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

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

[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?