#FantasticPromptsEnglish August 2: What were your favorite stories as a child?

My access to books was, in its own way, as limited as my access to any other media as a child. I could access a lot of classic fiction written before 1900 ... and Chronicles of Narnia. With those limitations in mind, I really enjoyed The Swiss Family Robinson and read it who knows how many times. Same for some of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Do they (the stories I read as a child) influence what you write today?

In two specific ways. In The Swiss Family Robinson, the family are stranded on an island that has incredible resources but no one living on it (to my recollection). Rather, there are people living near it who come there on the reg. The dad is always saying that the island will provide. Those two elements are very silly. If there are people near by, why wouldn't they want to live on this fabulous island? The story lampshades 'the island will provide' by having the mom call the dad out on it. And then the lampshading is subverted when the island does indeed 'provide' a spouse for one of the sons. (Which is an extremely gross concept.) The sense that this influences me is that I don't want to do things that have very silly flaws in them or things where it's supposed to be an adventure story but the challenges are almost superfluously easy to overcome.

I avoid giving the same answer twice and I've talked about Chronicles of Narnia somewhere. However, I can't find it so ... briefly. In addition to the allegory for Christianity in the stories, some of the stories go hard for some colonialism apologia. I see the same thing when I watch Life of Brian. The movie talking about the good that they think the Roman Empire has done becomes a stand in for the British Empire and the 'backward'ness of the conquered peoples becomes a stand in for the people that the British Empire conquered. There's the same kind of crap in the Chronicles of Narnia. Now that I can see that, I want to avoid doing that or anything like it in my work.

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@kontakinti Sure. I grew up in an evangelical, charismatic, non-denominational household with strong similarities to the Institute in Basic Life Principles.

The part I mentioned earlier in the same thread where I had limited access to media and books that were written from 1900 on relates strongly to the specifics of my upbringing.

Even at the time, I found the theology of those organizations a little flimsy so, as a seeker, I read widely inside various Christian traditions. I wouldn't consider myself an expert but I'm more knowledgeable than the average Christian.