20th century who found different passageways that lead them to Narnia, a fantasy land filled with talking animals, mythical creatures and magic. And in this first book, when the main protagonists (a quartet of English children) arrive at Narnia, The White Witch is the land’s queen – of her full title “Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands”. Narnia is the fantasy country itself, Narnia ; the Lone Islands are just territories affiliated with Narnia, but Cair Paravel… That’s an interesting topic. Cair Paravel is the castle that was built for the rulers of Narnia, where the country’s capital should be, and yet despite the White Witch styling herself “Chateleine” of this castle she actually does not live there, because while she is the ruler of Narnia, she is not a legitimate queen.

Narnia is waiting for its prophesized true rulers, “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve” who will sit on the four thrones of Cair Paravel – aka human beings (and the four children that are the protagonist of the book) ; and the White Witch only ruled over Narnia through a loophole – for she is a descendant of Lilith, the first wife of Adam and the first human woman (yes, the Narnia books are also heavily Biblical, which is part of their very essence, but we’ll come back to that later). But despite looking somewhat human, she is not human: it is said that the part of her bloodline from which she is related to Lilith was made of jinns, not human beings – and her other side of the family is giants. So she is a wholly inhuman being that just pretends to be human to obtain complete control of Narnia. And her rule over Narnia is deeply, profoundly crappy as she is a female variation of the fantasy archetype of the “evil overlord/dark lord that needs to be defeated”. It is to the point that the same prophecies that talk of the human rulers also point out that their arrival will not only mark the end of her evil reign, but also of her very life.

The reason she is called the White Witch is because she is a being of ice and cold whose rule plunged Narnia into an eternal and complete winter – and to add insult to the injury, a winter “without Christmas” as she banished Father Christmas himself from her realm. She is an arrogant, cruel and amoral character that does not seem to have any love for anything or anyone: every time she is pleasant, it is just trickery and deceit – and one that usually does not last as her dominating and harsh nature usually takes the better of her. She only sees people in terms of usefulness or hostility, getting rid of whoever she perceives as a threat and only keeping with her those that help her maintain her rule and power – for it seems to be all she cares about, rule forever and without any rivalry. Evil calling to evil, she managed to gather by her side, as her faithful subject, all of the most evil and negative entities populating Narnia: ghouls, ogres, minotaurs, hags, specters, werewolves, spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants… With a specific place given to talking wolves, that form her personal guard and secret police.

The White Witch herself is a very tall woman (thanks to her half-giantess nature) with a skin as white as snow (or paper, or icing sugar) except for her mouth which is very red. She is beautiful, but proud, cold and stern, dressed in white furs and wearing a golden crown on her head. Beyond her curse of endless winter over Narnia, the magic of the White Witch manifests mostly through two items of her. One is her magic wand – a long and straight golden wand which has only one power, the one to turn into stone whoever it touches. It is a dreadful weapon that she used many times, to the point the courtyard of her small castle is filled with the statues of those she petrified – some because they tried to fight her, others as a punishment for disobeying her. Her other magical item is a strange potion she keeps in a small copper bottle – when someone asks for a food or a drink, the Witch just needs to let a drop of the potion fall on the ground to conjure up such food or drink. But there’s a catch: the conjured up food will be incredibly tasty, desirable and memorable, but also be very empty and unsatisfying in the end, resulting in an addictive nature similar to the one of a drug. It is with this potion, used to summon hot cocoa and Turkish delights, that the Witch manages to influence one of the four children protagonist of the story, who on top of being fooled by the Witch’s beauty, queenly titles and fake kindness, becomes addicted to her enchanted candies.

Now, the entire first part of the book is about the plot of the Witch to get her hand on the four human children that entered Narnia, to prevent them from becoming the rightful rulers of the country – all while their very presence starts unravelling her curse of endless winter, and their coming to Narnia coincides with the White Witch’ nemesis. The king of the woods and king of the beasts, the leader of the forces of good in Narnia, the Great Lion named Aslan that just returned to Narnia after being away for all of the White Witch’s reign. Long story short, the White Witch corrupted Edmund (one of the four kids) to betray his siblings to the White Witch, but he came to realize the errors of his way and turned good, joining Aslan’s side… only for the Witch to arrive at Aslan’s settlement demanding a temporary truce in order to take Edmund – for “all traitors belong” to her. And this is where we get a confrontation between her and Aslan that reveals a much deeper and ancient nature than just a talking lion and a wicked witch. Aslan is noted to have authority and power in Narnia thanks to being the son of the “Emperor-Beyond-The-Sea”, who rules over all worlds, including Narnia. But during their confrontation, the White Witch reveals herself to be the Emperor’s hangman (and in fact it is this position of “executioner” that led to her ambition/delusion of becoming queen). There is magic, and there is Deep Magic – the magic that the Emperor placed into Narnia at the very dawn of time and that forms the Laws of this world. The Laws of the Deep Magic are engraved on the scepter of the Emperor ; on the trunk of the “World Ash Tree”, and on the Stone Table – a literal table of stone standing in Narnia and being the focus point of all of Narnia’s law and magic. And the White Witch is included in those laws, and by this Deep Magic all traitors belong to her as her “lawful preys”, and for every treachery she has a “right to kill” – which she invokes in an attempt to have Edmund killed for his treachery (despite said treachery being caused by HER), so that the prophecy of the “four thrones of Cair Paravel” might never be fulfilled. If the Deep Magic is not “appeased”, then all of Narnia will be destroyed in “fire and blood” – but the Witch’s attempt is thwarted by Aslan’s decision to sacrifice himself in place of Edmund, offering his life to protect the one of the young boy.

The White Witch perceives this as a triumph, for by offering himself as a sacrifice, she gets the legal right to destroy her nemesis and “positive rival” – and makes a grand ceremony of this sacrifice by killing herself Aslan on the Stone Table in front of all of her hordes of dark spirits and evil monsters. She jubilates as she kills the true leader of the forces of good in Narnia, before preparing for war against the rest of the rebels and four little kids from England… But as said kids will later discover, Aslan’s death is only temporary. For, as Aslan explains – the White Witch’s knowledge of the world only starts at the Dawn of Time. But there is a magic deeper than the Deep Magic, other Laws that came from “the stillness and darkness before Time”, and these laws specified that if a willing victim that committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, then the Stone Table would crack and “Death itself would start working backward” – not only resurrecting Aslan, but also offering a new age for Narnia, free of the ancient Laws of the Stone Table, and thus voiding the White Witch of her “cosmological-legal” power. (Yes there are strong Christian motifs here, which were willingly done – as I said, the Narnia books are very biblical).

Cutting the story short: a war ensues, but as always good triumph – and it triumph in quite a bloody way as the resurrected Aslan kills himself the White Witch. And so everybody is free, all those she turned into statues become flesh again, and the evil reign of Jadis comes to an end.

II) In other books

Narnia got several sequels, but Jadis took quite some times to return to the stage…

She is heavily talked about in the second Narnia book, “Prince Caspian”, taking place more than a thousand years after the original novel. We discover a Narnia overrun by humans that reject supernatural and magic as mere fairytales and superstitions, and who hunted down and exterminated most of Narnia’s original inhabitants, leading all fantastical beings into a secret and persecuted existence. The entire plot of the book is about true Narnians fighting to regain the ownership of their own land, and the quest to bring Aslan (and the four heroes of the first book) back into the land… But some of the nastier of Narnia’s original inhabitants have a different plan. While now all Narnians are gathered together against one common threat, no matter their race or species, and all wish and believe for the return of Aslan their savior, a few kept their old evil habits and allegiances. Tired of waiting for an Aslan that never comes, they think of invoking a power that equaled and rivaled the one of Aslan, and that could restore “true Narnians” just the same… As the titular Prince Caspian discovers when he is led by a treacherous dwarf to meet with a werewolf and a hag, there is a secret conspiracy wishing to call back the White Witch into Narnia, because, as one ominously says “witches never truly die”… But the conspiracy is broken before any rite can be attempted.

In the third Narnia book, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, Jadis is still nowhere to be seen, but her influence manifests here through a knife. Not just any knife: the stone knife she used to kill Aslan on the Stone Table, an act so terrible and so vile it turned the item into a cursed weapon (or a sacred item depending on how you look at it). The knife ended up in the ownership of Ramandu, a wizard living on the last island of Narnia before “the end of the world”, who kept it on a table of eternal feast. It notably plays a role in the story of three Narnian lords who arrived on this island in an attempt to sail off to the end of Narnia – as they stayed on the island and participated in the eternal banquet, they quarreled over whether they should stay here, go forward or return to Narnia. One of them, in his anger, took the knife to threaten his companions – and such a mishandling of the magical object cast a spell on them, forcing them into a deep dreamless sleep from which nothing can wake them up… except the willing sacrifice of someone who would be brave enough to sail as closely as possible to the end of the world, and then abandon themselves into what lies beyond…

The fourth Narnia book, The Silver Chair, is the last mention of Jadis before her second appearance. The main antagonist of the story is a mysterious supernatural woman known as the Lady of the Green kirtle, but it is speculated by characters in-story that she is of the “same crew” as the White Witch: both of them apparently belonged to a same coven of witches known as the Northern Witches (due to being set in the hostile lands of Narnia) that had declared themselves the enemies of all good animals and humans in Narnia.

III) The great retcon

Jadis’ second and last appearance is in the sixth Narnia book, “The Magician’s Nephew” and… as I said above, while it actually greatly fleshes out Jadis’ character, it also greatly retcons her into a very different character. Gone the “half-jinn half-giantess” nature ; gone her role as the Emperor-beyond-the-sea’s “hangwoman” that let her duties corrupt her ; gone her cosmic nature akin to the one of Aslan.

According to this book, Jadis belonged to a third world among the great multiverse – a world that was neither our own, neither Narnia. This world was ruled by a series of sorcerer-emperor and witch-empresses from their capital-city of Charn, the most wonderful and beautiful of all cities – they once were good rulers, but over generations became cruel tyrants and dominating despots. Jadis grew up as the last heir of the bloodline of these degenerate and sadistic mage-rulers, alongside her sister, and both waged war against each other for the throne. It was a long and bloody civil war, which ultimately saw Jadis’ defeat. She was spared by her sister, but Jadis was such a spiteful and petty creature that she decided “If I can’t have the throne of Charn, nobody shall” – and she used the Deplorable Word. You see, the Deplorable Word was the evilest and most dangerous spell of the royalty of Charn, a spell so destructive and baleful that no one had ever even dared use it… no one before Jadis. It was just one word, but potent enough to kill ALL LIFE in the entirety of the world of Charn. Jadis only survived by placing herself into a magical suspended animation thanks to a spell of enchanted sleep – and she stayed frozen in time, waiting in the ruins of a dry and empty world under a dying sun, until finally two young children arrived in Charn thanks to the magic of a magician uncle of theirs. The children woke up Jadis, and she returned with them to their own world – 1900 London.

There Jadis put together a plan to conquer this new world and makes herself its sole queen… until she realized that her magical powers did not work on Earth. She still kept some of her unnatural abilities, such as her disturbing beauty and a great physical strength (which allows her to pull pieces of iron out of lampposts WITH HER BARE HANDS) with which she causes a lot of mayhem in the city – from robbing jewelry stores to stealing coaches to drive them as chariots… It is enough for the uncle-magician to decide to send her back to where she belonged ; only for him to send her by mistake into Narnia, a world freshly created by Aslan. There she tried to attack Aslan, but couldn’t do him any harm and fled in front of a being able to resist her powers. Aslan recognized her as the first evil to enter the world of Narnia and to protect his creation from her he offered one of the young children from earlier the seed of a magical tree that would protect Narnia from her forever. Attempting to fight off this plan, Jadis snuck into the garden where the so-called Tree of Protection was supposed to be planted – and there she ate the silver apples of another magical Tree, the Tree of Youth. These fruits offered her exceptional longevity and endless youth – making her seemingly immortal, and she tried to use those same apples to tempt the young boy into not planting the Tree of Protection, to no avail. And so Jadis was forced to flee into the hostile and barren lands northern of Narnia, where she started collecting allies, growing her magic and plotting evil schemes to conquer this new world, waiting several centuries for the Tree of Protection to die… But she could never enjoy her newfound immortality for eating of the silver apples came at a great price. Her skin, once human-colored, turned the deadly shade of white we saw her sport in the original book, while the fruit cursed her with an inability to find peace or happiness: unable to find any pleasure or glee from her own evil, she was cursed to a life of endless misery.

- - - - - -

Behind such a now iconic figure, C. S. Lewis actually conjured up a lot of different sources to create the character. The White Witch’s character is obviously based on the Snow Queen: like her she is a beautiful but terrible bringer of winter wrapped in white furs – her very first scene is even coming in a reindeer-pulled sleigh to take away a little boy… But to this figure, C. S. Lewis added the one of the devil – more specifically, the devil as he appears in the Bible, but also the devil as he appears in “Paradise Lost”, with a few additions taken from the Jewish figure of Lilith.  Or actually a literary reinterpretation of Lilith: Lilith as she appears in George MacDonald’s fantasy novel of the same name. Two more literary sources complete the “origins” of Jadis, who was also inspired by the character of Ayesha from the novel “She” by H. Rider Haggard, and by the one of the Queen of Babylon, from Nesbit’s “The Story of the Amulet”.

Interesting fact: Jadis’ name is actually a French word that literally means “once”. Not once as just “play it once”, but once as in “Once upon a time”, “jadis” being a literary word meaning “a long, long time ago” or “in a past now gone”.

[purplehoodiesimon]

what's your favourite story (or even line or both) you've written?

Okay I'll do one story and one line for both a YR fanfic and a non YR fic cause I have 40 fics on ao3 and probably about 400 unfinished ones across my old wattpad drafts, google docs, and my notes app, and I am way too indecisive lol.

Story YR - probably an opalescent future. I just really love exploring the idea of a friendship between Simon and Madison and I LOVE stories about real world magic. Madison is also such a queen and so much fun to write. It was really fun figuring out which runes I wanted to use and Madison's family backstory, which just kinda came to me out of nowhere, and I just really loved writing it. I want to write more kinda like that, where it's Simon and Madison bonding over the metaphysical but I'm not going to push my brain on it. If an idea comes to me, I'll write it.

YR line - God this was so hard to pick just one but I'm going to go with "Romeo and Juliet fell in love in a day, and Simon's starting to understand why." from ch4 of Dear Titanic, how did you feel? There were so many lines in that fic that I'm just in awe of the fact that I wrote them, but that one holds special meaning to me. I take months to fall in love with someone. I think it took me like, 6-7 months with my current partner after I started dating them. I can feel infatuation with someone right away, but actually real love takes a while for me to feel. Writing that line though, and the scene that comes before it, I could understand it. I could understand why Simon fell in love with Wille after like 3 days together on the Titanic, even if I don't feel it myself. I don't know if this is making sense lol, but yea, that's the line I'm picking for this.

Non YR story - Absolutely my Narnia+Inhumanity series. You can check out the 'inhuman/dark fantasy narnia', 'inhuman au', and just general 'the chronicles of narnia' tags on my main blog @lord-of-christmas-lights for more about it if you're interested, but yea I'm just in love with the idea of inhuman Narnia and ngl I'm pretty fucking proud of my two actual stories about it. Inhuman Narnia is so much fun to write. I need to not talk about it too much or we will end up here for hours.

Non YR line - Again, so hard to pick just one but probably this line from my Stranger Things fic just sit with me in the dark; i'll be alright. "He freezes. They could be shapeshifters, they could be...they're his friends. They're his friends. He repeats it in his head. Nancy and Jonathan are safe, he's safe." I have mentioned my trauma with horror a couple times on this blog while talking about the vampire AU and this fic was a total vent fic. I am doing so much better since I started opening up to people about it about 2 years ago but for about 4 years when I was about 10-14, this fic was pretty much life every night. I could not separate horror from reality once it got dark and that specific line was so fucking healing for me to write.

Anyways, there you go! Thanks for the ask, it was a lot of fun to answer!!

[alehamora]

May 17, 2018 | N. Sheridan Road  | Day 298

I blame C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe for my magical inclination towards lampposts. I can’t help myself. If there is one in the vicinity, I will touch it and hope deep in my heart that I will open my eyes and find myself in Narnia. The same goes for large wardrobes of which I’ve only ever met one - Mama Aleyda’s in Colombia and that was filled with clothes, papers and faded memories.

Yes, has my voracious appetite for imaginary worlds coupled with my vivid imagination hindered my grasp of reality? Slightly so. Yes, I know that touching the lamppost won’t actually transpose my very physical body to another place, let alone a fantasy realm but a GIRL CAN DREAM OK. Like if you saw a bloody TARDIS just chillin’ in a dark corner somewhere or see a young kid carrying parchment in one hand and a caged owl in another that the very core of your being wouldn’t burst into endless euphoria as you sped towards with inhumane speed and agility?

Listen. I would shuck young children across the road and punt the elderly through shop windows if they stood between me and a chance to travel through all of space and time. So as ridiculous as it may seem (or endearingly violent as I like to see it) I will never give up on the chance for magic. Lord knows we need it now more than ever.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

I swear I have normal Narnia headcanons. However, none of them are featured in this post.

So! If you've been following my series of posts about my Inhuman Narnia AU and the couple of oneshots I posted on ao3 under ASkyOfKai, you've probably noticed that in this little universe I've created, Narnia is sort of...sentient. And I've just realized that I've only actually gone into depth about this on Discord with my friends who are probably very tired of hearing about it. So I'm making y'all suffer through it instead. Welcome to Inhuman Narnia 101, please take your seats because this is going to take a while.

Warning for religious themes, theological discussion, and some dark fantasy/inhuman/body horror concepts that involve blood and physical changes.

BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING: Please keep in mind that an AU is meant to be an alternate universe that may not follow canon information. If anything in this post contradicts canon on the creation of Narnia (it undoubtedly will), pay it no mind, this is an AU. It doesn't have to follow canon.

First off, a little explanation of the Inhuman Narnia AU in general. Basically I came up with this AU after seeing some other people on tumblr post about the Pevensies being not quite human after their time in Narnia. Just eerie, cryptid, a bit of dark fantasy kinda stuff. And I was like, "I'm in love, sign me up, I have ideas." I did not sit down and develop this all at once. The worldbuilding I've done for it has come slowly over the past few weeks through posts, fanfics, and discord rambles. The idea of Narnia being a sentient earth deity of sorts is a recent one and there is already so much to it. (Also I call her Narnia because it's convenient, she has other names but I haven't bothered to like, actually make any up so Narnia is what she's called.)

The most important thing to note starting off is that Narnia is not supposed to be a replacement for Aslan, nor is she necessarily "the hero to his villain". Aslan and I have an interesting relationship, as he is literally God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit/etc and I no longer really identify as Christian. While there are times that Aslan definitely takes a more antagonistic route in my writings, I don't actually see him as a bad guy, nor as a good guy. As God, he literally removed from our concepts of good and evil (in my opinion). The same goes for Narnia being an earth deity. I am a Christian-raised pagan, and I definitely subscribe to the idea that gods and deities are not subject to humanity and our rules. Narnia is not a good goddess, she is not a bad goddess, she simply is a goddess. Plain and simple. The dichotomy that exists between Narnia and Aslan in my writing is generally that of opposing deities, but this isn't a hard and fast rule. There were and still are times when they're friends, working towards the same goals. There are times when Narnia's power is stronger than Aslan's and times when Aslan's power is stronger than hers. There is no simple 1:1 comparison between them.

So, getting into motivations and why Narnia as a deity even exists. Essentially, I asked the question, "How do the Pevensies become inhuman?" and voila earth deity Narnia was born. Now, the basic in-universe mythology I've worked out is that Narnia and Aslan are two deities from separate dimensions that came together to create a new world, the world of Narnia. Aslan is the one who oversees things, he's the one who comes up with the ideas, and he's a little less attached to the world as a whole because he's a Creator, not an earth deity. Narnia is, however, and she literally makes up the world, she sort of runs the entire thing on a physical level, and she is much more attached to it. So she's always kinda taken on this role of making the things in her world the way she wants them. For the most part, she and Aslan designed everything together and they're both happy with it blah blah blah. Well, Aslan then decides to bring a few humans from this other world he's created to Narnia. And she affects them a bit (I've got headcanons about Digory and Polly that I haven't posted anywhere yet but I might soon), but it isn't until Aslan brings the Pevensies over that she really gets to experiment. See, there are other deities in the world that kinda rule over the various lands on a surface level (patron gods for Telmar, the Archenlands, etc, they just have less power than Narnia and Aslan) so she has a little less power over the people in those places, but the country of Narnia is both her land and her so when the Pevensies become the Kings and Queens and live there for 15 years, she's very connected to them. And it's through this connection that she starts to affect them. Honestly, I'm not sure if Narnia even knows what she's doing when she starts stripping away their humanity. I think it's that she can feel they're not from her world and she doesn't like that. She wants them to be a part of her, she wants them to belong in her world just the same as everyone else. (Side note—I know Telmar and some other lands in canon are based on people finding portals and coming through and I'd like to say that she does affect them a bit, takes away a bit of their humanity, but it's not to the same extent as the Kings and Queens of her lands).

"So Kai," you might say, "You keep empathizing that she is literally the land and the land is her. What the hell do you mean by that?" Well, essentially, she is...the...land. Basically if you've read Percy Jackson Heroes of Olympus, there's this idea that Gaia and Tartarus are both physically their domains and able to take on a smaller, human shaped physical form because they're gods and not restricted by human ideas of only having one body. Narnia is the same. Her physical form is both the entire world and whatever smaller shape she might appear in to people. However, we have to acknowledge that their world is differently structurally from ours. There's magic, there's talking animals, and in my Inhuman AU, there is a literal Heart of Narnia at the center. Like a physical, beating, human-shaped heart. Except it's a lot bigger than a regular human heart. Also it's golden. And many many many miles underground. So anyways this is where she's centered. It's basically where her soul is. Probably under Cair Paravel because I just came up with that idea and I love it. And radiating out from it are veins of magic and blood, and these stretch all across the world. Now here is where we get into blood magic and some of those fun terrifying concepts I've come up with.

Narnia has her own blood, of course, but also whenever one of her Kings or Queens bleeds in battle, she kinda pulls it down through the earth into her own heart and veins. It doesn't really do anything to her or them in particular, it's just a fun side effect of them having a patron pagan god. Yes this includes Caspian after he becomes King. Also Peter's blood turns golden because he's the High King, and then later Caspian's does too because I just really like imagery of Ben Barnes bleeding gold. (Side note—when Peter returns to England, his blood goes back to red, but it does remain a brighter red than blood generally is).

Diverting for half a second here. Now, in both my regular Narnia writings and my Inhuman AU, Lucy is very very connected to magic. In my regular Narnia fanfic, she studies with the druids, who are sort of like BBC Merlin's druids. They're just like, chill dudes who run around in camps doing magic and making prophecies and shit. However, in the Inhuman AU, they are a lot darker. One of my favorite ideas with the Inhuman druids and Lucy is that they are so connected to Narnia's magic and her Heart that their hands become stained with blood. Is it their blood, is it Narnia's blood, is it someone else's blood? Idk, don't ask questions. But yea, their hands are permanently stained reddish-brown to almost black. In my regular Narnia stuff, I still like the idea of Lucy's hands being stained and go with just earth magic, dirt stuff for the reason why. But yea no, in the Inhuman AU her hands are stained with blood because of blood magic.

So getting a bit more into how Narnia affects the Pevensies now because I love talking about this lol. She doesn't consciously chose how to change them, though she does call them her creations. Generally the way her magic affects them is by connecting them to to the land in some way and bringing out certain traits they have. So for Peter it's his eyes flickering between regular blue and the amber of a lion's, feathers appearing on his back that grow into wings, having a strength greater than that of a giant's. His blood is golden and on clear nights, the Aurora Borealis in the sky is reflected across his skin. For Susan, her skin glints like glass in the sun and she can briefly glimpse the future. Her wounds are sewn shut with golden rays of light, her eyes are cracked but clear, and she seems to glow faintly in the night, a bit of the sun's radiance shining through her. Edmund has a bit of a star's power lodged in his throat, and can manipulate words, uses them to influence people and their actions. His skin is frostbitten in places, a side effect of ruling the Woods where the White Witch once held so much power, and in some spots his bones shine under the ice that spreads across his skin. Lucy has the stained skin from her stronger connection to magic, and when she speaks words from the Old Language (the one Aslan and Narnia used to shape the world itself), her voice echoes and rasps. Her teeth are too sharp, her smile too wide, and when she disappears underwater, she can stay for hours without surfacing. I want to get into Eustace and Caspian now too but this post is already extremely long and I've still got a bit to cover, so we're just sticking with the Pevensies for now. So yea, Narnia doesn't pick what she does to the Pevensies, she just connects herself to them and through that connection, they change. The magic that she is made of, that Narnia the world operates on, that's what changes them. However, as I stated already, she does call them her creations and feels extremely responsible for them.

Wrapping back around up to the beginning, this is the biggest source of conflict between her and Aslan as of the canon timeline. I like to believe that the lamppost incident was an accident, that Aslan didn't actually mean to send them back at the end of LWW and it was pure coincidence, wrong place wrong time stuff. That being said, it did happen and Narnia really didn't like it happening. The Pevensies did return to their (mostly) human selves in this AU in England, so when they came back in Prince Caspian, she felt disconnected from them again. She reacted to this by digging into them even harder on a spiritual level and essentially speedran them back to being inhuman throughout the timeline of PC, which generally takes place over a few months in my mind. I don't remember how long it was in the book, it's been quite a while since I read them, but it's only like a week in the movie and like eff that, overthrowing a kingdom takes a bit longer in my opinion. Now there are a few divergences here. 1. They all stay at the end of PC and yea that's it, they go back to being Kings and Queens and it's like a second Golden Age but with Caspian there as well. 2. Susan and Peter stay, Lucy and Edmund go back and it's a repeat of the human/inhumanity cycle for them + Eustace in VOTDT and then they stay. 3. Everything happens exactly as it does in canon and it's a constant cycle of humanity/inhumanity with the character's various trips and finally ends at The Last Battle. I like all versions and I tend to leave things a little open to the reader on what exactly happens, or I would if I could actually finish some of my drafts and post them. As you can imagine, Narnia likes 1 the best and 3 the least. She really wants her Kings and Queens to stay and rule her lands and like be awesome and stuff. However, Aslan prefers 3 the best and 1 the least. So again, neither of them is really good nor evil, they just have differing opinions on how the world should be run and what the Pevensie's fates should be. I do tend to side with Narnia, I really like exploring these concepts of inhumanity, but I also really like the concept of a cycle. That's very common in mythology.

So anyways, that's a bit of an overview on earth deity Narnia and her role in my Inhuman AU. If you made it this far, congratulations, and I give you explicit permission to use any of my ideas in your own writing/fanart/whatever, as long as you tag either my tumblr or my ao3 (lord-of-christmas-lights and ASkyOfKai) because I need more Narnia+Inhumanity content in my life. Thanks for reading all this and I'll probably be back very soon with elaboration on Eustace and Caspian's inhumanity!

- Kai

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

Sooo I have a question about your inhuman Narnia Au, so hypothetically, if any of the Pevensies brought someone of their world to Narnia, and later married them, do you think Narnia would changr them too?

Yes. The idea is that Narnia doesn't like humanity in her world. She wants everyone in her world to be a part of her. I haven't really touched much on the other humans that exist in Narnia but I did mention in one post I think that she does change like, the Telmarine ancestors and everyone else a little bit. Not quite to the same extent though cause the idea is that the closer you are to her, the more you're changed. Someone who's close enough to one of the Pevensies to marry them would be close enough to Narnia to be significantly changed.

Also, on the subject of Inhuman Pevensies and marriage, I will say that I kinda picture none of them ever getting married. If one or more of them does, it's to someone who's 100% Narnian. They're just so connected to Narnia in my mind that I can't really see them marrying anyone who is or used to be human. I can see a case being made for Eustace and Jill in this AU, as I imagine Jill would also be changed a lot once she starts traveling to Narnia but that's about it. That's just my thoughts though! Feel free to imagine them however you want.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

I could post regular Narnia headcanons...

Or I could post the continuation of this post and go into depth about how Eustace and Caspian are affected by deity Narnia. Welcome back to Inhuman Narnia 101 and it turned out just as long as the first one so buckle up.

Check out this post by @dorianviolet for another awesome version of Inhuman AU Caspian

Warnings for slight body horror mentions including blood magic stuff, slight religious themes and theological discussion towards the end.

Before anything: This AU directly contradicts canon a lot. I don't care, that's why it's called an AU. Some of it is deliberate, some of it is accidental. I haven't read the books in a number of years, so this is all based on the movies and general information I've picked up from fanfic and tumblr. Discussion on this post is welcomed, criticism and arguments are not. Thank you.

First off, here is the link to an exploration of Dragoning, the Eustace-centric fic I wrote about this. I refer to it repeatedly in this post so if you want the full thing, there it is.

Second, let's get into this. So in my last post, I talked a lot about Narnia, her general existence in this AU, and her motivations as a character. She wants the people in her world to be a part of her, and no one else. Some of this is a conscious choice, and some of it isn't. Eustace's changes throughout his time in VOTDT are definitely not purposeful. It was his greed that drove him to the treasure, it was his own "curse" in becoming a dragon. That was not Narnia reaching out to him and purposefully trying to mold him to her world. As such, he takes on more of an observing role.

Eustace doesn't ever actually directly address his cousins on the subject of their inhumanity, in this fic or in any other I write. He simply sees it, notes it happening, and moves on. Even in the sections in my fics where the subject of inhumanity in general is brought up between Eustace and one of his cousins, it's always about Caspian, the greater Narnian world, or himself.

"Eustace asks why, and Lucy answers. Narnia changes people, she says. It happens to everyone, but the closer you are to her Heart, the greater it is. I don't know where Dragons are. Perhaps closer than we realized. It's exhilarating, isn't it? Aslan will return us to normal though, at the end of our journey." - AEOD

I don't know why, but I don't like the idea of Eustace trying to directly address the Pevensie brand of inhumanity. That line above takes place after his UnDragoning, after the way he sees things has changed, and I see it as him asking what exactly has changed, you know, why are Dragons different than boys?

That brings me to how Eustace himself changes. Now, if he hadn't gone and turned into a Dragon, I imagine Narnia wouldn't have taken much note of him. He's a random human, stuck-up, not at all in line for ruling her lands, and just kind of exists without much else going on. She still would have affected him a little, as she does to all humans in her world but it would have been almost entirely spiritual with no physical changes. And then we got the greatest fuck around and find out scene ever. He becomes a Dragon.

I love dragons, always have, I have a very deep spiritual connection to these creatures, and as such, I have gone all out on worldbuilding for Narnian Dragons. Again, the quote from AEOD, "...the closer you are to her Heart, the greater it is. I don't know where Dragons are. Perhaps closer than we realized." In the Inhuman AU, Dragons were the first creatures Narnia (the deity) and Aslan made when they created Narnia (the world). They just really liked the dragon shape from other worlds and thought, "Hey wouldn't it be cool if our world was populated by these big fire-breathing lizards?" Now I don't actually remember how often Dragons are mentioned and/or featured in the books so I'm going with my idea that Dragons are a somewhat rare but not extinct species. They have to be created through magical means, often through physical transformation of people or objects, though there are a few known cases of natural-born Narnian Dragons. Eustace's creation was the curse on the treasure, though I don't see his Dragoning as a curse itself. As in, the curse isn't in the being a Dragon, it's in how the Dragon was created. So, Eustace experiences this accidental change into a creature that's closer to Narnia's Heart than pretty much any other being in Narnia. They were her first creations, forged from the fire in the Stars, and they are the closest to her magic. And that gets her attention.

Now, if you went and read AEOD, you'll have noticed that one of Eustace's biggest changes (aside from the obvious physical ones) is his vision. This is just a natural thing for Dragons, they are far more in tune with magic and the earth and everything than everyone else, but Narnia's special interest in him definitely amplifies the hell out of his magic sense.

"The people here say dragons see the oddest of things, and he has to assume it's a hallucination....He refuses to give into its whims, reminds himself it's just his imagination. Until Reepicheep comments on it." - AEOD. Following this quote, Reepicheep mentions to Lucy that her inhumanity is returning faster than Edmund's and Eustace has a total panic attack at the idea that what he's seeing is real. He sees what everyone else does, Lucy's stained fingers and Edmund's ability to manipulate words, but he also notices stuff no one else does like the stars in Edmund's throat and the echoes that follow Lucy's words. This is further cemented after his UnDragoning, where the extra stuff he perceived has vanished. Now the general idea in this AU is that the closer to Narnia's Heart you are, the more you know and perceive. Everyone can see some of the more obvious inhuman aspects of the Pevensies, but there are things that only Dragons, druids, Stars, and some other magic folk really close to Narnia's Heart see. I'm not going to get into an exact chart of what certain characters can and cannot see because that can change over time and such and I'd rather leave it mostly up to personal interpretation on what other characters do and do not perceive about the Pevensies and other such inhuman characters.

(Side note—I had to pause in the writing of this post here to go to my second meeting for an autism assessment and I think if I just showed the doctor my notes app and the inhuman/dark fantasy narnia tag on my blog, I'd get the diagnosis instantly lol) So anyways, Narnia senses Eustace becoming a Dragon and is like "Ooohoo what's this?" and starts sort of digging into him in the same way she does to her Kings and Queens. This triggers his already enhanced perception of Narnia (the world) to get even stronger, and this is when he starts seeing stuff like people's souls, Caspian's second heart (more on that soon), and looking at Lucy/Edmund/Lilliandil becomes almost painful because Narnia's magic is so bright in them. Aslan then UnDragons him, which Narnia really doesn't like btw, and Eustace is back to being a fairly average human.

This is where stuff established in AEOD ends.

Now I have so many ideas and half finished fanfics written out in my notes app about Eustace, UnDragoning, and inhumanity and it would be impossible to cover them all here, so I'm just going to go with the highlights. One of my favorite ones is the idea that after Eustace's UnDragoning, he still feels very connected to being a dragon. He's had this taste of pure inhumanity, and something like that doesn't just leave a person. There's a fic I read once long before I was fully invested in this fandom about Eustace and draconity that I will never stop thinking about and was actually the reason I started considering Eustace and Narnian Dragons in this AU. One of the really important things to note is that once a Dragon is created, they can never be uncreated. They can be UnDragoned, where their physical form is returned to whatever it was before their Dragoning (a rock, a talisman, a faun, etc) but their soul has changed on a fundamental level to that of a Dragon. Now for Eustace in my Inhuman AU, this manifests spiritually as a deep longing to return to being a Dragon. Physically, he experiences fun side effects like increased heat tolerance, nails that grow faster than normal, and because Narnia likes to meddle, a single ridge of scales along his spine. In some versions of my drafts, he stays at the end of VOTDT and experiences a slow Dragoning because Narnia's influence on him is that strong, other versions he stays but never quite returns to the Dragon he was before, and in yet other versions, he returns to England and loses that connection enough that physically, he will never be a Dragon again. As I said, Narnia is fascinated by him, she's never really had a human Dragon before, but he is still just a random guy who happens to be related to the Pevensies and as such, she doesn't invest as much time or magic into his inhumanity.

So that's Eustace. This is already such a long post but I promised to talk about both him and Caspian so here we go.

Now, in my last post I talked a bit about how Narnia (the deity) affects the other humans in Narnia (the world) to an extent, but it's nowhere near the amount she does to her Kings and Queens, and also this diminishes more and more the farther you get from Narnia (the country). Telmar is fairly close to Narnia (the country) but as we see in PC, a lot of Narnia's magic and spirit has been diminished by the time Caspian is born. Up until the awakening of the land during the battle, Caspian is essentially 100% human. However, this changes very quickly.

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment Caspian becomes a King of Narnia. Is it when he refuses to kill Miraz? Is it when Aslan tells him he's one? Is it during his actual coronation? Yes, yes, and yes. I try not to pin it down to an exact moment. By the end of PC though, he's definitely noticing some changes in himself. I have an unpublished part 2 to an exploration of Inhumanity (my only other actually posted fic on this stuff) that I swear I will clean up and get posted soon that goes into further detail on the changes he's noticing at the end of AEOI. Some of the big ones include a second golden heart, seeing some of the life magic in the world around him, and a golden glow on his palms. He also slowly develops the ability to heal, though it's not always consistent. Magic takes practice, lots and lots of practice. In pt 2, the glow on his palms has gotten so bright and also spread around his head like a halo, and Lucy shows him how to conceal it so he's not impossible to look at, but because of Magic™ there's still a dusting of golden powdery stuff across his skin. His blood turns golden because Ben Barnes + golden blood is such pretty imagery, and like the others, it gets sucked down and absorbed into Narnia's Heart when he bleeds in battle. Also when I say he's got a second heart I mean he's got a second fucking heart. Ribcage shift and all. (His appearance doesn't actually change, it's more like a pocket dimension thing going on inside him, but he sure as hell can feel it happening). Having Narnia as a patron goddess just means you have to put up with a second puberty sometimes lol.

Anyways, there's a line in AEOI that I feel explains this stuff really well. "He cannot truly protect the land without becoming a part of it himself." Narnia changes her Kings and Queens because she wants them to be a part of her. Aslan doesn't really see these changes as necessary (in canon, a world without deity Narnia, they don't happen), and if the storyline we pick is the one that's the constant cycle of humanity and inhumanity, it's sort of a push and pull between them. Aslan wants the Pevensies, and by proxy anyone else who rules Narnia or experiences these changes, to keep their humanity, to stay as they were Created by him. Narnia, however, wants them to be as much a part of her as she is of them. It's very clear in both the books and the movies that Narnia (the world) is where these characters belong. In the end, they all come home to her (yes, Susan too because fuck Mr. Clive Staples Lewis). Caspian being anything less than fully inhuman is something she cannot handle. She is constantly having to recreate the Pevensies, reestablish her hold on them, only to have them return to England and become mostly human again. Caspian cannot be taken away from her, he is in this world by birth and she is going to do everything she can to shape him into the ruler he needs to be.

Once again, I would like to state that Aslan and Narnia are not opposing sides of good and evil. Gods cannot be defined by human standards, and to think either Narnia or Aslan completely in the right or wrong in this AU would be, well, an interesting standpoint, but really not the one I'm going for here. I'm not going to say it's a misinterpretation, I am very open to hearing people's thoughts on this AU, and everyone's going to see things differently. Just, please reread what I've written about them before you start making that argument.

Anyways, that wraps this post up because I have spent the better part of the past 6 hours writing this. I spent way more time on Eustace than I intended but it's just so fascinating to think about inhumanity from his perspective considering he's the only one in canon that actually was (briefly) inhuman. Again, if you got this far, congratulations! If you use any of my ideas mentioned here, please tag me, I am so starved for inhuman Narnia content lol.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

Back at it again with my Inhuman Narnia BS

Someone needs to teach me how to make higher quality gifs lmao.

Anyways here's a little thing I just threw together. I wanted to do Susan but my inhuman version of her is way more abstract than Edmund with his frostbitten skin and stars in throat deal. Still not sure I did the best at portraying that but eh. I did recycle my Pevensies + Jewelry art lol, but I have so many classes today and I was working on this during breaks and it was a lot easier to just grab that instead of redrawing him. I hope y’all like it!

Frames under the cut if you want a higher quality look

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

fic promo

This is a self promotion for my continuation oneshot to an exploration of Inhumanity for the Inhuman Narnia AU. Which I added as a chapter because the Narnia+Inhumanity series is just general fics from this AU. I swear, the organization makes sense in my head. Anyways. I don't know how fic feed accounts do that like, ao3 fic embedding thing where it's got all the tags and shit so...

an exploration of Gold <- That's the link

General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Gen, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Caspian & The Pevensies (Narnia), Caspian (Narnia), Peter Pevensie, Susan Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie, Aslan, Biblical References, Not Canon Compliant, Book/Movie: Prince Caspian, Magic, the pevensies are not human, caspian learns this, narnia has a soul, Body Horror, Introspection <- Those are all the tags, I'm not linking them but I'm including them so people can see them before they actually click on the fic

Anyways, if you read it, thank you! I love you! Comments are appreciated!

- Kai

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

Inhuman AU Susan

Susan, whose skin glints like glass in the sunlight, whose cracked gray eyes go blank when the future reveals itself to her, whose wounds are stitched with gold from where Lucy has woven sunbeams into her skin. Gentle, the Kings and Queens say, exchanging smiles too sharp for comfort. - From an unpublished, unfinished fic I wrote

Once again, I recycled the jewelry drawing and had some fun figuring out how to get the fade without having to compress the gif to high hell. Unfortunately, if I decide to do Peter and Lucy as well, I'll have to redraw them as I accidentally merged all the layers on their jewelry drawings before I saved them so I'll probably leave this style as just Edmund and Susan.

Here's the link to the Edmund drawing. Frames under the cut if you want a higher quality look.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

She's beautiful! I love it!! The rose circlet looks so good.

Just as I said I would, here is another one of the Pevensie siblings, here is Lucy @lord-of-christmas-lights I hope it's near to what you have imagined her like

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

And it was said that in the heat of battle, the High King's face more resembled that of a snarling lion's than his own.

Alternatively titled: oh fuck I'm hyperfixating on Narnia

Anyways I recolored this about four times and then forgot to put my signature on it before I saved it and now I'm too tired to go turn my laptop on, boot up my art program, open the file, add the signature, save the piece, send it to my email, download it to my phone, and replace it in the post. So, fancy Tumblr text in the corner. Also the little italics quote is one I just made up on the spot and really liked.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

More Inhuman Narnia AU content!

I just keep getting further and further away from their canon movie appearances the more I draw them lmao. It's Susan again! (Based on that one photo of Billie Eillash at the Met because I have not been able to stop thinking about it). I've honestly been debating for a day about posting this one, I wasn't really sure if it was interesting or good enough to put on tumblr but yea fuck that, art exists to be seen not hidden away in a laptop files folder. I hope y'all like it!

Alternatively titled: how the fuck does one draw golden scars and skin like glass (also ignore that the close up is terribly cropped)

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

I love him!!! The stars in the throat look so good! It's such a hard concept to get out of my mind and into the physical world and you did great job with it. I would love to see the others if you do them!

@lord-of-christmas-lights So I read your Inhuman AU and I most say I really loved it so I wanted to try and draw the Pevensies with your descriptions, for now is only Edmund (not because he is my favorite cof cof) Hope you like it!