I accidentally stumbled upon your fiction 'god loves you (and other lies she told me) and it got me absolutely SPIRALING.
I've been struggling with religion all my life, sometimes I don't know what I believe, and sometimes I don't believe at all. Listening to Shauna preach literally brought tears to my eyes and I felt a tingle in my heart of something like holiness. It's exactly like Lottie said, she believes it and she makes you believe it, too. The Bible is supposed to be a book of everything but what people portray it as. I've noticed that people mostly use The Bible to prove you wrong on something, or to backup their hateful opinions. It's all crazy to me and the way Shauna portrays it couldn't be more true.
I fucking love the way you wrote Shauna's character, and if those words of preaching are your original thoughts, I could sit with you for hours and talk about religion because I've never felt anything for a fictional work more than I felt for this. Not even the damn Religion class in High school made me feel this seen and heard by God like this fiction has.
Thank you so much for writing this and putting it on the Internet, you just might have changed someone's opinion on religion for the better.
so, i have a few thoughts on this.
1. thank you so much for your kind words. i never expected god loves you to receive really any kind of attention, and the fact that it is is so mindblowing to me. i can't express how grateful i am that you guys read my silly little words.
2. shauna is meant to be read as a liar. a manipulative, mildly abusive religious leader. she does not believe what she's preaching, and that's half the point. which leads me to:
3. if you find yourself feeling pulled or entranced by her sermons, i feel like you should maybe take a step back and reevaluate there. i don't want this fic to have that type of impact on anyone, because again, shauna is not preaching from a genuine place. she is meant to be attractive in that way, but again, that's because she's manipulating the congregation and jackie, and also you.
if you want to, feel free to send me a private message on here, or twitter, and we can talk more about it.
vaporwave
pixelskylines
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
