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| DUSTY A Fanfic by YellowBella |
The postmodern way of reading has changed the way we read. The text is no longer expected to contain all the TRUTH that the author intended. The claim that if the author said it that's what s/he meant, or if the author did not say it then it was not meant. All that is gone.
It is the reader who brings meaning to the text. The deeper the reader has read, experienced, contemplated etc enriches the text. Authorial style is no longer the important component. We are following Nietzsche now: the style must be even more so than what the text is revealing and concealing; and it must have music to our listening ears.
To explain: Anyone can read 50 Shades and like it. Reading Twilight first and seeing the movies is not a necessity for its enjoyment - or purchase.
BUT: IF you have read Twilight - carefully and lovingly - and seen the movies over and over, 50 Shades will be a different book for you than it is for the woman - or man - buying it over the counter. I don't think there is a fan of Twilight who will disagree with me. It's probably the only one thing they can agree on BTW.
Yes, you can read DUSTY without having read Twilight. BUT you will have a different reading experience than the Twilight afficianado. And by precession - another post modern term - you will now reread or remember Twilight with added resonance. So bringing yourself to the text resonates both forward and backward.
YellowBella have taken (there are 2 authors) have taken Twilight and owned it. DUSTY has created resonances in Twilight that were concealed and revealed them to us.
1. We meet a Renee who might have been, had she stayed in Forks and remained married to Charlie. A charming, lovely mother with bourgeois aesthetic tastes instilled by a sophisticated advertising milieu that is total. Bella herself is a product of it. Renee is in a symbiotic attachment with her daughter. She infantilizes her as a means of controlling her. Renee and Charlie are authoritarian parents as befits the Chief of Police of Forks. We surmise they vote conservative and have drawn hard limits and boundaries for behavior that their daughter must conform to. They are the family microcosm of one aspect of our larger political spectrum.
2. We first meet a Bella who is striving to conform to those boundaries set for her. Many Twilight fans have expressed over and over how important this is in parenting. How very necessary, and Kristen Stewart is openly and covertly criticized for not adhering to these ladylike expectations of proper normal behavior. Bella is securely caught in the Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge/normality Foucault so painstakingly draws in his 1974-75 Lectures on Abnormal at the College de France and in his books: Madness and Civilization and in Discipline and Punish.
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| Agnes Martin Grid Painting |
This Grid is inescapable and DUSTY fictionalizes it so beautifully that anyone of any age reading DUSTY can immediately understand a profound, graduate level world wide, original contribution all of human behavior - that of the relation of power/knowledge. Power and knowledge are not separate, cannot be separated, cannot exist separately as they are always in a relation. Power cannot be given, taken, traded,or any other verb used. There is no Big Power, Big Other over us. Power seeps through the Foucauldian Grid through the interstices of that Grid. When we meet Bella she has assumed the responsibility of being perfect in order to adhere to those requirements. She looks perfect, dresses perfect, acts perfect, behaves perfectly. She is an alive, lovely, charming Barbie doll that her mother has created and we can imagine what might have been her fate had she never met the Cullens, and far more so than in Twilight. This is why DUSTY is an exceptional example of fanfiction that stands on its own merits, inverts Meyer's Twilight and rips into our hearts in a real way that Twilight never attempts.
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| Michel Foucault |
I am hesitating here because I see that one blog post is not going to do it. So I will stop and continue in manageable fragments as you read it, read through me, and then carry my reading back to DUSTY.
Just as DeLillo's Cosmopolis is a far richer book if read through:Moby Dick; James Joyce: Lacan: Freud; Baudrillard; Nietzsche; Foucault; Gradiva; Greek Mythology; Ayn Rand; etc than if you read it just as a story on its own as women are reading 50 Shades without a clue of Twilight or other fanfic.
What you bring to DUSTY will determine the depth of your reading of DUSTY, as aspects of Kristen and Rob fold in as well as the characters of Bella and Edward. And fans are going to bring going on 5 years of obsessive contemplation and observing. Now it is time for DUSTY to reveal some hidden secrets to you. And in doing so, introduce you to cutting edge philosophical and political thinking for our damned times. You do not need a graduate education to understand it. Kristen already understands it and acts on it unknowingly but surely, adroitly, and in an absolutely original way.
Can you keep up with her? Bella in DUSTY can.
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| Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon late 1700's - Design for a Prison |
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| Panopticon Jeremy Bentham |
Dear God! Seriously? Are we all really this full of ourselves? Dusty was not art. You know how I judge if a story is good or not? If it's one that I would want to read over and over again and share with others. You couldn't pay me to read Dusty again. There was no joy in reading and no deep meaning. The authors are now acting like they've " changed fanfiction forever". All they did was writing a horrible Edward and Bella and decided it would be fun and entertaining to see if people would actually fall for it and keep reading. So many did and they continue to feed the author's egos.
ReplyDeleteI never said it was a literary masterpiece. Nor is Twilight, which was a Foucauldian "CUT" in the History of Sexuality. Andy Warhol's Campbell soup cans were a Foucauldian "CUT" in the Dominating Discourse of art history, ushering in POP. A detailed reading is here: http://twilightirruption.blogspot.com/2011/10/reading-twilight-through-foucauldian.html They haven't changed fanfiction forever, but they have raised the bar on the playing field. Have you read the really awful stupid and puerile fanfiction? Take your criticisms there.
DeleteBiggest load of crap I've ever wasted my time on. Started out amazing, went to hell when the authors never developed the characters, never moved the story along, created a despicable Edward and Bella and then left us hanging. If a story is going to be over 400,000 words I expect some resolution. And by resolution they either die, which would have been realistic for Edward, or they break up for good. To write an 18k chapter from an organs point of view is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. That time should have been spent on moving the story forward. And repeating the same thing over and over again in a chapter doesn't drive the point home, it confuses the readers and becomes monotonous and boring. 50 had a better plot line than this story and that's just....sad.
ReplyDeleteYou obviously don't understand post modern writing. While there is plot, plot is not the all encompassing concern of the post modern author. The internal growth is what is important. This is new feminist writing. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean its crap. And resolution at the end is almost never the necessary ingredient altho it often does end in a complete way. The intolerance of ambiguity is a quality of the authoritarian personality - (Adorno) - and from your comment you have a bad dose of it.
DeleteWhen ANY writer decides they are smarter than their intended audience, they alienate themselves and lose touch with why people write in the first place. Why would you deliberately set about to belittle your readers? You NEED readers. Without readers, you are just shouting into the void. I see a lot of writers fall into this trap but none more than the writers of Dusty.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to throw down on intelligence, join Mensa.
This gross exercise in pretension is a waste of time and internet downloads.
Maybe they are writing for a different readership than someone like you. Me for example. How do you know who their intended audience is? Maybe they don't know. Maybe they are just writing something they love writing and are not concerned with the marketplace. Not everyone is. DeLillo has never sold the way 50 Shades has sold. Obviously you are a 50 Shades kind of reader. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
DeleteIn fact, I have NEVER read 50 Shades, and find it awful that anyone would. I have read DeLillo, and Foucault and many of the other authors you mentioned.
DeleteI am eceptionally well educated, in some of the topics you discuss in your article in fact. Judging me for thinking Dusty is a poorly written, unimaginative piece of drivel, thats on you. Given that even the chapter that was written from the perspective of the heart was an idea stolen from a poorly constructed magazine interview with Pattinson, I fail to see where the writers were innovative.
But that's okay, you live in your little world of delusion, where you are the smartest person in everyroom. That's easy to achieve when everyone else left the room.
You give no indication that you have comprehended Foucault. You may have read him, as many have. Nietzsche: "Words written in blood are not to be read but learnt by heart."
DeleteWhere have I said DUSTY was an artistic achievement. Twilight was not either. And if you haven't read MOTU or 50 Shades based on it, you are not exactly an adept in the area of fanfic. DUSTY is an achievement in the field of fanfic.
Anyone who understood Foucault or DeLillo or Baudrillard or Nietzsche would not express themselves the way you have in your comment. See I am not following your model, am I?
For the three precious reviews, I would LOVE to read what you have penned, but if my suspicions are correct, you've never had the ability to commit to doing it. Have opinions sure, but have some respect as well.
ReplyDeleteSorry I don't understand your comment. What THREE reviews are you talking about? I suggest you read all my blog posts but that would take the rest of the week and beyond and I think however I simplify things they would be over your head still.
DeleteIf you look at the time stamps maybe you can figure it out.As for your blog posts being over my head, don't flatter yourself. For the record, I very much enjoyed Dusty and was defending the Authors, who I think did a great job. You however, look to want to argue with everyone. Sorry, I hope my explanation isn't too vague for you......
DeleteIt's vague. I have written only once about DUSTY. I have commented on it in other places but that is not the same as writing a post on it. I did not initiate any of these arguments but I do reply to each one when it is on my blog. Either that or delete them. You prefer deletion maybe?
DeleteI love these three comments so much! I couldn't agree with them more. The authors of this fic now feel they are above fanfiction and their readers. It's just sad to witness their preening on Twitter. They both honestly feel like they've written the great American novel or something. lol. If they tried to get Dusty published they would be laughed at. Let's see, we have a story where neither of the characters have any redeeming qualities. One of the characters is a drug addict who constantly cheats on the other while probably gaining ever venereal disease known to man while the other character just cries about it and does nothing. Then we get the ending that resolves NOTHING. After all the torture we get put through we get absolutely no resolution. Wow, that sure sounds like a best seller to me. These two need to wake up from their delusions before they have no one left to read their words.
ReplyDeleteAnother anonymous huh! Some fanfic readers are highly intelligent and don't read the crap that is out there. If you want to read crap fanfic go over to http://www.adifferentforest.com and you will find a large choice that is easy to understand and ends with a HE, 2 1/2 children, a house with a white picket fence around it, a dog and 3 cats.
DeleteIf MOTU (Master of the Universe) streamlined into 50 Shades can be the best selling book ever with its terrible writing then this one can sell easily. There is a market for it and it ups the ante. So Edward fucks a number of girls in high school, so why is that screaming venereal disease. He uses a condom. OH I see, you probably missed that one sentence reference. A pity.
No, I didn't miss the vague reference to condom use but if we are to believe that Dusty is a drug addict, do you really think he is going to be coherent enough to always use one? Please try and use some commen sense here. And thank you for trying to belittle every comment you've received even the one that was supporting you. That was entertaining.
DeleteYou are making an interpretation here and an inference. If someone supports me in a way I do not agree with, yes I will refute it. I am not a Peter Keating just looking for anyone who agrees with me. Ag ree with me based on my reasons and that I will accept. Not shall, will accept. Glad you were entertained. Doesn't take much does it?
DeleteDear JayKay, your question is entirely irrelevant. Regardless of who I am, or what I write, I am entitled to an opinion. As is anyone else. Once the authors of that fic show respect for their readers who took issue with they way things played out, I'll show them the same in return. I stand by my comments above because without readers, writers are nothing. Something they would do well to remember, along with the fact that readers are allowed to think there were failings in any writing. Perhaps if they hadn't tried so hard to come across as artistic or intelligent they might have written a better story. Then again, perhaps not.
ReplyDeleteObviously you've never read anything but fanfic. Fanfic is almost the only fic where the ending is tied up in a neat little bow. Just what part about the ending is a failing in your opinion?
DeleteRefer to my reply above, I am highly educated and widely read. I am not asking for a neat little bow, sometimes the only ending is a messy one, I have no issue with character death, or a path that seems a little out of the ordinary. Something that the authors of Dusty should have had the balls to do.
DeleteI actually gave up on reading the exercise in self-importance that Dusty became but did scan the final chapter. Nothing changed, not a single moment of character growth, no indication that there was any point to the ridiculous number of words that came before it. Character driven stories are written to explore character growth, where there is none, you have farce.
If they wanted to have Dusty die, I might have been right there cheering for them. Even if they wanted to rip from Shakespeare and have them BOTH die, I'd have been satisfied. But if you are going to leave your characters to live their lives, allow them character progression, allow them to learn something, allow them to seem like real people and not cliches.
Oh and in response to your comment below, I ADORE Kristen Stewart. ADORE her. Quit making judgements about people who can see through this exercise in vanity. You are clutching at straws trying to find reasons why people don't like it, perhaps stop looking for excuses. I am well read, well educated, haven't read 50 and love Kristen (and Rob) - whats your next excuse for why I am too stupid to understand?
All the people I have spoken to who DON'T like it are the higher educated women in the fandom. Ponder that a moment will you?
YOur idea of "highly educated" and mine are obviously different. This is not the first time a character has been left without character growth, at least the way you see it anyway. (I don't.)
Delete" Character driven stories are written to explore character growth, where there is none, you have farce. " This sentence alone damns you as relatively uneducated. Obviously you have never read Robbe-Grillet, Masha Tupitsyn, Baudrillard, Moby Dick, Ayn Rand (no growth in Roark or Galt as they are literary FLAT characters), Bolano and thousands of others.
I am sure all the women you have spoken to don't like it. I cannot quibble with you about that sentence.
Well it seems as if some fanfickers hate teambella i.e. YellowBella. This is a clear indication that they are on the right track. They are breaking the Dominating Discourse of Edward/Bella fanfiction. An ambiguous ending (not to me though) whatever are they thinking of.
ReplyDeleteHow about Gone With The Wind that great romance. Scarlet wakes up in the morning, Rhett has left her, and she plans on getting him back thinking, "Tomorrow is another day." I suspect all these outrageous ramblings against DUSTY are coming from Kristen haters. Am I correct?
I for one adore both Mary and Sarah and everything about Dusty. They've taken character from a somewhat-badly written book and like many FF authors have made me fall in love with them. I've been reading FF for four years and there are very few stories that have truly affected me. I understand why people don't like it. It's poetic and it's not written in simple English and a lot of people find it boring, repetitive, pretentious, but I find it beautiful. And as for the other commenters: Sarah and Mary have been blown away by all of the support they have received for this story and sure, they've snapped at people recently for saying rude things, but what exactly do you expect? They've poured their hearts in 400,000 words and the criticism these people are giving isn't constructive. Did you expect them to sit back like doormats and take it? This is their baby, and I actually find it somewhat refreshing to see people stand up for themselves and what they love, and not caring that it might cost them readers. And as for 'if they hadn't tried so hard to come across as artistic or intelligent they might have written a better story'. Did you ever think that perhaps you're just not artistic or intelligent enough to understand it? People have that same thing about so many of the world's greatest authors. But really, at the end of the day, Sarah and Mary aren't as 'high and mighty' as everyone is painting them. They just realize they don't need the people who act like these commenters are, because they have hundreds of dedicated people who genuinely love their story.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note: I loved your review so far and can't wait to read the rest!
Oh yes, I'm sure that's it. I'm sure I'm just not intelligent enough to understand Dusty. lol. It's people like you that have inflated the author's egos so much they think they have their own fandom now. It's really disgusting how some feel the need to blindly follow others. If Mary and Sarah can't take people who don't like their 400,000 word story that goes nowhere, then they shouldn't have posted it or they need to grow up and get some thicker skin.
DeleteFor starters, in my opinion, they DO have their own fandom now. And it's not that they can't take people not liking what they've written, but there's a difference between not liking something and being downright hateful. It's easy to take criticism gracefully if its actually constructive but these girls are being given comments that are attacks on them as people, so naturally they're going to have a bit of a problem with that.
DeleteFor some reason I can't reply so I am thanking anonymous for her comment on my review. But really it is difficult to read DUSTY the way I have read it unless you have been steeped in post modern thinking for 24/7 for 4 years. Very few POMO thinkers are into twilight and fanfic and films. Although Zizek does a lot of his analysis through films and media. He has the media by the tail as they try to label him a clown to trivialize him. Hard to do with his deep deep books and just the sheer number of them.
DeleteYes they obviously have their own fandom just going by the enormous amount of hits I have gotten on this one review in 1 day. I understand why the tabloids enable this hatred as it sure does sell. Alas I am not selling anything!
The fanfic fandom is splitting up into FF writers who have never read anything much besides FF and those who have and who want to take it further. They will leave the semi literate ones behind. Their world is changing and they are not happy about it.
I don't understand why this keeps coming up. ***These characters have no redeeming qualities, they are drug users, cheaters, horrible human beings!*** Is every person you know good? Have you never known someone who is addicted??? Who cheats on their spouse?? If you say no you are not only wrong but extremely delusional!! It happens! People get addicted to drugs...and live that horribly sad lifestyle for years and years. Some people in relationships cheat. I'm not saying I agree with it...but it happens. And this stuff happen to kids! It is hard to be a kid today. Things aren't like they use to be! Not everyone has a life that makes the neighbors jealous. Kids live these lives...unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI have sat back while this all unfolded for a week or two now....but I am tired of it. Didn't your mother ever tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say not to say anything at all. I would never go online and say the shit you've said. You can deny it....but we have all saw it. You have so many random people following your twitter accts. Word spreads. Every author deserves to boast and brag about their writings.
Personally, I think Dusty is amazing! A work of art. Their style of writing....breathtaking. Poetic. But, maybe I am different. I don't need to know every single detail. I have an imagination. I don't need it spelled out for me. I can read between the lines.
Haters are going to hate I guess. Jealousy is an evil beast.
I agee with you 110% there Tara, you more or less said everything I wanted in a much better way :-)
DeleteTara I have been astonished at what has happened with my single review. 1500 hits in one day and that has never happened to me before in the 2 years I have been posting. DUSTY is a REAL look at today. Coke is a real drug that teens use. Sex is easily available to all of them.
DeleteAs far as character growth being non-existant, what story were they reading? Not the one I was reading. It is clear that Dusty will have to go to excess, he has, and touch bottom if he is to come out of it. The great great 1990's novel on Addiction is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. A masterpiece. His writing is as addictive as the addiction he is writing about. With DUSTY you feel the intensity pulling you as it pulls them. Time is going faster and faster for them as it is for us. As it did for Eric Packer in DeLillo's Cosmopolis. Nano seconds, zepto seconds, no time for contemplation, memory, intuition, imagination and you can tell most of these violent commentors have never experienced any of those things. They are like the ones in the story going from site to site to spread their hate.
I've been trying to comment since yesterday just to say thank you for the review, but nothing was being posted.
ReplyDeleteI've been following your reviews through the story and they are some of the best. I've found myself Googling a few of the people you've brought up more than once because I had no idea who they were. Lol.
I have to apologize for the light I've brought on your blog by posting the link on my Twitter feed. I should have hoarded this review. I shouldn't have allowed it to be put up for ridicule. I thought my Twitter was safe, though. Why would people follow me if they have these opinions about me, right?
Thank you so much for writing this. I was literally left in tears last night. When you have these "anonymous" commenters showing up everywhere you go, telling you over and over again how wrong you are, no matter how strong willed you are, it gets to you -- it was getting to me. I'm only human. (And admittingly not as educated as some of you claim to be.)
So, from the bottom of my heart, from both Sarah and I, thank you. We look forward to the rest of your review.
I've printed this one out, folded it up, and hid it in my Nook cover so I can read it whenever I want. <3
Oh honeys I revel in this. The worse it gets the better I like it. They can't win with me. And I get to constantly put post modern thinking out there which is where I want it to be. I have much more to say. You are fictionalizing all of post modern thinking and people stuck in the old Discourse are threatened with its destruction. Twilight "CUT" into the History of Sexuality that had been covered over when THE PILL became available at your local corner pharmacy. The Pill was a "CUT" into the History of Sexuality. For the first time in a culture there are no longer any rituals for courtship, engagement, marriage. The very first time in history. We are seeing first hand why they have always been in place. Young people now are trying to invent their own rituals from scratch. Not easy to do. DUSTY is one way to do that as your Bella and Dusty have done. So you don't know all this philosophical stuff, but you fictionalize it. And that's where it started. The fiction writers: Bataille, Guibert, Blanchot were the ones spurring Foucault on. And Baudrillard. Nietzsche above all with his fragmentary and musical writing deliberately done so no one could ever make a theory from his writings. He escaped them on purpose. These haters are in The Order of Production not the Symbolic Order of Seduction. Two different orders. Twilight is a far better book than anyone gives Meyer credit for. Written in fragments, non-linear, event driven, and musical and her writing is more seductive than the seduction she is writing about.
DeleteYours is seductive with an intensity that is more intensely seductive, more seductively intense than the subject of its seductive intensity. See why they can't stop me. They don't know enough. You will love Masha http://mashatupitsyn.tumblr.com/post/35244231048/all-about-love and she has also done another one that will break your heart Beauty and Monsters. Her Judy Garland will dissolve you. She does not write fanfic but serious cutting edge post modern fiction about love. She is taking a PHD degree in philosophy at The European University in Switzerland IMO the only worthwhile University to study in left. All the great post modern thinkers of our time do seminars there. They are supposed to be doing a series of seminars in NYC in the spring.
I intend to write on your Bella's use of feminine "masquerade" as you so wonderfully fictionalize it. Much more difficult to get it out of Judith Butler who had been awarded the most dense and obtuse writer. She defended herself saying she refuses to write in "sound bites" so they can be taken out of context and spun by reviewers, media etc. Fuck you. Hope this soothes you. Me, I like a good rumble.
It's sickening really. Do you sit home at night and pat yourself on the back over for your greatness? How very embarrassing. Just know all those hits you're getting are people reading this and laughing their ass off at how conveluded you are. If it makes you feel better to fight with people and defend Dusty, then have at it. Just know that in a week or two Dusty will be forgotten and so will your "intelligent" defense of it. Okay, now come on back with your big words. I'm sure my puny brain won't be able to comprehend your awesomeness.
DeleteIt won't. Better read up on Judith Butler and read the Amazon reviews on some of her books, especially Gender Trouble so you will have a little chance of trying to "keep up". I'm not optimistic though. Does it make you feel better to trash DUSTY? At least as good as it makes me feel to praise it, NOT defend it. It needs no defending.
DeleteOne more week? Damn. It's been two weeks since the last update and you're still here talking about it. Js.
DeleteBelieve it or not, there are a lot of people who love Dusty. There are people who have lived this life. People who understand. If you're some how better than those of us who have, fine... Good for you. But really, what are you so mad about? Why do you care so much? And if its such a cause that you feel it necessary to comment, why not say who you are?
Take your anger somewhere else.
I'm not mad. Trust me, Dusty is doing great. Sarah and I are doing great, and the people who cherish Dusty as much as we do are all doing great. It's you, stalking our Twitter feeds and our Facebook accounts looking for somewhere to spread your anger. And if you feel justified enough to keep doing so, like its not wrong, well then maybe your ego is a lot larger than you keep saying mine is.
1500 people cared enough to read the review. Good or bad, it's just more attention.
I can guarantee its good, though. You're the minority, not the people who appreciated the story.
Like Twilight, DUSTY is a threat. There is a philosophical term "the unknown knowns" which wonderfully describes Ayn Rand and her relation to capitalism. DUSTY is full of these. I guess I will do one of the more terrifying ones tonight: transgressions.
Delete