“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the Witch.
“Myah have a myaitor myah, Myaslan,” Aslan said in a high-pitched, mocking tone, as if to himself. It was kind of shitty of him, and no one quite knew what to say.
“I — Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch, collecting herself.
“Yeah,” said Aslan. “Sorry.”
“I must tell you?” said the Witch, her voice going suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the firestones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”
“And so,” continued the Witch, “that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”
“Okay,” said Aslan.
“What?” shrilled the Witch, her face contorted in a disbelieving mask.
“Fucking take him,” Aslan said. “Like I give a shit about some asshole named Edmund who doesn’t even live here. Eat all his blood you want, or whatever.”
“Edmund,” he said to himself. “What a gay name.”
“That was a totally unnecessary and homophobic thing to say,” Susan said, crying.
“Well, it is,” Aslan said. “It is a gay name.”
Edmund began to cry. “I don’t want to die.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have eaten all that lady’s candy or whatever,” Aslan said.
Edmund cried harder. “That’s not why she wants to kill me. You’re not even paying attention.”
“Whatever,” Aslan said. “This is boring. You’re boring.”
***
“Susan, Eve’s Daughter,” Aslan said. “These are for you,” and he handed her a bow and a quiver and a little ivory horn. “You must use the bow only in great need,” he said, “for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you.”
“What kind of help?” Susan asked. “Can you be more specific?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Aslan said, gesturing airily. “Inner strength, or a guy will come, or something.”
“There are no arrows in this quiv –” Susan began.
“You’re welcome,” Aslan said. “It’s kind of rude not to say thank you when someone gives you a bunch of gifts for no reason, Susan.”
***
“I miss Edmund,” Susan said, weeping softly.
“Me too,” Lucy said.
“whose Edmund,” came a voice behind them. “Can you not cry so loud.”
***
“Lucy, Eve’s Daughter,” he said, and Lucy came forward. “In this bottle there is cordial made of the juice of one of the fireflowers that grow in the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends is hurt, a few drops of this will restore them. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in battle.”
“Why, sir?” said Lucy. “I think — I don’t know but I think I could be brave enough.”
“Because you’re like fucking six years old,” Aslan said.
“I –” Lucy began.
“Fine, though,” Aslan said, visibly irritated. “Take your shitty dagger and join the battle, where everyone else has magic and spears, let me know how far you get before someone stabs you right in the lungs.”
Lucy didn’t move.
“I’m not kidding around,” he said. “Go stand in the front line.”
Lucy moved, trembling, to join the other soldiers.
“Does anyone else have shit to say about my presents I got them,” Aslan asked.
No one did.
***
“Wasn’t there another one of you or something?” Aslan asked. “I have a fourth sword and I feel like there used to be another one of you. Stupid-looking kid, with like a gay haircut or something.”
“That was Edmund,” Peter said through his clenched jaw. “He’s dead. You let the witch take him.”
“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do with a sword,” Aslan asked him. “I’m a lion.” He looked at Peter expectantly.
Peter sighed and took the sword from him.
“Pretty inconsiderate of him not to be here when I got him a sword and everything,” Aslan said to no one in particular.
Susan began sobbing harder.
Tags: books, cs lewis, dirtbags, narnia
MALLORY
*several hours of laughter*
CRYING
EEEEeeeeeeheheheheheheeeeee
Is this better? I feel like this is better.
It’s 110% better.
DEFINITELY.
I’m so happy right now.
“Well, you shouldn’t have eaten all that lady’s candy or whatever,” Aslan said.
-Snort-
The candy is sex
the candy is always sex
So this isn’t actually how things happened in the books? Because I seem to remember Aslan being 100% total asshole and this all seems pretty accurate.
No, he’s much nicer in this article than he is in the books.
[SCREECHING]
“whose Edmund,” came a voice behind them. “Can you not cry so loud.”
—omg the sound I’m making behind my desk is causing serious attn XD
Gay haircut, yes. Thank you for doing Aslan’s work, Mallory.
I actually kind of feel this way about Edmund for real.
Turkish Delight isn’t even that good, and whatever, he was a war kid, probably he didn’t have that many sweets, but what a greedy prig, right? Straight line between Edmund and Augustus Gloop.
I KNOW. I tried it and it sucked. No matter what happened in the later books, I can never scrub from my head the image of Edmund shoving gelatinous, perfumey candies into his gob.
For some reason, when I read the book as a kid, I was picturing halvah as Turkish delight. Then when actually HAD Turkish delight years later, I was really confused.
I got some Turkish-as-in-from-Turkey Turkish delight as a souvenir not long ago that lingered in a cabinet for a month until I was hard up for sweets and tried it. It was amazing, and the first thing I thought was “Holy shit, OK, NOW the book makes a lot more sense.”
You know, I thought that once. Then I got a look at the British ration allocation of sweets and sugar during the war. I’m not saying I’d definitely have sold my family to the devil for even bad candy after a year or two of that. But I’m just as happy not to be put to the test.
(I’ve also had better and worse Turkish Delight. But if the White Witch wanted me, a box of Neuhaus chocolates would be a safer bet. Maybe not at Edmund’s age, though.)
I live in Istanbul and buy my Turkish Delight (lokum) from Haci Bekir, confectioner of old to the sultan: http://www.hacibekir.com/en/menu/haci-bekir/histo…
When I tasted a delicate cube of their walnut lokum for the first time, my first thought was, “Now I understand why Edmund sold out and betrayed his entire family.” It is that good. Swoon.
It was actually magic drugs though??? Like, I think Edmund gets an undeservingly bad rap for the things he does after a witch feeds him enchanted food.
Doesn’t everyone feel this way about Edmund? He was such a ginormous pain.
Yes. My mother read these books to us as a kid and she put on the most annoying whiny voice or Edmund. Because what other voice could he have?
He WAS, but only in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” He’s actually my favorite character because he’s not Mr. Perfect and he learns from his mistakes and becomes a better person. Besides, Eustace is MUCH more of a dick.
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
(And Clive Staples Lewis may have been drawing on some relevant experience re names.)
Sorry, no, I am here for Scrubb. Maybe not for Eustace, as he was in the first part of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but I don’t see how you can possibly forgive Edmund and not Scrubb. Eustace was an annoying little shit at the age of 12 or whatever, but show me the equivalent in Eustace’s actions of Edmund’s betrayal of his three siblings and his betrayal of the Narnian creatures who had tried to aid them.
No one hated Eustace-pre-Narnia with more burning fervor than Scrubb did. And the bravery he and Jill Pole showed in The Silver Chair and The Last Battle dwarf anything that had been required of Edmund. I’m not saying Edmund didn’t redeem himself, I think he did. But so did Eustace.
I WON’T HAVE IT, LIZ. I WON’T HAVE IT.
I dislike child Edmund, but I really like adult King Edmund the Just. (He was “graver and quieter” than Peter, and “great in council and judgement”! My sort of thing.)
;_______;
Edmund sucked.
NNnooooo I identified with Edmund the most!
We’re ignoring *Eustace Scrubb?!*
No, I don’t want no Scrubb
A Scrubb is a boy who acts like a total creep
Sailing on the Dawn Treader
And boring this reader
And being mean to Reepicheep!
If you’re covered with scales and you’re draggin’
Oh yes son I’m talking to you
If you live at home with Harold and Alberta
Oh yes son I’m talking to you
If you have a talkin’ Mouse but you don’t show love
Oh yes son of Adam, I’m talking to you
Eustace Scrubb is checking me
but his game is kinda weak
and I know that he cannot approach me
cuz he’s selfish and brash, he’ll die in a train crash
can’t get with no literally dead ass
You are amazing.
When my brother first read Narnia books, he pronounced Eustace as Eustache (rhymes with mustache), and I’ve never said it right since.
“No way am I letting that whiny little shit inside Narnia,” said Aslan. “Way too many humans up in this piece already.”
Eustace was also the worst. Like, I think I actively rooted against anything working out for him at all.
I kind of hoped he was going to have to have his arm amputated tbh.
Although I really can’t get behind Lewis when he talks about why the Scrubbs are awful. “They were very up-to date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and tee-totallers, and wore a special kind of underclothes.” Lewis would hate me and everything I stand for.
So Mormons, basically?
The “special kind of underclothes” completely mystified me as a child. In fact, I don’t actually know what it means now.
I am really not sure. Modern, non-restrictive underwear?
(Is your username a Chalet School reference?)
The term “liberty bodice” comes to mind, but I think it might be from an earlier era.
No, my username comes from an old Bob Newhart routine, about how a million monkeys typing could eventually come up with Hamlet.
I believe liberty bodices were still worn by schoolgirls, in the UK at least, until the 1940s-50s. They feel a bit too mainstream, though. I want to know what Lewis was on about!
You’re right, my research was sloppy, I just now remembered the term being used in an Agatha Christie from the 50s. But yeah, they don’t really seem outré enough, do they? I’m going to ask one of my librarian friends for advice on figuring this out. After all, fully employed librarians must have nothing better to do with their time than fielding idle inquiries from their friends.
Stolen from E. Nesbit, who has a short story about the Bastables that begins “Father knows a man called Eustace Sandal. I do not know how to express his inside soul, but I have heard Father say he means well. He is a vegetarian and a Primitive Social Something, and an all-wooler, and things like that, and he is really as good as he can stick, only most awfully dull. I believe he eats bread and milk from choice. Well, he has great magnificent dreams about all the things you can do for other people, and he wants to distill cultivatedness into the sort of people who live in Model Workmen’s Dwellings, and teach them to live up to better things. This is what he says. So he gives concerts in Camberwell, and places like that, and curates come from far and near, to sing about Bold Bandaleros and the Song of the Bow, and people who have escaped being curates give comic recitings, and he is sure that it does every one good, and “gives them glimpes of the Life Beautiful.” He said that. Oswald heard him with his own trustworthy ears. Anyway the people enjoy the concerts no end, and that’s the great thing.”
He was cold and tired and the lady had sweets and hot chocolate I mean which one of us would be like, “Nah, lady, I’d rather trudge through the snow.”
I know saying “the movie was better than the book” is blasphemy, but at least the movie gave Edmund a REASON for being such a pain in the ass.
Oh, lion!Jesus. You are such a lovable asshole.
See, this is hysterical because that’s baaaasically what happened in the book. Because as much as I loved Aslan as a child, I now look back and go WOW WHAT A DICK AND ALSO A REALLY TERRIBLE METAPHOR FOR JESUS
See, this is hysterical because that’s baaaasically what happened in the book. Because as much as I loved Aslan as a child, I now look back and go WOW WHAT A DICK AND ALSO A REALLY TERRIBLE METAPHOR FOR JESUS WTF CS LEWIS
Yeah seriously, like what version of Jesus exactly is Aslan supposed to represent?? Get your metaphors right, CS Lewis.
“And so,” continued the Witch, “that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”
“Okay,” said Aslan.
I imagine Aslayn Rand would say pretty much the same thing here, though for different reasons.
Aslayn Rand!
<3<3<3
Aslayn Rand would be getting with Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew to talk about free markets and the effective use of Narnia’s natural resources to Build More Locomotives.
I love this and hope this leads to Dirtbag Frodo and Dirtbag Eilonwy.
DIRTBAG FRODO THO.
I would say “don’t forget Dirtbag Bilbo!” but Bilbo is already King Dirtbag.
Dirtbag froooooodo!!!!!!!!!!!
Probably be pretty short b/c he would just keep the ring.
OMG DIRTBAG EILONWY YESSSSSSSS
Oh. But that also implies Dirtbag Merriman and I am Not At All Sure about that.
Dirtbag Aragorn and Dirtbag Westley bid you good day.
Or that time when he cursed a fig tree for basically no reason?
Celebrities who insist on certain items being put in their dressing room for them are mocked and criticized for being too demanding, but a dude who curses a fig tree just because he’s mad that IT’S NOT THE SEASON FOR FIGS is worshiped by billions of people worldwide.
Cut this down to 140 characters and you have one of the best tweets I’ve ever seen.
Listen. Fuck fig trees.
Dionysos and Jesus: agreed on the fucking of fig trees.
Meow, someone remembers Mr Rogers meow mrow mrow.
So, I see the title of this post and the author name and the picture of cartoon Aslan and then my eyes glance over at the text and take in “‘Myah have a myaitor myah, Myaslan,’ Aslan said,” and this giant warm wave of love and happiness and affection spread through me and stayed while I read it and now I just feel deeply content and I suspect feelings like this are why people join cults.
Nooo, not Aslan. My poor nostalgia. Lions were my favorite animals for a few years because of him.
I read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when I was a kid and could not get through the rest of the books because I thought they were just so goddamn boring and secretly wished Aslan had just eaten all the stupid kids, so this is kinda like my dream come true.
Right? And then I found out later that I had read a Christian allegory and was even more pissed.
What, you didn’t love the three page lists of all the items there were at a feast?
I know I read them, but I remember essentially nothing about them, other than feeling guilty about skipping stuff like that.
I know, right? The Lady of the Green Kirtle, on the other hand, had the right ideas.
Dirtbag Aslan wouldn’t have kept Susan out of Narnia for wearing lipstick and flirting.
SERIOUSLY. Oh, she can’t go to heaven because she likes dumb girl stuff? Well, fuck your heaven anyway.
*prints out your comment and hangs it on the wall*
I want “Well, fuck your heaven anyway” on a T-shirt.
Wait where’s Susan?
Oh, she’s not allowed. Lipstick and shit? come on.
But she’s our sister!
Look, it’s my club. and I say no pussies.
You must read The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman if you haven’t yet.
I haven’t. But I shall. Because, as you say, I must. 🙂
Or Dirtbag Gandalf. Fucking hell yes.
Oh god, can we have a dirtbag Samwise?
How It Should Have Ended, on YouTube. *flies over the volcano* *drops ring inside* “Wow, that was really easy.” “Yeah, can you imagine if we had walked all this way?” “HAHAHAHAHAHA yeah that would have been dumb.”
He’s not a TAME dirtbag.
need more thumbs A+
I will hate these books forever because of that part. I sort of read them out of a misguided obligation (they’re Classics!), but dang, that pissed me off. Liking wordly things doesn’t mean you’ve turned your back on God! I bet CS Lewis had tons of stuff, just sittin’ there. Being worldly.
I just think of poor Susan, all alone. Someone should write a book about grown-up Susan struggling with the death of literally everyone in her life and the memories of Narnia that she can’t let go of but can’t quite believe in.
Oh, there’s fanfic out there. Believe me.
Look up Neil Gaiman’s “The Problem of Susan”, stat.
That is one hell of an idea for a book! Someone jump on that, please.
AH HA I FOUND IT. http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/69470941562/th…
Gaiman did it, pretty disturbingly. Look for “The Problem of Susan.”
Basically Neil Gaiman’s short story – The Problem of Susan
http://grotesqueanddecadence.tumblr.com/post/2127…
EDIT: I love how quickly we all jumped on this. *pinky links with vesperer and Emmlo* <—- which I just learned is a thing you do when you say something at the same time
Didn’t Neil Gaiman or someone write a short story like this? And it really traumatized me because Aslan and the White Witch….nevermind.
I grew up with the books and no religious education and never understood what the hell Aslan’s problem was or that it was a metaphor. It drove me nuts! She did everything he asked and then he’s all “bye, don’t let the portal hit you on the way out!” Until I knew it was about Christianity I thought the moral was just that magic dies when you grow up and life is unfair- which true, but an odd message for a children’s classic. Has anyone else read the really amazing blog post about Susan all grown up? It’s one of two about her after Narnia. I stumbled across it a while back and choose to believe this is actually how the books ended. It has made me much happier about the parts I do enjoy. (I have no idea how to include links so I don’t know if this will work, but I’ll try pasting it after this. The other story is linked at the bottom of this one. They are perfect and Susan is the best, forever and ever. The end.) http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/69470941562/th…
But Susan had focused on worldly things to the exclusion of what Lewis considered higher priorities. I don’t think Lewis was saying that worldly things were in themselves bad.
Someone did write a short story about this – google The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman.
Yeah, I guess, but she was like 16! God should not hold you accountable for what you do and think when you’re 16. And the fact that he calls out her taste for stockings and lipstick and magazines as the reason is..ugh, grossly gendered. Why couldn’t it have been Peter who got distracted by sports and his paper route or whatever?
But ohhhhh dang, ya’ll, that Neil Gaiman story. I would have enjoyed an entire series like that! His short stories are excellent.
There is fanfic. There is SO MUCH FANFIC. And a surprising amount of it is pretty damn good. Fix-it fics make so many things easier to deal with!
http://grotesqueanddecadence.tumblr.com/post/2127…
Neil Gaiman wrote a sort of creepy short story that kind of deals with this? A whole book would be amazing though. Susan has retroactively become my favorite as I’ve gotten older and realized how bullshit Aslan keeping her out of heaven was.
If you can stomach hundreds of pages of directionless ‘adult-Harry-Potter’ rubbish, Lev Grossman’s ‘The Magicians’ is essentially this, at least the last third.
Hey look at you with your jazzy new avatar! Excellent!
I’m flattered you noticed! Kate Beaton’s illustration captures his verisimilitude far more than a teddy bear ever could.
I read this as Asian when I opened it but this is probably better than what I imagined in my head (sneaking out of SAT prep school to go play computer games, saving church offering money to go buy sodas….)
oh my godddd
i promise you all here and now that i will never write a “dirtbag [SOMEONE ELSE’S RACE]” post JUST IN CASE some of you were worried that i might
Also, I’m terrible because I read it that way all the time. Maybe I subconsciously really want to see more representation in media/on the web, so I misread it. Or I hate Aslan because what kind of monster would send Lucy off to fight his war?
MALLORY NO
my childhood
*sobs laughing*
“I’m not kidding around,” he said. “Go stand in the front line.”
I love you, Mallory.
The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman actually does some of this really well.
I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the series because I hated 95% of the characters in the first two books, but surprisingly I enjoyed the third book a lot.
If someone manages to make it through the second book, the third is really good. One of the best endings to a trilogy I’ve read, but it doesn’t totally make up for the second book, particularly that scene.
Poor Susan.
hahahaha oh Mallory, thank you forever for this, you wonderful unicorn
I thought Quentin got off too easily.
I have to assume that dirtbag Aslan is voiced by Jason Sudeikis.
Jason Sudeikis as the founder of Four Loko.
Am I the only one who remembered that Father Christmas, not Aslan, gave the kids their presents?
No! I was going to comment.
Dirtbag Aslan TOTALLY would have swiped them off the back of the sled while he was visiting the Mice or whatever.
In the cartoon version Aslan gave the presents, and that seems to be what Mallory is working off of.
That, or she’s already starting the War on Christmas.
I had been going back and forth for the last two weeks on whether I even wanted to finish the trilogy because the second book made me SO GRUMPY. So that’s good to hear! I shall soldier on.
Hey – agree with Audrey here, I didn’t like the first two much, but I think the third one was a big improvement. If you’ve read the first two, go ahead and get the last one.
Oh yeah. Thought something was off.
This is better, though.
Hahahahahaha OH NO.
You and your underpants 😛
I always wondered at how Caspian gives the kids spiced wine when they get on board. Aren’t they, like, 11 or so? I feel like that’s irresponsible boat ownership.
Look, would you want to be responsible for King Edmund the Just and Queen Lucy the Valiant (and their annoying cousin, I suppose) dying of hypothermia because you didn’t give them some spiced wine to warm them up? I think not.
I have the specialest underpants.
Dirtbag Aslan would have *hosed* Eustace.
“Fuck you and your fucking dragon skin, Eustace. That’s what you get for being a greedy shit.”
“Give it a fucking REST Reepicheep. I could just eat you. That would shut your endless yapping about your mother’s prophecy.”
these comments are totally fucked. this is in response to whoever posted about the Scrubbs being non-smoking teetotallers with special underpants – they’re supposed to be Mormons, right? I always thought they were Mormons.
I still love Narnia, it never made me Christian, and I liked that Aslan was a bit of a douche. Made him more real, you know? What really bothers me now that I’m an adult & can see it is the racism. Those Calormen, from the southeast, with the desert and the dark faces and long beards and flowing robes, they are evil barbarians. Ugh.
It does sound Mormonesque! But I think it’s Lewis mocking modern/left-wing values of the time.
But the underpants? Did the British lefties really have special underpants? That seems like a really specific thing to include in a book made up of allegories.
The Calormenes are absolutely a mishmash of Arab and Indian stereotypes. (It’s basically Arabian Nights-land.) But for whatever it’s worth, it’s made clear that the problem is cultural (being a tyrannical slave society) rather than inherent or racial. (And it’s not straight-up inferior– they’re better storytellers, have more elaborate cuisine, and they’re overall larger, richer, and more materially successful– which is an interesting thing for a subject of the British Empire to make the Orientalist monarchy.)
And one Calormene character in particular is probably the most kickass girl in the series (though she’s got some competition from Jill Pole), and very much the dominant member of her heroic team.
Well, as for the cuisine, the British were well aware that the eastern peoples had way better food than them – that’s why they stole it and you can get curry on every corner in the UK. Of course, the bar is set really low when your traditional foods involve boiling the taste out of every vegetable.
Now that’s not fair– they also boiled the taste out of a lot of the meat. And there weren’t any curry takeaways or doner kabob shops when Lewis was writing, even before WWII rationing, which suggests most of them hadn’t quite figured that out yet.
(Though I’ve heard that 19th century British food was better, and that some of the terribleness was a holdover from customs developed during WWI rationing.)
They can’t have been Mormons: Eustace was raised so aggressively secular he’d never heard of Adam and Eve, and couldn’t think of anything to swear by but “… by everything!”.
Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham isn’t IMHO an unimpeachable source. But for what it’s worth, his explanation: “At the time there was a fad for string underwear, it was crocheted out of quite coarse cotton thread and was in a net form. It did feel rather weird to wear but it was very warm… Harold and Alberta were simply faddists.”
The fact that he’s sufficiently familiar with it to know what it felt like to wear is at least a persuasive point.
( http://www.discovery.org/a/810 , which also references Agatha Christie mentioning similar faddish vegetarians who wore patent underwear.)
This is just excellent. OMG, Mallory, you’re too good. When do you ascend to God-hood?
THANK YOU for using a still from the cartoon. Goddamn if I don’t still love that cartoon.
This is what happens to assholes who love Turkish Delight. THERE MUST BE CONSEQUENCES.
See, this always terrified me because I LOVE Turkish Delights. WHEN WILL JADIS COME FOR MEEEE
At least you have the advantage of not being named Edmund. (Oh god, I’m so sorry if your name is Edmund.)
This is the best thing I’ve ever read.
Dirtbag Aslan actually makes a much better argument for why Lucy shouldn’t fight than Father Christmas did.
And I continued to laugh, even as my childhood burned in front of me.
Oh and I remember reading another “Susan after Narnia” piece I loved: http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/69470941562/th… I started tearing up here: “What it must do to you, to be a legend in the body of a young girl, to have that weight on your shoulders and have a lion tell you that you have to let it go. What it must do to you, to be left alone to decide whether to bury your family in separate ceremonies, or all at once, the same way they died, all at once and without you. What it must do to you, to stand there in black, with your nylons, and your lipstick, and feel responsible for these people who you will never be able to explain yourself to and who you can never save.”
This is wonderful, as is her companion piece: http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/79664265175/i-…
I loved the Narnia books as a child, but I was always haunted by them having to go back to being children when they return to our world, after having been adults for years in Narnia. The second piece captures that perfectly.
My favourite solution to the ‘problem of Susan’ is here.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/244594
Only nine sentences long, but solves the textual problem. And it opens up so many doors – Susan the Cold War spy, Susan the gangbusting adventuress, Susan the world-hopping freedom fighter…
cannot
stop
laughing
oh god
As others have said, there’s some great Narnia fanfic. These are my favourites:
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1510426.html
The real problem with Susan, in the end, was not that she was no longer Narnia’s friend. It was that she had already been its lover
http://archiveofourown.org/works/609699
I spent half of my life in Narnia, and I was of Narnia in my very soul.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/84577
His Dark Materials/Narnia fic. Will and Susan dealing with their losses. Long.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/137185
Anthony Bourdain visits Narnia to try out the local delicacies.
AAAHHH THE WILL-SUSAN FIC AND THE BOURDAIN ARE TWO OF MY VERY FAVORITE THINGS YESSS thank you for bringing these gems to the surface. Further up and further in!!!
No Reservations Narnia is absolutely the most perfect piece of fanfic ever written.
A teenage dirtbag totally traumatized me as a child while watching the crappy cartoon Narnia movie.
Tiny Amosisamos (sobbing) : Is – is Aslan really dead?
Teenage Dirtbag : Yup.
Storms of tears.
I will never get over how CS Lewis was basically Holly Golightly when it came to naming animals, since Aslan literally means Lion.
Dirtbag Eilonwy: so basically just regular Eilonwy, then. No alteration needed.
You should read Neil Gaiman’s short story The Problem with Susan. It’s definitely dark and twisted, but it’s pretty cool.
This is the best thing ever. Please count this as another vote for Dirtbag Eilonwy!
Yesterday, I was sitting in my office reading this and helplessly laughing until I cried. A few hours later I read it aloud to a colleague, and I had a hard time because of the laughing and crying and wheezing, and my colleague was doubled over. Today, I went back to it, thinking it couldn’t be as good as I thought it was, but it was.