The Twilight Effect
By Amegashita 41 Comments
I was talking to my friend at school the other day and he brought up the topic of comics, which is weird seeing as he doesn't read comics, he reads mangas. But he knows I read comics, and he does have some overall awareness of it, but never really started a conversation based on it. So I was surprised, to say the least. It was Wednesday, and the Superman Earth One came out and that sparked my friends idea on this.
"Have you heard of the Twilight Effect?"
Of course, I haven't. But I knew it involved Twilight so I assumed it wasn't going to be very good. Apparantly, based on the definition my friend made, the Twilight Affect is esssentially the basis that most things story wise (whether it be characters, stories, settings, plot, and anything else that forms the story) has gone under Twilightification. Any story that has come out after 2005, the year Twilight came out, in order to cater to the masses and the unexplainable popularity of Twilight and it's fans, they form and mold their stories to exemplify traits and characteristics that most of Twilight does.
Whether that be the long hair, outdated speech, hoodies, emo pressences in storylines, and overall darker themes in otherwise lighter story lines.
Now my friend applied this theory of his to the new Superman: Earth One. Mind you, me and him have never really read it, but what he said was:
"Apparantly, they made a new Superman one-shot and Clark is essentially emo in it. That's the Twilight Effect for you."
Now I can't comment on anything related to the one-shot because I haven't read, and have no intentions of reading it, but what he said made me remember something Xerox-Kitty said in a topic the other day.
@xerox-kitty
said:"Why do comic companies think that the only way to modernise & make characters realistic is to give them a hoodie?? "
I didn't pay it much thought before and responded with a silly, Hoodies are cool, comment but what my friend said formed a connection in my mind to what Xerox said. Why are comic companies and writers making new characters wear hoodies? Why are they doing this and that? Well I'm making a stretch here, but maybe the Twilight Affect, officially dubbed =], is a part in all this.
Seriously, take Billy Batson and Freddy Freeman --
Seriously, what the hell is up with that long hair? Especially since Billy's hair should be THIS:
And Freddy's THIS:
What could possibly be the explanation for this, this drastic change in hairstyles? What could possibly explain Billy's handsome, wavy short hair to spur an unbelieavable growth and gaind 13 inches to form some horrible, unsophisticated hairstyle? What could possibly make Freddy's short, nicely styled hair to gain 7 inches and to suddenly have the feel of the common rock music player. And don't even get me started on making Freddy some emo brat >.>..
Two words:
Twilight Effect
Don't believe me? Well explain Tim Drake's drastic personality change. And I don't mean for you to explain in the context of the story, I mean explain within the contexts of publishing and editing. Starting in 2005, DC starts to kill off each and every one of Tim Drake's supporting characters, starting with his dad all the way to his girlfriend. Then in Infinite Crisis, Superboy is killed and guess what? Tim loses his best friend and Casse Sandmark loses the person she loves? What happens after that? Emo guilt and anger. Tim Becomes enraged and on the edge of insanity, neglecting his body and lacking care for his own self and only busying himself with work. Cassie ends up an angry, self conceitied, and depressed character. When Tim asks her to join him on his Teen Titans she rejects his offer multiple times, and even goes so far as to accuse Tim of abandoning her and forgeting about Connor.
Tim spends the better part of a few years just focusing on resurecting, and bringing back everyone he lost back to life.
And let me remind you, there was no good reason as to why DC did this, they just did.
Twilight Effect:
The sudden change in aspects of stories by adding darker themes, and things of that nature in order to try and cater to a new fanbase, often alienating the old one.
Twilight Effect.