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

[weyrdchic.livejournal.com]

Completely avoiding all the wank elsewhere, and disclaiming that I've only read so far in the first book of Twilight and the rest I've gotten through summaries:

My problem with the series isn't that it's a fantasy, or a dark fantasy, or that it conveys some unhealthy behavior. I read and roleplay that all the time, I've always wanted to indulge in or at least laugh at some bodice-rippers. If you want to talk about bad influences, I watched South Park at age 12 and came away with little more than a filthy mouth and an advanced interest in politics just in time for the Bush administration. But none of what I've read, written, or watched has ever said 'this is the ideal to strive for,' not even Grand Theft Auto. And I look at the response to Twilight - not just the books in of themselves, but also the response - and see that the author AND a lot of the audience genuinely believe that these are expressions of true love. In reality. Without exception. If you try to suggest it otherwise, they will get furiously angry, they will draw back as if scalded or (I've heard this anecdotally) key your car.

I don't like the 'it sucks because it's popular' tack, but in this case I think it's what influences the concern. Twilight creates this mania that other romances haven't created since...basically ever. Lines a mile deep and near-rioting teenagers and people asking RPattz to bite them. Grown women who stalk the set and are encouraged to use a fictional character's engagement ring to show they're married. And everyone talking like it is the greatest work of literature to ever grace the universe. I have never seen a weirder response to a fandom. I remember being a young teen and feeling like everything was a matter of life or death, but I was never THAT emotionally volatile about it.

You're framing a lot as taste, from what I can tell, but I'm talking about people who say 'I want an Edward of my own.' It's not just teenagers, there's a lot of grown adults that think this is a sincere love story too. And I watch Edward's actions and think 'every single thing this person does is, down to the wording, the sign of someone who will be an abuser later in the relationship.' No, I don't think Twilight IS the problem, it's a symptom, but the symptoms can help define the problem sometimes. How do we judge history? From primary sources. We mock the 50s domestic ideal through its advertisements, and so on. And unchecked ('checked' meaning talking and analyzing and educating as to fantasy vs. reality), media still stirs up and influences - not necessarily in big actions, like everyone's going to throw themselves off a cliff after a breakup, but in things like people's instincts. If things like rape and suicide and spousal abuse weren't still a big problem due to people NOT being educated about their warning signs, I wouldn't be so worried.