Squeaking in at the tail end of December, I finished reading the 37th book of the year. (I finished number 36 three days ago, a Young Adult version of the Spider-Man origin story, told from the point of view of Mary Jane. I may write about that later.) Since I'm trying to finish Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (in order to be able to start Rhythm of War; or perhaps the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin; or maybe another Art of Magic: The Gathering book; or a history book called Plantagenet that is, as one might assume, about the Plantagenets; or maybe Hamnet, a rave-reviewed novel about the death of William Shakespeare's son; or perhaps the new Attack on Titan that arrived on Christmas Eve, to say nothing of the scores of older, unread books adorning my shelves), I feel as though I've read enough pages to constitute more than simply 37 books. Maybe in 2021 I'll do a page-count instead of title-count to see how that makes me feel.
Anyway, the reason I read Of Dice and Men is because David Ewalt's history about the creation and progress of Dungeons & Dragons is key to my upcoming Winterim. January 2021 will see me and another teacher at my school doing a three-week intensive course on tabletop RPGs, with the original brand smack dab in the middle. We'll also be looking at a handful of other versions of RPGs, then tasking the students to create their own new TTRPG. It should be a lot of fun, and though I'm not quite as excited for this Winterim as I have been in the past (truth be told, I've never been less pumped for a Winterim than I am this year, though it has nothing to do with my topic, coteacher, or students enrolled), mostly because my life feels like a pending storm is on its way. That has left me feeling a bit despondent, a topic I wrote about here, if you want details. Nevertheless, I am on break, which means that I'm reading new D&D manuals, watching YouTube videos of people, trying to wrangle enough patience to try playing with my kids, and finishing up the reading of this book. You know…teacher on break stuff. One of the things about Ewalt's book is his unabashed appreciation for the game. It's true that there is a level of geekery that Dungeons & Dragons attracts, so it shouldn't be surprised that someone who is interested in the past of the game is also interested in the game. Nevertheless, I liked his tone: It's inviting and general, yet clearly connected to the source. He'll use metaphors that require footnotes, but it's not done in a condescending tone, and they always help add to the world of the game that he's documenting. And though I knew a bit about the beginnings of the game thanks to the documentary In the Eye of the Beholder, there are a lot of extra details that Ewalt puts into the book that contextualized what I saw in the film. Not only that, but there is space in a book to go over parts that aren't as tightly refined as what In the Eye of the Beholder could cover. One example that I thought was interesting--and, frankly, underserved--was the chapter on the satanic panic of the eighties. The passing awareness I have of that particular moment in the pop cultural history has always been light, and I was hoping that there might be more in it with Ewalt's book, but he remains focused on D&D for the entirety of that chapter. (I'm interested to see what my students think: They were given the assignment of reading the entire book before we start in January, so they should come in prepared to discuss sections like that with me.) I also liked how he walked me through the history of the different editions without getting bogged down in minutiae. I've only recently started playing--a handful of students introduced me to D&D 5e (fifth edition) a couple of years ago--so though I've been aware of tropes and how to play TTRPGs to a certain extent, I didn't see how there could be so many changes to what seems like a pretty solid foundation. And what's the difference between Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the others? Ewalt manages to navigate this area pretty well, bringing about the salient historical points and putting everything into the narrative of a small, ambitious business, complete with the missteps and mistakes that led to nearly losing the game entirely. It didn't all sing to me, though. There are moments when he narrates a campaign that he's in with his friends, and while I appreciate what he's trying to do with that, it felt a little self-indulgent and not really the point of the book. This happens more toward the end, as Ewalt's love of the game and his excitement interacting with the potential of the new edition (this was written before D&D 5e came out) overpowers the narrative structure that he's been working so hard to establish. His digression on trying a LARP-lite experience was puzzling, as it didn't seem to really connect with the point of his book. I mean, I'm glad that he had fun at Otherworld where he had an opportunity to play a scripted campaign beyond the tabletop, but…how does this really fit in with discussions about the original creators, their own foibles, the process of creating a game with such massive influence on the pop cultural landscape? Admittedly, the subtitle of the book is The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It, and since Ewalt is one of those people, I guess it makes sense that some of his own life leaks in? I found it distracting, though. I read Ethan Gilsdorf's Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks a number of years ago, so I had already passed through a contemplation about what it means for someone to try to join in with the LARPing community and to balance an interest in exploring fantasy fiction. In fact, a lot of Ewalt's experiences mirrored Gilsdorf's. It made that particular section of the book a bit samey, though that's not really Ewalt's (or Gilsdorf's) fault. On the whole, however, I found the book to be worthwhile. I like history, I like pop culture, I like D&D…this is definitely the sort of thing that would resonate with me. I would probably recommend it to anyone who's looking for a bit of an insight into what might otherwise be an opaque topic--why do people pay so much money to just sit around and tell each other stories?--and also fans of the game will likely enjoy this trip down memory's dungeon. If you're only passingly interested in how tabletop RPGs got started, then you're probably fine missing this one. Note: The Concurrent Enrollment English class I'm teaching is writing a personal essay about their literary journey. We're using Fahrenheit 451 as our text, but writing our own stories as we go along. Personal narratives are kind of my jam, so I decided that I would draft my own example essays/approaches to the topic. Fortunately for me, I won't be graded on what I write. Instead, I can simply let the story take me where it will. Here's what I wrote.
Naked trees. Kniving winds. The too-early setting of an October sun. A strange street. A dripping nose. In my cold-chapped hands, I held a flyer for Jim Ferrin, a guy in our ward who was using the youth to help canvas Orem neighborhoods with his candidacy. I did not much care about him--aside from being politically ignorant, I was twelve years old and completely uninterested in doing this bit of service. Besides, I wasn’t friends with any of his kids. Add to that the injury of having had to give up a perfectly good book-reading evening, and my pre-teen angst about the job becomes clearer. I walked to the next house, numb fingers fumbling with the slender elastic, wrapping the half-sheet of paper (hunting-orange in my memory, though who now knows what it really was) around the screendoor’s black handle. As the leaves gossiped past me, I shrugged deeper into my thick leather coat. “I don’t want this,” I said to myself. “I want to be at home, with Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom.” Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom, of course, aren’t real. They’re characters from the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery. Set on a faraway planet, the book series revolves around the men and women who have become selected to ride massive, fire-breathing dragons, all in defense of their planet from a mindless mycorrhizal threat. The world is a rare feat in secondary-world creation, second only to Tolkien’s Middle Earth in the complexity, interaction of disparate parts, and world-building. (The late Anne McCaffery didn’t build her own unique languages for her world--something that will likely always put Tolkien at the top of the list for most detailed secondary-world creation in literature.) To a twelve year old whose primary experiences were imaginative, having such a wonderfully wrought world--even if it was fictional--was where I wished to spend as much time as I possibly could. What I didn’t understand then but can see more clearly now is that Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom--and Robinton, Menoly, and the rest of the entrancing cast--came into my life as permanent residents, people who became real to me through the viral act of writing and reading. They felt almost tangible, with problems that were large-yet-solvable, a type of bravery that I could only aspire to, and beneficiaries of a world in which dragons weren’t terrible beasts to slay but instead gentle companions, loyal and true. I grew up in the late eighties and early nineties: Ronald Reagan’s deregulation of what constituted advertisements to children meant that my Saturday mornings were twenty-three minute long commercials with a plot, interrupted by seven minutes of actual commercials. I knew very well how a child could pine for something. After all, watching an entire episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--during which time there were a half dozen reminders that I could actually play with the Technodrome or get that Donatello action figure to round out my collection--was an injection of desire coming straight into my eyeballs. There was a yearning for the toys on the TV (to say nothing of the jealousy I felt toward the child actors who got to play with the toys during the commercial) that can be difficult to fully understand. I would ache for what I saw on TV, almost as if I could physically feel it. That’s what I felt that blustery October day as I hawked flyers for Jim-Ferrin-in-our-ward. But it wasn’t an ache for the action figures and playsets. It was a desire to return to a written world, a place where these fictitious people lived. I wanted to return to Pern, not suffer through the bad weather of Utah in late-autumn. I couldn’t say that this was the first time that I felt such a pining for the fictitious, but it’s certainly one of the strongest. The pull of characters--a concern for them that was akin to caring about my real life friends and their problems--was so intense that I almost cried. (Being freezing cold and miserable probably only added to that emotional response.) This, of course, is a different sort of experience than when I finally “got” what Shakespeare was saying in Hamlet or could “see” Milton’s brilliance. This was a more tangible, more from-the-gut experience. I found myself wanting to be in a place that I had never seen with people I had never met more than I wanted almost anything else in that moment. I did, unsurprisingly, get to go home when my service was complete. I don’t remember if Brother Ferrin ended up winning that election a couple of weeks later; I do remember, however, that Pern has--ever since that time--been a part of me, a place that I happily return to. And though I don’t ache to return there anymore (at least, not to the same degree), I know the keenness of such yearning. I now look forward to the next time an author’s words can so fully enrapture me--I look forward to being teleported again. For my Fantasy Literature Winterim, we are reading the first of the Harper Hall trilogy of Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern series. The book is called Dragonsong and I love it a lot. It was my first introduction to the world of Pern, and it's a brilliant piece of writing. While it lacks some of the complexities and richness of the adult novels, its quality of writing and worldbuilding are top notch. And though McCaffery's ability to write fantastic characters and intriguing stories waned as she aged, I always wholly and fully recommend the Dragonriders of Pern series to anyone looking for worthwhile stories. In fact, I've mentioned the series a number of times here before.
What I couldn't help but marvel at was the way in which McCaffery weaves the details of her world into a compelling story. Menolly, the main character of this book, is a young girl in a backwater Hold where her talents are wasted. A number of injustices happen to her, all of which only serve to make the reader care even more about the young woman, and her eventual successes--through the generosity of others, as well as some timely luck--are enough to make even my desiccated heart palpitate with hope and optimism. Reading it with my class, however, has been the real joy of this particular pass (that's a Pernese pun, for the record). If you want to pick up Dragonsong and read it as a very soft fantasy, skip the Foreword. If you want to read it as it was originally conceived of, as science fiction, reading the Foreword will provide the necessary context. Most of my class wanted to read it as fantasy, so they skipped it, allowing the entire world to be unfolded as the story progressed. McCaffery has a lot of intricate details that allow new visitors to jump in and learn more about what's going on. Additionally, there are big, world-sized problems that are happening in the background to Menolly's story that provide the plot of other books, which tucks Menolly's arc into a broader tapestry. As one of my students pointed out, a Mary Sue character feels like the entire universe is created specifically for her, while a better-written character feels like she is a part of the world. Menolly is definitely in the latter category, where her contributions, though small, end up having large-scale ramifications further down the road. It leaves me in perpetual jealousy that McCaffery did such a stellar job with this series. Especially as I'm struggling with my own writing--questioning whether I should abandon the hobby altogether, in my darker moments--it's both encouraging and frustrating to see how to tell a good story and build a unique world at the same time. The encouraging part is that it can be done; the frustration is that I can't seem to do the same. Still, if nothing else, rereading the first Harper Hall book, which is built on a bedrock of solid worldbuilding and crafted with an expert eye toward character and story, is a private joy that I too often neglect. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! I mentioned before that I've started playing Dungeons and Dragons with my students at school, as well as playing with my two older boys. In order to do that, I have to design different campaigns for them to go through. Since I don't have one ready for them to enjoy today, I'm going to double-up and use today's writing to also give a glimpse about how I plan a short campaign for my kids. As a matter of note, there are acronyms that I use that refer to different manuals (DM = Dungeon Master's Guide, PH = Player's Handbook) and also random creatures that make sense to me. And, as a matter of playing, I put little check marks on the points that we hit. That way, if I need to recycle ideas or pull things back to a previous experience, there's documentation. Also, I invent a character that I control (or use one of the previous ones from other adventures) to help give the boys a chance to survive the encounters and have a good time.
In other words, I get it if you don't want to read more. Anyway, without further ado, here's the Sunday campaign for me and my boys.
Childish Fantasy
I have, for a long time, been a fan of fantasy. As a genre, it's been rather omnipresent in my life. Even when I was poor at reading, I still have the dimmest of memories about how much I enjoyed dragons* and stories of daring-do. I can't remember the name of one book about dragons that I particularly loved--it was so long ago and I didn't buy the book (checked it out from the library)--but I considered it my special version of dragon-book, as opposed to my older brother (who was reading some of the Dragonriders of Pern) and my younger brother (who was reading My Father's Dragon). Later, I'd fall into Pern, but for a time, I enjoyed this one form. I could never get my fill of fantasy. I took in the Chronicles of Prydain, as I've said, but I also read most of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which begins with Dealing with Dragons. This series, from what I can recall, took the idea of the princess as a damsel in distress and put it on its head, though a dashing prince still manages to make an appearance. One detail that stands out for me is the way the prince would use his magic. He'd feel the magic through his sword, which he twisted to get it to do…magic, I'm assuming. I can't remember more than that, but I thought it was pretty cool. I read a prequel to the first of the Shannara series, The First King of Shannara and was basically confused and unimpressed. I'd played a Shannara-based video game that had made me interested, but the prequel didn't interest me much. (This, by the way, fascinates me. You'd think that a prequel would be a good place to start--it's before the main story anyway. Yet, when I read The First King of Shannara, there wasn't anything that I could really wrap my mind around with it. I think there's a scene where someone's walking in a cloak and the wind/snow is blowing hard, but other than that, I have absolutely nothing. In fact, I remember the Twizzlers that I ate whilst reading the book much better than the book itself. Those were tasty Twizzlers. Kinda like these Pull and Peel style, except better. Also, I spent, like, six or seven minutes looking for the right kind of Twizzlers to link to. That's where my priorities are.) At the recommendation of an upperclassman, I tried Bazil Broketail, a story about a man-sized dragon…or maybe a little more than man-sized? Bazil is a dragonwarrior and the book was about him and his rider becoming friends and killing people, I think. This one is hazy, too. I remember not being particularly impressed. Then I struck upon Terry Goodkind's People are Stupid, better known as Wizard's First Rule. Goodkind is really the one to whom I owe the most when it comes to my grown-up interest in fantasy. While I've since drifted from his fandom--and I'll have more to say on him some other day--I can't deny a debt to him for heavily influencing my earliest work, particularly what I wrote when I was in college and freshly married. I spent more time among sorcerers than I did among the stars, but I still remember some of the books I read that had a more science-fiction flavor. The Spider-Man novels, of course, are considered a very soft kind of science-fiction. Most of Anne McCaffery's books are sci-fi (also soft), but I enjoyed the Rowan series and the Freedom's Landing series by her, aside from the Dragonriders. I also read a great deal of Animorphs books during my middle school years. The point of this random reminiscence isn't particularly concrete: I've loved fantasy since I was a child, and I still thrive on it above and beyond any other genre. In some ways, that has prepared me for the fantastical imaginings of writers like Homer, Dante, and Milton, as each of those writers spoke of things that maybe are, but so far as we can tell, truly only reside in the mind. And, as I've mentioned elsewhere, one of the worries that I have is that my diet is so fantasy-laden that a truly purposeful story--a story about my "truth"--can't have the fantastical and still mean what I want it to mean. I'm coming to grips with that possibility, but I'm still unsure what that kind of thinking means for me. Perhaps the great question is, was fantasy a thing that I loved as a child…but it's time to put off childish things? I mean, I play Dungeons and Dragons with my kids (both at school and at home) and one of my favorite shirts to wear has Wonder Woman on it, so maybe I'm not the best judge of what's "adult" and what's "childish". H*ck, I don't even mean that fantasy can't be "adult", as there are plenty of grimdark fantasies out there. This is something I'm going to have to think on some more. But not today. Today, I'm going to get read to play some video games with my kids. --- * I wrote about dinosaurs and dragons in a previous essay. The two behemoth creatures of fantasy and science fiction imagination would have to be dragons and dinosaurs.* And though the latter is not as common a trope as the former, I think it's fair to say that these two categories have had a lot written about them and both have significant things to say within their respective genres. But I'm not so much interested in considering the way the two influence their genres, but instead how the real-life stuff influences the fantastical. Here There Be Dragons It's no secret that real life dinosaurs inspired the myths of dragons and gryphons. Fossilized bones didn't appear only once natural philosophy turned into modern-day science. But dragons in their mythical and, as it were, classical sense are originally conceived as, basically, Tyrannosaurus rex but with longer bodies and, hey, why not, wings. (Which, if you want to read a story about a T. rex having wings and flying, you can read Steve Cole's YA Z. Rex. It is about as good as you might think when I tell you that it's about a T. rex growing wings and flying.) Because of these long-standing stories, despite the fact that dragons have 'existed' for only a few centuries, their inspiration doesn't feel as old. Not, at least, in terms of narrative. When it comes to the science, yeah, obviously. The death date of the dinosaurs was, like, at least before St. George was alive. But as a culture, going back deep into the medieval times and even earlier through Eastern influences, we've been telling stories about dragons for a good chunk of our human history. To me, it makes sense that dragons would have a continued presence in pop culture and fantasy literature because we've always told stories about dragons. Sometimes they're nice (Anne McCaffery's versions spring to mind); usually they're not (I think of the dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire and they aren't nice even to their "mother"). Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small. In other words, the concept of human/draconic interaction is malleable and intriguing. Though I think this trend is slowing down, there was a time (I have heard) where every fantasy book with a dragon on the cover would sell, and those without one wouldn't. Okay, so maybe that's apocryphal, but the idea of marketplace saturation with dragons has a logic to it. The ubiquity of dragons in fantasy is one of its staples, one of the ways in which a person can easily understand that this book is fantasy. Tolkien did it, so of course, everyone else had to. Even Pat Rothfuss' first Kingkiller Chronicle, The Name of the Wind, has a dragon that Kvothe, the main character, slays. Terry Goodkind's first novel, Wizard's First Rule not only has a wizard (necessary for "traditional" fantasy), but a dragon, both of whom are featured prominently on the front cover of the early paperback art. The creatures are prominent in much of the "sword and sorcery" style of narrative, including Dungeons & Dragons, which, it should be pretty clear, involves dragons. What I'm getting at is that these creatures are everywhere within the genre. It's great. While I no longer want to write a dragon story, necessarily, I think they're a wonderful aspect of the genre and if I could Impress a Pernese dragon, I would do it in a heartbeat. Welcome to Jurassic Park
Dinosaurs, on the other hand, have a different history in fiction and in books. Rather than being a part of a collective imagination and cultural heritage, dinosaurs are given a separate marketing approach. This is coming from my own experience (obviously), but I get the sense that dinosaurs have three distinct categories into which they're fitted: Kids books and encyclopedias, scientific books, and Jurassic Park. The first category is the DK Encyclopedia style of books, including picture books, alphabet books, and even the clever Dinosaur Train, which really tried to introduce high quality research into a kids' show. But that's partly my point: If you want to see a plethora of dinosaur books, you have to go to the Children's Section of Barnes and Noble. The covers are really bright, the font is easy to read, and there's a friendliness to it. Or, on occasion, the books will be edgy and have claw marks on it and look real tuff, trying to pull in a sense of adventure for the reader (presumably male, based upon the way we market to kids**). These are great "gateway" books, but their purpose isn't to pull children into a narrative, whether that's a cultural one or not. Instead, they're non-fiction, meant to educate and inform. I'm all for that--but there isn't a book with a dragon on the cover inside the Children's Section that isn't instantly understood as being fantasy, narrative, story. The second category is the grown up version of the first: The real meat (pun intended) of dinosaur research, complete with controversies, roundabout conclusions, gestures toward where the field may go, and confessions of false assumptions and attempts at corrections. These books are on my shelf, yes, and I've read some of them. Depending on the writer, they're either engaging and exciting, despite the fact that they're about fossilized bones (look to Brian Switek's My Beloved Brontosaurus for an example) or their entire premise is put into the first chapter and the rest of the book feels meandering and pointless (I'm looking at you, How to Build a Dinosaur). The point is, though there can be anecdotes, there aren't stories in these. They are factual, not fantastical, and that isn't a flaw. I don't want to be faulting a phone book for lack of a plot, here, because that's not what I'm driving at. Instead, I'm trying to point out that, if you're going to get a dinosaur book, it'll probably be one like this. The third category is using Jurassic Park as an umbrella term for the whole concept. While there are plenty of other dinosaur books (Footprints of Thunder and Cretaceous Dawn and Raptor Red spring to mind here), they're always compared to the science fiction novel (and its much more popular and familiar movie), Jurassic Park. For better or worse, Crichton's novel is the way in which we think about narratives on dinosaurs. The recent Dinosaur Lords books by Victor Milan all have a double-whammy blurb from George R.R. Martin: "It's like a cross between Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones." Name dropping the biggest fantasy novel series with one of the most iconic pieces of dinosaur science fiction guarantees a jolt of recognition. I pre-ordered the book based on that blurb alone. So while there are some books out there with dinosaurs, it's nothing like with dragons. And I find that so interesting. Maybe it's because we can make up stories about dragons without feeling like we need to get a PhD first, or maybe because Neil deGrasse Tyson won't fact-check our story in a tweet if it's about dragons but he probably will if it's about dinosaurs. Perhaps we feel like, because dinosaurs are real, our imaginations are bounded by that reality. I know that's an issue for me. I want to write a dinosaur book, but I want it to be accurate and I want it to have people being eaten by dinosaurs. And, because Jurassic Park already created such a vivid world of human-eating dinos, it's difficult to see around it to other possibilities. At least, that's how it is for me. That I'm interested in the harder story to tell--the one where I have to figure out what I'm doing in the shadow of one of the most influential stories in my own life--instead of going along with the "make it up, they're dragons!" possibility says something about my desires as a writer and what I now find worthwhile. And maybe, one day, we'll let dinosaurs be just as imaginative as we let dragons--they're kind of like cousins, after all. --- * Okay, aliens are probably a bigger thing within science fiction. But, as I think about it, in terms of a singular species, science fiction doesn't seem to have that generic trope. Spaceships, aliens, advanced technology--those tropes are definitely there. A creature, though? I don't know. It isn't really dinosaurs--there are probably more stories of alien brain slugs that take control of your body than there are dinosaur books--but I thought a juxtaposition of the two would be worthwhile. So don't get cranky if you disagree with the introductory sentence is what I'm saying. ** I know I'm not alone in feeling slimy thinking about selling stuff to kids. I mean, they don't know how to put their shoes on correctly, yet we expect them to make market-wise decisions about what they consume? Well, different rant for a different essay. |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|