#orual

[tomato-bird-art]

Why must holy spaces always be dark spaces?

(I reread Til We Have Faces and it is up there as one of my favorite books still…)

[rayless-reblogs]

All the Till We Have Faces reblogs reminded me of this exquisite duet by Tracy Grammer and Joan Baez, sung from the perspective of the tortured queen Orual, longing for her lost sister.

She in her silken flora I in my leather drear She with the grace of Cora Upon the road of tears

And did they see us shining Through winter’s dark decree Those gods of time and dying Who reasoned doom to me

[daily-rayless]

Orual the veiled queen from Till We Have Faces.

I've wanted to do a companion picture to my Psyche for a while. While Psyche is intriguing as an ideal, I think Orual is one of CS Lewis' most ambitious and psychologically authentic characters. An antagonist who's poignantly sympathetic, a protagonist who's frustratingly weak -- protective and powerful, self-deluding and dependent, deeply loving and endlessly devouring, mythically heroic yet the reader will see many of their own failures in her.

Lewis gets grief for some of his female characters, but with the help of his wife Joy Davidman (who was an actual genius, by the way, and doesn't deserve to exist in Lewis' shadow), Orual feels so believable to me. Faces isn't an easy book to read (and definitely isn't for kids), but I think it's fascinating, and Orual's a big part of that.

[anonymous-witness777]

ok for a moment there I was like "hmm not relatable ig" and then I remembered that one of my favorite books is Til We Have Faces. lol

if you're not obsessed with a fucked up female character i hope that changes for you soon. becoming obsessed with a genuinely deranged fictional woman will change your life.

[babu-s]

Doesn't the whole land smell of her? Do you and I need to flatter gods any more? They're tearing us apart... oh, how shall I bear it? … and what worse can they do? Of course the Fox is wrong. He knows nothing about her. He thought too well of the world. He thought there were no gods, or else (the fool!) that they were better than men. It never entered his mind – he was too good – to believe that the gods are real, and viler than the vilest men.

Till we have faces - C.S. Lewis

[dimsilver]

over the garden wall / till we have faces by c.s. lewis

[idontwantrobyntodie]

ugly women in fiction. i love u.

[bitterbareface]

"Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood."

"I say the gods dealy very unrightly with us. For they will neither (which would be best of all) go away and leave us to live our own short days to ourselves, nor will they show themselves openly and tell us what they would have us do. For that too would be endurable. But to hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper (words we cannot understand) in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another; what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman's buff, and mere juglery? Why must holy places be dark places?"

"Then I looked at Ungit herself. She had not, like most sacred stones, fallen from the sky. The story was that at the very beginning she had pushed her way up out of the earth--a foretaste of, or an ambassador from, whatever things may live and work down there one below the heat. I have said she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces. For she was very uneven, lumpy and furrowed, so that, as when we gaze into a fire, you could always see some face or other. She was now more rugged than ever because of all the blood they had poured over her in the night. In the little clots and chains of it I made out a face; a fancy at one moment, but then, once you had seen it, not to be evaded. A face such as you might see in a loaf, swollen, brooding, infinitely female."

"Do not do it," said the god. "You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also. Die before you die. There is no chance after."

"The Priest has been with me. I never knew him before. He is not what the Fox thinks. Do you know, Sister, I have come to feel more and more that the Fox hasn’t the whole truth. Oh, he has much of it. It’d be dark as a dungeon within me but for his teaching. And yet… I can’t say it properly. He calls the whole world a city. But what’s a city built on? There’s earth beneath. And outside the wall? Doesn’t all the food come from there as well as all the dangers?… things growing and rotting, strengthening and poisoning, things shining wet… in one way (I don’t know which way) more like, yes, even more like the House of [Ungit]."

some other Till We Have Faces quotes that go with this, I think, a year too late

there’s some sort of pipeline between the “Holy places are dark places” quote from Till We Have Faces and the “Hope has dirt on her face… and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go” quote that circles around here, I just haven’t fully connected the two dots yet

[sailermoon]

orual who has never been desired. orual who has always lived in the shadows of her sisters beauty . orual who-

[geryone]

wait omg those are EXCELLENT recs, may i pls request your recommendations for books and poetry that would make someone feel held & whole, or listened to - texts that say, "cunts have always been in power; i know them well, and flourished anyway." or texts that encourage & validate after a great injustice. literary equivalents of, "that's fucked up. i hate your boss. let's be enraged or stubbornly joyful together." without necessarily being explicit about it. i hope i've translated the vibe of what i'm looking for!!

Hello!!

For poetry that makes you feel held & whole & listened to I would recommend:

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a greathouse

Water I Won’t Touch by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Beast at Every Threshold by Natalie Wee

Also recommend the essay collection A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt!

For texts that encourage & validate:

Any poetry by Ada Limón or Hanif Abdurraqib!!

The closest novel I can think of to what you might be looking for is Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis which might be hit or miss for you!! That novel changed me and made me feel so validated but I can’t promise it will do that for you

[vinca-majors]

oooh how about U or X for the fic writer’s meme, please

U: Is there a pairing you would like to write, but haven't tried yet.

i don't know if it counts exactly but there's a lois/clark piece i started writing years ago and love with all my heart and have never been able to make much progress on. there are quite a few fairy tales i've always wanted to give an AU spin to - bluebeard and king thrushbeard particularly, but inspiration is fickle.

X: How would you categorize your fanfic reading? Are you a voracious reader? Do you carefully pick and choose? Something in between?

i consistently fall into the trap of getting into bed and thinking i'll just read a little bit of fic :) to wind down the day :) and then get sucked into a 85k-er and am still there fighting sleep at 2 AM. sometimes i read fic multiple nights in a row but i'll go weeks without opening ao3 too, especially if i'm in a irl book reading mood. the ideal fic is an 7-15k romance with substance, no archive warnings apply, opposites attract, credible conflict without melodrama or schmaltz, solid HEA. i'm always on the hunt but i feel like i've exhausted the ao3 stores where these sorts of fics are concerned and all that's left is the fluff and weird stuff. currently accepting recommendations!!!

[brokemylegflippingthefirewall]

I keep saying this book is a perfect trans allegory and here it is

“Her hands burned me (a painless burning) when they met mine. The air that came from her clothes and limbs and hair was wild and sweet; youth seemed to come into my breast as I breathed it. And yet (this is hard to say) with all this, even because of all this, she was the old Psyche still; a thousand times more her very self than she had been before the Offering. For all that had then but flashed out in a glance or a gesture, all that once meant most when one spoke her name, was now wholly present, not to be gathered up from hints nor in shreds, not some of it in one moment and some in another. Goddess? I had never seen a real woman before.”

— Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, painting the clearest picture of glorification I have ever seen in print

[hobbitwrangler]

Thank you @swanmaids @imakemywings & @aredhels for tagging me!

Rules: make a poll with five of your all-time favorite characters and then tag five people to do the same. see which character is everyone’s favorite.

I have far too many favourite characters but these are the ones that have been on my mind most recently.

tagging @scyllas-revenge @searchingforserendipity25 @glorf1ndel @lotrlorien @starsuncounted want to do this and haven't already!

[siena-sevenwits]

"I was with book, as a woman is with child."

- Orual, in Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

[fairtradebananas]

I’m reading Till We Have Faces for the nth time and always noticing and pondering new things. This time, how Orual’s complaint against the gods is based on the notion that they unjustly withhold goodness from her (a good father, a good sister, beauty, etc), while at the same time she’s blind to the gifts they’ve given her that actually answer all of those complaints (the Fox to replace her father, Psyche to replace Redival, the opportunity to behold true beauty rather than possess it). Her complaint eclipses her ability to see the blessings she is constantly being given because they’re not given in the way that she wants them

[idontwantrobyntodie]

The amount of time it took for me to realize this is a chess allegory is frankly embarrassing