|
I've been loving this thread (and the James Bond one as well) but I'd like to offer a bit of an explanation for Bella being such a shithead, maybe? People keep focusing on how selfish and useless she's written to be, and I'm absolutely not saying that this was done on purpose by Meyer, but that's literally how it feels to be a teenage girl with low self esteem. You feel selfish, maybe for good reason, but often for no reason at all. You feel ugly and unpopular, even when the actual reality is that people like you. You feel useless and helpless, because no one seems to listen to you, even when you're literally telling this to people who do listen to you. In a weird way, the fact that Bella is portrayed as both selfish and useless but also super important to a lot of people and liked by them-- I think all of that is a massive part of why the book was so popular with teenage girls. I felt like that when I was a teenager. It's kind of strange to see people in the thread here comment on her selfishness and uselessness without acknowledging that those qualities are a major part of what made the character so identifiable to girls her age. Basically, what I'm saying is Meyer accidentally a realistic teenage girl mindset, somehow. The negative qualities only make it feel more real on an emotional level.
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2020 19:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:02 |
|
|
I feel like we're talking just slightly at cross purposes. I agree with everything you said, in every particular. I'm only trying to expand on it a little, to add to it that because Bella is lovely, it makes her more emotionally resonant to teenage girls who also very often think they're lovely people and don't understand why people like them. The crappy characterization accidentally recreated how it feels to be a girl that age. I absolutely do not think that was done purposefully. Meyer couldn't write her way out of a paper bag. The character may only inspire disgust or dislike in people with healthier mindsets, and rightly should, but to someone who already thinks they're a horrible trashfire it becomes a point of identification. That isn't a good thing! Its just a thing that happens. By the way, thanks so much for all your efforts, chitoryu. Your output with these threads is insane, I dont know how you do it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2020 20:15
|
|
|
quote:the profusion of white blossoms that hung in garlands from everything in the room that wasn’t alive, dripping with long lines of white gossamer ribbons Edward stood at the altar, his expensive suit barely visible beneath the festoons of white flowers, a bouquet hung from each ear like petaled comets trailing ribbon tails. He was dazzling.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2020 23:11
|
|
|
Cleolinda did some pretty entertaining readthroughs of the books that come from a perspective of enjoyment laced with criticism. Along with jokes, she (also) (thank you chitoryu12!) has some interesting commentary on the ideas and audience impact. This quote is from her first blog about the book, back before the others were released, where she muses on how Edward is a stand-in for how teenage girls see teenage boys:quote:The real question on a girl's mind is, "What, other than sex, is he thinking about? What, other than sex, do I have to offer someone I'm crazy about?" And if you're a teenage girl with low self-esteem, the answer you're going to come up with to that second question is going to be, "I don't have anything, because I'm not pretty or special or worthy, so if I don't want to immediately put out, I have nothing, and I have no chance." The obvious answer being "sex" actually makes it harder, because you've got that looming in front of you, and maybe a kind of despair--are you going to have to give in if you want a boy to like you? What if you aren't ready? What if you're scared? I had meant to post this back when we covered the "honeymoon" because some of what was said then touched on these ideas from a different angle. Of course, life got in the way, lol
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2020 13:40
|
|
|
Meyer posted:I realized that lots of things about me—like truly hating surprises, and not liking gifts in general much more—had not changed one bit. It was a relief and revelation to discover how much of my essential core traits had come with me into this new body. chitoryu12 posted:Why would you be surprised? You've known the Cullens long enough to hear about all their backstories and supposedly you've spent enough time around them for all of them to treat you as a member of the family long before you married into it. Did you think all of them lost their human personalities? Granted, Meyer's writing is devoid of three dimensions.... If vampirism is, as people have supposed, a metaphorical representation of Mormonism, this becomes very ominous in terms of how Meyer thought about committing to Mormonism. I only mention this because, as chitoryu points out, this passage has no story reason to exist; Bella has never seen any evidence that vampirism alters personality, beyond the necessity of drinking blood. But Meyer still wrote it, so it must make sense to her somehow.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2020 07:17
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:gently caress this baby. Please dont say that, Jacob is right there 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2020 16:09
|
|
|
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?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2020 06:59
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2020 12:58
|
|
|
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...
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2020 01:21
|
|
|
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
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2020 01:47
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2020 02:56
|
|
|
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 |
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2020 03:18
|
|
|
Thaaaaaaat's pop culture!  Edit: upon reflection, this seems like the flipside of the narrative we hear in pretty much all media, that young women are desirable objects. Almost everything we read and see tells us that young women are the peak of desirability, the younger, the "fresher". It's loving gross. i feel like Meyer is a product of that atmosphere, and shes taking it to its logical conclusion. Ugh. Burn the world. Lysistrata fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jul 15, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2020 04:38
|
|
|
To be honest, i would agree, but i feel like without some kind of explicitly clear guideline on how and when the terf bullshit gets addressed, it would have to be explained quite often that yes terfs are wrong and bad etc. for the benefit of readers who may not have followed the whole thread or whatever. Which means the best way to do it would be to agree with and permit talk of her terfiness/fake feminism/how it may have affected the books, but only under circumstances where it's meaningful and important to reading and analyzing the books or their effect on pop culture. Outline that in clear terms in your first post. That way people know they can poo poo on her for it sometimes, but you get to define when it's interfering with the conversation/reading, and everyone knows the boundary because it's in the first post. That may be more work than other threads like this, but it would keep the thread from getting derailed. I wouldnt bother getting into consequences unless it happens, though. The request for civility is more powerful than a threat.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2020 22:50
|
|
|
Theres also something to be said here about how women are told by our culture to read red-flag behavior from men as romantic. It's way easier to internalize that as true than it is to reject that message. When you do, however, it means by extrapolation that the signifiers of overwhelming true love must necessarily be psychopathic and abusive. "He followed me home when i turned him down, this must mean he really likes me" leads very easily into "he controls where i go, gets angry when i dont obey, and invades every aspect of my life, he must love me that much." So Edward's point of view was never going to be any other way. He can't be, because if he isn't an abusive psychopath, he isn't sending the right cultural signals for "true love." Its the same thing that happened with 50 Shades and the book from Christian's point of view. More and more, Meyer strikes me as a mouthpiece for the toxic cultural behavior and perceptions around love, one that buys wholeheartedly into the toxicity as not just normal but ideal.  , Meyer. Also, get some feminism.(Chitoryu, i think you said you weren't gonna do Midnight Sun? Thats a shame, because id love to hear your perspective on it. I understand if it's too much of a slog, tho.) Edit: i hadnt read the das sporking version, and as i am procrastinating doing actual work, i decided to check it out. Found this little tidbit:  Gee, thanks for the condemnation that totally tells me you dont actually think a teacher lusting after his underage student is more than a minor peccadillo, Meyer. You know, the teacher that you created and wrote about and had complete control over and could have just decided wasn't attracted to his female student. And you even had the sense not to reveal this in the book, but then you did anyway because it's not that bad guys, its totally okay for men in positions of power to be exclusively attracted to underage vulnerable women in your work to the point that it's their only characterization, this is just a little funny thing to make people laugh! I say again, Meyer is a mouthpiece for toxic culture around love and fully believes the toxicity is ideal.
Lysistrata fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jul 19, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2020 03:33
|
|
|
To say im looking forward to it would be wrong, but im looking forward to your commentary at least. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2020 06:01
|
|
|
Why is everyone suddenly considering bella useless because shes a newborn? Newborns were like the super strong oh-so-scary big threat before! Shouldnt bella be their biggest asset in a fight right now, even if they dont have time to train her fully??
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2020 02:47
|
|
|
PetraCore posted:Bella is like, well, pretty impulsive but at the exact same level she was before, she doesn't have the mental issues and she's all pumped up on her own blood, so. Exactly! The logical thing to do would be to teach her to fight as much as they could, she's a gigantic asset. She's got the newborn strength, she's got perfect control of her vampire "instincts", and she's immune to the mental powers that would incapacitate anyone else. She should be the frontline defense here! Of course, Meyer handwaves all that and declares her useless because ~bella is a girl and therefore it is her job to be protected~.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2020 03:39
|
|
|
Malah posted:If they're making a power grab, then the Cullens only have to credibly threaten Aro's other collectors pieces and the Volturi legitimacy as peacekeepers. I would like to agree, but... *gestures at 2020*
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2020 00:52
|
|
|
Im definitely excited to see it, especially since it seems Meyer has given it a lot more thought and polishing this time.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2020 03:33
|
|
|
Hey, I havent had much opportunity to join in the conversation but ive been reading along. Thanks so much for doing this one! Ive been enjoying your commentary, as always, and the look at how things changed between bella and edward, and the different drafts, is extremely entertaining. I just couldnt help thinking back to some things I'd said before... chitoryu12 posted:
chitoryu12 posted:
Edward can't be any other way, because if he wasnt controlling and abusive, he wouldnt register to Meyer as "in love." Thats the end result of normalizing red flag behavior into romantic gestures-- someone who doesnt perceive love as real unless it's accompanied by abuse. Both Edward and Christian Grey follow this pattern, and imo it says something about our cultural idea of love as a whole (as well as masculinity and various other things) that these two characters were major attractions in major pop culture phenomenona. Something about the idea of an abusive lover's abuse being presented as proof of true love resonates with a lot of women-- personally, i havent yet been able to sort out what that means beyond "the culture surrounding love is really hosed up." chitoryu12 posted:
chitoryu12 posted:
Love is a predatory act in Meyer's books. Power differences are a built-in part of that predatory act. Maybe she's seeing a situation with a power difference and interpreting it as romantic because of the power difference. That would explain why you see comparatively little of the same sort of thought from students on equal footing, despite that realistically, that high school would be dripping with student hormones directed at each other, and edward would hear all that. chitoryu12 posted:
Shades of imprinting here! Im not going to look for the quote, but isnt it like, "oh, well, any girl who was loved that much and that devotedly would have no choice but to love the werewolf back!" I guess at least this flips the script she usually has in that Alice is the one with the agency in creating that relationship.... if you can call it that when Alice literally just follows the future that she sees laid out of her. Uh... So no one has agency there, i guess, because meyer said just no! Seriously, Smeyer, awkwaaaaarrrrrrrrrd... I guess Rosalie and Esme also had some agency? Except Esme was turned without being asked... so not really, i guess, she just kinda fell in love with the guy who exercised power over her death. Rosalie had some agency though! Hey chitoryu, we've found the one (1) relationship where the woman wasn't coerced into it by the guy or by circumstance!  Back in the early chapters i saw some interesting things about the portrayal of vampires and how they're supposed to seem inhuman or Edward has trouble thinking of humans as sapient beings, but i guess ill save my thoughts on that for if it comes up again since i didnt have time to comment when it came up the first time around.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2020 00:02
|
|
|
Yeah, thats definitely a component of Edward's appeal-- the idea that this powerful, immortal being is completely stricken with love for the audience-insert character. That supposedly makes the power dynamic more equal, because the powerful immortal is "helpless" before the Plain Jane's hidden charms. The problem with this is that judging by his actions, Edward is clearly not helpless, and in fact impresses his will on everything the audience-insert does from almost the moment they meet. Every bit of his controlling behavior is justified in-text as evidence of his love, and his supposed "helplessness" is really just selfishness that he doesnt even really want to resist. It's really strange how so very many people, including Meyer herself, couldn't see that the attempt at equalization of the power dynamic was completely meaningless; Edward's actions are hardly impacted by it. The most we get are guilty thoughts that never stop him from whatever controlling thing he does next.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2020 08:48
|
|
|
Is it just me or do Meyer's attempts at correcting weird abusive bits etc make this into more of a slog than the others? The earlier books had a kind of... idk, call it emotional weight, or passion, or involvement, i guess... that made the text if not good then at least entertaining. Is that what's missing here? Anyway, I'm still rooting for you to finish it, chitoryu, cause it's the only way I'll ever see the end. Also, Hades = good.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2021 15:26
|
|
|
Oh my god spork the vagina book
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
God it's worse than I remember
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2022 01:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:02 |
|
|
Oh my god, that's awful! I know it doesn't mean much, but I wish his family and friends healing and good memories.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2023 13:09
|
|