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me, 53 pages into midnight sun: will this boy shut up already

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Addams Family Values (1993) dir. Barry Sonnenfeld

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I was sketching n&c then had a random idea for a story moment.

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flower capybara

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TIL that alice oseman and oscar wilde have the same birthday. two iconic queer writers whose books are absolutely fantastic, both born october 16th

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cardan's letters to jude

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Keeping Up with the Cullens - BD Episode 3, pt 1.

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thankfully, meta created threads app bc i don't want to share tumblr

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Same man, same

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The Last Battle (Review)

Oh boy, The Last Battle. This is chronologically the last book in the Narnia series with this taking place in the Narnian year 2555. In it, an old, trickster ape named Shift lives with his "friend" Puzzle a simple-minded donkey at Cauldron Pool.

One day, Shift discovers a lion skin and, being the ever so conniving, forces his bestie to retrieve it. Getting a wicked idea, Shift stitches the skin into a suit and has Puzzle wear it. From there, the ape parades Puzzle as being the Great Lion Aslan who had not been seen for thousands of years. So begins the final battle for Narnia.

First off, I did like the striking visuals of the book. As Narnia is a Christian-based allegory, it draws a lot of its imagery from the Book of Revelation. And much like how trippy the visuals are in Revelation, we have descriptions of Father Time awaking and rising out of the ground to blow his horn signaling the end of Narnia. Creatures breach the ground and devour all the vegetation until it was a barren wasteland. The stars fly down (Wormwood reference?) them being sapient creatures. And then Father Time takes the Sun and crushes it like an orange.

Beasts go to either side of Aslan those that kept their faith go to His country in which Narnia was merely just a reflection of; those that don't lose their ability to speak and disappear under Aslan's shadow their fates unknown. And Tash is such a Lovecraftian abomination in its descriptions, it is described as being made of smoke and wherever it walked, the grass died.

Of course, the final battle is also epic before Aslan decides it was now time to destroy the physical Narnia.

As for my complaints. It's my opinion, of course, but the book was just too bleak for me. Due to it being the literal apocalypse, we have descriptions of dryads dying by the dozens because their trees were being cut down; Narnians who bought into Aslan and Tash being the same are sold into slavery; Shift sells out Narnia to line his invisible pockets.

Not to mention the big one being that the Pevensie children sans Susan and their parents are killed in a train wreck. I'm sorry what?

Them disturbingly being fine with the fact they died is wince-inducing already, but the novel contradicts other novels in that it is actually encouraged that leaving Narnia is a good thing as Aslan himself said in Voyage of the Dawn Treader: the Pevensies' main purpose behind visiting Narnia was that by knowing Aslan a little, they would better know Him in their world as He had another name.

But apparently, they return to Narnia anyway only once they died. Sure I get Aslan's Country is a metaphor for Heaven, but it still feels inconsistent.

We also got a confusing case with Emeth, a Calormene who, despite not serving Aslan, is granted entry into His country with Aslan saying that the good he did in the name of Tash he was really doing to Aslan, bad things done are to Tash and the like. It would be like saying that should someone receive the Mark of the Beast yet were truly convinced that they were fighting on the right side ends up being a part of the new Heaven and Earth when it would appear impossible.

Since C.S. Lewis was a Christian in his thirties, he probably believed in the notion that if there were people who had not heard about the Word prior to their deaths then they would be "saved" or something to that effect. I won't make claims that I know for a fact what he believed but that was one argument I have heard.

I already mentioned my issues with Susan's fate so I won't diverge into my complete thoughts. I do personally think that Lewis was not implying that Susan was prohibited from entering Aslan's Country because she discovered sex, nor was he being a sexist because Lucy and Susan get their fair share of taking part in battles. And the nylons, lipstick, and invitations thing? Again, not Lewis being sexist: in my opinion, what he was trying to say is Susan was putting too much priority in those material things that would not last long that she blinded herself to Narnia.

In short, in her efforts of becoming an adult, Susan instead was proving that she was being the total opposite of an adult: immature and misguided. That, and of course, she didn't end up in Aslan's Country because she's not dead yet because she was not on the train when it wrecked.

While saying this, I feel that where Lewis went wrong was how he dealt with the idea. All we have to go by on why Susan was no longer a friend of Narnia comes from her siblings, Jill, etc. Susan herself never appears in the book so we do not have her side nor her chance to defend herself. Because of that, it comes off as grossly, grossly cruel that Susan was being "punished" for something that is relatively minor. Keep in mind that Aslan himself doesn't have issues with growing up even encouraging it. Even Professor Diggory still believed in Narnia until he was an old man.

But Susan is treated with such little grace that instead of it coming across as intended, it makes Aslan seem to be a cruel and unforgiving god. After all, Susan is left alive on Earth with little financial support because her parents are dead and, as Gaiman himself speculated in his The Problem of Susan short story, she likely would have had to identify the corpses of her slain family. What kind of god would put a young adult in such mental trauma just because she happened to take a liking for lipstick, nylons, and invitations?

The most insulting aspect of it, IMO, is how Susan saw Aslan die and come back to life and always admitted in her heart that she believed that it was real, so why have Susan suddenly make a U-turn like that?

Ultimately, the Last Battle is a good book even despite my personal issues with it and I think it gives the series a satisfying conclusion.

8.3/10

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steve harrington outfit rankings (as voted by my followers) ↴

1. “Denim Vest / Shirtless Steve” Season 4 - 313 votes

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Bella’s Guardian Angel Vampire

Midnight Sun

I would fight, I would keep fighting. Whatever force it was that wanted to hurt Bella would have to go through me. No, she had no guardian angel. But I would do my best to make up for the lack.

A guardian vampire—there was a stretch.

Twilight

And then I knew I was dead. Because, through the heavy water, I heard the sound of an angel calling my name, calling me to the only heaven I wanted.

“Oh no, Bella, no!” the angel’s voice cried in horror.

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The Twilight Saga + every time the titles are mentioned in the book

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e is for eclipse

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His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him—and it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward?

part 1 part 2

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Through all these little things, I was able to add the most important quality to my list, the most revealing of them all, as simple as it was rare. Bella was good. All the other things added up to that whole: Kind and self-effacing and unselfish and brave—she was good through and through. And no one seemed aware of that besides me. (x)