Narnia is Not Tame

 I have watched Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans and I had thoughts about that ending; I was going to revolve this Note around that. But on the off chance that one of the three people who reads these Saturday Notes, y’know, cares, I didn’t want to spoil a movie that was just out. For the record though if you don’t watch the Netflix series, Trollhunters is actually pretty darn good? If you’re into kids’ action series.

Friday was a rough day at work too, so I kind of want to crawl into a hole and hide for the rest of my days. But hopefully my dad and I will get to see The Green Knight this weekend, and hopefully we’ll enjoy it.

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Narnia is Not Tame

I reread The Voyage of the Dawn Treader this week, and that book is weird. But we’ll talk about that in the Book Diary post. Another thought I had while reading though was that very often I see The Chronicles of Narnia talked about as if it’s a cutesy story about a saccharine group of kids having a safe romp through Candyland where nothing bad ever happens. This is perpetuated by blockheads like Lev Grossman--in his book The Magicians (or as I sometimes think of it, “Fantasy Sucks and You Suck for Liking It”), the sequence in his Narnia analogue, Fillory, is filled with the protagonists being astonished at actual bad things happening.

This attitude towards the books reminds me of a complaint I made a few years ago, in which I pointed out that so many times people making their own takes on fairy tales make the claim, or their reviews make the claim that it’s “Like a fairy tale, BUT DARKER!!!” Someone with a passing knowledge of fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs knows that there are versions of the story where good characters get devoured by an angry wolf.

Cue my friend’s admonishment: “But dude, fairy tales ARE dark.”

There are plenty of bad things that happen in the Narnia novels. Sometimes they happen to good people! There is plenty of violence as well! To be sure, these are children’s books, and so most of the worst of it isn’t on-page, but there are plenty of horrible things that happen. Do we forget that Voyage of the Dawn Treader sees our heroes nearly trapped in slavery? That Prince Caspian tells us that Miraz had all his political enemies assassinated, executed, or set up to die? That Peter beheads a Telmarine lord coming at him in the same book? That the monsters that try to summon the White Witch are killed as well? That there are giants eating a talking animal in The Silver Chair (and the heroes had unwittingly already bitten into it, much to their revulsion)? That Jadis killed her entire universe in The Magician’s Nephew? And then in LWW she goes and kills Jesus?!

[Again, not a metaphor for Jesus, actual Jesus. Not an allegory. Stop saying that.]

And the heroic characters are far from perfect people! Edmund is the obvious one, but there are plenty of others. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader the characters grapple with their baser instincts quite a lot. Caspian’s reaction upon finding a pool that turns things into gold is to try to claim it for the crown and make himself the wealthiest man in history. He also tries to abandon his country to go to Aslan’s Country, which every other character calls him out on. In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis has to be point-blank told by Aslan that disregarding someone’s pain isn’t okay even if that someone is lower class than you--something that Shasta is pretty shocked she hasn’t already worked out.

There is plenty of material in front of us to show that this isn’t a fun ride all the way through. There is a lot of struggle, a lot of violence, and a lot of battle. Because we don’t get graphic descriptions of the violence in front of us I think many people think that it isn’t there, but that’s just silly. Somehow, people get the notion that because they are Christian books written for children, they obviously must be dumbed down.

We know that children’s stories, especially old-fashioned children’s stories, are not usually that dumbed down, right? There’s a lovely quote that I think is from a Terry Pratchett book (and I can’t remember which one, for the life of me) about how adults try to make stories appropriate for children by removing the violence and blood, but that it turns out children don’t really mind that violence, as long as it happens to the correct parties. Or a statement by Neil Gaiman talking about Coraline, in that children read it as an adventure and love it, whereas adults find it all terrifying and think that their kids will have nightmares about it all.

The idea that Chronicles of Narnia is a saccharine and cutesy story is one of those ideas that has less to do with text and more to do with assumptions made by those who have either forgotten the source material, or never bothered to get acquainted with it in the first place. If you like graphic descriptions of on-page violence in stories and are disappointed by the lack of it in these novels, that’s a different criticism altogether.

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Why is The Flash afraid of parenthood?

 It’s late on Friday and I haven’t written this yet, but I had this idea of talking about media perceptions of the media, inspired by watching State of Play last weekend. I decided instead to hash out my feelings on The Flash, because that’s something I haven’t written much about. At least I don’t think so.

But! I was thinking of seeing a movie this weekend. Snake Eyes? Raya and the Last Dragon? Who knows.

Also I finished The Goblin Emperor and that’s fantastic.

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Why is The Flash afraid of parenthood?

No worries, I’m not going to go into heavy season finale spoilers. I think. But I don’t know if anyone who reads these (all three of you, tops) even care that much, but I’m not going to say what happens in the finale. 

So with the wrap-up of season seven, there are now two seasons of The Flash in which Barry and Iris meet their speedster offspring from the future, and this season had this whole thing about accidentally creating the personifications of fundamental forces of the universe (it’s weird), and acting like Barry and Iris are their parents because they created them? And how through that they learn to be parents?

Kay, so let me back up a bit. In season five (or rather the end of season four), we’re introduced to Nora, Barry and Iris’s child from the future. She’s a major character all season. And yet we don’t really see Barry and Iris having a conversation about having kids, or trying to have kids, until about a year and half later in season seven. And there’s that storyline with the fundamental forces of the universe which paints them as parents of a group of four adult people. And then the last few episodes of the season has Nora and Bart appear from the future, and--

...does The Flash not want to actually deal with children? Or families raising young children?

And normally I wouldn’t ask this, but there’s another couple of the show, Joe and Cecille, who had a baby a couple of seasons ago, and guys, that baby’s gone. I don’t think we’ve seen her on screen in years. Occasionally, it’s mentioned that the baby’s been put to bed, or is being taken care of by some offscreen character. Right now it might be a pandemic thing, but even before the pandemic the baby hasn’t appeared. I’ll admit that I’m not good with names so maybe this means nothing, but I don’t remember this baby’s name at all.

Arrow didn’t have this problem. Yeah, John Diggle’s kid was retconned from a girl to a boy because Flashpoint (if you didn’t watch The Flash that must have been so confusing and annoying), but the kid was mentioned. A lot. And actually had appearances. Diggle’s family role as a father is an important part of his character arc. He was often screwed by the show’s writing, but so was everyone, and that was still a big part of this character.

Joe and Cecille’s kid is… I think Daisy’s kid has more of a presence in The Great Gatsby.

I wonder if the writers of this show don’t want to deal with young children. And that’s something easy enough to screw up, and people complain about dealing with child actors, I guess, so I kind of understand being hesitant to do those kinds of storylines. It’s much easier in a show heavily featuring time travel to just have the kids appear fully grown, and we don’t have that mess of young children growing up and being a nuisance.

And yeah, sometimes people marry after there are already kids and they’ve grown up. It happens. And those stories can be told and have a place! But that’s not what’s going on here. Barry and Iris are going to have children, they just haven’t yet because… I don’t know, we don’t want to do that? They’re a married couple who want to start a family and they are destined to have kids we just haven’t gotten there yet because the show has been edging around the subject for a while.

They sit and talk about being proud of their children and how they turned out, and they haven’t done any of the raising part! There’s some mentorship, sure, but they didn’t raise these kids. It’s a plot point in season five, that Nora never knew her father, but they’re expecting these characters to slip into parent roles when they haven’t even had the kids they’re talking to yet what the fudge.

Maybe they decided with Black Lightning and Superman & Lois (and Arrow covered some of this too) that the whole idea of raising a family with being a superhero is already covered with their CW shows. But there’s a ton they can do with this! With small children speedsters! With being superhero parents! With being a biracial family!

Right now it just seems that they are really, really scared to have the lead characters actually be parents for children. That’s weird. Why even write this into the story if you’re not going to deal with it? It’s something that you can’t ignore, and the show is trying to do just that anyway. A major character has a toddler and that toddler hasn’t appeared on screen in ages! That’s not normal! If you’re going to explicitly write these characters as raising children, then they should be doing that! This needs to be addressed!

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Black Widow Thoughts

 It’s been a week guys and I am in a weird place, mentally, that is not all that great. I’m behind on a lot of things--the Buffy Blog, movie reviews, shows, the sporking… and I don’t know how soon that will be caught up. And it’s Camp NaNoWriMo which, uh, these days doesn’t generally go great for me.

I had a thought about talking about adaptation, but it sounded like something I’d done for a Saturday Note before, and looking through my Google Drive it looks like I have. So instead I’m going to ramble a bit about whether or not I want to see Black Widow.

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Thoughts on Whether or Not to See Black Widow

I know I’ve probably said before that I am a bit worn out on superhero media in general and Marvel in particular. There are projects I’m planning on paying attention to because they stick out in a way that interests me--Loki, because I like that character, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings because I like kung-fu movies. But at this point I cannot say that something being Marvel is in and of itself enough to attract me to watch something.

In short, I’m having trouble mustering enough emotion to care about Black Widow.

And this is a shame, because Black Widow should have been a movie I would have been really excited about. And I’m probably the 500th person to say this, but I would have been excited for it if it came out in like 2013. This movie should have come out years ago. By a longshot. Scarlett Johansson has been a bankable action movie star, and people were clamoring for more of her in movies, and enough people loved the Marvel Cinematic Universe without question. 

To be clear, enough people love Marvel right now that it still did great, even though the world is the way it is right now. But I can’t get myself to care. And that’s rough. I remember watching Endgame and wondering if I was watching it because  I actually wanted to or because I wanted to be in the same place the rest of pop culture was. I shouldn’t have to feel like I have to watch a movie to be in the same place as everyone else when it comes to pop culture. Any time that someone tells me that I absolutely have to watch this show that everyone else is watching, my first instinct is to tell that person to shove it.

I sort of feel that way about Black Widow. By all the accounts I’ve read and watched, it’s a good movie. But I am not that excited about seeing a movie about Natasha Romanoff, especially since Marvel killed her off in Endgame. I’m a bit less harsh on her death than a lot of critics, but I still recognize it as not a great choice, especially considering that she’s not really given a funeral scene.

I don’t care. And I feel bad that I don’t care. And I feel bad that I feel bad, and that’s stupid because why the fudge should I feel bad about what I do or don’t watch in theaters?

I did say I’m in a weird place right now at the beginning, didn’t I?

Like I said, I’m behind on a lot of things, and there are a bunch of movies I feel like I should go and watch, so adding another to the list feels like I’m adding more pressure to myself. And I don’t need that.

This is probably a very stupid Saturday Note, but I’ve had a rough week and I didn’t know what else to write about.

I am pretty sure that I will go ahead and watch Gunpowder Milkshake.

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Excalibur in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

 I’m going to be busy this weekend, and July is Camp NaNoWriMo, so there was some question if there was going to even BE a Saturday Note this week. But it appears that there is! Albeit maybe a short one. We’ll see.

I have a lot of thoughts about Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and I’m going to be writing more and more about it as I can, but right now in a rush this is a thing that came to me.

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Excalibur in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla takes place during the Viking invasion of England. You play as a Viking. For whatever reason, the game tries to play it as if you’re the good guy in this, and drawing deliberate parallels to the immigrant experience despite, you know, being required by the game to burn and pillage churches in order to build up your settlement. Because why not!

One of the longer side quests you can complete leads you to the “Treasures of Britain,” small caves with puzzles and traps that reward you with a small stone marked with an image of one of the Treasures of Britain. After you collect all the stones, if you go to a certain cave, marked as ‘Myrddin’s Cave’ on the map, you find a massive cavern with a First Civilization site, and some exploring will lead you to find Excalibur in a stone.

[Excalibur in Assassin’s Creed is, of course, a Sword of Eden.]

Put the stones in the right slots, and you can draw Excalibur. “Is this the sword that Britons call Excalibur?” Eivor will say with wonder in his voice. And then you can wield Excalibur, a massive greatsword that can release bursts of light that will stun your enemies.

And that’s… kind of it. It felt really hollow to me.

Excalibur doesn’t mean anything to Eivor. Eivor isn’t English, or Welsh, or any sort of British. It’s not as if we ever see him hear about the stories of King Arthur and show interest in learning more, or acquiring his sword. It’s not that King Arthur gets much mention in the game at all. The sword is there because it takes place in England that the makers thought it would be a fun little bonus. But it doesn’t mean anything.

I remember seeing that in-game, it was revealed that the Assassins left the British Isles at some point in the 5th century. I thought it was going to be a running mystery sidequest that you’d unlock answers to as you investigated the abandoned Assassin Bureaus throughout Britain. That you’d get answers. And this all lined up, roughly with both the fall of the Roman Empire and the time when King Arthur stories were supposed to take place. And according to the novel Assassin’s Creed: Heresy, Arthur was a member of the Templars/Order of the Ancients, the enemies of the Assassins (albeit a very idealistic one). I thought that there would be a reveal that in the wake of the Roman Empire’s collapse and absence from Britain, the Order of Ancients under Arthur would have wiped out the Assassins to the best of their abilities, cementing him in the backstory as an important figure and justifying Excalibur in the game.

Except none of that is there. The Assassins left because they were fighting Roman imperialism but didn’t have good PR, and after the Romans left they had very little reason or motivation to stay. Nobody wanted them around, and they weren’t very popular, so they left.

That’s it.

And so we have Eivor, the man or woman (depending on what the player chooses) who came to this land specifically to conquer and subjugate its people, take one of its most famous legendary treasures for him/herself for the sake of having a cool new weapon, after stumbling onto all of the clues leading up to it. Eivor doesn’t want it, Eivor doesn’t need it, Eivor has only kind of heard of it, but it’s there for player recognition.

To be clear of what happens here: Eivor the colonizer comes in and takes a sacred treasure that holds no personal value to him/her, but because it looked cool takes it up and is now his/her personal artifact.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is full of examples of the writers being completely oblivious to the implications of playing as an invader, saying “Most of our sources were written by their enemies, so mustn’t have been so bad.” The fandom’s mostly pretty clueless about it too, acting like it’s perfectly fine because “Of course it’s from the Vikings’ perspective, obviously they see it differently.” The fact that you’re actively oppressing other people, taking their land and wealth, burning their holy sites--all things that are explicitly shown in-game--is handwaved and barely mentioned by the sympathetic Saxon characters, who are tolerant towards you doing all of this. Very rarely is it even hinted that those are exactly the people collaborating with the colonizing armies.

Excalibur is the example that sticks out to me because I did that part recently, and it baffles me that there’s no story attached to the artifact in-game. It’s just another doodad for players to pick up. It doesn’t mean ANYTHING to our character. It’s just a colonizer who doesn’t care about anyone else’s culture or lifestyle grabbing someone else’s shiny artifact because it looks cool.

I hate that.

American Fantasy

 Camp NaNoWriMo has begun! And I’m probably screwing it up quite terribly. But there we are.

I have started the next Wheel of Time book. So far it’s going okay. The prologue actually felt like it was moving Plot forward, instead of setting up more stuff. This was the last book Robert Jordan wrote before he died, so I think he got the hint that he should get a move on with things.

Started up Horizon Zero Dawn again. I will probably come back to Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla for an expansion or two, but right now I think I should step away and try to replay one of the greats again.

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American Fantasy--Where Is It?

I did lists for Celtic, Greek, and Roman fantasies, and about what I would expect in those. But because the 4th of July is coming up, and also I read this blog post, I was thinking about the fact that while there are plenty of American authors writing fantasy, there isn’t that much fantasy that’s overtly influenced by American history.

This is a bit weird and simultaneously not.

See, even though fantasy can technically be anything because it’s fantasy, there are some expectations about fantasy, and they tend to fall into certain trends. And so that leans towards stories and settings based off of medieval European societies. And even though we have seen plenty of fantasy stories branch out from that to historical periods of Africa or Asia, I still don’t see that many fantasy settings that have much American influence.

There are exceptions--but they’re rare. I know Soldier Son trilogy by Robin Hobb draws on American expansion and colonialism, especially in the west, though the government structure is a monarchy. Children of Blood and Bone is set in a fantasy analogue for historical Nigeria, but the author explicitly admitted that a large part of the setting’s conflict is based on law enforcement killing black Americans. And the republic of Republic City in Legend of Korra ends up becoming something closer to an American republic by electing a president.

[For a kind of ‘barely there at all’ example, Paolini was inspired for his setting by living in the mountains in Montana.]

Still, there are a lot of separate elements but not really one that you look at it and say, “That’s based off of a part of American history!” Soldier Son comes the closest, because it very clearly has American army and Native American parallels, but the laws of inheritance that drive a large chunk of Plot and give the series its title don’t connect to American ideas of class that well.

To be clear, that doesn’t make any of the above-mentioned works bad (though Soldier Son wasn’t very good, in my opinion), but it does mean that we don’t really have any fantasy worlds (that I can think of) that contain really good fantasy counterparts to American history. And that’s a bit weird, considering how many fantasy authors and readers are in the United States. No, we don’t have a medieval past, but we don’t need one.

I want to be clear that there is plenty of urban fantasy set in the United States. But high fantasy is what I’m talking about here, where the entire world in question is fictional, rather than fantasy elements in the “real” world. There are also plenty of science-fiction stories that feature more influences of American history and culture--in part because I think that it’s a genre more obviously known for social commentary, and people talking about American history, because it’s more recent, tend to make some commentary about the country, its values, and its politics.

There’s no reason that governments in high fantasy worlds can’t be republics. They don’t have to be monarchies! Republics existed before the Enlightenment! And you would think, with talk about using fiction to talk about current events being a very popular notion, there are a lot of things you can do in fantasy worlds to talk about racism, class struggle, immigration, colonialism being painted as not-colonialism, and all kinds of other things that affect Americans today.

I want to see fantasy with republics. I want to see fantasy based off colonial America, and the Wild West, and gangster Chicago, and Southern Gothic stories, and weird cryptid stories, and Applachia, and Spanish California, and any and all of Florida. It doesn’t have to be the same as the historical periods with the names switched out or anything, but I think those are great inspirations for settings and no one’s really doing anything with them. And I think using the structure of the US government, or something like it, would be an interesting addition to a fantasy setting.

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