i'm updating a few book things, will be sending out notices on the substack: substack.com/@writercsjohnso…

this year for Halloween i'm going to pass out copies of my kids' books instead of treats it's healthier for them all the way and i get to act like an annoying bible-thumper AND self-promoer

if there is only one reason to hate the IronBoy/MCU/AgazingSM movies, it's because we were absolutely spoiled by Rosemary Harris' Aunt May The others were disgraceful and irreverent

If Vivek wins the OH seat, we should send him a collector's edition of Saved by the Bell If he loses, the Saved by the Bell cast should join him on SNL to make him feel more included or should it be the other way around?

if you missed it:

the muslims can restore constantinople then

both my kids know who Tyndale is, and thank God we got the Bible or the church would follow this heresy blindly

this is how it ends, but it's also how it is reborn i regularly push the loose carts back at my local store. saw someone else doing the same thing today there's a difference between losing a battle and surrender ... and the smallest acts can still make the biggest differences

You've waited for a while, but we've decided to move our brand new horror anthology book, "Reapers In Pursuit"to Kickstarter. Sign up for the prelaunch for our brand new horror anthology book now! @LadyAliBooks @writercsjohnson

just tell john to show up with some bacon and a pig at his side, he'll be fine

nearly all of hollywood hates their parents some of it is justified, but their hate ruined any father/mother figure on screen for my generation. thankfully my kids will not watch it so it'll likely be reconned when the zoomers/alphas take over, or it'll just die out entirely

Netflix really should stop doing this stuff. Do you know how many data centers we are going to need to dry up lakes and rivers so we can edit their crap in a more book-faithful way? it's a shame netflix hates nature

Some of my work, in case you're interested, my commissions are open and I also do traditional art and interiors.

sign up for my substack to hear about Dizchord #4's release: substack.com/@writercsjohnso…

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.

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