#digory

[doverstar]

What is your favorite Chronicles of Narnia book and why?

This is so hard. I’ll tell you my top three and then which one is my current favorite, because it is subject to change, sorry!

I love The Magician's Nephew because it's exactly what it should be. It's simple, and it sets up the perfect origin story for the idea of Narnia, other worlds, and what that should look like if you're doing a fantasy story to teach children the truth through allegory. I love the shining gold and yellow rings as transportation devices, I love how easy it is to understand the Wood Between the Worlds and how the rings work, I love that Uncle Andrew has distant familial ties to evil magic, and that's why he even knows about all of this stuff, I love the relationship between Digory and Polly, I love the housemaid (who had never had such a day before) and I love that what Jadis and Andrew meant for evil, Aslan worked out for good, using a grubby arrogant little boy who had no idea what he was dealing with. I love the parallels between Uncle Andrew and Digory, and between Jadis and Polly. And bar none, absolutely bar none, the very best part of the entire book is when Digory is desperately wanting Aslan to help save his mother's life even though he screwed everything up, and he knows he doesn't even deserve to ask, but he wants it so badly, and it's not a bad thing to want, he's so sad about the entire situation and about the hopelessness of it all, and he looks up and sees Aslan crying. Because Aslan knows. He knows better than Digory does. I have to stop reading and cry every time I read that part; never fails.

I love The Silver Chair mainly because of Eustace but also because of the Puddleglum Speech. Eustace and Peter are constantly fighting it out to be my favorite character. I love Peter because of who Peter just naturally is as a character, but I love Eustace because I've been Eustace. (I've been Edmund too, but oh boy, have I been Eustace.) I love the way Jill and Eustace are called into Narnia, and I adore Puddleglum, and I will never forget his speech when the witch is tempting them all. I will never get a tattoo, but if I did, it would say "I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia." I love Jill wrestling with keeping her mind on Aslan's instructions, especially when things get hard, and I love Puddleglum being so dismal and silly the whole book, except when it comes to the really important point in their adventure, when he turns out to be the most faithful of all of them. I love Eustace's obvious change from how he was during his first journey through Narnia, and who he is now. I love Caspian saying you can't be a ghost in your own country, because he's finally home. I love the owls, and when I can't fall asleep at night, I think about Jill's first night in Narnia in that comfy room with the fire.

I love The Last Battle because, out of everything I've ever read about the End Times, this little children's book is the only thing that makes me think and feel the way I know I'm supposed to feel about Jesus' second Advent. I'm supposed to feel the way those final chapters make you feel - when they're all finally in Aslan's Country. I'm supposed to be overjoyed at the idea of going Home and being where I belong, and stand firm even when things get scary. I'm not there yet, but The Last Battle gives me a glimpse of what it would be like to get there, and I want that! [I know it's not all theologically sound - Emeth, specifically, and his whole story is the worst. I know Lewis was thinking about Matthew 25, and I know he had some other verses he believed backed up what he was trying to say with Emeth, but the whole thing, regardless, is way too confusing even if inclusivity were the truth (it's not, from what I glean from Scripture), and it muddies waters that people really don't need further muddied. So a failure in writing, I'd say (while covering my face because what do I even know, really?). But it's helpful because it reminds me that C.S. Lewis was not perfect and he got it wrong sometimes, and made mistakes, and that's a good reminder for me and others - often, everyone treats him like a second Paul, and he wasn't, and I think he'd hate to be compared to him.] I love Eustace being brave and kicking and fighting even up to the end, when he's literally killed in Narnia (I cry every time) and I love Jill turning her head so she won't get her string wet. I love Tirian so much, and I love that we get to see the Pevensies (sans Susan) and Digory and Polly and Fledge and the Beavers and Tumnus and Reepicheep - it's such a joyful, joyful finale, even when it's all scary for a little bit and hope seems lost. It's wonderful, and I'll stand by it as a whole (even though people don't like the "Susan problem" and even though Emeth was a mistake).

But for right now, all of that said, The Silver Chair is my favorite. It's my favorite now because of how it depicts pushing on in faith even when things are hard, even when you stumble and screw up, you get back up and keep trying and when it counts, you'll be able to stand firm because when your strength fails, the Lord's never does. Love it.

Thank you, great question!

[mistyfarm]

Got married in my first RF2 file! My farmer’s enjoying the married life, I started playing as his rapscallion daughter, and i have a lot of headcanons lol. I love this dysfunctional little family

[faithfire-writes]

Digory and Brennus for the character dynamic asks!

@italiangothicwriteblr

OOOOH, thanks for the ask!

So THUS FAR these characters have not met--but might later.

Digory would be rather horrified by Brennus' backstory, though he'd find a lot of similarities to his own, ESPECIALLY after he finds out the truth behind his parents' deaths. A part of him would worry about Brennus' coping mechanisms, but Digory knows that different people react to the same thing in different ways.

Brennus, would, in all honesty, be surprisingly jealous of Digory. Here's Nettie's best friend who is a master at a foreign language and who has a PLACE in the north, a place with no one telling him he should be elsewhere or that he's "destined for better things". A part of him would also be worried about where he now fits into the story if Digory is the brains and Nettie doesn't necessarily NEED a new blacksmith.

[always-a-king-or-queen]

The ache will go away, eventually. 

That was what the Professor told them, the day they got back. When they tumbled from the wardrobe in a heap of tangled limbs, and found that the world had been torn from under their feet with all the kindness of a serpent. 

They picked themselves off of the floorboards with smiles plastered on child faces, and sat with the Professor in his study drinking cup after cup of tea. 

But the smiles were fake. The tea was like ash on their tongues. And when they went to bed that night, none of them could sleep in beds that were too foreign, in bodies that had not been their own for years. Instead they grouped into one room and sat on the floor and whispered, late into the night. 

When morning came, Mrs. Macready discovered the four of them asleep in Peter and Edmund’s bedroom, tangled in a heap of pillows and blankets with their arms looped across one another. They woke a few moments after her entry and seemed confused, lost even, staring around the room with pale faces, eyes raking over each framed painting on the wall and across every bit of furniture as if it was foreign to them. “Come to breakfast,” Mrs. Macready said as she turned to go, but inside she wondered. 

For the children’s faces had held the same sadness that she saw sometimes in the Professor’s. A yearning, a shock, a numbness, as if their very hearts had been ripped from their chests.

At breakfast Lucy sat huddled between her brothers, wrapped in a shawl that was much too big for her as she warmed her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. Edmund fidgeted in his seat and kept reaching up to his hair as if to feel for something that was no longer there. Susan pushed her food idly around on her plate with her fork and hummed a strange melody under her breath. And Peter folded his hands beneath his chin and stared at the wall with eyes that seemed much too old for his face. 

It chilled Mrs. Macready to see their silence, their strangeness, when only yesterday they had been running all over the house, pounding through the halls, shouting and laughing in the bedrooms. It was as if something, something terrible and mysterious and lengthy, had occurred yesterday, but surely that could not be. 

She remarked upon it to the Professor, but he only smiled sadly at her and shook his head. “They’ll be all right,” he said, but she wasn’t so sure. 

They seemed so lost. 

Lucy disappeared into one of the rooms later that day, a room that Mrs. Macready knew was bare save for an old wardrobe of the professor’s. She couldn’t imagine what the child would want to go in there for, but children were strange and perhaps she was just playing some game. When Lucy came out again a few minutes later, sobbing and stumbling back down the hall with her hair askew, Mrs. Macready tried to console her, but Lucy found no comfort in her arms. “It wasn’t there,” she kept saying, inconsolable, and wouldn’t stop crying until her siblings came and gathered her in their arms and said in soothing voices, “Perhaps we’ll go back someday, Lu.” 

Go back where, Mrs. Macready wondered? She stepped into the room Lucy had been in later on in the evening and looked around, but there was nothing but dust and an empty space where coats used to hang in the wardrobe. The children must have taken them recently and forgotten to return them, not that it really mattered. They were so old and musty and the Professor had probably forgotten them long ago. But what could have made the child cry so? Try as she might, Mrs. Macready could find no answer, and she left the room dissatisfied and covered in dust. 

Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan took tea in the Professor’s room again that night, and the next, and the next, and the next. They slept in Peter and Edmund’s room, then Susan and Lucy’s, then Peter and Edmund’s again and so on, swapping every night till Mrs. Macready wondered how they could possibly get any sleep. The floor couldn’t be comfortable, but it was where she found them, morning after morning. 

Each morning they looked sadder than before, and breakfast was silent. Each afternoon Lucy went into the room with the wardrobe, carrying a little lion figurine Edmund had carved her, and came out crying a little while later. And then one day she didn’t, and went wandering in the woods and fields around the Professor’s house instead. She came back with grassy fingers and a scratch on one cheek and a crown of flowers on her head, but she seemed content. Happy, even. Mrs. Macready heard her singing to herself in a language she’d never heard before as Lucy skipped past her in the hall, leaving flower petals on the floor in her wake. Mrs. Macready couldn’t bring herself to tell the child to pick them up, and instead just left them where they were. 

More days and nights went by. One day it was Peter who went into the room with the wardrobe, bringing with him an old cloak of the Professor’s, and he was gone for quite a while. Thirty or forty minutes, Mrs. Macready would guess. When he came out, his shoulders were straighter and his chin lifted higher, but tears were dried upon his cheeks and his eyes were frightening. Noble and fierce, like the eyes of a king. The cloak still hung about his shoulders and made him seem almost like an adult. 

Peter never went into the wardrobe room again, but Susan did, a few weeks later. She took a dried flower crown inside with her and sat in there at least an hour, and when she came out her hair was so elaborately braided that Mrs. Macready wondered where on earth she had learned it. The flower crown was perched atop her head as she went back down the hall, and she walked so gracefully that she seemed to be floating on the air itself. In spite of her red eyes, she smiled, and seemed content to wander the mansion afterwards, reading or sketching or making delicate jewelry out of little pebbles and dried flowers Lucy brought her from the woods. 

More weeks went by. The children still took tea in the Professor’s study on occasion, but not as often as before. Lucy now went on her daily walks outdoors, and sometimes Peter or Susan, or both of them at once, accompanied her. Edmund stayed upstairs for the most part, reading or writing, keeping quiet and looking paler and sadder by the day. 

Finally he, too, went into the wardrobe room. 

He stayed for hours, hours upon hours. He took nothing in save for a wooden sword he had carved from a stick Lucy brought him from outside, and he didn’t come out again. The shadows lengthened across the hall and the sun sank lower in the sky and finally Mrs. Macready made herself speak quietly to Peter as the boy came out of the Professor’s study. “Your brother has been gone for hours,” she told him crisply, but she was privately alarmed, because Peter’s face shifted into panic and he disappeared upstairs without a word. 

Mrs. Macready followed him silently after around thirty minutes and pressed an ear to the door of the wardrobe room. Voices drifted from beyond. Edmund’s and Peter’s, yes, but she could also hear the soft tones of Lucy and Susan. 

“Why did he send us back?” Edmund was saying. It sounded as if he had been crying.  

Mrs. Macready couldn’t catch the answer, but when the siblings trickled out of the room an hour later, Edmund’s wooden sword was missing, and the flower crown Susan had been wearing lately was gone, and Peter no longer had his old cloak, and Lucy wasn’t carrying her lion figurine, and the four of them had clasped hands and sad, but smiling, faces. 

Mrs. Macready slipped into the room once they were gone and opened the wardrobe, and there at the bottom were the sword and the crown and the cloak and the lion. An offering of sorts, almost, or perhaps just items left there for future use, for whenever they next went into the wardrobe room.  

But they never did, and one day they were gone for good, off home, and the mansion was silent again. And it had been a long time since that morning that Mrs. Macready had found them all piled together in one bedroom, but ever since then they hadn’t quite been children, and she wanted to know why.

She climbed the steps again to the floor of the house where the old wardrobe was, and then went into the room and crossed the floor to the opposite wall. 

When she pulled the wardrobe door open, the four items the Pevensie children had left inside of it were missing. 

And just for a moment, it seemed to her that a cool gust of air brushed her face, coming from the darkness beyond where the missing coats used to hang.

[somewhereincairparavel]

You mean to tell me that the pevensie siblings had ruled Narnia for DECADES before they had to come back to their normal lives, taking in the fact that time never passed at all in their world, only for them to do algebra and latin again in school all over again?? I wish the psychological aspect of this was expanded more because wtf? They probably hadn't picked up an algebra/latin textbook in decades so they come back and forget basically anything they've learnt in school?? Would it have slowed down their learning progress? Is that why peter was sent to professor kirke's house specifically for tutoring?? because kirke could understand the impact of moving completely different worlds and adjusting to it knowing that he'd be too old to return, while simultaneously continuing his life like nothing happened?? Or am I just reading into it too much because this still kinda blows my mind lol. Their perception of time would've been really fucked up.

[amalthiaph]

✨DESIGNING CHARACTERS IN NARNIA: The Magician's Nephew✨ (scroll for a breakdown of the design)

Just a little backstory: I got into the Narnia fandom on this day 15 years ago. Thinking about it today, that was just as long as the Golden Age of Narnia, when the Pevensie siblings ruled them.

For this draw series, I will be skipping The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe because it has won an Oscar for Costume and Makeup so there is no way I can top that. I will be moving directly to The Horse and His Boy.

I also started a re-read of all the books for the sole purpose of being able to design the characters of The Horse and His Boy correctly because for the love of me, I cannot remember anything about it, only the part where Rabadash turned into a donkey.

See also: The Magician's Nephew Characters

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

On a scale of Digory and Polly to Rose Tyler, when you go exploring a room full of uncanny waxworks, how relieved are you when an alien being who just finished destroying their own homeworld to end a war grabs your hand and accompanies you into London to cause a commotion?

(Also, for the record, Jelly Babies taste way better than Turkish Delight)

[rainintheevening]

Struck near-breathless by the realization that Digory brought Jadis into Narnia, and I bet he wept at least a little on hearing from the Pevensies what she had done, but then hearing how Aslan made things right must have given him so much joy, and then he would have told his own tale of the birth of Narnia, and his experiences, and I bet he and Edmund in particular had a strong understanding, and developed a really lovely friendship, because of their experiences with Jadis.

[whymusttheworld-95]

As part of the I wanna say like a thousand remaining members of the Narnia fandom, I think we should adopt collective dementia and pretend that the seventh book never happened, the pevensies all found the rings that digory and Polly hid and could visit whenever they wanted, and there were 8 friends of Narnia and one friend of ours (caspian) and they went on adventures on other worlds through the Wood Between the Worlds!! They all lived full lives and Peter got to pursue a career in medicine and Susan believed again, and were happy as they could be!!

[aesthetic--mood]

Polly Plummer Aesthetic

[fairmerthefarmer]

I’ve been thinking about the Magicians Nephew, right now specifically Polly Plummer and in an attempt to get back into doing art outside of work.

I’ve been thinking of what she’d maybe look like in the book and then as she ages (except it turns out I have such a hard time visualizing the passage of time in decades I was not alive in)

most of the references I looked at for clothes was anywhere from 1900-1940s. Maybe some late Victorian in her younger dresses? Not sure. Mostly Edwardian.

I like to think of her definitely going to school, and then becoming a journalist. She’s super sharp and level headed in the Magicians Nephew, and also has an interest in writing.

Also she definitely wore pants.

More rambling stuff under the cut if you’re specifically like me and fixated on Narnia for most of your life

Ok so c.s. Lewis isn’t very well known for his like, accuracy/timelines making sense. (The beavers somehow had potatoes and other vegetables despite it being a 100 year winter).

The magicians nephew takes place in somewhere between 1900-1910, cause that’s his childhood. And then LWW takes place in the 1940s, so like at the oldest Digory and Polly would be in their 50s by then, but also Digory is an old eccentric professor with white hair?

(I could be wrong and maybe that does work timeline wise, and I suppose in different eras, 50s is a lot older. My brain just doesn’t compute that at ALL. At the very least the movie version of the professor DOESNT look like he’s only in his 50s with how they made him look.)

I am also not a clothing expert at all, but it’s cool looking up fashion from different eras. I slightly interpret Polly as having a rich family because her first thought seeing digory is “oh he’s dirty”. I think it’s a thing that richer Edwardian children were usually dressed in light colours which wrapping my head around is tough, cause like, are their play clothes also white?

[mistyfarm]

Doodling my rune factory 2 farmers and making up increasingly elaborate storylines for both files

[to-the-western-wood]

peter, to susan, lying facedown on the bed, regretting everything: and then i called him dad

digory, to polly, on the verge of tears: and then he called me dad

[michaelbluthsdeadwife]

Hey this is really embarrassing to ask...but do you write any yandere requests? If not I totally understand why, but if you do I was just wondering.

Well, well, well… 😈

No but fr i would be open to it!

[snufflesw]

Aslan, where have you buried all your children?

I listened to Harpy Hare by Yaelokre and thought this part of the song would be perfect for an edit with Susan.

Uses scenes from The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lovely Bones, The Greatest Showman and Reign.

Saoirse Ronan as the fancast for Jill Pole. Skylar Dunn as the fancast for Young!Polly Plummer. Ellis Rubin as the fancast for Young!Digory Kirke

[queen-lucy-the-valiant]

In the movie verse of LWW, the wardrobe is covered in carvings of Digory's adventures, including, in the bottom left corner on the front, a picture of Jadis. So, how long do you think it took them to notice it there and ask Digory for the stories. And then, how much time do you think they spent in the wardrobe room listening to his own adventures while looking at the carvings?