When The Lion Called: Eight Years On

Eight years ago, on 26 November 2006, I nervously clicked on the "register" button for the online forum of a website called The Lion's Call, little knowing that it would change my life. I was fairly new to the world of the internet, my family having only gotten a dial-up connection at home in the January of that year. This was before the days of Facebook (at least it hadn't yet become a "thing", although MySpace was popular with my friends) and I was highly suspicious of signing up to anything that required giving out email addresses and other details. But this website, which I had been browsing recently, seemed like a friendly and safe site and it made clear that it was a Christian site and there were strict rules about minors being allowed to join and what could and could not be posted. I decided to risk it. In retrospect, I was a bit like Lucy Pevensie, taking those first cautious steps through the wardrobe into a woodland of snow and a great adventure.

The Lion's Call website (TLC) was created by Kristi Simonson for fans of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series and, apart from the discussion forum (which was what I was signing up to join) it had other interesting features including a character builder, some simple games, and write-in threads like "you know you're addicted to Narnia when...". The forum in those days was small and mainly involved discussions relating directly to the Chronicles of Narnia books, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe film (which had been released just less than a year before) and speculations about the Prince Caspian film that would follow it. I think the first thing I ever posted on the forum was a comment on a discussion about what became of Susan Pevensie after the events of The Last Battle, something I had been thinking about a bit in the last year. The ideas I had had about that became the germ of my (still ongoing) fan fiction story about Susan, which one of the TLCers was to convince me to start four years later. After joining the forum, it became a regular ritual to visit the site when I got a chance and read and comment on the latest discussions.

In February of the following year, I started University and I would often visit TLC when I was dropped off early in the mornings before the library had opened and the computer LANs were not yet busy (few people had their own laptops in those days). As the years passed, the website grew, and the forum became larger and more active. We found that many members had more in common than just our interest in Narnia and we started discussions on other topics including other fantasy worlds (especially Tolkien and Middle Earth) and faith and religion. We also had many members who were budding writers of fiction or poetry and so forum threads started on discussing writing, and people would share whatever they were working on. The site developed well beyond Narnia and became a real community where people felt safe sharing even personal issues.

I had known from the start that the site also had a chat room, but I never went anywhere near that part of it. Chat rooms were dangerous and "evil"; my parents wouldn't approve and you weren't allowed visiting chat rooms on the university computers in any case.

But then in December 2010, four years after I joined, there were posts on the forum about a planned Day of Prayer to be held in the website's chat room. Enough things had changed by this point that I felt confident enough to venture into the chat room to join the prayer session: and by now I knew that I could trust the people on the site. Also, earlier that year we had finally upgraded to broadband internet at home and I now had my own netbook computer. I was also a whole lot older and (theoretically, at least) two degrees wiser.

Joining chat opened up a whole new chapter in my life. These people with whom I had only communicated remotely (by reading and responding to forum posts, often overnight, because of time differences) I could now "chat with" (using text) in real time. I also hadn't realised, but in the last year or so more and more of the discussions had moved over from the forum to the chat room (which would explain why the forum had become more quiet than it had been). More importantly, I got to know the other members on the site at a deeper level because we could ask and respond to more personal questions in a less formal and less public setting.

I joined TLC chat at a critical period of my life. I had been applying for scholarships to Oxford and the TLC community had played a large part in encouraging me through that process and praying for me (even before I joined chat). Being the shy, reserved person I am, this online community gave me a safe place to share my concerns and struggles (I had always been better at articulating my thoughts in writing than in speech).

In June 2011, I joined Facebook for the first time. By now, it had been confirmed that I was going to Oxford, and I wanted to be able to keep contact with my friends and family in South Africa. By this time, TLC, had developed something of a presence on Facebook as well and through that and private messages I became Facebook friends with some of the TLCers (cautiously, and only with those I trusted, because on TLC itself we were encouraged not to divulge private details). And for the first time the window was opened onto the "real lives" of many of my TLC friends - I got to learn their real names, see what they really looked like and learn a bit more about their lives outside of TLC.

Picture by Lily of Archenland

When I moved to Oxford, I was privileged to meet two TLCers in real life: a British girl, and an American lady, who was visiting the UK with her husband. I got to stay at the home of the British girl on a number of occasions and we have since become good friends.

It's impossible to describe all the things that have happened in these past eight years, but I wouldn't have missed them for the world. I am now a staff member on the website and editor for our news team. The social, spiritual and intellectual blessings gained from being part of the TLC community is something that can't be measured. I am eternally grateful that I clicked on that "register button" all those years ago.

Days 4 (Inspiration) & 9 (Current Project)

 Lèrowen's blog: Eat...Sleep...Write

This is the third time I am restarting this post from scratch (I feel a bit like Tolkien trying to write the first chapter of Rings, though of course his project was a whole lot more significant).

I figured since my "Susan Fic" is my first serious/intentional piece of writing, I should include these two days' questions together. I thought I would discuss the influences and motivation behind this, "my current writing project". For the most part, however, this post discusses why and how I got started on this project in the first place.

Background
For those who don't know, my "Susan Fic" is about Susan Pevensie from CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, meaning CS Lewis is my main inspiration for this story. I've already discussed my introductions to Narnia in Day 2. In 2005 (my Grade 12 year) I read the complete Narnia series for the second time. It started in the July holidays when I took the Afrikaans translations of LWW and MN with me on my family trip to Namibia (I knew I wouldn't have much time to study for Matric trials finals that holiday, so by reading some Afrikaans I felt that at least I was doing something constructive and beneficial towards those exams). I went on to read the rest of the books (mainly in English as only the first 4 have been translated) throughout the year. The first Walden Narnia movie (LWW) came out that Christmas.

With Narnia still fresh in my mind, that December I read a Christian book: Harry Potter, Narnia and The Lord of the Rings (what you need to know about fantasy books and movies) by Richard Abanes. I was struck in one section where he quotes Philip Pullman (author of His Dark Materials, who has on occasion been referred to as the "Anti-Lewis") as complaining that "one girl was sent to hell because she was getting interested in clothes and boys."

For those not familiar with the story, The final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, ends with all the heroes of the previous books finding themselves, to all appearances in Narnia once again. And yet they realise that this is not Narnia (not the Narnia they know). Everything is bigger, more colourful and more "real". They discover that they are actually in Aslan's Country, and that the Narnia they had all known was really just a shadow of the Real Narnia they were in now (a concept undoubtedly inspired by Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas). All the Narnians who found themselves now in Aslan's country were there because the old Narnia had been destroyed. The people from our world, however, (called in this book "The Seven Friends of Narnia") had come into Aslan's Country by another route.

Lucy, Eustace, Jill, Digory and Polly had been travelling on a train (the older ones accompanying Eustace and Jill to school). Edmund and Peter were waiting for them at a train station. As the train rounded a corner near the station, it was coming around too fast. It derailed or toppled or something, causing a massive accident. All of them had died in this accident and now found themselves in Aslan's Country, which it turns out, is in fact our Heaven.

Susan was not involved in the accident however. She had rejected Narnia as she entered her teenage years and no longer even acknowledged it as a real place where she and her siblings had ruled as Kings and Queens.  Jill says that she is "interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations". One can see where Pullman's criticism is coming from, since Aslan's Country is portrayed as such  beautiful place, and she is not allowed to share in it. But he has completely missed the whole point that Lewis is trying to make in this story.

Most of all he makes an assumption that should not be made. Just because Susan does not join her siblings in Aslan's Country at this point in time, it does not mean she is going instead to hell. On the contrary, she does not die in the train crash. She is still very much alive in our world and has an entire life still ahead of her.

In light of Pullman's comment and with the knowledge I had of the story, an idea began to take shape in my mind. There was a little "escape route" that Lewis had left and I thought of a story which could be written to explain how Susan might have turned back towards believing in Narnia and in Aslan and in the One he represents in our world.

The Seed Lies Dormant
So I had this idea, but I felt I had neither the time nor the ability nor the motive to write it. I didn't see myself as an author, and I knew that for copyright reasons should I ever be able to write my idea into a full story, it could never be published. So I filed it away in my memory.

It was at about that time that my family first got an internet connection, so I was almost completely ignorant of the world of internet and the possibilities it contained. About a year later, I discovered TLC, a forum for fans of Narnia, and mentioned my suggestion in one of the threads there about "What happened to Susan". I discovered that I was not the only one who had thought about this question, and not the only one to suggest (or at least hope) that she somehow found her way back and went to Aslan's Country with the rest of her family and friends when she died.

I also discovered the "genre" of Fan Fiction, a concept hitherto unknown to me. I discovered that many people would write pieces inspired by Narnia, not for profit, but simply for the love and fun of it. I discovered many people had already written various fan fiction pieces about Susan and what might have happened to bring her back to believing in the things she had rejected.

But I never did anything about this new-found knowledge. I had neither the time nor patience to work out my idea. And now that I knew so many had already written on the topic before, I wasn't so sure it would be a good idea.

The Seed Spouts
Then in January this year, as the summer holiday was drawing on, but university had not yet started, I was chatting to Geoffrey F at TLC. I complained that the holidays were dragging and I felt I needed to do something constructive. He suggested writing something, and I mentioned the idea I had for a "Susan Fic". He encouraged me to go ahead with it. That is how it began.

Although CS Lewis was my inspiration for my fiction, in terms of the characters, the initial story and the general direction, I would be lying if I said he influenced my writing style. I have great admiration for Lewis' writing style. He has a gift for moulding words and language that I could never hope to emulate. Some minor influences may have filtered through from him (or any of the other authors I spend time reading), but I wouldn't say any one has consciously influenced my writing.

The story and characters on the other hand, are totally Lewis', at least to begin with. I have created many of my own additional characters and an additional world - but the core elements are his.

The inspiration I had all those years ago, the thing I called an "escape route" was this: In The Magician's Nephew, the second-to-last Narnia book Lewis wrote, he introduced the potential for many more worlds besides Narnia and our own world. In this book, Professor Kirke's crazy uncle creates rings which can take someone to a "world between all worlds" from which all the various worlds can be reached. He even has his heroes visiting a different world called Charn before finding their way into Narnia. At the end of this book, the rings are buried so as to never be used again.

In The Last Battle, Edmund and Peter are sent to dig up the burried rings. The friends of Narnia realise that Narnia is in trouble and decide to send Eustace and Jill back there to help them. The rings, however, are never used. Peter and Edmund were to hand them over at the train station where the accident took place. 

It occurred to me, therefore, that the rings would have been on Peter and/or Edmund's person when they died. If found, they would be passed on to Susan, their only surviving relative. She could use the rings to return not to Narnia itself (which is destroyed in The Last Battle), but to one of the countless other worlds which could be reached from the "Wood Between the Worlds". I thought to create a believable world in which Susan would have an adventure through which she might renew the faith she had lost.

That in essense was my idea. Of course, it turned out to be a lot harder than one would think. To begin with, the story was set in England. I had the idea of Susan staying with her Aunt and Uncle, Eustace's parents of whom we know a little from The Chronicles. Setting a book in London in the mid-20th century is rather difficult when you are familiar with neither the place nor the time. Thankfully I got much advice from Narnia Steward on TLC, who is at least familiar with the place if not the time.

After that, I had to invent my own world - which proved to be even more challenging. I wanted to come up with something unlike anything presented in the Chronicles. This was a little difficult considering that throughout The Chronicles adventures are set in woodlands, beaches, mountains, desserts, islands, marshes and snow-covered lands (among others).

I thought of creating a world in which the entire adventure happened under water (a sea-world), but realised that far too many complications would come of that. Eventually I decided to go for a "canyon/table land" type setting. This itself is challenging considering the only such place I have seen is Fish River Canyon in Namibia, and that only for a few hours one late afternoon (with the setting sun in our eyes). I'm getting through it somehow, but I'm sure there are a few major problems and inaccuracies in my setting. The most difficult part that I found is finding the correct terminology for the geological, geographical and biological environment in which it is set.

My next challenge (and one I'm still working on to some extent) is to find an appropriate adventure for Susan. I didn't want it to be cliché, and also didn't want to repeat anything that had happened in the previous Narnian books. This meant that defeating a cruel oppressor, returning the rightful ruler to their place and going on a sea voyage were all out of the question. I thought of a treasure hunt but that's one of the most cliché of all. While rereading one of my favourite books by Stephen Lawhead, I temporarily thought of having them rescue someone. Then I remembered - oh yes, that's what The Silver Chair is all about. I eventually settled on a hunt, but not one for treasure per se. It's not perfect (and I realise now a little too much like the end of The Magician's Nephew, though at least that isn't what the whole book is about), but it will have to do.

Wow, this turned out to be long. But I don't know how else to do it. I know its a little rambly, this post, but I am not rewriting it a fourth time - so there it is. Virtual chocolate prizes will be awarded to anyone who manages to read the entire thing ;-)

Linguistic Conundrums in Narnia

I promised myself I wouldn't get into the language issue in my Susan Fic, but try as I might, I have failed. How can I, in good conscience, motivate a new world that just "happens" to speak the same language as Susan Pevensie?

I thought I had a solution, but I've already hit a snag. My initial idea was to do what Lewis did, and ignore the question completely: the people (or animals) in this new world speak the same language as some kids from England? So what? Deal with it. Accept it. The story works.

I guess it does, but I'm not Lewis, and it's already starting to plague me.

Lewis (or perhaps some of his fans) have explained the situation in Narnia quite eloquently. The saving moments come from one of the last of the books written, The Magician's Nephew. In it we learn that Narnia was created in the presence of some English people: Digory, Polly, Unle Andrew and Frank the Cabby Driver (I won't deal with the question of  Jadis at the moment - after all, she was a witch ;-) ), and the Narnian animals became talking animals in their midst. It was convenient that Aslan would make them speak the same language as the visitors. The first King and Queen of Narnia were English too. Aslan was being practical. Problem solved.

But is it really? I recently had a discussion with some of my TLC friends about how it was that the other people-groups in the greater Narnian world also spoke English. The answer to this is given in Mr Lewis' proposed timeline, created after the completion of The Chronicles. In it we learn that the people of Archenland and Calormen are descendants of King Frank and Helen, the first rulers of Narnia. It is only logical, therefore, that their descendants also speak English. That solves that problem. (I have personal reservations about the fact that the Calormene culture so closely resembles aspects of Eastern cultures - Arabian, Turkish or Indian - as does their physical appearance. I'm not sure how this works if their their ancestry and language is purely English/Narnian. But maybe that's just me, and things can change drastically in 1 000 years. So, I won't make too much of a fuss about that issue).

Another question which arises is how it is that the Telmarines also speak English. We know they are descendants of pirates from our world and the natives of an island in the Southern Sea. The nationality of these pirates is unclear, and various suggestions have been made. The idea that they were Mediterranean, Spanish in particular, has been popular since the release of the Disney Prince Caspian film in 2008. Whatever their native tongue, the argument goes that they picked up English after conquering Narnia, since that was the language spoken there and in the surrounding lands. I wonder over such a suggestion, that the conquerors would pick up the language of their conquered (especially since the conquered included few men and mostly talking animals and other creatures with whom they would have very little to do). But such a situation is not completely unreasonable. It was, after all, the most wide- spread language in that eastern part of the world.

Okay, so here we have a few nice little arguments. All lined up, they explain why English was the language spoken by Narnians, Archenlanders, Calormenes and Telmarines. There I have no problem. But language is not that simple. And here I do have a problem.

Language is not static. It never has been. And despite various desperate attempts, it never will be. Every language has mutiple dialects. And as time passes, languages shift and change. The English language is divided into three time spans: Old English (also called "Anglo-Saxon"), Middle English (the language of Chaucer) and "Modern" English (the language from Shakespeare's time until today).

And one only needs to look at the language of Shakespeare to realise that it will not be long before people will accept that Shakespeare's English and that spoken by present day society is hardly the same language at all. Within the next generation I foresee a new category of English: Post-Modern? O.o (lets hope they coin a better name for it).

In sociolignuistics, we learn about two things that lead to the creation of dialects: geographical separation and societal seporation. Add to this temporal seporation and we have three important factors.

People that live in different places, different social groups and different times, (even those who started out speaking the "same" language) adapt their the way they speak to suit their needs. The further apart in space, society and time, the more different their speech becomes. This is why we have the phenomenon we call "dialects". And the longer and more distant the separation between groups that speak different dialects, the more different those varieties of the language become. Given enough separation and time, the dialects eventually loose their "mutual intelligibility". This is the ability of speakers of the one variety (dialect) to naturally understand speakers of the other.

One needs simply to look at the English of Britain and that of America (or Australia or South Africa or India etc.) to see evidence of dialectal differences. Thanks to global connexions brought about through modern technology, these dialects are still mutually intelligible. This is not the case for languages that started out as dialects of Latin. French, Spanish and Italian, though they bear some resemblance to each other, were once mutually intelligable dialects spoken by different groups. Separation has lead them to the point of diverstion they are at today.

So what does this have to do with Narnia? The answer is simple. While I can accept that Narnians first spoke the English of Digory and his companions, how do we explain that when the Pevensies arrived, the creatures of Narnia speak the exact same form of English, the same "dialect" they had spoken 1 000 years ago. That would be equivalent to discovering that, Chaucer's English was actually exactly like ours (and the stuff he wrote was him just having a bit of fun).

It's not possible. Even if we were to argue that language changed more slowly in Narnia, that the White Witch's presence kept language more static. Even an individual's language changes over their life-span. I'm pretty sure that hers would have changed a little in 1 000 years. Even if 1 000 years had passed in our world between the creation of Narnia and the Pevensie's visit, we would expect the English in Narnia to have diverged significantly from the way English had shifted in our world. But there is only one generation between the two visits of English children in Narnia. The English spoken by the Pevensies is not mouch different to that spoken by Digory and Polly or Frank and Helen. But how is it that Mr Tumnus and Mr and Mrs Beaver, speak the same form of English that their ancestors, the crow who was the "first joke" and "Fledge" spoke?

Taking this further, we would expect the Calormenes, living cut-off from Narnia during the 100 year winter, to speak yet another dialect of English. There is no evidence of this beyond slight "stylistic" peculiarities in their speech (and generally only their formal speech). There should be differences in vocabulary, semantics and even possibly grammar after all these years. The Telmarines, if they did speak another language and picked up English from their Narnian captives, should at least have had some affect on changing the language. Look what happened with the Norman invasion. Why don't we see a similar influence by Spannish or "Telmarinian" on the language of the Narnians? They would have at least contributed significantly to the vocabulary. After all English loves to pick up vocabulary from other languages.

And so I find myself in a pickle (no not a hedgepickle, but a linguistic pickle). Not only do I take issue with Lewis' explanations for the language in Narnia, but how in the world (or worlds) do I motivate that 20th Century English is also the language spoken the the world I created for my Susan Fic? There is probably some solution. I'm writing the story for fun, not as a serious writer, and so I could probably go back to my original plan and just "ignore the issue". It may require a few changes to my plot. The reason language is about to become important is because the creatures have a mysterious scroll Susan must interpret. I'll make a plan on that. But there you are. A puzzle indeed. Sometimes I wish I didn't "think" so much! ;-)

PS. CS Lewis is one of my favourite and most respected authors. He himself had an amazing intellect and a way with language that I could never emulate. He does much better justice to the language issue in his Sci-Fi trilogy. I know the Narnia stories were written for children, which is why he doesn't address complicated linguistic questions there. And these questions really take nothing away from the brilliancy of the stories. Some may wonder at all why I even bother to ask them at all. It's only because they interest me and are messing with my own writing. Selfish reasons completely.

Updates to my "projects"

Click on the link below to read updates on my "holiday projects" that I outlined at the start of winter. All comments are welcome.

Currently Working on...

Fanfiction Update

So in January I started writing my first ever fanfiction. I'm not much of a fiction writer, but Geoffrey F from TLC encouraged me to have a go. The story got put on hold for the semester, but now that I have some free time, I can work on it again.

The story tells of what happened to Susan Pevensie, after The Last Battle. This is the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Susan had abandoned Narnia, and refused to beleive that it was anything more than a game which she and her siblings had imagined. When the rest of her family and the other friends of Narnia are killed in a train crash, Susan is pared. This story tells of her quest for answers when she finds herself alone, bereft of her closest family and wondering if there was more to Narnia than she had been willing to remember.

Click here and scroll down to the last post to read my latest update.
Click here to read from the beginning.

All comments are welcome. If you are not a member of TLC, feel free to comment here on the blog.