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

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

I could get into a very long post on the differences, but I think the primary differences between the books are:

1) the worldbuilding. JK wrote a world that people still want to wallow and play in, whereas Meyer's series is based in the Real World (and we won't talk about how much of the Pac NW she got wrong.)

2) the sources of conflict. JK's is a Good vs. Evil story with Harry and his comrades battling Voldemort and the end of the world, whereas Meyer is relying a romantic conflict (with religious overtones, control-issues, and bonus stalking!)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

1) the worldbuilding. JK wrote a world that people still want to wallow and play in, whereas Meyer's series is based in the Real World (and we won't talk about how much of the Pac NW she got wrong.)

I actually see both as one-point-of-differentiation from the Real World types of settings: in Potter, it's the real world except there's wizards. In Twilight, it's the real world except there's vampires. And both build the hidden social structures and institutions that one point of differentiation implies.

Curious -- why specifically do you think a romantic conflict will (or should, if you think it should) get the booting more than a standard quest-type one?

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

Curious -- why specifically do you think a romantic conflict will (or should, if you think it should) get the booting more than a standard quest-type one?

The stated or implied sexual overtones leave the door WIDE open for approval/disapproval. Twilight deals with adolescent lurve, and way the two main characters deal with their attraction; any decision the author makes on their behalf is subject to approval or condemnation by adults, parents, and teens.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Also, most of us will never be called upon to take a Quest Against Evil. (No, not even the upcoming US presidential election really qualifies; voting is not onerous.)

But most people get involved in romantic relationships of one sort or another in their lives. Twilight cuts closer to home, or at least bangs against a reader's personal experience in a way that Potter doesn't.

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I hadn't thought about that aspect of it, but you're exactly right about it feeling more personal that way.