Every time I read that post about doing things out of spite I remember that C. S. Lewis put that fucking street lamp in Narnia because Tolkien once said that no good fantasy story would have a lamp in it.
Also, in case anyone was curious, Lewis and Tolkien were like…strange bitter author buddies, and Tolkien complained about the heavy-handedness of Narnia’s Christian metaphor, and Lewis complained about EVERYTHING in LotR, basically, and they wrote each other into their stories. According to most reports, the man who carved the Wardrobe was heavily based on Tolkien, and in Middle-Earth C.S. Lewis became (wait for it) Treebeard. Which I imagine was a very interesting conversation.
“You’re the magician who builds a wardrobe leading to Narnia!” “You’re a thing called an Ent that shepherds trees and takes years to make a decision.” “….what the fuck.”
And as far as doing things for spite goes, I can think of at least two major plot points in LotR that only exist because Tolkien was bitter about Macbeth. My takeaway from this would be that if the only thing keeping you going is Sheer Undiluted Bitterness, you’re in good company.
