Picking Apart Twilight, The Novel – Chapter 14
14. MIND OVER MATTER
Edward is driving Bella home in her truck after a whole lot of time staring at one another and breathing all over each other on top of a mountain.
He had turned the radio to an oldies station, andhe sang along with a song I’d never heard. He knew every line.
“You like fifties music?” I asked.
“Music in the fifties was good. Much better than the sixties, or the seventies, ugh!” He shuddered. “The eighties were bearable.”
Forgive me for saying so, I know I’m just projecting my own personal opinion here, but frankly I think Edward’s taste in music is awful. Totally stupid. What, there was NOTHING good playing for two decades? Yet there was something great about the ’50s and the ’80s? Your choices are either ’50s… or ’80s? Somebody tell me how that makes any sort of sense. I’m just gonna sit back and assume that we’re hearing Meyer’s personal taste in music, and that her taste in music blows. After all, her Twilight Playlist includes two Linkin Park songs and “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” by My Chemical Romance.
He looked into the sun – the light of the setting orb glittered off his skin in ruby-tinged sparkles – and spoke.
BLEAUGH! Aside from the fact that the author is illustrating the irritating fact that her vampire sparkles, it’s written so… so… I don’t know, does it make anyone else sick just reading it? “The light of the setting orb”? “Ruby-tinged sparkles”? I’m pretty sure she was trying too hard to make it sound artsy and poetic.
“I was born in Chicago in 1901.” He paused and glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. My face was carefully unsurprised, patient for the rest. he smiled a tiny smile and continued. “Carlisle found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and dying of the Spanish influenza.”
He heard my intake of breath, though it was barely audible to my own ears. He looked down into my eyes again.
Okay, back up. Let me address everything wrong with these two paragraphs. Earlier, Bella asked him to tell her just how old he was. He doesn’t. He just says when he was born – 1901. I’m assuming this is in order for the reader to be able to better project herself into the story. That way, he’s always as old as the date the reader is reading the book. But, personally, I think that’s lazy. In the world of fiction, be that movies, books, theatre, what have you, you should always assume, unless otherwise stated, that it is “Present Day”. Or, in some cases, some stories will even outright tell you that it is “Present Day”. But as I’ve learned in theatre classes, what “Present Day” ACTUALLY means is that it is presently the date in which the work of fiction was published. In this case, that would be the year 2005. So how old is Edward? 104. There. Was that so hard?
Next, Bella is “carefully unsurprised”. What does that even mean? It says she’s being patient, waiting for more. Does being carefully unsurprised mean that she wasn’t surprised? Or that she’s trying her damnedest not to look surprised, and that she actually IS surprised? Is she just saving her surprise for later? Seriously, what does this even mean?
Then, she gasps when she finds out he was dying of the Spanish influenza at the age of 17 in 1918. Why? What’s surprising about that? You do know he died at some point in order to become a vampire, right? Or are you suddenly realizing that the date 1918 was, like, a really long time ago? Maybe I’m over-reacting, and maybe she’s just shocked that he was dying of something so horrible and painful and she was concerned about how awful his death was. I don’t know, the book doesn’t make her shock terribly clear. I honestly don’t really know what she’s surprised about.
Edward tells Bella about how Carlisle was a doctor monitoring him at the time, how he’d “saved” Edward, after his parents had already died from the flu. He describes it as being painful, but refuses to give more details. I think Stephenie Meyer just didn’t want to have to, you know, be an author and describe the pain.
One by one Edward describes how Carlisle saved his family members lives – how he wouldn’t have changed them and turned them into family members if they were well and alive enough to make the choice themselves. Frankly, I think if you’re dying you wouldn’t want somebody else making choices for you. At least, I wouldn’t. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t want to live forever. And if I were to wake up after falling off a cliff to find that somebody decided for me that I was going to live forever with a bunch of other freaks I’d never met before, I’d be pretty pissed and ask for them to kill me. But, you know. That’s just me.
Edward describes the weird, unnatural ways that Emmett and Rosalie as well as Alice and Jasper fell in love. It doesn’t particularly sound real and loving to me, but I guess we aren’t here to read about other couples. Alice apparently has similar magical sparkly vampire powers to Edward. She has visions – sees the future, that sort of thing. But not always accurately, as the future isn’t always set in stone. It’s an interesting ability, but I still don’t understand why she has it, just like I don’t understand why Edward has the ability to read minds. I also don’t understand why only a small handful of vampires appears to have any magical powers at all. Why is it selective? And why isn’t it the same power in all vampires? How do you get that? How does that even work? Can vampire venom really give you magic? See, there’s lots of ideas that I MIGHT have bought, but I don’t because they’re unexplained. And just because something is fictional or magical doesn’t mean that it can’t be explained. I think it should be, even, even if it can’t REALLY work that way. After all, it’s fiction. I don’t want to believe it happens “just because”. Fantasy and sci-fi should have its own rules. When it doesn’t, it falls apart. Like this, for example. This is the world of Twilight falling apart. Not that it was ever being held together in the first place, but…
Blah, blah, blah, we stay in the North because it’s sunless, there aren’t many like us, most are nomads…
A couple pages later, they’re at Bella’s house.
“I want to stay with you.” It was easier to say in the darkness, knowing as I spoke how my voice would betray me, my hopeless addiction to him.
“Can’t I come in?” he asked.
“Would you like to?” I couldn’t picture it, this godlike creature sitting in my father’s shabby kitchen chair.
“Yes, if it’s all right.” I heard the door close quietly, and almost simultaneously he was outside my door, opening it for me.
YOU FOOL! HE JUST TRICKED YOU INTO INVITING A VAMPIRE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE! Wait, actually… I’m sure that was thoughtlessly written in and won’t ever be an issue. Sorry, book, please continue.
He reached the door ahead of opened it for me. I paused halfway through the frame.
“The door was unlocked?”
“No, I used the key from under the eave.”
Now the creeper vampire knows where your hidden keys are. You are also completely unphased by the fact that he knows this, meaning he’s been watching and paying very close attention to you, maybe even coming into your home. Bella, it’s alarming how unalarmed you are.
“I was curious about you.”
“You spied on me?” But somehow I couldn’t infuse my voice with the proper outrage. I was flattered.
…”How often did you come here?”
“I come here almost every night.”
I whirled, stunned. “Why?”
“You’re interesting when you sleep.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “You talk.”
“No!” I gasped, heat flooding my face all the way to my hairline. I gripped the kitchen counter for support. I knew I talked in my sleep, of course; my mother teased me about it. I hadn’t thought it was something I needed to worry about here, though.
She only becomes upset that he’s been watching her unannounced every single night for the past God-knows-how-long when she learns that he’s heard her talk in her sleep!? What kind of backwards human being are you, Bella? Are you even really human? Did you become vampire without anyone, even yourself, knowing it?
“Don’t be upset!” he pleaded.
Don’t be upset!? Why shouldn’t she be? Of course, that’s going to work on her because he’s using his super powers of godly beauty to manipulate her emotions.
…”You did say my name,” he admitted.
…
“Don’t be self-conscious,” he whispered in my ear. “If I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I’m not ashamed of it.”
You… don’t know that.
Bella’s dad arrives back home. Edward poofs away. For a couple of pages Bella does a tremendously terrible job at acting like there’s nothing she’s hiding. And then it’s several more pages of Bella and Edward quietly trying to hide the fact that there is a vampire boy up in her bedroom while they get lovey-dovey. This takes entirely too long.
He lay, smiling hugely, across my bed, his hands behind his head, his feet dangling off the end, the picture of ease.
It’s the first night the girl has actually invited you into her house, and you decide to sprawl across her bed? Girls, get this through your head – don’t date a boy like this in high school.
He lifted my chin, examining my face.
“You look very warm, actually.”
He bent his face slowly to mine, laying his cool cheek against my skin. I held perfectly still.
“Mmmmmm…,” he breathed.
It was very difficult, while he was touching me, to frame a coherent question. It took me a minute of scattered concentration to begin.
“It seems to be… much easier for you, now, to be close to me.”
“Does it seem that way to you?” he murmured, his nose gliding to the corner of my jaw. I felt his hand, lighter than a moth’s wing, brushing my damp hair back, so that his lips could touch the hollow beneath my ear.
“Much, much easier,” I said, trying to exhale.”
Just screw! Okay? Just hurry up and get down to it!
But, still, it just continues to paint this picture in my head of Edward putting on all these moves and working his magic vampire charms while Bella isn’t exactly asking for it. Granted, she’s not saying “no”, but the relationship still seems very forced from one angle.
He keeps touching her and breathing on her and being all disgusting and she likes it and junk, I guess because teenage girls really don’t have the brains to know that feeling good isn’t happiness. And then they talk about earlier in the forest. Ugh. Again? Really? Now, actually, this part is written kind of vaguely, so it’s a little difficult for me to tell whether they’re talking about his lust for her blood or his lust for her body, but I’m assuming that because it’s written so vaguely they must be talking about sex, because Meyer won’t just outright say that the two of them are horny.
“It’s not easy,” he sighed. “But this afternoon, I was still… undecided. I am sorry about that, it was unforgivable for me to behave so.”
“Not unforgivable,” I disagreed.
That’s not a sentence, Bella.
“Thank you.” He smiled. “You see,” he continued, looking down now, “I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough…” He picked up one of my hands and pressed it lightly to his face. “And while there was still that possibility that I might be… overcome” – he breathed in the scent at my wrist – “I was… susceptible. Until I made up my mind that I was strong enough, that there was no possibility at all that I would… that I ever could…”
Sex, or blood? Reader, you make the call.
I’d never seen him struggle so hard for words. It was so…
…Stupid?
…human.
Oh. Not the word I would have chosen. But okay.
…”I’ve had the scent of you in my head all day, and I’ve grown amazingly desensitized. If I’m away from you for any length of time, I’ll have to start over again. Not quite from scratch, though, I think.”
“Don’t go away, then,” I responded, unable to hide the longing in my voice.
“That suits me,” he replied, his face relaxing into a gentle smile. “Bring on the shackles – I’m your prisoner.” But his long hands formed manacles around my wrists as he spoke. …
This imagery is also increasingly disturbing. They’re NEEDING each other increasingly. For one, you should never NEED a person as badly as they’re starting to need one another. You know, like you’re incapable of living for yourself, being self sufficient. But then there’s imagery of prisoners, shackles, manacles… it’s awful. And despite claiming to be her prisoner, he grabs HER by the wrists instead, insinuating that she’s equally his prisoner. This is not healthy. This is not okay. This is not good.
“Isn’t it supposed to be like this?” He smiled. “The glory of first love, and all that. It’s incredible, isn’t it, the difference between reading about something, seeing it in the pictures, and experiencing it?”
Book, you really have no idea.
“Very different,” I agreed. “More forceful than I’d imagined.”
Oh, then we’re all agreed, this is unusual. Good, I’m glad we’re all on the same page (that page being 302).
“That was the first night I came here. I wrestled all night, while watching you sleep, with the chasm between what I knew was right, moral, ethical, and what I wanted. …”
I see that doing the right thing wasn’t more powerful than what you wanted. Especially since you kept coming back. You know, he admits right there to her face that he struggled with the idea that sneaking into her room and watching her sleep every night probably wasn’t the right thing to do, and Bella is STILL flattered by the idea. It’s pretty enraging to me. And all because he was jealous of Mike, whom Bella was obviously treating like a puppy the whole time. It’s disgusting.
“For almost ninety years I’ve walked among my kind, and yours… all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything, because you weren’t alive yet.”
Yep. About a century of your true love not even having been born. I realize they’re both teenagers in body, but sitting and thinking about nothing but the numbers, the age difference is quite staggering. He should have had numerous life experiences, should be a well-matured person, but it seems this is simply not the case. They should be on completely separate paths in their lives, even ignoring the fact that he’s a vampire and she’s a human. The age should have total lifestyle differences. But… ugh, that would be GOOD writing, wouldn’t it?
Bella’s dad checks on her. She pretends to be asleep. They continue to cuddle and shit.
“So if you don’t want to sleep…,” he suggested, ignoring my tone. My breath caught.
“If I don’t want to sleep…?”
He chuckled. “What do you want to do then?”
I couldn’t answer at first.
“I’m not sure,” I finally said.
“Tell me when you decide.”
I could feel his cool breath on my neck, feel his nose sliding along my jaw, inhaling.
Just like every other time before now, don’t bother getting too excited. In fact, ladies, proceed to begin punching yourself in the ovaries. Because NOTHING. HAPPENS.
“I still don’t understand how you can work so hard to resist what you… are. …”
…”That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others – the majority of our kind who are quite content with our lot – they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we’ve been… dealt a certain hand… it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above – to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.”
Again, here, he’s talking about bloodlust. But frankly? I think it’s just another way of illustrating the religious idea that God didn’t intend for man to be separated from Him and that we’re supposed to be better than something. Probably sex. That’s just my interpretation. But, come on, nowhere in these paragraphs do they talk about eating people. I think it’s pretty easy to see a religious comparison to the human race. And considering Meyer’s background, I don’t think I’m stretching that idea too terribly far.
“Why can you read minds – why only you? And Alice, seeing the future… why does that happen?”
I felt him shrug in the darkness. “We don’t really know. Carlisle has a theory… he believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified – like our minds, and our senses. He thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Alice had some precognition, wherever she was.”
“What did he bring into the next life, and the others?”
“Carlisle brought his compassion. Esme brought her ability to love passionately. Emmett brought his strength, Rosalie her… tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness,” he chuckled. “Jasper is very interesting. He was quite charismatic in his first life, able to influence those around him to see things his way. Now he is able to manipulate the emotions of those around him – calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”
I have to admit – this is the first actually INTERESTING idea I’ve heard so far in this entire book. Strong sensitivity to people’s thoughts becoming mind reading? Okay, interesting. Slight sensitivity to forthcoming events becoming seeing the future? Okay, cool. Charisma becoming emotion manipulation? That’s something. But the other stuff… So, are compassion, passion, and pigheadedness considered “super powers”? Those sound incredibly useless. And when Bella turns into a vampire, what in the hell is she going to bring over with her? The ability to kill the personality of anybody in the room?
“So where did it all start? I mean, Carlisle changed you, and then someone must have changed him, and so on…”
“Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don’t believe that all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”
Oh my God, Edward is a creationist. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that a vampire doesn’t know his own lineage. It doesn’t exactly seem as though there are nearly as many vampires as there are humans. How difficult would it be to trace? In any case, this solidifies it. Twilight has a very LDS undertone message. The vague mix of bloodlust representing bodily lust and the idea that a higher force created both humans and vampires suggests that there’s some other story to be told here, not just one of a romance between a vampire boy and a human girl.
And then the subject of marriage comes up.
“Well, I did wonder… about you and me… someday…”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, girl! Slow it down now! I think you’re a little love-drunk! How long have the two of you been together? And how long has it been since you first kissed? Like, a couple of hours? Good lord! Maybe I should be blaming this on the magical vampire beauty powers Edward has or something.
“I’m curious now, though,” he said, his voice light again. “Have you ever…?” He trailed off suggestively.
“Of course not.” I flushed. “I told you I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”
Ever… ever, what? Ever lusted? Ever had sex? Ever masturbated? What? See, I just can’t stand how the author chooses to dance around the subject. I know she’s trying to avoid being lewd, but it just makes it all the more confusing. You know, like not telling your kids about sex. Then they get confused and try to figure it out themselves. You do your readers no favors by trying to dance around the subject!
“I know. It’s just that I know other people’s thoughts. I know love and lust don’t always keep the same company.”
“They do for me. Now, anyway, that they exist for me at all,” I sighed.
“That’s nice. We have that one thing in common, at least.” He sounded satisfied.
“Your human instincts…,” I began. He waited. “Well, do you find me attractive, in that way, at all?”
He laughed and lightly rumpled my nearly dry hair.
“I may not be a human, but I am a man,” he assured me.
That… doesn’t entirely make sense… but I think I see where you’re going, book. And it’s… nowhere. Because for the final time this chapter we’ve danced around the topic of sex, but we aren’t actually going to address it.
More tired than I realized, exhausted from the long day of mental and emotional stress like I’d never felt before, I drifted to sleep in his cold arms.
Eesh! No thank you! Give me warm sheets, blankets, comforters, pajama pants, and thick wooly socks any day, but NEVER cold arms. There’s no way I’m getting to sleep being wrapped up in cold.
Geez… man… this chapter is a whole bunch of just sitting and talking. Most of it feels incredibly unrealistic, and again the number of times the dialogue dances around the topic of sex is astounding and outrageously frustrating. Not because I necessarily want to read vampire/human pornography (I can pick up something that easily from Wal-Mart), but because it’s written so unrealistically and is not straight-forward with its readers, most of whom will probably be young, impressionable girls who will then be confused about their feelings of lust. It really helps no one in the end. Avoidance is not nearly as powerful as education. Book, I don’t think you understand that.
Can you believe there’s still ten more chapters? Next up is chapter 15 – The Cullens.
marzgurl.wordpress.com 
Hey, Linkin Park actually makes good music. The stuff from the playlist was back from their NuMetal days, which I don’t think are as good as their new stuff. But I can respect your taste in music, and don’t mind if you don’t like those either. =3=
Haha, you know, frankly, I DID like Linkin Park for their first two albums. …And Reanimation. …And their Live in Texas Tour. I just think, you know, it would have been the LAST music I would have chosen to represent Twilight.
Agreed. It’s a bit of a disgrace to Linkin Park, to even think they’d be associated with Twilight. *shudder*
And yeah, I liked their early stuff too, I just also happen to like their new stuff. ^^;
This book has a very fairy-tale like idea of love.
Whihc unfortunately means very creepy.
As for evolution, if you think of vampirism as a parasitic organism, explaining how it has evolved would be easy. Since the vampires aren’t really a species of their own in this book. Rather they are humans that spread the vampirism (that might be a virus or something else, but that has something to do with biology) like you would a disease or a parasite.
Although they also can be said to benefit from it, so it’s more symbiotic, even if it leads to a biological dead end since they can’t breed (usually anyway).
One would think that even if vampires didn’t know where they came from (which is possible) they’d have stories and proposed explanations about it. And surely there are vampire scientists.
Of course there are vampire scientists! Like the famous Dr. Acula. 😛
But on a serious note, I find if you remove the magical aspects of vampires (like with your explanation), I just lose interest. Kinda like “infected” zombies. There’s no mythology to being sick. 🙂
Who is this Dr. Acula? I have never once hear of this before 😉
lol Dr Acula is far better written then the Twilight vampires combined.
“But on a serious note, I find if you remove the magical aspects of vampires (like with your explanation), I just lose interest. Kinda like “infected” zombies. There’s no mythology to being sick. :)”
It’s probably my background and interest in science, but for me explanations that make sense are a big part of what makes stories and mythologies cool.
I don’t even mind ‘magic’, as long as it follows rules and is not just random.
That being said, if the series is well written, and I can be invested enough to the world and characters, I can ignore all the unexplained mechanics, like in the Harry Potter-books.
That just don’t make much sense if you think about it.
Like, why are the wizards and other magical creatures in hiding in the first place? Why don’t the characters solve world hunger with magic?
But I can suspence my disbelief.
With Twilight, if it was well-written, and we could be interested in Bella as a character, if the people acted like logical real people, all the unexplained stuff wouldn’t matter because we could enjoy the story.
But as it’s shit, people notice all these things that wouldn’t matter if the story was well written.
I am still convinced this is a book is Stephanie Meyer’s masturbatory fantasy. However after this chapter, I am starting to think she has rape fantasy’s (eg: boy breaking in, watching her, her liking it) but her religion telling her brain it’s wrong.
“After all, it’s fiction. I don’t want to believe it happens “just because”.” This reminds me of something Linkara said once (paraphrased of course). Suspension of disbelief in this means that I can read a story with Vampires in it. However suspension of disbelief does not make an apple a zebra. As long as the rules are defined, and item A follows rule 1 & 2, we’re all good. Even if rule 2 cannot possibly exists in our real world. If you are going to include fantastical elements have the common decency to create some concrete rules.
Ugh, this chapter really drove me nuts. My friend was bought this book as a joke present, I may burn it for her.
This blog reader’s notes:
I have a suspicion about the music thing… 60, 70s… Sexual revolution era music. Of course the avatar of “save it for marriage” won’t have any of that.
Fun fact about the spanish flu: Some experts say that the attempted treatments killed as many people as the actual disease. These treatments utilized, amongst other things, quicksilver. And suddenly, we have a very accidental explanation of the sparkling. He’s full of heavy metal, and not even in the fun, head-banging way.
The fact that no-one was asked whether they wanted to be vampires is very much in line with Meyers’ way of thinking, I believe. Always passive, always obeying some higher authority.
Rageface belongs there. Yes. It is the sane reaction.
I’m very confused by how the lightness of a hand is supposed to be a positive feature. “I’m sorry, Biff, I’d love to be with you, but.. Your hands. They are so heavy and a I CANNOT BEAR IT!”
Also, rarely does one behold such glorification of sexual repression smack-dab in the mainstream.
I’m actually okay with the interchangeability of bloodlust and sex, as that is a recurring motiv for vampire stories. Only that this franchise’s approach is so ass-backwards and flat-out wrong in relation to anything resembling the real world that it becomes nothing but repugnant. Well-written vampire stories make you root for the heroine or hero trying to resist the vampire’s deadly lure. This one? “Fuck her or kill here, just get it over with”
It IS kind of fascinating to see a repressed ex-mormon’s BDSM fantasies unfolding, though. It’s kind of like a puppy trying to figure out how proper pooping works.
Aaaaaand then it goes straight into rapeland. Yikes.
At this point in the narrative, very ugly implications begin to rear their heads. The vampire thing obviously still being an analog to sex, this kind of paints the apologist picture of men being nothing more than slaves of their animal impulses, only the best of the best being able to resist their urges. That’s exactly the train of thought that protects sexual criminals and shames the victim for “asking for it”.
On a lighter note – I’ve seen this “one trait intensifies” thing for vampires before in some form. Raziel’s brothers in Soul Reaver 1. Their traits got out of hand and turned them into monsters with time, each in resonance of their personalities. (Most obviously with Dumah, who had delusions of grandeur and turned into an armor-plated giant).
Oh, hey, creationism. I’m sure you were as unsurprised as I am. Moving on.
So lust never existed for Bella before? At 17?! Yeah, you’re right – No way is that a human being.
And, of course, I agree with you about the harm that is done with this wishy-washy dancing around the bush. (no pun intended). It just mystifies the matter far beyond the level it deserves. This is how to inspire regrettable decisions!
As a creationist myself, I highly doubt God would create vampire. I figure if vampirism (as usually depicted in fiction) existed in the real world it would come from Satan, another middle finger to the Lord. I’ll stop there before I start preaching, don’t worry. 🙂
I do like (assume this is the only time you’ll hear me say that when it comes to Twilight) that they tied in “vampowers” to the person pre-vampire, and there’s something resembling an explanation, but they sound more like the mutants from X-Men or metahumans from the DC universe than the abilities given to vampires. Maybe she should have created a whole new mythology instead of screwing up an old one. There could be a good “Christian” approach to vampires but this isn’t it. The allegory gets lost when you re-write a concept everyone is familiar with.
It’s alright, I’m actually a creationist, too, though I say it publicly very infrequently. I just find the way it was written in to be pretentious on top of being bad writing.
The “vampowers” could have been interesting, but they’re really vague. I’m not fully satisfied with the explanation. Especially because it gives some of them super powers and gives more of them super… emotions. It’s kind of weird.
“As a creationist myself, I highly doubt God would create vampire.” – ShadowWing Tronix
Why wouldn’t he? This could be part of ‘gods plan.’ For you to say what god would or wouldn’t do is just arrogant. God has done far more terrible things to humans than Satan has ever done. God is the one that destroys cities, turns people into pillars of salt, razes towers, creates demons, and tells tribes to wipe out other tribes for land. The worst thing Satan has ever done was defy God. Other than that he just tempts people but doesn’t force anyone to do anything. I don’t worship anything when the ultimate good is worse than the ultimate evil.
For the record i am not a satanist but an atheist.
From an evolutionary standpoint, vampires make more sense. the Blade movies actually did a good job depicting this. Since humans prey on everything their would need to be something to prey on humans. Vampires. Since vampires prey on humans than something would need to prey on the vampires. Thus the reaper virus. This cycle would most likely repeat itself and i think it was a interesting approach.
I already said what i thought about their powers back in chapter 13.
I’m not going to get into a theological debate here because I don’t think MarzGurl would approve of the comments going off the rails. Would you feel better if I said “based on what I know about God through my interpretation of the Bible and what’s been said about people who allegedly were touched by God’s hand”? I don’t have the ability to interview God but I can take a guess.
As far as evolution, the problem with going that route is traditionally vampires have abilities that defy the laws of physics. The best example would be flight, whether the traditional “turn into a bat” or the more recent “fly like Superman” method. Otherwise, there is some merit in the evolution theory (see also one of the mutant theories in the Marvel Universe) and there was a show some years ago that this as a plot. Only they weren’t vampire, but a completely original concept which is what Meyers should have gone with. (In fact, you could make the case that she has, and just slapped a familiar name to it.)
“I’m not going to get into a theological debate here because I don’t think MarzGurl would approve of the comments going off the rails.” – ShadowWing Tronix
Then you shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.
And as for Twilight, I wasn’t really disagreeing with you. I should have been more clear on the fact that my comment was directed solely at twilight vampires. Since they mostly follow the rules of the physical world(not being able to fly or transform in things with less mass) the story could have had a stronger evolutionary background other then meyers (lack of) explanation; ‘We don’t know.’ Pure lazyness.
As far as traditional vampires go, they can be done from an evolutionary standpoint in the hands of a good writer. But going into such detail isn’t relevant for this kind of story. Usually the origins involve god, the devil, demons, or curse to name a few. These other worldly elements allow the vampire defy what we know about the physical world and by extension show how powerful the creator is. In a story like this, less is definately more. Meyer clearly didn’t go this route since the foundation of her entire story is based on something tangible, Venom. The only rules this idea follows is only what was convenient for her.
Commenter 1 just had a small aside before going on a longer point.
You went off on a rampage against strawmen.
Took the words right out of my mouth, Nate.
Anyway, back to business.
Here’s my boggle:
If this Edward dip has been around for hundreds of years, why does he act like a immature brat when he meets Bella? Does her presence leech away years of experience? Is she some kind of “dignity vampire” (where, instead of blood, she siphons away one’s ability to appear respectable)?
@natewinchester
“Commenter 1 just had a small aside before going on a longer point.”
Wrong. Her post was relevant to the topic. She stated that it was ‘Highly unlikely’ that god would create vampires. I disagreed and presented why. If it was an aside then she would have been off topic. Your post is a perfect example.
“You went off on a rampage against strawmen.”
Wrong again. One paragraph is hardly a rampage. If it was a rampage it would have been far longer and more detailed. Your following posts more closely resembles one then mine. And maybe you should look up the word straw man before you use it. Nothing i mentioned about god in my post was either false or fabricated. It is in the bible if you care to read it. The rest is just my interpretation of his actions.
The point of my last post was; You shouldn’t post anything if your easily offended or prepared for someone to disagree with you.
It was an “aside” or “parenthetical” to the full post, not off topic to the wordpress entry as a whole (not every aside is completely off topic). The closing sentence “I’ll stop there before I start preaching, don’t worry.” very clearly signals that the opening bit was not the poster’s full point, but just a side issue.
A paragraph in reply to two sentences. It’s called proportional response and you went overboard. You could have just as easily said something like, “I disagree. I find it perfectly within God’s character to make meyerpires.” and let that be the end of it unless someone else broaches further into the topic.
Just because you could have gone even more disproportional in your response, doesn’t make the initial response proportional to the original point. i.e. Just because you could bomb someone for insulting your mother, doesn’t make shooting them for insulting your mother any less of an overblown response.
A 2 sentence rebuttal is a rampage? You have a real self-centered view of things, don’t you.
I’m quite familiar with it’s meaning. You had a great example.
Then maybe you should look up the bible more. There’s this thing called “context”. It’s amazing how much of a difference it will make in your life.
… Yeah, not a strawman at all. *roll eyes* Way to just pretty much contradict your earlier protestations of innocence and pretty much prove my point.
So you weren’t prepared for me (and others) to disagree with your rampage? I guess you shouldn’t have posted it then.
For the record I (a) am a male and (b) wasn’t offended. I just don’t feel like having a theological debate in a thread that has nothing to do with “would God create vampires”. (Not that it wouldn’t be an interesting discussion were I really that interested in the subject of vampires.) It was a side note. However, if you want to know what I’m thinking then I apologize to MarzGurl (I just had to yell at someone at my site for trying to derail a topic) and here you go.
You made the point that God has done other things in the past. However, many of the things you list had a point. They were punishment for doing something wrong in most cases. Lot’s wife was turned into salt, to choose one example, because she looked back at the destruction, her old life meaning more to her and thus making her as bad as the rest of Sodom. For the record, God didn’t “create” demons. Even if you take the Bible as myth or darn good stories, demons are fallen angels, kicked out of Heaven for trying to take over and put Lucifer on the throne. They were sent to Hell to await final punishment. Satan wants to drag human souls to Hell with him as a middle finger to God. Satan likes to mess with us.
(As to why God continues to let them cause this trouble, why not stop Adam and Eve from having the snack break that doomed us in the first place? Now we get into free will.)
To that end, if vampires were part of the spiritual war between angels and demons, vampires (the real kind; meyerpires make no sense spiritually to me) would most likely be a creation of Satan to mess with humans some more, tempting them with power, immortality, and lust. It’s another way to lead people away from God, sometimes by force. Vampires can’t stand holy water, symbols of Christ (crosses, churches) and are killed by sunlight (they may or may not sparkle first 😛 ). They’re forever doomed to prey on the living, and perhaps make others suffer their fate. That’s not really in keeping with the God I’ve read or heard about. Unless this is a test that makes what Job went through look like a pop quiz in comparison.
So I’m not sure why God would create something that goes against God’s nature. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
@natewinchester
Despite the fact that the OP said it was a side note (Not the same thing as an aside) you are still wrong.
Aside
“8-A temporary departure from a main theme or topic, especially a parenthetical comment or remark; short
digression.” -www.dictionary.com
“3. A parenthetical departure; a digression.” -www.thefreedictionary.com
Since the OP coment is not departure from the main theme (Vampires and god) it is not an aside.
“not every aside is completely off topic”
Maybe in your world, but not in reality. Let me know if i need to define digression for you.
Parenthetical
“1-of, pertaining to, noting, or of the nature of a parenthesis.
2-characterized by the use of parentheses.” -www.dictionary.com
“1. Set off within or as if within parentheses; qualifying or explanatory: a parenthetical remark.
2. Using or containing parentheses.” -www.thefreedictionary.com
Since his comment wasn’t in parenthesis,brackets,dashes, etc. it is not a parenthetical. Still wrong.
“A paragraph in reply to two sentences. It’s called proportional response and you went overboard.”
I don’t see you lecturing Marzgurl on going overboard on proportional response during her twilight review. She has paragraphs dedicated to just one setence.
“You could have just as easily said something like, I disagree. I find it perfectly within God’s character to
make meyerpires.” and let that be the end of it unless someone else broaches further into the topic.”
I agree with this. I could have. However, I stand by what I said to the letter.
“A 2 sentence rebuttal is a rampage? You have a real self-centered view of things, don’t you.”
I said your FOLLOWING posts. Not previous or current. Let me define it for you.
Following
“5-that comes after or next in order or time;” -www.dictionary.com
Scroll down. You cant miss your giant wall of text.
“Then maybe you should look up the bible more. There’s this thing called “context”. It’s amazing how much of a
difference it will make in your life.”
Genocide
“the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” –
Dictionary.com
Clearly god is guilty of this, which was my point. You can put that in whatever context you want, but the act
of genocide is still wrong.
As for Straw Man I’m going to go with the Wikipedia definition since it is well known and a lot of other sites haven’t contradicted it.
“A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position, twisting his words or by means of assumptions. To “attack a straw man” is to create the
illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. Generally, the straw man is a highly exaggerated citation or over-simplified version of the opponent’s original statement, which has been distorted to the point of absurdity. This exaggerated or distorted statement is thus easily argued against, but is a misrepresentation of the opponent’s actual statement.”
The posters original position, which i commented on, was that he “highly doubted” that god would create vampires to which i directly disagreed. Since gods character is the core of the argument I brought up actual facts from the bible of his malevolent actions which you could clearly read if you so chose. Those acts being murder and genocide. My only opinion was that i disagreed with his actions, in wich case, does does not contradict nor invalidates the facts. Since i refuted the posters actual comment and and didn’t distort what he actually said it is not a Straw Man senario. With your logic any disagreement is a straw man and you use the term way too loosely.
“So you weren’t prepared for me (and others) to disagree with your rampage? I guess you shouldn’t have posted it then.”
This doesn’t even make sense. I was prepared the minute I clicked ‘Post Comment’ or else i wouldn’t have
posted in the first place. I’ll Assume you are grasping at straw men at this point.
My post to Tronix wasn’t a rampage, this one is.
After this chapter, I admit I’m tempted to try and write a similar story… except, you know, one that’s actually COMPETENTLY WRITTEN!
I did it once. That way lies madness.
See, this is what angers me so much about Twilight – the sheer NUMBER of missed opportunities. I mean, a century old ToddInTheShadows would be fascinating. One who perhaps doesn’t like the 60s and 70s because it sounded just like what had come before, but enjoyed a new style coming out of the 80s. (using Meyers up there, I’m not well versed enough in pop music history to know how someone that old would probably actually hear the music through the ages) This could be really neat. Instead? =P
That… would actually make an interesting story, Marzy (can I call you Marzy? you know, sounds like “marz-g”). I wouldn’t mind reading about an immortal that was filled with self-loathing. And no, Edward (nor Ethan in Daybreakers) counts.
That’s why in my parody, I explained that each vampire was uniquely gifted and pointed out why and where it came from.
To be fair, I don’t think many teenage boys do either. Heck, even a lot of adults seem not to get this. But then you could write a book on it.
Oh wait, someone did. C.S. Lewis the Abolition of Man.
Ok, I laughed because I couldn’t help but think of that “couples toilet” sketch SNL did.
Here I would say look up the Hogwarts Professor because I think he also did a series on Twilight, but I haven’t read it. There might be something religious to it, but it’s all (as always) pretty half-assed. It especially gets thorny when one notices that the meyerpires demonstrate more in common with the Mormon idea of the redeemed & transformed man (at least, what I understand of it, any Mormons feel free to correct me), rather than the condemned and fallen man that they would usually be. In this, Whedon’s Angel is more traditionally Christian than Meyers’ Edward.
Well to be fair… meyerpires would probably be one of the strongest condemnations of traditional Evolution that we could ever see. They function like viruses (cannot reproduce on their own) and yet are so far beyond any possible selective pressures, I can’t even begin to figure out how one would trace their lineage. Given that they are immortal and can breed easily, if there was competition between subspecies of meyerpires, it would be impossible for humanity to survive it.
Of course, given that Twilight is a fictional world, Edward is right – they were all created. We just happen to know their creator. And wonder about her a lot. [insert continued meta examination] Which is what makes him even more of a Mary Sue: he’s always right – even when there’s very little reason for him to be.
“Well to be fair… meyerpires would probably be one of the strongest condemnations of traditional Evolution that we could ever see. They function like viruses (cannot reproduce on their own) and yet are so far beyond any possible selective pressures, I can’t even begin to figure out how one would trace their lineage. Given that they are immortal and can breed easily, if there was competition between subspecies of meyerpires, it would be impossible for humanity to survive it.”
Not really, if you think of vampirism as a parasitic organism, instead of vampires as a species. I really should write an article on that, I’ve been thinking of biological explanations for vampirism.
As for how easily they could ‘overbreed’, but won’t, and somehow stay hidden, that problem doesn’t really have much to do with where vampires come from.
Whether it’s something that evolved or came from god or outerspace, it’s still odd it hasn’t spread more, but I guess that would be explained by the vampires heavily self-policing to make sure they won’t spread it too much.
With traditional vampires, I quite agree.
Immortal, indestructible Meyerpires? Let’s say, some kind of mutation creates a proto-meyerpire. It’s a bit stronger and faster than humans, but still vulnerable to humans in large groups. It creates and offspring here and there, building up its numbers (reducing its vulnerability) when say… the 12th offspring is even stronger, faster and can’t even be hurt by its ancestors unless they team up in a large group.
Of course, the two meyerpire subspecies would start competing for food and offspring. How does that work out? Especially with every recruit made for one army means one less for the opposing army.
If you manage to work the math on it, please let me know, I want to peer review it for ya. 😉
Unless…. IDEA! Maybe if a new offshoot of meyerpire could convert the prior proto-meyerpire (yes yes – blade 2 reference)… that might work out.
Well, the Xenomorphs from “Alien” are pretty much exactly what you describe (and they even sparkle in the sun!). So I guess it’s not too out there.
Of course, the Xenomorphs bleed acid and the Meyerpires only bleed failure and shame.
Quite. I’ve often said the xenomorphs are like a multicelluar virus.
And Predator is the cure… 😉
“Immortal, indestructible Meyerpires? Let’s say, some kind of mutation creates a proto-meyerpire. It’s a bit stronger and faster than humans, but still vulnerable to humans in large groups. It creates and offspring here and there, building up its numbers (reducing its vulnerability) when say… the 12th offspring is even stronger, faster and can’t even be hurt by its ancestors unless they team up in a large group.”
Why would that lead to the offspring becoming stronger and faster?
It could be that the different parasite populations within the different individual vampires would adapt to make their hosts stronger because it gave them an edge in spreading their own lineage, but that’s not the only route it could go.
Also “reducing their vulnerability”?
So, you mean the parasite adapting to more efficiently spread?
Like I said, it’s more useful to think of the ecology of the parasitic organism and it’s relationship to human species as it’s hosts than vampires as a species.
But what you’re describing, along the other logical issues with vampires, doesn’t really have much to do with evolution, or indeed where the vampires came from.
The question here is that if such creatures exist, no matter their origin, how haven’t they spread and taken over the world?
Especially since they could survive on non-human blood, so even if they hunted/converted all the humans within a small area they wouldn’t die out quickly and could spread it further.
“Of course, the two meyerpire subspecies would start competing for food and offspring. How does that work out? Especially with every recruit made for one army means one less for the opposing army.”
Also don’t forget that if the vampirism is caused by more than one individual parasite per human, there would also be competetion between the parasitic organisms within the host.
But I fail to see how this would be a problem for evolutionary theory.
You make a lot of good points, but I think your post applies more to the Strain than meyerpires. 😉
What I was talking about vulnerability I was talking about like… say wooden stakes to the heart kill a vampire. Thus, developing tougher and tougher skin until it’s too tough for wood to pierce would be a development to reduce the creature’s vulnerability.
And of course, as you can see below, I quite agree with you that the biggest question is why haven’t these things taken over the world. (see also: my reviews of the movies on impishidea.com)
“What I was talking about vulnerability I was talking about like… say wooden stakes to the heart kill a vampire. Thus, developing tougher and tougher skin until it’s too tough for wood to pierce would be a development to reduce the creature’s vulnerability.”
Why would evolution necessarily lead to that?
Reducing the hosts vulnerability could be advantageous to the parasite/symbiote, but it could also very easily be selected against. Not to mention something specific like developing tougher skin to combat wooden stakes (since how big and common a threat they are, exactly?) might not be worth the cost.
As, like I said earlier, there could also be competition within the host between different parasites that would compete on the resources.
And depending on the ecology of the parasite, the host dieing or not living indefinitely might be beneficial to it. Like, if it could use host’s death to spread or reach a new stage in it’s life-cycle.
I’m not that familiar with the Twilight-vampires, but I seem to recall that they were at their strongest right after being changed.
If that’s the case, it would mean the parasite is aiming for spreading quickly, and burning up it’s resources fast.
There’s also the issue of co-evolution. Normally parasites and their hosts would co-evolve, but if vampirism makes them unable breed, it leads to an evolutionary dead end for that creature. Well, I guess it’s relatives could benefit from it somehow and add selective pressure to ‘normal’ humans to carry genes that benefit them if they get infected.
Maybe in the past the infected could and would breed with humans more often, and that eventually turned into vampirism.
And maybe there are different levels of vampirism, or at least exposure to the parasite. It might be that you can get it in your system but not enough to turn you into a vampire…
I dunno. But the skin of meyerpires’ is nearly indestructible (bullet proof at least, I believe) so that’s what I was trying to calculate out.
Quite probable. Which makes even weirder that meyer’s vampires are so nigh kryptonian in their “design”. (pun intended?)
They say newborns are strongest with the “human blood still in them”. The movies at least (we’ll see if MarzGurl finds in the books), they do mention that animal blood doesn’t make a vampire as strong as human blood. Though I am curious, what do you mean by the parasite “burning up it’s resources fast”? Meyerpires continue to exist indefinitely after that first year and can continue to breed for as long as they are alive. And if they’re near impossible to destroy, well to quote Hermes Conrad: “That raises even more questions!”
Not in the Twilight-verse. Being “a little vampire” is like being “a little human”. Although yes, Breaking Dawn did have a whole “half breed” plot point but apparently to cause one you need:
A male vampire turned when he has plenty of healthy sperm. (ok, likely)
The male must then NEVER ejaculate (no, not even masturbation) to preserve and keep his one remaining load.
The male must then screw a human woman WITHOUT killing her. (for the issues with that, I refer you to Larry Niven’s infamous essay)
Not to mention that I don’t think the books list half-breeds as having any advantage over pure-blood vamps. For way too much info on it: http://twilightsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Hybrid
Or… hmm…
http://twilightsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Joham
So maybe they can have more than one hybrid. But then that makes no sense with:
http://twilightsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Venom
And since every birth seems destined to kill the mom (or transform her), it’s just about the same breeding rate as regular vampires. Geez, the more you look at it, the worse meyerpires get!
“Though I am curious, what do you mean by the parasite “burning up it’s resources fast”? Meyerpires continue to exist indefinitely after that first year and can continue to breed for as long as they are alive. And if they’re near impossible to destroy, well to quote Hermes Conrad: “That raises even more questions!””
Well, I don’t actually know what Twilight lore says about making new vampires, and how easy that is. And whether it’s even discussed that much.
By ‘burning up’ their resources I meant that they’d try to spread as quickly as they can after they infect the new host, which ends up weakening it eventually.
But if they can make new vampires just as easily when the vampire is older…
Maybe it’s about competition between the parasites within different hosts.
We don’t really know enough about how the Twilight vampires work to do more than speculate. Of course, though, the thing that would be more staggering for modern science about them would be how they have magic powers, like reading minds or predicting the future. Although that’s not just the vampires, there are other creatures like that in that world.
Which begs the question of how well-known these things are. Do goverments have their secret mind-readers and do universities study these things?
Meyer just doesn’t care to think about these things and what implications for the world the existence of such things would have.
“Not in the Twilight-verse. Being “a little vampire” is like being “a little human”. ”
Well, apparently the vampires don’t know much about how their bodies work. It would be possible they’d infect people and not know about it.
Or that those people formed anti-bodies for the vampirism or something.
I think we have already given this much more thought that Meyer ever did.
Yeah, that’s why I tried linking to the relevant twilight wiki article… but the fact that twilight has its own wiki is depressing me on many levels…
Forget that – with their indestructibility, abilities, etc etc, why aren’t meyerpires running the government, universities, etc? (which I went off on a rant about in one of my review for ImpishIdea.com, but I think I’ve pimped out my own stuff enough as it is, you can just check the links above and below)
Bingo. Always my biggest complaint about her stuff.
That’s why for my parody? (again, see link above) I had secret [Canadian] government project cyborg vampires!
Great, now I’m even more depressed. (mostly because it’s true) Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.
I have a question.
Why haven’t the vampires in Twilight taken over the world?
Is this ever explained or touched up on in any of the books? Meyer continuously pounds it into the readers’ heads that her sparklepires are perfect and near indestructible with no weaknesses to exploit like real vampires. So, what’s stopping them?
But perhaps this is a pointless question since Meyer’s Twilight is only concerned with a select group of two-dimensional characters, and a romance that panders to the audiences’ most selfish desires.
However, if my question IS addressed in the book, and someone can tell me, please do.
Nope. Everything I’ve heard, there’s no explanation.
So I came up with my own.
Ha! Well considering the crazy obsessed fans these books have, I would not blame them if that was the case.
If fact, the fans could be Humankind’s greatest weapon against the sparklepires! The vampires come back, ready to take the world over again, and all the armies of every country have to do is RELEASE THE GROUPIES! Aaaaaand the fairy vampires would be trampled and mobbed to death.
There! Hostel take over squelched! 😀
Oops! I meant “hostile.” My bad.
I’d forgotten how much the music thing bugged me. What wasted opportunity!
Why the 50s? Is it because that’s how far back the pop oldies on the radio usually go, and Oldies=Old Person Likes them=Classy?
It’d make sense if he was a human youth in the 50s, or came into his life as he knows it around then, and had a personal connection to it. But he was a young man/young vampire more around the 20s! Wouldn’t it be much more interesting to hear him complain like an old man about how all music sucks except the stuff he grew up with (a silly, but common and relatable sentiment). We could even set up Bella trying to get him to like her music.
50s… and 80s… Why wouldn’t he feel the way mortals who were young in the 10s and 20s would upon 50s music? Maybe his attitudes toward accepting the changes in music would open up something about his personality.
But that simple “Ugh!” toward the 60s and 70s just sounds so… arbitrary. And strange. 80s music is one of those genres that often doesn’t hold up well outside its context (hence the camp value). He’s had the time to really ruminate on music, and even take part in popular culture without anyone suspecting he was over 30. Could we have a little more here?
Same goes for creepy vampire habits. I think it’d be really interesting to deal with a vampire (or ghost) who doesn’t realize the things he’s used to doing (maybe in vampire culture this is totally normal, or they generally just don’t think twice about meddling like that due to emotional distance from humans) are actually very creepy. It was a total missed opportunity to flesh out the vicissitudes of vampire/human relationship.
Yeah, I know. It’s Stephenie Meyer. It’s all about the metaphor for sex that this couple is not having, not about anything else.
@ShadowWing Tronix
Won’t let me reply and Sorry for the gender confusion.
Anywho;
Nice post. I’ve said all I needed to say and their is no sense in harping on this so I’ll leave off with a profound quote.
“Well sir, while I may not agree with what you say, I’ll defend to the DEATH your right to say it!” – Peter Griffin
(Though I don’t completely disagree.)
Let me clarify. You are right, it was not an aside from MarzGurl’s main post. It WAS an aside from the Shadowing’s post.
Uh… see bold part. It doesn’t have to be in parenthesis. When you looked up the freedictionary, did you notice what was listed as synonyms?
“interposed, incidental, explanatory, qualifying, inserted, bracketed, extraneous, extrinsic”
Plus, with this being the internet, if you’re going to try and define someone’s style strictly by their punctuation… it’s either naive or insane.
1) That’s what we’re here for.
2) Well to be fair, Twilight is rather infamous for it’s ability to go on for paragraphs with what could be expressed in a sentence.
3) MarzGurl is also doing a book critique, which is a different animal from the conversational tones of posts.
Then on that we have no issue. I mean I probably disagree with you, but how one says something can be just as important as what they are saying. I might have every right to talk about how the academy awards are a government plot to repress the genius of Michael Bay, but if I bring it up and go on and on about it every time someone mentions any movie, I won’t be invited to many parties.
Well i read it as the post following your initial one. Sorry ’bout that, but these do have the “permalink feature” so may I recommend using that in the future to help others grasp your context.
Wait, I’m still not seeing which one you mean. Unless you’re talking about laura and I are having a fun discussion about the evolutionary theory of meyerpires.
I hate even invoking it but do you find the allies of WW2 “clearly guilty” of genocide for trying to wipe out Germany’s culture at that time?
1) Yes, I rebutted that.
2) You didn’t bring up facts. Facts would be specific. Since I doubt you’re using any of the first four definitions here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fact, you must be using the 5th:
“Often, facts. an actual or alleged event or circumstance, as distinguished from its legal effect or consequence.”
And the link recommends:
“a question concerning the reality of an alleged event or circumstance in a trial by jury, usually determined by the jury.”
That you can’t even see that your god is a strawman is the irony.
Agreed, since I was quoting you for effect. Hopefully now you see how silly the original statement was.
No, it was a rampage. This post was just pathetic.
I’m surprised you didn’t focus more on the fact the Edward breaths.
This is the big problem of Twighlight – it has some interesting ideas, but always shoves them out of the door to shoehorn in more of its unrealistic creepy romance.
See, for example the X-Man-Power. That could have been awesome. Every vampire has some special ability, tied to his past. Let’s say a pyromaniac gets fire-based powers! Or that guy who was really, really good with his dog? He can now call animals to his aid!
But noooo, we have to focus on damn teenage romance bullshit, because we clearly don’t have enough badly written “let’s dance around te sex topic” scenes.
Or that one guy, Carlisle? He was alive in the Civil War! This could have been a great opportunity for storytelling – how did the Civil War influence vampires, how did they influence IT, stuff like that.
Or the Vampire – Werewolf relationship? But nooo, they only explain it away in a few lines, keep it simple.
Or the whole Volturi thing, these vampires in the Vatican who try to control the Vampires, so that they don’t do something stupid? It had this “Camerilla” feeling all over it, but nooo, they are just evil bad guys.
I HATE these books, not for what they are (because then I’d have to hate every poorly written romance novel/indoctrination book), but for what they have wasted and what they have done. If someone now takes one of these ideas like the Vampire-X-Man stuff or Civil War Vampires, they will be written off as talentless hacks who copy Meyer.
I’d just like to say, my sister and I love your Picking Apart Twilight entries. We’re always excited when we see you’ve released another chapter. But we understand how long it must take you to post each of these up. Especially since you put research in!
Just wanted to let you know that you have fans!
And have you considered whether or not you intend to pick apart the next in the series? Or perhaps The Host even. It would be interesting to see since The Host is widely considered to be better written than Twilight (but honestly what little I read of it made me not think very highly of it). Just wondering!
Keep up the fantastic work!
Edward as Creationist? *faomssssss* I’m so glad you’ve pointed this out as it gives me just more reasons to hate him. I’m not proud to say that I bought into this book, back in the day granted, I was 16 in 2005, but still…
I took a mythology class recently where we explored several versions of the Little Red Riding Hood/ female sexual awakening myth. We frequently discussed the societal expectation of young girls to remain ignorant of their desires even though they’re just as hormonally stricken as boys. I bring this up because Twilight makes it plain that Meyer is either incredibly stupid or utterly diabolical on the subject. Bella obviously lusts, but seems to interpret it as love in her ignorance of sex. Is Meyer just as ignorant as Bella about repressed lust? Or is she so learned on the young female psyche she has formed her work to perfectly capture and exploit its target audience’s blithe misinterpretations of sex and love? I guess “diabolical” is giving Meyer too much credit, but I have a hard time accepting that anyone could have constructed such cock teasing prose without cackling about how hopelessly, and in many cases ignorantly, horny the poor things are.
Either way, tiresome as I’m sure it gets, don’t give up! They are definitely entertaining!
As a Latter-day Saint, Twilight is the most embarrassing thing for me as a girl of my faith to deal with. While their are elements of LDS belief, it is so twisted and pissed on that it not comparable. In High School, people would point to Twilight and tell me that was my religious belief. No matter how much how much I would try explain to people, teachers, or my own friends that it wasn’t a fair representation of my religion and it just fiction, the stigma of this series always came back to kick me just because the author happened to share the same faith I have. Thank you Marsgurl for being so smart and funny and for ripping this trash to shreds!