Ana's Note: This one is going to be all over the map, folks. What can I say, it's the nature of December. Apologies in advance.Husband and I watched the totally-not-Twilight movie "Little Red Riding Hood" a few weeks ago. We watched it purely for snark purposes -- I'd already deliberately spoiled myself on every major plot element, and we were largely looking for some good times with the RiffTrax. We were not disappointed.
But here's my dirty little confession.
I didn't completely, totally hate the movie.
Can I admit that? This is a safe space, right? I mean, I want to stress that a huge part of my enjoyment came from the really awesome RiffTrax, and can I just link to that again because this was a solo-riff by a not-MST3K cast member and that in itself is pretty awesome because I generally don't like the solo riffs as much, so here's more linkage to give this guy props. Because, seriously, I do not recommend this movie without the RiffTrax, this is not one of Ana's 5-star reviews saying that this is the Must See Movie Of The Year because it's not. At least not in my opinion.
And yet... again, I didn't totally hate it. So then of course I had to lay awake in bed wondering why that is, because this movie is really trying so hard to be Twilight.
There's the little things, of course. It's one movie instead of five. There's no real effort made at sustaining a love triangle -- the Heroine is clear from the get-go that she loves Jacob always and forever and Edward can take a running jump. There's the wonderful sensibleness of Edward accepting that early on and not trying to change his fate and my god a love triangle character who reads the signs early on and backs gracefully away someone alert the gorram media because more of this please. There's the fact that while the Heroine keeps being referred to as this super-sweet Good Girl, she's also playful and edgy and brave and scary but not in massive shades of any of those things. She sort of feels... real. Like a real person instead of some kind of One Trait Heroine.
Not that any of this makes the movie terribly good. The acting feels like the director told everyone to ham it up as much as possible, with huge sweeping gestures by Oldman and Significant Glances by everyone to everyone else, and there are plot holes so big you could drop a cow through them, but still... I didn't totally hate it.
As much as this movie was marketed as by Twilight people for Twilight people, I was surprised and amused to see that the ending is really almost the logical opposite of the Twilight franchise. Instead of the Heroine being absorbed into an adoring extended family, with the privileges and wealth that that implies in order to marry the socially appropriate preppy boy, she instead goes off to live by herself in the cold forest in abject poverty and total isolation in order to marry the socially poor werewolf boy.
Yes, this is the movie the Team Jacob fans have been waiting for.
Which is probably why I didn't totally hate it, because as far as the Twilight movies go, I've always felt that if I must root for one of the boys, I'd prefer Jacob over Edward. But then it struck me that no matter which of the two established teams you root for -- Team Edward or Team Jacob -- you're really in some ways rooting for the same fantasy, but with slightly different accoutrements. It's still a fantasy of heterosexual romance providing life-long happiness and sexy-times. It's still a fantasy of being loved and worshiped by someone powerful and passionate. It's still a fantasy of finding your happily-ever-after before you have to venture too far out into the scary adult world so that when the scary adult world does come knocking, you'll already have that whole happily-ever-after thing taken care of.
And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
The first time I saw the Twilight movie, I really didn't like it at all, but I still turned to Husband and said, "I can see why someone would like this." What I think I meant was I can see why I would have liked this. And I think maybe I would have, a long time ago, when I was basically a very different person with different experiences and different perspectives. There's something very powerful about this fantasy of being worthwhile and loved and cherished and utterly protected, both from Scary Bad Guy threats but also from the cold, cruel world at large, and I recognize that. It'd be nice to go to college for fun and never have to worry about whether or not I'll have to make a living from my major because my husband has all that wrapped up. It'd be nice to be able to take off a few years from life and just do my own thing because we're richer than Croesus. And sure, that doesn't work in Real Life because real life husbands can take away that wealth and leave you with no education, no meaningful skills, and no job experience, but the fact that a fantasy doesn't work in Real Life does not automatically invalidate that fantasy. Does it?
I'm serious: does the fact that This Fantasy Does Not Work, Do Not Try It At Home automatically invalidate the fantasy? Can we still enjoy it at home in private, knowing that the fantasy is just a fantasy and nothing more? I think maybe we can. Certainly I've maintained since my first Twilight post that liking Twilight isn't a bad thing that makes you a bad person. I think that's true for almost any book.
Randy Owens -- who is freaking awesome, and deserves an extra dollop of thanks for sending me Twilight things to navel-gaze about -- sent me this picture on Facebook a few weeks back as something worth adding to the ongoing Twilight dialog.
I'm not sure how I want to react to this. It doesn't seem quite like a fair comparison. I haven't read all the Harry Potter novels yet, but by gum I've watched all the movies and I remember there being a fair bit of angsting about romance in those movies. And I haven't read all the Twilight novels yet, but I've watched all the movies and I remember there being a fair bit of kung-fu-chopping-of-evil-vampires-who-want-to-eat-you-and-also-becoming-your-true-badass-self-who-has-super-psychic-shields in those movies. So there's that.
Plus, as much as I respect Stephen King, I don't remember the Grand Feminist Poohbah giving him a cookie in the last Grand Feminist Newsletter. I might have missed that.
I find myself now in the strangest position of wanting to defend Twilight. And that's a weird position. I really do think that Twilight has enough problems to devote a multi-year deconstruction to it, else I wouldn't be doing that very thing. I mean, we're still in the first half of the first book and what do we have so far? The conflation of whiteness with beauty. The casual co-opting of real disabilities in order to provide comic relief and make Bella more attractive to the character in text and the audience at large. The similarities between our romantic hero and a hardened abuser. The stereotypes that Renee and Charlie embody and the dysfunctionality of the Swan/Cullen family dynamics. Bella's clear depression that is never taken seriously in the text. Her utter disinterest in any one or any thing except books she's already read and housework. The male privilege on display with every male character in text. This is just off the top of my head. There are problems in Twilight, people. I mean it.
And yet... the problem of Twilight isn't that the heroine wants a boyfriend. There are problems with wanting a romantic partner more than anything else including your own safety, yes. There are problems with feeling like another person is necessary in order for you to be happy and fulfilled, yes. There are problems with giving up college because you want to get married and have sex all day, yes. These are serious issues that should and do need to be addressed with the Twilight text. They are issues that I'm going to assume Stephen King was alluding to but which he couldn't delve further into without ruining the pithiness of his quote. I understand that. This is not a STEPHEN KING SUCKS post.
So what kind of post is it? Several of you -- Kit most notably, if I may point with happy fingers -- have consistently made the point through the Twilight deconstruction that (a) yes, there are a myriad of problems with Twilight that can and should be addressed but that (b) some critics of Twilight have a worrying tendency to blow past the in-depth issues and instead dismiss the whole thing with 'criticisms' that could be leveled at any fantasy written by, for, and to a largely female audience. Like, you know, the sentiment that a whole book series revolving around having a boyfriend is so dang fluffy and self-indulgent when Harry Potter is clearly a seven-book epic about shooting lightning from a stick and nothing else.
And that kind of criticism doesn't help. It sounds suspiciously less like "less racism and sexism in books, please" and more like "less girly things in books, please". And I need to be extra-super-careful to not sound like that because part of the Deconstructionist's Vow is to first do no harm. And I appreciate all of you keeping me on track with that and reminding me of that, thank you.
"Little Red Riding Hood" is not a 5-star movie. It is not a 5-star movie because it is poorly acted, poorly directed, has plot holes large enough to accommodate falling cows, and is a period movie where one of the main characters clearly requires a bottle full of hair gel every morning despite such a thing ostensibly not existing in the given period. "Twilight", in contrast, is not a 5-star franchise because it has serious issues with racism, ableism, and yes, sexism.
But neither "Little Red Riding Hood" nor "Twilight" are bad simply because they are romantic fantasies intended to resonate with a heterosexual female audience who can well accept that the fantasy would not work at all in Real Life and are looking for a few hours of escapism to sink into. That, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.
The solution to Twilight, I think, isn't to stop crafting romantic fantasies designed to appeal to women. The solution to Twilight is to start crafting better ones that don't contain Race Fail, Ableism Fail, Feminism Fail, QUILTBAG Fail, and so forth. We don't need fewer female fantasies on the market, we need better ones.
113 comments:
I'm serious: does the fact that This Fantasy Does Not Work, Do Not Try It At Home automatically invalidate the fantasy? Can we still enjoy it at home in private, knowing that the fantasy is just a fantasy and nothing more? I think maybe we can.
In a way, I think this is vital to actually enjoying the fantasy - if it could work, then indulging it could also lead to dissatisfaction with real life, the way workable dreams do. If a workable dream leaves you dissatisfied with life, then you can chase it and maybe end up somewhere better. If an unworkable dream leaves you dissatisfied, there ain't much you can do except sink ever deeper into depression or futile attempts to make the unreal dream real. Knowing that the dream can't work, it seems to me, is the (only?) way to be able to set it aside when you're done dreaming and get back to reality.
of the main characters clearly requires a bottle full of hair gel every morning despite such a thing ostensibly not existing in the given period.
Herbs.
There's the wonderful sensibleness of Edward accepting that early on and not trying to change his fate and my god a love triangle character who reads the signs early on and backs gracefully away someone alert the gorram media because more of this please.
I'm curious how this counts as a triangle, if the heroine isn't interested in Eddy and he accepts that early on. Surely a triangle needs a sustained indecision on the part of at least one person? Is there romantic tension between Eddy and the werewolf? Now that would be a twist on Twilight.
(Minor note - the trigger warning at the top reads 'abelism', which I always expect to have something to do with Biblical mythology.)
It's a "love triangle" in the sense that Red has been engaged to Edward by parent-proxy and if she backs out now, much egg will be on face. But, yeah, it's the weakest love triangle ever and I appreciated that so much. And it wasn't rape-y either! (Dear dog, I am bragging on movies for not having Rape Culture vibes.)
THANK YOU for the typo catch. How delightful. I NEARLY added a trigger warning for "Stephen King", but I was afraid people might think that was flippant. However, I know some people REALLY do not like his apocalyptic book which, iirc, has been accused of being rape-y. But I haven't read it, so I don't know.
I'm serious: does the fact that This Fantasy Does Not Work, Do Not Try It At Home automatically invalidate the fantasy? Can we still enjoy it at home in private, knowing that the fantasy is just a fantasy and nothing more?
Absolutely. (See: Zombie Apocalypse, 90% of sexual roleplay, 60% of Plato.) I think some of the narratives we use in personal fantasies need to be outrageous and unworkable and transgressive.
As much as I'm not a fan of real-life gendered sexual violence, I find a lot to love about movies like Teeth (before you google, potential NSFW concept) and (my personal Red Riding Hood favorite) Hard Candy - movies where women commit some pretty gratuitous revenge violence. Which isn't to say that I advocate vigilante castration, and I think there are some lurking problems there, but yeah.
See: Zombie Apocalypse, 90% of sexual roleplay, 60% of Plato.
As the resident Token Platonist, I am going to take this parenthetical aside home and *marry* it.
Ana, do you read any of the big romance blogs, like Dear Author and Smart Bitches? They are ALL OVER the themes of this post.
Dear Author is by Jane L. right? I'm following her twitter, but I didn't realize her blog did more than just reviews. I'll have to check that out, as well as SB because I don't think I've heard of the latter. Thanks!!
Funny enough, I've been thinking about writing a Zombie Apocalypse post. I need to do that.
I completely agree. The sad thing about Twilight, in my opinion, is that the basic idea could be spun into either a light, fluffy romance or a deeper, darker exploration of "traditional" relationship dynamics and emotional abuse (which is often not taken as seriously as physical abuse, because if they're not leaving bruises they're apparently not doing any damage). I would read either of those and not be ashamed to admit it, but instead we've got this horrible mess that I can't talk about without directly stating beforehand that I disliked it.
On another note, I was just reading a discussion the other night that included that quote, and somebody claimed that it was wrongly attributed to King (King's original statement supposedly being about the differences between Rowling and Meyer's writing). I just can't remember who was supposed to have originally said that quote.
Having read The Stand (super-extended director's cut apocalypse with three kinds of cheese) I would agree that it is most everything people say it is, and basically All Of The Trigger Warnings, but it would seem rather a lot removed from a statement made by the author on an unrelated subject. I could be wrong? But I don't think we'd toss in a trigger warning every time we referenced Meyer unless it was actually relating to one of the seriously troubling things she wrote.
I just can't remember who was supposed to have originally said that quote.
I've seen the quote often before, but I don't think I've ever seen it sourced. I assumed it had been dredged out of the intertron aether, until seeing it attributed to King here, at which point I just assumed that no one had ever bothered attributing it when I saw it before. But in retrospect that doesn't seem enormously plausible.
Hmm! Here?
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/07/stephen-king-on-the-difference-between-harry-potter-twilight/#IDComment173605931
I don't think I've ever heard of the other person.
I would read either of those and not be ashamed to admit it, but instead we've got this horrible mess that I can't talk about without directly stating beforehand that I disliked it.
I want to cuddle this quote so badly. I've been in several conversations lately that start with me saying, "Look, I don't like Twilight, but..." and it's the STRANGEST FEELING. It's like "Are you there God, it's me Margaret", only instead of getting my period for the first time, I'm having to explain that, look, it matters HOW you criticize something, even if the something is really dreadful on various important issues.
The Harry Potter FANDOM would lead you to believe that it's all about romance, and many of the movies are not faithful to the books; however, in the books, it's pretty clear that Harry's interested in girls in that way that teenage boys wake up and go "Hel-lo, that's a lady, I'm having strange reactions". It's never anywhere near as important as saving the world; however, as he goes through puberty it becomes as important as his schoolwork, his social life, that sort of thing.
I think the King quote isn't trying to say that Twilight is automatically bad for being about romance; it's saying the two are on a totally different level. Twilight is meant to be a fluffy romance, a fun read but try not to draw too many conclusions from it. Harry Potter is meant to teach you what it means to be a hero. They're not really meant to be compared side by side.
As far as fantasy: I think it's perfectly acceptable to fantasize about things that can't possibly work in reality. For example, many of my sexual fantasies would be incredibly scarring and demeaning if they happened outside of the context of imaginary funtimes in a safe, loving relationship. I like that bit of fear and wrongness from time to time, much like how people enjoy being scared by films but don't want to live in a horror movie.
Speaking of gendered fantasies, it has often felt to me that the Eragon series of books often commits gender mirrored crimes against writing in the name of male fantasy. Eragon is essentially a uber-powerful video game character who gets to be a dick to whomever he pleases because he is so uber powerful. He is so uber powerful in fact that his skills in swordmanship and magic are unrivaled by almost all the beings in the land. At age 20.
The difference is I don't think that too many people will be able to confuse that particular power fantasy with how things work in the real world. Far too many people consider Edward oh so romantic in all his rapey vibe stalky glory. Or that Bella's passiveness to the point of catatonia makes for the ideal girlfriend. I have yet to meet someone who claims they wish to emulate Eragon.
I have yet to meet someone who claims they wish to emulate Eragon.
This is why I was considering James Bond for a decon - also a male-oriented fantasy, also varyingly messed-up, also varyingly non-functional in the real world, but much greater desire for emulation. (I saw 'varyingly' because he's been played by more people than the Doctor* and in about a dozenteen different stories, so he's zigzagged a lot.) And in the same way that Edward embodies a lot of real-world problems in relationships, I think Bond is the avatar of a whole lot of casual sexism.
*Counting radio.**
**Tangentially, one of the things I would most dearly like to see is a complete genderflip of the 2005 series of Doctor Who, the one with the Ninth. I mentioned this idea as a random thing a couple of years ago, and I can't get it out of my head.
It's just a matter of time before someone brings up John Galt.
Who is John Galt?
Most fantasies have an element of Does Not Work, Do Not Try At Home and/or This Would Actually Suck (see every adventure movie ever). It is perfectly possible to want to be Han Solo, Miles Vorkosigan, Jim Rockford, James Bond, Jim diGriz, MacGyver, and the like while simultaneously knowing that actually being any of the above would not be fun, at all. (Though being a PI who does not get beat up all the time might be). It's also possible to like those characters and stories and see the problems with them. Where I get disturbed by Twilight is when fans don't seem to see the issues and Actual Suck. (Of course Twilight is also monumentally not my fantasy, as one might guess from the characters I just listed.)
Of course, I'm not so enamored of Harry Potter, either, and for similar reasons. Well, not the lack of noticing Actual Suck, but because the series has Issues. (Possilbly volumes)
Dracula.
I'm working on a crossover.
Nearly got me. :D
I'm not sure how I want to react to this. It doesn't seem quite like a fair comparison. I haven't read all the Harry Potter novels yet, but by gum I've watched all the movies and I remember there being a fair bit of angsting about romance in those movies.
True, but it seemed to me that the romance angst was a result of a bunch of kids going through their teenage years together, amped up a bit by the fact that these kids were going through some really intense things together (on top of all the normal school-type stress). Even given that these kids are trying to figure out what's going on in their world, trying to save their friends, eventually trying to save the world - having *no* romantic tangles, misunderstandings, or pair-offs among the main characters would be distractingly abnormal. It starts with little-to-no romance, goes through some misunderstandings and separations, and characters slide into relationships after having known each other for years.
Compare to Twilight, where the romance-angsting seems to be the original point of the books, getting to something more (psychic shields, standing up for the right to make your own choices and take your own risks, etc.) later, and only as a result of the romance maturing.
I've been struck by the huge number of middle-aged male protagonists behaving much like older, grumpier Eragons in the TV line-ups. House. Leverage. Lie to Me. (*cough* Gordan Ramsay, Anthony Bourdain, and other celebrity chefs *cough*) And those are the ones I have watched at some point or another - I can think of another dozen or so I've browsed through on Netflix. I've also been struck by the *absence* of women able to do the same thing. The closest I can come up with is Glenn Close (<3) in Damages, which . . . has its own problems, and she's given much less leeway.
I don't know about those other shows, but with House it shows just how shitty being a dick makes House's life. Eragon gets no blowback whatsoever for acting like a sociopathic jerkwad.
Where I get disturbed by Twilight is when fans don't seem to see the issues and Actual Suck.
I think I agree with this, and with Nathaniel's point as well, but I'm not sure how we deal with it in the meta sense. Of course, I still plan to go through the books and say "this is unhealthy, this doesn't work in Real Life, this is a problem because..." but when I hear someone say "Edward is romantic!" how do I know whether they mean Real Life or fantasy?
And obviously, it's not my business to question or argue with them. But I mean in a theoretical sense, how would I know? I'm not sure.
What if ALL the Twilight fans understand this and we've been miscommunicating all this time?? OK, that's probably not the case. But would it BLOW YOUR MIND?
[satire] John Galt fans, on the other hand... [/satire]
I'll just level up: I rather enjoy the Twilight movies. The books, not so much, but I think the movies are fun. So if you feel uncomfortable about having enjoyed Red RIding Hood (which I haven't seen), well, there's at least one person around here you can feel cooler than. ;-)
--
It's still a fantasy of heterosexual romance providing life-long happiness and sexy-times. It's still a fantasy of being loved and worshiped by someone powerful and passionate. It's still a fantasy of finding your happily-ever-after before you have to venture too far out into the scary adult world so that when the scary adult world does come knocking, you'll already have that whole happily-ever-after thing taken care of.
The thing is, the first two of those three are perfectly nice fantasies. I'm a happily married heterosexual woman; I like romance, I like love, I like passion, and while I'm sure my husband would rather I kept any commentary on our sexual relationship off the Net, I will say that sexual chemistry and compatibility are good for a relationship and nice in their own right. Having a loving and attractive man in your life is, if you're a straight woman with an inclination towards monogamy, a very lovely thing.
Even the third ... well, I can understand the appeal. It'd be nice not to have to worry about money. It's nice being married and not having to worry about ever finding the right person. It's nice feeling secure. Twilight goes a very, very long way in that direction, far enough that I'd personally find it stifling to live that way ... but hey, if a teenage girl is feeling daunted at the size of the world or a middle-aged woman is feeling exhausted by all her responsibilities and wants some time out to dream of an easier life for a while, I think it's rather mean to judge her for that.
Especially considering, as you point out, Ana, the fact that pop culture is heaving with fantasies in which a boy finds an important role in the world that grants him status, friends, skills and a goal without having to do much more than sit still and wait for a Wise Old Man to come knocking on his door, or a man gets to have a relationship with a woman because he manages to kill a large number of obligingly disposable and two-dimenional enemies rather than because he ever has to learn how to talk and listen to a woman, or ... well, there are lots of equally unrealistic male fantasies on the market and always have been, and if you took them as literal guides to life you'd be in trouble. But few people assume men would be silly enough to do that.
Women, on the other hand, don't get that much trust.
If the Harry Potter books had been written like Twilight, we could have Team Hermione the Magical Werewolf, and Team Ginny the Sparkly Vampire.... and the whole series would have been about which one of them he was going to end up with, with Defeat Voldemort as a kind of sexy subplot. Can you imagine those Dumbledorian lectures which close every book actually being about "Are you going to choose the werewolf or the vampire, Harry?"
And when Harry first sees the Weasleys, he'd be all "Oh, who are those mysterious and incredibly beautiful strangers!" which would have been ... slightly weird at King's Cross, actually.
(I have read all the books. I have not seen all the movies. After a while even Alan Rickman as Snape is Not Enough.)
I have seen two of the Twilight movies (the first two) and am at least slightly plugged into the zeitgeist about them, but I've read none of the books - in fact probably your deconstructions are as far as I've read them. Harry Potter follows the traditional pattern of "boy's book" as being about Adventures while Twilight as far as I can see follows the traditional pattern of "girl's book" as being about Who Will She Marry.
Harry Potter is basically a school story, in the very British boarding school tropeverse, but even though large chunks of Twilight take place *at* school it's not a school story. (I think.) But there is a sub-genre of School Story which are "girl's books" but are definitively about Adventures, and quite often just skip completely over Who Will She Marry.
Anyway *waves* Hello! Narnia fan since before I can remember. Have totally failed to comment on any of the Narnia threads, but love your deconstructions.
I don't know about those other shows, but with House it shows just how shitty being a dick makes House's life. Eragon gets no blowback whatsoever for acting like a sociopathic jerkwad.
Someone wrote a bit about this on the NaNoWriMo forums - they were talking about the misapplication of advice to have 'flawed' characters, and then drawing a distinction between a 'flaw', and a 'weakness. The Boring Invincible Hero is Boring, so make them more interesting with flaws - but those flaws aren't interesting unless they actually disadvantage the character in some way. I connected it to the tendency to have sexist heroes whose sexism is pointed out as being a 'flaw', but who never actually suffer or lose much for their failing to treat half the population as real people.
(My new test for whether a character is realistically flawed or not is 'Would I want to be this person?' If the answer is an instant 'yes', there is probably something wrong. The more I have to think about it and weigh the pros and cons, the better.)
Oh right on.
I'm not sure whethe I ought to reply to you or Kit, but thinking about the points you both bring up, I've revised where Twilight (and Eragon, for that matter, and to a lesser extent Harry Potter) bothers me. It's not so much the fans not seeing the problems* as it is the authors not appearing to see the problems. Ignoring Bond (since the appeal to me there is being impossibly competent and loaded with cool spy gadgets), I don't think the creators of the characters I like would say "this is a perfect man" or even "a perfect hero" about them. (Which might well be the case with Bond as well).
*Though it's hard not to be a little weirded out by Edward being held up as sooo romantic, because all I see is WTF!? creepy controlling stalker. But anyone saying that Eragon is the most heroic hero ever, or the like would also make me go WTF!?
There's a couple differences between idolizing Eragon and idolizing Edward and Bella that make me wonder if the comparison is accurate. (Disclaimer: I'm not involved in either fandom, so my perception of their fans' perceptions may or may not be remotely accurate.)
First is the fact that Eragon's from a fantasy realm while Twilight takes place in what is very nearly the real world. Since Eragon's world is so much more different from the reader's than Edward and Bella's, wanting to emulate the latter comes more easily.
Secondly, I got the impression from your post that people idolize Edward and Bella not so much as someone they want to be as someone they want their romantic partner to be. This strikes me as an entirely different beast from the fantasy of wanting to be the uber powerful guy.
Would your crossover be based on the Slacktivist post about vampires and crosses, by any chance?
I liked "Canterbury's Law", which had a character rather like House et al, and lasted a season, maybe. Julianna Margulies as a slightly rogue lawyer. My favorite moment was when she trapped a guy into confessing for murder on the witness stand. He punches her. Instead of the usual male response to being punched--turn your head slowly back to the puncher--she is knocked flat on her behind, off her courtroom heels, and her team of male baby lawyers have to run to pick her up. Bloodied but calm, she announces, "The defense rests." It was over the top, and fun. Too good to last.
The all-time great bad-ass deeply flawed female character, though, is Marlene Ciampi, from Robert Tannenbaum's novels, before he got ridiculous and Writer's Right WIng Political Opinions inserty--the first dozen books are fabulous.
I assume that most Twilight fans are not insane, and enjoy the books as a romantic fantasy, albeit an intense and somewhat twisty one. Some of the smartest, most intellectual, most feminist young women I have taught have absolutely adored the books, more so, I would say, than the girls who were actually entering into relationships I worried about. It's escape, it's brain candy, it's a masturbatory fantasy that's somehow become a wholesome thing your mom will buy for you.
I really don't worry too much about the fans, at least in this sense. They are being bombarded with horrible messages about femininity every moment of their lives. Twilight is the least of their problems.
As for Harry Potter--I have to say, I agree with the quote, in the sense that Harry Potter is much better fiction, and more durable...but I believe that on some level Harry also created the Twilight fans, many of whom were devoted Potter fans, and then went looking for sexier fantasy fiction.
Dunno. My thing as a teenager were the Alanna books, by Tamora Pierce. I still adore them, but I think I got some really screwed-up messages there as well, for all of their 'strong, kick-ass central female character' qualities.
Maaaaayyyyybe.
Well, it started with someone here saying something about how Twilight vampires are the only people who could legitimately 'Go Galt' because they're perfect at everything, but then it crosspollinated with Fred's brilliance.
I find fantasies of being dependent on someone else way more disturbing than fantasies of kicking ass and taking names, myself. Like, I don't mind it as brain candy, but...I dunno, I'm with King. I write and read romance, and I still want there to be more to those stories than "having The Right Boyfriend solves all your problems".
However, I am also influenced by having to put up with...more FB posts about how HORRIBLE and LONELY it is to be a single woman OH WOES THE HORROR and IF ONLY they could MEET THE ONE and similar. Plus at least one girl in college who looked up to me all straight-faced and said "Oh, I *have* to have a boyfriend."* Ew. So I'm inclined to be snarly about that subject, because...damn, y'all. Having a penis at your disposal is not the biggest issue around. You can *too* live without him/her/them, and shut the fuck up, LeAnn Rimes. Ew some more.
Which, I guess, is the thing for me. Harry Potter/Buffy/LotR/Mercedes Lackey all have a fair amount of romantic subplot, but their characters also recognize that romance isn't the biggest thing in the world. That makes a pretty big difference to me.
Thanks for the rec. I read the Pierce books, too, and have some same qualms about them. Still, they got me into McKinley, so I'm going to call it a qualified success.
If you want your fantasy fiction sexier, than wouldn't something like Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse or Anne Rice appeal more than Twilight since Twilight is all about...the sexy frustration of abstinence or something?
I've been in several conversations lately that start with me saying, "Look, I don't like Twilight, but..." and it's the STRANGEST FEELING.
Okay, I've been resisting pimping books-yet-to-be-released, but I cannot restrain myself any longer. Two of my favoritest YA authors, Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbelestier, are coming out with *their* vampire romance book next spring, TEAM HUMAN, and... well, let Sarah tell you all about it.
I have *begged* my editor to give me this one to review.
I cannot be objective about Tamora Pierce. I am quite serious in saying that her books -- particularly the PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL series, but really all of them -- quite literally saved hapaxdaughter's sanity, and I'm quite sure she would concur.
(In fact, I know she would, since she wrote her National Merit application essay on the topic.)
For years I could get her to do practically *anything* by tying it to her burning ambition to be a Knight. This involved "fun" things -- learning fencing, archery, horsemanship, even deb training ("A knight must learn proper courtly behavior, as well as how to fight, you know!") -- but also simple daily tasks: "A knight must learn to keep her kit clean and organized / speak softly even when angered / pay attention to details / get enough sleep / etc.".
I am aware of issues in her books -- I am very uncomfortable with her depictions of the Exotic Other, for example -- but I cannot review her fairly. I am too deeply and personally grateful.
I mean if the complaint is "there's not enough doing it in this series" then it seems the result is they'd want to find a series with doing it. So it's not obvious that Twilight would appeal.
In the Sookie Stackhouse books there is not any polygamy, she's a serial monogamous. One boyfriend at a time. Any triangling is a bunch of pouting around and thinking about starting something. If triangles bug you on principle then it seems Twilight would bug you since a giant triangle is central to the narrative.
I can agree that mileage varies about what is sexy, I'm just saying that I can't see a person like "man, in Harry Potter it's all about adventure and there's not nearly enough romance" would then see Twilight and say "I have finally found all the hot and steaminess I was wanting."
[TW: Depression]
This decon - along with the score of people agreeing that it's OK to fantasise about things that would not be good in real life, if it's all imagination - hit a little close to home, for me. I've got a big ol' list of don't-try-this-at-home subjects that regularly occupy my fantasies, and some of them are.... Well, it can be bad stuff, and I do feel like I'm a bad person for having those feelings. I mean, yeah, it's purely fantasy; I have no notion whatsoever of doing anything like it in real life. And I'd never judge anyone else for having feelings they couldn't control. When it's just me, though, it becomes harder to shake the feeling that I am fundamentally inferior as a person because of it, and that's provided plenty fuel for other, more life-obstructing problems. Not really sure what to do about it, to be honest. Not completely certain that anything should be done about it. It's circular like that.
[End TW]
But then, this probably falls a little beyond the purview of "things it's nice to daydream about but would be inadvisable to pursue in real life", huh? More on-topic:
I think it's absolutely fine to enjoy things like Twilight, especially when it's balanced with a certain level of self-awareness. Honestly, most things have problematic elements to some extent, so it seems like a natural extension of the healthy media-consumption process, to me. It's all points on a graph, right? The Y axis is Personal Appeal, and the X axis is Problematica.* It's not bad if something personally satisfying is also deeply flawed, it just becomes more important to be able to recognise the problems it has, and exactly why it appeals to you. After all, it's not only about acknowledging the implications of a specific work; isn't it also important to be aware of the implications of your own feelings? Of course, that's not something you necessarily want to dissect in a public deconstruction, but I certainly think that some particularly well-done deconstructions have really helped clarify my own feelings on a great many things.
*And the Z axis is Technical Proficiency. And the... W axis(??) is Cultural Impact? This graph is beginning to confuse me...
Well, the triangle *does* bug me in TWILIGHT, but it isn't really a proper triangle -- no matter the "Team Jacob" nonsense, there wasn't ever any doubt that Bella and Edward were a committed unit. It was less a triangle than , umm, more of this: B = / = E
J
The suspense is not whether Bella would "choose" Jacob; it's whether her passivity will cause her to "submit to " Jacob.
not at all the same thing.
And as a committed romance reader, I'd add that "romance" and "hot and steamy" are not at all the same thing, either.
BrokenBell, if it helps at all, I too have fantasies* that make me feel very uncomfortable and guilty and like there's something "wrong" with me. There's a sort of circular self-loathing: I'm a bad person, I'm a bad wife, I'm a bad feminist, I'm a bad fill-in-the-blank. I'm not sure if this helps at all, but you can at least know that you are VERY MUCH NOT ALONE in this issue. *hugs*
* Both of the sexual and non-sexual variety. The guilt seems to stem from a deep-seated belief that I "should" have certain fantasies and "should not" have certain others. I recognize that this belief is unhealthy, but that doesn't stop my guilty feelings. *sigh*
"this is not so much the life that a teen-age girl would wish to have but the one that she already has, rearranged with heightened symbols. Your life could be like this; seen properly, from inside, it is like this"
YES!! This was a huge part of the appeal of the Twilight books for me -- it felt so *familiar* -- the insecurity, the drama, the obsession over trivial details, the feeling that every passing crush must be Twu Wuv Forever, that every setback was the End Of The World I Might As Well Die, the sense that everyone was looking at me, the entire universe revolved around me, the desperate desire to find the One Answer To Everything, the conviction that nobody else understood and I must be Meant For Something Different, Something Better, the tendency to Capitalize Everything -- I don't mean that was *all* there was to my adolescence, but I recognized a lot of it.
And TWILIGHT gave me , not so much a chance to revisit that (because, yuck), but a rueful laugh of recognition and "Thank God I don't have to deal with THAT anymore!"
Same reason I read a lot of shojo manga, actually.
I read the first Sookie book and enjoyed it, but I do not find the dynamic with Bill sexy at all. I spent my time with the book wondering if Harris was TRYING to showcase how unhealthy (and sometimes kinda rape-y) a relationship with a vampire is, or if I was just reading it that way.
I like Eric in the TV show, though, so there's that.
From what I've read of Anita Blake and Anne Rice, the feminism fail -- afaik -- is just as bad as Twilight, albeit possibly in new and interesting ways. I would also guess that the not-so-real-world-girl protagonists would prevent reader insertion in the same way that Twilight encourages it. However -- caveat -- I'm not read AB or AR directly; I know of them only through TV tropes osmosis.
@BrokenBell -- eh, I think that most people have "shameful" (and if any word in this context needed scare quotes, it's that one) fantasies.
I can't speak for my male friends, who don't talk about them, but for a lot of women I know the "shame" comes in the voice of cultural oppressions -- women should be "pure" in thought and deed, but *especially* thought, because it is our moral innocence (in the sense of "ignoranc") that balances and cleanses the taint of men's dirty dirty thoughts (and frees them to be the violent lust filled beast that nature forces them to be, amirite?)
Meanwhile, we hear the voices of our metaphorical mothers and sisters in feminism, who also (unfortunately) sometimes had a similar tendency to devalue the body, but in the OPPOSITE direction: "You only have fantasies of submission / bondage / pain / rape because YOU have been tainted, by the culture of the patriarchy, and you must cleanse your mind with the pure draught of sovereign independent Womanhood!"
And torn between the two, we forget the fundamental fact that our thoughts aren't Magic -- we cannot alter reality by thinking about something, even wishing for something, especially if the wish is subconscious.
It doesn't matter if my kinks are determined by my chromosomes, my childhood experiences, or the impact of cultural memes, any more than it matters whether my love for fried salty sweets and my loathing of legumes comes from any oth those sources.
What matters is that I don't indulge in the former to the extent that I ruin my health, nor avoid the latter that I can't get sufficient vitamins and protein. And if it takes adding a little butter and salt to my lima beans to get them down, I don't think that's anything to feel guilty about.
In the books Sookie's relationship with Bill ends because it's unhealthy fail and Sookie comes to see how bad it is when she's in a healthier one with SPOILER and you can easily read the contrast in the dynamics. Bill was never meant to be her Happily Ever After and the relationship only seemed great to her because she's never had a relationship before as a basis for comparison and the author did clearly state it was intentional.
I haven't read Anita Blake or Anne Rice I mentioned them only because I heard there was lots of sexiness happening and at the moment we're talking about fantasy with sex. I just said what I said to imply that I think Twilight is an odd choice of all of the urban fantasy series if a particular quality you are searching for is sexiness. Other Twilight fails aside, what turned me off from getting into it is that it's greatest claims to awesome is how into abstinence it is. That just seems like an odd thing to attract anyone who felt that say Harry Potter was too romantically lacking.
EEK! That sounds SO GROSS and not romantic.
No, romance and hot and steamy are not the same thing, but generally in stories where no hot and steamy things occur, in order to be romantic they at least have to be about something romantic. This whole Edward, Jacob, Bella thing sounds more dreary and forced the more I hear about it. I can see why someone looking for a chaste romance might read the jacket and pick it up, I guess I just don't get why they'd keep with it. This series is full of the dreariest aspects of romance. Obligation, being controlled, being buffeted around by someone else's bad attitude, the cranky sexlessness usually attributed to marriage (as opposed to the fun flirtatious kind before people that like each other like that get around to it) and whatnot. Reading about a world of pushy sexless jerks wouldn't strike me as romantic so I guess I'm just confused about why this would appeal to someone looking for romance. Usually at least there's some physical activity to earn books about pushy jerks the "romance" label.
I have numerous fantasies, both aligned ickily along patriarchal/colonial paradigms and directly orthogonal to them, that I would prefer not to have. Some of those I've managed to feel better about - being an agnostic atheist, for instance - and others are intensely uncomfortable. (Specifics redacted like whoa for everyone's comfort, but I'd be happy to ROT13 some if anyone wanted to feel less alone.) I find the intersections between "good girls don't" and "good feminists don't" to be the most interesting/uncomfortable, and it's a little suspicious to me that so many do intersect.
I really keep feeling like I need to step up and write a post about this, but I'm pretty sure no one would look at me the same way again online. :)
I've been hoping to work it into the Breaking Dawn "kink is okay" material, but that's ages away. *sigh*
Or, you know, what hapax said.
I haven't read Brennan (I don't think... or have I...) but I LOVE Larbelestier, so I will definitely be buying that one. Thanks!! :)
Hey, throw in being extremely confused about gender and one's sexual fantasies come out really weird. And that's before one adds "good girls don't" or "good feminists don't". And, on the non-sexual end of things, most of my favorite fantasies have got major issues - adventure is a genre rife with sexism and racism and other bad isms. The things I like might mostly have better ethics and interpersonal relationships than the things I take issue with, but they've still got problems. Sadly.
I really keep feeling like I need to step up and write a post about this, but I'm pretty sure no one would look at me the same way again online. :)
I don't think so. The point of this entire thread has been "yes, people have fantasies. They're healthy, even if we don't see our own in the same light."
Probably the only way it could go bad would be in a "whoa, too much information" sense. But overview-discussion should be fine. Just like it's okay to say "I had a broken leg" compared with a detailed, gory description.
And since I imagine this would be another life-deconstruction post, TMI would simply be off-topic.
TL;DR: This isn't a judging community.
Um... I'm not totally sure, but I should probably throw another trigger warning for depression down. I don't think it's anything too harsh, but I think get near some sensitive self-esteem stuff, so heads up, I suppose.
It's kind of... I worried about bringing it up here, since I'm hesitant to conflate fantasies that could be harmful to myself if they were carried out, with fantasies that would necessarily be harmful to others, but it seems like I might not have been clear about why I have problems with the feelings I have. I absolutely agree that people shouldn't be ashamed of indulging in a little fantasy, especially in a culture where women are shamed for simply acknowledging their sexuality, and you're completely right that properly managing one's "guilty pleasures", so to speak, can result in an entirely beneficial effect on a person's life.
Even so, I just can't bring myself to look at certain fantasies neutrally. I don't want to have them. I don't think anyone should have them. I don't think it's remotely possible for them to be used in a positive or constructive way. Their effect on my life can only be detrimental. I have a bunch of other odd kinks, proclivities, and preferences that would be pretty inadvisable to practice, and I'm absolutely fine with them; they're weird, and problematic, and I should be careful with how I handle them, but I don't worry about them. It's not hard for them to be harmless. But there are a couple of things that are too severe to be at ease with, and honestly, I don't think I should be at ease with them. My guilt is, in other words, part of how I cope with myself, and I'm hesitant to try and move away from it.
I really appreciate Ana and Dav showing some solidarity among people with difficult inclinations - honestly, it means the world to me. I'm really glad I'm not the only one who worries about if my fantasies make me a bad feminist, at least.
I think a post on the forbidden/shameful/disturbing fantasies would be good. Probably would need a number or warnings? Triggery stuff recontextualized in fantasy would still be triggery to read about...
If this isn't the place, maybe someone can suggest one? I go to kink memes to read and write the stuff, but meta-ing about it doesn't happen much at most, and the anonymity fannish cheerleading is just different vibe.
I'm really glad I'm not the only one who worries about if my fantasies make me a bad feminist, at least.
You're not. I frequently have bouts of panic that someone will TAKE MY FEMINISM CARD AWAY for fantasies that I have had literally for as long as I can remember. (And, as pointed out, this statement applies equally to sexual and non-sexual fantasies alike.)
I think hapax had a point: we can't control fantasies, but we can control whether or not we try to act them out, and HOW we act them out if we try to do so. If that helps. *hugs*
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." -- from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
One of my favorite quotes--thought it might be pertinent. As for people feeling guilty about their fantasies, it may interest you to know that on the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), there's a true/false question that goes something like "I have thoughts that are too awful to be spoken out loud." This is one of built-in lie detector questions on the test. If someone answers false, the test administrator knows that person is trying to present himself or herself in a overly positive light because everyone has terrible, horrible, awful thoughts from time to time. It's part of being human and having a subconscious brain that whirs along and suddenly presents us with some awful impulse like a maniacal jack-in-the-box. That's one problem I have with certain religious beliefs that you can sin in your thoughts. IMO, thought can never be a sin unless it evolves into an action that harms someone.
If not for my fantasies, good and bad, I would not be alive today. That's one reason the Shirley Jackson quote above speaks so strongly to me.
Hmmm, depizan, if my gender identity were particularly tied to my gender-identification and roleplay in my fantasies, I think I'd be intensely puzzled. So far it isn't, particularly.
As for people feeling guilty about their fantasies, it may interest you to know that on the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), there's a true/false question that goes something like "I have thoughts that are too awful to be spoken out loud." This is one of built-in lie detector questions on the test.
Really? That's really awesome. I'm glad to know that, because... yeah.
(Rather ironically, though, the whole thing is astonishingly subjective. Some of the kinks I've heard some people mention as the nadir of human awfulness I've just been like, "meh, it's not like they're hurting anyone." It seems very much a YMMV.)
On the topic of a post, I'm torn on how much detail to include, for basically that very reason. As Majromax says, I think it's possible to write a very vague one... but I sometimes wonder if something LESS vague is what is needed here, in order to clarify that NO REALLY, READER, YOU ARE NORMAL.*
* Because I suspect that a LOT of the OMG BAD FEMINIST kinks are basically the same half a dozen.
"I'm really glad I'm not the only one who worries about if my fantasies make me a bad feminist, at least.
You're not. I frequently have bouts of panic that someone will TAKE MY FEMINISM CARD AWAY for fantasies that I have had literally for as long as I can remember. (And, as pointed out, this statement applies equally to sexual and non-sexual fantasies alike.)"
The way that I have begun to be able to accept that my (kinks, fantasies, what-have-you) are OKAY and don't make me a horrible person on either end of the spectrum is to keep telling myself that this is part of what makes up who I am - even before I was interested in sex or had much of an idea what it was in the first place, there were stories and scenarios that my mind would take and run with.
The feeling of epowerment comes from understanding my own desires and interests, but also in believing that there is nothing inherently wrong with how I'm hard-wired, and that anyone who would want a relationship with me would have to be accepting and understanding of those fantasies. For anyone else, I would say that as long as both parties are in full and enthusiastic agreement, anything they want to do together is fine and dandy.... And 'agreement' could also include "I'm not really turned on by X, but I want you to have the experience of letting me satisfy your wants." I'm trying to learn to apply that acceptance and sense of "duh, that's fine" to myself as well.
I'm not quite sure what you just said, honestly. I don't know whether it's because I'm tired, but my brain keeps parsing in part as "my gender identity isn't tied to my gender identity." I'm pretty sure that's not what you wrote.
But I was pretty vague. TMI follows.
My body is female, my most common gender identity is neither, followed by both, followed by male, followed by female. I generally leave blank the Male/Female ticky boxes. (There's a decided lack of forms that include a Hell If I Know ticky box.) When I fantasize about sexual things, it is generally as a man. Actually doing sexual things, well, my body is female. There is no way for that not to come out in the category of "weird." And no way for my gender identity not to be relevant should I want to do anything. (Besides fantasize.)
there's a true/false question that goes something like "I have thoughts that are too awful to be spoken out loud." This is one of built-in lie detector questions on the test. If someone answers false, the test administrator knows that person is trying to present himself or herself in a overly positive light because everyone has terrible, horrible, awful thoughts from time to time.
I hope you've misparaphrased. With the question exactly as given, I would answer "false". For every and any depth of awfulness I have and could plumb, someone somewhere somewhen will have spoken such things aloud. Probably they should not be said, certainly I would not say them, but those are different.
I really love Tamora too much to be overly cranky about any of her stuff...or rather, my eleven-year-old self does.
Anita Blake was fun for several books, in a kick-ass-and-take-names kind of way. The series sort of disintegrated into a degree of Mary Sue-ness the likes of which the world has not seen before or since.
For me, dealing with my fantasy issues has given me a great deal of empathy for gay people struggling with their particular desires. They don't go away, no matter how much you wish it or try to punish yourself for them.
Trust me, I know.
Especially for young girls, I think the 'we're totally in love, and can take a long time to decide to Do It' can be very, very effective as a sexual fantasy.
Also, writing sex in a way that's hot is hard. Writing longing is easier. I'm someone who reads romances primarily for the bits before the sex, because the sex scenes usually aren't that erotic to me - they don't hit my buttons. But lingering in the the pre-sex (or off-stage sex) land keeps anticipation high and doesn't require that the reader set aside hir own fantasies for what sex will be like. Especially in genres where a happy ending is guaranteed (heh), it doesn't matter whether the relationship is consumated onscreen, or immediately. If the genre allows for something less than happily ever after, then there's reason for the relationship to up the stakes by moving onto sex, but otherwise . . . not so much.
I think I did mis-paraphrase--thanks for the clarification! It should probably read "I have thoughts that are too awful for ME to speak out loud." Keep in mind I read this in an Ann Rule book years ago, and the only reason I've remembered it is because it was a comfort to me--I used to be one of those people who carried around a load of guilt for things I hadn't done. I would probably fail a lie detector test even if I was innocent because the questions alone would make me feel anxious and guilty.
Oh, and Ana, thanks for posting your thoughts about The Red Riding Hood movie. I wanted to see it at one point and then didn't and then forgot about it, so I'm glad you reminded me. I remember the previews had a wonderful visual impact, especially that red cape against the snow and the shadowy forest.
I guess that leaves me mystified since the first romance literature I stumbled upon is the historical romance bodice rippers, and I stumbled into those when I was like thirteen. Now when you say "romance" I can't help but think of something like that, with lots of heaving busoms and carrying off sighing maidens and whatnot. There was lots of angsty obsession about love, but usually they'd already gotten up to at least some steamy kisses by then. The concept of teenagers thinking something like Twilight is lost on me because me and my friends when we were tweens would have died of boredom and been flipping ahead to see if they'd do something bad, and be quickly disappointed when they didn't.
What everyone else said about fantasies; go easy on yourself. If it's any comfort regarding non-sexual fantasies, my commonest rush-hour fantasy has been thinking about kicking the Achilles tendons of whoever was in my way. :-)
--
I don't think the creators of the characters I like would say "this is a perfect man" or even "a perfect hero" about them. (Which might well be the case with Bond as well).
Actually, if I remember the documentary right, Ian Fleming liked to be identified as the model for Bond and was rather disappointed when people started picturing Bond as Sean Connery instead.
But that's kind of the point: people talk a lot about what Stephenie Meyer does or doesn't put of herself into these books. Ian Fleming is just seen as a writer.
--
Also, writing sex in a way that's hot is hard.
Indeed. Writing a sex scene is kind of the acid test of writing, because it combines some of the most difficult elements. You have to describe physical actions, which is difficult to do without turning into a list of 'He did this, then she did that, then he did this, then she did that'. You have to describe physical sensations for which there aren't any words. You may have to describe non-verbal vocalisations. You have a whole world of double entendres waiting to trip you up. (For instance - my mind immediately took a dive into punning at reading that it's 'hard' to write a sex scene). You are describing people using organs for which there are absolutely no neutral words because they generally aren't discussed in public. You have to describe interaction which may not include the aid of dialogue.
Actually having sex is an awful lot easier than writing about it. And that in itself is a problem, because when the act itself feels so different from the way it's often written, that can be jarring too.
There's also the fact that writing or reading longing can be erotic, and I don't think Meyer leaves out sex scenes because they're difficult to write; her plot and mood depend on abstinence and - am I right that when we actually get to the sex there's a fade-out? Because that would pretty much be necessary for her tone, too; Edward's written as so cold, perfect, marble-fleshed and generally unphysical that writing about him having a penis would feel rather weird. Really, any of the nitty-gritty of sex is rather alien to him. The immediate problem that occurs to me is body hair. Edward's written as flawless and smooth; body hair, unlike head hair, doesn't tend to be tidy and fashionable-looking. If we picture him having it, it mars the icy perfection; if we picture him without it, it's peculiar and non-adult. If we picture him having a moderate amount of it, what about the texture? Male body hair is rather rough: do we let the roughness mar his sleek image, or have it soft, in which case we're back to infantilising him. The only answer is to leave it to the reader's imagination so she can pick whatever she prefers. And that's before we even consider the issue of semen.
Sex is messy, Edward is above mess, and a sex scene would be tonally all wrong. It could be written elliptically without too much description - many romances do that - but as Twilight is a book where much of the romance takes place in the reader's imagination anyway, I think that leaving the sex off the page was very much the right decision.
That New Yorker article is extremely interesting and makes some good points, but I think he's sharper about boy than girl fantasies. This -
What’s striking is how little escapism there is in these stories of vampires and werewolves. This is how the Bellas of the world actually experience their lives, torn between the cool, sensitive boy from the strange, affluent family and the dishy athletic boy from across the tracks.
- strikes me as wrong. That is not the experience of the normal teenage girl, any more than it's the experience of the normal teenage boy to be torn between two equally attractive girls. Two very appealing romantic prospects at the same time isn't that common.
I think that Bella's 'torn' status speaks to something more common: she's torn between two different cliques or subcultures, both of which are semi-closed to her and would require serious commitment and work to fully enter. It's softened by telling her 'We're wrong for you' rather than 'You're wrong for us,' which is what most teenage girls hear if a clique doesn't want to let them in, but they're otherwise similar. There are drawbacks to both, but both offer a sense of membership and identity, but she'd have to commit to be fully accepted. I think Bella actually tells Edward later that the real reason she wants to be a vampire is that she feels it's the right subculture for her rather than because she wants to be with him.
Teenage girls do dream about boys, if they're heterosexual, but they're at least as passionately invested in their social relationships. And that, I think, Twilight speaks to very directly. Bella begins life in Forks stuck in a clique of kids she doesn't much like, there are more exciting people she could hang out with, but whether she'd ever be fully accepted by them is a matter of much angst. That's the teen fantasy there: not Team Edward versus Team Jacob, but Queen Bees and Wannabees.
TW: Depression
BrokenBell, you are the first other person I've ever heard describe this particular thing that happens to me. I have no issue with people having fantasies that would be seriously harmful in real life, or would violate their own ideals, horrify their friends, or anything like that; heck, I have plenty of that stuff. Some of my recurring fantasies are probably unhealthy to dwell on as much as I do, but even they still feel like they're within the boundaries of a normal (for lack of a better term) level of dysfunction.
But then there's the stuff that's a whole order of magnitude beyond that. Stuff that I can't be objective about. I don't know how to be OK with the fact that it can exist in my mind, let alone that some part of my psyche somehow finds something delicious in them even though the rest of me recoils as instantly and automatically as yanking your hand from a hot stove.
This isn't the central issue of my life, and is less frequent than it has been in the past, but it can still pop up utterly without warning, and sometimes my brain gets stuck on it and I plunge into a seriously ugly depressive spiral.
I have to bring this to a close or that's going to happen to me tonight. But I will say this: we aren't intrinsically horrible, evil, disgusting people because this happens to us. I don't know if this will help you, but I hold on to the notion that this is something my psyche does, not what it is, or what I am.
I think it's probably more of a "Two hot guys equals twice the sexy" thing than anything to do with guilt.
Or, if you're heterosexual, it might be as simple as 'I'd rather look at/think about a male body than a female one because male bodies are the ones that do it for me.' Girl-on-girl action is an absolute staple of top-shelf material for men, after all, and the men I've talked to about it say that a lot of the appeal is just, 'I get to watch women doing sexual things, which is nice, without having to see any penises or hairy male legs, which are ugsome and unfun.'
huh, weird. I'm not sure how I would answer the "too awful to be spoken out loud" question. I do, of course, think things from time to time that I wouldn't say out loud, such as "hmm, my interlocutor isn't very bright" which I would never *say* not to my interlocutor nor to anyone else. But I'm not sure whether I'd answer the question true or false. I do think things that I know better than to say out loud, or things that I wouldn't say out loud to anyone but someone who knew me intimately and wouldn't judge me... but I think I'd probably get caught up wondering "how awful is awful?" and coming up with stupid examples like "my interlocutor isn't very bright", which isn't genuinely awful.
When given a true false question, I tend to answer "true" the questions that I'd answer as "more often than not" or "frequently" and "false" the questions that I'd answer as "seldom", "rarely", "never".
P.S. And I've probably been the "someone, somewhere" for somebody else, considering I've had this conversation at least once:
"You mean you don't fantasize about flaying people alive? Ever?"
"Um...no?"
"Then how do you know when you're properly angry?"
"..."
Ha. I once related to Husband an amusing quote I'd heard that went something like "If you've never fantasized about murder, you've not been truly in love," or something to that effect. (The idea being that you think some pretty nasty thoughts sometimes when you're REALLY VERY ANGRY with someone you love REALLY VERY MUCH. And the paraphrase here doesn't reflect that as well as I'd like, but yeah.) I thought it was funny, and kind of close to home in the sense of 'look at how awful our thoughts sometimes are'.
Husband got a really hurt/upset/confused look on his face and said, "I don't think about murdering YOU," and we didn't have that conversation again.
Writing longing is easier. I'm someone who reads romances primarily for the bits before the sex, because the sex scenes usually aren't that erotic to me - they don't hit my buttons.
Good point. I find the longing in Twilight WAY more effective than I would a Twilight-with-sex. Possibly because I did a lot of teenage longing, but almost no teenage sex.
I think Bella actually tells Edward later that the real reason she wants to be a vampire is that she feels it's the right subculture for her rather than because she wants to be with him.
AHA! I've been getting that vibe from the movies, so I'm glad to see it's canon. Phew.
Yes to everything you said about sex scenes.
Those are probably the hardest for me to write. Action scenes run a very close second, but poorly-done action doesn't descend into farce as rapidly as poorly-done sex does. (There's a "weepingcock" community on LJ dedicated to mocking bad sex scenes in fanfic; there's no comparable community for fight scenes, as far as I know.) I never worry about sounding ridiculous when I'm writing action, but I always do when I'm writing sex.
Also the language. I had a discussion about this over at Mike Timonin's blog--I have a hard time specifically referring to female genitalia because all of the words are either clinical, ludicrous (I'm sorry, but nobody over six should ever say "va-jay-jay") or vulgar enough that a substantial proportion of readers would probably find them a turn-off even if I don't. Men at least have a few dealable-with words.
Actually, if I remember the documentary right, Ian Fleming liked to be identified as the model for Bond and was rather disappointed when people started picturing Bond as Sean Connery instead.
But that's kind of the point: people talk a lot about what Stephenie Meyer does or doesn't put of herself into these books. Ian Fleming is just seen as a writer.
And no one picks on Clive Cussler for his multiple author insert characters. (Not only is Dirk Pitt young-Clive Cussler but these days Clive Cussler as Clive Cussler pops up in the books.) We (as a culture) are a lot more comfortable with guys having fantasies, aren't we.
Also, regarding Fleming as Bond... Ew. Bond is rather a creepy character, if one thinks about his character and not just his competence and gadgets (which weren't, I believe, in the books), but apparently his creator didn't think so. Joy.
Husband got a really hurt/upset/confused look on his face and said, "I don't think about murdering YOU," and we didn't have that conversation again.
Interesting. I fantasise about killing some people when I'm mad at them, but the closer I am to them, the less likely it is. I don't fantasise about killing my husband when I'm mad at him: I fantasise about saying mean things that would seriously hurt his feelings.
Which to me feels like a more dangerous fantasy, because unlike fantasies of murder, it's within the range of things I might actually do.
Thus the preponderance of hilarious euphemisms. I enjoy laughter with my sex, but it pulls me out of the action if I'm too busy cackling over "her dewy grotto".
I think non-romantic sex is actually easier for exactly this reason - if you're writing a scene that's not about sparkles and fireworks and is instead about how emotionally disconnected a pair of spouses are, or how much two people don't like each other, or sex as any number of other things, you can focus on the sex-as-metaphor or the contrast between the deed and the emotions, or any number of other things, but if the point of the scene is that these people are soulmates and everything is marvelous and yay . . . you don't have much to redirect to.
In terms of violent fantasies, the idea of causing someone pain, fullstop, doesn't do much for me. I don't tend to the 'flay them!' side of things or even the verbally-hurtful (I've tried that and just felt gross). But the idea of causing someone sufficient suffering that they will stop doing whatever they're doing and not hurt anyone else again and not cross me again... torture is ew, but an incapacitating bodyblow that would shut up a verbal abuser or other evil hatemonger - that's a compelling one.
Thus the preponderance of hilarious euphemisms. I enjoy laughter with my sex, but it pulls me out of the action if I'm too busy cackling over "her dewy grotto".
Is that an actual - of course that's an actual euphemism that someone has used somewhere. Silly me. I thought that the advice to not directly name parts was getting more widespread at this point - I mean, if it's necessary to provide a play-by-play, surely there are enough contextual clues to work out who's engaged in what? There are only so many parts of a body where things are likely to go in, and only so many things that are likely to be put in there.
I've thought occasionally about a blog post regarding my evolving relationship to understanding the concepts behind sexual fantasies, but - well, I'd be comfortable talking about such things with friends I know solely/mainly over the internet, but I have primarily-meatspace friends who read said blog as well and that would be much, much stranger. (Suffice to say for the moment that I find other people's thoughts on the matters curious and fascinating enough that I imagine I might in turn be bizarre to them. Yay diversity of experience, I guess!)
By the time I realised that my sexual fantasies were sexual*, I'd already heard a fair bit of Your Kink Is Okay and all that. My guilt was always about the things in my sexuality that turned out not to be real, built only of fears and expectations. The real bits I don't think I've ever felt guilty for.
*Sort of. As far as I can tell, my sexuality is a sort of vestigial organ. If you compare it to the ancestral record, you can see where several vital components "should" be but aren't. Some of the secondary components, however, are partially or completely intact. I've never been sexually attracted to people, but I did keep the fetish. (Shame about the nervous system bits in charge of physical arousal being hijacked by the nociceptors, though. I have a diary entry in which my fifteen-year-old self apologises to the future selves reading for writing in a way that might cause a "twinge".)
J. Random Scribbler: But then there's the stuff that's a whole order of magnitude beyond that. Stuff that I can't be objective about. I don't know how to be OK with the fact that certain ideas and images can even exist in my mind, let alone that some part of my psyche somehow finds something delicious in them even though the rest of me recoils as instantly and automatically as yanking your hand from a hot stove.
Hang on. That sounds like descriptions I've read of the O in OCD. Were you aware of this?
Dav: it pulls me out of the action if I'm too busy cackling over "her dewy grotto".
...seriously?
I also think that if you're writing emotionally disconnected sex, odds are you're writing the kinds of characters who can think about sex in fairly direct terms - and hence you can write about it a lot more directly without creating a tonal dissonance. Romantic sex, on the other hand, makes it harder to describe body parts because there aren't any romantic words for them: you'll either sound too blunt, too clinical or too cutesy.
I also think that if you're writing emotionally disconnected sex, odds are you're writing the kinds of characters who can think about sex in fairly direct terms
Ooh, that's a good point.
Which to me feels like a more dangerous fantasy, because unlike fantasies of murder, it's within the range of things I might actually do.
Huh. I don't think of murder of something I'm at all likely to do, but I don't place it out of the realm of possibility. (I'm not married, so I'm not sure if it would be more or less true for a spouse.) I think, like most people, I'd have to be pushed very very far, because I have pretty good violence impulse control and usually when I step back I don't actually want people dead, but possible? Yeah.
I know I'm approaching the limits of my stress because I've had some pretty intense fantasies about making people ride the bus properly. Why don't they move to the back of the bus? Why doesn't *someone* offer their seat to the tiny old woman with a cane? Why do dudes take up an entire bench with their spread legs and backpack splayed out?
----
Brin: I confess I may have recombined to get "dewy grotto" but I've seen both those words used in the same book. Can't remember if I ever saw them together in the text.
First fantasies that evolved to something sexual came way early - four, maybe five. I was disconcerted. (TW: icky potential victimhood) V qvqa'g rira xabj jung xvax jnf, naq ab bar unq obgurerq gb gryy zr, fb bs pbhefr V qvfpbirerq vg ba gur vagrearg. Juvpu vf ubj V jnf rkpunatvat yhevq snagnfvrf jvgu 55-lrne-byq zra ng gur ntr bs 15. Ivn rznvy. (Ba Whab. Erzrzore Whab?) V yvrq naq fnvq V jnf 18, naq sryg *fhcre* thvygl sbe yrnqvat gurz ba jvgu zl gbgf-npprcgnoyr ntr. V jnfa'g ernyyl ernql gb unir frk, juvpu vf tbbq, orpnhfr fbzr bs gur crbcyr V rznvyrq jvgu jrer Onq Arjf.
In other news, sex ed isn't merely about condoms and graphic pictures of syphillis.
I like the Millennium Trilogy, but there's a good case to be made that protagonist Blomkvist (sp?) is an author insert character.
An author insert character who has women by the droves because he respects them and doesn't try to dominate them emotionally. It's a good point that needs making, but "respect women so you'll get laid more often" is possibly not the BEST way to educate people. :)
But I like the books anyway. Mea culpa.
Oh my god, seconding the thank you to Brin, because I did NOT know that about OCD or "intrusive thoughts".
I've been for the past three or four years having these anxious split-second visions -- not really fantasies, because I do not enjoy them -- of me saying or doing something really inappropriate to someone I'm having a random conversation with -- swearing at them, for example, or hitting their knee, or saying something vulgar or offensive -- and it seriously unsettles me that I have these mental flashes of things that I really don't want to happen at all.
I'm going to be stuck on Wikipedia all day now, I just know it. But thank you. Good to know I'm not totally abnormal. o.O
AND WIKI SAYS THIS IS NORMAL. WHY ARE WE NOT TAUGHT THIS IN SCHOOLS?? I'VE BEEN STRESSING ABOUT THIS.
I assumed it was normal. I have those flashes of 'Person I am talking to would so totally not expect it if I performed a one-armed shoulder-throw on them right now', which I mentally categorised under the same label as 'I could get on the bus to the airport right now, find a standby flight to Shanghai, and vanish into humanity. No one would ever know how to find me.' It just amuses me to realise how many options we have at any moment that no hypothetical 'normal' person would ever contemplate.
Once something has been the subject of xkcd, I assume it happens to a huge number of people, since that's kind of his thing:
http://xkcd.com/706/
Of course, I'm protected by all sorts of privilege that hasn't trained me to see all the potential threats around me. I expect that there are all too many people who hardly need to be told that anyone could potentially turn on them at any moment.
When I walk home from school the bridge I cross is right next to a rail bridge. The bridge I cross is higher than the rail bridge by around about the height of a train car. Not a big deal, but it isn't lost on me that I could easily jump on top of the Amtrak. I have no idea why I would want to. I don't know what I would do when I was on top of the Amtrak, and I'm pretty sure that bad things would come it it (there must be a law) but it's right fraking there and it's not moving very fast and I've made jumps bigger than that before and I could totally do it.
And this thought has popped into my head, more or less, every time the Amtrak are crossing the river at the same time. Oddly, I don't think I get the same thought if there'a freight train there.
-
That's not an unsettling thought for me, it's just something (dangerous) that I would never actually do. I do have things that more closely match Ana's description of mental flashes of things that I really don't want to happen at all, they can be unsettling, and they certainly happen more often than I'd like.
Your saying "It'd be nice to go to college for fun and never have to worry about whether or not I'll have to make a living from my major...that doesn't work in Real Life because Real life husbands can take away that wealth and leave you with no education, no meaningful skills, and no job experience" unexpectedly threw my mind back a few decades to reading Virginia Woolf essays. Wow, I hadn't thought about them in years. I'm thinking of essays such as "Three Guineas" and "A Room of Her Own". Did you ever read them? I was never able to get more than few pages into her novels, but her essays are of a totally different style, spirited and easy to read.
Woolf (according to the essays) lived the fantasy you are talking about, of being secure and being able to do what she wanted without worrying about money, but she got that not from marrying a rich husband but from receiving a small inheritance. She said this was life-altering. She felt that this freedom gave her the room and time she needed to develop as a writer; she felt that she couldn't have become if shed been weighed down with responsibilities and the day-to-day grind. That leads into the stuff about Shakespeare's hypothetical sister and speculation about the historical lack of famous women writers.
I don't know if I would still like the essays. As I said, it's been decades.
Now that I think about it, didn't Woolf end up committing suicide? I think there was a movie about it a few years ago that I didn't see. How very sad. So what does that say about real life versus fiction that in the essays Woolf achieved happily ever after but years later ends up killing herself? I say that the older person does not negate the existence of the younger person. So Woolf is as I met her all the time ago, passionate and happy and determined, you can read the essays and meet her yourself, and she's also all the other people she is over her lifetime.
Funny how suddenly becoming independently wealthy seems like it should be a powerful fantasy but in fiction the female fantasy is getting the rich guy.
Good grief, that XKCD comic is my inner mental life. And you say that I'm not alone? This is so incredibly therapeutic.
My problem is that after I realize I could punch the other person in the face, I'm suddenly seized with this feeling of terror that if I did, it would ruin my relationship with them, and OMG I MUST NOT LET THIS THING HAPPEN, and it's the weirdest feeling in the world because I'm freaking out over the fear that I might be somehow *compelled* to punch them and then I'd be Very Unhappy.
It's only happened in the last 2-3 years though. I assumed I'd need to eventually see a counselor. Maybe not after this thread, though. Huh.
I'll have to look those up -- I've not read a lot of Woolf, but I did read a book (Virginia and Victoria? Or something) about her and her sister a year or two ago that was very interesting. I think she did commit suicide, though. :(
Seconding the Three Guineas and Room of Her Own recs. I found her easy to get into, but then at the time I was really enjoying Marx's writing style, which doesn't sound entirely plausible. (Years since I read either of them - mental whitewashing may have occured.) I like Woolf tremendously.
Hang on. That sounds like descriptions I've read of the O in OCD. Were you aware of this?
OK, you just made a light-bulb turn on in my head. Most of the written psychological evaluations* I've had over the years have indicated a mild tendency towards OCD, but I never paid that any particular attention. I figured it was just a skew in the results due to strong depression, and besides, none of the professionals I've seen have ever brought up OCD, and I've never felt any particular compulsions.
But thanks to that wikipedia article, now I know there's such a thing as OCD without physical compulsions. That's worth investigating. It may well be that the 'stuff' I described starts as garden-variety intrusive thoughts that somehow get a huge emotional zap associated with them. The issue isn't the content of the thought itself, but the reaction to it, and then the worry about that reaction, and then my brain falls into orbit around whatever it is. That does sound a lot like the O in OCD, and is worth investigating, so thanks for that.
* And yes, I remember that above-mentioned question from the MMPI. I never knew it was one of the lie detectors, though.
It's kind of a rule that after Randall Munroe makes a comic like that, thousands of fans will shout "OMG no way are you inside my brain?" xkcd has a bit of a reputation for bandwagonny fans (people whose response to any statement is 'OMG me too' no matter how inappropriate, like bringing up clinical depression and replying with 'Sometimes I get sad!') but I think Munroe has a legitimate ability to identify things that are pretty common even though people always think they're strange. (That's my reaction when he makes comics about walking efficiency/patterns, like the black and white tiles.)
I got about halfway through the seocnd book of the trilogy (without reading the first), and realized that this was incredibly well written, and beautifully plotted, and I didn't care if these people lived or died, and was having trouble telling much of the cast apart from one another.
So I stopped reading. I felt blasphemous, but it was just too much too read through if I wasn't going to care, or remember who the hell anyone was.
This from a woman who has now read the entirety of A Song of Ice and Fire. (To date. Now we wait.)
I'm weird.
BrokenBell: I really have to thank you for bringing this up, Brin. I hadn't even considered anything like this before.
You're very welcome. I'm so glad I could help.
This is completely new information to me, which is adding to my irritation at how little awareness there is of these kinds of things, especially for something that's referenced and joked about all the time.
Not everyone reads their way through the mental disorders section of the library at the age of thirteen, I suppose. (The library in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (where I lived at the time) is quite a big one too, which probably helps.)
Ana: But thank you. Good to know I'm not totally abnormal. o.O
J. Random Scribbler: That does sound a lot like the O in OCD, and is worth investigating, so thanks for that.
*grin*
I feel all warm and fuzzy and helpful now.
A nifty quote I've found that relates to the writing sex scenes subthread: "Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess." -How Not to Write a Novel
virtually all of them had intrusive thoughts from time to time, including [...] Impulses to violently attack, hit, harm or kill a person, small child, or animal
Oh thank goodness, I was afraid I was some sort of psycho waiting to happen.
I also enjoy fantasies of things I wouldn't want to happen in real life. I imagine I'd feel pretty guilty afterwards if I actually reduced all the cars clogging up my daily commute to ash, along with the drivers inside. Hell, I feel bad about doing nasty things to NPCs in video games, like the one time I razed a city in Civ one time and the owning NPC called me a murderer for killing all those civilians.
So, let me ask a question, which I guess relates back to my previous thoughts about Twilight reflecting common themes in romantic writing: what novels/movies can we think of that show a (let's say for the purposes of comparison), a heterosexual female romantic fantasy or pairing that's not problematic, or less problematic?
Arlin and Nazhuret from The Lens of the World immediately came to my mind, followed by the fact that I'm not sure they're strictly heterosexual, and the book is not really written as a romance, and it's from his perspective, not hers.
Less problematic than Twilight? How long of a list do you want? Pretty much every romance novel I've read that wasn't many decades old. I don't generally buy romance novels, though, so I can't list them. I will say that Mary Stewart's romances all qualify, though, and many of them are decades old.
Sticking to movies I own that would include romance in the description:
American Dreamer
Romancing the Stone
Ever After
(Also tons of stuff with romantic subplots, but that hardly seems fair.)
This is an interesting thread to read through, based on where it starts, where it goes through (and I'm heartened to see so much of YKIOK - both men and women need that reassurance tempered with an eye toward practicality, but it seems like women need it more because their fantasies are often counter-striaight-pornographical, and thus counter-cultural), and where it has arrived at.
So you're all wonderful people - don't forget it.
As for the need to Write Better...hrm, well, I was going to say if we should only apply it to writers that are doing it as Serious Business, but then I thought, "Well, hell, who am I to say that this Harlequin writer isn't trying to write the Best Damn Harlequin Possible and deserves the same seriousness of critique that anyone who fancies themselves a serious author."
So I guess, really, maybe even especially, in the things that we might consider to be disposable material, we should be asking for better writing...and then we run into the problem that not all of our fantasies will come up to the standard of Better Writing...
...so I guess we're back at the point of YKIOK, even though I'm sure there's some reason in there that I can use to ask writers of page, script, and screen to be better about their material, too...
I don't see anything untoward about demanding that works pandering to kink do so in well-written fashion. Even the, ah, less physically practical ones that I am aware of should be justifiable in a speculative fiction setting. The only exception I could think of would be a fetish for poor writing.
The whole true/false dichotomy is one of the most annoying things about the MMPI, in my opinion. I'm a shades of gray kind of person, as I imagine most everyone is, and although there are some questions that I'd answer clearly true or false on, most of my answers fall in the middle somewhere. The MMPI has no middle.
I don;t know the other two, but I'll definitely vote for "Romancing the Stone".
Virginia Woolf did commit suicide.
Thank you to everyone who posted about having random thoughts of violence in the middle of conversations, etc. Odd thoughts about kicking people, etc, flit through my mind quite often and have nothing to do with how I feel about said people. I kept having thoughts a few weeks ago about cutting off my pinkie finger with my new Cutco knife because it's so very sharp--talk about bizarre. I've learned to ignore these thoughts for the most part--I wonder if people who aware of such thoughts perhaps are more likely to remember their dreams than people who aren't aware of such thoughts. Perhaps it's some heightened awareness of the subconscious mind in all its strangeness. Anyway, thanks for the OCD link.
And I think it's possible to write a good romantic sex scene without mentioning private body parts. The standard words for our private bits are either too vulgar or too clinical for romance IMO and usually pull me right out of the scene. Connotation is so important when you're trying to set a mood.
Thanks for your answer. I think the reason I made the spontaneous link between my random disturbing thoughts and my dreams is because I have vivid, occasionally rather violent, dreams (I guess the violent ones would be considered nightmares). I thought everyone had violent dreams he or she could recall until I was sitting around talking with some friends about dreams and had them all look at me like I was some kinda weird when I mentioned the seven foot tall serial killer who had picked me up and shook me in my sleep the night before.
Later I joined a dream group and learned how to keep a dream journal. I also learned what some of the symbols in my violent dreams represented, which took away a lot of my anxiety about them. For instance, I learned that the seven foot tall serial killer was probably just some neglected part of my subconscious that was really trying to get my attention in a big way.
I think Tanith Lee did a good job with depicting romantic and kinky female fantasies in a relatively non-problematic way.
As for me, honestly, as someone who's pretty into the BDSM scene, I feel pretty comfortable with the fantasies I have that could be seen as extreme, violent or degrading. But I am ashamed of the fantasies that make me feel stupid or shallow -- the ones that at their roots are about someone thinking I'm pretty, for example. The ones that seem small and silly instead of big and epic.
As for the intrusive thoughts... I don't really have the ones about doing something bad or inappropriate, getting revenge on an antagonist, etc. I have scary, gruesome or paranoid thoughts pretty frequently, though.
It takes some talent to stay in a lucid dream--I've never been able to do it. When I realize I'm dreaming, I immediately wake up.
Kyra Sedgewick on The Closer? Yes, she seems all southern charm and such, but more or less dismisses anyone else's opinion and when she CAN'T close a case goes completely off the reservation.
Kyra Sedgewick on The Closer
Haven't seen that one, but I'll check it out. God, I love this community.
Boring is relative. Some people's most kinky fantasies involve a 69 with the lights dimmed instead of off. Other people's would require a renfaire, a mad scientist, a several-million-dollar dungeon and a catholic school girl costume ith a lizard costume underneath and a thirty year old man wearing them both to pull off. On this scale, there is the doable, the disappointing, and the impossible, and all of these are perfectly good fantasies to have and enjoy so long as you are enjoying them. Or, you know, enjoying the not enjoying.
A friend one said to me, "You know, if my sexual fantasies were actualized, they'd require some specialized carpentry skills, and traumatize me for life." Yeah. Like that.
You see, I read things like that and my immediate reaction is "God, I'm boring."
TRiG.
If you want your fantasy fiction sexier, than wouldn't something like Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse or Anne Rice appeal more than Twilight since Twilight is all about...the sexy frustration of abstinence or something?
Eh, it depends what you're into. Especially for young girls, I think the 'we're totally in love, and can take a long time to decide to Do It' can be very, very effective as a sexual fantasy.
If you want your fantasy fiction sexier, than wouldn't something like Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse or Anne Rice appeal more than Twilight since Twilight is all about...the sexy frustration of abstinence or something?
Well, I personally find the authors you cite as much more Squick than Squee. I am inherently monogamous, and find polygamy a HUGE turn-off -- to the point that even ttriangles set my teeth on edge. YKINMK and all that, but I do find the Twilight fantasy much "sexier" personally, more for the absolute committment of the principals rather than the abstinence.
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