fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4586 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4586 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

[Cowboys & Aliens, Jonah Hex, Django Unchained, Wild Wild West, The Good The Bad The Weird, The Magnificent Seven]

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02.

[Top Gun: Maverick]

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03.

[Star Wars]

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04.

[Stranger Things]

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05.

[Jessica Jones, season 3]

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06.

[Horizon Zero Dawn]

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07.

[McLeod's Daughters]

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08.

[Elsinore]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 54 secrets from Secret Submission Post #657.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

https://youtu.be/8O06tMbIKh0

I thought this video was pretty interesting. Particularly, that other books equally badly written and problematic don't face the same criticism.

I do think that things made for women and girls get more harshly criticized than things that are just as bad that are aimed for men (bad action movies vs. bad romance movies). Twilight bothers me because it romanticizes abuse. But lots of things do that (and I will criticize every single one of them).

I'm not in a place where I can watch the video right now, but are the "other books" equally famous as Twilight? I do think that media aimed at girls/women face extra scorn and criticism and that it's based on sexism, but I think the issue with Twilight is that it was aimed at a female audience AND it was badly written in a cringey way AND it had such a huge buzz around it that it was an international phenomenon in a way that few books are.

I love Lindsay Ellis' videos!

Never read or watched Twighlight and stayed out of the debate, but I like how the hatred for things teenage girls like is addressed here.

I read the first and part of the second books (translated to Spanish so some of the language choices and writing style might have been different). I thought they were passable.

I didn't know much about the books when I started reading them, they mostly drew my attention because it was the first romance novel I'd read where the main character wasn't an adult woman and at that time I was on a vampire kick.

Then, in the second book, Bella decides to pay attention to Jacob as a ploy to either get Edward jealous or forget him (I don't quite remember) and it pissed me off so much that I just dropped the whole series.

I've seen this vid before and I agree and disagree with her tbh.

Like yes, media that is marketed as 'for girls' absolutely gets harsher criticism than escapist fantasies for men, they're seen as more vapid, shallow, dumb, and in all honesty while I didn't like Twilight it really wasn't that much worse than a lot of YA-romance lit as far as writing goes. This isn't to say it's retroactively Good, because it isn't, but it's not The Worst Thing EVER either. It's just distinctly mediocre.

But at the same time just because the series got an absurd amount of hate doesn't mean there aren't legitimate writing issues within it, or that's it's protected from being criticized on those issues because of it. The relationship between Bella/Edward was toxic at best, the whole thing with Jacob being in love with their literal BABY was just fucking nasty, and yes if I see that shit in other books I'll absolutely take onus with them as well.

The slate doesn't get wiped-clean on that front just because a lot of people decided to hate it because everyone else was.

Yep. There's definitely a misogynist aspect to the Twilight hate-on, but it's not like critics lack ammunition. Is there a lot of mediocre YA romance out there? Absolutely! But very few of those books are a pop culture thing like Twilight is/was.

I agree. "The Twilight hate was excessive and often partly motivated by misogyny" and "Twilight was a bad series that romanticized gross relationships" can both be true.

On the one hand, yeah. If Twilight was written from Edward's point of view and aimed at dudes, it would probably catch slightly less flack. (See: Every time Orson Scott Card tries to write romance.)

On the other, there is plenty of crappy "aimed at girls" smutty pulp fiction that doesn't get Twilight levels of disdain because there's a difference between regular banal smut and Twilight levels of validating fucked up relationship goals.

A lot of paranormal romances came out in the wake of Twilight and a good chunk of them were shitty with abusive relationship dynamics and other problematic stuff. Hell, there are still YA books out there with problematic content and abusive relationships being painted as romantic. Twilight got the hate it got because it achieved pop culture status. I still enjoy the first book and sometimes read the second and third one when the mood strikes me, but that last book was a steaming pile of crap and I still can't believe nobody told Stephenie Meyer it was creepy as hell for Jacob to imprint on an infant.

Yeah, I really like this video and I respect Lindsay Ellis for making it.

Agreeing with all the people saying "you can both look critically at why this got so much hate and still agree that it's shit". Also, I never liked the whole "OH YOU THINK THIS IS BAD HUH? WELL I BET YOU WOULDN'T ACCUSE THIS OTHER THING OF BEING EQUALLY BAD" argument. Mostly because the hate for Twilight was mainly because it was so huge and if other books that are similar but way, way less well known get less hate for the simple reason that much less people read them... well colour me shocked.

And it's easy to pull the misogyny card but a lot of people who hated Twilight were in fact women and I think just accusing every woman who hates Twilight of internalized misogyny even though there are actually legitimate reasons to hate Twilight is pretty condescending and making things way too simple.

Frankly I don't like the idea that because a woman wrote a book series centered on a fucked-up relationship that somehow makes it immune from criticism, or it's suddenly 'okay' because some people's hate is based off of misogyny.

No. If I'm gonna talk about men writing shitty abusive characters/relationships, I'm going to talk about women doing the same. We don't get some kind of magical pass on that shit because sexism can play a part in negative reactions to our work.

[ SECRET POST #4586 ]

In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight

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Re: In defense of Twilight

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Re: In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight

Re: In defense of Twilight