Stuff I Love and Shit I Hate - Twilight

Argh, sorry this is going out late. Although I'm not really sure why, as I've already noted that I don't have any readers. I just wanted to have one thing that I could keep to a regular schedule- unfortunately uni went back yesterday and I was completely worn out by the time I got home and in no mood for ranting.

So anyway, this week it's time for some Shit I Hate. As I noted in my last post, there are 3 criteria for me to hate something -that it be unreasonably, excessively popular, morally objectionable or controversial, or just plain crap- and that a property required at least 2 of those 3 to earn my actual wrath (as opposed to my common apathy). Stephanie Meyer's Twilight hits the perfect trifecta of all three and as a result is probably the one modern pop-culture product that I loathe and despise above all others. My hatred for Twilight goes well beyond merely not liking it- to me it is a blight on the cultural landscape that needs to be smacked down and stamped out at every turn. That's why I'm actually bothering to post about it even though entire ESSAYS have been written both for and against it already.

Looking at my 3 criteria, the fact that Twilight sucks is arguably the LEAST of my problems with it. And yes, this is not a matter of opinion- anyone with any understanding of literature or quality writing can tell that the series is complete and utter tripe. Stephanie Meyer is a total hack and Twilight is barely above the level of the self-insert fanfiction written by teenage girls who failed english class (Meyer even admitted she based the entire series on a wet dream she had about being seduced by a gorgeous sparkly man in a sunlit meadow). It's supposed to be a romance, but the romantic leads, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever and very little personality. Bella is a Mary Sue of the highest order- she goes on about how clumsy she is and how she's not all that attractive in a poor attempt to mitigate this, but literally the entire goddamn plot revolves around her and everyone obsesses over her and loves her, despite the fact that she's honestly a total bitch (look at how she treats her family and human "friends" throughout the series) and as thick as pigshit. Edward is, to be completely blunt, a personality-deficient douchebag. Jacob was a likeable enough character, but Meyer realised that this was actually a problem (since he was only there to fill out the third side of the love triangle) so she changed tack and wrote him as a creepy borderline rapist who forces a kiss on Bella in order to make Edward look better and then hooked him up with a newborn baby girl. The plot is full of holes, Ass Pulls (the bullshit Meyer pulled to explain Bella's pregnancy is enough to make you hemmorhage from your eyes) and just plain bad writing. So yeah, Twilight sucks on any actual level of quality and if you think it doesn't then you're wrong. But like I said, this isn't my real problem with the series. After all, just because something sucks doesn't mean it's bereft of redeeming features, or can't have its moments, or even that you can't just enjoy it anyway, either because it's So Bad It's Good or simply that you actually WANT something mindless. There ain't no law saying that you can't like something that sucks.

But then there's my second problem with Twilight. Namely, that there is a massive and honestly psychotically rabid fanbase out there who will claim without the slightest trace of irony that Stephanie Meyer's "magnum opus" is unquestionably the greatest work of fiction in the history of mankind. Now keep in mind that, as I just pointed out, Twilight is rubbish. And yet it's getting this kind of critical response from the fans. I've known people who will proudly admit that the Twilight books are the only books they've ever read (undoubtably hyperbole as everyone reads books when they're growing up, if only in english class, but you know what they mean). I reserve a particular scorn for things that become massively popular while being crap on the basis that they can set depressing trends towards low-quality, high grabbing-power product which is all style and no substance, resulting in more of the same garbage. Right now, publishers will be out there looking for "the next Twilight" to publish and make oodles of money off, ignoring the fact that Twilight is garbage because MONEY! Encouraging this kind of shit results in an eventual watering down of the overall quality of whichever medium you apply it to- not only literature, but also movies, video games, bands, TV, whatever. I mentioned Sturgeons Law in my last post- that 90% of everything is crap, but the 10% that remains is the REALLY good stuff. So what do you suppose happens when it's the 90% of the crap which actually sells better than the 10% of quality? Yeah.

Also, it's just damn depressing to see how stupid so many girls can be made to look. I read a story once about a couple of teenage girls who went up to actor Robert Pattison and showed him the self-inflicted 'bite wounds' they'd made on their own throats, telling him "We did this for you." Um, thanks? Seriously, these girls cannot all be as stupid as this series is making them look.

Bob Chipman, a man for whom I have boundless respect, once wrote a column about why he thinks Twilight is so popular- basically because female readers simply aren't being given what they want, so if you offer them even something as crap as Twilight they'll seize on it desperately. Twilight went out into a virtual vacuum where anything that hit the right buttons -blank-slate protagonist for the reader to project herself onto, gorgeous immortal stalkers proclaiming eternal love- would be a sure-fire hit. So that at least explains the popularity, even if it doesn't really excuse it. Now, with Twilight dominating the female literaturescape, it'll be difficult for anything of genuine quality to make its mark without being compared to Twilight- and then a lot of preconceptions may result in a lot of genuinely good material not getting a fair go.

But the main reason I hate Twilight -and this is the one that takes me from a strong dislike to an outright loathing- is that the series is morally repulsive. A lot of people have already written on this (including Bob) and they're all right- Twilight is absolutely loaded with more Unfortunate Implications and Family-Unfriendly Messages than I can possibly summarise in a single blog post. At the core of the series is the idea that the perfect boyfriend is a moody, controlling, jealous, verbally and emotionally abusive stalker whose struggle to keep himself from hurting his girlfriend is seen as an attractive trait. By absolutely any definition, Edward and Bella's "relationship" is sick, twisted and abusive and yet because of the series aforementioned absurd popularity it's being idealized. That's why I hate Twilight more than pretty much any other product of modern culture- because it promotes ideas and messages that are blatantly harmful and its undemanding fanbase just eats it up. Word of advice, girls: if you meet a brooding, attractive boy who is insulting and abusive to you but obsesses over you to the point of stalking you, steer well clear of him. He's not a vampire. He's just an asshole.

And that isn't even getting into the painfully heavy-handed abstinence message (and the fact that the choice about when to "do it" is completely in Edward's hands, not Bella's), the outright disgusting implications of werewolf 'imprinting' (short version: when the guy falls in love with a girl- that's it, they're together forever, regardless of whether she likes him or not, whether she already has someone else she loves or whether she's blatantly underage), or the borderline pedophiliac implications of the end of the series. It's revolting, and that's what makes the fangirl assertions that it's "the greatest thing EVER" cause me to weep tears of blood.

Hating Twilight has gone beyond being cool and has reached the stage where it's old and unfashionable. As well, even a lot of haters think that the level of hate the series has attracted has gone too far. But it's not as if I ever hated on the series because it was "cool" to do so. I hate this series and oppose it wherever I see it because it should be hated. It isn't hated enough. While I wouldn't ascribe any impure motives to Stephanie Meyer herself (while she lacks any real talent and has some unpleasant beliefs about a woman's place in a relationship, I doubt she's doing anything malevolently) Twilight is, purely and simply, a minor modern evil. Let it be crap for all I care, let it be unreasonably popular to the extent that it chokes out far more deserving properties. But for the love of god, we can't afford to tolerate people taking its inherent messages seriously or it could give rise to an entire generation of starry-eyed, prettyboy-idolising domestic abuse victims.

Am I being hysterical? Possibly. Hell, even probably. But as far as I'm concerned this is a real problem. Sure, as far as social problems go it's seriously small-fry. But that's no reason to tolerate it. Besides, someone needs to tell those "Twilight moms" they're seriously creepy.

Why I hate what I hate.

Ooh, let this post slip a bit. To my dedicated readers, of which I have none, my apologies.

Anyway, as I said last Friday, I've decided to dedicate each Friday's post to expounding at length upon my most and least favourite things, alternating weekly. Last week was one of my favourite films, The Crow, tomorrow will be something I hate with an intense passion.

So I thought, before my first 'Shit I Hate' post, I'd explain what kinds of things I hate. This isn't simply a matter of whether I like something or not- while there's a lot of things I don't particularly like (beer, rap music, BDSM) I don't hate them.

So firstly to dispel one common argument: I don't hate stuff just because it's popular. I like Mario, Hayao Miyazaki, the original Star Wars trilogy, Half-Life, Evangelion, Iron Maiden, Zelda, Metallica, Spider-Man, Muse and Doctor Who. These things are all GOOD as well as popular (although I have to wonder sometimes about Spider-Man and Metallica these days) so I don't see the need to go hating on them just to score cheap points.

Secondly, I don't hate stuff just because it's controversial, is laced with Unfortunate Implications or is backed by people I personally disagree with as long as it remains a work of quality. Orson Scott Card is a nasty, bigoted homophobe but Ender's Game is still a brilliant landmark of science fiction. The less said about Mel Gibson these days the better, but I still think Apocalypto and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome are awesome films. If you can't react to art seperately from the artist, then you have a perception problem.

Finally, strange as it may seem, I don't even hate stuff just because it outright sucks. Sturgeon's Law dictates that 90% of EVERYTHING is crap. It doesn't particularly bother me. Sure, it's irritating when even something I've been looking forward to turns out to be disappointing, but merely sucking isn't enough to incur my wrath. I could probably name hundreds of movies, books, bands and games that suck but which I have no particular feelings about.

No, what it takes for me to hate something is any combination of the above. Things that are massively popular despite being completely unworthy of such recognition. Unextrordinary things that are popular solely because of their notorioty or because of the controversies attached to them. Things that are crap but try to get away with it by generating controversy, appealing to our baser instincts, or deliberately causing moral offense. Or worst of all, a combination of all 3- something which is not only completely crap, but morally offensive yet manages to be unreasonably popular. And it is exactly one such a property that I will be ripping to shreds tomorrow. Oh, I'm probably late to the party and maybe you'll think I'm just jumping on a bandwagon, but this needs to be said. Or at least I think so. And this is my blog. So... you know how it goes.

By the way, I just read Hideyuki Kikuchi's first Wicked City novel today. Not a bad story I guess (I'd seen the classic 1987 movie many years ago) but ultimately the story was actually pretty dumb and full of obvious holes, the sheer amount of blatantly explicit sex was just plain embarassing (it was regularly bordering on porn) and the adaptation by Seven Seas was pretty terrible with obvious translation mistakes and new art which simply wasn't very good. It wasn't nearly as good as Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D, although at least it was something different- I gave up on the VHD novels because they were getting depressingly repetative. Still, I'll be picking up the second volume when I can- I want to see where the story goes from here, since the first volume only covered the same events as the movie.

Fumbling the license.

If there's one thing that really shits me these days, it's religious fanatacism. But I'm not going to talk about that. In any case, there are MANY things that really shit me these days and the one I want to talk about right now is incompetent licensing.

You may (or may not) have heard that anime and manga companies are cracking down on fansubs and scanlations of series. OneManga, one of the biggest online manga archives, has just announced that they're closing up shop (metaphorically speaking of course, they never charged money) before they get sued and a lot of scanlation groups are throwing in the towel, regardless of whether or not they've already received a Cease and Desist from the companies.

I can't really blame them. They can sense the way the wind is blowing and are smart enough to realize that they honestly don't have a legal leg to stand on. What they're doing IS, after all, taking a product that is intended to be sold to an audience and which isn't theirs and distributing it for free to as many people as feel like helping themselves to it. And much as you might argue that they do a lot to raise awareness among readers or viewers about new manga and anime, if you attempt to claim that they don't financially impact on the creators and distributors then you're a goddamn idiot. I for one have read every single scanlated chapter of Naruto but scoff at the idea of actually PAYING for it- not because I'm a cheap-ass pirate (I buy a LOT of stuff I've already read scanned/watched fansubbed, most recently the DVD release of AIR) but because Naruto really isn't worth paying money for these days (don't get me started, but it jumped the shark ages ago). I probably owe Viz upwards of $800 for that series alone. I don't want to get into an argument on the relative vices and virtues of fansubbing/scanning, partly because it's hard to debate without anyone to debate with, but the point I'm trying to make is that legally, giving in is the smart thing to do, which is why so many of them are doing it. You can go underground if you want, but you sure as hell can't fight.

But that's not my point this time. What shits me off is that companies like Tokyopop and Viz and the like are closing down the scanlators and fansubbers while being generally incapable of replacing them with a viable alternative. Sure some of them are experimenting with online manga or anime streaming, but it's just not as efficient or expansive. Worst of all is when the companies acquire a license, choke off any illegal distribution, and then utterly fuck it up. For me personally, this is more of an issue with novels than manga or anime, although it covers all areas.

My prime example: Shakugan no Shana, which was licensed by Viz a few years back. I was reading it off the Japanese novel translation site Baka-Tsuki when Viz licensed it, so Baka-Tsuki, being the responsible and legal-minded fans that they are, immediately pulled down their translations. Viz released the first 2 volumes, then dropped the series. Completely. They released the first volume in April 2007, the second in October 2007 and haven't released another volume since. That seems pretty fucking conclusively dropped to me. Maybe the first two volumes sold particularly badly so they decided they couldn't justify continuing to release it. I can understand that, Viz is a business, not a charity. The thing is though, they still hold the license even if they don't intend to do shit-all with it. As a result, Baka-Tsuki still have no intention of reuploading their translations and as far as I'm aware no-one else it translating the novels either, even though the series is now up to twenty-three volumes and still going. With the third season of the anime taking forever to be released (and it'll take years longer before I can see it if I don't get it fansubbed- the second season hasn't even started to be released in America yet!) I've kind of been left hanging regarding where the hell the story is going.

Then there's Full Metal Panic, one of my favourite stories. I read the fan-translated volumes from Owaru Day By Day (the 2-part story 'The Second Raid' was based on) to Tsuzuku On My Own (the volume where, if you'll pardon the vernacular, shit got real). And then Tokyopop licensed it. Ouch. They release it at a rate of approximately 1 volume per year, if that- I think they've stopped altogether by now, although given the trouble they're in that's not surprising. I have the first 3 volumes they released and now I'm grinding my teeth with frustration about not knowing what happens next (they really SHOULD make another anime, but I think the property has gone dead).

Then there's all the lesser-known stuff that simply gets ignored by the companies but not by the scanlators (this is definitely a manga thing as pretty much every anime gets licensed these days). Manga like Sahara Mizu's My Girl (a story about a young single father raising the daughter he never knew he had), Kei Toume's Hatsukanezumi no Jikan/Hour of the Mice (a story about a group of teens at a mysterious school for the gifted struggling to come to terms with the fact that they're part of a giant social experiment) and Mysterious Girlfriend X (a story about a boy who gets possibly the weirdest girlfriend ever) just don't get picked up. Hell, even a series as well-known as friggin' Elfen Lied remains solely the preserve of the scanlators! Given how high-profile the anime was a few years back (and how much more in-depth the manga is than the anime) this is almost beyond belief.

Finally, there's the next worst thing- really lousy release schedules. Yen Press, who are doing a decent if not outstanding job in the market, licensed and released the first volume of a series called Bunny Drop recently. I picked it up because it looked like an interesting entry in a particular subgenre I like (inexperienced single daddy-figure raising a tooth-rottingly cute young girl, see also Aishiteruze Baby and the aforementioned My Girl) but when I had a look at their website for the release date of the next volume I was outright revolted. One every six months?! That's only 2 volumes a year and this series is already 7 volumes long and still running. That's 3 1/2 years just to get up to date with where it is now. This is NOT compelling me to buy the official release, this is just enough of a tease to tell me, loud and clear, "GO FIND THE SCANLATIONS!" Think about it.

Now I don't work in the manga or anime industries so there's probably a LOT I don't know or understand. And I do understand that a lot of these series' just aren't practical to bring across. These are COMPANIES after all and they need to consider what will turn them a profit. But I have to ask them: if you take away our scans and our fansubs, what are you going to do for us to compensate up for what you are depriving us of? Talented scanlation and fansub groups can get a translated version of a chapter of manga or an episode of anime online less than a day after they come out in Japan. If I want to wait until that chapter or episode is available in an official format I can be looking at anything up to 3 or 4 years. Online streaming is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough, not when you consider how much we're losing.

So anyway, a final word: please, fellas- if you take a license, either release the damn thing in its entirity, or let it go. Hanging onto the license indefinitely for no reason is just a dick move.

Stuff I Love and Shit I Hate - The Crow

I had this idea that I'd do a sort of weekly series of posts going into depth about my favourite and least favourite things. I decided to alternate weekly between my loves and hates, starting with my one of my favourite movies, so if you come back next week you'll see me rant about something I loathe. Since I was going to be talking about stuff I love and shit I hate, I figured that was as good a title as any for this column.

So this week, one of my all-time favourite live-action movies: Brandon Lee's The Crow.

Based on the comic book by James O'barr, The Crow is the story of Eric Draven, a rock musician who was murdered together with his beloved fiance Shelly Webster by a gang of thugs one night shortly before their wedding. Long story short, a year later Eric rises from the grave as an indestructible force of vengeance, guided by a supernatural crow, to seek out and kill his killers. It's your basic revenge story, only with the undead. But it's the style, the details, the direction and the performances that make this movie one of the definitive revenge stories of our time, together with classics like Sweeny Todd and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Brandon Lee's Eric is a nightmare clown in black and white facepaint, like a member of Kiss gone psycho, but he manages to be one of the coolest characters ever to stalk the shadows. He revels in his invincibility, hurling himself off rooftops, inviting his opponents to take their best shot at him before he kills them and doing it with impeccable style and no mercy. In this he is matched by Top Dollar, played to perfection by Michael Wincott in the role of a classy, stylish, elegant, cultured complete monster. Wincott is absolutely magnificent as he deadpans his way through the movie with black humour, such as when he stabs a man through the throat with a rapier and exasperatedly tells him "oh for fuck's sake, die will you?" while the man chokes and gurgles on his last breath. But it's still Lee who owns the movie, rightfully so as this was the one that took his life when he was killed in a tragic accident with a prop gun. I once heard Lee's Eric described as being like a heroic version of Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight and the tragic irony of that does not escape me. It's also an amazingly adept comparison as like the Joker, Eric is just such a magnetic character that whenever he's on screen you're constantly waiting for him to do his next awesome thing. Like Ledger, Lee's presence haunts every frame, only even more so- while Ledger's real person was subsumed by the power of the Joker's character, Lee is actually playing a dead man walking.

The Crow is so many things. It's an action movie but it's also a tragic love story. It has an awesome hero and an equally awesome villain. It's a revenge story, but Eric also finds time to transform lives (the scene where he reminds Darla that her daughter is out on the streets while bleeding the morphine out of her veins is a personal favourite). It's Hollywood action, but it's practically art- just watch the early scene where Eric leaps across the rooftops as the crow leads him to his first victim. And the soundtrack is simply awesome, featuring such bands as The Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails and The Cure. This is one of the tiny handful of live-action movies I care enough about to buy on DVD and one I'll take any excuse to rewatch. It's a masterpiece of its genre and if you haven't seen it, you have a hole in your life.

(I was going to put the YouTube trailer here, but I can't work out how to embed it properly. I'll work on it for next time. For now, here's the link.)

Allow me to ruin your life.

So anyway, before I discuss anything else I figure I should introduce my readers to my source of reference. It'll save a lot of time on explanations in my future posts.

Since I first created this blog, I discovered a site called Television Tropes and Idioms. As the frontpage says, it's the net's biggest archive of writing conventions, stereotypes, tricks and devices. It's also a database of not only countless works of fiction that use these tropes, from TV series to movies to anime to video games to books to music, but also creators involved in these and non-fiction topics such as politics, sports, countries and famous historical figures and events. So it's a database to rival Wikipedia, at least in certain areas, but what makes it so addictive is that There Is No Such Thing As Notability. Basically, anything interesting enough to go on there is wanted, there is none of the stuffy formality or organization of Wikipedia and you're free to invent new tropes for the archive as long as you can cite enough examples of it to prove it actually exists. I myself was the original inventor of the Stupid Sacrifice page (inspired by a particularly stupid example from Gantz). Anyway, the reason I'm showing this to you now is because I'm going to make a lot of references to tropes when discussing stuff in the future, so it's better to make sure you know what the hell I'm talking about in advance: whenever I Post Something With All Capitals Like This it's usually a trope name. Like Fan Dumb, Crowning Moment Of Awesome, Tonight Someone Dies, or Impaled With Extreme Prejudice. There, that should be enough to get you started.

So why the title? Because TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life. Seriously, they even have a page dedicated to that very concept (getting meta there)! Reading the endless examples and getting Wikitreed (my name for what they call a Wiki Walk) is worse than on Wikipedia itself. Sorry in advance for consuming the rest of your life, but... to be honest I regret nothing. I consider TV Tropes to be essential knowledge for anyone who wants to be interesting and in any event it's my favourite website bar none. So enjoy it as much as you can.

Just... try to get to bed before 4 in the morning.

So just in brief: what am I doing at the moment? Would you believe playing Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil? Yeah, I know it's old. Does the fact that I'm playing it even though I have more recent games to play suggest anything to you? How about that it's good? Yeah. HELL yeah. Double-barelled shotgun, I love you. I'll go into it in more detail another day.

So what the hell, right?

So yeah, 3 1/2 years ago I had a bit of trouble with this blog; I couldn't log in any more because of an account issue. Or something, I don't really remember any more. Anyways, although it irritated me, I didn't want to make a big deal over it, so I just left it. A couple of years later I come back after a few changes and glory be, I can log into my own blog again (getting a proper Google Account helped I think). So whatever, right? I might as well pick this up again. No-one ever read it, but it gives me a space to vent. Besides, a lot that's new to talk about has come up in the last 3 1/2 years.

I'll just keep this initial post fairly short and put up something more detailed tomorrow mayhaps. I've given up following the news recently (every time I look at it I just see something else that depresses) but the one bit I couldn't miss was the election coming up soon. Julia Gillard vs Tony "the mad monk" Abbott. My vote is preselected- I'm voting for Labour of course. Not that I believe my vote matters anyway, I live in a safe Labour seat, but I'd sooner cut my own throat than vote for a douchebag like Abbott. While I'm a bit ticked at Gillard replacing Kevin Rudd without the by-your-leave of the Australian public, Rasputin there would just ruin the entire country- he's as conservative as bloody Howard and a religious nutjob to boot.

Ugh, politics. I'll post about something less depressing later.