#anti smeyer

[dukeofdelirium]

I hate Smeyer for many reasons but mostly for her blatant native racism. Not only did she write a story about a real Native American tribe and misrepresent their culture and in doing so create real ramifications for them (while not offering a single dime to help them after the damage she caused), but her entire story hinges on racist and classist tropes.

The wolf pack are treated so terribly by her writing. They’re also sexualized and objectified by her despite them being teenage boys, the youngest of them by Breaking Dawn being like 12-13. They’re literally just a bunch of traumatized kids that she says look like 25 year old men, and the only reason she did that was so she could write about them naked all the time and shit

She wrote them as aggressive predators who harm women, despite her own writing contradicting this very thing, seeing as their sole purpose for existing is to protect the sanctity of human life.

She writes about Jacob assaulting Bella, about Sam tearing up Emily’s face, about them being unable to handle rejection and becoming violent and incapable of controlling themselves specifically around women. It’s a disgusting stereotype she plays with. She writes about them as if they have no right to their anger, despite their lives being intruded upon by a bunch of white colonizer vampires lol. The Cullens are quite literally the entire reason they shift into wolves at all. The Cullens don’t have to live there, they just choose to, even knowing that they are uprooting and destroying their lives by doing so.

And she writes it as if the native characters are the villains in all this. She ends her story quite literally enslaving Jacob to his canonical oppressors. He ends up having zero bodily autonomy and no mind of his own. He becomes forever bound to the Cullens and to the girl he loved who is no longer her but an undead demonic thing.

It actually pisses me off so bad lmao

[darklinaforever]

To say that Bella was born to be a vampire just because she says so, or because she already had a power as a human is stupid.

Bella already had two possible destinies, the human version and the vampire version. She literally saw her future with Jacob, damn it.

And there are tons of other aspects of the story that show she could have stayed human (and others that show that she would maybe become a vampire, again, both destined through the writing of these books were possible as much as the other).

Bella feels this feeling of being born to be a vampire mostly because she finally feels like she belongs among the Cullens, and all these other supernatural beings around her, and also because she is quite gifted as a vampire.

Not because she was really born for it.

It's pretty obvious when you take into account all the books and Bella's feelings in general written in them.

This post is also a good explanation for that :

After doing an unholy amount of lurking in this fandom I’ve noticed that Bella gets some flack for the “I was born to be a vampire” line. Sh

As for the delusion about her power...

Not all humans had gifts (like Bella and Alice), before becoming a vampire with a gift. And not all vampires themselves necessarily have gifts either.

So this rhetoric about Bella always being meant to be a vampire because of her shield power doesn't even work.

You can interpret it like that, yes, but you can also interpret it the other way around if you dig a little deeper into the whole writing of this series (and movies even though they tried to simplify everything).

[queenofglassbeliever]

Rosalie says she never loved Edward as anything more than a brother, but is mad when he shows no romantic interest in her.

She gets jealous when he shows an interest in Bella even though at this point she's been with Emmett for about 70 years.

She hates being a vampire, would rather have died, yet she asks Carlisle to turn a dying Emmett for her.

When asked by Edward what she would do if she were in Bella's position and Emmett in his, Rosalie can't give a clear answer. Some part of Rosalie would give up Emmett for a human life.

Rose has very little regard for human life. She only cares about the romanticized human life she lost.

She's about respecting choices, but only if it's a choice she agrees with. Rosalie supports Bella's choice to go through with the pregnancy, but only because it's something she would have personally done. Up until then, Rose has shown very little respect or care for Bella's choices. She tries to dissuade Bella, but never tries to understand Bella's POV.

I love Rosalie, but Smeyer made her so selfish and contradictory that loving her is really hard sometimes.

[quadrantadvisor]

Was desperate enough to use the search function to find posts about The Host by Stephenie Meyer and I just wanted to say, I love your takes and I agree with everything.

The love square never made sense. Jared and Melanie were impossible to root for because the sole basis of their love was that Melanie felt safe with him and Melanie was the last woman on Earth to Jared, and then neither of those things turn out to be true so all they have is intense sexual chemistry. And especially in contrast to Ian and Wanda, how and why am I supposed to care about them? And there is no reason for Wanda to love Jared. I get her falling in love with him through Melanie’s memory of him, but the reality ought to have shattered that illusion for both of them IMO. Especially for Melanie, because he’d rather scream at and hit her body rather than even entertain the hope she might be in there. Sure, he protects it from other humans, but then he abuses it, so that’s not in fact protection; it’s possession.

The gender bioessentialism never made sense. Sure, Wanda’s in a female body and can make the choice to reproduce, which is super cool. But given that her sense of gender hinges on that ability to reproduce and given that that ability is super rare, why would other Souls gender themselves? I think being agender or someone who just didn’t give a damn about pedantic human gender roles would have been super interesting for Wanda’s character and I think it would have added more dimension to her and Ian’s relationship. He barely had to struggle with the fact that the body she was in belonged to an attractive cisgender girl and he was a cishet man, in spite of Meyer’s weak attempts to call that into question. The gender question might have thrown him for more of a loop.

Contrast that to Jared’s very comphet interpretation of his relationship with Melanie, and ooh baby, we’ve got a stew!

Also would have liked more exploration on ethics in general. Why do the Souls care about the well-being of the organisms on the Fire Eater planet but not on Earth? Instead of stopping from eating them, do they steal their bodies too? And the humans killing other humans in an attempt to save them: Is it okay to murder them if they’re the ones doing the murdering, like before?

Sorry for the long ask. I just have a lot of thoughts. Please feel free to block and ignore if this is too weird. Genuinely no intention to bother or offend and I’m sorry if I have.

Oh man I'm always ready to rant about The Host with people!

Yeah I feel like Meyer thought she was saying something really deep about human nature and the way that our instincts drive us? And there is something there, like, your body having a reaction to another person and that affecting your behavior is interesting! In my opinion she just went WAY too far with it, and it makes the characters seem unrealistic and childish. The ways that both Melanie and Wanderer act around Jared are bizarre (this may partially be my ace spectrum talking but like, c'mon.) Jared just kinda sucks, also. The whole idea that there's this inherent magnetism between MEN and WOMEN and that that physical attraction is the most important thing in the world is so heteronormative and amatonormative and uncomfortable

And the book was SO CLOSE to having an interesting take on gender! Examing the genders and/or lack thereof of a body-snatching alien species could be so fun! There's even the mention of the alien species with three genders, and talking about their family structures. You would think that something like that would indicate a more expansive view on gender, but really it's just an extrapolation of more bioessentialism. Because that species has those biological sexes, their families MUST be steucturedin this way, because that's what's natural for them. There's no room for variability or different sorts of feelings. She completely equates gender with biology, even when that biology is being coopted by a hitchhiker.

You're so right about Ian and Wanderer, I would love more examinations of how different she is from humans, including in a gender sense, and them having to deal with that as a part of their relationship. Setting up Jared as someone very entrenched in social norms and Ian as a foil to him in that way sounds really interesting!

Soul society and ethics are SO fascinating. I do sincerely think that Meyer is an compelling fantasy and sci fi world builder, if nothing else.

It's late and I feel like I'm a little incoherent but I love getting to chat about this book, it's so infuriating but so fun, now I want to read it again.

[kwop-kilawtley]

It’s honesty wild how Smeyer wrote a horror tragedy and marketed it as a happy ending feel good romance successfully. And the people fell for it bc they can’t do critical thinking and took everything Bella said under vampire thrall at face value. Gotta give smeyer some credit she’s wild for that one.

[prettyboyinacage]

What if… what if I just—

Jasper originally being a part of the Southern Unionists who served in the Union Army during the Civil War instead of the Confederacy. Because then he’d still be from the South, but without the *ahem* …other stuff, ya know?

I put our boy in a Union uniform so, ha! Take that Smeyer.

[deathofherreputation]

the way smeyer could have done anything BUT make jasper a confederate soldier and she just… refused to even consider anything else??? it baffles me. and also, the way she NEVER even has him express remorse for it. like, if you HAVE to put it in there (which she doesn’t, let’s be real,) at least have him say he was sorry! here is this man who has now lived over a hundred years, he’s seen societies change and social activism and civil rights movements, and you mean to tell me his views wouldn’t have changed at all??? it could even have been potentially cool if she’d maybe explored that, had a scene where jasper admits to how wrong his ideas were when he was a human, or even could have explored how war manipulates young men and uses their sense of “pride” or “honor” to send them fighting for a terrible cause.

but nope, she just chose to be racist instead.

[waldensblog]

Not to stir the pot more, but vampire sex in Twilight makes no sense. Everyone already knows the heartbeat/erection one so I’ll skip over that and jump straight to fluids. Vampires, apparently, cannot cry or sweat or anything. They’re frozen in whatever state they were, and presumably, that means they cannot create new fluids - so sex would either be... impossible, or akin to a mortar and pestle grinding, given that they’re all rock-hard (sounds uncomfortable). Even if we accept the premise of a male vampire being able to ejaculate (something something the sperm that was frozen there - which must reasonably be a limited supply, so eventually... what, does cold air come out?), the sperm shouldn’t be able to fertilize anything, because it’s frozen too.