In Which I Read Twilight: Chapter 23 -- The Angel · 2:54pm Feb 19th, 2018
As Bella drifts away, she hears the sounds of a fight. Then she concludes she’s dead, because she hears the voice of an angel. Guess who the “angel” is. You never thought you were dead before when you heard his voice, why start now? And, seriously, even when it’s obvious it’s Edward, she keeps referring to him as “the angel” for pages. It might’ve been to convey her state of shock, but it didn’t do a very good job. Anyway, Edward, Carlisle, and Alice work together to try to stem Bella’s bleeding. (Where’s James? We learn that next chapter.)
A burning pain in Bella’s hand alerts them to another wound: James bit her, and the venom is starting to spread throughout her body, turning her into a vampire. Carlisle guesses that they can stop her from turning if they suck the venom back out, somehow. I’m not a doctor, but it seems to me that the bloodstream would carry the venom too far from the wound for that to be effective. Through a series of contrivances, Edward has to be the one to do it. He starts sucking (actually, he’s always sucked) on Bella’s wound and gets the venom out. Shortly after, Bella passes out.
Not much to say about this chapter. But for once, rather than being slow and boring, it’s just short (and boring). I might’ve been more invested if I cared about the characters at all. So, in the interest of content, I’m going to recommend two vampire movies, both much better than Twilight. In flavors of both drama and comedy!
If you want to go dramatic, Daybreakers. Thankfully, it uses traditional vampires: they can’t go out in the sun because they’ll burn up, they don’t have a reflection, they need to feed on human blood, etc. However, they’re placed in a very non-traditional setting: by the year 2019 (the movie was released in 2009), a vampiric plague has consumed the world, and vampires, rather than humans, are the dominant species on Earth. In fact, humans make up only about 5% of the population, and are either farmed for their blood or hunted so they can be captured and farmed for their blood. And therein lies the rub: because humans are so rare, the blood supply is running low, causing deprived vampires to slowly mutate into disfigured, feral creatures. Ethan Hawke plays a vampire hematologist searching for a synthetic substitute for blood, both to keep vampire society running and out of sympathy for the few uncaptured humans.
To be honest, I’m not really doing this for the plot or characters. They’re solid, but nothing special. No, what Daybreakers does phenomenally is the worldbuilding. The first ten minutes or so is, hands down, one of the most amazing examples of “show, don’t tell” worldbuilding I’ve ever seen anywhere, ever. It’s simply loaded with little details: one of the first things you see is a “Drive slow — School Zone” sign… with the hours being 2 to 3 AM. Numerous vampires smoke because, hey, you’re dead already, so it’s not like smoking’s going to kill you. Buildings have steel shutters to keep the sunlight out during the day. Coffee bars are stocked with different flavor additives: A, AB, B, and O. When a surgical test is performed on a vampire, the diagnostic computer shows no heartbeat and an inhumanly low body temperature. And all this is established with no opening crawl and minimal exposition. The worldbuilding is so well done that this movie feels more like an entry in a well-established franchise than a one-off. If the rest of the movie doesn’t interest you, that’s fine. But if you want to look at worldbuilding, you have to watch the first ten minutes.
If you want to go comedic, What We Do in the Shadows. These vampires are even more traditional than those in Daybreakers — besides the abilities mentioned above, they also have turning into bats, levitation, hypnosis, and a need to be invited into buildings. It even explains why they prefer virgins, which is so amazing that I refuse to post it here. Given the glut of authors and filmmakers trying to reinvent vampires, this is so unoriginal and so traditional that it wraps all the way back around into refreshing. The plot: a documentary crew follows around four vampires as they room together in a flat in New Zealand. Turns out, while being a vampire can be cool, it also has its own problems. It’s hard to get into nightclubs when you have to be invited, getting dressed is a chore when you can’t see your reflection, and if you hit an artery while feeding, your nice white couch is soon going to be a nice red couch.
This movie is hilarious. It keeps asking, “How would everyday actions work when you’re a vampire?” and getting unexpected yet logical results. Not feeling up for a night on the town? Just kill somebody and feed on him, you’ll be fine. The characters bounce off each other incredibly well, and things get even more amusing when different parts of the underground supernatural world start bumping into the vampires. Werewolves go through anger management classes and refrain from bad language to keep themselves from transforming: “We’re werewolves, not swearwolves!” But they can still be distracted by thrown sticks. And when vampires get introduced to the Web: “Leave me to do my dark bidding on the Internet!” “What are you bidding on?” “I am bidding on a table…” It’s quiet, quirky, clever, and very underrated.
Oh, and it’s directed by and stars the guy who directed Thor: Ragnarok, for your bizarre trivia tangent of the day.
Anyway, one chapter and an epilogue to go in Twilight. Home stretch.
Reviewing bad material is worth it when you get to write things like this. :3
When there's so little to talk about in a chapter, you can point out what you could be reading/watching instead.
I get the feeling that the answer isn't "torn to pieces." This greatly disappoints me.
If you want a book series that does the "our vampires are different" well (and before Twilight) check out the Cirque du Freak series. It's 12 books, but altogether probably about the same length as Twilight? They aren't long.
I keep seeing your suggestions of how to improve the worldbuilding, and thinking, "yeah, like CdF did!" Like with the garlic thing; that's addressed a couple chapters into the first book. They meet a vampire, and try to fend him off with all the usual stuff. He takes the cross and puts it in his shirt pocket, eats the garlic whole, and washes it down with the holy water.
When he's confronted about it, he reveals that the whole garlic thing was basically a prank; they spread it intentionally, because seeing so many people fall for it was funny.