#of new YA novels or teen shows were literally ten in 2018 and that's just wrong. that can't be

[haveamagicalday]

My 2018 Reads

Let me start by saying that I have read almost 100 books this year (some short stories but I like to count those too) I’m going to make a separate list for my top ten but here are the other ones!

4 Stars

Two Dark Reigns by Kendare Blake 

This is the third book in the Three Dark Crowns series. It’s a dark tale about three sisters who have to compete against each other for the crown. There are a lot of characters to follow which means they aren’t always that well developed but the story is so so enthralling.

The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas 

Loosely based on real events, the novel follows Monica whose older sister was one of five cheerleaders to die under mystery circumstances. Five years after the deaths, Monica discovers something that could help her solve what really happened. This was a gripping read with some great twists

Beneath the Haunting Sea by Joanna Ruth Meyer

This book flew under the radar this year which is a shame because it was a great read. Talia gets banished to a dreary island where she stumbles upon ancient legends that may be more real than she realizes. I will admit, the first third of this book was a little wack. It was like a different book but it got much better once she got to the island.

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

A melancholy tale of a trio of ghosts that lure young boys to their deaths each summer. Our main character is a life long resident of the town who is just trying to make it through the summer. I’ll admit, it got a little messy in the end but for a debut novel, I thought it was very engaging. 

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I’m late on this one, I know. Rachel commutes to work everyday. Then one day she sees something she wasn’t supposed too that leads her down a dark spiral to find out what really happened. Definitely a turn pager that has more than one mystery to solve. 

The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn

This year’s breakout mystery/suspense novel. Anna is confined to her house, spending her days in a group chat or playing online chest. When a seemingly perfect family moves in across from her, she becomes entangled in a mystery when she sees something she shouldn’t one night. An unreliable narrator will keep you guessing what’s real and what’s not.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

If you love the movie, you will love the book. An adorable, sweet read! 

3.5 Stars

Scream All Night by Derek Milman

Dario grew up on the set of various B-horror movies. That’s because his family owns the studio that makes them. Dario has tried to distance himself from his family but is forced to return when his brother invites him to a very special event involving their father. Darkly funny and unique, this was a twisted take on a young man coming to terms with his past.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Vampires are on the rise and to accommodate them all, the US government creates quarantined cities known as Coldtowns. Vampires must live in Coldtowns but for humans, it’s optional. But once you are in, it’s nearly impossible to get out. Holly Black creates an imaginative take on vampires. The book starts off a little slow but really picks up when our main character arrives at Coldtown. My only complaint is that this wasn’t a series. There was so much packed into this book that could have easily been expanded upon over the course of a few books.

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

Amber is in a coma. She can’t move or remember anything but she’s pretty sure her husband has something to do with her current state. The book alternates between past and present as Amber struggles to remember what happened to her. I found some of the twists convoluted and kooky but they were definitely original. Trigger Warning: there is a very graphic rape scene 

3 Stars

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Quincy is one of 3 media named Final Girls; the last ones standing during a horror movie like massacre that killed their friends. Now Quincy is all grown up but still trying to forget what happened the night her friends were murdered  when one of the other Final Girls shows up at her doorstep, forcing her to revisit her past.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

A Snow White retelling with a unique twist! Mina, the future queen, has a heart made of glass, crafted by her magician father. Lynet, our Snow White, is the spitting image of her dead mother. Then one day Lynet discovers that the king had hired Mina’s father to craft Lynet out of snow in her mother’s image after she died. Alternating between Mina’s past and Lynet’s present, this is a sweet and simple fairytale retelling!

Hex Hall series by Rachel Hawkins

Sophie is a teenaged witch with wayward powers. She gets sent to Hex Hall, a magical reform school, to learn how to better control her powers. This book was a fun read. I think I would have liked it more if I were still a teenager. The stakes never really seemed all that high but it was fairly entertaining.

Sea Witch by Sarah Henning. 

The Little Mermaid from the point of view of the sea witch. Well, sort of. Evie is a witch, best friends with a prince, whose other best friend, Anna drowned when they were children. Now, a girl who bears a striking resemblance to Anna, appears on the beach one day and she is determined to make the prince fall in love with her. Honestly, I was far more interested in Annemette than Evie. I think this would have been a really interesting story from her point of view instead.

To Kill and Kingdom by Alexandra Christo

Another Little Mermaid retelling but this time, the mermaid is a siren whose mission is to steal the prince’s heart. Literally. The first chapter of this book made it seem like this would be much darker than it ended up being. The romance was a little weak but still, this was an interesting take on the tale and an enjoyable read.

The Enchanted Sonata by Heather Dixon Wallwork

A Nutcracker retelling. In this version, Clara is a musician who receives a mysterious nutcracker on Christmas. She ends up whisked away to a magical world where all the children have been turned into toys and it seems that her, and her music, is the only thing that can turn them back. The Nutcracker is very dear to me, so I was overly critical of this book. It didn’t bear too much resemblance to the ballet or original fairy tale and it read more middle grade than YA. Still it was a cute read.

And the Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness

I absolutely loved A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness so I was excited for this. It was very different than what I was expecting. Simply put, this is Moby Dick told from the perspectives of whales. It was bizarre and I don’t really think I understood it fully but I’ve also never read Moby Dick before. The pictures were beautiful though and it is a very quick read.

Imposters by Scott Westerfeld

A new series that takes place in the Uglies universe. Frey and Rafi are twins but people only know Rafi. Frey has been raised to fight and be Rafi’s body double. I really enjoyed this book because of it’s connection to Uglies. Had I not read Uglies as a teen, I’m not sure this book would have held up on its own.

Lucy in the Sky

From the same author that did Go Ask Alice, this book is presented as a diary of a young girl that spirals out of control due to drug use. Objectively, this book isn't that great. The writing is poor, the story is unrealistic and it almost seems to glorify drugs rather than turn you off to them. BUT, it's enticing just like the other books in this series. It pulls you in and you want to keep reading. I read it in one sitting. 

From Twinkle, with Love by Sandhya Menon

Twinkle is an aspiring film director. With the help of a geeky classmate, Twinkle embarks on making her first film for a local film festival. Along the way, Twinkle learns about friendship, family and love. A delightful fluffy read for fans of romantic comedies.

What Should be Wild by Julia Fine

This is a hard book to describe. Our main character is a girl who has been kept hidden from society due to a rare gift (or curse perhaps). Anything she touches dies, and anything that’s already dead comes back to life due to her touch as well. The story was bizarre and not entirely satisfying but it certainly was intriguing. I think it boils down to a matter of taste and I’m sure others could find much more merit in it than I did! 

Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

After the death of her mother, Lina is spending the summer in Italy with a father she never knew. While there, she is given her mother’s old journal which sends her down a journey to her mother’s past. With her mother’s guidance Lina discovers the magic that Italy has to offer. A cute and heartfelt read with some classic teen romance.

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson

 Mila’s best friend is dead and she wants to know who is responsible. So why not ask her? With an old grimoire, Mila finds a sleep to bring her best friend back and accidentally brings back two other murdered girls as well. With the spell’s limited time Mila and her undead girl gang try to solve the mysterious behind their deaths. Quirky, fun but also enthralling, this is a very original book.

Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle

Best friends Olive and Rose begin to lose things. First it’s only small things but soon bigger things are going lost. Everything changes for the two when they meet 3 strangers in the woods and a mysterious spell book. At times, this was a very confusing read. I’m still not sure I fully understood it but the story was engaging and fairy tale like. A lovely read.

Far Far Away by Tom McNeal

A modern fairy tale like read. What starts off as a whimsical turns drastically dark as the story progresses. Our main character, Jeremy is somewhat of an outcast but attracts the attention of an outgoing and outspoken local girl. The most interesting aspect of this book is that Jeremy is able to speak to ghosts and the ghost of Jacob Grimm (who wrote all those fairy tales) has been his friend for years. Entirely random but a fantastic addition.

The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas

Another YA thriller from Thomas. This was her first novel and I think it shows. It’s weaker than the other books she has written but still good. However, the last 3rd felt like a completely different book which was a bit jarring. If you like murder mystery/unsolved crimes, you’ll like this but definitely check out her other books too!

How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather

Our main character is a descendant of Cotton Mather, the man who sentenced women to their deaths during the Salem Witch Trails. Samantha moves to Salem with her stepmother and finds that she is not welcomed by her fellow classmates, descendants of the witches. And it turns out there might actually be some magic in Salem after all. This was silly fun. I was expecting something more like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina but that’s not the tone of this book at all. The love triangle was a little annoying and there was a reveal that was bizarre but overall it was an entertaining book.

Renegades by Marissa Meyer

I absolutely loved the Cinder series and Heartless but I wasn’t feeling this one so much. There’s nothing really wrong with it, the characters are well developed and the writing is good, however I just couldn’t gather any enthusiasm for it. I will say that the writing was rather slow and I felt that the book could have been a lot shorter than it was but if you like superheroes and villains, you should like this.

2.5 Stars

Ever by Gail Carson Levine

This is a retelling of the Biblical tale about Jephthah but had more of a Greek mythology feel with a cast of many gods and goddesses. It was a weird mixture of mythology and focused on a very weak romance. I think this book was aimed more for middle grade and might be more enjoyable for them.

Midnight Sun by Trish Cook

Yes, I read the novelization of the Bella Thorne movie that came out earlier this year. Yes, it was poorly written, the plot was laughable, and the romance cheesy. But, it was a quick read that kept my interest. 

2 Stars

My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows and Brodi Ashman

I received this in my owlcrate and I’m still wondering why. The book is a retelling of Jane Eyre combined with ghostbusters because in this version, Jane can talk to ghosts. There’s also a secret ghost hunting society that wants recruit her but she’d rather be a nanny for Mr. Rochester. I really didn’t like this. The attempt at humor throughout was almost painful, the characters were dumb and I don’t understand why this book exists in the first place. I think it would have been better if it was just about Victorian era ghost hunters and not incorporate Jane Eyre in any way. This is part of a series in which the authors rewrite (very quirkily!) famous stories starring a character named Jane. From the reviews I read, their first book, My Lady Jane, was much better but I don’t even want to attempt to read it after this one.

September Girls by Bennett Madison

This is one of those books that I kept reading because of how bad it was. Sam is spending the summer in a small beach town that is overfilled with The Girls. That’s what Sam calls them because they are all blonde and beautiful. Turns out they are some sort of mermaid? It’s never really explained and they are all cursed and need to have sex with a virgin man in order to be free. Enter our sexist virgin, Sam. The women are written terribly, referred to as sluts and shanks and their asses and breasts are always mentioned. I have no idea how this book got published. But damn, was it fun to laugh at. Number of breast/chest/boob mentions: 27

Poetry (Both 5 Stars)

The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace

This book felt very personal to me (like I was reading the author’s inner thoughts) and I couldn’t always relate to some of the poems. I felt that the sequel dealt more with women’s issues on a whole and has something all women could relate too. Her poems are breathtaking though and so powerful.

The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

I picked this up out of curiosity and ended up reading it in one sitting. It is absolutely stunning. I think every woman should read this. Hell, I think every man should read this too. I can’t wait for the third one!

Short stories

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo (5 Stars)  

Holy smokes, this was breathtaking! A collection of six short stories based on fairy tales/mythology. The stories are so utterly original though. Clever, satisfying with feminist themes. This is a must read for fairy tale lovers! 

Amazon’s Dark Corners Collection by Various Authors

I happened to see this advertised on Goodreads and got it for free on Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader. This collection is 7 short stories of the horror variety. It’s hard to rate these since they are all written by different authors. I didn’t find any of these stories all that scary though. More so just sad. Interesting, but not all that gripping. My favorite stories were Miao Dao by Joyce Carol Oates and Sleep Tight Motel by Lisa Unger but I wouldn’t really recommend the others. Trigger Warning: The Remedy deals with depression and suicide and has a rather offensive/problematic ending. 

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman (4 Stars)

This is a very dark retelling of Snow White from the queen’s point of view. Snow White is not the darling princess she is often portrayed as. This short story is very adult but not overly graphic. You can read it for free at the link I provided. 

Matchless by Gregory Maguire (3 Stars)

A quick reimagining of The Little Match Girl. The main character isn’t the match girl but a young boy whose life intertwines with the match girl’s. This short story didn’t add anything new to the story since it’s focuses on an original character. The match girl is just briefly there. My feelings for this were mutual. 

Re-reads

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares (5/4 Stars)

One of my favorite summer rereads!

Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot  (5 stars)

Just as delightful and funny as the first time I read the series as a young teen

Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen (5 Stars

I’ve gotten into the habit of rereading this book every summer. It’s a book that can be read in one sitting and is so heartfelt.

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (5 Stars)

This is my all time favorite Sarah Dessen novel. I highly recommend all of her novels.

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black (4 Stars)

This takes place in the same world as the Cruel Prince. Some of the characters even appear in the latter novel. This is a standalone that reads like a modern fairy tale.

[theconservativebrief]

Ten years ago this month, the first Twilight movie sparkled broodily into movie theaters. By then, the four-volume book series had already been published in full, made the best-seller lists several times over, and was safely established as a cult phenomenon for its target demographic of teen girls — but with that first movie, Twilight became mainstream.

In the fall of 2008, America at large was introduced to the story of Bella Swan, teenage everygirl, and her fraught, star-crossed love for glitter-streaked vampire Edward Cullen. Twilight introduced us to Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and it continued the Harry Potter tradition of the YA book-to-movie franchise as a dominant box office force.

It also became a cultural flashpoint. Think piece after think piece by turn celebrated Twilight’s cultural dominance, mocked its shimmery vampire mythology, and feared the effects that romanticizing its tortured, dysfunctional love story might have on its teen readers. In 2008, Twilight was adored, but it was also hated, feared, and mocked.

Here in 2018, we finally have room to get a little perspective on the whole thing. In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the first Twilight movie, Vox culture writers Constance Grady, Alex Abad-Santos, and Aja Romano joined forces with deputy managing editor Eleanor Barkhorn to look back at the unlife and legacy of the Twilight phenomenon.

Constance: When the first Twilight movie came out in 2008, I was 19, and I was positive that the entire franchise was a blight on the pop culture landscape. Before the movie even came out, I made up my mind about it. I read the posts about how the Edward-Bella love story ticked all the boxes of an abusive relationship; I shook my head over Stephenie Meyer’s bland, boring sentences; I howled over the whole concept of everything that happened in Breaking Dawn. (He chews the baby out of her uterus!)

But I was also completely fascinated by the franchise. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I picked up the first book to see what the fuss was all about, and even though I thought the love story was creepy and the prose was blah and absolutely nothing happened until about three-quarters of the way through the book beyond some vampire baseball (vampire baseball!), I kept turning those pages. I was compelled. I couldn’t help myself.

I hate-read every Breaking Dawn review, and every review of the movie. I developed opinions on Kristen Stewart (bit her lip too much) and Robert Pattinson (I appreciated his palpable hatred of the franchise). I spent so much emotional energy thinking about the whole Twilight thing that I was, for all intents and purposes, a fan. I was just a fan who hated it.

Looking back 10 years later, I don’t think I was necessarily wrong about most of the things I disliked about the franchise then. Bella and Edward’s relationship does have some disturbing power dynamics (which we’ll get into in a bit). Myer’s prose is pretty bland. The structure of the plot is bananas. (I was wrong about Kristen Stewart, though, and the way she was penalized for sometimes seeming mildly uncomfortable with the Twilight phenomenon while Pattinson was lauded for his outright hatred of it says a lot about gender politics circa 2008.)

But I also think that I clearly found Twilight really compelling when I was 19, and I was mad about that, because smart girls weren’t supposed to like books and movies like Twilight. There’s a weird, creepy eroticism to those books that is calibrated to speak precisely to the sexual and romantic fantasies of teenage girls, and I was a teenage girl. It did speak to me. And that pissed me off.

There are few pop cultural products that our society likes to shit on more than the pop culture created for teenage girls, and Twilight circa 2008 was the pinnacle of that phenomenon. This was a franchise that was built for teen girls, marketed to teen girls, and loved by teen girls, and because of that, it became accepted common knowledge that all correct-thinking people could only despise and revile it. So when I look back 10 years later, I find it difficult to untangle my hatred of Twilight from my own internalized misogyny, and from my profound and at the time unexamined belief that anything made for teenage girls must inherently be less-than.

How did you feel about Twilight back in 2008? Has it changed for you since then?

Eleanor: I was 24 when the first movie came out, and I think being just past teenagehood made all the difference for me. I loved the movie — fully, earnestly, without irony, without reservations. I loved the moody Pacific Northwest setting. I loved the longing glances. I loved the vampire baseball! (But then I am a sucker for the “characters with superpowers show off their superpowers” scene that these movies always tend to have. Ask me how I felt watching Tobey Maguire leap from Queens rooftop to Queens rooftop in the 2002 Spider-Man.)

I had spent my teenage years full of feelings, full of angst, full of deep, painful crushes on mysterious boys. And I’d mostly felt embarrassed by those feelings. I wanted to be calm, detached — a Cool Girl, to reference Gone Girl, another best-selling book turned hit movie. Seeing Bella feel so many of the things I’d felt was tremendously validating. I was normal! I’m okay, you’re okay, etc.

The fact that I watched the movie at 24 instead of 19 also meant that Twilight inspired a fair amount of nostalgia for me. By my mid-20s, I was no longer having those intense feelings anymore. I was turning into a much more practical, grounded person — realizing that I should be looking for stability, kindness, and shared values in the men I dated, rather than hotness or mysteriousness.

This was a necessary step in my maturation as a human being. (I’m very glad to be married to my kind, stable husband, whom I met at church, rather than the hot guy in my algebra class who sometimes showered me with attention and sometimes ignored me.) But it came with a sense of loss — intense teenage feelings have a particular joy and drama to them.

Twilight came at just the right moment for me to be a fan: I was close enough to my teenage years to appreciate the validation of my feelings, but far enough away that I could appreciate, rather than be embarrassed by, the romanticization of those feelings.

And that’s why I never fully understood all the hand-wringing about whether Twilight was “good” for women, or whether Bella was a “good role model” for girls. Pop culture doesn’t need to be instructive to be good. It can simply show people as they are, rather than as they should be. Bella isn’t a character I want to be like as an adult, or want my daughters to be — but that’s fine. Fiction for young people is full of spunky, plucky young women role models. It’s okay for Bella to capture a particular way that many young women are — even if, with the benefit of a few years of hindsight, we recognize that’s not the way we want to be forever.

Alex: I mean, I understand the hand-wringing and analysis of whether Bella is a “good role model” because of Twilight’s audience. The books were being consumed by teenage girls (and younger-than-teenage girls), and the natural response from adults, when it comes to any piece of culture as popular as Twilight was, is to fret over “what is it teaching the children?”

Many adults seem to believe that books for younger audiences should follow a certain moral code or provide some kind of moral guidance. Though overhauling the way we teach kids about books and how we approach books ourselves warrants its own entire article.

I read New Moon — the one where Bella wants to die so Edward will come and save her — and I’ve seen every movie except Breaking Dawn Part I. I guess my main impression of that one book and the four movies (I don’t want to speak for Stephenie Meyer’s entire oeuvre) is that Twilight is both a not-so-well-written book and a mildly exciting movie franchise.

But like Constance said, it gets criticized exponentially harder than other pieces of pop culture because teenage girls like it. I think some of that criticism is warranted, in that the book wallows in shallow descriptions, but it gets magnified because of who its target audience is.

One of the things I wish the movies had done more of was lean into the vampire action. There wasn’t enough vampire baseball. If you’re gonna give these vampires magical superpowers — elemental manipulation, mind-reading, pain projection, etc. — then show us those powers. Make it seem cool to be a vampire. Or at least make it seem cooler to be an immortal high schooler than Twilight often did, with the characters just trolling around a Pacific Northwest high school looking for an eternal mate.

Aja: We also can’t really talk about whether Twilight was instructive or not without talking about the kinds of real-world legacies it left us with — including a full decade and counting of YA novels with extremely problematic relationships at their centers. Despite the many red flags flying around Bella and Edward’s relationship — starting with their 87-year age difference, his stalking and controlling behavior, and the fact that he wants to bite her more than any other human he’s ever met, fans loved the couple. And because plenty of Twilight fans were so interested in their codependent passion, publishers started marketing books that featured similar relationships as a selling point.

(One of the most disturbing of these books was Hush, Hush, a New York Times best-seller that featured a hero who literally stalks, threatens to sexually assault, and tries to kill the teen protagonist. It’s a controversial book that’s currently being made into a movie, so the phenomenon is still very much with us.)

But we also have a whole generation of Twilight fans who turned the publishing industry on its head with their insistence and demand for trope-filled stories that indulged their fantasies. And their unashamed consumption of a brand of media that nakedly catered to them arguably presaged the flourishing romantic comedy resurgence we now appear to be in the middle of.

Twilight fans were also responsible for one of the most remarkable and underdiscussed publishing phenomena in history, in that they essentially built an entire new publishing genre from scratch. They started by creating a controversial but very effective system of pull-to-publish Twilight fanfiction — stories that centered on Bella and Edward analogues, without any copyrighted names or details. Then, backed by the money and enthusiasm of ravenous Twilight fans who wanted to read more, more, more, they created their own small-press publishing houses in order to ship those fics-turned-novels directly to their audiences.

It was from one of these Twilight fandom publishing houses, created for and by Twilight fans, that Fifty Shades of Grey — which was originally a massively popular Twilight fanfic called “Master of the Universe” — originated. By blowing the doors wide open on the potential financial power of fanfiction, and introducing it to mainstream culture for the first time, Fifty Shades of Grey forever changed publishing. And it wouldn’t have existed without this very specific way in which Twilight fans commercialized their fandom.

We could debate endlessly whether the marketing of any of these fics was “good” or “morally instructive,” but I do believe these fans were galvanized to do what they did because they were forced to spend years defending their hobby and their reading pleasures. And we all know the best way to defend your hobby is to find a way to make money from it.

Constance: Aja brings up a great point here: Twilight was such a giant franchise that it had a real effect on pop culture. So what do you think is its most lasting legacy?

An interesting counterbalance to the wave of YA romances about creepy, mysterious, controlling boys that Aja correctly pegs to Twilight’s popularity is that Twilight also fundamentally changed the way we talked about those romances. Before Twilight, they were considered silly and fun and not really worth critiquing, but the criticism of Twilight was so heated and so pointed that it ended up influencing the discourse around practically all relationships built on the Bella-Edward model.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a lot more sophisticated about the power dynamics of its relationships than Twilight was, but I don’t know that it could have gotten away with a ship like Buffy-Angel in a post-Twilight era. When Buffy first aired, a scene where Buffy wakes up in the middle of the night to find Angel sitting on her windowsill passed without comment, but after Edward Cullen, it became one of the scenes that people brought up when they talked about why they don’t like that pairing. That’s because one of the things the hand-wringing over Twilight established is that it is creepy when a boy breaks into a girl’s bedroom to watch her sleep, the way Edward does with Bella.

And The Vampire Diaries, the next big vampire romance franchise after Twilight, went out of its way to subvert any Twilight comparisons with its central romance between Stefan and Elena. That show very pointedly played the big reveal that Stefan was a vampire in an echo of the famous “Say it!” / “Vampire,” scene in Twilight, but in this version, Elena ran screaming in the other direction as soon as she realized what Stefan was. There’s even a scene in one episode where Elena is watching Stefan sleep, rather than the other way around, and he tells her it’s creepy.

There’s plenty for us to critique about the gender politics of The Vampire Diaries, but it’s a show that clearly wanted to be the woke alternative to Twilight, and the way it positioned itself to take that slot was by subverting the tropes that the Twilight discourse had established were gross.

Eleanor: The only love triangle YA story I really got into after Twilight was The Hunger Games, which provided an interesting (but also maddening) foil to Twilight. I saw The Hunger Games get treated a lot more seriously as a franchise because of its apparent critique of income inequality (the movie came out just months after Occupy Wall Street), and because Katniss was in so many ways the anti-Bella: tough, resourceful, independent. Also in The Hunger Games’ favor: Jennifer Lawrence, who played Katniss, was much, much better at the celebrity image game than Kristen Stewart.

But I found everything about The Hunger Games a little too perfect; the good role model protagonist and the “serious” commentary on today’s social issues was all a bit much. I still appreciate Twilight’s stubborn refusal to be anything more than what it was: an evocative, albeit problematic, teen love story that took its characters’ feelings seriously.

Would it be a stretch to call movies like Brooklyn and Lady Bird part of the legacy of Twilight? Of course, they’re in an entirely different genre; they’re also more nuanced and better acted, and the relationships at their center are largely absent of the troubling power dynamics we discussed above. But they fill a place in my heart that Twilight once did, for the way they show that the stories of young women and their romantic choices are important and worthy of deep study.

Alex: The world would be a better, kinder place if everyone was required to watch Brooklyn. Though I’m not sure if it and Lady Bird are a part of Twilight’s legacy or are simply terrific stories about teenage girls growing up that haven’t been given the credit they’re due.

Twilight’s more direct legacy is Fifty Shades of Grey and the phenomena — the backlash and the fandom — that followed it. Right? When Fifty Shades came out, article after article depicted and chided its readers as desperate, horny middle-aged women. The book was considered “mommy porn.” Like Twilight, Fifty Shades is no beautiful tome of language. But the criticism of it seemed amplified because women, particularly women of a certain age, were really into it. And If there’s one demographic whose taste people like to judge more than that of teenage girls, it has to be moms. Poor moms.

Aja: I definitely think we can’t discount the fact that a lot of the teen girls who got vilified for loving Twilight grew up and got vilified for loving New Adult erotica, so I’m doubling down on the stance that Twilight’s legacy is creating a generation of women who became loud and proud about their fictional kinks as a result of being perpetually shamed for them. I want to think that ultimately, this confidence outweighs all of Twilight’s problematic tropes.

I will add that Twilight sparked a weird purity backlash in YA literature whereby depictions of sex and sexuality between teens became newly taboo, in part because of all the hand-wringing over Twilight and its ilk. I think that’s taken a while to wear off, in part because Twilight’s imprint was so indelible.

Also, there’s one really obvious thing Twilight bequeathed us, simple but huge, and that’s “Team X” and “Team Y.” Twilight made shipping, and discussion of shipping, a standard part of the pop culture discourse around media franchises, and it did so specifically via “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob.” (And the perennial underdog, Team Bella.) These ideas — and the specific concept of shipping as rooting for your pairing or character, or “team,” to win the love triangle — entered the pop culture landscape with Twilight, and now they’re ubiquitous. And crucially, by framing shipping as a pastime akin to rooting for a sports team, they made shipping into something harmless and fun rather than yet another toxic, galling thing to shame fans for doing. If only for this, I am Team Twilight all the way.

Original Source -> Reckoning with Twilight, 10 years later

via The Conservative Brief