Fantasy Worlds

Fantasy Worlds

doing my first actual creative writing prompt

"You find yourself in front of seven identical doors. 

A voice from above tells you:

'These seven doors lead to seven places:

Narnia, Neverland, Wonderland, Hogwarts, 

Camelot, Middle Earth, and Westeros.'

Which door do you go through? Why that door? What happens?" 

        I have decided today to do something I have not yet done in creative writing: I am actually doing the prompt. It's not actually a prompt for our creative writing group, but there are prompts in class every day for the creative writing 1 people to do. I normally have enough of my own to blather on about, but today I really liked the prompt and so I decided to transcribe it above and to write on it. Actually, I hadn’t finished writing it all down when it went away, so I googled what I had of it, and I managed to find the original image with the prompt on it:

I like the look of it as well. It fits the mysterious fantasticalness. It could be a little more ornate and fanciful, perhaps, but it’s rather mysterious.

         Although I must admit, I can't help myself but edit it a little. I do have the artistic freedom as a writer; I even have an official, legally valid creative license I made in art class the other year. (Well, it's legally valid in Violetia, at least, but I think my rights as queen and founder of Violetia extend in some sense at least to this world). I also have the magic of wordadry on my side :) (that one’s already in my blog post idea list to explain, don’t worry; I’ll probably get to it eventually. If not, it may become a novel some day, possibly, or some form of medium or short story).
        So anyways, I think first I’ll change out Westeros, simply because I don’t know anything about it. I learned in creative writing it’s apparently the world in some show called, “game of thrones”, but I’ve never seen that and I don’t know much of anything about it, except apparently many people die, as was said in class, and our teacher was apparently warned in a previous class by one of the students that she probably wouldn’t survive there. An unknown fantasy world could be interesting and adventurous, but I’m more inclined to start with the worlds I know and love already, because I’ve wanted to go to most of them for quite some time already, and so I wouldn’t give up the chance to go to a world I already care for in favor of a world I know almost nothing about, which, further, is apparently quite dangerous. Although I have read on the internet that apparently Once Upon a Time even contains allusions to Game of Thrones, namely in the name of Belle’s dad’s flower shop in storybrooke, which is the Game of Thorns. So, I suppose that if Once alludes to it, that makes me think it’s more likely to be a worthwhile show, since Once is so amazingly wonderful and I trust their taste, but if lots of characters die, then I would hesitate to watch it. That is one of the reasons I like Once so very much; almost no one is ever actually dead. Thus I am almost certain Rumpel’s not dead, because they simply can’t kill him off; if they did, hordes of angry fans, including me, would storm their metaphorical castle in which they write Once and force them to bring him back. He’s too quintessential to the show, and he’s just too awesome of a character! But I do digress. (How surprising! Me, digressing? Never...)
        The basic point of the paragraph prior is that I’m changing out the kingdom of Westeros. Instead, I’ll put in... well, what I had said when I first looked at the prompt was that I’d make that door go the the Land of Elyon instead, but now my mind’s on Once again, and so I’m tempted to have the Enchanted Forest from Once behind that door. You know what, I have creative license and wordriad magic, so I’ll just add another door. I’m gradually turning this thing into a list of my favorite fantasy worlds, aren’t I? I think that’s almost unavoidable, though, by the premise of this prompt. I find myself looking at both Neverland and Wonderland differently now, though, having watched Once, but we decided that these are the original realms from their own stories, not the realms as they are portrayed in Once. I do love Once, very much, and their portrayals of these worlds do fit to serve their purposes in the plot of Once, but I must say that if I were to visit them, I would rather go to the original portrayals of both worlds.
         I would definitively and absolutley keep Middle Earth, Hogwarts, and Narnia on there, of a surety and without a shadow of a smidge of a grain of an inkling of doubt. These are, to me, the three most quintessential of all fantasy worlds, and I listed them in their order of quintessential fantasticalhood. The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are the two most classic fantasy series of all time to me, but I list Middle Earth before Hogwarts simply because it’s a far more expansive world. Well, at least it’s more separate. I get the feeling based on the context that Hogwarts is being here used as a blanket term for all of the magical parts of the Harry Potter world, including the magical places beyond the school itself such as Diagon Alley and the Ministry of Magic, as well as, probably, the other schools, such as those we see involved in the Triwizard Tournament, so in short, the entirety of the Wizarding World. If they don’t mean Hogwarts to refer to the Wizarding World, then one could still easily access the rest of the magical world from Hogwart, unless there was some sort of magical border put in place by the rules of the portal door to prevent one from leaving the Hogwarts grounds, but I could break this down with my wordriad magic. Still, I think Middle Earth is larger, better mapped, and more separate from the “real” world, because there is no version of our modern earth connected to Middle Earth, except perhaps if one was to make the argument that Middle Earth is possibly meant to be our earth in its distant path, which I think is a valid point, and the Wizarding World is more like a hidden part of our world, or, as I described it in one paper I wrote, a “backstage” area of our world, and as far as I’ve seen, J.K. Rowling has never drawn maps of it, though please, correct me if I’m wrong, because I love studying maps of fantasy worlds (one of my presents this Christmas was actually a lovely illustrated book called The Maps of Tolkien’s Middle Earth by Brian Sibley, which has beautiful and detailed copies of Tolkien’s maps plus many lovely illustrations and intriguing text. Some day, when I have my own library, (see dream outlined in “My Little Library”) I plan to have the map posters included in the book hanging on the walls alongside my shelves). I don’t mean this in any way to be evaluating the coolness of either of the worlds or the stories therein, because both are amazing and epic and classic, and as you may have noticed from my brief mention earlier, I have written multiple papers on each, including a comparison-contrast essay on the two of them together, because I particularly enjoy analyzing stories I love, hence all the Once Upon a Time stuff on this blog (Once could be called my latest obsession of many). But it also seems somehow more likely that one could access the world in which Hogwarts is found with more ease than one could access Middle Earth, and so Middle Earth seems more likely to require a magical door. I’m not saying I wouldn’t give it a magic door, because such a door would make the Wizarding World much easier to locate and to access, but I am saying that I think I have more of a chance of finding it without a door than I do of Middle Earth.         I think Narnia is a wonderful and splendid land and it would be a lovely place to visit, but the Chronicles of Narnia have always been a little less familiar to me than the two aforementioned tales, and thus it took the third slot. I’ve actually never read all of the Narnia series; I began reading the first book years ago but never finished, which is exceedingly abnormal for me nowadays but wasn’t as much back then. 
         It’s that time again! I always come to this moment (except upon rare occasions) when I am running short of time and my blog post suddenly begins moving much faster. Basically, I was going to continue summing up and discussing my favorite fantasy worlds and stating which ones were behind doors before proudly proclaiming in my because-I-have-magic-and-creative-license line of reasoning that I intended to go through each door in turn and explore each world over the course of weeks, months, or even years. But really, nothing in the prompt says you can’t go through more than one door. It’s simply not stated. So, therefore, I can go through as many doors as I’d like, because nothing in the rules says I can’t. Even if it did, I could still use my artistic freedom/wordriad magic to go through multiple doors. So, I’ll probably go through the door to Middle Earth first, if only because it’s the most ancient sort of world (which, I know, it’s arguable, but that’s my perception of it), and to fully ensure I can find my way back, I’ll tie some of my magical hair-woven cord to the inside of the doorknob and I’ll thread it through behind me as I cross between worlds so I can find the door again, just to be doubly sure. Then I’ll set off on epic quests and journeys and explore and meet characters and go places and do things and see people/elves/hobbits/fawns/goblins/pixies/pheonixes/magical-winged-cats/et-tous-les-autres in each of the worlds. I think really the point of this prompt was supposed to be telling the story of what happened once I made my decision and went through a door, but I’m a notorious decision-avoider and I’ve gotten so wrapped up in explanations on this blog I sometimes lose the stories. 
         I have been realizing that many of my blog posts on this blog take on more of an explanatory tone than one of storytelling. I suppose this is because I feel the need to explain things more when I am on the internet, and because I feel in some ways my blog posts are simply more explanatory by their nature. When I’m writing my blog posts, I almost feel like I’m speaking to some unknown person, because literally anyone on the internet could be reading this, though in all honesty it’s most likely someone from my school or one of my family members. But I have to be prepared if it’s not, and even if it is I’d probably still write these like I’m talking to someone and trying to explain all my thoughts. But while oftentimes I like to write in an explanatory, conversational way on my blog, as I am doing presently, I think I should try to put more pieces written in more of a storytelling manner on here. Looking back, I think the only things I really have in a tone of storytelling are my post on the secrets of the Lande beyond the violet mist and my excerpt of my work-in-progress short story, and the latter is even surrounded by explanatory notes. So perhaps it shall be my goal in the coming week to write a few more blog posts of a storytelling nature.

        Beyond the violet mist, we discovered another fine medium of interdomainal (in the Violetian sense, not Faeren) transport in a hidden and secret chamber of a potentially varied number of mysterious doors in a transdimensional space.