mama bear

home is where the heart is.

[mama bear @neojool]

@mandalynns23 @lowerlightburn Check it yourself with an online test and a pair of headphones then, because it could be just one ear.

[mama bear @neojool]

@LadyAliBooks Deathwork.

[mama bear @neojool]

@CBR Deathwork.

[mama bear @neojool]

@CecilG90112976 @Aliceingeoland What did they do?

[mama bear @neojool]

@EkoLovesYou Amazing post, instant follow.

[EKO @EkoLovesYou]

They changed Aslan's voice, which is what the ape did.

Netflix's The Magician's Nephew moves C.S. Lewis's story from 1900 London into 1950s glam rock Britain. They gave Aslan a red-striped face and multicolored eyes, which director Greta Gerwig says was inspired by David Bowie, and the lion speaks in Meryl Streep's voice.

In The Last Battle, Puzzle did all the work. He carried the water and hauled the loads and said of course, Shift, of course. When something yellow came over the waterfall into Caldron Pool, Puzzle went in after it. The water nearly killed him. He came out half-drowned and bruised, dragging a lion's skin the size of a hearthrug.

Puzzle wanted to bury it. Lions are solemn, he said, "because of you know Who."

Shift just called it a winter coat. He sent the donkey downriver to a market that had no oranges. Alone, he got out a needle and thick thread and a big pair of scissors. He cut the body short. He sewed a long collar for a long neck. He put ties under the belly. Every now and then a bird passed overhead and he stopped his work and watched it, because he did not want anyone to see what he was doing.

Puzzle wore the costume, but Shift was the engineer.

Every generation puts a new skin on the old stories. Totally normal. But lately the new skin keeps the old face and sews in a new mouth. The story you were raised on comes back wearing its own face.

Lewis opened his last Narnia book with this test..

"A good deal of Puzzle's grey nose and face could be seen through the open mouth of the lion's head. No one who had ever seen a real lion would have been taken in for a moment. But if someone who had never seen a lion looked at Puzzle in his lionskin, he just might mistake him for a lion, if he didn't come too close, and if the light was not too good, and if Puzzle didn't let out a bray and didn't make any noise with his hoofs."

A costume only works on somebody who has never seen the real thing.

A skin holds up from far away, on a screen, in a trailer. Up close, in the pages, the stitches show. Every costume looks better in the dark, so hold the new version next to the old book in daylight. The disguise dies the moment the creature opens its mouth. Lewis's lion sings a world into being.

Gerwig told christian media critic Ted Baehr a year and a half ago that she loved the old 1979 cartoon. Now she has swapped the mouth of the one who sings the world. Wait and hear what the new one sings.

When Puzzle finds his conscience and asks what will become of them if the real Aslan turns up, Shift says he never does turn up, not nowadays. At that exact moment the sky answers with a thunderclap. The ground trembles. Puzzle hears a warning. Shift, whose mind works very quickly, hears permission. He tells the donkey he was just going to say the thunder was the sign they were waiting for. The objection gets sewn into the costume.

Every single no from heaven gets tailored into a yes.

And that's the needle still in the ape's hand.

Notice who Lewis refused to mock in the story. Puzzle isn't the villain. He's cold and tired, and a voice he trusts keeps telling him he isn't clever. Lewis saved his anger for the ape with the scissors and gives the donkey mercy. So if people we love get swept up by the trailer, they are not the enemy. The film itself may be lovely. We'll judge it the way Lewis taught us, up close and in good light. Nobody gets taken in because they are stupid. They get taken in because nobody ever walked them up to the real lion.

The enemy has never made anything.

He wears. He puts on light, he puts on scripture, he puts on a lion's skin. Lewis was writing about what the war looks like when it comes for the children. That part belongs to us. The answer to a dressed-up story has always been familiarity.

So read the real books. Read them out loud to the kids in your life until the real lion's voice lives in their ears. Kids who walk with Aslan thru seven books can't be sold a donkey in a skin, at any distance, in any light.

The movie comes out next year but the war is older than any calendar, and it's always been a fight over who speaks in the lion's voice.

[mama bear @neojool]

I really hate everything about the new Narnia movie. My beloved story, desecrated.

[Brandon Lansdown @BrandonLansdown]

My dear Wormwood,

You still think in terms of churches and arguments. That is why you fail. The churches can be left standing. What must be spoiled is the literature that taught the young to love the Enemy before they could define Him.

Narnia is one of the more irritating of those books. Children meet Aslan first as adventure and only later discover they have been handling Christ. That is dangerous. Direct attack only makes the stories more precious. So we do not ban them. We adapt them.

Give the Voice to a so-called celebrated actress. Leave the mane. Leave the pronouns. Then the thing that was a male Christ-supposition becomes a prestige performance. The story remains famous; the meaning becomes negotiable. In a generation the story will still be beloved, but the beloved thing will no longer be Lewis’s Lion. It will be the version that flatters the age.

That is how the Enemies literature is destroyed without the vulgarity of a bonfire. Keep the title. Change the sound. When the children hear Aslan, let them hear the present century speaking through Him. Once that habit is formed, the Enemies stories survive as brands. Their doctrine does not.

Do not call it persecution. Call it interpretation. The patients prefer that word, and it does our work admirably.

Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE

[mama bear @neojool]

@Seth_Troutt Wow bro, I literally teared up reading this. What a profound moment for a young man!

[mama bear @neojool]

Literally how is that woman allowed to just piss all over the Narnia story by making Aslan a woman? Is there no oversight? Surely someone had to sell her the rights. Can't it be revoked?

[mama bear @neojool]

@TwitAI_censor @AvidCommentator The laundry, home gym, couple racks of storage for tools, mowers, Christmas tree, sports equipment, etc. Just the usual.

[mama bear @neojool]

@officialvegod Y'all just need to go home and the sentiment would change. We don't want you in our countries. Simple as.

[mama bear @neojool]

@VitaCatholica I'm so sorry! 😢 You will meet again..

[mama bear @neojool]

@homemakinghunny Hahahaha no, no advice, this was the worst phase! My little guy had the worst FOMO, low sleep needs, idk. Just would not nap. He's at kindy age now and other kids there are napping in the afternoon, but my little guy powers through lol.

[mama bear @neojool]

@neqyve @skinthent @constans Bruh, they didn't "cut it", it was happening for literally ages before anyone realised what it was. Please just stop. You literally don't know wtf you're talking about. We saw people jumping.. LIVE.

[mama bear @neojool]

@neqyve @PNW_Shane @constans You literally don't know wtf you're talking about. Just stop.

[mama bear @neojool]

@uppityhobbit My boy asks me to sing a song to him for bedtime every single day. But if I do it outside of bed time, it's hand over mouth. hahaa

[mama bear @neojool]

@davidrazi @GamingAndPandas Literally. I stepped off the school bus and the newsagent had massive signs out the front with headlines saying, "WORLD WAR III". It was the day of all days.

[mama bear @neojool]

@MegsJTM @TomFoins This is exactly what we do with my kid. They were trying to get him to have a quiet rest while the others slept, but it's ok, he can just have a rest at home.

[mama bear @neojool]

@tramfaggot But it's full of Indians