Title: Once a King or Queen in Narnia
Author: Zana
Fandoms: The Chronicles of Narnia and
The ProfessionalsFor those who aren't familiar with it:
The Professionals is a British show from the 1970s. Bodie and Doyle are counterterror agents in CI5, which is headed up by George Cowley. Susan and Jax are minor characters.
Spoilers: For
The Last Battle (Narnia) and
The Purging of CI5 (Pros)
Beta: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msmoat and Britted by
elizabethoshea, beta-reader extraordinaire! Any errors that remain are my fault, not hers.
The origins of this story: All the way back in August (I write
slow), I was thinking about how much the ending of
The Last Battle pissed me off. Even back when I first read it, I knew there was something wrong. The book as a whole bothered me, but the idea that 1) Lucy, Peter, and Edmund dying
was a good thing because it meant they got to go to heaven and 2) Susan
didn't get to go to heaven because she was interested in boys and makeup... Sorry, C.S. Lewis, but you fail. On multiple levels: I've been rereading the books since writing the first draft of this fic, and OMG how did I completely miss the blatant sexism and racism in these books?*
When I was eleven, I wanted to write a story about Susan. In fact, I wrote a few pages of a story for her. I had never even
heard of fanfiction, but at age eleven I had that instinct -- brilliantly summed up in an icon by
ms_semicologne:
-- to fix what the author clearly had messed up. At the time, I didn't blame Lewis; I just didn't think the story was complete. This time, I was thinking about Susan, and how I
do blame Lewis now, and how the whole of
The Last Battle pissed me off once I realized it was all Bible stories in disguise, and this was the wtf of Revelations, and then I had that wonderful thought:
I can *fix* this.Cross-over with The Professionals: I love minor characters. I love
The Professionals. I have definite issues with the morality of CI5--the heroes are the
secret police--but I love the show. The show has race and gender issues as well. This is why we have fanfiction.
Susan Fisher rocks. Susan Pevensie would have rocked if C.S. Lewis hadn't had a stick up his butt about women.
More story notes: Please don't think that the conclusions that Susan comes to are necessarily conclusions that I share. A few are; most are not. I know most people will think that my character is a mouthpiece for me, but that's not what interests me about writing. I like to have a character figure out their world and their morality from
their perspective and experiences. I am not a CI5 agent nor am I a former Queen of Narnia: my own morality in her world would not make sense.
tears_of_nienna posted her Pros/Narnia x-over right after I'd finished my first draft of this. We'd both come up with the idea of doing a crossover totally independently. Isn't it weird how the world does that sometimes!
I realize the timeline doesn't work exactly. I enjoyed writing the story immensely anyway.
Feedback: Yes!
This is my first (real) fanfic.** I want concrit (really!!), the more honest the better. It's in your own interest to let me know how to make my writing better, as I plan to inflict more upon you all in the future!
*Unfortunately, I can't write the series off because in spite of their legion faults, I
could not put the books down. The underlying story is still that good, even as I'm cringing at the gender crap and "the (white) Narnians are Free and Good and the (dark) Calormenes are Evil and Treacherous."
**Hence the ridiculously long author's notes. I did a few LotR drabbles a million years ago, but they don't count.
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