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

[sholio]

Yes. One thing that I really appreciate about fandom is that it's made me less embarrassed about letting my id out to play. While some things (like amtdi, soulbonding, etc.) may not be my cup of tea, there's other things (like h/c and non-con) that I'm all over like a cheap suit, which helps me remember that other people's kinks are okay too. We're all weird here. We might not agree with the fangirl down the street, whatever her age, but what she's grooving on isn't shameful and wrong, something that has to be hidden. I imagine that one of the main reasons why the Twilight books have the cult following that they do is because it's incredibly affirming for teenage girls to realize that it's not just them; other people (lots of other people) get excited about the same parts of the book that make them squee.

At the same time, I'm not convinced that it's necessarily wrong to make light of the Twilight books, or teenage girldom in general, or any of our other fan tropes and excesses; the LDS parody pages that have been getting passed around are hilarious, and dude, I remember what I was like at twelve -- I was a friggin' idiot. I think being able to laugh at the crazy things we used to believe is part of growing up and learning not to live our adult lives like we did as teenagers. I'm having trouble expressing what I'm thinking here -- there's a difference between condemning someone for what they do, and lightly sporking it as a reminder of what happens when you carry that id playground over into real life, right? And I feel the same way about the things I'm into. SGA is my fan crack, but trying to take it as a rulebook for how to live my life would be dysfunctional and kind of dangerous. It deserves to be sporked now and then.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

God yes, this. This.

At the same time, I'm not convinced that it's necessarily wrong to make light of the Twilight books, or teenage girldom in general, or any of our other fan tropes and excesses;

Critique and meta and mockery I do not mind; that's the destiny of writing in all its forms. The third part, though, I have to stay with; we don't talk about the irrational stupidity of teenage boys unless it's framed in positive terms--recklessness, courage, stubbornness. Our mockery of teenagers is to wahat we perceive as weaknesses; cowardliness (screams like a twelve year old girl), romance, what's seen as important to them. No wonder teenage girls are conflicted, if they actually are; imagine going through your teens hideously uncomfortable with your body and biology with a world mocking you for what you are.