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Patron Saint of Hypoxyphilia ([info]shallow_kid) wrote in [info]fandom_wank,
@ 2008-08-17 11:49:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current mood:Sparkly

Twilight vs. Twilight round INFINITY
So, there is a petition aimed towards Stephenie Meyer and her publisher Little, Brown that's actually more of a letter about why Breaking Dawn sucks and what the author (of the letter!) would have done to make it better. It has received 1152 signatures so far.

When it broke a thousand, the petition's author emailed the following letter to Seth*, the maintainer of StephenieMeyer.com:

Seth,

I completely understand that you are not the whipping boy for Stephenie Meyer, but she has given us no address to reach her directly, so sadly, I have few choices- and one of them was to send this to you.

My name is Heather Faust, and I have written a letter to Stephenie and to Little, Brown. As suggested by a number of others on message boards, I posted this letter as a "petition." Today we reached a thousand signatures. (It has only been live for a few days.) We will continue to leave it live and see how it grows.

I feel that it is well written and respectful, and I would hope that you would take a few minutes to read it. If it gets through to Stephenie, well, I'd be thrilled. We are not looking to hurt her, we aren't looking for her to rewrite it... We just want our opinions acknowledged, and we'd like to no longer be referred to as a "vocal minority." We'd also love it if she'd be able to answer our concerns with more than just "it's fiction," "I'm not a biology major" or other brush offs. We don't, of course expect that at all. But just a simple "Yes, I hear you, I'm sorry that you were disappointed" would be enough for us.

Anyway, sorry that you are in the middle of all of this. That must suck for you.

Thanks for your time


Seth responds:

Heather,
First, let me assure you that I will not forward this email to Stephenie. You say that you are not looking to hurt her, but it would be ignorant to believe that criticism of any kind does not hurt the person to whom it is directed. I didn't even forward any of the 35 emails that I received today telling me (or Stephenie) how much they loved Breaking Dawn, how the series changes their lives, etc.

There are a few other reasons why I would not forward the link to this "petition." (By the way, you have heard that online petitions never generate results, right?). I disagree that it is "well written." Besides the grammar mistakes (which are not hard to overlook), you address the letter to Stephenie, but by the end of the first paragraph you refer to "Meyer" in the third person. I am not sure if you are speaking to her or not. Also, the "signatures" (which are completely invalid) are not just names, but a discussion board. I went to one page and found three people defending Breaking Dawn and saying things like "I am surrounded by self absorbed teenagers or adults that think they can write better books and never do!"
And, although I got very bored and wasn't able to read the entire "petition," I want to try to answer a few of your main points (although I'm sure that Stephenie's answers would be a lot better than mine):

#1 and #2: At the end of Eclipse, Alice specifically says that nobody has ever made the conscious decision to become a vampire, and so none of them had any idea how Bella would handle the entire process.

#3 and #4 (and everything else in your : These books are fiction. They are filled with FICTIONAL characters that Stephenie made up all by herself. In an attempt to keep the books clean and not make young girls think about things that they don't need to think about, no other book mentioned anything about reproductive systems. They are Stephenie's characters, she can decide anything that she wants.

And finally, Heather, your letter is not respectful at all. It is libelous in many instances. I would be embarrassed to say such things about someone who I have never met.


Which prompts a few "screw you, Seth!" emails in retaliation. They can be read here

Icing on top of the cake? There is a conspiracy afoot!

Hi. My name is Heather Faust, and I wrote a simple letter to Little, Brown. Some of my friends here suggested posting it as a petition just to see how many people we could get to sign it. It turns out, in a few days we got over a thousand people to sign it. So... not bad.

However, it has disappeared from google searches! So if you are looking for the address to it, here it is:

http://www.petitiononline.com/BDFailed/petition.html

Being off of google is a real pain, to be honest, so if you would consider posting the link on your blog or website, we'd appreciate that!

Someone is sure upset about a few words that I strung together in a little letter. I still live in the United States, and so I know I still have free speech. You do too. Make your voice heard.


(The original Amazon petition discussion.)


*A lot of people have mentioned that Seth is not only the webmaster of SMeyer's site, he's also her brother.



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