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Wow, the "humans are just inexplicably drawn to vampires" explanation of Bella's love would've been SUCH A COOL PLOT TWIST! As soon as she gets turned into a vampire (and is no longer human), she realizes: "I never actually liked this guy, let alone loved him. It was all just his evolutionary vampire magnetism. And now that I am a vampire, I can never know if any human will ever truly love me or whether they're just drawn to MY vampire magnetism!"
We will never know if this is true or not because Bella might have had this happen, but wouldn't know because by the time she's a vampire she could have had some type of Stockholm syndrome
It would’ve been a better climax to the series than the volturi thing. It would have been a nice horror twist considering they get a kid together. Jacob, also being immortal, could’ve helped her to outrun the crazy powerful cullens, who are now a giant threat instead of a charming family. IT WOULD EXPLAIN WHY EDWARD DIDN’T WANT TO CHNAGE HER UNTIL THEY WERE MARRIED
I thought this was going to be a plot twist for a moment. When Bella is changed, and sees Edward for the first time as a vamp, she starts monologuing that she always taken Edward's beauty as an unchangeable constant. I thought it would turn out that now that Bella had vampire vision, she would realise Edward was actually ugly. I was disappointed when the next sentences proved me wrong.
@@YuukitheMighty1 "Im the perfect predator, even my face is irresistable." Dude, you jerk, you have the exact same fact from your time as a human. What is wrong with you?? Seriously. What.
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Having not read the original books in years, I forgot all the mean things Bella thinks about people. It kind of makes reading Midnight Sun hilarious because Edward spends a significant portion of the book talking about how pure and selfless Bella is and how she never wants to hurt anyone's feelings, and criticizing her friend's for their cruel thoughts. But really the only reason he thinks so highly of Bella is because he can't hear what she's really thinking.
@@eternallylearning2811 Not quite. The stereotype is about "perfect characters who can do no wrong" (let's be clear this can apply to men as well), but actual application includes the narrative itself going out of its way to justify how a character's behaviour is "right", even if it would be considered wrong in any other situation, ignores the flaws entirely or doesn't even treat them as "flaws" at all. It could be argued that, since she's the "viewpoint" character, we're meant to agree with whatever she thinks regardless of how unwarranted or biased it is, especially if her viewpoint never reflects upon her thoughts about others.
The vampires shouldn't be in high school, they should be in college. This way they could stay up all night without raising suspicion, say they're staying longer to get a masters, and they won't have to deal with any of that teen drama of hormones that flood high schools.
They go to highs chool first so that they can stay in one place for a longer piece of time, when they graduate they go to college and eventually when they look too young for their age they all move to a new city
exactly...also I know lots of students at university who stayed much longer getting a BA due to retaking various things...you'd be able to stay a lot longer than high school! Also??? If you're super rich vampires you'd be able to fund yourself and take 500 BAs and MAs back to back in whatever you like! Obscure botany? Creative Writing? Music? literally anything, as opposed to having to sit thru boring ass surface level high school classes like....cmon!
I do agree, but this is explained in the books. They start in high school at the youngest ‘age’ they think they can get away with bearing in mind they all look around 17/18/19. I think Edward and Alice usually start as Freshmen and Rosalie, Emmett and Jasper as Sophomores. Then they work their way up through high school, college, postgraduate and so on, staying in the same place for as long as they possibly can until people start noticing that they (Carlisle especially) now look much younger than they should realistically be. If I remember rightly, it’s usually about 10 years. Then they move to a different place and start again. Not a fun life, sure, but they get lots of education and they keep themselves safe.
@@rook8808 - They would only be able to do this for a few years before people notice that they aren’t aging. If they go through the whole process of high school, college, postgrad, then they’ll come into contact with different people at each place, never the same people for too long, and it’ll take longer for people to realise. In the books it’s usually people who work with Carlisle day in day out who notice he should be a lot older than he is, meaning that they have to move.
He’ll be off that team by the halfway point of New Moon. I’m almost certain Stephanie Meyer made Jacob into an unlikable possessive jerk because she didn’t want Team Jacob fans to have any ammo. I’d say that he fortunately goes back to his origInal non-dickish personality in Breaking Dawn, but that’s only a result of, well, you know.
@@tristanhartup4936 Not actually. Let's talk about imprinting. It's an involuntary reaction, first of all. Jacob hated Renesmee before she was born. Jacob does love Renesmee right now, but not as a romantic partner - he's more like the cool uncle to her. As she gets a little older, he'll be more of a best friend and confidant, and only when she's old enough will she become a romantic partner. The wolf who imprints is what the girl needs right now. That's why Quil's relationship with Claire is more beloved babysitter and playmate than anything right now - because she's not old enough for anything more. Imprinting allows the wolf to be whatever their victim needs or wants at the time, and Jacob won't feel anything romantic for Renesmee until she's old enough to return those feelings.
I'm so glad he acknowledged the fact that vampires are predators designed to lure humans. Say what you want about the sparkly skin, back in the 14th, 15th, 16th etc century if you were walking in the forest and saw a young man glowing in the sun you would probably think he was an angel and essentially walk yourself into his fangs. If Stephanie Meyers had really taken that notion and run with it I think it would have been considered revolutionary in the literature field.
I was watching a review of Midnight sun and apparently Edward sees himself as being on fire which I think is a brilliant seperation in how humans and some vampires (Specifically Edward) would see their fate as being a vampire. As both you and Dom said, they're crafted to attract humans in every way possible (their breath? Really? I can't say someone's breath has ever made me want them.) So she'd of course see him as otherworldly and beautiful. Edward has been shown throughout the books to believed he's living literal hell on Earth. So he sees himself as an appropriate representation of that viewpoint. I'm conflicted in how much I like this comparison, I think if they were published closer together the stigma would have been less. On the other hand, I'm not sure that'd have been a good things due to all the problematic aspects.
Ummm...no I wouldn't. I'm a total coward, so seeing anything supernatural would make me want to get as far away as possible. Lol. But I'll admit that I'm probably in the minority.
Yeah based on my knowledge the guy was genuinely a good person but then he was literally turned into a jealous, angry, and entitled dog man that falls in love with babies.
"Objectively, there's nothing sexual about a person's ability to slice me in half with a blade, but I do NOT apologize for finding it enticing." Nor should you, sir. Nor should you.
A man who is a little dangerous himself has a better chance of facing real danger than the guy who looks totally harmless. That’s why the “bad boy” vibe is a trope older than dirt.
Want to look too deeply at this? I got this distinct impression after reading New Moon. Bella does not love Edward. Bella loves what Edward represents: a future where she can be a vampire herself. Bella has incredibly low self esteem, as can be seen with her describing herself as "plain" and "clumsy". It is implied that she is quite helpless as well, and at least subconsciously Bella recognizes this. She values good looks, grace, and talent. As a vampire, Edward has good looks, grace, and talent, and nobody can say vampires in this universe are helpless. As a vampire himself, Edward can turn Bella into a vampire and *give* her the good looks, gracefulness, and self sufficientcy she desires. Marriage does not matter to her. She turns down Edward's proposals too often for that to be a priority. It is also worth noting that basically every physical trait Bella admires about Edward is directly related to him being a vampire. I. E. Marble skin, topaz eyes, velvet voice. Traits she admires about his whole *vampire* family. She wants to be a vampire *first* and perhaps marry Edward later. He represents her future of being a vampire. No wonder she goes numb when he leaves her in New Moon. She looses her future and all subsequent hope of her ever improving herself.
She has to face her mortality then , and that literally gives her nightterrors, she only overcomes the numbness by enganging in destructive behavior choosing to die young if she can't be a vamp.
@@kycrush8657 exactly so! New Moon literally opens with her having a nightmare about being an old lady and then she proceeds to tell her vampire boyfriend to ignore her birthday. It seems very straightforward to me.
I got the very same impression, and I've never even read the books. I *have* seen the movies, however, and it's fairly obvious what Bella truly wants when in the very first film she's already pestering Edward to turn her into a vampire. Maybe it's because I'm not a teenager anymore and these types of books/movies aren't really for my age demo (though a lot of moms seemed to enjoy them well enough), but I hate what they imply regardless of whether or not the message was intentional. Bella, as you said, loses her future and all subsequent hope of ever improving herself once Edward is gone. And what is this teeeeerrible future that awaits Bella? One where she can't stay young and gorgeous forever, one where she actually has to grow old and get a few wrinkles under her eyes once she hits 40 or so; a future where she has to go to college and improve herself through actual effort so she can earn a living and not simply coast through life as an all-powerful immortal who never has to worry about mundane things like paying the bills; a horrible future where she has to contend with consequences and problems and sickness and death... in other words Bella is afraid of the very life that normal people live day in and day out. What kind of attitude is that to present to a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood who will soon have to deal with these things? And yeah, getting old and having to adult sucks, I can't sugarcoat it, and I might not even mind the teenage power fantasy element so much and regard it as harmless, but the way the movies (and probably the books) present it is that Bella would rather put herself in mortal danger and slip into a vegetative state over Edward because life's just not worth living if she can't be a super hot, perpetually young vampire or if--heaven forbid--she was forced to put in even the slightest effort to improve herself when Edward can just do it for her Bella is like every Millennial stereotype rolled into one (and I *am* a Millennial, so I'm extra resentful that she embodies all its bad traits, even if she isn't a Millennial herself): entitled, lazy, spoiled, self-absorbed, not interested in accepting her flaws or earning anything through her own merits and hard work, just wants to coast through life on easy mode.
I really want a fanfic a la "Midnight Sun" in which is revealed that this was her plan all along, and that she played the fool all this time just to get her way after she discovers that Edward can't read her mind. Maybe she falls in love in the process. But I'd like to see her as a manipulative teenager getting what she wants: immortality, beauty, strength, etc
An intriguing perspective. I never read the books, nor saw the fims, but I am glad it in9ired these thoughts in you. I guess I now have to reflect on my own fear of having to take responsibility and put work into my dreams even with the possibility of failures.
Yeah, I've definitely around to enjoy and agree with a growing opinion that is generally "Twilight IS bad, but not for the reasons we mocked it for back when it was new." Me back then: twilight's vampires are sparkly this series is trash Me now: I would love a naturally glittery man, but twilight glorifies seriously unhealthy relationship dynamics. Character growth achieved.
I hated it because it read like it was written by a desperate housewife who wanted to back in time and have a hot guy rescue her from her life... I stand by that assessment🤢
i keep telling people: twilight had some potential as a horror-romance but she wanted to play the romance straight. but the horror aspects are so fascinating
Just a shift in tone toward horror and then some details changed to make it fit into World of Darkness canon could work quite well. Bella as a replacement touchstone to Edward and her personality being eroded into the flat caricature thinking about him constantly because he ghouled her would work very well. The use of awe kicking off her initial attraction would work too. You could even have her be less superficial and more complex origionally and having the increasing superficial judgemental side come through with the Toreador vitae she's being given eroding her more compassionate side. Don't have to slip it into WoD setting, of course, but you very easily could....you know, if you wanted to avoid plagiarizing for some reason.
Let the right one in played that angle pretty good. Vampire girl befriends an abused bullied kid, starts slowly grooming him into her day time accomplice, and in the end leaves him with no option but to run off with her and be her Reinfield. The movie leaves it unclear on whether she actually cares about him in her own alien predatory way, or is just straight up using him. There's a book and a french version of the movie called let me in that I've heard is a lot different, but I haven't seen them.
@@Koorime18 oh man yeah i haven't read host but the bits i heard sounded like they could go in some fun, interesting directions sci-fi horror wise but i had a feeling it wouldn't. that really is a shame
Dr. Pepper is my favorite soda, so whenever I hear someone make a joke about it, I’m into it. Namely Dom and Linkara. More so Linkara though, because he absolutely does NOT like Dr. Pepper, so hearing him refer to it in as the bane of his existence is absolutely hilarious.
@@grumpyotter It is, so either no one edited this book or Meyers managed to get it published without editing it. It would also explain why the fourth book is so inflated.
@@LagrimaArdiente I am sure it is not unheard of for an author to be able to say "NO!" to the editing process, but I would imagine that's usually reserved for someone with the clout of Stephen King. But I looked it up and apparently there was a bidding war over Twilight--that might have given her more control over it. And then once the first book soared, no looking back, lol But sheesh--my daughter and I both read them around when they came out (because she was the right age and her friends really loved them) and I could not believe some of the clunky prose.
@@grumpyotter You can read it in a way that makes sense. Imagine she is saying it like "There they were, traitor tears, (sure enough / doing what they do) betraying me". Like saying "There that asshole was, being as asshole as usual".
"Im the perfect predator, even my face is irresistable." Dude, you jerk, you have the exact same fact from your time as a human. What is wrong with you?? Seriously. What.
@Crystal Kanashii On the other hand, it sounds like the basic advice not to do something dangerous even if it's enticing. "Don't touch a fire because you'll get burned" kinda thing.
That's true. Though I would amend it slightly, that one can date a bad boy or girl, but one should never have kids by them. Bad boys or girls can be fun to date, but they're sort of like a train wreck, you can't look away. You know they're bad for you. I would also add an important point, because you said it was in health class- if you want to make a 'bad boy' a fixture in your life, birth control is available, so one doesn't end up dragging children into the mess.
@@bugeyedmonster2 the "bad boys and girls" counterculture is just a place for bullies and wannabes who like to posture by being assholes to everyone else and are just as guilty of following the popularity food chain like any vapid trendchasing fools.
I just want to say that your ”I have nothing new to say”-feelings are NONSENSE. And yes, we would like a more in-depth video essay about Twilight’s place in the universe, thanks for asking.
"One long sniff away from drinking her like a Dr. Pepper" is legitimately a great line and now I want a vampire romance/comedy that has that exact line in it.
Re: sexlessness in Twilight - when I was a high school teacher, that was a big reason the girls liked the series. "He's not gross, like real guys", they would say, verbatim.
@@geager2 I don’t think they find the guys themselves gross, it’s their behavior they find gross. Whereas Edward in the book isn’t trying to pressure her into sex every 5 seconds.
@@geager2 Reality vs. Fantasy, I think. The girls liked romance as an idea to explore, but found boys their age to be too... single-minded in pursuit of sex. Sex and romance are not the same.
“Mutual brainwashing at the hands of an evolutionary quirk of an apex predator.” I’d be totally down for a story that revolved around this, if both characters knew that’s what was happening. It could be a great exploration of desire/lust (biological) vs love (psychological) and how much control we actually have over who we fall in love with. Potential to be both philosophical and sexy af.
yes ! where is : Beastars (the animé is realy great but the manga (the comics) is getting weird in the end... : / ) and where is : devil line (an another animé)( were a dark boy vampire start a relationship with a shy virgin human girl )
There’s actually a tumblr thread fixing Twilight and one of the MAIN things they change is that Bella is a freshman in college instead of moving in high school, because it makes more sense in the story’s context for the exact “immortal going back to high school over and over is weird” reason.
Oh gosh I went back to try to find it and was having a hard time. There’s a bunch of Twilight rewrite blogs now so it’s over saturated 🤣 I’ll keep searching for the original post
But a large reason the school is in there is to appeal to teenage girls, if you put them in collage they lose something they might relate to. . They could have just made him a young vampire and say the immortality comes when he turns 18 or so, other media have done that successfully.
"Midnight Sun" apparently makes the whole school thing a million times worse. I haven't read it, but I think it was Krimson Rogue who read a passage where Edward is being a massive, condescending twat to their Biology instructer and his inner monologs reveals he has two medical degrees. I just about fell off my chair laughing. No one with at least a single functioning brain cell would **willingly** subject themselves to the 4 years of... controlled chaos... that is being a US medical student, much less repeat the 4 year slog of getting the prerequisite BSc only to end up back in HS. I speak from firsthand experience.
See I’d amp up the hints of her mother being so into the new man into full-on Borderline, make Bella unaware of how much she’s been messed up by her mother, lean into the horror of that making her vulnerable to a predator, and up the dad to having guilt for having left his daughter with the ex he knew only wanted the child for the adoration of others but couldn’t keep because the court favored the mother over the father with a dangerous job. He then is more engaged with Bella and is trying to save his daughter from a predator, especially as his friends on the reservation warn him about the Cullens, even if not explicitly.
Correction - Edward, death, maybe Jacob can be my son in law at some undetermined point in the future (also undetermined, whether my daughter will physically age past 12... I'm sure it won't get weird)
By 15:53 I kinda knew where this was going and I started to sing in my mind the moment he made the question. It surprised me to see he actually recited the rest of the lyrics. I thought the meme was just going to be implied. I'm glad I was wrong.
Edward/Bella in a nutshell. Bella fails to realize that the "bad boys" in reality are nothing more than bullies and wannabes who like to posture by being assholes to everyone else and are just as guilty of following the popularity food chain like any vapid trendchasing idiots.
While the "preteen girls like this thing" was a huge aspect of the backlash against it, the big problem with Twilight for me was always the massive red flags that Edward's behaviour was raising, that were never called out on. I was a member of the target demographic, and I remember reading the first book and not hating it. Then I remember just a few weeks later reading an article on how many of Edward's actions were considered warning signs of abusive partners. I particularly remember reading that men who end up being abusive do reckless behaviour like speeding in their cars, while ignoring their partners' discomfort or fear, just like Edward does. I feel like Christian Grey was so extreme in his obvious abusive and manipulative actions that we sort of forget that Edward showed so many of those red flags. Maybe because the nature of 50 Shades being an adult novel meant we really got to see those abusive behaviors in action. But Twilight was for young girls. It was popular with shy girls, with girls in religious and abstinence only households that may or may not have as progressive views on a girl's rights in a relationship, with girls who felt pressured into sex, and with girls who were just straight up too young to feel comfortable with the idea of sexuality. Old enough to like boys and the idea of "romance", too immature to feel comfortable with even reading about anything beyond kissing. In that way, The Twilight Saga was dangerous in a way that 50 Shades wasn't. 50 Shades was explicitly for adults, who (should) have a better chance at understanding what a healthy relationship looks like, and recognizing that what Christian and Anna had wasn't one. Twilight was telling young girls that a man stalking you, telling you how hard it is to control himself around you because you made him want to commit violence against you, and (spoilers for later books) taking the engine out of your car without your consent to control your behaviour were all deeply romantic things. Both 50 Shades and Twilight romanticize deeply obsessive relationships, but Twilight was the one aimed at preteens.
Being honest, if we go for a scientific route, how Twilight uses every single trait that females see as attractive in males is kind of worrysome. He is handsome, in fact, that's the first thing Bella notices and begins her attraction and obsession over him. Something is accured to real life, since most of the attractiveness that women see in men as the physical attractiveness. Then, he saves her life, AKA brings security to her life. Again, something females find attractive is estability and higher chances of survivel. He showed he had great strengh (AKA being physically superior to toher males and so he can keep her safe), and also showed he was willing to use said strengh for protection. He is "kind". Now being handsome, status and strenght are good for attraction, but they are not enough to hold a relationship. So, there comes the "we are good vampires". So, he is not only superior to other candidates, even among those with the same status, he is prioritices protection and has a higher moral ground that others of his kind. He is paternalistic... This is a tricky one because most women say they don't like getting discriminated, but studies show women do enjoy and favor behaviour that benefits, "poitive discrimination". He goes out of his way to protect her, he gives her a special treatment, take control of situations, and so on. And, also also, he has to give nothing in return. This makes it very reasonable why some teen girls and women are attractive not only to Edward, but also many of those "bad boys" by simply going through scientific info. Mind you, this doesn't excuse his shitty behaviour, I'm just explaining his huge sex appeal and the tendency to ignore his flaws.
Yep! When twilight first hit I was like 13-14, and I missed being obsessed with it by the skin of my teeth, as the only things keeping me from reading it was that I didn't really care for romance-centric novels and that I was busy reading harry potter for the first time (I wanted to read it myself when I was old enough to enjoy it fully) but my friends were really into it and when I pointed out how fucking creepy Edward and Jacob were (after some intense googling and visits to fansites due to wanting to talk about the books without having to actually read them) they all dismissed and ignored my points with "that's not the full context" "he did it out of love" "but he had to or X would happen to her!" Etc. I'm still glad to this day that I managed to avoid reading them bc I could have ended up in a really dangerous situation (I'd been assaulted before, got bullied constantly, and had already dated someone who was 15-16 when I was 11-12) if I'd decided that I wanted a relationship like "Bella and Edward's! 😍😍😍"
@@doctorwholover1012 please tell me that the perv who was making moves on you when you were not just underage but a LITERAL CHILD never actually managed to harm you? It is a HELL of an age to have more than maybe 6 months age gap. Even 14 dating 16 would be hinky. 11/12 dating 15/16? Oh honey no. I cannot emphasize enough how I am so relieved and glad you read harry potter rather than this abuse priming trash...
@@victoriashevlin8587 thankfully nothing happened, but I'm still weirded out by the way he didnt like........ tell me no? Like, I was friends with: 2 ppl my age, a girl a yr younger than me, and her 15/16 yr old sister, and the 15/16 yr old boy she was m8s with. We hung out as a group during lunches n stuff, like normal teens. I developed a crush on him bc he was the only boy I spent any time with who didn't harass me like everyone else, but I still think when I told him I was into him, he should have gone "nope! No! Sorry, best friends, but no thanks" bc I was a literal child ??? Like, us 'dating' was very pg-13, and I didn't do anything I didn't want to, but looking back, I can't believe nobody pointed out how weird/sus it was 😬 (Thankfully after the twilight thing happened and I did my research, I realised how sus things were, so that later on (age 15) when my friends (Also 15) were dating 25 yr olds I could be like "no, nope, stop it, don't get in his car, don't go see him at night, don't stay over at his, don't pass go, don't collect any money" to them, and when I did watch media with a hella sus relationship (buffy the vampire slayer/spuffy/spangel/bangel anyone?) Age 16/17 I could be like 🤔😬😲😠🤬) (Also, as a random bit of context, in my house my dad married 3 times, and the last one (my mum) is 21 yrs younger than him, so age differences were something that I was used to even if I didn't know it as a kid😬)
I think Twilight made very young teenage girls internalize some toxic romance traits so that later on, when they grew up, they _couldn't_ make a grown-up judgement about stuff like 50shades. They had been desensitized in the most subtle way to microaggression and possessive abuse so that when they met Christian Grey at the age of 18-25, they couldn't help but think, oh yes, this is definitely for me. Note: I mean Christian Grey both in the sense of that book and both in the sense of meeting an abusive boyfriend in real life. So I in fact agree that Twilight has always been the more dangerous one.
I don't consider the vampire allure/repulsion a contradiction. I think of it as two competing traits of evolution. As Dom said, vampires evolved to be attractive to their prey, but as humans we've also evolved to fear the uncanny valley effect. Vampires look a great deal like attractive humans, but there are small, subtle distinctions and they terrify us on an almost subconscious level. In Midnight Sun we learn that Edward only became irresistible to most of the women at Forks High School through repetition. They eventually got used to his unnatural appearance and only noticed his beauty. As Dom pointed out, Edward's an apex predator, and human beings tend to be frightened of those, lions, tigers, bears etc. even if there's a certain majesty to them. I do think Dom hit the nail on the head about these books being good fantasy for girls with low self-esteem, I mean, I'm a guy, but I fit half of that criteria, and when I read those books in high school (didn't want to criticize something without reading it) and it became something of a guilty pleasure.
Bella has a serious case of "not like other girls"-syndrome. When she was thinking about how shallow Jessica is (even though we've never seen even seen evidence of this), I wanted to throw the book at the wall. Except that I was reading it on my laptop, so that would have been bad. Also, when Edward forces her to go to the dance with him, she utters the words, "You wouldn't get away with this if you weren't stronger than me." That... is not something you should ever have to say to someone who supposedly loves you. Even if it's about something as seemingly insignificant as going to a dance.
Bella would be just as bad as Edward, given half a chance. In Eclipse, she wishes she were stronger than Edward so she could force him to have sex with her. yuck.
@@thegodofalldragons what a waste of good good paper. Just imagine being this young innocent piece of freshly pressed blank canvas. The thoughts, the possibilities! And then you finally run through the printer...just to end up as the worst parts of twilight to be thrown against a wall. Poor little paper piece. Life isn't fair.
I feel like “twilight is badly written” and “twilight didn’t deserve the hate it got just for being a book popular with teenage girls” are two opinions that can coexist, like yeah there’s a lot to criticise about it but I feel like most of the hate it got was just people automatically assuming that anything that girls like is trash (similar to people hating on one direction and justifying their hate by saying that “all 1D fans are 12 year old girls”)
Definitely people that say twilight is badly written have actually read the book and can form a personal opinion whereas the hate it got were mostly other jumping on the bandwagon without actually forming their own opinion I liked twilight but can see that the writing wasnt great and theres some big problems with some of the content when I look back now but the series was a great way to get young people to read and (in my case) start writing myself
I agree, a lot of YA fiction targeted at girls (and boys, YA can be very trashy lol) has weird tropes and is poorly written, but I feel like twilight got a ton of vitriol mostly because it got suuuuper popular and once it was in the cultural zeitgeist it became a punching bag. Edit: I’d also add that while it’s fair to say that twilight portrays weird/unhealthy relationships....so do a lot of other YA books, and I feel like a lot of the criticism of this in twilight is in bad faith. Like, how many people REALLY were outraged that tween girls were reading about a bad, melodramatic relationship, and how many just wanted to dunk on this thing that housewives and little girls happened to like?
Imagine when Dom discover that in Midnight Sun, Edward describes himself as: "Like a stalker. An obsessive stalker. An obsessive vampire stalker." And still tries to have the high ground saying he is better than a normal human stalker 😂😂😂👌
I mean he got a point though, no human stalker is as good as him, like he literally has super hearing and can read the mind of all the people around Bella, he also managed to even watch her sleeping without being noticed. As far as stalking goes, hes pretty good.
That’s not something to be proud of. Stalking isn’t even romantic (idealized) in the sense it’s noble like being a thief or pirate, careers that aren’t strictly negative.
So he acknowledges he's a stalker then instead of realising that's wrong he basically says "I'm better than all those other stalkers." Quite the narcissist is Mr Cullen.
That effect is actually covered in the Anita Blake series. Blake herself develops a weird love/sex based superpower that is revealed to have caused her and two of her lovers (only a blip in her love life) to be blindingly in love with each other. She was terrified when she realized it, they however were "meh". After a couple of chapters it ceases to be a problem other than a mild concern of it happening again. ...Those books can be weird and slightly convoluted.
It would genuinely be so sad. Having that sort of power explored and knowing that that person can never really date or marry someone because it would be taking away their free will.
@@gameb9oy Nah. I lost all liking of Jacob the moment he kissed her without her consent and despite the fact that she really wasnt interested him like that. And the fact that he wasnt sorry about it at all.
I've heard that this is because Jacob was more likeable than Edward in the first two books and Meyer had to do some character assassination in the third book to make Edward look better. Not sure how true this is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.
@@Lord_Of_Night its definitely true in the shift from respectful to overtly aggressive in Jacob. She wrote him as being so sweet and likable even after his transformation that his sudden shift makes no sense unless Meyer specifically made that change to make him look worse than the undead stalker.
@@Lord_Of_Night This! This!!! Jacob was the ONLY character I liked because he was the most real and thought-out. Actually, everything having to do with The Pack was new and interesting. Then the third book happened and his character did a 180. She WROTE him as an asshole from that point onward and, when I read this, I felt betrayed. This was a writer forcing her character to become something he was not set up to be just so Eddy could look good by comparison. It was disgusting and I stopped reading after that.
Bella's blank personality is also a very real consequence of children being pushed into maturity by their guardians at a young age. Bella had to look out for her mum and do all sorts of things that were never her responsibility, only to be thrown to a father she barely knew when mum wanted to have fun with her new boyfriend. Bella never had the chance to develop a personality because she was too busy being mature and responsible as a child. This also explains why she's so attracted to Edward. On the one hand, he's her protector, someone who tells her what she should do, unlike her parents when she grew up. On the other hand, he's still a whiny baby so she needs to take care of him just like she had to take care of her mum
I always felt bad for Bella in that regard. Hearing how her mom depended on Bella so heavily was so sad. It's one thing if Renee was ill or had some kind of mental condition, but as far as I know nothing was mentally or physically wrong with her. It makes me wonder who did all those things for Bella before she was old enough to start handling what was her mom's responsibility. My guess is that her grandparents helped.
I think the reason she has a blank personality is because she she was written that way... the author is a good story teller, but the writing and character development was poor. My friend raised her two siblings from a young age and she has a rich vibrant personality.
With others children who have to be mature earlier on there is a still chance to be recognise what is wrong with them and seek help or at least be aware. And self awareness take time. With Bella it is most chilling finding out she is stuck in that mentality forever. She can't grow literally. She is frozen forever it is fate worse than
Oh damn, I didn’t know this. But I also have a flat affect and had to parent my own mother. Still don’t think I want to read the books, the first film years ago was more than enough for me, but it’s still kinda cool that I can finally relate to Bella lol
"... I might have been several pages into writing this before I remembered that that's not what I said I was going to do here." By all means, don't let that stop you! I'm sure most of us would LOVE seeing that video.
If you read between the lines, you can find another possible reason why Bella is in love with Edward. (Note: in case you care, this has Breaking Dawn spoilers). Edward is a vampire. That makes him extremely strong and fast, to the point that his hitting a baseball sounds like thunder and the human eye can't see him running the bases. His senses are so finely-tuned that he can tell people apart by the scent of their blood. He's inhumanly stunning, with a beauty that draws the eye regardless of individual taste. He's lived as a vampire for over 90 years and he hasn't aged a day and never will. And while his mind-reading is just Edward's thing, it's not uncommon for vampires to have some kind of psychic ability. And that's just from the first book, before vampire abilities get even crazier. And vampirism... is spreadable. Yeah, that's what I believe is the reason why Bella loves Edward. It's not just that he's powerful and immortal and beautiful, but that he can make Bella all of those things. In the first book, when talking about why she's interested in becoming a vampire, being with Edward forever was on her list, but it wasn't the first thing on her list. That would be her desire to "be Superman". In the final act of New Moon, there's a really telling scene where Bella and Alice are on a plane rushing to Italia to save Edward's life, and Bella asks Alice to bite her right then and there, even after Alice points out that the transformation process would incapacitate Bella and thus guarantee Edward's death. And in Breaking Dawn, after Bella becomes a vampire, she goes around enjoying her new abilities on her own while Edward basically stops being a main character for a good chunk of the book.
That's basically what it is, as soon as she found out she could become a vampire, that's all she wanted, from him specifically since love and crap, but meyer contradicts this in new moon when Alice said she wanted to turn bella to end the bullshit and Bella begged her to do it
That's exactly what I always thought about Bella's attraction to Edward: A kind of power fantasy. To be honest, that is also why I like vampires (or other supernatural beings) so much... This aspect also features in shows about these super-humans: The character of Caroline from Vampire Diaries loves being a vampire for the same reason as Bella and Teen Wolf's Stiles has issues with being a normal human while his best friend and others are werewolves and other types of supernatural creatures.
Sounds more like she loves the idea of Edward than the person, sort of like falling for Superman because you have seen him being a perfect paragon of goodness with out knowing that he is also Kansas Farm boy Cark Kent.
The thing about the Cullen "teenagers" being in school is that once they move somewhere new they pretend to be as young as they can get away with. So, if they pretend that Edward and his siblings are 15 to start off with they can stay longer in a place as they won't cause too much suspicion as they don't age. They have to go to high school to keep up that pretence but they can stay in that area for longer. I hate myself that I don't have to look that fact up and I know it off the top of my head.
Don't worry, I remembered that, too :) still sounds like a miserable and boring life though. Kinda like groundhog day and that guy tried to kill himself multiple times.
I remember as well, and I also remember that sometimes Rosalie and Emmett sepeprate from them for a few decades just to pretend to be a newly wed couple but they always comeback for that sweet sweet high school life XD
Could have been an interesting plot point and strong argument for jacob if Jacob made the point that Bella is so attracted to Edward because of the evolution adaptiveness of vampires And then to actually make the series about Edward and Bella proving they have real love.
@@danielshore1457 you know, reading all this made me realise that Bella friendzoned Jacob coz he is just a big dog and A dog is a man's best friend... So that gives it another angle 😂
I was around 14 when the Twilight craze hit off and, oh boy, I can barely describe the kind of feverish, hormonal obsession it produced. I binge-read all four books in the space of five days, I barely slept and wandered between classes at school like a zombie, only to pull whichever one I was devouring at that point out from my bag and continue to read under my desk as soon as I sat down. All of my friends were reading them and we were frothing at the mouth for the film, spurred on by the fact Robert Pattinson's face was literally everywhere. It was a haze of pure insanity. Then, about a month after actually seeing the film, I went back to re-read the books. With a bit of distance, all of the flaws in the characterisation and world-building were a lot more obvious. Meyer's writing style annoyed me a lot more than it had before and I found Bella's inner monologue quite pretentious and silly. Funnily enough, like a teenager trying to sound more 'adult' while writing. The frenzy died down fairly quickly for me after that and these days I actually think a bit fondly of the series. That whole period of crazy was a shared experience that hit a lot of people my age. We can laugh about it now but there's no denying it certainly had an impact.
Tbf reading all four in under a week isn’t that big of a challenge since for much of the books, nothing is really happening and you can coast along the plot. As Ravi from iZombie once put it: “It’s like mental pork rinds.” And “frothing at the mouth” is a great way to put it. Before I read the series I was watching a girl suffer from the effects of “twilight fever” (before we had a name for it) going on and on about how in love she was with her boyfriend, how she couldn’t sleep because she was up all night just thinking about him, etc etc. But then she recommended the books to me. I drank that koolaid. And I think Breaking Dawn had just released like a month before, so I read the first on a 2h car ride and had to finish the rest of it. Personally I don’t remember liking either Edward or Jacob, and Bella was easy to picture myself as (for the most part. My second read showed me how much cognitive dissonance I had to have employed) but I was engrossed because the idea of some of these characters promised me more than Meyer eventually delivered. The vampires were cool: No weakness to sunlight, religious things, food items, or even objects for the most part, they were essentially super powered like X-Men, immortal and invincible to a fault. Later I thought the werewolves were awesome, and on film too: transformation isn’t effected by the moon, it can be wielded at will, the wolves looked like regular canis lupis only HUGE, wolf senses and strength/speed while in human form, and the pack has a hive mind connection to get past the loss of speech. I was dying to see what these creatures could do and how they would fight each other. And I still was when the series ended. Thankfully the movie tried to fix that but did it in the worst possible way with a giant pointless fake out. Twilight is a guilty pleasure. It’s terrible at best and an atrocity to literature at worst. But I’ll still pick through moments in the film to watch on occasion because on some level it’s still entertaining and it still has aspects that I like in genre tropes.
Can i ask you something? What do you think generall about and are you perhaps even interested if i tell you: You can make a difference and get some Racists and various other toxic people removed from RU-vid. I actually have, no kidding, a whole Wiki that i made for the purpose of spreading confirmed Info, so people are better prepared. And this mainly makes my Wiki one where lots of Links are stored, so people can report/flag toxic people, Lunatics and others. No kidding, i have a bunch of Links directly leading to confirmed Karens, Racists, Mobbers, Sexists, Porn-Uploader, Bullies, ect. Basically, lots of that that obviously dont belong on YT. So no joke: If ya want to fight some baddies, i wont only not stop you, but i can help you. What do you say? -Sorry this was rather random, but i think you get why i have to spread the fact that such a Wiki exists. People complain about RU-vid and its CEO, but do they act?
@@tristanhartup4936 not just that. In Eclipse, both Edward and Jacob, but especially Jacob, get extremely controlling and manipulative with Bella. Looking back on it it's actually disgusting, and I shame myself for that being my favorite of the saga when I was 16 😂
@@Shalalacls See, I don't remember Jacob being that bad, at least in the earlier books (the imprinting was completely off the rails), but I really don't care enough to subject myself to a re-reading. I think society is currently in a phase of over-reaction in some ways and that's actually harming our ability to grow and move forward.
@@byMidnyt He's that bad in Eclipse. Forcing a girl to kiss you when she's said "no," continuing the kiss while she is physically struggling to push you away, later gaslighting her and saying she was into it when she continuously asserts otherwise = bad.
The sparkle skin was never the thing that bothered me about the Meyer-pires. If you read the manga that released for the book, the artist was able to render the effect to look quite beautiful, so it never struck me as being this world-ending problem. My issue with these vampires is that Meyer didn't really give them any particular flaws or weaknesses to counterbalance the fact that sunlight doesn't kill her vampires, only makes them look like they fell into glitter glue. - They don't need to sleep in coffins or the dirt/earth every day to replenish their strength. - Their house is littered with Catholic crucifixes and other religious symbols. - There isn't any particular food that wards them off. - They don't require an invitation to enter your home. - Edward constantly talks about how he's always a breath away from killing Bella (and other humans), but this crippling bloodlust is only ever told, not shown. - Apparently, the only way to kill them is to tear them into pieces and set those pieces on fire. So, presumably, a stake through the heart, silver, or other implements are of no danger to them. - Placeholder for other weapons or weaknesses from other vampire legends. KrimsonRogue, in his Twilight reviews, brought up how this lack of weaknesses only serves to make the vampires incredibly OP, and thus boring as a result, and I have to agree. When there is no sense of balance for someone's abilities, it actually erases any sense of tension or fear, because you don't get to see an interplay of strength and weakness. This is amplified by Meyer never showing Edward being weak or vulnerable, either physically or emotionally. I know he's meant to be an apex predator, but well, even apex predators have reasonable weaknesses, even if it's extremely difficult for a flesh-bag human to manage to exploit them. A human managing to tear a Meyer-pire apart to set the pieces on fire is just not possible without some sort of mechasuit or Mortal Kombat logic, so I'm instantly bored. They could easily rule the humans-their food source-but they just don't because reasons. Honestly, I could go on for a long time about why these creatures are written poorly, but I'll end here. TL;DR, the glitter skin is honestly the least offensive thing about Meyer's vampires.
@@greyscaleanon7551 - That was the point I was going for, yeah. It's possibly explained in later installments, but I'm not sure the explanation would satisfy me. Haha. It's similar to Jenny Nicholson's point about wizards in HP world. "Hey we're wizards. you're going to have to be okay with that," kinda sums up how I feel about the vampires in this universe. If the vamps had more weaknesses, and having humans be ignorant of their presence was far easier to live with, then it would make more sense to me that they try to blend in.
@@KatieLHall-fy1hw - One thing I forgot to add is the collection of superpowers. Each vampire seems to have an X-Men style ability to go along with all of their other advantages. Edward is a telepath. Alice can predict the future. Jasper regulates emotions of those around him. Dakota Fanning's character can cause crippling pain with a thought. Bella can neutralize abilities used on her, both as a human and eventually a vampire. These things aren't inherently bad, but when there are no counterbalances, it's tiresome to think about. Apparently, the werewolves are meant to keep the vampires in check, but uh, they seem massively underlevelled in comparison.
"Objectively, there's nothing sexual about a person's ability to slice me in half with a blade, but I do NOT apologize for finding it enticing." Sounds like my kind of smut too! Any recommendation?
Huh. The bit about how comforting a fantasy it can be to imagine a lover who is obsessed with you due to something neither of you can control might also crack the code on why "soul mate" AUs (worlds in which you have a predestined partner whose identity is revealed via say, magical birthmarks or tattoos) are so enduringly popular as a fanfiction and paranormal romance trope. I sort of assumed it was just an easy way to get two characters together, but the comfort aspect of "they have to love me no matter what" makes a lot of sense.
As someone with a crippling fear of making decisions, I'll add that another nice part of the soulmate fantasy (though I've never honestly been into it) is that you don't have to take the time to figure out if you are compatible and decide on your own whether you want to stay with the person, potentially making a mistake and committing to someone you'll later have to reject and separate from (after you've put in so much effort and been disappointed because you're not that compatible after all). If they're your soulmate then they're always gonna be perfect for you in every way - no thought required!
There's some security in not having tp recognize how sure you can be of something and still be wrong. If youru believe in soul mates, then you can *also* tell yourself that your irl couple will definitely work it out because you were meant to be, instead of recognizing that you can break up for any reason, up to and including that you just fell out of love
Your comment made me think. Especially the comfort aspect of "they have to love me no matter what". I have never thought about it that way in all honesty. Now I want to write a story about one character who has the mentality of "my soulmate has to love me no matter what", but plot twist: the soulmate doesn't want anything to do with them.
I love the security of knowing the characters in those aus are going to be together in the end. Sometimes I just want reality to fuck off and let me pretend somewhere there’s a dragon who found his mate and they were happy together for the rest of all time. That said I usually hate the obsession trope. Stalking isn’t sweet. Non consensual touching because you just can’t help yourself while he’s asleep is still way beyond fucked up even if he happens to be cool with it later. When authors manage to write a story without all the rapey bits though man do I love it.
Until I read midnight sun I hadn't realized that Edward had legit motives to be in love with Bella, learning of her kindness and selflessness trough other people's thoughts. It everything was not "Du riechts so gut" as Bella's version made it seem. But she just loves him because he's hot. Period.
@@alesauria2 I disagree about Bella solely liking Edward because he is hot. He is portrayed as an ideal man; dangerous enough to protect her yet unequivocally concerned about her safety at all times.
If this makes you feel bad about love: Remember that while the initial feelings of love are uncontrollable, love is also about *choice.* Love is a choice. We make choices to stay in a relationship, to put in the time and effort to overcome the hurdles thrown and the weird speed bumps. Or we make the choice that it's not worth it, that it doesn't make us happy, and walk away.
Agreed, that's why people fall out of love and break up. If it was not a choice, we'd all be devoted to and marry, or live with, our first loves. That, obviously, isn't the case. Choice makes all the difference.
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria but in Jacob's case (i don't wanna defend it because it's still creepy AS HELL but y'know, canon) it's because of the "wolf thing" aka imprinting.
Yes, that is such a big part of love. And there is big difference between love and being in love. Anyone who has had a long term relationship (or knows someone who do) knows in the beginning you have these feelings of being in love, of the butterflies in your stomach, of hormones, and all the physical things in your body. Yes, there are a lot of biological things happening you have no control over, but after a while (from a few months to a year) those will cool down. After that, the choice comes in; do you want to stay with this person despite not having those butterflies anymore? I've actually met a few people who were so sure that that state of being was the definition of love, they gave up on relationship after relationship, because they lost that and thought that meant they weren't meant to be. Especially when you're young, and you're experiencing those feelings for the first time, you want to believe that is true love. That only those feelings will hold up and triumph over everything else. Love is not about the butterflies, it's about what you do when the butterflies leave.
Stephanie Myers biggest downfall is a lack of a thesaurus. She only knows how to use the words "chagrin", "furrowed", "brooding", and "murmuring"...seriously...she has to get more words.....
Xehanort10 Halfway through the first book I had to get a dictionary just to affirm I knew what they meant myself. She has no idea what chagrin means...at all.
@@ladyphoenixgrey3923 She probably just looked at random words, didn't bother to find their meanings and just thought they'd look cool written down and sound cool when said out loud. I think chagrin means a feeling of embarrassment but I'm not sure.
I got the impression as a teenager that “people are attracted to us” and “people shy away from us” are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Like... people are attracted to their looks and voices, but then the strangeness and predatory nature of how they act are just off enough to go “DANGER WILL ROBINSON” after some time. It’s usually not a problem since most vampires will just eat them within an hour or two.
Earlier this morning a Facebook ad tried to pitch me some book with "It's like Twilight meets Ancient Aliens, with all the sizzle of Fifty Shades" and I just needed to share that horror with people I know will understand. Again, this was an advertisement, ostensibly trying to make it sound GOOD.
“...drinking her like a Dr Pepper.” That line almost broke me. Then I saw your realization of the truth of “Love”. To be honest, Dom, I was Team Jacob until the final book. I also fully agree to the overreaction to the sparkling diamond skin. Also, I do believe you have missed one of the other points that drew Edward towards her... He can’t read her mind. It is the only mind he has ever encountered that he cant instantly read and adjust to. I always assumed it gave him some semblance of a normal life that he thought was nearly a century gone. It is something I would ask you to remember for the future books. It does explain Edward’s confusion about her reaction to the prom, ya know?
I haven't yet gotten to the recently released complete Midnight Sun - so whoever did, may correct me if I am wrong -, but according to the partial draft that was up on Meyer's website, it drove Edward absolutely nuts that he cannot hear Bella's thought. For example in Ch 5 of the draft, he described his curiosity about her thoughts at any given moment - when she sighed, when she twisted a lock of hair around her finger, when she threw her books down, really anytime - as the most constant of his torments in the pure hell school became for him. So yeah, the fact that he couldn't read Bella's mind did drew Edward like crazy, but it was because he found her a huge mystery he was obsessed with solving.
I never read the books but I can imagine after a century having the thoughs of every person around intruding one's mind to the point they barely have to think about the person because all their thoughts are instantly delivered, having someone you need to try and give thought and time to know what they are thinking or feeling, by actually looking at them and considering it all, would be a change in pace to a life that could have become quite boring.
Interestingly, that’s how it works out in the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. Sookie (a human who can overhear EVERYTHING other people think) is initially happy to date the vampire Bill and get involved in his world, since vampires are dead and therefore she can’t hear their thoughts at all.
@@tristanhartup4936 Apparently nobody told Meyer to either write out the sound he made when he laughed or describe the act of him laughing. Not do both.
I'm glad you pointed out Bella's focus on looks. Bella describes herself as having thick mahogany hair and clear skin, yet is convinced that she is unattractive even before comparing herself to vampires. She constantly thinks that she is not worthy of Edward because she looks in her words "shamefully plain". She also thinks it's entirely ridiculous that Rosalie could be jealous of her because Rosalie is the "embodiment of beauty" as if that is the sole determinant for happiness. Also the age difference between her and Jacob was entirely unnecessary. They could have been the same age, it would have made no difference to the plot. Meyer has a weird thing about age differences in her other book The Host as well
The “Venus fly trap” effect and the “humans are instinctively wary of them” thing, don’t necessarily contradict each other. Evolutionary speaking vampires could have been beautiful to attract humans but then humans evolved to be repel by them. Or the other way around. It could be like a natural selection kind of deal, some humans are too attracted to the vampires that they override their self preservation, others survive to reproduce. Although Edward has a point, when vampires in this universe are literally the peak apex predator nature has ever created, why do they also need to be hot?
They may have evolved to be hot before they evolved to be an apex predator. The super speed etc. could have been a reaction to humans becoming more immune to their allure.
@@mrsb50 I would fucking love to see the magical evolutionry pressures that would create supernatural creatures. that sounds like an amazing worldbuild project and story.
@@598019001 Well if you think to much about this, the whole "Supernatural creatures" thing opens a big can of worms... why do only 2 types of creatures exist and why do only they have powers and in the case of vampires, why so many? It makes even more problems if that is an actual evolutionary problem compare to, like, a "curse" or something.
I'm imagining older vampires with their papery skin and Nos Veratu lookin' asses staring at the younger, sexier, sparklier vampires and going "Yessss we have evooolvved" But honestly that makes sense to me! Also dangerous things can be sexy, that's why humans have been sexualizing scary things since the dawn of time. Paradise Lost, those weird viking romances and Dante's Inferno is the only one I can pull off the top of my head but there's something about dangerousness that is innately slightly sexual. Genuinely it's hillarious how long ago the "King of the Underworld is a sexy good boy who's cute af" started
My first thought upon experiencing Twilight was, "Whose paying someone to write a Quizilla story?" For those who don't know that old site, it was a place for people to post stories online at least a good decade ago. Here's how the most popular stories always went: 1. Average girl somehow attracts attention of awesome dude 2. Awesome dude turns out to be (insert supernatural entity) 3. Average girl gets wrapped up in awesome dude's chaos 4. Awesome dude inserts himself into average girl's life to protect her Bonus points if she moves into his house that he shares with a bunch of equally awesome dudes of varying ilk that also fall in love with her It's basically a reverse harem fanfic. No wonder other people got paid to write a fanfic for it.
I never understood why a vampire, who is like what, 300 years old? Would enroll in high school... Like he could go anywhere and do anything, but instead decides to go back to high school... like why? Why not go to college instead or like Idk just travel and do whatever you want? Also, how did no one realize that this man looked 18 at 14 and then never grew or changed for the rest of his 4 years?
Clio Alexandra yes. It’s so dumb. College would be a much better option for “blending in” because you aren’t necessarily expected to leave after 4 years, what with grad school, and can study literally anything instead of having to rehash high-school level courses again and again.
@@alisaurus4224 I think he chose HS because most of them look like teenagers, and while teenagers and twentysomethings look similar, and how pretty they are could mask their age somewhat, it's still be somewhat safer to go the HS route. It's more like, Why dont the 'parents' do that? Couldn't they just argue that they were all adopted and their parents died? Idk
He graduated college several times, travelled plenty, lived on his own for a while away from the human world. basically they go to high school to have a normal life (as normal as it can be for them lol) and so that they can stay together in his dad's world, practicing medicine is Carlisles passion and Edward hates being seperated from him
@@kairanelle1380 Ok you clearly know the series better than I do but it still doesn't make sense to me. I would go CRAZY if I had to go to high school multiple times, at least with college you can learn about pretty much whatever you want. Like in high school everyone knows who you are but in college, nobody cares and you only make friends if you really want to or go out of your way. So I feel like they could really blend in better in college than in hs!
@@clioalexandra6485 Yeah but then they would have to move out of town faster. They go to high school first then college. And when they look too young for their supposed age they make new fake papers and move somewhere else
I remember several years ago, one of my friends posted on facebook about this amazing book series she'd found called 50 Shades of Grey. Being a massive bookworm, I looked it up online to see what all the fuss was about. Cue several hours of me getting more and more horrified, and wondering at the sanity of several of my friends. Long story short, RU-vid recommended a video named "Fifty Shades of Physical and Emotional Abuse" by someone called The Dom. I've been a beautiful watcher ever since, and I'm so glad you've decided to go down the sparkly rabbit hole. Just look after yourself and make sure you get plenty of kitty snuggles
I once consumed a piece of media, where vampires could shoot blood-lasers out of their eyes and honestly, I think more people should pull weird shit like that.
Regarding the "why do they keep attending high school?" question, lore-compliant fanfic Luminosity (a personal all-time favorite of mine, partly due to things like this) has a good headcanon for that, in two parts. In Chapter 3, Bella theorizes: "They moved a lot - did they have to repeat high school over and over again? Or did they just do this occasionally, and at other times spend their days pretending to 'homeschool' and secretly pursuing whatever interested them? The latter would make more sense. I could see attending high school anew once every thirty years or so to get an update on the state of education - they would always need to be able to pull off having attended high school _recently_ - but even if that was the goal, it would make more sense to go to college repeatedly and at least choose a different major each time. There was no reason the vampires couldn't pass as youthful college students, especially at a large, prestigious school that would tend to attract prodigies. Maybe they liked continuity more than I would have guessed, and preferred to segue into college with genuine secondary school histories. (Living as they did there had to be a source of forged records, of course, but they might not use them for absolutely everything.)" and later, in chapter 12, Rosalie Hale (another member of Edward's coven) explains: "'Why do you keep going to high school? College would be more interesting, wouldn't it?' I inquired. 'It is. Had a bit of a problem with somebody actually calling my imaginary high school alma mater once, though, so now I just sit through a year or two of this,' she gestured in the direction of the school building, 'and go with a partially real transcript.'"
I thought the reasoning for attending high school when they first moved to an area was so that they could spend longer there before they all looked too young for their supposed ages/people noticed they weren't ageing and they had to move on. I could be misremembering that or have made it up entirely, but I think I remember reading it somewhere. Perhaps the partial draft of Midnight Sun? I don't remember reading any Twilight fanfic so it's unlikely to be from that. I do prefer the explanation given above though.
@@hannahthetford5952 That's the reason, but it's not a good reason imo. No reason the Cullen/Hale kids can't be perpetually homeschooled. It's not uncommon.
@@hannahthetford5952 I've been reading Midnight Sun recently, and it did indeed explicitly state that--though it also mentioned that they don't _always_ do that, having made that choice this time because Forks was a particularly appealing place for them to live, and they wanted to be able to stay there for as long as possible. I haven't read the original book(s), so I don't know whether or not this was ever mentioned there.
@@Rikku147 Yes, homeschool would make way more sense. They really stand out at school so it's not like attending helps them blend in/integrate with the locals any better and it poses a significant risk to the other students if one of them loses control.
@@hannahthetford5952 Yeah but they stand out as a good looking high schoolers, something society values and is otherwise normal. Nobody thinks "huh that person is good-looking I wonder if there's something wrong with them." If they were instead shut-in homeschool recluses, it would look really suspicious. Why are they hiding? What are they hiding? It becomes the mystery and intrigue as rumors fly. They end up standing out more by removing themselves from society.
I mean, to be fair, a lot of teenagers are casually judgmental towards their peers, and dismissive of everything their parents say and do (even if their parents are mostly good parents and are genuinely just trying to help). Most of them grow out of it. Problem is, Bella never will because she’s frozen forever at 18. Tough luck, Charlie.
About the "Attractive like a carnivorous flower" and the "too Alien" parts of the book: First of all, I was an English major, so I automatically overanalyze literature anyway. Secondly, I am naturally an overthinker, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. When I first read this book many years ago, these two things actually made some sense to me in a few levels. Blood- There are 8 blood group for people, but only one universal donor. Only O negative blood is the least likely to cause an adverse reaction to give to a patient. That means there is something different with a O negative person's blood. Ironically, type O blood is also the type that attracts mosquitoes the most. Human Attraction- Not every person is attracted to every other person. Attraction is usually broken down to things like appearance, personality, chemistry, hygiene, and other factors that could attract people. Some people like a person with a sense of humor. Some don't. Some like men with warm brown eyes. Some like women with ginger hair. What attracts a person is as unique as the individual themselves. In this case, Bella is attracted to a pale, mysterious, model-like man. Knowing what I know about human nature and attraction, there was probably some other girl in the school that thought he looked anemic, rolls her eyes at who she perceives as overly angsty, and prefers chubby guys. We don't get to see her, of course, because that would go against the narrative of the book. But that is more true to life. Animal Behavior- A moth is attracted to flame, while a butterfly is not. Both creatures are large winged insects that look similar. However, only one of them will accidentally catch themselves on fire. A butterfly is more attracted to things like flowers. (...and drinking blood, but that is an entire difference story...) Genetics and Evolution- I like cilantro. I find it tasty in food like salsa. My friend only tastes soap when he eats it. Neither of us are weird or wrong about our taste. Genetically speaking, some people have evolved to having different olfactory receptors that can taste soap-like chemicals from the cilantro leaves. Due to evolution, some people have a tendon in their wrists that others don't. As the human race evolves, things slowly change to help our survival. Whose to say that evolution has not done this to protect some from, say vampires? Conclusion- When I first read the book, I thought about how a portion of the population might be immune to the wiles of vampires based on the criteria above. Meaning that Bella was a cilantro eating, mosquito attracting, male model loving, pyromaniac moth, while some other people might pass by Edward altogether.
*snickers*, hey, my tween self basically liked the concept of "human but predator". I used to wonder if they evolved as a separate branch from humans, had all these conjectures that they were ambush predators that usually attracted their prey from afar and then struck (thus the venom, to ensure it wouldnt fight it off- kinda like snakes), and had very similar theories as to why someone would be more alluring to a vampire vs another, or why some people would be drawn closer to them. I assumed they evolved to not really need a lot of those tricks anymore but they stayed with them just like vestigial organs, etc. no, seriously, I liked THAT kind of thinking way more than the romance. kid!me would be delighted to find someone with a similar thinking style lmao
You gave it way more thought than Stephenie Meyer ever did. She did bring in a few concepts that would've been cool to explore but never did because that wasn't the story she wanted to tell (and as such, she had no interest in the first place, so it was unintentional). According to Meyer after Twilight was released, she wanted to write a love story that rivaled Romeo and Juliet in some way, because she found the idea of loving someone so much, to the point you become obsessed and would literally die for them is romantic. She was also heavily influenced by her Mormon religion which really pushes the "celibacy before marriage", "you only get one chance at marriage and that's it", and "the wife is subservient to the man" messages because of it. (Arguably the one other Christian religion that is so similar to Mormonism is Catholicism in how strict it is, at least from my perspective as a former Catholic whom had a best friend that was Mormon once upon a time.)
I once read an article about the uncanny valley and Twilight was listed there as an example from literature. I only watched the movies so I didn't get it at first, but then I read the parts describing Edward and... yeah, I can totaly see it now. he is corpse pale, moves like a predator and is perfectly symmetrical. no human is truly symmetrical, our left and right sides differ by mere millimeters or centimeters, so perfect faces look creepy and "not quite right" to us. maybe that's why humans stay away from them idk
I just left a comment about this and I think that the whole uncanny valley, symmetrical face thing plays into how we see really really attractive people as intimidating. And that coincides with the idea that a "perfect" face is a symmetrical one.
@@nessyness5447 never even thought of that angle but that would explain all of the anime villain Stan girls that are in love because there’s a handsome killer aspect
@@theotakucave works in others too. In the psychogical thriller manwha killing stalking, some romantize the situation becauae they find sang woo attractive.
"She'd been a respectable young woman for some time. In certain people, that means there’s a lot of dammed-up disreputability just waiting to burst out"- Terry Pratchett, The Truth
That is extremely true. As "good" as some people are, quite a lot of them want to be bad in a playful, exploratory way. Being perfect for too long is a recipe for risk-taking or being bored.
I was a vood little book worm until I graduated. Nobody realized that book open up the world and make you want to explore it. First time I ran into an old classmate I had a neon pink pixie cut (in a time when people felt free to call you a freak and a satanic childish whore for having that hair. Not as acceptable as today. My classmate literally walked into a wall. 😊
"A deep dive post-mortem into Twilight's runaway popularity and the subsequent backlash" "A video essay on the philosophical implications of it all" Yes to both!
"Girl, that's your mother; give her a damn update" lol. I might send that to my daughters. it was because of them that I read Twilight back in the day (I read a lot of the YA books they brought home, some of which were incredibly well-written). Meyers isn't an awful writer, I thought the love story was annoying, but I was fascinated with the idea of the vampire family & what they did to blend in. I really liked the vampire baseball, but most of the book was relatively forgettable. of course, I was a 49 year-old mom at the time, so could not really relate to teenage romance anymore. and, I have to say, re: the evolutionary pressures leading us to "fall in love": I've always believed that it is chemistry that brings some couples together, but it is the shared experiences that deepen those hormonal drives into love.
The thing that annoys me is that the book could have been great. Bella is a parentified child with a great interest in literature who was completely out of her element and ends up meeting vampires, but Stephenie Meyer never really does anything with the first two character traits. Is annoying. That said I liked Twilight when I read it I didn't really notice it's flawed until I went back and read it again.
"but most of the book was relatively forgettable. " This. This right here is it in a nutshell. Though I do disagree with not being able to relate to a teenage romance. I believe, if well written, a book is relatable at any age. A well written book deals with universal themes, and when that happens you can relate whether the protagonist is male, female, human, alien, young, old. It's when it's all tropes and forced nostalgia that it becomes a problem. Heaven knows that's a huge issue with the movie industry today.
It's not that we have low self esteem, Dom. It's that we're so disappointed in our romantic options in real life that if a sexy, rich and powerful mythical creature told me he was in love with me in the lush wilderness, I too would risk it all. It aint that deep.
Twilight inspired me to make my own vampire romance. In a, “Can I do this, but better?” Sort of way. I’ve got a recently divorced vampire heroine with terrible anxiety who feeds off of either consensual partners or blood donations, even though those medical bills add up quick. She’s got a young son who bites and speaks almost entirely in ESP, and he’s been kicked out of every daycare in town. My love interest is a severely depressed ex-con with unwanted psychic powers who can hack into brains almost as easily as he can hack into computers. Shenanigans ensue. Anyway. This entire concept brewed as a result of my overwhelming disappointment with Twilight. And also dealing with some very serious shit irl. Vampires are cool, interpersonal relationships with vampires trying to function in the modern world are cool, but Twilight just falls flat of the full potential of the concept. You can do so much more with vampires in a modern setting.
You have me intrigued... I'm extra curious as it seems you've changed some of the lore, unless I'm interpreting it incorrectly, the vampires don't automatically turn their victims if they survive (unless the volunteers and the daycare kids don't survive which.... Either way, would be very interesting) are you going the other traditional route if vampire feeds and the victim much feed on their blood to turn?
Macallion my problem with Jacob was the idea of some guy telling me I had feelings for him when I clearly kept saying otherwise. Of course Bella didn’t do much to help the situation, in my opinion. I kept getting frustrated with the love triangle trope.
Right?? I recently reread the books as an adult in my mid twenties. As a teenager, I romanticized Jacob as the “bad boy” figure, but as an adult I realized he’s a complete asshole. In Eclipse, he pretty much sexually assaults Bella by kissing her without her consent. She got to the point where she literally had to punch to punch him to get him off of her, and when she injured herself, HE LAUGHED. Edward is not innocent by any means, but Jesus Jacob is far worse imo
Lindsay Hamilton yes! Edward does get a lot of heat, which is well deserved, but it annoys the hell out of me when Jacob gets a pass for being the “best friend”.
To be fair, Jacob was a legit best friend in the first book and the beginning on New Moon. But then he gets hit with character derailment and becomes a complete jerk. It wouldn’t even be that bad to be honest since Bella made it clear Edward was her choice by the end of New Moon, but then Meyer strung audiences and Team Jacob fans along in Eclipse despite Jacob still being an ass. Like if you are going to make a love triangle, both romantic partners needs to have a shot. If one is obviously going to lose, the author is not only wasting their time, but the audience’s as well.
Two things! *1, the first Twilight book was a writing exercise that got published and 2, (Spoiler) Bella canonically has little to no survival instinct. It's a plot point in later books.* The entire first book was a creative writing project to create a story around a weird dream Stephenie Meyer wrote down. The 'sparkly vampire with a hapless girl in a sunny meadow' scene was a dream Meyer jotted down and told her mom about, and her mom said it sounded like a neat story so she tried to write what happened before and after and the whole project spiraled until she was told it might be fun to try and publish it. (actually, it might have been sent to a publisher without her explicit consent, that part is actually kinda shady old discourse) I used to be a HUGE Twilight stan in middle school, and I still feel the need to defend it sometimes due to the old backlash, but I can confirm that the existential crisis you had is a typical experience. Also, I never considered the pheromone trap thing and the alienness thing contradictory, but that's probably because I read the first few books back to back and it actually clarifies it (in my opinion) later. Sort of Spoiler, but basically? In Story, vampires evolved to draw humans in but human's survival instincts evolved to *notice*. Bella is explicitly stated in canon multiple times for being weird in this regard, and I'm not kidding when I say it is LITERALLY CANON that Bella HAS NO SURVIVAL INSTINCT.
I did write something similar into my book about the vampires being both appealing and off-putting, but it has an actual explanation. After you become accustomed to the allure they have for their prey you start to have a bit of an uncanny valley feeling about them. They really only need the appeal to last a short while to feed. After you become accustomed to them you start to notice certain differences between them and humans that makes you become more uncomfortable around them. Mostly their movements, their speed if they slip in their facade for even a second. The more time you spend with one the more comfortable they get around you which makes them much more likely to slip.
Reading Midnight Sun years later made me realize that a lot of series could've been improved from being written entirely in Edward's point of view. (Not saying it would be a better series since the writing is still bad just less boring.) A lot of Edward's life is spent in his own head not surprisingly so without that he comes across as kind of flat in Twilight where Midnight Sun provides way more to not only him but the Cullen's as well. It also shows how much potential the series could've had if it were in the hands of an experienced writer. I have to admit there will always be a part of me that's nostalgic about Twilight. I think my teen self was much more enticed by the paranormal aspect of Edward and Bella's relationship than the romance itself. Reading Midnight Sun as an adult and having not read the main series in years really opened my eyes to the bad writing and flat story but there's still a fondness there that made it easy to enjoy Midnight Sun. Twilight/Midnight Sun are as good as it gets. The further you read into the series the worse it gets. Even my teen self started hating everything about it from New Moon on and Breaking Dawn is nothing less than a dumpster fire. Brace yourself.
I barely remember reading the twilight series cause i was so young, but i was surprised how interesting Edwards life was from his perspective. Although it makes Bella interesting in the first half and an unbearably forgettable prop character in the second half, like i forgot what scenes she was actually in. The paranormal aspect is the reason it became so popular i think, no one was all that interested in bella and Edward’s romance, but the questions their romance asked the reader were really memorable. Living forever/leaving family members forever/staying with someone who might kill you, its all really interesting for teenagers to consider
@@connieallen6804 I think the romance was the primary reason why so many found the story compelling as teenagers. The paranormal aspect brought in interesting questions of adventure, eternity and stability both in aspects of relationships and power, but I think as women we are just conditioned to deny our interests in romance and relationships because we are ridiculed for it in the developed world. I never perceived Edward as much of a threat to Bella because he was always honest and made his intentions clear to her and his actions proved that he was always concerned about her safety. An ideal man for teenagers to hope to be partnered with someday.
I hated Twilight, but wanted so much to like it that I kept reading. Short Second Life pissed me off since Bree was trying to not hurt anyone, and the Cullens still killed her even though she was a kid who was not doing as Victoria wanted her to do. And then I read Breaking Dawn. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. Talk about a tease with no payoff. Seemed like a big battle was on the way, and it ended up, "Oops, we were wrong. Let's go home." When the movie had to add in a goddamned dream sequence just to make SOMETHING happen, you know an author fucked up and was riding the coattails of her first book.
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria I agree with you, the ending was complete hogwash. Bella became a Mary Sue character by the end. The story started off with the promise of danger and adventure but completely undelivered by the end. But, I can't fault the romance of it.
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria It was actually the Volturi that killed Bree, not the Cullens. They wanted to spare her and make her a part of the family but the Volturi suck. I always hated that.
While Dominic says he brought nothing new to the table, honestly, I think he brought something that no one else has. Himself. Not just the youtube personality - though that is amazing as well and I will always burst out laughing at his breakdown of love, as examined through Twilight - but his experience in hating the book initially before giving it another try. This will to go back and re-examine not just the book, but himself, and share the experience with us, is something I will greatly treasure.
I read the book when I was fifteen and I found the sexless aspect of the book both relatable and appealing. By that time I had already had some experiences that made it painfully clear to me how frequently young boys would try to objectify me or pressure me into stuff. I was at the time very religious and genuinely, innocently committed to saving myself for marriage so that pressure/refusal to understand my boundaries felt demeaning and dehumanizing. I liked the book because Edward's creepiness aside, it was so thrilling to imagine a romance with a boy that didn't revolve around him trying to get me into bed as soon as possible. I still remember reading it and just feeling enthralled to discover that such a thing was possible. Even at the time though I recognized it wasn't well written haha
I think I was younger when I read them and I simply ignored the romance like in pretty much every book I ever read. to me romance was bs anyways so I did not really notice anything more wrong with it then with most others. later it turned out I am aro ace and have a huge issue with consent and respect in relationships which makes basicly every media portrail of a relationship show red flags . . . .
