As Wind In Dry Grass: Understanding The Jonas Brothers and Twilight Through Fanfiction At The End Of The American Empire

Late last year I spent quite a lot of time researching what came to be known as Jashleygate, a gossip-rag scandal that launched a bizarre and still on-going Twitter campaign of scorn and rage directed at Twilight star Ashley Greene. Because the other principal celebrities involved were of the Disney/child-star variety, there were all sorts of dark undercurrents: overbearing parents, drugs, mental illness. Several weeks and thousands of words later, we were knee deep in a river of psychotic tween angst, fighting against an unstoppable current, darkness all around us. It was an inconclusive experience, to be sure, but a nonetheless profound one.

Were it that at the time, I'd realized that I could have found all of that darkness and angst and insane profundity in one place: “Maybe It's Not Too Late,” a piece of Real Person Fanfiction by KayleeAnneNickJonas. MINTL begins with a kind of epigraph/summary that condenses the scarysad megalomania we talked about yesterday into a few precise sentences.

Ashley Greene has gone to far this time.

Demi Lovato was sent to Rehab because of the incident with Ashley.

Joe is confused about what he wants to do in life.

Nick is having trouble communicating with his best friend.

The girl who has to fix everything.

One girl who will change their lives.

Kaylee Anne.

I've retained the weird, modernist alignment and use of italics because A. it's creepy and B. it really sells the punchline: Kaylee Anne, our author, will be the one to set everything right. Okay then, let's read this thing.

Chapter 1: Demi Is Innocent

Kaylee Anne sits on a tour bus with assorted Disney personnel and fumes about the coverage of Demi Lovato's breakdown and subsequent trip to rehab. Our narrator appears to be a close personal friend of the Jonas Brothers, and is upset because "the witch" is on the main tour bus. There are some admirably weird sentences like this one: “I acted like I liked her when Joe was around but, she knew that I didn’t even like her because of the way I would stare at her while Joe wasn’t looking." Awesome. I'm enjoying this so much more than fucking Breaking Dawn right now.

“Kaylee, what you watching?” Danielle asked sitting beside me on the couch.
“Watching TV..” I said changing the channel.
“Oh that’s cool. Have you seen Kevin?” She asked.

What is this I don't even-- there's an interesting Freudian spelling error when Danielle heads to the "connivance store" but otherwise the action doesn't pick up for a while. We learn about our narrator's close relationship with the family; she and Nick Jonas came up on Broadway together. Okay. Kaylee hears that Ashley was rude to someone named Dani (I assume these are all really Disney people, but I literally refuse to Google them) and resolves to go punch her but doesn't and instead hangs out with Nick Jonas.

Chapter 2: What Is Ashley's Plan?

Now we get a comically super-villain like internal monologue from AG herself:

It seemed like everytime I tried to seduce him Demi would get in the way between us. Now that she is gone she can’t stop me. I will sweet talk Joe until I steal his virginity then I will dump him. Everything is going good so far. No one will be able to stop me. Ha!

Oh no! Who will save Joe's virginity? There is a certain amount of virtue one can instill in a child, that one should instill in a child, as a good parent. But when your child goes so far as to write a long piece of fanfiction in which the villain's goal is not murder or theft but the taking of someone's V-card, well, you have probably gone too far. Children should not take sex lightly, but they also should not take virginity so fucking heavily. I was a neurotic enough kid without obsessing over protecting my own virginity and the virginity of others (apparently with violence if necessary). Thank god I was not born in the era of the Jonas Brothers.

There's a wealth of good writing about the psychosexual game the Jonas brothers are playing with tweens. Playing rock and roll and endorsing lack of sex is just the first layer. "The subtext of The Jonas Brothers is an American morality horror," writes Ben McShane at Classical Geek Theater.

The Jonas Brothers are a flagship weapon in the culture wars. They feign conservative social values while romping around the bizarre hyper-sexual Disney meta-verse where young kids dress like Madonna and Mick Jagger and live the rock n' roll lifestyle... The Jonas Brothers conceal sexuality under the guise of sex-free fun.

Indeed. McShane also points out that South Park's "dressing down" of the Jonas Brothers depicts them spraying their audience with a white foam cannon, which is not "a hyperbolic joke" but something the Jonas Brothers actually do. Yikes.

ANYWAY, Ashley and Joe are in a store. There's an S. Meyer-like imaginative deficit on display here: our author is capable of imagining Ashley Greene's thought process, but can't figure out how to cleanly get her characters from one room to another.

We went to the cashier and got our items scanned and in a bag. We got the bag and went out of the store.

Ashley and Joe find our author and Nick Jonas asleep on a couch, and for whatever reason Ashley tells us that Kaylee is the last obstacle standing between her and Joe's virginity. Okay.

Chapter 3: I Secretly Love You

This chapter begins with an author's note explaining that chapters are getting shorter because she has writer's block. The dream is collapsing already? Anyway, we get a brief vagina monologue from Nick Jonas who confesses to having loved Kaylee for the past ten years. I will say this: the rest of this story notwithstanding, it sounds like our author has a healthy attitude about herself. This is what Nick says:

That is what I like about her. She don’t let anyone judge her. She don’t care what other people think.

Good for you, Kaylee. I'm just using your story to illustrate a larger, scary trend which is bigger than you. Keep writing! Just not about this stuff anymore please.

Chapter 4: What Is Joe Thinking About?

Joe Jonas is predictably ambivalent about his relationship with Ashley, and he misses Demi Lovato. Of course. Interestingly, we learn that he is also in love with Kaylee. Okay. Also, this happens when Joe asks Kaylee what she wants to do:

“How about go check out places here in South America. I never been in this part of town before. If your up for it that is?” She implied.

I've never been in this part of the town of South America. Also: the action in this story happens almost entirely on tour buses that never seem to be moving. The Jonas Brother touring operation is startlingly inefficient.

Chapter 5: Demi's Side Of The Story

This shit is like Rashomon, man. This is like that part when the ghost shows up and talks about how she got murdered: Our author, in an apparent attempt to empathize with Demi Lovato, goes into her head ends up condescending to her rather viciously.

Rehab, the last place I wanted to be. The last place I thought I’d never end up. It’s all because of Ashley! She is the reason why my self-esteem is low, I stopped believing in myself ever since her and Joe started dating.

Have we happened upon the root of the problem? Demi Lovato, by all accounts, has long suffered at the hands of her personal demons. Performers often have problems like these, and the fame they chase is nearly always their undoing. They build their own auto-de-fe. It's a pretty difficult concept for a kid to wrap his or her head around, which is understandable; they are optimistic about the world-at-large, and to see the world-at-large crush one of your idols is some dissonant shit. It's way easier to see it this way-- Ashley did it!-- and delay getting as jaded as the rest of us. As dark as some of this writing is, there's an innocence to it. It comes from an acceptably naïve place. There isn't much of that in the world at all anymore. And then of course I have to come along and get in TrashTheAshley's and Kaylee's face and ruin it for them anyway.

But then Demi Lovato gets a threatening text message from Ashley Greene and goes into her bathroom and cuts herself.

I looked around my room and saw a pocket knife laying on the floor. I picked it up and went into my walk-in bathroom. I turned on the light in there closing the door behind me. I slid down to the floor and opened the knife up. I held it against my wrist and slowing cut my skin. A couple more strokes and I had 5 cuts on my wrist it healed the pain just barely as the tears flowed down my face.

Okay, maybe these kids deserve it.

Chapter 6: Trust

Somewhat interestingly, we cut back to Kaylee and Joe talking now and learn that chapter 5 happened before chapter 4, that Kaylee is coming to tell Joe about Demi cutting herself. I'm kind of impressed with this plot construction. It's handled more deftly than any of S. Meyer's attempts at something similar. Joe doesn't believe Kaylee, she runs away in frustration, Nick catches her. He's about to confess his love for her when Joe shows up too. DAMMIT JOE.

Chapter 7: I Love You, Kaylee Anne

We jump back a few minutes and the same scene unfolds from Nick's perspective. Joe drives Kaylee away again and Nick follows and confesses his love when she threatens to leave the tour again. FINALLY, NICK!

Chapter 7 ½: Yes, Yes It Does

Amazingly, Kaylee Anne blanches in the face of Nick's love. Her first instinct is to get away from him, she is mortified at his use of the word “love.” I have to admit, I didn't see that coming. But then a sentence or two later she admits that she does love him and they agree to go on a date. Okay.

Chapter 8: The Big Date

I use OpenOffice because my demo of Microsoft Word expired a long time ago, and when I just typed “date” above it suggested “date-rape-y.” What does that say about my writing habits? Nick gets his Mustang flown down to South America for the date. That's some really tacky nouveau riche shit, Nick. They listen to “Alison” by Elvis Costello in the car. Whoa, who is writing this story? I kind of like Kaylee Anne all of the sudden?

And then Kaylee Anne decides to fuck with us a little. Because they arrive at their destination: New Jersey. WHAAAAAAAT? Our narrator tells us they are no longer on the South American tour “if you didn't know.” No, we didn't know, but I see what you did there, M. Night Kaylee Anne.

Later, Kaylee tries to write a song about Joe. Frustrated, she flashes back ten years. This story is really epic in scope, huh? Two continents, two time periods, damn! Kaylee and Nick play pretend instruments as eight-year-olds, and Nick's father comes in and tells them they make quite the “package” and could go “anywhere” with their talent. Kaylee dwells on those two words, and luckily decides to name the song after the latter.

Chapter 9: Anywhere

On stage, Kaylee performs her song, which is a little bit “metal” and a little bit “classical.” So Jethro Tull, maybe? This chapter is primarily composed of the lyrics to the song, which turn out to actually be an Evanesence song? Okay. Anyway, the "personal" lyrics move Nick to kiss Kaylee backstage.

Chapter 10:

Whoops, there is no chapter ten! Just a note from the author that she's run out of ideas! She asks for more ideas thusly:

If I don't get any reviews on this authors note it means you dont mind me deleting this story completely. So ideas! Or this story is gonna get deleted because whats the point of keeping it if no one cares right?

I'm going to post this whole story on Passive Aggressive Notes. Well, if anybody has any ideas, feel free to offer them now. Like, where do you think the final battle between Ashley and Kaylee should happen? On a cliff? A space station? I'm just glad we got to this thing before it got deleted; I feel like this is the Dan Brown-MacGuffin that will help us unlock the rest of the secrets of our own unfinished story. If the Jonas Brothers and Twilight are helping us usher in the end of the American Empire as the proverbial band on the deck of the Titantic (and Twilight is the concert program, I guess)-- and I am positing to you that they are-- maybe Kaylee's story, or a quote from it, will open the last section of an American History textbook someday. I mean, it will be translated to Chinese, but the essence will remain the same.

Thank you, Kaylee Anne, for writing this, for showing us where we are at as a culture. I really hope that you are not eighteen years old like your narrator apparently is, because if so you might be doomed. But if you are younger than that, you might end up being a pretty awesome person. Maybe it's not too late. Again: just write about fictional characters next time, okay?