bloodyrosemccoy: Panel from The Killing Joke: the Joker clutching his head and laughing maniacally (Ha)
bloodyrosemccoy ([personal profile] bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2010-02-19 11:29 pm

Batshit Appreciation Day

You know, before Twilight came out, I have to admit I never appreciated the sheer creativity with which the Harry Potter fandom’s batshit is imbued.

I mean, Twilight fans are batshit, but it’s a sort of vanilla batshit, the kind where you just insert yourself into the protagonist’s place and relive the story replete with fantasies of nice sparkly missionary position sex, or sit around insisting that your fandom is the BESTEST fandom.* If you’re really creative, you lust after the werewolf instead, but mostly the batshit is a matter of intensity.

There doesn’t seem to be nearly as much in the way of fans astrally married to the villainous sidekick vampire who sometimes manifests himself through the fan’s pet hamster to inform the fan that the original author is out to eat all their sweets and steal their paperclips. You just get varying levels of “MINE MINE CHARACTER ALL MINE” and “THIS IS THE ONLIEST BOOK.”**

Which strikes me as doubly funny since Twilight itself spirals from a self-insert Mary Sue self-indulgence to full-on psychodramatic crackfic.

I dunno, maybe there’s an Inverse Law of Crackiness, or maybe it’s just that Twilight appeals to a particular group of people without much interest in changing things up. Either way, though, I want to go back and salute the Potterfans. You guys still win, no question.


*I remain with the theory that many Twilight fans have an unnervingly narrow breadth of knowledge. [livejournal.com profile] cleolinda’s posse once suggested that Twilight fans, unlike other rabid fans, do not launch from their fandom into other fandoms, which explains their whole Stephen King fiasco.

**Although that can be pretty entertaining, I must admit.

Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!

[identity profile] dornbeast.livejournal.com 2010-02-23 04:18 am (UTC)(link)
It isn't just that they're buying non-genre YA fiction. It's an indicator of what Twilight really is.

Most "also bought" lists on Amazon show relation by author or genre. If I use the "also bought" list to classify Twilight's genre by eliminating books by the same author and books on the order of Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned By Reading Twilight, it's probably YA fiction, rather than fantasy or horror.

Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!

[identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com 2010-02-23 07:14 am (UTC)(link)
Exactly! It doesn't really seem to be the same thing as spec fic, for all it has spec fic elements, because she doesn't actually, y'know, SPECULATE on them. Twilight is just teen fiction with, literally, a few sparkles tossed on top.