[ SECRET POST #2075 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2075 ⌋

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

01.


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02.


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03.


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04.


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05.
[Twilight]


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06.
[Christian Bale, Scott Disik]


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07.


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08.


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09.


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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]












10. [SPOILERS for Misfits]



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11. [SPOILERS for A Song of Ice and Fire]



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12. [SPOILERS for the Vampire Diaries]



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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]













13. [WARNING for rape]



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14. [WARNING for suicide]

[Truffaldino from Bergamo (1976)]


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15. [WARNING for pedophilia, rape]

[DC Comics]


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16. [WARNING for depression]

[Zac Little/AngryFilmsProduction (YouTube)]


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17. [WARNING for child abuse]















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #296.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

i agree to a certain extent. he's certainly no more abusive or crazy than she is. i mean, the entire second book is about him leaving her because he believes he's bad for her. he only stays through the third book because he saw what happened when he left.

imo if you're going to say anything, it's that they're both way too obsessed with each other and exhibit unhealthy behaviors. but that's the point of the book...it's a fantasy romance; and it is, at least to me, romantic in the context of that fantasy world. it's not like any of that shit would ever be okay in real life. i think it's hilarious that people try to analyze it as if it were real.

[al28894]

The thing is, how many girls are going to be influenced by this book when they search for romance?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, girls are too stupid to tell fiction from reality and shouldn't read such dangerous books. They should only read books that have been cleared by people like me who know better.

[al28894]

Uh, most girls do have a sense of reason. I was just saying "How many..." could be influenced. Just because some people are making wrong decisions doesn't mean everyone from the same group is (are? English isn't my language).

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for being snarky. I just get tired of this "OMG! It's ~dangerous~ for girls" pearl clutching I see from some Twilight haters. And some of them do think that girls are too stupid to tell fiction from reality and should be "protected" and come very close to advocating censorship.

How many girls could be influenced by Twilight? How many girls could get influenced by "Phantom of the Opera" (the musical)? Or any number of other media that romanticize problematic relationships. How about real life?

I've never read Twilight so I don't know how bad it is or how much is exaggerated. It just confuses me why this get singled out when there are so many other things, things that are far less subtle, that girls and young women are exposed to every day that can be more dangerous than some stupid fantasy vampire novel.

[al28894]

Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know. There simply isn't a survey big survey big enough to cover every single woman in the entire planet as to question the 'media influence' part (not to mention that people sometimes lie...). Still, the thought that somewhere out there, a woman is thinking that these kinds of relationships are romantic are pretty scary and sad...

As to why people are jumping over Twilight? I guess it wasn't so much that the media changed, it was the people. In My Personal Opinion, as fandom moved from the 1990's to the 2000's, more and more young people are now aware of the misogyny and 'just-plain-wrongness' of shows, books, movies, etc. through the internet. So now that they know what's wrong or right, they will try to badmouth or over-exaggerate any kind of media that has a sliver of 'wrongness' even if it was intentional and relevant to the plot.

Along came Twilight, with it's plot-holes and suggestions of abusive relationships. While it's true that the book has major flaws, I don't think it's the "be all and end all" of bad literature. That position goes to bad fanfic writers.

Just my opinion though.

[(Anonymous)]

That's an odd jump in logic. You do realize there is no intelligence meter to being influenced by something. Everyone is influenced by their surroundings, no matter their intelligence.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but acting like girls are suddenly these naive and impressionable beings who can't think for themselves and therefore Twilight is BAD BAD BAD, when no one bats an eye at boys thinking the Joker is cool. People give men the benefit of the doubt regarding their interests, but with women it's always "oh shit, they might start thinking this is safe" as if they're kids trying on a cape and thinking it'll make them fly.

[(Anonymous)]

I certainly bat an eye at boys idolizing the Joker, and it is true that girls are impressionable and naive (because almost everyone is when they're young.) The fact that these books are marketed for the naive, impressionable age does make it a bad thing, and I don't know why people can't see that.

[fadeinthewash]

One can only discard harmful ideas if one has the foundation that tells them they are harmful (or false). Explaining the problems of Twilight does not necessarily presume anyone or everyone is too stupid to have noticed them on their own-- ignorance (real or perceived) is not intelligence/stupidity. When you were a wee child, you probably took at face value some stories of fairies or Santa or something, until the time came you were enlightened otherwise, by your own reasoning or someone else. On the other hand, if no one ever, ever told you there weren't really fairies at the bottom of the garden, would you know to recognize fairies as fabrications-- "to tell fiction from reality"--when you got older? All of life is learning, one way or another. The reality of fairies is easy; the nuances of abuse are not.

[elialshadowpine]

^ this.

I talked about it upthread but also, as someone raised in a family that was emotionally and sometimes physically abusive... in comparison, someone like Edward, who claims to be doing all this for Bella's safety and because he loves her, can look really damn good. And that's a reality that no small number of girls grow up in.

[fadeinthewash]

As I said, though, fairies are easy. The nuances of abuse are hard. Many atheists grew up religiously, but you know what? Atheists are a minority in the global population. Most of the people raised religiously keep on being religious.

[diet_poison]

This isn't about "girls are stupid". Boys and men are also very, very much influenced for the worse by some of the grosser things in society.

[(Anonymous)]

You're right. Everyone is really super intelligent and is never influenced by media or cultural idioms. This is why things like sexism and racism are no longer problems in our society, because people are so above social influence that it's impossible for such attitudes to be passed down.

[(Anonymous)]

+100000

[fadeinthewash]

it's a fantasy romance; and it is, at least to me, romantic in the context of that fantasy world. it's not like any of that shit would ever be okay in real life.

"The context of that fantasy world"? That fantasy world is our world +vampires +werewolves. Maybe it's a difference in interpretation: I consider all elements of a world to be like ours unless otherwise noted. That means that while vampires exist, human psychology and sociology is the same and gravity still pulls objects to the Earth and white light refracts into colors and so forth. "Makes sense in that world" in this case only makes sense if the human culture in that world had been altered in some way to perceive unhealthy relationships differently-- and it obviously hasn't been, because Edward at least seems aware of and cares slightly about the problems in their relationship.

i think it's hilarious that people try to analyze it as if it were real.
grrr. Because fiction is totally wholly removed from the society and culture the author is steeped in, right? If it's not nonfiction or "based on a true story," there's nothing of value about the (real) world that can be extrapolated and no author ever (intentionally or not) illustrates their world views via their fictional works? Terry Pratchett's Discworld takes places on a flat disc of a planet resting on the backs of 4 elephants who stand on the back of a turtle swimming through outer space and there's magic and narrativium and unlikely hijinks galore in his stories, but you'd have to lack the brains of an ant to not see even the implicit commentary and reflection of real life in them and to dismiss them as fantasy and therefore having zero bearing on real life.

The soul and center of good fiction is the humanity of even unhuman characters (or the intriguing/frightning lack thereof)-- all of which is derived from real life, which in turn IS shaped by the stories we perpetuate through the ages. Nothing's in a vacuum! Certainly not fantasy fiction!

Alternate, snarkier answer: Twilight IS real. It's a real story, poor though it may be. The events and creatures therein are fictional, of course, but the story is a real story that, like other stories, can be analyzed.

[(Anonymous)]

no, it isn't real. those things never happened. the point is, with fiction, there are no consequences other than arbitrary ones the author deems fitting. therefore an obsessive romance like that in twilight can easily have no bearing on reality because cause and effect aren't regulated naturally in fiction like they are in real life. their relationship in twilight can be portrayed as romantic because there is no reality in it other than the pieces the author chooses to insert to draw in the reader. so you're right in the sense that the fictional world is like ours unless otherwise noted (only because we assume the author sees it that way), except that it isn't real and doesn't follow the same rules as real life does. it might seem like it does, which is part of the skill of a writer, but it really doesn't. if it did, vampires wouldn't exist and bella and edward's relationship would have spiraled into a dark and disturbing mess. i get what you're saying in that there is a world view being represented, but the world view in the story is not, and doesn't have to become, your world view. you interpret it as you choose. if you really want to analyze something like twilight to extrapolate stephanie meyer's world view, by all means, go ahead. i have more interesting and fruitful things to do, personally.

[fadeinthewash]

no, it isn't real. those things never happened.
Yeah, I said that, too, actually. :)

the point is, with fiction, there are no consequences other than arbitrary ones the author deems fitting.
True...EXCEPT you canNOT just make wild shit up, throw it all together, and call it done. Well, you could, but no one would really appreciate it except in probably an ironic way. Now, there is a good argument to be made via the observation that real life often does not make sense, whereas that's something of a requirement in plotting out stories. However...people have to react in acceptable ways in stories for them to be real.

You could have a short story in which the main character is a champion baby-kicker, adored by all, and who has mothers eagerly throwing their infants under his foot... but if that's all there was to it (no satire, no symbolism, no commentary, no justification), people aren't going to easily accept the story. Why would a mother want her baby to be kicked? What kind of society celebrates a baby-kicker? Obviously, the kind within the story, which is also obviously NOT ours in real life. But if that kind of event comes along fairly out of the blue in an otherwise normal story (drive the car from work, make dinner, turn on TV--hey, baby-kicking, all right!--brush teeth, go to bed), there's a problem.

Charlie Brown's dog writes on a typewriter, balances on his back on the peak of his doghouse, and has imaginary dogfights with the Red Baron. Fantastic stuff, accepted

but the world view in the story is not, and doesn't have to become, your world view. if you really want to analyze something like twilight to extrapolate stephanie meyer's world view, by all means, go ahead.
I'm not saying it is or can/should be. I wasn't commenting on the "lessons learned" angle in my "fiction isn't in a vacuum!" diatribe. I'm not talking about Stephenie Meyer's worldview, either.

It's not any one particular person's views on life: it's that we all grow up in some society or another with certain cultural expectations, and by dint of being human, we all have lots of similar body language, some similar cultural cues on occasion, and the same basic physical responses and so forth. We all currently, to my knowledge, live on Earth and while there are diverse climates and ecosystems, a lot of the same physical principles apply all over.

There's this basic level of reality (ymmv as to what it is) from which deviations justification. Bella and Edward are not established to have lived in a society that thinks their sort of obsessive, mutually abusive codependency is a good, "romantic" romance. (Nor is it established that they exist in a society that does not see their relationship as bearing those traits, except inasmuch as it doesn't directly come up much if at all, but then again, neither does the atomic number of carbon but that's probably still the same, too.)

This doesn't even have to be the stuff of huge metacritical literary analysis of the sort that goes into Dickens and Twain and Austen! Why take the characters at face value when they treat their romance as romantic? Humbert Humbert thinks he's just led astray by tempting little nymphettes. Anita Blake thinks she's good for letting a man die as punishment for him not cheating on his wife with her.

Anyway, for the tl;dr wrap-up: read whatever however you want with as much or as little analysis as you personally want to put into it to have fun. I strongly disagree with the tactic of taking each novel at perfect face value as well as the exclusivity you seem to perceive between realism and fiction/fantasy.