Young Writers Society

Jas wrote:Lol at Pixie for showing us a photoshopped picture vs a real one.

OOH GUYS WHICH IS BETTER!?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rXDMN7Q4IZU/T ... attoo3.jpg

or

http://btc.montana.edu/ceres/html/Polar ... circle.jpg

Jas, be careful not to offend anyone.

Okay, first off – I have given Twilight a try and actually read the first book. I am not saying my arguments without actually having read anything.

I love Harry Potter. I have grown up with it, it has an unique (but sometimes even repititive, yes, but it's still good) plot and unique characters with exciting and fascinating relations to each other. Rowling uses allegories, humour, and even daily situations in her book to give us chances to identify ourselves. The idea is original – even though there have been a lot of wizard stories it is still unique and special.
I repsect anyone who says they like Twilight or dislike Harry Potter, but I will never understand their thinking.

This 'abnormal romance' thing has gotten out of hand, everyone writes about it, everyone loves it. I don't. Meyer uses this, too, and since it has never been my kind of thing, I dislike it. Like I mentioned earlier, I gave it a try and read the freakin' worst book I've read in my entire life. A.k.a. the first Twilight book.
Argument ended, Harry Potter rules, but I respect everybody for their own opinion.

Argument ended eh Nightfall? But we're just warming up!

Mr Smith, I have in fact read, re-read, and re-re-read every Harry Potter book. I have also seen every film many, many times. In fact, I recently hosted a HP movie marathon. It was awesome (just ask Pigeon, she was there ). So when I criticize HP, I feel entirely justified. The things you pointed out are trivial matters in the story arc, so my original point still stands.

I think Pigeon nailed it. Commercial success is not an indication of quality. If it were, every triple platinum album would be either jazz or classical, because most professional jazz and classical musicians have studied at university and have dedicated more hours of practice to their art than most of you have been alive. (Being a jazz student myself, I would know )

Consider this: you can divide the audience of any medium or creative work into two categories: the informed, and the morons. As we all know, the informed know a good piece of work when they see one, and the morons generally like garbage. BUT the informed make up only a small fraction of the audience. So for something to be popular, a lot of morons have to like it. And as we just established, morons typically like garbage. This would suggest that anything commercially successful (and therefore popular with the majority - i.e. the morons) is probably garbage.

Who is a better writer, JKR or Haruki Murakami? That's an easy one. Who is more commercially successful? Again, an easy one. It sure looks like commercial success = garbage.

Snoink, that is the best thing on the internet. Pigeon, you'd appreciate this one.

I understand...But this simpy does not give the idea of the topic, for one- i will state some reasons why Twilight MAY be better then H_P.

- Twlight has more exiting moments in my opinion.
- In Twilight BD there was exclusivly more people showing up at the permire then there was of HP (That's a fact)
-When you see Twilight the movies end will a jaw droper, In HP I just don't understand whats going on and why all of it happened in the first place. In Twlight The plot is a girl falling in love with a demon/vamp. ((You don't see that in everyday life eh?) and in Harry Potter It's true that JK Rowling did not make up the idea. Sure, she added some unique ways to make it more exiting but that doesnt explain why or how she managed to take that idea, when someone else, or another movie started it out.
- In twlight It's obviously more dramatic. You don't expect what happens. In HP when I watched the last movie I automaticy stated- "yes I know, Harry is going to survive, it's so obvious." and guess what!? He did. SO Im just stating that they give to much clues of what's going to happen, In twilight on the other hand, Has no clues. It leaves you wondering what will happen and leaves you blistering to find out.

Those are just my opinions.

So, are you basing this off of the films then? Because I think a lot of people are basing this after the books.

Sometimes I am talking about the movie and sometimes I am talking about the books. It's just that I'm not a big fan of HP But I wouldn't say I hate it, It's just I don't like it that's all. No offense to the people that do like it right? Well, lets keep debating, I like seeing people's opinion.

Ps. I Think all of your opinions matter

Karzkin wrote:This would suggest that anything commercially successful (and therefore popular with the majority - i.e. the morons) is probably garbage.

But that statement there operates on the assumption that a work can only appeal to one or the other: the morons or the informed. Most successful works (at least, the ones that remain successful over long periods of time) have multiple levels of appeal. In HP's case, you have the rather formulaic story and its trappings to attract the morons, and then you have the worldbuilding, overarching plot, themes, and characterization (among other things) to attract the informed.

Twilight, on the other hand, only appeals to the morons (to use your terminology).

And personally, I don't care much for Murakami's writing. His prose has always struck me as being overwrought (in either language, though it's a bit more forgivable in Japanese).

Twlight has more exiting moments in my opinion.

Twilight (book) put me to sleep. There was the prologue, which was a pretty good prologue, and then there was... whining. And more whining. And vapidness. And I was a bored reader.

I couldn't watch Twilight (movie) through because of how stupid some of the scenes were, made stupider by the melodramatic shooting and SFX. The SFXes were hilariously bad, to be perfectly honest.

In Twilight BD there was exclusivly more people showing up at the permire then there was of HP (That's a fact)

Popularity does not equal quality. There's also the matter of how just because more people are doing it doesn't make it right/smart/better. Thousands more people abuse drugs each day than conduct ground-breaking research. By the above logic, drug abuse is better than conducting research that could revolutionize life as we know it.

In Twlight The plot is a girl falling in love with a demon/vamp. ((You don't see that in everyday life eh?)

I would like to direct you to the Paranormal Romance section of your local bookstore/library. The genre's been around for years, decades even, and Twilight is rather substandard fare by the genre's standards.

You don't exactly see wizards and witches saving the world or attending schools of magic in everyday life, either.

Sure, she added some unique ways to make it more exiting but that doesnt explain why or how she managed to take that idea, when someone else, or another movie started it out.

Meyer did the exact same thing, only without adding much uniqueness or excitement. The only reason Twilight might seem more original is because most Twilight fans are woefully unread in the Paranormal/Supernatural Romance genre(s), in addition to being unfamiliar with other similar (and older) stories.

The vampire romance has been around for centuries. Countless poems and stories have been written that feature it. This Wikipedia article gives a basic introduction.

You don't expect what happens.

Only if you're not read in the genre. I found Twilight so predictable, it's part of why I wound up so completely bored with the book. Considering I read textbooks and encyclopedias for fun, it takes a lot to make me say I find a book boring. And I found Twilight boring.

Twilight brings nothing truly new to vampire literature, except for masses of hormonal teenage girls who have never read any other supernatural/paranormal romances before. Sparkly vampires don't count as that's a rather superficial aspect of originality that doesn't really affect the structure of the story. It could have been a very interesting take on why vampires avoid sunlight and how they beguile their human prey, but it wound up being just a not-so-important detail.

Edward's daylight sparkle parade could have been easily explained away by the use of body glitter, had things come to that. Which is the more plausible explanation: vampires sparkle and the half-naked guy running around is one of them, or the half-naked guy running around is crazy and covered in body glitter?

Pixie, I'm having trouble seeing why you even posted this discussion topic if you're going to say things like that. You say you're open to other opinions, but your words oppose that statement.

To be honest, I used to be a fan of twilight - I'll even admit I have an old, dusty poster in the back of my closet of New Moon.

But then I read Dracula. Then I read Anne Rice's series, Interview With a Vampire. And I thought to myself, no joke - "oh my god...twilight f**king sucks!"

By reading these stories, I realized how silly twilight was. How, to ne frank, god awful it was.

i suggest these books to you - these are real vampire books - not some glittery goo goo eyed "vampires".

And you talk about originality? Fine, here:

Things Stephanie Myer ripped off:
a. Vampire children
b. Half vampire children
c. Vampire armies
d. Vegetarian vampires
e. Vampire love
f. Love between a human and vampire
g. The quillet tribe
h. Vampires and werewolves being enemies
I. Love triangle (bella edward jacob)
j. Imprinting
k. Forbidden love
l. An irresponsible teenager
m. The new girl in a small town

Things JK Rowling ripped off:
a. Wizardy
b. School for wizards
c. .....

that's it. Might I add, I made the twilight list in less than five minutes.

Again, this is merely my opinion

Adding sparkles doesn't exactly make something original.

Fanfiction, JKR ripped off way more than that. For example, the horcrux adversely affecting Harry and Co.'s personalities when they wear it. Compare with the One Ring doing the exact same thing to Frodo. Or compare Umbrige's torture pen to Kafka's In the Penal Colony. JKR was obviously influenced by Tolkien, Dahl, Lewis, and even Monty Python. Just because an author borrows certain tropes doesn't make them a bad author (there are, however, other things that make both JKR and Myer bad writers).

Authors rip off things from other authors that they love. It happens. But that doesn't necessarily make them bad writers! Otherwise, Dante's "Inferno" would be bad because it's based on Virgil's "Aeneid," and Virgil's "Aeneid" is bad because it's based on Homer's "Iliad." Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" are influenced heavily by Boccaccio's "Decameron." J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were heavily influenced by William Morris's writings. C.S. Lewis's "The Silent Planet" and "The Screwtape Letters" is obviously based on "A Voyage to Arcturus." Ayn Rand's "Anthem" and Jack London's "The Iron Heel" and George Orwell's "1984" was based heavily on Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We." And on the list goes!

And yes, they are obvious rip-offs too, in very specific and obvious ways. Like, C.S. Lewis pretty much stole the idea of "sorbing" from Lindsay and used it in "The Screwtape Letters" (let's be honest here). BUT. That doesn't make the newer works worse than the other. Why? Because they are different, even when they are similar.

The ans is........Harry Potter!! I am a Twilight fan too...but I just feel that Harry Potter is better because as many others before me have also said Harry Potter is more into morals and tells more about how to live our life... Whereas...its all about Love.. Too gooey-gooey, Mushy-mushy.... Don't mind Twilight fans!! Twilight is good too.....But Harry Potter's Better!!!
Harshita:)

You guys are getting intense here, really, it's quite interesting to red

Anyways, my say in this...

Twilight VS Harry Potter (Books)

The Twilight series is ok. Many people say it's awful and blame it on Stephanie Meyer but if they've read her other book, The Host they might not think so. She doesn't have bad writing for The Host, so it must just be that there's practically no plot in Twilight.
I've read the Twilight series and thoroughly enjoyed it the first time, but when I tried to reread it, I couldn't get past the second chapter of the first book as I realized how cliche and boring it was.

Meanwhile, I've reread the Harry Potter series three times and loved it every time. JK Rowling always gives little surprises throughout the series and I love the way that each book reveals a little more about Harry and Voldemort's tangled past.

Now, in contrast, both of these books were a good read, at first, but if you try to reread Twilight you realize that it is extremely cliche:

• The new girl in town.
• Everybody loves/is intrigued by the new girl, even the guy that every other girl in town has a huge crush on, Edward Cullen.
• Her childhood friend, Jacob, and the gorgeous vampire both love her, now it's a love triangle between two hot guys and, of course, she can't decide.
• She likes both of them but in the end marries Edward and has his kid, even though he didn't exactly want her to.
• Together, they change the vampire vs. werewolf aggression in Forks.
• Bella has an amazing vampire power.
• They also change the way the vampire world works, by having the vamp council come and then leave, in awe of Bella's power.

Also, HP is cliche in some places. Yes, they win against the bad guy, and yes, everyone gets the person they were in love with. But, at least JK Rowling makes it interesting the whole way through, instead of giving away pretty much all that's going to happen half way through the second book.

Now, Twilight VS Harry Potter (movies)

The Twilight movies were actually pretty inventive, as a lot of the time they wouldn't be able to follow the book because it would be too boring. And by 'inventive' I don't mean interesting, I'm just surprised how much fluff the directors could put in there and still interest some people.

The Harry Potter movies were interesting the whole way through because they had to follow the book (since JK had kept the movie rights) and the books were exciting enough to have 8 movies based off of them.

I hope this hasn't offended anyone, I'm just inserting my opinion on this

-Justagirl

hehe It's okay But I do take all opinion's so don't talk like that, when I get into debate i just speak my mind so that's why. so Please. I can stay out of it is you want.

I would choose Harry Potter. I read some bad reviews on the Twilings books, and actually did not care to finish watching the first movie. I am a great fan for vampires, therefore I am slightly unnerved when I see vampires in the daylight and, from what I have heard, 'glittering'. I read all the Harry Potter series, and they were great (not the best series, though . That would go to the Wheel of Time). The HP movies are also good, although they became somewhat too action-orientated for my ultimate liking.