I’D like to think the students in my school were among the first teens who got hooked on the first “Twilight” book by Stephenie Meyer.
I was first intrigued by the book when the Philippine Daily Inquirer published a short piece on it. Then one of my classmates told me that his girlfriend had the book and offered to lend it to me and my sister. The cover was not the black background with the apple on the cover yet -- it was a picture of a girl with short black hair, standing in front of a drab grey background.
Hooked
My sister read the book first. The next day, she passed it to me. The book was passed around and soon, other batchmates and younger students in our school got hooked on it too.
I was so obsessed with “Twilight” that we had to buy two sets of the then three books to add to our collection. One was for letting other people borrow, and one was for our personal reading pleasure. You could only imagine the wear and tear these books will get after being read so many times by so many people.
Coupled with my obsession was the need to know more information about it. I visited Stephenie Meyer’s website, eager to know which celebrities will play which character in the movie, to read the scenes not included in the book and to view pictures of parties celebrating each book’s release.
Role-playing
During the summer of 2008, I grew extremely bored, and so I visited again Stephenie’s site. It was there that I stumbled upon the world of role-playing.
One of Stephenie’s site’s sections list “Twilight” links leading to websites that give the latest news about the movie, sites about bands that compose and perform songs inspired by the story and the role-playing game sites.
These RPG sites are not the same as simulation games like Defense of the Ancients, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. I call it literary RPG. Basically, you create a character and you role-play.
Rules and limitations
There are certain rules and limitations to RP-ing too. You control only the actions of your character and therefore you can only write about your character’s feelings, thoughts and actions.
If you’re RP-ing Edward, you cannot say things that Bella did to Edward. That would be inconsiderate to the person who RPs Bella.
The first site I joined (http://vampsunite388.proboards107.com) had around 400 members. As expected, most of the book’s characters were already taken. I settled for making an original character, one whom I created in my head. She carried my name and in truth she was like me in many ways. Her characteristics were like mine, but she was older, more mature, and she possessed some characteristics that I would’ve liked to develop more.
Vegetarian vampire
Laura Janelle was her name and she was a vegetarian vampire. The members of that first RPG site were very warm and welcoming. The chatbox was constantly alive and funny and the senior members gladly welcomed us newbies. Some of the more senior members would send me private messages, explaining things about the site.
Soon, I too became a more experienced member and my character developed relationships with others. In one thread, Laura almost got a boyfriend. In another, she helped a friend to give up her job as a prostitute, and she gained a best friend in a thread that technically had the span of one day but was actually posted in the time span of a week.
The site was constantly growing, with members joining and others leaving, more boards were added and more events were happening.
Death of Laura
It was summer when I joined and college was coming up soon. There was a war in the Vamps (short for vamps unite), and I decided that Laura would die.
I predicted that college would take up a lot of my time, and that I wouldn’t be able to log in as much as I used to -- and it was true. Still, I regret that I left, though I still visit and leave private messages for my friends there from time to time.
In truth though, the site was too active for my taste. I wanted to be able to be in the know about current happenings and who was in a thread with who, who was dating who, and such things. But with the many members, I was sure that I would not be able to catch up.
Role-playing was still something I wanted to do, and so I joined a newer RPG site, the creator of whom was one of my friends on Vamps. In the new site, Forbidden Twilight (http://forbiddentwilightrpg.proboards80.com), I became Samantha James, a blonde vampire who was a former model and the second-in-command of the Corder Coven, a coven of wild vampires who were supposedly the rivals of the vegetarian Cullens.
Morphing into Jasper
I also morphed into Jasper Hale, who is my favorite character to role-play. I must admit, I prefer blondes. In fact, it was the blonde Jasper who first caught my attention when Jessica introduced the Cullen siblings to Bella in that cafeteria scene in Twilight. The former soldier, in-the-background guy, the devoted lover with a mysterious tie to Alice.
I wanted to role-play more so I joined another site (http://twilightsaga4.proboards61.com), becoming Edward Cullen.
One summer was all it took to get hooked. I realize now that literary role-playing helped me tap into my creative juices and stimulate my imagination.
When we’re children it isn’t hard to role-play, but our idealistic worlds of wonder and fantasy lose its magic when we grow up. In the end, I realized it wasn’t just about “Twilight” anymore. As a role-player I develop more my characters who take a life of their own, I improve my writing abilities, I meet people from all parts of the world who love the series of “Twilight” as much as I do, and who love to write.
Joining Vamps was initially just to keep the boredom away, but I ended up loving the literary RPG sites so much that my parents threatened to terminate our Internet connection because I had been in front of the computer for so long!
If you’re an aspiring writer - whether a Twilighter, Twi-Hard, Fanpire or not, I encourage you to try out literary role-playing and maybe join one of the sites I role-play in. Who knows, you could be the next Stephenie Meyer in the future.
E-mail the author at tzu_77@yahoo.com.
