Narnian dreams

[edenfalling]

I had the weirdest dream last night.

I think it's because of my NFE signup, in which I said, among other things, that I would prefer not to write any Pevensie/Caspian ships (because none of them make any sense to me) and also requested a story about Polly and Digory post-MN, and somehow this all got tangled up with the Problem of Susan and turned into a massive THING where Polly and Digory accidentally left one of their Ring sets in Narnia and Disney!Caspian found them and used them to travel secretly to England where he got involved with the Malfoys (??? idk, what even) and kept kidnapping Susan into creepy stalker pseudo-romantic dinners at expensive exotic hotels and then getting Lucius Malfoy to Obliviate her so she couldn't tell her family what was going on, but while she didn't consciously remember anything she SUBCONSCIOUSLY began to associate Narnia with el creepo stalker probably-gonna-rape-her-eventually!Caspian and THAT'S why she turned away.

I don't know how the hell this fit into the timeline, since it would have to happen simultaneously before and after SC, nor do I know how it would have resolved because my alarm went off and I woke up just as Caspian was climbing the steps of a really blinged-out glass pyramid to consult with some ~mysterious evil power~ about Susan's continued resistance to his ~charms~ and what to do about the growing restlessness among his people who were kind of pissed off at the way he kept raising taxes to pay for those expensive hotels and stuff.

*hands*

My brain, gentle readers. It is a strange place.

Comments

[heliopausa]

Well, I'm very impressed! This sounds like one wild NFE coming up. :)

[edenfalling]

Ha! :D More seriously, the dream bears no relation whatsoever to my NFE requests; they just happened to be among the raw material my brain used to generate nonsense with a vague pretense of narrative, which it does with great verve every single night.

For instance, on Thursday night, I dreamed -- among other things -- that I was exploring a sort of haunted house that was part of a national battlefield park area, trying to find and save Dr. Cho from Age of Ultron who'd been kidnapped by the bogeyman. When that failed, I had to take up her incomplete quest, following instructions which she shouted through a locked door. This involved going outside and disguising myself as Napoleon to help usher a bunch of talking grizzly bears through a troop of heavily armed battle reenactors to take shelter behind the hill on which the haunted house sat. At one point this involved creating a 'barracks' by painting white lines on the grass and then believing very hard that this somehow demarcated a building -- the resulting illusion apparently worked just fine on humans, but missed the bears entirely so I had to keep herding them back inside the lines so the reenactors wouldn't see, like, half a bear sticking out of an apparently solid wall.

Later on, I had a completely unrelated dream about my dad running my parents' minivan off a winter highway into a ditch while he, my mother, and I were trying to reach an airport in order to catch a plane to a concert. (Logistically, this makes no sense. Especially since we'd been on an overpass until that moment, so there shouldn't even have BEEN a ditch to drive into.) And after THAT, I had a dream about trying to bake muffins with weird space-safe gluten-free batter that was sort of a virulent yellow goo, while riding in a schoolbus that somehow had a kitchen in the back, and arguing over vaccination policies with my fellow field trip chaperones.

In summary, dreams are WEIRD.

[transposable_element]

*blinks*

Okay, that is indeed very weird! I'm impressed and a bit envious because my dreams never have much detail or narrative structure, and I rarely remember them. Maybe you can use bits of the plot somewhere. I love the part about the taxes.

FWIW, I don't get those pairings, either. I have worked out the sequence of events and some of the dialogue for a satiric story about poor, bewildered Caspian getting seduced (or jumped) by Pevensie after Pevensie, but I don't know if I'll ever write it. If I do I wouldn't post it because it would be too mean.

[edenfalling]

I've always tended to have relatively narrative-oriented dreams. The ability to remember them is partly a matter of practice -- I liked to tell my parents about my dreams when I was a kid, and for a couple years in the early 2000s I kept a sort of dream-diary -- and partly a matter of being a semi-lucid dreamer. By which I mean that while I can only rarely control my dreams, I'm almost always aware that they are dreams, and can therefore set a little corner of my brain into recording mode if the dream seems interesting enough to be worth saving. :-)

I am not in principle opposed to Pevensie/Caspian pairings (though I strongly disliked the execution of Susan/Caspian in Disney's version of PC), and I'd be willing to try writing them for a pinch-hit, but I just don't feel them at all. I can buy Caspian-Edmund and Caspian-Lucy friendships because they actually spend time together during VDT, but... Hmm. You know, I think this is because of the way I interpret the Pevensies' return to childhood at the end of LWW. I really do think they became children again, in mind and heart as well as in body. And they remain children -- whose memories of adulthood are filtered through children's minds and emotions -- during all their interactions with Caspian, and so I just don't see those relationships through a shipping lens. But if you think of the Pevensies as adults who only LOOK like children, and interpret Caspian toward the high end of his possible age range, I can see how shipping would become attractive. I just... can't make that mental leap. *shrug*

For what it's worth, I'd read that story. Narnia fandom can get a little too self-serious, I think, and light-hearted comedy is always welcome. :-)

[branchandroot]

*exceedingly entertained* And even dreaming, even bringing in Malfoys, that's /still/ far more logical than canon. *hearts*

[edenfalling]

We aim to please. :-)

[autumnia]

Does this mean Caspian would have been sorted into Slytherin had he gone to Hogwarts? :-0

[edenfalling]

I... you know... hmm. *ponders*

Well, Caspian's certainly not a Ravenclaw, and he doesn't strike me as particularly Hufflepuff either. I'd probably put book!Caspian in Gryffindor. He has physical courage and a penchant for rash plans; his only real ambitions seem to be A) to be a good king and B) to win glory, which are quite Gryffindor; and his failings -- his temper and sense of entitlement -- are fairly Gryffindor as well. On the other hand, if we go by what Slytherin house is de facto (old nobility) rather than by its supposed defining trait (ambition), then he might well end up in Slytherin unless he specifically requested to go elsewhere, and that would probably bring out his less attractive side instead of his better potential. Film!Caspian also has that beautifully Slytherin "let's you and him fight" moment when he suggests that Peter duel Miraz, whereas in the book that's Peter's own idea, and since the version in my dream was film!Caspian... yeah, Slytherin.

(Tangentially, Dr. Cornelius is a Slytherin to the bone and I love him for it. *grin*)

[autumnia]

I like and agree with your reasoning here (it's just so interesting how book and film Caspian would belong in opposite Houses) and this is nearly worthy of a fic!

[marmota_b]

I have no coherent thoughts on this other than a laugh. Dreams can be weird, but also weirdly amusing in retrospect!

[edenfalling]

It was a pretty ridiculous scenario, that's for sure! :-)

[rosaxx50.livejournal.com]

I started off laughing as I read this and then it eventually turned horrifying.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, it started sort of as a "well, that's somewhat plausible if frankly ridiculous" and then took a turn into "what the hell, brain?" My dreams tend to zigzag wildly in tone, which I guess is because when I'm asleep I have no sense of thematic coherence.