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"I didn't want to start a bad precedent by asking my dad if I, his 17 year old daughter who had an old car, could drive several hours away to a strange city alone." So, idea to make the book better. Bella goes back to Phoenix, Charlie adopts Mike, Mike and Jessica start dating, and the three of them travel around solving crimes helped by Mr Cullen, who uses vampire medicine for forensic stuff
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Jul 1, 2019 21:25
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Edward, for being an immortal century old predator who instinctively sees human beings as prey instead of equals, still has more emotional intelligence than Bella, though.
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Jul 2, 2019 20:47
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Here's the thing. Honestly, Edward being creepy doesn't really bother me. Being a hundred year old immortal stuck in the body of a 17 year old who instinctively sees humans as either prey or threats and has spent his entire lifetime forcing himself to be self controlled and emotionally repressed because he knows that the sight or smell of blood will drive him into a frenzy probably means that he's not going to view the world the same way you or I would. It, of course, also means he's not good boyfriend material for an actual 17 year old human girl. But to give a little bit of credit to the Edward of Midnight Sun, or at least the excerpts posted, he knows that. He knows that any sort of humanity or understanding he's showing is a deliberate act, and all he wants to do is kill or dominate. And he knows how he affects people...he outright seduces the school nurse so she'll do what he wants. Is it creepy? Sure. But he at least is showing some sort of agency here. So I still find Edward less obnoxious than Bella, who has shown no sort of self awareness or agency at all.
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Jul 3, 2019 02:19
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The_White_Crane posted:Does he... ever actually do this on the page? I like to think he talks like everybody else, but every once in a while, admits to being steamed up, asks Bella if she's on the make, and just calls things he likes dilly. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 17:28
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chitoryu12 posted:I see we're continuing the theme of our true love just being an alternating series of them arguing, Edward saying it's really hard not to kill her, and Bella being enraptured by how hot and dangerous he is. It's clear that Edward is supposed to be the audience spokesman here.
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Jul 13, 2019 03:09
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So is the fact that Emmett feeds so much on bears his way of saying, "gently caress you for trying to kill me, bears!'?
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Jul 19, 2019 11:52
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Ok, so four spinoffs First, as mentioned: "Mike Newton, PI", Mike and his girlfriend Jessica solve crimes with the help of his adopted dad, Sheriff Charlie Swan. "Hanging Ten with Solomon!": Life's not easy when you're a pro-surfer, but marriage can be harder. Luckily, Solomon Finau has his wife Becky, his brother-in-law Jake, and his father-in-law Billy in his corner. Join him and his family he tries to navigate his personal and professional life. In the first episode, there's a moonlight luau, but where are Jake and Billy? Also, animal control is called to try to track down some stray dogs. "Carlisle Cullen, MD": Join Dr. Cullen as he tries to navigate the politics of hospital medicine. How do you balance the needs of the customers with the needs of the hospital? And why is Dr Cullen's first instinct always leeches, cupping, and purgatives? "gently caress you, Winnie the Pooh!": Growing up in Tennessee, Emmett Cullen had one hero, the frontiersman Davy Crockett. And when he heard that Crockett 'killed him a b'ar when he was only three', he decided to do one better. Now he has one goal in life, to end the bear menace, and he won't give up, no matter how grizzly it gets.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:23
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chitoryu12 posted:This seems way too trusting, even for a nice guy like him. I see this less as Carlisle being trusting and more of it as his attempt to exert dominance. He's saying, in effect, "We aren't afraid of you. This is our land and you're guests on it, and I'm inviting you to our home because I trust you won't do anything inappropriate and make us kill you."
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Jul 24, 2019 17:53
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chitoryu12 posted:That would be great, but Meyer's writing makes it legitimately hard to tell. It's this weird combination of dry and overly detailed where everyone either has their motivations spelled out plainly by our first person omniscient protagonist (who's a complete moron but can always tell exactly what someone's intentions are with the way they speak or act as long as the writer says so) or their motivations are a complete mystery. Carlisle Cullen is loving terrifying. He's probably the most powerful character in the book so far. Carlisle is 350 years a vampire, and has never once fed on a human being...the only vampire we've met that we can say that about. This is sheer exercise of the will. More than that, he's gathered a bunch of vampires around him...the Cullen "family", and has dominated them to the extent that they won't feed on humans either. Ultimately, Carlisle is still his father's son,the Puritan monster hunter of his youth. He's become the monster he used to hunt, so instead of destroying them, Carlisle has made it his goal to reform them...to turn vampires away from predators of humans so that they can live in harmony with them. Everything we've seen him do is in furtherance of that....befriending the town's sheriff, negotiating a truce with the Quileute, forbidding wandering vampires from feeding in "his" territory. The thing I think it should be stressed, which Meyer is damned inconsistent about, is that dealing with vampires, even the Cullens, is like being Sigfried and Roy. It's only the tigers' goodwill that keeps them from ripping your throat out.
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Jul 24, 2019 22:04
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chitoryu12 posted:Most vampires are like Laurent and his clan, viewing humans as little more than walking buffets to bite as soon as you get the opportunity. "Happy Meals with legs", as per Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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Jul 25, 2019 02:41
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chitoryu12 posted:I was curious, so I looked up what I could about her editing process. She had actually already begun writing New Moon before even looking for a publisher for the original story and had been editing at home. After she got ahold of a literary agent who was interested, Jodi Reamer, they spent 2 weeks on editing before sending it off for publication. Only 6 months passed between her coming up with the idea and the book being printed and shipped to stores. That's....she needs to fire her editor, then, because she's not well served. You can't edit a book for publication in 2 weeks. That's enough time to poofread it. I looked at word count....Twilight is 119,000 words. An experienced editor will, depending on the work, edit about 25,000-35,000 words a week. A good edit for a book of this size should take about a month. Then there are rewrites....even if the author is fast, that's another month or two, and then you go through, assuming all is good, 2-3 rounds of that before it's ready for publication. As much as you can say that Stephanie Meyer isn't a good writer, this book wasn't edited, and it shows.
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Jul 26, 2019 05:10
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It's a red flag that after Edward says, basically, quote:I am wretched and my very existence fills me with self loathing as I try to reconcile my prior humanity with the unhuman predator I have become. Only sheer force of will keeps me from complete and utter sociopathy and I live in constant fear that I'll allow my self control to slip and surrender to this overwhelming craving for human blood. My very nature separates me from human interaction and I'm forced to live a transitory marginal existence. I pray for death, but I've been cursed by God into this immortal half life. Her reaction is, "Being a vampire must be so cool! Can you turn me into one too?"
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Aug 14, 2019 02:08
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And THIS is why you don't hang out with vampires. It's like a sentient hot dog deciding to go to Coney Island on July 4th.
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Aug 15, 2019 14:45
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I swear to God, that last paragraph is so remarkably scummy. It's our protagonist gloating to herself how she's manipulating a sixteen year old boy who has a crush on her. How is it in a book with mass murdering vampires, Bella still comes across as the least sympathetic character?
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Aug 26, 2019 23:07
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"Sure, but, considering the difference in maturity between guys and girls, don’t you have to count that in dog years?" Is it in bad taste to make "dog years" jokes to a werewolf?
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Aug 27, 2019 16:12
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quote:He’s… the head of the pack, you know. He’s the Alpha. When he tells us to do something, or not to do something—when he really means it, well, we can’t just ignore him.” So, fun fact about actual wolf packs. The idea a lot of people have about their structure.. that there's an Alpha wolf who brutally keeps the others in line and is constantly at risk of overthrow, is outdated and wrong. Somebody came up with it after examining captive wolves in zoos. Actual wolf packs tend to consist of a mated pair and their unmated children along with sometimes other collateral relations. The rest of the pack isn't submissive to the alphas because of some brutal imposition of dominance. They're submissive because the alphas are their parents, and young wolves are submissive to their parents.
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Sep 13, 2019 13:49
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The Voluri actually remind me a little of the Camarilla from White Wolf's Vampire:the Masquerade RPG...traditionalist, secretive, contemptuous of humanity, and obsessed with keeping the existence of vampires a secret.
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Oct 24, 2019 22:49
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I mean, the Voluri are still more interesting than Bella or Edward. They're really pale and pretty. Jane is psychic. Aro is preternaturally cheery. They have their own town and goons and beautiful female bodyguards. So there's all sorts of potential there. So maybe I missed the explanation, but do we ever get anything explaining why Bella's blood is so appealing to vampires?
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Oct 25, 2019 02:58
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In better hands, the Bella being horrified by Gianna wanting to be turned into a vampire could be done as a nice piece of irony and with good effect. It would be, here's Bella, whose only real experience with the vampires is the Cullens, and who has this romantic view of vampires meeting the Volturi and the way they treat humans like cattle, along with all the horrors of feeding, and that's Bella learning the real nature of vampirism and being repelled by it. It would be a nice piece of character growth for her, and at the same time, reinforce e the nobility of the Cullens...that they choose to set themselves above and apart from this behavior. In better hands, that is.
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Oct 25, 2019 19:22
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So here's what I don't get, and maybe it's because I'm over 30 and therefore ancient, but why is Bella so casual about this being a vampire thing? She-s been stalked and tortured by two vampires, she's seen how the Volturi treat humans as cattle, she's heard Carlisle's story about the amount of guilt and self doubt he has over his vampirism, Edward has told her how not killing humans and holding on to human morality is a constant struggle, Jasper went into bloodlust when she got a paper cut and tried to feed on her, and the Blacks told her how vampires are the enemies of humanity. So given all this, you'd expect at least some hesitation or self reflection?
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Oct 28, 2019 21:24
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I guess one of the things I'm wondering is, how does Meyer expect us to view Bella? We know that Bella is an unreliable narrator, and has some pretty wrong ideas about vampires, relationships, herself, etc, and other characters call her out on them; Edward, Charlie, Alice, Jacob. So, I think the question is, does Stephanie Meyer know she's written such a flawed protagonist? In other words, is Bella supposed to be an idiot?
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Oct 29, 2019 03:51
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chitoryu12 posted:Is....is Meyer being self-aware? I can't tell if this is seriously her taking the piss about her characters or just being oblivious. That's the thing that gets me about these books. I'll think she's just being oblivious and writinga remarkably bad love story between horrible people without realizing it, then she'll throw in something like that, and I'll wonder if she does know how horrible these people and this relationship is.
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Nov 5, 2019 17:12
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chitoryu12 posted:This is why Bella shows such little reaction to learning that Edward was a serial killer for a time: because Meyer finds it reasonable.. The, maybe twisted, thing is that I think its reasonable too. I mean, I don't disagree with what Meyer writes there about vampire morality or their viewpoint. I'm sure if I were an immortal physically and mentally enhanced preditor who outlives all my loved ones, needed blood to survive and had an orgasm whenever I ate human blood, and gave off pheremones/an aura/whatever that made humans trust me and think I was beautiful, I'd start thinking of humans as not worthy or moral consideration either. That being said, as a human encountering something like that, my instinct would be either run like hell or kill it with fire. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 17:26
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Cythereal posted:What is it about Mormons writing fantasy and sci-fi that makes them so weird and full of utter sociopaths? Mormons gave us Twilight, the Ender's Game universe, and the goddamn kender from Dragonlance. Eh, Tracy Hickman and Tasslehoff aren't that bad. Tasslehoff isn't a sociopath. He's a kleptomaniac with ADHD, but he'd do anything for his friends, and one of his defining personality traits is that he hates cruelty and seeing innocent people suffer. And, while I'm no big fan of OSC's politics, Ender from Ender's Game isn't a sociopath. He's in a situation where believes that all he's doing is playing a simulation, and then, when he discovers the truth, is ashamed and dedicates the rest of his life to make up for his actions. That's really what both Speaker for the Dead and Ender's Exile are about. So really, it's not Mormons so much as it's just her.
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Dec 23, 2019 15:32
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Once again, we learn every single member of Edward's family has a more interesting backstory than he does. And, I guess to give Meyer a little credit, both Carlisle and Jasper tell Edward his Volturi conspiracy theory is crap. Also, is it possible that Benito is a reference/homage to Benito Juarez, who wasn't a vampire, of course.
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Jan 14, 2020 18:59
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While I know I sound like a broken record here, i will point out that every Cullen, as far as I can tell, has explained how they became a vampire, and these stories have inevitably been stories of desperation and degradation. The process itself has been described as agonizing. It's made multiple characters question their faith and their very humanity. Others responded by lashing out on rage and self destructive behavior. All of them, with the exception of Carlisle, have killed innocents. They have shown themselves to be instinctively manipulative, controlling, and violent. These are all victims of their condition, and they realize that. They all regret what they've become. And Bella knows that. She knows that, and she wants to be a vampire anyway, in spite of the fact that every vampire she's met thinks it's a bad idea. Bella's stupid.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:36
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chitoryu12 posted:she is, when in fact it seems really accurate. In a sane book written by a mature person who isn't part of a Christian cult, all of the warnings against it would come to fruition and Bella would have to learn to love herself and put work into her life instead of making vampirism a cheat code to solve all her flaws and self-loathing. I think that's maybe a little simplistic. There re a bunch of Mormon fantasy/science fiction authors (Hickman, OSC, Sanderson, etc) who are able to avoid nor.alizing abusive or toxic relationships. While Meyer's writing is certainly influenced by her Mormonism, it's more complicated tha saying that's why she doesn't write about healthy relationships)
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Jan 16, 2020 15:29
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Maybe this is just my attempt to bring characterization to people who aren't supposed to have any, but I'm getting the feeling that the reason the Cullens, Carlisle included, are so psyched about this entire thing is that they've spent their entire unlives suppressing their violence and their desire to kill, and now they're going to be able to get to kill in a socially acceptable way, and they're just over the moon.
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Jan 27, 2020 12:40
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Dienes posted:Leah is so much more interesting than Bella, and the love triangle she is in is so much more tragic and angsty than what Myers tries to do with Bella. They're all more interesting than Bella. I don't want to read this story, I want to read about, I dunno, how Jasper became the youngest Major in the Texas cavalry, or Emmett hunting a bear, or some time Alice was mislead by one of her visions, or Jacob's brother in law, the surfer, or Carlisle Cullen, colonial doctor, or how Charlie got elected sheriff, or how he and Billy met, or how the Volturi dealt with the coming of Mussolini, or, a lot of things, really.
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Jan 29, 2020 22:58
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