“I think that there should have been some nice vumpires,’ said my sister, wistfully. ‘Nice, handsome, misunderstood vumpires.’

‘There were not,’ said my father.”

(Fortunately the Milk, Neil Gaimon, 2013)

I thought that was funny.

Anyway….

I think you start to kid yourself if you only read ‘the good stuff’, you know. I like Stephs, to some extent—enough, you know. You always feel like it’s familiar, like you know what you’re going to get, with Bella, Edward, and Jacob, you know. It’s America saying, “We’re not smart; we’re not happy; and we don’t love ourselves”—you know. And that is indeed the reality of the majority; you’d need a new collective unconscious for the USA (and the world—the collective unconscious is ultimately trans-national and trans-racial, in fact in the end is not limited by species, either), for something like this not to be popular. And maybe it’s ‘good luck’ so to speak, in that I find it to be be pretty truthful—I buy these characters doing these things, having these feelings and doing these actions.

And also, like in most of the famous long-Victorian novels, it ~can~ surprise you, out of the sheer necessity of length and detail.

And yet. And yet. (chuckles darkly)

Somehow, it will never surprise you. You can learn all there is to know about vampiric teenagers in a month, and, after a hundred years—they will NEVER surprise you; not really. (laughs) But Tolkien was a snob, you know. (anxious voice) Sixty million people dying in the biggest war ever is putting a serious crimp in my plan to study ancient runes…. Why didn’t Hitler and Hirohito ask Me about starting this mess?…. Now, if they had had a dragon, I would have said yes. Dragons are romantic—in a masc-y way, right. (anguished) But airplanes are not! Airplanes are metal—and steel!…. (freaking out about this)

Oh yes. Sue me. Sue me for mental health damages, right. Parody, lese majesty, non-conforming ~~in the wrong way~~…. 😛

…. And it’s so funny how Charlie and Bella are like an old married couple that don’t sleep together anymore, right.

…. It’s getting almost responsible, compared to the second book or especially the first. Bella has to make all sorts of grown up decisions!

…. (Bella’s mom) I tentatively formed this theory near the beginning of the series, but that does help to firm up the idea that Stephs is intentionally writing “bad” fiction about weak people—that she’s not just a null who doesn’t know the difference herself.…

If you read my reviews, (I know you don’t), you can probs guess I have a robot academic insult half-formed in my brain now, so I’ll skip that, keep it light and unpredictable, right.

…. It’s like an indie pop song. It’s like a poppy alt song, where the singer mumbles intentionally things no one can hear about politics or antisocial behavior, and the room dances to sick beats and chords ripped out of Bach’s playbook, electrified.

…. I don’t want to say that stupidity doesn’t lead to unhappiness, because it does; however, the stupid person, the C- student (in some aspect of their life: for Bella it wouldn’t be English) is like the heretic of today; people talk about that person like they’re a criminal, in turn another mask for the heretic of today. And like the heretic goes to hell to suffer forever the unkindness of his god, even if he’s kind to his mother, the stupid person has to made example of, even if there’s something appealing about them, like their looks/fashion, or some other aspect of personal charm. People don’t want to humanize the heretic of today, you know. People don’t want to acknowledge that even someone kind to children and bookish is also something other than “rational” for part of the day, some days more than others, you know.

…. Steph Meyer’s non-nationalist American Indian mythology is pretty good; most white people are Way! too racist to acknowledge how vicious our paleface ancestors were to the Indigenous of this continent, you know—and it’s nice to work around that a little bit without just surrendering and black box-ing the red man, as is our habit. And a lot of mythology is pretty personal. Maybe not as personal as Twilight, but more personal than scientific history: ‘the story of the U-boat’, etc.

…. I get that girls generally don’t want to be nurses instead of wives, not if they’re going to be sexual—Bella isn’t my image of an alluring female personality, so I get it—but it is kinda funny how undisposed I am to play male pop romance hero, you know.

(smiles) They’re just…. Bad, you know.

…. It’s cute how they’re so bad, yet so old-fashioned. It’s different…. yet familiar.

…. But maybe believing in marriage is worse than believing in vampires and such, lol.

…. It’s funny how Victoria could almost be Taylor Swift, you know….

I know—it’s wrong to even talk about it. That’s the fault of adventure and adventure-lite stories: you can’t talk about villains without sounding murderous. 😸

But she’s not Serena van der Woodsen, you know. 🪵

…. It would be easy to underestimate the importance of Jacob to the story. (Jake is a Neverland Pirate, the heir of Peter Pan, lol….)

…. “You are safe inside your mind.”

…. It’s ok, although it’ll take me awhile to want to read the fourth-&-final, you know.

…. But yeah: as much as things haven’t changed, things have changed a little bit, you know. I at least wouldn’t want to go back to the past. There will always be beautiful monsters, without trying to live in some departed world, of the high noon of empire or whatever.

You take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have the Twilight Series. The Twilight Series (Who doesn't love the Facts of Life song?) ( )

... and back to Team Edward ( )

bruh (positive, i think?) ( )

not really sure why I read this whole series, but it was quick and not really painful. I think Meyer is unfairly trashed?.there are far worse books in the world. ( )