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Cythereal posted:Who the everloving gently caress puts that much makeup on a child?! No, really.
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Jul 10, 2020 01:40
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Cythereal posted:Who the everloving gently caress puts that much makeup on a child?! The child, judging by my kids few ventures into unassisted makeup amusement.
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Jul 10, 2020 01:49
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Cythereal posted:Who the everloving gently caress puts that much makeup on a child?! Pageant parents. Ever see those awful photoshop services that give pageant kids those terrible doll eyes?
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Jul 10, 2020 02:17
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chitoryu12 posted:One of you actually got it exactly right but I won't say who. Are you sure you didn't cheat? Victorkm posted:I dunno about exactly right but a couple people got pretty close if you combine their answers. We did? That's... terrible. I don't know about the others who were guessing but I was just making up stuff that seemed like it would be vaguely plausible based on what's been introduced in text so far with the intent of maximising useless drama.
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Jul 10, 2020 12:33
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The mention of Renee gives me a vain hope that Charlie will be lobbing a petrol bomb at a vampire at some point.
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Jul 10, 2020 15:00
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quote:The three of us, Jacob, Renesmee, and I, were hunting together. The diet of animal blood wasn’t Renesmee’s favorite thing—and that was why Jacob was allowed to come along. Jacob had made it a contest between them, and that made her more willing than anything else. Lucky for everyone that Renesmee's magical transformation to adulthood also includes instantly developing her entire system of morality to match her family! quote:“Jacob,” I said, trying to reason with him again while Renesmee danced ahead of us into the long clearing, searching for a scent she liked. “You’ve got obligations here. Seth, Leah—” Yeah, remember how when Sam imprinted he just abandoned all of his duties and left his pack to run poo poo themselves so he could fawn over his wife? Wait, what do you mean "he didn't do that"? quote:“Sort of like you? Are you officially dropping out of high school, then? If you’re going to keep up with Renesmee, you’re going to have to study a lot harder.” Jacob is currently so obsessive over his child bride that he intentionally endangers people and sabotages the Cullens' plans to avoid the thought of her having to move away for a little bit. There's no way he would be able to handle 8 hours in school. quote:I lost my concentration on my side of the disagreement when he said that, and we both automatically looked at Renesmee. She was staring at the snowflakes fluttering high above her head, melting before they could stick to the yellowed grass in the long arrowhead-shaped meadow that we were standing in. Her ruffled ivory dress was just a shade darker than the snow, and her reddish-brown curls managed to shimmer, though the sun was buried deeply behind the clouds. Uhhh no you didn't. Snowflakes can only form 6 points because the angle of the hydrogen atom bonds causes hexagonal shapes. quote:“Pretty,” Jacob called to her appreciatively. “But I think you’re stalling, Nessie.”  Our stand-in for the author's despicable human children with their needs was played at this age by 12-year-old Mackenzie Foy. CGI (including body doubles Rachel St. Gelais and Eliza Faria) was used to reflect her dramatic growth spurts. She has since appeared as young Murphy Cooper in Interstellar and Clara in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, and is playing the lead in the upcoming film adaptation of famous horse girl novel Black Beauty. quote:She bounded back to Jacob; he held his arms out at exactly the moment she leaped into them. They had the move perfectly synchronized. She did this when she had something to say. She still preferred not to speak aloud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lez_WdX7Oc quote:She flipped backward out of Jacob’s arms, landing lightly on her feet, and rolled her eyes—she looked so much like Edward when she did that. Then she darted off toward the trees. I think we have our winner for "Worst line out of context." quote:I smiled at the leaves they left fluttering behind them, shaking my head. Jacob was more a child than Renesmee sometimes. Literally. He has nothing else in his life except Renesmee. His entire personality and all of his wants and needs have been subsumed by imprinting. He now exists in this book only to serve as yet another perpetual babysitter, saving Bella from having to put one iota of effort into raising her child (who still unconditionally loves her the best by default because she's the mom). quote:While my thoughts were lost in the near future, my eyes swept the mountainside routinely, searching for prey, searching for danger. I didn’t think about it; the urge was an automatic thing. Oh hey, it's Meyer suddenly finding a reason to continue the plot! quote:Her hair was pale, pale blond, almost silver. This was the gleam that had caught my eye. It hung straight as a ruler to a blunt edge at her chin, parted evenly down the center. There's a lot of people this could possibly be, but Bella is always right when the book makes her sound right! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6uIM59ZYp8  In the books, Irina is the last member of the Denali coven to be seen. The film takes care of the lovely writing by having her appear along with her sisters at the wedding, making it obvious to the audience who she is. Irina was played by Maggie Grace, who moved from Ohio to Los Angeles in poverty and lucked into a successful acting career. After a few years of minor roles, she made regular appearances in the first two seasons of Lost as Shannon and played the chronically kidnapped Kim in the Taken series. She's currently part of the main cast of Fear the Walking Dead as Althea, who I'm sure won't suddenly get killed off in the next few years out of nowhere. quote:For one moment I stared at her, and she stared back. I wondered if she would guess immediately who I was as well. I half-raised my hand, about to wave, but her lip twisted the tiniest bit, making her face suddenly hostile. Wow, this must be bad if she can use such foul language! quote:I sprinted into the forest after Renesmee and Jacob, unwilling to have them out of my sight. I didn’t know which direction Irina had taken, or exactly how furious she was right now. Vengeance was a common obsession for vampires, one that was not easy to suppress. Vampires are biologically forced to be dramatic assholes! quote:Running at full speed, it only took me two seconds to reach them. Oh, so she can talk when she wants to! quote:Jacob’s ears flattened as he took in my expression; he crouched forward, baring his teeth—his muzzle was streaked with blood from his kill. His eyes raked the forest. I could hear the growl building in his throat. Why do they even use cars when nobody can see them? quote:We darted back to the long meadow and then waited silently as Jacob and I listened carefully for the sound of an approach we did not recognize. Wait, where are we? How close were the rest of the wolves? quote:“She was up on that ridge,” I told them at once, pointing out the spot. If Irina was fleeing, she already had quite a head start. Would she stop and listen to Carlisle? Her expression before made me think not. “Maybe you should call Emmett and Jasper and have them come with you. She looked… really upset. She growled at me.” "I haven't killed anyone in months!" quote:They exchanged a long glance—perhaps Carlisle was measuring Edward’s irritation with Irina against his helpfulness as a mind reader. Finally, Carlisle nodded, and they took off to find the trail without calling for Jasper or Emmett. gently caress this baby. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Apr 16, 2021 |
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Jul 10, 2020 15:52
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chitoryu12 posted:gently caress this baby. Please dont say that, Jacob is right there 
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Jul 10, 2020 16:09
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So as much as I disagree with Das Sporking on many of their points on this series (they seemed to be very against any suggestion of Mormon influence in the books and focused on Renesmee as an abuser over the obvious parallels to child grooming), they did find a lot of quotes from Meyer on her writing of the series and how she did so while raising children that are very telling.quote:Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. […] Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write. […] I mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted. quote:After spending so much time with [Bella], I loved her like a daughter, and no name was good enough. Finally, inspired by that love, I gave her the name I was saving for my daughter, who had never shown up and was unlikely to put in an appearance at this point: Isabella. quote:I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet) only to have another conversation start in my head. […] When I was stuck at swim lessons, out in 115 degrees of Phoenix sunshine, I would plot and scheme and come home with so much new stuff that I couldn't type fast enough. quote:I had recently started realizing that my memory was going, and that I could no longer remember whom I had said something to yesterday. My youngest was just passing one, and the next one was two, and I had an almost-five-year-old. So my brains were like oatmeal — there was nothing left. And so I knew I was going to forget this story! That realization was something that really hurt me. quote:Q: How did you [find a balance between writing and parenting]? You're so busy as a mom. Every moment of the day, with three little kids, is occupied. Suddenly, you're inserting this huge other effort into it. How did you allow yourself to do that? Now, compare that to Renesmee. There's more to it than just the girl magically passing the baby stage within days and becoming a precocious toddler within 3 months. She was born in only 1 month, she has endless babysitters who take care of her 24/7 while Bella just has to make occasional appearances and still gets all the love for being the mother, she never cries or wakes up at odd hours in the night, she never poops or throws up, she gains even abstract knowledge like morality instantly through observation and does everything perfectly the first time, she's got superhuman strength and durability so you never have to be worried about her hurting herself, she can completely understand and internalize whatever she's told and instantly communicate her wants and needs through touch before she learns to speak, etc. It becomes uncomfortably clear that Renesmee is a stand-in for Meyer's own unstated issues with motherhood. Married at 21 and popping out kids a few years later, she spent most of her adult youth unable to do really anything but run a house and care for a family. Her attempt at an outlet was constantly interrupted by the realities of raising multiple young children and the never-ending stress of that. And her self-insert is not only named after the daughter she wanted but never had, but is able to get all of the things that Stephenie never could. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 17:01
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Right, I would hesitate to ever suggest Meyer doesn't love her children, but it's clear she has some understandable issues with the expectation that women completely subsume themselves to motherhood, but this comes out sort of weirdly in her wish fulfillment writing because she both pushes against that by having Renesmee be the perfect baby who doesn't need Bella 24/7 but also framing motherhood as the most important jewel in Bella's crown. EDIT: Like the newspaper comic strip thread did a lot of pointing out about how For Better or for Worse has a lot of really uncomfortable stuff in it and things that have come out about how Lynn was raised and how she parented, and Twilight stuff with Stephanie Meyer doesn't even begin to approach that level of parenting onion. To some extent I think some of this stuff is just more visceral with Meyer because Twilight is and always was lightly polished wish fulfillment for her, so it's easier to read into the implications of that wish fulfillment. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 17:46
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That's why i mentioned a while back that Bella's sudden and unwarranted angst about "will I still be me" is chilling when vampirism is framed as a metaphor for Mormonism; motherhood is part and parcel of the religion, and it seems very clear that while on one level Meyer strongly believed motherhood was right, on another level its demands were overwriting her identity. That's evident in those quotes. That's a really common and relatable thing for a woman, regardless of religion. I chose not to have children because I didnt think i could stand the loss of identity that seemed built into it and-- at the time-- was not demanded of men. Making it a religious demand on top of the pre-existing societal pressure is utterly terrifying to me, because it was hard enough already to convince myself i didnt have to be a mother to be a good person, and in her religion, you absolutely have to be a mother to be considered both "good" and a whole person. Jeez, now I've made myself sad. That must have felt like such a trap-- being told, implicitly and explicitly, by your own belief system and the whole world, that you can only be a truly good person if you aren't really you anymore, and that's immutable and innate. No wonder she wanted to write a world where she could be good on the "right" terms but not have to lose her own identity in the process. I mean, it's not "good fiction", but drat. And no loving wonder it struck such a chord with the women in her life that she showed it to-- they were all in that position too, iirc. I can see why they would encourage her to publish it. ...and now im kinda glad she saw success with it, though i believe its messages are super harmful. At least it validated to her that she was something more than just a baby factory and caretaker, although it's still hella wrong to pass those values onto young girls as if they weren't exactly the trap she wanted escape from. Serena Joy, anyone?
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Jul 11, 2020 06:59
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PetraCore posted:EDIT: Like the newspaper comic strip thread did a lot of pointing out about how For Better or for Worse has a lot of really uncomfortable stuff in it and things that have come out about how Lynn was raised and how she parented, and Twilight stuff with Stephanie Meyer doesn't even begin to approach that level of parenting onion. To some extent I think some of this stuff is just more visceral with Meyer because Twilight is and always was lightly polished wish fulfillment for her, so it's easier to read into the implications of that wish fulfillment. Do you have a link to those posts? Lysistrata posted:That's why i mentioned a while back that Bella's sudden and unwarranted angst about "will I still be me" is chilling when vampirism is framed as a metaphor for Mormonism; motherhood is part and parcel of the religion, and it seems very clear that while on one level Meyer strongly believed motherhood was right, on another level its demands were overwriting her identity. That's evident in those quotes. I have a lot of issues with Das Sporking and how they interpreted the series, and one of them is their refusal to go into Mormon religion as a cause for Meyer's problems. Mervin, the founder of the blog, went so far as to totally ban any discussion of the subject. I'll assume the people here are not the kind of terrible human beings to hunt down Meyer's children for harassment. With that bar set, I will not come close to denying that her religion affects these books. Is she a "Mormon cultist"? No, probably not. But ex-Mormon anecdotes indicate where her narrative fits her religion, while the text compared to her own interviews and background shows where she was crashing into a brick wall. I think in the end, it's ultimately a supremely hosed up combination. A woman who lost a good portion of her life to the motherhood narrative of her religion, whose first book started as an expression of her sexual desires and obsessively subsumed any serious narrative in favor of giving her self-insert protagonist everything she retrospectively wanted. For all the money she's made, she can't get that back. Maybe that's why she's barely written anything outside the Twilight universe in over 15 years: it's her own little world, where her alternate self can be happy and there can be true meaning for what she does.
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Jul 11, 2020 08:53
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chitoryu12 posted:I think in the end, it's ultimately a supremely hosed up combination. A woman who lost a good portion of her life to the motherhood narrative of her religion, whose first book started as an expression of her sexual desires and obsessively subsumed any serious narrative in favor of giving her self-insert protagonist everything she retrospectively wanted. For all the money she's made, she can't get that back. Maybe that's why she's barely written anything outside the Twilight universe in over 15 years: it's her own little world, where her alternate self can be happy and there can be true meaning for what she does. I feel some relief that she was validated as something other than a mother, though-- in contradiction to the Mormon idea of women being meant for motherhood, the world told her she was a writer. Even if her books arent good fiction, they still struck enough of a chord and found enough recognition to become world famous, all money matters aside. Thats more validation than i ever expect to get. But I'm not disagreeing with you either, it is an incredibly hosed up situation and it did cost her a lot, though one assumes that parenthood has its rewards. I dont care to find out, that costs too much for me. And, well, this travels out of the realm of Twilight, but i binge read a bunch of articles on her Host book(s?) a few months ago, and the implication seemed to be that there was some questioning of Mormon values present. I found that interesting... but not surprising.
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Jul 11, 2020 12:58
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To be fair, Mervin/Das Sporking chose to ban religious discussion period because sooner or later it devolved into slap fights and they just didn’t want to deal with the moderation and fallout. This also ties to the community’s overall rule of in no way encroaching too deeply into the author’s personal life*, be they a random fanfic writer or a professional bestseller. Several times they’d touch on a sad or disturbing implication about motherhood as it may apply to Meyer and then tell readers to back off/not discuss in comments. I do agree though it’s worth discussing, especially when you have the “Sparkledammerung” review written by an ex-Mormon who commented several times in church influences on the narrative, in particular how Edward’s description parallels that of Joseph Smith’s. *Except Neal, gently caress you Neal, I hope you rot. P.S. if you don’t know what this is about, don’t go looking for it, it’s gross.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:15
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chitoryu12 posted:Do you have a link to those posts?
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Jul 11, 2020 16:46
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Does the Mormon Church or influential figures within it tend to say anything about Twilight or Meyer? A lot of churches I know tend to obsess over "successful member of congregation," but I could also see there being a wide variety of responses to the series itself. I never got big into Harry Potter back when the first books started coming out, but I remember a ton of churches going whole hog on the "witchcraft!" angle.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:01
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I went to see the Book of Mormon on Broadway. Apart from leaving in stitches from laughing the whole way through, I remember that there was a full page ad in the Playbill that basically read "You've seen the show, now read the book" which I honestly thought was a pretty cool response. So if that's what they said in relation to what was basically South Park the musical, I'm expecting the reaction to Twilight would have been fairly supportive?
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Jul 14, 2020 12:46
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Chapter 28: The Futurequote:Carlisle and Edward had not been able to catch up with Irina before her trail disappeared into the sound. They’d swum to the other bank to see if her trail had picked up in a straight line, but there was no trace of her for miles in either direction on the eastern shore. As you will likely note by watching the video of this scene from the film, it is not Jacob that she was looking at. This is just pointlessly delaying it to add pages. quote:There wasn’t much to be done. Carlisle had called Tanya with the disappointing news. Tanya and Kate hadn’t seen Irina since they’d decided to come to my wedding, and they were distraught that Irina had come so close and yet not returned home; it wasn’t easy for them to lose their sister, however temporary the separation might be. I wondered if this brought back hard memories of losing their mother so many centuries ago. And the dramatic moment just abruptly gets dropped for now! quote:Every detail had been gone over a hundred times already. We would start with the Ticunas, tracing their legends as well as we could at the source. Now that it was accepted that Jacob would come with us, he figured prominently in the plans—it was unlikely that the people who believed in vampires would speak to any of us about their stories. If we dead-ended with the Ticunas, there were many closely related tribes in the area to research. Carlisle had some old friends in the Amazon; if we could find them, they might have information for us, too. Or at least a suggestion as to where else we might go for answers. It was unlikely that the three Amazon vampires had anything to do with the legends of vampire hybrids themselves, as they were all female. There was no way to know how long our search would take. The Ticuna are a real indigenous people of Brazil, the largest living tribe. I'm sure Stephenie Meyer will have a sensitive and realistic depiction of them. quote:I hadn’t told Charlie about the longer trip yet, and I stewed about what to say to him while Edward and Carlisle’s discussion went on. How to break the news to him just right? "Hey dad, I'm going out of town for a few days." quote:I stared at Renesmee while I debated internally. She was curled up on the sofa now, her breathing slow with heavy sleep, her tangled curls splayed wildly around her face. Usually, Edward and I took her back to our cottage to put her to bed, but tonight we lingered with the family, he and Carlisle deep in their planning session. Maybe Emmett is right about how boring your sex life is if you've been doing it right next to your daughter. The alternative is quite horrifying to imagine! quote:Meanwhile, Emmett and Jasper were more excited about planning the hunting possibilities. The Amazon offered a change from our normal quarry. Jaguars and panthers, for example. Emmett had a whim to wrestle with an anaconda. Esme and Rosalie were planning what they would pack. Jacob was off with Sam’s pack, setting things up for his own absence. Emmett just has a journal of endangered animals he hasn't fought yet. quote:Alice moved slowly—for her—around the big room, unnecessarily tidying the already immaculate space, straightening Esme’s perfectly hung garlands. She was re-centering Esme’s vases on the console at the moment. I could see from the way her face fluctuated—aware, then blank, then aware again—that she was searching the future. I assumed she was trying to see through the blind spots that Jacob and Renesmee made in her visions as to what was waiting for us in South America until Jasper said, “Let it go, Alice; she’s not our concern,” and a cloud of serenity stole silently and invisibly through the room. Alice must have been worrying about Irina again. "Let me demonstrate how little we should care about the plot by forcibly changing your emotions without consent." quote:She stuck her tongue out at Jasper and then lifted one crystal vase that was filled with white and red roses and turned toward the kitchen. There was just the barest hint of wilt to one of the white flowers, but Alice seemed intent on utter perfection as a distraction to her lack of vision tonight. In case you're wondering about garlands and why Alice and Esme have been decorating the house, the Twilight Lexicon's timeline confirms that this is December! Meyer is just that bad about indicating when anything takes place that you have to go back and check for mentions of time skips to try and piece together when and where everyone is at any time. They're Christmas decorations! quote:Staring at Renesmee again, I didn’t see it when the vase slipped from Alice’s fingers. I only heard the whoosh of the air whistling past the crystal, and my eyes flickered up in time to see the vase shatter into ten thousand diamond shards against the edge of the kitchen’s marble floor. That was a lot of words to describe how perfect and awesome you are. quote:And then Alice was facing us, twisting in a move so fast it didn’t exist. That's not what a gasp sounds like. quote:“What?” Jasper growled, leaping to her side in a blurred rush of movement, crushing the broken crystal under his feet. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her sharply. She seemed to rattle silently in his hands. “What, Alice?” The plot! It's coming for them! Ignoring it didn't work after all! quote:Silence. ...did you just tell us that ice is cold? quote:I barely heard the confirmation of my fears. I didn’t need it. I already knew. What? quote:Alice’s eyes didn’t blink, but it was as if a veil covered them; they became perfectly blank. Only her mouth held on to her expression of horror. Why are you speaking in sync? You never do that. quote:“Why?” Carlisle was the one to ask this time. Not the wives! They must clearly be the deadliest of them all if they're bringing them! quote:“They’re coming now,” Edward whispered. Introducing two humans to the world of vampires and not even bothering to send a letter telling them that Bella has been changed already? quote:“There are so many of us,” Edward answered dully. “They must want to make sure that…” He didn’t finish. "It's all about me! They just hate me because I'm happy!" Remember that the Volturi have done nothing evil in this story so far. They've been harsh in their punishments and they still eat people instead of local wildlife to survive, but they have no concerns whatsoever except making sure that vampires stay underground and that the rules are followed for their own safety. Any vampire that doesn't break their rules has nothing to fear. quote:But that still didn’t answer the question. But also not a vampire! quote:Irina… the orphaned sisters… Carlisle had said that losing their mother to the Volturi’s justice had made Tanya, Kate, and Irina purists when it came to the law. There's a lot of things wrong here! First, we've already established how good vampire senses are. Bella can hear for miles and can track prey by heartbeat flawlessly. When Irina appeared, her eyes were so good that she could see every detail on her face. This obviously means Irina should have those same abilities. This means not only should she have been easily capable of hearing her heartbeat, she also should have been able to see that her skin distinctly lacked the sparkle of a vampire and that her eyes were brown (and it wouldn't make sense to wear contacts that dissolve in an hour while hunting deer). Plus, she was seen hunting animals! Immortal children specifically wouldn't do that because they're uncontrollable! In short, this plot has absolutely no reason to exist. Just like how the climax of New Moon hinged on every character making the worst or dumbest decision at every single point for it to happen as it did, the climax of Breaking Dawn hinges on every vampire sense suddenly not working when it's convenient and a single character making a baffling impulsive decision. quote:After all, the Cullens were in league with werewolves. From Irina’s point of view, maybe this meant nothing was beyond us.… In case you forgot because the book is so long and meandering, Irina holds a grudge against the Quileute because they killed Laurent. Despite Laurent being killed only because he was trespassing on Quileute lands as a vampire and attempting to kill Bella, the entire clan has agreed with her point of view and thus barely even agreed to come to the wedding. quote:Irina, wringing her hands in the snowy wilderness—not mourning Laurent, after all, but knowing it was her duty to turn the Cullens in, knowing what would happen to them if she did. Apparently her conscience had won out over the centuries of friendship. Following the law and preventing the unchecked spread of vampire babies: actually a bad thing! quote:I turned and draped myself over Renesmee’s sleeping body, covering her with my hair, burying my face in her curls. Already explained why that's dumb! quote:I felt Edward kneel beside me, wrap his arms over us both. Oh, so what you're saying is that this shouldn't even be a thing when the Volturi arrive. You have mounds of evidence (including photographs!) and she'll be instantly recognized by the Volturi upon their arrival as clearly not being a vampire. Seeing as vampires can process information and make decisions in fractions of a second, they should immediately realize they were wrong simply while walking up to her! quote:I babbled on, waiting for someone to exhale with relief, waiting for the icy tension in the room to relax as they realized I was right. The room just seemed to get colder. Eventually my small voice trailed off into silence. Buuuuut I just said why that's bullshit. She's got a heartbeat, she's warmer than human average, she doesn't have a vampire's rock-hard skin, she smells like a cross between a human and a vampire, she's got brown eyes, etc. Even a normal human would be able to immediately tell that she's not a vampire, let alone another vampire. Are we supposed to assume that the Volturi are just such bloodthirsty morons that they would show up like a tornado and rip the entire family to shreds without thinking? Also, we've seen the Volturi wait and let people talk before! They've already appeared twice, and both times they were calm and negotiated! There's a possibility this is another Forever Dawn mistake: the Volturi were created for that book specifically to act as a threat against the Cullens, which means they have zero characterization until they appear at the end. Now we're back to the original draft and all of their character development that makes them seem reasonable and fair is wiped away. quote:His voice was still quiet, gentle, velvet… and yet the pain and desolation in the sound was unavoidable. His voice was like Alice’s eyes before—like the inside of a tomb. Contact the Volturi? You've got their address, clearly. Send them a letter or call their receptionist or whatever and explain the situation, inviting them to see for themselves. quote:Renesmee was so warm and perfect in my arms, dreaming peacefully. I’d worried so much about Renesmee’s speeding age—worried that she would only have little over a decade of life.… That terror seemed ironic now. Oh shut up. quote:It was Emmett who answered my rhetorical question. No! quote:“We can’t win,” Jasper growled. I could imagine how his face would look, how his body would curve protectively over Alice’s. So why are the Volturi a huge threat, exactly? We've seen the Cullens and Quileute annihilate an entire army of newborns (who are stronger than baseline vampires) with only one minor casualty who healed within days, and Bella herself is still at that strength level. Their side includes a mind reader and a clairvoyant. quote:“Chill, Bella.” His expression was no different from when he was contemplating fighting anacondas. Even the threat of annihilation couldn’t change Emmett’s perspective, his ability to thrill to a challenge. “I didn’t mean the pack. Be realistic, though—do you think Jacob or Sam is going to ignore an invasion? Even if it wasn’t about Nessie? Not to mention that, thanks to Irina, Aro knows about our alliance with the pack now, too. But I was thinking of our other friends.” Why? His idea is worse than starting communication now but he's completely right when he says they can just talk to the Volturi. Are you just mad that he's the only vampire who's not draping himself across the furniture and wailing in despair at how unfair the treachery of life has become? quote:“Yes,” Esme said eagerly. “That makes sense, Emmett. All we need is for the Volturi to pause for one moment. Just long enough to listen.” Keep in mind that Alice has established that it's going to take a month for the Volturi to arrive. Why? God only knows. But it's clearly enough time for them to actually open a dialogue if they wanted to. quote:“We’d need quite a show of witnesses,” Rosalie said harshly, her voice brittle as glass. Did you say "A parade of new characters who won't matter?" quote:“We’d do it for them,” Emmett said. So you're admitting that just showing Renesmee to a vampire is proof enough that she's not one. quote:“Tanya’s family,” she said. “Siobhan’s coven. Amun’s. Some of the nomads—Garrett and Mary for certain. Maybe Alistair.” That's really the names you went with, huh. quote:Alice seemed too deep into her vision to answer at first; finally she shuddered, and her eyes flickered back to the present. She met Carlisle’s gaze for the tiniest part of a second, and then looked down. Oh no! The author shut down her powers again to keep her from spoiling the plot! quote:The silence was ominous for another long moment while Alice was in her trance. She blinked slowly when it was over, her eyes peculiarly opaque despite the fact that she was clearly in the present. Alice's power problem is another thing that's possibly a Forever Dawn leftover, assuming Meyer had this idea back then. If you remember the previous two books, Alice never had any sort of problems seeing the future when werewolves were around. She couldn't see them, but she could see everything else whether or not they were in the same room. She could even see Bella's entire future clearly up to the point where Jacob intervened. Now the presence of the Quileute and Renesmee somehow creates an anti-Alice field that is conveniently around all the time. Except there's a bigger problem: because she can't see a future that involves the werewolves or Renesmee, she should be totally blind to this. The entire climax involves them! Meyer's continuity with Alice's powers lasts all of one page at a time. quote:We all could hear Jacob on the stairs. Alice yanked, impatient, on Jasper’s hand. He followed quickly, confusion in his eyes just like Edward’s. They darted out the door into the silver night. At least he's wearing a shirt now. quote:He looked up to me finally, blinked, and then stared. I watched his expression as the room’s atmosphere finally touched him. He glanced down, eyes wide, at the wet spot on the floor, the scattered roses, the fragments of crystal. His fingers quivered. Is he about to wolf out right on top of his toddler lover? quote:“Nothing’s wrong with Renesmee,” I choked out, the words breaking in strange places. This book is so loving stupid.
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Jul 14, 2020 16:39
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So many heretofore unnamed and unremarked characters. I half expected Meyer to just start listing prominent celebrities that she likes and declaring that they're super-cool vampires that love Bella unconditionally and would fight for her. "Holy Crow, Edward! It's Wayne Newton and Carrot Top!"
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Jul 14, 2020 17:05
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Yeah, this was the stuff my high school friend haaaaaated so its entertaining to finally see it beought to light this way. She was horrified by the birthing chest burster scene. She could not believe that her romance was being suddenly ruined by body horror. (I asked her "did you expect a happy ending? They're vampires, they're supposed to be monsters." She didn't take that well  ) She was furious that Jacob was turned into a pedophile and didn't understand why Meyer made imprinting a thing. She was also grossed out by Edward being able to gently caress, apparently in the fandom it was a Big Deal that he was dead and obviously corpses shouldn't be able to have sex. There was a lot of fallout in the fandom over people defending the sex and the people angry about it because it was necrophilia. There was a lot of chatter with faux-scientific justification about how Edward's corpse-body must work and that's when I learned boomers were using icicles for dildos to try recreating the sex scenes.There were a lot of necrophiliacs in the Twilight fandom back in the day y'all. Be glad EL James was so vanilla in 50 Shades.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:30
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HIJK posted:and that's when I learned boomers were using icicles for dildos to try recreating the sex scenes. Sorry, what was that?
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Jul 14, 2020 21:48
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HIJK posted:that's when I learned boomers were using icicles for dildos to try recreating the sex scenes. cool
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Jul 14, 2020 23:07
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chitoryu12 posted:That's really the names you went with, huh. ...and our Mexican friend Juan, our Arabic friend Mohammad, our French friend Jacques, our Australian friend Sheila, our Scandinavian friend Helga, our Scottish friend Bonnie... (I honestly can't remember if any of these are actual characters)
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Jul 14, 2020 23:20
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chitoryu12 posted:Sorry, what was that? The older fans of Twilight were using icicles in their freezers as dildos to simulate sex with Edward Cullen. I'm so sorry: http://www.lamebook.com/twilight-saga-as-cold-as-ice/ This was the first post I came across with the evidence from a quick Google, I can hunt for more. But yes. Twilight fans were filling condoms with water, freezing them, stripping the condoms off the icicles and using them as sex toys. If my memory is correct there was way more on it than just that Facebook post it blew up on the various twilight forums. It's all because Edward is made of cold marble or whatever.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:08
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HIJK posted:The older fans of Twilight were using icicles in their freezers as dildos to simulate sex with Edward Cullen. I'm so sorry: http://www.lamebook.com/twilight-saga-as-cold-as-ice/ I feel myself slipping away.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:29
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chitoryu12 posted:I feel myself slipping away. What was really hosed up was that it was the older fans interjecting this information in the same discussions that teens were having. So my high school friend would call me even weeks after the Breaking Dawn debacle (she was one of the people who returned their novel. There was an epidemic of fans returning their books or giving them to secondhand stores. For a hot minute you found Breaking Dawn next to Laurell K Hamilton.) to complain that the adult fans were inserting their sexual fantasies into teen spaces. That's where you find out about the icicle dildos, the EL James style porn, the weird roleplay these women kept roping their husbands and boyfriends into. (That was its own thing, a lot of marriages broke up because supposedly some people wanted their husbands to be more like Edward...or their wives to be more like Bella.) The teen fandom got really really mad, as you might expect, they hated seeing porn pics being posted (apparently there was a nightmarish post where a soccer mom internally injured herself with an ice dildo...I'm just glad I didn't see any of the photos but apparently it was a murder scene) from adults, it was a poo poo show. It's important to keep in mind that I got all of this secondhand so who knows how much of it is true but there were confirmation posts everywhere on LiveJournal and my bestie confirmed they were all true, tabloid websites also reported on them.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:46
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HIJK posted:What was really hosed up was that it was the older fans interjecting this information in the same discussions that teens were having. So my high school friend would call me even weeks after the Breaking Dawn debacle (she was one of the people who returned their novel. There was an epidemic of fans returning their books or giving them to secondhand stores. For a hot minute you found Breaking Dawn next to Laurell K Hamilton.) to complain that the adult fans were inserting their sexual fantasies into teen spaces. This is absolutely horrifying. Just.... every aspect of this is awful.
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Jul 15, 2020 01:01
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A Real Horse posted:This is absolutely horrifying. Just.... every aspect of this is awful. There’s a reason we’ve just started saying “ok boomer” because addressing the latest boomer “faux pas/nightmare fuel” isn’t worth the effort.
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Jul 15, 2020 01:06
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HIJK posted:<icicle dildos> I remember hearing about that secondhand and all i could do was die inside or laugh. I chose the latter. Wasnt there some dildo that got made with sparkles that was done specifically to mimic ol' Eddies dazzlehammer? I guess we're just lucky Jacob never got that treatment...
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Jul 15, 2020 01:21
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A Real Horse posted:This is absolutely horrifying. Just.... every aspect of this is awful. Yeah. The Twilight shitshow is what lead to a lot of the segregation that we see nowadays like AO3 being dominated by adults and the depornification of fanfiction.net. (Though that also had other factors like the Power Rangers porno leading to the first wave of bleaching adult material.) IMHO it was also the last gasp of forums for fandom in general. After that everyone migrated to twitter and tumblr where you had block functions and could use apps to block posts with keywords in them. Those features were not available on forums of the time though with Xenforo being a thing maybe that isn't the case anymore. (SA is the only forum I come back to so idk what those others do.) IMHO Twilight fandom was the first wave of people realizing that you can't put adults and teenagers into an unfiltered blender. Lysistrata posted:I remember hearing about that secondhand and all i could do was die inside or laugh. I chose the latter. Wasnt there some dildo that got made with sparkles that was done specifically to mimic ol' Eddies dazzlehammer? I guess we're just lucky Jacob never got that treatment... I remember this. I'll look it up.
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Jul 15, 2020 01:25
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Sorry for the double post but here's a 2010 interview with the og Twilight dildo designer. I wonder if this was the forerunner of insane monster dildo businesses: https://www.salon.com/2010/07/02/the_real_twilight_dildo_inventor/quote:On Monday, when Salon's Christine Mathias highlighted the 10 most baffling "Twilight" products in honor of the release of "Eclipse," we had no idea that we were feeding into a controversy in the world of Twilight-related sex toys. But, indeed, Jon Condit, the designer of "The Vamp" (NSFW, as are all of the following links) -- the original "Twilight" dildo -- wrote in to correct us. The Tantus Niagra Vibrator -- Twilight has apparently often been mistaken for the vampire-inspired version -- by media and consumers alike -- but "twilight" is merely a particular shade of purple that the company uses in many of its products. Now, the toy that Condit designed? It has "a deathly pale flesh tone reminiscent of the moon's soft glow" complete with sparkles that glint in sunlight.
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Jul 15, 2020 01:34
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HIJK posted:Yeah. The Twilight shitshow is what lead to a lot of the segregation that we see nowadays like AO3 being dominated by adults and the depornification of fanfiction.net. (Though that also had other factors like the Power Rangers porno leading to the first wave of bleaching adult material.) IMHO it was also the last gasp of forums for fandom in general. After that everyone migrated to twitter and tumblr where you had block functions and could use apps to block posts with keywords in them. Those features were not available on forums of the time though with Xenforo being a thing maybe that isn't the case anymore. (SA is the only forum I come back to so idk what those others do.) All of this jives very well with what i recall. I ran a fandom forum for eight-ish years and have run the community (now on tumblr (sorta), twitter, discord) for almost twenty; it is a very, very bad idea to be laissez-faire about teens mixing with adults and we had to institute strict moderator rules about how to treat teens so that they were not sheltered but also not allowed into genuinely dangerous interactions. It helps that my fandom was small, persistent, and the work we're fans of included exploitative adult-teen relationships as part of the text, so the adults and moderators were all very conscious of the younger members' safety. Twilight fandom had absolutely none of this going for it, and it showed. That was a genuine clusterfuck. Lines were crossed everywhere. I only saw it secondhand, but again, everything you said jives with my memory. Edit: ahahaha you found it, thats hilarious
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Jul 15, 2020 01:47
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Lysistrata posted:All of this jives very well with what i recall. I ran a fandom forum for eight-ish years and have run the community (now on tumblr (sorta), twitter, discord) for almost twenty; it is a very, very bad idea to be laissez-faire about teens mixing with adults and we had to institute strict moderator rules about how to treat teens so that they were not sheltered but also not allowed into genuinely dangerous interactions. It helps that my fandom was small, persistent, and the work we're fans of included exploitative adult-teen relationships as part of the text, so the adults and moderators were all very conscious of the younger members' safety. That tracks with what I remember too. An advantage that Established Fandom had over Twilight fandom was that there was a lot more unspoken rules and experience. Adults stayed on one side of the fence in their fandoms (Star Trek, Stargate, mostly live action western properties) whereas teens stayed in anime and video game spaces. If you walked into one space then you had to blend in which meant you didn't try to complain much or stand out because then the others might sniff you out. Twilight fandom was the first time normal people were partaking in fan consumption of an established property. They didn't know the rules, that adults don't mix with teens and that teens weren't supposed to pry into adult spaces without attempting to act grown up. They just got into a lot of stupid fights, grown women doxxing teens over Edward vs Jacob, teens stealing personal info from adults in petty revenge. Imo one of the reasons the internet is a mess right now is because Twilight destroyed those rules. It was always fragile but it was like it gave adults permission to bully children and of course kids don't have a sense of proportion so they would use their tech know how to fight back leading to harassment campaigns. The idea of acting somewhat respectably in fandom spaces was destroyed by Twilight fandom and the insane stupid normies running it shoving ice dildos up their pussies. It still exists in some places but its even worse now because of the lack of respect for fandom traditions. Just the other loving day I was passed screencaps of idiots posting gay porn fanfic under their real names and with theit faces as their avatars. Just unreal. edit: just to add on, this is also why hatred for Twilight was so intense and virulent. People like me were watching our communities slowly being destroyed by the insane behavior of the Twilight fans. It wasn't just the terrible emotionally abusive content, it was the normie fans who insisted on doxxing themselves, passing out their personal info, bullying others into doing the same. The harassment campaigns and bullying from Twilight fandom spread like poison. We started out laughing at them but sooner or later we started acting like them. HIJK fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 02:02
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Alright I take back what I said about the Mormon Church probably being cool with Twilight - all of that stuff is incredibly not cool and messed up on so many levels, that there is no way anybody sane would have been cool with this.
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Jul 15, 2020 02:38
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HIJK posted:edit: just to add on, this is also why hatred for Twilight was so intense and virulent. People like me were watching our communities slowly being destroyed by the insane behavior of the Twilight fans. It wasn't just the terrible emotionally abusive content, it was the normie fans who insisted on doxxing themselves, passing out their personal info, bullying others into doing the same. The harassment campaigns and bullying from Twilight fandom spread like poison. We started out laughing at them but sooner or later we started acting like them. I get you, seriously. I managed to protect my little anime niche by making sure that poo poo wasnt tolerated, but it is tiny in comparison so that was a lot easier to push out when it started encroaching. I see it happening all around the edges now-- all of the doxxing and the bullying became so normalized in fandom spaces that it seems like absolute madness to participate in any kind of popular fandom now. And yeah, it started with Twilight. On the other hand, i dipped a toe into Twilight fandom currently just to see what was happening and it seems to have been adopted by queer and trans folk who are pretty chill and have a sense of humor about the material. I was pretty encouraged to see that, even though there was no tasty drama.
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Jul 15, 2020 02:56
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Leng posted:Alright I take back what I said about the Mormon Church probably being cool with Twilight - all of that stuff is incredibly not cool and messed up on so many levels, that there is no way anybody sane would have been cool with this. Breaking Dawn destroyed a lot of the fandom. It also turned a lot of people against Meyer because of the birthing scene and the mere fact that she alluded to marital hetero intercourse. IIRC she got interviews on places like Glenn Beck's show because the first three books didn't have "naughty bits" in them but were still super duper romantic AND safe for children uwu unlike those Danielle Steel novels that wives kept under their pillows. But then Breaking Dawn happened. The conservative backlash was impressive. They were sickened by the birthing scene of course but iirc they felt like Meyer was mocking them with the pro-life stuff. And then the pedophilia led to a lot of freak outs too. My school had a soft ban on Breaking Dawn because of Jacob's pedophilia. It also led to a minor fracture on the religious right because a lot of Protestants associated the pedophilia with Mormonism especially once ex-Mormons started wading in to explain the finer points of Mormon polygamy and how Mormons had a history of kidnapping prepubescent girls away from their families to marry and rape them if I recall my religious history right. To this day I wonder if Breaking Dawn was the reason why Mormonism ended up being rejected by Protestants in later years. Breaking Dawn was so terrible that even anti-abortionists hated it. Always thought that was impressive. Lysistrata posted:I get you, seriously. I managed to protect my little anime niche by making sure that poo poo wasnt tolerated, but it is tiny in comparison so that was a lot easier to push out when it started encroaching. I see it happening all around the edges now-- all of the doxxing and the bullying became so normalized in fandom spaces that it seems like absolute madness to participate in any kind of popular fandom now. And yeah, it started with Twilight. The current fandom seems to have grown up a lot. The kids grew up and chilled out. (But man at what cost...) HIJK fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 02:58
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I remembered what you said about The Host potentially having grooming undertones with one of the bodies so I went on the book wiki to check the ages.  26 and 17
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Jul 15, 2020 03:08
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HIJK posted:And then the pedophilia led to a lot of freak outs too. My school had a soft ban on Breaking Dawn because of Jacob's pedophilia. It also led to a minor fracture on the religious right because a lot of Protestants associated the pedophilia with Mormonism especially once ex-Mormons started wading in to explain the finer points of Mormon polygamy and how Mormons had a history of kidnapping prepubescent girls away from their families to marry and rape them if I recall my religious history right. You remember correctly. There was a big scandal about Mormon girls being married off at 12 or 13 in Canada, and i can link a documentary about Warren Jeffs and his stable of young mormon wives if anyone is interested (he was eventually arrested, thank god). Young brides are a thing in some parts of Mormonism. HIJK posted:The current fandom seems to have grown up a lot. The kids grew up and chilled out. Hey, we just pick up the pieces and keep going, right? As for me personally, as long as i have a safe place to watch it from...  chitoryu12 posted:I remembered what you said about The Host potentially having grooming undertones... There's that child bride thing in Mormonism again... Lysistrata fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 03:18
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The bit I remember being skeeved out by in the Host was Wanda's second body - at the end she gets transferred from Melanie to another body and that one is called out as being tiny and childlike next to the much bigger love interest. I read that, thought about Jacob's whole thing, and got a really unsettling vibe.
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Jul 15, 2020 03:19
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Lysistrata posted:You remember correctly. There was a big scandal about Mormon girls being married off at 12 or 13 in Canada, and i can link a documentary about Warren Jeffs and his stable of young mormon wives if anyone is interested (he was eventually arrested, thank god). Young brides are a thing in some parts of Mormonism. I've never been so disappointed in being right  quote:Hey, we just pick up the pieces and keep going, right? As for me personally, as long as i have a safe place to watch it from... Quite right. Who knows, maybe we can rebuild some day. quote:There's that child bride thing in Mormonism again... I actually read The Host on my bestie's recommendation. She was trying to turn me on to Meyer for some reason. Anyway I got halfway through it before I realized Meyer was doing the Mary Sue thing where the perfect protag gets tortured endlessly for no reason but that I would miss nothing if I skipped to the end. I did. I gotta tell you guys, when I read about the girl body they gave to the protag, I straight up thought that she was a 9 year old girl. It never occurred to me that she was a "child like" woman. I do recall sending my bestie a text to the effect of "The end of the Host is proof that Meyer is a pedo and she probably has mountains of CP on her computer. Stop buying her books, let the FBI take care of the rest" or something like that. What I'm saying is Meyer is a pedophile that fetishizes very young girl children being romanced and raped by old men. Earlier in the thread I talked about how it wasn't really fair to talk about Meyer's mental state but now I think I was wrong on that front. I didn't know the pedophilia in Breaking Dawn was so upfront and stark.
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Jul 15, 2020 03:44
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| # ? May 23, 2024 19:15 |
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HIJK posted:Earlier in the thread I talked about how it wasn't really fair to talk about Meyer's mental state but now I think I was wrong on that front. I didn't know the pedophilia in Breaking Dawn was so upfront and stark. But no, you see, it's good and pure and innocent. Jacob just is absolutely obsessed with the infant/toddler/small child, but it's because he's such a good protector for her! And sure, eventually it will be a romantic relationship. And she apparently gets absolutely zero say in the matter because why would she want to when he is so good and loyal and just really, passionately loves her. Yeah, it's super upfront and gross on every level. "Fun" story: Around the time this book came out, I went out to dinner with some coworkers. A coworker who had just had her first baby surprised us by meeting us at the restaurant with her infant daughter. Eventually she sat across the table from me, and the baby just stared at me. No idea why, maybe because I was the first person she had been close to who had glasses, or maybe just because she was a baby and who knows how their minds work? Anyway, after about an hour or so, the mom gets my attention and says "I think she's imprinted on you, like in Twilight! She hasn't stopped staring at you!" I just kind of smiled and looked away because how do you respond to that? Thankfully she never mentioned it again, I think she could tell it made me pretty uncomfortable.
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Jul 15, 2020 04:15
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