Happy Birthday, DWJ!

Diana Wynne Jones is seventy-six today! Huzzah!

In honor of the occasion, and because at any rate People Should Know, I thought I’d point out that there is a YA Fantasy Showdown going on. DWJ is the only author who had two characters in the first round; they’re on the second round now, and one character (see my LJ icon) is still in the running. Go Howl!

I’m also pretty pleased with how most of the other fights are going, though – despite my love for Hermione – Christopher Chant should totally have won there.+ It is, as some have said, a bit of a popularity contest.

Of the first round of sixteen matches, only two were between characters of whose books I had read both. The other one – Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games) versus Tally Youngblood (Uglies) – brought to mind an interesting point about how most books work.

*Mild spoilers of the Uglies trilogy*

I like Katniss as a character more than I like Tally, and, while I rather enjoyed the Uglies trilogy, I like The Hunger Games much more. Thus, I wanted to vote for Katniss.

On the other hand, the match specified that it was using the Tally of Specials (the last book of the trilogy) – a Tally who has been genetically modified with reinforced bones and muscles, ludicrously enhanced senses, and a body full of self-repair nanos. She’s basically Wolverine. And Katniss is a sixteen-year-old with a bow.

I was torn. But then I asked myself: what do protagonists – especially YA protagonists – do? Do they wipe the floor with far weaker teenaged opponents? Or do they beat seemingly insurmountable odds?

The person who wrote the battle between the two may have had similar thoughts, because Katniss won the “possible outcome” battle. She also won my vote and, eventually, that round’s fight.

Of course, there’s a lot of interesting stuff to be said about crossover battles and what has to be true in whose world.

+Unless possibly Hermione found out beforehand about his weakness to silver. But that would involve, you know, research. What are the odds of that?