The Problem of Susan

As I have stated before, one of my favorite stories is growing up was Harry Potter. However, because I was growing up as the story was being written there were often long gaps of months to years between one book and the next. As a result I found myself journeying into other completed works, one of which being The Chronicles of Narnia.

Unlike many little girls, I identified myself with Susan more than with Lucy and was both disappointed and dissatisfied when she did not join her sister, brothers, cousin, and every other traveler in The Last Battle. While everyone who had ever been to Narnia journeyed “further up and further in” Susan was left behind to deal with broken bodies at a train station, alone.

The Problem of Susan is a topic that has been debated ever since The Last Battle was written in 1956, but it is a debate that has become more popular with the publication of The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman in 2004. I won’t link it as the short story is slightly graphic, look it up if you like.

What must be remembered is that the Chronicles of Narnia is an allegory for Christianity. At the end of voyage of the Dawn treader, Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund that they must find him under a different name in their own world. It is possible that Peter and Susan also were given this message in Prince Caspian, but all the reader is told is that the two eldest Pevensie’s are “to old for Narnia”. To me, Aslan’s message implies that the siblings are supposed to grow up and bring the lessons learned in Narnia to Earth. However, by the end of The Last Battle there is no evidence shown that any of the siblings or any of the other travelers ever found Aslan on earth. Most of he “friends of Narnia” seem so busy talking about Narnia and wanting to go back there, they don’t bother looking here. The only one to follow this and move on is Susan.

Later in life, C.S.Lewis wrote that: “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end . . . in her own way.” My question is why should she have to? Why must Susan ask forgiveness for he crime of growing up?

I like to imagine that Susan had a long for filling life. That she helped to rebuild Britain after the second world war, that she took the lessons learned as the queen gentle into her fancy parties with nylons and lipsticks, and that even if she didn’t want to talk every day about what was lost it didn’t mean she forgot it. Only that she kept going forward instead of looking back.

Cross Cultural Confusion: Western Fandom and Girls Love

When I was growing up, anime seemed much more progressive then the television shows that originated in America or Europe. Don't get me wrong, shows like W.I.T.C.H., Gargoyles, Code:Lyoko, TMNT, and Winx Club were fun. However as I got older, all of these shows presented a very familiar format of male/female protagonist goes on adventures and over the course of episodes or seasons, falls in love with female/male characters. Possibly with a love triangle to “make things interesting”. As a result, the seemingly queer relationships among anime characters opened up a new world for me. Relationships between characters of the same gender were well represented, but most importantly to me, among school girls.

However once I got older, and learned more about Japan then just anime, I realized that the relationships that had helped me understand myself were less cultural progress, and more cultural misunderstanding. The animes that I had identified with was a specific subset of the Girls Love gene, or Yuri based on real cultural expectations. In Japan, a "romantic friendship” between school girls is considered a normal part of growing up. This allows Japanese girls to have practice relationships while remaining pure for their eventual husbands, and it is always meant to be temporary.

If these romantic friendships continue past school age, women considered immature. In the western world, this type of relationship is closer to the LGBT terms LUG (Lesbian until graduation) or bi-curious. Even then though, that is still a bit wrong. A “romantic friendship” deals with the emotional connection of a relationship, but not the sexual part.

This specific subset of girls love is called “Seinen Yuri” and in Japan it is actually marketed to men, men watch the friendship and fantasize about the girl(s) deep friendship, them growing up and eventually marrying them. However, cultural differences meant that for me growing up, I loved these animes. I would join other western fans of these shows in forums and blogs and speculate about the relationships, without truly understanding that my perspective wasn't the original intent.

I suppose that the. If question is this: does the fact that the animes I watched growing up which helped me develop who I am and accept that being LGBT+ was okay, are actually not that devalue the lessons I learned? You decide.

A Conspicuous Christmas

It’s not quite thanksgiving yet, but already advertisers are preparing for the holiday season. On every channel , viewers are being told that the key to their collective happiness lies in the very latest clothing, shoes, phones, makeup, jewelry and more in preparation for the December holiday season. Be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or whatever you are celebrating, the stresses of the season can culminate in one simple question. Is my gift for (insert name here) good enough?

Source

Knowing what to buy assorted family and friends is always a bit of a mess. Not only is it necessary to coordinate with other people in the friend circle to ensure no one gets the same thing, gift givers also have to navigate an innumerable amount of advertisements shouting out that THIS product is the seasons perfect gift. My family each have their own stratifies for Christmas, with varying success.

For grandma, her tried and true method is a gift box with a rolled up check inside. The boxes are each labeled with our names and have been reused for at least the past 6 years. Personally I love my grandmas method, it lets the recipient choose their own gift so there is no worrying about if they will like it, or if someone else has steady bought it for them. In my family though? Grandma is the only one who can get away with that. Everyone else has to give an actual gift.

Me and my mom? We ask. I know what I want for Christmas and so does she. Does it take the mystery out of gift giving, or the charm of it? Possibly, but now that I would rather get something that I know I would actually want and will use over something that someone else thinks that I need.

My aunts love to play the guessing game. They want to give a present that they picked out, and while they may ask other relatives for help, me for Mom Dad for my brother and so on, my hey would never ask the recipient what they specifically want. It is a nice idea L, but it can also end up backfiring, like the year I got two full makeup kits that i never used because “that’s what you get a 17 year old girl”. My aunts relied on the advertising around them to say what they should get me. A section of shirts with the tags still on, a carrying case of barely touched makeup, and a box of too big designer purses are the results. I won’t deny that the gifts are nice, but they aren’t me.

As the holidays approach my suggestion is this, no matter how much you love the look of surprise that the perfect gift brings, be mindful that what you think is perfect may not be what they think is the same. When in doubt, it is better to ‘ruin’ the surprise then let your almost thoughtful gift gather dust. If all else fails, listen to grandma, everyone loves cash.

Play like a girl

Growing up, I wasn’t the most active of children. I much preferred reading inside the lunch room to playing kickball on the playground at recess. However, I did have friends who were much more active  on the field than I was and I enjoyed other activities outside of the grounds of my schools athletic arena. I loved things like swimming, kneeboarding, innertubing, skiing on both water and snow, and rock climbing.  Lots of things that I thought were fun, that I could do at my own pace, but weren’t necessarily the best for demonstrating athleticism inside of the boundaries of schools PE class.  I didn’t see the point of running around a quarter-mile track for times just to prove that I could, so whenever we had to do the fitness test, I wasn’t necessarily the best at it. As a result to most of my classmates, and to my PE teacher, everything that I did it in that gymnasium I did ‘like a girl’.

 Like a girl is the phrase that I never really thought about  until I was older. Growing up it just kind of meant that I could do the best I wanted to in sports, but my brother would probably be better at it than me. To me it didn’t seem like something bad. It just meant that I didn’t like team sports, my brother did, and that was OK because I was a girl and it didn’t matter if I was good at sports.  It was only after I got into high school and my brother put together a band, that I realized what those words really meant. I was always more musical, my brother was always more athletic. When he seemed to infringe on to my space, it seems logical that I should try to take  some of his. So I tried out for the basketball team, and failed miserably. 

 It wasn’t my failure that bothered me though, it was the reaction I got from my family. They could’ve said that I could try again next year, or that they would work with me to help me build up the endurance I needed to be on the team. Instead, they told me it was fine That I didn’t make the team and I play like a girl anyway so it didn’t really matter. For the first time that I can remember those words hurt me. Not even because I really wanted to be on the basketball team, but because even the thought that I would want to even try seemed ludicrous to the closest members of my family.

 My tryout for the basketball team was my last attempt to get into team sports, but it affected me more than that. I was already growing out of swimming at our community pool, but I also stopped diving into the lake whenever we wend down to visit my Grandma. I let my membership to the local rock climbing arena expire. The next time summer came round I never once told you the kneeboard out of the shed,  and the winter after that, when my parents asked if I wanted to go skiing I made excuses. For the first time in my life I let those words affect me.

 My parents weren’t being malicious, my brother was never trying to impose his manliness on me by being better at me and sports. Looking back on it now it seems slightly ridiculous that I let four words affect my entire life. However I feel about it now though, then those words were everything. They told me it didn’t matter if I tried because I wouldn’t be good at it, so why try at all? Play like a girl is a phrase that needs to change, and thankfully today it is. People around the world are asking themselves just what message play like a girl gives the next generation. The world is changing, one ball at a time.