#sunset-telepath

They're really good. And you might have to read them for lit classes eventually.

I've yet to meet a single person who liked the Golden Tower. Everyone I've spoken to is filled with loathing for it.

It's just! So bad! on so many levels! I'd prefer if they had just never finished the series!

It doesn't even read as the same series the way they completely abandoned every single theme they'd built. I will give them that Aaron in Call's head was funny at times, but that's it.

But from the start they were insistent that who Call's soul used to be didn't mean he was bad now. He's not inherently evil, he can and is a different, better person now. And death cannot be escaped. Those are pretty major fucking themes!

The the Golden Tower was like what if this whole time there was someone secretly evil in the back of his head who was responsible for all the bad things in the world :3 and death can be undone if we like u :3

Has he considered becoming an existentialist philosopher? He could give Kirkegaard a run for his money...

I think Edward would genuinely believe that any philosophy he has isn't worth sharing because he's not human (he's a monster) so no one will be able to properly understand his true plights and anguish. they'll just water it down and misunderstand it, the foolish things, no idea their weakness, the predator among them 😔

and he'd think none of his family could either because none of them are burdened with the constant unfiltered thoughts of humanity--and also because all of them are hitched and he's single (i've been speaking from a pre-obsessed with bella era, though his melodrama does continue until about mid book 4.)

The serial numbers were filed off :sob:

okay i can understand some physical similarities (though they are a bit generic) and the whole supernatural 17 year old immortal thing (especially since they're both telepathic)

but I will say I do think personality wise they're incredibly different. edward spends every second of every day lamenting his existence and contemplating his own monstrosity (in a negative way). the melancholic melodrama he exudes is unparalleled. he'd see a flower lose a petal and walk into the ocean over it, then write a sad concierto about the inevitability of death for everything but him (because he's a monster)

The infamous event in Cambodian history is the Khmer Rouge reign and genocide from 1975-1979. But there's a lot of complicated history that succeeds the fall of the Khmer Rouge and that could be inspiring Alan Grant in 1989-1990.

So the Cambodian genocide is horrific. And while the more well known aspect is that the Khmer Rouge specifically targeted people living in the cities, who were slaughtered and forcibly relocated, a lesser known aspect was that they also targeted racial minorities in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge killed 100% of the Vietnamese population in Cambodia. (This is 1975-1979.)

In response to this (and other things), the nearby Vietnamese government (the communist one, they achieved victory in 1975 after America pulls out) begins the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and invades Cambodia in 1978. The communist Vietnamese government achieve victory in the first phase of the war by ousting the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and establishing a satellite communist Cambodian government that rules from Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia). This marks the end of the genocide and the end of the Khmer Rouge regime.

But the Khmer Rouge forces/army flee into the forests & jungles and proceed to fight a civil war with the Vietnamese government and the new communist Cambodian government over Cambodia from 1979 on. The war continues until tensions begin to diminish in 1989 and the Cambodian government signs a peace treaty with the Khmer Rouge in 1991. This 1989-1991 period is especially important because the communist Cambodian state (not the Khmer Rouge) is undergoing massive internal reworkings and renames itself, disavows communism, re-introduces private property, re-establishes Buddhism as the official national religion, and basically completely changes its internal structure.

My hypothesis is that Grant is either: 1.) implying that the Cambodian farmers are ex-Khmer Rouge (farmers were the Khmer Rouge's ideological and popular base) or 2.) implying that the new anti-communist reforms are driving Cambodians to desperation or 3.) just including Cambodians because their country had been in a state of danger/unrest for well over a decade at the time Grant is writing Rite of Passage.

Anyway sorry for bombing your inbox with an ask about Cambodian history in response to your post about Alan Grant and his inclusion of Cambodians in Rite of Passage and the historical context of 1989. I'm by no means an expert in this and others would probably disagree but this is the general thrust of what's happening in Cambodia when he's writing this.