DVD Commentary Meme: PUSH.
Jul. 3rd, 2017 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafFor aris_tgd.
The whole fic is here.
Gloomily, Amy plodded down to the church the following Sunday afternoon. The noticeboard was odd; on the one hand it looked like a perfectly normal church noticeboard, if not of one she'd have gone to,
One of the themes of the story, and part of the way Amy resolves her problem with magic, is her discovery that there’s more than one kind of Christianity, and that she shouldn’t just assume that hers is the only correct kind. She is instinctively suspicious of anything that looks too catholic - and by her standards, St Dunstan’s certainly does.
but the details were weird.
And therefore I had a lot of fun coming up with said details! The format of the notice board is pretty standard Scottish or English Anglican:
S. Dunstan's, Hogsmeade, Scottish Episcopal Church, Diocese of Iona. Incumbent Fr. David Smethwick SCP, M.Thaum. (Witt.), M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.) it read,
Dunstan: is mentioned earlier in the fic as a wizarding saint. He was a distinguished and powerful churchman of the late 10th Century (at various times Abbot of Glastonbury, Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of Canterbury), a reformer of the monastic life, and a successful politician. He was clever, well educated, and a skilled silversmith (and, according to legend, once caught the devil with his tongs). He was accused of witchcraft by enemies at court; for the purposes of this fic, he was actually a Wizard though not a black magician. Abbreviating saint as S., rather than St., is a bit of a high church affectation, although it does handily signal what sort of church this is.
Scottish Episcopal Church: the Scottish sister of the Church of England (the Church of Scotland is an entirely separate, Presbyterian organisation). Popularly known as the ‘Piskies. Very small. More progressive than the C of E (it has just voted to allow same-sex marriage), and generally a bit more ‘high church’.
Iona: Some bloke once complained in the comments that the Diocese of Iona is not actually a diocese of SEC. This is true. In terms of the geography, I would guess that Hogsmeade is in the Diocese of Moray, Ross, and Caithness, but I have posited that SEC has a secret, non-geographically defined meta-diocese for the Magical world. There is some analogy to the provision of Provincial Visitors/ Alternative Episcopal Oversight for those unable to accept the ordination of women.
Which is to say, yes, there would have been a ‘flying bishops’ joke in there if there had been any way I had been able to make it plausible for someone to make it around Amy.
SCP: A real society of liberal/ progressive high-church/ catholically minded Anglican priests
M.Thaum. (Witt.). David’s first degree is in thaumaturgy, from the distinguished wizarding university in Wittenberg, famously home of Dr. Faust. I forget whether I nicked this idea off lareinoire or ninveh_uk. We learn later that David had good grades in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes; he’s pretty clever. Actually, what with one thing and another, David is a bit of a Gary Stu, but I still like him…
M.A., D.Phil. Oxon. Both of these are theology qualifications from the University of Oxford (I’m not sure where David fitted a D.Phil. in, but an illicit time turner may or may not have been involved). David trained for the priesthood under the Muggle system, as he explains later, so he did a theology degree in parallel with training focussed on pastoral and priestly skills. I suspect he went to St Stephen’s House (the most catholic, and decidedly camp) of the Oxford theological colleges/ seminaries rather than Cuddesdon, which is ‘middle of the road’ theologically and literally in the middle of nowhere. Though Apparition would be very useful if you lived there….
followed by a list of weekly services, Baptisms, weddings, funerals, confessions by arrangement (please avoid Mondays except in emergency).
because Monday is his day off (in the UK, at least, full-time for an Anglican priest means a six day week). This is a standard way of phrasing it, although I can’t imagine emergency weddings happen that often….
Below a poster advertised a service of blessing of broomsticks, and the Mothers' Union were having a speaker come to tell them about sewing spells (with prize for best charmed cauldron), while the Men's Group were going to hear about Arithmantic Principles of Change-Ringing. One sign appealed for donations for Christian Aid and another for a group of Anglican nuns teaching basic magic to AIDS orphans in Malawi, while a third informed her that a light burned for the church at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
A mixture of things a Wizard church might be doing, based on analogy with Muggle churches, and authentic Muggle-Anglican detail.
The Mother’s Union is a real organisation. Similarly, most SEC/ C of E churches have a Men’s Fellowship. Their meetings quite often seem to involve beer and/or steam trains, but I wanted something wizarding here.
Arithmantic principles of change-ringing: is a bit of a shout-out to Dorothy L Sayers, and also a mild joke about the incomprehensibility of change-ringing to non-ringers.
Christian Aid is a real development/ relief charity, set up in the aftermath of WWII to provide aid to refugees (of whatever faith or race), and a popular good cause in British churches.
I wanted a magic-related yet religious charity appeal, too, and I liked the idea of a magical order of nuns. The AIDS orphans are, of course, Muggleborns, and one imagines a very vulnerable group indeed.
A light… Walsingham: Walsingham was, and is again, a popular place of English pilgrimage - the shrine contains the ‘Holy House’, a miraculous replica of the house Jesus grew up in in Nazareth, built according to the directions of a woman called Richeldis who saw it in a vision, or so the story goes. The shrine was destroyed at the Reformation and restored by the vicar of Walsingham in the 1920s, and a growing pilgrimage developed. It is quite common for higher-church British churches to make a donation to the shrine; they are regularly remembered in prayer there, and they get a lamp named and lit for them in the shrine church. There’s a standard blue-and-white sign which you can hang up in your own church, though I couldn’t find a picture of one online. On reflection, I think it says “A lamp burns for this church in the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham”, not light, but never mind.
Amy stared at it, no longer quite sure which detail she found most bewildering or repellent,
Amy has come to faith in a very evangelical church, and there are several things on the sign which she is aware she ought to disapprove of - possibly without being able to explain why - even leaving the magical stuff out of it.
then, giving it up as a bad job, she walked into the porch, and put her hand on the latch.
The church was cool and surprisingly light, given that it was illuminated only by the grey daylight coming in through the south windows and by the candles on a chandelier, which a man in a cassock standing perilously on the top step of a stepladder was engaged in snuffing.
My college chaplain used to do this. I don’t know how he didn’t break his neck.
Would Amy actually know the word ‘cassock’? Probably not, but I didn’t think of it at the time, and I’m not sure ‘funny sort of dress thing’ would have improved the paragraph.
There was a strange sweet smell, not unpleasant, but heavy and unfamiliar.
The smell is, of course incense (probably “Basilica”), but Amy has never been in a church that uses it before.
The man, who was presumably Fr David Smethwick SCP and whatever the rest of it was, was tall and thin, though not quite tall enough for the job he was doing, and his rather untidy hair was snow white.
His hair has been turned white by his sufferings at the hands of the Death Eaters, a melodramatic touch which may have been unconsciously inspired by the (impossible) way Miss Wilson’s hair turns white overnight while fleeing Nazis in “The Chalet School in Exile.”
Amy stood there awkwardly, not wanting to startle him, but he looked down from what he was doing anyway. "Hullo, you must be Amy," he said, "I'll just snuff these, and then we can go through to the rectory."
"That looked awfully dangerous" she burst out, after he had climbed down. "You should get a longer ladder. Or – why don't you use magic?"
He darted a sidelong look at her,
Amy actually is warming up to the idea of magic, though she’s not yet admitted it to herself, and here we see that she’s started to take it for granted. She has a point about the ladder, too; Amy is fundamentally a lot more sensible than her current over-wrought behaviour and crisis of conscience might suggest.
and she saw with a start that though his hair was white, his face was quite young looking.
I don’t often have a strong mental image of characters - I couldn’t tell you Amy’s hair colour - but I do of David.
He was a lot younger than her father.
Goodness knows what that means in practice, given that Amy is eleven, and that she doesn’t know that wizards live longer than Muggles. I think he’s probably in his very late thirties, and probably not really much younger than her father, allowing for study, curacy, etc., but wizarding genetics are on his side.
"You're probably right about the ladder," he said "though there always seems to be more important things to worry about. But it's funny you should ask about magic.”
PASTORAL SKILLZ!
"No-one else seems to have a problem using it," she said, oddly reluctant, "other than me, I mean."
He laughed. "Yes, I've heard a bit about that; I expect that's why Professor McGonagall sent you down. I don't have anything against using magic, though, not normally. But I trained at a Muggle college and was a curate in a Muggle parish, and it just feels more natural to carry on as I learned. The Archdeacon thinks it's a bit pretentious, but I can't help feeling that it means more if I do things in the church by hand. Which the Archdeacon says is sentimental, and he's probably right, but there you go.”
One of the reasons I like David - and I hope this saves him somewhat from unremitting Stu-dom - is that he’s quite aware of his own foibles.
"You trained with Muggles? So there's no Bible colleges for wizards? So much for all that stuff people keep telling me about the wizarding world being full of Christians.”
Amy remains suspicious, and is on the look out for proof she’s been lied to. But nb she’s started referring to ‘Muggles’ without thinking about what she’s doing.
He shook his head. "No, it's not like that. It's just a matter of numbers. It doesn't make any sense for the wizard province to train its own priests, we haven't got enough parishes or enough vocations – well, we haven't got the population – and anyway, the priesthood's the priesthood, whether you're a wizard or a Muggle. We do a couple of extra seminars, because sometimes there are different pastoral issues, but other than that, it's exactly the same.
Did I spend too much time thinking about this? Almost certainly. Also, I doubt Amy actually understands all of this, given the wodge of Anglican jargon, but she’s pretty much all at sea anyway.
Mind you, there's other ways to do it. The Church of Scotland works like we do, but the RCs either train within the magical orders or send them to the Wizard College in Rome.
Yes, definitely spent too much time on it. There’s a Scots College and an English College (etc), why not a secret Wizard College? I continue to enjoy the idea of magical religious orders.
And I think some of the free church types go to separate colleges in the States.
Bit dismissive there, David!
But I think our way's better, though I did feel very out of my depths out there at first."
"You're not – Muggle-born?”
Amy’s assumption that David is Muggleborn is, again, a symptom of her difficulty in believing in wizard Christianity.
"Nah, I'm what they used to call pureblood, back in the bad old days. I expect I've got some Muggle tucked away somewhere, virtually everybody does, but my family's wizard as far back as anyone's ever traced.”
’Back in the day’? Which was, in fact, last year… Slight failure on my part to remember what year this is set in.
"And what do they think of you being a vicar?"
"I don't think they were much bothered one way or another… well, except for my irritating uncle Eustace who keeps telling me that with O's in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes I should have gone into banking and made my fortune, but I somehow suspect that that's not what you mean.
Eustace is, I’m afraid, an irresistible name for an Irritating Uncle.
I have good parents who say good parent-like things like 'we'll support you whatever you choose.'
This is a clunky sentence that I would rewrite now.
I come from a fairly religious family, actually. It's not like no-one in the Wizarding World goes to church. Wizards aren't very devout, as a bunch, but then neither are British Muggles. America's different, of course.”
I stand by this as quite plausible given canon
"But it doesn't make sense!" said Amy, almost crossly. "The Bible says you shouldn't let a witch live!'
"Fairly close to where it says that you shouldn't eat prawns or wear mixed fibres, if I remember correctly" said the vicar, dryly.
If I was writing this again, I’d probably do this bit slightly differently, as there is a slight undertone of implicit anti-semitism in the ‘but prawns!!!111!!’ argument, at least in its crude and unreconstructed form. On the other hand, it’s a quick way of getting the ‘contradictions in Scripture’ point across.
"And are you seriously suggesting that God wants your classmates dead? Or Professor McGonagall? Or me?”
Probably a more telling argument, in any case.
"Well… no.”
"Glad to hear it. And not just because of my selfish preference for being alive," he said, with a wry grin.
Amy thought of the story Pusey had told her, but only said, "But I don't think he wants you to do magic."
The vicar sighed, and folded the step ladder up. "I'll put it away, and then we can have some tea. Or would you prefer juice? And I've got some real, honest-to-goodness Muggle chocolate digestives. I got fond of them when I was at theological college.”
David likes chocolate digestives. He also realises, given how hard he found his first months living with Muggles, that part of Amy’s problem is that she’s homesick and disoriented.
"That would be lovely," said Amy, disarmed, "Anything. As long as it's not pumpkin juice."
I find it unlikely (a) that pumpkin juice is actually nice and (b) that Muggleborns, assuming they haven’t been systematically deprived of nice things like Harry, would take to it quickly.
aris_tgd. The whole fic is here.
Gloomily, Amy plodded down to the church the following Sunday afternoon. The noticeboard was odd; on the one hand it looked like a perfectly normal church noticeboard, if not of one she'd have gone to,
One of the themes of the story, and part of the way Amy resolves her problem with magic, is her discovery that there’s more than one kind of Christianity, and that she shouldn’t just assume that hers is the only correct kind. She is instinctively suspicious of anything that looks too catholic - and by her standards, St Dunstan’s certainly does.
but the details were weird.
And therefore I had a lot of fun coming up with said details! The format of the notice board is pretty standard Scottish or English Anglican:
S. Dunstan's, Hogsmeade, Scottish Episcopal Church, Diocese of Iona. Incumbent Fr. David Smethwick SCP, M.Thaum. (Witt.), M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.) it read,
Dunstan: is mentioned earlier in the fic as a wizarding saint. He was a distinguished and powerful churchman of the late 10th Century (at various times Abbot of Glastonbury, Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of Canterbury), a reformer of the monastic life, and a successful politician. He was clever, well educated, and a skilled silversmith (and, according to legend, once caught the devil with his tongs). He was accused of witchcraft by enemies at court; for the purposes of this fic, he was actually a Wizard though not a black magician. Abbreviating saint as S., rather than St., is a bit of a high church affectation, although it does handily signal what sort of church this is.
Scottish Episcopal Church: the Scottish sister of the Church of England (the Church of Scotland is an entirely separate, Presbyterian organisation). Popularly known as the ‘Piskies. Very small. More progressive than the C of E (it has just voted to allow same-sex marriage), and generally a bit more ‘high church’.
Iona: Some bloke once complained in the comments that the Diocese of Iona is not actually a diocese of SEC. This is true. In terms of the geography, I would guess that Hogsmeade is in the Diocese of Moray, Ross, and Caithness, but I have posited that SEC has a secret, non-geographically defined meta-diocese for the Magical world. There is some analogy to the provision of Provincial Visitors/ Alternative Episcopal Oversight for those unable to accept the ordination of women.
Which is to say, yes, there would have been a ‘flying bishops’ joke in there if there had been any way I had been able to make it plausible for someone to make it around Amy.
SCP: A real society of liberal/ progressive high-church/ catholically minded Anglican priests
M.Thaum. (Witt.). David’s first degree is in thaumaturgy, from the distinguished wizarding university in Wittenberg, famously home of Dr. Faust. I forget whether I nicked this idea off lareinoire or ninveh_uk. We learn later that David had good grades in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes; he’s pretty clever. Actually, what with one thing and another, David is a bit of a Gary Stu, but I still like him…
M.A., D.Phil. Oxon. Both of these are theology qualifications from the University of Oxford (I’m not sure where David fitted a D.Phil. in, but an illicit time turner may or may not have been involved). David trained for the priesthood under the Muggle system, as he explains later, so he did a theology degree in parallel with training focussed on pastoral and priestly skills. I suspect he went to St Stephen’s House (the most catholic, and decidedly camp) of the Oxford theological colleges/ seminaries rather than Cuddesdon, which is ‘middle of the road’ theologically and literally in the middle of nowhere. Though Apparition would be very useful if you lived there….
followed by a list of weekly services, Baptisms, weddings, funerals, confessions by arrangement (please avoid Mondays except in emergency).
because Monday is his day off (in the UK, at least, full-time for an Anglican priest means a six day week). This is a standard way of phrasing it, although I can’t imagine emergency weddings happen that often….
Below a poster advertised a service of blessing of broomsticks, and the Mothers' Union were having a speaker come to tell them about sewing spells (with prize for best charmed cauldron), while the Men's Group were going to hear about Arithmantic Principles of Change-Ringing. One sign appealed for donations for Christian Aid and another for a group of Anglican nuns teaching basic magic to AIDS orphans in Malawi, while a third informed her that a light burned for the church at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
A mixture of things a Wizard church might be doing, based on analogy with Muggle churches, and authentic Muggle-Anglican detail.
The Mother’s Union is a real organisation. Similarly, most SEC/ C of E churches have a Men’s Fellowship. Their meetings quite often seem to involve beer and/or steam trains, but I wanted something wizarding here.
Arithmantic principles of change-ringing: is a bit of a shout-out to Dorothy L Sayers, and also a mild joke about the incomprehensibility of change-ringing to non-ringers.
Christian Aid is a real development/ relief charity, set up in the aftermath of WWII to provide aid to refugees (of whatever faith or race), and a popular good cause in British churches.
I wanted a magic-related yet religious charity appeal, too, and I liked the idea of a magical order of nuns. The AIDS orphans are, of course, Muggleborns, and one imagines a very vulnerable group indeed.
A light… Walsingham: Walsingham was, and is again, a popular place of English pilgrimage - the shrine contains the ‘Holy House’, a miraculous replica of the house Jesus grew up in in Nazareth, built according to the directions of a woman called Richeldis who saw it in a vision, or so the story goes. The shrine was destroyed at the Reformation and restored by the vicar of Walsingham in the 1920s, and a growing pilgrimage developed. It is quite common for higher-church British churches to make a donation to the shrine; they are regularly remembered in prayer there, and they get a lamp named and lit for them in the shrine church. There’s a standard blue-and-white sign which you can hang up in your own church, though I couldn’t find a picture of one online. On reflection, I think it says “A lamp burns for this church in the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham”, not light, but never mind.
Amy stared at it, no longer quite sure which detail she found most bewildering or repellent,
Amy has come to faith in a very evangelical church, and there are several things on the sign which she is aware she ought to disapprove of - possibly without being able to explain why - even leaving the magical stuff out of it.
then, giving it up as a bad job, she walked into the porch, and put her hand on the latch.
The church was cool and surprisingly light, given that it was illuminated only by the grey daylight coming in through the south windows and by the candles on a chandelier, which a man in a cassock standing perilously on the top step of a stepladder was engaged in snuffing.
My college chaplain used to do this. I don’t know how he didn’t break his neck.
Would Amy actually know the word ‘cassock’? Probably not, but I didn’t think of it at the time, and I’m not sure ‘funny sort of dress thing’ would have improved the paragraph.
There was a strange sweet smell, not unpleasant, but heavy and unfamiliar.
The smell is, of course incense (probably “Basilica”), but Amy has never been in a church that uses it before.
The man, who was presumably Fr David Smethwick SCP and whatever the rest of it was, was tall and thin, though not quite tall enough for the job he was doing, and his rather untidy hair was snow white.
His hair has been turned white by his sufferings at the hands of the Death Eaters, a melodramatic touch which may have been unconsciously inspired by the (impossible) way Miss Wilson’s hair turns white overnight while fleeing Nazis in “The Chalet School in Exile.”
Amy stood there awkwardly, not wanting to startle him, but he looked down from what he was doing anyway. "Hullo, you must be Amy," he said, "I'll just snuff these, and then we can go through to the rectory."
"That looked awfully dangerous" she burst out, after he had climbed down. "You should get a longer ladder. Or – why don't you use magic?"
He darted a sidelong look at her,
Amy actually is warming up to the idea of magic, though she’s not yet admitted it to herself, and here we see that she’s started to take it for granted. She has a point about the ladder, too; Amy is fundamentally a lot more sensible than her current over-wrought behaviour and crisis of conscience might suggest.
and she saw with a start that though his hair was white, his face was quite young looking.
I don’t often have a strong mental image of characters - I couldn’t tell you Amy’s hair colour - but I do of David.
He was a lot younger than her father.
Goodness knows what that means in practice, given that Amy is eleven, and that she doesn’t know that wizards live longer than Muggles. I think he’s probably in his very late thirties, and probably not really much younger than her father, allowing for study, curacy, etc., but wizarding genetics are on his side.
"You're probably right about the ladder," he said "though there always seems to be more important things to worry about. But it's funny you should ask about magic.”
PASTORAL SKILLZ!
"No-one else seems to have a problem using it," she said, oddly reluctant, "other than me, I mean."
He laughed. "Yes, I've heard a bit about that; I expect that's why Professor McGonagall sent you down. I don't have anything against using magic, though, not normally. But I trained at a Muggle college and was a curate in a Muggle parish, and it just feels more natural to carry on as I learned. The Archdeacon thinks it's a bit pretentious, but I can't help feeling that it means more if I do things in the church by hand. Which the Archdeacon says is sentimental, and he's probably right, but there you go.”
One of the reasons I like David - and I hope this saves him somewhat from unremitting Stu-dom - is that he’s quite aware of his own foibles.
"You trained with Muggles? So there's no Bible colleges for wizards? So much for all that stuff people keep telling me about the wizarding world being full of Christians.”
Amy remains suspicious, and is on the look out for proof she’s been lied to. But nb she’s started referring to ‘Muggles’ without thinking about what she’s doing.
He shook his head. "No, it's not like that. It's just a matter of numbers. It doesn't make any sense for the wizard province to train its own priests, we haven't got enough parishes or enough vocations – well, we haven't got the population – and anyway, the priesthood's the priesthood, whether you're a wizard or a Muggle. We do a couple of extra seminars, because sometimes there are different pastoral issues, but other than that, it's exactly the same.
Did I spend too much time thinking about this? Almost certainly. Also, I doubt Amy actually understands all of this, given the wodge of Anglican jargon, but she’s pretty much all at sea anyway.
Mind you, there's other ways to do it. The Church of Scotland works like we do, but the RCs either train within the magical orders or send them to the Wizard College in Rome.
Yes, definitely spent too much time on it. There’s a Scots College and an English College (etc), why not a secret Wizard College? I continue to enjoy the idea of magical religious orders.
And I think some of the free church types go to separate colleges in the States.
Bit dismissive there, David!
But I think our way's better, though I did feel very out of my depths out there at first."
"You're not – Muggle-born?”
Amy’s assumption that David is Muggleborn is, again, a symptom of her difficulty in believing in wizard Christianity.
"Nah, I'm what they used to call pureblood, back in the bad old days. I expect I've got some Muggle tucked away somewhere, virtually everybody does, but my family's wizard as far back as anyone's ever traced.”
’Back in the day’? Which was, in fact, last year… Slight failure on my part to remember what year this is set in.
"And what do they think of you being a vicar?"
"I don't think they were much bothered one way or another… well, except for my irritating uncle Eustace who keeps telling me that with O's in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes I should have gone into banking and made my fortune, but I somehow suspect that that's not what you mean.
Eustace is, I’m afraid, an irresistible name for an Irritating Uncle.
I have good parents who say good parent-like things like 'we'll support you whatever you choose.'
This is a clunky sentence that I would rewrite now.
I come from a fairly religious family, actually. It's not like no-one in the Wizarding World goes to church. Wizards aren't very devout, as a bunch, but then neither are British Muggles. America's different, of course.”
I stand by this as quite plausible given canon
"But it doesn't make sense!" said Amy, almost crossly. "The Bible says you shouldn't let a witch live!'
"Fairly close to where it says that you shouldn't eat prawns or wear mixed fibres, if I remember correctly" said the vicar, dryly.
If I was writing this again, I’d probably do this bit slightly differently, as there is a slight undertone of implicit anti-semitism in the ‘but prawns!!!111!!’ argument, at least in its crude and unreconstructed form. On the other hand, it’s a quick way of getting the ‘contradictions in Scripture’ point across.
"And are you seriously suggesting that God wants your classmates dead? Or Professor McGonagall? Or me?”
Probably a more telling argument, in any case.
"Well… no.”
"Glad to hear it. And not just because of my selfish preference for being alive," he said, with a wry grin.
Amy thought of the story Pusey had told her, but only said, "But I don't think he wants you to do magic."
The vicar sighed, and folded the step ladder up. "I'll put it away, and then we can have some tea. Or would you prefer juice? And I've got some real, honest-to-goodness Muggle chocolate digestives. I got fond of them when I was at theological college.”
David likes chocolate digestives. He also realises, given how hard he found his first months living with Muggles, that part of Amy’s problem is that she’s homesick and disoriented.
"That would be lovely," said Amy, disarmed, "Anything. As long as it's not pumpkin juice."
I find it unlikely (a) that pumpkin juice is actually nice and (b) that Muggleborns, assuming they haven’t been systematically deprived of nice things like Harry, would take to it quickly.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-03 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-03 08:43 pm (UTC)It was important to me that Amy is likeable, and not a straw man, despite the wrong-headedness of some of her opinions.
There is also definitely a way you could read this story as being about accepting other things than magic, but that didn't occur to me while I was writing it.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-03 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-06 08:51 am (UTC)(Terry is relatively young himself - he's a church youth worker, who tend to be in their twenties and fresh out of college - and I have a vague feeling that he is actually instinctively a bit more liberal than the church he has ended up working for, and isn't quite sure how to deal with this).
The bracelets are ghastly, but I remember them being a big subcultural craze. I think the most ridiculous one was the one that said 'FROG', which stood for 'fully reliant on God'. Oh, the nineties....
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-06 11:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-03 09:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-06 08:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-06 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-06 08:52 am (UTC)