Fangirling and Writer-Nerd Chaos

C. S. Lewis being a complete mood, as usual

(from Surprised By Joy, ch. 9 ‘The Great Knock’)

i read CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed one time years ago and i’m still not recovered from it

— A Grief Observed: part i-ii, C.S. Lewis x

I need y'all to understand that he wrote this famous passage in the middle of her brief remission -

i think all quiet on the western front and the lord of the rings are in direct conversation with each other, as in theyre the retelling of the same war with one saying here’s what happened, we all died, and it did not matter at all and another going hush little boy, of course we won, of course your friends came back

someone should remake lord of the rings as a grandfather telling a fantasy story to his grand child with flashbacks to world war one showing the dead boys and men the characters were based on. grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.

i’m fine

I will never get over how Tolkien & Lewis took the horrors of war and spun them into fantasy.

Shivering in the trenches dreaming of cozy hobbit holes, shaking as bombs pockmark a forest and imagining each shallow mud-filled crater contains a new world—that maybe there are still as many beautiful things in the universe as there are bombs—that maybe the world is bigger than this moment and this ugliness and one day this will be a peaceful forest again full of small ponds.

I mean look at these photos of the shell craters in Sanctuary Woods, near Ypres Belgium and tell me it’s not the Wood Between The Worlds:

…oh.

though I still love Chronicles of Narnia the older I get and the more I learn the clearer it becomes to me why it would have driven Tolkien completely insane

The Santa part almost ruined their friendship

Tolkien: you can’t just patch random things together because you like them, everything has to fit together in a dense textural weave of reasonable causes and effects

Lewis: and then the witch from the other dimension turns the fox to stone for having a contraband tea party …

Tolkein is the nerd that complains that characters’ costumes and weapons are impractical and Lewis is the nerd that thinks the designs fuck

i still love that his dark materials basically exists because philip pullman got so fucking furious at c.s. lewis that he wrote a story to counter the chronicles of narnia with the quite blunt subtext of ‘YOU SIR ARE A FUCKING IDIOT’ and it turned into another fantasy classic which now philip pullman spends energy screaming about how ‘IT IS NOT REALLY FANTASY’

i just love that this started with a furious philip pullman and ended with a furious philip pullman, it’s just absolutely hilarious to me

though I still love Chronicles of Narnia the older I get and the more I learn the clearer it becomes to me why it would have driven Tolkien completely insane

The Santa part almost ruined their friendship

Tolkien: you can’t just patch random things together because you like them, everything has to fit together in a dense textural weave of reasonable causes and effects

Lewis: and then the witch from the other dimension turns the fox to stone for having a contraband tea party …

Tolkein is the nerd that complains that characters’ costumes and weapons are impractical and Lewis is the nerd that thinks the designs fuck

Tolkien and Lewis are both products of their times & their sexism exerts itself in different ways but my favorite is how every individual Narnia book has the same number of named female characters as the entire LOTR series combined. It’s so fucking funny.

Second place goes to Lewis being mortally terrified of the concept of girls touching a sword and Tolkien just handing Éowyn a blade and telling her to go fuck up the witch king

tolkien: all the war and death in lotr has nothing to do with the war i was in

tolkien: just like how all the morals/good vs evil/everything my characters believe have nothing to do with my morals/beliefs/religion

tolkien: and that character that comes back from the dead has nothing to do with my religion which is based on someone coming back from the dead and uses coming back from the dead as metaphor literally constantly so don’t get any ideas

tolkien: and none of those giant evil spiders have anything to do with the tarantula that bit me either

clive staples: jirt youre literally so stupid

tolkien:

clive:

tolkien: that really slow grumpy tree who takes forever to get to the point or make up his mind is definitely you though

meanwhile, clive staples: Every Single Thing In This Book Including The Talking Lion Is From My Actual Life

I’m sorry but seeing y'all call CS Lewis “Clive Staples” is weirder than any of the magic or furry Jesus in either series

a LOT of my profs are big into Inklings scholarship and i live in constant fear that i’m going to accidentally call him ‘clive staples’ (or worse ‘jonald ronald’) in class

There once was a man named Clive Staples Lewis and he almost deserved it.

hi i’m tolkien here are my ocs. i call them Elves (not elfs!!! if you call them elfs i will block you) they look like humans but they’re tall, live forever, and have pointy ears. that’s it bye

cs lewis: are you alright with constructive criticism? i dont want to sound mean

tolkien: no go ahead i want to hear it

cs lewis: they fucking suck

tolkien: thats not constructive criticism

cs lewis: here’s my OC, it’s jesus but he’s a lion tolkien: Furry cs lewis: blocked

Tolkien: lamp posts don’t exist in fantasy worlds Cs Lewis: ok you know what fuck you

CS Lewis: I could beta for you if you want. help you trim the fat on your stories

Tolkien: what do you mean

CS Lewis: I just. you describe a lot of trees.  are trees that important

Tolkien: just you fucking wait. trees are SO important.

~and that day, Tolkien invented ents~

@urulokid

CS Lewis: Not more trees.

Tolkien: This one’s based on you.

casual reminder that Lewis and Tolkein almost completely ended their friendship over Lewis having Santa make an appearance in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe because Tolkein hated it so fucking much.

Wait why did Tolkein hate Santa being in that story why does Tolkein hate Santa ;-;

Probably didn’t get the pony/smaug plush he wanted

“that bearded bastard didn’t bring me a plush dragon”

“Please calm down…”

“HE’S A FRAUD”

hi i’m tolkien here are my ocs. i call them Elves (not elfs!!! if you call them elfs i will block you) they look like humans but they’re tall, live forever, and have pointy ears. that’s it bye

cs lewis: are you alright with constructive criticism? i dont want to sound mean

tolkien: no go ahead i want to hear it

cs lewis: they fucking suck

tolkien: thats not constructive criticism

cs lewis: here’s my OC, it’s jesus but he’s a lion tolkien: Furry cs lewis: blocked

Tolkien: lamp posts don’t exist in fantasy worlds Cs Lewis: ok you know what fuck you

CS Lewis: I could beta for you if you want. help you trim the fat on your stories

Tolkien: what do you mean

CS Lewis: I just. you describe a lot of trees.  are trees that important

Tolkien: just you fucking wait. trees are SO important.

~and that day, Tolkien invented ents~

@urulokid

CS Lewis: Not more trees.

Tolkien: This one’s based on you.

Level of spite: C. S. Lewis putting a lamp post in Narnia (and making it a minor plot point in at least two of his books) just because Tolkien insisted no true fantasy series would have a lamp in it.

If your salt levels haven’t reached CS Lewis, you’re not doing it right.