Is it a sign of a defective personality that, despite teaching fifth through seventh graders, I’ve managed to avoid these books completely, but hearing you talk about how awful they are makes me want to read them?

Seriously, I would have had to were it not for Stoney’s efforts? I blame President Hussein-Obama.

Could be.  Do you enjoy spending your time on mind-numbing pursuits on a general basis?  Or is it that you’re kind of childish and see a feminist blogger as an “authority” to rebel against?  Especially in the latter case, you’re a sad sack, because you want to “rebel” without rebelling against anything real that has power to push back.

It’s true.  Under the new liberal fascism, badly written YA about non-vampiric vampires will be mandatory.

I realize most people don’t think it’s important, but it touches on two subjects of the utmost importance to me: Whether or not young women are being raised to be intelligent, and whether or not they’re being raised to be self-respecting.  Second rate novels are reason enough for me to get my ass in a tangle, but if they’re based on this premise that it’s romantic to be self-destructive for “love”?  Gag.

And meanwhile Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters’ Club are escaping the notice of the site moderators. FOLLOW THE MONEY.

I’m the dad of a 9-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son.  Influencing their reading/watching and even doing-choices is very, very tricky.  I’m not sure I would even want them to not read this kind of crap, as much as I’d like them to read (at least some of) it and say, “Wow, that’s really crap!” I hope I can help them develop the tools to recognize the politics and ideology of art (as well as social structures, convention, etc), and then trust them to make their own choices.

But I’ll be really glad when my daughter’s High School Musical phase ends.

I think it’s worth mentioning (as I think Stoney does, somewhere in the comments) that in buying these books, even to read them on a lark, people are helping to fill Mormon coffers via Meyer’s tithing and helping to fund things like Prop 8. If you must read them but don’t want a hand in that, borrow copies

The first rule of Babysitters Club is that we don’t talk about Babysitters Club.

Geez Amanda, I thought MBL just meant that they sounded so awful she’s tempted to read them and see how entertainingly horrific they are.  I’ve been reading all this stuff and i’m almost tempted too.

Then I remember that bad writing gives me hives.

Amanda,

Thanks for the comparison between “Twilight” & Buffy. I have granddaughters whom I am trying to interest in the Buffyverse as opposed to “Twilight.”

There are so many strong young women in the Buffyverse who would provide wonderful role models.  Why are people drawn to crap when they could have better?

(PS: Not including Anya as one of the role models: great lines, funny as hell, but not exactly a role model...)

Papa IP

Vampires?  You wanna talk vampires?  Well the real ones are the sky darkening clouds of rabid pelicans that hover over my state, having been lured there by fluoride chemtrails, a natural pelican attractant.  I don’t see your precious black J*sus making any proposals to eliminate this scourge of The Heartland, because he’s in an abusive relationship with us, isn’t he?

I agree on the merits here - poorly written, transparent pulp sucks.  But I’m often moved to wonder when reading AM’s posts - what exactly is the point of constantly ridiculing people for their tastes?  I think it’s especially problematic when you’re talking about tastes that start to lap at the beaches of the sexual realm - you can’t after all, help what gets you off. 

I write pseudonymous erotic fiction from time to time that, while pretty unobjectionable by comparison to a lot of what’s out there, certainly contains depictions of feminine and masculine roles that aren’t anything I’d like to see my son or daughter emulate. 

I could change it to make it more self-aware and tongue-in-cheek, of course, but then it wouldn’t be, you know, hot.

You know, when I see stuff like this, it suddenly all makes sense to me how girls tend to lose self-esteem as they grow up; if your role-models are all passive, perfectly beautiful, and only interested in attracting mates, which are proof of their beauty and goodness...no wonder you have a hard time developing a real self! You can’t dream of being a full person as a woman if you’ve never seen any girl become one.

Stories are important, so important that we have huge industries devoted to telling them. We can’t seem to live without them. I have a son, and I’m dazzled by how easy it is to find stories and characters that cater to any interest or skill he might have; sports, space, magic, farming, archaeology, road-building--there are millions of representations of grown men doing these things. But finding any story about girls that doesn’t involve being a princess is still far too difficult, and still considered a bit “weird” by a lot of people.

Personally, I don’t care what regressive crap a person masturbates to, but when this crap is given to girls in the formative years of their sexuality, as their personality is beginning to mature and they’re beginning to form their own set of preferences and desires, it’s about as developmentally healthy as weaning an infant on YooHoo.

Amazing - I just read Dracula (yes, the original) for the first time, and the symbolism of the vampire as the soul-sucking patriarchy adds so much to the story.  Wow.

I never heard much about these stories until now, other than that it has been made into a movie (mercifully I have close to zero interactions with 10-15 year olds) but just the fact that the author is Mormon is enough to make me stay far, far, far away.

FINALLY!!!!! someone who sees this crap for what it is!!! TOTAL ANTI FEMINIST CRAP.

I hate this, but my daughter is OBSESSED with this book. She is a bright girl who reads voraciously. This stuff scares me. I’m a survivor of Domestic Violence and so is she. What bothers me is the fact that I entered the relationship with my ex because of my twisted view of romantic love. I was a victim of that myth---the awkward girl who never got the guy and suddenly---there was this guy who was paying attention to *ME*!!!! So what did I do? I married him. Big HUGE MISTAKE.

I was so angry at the last novel....and my daughter and I still have huge fights over it. I am terribly scared that she will carry this notion of obsessive self destruction for a boy like I did. I sincerely hope that I have done enough to warn her that sacrificing your self worth and, ultimately, your safety, is NOT the way to go. she says that she understands. I just hope this tripe is simply entertainment.....

*sigh*

Part A:
“Personally, I don’t care what regressive crap a person masturbates to...”

And Part B:

“but when this crap is given to girls in the formative years of their sexuality, as their personality is beginning to mature and they’re beginning to form their own set of preferences and desires, it’s about as developmentally healthy as weaning an infant on YooHoo.”

cannot be reconciled.  Obviously you DO care what regressive crap a person masturbates to - some is OK and some is “developmentally unhealthy.” And apparently what’s developmentally healthy is to “[tease them] until they develop the proper amount of shame about it.”

That just doesn’t sound quite right to me.  And anybody who thinks that the people you teased about music in high school are all looking back eternally grateful to have been shown their error of their terrible tastes, well… you still have some growing up to do.

“The main character is supposedly awkward, clumsy, unattractive, and unpopular.  But somehow, despite all this, she gets the perfect amazing vampire boy to love and coddle her, and a back-up werewolf boy so that she gets to have boys fighting over her.”

The male gendered equivalent of “manic pixie dream girl” is a vampire?

I was reading something the other day about how the actor who plays the vampire boyfriend in the movie now gets girls chasing him and demanding that he actually bite them on the necks, and he thinks it’s fairly horrifying…

I was reading something the other day about how the actor who plays the vampire boyfriend in the movie now gets girls chasing him and demanding that he actually bite them on the necks, and he thinks it’s fairly horrifying…
Scott on 12/10 at 02:42 PM

Yet another reason to add the “mercifully” I put before before “zero interaction with 10-15 year olds”.

The male gendered equivalent of “manic pixie dream girl” is a vampire?

ooooh.  Nail on head, methinks.

The graphics alone make that series full of win.

I read the first two books, then quit. They’re kind of like that Beyonce “Single Ladies” video. Awful music, awful lyrics, but the video is hella fascinating. Or maybe it’s just me.

But the badness of the books got to me after #2 and I refuse to read any more. It’s nice to see all this hate for Twilight because many of my good friends love this book. -_-

It was written by a women who had a harmless dream and wanted to remember it. you people who find dumbass reasons to ridicule it, need to get a life!! Can’t a book be just for enjoyment, does it always have to have meaning, I like to read to relax. If I want a message book I’m pretty sure I know what to look for in the reference section. Does every story with a female character have to be about a femenist. Oh, and by the way, I don’t recall seeing the word Mormon in the book at all, except the jacket that tells about the author. Why don’t you write a book about a vampire and a feminist if you know how it should be done!!!!

Poor Cedric Diggary......

“I was reading something the other day about how the actor who plays the vampire boyfriend in the movie now gets girls chasing him and demanding that he actually bite them on the necks, and he thinks it’s fairly horrifying…”

(that’s how he’ll be not EDWARD)

My daughter insists that the heroine isn’t a wishy washy girl, but a strong one! I said giving up college for a husband just because she wants to have sex is BAD BAD BAD. you can have both if you want! You don’t even have to get married to have sex!  my daughter is 14 and she is pretty smart and cool---fun to hang around We talk a lot and she tells me just about everything. I know she carries a torch for a boy who is her friend and always ditches her for the bad girl who breaks the rules.

LOL @ the idea that books don’t have to have meaning! and the idea that something has to directly say “Mormon” to be promoting Mormon ideas. Adorable try, though.

Or is it that you’re kind of childish and see a feminist blogger as an “authority” to rebel against?  Especially in the latter case, you’re a sad sack, because you want to “rebel” without rebelling against anything real that has power to push back.

I don’t think you’re an authority and don’t want to rebel against you, but hearing from you among others how bad this shit is makes it sound almost entertainingly so. Not enough that I’d ever actually bother, though.

I think it’s especially problematic when you’re talking about tastes that start to lap at the beaches of the sexual realm - you can’t after all, help what gets you off.

Eh, most people jerk off to stuff they aren’t entirely proud of, but it’s pretty naive to think those tastes develop in a vacuum. What’s obscene and rebellious and therefore hot isn’t the same in every time period and in every society, and changes when the times do.

And kjones’ comment marks the end of my defense of my position.  I have no desire to be associated with the horde of crazed haters that are likely to continue in this vein for some time.  I’ll just close byt saying sometimes being mean isn’t a wry political statement - sometimes it’s just mean.

APS

Lord of the Rings never mentioned the word “Catholic”, either, but you’d have to pretty thick and/or ignorant not to see the influences. I think it’s the same deal here.

Ape Man, I think you’re confusing genres here. These books are not being presented overtly as porn. They are being presented as wildly romantic and appropriate for young girls. Not to speak for her, but I don’t think “regressive crap a person masturbates to” and “this crap” are the same “crap” in Mighty Ponygirl’s comment.

Although I disagree that this post is about being a snob over taste, from the many critiques I’ve read of the series—which use actual excerpts—I really don’t care if someone complains that critics are being snobby. It is an abominably written series. The fact that it’s popular doesn’t change that and doesn’t make me feel bad.

I read them to see what everyone else saw in them, and I think it was the Seattle Newspaper put it best: “like touching a monkey thats touching an electric fence”. Pajiba was pretty good too, and least about the getting drawn in because you wanted to see if something finally happened. It never did.

I am so glad I read the stoney-summaries, because I hadn’t found anyone else as furious about the scene where Jacob assults Bella and her dad says “good for him” as I was!!!

[In case anyone’s curious, Tamora Pierce writes some bitching YA with female protagonists. There’s a great “your body is your own” theme too, and she’s just awesome in general. /plug]

Ape Man, you do realize that Amanda and I are two different people, right? And while yes, I do feel that Twilight should have a tagline of “when you’re too grown-uppy to masturbate to the Care Bears anymore” about the only time I’ve ever ridiculed someone for liking the series was after all attempts to politely express that I’m not interested have failed and OMG YOU HAVE TO READ BOOK BEST EVAR!!!1!

Part A might have been better served by “what regressive crap an adult masturbates to.” Is that better?

And I further put forth that an adult can have a regressive fantasy while understanding that the fantasy is regressive and also a fantasy. If I decided I wanted to fantasize about being protected and rescued by a hot, emotionally tortured dude, and that his passion for me was unrivaled and he was sooooo hot, and that I could suffer for my love for him as some completely fictional proof of my love, etc, that’s not to say that I don’t know IRL that dudes like that tend to not exist without some pretty serious patriarchal strings attached and that IRL having anything close to that would suck ass, because my fantasy is interacting with a conscious understanding of how the world really works.

But girls--not out of high school (much less out of middle school), and who don’t know how the world works--don’t have the experience or the learning to know that the “nice points” of patriarchal “romantic” love always come with caveats. And that there isn’t a lot of stuff out there in their cultural landscape to tell them otherwise. So while they look for clues on how to navigate the waters between childhood and adulthood, this book presents the easy, tasty romantic lie that the first boyfriend they have is OMG TRUE LOVE and that when he hurts her fucking her it’s because it’s LOVE and that the most important thing she has to offer the world is her LOVE OF HER FUCKING BOYFRIEND then I’m sorry but that’s irresponsible. Girls of that age need to be given direction and encouragement to develop their own personalities and their own self-worth, they don’t need to be told that the best way to overcome their feelings of inadequacy and awkwardness is to hand over their autonomy to their obsessive boyfriend.

I’m not sure I would even want them to not read this kind of crap, as much as I’d like them to read

Even schlock like this can be used to open up a productive discussion. If my friend’s 11-year-old daughter hadn’t read this book, or if her parents had thought it was as harmless and positive as “Harry Potter,” I really think it would have been a couple more years before she and her mother had the discussion they did about not subsuming one’s goals and dreams and independence simply because you like a boy and he likes you.

That beats outright censorship (which never works with kids and adolescents), and even though she’s now reading the rest of the series, she’s doing so with what we all hope is an “inoculation” of sorts. Although I must admit, when I read the following in the earlier thread:

Oh, and piling on to the DESTINED FOR EACH OTHER, I suppose it should be mentioned that Bella’s Werewolf-Suitor loves her because he somehow senses that HER DAUGHTER will be his DESTINED BELOVED, and he, you know, gets this concept while the kid is an infant.

I had one of those “Wait, what!?” moments, and sent over a link to Stoney321’s summaries. I really don’t think that either my friend or his ex wants this bright and independent girl taking a pre-teen course in “Subservient Mormon Wife 101.”

Hmm. I’m reading a really shitty series right now called Sisters of the Moon or something. It’s awful, feels like the worst parts of Sex in the City (BUY SEXY UNDERWEAR EVERY DAY, LADIES!) but for some reason I keep reading. I guess I like a trainwreck.

Then again, I’m an adult and I recognize that it’s all bull. I’m so grateful some days that I don’t have a formatively aged daughter. *terrified whimper*

Does anyone know of a good vampire series that starts women who aren’t, you know, helpless? Or stupid “feminists” who buy expensive shit to wear for guys who treat them like dirt and the one piece of evidence for their “reminist” status is that they can still enjoy the sex even though they KNOW the guy hates them and will treat them like dirt afterwards (it’s the NEW feminism, ick)?

Apeman, I don’t want to make you feel bad or stop you from having a good time, but you just got pwnd.

I had one of those “Wait, what!?” moments, and sent over a link to Stoney321’s summaries. I really don’t think that either my friend or his ex wants this bright and independent girl taking a pre-teen course in “Subservient Mormon Wife 101.”

Gracchus, sweet, that was my comment! Glad to help.

I can’t confirm - I haven’t read the books, but apparently that’s in the fourth book, from a blow-by-blow nasty summary of the book I read online. Ouch!!

The imprinting thing is scary. It’s supposed to be sweet and romantic - the 16 year old boy will cherish and love and basically be a parent figure to the child until SHE hits 16 at which point (I think it was Seraph that said this a few months back) “there will be a VERY uncomfortable conversation”. Blech.

The first four or so books of Laurell K. Hamilton are ok, and at least better writing than this dreck.  Be warned though, it goes downhill after that so steeply you may well develop whiplash.

Mighty Ponygirl---amen. Thanks. as a mother of a teen---I’m at a loss on how to steer her in the right direction without censoring. so far, we talk. I let her know why I feel the way I do, but I feel like I;m losing the battle against the Myth of Romantic Love.

Gracchus: you might want to send this link as well: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/tag/book+recaps
Particularly the Breaking Dawn recaps (scroll down). In short, SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!

-- When Bella becomes pregnant (pretty much right away after having sex after marriage) with a fast-growing miracle baby who already has superpowers and is actually destroying Bella’s body, at the baby’s birth she is actually torn apart, and dies; Edward has to literally bite the baby out of her, then turn her into a vampire in order to bring her back to life. Then her ex-boyfriend-werewolf “imprints” on the infant, who will be his future wife. And this is not presented as wacky or especially dark.

Honestly, MightPonygirl, I agree with you on the supply side.  This shit bothers me A LOT as a dad - I wish there weren’t so much of it everywhere.  I REALLY wish there weren’t rape fantasy scenes in fucking disney movies.  Rail “Born to Buy” style all you want about marketers preying on kids’ underdeveloped senses of self - I’ll be right there with you.

What I object to is attacking the people who enjoy this stuff as somehow being unfit for society because of their bad taste.  People like what they like - even teenage girls! 

This post is one in a LONG, seemingly endless string of posts in which Amanda ridicules (and here, openly advocates other people ridiculing) people, including teens, for their bad taste.  I understand YOU didn’t say these things - but does it bother you?  It bothers me.

APS

Sorry, that was for Ellen.  I was recommended the books by a high school girlfriend, so I don’t know if, going back to them now, the early books won’t turn out to suck just as badly as the later ones.

When Bella becomes pregnant (pretty much right away after having sex after marriage) with a fast-growing miracle baby who already has superpowers and is actually destroying Bella’s body, at the baby’s birth she is actually torn apart, and dies; Edward has to literally bite the baby out of her, then turn her into a vampire in order to bring her back to life. Then her ex-boyfriend-werewolf “imprints” on the infant, who will be his future wife. And this is not presented as wacky or especially dark.

LOL what!? How could even a teenager not laugh their ass off at that? It sounds like a parody!

This post is one in a LONG, seemingly endless string of posts in which Amanda ridicules (and here, openly advocates other people ridiculing) people, including teens, for their bad taste.  I understand YOU didn’t say these things - but does it bother you?  It bothers me.

She’s a music geek.  Being cattily superior is their golf.

I love Amanda’s writing most of the time but yes, it bothers me too.

Maybe, Gavel.  I’m sorry, MBL.

TheHolyFatman—Believe me when I say that I hear you. If you tell your kid that they can’t read the book, they’ll only get obsessed… so how do you provide guidance without being overbearing?

I hear Amazon had a great deal on the entire Buffy series a while back.

Errrgh. she *loved* the fourth book. BLECH

Ape, if it makes you feel better, think of it as examining people’s tastes instead of ridiculing them. Might take the edge off your sensitivity.  I examine because I believe the life unexamined is not worth living.

LOL what!? How could even a teenager not laugh their ass off at that? It sounds like a parody!

As I recall, there was a huge backlash with the main online Twilight fandom (I’m not sure how much of the backlash was the TwiMoms and how much was the teenagers) when Breaking Dawn was leaked, the leaked book was dismissed as being unrealistic, and then when the book was *actually published* the people who’d dismissed the leak were horrified to learn that the leak was real and Meyer actually wrote this. LOL. Meyer got really snippy with the readers who complained. Here’s one link for the bored, and here’s another.

If you like these sorts of “I read ‘em so you don’t have to” critiques of pulp fiction haunted by the author’s sexual demons, I am happy to introduce you to the phenomenon called “Oh JOHN RINGO NO!” From the start:

Permit me to introduce John Ringo.

Ringo is the author of a bajillion books, including fantasy and military SF. The novels (oh, yes, there is more than one) we’ll be considering are from the PALADIN OF SHADOWS series. These are modern-day action thrillers in which—well, let’s look at GHOST, the first novel in the series. The story begins with our hero, Mike Harmon, a accidentally witnessing the abduction of a college coed. He witnesses it because he just happens to be lurking in the shadows and watching the coeds himself. This is Mike’s recreation. Why? Well:

He knew that at heart, he was a rapist. And that meant he hated rapists more than any “normal” human being. They purely pissed him off. He’d spent his entire sexually adult life fighting the urge to not use his inconsiderable strength to possess and take instead of woo and cajole. He’d fought his demons to a standstill again and again when it would have been so easy to give in. He’d had one truly screwed up bitch get completely naked, with him naked and erect between her legs, and she still couldn’t say “yes.” And he’d just said: “that’s okay” and walked away with an amazing case of blue balls. When men gave in to that dark side, it made him even more angry then listening to leftist bitches scream about “western civilization” and how it was so fucked up.

Ladies and gentlemen, *our hero.*

You think that paragraph alone would make this book awesomely bad, but no. IT GETS MORE SO. Yes, you will be horrified by a lot of this, because Mike Harmon’s adventures are by turns awesomely horrific and horrifically awesome; I freely confess that I cannot stop reading these books, because *I have to see what Ringo does next.* I do, however, have a finely-tuned defense mechanism: whenever something trips my circuit breaker, causing me to cringe away from the page, I utter aloud a cry that resets my noggin. You will probably need it yourself, so I provide it here, as a public service: “OH JOHN RINGO NO.”

And this guy, like Stoney321, proceeds to deliver. I couldn’t stop reading.

When the Twilight film comes out on DVD, I’m getting a six pack of beer and watching it for the sheer awfulness if I get really bored one night. I’m a big fan of The Agony Booth (http://www.agonybooth.com/) so it should be a good time.

This post is one in a LONG, seemingly endless string of posts in which Amanda ridicules (and here, openly advocates other people ridiculing) people, including teens, for their bad taste.  I understand YOU didn’t say these things - but does it bother you?  It bothers me.

I’ve been having this argument with someone else in another forum.

I have absolutely no doubt that Twilight does as well as it does because people are hyping the shit out of it. And dealing with Twilight fans is… well… I’ve got one friend who was able to suggest I read it without coming off like some sort of white-eyeballed pentacostal about to break into a round of Speaking in Tongues (which, ironically, this is the friend I tricked into getting into Harry Potter). Everyone else has had about the subtlety of their fervor as ... well, a white-eyeballed pentacostal… etc.

Now… apart from the obvious “self-defense” aspect of being allowed to ridicule the shit out of how completely immature and bone-headed the series is when presented with rabid Twilight fans, I think having strong, well-articulated opinions against the Twilight series (which, yes, I think Amanda is making a strong case for why it’s regressive anti-feminist crap) might actually help with the self-feeding hype. If someone is interested in the series and decides to look into it (as I did, in fact) and instead of getting “omg Edward is so dreamy, I love this series, it’s better than Harry Potter!” they get “here is a list of reasons why Twilight is incredibly problematic, sexist and/or intellectually bankrupt” then they might save themselves (or their kids) the time and money of reading the series.

Gracchus - OMG.  I can’t decide if that’s awesome, or if I just died a little inside.

Yeah, I’m just never going to be so soft as to pretend that crap isn’t crap because it hurts the feelings of crap lovers.  Like I said in the post, I’m mildly grateful for a lifetime of having friends that will ride your ass if you eat pop culture junk food.  Junk food is bad for you, and so is rot pop culture.  My life is better in significant ways because the snobs of the world exist.  It would make me a terrible, dishonest, phony, horrible person to pretend otherwise.  And fronting, of course, is the first step in being a bad writer.

But hey, maybe if I learn to front hard enough, I can write a terrible, terrible series of books that are less novels than cheap wish fulfillment.  Anti-art makes a lot more money than art ever could.

Mighty Ponygirl---she watches Buffy, have no fear. (she is sitting next to me as I type this) we just had a discussion and she says, “MOm, It’s a BOOK! It’s a fairy tale---that stuff isn’t real!”

I hope so.

Which is why the scene where she saves herself is so damn effective.  She has to get over how he makes her feel and instead accept that he really is the monster.  And in the midst of their final bad ass final fight, he gets his soul back, and suddenly she sees the soft, loving guy that she fell in love with.  Brilliant, because this is exactly how abusive fucks suck you in.  But Buffy reaches into her reserve of strength, ignores his soft, pleading eyes, and stabs his ass and sends him straight to hell.  Which is what you’ve got to do, because guys like that are vampires.

Too bad she (and we) had to go through the same rigmarole all over again in Season Sux, only this time with an undisguised “bad boy” instead of the loving Angel with the psychotic Angelus lurking inside.  Sure, I know that she’d suffered a lot of combat fatigue and other trauma by then, but personally, I blame Creator Breakdown.  Thanks a lot, Marti Noxon. 

but as its own entity, season two holds together remarkably well as a metaphor for the dance between an abusive bad boy and the woman he’s pulled into his life

True.  And perhaps the metaphor can be expanded.  For example, during discussions about what to do if a friend is being abused, we’re often advised to make sure they know we’re there for them, no matter what, so the abuser can’t achieve their goal of isolating the victim. 

Which brings me to Xander.  While he’s supportive at first, and more than happy to help stand against Angelus if that’s what Buffy needs, he has no patience with her inability to break her emotional ties with Angel and simply kill him, all of which leads up to some pretty nasty exchanges as the season goes on, and culminates with the famous Lie.  Is it any wonder that the only person she feels safe talking to when she falls into yet another (this time mutually-)abusive relationship in Season Sux is Tara?

(As a side note, there’s an element of Buffyverse Fanon that agrees with Xander, that Buffy callously allowed Angelus to rampage unchecked through Sunnydale because she “wanted her boyfriend back”.  I argue that this ignores the fact that Buffy only had a few canon meetings with Angelus after Angel lost his soul, and in most of them she was at some disadvantage or other).

Though Angel struggled throughout the series with his desire to control Buffy’s behavior, often under the guise of protecting her.

To his credit, he did struggle with it, as opposed to wallowing in it like Edward Cullen.  Even better, Buffy always called him on it when he succumbed, rather than finding it oh-so-romantic.

I’ve read all four (my job is really boring) and they were awful. I just kept reading because I’m a masochist. I was expecting the series to get better towards the end initially, cause it was being compared to Harry Potter, only too late did i realize it was for popularity, and not plotlines. Sigh… I want my money and time back.

Seraph, I’m always torn on that.  On one hand, you’re right.  On the other, at least it was explicable in the sense that Buffy had a pattern, and the personality flaw that led her to get with Angel was being expressed with Spike in a more grown-up and fucked up way.  What I didn’t appreciate was that Spike was made out to be a suffering good guy because he had an abusive fuck attitude towards Buffy.  I mean, sometimes you saw a glimpse of how evil he really was, but not enough. 

But they were at least somewhat in control of Buffy’s motivations. Which is why what she needed to do was realize that she didn’t need a man to complete her.  Abusive fucks seek out women who are trained by the patriarchy to be desperate for male attention/validation.

Thanks, Annejumps and Ellen

When Bella becomes pregnant (pretty much right away after having sex after marriage) with a fast-growing miracle baby who already has superpowers and is actually destroying Bella’s body, at the baby’s birth she is actually torn apart, and dies; Edward has to literally bite the baby out of her, then turn her into a vampire in order to bring her back to life. Then her ex-boyfriend-werewolf “imprints” on the infant, who will be his future wife. And this is not presented as wacky or especially dark.

Lovely. I’m as big a fan of bad taste as the next guy (the next guy being Mel Brooks or John Waters). I also love whacked-out and twisted plots. but it’s clear from this and Stoney321’s that this has a whole other unhealthy religious subtext about “a woman’s role” going on—one designed to take advantage of adolescent girls’ inexperience and insecurity.

What I didn’t appreciate was that Spike was made out to be a suffering good guy because he had an abusive fuck attitude towards Buffy.

I dunno - it’s been a while since i’ve seen season six but I didn’t, then, see Spike made out as a good guy, just an evil guy who is humorously pushed into doing good against his will.  I think that’s why people reacted like they did - the writing may not have Spike as good, but he’s FUNNY (and, imo, way more interesting than Angel) so his fans projected on him what they wanted to see.

Gracchus - OMG.  I can’t decide if that’s awesome, or if I just died a little inside.

Keep reading, buddy. Like the Twilight series, Ringo’s stuff gets even more insane the further you go. Lots of meta-analysis about whether Ringo is having us on or if he’s just wrestling with his personal demons.

Ellen is right, Gracchus, and Jacob does “imprint” on Bella’s newborn baby. Not only that, but since she’s now his bethroted he hardly ever leaves the baby’s side.

Now, Meyer tried to get around the obvious lack of free will by having Bella say that’s gross, and Jacob (I believe it was Jacob) suggesting that the subject who was imprinted on doesn’t necessarily HAVE to fall in love with the werewolf who imprinted on him/her but they usually do. And if that’s the case, then that just defeats the purpose of imprinting at all now doesn’t it?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it ever single time: these books are shit. Even putting aside the subject matter, the writing in and of itself is atrocious.

And yeah, Meyer based this entire thing on a (probably) hot and sexy dream she had and came up with this superhot vampire guy who falls for the plain jain Meyer, er, I mean Bella. If I were her husband my eyebrows would be raised.

Gracchus - it’s a bit obvious to be seen reading at work, so I can’t right now, but please tell me there’s a climactic scene where he rapes someone and then fifty pages of angst about it and zero about the victim.  Better than Angels and Demons.  Now that had some messed up Mary Sue action going on.

My 14-year-old son has been obsessed with this series, and hasn’t quite been able to articulate why. I had read the first book, and had been mildly annoyed with the schlocky writing and absurd fixation on Edward’s good looks—the feminist implications of Bella’s obsession with him and her utter lack of direction should not have been, but were, lost on me the first time around. When he started reading the books, I read along, and by the fourth one I was fully aware of how shitty they are, on every level.

I read a lot of books as a kid that I probably shouldn’t have, and as an adult, I’m glad I did. I wasn’t about to forbid him from reading them. Instead, we’ve talked a lot about what makes Bella and Edward’s relationship so problematic, and I don’t think I would have had such an easy and natural way of raising certain issues with him if he hadn’t been reading the books in the first place.

Now I just want to understand why he likes them so much. Who does he identify with? And why?

I could look at it that way, of course.  But that’s not what it is, and you know that.  You can’t state explicitly that you think it’s a good idea to ridicule people until they see the error of their horrible tastes (and, indeed that they’ll be grateful) and then tell me to “look at it as examining people’s tastes rather than ridiculing them.” That’s ludicrous.

I also liked that Buffy and Angel reached a point where they could maturely realize that they were incompatible and just go their separate ways.  Though Angel struggled throughout the series with his desire to control Buffy’s behavior, often under the guise of protecting her.

Brilliantly handled with him and Spike in the last series where our two brave boys were basically, well, irrelevant to her.

OK, one other thing that’s worth point out about Spike/Buffy… as fucked up as it was, I don’t really feel like Buffy had any illusions about what the relationship was about (tis been a while since I’ve watched the Porn season). Whether or not you want to try to make the case about whether or not Spike loved Buffy is beside the point, because Buffy wasn’t interested in loving him, and he knew it. What would have otherwise been an abusive relationship was saved by ambivalence and the knowledge that she could kick his ass if he stepped out of line.

Hell, “I love you."/"No you don’t, but thanks for saying it” kind of says it all.

Compare that to fucking your wife until she blacks out and having her wake up with a bunch of broken bones and pregnant with a demon child.

Hell, even Dax gave as good as she got with Worf.

OK, I’m a huge dork. You caught me.

Gracchus - it’s a bit obvious to be seen reading at work, so I can’t right now, but please tell me there’s a climactic scene where he rapes someone and then fifty pages of angst about it and zero about the victim.

Will it hold you until after work knowing that the protagonist ends up ruling a small kingdom in Eastern Europe (and note again, these are contemporary thrillers) with an adopted harem of adolescent hookers he’s “rescued”?

And that’s not the end of it by any means. I envy your reading this for the first time only slightly less than I envy the author’s endless belly laughs reading the original novels.

Gracchus, I know someone IRL who knows a *lot* of people in professional SF publishing. I heard about what would become a watchword *way before* OHJOHNRINGONO became a watchword - in the context of swapping stories about Scary/Freaky People We Each Knew in our various publishing experiences. Somehow we had got round to BDSM: UR DOIN IT WRONG… So, yeah.

My reason for not believing his demurrals of it being purely a private exorcism of inner ugliness and horror which he was forced, nay *forced* to publish is - I’ve done some of those. Nobody else has seen them nor ever will, because I don’t keep them around after I’ve done them. And I don’t *talk* about them in a tantalizing hinting way on open message boards, either. I talk about things that I want to do, or that I want someone *else* to do, because I think the concepts are cool and good and ought to be done. But if I really don’t want to create something out of revulsion, well, I don’t let myself get talked into it. (Same goes with stupidly-dangerous or humiliating shit.) Nobody can force you to create a work or art, nor publish an existing one w/o your permission, unless they steal it physically from you and that’s asking for a lawsuit and a court order.

Will it hold you until after work knowing that the protagonist ends up ruling a small kingdom in Eastern Europe (and note again, these are contemporary thrillers) with an adopted harem of adolescent hookers he’s “rescued”?

?????

Please tell me that’s the biggest WTF moment in that series. It has to be, right? Right?

emjaybee, one good resource is OTR(Old Time Radio) and this lady</a> couldn’t be compared to a princess:

CANDY MATSON was the private eye star of Candy Matson, YUKON 2-8208, an NBC West Coast show which first aired in March 1949 and was created by Monty Masters. He cast his wife, Natalie Parks, in the title role of this sassy, sexy PI. Her understated love interest, Lt. Ray Mallard, was played by Henry Leff while her assistant and high-falutin’ best pal, aptly named Rembrandt Watson, was the voice of Jack Thomas.

Every show opened with a ringing telephone and our lady PI answering it with “Candy Matson, YU 2-8209” and then the organ swung into the theme song, “Candy”. Each job took Candy from her apartment on Telegraph Hill into some actual location in San Francisco. The writers, overseen by Monty, worked plenty of real Bay Area locations into every plot.

Candy was bright, tough, and fearless. She used her pistol infrequently, but was unintimidated by bad guys, regardless of circumstances. Threats, assaults, and even bullets would usually produce a caustic, but clever, response for this blonde sleuth. She and Mallard were frequently working the same case, but she usually solved it first.

OTR experts generally agree that this show was the finest of all the female PIs. Although the show ran until May 1951, it never attracted a permanent sponsor (although the first season’s final episode ended with the announcement that “Candy Matson Is San Francisco’s Most Popular Program").

“I’m just never going to be so soft as to pretend that crap isn’t crap because it hurts the feelings of crap lovers.”

That’s a false dilemma.  I think about 95% of the music/cinema/etc you tout on this site is TERRIBLE, but since I recognize that’s a difference of taste, I don’t constantly harp on what an idiot it makes you that you like it. 

I remember once reading a Stephen Merritt interview where he talked about how he was happy when he got signed to a big label because despite all the headaches, it put an end to all of the ridiculous who would come to him and assume that he liked all these horrible little bands just because he was himself an independent musician. 

When I read that I immediately thought of you. 

See how what I just wrote isn’t just a description of a different point of view but unnecessarily mean, and intentionally belittling?  I didn’t have to write it that way.  The fact that I did so makes me something of a shit. 

Get it?

ROTFLMAO moment:

Mostly because he’s cold as ice. (Willing to sacrifice our love!)

BRILLIANT!  New keyboard time.

The male gendered equivalent of “manic pixie dream girl” is a vampire?

Nope - a protective sparkly dream vampire.

Oh, how I long for the days when vampires were real vampires, and breathy little maidens were snack-food.

Going back to the Buffy bit...I was under the impression (from some comments here and there both here and abroad on the ‘net) that Joss Whedon isn’t exactly well liked, because while he presents strong women, he often nerfs them at the same time, beyond just like, making a human being with flaws. Or something around those parts.

Yes/No/Astonishing X-Men was really good, anyway?

Ape Man, saying over and over that you disapprove of Amanda’s critiques will not, I suspect, convince her to stop writing them.

annejumps:

Obviosuly that’s true.  But is there something wrong with trying to make sure that my specific objection is properly understood?  It’s not, to me, a trivial matter.  There actually is someone specific I would love to turn on to this site - so much of what’s here would be right up her alley.  But posts like this would hurt her feelings.  If that’s a price that’s worth paying, great.  I just don’t really see what advantage is being gained with all the sneering that goes on here.

APS

Ellen is right, Gracchus, and Jacob does “imprint” on Bella’s newborn baby. Not only that, but since she’s now his bethroted he hardly ever leaves the baby’s side.

Now, Meyer tried to get around the obvious lack of free will by having Bella say that’s gross, and Jacob (I believe it was Jacob) suggesting that the subject who was imprinted on doesn’t necessarily HAVE to fall in love with the werewolf who imprinted on him/her but they usually do. And if that’s the case, then that just defeats the purpose of imprinting at all now doesn’t it?

I’m getting the feeling this Twilight series would have worked better if Edvard was a robot, instead of just a pseudo-vampire who acts like a robot.

I say this based on the old debate about who would win in a fight between a robot and a werewolf. The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t matter: we all win when a robot fights a werewolf.

All the teenage girls I know were all insane about the movie, but I don’t know how many of them actually read the books.  However, I know loads of adult women who are completely sucked in (and crazy about) the books.  I was just talking to the student teacher (studying for a master’s degree in education) in my kid’s class today about the series.  She is so very into it and says that the characters are so true to life and she identifies with them so much and why aren’t there any real men around who are vampires like Edward, etc.  And some of my very good friends are also sucked in by these books and are trying their level best to get me to read them.  So far I’ve resisted, but I am just a tiny bit curious why grown women would be as into this as they seem to be.

It’s a little inexplicable to me, to be honest.  I have my fair share of bad taste in books (I personally have a weakness for cheesy historical romance novels, but I get that my books are fiction and a fun read and I don’t think they are in any way true to life), but this really baffles me.

Please tell me that’s the biggest WTF moment in that series. It has to be, right? Right?

Not even close. And those are all the previews you get, kids. The linked posts capture the awfulness in a way that only someone who’s seen the elephant can do.

Also, thanks for the additional info on Ringo, bellatrys.

says that the characters are so true to life and she identifies with them so much and why aren’t there any real men around who are vampires like Edward, etc.

Ok, how can they see it as “true to life” if men like Edward don’t exist?

Part 2: The graphics are to die for. 

“The Marine Corp could always use a hand:”

Ape

It’s your moral duty not to allow your friends to cultivate ridiculous illusions.  Because there’s a very real danger that the awkward, unattractive girls of the world will be vulnerable to abusive motherfuckers who take advantage of these romantic fantasies, and convince them that controlling, stalker-ish behavior is an expression of a love so pure that those ordinary fools can’t see it.

Without knowing what your relationship is to this Special Person let me just say that teasing by good friends is probably the most effective means of knocking fool shit off I’ve ever experienced. And while it sucked to have your friends shine the harsh light of reality on you when you’re still in the dream mode of how you could totally get the bully to reform and love you, I’d wager it’s a lot safer than learning the hard way that no you can’t. Teasing by parents, well, that’s therapy time. But that’s why she wrote “friends.”

TheHolyFatman—perhaps your daughter should start reading all these culture-criticizing feminist blogs.  Interesting people who are not her mom are way more likely to get the point across.  And 16 is not to young for blog reading.

Of course the argument rages all over livejournal about whether or not it’s right to try to actively censor what teenage girls fantasize about - I would say “no”, with the caveat that I don’t know how many girls get steered towards the no-biting-before-marriage Twilight books because Laurell K. Hamilton etc. (more straightforward literary vampire porn) is unacceptable to their families or peer culture. I certainly hid my Anita Blake books (because if you opened them to any given page there was throbbing of some sort), while Twilight is something you talk about.

I also never thought I’d have occasion to say the words “Hamilton handles werewolves with consent issues much more sensitively.” But she does!

P.S. Not saying all the Blake books were good.
But I did think they were, objectively, healthier.

Ok, one direct quote from Ringo (via the fine blog post), which should have appeal to one of Amanda’s favourite themes. The protagonist has just rescued a coed from a “fate worse than death” (as the old pulp fiction cliche goes), and the following conversation ensues [boldface mine]:

“I really want to know who you are.”

“Well,” he said, grinning, “if you ever see me again, for the first time, be overwhelmed by a wave of lust and need to give me a blowjob right then and there, even if it’s in public, okay?”

“Sure,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “Men. Maybe not in public, but we’ll talk, okay? This has...”

“Don’t let this put you off of men, God damnit,” Mike said, firmly. “I didn’t risk my fucking life to have you go lesbo. All men aren’t these filth. And if you decide they are, you’re spitting on what *I* did . Because the *good* guys want to get laid, too. Understand?”

The “hero” is a NiceGuy(R)?! OH JOHN RINGO NO!

A friend of mine, who is obsessed with these books and has a degree in English Lit, put it thus:

“I had this exact relationship when I was in high school and I’m hoping it turns out different than mine did.”

As I said in an earlier thread:  The TwiMoms are looking at relationships that have similar power dynamics (man in control, woman gives up or puts goals on the backburner to build a great life around him, feels completely underappreciated and vulnerable but defines herself by her status as wife/mother) and imagining that they can-- should-- be different than they are.  They don’t want to believe it’s the inherent mismatch in power, the lack of regard for themselves as separate people with their own personal goals unrelated to being wives or mothers, and the fucked up notion that obsessive love is the only true love.

I REALLY wish there weren’t rape fantasy scenes in fucking disney movies.

Wait. What? Which movie is that? o_O

If we’re going for the group hug, I’m with Gavel and Ape on the music posts. I’ve learned to avoid them because, well, the disdain and self-congratulation in those thread kind of burns. I also tend to skip over those because, um, they remind me a little too much of when I was younger and when everyone who had a different taste in music, TV, religion, politics, etc. than me was “TEH FARKING MORAN”. And then I get a little embarrassed over being, basically, a typically self-centered kid like everyone else was/is at that age.

I just noticed this:

It’s your moral duty not to allow your friends to cultivate ridiculous illusions.

I don’t know. Seems like a good way to lose friends. And who are you to decide what is ridiculous and what isn’t? I’m not saying that open communication isn’t a good idea, just that I hope this isn’t indicating a tolerance for haranging friends until they see the light (that’s what fundies do, isn’t it?). Also, are we talking adult friends? Because there’s a lack of respect if you think their ideas are “ridiculous illusions”...right?

following that link was just about as painful as I was afraid reading the “Twilight” books would actually be.

One last thing and I’ll shut up, really.

Let me give a little background on my own experience of this site.  I’ve been reading Pandagon for years and I think it’s changed my perspective on gender relations and sexual politics a great deal.  After being a nominal feminist who fell squarely in the acceptable range of misogyny for male culture, over the last several years I’ve drifted about as far towards “militant feminist” that a man can really drift.

Recently I was listening to Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” and I was marveling at how much my interpretation of the album has changed over the last, say, five years.  A reverential confessional like “Shelter from the Storm” now seems to me to be about a very callous man who has used and mistreated a woman, and who later remade her in his memory into a very specific male fantasy - the woman who gives and gives of herself and expects nothing in return.

This, to me, increases the beauty of the album - you can see, with the benefit of years of cultural hindsight, how Dylan’s flaws as a man led him to this place of anger, resentment and loneliness.  You could also use it as a reason to revile the album more - after all, Dylan clearly sees himself not as the aging douchebag that he is, but as an embattled poet-hero, misunderstood by society.  He’s a hypocrite and a fool. 

But of course which perspective you have on that question is determined by taste - if you like the way the record sounds, your new understanding is going to add a layer of richness to the experience of listening.  If you don’t, you’re going to see it as a confirmation of the obvious correctness of your dislike of the music. 

Had the first post I read on this site been “Hey, if you like Bob Dylan, you’re an idiot and your friends really need to make fun of you incessantly until you stop,” I really doubt I would have kept reading.  That’s all I’m driving at.

Oh, Ape, I really can’t get on board with the idea that there’s some moral horror in making fun of crap.  It’s not feeding the poor or anything, but if anyone gets offended, that’s a good measure of how they need to get a thicker skin.  That’s minimal.  People harangue me directly about my taste and while I give as good as I get, I’m never offended.  Life is to short to take offense and to avoid having your cheap yuks.

We’ve all had friends or been the ones ourselves who got some completely bullshit idea into our heads (usually about our choice of “crush") that our friends were able to tease us back into common sense about.

Yeah, I’ve had fundie “friends” who wanted so badly to save my endangered Episcopalian soul, and I can assure you that even at the time I knew the difference… this isn’t the same thing as having trusted friends who have the ability to look at whatever fool notion you’ve decided to share and say “um, no. Stop pretending this is a smart idea.”

Sorry, but pretty much everybody rags on aesthetic tastes they don’t share with others.  I tend toward really pedestrian tastes in music and I’ve always felt a bit intimidated around insufferable music snobs because of it, but that has never stopped me from criticizing boy bands or Katy Perry.  I’ve solved my musical inferiority complex by 1) avoiding trying to front like my taste really is teh awesome in threads that revel in music snobbery, 2) realizing that I don’t have to justify my music tastes to anybody, which means that I don’t give a shit if anybody else approves, and 3) being open to listening to new music (or watching arthouse movies, or reading new books) if it seems like it might be interesting to my tastes.

All of this is to say, ApeMan, you really don’t have to read certain posts if they bother you. Nobody is forcing you. Some of us enjoy them (I like the movie and book reviews) and avoid those we don’t enjoy.

I sent this post to a friend of mine, who actually teaches a women’s studies class that centers around Buffy. She loved it because she hates Twilight for all the reasons she loves Buffy. I’m firmly with her in that camp.

But, yeah. My sister was 1st in line opening weekend...wearing a Tshirt (which she kept on all weekend). She is 31! I swear she didn’t drink the antifeminist Kool-Aid, but she LOVES those books and is very offended at my distaste. I tried to explain my reasoning - in language very similar to this post - and she FREAKED.

Furthermore, here is the type of conversation I have with early-twentysomething girls lately:

Girl: When is Prince Charming going to scoop me up onto his white horse?
Me: Um, no one is coming.
Girl: WHAT??
Me: I’m not saying you’ll never find a guy. But even the best guy will be human, which means far from perfect. Besides, even when you find a happy relationship, you’d better be able to take care of yourself.
Girl: But WHO NEEDS A CAREER I want to HAVE LOTS OF BABIES AND BE TAKEN CARE OF BY MY WONDERFUL WONDERFUL MAN. WHY DON’T WOMEN LIKE BEING TAKEN CARE OF ANYMORE?? CHIVALRY IS TOTALLY COMING BACK IN STYLE, YOU SAD OLD SPINSTER.
Me: Um, historically, women have NEVER been taken care of. They have served as the unpaid labor of every powerful culture on earth. Every gain for women in has come from considerable effort and protest from WOMEN (and some men). I’m not saying you shouldn’t have kids or even take time off for them, but being able to generate your own income is a privil-
Girl: YOU HATE BABIES AND I BET YOU ARE A LESBIAN. I PREDICT THAT YOU WILL ONE DAY OWN MANY CATS.
Me: I’m allergic to cats. And stupidity.
Girl: YOU HATE MEN AND YOU WANT ME TO BE LIKE YOU BECAUSE MISERY LOVES COMPANY.
Me: Uh, no. But if my husband dies or becomes handicapped, where does the household money come from if I haven’t kept up my job skills?
Girl: YOU ARE CYNICAL AND MEAN. I BET YOU EVEN PAY ON DATES, FREAK.
Me: **yawns, makes appointment at spa with considerable disposable income**

I have had this conversation - in various iterations - with lots of young women who should, from a historical standpoint, have a better understanding of feminism’s gains. Sadly, they seem to be taken for granted when you’ve had them all your life. I feel incredibly lucky to have been born the year that Roe v. Wade took the idea of choice and made it law. It’s frustrating to be called ‘cynical’ and ‘mean’ when I point out that the Cleavers were fictional characters.

P.S. I forwarded that Livejournal link to my sister. She’s going to HATE me. Hee!

I’ve never understood the appeal of vampires, to girls or anyone else. Guess it speaks to some deep place in the American mind forever stuck in nineteenth-century occultism and romanticism. Ecch.

Yeah, I’m just never going to be so soft as to pretend that crap isn’t crap because it hurts the feelings of crap lovers.  Like I said in the post, I’m mildly grateful for a lifetime of having friends that will ride your ass if you eat pop culture junk food.  Junk food is bad for you, and so is rot pop culture.  My life is better in significant ways because the snobs of the world exist.  It would make me a terrible, dishonest, phony, horrible person to pretend otherwise.  And fronting, of course, is the first step in being a bad writer.

Well, your writing does suck immensely; always has, and always will, I suspect. I’ll take your word for it that it’s not because of fronting because, after all, you always take great pains to remind us that you are honesty and integrity incarnate. Amanda, Kitschfinder General.

Your music snobbery has always cracked me up for that very reason (the hysterically funny attempt to ferret out the psychological impurities behind Coldplay’s music from a few years back is one of the greatest in the music-snobbery genre, for my money)- there are plenty of people who are much better writers and thinkers than you who don’t feel a need to act like straight-edge militants when it comes to pop culture detritus, who aren’t so insecure as to think that exposure to art created with impure motives will somehow corrupt their very being, yet you seem convinced that being an ignorant snob about anything that falls short of your ideological standards is a sign of...well, who knows.

I mean, really - Devo is the best band ever but Spoon is terrible? It’s like you have anti-ears. Un-ears, or something.

But I’m a guy, so I suppose it’s like you said once in response to all the other people who provided you with constructive criticism regarding your subpar writing - I’m just a big ol’ sexist, and I refuse to accept a woman writing on this site.

wapsie—it’s definitely the appeal of the dangerous badboy, but it’s not really carefully examined.

Vampires look at humans as food. There’s something very wrong about the idea that a vampire could love a human.

If someone told me he loved a chicken, I would rightly think “what a freak,” not “omg what a poetic tortured soul.”

OK, one other thing that’s worth point out about Spike/Buffy… as fucked up as it was, I don’t really feel like Buffy had any illusions about what the relationship was about (tis been a while since I’ve watched the Porn season). Whether or not you want to try to make the case about whether or not Spike loved Buffy is beside the point, because Buffy wasn’t interested in loving him, and he knew it. What would have otherwise been an abusive relationship was saved by ambivalence and the knowledge that she could kick his ass if he stepped out of line.

YMMV.  The fact that Buffy got into the relationship knowing damn well that it would be unhealthy bordering on dangerous (yes, Buffy could take Spike in a straight fight, but he was never one for straight fights - see the rape scene) was actually half of my problem with that season.  She was actually demonstrating less wisdom and emotional maturity than she did in High school.  Once again - explainable as trauma, lay the actual blame on creator breakdown. 

For the record: yes, Buffy abused Spike, too.  Acknowledged above with the “mutually”.  Doesn’t actually “save” his side of the relationship from being abusive.  Also: of course he loved Buffy.  Feelings, he had.  Just no conscience or empathy.  We’ve seen plenty of vampires and demons in love.  Generally, it’s nothing like a healthy human relationship. 

Compare that to fucking your wife until she blacks out and having her wake up with a bunch of broken bones and pregnant with a demon child.

What’s worst about this is that it’s presented as oh so romantic!  At least Buffy and Spike’s relationship was acknowledged as hellish (by the series at least - some of the Spuffy stories I read at the time...brrr!).

You know, there’s three aspects to that scene.  Let’s break ‘em down:

Demon Baby - Neutral in terms of judging abusive or not.  Simply the result of Edward mistakenly believing he was sterile and Stephenie Meyers’s belief that a baby is necessary for the relationship to be truly perfect. 

Bruises - Not done with malice.  Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.  Still, super-strong characters - including Buffy herself, Angel, and even Superman, despite the reference - have managed to avoid hurting human lovers.  Most have learned a bit of gentleness, maneuvering their power through a fragile world.  If nothing else, did it never occur to them (or Meyers) to have Edward lie back, let Bella get on top, and let her set a pace that didn’t hurt?

Continuing the sex after Bella passed out - Rape.  Coupled with a truly frightening lack of concern, considering that he went into the sex worried that he might accidentally kill her.  Reminds me of that Dan Savage column where the woman’s boyfriend only called the hospital about her rectal bleeding (brought on by his anally raping her during a bondage game) after he’d had his orgasm.

Also, someone posted a link to a cartoon about “Twilight” that ended with a panel of a woman gaping silently in amazement at some people who read that book.  If that is part of a series I would sure love to know where to find the rest of it.

Wow, Fugg, your masochistic insistence on reading what you consider a poorly written blog will really wound Amanda. However, I doubt she’ll accuse you of “sexism” for refusing to accept her posting on a blog that she co-founded—not when an accusation of douchebaggery more than covers the bill.

PS: Not including Anya as one of the role models: great lines, funny as hell, but not exactly a role model…

LOL.  No, demonic beings that destroy people out of revenge are definitely not good role models.

Between the “Disney Princess” phenomenon and this _Twilight_ thing (which fortunately I had never heard of until months ago), there is certainly an upsurge in fairy-tales—and not the good creepy kind of fairy tale like Charles Perrault’s, or as revised by Angela Carter.  Imaginary escape from harsh and cruel 21st-century capitalism?

Also, someone posted a link to a cartoon about “Twilight” that ended with a panel of a woman gaping silently in amazement at some people who read that book.  If that is part of a series I would sure love to know where to find the rest of it.

Didn’t you ever go back to that thread after you asked this question yesterday?  I answered it:

It’s not a series as such, although the artist does have an off-and-on webcomic.  There’s only one other strip on this topic.  Take a look.

I’ve never understood the appeal of vampires, to girls or anyone else.

The resonance of the vampire myth, however, is obvious.

“There are creatures out there or, worse, walking among you, who want to eat you.”
“You often can’t tell them from your friends.”
“They have no sould. They can make you like them.”
“But if you’re smart, and lucky, you may be able to beat them.  But it can cost.”

I am bracing myself for reading, at the very least, Twilight. As a teacher of middle school, I think it’s important for me to be able to discuss with my students something that is influencing them so acutely. Everything I hear and read about this series makes me very concerned about the messages the eleven and twelve year-olds reading it are getting. So, I will take the bullet. I won’t buy it- I don’t want to support Meyer and based on the excerpts I have already read, I will find the prose very painful, but I think its important to be able to have an informed conversation about a cultural phenomenon.

If that is part of a series I would sure love to know where to find the rest of it.

There’s only one other Twilight comic I could find by that artist. Seraph provided this link:

http://headtripcomics.comicgenesis.com/d/20080505.html

Seraph, I had the same “why wasn’t Bella on top?” question.

I assume it’s supposed to be romantic because he was so all-consumed by the awesomeness of the fucking that he failed to notice she was unconscious and being badly hurt by it all.

I don’t consider it romantic when my lover doesn’t notice / care whether or not I’m enjoying the sex. *eyeroll*

I guess they didn’t call Bella an ambulance because, you know, VAMPIRES, but isn’t Edward’s “dad” a doctor?

“omg what a poetic tortured soul.”

It took centuries—in Teh Western Tradishun anyway—for anyone to find the “poetic tortured soul” the least bit appealing.  It was somewhere between Byron and Darcy.  (Now _that’s_ some slashfic waiting to happen!) Stupid Romanticism.

Did anyone explain the “rape fantasies in Disney movie” comment? I don’t see it.

It was somewhere between Byron and Darcy.

OK, with a dash of Werther.  (Wooooo, three-way!)

“Seraph, I had the same “why wasn’t Bella on top?” question.”

OH COME ON. Woman on top is not righteous Mormon sex! MAN ON TOP, ALWAYS.

Woman on top is not righteous Mormon sex! MAN ON TOP, ALWAYS.

I.e., “Missionary.”

This post is one in a LONG, seemingly endless string of posts in which Amanda ridicules (and here, openly advocates other people ridiculing) people, including teens, for their bad taste.

I don’t see it.  Amanda says that if she read something like this as a kid, her friends would tease her, and that people shouldn’t let their friends read dreck like it today, but there’s no ridiculing or incitement to ridicule.

I guess they didn’t call Bella an ambulance because, you know, VAMPIRES, but isn’t Edward’s “dad” a doctor?

If Edward’s “dad” is a vampire, wouldn’t that present similar problems to a physician being a smack addict, having free access to hospitals and blood banks and all?

A halfway decent author might find some humour or conflict in the situation, but I’m guessing Meyers doesn’t do anything interesting with it.

I was referring specifically to the meet-cute between Tarzan and Jane, which is a sexually charged scene with heavy overtones of physical menace.  Basically, Jane is in fear for her physical safety and is clearly expecting Tarzan to harm her, and yet she can’t help but be tickled by his advances.

APS

You know if people want to read pulp about vampires there are far better series. Hellsing, Vampire Hunter D (yes it’s a book series just recently released), The Dresden Files. All have elements that are far better then the Meyer books. Btw she had never researched the subject of vampires before deciding to write books about them. Hence the vampires in broad daylight bit among others.

As for the comments about the Disney Princess stuff most of the Disney is taken from older stories. It’s a literary form common to hundreds of thousands of books, stories etc.

I got my vampires from a different source, and the business with the Twilight demon baby reminded be of a certain storyline-

Oncle Julian: That’s one of them walkin babies. Someone get me an ax.

This is in swedish, but you don’t need the sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBCelXwQYpA

most of the Disney is taken from older stories. It’s a literary form common to hundreds of thousands of books, stories etc.

Yes, true.  But its position in the consumer marketplace is much bigger than it was in my own youth, the ‘70s and ‘80s.  So something reanimated (teehee) the fairy-tale/princess phenomenon—not that it ever went away, but it sure flared up something fierce.  It’s on some kind of feedback loop between what people want now, what they can be enticed to want, and what they have always wanted.

Ape Man, thanks for the answer.

Guess we’ll have to disagree. I thought that scene was very realistic, in the sense that, yes, she was scared, and yes, he was attracted, and yes, she very much was NOT, but her intellectual curiosity was considerably piqued. She thought she’d just found a living fossil - talk about fame and fortune! I’d be a bit excited too, if I’d devote my entire life to discovering new species. Later she mentions her excitement about meeting the queen as the discoverer of the “ape man” - I was pleased that a heroine wanted something more out of life than, say, a wedding ring.

I very much did not get the impression that she was all hot and bothered that, oh yes, he might rape me! Sweet!

But, hey, to each his own interpretaton.

Thank you Seraph )

Agreed, the overt intent of the scene is not a rape fantasy.  However, I haven’t met too many people who really pretend not to see where I’m coming from.  I have to wonder if you’re being intentionally obtuse there.

APS

I’ve never understood the appeal of vampires

Well, living forever would be nice.  And. . . that’s about it, I s’pose.

Rather than address the pettiness intermittently present in this thread, or the towering issues of how soul-crushingly bad Twilight is, or the bullshit buying the books fuels (amazingly, my friends and I were have a discussion regarding Mormonism and Twilight last night), I’ve decided to simply say one thing to everyone: STOP LINKING TO TVTROPES I JUST GOT OFF THERE DAMN YOU.

And for those who have never been there until you saw a link in this thread, allow me to break the news: We have just ruined your life.

I’ll take your word for it that it’s not because of fronting because, after all, you always take great pains to remind us that you are honesty and integrity incarnate.

WTF?

Well, living forever would be nice. 

You’d think, but consider how many hours you’ve sat around stared at your bellybutton because you couldn’t think of a single thing to do. I think Douglas Adams’s take on immortality - the eternal “long, dark teatime of the soul” - is right, but I think a lot of Douglas Adams said on a lot of things was right/

“The first rule of Babysitters Club is that we don’t talk about Babysitters Club. “

Spence, you suck; now there’s hot cocoa on my monitor, in my hair and up my nose.

Damien,
Yeah, my weekend got ate by TVTropes.org. It was a bit unsettling how quickly it grabbed my attention.

Thinking about the Spike/Buffy thing, I think he’s analogous to something like a drug addict (only as a vampire, he’s addicted to violent) who falls in love with a cop. He knows his habit is unacceptable and she can punish him for it, so he tries, at first, just to stop using. But his need is still, there, and the issues that sent him down that road is still there, and he keeps feeling like she owes it to him to compromise her standards, just a little, since he’s trying so hard for her. And then he backslides in a big way, harming her, and finally does what he should have done when he started to change for her: goes on a quest to regain his soul (checks into rehab and gets therapy), coming out of it not only reformed, but happy to be reformed for the sake of the new himself, and aware she doesn’t owe him a damn thing, but at least their lingering emotional ties are making her miserable anymore.

STOP LINKING TO TVTROPES I JUST GOT OFF THERE DAMN YOU.  And for those who have never been there until you saw a link in this thread, allow me to break the news: We have just ruined your life.

Hehe, I think I see what you mean.  I’ve never seen it before this thread, either, but I can see how it might do that.

Good teen-girl antidote to these, if you like the vampires, is Sunshine by Robin McKinley--also stars a “good” vampire, also told from female protagonist point of view, but she is the dominant one, and..well I don’t want to ruin it, but there ain’t nothing weenie about her. If you need something that handles the same themes but in a strong, funny, non-sexist way, Sunshine is it. I think it’s in paperback too.

(sadly, not a series, BUT, all McKinley’s books are just as good, the women just as kick ass, and they are often funny too.)

What needs to happen is an society-wide examination of the difference between fantasy and reality.

Full agreement with both “Personally, I don’t care what regressive crap a person masturbates to...”

and

“but when this crap is given to girls in the formative years of their sexuality, as their personality is beginning to mature and they’re beginning to form their own set of preferences and desires, it’s about as developmentally healthy as weaning an infant on YooHoo.”

The reconciliation is to make sure that young people know that there are some things that are feasible in real life and others that, however awesome they sound, are safe in fantasy only.  Guys like Edward, Angel, Spike, Lucius Malfoy, Hannibal Lecter, Megatron, et cetera are attractive as fuck* and it’s their danger that provides a big chunk of the attraction---and in the safety of a book or movie, where they have no access to your life, they’re wonderful.  In reality, however, when such a man is present in living** color, it’s like skydiving with an unpredictable parachute.

*for the record: I do not find Edward attractive.  Or Angel, really.  And definitely not Hannibal Lecter.

**sometimes living, anyway

It’s made blatantly obvious for every other danger we human beings face---kids in school get the talking crash test dummies, the This Is Your Brain On Drugs egg, all sorts of things.  This issue of what you find hot vs. what you should seek out in real life deserves the same educational time.

Also, I think the stigma on fantasy as waste of time and brainspace, get-a-life-loser, needs to get eased, or at least redirected.  It should be providing people’s fix of what it’s not safe to get in reality, so they can enjoy life as they have it better, rather than bemoaning the lack of something that’s not safe for them to have---or seeking it out.  In all seriousness, we need more controlled environments where people can safely do what generally isn’t safe.  And more acceptance/endorsement of that option and that question.

I don’t know, maybe trashy literary versions can act like a vaccination against the real thing, at least for girls with strong, healthy peer groups.  I hated anti-feminist trashy romance, I had strong role models in fiction and tons of great feminist role models, male and female, in real life.  I was still pretty damn vulnerable to manipulation the Different Boy with a Tragic Past.  I’d blame it more on lack of practiced social skills than anything else.

“if you ever see me again, for the first time, be overwhelmed by a wave of lust and need to give me a blowjob right then and there, even if it’s in public, okay?”

I used to be a fan of blowjobs, and then I read that.

or how about people just don’t be retarded and realize its a freaking book?

Permit me to introduce John Ringo.

He’s no huckleberry.

I used to be a fan of blowjobs, and then I read that.

I used to be a fan of the English language, and then I read it.

Has anyone else read the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs?  Its still just more of the same paranormal pulp fiction, but at least it does have a strong independent heroine who holds her own against vampires and (very) patriarchal werewolves.

RE: John Ringo, he is quite clearly a wingnut.  I like the “military SF” aspect of his writing (his collaboration with David Weber on the “March Upcountry” series was particularly good in this regard) but his politics...woo.  Same with Jerry Pournelle, who is a better writer IMO.  I haven’t read any of the Mark Harmon books but the passages mentioned here sound quite in character for Ringo.  Ringo is not for feminists.  (Though I’m not sure what the “feminist” review of “Cally’s War” would look like; he quite clearly tries to create in Cally O’Neal a strong female character, but probably not one that who would play in Pandagonia.) He’s not for liberals or progressives either; one of his newer books has an essay in the back about “tranzis” (i.e. transnationalists) that would not be out of place if it were posted on RedState or Free Republic.

Nobody’s mentioned Anne Rice in this thread yet...didn’t she pave the way for the return of vampires as a phenomenon with mass appeal?  Buffy and the rest have all followed the path initially broken by Rice, I think.  Before Lestat the only vampire anyone knew about was Dracula.

As I recall, there was a huge backlash with the main online Twilight fandom when Breaking Dawn was leaked, the leaked book was dismissed as being unrealistic, and then when the book was *actually published* the people who’d dismissed the leak were horrified to learn that the leak was real and Meyer actually wrote this.

That

is awesome.

its a freaking book?

No shit. I could have sworn it was a strawberry-flavored hamster. I have to stop getting high so often.

Yes, it’s a book. A shitty one that deserves to be mocked.

Nobody’s mentioned Anne Rice in this thread yet...didn’t she pave the way for the return of vampires as a phenomenon with mass appeal? 

Yes, I think you could say that she did--for better and worse.

Amanda:

This is what I get for making the first comment on a post and then not looking back in for four and a half hours.  Gavel Down has the right read on what I was trying to say, but I don’t blame you for misreading me, since that sentence was, in retrospect, pretty horrific. 

Just so that I’m perfectly clear:  I’m pretty sure that I’ll have the same read on them that you do.  I tend to occasionally pick up things that I KNOW are crap, just to revel in the awfulness, but in this particular case I do have several students (one in particular who is, in every other way, an uncommonly poised, mature, intelligent young woman) who are absolutely batshit crazy in love with these books and have done their best on a couple of occasions to get me to read them.  Between the two, I’ll probably end up reading them, if for no other reason than to engage in counterprogramming.

If you like these sorts of “I read ‘em so you don’t have to” critiques of pulp fiction haunted by the author’s sexual demons, I am happy to introduce you to the phenomenon called “Oh JOHN RINGO NO!”

LO freakin’ L.  The probability that I will read that book is getting closer to 1 by the minute.  Not buy, and likely not enjoy, but read.

Guys like Edward, Angel, Spike, Lucius Malfoy, Hannibal Lecter, Megatron, et cetera are attractive as fuck*

*for the record: I do not find Edward attractive.  Or Angel, really.  And definitely not Hannibal Lecter.

But yes to Megatron, huh?  That’s a new one.  Is it all versions, or does Hugo Weaving’s voice have something to do with it?

You’d think, but consider how many hours you’ve sat around stared at your bellybutton because you couldn’t think of a single thing to do.

There’s a quote along the lines of “Many men dream of immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a Sunday afternoon.” Can’t trace it down offhand, though.

I’ve always liked that quote, Phoenician.  In the same vein, I think it was Mark Twain who said “people demand freedom of speech as a substitute for the freedom of thought which they have but do not use.”

APS

A thought:

I suspect part of the appeal of human/vampire pairings (or anything similar, and in fact the allure to women of “romantic” sexism itself) is that it features approval/liking from a person perceived as superior, and this results in a perceived rise in status to the lower-ranking person.

In Twilight, an immortal, incredibly-strong, incredibly-fast, so-called gorgeous supernatural being wants Bella.  She has his attention, his approval, his so-called love, and this has value to her, above and beyond what any peer could give her, because of his high rank, so to speak.  It’s the approval of a superior.

Ditto any sexism of the sweetened “this is God’s role for you” variety: the patriarchy raises women to value men and men’s opinions above women and women’s opinions, and (especially if the woman is heterosexual and attracted to men, or otherwise loves them, as with, say, fathers) when approval is given for toeing the “perfect subservient woman” line, once again it’s the approval of a (perceived) superior, and carries more weight---and the approval to be had from other women pales in comparison. 

That’s probably part of the reason why the ERA failed---comfortable women had friendly men saying “you don’t need it” (implied: you’re successful as you are, and we love/respect you), and that drowned out the feminists saying “you deserve it” (with its implication of “the status quo isn’t as nice as you can pretend it is).

Point is, approval from a higher-ranking source than yourself functions as a perceived lift in status, and thus, like any addictive drug, an abusive relationship provides the illusion of the opposite of what it’s actually doing.

“Seraph, I had the same “why wasn’t Bella on top?” question.”

OH COME ON. Woman on top is not righteous Mormon sex! MAN ON TOP, ALWAYS.

Oh, I know.  I just think that it serves as a perfect illustration (as if another one was needed) that Stephenie Meyers can’t think outside her religiously-indoctrinated box, no matter how logical and obvious the solution might be.  Bella on top eliminates all of the sexual risks that they were aware of (they couldn’t have known that a 100-year-old corpse still had viable sperm), but they can’t do that, because it’s unrighteous unromantic.  After all, that would mean he wasn’t taking control, which is what she apparently fell in love with in the first place, and it would mean that she wasn’t suffering enough for their love.  I mean, what’s six inches of ice-cold up her hoo-ha compared to six inches of ice-cold up her hoo-ha and broken bones?

“Gee Amanda, people would like you so much more if only you’d be a little *nicer*.”

Just wanted to make a note of what a novel treat this is, since we *never* see random asshole guys showing up at the blog to whine about the *tone* of Amanda’s posts.

Who the fuck do you think you are, telling her what or how she can post?  Not much of a “feminist” if you think your lofty penile wisdom gives you the right to swing your dick around and whip any uppity bitches you see back into place.

But yes to Megatron, huh?

Yep.  In fact there are very few Transformers to which I am not attracted.

That’s a new one.  Is it all versions, or does Hugo Weaving’s voice have something to do with it?

All versions---or rather, G1, IDW, and Movieverse, which is all I’m familiar with.  Hugo Weaving’s voice only does anything in my imagination or in fanfic, because pretty much everything Megatron says in the movie has me wanting to beat him over the head with an intercontinental ballistic missile labeled “LOGIC"---the voice is excellent but the dialogue is not exactly a turn-on.  (Conversely, I tend to watch G1 with the sound turned off because the voices annoy me, and IDW, being a comic, does not have any sound at all.)

But, yeah.  Transformers fan and automobile fanatic who looks up and sees the gutter---’tis me in a nutshell.

I’ve never understood the appeal of vampires, to girls or anyone else. Guess it speaks to some deep place in the American mind forever stuck in nineteenth-century occultism and romanticism. Ecch.

The appeal of vampires?  Easy.  They’re the new hypermasculine construct for the love interest of the modern, independent woman.  The idea is that today’s woman is so powerful she HAS to find a creature as primal as an animal to be able to match her, to have a fulfilling relationship.

The whole concept of the paranormal romance, expressed through a sexual relationship between a human and a vampire/werewolf/wizard/shapeshifter is that it is a rejection of the worst stereotypes of the modern man.  Normal, contemporary human males are seen as weak, dismissive, unchivalrous, self-interested and fickle, and they lack the sexual je ne sais quois required to get their female partner off.

Authors don’t have to struggle to make vampires manly (to fill the mold of traditional gender norms now that the modern man has seemed to abandon them*) because they’re inherently dominant (i.e. manly) by virtue of the vampire characteristics of immortality, strength, ferocity, sensuality, primalism (primality?), etc. 

The template of the 1990s romance novel and on is that women want doting but extremely powerful males who are possessive but still allow them their independence when it’s really important to them to assert their wishes.  The vampire is an easy fit in this mold, especially because the vampire is almost always portrayed as a rich stud (often in a position of political power) who’s deeply concerned about the emotional and physical security of his female, yet has some kind of deep life-or-death burden to bear or secret struggle to wage, showing the reader he’s not *just* an obsessed yet giving superman, but that he has responsibilities whose fulfillment is exemplary of his goodness and scruples.  The only place where you don’t see this template is in contemporary, non-inspirational romance.  I think it’s interesting that contemporary non-inspirational romances are some of the least popular of the many romance subgenres.  Course, that could be because chick-lit is now taking its place.

Plus, the whole biting the neck thing?  Metaphor for sex.  In the genre, sucking the blood of a woman - while described as and implied to be “feeding”, yes - has a much stronger sexual connotation than a nutritive one.  It’s supposed to represent the vampire’s relationship with the woman as one of sustaining all his needs, just as he sustains hers through protecting her, providing for her and being skilled in sexual acrobatics.  It’s completely patriarchal when there’s a “binding” of wills/souls coupled with the bloodsucking.

I haven’t read any of Meyers books because the people I trust for paranormal romance recommendations said it was crap.  So, there you go.  Virtually ubiquitous in the paranormal romance subgenre is the happy acceptance of unplanned pregnancy.  They don’t all go like Bella’s, but it’s still a deeply disturbing, insidious message that I hate, which is why I’m presently writing my own paranormal romance novel in hopes of bucking that trend, and others, like looking someone up and down, thinking the person *looks* clean and then having unsafe sex with them.  And if I have to read about a woman’s “velvet sheath” one more time I swear I’m going to stop reading these things.  Well, I kind of swear. 

*This is not my opinion of men.  I’m just explaining the idea behind the bookselling phenomenon of paranormal romance.

“Guys like Edward, Angel, Spike, Lucius Malfoy, Hannibal Lecter, Megatron, et cetera are attractive as fuck* and it’s their danger that provides a big chunk of the attraction”

Megatron?  Pfft.  Soundwave ftw.

“But I’m a guy, so I suppose it’s like you said once in response to all the other people who provided you with constructive criticism regarding your subpar writing - I’m just a big ol’ sexist, and I refuse to accept a woman writing on this site.” - Fugg Kew on 12/10 at 05:12 PM

Knowing you’re a sexist asshole is the first step in fixing it.  Since you don’t seem interested in self-improvement, though, feel free to leave (and start your own blog...that is, if you could actually get anyone to read it).  We sure as fuck aren’t *here* to read your tired-ass, same-flavor-as any-other-sexist-asshole comments.

Who the fuck do you think you are, telling her what or how she can post?  Not much of a “feminist” if you think your lofty penile wisdom gives you the right to swing your dick around and whip any uppity bitches you see back into place.

That image is both hilarious and deeply, deeply horrible.

I’ll just add that what is annoying is the idea that I’m harping on shit in this post just because it’s shit.  I usually harp on shit because I have specific objections that I’d like to write about.  I’m actually pretty restrained on the blog compared to my everyday life when it comes to harping on stuff that I just don’t like, because I figure some very good if thin-skinned people will get offended.  I save the “fuck this shit” stuff for Twitter, where so far no one seems to care.  (Okay, people gave me shit about making fun of Spoon, but that’s the reaction you want---good-natured arguing, instead of taking it far more seriously than it’s intended.)

Oh Fugg, you’re not a sexist.  Or maybe you are.  But clearly you are a wanker with absolutely terrible taste. Or maybe it’s not terrible.  What do I know?  I don’t understand the desire to sit around crying into my Homer doll while listening to music that impresses me with its awesome earnestness.  And I have no doubt that anything with a healthy sense of irony goes right past you.  For instance, you didn’t detect that pretty much no one calls themselves a snob without a bit of ironic self-deprecation.  Shit, even a half decent emo band gets irony.

@annejumps:

I don’t have time to read all the comments right now, so someone might have already answered this, but most of the backlash to Breaking Dawn came from the teenage side of the fandom. On the TwiMoms board, at least, people weren’t even allowed to say they hated the book; “I hated it” was changed to “it wasn’t what I expected.”

Speaking of fandom things, most of the reviews I’ve seen that have come from people who have that background note that the books “read like badfic” and have called Bella and Edward Mary Sues.  Meaning that they are, basically, so characterless that they are perfect blank slates that you can project yourself and your fantasy man onto. It’s very easy to ignore the things you don’t like about them or are creepy about their actions if you’re not reading analytically. I know a lot of people have used this as an explanation for their popularity, and I suspect this is why a lot of strong, independent, smart young girls insist that Bella is a strong, independent, smart character when she barely lifts a finger to help herself in any of the novels.

For example one of my friends who loves the series got mad at the movie because she “couldn’t skip over Bella and Edward’s lovey-dovey crap.” I haven’t asked her how she did this with the books yet, considering that three-fourths of the novel consists of that, but I suspect she just skipped over anything she thought was too cheesy or too creepy in their romantic scenes.  And she’s in her twenties and admits the series is a guilty pleasure, so if she still cherry-picked that much I’m thinking a middle-schooler who’s completely hung up on the series might do more.

Not that I don’t worry what kind of messages the books are sending. In one book Jacob kisses Bella against her will several times, and it’s just laughed off by everyone around her, not to mention Edward’s a complete creep (he makes a note to himself to bring oil to keep her window from squeaking when he goes to watch her sleep at one point. What the hell!?)

If you want some more reading on the topic, try Shinga’s comics and Rob Schmidt’s posts about race in the books.

I mean, what’s six inches of ice-cold up her hoo-ha compared to six inches of ice-cold up her hoo-ha and broken bones?

We’re talking about sparkley special vampirey-in-a-good-way perfect boyfriend here.  Would six inches make the grade?

Now I’m addicted to TVtropes.org. Damnit…

So the top three asshole troll magnet posts appear to be:

1. BOOBS
2. Nice Guys
3. Sexual Oppression of Women

Those blog posts are long, but they’re fucking hilarious.

Megatron?  Pfft.  Soundwave ftw.

Megatron/Soundwave: hotter still.  (Srsly: *is greedy, wants both*)

(Heaven for me is described by this song.)

I want to reiterate my apology, MBL.  And you’re right that it’s tempting just because it’s such a social phenomenon.  But the problem with reading, of course, is that it’s time intensive.  Watching a 30 minute popular sitcom that sucks to see what’s up with that is a lot easier of a sacrifice.

Okay, someone earlier wrote “why would you want to live forever?” Since that time I’ve discovered John Ringo and TVtropes.  Heck, I might not sleep tonight.

Would six inches make the grade?

Surely not. No self-respecting vampire dick isn’t slamming repeatedly into your cervix.

We’re talking about sparkley special vampirey-in-a-good-way perfect boyfriend here.  Would six inches make the grade?

Thanks so much, Phoenician.  That image wasn’t disturbing enough all by itself.

Guys like Edward, Angel, Spike, Lucius Malfoy, Hannibal Lecter, Megatron, et cetera are attractive as fuck

May I ask why?

luzzleanne, yeah. On the previous Twilight post I mentioned the Mary Sue aspect, and it’s a crucial part of a reading both regarding the author’s frame of mind and the way some readers are approaching it.

I know some people read it for the lulz but I don’t see how they can make it through thousands of pages of that (aren’t each of the books like 500 pages at least?)

OMG they have “Oh John Ringo No” T-shirts.

this premise that it’s romantic to be self-destructive for “love”?

I do remember being required to read Romeo & Juliet in high school and </i>Sorrows of Young Werther</i> in college, but these are part of the Canon, and so couldn’t possibly have any adverse effect on anyone’s thinking . . . 

Notorious, we don’t have to understand why it works to understand that it does work.  Understanding why is important, of course.  But we don’t have to know why the sky is blue to prove that it is. 

In other words, I don’t get it myself.

May I ask why?

All right, guys like (insert above) can be considered attractive as fuck.  It depends on your taste.  I was referring to the trend of women and girls falling for fictional bad guys, especially those with some variety of superpowers.

Without pretending to be an expert on the mechanics of attraction, people find someone attractive for some combination of physical beauty, charisma, and personality; things like strength or power are also attractive, as is some degree of standing out from the crowd.  Contrariness is attractive sometimes---rebel, bad boy, et cetera---these imply courage and freethinkingness and separates one from the rank and file.  Standoffishness/untouchability is a challenge of sorts, and landing the spot as such a person’s lover can seem like a significant accomplishment.

I personally find Edward Cullen and Hannibal Lecter abhorrent, Angel blah, Spike interesting, Lucius beautiful, and Megatron either drop-dead gorgeous (G1) or beautiful as sin (Movieverse).  Megatron especially drips charisma, and he’s smart and clever and powerful, if distressingly narcissistic.

Has anyone here read Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely? I read it just after reading a takedown of Twilight not unlike Stoney’s, and therefore ended up comparing to two.

It has some similarities: high school girl being pursued by pretty pretty supernatural guy (in this case, a fairy prince, who must find his True Love to break the curse put on him by his evil mother). But it heads off in a different direction in that Marr’s protagonist doesn’t want to marry the pretty pretty fairy prince, thankyouverymuch. It’s got several sympathetic main characters, trying to do the best they can with the sucky situation they’re in.

I’d also second the rec for McKinley’s Sunshine. OMG I love that book.

Angel blah

I’d rather fuck an actual plank of wood, but I think Angel is hilarious when he’s put-upon, because I think that’s the one emotion Boreanaz can pull off convincingly. I still remember his face when Willow asks him how he shaves and Xander accuses him of ogling his neck.

Amanda’s right, though.  It isn’t really the sort of thing that can be explained---either you see it or you don’t.  I don’t get why big breasts are attractive, I don’t understand body-part fetishes, and my reaction to most romance novels is “why hasn’t she killed him yet?” I don’t like penises over about six or seven inches in length.  I do, on the other hand, like sentient robots that outsize me by an order of magnitude.

It’s not translateable, really.

That said, you can look at such things and try to think how they could be considered attractive (if you wanted to), and you might see something you didn’t before.

Without pretending to be an expert on the mechanics of attraction

Hey, you’re talking to the president of “not an expert on attraction”. 

All the qualities you mentioned can easily be found in people who aren’t assholes.  As a social worker friend of mine would say, some women* have very low self-esteem.

*I don’t mean you

I don’t get why big breasts are attractive

Trust me, I could go on all day about this.  Suffice it to say:  at least big breasts aren’t *bad* for you.

A) To whomever posted TVTropes, thanks a lot - now I won’t be able to hold down a job ever again.

B) I think Lucius Malfoy is hot, until I think about the way that he treats Draco, and the fact that he isn’t just beautiful, not just disturbed, but evil, and not only evil, but a fucking coward, and then I just kinda want to stab him.

C) Size isn’t a liability unless you don’t pay the fuck attention to that weapon you’re waving around.  I’ve been with guys of a li’l size who take care (and it’s marvelous), and I’ve been with guys who are big who didn’t care enough to notice either my cringes or my “OW!"s, and it all depends.

PAT,

Sometimes, it’s that much stronger when you’re attracted in spite of your better judgment. Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Severus Snape set off a fandom earthquake in regards to the attractiveness of the character.

Sure, he’s petty and really, quite a horrid person.

But on the other hand, he’s now got that voice. And he is sarcastic, which sets off other attractions, such as wittiness, the spy angle, that capable master angle of his profession, even detention fantasies. There’s all sorts of kinky-fying potential with the character, if you are deft and perverted enough as a fanfic writer.

Not so much with heroes; they’re so forthright and wholesome. Not that it isn’t good to identify good traits, but it’s not so much fun to fantasize safely about, for a lot of people

Look, the whole “Man of Steel and Woman of Kleenex” is based on what happened in Hancock.  That is, ejactulated sperm from superhumans are inherently uncontrollable.  Bella should be *dead*, from a case of sperm rushing through her body at lethal speeds before it, blood, and brains gush out the top of her head. 
*description necessary for full impact of stupidity*

In the end, I am unbelievably grateful that the YA book that truly influenced me, Julie of the Wolves, was so powerfull in it own right.  I can’t imagine the sort of me that is influenced by Harry Potter or Twilight.
/me shudders

Pop culture sucks.  Popular vampire culture sucks even harder.

“I do remember being required to read Romeo & Juliet in high school and Sorrows of Young Werther in college, but these are part of the Canon, and so couldn’t possibly have any adverse effect on anyone’s thinking . . .”

Heh.  Not everybody who respects canon thinks it and “emo crap” are mutually exclusive.  I read Werther in high school after we had to read Faust.  When I got to college, one of my history profs started talking about Goethe and the pan-Germanic movement and romanticism and its excesses and how guys would dress up like Werther and shoot themselves when they’d decided that it would be extremely romantic to kill themselves over a bad relationship and has anyone actually read this book? I was the only one in the admittedly small class who had, and his next question was “It was of course important to many young people at the time, but really, it was a little bit silly, wasn’t it?”

I think sometimes the fact that something is supposed to be a little bit silly or trashy, or it was thought of that way by many contemporaries, or it was so roundly mocked that a work lampooning it gained enough popularity to single-handedly killed the genre, frequently gets lost in the teaching of classic literature.

Actually, the Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex thing is based off of nerds thinking to the logical conclusion for Superman and Lois Lane. There’s a funny paragraph about them perhaps resorting to artificial insemination, only to have him having to fly around in order to chase down his rocket powered flying ejaculate in order to put it into a glass test tube at comparable velocity and… It’s rather like “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie\”. The essay just gets funnier and funnier as it goes.

Megatron either drop-dead gorgeous (G1) or beautiful as sin (Movieverse).  Megatron especially drips charisma, and he’s smart and clever and powerful, if distressingly narcissistic.

You know, that describes G1 Megatron, but I would consider the Movieverse Megatron to be a totally different character.  In fact, I’d say that all of the Decepticons traded in their scheming, somewhat cowardly personae to become a bunch of giant, mechanical uruk-hai.  Megatron in particular is all about roaring brutality instead of his G1 cleverness.

All the qualities you mentioned can easily be found in people who aren’t assholes.

Very true, and I’d say truer in real life than in the movies, which often feature overstated, far-above-the-ordinary antagonists and antiheroes.  There’s a flambuoyancy to them, sometimes, a rock-star aspect that doesn’t often get upheld, full-time, by real live people.  (And real-life attractive charismatic standout rebel clever people usually don’t have superpowers or command of an interplanetary army.)

Fictional characters also, as has been mentioned, can be altered by the viewer: because their characteristics and personhood is limited to what can be portrayed by a novel or a movie or a TV series as opposed to real human beings who have a full personality regardless of what gets conveyed at a given time, people can “write\” the remaining characterization in their head as practically anything.  We can view them sympathetically or with hostility, write them as good or evil or noble or selfish, and it can be just as right as any other interpretation---which doesn’t work with real people, because there is that objective real person to compare it to.  This also makes fictional characters interesting in a way it’s harder for real people to be.

It also makes it safer.

“Look, the whole “Man of Steel and Woman of Kleenex” is based on what happened in Hancock.”

Somebody clearly never watched Mallrats.

Movieverse Megatron didn’t get much characterization.  He was also pissed the hell off for the entire time we met him.  I am pretty much going with the concept of “characterization mostly transcends continuities.”

As an aside, a man with immaculately-maintained stubble driving a brand new, shiny SUV with a picturesque golden retriever in the back seat cut me off in traffic today, and before I knew what I was doing, I shouted, “Thanks a lot, Rugged in Montana!”

Sometimes, it’s that much stronger when you’re attracted in spite of your better judgment.

Yes.  THIS.

There’s often something very thrilling and satisfying and engaging about danger with the risk removed (risk with the danger removed?).  Falling to your death from a great hight is horrifying, yet many people are fond of skydiving, or of roller coasters or bungee jumping or those rides that let you freefall for a few seconds.  We like animals like lions and tigers, in the zoo where there’s glass and fence and moat keeping us from becoming dinner.

It’s a step out of our boring lives and a feeling of hanging with something a step above us, a step beyond us.

Nobody’s mentioned Anne Rice in this thread yet...didn’t she pave the way for the return of vampires as a phenomenon with mass appeal?

Read Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned after finding them abandoned on top of a phone booth in the Village in high school.  Was ok...but not compelling enough to buy/borrow other Anne Rice books. 

It took centuries—in Teh Western Tradishun anyway—for anyone to find the “poetic tortured soul” the least bit appealing.  It was somewhere between Byron and Darcy.  (Now _that’s_ some slashfic waiting to happen!) Stupid Romanticism.

Not all tortured souls are necessarily bad.  At least Bronte’s Wuthering Heights gave us the unsinkable feline named Heathcliff. 

In fact, I’d say that all of the Decepticons traded in their scheming, somewhat cowardly personae to become a bunch of giant, mechanical uruk-hai.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  That’s perfect.

And very true.  With the exception of Barricade (who rocked), and Megatron’s face design (which sometimes rocked*), I wholeheartedly prefer G1 Decepticons.  Whenever I read or write movieverse fanfiction I’m always thinking of Starscream in his G1 form.

*and sometimes looked like the-devil-as-a-mechanical-goat; I used to not think it possible that something could be so beautiful and so ugly all at the same time.

Is my sanity sufficiently no-longer-in-question that I can say there was that one Uruk-hai that was almost kinda sexy, without breaking anybody’s brain?  I don’t think I’d do him, but he was definitely worth looking at.

I’m glad someone else mentioned Laurel K Hamilton. Particularly useful to think of those in the vampires-are-the-patriarchy mode.

Those of you complaining that you’ll never have a life again thanks to TVTropes: You’re welcome.

Sometimes, it’s that much stronger when you’re attracted in spite of your better judgment.

Yes.  THIS.

Well, more evidence that I’m a Martian or something because this makes no sense to me.

There’s often something very thrilling and satisfying and engaging about danger with the risk removed

I know a woman about 22 who could have any guy she wants.  She picked one who was in jail for something.  Waited and waited for him.  He got out, got her pregnant, and split.  Doens’t exactly sound like the relationship equivalent of a skydive jump.

(And real-life attractive charismatic standout rebel clever people usually don’t have superpowers or command of an interplanetary army.)

Look, I’m working on it.  First, I have to find a fluffy white cat.  The evil moustache and the gorgeous but deadly daughter are going to be difficult - I may have to rent.

However, I have a location in mind already…

But that’s real PAT.

We’re talking about Megatron, here. And Snape and various sundry others. Who can really wield magic? Who can really be a intergalactic warlord? Who can really shift themselves into tessellating pieces and come out again as a jet?

There also needs to be a measure of overwhelming cool going on or else it’s just not going to happen. Dumbledore was awesomely powerful, but was he cool? Neo was powerful, but was he cool? No, you get more fanfic written about those enigmatic Twins. Who happen to be able to phase through stuff, are more efficient assassins the the rest of the Merovingian’s men, and appear to have linked minds (that’s something to work with, perversion-wise).

“Doens’t exactly sound like the relationship equivalent of a skydive jump.”

No, it’s the equivalent of a BASE jump.  Surely you can understand the fact that there are observable phenomena, such as swimming with bullsharks and having unprotected sex with irresponsible felons and reading Ayn Rand, where the visceral draw experienced by those who engage in them cannot be sufficiently explained for the internalization of the deep wisdom by someone who has no compulsion whatsoever to engage in these things? And that asking for explanations and then acting like the people attempting to explain are from a different planet is not necessarily productive?

Kyra, I’m sure there’s some fans of WWF wrestling out there that would find the Uruk-hai attractive. Just saying.

I know a woman about 22 who could have any guy she wants.  She picked one who was in jail for something.  Waited and waited for him.  He got out, got her pregnant, and split.  Doens’t exactly sound like the relationship equivalent of a skydive jump.

No, that’s jumping without a parachute.

She’s a music geek.  Being cattily superior is their golf.

I don’t really get the impression that Amanda is like this. But I’ve gotten big helpings of this bullshit from other music geeks, so I know what you mean.

Dumbledore was awesomely powerful, but was he cool? Neo was powerful, but was he cool?

The problem is the definition of “cool” you’re working from seems to be synonymous with “villain” which just turns this into a circular argument. So I guess the question becomes, why are villains so much more cool?

No, that’s jumping without a parachute.

Exactly.  The parachute is the ability to make the ground non-fatal; in fantasy it’s the ability to make the guy what you want him to be.  In real life that option is smashed to pieces by what he is, just as the ground, when you’re at terminal velocity, is rather hard and unforgiving.

If parachutes were as unreliable as “dangerous” human beings are, pretty much every skydiver in existence would quit jumping out of planes and use one of those virtual skydive deals with the vertical wind tunnel that blew air at you hard enough to keep you floating in midair a few feet off of a grating.  Going for a criminal or the like in real life is sorta like saying “well, parachutes only work 50% of the time, but I wanna see the landscape so I’m gonna do a real skydive instead of sitting in that wind tunnel thing.”

I second Kyra’s description of the bad-aristocrat fantasy as a nasty kind of serotonin addiction; because I can’t quite agree with this:

“ some deep place in the American mind forever stuck in nineteenth-century occultism and romanticism”

because the new vampires aren’t very nineteenth-c., IMO. The New Age is following ninteenth-c Swedenborg and so forth, but I think the supplicant-commoner stuff is the working out of our nineteenth-c battle with a caste system. (I’m probably abusing the term sociologically, but something stronger than a class system really is, the fantasy that `blood will always tell’.)

I second Kyra’s description of the bad-aristocrat fantasy as a nasty kind of serotonin addiction

I said that?

*Wikis serotonin*
*still confused*

In discussing the general appeal of vampires, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned the potential for homoeroticism and/or exploring themes of sexual repression in general. The vampire as sexual transgressive (and not just transgressive as in predator - we’re talking High Queer/Gender Fuck stuff here, too) is a pretty common recurring theme.

serotonin plays an important role as a neurotransmitter in the modulation of anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, human sexuality, appetite, and metabolism, as well as stimulating vomiting.

Serotonin is a ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter:

SSRI medications have been shown to lower serotonin levels below initial level over time, despite initial increases in serotonin. [15] This decrease in level did not rectify after the medicine was discontinued. However, the novel antidepressant Tianeptine, selective serotonin reuptake enhancer, has mood elevating effects. This has given evidence to the theory that serotonin is most likely used to regulate the extent or intensity of moods, and that low levels are what’s associated with SSRI sexual dysfunction and/or “mood blunting” experienced by people on these medications

Me: I’m allergic to cats. And stupidity.

Ginger, from now on I’m going to imagine all of your comments in the voice of Daria Morgendorffer.

The problem is the definition of “cool” you’re working from seems to be synonymous with “villain” which just turns this into a circular argument. So I guess the question becomes, why are villains so much more cool?

I *can* think of some “good” characters who are genuinely cool, but there seem to be way more villainous ones, and even the “good” ones usually have a dark secret/reformed past kinda thing going on which adds to the cool-factor significantly. I don’t know if “cool” and “villian” are totally synonymous, but I think a certain *flirtation* with villainy on the character’s part is the most popularly attractive. This can be stretched to the point that a single hint of good in a super-evil character is sufficient to push him back towards acceptable for most fans (including me.)

Doesn’t mean I’d like the villain-types in real life, though! I was going on and on about this one character a while ago, about how dark and mysterious and brooding and sexy and slightly-evil-but-mostly-sorta-morally-conflicted he is, and my friend asked me “so you’d date him?” and I was like “HELL NO. That guy’s fucked up, and a total jackass. I’d kill him within minutes of meeting him.” But he’s still my fav. ^^

...what, was I supposed to add something of *value* to the discussion? I just wanted to geek out at y’all.

“The problem is the definition of “cool” you’re working from seems to be synonymous with “villain” which just turns this into a circular argument. So I guess the question becomes, why are villains so much more cool?”

Well, Voldemort wasn’t cool. He was a meglomaniac with daddy issues. That’s not cool. Darth Vader was cool. Until the new trilogy ruined his efficient and powerful mystique by turning him emo.

There are heroes that are cool. Spike, from the anime Cowboy Bebop, was cool. He was a hopeless romantic, a competent fighter, spaceship pilot, bounty hunter, a pretty good friend, and very sure of himself, as himself. Sure, his love life sucks; falling for his homicidal gangster friend’s girlfriend is just a very bad thing. But did he mope? No. He survived his ex-friend trying to kill him and went off on his own way. Did he angst all the damn time about love sucking? No. He wasn’t that emotionally in touch with himself, but he let it be.

Some of Neo’s lack of cool can be blamed on the fact that he was portrayed by Keanu Reeves. But that’s incidental. Neo’s motivations can be boiled down to: He’s there to save the world. He loves Trinity. Hurt her, you get hurt. Bad. That’s too little to be cool. He looks cool, and he has cool powers, but as a character, he’s too flat to be cool.

The Twins have even less characterization, but they don’t have pesky details like destined loved ones and world-saving responsibility to contend with; they are just their own sexy selves. That makes them easier to fantasize about; being unattached. 

Batman is cooler than Superman. Leave aside gritty portrayal; his reason for being a hero is more nuanced; it’s not just the right thing to do. He’s playing the line between justice and vengeance; go too far one way and he dishonors the memory of his parents. He has to train to get at the physical peak that he is at, he has to develop tech, he has to use his brains. His dedication is to be admired and the result is cool. Superman is a near perfect alien being who is here for the good of human kind. He didn’t need to work for his powers, it was happy accident. His fallibilities are external to him; kryptonite or yet another stronger villain. 

I’d have to say that coolness comes from competence, not too much emotional distance and not too much navel-gazing, no whining, and individual expressions of dedication to something, and depending on the genre, motivations that cause interesting actions and consequences for the character.

One caveat; coolness can be subsumed by goofiness or too much cuteness. Like the Kingdom of Hearts game; protagonist Sora is too cute and obviously loveable to be very cool. His anti-hero friend Rikku, who turns evil then repents and tries to atone for his evilness and so on and so forth, gets to be the cool one. It’s harder work for Rikku; harder choices, harder consequences.

Heros are just too transparent sometimes to be cool. Coolness needs a little mystery.

and my friend asked me “so you’d date him?” and I was like “HELL NO.

For me, the ability to hang with (insert character here), so to speak---to operate on his level, to play with fire and not get burned, to retain control of the situation, was/is in part a testament to the skill/charisma/all-around awesomeness of my fantasy-self, and aside from knowing it wouldn’t work in real life, I’m pretty sure I’m not quite that smart/awesome/great in real life.  Much as I love the common theme of the viewpoint character as everyday person who interacts with, and succeeds at, greatness (see Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Harry Potter, Star Wars . . .), I know that’s also a fantasy.

Another thing: you tend to know a whole lot more about the character than you do about a person you’ve just met---you read about them in a book, you know what makes them tick, how they think, et cetera.  So it’s easier to act in ways that are attractive to them, and thus believeably seduce them.  There’s no “but what do I say/what does he like/what if I come across as stupid” angsting about what the other person is thinking, as there is in a relationship.  Fantasy is a roleplaying game where you play both sides, so there is collusion, omniscience, an exact sharing of purpose and goal: the fantasizer’s happiness.

I *can* think of some “good” characters who are genuinely cool, but there seem to be way more villainous ones

It’s that damned Romanticism again.  The Romantics thought Satan was the real hero of _Paradise Lost_, and they had a tendency to die young, and people said that Lord Byron was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Being doomed and/or rebellious became cool; or, to put it another way, “cool” was invented, and kicked “good“‘s ass.  And fantasy—sexual and otherwise—has never really been the same since.

I’m not too sure. Odysseus was cool. Brains and cunning. Hercules was a lunkhead. Uncool. Achilles was a drama-llama. Uncool. Theseus was an ungrateful lout who abandoned the one person who helped him survive the labyrinth. Uncool. Perseus… sort of cool. But only because the monster he killed was a real menace and he didn’t act like scum to Andromedea.

Ugh, the more I read about the Twilight series, the more grateful I am to my 4th grade teacher, who introduced me to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy world via The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. 

And the more I want to re-read Sunshine by the same author.  Though the heroine might not have much of a choice in her actions, if she wants to continue living, she, ya know, acts!  And has life!  And doesn’t pine away and almost die for her One True Love!  And the vampire is actually scary and alien and not a sparkly symbol for Joseph Smith!

Though I might have to attempt to read the stupid Twilight books, so on the next “spa day” (I know, I know) with a few of my female friends, I can state that yes, I have tried to read them, and no, I couldn’t finish the idiotic pieces of garbage.

@ Norvegica:  As much as I might agree with your assessments, I think that we’d be applying a Romantic or post-Romantic standard on material that predates the invention of that standard.  But I’m more committed to the idea that the rebel, as a type, is supposed to be _unattractive_ until very late in the day of “The Western Tradition.” On the other hand, I may be making a too-fine distinction between rebel and trickster, both of which seem to be related if not intrinsic to coolness.

on the next “spa day” (I know, I know) with a few of my female friends, I can state that yes, I have tried to read them,

I hadn’t thought of this until seeing the juxtaposition of the books to a special women-only activity…

To what degree is the “Twilight” phenomenon commingled with female friendship?  In the two threads on the books I’ve seen, I can only recall one mention of a male fan.  And so many of the stories have been about female friends recommending the books to each other, or sharing them intergenerationally.  Have the books been embraced because they’re a safe way for women to share feelings—even (especially?) sexy and fantasy feelings—among themselves?  I get the sense that many of my students use Jane Austen that way, but maybe this is a version of the same kind of interaction with a lesser risk of seeming snooty.

The resonance of the vampire myth, however, is obvious.

Plus, there’s this:
“Mommy said there wasn’t any monsters, really.  But there ARE.” --("Aliens’)

IOW, part of the resonance is the cautionary tale: once you’ve experienced a few star-fuckers and energy sumps (concern trolls being one manifestation), you realize “Holy fuck, there ARE vampires!”

“Btw she had never researched the subject of vampires before deciding to write books about them. Hence the vampires in broad daylight bit among others.”

How the fuck much research does it TAKE?  Is she actually an inhabitant of Earth?

Man, Utah/Arizona must be even more godforsaken than I thought.  Meyers must be the stupidest person to ever get a book deal.

Amanda, please don’t stop being snarky about crap, I love it - especially your IMS posts. 
Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it seems people are basically saying “don’t make fun of anything in case someone likes it and you hurt their feelings”.  WTF?
I, for one, happen to like Spoon, but I can take it when someone makes fun of the things I like. 
In fact, I love it, because it forces me to think about the thing in question - ask myself why I like it and come up with a good argument (or at least a good comeback).

Uh, re vampires in daylight: That’s a Hollywood invention.  In fact, most of the “common knowledge” about things like vampires is recently made up.

Huh. I always thought the erotic appeal of the vampire myth was pretty straightforward - it’s an efficient packaging of a lot of adolescent female fears about sexuality that gets penetration and pain and blood and control and domination all flat-out out there - and makes the thing that want to penetrate your, um, neck with its teeth an actual scary monster that nonetheless exerts some kind of emotional power over you.

And then the “friendly vampire” thing comes in and goes, well, the scary thing that wants this from you can be gentled and put on your side through judicious application of morals or friendship or (in the most basic case) through a kind of chivalry that looks more like pack-animal politics in which at least it protects you from all the other scary biting fiends.

The “I will become a sparkly, sparkly vampire” is connected to this idea that, okay, you’re going to get penetrated and there’s going to be blood and pain but the next day you will wake up different and instead of being a chunky, flushed, sweaty, all-too-biological teenage girl you will be this pale ethereal creature - basically, now you are a woman writ large. There’s also some part where later the woman becomes a biter - she learns to wield this scary sexual force herself and consume men.

All contemporary vampire fantasies tend to contain elements where, okay, maybe the heroine is scared - but she chooses the biter and the circumstances in which she is bitten and wields some control over the situation, be it emotional control over said vampire or having a sharp stake around just in case.

There are other elements - like the bit where it’s not really the vampire’s fault, he has an uncontrollable need which it’s the woman’s job to figure out how to negotiate - but the whole thing really plays well on subdued anxieties about the whole sex-with-men thing. Which makes me irritated that Meyers has taken the effective make-your-inner-demons-outer-ones fantasy catharsis, ripped it up, and kept the really upsetting bits without offering anyone a sharp stake just in case.

“Uh, re vampires in daylight: That’s a Hollywood invention.  In fact, most of the “common knowledge” about things like vampires is recently made up. “

Actually Dracula was said to be weaker in daylight while other vampires he turned did turn to ash since they were not as powerfull as him.

Most of the myths that predate Bram Stoker state that vampires cannot withstand sunlight either not being able to move or being slowly burned by it or not being able to do anything vampiric while the sun was up.

A friend of mine knows that these books are terrible but still reads them because they’re so absurd.  I refuse to touch them; Bella’s passivity would have me chucking the book across the room and scaring the Triple Felinoid, who have enough problems with being skittish.

At the same time, Stoney’s evisceration is almost enough to make me buy a used copy so I’ll have something idiotic to drop in the bathtub when I’m taking a long soak....

To what degree is the “Twilight” phenomenon commingled with female friendship?  In the two threads on the books I’ve seen, I can only recall one mention of a male fan.  And so many of the stories have been about female friends recommending the books to each other, or sharing them intergenerationally.  Have the books been embraced because they’re a safe way for women to share feelings—even (especially?) sexy and fantasy feelings—among themselves?  I get the sense that many of my students use Jane Austen that way, but maybe this is a version of the same kind of interaction with a lesser risk of seeming snooty.

FlipYrWhig, I would agree. In my experience, however, almost *all* fandoms are ways for women to interact with each other. Of the major online fandoms I’m aware of, upwards of 90% of the participants are female, even in the Band of Brothers fandom. I’d almost go back to school to write a paper on online fandom communities as related to feminism.

Obsessive love per se does not necessarily mean the victimization of women. There are examples of mutually obsessive love in literature, like, say, Wuthering Heights, in which the sadness created has more to do with the tensions between such love and personhood (for both men and women) and less to do with feminist concerns.

Twilight has not been released on this side of the Atlantic, but from film reviews I gather I would have a number of objections. First, why is sex presented as dangerous and particularly dangerous for women? If men and women could participate in it on equal terms with equal bargaining power, maybe it wouldn’t be so dangerous for women. Of course, one of the big reasons women don’t get to participate on equal terms are these notions of female purity and conquering women through sex, an idea the plot of this film seems to reinforce to a tee.

MBL: Is it a sign of a defective personality that, despite teaching fifth through seventh graders, I’ve managed to avoid these books completely, but hearing you talk about how awful they are makes me want to read them?

Train Wreck gossip effect, one step removed from the actual train wreck. The more you hear about how horrible the train wreck was, the more you feel you might have missed something epic (if only in its train-wreckyness) by not seeing it. Doesn’t make the train wreck any better, though.

Ape man: what exactly is the point of constantly ridiculing people for their tastes?

Generally, ranting and raving is fun, and doing so among like minded people is more fun.

Specifically, when it comes to Twilight: The problem with taste in this case is that junk food, while a matter of taste, also contains stuff that is not good for your health. Same with pulp novels using reactionary world construction. The advantage of pulp vs. deep-fried Mars bars is that you don’t have to go to the gym to overcome the effects—you can instead read amusing deconstructions.

Holyfatman: I think if a kid or teenager reads all over the spectrum, one stupid romance novel full of bad examples won’t suuddenly switch them to self-destructive. I can only speak from my own experience here, but IME the best way to discourage a teenager from reading something is classifying it as “silly” and show that all the cool people think it’s silly. “Dangerous” just makes it more interesting.

Strange that I can remember exactly what my “guilty pleasures” were when I was a teen, but can name only one book that left a visible mark on my opinions, insofar that I liked trees a whole lot more after I read it than before.

Ellen: Does anyone know of a good vampire series that stars women who aren’t, you know, helpless?

I cannot recommend it for being good, but Mercedes Lackey wrote a series of book where the heroine is a paranormal investigator (and a witch, and a romance writer), and her boyfriend is a vampire.

Barbara Hambly’s “Those Who Hunt the Night” and the sequel (I forgot the name) are also not bad in that regard, and have better plots and characters.

ks: And some of my very good friends are also sucked in by these books and are trying their level best to get me to read them.

Only one of my friends likes it, and she says it’s “mind candy”: Lots of emotion that feels good while reading, no conflict you’re too tired to read about anyway, and nothing lingering on your mind after you finished it except for a vague, “pretty, but kind of silly”.

Ginger: When I was at uni myself I always tried to convince those girls to drop out of uni now because they don’t need a degree to wash someone else’s dirty underwear, and leave their seat in the usually overcrowded room and their place in hard-to-get-into classes to me. Didn’t work, though…

Luke, if you can believe it, the film is apparently actually less objectionable than the book. They spruced it up quite a bit.

Reventlov: Has anyone else read the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs?  Its still just more of the same paranormal pulp fiction, but at least it does have a strong independent heroine who holds her own against vampires and (very) patriarchal werewolves.

I’d agree, Reventlov, that Mercy is a really interesting character and that so far in the series she’s managed to hold her own amidst a lot of really patriarchal, territorial, male characters. The latest installment is due out in February and I’m interested to see how the tentative relationship she’s started with one of the werewolves plays out in relation to her fiercely independent streak. I love Mercy’s character, and I think Briggs is doing a credible job of showing how she’s struggling to be her own person while also establishing the relationships she desires. 

Inge: Specifically, when it comes to Twilight: The problem with taste in this case is that junk food, while a matter of taste, also contains stuff that is not good for your health.

I’ve read Twilight and the first two sequels (skimmed the fourth and found it just too weird and creepy), although I haven’t seen the film, and I’ve been suspicious of the religious/reactionary motives from the start. I laughed my ass off reading Stoney321’s smackdown.  But--as someone who cares deeply about both encouraging teenagers to read, and also encouraging teenagers to explore their sexuality through literature--I’m having a really hard time with a lot of the criticism about Twilight which seems to be aimed at teenage girls and their enjoyment of the series.  Given that it’s a romance series, essentially, that criticism is also an implicit criticism of their sexual pleasure. 

I think it’s important to criticize the messages about sexuality and gender that are present in the series, and there’s no doubt that Meyer’s literary style begs to be parodied.  I’m just struggling with how to raise questions about the content of the books without the effect of that criticism to be that teenage girls feel like their literary taste and desires are being judged and found wanting. How do we encourage people to be critically aware of the messages in the stories without that criticsm turning into, “oh those silly teenage girls and their unenlightened sexual desires”?  That’s incredibly ageist and, I believe, deeply unfeminist. Somehow, we need to come up with a better way to give young people the tools to be critical of the series while also sending the message that their growing sexual awareness is absolutely valid and worth cultivating throughout their lives.

I hadn’t thought of this until seeing the juxtaposition of the books to a special women-only activity…

To what degree is the “Twilight” phenomenon commingled with female friendship?

I don’t know how to answer the question about fandom, but it struck me that reading itself is a gendered activity, or rather, the types of books and authors that get read are affected by gender. 

The plural of anecdote is not data.  That being said, most of my male friends do not read female authors.  We tend to find books (or series) that we as a group are interested in, and they get passed from person to person.  The only female author that they have all read is J.K. Rowling, and I don’t know that they would have read it had Harry been named Harriet.  I don’t know that if Jim Butcher had been Jane Butcher, if whichever of them had picked up the Dresden Files would have done so.

Granted, I don’t know that a Jane Butcher could have gotten the Dresden Files published.  It seems that female authors can only get books published that deal with certain things (family, friendship, “girl porn” romance novels), thus furthering the perception that books by women are of no interest to a male readership.  (That those types of books are the most likely thing to get a woman published sort of encourages women to write certain types of books, which perpetuates the cycle).

I mean, even classic authors (Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters) still get tarred with the “women writing about women stuff” brush, meaning that if a guy is not an English major, chances are he’ll never pick up Pride and Prejudice, or Wuthering Heights.  And don’t get me started on how heavily the canon taught in schools and universities is tilted towards male authors, furthering the sort of cultural idea that men write real books, and women write fluff.

Complete tangent, sorry.  Hopefully it makes sense.  At work and don’t have much time to edit.

FYI:  Y’all have NO idea how confusing it was for me when I realized that two of the authors being discussed were named Meyers and Briggs.  I don’t remember names well, so I had forgotten who wrote this, was reading through the email comments, and went - qua?

(If you know why my screen name is what it is, you’ll get it.)

Lemme just add to this jumble of opinions:

Best Vampire Movie Ever:  Cronos

annejumps on 12/11 at 07:22 AM “in my experience, however, almost *all* fandoms are ways for women to interact with each other. Of the major online fandoms I’m aware of, upwards of 90% of the participants are female, even in the Band of Brothers fandom. I’d almost go back to school to write a paper on online fandom communities as related to feminism.”

There’s a fairly large body of work on fandom and women. Janice Radaway’s Reading the Romance and Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers spring immediately to mind.

I’m having a really hard time with a lot of the criticism about Twilight which seems to be aimed at teenage girls and their enjoyment of the series.

The criticism, such as it is, of girls aged 10-15 who read this series focuses on the fact that most inexperienced people that age (of either gender) have some pretty unrealistic notions of how sexual pleasure and desire fit into the larger concept of romantic relationships, and find the actual sexual act shrouded in all sorts of frightening mysteries. This is not a judgement on teenaged girls, it’s more a statement of fact: they’re not silly or stupid, just inexperienced.

The problem with the Twilight series is that it panders directly to those unrealistic notions and fears, positing them (in the service of anti-feminist religion) as true.

I’m just struggling with how to raise questions about the content of the books without the effect of that criticism to be that teenage girls feel like their literary taste and desires are being judged and found wanting.

You raise questions by, for example, asking these girls in a positive way to find instances in the books where Bella is supposedly strong, independent, confident, and making her own decisions—that’s the kind of heroine you like in the books you decide to read.  From what I’ve read about the series, they’ll have to make some major stretches to find those examples. And showing how they are stretches can open up the kind of discussion you want.

It works differently with different kids. In the case of my friend’s 11-year-old, she’s sharp and independent to begin with, so it was simply her mother starting the conversation with something to the effect of “these books are fun, but it’s not ok to do what Bella does and give up everything just because she likes and boy and he likes her.” After which they had a productive discussion not only about “boys” but also what she likes and doesn’t like about the books (her mother’s a big reader and into book clubs, so she was loving that).

[also, while I’m posting, I want to make it clear that I’m not the author of the “Oh John Ringo No” site—just a big fan. Reading back on my posts I see how someone might assume I was touting my own work, but the credit belongs to someone else]

Has anyone addressed here the prevalence of role-playing blogrings and the like online as well?  I know that Harry Potter has quite a few - a few years back I used to participate in a blogring that used characters from when James and Lily were in school, and it was fun for me to do that as a writer because it was nice to slip into a character that someone else gave me and then add my own twists (although we were canon nazis).  However, most of the people doing this were teenaged girls, and it was interesting how many of them seemed to be using that as a way to work out sexual anxieties, considering the themes that were dealt with within this framework.

Just another thought.

Notorious, the Nice Guy® stuff is really gut-churning.  Yes, some women have bad judgment.  The proper response is not to pout and demand answers from women who don’t have the same bad judgment.  The proper response is to wonder why you have such bad judgment that you’re only falling for women with bad judgment. i.e., instead of trying to control women, try to control yourself.  You’ll have more success.

Twilight has not been released on this side of the Atlantic, but from film reviews I gather I would have a number of objections. First, why is sex presented as dangerous and particularly dangerous for women?

Well, getting back to the pre-modern trope of the vampire, part of the reason for this was that sex *was* dangerous for women - lack of contraception and bad medical care.  Childbirth was a risky event.  So you have this incredibly attractive activity linked to the fear of deadly consequences, wrapped up in a male Other.

And for devout Mormons especially, but a lot of other women in this country, sexual engagement with men tends to mean handing over your autonomy.  So it is something that’s dangerous, if not in the traditional way.  Even decades after the feminist revolution of the 70s, the price most women pay to have sexual relationships with men is giving up control over some or, in some sad cases, most of their identity.  They want the romance and the passion and the big wedding where everyone stares at you, and the price is living with a man who basically has veto power over much of what you want to do.  Also, you’re going to be doing more housework and the responsibility of child-rearing.  Sex for women is still tied strongly to feminine duties of house and home, which of course is why single women who have sex without taking on these duties right away are such a threat to the order, even if such women shrink from the word “feminist” and never do anything political in their lives. 

It’s not just that penetration is scary, or even particularly bloody.  The vampire myth has grown just as actual sexual intercourse has become safer and less fraught for girls and women.  But the masculine power that the vampire represents means that penetration as a form of laying claim to a woman is still a powerful symbol.

it struck me that reading itself is a gendered activity, or rather, the types of books and authors that get read are affected by gender

I’m sure that’s true, and when it comes to novels in the English-speaking world it’s been true since the 17th century (to be brief and overly schematic about it, “novels” were largely for women and largely about women and often _by_ women; they were frequently subversive or scandalous in plot [although they tended to have moralistic endings]). 

What I’m wondering in the case of something like “Twilight” is the extent to which girls and women pick them up and think, consciously or unconsciously, triumphantly or resignedly, “Finally!  Something for us!” Before this, what was the last big woman-centered pop cultural phenomenon?  _Desperate Housewives_?

@ Karinna:  And, as for the canon, I do my level best to integrate works by women into the courses I teach, and not just Jane Austen, and not just chaste and dignified material.  There’s a ton of stuff out there.  Talking about whether an older work by a woman is feminist or not is a _great_ discussion-starter.

Why villains are cool.

Does anyone know of a good vampire series that stars women who aren’t, you know, helpless?

Tanya Huff’s Vicki Nelson series was pretty awesome, although more humorous than romantic.

Does anyone know of a good vampire series that stars women who aren’t, you know, helpless?

Try Kim Harrison’s urban fantasy series starring the character Rachel Morgan.  It starts with Dead Witch Walking.  (All the titles are plays on Clint Eastwood films.)

Vampires are integral to the plot, but are only some of the characters.  The story is told from the point of view of a female witch (in this world, men can be called “witches” too) living in an alternate present day reality in which otherwordly creatures, called Inderlanders, are known to human kind.  A flaw in a genetically modified tomato killed off a good portion of the human population, giving Inderlanders the opportunity to announce their presence to the world and take over political operations until the humans got back on their feet again.  Rachel Morgan works for the FIB (a sister agency to the FBI that handles Inderlander affairs) and at great peril to her life, quits her job to become a private investigator, teaming up with her vampire roommate, Ivy, and an in-your-face, constantly swearing pixie named Jenks.  The series, based in Cincinnati, takes off from there, with someone or something - often a demon - trying to kill Rachel.  Her relationships and magic skills develop, and she’s absolutely a hard-hitting female lead.  She mostly has straight relationships throughout the books, but there is mega sexual tension between her and Ivy.  Rachel actually explores, as she puts it, “separating sex from blood”.  The whole series is great, and parts are really funny.  The worldbuilding is phenomenal.  It’s a stand-out among one-character, third-person omniscient urban fantasy.

I am not nor have I ever been Mormon, Catholic or of any other defined religion except for Christianity, and I share the “values” (as far as sex after marriage goes anyway). But people keep comparing these characters to real life, Hello!!! it is about VAMPIRES!! Not real people, if young girls get the wrong message from a book as far as how to be in a relationship with a boy, then the parents of that girl should be ashamed of themselves. You all exert an awful lot of time and energy into something you don’t like. Get over it, who says everything out there has to match your ideals or its crap? I am tired of the “feminist” bullshit. It seems it is a guise for just simply hating men. Yes, I am female, but I am independent and don’t need to degrade others to make myself feel better as a woman, nor do I need a fantasy novel to fall in line with how I would do things in order to enjoy it. And neither does my teenage daughter.

Hello!!! it is about VAMPIRES!! Not real people

Well, but then there have been all these anecdotes about people wishing rather intensely that there were more men like Edward, etc.  So fans are clearly trying to think through how “real” the stories might be, not in terms of the actual existence of vampires but in terms of the depiction of love, desire, fidelity, etc.  “It’s just a book” doesn’t go very far in terms of explaining what its readers get out of the experience—and it it were “just a book,” the fan community wouldn’t be nearly so fervent.  “Just a book” could be any book, so, you know, why this one/series?

I am tired of the “feminist” bullshit. It seems it is a guise for just simply hating men. Yes, I am female, but I am independent

You know what people would have called you in the not-too-recent past for declaring so unambiguously that you are a woman with an independent mind?  A feminist.  Don’t hate, appreciate!

The vampire myth has grown

s/grown/degraded grump grump grump

Get over it, who says everything out there has to match your ideals or its crap?

I do. So there.

GOD DAMN this “it’s just a book!” shit gets old fast. There is no such thing as “just a book.” Literature is formative, both individually and culturally. We as a species yearn for stories (as was said above) because WE THINK NARRATIVELY. We use books to make sense of our world. And so if a very, very popular book is inspiring people to make sense of their world *harmfully*, that is worth discussion.

Note: DISCUSSION. We don’t have Stephanie Meyer burning at a stake here. We are TALKING. If it bothers you so much to read people saying things you, personally, don’t need to say or don’t agree with, then you are welcome to shove your head further up your ass, so as to drown us out.

don’t need to degrade others to make myself feel better

You just need to make vain attempts to troll blogs and demand people stop posting things you don’t like, right? And telling people to ‘get a life’ and ‘get over it’ isn’t an attempt to degrade, of course. kjones, you do amuse; you might not have any idea how unoriginal you are.

Shorter kjones:

Waaahh, don’t say anything bad about my favourite bestselling fantasy of Xtian subservience to a really hawt dood.

Oh, and to answer your question:

who says everything out there has to match your ideals or its crap

You might want to talk to all those Xtian fantasists who want to ban “Harry Potter” sight unseen because it promotes Satanism or something.

No-one here is talking about banning the Twilight series—we’re just poking fun at the poor writing and over-the-top ad hoc plotting, and pointing out the very unhealthy message it contains for independent-minded teenage girls. And speaking of sending the wrong message…

Yes, I am female, but I am independent

[boldface mine] Outside religious fantasist communities, truly independent American women don’t consider themselves exceptions to the rule anymore.

@ FlipYrWhig-

Your approach sounds awesome; I wish I had run into more teachers like you while I was in school!

I think you might be right about part of the draw for women to Twilight--I don’t happen to have that response to this series, because of all the problems dissected here and elsewhere.  I have had that response to other authors, though.

kjones:

You’re obviously new, or you’d know that not only are there quite a few regular, male posters here, but that many of us women are happily partnered with men.  We don’t hate men, but we surely don’t like the memes that the Twilight series encourages.  Books are books, but books have a lot to say about where we are as a society, what our anxieties are, what is acceptable, etc.  Fantasy books sometimes more so, because the elements of fantasy give an author greater leeway to explore the underlying themes.  And saying that it’s just peachy keen for a teen to lose her goals, dreams, and her identity to a guy (even a guy she loves) is unhealthy, IMO.

kjones, don’t you have some shitty fanfiction to write or something?

“Does anyone know of a good vampire series that stars women who aren’t, you know, helpless?”

Forever Knight. I miss that show! So campy, but so fun.

@ karinna:  What a nice thing to say! 

IOW, part of the resonance is the cautionary tale: once you’ve experienced a few star-fuckers and energy sumps (concern trolls being one manifestation), you realize “Holy fuck, there ARE vampires!”

The best representation of a vampire-as-actual-social-predator in fiction is Cassidy in Garth Ennis’s Preacher comics. I’m kind of surprised no one has mentioned him yet!

Gracchus,

Just wanted to say thanks for the thoughts.

Wearing my hat as a feminist, I definitely agree that the messages the books give their adolescent readers (well, anyone, but particularly people with less experience) are problematic.  It’s not the criticisms per se that bother me, it’s the way that criticisms of the books can so easily slide into making fun of the people who read them. I’ve caught myself doing this. And again, from my feminist perspective, I don’t feel like we’re doing young girls favors by deriding their choice of reading materials or questioning what turns them on.  I absolutely think we should challenge them to think critically about the messages the books send (as your friend has done), but I think we really need to be careful to assess how we approach those questions and how they’re received.  Adolescent girls don’t need one more reason to feel ashamed for exploring (in literature, no less: a totally safe and private space!) their nascent adult sexuality.

kjones,

Oh, and by the way, I don’t recall seeing the word Mormon in the book at all,…

Just HOW stupid are you?  The tropes that TWILIGHT lays out are essentially Mormon progaganda, and the fact that it doesn’t have printed on the cover “MORMON PROPAGANDA®©” doesn’t make it any less so.

So, toss the entire huge gigantic obvious LDS thing aside, and what kind of propaganda is it?  “Sacrifice all for your boyfriend.” Don’t you think inculcating that concept into your children’s minds is a bad fucking idea, lil’ miss independent?

OK, I am an open minded person, can anyone take a message from the book and show me where it flows with the “Mormon” message? I can see where there is the talk of souls and that can be in any religious conversation, it is not limited to the mormon faith. I am just curious, if they never told people that Ms. Meyer was mormon, would that even be an issue, or is that maybe just some prejudice seeping through? I know WE all have some to an extent. Oh, and Eric, I’m not sure how stupid I am, but you sure seem willing to insult my intelligence because I don’t agree with you. I have known many teenage girls, my sister included, who have given up all for the boy, and they were not mormon. Maybe if you can point out the Mormon inference, I would understand more. Educate me.

annajcook: But--as someone who cares deeply about both encouraging teenagers to read, and also encouraging teenagers to explore their sexuality through literature--I’m having a really hard time with a lot of the criticism about Twilight which seems to be aimed at teenage girls and their enjoyment of the series.

After commenting yesterday, I found an interesting essay by Helen Keeble (guessing the name from an LJ account) here: http://helen-keeble.livejournal.com/74065.html

She suggests that many critics of Twilight and its appeal to teenaged girls might be barking up the wrong tree: the appealing fantasy is not of submission, but of agency. Bella has a far wider area of autonomy and competence, she says, than most teenage girls today can even dream of. Plus, a perfect boyfriend who is all about her.

Does not explain “Breaking Dawn”, not Twimoms, I guess, but from earlier in this discussion I got the impression that the reception of “Breaking Dawn” among fans was mixed. (Nothing I read so far has fully explained Twimoms, except “Everyone is somebody else’s weirdo.)

Karinna A: That being said, most of my male friends do not read female authors.

Comparing anecdata: my male friends either read only non-fiction, regardless of author’s gender, or pretty widely, regardless of author’s gender. But the people I know are hardly representive of anything.

Doug S, linking to TVTropes: I’m not going there!

kjones: it is about VAMPIRES!! Not real people,

Yes, and Narnia is about a talking lion, not real people.

I am tired of the “feminist” bullshit. It seems it is a guise for just simply hating men. Yes, I am female, but I am independent

(gets out the bingo card).

cyrano: I find Cassidy’s characterisation over the series gratingly inconsistent. And Ellis does not even have the excuse of different creators working on the series, or an unreliable narrator.

For a nasty vampire, I’d rec Steven Brust’s “Agyar”, with the caveat that I could not finish the book because I hated the character too much.

OK, I am an open minded person, can anyone take a message from the book and show me where it flows with the “Mormon” message?

Try clicking through the bloody link to stoney321’s synopses at the top of the page, kjones. It’s written by an ex-Mormon who’s very knowledgeable about his former religion, and read the books.

You may be “open minded,” but are you worried that reading it may make you and the baby Jeebus cry?

I have known many teenage girls, my sister included, who have given up all for the boy, and they were not mormon.

“Giving it up all for the boy” is obviously not exclusively a Mormon message, but it is a Mormon message. I’ve also known people who believe in the Old Testement, and not all of them were Jewish.

In your defence, with this level of reading comprehension, I can see why Twilight might seem like classic literature to you.

Gracchus beat me to it. Try reading the actual post and links before commenting next time, kjones.

BTW, Stoney’s a woman

Interesting.  I read the book because all my girl students were going crazy over it and I liked it a lot, though I was rather uncomfortable that apparently other vampires wanted to eat her so he had to become her protector.  But that’s the adult in me talking.  I can completely understand the craze because Twilight is the best example of teenage girl puberty confusion I’ve ever seen (most of us forget what it felt like to be in the throes of hormones.  We remember it was bad, but most of us forget how thought-numbing puberty makes all of us).

I didn’t read the other books afterwards (I’ll get around to it eventually, but I’m working on 4 other books right now), so for all I know, it gets worse later.  I agree that it’s totally girl porn: I think most young girls identify well with the heroine because she’s feeling exactly what they’re feeling.  And as to the message?  I’m not sure that even the most carefully crafted message will get through the “HAVE SEX NOW!” message that their pituitary is screaming into their brain.

And as to the message?  I’m not sure that even the most carefully crafted message will get through the “HAVE SEX NOW!” message that their pituitary is screaming into their brain.

I think we give young people too little credit. Here in America we tend to assume that sexual desire is incompatible with thinking clearly or making responsible decisions.  In some other cultures, adolescent sexual development and responsibility is viewed very differently. (And I would argue, much more respectfully).  It think it is perfectly possible for teenagers to both critique the messages in the Twilight books and get pleasure out of reading them (after all, many of us on this thread have done the same . . .).

Mrs W.: I’m not sure that even the most carefully crafted message will get through the “HAVE SEX NOW!” message that their pituitary is screaming into their brain.

Denying that teenagers have any higher thought processes does not help getting any message across, as they are likely to believe you are in lack of a clue when they notice. And whatever you think, unless you are a brilliant actor, they will notice. If you despise someone or think them non-sentinent, it’s hard to keep that out of your speech.

Annajcook- I clicked on the link but I’m not sure how my view was different.  I totally accept that my students are intensely sexual creatures right now, which is probably why they chewed up my copy of the book in less than a month.

Ellen: The imprinting thing is scary. It’s supposed to be sweet and romantic - the 16 year old boy will cherish and love and basically be a parent figure to the child until SHE hits 16 at which point (I think it was Seraph that said this a few months back) “there will be a VERY uncomfortable conversation”. Blech.

I think I mentioned this on another “Twilight” thread, but the whole “raise ‘em, then marry ‘em” idea, referred to in some quarters as the Hikaru Genji Plan, is a pretty old storytelling trope, and can be found in all sorts of media. (Note that Robert Heinlein has one of the larger entries on that page.)

Mrs. W.,

I’m glad you had a chance to read the link.  Dr. Schalet’s article (linked within the Feministing post) is a more extensive description of the two different approaches between US and Dutch parents . . . I see that that internal link is now broken (damn!) and I don’t have time at the minute to find another path--but if you’re interested in her work, I’ve linked her home page above. 

The pertinent distinction is the one Courtney points out on Feministing:

Basically that adolescent sexuality is dramatized in one country (good ol’ U.S. of A.) and normalized in the other. Parents in the Netherlands repeatedly expressed believing that love between teens is very possible, whereas American parents scoffed at it.

I don’t know enough about your opinions, obviously, to address overall how you’re thinking about teenage girls, their sexuality, and most specifically their experience of Twilight.  But I felt like your earlier comment was characteristic of a broader American attitude about teen sexuality being irrational and out of control (all about “drama") rather than something to be respected as valid emotion not that different from our own.

“They are being presented as wildly romantic and appropriate for young girls.”

Actually, to be fair, they were mostly just presented to teen girls along with a bunch of other stuff that came out that year and the girls themselves ate them up.  The initial release of the first book was as low key as most other YA books that came out that year and the tweens reading them is relatively new and a natural by-product of the book being popular among their cooler elders.

I think the more interesting thing about them is how they became so popular in the first place, because I can tell you that (initially) it wasn’t from them being pushed by bookstores or parents and teachers.  It was purely from the cover art and word of mouth among teen girls.

The stories make plenty of unhealthy arguments, but I think it’s important to remember that they are popular because the books fill a void for teen girls that culture has forced them to make.  Just trying to convince teen girls that they are silly books isn’t going to do anything but alienate them, you have to provide another option.  And Buffy, while far superior, isn’t one of those options.  Aside from being about vampires, for most teen girls it’s about something completely different.

“The problem with the Twilight series is that it panders directly to those unrealistic notions and fears, positing them (in the service of anti-feminist religion) as true.”

Exactly this.  Except where you are missing the part where you explains that the reason girls are eating this up is partly because it bothers to talk about sexual desire at all. Not sex.  Girls wanting sex.  (Another reason why Buffy doesn’t work as a substitute: It isn’t anymore helpful in the whole “it’s ok to want sex” dept because it really isn’t ok for Buffy to want sex.) In the end Bella submits to Edward, but the first book is mostly just full of really suggestive language, Bella wanting to kiss, Edward taking on the role usually assumed by parents and women as gatekeepers and saying “no! it’s too dangerous!” and then Bella finding ways to show him he’s wrong.  Unlike most stories of those types where the girl tries to prove that she is adult enough to be a wife/proper girlfriend and then later submits to sex to be the wife, Bella is adamant about not wanting to get married or make commitments, but still argues that she is adult enough for sex.  It’s an interesting role reversal mixed into what is otherwise a very stereotypical “guy rescues girl” story.  I think without that role reversal the book would have never taken off.  Much like the way that the fucked up relationships and parental figures is essential for Gossip Girls success.  It’s a little window into how the world seems to them - but with the plot determined by wish fulfillment rather than logic or reality.

Also, I think we need to give teen girls some credit: the books not only get worse but also less popular as the series progresses.  Something that’s hard to see because the initial sales of each book is higher than the last because the overall popularity of the series keeps growing.  I do know some girls that liked the ending of Breaking Dawn but the general consensus was that it sucked way more than HP 7.

Also, the other interesting thing about the first book is that Bella is essentially arguing that she wants to be a slutty superhero: kiss, me Edward, make me a vampire Edward, don’t let me grow up to be a boring old adult like my parents, Edward - oh, and by the way I’ll get you sister to do it if you won’t, Edward.  Unfortunately, Meyers wasn’t about to let Bella do that and most teen girls wouldn’t really have been comfortable with that ending without the veneer of respectability that “true love and marriage” would give Bella’s decision.

Mickle: the reason girls are eating this up is partly because it bothers to talk about sexual desire at all. Not sex.  Girls wanting sex.

Yes! Absolutely. Both your comments are right on Mickle.  And I think you’re right about the progression of the series.  My initial reaction when reading the first book was tentative optimism about its portrayal of female desire as, well, desirous!  And then it all went wrong . . .

kjones, I think you’re stupid enough to not know how TO FOLLOW THE FUCKING LINK.

How’s that for a metric?

OK Eric, I read the “fucking” link, and I stopped reading it into the second page because Stoney has edited the story so much that it is no longer Twilight that she is doing a synopsis on. I mean give me a fucking break, Stoney turned it all around to turn it into some distorted version of the Mormon message. Stoney is obviously rebelling against old beliefs and would attack anything that a Mormon would write. So, Eric, did you read the book or just Stoney’s version? What a joke you are. Oh and graccus, His name is JESUS, and I am sure he weeps for your soul.

kjones -

Seriously, you have no idea ... did you follow the links within stoney321’s posts that links directly to mormon scripture, websites, and propoganda?  She isn’t twisting anything.  Trust me, if she was twisting, she would tell you flat out, give reasons, and pies, and cookies, and juice, and then twist away.

I have read Twilight.  I like the books for the peices of FICTION they are.  Yes, they are flawed.  Yes, they are a bit ... wrong and mind-numbing in places.  But you know what, they were entertaining to me.

Do I find the books to be crap?  Not really, I’ve read worse.  Do I run around and make sure everyone has a copy?  Hell no.  Why?  Because you either like it or you don’t.  You either understand it is fiction, or you have more problems then how many times Bella falls.

Claudia6913 I did not follow links, because stoney turned me off by what I feel was twisting the story as I stated above, maybe that was just an attempt at humor, I don’t know. I agree with you, I have read worse and I have read better. I, as you, just took it for what it was, enjoyable fiction. This attack on the Momon faith just reminds me of when, back in the 70’s religious fanatics said if you play rock-n-roll records backwards there is a subliminal message there. Well, until it was pointed out, not many knew, but then everyone wanted to hear it. If your not careful of what you point out, people will get the exact message you don’t want them to get. I am not saying parents should not discuss things with their kids, by all means talk and get there take on it but don’t suggest message let them tell you what message they received from it. Obviously, everyone who has posted here has very strong opinions otherwise they would not bother. Unfortunately not everyone agrees, I don’t mean to offend people, I just have a ‘loud’ voice.

Blue Field Damian,

Please to not be stereotyping fanfic writers, in this kind of discussion, involving the sexual desires of adolescent girls, how they express them, and how they can be respected, it is particularly bad.  Kthxbye.