panlight

What always stuck me as odd about this whole thing is like, yeah, most cultures have laws against hurting and killing people?? Did they need an extra one for imprintees? "Hey, don't hurt or kill people but ESPECIALLY not these specific girls." Also there's something icky about the idea that they are a protected class because of who they are to a man vs who they are as a person in their own right and that these Indigenous characters needed a special law not to hurt women and girls. Not great.

Again, it's one of those things that seemed especially designed for the Jacob and Renesmee situation. There was no reason they would need a special law to protect your average Quileute girls who were the subject of imprinting before. They would already be familiar to the group and their whole mission is to be protectors. But boy howdy is that "you can't hurt someone's imprint, it's our most sacred law" convenient when that imprint is a blood-drinking half-vampire potential abomination that everyone wanted dead five minutes ago.

And the thing is, the whole moral quandary around Renesmee and the visiting vampires could have at least been interesting if any of the characters had been allowed to like, be more than "uncomfortable" with it. It comes back again to SM not being that interested in the Vampire Stuff. She likes the romance, she likes the super hero aspect, she doesn't really care about "hey this group of people is dedicated to the protection of human life; earlier in the SAME BOOK Sam says something along the lines of they 'protect everyone we can no matter where vampires plan to hunt.'" But none of that matters with Renesmee.

This is another one of those times, like the car chase, where the narrative is telling us like "there is no other choice, this is what they must do to save Bella/Renesmee" and implies it's lowkey noble that they are willing to go to these extremes, to stretch the bounds of their beliefs, to do that out of love for them. But the books never really convince me that this was the BEST way let alone the ONLY way to help or protect those people?

I don't know where any of this is going other than, yeah, it felt contrived to force Jacob and by extension the rest of the pack to be on board with the assembly of the X-Men vampires. And for so many reasons this all feels like the least interesting way to go about any of this. The tenuous truce the Quileutes and Cullens came to in Eclipse after working together against the newborns (Paul and Emmett, Seth and Edward, Billy shaking hands with Carlisle after he treated Jacob) was way more interesting than the forced "one big happy family now!!!!" of imprinting. In Breaking Dawn, Carlisle basically tells Sam they don't need to show up for the confrontation with the Volturi, something like "don't get your family slaughtered for pride" and Sam responds that Jacob cannot abandon Renesmee and the packs cannot abandon Jacob. But he means LITERALLY. Because of the imprint, they really don't have a choice. I think it is, like you said, a biological imperative. Renesmee's destruction would equal Jacob's destruction and all the other wolves have shared the pack mind with him, so they are compelled nearly as much as he is.

I think it was smart for SM to go that route in the later books.

My suspicion is that, because the meadow scene was basically her just writing out the dream she had, in the original Twilight she was not willing to tweak it. She was married to the sparkling/glittering/diamond motif because that's what she saw in her dream. But as time went on and her lore developed more, she was perhaps a bit more willing to get away from what she literally saw in her dream (the beautiful glittering) and lean more into the idea that this 'sparkling' could look like a person on fire.

Because in the original Twilight the whole moment is kind of quiet and soft and Bella's dazzled by beauty. It's only in the later two iterations that we get the panic from Bella/Beau and it feels like SM was embracing the idea that this was a re-do.

Like this one:

Question 2: We've got an idea of everybody's track records except for Alice's.  Stephenie:  Oh! Track records on how many people have been killed by various members of the Cullen family.  I don't have a number count for you, I'll have to go back and kind of think about it, but nobody's record is very good except for Rosalie and Carlisle.  It's a lot harder than people seem to think, being a vampire. I mean, how would you be if you just couldn't eat food? I think you'd try now and then, I know I would.

Question 7:  So how do vampires find mates?  Is it like werewolves? Stephenie:  She wants to know how vampires find mates, it's like werewolves where you might - not all werewolves imprint, by the way, but where you just see someone and you know, or if it's like humans.  And it's like humans.  The difference is that after you meet someone and you fall in love with them, you don't fall back out of love with them.  That is a permanent thing.  But you still, it's not a first sight kind of thing. OK, with the book in the air.

Personally, I prefer vampires who always look like vampires. I feel like it's too easy, too much of a cop-out, if they look like normal humans most of the time but only when they're hunting or fighting or about to have sex or whatever, suddenly they "vamp out" and look more monstrous.

Like I get it, especially in a visual medium like movies or TV, it's just a lot easier to have your actors look like normal people most of the time! And I get it from a writing standpoint, too, that it's easier to have them pass for human 90% of the time. But, personally, I just find that less interesting. I like that idea that they have to put some effort into passing for human, that they look a little corpse-y or their eyes are a weird color and they need excuses (the fluorescents!) or dark sunglasses or contact lenses, or in the case of Twilight, they are stone-like.

I DO like the sunlight angle, though. Sparkling gets a big 'meh' from me; I don't love it, I don't hate it. It's whatever. Not my favorite bit of lore but doesn't ruin it for me, either. Just kinda there. I would have preferred a more negative consequence to sunlight rather than just 'oh wow we're extra beautiful, so beautiful we can't be seen by humans or they're know we're supernatural (lightly retconned in MS and Life and Death to look more on-fire-y, but that was NOT how it came off in Twilight Classic. At least not to me). Could have been slightly painful but not life-threatening so they avoided it. Or, as I wrote like 100 years ago, it could be a Picture of Dorian Gray situation where they keep up their youth and beauty until the sunlight reveals all the evil they've done. Or whatever.