[ SECRET POST #2188 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2188 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 102 secrets from Secret Submission Post #313.
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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm, do you flee in panic every time you meet a Tarantino enthusiast, because by this line of reasoning you should automatically assume that they're into a bit of the old casual assasination and ultraviolence at the weekends.... and let's not even get started on WoW players and first person shooter fans.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really think that's what OP is getting at. There's a difference in enjoying something in a fictional context and thinking it's a-okay in the real world. The people who read the books and think that the relationships therein are super romantic and awesome and go on about how they want a real life Edward or Christian probably don't get the whole "fucked up in a rl context" part of things.

[(Anonymous)]

OP said nothing about real life - just if they see the relationship was romantic, period.

[(Anonymous)]

Even thinking the relationship is super romantic in a fictional context is fucked up, though. You can enjoy fucked up relationship dynamics but still acknowledge that they're fucked up. If you wax poetic about how romantic a creepy stalker is and how you want one in your life, then you've got issues.

[(Anonymous)]

This. If I met a Tarantino enthusiast who thought that, in real life, extreme violence was a-okay, super duper cool, and a desirable lifestyle? That there was nothing wrong or fucked up about how it's glorified in the movies? Hell yeah, I'd flee in terror in half a heartbeat.

Someone who acknowledges that violence needs to stay in fiction and is not actually cool or acceptable if you think about it? Totally chill, and also the vast, vast majority of fans. But switch the situation to Fifty Shades, and suddenly there's loads of people who believe that the relationship is super awesome and need not/should not stay in the realm of fictional. So. That's the difference. (Regardless of what OP said, that is what I would say.)

[(Anonymous)]

But do the majority of Twilight/50 Shades fans actually do that? Because I haven't really seen many people say things like "Edward and Bella's relationship is a great model for real life romances and I want mine to be exactly like that." I admit I don't spend time in the fandom or anything, but when I see people post or talk about it they say things more like "Aww the book was so cute!" or "I love Edward and Bella together!"

If a Tarantino enthusiast says "The ending of Inglorious Bastards was so badass!" you would assume they had reasonable opinions on real life violence, even though they didn't say anything specifically to confirm that.

If I say “Sylvannas in WoW is so cool” I obviously mean that, in the context of WoW’s fictional universe and what I like to see from a fictional character, she’s cool. I’d never have to specify “Sylvannas is so cool, but of course you realize I mean she’s cool fictionally and she’s obviously really messed up and the things she did were horrible, and I’d never want a person like her to exist in the real world.”

So I don't think it seems that fair to expect, as people seem to, for Twilight fans to stop themselves constantly to explain/verify that they don't actually want their real boyfriends to sneak unto their houses and whatch them sleep. I don't expect that sort of thing from other fans, why is Twilight so different?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, for me, part of my Twilight dislike--I don't hate the books, but someone would have to pay me for me to read them again, and I only got through the first three--comes from being in a room with 6,000+ Twilight fans during the SD Comic-Con panel for the first movie. I had never seen such disrespectful, skeevy behavior from so many people at once in real life before, and keep in mind I was at Comic-Con, where a certain amount of neckbeard social idiocy is to be expected. It creeped me out. And I work in a library and have had quite a few conversations with people who liked Twilight--one girl said she wanted her own Edward, and when I got kind of incredulous and asked if she wanted a possessive stalker, she said she didn't care about that, as long as someone as attractive as he was would be completely obsessed with her and never look at anyone else. And another woman said the most romantic part of the books was the bit where Edward admitted to breaking into Bella's bedroom to watch her sleep. I said that was edging into restraining order territory for me, and she said she wished her husband would do things like that, because it would prove how much he loved her. Oh, and she said if I was being followed around by someone handsome I'd change my mind. (I had been. It didn't.) Those two conversations stand out as particularly wtf worthy, but the rest mainly just said that Edward's behavior was romantic, they didn't go into detail about wanting an Edward of their own.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you are right and there are some fans who really wouldn't want that type of relationship in real life, and some people do assume that liking the books = condoning stalkery behavior and unhealthy relationships irl, which is stupid. But I think the reaction that people have to Twilight fans is tied up in a lot of things. For one, the majority of people irl are going to have a romantic relationship at some point, whereas most people are probably not going to get their hands on a sword or small munitions and go on a Tarantino-style killing spree, so I think people tend to worry a lot more about rl consequences when it comes to how people interpret relationships as presented in the media. And there are definitely a fair share of people who assume that people who like violent media are somehow more violent or that violent media makes you violent.

There's also the fact that the books are aimed specifically at pre-teens and teenagers, and people are worried about young people who have very little relationship experience reading the books and internalizing that the relationship is romantic, despite being completely unhealthy. So, some of it's kind of concern-trolling, but I don't think it's completely unwarranted, either. Talking to younger fans - and especially pre-teen fans - and telling them it's okay to like the books, but explaining some of the issues with Edward's creepy-ass behavior is generally a good idea, just liking talking to your kids about the media they consume and rl issues in general is a good idea.

I think that there are people who say they think that Bella and Edward's relationship is romantic who wouldn't actually want that irl, but there are those people who, when asked about it, also say that they think that Edward breaking into Bella's room to watch her sleep is "sweet", or even girls who like Jacob who write off his rapey-ness as him just really liking Bella and not being able to handle himself. And honestly, if someone told me they wished that Kill Bill or Inglorious Basterds were real and seemed as sincere about it as some people do when they say they wish they had their own Edward, I would probably back away slowly.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah, this is a really reasonable comment and I pretty much agree with you - especially on the point about romantic relationships being something people are actually going to have in real life. If I had kids I wouldn't give them the books, that's for sure.

I just have been feeling pretty devils-advocatey about Twilight fans lately because I see so many people being melodramatic about the woeful mental state such fans must be in, and I feel like it's an overreaction and also kinda hypocritical (i.e. is how a non-rabid Twilight fan feels about the books really that different from how I feel about the stupid angst ship fic I read about questionable pairings.)

Yeah, Twilight is problematic and the fact that it became so instantly popular is maybe concerning. But I wish people would a) stop being melodramatic, because although the books are problematic most Twilight Fans are probably still well-adjusted individuals and b) stop using Twilight's problematic nature as a way to show off how good they are at love by going on about how they can't possibly understand those poor maladjusted girls who actually like such horrible sludge.

I think that if people were primarily concerned with the wellfare of developing teenage girls, they would focus their criticism on the book and talk more about how it's marketed and how it became so popular, and how it fits in with other popular media targeted towards young girls. Instead, the criticism is often laden with condescension towards people who like the books and treats the fans themselves as the problem. Which says to me that while they may be concerned about Twilight's societal implications, they are more concerned about feeling superior.