Consuela, I still have some trepidation about Narnia fic, but am willing to trust you, so I am poking my nose into some of them. As for "I Love Not the Man But Nature More", how can I resist at least trying a fic that uses

“Yes, this is a fertile land, and we will thrive… We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... 'This Land'."

Hah! It is a cute epigraph, but I don't think it fits the story, which is rather... primal, and not silly at all.

Woops. I'm writing a story that either lots of people will love, or I'll get hate-mail for.

... possibly both.

Woops. I'm writing a story that either lots of people will love, or I'll get hate-mail for.

I told someone else, elsewhere, to write for the sake of the story they wanted to tell. Writing is one thing; getting it to an audience is another. That won't protect you from a virtual mob set to run you out of the internet on a rail, of course. I'm not sure what would - sometimes there are mobs in search of a convenient target.

Well, I posted it, and (so far) all the comments have been positive.

But really the question is whether I'm willing to post it on FFN. This is a pagan story, and the FFN Narnia community is, generally, really into the whole Christian allegory.

Here's the story, btw: [link]

Really nice, 'suela! I left a comment for you on AO3.

Thanks, sail! I'm still a bit dissatisfied with it, but it pretty much did what I wanted it to.

Out of curiosity, how are you dissatisfied with it? Nothing jumped out at me as I was reading it (I've been reccing it to some friends, btw).

Thank you, Anne!

how are you dissatisfied with it?

I think the setup with the sacred lion is too obvious. I think the prose is a bit clunky and boringly structured--too much subject-verb-object. (It's something I really need to work on.) I think the whole thing could have been built more gradually. I think Lucy gets sidelined and Susan needed more to do at the beginning, although she shines at the end. I'm not sure I got across the difference in the way Aslan's sacrifice worked--that this is a Narnia in which the willing sacrifice is the greatest source of power. Oh, and I didn't really know how to end it, which is why you get the switchover to the omniscient POV there for the funeral scene.

That said, I also didn't really want to spend 10 or 15,000 words on a story that ends on such a downer. Some stories just have to be told and not dithered over. If I hadn't posted it, it probably would have sat on my hard drive for a year.

Consuela, I read it and liked it. But I can see what you mean about certain parts of the fandom thinking it wronger than a wrong thing. I'm fairly sure there was a time in my life when I would have thought that myself (clinging as I was to the religion I was raised, not yet seeing something else in the old saw "All truth is God's truth"). But now I think what you have written is good, a universe or two over from what Lewis wrote.