Just wanted to share. Did anyone hear about how the birth scene from Breaking Dawn is giving people seizures? Apparently there are flashing lights or something coming out of Bella's vagina or something, I don't know. I'm not sure if that's before or after Eddie the Sparkly Wonder eats the placental sack. Of course, they PG-13'ed it up because Meyer apparently went schizo in the last book and made it all bloody. It was like she wanted to make the story good after she had already written 3/4ths of it. Poor Stephanie Meyer, she is like the Danielle Steele of writers.
http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=685825&affid=100055&ocid=...
This has to be my favorite part:
When the birthing scene came on the screen, "[My husband] started mumbling and he was blinking on and off with his eyes at that point. I was kneeling in front of him slapping his face."
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, said he has no memory of the incident.
Oh man, this article is even better about a kid who threw up during the birthing scene....Poor Kristen Stewart, your vagina scares people.
http://io9.com/5862729/the-twilight-pregnancy-scene-is-giving-audience-m...
Best part:
As a side note, the dangers of the Breaking Dawn birthing sequence were reported earlier this week by famed comic illustrator Jim Lee, who tweeted, "Had to step out of Breaking Dawn...our 11 year old son literally threw up during the birthing scene." Lee claims that this was a physiological reaction to the events onscreen ("He said the crunching noises during birth got to him") but that incident just sounds like your average preteen's protest to being dragged to a Twilight film.
Poor Stephanie Meyer, she is like the Danielle Steele of writers.
I hate to tell you this, but Danielle Steele is the Danielle Steele of writers.
I always thought Danielle Steele was the Nora Roberts of writers.
At least Nora Roberts writes FUN crap. Sure, it's ridiculous and predictable, but it's a good laugh and nice when you don't want to read Jung.
No, Nicholas Sparks is the Nora Roberts.
Wow and I thought only good old Chuck could get reactions from people like that. Didn't that happen a few years ago with pokemon and a bunch of kids had seizures and shit?
No, Dean Koonts is the Nora Roberts.
No. Dean's Steele Sparks Nora's Koontz
Seriously people, that's what you get from those articles not the haha funniness of them. I mean other than having a seizure must suck but the fact that the crunchy noises during the birth scene made his kid throw up. You can't write comedy gold like that!
I never knew birth was crunchy.
Oh come on - I thought we were being pretty funny.
I have to see this movie, this weekend. Gah, the things you'll do for a date in this city.
Don't have a seizure!!
@jacks - one day i hope you meet a nice girl who mocks you ENDLESSLY for caving and watching this movie.
welll, he already knows you, ave ^^ twilight is silly mormon stuff that teaches teenage girls to lay down in submission to their men, and disobey their men, only when their man in question tells them to get an abortion. .
I completely agree!
But that is what I like the most about the Twilight Saga. It creates this socially recognizable symbol that can be used to talk about those issues.
I have no problem telling girls who are into Twilight that, having evaluated the themes and events of those books, I find their misogyny troubling. This doesn't get you a lot of dates, sure, but I like to think that the facts of the book and its agenda stay with them and worries them. I suppose it depends on how alert and open their minds are, but it's a good basic litmus test for alert and open minds.
Alert and open minds ought to be troubled by Stephanie Meyer's misogyny. Of course, I also had a lot of trouble with her demonization of sexuality, but that is a different argument altogether. And I'm done having that argument.
I haven't read BD, but I have heard a lot about the birth scene, there was a facebook campaign to get David Croenberg (sp?) to direct it, based on that scene alone. It sounded like it would have been AWESOME if it weren't part of Twilight. But if it sending people into seizures and making kids barf, I might have to see it.
As for the secondary conversation, my husband and I were just discussing the misogyny and other troubling themes in Twilight. I actually did read some of the books, it's terrifying that so many teen/pre-teen girls are being convinced that this is "romance" and "true love", and it is likewise astounding that Harry Potter brought forth such vehement opposition, where Twilight did not (although my theory is that anything that tells teens to wait for marriage to have sex is okay in the books of the same people who were upset about HP, regardless of the context of that message).
The latest from Camp Twilight:
http://www.movieline.com/2011/11/twilight-fans-terrorize-the-bridal-indu...
One of my coworkers was ranting about how bad the movie was. She'd read the books and was pissed that they didn't show enough of anything. I wasn't sure what she expected, was every sentence of the book being played out SMeyer-style on the screen. She said the book was "so much more descriptive" and that the movies made Edward "so different". I know they did that so Edward would have some kind of character to him, which was a good thing. The movies (apart from New Moon) are quite bearable and make the slightest bit of sense.
My coworker said she was okay if I ranted about Twilight, but honestly, the literary shit that so many women indulge on for the sake of romance is troubling to me. Men get more selection of "realistic" romance than women do, it seems.
By the way, I'm fucking loving the articles. Any sort of in-depth analysis of the themes in Twilight is my cup of tea.
Bek--I think it's a sad comment on what women expect in relationships (most of the shit in romance would be unhealthy in reality) and refuse to actually do anything about cultivating good relationships with real men, who may not be able to give them a huge diamond and whisk them away to a castle, but might actually love them in a healthy and realistic way.
I hear women bitching about some of the smallest issues a relationship could have, then drooling and going crazy for actors and fictional characters. Fucking check into reality. The world doesn't have Fabio on the cover, and that's okay. It's better than okay, its a really good thing.
/rant
Plus, Fabio smacked into a goose when he was on a roller coaster - the moral of that story is that it's safer on the cover of a book.
also, "romance" novels outsell everything else. By a lot. that has to say something about something.
Well, technically speaking, "romance" is a very big genre. Lots of stuff can be classified as romance, not just fluff.
I'm not suggesting that all "romance" is fluff - I've read some, and it was fluff, but I don't suppose it all is. I'm pretty sure. But if it's literary enough, then it just becomes fiction...
I think romance is fine when it's not the entire point of the story. That's why Twilight is so deceitful in a way. It tricks you into thinking it's about the supernatural and vampires and then you read it and I was like, "This is all just a metaphor for abstinence". It was all FEELINGS but like immature 16 year old FEELINGS, there was no story there. Even the movies are just about "He's sooo cute", "Look at those abs", "Oh my god, I want that wedding dress". The "plot" of the films is like incidental.
I always tell people when I worked at a bookstore, the majority of all women bought romance and New Age books to become better people or fantasize about love. Men wanted business books and history. It really does prove men are from Mars and women Venus and all that crap lol.
But if it's literary enough, then it just becomes fiction...
Not if the author is a woman. If Francine Fitzgerald wrote the Great Gatsby (just as it is word for word) they would sell it as romance. Perhaps mainstream romance.
And if your characters are 30 somethings instead of 20 somethings, then it's "women's fiction", which is a genre I find to be total bullshit, but that's just me. I'm a bit touchy about the marketing aspects.
Most of what I write turns out to be romance, although it's more like romance through a meat grinder. I think a love story is integral to any good piece of fiction. All of my favorite shit (movies, books, songs, etc.) feature a love story at the core. Having said all that, Twilight is little more than some Mormon broad's extended wank fantasy.
I like love stories, but they're rarely ever done well, because the tension disappears once the couple gets together, and the only way to keep that tension going is by creating a disruption in the relationship, and it's ALWAYS cheating. There's nothing worse than when a romantic plot sort of overtakes the rest of the plot in a story. Let the romance change the main character in some way, but keep the rest of the plot going.
Go into any bookstore and check out the romance section. I am not saying there are not good pieces of literature hidden in there, or that female writers sometimes get pigeonholed--but having worked the "genre" section of a big bookstore I can say with certainty the vast majority of the books in the romance section are trashy, dirty, short novellas with painted covers of some strong, muscular man in a half buttoned shirt, using a one armed embrace on a pretty, long dressed, cleavage showing woman.
The new "modern" romances aren't much better. Well, the covers are better.
If given the choice to close my eyes and grab any piece of "chick lit" versus anything from the "romance" section of a book store, I'd take chick lit. At least there is less horrifyingly cheese-balls sex scenes, and the woman is often a strong character in her own right, except for the issue of her just NEEDING to find a MAN to be WHOLE.
And that is not to say I take issue with love stories. Most every long piece I write is about two people in a romantic relationship, I just try to leave "throbbing members" out of it, and I don't like this trend in women's literature that in order to be happy, you have fall in love with some fantastic looking man. It's nice when it happens, but it shouldn't be the goal.
@Bekanator - I agree with you. My WIP novel has romantic tendencies and I didn't want to make it about cheating so I added rape and suicide instead. Hoping it is slightly unexpected.
I never wanted to write a love story, because they always seem so cliche, but sometimes it just happens I guess. I always get the impression people assume i am writing romance because I am female.
I've never run into that, I suppose because the over arching themes in my stories are pretty intense, and the "love story" is just how all those things end up getting expressed? Like my major WIP is a story about a reformed neo-NAZI trying to get over his past, move on, and forgive himself. The plot is about his relationship with a woman who was beaten and widowed by a group of neo-NAZIs. There's definitely a love story, but it's all the shit they have to work out about who they are that is the more important thing.
I've never been accused of writing romance, but I don't say all of that^^ when I describe it. I say something like "It's a story about a reformed neo-Nazi in Baltimore".
@Renee - I'm with you on chick lit over romance, but chick lit has this rather annoying feature of pages of brand name clothing descriptions and cheesy gay best friends to replace the sex scenes. That and trivial rivalries between frenemies.
That said, I mentioned this in one of the magazine posts, but it's pretty upsetting to me, the way that literature is marketed towards women. It's like we don't have any other interests apart from romance and paranormal men and Coach bags and our stupid bitchy girlfriends. Actually, if you read some of the reviews for Holiday Reinhorn's Big Cats on Amazon, there are a few negative reviews from women who picked it up based on its chick-lit-looking cover and were disappointed because it wasn't more like Confessions of a Shopaholic.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with wanting to read more heartwarming stuff, but it upsets me that more women don't appreciate the deeper, human parts of literature.
My current WIP is meant to be like a satirical feminist novel with a slutty protagonist that goes through several different casual relationships, learning from them along the way. She doesn't end up with a guy in the end, even though a few of her partners in the novel could have made good companions. The whole point isn't that her promiscuity is to be shamed or praised, but that it's a point in her life that she learns from.
People like love stories, and that's a good thing. It's nice to see how one person can make another happy, but the forced tension can ruin it, as can keeping a couple together for the sake of keeping them together. Sometimes it's best to let them have a short term relationship, give the readers the nice warm feelings, and then allow the character to move on to bigger and better things.
@Bek--don't get me wrong, I am not a fan of chick lit by any stretch, but I can stand it, while panty wetter romance makes me physically ill.
And...I'll play the devil's advoacate and ask do most women like light, fluffy chick lit over the other stuff? Or has marketing just been pointed in that direction, and thus we (and they) assume their approach is working every time a woman picks up one of those books as a guilty pleasure (personally I read fashion mags when I want that) or we assume that women who read them regularly wouldn't/don't also read heavier, more meaningful stuff?
Most of the women I know either read chick-lit type books. My younger co-workers all seem to enjoy Twilight and that Pretty Little Liars series. The older women mostly read detective novels and mysteries, which isn't chick lit but still somewhat the norm in terms of mainstream reading.
This one time I left my knife play story in the break room and some of them read it. Makes me wonder if they actually liked it or if they were just being nice.
Most women I know read fluff. I've indulged in some fluff - but only on occasion. I admit openly and freely that i read Sophie Kinsella's book Twenties Girl, which is about a flapper era ghost (hijinx ensue), and found it charming. But it is by no means my go-to.
My mom really likes those Sue Grafton books - M is for Murder and so on.
Traditional romance novels (Fabio on the cover) are sort of like Mad-Libs for writers.
I don't know, I don't know that many women "in real life" and the ones I do know aren't voracious readers, so it is hard for me to put a finger on it, I guess.
My female relatives read a lot of everything. Now, I wouldn't give my mom a Chuck P. book and expect her to love it, but she would eat a Sue Grafton as easily as she would eat something more literary.
I don't usually read books by female authors, no matter the genre. For whatever reason the stories I'm attracted to reading tend to be written by men. The last book I read by a female author was some short story thing by Mary Gaitskill and I hated it. It was written well enough, but it was just so goddamn dour. Before that, I made it half way through The Fountainhead before tossing it across the room.
As far as what other women read, no one I know, male or female, reads for recreation save for my grandmother, and she loves romance novels and mysteries, typical old lady stuff. I think chick lit is pretty useless. At least romance novels are titillating, chick lit seems like just a lot of whining and pining over the opposite sex, whereas romance novels indulge in it, albeit with usually hilarious results.
I can't find any source mentioning that the seizure lights specifically flash out of her vagina and this makes me disappointed.
^^Hahahahahaha
I guess I was fortunate to have read a whole pile of literature written by women before I ever read my first "romance" or "chick lit"
mind you, I also read a lot of fantasy, which is the adolescent boy version of romance.
Am I the only one confused as to why a story about a woman who has trouble making up her mind between bestiality and necrophilia is so popular?
The publication is awful, yet the love messages and sms
wish that love will overcome will make people predict the last publication for the sequence.
Sounds like the girl's got disco fanny. I'll be expecting Goldmember coming out of there on rollerskates.
@Dwayne well, because it's hot boys being hot. (imho, they are not hot, but...) Look, if there was a story about a male assassin who curses a lot, drinks too much whiskey and decapitates people, and he has the choice of seducing the hot vampire bi girl or the dangerous, rowdy werewolf girl, would boys love it?
Boys, maybe. Men, no.
Ah, Phil...that's not true at all. Men like trash as much as boys like trash as much as girls like trash as much as women like trash. I've seen more than a few movies that aren't THAT far from Danny's little synopsis and you bet your ass grown men wanted to see them.
I was more making a statement about how I think grown men should behave.
Right, that's a totally different matter.
