Sunday, January 01, 2012

Twilight (spoilers)

Read the Twilight books recently (haven't seen any of the movies). Can't really understand the hype, neither the positive nor the negative one.

The books have some interesting premises (such as the vampire character having a fairly normal and supportive family), but are fairly badly written. The author appears to have learned something by book 3, and books 3 and 4 are considerably better than 1 and 2.

She has for example learned that in a romance story there should probably be some sex, or at least some thoughts about sex, at least if the romance story is written in the first person, and by the middle of the third book Bella actually starts thinking about having sex with Edward. That's about a year and a half into their relationship. Considering how attractive she finds him at the first glance, it would have taken me about what, 300 milliseconds or so to start having impure thoughts?

They don't get to have sex until book 4.

As fantasy the books are readable, as romance they suck. OK, I am not a very experienced romance reader, but I should get at least some idea why the protagonist likes the guy she likes.

That said, I don't quite understand all the critique based on the fact that Bella is not a fighter unlike Buffy's characters. How could she be a fighter in that world? Vampires in the Twilight series are a lot harder to destroy than in Buffy, and Bella does not have any supernatural skills.

And one thing that surprises me in all the vampire fiction: how come none of them ever work for the Red Cross?

1 comment:

Joonas said...

The intresting question is, if vampires do have sex drive. The normally do not (cannot?) procreate sexually, so there is no need for them to have one.

On the other hand they retain parts of their former selves, so it would be possible for them to keep their lipidoes too.

In some RPG (Vampire the Masquerade?) it is explicitely stated that vampires are able to control their sexual anatomy _at will_, but do not retain pleasure for using it. They only retain pleasure from feeding.

This is actually different from the humanity point idea where vamipires gradually lose their humanity and turn into monster., I would think that the would lose their lipidoes in same way.

Vampires are undead and thus do not breath etc... however they need blood, are they useing the oxygen of it or are they burning it somehow, or are they powered by external force. If they are powered by external force, it raises question why they need blood? Do they need some substance, which they cannot synthesize (such as vitamin C for humans) and obtain in by from blood.