Campire or vamporn? Twilight cont’d

I may be over the hump, Twilight! Just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore ersatz teen angst, the mood shifted. Now it’s all glittery-skinned Edward of the sculpted torso sniffing Bella’s hair. I’m starting to get what the appeal is: the young woman’s fantasy of attracting someone dangerous, powerful, older (albeit some ick factor there if you think about just how much older), simply by virtue of her very being. That’s why I’m glad there was no Internet as we now know it when I was a teenager, or else I’d have been lured away by the first perv who IMed me I was special.

With some selective skimming, I’m now on page 335, and Bella has been invited home to meet Edward’s vampire family. With more than 150 pages to go, some new dangers are bound to erupt and threaten this odd domesticity, and with the narrative’s attention diverted (for now, at least) from school dances and Bella’s insipid mortal friends, I just might make it all the way! 

Meantime, an observation about vampire stories and mind-reading. In Twilight, Edward can read people’s thoughts, only not Bella’s, which contributes to his fascination with her. In the Sookie Stackhouse series (on which the show True Blood is based), it’s Sookie, a human, who can read thoughts, only not those of her vampire love interest, and that’s a big draw for her as well. Perhaps Buffy fans will recall the episode where the slayer is temporarily afflicted with this power and is overwhelmed nearly to the point of madness, but she’s unable to read the thoughts of Angel, her vampire hunk. I think it’s kind of telling that the mind-reading gambit so heavily co-opted by these lesser works was only deemed worth exploring in a single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, at whose feet these derivative upstarts are not fit to lie.

I’m sorry, Twilight! That wasn’t fair. Buffy’s gone and you’re here, so I’m gonna try to love the one I’m with. You have some very nice blurbs.