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Why Are Certain Female Marketed Franchises So Disliked?

SkySkimmer said:
It's like how people are 'oh no not gay fanfiction' but nobody cares about lesbian fanfiction.
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Is that really a thing though, in comparison to slash? I don't think I've ever been reading a story and then SUDDENLY LESBIANS
Reveen said:
Nerds don't like it when they stare into the abyss and realize that escapist fantasy written for teenage girls isn't all that fundamentally different than escapism written for guys.

Bella Swan is one end of the spectrum and Kvothe is on the other. But aside from Rothfuss being a better writer the fantasy isn't all that more mature one way or the other.
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To be fair, most people I've spoken to think the sex fantasies part of TKK almost ruin the series. Mary Sue Ninja village actually turned several people I know off it.
 
Mutton said:
To be fair, most people I've spoken to think the sex fantasies part of TKK almost ruin the series. Mary Sue Ninja village actually turned several people I know off it.
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Yeah, but the teenage boy escapism was in the series long before that. Rothfuss just jacked up the throttle for the second book.

Also, I'm deeply, deeply skeptical of the unspoken idea that Twilight would get less shit if it was written better. Anne Rice get's shit talk for her early vampire books too.
 
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Reveen said:
Yeah, but the teenage boy escapism was in the series long before that. Rothfuss just turned up the throttle for the second book.
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Right, but it wasn't a bad kind of fantasy escapism; it was a lot of fairly standard stuff done in a very, very well written manner. That's a massive difference here when we're talking about why people hate things. What crappy teen boy stuff is popular on the same level as Twilight, receives the same level of hate, and is of the same level of quality?

I think the last one is a kicker; you don't see The Hunger Games getting hate outside of a crappy ending (and let's face it, Harry Potter gets hate for that as well).
 
E.I.G. said:
... I don't really think there actually are that many lesbian fanfics compared to the shear volume of male homosexual fics out there, but that is likely to be more the result of a lack of other female characters to pair them with than it actually being less likely to be made.
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Mutton said:
Is that really a thing though, in comparison to slash? I don't think I've ever been reading a story and then SUDDENLY LESBIANS
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The only fanfic I really read is Mass Effect and a bit of Dragon Age, and looking at that... yes. It's definitely a thing. It's really a near-mirror situation. The only thing a bit different is that there are some lesbian pairing fanfics that are actually written by lesbian women/girls. But no matter the gender, for the most part what you have is homosexual pairings written by and for heterosexual members of the opposite sex.

Oh, and male slash definitely heavily outnumbers female slash, but I think that is because more fanfic writers seem to be female.

Also, Kvothe who? I had to google that stuff, so I don't know if it's a good equivalent for Twilight. Maybe Eragon would fit better? Or the Transformer franchise? Or the Marvel superhero franchise with all its recent movies?
 
I'd say misogyny but I'd say it's basically the fact that women are a break out market in Hollywood, and so they're getting a set of things we're used too in guys, IE dumb as shit lowest common denominator stuff that you watch for the fanservice and as mindless entertainment. Just we're not used to what mindless entertainment for young women looks like so it seems much more alien to us.

Twilight isn't any dumber than Michael Bay's transformers.
 
Mutton said:
What crappy teen boy stuff is popular on the same level as Twilight, receives the same level of hate, and is of the same level of quality?
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The thing about Twilight hate is, it's really awful in ways that don't relate to it being crappy escapist fiction because the characters are such horrible people. The unfinished manuscript for Midnight Sun and the Twilight illustrated guide really hammer it in.

For example in Midnight Sun: Jasper is trying to resist eating someone while at school Alice tells him that thinking of humans as people helps a little when trying to not eat them. Emmett mentions how he didn't even think about trying to resist killing someone whose blood he found particularly delicious smelling like Edward does Bella's and thinks maybe Edward should just give in and kill her. Jasper intended to kill Bella despite Edward and Carlisle telling him not to until Alice had a vision of her as her friend. Rosalie suggested they kill Bella just to be on the safe side after Edward saved her from getting hit by a car.

And from the illustrated guide:

One of the Irish vampires manipulated a starving orphan into agreeing to become a vampire by promising her that she'd never go hungry again because she was curious as to whether or not she'd have powers when she turned,

Benjamin saw Amun murder the man who raised him and still hangs around him.

The main reason one of the Denalis got turned off of killing humans was because killing them reminded her of the Volturi killing her 'mother'.
 
FBH said:
I'd say misogyny but I'd say it's basically the fact that women are a break out market in Hollywood, and so they're getting a set of things we're used too in guys, IE dumb as shit lowest common denominator stuff that you watch for the fanservice and as mindless entertainment. Just we're not used to what mindless entertainment for young women looks like so it seems much more alien to us.

Twilight isn't any dumber than Michael Bay's transformers.
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:V Since I equally detest both does it mean it's to me, an unbiased reaction/dislike
 
Evillevi said:
:V Since I equally detest both does it mean it's to me, an unbiased reaction/dislike
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The beyformers are simply bad on... well, lots of levels. But I don't think it's going to effect young growing minds and how they approach the world. A better comparison is the Honor Harrington which has a somewhat disturbing message for how one should look at politics and is pro-violence/interventionism..
 
FBH said:
I'd say misogyny but I'd say it's basically the fact that women are a break out market in Hollywood, and so they're getting a set of things we're used too in guys, IE dumb as shit lowest common denominator stuff that you watch for the fanservice and as mindless entertainment. Just we're not used to what mindless entertainment for young women looks like so it seems much more alien to us.

Twilight isn't any dumber than Michael Bay's transformers.
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I'd take the same premise (women are a break out market) but spin in it a different direction: shitty female targeted stuff is concentrated while shitty male targeted stuff tends to be spread out. You have lots of male things with a small to medium sized level of popularity while the female stuff tends to be a few giant things. Thus it's much more visible and gets more hate.

I'll also admit I liked Transformers 1; it wasn't great, but it wasn't a bad film, just a fun nostalgia fest. Everything after that is Twilight bad though, I agree.
 
TheLastOne said:
The beyformers are simply bad on... well, lots of levels. But I don't think it's going to effect young growing minds and how they approach the world. A better comparison is the Honor Harrington which has a somewhat disturbing message for how one should look at politics and is pro-violence/interventionism..
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The problem there is that Honor Harrington doesn't have nearly the popularity of Twilight or Bayformers. I'm pretty far outside the target demographic of either, but I'd never heard of Honor Harrington before joining SV. Everyone's heard of Twilight, even if they wish they hadn't.
 
Rad said:
The problem there is that Honor Harrington doesn't have nearly the popularity of Twilight or Bayformers. I'm pretty far outside the target demographic of either, but I'd never heard of Honor Harrington before joining SV. Everyone's heard of Twilight, even if they wish they hadn't.
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True, Mil Sci-Fi is niche. I don't think there is a singular franchise both as powerful and as virulent aimed at boys. I mean, things like Atlas Shrugged are worse, but again not as popular.

A better comparison might be Football culture, but that's (sort of) leaving the realm of fiction.
 
Force Lord said:
I distinctly remember reading about a thread in some obscure sonic forum where some guy or gal wanted to taste Sonic's sperm or something... *shudder*
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Oh, please, that's nothing.
I once saw an entire essay written up on Bioware Social Network where someone was debating how Quarian sweat tasted.
 
TheLastOne said:
A better comparison is the Honor Harrington which has a somewhat disturbing message for how one should look at politics and is pro-violence/interventionism..
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I think that most people would agree that Twilights abusive relationships trumps mere interventionism any day of the week. Many readers will deal with abusive relationships, the most they can do with interventionism is vote for a candidate that supports it.
 
TheLastOne said:
Tell that to Iraq. What's the total death toll for that bit of internationalism?
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Iraq isn't suffering because they read the series. The effect of the books on foreign affairs is minimal at best, and the readers lives are not damaged by being pro-internationalism. Also, the international force currently attacking Iraq is coming from Syria. I'm pretty sure that Honor Harrington was never published there.
 
notanautomaton said:
Iraq isn't suffering because they read the series. The effect of the books on foreign affairs is minimal at best, and the readers lives are not damaged by being pro-internationalism. Also, the international force currently attacking Iraq is coming from Syria. I'm pretty sure that Honor Harrington was never published there.
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If we can talk about the self-reenforcing cycles of emotional abuse cause by creepy teen novels, we can talk about novels as political shills. While I doubt any one book series shifted an election, it's part of a larger trend of politically influenced works that appeal to young readers and encourage mindsets, and the 2000 election was really really close. If the Gung-ho message of the military sci-fi genre shifted the vote by as little as 550 people, we could have had an entirely different president in 2000. I think things much less influential then what you read can shift that many votes, once you blow it up to a state level, never mind a national one.

The same goes for Twilight, despite it's popularity. It still only reaches a small minority of the population in a big way.

There's lots of creepy romance outside of Twilight, and lots Military Sci-Fi outside of David Weber.
 
TheLastOne said:
If we can talk about the self-reenforcing cycles of emotional abuse cause by creepy teen novels, we can talk about novels as political shills. While I doubt any one book series shifted an election, it's part of a larger trend of politically influenced works that appeal to young readers and encourage mindsets, and the 2000 election was really really close. If the Gung-ho message of the military sci-fi genre shifted the vote by as little as 550 people, we could have had an entirely different president in 2000. I think things much less influential then what you read can shift that many votes, once you blow it up to a state level, never mind a national one.

The same goes for Twilight, despite it's popularity. It still only reaches a small minority of the population in a big way.

There's lots of creepy romance outside of Twilight, and lots Military Sci-Fi outside of David Weber.
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Another problem with your argument is that in the US, many people favor intervention, while only redpiller's are pro-domestic abuse. It's arguable that the lack of hate towards the Honor series is in part due to the controversy around intervention. Everyone get together against domestic abuse, getting people to go against interventionism is harder.
 
E.I.G. said:
... I don't really think there actually are that many lesbian fanfics compared to the shear volume of male homosexual fics out there, but that is likely to be more the result of a lack of other female characters to pair them with than it actually being less likely to be made.
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Mm, I disagree. If you take the basic assumption that most people write pairing fics about people whose relationship they are into - as in, most people who write slash are into guys, most people who write femslash are into girls - then it just comes down to demographics. The "creative" side of fandom - as in, that side that writes fics - trends pretty strongly female. As a logical result you're going to see far less femslash than slash out of simple demographics, because fewer people producing such content are oriented that way.

Though the lack of good female characters doesn't help, and as a result you seem to mostly see femslash within media that has a primarily female cast.
 
The female-marketed franchises mentioned in the article: Twilight, Bieber, 20 shades of grey, etc. are disliked because they're fucking awful. This is an objectively true fact. A lot of "fans" mostly enjoyed these because they're ridiculously trashy, or because they were pre-teen girls. Seriously, pre-teen anybody have no taste. This is documented.


Here's a list of male-marketed franchises that get similar amounts of flak:
Top Gear
Transformers
300
Anything by Frank Miller
A whole bunch of fan-service anime.
D&D (I love it, and I'm a lady, but apparently that's weird)

Tadaaaaa!

This isn't a gender issue. This is a "pop-culture icons" issue. Sometimes pop-culture icons arise that are kinda crap.

This isn't exactly a new or interesting thing.
 
Twilight and 20 Shades, sure, but if I'm listening to the radio, and Bieber comes on... well, I don't love it, but I don't hate it either, and there's a lot worse that gets radio play, whether we're talking lyrics or vocal quality.

Bieber is a generic boy-singer doing manufactured lyrics.
 
TheLastOne said:
True, Mil Sci-Fi is niche. I don't think there is a singular franchise both as powerful and as virulent aimed at boys. I mean, things like Atlas Shrugged are worse, but again not as popular.

A better comparison might be Football culture, but that's (sort of) leaving the realm of fiction.
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There's too many of them. Like, Twilight would be no more popular than Weber if there were as many young adult/femalebooks as Male marketted SF
 
Q99 said:
Twilight and 20 Shades, sure, but if I'm listening to the radio, and Bieber comes on... well, I don't love it, but I don't hate it either, and there's a lot worse that gets radio play, whether we're talking lyrics or vocal quality.

Bieber is a generic boy-singer doing manufactured lyrics.
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Oh dear god no he's not. I know "musical taste is subjective" and all that but Bieber sounds like a mutated goat with a broken leg.

As someone who's been around since New Kids on the Block were a thing I can honestly say Bieber is several orders of magnitude worse than "generic boy-singer doing manufactured lyrics." Most of them at least have a passable grasp of how to sing, from a purely technical perspective. Hell, I drew a comparison to Brittney and the hate she faced earlier, but even she had one or two tracks that were at least somewhat catchy. I'll admit I've caught myself enjoying a Brittney track once or twice before being informed who the artist was--and I'm really not a pop fan. The few times Bieber's music has invaded my car stereo or pandora station my immediate reaction has been "Oh my god what is this godawful shit!" and an immediate, desperate urge to turn it off to spare the horrors being inflicted on my ears--only to discover afterward who the artist was.
 
Q99 said:
Twilight and 20 Shades, sure, but if I'm listening to the radio, and Bieber comes on... well, I don't love it, but I don't hate it either, and there's a lot worse that gets radio play, whether we're talking lyrics or vocal quality.

Bieber is a generic boy-singer doing manufactured lyrics.
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20 shades had some redeming features in it.

The girl admits that the relationship she's in is unhealthy, the book admits that Grey is F'ed up in the head and is not a ideal choice for an ideal romantic relationship. The book is basically porn but it admits that the charaters are flawed and the main charaters actually feel like they have at least some amount of depth to them.

The Heroine of the story is actually pretty funny at times too, the first time I heard Whore Drawers I laughed.

Bella was an unlikeable psycopath honestly there was no saving her as a charater.

Edward though is salavagable think about it he is a literal hundred year old vampire virgin who dispite his looks and wealth could not get laid for a HUNDRED years. As a star of a comedy he would be god damned hilarious.

I had to watch all seven twilight movies at my former workplace the movies were bad but they had the ponetial to be so much more.
 
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