Twilight

[Seventh Pup]

I think were some of the appeal comes from is that many teenage girls (and even a few older ones) feel like they haven't accomplished much; don't know how to define themselves but still want to be sought after. Bella accomplishing nothing in the first book, while I gave up the series at the first book my roommate has continued to them and confirms she accomplishes nothing in the second book either.

Yet despite the fact that she has accomplished nothing, has interest in nothing, has knowledge about nothing. Boys are fighting tooth and nail for the right to woo her. Edward lurves her sooooo much that he will commit suicide at the thought of losing her. Jacob lurves her sooooo much that he is happy to get even a scrap of her. All the other teenage boys in Forks would drop a girl friend if Bella smiled at them.

During the first book Edward is fascinated by Bella she could talk about flossing and Edward would listen with wrapped attention. That is every awkward girls fantasy; I have a feeling Ms Meyers did not date much in high school.

Bale I am currently reading Abarat by Clive Barker; while I am only 3/4 of the way through the first book I have to say I'm enjoying it. The main character is a young woman who is neither wimp nor a super hero. So far there have been no love interests. It is refreshing and I would recommend to your teenage neighbor.

[Nymeria Sand]

[quote name='Balefont' post='1618890' date='Dec 14 2008, 10.37']As in I don't like it but I understand it? To an extent, yes, and I'm planning on reading the rest of the books to get the full perspective. In the meantime I'm feverishly looking for books and movies for the teen girls I can use in conversation to counter Twilight. On the movie front I have a full arsenal. But I'm having a tough time literature wise trying to find suitable replacements that are easier for the young girl to digest than Jane Austin yet not the repetitive, clunky drivel presented in Twilight. I'm open to any suggestions.[/quote]
Well...here's one. And yes, Austen is involved. :) Since Meyer compares Edward to Darcy and Heathcliff, maybe they could read at least part of Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights to get a feel for those characters. Then compare and contrast. I think they may find that Edward is left in the dust by Darcy, who is a flawed character but wonderful nonetheless.

Meyer, especially in Eclipse, continually quotes passages from Wuthering Heights. I think I'd start there. Bella more or less compares herself to Cathy and makes the comment that the only redeeming quality either character has is their love for each other. That might be a good teaching point.

[quote]Oh yeah, and in continuance from my earlier posits with respect to "safe sexual tension", we mustn't forget also that the Edward character is a mature '17 year old'. How many 17 year old, or teen boys for that matter, act so 'grown up'? Again, a mature 17 year old boy is another fantasy element of the story.[/quote]
But he's not 17. He's 110 or thereabouts. Now, his body may be that of a 17 year old, but he's seen so much more than Bella can possibly imagine. Even the most mature 17 year old boy on the planet would think of nothing but sex--he would continually be trying to get her into bed with him. Any girl who thinks otherwise is delusional.

[quote name='Shryke' post='1629929' date='Dec 24 2008, 17.04']Agreed Balefront. Probably the main reason I find the series so offensive. The type of relationship it idealises are the kind that almost always turn violent to one degree or another. And even when it doesn't, it's just generally unhealthy for both parties.[/quote]
Agreed. My daughter and I did talk about this when I finished Eclipse. Her reasoning--hey, she's only 12, I need to give her a break for that--is that Edward has Alice hold Bella against her will "because he loves her and wants to keep her safe." I tried to explain that no man should ever do that to a woman and you should never accept a man who would do that to you. Keeping her safe is one thing--taking away her free will is something else altogether. And considering the free will issue came up in the fight with the Volturi in Book 4, I think that is something she needs to think about a little more closely. Jake is young and can be expected to act his age. Edward has no excuse.

I thought it interesting that (according to my daughter) it was okay for Edward to kidnap Bella, but it wasn't okay for Jake to kiss her by force (yet another fantasy).

I liked Jake--he's the only one who sees Bella clearly for what she is, and yet he loves her anyway. I told my daughter that if she ever treats a boy the way Bella treated Jake, I'll slap her silly and then ground her for a year.

Oh, and someone please explain the vampire sex-insemination thing. I'm a little confused by that. Is Edward an incubus? That would make him a demon, not a vampire. If he's not an incubus, how in the world did his sperm survive? Is his genetic material that of a 17 year old as well?

How would a vampire get an erection, anyway? There's no blood flow to cause it. Or is he permanently hard as rock?

[Balefont]

[quote name='Nymeria Sand' post='1632944' date='Dec 29 2008, 11.01']But he's not 17. He's 110 or thereabouts. Now, his body may be that of a 17 year old, but he's seen so much more than Bella can possibly imagine. Even the most mature 17 year old boy on the planet would think of nothing but sex--he would continually be trying to get her into bed with him. Any girl who thinks otherwise is delusional.[/quote]

That's why I used quotes when I said 'mature 17 year old' - because he's 100 years old in a 17 year old's body. I guess that's the only way to land a mature male. le sigh


[quote]I liked Jake--he's the only one who sees Bella clearly for what she is, and yet he loves her anyway. I told my daughter that if she ever treats a boy the way Bella treated Jake, I'll slap her silly and then ground her for a year.[/quote]

Agreed. It helped fuel my Bella loathing.

[quote]Oh, and someone please explain the vampire sex-insemination thing. I'm a little confused by that. Is Edward an incubus? That would make him a demon, not a vampire. If he's not an incubus, how in the world did his sperm survive? Is his genetic material that of a 17 year old as well?[/quote]

Holy crap my mind has been boggled by the same thing. How can the undead have viable sperm. Does. Not. Compute.

I see the whole pregnancy thing to be yet another of Meyer's plot points to reinforce Bella's helplessness and rid Edward of his 'guilt'. All of it - disgusting (and I don't mean the mild gore).

[quote]How would a vampire get an erection, anyway? There's no blood flow to cause it. Or is he permanently hard as rock?[/quote]

:lol: I guess all that mentioning of "stone" and "marble like skin" can lead one's imagination to guess... :stunned:

I finished Breaking Dawn last night and I loved that book because it provided the final nail on the coffin (hardee har har) on the series being utter shit. I'm so satisfied in my loathing (can you see me gloating in my loathing?). The series was absolutely absurd and I pity the fans. I've never met a series of characters I could care so little for I don't even wish they'd die.

Hopefully Gene Wolfe can help me rid the awful taste in my mouth.

[Nymeria Sand]

[quote]I see the whole pregnancy thing to be yet another of Meyer's plot points to reinforce Bella's helplessness and rid Edward of his 'guilt'. All of it - disgusting (and I don't mean the mild gore).[/quote]
I never thought of that. :) What I was thinking was that it was a giant plot hole--or a way for Meyer to disregard the rules of her universe in a way that made no sense at all in order to achieve the final book's showdown with the Volutri. Which is fine (not really, and Rowling did the same in the final HP novel as well), but it has to make sense. Even in fictional universes the characters must obey the rules set down by the author. We'd never been given a reason to think that Bella and Edward could conceive a child--have sex, yes, but not conceive. Meyer does try to explain it, but she doesn't go far enough. How, for example, does a vampire have 25 pairs of chromosomes and a werewolf 24? (And just how many does Nessie have, anyway?) How can a male vampire achieve an erection much less have viable sperm? Granted, younger readers may not even think about that sort of thing, but older ones will. I don't just mean adults, but older teens as well.

I was disappointed in Charlie as a father in this book. What parent would go along with that "need to know" bullshit Bella was trying to push on him? I know I wouldn't.

[quote]I finished Breaking Dawn last night and I loved that book because it provided the final nail on the coffin (hardee har har) on the series being utter shit.[/quote]
I finished it last night, too, after skipping chapters because I was bored out of my mind. Of the four books, BD was by far the worst of a bad lot.

My daughter thinks I'm just being rotten. She enjoyed it and that's that as far as she's concerned. I guess I need to work on her literary education a bit. Part of the bargain was that she read The Hobbit after this series. This is the first YA series she's really read (besides A Series of Unfortunate Events) and I want her to read more than just this. There are plenty of good YA series out there that are far better than this garbage.

[quote]The series was absolutely absurd and I pity the fans. I've never met a series of characters I could care so little for I don't even wish they'd die.[/quote]

All in all, this series makes HP look like classic literature (and I devoured HP, all the while acknowledging it was a good story even if not brilliantly written). It was full of one dimensional characters I cared nothing about. Alice and Carlisle were my favorite characters, but we didn't get to see nearly enough of them. Carlisle played the part of the "wise old mentor", guiding Edward through his mistakes, and he genuinely wants the best for all involved.

I was really hoping Victoria got to Bella in Eclipse. I think she would richly deserve it.

[Ran]

[quote]How, for example, does a vampire have 25 pairs of chromosomes and a werewolf 24? (And just how many does Nessie have, anyway?) How can a male vampire achieve an erection much less have viable sperm? Granted, younger readers may not even think about that sort of thing, but older ones will. I don't just mean adults, but older teens as well.[/quote]

Why do these questions matter? I mean, Meyer putting in the chromosome detail is I guess cause to question why _she_ felt the need to put it in in the first place, but ... why get caught up on the question of how a vampire manages an erection or has viable sperm? You're already ac, vampire sperm) seems a bit strange.

I know there are doubtless many, many flaws in Meyer's work, but her not going into such minutiae can't possibly be among them.

Get Robin McKinley's [i]Sunshine[/i] and Tanith Lee's [i]The Silver Metal Lover[/i] in your daughter's hands. They are much better than what Meyer's books appear to be, but would have some elements which your daughter may like (vampires in the former, teenage female protagonists blossoming through a romantic relationship in both).

[Nymeria Sand]

[quote]Why do these questions matter? I mean, Meyer putting in the chromosome detail is I guess cause to question why _she_ felt the need to put it in in the first place, but ... why get caught up on the question of how a vampire manages an erection or has viable sperm? You're already ac, vampire sperm) seems a bit strange.[/quote]
They matter because it doesn't make [i]sense[/i], Ran. Even in fiction, things have to make sense. They have to be believable or it just comes off as a cheesy plot device.

I don't see why she needed to bring up the chromosome count at all, especially if she's not going to follow through on it. And the fact that vampires have a different chromosomal count than humans makes them biologically incompatible--any children produced will almost defintely be sterile (along with other mutations) since they are technically different species. (Which leads to another hole--Bella couldn't have children with Jacob, either, so Edward's offer to Jake is rendered null and void. (There's a biology lesson in there somewhere.)

Meyer opened the door to such questions when she put it out there in print.

[Ran]

The chromosomes I already granted. It's the erection thing that I don't get. She can just handwave it as magical, right? So it's a meaningless question.

[Nymeria Sand]

[quote]She can just handwave it as magical, right?[/quote]
I would go along with that only after Bella became a vampire herself. If it had happened afterward, I wouldn't question it so much, since she would physically be on the same wavelength with him. But don't forget, Edward isn't fond of anyone thinking vampires are "magical" creatures, which takes the magic out of it altogether. Mythological creatures, maybe, but not magical.

[quote]So it's a meaningless question.[/quote]
Not to me, and not to others I know. It shows that Meyer didn't think that final book through before she sat down and wrote it. Even [i]she[/i] had to question it, and she came up with the lame "he's an incubus".

[Balefont]

[quote name='Nymeria Sand' post='1633014' date='Dec 29 2008, 12.27']I finished it last night, too, after skipping chapters because I was bored out of my mind. Of the four books, BD was by far the worst of a bad lot.[/quote]

Me too! :lol: It was start skimming or stab out my eyes.


Oh and yay for [i]deus ex machina[/i]! The whole 'saga' is slathered in it.

And Ran, I'm sorry. Anyone who can defend the travesty that is [i]Heroes[/i] will obviously differ greatly with me on opinions of [b]decedent[/b] escapist fantasy.

[Ran]

I suppose that's true. I figure escapist fantasy about dead folks (whether vampires or zombies) don't necessarily have to have scientific explanations for things. Comic book science, zombie science, vampire science -- whatever. You just sort of go with the flow, unless the story is [i]about[/i] the science to some degree.

[L'Sana]

[quote name='Nymeria Sand' post='1633014' date='Dec 29 2008, 10.27']How, for example, does a vampire have 25 pairs of chromosomes and a werewolf 24?[/quote]

What????

Granted, I haven't read these books and biology was always my worst subject, but everything I've heard about Twilight says that its vampires are humans who have been transformed, correct? Meaning that pretty-boy Sparkles would have been born a standard human with the usual 23 pairs. So where the heck did he manage to get 4 extra chromosomes?

[Shryke]

Those extra chromosomes are the ones that sparkle.

[oneeye]

Sigh, I didn't resist. And even worse I am liking it so far in a mindless way. At least in my defense I can say it beats Eragon.

[Mya Stone]

[quote name='Bach' post='1634462' date='Dec 30 2008, 19.14']Sigh, I didn't resist. And even worse I am liking it so far in a mindless way. At least in my defense I can say it beats Eragon.[/quote]

*pats* Bach.

I liked it too, in that same mindless way.

Bale already lectured me about it, to great extent.

And as I already said, my equation is Vampires + Star-Crossed Lovers = Mya's Kryptonite.

Oh well. :P

[Balefont]

[quote name='Mya Stone' post='1634473' date='Dec 30 2008, 19.29']*pats* Bach.

I liked it too, in that same mindless way.

Bale already lectured me about it, to great extent.

And as I already said, my equation is Vampires + Star-Crossed Lovers = Mya's Kryptonite.

Oh well. :P[/quote]

But fuckin'-A, Sarah, it's just sooooo [b][i]baaaaad[/i][/b]. Not in a mindless < sigh > way but in a eck < vomit > way. Sorry, now that I've read them, I really don't get the adult appeal. < shudder >

I will say I loved Breaking Dawn for the mere sake it wiped out all of my memories of the first three books. :thumbsup:

[mabbott74]

I've heard Bella in the Wheel of Time series has better character developement... And she was a ratty cart horse..

[Galactus]

[quote name='Ran' post='1633152' date='Dec 29 2008, 20.48']I suppose that's true. I figure escapist fantasy about dead folks (whether vampires or zombies) don't necessarily have to have scientific explanations for things. Comic book science, zombie science, vampire science -- whatever. You just sort of go with the flow, unless the story is [i]about[/i] the science to some degree.[/quote]

Magic, we don't have to explain it.

[Nymeria Sand]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1634313' date='Dec 30 2008, 15.59']Those extra chromosomes are the ones that sparkle.[/quote]
:thumbsup: Good one!

[quote]I suppose that's true. I figure escapist fantasy about dead folks (whether vampires or zombies) don't necessarily have to have scientific explanations for things. Comic book science, zombie science, vampire science -- whatever. You just sort of go with the flow, unless the story is about the science to some degree.[/quote]

I didn't really start thinking about the sex thing until the chromosome issue came up. The author threw the science into it; I just followed where it led. Maybe it's only scientific geeks like me who care about that sort of thing, but really, if you set up something like that, I still think it has to make sense within that framework. Now, if Meyer had set it up on some planet with its own different universe, that's different. But she didn't.

[quote]Granted, I haven't read these books and biology was always my worst subject, but everything I've heard about Twilight says that its vampires are humans who have been transformed, correct? Meaning that pretty-boy Sparkles would have been born a standard human with the usual 23 pairs. So where the heck did he manage to get 4 extra chromosomes?[/quote]

That's another one of my endless questions, L'Sana. In theory, the werewolves should not be able to have viable offspring, either.

[quote]Magic, we don't have to explain it.[/quote]
But it's not magic. It's mythology. :)

[The Anti-Targ]

[quote name='L'Sana' post='1634286' date='Dec 31 2008, 09.24']Granted, I haven't read these books and biology was always my worst subject, but everything I've heard about Twilight says that its vampires are humans who have been transformed, correct? Meaning that pretty-boy Sparkles would have been born a standard human with the usual 23 pairs. So where the heck did he manage to get 4 extra chromosomes?[/quote]

Oooo, this is fun. Coming up with a scientifically plausible explanation for how 23 pairs becomes 25. Quite easy really: the vampire toxin. The toxin is extremely genotoxic and mutagenic to the extent that it completely deranges the DNA structure of every cell in the body causing the 46 chromosomes to break up and re-form into 50 chromosomes. This also permits the interbreeding of vampire and human because the genes and size of the genome are identical, it's just the number of chromosomes are different.

So the human mate contributes 23 chromosomes and the vampire contributes 25 chromosomes in the mating process. Thus the total number of chromosomes in the offspring is 48, which means 24 base pairs. The offspring should therefore be a were-creature. Is this how it is in the books?

Is there a difference if the male is human and the female a vampire? Obviously the intrauterine environment of the female vampire (much colder for a start off) can have a significant influence on the phenotypic expression of the genome of the offspring. I vote Alice gets it on with Charlie and we see what happens.

In the world of inter-species hybrids you are more likely to get a fertile offspring if the offspring is female, though in some cases (e.g. ligers) males are also fertile, though they are "sub-fertile" meaning they not as reliably fertile as the males of the pure species from which they are derived.

But given the hypothesis above that vampire genetics is a re-ordering, and a mutation of the normal human genome it is difficult to draw reliable parallels between genuine inter-species breeding. I tried an on-line search of the 'Journal of Vampiric and Were-creature Reproduction' but there were no entires for human-vampire or human-were-creature reproductive research. I thought that was a bit odd, particularly for the human-were-creature inter-breeding since I'm sure native americans have been inter-marrying with humans ever since European settlement in North America. Perhaps there have been sufficient studies in human medical journals that the Society for the Advancement of Mythical Science deemed it to be an unnecessary expenditure of limited research funds.

I imagine with the rise of vampire vegetarianism within the last 50 years or so there is likely to be a greater frequency of non-fatal, close interactions between humans and vampires and hence there will be a need for further research into this whole area, including vampire erectile dysfunction.

Don't you find it rather fascinating that Native Americans are a different species to all the rest of humanity? Is this adding some racist undertones to the misogynistic elements? Is this why Bella treats Jake so badly, as people have noted, when he tries to become more than friends? And why Jake is the only person to try to forcibly engage in sexual activity with Bella; while pure, marble-white Edward is the very essence of Victorian chastity? Hmmm this is another rather disturbing turn.

[loathsome warg]

My best friend just called to inform me that she LOVED the book. I think I need to find a new best friend... eep!