Building The Perfect Vampire
8/9/08 10:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsSo: I have now read all four Stephanie Meyer vampire books.
I thought the first one was great fun--reads fast enough so I rarely stopped to say "say wha?", full of silly teen-angst (I live with real, authentic teen angst on a day-to-day basis, and it is both more anguished and more inchoate than anything served up in Twilight). Meyer sets up a Mary Sue: the classic girl-who-is-prettier-than-she-thinks, a little spunky, good enough in school without being a Brain. While living with her mother in the sunbelt, she's always been this pale, gawky, clumsy kid, not popular, not hated, just negligible. Then she moves to Forks, Washington, a town beset 350 days of the year with clouds and rain (this is a plot point, honest). Suddenly pale is cool, and she's kinda a babe. And the best looking boy in school is interested in her. Of course, he's a vampire. And of course, once Bella (the girl) finds out Edward's secret she becomes 1) privy to all the vampire secrets (cause Edward is one of a coven of peaceful vampires who eat deer and woodchucks and stuff, rather than human blood) and 2) in fear for her life because she knows the vampire secrets.
One big secret, which is not a secret to most readers of vampire fiction, is that vampires are inhumanly gorgeous, inhumanly strong, graceful, and fast. Because they live forever, give or take, they're inhumanly clever and Machiavellian. They have plenty of money because they've had forever to invest and make money. They glitter in direct sunlight! (which is why the clouds help--the overcast allows the vamps to go outside during the day without blinding the locals). And many vampires have extra cool powers, as if living forever wasn't enough: Edward can read minds, except for Bella's (which is useful to the plot, because if he could read her mind it would put paid to any number of plot contrivances).
Sarcasm Girl says to mention that Alice occasionally rocks. And Alice (one of Edward's coven) does rock--in a sort of serviceable way. Alice is the one who dresses Bella (so that Bella doesn't have to do anything so unheroine-like as obsess over clothes, and yet permits Meyer to get in lots of clothing description). Alice arranges birthday parties and weddings, she loves to shop and would make a perfect best-friend-cheerleader if she weren't, like, immortal. Oh, and Alice can see the future too. Sometimes.
At the end of Twilight, Edward and Bella are a couple. At the beginning of New Moon they break up, because Bella gets a papercut (srsly!) and all the vamps in the house come close to attacking her, and Edward (who looks 17 but combines the stodgy I-know-what's-best-for-you conservatism of the 80-odd year old he is experientially with an annoyingly teenage emo shtick) realizes that hanging out with vampires is dangerous for her. Parted from Edward, Bella goes into a decline, but while she's contemplating death, she makes friends with Jacob, a nice Native American boy (and the most realistic - personality wise - character in the books) whose tribe are werewolves (the mortal enemies of vampires, of course). Over the next couple of books (the rest of New Moon and Eclipse) Edward and Bella are reunited, have to face down the Volturi (a sort of Watchers' Council of ancient vampires in Rome who administer vampire-dom); Bella goes to the prom; Jacob, now a full-on werewolf--falls in love with Bella, who realizes that she's a little in love with him too; and Bella keeps nagging at Edward to bite her already and make her a vampire. Jacob pulls a "him or me" scene with Bella (oh, Jacob! We could have told you that wouldn't end well) and at the end of book three she's won her true love, but lost her best buddy.
A good deal has been made of the fact that Edward abstains from sex and from turning Bella into a vampire until after they're married. I see this as less a matter of principle, Mormon or otherwise, than story-telling necessity: after Jeannie marries Major Nelson or Remington Steele and Laura Holt finally sleep together, it's much harder to keep the romantic tension going.
So the first book, enjoyable. Books two and three, overlong, but entertaining. But the fourth book rolls lavishly into Mary Sue territory, in a mind-boggling way. Book four is all about Having It Both Ways, Auctorially. Sarcasm Girl, who was in Indiana when she got the book, kept texting me messages like: "*headdesk*." She's pretty much on point. Alice and Esme (another of Edward's coven) organize a lavish wedding (which again gets Bella out of being interested in the wedding itself, while permitting lots of wedding porn). Edward and Bella go off to South America for a lavish honeymoon, and have human/vampire sex--a risk, because Edward's a little, um, stronger and more indestructible than Bella is. She survives the sex. Hell, she likes the sex. Edward, however, is traumatized and emo, cause he bruises her a lot. But wait! There's more! Bella becomes pregnant--well, no one has ever heard of a human becoming pregnant by a vampire, because most vampires are still snacking on humans, and the humans don't last long enough to get to the sex part. As with Rosemary and her baby, the creature inside Bella makes for a rough pregnancy. By the time they get back to Forks and Jacob is on the scene (self-righteously horrified at the fact that Edward has knocked up his bride, despite the fact that no one could have predicted that it would happen) it's time for her to have the baby. Which kills her. Except that Edward injects vamp venom directly into her heart and saves her--or at least makes her a vamp.
Of course, new vampires are dangerous: it takes them several years to change from the vamp equivalent of crazed toddlers to more self-controlled creatures. Which would mean that, by the time Bella recovers from her vampirization her child would be ready for preschool. So instead, Bella turns out to be unusual--maybe because she has been preparing to become a vampire for three books, or maybe because she's just special that way--and shows preternatural control of her vampiric powers. So she gets to hang out with her baby, who is (revoltingly) named Renesme (for Rene, Bella's mom, and Esme, Edward's kinda vamp mom), and who is unlike any child ever born before. She has a heartbeat, but she matures at an unbelievably rapid rate, can communicate her thoughts via touch, and --oh, right! Jacob the werewolf imprints on her, like with ducklings? So he's going to wait until she's old enough, but not in any icky way.
The Volturi, craving the powers of some of the talented Forks vampires, come to town in full strength, intending to use the fact of Renesme's birth as a way to destroy most of the coven and just keep the vampires with interesting powers (like collecting stamps, I guess). Instead, it turns out that Bella--what a surprise!--has a special power unlike any ever seen before, which, after a long negotiation, resolves the situation. Bella and Edward and their daughter get to live happily forever after; Jacob is waiting in the wings as babysitter and future lover. Oh, and in the last chapter or two we learn that werewolves aren't werewolves, they're shapeshifters. Why this was important enough to be mentioned at all, we will never know.
How do we have it both ways?
* All through the series someone else takes over--insists on taking over--all the things Bella either doesn't want to do or can't do--clothes shopping, caring for her baby, communicating clearly. Esme is only too delighted to be permitted to build a house for Bella and Edward to live in. Alice--well, there's a song about Alice. Rosalie wanted a child so much when she was human that now she's a vamp she's damned near the perfect nanny. Bella gets to reap the benefits without having to be too girly about clothes or house or baby.
* Bella's father, who never liked Edward much, copes too easily with Bella's transformation into vamp. She loses nothing by her transformation, despite a books-long fretting over all the things she will sacrifice in order to be with Edward.
* Although Edward has been promising Bella since book 1 that eventually he will turn her into a vamp, he doesn't actually do so until she is at death's door, ravaged by the process of birthing a demi-vamp. Even then, he doesn't bite her, he uses a syringe. So he's not being an Evil Vampire, he's saving her.
* Once Bella becomes a vampire, the Mary-Sueism really comes through. She's stronger and more graceful (oh dear God, kill me) than everyone else (that does improve her sex life, as Edward doesn't have to worry about bruising her any more). She's got a special power that she had even when she was mortal: she's a shield, which is why Edward can't read her thoughts. And of course this girl who was always good looking but didn't realize it, is now flawless, not through any work of her own like remembering to wash her hair or put on lipstick. As with Alice and the clothes, Bella gets to be prom queen without having to want to be a prom queen.
* It turns out that Bella doesn't break Jacob's heart, because what he was in love with, even before Renesme was a twinkle in her father's eye, was the potential Renesme he was going to imprint on. Does that make sense? It certainly means Bella doesn't have to feel guilty about him. Win win!
* And despite the impending doom Meyer sets up over the birth of a vampire baby (a taboo in this verse), the "battle" comes, and nothing happens. No one dies, except for one minor character we don't like anyway. No one gets hurt, and Bella saves the day. As SG remarks, There are not one, not two, but about FOUR deus ex machina's in the end of the book, making it read like fanfiction.
Me, I think that Meyer should have stopped with Eclipse, and left the interesting revelations of the bedroom (and birthing chamber) to her readers imagination and the vast quantities of fanfic this book has replaced.
I thought the first one was great fun--reads fast enough so I rarely stopped to say "say wha?", full of silly teen-angst (I live with real, authentic teen angst on a day-to-day basis, and it is both more anguished and more inchoate than anything served up in Twilight). Meyer sets up a Mary Sue: the classic girl-who-is-prettier-than-she-thinks, a little spunky, good enough in school without being a Brain. While living with her mother in the sunbelt, she's always been this pale, gawky, clumsy kid, not popular, not hated, just negligible. Then she moves to Forks, Washington, a town beset 350 days of the year with clouds and rain (this is a plot point, honest). Suddenly pale is cool, and she's kinda a babe. And the best looking boy in school is interested in her. Of course, he's a vampire. And of course, once Bella (the girl) finds out Edward's secret she becomes 1) privy to all the vampire secrets (cause Edward is one of a coven of peaceful vampires who eat deer and woodchucks and stuff, rather than human blood) and 2) in fear for her life because she knows the vampire secrets.
One big secret, which is not a secret to most readers of vampire fiction, is that vampires are inhumanly gorgeous, inhumanly strong, graceful, and fast. Because they live forever, give or take, they're inhumanly clever and Machiavellian. They have plenty of money because they've had forever to invest and make money. They glitter in direct sunlight! (which is why the clouds help--the overcast allows the vamps to go outside during the day without blinding the locals). And many vampires have extra cool powers, as if living forever wasn't enough: Edward can read minds, except for Bella's (which is useful to the plot, because if he could read her mind it would put paid to any number of plot contrivances).
Sarcasm Girl says to mention that Alice occasionally rocks. And Alice (one of Edward's coven) does rock--in a sort of serviceable way. Alice is the one who dresses Bella (so that Bella doesn't have to do anything so unheroine-like as obsess over clothes, and yet permits Meyer to get in lots of clothing description). Alice arranges birthday parties and weddings, she loves to shop and would make a perfect best-friend-cheerleader if she weren't, like, immortal. Oh, and Alice can see the future too. Sometimes.
At the end of Twilight, Edward and Bella are a couple. At the beginning of New Moon they break up, because Bella gets a papercut (srsly!) and all the vamps in the house come close to attacking her, and Edward (who looks 17 but combines the stodgy I-know-what's-best-for-you conservatism of the 80-odd year old he is experientially with an annoyingly teenage emo shtick) realizes that hanging out with vampires is dangerous for her. Parted from Edward, Bella goes into a decline, but while she's contemplating death, she makes friends with Jacob, a nice Native American boy (and the most realistic - personality wise - character in the books) whose tribe are werewolves (the mortal enemies of vampires, of course). Over the next couple of books (the rest of New Moon and Eclipse) Edward and Bella are reunited, have to face down the Volturi (a sort of Watchers' Council of ancient vampires in Rome who administer vampire-dom); Bella goes to the prom; Jacob, now a full-on werewolf--falls in love with Bella, who realizes that she's a little in love with him too; and Bella keeps nagging at Edward to bite her already and make her a vampire. Jacob pulls a "him or me" scene with Bella (oh, Jacob! We could have told you that wouldn't end well) and at the end of book three she's won her true love, but lost her best buddy.
A good deal has been made of the fact that Edward abstains from sex and from turning Bella into a vampire until after they're married. I see this as less a matter of principle, Mormon or otherwise, than story-telling necessity: after Jeannie marries Major Nelson or Remington Steele and Laura Holt finally sleep together, it's much harder to keep the romantic tension going.
So the first book, enjoyable. Books two and three, overlong, but entertaining. But the fourth book rolls lavishly into Mary Sue territory, in a mind-boggling way. Book four is all about Having It Both Ways, Auctorially. Sarcasm Girl, who was in Indiana when she got the book, kept texting me messages like: "*headdesk*." She's pretty much on point. Alice and Esme (another of Edward's coven) organize a lavish wedding (which again gets Bella out of being interested in the wedding itself, while permitting lots of wedding porn). Edward and Bella go off to South America for a lavish honeymoon, and have human/vampire sex--a risk, because Edward's a little, um, stronger and more indestructible than Bella is. She survives the sex. Hell, she likes the sex. Edward, however, is traumatized and emo, cause he bruises her a lot. But wait! There's more! Bella becomes pregnant--well, no one has ever heard of a human becoming pregnant by a vampire, because most vampires are still snacking on humans, and the humans don't last long enough to get to the sex part. As with Rosemary and her baby, the creature inside Bella makes for a rough pregnancy. By the time they get back to Forks and Jacob is on the scene (self-righteously horrified at the fact that Edward has knocked up his bride, despite the fact that no one could have predicted that it would happen) it's time for her to have the baby. Which kills her. Except that Edward injects vamp venom directly into her heart and saves her--or at least makes her a vamp.
Of course, new vampires are dangerous: it takes them several years to change from the vamp equivalent of crazed toddlers to more self-controlled creatures. Which would mean that, by the time Bella recovers from her vampirization her child would be ready for preschool. So instead, Bella turns out to be unusual--maybe because she has been preparing to become a vampire for three books, or maybe because she's just special that way--and shows preternatural control of her vampiric powers. So she gets to hang out with her baby, who is (revoltingly) named Renesme (for Rene, Bella's mom, and Esme, Edward's kinda vamp mom), and who is unlike any child ever born before. She has a heartbeat, but she matures at an unbelievably rapid rate, can communicate her thoughts via touch, and --oh, right! Jacob the werewolf imprints on her, like with ducklings? So he's going to wait until she's old enough, but not in any icky way.
The Volturi, craving the powers of some of the talented Forks vampires, come to town in full strength, intending to use the fact of Renesme's birth as a way to destroy most of the coven and just keep the vampires with interesting powers (like collecting stamps, I guess). Instead, it turns out that Bella--what a surprise!--has a special power unlike any ever seen before, which, after a long negotiation, resolves the situation. Bella and Edward and their daughter get to live happily forever after; Jacob is waiting in the wings as babysitter and future lover. Oh, and in the last chapter or two we learn that werewolves aren't werewolves, they're shapeshifters. Why this was important enough to be mentioned at all, we will never know.
How do we have it both ways?
* All through the series someone else takes over--insists on taking over--all the things Bella either doesn't want to do or can't do--clothes shopping, caring for her baby, communicating clearly. Esme is only too delighted to be permitted to build a house for Bella and Edward to live in. Alice--well, there's a song about Alice. Rosalie wanted a child so much when she was human that now she's a vamp she's damned near the perfect nanny. Bella gets to reap the benefits without having to be too girly about clothes or house or baby.
* Bella's father, who never liked Edward much, copes too easily with Bella's transformation into vamp. She loses nothing by her transformation, despite a books-long fretting over all the things she will sacrifice in order to be with Edward.
* Although Edward has been promising Bella since book 1 that eventually he will turn her into a vamp, he doesn't actually do so until she is at death's door, ravaged by the process of birthing a demi-vamp. Even then, he doesn't bite her, he uses a syringe. So he's not being an Evil Vampire, he's saving her.
* Once Bella becomes a vampire, the Mary-Sueism really comes through. She's stronger and more graceful (oh dear God, kill me) than everyone else (that does improve her sex life, as Edward doesn't have to worry about bruising her any more). She's got a special power that she had even when she was mortal: she's a shield, which is why Edward can't read her thoughts. And of course this girl who was always good looking but didn't realize it, is now flawless, not through any work of her own like remembering to wash her hair or put on lipstick. As with Alice and the clothes, Bella gets to be prom queen without having to want to be a prom queen.
* It turns out that Bella doesn't break Jacob's heart, because what he was in love with, even before Renesme was a twinkle in her father's eye, was the potential Renesme he was going to imprint on. Does that make sense? It certainly means Bella doesn't have to feel guilty about him. Win win!
* And despite the impending doom Meyer sets up over the birth of a vampire baby (a taboo in this verse), the "battle" comes, and nothing happens. No one dies, except for one minor character we don't like anyway. No one gets hurt, and Bella saves the day. As SG remarks, There are not one, not two, but about FOUR deus ex machina's in the end of the book, making it read like fanfiction.
Me, I think that Meyer should have stopped with Eclipse, and left the interesting revelations of the bedroom (and birthing chamber) to her readers imagination and the vast quantities of fanfic this book has replaced.