Jill and the Lion, by Art Childs
It’s time for another group review of Narnia fanfics!
Featured artwork: Jill and the Lion. This is the scene from the first chapter of The Silver Chair where Jill, abandoned by Eustace on Aslan’s Mountain, has to decide whether or not to drink from a stream guarded by a dangerous lion who talks to her. Of course, she’s okay. I like how the artist captured her trepidation and gave her a 1970s look with her headband.
All these stories are from Archive of Our Own.
Never Forget Your Pencil and Paper (or How Eustace Got His Dragon Back), by ojisandavid
The author said of this work: “Many works of fiction would be much shorter if the characters exhibited any common sense at all. It would also help if their creators didn’t stack the deck against them like a playground bully who trips someone and then blames them for lying on the ground. If we apply this observation to The Silver Chair, we can guess that the book would consist of seven short chapters if Aslan hadn’t decided it was fun to watch Eustace fall off an insanely high cliff instead of maybe, I don’t know, warning the kids away from the cliff beforehand. Or if he’d just opened a magical door for them directly to Cair Paravel instead of blowing them there on the slow train. Or – and this is a big one – if the kids had written down the damn signs.”
And that’s it, in a nutshell. This is the common sense version of the story, all apologies to Mr. Lewis.
I read it last summer and have to say it influenced my own fanfic which is a high honor indeed. In addition to writing down the signs, the kids get help from King Caspian and rescue a Talking Stag that was about to become Harfang’s dinner, painting Aslan in a bad light in the process. This is NOT a pro-Aslan story. It doesn’t mean the author is anti-Aslan, it’s just a different way of exploring what could have happened. That’s what I like about Narnia fanfic. The playfulness and inventiveness of it. There’s an obnoxious, fanatical Chaplain called Cliveson (get it?) and a Calormene soldier in the party as well to diversify and give pointed commentary.
Of course, being as the characters use common sense, the story ends early, when the party meets the Green Witch and Prince Rilian after the Giant’s Bridge, and there’s some great dialogue where the witch takes it on the chin for her annoying trilling and lisping. And as it turns out Eustace, once back in Narnia, retains the power to transform into a dragon, and roasts the witch into unagi. There’s also wonderful dialogue at the end between Jill and Aslan where she rips him a new one.
Enthusiastically recommended!
The Silver Chair, Humor
To Want Wrong Things, by Angelike
When I read fanfic I don’t care about ships or shipping. There, I said it. I have absolutely no interest in who is bonking who. No dogs in that fight. If it’s handled well for the purposes of the story, then I get interested.
This story was written by the author as a riff off the Walden Prince Caspian movie, supposing that Caspian and Peter had a (well-hidden) gay relationship that ended after Peter and his siblings returned to England. Caspian was left bereft, but proceeded to have a different life with Liliandil (the Star’s Daughter) and his son Rilian, tragic as it later was by the events of The Silver Chair. At the end of that book, together with Jill and Eustace on the mountain of Aslan’s Country, and freshly restored to health and youth, Caspian asks Aslan for a glimpse of Earth… and Aslan intuits why. To see Peter again of course.
What follows is a sensitive, wonderfully nuanced discussion of the repercussions of homosexuality in Narnia and in late 1940s England, and the destiny Caspian had to restore Narnia, not give in to his desires. It’s quite good. When Aslan, who acts like a wise and loving father, gives Caspian a choice at the end, who knows what the heartsick former king will do? Recommended.
Prince Caspian, book and movie
they used to shout my name, now they whisper it, by hauntedthief
There are many, many fanfics about the Problem of Susan that crops up towards the conclusion of The Last Battle, most reacting with outrage or sympathy for Susan’s apostasy, not the scorn that Jill and Eustace give her. This short fic discusses that even though Susan turned her back on Narnia, she lived a full life as a human being whereas the other children, for all their fantastic adventures, did not. Thoughtful and compelling is this writer’s take.
The Last Battle
all that is hidden, by nasimwrites
Where did The Lady of the Green Kirtle come from? There’s not a lot of fics about that. This writer posits she was a disgruntled evil spirit that took human form only after many centuries, her actions driven by defiance and her scorn for Aslan. It’s an OK theory, but not one I subscribe to; she seems too human for that. A different take I’ll say but YMMV.
The Silver Chair
Heaven is unconcerned with the lost – so C. S. Lewis said, by Carliro
Oh, I forgot about the shocker of the ending of this story, even though I had read it last year. Susan is sent to an orphanage and tries to go on living after the DEATH OF HER ENTIRE FAMILY and can’t deal. A rebuttal to the casual cruelty of the events of the final book. Fics like this are why I follow this fandom, because of the issues raised and the many different points of view the writers tale.
Post The Last Battle, (The Problem of Susan)
A Traveler’s Guide to Ettinsmoor, by Ermingarden
Planning to visit the Land of the Giants? Here are a few things the savvy traveler should know.
Written by Chirripeep, a Talking Mouse, for the benefit of other Talking Beasts, this story takes the form of a tourist guide, but it’s also a rumination by the author on why intelligent animals are born and dwell in Narnia but also may travel elsewhere. Note that Lewis never went into depth on this subject. Obviously, the animals can travel, as the author of this story mentions Reepicheep, Bree, and Hwin; there are also the examples of Sallowpad the Raven who went to Calormen with the Pevensies and the Talking Stag who was eaten by the giants of Harfang. But there were never any hard and fast rules by C. S. Lewis on this topic.
(My headcanon is that at Narnia’s dawn Talking Beasts wandered all over, creating pockets of settlement yet to be discovered.)
The story is less of a complete article filled in with imagination and more of a caution against traveling to Harfang and dealing with its Giants. I would have wanted more of a pastiche but apparently what is there was very appealing to most readers of it.
The Silver Chair
