lady_sarai (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_sarai) wrote2006-04-26 12:51 am
lady_sarai) wrote2006-04-26 12:51 am
Peter and Narnia and oh, dear. Not again.
Apologies to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zoe_chan because I took a bit of this directly from our IM conversation. Because I'm lazy like that, but I did expound on some of it...
So, I kind of wish that I could have fandom in moderation, you know? That a character wouldn't come and clock me upside the head. It's frustrating. But that's what's going on with Peter Pevensie right now. Many of you should be familiar with the symptoms; you've seen me do this before. (Most notably of late with Cedric Diggory and Mark Cohen. Why do I do this?)
And because he's attacked me, I've had lots of thinking. Which is bothersome because I DON'T KNOW THE CANON!!! ::weeps:: I know movie!canon. But, you know, this bothers me when it happens in most fandoms. The book is LAW. I hate that I don't know it in this case. I also can't find my book so I can rapidly LEARN the canon. Because The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is mainly what I'm being concerned with right now, and I'll worry about the rest later.
I KNEW seeing the movie would send me head over heels into Narnia, and I KNEW I'd want to read the books, but I totally didn't expect Mom to get the movie before school got out and I'd have time to read the series while freaking out about it.
And it is bothering me very much that I don't know the book canon, and that I am not willing to go looking for summaries and details on the internet... because I DO want to read the books. But I would very much like to know how old the Pevensies are when they first enter Narnia. It's not a big deal, or a huge detail, but I was thinking about how very YOUNG they all are. And I didn't know how much older than Susan Peter is. Or how young Lucy is, exactly. (I adore her, btw. She brings me warm fuzzies and I want her in my pocket.)
So, I'm highly annoyed at not being able to find that book, although I THINK it's in a suitcase at home. It better be because it's nowhere else.
Anyway, I had been thinking, regarding Peter. He is the oldest (something I relate to) and he's supposed to take care of his brother and sisters and, well. We know how THAT goes; he *tries.*
And as far as his priggishness (aszoe_chan put it) in the movie? I totally see my younger brother in Edmund, re: his moodiness and such, and I definitely wasn't always terribly nice to him when he got in those moods... now I ignore him, but it's been many years. Peter not being terribly nice is IMPORTANT. It makes Edmund's choices more justified and I like that Peter recognizes that what he did had a part in how Edmund acted (in the movie, anyway).
And as an older sibling, I have to say this. It is a mindset. It becomes part of who you are. There really is something to birth order affecting your personality. And Peter's father is fighting in WWII and he's been asked by his mother to look after the others. My father died when I was seven, and let me tell you: when people ask you to help your mother or take care of your brother, you DO. So much so that when my brother hit junior high, my mother asked me to back off because he felt like he had two mothers and we were ganging up on him. My reaction to this was not pleasant and I was EXTREMELY hurt, because really, I was just doing what I thought I needed to as a big sister. I was giving him advice and trying to take care of him and he was taking it as being too intrusive, which probably has to do with his age at the time as well as my actions. I'm 22 and I'm STILL taking care of my mother and brother as if it's my job. I can't help it.
It's also affected how I act with friends. I tend to be the mother duck. We used to joke about it in high school, how I would lead us all off to homeroom in the morning and round us up so we weren't late.arnica still compares me to Molly Weasley. I don't mind it, either. It's just me. I can't help it. I'm overprotective and try to take care of everyone. It's how I've been since I was seven.
The point of this is that Peter is the oldest of four siblings, and even without the added trauma of a missing father or mother, just being older does something. It's ingrained in your mind. When your mother or father tells you you're going to be a big sister or brother, it's inevitably followed up by commands to take care of, teach, and be friends with this younger sibling. And if you're young enough, this is something welcomed and it makes a child feel important and special; this can happen differently. Everyone is an individual, after all. But in my general experience, children either feel horribly displaced and resentful about a younger sibling, or they welcome and them and revel in the older sibling role.
And just because I'm 22, it doesn't mean that I don't want to protect my brother from my mistakes, or give him advice, or stop worrying about him. It's been very difficult to accept that he has to take ultimate responsibility for his actions and sometimes there is nothing I can do except be there for him after-the-fact. My aunt still acts the same way toward my mother, who sometimes expresses exasperation at being treated like she doesn't know as much.
This has digressed a LOT.
Back to my points, I have to give credit to William Moseley, honestly, because a lot of why I feel for Peter has to do with seeing the facial expressions he uses at certain moments. He's very young, and very much an older brother, and it shows. When he's facing off with the wolves on the ice, he looks almost sick while he's holding that sword. When he thinks Lucy was lost in the water, and when he *does* kill the wolf, and when Jadis stabs Edmund and when Lucy heals Edmund... and a million other moments, his facial expressions work for me. I feel for him.
Anyway. Peter is how old when he's got this prophecy laid at his feet and he's made High King? Hello. That's a huge thing to put on someone so young. I mean, never mind the logistics of taking over a country that's been under a cruel dictator for 100 years... but he's still got to take care of his brother and sisters, and they're rulers, too, and essentially they are all orphans there.
He's got to be feeling a responsibility to be a parental-figure to them.
And I figure, especially with Lucy, he must wind up in the parental role fairly often. which is where my begging for fic came from. =P
Yeah, Peter's fantastic and "magnificent" and brave and High King and all that, but he's still a very human BOY (especially at the beginning). He's leading an army and fighting in battles and killing, and it's not like that's something anything could have prepared him for in England. (Although, there was WWII and the blitz, and their father away fighting, which does mature one before their time anyway)... And he's ruling a country he's never even known existed, and he's not perfect.
Plus, what kind of title is "the Magnificent?" Holy high expectations, Batman!
It'd be very interesting to look at that side of things, where he's not so perfect or brave or magnificent. Where he's a boy, reacting to all this expectation and responsibility and pressure and suddenly being thrust into this position of High King, and leader of an army and the only parental figure his siblings (Edmund and Lucy, especially) have. (Because I'm sure Susan feels it, too, and might very well resent Peter if she thought he saw it this way.) I see Peter internalizing a lot, and probably having a great deal of insecurity at first, despite any assurances he might get from others, even Aslan. Besides, if he's taking care of everyone else, who's taking care of him?
And I'm so annoyed with this paper and with Narnia and Peter and what the heck. ::growls at herself:: Seriously. If I HAVE to be in a fandom could I at LEAST have a fic idea to think on instead of generic character analysis and whatnot? Or at least some links to really good fic, and I will not have my unhealthy diatribe on incest again. Because it gives me an aneurism.
zoe_chan because I took a bit of this directly from our IM conversation. Because I'm lazy like that, but I did expound on some of it...So, I kind of wish that I could have fandom in moderation, you know? That a character wouldn't come and clock me upside the head. It's frustrating. But that's what's going on with Peter Pevensie right now. Many of you should be familiar with the symptoms; you've seen me do this before. (Most notably of late with Cedric Diggory and Mark Cohen. Why do I do this?)
And because he's attacked me, I've had lots of thinking. Which is bothersome because I DON'T KNOW THE CANON!!! ::weeps:: I know movie!canon. But, you know, this bothers me when it happens in most fandoms. The book is LAW. I hate that I don't know it in this case. I also can't find my book so I can rapidly LEARN the canon. Because The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is mainly what I'm being concerned with right now, and I'll worry about the rest later.
I KNEW seeing the movie would send me head over heels into Narnia, and I KNEW I'd want to read the books, but I totally didn't expect Mom to get the movie before school got out and I'd have time to read the series while freaking out about it.
And it is bothering me very much that I don't know the book canon, and that I am not willing to go looking for summaries and details on the internet... because I DO want to read the books. But I would very much like to know how old the Pevensies are when they first enter Narnia. It's not a big deal, or a huge detail, but I was thinking about how very YOUNG they all are. And I didn't know how much older than Susan Peter is. Or how young Lucy is, exactly. (I adore her, btw. She brings me warm fuzzies and I want her in my pocket.)
So, I'm highly annoyed at not being able to find that book, although I THINK it's in a suitcase at home. It better be because it's nowhere else.
Anyway, I had been thinking, regarding Peter. He is the oldest (something I relate to) and he's supposed to take care of his brother and sisters and, well. We know how THAT goes; he *tries.*
And as far as his priggishness (as
zoe_chan put it) in the movie? I totally see my younger brother in Edmund, re: his moodiness and such, and I definitely wasn't always terribly nice to him when he got in those moods... now I ignore him, but it's been many years. Peter not being terribly nice is IMPORTANT. It makes Edmund's choices more justified and I like that Peter recognizes that what he did had a part in how Edmund acted (in the movie, anyway).And as an older sibling, I have to say this. It is a mindset. It becomes part of who you are. There really is something to birth order affecting your personality. And Peter's father is fighting in WWII and he's been asked by his mother to look after the others. My father died when I was seven, and let me tell you: when people ask you to help your mother or take care of your brother, you DO. So much so that when my brother hit junior high, my mother asked me to back off because he felt like he had two mothers and we were ganging up on him. My reaction to this was not pleasant and I was EXTREMELY hurt, because really, I was just doing what I thought I needed to as a big sister. I was giving him advice and trying to take care of him and he was taking it as being too intrusive, which probably has to do with his age at the time as well as my actions. I'm 22 and I'm STILL taking care of my mother and brother as if it's my job. I can't help it.
It's also affected how I act with friends. I tend to be the mother duck. We used to joke about it in high school, how I would lead us all off to homeroom in the morning and round us up so we weren't late.
arnica still compares me to Molly Weasley. I don't mind it, either. It's just me. I can't help it. I'm overprotective and try to take care of everyone. It's how I've been since I was seven.The point of this is that Peter is the oldest of four siblings, and even without the added trauma of a missing father or mother, just being older does something. It's ingrained in your mind. When your mother or father tells you you're going to be a big sister or brother, it's inevitably followed up by commands to take care of, teach, and be friends with this younger sibling. And if you're young enough, this is something welcomed and it makes a child feel important and special; this can happen differently. Everyone is an individual, after all. But in my general experience, children either feel horribly displaced and resentful about a younger sibling, or they welcome and them and revel in the older sibling role.
And just because I'm 22, it doesn't mean that I don't want to protect my brother from my mistakes, or give him advice, or stop worrying about him. It's been very difficult to accept that he has to take ultimate responsibility for his actions and sometimes there is nothing I can do except be there for him after-the-fact. My aunt still acts the same way toward my mother, who sometimes expresses exasperation at being treated like she doesn't know as much.
This has digressed a LOT.
Back to my points, I have to give credit to William Moseley, honestly, because a lot of why I feel for Peter has to do with seeing the facial expressions he uses at certain moments. He's very young, and very much an older brother, and it shows. When he's facing off with the wolves on the ice, he looks almost sick while he's holding that sword. When he thinks Lucy was lost in the water, and when he *does* kill the wolf, and when Jadis stabs Edmund and when Lucy heals Edmund... and a million other moments, his facial expressions work for me. I feel for him.
Anyway. Peter is how old when he's got this prophecy laid at his feet and he's made High King? Hello. That's a huge thing to put on someone so young. I mean, never mind the logistics of taking over a country that's been under a cruel dictator for 100 years... but he's still got to take care of his brother and sisters, and they're rulers, too, and essentially they are all orphans there.
He's got to be feeling a responsibility to be a parental-figure to them.
And I figure, especially with Lucy, he must wind up in the parental role fairly often. which is where my begging for fic came from. =P
Yeah, Peter's fantastic and "magnificent" and brave and High King and all that, but he's still a very human BOY (especially at the beginning). He's leading an army and fighting in battles and killing, and it's not like that's something anything could have prepared him for in England. (Although, there was WWII and the blitz, and their father away fighting, which does mature one before their time anyway)... And he's ruling a country he's never even known existed, and he's not perfect.
Plus, what kind of title is "the Magnificent?" Holy high expectations, Batman!
It'd be very interesting to look at that side of things, where he's not so perfect or brave or magnificent. Where he's a boy, reacting to all this expectation and responsibility and pressure and suddenly being thrust into this position of High King, and leader of an army and the only parental figure his siblings (Edmund and Lucy, especially) have. (Because I'm sure Susan feels it, too, and might very well resent Peter if she thought he saw it this way.) I see Peter internalizing a lot, and probably having a great deal of insecurity at first, despite any assurances he might get from others, even Aslan. Besides, if he's taking care of everyone else, who's taking care of him?
And I'm so annoyed with this paper and with Narnia and Peter and what the heck. ::growls at herself:: Seriously. If I HAVE to be in a fandom could I at LEAST have a fic idea to think on instead of generic character analysis and whatnot? Or at least some links to really good fic, and I will not have my unhealthy diatribe on incest again. Because it gives me an aneurism.
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I'm okay now. I'll let you read the book.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of that. Peter IS the oldest, and yeah, pressure. I like all the Pevensies.
Have you watched the old BBC Narnia movie? The special effects are, well, special, but it is FANTASTIC. When you have some time after school lets out, I'd recommend renting it. Or I'll mail you my copy to borrow if you can't find it anywhere. It's that good.
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I love them all; they're all very complex in their own ways. But Peter's the one quietly eating my brain. ::sigh::
I haven't! The only version (besides the new one) that I've seen was a horrid cartoon they used to play on TV every Christmas. And I HATED it and now I can't remember it, but THAT MOVIE is mainly why I never read the books in elementary school. Because I loathed that movie.
It's probably not that bad, now that I'm an adult. But. I think the White Witch scared me. Among other things. =P
I will have to check the series out! (I love it. "Special" effects. ::snort::)
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The cartoon = TEH ICK, but the BBC one was awesome. I especially liked this thing they did for Aslan--there was always this growl in his voice, even when he wasn't angry, because, you know, he's not a tame lion. And the puppet they used for it--I know that sounds silly with how awesome he looked in the new version, but it was really cool looking. Ooh, look at this picture of Peter and Aslan. Just adorable.
BUT! I'm serious about the FX. They popped in some hand-drawn animated stuff, and there's lots of puppets and it's definitely made for TV in the late 80s. So don't judge too harshly, please.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who hated that cartoon. I can't even remember it beyond my insane hatred for it. =P Heh. (I love that, btw, that Aslan is not a tame lion.)
And OMG, Peter looks ten there. ::cuddles him and Aslan:: Oh. Cuteness.
You have to love the 80s. Seriously. Snap bracelets, New Kids on the Block, leg warmers, Day-Glo? ;)
If I can handle watching the occasional episodes of Punky Brewster, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and Fraggle Rock without dying from an overdose of sweetness and 80s tv? I can probably trick myself into being in the right mood to completely bypass horrid FX. ;)
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So as much as I like Peter because he is a good kid, and grows into a great king and whatnot... I'm also interested in the more human parts.
I mean, how do you deal with killing (with swords, even, and not the guns and bombs of WWII) when you're that young? Never mind everything else that I won't repeat because I think I already talked about it.
Heh!! :)
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And it's not just him, it's all of those pesky kids. ;) Particularly when they're interacting.
Blargh.
I'm also totally unmotivated to do ANYTHING school related and hmph. =P
I don't want to go to film class, I want to write about Peter. If I had an idea.
Or read about him. ;)
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I am totally begging for fics. All the Narnia fics I've found make me want to gouge my eyes out with rusty sporks. It hurts my soul, I tell you.
Plus, I always love your writing. Always. (And to make you happy, your drabble request is SO not going to be a drabble. Not even trying to fit it in 100 words.)
I understand about the power, trust me. >_< Money sucks.
...Fics for me? ::bounces!::
I love you, btw! I miss you! ::hugs::
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