Why Female Representation in Video Games is Important to Me

“Mommy, when are they coming out with a Gamegirl?”

I posed this question to my mom when I was six, holding my prized red Gameboy in my hand. I’d noticed the “boy” in the title and wondered why on Earth my new favorite device came with a gender—did that mean it wasn’t intended for me? I couldn’t understand the reasoning behind it at the time, except that it made me feel left out. My mom responded that she didn’t know, but that she hoped they would start selling a Gamegirl eventually.

The face of a gamer.

 The Internet is teeming with controversies surrounding women and the gaming world right now. Feminists who discuss video games, such as Anita Sarkeesian and her fantastic online web series Feminist Frequency, have been the target of harassment ranging from name-calling all the way to rape and death threats. This is all because these women critique the sexism and lack of female representation in many games and gaming communities, and members of said communities have responded defensively. Most famously, this issue spawned Gamergate, a movement that many claimed related to “ethics in [video-game-related] journalism” rather than displeasure with the people who have called attention to the misogyny omnipresent in gaming.

One way this has impacted my life is that if I make a public observation about, say, a female character in a game, or attitudes about female characters in games, defensive gamers like these pop up in my mentions on Twitter. It’s startling. When I mention, for instance, that I enjoyed getting to play as a woman in the recently released Fallout 4, I get attacked for privileging diversity over a game’s plot (as if those two aren’t interconnected), creating an issue when there isn’t one (there is), and being a “feminazi.” The impression that this all gives me is that these members of the gaming community seem to think I, as a woman, am invading their space. That I suddenly heard other women want to see women in their games and I jumped on the bandwagon because I like causing problems for people.

That’s laughable. I’ve been playing handheld and console games since 1999 (computer games since 1997), and I’ve been desperate for more female representation in them for just as long.

Disclaimer here: This blog post is meant to be personal. I am here to talk about why I, as an individual, want to see more women in games and my history with that issue. I do not speak for other women—other women’s opinions about this may be similar or dissimilar to mine, depending on who they are. This post isn’t meant to prove once and for all why more women should be featured in the gaming community. It’s just meant to show why this inclusion is so important to me.

Let’s head back to 1999, when I received my first games for my Gameboy Color. Originally, my sister and I were given Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue, but they were corrupted and unable to save, so I consider my first real Gameboy game to be Pokémon Yellow. I looked at the back of the box and saw that I was to play as a boy in a baseball cap. All right, whatever. But then I started the game, and here’s the first question I was asked: “What is your name?”

(From Green Rupee Gamer's blog)

 Before I continue on, let’s return to that earlier complaint I heard about people forcing diversity into games without any thought for the plot. I understood, and continue to understand today, why allowing for a female protagonist in a game does not always make narrative sense.

When I was nine, one of my favorite games became Kingdom Hearts. I felt like there was no better game on the planet. I played it every chance I got. And even though I desperately wanted a chance to play as the main female character, Kairi, I understood why I was playing with Sora. Shifting the narrative to focus on Kairi would have changed the entire plot, and thus the entire game. Playing as Sora didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the game, and I certainly didn’t hold it against him. I loved him. I still love that guy.

With Pokémon, however, they weren’t asking me, “What is the name of the character you’re playing as?” They asked, “What is your name?” It literally asks you to step into the shoes of the character on the screen, or in other words, to play as yourself in a fictional reality. To add to this, your character in Pokémon doesn’t speak, meaning that whatever personality they have is whatever you project onto them. It’s an invitation to be part of the game—an invitation that fell flat for me, a girl.

I could’ve typed in “Morgan,” since it’s a gender neutral name, but playing as some boy named Morgan didn’t feel like the same thing as playing as myself. Sometimes, I pretended I was a girl with short hair, but that illusion always shattered when the characters in the game referred to me as he/him. This was made even more difficult in the Legend of Zelda games, which also ask you for your name. The character onscreen is more than just a few tiny pixels, so it is very clear the character is male.

Also, your sister screams "BIG BROTHER!!!" at you about twelve times (from Samurai Nintendo)

Some people might be wondering why the hell I struggled to connect with a character so much if they weren’t the same gender as me. I still don’t have the complete answer for this—it’s something I felt as a kid, and I haven’t yet figured out the words to fully explain why I felt this way—but I will propose one idea. There’s a difference between liking a character and identifying as one.

Did I like male characters as a kid? Definitely. I adored Ash and Brock from the Pokémon anime, and Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, and Simba from The Lion King. But because they were boys, I didn’t feel like I could be them. My ability to identify with characters regardless of gender (as well as race, sexuality, etc.) has become much more complex over the years, but whenever I play a video game there’s still some part of me that’s wondering, “Can I be a girl?” That’s partially related to that old feeling coming aflame again, and partially a result of my awareness that women are represented in video games far less often than men are, and I find the message that exclusion sends to be hurtful.

Anyway, back to Pokémon. Soon after my first journey into the virtual Pokémon world (RIP to my level 100 Tentacruel from Pokémon Yellow), Nintendo announced Pokémon Crystal, a new Pokémon game. Well, not exactly new—it would take place in the same region as Silver and Gold (I’d played Gold by this point as well), and would have more or less the same plot and kinds of Pokémon you could catch. Except that this time, you could play as a girl.

JLSHFJLSFKLJFK (from TV Tropes)

 I absolutely lost my shit. Ironically, I got so excited that I created an entire persona and backstory for her (she was Arina, the twin sister of my real-life sister’s version of her, named Lucy), so I didn’t end up self-inserting myself the first time around. But the point was, I could if I wanted to. The point was, if I typed in “Morgan,” I could easily see the character as myself if I changed clothes and dyed my hair blue. No more walking around the Johto region looking desperately at all the female sprites and wishing I could switch places with them. Arina was someone I felt like could be me.

From that point on, self-insert games in which you couldn’t choose your gender felt like a disappointment, even if I enjoyed every other aspect of the game. I actually ended up liking Legend of Zelda games more than Pokémon (and still do), but it continues to feel weird to type in my name when this obviously male person is staring back at me. To Nintendo’s credit, they just announced a female version of Link named Linkle, whose name makes me thankful that you get to choose your own in Legend of Zelda games. Maybe she’ll be an option in future Legend of Zelda adventure-game titles?

Because of this lack of female representation, I also never expected that a game would exist in which you had to play as a woman. I figured if you weren’t given an option, you were a man. I still remember how I gasped the first time I played Portal and happened to catch what my character looked like through one of my portals while playing. It’s a first-person game, so I’d played for about an hour already assuming my character was male. I froze for a second, turned to the friend who was showing me the game and went, “Wait. I’m a girl? I’m a girl?” I seriously wanted to cry.

So, this isn’t something I’ve recently noticed and starting having a problem with. Female representation in games has been a concern of mine since before I’d ever heard of feminism.

To finish off this post, I will provide a sample of what gender demographics have looked like in gaming throughout my childhood up until now. Below is a photo of most of the games in my house. I haven’t played all of them, as they’re a combination of games belonging to me and to my fiancé. Underneath that is the gender of the character(s) you play as in each game. I will be skipping repeat games, such as the multiples of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II. Note that almost every title with the description “option between male and female” is developed by the same company, Bethesda Softworks. I will also include a couple of games downloaded onto consoles but that we don’t have cases for.

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 – male

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 – male (with one female exception if you play Birth by Sleep)

The Last of Us – male (you play briefly as a female at one point)

Fallout 4 – option between male and female

Rock Band 4 – option between male and female

Forza 5 – male

The Elder Scrolls Online – option between male and female

Oblivion – option between male and female

Skyrim – option between male and female

Viva Piñata – no gender

Left 4 Dead 2 – option between premade characters (3 males and 1 female)

Halo Reach – male (except online, where you have the option between male and female)

Halo 3 – male (except online, where you have the option between male and female)

Halo 4 – male (except online, where you have the option between male and female)

Fable II – option between male and female

Fable III – option between male and female

Gears of War – male

Bioshock – male

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – male

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – switch back and forth between premade characters (2 males and 1 female)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – male

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – male

Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories – male

The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker – male

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – male

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 – switch back and forth between 200 premade male and female characters

Super Smash Brothers Brawl – option between premade characters (28 male, 6 female, and 6 of unknown gender)

Mario Kart Wii – option between premade characters (16 male, 7 female, and 1 of unknown gender)

Halo 5 (not pictured) – male if you’re playing solo (there are female options if playing online main story/online multiplayer)

Grand Theft Auto V (not pictured) – male (except online, where you have the option between male and female)

Portal (not pictured) – female

Portal 2 (not pictured) – female

Out of 32 games, 17 of them (which you might notice is more than half) require you to play as male for either the entire game or the majority of it. Of those 17, 2 include sections where you can play as women (Ellie from The Last of Us and Aqua from Birth by Sleep) and 5 only let you play as women under certain circumstances, mostly having to do with online multiplayer (Halo Reach, Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo 5 and Grand Theft Auto V). 12 allow you to choose. Of those 12, 4 provide you with more male character options than female ones (Left 4 Dead 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and Mario Kart Wii. The astute will notice that Super Smash Brothers Brawl provides just as many characters of unknown gender as female ones). 2 require you to play as female, and 1 doesn’t specify a gender.

This is coming from a household where both gamers who live there prefer to play as women, meaning we’re more likely to pick up progressive games, so this is a very generous list.

Again, I can’t speak for every woman. There are probably plenty of women out there who don’t care about identifying with the main character or having the main character’s gender match their own. I’m just here to share my story, explain why it’s important to me, and emphasize why this is an issue I will continue to talk about. In the end, it all comes down to exactly how I felt about my Gameboy when I was six: left out.

-Morgan

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Writer's Block Exists, But Not in the Way You Think

It's pretty common knowledge that writers (or any other type of artist) need a kick in the pants every so often, and usually that kick needs to come from themselves. Artists are great at getting themselves into creative ruts and flailing helplessly when they realize there's no easy way out. And it can be so tempting to stay in that rut, because while there, you have no artistic responsibilities and can just hang out.

I'll just be down here.

But if you stay in the rut for too long, you realize it's boring as hell. Not being expected to do anything can make you feel useless. If you're an artist who invests a lot of their identity in said art, it can also lead to a slight existential crisis à la, "Why am I even on this planet if I'm not doing [x]?"

This year, I've spent a lot more time in creative ruts than I usually do. I'm no stranger to these ruts, of course, and I don't think any artist is. But the ruts of 2015 proved a lot harder to get out of, and, thanks to a number of circumstances, my willpower was no match for how steep they were.

Why am I even calling these ruts? Why am I not calling it writer's block? Because I don't think writer's block exists, or at least, it doesn't exist in the way most people seem to understand it. When I hear people complain about writer's block, it often comes in the form of, "I can't think of anything to write about. I'm sitting there and nothing is coming out."

Oh, something could come out, all right. All you have to do is think of words and type them onto the page, or scribble them into your notebook or napkin or stone tablet or whatever you use. Your problem is that nothing good is coming out.

Well, duh. That's, like, 75% of writing a first draft. Like I've said before, writing involves wading through a lot of shit before you can get to the good stuff. It's about not judging yourself and trusting that you will be able to look at it with fresh eyes later, to clean up the language and cut out entire sections that aren't working. It's about not being afraid of your own failure because nobody gets it right the first time.

To me, writer's block is less about your creative abilities no longer working and more about some paralyzing fear holding you back from writing at all. It is incredibly hard to push through this, and sometimes, you have a lot working against you. A major event could disrupt your life, whether it's a positive or negative one; you could be battling mental illness; your living conditions might make it more difficult or outright impossible for you to work on your art. But there's a fine line between giving yourself a break because of an obstacle and not pushing yourself to work when you know enough pushing would get you where you need to be.

Clearly, I am still struggling to find this line.

As many of you know, I'm writing a YA fantasy series meant to be four books long. I've written books one, two, and three, but shortly after finishing the third, I took a step back. I didn't want to start book four until I was fairly satisfied with the first three. Book one was polished thanks to a significant rewrite I undertook with it after becoming more familiar with the publishing industry. I was happy with book three, since it was my most recent work and written by a much more mature author than the other two.

But book two was a total mess. So, last year,  I promised myself I would revise the thing before drafting the final book in the series.

I'd been avoiding revising book two for a while, and only recently did I start thinking about why that was. Drafting it had been a messy process. I'd stumbled through the first ten chapters with no idea how to organize it, the last section was plagued with overblown tangents, the main plot got lost in a tangle of subplots. But I also wrote that book during the most difficult emotional period of my life. As a result, the book includes some of my best writing, but also made me not want to look at it.

Re-reading the first several chapters, I had no patience for the miserable kid who'd written the original draft (the me of several years ago). I called her stupid and annoying, cursed her for the monstrosity she'd left me with, and laughed at all her amateur mistakes. Revising her prose proved exhausting, which made it easy to slip into a rut. At some point, I tumbled into the rut and stayed there.

To be fair to myself, I've been up against a lot this year. My last semester of college took a toll on me. I was dealing with a school newspaper fiasco that left me disillusioned with my university and with universities in general. My significant other was studying abroad, and the separation was, to put it mildly, hard. I was teaching a class and my mental health was suffering worse than it ever had during college. Throughout that last semester, I revised book two in small bursts, but not in any sustainable way.

Then I graduated and went to Europe for two months, as my Instagram account can attest to. It was understandable that I didn't revise during this period, since 1) I had no time and 2) I had nowhere to go. Most of my time in Europe was either spent at my significant other's flat in London, which housed like seven other people and not very many rooms, or in an AirBnB, which...is someone else's house. I wasn't about to demand a room I could revise in for two hours every night. Through all of this, I promised myself I would start revising as soon as I got home.

Guess what didn't happen.

We arrived home super jet lagged and not wanting to do anything but laze around the house. I could barely find the energy to move. It's fine, I told myself. The family trip to Alaska is soon. You'll start revising there. Then we got there for our two-week vacation and I found myself repeating the same process every day. I'd announce that I was "planning to edit" later, occupy myself with other, less demanding tasks, and become more and more anxious as the day's hours dwindled. The closer I got to midnight, the more excuses built up. I'll do it in an hour. Okay, half hour. Actually, I can't tonight. I need to spend more time with my siblings. Or I'll just finish this quest in this video game. Tonight isn't a good night because--

These weren't valid excuses anymore. I was stuck in the rut. I'd been there for so much longer than I was used to and couldn't figure out how to get myself out of it. Worse than that, I started to tear myself apart for continually succumbing to whatever was stopping me. I criticized myself every day for it. It didn't exactly do wonders for my self-esteem.

Then one day during our trip, we visited a rocky beach. I was climbing out to one of the larger rocks that was more difficult to reach, since it was further out in the water than the others. I made it there without a scratch, despite the slippery stones I had to step on and the incoming tide. Boy was I proud of myself for being a badass and succeeding in an outdoorsy activity that made me nervous. I was still celebrating on my way back to the beach when I slipped on the barnacle-encrusted rock. I landed right on my butt and earned a cut on my palm, which would later bruise.

Asshole barnacles.

It was a shallow cut that barely broke the skin. It wasn't even that big, and there wasn't much blood. But what did I do? I, a 22-year-old woman who has always had a low pain tolerance, started crying.

I didn't cry in front of anyone who wasn't understanding (just my significant other, who is very pro-feel-what-you-feel), but still, I felt humiliated. I'm not very patient with myself when it comes to having an emotional reaction I don't consider reasonable. If I'd had it my way, I would have jumped back up all Mercutio-like and said, "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch!" But I cried, which definitely did not match the badass-outdoorsy-warrior mood I'd been indulging in a moment before. I felt ashamed.

This, of all things, made me remember why I was writing my YA fantasy in the first place.

My YA fantasy's main character has been thrust into a combat situation that doesn't match her personality at all. She, like me, is prone to crying for every reason under the sun, whether it be physical pain, interpersonal, frustration, anger, etc. Her best friend is a much more conventional warrior, and tears from her are pretty rare.

But there's a reason my main character has the spotlight instead of her friend. I want to show her fighting for her life through tears. I want her emotional outbursts to fuel her rather than indicate weakness. Through these books, I want to show people that emotion can lend us enormous strength though it may seem to hinder us. I am working against our culture's criticisms of "excessive" emotion and how it encourages people to suppress it. I especially want teenagers of all genders to read these books and feel validated when they cry. I want them to see crying as a source of power the way I couldn't as a teenager.

There is no way I'm gonna be able to do that unless I sit down and revise book two, damn it.

And you know what? When I got back to it, I thanked my younger self. Even though she didn't really know what she was doing, she'd fought through the muck to get words down during the hardest time of her life. Sure, it's a lot to revise. But without her, I wouldn't have anything to revise at all. She stayed out of her rut long enough to write this craptastic first draft. I am so proud of her.

So it took an assful of barnacles to get me out of my rut this time. Well, it didn't get me out on its own. It just threw down a rope. It still took me a few days to haul myself out of there and get down to business. Now, finally, I am revising again, and I feel much more comfortable with myself. I feel I'm doing good, important work that I hope will someday benefit other people.

Writer's block may be tough to deal with, but thinking about it in terms of fear instead of a short supply of creativity gives me a lot more control over how I handle it. I'm always better when I'm working on my craft, and I'm happy to be back on board.

If you have any methods for getting yourselves out of artistic ruts, let me know in the comments. I could sure use more ideas.

-Morgan

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I Don't Regret Giving up Acting: Some Darker Sides of Being a Child Actress

This post has moved! Read it here.

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I've Been M.I.A., But I'm Back With a College Degree!

This blog is something I treasure. It allows me a platform to write my thoughts on topics that are important to me in long form, and then to distribute those thoughts to a large audience. It provides me with a place to practice my writing, which, to a young writer trying to sell her fiction, is valuable no matter what the medium. It also produces instant feedback from readers and gives me the opportunity to interact with them.

So why haven't I written anything here since June of 2014? Why have I been neglecting something so important to me for almost a year?

Well, a number of life-changing things have happened to me in the past ten months. For your convenience, here's a chronological list:

• This person wandered into my life and made me fall in love. Rude. I would recommend following said person on Twitter and Instagram though, since both include quality content (Danny is both an amateur photographer and sassmaster).
• I went to the Caribbean on a family vacation and met some donkeys. The donkeys in Bonaire are morally offended by any form of journalism and so refused to allow me to write a blog post in their country.
• I started my senior year of college, which is the primary reason I wasn't updating this blog. Because of how draining senior year was, both academically and emotionally, I actually fell behind on everything, including writing/editing/revising my novels, reading for pleasure, keeping up with the publishing world, etc. Even playing video games started to feel like exerting too much effort.
• During my senior year, I taught a class on Leo Tolstoy, one of my favorite classic authors. If you're interested, we read Anna Karenina, selections from War and Peace, part of his essay "What is Art?", and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (a compilation of his shorter works), using the award-winning translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The class was small, but a big academic and personal success. It also took a lot of work, as you would expect. If you're into beautiful prose, expertly crafted characters, and emotions in general, I recommend you read all of these things.
• I ended up smack in the middle of a censorship controversy at my university (which, now that I no longer attend the school, I am comfortable stating is the University of Redlands). I was co-editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The Bulldog Weekly when, midway through the year, our student government decided to cut our funding. Suspiciously, this came after we published an article that didn't make the university look very good. My co-editor and I wrote about it here, but I plan to write a blog post talking more extensively about this as well.
• I graduated from college, earning my bachelor's degree in Writing Fiction: Listening, Absorbing, and Creating, which is a combination of the literature, creative writing, and psychology fields. If you're wondering why my major sounds made up, that's because it is. During my undergrad, I was part of an incredible program called the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies that allows students to design their own majors, which requires a lot of extra thought and self-motivation. I have a lot of negative feelings toward my university right now because of the whole newspaper drama mentioned above, but I can't speak more highly of Johnston and it will always have my heart. So, if you're considering the U of R, DO JOHNSTON.

And now I'm doing some traveling in Europe as a sort of graduation gift to myself. But what comes next?

Originally, I had planned to pursue a master's degree immediately after finishing my undergrad. Senior year helped me realize that I'm pretty burned out on school, at least for now, so I'll be spending the next year focusing on my novels, catching up with the publishing world, pleasure reading, and keeping up with this blog. I'm so excited to finally have time to participate in these things again, without having to schedule them around homework.

After that? We'll see. What masters degree would I want to pursue? Many might think I'd go for a creative writing MFA. I considered that at first, but now I know that's not the path I want to take. I have many reasons for this, which I hope to discuss on this blog at some point in the future.

What about literature? Tempting, but I think I'd rather indulge in all the pleasure reading I can in the years to come. Pursuing a masters in literature means committing myself to whatever my professors list in the syllabus. While I'm sure they'd assign some excellent reading, it means another several years of not having time to read purely for pleasure. Also, the niche I'm most interested in learning more about is Russian literature, and I'm pretty sure that requires learning Russian. Which would be great, and I would love to do that eventually! But I'd prefer to focus on getting my writing out there first.

If I'm going to pursue a masters in anything, my ideal choice (for the moment) is a masters in publishing. I'm really interested in becoming involved with publishing from the editorial side as well as the author side, and I've looked into some publishing programs that seem like excellent networking opportunities.

So, expect more posts from me now. I don't have homework taking up my time anymore and I'm looking forward to posting my thoughts somewhere less restrictive than Twitter. For those of you who have stuck with this blog, thank you so much for reading. For those of you who started following me within the past year, welcome, and I'm glad to have you!

I hope this is the beginning of a fulfilling and educational new era for this blog. Keep an eye out on Instagram for photos of England, Ireland, Scotland, and more!

-Morgan

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No, I'm Not Embarrassed: Good Lit is Good Lit

When I woke up this morning, there was rage all over my Twitter feed. I couldn't find the source, but it seemed to have something to do with YA readers being shamed for, well, reading YA. What's new, right?

I went about my day normally. Later, a friend posted the link to the offending article, and I read it. It's called Against YA, with the tagline, "yes, adults should be embarrassed to read young adult books." It argues that by reading young adult literature, adults are missing out on more "important" literature, namely literary fiction. Such readers are apparently selling themselves short by choosing "escapism" over more complex, ambiguous works only found in the adult section of the bookstore.

This article reeeaaally got under my skin, for a number of reasons.

(Side note: I'm not entirely comfortable with posting the link to the article, since I know controversial articles love to generate more traffic, and I'm contributing to that by posting it. But it's not fair for me to present my argument without offering up the other side, so there it is).

If you follow this blog, you know I write YA fantasy. You might also know that I write YA contemporary, and adult contemporary, or what the writer of the article calls realistic fiction. I am interested in a variety of different perspectives and audiences, so I don't feel comfortable limiting myself to just one category or genre. Naturally, then, I don't limit myself as a reader, either.

I used to. You'll know from some of my past entries that I used to limit my reading to realistic, literary fiction, particularly classics (yet I was writing YA fantasy?? Yeah, I was still figuring out the whole read-the-genre-you-write thing...don't worry, I learned). I agreed with this woman, mostly because I considered most YA books to be carbon copies of Twilight, which I disliked. I looked down on these books because I thought people used them for escapism. I, too, thought YA limited itself to "instant gratification" and shirked the harsher realities my classics offered me.

There are so many problems here.

First off, there is nothing inherently wrong with escapism. The reason it used to give me pause is because I thought people who sought out escapism wanted to ignore the problems in their lives, and thus never deal with those problems. I thought if you wanted to escape, you were weak, and your real life would fall apart around you.

My prejudice against YA was probably wrapped up in this mindset. But how unfair is it to assume that someone who wants a little escape is going to let their world go to pieces? There's a difference between wanting to get away for a little and being seriously dysfunctional. Also, I'm a hypocrite--what the hell do I play video games for if not for the escapism? The graphics? It's definitely not the graphics.

Secondly, the generalizations about YA listed in this article make it clear that this woman has not read widely in the YA category, or at least not widely enough to appreciate its many nuances and opportunities for complexity. According to her, YA is full of hunky dory protagonists who never self reflect and always get a perfectly tied-up ending. YA is meant to be pleasurable, she says. It's fluff. It doesn't let you empathize with people who aren't like you. It's easy on the heart and satisfying.

Right. That's why The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which she mentions in the article, leaves us with a good feeling. Wait, never mind. It ends with the main character suffering a serious emotional breakdown thanks to a traumatic event from his past. The readers are left wondering how he will cope with this latest relapse, and we don't get to know. If Katsa had never self-reflected in Graceling, never confronted an upsetting emotional reality about herself, she would never have won my respect. Boy do I wish the end of The Amber Spyglass was "easy on the heart and satisfying," because then I could've avoided the overwhelming panic and indignation I felt when I realized what was going to happen (I kept flipping the pages back and forth as if that would change it). If we're counting Harry Potter, I managed to empathize with Severus Snape. Last I checked, I wasn't a bitter, thirty-something-year-old man with greasy hair and an unrequited crush he really should have let go of a long time ago (yes, I'm being critical of him here, but feeling empathy for someone does not eliminate your ability to criticize that person. I felt sad for Snape, but I could still see issues with his behavior).

Or, let's take the book I'm reading right now: Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein, which follows a girl in her late teens who is placed in a women's concentration camp during World War II. The narrator has a captivating voice. The characters are interesting and respond to trauma in their own unique ways. The author does not shy away from the gruesome realities of a concentration camp, nor does she give us closure about what happens to everyone (oh, look! Ambiguity!). It is frustrating and, at times, sickening to watch these characters endure what they have to endure. It is not "pleasurable"--the only "pleasure" I could think of getting out of this book is being glad I'm not the one in a concentration camp, but I wouldn't call that "pleasure." I am not reading it to feel better about life; I'm reading it because I want to see what happens to these girls.

But, Morgan, wouldn't you ultimately get more out of a piece of literary fiction? Doesn't this book pale in comparison to those classics you love? Aren't you an adult?

Ah, there you are, Ulysses by James Joyce, which I spent last month reading with a class. I knew you'd come in handy.

When it comes to literary fiction, Ulysses is about as literary as you can get. It contains made-up words, nonsensical sentences, literally hundreds of obscure references (many of which are crucial to the experience, so have fun looking them up!), confusing narrators (who the hell is talking in this paragraph?), and stream-of-consciousness prose that is sometimes impossible to follow. Also, every chapter is written in a different style. Every time you think you're used to how Ulysses operates, boom! It transforms into a different monster.

Many people who haven't studied it closely or approached it blind think the book is a load of nonsense and isn't worth it. But I loved the hell out of this book. If you have it, or next time you visit a bookstore, flip Ulysses open to chapter eleven, the music-themed chapter. The chapter has a freaking overture made out of language. What does that mean? It means it operates like a musical overture, which plays a collection of sounds that will later appear throughout different parts of the performance that is to follow. Except Ulysses does it with words. The overture is made up of of a page and a half of short phrases that, in some form or another, appear in the chapter. As you read, you find yourself playing "Where's Waldo"--"Ah, there's the reference to the first line of the overture! Look, that must refer to line twelve!" It's mind-blowing and exciting. It makes you re-think how we use language and how stories are formed.

I also love the hell out of Rose Under Fire so far. I feel a rush of anticipation every time I sit down to read it, just as I did with Ulysses. How is it possible for me to sincerely enjoy such different books, especially one on top of the other? Because I understand that these novels are aiming for different effects, and those effects are equally legitimate. Rose Under Fire places compelling characters in a terrifying situation. It wants me to feel their reality and stress over the characters' fates. Ulysses challenges my expectations as a reader and demands that I pay just as much attention to the language as I do to plot and character--probably even more attention. These are both great goals. They are both stimulating. They both make me feel something.

Of course, if the article angered me as a reader, it angered me as a writer, too. I took most issue with the writer's claim that "[YA readers] are asked to abandon the mature insights into [an emotional] perspective that they (supposedly) have acquired as adults."

If this is what YA is about, then evidently, I haven't been reading YA. I've seen plenty of observations and epiphanies in YA literature that some adults never even think about or achieve. I have stated that there is nothing wrong with escapism already, but as someone who does not personally read for escapism, I tend to write against it. The novels I write (about and for teenagers) depend on mature insights. They feed on them. They could not exist without them. The more you follow my main character, the higher and higher she reaches for these insights, though sometimes she'll flinch away from them, too, because they're painful and she's human.

To argue that YA forces you to do away with adult emotionality negates everything I've been writing for, and negates a sizable percentage of the feelings a teenager experiences. Because many of the things teenagers feel are very real, very adult feelings. That's part of why adolescence is so terrifying--emotions aren't simple anymore. The feelings are new, but that does not make them lesser. As for adults who think reading about these "first" experiences is a form of regression, well, most of the adults I know would benefit from revisiting the roots of these emotions. That "first" feeling laid a foundation, after all.

Are you a literary novel? Give me feelings. Are you a YA novel? Give me feelings. Grip me by the heart, book, and I will love you, because feelings are the whole damn reason I'm here.

-Morgan

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My Love/Meh Relationship with Frozen

Pretty personal post ahead. But I thought it was important to share on this blog, since it is closely linked with the role fiction can play in one's life and in one's identity.

If you've been on the Internet at any point over the past three months, you definitely haven't encountered this totally obscure Disney movie, Frozen. On the off chance you do know which movie I'm talking about, be warned that this post contains spoilers.

The moment the movie came out, every other person I talked to told me I needed to see it as soon as possible. People said it was the best Disney princess movie since Beauty and the Beast. I practically knew all the songs before I actually saw the thing. Two of my college-aged friends have seen the movie in theaters five times. I thought, whoa, this movie must be Pixar-level amazing. So I walked into the theater with extremely high expectations...

...and walked out confused. Disappointed. My sister agreed with me. The movie was trying too hard to be Tangled--the Sven character was completely interchangeable with the horse from Rapunzel's film. Out of all the jokes in the movie, one made me laugh. One. Even then, it was just a little "heh." I couldn't stand Olaf (I feel so bad saying that, because he's cute and sweet, just not funny to me). Elsa rubbed me the wrong way. Much of the plot "twists" were incredibly predictable. I was glad Disney finally subscribed to a type of "true love" that wasn't romantic, but I just wish I hadn't seen it coming from a mile away. Don't even get me started on Disney's choice to make Hans evil. Why were people so crazy about this movie?

Well, big deal, right? I don't have to love a movie everyone else is, for some reason, obsessed with. I participated in the cultural phenomenon and now I can move on. I tend to be a harsh critic of movies in general, anyway, so this shouldn't bother me so much.

But then there's this:

That is a picture of me and my sister, Wendy, above the movie's sister characters, Anna and Elsa. It's great that Anna is the younger sister and Elsa older, because as far as my sister and I go, the personalities match us almost perfectly. If someone had told me, "Hey, they're gonna make a movie about an older sister who has emotional issues that she doesn't know how to control and a sweet, optimistic sister who has complete faith in her," I would have thought the scriptwriters were spying on my family.

Remember, I wasn't a big fan of the movie. But the fact that I wasn't a huge fan kept bothering me, long after I'd seen it. Part of it may have related to the fact that I felt left out, since everyone else latched onto it. But I've come up with a couple more reasons that the bitterness stuck with me:

1) I'm mad that this movie didn't come out in the 90s.

Ariel!...and Eric. Belle!....and the Beast. Kiara!...and Kovu. These are the main characters of some of the Disney movies my sister and I watched (and acted out in front of the screen) as kids. Notice something about these movies? They're running low on female characters. This meant that, unless one of us wanted to be one of Gaston's fangirls or Lion King 2's evil Zera, only one of us could be "the girl," and the other was stuck being the boy. Because I was the bossy older sister, I usually got to be the female character, to Wendy's dismay.

Sure, we could have come up with our own characters, which we did. But it was fun to pretend we were characters we could see onscreen. These movies had merchandise, soundtracks we could sing to and toys we could play with. This stuff stretched the worlds further, made the fictional playground bigger. Wendy and I had a few sister movies to choose from, of course--she was the Hallie to my Annie (The Parent Trap remake), the Mei to my Satsuki (Totoro), the Mary-Kate to my Ashley (I'm not gonna list them all). But did these movies offer toys you could play with, or outfits, or dolls? Totoro has some, but not of the sisters.

If this movie had come out when we were kids, my poor mother probably would have purchased half the Frozen merchandise in the Disney store. We would have had Elsa and Anna dolls. We would have danced around singing "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" and "For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)" together. We would have dressed our little brother in white and called him Olaf. Heck, we would probably have started asking people to call us Elsa and Anna (we would sometimes ask people to call us by our middle names, which are close enough--I'm Morgan Elizabeth, she's Wendy Anne).

Is it immature of me to whine about how my childhood lacked Frozen? Absolutely. My childhood had plenty of wonderful things, and I'm thrilled for the little sisters of the world who get to grow up with these characters. I'm just a little jealous of them, too.

Here comes the bigger one:

2) I saw too much of Elsa in myself.

Recall how I said Elsa rubbed me the wrong way. I also mentioned that I was the bossy older sister, kind of flippantly. But I say that with some pain.

Emotions have been a big...thing for me for much of my life. If my novels are ever published, you will see what I mean. I was always the temperamental kid in the house. I had a hitting problem that I took out on my siblings. In high school, I had meltdowns. And over the past three or four years, I realized my out-of-control emotions could hurt people. I didn't know what to do about it. I tried telling myself not to explode when I felt a freak-out coming on, but that didn't help. It usually made it worse. This all leads up to the present day, when recently, a counselor told me I punish myself for feeling things too intensely.

 This scene looked familiar.

I told my friend, who is the number one Frozen fan, about this counseling session. Later on, she said to me, "If you punish yourself for your emotions, why didn't you like Elsa?"

Hm. Well, Elsa had a resolution. I'm better than I was a few years ago, but I still haven't really resolved this yet.

One thing I knew people were wild about was Elsa's song, "Let it Go" (which I now enjoy, though I don't think it's musically or lyrically strong enough to be Oscar-worthy--the best thing about it is Idina Menzel's voice). That's when she uses her icky feelings to construct her castle, which I could easily tie to my own novel-writing. I knew Elsa was bothering me, but I couldn't articulate why at the time. Some part of me must have been thinking, or rather feeling, "Let it go, huh? It'd be nice if it were that easy."

 Pictured: not me.

I kept thinking, no, she can't win. She's still hurting people. How can this song be so triumphant when "letting it go" isn't actually the answer? The whole country or whatever Arendelle is has been plunged into eternal winter because she's cursed with emotions that overpower her--I mean, ice powers. Later, when Anna tells her this, she acknowledges this herself: "I'm such a fool! I can't be free! No escape from the storm inside of me!"

I identified so strongly with Elsa that she repelled me. That happened to me the first time I read Dosteovsky, too. I pride myself as someone who is willing to look at her flaws, but sometimes, I guess it gets too close and I start pushing things away.

And I have an Anna. I have a sister who loves me even though I bossed her around and hurt her. I pushed her away plenty, especially during my last two years of high school. Sure, our relationship is great now, but I can never undo any of that stuff.

 (And she would still probably do this for me).

Is it possible to love a character and not like the movie so much? I think so. That's how I feel about Holly Golightly--Breakfast at Tiffany's is otherwise not so great (please read the book; it is so much better). After three months of not understanding my reaction to this movie, I've settled on this stance. Frozen? Meh. Anna and Elsa? Love.

And if you see yourself in a character, don't hate him or her. This goes double if you see yourself in another person you meet--I know of so many people who see their own traits in another and so decide they dislike that person. Treat that character or individual with empathy and kindness. You may learn something about yourself.

Maybe one day I will let it go. If not, I've still got that bitchin' ice castle.

-Morgan

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Classics and Contemporary Novels: How Both Can Improve Your Writing

A while ago, I wrote what I now consider to be a fairly naive post about how I am at a disadvantage in the literary industry because I love to read classics, and my novels are consequently influenced by them. I couldn't understand what the literary world had against archaic language, flowery descriptions, and novels that went on forever when I went wild over them. Why must I conform? I cried to the skies. Why must I cooperate with the rules The Man set down?!

Well, I was right about one thing: limiting myself to classics did put me at a disadvantage. But I acted like this was outside my control. I acted as if enjoying classics meant I couldn't enjoy anything else.

Before I get to the point of this post, let me ask you something. Have you, as a writer (or as some other kind of artist, or even just as a human being going through the world), ever heard the same rule beaten into your head over and over, and you understood it was a rule, but you never really understood why? For instance, as a kid, you probably knew your parents wanted you to eat your vegetables and cut down on the candy. This was an accepted fact because your parents said it, yet some tiny voice in your head went, but, why? You couldn't fathom why someone would make such a rule. Candy is awesome. Vegetables aren't awesome (or maybe you were like me and you thought vegetables were awesome, but not quite as awesome as candy).

For me, there was a rule like that in the writing world: use simple language. I saw this and thought, but...I like my pretty, adjective-filled descriptions of bathroom tiles. I like sophisticated vocabulary you don't often see in the twenty-first century. You...you want me to be a minimalist, like Hemingway? But I'm not him! You people are all against me! I literally scratched my head over this rule for six freaking years.

Then, while studying abroad in Ireland last semester, I had the wonderful opportunity to read contemporary and classic novels side by side. I took a class called Contemporary Irish Fiction as well as 19th Century Irish Writing. Now, keep in mind, I'd started picking up contemporary novels again recently, so I was already starting to learn my lesson. I read a slew of YA novels over the summer, The Hunger Games series the winter break before that, etc. But this gave me the opportunity to read them at the same time. To compare. To see that--

Oh.

Oh.

There are reasons many of the qualities often found in classics are now extinct in contemporary literature. Good reasons. Suddenly, I'd lost my patience with seven-page-long monologues about the same thing, because I'd re-entered the world of contemporary works, and those authors, uh, cut those parts out. Because they didn't want their readers begging for mercy.

However. You may have noticed the title of this post. I am not here to bash classic novels. Now that I've been enlightened and have familiarized myself fairly well with both "genres," I feel like I better understand what writing lessons can be gleaned from each. Let me tell you, my prose has improved immensely ever since this epiphany. I am simplifying the hell out of my latest draft, and I am reevaluating those anachronistic words, but I'm also remembering what classics taught me.

Here's a list of why you, writer, should read a healthy balance of both classic and contemporary novels and, more importantly, why.

CONTEMPORARY NOVELS

1) Simplify your language. I'm starting with this one for obvious reasons. I was editing one night, reading over one of my overwrought sentences, and then I thought to myself, "Morgan--you're trying to get a complicated concept across to your reader. So why the hell would you use complicated language to confuse them even further?" Even worse is when your characters are performing a simple task and you write it out in the most convoluted way possible. I'll provide a sample of my own writing so you see what I mean. Here's the sentence from the unedited first draft, about a teacher's reaction to my main character asking to go to the bathroom because she's upset: "At first, [the teacher's] wrinkled lips thinned, accentuating the pinkness of her lipstick, but her features softened as she scrutinized Ama’s face, which Ama had been forced to scrunch in order to tether it to what was socially acceptable, and to prevent it from bursting like a pressured dam." Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone, what the hell? Slow down. That is way too many words for such a simple thing. Here it is after I simplified it: "At first, the teacher’s wrinkled lips thinned. But her features softened when she studied Ama’s face, which Ama forced herself to scrunch so it wouldn’t burst like a pressured dam." There, that's better. The action remains and we still understand Ama's emotional struggle without getting beaten over the head by it. We lost the bit about the lipstick, but who cares? No one will miss a useless detail like that.

 2) Concision. Yeah, I'm still struggling with this one, but I'm getting better. Ever notice how contemporary novels tend to be slimmer, while older novels could be doorstops? There are exceptions, of course--1984 is tiny, while the Harry Potter books are famously huge. Contemporary novelists have realized that the more quickly you get your point across, the less likely you are to lose your reader's attention. The Perks of Being a Wallflower wasn't 500 pages long because it didn't need to be. It said everything it needed to say in about 200 pages and said it beautifully. Conversely, I love Dracula, but it definitely didn't need to be that long. In fact, I started to get really sick of how long it took to reach the climax. Older novels were sometimes longer because authors got paid by the word, or because the novel was serialized--the books would be released a few chapters at a time in magazines and readers would beg for more. Those days are behind us, so try not to write a doorstopper, unless it really works for your story (and, again, this is advice from someone who...writes doorstoppers).

3) Pacing. This kind of ties into concision, but it gets its own category because it's the most stark difference I've noticed between classics and contemporary novels. The first contemporary novel I picked up in a long time since my classics phase was The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (I read The Golden Compass in ninth grade but didn't finish the series until I was nineteen). For the first time in years, I found it extremely difficult to put the book down. I'm crazy about War and Peace and will recommend it to anyone who breathes, but it also drains your mental energy, so putting it away for a while takes less willpower. With Subtle Knife, I could keep turning pages and not even notice how quickly I was moving. The story drew me in, and I felt a desperate need to know what happened next. Sure, parts of classic novels can create this effect, but they're more likely to drag. Contemporary novelists know to eliminate the parts that drag, or at least minimize them as much as possible. For a slow reader like me, this is helpful.

 4) Understanding the market. This is more for writers who are looking to get published than anyone else, and part of what made me complain about my "disadvantages" in that post from 2012, because I was a snot-nosed brat. If you read nothing but classics all the time, how the hell do you expect to get published? You're not competing with Austen and Dostoevsky and Joyce. I mean, you are to some degree, since your books would hopefully be sold in the same stores as theirs are (eep!). But it's not the same. What if your idea has been done before, and you don't know it because you haven't read much past 1960? What if you thought your protagonist named Katniss had the most unique name ever, and you're not Suzanne Collins? What if you make the amateur mistake of comparing your novel to Great Expectations in a query letter? (Don't do it. Please don't.) If you know what people are reading right now, you have a better chance at making a difference. You can spot the stories that aren't being told. You're more likely to sound original because you've done your research.

CLASSIC NOVELS

1) Learning new vocabulary. "Morgan, what the hell?" you must be thinking. "Didn't you just say to simplify your language? In bold, multiple times?" Yeah, but sometimes, a situation calls for a sophisticated word. If you've never paid much attention to a classic novel or English class, your vocabulary will be limited. And, as a writer who will be tempted to repeat the same words no matter how expansive your vocabulary is, that isn't good. When you're stuck, say, describing how someone is feeling, and "sad" just isn't cutting it, what do you do if your arsenal lacks words? Maybe your character's sadness is really deep, quiet, and thoughtful, so "melancholy" would fit better. There is no other single word to describe that feeling, so use it. You need it. Classic novels are obsessed with the word melancholy. I can't remember any contemporary novels I've seen it in, except Because of Winn Dixie, though I'm sure there are some. If it fits, then please pull a word like this from a classic. Just don't overuse it.

 2) Creating unforgettable characters. This is not to say that all characters in contemporary novels suck, or aren't memorable. Far from it. My ears will probably perk when they hear a Harry Potter character's name until I die. But dude, think about Peter Pan. Alice in Wonderland. The Greek/Roman gods. Society has held onto these characters for decades, centuries, millennia, and still hasn't let go. Who doesn't want to create a character who millions of people take into their hearts as if that character is a living, breathing person? Readers have met characters who touched them in some personal way, inspired them to do something with their lives, even saved them. I will encourage all my children to read Jane Eyre at some point not just to see how a woman can behave against a society that dislikes her, but how admirable and courageous a person, male or female or somewhere in between, can be. I want everyone to read to the end of The Brothers Karamzov so they can sniffle at the last five pages and want to hug the hell out of Alyosha Karamazov. Like I said, this can happen in contemporary novels, but such novels can sometimes be harder to find. This is partly because there's an emphasis on plots and ideas in the literary world today--which is necessary, since a cool concept is often what will get someone to read a book in the first place. Good contemporary novelists, like Emma Donoghue and Rachel Hartman to name two very different ones, will balance well-written characters with interesting plots. But many spend more time on plot than character, and finding the gems can become a challenge.

3) Complexity. When I read the introduction to War and Peace, the translators claimed that Leo Tolstoy had taken life and put it on paper. Sensory observations, understanding of humanity, realism in general--all spot on. I thought, pfft, yeah right. Then I read it, and oh my god, were they right. It's one of the reasons Tolstoy has gone down in history. He gave us three dimensional people and a world that breathed, and breathed so truly that we could recognize that world as our own, despite the fact that we don't live in 19th-century Russia. He also layered the book with ideas, meaning, philosophies, and questions regarding life that we might never have thought about. I'm not talking about complex vocabulary here. I'm talking about complex characters, complex worlds, complex ideas, complex morality. This is, once again, something more easily found in classics, because it's usually why they're classics. To Kill a Mockingbird pointed a finger at racism, but through the eyes of a young girl named Scout, so Harper Lee couldn't quite point at it directly. The social commentary becomes clear without any character having to explicitly say, "This is wrong" or "This is racist." In the same novel, a character previously thought to be evil, Boo Radley, turns out to be sweet and sensitive, which surprises Scout. There is still clearly something wrong with him, but not in the way Scout thought--it's more complex than that. Yes, this is present in plenty of contemporary novels, and boy do I love those novels. Yet so many of them employ cookie-cutter characters, stereotypes, and black-and-white morality, so you've got to work harder to find the good stuff.

4)  Understanding what has stopped working. A big mistake I made during my classics phase was thinking that if a book won the honor of becoming "classic," that meant everything about it worked. I didn't understand why I couldn't write endless sentences when James Joyce could (other than the fact that he was actually good at writing them). Why was Melmoth the Wanderer allowed to be 600 pages long when mine wasn't? Why did F. Scott Fitzgerald get to use all those adverbs in The Great Gatsby? The answer is this: no book is perfect. No, fifteen-year-old Morgan, not even a classic. A really good book is a book with so many strong points that the weaknesses fade into the background, or at least seem to matter less. Melmoth the Wanderer's length was mostly excused because Melmoth was a fascinating character with an intriguing perspective on humanity. James Joyce was long-winded, sure, but look how unique, and often beautiful, his language is. The Great Gatsby took a jab at the corruption of luxury, and did it eloquently enough that people tolerate the excessive adverbs. By reading classics, you can isolate what made it so memorable (not necessarily to the world, but to you) as well as what made it a struggle to read. Eliminate the bad, but keep the good in your brain. Then you can strive to improve your own writing without outright imitating everything about the classics, either.

Hope this helped someone. It sure helped me.

-Morgan 

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