Wow. Okay. I’ll be honest with you, I was expecting something… more veiled I suppose but whatever. I’ll break this down… again.

Putting that quote back in context, I said:

The misogynistic undercurrent comes in when we use Twilight (and 50 Shades) as the height of “crap I don’t want young women to read”. And of course I have to ask why? Why shouldn’t teen girls read it? It’s not well written, sure, but that’s not the reason most folks give. The reason most folks give is that it’s bad for them somehow, that reading Twilight is somehow damaging. Again, why? Because teen girls are impressionable and will think this is the kind of relationship they should be striving for? Can’t they understand the difference between a romantic fantasy that means nothing, one where they can live vicariously through a fictional character and date the bad body without actually ever being in any danger of anything more than a paper cut?

And you respond by blaming dating violence on fiction. And to be honest, this really, really pissed me off. I don’t know if you’re aware how much responsibility you’re putting on stories here, but it’s a lot. You’re placing blame on fiction when the blame for any and all abuse in relationships should be on the abusers. I’m very sympathetic to your friends and I hate that they were ever abused, but it wasn’t because of stories, it was because their partners were dicks. Their partners made the choices to be abusive.

Look, perhaps I made a mistake by using the term “critical thinking” when I really meant “the ability to differentiate between fiction and the real world” I’m not asking teenage girls to sit down and write an essay about every book they read, but I am saying that most teenagers know the difference real and not real and that the hopeful optimism in things like “happily ever after” and those kinds of romantic notions have more to do with the idealism and optimism of youth than they do with the kinds of stories we tell. Art is reflective. It can seek to change the world we’re living in, but for the most part it reflects something about the world. We write about our hopes, our fears, our wants, our dreams, and our worries. We write about what the world is and what we fear or wish it could be. This is the reason fantasy exists. We want to slay dragons and save the day. We want happily ever afters. We want to have some kind of power in our own lives, especially when we have none.

And I have to ask, why do you think certain stories appeal to certain kinds of people? Why would teenage girls especially be drawn to love stories where bad boys have soft centers and desire them wholly? Why would a teenage girl want a story where she’s special and important and has power over men? Well, I’d say a lot of it has to do with the fact that young women have very little power in the real world. In fiction they can explore a power fantasy they don’t have access to in real life.

I know I’m probably not going to change your mind, and that’s okay. You can say you want better stories for teen girls and that’s fine, but what I’m saying is I really don’t think there’s that much harm in young women reading their “trashy” teen romances. You said yourself that as a teen you loved Angel/Buffy, and while I don’t know much about Buffy at all I do know that you yourself put it in the “power imbalance”/bad category in your original post. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that even as a teen you knew it wasn’t perfect, but there was something about it you loved. It spoke to something inside you, and it made you happy. So I have to ask you here, what makes you so special? What makes you different from all the other girls who loved that relationship or relationship like it that grew up well adjusted and able to understand that things that are okay in books aren’t always okay in real life? I’m not asking them to “ignore” things. I’m asking them to think about things. I believe they can. I believe they do. I believe we’ll get better at is as time goes on. Education goes a lot with it, because even if every teen romance ever written from now on was a shining example of real love (which… I’m not ever going to get into that) there would still be dating violence. Cruel people will always be cruel, but the key is recognizing the behavior for what it is and helping those who need help.

Now, of course I’m saying we should be critical of media. I’ve said that several times. But I actually do think young women are smart enough to do it. I was a teenager when Twilight came out. I was one of those teenage girls who used to get in fights with other girls to tell them what they were reading was trash. I was one of those girls who cited all those articles and think-pieces about how bad Twilight was. I’m deeply ashamed of that now, because I was an ass. I shouldn’t’ve been out there moralizing about how terrible it was. My peers understood it was just a story. They loved it for their own reasons, but I was the jackass who didn’t trust their judgment. I was wrong. But the fact was that when Twilight was a thing (ten years ago) the environment around it was such that plenty of people were telling teen girls the relationship wasn’t ideal, to the point of bashing. Teen girls were educated on the issues with that series whether they wanted to be or not.

As to the larger conversation about the messages we send in media, I do feel there are harmful messages sent to all people. I’m not saying there aren’t. What I am saying is that we’re too hard on things like teen romance. Media isn’t the only thing that affects who we are and how we behave, and I would wager that a lot of the harmful things we’re taught aren’t taught through television or books, but through parents, teachers, and guardians. “He picks on you because he likes you” was told to me by my own mother. The conversation about bad messaging is complex, and as I stated before I refuse to lay it all at the feet of art. There are dozens of factors. And I also don’t agree that the majority of love stories aimed at teen girls are in the same vein as Twilight.

And to the thing about boys, what I was saying is that no one talks about how terrible it is for boys to read books like say… Ender’s Game. No one talks about how damaging and dangerous it is for boys to read about someone who is essentially a child solider who destroys entire worlds. That’s what I meant. No one expects boys to become Ender because they read about him. We also don’t expect young women to become Katniss and kill kids and topple governments. I know these are different genres, but that’s my point. My issue is that we hold romance to a higher standard when it’s just as fantastical as any other genre.

But I will tell you what I think is unfair and unreasonable: assuming that young woman can’t think about the media they consume. It’s unfair and unreasonable to hold books written by women, for women to a standard we don’t hold for books written by men, for men. It’s unfair and unreasonable to blame stories for the actions for real people. It’s unfair and unreasonable to hold girls to a different standard and to moralize about their tastes.

@tinkdw mentioned you in a post

@rosemoonweaver interesting addition! Yeah I wasn’t going into the details specifically of good or bad ships tho I accept it comes across as such more specifically trends of shippers which In my experience def has fallen into this division as I stated. Agreed with all your points about why people ship things, as I said, each to their own! However I heavily HEAVILY refute the concept that disliking yet more power imbalance / dark “saviour” rhetoric in Twilight/50 shades is misogynist.

If that’s your experience, that’s fine, however I felt it was important to point out the multitude of reasons people ship what they do.

I will say, however, that a good way of really finding out what draws people to things is to ask them and not just use your own observations. You may not have gone into detail about “good” ships vs “bad” ships, you implied there were “good” ships and “bad” ships. I take issue with this, but I’ve said my piece on it already.

I never said disliking power imbalances or “dark saviors” and the themes in Twilight/50 Shades was misogynistic. What I said was:

Lastly, I’m gonna go to bat for Twilight here a bit. Can we please stop slamming 50 Shades and Twilight as if they’re the worst thing a teenage girl or young woman can read or enjoy? Please? Look, the trope of shitty dudes being changed by the women they love isn’t new. It’s old as hell and most often comes up in literature written by women, for women. […]

I know I’m on a tangent now, but I really need to say that I dislike the undercurrent of misogyny that sits inside the bashing of things like Twilight. Sure, it’s mass media and we ought to be critical of it, but that doesn’t mean it should get blamed for all ills and for “sending a bad message”.

My issue with the way we talk about things like Twilight and 50 Shades implies a certain lack of critical thinking on the part of young women. I never said you were being a misogynist, nor did I say disliking those things was misogynistic, but I can’t help but notice that whenever we talk about these kinds of fiction (”we” as in all people who talk about these things) we put an extra pressure on these kinds of fiction.

The history of literature written by women, for women is full of darker elements. Power imbalances and dark dangerous men, wide-eyed optimistic women, and scandalous affairs are all staples of romance, dating back to capital-R Romantic literature. You don’t have to like that. No one has to like that, but it exists. The misogynistic undercurrent comes in when we use Twilight (and 50 Shades) as the height of “crap I don’t want young women to read”. And of course I have to ask why? Why shouldn’t teen girls read it? It’s not well written, sure, but that’s not the reason most folks give. The reason most folks give is that it’s bad for them somehow, that reading Twilight is somehow damaging. Again, why? Because teen girls are impressionable and will think this is the kind of relationship they should be striving for? Can’t they understand the difference between a romantic fantasy that means nothing, one where they can live vicariously through a fictional character and date the bad body without actually ever being in any danger of anything more than a paper cut?

My problem, as I stated before is that the undercurrent of the argument assumes teen girls will want to emulate the relationships they read about. The undercurrent of arguments that some fiction is somehow bad for women is that women need to be protected from the things they write for themselves as fantasy. It assumes a lack of critical thinking skills that isn’t present when we talk about why teenage boys shouldn’t read about trouble boys who get into fights and get themselves hurt. We don’t really have those kinds of conversations about literature aimed at young men. We don’t talk about how war novels or spy novels or the like are bad for boys. And frankly, if we started I’d be very skeptical of those conversations. I’m always hesitant to lay the societal ills at the feet of art, no matter how well done that art is.

My problem wasn’t liking or disliking themes or tropes in fiction, my problem is the underlying idea that these themes or tropes are harmful specifically to the people who love them the most because they will love those things and that is somehow a bad thing.

Have you noticed a trend or a pattern like certain ships or ship dynamics attracting certain kinds of people? Im not trying to start wank. Im curious bc ALL my rl friends ship my notps like Bill & Sookie over Eric & Sookie. Bangel over Spuffy. Bibro over destiel. And since I have emotional/mental problems, i worry its me bc Im drawn to or I romanticize dysfunctional unhealthy relationships. (Btw my fave Spuffy argument is how Angelus and Spike viewed their souls. A curse vs atonement)

tinkdw:

Hi 🙂

Firstly I want to say please don’t worry about things you like! If you like it you like it, unless it’s causing you or someone else harm it’s all good 🙂

Yes I have noticed a link, I’ve been discussing it recently actually with friends, how there seems to (generally not always but generally) be a Bangel/Sookie x Bill/Wincest divide v Spuffy/Sookie x Eric/Destiel in shippers.

It comes down to why you like things I guess and it does totally make sense to like either an obvious

1.Bangel/Sookie x Bill/Wincest: “first love” or just… first on screen, kind of thing that is quite soulmate-y and including a power imbalance, a kind of “save me prince charming” thing, dark and exciting to watch, the word I hate passionate where what it really means is emotionally abusive and even quite depreciative, with an element of one (usually the woman) being young, naive and wide eyed (the kind of thing that often is pushed on teenage stories because “teenage girls love this” well yeah cos it’s all we got when I was a teen and urgh no more thank you! I’m looking at you Twilight/50 shades! I don’t want this for my teenage girl if I have one!).

versus

2. Spuffy/Sookie x Eric/Destiel: something that is much more long term in coming, takes shape over time, is deep in the narrative, ends up being really quite healthy in terms of real life comparisons with a more equal power balance, making the “male figure” far more soft and giving the “female figure” more power in a het relationship and in a same sex still with a similar meeting in the middle concept, giving them more agency in the relationship (especially the woman when it’s het as usually she’s younger and in awe of the first boyfriend but older and more world wise by the time it comes to the second), giving her far more choice in the matter, totally not soulmate-y at all but about them growing up.

This is just a random person opinion, based on what I’ve seen. Though I have spoken to people where we discussed the way Buffy/Angel as shows finished around the time SPN started and how the exact same online dialogue and terms – eg “delusional”, “unhealthy”, “pandering” “the show is going to shit” – started coming about in SPN fandom and clearly were the same people who were just as vile about SPN as they were Buffy/Angel so I do think there is a clear link as well as the one I had already noted psychologically:

https://tinkdw.tumblr.com/post/171169423912/rahirah-tesla1321-tinkdw-i-wonder-if-the

Ooookay there’s a lot to unpack here. @tinkdw if you’d like to have a conversation about this in a more private way, I’m all for it. Please don’t think that I’m attacking you, because I’m not. I just have a lot of issues with this line of thought because I think there’s a lot more going on here than just “power imbalance” vs “power balance”. I think that’s quite reductive and since I’ve been involved with fandom the concept of shipping, why people ship what they do, and how they ship things has fascinated me. I’ve been drawn to understand it and the shippers who enjoy it. So, please allow me to discuss what I’ve found through talking to folks and reading their works and headcanons.

First of all, yes, different people are drawn to different dynamics and relationships. What “does it” in terms of satisfying drama is different for everyone. Some folks love soft and fluffy pairings with minimum angst, other people love love/hate, slap-slap-kiss relationships. There’s also an element of relatability to characters that plays in to why people ship what they do. If someone is more interested in one or two characters they’re more likely to ship them together, especially if the dynamic is one that interests them.

Every ship that has ever existed has some kind of core “essence” if you will. It’s a theme that runs through nearly every AU and canon fic that these characters appear in and often is the very thing that draws people in. For something like destiel it seems like “meeting in the middle” and “star-crossed lovers” fit pretty well. (I mean, look at how many human/creature aus there are. Hell, the ship itself is human/immortal creature.) That’s fun for some folks. Wincest is more “ride-or-die, ‘til the end of the line” “Us against the world” “I don’t want to live without you” and that just does “it” for some folks. The social taboo might also play into shipping, either as a “sure whatever I don’t care” factor or a “this is wrong and I like that” factor. I could get into the psychology of taboos but I’m not really wanting to right now. All I will say is that this taboo isn’t limited to one ship, nor is it limited to fandom. Some people enjoy the fantasy of it, and that doesn’t mean they’re out there wanting to sleep with their own family anymore than liking professor/student fic makes you want to have sex with your professors or students. It’s fantasy.

Second, there is no one reason people ship things. For some folks, they go off what they believe is or will be canon. Others like to play around with dynamics. Still others use fictional relationships as coping methods for real life trauma. I’ve met plenty of folks who are survivors of all manner of awful things who ship wincest. I haven’t met anyone yet who wants wincest to be A Thing on the show. A large number of people just ship things. They don’t really have a rhyme or reason as to why, they just do. Something has drawn them in and they want to play around with the characters. It’s not like most people sit around asking themselves “Why do I ship this? What does it say about me? What draws me to this?” …. I mean, I do but I’m a huge analytical nerd.

No, I’d say that there’s just some kind of “spark” in a ship for some folks. Sure, you can find patterns in the things people like to ship (I love angsty ships. Gimme battle couples, star-crossed lovers, and big, epic love stories any day.) but it doesn’t necessarily reflect what they actually want IRL. To address the anon, liking certain ships doesn’t mean you’re going to want to or try to emulate them, even with mental illness. It’s not a reflection on the kind of person you are anymore than liking gore-fest horror movies is. There’s nothing wrong with having a preference and there’s nothing wrong with liking unhealthy relationships in fiction.

Lastly, I’m gonna go to bat for Twilight here a bit. Can we please stop slamming 50 Shades and Twilight as if they’re the worst thing a teenage girl or young woman can read or enjoy? Please? Look, the trope of shitty dudes being changed by the women they love isn’t new. It’s old as hell and most often comes up in literature written by women, for women. It’s a power fantasy, the same as something like killing the dragon and getting the girl is a male power fantasy. Is it realistic or desirable in real life? Hell, no, but being the Chosen One and toppling an authoritarian regime single-handed isn’t really either, if we’re being realistic. The thread of thinking that really bothers me here is the idea that it’s bad for teenage girls, frankly, because they’re too dumb to realize that it’s fiction and shouldn’t be something they want in real life. That really bothers me. Teenage girls aren’t stupid. They might very well feel that things in Twilight are romantic, especially when they’re written to be romantic by the author, but I have more faith in teenagers to understand the difference between fiction and reality. This idea that women (especially young women) are too fragile or weak-minded to process fiction is old and it’s dumb.

I know I’m on a tangent now, but I really need to say that I dislike the undercurrent of misogyny that sits inside the bashing of things like Twilight. Sure, it’s mass media and we ought to be critical of it, but that doesn’t mean it should get blamed for all ills and for “sending a bad message”. Look, I was a teenager when it came out. I hate it on principle. I thought I was so much smarter than my peers b/c I didn’t like it. I “wasn’t like other girls” b/c I didn’t like the trashy teen romance. Yet I was the one who wound up in an abusive relationship because of my own lack of self-worth and some shitty dude who took advantage of that. Fiction didn’t do that, some asshole did. And no, I’m not saying we can’t be critical of things. We should. But being critical doesn’t mean “this is just trash and it’s and it’s bad for you”. Being critical involves looking at the media and discussing the issues as well as the value it may hold. Critical thinking doesn’t go out the window when we read fiction, but it also doesn’t mean that we can’t seriously enjoy things that aren’t great in the “morals and values” department. If we really worry about teenage girls and how they value themselves in and outside of relationships, I say we focus more on educating them about good, healthy relationships and encouraging them to built self-esteem. We can change our media, too, but Twilight and 50 Shades weren’t the start or the end of these kinds of stories. They’re always going to exist because people enjoy them, and shame does no one any good.

Wrapping it all back up for my final point: people are drawn to different things for different reasons. We can analyze why a story that involves all-encompassing, fated-to-be story might draw folks in but that doesn’t make it better than a story about two people who come together despite that. Shipping is about love and sexuality and compassion and companionship. There are thousands of stories to tell there and none of them are really “better” or “worse” they’re just different. They speak to people for different reasons. It’s never really so black and white. It’s personal preference. What appeals to one person is a NOTP for someone else. There’s themes in ships and fiction that people enjoy, but I think the best way to figure out what it is that draws certain people do those things is to talk to them.