Before the movie of PC came out, I re-read the book, and it squarely hit a button I had recently formed because of the game I was running. (Memento, the game that gave rise to the Onyx Court books.) Bear with me while I give some background; I promise I'll get back to Narnia.
Memento was a Changeling game, and in Changeling, humans can't see faerie things unless they're enchanted; also, once the enchantment ends, they forget most of what they saw. But fae-blooded humans can have faerie gifts, and so when I was making Nicholas Merriman, the last scion of a family that had been helping the faeries for hundreds of years, I gave him the gift that lets you remember everything from while you were enchanted.
Not until later did it occur to me what a hideously cruel thing I had done to Nicholas. The characters enchanted him several times -- which was tantamount to taking him to Oz or Narnia for a few days, where everything is more colorful and magical and amazing, and then kicking him out again. Leaving him with a perfect recollection of what he had lost, the wonder all around him . . . that he was incapable of seeing for himself.
So when I re-read PC, I instantly thought about what that would do to the Pevensies, and Susan in particular. It made me so very happy that the film brought it up explicitly, with Lucy asking Susan if she isn't happy to be back, and Susan saying yes . . . but how long will it last? Because I'm with you: after how much the characters go on about the simultaneously numinous and real feeling of Narnia, the idea that pulling the plug doesn't scar them forever is just impossible for me to believe. The movie also flat-out changes the reason Peter and Susan don't come back, in my opinion for the philosophical better; how horrible would it be to hear it's just because you're too old? (Especially when you became an adult in Narnia, before getting demoted to childhood once more?)
If I ever write my "problem of Susan" story, that experience is going to be at the heart of it.
I'd love to hear the stuff in your last graf, both the Reepicheep and Rowling parts.
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Memento was a Changeling game, and in Changeling, humans can't see faerie things unless they're enchanted; also, once the enchantment ends, they forget most of what they saw. But fae-blooded humans can have faerie gifts, and so when I was making Nicholas Merriman, the last scion of a family that had been helping the faeries for hundreds of years, I gave him the gift that lets you remember everything from while you were enchanted.
Not until later did it occur to me what a hideously cruel thing I had done to Nicholas. The characters enchanted him several times -- which was tantamount to taking him to Oz or Narnia for a few days, where everything is more colorful and magical and amazing, and then kicking him out again. Leaving him with a perfect recollection of what he had lost, the wonder all around him . . . that he was incapable of seeing for himself.
So when I re-read PC, I instantly thought about what that would do to the Pevensies, and Susan in particular. It made me so very happy that the film brought it up explicitly, with Lucy asking Susan if she isn't happy to be back, and Susan saying yes . . . but how long will it last? Because I'm with you: after how much the characters go on about the simultaneously numinous and real feeling of Narnia, the idea that pulling the plug doesn't scar them forever is just impossible for me to believe. The movie also flat-out changes the reason Peter and Susan don't come back, in my opinion for the philosophical better; how horrible would it be to hear it's just because you're too old? (Especially when you became an adult in Narnia, before getting demoted to childhood once more?)
If I ever write my "problem of Susan" story, that experience is going to be at the heart of it.
I'd love to hear the stuff in your last graf, both the Reepicheep and Rowling parts.