writing of a high school girl who read too much fantasy

[deird1]

So, last year when I posted my first piece of writing, my sister asked to see "Lithuania stories".

This may have confused people who weren't me.


Here, for your interest and amusement, is the long story of my biggest imaginary world ever...




Firstly, let's get our terminology straight:

Lithuania is not Lithuania.

Or rather, there is this exciting place in Europe called Lithuania. This is not the same as the Lithuania I invented. I just stole the name because I thought it sounded pretty (thus beginning a long career of enthusiastic plagiarism - but we'll get to that later).

It's not actually pronounced the same. My Lithuania turns the U into a W, so it ends up sounding like "LITH-WAY-NEE-A".


Got that?




Amandarin - or "they'll totally believe the twelve-year-old girl is really a famous knight if she has a boy's name, right?":

This all started when I was twelve. Thus, my protagonist was a twelve year old girl.

The original idea was that she'd get this magic chest full of outfits, and every time she changed to a new outfit and pressed the magic jewel, she'd go to a new world where the outfit was appropriate. So, for instance, if she wore the genie outfit, she'd end up in an Arabian world with magic carpets. A different world for every section of the story, with a different adventure every time!

...yes, I had just seen Sliders.

The problem was, I ended up getting so intrigued by the first world that we just stayed there instead.


Amandarin:
- showed up in a random village, got mistaken for a random knight because of her clothes and name*, and was begged to rescue the villagers from a dragon
- killed the dragon in an epic sword fight
- discovered one of her old friends, who'd somehow ended up in this world before her and been captured by the dragon
- was given much exciting treasure and rewards
- was henceforth SO POPULAR that the local kings got jealous and gave her her own country to rule over so she'd go away and leave them alone
- was brilliant at running the new country, so the same kings got even more jealous and decided to invade
- kicked the kings' arses, saved her country, and got even more popular
- continued to be awesome for the rest of her life

* Her name - "Amanda" - was a boy's name that meant "famous warrior", so after she became queen of everything ever, she feminised it.


This, by the way, is her country. Lithuania:



It took me forever to get the coastline done.




A study in writing styles over several years:

The thing with Amandarin is, her story started when I was twelve, and then continued to be written and rewritten for the next six years. Which means I can compare different versions of the same story, and see how my writing changed.

Let me show you...


version 1:

This all started on my 14th birthday, when I woke up to find a large rectangular parcel in the middle of my bedroom. It was about a metre long, and half a metre wide. I tried to lift it, but it was too heavy, so I unwrapped it… and then stood there, stunned, for a few minutes.

It was a chest made out of dark polished wood – oak, I thought. The lid was round. That would have been enough to make me slightly taken aback. But… the chest was lined with gold, and the wood was embedded with tiny jewels! I am dead serious. At the centre of the lid, there was a jewel larger than the others. A diamond, probably. It glowed faintly pink.

I decided that it probably wasn’t a present from my father.

I tried to open the chest, but I couldn’t figure out how. So, I picked it up, and put it in my wardrobe. Then I realized something. When it was wrapped up, I had tried to lift it, and couldn’t. Now, it was easy to lift. I frowned, trying to figure it out, but my mum called, so I had to go.

The next day, I found something on the floor of my bedroom. It was a card. The writing on it looked really old fashioned, and it was in gold ink. On one side it said: To Amanda Greives, from The Wizard of Cranberry. On the other side, it had a short poem. It went like this:

The centre holds the secret key,
And if you are not scared,
Try to see what you can free,
Find what the chest has snared.

You are called to save your friend,
And other souls as well.
Who can say how this will end?
Only you can tell.

Look beneath the secret door,
Find the latch and pull.
See in there the boxes four,
If you don’t, you’re a fool.

I was now certain that it wasn’t from my dad.

Over the next few weeks, I busied myself finding out what it meant. I figured one thing out pretty quickly. The centre – it could mean the centre of the chest, but why would the chest have its own key inside it? The only other possibility I could think of was the centre you noticed as soon as you saw the chest. That is, the biggest jewel of all. It took me a while to open it, but finally I pushed the jewel inwards, turned it to the left, and released it. It sprang up on a hidden hinge, and when I looked in, there was a beautiful silver key lying there. It fitted the lock perfectly. The inside was filled with little red velvet bags. I picked up one, and inside (I am not kidding) was a full suit of armour! I don’t know how it worked, but the inside of the bag seemed to be bigger than the outside. There were all kinds of clothes in there. A wizard’s cloak, a ball gown, absolutely everything!

version 2:

I woke up at about 5:30. You know how some nights you aren't actually fully asleep at all, and then you wake up really early and can't get back to sleep? Well, this had been one of those nights. It was my fourteenth birthday, and although I was supposed to be too old for that now, I was still excited.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was no good trying to get back to sleep, so I decided to get up and explore my birthday presents. Five packages sat in the middle of the floor as well as a brightly coloured piece of string that I knew would lead round the house about three times, and finally arrive at some weird and bizarre present (my dad has a strange sense of humour).

Some perfume, a dress, two books, a game, and some makeup later, I was up to the last present in my room. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, instead of the normal coloured stuff. It was about a metre long, half a metre wide, and half a metre high, with a curved top. With some effort, I lifted it up onto my bed. As I did, a card dropped from the top, onto the floor. I picked it up and read it. It said: "To Amanda Grieves, from the Wizard of Cranberry" Nothing too interesting. I laid the card aside, and began to open my present...

It was a chest, made of dark wood. The edges were lined with gold. Every side had hundreds of minature little carvings covering it, and every so often in the carving there was embedded a tiny jewel. In the very centre of the lid was a jewel that was larger than the rest. It looked like a diamond, but it couldn't have been; it was too large. In the middle of the diamond it glowed, very faintly. All in all, it looked too fantastic to be real. I decided that it probably wasn't a present from my dad.

"Amanda! Breakfast!" My mother. I put the chest in my wardrobe and shut the door. I didn't want my parents to think that I'd been burgling the neighbourhood. As I walked to the door of my room, I spotted a piece of paper lying on the floor. Still in shock, I bent down, and picked it up.

It was the piece of card that had come with the chest. I'd already read one side. But I now noticed the other side. A poem was written on it. I was getting hungry, and my mother was still calling, but curiosity got the better of me, and I sat down to read it to myself.

The centre holds the secret key,
And if you are not scared,
Try to see what you can free,
See what the chest has snared.

You are called to save your friend,
And other souls as well.
Who can say how this will end?
Only you can tell.

Look beneath the secret door,
Find the latch and pull,
See in there the boxes four,
If you don't, you're a fool.

I decided it definitely wasn't a present from my dad...

I ran my hands over the exquisite surface of the chest. Slowly and delicately I traced the carvings with my finger until I reached the central diamond. The centre holds the secret key... I hadn't found the key yet. But how could it be in there?

I stopped my imaginings, and stared at the chest. I was sure that the diamond had moved when I pushed it. I touched it again, and pushed down, slowly. Yes, it had. And it was.

It didn't do anything remarkable when I pushed it down, but I finally realized that you had to push it down and turn it to the left, and then the diamond would just flip up, revealing a silver key.

Five seconds later, I had the chest open. I have to admit, I was so psyched up about the chest that I almost expected it to shine out some magical light when I opened it. But it didn't. No, it just opened, to reveal dozens of little bags. I picked one up and looked inside.

Ever seen Mary Poppins? I used to love the way that she could take things out of her bag that were bigger than the actual bag. I just never expected to see it in real life...

Armour. A whole suit of armour in a bag about the size of my hand. It was incredible. Each bag held some different wonder: a wizard's cloak and hat, a strange robe; everything! I reached into one bag, and pulled out an outfit that included a sword, a kind of dress, and leather boots. I decided to try it on...

I studied myself in the mirror. I was wearing a blue tunic, blue tights, black leather boots, a dark blue mantel, a beret with a feather in it, and a belt, with sword. The effect was actually rather good. I twirled once or twice, and almost stepped on the key, which was lying on the floor. I picked it up, and moved over to the chest to put it back underneath the diamond. Push in, turn to the left, and it flipped up. I was about to close it again, when I noticed something underneath the key. Look beneath the secret door...

version 3:

Amanda’s head turned from the sheet of paper in her hand, to the box, and back to the paper. She was used to getting strange birthday presents – her father’s imagination had seen to that – but nothing like this box. No, not a box, something more...grandiose... a chest. You couldn’t call something with jewels in it a box.

Really, though, it was the poem that was the strange bit. Yes, a box with fake diamonds, and fake gold could be from her father, but not the poem. Her parents had both failed English. It was a strange poem, too. Amanda read it to herself again, trying to make sense of it:

The centre holds the secret key,
And if you are not scared,
Try to see what you can free,
See what the chest has snared.

You are called to save your friend,
And other souls as well.
Who can say how this will end?
Only you can tell.

Look beneath the secret door,
Find the latch and pull,
See in there the boxes four,
If you don't, you're a fool.

The centre holds the secret key... The centre of the chest? Ridiculous. Why would the key to the chest be put inside it? Maybe it meant the central jewel – the large diamond in the middle of the lid. Amanda touched it, curiously...

...apparently my memory is faulty, and Amandarin was a fourteen year old girl. That makes sense: my twelve year old self thought that fourteen was the coolest age ever - and, indeed, all Lithuanians ended up reaching Official Adulthood at the age of fourteen.

I'm glad to see my writing getting slightly tighter over the years. That first try really was dreadful. (I'm also glad to see that I'd stopped referring to Rathmandu as the Wizard of Cranberry, which - really, self? What were you thinking?)


Moving on...




Marion - or "getting fictional revenge on your mortal enemies is the awesomest":

A couple of years after I invented this place, an author came to our school and told us that when he gets annoyed with someone in real life, he puts them in one of his stories and hits them with a truck. That makes him feel way better.

I thought this idea was the coolest.

Enter Marion, who is basically a revenge fantasy on everyone who was ever mean to me.


Marion:
- invents this fictional country called Lithuania

Err...

Marion:
- has a grandmother who went to Lithuania ala Amandarin and then came back to Australia, and then made sure that all of her children and grandchildren knew absolutely everything there was to know about Lithuania, down to how to use the cutlery*, just in case they ever went there
- got stranded in Lithuania with several classmates - most of whom were mean to her
- totally knew everything there was to know about Lithuania and thus was fine and had a ball

* Yes, there is a specifically Lithuanian way to use cutlery. And I still remember it. There may have been detailed notes...

Marion's Classmates:
- did not have a fictional-world-obsessed grandmother
- were really mean
- went to Lithuania and got mistaken for men (see: girls in dresses tunics with short hair look totes like guys, truefax) - insane men, in fact
- got completely covered in mud
- spent a few years being servants and wishing they'd never been so nasty
- apologised profusely to Marion for everything ever


Revenge Fantasy FTW!!!!


Here, have some Mariony goodness:

Well anyway, one day I was at school. I didn’t much like my school, because I was not one of the ‘popular’ crowd, and they all picked on everyone they didn’t like. Well, on this particular day I was walking to class with five girls from my class (all very popular and very snobby) teasing me and my friend Christine. Christine was younger than me, and fairly small for her age. The girls’ names were Carli, Sarah, Melanie, Kath, and Jane. They were teasing both of us about everything they could think of: relations, clothes, favorite colours – just everything. I’d just about had it, and just as we got to the door to our classroom I muttered “I wish I was in Lithuania.” And I opened the door, and went in…

We just stood there – openmouthed. You see, when you enter a room, you sort of expect it to be a room, whereas what we had just stepped into was outside. No roof, no floor, just space. We were next to a huge river, running over rocks. At either side of the river were huge cliffs, turning the river into a gorge. I was stunned, which was probably why I thoughtlessly said “I don’t believe it. We’re in Lithuania!” Big mistake. Instantly, all five girls turned on me. “You think you’re so smart.” “ I can’t stand the way you try to push everyone around.” I had had enough! I turned round, and walked off without a word.

And here's Mean Girl #1:

We walked for three days, fell in a swamp, fell into the river at least three times, scratched ourselves on rocks, caught ourselves in trees, and generally had a bad time. Finally, we saw a town. Half-starved, and with our clothes in rags, we ran down towards the town and started banging on the doors, screaming for them to let us in. They let us in all right. We were taken straight downstairs to a dungeon, and thrown in. I threw myself against the door, sobbing to be let out, but they just ignored us. The next week was agony. We had to sleep on hay, and every so often they’d chuck some food through the door. Apart from that, we were by ourselves. No matter how much we screamed or cried, they would just ignore us. And then, finally, we were taken out and placed in a sort of carriage with bolted shutters on the windows. For ages we travelled like this. About every six hours the carriage would stop moving, the shutter would be opened, and someone would chuck food and water in. Finally, we stopped completely, and we were pulled out. Someone led us up some stairs into a huge room. It had rich, lavish furnishings, and four thrones were placed at the front. But I noticed none of this, because there, coming towards us, with a smug look on her face, was Marion! I took one look at her, and screamed out “You bitch!”

(Delightful story, this.)


As the years went on I started to find Marion more and more irritating - but she was already part of the whole story, so I couldn't just not include her. Instead, she just started having more and more of her personality reach the surface... becoming superior, sarcastic, and very teenaged.


Here, have a redraft:

"Lithuania," explained Mrs Fisher, "is a country in the south of Liamana, in the world of Erren. In the north, are the Dividing Ranges, and above that is the land of Megorlune. Madergascar is in the east."

"Madergascar?" asked Marion, "Where's that?"

"Madergascar is a land of ice and snow. It is terribly cold: so cold, in fact, that the Madergascans usually stay inside: in the cave systems in the middle of the mountains. Because it is so tricky to live in Madergascar, they have a lot of slaves to do the hard work..."

Marion rolled her eyes as her grandmother's voice droned on. It was all so juvenile...

Stealing names, places, and just about everything else:

Lithuania? Well, we've covered that.
The Dividing Ranges are from Sydney.
Rathmandu the wizard (who we'll get to) is a modified version of Ramandu from Narnia.
Cauldron Pool was also stolen from Narnia.
Guanette was from the Obernewtyn Chronicles.

I had a country that was like the movie Pocahontas, which I thought was pretty.
I had another one that was out of Lord of the Rings.
And another one that was entirely due to my first trip to the snow. (See: what Marion's grandmother is talking about, above.)

And my main winged horse was called Estariol, from A Wizard of Earthsea.

Basically? You can figure out every single thing I read or watched for six years, by looking at what bit of Lithuania I was inventing at the time.




Zezat - or "slavery is romantic and makes a great backstory":

Zezat's backstory is long and complicated. Zezat's non-backstory is brief and still a mystery, because I never really got up to that bit. I was way too interested in the backstory.

Her backstory being that she was, you guessed it, yet another Australian that had ended up in my imaginary world by accident. Except she ended up there when she was about six.


Zezat:
- ended up in the EEEEEVIL land of Madergascar, full of ice and snow
- became a slave
- was tragic and awesome
- met another Aussie, who'd ended up there and become a guard over the slaves
- escaped with the help of her friend the guard
- would have eventually ended up in Lithuania and been tragic some more


Here is Zezat:

Zezat groaned, her back refusing to cooperate in taking the boxes to the kitchen. She was tired, no, exhausted, she hadn't eaten all day, she had been carrying these boxes since dawn, and she was sick of it. She looked around the passage, furtively. Noone there. With another groan, she dropped the box, and sank to the floor.

"There," she said, "And I don't care if they do have delicate things inside them." Suddenly curious, Zezat pulled the box towards her, stopping in disgust as the wrapping broke, and revealed the contents.

"Bricks! No wonder my back was sore." The footsteps coming towards her raised no reaction from Zezat. She suddenly didn't care if the soldiers found her like this or not.

"Zezat! What are you doing?!" Oran was chastising her, until he saw her face. Years of hard work, being beaten for the slightest misdemeanor, had taken their toll on Zezat. With a sigh, he dropped down beside her, offering her a flask of wine. She sipped it, thankfully.

My world paid no real attention to geography and climate. Madergascar, land of ice and snow, was right next door to Lithuania with its lovely European climate, which was right next door to The Americas, which was always balmy enough for my Pocahontas stand-ins to be wearing skimpy clothes.

Here's a map of the whole place:



(Yes, it's flat. Like Narnia.)
(Yes, the Earthsea Archipelago is totally stolen from the Chronicles of Earthsea.)
(And those bits in brackets are the terms used for residents of each continent. I may be a plagiarist, but I care about my grammar!)

Lithuania itself is the country at the bottom-right of Liamana. If you compare the two maps, you should be able to see how the shapes match.




Raqui - or "struggling artists are the most interesting people in the universe":

Note how my characters got less successful the older I got.
Amandarin became the Bravest Knight In All The Land, and also The Best Queen Ever, and even got to put "Dragonslayer" as an official title at the end of her name.
Marion got to be really popular and cool and laugh at all the people who she'd never liked.
Zezat... got stuck halfway through her escape attempt. But only because I got bored.
And then there was Raqui...

Raqui was eventually successful. (She was, after all, the heroine.)


Raqui:
- got stranded in Lithuania after she arrived there randomly from Australia (are you sensing a theme, at all?)
- ended up homeless, living in a marketplace in the middle of town, not having a clue about the language
- made her living through doing charcoal drawings of people who wandered through the market, for a crescent* a picture
- became a famous artist and did paintings of nobles at all their fancy balls
- like all my main characters, ended up meeting Amandarin and bonding over mutual Aussieness

* (Currency stolen from Narnia.)


An excerpt from Raqui's first day:

She jumped off the cart as they moved into a larger, more open area. There were a lot of people around, and it looked interesting. Lisa turned, and a piece of paper was blown right into her face. Struggling to pull it off, she was finally released, and could see what the market place was like. For it certainly was a market place of some sort, that was obvious. People hurried in every direction, almost aimlessly. Every way she turned, there were hastily erected stalls, and men shouting their wares. The shops around the sides of the market place had open fronts, so it was possible to see almost into the centre of the houses. In the middle of the market square, there was a young girl, dressed in long robes, apparently telling a story to those gathered round her. Lisa frowned, straining to hear what they were saying, but she couldn't catch the words. Strange. In fact, now that she thought about it, she couldn't tell what anyone was saying.

Her name was actually Lisa, but she took the name Raqui to go with her outfit.

Um...

It's because Raqui = "Rag Queen".
And because Raqui wore a whole outfit that was pretty much lots of rags all sewn together, because she was homeless and all her clothes fell apart.
And because "rag" in Lithuanian is also the word they use to mean "misfit".
And she calls herself "queen of rags, and rag of queens". Which is really really cool and awesome and not at all stupid.




The language thing:

Lithuania had its own language. I've even figured out a few hundred words, and the whole structure, and a few exciting things that English doesn't do.

Amandarin didn't have any problem speaking Lithuanian, because of magic courtesy of Rathmandu the wizard (we're getting there).
Marion, of course, was taught fluent Lithuanian by her insufferable grandmother.
Zezat was six. I figured she'd pick up the language pretty fast.
Raqui was my only real acknowledgement that it might be trickier than that.


The bit of conversation in which she got her name went like this:
"Mi? Mi im vim Shena."
"Vim Shena? Le - Vim Shena du Derenan!"
"Le! Mi im Raqui - Shena du Derenan, lu Deren du Shenanan!"

...and no, I'm not translating it for you. :)




Rathmandu - or "red hair is magical!!!!":

Rathmandu the wizard. Originally a macguffin whose entire function was to send Amandarin a magic box, and then hang around and look smug and wizardly.

She has red hair, because red hair is pretty. And also it's really really magical, and if you have red hair you're going to end up being a really powerful wizard.

Despite being one of my earliest characters, she really didn't interest me too much. She just... had red hair. And occasionally did magic for some reason.


As I got older, though, I got more and more interested in characters who were... shall we say... NOT MARY-SUE PARAGONS.

And Rathmandu had potential.

She was really interested and excited about being a wizard, and got horribly annoyed with her teacher, because he seemed to have no interest in doing magic, even to light fires.

The story was going to be this really fascinating one in which Rathmandu clashed with her teacher, and started doing magic behind his back just to spite him, and ended up with all these things she'd tried getting out of hand, and not caring that they'd got out of hand because she was getting to do magic, and then...


It would have been fascinating and complex. And it never quite got off the ground, because I got sick of the entire world and decided to move on invent a new one. (Long story.)


But anyway, Rathmandu's my favourite.


And here, for your final piece of teenaged storytelling, is a piece of her story:

The canyon was deep, with huge sloping sides of solid rock. Quiet in the dawn light, it was the perfect place to practise magic without disturbance.

"A fireball is a very delicate thing to make," explained Pentifar. "You must be careful to stay relaxed. Remember, it can't burn anything that it doesn't touch itself. Fireballs can't set fire to anything."

"Then what's the point?" asked Rathmandu. Pentifar did not answer, but swirled around, throwing a huge blue ball of fire from his fingertips. It gained speed and size as it rushed away from them, finally exploding in a huge cloud of light as it hit the opposite cliff face. Pentifar turned to face Rathmandu, who was shaking.

"You're telling me," he said, calmly, "that there is no point in being able to do that?" Rathmandu smiled. She had got the point. And anyway, it looked like fun...

Apart from my heroines (as listed above), I had:
- a map of the country
- a map of the world
- the entire history of all the kings and queens of Lithuania for several hundred years
- some other heroines and heroes
- a language
- a system of government
- a full set of laws
- a huge list of all the jobs you could do and how much you'd get paid for them
- a coat of arms for every town
- a map of the towns
- a whole year-long honeymoon taken by Amandarin's son, with every stage of the journey figured out
- gypsies
- people who lived in the mountains and walked on clouds
- mermaids
- Venice! but on a really really big lake!
- exciting and pretty fonts that I could type all my Lithuanian stuff in
- far too much imagination

My family got sick of hearing about it many years before I did - but put up with me because they rock. And even gave me a Lithuanian-themed cake for my 21st.

Hey family! You rock! Even more than Lithuania does!






...Questions? Comments?

Comments

[velvetwhip]

I think it's wonderful that you have this. It's wild and awesome.


Gabrielle

[deird1]

*dances*

My lovely lovely world...

[verity]

THIS IS AWESOME. I think map #2 isn't showing up, though?

[deird1]

YAY.

Hmm, it looks fine from here. And it's the same kind of file type as the first one, so I'm not sure why there'd be issues...
*worries*

[jl_in_the_lane.livejournal.com]

I love this.
And I love you.
You were and are an ace cool deep mysterious not-at-all-yellow girlie.

Love getting to see the whole thing pan out, rather than just being aware of cool fonts and cloaks...

(... the cloak was part of this phsae... right? or did you wear other stuff that I've forgotten?)

Hey, that Queen of Rags and Rag of Queens thing - that is SO Lady M.'s Rags and Riches Secret Ball. With that raggy skirt. Isn't it. It is.

(Which is SO COOL, because I love the idea that you sneaked yourself an L-themed 21st without anyone knowing. I hope you found it cathartic...)

[deird1]

Hey, that Queen of Rags and Rag of Queens thing - that is SO Lady M.'s Rags and Riches Secret Ball. With that raggy skirt. Isn't it. It is.

You know me well. :)
And yes, that's where the skirt is from.

(Err... unlike the whole rebellion-in-a-forest thing, which is from one of Amandarin's distant descendants, in a total Robin Hood ripoff.)


Cloaks, and fencing foils, and funky hats...

[jl_in_the_lane.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it *was* a Lith-related thingy. So I get to say I've been there. I like it.

(...don't remember the hats...)

[klme.livejournal.com]

I would also like to note that Amandarin is pronounced with the emphasis on the DA, not on the MAN. Important, I think :)

[vixenmage]

This is awesome, and you are awesome. And yay for little kids who plagiarise like mad! I think most people do, at that age.

[snickfic]

Zezat's backstory is long and complicated. Zezat's non-backstory is brief and still a mystery, because I never really got up to that bit. I was way too interested in the backstory.

Hah! I frequently had this problem with the stories I made up as a kid. I'd pause to give a couple minutes' backstory on the main character's parents and end up hours later with this whole, complicated, much more interesting story. I eventually decided what I really needed to do was just start with the children of the characters I was actually interested in, and then turn the "backstory" in to the main story. I never managed to execute this plan, however.

Most of my stuff didn't get written down, though; it all happened in my head.

Anyway, this is neat! It's always interesting to me to go back and look at what my younger self was thinking.

[aberrantangels]

I'd pause to give a couple minutes' backstory on the main character's parents and end up hours later with this whole, complicated, much more interesting story.

Happened to me all the time. Still does, actually.

Most of my stuff didn't get written down, though; it all happened in my head.

That too.

[urania_calliope]

This was AWESOME to read! When I was younger I too had a little 'universe' I played with and annoyed others to death with.

I'm going to leave that box sealed though. My writing would be beyond embarrassing to checkout.

[next_to_normal]

I adore 12-year-old you. :)

...yes, I had just seen Sliders.

Well, clearly you have impeccable taste!

Plagiarism

[1c2k3p4p5c.livejournal.com]

Your plagiarism started at least by Grade 2, when your stories were a mix of Enid Blyton and C. S. Lewis. ;)

Re: Plagiarism

[jl_in_the_lane.livejournal.com]

Well, C.S,Lewis is such a gigantic plagiarist himnself, anyway. You can tell he had a WONDERFUL time putting fauns etc etc in his stories...