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** The powers. They're supposedly based on qualities possessed as a human, i.e. Jasper was charismatic, so he's an empath, Edward was perceptive so he can read minds, etc. Little Jane's power is to cause extreme pain. What does that say about her life pre-vamp?!
*** She was going to be burned at the stake. It can be assumed she was probably accused of being a witch. That would point to her living a life of being a social pariah, i.e. a life full of pain.
*** This one may be a bit of a stretch, but it's a valid theory: As mentioned above, Jane and Alec were set to be burned at the stake. Obviously, the Volturi must have "rescued" them--and these two children would have ''no idea what was going on''. If they nabbed the kids and turned them immediately with little attempt at explanation, what would their final thoughts be before the pain made thinking impossible? Now imagine that Alec is bitten first. He's in unbearable pain, and sees the Volturi going for his sister. He would be very, very focused on the thought "I want to shield her from this, please, I want to protect her from the pain!" and so that's the power he gained. Jane, on the other hand, is shown to be the much more impulsive, easily-angered type, and would be more likely to think "I want to hurt these bastards as much as they're hurting my brother!" Thus, that's the ability ''she'' got.
**** Which leads to some Fridge Horror of its own--what would make them turn from fearing the Volturi to doing their dirty work?
**** They're never sent out together. It's always either Jane ''or'' Alec--which makes no sense, as they're more powerful together...Until you realize: they may work for the Volturi [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation because if they don't,]] [[AdultFear they'll kill their twin.]]
*** She was going to be burned at the stake. It can be assumed she was probably accused of being a witch. That would point to her living a life of being a social pariah, i.e. a life full of pain.
*** This one may be a bit of a stretch, but it's a valid theory: As mentioned above, Jane and Alec were set to be burned at the stake. Obviously, the Volturi must have "rescued" them--and these two children would have ''no idea what was going on''. If they nabbed the kids and turned them immediately with little attempt at explanation, what would their final thoughts be before the pain made thinking impossible? Now imagine that Alec is bitten first. He's in unbearable pain, and sees the Volturi going for his sister. He would be very, very focused on the thought "I want to shield her from this, please, I want to protect her from the pain!" and so that's the power he gained. Jane, on the other hand, is shown to be the much more impulsive, easily-angered type, and would be more likely to think "I want to hurt these bastards as much as they're hurting my brother!" Thus, that's the ability ''she'' got.
**** Which leads to some Fridge Horror of its own--what would make them turn from fearing the Volturi to doing their dirty work?
**** They're never sent out together. It's always either Jane ''or'' Alec--which makes no sense, as they're more powerful together...Until you realize: they may work for the Volturi [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation because if they don't,]] [[AdultFear they'll kill their twin.]]
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****
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* Try reading the series remembering that in traditional literature, vampires can put humans under their complete thrall. Suddenly, Bella's complete fascination with Edward and her willingness to forgive him anything almost seems like ''good'' writing...
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** The powers. They're supposedly based on qualities possessed as a human, i.e. Jasper was charismatic, so he's an empath, Edward was perceptive so he can read minds, etc. Little Jane's power is to cause extreme pain. What does that say about her life pre-vamp????
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** The powers. They're supposedly based on qualities possessed as a human, i.e. Jasper was charismatic, so he's an empath, Edward was perceptive so he can read minds, etc. Little Jane's power is to cause extreme pain. What does that say about her life pre-vamp????pre-vamp?!
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*** This one may be a bit of a stretch, but it's a valid theory: As mentioned above, Jane and Alec were set to be burned at the stake. Obviously, the Volturi must have "rescued" them--and these two children would have ''no idea what was going on''. If they nabbed the kids and turned them immediately with little attempt at explanation, what would their final thoughts be before the pain made thinking impossible? Now imagine that Alec is bitten first. He's in unbearable pain, and sees the Volturi going for his sister. He would be very, very focused on the thought "I want to shield her from this, please, I want to protect her from the pain!" and so that's the power he gained. Jane, on the other hand, is shown to be the much more impulsive, easily-angered type, and would be more likely to think "I want to hurt these bastards as much as they're hurting my brother!" Thus, that's the ability ''she'' got.
**** Which leads to some Fridge Horror of its own--what would make them turn from fearing the Volturi to doing their dirty work?
**** They're never sent out together. It's always either Jane ''or'' Alec--which makes no sense, as they're more powerful together...Until you realize: they may work for the Volturi [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation because if they don't,]] [[AdultFear they'll kill their twin.]]
**** Which leads to some Fridge Horror of its own--what would make them turn from fearing the Volturi to doing their dirty work?
**** They're never sent out together. It's always either Jane ''or'' Alec--which makes no sense, as they're more powerful together...Until you realize: they may work for the Volturi [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation because if they don't,]] [[AdultFear they'll kill their twin.]]
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**** [[InsaneTrollLogic Because everyone who reads these books will TOTALLY lable everything as fantasy, even the realistic elements of it (because snow isn't cold, and if you hit your head on the pavement you won't sometimes need a hospital, right?), and fantasy novles never have anything to say about reality that a reader can take away from it.]] [[SarcasmMode And it's not like there are any cases of girls taking these books way too seriously anyway. Like I never heard girls in front of me in a class talking about how Edward was the perfect man, and they wanted a boyfriend like him on a consistent basis.]] [[FacePalm Right.]]
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**** [[InsaneTrollLogic Because everyone who reads these books will TOTALLY lable label everything as fantasy, even the realistic elements of it (because snow isn't cold, and if you hit your head on the pavement you won't sometimes need a hospital, right?), and fantasy novles movles never have anything to say about reality that a reader can take away from it.]] [[SarcasmMode And it's not like there are any cases of girls taking these books way too seriously anyway. Like I never heard girls in front of me in a class talking about how Edward was the perfect man, and they wanted a boyfriend like him on a consistent basis.]] [[FacePalm Right.]]
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*** About the was Jacob imprinted on Renesmee. At first I thought that it was just idiotic, but then I realized that if someone made it happen, then it was a smart way to prevent war. And since god almost canonically exists in the series, maybe he, or some kind of twisted destiny, decided that it would be bad, very bad, if there was a war between the 'vampire hunters' and the 'good vampires'. The cullens didn't want to fight the werewolfs in the first place, and this way, the werewolfs have a bond with the cullens in a way that they're NOT ALLOWED to attack them. I mean, I don't think that god would worry about pedophillia. There are more than enough evidence for that in the bible.
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*** About the was Jacob imprinted on Renesmee. At first I thought that it was just idiotic, but then I realized that if someone made it happen, then it was a smart way to prevent war. And since god almost canonically exists in the series, maybe he, or some kind of twisted destiny, decided that it would be bad, very bad, if there was a war between the 'vampire hunters' and the 'good vampires'. The cullens Cullens didn't want to fight the werewolfs in the first place, and this way, the werewolfs have a bond with the cullens Cullens in a way that they're NOT ALLOWED to attack them. I mean, I don't think that god God would worry about pedophillia. There are more than enough evidence for that in the bible.Bible.
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* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[Literature/NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''Literature/TheCastleOfOtranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
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* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[Literature/NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''Literature/TheCastleOfOtranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' ''Literature/WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
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** According to WordOfGod? "Isabella" has always been a popular Gothic-character name because it was the name of the heroine of the "first" Gothic novel ''Literature/TheCastleOfOtranto''. It's also the name of Heathcliff's wife in Bella's favorite novel ''WutheringHeights''.
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** According to WordOfGod? "Isabella" has always been a popular Gothic-character name because it was the name of the heroine of the "first" Gothic novel ''Literature/TheCastleOfOtranto''. It's also the name of Heathcliff's wife in Bella's favorite novel ''WutheringHeights''.''Literature/WutheringHeights''.
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** According to WordOfGod? "Isabella" has always been a popular Gothic-character name because it was the name of the heroine of the "first" Gothic novel ''The Castle of Otranto''. It's also the name of Heathcliff's wife in Bella's favorite novel ''WutheringHeights''.
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** According to WordOfGod? "Isabella" has always been a popular Gothic-character name because it was the name of the heroine of the "first" Gothic novel ''The Castle of Otranto''.''Literature/TheCastleOfOtranto''. It's also the name of Heathcliff's wife in Bella's favorite novel ''WutheringHeights''.
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* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''The Castle of Otranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
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* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[NorthangerAbbey [[Literature/NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''The Castle of Otranto'' ''Literature/TheCastleOfOtranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
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* Vampires can't sleep. Ever. ''Ever''. They are constantly awake and aware of everything going on around them. What happens if a person with clinical depression is turned into a vampire? Hell, what happens if even a stable person goes through a shitty emotional period? Most people, when in a depressed state, begin sleeping a lot more often and for a lot longer than is considered normal. They do this to get away from the pain. What if you ''can't''? You can't ever stop thinking, can't ever stop feeling, can't ever just "sleep" on a problem. The conscious mind ''never has a chance to rest''. Physiologically, vampires may not need to sleep, but ''psychologically''...? For some people, it would AndIMustScream Lite.
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* Vampires can't sleep. Ever. ''Ever''. They are constantly awake and aware of everything going on around them. What happens if a person with clinical depression is turned into a vampire? Hell, what happens if even a stable person goes through a shitty emotional period? Most people, when in a depressed state, begin sleeping a lot more often and for a lot longer than is considered normal. They do this to get away from the pain. What if you ''can't''? You can't ever stop thinking, can't ever stop feeling, can't ever just "sleep" on a problem. The conscious mind ''never has a chance to rest''. Physiologically, vampires may not need to sleep, but ''psychologically''...? For some people, it would be AndIMustScream Lite.
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** . . . Excuse me, I need to go [[BrainBleach carve out my brains with a spoon]].
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** . . . Excuse me, I need to go [[BrainBleach carve out my brains with a spoon]].spoon]].
*** Oh ''god'', [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel please pass it over when you're done]].
* Vampires can't sleep. Ever. ''Ever''. They are constantly awake and aware of everything going on around them. What happens if a person with clinical depression is turned into a vampire? Hell, what happens if even a stable person goes through a shitty emotional period? Most people, when in a depressed state, begin sleeping a lot more often and for a lot longer than is considered normal. They do this to get away from the pain. What if you ''can't''? You can't ever stop thinking, can't ever stop feeling, can't ever just "sleep" on a problem. The conscious mind ''never has a chance to rest''. Physiologically, vampires may not need to sleep, but ''psychologically''...? For some people, it would AndIMustScream Lite.
*** Oh ''god'', [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel please pass it over when you're done]].
* Vampires can't sleep. Ever. ''Ever''. They are constantly awake and aware of everything going on around them. What happens if a person with clinical depression is turned into a vampire? Hell, what happens if even a stable person goes through a shitty emotional period? Most people, when in a depressed state, begin sleeping a lot more often and for a lot longer than is considered normal. They do this to get away from the pain. What if you ''can't''? You can't ever stop thinking, can't ever stop feeling, can't ever just "sleep" on a problem. The conscious mind ''never has a chance to rest''. Physiologically, vampires may not need to sleep, but ''psychologically''...? For some people, it would AndIMustScream Lite.
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***She was going to be burned at the stake. It can be assumed she was probably accused of being a witch. That would point to her living a life of being a social pariah, i.e. a life full of pain.
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*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[narm fifteen-year-old]] [[CantGrowUp in an immortal body]].
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*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[narm fifteen-year-old]] [[CantGrowUp fifteen-year-old in an immortal body]].
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* Admittedly I'm not really a ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fan to start with, so, when I started seeing the trailers for ''New Moon'' with all the shirt-less wolf boys (who IIRR were fully clothed in the books) I just chalked it up to fan service and them trying to bring as many teenage girls in as possible (and a few boys, I guess). Then (after seeing the movie and wondering on it for way too long) I realised that those boys are just adjusting to being wolves meaning they're constantly losing control and tranforming which shreads their clothes to bits. Of course they're going to wear as little as they can! - {{Oolia}}
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* Admittedly I'm not really a ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fan to start with, so, when I started seeing the trailers for ''New Moon'' with all the shirt-less wolf boys (who IIRR were fully clothed in the books) I just chalked it up to fan service and them trying to bring as many teenage girls in as possible (and a few boys, I guess). Then (after seeing the movie and wondering on it for way too long) I realised that those boys are just adjusting to being wolves meaning they're constantly losing control and tranforming transforming which shreads shreds their clothes to bits. Of course they're going to wear as little as they can! - {{Oolia}}
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*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[Narm fifteen-year-old]] [[CantGrowUp in an immortal body]].
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*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[Narm [[narm fifteen-year-old]] [[CantGrowUp in an immortal body]].
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Changed line(s) 37,38 (click to see context) from:
* I just realized that there may be a reason Meyer abandoned pretty much every aspect of vampire lore apart from the bloodsucking. One of the traditional aspects of vampire lore is that a vampire has to be invited in to a house. If the Cullens were traditional vampires, Meyer wouldn't have been able to write the [[{{SarcasmMode}} ever so romantic]] scenes of Edward breaking into Bella's house and watching her while she sleeps. -- Tropers/Ncfan
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* I just realized that there may be a reason Meyer abandoned pretty much every aspect of vampire lore apart from the bloodsucking. One of the traditional aspects of vampire lore is that a vampire has to be invited in to a house. If the Cullens were traditional vampires, Meyer wouldn't have been able to write the [[{{SarcasmMode}} ever so romantic]] scenes of Edward breaking into Bella's house and watching her while she sleeps. -- Tropers/Ncfan
--Ncfan
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Changed line(s) 37,38 (click to see context) from:
* I just realized that there may be a reason Meyer abandoned pretty much every aspect of vampire lore apart from the bloodsucking. One of the traditional aspects of vampire lore is that a vampire has to be invited in to a house. If the Cullens were traditional vampires, Meyer wouldn't have been able to write the [[{{SarcasmMode}} ever so romantic]] scenes of Edward breaking into Bella's house and watching her while she sleeps. --Tropers/Ncfan
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* I just realized that there may be a reason Meyer abandoned pretty much every aspect of vampire lore apart from the bloodsucking. One of the traditional aspects of vampire lore is that a vampire has to be invited in to a house. If the Cullens were traditional vampires, Meyer wouldn't have been able to write the [[{{SarcasmMode}} ever so romantic]] scenes of Edward breaking into Bella's house and watching her while she sleeps. --Tropers/Ncfan
-- Tropers/Ncfan
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Changed line(s) 37 (click to see context) from:
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* I just realized that there may be a reason Meyer abandoned pretty much every aspect of vampire lore apart from the bloodsucking. One of the traditional aspects of vampire lore is that a vampire has to be invited in to a house. If the Cullens were traditional vampires, Meyer wouldn't have been able to write the [[{{SarcasmMode}} ever so romantic]] scenes of Edward breaking into Bella's house and watching her while she sleeps. --Tropers/Ncfan
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* So if Bella had chosen Jacob, and they got married and had a kid, would Jacob imprint on the kid?
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* So if Bella had chosen Jacob, and they got married and had a kid, would Jacob imprint on the kid?kid?
** . . . Excuse me, I need to go [[BrainBleach carve out my brains with a spoon]].
** . . . Excuse me, I need to go [[BrainBleach carve out my brains with a spoon]].
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*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[CantGrowUp fifteen-year-old in an imortal body]].
to:
*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[Narm fifteen-year-old]] [[CantGrowUp fifteen-year-old in an imortal body]].immortal body]].
*** In another case of FridgeBrilliance though, what might better resolve Edward's reaction could be that he really does treat Bella as a 'drug'. He had described her blood as being like aged wine or something in the first book. Maybe he really was addicted to her (if only her 'fragrance') and when he left he was going through intense withdrawal. When she 'died' he panicked because his drug was really gone now, so he concluded it would be better to die than live on with her.
**** Who knows; that whole book was supposedly written as a ShoutOutToShakespeare...
*** In another case of FridgeBrilliance though, what might better resolve Edward's reaction could be that he really does treat Bella as a 'drug'. He had described her blood as being like aged wine or something in the first book. Maybe he really was addicted to her (if only her 'fragrance') and when he left he was going through intense withdrawal. When she 'died' he panicked because his drug was really gone now, so he concluded it would be better to die than live on with her.
**** Who knows; that whole book was supposedly written as a ShoutOutToShakespeare...
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More speculations...
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*** You have to keep in mind, though, that Edward is supposed to be from the early 1900's. Edward himself talks about how seventeen-year-olds were more mature and allowed more responsibilities (i.e. getting married). Either his mental state depreciated, he was an exception to the norm, or Stephanie Meyer [[TheyJustDidntCare didn't bother with being historically accurate.]] Given that we never really hear his reasoning it's a tough call. Personally, I think his behavior is more like a [[CantGrowUp fifteen-year-old in an imortal body]].
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That\'s jumping to conclusions a bit...
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** This is explicitly stated in the book. I thought there was a mention of it in the movie but to be totally honest my mind has pretty much blacked out every part of that movie that didn''t turn up the narm to an eleven. {{ZigZag}}
** So basically, Stephenie Meyer ripped off TheDresdenFiles, where Billy and the Alphas wear easily-discarded clothing so they can transform. Well, what else were we expecting from the Queen of Dreck?
** So basically, Stephenie Meyer ripped off TheDresdenFiles, where Billy and the Alphas wear easily-discarded clothing so they can transform. Well, what else were we expecting from the Queen of Dreck?
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** This is explicitly stated in the book. I thought there was a mention of it in the movie but to be totally honest my mind has pretty much blacked out every part of that movie that didn''t didn't turn up the narm to an eleven. {{ZigZag}}
** So basically, Stephenie Meyer ripped off TheDresdenFiles, where Billy and the Alphas wear easily-discarded clothing so they can transform. Well, what else were we expecting from the Queen of Dreck?{{ZigZag}}
** So basically, Stephenie Meyer ripped off TheDresdenFiles, where Billy and the Alphas wear easily-discarded clothing so they can transform. Well, what else were we expecting from the Queen of Dreck?
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Changed line(s) 59 (click to see context) from:
** Also considering that Edward displayed enough super strength to bust the bed’s headboard during the marital mamba, how did Bella manage to survive?
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** Also considering that Edward displayed enough super strength to bust the bed’s headboard during the marital mamba, how did Bella manage to survive?survive?
* So if Bella had chosen Jacob, and they got married and had a kid, would Jacob imprint on the kid?
* So if Bella had chosen Jacob, and they got married and had a kid, would Jacob imprint on the kid?
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* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''The Castle of Otranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
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* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''The Castle of Otranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
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* As mentioned above, pretty much all of humanity doesn't know that vampires are real. ''What would they do if they found out?'' Most likely, panic and go into a full out war. And if the vampires had no reason to hide anymore... It would be a literal blood bath, with humans being hunted down every minute of every day and anyone trying to physically fight them being killed on the spot. Most of the world's population would be gone with in weeks, even days. Even worse, what if humans decided to drop an Atomic bomb all the largely vampire populated areas? If it kills the vampires, great, but all the humans in the area would be killed, too. And if the vampires somehow survive, they might possibly be radioactive and on the search for another food supply. But since they can't kill all the humans at once, they might start making human camps, for the sole purpose of procreation of new food.
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* As mentioned above, pretty much all of humanity doesn't know that vampires are real. ''What would they do if they found out?'' Most likely, panic and go into a full out war. And if the vampires had no reason to hide anymore... It would be a literal blood bath, with humans being hunted down every minute of every day and anyone trying to physically fight them being killed on the spot. Most of the world's population would be gone with in weeks, even days. Even worse, what if humans decided to drop an Atomic bomb all the largely vampire populated areas? If it kills the vampires, great, but all the humans in the area would be killed, too. And if the vampires somehow survive, they might possibly be radioactive and on the search for another food supply. But since they can't kill all the humans at once, they might start making human camps, for the sole purpose of procreation of new food.food.
* When one takes into account that vampires have extremely corrosive bodily fluids – strong enough to melt contacts lenses and cause humans to endure great pain when bitten – how would it be possible for Edward and Bella to have sex much less a baby?
** Also considering that Edward displayed enough super strength to bust the bed’s headboard during the marital mamba, how did Bella manage to survive?
* When one takes into account that vampires have extremely corrosive bodily fluids – strong enough to melt contacts lenses and cause humans to endure great pain when bitten – how would it be possible for Edward and Bella to have sex much less a baby?
** Also considering that Edward displayed enough super strength to bust the bed’s headboard during the marital mamba, how did Bella manage to survive?
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* As mentioned above, pretty much all of humanity doesn't know that vampires are real. ''What would they do if they found out?'' Most likely, panic and go into a full out war. And if the vampires had no reason to hide anymore... It would be a literal blood bath, with humans being hunted down every minute of every day and anyone trying to physically fight them being killed on the spot. Most of the world's population would be gone with in weeks, even days. Even worse, what if humans decided to drop an Atomic bomb all the largely vampire populated areas? If it kills the vampires, great, but all the humans in the area would be killed, too. And if the vampires somehow survive, they might possibly be radioactive and on the search for another food supply. But since they can't kill all the humans at once, they might start making human camps, for the sole purpose of procreation of new food.
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*** This Troper is crying with laughter right now. Yes, Isabella was Heathcliff's wife. He beat her, insulted her, controlled her and treated her like shit all the time. Fridge Brilliance indeed.
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** The powers. They're supposedly based on qualities possessed as a human, i.e. Jasper was charismatic, so he's an empath, Edward was perceptive so he can read minds, etc. Little Jane's power is to cause extreme pain. What does that say about her life pre-vamp????
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*** What made this troper REALLY wince, was the fact that unlike any other vampire story, Twilight has no humans willing to fight the vampires. And despite the sparkle thing, Twilight-vampires are not fluffy and wussy, they are bloodthirsty creatures that will kill. Worse, while Carliste's clan is 'vegetarian', they do it basically for the same reason a person might not want to eat meat. They do not judge vampires who do drink blood, and in one book in fact allow it for their guests. It's very clear that there seems to be little if any moral hang-ups about killing humans. And the humans? They are apathetic, almost like cattle with no will to fight back. Twilight universe is the vampire paradise...
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*** To that extent, lets look back on some of the events in the series. Bella and Edward are more concerned with gazing into each others' eyes than the fact that people are being eaten in the very next room, still more concerned with themselves and each other than the fact that a good number of people are being killed to make up and feed Victoria's vampire army that was created for the sole purpose of killing Bella, and still more concerned with themselves to the point that they're perfectly willing to let innocent and unaware humans be killed and eaten to get support from their other vampire friends that wouldn't even be needed to stand up to some evil vampires who wouldn't even do anything, in a situation that could have been avoided if they had just made a simple phone call in the first place. And these are supposed to be the [[BlackAndGreyMorality GOOD guys]], and yet NOBODY calls them on this. [[StrawmanHasAPoint Nobody who matters, anyway...]]
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**Actually the books specifically say that the werewolves run several degrees warmer than humans. They don't wear shirts because they're always warm. It's made relevant to the plot when Jacob has to share a sleeping bag with Bella to prevent her freezing to death.
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* ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' has one: who actually says that the vampires -die- after being burned if nothing else can kill them?
** ''InterviewWithTheVampire'' actually mentions this in-book, saying that no-one knows if vampires die upon being burned.
*** It gets explained in subsequent books in the Chronicles. The older a vampire is, the stronger their blood is, and they're able to withstand things that would kill a fledgling (including fire, which becomes brutally clear in ''Queen of the Damned''). ''Interview'' reads much differently if you've read it after ''The Vampire Lestat'', knowing that prior to coming to the New World, Lestat repeatedly fed from Akasha, the very first and most powerful vampire. [[FridgeLogic Then it becomes clear]] just how he survived what otherwise looks like a pair of {{Disney Death}}s at the hands of Louis and Claudia.
** Another from ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' - though Rennesme is able to communicate somewhat, a child with full adult awareness in their eyes [[TroublingUnchildlikeBehaviour would be scary]], not cute. Also the fact that she is fully aware and fully intends to marry the man who has been changing her diapers while her parents have sex that she is telepathically tuned into, and it becomes an enormous bundle of disgusting.
*** What are you talking about? Renesme can't read her parents' thoughts, she can only share her own with them.
*** And speaking of imprinting... think about that for a moment. Imprinting is so powerful that it will ''obliterate all feelings of romantic love'' that a werewolf feels for someone on whom he hasn't imprinted, effectively altering the werewolf's entire personality. A werewolf can imprint on any person at any time. He will do whatever it takes to please the person on whom he has imprinted, using techniques that sound suspiciously like [[http://www.vachss.com/guest_dispatches/grooming.html child grooming]]. Also, it's possible for a werewolf to imprint on a baby, and after being in [[ParentalIncest a quasi-parental]]/[[BrotherSisterIncest quasi-fraternal relationship]] with the child [[JailBaitWait for years]], he will expect the girl to turn around and welcome her semi-father/semi-brother [[NotBloodSiblings as lover and husband]]. Oh, and werewolf society can't seem to conceive of a reason that the girl would refuse a guy who'd been grooming her to be his bride since birth or a man who beat and disfigured her; they don't really see why the girl wouldn't choose someone who would do ANYTHING for her, or why she might want to be free to choose. (And Meyer never considers that the woman might love and prefer a man who hasn't imprinted on her, or that the baby girl might grow up and not be attracted to men at all.)
**** On a related note, Jacob's reasoning on why the girl always ends up returning the wolf's feelings? It's impossible to resist that level of devotion. Yeah, tell that to anyone who has had a stalker.
*** Meyer is a real life HeteronormativeCrusader and incredibly fundamentalist in her religious beliefs I doubt she wants to admit women can BE gay.
**** Ironic, considering the HoYay in Twilight.
**** In a world where Soul Mates is basically {{Canon}}, there can be a subversion: imprinting [[LoveAtFirstSight just shows you your True Love]], thus previous lovers should be happy their mate imprinted as their love was already doomed from the start. On the other hand, the imprinted couple are Soul Mates, so all the problems you mentioned will be settled by the PowerOfLove, and, after all, the imprinted is doing the right thing, making the other feel loved, protected.... Then we realize those arguments are the same used by certain kind of [[{{Squick}} stalkers, pedophiles and all kind of sexual offenders]] to justify themselves, and that [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel many Fangirls are in love with the idea!]] Someone pass the BrainBleach, please.
***** Not quite. Most Latterday Saints believe that, after they are sealed forever to their spouses, they will continue to have "spirit children" throughout the afterlife, and graduate to become gods of a planet of their own, so that their spirit children can be born and grow up as good Mormons on that world, marry and have spirit children of their own... The idea of "Imprinting", then, isn't much of a stretch if you approach from this cultural-religious viewpoint. Big age differences haven't ever been much of a turnoff in the history of the LDS church, either, considering that some early leaders are known to have been sealed to very young girls (although when those marriages were consumated is debatable).
** Regarding Renesmee, it gets [[SarcasmMode even better]]. According to the official guide, half-vampires have full adult awareness ''the instant they come out of the womb''. Which means that all of those times Renesmee was an infant and going on about how Jacob was "hers"? It wasn't being used in the sense of a child being possessive...
** Yet another ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' one: vampires and half vampires live forever unless killed - their immortality is an intrinsic part of what they are. Werewolves, on the other hand, may have ''extended'' lifespans, but generally are expected to, once there is no longer a vampiric threat in the area, settle down and stop shifting, allowing them to raise a family and live out the human life they'd put on hold to deal with the vampires. Jacob has imprinted on a half-vampire, though, so to stop shifting would mean allowing her to outlive him, possibly by centuries (assuming that he ''could'' stop, being around vampires on a daily basis). If Jacob is still mostly mentally human, what happens when WhoWantsToLiveForever starts to set in?
** According to the official guide, vampires are forever locked in whatever mental state they were in when they were transformed. Keep in mind that Esme was transformed when she was suicidal and probably suffering from postpartum depression. Keep in mind that Rosalie was turned after she was ''gang raped by her fiance and his friends''. Both of those women get to spend an eternity in that mindset. What fun!
** Alice too, who's father murdered her mother and planned to kill her too, and when she tried to report it to the police, she was deemed insane and locked up in a mental asylum. The reason she has no memories of her human life? Amnesia caused by electric shock therapy.
** Here's one: Meyer's vampires apparently cannot cry or sweat and just generally seem unable to secrete oils and the like. So are their eyes somehow still lubricated, or are they [[{{Squick}} completely dry]]?
** The world of ''Twilight'' in general is horrific. By the end of the series, we see that the vampires are all around the world. They can outrun and overpower any human. They can read minds and see the future and cause hallucinations and control the elements. They are constantly thirsty and see humans as cattle. ''There is no escape if one goes to kill you''. And in ''Breaking Dawn'', we see that the only group who defends humans from the vampires - the wolves in La Push - are willing to turn a blind eye and let humans die. Lovely.
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* I hated the first half of the novel ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' because there was too much of Bella obsessing over Edward. I thought it was hokey and dull adolescent literature crap. Then the second half of the novel was more interesting than the first. After I finished the fridge brilliance hit me: Edward is a vampire. He drives women crazy with how beautiful he is - it's a part of him being a predator. Bella spent the first half of the book trying to understand WHY she was so obsessed with Edward.
** On the subject of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' and vampires-as-predators; the whole "sparkling" thing. At first, it just seemed, well, kind of silly. I mean, why? But then I remembered the whole little speech about being the "perfect predator," and it made sense. The sparkling is a lure for future victims; after all, ridiculous or not, wouldn't ''you'' do a double take if you saw someone sparkling? And people who are less wise (someone like Bella, for example) would probably go check out what's going on, leading to an easy way to get prey without causing a whole mess of attention. It's still a little odd to me, but it's no longer gratuitous.
*** The only problem is, Edward addresses his perfection as a luring predator, and then mentions that everyone but Bella finds him and the rest of the Cullens crazy amounts of creepy. He returns to that point frequently, that she's so unusual for wanting to be anywhere near him or any other vampire. I guess this means that vampires prefer the blood of people experiencing Lust Induced Brain Freeze?
*** Nope, still not making any sense to me. Meyer goes on and on and on about how fantastically super-duper strong/fast/indestructible all the meyerpires are. If they are so strong and fast why on earth would they need that split second advantage of a person doing a double-take? And for that matter, why would they need anything else to enhance their beauty when Meyer is physically incapable of writing a paragraph without mentioning how hot Edward and all the other vampires are?-ZigZag
*** Also, that completely and totally ignores the whole friggin point of vampires having to stay out of the sunlight. The sunlight is supposed to be detrimental to vampires not make them even better killing machines! It's their weakness and having that weakness is an essential part of [[strike: all vampire lore]] vampire lore post-1922. I think this one is more a case of Meyer's habit of thinking that writing a perfect character is better than writing a character with flaws or weaknesses.
**** At least, not any flaws or weaknesses that she is aware of...
*** I always thought that their sparkliness was a weakness. Instead of bursting into flames, they sparkled. While it does not cause death, the sparkling would require more investigation and more investigation means the world finds out about vampires.
*** The main problem this troper has with the sparkling is that it breaks one of the two traits that the vast majority (if not all. Hey, I am only on the L's in the vampire dictionary right now. Give me a break, this book is thick) of vampires have: A strong attachment to the night. Sparkling like diamonds in the sun isn't exactly creature of the night material... And although it could be dismissed as OurVampiresAreDifferent, considering all the other deviations you gotta wonder where the line is when something should stop being called a vampire and instead be like... a angel/faerie/SOMETHING instead. This led to this troper's fridge brilliance moment when she realized that the novels would have been a whole lot more kick butt if instead of vampires, the Cullen's and their ilk were gods like the Greek or other polytheistic ones. Shining/sparkling when revealing themselves to a mortal? Check the myth of Dionysis's mother! Requiring blood sacrifice? Well, the Inca gods needed it. And let us not forget immortality and [[RapeIsOkayIfItsDivineOnMortal creepy courting maneuvers...]] Sparkling would almost be awesome in this case.
** One thing this troper hated about the ''Twilight'' series is how every character, from the leads like Bella, Edward and Jacob, to the BigBad of Eclipse, Victoria, and her right-hand-man, Riley, to the eponymous character of ''The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner'', are cripplingly motivated by "love". Bella is catatonic for four months when Edward leaves her; Edward tries to kill himself when he thinks Bella is dead; Jacob tries to kill himself when he finds out Bella and Edward are married; Victoria assembles a newborn army to avenge her mate, James; Riley follows Victoria to his own demise, loving her and believing that she loves him; and Bree Tanner, a newborn, overrides her most powerful instinct - self-preservation - when she realizes that Diego , who she has known all of two days, is dead. It made me sick to see how pathetic they all became...but then I realized, Stephnie Meyer is writing about a world where true love, real love, love worth fighting and dying for, actually exists. And suddenly, I was glad for it. [[SomeAnvilsNeedTobeDropped Because, what's wrong with that?]] --MollyWalker
*** Yeh, what's wrong with thinking that a man who stalks you, breaks into your house, watches you while you sleep without your knowledge, breaks your car to stop you from going to see your friends, threatens to commit suicide if you ever leave him, badly hurts you during sex, tries to force you to have an abortion (and mind, this troper's pro-choice, but that's the point, pro-''choice''), wants to murder you all the time and drink your blood, abandons you to four months of hell knowing full well you're creepy obsessed and will go crazy, [[{{Anvilicious}} forces you to marry him against your wishes in order to have sex with him]] and become a vampire even though you're barely legal, carries on a dangerous relationship with you in full knowledge that if you so much as trip, you're almost-literal toast, and has murdered quite a lot of people in the past is totally romantic? People these days, so cynical.
*** [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped What's wrong with that is that that's not the way the real world works at all, and teaching impressionable adolescent girls to be morons at young ages over what they think must be true love because they read it in the perfect perfection of perfectness that is Twilight is a really bad idea?]]
*** Sure, then let's proceed to Harry Potter, Narnia, and any fiction ever written. Because they just don't work like the real world and might impress our easily-influencable people to believe in all sorts of stupid stuff, like magic and parallel universes. Really, it's fiction, people making false assumptions about it being real shouldn't be an argument to put down concepts, however ridiculous they might seem to you.
**** [[InsaneTrollLogic Because everyone who reads these books will TOTALLY lable everything as fantasy, even the realistic elements of it (because snow isn't cold, and if you hit your head on the pavement you won't sometimes need a hospital, right?), and fantasy novles never have anything to say about reality that a reader can take away from it.]] [[SarcasmMode And it's not like there are any cases of girls taking these books way too seriously anyway. Like I never heard girls in front of me in a class talking about how Edward was the perfect man, and they wanted a boyfriend like him on a consistent basis.]] [[FacePalm Right.]]
**** To the person who wrote the entry that started with "Sure, then let's proceed to Harry Potter, Narnia, and any fiction ever written." You completely missed the point. The problem isn't the unrealistic physics in Twilight, it's the unrealistic psychology, which anyone will agree is a problem. People who complain about magic not being realistic are better off avoiding fantasy works, but people complaining that "that's not how real people's psychology works" have a perfectly valid complaint, assuming that they are right.
*** About the was Jacob imprinted on Renesmee. At first I thought that it was just idiotic, but then I realized that if someone made it happen, then it was a smart way to prevent war. And since god almost canonically exists in the series, maybe he, or some kind of twisted destiny, decided that it would be bad, very bad, if there was a war between the 'vampire hunters' and the 'good vampires'. The cullens didn't want to fight the werewolfs in the first place, and this way, the werewolfs have a bond with the cullens in a way that they're NOT ALLOWED to attack them. I mean, I don't think that god would worry about pedophillia. There are more than enough evidence for that in the bible.
** I hated how apathetic Bella was, or at least how she didn't take other people's suffering or even her own as seriously as normal humans would. And as I read the honeymoon chapter of Breaking Dawn, I was seriously wondering how she could take wounds matching those of severe domestic abuse so lightly. And then it hit me...Bella is [[TooKinkyToTorture the biggest sadomasochist on the face of the earth!]] If she's actually subconsciously enjoying every terrible thing that happens to her, her calmness about it seems totally plausible.
** If all these fridge theories about Twilight are correct, then this book would be the worst case of MisaimedFandom and ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch ever!
** It dawned on me out of the blue yesterday: read through ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' again (or the first time, whatever). Notice how Bella is always begging Edward to turn her into a vampire, but he refuses to do so until they're married? It's because Stephanie Meyer is using vampirism as a euphemism for sex. Edward, having come from the 1910's, is so old-fashioned that he doesn't believe in sex before marriage. And all the creepy touching that is described in the book? They have no choice, they have to get their hormones out somehow.
*** Which turns into either FridgeHorror or a case of {{Metaphorgotten}} on Stephenie Meyer's part when you consider Carlisle, Esme, and all their '''children'''.
*** Vampirism has been a sexual metaphor for as long as it's appeared in literature. Meyer wasn't doing anything clever there. In fact, looking at the way vampires are handled in a story is really telling about how the contemporary society views sex. {{Dracula}} was originally an ugly old man and a CompleteMonster who seduced young women into being his slaves and whores, but one can't help but be drawn to him, for some reason -- Victorian society on sex in a nutshell. This changes over time, as Dracula becomes a ManOfWealthAndTaste, but still [[CompleteMonster unrepentantly evil]], on through vampires with variation, some more evil than others, until you hit the modern sexual revolutions and heavily romanticized vampires in AnneRice novels and such. There is then a revival of the awareness of the dangers of sex and therefore vampirism but still a romanticized version present in BuffyTheVampireSlayer and {{Angel}}, where vampires seem to represent sexually aggressive individuals that the [[YouGoGirl Superpowered-Empowered]] ActionGirl must eliminate (and also enter into relationships and have sex with -- though that's shown to have nasty consequences too). After all this, we get ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', penned by a Mormon housewife, about ultra-hot, Adonis-like, cold-as-marble-but-still-"perfect" vampires that the MarySue protagonist desperately wants to be with but can't, not until she's married, because she just can't, ok? [[AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle And now you understand vampirism as a sexual metaphor]].
** I thought it was stupid that in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' all the vampires are supposed to be at least 100 years old, and they act like hormonal teenagers (Edward especially). But then I realised even though they’ve ''lived'' 100 years, they’re frozen in teenage bodies; Edward’s brain hasn’t developed past that of a seventeen year old. His ‘Bella’s dead so I’m going to kill myself in the worst possible way, and potentially break TheMasquerade’ isn’t so ridiculous when you remember he’s still mentally a seventeen year old, the parts of his brain that determine cause-and-effect haven’t finished developing, and never will. SimplyKelp
* So, everyone can agree that sparkly vampires is a load of BS. I thought this way from the moment I found out about it. But then I stumbled upon [[http://blog.fantasyheartbreaker.com/2010/08/13/why-vampires-sparkle/ this article]]. In a nutshell: WorldOfDarkness-type rules which state that vampire-sparkliness is a ''disability'' which causes people to instinctively detect their true, predatory nature. And Bella's romantic-attraction is a Derangement. -Tropers/KimikoMuffin
* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''The Castle of Otranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
* I don't Know if this is fridge brilliance or Fridge Horror, but I just relised Bella is named after {{Bela Lugosi}}. I just threw up a little...
** According to WordOfGod? "Isabella" has always been a popular Gothic-character name because it was the name of the heroine of the "first" Gothic novel ''The Castle of Otranto''. It's also the name of Heathcliff's wife in Bella's favorite novel ''WutheringHeights''.
* I owe this one to [[ThatGuyWithTheGlasses Doug Walker]]. Because TVTropesHasRuinedMyLife, the Oxford introduction to ''The Spanish Tragedy'' recently made me think that a Revenge Tragedy basically boils down to "YouKilledMyFather. PrepareToDie." That made me think of Chester A. Bum imitating Victoria in ''Eclipse.'' And ''that'' made me jokingly think, So, from a PerspectiveFlip, Victoria would be the heroine of a Revenge Tragedy. And who else wrote Revenge Tragedies? Our good friend WilliamShakespeare! So TheNostalgiaCritic was absolutely right - Bella ''would'' make "a great Shakespeare villain."
** In Shakespeare's ''TheMerchantOfVenice'', Jessica pulls a Bella (in a perhaps-deliberately-''RomeoAndJuliet''-echoing balcony scene) and elopes with her lover and the rest of the local beautiful people. Jessica, like Bella, lives alone with a protective dad. The "beautiful people" are the Christians, utterly alien to Jessica, since she and her father are Jews. Although many of the Christians abuse Jews (as many of the vampires kill humans), Jessica isn't afraid--she wants Lorenzo to make her a Christian and marry her. There's even a Jacob hanging around--Jessica's roguish, comedic best friend Launcelot, and Lorenzo and Launcelot are jealous of one another for hanging around her and spar in a way that's very Edward-and-Jacob-like. Although, as in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', the couple get a sugary-sweet happy ending, AlternateCharacterInterpretation pegs Jessica as the villain for shunning her father. This means one of two things: 1) Stephenie Meyer is secretly a subversive, Shakespeare-referencing genius, or 2) Shakespeare saw ''Twilight'' coming. I'd love to believe the former, but I find the latter far more likely.
*** Shakespeare was also smart enough to make this a side-plot rather than the A-plot of his play.
** On the subject of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' and vampires-as-predators; the whole "sparkling" thing. At first, it just seemed, well, kind of silly. I mean, why? But then I remembered the whole little speech about being the "perfect predator," and it made sense. The sparkling is a lure for future victims; after all, ridiculous or not, wouldn't ''you'' do a double take if you saw someone sparkling? And people who are less wise (someone like Bella, for example) would probably go check out what's going on, leading to an easy way to get prey without causing a whole mess of attention. It's still a little odd to me, but it's no longer gratuitous.
*** The only problem is, Edward addresses his perfection as a luring predator, and then mentions that everyone but Bella finds him and the rest of the Cullens crazy amounts of creepy. He returns to that point frequently, that she's so unusual for wanting to be anywhere near him or any other vampire. I guess this means that vampires prefer the blood of people experiencing Lust Induced Brain Freeze?
*** Nope, still not making any sense to me. Meyer goes on and on and on about how fantastically super-duper strong/fast/indestructible all the meyerpires are. If they are so strong and fast why on earth would they need that split second advantage of a person doing a double-take? And for that matter, why would they need anything else to enhance their beauty when Meyer is physically incapable of writing a paragraph without mentioning how hot Edward and all the other vampires are?-ZigZag
*** Also, that completely and totally ignores the whole friggin point of vampires having to stay out of the sunlight. The sunlight is supposed to be detrimental to vampires not make them even better killing machines! It's their weakness and having that weakness is an essential part of [[strike: all vampire lore]] vampire lore post-1922. I think this one is more a case of Meyer's habit of thinking that writing a perfect character is better than writing a character with flaws or weaknesses.
**** At least, not any flaws or weaknesses that she is aware of...
*** I always thought that their sparkliness was a weakness. Instead of bursting into flames, they sparkled. While it does not cause death, the sparkling would require more investigation and more investigation means the world finds out about vampires.
*** The main problem this troper has with the sparkling is that it breaks one of the two traits that the vast majority (if not all. Hey, I am only on the L's in the vampire dictionary right now. Give me a break, this book is thick) of vampires have: A strong attachment to the night. Sparkling like diamonds in the sun isn't exactly creature of the night material... And although it could be dismissed as OurVampiresAreDifferent, considering all the other deviations you gotta wonder where the line is when something should stop being called a vampire and instead be like... a angel/faerie/SOMETHING instead. This led to this troper's fridge brilliance moment when she realized that the novels would have been a whole lot more kick butt if instead of vampires, the Cullen's and their ilk were gods like the Greek or other polytheistic ones. Shining/sparkling when revealing themselves to a mortal? Check the myth of Dionysis's mother! Requiring blood sacrifice? Well, the Inca gods needed it. And let us not forget immortality and [[RapeIsOkayIfItsDivineOnMortal creepy courting maneuvers...]] Sparkling would almost be awesome in this case.
** One thing this troper hated about the ''Twilight'' series is how every character, from the leads like Bella, Edward and Jacob, to the BigBad of Eclipse, Victoria, and her right-hand-man, Riley, to the eponymous character of ''The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner'', are cripplingly motivated by "love". Bella is catatonic for four months when Edward leaves her; Edward tries to kill himself when he thinks Bella is dead; Jacob tries to kill himself when he finds out Bella and Edward are married; Victoria assembles a newborn army to avenge her mate, James; Riley follows Victoria to his own demise, loving her and believing that she loves him; and Bree Tanner, a newborn, overrides her most powerful instinct - self-preservation - when she realizes that Diego , who she has known all of two days, is dead. It made me sick to see how pathetic they all became...but then I realized, Stephnie Meyer is writing about a world where true love, real love, love worth fighting and dying for, actually exists. And suddenly, I was glad for it. [[SomeAnvilsNeedTobeDropped Because, what's wrong with that?]] --MollyWalker
*** Yeh, what's wrong with thinking that a man who stalks you, breaks into your house, watches you while you sleep without your knowledge, breaks your car to stop you from going to see your friends, threatens to commit suicide if you ever leave him, badly hurts you during sex, tries to force you to have an abortion (and mind, this troper's pro-choice, but that's the point, pro-''choice''), wants to murder you all the time and drink your blood, abandons you to four months of hell knowing full well you're creepy obsessed and will go crazy, [[{{Anvilicious}} forces you to marry him against your wishes in order to have sex with him]] and become a vampire even though you're barely legal, carries on a dangerous relationship with you in full knowledge that if you so much as trip, you're almost-literal toast, and has murdered quite a lot of people in the past is totally romantic? People these days, so cynical.
*** [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped What's wrong with that is that that's not the way the real world works at all, and teaching impressionable adolescent girls to be morons at young ages over what they think must be true love because they read it in the perfect perfection of perfectness that is Twilight is a really bad idea?]]
*** Sure, then let's proceed to Harry Potter, Narnia, and any fiction ever written. Because they just don't work like the real world and might impress our easily-influencable people to believe in all sorts of stupid stuff, like magic and parallel universes. Really, it's fiction, people making false assumptions about it being real shouldn't be an argument to put down concepts, however ridiculous they might seem to you.
**** [[InsaneTrollLogic Because everyone who reads these books will TOTALLY lable everything as fantasy, even the realistic elements of it (because snow isn't cold, and if you hit your head on the pavement you won't sometimes need a hospital, right?), and fantasy novles never have anything to say about reality that a reader can take away from it.]] [[SarcasmMode And it's not like there are any cases of girls taking these books way too seriously anyway. Like I never heard girls in front of me in a class talking about how Edward was the perfect man, and they wanted a boyfriend like him on a consistent basis.]] [[FacePalm Right.]]
**** To the person who wrote the entry that started with "Sure, then let's proceed to Harry Potter, Narnia, and any fiction ever written." You completely missed the point. The problem isn't the unrealistic physics in Twilight, it's the unrealistic psychology, which anyone will agree is a problem. People who complain about magic not being realistic are better off avoiding fantasy works, but people complaining that "that's not how real people's psychology works" have a perfectly valid complaint, assuming that they are right.
*** About the was Jacob imprinted on Renesmee. At first I thought that it was just idiotic, but then I realized that if someone made it happen, then it was a smart way to prevent war. And since god almost canonically exists in the series, maybe he, or some kind of twisted destiny, decided that it would be bad, very bad, if there was a war between the 'vampire hunters' and the 'good vampires'. The cullens didn't want to fight the werewolfs in the first place, and this way, the werewolfs have a bond with the cullens in a way that they're NOT ALLOWED to attack them. I mean, I don't think that god would worry about pedophillia. There are more than enough evidence for that in the bible.
** I hated how apathetic Bella was, or at least how she didn't take other people's suffering or even her own as seriously as normal humans would. And as I read the honeymoon chapter of Breaking Dawn, I was seriously wondering how she could take wounds matching those of severe domestic abuse so lightly. And then it hit me...Bella is [[TooKinkyToTorture the biggest sadomasochist on the face of the earth!]] If she's actually subconsciously enjoying every terrible thing that happens to her, her calmness about it seems totally plausible.
** If all these fridge theories about Twilight are correct, then this book would be the worst case of MisaimedFandom and ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch ever!
** It dawned on me out of the blue yesterday: read through ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' again (or the first time, whatever). Notice how Bella is always begging Edward to turn her into a vampire, but he refuses to do so until they're married? It's because Stephanie Meyer is using vampirism as a euphemism for sex. Edward, having come from the 1910's, is so old-fashioned that he doesn't believe in sex before marriage. And all the creepy touching that is described in the book? They have no choice, they have to get their hormones out somehow.
*** Which turns into either FridgeHorror or a case of {{Metaphorgotten}} on Stephenie Meyer's part when you consider Carlisle, Esme, and all their '''children'''.
*** Vampirism has been a sexual metaphor for as long as it's appeared in literature. Meyer wasn't doing anything clever there. In fact, looking at the way vampires are handled in a story is really telling about how the contemporary society views sex. {{Dracula}} was originally an ugly old man and a CompleteMonster who seduced young women into being his slaves and whores, but one can't help but be drawn to him, for some reason -- Victorian society on sex in a nutshell. This changes over time, as Dracula becomes a ManOfWealthAndTaste, but still [[CompleteMonster unrepentantly evil]], on through vampires with variation, some more evil than others, until you hit the modern sexual revolutions and heavily romanticized vampires in AnneRice novels and such. There is then a revival of the awareness of the dangers of sex and therefore vampirism but still a romanticized version present in BuffyTheVampireSlayer and {{Angel}}, where vampires seem to represent sexually aggressive individuals that the [[YouGoGirl Superpowered-Empowered]] ActionGirl must eliminate (and also enter into relationships and have sex with -- though that's shown to have nasty consequences too). After all this, we get ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', penned by a Mormon housewife, about ultra-hot, Adonis-like, cold-as-marble-but-still-"perfect" vampires that the MarySue protagonist desperately wants to be with but can't, not until she's married, because she just can't, ok? [[AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle And now you understand vampirism as a sexual metaphor]].
** I thought it was stupid that in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' all the vampires are supposed to be at least 100 years old, and they act like hormonal teenagers (Edward especially). But then I realised even though they’ve ''lived'' 100 years, they’re frozen in teenage bodies; Edward’s brain hasn’t developed past that of a seventeen year old. His ‘Bella’s dead so I’m going to kill myself in the worst possible way, and potentially break TheMasquerade’ isn’t so ridiculous when you remember he’s still mentally a seventeen year old, the parts of his brain that determine cause-and-effect haven’t finished developing, and never will. SimplyKelp
* So, everyone can agree that sparkly vampires is a load of BS. I thought this way from the moment I found out about it. But then I stumbled upon [[http://blog.fantasyheartbreaker.com/2010/08/13/why-vampires-sparkle/ this article]]. In a nutshell: WorldOfDarkness-type rules which state that vampire-sparkliness is a ''disability'' which causes people to instinctively detect their true, predatory nature. And Bella's romantic-attraction is a Derangement. -Tropers/KimikoMuffin
* Before reading the first seven chapters of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', everything I knew about Gothic literature, I learned from the Bronte sisters and [[NorthangerAbbey Henry Tilney]] -- the 19th century, after authors became GenreSavvy enough to play cleverly with Gothic tropes -- and ''Twilight'' didn't seem similar to these at all. I've since read such Gothic literature from the ''18th'' century as ''The Castle of Otranto'' (which I loved), ''Romance of the Forest'', and ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (both of which I hated). Stephanie Meyer, ''Twilight'' is not a modern ''WutheringHeights'' -- '''it's a modern ''TheMysteriesOfUdolpho''!''' The problem is, heroines like Matilda, [[ShoutOut Isabella]], Adeline, Emily St. Aubert, and Bella Swann are ferociously outdated. A FlatCharacter with low self-esteem surrounded by people who want to protect her worked then; trying to play it straight now doesn't work, but it is a successful CallBack to the original Gothic heroine. ''Udolpho'' and ''Twilight'' both also play AllGirlsWantBadBoys painfully straight, which was also an outdated trope by the Bronte's time, possibly thanks to JaneAusten [[hottip:*:(Charlotte Bronte would have seen how much she and Austen actually had in common if she'd only read ''MansfieldPark'')]]. - Tropers/{{Lale}}
* I don't Know if this is fridge brilliance or Fridge Horror, but I just relised Bella is named after {{Bela Lugosi}}. I just threw up a little...
** According to WordOfGod? "Isabella" has always been a popular Gothic-character name because it was the name of the heroine of the "first" Gothic novel ''The Castle of Otranto''. It's also the name of Heathcliff's wife in Bella's favorite novel ''WutheringHeights''.
* I owe this one to [[ThatGuyWithTheGlasses Doug Walker]]. Because TVTropesHasRuinedMyLife, the Oxford introduction to ''The Spanish Tragedy'' recently made me think that a Revenge Tragedy basically boils down to "YouKilledMyFather. PrepareToDie." That made me think of Chester A. Bum imitating Victoria in ''Eclipse.'' And ''that'' made me jokingly think, So, from a PerspectiveFlip, Victoria would be the heroine of a Revenge Tragedy. And who else wrote Revenge Tragedies? Our good friend WilliamShakespeare! So TheNostalgiaCritic was absolutely right - Bella ''would'' make "a great Shakespeare villain."
** In Shakespeare's ''TheMerchantOfVenice'', Jessica pulls a Bella (in a perhaps-deliberately-''RomeoAndJuliet''-echoing balcony scene) and elopes with her lover and the rest of the local beautiful people. Jessica, like Bella, lives alone with a protective dad. The "beautiful people" are the Christians, utterly alien to Jessica, since she and her father are Jews. Although many of the Christians abuse Jews (as many of the vampires kill humans), Jessica isn't afraid--she wants Lorenzo to make her a Christian and marry her. There's even a Jacob hanging around--Jessica's roguish, comedic best friend Launcelot, and Lorenzo and Launcelot are jealous of one another for hanging around her and spar in a way that's very Edward-and-Jacob-like. Although, as in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', the couple get a sugary-sweet happy ending, AlternateCharacterInterpretation pegs Jessica as the villain for shunning her father. This means one of two things: 1) Stephenie Meyer is secretly a subversive, Shakespeare-referencing genius, or 2) Shakespeare saw ''Twilight'' coming. I'd love to believe the former, but I find the latter far more likely.
*** Shakespeare was also smart enough to make this a side-plot rather than the A-plot of his play.
