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Nicholas McIntire:
If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?
Nicholas McIntire
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[This is always a tricky, but excellent, question. When I get asked the "what period in history would you most like to live in" the answer is more or less right now, because as a gay guy, the past is a terrible option and I don't know how things are going to go in the future. When it comes to fantasy realms, there are so many I love, but typically I'm incredibly glad I don't have to live in them. I would actually choose my own world (boo, I know, but I'll provide alternatives), specifically because it exists without homophobia, racism, transphobia, or sexism. I'd still legitimately die within 10 minutes of showing up. Maybe 15 minutes, if I had magic? Stories, and especially epic fantasy stories, tend to glorify certain aspects of the past. "Oh, this is a reflection of a 15th-century medieval German military, and battles will have X number of opponents etc" Since neither the 15th century as we know it, nor Germany (random example) exist in any fantasy world, authors can pick and choose the bits we want to use and toss out the rest. We're basically gods in our worlds. Thus, it would be cheap to just say my own world because I know all the rules, I'd throw in Elizabeth Haydon's excellent Symphony of Ages. I'd live in that world in a heartbeat. Music and the spectrum as magic? As a musician, sign me up, I'd love to be a Skysinger like Rhapsody, going around and helping as many people as possible. Plus it's a world in which people like me exist, so win-win. I grew up on Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and if I could live in said Enchanted Forest (without getting turned into a floating blue donkey) provided I knew how it worked, it'd be basically heaven for me. It would be deeply cool to be a great witch in Christofer Rowley's Bazil Broketail series, because talk about a soft magic system that still feels cogent and open to exploration! (though being a Master of Padmasa has its advantages, disturbing as they are) If it's Wheel of Time, I'd be in the Yellow or Blue Ajah in a heartbeat (As a nurse, fixing people with magic would be incredible and extremely rewarding. So would following righteous cause as a Blue. But I can't pretend that I wouldn't be tempted by the Greens or the Browns.) If It's N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy, I'd love to be a maybe 7 or 8-ring orogene (well, I wouldn't LOVE it, but it'd be cool). Going back into classic fantasy, the devils and gods are the most fun. I'd love to be Aslan (forgetting that, SPOLIER ALERT for the end of Chronicles of Narnia!, he's overjoyed that everyone in Lucy's family dies in a train crash except Susan, since she became too materialistic, and thus can never enter the "paradise" he set up for literally everyone else. After killing them intentionally so they could hang out with him for eternity. Nice guy! And they're all surprsinginly cool about it). Those are literally the best examples I can come up with while staring at my library. Mostly, going in either direction, I'd probably die from ignorance before I could do anything interesting :) (hide spoiler)]
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