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homomenhommes · 5 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … November 27

c. 111 A.D – Antinous born (d.130 A.D.); If there was an All Time Beautiful Men contest, this man would have been a contender if he didn't just walk away with the cup. And like most beauties, be married well.

Antinous was a famous beauty of the ancient world who became the beloved of the emperor Hadrian. He may have been a male prostitute when Hadrian met him, but his origins are obscure. All that is known is that Hadrian was immediately and utterly smitten with the beautiful 15-year-old. From that time on, Antinous was with the emperor constantly until a journey to Egypt where he was drowned in the Nile. Some say that Antinous, knowing that a prophecy had declared the death of Hadrian unless a living sacrifice were to be offered in his place, died so that his lover might live. Others believe that Antinous, growing into young manhood, was ashamed of playing mistress to the emperor.

The most poignant story is that the boy killed himself because he couldn't bear the idea of growing old. What we know for certain is that Hadrian's grief at the death of Antinous was uncontained and nothing short of monumental. He deified him and founded the city of Antinopolis in Egypt in his honor (and many other Antinopolises elsewhere in the Roman world) and renamed the boy's birthplace Antinopolis as well. A cult was inaugurated in his honor. Coins were minted with his likeness and numerous busts and shatteringly beautiful statues were erected to commemorate the beauty of this youth and the love the emperor felt for him.

After deification, Antinous was associated with and depicted as the Egyptian god Osiris, associated with the rebirth of the Nile. Antinous was also often depicted as the Roman Bacchus, a god related to fertility. Antinous is one of the best-preserved faces from the ancient world. Many busts, gems and coins represent Antinous as the ideal type of youthful beauty.

1883 – The English Uranian poet Edmund John was born on this date (d.1917). Poet John came of age in the decade after the trial of Oscar Wilde and illustrates the fact that far from disappearing off the face of the globe, homosexuality simply retreated a bit further underground. A letter to one of John's young friends provides us with a very good idea of the "tone" of Gay life in Edwardian England: "I have received your adorable illustrated letter this morning and loved it so much I immediately made an altar before it, lit by amber candles in copper candlsticks, burnt incense before it and kissed its extreme beautifulness."

Much of his work was condemned by critics for being overly decadent and unfashionable. He fought in the First World War, but was invalided out in 1916 and died at Taormina, in Sicily, a year later. His books include The Flute of Sardonyx: Poems (1913), The Wind in the Temple: Poems (1915), and Symphonie Symbolique (1919).

Following what was almost a fashion in the first two decades of the century, the objects of the emotion in many of the poems are young boys but, unlike most of the 'Uranian' poets, John's sincerity gives the poems a white-hot purity.

1922 – Born: James Lord (d.2009), expatriate British writer in France, Giacometti scholar and art historian.

Lord was born to Albert Lord, a New York stock broker and Louise Bennett . He attended Wesleyan University, but a self-admitted poor student, he enlisted in the United States army after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. His facility with French qualified him for Military Intelligence Service after the invasion of Normandy; he was stationed in France.

While there, Lord searched out Pablo Picasso in 1944 locating him in his studio on the Rue des Grands-Augustins. Following the war, Lord left Wesleyan without graduating, returning to Paris in 1947, perhaps because his homosexuality might be better accepted there.

Despite his sexual proclivities, he entered into an affair with Picasso's mistress, Dora Maar after she and the artist were split.

He kept meticulous journals of the conversations that he had with nearly all the litterati of post-war Paris. His intention was to become a writer, but excessive socializing kept him from production.

Lord met the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti in 1952 at the Café aux Deux Magots, and frequently visited his studio in Montparnasse. The two remained friends throughout the artist's life.

After two unsuccessful novels, Lord was asked to write a book on Giacometti by the Museum of Modern Art to accompany the 1965 retrospective exhibition on the artist.

A Giacometti Portrait was hailed a success and is today valued as a source for information and insight on the artist. In 1970 Lord began a full-length treatment of the scultpor, completed only in 1985 and published as Giacometti: A Biography. The book's frank description of Giacometti's sadistic tendencies and mental problems drew the ire of many of the sculptor's friends, who signed a public protest letter against the book.

Lord set out to write a series of memoirs based upon personalisties. Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir appeared in 1993 followed by Six Exceptional Women the following year and Some Remarkable Men in 1996. A Gift for Admiration was published in 1998.

He adopted his life-companion, Gilles Foy-Lord, officially as his son. While working on a book of his experiences as a gay man in the army, My Queer War, he suffered a heart attack at his home in Paris and died at age 86.

Lord's style is that of a raconteur and witness to the event itself. All of his writing weaves autobiography, reportage, and gossip. HIs portraits of his experiences with Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Balthus, Peggy Guggenheim and the art historian Douglas Cooper provide rich documentary evidence on these personalities.

1964 – Adam Shankman is an American film director, producer, dancer, actor, and choreographer. He has been a judge on the television program So You Think You Can Dance since Season 3. He began his professional career in musical theater, and was a dancer in music videos for Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson. Shankman has choreographed numerous films as well as one of the Spice Girls' tours. He has directed several feature-length films, including A Walk to Remember, Bringing Down the House, and the 2007 remake of Hairspray. Shankman is openly gay.

Shankman was born in Los Angeles, California to an upper middle class family. He has said that he had a "traditional Jewish upbringing" in Brentwood. He attended The Juilliard School, but dropped out to dance in musical theater.

Prior to directing Hairspray, Shankman was known in Hollywood primarily as a script doctor. His trademarks in his films often features a singing/dancing sequence and a character getting sent to do community service. "I've done so many things I'm not super-proud of," he admitted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. In August 2008, Box office Mojo reported that Hairspray had become the fourth-largest grossing American movie musical within the previous 30 years. He has also directed the 2012 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages for New Line Cinema. Shankman has also directed and choreographed multiple episodes of Fox's Glee.

1967 – On this date Craig Rodwell opened Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the world's first Gay and Lesbian bookstore, in Greenwich Village, New York City. The small bookstore remained open over 40 years until it closed in 2009.

1700 – A new law concerning sodomy was passed by the Pennsylvania assembly. If committed by a white man, sodomy was punishable by life in prison and, at the discretion of the judge, a whipping every three months for the first year. If married, the man was castrated and his wife was granted a divorce. If committed by a black man, the punishment for sodomy was death.

1998 – Former Zimbabwean President Canaan Banana was convicted of eleven counts of sodomy and indecent assault.

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oakashandwillow · 30 days

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20 Questions for Writers

Tagged by @bywayofmemory

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 91. A couple of those are 3SF compilations.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 115,642

3. What fandoms do you write for? Narnia, mostly. Used to write some Supernatural, Doctor Who but mostly in crossovers. Once we get into 3SF or "i've written this like once" - Star Wars (Mandalorian & Andor/Rogue One in particular), Battlestar Galactica, original stuff, Alex Rider, The Locked Tomb, Mass Effect, DC Comics, Middle Earth (movies, all books, Rings of Power), MCU - a lot. Twilight because of my "what if Renesmee was not... what Meyers wanted her to be" series.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Whose Other Side Is Salvation. Narnia/Doctor Who. Susan and the Doctor run.

we have to go on living. Young Justice. He can't hold it together forever. Robin, post-Failsafe.

to go nowhere with you. Torchwood/Narnia. "Minotaur," Edmund corrects automatically. Edmund/Ianto, time loops, minotaurs, coffee, and rift archaeology of sorts.

give me a world, you have taken the world i was. Hardy Boys. Joe wakes up alone in the dark. Things get worse from there, which sucks, because Frank is supposed to be home from college for Christmas break today.

Secrets Kept. Young Justice. Artemis knows Robin's secret. Spoilers through Young Justice 1x08.

5. Do you respond to comments? I... am nowhere as good as I would like to be at it.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? ... considering all the Narnia and specifically Susan Narnia stories I write that is a hard call. Probably we have come to our real work. AU. When Peter and Lucy hunt the White Stag, Susan and Edmund are in Archenland. Things go downhill from there. It's pretty early in my fic career so it could be a lot better in terms of quality but it is probably the saddest ending I've written. In terms of saddest story that I'm actually proud of? Probably we should take warning, we should forgive each other. Narnia, Prunaprismia, the bitterness of loss and pride and decisions it seems like are the only ones you can make even though they aren't.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Do I.... do I write happy endings.

I suppose my Renesmee series has a pretty happy ending! between one June and another September. Twilight, Renesmee/Leah. Renesmee Cullen comes full circle and falls in love. Does not make much sense without having read the previous works in the series though.

OH wait i gave edmund/bacchus (Narnia) a happy ending in one year since i've seen the mountains. I can write things that are happy!

8. Do you get hate on fics? I am extremely under the radar for almost everything honestly so no! And tbh I just don't have patience for that so would probably just delete and block if it was properly hate.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I've written some, though it's pretty mild!

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Look, what haven't I crossed over with Narnia. Merlin (BBC), Doctor Who / Torchwood, Mary Poppins, The Dark Is Rising, The Library Trilogy. I've done Leverage/Supernatural and I don't even know what I've done in various 3SF rounds. If we're counting my RP days I had some WILD character interactions while playing Padme Amidala in particular.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I doubt it? Never checked.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Once or twice! And podcasted once.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Several times! Only one is actively published and available as a fic though. Winds To Catch, Narnia/Mary Poppins, with @siterlas and animus in the city on A03. A Very Long Time Ago @bedlamsbard and I did like... an alarming amount of words on a BBC Merlin/Narnia crossover in commentfic. (Alarming for me who mostly writes like, maybe 1-2k a fic, not for Bed who's chapters number easily in the multiple thousands of words.) @siterlas and zempasuchil and I once wrote a bunch of AU BBC Merlin RPF commentfic where we wrote both the actors as if they were in a show about Marx and Engels instead and also parts of the fake show that they were in. Definitely various Supernatural and Narnia commentfic across the years. Probably more? Have also written friend fic for Las with Animus and Z. I also did a lot of RP stuff over the years! Which is cowriting though not in the sense we think of with fic.

Actually I really miss commentfic. It's so fun. I sometimes get to do it a little in 3SF but most people don't even know it's a thing you can do these days I think alas. Very informal collaboration is delightful!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Yeah I can't answer that. I'm very bad at picking favorites, ever. If we're talking ships I actually write, Susan/Edmund (Narnia), Bo-Katan/Din (Mandalorian) and Kara/Lee (BSG) are probably my top three? But I love... so many ships.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I started a follow up to my Hardy Boys story and I've noodled with it occasionally and don't think I'll ever properly finish it.

16. What are your writing strengths? I have been told I'm really good at ending lines! I like to think I'm good at just character study.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Plot. Who needs a plot. What is a plot.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I do not trust myself to get it right at all so I just don't overall.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Depends if we count doing RP in which case it's Lord of the Rings. If it's straight fic, Narnia.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? My favorites land in very different categories, so I think I will pick the first fic I wrote that I properly felt "wait, I think I can be good at this writing thing" and still gets received well. this temporary flesh and bone. Narnia. Susan/Edmund. Susan, Edmund, and the zombie apocalypse in England.

I shall tag. @svgurl410 @lyntergalactic @liminal-zone @callowyn @ravenlilyrose

#fanfic #writing #narnia #it me

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phantomato · 9 months

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Bacchus’ kiss tastes like dry wine. Edmund thought it would be sweet, like a mulberry syrup, but the overwhelming sensation is the sourness of cherries—fruit at its bitter early-spring freshness, straight off the vine. The kiss makes him squirm up, up into the hard-and-firm hold of this tormenting god.

Loosely Chained [AO3] Edmund/Bacchus, Explicit, 3k

My RMSE 2023 fic—and the first time I’ve written Narnia without making it a crossover! Edmund and Bacchus have filthy sex.

#narnia #edmund pevensie

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trulyabookweirdo · 4 years

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I'm DESPERATE for Narnia content. I need more fanfics. I'm dying hereeeee

#narnia #the chronicles of narnia #lucy pevensie #edmund pevensie #peter pevensie #susan pevensie #casmund #prince caspian #edmund x caspian #edmund/Bacchus #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #the voyage of the dawn treader #fanfics #fanfic

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ivyblossom · 2 months

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That thing where I feel like I'm going to have to write fanfiction again

This is a weird one. I just want to say it somewhere, so that I've said it somewhere, but I realize there's there's one person who actually cares about this and she already knows, so. This is just for me, I guess.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote most of a Narnia fic. It pairs of Edmund Pevensie and Bacchus, aka Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of grapes, wine and uninhibited ecstasy. Also theatre. I know, that's a bit weird. Is Bacchus even in the Narnia stories? (Yes, he is. He even has lines!) Why on earth am I pairing him up with Edmund, who is 10 when we first meet him?

It's all the weird memory tricks, I'm a sucker for those. The Pevensies forget about England because they stay so long in Narnia and stop thinking about England, and they can (and do) forget about Narnia if they stay in England too long and don't think about Narnia enough (poor Susan), and I find that really interesting. It offers up so many nooks and crannies to stick story in. They grow up and become adults in Narnia, but are required to forget most of it in order to return to build children in England.

And come on: is Bacchus not also very obviously the god of Narnian orgies? I mean, yes. Clearly. He's also Aslan's default caterer and water-into-wine head tech. If you need buildings destroyed and bullies turned into trees and/or pigs, Bacchus is your guy. He's not big on wearing clothes, and according to Edmund, he's incredibly beautiful and extremely dangerous. Edmund is only 10 when we first meet him, sure, but he grows up, reverse ages, and then starts to grow up again. Bacchus throws them a G-rated orgy in Prince Caspian. There's love there.

Hasn't Edmund suffered enough? Yes, he got addicted to the Turkish Delight that time, but he'd been struggling and was being bullied, he was carrying a lot of self-hatred and shame, give a kid a break. He did get himself heroically killed putting it right, only to be healed physically and psychologically by Santa Claus's magic healing cordial, as one does. Doesn't Edmund deserve a cute immortal boyfriend with quirky friends and a serious green thumb who grows his own grapes, makes his own wine, can manipulate and control the desires of everyone around him like conducting an orchestra, and who will love him until the end of time? There aren't many humans in Narnia, why not hook up with the god of uninhibited ecstasy? I mean, he's right there.

Anyway. It was fifteen years ago.

I wrote 3/4ths of it, I had one part left to go to finish it, I had an idea about what how it would end, but for some reason I never wrote the ending. I don't remember why. So it's been sitting there unfinished since 2009.

And in the last few weeks I started thinking about it again. I had an idea about that ending. I couldn't remember if this idea I was toying with was my original concluding idea or not, it's been that long, but I liked the idea, and I thought, you know, I should write that idea in as the last part and finally finish that thing.

And then I read what I'd written. And a) 15 years is a long time and I have so many criticisms, I was clearly in love with the sound of my own voice (uh...nothing's changed there I guess?), b) I wrote the thing in such a way to exclude my new idea, so apparently that wasn't my original plan, but c) yeah, I should have written this thing properly the first time around. And now I have 104 more ideas and I love them all, so.

I think I have to rewrite it. Or, I suppose, just write another one and replace it? I dunno. Just playing it out now.

I think I'm going to write it. Is this an active fandom? I don't think so. I don't care. This love story needs to be told. Edmund deserves this.

#fanfiction #narnia #Edmund/Bacchus #it's never too late right?

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house-of-crows · 3 years

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Here, have some Angst with extra Angst. Happy valentine’s day, Narnians~

#edmund pevensie #Edmund/Bacchus #Angst with a side of Angst #In my feels #and this soothes the ache #Valentine's Day #chronicles of narnia #The Chronicles of Narnia

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wewerekingswewerequeens · 7 years

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There needs to be more Edmund/Bacchus fanfiction.

I’m working on my own, though don’t expect much, and I thought I would put this out there incase anyone was inspired.

#Narnia #the chronicles of narnia #edmund pevensie #peter pevensie #susan pevensie #lucy pevensie #bacchus #edmund/bacchus #Edmund Pevensie/Bacchus #narnia fanfiction #The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe #Prince Caspian

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rthstewart · 4 years

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I wrote 2 things for the Lucian exchange

I wrote two stories, both for Be_themoon, and others.

The first is a basically a rip off of the Being Neighborly chapter from Little Women, after @larmalot suggested on Twitter the idea of the Pevensies as the equivalent of the March girls and their rich neighbor Laurie/Caspian looking at them wistfully out the window. So I copy and pasted the chapter and moved things around and changed it up a bit and turned it into a Lucy/Caspian pre-romance fusion.

Being Neighborly Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Caspian/Lucy Pevensie Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Pre-Relationship Summary Caspian is locked in his tower and feeling poorly. Lucy sets out to rescue the Prince.

The second is a much different thing. I wrote M rated fic for the first time in over 10 years. Edmund/Bacchus, Lucy/Maenads, Lucy/Caspian, so m/m, f/f, and m/f. M rated. Did I mention that? Also voyeurism. What it says on the tin. AUTHOR CHOSE NOT TO USE ARCHIVE WARNINGS.

Also, this is NOT part of The Stone Gryphon. I tend to get a lot of hate when I deviate from my usual, and especially with gifts. This was written for a particular recipient. And really, if it’s not your thing, just move along.

Opens the Gates of the Heart Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Caspian/Lucy Pevensie, Bacchus/Edmund Pevensie Additional Tags: Voyeurism Summary: "Prepare yourselves for the roaring voice of the God of Joy!" Euripides, The Bacchae Being a good Telmarine means Caspian isn't prepared for the God of Joy.

#narnia #chronicles of narnia #narnia fanfic #lucian #bacchus #lucy pevensie #edmund pevensie #edmund pevnesie/bacchus

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narniagiftexchange · 3 years

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THE WINTER NARNIAN GIFT EXCHANGE.

for: @stormwarnings from @athoughtfox.

Through the iron-grey halls of the castle of his fathers, Caspian seeks the Kings and Queens of Old. The tall, thin windows stripe the floors with their sliced-up early light, the beams falling straight and bright as the blade of a knife through the silence of the castle. Shadows hunch in the gaps between, cloaking the ashen ghosts of Telmarine lords.

On the leisurely march from Beruna, the ancient Kings and Queens had been easy to find. Wherever the trees sighed and the water quivered and the wind grew sweet, there they walked. And if he could not see them, he had learned to follow the flowers’ keen sudden blooming, the patches of blazing green where the grass had been under their feet. But here in the castle built by his ancestors, they are easily lost, drifting away like dust. He woke last night in his old bedchamber and wondered if he had dreamed them up completely.

The whole castle is strange and still, like a great breast holding its breath, its long halls like hollowed-out bones. Most of the Telmarine court had moved out when they heard the news, most of the Narnians had declined to settle inside until they knew what was happening. The only busy place is the throne room, where bouquets and banners are being laid for his coronation at noon, when he will be sworn into the service of Aslan and the High King. He tries not to think about it; it makes his head swim and the floors tilt, makes him feel like a child arranging paper dolls of fairytale characters in his play scene, imagining himself king of the Narnia of his boyhood dreaming.

They are not in the bustling throne room, nor in the feasting hall, but on the terrace outside the great castle doors he spies the trees to the west bowing in the windless air. Following their whispers, he walks the dappled path through the forest, which folds around him softly until he can no longer see the walls of the castle. He cannot guess how long he walks; it might be two minutes, it might be hours, the sound of his own breath very loud in his ears, the trees twisting their long fingers in the yellow light so that it shifts on the ground in front of him, bringing a loose echo of the dizzy swirl from the night Bacchus had run with them. Eventually he steps out of the sweet green haze into a clearing, where Lucy is dancing with the dryads.

They have no music but the low, woody murmur of the sweeping branches. Every step is graceful and sure, a pattern he cannot begin to follow, each high leafy head at once stately and playful. Time has been sliding away from him today, as he walks, as he watches. This clearing seems bubbled outside of the passing of the world, the scene it encloses as enchanting as if some magic had brought to life the pages of his story books.

He does not see Lucy leave the dance, but suddenly she is in front of him. He blinks down at her, shaking the fog away from his head; among the trees she had seemed much taller.

��I said they used to dance,” she laughs, the freckles on her nose refusing to settle in the mossy glimmer of forest light.

“May I dance with them?” he asks around the sandy dryness of his mouth.

“You will, I think,” she says, giving him a considering look. “But -”

She frowns, stepping close to him and staring hard. He stares back, beginning to feel his eyes prickle. If he lets his gaze ease, her edges blur strangely. Her eyes are very deep, the blue of them stirring like the tide, and he is as powerless to hide himself from her as he would be from the strength of the ocean.

“Oh,” she smiles suddenly, “you’re for the sea.”

“What?” he manages, almost staggering when she lets go her stare.

“You’ll be a sailor,” she tells him airily. “I can smell it on you - salt, I mean. Still, though, something about the trees… Edmund?”

Caspian jumps and turns to find Edmund watching him from the dusky space beneath a gnarled tree. He glances around wildly with half a thought of glimpsing some hiding place; he had been sure he had walked the clearing all around, but he had not seen Edmund until this moment.

With a brush of a wry smirk, Edmund steps out of his dim nook – for a breath the shadows seem to follow him, clinging fondly to his boots, cringing in the sunlight – but the moment Caspian blinks they are gone. He does not have time to ponder this, because Edmund seizes his hand and turns it palm up, examining it intently, scrubbing his thumb over it once, then letting it fall.

“Shipwright,” he says, dropping the word heavy and certain.

“Oh, Caspian!” Lucy grins, clapping her small hands together. “You’ll build ships of wood and sail on the sea. You’re one of ours.”

“One of…” he lets this trail into the air, dove-soft, and looks up at the vast high stretch of sighing blue sky, the hard bright sun. “Where are King Peter and Queen Susan?”

A silence wells up thickly in response to this.

“They’ll be at the coronation,” Edmund says, his voice flat and still as a woodland pool.

“We have a little time,” Lucy says brightly. “You wanted to dance with the trees; come then!”

She catches his hand and pulls him away into the dance, and Edmund comes after this time, taking his trailing hand, and they weave among the bowing trees until his question is forgotten, until he can hear all the earthy music of the dryads for himself.

#tcon #tconedit #lucy pevensie #edmund pevensie #narnia #type: fanfiction #from athoughtfox #for stormwarnings #narnia gift exchange #narniagiftexchange #winterexchange: 2

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mymovingfingerwrites · 3 years

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courage, dear heart

When we think of Lucy, we think of her golden hair and her cheerful smile, we think of a girl walking through a wardrobe and accepting a new world without question. We think of Queen Lucy, blessed with the power to heal, the only girl on a ship full of boys searching for a hint of whence they came. We think of her at the end of the world, kind and lovely and sorrowful as a mouse rows away, and in the world beyond the end of the world, her eyes lit up with delight. Resolute Lucy, bold Lucy, perched like a bird on the back of a lion.

When we think of Narnia, we think of Lucy. How could we not? Was it not Lucy who opened a wardrobe door and found winter, was it not Lucy who refused to be minimized, was it not Lucy who infused the land with good cheer for years after her coronation, was it not Lucy who first cocked her head and said that the land was speaking to them and they must listen?

We think about Lucy, bright Lucy, glittering Lucy, and we know instinctively that Lucy was always the heroine of her own story. What we don’t consider is that in her darkest moments—for Lucy, like us all, was not always bright, no matter how the legends insisted otherwise—she felt at times captive by the winds of fate stirring her hair. Perhaps we are–though we don’t like to admit it—some of the many people in both worlds who looked at Lucy and resented her for having the audacity (the privilege) to fill the pages of her book with her own words without considering how heavy her pen may be.

(Was it really her book, though? Lucy did not deny she wrote her own narrative. She was Lucy the Valiant; she spoke the language of High Narnia, she heard when Aslan called, she commanded the long-dormant trees into existence once more. Lucy was familiar with the power of words. What she objected to was the idea that her life was her very own, that her canvas was blank except for marks of her own making. Dear Lucy, pulled uncomplainingly into heroics, a simple game of exploration leading to death and betrayal and heartbreak (and majesty, and light, and animals that could talk). No; this was not her book but if she had the (mis)fortune to open it she certainly would inscribe her legacy on it herself).

To our credit, we sense what Lucy had always known: she felt as though her role was inevitable. (In boys, we call that responsibility, or heroism). Perhaps that is what we resented. When you are a young girl with golden hair and blue eyes and the lightest smattering of freckles, when you are the baby of the family and coddled and loved dearly, when you are born with an infinite well of self-possession and three protective older siblings, when you believe in your own worth–stepping into the pages of your story and titling it as your own looks like a foregone conclusion from afar.

(Her sister, Susan, struggled with this for many years. Though she was the pretty one, or at least that was what her mother told her, Susan eyed Lucy’s waterfall of blonde hair with envy. Though she was meant to be gentle, Susan watched how animals flocked to her sister first, how even the most timid of creatures lined up to whisper their secrets into Lucy’s ears. This would take Susan a considerable amount of time to overcome, but let us not blame her too harshly. Being a girl is difficult enough; being the other girl in the story is harder still).

But what we do not see, unless we look very closely, is that nothing felt foregone for Lucy. What looks easy from afar was not from within. Lucy chose herself, over and over; she chose to follow the path Aslan lay out for her, and she chose to do so with good humor and kindness as armour against the inherent cruelty of the world, even the magic one.

Of all her siblings, Peter understood this best, though they never discussed it in so many words. Perhaps that is why Peter always trusted Lucy, or at least apologized to her without resentment when she was proven right. The bookends of the family, they were as temperamentally different as any other pair of siblings. Peter sometimes felt blinded by Lucy's incandescent optimism; Lucy at times was weighed by proximity to Peter's practicality.

But both of them understood duty, more so than Edmund, led so easily astray by pleasure, and Susan, who believed (at times to her credit) that the world owed her the same that she owed it. Neither Lucy nor Peter strayed from their tasks, not even when Lucy picked her cold and lonely way down to the shadow of a godly voice, nor when Peter first felt the undeniable weight of his gleaming sword marred by enemy blood. They chose, and they chose again, even when those choices did not feel like choices but inevitabilities.

For when one understands duty, taking one's place as hero is not self-indulgent. It is not privilege; it is a prerogative, and it is difficult. But where Peter found his duty in protection and caregiving, in oversight and the hard labor of daily majesty, Lucy found hers in vision and clarity and momentum. When Susan hesitated over the unknown and Edmund lay sniffling quietly when he thought nobody could hear, Lucy knew that her relentless confidence was as necessary as Peter's guidance.

(This was a burden, too. Who was positive for Lucy? Her siblings tried to be, of course; they loved each other dearly, more so in the following years. But this sense of need never left Lucy, this fear that if she did not smile that nobody else would ever smile again).

Cheerfulness and friendliness can be their own prisons. When you believe in yourself, others are relieved; they need not take on the responsibility of believing in you too. Lucy never allowed herself to stray (save from moments alone in a large, soft bed, save from a magic book that in its pages contained temptation, save from tears that splashed hotly in the cool Narnia wind) all the more rigidly because everyone expected that she never would.

(It takes strength to choose optimism; it takes willpower to respond to situations with cheerfulness. Lucy was valiant even at seven years old, remember. She knew that raising her head high was an act of defiance, she knew believing in her own experience was brave, she knew that daring to rescue a friend from the clutches of an unknown evil was perhaps foolhardy but nevertheless necessary. She may not wield a sword but do not mistake her empathy for weakness).

Beauty and softness can be their own prisons, too. Youth and innocence and loveliness can make you more—it can mark you as worthy to speak to a god-turned-lion, your friendship as worth the threat of eternal damnation—but it invariably means that more is all you are allowed to be. There were days when Lucy fled back to her castle, her nose red and her eyes stinging, her hair twisted into disarray, and wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath a heap of blankets and throw pillows at the door just to prove that she too could be cruel, she too could be wanting. It is no easier to smile when tasked to in Narnia than it is anywhere else.

Sometimes Lucy resented her role as the youngest, the softest, the angel (or was she meant to be the prophet?). She saw Susan notching an arrow to her bow, watched Peter and Edmund joust in the courtyard, and looked down at her glittering bottle of cordial and longed to smash it against the door and take up war instead of peace.

Father Christmas gave her that vial, after all, a children’s story speaking to a child. Her power was limited, finite. Lucy began to use it sparingly, though she would have liked to heal every small hurt that befell a member of her kingdom. Part of her always felt a frisson of fear at the thought that she may one day no longer have the power to heal. Part of her felt anger that even Father Christmas did not think her capable. None of her siblings had gifts of borrowed power.

(Edmund did not get a gift at all, but he was, surprisingly, placid about this slight. He still remembered the enchanting taste of Turkish delight, even years after it last melted on his tongue. He knew that even now he would betray his family for another taste of that wickedness, and that knowledge made him humble. His gift was that he would never be tempted again, and for that, he would trade all the gold in the world).

Let us talk about what it must have cost Lucy, more than her siblings, to return to a world of mundane happenstance. Let us think about her, forced to be seven years old, forced to plait her hair and be seen and not heard and befriend children scarred from years of war. These playmates did not want to be coaxed into the brilliant world of Lucy’s imagination. They did not want to hear of Aslan, they did not want to pretend to be anything they were not. They had survived days or months or years away from their parents, but not in the warm embrace of a magic land; they had been torn from their families by trains and cars leaving in the dead of night, they had been sent to farms where food stretched thin, to towns that covered their windows with black paint and slept six to a bed, heel to head. Magic to them was their father, home from the war, with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes but was nevertheless warm. It was their older siblings, reunited and once again casual monarchs of the family dynamic. It was their mothers chiding them to eat, their friends once again within easy access, the serenity of the night broken only by lorries and not sirens.

Lucy had experienced hardship before, of course. Everything has a balance, after all. When you feel joy deeply, sorrow cuts you to your very core. When you are easily delighted, you understand how ephemeral delight can be. Lucy carried joy with her, of course: the wild exhilaration of Bacchus and his nymphs, how right it felt when her and her siblings rushed out to the parapet to see a brilliant golden sun nestle into the cool embrace of the Narnia forest, the softness of Reepicheep's fur tinged with drops from the sea at the end of the world, how Aslan looked at her and she felt seen. Lucy never shied away from emotion. Lucy was valiant in this too.

But she never forgot the lesson of dear old Tumnus. In Narnia, he was a constant presence in her dining hall. But she never forgot that the cost of her entrance into this glittering world was an innocent creature frozen for daring to take her home for tea. She never forgot that her siblings doubted her, that her youngest brother was led astray by sparkle and glitter. She remembered the silent despair of Caspian searching for his family, Eustace wondering which poor soul he devoured in the guise of a dragon defeating another. To the end of her days, she thought of the quiet dignity and terrible sadness of Lord Rhoop gazing upon the still bodies of his very closest companions, choosing to condemn himself to an endless sleep to be by their side on only the faintest suggestion of hope. Because Lucy was Lucy, she took those feelings into her own and cared for them as she cared for their benefactors.

But in a way, Lucy had not yet experienced loneliness and fear, not like her siblings had, not like these war-torn children. The closest she had gotten were those first few days in the professor’s house where none believed her, or when she walked alone to Aslan in the middle of the night wishing desperately someone would follow. For most of her time in Narnia, however, Lucy was easily, automatically accepted, her majesty unquestioned. In Narnia, she was unique: lovely Lucy, Queen Lucy, friend of centaurs and fauns and nymphs, immortalized in ballads, welcome in badger dens and banquet halls alike. Lucy was Aslan’s favorite, of course–didn’t he speak mostly to her, didn’t he cuddle her in his great and terrible paws? Queen of peace and harbinger of joy.

When she twisted back into an unfamiliar body she expected this world to accept her, too. Yet Lucy was not celebrated in this world; at least not automatically. Susan took one look at her circumstances and tossed her head and vowed to be queen in this life too. Edmund chewed his lip and sighed a little to Lucy but bent his head to his studies, just in case Aslan was wrong and he would be forced to rely on the battles to be won in schoolhouses and universities. Peter raged, in his own way, at the loss of his kingdom, unable to cope with his duty and his purpose and his raison d'être so brutally torn from him.

Lucy tried to talk to the trees, but they ignored her, their bark cool to the touch. She tried to dance in the meadows, but the grass was sharp and covered her legs with rashes. She tried to befriend the dogs at her local shelter but they snapped at her suspiciously. She tried to talk to her peers and hear their stories and stand up for them like she stood up for her subjects but they eyed her with mistrust and laughed at the boundless optimism she tried desperately to embody. This generation of children was not prone to easy positivity, remember. Those in Narnia had been so desperate for help after their long years of winter. Humans, she found, were surprisingly not.

Lucy had never been ignored before. She had never been disliked openly, she had never struggled to make friends. She did not know how to handle girls eyeing her with jealousy or derision, how to process boys that pulled her hair not to flirt but to hurt. Her gentle heart and loving manner had always won her praise and acclaim, but in those brittle years after the war, she was playing a game where she did not know the rules.

She was not able to admit until years later that perhaps this loneliness was good for her. Heroines need strife to grow, even in all the old stories. Lucy could have turned her back on who she was in Narnia; she could have tempered the blaze of her spirit, fell obediently into the ranks of conformity. She could have stemmed the flow of her hope and turned instead to sheer practicality. Was that not what her siblings were doing?

(No, dear Lucy, stubborn to the very end. That was not what they were doing and you should have given them the benefit of the doubt).

In some sort of twist of fate, Lucy did most of her growing in this world, off the pages of the book, trying to decide what was important to her in a world where the rules were more (less) rigid, the values were more (less) prescribed. This was where she became truly valiant, in the mundane manner as well as the majestic. In this world she learned how to listen: quietly and patiently. Here the silent trees aided her, providing a calm and soothing canvas on which a friend could shyly begin to paint her troubles. She learned that being bold and brash could sometimes be selfish instead of brave.

Lucy remembered what it felt like to be seven and ignored. She remembered encountering a fawn risking death for her company, even though she was not yet a decade on this earth. She remembered her own siblings’ gentle condescension. She knew what it felt like to be dismissed. Sometimes you do not want somebody to fight for you. Sometimes you want somebody to help you as you learn how to fight for yourself.

In this world, Lucy learned what it meant to be valiant without pride. She learned how much bravery it takes to be heroine of a story with many other heroines and heroes and warriors and soldiers, that being one of many provides strength. (It reminds her of those old sunny days, playing chess in the courtyard, all her siblings casually, loosely together). In this world, when she lifted her head and smiled warmly, when she woke in the morning and greeted the sun, she did so with optimism she crafted herself, with positivity she forged out of the steel of her spine. She learned you did not have to be in the forefront of a story to blaze in it, that sometimes people did not want love and laughter but truth and honesty and justice. She met her peers’ eyes and they lifted their chins and she made them feel fierce, not protected.

When Lucy thought, years later, of the vial Father Christmas gave her, she realized he was giving her an instrument of her own power. Her ability—her great burden—was that she could not save everyone but she could save many. She had to choose. Lucy was not alone in this; a sword gives one the ability to take a life—but to trade a death for many lives. A bow allows one to even the stakes while remaining aloof, to assign death to others from a great distance. No gift at all forces one to look inside themselves and find the strength that was always there. Magic to heal, like all of these gifts, like all gifts, was meaningless unless one wielded it.

Lucy could have been afraid of indecision; she could have kept her vial locked away or pretended it had run out. She could have used it all within years, saving this generation of her subjects only to damn the next. The choice was hard, sometimes. Sometimes she left the vial behind and had to grasp the hand of a dying soldier and know in her heart that she could have saved him had she only decided to bring it. Sometimes, particularly toward the end, she had it in her pocket but knew she could not use it, that she had to be brave for those ahead as well as those now. These choices were not easy. These choices were her own. Peter, burdened with majesty, had to make choices about who to damn to combat, what was worth fighting for—but he never had to choose who to save. Susan, gentle, had to weigh the many competing demands of the land and decide which to prioritize, strategize how to best achieve her goals, knowing the weight of her kingdom was on her back—but she knew there was always a second choice, always a way to optimize a situation. Edmund, even and fair, had to devise a system of just rule, had to know when to stick to it and when to revise it, even when a friend had to be punished, even when it hurt to be the judge—but he did not have to enforce these laws, only set them.

Warrior, strategist, arbiter, healer: all four Pevensie siblings shouldered their own burdens and supported each other in the heavy task of ruling over many. When three of them returned (when six of them returned) to see their land destroyed, to see a new land created, they remembered those choices and they vowed to uphold them. Lucy had no vial in the kingdom of heaven but that had never been what gave her power. Even in the golden light at the end of the world there were jealousies and anger and injustice and strife. Even in the endless summer of forever there was the chance to be brave.

(Susan, on Earth, mourned her baby sister more than anyone else. Peter had death in the shadows of his eyes since he took a life at thirteen years old and was praised for it. Edmund too seemed to know that he was living on borrowed time. But Lucy, dear Lucy, did not deserve to be struck down so young. Susan had watched her grow into the set of her shoulders and ignite the light in her smile not once but twice. She watched Lucy forge a mortal crown out of sheer determination and optimism and she felt something like awe. She wanted her sister to wear it; she wanted her sister to join her in this brave new world, where women were beginning to display the beauty of their resilience and their wild and clever strength. She wanted to apologize, to admit she too remembered Narnia, that she had not understood the type of strength Lucy drew about her like a warm shawl.

Susan did not know for many years where that fateful train journey took her siblings. She deliberately did not consider Narnia, for why would a land full of kindness and light steal her family senselessly, randomly? (She did not know of their mission, of magic rings, of beasts lurking in the darkness. How could she, when they deliberately did not include her?)

She chose to believe that Lucy and Peter and Edmund were in a land of eternal stillness. Susan remembered those burdens, too, even if the details of Narnia were on some days blurry. It seemed more sad, somehow, to think of her siblings once again wearing their crowns on stone thrones, as if their time on Earth meant nothing.

When she opened her eyes and saw Lucy again, young and royal, she felt at first a deep pang of regret before the relief flooded in).

For Lucy, going to the world after the world of Narnia was not frightening but exhilarating, not limiting but empowering. It did not take long for her to forget what she left behind on her mortal world; they had teased Susan, once, for shutting out remembrances of talking animals and magic dancing along the stone paths. If Lucy remembered that, she might have felt shame, now that the quiet majesty of a row of silent English oaks faded into blurs, that the chatter of her peers became as dim and incomprehensible as squirrels.

But Lucy was never one to look back; she was eager to flip ahead to the new pages in her story, here in a world where the pages had no ending. There were new friends to meet and a kingdom to build and cheers to receive and challenges to fight. Susan would realize this too, one day, joining her siblings in this world beyond the world. Lucy was suited for this, as if she were chosen for this, as if she chose this over everything else she could have chosen.

She wrote her own story, yes, but we should remember that does not mean that all of her words were her own.

#this has been sitting in my drafts for months so i decided...just to post it #lucy is a hard character for me #i think i was always jealous of her as a kid #this is an attempt to think through that #anyway #lmk what you think #lucy pevensie #chronicles of narnia #the pevensies #peter pevensie #edmund pevensie #susan pevensie #my moving finger writes #the chronicles of narnia

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