I was talking with some friends of a friend today, and it turned out two of them were sparklepire fans. Naturally, I had some questions to ask.
ME: No offense, but what is the point of having a vampire that doesn’t kill people, doesn’t get killed by sunlight, and sparkles?
HER: That’s what makes it so great. You expect vampires to be all those things, and then she does something different. She’s being original.
ME: What about Edward stalking Bella? I mean, wouldn’t it creep you out if some guy was watching you while you were sleeping?
HER: Yes, but he loves her. and she loves him.
I left it at that. If she wants to like Twilight, she can go enjoy Twilight. I mean, I’m a fan of the Inheritance Cycle, so I’m not one to talk. Just because the Culture Police don’t approve of a novel doesn’t justify spoiling the enjoyment for those who do like it.
Your friend may believe this, but the only remotely original thing about Twilight is the sparkling. There have been plenty of other stories about vampires that fed on animals, and plenty where vampires were not killed by sunlight. I can’t think of another author who’s been as determined as Meyer to remove every possible downside to vampirism, but those two particular elements aren’t original at all.
How many normal people do you know have to stay home on sunny days so people don’t realize they sparkle? Or can only play baseball during thunder storms so they don’t attract attention because of the noise? So, that’s like two ways they’re different from people.
I always wondered why the girl vampires at least couldn’t just wear makeup on sunny days to cover up their sparkles. Maybe the boys would worry that a guy wearing makeup to high school is more conspicuous than a guy who’s mysteriously absent on occasion, but for most of the last century the girls would have had access to foundation or powder. Heck, in the past decade or so plenty of young women have been wearing body glitter or glittery blush and eyeshadow, so it should be pretty easy for the female vampires to camouflage sparkly skin.
I think GL was asking if they were physically different from people other then the sparkling. I’m kind of curious too, I’ve never read the books, but heard people make fun of the Sparklepires. From the trailers of the movies I’ve seen, they seem to have some super-human abilities, how else are they different from normal people?
I’ve described them in other threads as “superheroes with a disgusting diet”, and that’s basically it. I later learned that the author has actually said she never cared for vampire fiction, was always more interested in superheroes, and that her vampires are more like superheroes than other vampires in fiction (see here).
All the vampires in Twilight are superstrong and superfast, and different vampires also have different special abilities. The hero of Twilight can read people’s minds, and another member of his vampire “family” has visions of the future. They have none of the weaknesses traditionally associated with vampires (holy symbols, garlic, etc.), and indeed have no real weaknesses at all. Conventional weapons are useless against them. They vampires are described as being better than humans in every way. Being turned into a vampire even makes people better looking.
They do need to drink blood, but some choose to drink only animal blood. This is describes as being less satisfying than human blood, but vampires on an animal-only diet don’t seem to suffer any ill effects. They aren’t weaker than vampires who drink human blood. It does, however, make their eyes a different color. (No, really.) A vampire full of human blood has red eyes, and a vampire full of animal blood has eyes that the narrator will describe at great length as being a beautiful golden color. In either case as the vampire starts to get hungry his or her eyes will become darker until they turn black. It’s very convenient, like they have a gas gauge built into their faces.
I read the first couple of Twilight books. They aren’t good, but I’ve seen worse.
If you’ve only ever thought of vampires as horror-movie monsters, then it’s briefly interesting to see them in a romance novel. They’re an incarnation of one of romance’s staple plots: a brooding alpha male with a dark past is rescued from his lonely existence by the joie de vivre of a beautiful young woman.
The only thing that keeps the Twilight vampires from being completely pathetic is that they are, in fact, very dangerous. They have made a deliberate choice to avoid preying on people, but at any given moment they’re only one heartbeat away from tearing out the throat of the nearest human. Especially if she happens to get a paper cut. It can be interesting to watch a character handle that struggle.
But Meyer spares her vampires from daytime weakness just as she spares her werewolves from their classic vulnerability, allowing them to change form effortlessly and at will. It makes them much less interesting.
I’ve not read the books nor seen the movie (nor do I intend to), but I found this summary of the series amusing. The summary was written by someone who was raised Mormon, and it points out a lot of Mormon symbolism present in the series.
This post is written by someone who was raised Mormon, and that post, while snarky, says much more about the authors issues than the books say about Mormons or “Mormon symbolism”*.
I read part of the series, and didn’t finish because I didn’t particularly like them. I saw nothing “Mormon” about them, except possibly the theme of abstinence, which is hardly unique to members of the LDS church.
The movie is up on Youtube now. It’s getting pulled down about as fast as fans can put it back up again, but you can watch it there.
I liked the house Edward’s family lives in, but not much else about it.
It reminded me of something I had conveniently forgotten; How deeply, hopelessly smitten I was with a boy of about 17 when I was 14 and in high school. He was the most beautiful thing ever. And it was’t because I wanted to giggle with my friends, I didn’t even like the boy much. He was just so beautiful. Guys aren’t the only gender to fall in “love” that way.
In the books it’s also said that they sparkle like diamonds - so I kinda think of an exaggerated effect like Emma Frost had in the Wolverine movie. Everyone I’ve talked to who has read the books thinks that the movie effect was WAY toned down. So with the diamond part it’s a little more reasonable that they can’t just hide it with makeup.
It might be reasonable except for the fact that it’s a major point in the books that under indoor lighting at school or outside on a cloudy day then Edward & Friends don’t sparkle suspiciously at all. They just look pale. Diamonds still sparkle when they’re not under direct sunlight, the effect is just less brilliant. If the vampires aren’t sparkling on a cloudy day or under indoor lighting then they can’t be sparkling so much that it would show through heavy makeup.
I have some experience with this kind of thing, because I make jewelry as a hobby. Nothing as fancy as diamonds, though – I’m a beader and use various glass beads and semi-precious stones. Anyway, over the past year or so I’ve been trying to take good photos of my work, and dealing with the lighting is tricky because if it’s too bright then it reflects off the glass/stones and I wind up with a bunch of big white sparkles in the picture. I quickly learned that I couldn’t use a flash or direct sunlight, and my experiments on an overcast day showed that even when it’s cloudy my beads are reflecting more sunlight than I’d like. Here’s an example– see all the little white reflections? Here’s the same piece under normal indoor lighting, which came out much better. You can still see some reflected light in the beads, but I didn’t want to eliminate that entirely. That’s with just glossy opaque glass beads, not the sparklier faceted or transparent kind. Here’s a polished semi-precious stone necklace under the same indoor lighting conditions, and it’s very noticeably reflecting light too.
So this shining like a crazy diamond, but only in direct sunlight, business really rang false to me. I don’t think Meyer thought it through very well. If the sparkling is only visible on a sunny day then it must actually be quite subtle, less than a polished stone or opaque glass bead, and thus something that could easily be concealed with makeup. If it is dazzling in direct sunlight, Edward & Friends should at least be wearing broad-brimmed hats outside even when it’s cloudy and scrupulously avoiding flash photography at all times.
If we accept as a given the whole idiotic premise of sparkling vampires, it would be rather clever to say that superstitions about vampires not showing up in mirrors or on film are actually due to vampires being determined to avoid reflected light or camera flashes. I don’t remember this coming up in Twilight, although for all I know Meyer addressed it in one of the later books.
ETA: Oh yeah, the sparkling effect in the movie was really stupid looking. It was bad CGI that seemed about 15 years out of date. They’d have done better to just slather the lead in body glitter.
I can accept that as just being a joke, but it does remind me of debates we’ve had on here about whether people who ever eat any kind of meat (like fish) at all have the right to call themselves vegetarians. Can you imagine someone saying “No, I’m totally a vegetarian, because I don’t eat the meat of animals. I just kill them and drink their blood! Okay, I’ll admit it isn’t vegan, but it is vegetarian!”
