Well, well, lookie here....

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

I was perusing TwilightSucks awhile ago, and came across this little gem, detailing why Bella Swan is a good match for Draco Malfoy. You can read the madness below:

http://twilight-sucks.livejournal.com/1584746.html

I nearly burst out laughing when I read the line: "Draco doesn't want friends. He wants fans and henchmen. Harry didn't fawn over him, and so their enmity was born." Seriously, that describes Harry more than anything!

And actually, no, Rowling would not write the story about Eric or Mike or whoever. Chances are, Eric and Mike would still be nobodies, just like Dean and Seamus. Harry is no everyman, after all- he's a self-absorbed jerkass Gary Stu just like Edward and Bella- he just hides it better!

Seriously, every so often someone will critique Twilight and immediately follow it up with "But Harry Potter is sooooo much better!" Newsflash: Just because it's better than Twilight... doesn't mean it's good!

Comments

[darth-gojira.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to make sense of your statements.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Agreed. So very much. #With sweettalkeress, that is. :)

[darth-eldritch.livejournal.com]

This is too funny!

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

I can easily admit I liked Twilight. I know some people truly do seem to hate it but I never expected it to be compairable to some of the greatest literature ever. With HP the way fans and such insist on what HP is, it makes you think people are just on the suckup cycle. I always sort of accepted Twilight for what it was. I think even the author of the books seems to know her stuff is what it is. I've seen one interview of the lady and she seemed way more down to earth than what I've seen from JKR's interviews. And sorry I can't remmeber her name right now, Stephany or something (shrugs).

With JKR, she gets put up by fans/media into such a high catagory and sometimes even she seems to throw herself up there, for me at least its a lot easier to complain about the HP story/interviews that it is for me to tear apart Twilight or the author.

The biggest damn arguments I've ever had about Twilight don't involve canon or interviews or even mistakes or contiuity issues in the story it involve people insisting to me that Twilight vampires are not real vampires.

Nothing nags my rantometor more than someone insisting they're fantasy crap is more real than someone elses. And hell, look at me, my username has Unicorn in it but I'm not gonna go all bitchy over someones story about Unicorns just cause I don't like the portrayal...but then minute someone brings up twlight someone out theres gotta make the 'They're not REAL vampires' argument. Its crazytain and at some point even rational people seem to jump on board that expressline.

With Twilight, I think what the author did far better than JKR was to show the emotional side of situations. I think here in DTCL we've often complained about how Harry seems to move on so easily from emotional tragic things. It's sort of like, LALALA, Sirius died, let me go EMO for 10 minutes and then we're on to the next adventure and don't even hardly remember the guys name.

So, I kinda thought if we could get that bit of 'magic' in writing out of Twilight books; the ability for the characters to actually really show the effects of their emotions and put that magic into Harry Potter books...I wonder if there could have been more there in terms of really giving us the 'feel' of friends and lovedones dieing. Instead of just the initial outburst of emotion and then big void I always felt when reading HP after some character died or was hurt/etc.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Eh, when I read the first couple of Twilight books there were some things that I found vaguely cute. Most people I've spoken to complained about the racism and sexism and such.... My biggest beef with Twilight (to keep up with my theme) is how obviously superior the vampires are to humans. Like, if the vampires wanted to eat us all right now, there literally wouldn't be a damn thing any of us could do. And the author treats this as a GOOD thing, and allows them to do whatsoever they want. In that respect I think Twilight is even worse than Harry Potter because Meyer never even paid lip service to the idea that humans could ever possibly stand up to her vampires (she pretty much directly stated, "yeah, my vampires are better than all of you, you're ants under their shoes to them, stuff it").

Regarding the emotional aspect of the books, I can see where you're coming from, but a big complaint is that there's too much of a good thing, as it were. It isn't realistic or logical for someone to angst about the only father figure they've ever had for ten minutes and then move on to gleefully attacking a mean teacher, but neither is it realistic or logical to turn suicidal everytime your significant other leaves you alone for a couple months.

Harry Potter is more annoying than Twilight overall, though, just because so many people treat it like it's great literature when it's not (I knew someone in high school who wanted to get DH on the AP ENGLISH READING LIST!). At least most sane people acknowledge that Twilight is frivolous wish-fulfillment.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter is more annoying than Twilight overall, though, just because so many people treat it like it's great literature when it's not (I knew someone in high school who wanted to get DH on the AP ENGLISH READING LIST!). At least most sane people acknowledge that Twilight is frivolous wish-fulfillment.

Exactly. At least Twilight fans never have tried to pretend that it's great literature (at least, none that I have met have). What's weird about HP is that I know quite a lot of really intelligent people who *still* insist it's a great fantasy classic, at least up there with the Narnia books. When I was in high school, a lot of people thought it would an instant classic, something we would hand down to our children and grandchildren (I admit that I did too). Although the movies are still doing pretty well, I am starting to think that things are winding down for the series now. Let us hope so, anyhow.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

My biggest beef with Twilight (to keep up with my theme) is how obviously superior the vampires are to humans. Like, if the vampires wanted to eat us all right now, there literally wouldn't be a damn thing any of us could do. And the author treats this as a GOOD thing, and allows them to do whatsoever they want.

This makes for rather a boring set of characters, besides the fact that I really don't buy it. Vampires might be uber pretty/smart/strong/fast, but how exactly are they immune to machine gun fire, etc? Is that what the sparkly skin is for?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you.

/I think even the author of the books seems to know her stuff is what it is./

I wish that it were so, but I doubt it. Considering that Stephenie Meyer seems to think that Edward, an abusive control freak, is the ideal man and cannot seem to understand why her series is so anti-feminist, I really don't think that she fully realizes what she has written.

/I've seen one interview of the lady and she seemed way more down to earth than what I've seen from JKR's interviews./

Which interview was that? Because a lot of her interviews showcase her as being obtuse, arrogant, and clueless. Like the one where she basically said that classic romantic couples like Anne and Gilbert from "Anne of Green Gables," Darcy and Elizabeth from "Pride and Prejudice," and Buttercup and Westley from "The Princess Bride" weren't as good as her couple.

/The biggest damn arguments I've ever had about Twilight don't involve canon or interviews or even mistakes or contiuity issues in the story it involve people insisting to me that Twilight vampires are not real vampires./

I find that annoying too, but that's only because they're missing the main problem with "Twilight," namely that it glorifies anti-feminism and abuse against women.

/I think here in DTCL we've often complained about how Harry seems to move on so easily from emotional tragic things. It's sort of like, LALALA, Sirius died, let me go EMO for 10 minutes and then we're on to the next adventure and don't even hardly remember the guys name./

Oh, believe me, if you think that Harry is isolated from people and flippantly changes moods at the drop of a hat, he's got *nothing* on Bella Swan. Harry is a veritable saint compared to her.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

I don't really care if anyone disagrees with me. Like I said I can't even really remember the chicks name half the time that well and only saw one (count them) one interview. She seemed kinda like she was downplaying the whole thing or at least thats what I remember from the interview. And I was more compairing my memory of what I saw of her to how I've seen JKR in her interviews. So it was more a comparison between the two and not a she's the worlds greatest person every. You got me confused with some other Twlight reader if you're thinking that. It was just that she seemed more open to the whole mistakes and such as opposed to JKR who seems to always find a way to pull something out the rear if someone points out inconsistances.

On the whole Bella mood changing thing - firstly I thought that was the whole teenage drift anyway, with her character and how it's supposed to come across. Whereas Harry always seemed kinda stiff but is apparently supposed to be displaying emotions. I always found it hard to see harry's emo's.

I don't see his changing mood as the same or maybe you're comfusing what I mean or perhaps we're talking about two aspects. It's more like the deeper emotions were lost in HP and they were prominate in T.

I think even in the books, Bella is shown to be Isolated...I think that was actually an ongoing theme in the story how she cut herself off from everyone, etc. So...I don't really see that it wasn't in there or that it wasn't an issue.

Personally after reading the whole series I felt like she was 'supposed' to be a vampire from the start. Other people can take from it what they want (shrugs)


And on the whole feminist/anti-feminist debate/discussion, since there are tons of stuff I could bitch about in terms of the whole women vs. men vs. society thing, Twilight can be just another banner for people to wave to call society evil (shrugs). I don't know if it is or if it was just another cheesy story.

On the whole stalker thing, in terms of vampires thats like an ongoing theme for how they are in most stories isn't it? So T-Vampires wouldn't be so different from all the other ones really. I have seen tons of Vam movies where Mr. vap is hanging out the womans window wanting to get in (LOL!) Thats seems like what they do in most movies/stories.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Considering that Stephenie Meyer seems to think that Edward, an abusive control freak, is the ideal man and cannot seem to understand why her series is so anti-feminist, I really don't think that she fully realizes what she has written...a lot of her interviews showcase her as being obtuse, arrogant, and clueless...they're missing the main problem with "Twilight," namely that it glorifies anti-feminism and abuse against women.

Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. I'd just heard the books were shallow and trashy. :D

What's a more interesting question for me, though, is this: What's up with these best-selling female authors who think they wrote ennobling, feminist literature, but actually wrote misogynist crapola?

Another example is Laurie R. King, author of those horrible Mary Russell books, among others. Her books are dull, vapid, poorly-written, and repetitive. They're littered with alcoholics whose disease is presented as charming, funny, and harmless; women who are supposed to be strong and independent, but are really unhealthily dependent on their partners, whether male or female; men subservient to women; gays who are always paragons; children who usually get killed off; and gratuitous violence towards animals presented in highly sexualized terms.

Most sickeningly of all, whenever somebody dies, it's always a woman's fault. In one book, a serial killer murders little girls because he was dumped by his girlfriend 20 years ago. When characters die in car or boat accidents, even though men are driving, girl passengers get blamed for "making" them crash, even if the driver was drunk. A cult leader orders a mass suicide, but it's all because the female main character left the cult. And it's always male authority figures who tell us women are responsible. OTOH, when a male character has several family members die, he's explicitly told it's not his fault, even though they were murdered by someone he'd recently pissed off.

Like Meyer and Rowling, King clearly has no idea what she's written. She's said in her blog many times that she's a feminist who writes liberated women characters and deals with serious social issues in her books. She's also extremely arrogant and condescending towards longtime Sherlock Holmes fans who object to her portrayal of him in the Russell books as a weak, stupid, drunken, aging pervert who lusts after a traumatized orphan teenager. I call him Pseudo-Holmes, since I don't recognize him as having anything to do with Doyle's character.

Maybe I just haven't seen it, but I don't know of any popular male authors who think they wrote something fine and noble but really wrote hate-filled trash. What is up with women, that so many of them have this problem? Please note, I am not suggesting there is anything innate in women that makes them this clueless and self-deceptive. I'm asking what is it in our socialization that has created this problem?

Twilight and its fan base

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Another ff.net member told me that Twilight is only popular because it's a common heterosexual girl's/woman's fantasy for a Marty Stu character to fall in love with her and that is what Twilight attempts to portray (although ineptly.)

On fictionpress I happened to discover a story that was sort of like the Twilight subject matter would be if aimed at heterosexual boys/men instead. It involved a really bland and jejune young man who receives the flattering interests of a glittery vampire woman who is so badly written that she comes across as a lesbian bull dyke more even than Edward comes across as androgynous.

Some publisher must have realised that there just happened to be such a market for Meyer's kind of rubbish. The fictionpress story on the other hand probably wouldn't be published.

Re: Twilight and its fan base

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Some publisher must have realised that there just happened to be such a market for Meyer's kind of rubbish.

I don't think you need someone on ff.net to tell you about fluff novels. You can go in any book store and take a gander at the 'romance' section to know there is a market for fluff stories about love/lust and happy ever after.

Where the girl character and boy character are gonna end up with each other no matter what. He can be a dick a jerk a warrior and even a vampire and true love tends to turn him into a wonderful guy and sex with him turns the girl into an even hotter love interest for him.

The only big difference with twlight and the regular standard romance novel is that the sex isn't explicit in Twilight and was covered in sparkle for the teenagers so they could read some romance fluff.

There have been pleanty of fluffy romance novel vampire stories that were out for adult readers way before twilight came along.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/"Draco doesn't want friends./

I guess that's why Myrtle told Harry that Draco was crying about not having friends to turn to in HBP. -_-

/He wants fans and henchmen./

Crabbe and Goyle fit this description, even though Draco was clearly upset by Crabbe's death in DH. But what about Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott? We don't really see Theodore, but from what little we see of Blaise, he certainly doesn't act like he is Draco's simpering minion.

/Harry didn't fawn over him, and so their enmity was born."/

No, their enmity was born because Draco insulted Ron and told Harry that he shouldn't hang out with the "wrong sort," and Harry turned him down. Which is not any better, granted, but it still wasn't the same thing as what this person says.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know about their misunderstanding in the robe shop. I'm talking about their meeting on the train. After Draco introduces himself and his friends to Harry, Ron laughs at his name, which isn't nice. Draco then makes rude remarks about Ron's family, which isn't nice. Then he tells Harry that he can help him avoid making friends with the "wrong sort," which is an obvious allusion to Ron, which isn't nice. Harry then rejects him and Draco is offended.

So, it seems that the two principal offenders of that meeting were Ron and Draco. Both were prejudiced and rude in their own ways. However, because Harry was already predisposed to disliking Draco due to their first meeting, he takes Ron's side.

Twishite

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Meyer's prose writing is so bad and so amateurish that it is a real chore to read, Twilight would disgrace a 16 year old fanfic author.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

My take on Potter versus Twilight: both are disgustingly crappy books written by sick individuals. Meyers has creepy ideas about relationships and women and Rowlings wrote the Potter books as narcissistic wank-material.

I feel sorry for the trees that died to print these monstrosities.

LOL! Thanks for the laugh! You say some of the funniest things. :D

Then there are Laurie R. King's books, which can be described in all these ways. They win major awards, too, which can't be said for HP and Twilight.

Narcissistic wank material

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I've found illuminating your discussions of narcissism, Dumbles, Harry as self-insert, etc., but I really tended to think you went a little too far in your assertions.

Then I reread DH chapter 5 in writing my last, and came across this-- Kingsley the uber-competent and cool's challenge to Lupin:

"The last words [God]Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us?"

"Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him," said Lupin calmly.

God, it's embarassing reading other peoples' masturbatory fantasies when you don't share their kink!

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Seriously, every so often someone will critique Twilight and immediately follow it up with "But Harry Potter is sooooo much better!" Newsflash: Just because it's better than Twilight... doesn't mean it's good!

HP isn't great literature, but at least books 1-5 are good entertainment. I really enjoyed them, and was able to get through HBP and DH, although I found them dull. I couldn't even read Twilight. It was so poorly written and repetitive, I had to quit after the first 60 pages. If there were a Cliff's Notes version of Twilight, so I could know what everybody's talking about, that would be nice.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

I've read some summaries, but they tend to be more like our summaries of the Harry Potter books. Possibly more fun than what you're asking for, but I don't know if they're neutral enough to give you a good idea of what the books are like. (The reason I don't know is because I've never read the books myself.)

I did find a *really* good Twilight fanfic that quickly takes things in a different direction from the books (which is part of what prompted me to try to find out what happened in the originals). It might only serve to confuse you about what happened in the published books... but I think it's worth it, anyway. It's at http://luminous.elcenia.com/story.shtml, and it's complete.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

The long and short of Twilight is basically this: an assholish emo teen girl named Bella Swan falls in love with an equally assholish sparkly vampire because he's hot. Said sparkly vampire takes to doing everything for Bella from saving her from danger to watching her sleep at night, though Bella's father doesn't approve. Bella, meanwhile, keeps pressuring the vampire to turn her into a vampire, but he declines again and again, ostensibly because he doesn't want her to be a monster, though his exact reasons tend to depend on who you ask. But anyway, Bella gets in good with his vampire family and they treat her like a princess.

Later on, there are some evil vampires who develop a personal obsession with Bella and want to eat her, but the good Vampires put a stop to it. That's the first book, in a nutshell. Later books introduce some other evil vampires, and then the main character ends up marrying the hot vampire, turning into a pretty vampire herself, and having an adorable child, whose main purpose is to subtly and inadvertently imply that the author hates children and parenting but wants the accolades of having one because she comes from a conservative Christian family. The evil vampires make one more appearance, but they're sent packing and everyone lives happily ever after. Sort of....

Oh, and there's this subplot involving werewolves who fall in love with Bella and then keep turning into pedophiles (it makes sense in context). They're supposed to be the only things that can take down a vampire, but they won't do a thing to stop them from eating humans if it inconveniences the plot (the main character vampires do not actually eat humans, but a lot of their friends do and they have NO ISSUE with this).

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Oh, and don't forget that Edward's attraction to Bella is based on her blood smelling like freesia and that he can barely keep himself from not tearing her throat out and draining her. In the leaked "Twilight-from-Edward's-perspective" chapter, we learn that as soon as Edward smelled her delicious freesia-scented blood, he planned the most efficient way of killing everyone in the classroom in case he lost control. What a healthy relationship!

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

I saw that and was like, wtf. I know interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, but Draco was making a genuine effort, in my eyes, to be friendly to Harry. He talked about things most other boys his age would be interested in- what house they'd be in, brooms and quidditch (everyone in the WW loves quidditch, like, people keep saying Draco was trying to make Harry feel dumb and I'm just thinking, no, that's a legitimate conversation starter!). Draco was interested in Harry even when he was scruffy and in oversize clothing and all. Ron? Wanted to see him 'coz he was the Boy-Who-Lived.

And ITA, Harry's the one who gets upset with people who have valid reasons for not agreeing with him and expects everyone to support him 100%, no need for critical thinking, either you think what Harry wants you to think or he has no use for you.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Seriously, every so often someone will critique Twilight and immediately follow it up with "But Harry Potter is sooooo much better!" Newsflash: Just because it's better than Twilight... doesn't mean it's good!

Ugh, I hear you. I remember seeing someone critise Eragon for the main character's complete lack of regret over the horrible things he does, and then compare it to Harry's slicing and dicing of Malfoy in HBP. "Harry shows regret and faces consequences for this action, because he's a realistic, flawed, three-dimensional character," they said.

I was like... uhm, no he isn't, and more to the point, no he doesn't - there is a single paragraph in the next chapter about him feeling vaguely uneasy about it, and that's it. After that, it's never mentioned again.

I swear, Rowling has people hypnotised - whatever they think should be in her series, they manage to see in it.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Comparing a crappy book to another slightly less crappy book (but only slightly) does not really help HP fan's case. Twilight probably ought to be compared to the various books that the author thinks she writes better than, such as Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights.

And I am starting to agree with the hypnosis idea. Perhaps people just hate to admit that they were rabidly obsessed with something that doesn't deserve that kind of love?