Eons ago when I was but just a child. I was surrounded by pious dogmas of fear and threats preventing me from using my own imagination, preventing me to discern things on my own, preventing me from keeping my mind open. When I was old enough I broke away from those chains and forsoo-Ahem, well anyways I guess I should get to the point. To do that, I have to delve into my history of how I got involved with fantasy in the first place, so please, hang in there. I guess you could say the thing that got me interested in fantasy, or magic rather, was church. In the 80s it was the time of the Moral Majority which was a "Christian" movement , I guess, to impose Christian morals on everyone in the country through politics. Their argument was due in part to the AIDS epidemic and the introduction of mistism in cartoon and other parts of pop-culture. Churches ate this stuff up and as a result a lot of the cartoons I wanted to watch were condemned as being evil. IF YOU WATCH CARE-BEARS YOU ARE GOING TO HELL!!! In most cases the Moral Majority backfired on it's self and backfired on me. I wondered what was this thing called magic that got everyone in such a tizzy at the mere mention of the word. Of course I had seen commercials of all these shows I wasn't allowed to watch and it did nothing but feed my curiosity. I remember this one time around the age of six I was sick on a Sunday morning and I couldn't go to church so my sister elected to stay home with me. It wasn't missing church that was the awesome part, it was being able to watch He-Man and saying to myself "this stupid crap is evil?" that was awesome.
If church made me interested in fantasy/magic, than it was my Dad that got me hooked when he read The Chronicles of Narnia to my brother and I. It was crammed full of magic-ness and it had the words "Deep Magic" in it and yet was written by a Christian. Wait a minute, I thought magic was evil? But this old Christian guy was writing about it with no problem! DOES NOT COMPUTE! Then secretly my family watched the Disney movie Fantasia and after that what the church said about magic was pretty much an annoying gnat from there on out.
I started slowly to bide my time, watching the BBC versions of the Chronicles of Narnia because to my parents it was pretty much harmless. After that I graduated to some cool Jim Henson stuff like the Labyrinth, which is still a favorite, and there was a smattering of other stuff. Oh yeah, somehow I snuck in some care-bear movies, I think it was in part because of how awesome the Disney channel was back then. Something I didn't see coming happened next. My parents switched churches and suddenly at the age of 9 it was okay to celebrate Halloween, score! Now a lot of things became more accessible to me as far as my interest in fantasy was concerned and even though my Mom still thought somethings like Power Rangers were evil, she didn't stop me from watching it. By this time though I was more in to Superheros and there was a fantastic Uncanny X-men show on as well as an equally fantastic show called Batman: The Animated series. High school, yeah nothing happened in high school because I was more interested in Drama Club. I think the first Blade movie came out around that time though and the Matrix, that was rad I guess.
After high school and I mean right after, I said that if I like fantasy so much I should actually try reading some fantasy books and the movie Lord of the Rings was due to come out soon so I started there. Of course it blew my mind and I became a huge fan and made sure to go into watching the movies a huge fanboy and gripe if they changed anything, the movie was great and it made me become an even bigger fan. Much to the annoyance of my first girlfriend I started comparing everything I saw in real life to the elvish architecture or design in the films. Then there was Harry Potter and the list goes on from there. I read a few other series too and I even tried my hand at a few things, none of them I ever finished, but I enjoy going back to them from time to time. I take that back I did write and finish one issue of a comic book, but I couldn't find an artist so it's sitting on a shelf somewhere. Right now my favorite series is, if you couldn't tell already, The Dresden Files, and I've recently read The Name of the Wind and A Wise Man's Fear which is authored by Patrick Rothfuss.
Here is the important part, even though I don't agree with the way that my old church handled things, I understand why they did it. They were trying to protect us kids from thing they thought were influenced by, well, the devil. Even though I don't believe the magic I read about can exist in reality, I still believe in spiritual warfare. I'll admit that I've stayed away from certain things because I didn't like the cut of it's jib in a spiritual sense. When I read the things I read or watch the things I watch I just remember what is the truth and what is not. The things I write I blend with my spiritual beliefs which you could label as Christian and it balances out better than I thought it could. I want to culivate an environment of understanding rather than fear as I feel I believe it works better. I refuse to feel guilty about the things I read, watch, and write because someone behind a pulpit says I should. I can decide for myself what to like and I think I've done a good job of it so far. I also don't believe I'm going to hell because I watched CareBears 2, which IMO is the best CareBears movie.
