bloodyrosemccoy: (Mature and Sexier)
bloodyrosemccoy ([personal profile] bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2011-01-16 06:20 pm

OH GOD WHEREFORE

Oh, man, y’all, somebody in HarperTeen’s marketing department needs a raise.

Look what I shelved today:



That’s right. They Twilified Romeo and Juliet. And also Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and a bunch of others.

Do you think this works? Does slapping a big red thing on a pitch black cover and typing in fancy font actually trick teenage girls (and frustrated housewives) into reading any damn book they’d previously spurned? Maybe we should try Gothing up the covers of books like On the Origin of Species and see if it’s true! I really see no downside to tricking people into reading that.

At least there’s some color on these, though. The YA novels are looking increasingly gloomy lately. Every cover is washed-out greyscale. Although that is starting to serve as a warning: if you see a grey cover, you’re safe in betting you’ll find a bland normal girl torn between her One True Love, who is TORMENTED because he is a demon/vampire/fallen angel/demigod/time pirate as well as a jerk, and some other red herring rival dude, who is also a jerk. It’s just when this cover style starts bleeding into books I like that we have a problem. Can you just picture Beka Cooper looking all sad and greyscale, with bright red rose petals falling from her hand? Or god forbid Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegle?

Okay, yeah, neither can I. Nor can I picture that with my own OGYAFE. But if it does ever happen, I suppose SOMEBODY will read them.

They just won’t know what hit them.

[identity profile] westrider.livejournal.com 2011-01-17 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
I'm with you on that one. I always saw it as more a tale of teen stupidity than true love.

Actually, that makes the Twilight association fit even better, now that I think about it.

[identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com 2011-01-17 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
Exactly. If you want to give it a generous interpretation, maybe it's got the same nihilism as a Coen brothers movie--Stupid People Blunder Around And Then Wonder What Happened.

Now I think about it, if you look at Romeo and Juliet like it's, say, Fargo, it brings a whole new meaning to the story.

[identity profile] gwalla.livejournal.com 2011-01-18 03:01 am (UTC)(link)
I'm pretty sure that's what it's supposed to be. Especially if you recall that before he meets Juliet, Romeo is head over heels with some other girl.

[identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com 2011-01-18 11:02 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I always thought that the mention of the lovely--uh, Rosamund? Rosalind? Rosasomething, I seem to recall--was rather a dead giveaway that this story was not quite the tale of Wuv, TWU Wuv that it gets made out to be. Sounds about right for a story of rampant teenage hormones, though.

Also, the part where his friends basically point out "Romeo, bro, you fall in passionate love like this pretty much every damn week" rather destroys his credibility. I'm sure he's quite sincere about his love until someone fresh and new walks by ...

[identity profile] gwalla.livejournal.com 2011-01-18 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the point is "Get some perspective and don't let infatuation trump reality, kids, or you too may end up killing yourself in a panic over a stupid misunderstanding and seriously messing things up for everybody".

[identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com 2011-01-19 12:04 am (UTC)(link)
And also, "Feuds are dumb."