fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #697 ]

[ SECRET POST #697 ]

⌈ Secret Post #697 ⌋

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

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[Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe]

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[Naruto]

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Notes:

CITY STUFF → http://lolbuttsex.myminicity.com/

Secrets Left to Post: 09 pages, 217 secrets from Secret Submission Post #100.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

101. I realise this may come as a terrible horrible shock to you, but books are not actually always written with the idea that the people reading them should take the lead characters as role models. (In fact, most books which ARE written that way suck a lot. Sorry, they do.) Books are still written with female characters like this in them because women like this do in fact exist. (Also, if you are talking about the book I think you're talking about, I personally don't see her that way--but since you didn't mention any names, I won't either.) Authors are not obligated to give you role models. You should not actually assume when reading books that the main male and female character are the kind of people the author thinks all men and women should be like. Shockingly, many authors don't believe that all women (or all men) should be alike. I like Elphaba, and I also like Bella Swan. I'm not very much like either of them. I like Sailor Uranus, and I also like Sailor Moon. It's nobody's place to tell writers that certain types of characters are off limits. There's room in the world for them all. Not everyone has to be Bella Swan. But surely not everyone has to be Xena, either.

108. While I never joined in with the mocking, a lot of my friends hate it and I was prepared to, until my best friend read it and liked it. Guess what? It's not that bad. And you should read the other books. I'm halfway through the fourth book, which is certainly deeply flawed, but you know what? Flaws and all, I'm more likely to re-read Breaking Dawn than I am to ever read the last two Harry Potter books. Which sucked way worse. Stephenie Meyer, exactly like JKR and Anne Rice, and Stephen King for a while there, suffers from "I sell so many books nobody edits me any more" syndrome. The fourth book should have been two or three much shorter ones and the OMG SPESHUL POWERS in it should have been toned down some, but as long as you can read it with the understanding that most of the characters aren't actually human and shouldn't be expected to act as if they were, it's not a bad read and she does give logical explanations for all the weird behaviour in the first three books, which the "I want feminist treatises disguised as novels, because young readers can't be trusted to tell the difference between fantasy and reality in a novel that contains frickin' vampires" contingent prefers to ignore.

110. Me too.

120. Edward is SUPPOSED to be weird and socially awkward and twitchy. People who think he is supposed to be suave and romantic amuse me; I wonder what books they read. I didn't get that version.

144. I like Ruby rather a lot, but it does seem like the CW finally got what they wanted (and Kripke didn't) this season. I still trust Kripke though; he kept Jo the little sister and Bela the enemy they both so clearly were, and Anna's gone. And there's not much One Tree Hill about Castiel.

OMFG THANK YOU

I liked RPattz's Edward well enough because he was a goddamn creep, and let's face it, Edward Cullen is a huge creeper. People are just too ~dazzled~ to realize this, I suppose.

It's not that I think of him as a bad person, but I think of him as essentially alien. I think of him as essentially not being human and not knowing how to act like a human being. The last time he dated a human being was before 1918, when the rules were different, and then he's got his super spidey sense that means he can't get her smell out of his nose. So it makes sense that he would act like a freak. And he did. I think he's a decent person for what he is, but if a human guy acted like that he would be horrible.

We both know that Twilight is not that deep. We both know that most fans of Twilight are pre-teen and teenage girls who think Bella is the most enviable girl alive and that Edward is the ideal boyfriend. Your argument would work if you were talking about legitimate adult literature (which would be nowhere if it weren't for shitty characters, as in characters who have shitty personalities), but not when we're talking about entertainment fluff aimed at impressionable young girls.

Who are you calling "we", kemosabe? Speak for yourself, please.

I don't MAKE "for the sake of the chylldrunnnn" arguments and I sure as hell don't agree with them.

This may also come as a great shock to you, but most "literature" over the centuries has just been the stuff that survived because people kept reading it over and over. Which means that in 100 years people are more likely to be talking about Twilight and Harry Potter in "early 21st century literature" classes than they are about some book that only 50 people ever read. I may even agree with you that some of the books that only 50 people will ever read are better than Twilight (I'd go to the wall for Salman Rushdie) but what survives is what people like. Charles Dickens wrote newspaper serials. Shakespeare's plays were popular. None of it is as deep as you want it all to be.

I don't CARE that you think "impressionable young girls" are getting the "wrong ideas" from entertainment. Where are their parents and teachers? That's where they're really getting their ideas. If you watch Xena and read feminist novels but your mother is still slaving away for a man who treats her like crap and telling you this is how life really is, guess what you learn? Hint: It's not to be like Xena.

I don't want my books to be written in order to teach moral lessons and how you should live your life, I want a good story. I generally prefer stories about fucked-up people, because normal people in healthy relationships have calm, unexciting lives that are ideal to have but boring as shit to read about. Women and girls of all ages buy self-help books. We know the difference between Dr Ruth, Our Bodies Ourselves, Getting the Love You Want...and Stephenie Meyer. You are the one who is being patronising of other women, assuming girls don't have any common sense about their real lives because they enjoy a good fantasy.

Good literature is not always entertainment/popular literature (and actually, I don't particularly like Dickens or Shakespeare). Have a look at a list of Nobel Prize winners (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/). Besides a few (like Faulkner, Hemingway and Morrison), those names are mostly unknown and don't tend to top best-seller lists. Plenty of literature was revered in its time, but plenty of it was scorned, too. Kate Chopin is a good example.

I don't necessarily disagree with you that Twilight might "survive" the test of time, but if it does, I guarantee you that people will be reading it in future literature courses as an example of the negative ideas impressed upon young girls in the early 2000's. Whether or not you choose to think so, young girls buy into this obsessive stalker knight in sparkling pale white skin crap hook, line, and sinker. With other media all around them telling them they should be silently smoldering and take up as little space as possible (95 lbs. sounds good!), why wouldn't they?

I love controversial literature. I love flawed characters and screwed up relationships. But not when they're being sold to uncertain, insecure girls as Ideal Romances with a drab, lifeless female at the helm waiting for an obsessive vampire save her from a life that's just so empty without him (and that IS what Twilight's being sold as, not as Negative Relationships).

I don't care whether it survives the test of time--it's not that great a book. (I like it. I also like KitKats, but they're not Godiva.) But I'm very amused that you think the same kind of political criticism of literature/media that you think is important will always be the kind of criticism of literature/media that's in academic vogue. I'm just saying that whether or not something is considered "literature" has nothing to do with how good it is or how "deep" it is.

I don't think Twilight should be marketed as Negative Relationships, though; if I were going to characterise the book it wouldn't be True Romance and it wouldn't be How To Have A Terrible Relationship; it would be "100 Good Reasons Why Relationships Between Humans and Non-Humans Are Weird and Difficult".

Because Meyer, through Edward, goes to great lengths to explain how vampires are different from human beings and why they behave the way they do. Whoever's fault it is that some readers are skimming those parts and deciding that Edward is the ideal man, it's not hers.

And, I'm SO NOT INTERESTED in "This shouldn't exist because the children might get the wrong idea" arguments. It is not the duty of writers of FICTION to provide children with appropriate role models. That would be the duty of their PARENTS and TEACHERS.

Books get marketed by publishing companies to the audience the publisher thinks is most likely to buy them. That's always going to be true. The writer doesn't necessarily write for any specific audience. Rowling didn't originally intend her stories for children, or at least that's what she said from 1997-2000, after 2004 she decided she was Sending A Message, but whatevs. I don't know (nor do I care) whether SMeyer originally intended the book for a teenage audience but my main frustration with the fandom is that I want to talk about how alien these characters are and so many people simply refuse to pay attention to those parts of the books.

Edited 2008-12-03 02:49 (UTC)

...deciding that Edward is the ideal man, it's not hers.

Right, so the fact that Edward is constantly described as stunning, amazing, beautiful, perfect, etc. etc. is not Meyer's fault. I know what you're going to say– Edward is only seen this way through the eyes of Bella. But every single person I've seen talking about Twilight says that part of the reason they/everyone loves it so much is because they all pretend/want to be Bella.

It is not the duty of writers of FICTION to provide children with appropriate role models.

If Meyer wants to write about complex and complicated, morally ambiguous relationships, she probably shouldn't be writing young adult novels. :| Of COURSE not every character in children's books should be a shining example of good, but when you create a female heroine who cares about NOTHING but her abusive boyfriend, what message does that send? The reading level of Twilight is not aimed at people who are going to analyze the relationship as a profound meditation on the complexity of romance– probably because none of them have ever really experienced it seriously. And you keep saying that the reader is supposed to analyze the complexity of Bella/Edward's relationship and not accept it as perfect, but what do they really lose? Bella doesn't care about anyone or anything (including her own autonomy) but Edward, so she really has nothing to lose, and any time she's in serious danger, he comes to her rescue. If Meyer writes a new book where one of them actually goes through some real, irreversible trauma because of their relationship and actually has to question it, I'll change my mind about the series.

Parents and teachers can't monitor every bit of input a child chooses or is subjected to. Society has way more of an impact, because kids tend to care more about impressing/adapting to society than they care about their parents/teachers. Me and many girls I know grew up with families that praised us and told us we were beautiful, but we didn't believe them. We believed what we saw around us telling we needed to lose weight, have better skin, etc. etc.

THIS. Thank you for being intelligent and sane.

Oh, man, I agree with EVERYTHING you said. EVERYTHING. I'm so so soooo glad I'm not the only person in the world who feels this way. (Sometimes I feel like the only damn person EVER to just accept books as ... you know, entertainment, and not try and find the MEANING OF LIFE hidden in the pages. I KNOW. I'M A FREAK.)

ANYWAY. Thank you for writing this out so eloquently.

This. I'm so sick of every straw feminist telling me my favorite characters aren't strong women if they want to get married and have children. Feminism is about E-QUAL-I-TY. I would actually love it if more characters on TV were portrayed in loving, commited relationships (or even gasp! marriage!) rather than a revolving door of one-act love interests and destructive affairs. Case in point: Wash and Zoe on Firefly. Tell Zoe she isn't a strong woman to her face.

I'd just be satisfied if they'd stop saying that everything in the world has to send their message or it's bad for you. :) But I love Zoe so much.

Wait, wait, wait.

This comment gave me some severe cognitive dissonance.

This is still the same

ataniell93 who rages about the horrible morality present in Harry Potter, right? Who is always reminding us that it's entirely justified to dismiss female characters for being girly and/or love interests?

But Twilight is a-okay?

What?

Rowling, unlike Meyer, has actually SAID she wants to send people a Message. Up until 2000 when GoF came out, they were just stories. Along about 2004 she visited the Holocaust museum and decided she wanted to Send A Message. I haven't liked a thing she's written since. I never said she didn't have the right or that it was morally wrong for her to write these books. I said that she was saying things she says she didn't intend to say and that I thought it was pretty gross. This argument here, right here and right now, is against the idea that writers HAVE to send a message and that they are morally wrong and shouldn't be in print if they're sending the wrong one.

You show me where Stephenie Meyer has said, "this is the kind of life you should live". Or gone on line and told people she's worried about the love lives they will actually have because they like a character in her books she's not so fond of. I've yet to hear her say that if you like Jacob better than Edward you're going to be an abused wife.

I do NOT think every book HAS TO SEND a message and must be judged on the message. I do think that if you're going to go on about how your books are about morality and love and choice then people can look at that and say, "okay not so much." But I have NEVER, EVER said that JKR does not have the right to write these books or that they should not be marketed to children because they don't send the right moral message.

It's okay to dismiss characters, period. They're fictional. If you don't like a character, you are not obliged to try to like them, and it doesn't really matter to me why you don't like them. Most of the arguments that I've made that you seem to be thinking of were arguments against the notion that if a female character appears to be badly written (or a character of colour appears to be badly written, for that matter), fans should embrace them anyway, even if they don't find the character likeable, and blame the writers, not the character (okay, the character doesn't exist, and is therefore not responsible, but even so, if the character sucks, they're fictional, their feelings are not going to get hurt!) and try to save that character from the writers. Problem: in order to want to save a character from bad writing, there has to be something there to make you like them to start out with. Some of the characters I've been in arguments about don't make that cut. Nobody is morally obliged to like fictional people, regardless of the colour of their fictional skin or the shape of their fictional genitals.

I do think that if you know for a fact that a character was added to a long-running series and the casting call is for "hot," that's suspicious. When it's clear that the character has been "created" not as a character who is a whole person but rather a plot coupon for a male character, you are justified in saying "that's not actually feminist writing". (Which isn't the same thing as saying it HAS to be feminist writing.)

I don't think that creators don't have the right to create these characters, which is what 101 was saying and what I disagreed with 101 about. I do think that it's silly to judge fans as "woman-haters" and "anti-feminist" because they don't embrace this kind of writing about women, and particularly when the judgement is coming in the middle of a ship war and therefore probably doesn't actually have half as much to do with feminism as it does with "ACCEPT MY OTP IZ CANON". Unfortunately, most of the people who scream that Wincesters hate their vaginas because we didn't all love on Jo actually are Dean/Jo shippers, which does not help their argument.

I have NEVER said anything to the effect that being girly is bad. Dude. I wear skirts and blouses all the time, I have 200-odd dolls, a pink canopy bed, I own an insane amount of jewellery and perfume and I don't own a pair of blue jeans. They don't even ascribe this opinion to me on fandom wank.

Edited 2008-12-03 02:36 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying (though I disagree with you about some of your interpretation of the HP books), but I also think that writers always send messages with what they write. It's just that it's often not a conscious message. Depicting reality is telling your audience that this is what you think reality is.

I mean, if a writer thinks of women in a certain way, they'll portray them in a certain way, sending the message "this is how women are". They're not trying to make their audience think of women in a certain way. They're simply depicting reality as they see it, saying that their view of women is the reality (argh, I'm being so redundant right now, and way too tired to edit; I'm sorry if it's impossible to make sense of).

Of course, it's not easy to see whether this is the case; unless the creator/s actually tells us what they tried to portray, we can't know for sure. Not to mention that they might fail.

This!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a great book. It's also intensely misogynistic. Did Ken Kesey mean to send a message about how horrible women are oppressing all the menz and are only acceptable as happy hookers? Maybe, maybe not, but regardless, it's still a very ugly part of the book and tarnishes my enjoyment, and I have every right to be frustrated if people ignore that aspect of it because they think the good parts make it above reproach.

As for whether or not Twilight is sending messages...haven't read the books, can't say for sure, but I found this (http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html) both hilarious and terrifying.

Yeah, I've seen that before, and, er, it's pretty spot-on. ^^;

Since Smeyer wanted to write a perfect love story, Twilight describes what she thinks that is. And it is creepy and laughable at the same time...

The fact that Meyer has made it pretty damn clear that she considers Edward/Bella to be a romantic ideal, even if she hasn't been as conscious of the messages it might be sending, puts your argument on shaky grounds.

I don't really care what characters you like or don't like. I do, however, get annoyed when I see someone saying, "The only reason people hate Ginny is that she's a non-character who exists just to be someone's girlfriend," and then later the same person getting up in arms because someone said almost the same thing about Bella Swan, just a little more passionately. No, I'm not a big Harry Potter fan and I couldn't care less about the couples in it. I just find hypocrisy annoying. So Twilight pushes your kinks as a tale of dysfunctional love; don't delude yourself into thinking that Meyer meant it that way and therefore it and its characters are exempt from criticism.

As for the girly thing, maybe I'm mixing you up with someone else. I thought I recalled you insisting that demure feminine characters are virtually always written worse than tomboyish female characters and that's the only reason they get hated on at one point, but it's FS, I tend to block out details like names sometimes.

okay, the character doesn't exist, and is therefore not responsible, but even so, if the character sucks, they're fictional, their feelings are not going to get hurt!

Sure, but I still get uneasy when I see people raging about how much (insert usually female character here) sucks while putting much less emphasis on the things the creator did to make her suck. Victim-blaming skills honed on fictional characters can wind up getting applied to real people if you're not careful.

Everyone sends a message and makes a statement about the kind of person they are in the various things they do. Analysing popular culture tells you a lot about a society. The message isn't always conscious but I would argue that it's more important to analyse texts because of the messages aren't always deliberately placed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #697 ]

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JKR actually did begin saying after book 5 that she was trying to send a message...

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Re: JKR actually did begin saying after book 5 that she was trying to send a message...

Re: JKR actually did begin saying after book 5 that she was trying to send a message...

Re: JKR actually did begin saying after book 5 that she was trying to send a message...

Re: JKR actually did begin saying after book 5 that she was trying to send a message...

Re: JKR actually did begin saying after book 5 that she was trying to send a message...