InsaneJournal

As much as I like Do Wop (and I actually do) PBS keeps rerunning their Do Wop special. Over and over and over, interspersed with Andre Rieu or however you spell it. Over and over and over.



On "My" Edmund:

1) My Edmund is a Virgo. Most people think Prince Caspian takes place in the autumn, since they’re going back to school. And Edmund’s birthday is a week before that, so it’s very conceivable that he was born in September. Especially when you think about how much of his personality is so Virgo. The only other options are Libra and Leo. He's not social enough for Libra and he's not grandiose and oblivious enough for Leo.

The dark side of Virgo is obsessive and controlling- a lot of male stalkers and serial killers are Virgos. That’s why they’re so methodical, doing things like keeping a body part from each of their victims sealed in a plastic bag and labeled or parking across the street and using a camera with a telephoto lense to record whenever a certain girl leaves her apartment.

Can't you just picture Edmund's siblings driving him nuts by sneaking around behind his back and sharpening his pencils down to different uneven points or mixing up his black and navy blue socks, or moving his stuff slightly?

Virgos are often associated with Justice, too, after all you need the same sort of personality type to hunt down criminals as you do to be one yourself.

2) My Edmund is bisexual. Because the Jadis thing is just too strong and obvious, but I love to slash him anyway, since there are so many great pairings for him. Either he ended up a total womanizer (which doesn’t seem likely given how cautious he is in canon) or she scared him away from girls for life. But not wanting to get involved with a woman doesn’t imply lack of attraction to them. Just that he might consider guys a safer prospect. Also, the willingness to charm either gender would come in handy for someone working in Intelligence for I am also a huge fan of Spy!Ed.

I can't see him as a slut though. He needs his control, or he thinks he does, because the last time he *wanted* someone and tried to do something about it, people died. I really did love the characterization in "King's Love". There's always some reason why he can't think about that right now and when/if he falls for someone it comes out of nowwhere and totally throws him off.

He totally strikes me as a Bottom though. Not just because of the three male characters he's most often paired with, two are serious Alpha types (although Eustace couldn't top a wedding cake) but *points up* see the Jadis bit again. I mean, Jadis had some sway over the other men but none of the others reacted like *that*. I don't think he is for the same reasons as say, Draco is but I'm not sure how to articulate it right now. I know I like Edmund to stay *Edmund* even if he is the bottom (which means, don't call him "fragile" please, he's a lethal, veteran warrior).

ETA: I just figured it out. Draco heartily embraces and exploits all his little kinks (and also just isn't used to there *not* being someone around to take care of him, he's a spoiled brat who thinks, "well, why *shouldn't* someone else do all the work?") while Edmund is painfully repressed and his reasons for preferring the role he does change depending on where you are in his character arc.

3) My Edmund believes. He has doubts, sure. He demands evidence, sure (but then, he *has* his evidence) . He may struggle but you may note that he is not the one who gives up. No matter how hard it got, he never really gave up on Aslan (once again, there's a great passage on this from "King's Love"). I don't buy the "he's too complicated for that" argument, that's exactly it, he's complicated.

One view of Edmund that bugs me almost as much is when people talk as if he has “no moral compass”. But he still has a moral compass. He probably has more of one than the others do, it’s just that he has a different idea of what that means. It’s about perspective, not about whether or not his moral compass actually exists. He just doesn’t see things the way a typical person might because he’s been a king, and a spy and a veteran of war from the age of eleven.

4) And yes, he is willing to do things that might look, at first, like they’re at odds with this belief but they said God is good, they never said God was nice and Aslan is not a tame lion, or, as they pointed out in the books, a particularly safe one. Because of this, he (Ed) may have trouble fitting into organized religion in our world, the kind of kid who keeps getting asked to leave Sunday School for asking impertinent questions or who can’t quite manage not to swear but when you actually sit down and talk to him you realize his faith is as strong as any ordained minister’s, maybe more so because he has proof, which is why he might seem so disdainful of the way it usually works. “Why should I sit here and be lectured at by some priest when I've hung around with the physical manifestation of my god?"

I also think that maybe he isn’t too keen on the whole world *knowing* how much he believes-he is the Slytherin character and they usually play such things close to the vest-in PC he believes Lucy about seeing Aslan but he seems concerned about Susan and Peter losing respect for him so he downplays it as much as possible. He believes Lucy saw Aslan and doesn’t ignore or ridicule her for her claims, he doesn’t see Aslan himself, however, he *wanted* to believe enough to trust that Lucy knew what she’d seen. And he’s the second person to run to Aslan when Aslan finally appears.

Most importantly though, Edmund is the character who represents redemption and the powerful, emotional, salvation experience*. This is Edmund's character arc. It's his *point*. Even if you leave out the author, or any references to real world religions. Aslan saved his life, do you honestly think he'd turn around and not have faith in Aslan after that? How *ungrateful* is that? Even if LWW says he wasn't told what really happened, he demonstrates otherwise in VotD and anway, did you think he wouldn't find out on his own? No, he really changed, he hasn't been pretending the whole time.

** Peter represents faith as social obligation and moral duty but the one thing I do agree with the "Aslan conspiracy theory" people on is that he's more loyal to Narnia itself (and his family) than anything else. Eustace and Jill represent faith accquired by being dragged along whether you wanted to go or not, and just trying to make the best of it and be a good person and somewhere along the line, you realize this is the real thing. Lucy is the one most people can't really manage,the pure, shining beacon of Belief. Susan is what a few fan authors think Edmund is, you know, the one who doesn't really believe and is just humoring the others.