So, I was reading my guilty pleasure about Robert Pattison (Edward the Dreamy) taking one of the Jonas Brothers Girlfriends out to lunch and this quote:
caught my eye.
Did I miss something when I attempted to read this book? Or is The Superifical writer just being his/her usually snarky self.
I usually don’t miss the metaphorical stuff going on in a story line, but my hatred for this book overshadowed any reasonable thinking I may have.
Well, the author is a Mormon, and I suppose some Mormons feel like outsiders, as the vampires would…
But no, I don’t see the parallel at all. Vampires in the “Twilight” series are perceived as incredibly cool and attractive, as the prototypical “Bad boys” with a sensitive side that teenage girls love.
Mormons may be many things, but they are NOT perceived by ANYONE as cool or as seductive “bad” folks.
Well, not since Joseph Smith…
d&r
Not Mormonism per se as much as religiousity in general and chasteness / virginity / dealing with temptation specifically.
From io9:
Then why do they keep sending cute boys with strange underwear to my door?
Strange underwear? I don’t think I’ve gotten the ones with strange underwear… at least not that I know of… 
I’d say he’s a metaphor for the entire book, by virtue of sucking.
Well I didn’t notice anything, and I am a Mormon. There’s certainly plenty of material about sexual tension and delayed gratification and all that, but let’s face it, literary vampires have been seducing pure virgins without quiiiiiite getting to the sex for quite some time. I don’t know how much you can really attribute the happily-ever-after-for-eternity ending to LDS theology, since vampires, again, do have a tendency to live forever anyway. Myself, I would say it’s more vampirey than Mormony, but I didn’t actually read the 4th book, I only read a snarky synopsis.
For a beautiful set of snarky commentary on the books, I suggest LDS Sparkledammerung
.
The commentator has her own ideas about the supposedly Mormon undertext in the books…and sums them up rather nicely. With pictures, yet!
It’s hilarious reading and I highly recommend it.
Google Mormon + “magic underwear.”
All Mormons wear strange underwear.
-FrL-
huh, Thank you elfkin477 and Frylock. I had no idea, but I find it extremely fascinating!
AND it proves my point about Joseph Smith.
OK now, so help me this is true-
Mormo and Moroni are names of types of Vampires in the Balkans.
Not quite true, but way to make fun of my religion.
Do jews wear “magic beanies”?
Well, yeah, but we try not to stare too hard.
Ditto on the underwear.
He (and his whole clan) is a metaphor for the treatability of homosexuality. Essentially it is ok to be a vampire (gay) and want to consume the blood of humans (have homosexual sex) so long as you control the urge by hunting only non-humans (having only heterosexual sex). The desire to hunt human (have homosexual sex) may seem overpowering but if you fight it hard enough you’ll eventually regain equilibrium and find a higher plane of happiness and social integration.
I make no claim that was intended subtext. It is just the first thing I thought of when I read the books.
If we can stop with the dumb insults to a religion you guys don’t actually seem to know much about, you might be interested in reading this essay on Twilight: What Girls Want. Although the beginning of the essay really annoyed me (“I hate YA novels–they bore me.” So why are you writing about them? “Twilight is fantastic.” What?) when she gets into the story and sex and teen girls, I think she makes a lot of really good points. I particularly like the line “the books constitute a thousand-page treatise on the art of foreplay.” Yeah, pretty much.
Ooooh, thank you very much!
HILARIOUS. I enjoyed this more than the actual books. I read them all and the storyline was good, but Meyers really is quite a predictable writer.
Cite? (And I did try to google it, came up empty)
There was a claim (not factually based) in the fundamentalist anti-Mormon screed “The God Makers” that “Mormon” means “Gates of Hell” in Chineses. So, I’m dubious.