Let Your Imagination Run Wild – #WhatIf Fantasy Tag Game

How is your imagination this morning? Energized and fighting the bit and raring to go?

I discovered the #WhatIf Fantasy tag game roaming around the blogosphere – set loose upon the world by fellow fantasy author Jenelle Schmidt – and thought you guys might enjoy a chance to play along and answer the questions too! So I tagged myself into the game and now I’m tagging in all of you as well.

How’s it work?

Well, there’s a list of questions (created by Jenelle). I’ll answer them here and then you all are invited to answer in the comments or create your own blog post! Guidelines on how to do that are listed at the end of this post.

Ready? Onward!

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1. Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. The cast of the most recent fantasy book you read comes to your assistance… who are they? Will they be helpful?

I’m currently reading A Wrinkle in Time. Not very far into the story yet, but the characters seem a mighty resourceful bunch so I’m guessing they’ll be pretty helpful. At the very least, they’ll be good company! I’d love a chance for a chat with Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace.

2. You go to bed one evening and wake up in the lair of the villain of the last fairy tale you read, where are you and how do you plan to get out?

That would be the castle of King Haggard from The Last Unicorn. *shudder* Not a pleasant place. Not a pleasant place at all. If King Haggard wants you, escaping his reach doesn’t just mean getting beyond his borders, it means escaping the Red Bull and that’s just not something that happens.

So, really, I don’t think that running would be any good. I think I’d have to prepare for a final stand. Blaze of glory and all that, wot wot.

3. You are transported into a fantasy realm and given a mythical creature as a companion and best friend… which mythical creature do you get?

A magical steed of some sort. It could be a unicorn, or a pegasus, or a saif (*grin* like Frey in Song of Leira), or one of the Mearas like Shadowfax. I guess I’ve just seen how incredibly beautiful the relationship between horse and rider can be and can’t imagine anything better than a magical steed in a fantasy world.

4. In a strange series of coincidences, you end up needing to take the place of your favorite fantasy hero or heroine. Who are you? 

Ooh, this question. So difficult! *sigh* I have so many favorites. We’ll stick with heroines to narrow the list down a bit (that carves out Aragorn and Kaladin at least, not to mention a few others), and then I’d probably have to go with Eowyn. Still such a hard decision though …

5. To go along with question #4, now that you are that character, is there anything you would do differently than that character, now that you are running the show?

Really, that’s so hard to say. Because Eowyn’s story is so good, and I feel like if I changed any part of it, it wouldn’t be her story and she wouldn’t be the character that I’ve grown to love.

6. If you were yourself in a fantasy novel, what role do you think you would play in the story?

Well, if we’re dreaming … a horse-riding warrior of the knight errant sort, you know the type, someone who goes around helping people, setting wrongs to right, and fighting monsters. So a secondary character who stumbles across a quest randomly and decides to join in and then spends the rest of the journey encouraging everyone with why we need to accomplish our goal. ;)

Yes, this is my wild thing. Just look at the wisdom in those dark brown eyes of his! Wouldn’t he make a good warrior’s steed?

7. One morning, as you are going about your daily business, you pick up an everyday item and a voice booms in your head with prophetic words about your future. What object is it, and what is your prophecy?

The object, of course, is a laptop. And the words, like most prophecies, could be interpreted as either a curse or a blessing. Something to do with endless typing, stories that burn like a fire within demanding to be told, characters constantly whispering in your ears, and living caught between two worlds.

*shudder* What can it mean?

8. You are transported into a magical realm and turned into a mythical beast… what beast/fantasy creature do you want to be?

A phoenix.

They’re really just too cool. (*grins*)

Songkeeper fun fact: In the early, early planning stages of Songkeeper, Birdie was going to meet a phoenix in the Vituain Desert at the Hollow Cave before the Hollow Cave ever truly existed. Once I started writing, the phoenix was scrapped from the story before any of the characters even reached the desert because I wanted to make Gundhrold a bigger part of the tale and realized I was really only adding the phoenix because I think they’re cool.

That may not be a bad reason to add a character, but it’s also not necessarily a very good one. His name was going to be incredibly cool though … but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I’m sure I have it written down somewhere. ;)

9. If you could read your way into any fantasy realm, but the catch is that you can never leave, would you? Which realm would you choose?

In a heartbeat. Middle-earth. Narnia would be a close second. But Middle-earth is my first and greatest love when it comes to fantasy realms.

10.  As you are going about your normal day, you discover that you have a magical power. What is it?

The ability to sleep after drinking caffeine! Not sure how magical it is, but I usually can still manage to fall asleep after drinking coffee at 10 PM at night. On the rare occasion that means I type until 2 AM, but typically not. I have also discovered that if I drink a cup of coffee fairly quickly right before going to sleep, I wake up earlier and far more energized. Pre-caffeinated! It’s the best.

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Well, there you have it! Thanks, Jenelle for such fun questions.

Now, fellow wanderers, it is your turn.

You can answer the questions in the comments or write your own blog post and leave a comment here so I can go check it out and read your answers too. :)

If you write your own blog post, there are a few #WhatIf tag game rules (guidelines?):

• Thank the blogger who tagged you. (I found the tag game on Jenelle’s site, so thanks Jenelle!)
• Include the graphic somewhere in your post.
• Answer the questions.
• Tag a few blogger friends – and let them know they’ve been tagged
• Have fun!