This is your brain. This is your brain on Twilight fandom.

[lizbee]

Last night at the laundromat, I started reading Princesses & Pornstars by Emily Maguire, an Australian book about sexism, pop culture and feminism.  It's quite good, but my timing was a bit off.  You see, I'd just spent the afternoon catching up on all the Twilight wank, and as I read, I had these little voices in my head going:

"That's just your opinion.  Not all of us can be strong women.  It's a romance, like Wuthering Heights or Romeo and Juliet.  You can't say anything until you've created a worldwide fashion trend.  You need to put your claws away and use your energy for something productive.  People worked very hard making those pornstar t-shirts for little girls, you shouldn't make them feel bad.  You'll understand when you're a mother.  Try again when you're as rich as Paris Hilton.  Go shave your legs, you ugly feminist."

(All sentences adapted from responses to Twilight reviews.)

Thanks a lot, Twilight fandom.  I had to put the book down and watch the spin cycle until my brain was back to normal.

*

I was woken up around one-thirty this morning by the sound of our new downstairs neighbours having a domestic.  As far as I could make out, she kissed a mate of his called Alec at a party, and she insists it didn't mean anything, but he was kicking her out.  Problem was, he wasn't on the lease, nor was he paying rent -- he was trying to kick her out of her own flat.  Eventually it got to the stage where he was accusing her of kicking and hitting him, and she was screaming, "Let go, you're hurting me!"  And that was when I called the cops.

Eventually I got back to sleep, and had nightmares about being on a bus tour run by murderers, and having to kill people to escape.  And seeing someone's heart ripped out while they stood in a queue at the bank.  I must have been clenching my jaw, because I woke up with sore teeth and a sinus headache.  Good times.  Good times.

Comments

[whywastewords.livejournal.com]

The domestic tiff infected your dreams and made everything BLOOD SPATTERED, and the Twilight wank infected your brain and made everything NOT GOOD.

LOL at the highly offended fan's reasoning that TW is a love story like R+J or Wuthering Heights - both of which were written centuries ago, before widespread suffrage, feminism and freedom of women in the Western world. Twilight was written by a modern woman in modern times, so what's her excuse?

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

The really interesting thing about Wuthering Heights was that when it was first published, Heathcliffe was seen as a wonderful portrait of evil in human form. Then it was discovered that the author was a woman, and suddenly he was recast as the "ideal" romantic hero.

[whywastewords.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, for if the womenz has writ the novel, therefore she must have intended romance, coz that's what the womenz are good at! I certainly never swooned over Heathcliff. I thought he poisoned perfectly innocent people's lives - I must not 'get' how much he loved Cathy I guess. And slightly OT but Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester is a championed romantic hero, but he honestly creeped me out. WIFE IN THE ATTIC ANYONE? And since reading Wide Sargasso Sea, I can't shake it off has the canon prequel of his life with his first wife, which leads to even more disgusted shivers about him.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I really love Jane Eyre, but the whole point of it is that the relationship only works if Jane's the one with the power, not Rochester.

[froda-baggins.livejournal.com]

Totally.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

I am pretty much totally with you on the Rochester stuff. It's what made Wide Sargasso Sea as easy to believe for me as it was. (Though, even if I didn't absorb it for sadistic reasons, just...works for the situation.) I have not yet read Wuthering Heights, though. I think, being me, I could possibly love the fucked up people for being fucked up, but I'm not one to idealize, thankfully.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

I didn't even read Wide Sargasso Sea, I only watched After Mrs Rochester which is...about Jean Rhys, and thus even more derivative, and Mr Rochester still creeps me out. Um, yeah.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

God, I loathed that book when I had to read it in high school. It's one of those novels where everyone has to act stupid for the plot to work -- the whole thing should have been solved by a shovel to the head and a quick burial out on the moors for Heathcliffe, really.

[melengro.livejournal.com]

I am SO GLAD I wasn't the only one who thought that that was Bronte's intention. I kept thinking 'this can't possibly be 'true love', you like the Brontes too much for that...' and...I just...GUH. This makes the book SO MUCH BETTER. I'll never understand people who view it as a romance, in much the same way that I'll never understand Steerpike fangirls...

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Re the sparklywank, I don't even know who the hell Robert Pattinson is but he's my new hero all the same. (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1174491.html?thread=186434523#t186434523)

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

MINE TOO! But if I were a writer whose book was being adapted, and the lead actor requested extraneous material about his character because he was so sketchily defined ... well, I'd probably have to go shoot myself.

(I don't count JKR taking Alan Rickman out and telling him all of Snape's secrets; it's not like he had more than four books to go on at the time. Now, if it had been Daniel Radcliffe...)

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I haven't stopped laughing since I read that. :D

[prettyquotable.livejournal.com]

Haha, the Twilight wank gave me nightmares too. I had a dream I was in Melbourne for a friend's wedding, in a bookstore with a huge poster declaring "TWILIGHT FREE ZONE: IF YOU WANT TO READ SHIT GO SOMEWHERE ELSE". And then we were suddenly all in a supermarket hiding from hoards of sparkly vampires who you could only kill by stabbing in the neck. And for some reason, Jim Gordon from Batman saved us all?

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

JIM GORDON WILL SAVE US!

(I wish I worked in that bookstore.)

[peace-bloom.livejournal.com]

you are getting bigbig hugs at proro tonight.
:(
x

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

It's Pieces who needs extra loves -- she's picked up that horrible flu with the cough, and spent most of the weekend sleeping on the couch, unable to move very far. And today she's gone off to work, since she doesn't want to use any more sick days.

[peace-bloom.livejournal.com]

oh man. is your house a plague house? *fears teh germies*

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

No one else is sick. Pieces probably picked it up on her flight.

[peace-bloom.livejournal.com]

the poor duck! :(

[nixwilliams.livejournal.com]

D:

that guy sounds like a right arsehole.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

He was absolutely delightful. I hope they break up, like, yesterday.

[onomatopoetry.livejournal.com]

My favorite part of Twilight defense? "A woman wrote it and there's a woman in it and women like it, so it must be feminist and you must be a misogynist if you criticize it."

Because, yes, that is how it works.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, that's one of the points in Maguire's book, the fallacy that anything a woman does is inherently empowering purely because a woman does it, therefore feminists who criticise anything women do are misogynists.

See also, any discussion of internalised misogyny or sexism in fandom.

[suburbannoir.livejournal.com]

I like that I live in the same flat as you and had to find out via your lj the details of last night. Because I? Was sleeping. Very deeply, apparently. I didn't even know we had new downstairs neighbours. Fail.

[baggers.livejournal.com]

a bus tour run by murderers, and having to kill people to escape.

i smell a future as a japanese gameshow developer in your future.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

...fair point, I guess, that not every woman character is going to be a strong one in the interest of diversity and honest portrayals in characterizations, but there's that and there's celebrating the pathetic, and I don't like having to do that.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I go back and forth on Twilight and Bella. I like(d) that she isn't a plucky heroin and that she is clumsy and soft (aside from stubborn). I am creeped out by the stalking and the obsession and the setting up for a d/s relationship. He's way older and she's a comparative baby.

But.

I hope that your new downstairs neighbor's problem bf goes away for good. I hope she and everyone else involved are safe.

*hugs*

[mrbehemoth.livejournal.com]

These are the problems that arise when we allow women access to literacy.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

My delicate brain is vulnerable to every stupid idea that comes along, yes. Also, lacking a husband to tell me which box to tick, I always vote for the handsomest man running in any election!

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

Every time someone compares Twilight to Romeo and Juliet, I die a little inside. I know that it appears to be fashionable in certain online circles to look down on R&J as the original overblown star-crossed lovers/teen angst romance, but I tend to think that this is a major injustice to the play.

It'd mocking the clichéd literature and language of love of its time after all, what with the frequent digs at Petrarchist poetry, and it's got a delightful heroine who is as witty and independent and stubborn as Shakespeare's comedy ladies. Juliet would probably wipe the floor with both the Edward Cullen fanclub and bashers of the tragedy she appears in. :)