Its been a long while since I’ve read the books or seen the movies, but weren’t they escaping WW2?
Seems kinda… worse than taxes and the subway. “Ah yes, lets give up on this magical world to return to ours to get *checks notes* bombed. Perfect.”
Been a while for me, too, but didn’t they find their way back by accident?
Pretty sure they were also old as hell too, so they got to like regain their youth. Sort of a win if you don’t mind living, well, here. You know, rather than a magical world with talking animals and stuff.
As I recall, they were adults but not old. I think they were riding through the forest, got off their horses to follow some light in the denser trees or something, then fell out of the wardrobe and couldn’t get back.
In hindsight, those horses definitely fled the country or got executed.
Reading all of this is both hilarious and disturbing. The post itself and this whole comment chain is just “I read it 30 years ago and barely remember anything but here’s my take on those vague memories”. And I’m replying to the very top comments, what the fuck is happening? It’s so fucking weird.
I was being honest, the last time I read any of those books was probably 20+ years ago, but I read them repeatedly before then.
lmao yeah it’s a Ken Burns documentary where we are getting the first hand accounts of the civil war because we can’t go back and watch the reply of the actual events but instead it’s a comment thread about a tweet about a movie about a book.
Been a while since I read the books, but weren’t they a bunch of Christian kids coming up with a fantasy explanation so they could spend hours in the closet together?
Given the kind of person C.S. Lewis was,
probably notmaybe (holy shit)…
Susan was not the sharpest bulb.
Or the brightest hammer.
On the other hand, she’s the only one who survived.
By going into denial about it.
Not only that but in the books they live there until they are adults and have forgotten about the real world. They rediscover the wardrobe while hunting. When they leave narnia the become kids again with all their memories intact.
If they were escaping war, they sure did fight a lot in Narnia. And escaping the war has multiple layers in that lots of children were sent away from cities to safer places in the countryside as well as the escapism of Narnia. In the end they also escaped life via train crash, though that’s beside the point.
This will give some of the context for the backdrop of the war.
Good read, thanks for this
they were rich britbongs though werent they? barely in danger
I don’t think they were rich, but they were definitely not lower class.
they had a massive walk-in wardrobe with hundreds of different outfits, in a time before SEA slave labor/modern industry made clothing incredibly cheap…they rich as fuck
That wasn’t their house. They had been sent to the professor’s house to stay as the blitz was going on, so London, where they actually lived, wasn’t the safest place.
Gentle reminder that slave labor, industrial automation and exploitation of far away lands were not even recent in 1950, and that still today, the vast majority of humanity still doesn’t have the means to own hundreds of outfits at a given time, let alone have a walk-in wardrobe.
It only lasted 8 months and had 40k deaths for the whole country, but that’s why they were sent out to the countryside.
I’ve thought about the isekai genre (ending up in another world) a lot lately and how a big part is usually the characters trying to find a way home. I wondered what percentage of people would actually want that nowadays. I suspect it’s considerably lower than it used to be.
“As for you, young lady, you want to go home, right?”
“No, not anymore. I want to stay here and become the new wicked witch.”
“Nonsense! Now click your big honking boots together three times and wish to go home to Kansas to live in poverty with your dirt-farming, teetotaling aunt and uncle!”
There’s a big trend in recent isekai to just outright kill the character at the beginning. So, you’re either reincarnated into another world or your soul is snatched upon death and body recreated in the other world as an explanation for why the character isn’t spending their whole time just trying to get back, but I do think that would be an interesting angle to explore.
Yeah it would be cool to be really overt about it, have the character be perfectly able to go home but they’re just like “nah, fuck that place” lol. I’m sure it exists somewhere but I don’t think I’ve seen it before.
Old isekai had the MC want to go home. Modern isekai has the MC wanting to start over and stay in their new world. You can chart the change based on how dissolutioned young adults are about the Japanese Dream of stable employment and raising a family.
The fantastic book series Magic Kingdom For Sale is basically about this. I started reading what I assumed would be a lighthearted comedy and it literally opens with our main character lost in alcoholic depression because of an awful tragedy. The fantasy land he’s sent to is hostile, but it provides him enough hope to fight for a better world there.
It’s bad when the idea of dealing with a fantasy Dark Lord is more appealing than real life. At least it’s clear who the good and bad guys are.
Well, it’s pretty clear in 2026 normie world too (who the bad guys are). People just aren’t heroes in real life, and it’s too hard to kill the top villains.
Always nice when the bad guy doesn’t know exactly where you are.
Oh wow, core memory unlocked. Haven’t thought of those books in decades.
If I could bring my cat and like 3 other people, I would 100% be like “good luck, losers!” and would never be heard from again lol.
I’m aware of a few early isekai works from like the 80’s to 90’s (Dunbine, Elf Hunter, and quite a few western Choose Your Own Adventure books and pulp novels fall into this category). It seems to be that as a trend, the premise is that the main character wants to get back to the “real” world and that usually drives the main plot.
Then theres a big trend of Isekai light novels (and related anime etc) in the later 2000’s to today. These almost exclusively seem to feature characters who just want to live a life in their new fantasy world. Literal escapism, even. Konosuba is notable for being very popular, maybe being around the start of this trend, and the main character is given a task to complete and be returned to the real world, but he just ignores it.
I guess we can speculate on whether this means people got more miserable in the intervening time.
Funny enough the webnovels tend to mention why protagonist doesn’t think of the real world, but their anime doesn’t go over it much.
Campfire Cooking is my favorite one of the newer crop of these.
His super power is basically Amazon Grocery. He immediately hides that fact from everyone, tells the people that summoned him he’s useless, and leaves the country to live “off grid”.
And all that before he even knows how that world works. I’m not even sure he knew he could do other kinds of magic at that point. Natural instinct to GTFO society / authority was something I could identify with
An isekai where the MC is Snuffkin.
Sword Art Online’s original premise sounded kinda fun to me tbh. Though I have a feeling the whole “society makes sure that the players get life support in the hospital while they are stuck” wouldn’t work as nicely in RL as it did in the anime. But “can’t log out of video game because it’ll kill me if I really try” would be kinda nice for a while.
People were dying because eventually power outages, and people pulling the plug. It was a major plot point.
But uh there’s a reason he goes right back in LMAO
Yeah, I think it was episode 2 that mentioned some people just disappearing to never return and others disappearing temporarily while they were being moved to hospitals and the Nerve Gear having capacitors or something designed to allow it to be unplugged for a few hours before it does the death shock to allow for that.
It seemed like it wasn’t a recurring thing, so most of the players in the game at the end of ep 2 must have been moved to hospitals (or had other life support options).
That’s why I like villianess stories in otome isekai, it makes sense why they want to go back
This trope has been explored, sure enough.
Recently, I recall the comics DIE, although I didn’t finish it yet. And also the TV show The Magicians. In both cases one of the crew stays to be a king while everybody else goes home. And time runs at different rates on either sides. And then they meet again. Hijinks ensue.
I’m not sure what you mean, I don’t think I’ve seen a single isekai protag try to go back to Earth unless you count the “trapped in VR” ones.
I’m always a little disappointed by how quickly the regular world becomes irrelevant in the story. The intrigue is from how a person from a modern nonmagical culture interacts with a medieval magical culture.
But from the isekais I’ve seen, I’d say you could replace half of them with a person with amnesia and nothing would change.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single isekai protag try to go back to Earth unless you count the “trapped in VR” ones.
It used to be the standard:
- Digimon Adventure (the first series)/Digimon frontier (fourth series)
- Inu Yasha
- Monster Rancher
The only recent example I can think of is Zenshu from last year.
The intrigue is from how a person from a modern nonmagical culture interacts with a medieval magical culture.
Welcome to Japan Ms. Elf might be up your alley: a guy finds out his lucid dreams have actually been him getting isekei’d every night for most of his life when he accidentally brings a friend/love interest back with him. She’s fascinated by modern Japan so they start going back and forth between the real world and magical world together.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll check it out!
I don’t think I’ve seen a single isekai protag try to go back to Earth
Wizard of Oz, for one. I’m using a Japanese term because English doesn’t have a succinct one for that particular genre, but it apples to media anywhere.
Well they still need the OP’ness
They found the fountain of youth and you call them “fucking idiots”. Go to Narnia, live a full life, leave Narnia with your adult mind in tact, walk out of the wardrobe a kid again, repeat.
So there’s a few problems with that plan:
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If you leave Narnia, you will eventually forget Narnia. First it’s like a dream, then a dream of a dream, and then you just completely forget ever having gone.
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The same applies in reverse. You will eventually forget Earth and spend your time in Narnia instead.
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You can’t go to Narnia without Aslan taking you there. The Professor, who was infact one of the entities present at the creation of Narnia, tells the Pevensies that they won’t be getting back to Narnia through the wardrobe again.
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Even if you could pass through to Narnia on command, there is a varying degree of time dilation between Narnia and Earth. The entirety of Narnia’s 2,555 year existence is compressed into 50 years on Earth, but the first 1000 years of that existence was compressed into the first 40 years of the timeline, and the remaining 1,555 was in that final 10 years. Also, you can spend 10 minutes in Narnia and end up having been gone for weeks on Earth, so the time dilation goes both way and is pretty inconsistent then too.
This guy Lion, Witch and Wardrobes.
Listen, no one said attaining the fountain of youth would be easy. A properly motivated party has all of eternity to consider and solve these issues. And while the memories might fade - the muscle memory you develop learning skills and other brain development couldn’t possibly be wiped out.
Maybe consider detailed journaling - and once time slips into the modern era, record video recaps. It’ll be like in Severance, an outie getting a video message from their innie and vice versa; or like Drew Barrymore catching up with a video recap of her whole life thus far, as in 50 First Dates. Establish the mental pathways in your earth brain with new memories of LEARNING what happened in Narnia, before you fully lose your Narnia memories.
Believe it or not, muscle memory is one of the first things you forget as soon as you leave Narnia. For example, Lucy learns how to swim in Narnia, but when she goes back to England, she instantly forgets. No muscle memory, nothing, it’s all fresh. The same applies to skills like swordsmanship, archery etc. You won’t remember how to do any of that when you leave, but you will if you come back.
From a storytelling perspective (and arguably Aslan’s perspective), Narnia pulls in people that need to learn a life lesson and are needed for something in Narnia. Aslan doesn’t let you keep everything you gained while there, he only lets you retain information he deems important to your life on Earth… Because despite being literally Jesus, Aslan is a bit of a dickhead sometimes.
I’m impressed with your knowledge of the universe. 😊 I think I only ever read one, MAYBE two of the novels, and I definitely saw and loved the early 2000s films - but only ever saw them the one time in theaters. There’s a LOT of story here that I missed, I should probably go back and explore this series properly.
They didn’t have the same body is why, they were in their 40s and had an entire life when they left and were still children on earth.
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Wasn’t there also a world war going on in their real world?
(Btw do not check the poster’s youtube channel I remember them being one of the alt-right pipeline figures. Notice the blue checkmark.)
Yes. They were sent to the countryside to get away from the blitz.
This has been fun, guys, but there’s no Wi-Fi here, so we’re gonna head back to hell.
Nah, they’re based as fuck. Royalty willingly abdicating the throne to become one of the people should be applauded, not criticized. Though they could have established a new government of the people before doing so…
Ours mysteriously became shorter. It was a full on epidemic of that shit for a time too…
Wait, what? Did you reply to the right comment? I’m confused.
What happened to the last French king?
Ah, now I follow. 😂 Didn’t catch your username.
All so that we can figure out that God is a magic talking lion
i fucking wish i could ride the subway
I’m also confused about this post’s hate of trains.
Can’t stay on drugs all the time.
My extended family could argue otherwise.
“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
If industrialized society was easy then everyone would do it. We should all be subsistence farmers.
Yeah they don’t have family or friends in the real world so definitely no reason to go back. /s
The best thing about Narnia would be the lack of climate change.
Global warming was definitely a huge plot point in the first book.
They became adults, which is just childhood without the fun and with more suffering.
Then you die.
What prime material for someone to write an allegorical book about.
Especially since you might be into Beaver people after. https://youtu.be/waKc9C76W14
Well there are the indoor toilets and plumbing, easier access to food, lights at thr flick of a finger switch. Malls, internet, cellphones, and other post-medieval conveniences
yes. the famous internet, you access through your cellphone, that you buy in the mall… during the blitz.
They returned to the middle of the second world war lol.
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