#literary lion

[victoriadallonfan]

I know I’m like half a year late to recommend it, but The Sin Squad just put out a great video on how difficult it can be to find actual dog whistles and problematic material in fiction versus paranoid reading (aka gearing yourself up to find a reading to such things where they might not be intended)

I recommend it for everyone to at least give it a few minutes if your time because it’s some solid work and high quality analysis!

[spalanai]

the disappointment of walking into a wardrobe and not finding narnia

[starr-angelofnarnia]

Some Things Should Be Left in the Past

I'm trying to distract myself from the hellscape that is my home country, so let's talk about Narnia.

I see things every so often in my Google suggested articles about the Greta Gerwig adaptation of Narnia and if fans think it's a good or a bad thing, what they'd like to see or not, and if more of the series will be adapted this time around.

Personally, I'm indifferent. I grew up with the live action (I guess from Disney?) film version and it'll always have a special place in my heart. (And Skandar Keynes will forever be my first celebrity crush). Before that, I had no idea there was another adaptation (BBC TV series apparently). So I really don't care either way.

The more interesting question to me is if more of the series will be adapted. The BBC series adapted The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and the Silver Chair. The Disney/Walden Media adaptations covered the same books minus the Silver Chair. As a child, I had a few picture book adaptations of only The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. And I think, if you asked the average person (not a fan of the series) what they know about the series, they would most likely be most familiar with LWW because it tends to stand alone.

Okay where I'm going with this now: I don't think any of the other stories beyond the three that feature the Pevensie's adventures in Narnia will be adapted because the rest of the series just kind of sucks.

Disclaimer: From here on out, there WILL be spoilers for the entire seven book series. I'm analyzing the plot and sharing my opinions on it. If you don't want anything spoiled, you should probably stop here.

Still here? Okay!

LWW will forever be one of my favorite stories. And it's because I loved the story so much I decided to read the entire series. But I found the rest of it (again, outside of the class 3) to be disappointing. And I think there are a few reasons for that.

LWW is the strongest book in the series because it was the first. It was written as a children's fairy tale. The book is even dedicated to C. S. Lewis' goddaughter, Lucy (I believe Lucy Pevensie is named after his goddaughter as well). And the religious connections, the fact that its a Christ-like tale is blatantly obvious. But the story works. The metaphor is clearly there, but you can enjoy it without being religious. Because here are these children who leave behind the tragedies of World War II and find themselves in a magical land, one they quickly become royalty in.

I honestly think from there though, Lewis sank too hard into the religious metaphor to make it believable. As a stand alone book, LWW is the story of Christ. But the more he adds on, the more it becomes apparent that this isn't just a metaphor but some type of parallel universe. From LWW, we get to Prince Caspian where the oldest two are now told they cannot return because they're too old. Then comes Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Lucy and Edmund are finally told the same thing; that they are too old. And at some point, Lucy expresses how much she will miss Aslan if she can't come back.

And now, its no longer a metaphor. Because Aslan tells Edmund and Lucy that he does exist in our world, but he goes by a different name. At this point, Aslan is no longer a metaphor for the Christ story, he expresses that he IS Jesus.

From there, the series takes a weird turn as it attempts to fill in gaps in the established lore. The Silver Chair is still chronological but I honestly don't remember much of it because by this point, I didn't care. I was just trying to earn my AR points. But after SC, the books aren't chronological. The Horse and His Boy takes place in Narnia during the Pevensie monarchy but this book isn't about them--they only appear briefly because of a plot against their country of Narnia. The Magician's Nephew finally establishes how Narnia came to be and sets up where the Wardrobe comes from that will eventually get the Pevensies to Narnia. And then the Last Battle sees the world of Narnia come to an end.

So, problem number 1: Lewis has established the four Pevensies as the protagonists, the heroes of the series. And by book three, we've cut out two and added a new one. While spin offs are lovely and expansions of the world, trying to expand on the same plot with a new cast of characters doesn't tend to sit well. This is why I think the SC isn't memorable. The Pevensies have no place in it; only their cousin who's just been introduced in the book prior. I don't care about the cousin.

Problem number 2: It's great to have an expansion to the lore of a fictional world but the following novels don't really do that. The closest thing to an expansion of the lore of Narnia is THaHB. But again, the Pevensies aren't the center of the plot. Introducing a new character in a familiar world without focusing on the familiar characters takes away from the enjoyment. The Pevensies are RIGHT THERE, but I'm following the story line of some random kid.

Out of the last four books, the most memorable to me is the Magician's Nephew because there is a lot of world jumping. In this book, we get to see the end of one world, the establishment of a new one (Narnia) and we get to see where some of the most memorable elements of LWW come from (the lamp post, the wardrobe, the professor, etc).

The Last Battle? I hate it. It shouldn't exist. In my [not so humble] opinion, LB ruins the series. And I've seen analyses into this that are fascinating takes, (that the train crash could make sense in a historical context; that the problem with Susan is she demonstrates that sometimes remaining alive [alone] is worse than death) but I think this just attempts to fix problems that are unfixable.

There is so much more I could say on the problems with the series but I'll save that for now. I'll conclude this accidental essay by saying there is a reason the book to screen adaptations have occurred as they have. The stories we know and love, those that persist and stand the test of time, do so because they remain relatable, they give us a glimpse into times past, and they have cultural significance. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does show up on lists of Classic literature (it was required reading for me as a sixth grader). The rest do not. And there is nothing wrong with leaving the other books in a series behind; Lewis' Narnia would not be the first nor the last to have one story persist while the rest fall into a bit of obscurity. And that's okay.

If I can find them, I may go watch the currently available adaptations, both the BBC series and the films (though, again, I'm partial to the films). As Greta Gerwig takes up the mantle of readapting the series, of course LWW will be there and perhaps PC and VotDT as well. I think it would be fun to see the creation of the world we know and love with an adaption of the Magician's Nephew. But I think the rest should stay in the past.

[bdazzlebooklover]

Love this beautiful copy!

[imminent-danger-came]

(4x10 The Jade Emperor)

-

(4x14 Better Than We Found It)

-

Jade Emperors smiling before their inevitable ends.

[maverick-prime]

fanfiction is worth way more than you might think it is. here's why.

something i don't think anybody ever talks or thinks about is how fanfic helps writers develop incredibly useful skills and tools in the same way that prompts, worksheets, and studying literature does. (i actually think it's much more accessible than many of those types of supposedly helpful methods to build good writing skills. fanfiction makes the possibilities limitless while building upon media that people love and really connect with. you can find whatever you want if you use the right tags in AO3.) to illustrate exactly what i mean, i present these points:

*NOTE: if you're not familiar with fanfic terms, i'll define them as i go! i'm also an AO3 user, so i'll be using that as a basis for a lot of my thoughts.

it’s a really helpful way to get a grasp of how to keep characters consistent in a piece, since you have to work with characters that already have established personalities, backstories, habits, and character traits that carry over from their source material. this can get a bit tricky when writing AUs (alternate universes) or canon divergences (hopefully self-explanatory) in particular, but if you acknowledge that characters are OOC (out of character), this can solve that issue pretty quickly and as long as you make everything make sense within context, you're golden. not only that, but you can fix any flaws that you perceive in a character by adding in your own headcanons (personal ideas/beliefs about a character) or by creating realistic traits in that character that don't exist in canon but make sense for the character. this also works for expanding upon canon traits that are never explored to their full potential in canon.

a great example of this would be tony stark in the MCU. a lot of fanfic interpretations of his character put a stronger focus on his anxiety and PTSD, since the movies hint at those traits existing, but don't do them a lot of justice. another good example that's a bit more broadly applicable is LGBT+ or neurodivergent headcanons. if you really identify or kin with a character and feel that they have a certain orientation, gender identity, or mental disorder/condition, you can make it happen! this often has the great side effect of opening up a lot of possibilities for writing those traits into that character and how they affect the world and other characters around them differently than in canon.

you can think of an almost infinite amount of different scenarios to put characters and story events in. i mentioned AUs and canon divergences above, but there are also fanfic tropes like everybody lives/nobody dies, kidfic, time loop/time travel, role swap, missing scene, and even omegaverse (i'm not explaining that one to you, you're on your own pal) that offer different possibilities for putting characters and story events in all sorts of circumstances and contexts that differ from canon. (continuity soups are one of my very favorite examples of this technique. in a continuity soup, an author working with a franchise that has multiple different continuities can cherry-pick aspects of each continuity they like and smash them all together into a single world. this technique works especially well with transformers, which has, at this point, almost a dozen different continuities that are in fact all canon at the exact same time.) a writer doing this learns how to translate certain necessary story events into a completely different world, or can come up with a whole new world, storyline, or context on their own to play with plot, conflict, characters, and story events.

there are a near-limitless number of AUs out there, and every AU that is widely used comes with its own set of tropes. tropes are another useful tool for writers, because they can either be cliche or they can actually be very helpful for building a compelling plot or for introducing characters in a certain way. there are even fanfic genre tropes that exist, like hurt/comfort, fluff, whump/angst, slow burn, enemies to lovers, dead dove do not eat, crackfic... the list goes on!

writers who have difficulty writing things like romance, intimacy, emotional turmoil, injuries, sci-fi, or magic can easily learn a lot from how different fic writers write those topics (and many others). there are tons of fics that focus a lot on one specific genre and whose authors have developed a really great understanding of how to write those genres. not only can you learn a lot in terms of how to write genre, but you can also learn to develop your own writing style. this is one of the reasons why i think fanfiction is a lot more accessible than traditional books and classics. sure, you could read danielle steel novels or fifty shades of grey (which is itself fanfiction!!) or 1984 by orson welles, but unless you're really invested in the worlds being created, you'll find it harder to appreciate the prose. and, a lot of fic writers are not professional writers, so they don't even care about prose! (this is a broad generalization, and i mean "prose" in a more academic sense because i am literally studying rhetoric and prose for my bachelor's degree. not a lot of fic authors are breaking down writing styles for dialogue, diction, or sentence structure. they just write what they love writing and often develop their own styles out of that, which is also just as valid.)

i myself have definitely not been reading as many books in recent years as i've read fanfics. i go through fanfics like wildfire through a dry field. finding fic authors i love reading has really helped me improve my writing style! not only that, but i feel confident to try writing real romances with kissing scenes, to use actual scientific language to describe in-text phenomena, to describe magical objects and worlds with more clarity, and even to try my hand at writing smut. i've learned to break out of my comfort zone thanks to fanfiction, and it's helped me become a much better writer.

developing a writing style through reading other authors' work is much like developing an art style. any artist knows that you're encouraged to create your own style by mashing together traits from other artists' styles you really love and making them into something that's wholly your own. writing works the exact same way. one of my professors last semester had us do an "apprenticeship" with a short story collection written by a certain author to open us up to styles we like and don't like. she said that's how you create your own style, by figuring out what you like and what you don't like. i've been doing this with fic authors for years, and let me tell you, there are some real literary geniuses out there.

fanfiction helps writers learn to accept criticism as well as suggestions for what to write next. one of the hardest parts of being a writer is having someone read your work and tell you there's something wrong with it. your peers do it, your professors do it, editors do it, publishers do it. i've had the great privilege of participating in multiple writing workshops as part of my university education, but it can be really, really hard to find or create writing workshops outside of an academic setting. sites like AO3 cut out the middleman and bring authors right to their audiences. anyone can leave kudos on a fic if they liked it, and anyone can comment on a fic and chat directly with an author. i know for a fact that most authors regularly check and read the comments sections on their fics for feedback, criticism, and requests for what to write next. you can't necessarily do that with big-time authors like stephen king; you’d have to send a letter that may never be read.

the closest thing this system of interaction comes to is voice actors hopping on twitch streams and taking requests from viewers to say all kinds of things in-character. (this actually has the added benefit of inspiring new and interesting fic ideas.) the community on AO3 is genuinely one of the most accepting and welcoming internet spaces i've ever existed in, with possibly the exception of tumblr. fic authors really value feedback, and they love when people leave comments. sometimes they write fic just for themselves, but sometimes they do it for their audiences too! there's a really deep appreciation for source material and fanon (fan canon) alike in the world of fanfiction, and a lot of that is fostered in the author-audience connection. this is invaluable as a beginning writer, because it can help establish criticism as a valuable tool and not something to fear.

it can be scary when you put so much love into something and people don't like it. but fic readers are some of the most encouraging, wonderful people ever. you can trust them to offer valuable feedback and actually constructive criticism.

in short, fanfiction is a bit like placing a kid into a sandbox that only has a select few toys in it and letting them play however they want. so much creativity can come out of working within certain restraints, and it can really help you develop a lot of skill you might not develop otherwise. more aspiring writers should write—or at least read—fanfiction so they can reap some of these benefits. i wish it were more widely discussed in universities, at the very least, because there is so much to learn from fanfiction.

and if you really think fanfiction is only for gross internet weirdos, i remind you of fifty shades of grey being fanfic of twilight, or that city of bones, the first mortal instruments book, was originally a ginny/draco fanfic. i don't even need to mention the sheer number of more recently published romcom books that are based off of reylo from the star wars sequels. plus, if you really think about it, most modern shakespeare adaptations and homages (10 things i hate about you, leo dicaprio's romeo and juliet, the lion king) are fanfiction! there's no shame in making media of what you love. there's no shame in loving anything in the first place. do what makes you happy, and chances are you'll learn something along the way.

[elmp]

It Has A Little Bit Of A Longer Snout Than A Lion

Please. Do. Not. Fucking.

Ever. Tell. Me. How. I. Feel.

About. Shit. For. Me.

[annafromuni]

Marjan Kamali's The Lion Women of Tehran Makes My Heart Swell

The Lion Women of Tehran is Marjan Kamali’s newest release and I cannot contain my excitement. I fell in love with The Stationery Shop and have been awaiting another book from her since I closed the back cover, unwilling to let the smells and senses of food and cooking from my mind. The Lion Women of Tehran has not disappointed on that front either, reinforcing my appreciation for cultures where…

[thelastrenaissance]

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fantasy novel by C. S. Lewis. The novel was published on October 16, 1950.

“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather,

C. S. Lewis.”

C. S. Lewis “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”

[not-really-a-poet-blog]

a lion, maybe 

the moon follows me 

as if I am a majestic creature,

close, but not close enough

it opens its mouth as if 

to smile,

or gape in awe

by: anonymous

note from the “not-really-poet”:

this is part of a larger poem, but i thought i’d share a piece of it now. thnx so much!!!

[changelingchangewing]

I love revisiting beloved books from my childhood. I’m rereading The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe currently and it is an absolute delight.

[red-sea-itinerary]

or. add your own suggestion! (or make a Lion Hunters poll of your own 👀)

[sailforvalinor]

🦁

[swynlake-rp]

A magical forest teeming with wildlife and magical beings, a pristine lake, drama and intrigue, and a bustling small town main street, what else could you need to bring these characters to life in a magical town?

Pearl Beck (Pearl, Finding Nemo) - You were taught your entire life to hide It, It being the fact you are a merperson, which in case that wasn’t clear, is your entire identity!!! Swynlake a magick-friendly town, and yet, you sure don’t see any out merpeople here, especially not any out cecaelia. Well, then. You’re just going to have to change that and show everyone how awesome merfolk are.

Cash Conrad (Cash, Fox and The Hound 2) - Steel guitars, handwritten lyrics, and a passion for show business, that’s the recipe for one Cash Conrad. After an argument put your success on hold you’ve come to Swynlake to make it right. Surely someone better than who you fired is out there somewhere. Can you be each other’s golden geese?

Shenzi Bungu (Shenzi, The Lion King) - Excellence runs in your blood and you deserve recognition for it! After joining MAFIA you’ve become keenly aware of your purpose. So you’re here in Swynlake under the guise of grad school to further the mission. And you don’t know how to fail!

Rapunzel Corona (Rapunzel, Tangled) - Starry eyes, lantern lights, and…magic glowing hair? Stranger things did happen here in Swynlake. Maybe that’s good for you! You’ve run away from home, you’re hiding, could Swynlake be your chance to blend in while searching for the answers you crave? You do hope so.

Danielle Richards (Dog Triplet, Lady & The Tramp) - You don’t have time to waste kicking yourself for only embarking on a grand adventure now. What matters is that you’re doing it! Will reuniting with your younger brother prove to bring a welcome change to your boring life?

Wade Watts (Wade, Kim Possible) - You have tons of friends, okay? So what if they all live in your computer…it’s just…well it’s easier to be yourself online, isn’t it? Who needs to actually talk to people when you’re a computer genius!

[blumoonfiction-blog]

Fairy Tale101: Myths & Legends - The Snow Queen

“The cold never bothered me anyway.”~Elsa, Frozen Let’s talk about one of the most fascinating characters in fairy tale history: the Snow Queen. You’ve probably heard of her, whether from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 story, Disney’s Frozen, or even as a fleeting reference in winter-themed conversations. She’s this incredibly enigmatic figure, blending beauty, power, and just the right touch of…

[anwhitebooks]

The Lion Women of Tehran: Thought-provoking and compelling

August 15, 2024 Spoiler-Free Review If you like character-driven stories centered on friendship and coming-of-age in an increasingly intense political landscape, this one is for you. This book deals with some heavy themes. Click here for content warnings. What’s The Lion Women of Tehran about? This story follows the wealthy, high-born Ellie and her best friend from the slums, Homa, as they…