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bellaslilpapercut · 3 years

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Eclipse reread part 2! This is gonna cover a lot of chapters because I forgot to include stuff from chapters 4, 5, and 6 in part 1 (in my defense your honor, this book is very grating to read). Awayyy we go:

1. so chapters 4-6 really could have been one chapter tbh since the plot is: Bella ditches work at Newton’s Outfitters to hang with Jake and then writes some graduation invites with Angela. She pushes her rusty old behemoth as fast as it can go through driving rain but then hangs outside with Jake the whole time so I don’t really know where the rain went. She also manages to hear Jake gasp through her closed car door! Super sonic! Anyway, Bella insists that Edward is a good guy, Jake makes Bella hold his hand, Jake explains imprinting (yuck we can skip that), and then Edward drives threateningly past Bella while she’s on her way to Angela’s house. Angela reminds Bella that, at his core, Edward is a teen boy who is Totally Jealous of how Ripped and Sexy her 16 year old best friend is. Then Alice kidnaps Bella. Fun times!

2. During the imprinting convo it becomes very apparent that Meyer thinks the worst thing that can happen to a girl is getting broken up with. Somehow Leah got the “worst end” of the Sam/Emily/Leah fiasco despite Sam turning into a “monster” and Emily getting literally mauled in the face. What’s worse is later in the book, during the “Legends” chapter, when Bella wonders if Leah thinks Emily’s scars are a form of “justice.” Yea, Bella, that’s justice.

3. I love this Rosalie quote but hate the entirety of they way meyer writes her story. Others have mentioned it before but Meyer writes Rose's dialogue there as if Rose is an author and not like...a person telling a story. An easy fix would be to format Rosalie's story "flash back" style rather than have her narrate all the way through. Then you can include all the superfluous details of exactly what everyone's voice sounded like and all the excessive dialogue tags you want.

I also Violently Abhor this quote here:

Yea, meyer, the Hot Girl hates your self-insert because her stupid ass brother didn't have the hots for her. It just reads like weird middle school revenge fantasy "I only hated you because you were so Special!!!" Sure, sure. Also "all those females!" People don't talk like that @stephanie

4. I do love the scene when Bella “escapes” from Alice with Jake (I don’t know why i put escape in quotes, Alice could definitely murk Bella) but then that whole adventure ends with Jake telling Bella he’d rather she die than turn into a vampire. And yeah, fair buddy, but also you’ve known Bella for a long time. This should not be a surprise to you at all even a little bit. a) she mentioned it before, b) you knew she would never get over Edward even if your plan in NM had worked, and c) you’ve known that she’s fully obsessed with the Cullen’s since you started hanging out with her again. The last time you guys hung out she went on an impassioned rampage about how lovely and good and fantastic Edward is (footage not found) I really don’t know why you’re surprised that this hard-headed girl is prepared to commit to vampirism for him. She is not normal lmfao.

5. The legends chapter. Oh boy. Stephanie, Meyer, Smeyer. Honestly it might have been less offensive if she had just made up a whole new tribe to give these backstories to, for all that they have in common with real Quileute legends but actually that would still be offensive and terrible anyway. I don’t know how to describe this adequately but if you’ve ever seen G.I. Joe’s portrayal of indigenous people that’s exactly what meyer made Old Quil and Billy’s dialogue sound like. Just absolutely dripping with Mystical Native/ Magical Native trope from the content to the tone. https://mthg.org/ Because it can’t be plugged enough.

6. The legends chapter ends with this Wuthering Heights quote:

I have no qualms with it's inclusion, if you really want to push the Edward is Heathcliff and Bella is Cathy agenda, I don't believe it but fine, whatever. But those last two paragraphs are such a dumb way to end a chapter. Every chapter ending should make the reader want to turn the page: this makes me want to shut the book (actually I did take a long break after this lmfao). Anyway, just end the quote on "drank his blood," bold those three words, and end the chapter there. Don't go back and say "the three words that stood out were... Anyway it could have fallen to any page I believe in coincidence teehee!!" That's just annoying.

7. Okay guys I hate to say it but Edward does get a lil bit of ~character growth after the first few chapters. He comes home after having Bella kidnapped (she decides not to be angry, surprise surprise) and is all "so I've been thinking about it and you're right my Beloved Angel Face or whatever, please hang out with Jacob but also wear a helmet on your motorcycle my Beloved Dumb Idiot or whatever" (paraphrase). And he also says this in chapter 12:

Which is like, man I hate when I agree with Edward but I agree with Edward here. Now I know from MS that he only wants Bella to stay human because he's creating an Unfolding Drama in his head but this bit of dialogue is really sweet. And it's funny that he thought Bella didn't want to marry him because she just wanted to use him for immortality but it's also a Dark Reminder that he's literally only romantic with her because he can't read her mind and can't tell that she's just as obsessed with his looks as the other Teen Girls TM.

8. uuuh Jasper’s Backstory Time. This is so infuriating to read for so many reasons. So we know that smeyer got Jasper’s name from a confederate memorial/ listing (from a New Moon Q&A but the link isn’t secure so I can’t share) so I know that his backstory was always meant to be Confederate Soldier which makes everything else about his characterization just baffling. Again, he was the only Cullen that was genuinely kind to Bella besides Carlisle for the entire first book and he’s still incredibly kind during Eclipse (which is another issue I have though because no one mentions again that Jasper tried to eat Bella and they stand close to each other and hang out and Bella’s never like “this is scary, this dude tried to kill me” but i digress). The point is: smeyer knew he was going to be a confederate from book 1. She never addresses that this was bad, she never has Jasper mention that he regrets his role in the war, he is the only Cullen that’s actually capable of empathizing with humans anymore (Carlisle cares but I would not categorize him as empathetic), it just... None of these pieces fit together. This is a fraught and bloody history that smeyer throws in with no thought to how it might alienate black readers (though tbh she constantly emphasizes “white beauty” throughout the series so I doubt she cares) and the editors don’t question it either. No one, at any point in time, said “Hey, steph, you know confederates fought for slavery, right?” Every black american deserves reparations. White women and men who glorify the civil war should be the first to pay up.

9. I’m gonna jump back to chapters 9 & 10 here (target & scent, respectively) to say: no tension is being effectively built. I get it, someone stole your clothes. You’re annoyed because you have nothing to wear and Victoria is scary. But where is she? Where is the volturi? Move it along, please! This is one of the challenges of 1st person narrative because the author is stuck in the eyes of, usually, the person who knows the least. Meyer is not a talented enough author to make this interesting. Not to bring up THG again but Suzanne Collins really knew how to work 1st person. Everything that Katniss asserts with certainty throughout the series gets either confirmed or denied by the narrative, keeping it interesting. She assumes the worst of the people around her so we’re pleasantly surprised when people violate those assumptions. We’re kept on edge by how little Katniss knows and SC never gifts Katniss with more knowledge than she could be expected to have. Bella is constantly gifted with knowledge and her assumptions are rarely proven wrong. You can dig into the canon a little bit more, read the lexicon and the guide, and find all the examples of Bella being unreliable or making wrong assumptions. But within the narrative she is rarely incorrect. She doesn’t get opportunities to grow out of her false assumptions (while Edward does, at least in Eclipse). So to keep the Victoria debacle interesting, smeyer has to plant seeds like- during these two chapters- Bella thinking of Laurent and Victoria while the cullens discuss who could have been in Bella’s room. That just doesn’t cut it for me.

This is hella long and I’m only halfway through the book. I probably should split the second half into two parts as well but based on how talented smeyer is at stretching out the mundane, especially just before the climax, I probably wont need to.

#eclipse reread #saga reread #the twilight saga #twilight meta #twilight renaissance #long post

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songofproserpine · 6 years

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Re-reading DEMON IN MY VIEW reminds me of just how many similarities this book has to TWILIGHT (which may explain why I liked the latter for a short while). DEMON came first by several years, and I don’t think Smeyer read it, since she openly admitted to not reading anything to do with vampires prior to writing about them (the gall). But here they are:

Inexplicably world-weary teenage girl protagonist who has no friends, makes no friends, and isn’t... very nice

Gains the attention of an old vampire that she’s dreamt about (and written books about)

Every supernatural thing in a five mile radius goes out of its way to give a shit about this unfriendly girl and her existence

The main lead is a really blatant self-insert of the author--who was also a teenage girl when she wrote this--who also wrote about vampires--whose books are openly referenced in this book--whose writing life is pretty much the only thing the heroine has going for her

The main lead is hunted repeatedly by a vampire who is out for a mixture of revenge and sheer sadistic fun, and gets beaten the fuck up (like, really horribly beaten)

The main lead has no situational awareness whatsoever and constantly gets herself into trouble of varying degrees (despite being written as deeply mature)

Vampires can go out in the daytime (they don’t sparkle), and they have weird X-Men-esque powers

The healer character has a name beginning with Car (Caryn in this book, Carlisle in TWILIGHT)

The vampire follows the human girl in pure Edward Cullen stalker-y fashion--and they joke about it

Now I’m not against Mary Sues or self-inserts. I don’t think that makes a story immediately bad. I do think that if you’re going to do a self-insert, you should make the character dynamic, well-rounded, and engaging--and that includes giving them flaws. Jessica in DIMV is flawed--she’s unfriendly, openly hostile, dismissive of even her adopted mother--but it’s never addressed as something she needs to change, or something she’s even aware is a bad thing.

When Caryn reaches out to her repeatedly, she shuts the other girl down and tells her to fuck off--even after Caryn confesses, “Hey, I’m a witch and my clan is trying to keep you safe from all the vampires you pissed off--so with your permission, may I please help you?” Jessica treats everyone else as a nuisance, but doesn’t really learn that this is a bad thing. The text never challenges her shittiness. It doesn’t exactly reward her for it either, but she never learns to change.

Aubrey--the aforementioned hot vampire dude who is interested in her--reflects to himself that Jessica is strange and unusual. He even says she gives off “the air of a predator,” which takes him aback.

Now. When you read a vampire novel you gotta give a little bit of leeway for some of the verbiage--things like hunt, feed, predatory/prey, etc. These all enter the lexicon as meaning certain things despite their other implications. But reading this book again now, and seeing Jessica as the cold-hearted absolute shitkid that she is, and seeing her compared to a predator, just makes me think one thing: Jessica is a life-ruiner. She ruins lives. She has no regard for the welfare or emotions of other people, only her own. She plays a part in every problem that comes her way, and never owns up to being partly responsible. She drives people away and never stops to think, ‘Hey, this isn’t right.’ She’s a Janis Ian, and Janis was the real antagonist of Mean Girls.

I think I’m meant to see Jessica as this isolated, dark little grump because of her strange circumstances. Spoilers: Her mother was pregnant, got turned into a vampire, and after some weird magic made her mother human again, Jessica was born. She was basically ‘suspended’ in utero for a couple decades, feeding off of blood and other weird dark powers that her mom had (because vampires). And hey, listen: that’s really fucking cool. In fact, I dig that! But the story... never goes anywhere with them. In fact, the story stops just as it starts to get really interesting.

Jessica’s weird dreams about vampires and witches are all her sight-jacking her mother’s sire’s memories--which, again, is super cool. But it... never goes anywhere. How else does this affect her? Is she even the slightest bit aware that there’s something weird in her brain? Does she sometimes look in horror at her behavior and think, ‘This isn’t right, this isn’t me, but I don’t know how to stop?’ Does her proximity to vampire-ness just make her an interminable shithead with no regard for the emotions of others, and nothing else? Christ. How boring.

And to make it weirder, Aubrey likes her. Why the hell does he like her? He’s got no personality in this book. He’s just... there. A name on the page. A thing. That sometimes does things. But mostly does nothing. And then when he does do things, it’s too little too late and he just has to pick up the slack. So maybe he’s more like a real man than I thought.

DEMON IN MY VIEW can be read in 90 minutes (or less, if you read fast), and the story ends just as the actual story begins. There’s so many more questions the book leaves you with, and not the good “I have answers but I want to see where they go” questions. Just flat out, “What happens?”

What happens to Caryn now that she’s been tainted by dark powers? Is she outcast from her clan? Is her life in danger? What about her powers: are they stronger, weaker, changed?

What happens to Jessica now that she knows not only is her birth mother alive, but that she, Jessica, has part of the first vampire’s powers in her?

Does the first vampire even know that Jessica is alive? Does he know that Jessica’s mother is alive? Is he aware that he and Jessica have been sharing memories?

What does Jessica think about her new unlife--does she like it? Is she a little scared? Does she miss anything about how she was before?

What do Jessica and Aubrey think about each other now that they’re effectively stuck together (until this all blows over)? What do they learn about each other? How are they tested? How do they grow together?

These are all things the story could have gone on to address, because they’re all really interesting, and the set up to these questions are all there--but these characters never reappear again. Ever. Anywhere. And it’s infuriating.

Reading this again just reminded me of how I felt when I first read it as a teenager: The witches in these books are FAR more interesting, and I wish more was done with them. Alas.

#honestly if i had to choose between mormon vampire bs #and teenage self inserts #i'd go with the self insert every time #krist reads

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