Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2012-09-07 07:01 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-09-07 07:01 pm
[ SECRET POST #2075 ]
⌈ 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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-09-08 03:44 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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.