Age: 18

Gender: Male

Favourite authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones, David & Leigh Eddings

Favourite characters: Merry (Lord of the Rings); Neville, Luna, Hermione (Harry Potter); Edmund (Narnia); Christopher, Conrad (Chrestomanci); Garion (Belgariad/Malloreon)

Other authors I've enjoyed: Guy Gavriel Kay, Sheri S. Tepper, Robin Hobb, Anne Bishop, Emily Rodda, Eoin Colfer, L.M. Montgomery, Agatha Christie, Lloyd Alexander, Philip Pullman, Douglas Adams, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Sara Douglass, Richard Adams, Patrick Rothfuss, Sir Thomas Malory

Authors I have NOT enjoyed: Tim Winton, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer

I've always loved fantasy, having grown up on Enid Blyton, Narnia and The Hobbit. I enjoyed the movies but grumbled about all the departures from canon. My other interests include politics, zoology and history.

"Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you." - Gustav Holst, talking about music, but just as appropriate for writing too.

MY THOUGHTS ON:

Narnia: The reason that all of my fan fictions are based in Narnia is because I think it's the easiest to write in. Simple laziness, in other words! Lewis left so many enticing holes in the Chronicles (deliberately, I'm sure) that there are always more stories waiting to be written.

Canon: As this is a fan fiction site, it's the canon that I imagine most people are interested in, and so it should always be respected as far as possible.

Religion: I'm an atheist (which puts me at odds with several of my favourite authors), but I respect other religions.

The English language is a product of hundreds of years of evolution, deriving from Latin, French, German and many other languages. It is a very beautiful thing. As such it is appalling when people abuse it - it's not that hard to learn some simple rules of punctuation, spelling and grammar. The language deserves some respect! Chatspeak usually makes me retch, and the word "like" has acquired a demonic quality that is beginning to infect its legitimate uses. Let's save the word "like" from complete ruin and disgrace!

There is one internet language development that has, sneakily and unexpectedly, crept up and converted me, much to my astonishment. I find that the use of asterisks around actions is really a rather clever idea, and helps enormously with the fact that you can't actually see the people you're talking to on the internet and read their body language. So I am an asterisk convert!

Slash: I have no problem with homosexuality but somehow I think C. S. Lewis might have. Because they are so monumentally uncanonical I don't read slash fics.

Incest: I most certainly do have a problem with incest, and so should you. I mean, really. Not only is it scientifically proven to be harmful, it's also just wrong. Think about your siblings. See? What on earth is wrong with writing a nice bonding fic? There is more to life than romance!

OCs: So originally I really didn't like OCs of any kind, even movie ones like Oreius. But I find I don't mind them so much anymore, as long as they're interesting and canonically plausible. And this turnaround has nothing to do with the appearance of a few OCs in my stories ... honestly ...

AU: I have been converted to certain kinds of AU, because they can make for extremely interesting situations with the characters which are, of course, the most important part of any fiction.

Movieverse: Again, some very clever fics have raised my tolerance levels of movieverse. As long as it doesn't quote the movie line by line, it's fine. I mean, we've all seen the movies how many times?

Narnia and Christianity: It may seem incongruous to some that I can be an atheist and love Narnia at the same time, but I think that for the most part Lewis has left enough ambiguity for me to skim over those aspects (and the one place where he doesn't, Lucy's speech about the stable being bigger on the inside in TLB, is my least favourite part of the entire series). But that doesn't mean that I don't accept that Aslan is analagous to Jesus. And some of my writing probably shows that, because, after all, it was Lewis who came up with Narnia itself, and as far as that universe goes, he's boss. So in my writing I accept his beliefs.

Reviewing: I try to reply to all reviews, and try (but perhaps less successfully) to review everything I read, even if it's old. If you review one of my stories, chances are I'll go and have a look at what you've written, and hopefully write a review. I have to say that, while favourites are very flattering, they mean so much more with a review!

Favourites: I go the whole way or not at all. If I have someone on alert, they're on favourites too, because then everyone else can see the authors that I like enough to want to read everything by them. That's how I find most of my favourites - by navigating through other people's! And my favourite stories are pretty empty, because I generally like everything by my favourite authors. (Wasn't that nice and incoherent?)

Other quibbles. Note that a lot of my favourite stories have these things but they just annoy me a little bit.

A tiny note about the Prince Caspian movie: a lot of people have used a passage in the book that says that Caspian is the "same age" as Peter as justification for casting an almost-adult. In the book Prince Caspian, Peter is 14. Just had to put that out there.

Nicknames: In the books, Susan is called "Su" (NOT Sue - that makes me think of Mary Sue), Edmund is called "Ed", and Lucy is called "Lu". Peter is never called "Pete", which is why this always jars with me. It just sounds so - post-1940s.

I am a little tired of constantly reading Edmund referred to as "the Just king" or Lucy as "our Valiant sister". It is an epidemic - it's everywhere! I think that makes it a cliche. There are more subtle ways of referencing those qualities, methinks.

Aslan's divinity or otherwise aside, my inner pedant also stirs when Aslan is referred to as "He" (uppercase). Does Lewis do that? No? Well, that settles the matter, surely.

Wow, that was all so grim. So here I'll say that my favourite stories tend to be Pevensie sibling bonding or the ever-present, always moving "Susan redemption". I also have a soft spot for parodies.

THINGS I'M DOING:

-Editing Wikipedia. A fantastic way to contribute to the internet.

-Listening to Beethoven's symphonies. Heaven! If you have only heard the "da-da-da-DUMM" of the Fifth or the Ode to Joy from the Ninth, you are missing so much!

-Reading the Bible. Or attempting to. I figure that a book that has so profoundly influenced a lot of literature deserves to be read at least once. It's a daunting task, though, and so far I'm only up to Judges, having enjoyed Genesis and Exodus and ploughed through the grim, sometimes rather horrifying Leviticus and Numbers (UPDATE: And Deuteronomy! And Joshua! Yes!). However, I'm told that the New Testament is rather less dour. UPDATE: I have officially given up. I was starting to hate the thing, and that's not why I was reading it. I struggled through the Old Testament up to Ruth, and then read Matthew. That was more than enough.

-Re-watching The West Wing. Best TV show ever.

-Preparing for my Associate (AMEB) in piano.