All for books!

I've been doing really good reading this summer. I read for a lot of classes throughout the year, but rarely on my own, because of time. So this summer I've been catching up, with quality books.

I've read many, many one act plays. I've been reading Proust and Ovid. "The American Scholar" by Emerson. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I just finished The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and The Shack by William P. Young. I'm working on a book about Mozart's last year of life. As I mentioned, I re-read Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card.

And, I re-read the Harry Potter series. (All seven books in seven days.)

I am of the Harry Potter generation. The books started coming out when I was in elementary school, and I started reading them before they became such a big deal. In fact, one of my elementary school teachers read the first one to us, clearly before all the controversy popped up around them. Harry Potter's effect on my generation was tremendous, and, I believe, tremendously good. IT GOT US READING. We were all generally hooked on Harry Potter when we were young. So when we got older and books were still coming out, we were still reading them, unashamedly. The thought of being embarrassed that we were so excited about a book when we were 17 was ridiculous. The release parties (and I did indeed attend a few in my day) may have seemed like hype, but they were sparked by genuine enthusiasm and love for these books. Books that get kids reading are great in my book (unavoidable pun), but furthermore, these books aren't cheap fiction. They're GOOD. Yeah, it's not Dostoyevsky. It's not pretending to be. They're books that reach young people, and honestly deal with incredibly complicated themes and relationship, and do it in a delightful way. The characters are slightly over-the-top in a way that's magnificent, and the students are real enough for those reading to relate to them.

This is the first time I've re-read the entire series. Re-read things since the seventh book came out. And I'm rereading them with awestruck appreciation, watching how things come together, how masterfully woven these books are. I'm particularly impressed by the relationship between Dumbledore and Harry, which is absolutely not a surprise because of how important teachers are to me. It develops so beautifully, it is no surprise that I had to take a three hour break while reading the sixth book to sob at Dumbledore's death. (I've never cried that much at any book. And the fact that my reading was halted for three hours was a big deal. I pride myself on having read almost all the Harry Potter books in the day after I'd gotten them, not going to sleep until I finished.)

I was absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter, especially in middle school. I used to play online RPGs (role-playing games) based on Harry Potter's world, which was basically collective storywriting. We each had a character, and one person would "pose" (write out what that character was doing), others would respond. For example, in one RP log I have saved on my computer, my character Katarina Fole, the Transfiguration teacher, was hit during dinner with a flying salad:

Just as the poor, unsuspecting Katarina Fole is about to shove the first bite of juicy roast beef in her mouth, she is attacked by an amazingly ferocious cherry tomato. As she turns, more tomatoes charge, this time as backup forces of carrots with lettuce shields wail their soundless war cry. The shocked teacher reaches for her wand, but by the time she wields it, the attacks have stopped. After questioning the leading tomato (which she had to threaten showing the tomato just what could be done with the table, her hand and the tomato in the middle), she discovers that the veggies were not attacking on their own; they were sent by a power greater than that of salad. Standing and brushing off the battered shields, she stomps over to Nate and Mark's table. Her wand is clenched in the middle of her left fist, and a little bit of lettuce in clings to her hair.

(Kat, for the record, is one of my favorite characters I've ever written or played. And, yes, I went dressed as Kat to the release party of the 7th book - see picture, with my best friend Emily as Luna Lovegood.)

Then, the others in the room (particularly, in this instance, Nate and Mark) would respond with poses of their own. The end result yields, well, stories.

Normally when I mention that I spent most of my internet years role-playing online, I'm met with strange stares and expressions of pity. And yes, it is true. I was an extraordinarily antisocial nerd who had more friends on the internet than in real life. Yes, going outside was a rare event and yes, I would occasionally dream in text. But looking back, I learned so much from my time playing RPGs like this. First of all, it improved my basic writing skills. The people I RPd with were generally much older than me. Several of them are now married. Generally, these people were in high school or college, while I was puttering around in 7th grade. I had to keep up, and I did. Related to this, it taught me about character development. We had a character approval process, where new players had to write a character's personality, history and physical description, and if they were inappropriate for some reason, they could not start playing. They had to show they were serious about the game, and they had to show intelligence and believability. Therefore, you could not be an orphan who found a wand while living on the street at age two who then taught yourself how to be an Animagus by the age of five and has grown up to adolescence to already have supermodel looks and an incredible singing voice. We valued characters with normal backgrounds and vibrant personalities. Those were playable. You can't base every role-play on the fact that you don't have parents. Kat was by far my weirdest character, with strange little tidbits to her personality that seemed spontaneous and random (like an obsession with walnuts), but even she had a very normal life. I learned to find the value in the every day, and see how character grows from that. Extraordinarily helpful in writing, acting, and directing.

But even beyond those, I look back on my history in RPGs and realize that it was my first real experience collaborating on art, and when I look at it like that, the experience seems even more beautiful.

The major rule of RP is "no powerplaying". Powerplaying is when person A writes a response of person B's character, or says that something happens to person B's character without person B's permission. In the earlier example pose, with the salad, the person who I was RPing with, whose character knocked a salad bowl flying, only said that the salad flew towards the direction of the Staff Table. She didn't say that the tomato hit Katarina in the back - that was my character and therefore my territory. Of course I took it, because that's a great opportunity. But I could have made Kat dodge it, or be completely oblivious to all of it. And later, I never had Kat say something to Nate and then write, "Making Nate squirm in his seat." That could be her intention, and I could voice that, but it was up to the other person to decide whether he did or not. Quite obviously, this keeps the communal nature of RP alive - if you want to write all the characters, you are clearly welcome and able to go write something yourself. Role-playing was about the community of it.

With that rule in place, and with the incredible community of writers in the game I played, the result is people coming together, having experiences, writing together, and loving it. It was a game, it was a collaboration, it was a community, it was art. We took the world of Harry Potter, yes, but we didn't play those characters, we set it in a magical school in Colorado and didn't really mention the plot of the books, and we just had fun. I learned so much, so much that I'm still actively using. I became a pretty good roleplayer in my time, even becoming a mentor to help out new players and approve new characters. I stopped when I got into theater in high school, because I simply did not have the time. But I wouldn't trade those years spent connecting via Telnet for anything in the world.

It comes as somewhat of a surprise to people that I write. Actually, that I'm really into writing, with three novels under my belt (mostly first-drafts that won't be revised). One, I'm working on revising now. I participate in NaNoWriMo, which challenges you to write a novel in a month. I find it helps me to actually get up and do it. I feel very strongly about young adult fiction. So much of what is written for young adults is crap, frankly, and teenagers and people in their 20's are target audiences. I think that is the formative time. Children are read to a lot, by parents, by teachers. But from middle school onto college, reading can become something that is "assigned", that people do because they have to, not because they want to. Books for people in this age group are vital. They need to be entertaining, but they need more substance. They need to be easily understood, but intelligent.

One of the most inspiring times in my life was last summer, when Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight series, was released. Yes. I have read all four Twilight books. I'll say their cover art is incredible, and there's one point in New Moon where Stephanie Meyer does a really effective trick. Edward freaks out and leaves Bella, and instead of saying, "seven months later" or whatever it is, there is a page with the name of each month on it, and you have to flip through, "November... December... January... February," etc. It's actually a brilliantly physical way to have the reader experience the length and pain of the time. I bow to that trick. However, the rest of the books are not worth the time. I'll admit that a part of me liked the first one, the part that the Sondheim fan in me tries to deny exists. It appealed to the trashy side. But the next two were just boring, and overdramatic, and I only read them to get to Breaking Dawn.

Breaking Dawn is one of the most awful things I have ever read, and therefore I loved it.

When creating a world, be it onstage or onpage (oh I'm clever), you establish the rules of the world. Particularly when dealing with fantastical creatures (such as... vampires). You establish rules to how they operate. (Later, when roleplayers start popping up, these rules are known as "canon". For an obvious example, in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, gold dragons are always paired with women, bronze always with men. Thus, to have a female bronzerider would be going "against canon" and would thus be illegal in most RPGs based on Pern.) Stephanie Meyer did a good job establishing HER vampires. Now, she's criticized a lot because her vampires aren't like most established vampires, but I'm not a vampire expert and I'm not going to get up in arms about that. Stephanie Meyer and Anne Rice are clearly different people with different vampires.

What Stephanie Meyer does in Breaking Dawn is she breaks her own established rules of her world for no real reason but pure sentimentality and cheesy, Mary Sue endings. The effect is, "AND NOW HERE'S A HAPPY ENDING WITH CUPCAKES AND SPARKLES!" Breaking Dawn is like Stephanie Meyer has written bad fanfiction of herself. These characters would not have been approved by any legitimate RPG. I had an absolutely great time reading it, because it was so ridiculous. I do not think this was the reaction Stephanie Meyer wanted.

While I was reading this and laughing, people who had been fans of Twilight before it became a big enterprise like it is now were reading this and getting angry. Because, yes, there are intelligent Twilight fans, and they were livid. Clearly, the book was horrible, and they wouldn't take it. They struck back. They sounded the battle cry, "Don't burn it; return it!" They started distributing illegal copies over the internet, saying, "No one should have to pay to read this piece of crap." My heart swelled as I saw young people demanding better literature.

I think Twilight only became as popular as it did because of Harry Potter. We have gotten used to being excited for new books to come out. But, as the Breaking Dawn backlash shows, not just anything can cut it. But there is a definite call for quality fiction for my generation.