Two Questions...

[leahbobet]

...both spawned by the never-ending parade of posts about how terrible Twilight is.*

1) So two major YA series hit big in the last ten years: Twilight and Harry Potter. In the early part of each series, you saw what can be charitably called low production values in terms of craft, plots that revolved around blatant wish-fulfillment, and wholesale rips of the tropes of already established subgenres. Potter is the poster child for mainstream acceptance. Twilight is excoriated regularly in newspapers, the internets, and local bookstores in reenactments of the Five Minutes' Hate.

What's the difference? What causes that?

I have my own theory, but I want to hear yours.


2) Where do people get the idea that exposing a child to a worldview or idea at all means the child will automatically agree with, adopt, and adhere to that worldview or idea?

Really, peoples. You met kids?


*Haven't read it, not gonna, no opinion on the matter.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Potter escapes because it's for kids, and though its structure is dead cliche, the decoration (the spells and so forth) are rife with wit and cleverness.

Twlight is supposedly for an older audience, it is a fairly blatant argument for abstention, substituting lots of emo and angst for sexual activity.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, this. And not just emo and angst, but emo, and angst, and the threat of certain violence if you go too far.