It would appear that this problematic novel is once again a fave.

So. I obtained the twilight saga: white collection yesterday – thank you, Joe! – and I have already finished he first book. And I… loved it.

Now, this could be for many reasons. Reading this after ten years was like hugging my mom after having been abroad for months. I knew almost every line and remembered how I felt when I first read it, and what a comfort it was to me during those wretched middle school years. Photo credit for the featured image is by Kate, by the way, and that’s me in prime Twilight years.

But also, bits of Twilight surprised me. I fed myself a narrative about these books over all these years – that they were unhealthy, unfeminist, and unexciting. That’s partly true. And I’m not saying that they’re not hugely problematic and that they shouldn’t be discussed as such after reading.

As Jen Campbell, an author whom I greatly admire, has said – and I’m heavily paraphrasing so check out her YouTube channel so you don’t get the wrong idea from me – you can like things that are problematic. Feelings are kind of hard to control; you are allowed to feel your feelings. But you just have to be able to understand and discuss the parts that are problematic.

I’ve definitely distanced myself from Twilight in the past ten years, partially because the people that I most admire in my life have teased me about how inordinately obsessed I was. And this is dark, but… at least for a while I was obsessed with this, instead of self-mutilation.

So here I am, leaning into the saga again.

The thing that I do feel that I have control over in this respect is that I can talk and write about this without trying to defend the bad parts, and that I’m not supporting the franchise and the ways in which it has inevitably hurt young men and women – more on how it’s hurt me despite my loving below… “what a sick, masochistic lion,” am I right? – by purchasing the books or paraphernalia.

Cool, so that’s a lot of words. I guess I’ll just try to assemble the notes that I took while reading, because I am a nerd and also wanted to do this vaguely properly. We all know I love categories and bullet points, so here we go. Spoilers, I guess, if you care.

On Twilight and its First Chapter:

I took a whole page of notes on the first chapter alone…

• Stephenie Meyer actually kind of sets up the whole series in this first chapter in some very clever ways. I can do without the physical description – especially given that this book is so white and heteronormative – but it establishes how Bella will find herself attracted to Edward. She notes that she has always been in the role of a parent in her family, as she takes care of her “hare-brained” mother, and so this makes her think that she’s much more emotionally mature than she is. (This is hella common in real life; ask psychiatrists.) She says that she doesn’t relate well to people her age, or maybe just to people in general… meaning that maybe she needs an old soul or an alien race in order to feel understood. (Edward anybody?) Her future powers sort of against Edward are explained right from the beginning in that she says she’s very good at suppressing emotions, though her body admittedly reacts more dramatically than her mind. All of this reminds me of the establishing shots we see of Rey in Force Awakens that proves to the audience that she is force-sensitive and able to fight.
• That being said, there are some literary tropes that bother me here. So many YA books do it – including Harry Potter – in that when the main character moves to a different plane, á la Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, they just so happen to have little to no connections at home, leaving one less complication. (I’m currently listening to the audio for Stephen King’s 11-22-63 and that’s a trope that bothered me there, too!)
• Some clever things: Edward firsts appears on page 14, but we don’t know it yet. Bella sees his car (feasibly with him in it) and thinks about how pretentious he is. First impressions / Pride and Prejudice, am I right? The hate-to-love is so real in this and it’s my favorite trope. We all have our things. She also notes that, as she’s walking up to the school, “no one was going to bite me.” Also, the first grammar mistake I found was on page 17, which, considering my thoughts on the series for so long, was surprising to me.

On Twilight and Feminism: 

• The epigraph is from Genesis and is about temptation and “women’s frailty,” but is also often used as a means of female empowerment in literature. See Aemilia Lanyer’s “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women.” And considering the subject matter – Bella’s lust and love and agency despite powers that overwhelm her – I think it’s quite smart. And Bella brings up Eve, albeit in the vernacular, when she says that Edward, who apparently hates her, “doesn’t know [her] from Eve.” It works really well because Edward is fighting temptation in that very moment.
• OKAY. People think that Bella is an antifeminist character. I think I used to think that, too, but I don’t think that anymore. When a female character isn’t Katniss Everdeen – who, don’t get me wrong, is one of my favorite characters – people don’t think that they’re strong characters. No. Bella is strong in her convictions, and despite Edward’s “dazzling” capabilities – Jesus – she is able to hold fast to her opinions in all things.
• Also the boys following Bella around and expecting things from her are too real. Edward will get more unbearable as the books go on, but for the most part, he asks her permission on things. There are some terrible exceptions to that: STALKING, INAPPROPRIATE TOUCHING, M’LADY RAPE CULTURE RHETORIC, ETC. Also half your age plus seven is the rule, Edward. But Mike and Eric and Tyler? All boys I know. And they suck. (Mike is maybe slightly better than the rest.)
• All right, the lady friendships are severely lacking. But while I will admit that I thought that Bella was often looking down on Jessica, I think it was really that she allowed Jessica to make her own choices, but felt wearied by the task of having to explain herself when not wanting to do the stereotypical female activities that Jess has every right to enjoy.
• Edward: “You’ve got a bit of a temper, don’t you?”
  Bella: “I don’t like double standards.”
  SAME.
• When Bella is looking up vampire legends, she notes that stories of vampires often grew out of misogyny: “they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children and to give men an excuse for infidelity.” And the Cullens do not follow the rules of these legends, suggesting that they are more in line with a feminist world.
• Mike: Hey, Bella, what’s your essay topic for English?
  Bella: “Whether Shakespeare’s treatment of the female characters is misogynistic.”
  SAME.
• There were many literary references to what I consider to be inherently feminist works: Jane Austen’s canon, Macbeth, and Wuthering Heights. 
• Okay, this is good and bad, but Bella harnesses her sexuality to get the information she wants out of Jacob, and I’m like… yeah.
• Although Edward very much emphasizes that he wants to eat her and that she’s attractive, he also highlights Bella’s personality traits that he likes. Namely her intuition. I’ve got that! I swoon. He also describes her as brave and tenacious. Which she is! But also I laughed a lot at the things Bella said in this read? I think she’s funnier than people give her credit for.
• The first thing Bella asks about once they’re officially boyfriend and girlfriend is whether he can have sex. You go, girl! She knows what she wants and she goes for it. While I highly disapprove of her choice to become a vampire, I recognize that it is her choice. We’re all judgy about other women because internalized misogyny but the important thing to recognize is that a lady’s individual choice is way more important than what her choice looks like to the outside world.
• “‘I can’t always be Lois Lane,’ I insisted. ‘I want to be Superman, too.'” You tell ’em.

On Twilight and the Little Things I Noticed This Time Around:

• Carlisle was feasibly around for the Great Fire of 1666, and his religious beliefs make so much more sense knowing that he was a preacher’s son who has grown to see so much of human life for the past three hundred years.
• I actually gasped out loud because I forgot that James is the one that turned Alice. But this also brings up questions about whether fortune-tellers are real things in this universe.
• Something I needed to hear from Jasper as a teenager but probably skipped right over: “I can feel what you’re feeling now – and you are worth it.”

On Twilight and My Writing: 

• I pretty much plagiarized the preface as the beginning for my story, Verboten – a word which I mispronounced for years – which I outlined heavily, but never got past that prologue. I did end up writing, last year, a version of the first chapter, which became a short story that I admittedly still kind of like even though it has vampires.
• The style is very YA, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I used to think that there was, but writing in dialect is something that people have been doing for centuries. And, depending on my narrator, I often write in this sort of syntactically tripping way myself.
• There’s a mention of an electric current at first touch, which famously (to me, a one-time vampire nerd) signifies meeting your soul mate. This originates from L.J. Smith’s Night World series, and I used it always as a trope in the first chapter of the vampire stories I wrote.
• Quotes from Twilight would inevitably become the titles of my stories. One example is, “no blood, no foul,” which I know doesn’t come from Twilight, but it’s the first time I read the phrase. Also, I got a lot of vocabulary from this series. Irrevocable. Ostentatious. Masochism.

On Twilight and Things That Bothered Me, Concerning Plot and Also the World Today: 

• White and heteronormative. Yes, there are indigenous peoples. We will get more into that in future books.
• I feel like considering how smart and ethical the Cullens are, they should be more sustainable and do something with the goddamn food they don’t eat. It seems like no one brings in lunch here – they should bring lunch boxes and wax fruit or something.
• Where does Bella get her money from? She does not have a job, so I assume she gets an allowance? But she goes out to buy groceries all the time and still has a secret sock stash of money, as well.
• Listen, I think the blood typing situation is quite funny and clever. It is both a nice dissonance and a nice resonance that both Bella and Edward can’t deal with other people’s blood. HOWEVER, the fact that Bella is a human who gets a period is completely ignored. Considering Edward’s lust for her blood, especially before he passes the test of not draining her body at the end of the book, means that this must be discussed. I remember Stephenie Meyer saying on her website ten years ago that “Edward would be too polite to mention Bella’s period.” But like… Ugh. I’ve always wanted to write a piece called “The Missing Punctuation in YA Literature.” Stay tuned.
• It’s definitely useful that this is technically before cell phones would be a thing no teenager would be without.
• Edward does some weird breathing things when he’s turned on by Bella and like, he doesn’t have to breathe, so… I understand he needs to breathe to smell, but sometimes in the context, it doesn’t work.
• I don’t really believe that Edward is a virgin considering his like ten-year rebellious phase.
• I’ve always thought the ending was misleading. And I won’t get into the gender-swapped version of this because I only read the end and there’s a lot to unpack there.

On Twilight and My Life:

• I did that mitosis lab in senior year and my lab partner and I talked about Twilight the whole time, and it’s definitely not that easy to figure out which phase is which.
• I think I now read Bella as having anxiety and depression, like me. She acts melodramatically in some ways and there is a lot of talk of hyperventilating, but I’m pretty sure in a lot of situations I’d act the same way? Who knows if those are behaviors I learned from the book, though.
• I’ve had one and a quarter boyfriends in my life – see The Sound of Music Ruined My Love Life – and I told the full boyfriend that one day he would regret hanging out with me, a line that I didn’t realize I got directly from Edward. (The difference is that I was right and he did regret it, mwahahaha.) But I still use that line in relationships of all sorts today. My self-loathing is such that I believe people would be better off without me.
• I fell for some m’lady shit in my lifetime because of this. I have also done the 20 questions thing with every man I’ve ever liked.
• For some reason I can taste the soda that Bella has at the restaurant every time I read it, which just shows that Stephenie Meyer has created a world in which I could see myself.
• I’ve always seen sacrifice as an attractive trait, and I think Harry Potter gave me that idea first, but there was also this…
• My old e-mail used to be blackrose1901@gmail.com (I know) because Edward was born in 1901. I tried to make it seem like the 1901 was for Frasier‘s apartment when I “grew out of the series,” but you know.
• I won’t even begin with the whole “I love you” fiasco. Someday.
• I named my converse Emmett and Jasper. I totally named things Edward and Jacob, as well, but I don’t remember what. Can’t have been that important.

 

So… those are some of my feelings. I’m going to casually read the next book now. Things may go downhill.