thoughtfulSee, there was a lot of stupid pre-con surrounding the fact that OH NOES TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! Never mind that Twilight, whether you like it or not, is speculative fiction, full of My Little Vampires, and has spawned a massively successful movie series. Never mind that this same complaint came up about the Harry Potter people, the urban fantasy people, and lots of other "not our kind" groups, before they became "our kind." TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! IT IS TEH END OF DAYZ!!!! Worse yet, they're girls! Icky icky girls! The mainstream press—which still views the female geek as a charmingly endangered species, one which is potentially a myth—grabbed this and ran with it; if you go digging, you can find some...charming...articles about "the female invasion of Comic-Con" and "girls meeting geeks."
I first "invaded" Comic-Con thirteen years ago. Pretty sure I was a girl at the time. My boyfriend at the time definitely thought so, and as he had more opportunity to perform practical examinations than anybody from the mainstream press, I'm going to place bets that he was right. But anyway.
The Twilight girls, understandably, took offense, since they were being presented as fluff-brained bimbos who wouldn't know a comic book if it bit them on the booty. The general populace of Comic-Con wasn't offended, per se, although some offense started brewing when the Twilight fans started speaking up, since the cycle o' slag went media -> them -> us. But there was still the chance that everybody would be able to just get along. I know that I'm a lot more focused on getting where I'm going, at-con, than I am at playing Sharks vs. Jets in the middle of the Exhibit Hall.
But then came...the shirts.
Shirts on Twilight girls all over the convention. Shirts which read, in large, easy-to-read lettering, "Yes I am a real woman / Yes I am at Comic-Con / Yes I love Twilight." As a "real woman" who's been attending Comic-Con since before she could legally drink, these shirts awakened in my breast the deep and abiding desire to force-feed them to the people wearing them. I did not do so. Be proud of me. Be especially proud of me since large groups of the shirt-wearers—not all of them, by any means; I'm sure there were Twilight fans who were having a fantastic time without trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios—chose to stand around near the Exhibit Hall cafes and out by the Heroes carnival, making snotty comments about the costumes, figures, and overall appearance of the non-Twilight girls who went walking by.
Not cool.
I am a girl who likes the X-Men. I am a girl who likes horror movies. I am a girl whose favorite comics currently in print are Hack/Slash, The Boys, and Creepy. I am a girl who has spent a long damn time fighting for respect in her chosen geeky social circles, because we are still the minority in a lot of places, and it's difficult to convince your average horror geek that the female IQ is not calculated by taking the national average and subtracting her bra size. Twilight aside, there aren't enough of us to start playing this sort of game. Yes! You in the shirt, you're a real woman! And so am I! And so is every other girl at this convention! I did not give up my right to femininity just by deciding that I like to keep my My Little Ponies and my blood-drinking monsters separate, nor did you get a double-dose by combining the two. Women have been fighting for respect in comic and media fandom for a long time. Undermining that fight, even if you're doing it because you were provoked, just undermines us all.
No one has to like what I like. I try not to judge the likes and dislikes of others, and even when I can't avoid it, I try not to wander around in T-shirts that say things like "Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten" or "Women Opposing More Bad Adapted Terror: JUST SAY NO TO STEPHEN KING MOVIES." All this could have been avoided if people hadn't been dicks to the Twilight fans in the first place...but I really do wish the Twilight fans hadn't felt compelled to be dicks to the rest of us in return.
July 29 2009, 01:32:49 UTC 7 years ago
Both Flowers in the Attic and the Vanyel series (in which, no, he was pining for someone his same age... then his love came back signifigantly younger... and that was presented as a problem and not actually particularly acceptable) present the relationships in them as flawed and imperfect, even when they are presented as 'true love'.
But... seriously, you can have good books and relationship models which aren't so messed up - or are, at least, SHOWN to be messed up - and still have good books.
The problem here is that it is, in a way, didactic, but it's teaching the wrong things.
July 29 2009, 08:22:06 UTC 7 years ago
By the time you're 12, you've already been exposed to enough bullshit that basically, what you've seen of your family relationships, what you've picked up from advertising and everything else in the world has made the difference. You're already predisposed either to look at the book and say "this is indeed how someone born in 1900 and a predator by nature would act, and Bella is strange but interesting" or you've already drunk the Kool-Aid.
At least if you are a parent or teacher and you have Twilight lying around, if you've read it (and I may be presuming too much to presume that you have) you have something you're both familiar with that you can start a discussion about if you really think there's a problem. Personally if I were a parent I would welcome it. For that very reason. Concerned about relationships and the potential for abuse? OK, start here. "What do you think about Edward Cullen? What do you think about Bella?" But don't start off by insulting the book or you'll just get shut off. Actually listen to what the other person thinks about the book.
I don't believe that the author needs to tell you what she thinks is messed up unless you're six. (And maybe not even then.) If you read the books and YOU could figure out that it's messed up, why does she need to tell you? I mean I personally wouldn't let Stephenie Meyer OR JK Rowling tell me who to date or how to date them, and I sure wouldn't get my opinions on the ethics of warfare from JKR, which we also hand to kids routinely. Many childhood classics are pretty creepy.
I actually DO spend a fair bit of time talking to teenagers about books they read in the fandoms I'm in with them and I have not actually MET any of these mythical people who were perfectly normal until they read Twilight and then suddenly decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives barefoot and pregnant.
I have heard of--but not met--people, including teenagers, who were trending that way anyway who picked that out of the book because they wanted to see it there. (I don't think we should decide what we will put in books because of how the batshit may be influenced, though, or we will have to start by eliminating all religious scriptures and by the time we get to Twilight there won't be too much left.)
I have met people, including teenagers, who gush about it but in the light of day are aware that it's just a nice fantasy and no more realistic or real-world desirable than the average romance novel. If you ask them, "do you want Jim, the hot guy at your school, who is not a vampire, to break into your house and watch you sleep?" they will generally say NO.
I have met people, including teenagers, who think it's silly. And I have met people, including teenagers, who think it's interestingly angsty and creepy. Interestingly angsty and creepy is why I like it.
Most of the really batshit Twilight fans I've encountered were my age (40s), though, not teenagers.
If you're really concerned about people, try asking them without insulting their favourite books first what they actually think of the books. You might be surprised.
July 29 2009, 17:48:45 UTC 7 years ago
July 30 2009, 01:10:10 UTC 7 years ago
Your mother fucked you up. If you're going to hand your kids books with weird sex in them, you owe it to them to discuss that with them.