maidmalapert: (task at hand)
Jill Pole ([personal profile] maidmalapert) wrote on September 15th, 2013 at 04:40 am
Because that's not a broad topic at all!!

Narnia and Aslan have become pretty separate in Jill's mind at this point, although they used to be tightly linked. Now that she has remembered Aslan's Country or the "real world" or interdimensional onion heaven or whatever you want to call it, that's the place she associates with him. Narnia is its own separate thing, more to be associated with Eustace and the Pevensies and Puddleglum and Tirian and so on. Also, Jill still feels like Aslan betrayed her trust, but Narnia never did. Narnia was never trustworthy to begin with; it was beautiful and unsafe. It was taken for granted that Narnia would hurt her, but it would be worth it. Aslan was never supposed to be safe either, but he was supposed to be true and right, and that turned out badly.

Anyway, let's start with her thoughts on Aslan. His whole draw, for Jill, was that it was impossible to help believing him and obeying him when he was there in front of her. So finding out that he was either wrong or lying and that in either case he broke his promise to her (the promise that she would be able to stay in "the Real World" forever) was a negation of everything she believed about him and was shattering and unacceptable. And once it became obvious that he was wrong or lying once, a lot of his other behavior suddenly becomes really, really questionable.

Jill's had some time to process all of that, though, and she has by this point come to the conclusion that she just wants to talk to him again. She can't worship him again—she wouldn't use that word, but that's what she was doing before—but she still wants to try and understand him if she can. Even if he's not infallible, he still gave her a lot and his love still matters to her and she wants to learn more about his motives and, as Lloyd put it, see if she can trust him as a friend even if she can't have the kind of faith in him she had before. She wants to see if she can forgive him, although she wouldn't put it that way either; it still hasn't occurred to her that forgiveness can go in that direction. This is Aslan we're talking about. He is the one who is supposed to do the forgiving.

Now onto how she feels about Narnia! The primary answer is "nostalgic." Jill loves Narnia. She will always love Narnia, but it's dead, and she knows that. It's also... I said it's not really linked with Aslan anymore, but I guess it would be more accurate to say it's not linked with her current view of Aslan. Narnia will always be associated with how she felt about Aslan before everything got confusing and strange. She wasn't always happy there, but her time in Narnia was the time in her life where everything seemed the most certain and she felt she had the most purpose. So she'll always remember it sort of through rose-colored glasses.

Anyway! Tell me more about how Josh defines "the right choices" in general and in terms of shaping history, whether or not they're the same.
 
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