when it rots

washed up gun from lake michigan

via coravioletwalters

don't MAKE me turn this hero's journey around!

Aww, is somebody still in “refusal of the call”?

#lmao how are you gonna turn around when the hero can never truly return home?

"Twilight vampires are stupid! Twilight vampires are for little girls!"

NO! LISTEN!!

Twilight vampires are a direct result of Purity Culture of the 90s and early 2000s, the AIDS crisis, and the War on Drugs.

Many vampires are prolonged feeders. Hell, the original literary babes like Carmilla and Dracula, feed many times from people, and those folks never went through any change besides anemia, potentially becoming obsessed with or enslaved to the vampire, or DEATH.

Not to say that some vampires in between don't have a one-and-done in biting and turning (My Best Friend is a Vampire [1988], Blacula [1972], My Babysitter’s a Vampire [2010]), but Twilight vampires truly do it with every aspect of these guys. Bella meets Edward ONE TIME and is obsessed with him, drawn to him. He seems to be her first love, and they end up getting married. They have sex THE NIGHT AFTER THEY WED, and BOOM, PREGNANT! True Love Waits, the organization that formed in 1993 with the aim of reducing premarital sex (some members even thought actually dating before marriage was towing the line), had its first Purity Ball only seven years before the novel came out. Stephanie Meyer herself is Mormon, so the purity culture runs DEEP. This is an important context to be looking at this media from!

This one bite thing is not a popular thing in vampire media in years since Twilight, many people seem to prefer the method of vampires swapping blood with their sires (True Blood [2009-14], Interview With the Vampire [2022-present], What We Do In The Shadows [2019-2024]). One of the inspirations for Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even has this method in place. But Twilight is in the age of D.A.R.E. where we gotta say, "Not even once!!"

These guys also really dig in on moral superiority of being "vegetarian." They are able to control their want to feed on humans, their LUST for blood, by feeding on animals. This is another product of purity culture! Vampires feeding has long been a metaphor for sex. They partake in a 'cleaner,' 'more moral' type of feeding, much like "soaking" or dating without engaging physically at all. Edward has been a good boy, basically his entire vampiric life, feeding on wild animals, and he constantly mentions that Bella even being close to him is a threat to her safety (and her mortal soul). This is straight-up purity culture nonsense!! Painting women as the gatekeepers of sex and pleasure, and men as wild monsters that seek to corrupt these delicate flowers.

Yeah, Twilight mainly appeals to teenage girls in terms of sincerely thinking that Edward or Jacob are good people worthy of being attracted to, but I think that the vampires in the franchise are incredibly fascinating in the wake of all of these important changes to how we as a culture view sex and sexuality! I've even seen cases made where these vampires are much closer to Mormon angels than vampires due to their diverse range of abilities and sparkly skin. These are bonkers versions of the vampire myth, but they are still important! All vampires ever are products of their time, and these sparkly, horny, guilt-ridden monsters are practically engineered for girls and women of the aughts, playing out the sexual and courting behaviors they have had shoved down their throats their entire sexual development.

Be nicer to the folks that like Twilight! And analyze your media!

Bitches will find a fictional man attractive and then immediately imagine him in situations where he is losing alarming amounts of blood

Dabby Phabby doobles

🐏 I'm opening an Ignatius ram fanbase !

Summary:

Read it on AO3.

“The power dynamic between Edward and Bella is heavily skewed it’s not healthy” is such a funny argument because that's... kinda the point

Everything about Edward is designed to draw in and kill a human. He’s got loads more life experience than any of his ‘peers’ (100 years of own lived experience + all the thoughts around him). AND YET he kowtows to this woman who is, by many measures, average. Bella’s a snake charmer. Bella’s a lion tamer. He’s the gun but she pulls the trigger. Edward’s strength and speed is Bella’s strength and speed because he’s wrapped around her little finger. There are different kinds of power. Edward's got physical power, but Bella's got her own power of him (and vice versa; they're crazy about each other). His power is at her disposal. That’s the spice. That’s the source of tension and the satisfaction.

phenomenom thats been bothering me that i could only express via an mspaint reverse boomer comic

I'm gonna take you to my place.

people give Bella so much shit for what she said to Charlie during the plan to escape James but in her defense, she was the only one who even cared to consider him! Edward was so wrapped up in his panic and guilt that he only cared about Bella's safety! I doubt the other Cullens would've even brought him up. Bella would've never hurt him if it wasn't for his own sake.

under a poplar tree

Hans/Henry fanarts with Galehaut quotes from Lancelot-Grail

We literally cannot let them start charging 80 dollars for video games 70 dollars was already outrageous 60 was pushing it. 80 fucking dollars. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR DAMN MIND. For MARIO?!?!?!?!?

If we don’t buy it, they’ll lower the price, just like the 3DS. They make more money from 2 million people buying it at $60 than 1 million at $80

"I promise you."