Creepy, stalker vampires are NOT ROMANTIC!!!

And they're not sexy either. But first, Buffy hands Edward his ass on a platter ("OMG, are you twelve??!!") - Buffy vs. Edward, a la Smart Bitches/Trashy Books.



Now for actual musings, on the series and on the letters. I’m a big fan of romance literature and, while there’s a lot of complexity (and often not a little patriarchal ideology) in romance, on the whole the stories are on the woman empowering side. Nowadays heroines are often older, not necessarily pretty, and not just “feisty” (ie. dumb clucks who run into danger, thus giving their manly men reason to rescue their Darwin Award-winning behinds) but actually strong, especially in the paranormal subgenre where these post-Buffy heroines are often physically kick-ass as well. Here are some of the comments from the Buffy vs. Edward video from SBTB:

“Oh. Holy. Jeebus. Best remix ever! The editing was awesome. Although it almost made me sad—Twilight is such a major step back from the empowerment message of the Buffy story. I think I’ll reward myself for finishing my current book by
rewatching the series...”

“That’s the most of ‘Twilight’ I’ve seen and I really have to say anybody who finds him romantic needs to have their heads examined. Creepy stalker with an eye issue. He’s not even good looking, ewww. I know teenage girls are weird, but ...”

“I loved this. Buffy has exactly the right attitude for dealing with stalking sparkly bloodsuckers.”

Now, the readers of this blog aren’t necessarily representative of romance readers in general. First off, they tend to be well educated and liberal. They’re also on the older side, so they’re probably not the target audience of young and/or hopelessly caught up in misogynistic ideology Twilight readers. Quite honestly, they were repelled by it.

The letter format of the article is an effective way of presenting the criticism in a way that teens and pre-teens could get into, rather than getting turned off by a heavy literary criticism. The kids are the ones who are buying into this whole Twilight thing, which is scary because their ideas of what’s romantic, and what’s sexy, is being shaped by this crap.

SB Sarah (of SBTB) posted today on Patrick Swayze’s death (very sad). She wrote about how his death meant more to her personally than Michael Jackson’s because, while Jackson’s death was “… a loss from [his fans’] childhood, of a person who was responsible for the soundtrack of their youth. For me, it wasn’t Jackson - it was Swayze, particularly Dirty Dancing.” She goes on to recount how this movie influenced her growing up, and as an adult, in particular her idea of what was romantic (hence, becoming a fan of romance writing.) Compare Dirty Dancing to Twilight. OMG, the comparisons are many! From the woman oppressing mess that is Twilight to DD, with its cute but non-“beautiful” Jewish heroine (who plans on joining the Peace Corps after high school), its the abortion subplot, its examination of class differences. OMG! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!! It’s not Buffy (and I do have to concur with the commenter above – Joss Whedon, we miss you!!!) but it’s such a different idea of women and their proper role and the value they place on themselves and other women, and the meaning of virtue, what’s right and what’s wrong, all the things teens struggle with the most.

Another great point covered in the letters is that keeping on with her (teenaged!!!) pregnancy is not about being “responsible.” Like the letter says, there's nothing that says you have to have a baby just because you get pregnant:

“...[W]e’re not breeders! Becoming pregnant is not magic and not some gift from god. Hello! It’s all about sperm meets egg. That’s just a natural fact. Maybe if you were paying more attention instead of only flirting with a guy who has constant urges to kill you in biology class...”

Besides, THE CREEPY ASS FETUS IS KILLING HER!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!!! This is some sick, sick shit. Props to the letters' author on the fact that we’re more than baby machines... and for going into all the ways we can contribute to actually making the world a better place, as human beings who happen to be women, not uteruses with legs.