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.

Oh, thank you Windsparrow, that's very kind of you. And yes, it's definitely not mean to be Lewis's universe.

Thank you for sharing that, Consuela. The setup with the sacred lion didn't come across as too obvious. When introduced, it came across as just one more thing that was going wrong for them.

Some stories just have to be told and not dithered over.

Yes. This is why I have about a dozen what-should-be-short stories languishing on my hard drive, never to see the light of screen.