i'd like to point out first, my del.icio.us tags include amtdi and non-con

[seperis]

You know, I thought I talked myself down off this one, because frankly, Twilight is not great literature and mounting a defense takes up valuable time reading non-con amtdi porn.

But you know, I just feel that inspired, plus I ran out of Dean/Castiel reading and my son still has Twilight in his locker. Go figure.

I have to know something; did I miss the memo that I'm supposed to be ashamed of being twelve? My apologies; see, when I was twelve? I never really considered to form my actions to meet an arbitrary standard that would come into existence twenty years later on my reading habits, because that? Would have totally pulled the Gor novels right out of my hot little hands.

As in, please to be putting down your AMTDI non-con for a second while ranting on how Twilight is ruining young girls. I will totally be there when fandom as a whole stops finding aliens made them do it rape as a fun and lighthearted fanfic pasttime. I mean, I will be there, but I'll still be writing it. Hell, throw in eroticized slave-fic with idealized sexual slavery and falling in love with your enslaver controlling boyfriend who stalks you...wait.

Writer responsibility comes up a lot with this, which I suppose is fair when one is writing cross-alien-species sexual hijinks and one is struggling to portray those sensitivity, or the reality of slave trafficking in the modern world, or hell, magical healing cock after rape and lets toss in mpreg for kicks, because there's a genre that's incredibly sensitive and socially conscious. I have zero interest in writer responsibility, to be honest, except for one key points--did they tell a story? That's it; that's where it starts and stops, with some codicils of audience. Twilight was readable to a huge group of people.

Maybe the mystery is the plotline? Because I agree; I cannot imagine why anyone would enjoy a fantasy novel about two people obsessively in love with each other and would do anything to be together.

You may pile your under the bed romance novels over to the left, please; lets do this right. Let's blackball the entire romance novel industry already. I want petitions against VC Andrews, Johanna Lindsay, Judith McNaught, Catherine Coulter, Virginia Henley (Okay, I could stand to lose her), and anything set in Viking England with a wee Saxon lass.

Seriously. I get hating them for being bad, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder; shaming young girls for something they've found to love is edging right into the reason I'm trying to stop myself from ever using the term "Like a twelve year old girl" again in any slash fic I write. Which will probably be something I'll have to pick up on beta because comparisons to teenage girls as insults to men is surprisingly common.

Please lay off the girls. And remind me again how Seeds of Yesterday ended. For the life of me, I couldn't find it with my other VC Andrews work.

Comments

[seperis.livejournal.com]

They aren't a role model for young girls. If girls model behavior in Twilight, it was there before hte book and would have existed whether the book did or not. They model the behavior of the people around them. The book might reinforce tht for them, which with parents with those values, may be why the parents encourage reading it, but again, that's not the problem of the book. That's a problem with parents, society, adults who encourage behaivor suited to fantasy. It's like blaming a novel about a serial killer for serial killing.

[quietus-x.livejournal.com]

Mmm, it's certainly not the only behavior model for girls, yeah -- but it does reinforce behaviors that, IMO, are better off not reinforced (such as putting up with a creepy stalker psycho boyfriend). It is a problem with the book, much in the way "shitty writing" is a problem with the book. It's a reason people don't like the books, or won't read the books. It's just not a problem in the sense that the book should be punished for it.

It'd be not like a novel about a serial killer so much as a novel that glorifies serial killing -- obviously, that's not gonna by itself turn someone into a serial killer, but at the same time, it shouldn't be lauded for (questionably) inappropriate content.

I'm not saying people should even discourage girls from reading the books or whatever; I'm just saying that someone should maybe let it be known that what's okay in fiction isn't actually cool or okay in real life.

Gah, I seriously don't want to drag violent video games into this, but it's like how even when you kill people in video games, you're clear that it's not really okay to do that in real life. So it's okay to play a game like that -- and it's fun, which is great. But if you're playing a violent video game and thinking, "it would be cool if I did this for real" (which never happens, but if it did), someone should probably talk to you and point out that no, it's not cool. And, no, it's not the internet who's responsible for that -- it's the parental figures or whatever who should mention it.

The responsible response, if you've gotta complain to the girls who are reading them, would be to just mention that the actions lauded in the book are not okay and some of the underlying themes are harmful -- some girls will go, "I'm not stupid. I know that and I like it anyways," and that's fine. It's the ones who go, "That's not true. There's nothing wrong with anything he does because he loves her," that you should talk to.

And frankly, the internet, TV, and friends are what raises a lot of children these days. Most of what I learned about how to behave and grow up and treat other people? I learned from a) my peers during school, b) TV, and c) the internet. I got an internet connection at age 10, and my parents were both too busy working to really have "talks" with me or teach me stuff or whatever. I mean, it worked out for me and I'm a pretty normal person, but still.

That's bad. People shouldn't do it, but they do it anyways, and the end result is that these kids are getting their parenting from places that, frankly, are hardly good places for a kid to grow up.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I don't buy the society is worse today than the fifties and before TV, everyone was moral and lived on organic produce. It's nonsense. If a child thinks a video game first person shooter is a reflection of reality, there's already something wrong with that person that the game highlights, not creates.

Twelve is not twenty, is not thirty, and opinions expressed there aren't going to be the same. Teenage girls are and have been the whipping boy of society, to cross my genders, since the beginning of time. Their behavior is scrutinized, criticized, watched because their pleasure is going to change the course of teh world. Female masturbation in movies gets a higher rating than male. Frontal nudity with a woman, a "bad" woman, is a-okay.

Addressing a girl sighing over a story that hit her kinks because her kinks are not okay goes right back to the idea that girls are not only weak--they are not good enough. I'd kill to see people apply to boys the standards they do to girls, the scrutiny a young girl is under when she achieves puberty, and hwo the purity of her mind must be protected from everyone. There is no way I find any of this less than unacceptable.

[quietus-x.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I don't know about that -- I'm not saying everyone was moral or anything in the past; I'm just saying that today, a lot of parents don't parent.

If a child thinks a video game first person shooter is a reflection of reality, there's already something wrong with that person that the game highlights, not creates.

I agree. Yes, there is, and it's an indication that someone should notice and talk to them about it. It's not exactly the same as someone reading Twilight and thinking it's a reflection of reality (remember how many 11 year olds were heartbroken about not getting Hogwarts letters?), but it's similar on the surface. It doesn't prove there's anything wrong with anyone, per se, if they haven't been taught or shown otherwise, but someone should still give them an awareness, if they indicate a lack of it, that some behaviors aren't appropriate IRL.

The problem isn't that a girl's kinks aren't okay -- the problem is that the girl has to know that they're kinks, in a sense. It's okay to like something because it hits your kinks. But if you like something and you think it's how things are and should be, then that's more questionable.

Sometimes I read and enjoy dubcon, and there's nothing wrong with that -- but if I started defending RL "dubcon" (which is rape, okay) because "it's okay I'm sure he really wanted it and he only does it because he cares", I'd be a fucking moron.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

A lot of parents never parented; my grandmother worked on her family farm from when she could walk. On my mom's side, nannies took care of that. This is not new. The attention we are paying to it, setting a standard for waht constitutes parenting, that's new, and it's even newer that we don't think beating the kids into submission is not good parenting.

I agree. Yes, there is, and it's an indication that someone should notice and talk to them about it.

Well, yes. That's a difference between fantasy and behavior. We discuss behavior when it roams into the dangerous fantasy territory. Psychoanalyzing their feelings for Grand Theft Auto for deeply seated issues due to teh fact the game is Grand Theft Auto is stupid. The same holds true for female sexuality, not to mention the fact that children engage in fantasy and in a surprising turn of evetns, do not stay teh same people from day to day. I'm saying, as clearly as I can, that jumping the gun in interpreting fantasy into reality without any proof but the kid likes Twilight and Grand Theft Auto is stupid. If other warning behaviors, such as animal mutilation or a disturbing desire to collect grenade launchers come to a point of worry, then it's a problem because action has taken over.

It's not like this is an unclear line for anyone to see; for some reason, however, especially with girls, we tend to think them so weak that they will automatically conflate the fantasy with real life instead of assuming, crazily, that they're okay. I am not of the opinion choosing guilty until proven innocent with the fantasy life is the way to go.

[quietus-x.livejournal.com]

Wait, I'm not sure we're arguing different sides of this argument?

I'm treating "I like Twilight even though it's unrealistic" and "I like Twilight because Edward is my dream guy" as two distinct groups of fans -- where there are a lot of people in the latter camp (possibly the majority?), which frankly boggles my mind. The latter's the group I'm talking about and/or take issue with.

I mean, it's okay to be attracted to someone who's creepy/psychopathic/whatever (Dark Knight's Joker fangirls, I'm looking at you so hard right now (and if I never see another Joker/OFC fic, it'll be too soon)). But "I wish I had an Edward" is behavior, isn't it, if they mean it? It's the explicit expression of a (potentially harmful) belief, at any rate.

What's your opinion on the "I like Twilight because Edward is my dream guy" fans -- including the adult ones? My opinion is that when kids express this opinion, someone should talk to them about it. And when adults express it, I usually just go O_o at them.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

He is the dream guy, the perfect boyfriend who loves her more than lint and thinks she's perfect despite hte fact she is not a white blonde with big tits and despite teh fact she falls over stuff. I think we are arguing different sides because I assume without being told that the girls that are saying that are indulging in their fantasies in the Perfect Boyfriend Who Does Not Require THey Subscribe to Seventeen Magazine's Perfect Girl image and not They Are Being Unhealthy If They Do Not Carefully Phrase Their Praise in a Way That's Socially Acceptable.

They're *kids*. They have the fantasy of the perfect guy. Let them have a damn fantasy without turning it into another way that girls are weak, are stupid, are easily led, another way that we demonstrate again they have no agency outside what is fed to them by others.

[greenapple.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

They're *kids*.

Some, I imagine, are children; I imagine many more are sexually mature young adults. It seems contradictory to me to, in one breath, argue for the noninterference of young women's privacy and their inner erotic life, and in the next deny them the acknowledgment of their physical maturity. Isn't this more of the infantilizing and "purifying" of young women that you argued against further up the page?