Why Unironic Twilight Fans Are Not Fantasy Nerds

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Nothing like some good space opera music to get you into the mood to write .. well, space opera. And there is no more enthusiastic soundtrack than New Star Trek’s. It’ll make you want to discover the hell out of some new life and new civilizations.

Anyway, while I’m off giving my characters a hard time, I figure I can let y’all read an interesting link having to do with speculative fiction: narnian_dreamer’s analysis of Twilight and how it relates to the larger culture of speculative fiction readers. (There’s a second part right after it on Bella’s martyr complex and Stephenie Meyer’s inability to read her own subtext, which is also pretty interesting.)

It may explain why normal fantasy fans react so violently to fans of books like Twilight and Eragon, and to any book that doesn’t seem to carry out its ideas to logical conclusions. We’re looking for speculative fiction that actually speculates—that uses the premises it comes up with. It’s back to my old argument about what nerds like—seeing limits and rules as tools and frameworks instead of hindrances and cages. And that’s so many of us we Just Don’t Get the appeal of worlds where the rules get broken.

Comments

[sanachan1.livejournal.com]

I actually own and have read (and mostly enjoyed) all the Twilight books. I went and saw the movie and enjoyed mocking it mercilessly. (It was SOOOOO bad. I thought it was actually worse than the books, and that's saying something.) I generally fall very much into the first category of reader, I'm a hard core conditional believer. But with some books like the Twilight books, or some of the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, I can shift into the total "eh, it's just a fantasy."

But I will never argue with you that the Twilight books are actually GOOD, or have any value as serious literature. They're brain candy, and for me fall into the same category as trash tv like Survivor or the Bachelor (or my ultimate guilty pleasure Millionaire Matchmaker). I KNOW they're stupid and exploitative while I watch them, but I enjoy them anyway, just like I enjoy Big Macs and other fast food. I know they're bad for me, but like them anyway. I have a number of other friends who enjoy them the same way. And the die hard Twilight fans freak me out just as much as the next fantasy/horror fan.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

True, there is some crossover, and she allows for that--hell, Cleolinda thought the first one was a sparkly Twinkie. But you know the difference between the two types of belief, and understand that the two types are different. That puts you ahead of the game.

[sanachan1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely agree with what she's getting at. Not that the Twilight phenomena is something I think about that hard, other than being baffled it became so popular. I feel like one of those annoying hipsters "I liked this band BEFORE they were popular." But it was so wierd... one day I looked up and suddenly this goofy series I liked was basically the next Harry Potter series. My 18 year old niece, who also enjoys the books (I introduced her to them for fluffy reading) says she's ready to start punching people at school who will not shut up about how much they OMG LURVES! Twilight, especially the movie.

[beccastareyes]

Reminds me of a game that the people on the Lois Bujold mailing list would play whenever someone would find a review of Bujold's Sharing Knife series. They'd try to guess whether the reviewer was a fantasy fan or a romance fan by what they focused on* -- the romance fen would focus on the two main characters and their forbidden love and be left puzzled when the author did a lot of her worldbuilding gradually and by inference, while the fantasy fen go into the worldbuilding and gloss over the romance. (The nice thing about the books is that they are about bringing together two different societies that are slowly running up into one another and the romance is tied to that angle. That and they feature a couple whose story didn't end with the wedding, unless you stop after the first book.)

* Of course, many of the fen on the list were both.

[thewrongcrowd.livejournal.com]

willnotreadtwilightwillnotreadtwilightwillnotreadtwilight... okay, I broke down and bought a mass market copy. Just so I can honestly say it's a pile of crap.

Interesting that you mention Eragon. There again, all the attention meant it was actually decent or --well, let's just say I'm going back to ignoring all the attention. It wasn't atrocious, but the thought that continually ran through my mind was, "you could be rereading LotR for the 200th time instead; at least it's consistently developed..."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I usually say that Eragon read, for some WEIRD reason, like a fourteen-year-old with potential had written it. It wasn't bad, but it was definitely practice material. With polish and a lot more practice, Paolini could BECOME a good writer.

What drove me away from Eragon was actually the really terrible conlanging. It was just too awful to keep reading.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

You don't crack a smile when they speak in scared whispers about Galbatorix?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

That was actually my favorite part of the movie,* because Jeremy Irons so clearly digs saying "Gaaalll-bahTOHRixxxx." I'd erupt into gigglesnorts every time.


*It's almost unwatchable even with Rifftrax.