I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that…. Is it ok if I ask for examples? Do you mean that they are retellings of Asian folklore by white people, or fantasy books based on Asian culture, or something else?
I should point out it’s less that non-Asian people have written about Asian culture so much as ALL my childhood Asian storybooks were written by white/non-Asian people
Ive just been told that my favorite book as a kid, written originally in 1986, about a group of male dogs and their adventures, is bad because it lacks diversity.
Did anyone actually outright state to you that it was “bad”?
If so, I think they’re missing the very point of this kind of examination. It’s not really about denouncing the media of the past as much as it is about helping creators make effort to avoid pitfalls in the future.
We are only going to progress as a society, and works we have right now are by no means guaranteed to meet the standards we set in the future. No matter how good a work is in this regard, the point is that there’s always room for improvement, you know?
At least that’s the way I understand it. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this somehow, it’s definitely gonna matter when I create content myself!
I suspect they didn’t call it bad but rather criticized it’s lack of diversity and because too many people think any criticism = bad your mind just went there
Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, I have an especially hard time intuiting the difference between criticism and bad, especially when it comes to my childhood favorites. ?
Like I know criticism doesn’t mean bad intellectually, but I just can’t seem to get my brain to bend that way. ?
Any neurodivergents around here have any debugging tips I could use for my brain on this kind of thing?
Laura
You could think of criticism as “a variety of points of view,” or “critique,” or “critical analysis” or “critical theory” — that is, that someone cares enough about the art form, finds it important enough, finds it complex enough, to want to study it and analyze it and enter into dialogue with it and create conversation around it. That could be true whether the content is “good” or “bad”. From that perspective, criticism is a gift. It’s from others who want to provide valuable feedback on how a particular statement or action affects them, so that the person making the action or statement can learn from that feedback.
It’s as much a gift as an honest performance appraisal can be at work. Hard to hear, but so much better, long run, than NOT hearing it.
…Just as Joyce needed to hear from Walkie that her talk of “God-pertunities” was unhelpful.
Mikey
When did Joyce hear that from Walkie again? I forget.
To be fair, the post you were replying to did use the word “bad”, so it wasn’t necessarily YOU who made the error, if it was one at all.
Also, I am curious how a book starring dogs can lack diversity, like was it because they were all male? Did they just “read” as white (in which case, I’d argue that’s a dumb argument)? Were they all similar breeds of dogs? Or was it in reference to the human characters that may or may not have been present?
And once again I accidentally hit the “flag” button by mistake when trying to reply, sorry. I really wish they’d move that so it’s not right next to “reply”, I’d be shocked if I’m the only one making that mistake.
spriteless_auntie
To be fair, like half of criticism these days is all ” Thing bad?!” A more useful question is, are they starting a conversation, or ending it?
Proxiehunter
I suspect you haven’t seen some of the internet drama over fiction lately.
Clif
How can you have a lack of diversity if its dogs? Are there like no German Shepherds or something?
JBento
I think it’s because there are no female dogs? It’s the only reason I can think of why ktbear would feel the need tos pecify MALE dogs.
If we’re talking actual dogs, and not anthro characters like Busytown or Mickey Mouse, then I’d say gender diversity is a lesser issue (though I’m not denying that it is an issue).
What I mean is, we need diverse fictional characters so that people of color, and women, and other minorities, can see themselves represented in stories. But no human reader is gonna see themselves in a dog anyway. If you’ll allow the comparison, that’s like saying that an actual Chinese person will feel represented by a Siamese cat.
And yes, OBVIOUSLY this depends heavily on how human-like mannerisms these dogs have. (That’s why the Chinese cat in Aritocats is definitely a harmful ethnic stereotype, for instance.)
Joseph Mound
As an Asian man (living in the US mind you) I have to say that I disagree with the idea that the Siamese cat in Aristocats is a harmful stereotype. I’ve watched the film dozens of times. I don’t find it offensive at all. Frankly, it’s a hilarious caricature of how Asians appear to lots of white people. I don’t see it any different than when a street artist draws a caricature of you, or seeing a caricature of a politician. I don’t believe they’re actually that way, it’s obviously an exaggeration. It’s only harmful if it’s coming from a position of hate, or malice. I don’t know anybody in my community that thinks different. It would be nice to have our opinion considered once in a while, instead of a bunch of white folks trying to tell us how to feel.
Mikey
I apologize for giving too one-sided a view of things, but you’re wrong to claim that I didn’t consider Asian people’s opinions. I’ve seen a fair number of articles by Asian people, complaining about ethnic caricatures like that cat.
If I was too one-sided, then I apologize for that. My bad. I just wanna be clear that my statement was in fact based on what I’ve heard Asian people say.
Joseph Mound
Fair enough, sorry if I came off too harshly. I just get so tried of being told what to feel…
May have previously mentioned that I write a romance novel series. The main character is a multi-linguistic high-empathy blonde woman. Recently, while working on a Child Crush list (inspired by a certain Youtuber), I realized that said main character draws a lot of inspiration from Melody from Hey Dude and Gadget from Rescue Rangers, both of whom I felt a kinship with when I was a kid.
Technically, it’s Twilight: Eclipse. Also technically, Bella is from a big city and then moves to a small town. Not that this really matters, or that I can even say for sure what the specific plot of Twilight: Eclipse is. I’m pretty sure there’s a scene in a cave.
I’m not familiar with the Twilight series, but would that cave scene be the one where people watch projected shadows believing them to be reality, and then one exits the cave, encounters things that actually are real and not merely projections, and their new knowledge makes them no longer fit into the group they came from?
No, I think that was something else. But it might still be fitting for Joyce.
Actually twilight is about a vampire old enough to be a senior citizen who creepily breaks into the bedroom of a high school girl, and she thinks it’s romantic
Actually Twilight is a silly YA romance wish fulfillment fantasy and overthinking it is sort of low-hanging fruit at this point.
Jamie
I subscribe to the Brandon Sanderson/Dan Wells opinion on this:
Twilight is something teenage girls like, and therefore everyone thinks this makes it a great target to dunk on. It’s not some great masterpiece or anything, but it’s not remotely as bad as people make it out to be and it’s frankly a bad look to be criticizing it for not being more than it is.
Yumi
I think it sucks how people tend to mock things teenage girls like, and what also sucks is some of the things marketed to teenage girls. Twilight for me falls under both of those. There are a wide variety of criticisms of it, some you can tell are rooted in “teen girls are stupid” and some that aren’t, but it does get hard to separate sometimes because the teen girl haters will pick up and repeat the more valid criticisms while really just caring about tearing it down.
Psychie
I originally hated it because my first name is Jacob and when I was a kid I liked to claim I was a werewolf, and the first time I heard of twilight was when a girl in my middle school choir accused me of ripping it off in a *very* mean tone, and she didn’t believe me when I (honestly) said I had never heard of twilight and had been pretending to be a werewolf for YEARS before it was published. Then the more I heard about it the dumber it sounded to me. I never read it, but of the people who’s opinions regarding fiction I respect who have, none of them thought the writing quality was good. I have also not heard anything good about the movies, but those are adaptations so that’s fairly par for the course.
I’ve never been one to especially care about target demographics, so I don’t *think* I fall into the category of people hating it because it’s for teenage girls, especially considering some of my favorite shows of all time were targeted at young girls (MLP:FIM, DC Super Hero Girls, like half of Disney channel, etc.), but I can’t really be sure if I AM biased in that direction, I just don’t think I am.
Yumi
I have a complicated history with the Twilight series, but I did read the original series (there’s the series of four novels, then the novella, then the two companion novels). I was thirteen when Breaking Dawn (the fourth book in the series) came out. A little while after that, I developed an anti-Twilight stance, but did not have one when reading them.
Skeptible
If you have sparkly vampires, people are going to dunk on it regardless of who it is for.
My objection to it is it allowed young people to objectify senior citizens sexually and I continue to get barely legal girls on my dating profile when I’m looking for mature women.
I call them grandpa chasers
davidbreslin101
And there’s this obsession with going out of their way to watch it so you can dunk on it, instead of passing by and saying “not for me, but you lot have fun.” I’m not that into paranormal romance, and I can’t say I’ve ever been forced to watch or read Twilight.
BBCC
I don’t doubt that there’s plenty of people who hate it for misogynistic reasons but there’s plenty of valid reasons to hate it – namely that Edward is abusive as hell (so’s Jacob but they never actually get together so).
Wraithy2773
Yeah, Twilight is bad, but it’s not uniquely horrible or anything. It’s about as bad as 95% of the other YA crap out there, the films deserve about as much scorn as the Transformers movies do…
…which is still a lot, of course, but it really is amazing that the series aimed at teenage girls gets all of the vitriolic hatred, while equally shitty stuff aimed at teenage boys gets mountains of defense.
Yumi
A general anti-YA stance isn’t actually better.
Psychie
Any genre that gets “big” will have floods of writers doing it, some for the expected cash cow, some because they are genuinely inspired by popular works, some by sheer coincidence, etc. The issue is that the more different writers are writing in the same genre, the higher the percentage of crap within that genre gets, and for the last few decades most or all of the “big” genres have been YA targeted, paranormal romance, dystopias, coming of age fantasy, etc.
If we assume the percentage of authors publishing crap is more or less constant, naturally any genre with more authors publishing is gonna get more of the crap. YA is easily one of the most popular target demographics, but you see a similar issue with middle-grade targeted books, you have tons of attempts at being the next Percy Jackson or the next Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, and most of them suck, some are gems, but most of them aren’t. Part of the problem is also that publishers have a similar attitude as TV and movie producers, which is that kid-targeted media doesn’t need to be well-written because “kids can’t tell the difference”, which is idiotic, but I digress.
Yumi
A writer who isn’t already famous who expects YA to be a cash cow for them is kind of laughable, tbh. Some people do get lucky like that, I just wouldn’t recommend anyone have the expectation.
“The issue is that the more different writers are writing in the same genre, the higher the percentage of crap within that genre gets”– see, no. Like, I can understand your logic, I think. Say there are three good authors with good manuscripts out there, and publishers want to publish ten books. Then seven of the books won’t be so good. And if publishers want to publish twenty books, but there are still only three good authors, then seventeen of those books won’t be so good. But 1. the issue there is publisher demand, not number of writers; an increase in writers actually allows agents, editors, and publishers to be more selective. 2. I don’t see that as what’s happening because there aren’t actually only “three good authors.”
Along with the growth in YA has been a growth in the diversity of authors getting stories out there. This is a good thing. (There’s still a long way to go in terms of diversity in publishing, of course.) This is happening in MG as well. There are plenty of stories that I’m sure were good that the world never got to see because of gatekeeping in publishing. There’s not actually a shortage of stories. The more different writers are writing in the same genre, the more that genre gets to grow.
(Also, publishers know that A LOT of YA is purchased and read by adults, and that, to some extent, it needs to hold up with them as well.)
Saying 95% of YA is bad is an opinion I disagree with, but if you think 95% of all published literature is bad, I’m more whatever about it. But if you think YA more “crap” than other genres, I find that pretty yikes.
Also, a lot of anti-YA rhetoric, along with anti-romance rhetoric, has ties to misogyny, with the majority of authors and readers being female.
thejeff
Sturgeon’s Law applies, as it always does.
davidbreslin101
I’ve met a couple of published YA writers at conventions, and yes, it’s not a field where you can give up your day job when you get your first book deal…. One of them argued that it’s actually harder than writing for adults, as the target audience can be incredibly picky.
Mikey
When you talk about how the high interest in a genre allows publishers to be more selective, I think you need to take self-publishing into account, too. These days, there are more self-published books than ever before, and self-published books constitute a higher percentage of what’s being published than ever before, too.
That’s not to say that self-published stuff is bad. I buy and read self-published novels and comics, and some of my all-time faves are self-pub stuff.
My point is this: There’s always a horde of lazy writers out there who are eager to jump on whatever bandwagon is going strong at the moment, and write whatever they think will sell instead of what they’re actually passionate about and interested in. When a genre–dystopian YA, let’s say–gets big, then the ever existing mass of lazy writers will churn out hastily-written dystopian YA novels and hope that these will sell just by being part of a popular genre.
So it’s not that popular genres are bad, or that publishers publish anything no matter the quality, but it’s a fact (if you ask me) that the popular genres will be the ones to get the sloppily written cash-in novels. I’m not claiming that, say, epic poetry is automatically good, but I am saying that if you buy a newly written epic poem then there’s little chance that the author wrote it in a weekend in order to earn big bucks from undistinguishing readers. That’s usually more common in the big genres.
Disclaimers: This isn’t a diss against dystopian YA in itself; I’m fully aware that the opposite also happens sometimes and super-niche genres gets poorly written crap that sells just because there’s so little competition (just look at dinosaur erotica, or better yet, don’t).
I’m just saying that we no longer live in a world where publishers rejecting a novel makes it hard for that novel to reach the public.
Yumi
Okay. I was specifically talking about traditionally published stuff, but I could have made that clearer. Like, I was going to go into the “if you count self-published/unpublished writing” then the idea is more accurate, but it wasn’t what I was talking about, and I thought I had gone on long enough.
No no no, they aren’t actually vampires. They run through the forest and sparkle in the sun they’re faeries.
Kimi
Fairies with an iron deficiency instead of iron burning them is the best description of twilight I have heard in a bit.
aelfwine
That’s actually referenced/joked about in chapter 1.1 of the web serial “Pact” by Wildbow:
“What looks like a goblin could be a demon, or a wraith, or a glamour. I mean, you remember those ‘vampires’ from out west.”
“The faerie? Sure.”
“You’re not getting what I’m saying. If they can fool themselves into thinking they’re vampires, and believe it to the point it becomes sort of true, sparkly skin aside, then they can fool us.”
It’s fantasy. None of these vampires are written like they’re the equivalent of very old humans, especially the ones who are treated most like Bella’s peers. If this isn’t what you’d go with re: How Vampires Work, okay, but that’s what this criticism comes down to.
Also, a lot of people fantasize about things that would not necessarily be great for them in real life, and that is okay. If you actually have a stalker, you can’t stop them from stalking you even if you really, really want to. If you’re reading about or thinking about a scenario where stalking is portrayed as romantic or hot and you don’t want to keep doing it, you can revoke consent at any time by putting down the book or thinking about something else. When someone thinks actual stalking is okay because they read about it in a book that was never trying to be realistic and they are not a very young child, then somewhere along the line there was a catastrophic failure in sex and relationship education, and also that person is probably trying to justify a bad situation they have no idea how to deal with. (I’m not including scenarios where two weirdos are doing a thing consensually, which is probably generally okay.)
the werewolf stuff was for sure pretty racist tho
Yumi
Unfortunately, “a catastrophic failure in sex and relationship education” was pretty common at the time the books were coming out. A thirteen year old just starting to think about getting into a relationship could read a book where stalking from a romantic interest is acceptable and think it’s not as big of a deal as they might otherwise. And the “never trying to be realistic”– that’s obvious for the stuff like vampires, but less so for how relationships work.
temperaryobsessor
While I sort if see your point, I also think fiction is in many way people’s first introduction into many subjects, and it makes sense to look at it critically. If for no other reason so people can point out the bad lessons and try to explain that they are wrong.
BBCC
You don’t get to go ‘well they’re not actually the equivalent of very old people’ and then go on and on about how ohhhhhh they’re so wise and mature and polite and experienced and totally from a different era and he’s lived so much longer than you.
And there’s a world of difference between someone who thinks stalking/possessiveness/controlling behaviour is hot in fiction and someone who doesn’t know how to recognize those things and how dangerous they’d be in real life and so defends it as fine because ‘he’s hot/they’re in love/etc.’ I’ve seen SO MANY people saying Edward isn’t abusive when his behaviour absolutely is. If you’re into it in fiction, fine, but that is very much not the problem with Twilight.
Are they? I’m very visually impaired so even with glasses I cannot see a difference in color at all. They look like the same shade of blue to me so it must be subtle.
RassilonTDavros
I actually downloaded the comic and opened it in Photoshop to check– they are indeed different shades, albeit only slightly.
Yumi
They’re different enough that I could quickly see they weren’t the same by looking at the comic, but similar in both being flashblack blue. I could give you the hex code for each of them, but those numbers mean remarkably little to me, so I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Go ahead! ? I love hex codes. And hexes in shows like Owl House! ?
Yumi
The thing I’m using says Joyce’s hair is #72acdc. What’s fun about that AC/DC formed in 1973. So. Close. And Dorothy’s hair is #83b9e7. I don’t have a fun fact for that.
Hmmm….. i dont know how Willis picks colors, albeit because most professional tutorials I’ve seen in the past emphasize the importance of removing colors that look too similar to each other.
Also for what it’s worth, the “b9” in Dorothy’s hex sounds like “benign”.
A benign hex, the most interesting kind of hex! ?
asmodai27
In this particular instance, my personal bet is that Willis drew most things with the usual colors and then applied a hue filter to make everything flashback-blue.
This is useful to keep light/dark constrast consistent with usual ones, but can lead to very close colors since we can no longer use hue to distinguih them.
BarerMender
Also, Joyce gives (to me) every appearance of being AC-DC.
Yeah, in case you’re wondering, definitely more variation in luminosity and saturation in the regular pallette than the blue one. Checked it myself in photoshop.
Discussion (220) - “Tangled”
Ana Chronistic
wow, feeling this
*has just noticed that some of my beloved childhood books are Asian stories… written by white people*
The Wellerman
? yeah, white washing is like the corn syrup of past American media, virtually everywhere,
But at least moving forward, we can make effort to avoid it!
Believe it or not dodged that bullet just now when figuring out how to hire voice actors for my DOA fan game. Particularly though voice acting roles.
The Wellerman
Woops ignore that repetition in that last sentence, could have SWORN I removed it before posting ?
True Survivor
I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that…. Is it ok if I ask for examples? Do you mean that they are retellings of Asian folklore by white people, or fantasy books based on Asian culture, or something else?
AGV
Maybe Aladdin or Mulan
Maybe even the 1.001 nights, which where redistributed (and rewritten in some cases) by europeans
Ana Chronistic
Some of them:
The Story about Ping
The Revolt of the Darumas
Shen of the Sea
The Laughing Dragon
A new one I found in a little library:
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
Ana Chronistic
I should point out it’s less that non-Asian people have written about Asian culture so much as ALL my childhood Asian storybooks were written by white/non-Asian people
These days I counter that by reading manga ?
ktbear
Ive just been told that my favorite book as a kid, written originally in 1986, about a group of male dogs and their adventures, is bad because it lacks diversity.
The Wellerman
Did anyone actually outright state to you that it was “bad”?
If so, I think they’re missing the very point of this kind of examination. It’s not really about denouncing the media of the past as much as it is about helping creators make effort to avoid pitfalls in the future.
We are only going to progress as a society, and works we have right now are by no means guaranteed to meet the standards we set in the future. No matter how good a work is in this regard, the point is that there’s always room for improvement, you know?
At least that’s the way I understand it. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this somehow, it’s definitely gonna matter when I create content myself!
alongcameaspider
I suspect they didn’t call it bad but rather criticized it’s lack of diversity and because too many people think any criticism = bad your mind just went there
The Wellerman
Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, I have an especially hard time intuiting the difference between criticism and bad, especially when it comes to my childhood favorites. ?
Like I know criticism doesn’t mean bad intellectually, but I just can’t seem to get my brain to bend that way. ?
Any neurodivergents around here have any debugging tips I could use for my brain on this kind of thing?
Laura
You could think of criticism as “a variety of points of view,” or “critique,” or “critical analysis” or “critical theory” — that is, that someone cares enough about the art form, finds it important enough, finds it complex enough, to want to study it and analyze it and enter into dialogue with it and create conversation around it. That could be true whether the content is “good” or “bad”. From that perspective, criticism is a gift. It’s from others who want to provide valuable feedback on how a particular statement or action affects them, so that the person making the action or statement can learn from that feedback.
It’s as much a gift as an honest performance appraisal can be at work. Hard to hear, but so much better, long run, than NOT hearing it.
…Just as Joyce needed to hear from Walkie that her talk of “God-pertunities” was unhelpful.
Mikey
When did Joyce hear that from Walkie again? I forget.
Laura
Here’s the source:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/godpertunity/
Ta!
Psychie
To be fair, the post you were replying to did use the word “bad”, so it wasn’t necessarily YOU who made the error, if it was one at all.
Also, I am curious how a book starring dogs can lack diversity, like was it because they were all male? Did they just “read” as white (in which case, I’d argue that’s a dumb argument)? Were they all similar breeds of dogs? Or was it in reference to the human characters that may or may not have been present?
And once again I accidentally hit the “flag” button by mistake when trying to reply, sorry. I really wish they’d move that so it’s not right next to “reply”, I’d be shocked if I’m the only one making that mistake.
spriteless_auntie
To be fair, like half of criticism these days is all ” Thing bad?!” A more useful question is, are they starting a conversation, or ending it?
Proxiehunter
I suspect you haven’t seen some of the internet drama over fiction lately.
Clif
How can you have a lack of diversity if its dogs? Are there like no German Shepherds or something?
JBento
I think it’s because there are no female dogs? It’s the only reason I can think of why ktbear would feel the need tos pecify MALE dogs.
Mikey
If we’re talking actual dogs, and not anthro characters like Busytown or Mickey Mouse, then I’d say gender diversity is a lesser issue (though I’m not denying that it is an issue).
What I mean is, we need diverse fictional characters so that people of color, and women, and other minorities, can see themselves represented in stories. But no human reader is gonna see themselves in a dog anyway. If you’ll allow the comparison, that’s like saying that an actual Chinese person will feel represented by a Siamese cat.
And yes, OBVIOUSLY this depends heavily on how human-like mannerisms these dogs have. (That’s why the Chinese cat in Aritocats is definitely a harmful ethnic stereotype, for instance.)
Joseph Mound
As an Asian man (living in the US mind you) I have to say that I disagree with the idea that the Siamese cat in Aristocats is a harmful stereotype. I’ve watched the film dozens of times. I don’t find it offensive at all. Frankly, it’s a hilarious caricature of how Asians appear to lots of white people. I don’t see it any different than when a street artist draws a caricature of you, or seeing a caricature of a politician. I don’t believe they’re actually that way, it’s obviously an exaggeration. It’s only harmful if it’s coming from a position of hate, or malice. I don’t know anybody in my community that thinks different. It would be nice to have our opinion considered once in a while, instead of a bunch of white folks trying to tell us how to feel.
Mikey
I apologize for giving too one-sided a view of things, but you’re wrong to claim that I didn’t consider Asian people’s opinions. I’ve seen a fair number of articles by Asian people, complaining about ethnic caricatures like that cat.
If I was too one-sided, then I apologize for that. My bad. I just wanna be clear that my statement was in fact based on what I’ve heard Asian people say.
Joseph Mound
Fair enough, sorry if I came off too harshly. I just get so tried of being told what to feel…
Rose by Any Other Name
I’m also feeling it, but in a different way.
May have previously mentioned that I write a romance novel series. The main character is a multi-linguistic high-empathy blonde woman. Recently, while working on a Child Crush list (inspired by a certain Youtuber), I realized that said main character draws a lot of inspiration from Melody from Hey Dude and Gadget from Rescue Rangers, both of whom I felt a kinship with when I was a kid.
Colineo
Emerichu?
Rose by Any Other Name
Affirmative.
Twitcher
Where did Joyce “absorb” tangled?
Raen
NGL, it might be that I was born in the late eighties, my childhood was mostly written by Asians (by which I mostly mean a single Asian country).
Doctor_Who
Isn’t Joyce’s favorite movie Twilight?
…The one about the smalltown girl who keeps secret from her parent her desire to be corrupted and join the legions of evil?
Yumi
Technically, it’s Twilight: Eclipse. Also technically, Bella is from a big city and then moves to a small town. Not that this really matters, or that I can even say for sure what the specific plot of Twilight: Eclipse is. I’m pretty sure there’s a scene in a cave.
deliverything
I’m not familiar with the Twilight series, but would that cave scene be the one where people watch projected shadows believing them to be reality, and then one exits the cave, encounters things that actually are real and not merely projections, and their new knowledge makes them no longer fit into the group they came from?
No, I think that was something else. But it might still be fitting for Joyce.
Segnosaur
Actually twilight is about a vampire old enough to be a senior citizen who creepily breaks into the bedroom of a high school girl, and she thinks it’s romantic
Imogen
Actually Twilight is a silly YA romance wish fulfillment fantasy and overthinking it is sort of low-hanging fruit at this point.
Jamie
I subscribe to the Brandon Sanderson/Dan Wells opinion on this:
Twilight is something teenage girls like, and therefore everyone thinks this makes it a great target to dunk on. It’s not some great masterpiece or anything, but it’s not remotely as bad as people make it out to be and it’s frankly a bad look to be criticizing it for not being more than it is.
Yumi
I think it sucks how people tend to mock things teenage girls like, and what also sucks is some of the things marketed to teenage girls. Twilight for me falls under both of those. There are a wide variety of criticisms of it, some you can tell are rooted in “teen girls are stupid” and some that aren’t, but it does get hard to separate sometimes because the teen girl haters will pick up and repeat the more valid criticisms while really just caring about tearing it down.
Psychie
I originally hated it because my first name is Jacob and when I was a kid I liked to claim I was a werewolf, and the first time I heard of twilight was when a girl in my middle school choir accused me of ripping it off in a *very* mean tone, and she didn’t believe me when I (honestly) said I had never heard of twilight and had been pretending to be a werewolf for YEARS before it was published. Then the more I heard about it the dumber it sounded to me. I never read it, but of the people who’s opinions regarding fiction I respect who have, none of them thought the writing quality was good. I have also not heard anything good about the movies, but those are adaptations so that’s fairly par for the course.
I’ve never been one to especially care about target demographics, so I don’t *think* I fall into the category of people hating it because it’s for teenage girls, especially considering some of my favorite shows of all time were targeted at young girls (MLP:FIM, DC Super Hero Girls, like half of Disney channel, etc.), but I can’t really be sure if I AM biased in that direction, I just don’t think I am.
Yumi
I have a complicated history with the Twilight series, but I did read the original series (there’s the series of four novels, then the novella, then the two companion novels). I was thirteen when Breaking Dawn (the fourth book in the series) came out. A little while after that, I developed an anti-Twilight stance, but did not have one when reading them.
Skeptible
If you have sparkly vampires, people are going to dunk on it regardless of who it is for.
Opus the Poet
My objection to it is it allowed young people to objectify senior citizens sexually and I continue to get barely legal girls on my dating profile when I’m looking for mature women.
I call them grandpa chasers
davidbreslin101
And there’s this obsession with going out of their way to watch it so you can dunk on it, instead of passing by and saying “not for me, but you lot have fun.” I’m not that into paranormal romance, and I can’t say I’ve ever been forced to watch or read Twilight.
BBCC
I don’t doubt that there’s plenty of people who hate it for misogynistic reasons but there’s plenty of valid reasons to hate it – namely that Edward is abusive as hell (so’s Jacob but they never actually get together so).
Wraithy2773
Yeah, Twilight is bad, but it’s not uniquely horrible or anything. It’s about as bad as 95% of the other YA crap out there, the films deserve about as much scorn as the Transformers movies do…
…which is still a lot, of course, but it really is amazing that the series aimed at teenage girls gets all of the vitriolic hatred, while equally shitty stuff aimed at teenage boys gets mountains of defense.
Yumi
A general anti-YA stance isn’t actually better.
Psychie
Any genre that gets “big” will have floods of writers doing it, some for the expected cash cow, some because they are genuinely inspired by popular works, some by sheer coincidence, etc. The issue is that the more different writers are writing in the same genre, the higher the percentage of crap within that genre gets, and for the last few decades most or all of the “big” genres have been YA targeted, paranormal romance, dystopias, coming of age fantasy, etc.
If we assume the percentage of authors publishing crap is more or less constant, naturally any genre with more authors publishing is gonna get more of the crap. YA is easily one of the most popular target demographics, but you see a similar issue with middle-grade targeted books, you have tons of attempts at being the next Percy Jackson or the next Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, and most of them suck, some are gems, but most of them aren’t. Part of the problem is also that publishers have a similar attitude as TV and movie producers, which is that kid-targeted media doesn’t need to be well-written because “kids can’t tell the difference”, which is idiotic, but I digress.
Yumi
A writer who isn’t already famous who expects YA to be a cash cow for them is kind of laughable, tbh. Some people do get lucky like that, I just wouldn’t recommend anyone have the expectation.
“The issue is that the more different writers are writing in the same genre, the higher the percentage of crap within that genre gets”– see, no. Like, I can understand your logic, I think. Say there are three good authors with good manuscripts out there, and publishers want to publish ten books. Then seven of the books won’t be so good. And if publishers want to publish twenty books, but there are still only three good authors, then seventeen of those books won’t be so good. But 1. the issue there is publisher demand, not number of writers; an increase in writers actually allows agents, editors, and publishers to be more selective. 2. I don’t see that as what’s happening because there aren’t actually only “three good authors.”
Along with the growth in YA has been a growth in the diversity of authors getting stories out there. This is a good thing. (There’s still a long way to go in terms of diversity in publishing, of course.) This is happening in MG as well. There are plenty of stories that I’m sure were good that the world never got to see because of gatekeeping in publishing. There’s not actually a shortage of stories. The more different writers are writing in the same genre, the more that genre gets to grow.
(Also, publishers know that A LOT of YA is purchased and read by adults, and that, to some extent, it needs to hold up with them as well.)
Saying 95% of YA is bad is an opinion I disagree with, but if you think 95% of all published literature is bad, I’m more whatever about it. But if you think YA more “crap” than other genres, I find that pretty yikes.
Also, a lot of anti-YA rhetoric, along with anti-romance rhetoric, has ties to misogyny, with the majority of authors and readers being female.
thejeff
Sturgeon’s Law applies, as it always does.
davidbreslin101
I’ve met a couple of published YA writers at conventions, and yes, it’s not a field where you can give up your day job when you get your first book deal…. One of them argued that it’s actually harder than writing for adults, as the target audience can be incredibly picky.
Mikey
When you talk about how the high interest in a genre allows publishers to be more selective, I think you need to take self-publishing into account, too. These days, there are more self-published books than ever before, and self-published books constitute a higher percentage of what’s being published than ever before, too.
That’s not to say that self-published stuff is bad. I buy and read self-published novels and comics, and some of my all-time faves are self-pub stuff.
My point is this: There’s always a horde of lazy writers out there who are eager to jump on whatever bandwagon is going strong at the moment, and write whatever they think will sell instead of what they’re actually passionate about and interested in. When a genre–dystopian YA, let’s say–gets big, then the ever existing mass of lazy writers will churn out hastily-written dystopian YA novels and hope that these will sell just by being part of a popular genre.
So it’s not that popular genres are bad, or that publishers publish anything no matter the quality, but it’s a fact (if you ask me) that the popular genres will be the ones to get the sloppily written cash-in novels. I’m not claiming that, say, epic poetry is automatically good, but I am saying that if you buy a newly written epic poem then there’s little chance that the author wrote it in a weekend in order to earn big bucks from undistinguishing readers. That’s usually more common in the big genres.
Disclaimers: This isn’t a diss against dystopian YA in itself; I’m fully aware that the opposite also happens sometimes and super-niche genres gets poorly written crap that sells just because there’s so little competition (just look at dinosaur erotica, or better yet, don’t).
I’m just saying that we no longer live in a world where publishers rejecting a novel makes it hard for that novel to reach the public.
Yumi
Okay. I was specifically talking about traditionally published stuff, but I could have made that clearer. Like, I was going to go into the “if you count self-published/unpublished writing” then the idea is more accurate, but it wasn’t what I was talking about, and I thought I had gone on long enough.
Vukodlak
No no no, they aren’t actually vampires. They run through the forest and sparkle in the sun they’re faeries.
Kimi
Fairies with an iron deficiency instead of iron burning them is the best description of twilight I have heard in a bit.
aelfwine
That’s actually referenced/joked about in chapter 1.1 of the web serial “Pact” by Wildbow:
“What looks like a goblin could be a demon, or a wraith, or a glamour. I mean, you remember those ‘vampires’ from out west.”
“The faerie? Sure.”
“You’re not getting what I’m saying. If they can fool themselves into thinking they’re vampires, and believe it to the point it becomes sort of true, sparkly skin aside, then they can fool us.”
Yumi
But luckily, the main other romantic option also sucks.
Ari
It’s fantasy. None of these vampires are written like they’re the equivalent of very old humans, especially the ones who are treated most like Bella’s peers. If this isn’t what you’d go with re: How Vampires Work, okay, but that’s what this criticism comes down to.
Also, a lot of people fantasize about things that would not necessarily be great for them in real life, and that is okay. If you actually have a stalker, you can’t stop them from stalking you even if you really, really want to. If you’re reading about or thinking about a scenario where stalking is portrayed as romantic or hot and you don’t want to keep doing it, you can revoke consent at any time by putting down the book or thinking about something else. When someone thinks actual stalking is okay because they read about it in a book that was never trying to be realistic and they are not a very young child, then somewhere along the line there was a catastrophic failure in sex and relationship education, and also that person is probably trying to justify a bad situation they have no idea how to deal with. (I’m not including scenarios where two weirdos are doing a thing consensually, which is probably generally okay.)
the werewolf stuff was for sure pretty racist tho
Yumi
Unfortunately, “a catastrophic failure in sex and relationship education” was pretty common at the time the books were coming out. A thirteen year old just starting to think about getting into a relationship could read a book where stalking from a romantic interest is acceptable and think it’s not as big of a deal as they might otherwise. And the “never trying to be realistic”– that’s obvious for the stuff like vampires, but less so for how relationships work.
temperaryobsessor
While I sort if see your point, I also think fiction is in many way people’s first introduction into many subjects, and it makes sense to look at it critically. If for no other reason so people can point out the bad lessons and try to explain that they are wrong.
BBCC
You don’t get to go ‘well they’re not actually the equivalent of very old people’ and then go on and on about how ohhhhhh they’re so wise and mature and polite and experienced and totally from a different era and he’s lived so much longer than you.
And there’s a world of difference between someone who thinks stalking/possessiveness/controlling behaviour is hot in fiction and someone who doesn’t know how to recognize those things and how dangerous they’d be in real life and so defends it as fine because ‘he’s hot/they’re in love/etc.’ I’ve seen SO MANY people saying Edward isn’t abusive when his behaviour absolutely is. If you’re into it in fiction, fine, but that is very much not the problem with Twilight.
Thag Simmons
I don’t think she’s saying favourite movie, just favourite disney movie.
Sirksome
Speaking of hair this blue atrocity allows us to pretend Joyce and Dorothy are the same kind of blonde.
Caro
like carla does
Kim
xD
Yumi
The shades are still somewhat different, though.
Sirksome
Are they? I’m very visually impaired so even with glasses I cannot see a difference in color at all. They look like the same shade of blue to me so it must be subtle.
RassilonTDavros
I actually downloaded the comic and opened it in Photoshop to check– they are indeed different shades, albeit only slightly.
Yumi
They’re different enough that I could quickly see they weren’t the same by looking at the comic, but similar in both being flashblack blue. I could give you the hex code for each of them, but those numbers mean remarkably little to me, so I don’t think that’d be helpful.
The Wellerman
Go ahead! ? I love hex codes. And hexes in shows like Owl House! ?
Yumi
The thing I’m using says Joyce’s hair is #72acdc. What’s fun about that AC/DC formed in 1973. So. Close. And Dorothy’s hair is #83b9e7. I don’t have a fun fact for that.
The Wellerman
Hmmm….. i dont know how Willis picks colors, albeit because most professional tutorials I’ve seen in the past emphasize the importance of removing colors that look too similar to each other.
Also for what it’s worth, the “b9” in Dorothy’s hex sounds like “benign”.
A benign hex, the most interesting kind of hex! ?
asmodai27
In this particular instance, my personal bet is that Willis drew most things with the usual colors and then applied a hue filter to make everything flashback-blue.
This is useful to keep light/dark constrast consistent with usual ones, but can lead to very close colors since we can no longer use hue to distinguih them.
BarerMender
Also, Joyce gives (to me) every appearance of being AC-DC.
alongcameaspider
Joyce’s is ever so slightly darker
The Wellerman
Yeah, in case you’re wondering, definitely more variation in luminosity and saturation in the regular pallette than the blue one. Checked it myself in photoshop.
JA
I dunno, Joyce’s hair here seems to be a tint or two darker than Dorothy’s. Either that or I’m imagining things.
Stephen Bierce