....And Then The Fandoms Came

The awesome bibliodaze tweeted this yesterday:

I replied with this tweet:

Then one of my Twitter followers asked me:

"Take it you're not a fan of John Green. Why not?"

 

I was deeply amused by the tweet on a number of levels, one of which is that this person's automatic assumption that being associate with Nicholas Sparks is a negative (as it should be, though but I suspect it is so for a different reason than why I take issue with both authors). 

Anyway, I thought I'd copy my reply here to share you all (and so I can just link to this post in the future when people ask).

Actually, I'm a long time nerdfighter and fan of the vlogbrother channel.

My issue is quite literally the same issue I have with the phenomena that surrounds Nicholas Sparks, hence the comparison. There's a distinctly imbalanced favoring of John's work that has far more to do with his gender and the blind loyalty of the (nerdfighter) fanbase than the actually quality of his books. Which are basically well written YA romance novels that are on par with what many of his female contemporaries write.

Yet John's being heralded as the savior of YA. Strange considering  considering YA has been on the best selling lists for the last decade thanks to JK Rowling and Stephen Meyer. Could it be that John Green, much like Nicholas Sparks benefits from a sexist double standard where when women write YA romance it's ridiculed or dismissed, but when men write it they're heralded as literary pioneers?

Here's a great article about how things might be different for Joan Green by The Book Lantern.