Batshit Appreciation Day
Feb. 19th, 2010 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyYou 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]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-20 07:11 am (UTC)12 yr olds. Go figure.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-20 07:21 am (UTC)And no, this is not hyperbole. The lady's poor 14-year-old daughter had one of the most embarassing parents I've heard of.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-20 07:29 am (UTC)Yanno, I think I was about 12 when I first read that compendium of Greek Mythology tales. (Bullfinch's?) And I was reading Andre Norton by then, too. Isaac Asimov, Heinlein, Clark... I'd seen Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy, and who knows how many 50's B movies with mutants, giant ants, grasshoppers, crabs, spiders and whatever else.
One has to wonder how someone can be so sheltered in today's world, especially with Teh Intarwehbs available to fill that void between their ears.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-20 07:42 am (UTC)He got deluged with comments by Twilight fans saying he's just jealous of Meyer, that he's sexist, and that why doesn't HE write a bestseller that gets made into a hit movie if he thinks he's so great.
That's when we started to wonder about them ...
When I was 12 I was reading Ray Bradbury, David Eddings, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, and knew all sorts of myths and legends. I stayed away from B-movies for a while longer because I was still able to internalize the IDEAS and scare myself, but at least I knew they EXISTED.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-20 08:21 am (UTC)Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to be a fly on the wall when the light finally dawns? Hee.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-22 05:14 pm (UTC)I still have that problem with horror movies. Over-active imagination, over-internalization of movies is one of the reasons my video-fare is usually kind of light.
And at 12...Tolkien, Douglas Adams, McCaffery's dragons, Conan Doyle, Terry Brooks, all that. How can these people be so genre-ignorant?
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-22 09:04 pm (UTC)Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-23 12:15 am (UTC)Although your addition that they buy a lot of non-genre YA does explain quite a bit.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-23 04:18 am (UTC)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!
Date: 2010-02-23 07:14 am (UTC)Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-23 09:06 am (UTC)Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-20 03:21 pm (UTC)Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-23 12:11 am (UTC)OR SO WE ALL THOUGHT.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-23 09:09 am (UTC)Seriously, werewolves go back, uh... forever? Complete with silver vulnerability. You can't rip off a basic werewolf.
Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-22 09:19 pm (UTC)Re: The Onliest Book! Buahaha!
Date: 2010-02-23 01:57 am (UTC)I think this one is from one of the posters.