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seijch · 3 years

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ANNOUNCEMENT: NOT A HELLO, BUT NOT A GOODBYE EITHER

omg hi ... im like . ashamed to come back after saying brief hiatus in october and then disappearing off the face of the earth til FEBRUARY but under the cut i will be explaining myself and the following, if youre interested (and a tl;dr at the very bottom if you don’t wanna scroll thru this obnoxiously long post):

the reason(s) i was gone for so long

what i was doing during that time (its just a personal account yall can scroll past this idrc)

the status of those um . halloween requests

the future of this account

i. so . Hiatus .

i know. i know . i probably mentioned it when i made the announcement post, but my mental health likes to go on one of those rides. yknow the ones where you go like up rlly fast then down maybe and then up then DOWN .... its like that. i needed a break and every time i wanted to come back or thought about it, something would happen and i would get stuck in my own head.

a big reason for getting stuck in my head was (and i hate to admit this ... i hate to admit that i have Insecurities On The Internet) my feelings of inadequacy regarding my writing. i love to plot fics, i love concepts and characters and making little headcanons but i dont ... know if i love writing rn. and i thought for the longest time that like . whatever ill just push thru it its fine ill be fine but it kinda wasnt lmao you can kinda see it in my halloween reqs and what become of them when i get to that but i began to feel like nothing i had put out or would put out would hold up prose wise (and normally i dont feel like this im much more “idc its my life im living it” but thats not a rant for tumblr LMAO). i still feel like that -- like im better as a reader than a writer. but . You Know :-)

tl;dr: mental state go brrrrr

ii. anywhere here’s wonderwall

when i left, i was in a steadily decreasing mental and emotional state, made worse by a situation at work that really was a case of petty jealousy on my end and rlly isnt very consequential now despite how much pain and resentment it gave me when it Was a problem so i wont get into it. the tl;dr of november and december was me using work as an crutch and distraction -- i know my job, i do it well, it helped me not think about my responsibilities and obligations and inadequacies. of course, as the holiday season grew busier n busier i was scheduled so often that i moved 88 or so miles (according to my apple watch, which i ONLY wear at work since im never anywhere else outside my house) and fell into a cycle of showering n sleeping at my house before going back the next day. (theres definitely something to be said abt capitalism and “grind culture” here but once again its not the time or place snsjkdfds)

at the turn of the new year, i happened to remember a birthday card i hadnt filed away for safekeeping from a friend of mine that id been horribly out of touch with til that point. i started crying because i realized how out of touch id been in general up until that point. the month of january was great for me: i was focused, happy, and in a much better place than i had been before. the end of it brought me down focus wise and im hoping that enough time away from my distractions will refocus me bc i ... need it LMAO and though ive burned out from that level of productivity and gotten distracted again im ... trying to stay positive which i think is the most i can do 😁👍🏼

media wise, i got real into stardew valley (but burned out bc i played it extensively as a way to wind down after work), the pokemon platinum romhack renegade platinum (still havent finished it bc of school n i played it w the intent to see if i could nuzlocke it ... bitch its so hard but its so fun bc of it), briefly assassins creed: odyssey (im one of those ppl who completes an entire region before i move to the next so you can tell i burned out of that one + wouldnt have the time to properly devote to it even if i didnt), got back into genshin impact after pulling for xiao (after not touching it for like . months), and danganronpa. yes . danganronpa 😐 i Know. i stopped playing it after the second trial of the first game bc i was so hurt by the outcome and picked it up in late january only to get sucked in (thank god i had the foresight to buy the second and third games during the steam winter sale). rn im at the start of chapter 4 if anyone wants to come in my asks and um . talk to me abt danganronpa

tl;dr: I’m Into Danganronpa Now

iii. you realize halloween was three months ago right

i mentioned this in the first section, but i love to plot things. every request is plotted or at least has a solid foundation. i had fun detailing what concept i wanted to go with considering what i was given, and there were some bangers i might touch up in the future. but heres whats going to happen to the requests themselves:

there are two finished requests. one will be posted tomorrow and the other will be touched up (just bc i finished it doesnt mean its good 🧍‍♂️) and scheduled for next saturday. as for the ones i never got around to ...

i will not be finishing those requests. i hate to be That Person, but i feel like we all expected this 🧍‍♂️ what i will do is post all of my notes for each request in batches -- requests that have an @ to go with them will be mentioned in the post proper, but anon asks will be pictured. (there are some asks that came from blogs who are now deactivated but i wrote down all the prompts and remember most of those askers so ill cross that bridge when i get there) there will most likely be an excerpt or two simply bc i think i mightve written a few plot points or interactions in the form of bullet points. i rlly am sorry about doing this but i remember looking at my notion doc with all the prompts and feeling ... like i wasnt measuring up n it wasnt just to myself or to some intangible concept of “other” id constructed but it was instead to those who requested n actually WANTED to see and hear and read my writing and i ...... im gonna admit thats another big reason i avoided this site.

regardless, youll definitely get what i have (and likely more than just my bullet points and illegible handwriting).

tl;dr: im sorry. what i have in terms of plot, concept, and interaction for every request will be posted, but i cant say ill ever complete them and mean it.

iv. so what now?

well i mean . im not entirely sure how sold i am on haikyuu in the content creation department (as a creator n to a lesser extent, as a consumer). as mentioned previously, its no longer my primary focus. it doesnt mean im not into haikyuu anymore; i have a lot of love for those boys but i cant rlly say im even caught up w recent fandom activity and also havent even finished s4 pt2 LMAO thats on my to do list

and despite all that, i still want to share my plots n concepts and snippets and maybe even fics. it wont happen anytime soon. it might not even happen. but i mean . its better than me saying i wont write ever again shjdkfs but either way ill probably use this blog as a personal blog w the occasional ask game for dialogue prompts (those are always so fun i love making up aus to fit like . the most mundane prompts)

as for my works (past and any potential future), ive opened an ao3 acc here n ill be editing n possibly expanding on my old works to post there. tumblr, to me, is The x reader hub, but i figure more x reader fics on ao3 is never a bad thing.

ill be deleting/posting drafted posts to the queue since they were all meant to be queued anyway as well as (sorry again 🧍‍♂️) deleting or answering asks in the inbox. (moots if you get a notif from me saying i rbed your post from months ago ... mind your business) im very hard to get ahold of and its ... a problem. expect an overhaul of the nav n shit to reflect my new direction n also because i feel like i cant tell if my passion for carrd is shared by the majority HSDKLFS maybe its better to read my info in a normal post ykwim .......

and of course . if youve read all this n decided im no longer worth the follow, i sure as hell cant stop you. thank you for wanting to, at some point, hear what i have to say -- it means more than you think.

tl;dr: writing will be edited and reposted to ao3, this blog will be a personal blog with a hint of writing (sometimes)

the tl;dr to end all tl;drs:

im back! i wont be as active as i used to due to a lessened interest in haikyuu in general, but i have an ao3 acc now where all my past work will be edited, possibly expanded, and reposted. any future work will also find itself there. my halloween requests will be posted in batches as incomplete concepts, plots, and snippets of scenes; i wont be promising to finish any of them.

there are still fic concepts im attached to and want to finish, but i cant promise any more writing on my end. this blog will be a personal blog with maybe writing, not a writing blog with my personal thoughts all over it.

regardless if you stick around or not, its been crazy sexy cool (equal emphasis) being on haikyuu tumblr even tho i wasnt around for long ... even tho its not my main focus anymore, im still excited to see what the future might hold 🤝

love, ari 💌

#did i have an announcement tag #announcement #also regarding work hsjkdfsd the company i work for didnt give my location the opening for the full time position i wanted #my managers all agree id be promoted if we had it but we dont so i . hee .#anyway um i hope everyones doing well #some of my moots changed urls while i was away and now i have no idea who anyone is #its like when you see your familys friends and theyre like omg youre so big now! i remember when you were a baby and youre like 🧍‍♂️#and you have to play along bc apparently they remember you hskdfsd #im not very funny in this post but i figured id rather be honest considering my lengthy absence #consider this my comeback stage

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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years

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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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cheswirls · 7 years

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i have so many thoughts and its about 430 am so lets get started before they get scrambled.

i decided to read red potter and the middleground, but because i finished one so early in the morning, i had to hold off on the other for a bit, until this -past, i guess- evening. i had read for sure a chapter of the middleground previously, maybe two, but i’ve read too much now that the recollection isn’t coming to me like it came in small bursts through reading through chapter one again. i think it was another instance when i got extremely busy and had to put it down, maybe tac2 took over, dunno, but i got back to it now bc im still on the post-playthrough-of-white high and anything deep in unova is good and lu is fantastic so i knew this would be fantastic and is was right.

it’s a very dark read? unexpected, then again, its centered around a war, so also i shouldve expected it. the realization hit me around the third chapter, i think, when the nimbasa incident happened. very dark and very good. and emotional, i dunno how many times ive cried tonight but its been a night/twilight. the whole story basis with the center legend of unova and all the olden history is really good, its all really boosting my unova high like this is exactly what ive been needing to find, and all the characters it brings in despite the animeverse of it all -benga, n, touko!!- and the roles they play just really made it better, its kind of shallow but i like it even moreso because of the additions and though the story kept me highly entertained and drawn in there were a couple moments when i wished like oh man i hope the story has n in it bc n man jus n i need n content and then bam mentioned and now hes officially in it sort of i mean yeah he is. in the story. and this was early on like during the first few chapters so i had to hold out but it was worth it like, the story is interesting with the anime characters and i knew it was gonna be aniverse going into it and it was good and fine and still is good and fine.

i dont remember when i started wishing for touko but man oh man it happened and i was like damn this could happen i wish she was kinda here bc i think i had begun to pick up on something and then later i really picked up on it which i will get to later and them bam another happy revelation and i am still like. touko. shes here. shes a part of the story. this is awesome.

anyway before this gets too long to massively too long, this is basically going to be a big analysis and happy-rant post, so if you have not read the middleground by the amazing @pkmncoordinators, you should do so here but then like leave this post until you do and then come back, that would be good. the rest is under a cut to save peoples dashes, sorry this is mega long already aha.

i played ghetsis’ battle theme through a chapter and it mustve been a shorter one bc it lasted me -30min- near the entire chapter. maybe the one beginning w the drayden and alder talk? or the dragonspiral tower one? or maybe theyre the same, its been a long night of binging this entire work. anyway. it set the mood for whatever chapter like i intentionally was like oh this theme is a little foreboding lets play it. and i had it down so low sometimes i could only hear the percussions to it, but it was still there, setting the tone.

otherwise, i found myself only keeping to n music. maybe there were a couple plays of unova e4, way in the very beginning of the first/second chapters, maybe, but for the most part, i kept with n’s songs. the bridge, some, the castle and battle theme, a lot. some renditions of such in b2w2 style. i tried to play through the music of n’s room in the castle, but i had to stop after a little into it, maybe ten minutes, because it was getting all these feelings out of me and i felt like if i played it all i would ‘tire it out’, so to speak, even though that hasnt happened w any of the tracks thus far, but i really want that to be a special one i have on to draw inspiration from. later into the night/morning, whenever, i did decide to try out a remix of it via the b2w2 track of the same theme. the tune is in a slightly different pitch, but more than that, it gets distorted, almost corrupted, throughout and differentiates itself that way from the original, so i did end up playing through that no problem. i cant recall now if i ever played a theme back to back, i think i switched after the 30min was over, which, understandable, it’d been looping for half an hour. but i think i did play it again maybe once, which is fine. good.

but enough with music meta. its interesting, maybe thats where the draws of ‘where’s n?’ came from, but its not the focus.

oooh boy lets talk about various things that i will address here bc its 5am now and i need to not lose track. the n thing. um. the touko revelations. remember liberty, because the truth will set you free. the hero of truth. the opening chapter remarks. the possible sourgrapes. the viewpoints thing. there is probably more i will get to later in a different post but these are the current things for the morning.

first i wanna talk abt touko, hilda, whatever. small note so i dont appear brash, to ppl who dont really follow my content, i just dont really like the names hilda and hilbert. hilda is slowly growing on me, but missy always called the protag touko, and it really grew on me, and i live the name now, so thats what i always defer to her as. jus a preference thing.

so, i had no idea and i had every idea. oh my god. lu, you are so good at the foreshadowing stuff, serious. a master at it. i didnt pick up on the nimbasa trainer mention, or maybe i did but its been long ago now and i dont remember it. if she appeared before then i already dont remember the callback to it, oops. anyway. it was after that, for sure, if not before, that i did pick up on the brunette trainer and thought ‘damn if that was touko tho thatd be so rad’. really thinking it was in the electronic store in striaton, but that seems so far away from nimbasa like there mustve been something in between but i dont think so? so that. and then in the next, black city? abt the brunette trainer watching the tv, and i think i had the same thought except it was during ghetsis’ speech so between both moments brunette trainer was mentioned. i think i picked up on the repeated mentions of brunette trainer when she and iris locked eyes to see her also packing to leave the center. it was a thought more along the lines of ‘brunette trainers seem to be standing out to me more or are i guess being detailed more than other trainers’ than out of suspicion. i was picking up the repeated characteristic, but more of the notion that it was being named over and over, instead of anything real behind it. like, okay, there are a lot of brown haired trainers around, that works.

it was maybe in icirrus if that was the next thing, i tried to look and think i confirmed that was the next thing based on the recall conversation, so yes. in icirrus, my memory is really failing me sorry!!, somewhere, the first mention or maybe if that first mention was the brunette trainer across the hall in another room, my mind clicked. and it was like, oh, this brunette trainer might actually be all the same person. and i started to think again, wow, what if that person was touko bc i was really passionate abt it and i couldnt come up with who else bc i didnt have the focus i was still actively reading the store yknow? if was nothing about the being followed, i had to wait for the others to catch on and tell the reader before i got that aha. but i did! get! the touko part. it was when iris woke up from the comatose and all those scenes started playing out, maybe she mentioned not disturbing the others or cilan when they were talking, or georgia when she ran off, or something abt the trainer in another room, or a revelation dawned i guess somewhere in those scenes. and i was like oh my god that has to be touko god wow. im really losing my original train of thought i apologize. still recovering from sickness, and the whole long night thing. so something along that thought, but then it sorta got forgotten bc shit got real w virgil and the truth seekers being there, and i didnt recall again until she approached cilan during the counter sheidl -niiiiice throwback, by the way- training, and i was like !!!!!!!!!!!! that HAS to be touko and then she led him away and the whole scene played out and i remember scanning the page briefly, jus flicking my eyes over to see if i saw the namedrop and didnt, so i got entranced in the scene and then benga was like ‘hilda get the other three’ and TOUKO!!!!! WAS THERE OMG!!!! like confirmed, in the flesh, it was great its great what a great thing to add wow. and then the recall conversation happened and i began to pick up and was like wow they were being followed and didnt even remember the brunette trainer mentioned in nimbasa, barely remembered someone with a samurott led the charge to put out the fires, so that was a surprise. of course, that was such an intense scene, and i remember having a small breakdown around then bc burgundy said something about how she couldve been in one of those rooms and that chilled her and it sent me wild bc it was scary to think about, it really was chilling, this story really is dark che wow.

so i was proud of myself for picking up on that, the touko thing, but i probably wouldve been in the dark completely had i read it and not recently played through white and mind being constantly on that region and those characters right now.

that was super long. um. next thing is liberty bc i can remember it. the line is, im pretty sure, just remember liberty, because the truth will/can set you free. and its really only because im so into unova right now, but back at the first chapter today, my mind immediately picked up ‘oh liberty island’. except its not island, its liberty garden-island, thing, but still. the liberty just connected, and i had it, and so like when iris busted out like hey we’re not flying to nimbasa we’re going to liberty garden i was like yh guys cmon take a hint. but i really think it was probably creative and thought-provoking to others, a bit of a twister, to liek other readers like this isnt a callout on an easy riddle, jus a notion i picked up on easily. actually i remember the castelia thing confusing me, but there was also some disconnect because the liberty line want being used, it was just being mentioned that everyone seeking the seekers was heading to castelia, like the two were never paired i dont recall of. and it happened every time. i was like okay yes theyre at libery garden, then castelia was mentioned and i was like okay theyre at castelia. they never really crossed so they never crossed in my mind. it wasnt until the group landed in castelia i think that my mind connected, ah yes, liberty garden is off the coast of the city. i do wonder how plasma figured it out though. i think earlier speculation was on the touko-n relationship compromising the location, though im not sure how that would work in the first place, so it seems more likely someone jus picked up on the insinuation like i did, jus made the connection, tho i dunno who.

really quick hero of truth revelation thing. it took me a couple reads to grasp, like iris realized something cilan didnt but he went away and it took me, i had to read it over a few times because she realized something so therefore the readers have to realize as well, and then i made the connection that cilan was related to the hero of truth therefore making him the hero of truth. that couldve been phrased better unless cress and chili are somehow included which i think not, too many motifs, but the point comes across. i might not have made the connection had i not read earlier in the day about iris slipping cilan reshiram’s pokeball, something i stumbled upon before i started reading the entire thing oops so maybe that was a giveaway that helped me work through it, maybe i just connected based on the ancestor stuff, dunno.

i still havent figured out whos writing the chapter intros and its getting to me!! i dunno if we’re supposed to know yet, at first i felt like cilan, and then a vague collection of others, maybe trip with the camera capture in black city, and then maybe touko at the end tho i feel like something was mentioned that was confidential and that she wouldn’t have known about. then again i suppose sharing stories and then recounting could come into play, in which case benga could also be writing them.. i dont’ feel like its someone currently irrelevant, tho. like, i don’t think it’s luke, or bianca, or someone kinda disconnected like that. its probably a spoiler for you to say whom, which okay, fair, but i hope someone signs off on the intros in the last chapter, or that theres something to pick up on to discover it ourselves, or maybe its not important, but i really gotta know eventually.

someone mentioned days ago about something like not being into wishfulshipping and then something about sourgrapes was mentioned, i really dont remember that well, but i started to pick up on it throughout, especially with all the camping scenes, and remembering you liked sourgrapes so much, and is it possible to confirm that thats a ship in this fic? or, has a possibility? i think i’m picking up on it, but it could be friendship, im not sure.

these next two are the last two for now i think. first, viewpoints, because this story delves into such a cast of characters and i think the same story told from the viewpoint of others would be so interesting, like told through the eyes of benga or touko, or even elesa possibly, and if you ever like wanna divulge in that or after you get done wouldnt mind someone taking a shot at it and working with for accuracy reasons, that would be pretty cool. and you have your first volunteer.

second and last is the n thing. i think a little is just meta, which i want to make a full post on later in time, so this may or may not tie in not sure. just, real brief, isn’t n such an interesting character? i really just, i dunno if i like him like i like others, but i really find his dynamic interesting. keeping it short, bc meta, the boy really grew up differently than a “normal” human. the proper socialization was there, sort of, because he can walk and speak and was educated like hes a math geniusa nd stuff, but he wasn’t socially educated. a lot of people dont realize the two are different, i didnt until i took an intro to sociology course this past fall semester. anyway tho. he really wasnt socially educated, and you can see that through all representations -cant speak for spe actually i havent read the arc yet- even in the anime, though far less likely than i would have liked, having rewatched the n arc a few days ago. the disconnect from people is there. n had tutors, but other than that he was in a room with his only company being pokemon formerly abused by people. that was it. not even normal pokemon, but those he had to gain the trust of first because they were misled by trainers. he doesn’t really know how to act with people. he talks fast, hes very blunt, he doesnt know the meaning of personal boundaries, et cetera. he was, practically, raised in a cult. led to believe only the cult’s beliefs. and its only through getting out of his room and around unova, at least in the game, that he begins to develop his own thouhgts and ideas and morals, that he begins to doubt what hes been preached his whole life. this is getting a bit like so im gonna cut, but i just, n is such an interesting character. the tie in. already, in the tv announcement, his voice is ethereal and i could picture it, could play the sound in my mind based off the anipoke and the gens voices, because both of those are genuinely how n sounds to me, i can see it perfectly it just works like there is no other voice for him. i could picture that when he spoke. and already, with the dreamy, far-off gaze, and it hardening, i can see his characterization is going to be so great in the middleground, and im so excited. i recently finished a fic where his characterization to me was absolutely perfect, and even as it evolved, that standard didnt diminish, because the evolution was so seamless and good that the changes to him felt right, felt realistic.

im realizing now this sounds like a do-good-or-there-will-be-consequences thing, which is not my intention. im just, i really wanted a story with n, one i knew would be good, and the middleground is it at the moment. and i know youll do a good job because i liked tac so much, which featured n, and already its the little things with middleground!n that are already so good, and this was really just me saying thank you and i cant wait, and so thank you and i cant wait for more. i cant wait to see more of n, no matter how small a role, or how big iunno, he plays, its already so good for such a complex character with such a grey background. morally grey, ethically grey, realistically grey, just grey.

all in all, the middleground is amazing so far, i love it so so much, and once again, i cant wait for more. thank you for such an amazing piece thus far, lu. its past 6am now so its taken me a bit to get through this post, i hope the majority makes sense. and i cant wait to see what comes next with the story.

#the middleground #another long post about another long work wow who wouldve guessed

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