Find What you Love

"You've got to find what you love and let it kill you." ~ Kinky Friedman

I spent a lot of time last night reading that VC Andrews blog and it's still great. I've been thinking about how it somewhat relates to Madoka, in terms of the characters being these middle school-aged girls who, as Kyubey says, usually live lives full of both complete hope and utter despair. Both have a lot of qualities of fantasy and wishes and utter devastation.

And while Madoka doesn't have the prevailing sexual nature of VC Andrews stories, the subtext is still there.  People (or Kyubey) seek to deceive the girls as a means to control them. Controlling them is necessary because the young girls can provide things that no one else really can. It is, of course, a story many girls on  the verge of womanhood hear, experience, and try their best to survive.

A lot of women, now that they're adults, have puzzled as to what really appealed to them where these books were concerned. It's something I've wondered about myself, even when it comes to things like Madoka. After all, I'm quite fascinated with this stuff. One of my earliest memories is some movie where a little girl in a fancy tea dress was trapped in a well. I have no idea what the movie was, but that image always stuck with me.

I have a theory, and it's kind of a sad and sick one. See, some people believe that we like this stuff because we crave the idea of someone treating us this way, but I don't believe that's true. After all, the mistreatment is never presented as a GOOD thing. It's always presented as pretty awful.

Maybe though, maybe, just maybe it's that many young girls secretly suspect and fear that their lives will be full of people trying to control and use them.  At the end, they may not have a choice in the matter and just get swallowed up by the process. So perhaps the fantasy aspect is that, at least, whatever uses, abuses, and destroys you at least has SOME benefits to it.

After all, Kyubey is a deceptive little creature, but he does give you a wish (even if it backfires) and you DO get to be a magical girl for a while. You get adventure and importance and theme music. And with VC Andrews folks, well, yes the situations are dire but full of passion and intensity. Sick, freaky passion and intensity, but that's better than boringness that sucks the life out of you. Damian Adare may be a controlling sociopath monster, but it's really clear that in the bedroom, the man can throw down.  He's really hot too, and while no one wants to really BE around a sociopath monster, if you have to be, it helps if he's hot. And yes, I know that's shallow, but it's better than nothing.

By the time girls are finding VC Andrews, some of them are starting to suspect that nothing might be all  that's on the menu.