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teashadephoenix · 4 years ago

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Okay so I tried to finish this yesterday before I crashed for a nap, but I am old and weak so here it is.

Lucifer Season 5A overall thoughts!

SPOILERS!

-i called it. I knew if they opened with Mr Said Out Bitch it was gonna be bc he was dead-- had to be, bc Lucifer was in Hell. Didnt like being right. Thanks for heaping a bunch of character development on a great bit of comic relief just so he can be dead.

-not enough Trixie. What the fuck. Is this a Chandler Riggs situation? Can Scarlett not act or something? Give her stuff to do please.

-EIGHT EPISODES AND NO SINGING LUCIFER???? GODDAMN BLASPHEMY

-i get why people are frustrated with how Maze is written bc it seems like she never does anything but go back and forth but I mean... that's just the writing across the board for this series. Lucifer, Chloe, and Dan have all flipflopped as the seasons progress-- character growth is handled the way real people are, with relapses in bad behavior and having to reiterate lessons more than once. Unusual for television writing, which usually addresses an idea once and then fucks off it forever.

-That said, I enjoyed Maze's arc of dealing with abandonment and seeking a soul. It made sense and was in character-- Lesley played Maze like she felt utterly lost, near madness from frustration, seeking comfort the way she best knows (sex and violence) from the people she loves and not knowing what to do when it wasn't working. I hate that she's so easily manipulated but I feel like it really is bc she wants to feel normal so badly and doesnt realise that normal is relative.

-tangentially, Lilith did not play as big a part as I expected and i was sort of disappointed.

-I wonder if the ring will now be used to pass lilith's immortality to someone who needs it?

-Tom Ellis' performance as Michael was v good as I previously said, but the entire concept of him was nothing inspired. I really had high hopes for him bc I love twins and especially twins who are like the bane of each other's existence but ffs they didn't do anything with it! So he's the polar opposite of his brother, so what! He's a wicked little American hunchback who lies and schemes and plays on people's fears... why? To what end? His plan kept changing and his entire motivation seems to be "bc I'm a dick." Boring. And he dresses like a twat.

-Lucifer was not stuck in Hell for remotely a long enough time. I am an angstwhore and I wanted pining. The same fucking thing happened when they made Dean a demon on SPN-- oh no we've had a decent idea and gotten our hero up the tree, now let's do absolutely nothing with it and get him back down aqap! Fuck off. They gave us this difficult, interesting situation to work with (how can Lucifer have a relationship if he has to run Hell) and then the moment he came up for the tiniest amount of time, Hell apparently no longer needs a warden! Srsly? When only two months ago, all hell was breaking loose???? Fuck your fucking convenient handwave.

-also I am sad they dropped the hinted mental/emotional toll on Lucifer for having to return to Hell Granted the article is a year old, likely discussing ideas that were in the infancy, but I was looking forward to seeing the "alcoholic running a liquor store." Obviously once they decided they were doing Michael-playing-Lucifer and summarily realised nobody would believe Lucifer changed that much, it was easier to just come straight out and say "yea thats not him, thats the evil twin."

-Amenadiel is lovely as ever. Charming, funny, the perfect mix of earnest and awkward. DB Woodside nails him and I love him. I love his friendships with Dan and Maze, the big brother instinct he gets with Luci and Chloe. He's a big black dude whose primary role is caretaker and I am here for it.

-Nice to see happy funny Dan back after taking a bereavement sabbatical in s4. I like Kevin Alejandro's performance a lot and so I dont like when Dan's being a dickhead bc it makes me wanna smack him. Loved him reading Diablo scenes w Luci-- reminded me of s2 when they were dorking out about the Weaponizer movies. And the cemetery scene, wow. Dan realising Heaven and Hell are real and that he is in danger of damnation and how bad that scares him-- ow my heart. That having been said...

-I didnt really like characters having these massive bombshells dropped on them just bc Michael is a douche-- that's so lazy. It felt like the writers ticking off checkboxes. Okay so he tells Chloe she's a miracle. That's fine I guess-- there are stakes there. We know it's going to rock her world bc we know how much it damaged Lucifer when he found out. But then he orchestrates Dan finding out and apart from the shock factor... who cares? It matters after, but not before. There was no set-up for that punchline. We knew when Linda pushed Lucifer to "drop the metaphor" that it was going to be a biblical shock for her. We knew what a relief it was going to be for Charlotte, who thought she was losing her mind, to learn that Hell was real and she could change her fate. We knew it was a gamechanger when Chloe found out. And that's why Dan gets the fuck over it super fast, bc it doesn't matter. It was just a box to be checked. Boo.

-it was nice getting to see Tricia Helfer bc I adore that woman but i really do hope that we get to see Charlotte properly again. Take me to the silver city already i am sick of not knowing what it looks like.

-i love Linda to bits. She's funny, she's heartwarming, she's the owner of the single braincell and she and Ella occasionally share it while they watch the others try to bite their own elbows.

6/10

s4 > s2 > s5A = s1 = s3

#lucifer s5 spoilers #lucifer s5 #lucifer spoilers #lucifer #season breakdown

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edensvalentina · 1 year ago

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ok so, this ironically has to do with what I see as biblical connections in the text. which grrm isnt above, though the metaphors are getting crossed with her being crucified but thats honestly better than a one to one.

I feel like theres a connection between marika-godfrey-radagon, and adam-lilith-eve. which tldr in biblical apocrypha adam and lilith were made at the same time, she wasnt subservient, so she was cast out and eve was made from adams rib

it seems like marika was in need of an empyrean heir and the biggest issue was that godfrey couldnt deliver. the twins were born omens, and godwyn might have had a fish tail (or just wasn’t an empyrean and the twins being omens was enough of a big deal the greater will threw a fit idk) and so he was cast out to become the first tarnished.

meanwhile i dont think radagon was made with the intent of him ever becoming elden lord. the carians didnt follow the greater will and where likely seen as a threat like the giants or dragons. this is where me theory on grafting comes in. for some reason marika needed to take a more active role in this conflict and couldnt, so she grafted part of herself with part of a fire giant thus creating radagon. why? i dont know! maybe shes just a control freak, maybe she was doing fucked up experiments because whos gonna stop her, shes fucking god.

my reasoning mostly boils down to the imagery of marika being crucified shes missing part of her side dipping into her stomach where her stomach is, and we have the giants red braid which says radagon hates his red hair because of its connection to the fire giants. which if hes only the other half of marika (naturally occurring or not) doesnt really make sense. also have you seen radahn??

i dont think radagon was created with the idea of being marika’s husband. frankly neither seem exactly keen on the idea. but during the liurian wars radagon ended up marrying rennala (and isnt it funny the astrologers carians are descended from and the fire giants got along?) its unlikely marika LIKED this, but the greater will seemed fine absorbing other factions and it worked out in the end

the issue is marika has three children so far, two of which have been thrown in the fucking sewers. at the same time radagon and rennala are actively having children and ranni ends up being born an empyrean, and doesnt that get marikas fucking goat. so i think the greater will had godfrey cast out and bid marika to take radagon as a husband.

ranni is made a demigod stepchild and has her own two fingers, but i think the greater will was hoping for an heir raised within the golden order and ruined marika and radagons lives to do it. as for them sharing a body at this point? radagon obviously opposed marikas plan to shatter the elden ring and I think she ended up assimilating him either on purpose or like she killed his body and his spirit ended up possessing her or something idk.

my personal elden ring head canon propaganda is that the first person in the golden lineage to graft was not godefroy but marika herself

#elden ring #look its a mess fight me #my phone died halfway through writing this #and i lost the draft #its not pretty #but i wrote it and its out of my brain after being there for months #still have to figure out what radagons connection to the misbegotten are #because something is going on there #despite the misbegottens connection to the crucible #also marika grafts herself #and has really toxic nasty times with rennala #obviously

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ultralaser · 6 years ago

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i'm just gonna go ahead and spoil the fuck out of hellboy 2019 bc it's awful and i can't think of a good reason not to

thomas haden church shows up as lobster johnson! but he looks ridiculous, like, a cheap halloween costume version compared to, say, the period costumes in captain america or wonder woman. and he has NO SET UP so he just comes off like a joke, it's not, oh this is a wierd noir pulp hero in **gotham city**, it's, lobster johnson, nazi hunter. is hellboy a world with cool superheroes, and if so, why isn't hellboy one of them? is he an x men now? idk it doesnt work tho

baba yaga shows up! she has a house on chicken legs that's rendered beautifully, but then she has one of the worst face prosthetics i've ever seen, it literally looks like a cheap monster mask from party city. so much for the grace and elegant spookiness of a doug jones suit, this baba yaga mask can't even lip sync well

guy davis kaiju demons show up! but they aren't, cool, they're just, they have as much screen time as the ogdru jahad in hellboy 04, but they show up and start just gruesomly killing ppl, like same with thr giants fight earlier on, the movie uses the r rating to push a lot of just dismemberment, disembowelment, graphic bodily harm, it's gross and mean and dumb and out of character for the comics. therr's the helicopter shot of the tall man walking through the tower bridge, then two bat demons fky up in front of him and tear someone in half and all their guts fall out. what? why

king arthur and merlin show up! merlin is, christian for some reason? and king arthur is boring. this sequence is nearly saved by ian mcshane's narratiom, but not really. witches bad, she created a plague but not, the plague? england is the most important place in history, blah blah, no. king arthur legend of the sword does more with excalibur as a magic artifact, and drunk merlin from transformers the last knight is way more compelling than Christian Merlin, warrior for god

they do the quick ww2 origin flashback, ala thomas and martha wayne, joe chill, pearls. kroenen is there and looks bad, ilsa looks fine, rasputin, tbh feels like they got the same actor who did a poor job in 04, he's generic in a boring way, the whole scene is unnecessary

okay, so, then halfway! through, after hellboy has been sent to england to help the rebel general from rogue one, and they name their perennial giant hunt 'the wild hunt', and they all betray hellboy and stab him with a bunch of spears, and are killed brutally by giants, and then hellboy brutally kills the giants, and is rescued by new girl, who talks to ghosts and was rescued by hellboy from being replaced by a fairy changeling (who is back, running around putting milla back together after king arthur dismembered her and locked her still-living pieces in boxes around england?), and hellboy both knows her from all along but also hasnt been back since, and knows shes a psychic but also hasnt seen her since she was a baby, depending on the scene?

THEN finally daniel dae kim's ben daimio shows up, and he's NOT EVEN IN THE BPRD, he's with british intelligence, and he takes hank's anti-mutation polyjuice serum from days of future past to repress his were-jaguar form, and he has a special gun designed to KILL HELLBOY because he doesnt trust him not to be the actual devil, despite, HIMSELF, being cursed with a monstrous destiny

the scene in the trailer with hellboy, new girl, and daimio on a bprd mission, with hellboy punching daimio to activate his hulking out? THAT'S IN THE **SIX MONTHS LATER** EPILOGUE. the movie ENDS with the three of them finding abe sapien

so this whole thing? is a fucking ORIGIN STORY. it is EVERY SUPERHERO MOVIE FROM 78 TO IRON MAN TWO, it is ONE HERO, ALONE, IN A WORLD WITH NO OTHER HEROES. it's not even the x-men because they're not recruiting hellboy to join their team, it's like if the x-men were just xavier and logan and a nunch of fbi guys.

meanwhile, ddk and new girl are both americans doing british accents, david harbour is still playing hellboy as a 75 year old teenager, and ian mcshane, bless him, is just playing ian mcshane

also, just, i think the intent was for harbour to play it as the stone right hand is just really heavy? but it ends up looking like a cosplayer who misjudged the weight of his prop hand an hour into the con. i want to say del toro did a better job of making it look like, this is actually hellboy's hand, and not, this is ron perlman wearing a wierd prosthetic.

and also, amazing advances in prosthetic technology aside, why didnt they just get dave bautista, if they wanted surly hellboy, or dwayne johnson, if they wanted comic accurate charming hellboy, because neither of those dudes would have needed a muscle suit. hellboy ends up (AGAIN) looking like one of the fucking dwarves in the hobbit, who wore fat suits to look like they were built like john rhys davies, but if they turn their head wrong you can see their prosthetics floating like trump's wig

have the balls to give him his wierd jawline from the comic, or don't fucking bother

okay, okay. OKAY. so, you guys remember the BLOOD TORNADO from blade one, the 'original ending' on the dvd where frost turns into a whirling vortex of blood, and they superimpose the dorff's torso just kind of leaning out of it? and it looked awful both because it's super fake anyways but also unfinished? so, there is an EXTENDED scene where professor mcshane comes back as a ghost, and it's ian mcshane's head pasted onto a super fake ectoplasm tail coming out of new girl's mouth (which also, gross), and they forgot to give him a neck, and he's naked? and it's awful and only not laughable bc, frankly, ian mcshane is a treasure and spends the whole moving swearing a lot

and honestly, the most annoying part is that hellboy 19 cribs the ending from hellboy 04 where hellboy is about to give in to his cursed destiny and join team evil, until some white dude says 'no, stop, you have a choice thanks to your father'

hellboy popped into our plane in 1944 and it is 2019, dude is SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OLD. he is smarter than this shit, or at least, old enough to know better. i'm half his age and i can tell when someone is not negotiating in good faith.

and at least in 04 he was doing it to save liz, in the new movie witch milla ALREADY KILLED IAN MCSHANE and it still takes ghost mcshane to cuss hellboy out back to team good, talking him into using EXCALIBUR to rekill her instead of, destroying the world

and do they reconcile that EXCALIBUR was the key to the hellmouth, that hellboy pulling the sword from the stone started the biblical apocalypse? that england is the villain here? no, they joke that now hellboy is king.

OMG and i forgot merlin shows up again to tell hellboy HE IS LITERALLY DESCENDED FROM KING ARTHUR. his human witch mother fucked satan in the 1600s and gave birth to hellboy in hell, and then four hundred years later rasputin and the nazis summon him to earth as he's still a baby. does this make sense? no. is it comics canon. idk, who cares, it's BAD.

this movie is B A D in almost every way, it is amazing how bad it is. it is clearly a 'gritty' remake of the 2004 film, not in any way a new take on the comics. there are FIFTEEN YEARS of new bprd comics put out since that film for these guys to riff on, and they are still fundamentally misrepresenting beloved characters while also just, making up new bullshit.

but when del toro did that, it was del toro's cool bullshit. this is hellboy from the guys who said 'lets have jaime rape cersei on joffrey's tomb'

#hellboy #i dont want your garbage #spoilers

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foodhx · 4 years ago

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I havent written in a very long time. Im grateful i wrote previously and have something to look back on. So much has changed. S and i broke up. Its been more than a year, depending on how you count it, maybe 1.5 yrs.

Im not sure where im going with this, or in life. There were things i believed in before, had hope and ideals. I havent any hope now, i dont know what to hope in (apart from God). Its been like this for a while. What does it look like to hope in God now?

Ive ended up in a specialty i didnt plan on going into. What’s done is done. But the learning point is, it would have been better to take more time to rotate around before deciding, because it was an emotional, impulsive decision (felt way too rushed, i knew this even at the time of applying). It wasnt a peaceful decision, the way such “life-defining” decisions should be made. It was an emotional time - literally six days after S sent that message to break up with me, my boss texted to ask if i was still interested in applying. Im deeply grateful for the opportunity he gave me which i didn’t and don’t deserve. I should have a word with him at some point. On a side note, im deeply grateful that this dept and the people i work with now are mostly of incredible Godly character, a very unique and irreplaceable quality in a workplace.

So much has fallen apart. My career, and the relationship with the person who became my best friend over the course of 7-9 years. It felt unreal, standing there watching everything explode. I couldnt believe what was happening. I never expected things to explode this way. I never expected myself to leave, and i never expected him to leave. He didn’t mean to be cruel, but i experienced it as such, through the whole months of me begging. Especially at the point where he physically walked out on me and closed the door when i was crying hysterically - not to be overdramatic, but it felt like pure coldness to do that to my uncontrollably hemorrhaging heart (like watching that aorta spurting on cardiothoracics). He still thinks choosing not to carry on is right and directed by God, which i doubt. He declined reconciliation despite months of my sincere apologies, pleading with him and my attempts to remediate where i screwed up (he hasn’t made an effort to reconcile with me in 1.5 yrs, cos he’s lost faith in our relationship and, it seems, me, entirely. Unfair as it might feel, that’s the way he feels). All in all, the break up was devastating. I’m still disoriented and trying to find my feet.

Ive significantly lost respect for him, because of his choice not to carry on and to, well, give up on us. I feel that this was more an emotional decision than a decision based on a true seeking of God, true dying to self and true obedience, especially to certain biblical instructions (love your neighbour as yourself, in humility value others above yourself, the relationship as an expression of love for Christ “what you did to the least of these you did to me” rather than a competition for love for Him, 1cor13).

I feel his decision to give up, abandon and betray is not biblically based, even if it can be justifiable by a twist of verses (he justifies not carrying on as him “putting God first”). I feel his decision was driven more by his hurt that i broke up with him, over text, last feb, and my cheating on him in july, than a real, honest, self-challenging attempt to “put God first”. I feel the decision not to carry on came more from his hurt over what i did to him than a true excavation of what it means to obey God and seek Him first. Its not necessary to leave someone whom youve built up a relationship with in order to put God first. Its arguable that being there for one’s friends IS putting God first, rather than leaving them because you can’t deal with it emotionally (greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends).

E says that its never so simple as “i heard it from God”, its all a mix of (sometimes sinful) human emotions as well as right-minded intention to follow God. How much of this move is driven by God vs his own human uncontrollable emotions? I doubt he’s admitted the whole truth to himself or me.

But i think his hurt is valid. It definitely is. He says he still doesnt feel whole coming out of 2019 and how i broke things off with him over text in feb and how i cheated in july. I’m not sure what he feels because i cant identify, but he says he doesnt want to deal with the pain with me because it was caused by me, and he’s not ready to talk to me (“can’t deal with it”). He tried to forgive me at the time, attending counselling with me, but gave up after 2 sessions. So i guess i can believe there may be a part of him that could want to work towards a friendship at some point (tho this is thrown into doubt at times, because of our apparent fundamental and irreconciliable differences). On my end, I feel that ive given him the benefit of the doubt many times, and hes always disappointed me in this process, since the break up. He’s never showed up or been the bigger person.

I could give him time, or i could end things. I could give him time to process what he needs to, and give him the chance to potentially engage with me the right way at some time in the future.

Should i, though?

Well, yes and no. Part of me knows he will only ever disappoint me cos thats all hes ever done consistently. The other part of me wants to give him the benefit of the doubt and just let him process things in his own time because its destructive to operate with such cynicism. One is overly cynical, the other is overly hopeful, and both responses arent centred.

Overall i just dont want to think about this anymore. I just want this whole thing out of my mind.

But is that enough for me to cut him out completely and forever? When i ask him, he replies that he wants to be friends but doesn’t know how or when that could happen. He isn’t at all invested in this “friendship”, even if he says its what he wants. He thinks God needs to encourage it or something before he will put in the effort... its all so screwed up cos of his ridiculous view or way of hearing from God that’s so mystical and non-bible based. I honestly feel really disgusted by him. He has been asking me not to contact him for a long time, more than a year. I’ve agreed to honour that. Mainly out of an understanding that he’ll never change, and ive outgrown him and his cuckoo ideas about how to hear from God. I know even if we become friends in the future, he’s gonna be the exact same dud - and why would i want to go back to that? Even as a friend. My basic requirements for friendship are that i respect the person and they respect me back. He absolutely does not respect me, and i absolutely dont respect him. Even tho we pay lip service to each other in emails for the sake of appearing holy and peace loving, we each are 100% convinced we know better. I don’t see a friendship here. I see disgust. I see contempt. Its beyond repair. And theres no instruction from God to repair it. So it will lie unrepaired for life.

Thinking about him makes me get into unpleasant thoughts and feelings. I dont have the exact words to describe how i feel. Not quite just anger (im over the peak of that), not really sadness (i do feel its sad that i still care about him and think about him so much when he wants nothing to do with me and wants me to not contact him - i mean, i dont have a practice of asking people not to contact me indefinitely, i think its rude, unfair and cruel), not just superiority cos i do admit i dont know everything and God works in mysterious ways and He still establishes a relationship with S even tho there is likely disobedience and misguidedness in S that he may never ever come to realize in this life). Its not purely a sense of betrayal as i walked out first - i knew he wasnt what i wanted, cos he wasnt loving me, or kind, or Christlike in his countenance towards not just me but everyone around us. I shouldnt just have walked out i should have pointed us to God, but there you have it. I dont regret ending things cos i know if i had continued we would be in a worse place than we are in now, where im stuck in an unhappy relationship out of obligation and fear of being alone. Its better to not be in a relationship than to be in one where you arent respected or loved.

I would say this whole event has had an impact on my relationship with... effort and commitment? Knowing you can try your best and have everything still fail. I used to believe in the “power of my dreams”. That i could get anything i wanted if i wanted it enough. But ive learnt that where the outcome is dependent on things outside my control (eg other people, genetics, politics), just trying my best and bringing my best intentions isnt enough. Its something but it doesnt guarantee an outcome - nothing can. You can say God can guarantee an outcome, but i would be cautious to believe only what He’s given in the bible and some revelations that are consistent with that and have been confirmed by wiser believers than myself, and those who know me well.

I have to hope again. And i have to stop wallowing and being selfpitiful. No. I have to hold myself to a higher standard.

The between places.

To focus on the next right thing - passing anatomy and being punctual. Seeking God, esp in my work...

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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years ago

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yallnve realized by now that this is a fulltime 100% narnia blog...and as i havent slept since finding out someone somewhere was set on making "the silver chair" into a movie & the dynamic world of narnalysis is the best i can offer,

first of all im like.........ya rly gonna just jump into the silv chair!! im not really interested w the details on what anyone plans to do with the content b/c i donno, ive never been really interested in the book. not because its like bad or anything, actually it's probably the most cinematic in terms of things actually happening at a steady rate. i just like what i like, maybe because its sort of lower scale? whatever. its not like its hard to make into a movie i dont think, is what im saying. that would be either the horse and his boy or prince caspian, probably the latter b/c like a genuine 1/3 of it is an expository flashback. but all of the books are bit tricky to adapt coz theyre just short, you have to pad basically all of them in some way or another. but sure. silver chair. w/e

the thing is that you Have to assume despite starting afresh that theyre doing this one since the first three books have been recently filmed? and this being the fourth. but How Are You Going To Just Jump Into This One. thats an awful lot of exposition thats being built on, at this point in the game we're neck deep in the Lore. you'd really just have to have read the previous books or at least seen the movies. are they counting on the audience to have done that? but at the same time its really not fair to fully rely on that. in the book you can go "read the other books" and wave it off in a sentence of "and then they explained it all" which does tend to happen in the actual text a fair amt. its a bit awkward in movie form though? its a plot point right off that eustace knows who prince/king caspian is. so then you have to sum up dawn treader. and that has to do with what happened in prince caspian, in which the plot of lww is pretty important. like, alright, possibly you could just explain tvotdt & take it from the perspective of the girl who doesnt know crap about narnia yet? but thats not nearly as good a starting point as lww. on account of that ones meant to be a starting point! i'll see scholastic / any publishings that try to push magician's nephew as the first book In Hell, frankly. strongest narnpinion right there. the published order over the chronological order

anyways i'm sure it can be figured out, its just.......Interesting to think how the silver chair intro might be made into Intro To Narnia v.2.0? will they even try or will it be "ok but seriously just have read the books or whatever before you come in here." mystery unfolds

another thing thats interesting is that lww is clearly abt like, hey kids here's a version of the resurrection for you. whereas silver chair doesnt have anything to do w any Biblical Events at all (tho of course neither does prince caspian, tvotdt, or the horse & his boy). it is instead about how atheists will try to steal your firstborns for.................reasons. (no reason, theyre just evil.) this one is just a major amplified version of another particularly ridiculous CS Lewis Apologism Favorite that runs through the books: that when it comes to having no Faith (in aslan but you know also the abrahamic god) everyone who doubts aslan/god is like, actively lying to themselves, because they have that Gut Feeling telling themself that their faith is not only whats righteous but also whats true. the gut feeling of truth is a big theme in the books, shit hinges on it all the time and makes doubt all Clearly Sinful instead of a reasonable result of aslan effing off for centuries or whatever. and speaking of, god only knows if lewis is really suggesting that real life doubt or nonreligiousness is 100% populated by people who are clenching their fists like "i know in my heart jesus is real but i dont want to believe it so i won't, damnit!" which yknow makes no sense for like....life, and uh? i dont know what its supposed to mean for like....other religions? i dont think he's about putting the nuance that not every concept of religious Faith is the same as in christianity into this book, i dunno abt his thoughts irl. lord knows its a mystery how he thinks that "if jesus wasnt lying and jesus wasnt Insane then christianity is real" argument means anything. nothing in the world fits that argument for finding out if something is true or not........and also it hinges on that concept of "insanity" which......like.......i'm sure is all about nice 1940s ideas of how "insane" people act. its shit, throw it out, i mean. and besides? as though theres a Logic argument to prove christianity as truth? have you just Solved religion, lewis? have you? sometimes, i swear..

anyhow so in the silver chair its just a big ol festival of his "atheists are lying to themselves" and "atheism starts by someone who Knows The Truth (jesus is real) lying to others, likely aka the devil or whatever, and the stand-in for the devil is a witch again." and lewis really seems fond of the allegory of the cave. smh! like, in that allegory "knowing" that your faith is true is impossible! but youre also out here arguing its logically provable? and don't forget the gut feelings thing. but it makes NO sense for him to drop it into this book universe because in this allegory the prince captured by atheists & the protags are people who have hopped into the cave and seen the sun and shit!! they dont need to be the people who have only ever seen shadows who need to be convinced that an outside world can exist!!! bitch!!! get your allegory in order. silver chair just.....lord. the lying babysnatching atheists

a n y w a y s . . . thats a weird conflict to put in your third act, and its also a weird argument to make re christianity, that even though you acknowledge its impossible to know that your faith is in something thats real, you're willing to risk it? its sort of like that idea that you might as well be religious even if you dont "believe" any religion is true, because you lose nothing and potentially gain both comfort in life and reward in an afterlife. but its kind of a big deal in christianity that you're supposed to believe that what you believe in Is Literally Real. maybe apologists are allowed to do that sort of thing in their arguments, i suppose. its like in the last battle where he has a dude who believes in another deity accepted into the christian afterlife b/c despite a lack of belief, his virtuous nature is, from a practical standpoint, accepted to be for all intents and purposes to be equivalent to having believed in the christian god, like if he happened to follow all other rules except the Believing In Jesus one then he's good to go anyhow. interesting in that its also supposed to be pretty vital in christianity that one has to accept jesus as god in order to be Saved all up into heaven! i suppose that guy in the book was meant to have been converted right before death or whatever. at that point its very unclear who is exactly dead or not, but probably everyone. still, aslan clearly makes the argument that "basically you might as well have been believing in me, so you're good to go." fascinating stuff. another one to ask lewis abt

uhhhh another point is that i think theyre intending to make other movies also? but not all four remaining ones!! and if i had to guess which one they'd be leaving out uhh lets say....the horse & his boy....................which conveniently is the other sort of sparsely plotted one. two kids ride horses towards narnia, briefly have to have a shenanigansy undercover sneak through a crowded city, ride towards narnia some more, and then one of them stays at some guys house while the other kid goes into narnian battle where he himself doesnt actually do anything, but that fact is described pretty funnily. its still sort of a fun one, on account of the sneaking around hijinx, and the fact that it happens to give ANY of the details of what tf the pevensies did for like the twenty years they reigned over narnia's golden age which the lww just tells you absolutely n o t h i n g about! the answer is: a lot of battling probably, on account of narnia went from being ruled for a century by someone who could kill you in a second and also why would you have invaded narnia at that time, it wouldve been like trying to invade russia. but then a bunch of kids took the throne and upended the whole system and the snow went away, it seems like a destabilizey time to invade or whatever. imo. but then again they mightve bought themselves a few years on account of aslan having shown up and all. but lbr, they were just put into battle right off and coronated three seconds later, theres no reason on that front that they wouldnt shy away from having more battles. and the books said there were a lot of battles. and in thahb, its like, well we've been battling a lot lately and now we're in shenanigans and we'll just have to battle our way out of it, which they absolutely do. edmund straight up decapitates a guy. how ARE they supposed to just transition immediately into english schoolchildren after a couple decades of that mess??? they even have the fancy courtly speech. its magic i suppose

the point is its kind of a fun book, oh also, aslan is TOP shenanigans in this one. he straight up actually attacks one of the protagonists, for Reasons, but still. not that he doesn't murder the pevensies in the last book. i mean, i guess you could argue that its just like Divine Coincidence where what with the unaligned timelines betwixt england and narnia, aslan couldve just picked the moment everyone was gonna die anyway and just tossed them over to X point in time in narnia. but I Donno.....im kinda with that university student who's stressing about whether aslan cause ww2 for the purpose of sending the pevensies to the wardrobe. like, that train accident that killed everybody killed four people on the platform & five people on the train in different carriages and everything, or maybe the numbers are switched because i dont remember where lucy was. im saying, that was a hell of a crash. but sure. anyhow, even more fun, aslan appears as a cat to the Other protag while he's spending a night on the edge of the wilderness, and scratches him for saying he once threw rocks at a stray cat. like, hard #same, aslan!!! wtf dude why arent YOU being claimed by satan

whats also fun is that it doesn't really take place in narnia, which is also the reason besides pacing that you wouldnt really want to make this one into a film? because uhhhh the whole worldbuilding lewis crapt upon everyone for calormen is clearly racist as fuccck. if you arent already familiar with all the books (namely this one and i suppose the last battle) then its like.....i guess its some sort of vague notion of the ottoman empire? its really just a mashup of any number of white-english-variety racist notions. everyone is brown, is it an inaccurate stab at an amorphous amalgam of middle eastern culture? east asian? are people islamic or hindu? just try and guess what he was going for because its just. not based on anyone needing to know anything about reality. lewis was against seasoning food i guess, because it will mention i guess like, people cooking with onions like the heathens they are. (spoilers: this country just exists in the narniaverse to represent Those Heathens). its not necessarily an Evil place, they are noble savages ok!! with their formal seriousness and cutthroat customs.......b/c they are not as advanced and peaceful as the white northern christians, see. closer to the less developed violence of their inherently backwards ways and Cruel Society reigned by violence DONT CONVERT OR YOU'LL DIE, KIDS. but also.....you wont be white? the reason of calormens existence is really never explained. telmarines came from englandverse on accident thru a magic portal just lying around, possibly thats whats meant to have happened there too? its never attempted to be explained. anyways its basically the intro to the disney aladdin.

lewis is entirely inconsistent and self contradictory all throughout the series for the sake of the authors convenience. this is part of what makes the stories fun and the worldbuilding charming. it is also what allows him to pull stunts that have you pinching the bridge of your nose in exasperation and writing out essays to try to figure out how narnia is supposed to work. it is also what allows him, five books in, to be like, "here is the country to the south where the demon-worshipping gross scary brown uncivilized folk sit around hating narnia and confirming any racist notion you have about any nonwhite nonchristian country or culture." thanks, clive

its of course ludicrous and, of course, the protagonist shasta just so happens to be white despite being raised calormene. spoilers, he is narnian. or really from archenland, which isnt narnia but is still white and pro-narnia so its alright. i mean, technically narnia is allied with calormen at all points in time of the series? calormen just quietly tries an invasion in that book and also in the last book. so thats interesting. i suppose lewis is anti-crusades, which is big of him. the pevs arent out here trying to conquer calormen and convert them to narnianism. so that must not be the Destiny of the true christian? or are we meant to believe calormenes are beyond help? shasta who is of course secretly not "really" calormene is still representing someone undergoing "conversion," yet again, the guy is white. i suppose being brown is whats hopeless?

theres an inadvertently laughable line at the start of the book where a calormene expositorially points out that shasta is white by comparing him to the "accursed but beautiful" narnians. who are all white? is he just talking about the pevensies? the archenlanders (i cant remember where theyre meant to have come from either.) are like, all humanoid narnian natives white?? wtf, aslan. anyways, the dialogue is unnatural and funny enough, but its also like.....ok lewis, we got it, whiteness is the standard for all universes and everyone wishes they were white. stupid, sexy narnians.

what alllllmost suggests that being a poc isnt an automatic fastpass to hell is that im fairly sure the second protagonist aravis is a nonwhite calormene?? i dont remember it ever saying she was "fair" like the narnians the way the book immediately points out that shasta is. she is of course escaping an arranged marriage (the calormene plot to sort of vaguely try to invade narnia is also based on forcing susan to marry a dude she doesnt like yet who she apparently genuinely considered as a suitor when he wasnt acting like a jerk? so not only a dude who isnt white but a dude who isnt aslanian christian. its a whole complicating element to just toss out in this otherwise flat af worldbuilding, dude!! not to mention? despite the battles and shit, susan was out here considering marriage? how absolutely fucked up would it have been if any of them married and then effed off back to england. moving along) but she is from the start portrayed as equally sympathetically as shasta and nothing about her is pointed out as being Bad and Reprehensible, which the narration has no qualms about doing. she even gets to spend some time with her calormene friend, who is not exactly meant to be as sympathetic or noble but certainly isnt portrayed as at all evil. like...theres at least the occasional exception apparently, in which maybe not every person is inherently evil and violent and cruel. who knows

also aravis definitely later marries the white protag?? but apparently interracial marriage isnt entirely Unthinkable here. wait, also, aravis claims to be somehow a direct descendant of the calormene god tash? first of all, is that true, comma, possible? in the last book its confirmed that tash is real, albeit, like, a demon. dunno what c.s. is telling us with that one. is aravis related to a demon. we can only guess on account of the theme of Inconsistency

anyways. i suppose you could make it into a movie if you just threw out the racist shit. but the "calormen is also distinguished from narnia via its religion" element is also a touch janky. can it be thrown out too? if they intend to produce the last battle, will it be thrown out then. it kind of comes up again. if you get rid of those elements though, the stakes get a little blurrier and more political and more "wait well why would they have any beef with each other in the first place" if you cant just easily point out that the calormenes are shaking their fists at the narnians and their demon worship and their jealousy at not being white. again, are all centaurs white or something? wtf

truly calormene is the most racist ass shit in the whole series, but the concept comes up in less painfully direct ways other times, too. why are there native species in narnia that are considered inherently evil?? sure, the white witch as the stand-in for the devil wasn't originally from narnia. was she creating shit too? i dont remember what she was up to on account of i havent read the magicians nephew in a hot minute. i know they had to take a pegasus into a garden of eden type shit to smoke her out of wherever she was lurking for some reason or another. still. whys there whole types of creatures who are universally and unilaterally condemned? i know we're meant to believe that they just have evil intent according to their nature, but uh....theres no point at which any of these creatures are given a chance? maybe they served the white witch because she was nice to them for once. you're not given the chance to know. EXCEPT for the fact that you get shit like: giants are evil save for the occasional exception, like in lww when a "good" giant is described as having like, a long family line, and "traditions." not like Those Sorts. they do talk in like prince caspian and shit, when their numbers are miserable and theyre discussing tactics, whether to get help from the gross hags and harpies and etc and ppl will talk about Those People and Sorts and Rabble and its like...jfc. b/c apparently sommme of them can be decent! if theyre a giant or whatever. and meanwhile the dwarfs are always chaotic neutral or whatever. not believing in aslan but not necessarily being anti-narnia coz they live there. but sometimes being good guys!! but sometimes being bad guys, and jadis was cool to them apparently. like.................theres definitely cases of Types of narnians who fall outside the "born good / born bad" system, and thats pretty fucked. wolves too? theyre the Talking Beasts aslan definitely created, but on the side of the white witch? how was she having trees be on her side, too? whats going on around here. whats the moral meant to be. smh

uhh well anyhow, you could do a nice essay on gender re narnia. on account of sometimes its staleass typical sexist tropes like uhh, say,, the devil stand-ins keep being women? witches, ok. and the idea of "women need to be protected as pure creatures" as a basic sexist notion, and even lewis taking a relatively subdued jab at the idea of calling that sexist. susan being the miniature mom character type, and of course the infamous last battle bit where, in an attempt to describe her lack of spirituality as a self-insert of what lewis considered his own period of fake maturity via rejection of christianity, she's of course not only described as not believing in narnia (which????? what is anyone supposed to make of that. again, in the allegory of the cave shit, she's been outside the cave!!! she lived in narnia for YEARS AND YEARS and then WENT BACK. how are we supposed to believe she just convinced herself it wasnt literally real? its not quite the same as someone losing their faith in christianity.) but as like, wearing makeup, damn her. even if he wasnt trying to make the point that "look at boys and go to hell" which, i suppose he couldnt, as in narnia susan was being courted just fine as queen, yet i suppose also she didnt marry anyone—anyways, of course its still sexist to slight the way she decides to dress as some form of false maturity, even if its meant to be metaphor. just clumsy af & not great when again, devils are always witches around here. and being younger is to be more spiritually pure which like............mmm ok. this is sort of another one of those weirdly sexless fantasy universes, why do those keep happening. i mean sure this is a christian fairy tale for kids. but nobody even gets married save for in the last paragraphs of a couple books. its left a bit ambiguous whether thats even spiritually acceptable in the narnia rules, unless its to Continue the Line a la the telmarine monarchy from caspian the first to tirian the whateverth. hm

but also of course you get the young girl characters being...somewhat almost allowed to fight (archery mainly) but anyways at least being given equal status to the boys who are there also. theres even mention of once apparently narnia being ruled by a queen w no kings around. fantastic. and theres some non-witch lady characters on occasion. the human characters are where the dynamics are most at, i suppose, but anyways this at least has some nuance & at times seems to go just a bit beyond what you might expect from some old dude in the 50s. still not that surprising or innovative, but not completely flat, and seeming to contain at least a little reflection upon the topic

the essay of race re: narnia would be really short though. Its Racist Af. if you threw classism in too, you might get a bit more length out of it. but really its just so flat in this subject, and totally needless. there's the fact that even narnia is ruled by white english people but.....you can really do without juxtaposing this with the heinous nonwhite country somewhere over there. the rest of the books operate just fine w/o this

tolkien mentioned HIS scary brown backwards civilization to the south a lot more fleetingly in lotr but its....v much the same worldbuilding as narnia??? aka middle earth is pretty much an imaginary proto-england where you dont want to go too far east or south or you run into dangerous &/or inherently evil territory!! ok, jrr.....who was the other people in the inklings?? what did they write. could no one rein these guys in. coz lewis is over here with his Alternate Universe england. with uhhhh wilderness to the north and west and the dangerous evilish racismland to the south. and the ocean and dont forget narnia is a flat earth to the east. also? why are the lone islands like that. can aslan take care of some of that shit. for gods sake. anyways. the all-white good guys / evil poc should be thrown out of everything, thats not what makes the worldbuilding in either lotr or chronarnia at all interesting. yet is it is surely a subsection of the inherent Englishness of both examples........it warrants analysis but not "carrying on into films or anything based on either's precedence in the fantasy genre."

god who knows what im talking about at this point. im just saying "if they arent looking to even bother trying to wrangle the horse and his boy into something not ludicrously racist then i wouldnt be at all surprised." still, do you suppose theres like a curse where unless all narnia books are given some sort of film adaptation, the world won't know peace? more likely the world would end, maybe. the curse of clive. i dont really remember but that elder bbc series sure didnt cover the whole saga

well this is long enough but lets all set off in more endless, doomed narnalysis, such as

my thesis on trying to figure out what. the Fuck any reader is supposed to make out of edmund's role in the lww

whats the deal with merpeople?!

where are all these witches coming from, anyways

seriously if the narnians were just less murderous to the Undesirable species would they have been on the pro-aslan side all along

if there was only two humans staying in narnia at its birth, wouldnt their line like, die out immediately with their kid.

where did the archenlanders come from

where did the calormenes come from

oh yeah and like. are we seriously meant to believe that, at the end of the world, when aslan reveals that being goodnatured supercedes having the Wrong Religion, there is only one calormene in all of a) current existence and b) history who fits the bill? really. why even bring it up, then.

how did narnians react to their four monarchs completely disappearing......for real.....and what happened to the line to the throne?? was there just no ruler until the telmarines came in and took things over for the rest of the few centuries or whatevs.

when was that deep magic in lww written? at the start of narnia? coz thats the magicians nephew. again, how tf did the white witch get any leverage in that one. how was that supposed to be a good idea. wtf. see my thesis

whats the white witch supposed to represent as a stand-in for the devil? not helping that i dont remember the details of magicians nephew for shit, but she's definitely in the Multiverse lore of narnia as being from a different world as narnia and england. wtf is like...her nature

how weird is it in narnia that you have a god who drops in confused alien children to both go on personal journeys and save the world? is narnia-aslan/earth-jesus also dropping other children from other worlds into other other worlds? via other forms? hmm

lewis is all but inviting us the readers to be filling in the blanks with narnia fic. he's basically like, outright actually inviting fic with people wanting to speculate what happens with susan, who must inevitably return to narnia as lewis intends her to represent his own departure from (and obvious inevitable return to) christianity

a weird detail that is also never elaborated on: in addition to the narrator freely inserting loads of opinions into the narration, there's a time or two its made clear that like, the narrator has gotten this info from interviewing the characters. how'd you know about that last battle, "they all died and this happened in the afterlife" shit, huh. just another weird element

sussing out other lewispinions, like how he hates all schools apparently

narnia vs middle earth!! both quasi englands, both pre industrialization, both with christ figures running around some more than others, both with the need for rightful kings, totally different roles for humans tho. well, thats the whole comparison

and, inevitably, more.

#just narnblogging #or narbling #stay tuned for......murder

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