the deep moans round with many voices

I would like to preface this by apologizing for A) writing in second person, B) inflicting this much hideously angsty melodrama upon the world, C) probably not even making any sense in terms of character development, D) creating this kind of horrible melodramatic angst, E) using pretentious section titles, and F) making you read abominable angst and melodrama. Also, I don't think I made any sense whatsoever when trying to talk about gender roles, so I'm sorry for that too.

But I am so sick of this story by now, and it finally has some sort of ending, so I officially give up. If you have any editing advice whatsoever, I will... well. I will owe you a giant favor, okay? Exact payment methods are negotiable.

That said, here is a fic. (The title, of course, is from the nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.")

Mary Pevensie and her family: a character study in three parts. (2,225 words)

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( How Does Your Garden Grow? )

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...I really kind of hate this fic, but I don't know how to fix it. Please help?

Here is another Narnia genderswap character study, this one of Laurie Pevensie. He's been the hardest of the siblings for me to get hold of, probably because he's the closest to his canon counterpart. So far the only overt differences seem to be a greater penchant for categorizing things -- he makes lists and analogies and has a thing about spatial arrangements -- and an increased perceptiveness toward his family. But the latter is, I think, just a product of growing up in a different and tenser family situation; Lucy would probably be equally sensitive if she'd had a similarly troubled family, and if the tension had been going on for years instead of just one.

I expect the differences will grow as Laurie gets older, but even so, it surprises me how little change switching Lucy's gender seems to make.

Anyway. Laurie Pevensie's world always makes sense, even if his siblings don't see what he does. (550 words)

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( Anchor Points )

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No prizes for guessing who the sun is. *wry*

In Narnia, Laurie continues his categorization habits and extends them to seasons as well. Starting from the Narnians' association of Edith with winter (because of her ties to Jadis), Laurie determines that Mary is summer, Stephen is autumn, and he himself is spring. Interestingly, while east and spring correspond well, as do west and autumn, north and summer and south and winter are normally opposite symbolic associations (at least in the northern hemisphere, which England is part of and which Narnia approximates). Laurie doesn't see any contradiction; he just thinks his sisters are complicated. :-D

I think once I get the Mary character study done, and maybe a snippet about the Christmas gifts, I will post these on ff.net as a sort of ficlet collection, to be added to randomly when the mood strikes me. But I want the Mary-POV piece done first.

More Narnia genderswap! This is set the year before the Pevensies go to Narnia the first time, as should be obvious from the title. (Apparently Lewis wrote a semi-official timeline at some point, claiming that Peter was born in 1927, Susan in 1928, Edmund in 1930, and Lucy in 1932, which means that here Mary is twelve, Stephen eleven, Edith nine, and Laurie seven.) Stephen POV, because family dynamics are fun and unreliable narrators are even better -- as you can see, comparing this story to Fester Like a Sore, Stephen and Edith interpret the same basic situation somewhat differently.

I wrote this longhand at work tonight -- it was a very slow evening! -- then typed it up when I got home, doing a quick edit as I went. (1,250 words)

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( Summer of '39 )

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Stephen isn't a mother figure like Susan, but he's still a peacemaker of sorts. He does this mostly by not saying things, which is not always helpful in the long run, but it does keep him on speaking terms with everyone, and means he doesn't spark fights... except occasionally with Edith, who wants him to pick a side (preferably hers) and stay there, and doesn't always manage to bite her tongue and play "good daughter" when she's really angry.

I think Stephen and Mary are somewhat closer than Susan and Peter, because Stephen looks to Mary as an example in a way that Susan never looked to Peter. This also means that Stephen doesn't look after Laurie the way Susan sometimes looked after Lucy; that's Edith's job, which she alternately embraces and resents.

...

I still need a name for this, and I cannot think of a good one. *sulks*

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I dream of a Narnian genderswap retelling of LWW, wherein the four Pevensie siblings are Mary, Stephen, Edith, and Laurence rather than Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy -- which would obviously change the intra-familial relationship dynamics a lot, and would then throw monkey wrenches into Lewis's rather gender-essentialist plot devices.

I am still not writing the alternate version of LWW. But. I am doing some background world-building and character exploration, of which this is one piece. In this world, Mary is struggling with issues Peter never had to face, and her troubles have the knock-on effect of making Edith's pre-Narnia family role very different from Edmund's, though she's equally unhappy in it.

So. 575 words on Edith, Mary, and their mother. The title is from Langston Hughes's poem "A Dream Deferred."

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( Fester Like a Sore )

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As you can see, Edith is like Edmund in some respects -- the practical bent that shows up in Edmund's interest in roads and railway schedules, the sort of push-pull pre-Narnia relationship with Peter (or Mary), a feeling of being unappreciated by family -- but she's channeled those similarities in rather different directions. Edmund is superficially the one pulling his family apart. Edith is superficially the one holding hers together.

Incidentally, Edith ends up much more associated with Jadis than Edmund did. Because she's female, she's seen as a potential apprentice and heir to the Witch. And to some degree that's fair, because Edith takes Jadis as a role model -- not in morality, obviously, but in the sense that she's finally found an example of a woman who unapologetically wields power without compromising her sense of self or renouncing outward trappings of femininity like dresses and jewelry. Mrs. Pevensie doesn't overtly wield power, and before Narnia, Mary is alternately trying to deny her true self and be a sort of wind-up caricature of what she thinks a "proper" girl is like, or running away, acting out, and trying to deny that she is a girl.

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Master List of Elizabeth Culmer's Fanfiction: Chronicles of Narnia
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Organization: This list is organized by associated narrative cycles; within each section, stories are arranged first by timeline (if applicable) and then by writing date. Word counts and writing dates are approximations.

Content/Warning Policy: 1) I am not consistent about warnings! I use them when I remember, for a few relatively broad categories of potentially problematic content, but if something is off-page, non-explicit, or generally backgrounded, I probably won't think to note it in the metadata. 2) The things I try to warn for are explicit sex, rape, murder, torture, cannibalism, incest, depression/suicide, familial dysfunction, and occasionally also societal dysfunction (aka dystopia). Sometimes I just slap a general content warning on all my fic for a given fandom and don't label each individual fic. I also don't generally warn for violence, unless the violence in a fic is dramatically out-of-step with the violence in its source canon. 3) I don't use any content rating system unless I'm posting to a site or community that requires or encourages ratings, because I find movie-style ratings counter-intuitive when applied to written fiction, and not particularly useful for anything other than denoting the presence of explicit sex, which I already note in the metadata.

Quality Rating System: I've marked my favorite stories with asterisks, on a scale of 1 to 4. The more asterisks, the more I like the story. This doesn't necessarily mean that stories without asterisks are bad, just that I don't like them as much. Also, I am not claiming to be an arbiter of taste; you may love stories I dislike, and vice versa. I am just providing a heads-up about the ones that I think are best written and/or most interesting.

Notes: I tried not to fall into this fandom. I really, really tried. But I reread all seven books and there's so much to love! There are also several lifetimes' worth of loose ends to tie up, empty spaces to fill, backstory to create, and theological ideas to dig out, explain, and either affirm or denounce with extreme prejudice. I have a terrible feeling I may be writing here for a while.

All stories are book canon only unless specifically noted. This is because I never consider filmizations canon. They're just somebody else's vaguely AU retelling of the true story. Please also note that while I am not Christian, I do consider Lewis's theology an integral -- albeit infuriating and inconsistent -- part of his world-building, so most of these stories will have religious and/or philosophical elements to some degree. I am trying to work out my issues as I go. *grin*

Where To Read: As always, if an AO3 version exists, it is definitive. FF.net versions are definitive in the absence of an AO3 version. Journal versions are the equivalent of beta drafts, though the shorter and/or fragmentary works may never be posted anywhere else.

Quick navigation links, because this page has grown long: Lost Chronicles of Narnia overview, Lost Chronicles - MN era, Lost Chronicles - LWW/HHB era, Lost Chronicles - PC/VDT era, Lost Chronicles - TLB and general worldbuilding, The 'Problem' of Susan, As the Morning and the Night, And All Around Is the Desert, miscellaneous other Narnia fics, Narnia meta.

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( The Lost Chronicles of Narnia )

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( Lost Chronicles - The Magician's Nephew era )

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( Lost Chronicles - LWW/HHB era )

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( Lost Chronicles - PC/VDT era )

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( Lost Chronicles - TLB era and general worldbuilding )

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( The 'Problem' of Susan )

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( As the Morning and the Night - genderswap AU )

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( And All Around Is the Desert )

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( Everything Else )

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( Meta )

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