#thank you so much for the ask!! i love talking about susan pevensie tbh

[serialreblogger]

What do you think of character game: Susan

Pevensie from Narnia?

character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS

ship with: nobody, because in concert with @malewifelester i have decided Susan is aro (and bi). I ship her with badass femininity

friendship them with: her siblings :(( i’m just a sucker for family bonds, found or otherwise

general opinions: deserved better than getting blamed for trying to conform to the only option for feminine value she was presented with. I honestly do think that if CSL had lived 50 years later he would have had a very different take on the matter (bc as a human being, he was very genuinely well-intentioned and worked hard to avoid bigotry in his thinking. At the same time, it was the 1940s and there were a lot of fundamental precepts of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/ableism etc that just weren’t ever challenged, or even explicitly mentioned, in most social circles. So, despite his best efforts, there were a lot of things it straightup never occured to him to question - like “gay is bad,” and until he met his wife, Joy, “women are inferior.” I’ve talked before about how much growth he did in the last few years of his life, when it comes to sexism; until Joy pointed it out, he literally never realized it was maybe a bit not good that the highest compliment he knew to give a woman was saying “she has the mind of a man.” Once Joy was like “hey this sucks actually” he went “o h. wow you’re so right” and never did it again, which honestly makes me respect him a lot despite disagreeing with pretty much everything he believed, because he really was that dedicated to examining every idea presented to him and pursuing that which was good and true no matter where it led, and honestly that makes him a better person than some modern-day liberals I’ve met).

That said, he did live in the 1940s, and kids today are still reading and internalizing the messages of The Last Battle, and i think that’s pretty awful so I’m gonna go ahead and make Susan a more complex and compelling character than Lewis ever intended for her to be. Aro bi in the 1940s who was raised being told she was The Pretty One, treated as more valuable than her younger sister by everyone (including her parents) for that reason, and so naturally did everything she could to cling to that label, even at the expense of everything she herself loved and valued. She wasn’t vain, but she was scared, and isolated from her siblings by the socials and special favours she received from the people who liked her for her face. Her brothers looked down on her for the same reason everyone else put her on a pedestal, and Lucy--Lucy didn’t see her either. Lucy envied her, but she didn’t really know who she was anymore.

Susan had no one.

She was expected to settle down and find a nice husband to fall in love with, but she didn’t do that, she’d never really understood what the appeal was in finding a single soul to dedicate your life to, give everything up for. She’d never fallen in love, and she didn’t want to. But she was running out of time.

And what would happen when she wasn’t young and beautiful and perfect anymore? Nobody saw Lucy, who wasn’t ugly but she was just ordinary-looking; Lucy, the sweetest person Susan ever knew, who was constantly talked over and shuffled off to spend summers with the insufferable insect-collecting cousin. What if that happened to Susan? Who would she be, if she wasn’t the beauty of the family? Would she be anyone at all?

And gosh, imagine Susan’s life after her entire family - including the only people who knew about the magic they’d had in childhood, the magic she’d taken to scoffing at because she was so afraid of what that lion who’d abandoned her would say about her now - imagine what she’d be left with after they all died in a train wreck. Imagine how entirely alone she’d be. What would her life become, when she had nothing except a face that would only stay perfect for a few years more, and no one who cared about her except the people who wanted things she could never give?

Dang it, I made myself sad.

[sayheykid]

1 & 22 if you want!

just started following me, huh? wow i thought we were friends

regardless, i do want to answer these questions 😌

give short descriptions of all your current WIPs.

“short” ha. i will make this as short as i can. i only have one big wip right now, because i’m the type to go REAL deep on a project and stick with it for years (i’ve had this one since 2015? maybe? it might be longer tbh)

my project doesn’t have a title, rip. please help a girl out   this is about to become so long winded, apologies

in theory, this story is mostly about baseball, but it’s actually, at it’s core about found family and growing up and growing closer together. the main characters are ellie hendricks, ellie’s best friend sam florence, and sam’s older brother charlie, though there are many many side characters whom i love with all my heart. main themes include friends who become family, childhood friends to lovers, finding your place in the world, hijinks, and sports, because ya girl knows what she’s about. 

some basics about the characters:

ellie - has gone through so much in her life, but refuses to become anything other than optimistic and kind. she has been all but adopted by the Florences, who are the family she never felt like she had. not fitting in has always been a struggle for her - half filipino growing up in boston, richer than her peers but having parents that seem like they always had more important things to focus on than her. being a part of the florence family was super important to her, and finding her own place with friends in college made all the difference. character comps include susan pevensie and sloane peterson

sam - a jock through and through. a star athlete from a family of star athletes. she is driven and competitive and ready to throw down. she can benchpress you, no doubt. being the youngest of three siblings and the only girl may have something to do with this, but honestly sam is just like that all the time. 

charlie - the best guy in the world? it’s more likely than you think. you’ve never met a guy who is more of a big brother. protective, loyal, very driven by duty and morality, does not know how to half ass anything. absolutely thrives on responsibility. the only thing he is more all-in on than baseball is how much he’s in love with ellie

the story spans quite a long time, though very little has been written chronologically lmao. the focus of what i’ve been working on primarily is while the three of them are in college, charlie as team captain and the preeminent collegiate pitcher, sam and ellie finding their ways, and the three of their collective friend group and the everyday experiences they have. it’s kind of like a slice of life fic that spans years, and on top of regular life and pranks and misadventures, there is a very very heavy baseball presence (that i barely scratched lol) so it’s all i could ever ask for 

i could talk about them forever, please please PLEASE hit me up if you want to know more (i couldn’t incorporate some of my best side characters in here, but i’d love to talk about them too)

22. how much of your own self/experiences do you believe pours into your projects? if this differs per project, which projects have the most and least of you?

so much. SO much! i think there’s definitely a lot of myself in this project in particular, and i definitely think there are parts of me in all of my characters. i think all of my separate interests come through in different ways - love of baseball and baseball culture are obvious here, but also things like history and architecture, which i had the chance to explore because i designed the university in the story from the ground up. as i mentioned at the beginning, i go really deep, so there are so so so many places where i can explore and fill in my own passions and experiences

thank you so much for asking! hopefully this wasn’t overwhelming, and hopefully it was understandable enough that people want to learn more