DrowZ: Twilight is Still Happening? And the reclaiming of properties.
After publishing my last post, I had old friends and acquaintances crawl out of the woodwork to share with me their war stories of the Twilight fandom. The Jacob versus Edward debate and fan fiction rivalries, it was only incredibly validating. Their battle scars sparkled like diamonds, and I studied them thoroughly. Once I was a passing bystander to the Twilight movement, now I was a historian. They sent me their old fanfiction, with all of the self-inserts and civil war re-imaginings included. It felt like a form of indoctrination - I was the newest member of their vampire coven and nod they were ready to share with me an even deeper secret: The Twilight fandom is alive and well.
A quick Edward and Bella doodle by my friend Superbork,
Much like the vampires from the very books they cherished, the fandom had quietly been operating beneath the surface of the world. For proof, I went to the Twilight subreddit and found a burgeoning community of fans - almost 20 thousand of them, and for years they'd been pouring over every page, and scene like tomorrow never came. It's a scene that's been galvanized by the recent release of Midnight Sun and the reveal of Robert Pattinson's new appearance as the Batman in the DC movie of the same name. "my twilight renaissance..." reads a post by Reddit user cherryblossomemoji, "because i'm reading midnight sun, as many of us are, my best friend and i decided to bingewatch all of the movies. i feel like i'm fifteen again and in love with edward and completely obsessed," they write.
I did not doubt that Twilight possessed a colossal fanbase- but for them to be this numerous and this active was astonishing. Was I a Twihard? Not in the same sense- I turned to the movies on a whim after hearing that Stephenie Meyer had just released another book. It was a joke to me, but many people found solace in these films, and many of the ones I spoke to now acknowledge the flaws, and through those flaws, Twilight sparked the motivation to create.
To this day, people create fan fiction, blogs, and comics celebrating a shared interest in this melodramatic vampire story, and every version I've found thus far is infinitely more interesting than the one I found on the screen.
Twilight Storytellers: New Voices of The Twilight Series is a series of short films backed by Lionsgate and created by the Twilight community. Fans sent in screenplay outlines, with 20 finalists winning $500 and an opportunity to write a completed screenplay- five of those would then receive $50 thousand to create their short films, and those would win expensive prizes.
They would wind up green-lighting six pitches and producing seven short films, which you can find here. Each of these explores the background of a character who appears in the movies proper. While I can admire the passion that goes into projects like these- I found a lot of the short films mired by their devotion to the established cast. Only two films aren't about the Cullen family, personally, I found only one of them to be enjoyable:The Groundskeeper.
So, do I think Twilight is dumb? Yeah, infinitely so. It's probably one of the worst pieces of media I've experienced this year. Between the last article and this one, I learned that the Quileute people featured in the Twilight books are an actual Native American tribe in the region, who had their legends twisted by Stephenie Meyer and never saw any of the money the franchise made. I don't think highly of the books or its author. Still, Twilight is an experience that thousands of people shared - many of those people were then inspired to go on and create versions of it that surpass the original.
Fanworks, in general, serve as a bit of a safety net for creatives. You're much more likely to catch eyes by providing your own spin on an established property as opposed to just throwing your idea out into the universe. Communities form around a shared interest; people make friendships and share their appreciation through their method of choice. That's important. These nets then turn into bridges to other works inspired by the original, and in the best case, they iterate on the successes and leave behind the mistakes.
There's a phrase people throw around when they want to ignore the actions of someone who makes a thing they enjoy, "Separate the art from the artist." I feel it's important to address this here because the renaissance Twilight is currently having has been caused, in large part, by the release of a new Twilight book by Stephenie Meyer. The same person who refused to cast a black person unless it was a villain, and appropriated the culture of a real Native American tribe for profit. Until Meyer acknowledges the damage done and gets those people the money they deserve, those Twilight memories should stay memories.
In a similar situation, the creator of the popular video game Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, is a famous bigot in just about every way you can cut it. He also no longer owns Minecraft, and the current owners have scrubbed every mention of his existence from the game. He no longer receives any money the game makes - this isn't true of Stephenie Meyer and Twilight. The continued celebration of Twilight is already soured because other people are already excluded through the issues that are embedded in the series' DNA, continuing to line Stephenie Meyers' pockets with it is quietly supporting her choices.
---
Thanks for reading again, just wanted to put a proper bookend to all of the Twilight stuff. Going through this all was a lot of fun, and a gasp of levity that I sorely needed. Now and forever, representation matters, Black Lives Matter and continuing to stay silent about that in these times is supporting the murder of people who look like me.
Donate to the cause here, do what you can, use your voice, please don't stay silent.
If you have something you want to suggest the blog, email me at TheCementMix@Gmail.com
https://ko-fi.com/thecementmixer If you want to donate to the blog, do it there, I would appreciate it.
If we hit 300, I'll record some podcast episodes - if we hit 400 I'll read Midnight Sun.
As usual, here's a invite to The Cement Mixer discord: https://discord.gg/x4vvzeu
Comments
Post a Comment