![]() Cassidy Serhienko Despite having read Twilight a grand total of 21 times (yeah you read that right, die mad about it) it was always lost on my 12 year old self just how much of the book was about Bella and Edward being super, uncomfortably turned on by each other. Not even counting the very simple metaphor of “thirst”, literally the whole book is about them wanting to touch each other. I think that at the time I got it cause why else would I have been so enamoured let’s be real, but I didn’t GET IT. Definitely not enough to put into words. Cause it’s about the yearning *insert parks and rec meme*. This is probably why the cover is a pomegranate, the indisputably sexiest fruit. So obviously Midnight Sun is absolutely hysterical because Edward invented emo boys and angst. Which we know is not a vampire trait because Emmett. But! I appreciate that it has, mostly at the beginning, moments where it’s genuinely kind of creepy. I know we all make fun of him watching her sleep and whatnot but that to me doesn’t feel CREEPY creepy (don’t watch people sleep). But he takes actions and has thought patterns that distinctly make him not-human. Like how he has to analyze if Bella is attracted to him based off of how a middle aged woman reacts to him - which highlights his age and sets him apart as other. Plus the fact that Emmett is super chill about the possibility of Edward killing Bella for most of the book is both super funny and vaguely unsettling. That otherness is something that was maybe missing from the first book. I don’t know about anyone else but I always thought it was stupid how angsty Edward was about being with Bella, even though the angst is fabulous and literally the whole point. But because Bella knows he’s a vampire but doesn’t fully understand the implications of that, as a reader you also see him as a human - with some admittedly weird quirks. Not, mind you, that I would change anything about the original books (okay except the baby, and y’know Jacob falling in love with the baby, even I can not justify that). For an older reader I think that it makes for a more interesting story to see Edward as more inhuman and more capable of violence. You have to laugh at him planning, in great detail, how he would murder Bella and their entire class. Sounds like every physics class I ever sat through tbh. Another thing that people critiqued Twilight for was Bella’s “lack of agency”. Apparently Stephanie Meyer heard ya’ll whining about it if Edwards fixation on her saying yes is any indication. For me, Bella’s normality was exactly something that I liked about the original Twilight. It’s the go-to YA trope to have girls who are allegedly plain and clumsy but then take one self defence class and suddenly have the skills to single-handedly defeat an entire army. Bella legitimately IS normal. Why tf would some rando human be able to physically hold her own against vampires and werewolves when their entire mythology is about being virtually indestructible. A human could be killed by an irritated badger let alone a vampire. And Bella doesn’t understand the intricacies of the vampire/werewolf world because she. Isn’t. Supernatural. So yes, Edward, Jacob and the other supernatural characters take charge in physically fraught situations but Bella calls all of the shots in her relationships with both boys. Between her and Edward, she’s the aggressor. She takes their relationship to higher levels of physicality and ultimately she gets every single thing she wants even though Edward tries to do the opposite “for her safety”. Dating? Kissing? Sex? Friendship with Jacob even though he’s clearly thirsty as hell? Becoming a vampire? Being turned specifically by Edward? All of it happens despite both Edward’s and Jacob’s protestations. She pushes for every outcome and gets what she wants. Even though it stays pretty PG-13, Twilight was one of the first books I remember reading where a female character just straight up asked for what she wanted in her relationship. Anyway, come for the nostalgia, stay for murderous and horny Edward.
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