In Which I Read Twilight: Chapter 13 -- Confessions · 4:07pm Jan 20th, 2018
Let it be known that I’m not a big fan of vampires. I don’t hate them, they’re just sort of “meh” to me. And since I don’t care about them, I don’t mind changes to the formula all that much as long as they don’t stray too far from the base. If they don’t drink blood, for example, they better depend on something else. Emotions? Yeah, emotion-eating vampires are fine.
That being said, there’s no way to make sparkling vampires not stupid.
I mean, the reason they don’t go into the sun is because they sparkle? It’s not even a metaphysical “sunlight, and only sunlight, makes us sparkle”; it’s just “direct sunlight is bright enough to make us sparkle”. So do they sparkle if a lightbulb is bright enough? Lightbulbs can be pretty bright nowadays. Or what if someone takes their picture with the flash on? Shouldn’t they sparkle a little in less bright light? It’s not like the only possible values are “all sparkle” and “no sparkle”. How come their skin otherwise looks more or less exactly the same as the skin of humans, but a lot paler?
And is there even a good reason for why they sparkle? From what I’ve read, it doesn’t look like it. A lot of the myths about vampires can be attributed to vampires supposedly being of the devil and repelled by Christianity. Stake through the heart kills them? Jesus was crucified on wood, so you’re piercing their heart with Jesus. (I didn’t say those myths made sense.) No reflection? They’re soulless. Can’t enter churches or other holy ground, repelled by crucifixes? Kind of self-explanatory. Here, vampires just happen to sparkle. Later in the book, Edward goes on about how all the adaptations of vampires are to make it easier for them to hide among and hunt humans, but I fail to see how you can hide among humans when you can be found out with a bright flashlight. Although considering vampires try to hide out and buy BMWs simultaneously, maybe the average IQ on this version of earth is fifty points lower than ours.
Sorry. I just hate Twilight’s sparkles.
When she sees Edward sparkle, Bella begins obsessing about his looks even more, if that were possible. The two exchange some lovey-dovey dialogue about never wanting to leave each other. Edward talks about what Bella’s blood, her scent, is like to him.
“You see every person smells different, has a different essence. If you locked an alcoholic in a room full of stale beer, he’d gladly drink it. But he could resist, if he wished to, if he were a recovering alcoholic. Now let’s say you placed in that room a glass of hundred-year-old brandy, the rarest, finest cognac — and filled the room with its warm aroma — how do you think he would fare then?”
We sat silently, looking into each other’s eyes — trying to read each other’s thoughts.
He broke the silence first.
“Maybe that’s not the right comparison. Maybe it would be too easy to turn down the brandy. Perhaps I should have made our alcoholic a heroin addict instead.”
“So what you’re saying is, I’m your brand of heroin?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
He smiled swiftly, seeming to appreciate my effort. “Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.”
That’s right. Our two lovers just compared their relationship to a drug addiction. An unhealthy, incredibly shallow pleasure that severely interferes with one’s ability to relate to others and gradually consumes their life-
…Wait, that actually sounds pretty accurate.
Edward talks about how hard it was to be around her when she smelled so good. Apparently, it took every ounce of self-control he had to not kill the other members of Bella’s class the first time he saw her. (Bella’s not bothered by this, by the way.) He left for a week after the first day to get away from her, only to return because he knew how much trouble and pain he was causing his family. Following the incident with Tyler’s van, he realized he loved her (uh-huh, sure) and, after much deliberation with his family, decided to stay in Forks.
More stupid lovey-dovey dialogue. Given how much time they spend on it, it’s pretty shallow. When they’re finally done, Edward offers to carry her back to the truck, to show her how he moves in the forest. With her on his back, he runs incredibly quickly through the forest — a trip that previously took hours now takes minutes — and Bella feels faint when they get back. They kiss, and it’s both over-the-top and pretty subdued. Over-the-top because the prose goes heavily into purple territory, subdued because the book doesn’t spend a lot of time on it.
After a few minutes of waiting and Bella still feeling faint from the run, Edward decides he’s going to drive them home.
“Bella, I’ve already expended a great deal of personal effort at this point to keep you alive. I’m not about to let you behind the wheel of a vehicle when you can’t even walk straigt. Besides, friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” he quoted with a chuckle. I could smell the unbearably sweet fragrance coming off his chest.
“Drunk?” I objected.
“You’re intoxicated by my very presence.” He was grinning that playful smirk again.
“I can’t argue with that,” I sighed. There was no way around it; I couldn’t resist him in anything.
Again with comparing the relationship to unhealthy mental states. Is this book trying to give me material to make fun of?
While reading this chapter, I noticed something that immediately bugged me more than usual: the whole time Edward was talking about not eating Bella, Bella barely reacted. Not even mentally. She never stopped Edward and asked questions about him, we never got any asides where she took the information in without interrupting Edward, not even something as simple as, “I kept listening, shocked.” She just sat there, oblivious, as if she knew she was being exposited at for the reader’s benefit. The fun thing about a relationship — friendly, romantic, family, or otherwise — is seeing the personalities of two people bounce off each other. But Bella and Edward barely have personalities. In this scene, one that’s crucial to their relationship, Bella simply sits and listens to Edward drone on about himself. For a romance novel, the romance is incredibly underdeveloped. In fact, for a story, period, the romance is incredibly underdeveloped. Where are the scenes where we watch them talk about stuff that interests them, argue about things besides each other, where they’re people rather than our romantic couple?
It’s not like this is hard. John Wick is an action movie of the sort where assassins can have their own special hotel, bar, and currency, and eighty percent of the bad guys get killed with close-range double-taps. But in the space of about five minutes, it establishes a solid connection between John and his new puppy Daisy with a few scenes:
- The first night she’s home, Daisy’s sleeping on the floor. She makes puppy-dog eyes when John looks at her, prompting him to call her up to his bed.
- She wakes him up in the morning by jumping on him and licking his face.
- John pours Daisy a bowl of cereal for breakfast and apologizes for not having dog food yet.
It’s kind of silly, I’ll admit. But it’s just so human (and so canine) that it’s hard to not love it. The Twilight equivalent would be five nonstop minutes of variations on, “Aren’t you the cutest thing ever!” (Daisy is the cutest thing ever, but that’s not the point.) There’s no little quirks in Twilight’s romance, nothing that sets the characters apart from other couples. All they do is gaze into each other’s eyes. Why gaze into someone’s eyes if there’s nothing behind those eyes?
I know I started reading this to see what I could learn. Looking back so far, I’m shocked at how basic the stuff I’m “learning” is.
Pack it up, people. We got that joke out of the way, we can move on now.
John Wick would be a much better vampire romance novel.
In much the same fashion that I love spaghetti, I suspect.
As for the part where they're "trying to read each-other's thoughts", hasn't it already been established that Eddy can read minds?
The more we learn about (and from) this work, the more I question how the crap this was so popular and omnipresent in the first place. My initial guess was that it was like a sort of porn that people didn't feel guilty over, but I don't think it even qualifies for that level of "quality".
On the sparkle thing.
There's a shared group fanfic over for another fandom that I'm part of, and one of the characters (former and part-time villain, it's really complicated) managed to pick up Twilight style vampirism. And she made it work, made it terrifying again.
It helps that the character prides herself on being a competent and cunning villain, and loves to turn a disadvantage to her own advantage.
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In fairness to Twilight (that's a phrase I never thought I'd say), it was also established that Edward couldn't read Bella's mind. No, no reason was given.
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Cool! Can I have a link?
I gotta say, I’m so glad I never read this book...
With all you are pointing out I get the feeling the author is a pretty subtle troll and everyone just THINKS she's good or the book is rubbish...
That pun was bad and you should feel bad.
But you’re reading Twilight, so you earn this one.