Girlzzzzzzzzz are good!

I love the internet.

Is there REALLY a big problem with this? She links to three articles at the beginning. The first in an article about the SECOND article, which is a response to an L.A. Times piece. The third article and even the fourth article which she links to later in the her column are about the logistical problem of having Twilight at the show. It has nothing to do with girls or boys.

And here’s the kicker: you can’t compare Watchmen and Twilight, or Hellboy and Twilight, or ANYTHING and Twilight, aside from, perhaps, Harry freaking Potter. Twilight is much, MUCH bigger than any of those other movies (aside from HP). The logistical aspect of having it there is going to be completely different, and completely new.

It’s also going to involve a bunch of convention goers who have never been to Comicon before, and could probably use some help in surviving.

Nowhere but on the internet is this an issue, and even then it’s just a couple of stories that get recycled over and over again and commented on over and over again on different sites so that it seems like an issue.

“By the time the last movie premieres, all the 12-year-olds who slathered over the first book will be 16/17-years old, and will be SO OVER Twilight.”

I truly doubt that. Even if their tastes DO change, the books will always be special to them because they had such an affect on their lives. There are lots of books, movies, bands, etc. that, after some time has passed, I realized weren’t really that good. But I still enjoy them because they’re so closely bonded with a specific time in my life.

For that matter, you’re disregarding the fact that humans still have children, and for every 12 year old who out grows Twilight, there’s another one (or probably two) waiting to take his or her place.

Some of the responders over at Occasional Superheroine make a good point. San Diego Comic-Con is still ostensibly about comics. And why Twilight mania may be irritating, it’s shows that SDCC really hasn’t been about comics for a decade or more. And, in fact, dealers and comic people are slowly getting squeezed out of the convention that bears their name in favor of big Hollywood studios pimping.

And, Jessika, thank you for saying what you did about Edward. That is the very thing I understand the least about that story. His behavior creeps me the hell out.

12 year old girls are not scary. they are annoying. a pox on this fail of an argument.

Kat managed to explain to me why I wasn’t really feeling the argument here. I mean I don’t really like any “fan-litism” as Kat put it, and I have no problem with these Twilight fans being at Comi-Con, but if anybody tries to talk to me about it my eyes will gloss over and I’ll space out to protect myself from something I truly don’t care about and I suspect the same thing would happen to a Twilight fan if I tried to talk about Marvel and Dark Reign and all the stuff I care about in geekdom.
But it’s true that guys are typically more aggressive about our interests and girls are typically more defensive. I may not be aggressive when it comes to comics, games, or other geek hobbies, but start talking about football and it’s Jaguars all the way and fuck you if you’re a fan of the Colts.

I think all the concerns about the Twilight contingent are vastly overstated. However:

1)Twilight has no comic antecedent (unlike Watchmen, The Spirit, and Hellboy), so one could make a reasonable argument that its inclusion is less central to SDCC’s mission as a *comic* con.

2)Does sexism play a role in the anti-Twilight sentiments? Quite likely, but it’s also worth noting that other girl-centric fandoms (Harry Potter, Naruto, etc.) have been welcomed into the Comicon fold w/o incident. Framing this issue as a solely sexist one ignores that reality.

3)The mass critical disdain for Twilight (and not just in ‘nerd’ circles, but in more mainstream outlets like Entertainment Weekly) makes it an easy target for contempt. I know a few folks who dig Bella, Edward, and the rest of the sparkly gang, but even they aren’t willing to defend the books as ‘good’, just ‘fun’ (compared to the Harry Potter books, which mostly received favorable reviews from critics).

4)Twilight fans are notorious for their bad behavior, even by ‘nerd/geek’ standards. Google up the publicity tours the movie actors went on (visiting ‘Hot Topics’ across the USA, etc.) last year in advance of the movies and you’ll read about several near-riots and related insanity. It’s worth noting that even their supposed objects of worship (Pattinson, Kristen Stewart) are more than a little fearful of them.

All that said, I was at the SDCC last year during wave one of Twilight mania. It didn’t ruin the con then, and I very much doubt it will now, if for no other reason than that the con staff are smart folks who do their job well.

I don’t really see the appeal of conventions, to be honest, but in fairness, I suspect it isn’t a “girl” thing, just a “totally unrelated fandom overrunning our event” thing. I suspect you’d get the same reaction if the place was going to be overrun by baseball fans.

And I think it also plays into the increasing suspicion that SDCC long since stopped being about comics in any way, and became a means of promoting anything in film or TV that could be described, however tenuously, as fantasy or sci-fi.

Joe,

Though Naruto is ostensibly ‘shonen’ (targeted at young boys) manga, it looks to me like it is dominated by fans of the distaff persuasion on this side of the pond. YMMV, of course. My larger point about girl-centric fandoms being integrated into the greater SDCC whole w/o incident still stands though. When I went to SDCC last year, I saw dozens of fangirls with ‘yaoi paddles’ cavorting all over the con hall and nobody raised an eyebrow.

Re: #1, I can’t really say that Twilight doesn’t have a right to be at SDCC b/c it doesn’t have a comic antecedent (like the other movies I mentioned), but I personally don’t think there is much potential for fans to crossover into comics, graphic novels, manga, etc. The bulk of the Twihards that attended last year wore, “I’m only here for Twilight,” t-shirts, proudly proclaiming their disdain for all things non-sparkly. With that in mind, I don’t like some of the aggrieved fangirls comparing Twilight hype to the hype surrounding Watchmen or the Hellboy movies. Those franchises evolved from the core of what SDCC is supposed to be celebrating and showcasing. Twilight only fits in to the extent that it’s a poorly told, incredibly twee version of the sort of vampire romance that’s been done better elsewhere.

I wonder how many of them bought up the con tickets…stayed for the one panel and then took off? I don’t think there’s much hope of converting them into comics readers….they aren’t here for that…it’s a hormonal thing…it’s the innate,almost instinctive, response of females to male fame.