As Soon As I Get A Grave, The First Thing I’m Gonna Do Is Start Rolling In It.

When someone’s accent changes according to their mood

Forget pet peeves, what is one of your little loves?

I love in the summer when people drive with the windows down, and the music up, and they sing along really enthusiastically.

Radium Girl

“Some people read with their feet,” is a quote that’s been relevant since the day I heard it (and before that, to be so honest), and something else that’s rattling around in my brain is some post (I’ve got no hope of finding the original as I can’t even recall what website I saw it on) saying something along the lines of “it tracks that the Pevensies are British and that the moment they found themselves in an unfamiliar place they declared themselves its royal family.”

If you want to talk about colonialism, talk about colonialism, but it does frustrate me to see a point missed so thoroughly. I hate to see it missed and I love this particular aspect of the series, so I’m going to take a moment to talk about it.

The Pevensies did not declare themselves royalty. Becoming kings and queens was not their idea. This was an expectation that the people of Narnia had for them, and when the kids were informed of this expectation, they found it daunting, to say the least.

This theme recurs almost beat-for-beat with Caspian, who is very openly unsure of himself and his ability to rule Narnia. It evolves with Eustace, who begins his arc unable to even consider the possibility of himself doing something important for Narnia or vice versa. It returns with Jill, who gets angry at being saddled with a mission that feels altogether too big for her.

The premise that keeps coming up throughout the series is this concept of worthiness and capability. The takeaway is not that some people are made superior or that people can make themselves superior. The takeaway is that you will feel inferior. In fact, if you feel superior, you are probably delusional: a danger to yourself and others. You will feel inferior, but that is neither a sentence to accomplish only little in life, nor an excuse for only accomplishing little in life. You will be afraid and insecure and uncertain and embarrassed, but you can and must do great things nonetheless. We are, all of us, made for greatness.

There’s a time and a place for overthinking fiction, and if the time and place is here and now:

Do you find it endearing if the love interest is stupid or are you just afraid of other people’s free will?

*slaps roof of uncanny valley*

This bad boy can fit so many of my drawings in it!

So, what’s The Scene for you, the one that just has to make it into the movie? For me, it’s hands-down the mute “Buddy?”

Need to have my heart shattered a second time by seeing Haymitch’s reaction to Ampert’s death on screen.

Because he knew almost as soon as he met Ampert that the kid had no chance. Ampert’s reaping was an execution order, even more than anyone else’s. From a purely practical perspective, Haymitch should have been closed-off toward him, should have resigned himself to Ampert’s inevitable death at the hands of the unstoppable Capitol and just looked out for himself. After all, Snow offered Haymitch a deal if only Haymitch would lay low and let the Capitol do as it pleased.

Instead, Haymitch promised to fight for Ampert, to protect him, to keep his death from being whatever torture Snow had in mind for him. He promised to do whatever could be done. Why? Not because it was easy (it obviously wouldn’t be) and not because it was even possible (how could it have been), but because it was right. Because Ampert was a kid caught up in other people’s problems and he didn’t deserve any of it. Anyone who could have stepped in was obligated to, even if it didn’t do any good. There was no saving him, but there was no justifiable option but to try anyway.

Haymitch was all-in with this impossible task. He understood the doomed necessity of protecting the kid marked for death, not because he could succeed but because he couldn’t not try. That’s why he fought for him even as he realized the mutts were only there for Ampert, that this was the brutal execution Snow had planned to make an example out of an innocent kid. That’s why he tried to save someone who couldn’t be saved. That’s why he tried to call out to bones that couldn’t hear.

Currently color-coding my subplots and fellas. I fear I need the shrimp colors now.