I do not understand all of this poo-pooing of Narnia by my fellow godless bastards. I haven’t seen the movie, and I haven’t read the books since I was a kid. But I was a precocious young atheist (thanks Bertrand Russell, Douglas Adams, George H. Smith, Erich von Daniken), and I was fully aware of the preachy Christian allegory way back then. At the time I found it mildly irritating at certain points. And I guess that, admittedly, some of the Aslan shit was semi heave-inducing (deus ex felina — I am particularly fond of this description), and I probably didn’t catch all of the apologist crapola at that age (although I do recall my bullshit detector going off often enough). But generally it wasn’t wincingly noticeable without searching for it, or terribly relevant to the plot as a whole. Vague references in fiction to other fiction… meh. Whatever. If I’m going to suspend my disbelief, I might as well suspend my tendency to hyper-criticize as well. I suppose. Save that shit up for bullshitting hardcore on university papers. All writing, especially fiction, (but especially non-fiction) embodies the bias of its author. I can overlook it, sometimes. If I’m not busy being cantankerous. And despite it all, the series remains one of only two pieces of fantasy writing that I can tolerate to any degree (the other is The Lord of the Rings). So suck it. C.S. Lewis is still the awesome.

Now. More nog! And chocolate!