Hoo-boy

[cupcake_goth]

A question for the ages, from a friend on another place on the interwebs:

"Is Twilight more or less horrifying than Flowers in the Attic?"

DISCUSS.

Comments

[staxxy.livejournal.com]

Twilight. the fans make it more horrifying.

[edited because I forgot to say WHICH ONE. ugh. my week is nuts. pardon me.]

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

Oh my God! The incest factor alone puts Flowers in the Attic into a whole 'nother horrifying category. Also, arsenic powdered doughnuts. That book put me off powdered doughnuts for YEARS. I still give them the side eye before I indulge.

Twilight is small potatoes in comparison. Plus it's just silly.

My opinion of course. :)

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

Yeah there is that. I wasn't thinking of the fans though.

[bork.livejournal.com]

'Flowers in the Attic', hands down.

I think if 'Twilight' would have been out when I was a pre-teen, it would have bored me to tears.

[icprncs.livejournal.com]

I've never encountered anyone who thought Flowers in the Attic was something to emulate. The same cannot be said about Twilight.

[tbass.livejournal.com]

My mom used to threaten to poison our donuts when we were bad... Twilight is horrifying in a completely different way though.

[theda.livejournal.com]

All I want to do it applaud this comment.

[staxxy.livejournal.com]

I can't bring myself to read more than a couple of pages of either so I feel unqualified to compare. It just took me too much time to scrub my brain after the attempt.

Bleeeeaaaaaaah.

[maiaarts.livejournal.com]

No one I knew who read the Flower in the Attic took them as seriously as they take Twilight.

And: STALKING IS BAD which is why Twilight horrifies me in its own special way

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

I STILL remember a series of scenes in one of the Flowers in the Attic books in which an evil abusive foster mother strangles a little of newborn baby hamsters, then makes her foster daughter bath in the tub with the dead hamsters.

There's also a scene where the foster daughter faux masturbates by rubbing a pillow between her legs, which even then struck me as inefficient.

Flowers in the Attic. Because Twilight is anti-feminist and encourages the conflation of stalking with love... but so does our entire culture. Twilight is just a reflection of our mainstream culture values. Flowers in the Attic is LEGIT FUCKED UP.

[cupcake-goth.livejournal.com]

DING DING DING DING!

Flowers in the Attic is a fabulously creepy, messed-up story, but I never heard of anyone wanting to BE Cathy.

[cupcake-goth.livejournal.com]

Because Twilight is anti-feminist and encourages the conflation of stalking with love... but so does our entire culture. Twilight is just a reflection of our mainstream culture values. Flowers in the Attic is LEGIT FUCKED UP.

That is exactly it. Flowers in the Attic is following in the grand (and legit fucked up) tradition of gothic horror novels.

... aaaaand now I really want to re-read them. Time to hit the thrift store and pick up some cheap paperbacks!

[jaborwhalky.livejournal.com]

I would say they are the same page of Bad..

Flowers in the attic , when I was young I saw the TV film based on that book and it was soo bad.

[icewyche.livejournal.com]

I vote Twilight. Because however fucked-up FITA is - and ye gods is there some serious fucked-up-edness going on there - at least the prose was somewhat readable and nobody goddamn SPARKLED.

Although looking back, I have to say that while I didn't think much about the whole Cathy-teaches-herself-to-become-the-best-ballerina-EVAR thing when I read the book as a pre-teen, now that I'm 43 and an actual ballet dancer it bugs the living hell out of me. Teaching oneself to go on pointe is a surefire way to get crippled, where did she get the pointe shoes anyway because they have to be FITTED HELLO, and NO YOU CANNOT DANCE THE GODDAMN ROSE ADAGIO BY YOURSELF. Not unless you can telekinetically support yourself during the numerous balances, pirouettes, and lifts, and last we heard Cathy was not part of the X-Men. [/dancer rant]

[arinye.livejournal.com]

Madame, you have read my mind. I was just about to say something similar, but you beat me to it.

[maidengurl.livejournal.com]

The Flowers in the Attic series starts with the horrifying while the Twilight series builds to completely horrifying in Breaking Dawn.

Makes me wonder what the reaction to Flowers in the Attic would have been during the internet age.

[mahariel.livejournal.com]

I forced my way through the entire Twilight series because my jewelry team was gushing over them for months, and I figured they had to get better, and afterwards I seriously considered using them for a backyard barbecue. Even as a teenager, I was still exceptionally literate, and badly written books were scorned. It's been a quarter of a century, admittedly, but I wouldn't have gotten through Flowers once back then, let alone reread it as many times as I did, if it was at the same level of poorly written crap that the Twilight novels are.

[bijouxdejais.livejournal.com]

Twilight is about an inch deep, and could never actually happen to anyone. Flowers in the Attic could and (horrifyingly) probably HAS happened to someone.

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

Damn, I think I just packed my copies.

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

I vote Twilight, because, as was said above, no one tried to be Cathy. Twilight is more insidious in its horrifying nature.

[kirk1701.livejournal.com]

I would have to say Flowers in the Attic. Even by todays main stream standard is it a distrubing book. For the 80's it was down right frightening and probably only got away with the tpics in it due to it being put in the horror genre and flew under a lot of peoples radar. Abuse, imprisonment, murder, incest.

Twilight has its moments too but it not as disturbing. However sparkly vampires are close. *shudders*

[nelsolidarida.livejournal.com]

YES. FitA is intended as a well-crafted piece of horror (ok I may be stretching the boundary of well-crafted, but as teen horror goes it is), whereas Twilight is marketed as a romance story. My friend's daughter, usually pretty sensible, has been known to rate boys in terms of whether they're an Edward or a Jacob. So in context I'd say Twilight was worse!

[miss-lisa-ma.livejournal.com]

ICON WUUUUUUV!!

Using the icon for the other Team Edward (Dalton, that is)

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Haven't read Flowers in the Attic, though I watched the first ten minutes of the movie. Not sure how my mother got through the damn thing since she was horribly abused as a kid.

Twilight, on the other hand... The only way I could get through that one was to keep a pen handy and jot comments in he margins.

I guess that FiTA is the lesser of the two evils, since it's based on Stuff That Actually Happens, though it likely started the whole Abuse is the New Dead Parents trope for Mary Sues.

[marc17.livejournal.com]

I've never read Twilight, and only seen one of the movies, but I can't think of really anything bad actually happening to the main character in the first couple of books beyond the boy she likes not instantly liking her back. In general, the movie I saw was less bad than your average prime time TV show.

FitA however was a fair bit of horror.

[sandra666219.livejournal.com]

Flowers in the Attic is a classic. I love V.C. Andrews. Twilight puts me to sleep

[savannarama.livejournal.com]

Hahaha!

[savannarama.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. If a teenage girl I knew was about to read Flowers in the Attic, I would say "have fun" because it grimly entertains, but never does it make anything hideous romantic enough to confuse. However, if she were reading Twilight, I would want to Talk to Her Afterwards.

[lost-shadowwolf.livejournal.com]

I have to agree, Flowers in the Attic is WAY creepier because of the desperation and uttery saddness of the whole thing. And yeah the slow posioning with powdered donuts, how the mum never would come back and when she did urgh it was all just so screw up. Twilight WISHES it was that creepy.

[dykestar.livejournal.com]

TWILIGHT IS FAR LESS DISTURBING IN EVERY WAY. FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC STILL GIVES ME NIGHTMARES! THERE IS NOT ENOUGH CAPSLOCK TO ADEQUATELY EXPLAIN MY DEEP INTERNAL SHUDDERING AT THE MERE MENTION OF THE TITLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!