fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #705 ]

[ SECRET POST #705 ]

⌈ Secret Post #705 ⌋

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

101.

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102.

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103.

[Elf]

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104.

[Naria: Caspian/Susan]

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105.

[Hellsing]

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106.

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107.

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108.

[Snoop Dogg, Sensual Seduction music video]

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109.

[Weiss Kreuz]

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110.

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111.

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112.

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113.

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114.

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115.

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116.

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117.

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118.

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119.

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120.

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121.

[NCIS]

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122.

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123.

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124.

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125.

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126.

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127.

[Eternal Sonata]

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128.

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129.

[Fullmetal Alchemist]

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130.

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131.

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132.

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133.

[Spirited Away]

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134.

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135.

[Prince of Persia]

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136.

[Eureka]

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137.

[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]

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138.

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139.

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140.

[Harry Potter]

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141.

[Special A]

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142.

[Labyrinth]

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143.

[Making Fiends]

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144.

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145.

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146.

[Bust a Groove]

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147.

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148.

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149.

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150.

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151.

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152.

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153.

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154.

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155.

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156.

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157.

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158.

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159.

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160.

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161.

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162.

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163.

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164.

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165.

[Hetalia]

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166.

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167.

[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Gurren Gakuenhen]

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168.

[MSNBC, Morning Joe: Joe Scarborough/Mika Brzezinski]

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169.

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170.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 165 secrets from Secret Submission Post #101.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - doing it wrong ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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No, we can't. I don't think that there is any kind of relationship that is not okay to write about, and every time I hear the word "X is being glamourised" from people who promote these arguments, it always means "X isn't punished hard enough". Welcome to the glory days of the Comics Code Authority, only we're doing it for your mental health, not your morals.

I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT sign on to this kind of censorship.

Also, what glamour? Edward is weird, moody, socially awkward and pretty. Bella doesn't like it when he's controlling, although sometimes he has good reason to be and she will go along with it at that point. (The whole "people you can't possibly fight yourself are after you" argument is, I'm afraid, rather compelling.) Edward is freaky, but he doesn't make her feel bad about herself. I've been in the kind of relationship this book's detractors think it's presenting, and I would run a country mile to get away from it, but that's not what I see in this book.

I kind of love you and your responses. :D THANK YOU FOR REPRESENTING THE SANE TWILIGHT FANS.

:D :D :D :D :D

I'm especially frustrated that fangirl squee is taken as serious commentary on what you want in your life. OK, putting Tom Sturridge on your tits is NUTS, but if a girl says "OMG I LOVE EDWARD SOOO MUCH I'D SO LEAVE MY BF TO MARRY HIM" does that really mean any more than "OMG I love Brad Pitt soooo much, I'd leave my boyfriend and marry him"? Of course not. Because Brad Pitt is a celebrity that you will never meet and Edward is neither human nor real.

"I want a relationship just like Edward and Bella", why do people take this literally? I'm sure the people who say that don't actually want a controlling boyfriend any more than they want trackers and the Volturi coming after them to try and kill them dead!

Though, personally, I love Carlisle :) but then, I'm older than most of the people who want Edward.

I didn't expect to like these books but I read them because my best friend loved them, and I really do love them. They're not War and Peace. But neither is Harry Potter.

(And actually, I think Ron and Hermione are waaay scarier than Bella and Edward.)

Oh, I totally agree with everything you said. Just because I read something, doesn't mean that's how I want my life to work out. I'm one of those people who reads, you know, for ENTERTAINMENT and ENJOYMENT, not because I want to find a manual on how my life should be lived. lol And yeah, I mean, Twilight isn't fantastically written or the be-all, end-all, but damn it, I found it HIGHLY entertaining. And I know there are some scary-ass fans out there, but that doesn't mean that WE ALL ARE. And no, not everyone who reads these and actually enjoys them is fucked in the head. I'm happily married, and I wouldn't want my husband to start acting like Edward. That doesn't mean I can't ENJOY THE FUCKING STORY, though, you know?

Oh, and I also love Carlisle. :D I'm quite a bit older than most of the Edward fans, myself. Though I will say that Rob Pattinson looked GLORIOUS in the movie. ;)

(And actually, I think Ron and Hermione are waaay scarier than Bella and Edward.)

I'm not a Ron/Hermione fan either, but WHY is this scarier than Bella/Edward?

Because Ron isn't glamorous, sexy or rich. God, get with the program, anonymous.

I love Ron and still haven't quite forgiven Hermione for attacking him with birds, but I don't think that's what she's thinking about.

I can't stand him, but in Book 6 they were both jerks. The fact that they were both jerks to each other doesn't make it a better relationship than if it only went one way.

Oh, I know. I was being snide.

Re: 145

vivalanaomi.livejournal.com - 2008-12-12 02:30 (UTC) - Expand

no, because Ron belittles everything Hermione cares about, like her SPEW and her studying and her intellect and all that.

Well, that's true, but I was under the impression that emotional abuse was a bit more than not liking someone's political cause and telling them so or finding their obsessive attention to detail tiresome. The underlying motive behind emotional abuse is to put the abuser in control, not to make the abused person feel bad about his or herself. Abusers often do make their victims feel worthless, because that makes them easier to dominate, but that isn't their goal in and of itself. Ron also lacks some of the other, and more disturbing aspects of emotionally abusive people. He doesn't constantly follow Hermione around; he doesn't threaten her; and he doesn't demand that she do things because he wants her to do them and he doesn't threaten to leave her if she disobeys him.

Below you noted, "[he doesn't] belittle Bella's academic and intellectual interests (like Ron does Hermione's)--in fact he encourages her to complete her education, it's Bella who doesn't want to." You left out that when Bella decides she doesn't want to college, Edward doesn't say, "Well, honey, it's your choice!" Instead, he blithely ignores what she says and submits her application anyway. This isn't the first time that Edward does this, either. In Twilight, he takes her to prom, even though she doesn't want to go and in New Moon, he and his family throw a birthday party for her even though she doesn't want a party.

All of this suggests to me that Edward believes that Bella just isn't capable of making her own decisions and she should pretty much do whatever he tells her, because he knows what's good for her. Call me oversensitive, but that bothers me more than Ron making fun of SPEW.

Edward is an asshole sometimes, but it's always out of concern for Bella's safety and he ALWAYS explains himself when asked to do so, unless it's an immediate emergency. He does not do any of the following things:

* belittle Bella's academic and intellectual interests (like Ron does Hermione's)--in fact he encourages her to complete her education, it's Bella who doesn't want to;

* belittle the causes Bella cares about or the changes she'd like to see in their world;

* tell Bella she's a shrew or that her complaints/wishes/interests that are different from his are unreasonable.

Imnsho, Ron's much more emotionally abusive. Edward is so paranoid about dating someone who's incredibly breakable from his POV that it comes off as a desire to control her when actually he doesn't want to control her, he just wants her to be safe. Ron...kind of hates Hermione's political activism, intellectual interests, organisational skills...he is always bitching at her, and he uses another girl to get at her. And the fact that Hermione is just as mean to him doesn't make the relationship BETTER. They're horrible to each other.

YMMV, a lot of people like the Weasleys; to me they're exactly like the O'Keefes in "Wrinkle In Time" except that Rowling likes them and wants us all to love them too.

You are so right.

I mean, when I took my girlfriend's engine out of her car so she couldn't see her friend, it wasn't creepy. I only did it because I LOVE HER.

Why can't women just wake up and realize that illegal acts of vandalism and theft aimed at controlling their movements and socializing are the new bouquet of red roses?

Geez!

Are you serious? Have you even READ the last HP book? He turns around, grows up, and supports her beliefs!

Read this, and then tell me Ron is more abusive - http://pamgutz.livejournal.com/6499.html

Thanks for that awesome link!

It's fine to write about any kind of relationship, but it's the way said relationships are perceived (in this case, Bella and Edward's). It scares me that so many girls are willing to overlook Edwards scarier aspects because he and Bella are "in love".

That scares me too, but I don't think you can blame it on the books. Edward is weird, socially awkward, hard to get along with, and Bella doesn't like it quite a bit of the time. She accepts it because a) she's obsessively in love with Edward; b) she's rather damaged herself, having had to be the parent of her parents since she was quite young; c) there are actually good reasons and extenuating circumstances for some of Edward's actions (non-human abilities--his own and also the scary people who are after Bella) and d) when she goes against Edward's better judgement of what she can handle in his world, quite often she ends up getting hurt. If teenagers are reading this and deciding that Edward is a true romantic hero and Bella doesn't mind things that she argues about and complains about all the time, I'm going to say that this probably is a symptom of a larger problem endemic in our culture that Stephenie Meyer did not create and cannot control. Personally, the one I would date is not Edward, it's Carlisle. Bella is a first-person narrator, so of course she's going to explain things the way she sees them, but I think it's a mistake to assume that this is a textbook for how to have any kind of relationship.

And realistically? I think many of the girls who say "OMG EDWARD IS SO ROMANTIC" wouldn't actually put up with this behaviour in real life when faced with it. But Twilight is a vampire fantasy. I don't think girls who read pioneer romances want to go and live in the 1890s, but they fantasise about it. It frustrates me that people who say that they are feminists are often the people who give other girls and women the least amount of credit for having any common sense at all about stuff like this. I mean, I consider "OMG EDWARD IS SOOO ROMANTIC, I WANNA BOYFRIEND JUST LIKE HIM, I'd leave my husband/bf/SO in a heartbeat," to be the exact same kind of thing as when I say "OMG Rahm Emanuel is soooo hot, I'd hit that with the force of a thousand suns," when actually, I absolutely wouldn't (we're the same religion, we're both serious about it, and I'd be sooo disappointed if he cheated on his wife, even though I like to read slash about him). I think people frequently mistake fannish squee for something that it isn't.

I see what you're saying, but I've heard too many young girls at my mother's school go all mushy about the pairing without mentioning its faults for me to be entirely comfortable with it.

So...when you squee and get mushy about a fictional character or a fictional relationship, do you normally preface that with a discussion of the flaws inherent in said character or relationship and its inappropriateness for the real world, or do you just squee?

And if you just squee, why shouldn't they?

I started out in the online fanfiction/roleplaying world in Harry Potter and I was in my late 30s (2001-2002), and I ended up in a lot of conversations with people who turned out to be 14-17 years old. In the beginning, I frequently could not tell who was 16 and who was 35.

Later I detected a pattern: many 16 year olds were much more incisive in discussing a character's flaws than the 35 year olds (Snape's "wives" were not 15...), who were often in the rough spots of parenting/marriage/elder care and wanted silly romantic fluff, as opposed to teens, who liked angst. But if I had come into the conversation saying, "I'm 35, and you're 15, and this is not a good role model, and you do know this is not the kind of guy you should really date," it would have shut the conversation down AT ONCE. But I thought Snape and Draco were cool too, so we squeed, and then later, in the stories and deeper conversations, it became pretty clear that the teenagers were often clearer on the fault lines than the adults indulging in escapism who had enough RL to deal with offline. I tended to write fic with an equal balance of angst and emotional realism to romantic fluff, so I drew people from both age groups.

Your mother is the teacher of these girls. She's an authority figure and even if they like her, they're not going to have the conversations with her that they have with each other. You're her daughter, and presumably tell her what you hear. You are not going to hear what they really think deep down, and you certainly aren't going to hear it if you approach them as an older Person Who Knows What's Best For You.

Of course they go all mushy about the pairing. Of course they leave it at that. You're not someone they want to have this conversation with, and you won't be as long as you start out critical and authoritative.

Not to mention, there are a lot of people who don't want to analyse their squee material, and when did that stop being okay? As long as you're doing OK where it counts in real life, I see no reason to be concerned about you (OK not you personally, but you know what I mean) because you think Edward is hotter than Jacob or Draco is hotter than Ron. If you're not doing OK in real life, as a friend, I'm going to address that, not your shipping preferences.

(Actually, Draco is much nicer to Pansy than Ron is to Hermione, but Ron/Hermione are one of Those Couples--they freak me out way more than Edward and Bella, since when Edward is an asshole he usually has a good explanation for it later and he doesn't actually try to make Bella feel horrible about herself like real abusive bfs do.)

"when Edward is an asshole he usually has a good explanation for it later,"

... I may be projecting just a bit, but that seriously gives me the creeps. o__O

Just because he doesn't try to make her feel guilty doesn't make him NOT abusive.

I don't understand the disgust with Ron/Hermione. They've grown up, they're nice to each other now. Edward has had plenty of time to mature, but he still insists on exerting a disgusting amount of control over Bella.

Actually, Draco is much nicer to Pansy than Ron is to Hermione

We see Draco and Pansy together for all of four pages in the entire series. THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW THIS. Your fanon =/= canon.

Besides, shouldn't you be off proving how pathetically middle-class you are by fawning over some wealthy person as part of your desperate desire to have some of their money? You know, with your innate ability to grovel and worship your "betters", you come off like a real life Peter Pettigrew.

Read some Paul Fussell already, you silly cow. Maybe then you'll realize how delusional your ideas about the rich are. They don't actually piss rainbows and then let their offspring bathe in them.

I think you should MWPP the Twilight characters into

lightning_war. They'll fit right in!

I wish I could copy/paste this a million times. Thank you for saying what I haven't been able to explain!!

I applaud your HEROIC STAND AGAINST CCA CENSORSHIP by commenting on a fucking lj community that is completely unrelated to the CCA or censorship.

Shine on, you crazy diamond!

(P.S. If you'd censor your own posts that'd be awesome, TIA!)

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